1958

Somewhere Beneath the Atlantic Ocean


"Fuck this," snarled Peach, spitting phlegm onto the dock. "And fuck Fontaine."

Peach Wilkins was a pudgy, rattish man with nicotine-stained teeth and fish-stained overalls and a scowl that could stop a clock. He had a permanent five o'clock shadow and his breath smelled potently of tuna. Which wasn't so unusual in of itself, when one made a living out of the fishing industries of Port Neptune, but Wilkins had a tendency to breath out every time he opened his mouth, his words piggybacking on his halitosis.

"You don't fuck Fontaine," groused Heymans Breda, picking through the Fisheries's customs manifest and trying not to think about Peach's breath slithering over him like a glutinous gray eel, making the small hairs on his neck curl. "Fontaine fucks you."

Wilkins grunted in noncommittal agreement. The two men departed the Fontaine Fisheries for Pier Four, ignoring the narrow eyes of the Port Authority at every junction. Heymans tucked the clipboard a little closer to his chest, occasionally flashing his teeth in a disingenuous smile whenever one of the constables gave them the stink eye. For all their rubbernecking, however, Andrew Ryan's goons didn't bother Peach and Heymans. Breda knew his associate kept a gutting knife squirreled away somewhere under the heavy rubber of his apron, in case one of the Port Authority spooks ever pressed their luck.

"He's putting the screws on us, and double," muttered Peach, once the two of them were well out of earshot, emerging from Pier Four onto the Lower Wharf of Neptune's Bounty. Split into three parts, the Wharf was a hub of activity during working hours, with the fishing subs of Rapture going in and out to deliver their catch. That late in the evening, empty save for the shadows and the smell of fish, Breda thought it was just plain creepy. They splashed through frigid pools of stagnant seawater. The small, wet pebbles that lined the piers sparkled in the mildew-green light of the ocean. The water was almost still, small waves occasionally hitting the tanks. The fish stared at them with unblinking, unknowing eyes, silent witnesses on their insubordinate little chin-wag.

"Fontaine's squeezing us out of eighty percent our cut with the threat of turning us in to Ryan if we don't stomach it," Wilkins went on, nattering. "Son of a bitch."

"You're telling me," muttered Breda, humoring the sod. "Fontaine can sell this shit at a far higher margin than he's paying us to smuggle it in here."

Peach worried at a hangnail, continuing to fidget and mutter as though Breda hadn't spoken: "This started out as simple. Take Fontaine's bathysphere back topside twice a week, pick up beef, real tobacco, you know. But now, Ryan's chief, Bradley, the bastard's up and called smuggling a hanging crime. Hanging? Says any connection to the surface could destroy the city." Peach snorted. "Before long, only difference between this place and topside is whether or not you can open up the damn windows!"

Breda sighed. Peach struck him as being one bad day short of a proper episode, but the fishy little git had a point.

Living in a city a thousand-odd fathoms below the ocean's surface came with certain restrictions, not least of which being the limitations of manufacturing and the lack of raw materials. But where Rapture's walls ended, Fontaine's ventures began.

While the likes of Peach had been bulldozed into doing Fontaine's dirty work, Breda had served as Frank's chief broker for the past several years. Sure, Fontaine had Heymans by the short hairs just like the rest of them, but the price disparity due to the cost of supply was so incentivizing, Breda couldn't help but admit how lucrative the enterprise was. Rather than encourage local producers to get creative, to supply at a lower cost through competition, Rapture's isolation meant certain goods could only be obtained through smuggling. Not just meat and baccy and booze, but more incriminating wares... Bibles. News reels. Trotzky, Mandel, Marx. The sort of Red stuff that made Old Man Ryan sweat.

Breda took another look at the list in his hand: bills of lading, specifications regarding the nature and quantity of the cargo. He even kept the goddamn receipts, scribbled in incomprehensible Icelandic. Breda checked over his arithmetic as he and Peach came to the junction between the Jet Postal and the Fighting McDonagh's pub.

"I need a drink," decided Peach, wiping his mouth with the back of his filthy rubber glove. "You comin'?"

"Bill working tonight?"

"It's Tuesday, ain't it?"

