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
RAPTURE OPPRESSORS
And on another was
BE WARNED
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.
