JUNE 8, 1959 — 11:19 PM
It was late in the evening hours before Officer Sullivan was finally ready to report to Andrew Ryan. It had been much earlier that Ryan was ready to receive him in Central Control, but such was the way of things.
"What are the total casualties?"
Sullivan looked uneasy. Considering the day's events, Ryan expected nothing different.
"We're still working on the tallies, sir." He glanced down at a scratch pad as he spoke; there had been no time to prepare a formal report. "Good news is that so far it looks like the hostility's been limited to Olympus Heights."
In the grand scheme of where good news was concerned, it really wasn't all that good.
"I want the entirety of Apollo Square placed under lockdown." There was nothing in this world that could have matched the ice and steel in Andrew Ryan's voice at that moment. "Not a single rat is to leave the premises until Atlas and every single one of his parasites are exterminated, you hear me?"
"Understood, sir. We've already shut down bathysphere service to and from the Square, and we've got guards stationed at the bulkhead doors."
It wasn't enough, not in Ryan's mind. There couldn't possibly have been enough to quell the rage that simmered within him.
"Show me the damage."
Sullivan hesitated, but he knew better than to cross Ryan at a time like this. He reached into the folder at his side and drew out what photographs they'd already taken of the scene, then carefully slid them across Ryan's desk.
The rush development job had done a number on the quality of the photos, leaving them grainy and lacking in color, but they were enough to clearly show the extent of the damage. The Bistro Square lay in ruins; the Metro station had been entirely destroyed, strewn with the bodies of those attempting a last-minute escape; Athena's Glory had been looted from top to bottom; but worst of all was the remnants of what had occurred at Mercury Suites.
"Did your recovery efforts turn up any survivors?"
Sullivan's hands knotted where they gripped his officer's cap.
"Those that survived were the ones who managed to get out ahead of the worst of it. The rest were either caught in the explosions or...or by the people who set 'em off."
Ryan sifted through the photos as he spoke, searching for details he wasn't yet prepared to acknowledge.
"How were they able to plant explosives in the area?"
"We're looking into that right now. Got some of our patrols from the area in questioning as we speak."
What remained unsaid—the implication that Atlas's propaganda had somehow managed to infiltrate even his security forces, those held to the highest standard of upholding Rapture's values—hung in the air between them like a great invisible weight.
Ryan stared down at the wreckage of Athena's Glory. The question that sat at the forefront of his mind was one that needed an immediate, definitive answer. But his pride prevented him from asking it with any urgency.
"Is there any news regarding my son?"
"Not yet, sir. His apartment was trashed like all the rest, but it doesn't look like anything else went on in there."
The probability was high that Jack had been nowhere near Olympus Heights at the time of the incident; he'd heard some news already that the boy was last seen at the shooting range, after all. But the possibility existed that he had knowingly avoided the attack. The possibility existed that he was somehow complicit in the whole thing.
His time at the shooting range certainly did nothing to disprove either scenario.
Ryan's grip tightened on the photo in his hand.
"He must be found as soon as possible."
Sullivan looked uneasy, even more so than before. But again, he knew better than to voice any argument.
"I'll tell the boys soon as I get back."
Ryan would have preferred him to do so sooner than that. But before he could instruct Sullivan accordingly, his attention fell to the next photo in the stack.
It depicted the scene on the ground floor at Mercury Suites, where the elevator shaft had been destroyed, apartment doors had been cut open and bodies lay in the street.
One of the opened apartments was that of Yi Suchong.
An alarm bell was ringing somewhere in the back of Andrew Ryan's mind.
"Where is Dr. Suchong?"
"There's been no sign of him, either. Maybe they got to him in his apartment, but—"
"You haven't searched the premises?"
"Not yet, sir—"
"Radio your men right now, tell them to drop whatever they're doing and search Yi Suchong's quarters immediately." This deserved urgency. "Do it."
Again, despite the doubt in Sullivan's face, he could offer no protest. He got out his radio and did as Ryan ordered.
The minutes that followed were some of the tensest Ryan had ever known.
"Still no sign of Suchong," came a voice crackling through Sullivan's radio. "But those bombers really did a number on this place."
"Tell them to search the laboratory."
"The laboratory?" But a single look from Ryan reminded Sullivan not to question him. He brought up the radio again: "He's got a lab. Try looking there."
More minutes passed. Then:
"There's nothing here."
The alarm bell's ring grew louder and louder.
It seemed that even Sullivan could hear it. "What do you mean, nothing?"
"The place is a wreck, but it looks like whoever got in here took everything that wasn't nailed down."
The photo crumpled in Ryan's hand.
"Tell your men to conduct a search for Yi Suchong at once. Leave no stone unturned."
"Mr. Ryan—"
"Wait!" The radio crackled again, immediately commanding their attention. "Johnson found something, sir."
Ryan couldn't dare to hope; several drums full of liquid pheromones couldn't be so easily missed, after all. But part of him did, regardless of however much he knew better.
"It looks like...it's an AccuVox, sir. There's something in it..."
AccuVox—Fontaine Futuristics' name brand of personal audio recorders. Ryan's mood was already such that even the remotest connection to Fontaine was enough to make his blood boil.
"Sir—the label on the cassette here, it says... 'To A. Ryan from T. Telamon.'"
But at that, his blood ran cold.
Sullivan stared at Ryan with obvious trepidation. Ryan took a deep, fuming breath, then nodded to him.
"Play it for me."
There was another long moment of tension, but Sullivan nodded in reply. "Play it, Patrick." And then he set the radio on the desk between them.
The audio on the cassette was somewhat difficult to make out through the doubled layer of static, but Ryan's focus was on nothing else.
"Top of the evenin' to you, Mr. Ryan. This would be Atlas speaking."
There was an Irish lilt in the voice, and a tone that sounded almost like laughter. The voice was new to his ears, but there was something distantly familiar in that tone, something that immediately grated on Ryan's nerves.
"I imagine by the time you find this message, one way or another, you'll have guessed what it was we're after. Lucky for us that Dr. Suchong was the sort to work for the highest bidder...but, ah, it seems he did need some more convincing in the end. Not so lucky for you, of course; no matter how or when you've managed to come by this little tape, after all, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do to stop us now."
Ryan had, once again, started to drum his fingers against the desk without fully realizing it. At this, however, he stopped cold.
"I might have tried more peaceful discourse, but you've shown us time and time again that our voices aren't important, as if they're not loud enough to fall upon your ears. