BioShock: Rapture

Apollo Square, Rapture 1948

Standing on the stage with Ryan, Bill McDonagh exulted in Ryan’s speech as it boomed through Apollo Square. Rapture rose in sturdy magnificence around them.

“To build a city at the bottom of the sea! Insanity! But look around you, my friends!” Andrew Ryan’s voice boomed, with only a little feedback squeal. Wearing a caramel-colored double-breasted suit, his freshly barbered hair slicked back, Ryan seemed to emanate personality from the podium. Bill could feel Ryan there, to his left—and the almost frighteningly deep conviction in his tone kept his listeners riveted. The crowd of more than two thousand seemed a bit stunned by their surroundings when they’d first come. Now Bill could see them nodding, the pride shining from their faces, as Ryan told them they were a unique people in a unique place—each one of them with a chance to make their own destiny within the walls of Rapture. Those at the front were mostly the moneyed patricians, eccentrics, and pioneering professionals Ryan had recruited. The determined blue-collar types milled at the back of the crowd.

Hands clasped in front of him, Bill stood to Ryan’s right and as close to Elaine as propriety allowed. Beside Bill and Elaine stood Greavy, Sullivan, Simon and Daniel Wales, Prentice Mill, Sander Cohen, and Ryan’s new “personal assistant,” the statuesque beauty Diane McClintock. She looked like she fancied herself a queen. Bill had heard she was originally some cigarette girl Ryan had picked up—and now she was putting on airs.

Under the bunting-swathed stage overlooking the square, a tape recorder took down Ryan’s speech. He planned to record all his speeches and put edited sections of them out as “inspirational talks” on public address throughout Rapture.

“But where else,” Ryan demanded, “could we be free from the clutching hands of parasites?” His deep voice resonated in the gleaming windows looking out to the shadowy, light-shafted depths of the sea. Bill nudged Elaine and nodded toward the windows as a school of large fish swam up to the glass. The fish seemed to be taking in the speech, ogling Ryan as if awestruck. She hid a smile behind her hand. Bill wanted to take that hand and kiss it, draw his new fiancée away from this pensive crowd, up to the privacy of his apartment in Olympus Heights—celebrate the culmination of so much hard work with another sort of climax. But he had to be satisfied with winking at her, as Ryan went portentously on: “Where else could we build an economy that they would not try to control, a society that they would not try to destroy? It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea! It was impossible to build it anywhere else!”

“Hear hear!” Greavy said, leading a patter of applause.

“The ant society misunderstands the nature of true cooperation!” Ryan boomed. “True cooperation is enlightened self-interest, not grubbing parasitism! True cooperation is not based on the bloodsucking that the parasites call ‘taxation’! True cooperation is people working together—each for their own profit! A man’s self-interest is at the root of all that he accomplishes! But there is something more powerful than each of us: a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. It is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. The Great Chain may sound mystical…” Ryan shook his head contemptuously. “It is not! Some would imagine the hand of their so-called God behind every mystery! The best of human nature, the laws of natural selection—such is the power behind the Great Chain, not God! We need no gods or kings in Rapture! Only man! Here, man and woman will be rewarded with the sweat of their brows. Here, without interference, we will prove that society can order itself with unfettered competition, with unfettered free enterprise—with unfettered research! I have scientists in Rapture working on new discoveries that will astound you—and the persecution of the small-minded is all that kept those discoveries from happening till now. Science will advance without the oversight of pompous tyrants who would impose their personal view of ‘morality’ on us.” He cleared his throat and smiled, his tone becoming friendly, fatherly. “And now, in celebration of the opening day of Rapture—a song performed by Sander Cohen, written by Miss Anna Culpepper…” Anna Culpepper was an unfinished English major, a naïve but ambitious young woman whom Ryan had recruited out of her third year in college and who fancied herself a lyricist.

Wearing a tux, the impish performer stepped up to the microphone. Bill winced. Cohen got on his nerves.

From somewhere canned music played, and Cohen sang along.

It was a sluggish number, taking a long time to reach its chorus, and Bill lost interest, letting his attention wander to the majesty of Apollo Square, Rapture’s “Grand Central Station”…

Rapture’s architecture and design was a fusion of the style of the World’s Fair of 1934—an event that had a great impact on Andrew Ryan—and the industrial grandiosity of “The Art of the Great Chain.” To either side of the stage, heroic statues of electroplated bronze, forty feet high—the elongated forms of sleek, muscular, idealized men—stretched their arms toward the heights as if straining for godhood. To Bill they looked a bit like giant hood ornaments, but he’d never say as much to Ryan, who loved that sort of art. Bill had been a trifle taken aback the first time he’d seen a towering statue of Ryan, like the one at the other end of the big room—there were many about Rapture, the figures looming magisterially, seeming to embody an iron determination. In Apollo Square, relief images of lines of men—cheerfully pulling chains—decorated the walls. Everywhere was art decoratif trimming, often shaped like rays of light emanating from glistening knobs, intricate borders evoking both the industrial scale of the modern world and the temples of Babylon and Egypt.

As the song droned on, Bill felt suddenly giddy, riding an inner rush of amazement at what he’d helped build. The Waleses had created the look and feel of Rapture, but he and Greavy had built its flesh, its bones, its inner workings—and Ryan was its animating “soul.” They’d done it with the help of all those men who’d labored in the tunnels, under the sea—who’d risked their lives in the completed, watertight sections of Rapture, levels built from Hephaestus to Olympus Heights. Rapture was a reality: a small city, three miles to a side so far, rising from the depths to tower over the deep seabed.

Rapture. They’d really done it! Oh, there weren’t enough maintenance workers, there were still more heating ducts to be put in, still pipe to be laid in some levels. So far, only three of the five geothermal turbines were running in Hephaestus. Slow seepage was a problem in some areas. But Rapture was real: a man had conceived it, funded it at gigantic cost— spending the kind of money that small countries spent every year—and saw it through to completion. It was breathtaking.

He looked over at Sullivan, who always seemed gloomy, worried. Rumors were still rampant about G-men sniffing around in New York, wondering if Ryan was dodging taxation on some new project.

Some of the faces in the crowd seemed pinched with a vague anxiety of their own, were staring restlessly around at their strange new habitat. A lot of Rapture’s people were high-tone types, moneyed or formerly moneyed nobs who’d become disaffected with society. They’d come here looking for a new start and liking the fact that a wealthy man like Ryan had offered them one.

Bill hoped it was all worth it. So much was sacrificed down here. Like the time he’d seen three men boiled alive setting up the geothermal central heating. The volcanically heated water in the feed pipes had been released at too high a pressure—something he’d tried to warn Wallace about—and the pressure burst a pipe joint. Superheated water gushed to fill a room in seconds. Barely got out in time himself. Wallace should have known better after that close call the first day in the domes. Bill had felt those deaths hard—he’d watched the men die through a port, and the sight had given him nightmares for a week.

That first accident, though, in the dome tunnel, had cemented Bill’s relationship with Ryan. He had saved Andrew Ryan’s life—and Ryan had rewarded him with a nice raise, for one thing.

But he wondered if money really meant the same thing down here. Initially most of the inhabitants of Rapture were required to change their money for Rapture dollars, some percentage kept by Ryan to pay for maintenance services. And what would happen to a man when his Rapture dollars ran out? People couldn’t wire out for money—or even send letters out of Rapture. Did they really understand how sealed off from the outside world they were?

The song ended, and Elaine reached over, giving Bill’s hand a discreet squeeze. Long as Elaine was there, Bill was happy. It didn’t matter where they were.

He had helped build something glorious, something unprecedented. Sure, Rapture was untried, was a glaringly new idea. A gigantic experiment. But they’d planned Rapture down to the last detail. How badly could it go wrong?

The North Atlantic 1948

A raw morning on the North Atlantic. Broken light slanted fitfully through silver-gray clouds. Wind snapped the tops off waves, smacking packets of saltwater into the men manning the decks of the six Fontaine’s Fisheries trawlers. The man who now called himself Fontaine had invested some of his own cash, and somewhat to his surprise he’d made a success of Fontaine’s Fisheries, selling tons of fish to Ryan’s project—and to Reykjavík. Cold comfort, so to speak.

Frank Fontaine—formerly Frank Gorland—could see the peculiar little tower rising tantalizingly from the waves, a quarter mile off. Beyond it were two ships, one of them the platform ship with its winches and hoists. Slabs of ice still floated about the trawler, brightly white against the green-blue water.

The object was to get from up here—to down there—to get safely into the city marked by that anomalous lighthouse. The first time Rapture’s buyers had come to his trawlers to purchase fish, he’d given them a letter to take down to Ryan.

In fact, he’d sent variations of the same letter with three different deliveries to Rapture.

Standing at the prow of the pitching deck of the trawler, unscrewing the top of his flask, Frank Fontaine asked himself: Am I after fish—or a wild goose? Sure, he always dreamed about a big-paying long con, but this one was threatening to go on indefinitely—and though it was afternoon and supposedly summer, it was cold as a son of a bitch out here. Made a witch’s tit seem like a hot toddy. Was it worth giving up Gorland—becoming Fontaine?

A city under the sea. It was becoming an obsession.

Fontaine looked up at the streaming charcoal-colored clouds, wondered if it was going to storm again. Just being on this damn tub was too much like work.

Talking to the men who picked up the fish for Rapture’s food supply, Fontaine had confirmed that Ryan had indeed built some gigantic underwater habitat, a kind of free-market utopia—and Fontaine knew what happened with utopias. Look at the Soviets—all those fine words about the proletariat had turned into gulags and breadlines. But a “utopia” was pure opportunity for a man like him. When this undersea utopia fell apart, he’d be there, with a whole society to feast on. Long as he didn’t step too hard on Ryan’s toes, he could build up an organization, get away with a pile of loot.

But he had to get down to Rapture first…

The trawler lurched, and so did Fontaine’s stomach.

A small craft was being lowered over the side of the platform ship—a thirty-foot gig. Men descended the ladder and clambered aboard it. When it started motoring toward the trawlers, almost a quarter mile away, it was bristling with men, rifles glinting in their hands.

But he hadn’t come this far to run. He waited as his crew lined up behind him. Peach Wilkins, his first mate, came to the rail. “Doesn’t look good, boss,” Wilkins said as the launch came steadily closer. “What they need all those guns for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Fontaine said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

The launch cut through the tossing waves and then came about to ease up against the trawler’s starboard side. A man in early middle age, wearing a top coat, rubber boots and leather gloves, climbed the ladder and swung aboard, followed by two burly, watchful younger men in watch caps and slickers, rifles on straps over their shoulders.

Looking chilly and gray-faced, the older man braced himself on the bucking deck and looked Fontaine up and down. “Name’s Sullivan, chief of security for Ryan Industries. You’re Frank Fontaine. Am I right?”

Fontaine nodded. “That’s me. Owner and operator, Fontaine’s Fisheries.”

“Mr. Ryan’s been watching your operation out here. Seen you build it up, edge out the competition—make a success of it. And you’ve done a good job supplying us. But you’re nosy. You’ve been asking questions about what’s down below—” He hooked a thumb at the sea and grinned unpleasantly. “You even bribed some of our platform workers with booze…”

“I just want to be part of what you’re building down there. I sent several letters—”

“Sure, we got the letters. Mr. Ryan’s read ’em.” Sullivan looked the trawler over. “You got anything left to drink on this boat, besides water?”

Fontaine took out the flask, passed it over. “Help yourself…”

Sullivan opened the flask, drank deeply. He passed it back empty.

“Listen,” Fontaine said. “I’ll do what I have to—anything it takes to make my way… in Rapture.”

Sullivan pursed his lips. “You know—once you go where Mr. Ryan is, you ain’t coming back. You live there; you work there. Maybe you do real good there. But you don’t leave there. There ain’t a whole lot of rules. But that’s one of them. And that takes commitment, Fontaine. You ready for that?”

Fontaine looked out to sea, as if he were thinking, puzzling out some great truth. Then he nodded to himself. There’d been a kid at the orphanage—whenever the nuns asked him if he wanted to please God, the kid had looked at them, all mistylike. The kid had ended up a priest. Fontaine put that simple, misty-eyed belief on his own face. And he said, “All the way, Chief.”

Sullivan gave him a long, close look—and then grunted. “Well—Mr. Ryan liked your letters. And he’s inclined to offer you a place in Rapture. Says you’ve earned it, sticking at your vigil out here. I guess we’re taking a chance on you. Same offer goes for your men.”

“So—when do we go? Down to Rapture, I mean…”

Sullivan chuckled and turned to look at the sea, then nodded to himself. “Right now.”

And at exactly that moment, the crew of the trawler gasped and pointed—seeing a submarine suddenly rise to the surface in a roaring wash of froth just forty yards off the port bow.

Sinclair Solutions, Rapture 1948

“So what’s your problem with this Tenenbaum woman?” Chief Sullivan asked. He shifted in the stiff little straight-backed chair across from Sinclair’s desk. Glaringly visible through the big round window behind the desk, a SINCLAIR SOLUTIONS sign glowed in red-gold neon outside, against the indigo backdrop of the sea.

Augustus Sinclair rubbed his clean-shaven chin at that, as if he wasn’t sure of the answer himself. The pharmaceuticals investor was a trim, darkly handsome half-Panamanian in his thirties, with a faint line of mustache. You had to look close to see the mustache wasn’t just penciled in. “Well—she’s been working for us, development, see. Me, I don’t understand exactly what she’s working on—something to do with heredity I gather—but I’m a big booster of science. That’s one reason Andrew asked me down here, I guess. That’s where the money is—new inventions, new drugs. Why, if a man can…”

“We were talking about Brigid Tenenbaum,” Sullivan reminded him. Sinclair had a tendency to rattle on. And it was almost five o’clock. Ryan’s security chief was looking forward to a half bottle of what passed for Scotch in Rapture, which he had stashed in his apartment.

“This Tenenbaum,” Sinclair said, running a finger along the negligible line of his mustache, “she’s a damn peculiar woman and… I just want to make sure that if she’s working for us, she’s not breaking any rules around here. She had her own lab, for a while, financed by a couple of interests around Rapture, and those guys dropped her like a hot potato. See, word got out she used to do experiments on people for this doctor of Hitler’s. Vivisections and—I don’t even want to think about it. Now, we do some human experiments at Sinclair—you got to—but we don’t kill people off. We don’t force ’em. We pay ’em good. If a man’s hair turns orange and he starts acting like a monkey for a week or two, why it doesn’t do him no harm in the long run…”

Sullivan started to laugh—then realized that Sinclair wasn’t joking.

“But Tenenbaum,” Sinclair went on, “she’s taking blood from people by the bucket—and more’n one of them collapsed.”

“You afraid you’re doing something… unethical?” This was a word that didn’t get too much use in Rapture.

Sinclair blinked. “Hm? Unethical? Hell, Chief, I’ve been on the same page as Andrew about altruism, all that stuff, for years. Why do you think I was brought in so early? Worrying about ethics—I don’t do it. I came here to strike it rich; you won’t catch me blowing my last bubble for any other personage—” He jabbed a finger at Sullivan to emphasize the words: “ —plural or singular. I read every issue of Popular Science and Mechanics front to back—I’m a hard charger behind the Rapture science philosophy. But…”

“Yes?”

“Well, there’s some rules here, ain’t there? I just feel like people might get up in arms if we go too far. I’m not sure this Tenenbaum isn’t likely to do that. Or that other fellow, Suchong…”

“We got detention for troublemakers—but they’ve got to be, say, outright murderers. Thieves. Rape. Major smuggling. Stuff like that. We’re strict about watertight integrity—and about leaving Rapture. But apart from that…” Sullivan shrugged. “Not much in the way of laws. Fella opened a shop called Rapture Grown Coca the other day. Grows his own coca bushes under some kinda red lights. I’m hearing he makes cocaine from the leaves. Or claims he does. Might be anything in those syringes. Gave me a bit of a turn, seeing the people come out of there—looked like they might get up to any goddamn thing. But Ryan’s all right with it. So I guess taking a bit of extra blood… long as it’s voluntary…” He shrugged. “Isn’t a problem.”

“Yeah. Well I hope it isn’t.” Sinclair shook his head. “My old man was sure we got to do things for the greater good—and what happened? I don’t hold with worrying about anything but number one. Still—I don’t want to get the public up in arms neither. You hear any rumblings like that? People talking… unions? That kind of thing?”

Sullivan had been thinking about his Scotch, but this stopped him. “You heard something, I take it? Mr. Ryan worries constantly about Communist infiltrators.”

“Some rumors from our maintenance guys. Heard ’em talking about that place the workers have made up for themselves, down below. Not much more than a shacktown. Who knows what goes on down there?”

Sullivan pulled a paper and pencil from his coat. “Got any names for me?”

Sinclair opened a desk drawer, took out a pint bottle. “A few. Care for a drink, Chief? It’s that time of day. This is from my own Sinclair Spirits distillery. Very good, if I do say so myself…”

“Augustus, you’re a man after my own heart. You pour; I’ll write…”

Lower Wharf, Neptune’s Bounty 1949

Andrew Ryan had an odd feeling as he looked up at the sign that read, FONTAINE’S FISHERIES. He and Chief Sullivan watched two burly workmen on stepladders hanging it from the ceiling of the lower wharf area. Ryan didn’t believe in omens, in anything supernatural. But there was something about that fisheries sign that bothered him. Frank Fontaine had installed an office, a conveyor belt for fish, big freezers for long-term storage down below. Nothing unexpected.

But the feeling of vague dread returned every time Ryan looked at the neon sign—and it seemed to increase, becoming an inner shudder, as the neon sign was switched on. A nice-looking sign, really, with FONTAINE’S in electric-blue neon, FISHERIES in glowing yellow, under a neon fish shining against the wooden backdrop.

“Seen enough of Neptune’s Bounty, boss?” Sullivan asked, glancing at his pocket watch. It was cold in here—they could see their breath—and they’d been inspecting new businesses for hours, trying to get a sense of what was taking root in Rapture.

Ryan heard a splash of water on the pylons nearby and glanced over to see a small tugboat-style vessel pulling up at the wharf, the smoke from its engine sucking into vents on the low ceiling. The lower wharf was an interior space designed to look exterior, with shallow water around the jutting wooden dock and the occasional boat from neighboring chambers where fish and other goods were off-loaded. Another peculiarity of Rapture—a boat that wasn’t a submarine, putting around deep under the surface of the sea.

“Mr. Ryan, how are you sir?”

Ryan turned back to Fontaine’s Fisheries to see Frank Fontaine standing at the open door, hands in pockets, dressed in a yellow overcoat and three-piece tailored suit, black shoes decked out in spats, bald head shining in the blue light from his sign—Fontaine’s own name glowing over his head. Stepping out beside him, smoking a cigarette and squinting past the smoke, was the thuggish bodyguard Fontaine had brought in recently—Reggie something. Reggie was looking at Sullivan with a kind of smirking contempt.

Ryan nodded politely. “Fontaine. You seem to be settling in, all right. I like the fisheries’ sign. Neon brightens Rapture up.”

Fontaine nodded, glancing up at the sign. “Sure. Just like the forty-deuce. I help you, Mr. Ryan? I was just about to check on my fishing sub…”

“Ah, yes. The fishing subs—I like to keep tabs on them myself.”

“That right? Got you worried?” Fontaine’s tone was cool, a little mockery behind the respect.

“Rapture leaks enough,” Ryan said, wryly. “We don’t want too much coming in—or too much slipping out. Nobody comes or goes without our authorization.”

“For a place that likes to keep the rules down, Rapture’s sure got a lot of ’em,” Reggie muttered.

“We’ve got only as many rules as we need,” Ryan said. “No robbery. And nobody leaves Rapture—or brings in stuff we don’t want here. No outside product or religion—no Bibles, ‘holy’ books of any kind. Luxury goods—we’re going to make our own, soon’s we can. No letters, no correspondence with the outside world. Secrecy is our protection.”

“I couldn’t miss the contraband rules.” Fontaine chuckled. “Being as you posted them in my office, in big black letters. Or your man there did.”

Sullivan grunted to himself.

“I think you understand me,” Ryan said, carefully keeping his tone civil. “The fisheries could be a weak link…” Ryan hesitated, choosing his words carefully. Fontaine was a forceful entrepreneur, and Ryan liked that. He’d even outbid Ryan Enterprises for some shop space. All in the spirit of Rapture. But Ryan needed to let Fontaine know where the boundaries were. “The only thing a fisherman should bring to Rapture is fish.”

Fontaine winked—flashing a smile. “We have no trouble identifying what’s fish and what isn’t, Mr. Ryan. There’s the smell. The scales.”

Reggie laughed softly.

Ryan cleared his throat. “We’re all individuals here, Fontaine. But we’re also part of the Great Chain of industry… The Great Chain unites us when we struggle in our own interest. If anyone breaks that chain by bringing in contraband, that’s a weak link. Even ideas can be contraband…”

Fontaine smiled. “The most dangerous kind, Mr. Ryan.”

“I do wish you luck, and a prosperous business,” Ryan said.

“Might feel more like I’m part of things if you invited me to join the Rapture Council,” Fontaine said mildly, lighting a cigar with a gold lighter. “Care for a smoke?”

“No. Thank you.” Ryan examined the cigar. “I presume that is a Rapture-made cigar?”

“Naturally.” Fontaine raised the cigar for Ryan to see.

Ryan smiled noncommittally. “You perhaps have the impression the council is some grand, powerful organization. It’s a very loose commission to oversee enterprise, keep a bit of an eye on things without interfering. Time consuming, to be honest.” Ryan wasn’t enthusiastic about bringing the glib, forceful Fontaine into the Rapture Council. He liked competition, but not breathing down his neck. “But ah—I’ll take your request under advisement.”

“Then we’re in good shape!” Fontaine said, blowing blue cigar smoke in the air.

The man seemed relaxed, certain of himself, unworried. And maybe there was something in his eyes that Ryan recognized. A hint, a flicker that suggested Fontaine’s willingness to do whatever he had to do… to get what he wanted.

Olympus Heights 1949

“Mr. Ryan likes to talk about choices,” Elaine was saying. “And I keep wondering if we made the right one, coming to Rapture in the first place.”

“We did, love,” Bill said, glancing around the comfortable flat with some satisfaction. He patted her pregnant tummy absently with his left hand, his right around her shoulders. They sat gazing out at the sea from their viewing alcove.

Before opening day, Ryan had purchased a great many furnishings wholesale and warehoused them in the undersea city, selling them at a profit to Rapture entrepreneurs. He’d brought in raw materials too, and a modest manufacturing base had sprung up.

Elaine’s tastes didn’t run to the rococo excess found in so much of Rapture. She had chosen simple lines, craftsman-style furnishings: curving dark wood, polished redwood tables, silver-framed mirrors. A smiling portrait of Bill—his mustache curling up, his russet hair starting to recede—hung over their shark-leather living room sofa. Materials found in the undersea environs around Rapture were being increasingly used in furnishings—locally mined metals, many-hued corals for tabletops and counters, glass from deep-sea sands, even beams and brass from sunken ships.

The curving window of the viewing alcove, the glass arching over them sectioned by frames of Ryanium alloy, looked out on a deep channel between towering buildings. An uneven dull-blue light prevailed through the watery space; the new, glowing sign across the way, seeming to ripple in the funhouse lens of the water, read:

“I don’t mind the smell of Rapture,” Elaine said. “It’s kind of like the laundry room of the building I grew up in. Kind of homey. Some of it.”

“We’re working on that smell, love,” Bill put in. “The sulfur smell too.”

“And I don’t mind so much not seeing my family. But Bill—when I think of raising a child here…” She put her hand over his, on her swollen belly. “That’s when I worry. What will the schools be like? And living without churches, without God… And what will the child learn of the world up above? Just the hateful things Ryan says about it? And—will she… if it’s a she… will she really never get to see the sky?”

“Oh in time she will, love—in time. Someday, when Mr. Ryan thinks it’s safe, the city will be built higher up, above the waves. And we’ll come and go freely, Bob’s your uncle. But that’s a generation off, at least. It’s a dangerous world out there. Bloody atom bombs, innit?”

“I don’t know, Bill. When we went to dinner in Athena’s Glory, with him and his friends—Well, Mr. Ryan ranted a good deal, don’t you think? On and on about the world above and how we have to accept our choice and rejoice in it. And to be stuck in Rapture with… well some of the people here, like that Steinman. He kept touching my face, talking about how it was ‘so close, so close and yet’! What did he mean?”

Bill chuckled and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “Steinman’s a prat, all right. But don’t worry. We’ll all be just fine. I’m going to protect you, darlin’. You can trust me to do that. It’ll all come right in the end…”

Atlantis Express, Adonis Station 1949

Stanley Poole had never been this nervous on a reporting assignment. Maybe it was being this close to larger-than-life personalities like Andrew Ryan, Prentice Mill, and Carlson Fiddle—them being all casual-like, almost acting like he was one of them.

The four men were sitting together at the front of the first train car. Poole couldn’t quite make out what Ryan and Mill were saying over the rumble of the Atlantic Express. A pensive, pinch-faced man, Mill seemed worried about something…

They were all on their way to the Adonis Luxury Resort, though it was far from finished—only the Roman-style public baths were ready, steaming for bathers. Ryan wanted The Rapture Tribune to report some progress. To Poole’s right were Mill and Ryan; to his left sat Carlson Fiddle, a bespectacled, nattily dressed, soft-faced man, gently wringing his hands in his lap. Fiddle looked put-upon and preoccupied—and prissily startled as the train lurched into motion. The kind of fussy little man who made you think of an old lady. It was like he’d spent too much time with his mother. They’d just come from the future site of what was to be Ryan Amusements, and now, as the train started for Adonis, Poole sensed that there was a story in Carlson Fiddle’s pensiveness.

“Well, Carlson—” Poole began. “May I call you Carlson?”

“No,” Fiddle said, frowning at the floor.

Poole winced as he took out his pen and notebook. He knew he wasn’t a person who easily commanded respect. As the train passed through a tunnel he could see his reflection in the dark window, beyond Fiddle—the reflection was sickly, the dark glass making him look even more hollow eyed than normal. But, at best, how did anyone take him seriously, with those jutting ears, that skinny neck, and protruding Adam’s apple? The gauntness was worse lately—he had trouble keeping his food down. Maybe it was the binges on booze and drugs he’d gotten into since arriving in Rapture.

Poole cleared his throat and tried again: “Quite a job you’ve got, Mr. Fiddle—designing Ryan Amusements, I mean. Amusement park for the kids, that the ticket?” He smiled encouragingly, hoping Fiddle would get the joke. But not a flicker of amusement came from the guy.

Fiddle adjusted his glasses. “Yes, yes, we’ll have animatronics, some interesting, ah, exhibits planned. I’m a bit baffled about what Mr. Ryan wants exactly.” He glanced sharply at Poole. “Don’t quote that in the paper. About me being baffled.”

Poole winked at Fiddle. “Oh, Mr. Ryan was clear…” He lowered his voice. “… this is going to be a puff piece all the way. All about the swell new constructions coming, the new branch line, the spa. So—what’s this animatronics thing?”

Tired of adjusting his glasses, Fiddle adjusted his tie. “Oh, not everyone calls it that. But—there was that Westinghouse exhibit, in ’39, with Electro the robot and his little pal Sparko. That kind of thing. Animated mannequins, some say. They’ll talk to visitors.”

“Animated mannequins! Do tell!”

Fiddle went back to gently wringing his hands in his lap. “It’ll be about the history of Rapture. I’d like to put in some fairy-tale material too, to keep the kids coming back. Maybe something like the Walt Disney cartoons. But he… well, never mind. Just print that I—that I think it’s a wonderful project, and I’m looking forward to making it a reality.”

“Sure thing!”

The train jolted as it took a turn, rising up to pass into a transparent tunnel through the sea. Coldly magnificent, like some sunken fairyland, Rapture rose about them. A school of big fish zigzagged by, glinting silver. A private bathysphere whipped along below them as they entered another building.

Poole glanced over at Ryan and Mill, when Mill raised his voice. “He does keep implying, Andrew, that I… that eventually—”

“Come, come,” Ryan said equably. “You worry too much, Prentice! Augustus is not some predator of the sea.”

Mill snorted bitterly. “Then what does Sinclair mean when he says, ‘Enjoy the Atlantic Express while you have it’?”

“Oh, that’s just one businessman using a bit of psychology on another! He probably plans to make you an offer and wants you to worry about a takeover. Keep you off-balance. Perfectly normal business tactic.”

“But it’s not a public company…”

“Perhaps it should be! You need not sell out to Sinclair. You could pump up your liquidity by selling shares freely about Rapture. Rapture is still growing! It’s a bubble that will never burst. You will want the capital for investment, Prentice… Ah—here’s our new luxury resort…”

The train slowed as they came into the station near Adonis. Poole, scribbling on his notebook, was somehow aware of Ryan’s scrutiny.

He looked up to see Andrew Ryan frowning at him. Ryan raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You do remember our talk? Nothing unauthorized, Poole.”

Poole swallowed, tempted to point out that Ryan’s heavy hand on Rapture’s newspaper was counter to his talk of freedom. But then Ryan was the major shareholder in the Tribune, and Stanley Poole had never heard of a newspaper that expressed an opinion its owners didn’t like.

“You betcha, Mr. Ryan,” Poole said cheerfully, winking. He rubbed his nose but quickly stopped, knowing it was an irritating mannerism. Man, he’d like to get out from under that hawkish gaze of Ryan’s, get a bottle from Sinclair Spirits and a little sniff-sniff from Le Marquis D’Epoque, that new liquor-and-drug shop over in Fort Frolic. “This branch line, Mr. Ryan—mighty impressive. Quite a view.”

Ryan nodded, his expression becoming neutral. But he kept staring, a look that could be felt like a finger prodding at Poole’s forehead. “I do think I may have some special assignments for you, in time, Poole, if you prove to be discreet. I’ll need someone… very discreet indeed.”

The doors of the train slid open, and Ryan forgot about Poole, turning to clap Prentice on the shoulder, smiling. “The doors were a tad slow to open once we arrived, don’t you think, Prentice? Let’s make them brisker. Let’s keep Rapture moving ahead!”

Medical Pavilion 1949

“Bill, do we have to do this?” Elaine whispered as she lay back on the examining table, awaiting Dr. Suchong. “Why do I have to see these two? I don’t think that Tenenbaum woman is even a doctor. And Suchong—he’s some kind of brain surgeon or something… what does he know about obstetrics?” She smoothed out the hospital gown so it covered a bit more of her pregnancy-swollen belly.

Bill patted her tummy. “The regular doctor was booked up, love. I mentioned to Ryan you were having some unusual cramps, and he insisted that someone here would see to you. Tenenbaum and Suchong were working with Gil Alexander, who’s doing a bit of work for Ryan.” He shrugged.

Elaine licked her lips and said nervously: “I heard someone say she’s got a reputation of being kinda crazy with her experiments…”

“Haven’t heard that. She’s just another genius type that Ryan took an interest in. Sure she’s odd—they all are. Can’t make people understand what she wants half the time…”

“Ahh,” Dr. Suchong said, bustling in, his glasses catching the shine in the overhead lamp. His thin Asian face had a faint gloss of sweat. “Here is soon-mother!”

Brigid Tenenbaum came drifting in after him—a very young woman, superficially pretty but with bruised-looking eyes, a shapeless bob of brown hair, a distant expression on her face. Both of them wore lab coats, Tenenbaum with the skirt of a shabby brown dress showing under her white coat.

“Third trimester, yes?” she said. “Interesting.” Her accent, mixing German and Eastern European, was almost as pronounced as Suchong’s. “Well fed, yes? Circulation—good.”

Elaine scowled—Bill could see she felt like a lab animal. Tenenbaum hadn’t even said hello. But it was true—she wasn’t what you’d call a physician. She just happened to be available today. It was all a bit slapdash for Bill’s liking.

“Yes she is, what is expression, ‘well along,’” Suchong remarked, prodding at Elaine’s belly. “Yes… I can feel the… offspring moving. Almost ready for emergence. The creature wishes to come out and feed.”

Tenenbaum had turned to a nearby table of instruments, moving them minutely, squaring them up so that they were at precise right angles and equidistant.

“Mrs. McDonagh,” Suchong said, examining Elaine’s thighs, “does fetus make the reflex movements with extremities?”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “Do you mean does the little one kick, Doctor? The child does; yes.”

“Excellent sign. Long since I have examined a fetus. Difficult to obtain them in healthy state.”

He stepped around to her feet, reached out, and pulled her legs apart with a sharp, decisive movement of his hands like a butcher preparing to gut a chicken. Elaine made a squeak of surprise.

“’Ere, Doc, easy on my girl!” Bill said.

Suchong was lifting up the hospital gown—and he and Tenenbaum were both leaning over the exam table, frowning at Elaine’s private parts. Suchong grunted, pointing. “Interesting distention, there and there—you see? Part of peculiar metamorphosis of pregnant woman.”

“Yes, I see,” Tenenbaum said. “I have dissected many in this stage…”

“Enviable. Perhaps you have specimens?”

“No, no, all my specimens were taken when the Americans came, but—”

“Bill!” Elaine squeaked, snapping her legs shut and pressing the gown down over her crotch.

“Right! See any problems, you two?” Bill said.

“Hm?” Suchong looked at him in puzzlement. “Ah! No, no, she will do very well. It would be interesting to probe a bit—”

“Won’t be necessary, Doc! We’re off.” Bill helped Elaine down from the table. “Come on, love. Back in here, there’s your clothes, time to get dressed.”

He heard Andrew Ryan’s voice from the lab next door. “There you are, Dr. Suchong—is all well?”

Suchong said, “Yes, yes, nothing abnormal. I am glad you are here, Mr. Ryan—please to look at experiment thirty-seven…”

Bill stepped to the door of the lab, with half a mind to tell Ryan how coarsely Elaine had been treated. But he stopped, staring.

Andrew Ryan, Suchong, Gil Alexander—a researcher who worked for Ryan most of the time—and Brigid Tenenbaum were gathered around a big motley figure in a sort of glass coffin filled with water; the case was hooked up to a tangle of translucent tubes. Bill had only met Gil Alexander a few times—a serious-eyed man with a thick mustache. He was quite professorial and intelligent, but, it seemed to Bill, cold-blooded.

Stretched out in the glass coffin was a man whose body seemed a patchwork of flesh and, in some places, steel. Corpse-pale, the man lay motionless in the bubbling water—Bill thought it could have been a drowning victim.

Gil Alexander was adjusting a tube sinking into the supine man’s left leg. “A little inflammation. Not bad. We have good induction…”

Bill found himself staring at the exposed left leg—it looked as if flesh and metal were fused at the thigh. It was all puckered, and Bill thought he saw the skin quiver, as if reacting to a perfusion of bubbles. He wanted to speak up or leave, but there was something that held him, something weirdly fascinating in the scene…

“You see, Mr. Ryan,” Tenenbaum said, “fusion is incomplete, but I feel if we were to perhaps try viral gene transfer, we make body more capable of unifying with…”

“Bah!” Suchong said, glancing at her in annoyance. “You always think genes the way. Viral transfer of genes is entirely theoretical! Not needed! Body can be conditioned so that cells bond with metal! We have no way to control genes without breeding program!”

“Ach—forgive me, Doctor,” she said, her voice faintly contemptuous, as she needlessly straightened tools on a nearby table, “but you are mistaken. The way will reveal itself to us. When we consider Gregor Mendel…”

Alexander seemed amused by the simmering between Suchong and Tenenbaum. He smiled, Bill noticed, but said nothing.

Ryan made a dismissive gesture as he frowned over the figure in the transparent, liquid-filled coffin. “I’m more interested in the practical uses—I need a process that makes our men capable of longer hours out there—”

“Cor!” Bill burst out—as the legs of the supine man contracted, an armored knee striking the top of the glass case, cracking it. Water spurted up through the crack…

Ryan and Suchong turned to stare at Bill—Tenenbaum and Alexander seemed more caught up in changing the flow of a chemical through the tubes that communicated with the glass coffin.

“Bill,” Ryan said softly, coming over to him. “I thought you’d gone.”

“Just leaving,” Bill said. “That fellow in there all right?”

“Him? Oh he’s a volunteer—helping us with an experiment.” Ryan took his arm. “Come—let’s leave them to it, shall we? How’s Elaine…?”

And he escorted Bill from the lab.

Fort Frolic 1949

Bing Crosby crooned “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” from flower-shaped speakers, and Bill hummed along as he escorted Elaine along the upper atrium. There was just time for a stroll before the musical at Fleet Hall. Bill had brought Elaine for a Christmas-season outing. Their friend Mariska Lutz was looking after the baby.

“It’s funny about this place,” Elaine murmured, as she and Bill strolled along the balcony walk of Poseidon Plaza, in the neon-bright upper atrium of Fort Frolic. Elaine wore a shiny pink satin dress and Bill wore a white linen suit. Other couples hurried by, dressed up, hair coiffed, faces glowing with laughter. Almost like New York, Bill thought.

“What’s funny about it, love?” he asked. They were passing the entrance to the Sir Prize Games of Chance Casino, with its big knight’s helmet projecting between Sir and Prize. The neon signs seemed to radiate sheer insistence in an enclosed space. There was no sky to put them in perspective.

“Well, I mean—I thought it’d be really different from the surface world. It is, of course, in some ways—but—” She glanced through the windows at the people working the slot machines. “The idea was to bring just the best of the world down with us—but maybe we brought some of the worst too.”

Bill chuckled, tucking her hand under his arm. “That happens when a place is settled with people, love. They bring the worst and best with ’em wherever they go. People’ve got to have some place to let their ’air… their hair down. Got to have their Fort Frolic.”

They went down the stairs to the lower atrium, past Robertson’s Tobaccoria, and she sighed as they passed Eve’s Garden. She looked at it askance. “A strip club was necessary, was it?”

Bill shrugged. “Especially necessary, some would say—with all the men we’ve got here. Men building, working maintenance. Now me, I don’t need any such diversion. I’ve got the best-looking bird in Rapture to admire.”

“Well, don’t expect a strip show.” She batted her eyes at him like a flapper in a movie. “Until we get home I mean.”

“That’s my girl!”

She laughed. “Oh I don’t mean to sound like a bluenose—Let’s get some wine in Sinclair Spirits… or maybe something in the Ryan Club. You’d probably rather have ale…”

“It’s wine for milady! But we’ve got tickets for the show at Fleet Hall, love. Thought we’d have our drinks after.”

“Oh, Fleet Hall! I’ve been wanting to see it. That Footlight Theater place is kind of cramped.”

“Fleet’s big. Mr. Ryan planned for big all through Rapture.”

She glanced quizzically up at him. “You really admire Mr. Ryan, don’t you, Bill?”

“What, me? You know I do! Gave me everything I’ve got, he has. I was installing toilets, love—and he made me a builder of a new world!”

They passed the liquor and drug emporium Le Marquis D’Epoque—which was quite thronged, mostly with young men. He saw someone he knew inside, the rat-faced Stanley Poole, shifting from foot to foot, nervously buying a vial of some narcotic. Bill hurried on, not wanting to talk about the place with his wife—and not wanting to make small talk with the execrable Poole.

The piped music had become Fats Waller jazzily banging out the Jitterbug Waltz. Happy voices echoed from the high spaces of the atrium. People looked a bit ghostly in the reflected light from the neon, but they were happy ghosts, smiling, teasing one another. A young red-haired woman squealed as a young man pinched her. She remembered to slap him, but not very hard.

Bill saw one of Sullivan’s constables, big Pat Cavendish, looking like a hotel dick in his cheap suit and badge, swaggering about, hands in his pockets and gun on his hip, leering at a parcel of young girls.

Elaine brightened when they came to the Sophia Salon, and Bill resigned himself to standing about with his hands in his pockets as Elaine poked through the finery in the “high fashion” boutique. He bought her a nightgown and a new coat to be delivered to their flat, and then it was time to go back upstairs to Fleet Hall.

They hurried out of the boutique and up the stairs, where Bill spotted the architect Daniel Wales talking to Augustus Sinclair. But the younger Wales was in close conversation with the mercurial businessman and didn’t even look up.

Bill peered up at the ceiling, thinking about watertight integrity, and was pleased to see no sign of leakage. Some parts of Rapture were more scrupulously maintained than others. This one was pampered like a baby’s bottom.

It seemed to Bill that Rapture was thriving: the Atlantic Express rumbled efficiently from one building to another. Shops bustled with business. Rapture’s galleries and atriums glowed with light; its art deco fixtures gleamed with gold leaf. Crews of workmen kept the carpets clean, picked up trash, and repaired cracks in bulkheads. Looking down at the lower atrium, the increasing crowd, and the shining signs, Rapture seemed fully alive, thrumming with economic brio. And just maybe Mr. Ryan, the Wales brothers, Greavy—just maybe they couldn’t have done it without Bill McDonagh.

Bill and Elaine reached Fleet Hall, pausing to admire the grand blue-and-white sign. The archway was tricked out with radiant lines of white neon. A buzz of mingled conversations came from inside. Bill pressed Elaine’s arm to him and bent and kissed her cheek, and they went in.

The big, ornate concert hall was thronged, and they had seats in the orchestra section. The lights went down, the band struck up, and the musical Patrick and Moira commenced. It was a Sander Cohen production, thankfully without Cohen in it, and Elaine was enthralled. Bill found it all rather sentimental and a tad morbid—the play was about a ghostly couple who found each other in the afterlife—but he was happy to be there with Elaine, pleased she was having a good time. She seemed lost here on occasion. Now—he felt like they’d really found their place in the world… deep under the sea.

Heat Loss Monitoring, Hephaestus 1950

Bill almost had the heat monitor adjusted. Temperature control was just one of Rapture’s numerous points of vulnerability, one of many maintenance linchpins that had to be constantly adjusted to keep the city from breaking down. The city under the sea had been settled for just two years—a little less—but there was a great deal of repair to be done already.

Caught between fire and ice, me, Bill thought.

A certain amount of the cold water outside Rapture was drawn in through sea vents to modify the heat from the volcanic gases used to drive the turbines—water in one was cold enough to kill a man from hypothermia in under a minute; the water in the other hot enough to boil him. Bill had witnessed both tragedies.

Bill turned wheels to balance the mix of frigid coolant and volcanically heated water. He glanced out the window into the sea, where a complex of transparent pipes glowed dull red, conveying mineral-rich heated water from geothermal sources. Bill could faintly smell sulfur, though they tried hard to filter it all out. Still and all, the air in Rapture was usually cleaner than it was in New York City. Clean air was provided by gardens like Arcadia and the intake vents in the lighthouse structures.

The heat meters were bobbing just right now. He had the balance. Pablo Navarro was working at the other end of the apparatus-crowded room with Roland Wallace and Stanley Kyburz.

“That Navarro is always looking for a leg up,” Wallace grumbled, coming over. “Wants to be head engineer of the section, don’t you know.”

“That’s Greavy’s call, mate. But I don’t know as Pablo keeps at the job hard enough to deserve that title. How’s Kyburz working out?”

“Getting his work done. Good technical know-how. But those Aussies—they’re odd. And he’s the sullen sort, don’t you know.”

“Every Australian I ever knew was a sullen ol’ sod,” Bill said absently, eyeing the meters. “Holding steady so far.”

“Anyhow, there was an intercom buzz for you. Mr. Ryan wants you in Central Control.”

“Should’ve told me before! Right, I’m off.”

Bill checked the meters once more and then hurried out, hoping Elaine would be working in Ryan’s office.

He found Ryan pacing in front of his desk. No sign of Elaine. “Ah, Bill. I sent Elaine home early.”

Bill felt a sudden inner coldness. “Is she all right?”

“Yes, yes,” Ryan said distractedly. “Seemed fine. Wanted to look in on the nanny. Perhaps she came back to work too soon after the baby was born. How is the child?”

“The little one’s right as rain. Smiling and waving ’er arms about like she’s conducting a band…”

“Splendid, splendid…”

Bill hoped Elaine was all right. But she had insisted on getting a sitter and going back to work. She seemed to get cabin fever in the flat. Not easy to take the baby in a stroller through the park in Rapture—a bit of a journey to the small park areas.

“Bill, would you come with me? I have to have a chat with Julie Langford. I’d like your opinion on the new tea garden in Arcadia. And some other things. Plenty to talk about along the way…”

They traversed several passages and then entered a transparent corridor between buildings, sauntering untouched through the sea itself—heat vectored through the floor, protecting them from the North Atlantic’s frigidity. “I’m hearing rumblings in Rapture I don’t like, Bill,” Ryan muttered, pausing to watch a school of bright fish swim frantically by, pursued by an orca. “Out there, it’s all as it should be. The big fish eats the smaller fish. Some fish elude predators and thrive. But here… there are those who disturb the balance.”

Bill stepped up beside Ryan, the two of them gazing through the glass like two people chatting at an aquarium. “Rumblings, guv’nor? Which sort? The pipe sort or the people sort?”

“It’s the people—if you want to call them that.” Ryan shook his head and added, “Parasites!,” his mouth twisting sharply with the word. “I thought we could weed them all out. But people are tainted, Bill—there are rumors of union organizers here in Rapture! Unions! In my city! Someone is encouraging them. I’d like to know who… and why.”

“Haven’t heard anything quite like that myself,” Bill remarked.

“Stanley Poole caught some union talk in the tavern. There’s a pamphlet being passed around complaining about ‘unfairness to the workingman of Rapture’…”

“People being tense—they naturally need to blow off steam, guv. Toss around their ideas, freelike. Even some ideas you… we… don’t like, Mr. Ryan. Unions and whatnot. Now, I won’t defend ’em—” he added hastily, “—but there’s a kind of marketplace of ideas too, yeah? People need to be able to trade in ideas…”

“Hm. Marketplace of ideas. Maybe. I try to be tolerant. But unions—we saw where that leads…”

Bill decided not to argue that one. They both silently watched a blue whale swim majestically overhead. Bubbles streamed up from the seabed; lights blinked on in the buildings of Rapture, rising spectrally through the blue-green water. The Wales brothers’ designs mixed sweeping lines with a certain artful intricacy. The architecture seemed calculated to project boldness, even bravado.

A neon sign across the watery way, running vertically down a building that could almost have been from mid Manhattan, read FLEET HALL. Another neon sign glowed in grape-purple to advertise WORLEY’S WINERY, the letters rippling with intervening sea currents. Most of the apartment buildings had square windows, not portholes—for the most part they looked like apartment buildings on dry land. The effect, at times, was more like a sunken Atlantis than a metropolis deliberately built beneath the sea—as if the polar ice caps had melted, flooding Manhattan, its steel and stone canyons immersed in a deep, mysterious watery world without a clear horizon.

“It could be,” Ryan went on at last, “that we were too hasty in some of our recruiting for Rapture. I may have picked some people who were not as likeminded as I’d hoped.”

“Most of our people believe in the Rapture way, Mr. Ryan—there’s plenty of free enterprise in Rapture.” Bill smiled as a stream of bubbles rose a few inches beyond the glass. “It’s bubblin’ with it!”

“You hearten me, Bill. I hope everyone stays busy—competing, carving out their place in our new world. Everyone should branch out, create new businesses! Do you still plan to open a tavern?”

“Right enough I do. Fighting McDonagh’s it’ll be called. After me old man; he was a boxer in his youth.”

“We’ll have a grand-opening party for you!” Ryan looked up, toward the heights of the towers mounting through the sea—hard to see the tops of many of them from here. He took a deep breath, looking pleased, seeming to buoy into a better mood. “Look at it, rising like an orchestral climax! Rapture is a miracle, Bill—the only kind of miracle that matters! The kind a real man creates with his own two hands. And it should be celebrated every day.”

“Miracles need a lot of maintenance, Mr. Ryan! Thing is, we’re short on people to deal with the sewage, the cleaning, and the landscaping in Arcadia. We got posh types who never suffered worse than a paper cut—but precious few who can dig a ditch or plumb a pipe.”

“Ah. We’ll have to lure men who have the skills we need, then. Find ways to house them. We’ll bring them in, don’t you worry about it. The light attracts the enlightened, Bill!”

Bill wondered how that would work out—bringing ever more blue-collar workers, men who might not take to a place where the guv’nor despised unions. Could be trouble down the road.

“Ah,” Ryan said, with satisfaction. “A supplies sub is coming in…”

They watched the submarine ghost by overhead, its lights glowing against the indigo depths. From here, its lines muted by the depths, the sub looked like a giant creature of the sea itself, another kind of whale. It would be heading to Neptune’s Bounty. Bill watched the sub angle downward for the hangar-sized intake airlock that led up to the wharf and Fontaine’s Fisheries.

“Dunno,” Bill said, “who might be encouraging unions—but I can tell you one person I don’t much trust is that Frank Fontaine.”

Ryan shrugged. “He’s quite the productive one. He’s got a lot of enterprise rolling. He keeps me thinking; I like the competition…,” adding, as if thinking aloud, “within reason.”

Fontaine had worked with Peach Wilkins to develop a way to do Rapture’s fishing more discreetly—underwater. A few simple adaptations to the smaller subs, refitting them to drag nets, and they had purely subaquatic fishing.

But the fishery gave Fontaine a potential access to something that Bill knew made Ryan nervous—the outside world. His subs left Rapture on business of their own—and they might be contacting anyone out there. Every year Ryan cut more ties with the surface world, liquidating his properties, selling factories and railroads.

“You think maybe Fontaine’s using the subs to bring in contraband, guv?” he asked suddenly.

“I’m monitoring that possibility. I warned him—and it seemed to me he took the warning seriously.”

“Some smuggling’s going on, Mr. Ryan,” Bill pointed out. “A Bible turned up in the workers’ quarters.”

“Bibles…” Ryan said the word with loathing. “Yes—Sullivan told me. The man says he bought it from ‘a fellow I didn’t know over to Apollo Square.’”

Bill had no love for religion himself. But privately he thought some people probably needed it as a safety valve. “All I can tell you, Mr. Ryan, is that I’ve never trusted that bugger Fontaine. He talks all silky, like—but none of it feels like real silk.”

“We can’t assume anything, you know. Come along…”

Bill sighed. Sometimes he got tired of being ‘Come Along Bill.’

An electric eye triggered the semicircular Securis door to slide open. They strode along corridors decorated with posters extolling the glories of Rapture’s commerce, down a curving stairway, to a bathysphere station where a banner declared COMMERCE, INDEPENDENCE, CREATIVITY. Ryan remained silent, brooding as they went.

Bill expected to take the Atlantic Express, but Ryan ignored the train station and continued to the Rapture Metro. They passed a party of maintenance workers who tipped their hats at Ryan. He paused and shook hands all around. “How’s it going, boys? Patching up the ceiling? Good, good… don’t forget to invest some part of your paychecks in one of Rapture’s new businesses! Keep it growing, fellas! You working for Bill here? If he isn’t treating you right—don’t tell me about it!” They laughed all around at that. “Start a competing plumbing business, give ol’ Bill here a run for his money, eh! How do you like that new park of ours, by the way. Seen it yet? Fine place to take the ladies…”

When he was in the mood, Ryan could be quite convivial, even chummy, with the workingman. He seemed almost to be performing for Bill today.

Ryan put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels as he reflected, “When I was a young boy, my father took me to a park in… well, it was in a foreign capital… the czar was still alive then, but my father’s business was faltering, and that park lifted his spirits! ‘This is where I met your mother!’ he said. So boys—if you want to meet the right young miss, we’ve got just the place! Plenty of privacy for sparking the ladies, eh?”

The workmen laughed; he clapped two of them on the shoulders, wished them a profitable day’s work, and sent them on their way. The men went away beaming—they’d be able to boast of chatting with the great Andrew Ryan.

Ryan led Bill into the waiting bathysphere. When its hatch lowered into place, Ryan tapped the selector for their destination and hit the GO lever. The bathysphere dropped neatly into its passageway and then set out horizontally with a bubbling whoosh.

The two men sat back, riding in companionable quiet till they were halfway to the nearest air lock for Arcadia, when Ryan said, “Bill—have you heard residents whining about not being permitted to leave Rapture?”

“Here and there,” Bill admitted reluctantly. He didn’t want to snitch on anyone.

“You know we cannot trust anyone outside Rapture, Bill. We’d have American intelligence agents down here, or the jackals from the KGB, fast as…” He snapped his fingers.

“It can be hard for some down here, sir. There’s some as wonder if they made the right choice immigrating to Rapture…”

“I have no respect for quitters! You don’t visit Rapture—it’s a way of life!” He shook his head bitterly. “They are spineless! They were told, before they came, that there were certain inviolable rules. No one leaves! There is no place for men like us on the surface.”

Bill was in awe of Ryan; he knew it, and Ryan knew it. But maybe it was time to give Ryan some guff about this lockdown. Because he was afraid that if Ryan stuck to this policy, it could be explosive. “It’s human nature, guv’nor, to want freedom to come and go. People get stir-crazy, like, when you pen them up. You believe a man should make a choice—but how can the poor sod choose to stay in Rapture? We took that choice away!”

“A man has thousands of choices in Rapture. But that one he gave up when he came to this world—a world that I created. I built it with money and resources earned with my sweat! It’s all a lot of absurd whining! In time we will expand Rapture across the seabed and there will be far more room to move about.” He flicked his hand in a gesture of contemptuous impatience. “They entered into a contract coming here! In the end, our choices make us what we are. A man chooses, Bill! They chose—and they must accept the responsibility.”

Bill cleared his throat. “Natural enough for some blokes to want to change their minds…”

The bathysphere reached its destination, clunking into place, and the hatch creaked open—but Ryan made no move to get out. He remained in his seat, looking at Bill with a new solemnity. “Have you changed your mind, Bill?”

Bill was taken by surprise. “No! This is my home, Mr. Ryan. I built this place with my bare hands.” He shrugged. “You asked what I’ve heard…”

Ryan looked at him for a long moment, as if peering into Bill’s soul. Finally, he nodded. “Very well, Bill. But I’ll tell you something. The residents of Rapture will be purged of the habits of ant society! They must learn to stand up beside us, like men—and build! I plan to start a new program of civic education. Banners, a great many more of them—educational announcements on televisions and public address, and billboards! I’m bringing in someone to help us train them to see that the world outside Rapture is the real prison… and Rapture is the real freedom.” Ryan climbed out of the bathysphere. “Come along, Bill. Come along…”

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1950

“Miss Lamb,” Diane announced. “Dr. Sofia Lamb…” There was a certain coolness in her voice as she said it, Andrew Ryan noted. Had she already taken a dislike to the woman? Dr. Lamb had been a kind of missionary, both physician and psychiatrist, working in Hiroshima before and after the bomb—maybe Diane was intimidated. Diane was sensitive about her working-class background.

“Escort her in. Have the guards wait outside.”

Diane sniffed but went back into the outer room and held the door for Sofia Lamb.

“He’ll see you now, Dr. Lamb,” Diane said, as if wondering why he was seeing her.

“Splendid. It’s been a long journey… I’m curious to find the final chamber of this great nautilus shell of a city…”

Ryan stood politely as she strode in. Dr. Lamb carried herself like the educated, well-heeled elite professional she was. He knew protocol would matter with her.

She was tall, almost cruelly slim, her blond hair coifed into large curls atop her head. She had a long neck, a narrow face with stark bone structure, icy blue eyes behind stylish horn-rimmed glasses, lips darkly rouged. She wore a navy-blue dress suit with sharp white collars and dark blue pumps.

“Welcome to Rapture, Miss Lamb. Won’t you have a seat? I hope your journey wasn’t too exhausting. It’s a pleasure to have you join us in our brave new world.”

She sat in the chair across from him, crossing her long pale legs. “Brave new world—a reader of Shakespeare! The Tempest, was it not?” Her long slender fingers expertly extracted a platinum cigarette case from her small handbag as she went on, looking blandly at him, “O brave new world that has such creatures in it…”

“Are you surprised, Miss Lamb, that I’m familiar with Shakespeare?” Ryan asked, coming around the desk to light her cigarette with a gold lighter.

She blew smoke at the ceiling and shrugged. “No. You’re—a wealthy man. You can afford to educate yourself.”

It was not an obvious criticism—yet somehow, it was condescending. But she smiled—and he saw a glint of charisma. “I must say,” she went on, glancing around, “this place is remarkable. Quite astonishing. And yet no one seems to know about it.”

“As few as we can manage. We work hard at keeping it secret. And we shall require you to keep it secret too, Miss Lamb. Or should I call you Doctor Lamb…?”

He waited for her to say, Oh, call me Sofia. But she didn’t. She merely nodded, just faintly.

Ryan cleared his throat. “You are well aware of the driving forces behind Rapture—its philosophy, its plan. The Great Chain…”

“Yes, but I can’t claim to completely understand your… operative philosophy. I am of course attracted by the possibilities of a new society that has no… no interference from the outside world. A self-sustaining colony that might rediscover human possibilities—the possibility of a society free from the warmongering of the upper world…”

“I understand you were in Hiroshima when…”

“I was in a sheltered, outlying place. But yes. People I sometimes worked with were burnt to shadows on the walls of their homes.” Her eyes held a flat horror at the memory. “If the modern world were a patient in my care…” She shook her head. “I would diagnose it suicidal.”

“Yes. Hiroshima, Nagasaki—they were a large part of the reason we built Rapture. I suspected you might understand our imperative, after seeing what happened there, firsthand. I’m certain the surface world will commit nuclear suicide in time, Dr. Lamb. One generation, two, three—it will happen—and when it does, Rapture will be safe, here below. Self-sufficient and thriving. Rapture is deliverance.”

She tapped her cigarette ash into the brass floor ashtray beside her chair, nodding eagerly now. “That is the great appeal for me. Deliverance. A new chance to… to remake society into something innately good! Everyone has a duty to the world, Mr. Ryan—and we’ve lost all that, up above, in all the grubbing chaos of that perverse civilization…”

Ryan frowned, not exactly understanding her. But before he could ask her to elucidate, she went on:

“And I was gratified to hear that everyone has equal opportunity here! Including women, presumably?” She glanced at him questioningly. “In ordinary society the male hierarchy crushes our dreams. They see a woman with a spark”—she crushed her cigarette out angrily in the ashtray—“and they crush it out! ‘Lady doctors,’ as they call them, are sometimes tolerated. But… real advancement for a woman in the field? No.”

“Oh yes, I see…” Ryan thoughtfully stroked his mustache with the ball of his thumb. Theoretically everyone in Rapture started on an equal footing—and anyone could rise to the top with hard work, enterprise, talent, ruthless dedication to the simple, liberating power of free enterprise. Even women.

He’d invited Sofia Lamb to Rapture because she’d graduated at the top of her class. She was said to have written brilliant theses—which Ryan hadn’t had time to read—and to have shown a fearlessness in psychiatric experimentation. Scientific fearlessness was axiomatic to Rapture.

“You can compete with the rest of us here,” Ryan said firmly, as much to convince himself as her. “But of course your initial work would be to evaluate Rapture, help us develop a means of preparing the public for the future. More pressingly, some residents may be developing psychological problems—little, ah, personal difficulties that bubble up from isolation down here. Your first task will be to diagnose those problems and suggest a solution.”

“Oh, of course, that is quite understood. But later—if I want to develop my own… institute, here in Rapture?”

“Ah yes. That would be splendid. Why shouldn’t people have a psychiatric doctor to consult with? A whole institute for self-exploration.”

“Or perhaps for redefining the self,” she murmured. She stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be shown my quarters. The trip here has been—a lot to absorb. I need to change, rest a bit—and I’ll need a full tour of Rapture. I’ll start my diagnosis right away—this evening.”

“Good! I’ll have Chief Sullivan send over his files about… problem people. The little malcontents cropping up—the complainers, and so on. You can start with those.”

Neptune’s Bounty, Rapture 1950

Brigid Tenenbaum was walking down the chilly dock toward the water, thinking that perhaps she might get some fresh fish for dissection. If they were iced, she could extract their genetic material with some hope it might be intact. She didn’t have a definite contract with Sinclair Solutions anymore, but she could still use their lab after-hours, since she had the door combination. The tale of her attempt to extract semen from one of the submariners with a large syringe had gotten her dropped, unreasonably she felt, from Sinclair’s research labs. Certainly, she’d used bad judgment in implying she wanted something else from the man’s evil-smelling genitals. Perhaps she’d thrust the needle into his gonad rather too vigorously. But for him to run screaming from the lab, naked from the waist down, with a syringe dangling from his groin, trailing blood and shrieking, “The crazy bitch put a spike in my goddamn nuts!” seemed like an overreaction.

Since then she’d scarcely seen Rapture’s founder. Nor had she been able to get an appointment with the man. There was always an excuse from that snippy Diane McClintock.

Sometimes she wished she were back in the camp, working with her mentor. At least they had real creative freedom.

Brigid sighed and tugged her coat closer around her shoulders. It was always nippy down here, in the strange, underwater docks. A kind of artificial cavern, really, within Rapture, filled with water, where the delivery boats pulled up, loaded with fish and other approved goods brought from the submarine bays. The docks were wooden, the walls and ceiling were metal—the water lapped at the pylons with a strange hollow, echoing whisper.

A constable and a black man who seemed to be a deputy were walking past, both of them looking at her curiously.

She saw a couple of dockworkers in heavy pea jackets, standing on the pier below her, waiting for a small tugboatlike vessel to pull up so they could offload it. They were amusing themselves as they waited, tossing a ball back and forth. She recognized both of the men—she’d seen them under Dr. Suchong’s hands. He’d tried to cure one of them, Stiffy, of a partial paralysis—and the other one…

The other one saw her first. He was a stubby-nosed man with a windburned face—but his red face went white when he saw Tenenbaum. He dropped the ball and clapped both hands to his genitals. “No you don’t, lady, you ain’t getting near ’em!”

He backed away from her, shaking his head. “Uh uh, lady!”

“Don’t be such a fool!” she called out wearily, searching for the right English words. “I am not here for you. I want fresh fish.”

“You’re calling them fish now, are you?” the man demanded, backing away—and falling off the dock into the water. He got up, sputtering, spitting water—it was only four feet deep here.

“Ha, ha, Archie!” the other fisherman called gleefully to him, going to pick up the ball. “You finally got that bath you been avoidin’!”

“Screw you, Stiffy!” Archie called, splashing off toward the approaching boat. “Ahoy there, give me a hand; I’m comin’ aboard!”

“Ah, whatya scared of a skinny little dame for!” Stiffy yelled, laughing.

She approached Stiffy, putting on a professorial, officious manner so that he wouldn’t try to become too familiar.

“You throw the ball—it is very… unusual for you, no?” she asked, staring at his hands. She’d stood by and observed when Suchong had examined him. “Your hands—one paralyzed, the other only half working, this I remember. You carry some things on shoulders, not do so much work with hands.”

“Sure—that’s why they called me Stiffy. I got another kinda Stiffy, lady, if you—”

She gave him her severest frown. “Do not trifle with me! I wish only to know—how you can catch ball now. With fingers that were paralyzed. Dr. Suchong repaired your hands, yes?”

“Suchong? Hell no! Made a lotta excuses. Funniest thing. We had a net fulla fish, see. I was scoopin’ ’em out of the net, sortin’ ’em out—that much I could do, anyhow—and there was some kinda sea slug mixed in with ’em, floppin’ around. Weirdest lookin’ little slug you ever saw! Little bastard bit me on the hand!” Stiffy chortled. He didn’t seem angry about it at all. “I didn’t even know they could bite! Well, my hands got kinda swole—but when the swelling went down”—he looked at his hands in renewed wonder—“they started to come to life!” He tossed the ball in the air and deftly caught it. “You see that? Before the little bastard bit me, I couldn’t do that, no way, no how!”

“You think it was sea slug that release paralysis?”

“Something in that bite—I could feel it spreading out, like, in my hand!”

“Ach! Indeed!” She peered at his hands. Saw the curious bite marks. “If only I had this creature… You can find another such sea slug?”

“I still got the same one! Chucked it in a bucket of seawater! It was such a crazy-lookin’ little thing I actually thought I could maybe sell it to one of you scientist types. You wanta buy it?”

“Well—perhaps I do.”

Sofia Lamb’s Office 1950

“I guess… I guess I shouldn’t have brought my kids to Rapture. But they told me we had to come together, the whole family, or nothin’… They said they needed skills with a boiler, I’d be taken care of and make a pile of dough…”

Dr. Sofia Lamb was watching the middle-aged man in the workman’s overalls pacing back and forth in her office, wringing his hands. “Wouldn’t you like to relax on the couch as we work on this, Mr. Glidden?”

“No, no I can’t, Doc,” Glidden muttered. He sniffled, as if trying not to cry. His eyes were bruised looking from fatigue; his thin lips quivered. His big hands were reddened from his work in the geothermal plant. “I need to get back home. Ya see, my wife, my kids, they’re alone in the new apartment… if you can call it an apartment. A dump is what it is. Lotta shifty characters around there. I feel like the kids ain’t safe in that place… We’re havin’ to share it with another family—there ain’t enough housing in this crazy town. Nothing I can afford, I mean. They said there’d be more housing here… and better pay. I thought it was a road-to-riches thing, like the Comstock Mine… They talked like…” He bit his lip.

She nodded, shifted in her chair, and made a note. She’d heard a similar story from a number of workers she’d interviewed as part of her project for Ryan. “You feel you were… misled about what would happen here?”

“Yeah, I—” Glidden broke off, stopping in the center of the room, staring at her suspiciously. “You… you work for Ryan, right?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking—”

“So no, no I wasn’t, what’d you say, misled.” He licked his lips. “They were straight with me.”

“It’s all right; you can say what you really think,” Sofia said reassuringly. “It’s true that these therapeutic sessions will be summed up in a report—but I’m not naming specific people in my report. It’ll be about the trends…”

“Yeah? How come this ‘therapy’ thing here is free? I wouldn’t-a come except my wife says I’m all tense and like that… but… free? Nothing’s free in Rapture!”

“Really—you can trust me, Mr. Glidden.”

“So you say. But supposin’ I get fired because of this? Maybe they blackball me! So I got no work! And then what? You can’t leave Rapture! You… can’t leave! Not even you, Doc! You think he’ll let you leave if you want to? Naw.”

“Oh, well I…” Her voice trailed off. She hadn’t given much thought to leaving Rapture. There seemed so many possibilities here. But what if she did try to leave? What would Ryan do? She was afraid to find out. “I’m… in the same boat, so to speak, with you, Mr. Glidden.” She smiled. “Or under the same boats.”

He crossed his arms in front of him and shook his head. He wasn’t going to say anything else.

She wrote, Subjects are typical in mistrust of Ryan and feeling of alienation. Social claustrophobia at boiling point for some. Financial status a key factor. Higher incomes show less anxiety… She underlined higher incomes and then said, “You can go, Mr. Glidden. Thanks for coming in.”

She watched Glidden rush from the room, and then she went to her desk, unlocked a drawer, and took out her journal. She usually preferred it to the audio diaries. She sat down and wrote,

Sofia put the pen down and wondered if what she was contemplating was too risky. Politics. Power… An idea that was becoming an idée fixe. Possibly it was sheer madness…

But madness or not—it had been growing like a child within her all the time she’d been in Rapture. She’d been quietly gestating the notion that what Rapture could destroy—men like Glidden—it could also save, if it were guided by a new leader.

She could turn Rapture sharply to the left—from within.

Dangerous thinking. But the idea would not go away. It had a life of its own…

Pumping Station 5 1950

Bill McDonagh was switching on drainage pump 71, to pump out the insulation and ventilation spaces in the walls of the Mermaid Lounge, when Andrew Ryan walked into station 5. Rapture’s visionary genius was smiling but seemed a bit distant, distracted.

“Bill! How about taking a quick inspection walk with me, as we’re both near Little Eden. Or are you handling an emergency?”

“No emergency, Mr. Ryan. Just a bit of an adjustment. There, that’s done it.”

Soon they were strolling along the concourse of Little Eden Plaza, walking past the gracious façade of the Pearl Hotel. People ambled by, couples arm in arm, shoppers with bags. Ryan seemed pleased by this evidence of thriving commerce. Some of the shoppers nodded shyly to Mr. Ryan. One rather matronly woman asked for his autograph, which he patiently provided before he and Bill hurried on.

“Anything you’re particularly concerned with, ’round here, Mr. Ryan?” Bill asked as they walked past the Plaza Hedone apartments.

“There’s talk of chemical leakage, and we had some kind of complaints at a shop in the area, so I thought I’d look into both at once. I don’t care much for complaints, but I like to know what’s going on and had some free time…”

They came to a corner that was covered with what appeared to be a thick green-black chemical leaking from a seam in a bulkhead. It smelled of petroleum and solvents. “There it is, Bill—were you aware of it?”

“I am, sir. That’s why I was adjusting the valves in station five. Trying to cut back on flushing so I could reduce this ’ere toxic overflow. There’s a factory upstream, you might say, or anyway upstairs from ’ere, turns out new signs and the like. Augustus Sinclair owns the place, what I remember. They use a lot of chemicals, dump them in the outpipes—but they corrode the pipes, and the solvents work their way out to the sidewalk. What might be worse, the rest of it gets dumped outta Rapture, Mr. Ryan—I checked on it. These chemicals, they go out into the ocean and down current—could be they’ll get all mixed up with the fish down there. We could end up eatin’ these chemicals when we eat those fish.”

Ryan was looking at him with arched eyebrows. “Really, Bill—how ridiculously alarmist! Why, the ocean is vast. We couldn’t possibly pollute it! It would all be diluted.”

“Right enough, sir, but some of it accumulates, what with currents and eddies, and if we create enough of a mess—”

“Bill—forget it. We’ve got sufficient concerns right here inside Rapture. We’ll have to replace those pipes with something stronger, and we’ll charge Augustus for it…”

Bill gave it one more try. “Just thought it’d be better if he’d use chemicals that wasn’t so corrosive, guv. Could be done, I reckon, if—”

Ryan laughed softly. “Bill! Listen to yourself! You’ll ask me to regulate industrial waste, next! Why, old Will Clark, up in Montana, created a wasteland around his mines and refineries, and did anyone suffer?” He cleared his throat, seeming to recollect something. “Well—perhaps some did, yes. But the world of commerce is restless; it’s like a hungry child that keeps growing and never quite grows up—it becomes a giant, Bill, and people must get out of its way or be stepped on by its ten-league boots! Oh, I’ll look into stronger drainage pipes outside factories, to prevent a mess on the sidewalk. Ryan Industries will bill Rapture, and Rapture will bill the factories. Come along, Bill, this way—ah! Here’s the other problem…”

They’d come to a shop in Little Eden Plaza called Gravenstein’s Green Groceries. Across the “street”—more of a wide passageway—and a little ways down was another, larger business called Shep’s ShopMart.

Reeking garbage of all sorts was piled up high in the gutter around Gravenstein’s. Bill shook his head, seeing every kind of garbage imaginable, most of it decaying. The fish heads were especially pungent. Shep’s, by contrast, looked immaculate. A small man in a grocer’s apron rushed out of Gravenstein’s as they approached; he had a hatchet face and flaplike ears, intense brown eyes, curly brown hair. “Mr. Ryan!” he shouted, wringing his hands as he ran up to them. “You came! I must’ve sent a hundred requests, and here you are at last!”

Ryan frowned. He didn’t respond well to implied criticism. “Well? Why have you let all this trash pile up here? That’s hardly in the spirit of the Great Chain…”

“Me letting it pile up? I didn’t! He did! Shep did it! I will pay any reasonable price for trash pickup but he—!” Gravenstein pointed across the street at the big man stepping out of Shep’s. Gordon Shep wore a big blue suit, his swag belly straining out of the jacket; he had a jowly face, an unpleasant gold-toothed grin, and an enormous cigar in his hand. Seeing Gravenstein pointing at him accusingly, Shep crossed the street, shaking his head disparagingly, and managing a good deal of swagger despite the obesity.

He pointed at Gravenstein with his cigar as he walked up. “What’s this little liar here yellin’ about, Mr. Ryan?”

Ryan ignored Shep. “Why should this man be responsible for your trash, Gravenstein?”

Bill could guess why. He remembered that Shep here had diversified…

“First of all,” the smaller man said, shaking, clearly trying not to shout at Ryan, “it’s not all mine!”

“Feh!” Shep said, chuckling. “Prove it!”

“Some of it’s mine—but some of it’s his, Mr. Ryan! And as for what’s mine—he runs the only trash-collection service around here! He bought it two months ago, and he’s using it to run me out of business! He’s charging me ten times what he charges everyone else for trash collection!”

Bill was startled. “Ten times?”

Shep chuckled and tapped cigar ash onto the pile of garbage. “That’s the marketplace. We have no restraints here, right, Mr. Ryan? No price controls! Anyone can own anything they can buy and run it how they like!”

“The market won’t bear that kind of pricing,” Bill pointed out.

“He only charges me that price!” Gravenstein insisted. “He’s my grocery competitor! He’s got more business than I do, but it’s not enough; he wants to corner the grocery business around here, and he knows if garbage piles up because I can’t afford to pay him to take it away, nobody’ll come to shop at my place! And nobody does!”

“Looks like you’ll have to move it out yourself,” Ryan said, shrugging.

“Who’ll look after my shop while I do that? It’s a long ways to the dump chute! And I shouldn’t have to do that, Mr. Ryan; he shouldn’t be gouging me, trying to run me out of business!”

“Shouldn’t he?” Ryan mused. “It’s not really a business practice I admire. But the great marketplace is like a thriving jungle, where some survive and become king of their territory—and some don’t. It’s the way of nature! Survival of the fittest weans out the weaklings, Gravenstein! I advise you to find some means of competing—or move out.”

“Mr. Ryan—please—shouldn’t we have a public trash-collection service?”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “Public! That sounds like Roosevelt—or Stalin! Go to one of Shep’s competitors!”

“They won’t come clear over here, Mr. Ryan! This man controls trash pickup in this whole area! He’s out to get me! Why, he’s threatening to buy the building and have me evicted, Mr. Ryan! Now I believe in competition and hard work, but—”

“No more whining, Gravenstein! We do not fix prices here! We do not regulate! We do not say who can buy what!”

“Hear that, Gravenstein?” Shep sneered. “Welcome to the real world of business!”

“Please, Mr. Ryan,” Gravenstein said, hands balling into fists at his sides. “When I came down here, I was told I’d have an opportunity to expand, to grow, to live in a place without taxes—I gave up everything to come here! Where am I to go, if he drives me out? Where can I go? Where can I go!”

A muscle in Ryan’s face twitched. He looked at Gravenstein with narrowed eyes. His voice became chilled steel. “Deal with it as a man should, Gravenstein—do not whine like a child!”

Gravenstein stood there, shaking helplessly, pale with rage—then he ran back into his store. Bill’s heart went out to him. But Ryan was right, wasn’t he? The market had to be unregulated. Still, there were other problems cropping up in Rapture from predatory types…

“Say there, Ryan,” Shep said, “how about coming in the office for a drink, eh?”

“I think not, Shep,” Ryan growled, walking away. “Come along, Bill.” They strode onward, and Ryan sighed. “That man Shep is an odious sort. He’s little better than a mafioso. But the marketplace must be free, and if some eggs are broken to make that omelet, well…”

There was a shout from behind. And a yell of fear.

Bill and Ryan turned to see Gravenstein, hands trembling, pointing a pistol at Shep in the midst of the passageway. Gravenstein shouted, “I’ll deal with it like a man, all right!”

“No!” Shep shouted, stumbling back, the cigar flopping from his mouth.

Gravenstein fired—twice. Shep shrieked, clutching himself, staggering with each shot—and then fell like a great sack of dropped groceries onto the passageway floor.

“Dammit!” Ryan grunted. “That, now, is against the rules! I’ll have a constable on the man!”

But that would not be necessary. As Bill watched, Gravenstein put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

Sofia Lamb’s Office 1950

Sofia Lamb balanced her notebook on her knee, poised her pen, and said, “Tell me about this feeling of being trapped, Margie…”

“There’s one way I can get out of this burg, Doc,” Margie said in a flat voice. “If I kill myself.” She sat up on the therapy couch and chewed a knuckle. She was a slender, long-legged, brown-haired woman in a simple blue dress, worn-out white flats, a small, shabby blue velvet hat. The paint on her fingernails hadn’t been renewed for a long time; they were patchy red. Margie had a sweet, lightly freckled face with large brown eyes, her face going a bit round, and her belly pooching out—she was a couple of months pregnant. “But maybe not. Maybe killing yourself doesn’t get you out either.” Her large brown eyes seemed to get larger as she added in a whisper, “I’ve heard there’s ghosts in Rapture…”

Sofia leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “Ghosts are in people’s minds—so is the idea that you have to escape. That’s just… just a notion that’s haunting you. And… after what you’ve been through…”

“What I been through—maybe I got only myself to blame.” She wiped tears away and took a deep breath. “They said I’d have a career as an entertainer here. I shoulda known better, Doc. My ma always said, you don’t get a free ride in this world, and she was right. Ma died when I was sixteen, my pop was long gone, so I was on my own, working as a taxi dancer when I got recruited for Rapture. I come here, fulla hopes and dreams, end up in that strip joint in Fort Frolic. Eve’s Garden, what a joke! All the big shots come there, grinnin’ like apes at the girls. I’ve seen Mr. Ryan there even. When he got interested in Jasmine Jolene—what airs she put on, I can tell ya! The manager of that place, I wouldn’t have sex with him. So he fired me! It’s not supposed to be part of my job…”

“Naturally not…” Sofia wrote, Consistent pattern of disappointed expectations in patients.

“So I tried to get work some other place in Rapture—waitressing, ya know? Nope, no work. Sold most of my clothes. Ran out of money, ran outta food. Living on stuff cadged outta trashcans. Asked to be taken back to the surface. No way, sister, they tell me. Never thought I’d ever end up a whore. A little dancing for money, sure, but this—selling my ‘assets’ to those fishermen down at Neptune’s Bounty! All the damn day in the bar—or on my back in the rooms they got out behind. And Fontaine—he said I had to give him a percentage. My ma always said so: I get stubborn—and I told him to go to hell on a sled. He tells that Reggie to knock me around.”

Sofia clucked her tongue sympathetically, and wrote, No recourse for those stricken by bad luck. No WPA here. Nothing to catch those who fall. Enormous potential for social ferment.

“You’re in my care now,” Sofia said soothingly. Her heart was wrenched at Margie’s story. “I can even offer you a job.”

“What kinda work?”

“Gardening, assisting. I intend to start a new program I’m calling Dionysus Park. Nothing you’ll have to be ashamed of. But I will need something from you. I need your trust. Your complete trust.”

Margie sniffled, and her eyes welled with tears. “Gee, if you’ll help me—gosh, you got it, Doc! I’ll trust you from here to the stars!”

“Good!” Sofia smiled.

If you could get people to trust you, really trust you—you would get their loyalty too.

And she would need loyalty, unthinking loyalty, for what she had in mind. A gradual revolution, first in mind and then in fact—transforming Rapture from within…

Between Neptune’s Bounty and Olympus Heights 1951

Frank Fontaine felt like a fat kid with the keys to a candy store.

Gliding through the sea in his private, radio-controlled bathysphere, from Neptune’s Bounty to the station for Olympus Heights and Mercury Suites—past neon signs for several shops, including one of his own—Fontaine reflected on what a feast Rapture was for a man like him. Ryan kept business regulations to the absolute minimum. If you had enough Rapture dollars to hire a space from Ryan Industries, you could open pretty much any business you wanted. Fontaine had even cultivated one of Ryan’s bookkeepers, Marjorie Dustin. As long as he diddled Marjorie every so often and kicked her some cash, she cheerfully added forty percent, on paper, to his fresh fish take—Ryan Industries was paying for forty percent more fish than they received.

He knew Ryan had men keeping an eye on him. That very morning Fontaine had spotted that Russian thug Karlosky following him through the Lower Concourse. Ryan was setting up security cameras around Rapture. Not a lot of them yet, but more were coming—and Ryan controlled them. Hard to keep a secret for long from those cameras.

Fontaine watched an enormous fish with a gigantic mouth swim past. He had no idea what kind it was—it swiveled an eye to look through his bathysphere port, seeming intrigued. Fontaine shook his head, amused at how much he’d grown accustomed to living in a giant aquarium. Maybe someday, when he’d gotten control of Rapture, he could use the undersea city as his base for forays onto dry land. He’d always have a place to escape to, where the cops would never find him…

Fontaine caught a glimpse of one of his own subs sliding by below, heading toward the underwater wharf entrance, dragging a net full of glistening silvery fish. Silver—like silver dollars. Cash just swam along in the sea, and all you had to do was find some sucker to scoop it up for you. Sometimes he thought he was the only guy in the world who wasn’t a sucker.

People in Rapture were getting sick of eating fish. Fontaine had started smuggling in beef, which was all but impossible to get in Rapture otherwise. Shortage was opportunity. A lot of these saps were even feeling short on religion, so Fontaine brought in Bibles. Which was sure to make Ryan angry. Ryan hated religion—whereas Fontaine simply laughed at it.

The bathysphere arrived at the station, locked into place, and Fontaine emerged. He hurried past a group of snazzy partiers heading through the Metro for one of the nightclubs. The overhead lights were dimming, as they were designed to do in the evening, to give people in Rapture a more normal sense of night and day.

Fontaine took a tram up to Olympus Heights, and then the elevator to his place in Mercury Suites. He arrived just in time to grab a quick bite before his meeting. He walked through the marble-lined rooms, past small bronze statues of dancing women and the comforting paintings of New York City scenes. He did miss New York.

He sat at a marble-topped, gold-legged table by the big window looking out on the blue, lamplit sea, where glowing purple jellyfish wafted by like skirts on invisible dancing girls.

His cook Antoine made him beef bourguignon with seaweed and a few lonely leafs of lettuce on the side. He drank a glass of a pretty dull Worley wine, and then the doorbell rang. Reggie let them in.

“Da boss’s in here,” Reggie said.

Reggie ushered Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum into the sitting room. “Keep an eye on the door, Reggie,” Fontaine said. “We don’t wanna be interrupted…”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Dr. Yi Suchong was still wearing a long white lab coat over a shabby suit peppered with rusty spots that looked like bloodstains. Brigid Tenenbaum wore a calf-length blue dress. She walked somewhat awkwardly in red pumps, clearly unused to them. She was a young woman—the wunderkind they’d called her. Her face, however, its angularity reflecting Belorussia, was marked by experience. There was a cold distance in it. Fontaine understood that distance. He didn’t let anyone close to him either. But there was something almost robotic in her movements. And she never met his eyes, though sometimes he felt her watching him.

She obviously dressed up for the meeting, with a touch of lipstick, awkwardly applied. She wasn’t so bad, despite her tobacco-stained teeth and chewed-down fingernails.

As they sat on ornate sofas across from each other, Fontaine ran a hand over his bald head, wondering if he should grow out his hair—but women seemed to like him bald. “May I smoke, please?” she asked.

“Sure you can. Have one of mine.” He passed her the ornate silver cigarette box he kept on the coral and glass coffee table.

She took a cigarette with trembling fingers, inserting it into an ivory holder she produced from a small pocket in her dress. Fontaine lit it with a silver lighter shaped cunningly like a seahorse. She glanced at him as she blew smoke toward the ceiling—then looked quickly away.

Both of the scientists, sitting widely apart, seemed quite stiff and formal. Seemed like they didn’t trust him. They’d get over it when he started shoveling mounds of money over them. Something nice and cozy about a blanket of cash.

Suchong was a lean Korean, wearing wire-rim glasses. He must’ve been twice Tenenbaum’s age. She didn’t at all seem in awe of him, though he had a string of degrees.

“How about some wine?” Fontaine asked.

She said yes and Suchong said no at precisely the same instant. Suchong laughed nervously. Tenenbaum just stared fixedly at the end of her cigarette.

Fontaine got wine for himself and her and said, “Dr. Suchong—I understand you’ve been working for Ryan Industries.”

Suchong sighed. “Suchong works for himself. There is the Suchong Institute and Laboratories. But—contracts with Ryan and Sinclair, yes…”

“And Miss Tenenbaum—you’re working… as a free agent?”

“Yes. This is a good description.” She looked past him, over his shoulder, as if she were trying to give the impression of looking at him without quite being able to.

“This is where I say, You’re all wondering why I called you here,” Fontaine said, putting down his wineglass. “I asked you two here because I’m thinking there’s bigger opportunities in this science stuff than I ever thought of. I’ve got people who work for Ryan giving me the inside skinny. What I hear, you two are feeling somewhat frustrated.”

Tenenbaum bobbed her head, her eyes flickering at everything but Fontaine. “This is true, what you say. Ryan says work on anything—but research costs money. Financial support is, what is the word—inconsistent.” She flicked her eyes at Suchong. “Dr. Suchong does not wish to make Mr. Ryan angry—but we both need… more!”

Suchong frowned. “Woman, do not speak for me.” But he didn’t deny it was true.

They were ripe and ready to pluck. “Well now,” Fontaine said, “given the right situation, the three of us could start our own little research team. Suchong, I understand you’re working on a new kind of tobacco?”

“Not precisely.” Suchong’s accent was heavy—it took Fontaine a moment to translate plee-cise-lee into precisely. “Suchong alters genetics of another plant to make nicotine. Make nicotine in sugarcane! We will extract and make ‘Nico-treats.’ Nicotine candy!”

“Clever!” Fontaine said, grinning. “Yeah, I’ve been reading up on this whole genetics business. You could make all kinds of things by switching genes around, seems to me. Maybe miniature cattle we could keep down here somewhere for fresh beef, yeah? And from what I hear, you could switch a person’s genes around. You could make changes in people, right?”

Her frown deepened into a scowl, which she directed at the floor. “What do you know of that?”

“Just rumors. That you’re paying for some kind of special sea slug. I hear you’ve bought ten of them…”

She nodded once, briskly. “I would buy more if I could. No ordinary sea slug. This species is a living miracle! I asked Ryan to help fund these experiments. He was not listening.” She sniffed, taking her cigarette butt from the holder and dropping it vaguely toward the ashtray. It fell onto the table and smoldered there. She gnawed at a nail, her eyes unfocused, seeming halfway in another world, oblivious as Fontaine reflexively put the cigarette out in the ashtray.

Making a sudden awkward pushing gesture with her hand, she went on, “Ryan, he put me off! ‘Maybe later,’ all this sort of thing.”

“You on the point of a breakthrough?”

“Perhaps.” She glanced at Suchong. He shrugged.

Fontaine smiled. “Then it’s something I want to invest in. I’ll pay well for a stake—and Ryan doesn’t have to know about it. When you’re ready, you can come and work for me completely. Both of you! I figure this genetics dodge could be the wave of the future—and I’ve got a few things in mind. The two of you could work on it—Suchong could bring you into his lab, and I could pay your salary, for now… Maybe get this guy Alexander involved. Only I don’t want Ryan to know about any of this. I want it on the QT, see. He’ll move in and take anything we come up with otherwise—and he’ll find some excuse to keep all the rights to himself.”

Tenenbaum smiled crookedly. “Meanwhile, Ryan pays for Suchong’s expensive lab, yes?”

“Why not let him pay for the big stuff?” Fontaine said, toying with his wineglass. “I’m doing good here—but Ryan controls more resources in Rapture. He’s got deeper pockets. For now.”

“Suchong needs more research money, yes!” said the Korean abruptly. “But also need something else.” He put his hands on his knees, leaned stiffly forward, his eyes washing out behind his glasses as they caught the sea lights from the window. “Yes. We both think of altering human genes. Difficult to do without humans! What Suchong really needs is—young humans! Their cells have very much more possibility. But—everyone crazy about children! Overprotect them!” He made a face. “Vile creatures, children—”

“Don’t much like kids, eh?”

“Suchong grow up in a household where my father is very poor servant, only children there the brats of rich man. They treat me like dog! Children are cruel. Must be trained like animals!”

“Children—all are lost creatures,” Brigid Tenenbaum said softly, her voice almost inaudible.

“You were pretty young when you started working as a scientist, Miss Tenenbaum,” Fontaine prompted. Understand what makes ’em tick, and you can wind up their clock. Set ’em for whatever time you want. “How’d that happen?”

She took a sip of wine, lit another cigarette, and seemed to gaze into another time. “I was at German prison camp, only sixteen years old. Important German doctor; he makes experiment. Sometime, he makes scientific error. I tell him of this error, and this makes him angry. But then he asks, ‘How can a child know such a thing?’ I tell him, ‘Sometimes, I just know.’ He screams at me, ‘Then why tell me?’” She smiled stiffly. “‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to do such things, at least you should do them properly!’” She took a drag on her cigarette and made a ghostly little smile—and a ghost of cigarette smoke rose from her parted lips as she let the smoke drift slowly out of her lungs.

Suchong rolled his eyes. “She tells that story many times.”

Fontaine cleared his throat. “I don’t know as I can get you the kind of experimental subjects you’re talking about right away, Doc,” Fontaine said. “Might draw too much attention. But what I can get you is some grown-up guys who’ve run afoul of the rules around here. Couple of guys disappear from Detention, who’s going to care? We’ll give out they escaped and got drowned trying to get out of the city.”

Suchong made a single brisk nod. “That can be useful.”

“So—supposing you could find a way to control genes,” Fontaine said, toying with his wineglass. “Is it true what I heard—that genes control how we age?”

Again Suchong said no and Tenenbaum said yes at the same moment.

Suchong grunted in irritation. “This is Tenenbaum theory. Genes only one factor!”

“Genes, they are almost everything,” Tenenbaum said, sniffing.

“But I mean—you could help a man stay young,” Fontaine persisted. “Maybe change his body in some way. Give him more hair, stronger arms, a longer… you know. If we could sell that… and give a guy, I don’t know, more talents… more… abilities.”

“Yes,” Tenenbaum said. “This is something my mentor talked about. To enhance a man’s powers—make him der Übermensch—the superman. A super man—or woman! Many risks in this. But yes. With time—and much experimentation.”

“When Suchong get money and experimental subjects, Mr. Fontaine?” Suchong asked.

Fontaine shrugged. “I’ll get you the first research payment tomorrow. We’ll work out a contract, just between us…”

Fontaine paused, reflecting that if he had to give them shares in the business, it might cost him a lot of money in the long run. But once he had the basic products started, the technology going, he could hire other researchers cheaper. And then he could get rid of Suchong and Tenenbaum. One way or another.

He smiled his best, most convincing, most openhearted smile at them. Never failed to lure the suckers in. “I’ll get you the contract and the money fast—but we’ve got to do it carefully. ‘Free’ enterprise or not—Ryan watches everything…”

Lower Wharf, Neptune’s Bounty March 1953

Chief Sullivan didn’t like being out on the lower wharf when the lights had been dimmed this much. He could still see to get around, but the shadows around the pylons multiplied and seemed to squirm at the edge of his vision. This wasn’t a safe place even in broad “daylight.” A couple of guys had disappeared on this wharf over the past week. One of them had been found, or what was left of him, his body carved up pretty good. Seemed to Sullivan, when he’d examined the body, that those nice straight cuts had been made by scalpels…

Sullivan’s boots creaked on the planks as he walked to the end of the wharf. The cold came off the water. The smell of fish was strong—the reek of decay. Three wooden crates were lined up together on the wharf with a curious palm-print logo on them—but he figured breaking into them wasn’t likely to provide him proof of the contraband smuggling he knew was going on. They were marked “Rotten—for discard” and smelled like it. He figured Fontaine was too smart to have his contraband right here on the wharf.

The lower wharf resembled a wooden pier. It slanted down toward water released into the big chamber that enclosed part of the fisheries. The shallow water around the wooden projections was mostly just to give a feeling of a real wharf, to break up the claustrophobia—part of the psychology of Rapture design. A big electric sign, hanging from the ceiling, switched off, read FONTAINE’S FISHERIES. The walls here were mostly corrugated metal; above the lower wharf area was the upper wharf, with cafés and taverns like Fighting McDonagh’s—the tavern owned by Bill McDonagh, though he had little time to run it in person.

The wharf area felt, to Sullivan, like a kind of man-made cavern. Wood and sand and a pool of water below, the looming walls, the ceiling overhead—it was like an undersea cave. Only the walls and ceiling were metal.

The actual docking area for the fishing submarines, complete with cold storage vaults, was hidden down in the back, in a fish-reeking labyrinth of passages, conveyor belts for seafood processing, and offices—like the wharf master’s office. The wharf master was Peach Wilkins—Fontaine’s man. So far, Wilkins had stonewalled Sullivan when it came to the smugglers.

Reaching into the pocket of his trench coat to feel the reassuring grip of his revolver, Sullivan descended the switchback ramp to get closer to the water. The briny water lay quiet as a sheet of glass. But something splashed off in the shadows close to the wall.

He drew the pistol but kept it low, thumb ready to cock the hammer back. He bent down, glanced under the pier, thinking he saw a dark shape moving back there in the dimness.

Sullivan squatted a little more, trying to peer into the darkness under the pier, but saw nothing but the glimmer of water. Nothing moved. Whatever he thought he’d seen was gone. But then he saw it, bobbing back there, close to the corrugated metal walls. Someone had been pushing a floating crate along. He wished he had a flashlight.

A distinct splashing sound came from back near the crate. He raised the revolver and shouted, “Come out of there, you!”

He was distantly aware of a creaking noise on the ramp behind him. But his attention was fixed on the darkness under the pier, where that splashing had come from…

“You in there! I’m going to start opening fire if you don’t—”

He broke off, hearing the creaking more distinctly behind him, and turned—in time to see the silhouette of a man against the dim light of the ceiling, leaping down at him from the higher wharf ramp—a monkey wrench in the stranger’s hand poised to bash Sullivan’s skull.

Sullivan just had time to twist himself to the right so that the monkey wrench came whistling down past his left ear, thumping painfully into his shoulder—then the man tackled him.

Sullivan was slammed backward, hand convulsively firing the pistol. He heard the man grunt as they both splashed into the shallow seawater. Sullivan twisted as he fell, coming down on his left side. Salty water roared in his ears and choked him, big rough hands closed around his throat, a great weight bore him downward. He struck out with the gun butt, felt it connect with the back of the man’s head. The two of them thrashed; then Sullivan got his feet under him and managed to stand, thigh deep, water streaming off him. The other man was getting up, staggering, blood dripping from a head wound. A big square-jawed, ham-fisted man in a pea jacket glared at him with one little brown eye through black hair pasted down by water. He’d lost the monkey wrench in the water.

The man swung a bunched fist hard at Sullivan—Sullivan jerked back so that the blow missed, but he was sent off-balance. He tried to fire the gun, but water had gotten in, and it misfired. Sullivan was staggering back to try to stay upright. The man grinned, showing crooked teeth, and sloshed toward him, big hands outstretched.

A flash from up on the wharf—a gunshot—and Sullivan’s brawny assailant grunted, gritted his teeth, took one more step, then fell on his face in the water. He thrashed for a couple of moments—then went limp, floating facedown.

Sullivan steadied himself and looked up to see Karlosky smiling coldly down at him from the wharf ramp, pocketing a smoking pistol. The air smelled of gunsmoke.

“Nice shot,” Sullivan said as blood welled from the hole in the left side of the stranger’s head. “Assuming, that is, you weren’t aiming for me!”

“If I shoot at you,” Karlosky said in his Russian accent, “you already die.”

Sullivan pocketed his own pistol, grabbed the dead man by the collar, and dragged him to the lower ramp, laboring in his water-heavy clothing. Pulling the thug onto the ramp, he bent over—aware of the pain from a deep bruise in his left shoulder—and turned the corpse over. There was just enough light to make out the face. He still didn’t recognize him. Or did he? He reached out and wiped wet hair away from the dead man’s face. He’d seen that face in a photo, in the Rapture admissions records. A maintenance worker. “The guy tried to brain me with a wrench,” he said as Ivan Karlosky joined him.

“I heard you shoot,” Karlosky said. “But you miss.”

“Didn’t have time to aim. You see anybody else on the other side of the wharf?”

“Da! Running away! Could not see who!”

“I’ve seen this one’s file. Don’t remember his name.”

“Mickael Lasko. Ukrainian! All sons of bitches, Ukrainians! Lasko, he work maintenance, then do something for Peach Wilkins. I heard in a bar, maybe he knows about smuggling—so I follow him this morning. The bastard lose me down in the docking maze. Some hidden passages down there…”

“Seemed like this particular Ukrainian son of a bitch wanting to do me in…” Shivering with the chill from the water soaking his clothing, Sullivan went through the dead man’s coat pockets—and came up with an envelope full of Rapture dollars and, in another pocket, a small notebook. He opened the notebook. It contained a list, blurred from the water. He read it aloud:

“Looks like he’s smuggling,” Karlosky said.

Sullivan shook his head. “Looks like Fontaine or Wilkins don’t have much respect for me. Like I’m supposed to believe this guy is behind it all. He’s not going to keep a notebook listing cocaine and Bibles. I doubt he knew how to spell ’em. The envelope with the cash in it was payment to this knucklehead to try to take me down. They were okay with it if he got killed. Make it look like the smuggler was all done for, take the heat off them…”

He tossed Karlosky the envelope. “You can have that—for saving my life. Come on, I’ll send someone down to pick up this patsy.” They started back up the ramp, hurrying into better lighting. “Shit, I hate walking with salt water in my pants. It’s rasping my ball sack, goddammit… let’s get a drink. I’ll buy you a vodka.”

“Vodka is good to get smell of rotting fish out! And smell of dead Ukrainian—even worse!”

A Locked Laboratory, Rapture 1953

“Absurd, Tenenbaum!” Dr. Suchong jeered as he walked ahead of Frank Fontaine and Brigid Tenenbaum.

“This discovery is very great,” Tenenbaum retorted confidently. She seemed to simmer with subdued excitement. “Mr. Fontaine, you will see!”

Frank Fontaine’s deal with Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum hadn’t quite paid off yet. Maybe, he figured, as he followed her and Suchong into the laboratory, today was the day that particular roll of the dice was going to come up lucky sevens. Tenenbaum’s excitement—which she almost never showed—seemed to hint she’d stumbled across something explosive.

Tenenbaum led the way to a sedated man in a hospital gown lying on a padded gurney in the most secretive inner chamber of the laboratory complex. She looked the unconscious man over with analytical coolness as she spoke. “Germans, all they can talk about is blue eyes and shape of forehead. All I care about is why is this one born strong, and that one weak—this one smart, that one stupid? All the killing, you think the Germans could have been interested in something useful? Today—I think we have found something very much useful…”

The sleeping man on the gurney was bound to it with leather restraints. He was quite an ordinary-looking man of medium height, brown hair, blotchy skin. Fontaine had seen him playing poker in Fighting McDonagh’s—Willy Brougham. On the white metal table beside Brougham was an enormous syringe with a thick red liquid in it. Occupying most of a shelf beyond the table was a five-gallon aquarium tank bubbling with seawater. Immersed in the tank, pulsing repugnantly on a bed of sand, was one of Tenenbaum’s sluglike wonders. It was about eight inches long, with a primitive armor fringing its edges. It had striated, grainy skin; faintly incandescent blue panels on its humped back. Teeth gnashed at one end on its elongated body; a small tapered tail twitched at the other.

“This Tenenbaum, she believes genes answer to everything. Suchong think genes important—but the control of subject’s mind, conditioning of synapses, these things are more important! Who controls such, controls all!”

“I like that,” Fontaine said. “Conditioning is something real interesting to me. Read about it in some magazine. The Nazis were experimenting with it…”

Tenenbaum cleared her throat and said, “Now this man, Brougham, he is wounded—I will show you injury…” She lifted up the gown of the man on the gurney, and Fontaine winced to see a nasty, puckered, ragged tear in the man’s flesh, about seven inches long, haphazardly taped shut just above the groin. “He tries to use fishing hook to steal fish from fishery tanks! Ryan’s men catch him, slice him with his own hook. Now—we have extracted special material from slugs. Purified it. This material is made of special stem cells. Unstable. Highly adaptable. Please observe.”

She picked up the syringe and jammed it in the flesh just above the man’s groin. Brougham’s back arched, his body reacting—but he didn’t wake. Fontaine winced at the sight of the three-inch needle piercing deeply into the man’s gut.

“Now,” she said, “observe the wound.”

Fontaine did. And nothing happened.

“Ha!” Dr. Suchong said. “Maybe it not work this time. And your great theory—poof, Tenenbaum!”

Then the skin around the wound twitched, reddened, and the serrated flesh inside the wound seemed to writhe about… and seal shut. In a minute, only a faint scar remained of the ragged gash. It had healed before their eyes.

“I’ll be damned!” Fontaine said.

“I call it ADAM,” said Brigid Tenenbaum. “Because from Adam in the myth came life for mankind. This too brings life—it destroys damaged cells, replaces them with new ones—transferred by plasmids, unstable genetic material. Now, stem cells can be manipulated—their genes changed! We can make them this, make them that. If it can do this, heal instantly—what else can it do? Transform a man, a woman? Into what? Many things! Endless possibility!”

Suchong chewed at a thumbnail, staring at the experimental subject. Then he pointed. “You see there? On his head—some lesions!”

She shrugged. “Hardly visible. A few minor side effects…”

“Some may have much more! Your man with the miracle hands—that one behaves a little strangely now. And there are some curious marks on his arms. Like cancer! Uncontrolled cell growth!”

“So that’s the key,” Fontaine mused. “These stem-cell things and this… this ADAM? You can use it to change things up in a man—give him special abilities, like we discussed?”

“Precisely!” she said proudly.

Fontaine could tell she was speaking to him, though she never looked at him. She would turn her head his way, but her eyes were always fixed on some point over his left shoulder, as if she were talking to an invisible person behind him. “Growing hair, growing a bigger pecker, bigger muscles, bigger breasts for the ladies, bigger brains for the highbrows…”

“It is all possible with ADAM!”

“Hmf,” Suchong said. “You do not tell him how ADAM must be constantly re-energized!”

“Not a concern, Dr. Suchong!” Tenenbaum said, listening to Brougham’s heart with a stethoscope. “I have design for energizer—we will call it EVE!” She frowned. “But—the sea slug can only make so much ADAM and EVE. These sea slugs—we believe they are also parasites. We find on sharks, other creatures. Maybe they can be attached to human beings. A person could become a… a factory for ADAM. Then we have more ADAM for experiments.” She scratched thoughtfully in her unwashed hair. “Working with my mentor, all he thought of was how to find greater power in men! To breed them, to change them! Working at his side, I was thinking of another researcher. A greater one! Ha, ha!”

That was the first time Fontaine had ever heard her laugh—a brittle, almost inhuman sound.

“So this ADAM thing,” Fontaine went on, looking at the healed skin on the sedated man. “If you could get enough sea slugs, maybe some people to work with as… what would you call them, hosts… you could mass-produce this stuff?”

She nodded to the imaginary person behind Fontaine. “In time—yes.”

“But…” Dr. Suchong shook his head. “Suchong believe—ADAM could be addictive! My study of human beings shows me anything that make easy change in people, the people quickly become addicted! A man feels bad, takes drink of alcohol, very quick feels a little better—he becomes addicted to alcohol! Same with opium! Maybe same with ADAM—quick fix in man: addictive! Organism develops need for it. Suchong observe agitation in this man Tenenbaum found on dock. Sometimes he is… what is it you people say? He is ‘high’!”

Addictive? Even better. Fontaine thought of the time, risk, and expense of bringing in poppy from Kandahar.

Yeah. He could feel it. His cultivation of Suchong and Tenenbaum was paying off.

“Keep on this,” Fontaine told them eagerly. “I’ll make it worth your while—worth all our whiles!”

Medical Pavilion 1953

Sitting pensively behind his inner-office desk in the medical pavilion, Dr. J. S. Steinman was bored, and tired of fighting his own impulses. And only just now beginning to understand why he’d come to Rapture.

Steinman took a cigarette from the box on the coral desk, lit it with a silver lighter shaped like a human nose, and got up to open the curtains on his office port hole so he could gaze out at the sea—at kelp and sea fans waving in the current. Restful, that view. Nothing like New York. Always hectic in the Big Apple. People interfering with a man.

