Chapter Two:
Rapture
"Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose…Rapture!" -Andrew Ryan
Underneath the Atlantic Ocean
As the 18 Fathoms sign receded from view, a projector screen rose up in front of my face, blocking my view of the ocean outside. From somewhere in the back of the submersible, a projector began to roll, sending a picture of a tower in the middle of water onto the screen. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was the tower that my plane had crashed into, where I had entered and was now descending from. Might as well enjoy the show, I thought to myself.
A black and white slide, an advertisement for something called "INCINERATE" appeared on the screen. "Fire at your Fingertips!" the heading read. "Plasmids by Ryan Industries". A handsome man was depicted in the ad, producing a flame from his finger and lighting the cigarette of a beautiful woman, who was smiling at him. A sudden craving for a cigarette lanced through my brain, but then I remembered that the one I had smoked on the plane was the last in my pack.
Another picture appeared, a portrait of a man sitting at a desk, wearing a suit and sporting a cheerful but firm attitude in his expression. "From the desk of RYAN," proclaimed the words to the right of the desk. A man's voice began to play through an unknown speaker system inside the bathysphere.
"I am Andrew Ryan," the voice said, "and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" A drawn image of a hardworking farmer appeared on the screen, wiping perspiration from his face. A barn and windmill stood behind him, among a vast field. It looked a lot like the farm I grew up on.
"No', says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor." Ryan's voice continued, as a slide of a menacing eagle played out on the screen, talons open and beak ready to attack the same poor farmer, who cowered in the corner of the picture. Behind the eagle was the White House, and an American flag.
"No', says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God." said Ryan. A new image, one depicting a giant hand reaching out of the heavens toward the farmer, appeared on the projection.
"No', says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone!" the voice said with a note of finality. A third slide shone onto the screen. From the cloud-filled sky over the Kremlin, a hammer and sickle stood ready to smash and stab the minute figure of the farmer on the ground.
"I rejected those answers," said Ryan's voice furiously. "Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose…Rapture!" The screen retracted into the floor suddenly, and my jaw dropped with shock at what I saw beyond the glass.
Through the window, a massive underwater city lay sprawled across the ocean floor, with fish swimming between the tall buildings and glass tubes connecting everything. A monstrous squid swam past the sub, tentacles trailing, and I could only gape in wonder at this impossible spectacle of engineering. Whoever this Ryan was, he was a genius, to be sure.
"A city," the voice of Andrew Ryan broke into my thoughts, "where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
The bathysphere was moving through the city, passing between the mighty buildings with ease. A monstrous noise rang out through the water, and slowly, a giant whale appeared from behind two "skyscrapers". An actual whale was swimming through the city! It was magnificent, no question. But even as awe-inspiring as Rapture was, I still wondered how on earth something this big could be kept so secret from the outside world. How could the US, England, or even the Russians not know about this?
The whale passed under the submersible as voices began to play out of a small radio on the left side of the machine's door. A man with an Irish accent was talking.
"…all lit up like hellfire. Looks like some kind of plane crash."
"We're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," another man, an American, was responding. "How could it?"
"I don't know. You'd best get over there, and be quick about it. The Splicers are comin'," said the Irishman.
"You gotta be kidding me! How did they know we were coming?"
"The bathysphere's on its way down. That means we've got company."
The sub pulled through a series of metal rings with neon lights on them, which read, "ALL GOOD THINGS OF THIS EARTH FLOW INTO THE CITY". It came to rest inside a cylindrical station after passing through the last ring. I felt the sphere begin to rise up as the water drained off of its metal plating.
"Just one more minute!" the American called through the radio. "The sphere…the sphere's coming up now!"
"Charlie, security's crying wolf all over, get a move on!" the Irishman responded, panic edging his voice.
Outside, all I could see was darkness, broken only by the dim flickering of an overhead lamp. A silhouette was visible against the glass window on the back wall of the room. It was human, slowly backing towards the sub, arms held out in front of it, as if to ward something off. Something was moving towards him from out of the gloom.
"Just don't hurt me! Just let me go!" he pleaded to his unseen assailant. This must be Charlie, I thought. His voice was the same as it had been over the radio. The light shone out on Charlie, revealing a woman advancing on him, sharp metal blades grasped in her hands. She had murder in her eyes, and looked at Charlie like a hawk watching its prey.
Without warning, the woman lunged forward, slashing across Charlie's stomach. The wounded man choked and gagged, crying for her to stop as more blood gushed out. The woman pinned Charlie against the bathysphere's door and drove a blade into his body, splattering viscera onto the glass. A final slash of the weapons finished off Charlie, sending him dying to the ground in a spray of gore.
Panting like a dog, the murderous woman looked up from her unfortunate victim, staring through the sub window right at me.
"Is it someone new?" she asked in a hoarse voice that made my blood run cold.