Breda shook his head, eyebrows furrowing. "I'm not keen on crossing paths with Andrew Ryan's general contractor right after a haul. Bill McDonagh's a straight arrow, but he's Ryan's man. Don't need him having one too many and saying the wrong thing to the Rapture Council."

Peach shrugged, eyes glazing over, not able to see further than his next bottle. "Suit yourself."

Breda watched him stagger down the corridor and around the corner, towards the warmth and light and noise spilling from the doors of the Fighting McDonagh's. Heymans swallowed down the acidic bite of envy, thinking of an Old Harbinger ale and one of McDonagh's, frankly, amazing cornbeef sandwiches, served warm with chips. Then he shook his head, pivoted on his heel, and went back the way he'd come, stomping through the viaduct walkway, clutching Fontaine's cargo manifest in one white-knuckled fist.

Back on the empty Wharf, Heymans paused before the big window looking out onto the seafloor. He saw the gleaming, almost metallic flanks of fish wheel in schools through the opaque water, glowing under the neon-blue illumination of the Fontaine Fisheries sign. Breda moved closer. The fixed flood of the Pier Four lights enveloped the small fish. They came sliding, drifting, mouths aperturing in motion, gills rippling against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at him.

Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Breda felt an unexpected compunction. He took the last page of the manifest, crumpled it, and tossed it over the lip of the tank, watching it disintegrate into pulp amidst the brine.

The crates of expensive Scotch whiskey the manifest recounted had already met a similar fate somewhere near Surtsey, off the coast of Iceland. An entire portion of Fontaine's smuggled goods, lost to the sea.

"Run out of fish food, Breda?"

"Jay-sus Christ––"

Heymans's heart leapt into his throat as he whirled around, his pulse sounding so loud in his ears he almost didn't hear the dark, smoky chuckle sound from the shadows. Once the figure emerged into the buzzing blue light, thrown into a dizzying strobe by the Fisheries marquee, Breda really really wished he had Peach and his gutting knife back with him.

You gotta be fucking kidding me, thought Breda, despairingly.

The figure was tall, dark, unfairly handsome, dressed immaculately in a double-breasted blue suit jacket. The lenses of his glasses glinted neon, like a light on an anglerfish. Folks often talked about the color of eyes, blacker than volcanic obsidian and far sharper. From them came an intensity of conviction, an honesty, a peculiar sort of gentleness. Breda reckoned the man knew right proper what was meant by being a gentleman... not a bearing of trite politeness, but one of great spirit, an honor so antiquated and idealistic it was almost laughable.

Ideals... in a place like Rapture. The man had to be stir crazy.

"Where is she?" asked Breda gruffly, trying to move the remainder of the manifest into the lining of his coat, failing when the newcomer's eyes tracked Breda's every movement.

"She?" The visitor flashed his teeth, much in the same way Breda had done to the Port Authority. "I can think of half a dozen places off the top of my head more pleasant than a fish processing facility for a first date."

"Don't take the piss with me, Mustang. Neptune's Bounty is Fontaine's turf, and you're one of Andrew Ryan's guys. Aside from Bradley, you're the most hated sonuvabitch this side of Pauper's Drop. You wouldn't risk coming down here without some sort of protection. So..." Breda crossed his arms, scowling. "Where's your lady friend?"

Former army officer, Rapture Council member, renowned biochemist, and all-around philandering scoundrel Roy Mustang raised his hands in mock surrender. His white gloves were spotless, unlike just about everything else in Rapture. "I'm alone," he said calmly.

"I have your word on that?"

"For whatever it's worth to you."

Heymans snorted. "Less than the fish guts on my boots." Then, before Mustang could go for any hidden weapon of his own –– or snap his fingers and activate that bizarre plasmid of his –– Breda drew a dummy pistol from a holster at his back. He leveled it at Mustang's sternum and moved to take a step forward––

"Drop it."

Heymans hadn't heard her approach, but he felt the barrel of her handgun tickling his hair well enough. He tossed his dummy gun aside, heard the faint plop as it hit the water under the pier. He peered at the figure out of the corner of his eye.

"Alone, huh?" muttered Breda scathingly, glowering at Mustang's hired muscle. She gazed sedately back... and did not lower her firearm. "Hawkeye."

"Breda."