It was the implied condemnation he resented, the small-minded judgment of his greatness. How to explain what it was like to reach out for the planet Venus, in hopes of making it his pocket watch? How could he explain that he was sometimes visited by the goddess Aphrodite? He had heard the goddess’s voice so clearly…

“My darling Doctor Steinman,” said Aphrodite. “To create like the gods is to be a god. Can only a god fashion a face? You have done it again and again—you have taken what was lumpen and made it exquisite; you have taken the mediocre and made it the marvelous. But in every man and woman’s face a secret is hidden. The lost perfection—masked. Under the face of a woman whom low, vulgar people regard as ‘beautiful’ is another face, the perfect face, the Platonic ideal—hidden under the surface beauty. If you can liberate the perfect face from the almost perfect, you become a god. What is more important than beauty? It was I, Aphrodite herself, who inspired the poet Keats. Truth is beauty; beauty is truth! The hidden symmetry underlying the ugly irregularity of surface reality. And here is the paradox: only by passing through the dark gate of chaos, through the shadowy valley of so-called ‘ugliness,’ is the quest at last completed and the hidden perfection found!”

Oh, how the goddess had thrilled him! Yes, it was true that he’d heard her voice while taking ether—cocaine and ether by turns, in fact—but it had been no mere hallucination. He was sure of that.

So when Ryan had approached him, saying that innovative surgeons would be needed in Rapture, he’d heard Aphrodite whispering to him again: “Here it is! Here is the chance, here is the opportunity, here is the secret realm you’ve dreamed of, where you can at last unearth perfection! A refuge where the small-minded scorners cannot find you!”

Steinman blew a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling vent and turned to look at himself in the office mirror. He knew very well he was a “handsome” man. The elegant chin, the striking ears, the dark eyes, that understated, perfectly clipped mustache like an accent mark over a bon mot when he uttered a witticism…

And yet there was another face under that one waiting to come out. Did he dare to find his own perfect face? Could he do surgery on his own face—perhaps using a mirror? Could he—

“Doctor? Miss Pleasance is waking up…”

He glanced up at the doorway, where his assistant waited for him: Miss Chavez, a small, pretty Puerto Rican woman in a white uniform, white shoes, nurse’s cap. She didn’t seem surprised to find him gazing into the mirror.

Chavez was a petite little creature with a heart-shaped face, Cupid’s-bow lips. Could he find that perfect face underneath Miss Chavez’s features? Suppose he were to reduce the pterygoideus muscles by half, then doubly tighten the temporalis muscle, and he might just bisect the eyelids…

All in good time. “Ah—yes, go ahead and begin unwrapping her face, Miss Chavez; I’ll be right there…”

Miss Sylvia Pleasance was engaged to Ronald Greavy, son of the Ruben Greavy who worked closely with Ryan. They were an influential family in Rapture.

He stubbed his cigarette out on the seashell ashtray on his desk and walked down the hall. Stretched out in the recovery room, Miss Pleasance was wearing a nightgown and socks. She had a sheet draped modestly over her. Look at those fat little arms. Too bad he couldn’t cut into those fat little arms and reduce them. Perhaps down to the bone. Even expose the bone in places. Like ivory jewelry…

Nurse Chavez had cranked the upper part of the patient’s bed to a forty-five-degree angle and was beginning to unwind the bandages. Miss Pleasance’s large green eyes were gazing out at him from the gaps in the mummylike facial wrap with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Her red hair spilled almost stylishly over one side of the bandage. He thought, once more, that there might be a certain appeal to leaving the bandages on—forever. One would see only the hair and eyes—and mystery. Like a mummy…

Sylvia Pleasance’s face was slowly revealed… Nurse Chavez gasped…

And clapped her hands together. “Isn’t she lovely, Doctor! You’ve done a wonderful job!”

He sighed resignedly: it was true. All quite lovely. He hadn’t done anything experimental with this woman. He was trying not to do anything unusual in his new practice. Just give them what they wanted. But it was hard. The temptation had been strong…

She had a conventionally attractive, delicately sculpted face now, with dimples on her pale cheeks, a matching dimple in her chin. It was a sweetly rounded visage but with all the unpleasant chunkiness gone. Her fiancé would probably be pleased. She looked rather like an adult Shirley Temple. How tiresome. But the Pleasance woman cooed over her reflection when Nurse Chavez gave her the hand mirror.

“Oh, Doctor! It’s perfect! God bless you!”

“Yes, yes,” he muttered, approaching, taking her chin in his hands, turning her head from side to side, looking at it under the light from the gooseneck lamp. “Yes, only… I cannot escape the feeling that there is more, far more, to be done… some hidden perfection lurking underneath this pretty little mask!”

“What?” Miss Pleasance seemed startled. She swallowed and drew back from him. “I…” She frowned and looked at herself again in the hand mirror. Turned her head this way and that. “No! This is what I wanted! Exactly! I’m amazed at how you got it! I wouldn’t alter it a jot, Doctor!”

He shrugged. “Just as you like. I simply think…” Thinking to himself: If I could just cut a quarter inch off the nose… and then… perhaps narrow the forehead, entirely remove the orbicularis oculi…

But aloud he said, “I’m so glad you’re pleased with the results. Go ahead and let her get dressed, Nurse, release her to her fiancé, and I’ll, uh…” He turned vaguely and walked, as if through a dream, back to his office.

Surgical knives are so limited. If only there were some way to transform people on the cellular level. If one could only sculpt people genetically; if only a surgical artist could reach into the very essence of a person, transform the subject from within—just the way God would.

The way Aphrodite would want him to…

Fontaine’s Fisheries 1953

It was late. Fontaine’s office was closed, the shades drawn. Reggie was somewhere outside, keeping watch. Fontaine and Tenenbaum were alone in the fisheries’ office on a comfortable sofa. Brigid Tenenbaum was stretched out, wearing a negligee and red pumps. Fontaine was half-sitting on the edge, leaning over her, her hands clasped in his. Beside them on the floor was an empty Worley wine bottle and their glasses. Fontaine wore only his boxers and a T-shirt. His clothes were folded neatly on a chair at his desk across the room.

She seemed frightened, and yet he could see anticipation in her eyes too when she glanced at him and—as always—looked quickly away.

“You look kinda scared,” he said. “You sure about this?”

“I… do not like to be touched,” she said. “But… I need it, when the feelings of desire come. What I dream of is a man who… who simply takes me. I will make some token resistance. But it will not be real. I must fight a little. I can only do it that way…”

“Well, kid,” he said, using his ‘voice of reassurance,’ “you came to the right shop.” She’d cleaned up rather nicely and put on some perfume, even seemed to have brushed the cigarette stains off her teeth. “So this is something you haven’t done exactly—but you… imagined?” he asked.

“Yes. I am afraid to touch. But I must be touched…”

“What they call a contradiction in terms. That’s you, eh?”

“Perhaps. Now… please… put the blindfold on me.”

“Oh yeah.” He took the black blindfold from his pocket and tied it over her eyes. “There. You can’t see me now.”

“No… now that I cannot see you… you can touch me—if you hold my arms down…”

He pressed her arms back by her wrists to either side of her head and stretched out on her, pressing his hips to hers. She tried to twist away—but she wasn’t trying hard.

“Just remember,” Fontaine said as he did his duty, enjoying it more than he’d thought he would, “you want it done your way—you do your work my way. You work exclusively for me…”

Ryan Amusements 1953

Bill McDonagh felt a bit foolish taking the Journey to the Surface ride alone. It was made for Rapture’s children, really, to “satisfy their curiosity” about the surface world. Supposedly. In a few years his child would want to go on a ride in Rapture’s only amusement park. Bill wanted to know, in advance, if what he’d heard about the ride was true. If it was, the ride would probably upset Elaine…

He’d been here before to do some maintenance work, but he hadn’t taken the tour. He’d bought a ticket and everything.

Now he climbed into the ride car—shaped like an open bathysphere—and settled back. It lurched into motion and then creaked along its track into the tunnel.

The car rumbled slowly past an animatronic mannequin of Andrew Ryan sitting at his desk, looking almost fatherly. The mannequin moved and gestured, in a herky-jerky way, and “talked”: “Why, hello there. My name is Andrew Ryan, and I built the city of Rapture for children just like you, because the world above’s become unfit for us. But here, beneath the ocean, it is natural to wonder if the danger has passed…”

“Crikey,” Bill muttered. The Ryan robot gave him the willies.

Then the car moved on to the mechanical tableau that warned about taxation on the surface world. Up on his left was a farmhouse, where a farmer tilled his field and his happy wife and child stood behind him… but then a giant hand—truly gigantic—moved clutchingly into the tableau, reaching down from above. It had suit sleeves on it—like the suit worn by a bureaucrat. It grabbed the roof of the house and tore it off… The tax man taking away all that the man had worked for… The animatronic farmer slumped in despair…

“On the surface,” said the deep voice of Andrew Ryan booming from hidden speakers, “the farmer tills the soil, trading the strength of his arm for a land of his own. But the parasites say, ‘No! What is yours is ours! We are the state; we are God; we demand our share!’”

“Oh lord,” Bill said, staring at the hand. It was terrifying, that giant hand… And the hand—as if from some cruel bureaucratic jehovah—came inexorably down in other tableaus as the ride trundled slowly onward. An animatronic scientist made a glorious discovery in his laboratory, rose up on a pedestal in triumph—and then was crushed back down by that giant hand from above. “On the surface, the scientist invests the power of his mind in a single miraculous idea and naturally begins to rise above his fellows. But the parasites say, ‘No! Discovery must be regulated! It must be controlled and finally surrendered.’”

That one ought to make Suchong and his like happy, Bill supposed.

The next tableau showed an artist painting away in rapturous inspiration—before a giant hand came down and suppressed his freedom again…

The final tableau was the most frightening of all. A child was happily watching TV with his family. Then Ryan’s God-like voice warned, “On the surface, your parents sought a private life; using their great talents to provide for you, they learned to twist the lies of church and government, believing themselves masters of the system, but the parasites say, ‘No! The child has a duty! He’ll go to war and die for the nation.’”

And the giant hand came down, pushed through the wall—and dragged the child away—into the darkness… into death.

Bill shook his head. This was all about scaring children it seemed to him. He’d heard that Sofia Lamb, when she’d first come, had given Ryan the idea—an “amusement ride” that was a kind of aversion therapy, a way of imprinting children with a revulsion for the surface world—and a consequent commitment to the only alternative: Rapture…

Between the big tableaus, animatronic Ryans appeared, lecturing, hectoring—warning the child about the horrors of the surface world.

As the ride ended he heard Cohen’s song, “Rise, Rapture, Rise,” playing…

Bill sighed. He was going to do whatever he could to keep Elaine away from here. She wouldn’t understand. She already had her doubts about Rapture, and this would only deepen them. Whatever happened, they were committed to Rapture and Andrew Ryan. Weren’t they?

Dionysus Park, Rapture 1954

“How can a house divided stand, Simon?” Sofia Lamb asked gently as they sat in the sculpture garden of Dionysus Park. Simon Wales sat beside her on the carved coral bench, smoking a pipe, seeming troubled; Margie and several of Sofia’s other followers were scattering fish-gut fertilizer around the plants at the other end of the park’s gallery of sculptures. Across from them was an example of “unconscious art,” a sculpture by one of her followers showing a squirming octopus—but the creature had a human face that was oddly like Andrew Ryan’s. “Rapture is designed for conflict, for competition—but can this marvel of a community survive that division, bottled up down here? We need unity to make Rapture thrive! And that means a communal concept, not a competitive one…”

Simon glanced around nervously. “Really, you shouldn’t use those kinds of… well, Ryan would regard that as red propaganda… Could be dangerous. They’re building a new detention center, and I have a feeling Ryan might want it for, ah, people who talk about undermining his master vision…”

Sofia shrugged. “If I must go to prison—so be it. The people need me! More are coming every day, Simon! The vision of wholeness is taking hold! Rapture must be a single society—not some schizophrenic social organism forever wrestling with itself. Look at what’s been happening—people forced into prostitution, living on top of one another. How is that better than the surface world?”

“If he suspects what you’re up to…”

She chuckled. “He’s convinced I’m on his team. I advised him on how to set up that little child-training amusement park… it’s absurd, really; I doubt if it does anything but frighten children, but he believes it’ll train them to accept Rapture. I gave him an edited report on all my…” She glanced at him. “I can trust you, can’t I, Simon?”

He looked at her with a stunned expression and swallowed hard. “But—of course! How could you doubt it? You know how I feel…”

“Mommy, look!” Eleanor said pipingly. Sofia glanced over to see her small daughter, just three years old, in her pink pinafore, dragging one of the audiodiaries behind her. “I’m going to play with the Mr. Diary you gave me!”

Sofia nodded. “Wonderful, my love!”

His voice lowered, Simon asked, “Don’t you think it’s time she had some contact with other children, Doctor?”

“Hm? No. No, they’re under the influence of the poisonous paradigm of Andrew Ryan. I will keep her right here, train her in safe isolation—make her a paragon of the society to come…”

“And—” He cleared his throat. “What happened to her father?”

“Ah, as to that—it’s a private matter.”

Eleanor was sitting in the grass, talking to the tape recorder as if it were a friend; she clutched a small screwdriver in her hand. “Hello, Mr. Diary. Want to play?” She mimicked its voice: “‘Actually, I’m quite busy right now, Miss Eleanor. Maybe later.’ Well, all right! But do you mind if I take you apart while I wait? I promise I’ll put you back together! ‘Wait! You can’t do thaaaat… noooo… waaaaiiiit, wait Eleaaanoooorrrr…’”

And to Sofia’s surprise, Eleanor commenced stabbing at the tape recorder, breaking it apart with the screwdriver…

Laboratory Complex 1954

“Some plasmid effects proved to be more difficult than we expected,” Brigid Tenenbaum said, leading Fontaine down the hallway.

Suchong was leaning out an open door, gesturing for them to come. “Suchong is ready now for demonstration!”

Feeling a bit sick inside but determined to see this through, Fontaine followed Tenenbaum to the lab’s experimentation room.

As they entered, Fontaine saw it was the same experimental subject as last time, the fellow Brougham. But now he was awake—though not entirely awake. His eyes were open and flicking about.

They were in lab 3 of Fontaine Futuristics—an almost bare room but for a cabinet, a brushed-steel table of instruments, and an examination bed fitted with restraints. Steel walls were textured with rust and rivets; the room smelled of antiseptics and seawater leakage. He heard it dripping between the walls. A single naked electric lightbulb glowed in the middle of the ceiling. The floor was covered with what looked to Fontaine like a thin carpet of black rubber.

“You guys don’t go in for extras, do you,” Fontaine observed. “Maybe a little decoration…”

“We will add more equipment later,” Dr. Suchong said, bending over the table. “Decorations are superfluous.” He selected a syringe and set about drawing a glowing blue fluid from a beaker. The man on the table looked at the syringe with frightened eyes; he writhed and made a mewing sound.

“In time, Suchong will add computers, such other devices.”

“Computers?” Fontaine asked. “What’s a computer?”

“Like… adding machine,” Suchong said, putting alcohol on Brougham’s shoulder. “But faster, smarter. Mr. Ryan has designs. We can take to Fontaine Futuristics… Now—injecting the solution we call EVE. It will activate the ADAM we have already incorporated into him…”

He injected Brougham’s shoulder with EVE. The man strapped to the table groaned and tried to pull away. Suchong relentlessly drove the syringe plunger home.

“We are ready,” Suchong said. “Please back away from subject…”

All three of them backed away from the man on the exam table, all the way to the door. “The subject” was muttering to himself. Visibly quivering in the leather restraints. Shuddering. Shaking. Till shaking became convulsing. He shrieked, and his back arched, bones audibly creaking. Fontaine was afraid the guy was going to snap his own spine.

“It’s coming out of me it’s coming out of me it’s coming out of meeeeee!” Brougham shrieked.

Then there was a sizzling sound—the smell of ozone and burning flesh—and blue electricity arced up, passing from the man’s restrained hands to his head, the arc crackling for a moment—and then it snapped up at the electric light—which burst and went out.

The room went dark. Black as the pit of hell.

“What the devil—!” Fontaine said.

As if the devil in question were responding to Fontaine, a reddish-blue glow surged up again, much brighter now, illuminating the room. The exam room strobed in and out of visibility, Brougham’s hands hissing great fat sparks that blackened the walls. The only light source was the eerie glow generated by the man on the table. A hissing sound filled the room. The glow in the man’s eyes began to pulse.

Fontaine shook his head, not at all certain of what he had gotten himself into. He realized he should have brought Reggie, maybe Lance too.

“Doctor!” Tenenbaum shouted. “The tranquilizer!”

Fontaine saw for the first time that Suchong had something ready in his hand—it looked like a gun, but when he fired it at the man on the exam table it made a soft spitting sound, and there was no muzzle flash. The man yelped, and Fontaine saw that a dart of some kind had shot into the man’s hip, where it waggled with his movements.

Those movements calmed… and the light diminished as the electrical glow ebbed away.

“You see,” Suchong said, “when mind shuts down, his power too shut down…”

“We should have insulated that lightbulb,” Tenenbaum said, reaching back to open the door, as the last of the electrical shine vanished.

The light from the hall indirectly illuminated the chamber, and the three of them approached Brougham, who once more seemed semiconscious, moving his head gently from side to side.

The experimental subject seemed relatively unhurt, to Fontaine’s surprise, though the man’s hospital gown was reduced to charred threads. “He should have gotten burned, shouldn’t he, with all that electricity shooting around in him? Maybe he’s all burned inside himself?”

Tenenbaum shook her head as she examined the experimental subject, taking his pulse. “No. He is not burned. This is part of plasmid phenomenon. He emanates the electricity but is not harmed by it. Not exactly… harmed.”

“So—what’s the practical use of this stuff?” Fontaine demanded. “How’re we going to make money on it?”

Tenenbaum shrugged. “Can be used to start engines, galvanize equipment that is missing power, yes?”

Looking closer, Fontaine saw there was a mark on Brougham—around his eyes. Not exactly scar tissue, but more like a thickening of the skin—a cancerlike growth across his face. Radiating outward from his eyes was a fanciful mask of thickened red tissue.

“You notice the extraneous tissue,” Dr. Suchong said, nodding. “Does not seem… lethal. But it is curious. Some subjects have more than others…”

“Some of them? How many of these guys do you have?”

“A few still alive. Come—this way.” He led the way from the chamber.

Fontaine was glad to get out of there. He might’ve gotten fried during that demonstration. “So—what did we just see? That was a plasmid, right?” He added wonderingly, “Lightning coming out of a man!”

Dr. Suchong paused in the barren metal corridor under a naked yellow light and rubbed his hands together.

Fontaine and Tenenbaum lingered with him in the hall, all of them a little shaken up. Fontaine glanced through an open door into a small, cluttered lab where one of the nondescript sea slugs squirmed in a bubbling aquarium on a table seething with fluid-filled tubes.“Suchong is most impressed by plasmid possibilities! Powerful electrical charge, drawn from atmosphere, can be used to activate machines—or to attack enemies! Maybe for self-defense against sharks when our men work in sea! That Brougham—he cannot control it. But soon Suchong will improve stem-cell communication with the nervous system! Soon a man can control this power! And other powers!”

Fontaine found that his pulse was racing with a mounting excitement. “What other powers?”

“We have found special genes, can be changed with stem alteration, using ADAM—so a man has power to project cold, as Brougham project lightning! Power to project fire! To project rage! To make things move—with power of mind alone!”

Fontaine looked at him. Was he in earnest—or was this a sell job? Was Suchong trying to con him? But he’d just seen a sample of plasmid power. “If that’s true, ADAM is the ultimate score. ADAM—and EVE. It’s fuckin’ amazing.”

Tenenbaum nodded, looking through the door at the sea slug in the aquarium. “Yes. The little sea slug has come along and glued together all the crazy ideas I’ve had since the war. It can resurrect cells, bend the double helix—so that black can be reborn white, tall can be short. Weak can become strong! But we are just beginning… there is more we need, Frank. Much more…”

Fontaine grinned—and winked at her. “You’ll get whatever you need! Fontaine Futuristics will transform Rapture! I feel it in my bones.”

Tenenbaum looked curiously at Fontaine—right at him. But he suspected she could look right at him only because she was thinking of him as a specimen. “Really? You feel that in bones?”

“Nah, that’s just an expression—what I’m saying is, this is going to go big. And it’s got to be presented big. I’m going to buy space from Ryan Industries… and we’re going to move Fontaine Futuristics out of this dump, into the best-designed location in Rapture! It’ll look like the inside of a mansion, with lots of décor and sculpture so that people’ll sense the power behind those doors!” He broke off, shaking his head. Thinking that he was starting to sound like… a businessman.

Won’t have to do it long, he told himself. The bunko possibilities in this one are all about selling something to people they only think they want—until they’ve got it. And once they’ve got it—it’s got them. Meaning I’ll have ’em in my hip pocket.

Suchong glanced at the sea slug—and licked his lips. Something was troubling him. “But Mr. Fontaine—there is danger.” He looked gravely at Fontaine. “Danger in using ADAM—and in developing plasmids. You should know before proceeding. Come this way. You shall see…”

They went down a metal-walled corridor, feet clumping on wooden planks. The air at this end smelled like raw chemicals and curdled human sweat. They came to a steel door stenciled

Suchong put his hand on the knob…

“Perhaps we should not go in!” Brigid Tenenbaum said suddenly, not looking at either of them but holding the door shut with the flat of her hand. She stared at the closed door.

“Why?” Fontaine asked, wondering if they were planning to lock him up in there. It occurred to him that maybe he should be careful around scientists who strap random people to tables and inject them with things…

“It is dangerous inside—perhaps diseased…”

Fontaine swallowed. But he made up his mind. “There can’t be any part of this I don’t know about. It’s all my business.” He wanted plasmids—bad. But he needed to know what the risks were. If this was something that exposed him too much…

She nodded once and stepped back. Suchong opened the door. Immediately, a disturbing, unnatural smell emanated from the room. It was a scent Fontaine would expect from exposed human brains when the top of the skull was sawed away…

His stomach lurched. But he followed Suchong one step, just one, into the room. “We try to mix some genes from sea creatures with human,” Suchong was saying. “Give man powers of certain animals. But…” The musty, ill-lit rectangular chamber was about thirty-five feet by thirty, but it seemed smaller because of the shifting heap of the thing that dominated it. Clinging to the walls opposite Fontaine was something that might’ve once been human. It was as if someone had taken human flesh and made it as malleable as clay—bones and flesh made pliable—and plastered it onto the wall. Beaded with sweat, the mass of human flesh seemed to simply cling there, spread over two walls and a corner. A bloated face muttered to itself, at the center of the creature, near the ceiling; several human organs were exposed, including a heart and kidneys, damp and quivering, dangling like meat in a butchery from crust-edged gaps in its body, the creature’s big limbs…

“What the hell!” Fontaine blurted.

The thing’s beak clicked and muttered in response.

Fontaine turned and dashed from the room. He went five paces down the hall and, feeling dizzy, gagging, came to a stumbling stop, leaning against Rapture’s cold metal bulkhead.

He felt a surge of relief when he heard the door of the Special Studies room clang shut. Tenenbaum and Suchong strolled up beside him, Suchong with his hands casually in his coat pockets, looking faintly amused. Tenenbaum seemed almost humanly concerned for him.

“So…” Fontaine swallowed bile. “You got this process under control or not?”

“We do now,” Tenenbaum said, looking thoughtfully at the yellow overhead light. “Yes. We will not be producing more of… those.”

“Then—I want you to do something for me. Kill that thing in there. Incinerate it. No traces left—I want no bad publicity. I want more plasmids like the one that makes lightning. But more variety. More controllable… easy to package… Stuff that makes a man smarter, stronger. The stuff that makes us money. You understand? Money!”

Ryan Amusements, Rapture Memorial Museum 1954

Stanley Poole stood at the outer edge of the small crowd waiting for Dr. Lamb to begin. Discreetly passed-out flyers in maintenance station 17 and Apollo Square advertised “A Free Public Lecture by the Eminent Psychiatrist, Dr. Sofia Lamb, on a New Hope for the Working Man.”

The lanky, swan-necked blonde in the modish horn-rims stepped up in front of the museum’s Rapture Grows tableau, with its stylized images of Rapture’s founding workers. She gazed at the little crowd like a prophetess, her benevolent expression condescending but motherly, her smile infinitely knowing. She pressed the button to start the museum tableau’s recording. A friendly male voice intoned, “After the platform is secured, work progresses at an astounding rate. Designed to be the foundation of Rapture, workers toil around the clock to create the metropolis you see today.”

“Do you hear that?” She clasped her hands behind her back and chuckled ironically, making eye contact with the small crowd—mostly low-level workers, all listening raptly, though Poole realized that Simon Wales was there too. “That recording,” Sofia Lamb went on, “is a compact little insight into Rapture! ‘Workers toil around the clock to create the metropolis’! And in the Laying the Foundation exhibit, right over there—what does the recording say?” Her voice was mockingly arch as she recited: “‘Engineers work to overcome obstacles, such as diamond-hard rock, obstinate sea life and unexpected casualties!’ Think about it, my friends—how much needless suffering have we taken for granted?” She shook her head sadly. “Unexpected casualties? Oh, Andrew Ryan fully expected them! He just didn’t care! A great many lives were lost in building Rapture—those lives were sacrifices to the ‘god’ that is the human ego! Ryan’s ego! The common man and woman in Rapture is overworked and underpaid; they’re left exhausted. They toiled around the clock to create this city—but how much of what they created do they really share in? What did Andrew Ryan really offer—but paper? A little something called Rapture dollars… mere documents, paper money! Paper for paupers! And precious little of that! Who, I ask you, really owns Rapture? The people who built it? or the plutocrats who control it? The many—or the few? You know the answer!”

A good many in the crowd were nodding. Some frowned, unsure—but most seemed convinced. They’d been thinking something of the sort themselves, Poole supposed. Here was someone who said it right out loud… Dr. Sofia Lamb. A psychiatrist—using her psychology on the common man.

“This woman Lamb is becoming troublesome, Poole,” Ryan had said. “See what she’s up to. Stay discreet…”

If Ryan could hear this, Poole thought, he’d blow his carefully barbered top.

Sofia Lamb paused thoughtfully, then pointed at the ornate walls. “Rapture looks like a great big palace at times, doesn’t it? It abounds in luxury—but where’s housing for those who maintain it? You’re crowded into places like Maintenance Seventeen! But that’s traditional in a palace, isn’t it? There are the luxury quarters for the elite—and then there’s the little cubbyholes under the stairs where the servants live! Palace servants have always outnumbered kings and queens! Yet we blindly continue to serve them! My vision of a new, united Rapture is revolutionary—yes, revolutionary! I say it proudly! And yet all I’m bringing is a new spirit of cooperation, my friends. A new shape for love! Cooperation, in a place like Ryan’s Rapture, is transformative, and the word I’m bringing is a sacrament, the beginning of a new church of cooperation. I have had an inspiration that seems to come from some cosmic place of certainty—and it is telling me that Rapture’s foundation on competition is cracking! Competition is division, my friends. A house divided cannot stand!” As she spoke, Poole noticed, she became more intense; her nostrils flared, her eyes flashed, her hands fisted. She radiated charisma—just as Ryan did. But her magnetism was somehow powerfully maternal. Poole glanced at Simon Wales and noticed he seemed totally captivated by Lamb. She went on, declaring loudly, “We must evolve to heal Rapture—and we will heal it by redesigning it from within! We will create a true utopia—and utopians fit to live in utopia! We will build a unity that will thrive, even as the surface world fails! But the new Rapture will not be based on greed—it will be a collective based on sharing! What is the collective? It is the body of Rapture! Therein will lie its truth! An end to the burden of mindless competition—a turning to cooperation, altruism, community—and communality!”

Holy cow, Poole thought. Ryan was going to flip. The boss was caught between a rock and a hard place. Ryan was officially against censorship—so how could he censor this woman? But from what Poole had heard about the secret structures being expanded in the Persephone Project, Ryan had a plan for taking care of Red organizers…

As the speech ended he turned away—and spotted someone at the back of the crowd he hadn’t noticed here before—a man with dark glasses and a hat covering his bald head.

Poole knew him, despite the man’s attempt at going incognito. It was Frank Fontaine. And Fontaine had a mighty thoughtful look on his face…

Frank Fontaine wasn’t aware of Poole watching him. He was mesmerized by Sofia Lamb.

The woman’s amazing, Fontaine thought. What a con artist. She was a grifter with two or three college degrees—he had to admire her. “What is the collective?” she’d said. “It is the body of Rapture!” Good stuff. You could plug almost any feeling you wanted into that. Conning one guy at a time wasn’t much challenge.

But a whole crowd—conning a whole population. Man, that was a thing of beauty.

This Lamb woman knew how you got “the people” on your side. Figure out what was bothering them and use it as a kind of harness, and pretty soon they’re pulling your wagon for you. Smart. “But that’s traditional in a palace, isn’t it? There are the luxury quarters for the elite—and then there’s the little cubbyholes under the stairs where the servants live! Palace servants have always outnumbered kings and queens!”

Smart—give ’em something to repeat to one another. “We’re like the palace servants, living under the stairs, see?”

This Dr. Lamb was going to be too much competition, of course. In time he’d have to see to it that Ryan got the info he needed to arrest her. Meantime, she was inspiring him, along with the crowd. Only, not the same way…

He’d do it all his way, of course. She was kind of the female version. His own version of radical leadership would be very different.

Maybe it was too early to really get going on it. But he could start to plant the seeds. Get it growing. And in time—harvest.

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1954

Bill found Andrew Ryan at his desk. “Mr. Ryan—I have that maintenance report.”

Ryan glanced up. “Oh, Bill, have a seat…” He looked back at the folder in his hands as Bill sat down across from him. The folder was marked CONFIDENTIAL. “I just want to have another look at the end of this one… I had Stanley Poole look into some things… this Lamb woman is a problem…” He flipped a page. “Bringing that woman in was bad judgment…” He grunted to himself, closed the folder, pushed it aside, and opened another. “Yes. Poole’s also found out something about Fontaine’s new venture he’s calling Futuristics… Seems quite… pregnant with possibility… Take a load off while I sort through this…”

Ryan made notes, nodded to himself. Then he looked up at Bill, smiling. “I get so caught up in the day-to-day business—I forget to really take a good look at the people around me. You look a bit careworn, Bill. That’s natural. How’s Elaine?”

Bill smiled, relaxing a little. He liked to see this side of Ryan. “Grand, Mr. Ryan. Knows how to make a man happy, that one.”

“Good, good. I too will settle down when the time comes. I dream of having a son one day, you know. Someone to take what I’ve built in his hands and keep it thriving—build on it! An investment in the future. What a wonderful place to grow up, Rapture is, too. A wonderland for kids, I should think…”

Bill wasn’t so sure of that. Not at all. But he only smiled musingly and nodded.

Sullivan came bustling in. He nodded to Bill and stood beside the desk with the tense air of a man who was fitting this stop into a tight schedule. “You called me, sir?”

“Ah—Chief. There you are! Yes…” He pushed the folder toward Sullivan. “I need you to jump with both feet into this. Have you heard something about a… a new development called plasmids?”

“Plasmids? No sir. What the blazes are they?”

“Some kind of product. Look at this…” He reached into a desk drawer, drew out a folded copy of The Rapture Tribune, and laid it out on the desk for Bill and Sullivan to see. It was opened to the back page, on which an advertisement proclaimed,

Ryan shrugged. “Fontaine is putting them out. Grows new hair, new teeth, makes you prettier, stronger, younger, even faster. Already selling big to the maintenance workers. A genetic breakthrough, according to Poole. Our restless young rival is at it again. I want you to find out what you can about these ‘plasmids,’ Sullivan, and everything about Fontaine Futuristics. Apparently he’s hired Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum to develop these products. That woman seemed unstable to me—but she’s a whiz.”

Bill looked at the advertisement and shook his head. “Too good to be true, innit? I mean—got to be side effects. They test these things first?”

Ryan waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not really concerned with weighing down progress with a lot of testing. People want to try it, they can take their chances. Well Sullivan—can you take this on? Poole’s got his hands full watching that Lamb woman…”

Sullivan rubbed his jaw. “Working on that smuggling thing pretty hard right now, sir. Fontaine’s changed his MO.”

“We’ll take care of their smuggling later. Unless you have solid proof it’s Fontaine?”

“No sir. Not arresting proof. Of course, the constables would probably arrest anybody you told them to…”

Ryan leaned back in his desk chair, seemed to consider it. Then he shook his head. “No. If I did that, we’d be no better than the Reds. No, we’ll get evidence. But first I want to know what this plasmid thing is all about. My instinct tells me it’s something that could change Rapture’s marketplace.”

Sullivan nodded, ran a hand through his hair, licking his lips as if he were thinking of bringing up another issue. Then he shrugged. “I’m on it, sir.”

He headed out the door, a man on a mission.

“How are those leakage problems I’ve been hearing about, Bill?” Ryan asked, though the glazed look in his eyes suggested his thoughts were roving elsewhere.

“Constant maintenance, guv. The bloody sea doesn’t just sit quiet out there—we push it out of our way, and it pushes right back. Always throwin’ its weight around—sheer water pressure, currents, changing temperature, ice formation, sea creatures a-scrapin’ and squeezin’. Barnacles and starfish and seaworms. Had to send scraping crews out twice the last month.”

“Yes. Some of the men spend so much time in deep-sea diving suits they’re beginning to feel like part of them.” Ryan smiled to himself.

Bill remembered the experimental subject he’d seen in the labs. Not something he wanted to think about.

Ryan tossed the pencil on the desk, tented his fingers, and scowled broodingly. “Fontaine is shaping up to be my great rival here. He can only sharpen me. It is like fuel for the fire of my talent. But I cannot let him come to fully dominate the marketplace in Rapture. No. I may have to take action. We may have to get tough with Mr. Fontaine…”

Maintenance Station 17 Early 1955

It was right depressing, visiting the old maintenance workers’ colony. Bill McDonagh didn’t like coming here. It made him feel obscurely guilty as he walked along from the Metro passage to the back of the pawnshop at the corner, picking his way past moraines of trash. Bill felt responsible for Rapture—he sure hadn’t planned on any slums.

Someone had written “Welcome to Pauper’s Drop” in red across one wall in dripping paint. Below it, a long, tatty row of sullen indigents squatted against the metal bulkhead, shivering, some of them in carapaces of cardboard. The heating duct for this area was blocked, and the few merchants down here were reluctant to pay the Ryan Industries service fee for getting them unblocked. Bill had come down to do it in his spare time. Not that he would tell Ryan that. If Ryan knew he was doing charity work…

Bill had gotten Roland Wallace to help—each swearing the other to secrecy—and Wallace promised he’d bring an electrician along. But neither Wallace nor his wire jockey was here now.

