her tape recorder. Ryan had gone on an errand to Hephaestus and was going to give some kind of New Year’s address over the radio.
“Well, love…” Bill said, toasting his wife with the champagne glass. Trying to pretend he was enjoying himself. “In just a few minutes it’ll be 1959…”
Elaine McDonagh nodded slowly and forced another weak smile. The fear flared in her eyes, then dutifully hid itself again. She gave him the brave look that always tore at his heart. “It is! It’s almost New Year’s, Bill…” She looked at the other tables, filled with revelers in jeweled masquerade costumes and masks. They were waving noisemakers, laughing, talking loudly over the music, doing their best to celebrate. Her gaze took in the bunting, the banners, the circular hot-pink neon sign, specially made up for the party: Happy New Year 1959. “It’s funny, Bill—all these years down here … Sophie growing up without seeing the sun … now the war … and it’s almost 1959 … Time passes all funny in Rapture, doesn’t it? It’s slow and fast both…”
Bill nodded. Elaine was increasingly homesick, and scared. But he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man who had taken him out of the loo and made him a real engineer. Sure, Ryan was giving way to hypocrisy—but he was only human. And maybe it was true that Rapture had to go through this transition period before getting back on track. They just had to clear out the Atlas types, the worst of the splicers, and Lamb’s followers.
He noticed Elaine staring around at the armed men, the constables standing guard near the walls. The guards weren’t wearing masquerade masks. Scores of gunmen, there to protect this exclusive gathering from rogue splicers.
Constable was the one job you could stand a good chance of getting, if you were out of work in Rapture—because the mortality rate for constables was so high.
Bill was glad to see Brenda bringing each constable a flute of champagne on a tray to get ready for midnight. Made it seem more festive.
A gun in one hand, a champagne glass in the other, he thought ruefully. That’s Rapture.
He had a pistol under his coat; Elaine had one in her pearl-beaded white purse.
“Do you think Sophie’s all right?” Elaine asked, toying with her glass, looking anxiously at the clock.
“Sure, she’ll be fine.”
“Bill, I want to go home as soon as we get past New Year’s Eve. Like at twelve-oh-five, okay? I don’t like to leave Sophie with the sitter long in this place … I don’t know if Mariska can use a gun, really. I mean, I left her one, but…”
“Don’t worry; we’ll leave a few minutes after midnight, love.”
The Count Basie song finished, and Duke Ellington started. Wearing their gawdy party masks, a half dozen couples were dancing in a cleared space between the tables, forced smiles held stiffly on their faces.
Bill wondered what music the rest of the world was listening to. Music in Rapture had to be outdated. There were rumors about something called rock ’n’ roll.
Trying to change Elaine’s mood, he took her hand, pulled her to her feet, got her dancing to the Duke Ellington number. They used to love going dancing together in New York …
Then the song stopped, simply cut off in midtune, and the countdown started, led by a giddy Sander Cohen: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”
Bill pulled Elaine close for the midnight kiss …
That’s when the explosion came. The doors exploded inward, knocking three constables like rag dolls into the center of the room. Bill shoved their table over for partial cover, pushed Elaine to the ground behind the tabletop, and covered her with his body. Machine-gun rounds ricocheted from the bulletproof windows to slam through tuxedos, to wound squealing women in their glittering finery. Elaine was screaming something about Sophie. Another bomb flew into the room and detonated—body parts spun overhead, spraying blood. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing as machine-gun bullets raked the room—as if the gunfire were part of the New Year’s Eve revelry. Screams … More gunshots …
Faces that seemed frozen, mocking: the invading splicers were wearing masquerade-party masks—domino masks, feathered masks, golden masks …
Andrew Ryan’s voice came from the public address, at that moment, as he made his New Year’s speech …
“Good evening, my friends. I hope you are enjoying your New Year’s Eve celebration; it has been a year of trials for us all. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city…”
Bill peered around the edge of the table, saw a splicer in a black mask yelling, “Long live Atlas!”
Another, running through the cloud of smoke at the shattered doors, bellowed: “Death to Ryan!”
“… It was your strength of will that brought you here, and with that strength you shall rebuild. And so, Andrew Ryan offers you a toast. To Rapture, 1959. May it be our finest year.”
“Diane!” Elaine shouted.
Bill turned to see Diane McClintock crawling past on her hands and knees, dazed face bloodied, her green dress had become red-stained rags. “Diane—get down!” he called.