Riza Hawkeye, Mustang's inscrutable bodyguard, stood adjacent to Breda, leveling her pistol at his head in a staunch two-handed grip. She stood with her feet shoulder width apart and her knees slightly bent, bringing her head-height with Heymans. Though she left her finger off the trigger, resting it along the frame of the gun, she kept the sights fixed on Breda even as he jammed his hands into his trouser pockets.

In the dappled light of the tanks, her tightly-bunned blonde hair was the color of an acorn cap, yet her eyes were bright like the acorns themselves. Though he knew her well-enough by reputation, Breda had never seen Hawkeye in person, before –– she was slight in a stringy, athletic sort of way, not weak, just lean and muscular. She stood there with her gun extended, waiting for her boss to make the first move.

"At ease, Lieutenant."

Liutenant... another vet, then, thought Heymans. Breda felt a twang in his chest when he realized she couldn't have been any older than he was, but while he was getting wasted at graduation, she was overseas slogging through the mud of Chambois in the Orne and blowing Jerries to kingdom come. The thought made his head hurt.

True to form, Hawkeye murmured a calm "Yes, sir," and lowered her gun to her thigh, letting out a tight breath as she eyed Breda skeptically.

"You shouldn't be hangin' around here," said Breda coolly, eyes narrowing as Mustang swaggered closer. "You're lucky it's me you ran in to, not Peach."

"It's almost as though I managed that on purpose," said Roy slyly, a ruthlessly intelligent glint in his black eyes. "Besides, we're all civil here, aren't we?"

"Get stuffed. You've got too many fingers in too many pies, Mustang."

The man mirrored Breda by sticking his hands in the pockets of a sleek black greatcoat. Heymans thought the jacket made Mustang look smooth and glossy, like an orca.

"Are you a gambling man, Breda?" queried Roy, seemingly nonplussed by his own non-sequitur.

"Depends on the stakes," replied Heymans, cautiously.

"Say... Frank Fontaine's smuggled goods?"

"You gotta be going soft in the head."

"Then why did you jettison twenty percent of the smuggled cargo off Iceland? Why feed your manifest to the tuna?"

Breda rooted his jaw, acutely aware of the metaphorical thin ice under his boots. "I don't see what you're implying, Mustang," he muttered, trying to play dumb.

"You. Fontaine. The Fisheries. It's a smuggling front, yes? You use the mini subs to bring contraband down from the surface in addition to netting fish. Am I correct, or should I have the Lieutenant bring crayons next time to explain it to you?"

"That kinda talk's just Ryan blowing smoke. Ain't nothing to find down here."

"Don't lie to me, Breda. I'm too smart for that, and I know for a fact that you're too smart for that."

Heymans growled, "You don't know anything about me."

"Heymans Breda," intoned Mustang, steely-eyed. "Westpoint, Class of '45. Graduated top of your class. Airborne trained and Ranger qualified, but the War ended before you saw any action. You designed a new math and computation-based strategy system for your honors project, one of the military's most accurate digital combat simulations––"

"Shut up!" Breda felt the blood rising to his face. "What the hell do you want, Mustang?"

Roy held his hands out in a gesture almost conciliatory. "Your help."

He blinked. "You're kidding."

"Not about this," murmured Hawkeye, startling him. She hadn't so much as twitched since lowering her firearm.

"I asked if you gambled, Breda," continued Mustang, smooth as plate glass. "And the chips you cashed in at Sir Prize last week leads me to believe that you do. But not craps or baccarat or the slots... they're too juvenile, too random, for a Westpoint number cruncher. You're a poker man, I suspect."

Breda felt as though he was being deconstructed, the many layers and masks he'd donned over the years stripped away, like Steinman unwrapping one of his plastic surgery patients.

"In table poker," Roy went on: "the rake is a fraction of each bet placed into the pot. The dealer removes the rake from the pot after each betting round, making change if necessary. The winner of the hand gets the money that remains in the pot after the rake has been removed. Most casinos take around ten percent of the pot, though I think Cohen and his lot down in Fort Frolic take twenty. In any case, after every round, it caps at a little under fifty dollars. Not a whole lot compared to the pot over the course of a busy evening... but not table scraps, either. Especially not in a town like Rapture."

"What are you––"

"You're taking the rake on Fontaine's pot, Breda."