Bill was beginning to feel nervous about being here alone. The surly unemployed along the wall watched his every step. He heard them muttering as he went along. One of them said, “She’s watching him too…”

He was relieved to see Roland Wallace at the corner. With Wallace was a bearded man in overalls, carrying a toolbox—a tall, gaunt man with an aquiline profile.

“Oi!” Bill called, his breath steaming in the chill. “Wallace!” Wallace saw him and waved. Bill hurried to him. “I’m bloody well glad to see you, mate,” Bill said, keeping his voice low. “These ragamuffins over ’ere’ve been giving me the gimlet eye. Half-expecting a knock in the head.”

Wallace nodded, looking past him at the ill-kempt men and women along the wall, many with bottles in hand. “Drinking too, a lot of them. No rules against making your own in Rapture—someone’s been selling cheap absinthe to this bunch, I hear. Three people died from bad hooch, and two went blind.” He cleared his throat. “Well, come on—the best way into the duct is in the back of the pawnshop. Glad to get the heat working here—it’s damn cold…”

The electrician said nothing, though it seemed to Bill that the man was muttering to himself under his breath, his hawkish, deep-set eyes darting this way and that. Bill noticed thick red blotches on the man’s forehead.

They stepped over small piles of trash and went around a quite large one to get to the back of the pawnshop. “There’s no trash pickup here either?” Bill asked.

“We can’t afford it.”

“You live down here too?”

“Why you think I’m doing this job free?” the electrician said, clipping the words. His tone dripped venom. “Need the heat. Can’t get into the ducts without you Ryan Industries types along. Not if I don’t want the constables after me.”

Bill nodded and thumped on the back door of the pawnshop.

“Who is it?” called a gruff voice from inside.

“Bill McDonagh! Looking for Arno Deukmajian! You got my Jet Postal?”

“Yeah, yeah, come on in.” The man who opened the brass-sheathed door looked as gruff as his voice sounded. He was a squat-faced man in a rumpled suit with a scar through his lower lip. His arms were too long for his suit jacket. His hair was bristly short. “Yeah, I’m Arno Deukmajian. This here’s my shop. Come in, come in… if you have to.”

The three men entered the dusty, dimly lit back room where there was barely room to move about. Piled floor to ceiling were appliances, radios, lady’s shoes, gowns, boxes of guns, boxes of watches, silver picture frames, anything that could be hocked. “I’ve cleared off the trapdoor,” Deukmajian said. “This place was built right over it.”

Building over the trapdoor might’ve been a violation of some building regulation up on the surface, Bill figured, but in Rapture there were almost no building regulations.

Wallace had the key. He knelt on the metal floor and opened the trapdoor, as the electrician held an electric torch for him. The light slanted down to reveal a grimy iron shaft and a rusty ladder.

A sickening smell rose up from the shaft. “Must be something dead down there,” Bill said. He climbed down as the electrician held the light. It got a little colder each step he descended. The other two joined him at the bottom, and they ducked to enter a tunnel, the electrician going first to light the way. The reek of death was growing stronger. They had to move along hunched over—the tunnel was about eight inches too low to stand up in. “If they’re going to make it big enough for a short man, why can’t they make it big enough for a tall man,” the electrician grumbled. “It ain’t that much more.”

Just thirty echoing steps in, where the tunnel narrowed to a large pipe, they found the source of the smell—and the cause of the obstruction. A body was jammed in the heating duct. It appeared to be the partly mummified body of a boy—perhaps twelve or thirteen—lying facedown in the vent pipe. He wore ragged clothing, and his black hair was matted with old dried blood. A large fan blade, pitted with rust, had sliced partway through his neck…

“Oh Jesus fookin’ Christ,” Bill muttered. “Poor little blighter.”

Wallace was gagging. It took him a few moments to get his composure. Bill had seen enough death in the war—and in the building of Rapture—and he was almost inured to it. Almost. Still, he felt a deep queasiness looking at the shriveled hands of the child, clutching at the tunnel wall—as if frozen in a last attempt at reaching out to life.

“I reckon,” Bill said, his voice a bit hoarse, “the kid was exploring… and the fan’s not on all the time. It was off, and he tried to crawl past—and that’s when it came on.”

The electrician nodded. “Yeah. But he wasn’t exploring. Didn’t have any place to live. One of the orphans. Nobody took him in, so… he came down into the tunnels to sleep, where he’d be safe. Maybe got lost.”

“The orphans?” Bill asked. “Quite a few, are there?”

“There’s some, hereabout. People come here, work, then they finish a project and the bosses lay ’em off. No more work. But they’re not allowed to leave Rapture either. So they start to fighting over food and such—kill one another. And now with these plasmids… some people don’t know how to handle ’em. Got to know how. Surely do. If you don’t—you might get a little carried away. Leaves some orphans…”

“There ought to be an orphanage,” Wallace said.

The electrician chuckled grimly. “Think Ryan can figure out how to run one for profit?”

“Someone’ll start one, we get enough orphans,” Bill said. “Well, let’s move him and see if we can get this thing started…”

Glad to leave the impromptu metal tomb, Wallace volunteered to get the necessary items. He hurried back to the ladder, returning a few minutes later with a large burlap sack and extra gloves. “Kid’s kinda shriveled; I suppose we can get him in this…”

Grimacing, they worked the child’s body free of the jam, carefully blocking the blades with a hammer from the toolbox in case they should decide to start running.

But after they’d gotten the dried-out husk of a child removed and stuffed the desiccated body into the burlap sack and removed the hammer, the vent blades were still motionless.

The electrician opened a panel near the fan and made some adjustments inside with a tool. He squirted lubricant in and used a small device to test for current. “It’s live over there but… I’m going to have to give it a jolt to get it going. Some parts sat too long—rusted inside. Stand back…”

He stretched his left hand out toward the panel—seemed to concentrate for a moment—his eyes glowed faintly—and a small lightning bolt shot blue-white from his hand and crackled into the open panel.

Startled, Bill straightened suddenly—and banged his head on the ceiling. “Bloody buggerin’ hell!”

“Electro Bolt plasmid,” Wallace muttered.

“Holy…” Bill said, rubbing his head. “They just fookin’…” Then he realized that the fan was whirring, blowing warm air into his face.

“That’ll do it,” the electrician said. “When this one stopped, the other ones stopped too. Should all be working now…”

He turned and glared at Bill—and there was still a bit of glow in his eyes, so that he looked like a feral animal in the tunnel dimness.

“You just got to know how to handle ’em, see?” he said. “The plasmids.” Then he picked up his tools and started back to the ladder.

Maintenance Station 17, Sinclair Deluxe Hotel and Apartments 1955

“You don’t mean you spent it all, Rupert?” demanded Rupert Mudge’s wife—just as he’d figured she would—with that disgusted look on her face that he was getting so very sick of seeing.

She was a hip-heavy, short-legged bottle blonde with permanent frown lines in the corners of her mouth that made her face look like a wooden puppet. She wore a tattered red-and-yellow flower-print dress and the work boots she used in her housecleaning job.

I’m outgrowing that woman, Mudge thought as he ran a hand through his luxuriant hair. He’d gone from partly bald to this glorious brown mane thanks to Fontaine’s plasmids. He shook his head—harder than he needed to, so he could make all that hair fly about—and then he reached for his new ADAM. He already had a good charge of EVE going to activate it.

“You take that plasmid stuff back to Fontaine’s!” Sally grated between grinding teeth. “I worked hard for that money!”

“Oh Christ, Sally,” said Mudge, injecting the plasmid, “a man’s gotta put on a good appearance out there in the world. I need…” His teeth started chattering as the stimulant effect of SportBoost hit him. The room was swirling slowly around him, pulsing with energy. It was like he was the center of the universe. It scared him and exhilarated him both. It almost made the shabby little studio apartment they rented in the so-called Sinclair Deluxe seem like something worth living in—if it weren’t for the cracks in the walls, the naked lightbulb, the leaks in the corners, the smell of rotting fish. “Sal… Sal… Sally… I need… I needa… needa… needa show people I’m fast and strong, I’m gonna get one that makes you smart…”

“Ha! I wish you’d taken the smart one first! Then you’d’ve been smart enough not to blow our little stash of moolah on any of this! You don’t need that fancy hair; you don’t need those muscles—”

“These muscles are gonna get me a new job on the Atlantic Express! They’re gonna put up a new line!”

“What I heard, more people are taking the trams and the bathyspheres—the Express might be, what you call it, obsolete. They aren’t gonna rehire you nohow after you went flippy on the foreman!”

“Aww, that big lug flew off the handle for nothin’!”

“You were on one of those crazy plasmid things, and you went nutso on him! You threw a wrench at his head!”

“Plasmids—you gotta get used to ’em, is all! I wasn’t used to it yet! All the fellas are usin’ ’em!”

“Sure—and most of ’em are going broke from it! They sit around jabbering, high on the damn things! Not a single one as doesn’t have side effects! What’s them marks on your face, there?”

“What, you never got a pimple?”

“That ain’t no pimple; it’s like skin growing where there oughtn’t to be any!”

“Woman—shut your trap and bring me some dinner!”

“Shut my trap! I’ve been working all day scrubbing floors in Olympus Heights for the high muckety-mucks, and I gotta come back to a dump and hear ‘bring me some dinner’! Why don’tcha try earning your dinner! How about them apples—the apples we ain’t got! How’m I going to pay for the food if you spent all the money on plasmids! You know Ryan doesn’t allow no soup lines around here!”

“I heard that Fontaine’s starting up some kinda soup kitchen…”

“I wouldn’t go near that man, if I was you. Mazy says he’s a crook!”

“Aw, what does that loopy bimbo know? Fontaine’s okay. I thought maybe I could get some work over there… I’m strong now! Look at that!” He flexed his bicep—and his shirt ripped with the expanding muscle. “That’s from BruteMore! Plasmids are the future, see!”

She sat down on the sagging sofabed across from him. “That’s what worries me—the future.” Her voice was soft now. And that had a way of upsetting him even more than when she yelled. “I wish we could afford a place with a window. Not that there’s much to see but fish. A person gets sick of looking at fish.”

His knee bouncing with nervous energy, Mudge looked around the small, dingy apartment for something to sell at the pawnshop. He wanted another SportBoost. Just to make sure. He didn’t like to run short on plasmids. All he had was another BruteMore in the icebox. The radio maybe—could he sell that? She kind of prized that radio. Only luxury they had left…

“Funny, Mr. Sinclair calling this flophouse ‘deluxe,’” Sally said. “Must be his sense of humor. But we won’t have even this if you don’t get off your tuckus and work. What I make can’t keep us in a home—’specially with you jabbing yourself with those crazy goddamn potions!”

“Oh, stop running your yapper…” Maybe he’d take his last hit of BruteMore—see how it did with the SportBoost real fresh in his system. He wondered if he could get Sally to take some BreastGro…

He got up, went to the icebox—he’d hidden the BruteMore behind an open, half-empty can of beans.

He injected it standing right there, with his back to Sally. A glowing red energy suffused him. He could feel it move through his body—it was like individual cells growing from inside.

Sally kept rattling on. “This area wasn’t supposed to be no permanent place to live! Supposed to be temporary housing for train maintenance! Not much better than one of those shacktowns we had in the Depression, when I was a kid, out in Chicago!

“You know what they’re starting to call this parta Rapture under the train station? Pauper’s Drop! Can you beat that? Pauper’s Drop, Rupert! That’s where you’ve taken me! I shoulda listened to my old man. He warned me about you. What’re you doing over there? Look at you! You look like you’re getting all swollen up… it ain’t natural!”

He spun to face her—and look at the expression on her face! Sally knew she should’ve kept her mouth shut. Her scrambling away like that—that was a clue. She was trying to get to the door.

“Should’ve kept your mouth shut, woman!” he roared. The metal walls seemed to vibrate with the sound. “Your old man warned you, did he? I’ll show you somethin’ that old fool never thought of!”

She was tugging at the door handle. Rupert Mudge turned, seized the icebox, lifted it up, spun around—and threw it at her.

Funny how light it seemed in his hands…

And funny too, how fragile she turned out to be. She had seemed like a real terror, sometimes. A little ball of fury. But now, just a big wet red splash all over the rusty metal door. And the wall. And the floor. And the ceiling. And a head all by itself, facing into the corner…

Uh-oh. Sally was paying the bills around here. And now she was dead.

He’d better get out of here. Get over to Fontaine.

Mudge stormed out the door, headed for the passage to the Metro. Yeah—Fontaine’s. Find work there. Any work at all. No matter what they asked him to do. Because he had needs. That’s what Sally hadn’t understood. He had powerful needs—and a need to be powerful.

Arcadia, Rapture 1955

“You know what’s missing, here?” Elaine said, looking around at the enclosed parkland. “The sounds of birds. There’re no birds in Rapture.” A soft, golden, artificial light suffused the air. Pushed by hidden fan blades Bill himself had installed, the breeze blew the perfume of daffodils and roses to them.

Bill and Elaine were sitting on a bench holding hands. They’d decided to spend most of his day off together. They’d had lunch and then gone for a long walk. It was getting near dinnertime, but it was a delight being in the park. Smelling flowers, looking at the greenery. Hearing a stream chuckling and murmuring. He found himself wishing they’d brought their little girl, Sophie.

Not quite four years old, Sophie liked to scamper to the miniature wooden bridge and toss blades of grass into the creek of filtered water, watch them float downstream to vanish into the walls. She would play happily among the ferns, the artfully random boulders, the small trees.

Still, he reckoned Sophie was having a good time back in the flat, playing that Sea Treasure board game with Mascha, the little daughter of Mariska Lutz. Mariska was an Eastern European woman Elaine had hired out of Artemis Suites as a part-time nanny. Funny to think Sophie and Mascha had never known a world beyond Rapture. Ryan suppressed most images of the surface world in Rapture’s classrooms. That troubled Bill as much as The Journey to the Surface. But there were things that troubled him more. Like Mr. Gravenstein putting a gun to his head in front of his ruined grocery store. The memory still haunted Bill.

“No birds here, love, that’s right enough,” Bill said at last. “But there are bees. From the Silverwing Apiary. There goes one of the little buggers now…”

They watched the bee zip by: pretty much the only wildlife inside Rapture, unless you counted certain people. The bees were necessary to pollinate the plants, and the plants created oxygen for Rapture.

“Ah, there’s your pal Julie,” Elaine said. Her lips compressed as she watched Julie Langford walk up.

Bill glanced at Elaine. Did she really think he had some kind of hanky-panky going on with Julie Langford?

The ecological scientist was a compact woman of about forty, her pragmatic haircut held by barrettes. She wore transparent-framed glasses and olive-colored coveralls for her work in the tree farm and the other green zones of Rapture. Bill liked talking to her—liked her quickness, her independent way of thinking.

Julie Langford had worked for the Allies devising a defoliant in the Pacific, he knew, exposing Japanese jungle bases. He’d also heard that when Andrew Ryan talked her into coming to Rapture, the U.S. government had gotten peeved after she’d abandoned her federal job. She’d vanished, in fact, from North America. They’d been combing the world looking for her ever since.

“Hello, Bill, Elaine,” Julie said distractedly, glancing around at the plants. “Still not quite enough natural light getting through down here. Need to add more sunlight mirrors in the lighthouses. Those junipers are going brown around the edges.” She put her hands on her hips and turned politely to Elaine. “How’s your darling little girl?”

Elaine smiled distantly. “Oh Sophie’s good, she’s just learning to—”

“Good, good.” Julie turned impatiently back to Bill. “Bill, I’m glad I ran into you. I need to talk to you about the boss—just for a minute. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

Bill turned to his wife, wondering how she’d feel about it. “You mind, Elaine?”

“Go on, I’m fine. Do as you like.”

“Back in a mo’, love.” Clearly she wasn’t fine with him strolling off with Julie, but Elaine was a cheerful girl most of the time. It wouldn’t do her any harm to feel a little jealousy now and then, keep her from taking him for granted. He kissed Elaine on the cheek and walked off toward the little bridge with Julie, hands in his pockets, trying to look as unromantic as possible.

“Don’t mean to drag you away from the little lady,” Julie said in a way Bill thought was a bit condescending toward Elaine. “But I need an ally, and I know you love this park.”

“Right. What’s afoot, Julie?”

“I tell you, Bill—here I am, a batty plant woman working for years to expose the Japs in the jungle, melting away plant life, and now I’m down here trying to do the complete opposite. ‘We’ll create a second Eden down there,’ Ryan says. All that, and now he wants to turn this place into a paying tourist attraction—for residents of Rapture, I mean.”

“What? But I thought this was a public park.”

“So it was to be. But he doesn’t really believe in public ownership of anything. And he’s trying to keep up with Fontaine. So he’s raising capital. Which means charging for everything you can imagine. Hires me to build a forest at the bottom of the ocean—then turns a walk in the woods into a luxury. Something you have to pay for! You know how he is. ‘Should a farmer not be able to sell his food? Is a potter not entitled to a profit from his pots?’ But what am I going to do? He’s my boss, but he listens to you, Bill. Maybe you can talk him out of this. We need some kind of free public space in Rapture. A commons. People just need it—they need the breathing room.”

Bill nodded, glancing at his wife, pleased to see Anya Anyersdotter had stopped to talk to her. Elaine was smiling. She liked Anya, a smartly dressed little woman in a pageboy haircut, prone to freethinking. Anya designed shoes and clothes and had her own boutique—one of Rapture’s success stories.

Bill turned back to Julie. “But here, what am I to do, Julie? You know about his own private forest fire?”

“What? No!”

“Oh yeah. Tells me: ‘I once bought a forest. Then they,’ says he, ‘claimed the land belonged to God—demanded I establish a public park there. A public park, where the rabble can stand about gawping, pretending they’ve earned that natural beauty! Land that I owned! Congress under that bastard FDR tried to nationalize my forest—so I burnt it to the ground.’”

“Not truly…”

“Oh yes. Truly. You think he could be talked into making anything into public property?”

She made a soft little grunting sound and shook her head. “Maybe not.” She gestured at the gemlike parkland around them. “Once he told me, ‘God did not plant the seeds in Arcadia. I did.’ But I designed all this—with a little help from Daniel Wales…”

“I think we ought to trust Mr. Ryan. He’s known what he’s been about so far…”

“Yeah well—it doesn’t end there. He’s even talking about a surcharge for oxygen! He says the air in Rapture is only there to breathe because Ryan Industries provided it!”

“Oh Jay-sus.” Bill lowered his voice. “Here comes that bloody prat Sander Cohen…”

Sander Cohen approached over the little bridge, arm in arm with two bored-looking young men wearing hunting outfits, though they carried nothing to hunt with. Cohen wore Tyrolean lederhosen, suspenders, and a mountain climber’s hat with a purple feather. The leather shorts exposed his knobby knees. He looked peculiarly pale—but that was largely because Cohen had whiteface makeup on, almost like a mime, though he was a long ways from a stage. His wiry, up-curling mustache seemed to quiver at the ends when he saw Bill. “Ah! Monsieur William McDonagh! Madame Langford!” Pronouncing the names, for no apparent reason, as if they were French.

“Cohen,” Langford said, with a curt nod.

“Sander,” Bill said. “You gents out for a stroll, yeah?”

“We are, in fact!” Cohen said. “These young rogues drank a bit too much. Taken a little too much SportBoost too! Talked me into a walk in the park. Though the Muse knows, I don’t like parks, you know. Revile them, actually. Reminds me of animals.” He squeezed the arm of the man on his left. “Not this sort of animal. This very sophisticated animal is Silas Cobb, Bill. You must have been to his darling little shop, Rapture Records! I suppose you might say it’s mine too—I’m an investor.”

Cobb was a skinny fellow with a shock of brown hair and a dreamy expression. He snorted and said, “Yeah. He pays the rent for my ‘darling little shop.’ Which just happens to have everything Mr. Cohen here ever recorded.” He brightened as he added, “And some other people too—Sinatra, Billie Holiday.” Cobb was still drunk, swaying in place.

“And this great megalith of a man,” said Cohen, tilting his head rakishly at the big guy on his right, “is Mister Martin Finnegan.” Finnegan was a mustached, surly-looking man, his height accentuated by the hair piled on top of his head. He seemed both grimly masculine and vaguely effeminate at once. “Martin worked backstage at the theater on Broadway where I performed my Young Dandies… if you needed a stout heart to pull a curtain rope, he was your man. Has quite a grip. But he’s an actor himself. The next Errol Flynn, eh Martin?”

“And why the hell not?” Finnegan growled. “I can act as well as that bastard from… Where the hell is Flynn from—he’s no Irishman, is he?”

Cohen waved dismissively. “Errol’s from Australia or Tasmania, some such place. Oh, few successful actors can act. They’re simply lit well and have nice muscle tone. A lovely profile. Oh! What was that!” Cohen ducked his head as a bee flew by. “Was that an insect? An insect here in Rapture! I thought I was free of insects here!”

“Just a harmless little bee,” Julie said. “Need ’em for the flowers.”

“Shuddersome things. Vile. Might walk on me. Might sting me. I detest nature. It won’t obey! It cannot be… organized. Can one stage nature? No! Nature should be conquered, forced to submit! How ruggedly handsome you look today, Bill. Won’t you come to the Kashmir with us, split a few bottles of wine, eh?”

“Bill! Bill!”

Bill turned to see Roland Wallace trotting up, face red, all out of breath.

“What’s afoot, Roland? Twice today I had a chance to say that. Love to say it.”

Wallace came to a stop, bent over, hands on his knees, puffing. “Bill—emergency! In Hephaestus—flooding! Looks like it might’ve been sabotage. Someone did this on purpose, Bill. Someone’s trying to kill us all…”

Kashmir Restaurant, Rapture 1955

Ryan held court over the dinner table. Joining him this evening were Diane McClintock; the engineer Anton Kinkaide; Anna Culpepper, thinking herself arty in a blue beret; Garris Fisher—a top executive working for Fontaine Futuristics—and Sullivan. Karlosky was about thirty paces away, keeping security watch in the restaurant’s anteroom. Karlosky was fed, as part of the job—but no vodka, not here. The Russian could sometimes be trigger happy, especially after a vodka or three. Once in New York, Karlosky had shot a cab driver who’d had the temerity to scrape the limousine’s shiny fender. Ryan had to pay a pretty bribe to keep Karlosky out of jail.

Picking at the remains of his sea bass with the elegant sterling fork, Andrew Ryan reminded himself to keep smiling. He didn’t much feel like it, but he was hosting this meal at the Kashmir and felt an obligation to keep up appearances. He sat quietly with his talkative guests, Anna rambling about a new song she’d written; Diane about a painting she was engaged in, having just recently gotten the notion she might be an artist. Kinkaide was making feeble efforts at witticisms. All quite tedious to Ryan. He sensed that everyone was trying to think of some way to talk about anything but their feelings about Rapture. Which made him wonder what people said about life here behind his back. Of course the grumbling was becoming louder. The treacherous Sofia Lamb was stoking that smoldering fire…

He watched his guests put on their little acts, striving to seem cheerfully amused, happily involved in Rapture, but starting to fray around the edges in the confinement—like so many of the weaklings he’d allowed into the city. They had every manner of comfort: even now they sat in the most luxurious corner booth of the restaurant, by the tiered, gurgling marble fountain, under a big window that looked out on an undersea garden where purple and red flabelliform plants waved in shafts of blue light. Chopin played softly from hidden speakers. Life here for the moneyed should be enchanting. But it never seemed to be enough.

Ryan noticed Anton Kinkaide staring goofily at Diane. Kinkaide was a man with little social sophistication but a brilliant engineering mind. His ratty sweater, crooked bowtie, and nervous nursing from a beer glass contrasted with Fisher’s easy champagne sophistication. Ryan wondered if Diane would like Anton Kinkaide. The engineer could be impressive—he had designed the Rapture Metro—and he was a man who loved ideas. Diane pretended to be an intellectual at times, though really she was quite a naïf.

The only other diners in the restaurant, at a table across the big room, were the smirking Pierre Gobbi and Marianne Dellahunt. The young Frenchman, a winemaker, was visibly bored as he listened to the superficial Marianne, whose taut features seemed empty of character and age. She’d made one too many visits to Dr. Steinman.

Ryan wished Bill and Elaine had come to dinner. Bill McDonagh was damn good company. Levelheaded too.

Sullivan was finishing a third glass of Worley’s best wine. Sullivan was a bit of a stiff at any gathering; he was either stone-faced or got drunk and started leering at the women. After the leering phase he’d slip into the inevitable drinker’s glumness, glowering at the windows as if angry with the endless blue depths. Ryan could almost read his mind: Taking this nutty job and moving down here, I musta been crazy.

But sober, Sullivan did what needed to be done. Ryan knew he could trust his security chief. That was worth putting up with a great deal.

He wasn’t sure he trusted Garris Fisher as much. The urbane middle-aged Fisher, both a biochemist and an entrepreneur, had helped promote Fontaine’s plasmids.

“Any interesting new developments at Fontaine Futuristics, Garris?” Ryan asked carelessly.

Fisher smiled mysteriously, as Ryan had known he would. “Oh—” He tapped the champagne flute with his fingernail to make it ring. “Naturally. But nothing you need worry about, Andrew…”

“Your BruteMore is selling rather well, I understand. Others aren’t quite… panning out.”

Fisher shrugged. “These little potholes crop up in the road of commerce, do they not? We bump right through them, change the tires, and move on. Our SkinGlow is popular with the ladies… And Fontaine’s new one, Incinerate—quite flashy.”

“Ah, yes.” Ryan chuckled. “I watched the cook in the kitchen start the gas fire with it. Pointed his finger and whoof! A bit startling at first.”

“Startling is itself an advertisement, you know. Grabs attention.”

Ryan nodded. There was something to that—he’d been impressed, seeing the man shooting fire from his hand. A true sign of Rapture science at work. And according to Sullivan, Fontaine was raking in huge profits—overtaking Ryan’s own. Ryan Industries truly needed to find a way into plasmids…

Kinkaide was gawping at Diane again. Ryan found himself wondering if he could indeed fob Diane off on Anton. Of course, he could always simply tell her to go away. But somehow she’d wormed her way into his emotional life so that he knew just dismissing her would be painful, which was partly why he wanted to get rid of her. He didn’t want the distraction of a serious relationship. She’d been hinting of marriage lately. Detestable thought. Never again. But he would prefer Diane left him on her own, without having to be… propelled.

He felt her touch his arm, turned to see her smiling back at him with just a mild reproach. “Darling, my glass has been empty for ever so long.”

Ryan sighed inwardly. The former cigarette girl, at least publicly, was always putting on that stilted chic diction she’d picked up from the movies. Thought she was Myrna Loy.

“Yes, my dear, we do need another bottle of champagne.” He didn’t want to suggest any more wine for Sullivan. “Brenda!”

The woman who was ostensibly the owner of Kashmir—Ryan’s partner, really—came hurrying over, trotting around the heroic statue of powerful men lifting the world, beaming at Ryan. Brenda’s high forehead gleamed in the light from the window; her tight, low-cut silvery gown—rather much, Ryan thought, for a woman past thirty—forcing her to take small Geisha-like steps across the carpet. “Andrew!” she gasped, in an absurdly girlish voice. “What else can I get for you?”

“A bottle of our best champagne, if you please.”

“And,” Sullivan said, “bring a, uh…” He noticed Ryan watching him and sighed: “… a glass of water.”

“I’ll see to it personally,” Brenda fluted. “Personally per-son-ally! And then perhaps—the dessert cart!”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “That’ll be splendid; thank you, Brenda…”

He glanced around at the others. The smiles they’d put on for Brenda faded as she walked away—except, as always, Fisher, who seemed in his element in Rapture, still smiling confidently.

Maybe, Ryan thought, I’m imagining all this discontent.

But his reports from Sullivan, and other security sources, suggested that there was discontent at all levels of society—especially in Artemis Suites and “Pauper’s Drop,” both of which were growing dangerously crowded. He’d underestimated how many people were needed for basic maintenance work and hadn’t built enough housing for them. Rapture would soon exceed eighteen thousand souls. Not all of them came equipped with investment funds. He had hoped many of the maintenance and construction workers would earn their way out of their slummy squalor. Find a way to branch out, take a second job, invest—the way he would in their position. The rumors that Frank Fontaine and Sofia Lamb’s followers had been encouraging notions Andrew Ryan regarded as absolutely taboo—such as unions—were getting louder. Fontaine was slippery, however. Finding proof against him for Communist organizing was as hard as finding strong proof he was smuggling.

But Sofia Lamb—he had a plan for her. He’d get her to debate him in public. When Rapture’s better element heard her Marxist sophistry flagrantly blared on the radio, no one would object if she simply… disappeared.

“I was thinking,” Diane said, “that we might have some public performances, me and Sander and a few of them others—” She remembered her new grammar. Cleared her throat. “And a few others, in the park and in the atriums, get people out more. You’ve made all these large, lovely, high-ceilinged spaces for people—but what do they do? They huddle like little gophers in their warrens!”

Ryan found himself yearning for the simpler, less affected company of Jasmine Jolene. Perhaps he could slip away to see her tonight…

“Mr. Ryan?” Karlosky’s thick accent broke in on his thoughts. Smelling of tobacco and too much men’s cologne, Karlosky was standing at his elbow.

Ryan turned briskly to him, hoping this was an excuse to slip away early. “Yes?”

“There is problem in Hephaestus. Sabotage, they say!”

“Sabotage!” Strange that he should be almost pleased to hear of this. But it was just the excuse he needed. He stood. “Do not discommode yourselves,” he told the others. “I’d better go look into this.”

“I’ll come too,” Kinkaide said.

“Not your area of engineering, Anton. I’ll see to it. Ah—perhaps you can escort Diane home for me, after?”

“Oh yes, yes, delighted, surely, I… yes…”

Ryan hurried away with Karlosky, guessing that Bill McDonagh was already dealing with the emergency…

Bill McDonagh was up to his waist in icy water, wondering how he was going to deal with this emergency. He had sloshed across the valve-control room and found the right wheels to turn, but his numb fingers were losing strength. He only had two out of four shut down. He managed the third and fumbled at the fourth. He should have closed the hatch to the valve room. But if he did, he risked drowning in here. He’d switched on the bailing pumps and hoped the machine could keep up with the inflow till he could get this broken pipe plugged.

Roland Wallace was also wading in through the water, wearing rubber waders up to his armpits and gloves. Wallace pressed close at Bill’s side, reached into the cold water, and helped turn the last two valves. The valve wheels turned gratingly, and it seemed to take forever—but at last the flow was blocked.

The water stopped rushing into the room, and they found their way to the pumps, activated them, waiting for the room to drain—both with chattering teeth.

“You see the tool marks where they tore the pipes out?” Wallace asked, pointing. His voice was raised to be heard over the grinding and sucking sounds of the pumps.

Bill nodded, rubbing the feeling back into his hands. The broken coolant pipe was jutting out, the metal ragged at the ends, the harsh angle and the marks on the wall suggesting strong force. “You got no argument from me, mate. Sabotage!”

The floodwater had almost pumped out when Bill saw the package taped to the ceiling vent.

“What the hell is that, Roland!”

“What—oh! I don’t know! But it’s got some kind of clock on it…”

“Jay-sus! It’s a bomb! Get out!”

Wallace threw the bolt, opened the metal door—and they stepped through not a split second before a whoomf sound came from behind them, with a flash and a sharp smell of gunpowder.

“Fuck!” Bill sputtered. He peered through the smoky air, back through the open door, and saw a blackened mark on the vent where the bomb had gone off but no other appreciable damage. Instead, the room was littered with what looked like large pieces of confetti, which were starting to stick to the wet floor and walls.

Coughing from the acrid smoke, he stepped in, scooped up some of the confetti, and hurried back out.

There were words on the strips of paper. Printed in large black letters on one was

And on another was

They were all like that, one phrase or the other. “Be warned, Rapture oppressors,” he said, looking over the slips of paper.

“A bomb with nothing but paper in it?” Wallace said, puzzled, scratching his head.

Bill remembered hearing as a kid about the old anarchist bombers active from the late nineteenth century. Mad bombers they’d called them. But confetti wasn’t their style. “Just a way to get our attention,” he suggested. “A little sabotage, yeah? A bit of a bomb, but not enough to make people go all out to find the bombers. Like it says—a warning, innit?”

“But the implication is that a bigger bomb will come,” Wallace pointed out. “Otherwise, why a bomb at all?”

“God’s truth, that. Think they’re oppressed, do they? That supposed to tell us what they want? Bloody vague, I call it.”

“What’s vague?” Ryan asked, hurrying in. “What’s happened?”

“Here, Mr. Ryan—you oughtn’t to be here!” Bill said. “There could be another bomb!”

“A bomb!”

Wallace shrugged. “More like a firecracker, sir. Spreading confetti—with some kind of political warning on it. Not much damage.”

Bill handed him the slips of paper. And watched Ryan’s face go red, his hands trembling.

“So it’s begun!” Ryan sputtered. “Communist organizers! Probably that Lamb woman’s followers…”

“Could be,” Bill said. “Or mebbe someone who wants us to think that’s what’s going on here…”

Ryan looked at him sharply, crumpling the paper up in his fist. “Meaning what, exactly, Bill?”

“Dunno, guv. But…” He hesitated, knowing Ryan’s mixed feelings about Frank Fontaine. Ryan seemed to like Fontaine. Didn’t seem to want to bring him down. “Someone like Fontaine might use this political muck to shift power around in Rapture…”

Ryan looked doubtful. “Someone, yes—but Fontaine?”

Wallace cleared his throat. “Rapture does have its vulnerabilities, Mr. Ryan. Doctors can be kind of expensive here. Fontaine could point that out. Sanitation, even oxygen—all charged for here.”

Ryan looked at him with narrowed eyes. “What of it? I built this place. Ryan Industries owns most of it. People have to purchase property, compete their way to comfort, here!”

Wallace gulped but went bravely on. “Sure, Mr. Ryan, but—people working for most merchants here aren’t getting paid much. There’s no minimum wage so it’s kind of hard to earn enough to save and, uh…”

“The resourceful will earn! We have possibilities here others don’t have—no restriction on science, no interference from the superstitious control systems people call religion! These malcontents have no case! And I must say, Wallace, I’m surprised to hear these Communist ideas from you…”

Wallace looked genuinely alarmed at that. Bill hastily put in, “I think all he’s saying, guv, is that the appearance of unfairness gives these Commie blokes a chance to get their snouts in. So we’ve got to be on the watch for ’em.”

“That’s it!” Wallace said quickly. “Just—on the… on the watch.”

Ryan gave Wallace a long, slow, silent appraisal. Then he looked back at the remnants of the message bomb. “We’ll watch all right. I’ll put Sullivan on this. With all speed. Right now—let us find a safer place for a convocation…”

“For a—right, guv. For one of those. Out this way, sir…”

Bill had told himself, for his family’s sake, that everything was going to work out. But he could no longer ignore the stunningly obvious:

Rapture was cracking at the seams.