Beyond her, some of the constables were ducking behind the bar—and grinning. Bill realized that some of them had been in on this. A security bot went whistling by overhead, firing at a thuggish splicer cartwheeling into the room. A nitro splicer in a fur-fringed white mask was throwing another bomb, which blew up on a table under which three men in tuxes crouched—their tuxedos and their flesh mingled wetly in the blast.
Bill hoped to God the rogue splicers had the common sense not to throw too many bombs near the windows. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, but they could only take so much.
“Come on, Elaine, we’re off!” he said gruffly, trying to get some steel into her spine. “And bring your purse.”
He tugged out his pistol, the two of them scrambling like doughboys under barbed wire till they were under one of the few tables still standing. A bleeding thuggish splicer was crawling by like a hungry alligator, laughing insanely, his mask down around his neck. ADAM scars crisscrossed the man’s face in livid pink that somehow matched the neon pink of the Happy New Year 1959 sign. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole in the crawling splicer’s neck as he sang croakily, “I’m a little hair, pulled off a chin, about to go into a spin, down the drain drain drain—!” Then he noticed Bill and Elaine—and whipped a hooked blade at Bill’s face. Bill shot him in the forehead.
The blade clattered on the floor. Elaine groaned at the sight of the dead man. They crawled onward.
Bill risked a look over his shoulder and saw a group of loyal constables, including Redgrave and Karlosky, firing above an overturned table at spider splicers crawling across the ceiling near the blown-open doors. A red-masked nitro splicer made a bomb fly through the air with the power of his mind—it flew past the table, then doubled back. Karlosky and Redgrave dove to the side, and the bomb went off. Redgrave rolled, wounded. A shotgun blasted nearby—Rizzo firing over a table at the nitro splicer. The splicer’s face vanished in a welter of red, and a grenade blew up in his hands, his body flying apart like a New Year’s party favor.
Bill crawled onward, one arm over Elaine, who crept along beside him alternately sobbing and cursing. They’d reached the swinging doors into the back kitchen. “Okay, kid,” he whispered in her ear. “On three we jump up and run through them doors. Watch out for my pistol, love, I might have to fire it. One, two—three!”
They were up and rushing through, Bill shouldering the door aside—and firing at a spider splicer hanging upside down from the low ceiling. Wounded, the splicer fell off onto the stove, clattering into pots of boiling water and lit gas burners. Shrieking in pain, the splicer flailed and tumbled off the stove and onto the floor.
Bill and Elaine rushed past into the rear hall. Bill turned left; a gun banged just beside him. He turned to see Elaine pointing her own pistol, its muzzle smoking, her face contorted with anger as a nitro splicer fell back, his head shot open. A grenade fell from his hands and bounced to the floor—
“Down!” Bill yelled, and dragged her behind a steel kitchen cart, covering her with his body—and then the bomb went off. The cart caught the blast and slammed into them with the shockwave, the steel cart cracking painfully into Bill’s right arm. “Ow, buggerin’ hell that hurts!”
“Bill—are you all right?” Elaine asked, coughing as the smoke cleared.
“I’m okay, except me bloody ears are ringing like a mad monk’s church bell! Come on, we got to get up, love!”
They made their way dizzily down the smoky hallway, eyes stinging. Gunfire rattled behind them and explosions shook the floor. Other people were running from the kitchen. He looked back and saw Redgrave stumbling along, wounded in the leg but game enough—Karlosky behind him, urging the wounded Redgrave along.
Rizzo was turning to fire behind them through the door at splicers Bill couldn’t see. A swishing sound—and Rizzo shrieked, the scream becoming a gurgle as a curved blade buried itself in his throat. Rizzo fell back, blood gushing over his tuxedo …
Bill fired at the door—a masked splicer jerked back. Elaine kept tugging on his arm, shouting about Sophie. He let her urge him through the emergency exit to the stairs, and they saw a group of white-faced, scared-looking constables a flight below, yelling up at them: “This way! Down here!”
Hoping they weren’t heading into a trap, Bill and Elaine went with the constables.
A blur of corridors, passages, a checkpoint, another, waving ID cards, an atrium, an elevator …
Time did indeed seem all funny, weirdly collapsed, a telescope snapped shut …
And then they were in their own flat, panting, Bill locking the door. Elaine with her purse in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Hello!” called Mariska Lutz, their sitter, from the next room. “Back already? Have a good time?”
Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office
1959
“It makes me half-crazed to think of it,” Ryan said, voice trembling. He balled the report in his hands and threw it into a corner. “On New Year’s Eve! The cold-blooded treachery of it! They expected me to be there! It was an attack on me—but it was also an attack on the heart and soul of Rapture. Our most accomplished men and women were in that room, Bill, celebrating the new year. And at least six constables betrayed us! We’re lucky Pat Cavendish acted quickly—he shot most of the treasonous scum. But, by God, we must root out any other bad apples.”
He sounded bitter—but rational. Lately, Bill suspected that there was something twisted growing in Andrew Ryan …
Bill and Ryan sat alone in his office, Bill wishing someone were here to back him up. He had to say something Ryan wasn’t going to like.
Shifting in his chair, Bill rubbed his deeply bruised arm where the explosion had knocked the cart into him. His ears still rang a bit; Elaine was haunted by nightmares. “Mr. Ryan—this attack didn’t come out of the blue. It’s because you took out Fontaine. It’s a reaction to that, really. People are saying Rapture doesn’t mean what it used to—nationalizing a business … by force! It gave them the excuse to go a bit mad! That Atlas took the opportunity—lit the fuse of the whole bloody thing…”
Ryan snorted. “It’s not nationalization. I own most of Rapture anyway. I built it! I simply—acted for the best interests of the city! Atlas is just another babbling ‘Pravda,’ a tissue of lies he calls truth! If we let him take hold here, he’ll be another Stalin! The man wants to be dictator! If it’s war—why then so be it!”
“Mr. Ryan—I don’t think it’s a war we can win. It’s the math! Atlas just has too many of them rogue splicers. And too many rebels with him. We need to broker some kind of peace deal, guv—Rapture can’t take a revolution! This city is underwater, Mr. Ryan! It’s in the North Sea! It’s sitting on channels of hot lava! All of that is … oh, crikey, it’s volatile. We’re dying the death of a thousand cuts from leaks already—but one major leak in the wrong part of Hephaestus, and we could have a hell of an explosion. Suppose some of that icy water contacts the hot lava, in a pressurized area? The whole thing would go up! All this fighting risks exactly that kind of damage!”
Ryan looked at him, his gaze suddenly flat. His voice was flatter as he said, “And what do you suggest we offer them?” He closed his eyes and visibly shuddered. “Unions?”
“No, guv—a lot of these blokes worked for Fontaine. The others just want the ADAM. Crave it. Let’s hand over Fontaine Futuristics to Atlas’s lot. It’s not right to go against our principles—to nationalize, Mr. Ryan. We can take the high road, show ’em we stand for something! We can go back to the way we were and give up Fontaine Futuristics!”
“Give them…?” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “Bill—men died to take over the plasmids industry! They will not have died in vain.”
Bill didn’t believe for a moment that Ryan was concerned about who’d died in vain. That was just an excuse. Andrew Ryan wanted the plasmids industry. It was in his nature. He was a tycoon. And the plasmids industry was the biggest prize in this toy store.
“Ryan Industries owns Fontaine Futuristics now,” Ryan went on. “For the good of the city. In due time, I’ll break it up. But I’m not going to give it to that murdering parasite Atlas!”
“Mr. Ryan—we’ve got to stop this war. It’ll destroy us all … there’s no place to retreat to! If we won’t make peace with them—well, if that’s the case, I’ll have to submit my resignation from the council.”
Ryan looked at him sadly. “So you’re walking out on me too. The one man I trusted … betraying me!”
“I’ve got to show you how strongly I feel about this—we’ve got to make peace! It’s not just Atlas—suppose he makes a deal with Sofia Lamb? Her people are fanatics. Now she’s broken out, she’s twice as dangerous! Her mad little cult’ll have a go at us too! We have to stop this war, Mr. Ryan!”
Ryan slammed a fist onto the desk so hard the room echoed with it. “The war can be stopped by winning it! It can be won with superior might, Bill! We can do more and better splicing, use pheromones, keep control of our splicers … and have an unstoppable army of superhuman beings! We have the labs—oh yes, we’re short on ADAM now, it’s true.” He cracked his knuckles. “The Little Sisters we have left can’t produce enough ADAM. But there’s ADAM out there—in all those bodies. I
0 Comments