Heymans swallowed. Nausea churned his insides. The neon-blue Fontaine Fisheries sign buzzed over Roy Mustang's head, like the ribband from the Book of Numbers.

"Bearding the lion in his den." Mustang whistled. "You've got some daring."

Heyman's first thought was separate from the feelings in his chest and stomach; it was the observation that Mustang didn't strike him as acting smugly complacent or excessively and unwarrantedly satisfied with himself. The cocksure swagger he'd exuded when he revealed himself had waned to a quiet, considered thoughtfulness, like someone musing and mumbling over a piece of art.

"If you expect some kinda reward from Fontaine for turning me over, you're gonna be sorely disappointed," spat Breda, stabbing a finger at Mustang. "He'll string me up by my toes in the Upper Wharf, kill her," he nodded at Hawkeye, "then take whatever's left of you. You and your weird plasmid power."

"You sound a little on-edge."

"I'm hanging over the fucking cliff, Mustang. Anyone with half a brain rattling around in their skulls knows to be right proper scared of Fontaine."

"Then why cut into his profit?" queried Roy, raising an eyebrow in question. "If he's as terrifying as you say –– and I suspect you've got a valid point there –– why welsh the man?"

"Special compensation. Fontaine don't pay us enough. I'm just looking out for me. That's the Rapture way, innit?"

"I don't buy it. The risk is too high."

Breda leveled on Mustang with crushing intensity, searching his boyish face for some deception. As Roy stared back, his eyes seemed to draw color from the shadows of the wharf and the opaque green of the seabed, to darken with them. Heymans couldn't tell what he was thinking. Granted, Peach was usually the cat on hot bricks when Ryan's goons or the Port Authority managed to corner them, but even Breda had to admit he was nursing a distinct feeling of unease, an almost physical sickness like acid reflux. Mustang made him nervous... but, strangely, unlike Fontaine, he didn't make Heymans feel as though he was being had.

Besides, they had him found out. If Breda refused to play ball, Roy and his guard dog could always go to Ryan with their findings. Like the fish in the tanks, he wasn't exactly swimming in alternatives.

"Few months back," muttered Breda, his gaze dropping to the pier planks, "kid named Timmy got captured and interrogated by Bradley, Ryan's Chief. When Tim wouldn't drag Fontaine, Bradley killed him... electrocuted him using a large battery connected to cables while pouring salt water all over his body."

Mustang's dark eyes also lowered. "I see."

"His corpse is still trussed up where Bradley left it... Frank forbade us from movin' him. Called it a reminder." Breda's hands fisted. "I've been welshing on my agreement with Fontaine 'cause I'm sick to the teeth of him hauling us over the coals. I'm sick to the teeth of Bradley screaming blue murder every time one of us so much as looks at Ryan sideways. Peach and the others reckon Fontaine is cuttin' 'em out of a profit, but a good chunk of the cargo don't even make it into Frank's books. I should know... I keep 'em. And I'm tryin' to hit him where it hurts."

"Money is a language Frank Fontaine speaks with eloquent fluency," murmured Hawkeye, startling Heymans; he had forgotten she was there. "He is far more likely to take note of a decline in gross profit margins than the mewling of a few dissatisfied underlings."

"Timothy Hallahan was confirmed dead two months ago," said Roy, brow creasing in thought, "and you've been raking the pot since then, I take it."

"Yeah, that's right."

Mustang shook his head. "It won't last. Fontaine's a crook, but he's clever. If the disparities become too consistent, then he's liable to sniff out the culprit. Since you're the one doing his books, you'd be the first head he'd bump." The man's severe expression softened. "I think you're a man of conviction, Heymans. I think you're becoming increasingly aware of the danger Fontaine –– and Andrew Ryan –– pose to Rapture. You're trying to do right by yourself and your friends, by Timmy H., by knocking Fontaine down a few pegs with your, ahem... scaled commission fees, but I suspect you're fast approaching a point where the benefits gained will be less than the risk invested."

"You're talkin' about the Law of Diminishing Returns."

Mustang smiled crookedly. "This is Rapture, Breda. This is a world founded upon the concept of no returns."

There was a certain amount of dizziness as Heymans tried to rationalize what Mustang was suggesting. "I'm in too deep," he breathed hoarsely. "I can't quit the Fisheries, now. I wouldn't last a day. Fontaine can't risk his top men getting snatched by Bradley."