Artemis Suites 1955

“I was working in the lighthouse today,” Sam said glumly. Sam Lutz was tired. His back ached as he sat beside his wife and watched their daughter play beside the family bunk beds.

Sam and Mariska Lutz were sitting on their bottom bunk in the crowded number 6 of Artemis Suites—a “suite” intended for a few people, but which the Lutzes shared with nine other families. They ignored the argument and bustle and jostling from the rest of the apartment and watched Mascha playing on the floor by the bunk with two stiff little dolls Sam had made for her from scrap wood. One of the dolls was a boy, one a girl, and little Mascha—a pale black-haired child, with flashing black eyes like her mother—was making them dance together. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!” she sang, her reedy voice providing the music for the dance. Some song she’d heard piped over the public address in one of the atriums.

“It was good you could get the work, Sam,” Mariska said as she watched Mascha. Her diction was good—she’d taught English in Prague—but her accent was thick. They’d met when Sam was stationed in Eastern Europe after World War Two. Circumstances had made it almost impossible for her to marry him and go back to the States—but in ’48 they were approached by a recruiter from Rapture looking for Atlantic Express laborers. It was a way out of the wreckage that was left after the war. A way out of the U.S. Army.

Only Rapture wasn’t an out. He felt trapped here. The work had finished up, and Sam got laid off. And he’d been summarily informed he wasn’t allowed to leave the underwater colony. There was beauty in Rapture, sure—but people like Sam didn’t have much chance to appreciate it. It was like Sofia Lamb said: most people here were like the backstairs servants in a palace.

“Yeah, I needed the work, sure,” Sam admitted. “But it was just two days’ worth. Not enough to get us out of here. Need enough to get our own place in Sinclair Deluxe, at least.”

“There are some rooms they don’t use behind Fighting McDonagh’s—Elaine told me about them. Maybe they would let us have them cheap! The McDonaghs are nice.”

He grunted. “Maybe, but… not sure I’d want the girl there. McDonagh’s night manager hires out those rooms to women from Pauper’s Drop… desperate women, if you know what I mean…”

“And is it so much better here?”

“No.” Then realizing that gloom could be catching, he smiled and patted her hand, leaning close to whisper, “Some day I’ll take you home to Colorado. You’d like Colorado…”

“Maybe someday.” She twined her fingers with his, looking nervously around. “Best not to speak of such, here. We have food and shelter now…”

Sam snorted. He looked at the other people shuffling back and forth in the close, malodorous suite. And all the other rooms and suites in the Artemis building were just as crowded, just as prone to tension.

Little Toby Griggs appeared to be arguing with big, chunky Babcock again. Something odd about those two. It was as if in a moment they’d transform into two cats arching their backs and hissing. Then Babcock turned and walked away between the bunk beds. Griggs followed…

There were two rows of bunk beds in what should have been the living room. Seven more against the two long walls in the bedroom. Junk piled in the corner. Not enough storage. He hoped the toilet wasn’t plugged up again. Smelled like it might be.

And someone had been putting graffiti on the walls. Ryan doesn’t own us! it said. Become the body of the Lamb! That would have to come down before the constables saw it.

“Oh, if you were up in the lighthouse,” Mariska said suddenly, “you saw the sky! That must have been nice!” Her eyes were wide at the thought of seeing the sky again.

“Yes. I only had a few seconds to look at it. They had us busy fixing the entry bathysphere. We had to bowse up three hundred yards of steel spool and set it in place. Not easy with just three of us and only a hand-cranked winch. And it was cold up in that lighthouse shaft. It’s winter on the surface. I remember crossing this ocean in a troopship this time of year—cold as hell and the waves higher than the ship, all of us seasick.” He made a mental effort to force memories of the war out of his mind. It was helped by Toby Griggs and Babcock arguing loudly on the other side of the bunks. He tried to ignore them—you had to screen most people out, in these conditions, if you wanted to stay sane.

“Did you hear anything up there in the lighthouse?” she asked. “I mean—maybe ships passing or gulls or…”

“You know what I heard up there? Icebergs! We heard one of them banging on the lighthouse—boom! Big ol’ clangin’, echoing sound! What a noise!”

“I’d like to go up and look sometime,” she said wistfully. “If they allowed it…”

“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry I brought you down here. They made it sound so good…”

She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips seemed deliciously soft to him, after dealing with cold, hard metal all day. “Miluji tě!” she whispered. Czech for “I love you.”

“Me too, kid!” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. She was a small woman, nestling easily against him.

Around the crowded bunk room, people muttered and argued and bitched in three, maybe four different languages: the singsong of Chinese, the bubbling flow of Spanish, and especially the sarcastic brassiness of Brooklyn English.

“Whadya doin’ with ya boots under my bunk over heah? I look like I got room for your shit under my bunk fa cryin’ out loud?”

“Someone fucking stole the last of my scented fucking soap! You know how hard it is to get that shit? It’s probably you, Morry…”

“The fuck it was!”

“Somebody got into my lockbox! I had my last EVE hypo in there and it’s gone!”

“Whatya talkin’ about, you’re the one stole my plasmids! I had a New Skills I was gonna inject for the job tomorrow!”

Frightened by the shouting, Mascha came to sit with her back against her dad’s legs. She made the little dolls clack together, singing loudly to drown out the sound of all those heated voices. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!”

Someone in the far corner shouted, but Sam couldn’t make out what they said. He caught a flash, heard a crackle, smelled ozone—a shout of pain and a flare of blue light.

A ball of fire sizzled across the room, between the bunks, and charred the wall on the left.

“Mama! Daddy!” Mascha whimpered, climbing up on the bed behind them to peek over her mother’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Someone’s messing with those plasmids!” Mariska whispered, her voice choked with fear. “They’re way over there, little one, on the other side of the room—we’ll be safe here.”

“Stay at the bunk,” Sam told her firmly. Mariska tried to hold him back, but he pulled away. He had to know what was going on. If they were throwing fireballs, the whole place could catch—plenty of flammables in Artemis. They were a ways from the doors to the suite and could surely burn alive before they got out. A mighty peculiar way to die considering they were deep underwater. But he’d heard of men burning alive in submarines in the war.

He moved carefully to steal a look around the corner of the Ming family’s double bunk and saw the two men quarrelling in the far corner of the room near the row of circular blue-lit ports looking out into the sea.

“Just get outta my face or the next one’ll toast you, Griggs!” Babcock shouted, jabbing an angry finger at the smaller man. Babcock was a tall man with fat cheeks and patchy hair, greasy coveralls. He had one of the odd skin reactions people got from plasmid use, this one on his scalp, making an ugly mesh of red welts. Part of his hair had fallen out around it.

Toby Griggs was squared off with him—a puny, fox-faced fellow, hair slicked back; he had a tart way of talking and a lively sense of humor. Sam had always kind of liked Toby for his spunk. Toby worked as a salesman in one of the shops off Fort Frolic and still had his wrinkly green-and-black-checked suit on.

“Back off or I’ll electrocute you, Babcock!” Toby crowed as energy crackled between the fingers of his raised right hand. “I’ll strap you in the electric chair standin’ up!”

Sam wasn’t surprised that Toby had spent his paycheck on a plasmid from Fontaine Futuristics—Toby had been talking about how a good plasmid could be an equalizer. He was a little guy and didn’t like to be bullied.

But Babcock had always seemed levelheaded—and he had two small girls to think of—plump little twins. Yet there was Babcock, using Incinerate!, making a ball of fire appear in his hands.

Toby Griggs had a look in his eyes that made Sam think of a rooster back home on the ranch about to jab a rival with its beak—that mean glitter in its little eyeballs. As for Babcock, it looked to Sam like the mesh of red welts on his head was pulsing in rhythm with his angry panting. A wavery column of hot air rose from the fire flickering over Babcock’s hands. Strange that the flames emanating from his fingers didn’t burn them—but plasmids were like that. It seemed to Sam that heavy plasmid use made people into something like rattlesnakes, not hurt by their own venom.

Toby and Babcock danced around each other, teeth bared, wild-eyed, drool running from the corners of their mouths, energies simmering in their raised hands. To Sam their threats sounded like babbling; like they were barely aware of what they were saying.

“Threatening me, Babcock?” Toby howled. “Is that right? Is it? I’m tired of you big slobs pushing me around! Why do you think I paid good money for this plasmid? I may not eat for a week, but I have power to keep plug uglies like you from throwing your weight around! I’m a new man! I can feel it! I’m no one to screw with now, Babcock! Back off or die!”

“Die? Me? I can burn you to a cinder! I swore I’d defend my family against anyone who threatened them, and I’ll do it!”

“No one’s threatening your family! You’ve been getting nutty from the moment you got that plasmid!” Toby snarled. “You can’t handle it! Maybe you took too much EVE and not enough ADAM—ya don’t know what you’re doing! You’re nuts, Babcock! Batty, crackers, crazy! Back off or I’ll put a charge in you that’ll turn your head into a thousand-watt lightbulb!”

“How are you gonna do that when you’re a burned-up cinder, Griggs, huh? Answer me that!”

Fire whirled restlessly, roaring in Babcock’s hands, as if it were eager to destroy.

Toby Griggs growled to himself and took the offensive. He twisted his shoulders about, grimacing with insane concentration. Electricity writhed from his fingers, crackling through the air at Babcock, just as Babcock’s wife—a pudgy, mousy-haired woman in slippers and a loose blue frock—came rushing up to him on her short legs, throwing her stubby arms around him. “Noooo, Harold!” she yelled. “Don’t do that! You’ll get us killed!”

Then she let out a pealing shriek as the Electro Bolt struck her and Babcock at once… an extra-big bolt of blue-white lightning—everything Toby Griggs could summon up.

Onlookers screamed as Babcock and his wife went rigid. The two of them were doing an absurd little dance together, locked in a fatal embrace as the current raged through them, sparking blue from their bared teeth. Mrs. Babcock’s hair stood on end; her dress caught fire…

Their eyes smoked and then boiled out of their heads. Their faces contorted.

The charge burst and sparks flew into the walls and floor as Mr. and Mrs. Babcock, flesh fused in a grotesque mock of marriage, fell in a limp, smoldering heap.

“Oh my God,” Sam muttered, staring at them. “They’re dead! Toby Griggs, what have you done!”

“You—you all saw it!” Toby said shrilly, backing away from the gathering crowd between the bunks. “He threw a fireball at my head! He was raving, completely out of his gourd! He was on a plasmid high! He can’t handle his plasmids, and he just… he tried to… tried to kill me! He…”

Then Toby bolted, dodging past grasping hands, out the front door of the suites.

Two little girls, the five-year-old Babcock twins, came tiptoeing up together, clutching each other in life as their parents clutched each other in death.

“Mommy?” quavered one little girl.

“Daddy?” quavered the other.

Two little girls. All alone now. Orphans. Two little sisters…

Fontaine Futuristics, Rapture 1955

“We have too few sea slugs,” said Brigid Tenenbaum, squinting into a microscope at a dead gastropod, as Frank Fontaine entered lab 23. These new research digs were bigger, roomier, with ports and windows, levels, and a balcony-walk looking down on the central concourse of Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum turned, frowning thoughtfully to Fontaine. “Only special gastropod works for ADAM mutagen and base for EVE… and these, all gone.”

“We’ll have to cut back plasmid production,” Fontaine said gloomily, looking at the remaining sea slugs squirming in the aquarium. Ugly little fuckers. “Couldn’t we breed the little bastards? Create more sea slugs with, what do you call it, animal husbandry?”

“Perhaps in time. But very slow process, much experimentation, maybe years. Better is to increase individual sea-slug production of mutagen—of ADAM. This can be done more quickly—if we use host.”

“A host? Oh… Maybe we can hijack a ship, send you down the sailors.”

“We try adults already. Two subjects. They sickened and died. Screaming—very noisy. Irritating. One of them reached to me…” She looked in wonder at her hand. “Tried to hold on to my hand. Begging, take it out, take it out of me… But children! Ah—it likes to be in children. The sea slug is happy there.”

“It’s happy… in children? Well—how’s it work exactly?”

“We implant sea slug in lining of child’s stomach. The sea slug bonds with cells, becomes symbiotic with human host. After host feeds, we induce regurgitation, and then we have twenty, thirty times more yield of usable ADAM.”

“And how do you know it works so good on kids?”

Dr. Suchong answered him as he pushed a gurney into the room. “Suchong and Tenenbaum experiment on this child!” Stretched out on the gurney was what appeared to be a sleeping child, a rather ordinary little white girl in a dressing gown, strapped to the wheeled hospital bed. She was perhaps six years old. Her eyes opened—she looked up at him sleepily, gave him a distant, fuzzy smile. Drugged.

“Where in hell you get that kid?”

“Child was sick,” Tenenbaum said. “Brain tumor. We tell parents maybe we heal. We implant sea slug in her abdomen, inside. It cures her tumor! We keep her tranquilized—she talks in her mind to sea slug…”

As if in response, the little girl lifted a hand—and touched her own belly caressingly.

Tenenbaum gave a little satisfied grunt. “Yes. She will be productive.”

“You intend to use this child to create a new plasmid base…” Fontaine shook his head. “One child? Will it be enough? The market for it is exploding! People are going wild for the stuff! I was going to start major marketing, stores, maybe even vending machines…”

“This is tester child,” Suchong said. “We need more, many more. Implant, feed, induce regurgitation—much mutagen produced, much ADAM. Better if not tranquilized. We must prepare hosts for this. Condition them!”

“How come it… it likes children?” Fontaine asked. He could almost feel a sea slug squirming in his own belly. Sheer imagination, but the thought nauseated him.

Tenenbaum shrugged. “Child stem cells are more malleable. More… responsive. They bond with the sea slug. We need children, Frank—many children!”

Fontaine snorted. “And where are we supposed to get those? From a mail-order catalogue?”

Dr. Suchong frowned and shook his head. “Suchong has not seen such catalogue. Not needed. Two children available already. Orphan girls. Babcock twins. They stay with people in Artemis Suites—their parents dead. Both parents killed by plasmid attack. And they are girls, the right age—perfect! We pay to bring them here.”

“Okay; they’ve got to be kids—but why girls?” Fontaine asked. “People are even more protective about little girls.”

Tenenbaum winced and turned back to the microscope, muttering, “For some reason girls take sea-slug implant better than boys.”

Fontaine wondered what little boy they’d experimented on to determine that and what had become of him. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t.

And in fact—there was one place that could supply children for all sorts of things. “So—just girls, eh? That’s okay; that’ll just be fewer bunks in the orphanage.”

“Orphanage?” Tenenbaum blinked in puzzlement. “There is an orphanage in Rapture?”

Fontaine grinned. “No, but there will be. You just gave me the idea, with this thing about the Babcock orphans. I’ll donate the money for the orphanage! Yeah! ‘The Little Sisters Orphanage.’ We’ll get our adorable little plasmid farms… and we’ll train ’em up right. We got to do this soon! I’ve got more orders for plasmids than I can fill in a year!” Something about the idea energized him. He felt a kind of shudder, almost a release go through him as he thought about it. Orphanages. Like where he’d grown up. Orphanages leading to money. And money… leading to power. “Money and power, Brigid. Money and power! It’s all right there, low-hanging fruit for the plucking… in a gatherer’s garden.”

He heard the door open and turned to see his bodyguard come in, grimacing. He’d left Reggie standing at the door outside Fontaine Futuristics—now his hand was clasping his right biceps, blood streaming from his fingers. “Say, anybody got any bandages here?”

“Reggie!” Fontaine stepped to the door, looked down the concourse. Saw no one. “What happened? You hurt bad?”

Suchong was already methodically sponging off the wound on Reggie’s arm.

“Ouch! Oh, I’m not hurt bad. But I’ll tell you what—somebody shot at me. Kind of at random, seemed like. The prick. I shot back, but I think I missed him. He took off.”

“Shot at you… you mean a constable?” Fontaine asked.

“Don’t think so. I wasn’t doing anything to make a constable shoot at me. And he didn’t have a badge. Loopy-looking plasmid-head with a pistol. Spots all over his face. It’s been like this lately—random shooting. Ryan’s started putting in those security turrets, to keep these guys in check. You’ll want to get one of those babies for this place. Camera with a machine gun that picks out targets. I dunno how it… ouch, Doc, shit!”

“Suchong is so sorry,” Dr. Suchong said, not sounding sorry as he wound a bandage tightly around the wound.

“Like I was saying, I dunno how the turret thing keeps from killing the wrong people. All I know is—on and off all day there’s been gunfire. Plasmids… that’s the reason I don’t use that stuff. I don’t like firing my gun without a goddamn reason.” He winced again. “Waste of good bullets.”

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1955

Andrew Ryan was standing at the window, looking broodingly out at the lights of Rapture shimmering through the sea, thinking: Steps will have to be taken… I have tolerated too much…

“You wanted to see Poole?” Sullivan asked, coming in with the ratlike little reporter.

Ryan nodded and sat at his desk. Stanley Poole and Sullivan sat across from him. “Well, Poole? What’s your report about this Topside character? People are talking about him as if he’s a hero—but he’s an outsider, as I understand it…”

Sullivan frowned. “I could’ve got you the dirt on him, Mr. Ryan.”

“I know, Chief. But your men are sometimes too… obvious. Poole here has a strange gift for being ignored. Well, Poole?”

Stanley Poole licked his lips nervously. “Yes sir, well, near as I can find out, this guy they’re calling Johnny Topside—he’s a deep-sea diver. There was some snoopers out here, you remember; our subs made sure they stopped snooping. When they went missing, why, he came out to see what was going on. Went down at the main lighthouse and found a way in. One of the air locks, I guess. People are pretty impressed with him, making his way here. Acts like he’s on his own, just wants to help. He’s asking about missing girls, seems like…”

“Is he? What is his real name?”

“I’m sorry—he’s being cagey about that. Seems like he prefers an alias. Changes ’em around. Sounds like a secret-agent type to me. G-man is what I figure—hell, how’d he get all the info on boats missing in this area, all that stuff, if he didn’t have connections?”

Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose. He was having small, annoying headaches, more and more often. Hearing that there might be a government agent in Rapture made his head redouble its throbbing. “You got anything on him, Chief?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Same impression. I haven’t found out his name either. Easy enough to do. I can take him over to the new facility…”

Ryan snapped his fingers. “Precisely what I had in mind. He’s an outsider. Who knows who he’s affiliated with. We cannot let a random outsider wander about in here, asking questions… Arrest him immediately, Sullivan. And while you’re at it bring in that wretched Lamb woman. Poole here reports she may be connected to our confetti bomber. I’ve had enough of her Marxist babbling. She’s turned half the maintenance workers against me.”

“You want her charged with something?” Sullivan asked.

“No. I want her to simply… disappear. Into Persephone. Let her followers feel abandoned.”

Sullivan nodded. “You got it, Mr. Ryan.”

“Lamb’s got a daughter,” Poole pointed out. “Girl named Eleanor.”

“Does she? Well, find a home for the girl, Sullivan.”

Poole shrugged. “That colored woman, Grace Holloway, looks after her sometimes. She’ll take the kid…”

“Fine, fine,” Ryan said, with a dismissive wave, “let her take the kid. For now. The child may be of use later…”

Apollo Square 1955

“Spider Splicers, that’s what they are,” Greavy said.

“Spider what?” Bill asked.

“Splicers, Bill,” Ruben Greavy repeated. “Splicers. That’s the common term for real plasmid addicts.”

Fascinated, Bill watched the two splicers, a man and a woman, moving on all fours along the sides of a tramcar. They were crawling on the wall like bugs, defying gravity. “Seen my share o’ plasmid users,” Bill allowed. “But this… sticking to things like bloody bugs… Going too far, maybe.”

“Going too far is the splicer way,” Greavy said dryly. “They all go rogue in time. They’ve gotten obsessed, this bunch. They’re all about their plasmid splicing. Injecting Fontaine’s mutagens, looking for EVE to activate it…”

Bill McDonagh and Ruben Greavy were standing by the tram tracks in Apollo Square, watching the tram go by. Adhering like geckos to the metal sides of the slowly moving trams, the spider-splicer couple was ordinarily dressed, but their heads and cheeks were knobbed with ugly reddish welts, growths from abusing ADAM and EVE.

Shifting his heavy toolbox from his left hand to his right, Bill reflected on how tempting plasmids were. He could use that wall-climbing power for getting at difficult-to-fix places in Rapture. He could use the new telekinesis plasmid to move objects about, adding an extra pair of invisible hands to a job. One man could do the work it would normally take three to do.

But Bill knew better. Some could take them and stay more or less sane for a while. But keep taking them—and you eventually went barking mad.

He watched as the male spider splicer grinned clownishly into the tramcar from its roof, head dipping to stare upside down in a window, leering at the passengers cringing back from him. “You lovey snuggle ducks!” he yelled hoarsely. “You little chocolates in this chocolate box of steel!” He cackled something more that Bill couldn’t hear as the tram trundled away from him and Greavy. But he could see the giggling woman reaching in through a window, clutching for someone’s arm…

A gunshot cracked from inside the tram, and smoke drifted out the open window as the female spider splicer jerked her arm back. She screeched in pain and fury, and her splicer partner fired his own gun into the window while clinging upside down. Then the tramcar slipped from sight beyond the kiosks.

Bill sighed and shook his head. “Out of their ever-lovin’ bloody minds, they are!”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Greavy said thoughtfully. “But I think of it as part of a Darwinian process. This madness, these side effects—they’ll die of it, eventually, fighting each other, perhaps. A possibly necessary winnowing in Rapture. Ryan and I knew something of the sort would come—some vector of purging. Eventually plasmids will be developed with fewer side effects. These early users are like guinea pigs…”

Bill glanced at Greavy. He’d never liked the man much, and that sort of comment was one of the reasons. “We’d best get to that inspection You think we should call the constables about that gunfight?”

Greavy shrugged. “There are so many gunfights now, so much antagonism—the constables can’t deal with most of it. Ryan’s attitude is that if two consenting adults want to duel, let them.”

Troubled, Bill led the way across the tracks and down a short stairway. Workers hoisted a big sign into place at the entrance to a new institution built into a leased space. The sign, with silvery metal lettering, read:

Framing the lettering was a relief sculpture, one on each side, of hands reaching down, to pull other hands upward…

“Never thought I’d see that in Rapture,” Bill muttered, as they paused to watch. “A charity!”

“Shouldn’t be here at all,” Greavy said, frowning. “Just makes things worse. Charity trains people to be dependent. It’s in the natural order of things for people to strive and fail—for a good number of them to fall by the wayside, and… you know. Just die. Fontaine’s Center for the Poor!” He snorted skeptically. “What’s that a front for?”

“Anybody else, I’d give ’em the benefit of the doubt,” Bill said. “With Fontaine—I’ve got to wonder what the bastard is up to…”

“Politics,” Greavy murmured. “Political allies. Maybe his own little army—the army of the poor…”

“He’ll have no shortage of poor to draw on,” Bill said as they moved off. “Artemis Suites and Pauper’s Drop are stuffed with blokes out of work—and if they work, they still feel crowded and underpaid. Not everyone can start their own business. And if they do, who’ll clean the toilets?”

“You know where Fontaine gets the money for that charity?” asked Greavy with rhetorical pompousness. “From selling ADAM! And why are a lot of the poor impoverished? Because they’re addicted to ADAM! They’re spending all their money on it! The irony is naturally lost on the hoi polloi…”

They walked to the nearest wall, not far from the entrance to an apartment complex—and almost immediately Bill felt cold water dripping on his head.

He looked up, saw the discoloration high on the wall where it met the big, heavily framed windows arching over the room, several stories up. He admired the Wales brothers’ vision, building big public spaces like this one. The high glass ceiling eased the sense of confinement, gave people access to something like sky. Infused by light filtering green-blue from the surface, the sea was directly overhead. The windows curved down to meet the walls, and through the glass near the ceiling was a rippling vista of other Rapture buildings, light streaming up their towering façades, neon signs blinking.

Another drop of water fell from the ceiling and splashed his shoulder. “Pressure crack,” Bill guessed. “From the look of the puddle it’s been here awhile. Wish I could climb walls like those spider-splicer bastards, get a closer look. Well, I think we’ll have a team go out in the diving suits, apply some sealant, then we’ll see if—” He broke off, staring, as a wrench floated up from his tool kit, as if weightless, and bobbed in the air in front of him. “What the bloody hell is that?”

The floating wrench suddenly darted at his head, and only good reflexes and a quick duck saved Bill from being struck down. The tool flashed by him, and he turned to see it spinning along, stopping in midair, turning to swish viciously at him again.

“What the blue blazes!” Bill grabbed the wrench with his left hand, bruising his palm. It seemed to jump about in his hand like a live but rigid metal fish before it simply stopped. “Who’s chucking tools at me?”

“There’s your tool chucker,” Greavy said, grimly amused, pointing at a woman about ten yards away, standing by the doorway into Artemis Suites. She was a petite, smirking, waiflike woman in black pedal pushers and a ragged, blood-spattered blouse, the left sleeve ripped entirely away, her left arm scratched and bloody. She wore kohl smeared around her eyes, so they looked like a panda’s, and her bleached hair was teased up over her head, almost writhing around like Medusa’s snakes. Bill supposed a side effect of the telekinetic plasmid she was using was affecting her hair. One side of her face was striped with red welts. Her eyes had the demented glimmer of the hard-core plasmid user. She was crazily stoned.

She raised a grimy hand and pointed it at his tool kit—which jerked from his hand and spun away from him, scattering its contents across the room. People dodged out of the way of flying tools, now under the control of her telekinetic powers.

“Hey you, stop throwing your tools!” shouted a glaring, bald-headed constable in a checked suit, stalking toward Bill. A star-shaped badge was pinned on his chest.

“Isn’t me!” he yelled back. “It’s ’er, Constable, the splicer over at Artemis!”

The constable turned to look, reaching into his coat pocket for a gun. But as soon as he did his badge tore itself off his coat, spun around his head, and then buried itself between his eyes.

The constable screamed in agony and fell to his knees, clutching at his blood-spurting forehead.

“That’ll show you pricks!” the little female splicer screeched, pointing a finger at Bill and Greavy. “I saw you, poking around here, you official types! Ryan’s little puppets! Well, we don’t want you ’round Artemis! Or your bald-headed cops neither!”

She made a sudden gesture, and his tools, scattered across the intervening floor, leapt into the air and came spinning at him. Bill threw himself flat as they flashed over him. Greavy shrieked, and Bill turned to see a screwdriver driven through Greavy’s chest—the screwdriver blade dripping crimson. Greavy wobbled…

“Jay-sus, Greavy!”

Bill got to his feet just in time to catch Greavy as he fell, lowering the man’s quivering body to the floor. Greavy was sputtering, dribbling blood, his eyes glazing. Dying.

Maybe if they could get some ADAM to him in time they could heal him…

But there was no time. In moments, Greavy was dead.

Bill looked in shock over at Artemis Suites—but the telekinetic splicer was gone. He heard someone cackling from the shadowy corners of the ceiling.

And then an announcement echoed from the public-address system—Diane McClintock’s recorded voice: “Remember that here in Rapture, we’re all individuals—but we’re also a part of the Great Chain! Welded together by the free market, we are becoming one happy family…”

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1955

“Mr. Ryan? Something I’ve got to ask about…”

Bill McDonagh was nervous, demanding an explanation from Andrew Ryan. He had countless other things to do, but he was too troubled to work until he cleared this up. Worry, burning like an acid stomach, had been building up in him.

“Yes, Bill?” Ryan said, looking up from a small box of audio tapes, seeming only vaguely curious about Bill’s errand. He was at his desk, sorting through labeled recordings of his speeches and debates. An Acu-Vox recorder was set up beside the box.

Ryan was wearing a caramel-colored, double-breasted suit and a blue tie. Bill wondered how he could function in a buttoned-up suit all day long. “Mr. Ryan—I’ve got to keep the heat evenly circulating in Rapture; I’ve got to keep the pipes from freezing; I’ve got to be able to control water pressure. Part of the engineering of this place. I can’t do it when there’s a big drain, a sudden drop in heat and pressure—and it comes unpredictable-like and no one’ll let me inspect the source of it—”

Ryan set the box aside. “Come to the point. What does this enigmatic monologue refer to?”

“There’s a whole section of Rapture I’m not even allowed in now! Sinclair’s got his own people running it. Place he is calling Persephone. I knew they were building something, but I thought it was a hotel. Only it’s too secretive for that. I can’t be responsible for hydraulic engineering when a whole section of the city is sealed off from me! Seems like it’s been functional for a long time. More than a year… And it’s no hotel.”

Ryan made a small growl of grim amusement in his throat. “Depends on what you mean by hotel! Persephone. Yes… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that…” Ryan leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling as if something were written up there. “Bill… have you heard my debates with Sofia Lamb?”

“Only caught a minute or two. Kind of surprised me, when you debated ’er…”

Ryan smiled ruefully at him. “I took a risk, elevating that malcontent in that way. My instinct was simply to have her arrested as a… a social saboteur. But—I advocate freedom; I don’t wish to be a hypocrite—and I didn’t wish to make her a martyr. So I thought I’d let the people hear the sort of nonsense she spouts when I’m there to refute it! Listen…” He pressed a button on the tape recorder.

Bill heard Ryan’s voice: “Religious rights, Doctor? You are free to kneel before whatever tribal fetish you favor in the comfort of your own home. But in Rapture, liberty is our only law. A man’s only duty is to himself. To imply otherwise, therefore, is criminal.”

Lamb replied, “Ask yourself, Andrew—what is your ‘Great Chain of progress’ but a faith? The chain is a symbol for an irrational force, guiding us toward ascension—no less mystic than the crucifixes you seize and burn…”

Bill nodded. It bothered him too, when Ryan seized religious artifacts. He wasn’t religious. But a man ought to be able to believe in whatever he liked…

Ryan hit Fast Forward and then Play. Lamb’s voice again: “… Dream, delusion, or the pain of a phantom limb—to one man, they are as real as rain. Reality is consensus, and the people are losing faith. Take a walk, Andrew. It is raining in Rapture, and you have simply chosen to not notice…”

Ryan stopped the tape and snorted. “Quite the little extemporaneous speaker, isn’t she? If you parse it, it makes no sense. But its real message can be decoded, Bill—‘reality is consensus… the people are losing faith.’ What is that but a Marxist notion? And this business of claiming I ignore the suffering in Rapture…” He shook his head grimly. “I don’t ignore it—but I must accept it as part of the long, weary march of evolution! The surface world is still with us here—to die to the habit of parasitism comes hard, Bill. And some fall by the wayside in that long, lonely march. I know that full well! But what does she do? She makes me sound like Louis the Fourteenth! Next she’ll imply Diane is Marie Antoinette, and she’ll call for the guillotine! Do you expect me to stand by while that happens?”

“What’s all that got to do with this Persephone, guv?” Bill asked. He suspected he knew—he’d heard rumors—but he wanted it spelled out.

Ryan looked Bill in the eye—the look was almost one of defiance, though Ryan was boss here. “That’s where Sofia Lamb was taken, not long ago, Bill! And incarcerated.”

“Incarcerated!”

“Yes. You must have noticed her absence from the scene. That glib, sanctimonious woman can make all the speeches she likes to the walls of her cell.”

“But—won’t that make her a martyr?”

“As far as her followers know, she’s simply disappeared. Deserted them!”

Bill shook his head sadly. “Ought to be another way, Mr. Ryan…”

“I cannot allow this social sabotage to go on!” Ryan aimed an index finger at Bill. “Do you know who planted that charming little confetti bomb, with its warnings? Oh, I found out, Bill.” He slapped the top of his desk. “It was done by an agent of Sofia Lamb! Stanley Poole’s infiltrated her little circle. He’s heard that it was one of our own people who planted the thing… quite likely, Simon Wales!”

“Wales!”

“Oh yes! At Lamb’s behest.”

“Well—why not prosecute her for that? A bomb’s a bomb. It was vandalism at least! But this just disappearing people…”

“Her public prosecution would become a cause célèbre! Anyway, we haven’t got solid proof. Just hearsay. But think about it—how like a psychiatrist to create a bomb that blows nothing up… except our sense of security! Not long after she got here, she started her little game, pulling the pins out from under us one by one. Do you know what she did with the bonus money I paid her? She took that—and a great many ‘donations’ from her followers—and built that smarmy Dionysus Park. Named in some bizarre effort at mockery…”

“Dionysus Park?” Bill scratched his head. He’d only been there once, to check the drainage. “Thought it was some kind of ‘retreat.’ Therapeutic art, something like that.”

“Oh yes.” Ryan’s voice dripped with cynicism as he went on. “A retreat—her sheeplike followers closeted with Sofia Lamb in her precious garden and her own cinema. Just the setting for Marxist propaganda disguised as therapy and art! Rapture is a powder keg, Bill—I knew that when Ruben Greavy died. Plasmids made Rapture unstable. We can’t remove plasmids, not now—but we can remove some of the instability. Lamb, people like her—they have to be stopped.”

Bill wondered exactly what happened to the “incarcerated” in Persephone. Wasn’t Persephone a name from a myth—about hell?

Ryan went on, gesturing at the Acu-Vox, “I recorded a note to you about all this—but I may as well talk it straight out with you instead. You remember when you spoke of a ‘marketplace of ideas’? That was you. I liked the phrase. So—I let Lamb enter the marketplace, tried to defang her in debates. But she is too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely… You know the place they’re calling Pauper’s Drop—you’ve been to the Limbo Room?”

“Not me. Too much a ’ole in the wall.”

“Good. Because Grace Holloway was singing protest songs there—perfectly harmless colored lady was Grace, till Lamb got hold of her! And between their protest screeches, these… these Oblomovs hand out Lamb’s manifesto! Lamb adorns every wall there! Saint Lamb! You made her, McDonagh—”

“Me!”

“You with your marketplace-of-ideas talk! You persuaded me to allow her sort! Now—I want you to talk to the council about this. They must accept that people like this are to be silenced…”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Ryan, it’s not my place…”

“I need to know how you really feel, Bill. That’ll show me where you stand.”

“But—incarceration? This place Persephone… What exactly is it?”

Ryan sighed. “I should have let you in on it. Quite a while back I did a deal with Augustus Sinclair to build it—it’s out on the edge of Rapture. Right over that… big crevice—just in case. It’s… a facility for isolation and interrogation. Something between a mental hospital and a penal institution. For political enemies of Rapture.” He was busying himself with the tapes—seeming embarrassed. “Some of this woman’s followers are free—and some aren’t. We’ll find them, in time, and they’ll have their own little cells. There are various shades of malcontents in Persephone…” He seemed to realize he was fussing mindlessly with the tapes and put the box aside. “As for water-pressure issues—I’ll have Sinclair speak to you, give you reports on all that. He has a maintenance crew to deal with any… internal problems of that kind.”

He doesn’t want me to go there, Bill realized. He doesn’t want me to see what it’s like…

Something else occurred to Bill, then. There was a chance, after all, he could see the inside of Persephone—as a prisoner. It could happen if he said the wrong thing. That’s what it was coming to, in Rapture. And he couldn’t risk getting put away—not with Elaine and his little girl needing him…

Bill let out a long, slow breath to calm himself. When things cooled down, maybe he could persuade Ryan to close Persephone.

“Okay, Mr. Ryan,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “I reckon you know best.”

Persephone Penal Colony 1955

Simon Wales felt a powerful mingling of superstitious awe and pride as the guard let him into Sofia Lamb’s cell.

She was waiting for him on her neatly made bunk, sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, her blond hair back in a bun. She looked thin, hollow-eyed. But the transcendent spark was there.

“So you did come,” she said softly. “How’d you arrange it?”

Wales had to take a breath to calm himself before he replied. He viewed this woman as a sending from the Locus of Universal Love. It was like being with the radiant Joan of Arc as she waited for the stake. “I… I have some terms of friendship with Sinclair, since Daniel and I were the chief architects of Rapture. I convinced him to let me inspect the structure here, to see if it was putting strain on the rest of Rapture—all a blind, of course. He allowed it—and then it was simply a matter of bribing the guards…”

“Good. You must see to it that the guards will let you in whenever you come—pay them whatever you must. They fear Sullivan and Ryan—they cannot be induced to simply let me go. But they can be persuaded to let me talk freely with the other inmates.” She frowned. He could see emotional pain flicker across her face, quickly suppressed. “What about… Eleanor? Any word?”

“They have her in some kind of… conditioning.”

She grimaced. “Well. They will think she is one thing… but I have buried her true mission deeply inside her. Eleanor will survive! And she will surprise them. She will surprise everyone here. I have faith in that.” She glanced at the door. “I’m developing a therapeutic relationship with Nigel Weir…”

Wales looked at her in surprise. “Weir? The warden of Persephone? He let you…”

She smiled. “He’s a sad, disturbed little man. Under pretense of interrogating me—he asked me about himself. Indirectly, you see. I turned the interrogation back on him—we even looked at his files together. I think I’ve persuaded him to let me do some experimenting—and therapy on the prisoners in Persephone. He’ll convince Sinclair it’s all for the benefit of Ryan’s little fiefdom. But in time, I plan to organize a rebellion here. One which they will never expect. They’re foolish, putting so many political prisoners in one facility—it plays into our hands…”

Gazing at her, Wales felt dizzy. He suddenly—uncontrollably—went to his knees. “Ma’am… oh, Sofia! How is it that I was ever loyal to Andrew Ryan? That I let him blind me?”

She smiled. “It’s all right, Simon. The ego is powerful. The will to love is weak, at first. It must be strengthened with sacrifice to the collective. It takes time! But you were one of the first to see the light. You are beloved to me, Simon Wales… And in good time, Ryan will fall. And I… we… will be waiting to take his place. Rapture will be ours. Tell them—tell everyone—I will be watching! I will know who is a slave to ego—and who ascends to the body with the blessed…”

“Yes, Sofia! I’ll see that your flock knows!”

Sofia Lamb put a hand on his head, in benediction. Wales felt an orgasmic shudder go through him at her touch, and he lowered his head and wept with joy…

Rapture Detention 1956

Sullivan was worried about Head Constable Harker. The HC was breathing through his mouth like a man who’d just finished a two-mile run, but Sullivan knew damn well he’d been sitting at that desk at least half an hour. One of Harker’s cigars, still smoking, was just a butt in the seashell ashtray. Harker sat there, panting, staring into space, drumming his freckled fingers on the desk. The head constable was a short, thick, jowly man with receding red hair, a shabby black suit. Looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.

“You asked me to come over, Harker, remember?” Sullivan said, sitting across from him. “You okay? You look kinda worse for wear.”

“Sure, I’m… I’m okay.” Harker reached up, unconsciously fingering the constable’s badge on his lapel. “I just sometimes wonder”—he glanced at the door to make sure it was closed—“if I made a mistake coming to Rapture.”

Sullivan chuckled. “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger on that one. Don’t know many who don’t feel that way sometimes.”

Harker nodded, too rapidly. “But there’s still some true believers, Chief. Like Rizzo. Wallace. Ryan, of course. That crackpot, Sander Cohen. Maybe McDonagh. ’Course, we lost some too—like Greavy…” Harker sighed.

“Yeah, shame about Greavy—too confident, strutting around like he owned the place. They nearly got Bill McDonagh too.”

“I dunno, I don’t have a good feeling about it, Chief. I’m grateful you got me this post. But I shoulda stuck around in the States and, I don’t know, gone into something else…”

“Me and you, we’re badges, pal. Too old to change.” He could see Harker was scared, plenty scared. “What is it? I mean—there’s something that’s got you off-balance here. Something in particular. Why’d you call me over here?”

Harker rubbed a thumbnail raspily over his two-days’ growth of beard and reached into the desk drawer. He took out a pistol, stood up, stuck the pistol in his coat pocket, and said, “I’ll show you. Come on.”

They went into the corridor. Karlosky was waiting out there, a pump shotgun in his hands. Sullivan kept the Russian close when the Great Man didn’t need him. Yesterday that pump shotgun had cut a spider slicer nearly in half—and saved Sullivan’s neck.

Karlosky nodded at Harker, who just grunted and brushed past him, stumping down the hall on his short, thick legs, one hand in his coat pocket on that gun.

The head constable led them around a corner, past a black guard who unlocked a hallway door to let them into the cellblock. They strode past a series of insulated, locked cells, all on the left-hand side, where splicers—low enough on EVE to be containable—babbled and begged for their plasmids. A feral-looking woman, her face etched with plasmid lesions, spat at them through a barred cell-door window as they passed.

This place was grimier and crazier than Persephone. The “isolation facility” wasn’t full of splicer crazies, anyhow. Just political eccentrics.

At last Harker stopped near cell 15, where a hulking constable with nervous blue eyes and a leering smile leaned on the hallway’s metal wall, a tommy gun cradled in his arms. “Howdy Chief,” Cavendish said.

“A little over an hour ago,” Harker said, in a low voice, as Sullivan and Karlosky caught up with him at the cell door, “we bring in an unconscious splicer, right? Half-naked, lotta plasmid deformities on his face and all. Well, when we found this cocksucker he had some kind of fish-gutting hook in one hand, all covered with blood. And in the other hand he has a woman’s head. Her head—cut off her body, you get me? Sliced off just under the chin! Slick as a whistle! A brunette. Mighta been a pretty woman. I think maybe I saw this chippie dancing over in that strip joint, in Fort Frolic.” He licked his lips, glanced down the hall toward cell 18. “Well, this splicer, he’s kinda squeezin’ her head to his chest, looked like a kid hugging a baby doll. And he was sawing logs, this guy, snoring! Pat Cavendish there gets him cuffed and tries to wake him up, but the guy’s too sacked out. So Patrick gets some help, brings the son of a bitch up here, puts him in cell seventeen over there. We got the broad’s head in the freezer, in case you want to ID her.”

“Okay,” Sullivan said, shrugging. “Not the only homicidal splicer we’ve had. Pretty crazy, but lots of ’em are. He must’ve run outta EVE, got tired, plasmids needed recharging, took a snooze… so now you got ’im. Ryan’s talking about turning guys like this over to Gil Alexander for his… experiments. We’ll get him to a judge in the morning—”

Cavendish gave out a sniggering sound of contempt. “Boy-o have you got it wrong!”

Sullivan didn’t like Cavendish’s tone. But he didn’t like Cavendish at all. One of the bad eggs. Half Irish, half Suffolk Brit. Grin like a wolf. Liked to beat up prisoners. But a good man in a fight. “He ain’t run out of anything,” Cavendish went on. “Drank himself to sleep, I figure—that’s what it smelled like. Woke up still charged. He was in eighteen, last I looked.”

“What do you mean, last you looked?”

“There’s a new plasmid on the market,” Harker put in, almost whispering, eyes darting to the door of 18. “Only—it’s kind of black market. Fontaine hasn’t released it publicly. It’s supposed to make them extra crazy in record time, for one thing. For another—might be the most dangerous one around, if you think about it. Only, I figure these guys are probably too nuts to use it against the council. They’re all about goin’ with their impulses…”

“Use what?” Karlosky asked, impatiently.

“They can disappear,” Harker said. “And… go somewhere else! This guy, he comes in and out of that cell as he pleases. Pat—what do they call that plasmid?”

“Teleport.”

And at exactly that moment a sucking sound made them all look toward cell 18. Specks of free-floating blackness appeared in the air, sparkles of energy took on the approximate shape of a man—and the sound increased till it ended in a shoomp!—as a man appeared out of nowhere. He was a pale man, barefoot, naked from the waist down, wearing only a filthy, bloodstained work shirt. His hair was patchy brown; the angular face was hard to make out under all the plasmid excrescences. One of the growths had nearly blotted out his left eye. “Hey, you dog humpers is keeping me awake out here!” he snarled, spraying spittle past his snaggly yellow teeth. “I’m trying to finish my nap, for fuck’s sake! Well ain’t you the pips with your pretty badges! I want me one!”

Karlosky, Cavendish, Harker, and Sullivan were all bringing their guns to bear. A tommy gun, a shotgun, and two pistols—pointed at an empty space.

Empty because the splicer had teleported out of it. He still had plenty of EVE in him, and he had vanished—and reappeared behind Karlosky. He pulled Karlosky’s hair, hooting gleefully, and as the Russian spun toward him with the shotgun… the splicer vanished again, twinkling away…

Only to reappear, bringing a nasty smell and posing like a dancer, between Sullivan and the wall, yanking Sullivan’s right ear and cackling, “Hiya Chief!”

Bastard acts like one of them cartoons at the movies, Sullivan thought. He made a grab for the splicer—and felt his fingers pass through air that crackled with departing energy.

He turned to see the splicer grabbing the pistol from Harker with one hand, with the other tearing the constable’s badge off.

Sullivan got his pistol into play and fired at the splicer, squeezing the trigger a split second too late—the bullet passed through the place where the teleporter had been, ricocheting off the steel walls near Harker. The sucking sound came again, and then a flash of light from the cell window of 18.

Harker made a plaintive little eep sound, a noise you’d never expect from him—then he gasped as he slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood. He fell on his face, squirming, groaning. The ricochet from Sullivan’s gun had hit the constable, and hard.

“Dammit, Harker!” Sullivan sputtered. As if it were Harker’s fault. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Just…” Harker gasped again. “Get the fucker…”

Tommy gun raised, Cavendish was stalking toward the window of cell 18. He peered through the small barred window in the studded-metal door… and his head jerked back with the bang of a gunshot from inside.

Sullivan thought at first Cavendish was dead—but then he saw the constable was just missing part of his left ear, much of it shot away. Cavendish crouched down in the corridor, put a hand over his red-streaming ear, hissing with pain. “Fuuuuuck!”

A “tee-hee-HEEEEEE!” came from inside the cell. “Too bad I missed, could’ve improved your ugly fucking face to have a bullet hole through it, dog humper! I gotta recommend that one to Steinman!”

Sullivan cocked his pistol, moving in a half crouch down the row of cells. He ignored the bearded splicer in number 16, who taunted, “You see, if you’d given us our ADAM, we’d all be happy harpies, but now, right now, you’ve made us into saddy soddies, and sadness hurts, it hurts, going to hurt and hurt!”

It’s me that’s done the hurting so far, today, Sullivan thought glumly. He’d accidentally shot Harker. This teleport thing had him shaken. He saw now why Harker’d been so unnerved.

He approached the cell door obliquely, pistol raised, trying to peer in without making himself a target. There, the seminude splicer was relaxing on his back in a cot against the farther wall of the padded room. His naked genitals, spattered with dried blood, all too clearly on display. He had his left arm behind his head, his right arm up, and he was spinning the pistol on his index finger and singing a Rapture advertising jingle to himself, “Ohhh, the beer may be green, but it’s mighty keen; it satisfies a man, makes him feel grand; it’s Ryan’s own, Ryan’s own, Ryan’s… own… beer!”

On “beer!” the splicer stopped spinning the gun and fired it toward the barred window of the cell. The bullet struck a bar and ricocheted down the corridor. Sullivan ducked, though the bullet was already on its way by then.

He raised slowly up, only to hear that sucking sound and Cavendish yelling, “Down, Chief!”

He flattened belly-down on the floor—and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the splicer materializing over him to his right, the pistol pointed down to shoot him in the head.

A rat-a-tat echoed harshly in the corridor, along with the big thump of a shotgun—and the splicer was stumbling backward, stitched across the middle with blood-spouting bullet holes, right arm torn half off from a shotgun blast. Cavendish had gotten him square with the tommy gun, and Karlosky had clipped him good with the shotgun. Someone around the corner yelled in pain as part of the tommy-gun burst ricocheted down the corridor. Maybe the steel walls hadn’t been such a good idea.

Sullivan got up again, coughing with the gunsmoke in the small space. Yips and jeers and shouts of derision came from the adjoining cells. But the teleport splicer was twitching, gurgling in death.

“Well, we got him, but we lost Harker,” Sullivan muttered, turning to look at the dead constable.

“This is a whole new… how you say it? From baseball…” Karlosky said, looking down at the twitching splicer.

Sullivan nodded. “A whole new ballgame.”

Footlight Theater 1956

Frank Fontaine took his seat near the stage in the small auditorium of the Footlight Theater. He was here to see Sander Cohen’s new cabaret production, Janus—Cohen promoted it as “a tragic farce about identity.” It was actually an oddball collaboration between Sander Cohen and the surgeon Steinman. But Fontaine’s mind was elsewhere—he was remembering something Ryan had said. Even ideas can be contraband.

Settling into the plush seat, Fontaine smiled to himself. Ironically, Ryan had sparked an idea with that little phrase. Spread the right subversive belief, it could turn this place on its head—could dump Ryan at the bottom, lift Frank Fontaine to the top.

Feeling overfull from his dinner, a little drunk from the wine, Fontaine glanced over his shoulder at the audience crowding into the small theater. There was Steinman, the surgeon, overdressed in a tuxedo, playing “author.” There was Diane McClintock, standing at the head of the aisle, in the doorway; she wore a low-cut red-beaded black frock, carried a matching beaded purse. She was frowning, looking at her diamond-crusted watch. Waiting for Ryan, no doubt—she was Ryan’s fiancée as well as his receptionist.

Two seats were empty right next to Fontaine—this might be a great opportunity. He stood up and waved to Diane, though he scarcely knew the woman. He pointed to the two seats, smiling. She glanced through the door to the lobby, then nodded briskly, her lips pursed, and hurried down to him. “Mr. Fontaine…”

“Miss McClintock.” He stepped aside so she could take a seat. “I’ve saved a spot for Andrew too,” he said.

“If he even shows up,” Diane muttered, sitting down. “He’s… always so busy.”

He sat beside her. “I understand someone might be announcing a wedding soon…?”

She snorted. Then remembered herself. “Oh—yes. When he… decides the time is right, we’ll make the announcement.” She opened her purse. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette… oh bother… I seem to be all out.”

Fontaine noticed that most of the purse was taken up by a book. “I do have a cigarette for you,” he said. “Complete with Fontaine Futuristics matchbook. Very stylish.” He held the case out; she took a cigarette, and he lit it for her.

“You’re a lifesaver…”

“Looks like you’re carrying books around in that thing—does it make a better weapon that way?”

She blew smoke at the ceiling. “No need to be dismissive of a woman’s desire to learn. I’m reading a Fitzgerald novel from the ’20s. The Beautiful and the Damned.”

He thought, What could be more fitting? But, winking at her, he said, “One thing I’m not dismissive of is a woman’s desires.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if thinking of bringing him up short. Then she gave way to a titter of laughter. “Oh gosh. That kinda remark, ‘a woman’s desires’—makes me feel like I was back working the club where Andrew and I met…” She glanced over her shoulder. “You haven’t seen him here, have you?”

“Afraid not.” Maybe he ought to let her know, obliquely, that he might be available to squire her if Ryan gave her the brush-off. She could be useful. “If he doesn’t show up, I’ll heroically offer you my arm, ma’am, and escort you from here—all the way to the moon and back.”

“It’s even farther to the moon than it used to be, down here,” she said. But she seemed pleased.

“Me, I kinda hope he doesn’t show up…”

She glanced back at the door again and then stepped on her cigarette as the curtains parted. “Show’s starting,” she sighed.

It took him a moment to recognize Sander Cohen, as made up as he was—and with another face entirely slung on the back of his head. Cohen was dressed in skintight Lincoln green, had an absurd mustache and beard, and a feeble little bow and arrows slung over his shoulder. He pranced to mandolin music in front of a painted forest backdrop and broke into a song about how he “loved to be in the Greenwood with my merry men, oh, my gay and merry men, my oh so happy men, and then came along that dreadful bitch known as Maid Marian, and OH how paradise has fallen…!”

His “merry men,” looking more like nearly naked Greek wrestlers, came dancing out of the wood, waving arrows and singing the chorus with him.

Oh Jesus wept, Fontaine thought.

Then the King of England came along, wearing a lion-blazoned cloak, a gold-painted crown, and a red beard that was coming loose from his chin. He brought Cohen to his castle and set him to be the new Sheriff of Nottingham; “Robin Hood” lost little time in assassinating the king—merrily stabbing him to the beat of a song—and then switching the face on the back of his head around to the front. The mask resembled the king; he dragged the body off and took the king’s place.

The one-act musical mercifully ended to a smattering of applause—although Dr. Steinman stood up, clapped lustily, and shouted, “Bravo! Bravissimo!”

Fontaine helped Diane into her wrap. Maybe he could get her to a bar. After a few drinks, she might remember her cigarette-girl origins.

But suddenly Ryan was coming down the aisle, shaking hands with people, nodding—waving to Diane. “Sorry I’m late, darling…”

So much for that. But the evening wasn’t a bust. Despite having to watch Cohen flounce about, the play had given Fontaine an idea.

On the way out of the theater, he paused to gaze at one of Ryan’s earliest propaganda posters. “Rapture is the hope of the world…” it declared—over a picture of Andrew Ryan holding the world on his shoulders. Andrew Ryan as Atlas?

Looking to see that no one was watching, Frank Fontaine tore the poster down.

Bill McDonagh’s Flat 1956

Sitting on his sofa near the big sea-view window, Bill McDonagh wondered if keeping records of his “thoughts and impressions of life in Rapture” was really a good idea. He’d tried it for a while, but it didn’t come naturally. Ryan was pushing for everyone to keep recordings of their problems, their plans, for some kind of planned historical retrospective, and it was becoming something of a fad. But Bill was starting to wonder exactly how it might be used against a man…

The tape recorder was sitting on the coffee table by a mug of greenish beer. Neither seemed appealing. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven. Elaine would be home from Arcadia with the little one soon enough. If he was going to do this, he’d better get to it. He reached for the tape recorder, but somehow his hand found his way to the mug of beer instead.

He sighed, put down the beer, pressed the Record button on the device, and began: “Rapture’s changing, but Ryan can’t see the wolves in the woods. This Fontaine fellow… he’s a crook and a proper tea leaf, but he’s got the ADAM and that makes him the guv’nor. He’s sinking the profits back into bigger and better plasmids and building them Fontaine poorhouses. More like Fontaine recruiting centers! ’Fore we know it, bloke’s gonna have an army of splicers, and we’re gonna have ourselves a whole heap of miseries.”

He switched off the tape recorder. There was a lot more on his mind—but he was reluctant to make his doubts about Rapture a matter of record.

The phone on the coffee table rang. He answered the phone. “Right, Bill here.”

“McDonagh? It’s Sullivan. We’ve had another three killings in the Upper Atrium… and the council is calling an emergency meeting…”

Council Conference Room 1956

Andrew Ryan wasn’t sure he wanted this special meeting of the Rapture Council. But he was reassured to see Bill McDonagh and Sullivan come in. He still felt he could trust those two.

Only six people had shown up this time, and they were gathered around the oval conference table in the ornate, gold-trimmed little room near the top of the highest “air scraper” in Rapture. Anna, Bill, Sullivan, Anton Kinkaide, Ryan, Rizzo.

Ryan missed the presence of the late Ruben Greavy. And he could have done without Anna Culpepper, who liked to put her oar in without having anything useful to say. He should never have allowed her on the council.

Ryan toyed with an untasted cup of coffee, feeling his age. His role as Rapture’s guide and mentor was becoming a weight—he could almost feel it pinching his back, making his bones creak. And some on the council were making it worse, always prodding at him with their feeble little ideas. Meanwhile, Rapture’s problems had become Andrew Ryan’s: crime, subversives, foolish use of plasmids, constant maintenance problems… these required real vision to overcome. He was seeing that more and more clearly. A man needed a willingness to institute big solutions to big problems.

“We’re so close to the surface here,” Anna said, sitting down with a cup of tea. “It makes me think it wouldn’t be so bad to have a few… excursions to the surface world… just close by, on a boat, I mean…” She looked up at the glass ceiling, just a yard or two under the surface of the ocean. Moonlight penetrated the waves, came glimmering down to color the room’s electric illumination with a blue-white paleness, making Anna, gazing upward, look as if she’d put on whiteface. That made Ryan think about Sander Cohen—he was glad Cohen hadn’t come. The performer was getting ever more socially peculiar. He’d sent a Jet Postal note, begging off with some enigmatic excuse about being “caught up in the hunt for art, which must be captivated, bound to the stage, in preparation for the titanomachy.”

Titanomachy? Whatever was he talking about?

Ryan glanced up as a shadow passed over them: the silhouette of a large, sleek shark swam overhead, circling the lighted room in curiosity.

“In time,” Ryan said, “we may have an excursion, Anna. All in good time.”

Anna sighed and gave him that pitying look he’d found so infuriating lately. “Dare I point out—it has been ten years since Hiroshima; there have been no further uses of atomic weapons. The war, it appears, is a ‘cold’ one. That’s what our radio tells us.”

Rizzo sniffed disapprovingly at her skepticism. “Russkies have been stockpiling A-bombs just same as the US of A, Miss Culpepper. Why, it’s a tinderbox out there! The Commies are taking over China; the Soviets got their agents every goddamn place! Only a matter of time before the atomic war comes!”

“Exactly,” Ryan said. Good old Rizzo, a sensible man. “And that aside—we have to remain as hidden away here as we can. We don’t want anybody taking notice of anything out here. The lighthouse is risky enough. If it weren’t for the air draw…” Ryan changed the subject. “Let’s get to it—we have to decide on a policy about all this violence…”

“It’s simple, boss,” Sullivan said, leaning his elbows on the table, a pinched look on his face. “We got to ban plasmids. I know how you feel about banning products. But we got no choice! You’re talking about atomic power? I’m not sure these plasmids are any safer than that stuff…”

Sullivan’s words were slurring ever so slightly. He’d been drinking before the meeting. Ryan reached for patience. “Chief—I know it was hard for you to lose Harker that way. But the market has a life of its own, and we can’t choke that life off with bans or even”—he had difficulty actually saying the word—“regulations. The solution is simple. Ryan Enterprises is now in the plasmid business. A better product will draw people in—and they’ll buy one that doesn’t affect their minds.” He glanced at Bill, thinking he looked weary and troubled. “What do you think, Bill?”

“You’re seriously going into plasmids, guv?” Bill asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “It’ll take more time to develop a plasmid that doesn’t have side effects. Meanwhile…”

“Bill, it’s either we go into them or ban them—and how well did Prohibition work?”

“But—they’re addictive.”

“So is alcohol!”

Bill shook his head. “Look what happened to Mr. Greavy! If you’d seen it…”

“Yes.” Ruben Greavy’s death was a painful subject for Ryan. “Yes, that was a great loss to me. He was an artist, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a true Renaissance man. A great loss. I feel responsible—I should have sent security along with him. But he would insist on going wherever he liked in Rapture…”

“I was the one with him,” Bill said, looking very unhappy. “If anyone’s responsible…”

“The only one responsible,” growled Sullivan, “is that telekinetic bitch that killed him. But Mr. Ryan—if you want to continue allowing plasmid sales and get Ryan Industries into it…” He shook his head, wincing at the thought. “Then it’s got to be regulated.”

“We’ll consider restricting some plasmids,” Ryan said, though he had no intention of really restricting any plasmids. “This is a rough transitional period. To be expected. Part of the tumult of the market…”

“Do we even know for sure which plasmids are out there?” Kinkaide asked.

Sullivan shrugged. “Not for sure. I’ve got a partial list.” He searched his pockets, looking for it. “Got it here somewhere… Some are kinda black market; some Fontaine sells in shops. He’s selling EVE right next to it. Damned floors are littered with syringes… here it is…” He unfolded a wrinkled piece of paper.

Sullivan cleared his throat, squinted at the paper, and read out, “Electro Bolt—fires bolts of electricity. Can stun a man or kill him. Incinerate!—started with a plasmid you could use for cooking but now it’s sorta like a flamethrower that comes outta your hand. I have seen Teleport—not sure how we can control that one. It’s a big worry. I mean, Christ, how do you jail someone who can teleport? Telekinesis—that’s what killed Mr. Greavy. You’ve all seen that. There’s Winter Blast—sends out a current of supercold air. Freezes your enemy solid. And there’s that Spider thing they go up the walls with. Lots of those creeps around.”

“Ha, creeps,” Anna said, absently glancing at the transparent ceiling. “They do creep, don’t they? Good one, Chief.”

He looked at her in puzzlement. He hadn’t been joking.

“What about this Teleport?” Bill asked. “What do we do about the bloody Houdini Splicers? It can’t be legal.”

Ryan nodded. He didn’t trust it either. It weakened security—it might enable people to leave Rapture. He had security cameras and turrets set up at the only egresses to Rapture, to stop anyone unauthorized from leaving; he was in the process of installing more security bots. Some plasmids could make a joke of all those wonderfully engineered devices. “We’ll see what we can do to suppress that one.”

Kinkaide tried to straighten his tie and only made it more crooked. “I don’t understand the physics of these plasmids. Where are these new ADAM cells drawing all the energy from? If the splicer shoots out flame, does it come from his intestinal methane? Where does he get the raw materials? Does he lose a pound afterward?”

Bill looked at him. “You’re the boffin—no theories, then?”

Kinkaide shrugged. “I can only speculate that all this extra energy is being drawn from the splicer’s environment in some way. The air around us is charged, after all. That could account for the Electro Bolt. The mutagenic cells, once redesigned by ADAM, have a sort of secondary mitochondria that might provide specialized energy emissions. We don’t know what most of our genes do—some might be designed for these powers. Which might even account for tales of supernatural beings, genies and magicians and the like—but those mutations didn’t work out, you see. Perhaps because they tended to be burdened by negative side effects—like psychosis, facial excrescences, and so on…”

“Bit of a dodgy omen, that, innit, Kinkaide?” Bill pointed out. “I mean—if these mutations existed in the past, and they didn’t make it. Didn’t work out then, might not work out for Rapture, then.”

“Something in that,” Kinkaide allowed, nodding slightly. “But Mr. Ryan is right—if it’s possible to create plasmids, then it should be possible to perfect them. We can work out the bad parts. Just imagine having rational control of telekinesis or the ability to climb walls like a fly, to hurl electricity. To become… superhuman. It’s wonderful, in its way.”

“Maybe people could just learn to use ADAM without overindulging,” Anna suggested. “An education program.”

Finally, Ryan thought, Anna had said something useful. “Not a bad idea. We’ll look into that.”

“The side effects of plasmids,” Sullivan pointed out, “are the only thing keeping more people from buying ADAM. We fix the side effects, we’ll have superpowered people everywhere. We’ll all have to do it just to keep some kinda balance of power. I don’t want to cough fire every time I belch.”

Bill nodded eagerly. “Chief Sullivan’s in the right of it—side effects or not, plasmids are just too dangerous. Rapture is made mostly of metal—but it’s complex, and that makes it vulnerable, fragile in some places. Daft bastards running around shooting fire, blasting lightning about—they could bring down the whole bloody house of cards!”

Ryan made a dismissive gesture.

“We’ll get the splicers under control. Meanwhile,” he added musingly, “this is all part of our evolution. Just growing pains.” He considered explaining fully. But they wouldn’t understand if he told them what he really thought. Greavy had understood, though. He’d understood the winnowing. The subtraction of weak links from the Great Chain; what they were going through in Rapture now was the heat of a welding torch, both destructive and constructive.

“It isn’t just the superpowered sons of bitches,” Sullivan growled, crumpling the list of plasmids in his shaky hands. “It’s the leadheads rampaging around the city, shooting guns at random. Faster reflexes from all that ADAM. We’ve had to kill four in the last two days. Sad thing is, they all had kids. Transferred to that new orphanage of Fontaine’s…”

“Fontaine,” Bill said, looking at Ryan significantly. “Got a finger in every bloody thing. Every kind of smuggling. He’s not just bringing in cheap hooch and Bibles anymore, guv’nor.”

Ryan grunted. “How’s the evidence looking on Fontaine’s smugglers?”

Sullivan sat up straighter, suddenly energized. “I’ve got enough to raid him, Mr. Ryan—then we’ll have the proof! I’ve got a witness to the smuggling ring, up in detention, under protection.”

“Then put it together,” Ryan said. “We’ll raid his operation and see what we get.”

Kinkaide shook his head. “All that charity stuff he’s behind. You’ve got to wonder what he’s up to.”

“He’s up to undermining me!” Ryan said bitterly. “Charity is a form of socialism! It’s too much like that Lamb woman. If they’re not working together—then they will be in time. Like Lenin recruiting Stalin. Stopping Fontaine stops this propaganda tool he calls charity…”

“What about this plasmids business?” Rizzo asked. “We don’t want to ban them or regulate them… so how do we control them?”

“Now that’s a good question, mate,” Bill said.

“I am about to announce a new Ryan Enterprises product line,” Ryan said, smiling in a way he hoped was reassuring. “A new line of weapons! Chemical throwers, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, better machine guns—we can use weapons innovation to counterbalance the splicers until we get ADAM perfected.”

Bill shook his head skeptically but said nothing.

“There’s something else,” Sullivan said, frowning. “I’ve got a source in Fontaine Futuristics—tells me about some kind of what they call fairy-moan experimentation, something like that, that can be used to get a handle on those splicers—”

“He means pheromone, I suspect,” Kinkaide said, smirking.

“Maybe that was it,” Sullivan said, unruffled. “Something about Suchong using phero… those things… to control the splicers, without the splicers even knowing it. Maybe spraying a chemical that makes them all show up in one place, so they cause problems for… well, anybody you wanted to cause problems for. I guess.”

Ryan scowled. “Control the splicers… with pheromones…” He was intrigued. But it was troubling too. Because Suchong worked for Fontaine.

Meaning that Fontaine in turn would eventually control at least some of the splicers. And it was becoming clearer: Fontaine was a predator. If you allowed him to grab that kind of power, he would use it to take Rapture over. Probably he’d do it behind a smokescreen. As Bill had warned, Fontaine could even partner up with Lamb’s followers, now that they were at loose ends.

It could mean the destruction of Rapture.

Fort Frolic, Fleet Hall, Backstage 1956

“Can anyone ever make you feel like Sander Cohen can? Rapture’s most beloved musical artist returns with ‘Why Even Ask?,’ his greatest album yet. Songs of love. Songs of joy. Songs of passion. Buy ‘Why Even Ask?’ and invite Sander Cohen into your home today.” Hurrying along through the empty backstage area, Martin Finnegan chuckled to himself hearing the public-service announcement playing from Cohen’s dressing room. Cohen was listening to the PA announcement over and over again. “Can anyone ever make you feel like Sander Cohen can? Rapture’s most beloved musical artist returns…”

Martin went down the wood-walled corridor, found Sander Cohen seated pensively in front of his gold-framed oval dressing-room mirror, putting on another layer of makeup with one hand. With the other he was shaping the needlelike points of his hooked mustache. Cohen wore a purple and blue silk smoking jacket, silk slippers, and purple silk pajamas. He looked at Martin in the mirror. “I’m running short of makeup, you know,” Cohen said. He picked up the stub of an eyebrow pencil and began to darken his eyebrows. “I’ve asked Andrew for more, but he talks tiresomely of import priorities, the importance of creating our own goods. Does he really expect me to make my own eyebrow pencil? My, you look virile today, Martin…”—all said while outlining his eyebrow, looking at Martin in the mirror. That face became ever more lurid each time Martin saw it, ever more like a mad, mustachioed mime. “… And invite Sander Cohen into your home today…” The recording ended, and Cohen restarted it. “Can anyone ever make you feel…”

“What do you think of that announcement?” Cohen asked, starting on the other eyebrow, watching him closely in the mirror. “It’s going out tonight on the public address. Trying to push my new record. It seems a bit bland to me. Lacking in verve. Doesn’t have that libidinous fevre that I so delight in…”

Martin sat in a wooden chair behind Cohen, wishing he’d stop playing the announcement. “I think it’s good for regular folks to hear,” Martin said. “Kind of family friendly, like. That’s good, you need that.”

“Oh God, I hope it doesn’t mean they’ll bring their children to my shows. I can’t imagine how I was able to bear being one. Fortunately it didn’t last long.”

Martin shifted in the uncomfortable chair, making it squeak. “Speaking of how Sander Cohen can make me feel… The note you sent me mentioned trying something new…”

Cohen tittered, hand fluttering over his mouth. “Well…” He winked, and opened a dressing-table drawer and drew out two bottles, setting them down on the dressing table, one after the other. They were squat bottles filled with red fluid. Martin knew full well what they were. Cohen opened the lower drawer, took out a flat black box, and opened it. In velvet-lined compartments were two syringes filled with glowing fluid. EVE. For activating the plasmids. Staring at the bottles, Martin’s mouth was dry. He and Cohen had taken cocaine together before, cut with a lot of booze. But this… He had seen splicers. Some of them seemed fairly together. Others, though, were like nitroglycerine, always ready to explode. And then there was the disfigurement. Those who used a great deal of ADAM ended up looking like they had a skin disease. The loony expressions glued on their faces made it all worse. On the other hand—look at that blue glow in the bottles! The implied power in it.

“Well? Shall we indulge?” Cohen asked, his mouth screwed to a cone and twisted comically to one side. “Hmm?”

“What the hell,” Martin heard himself say. He knew he’d try it sooner or later. He tried everything sooner or later. As Cohen prepared the syringes, Martin found he regretted that his first experience with ADAM was going to be with Sander Cohen. The Artiste always took everything to crazy extremes. After that last little drunken trip into Arcadia, dancing naked with the Saturnines, forcing a teenage boy to have sex with an octopus, they were all lucky not to be in the Rapture detention cells. They’d gotten out one step ahead of the constables.