"You could stop the rake."

"No."

"Tell me why."

"I didn't know Timmy H. all that well, but a friend of mine did. My best friend. And I had to tell Jean what happened to him. I... I can't do that again, Mustang. I won't."

Roy's eyes glittered in a way that made Breda's neck prickle. "If I could offer a suggestion?"

"Huh?"

"Work for me."

Heymans felt as though his stomach had dropped out. "Come again?"

"Work for me. You can stop welshing Fontaine and keep your cozy position in the Fisheries... but you report to me."

The man was scheming, thought Breda furiously, somehow involved in making secret and underhanded plans behind both Fontaine and Ryan's bent old backs. Breda knew Mustang was the cunning and unscrupulous sort, especially insofar as his career was concerned, but this was an entirely different kettle of fish, and it stank worse than Peach Wilkins's breath.

"What is it you're planning, exactly?"

"Is that a yes?"

Arrogant sod. "I'll decide that when you answer my question."

Roy Mustang worked out a crick in his neck when he confessed, "I am going to get the drop on Frank Fontaine and Andrew Ryan. I am going to rise to the top and run Rapture myself. And I need the help of people like you to do it."

Son of a bitch. It wasn't just Fontaine... Mustang had designs for the whole goddamn city!

Hawkeye was scowling at him, as though silently chastising her boss for letting his schemes slip so casually. Heymans had to admit he couldn't blame her. He wasn't stupid, Roy Mustang, but he trusted a bit too easily.

"And what do I get outta it?" asked Breda before he could stop himself.

"A commission from me, some peace and quiet from the Port Authority –– I can speak to Hughes about keeping them off your tail –– and most importantly... protection, should anything nasty come to a head."

"This whole thing is already nasty."

Hawkeye made a small grunt of acknowledgement. At least she had an ounce of common sense about her, unlike her brown-nosing boss.

"If there's trouble, I assure you I'll keep you from catching the brunt of it. That's more than Fontaine ever did, surely."

"You can't protect everyone."

"I don't need to protect everyone. I can protect the ones I love, and in turn they can protect the ones they love." Mustang let out a gruff, mirthless laugh. "It seems the least we puny humans can do for each other."

"That sounds almost altruistic, Mustang."

"I prefer reciprocity. I merely expect renumeration for services rendered. I defend you, you defend my interests, you defend others, they defend your interests. Quid pro quo."

"You're gonna need a goddamn miracle to make this work."

"Alas, divine providence is in short order in Rapture." He chuckled to himself. "Unless you're contracting to Fontaine for some contraband Bibles, of course."

Hawkeye did not look in the least bit amused, and Roy's laughter died on his lips with a nervous snicker.

"You're askin' me to gamble everything, Mustang," growled Breda, "on your little dog and pony show. You're askin' me to risk my life."

"Well," Roy gave a little turn about the dock, musing over his words like he was sampling one of Fontaine's smuggled vintages, not that diluted shit from Worley Winery, "the way I see it, when we're a couple thousand fathoms under the freezing Atlantic Ocean, risking our lives is stitched into our residency contracts. There are times you can sit and watch from the safety of a porthole and there are moments you need to grit your teeth and take on the ocean pressure.

"And I think, for all his sins, Andrew Ryan is right on one account... crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn't think we possessed. We can change this city, Heymans. We can make it better for the rank and file, for those of us who aren't fossilized like Ryan or bent crookeder than a corkscrew like Fontaine.

"But I can't do it alone."

Breda had worked around monetary accounts long enough to recognize a pyramid scheme when he saw one... each paying participant recruiting two further participants, with returns being given to early participants using money contributed by the later ones. A revolution hinging on participation, and promises compounding promises.

And all the way at the top of the pile, Roy Mustang in his sleek black coat, with Miss Hawkeye two steps behind him.

Hell... the prospect was a sight better than Ryan or Fontaine.

"All right." Breda breathed out through his nose. "All right. I'll help you get to the top, Mustang."

He smiled. In Breda's peripheries, Hawkeye held her head a little higher. "Call me Colonel. It was my rank during the war."

"Fine... Colonel Mustang. You might just be crazy enough to pull this off...