But Martin did want to be a stage performer. So far, the only performance he’d done in Rapture had been at Cohen’s “tableaus,” where Martin and Hector Rodriguez and Silas Cobb and a couple others dressed in scanty costumes and posed heroically under the Artiste’s direction, for a very small audience. Many in the audience had been touching themselves obscenely. What was it Hector had said later that night? “It could well be that all art is just grift, after all.”

“Now, let us partake,” said Cohen. “This bottle contains SportBoost and Winter Blast. A splicer cocktail. That’s yours. Mine is something very, very hard to get—Teleport! Next I want to try those Spider Splicings… Well? What are you waiting for? Bottoms up! So to speak…”

Martin took a deep drink from the plasmids bottle. The thick fluid was surprisingly bland, though there was a chemical aftertaste, a bit of saltiness. Perhaps a suggestion of the taste of blood. And then—

A terrifying rigidity struck him. It was as if someone was running an electric current through his muscles, a charge generated from within his brain, crackling out through his nervous system—and it was making him go rigid. His arching back was threatening to snap his spine.

And then he fell to the floor, shaking with spasms, fighting for breath. Waves of dark, hissing energy unfolded in him. He felt high, but he was also terrified. He was distantly aware that Cohen was dragging down his pants—“Presto plunge-oh!” Cohen whooped—and then came the piercing pain of the needle jabbing into Martin’s gluteus maximus.

White fire exploded behind Martin’s eyes, and it was all he could see for a moment—like gazing into the heart of a welding arc. Unfamiliar tastes, like random chemicals, passed in waves through his mouth. He heard his pulse hammering in his ears. And then a wave of relief came, a ripple of release, as the rigidity washed away in a rolling tide of living coolness. After a few moments he was able to move again and struggled to his knees.

“Now,” Cohen said, laying the empty syringe on the makeup dresser. “I’m going to drink mine—here’s the syringe for me—you do me! I mean, the syringe! And don’t try to use your powers yet! You might turn me into a block of ice!”

They repeated the process for Cohen, Martin injecting him in the rump, going about it mechanically even as he struggled for some kind of inner equilibrium. He didn’t feel quite real somehow…

Martin set the empty syringe aside and sat gingerly on the chair as the Artiste flopped about like a fish on the floor, the EVE merging with the ADAM, showing in alternating blue-red energies in Cohen’s body.

Suddenly Cohen went limp, sighing. Then he sat up, chortled gleefully, and vanished. There was an ambient sucking sound as a thump of air rushed to fill the sparkling vacuum where he’d been.

“Sander?” Martin’s tongue felt thick. It was hard to talk. His head pounded like a parade drum thumped by a cocaine fiend. But he felt good, profanely good…

A sucking, a sizzling, a Cohen-shaped sparkling, and there he was, materializing at the door to the corridor. “Ha ha! Look! I did it, Martin! I teleported! Ha ha ha!”

It seemed to Martin that Cohen’s face was rippling within itself, bumps rising and falling on it as if little pistons were pumping randomly under his facial skin.

Martin laughed—it didn’t matter, really, what was happening to Sander Cohen. Nothing mattered! The energy roared like a tornado in the room. The sinews of visible electric power stretched and snapped in the very air.

He looked around, expecting to see these powerful forces throwing the furnishings about, whipping things through the air. But nothing was affected. He was seeing these energies in his mind.

“Come, come, follow me, I have a special delight for us in the rehearsal room!” Cohen crowed, whirling about, dancing toward the door. “Come, come and see my guests!”

“Guests? What sort, Sander? I’m not sure I can deal with guests. I feel strange…”

“But you must!” Cohen insisted gleefully. “This is a test! I test all my disciples! Some shine like galaxies… some burn like a moth at the flame! Just remember: the artist swims in a lake of pain! Perhaps he evolves into something magnificent—perhaps he drowns! Will you drown—or will you come along?”

Sander Cohen went out the door, and Martin was somehow swept along behind him, carried by some powerful inner current. He was unable to walk slowly, unable to think slowly. He was a living dynamo of energy.

No wonder people get addicted to this.

That thought came, and he pushed it rudely aside. No raining on the parade! And the parade drum thumped frantically, pacing him down the hall to the rehearsal room at the rear of the backstage area. Cohen had already teleported ahead.

Martin felt like he was waterskiing, pulled along in a bracingly cold medium by a powerful engine. He burst through the door into the rehearsal room and found Sander Cohen stalking back and forth in front of three people, their arms spread in restraints. They were bound to three interlinked metal frames bolted to the small rehearsal stage…

It was all seen through a glass darkly, for Martin—a filter like mental sunglasses that made some bits shine out and muted others. It seemed unreal, almost two-dimensional, like it was all happening to someone else. Like a movie…

“Please!” said a busty, frowzy woman with flapper-style brown hair. She was pinioned on the left side of the practice stage. “Let me go!” Her eyes kept fluttering, perhaps because one of them was losing its false eyelashes. She wore a ripped black shift and one red pump, the other foot bare.

In the center framework, a middle-aged man with a tonsure of white hair shook in his bonds in rage and fear. His suit was torn and bloody, his nose was swelling and leaking blood, his left eye swollen shut. Cohen’s third “guest” was a young man in a T-shirt, with tousled blond hair and a little red-blond beard that, along with his green trousers, made Martin think of Robin Hood. He looked like he was drugged or drunk; he just sort of hung there in his restraints, murmuring inaudibly, eyes slitted, lifting his head now and then.

“We shall call these three Winken, Blinken, and Nod!” declared Cohen, parading around them, clapping his hands.

I was right; it’s a movie, Martin thought. It’s not real, none of it. He was in the audience and in the movie at the same time. It felt good to watch it and to be the hero of it.

“Please, Mr. Cohen!” the woman wailed. “I wasn’t holding out on the tips! The other girls all keep the same amount!”

“The constables Hector and Cavendish caught these three for me, Martin,” Cohen said, taking a cigarette lighter and a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his smoking jacket. He tapped a button on the case so that a cigarette popped out of a little hole; he lipped it up to the lighter, puffed, and blew smoke in Blinken’s face.

“Cavendish!” Blinken snarled. “That crook! Supposed to be the law! You bought him off!”

“And isn’t that always the case with the best policemen?” Cohen said, putting the cigarette case away. “That Sullivan is such a square. Won’t take a bribe. But Cavendish likes my little gifts… doesn’t he, Blinken?”

“That’s not my goddamn name!” the older man shouted. His remaining eye blinked furiously as he struggled with the tight leather restraints around his wrists and ankles. He went angrily on, “You know damn well who I am! I worked for you a good six years, Cohen! I did a hell of a job in that crappy little casino of yours!”

“Oh, but you were skimming the winnings, old Blinken,” Cohen said, his voice oily. He toyed with the cigarette lighter.

“Ask anybody in Fort Frolic; I was completely on the level!” Blinken snarled. “I was totally—”

He interrupted himself with a long, pealing scream as Sander Cohen put his cigarette out in Blinken’s remaining eye.

Cohen made a face at the man’s shrieking—and then came that sucking sound, the thump, the sparkling, and Cohen had vanished.

… Only to reappear close beside “Nod.” Cohen reached out and stroked the young man’s blond hair. “The problem is an artistic one, a compositional question,” Cohen said, raising his voice to be heard over Blinken’s cries. “Shut that one up for now, will you?”

“Sure.” Martin was glad to do it. Blinken’s screams were distracting him from the movie. He strode over to him, took him by the throat—but instead of squeezing, something else came from his fingers. Not quite intentionally.

Ice. It spread out from his fingers onto the man’s neck, his head, and clickingly up over his chin. It covered his face like a helmet. In another second it had coated his shoulders, his torso—the man was caught in a carapace of ice.

“Stop!” Cohen barked.

Martin stepped back, unsure as to what had happened at first—then realized that he’d used the plasmid. The power of the specialized ADAM he’d been given had sent a current of entropy from his fingers, slowing molecules, drawing water vapor from the air—coating Blinken in ice.

“If I hadn’t stopped you,” Cohen said, playing with the lighter, flicking it on and off, “you’d have frozen him right through in another second. This way he’s in a pretty cocoon of ice, for now…”

It was true. Blinken was wriggling in the sarcophagus of ice. A little melted water, mixed with bloody foam, slipped about his face, his cries were muffled; one wild eye was bleeding, the other rolling under its blackened, swollen lid…

Martin marveled that he felt so little, that he was so distanced from what was happening this close in front of him. But the rolling hotness, the transporting sweetness of the plasmid high was still upon him, dominating him, and nothing else was truly real.

“Please, Mister, don’t do that!” the woman shrieked. “No no noooo!”

Martin turned to see Cohen flicking the lighter under her ragged clothing, her hair. Setting “Winken” on fire.

“We’re almost ready, Martin!” Cohen crowed as she writhed, shrieking in a growing plume of flame. “You must capture her in ice when she’s in just the right posture for the composition! We’re making a glorious tableau, a lovely triptych of tragedy: the human condition! I shall entitle it, Three Souls Revealed! If only Steinman could see this glorious transfiguration!”

Martin could barely hear him over the woman’s shrieking. Most of her hair was gone now…

What was this movie he was in again? What was the title? Martin couldn’t remember…

“There!” Cohen shouted, leaping with excitement. “As she arches her back and howls and spreads her fingers! Now! Freeze her! Just point at her and freeze her right there!”

Martin stretched out his arm and willed the plasmid to emanate from his fingers—he felt the chill of it passing out of him, saw ice crystals shimmering in the air in front of his hand. Suddenly, the fire around the dying woman was snuffed out.

She was instantly frozen solid, her eyeless sockets—the flame had melted her eyes—filling with pockets of crushed ice. Her mouth agape around a chunk of ice, her singed-away hair replaced by icicles…

Martin felt a wave of nausea pass through him. He was starting to see that this was real. These people were real…

Cohen vanished, teleporting—then reappearing near Blinken. Who was just starting to crack out of his ice cocoon.

“As soon as he breaks out, when he opens his mouth to shout at us—freeze him!” Cohen ordered. “Freeze him solid!”

At least that would end the man’s terror, Martin thought. The thought making him feel sick in itself. This is real…

He emanated the entropic power of Winter Blast—and the plasmid quickly froze the man through and through. And Martin shuddered, as if he was frozen himself.

“Ha haaaaa!” Cohen cackled just before he vanished—reappearing close to the groaning young man hanging slack in his bonds. “Only one panel of the triptych remains! Come, come and play with Nod, Martin!”

Martin found he was drawn to Nod, that his hands went easily to him. He was a very pretty young man, after all. Cohen took out an elegant little straight razor…

Medical Pavilion, Aesthetic Ideals Surgery 1956

J. S. Steinman was bemused and distracted. Admiring the eyeless, limp face he had so deftly removed from the woman’s skull, holding it up to the sea light from the windows so that he could see the deep blue of the North Atlantic through her empty eye sockets, Steinman thought: Aphrodite, your light is entering my eyes…

And then the visitor buzzer razzed intrusively at him.

“Damn them, why won’t they leave genius to be genius!” Steinman muttered, hanging the detached face—complete with her nose and eyebrows—over the lamp beside the operating table. The electric yellow lamplight came prettily through the sockets, but the blood emitted an awful stench in contact with the hot lamp.

The buzzer buzzed again.

“Wait here, my dear,” he sighed to the faceless woman lying on the operating table. Of course, speaking to her was pure whimsy: she couldn’t hear him. She was dead. She’d been a rogue splicer he had bought from a constable, who’d shot her in the head when she’d tried to decapitate someone with a fish knife. The bullet had left her alive—anyway, she’d lived until a few minutes ago—but paralyzed. So Steinman hadn’t needed anesthetic or restraints to keep her quiet during the carving…

He left the operating theater, climbed the stairs, and went through the operating suite’s door, locking it behind him. Absently toying with a scalpel, he crossed the small lobby and opened the outer door.

Steinman realized he should have cleaned up a bit before answering the door. Frank Fontaine and his bodyguards were standing outside the Medical Pavilion, staring aghast at his blood-splattered surgical coat and the bloody scalpel in his hand. The booster plasmid he’d been using was starting to make him a bit abrupt, careless perhaps. He had gone three nights without sleep.

“We didn’t realize you were, um, busy, doctor,” Fontaine said, rolling his eyes at his bodyguards: a thuggish sort in a tatty suit and a grubby long-haired man who looked like a dirty Jesus.

Steinman shrugged. “Just some anatomical investigation. Work on cadavers. A trifle messy. Do you wish to schedule some—”

“What I wish to do,” Fontaine interrupted sharply, “is to come in and talk in private.”

Steinman gestured with the scalpel—his movement was preternaturally brisk so that the scalpel made a whipping sound as it cut the air. The bodyguards reached for their guns.

“Take it easy,” Fontaine told them, raising a calming hand. “Wait out here.”

He stepped into Steinman’s lobby, and closed the door behind him. But Steinman noticed that Fontaine had his left hand inside the flap of his coat. “No need to be reaching for that gun,” Steinman sniffed. “I’m not some… lunatic. You just caught me at a bad time.”

“Then maybe you could put away the scalpel?”

“Hm? Oh yes.” He stuck it in his jacket pocket so it stuck up like a comb. “What can I do for you?”

Fontaine ran a hand over his bald head. “I am going to need some work done. Some on me, and some on… there’s a guy who works for me. Kind of looks like me. I want you to make him look a lot like me.”

“Mmm, probably,” Steinman said, cleaning blood from under his fingernails. “I should have to see him to be sure. But you have a distinct face, and that helps. That chin. Yes. If you want, I might be able to do a face transplant! Yours on his, his on yours! Has never been successfully done, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“Yeah well—not a chance. No, just… a little painless surgery so I look… different. And so he looks like I do now. And I want nobody to know about it but you and me… And I mean nobody. Not Ryan’s people, not Lamb’s people, not even my people.”

“Lamb?”

“You haven’t heard? She’s got some kind of uprising cooking in Persephone. I don’t trust her—don’t want her knowing any of my business.”

“Mum’s the word!”

“So you can make me look different—in pretty short order? Painless? And not a freak like some you’ve been turning out. A good face. A face people’d trust…”

“Should be possible,” Steinman allowed. “It’ll cost you. I’ll need a free supply of plasmids and plenty of cash.”

“You’ll get it—but the plasmids come after the operations. I don’t want you crackin’ up all rogue when you’re working on me. You already look like you could use some sleep…”

Steinman waved airily. “I work long hours perfecting both my skills and my art.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll get you a nice deposit so you’re ready to do this at a moment’s notice. It will be soon… Remember—not a word to anyone. Not even to Cohen—he’s too close to Ryan…”

“Oh, I see. Fear not. I would not have mentioned it anyway. I am ever discreet. It’s part of my professional code.”

“Better be. Or you’ll find yourself going headfirst out an air lock without a diving suit.”

Now there was the real Frank Fontaine, Steinman thought. That icy voice, the even colder eyes. His true colors.

Steinman winked conspiratorially. Fontaine just looked back at him—then went out the door.

Fighting McDonagh’s Bar 1956

Chief Sullivan, Pat Cavendish, and Karlosky were waiting for Bill in Fighting McDonagh’s Bar. Sullivan was wearing a trench coat; Cavendish in his usual rolled-up shirtsleeves and slacks, no matter the temperature; Karlosky in a brown leather jacket that might’ve come from the Soviet air force.

Bill carried a tommy gun Sullivan had issued him the night before—but he wished he didn’t have to carry it. He’d gone on bombing missions, but he’d never dropped the bombs himself. Still, it was beginning to look as if guns were going to be as much a part of life in Rapture as Jet Postal and bathyspheres.

It was early morning and the bar was closed. The wooden planks of the floor creaked under his tread as he came up to the group of armed men waiting near the window. Those planks always reminded Bill reassuringly of old pubs back home. A killer whale, big as a Cadillac, cruised by the window, slick black and white, in no hurry, a large eye rolling to peer curiously in at them.

“They ready down there?” Bill asked. He was wearing a deputy constable’s badge. He was even more uncomfortable with that than with the gun. Elaine had been right weepy when she’d heard he’d been deputized. It was only temporary, till they recruited more constables. Quite a number of them had been killed by splicers. It was risky—and it meant he was subject to the orders of Pat Cavendish, the new head constable, a right bastard if ever he’d met one.

Sullivan nodded. “They should be right outside the door of the wharf, keeping their goddamn mouths shut, I hope.”

“Where’s this hideout hiding out at?” Bill asked.

“Witness says it’s in a cavern under the fisheries. We think they bring the stuff into Rapture with a sub; then they take it in an unregistered bathysphere through a tunnel to their hideout. Right now the sub’s accessible to us in bay 2—word is, they haven’t moved the contraband out of the sub to the cave yet.”

“We going to be able to find the contraband on the sub?” Cavendish asked. “Probably hidden good.”

Sullivan scratched his unshaven chin. “We worked out that the stuff’s probably being smuggled in one of the fuel tanks. They’re refilling their fuel way more often than they need to. Meaning they aren’t carrying as much fuel as they should. Something’s taking up that fuel space.”

A voice was crackling from Sullivan’s handheld radio. “Ready to go, Chief!”

“Okay, Grogan, we’re coming down,” Sullivan said, speaking into the radio. “Soon as we’re there—we hit ’em!” He stuck the radio in a coat pocket, hefted his shotgun, and said, “Let’s go!”

Sullivan led the way; they followed him down a series of stairs, through hatches and doors, past the wharfs—and into a passage that led to the sub bay.

Six constables, heavily armed, were waiting at the rusting door to the sub bay. Sullivan trotted toward them, signaling “go ahead” with his gun hand.

Constable Grogan raised a pistol in acknowledgment. He was a stocky, freckle-faced man with sandy hair and a bushy, rust-colored mustache. A badge glinted on the lapel of his suit. He threw the latch, opened the metal door with a shove of his shoulder, and he and the others rushed in. Sullivan, Cavendish, Karlosky, and Bill were close on their heels. Cavendish was grinning like a wolf; Karlosky, smiling grimly, pistol in hand; Sullivan, pale and grave. Bill started to move past Cavendish.

“Hang back, McDonagh,” Cavendish said. “Leave this to the real officers. We’ll call you to the front line if we need to.”

Bill had a mind to hand Cavendish his badge and tell him where to shove it, but he silently dropped back to the rear. He wasn’t eager to pull the trigger on anyone.

They ran across a bank of carved-out rock into a great, echoing metal room with its own ocean-water lake. The room smelled of diesel and ocean brine. A converted 312-foot Balao-class submarine, without the deck guns, rocked in a flat calm. Lit by electric lights on steel rafters, the hangarlike room was just big enough to contain the submarine and enough water for it to submerge in. To the left, through the translucent water, Bill saw underwater steel doors that led into the air lock and the open sea. Purportedly there was another, smaller side channel, along the way, for the bathysphere to take to Smuggler’s Hideout. A big yellow fishing net was folded up on the afterdeck of the floating submarine. A pontoon gangway ran from the stony verge just inside the door out to the rust-streaked vessel. On the side of the conning tower was stenciled:

The constables were already running along the gangway. Bill was at the rear, looking nervously around. There was no sign of life, not much noise—maybe a slight purr of an idling motor from the sub. Then Bill caught a flicker of movement up in the rafters, beyond the glare of the lights. He leaned back, craning his neck to look, shading his eyes with a hand. He just made out a face up there, someone on a catwalk near the ceiling. Bill had seen the man with Fontaine before. Reggie, his name was, and he seemed to be speaking into a handheld radio.

“Sullivan, Cavendish—wait!” Bill shouted, stopping on the gangway. “There’s something wrong—someone’s up there.”

Sullivan hesitated just before the sub, looking around as if he suspected something himself. Cavendish and Karlosky stopped to look back at him in puzzlement.

Grogan was already on the submarine’s top deck with two other men. Others were scrambling onto the metal grating, rushing toward the hatch.

“Get that hatch open!” Grogan yelled.

“In the rafters, up there, Sullivan!” Bill shouted. But there was a groaning, a churning at the submarine’s aft. Vapor bubbled up, reeking of diesel; the water moiled and seethed…

The submarine began to descend. It eased forward as it sank, heading toward the underwater doors opening in the submerged wall. The unattached gangway rocked in the waves of the submarine’s descent. Water surged up over the vessel’s bow, rushing over the shouting men on the deck. The submarine picked up speed, suddenly spurting forward and down, as the conning tower dipped under the surface. The men on the deck were swept into the water, then sucked downward in the vessel’s wake, their screams quickly drowned out. The submarine angled sharply down, completely submerged now, sailing swiftly through the opened steel doors into the shadowy undersea tunnel. Several men struggled in the sub’s wake, deep underwater, silhouettes seen dimly in the water. They were like children’s toys going down a drain, drawn by the suction of the closing doors.

Bill squinted up at the ceiling again, raising his tommy gun for a shot at Reggie, but he was gone.

They fished the survivors from the water. Grogan hadn’t made it. He had drowned, in that tunnel somewhere.

Standing together on the stone verge just inside the door to the now strangely empty room—the sodden Sullivan, Bill, Karlosky, and Cavendish stared at the water, now calm, the gangway rocking gently on its pontoons.

“They had ’er ready to go,” Bill observed. “Just threw a switch, and she’s off. The bastards went out of their way to take the bloody sub down fast. They wanted to drown as many of us as they could.”

“We’re lucky more didn’t go down with it,” Sullivan said. “Goddammit… Grogan was a good man.”

“I reckon I saw Fontaine’s man Reggie, up in the rafters,” Bill said. “Didn’t have a chance to tell you. It was him. Whoever it was, they were using a radio.”

Sullivan looked up. “Yeah? Giving the signal to submerge…”

“That’s what I figure. They were waiting for us. Hard to keep this raid a secret—hard to keep anything a secret long in Rapture, Chief. We’re too crowded and becoming too bloody incestuous.”

“Of course, you know what the bastards will say,” Sullivan growled. “Fontaine will say that the sub was about to depart to do a job—and we just picked a bad time to go aboard. They’ll claim they had no idea we were there. But there’s one thing. I’ve still got a witness. Herve Manuela. He can point us to more evidence.”

Bill nodded. He looked toward the closed, submerged steel doors. And wondered where Grogan’s body was floating now…

Andrew Ryan’s Office 1956

“Andrew?”

Annoyed, Ryan looked up from his paperwork to see Diane in the doorway of his office. She had a you’ll-never-guess-what expression on her face. “Well?”

“Frank Fontaine is here to see you!”

Ryan sat back in his chair. He picked up a pencil and flipped it through his fingers thoughtfully. “Is he now? He has no appointment.”

“So should I tell him to go away?”

“No. Is Karlosky out there?”

“He’s the one who stopped Fontaine coming in. They’re kind of having a big-boy pissing contest of some kind—I mean, Karlosky and that man Reggie. He’s here with Fontaine.”

“Tell Karlosky to come in—and then bring Fontaine and his man in. This is overdue. It may prove interesting…”

“Very well. Can I—”

“No. You’ll wait outside.”

She pouted but went out to the entry room. Ryan wished he hadn’t given Elaine the day off. He was seriously tired of Diane’s airs, her possessiveness. He felt less and less like spending time with Diane; he needed one of his little intervals with Jasmine Jolene. A womanly woman, that Jasmine. A childbearer, with beauty and talent.

Karlosky came in, taking a pistol from a shoulder holster. He held it down by his side and stood to Ryan’s left, watching the door as Reggie came in. Reggie didn’t show a gun—but Ryan knew he had one.

Reggie glanced at Karlosky. “Tell him to put that heat away, Mr. Ryan.”

Ryan shrugged. “Holster the gun, if you please.”

Karlosky glared at Reggie before he holstered the pistol. Reggie looked like that wasn’t going to be good enough—but Frank Fontaine himself walked in then, long overcoat unbuttoned, hands in his pants pockets. He looked like a guy out for a walk on Broadway. His three-piece, light-blue suit was exquisitely tailored and pressed. Immaculate spats adorned his shoes, and a watch fob gleamed at his vest.

Fontaine looked relaxed, pleased with himself. The arrogant rascal, Ryan thought—almost admiringly.

“Normally,” Ryan said, “I require an appointment. But I’ve been wanting to talk to you in person. We lost a good man trying to inspect your sub.”

Fontaine grinned. “You wanted to inspect the subs, Mr. Ryan, well, you should have made an appointment.” Fontaine spread his hands in mock regret. “If you don’t tell us in advance… you might end up with your constables floating about facedown again.”

Ryan leaned forward, letting the anger show on his face. “You knew damn well we were coming!”

“You did another inspection the very next day, and one after that. You found nothing. I’m not smuggling anything, Ryan. That’s why I’ve come here. To set the record straight.”

“I don’t expect you to admit it, Fontaine. I understand that you and the truth are not on speaking terms. You were authorized to bring fish and fish only into Rapture. Unauthorized contact with the outside world is dangerous! We will put a stop to it— within the laws of Rapture…”

Fontaine looked at Ryan almost pityingly. “You guys are imagining things. The only outside world I’m in touch with are a lot of fish. You can’t call ’em close-mouthed, but they’re not telling tales about Rapture to anyone. I’m the one with a bone to pick, Ryan. I’ve heard rumors you’re planning to ban plasmids. They’re Rapture’s most sought-after product. The people won’t tolerate being deprived…”

“Deprived of their addictions?”

Fontaine shrugged. “Power is addictive. What do you know about that, Ryan?”

Ryan felt his hands clenching, blood rushing to his face. Then he forced himself to relax and lean back. He shook his head and chuckled. Fontaine was smart. He’d hit a nerve. “We’re not going to ban all plasmids. But there are some I won’t tolerate…”

“Such as?”

“Such as Teleport.”

“Too hard to keep people in Rapture? They can’t teleport that far!”

“Maybe just to a passing ship… and if Rapture is invaded—you’ll lose all your assets. You know they’ll find some excuse to seize everything.”

“Now there you’ve got a point, Ryan.” Fontaine lowered his voice and looked at Ryan earnestly. “I’m not risking Rapture—just know that much. I’m not letting anyone know we’re here. I’m making a living. So I don’t have to lean on plasmids too much…”

He said it like he was making an offer. Ryan figured Fontaine was indirectly telling him: I’m smuggling but I’m not putting us at risk—stop worrying about my smuggling, and I’ll go easy on marketing forbidden plasmids…

That was a deal Ryan wasn’t making. Ryan wondered if this was the moment to deal with Fontaine another way entirely—maybe it wasn’t in line with Rapture philosophy to simply have Karlosky shoot him dead. But it’d save a damn lot of trouble. He was tempted. Still—there was the risk of what Reggie might do if Fontaine went down. And Fontaine’s other men. He settled for an implied ultimatum. “No smuggling, Fontaine—and no Teleport.”

Fontaine’s smile went crooked on his face. “I’m finding Teleport problematic too. People who use it get extra crazy—they’re giving me problems. I’ve got my own security issues…”

“Security issues? You act as if you have your own little fiefdom here in Rapture.”

“If I do—you gave it to me, Ryan. By deceiving people about what they’d find in your pretty undersea ‘utopia.’ By not providing for them once they got here.”

“Everyone has a chance to earn their way,” Ryan snapped back. “Only parasites and slaves remain in their little dilemmas.”

“Is that right?”

Their gazes locked.

“What exactly are you up to, in that Little Sisters Orphanage, Fontaine?” Ryan asked. “You barely take care of the boys in the other wing of the orphanage. It all seems to be about the girls. If you’re using them for your personal little playthings…”

Fontaine’s eyes flashed. “What do you take me for? I’m like you. I like full-grown women. As for the orphanage,” Fontaine went on blandly, “we’re just trying to give back to the community.”

He managed to say it with a straight face.

Ryan snorted. “I’ll figure it out eventually. One thing I’m sure of—you’re using that ‘food for the poor’ charity to recruit people into your little syndicate. I’ve known mobsters to do the same thing.”

“Mobsters?” Fontaine took a step toward the desk. “I don’t have to stand for that.”

Ryan moved near the security-alert button on the edge of his desk. Maybe this was the moment after all…

“What I’m here for really,” Fontaine said sharply, “is to tell you that if you leave me alone—I’ll leave you alone. All that recruiting you’re guessing about won’t come and bite you in the ass. If. You back. The fuck. Off! You respect strength, Ryan. Well, respect mine. I’ve got six more armed men out in the corridor. And I’m leaving here now, so don’t interfere with me. I won’t distribute any new Teleport. But there just might be some other new plasmids. And you people are going to live with them. Because I’m changing everything, Ryan. I’m changing it from the inside out. And no one can stop me. We can do this easy—or the hard way…”

Fontaine beckoned to Reggie and they stalked out of the room.

Rapture Detention 1956

They walked under the dimming-glowing-dimming lights of the cellblock, Sullivan following Redgrave and Cavendish, their footsteps reverberating. Constable Redgrave was a medium-sized, wiry black man with a Southern accent. He was vain of his white linen suit. Cavendish spun a police truncheon on a thong as he walked along.

The overhead lights spat a few sparks and guttered again. Water dripped down. There were shallow puddles in the metal hallway.

“We’re gonna get fucking electrocuted in here,” Sullivan said.

“Always a possibility,” Cavendish said. “Tell your friend McDonagh. Got a lot of leaks now. Can’t afford to lose any more men.”

Sullivan grunted to himself. “Lot of our best men transferred over to keep order in Persephone. I hear that Lamb woman is still up to some rabble-rousing… how she does it from jail, we don’t know.”

“Subversion’s easier to deal with than getting electrocuted…”

A splicer just ahead of Cavendish reached out from the barred windows of his cell, screeching, “Electrocuted? Did I hear ya say you want to be electrocuted? To be punished for your crimes? Here you are, you bastards!”

Electricity flickered along the splicer’s arm—and sputtered out.

“Don’t worry about that one,” Cavendish said. “He’s got no EVE left in him. Can’t do anything with his ADAM…” And Cavendish cracked the splicer’s elbow hard with his truncheon. The impact made an ugly crunching sound, and the man jerked his arm back in, shrieking in pain.

“You broke it!”

“You deserved it,” Cavendish said, yawning, as they passed onward. “Ah, there it is. Number twenty-nine.”

As they strode up to the door, Sullivan hoped the denizen of cell number 29 was ready to talk. Herve Manuela wasn’t a splicer—he was quite sane. They’d caught him carrying a large box of contraband. He’d worked closely with Fontaine’s man Peach Wilkins at the fisheries. He was finally ready to make a plea deal, but he was still scared of crossing Fontaine.

“Hey, Manuela!” Sullivan called as Cavendish unlocked the door. Redgrave was standing to one side, using his white handkerchief to polish his chrome-plated revolver, whistling to himself.

As they stepped through the open door, Sullivan could smell the putrefied blood…

Herve Manuela was lying facedown in blood-splashed prison blues. He was missing most of his head. Strands of dark hair were glued to the wall by dried blood. It looked to Sullivan—his stomach lurching as he contemplated the mess—as if someone had grabbed Manuela and smashed his head so hard against the wall it had simply exploded. Only splicers had the strength to do that.

“Son of a bitch,” Cavendish said. “Hey, Redgrave, look at this shit!”

Redgrave looked through the door and made a gagging face. “Lord, that’s one bad mess, sure is! Who done that, boss?”

Sullivan turned away in disgust. “You didn’t do this, Cavendish?”

Cavendish was capable of something like that. He was strong and brutal. He might be pretending to be surprised.

“Me? Hell no!”

“You definitely had the door locked?”

“Goddamn right it was locked! Hey—there’s something else…” He pointed at the opposite wall.

Sullivan looked—and saw words written in blood:

“Lamb!” Sullivan muttered. Ryan could jail the woman, but she was still a thorn in his side.

He snorted, shaking his head. “Love to all!”

Olympus Heights 1956

Jasmine Jolene had a very comfortable apartment in Olympus Heights, almost as close to the surface of the sea as the council’s conference room. Sipping his martini, Ryan felt a certain pride. A chandelier gleamed; a picture window and the intricately framed skylight offered views into the sea. Turning to gaze out the broad window, Ryan could just make out the red of sunset, the setting sun adding a muted crimson to the iridescent scales of a school of big blue-fin tuna sweeping by.

He glanced at the bedroom door, wondering what was keeping Jasmine. He’d left her lolling on the enormous pink-plush bed, with its pink-satin headboard.

There was a kitchen, a Frigidaire stocked with food, and a liquor cabinet with the best brandies and wines. Andrew Ryan had given Jasmine all this. He had provided for her. The small salary Sander Cohen gave her for her rather clumsy, poorly attended performances in the Fleet Hall would not have paid for much more than Artemis Suites. But she earned her luxuries—Andrew Ryan saw to that, once or twice a month, and with some vigor for a man his age.

He tightened his red silk bathrobe and sipped his martini. Feeling the alcohol, he frowned and put the drink down on the flamboyantly carved side table. That would have been his third martini. He hadn’t been much of a drinker before coming to Rapture. He’d kept it to a minimum until recently. But it seemed to be creeping up on him.

The complainers had opportunities to make a good life in Rapture. They simply did not have the will to make use of them. Work two jobs, three if necessary. Cut rations in half. Squandering their Rapture dollars on ADAM just to have an electrical joust with some drunk. What do you expect? But they always blamed him when they failed.

The graffiti was still out there: Andrew Ryan doesn’t own me.

And, Organize Artemis! The Collective Lives! Trust Lamb! And the enigmatic: WHO IS ATLAS?

Slogans. It started with slogans. Then it became Communist revolution. Mass murder of real workingmen by parasites.

And indeed—who was Atlas? Sullivan’s intel suggested the name was a pseudonym for some Red organizer. Some would-be Stalin…

Something was going out of balance. The top was spinning, left, right, left, right, wobbling, about to fall…

“Um, Andrew darling, there’s something I need to tell you…”

He turned to see Jasmine, looking rather more full-figured than usual in a pink negligee. She wore pink slippers with little gold puffs on the toes. She patted her golden hair nervously, though she’d already spent some considerable time brushing and grooming after their lovemaking. “What is it, my dear?”

“I…” She licked her lips, and her gaze wandered restlessly to the big window. Her thick black eyelashes batted. She’d always blinked rather too much. “Um…”

There was something she wanted to tell him. She was afraid to, he realized. “Come, come, Jasmine, I won’t bite, what is it? Out with it!”

She chewed a lip, hesitated, started to say something, then shook her head. She looked around with a quiet desperation—then pointed at the corner of a window. “Um—those. Snail things or… whatever they are.”

He looked at the lower edge of the window. Some spiny crustacean was creeping across a corner of the glass outside. “You wish to have your window cleaned of those things? I’ll try and get a crew up here when you’re at work. You know how they like to stare in at you when you’re home.”

“You can’t tell where they’re looking in those big dark helmets. Scary ol’ big daddies, I call ’em.”

“Is there something else you wanted to tell me, Jasmine?”

She closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and shook her head. He could see she’d made up her mind not to tell him.

Ryan opened his arms to her—and she came to him. He enfolded her in a warm embrace, and they gazed out the window, where the light was fading, the shadows of the deep rising with the coming of night…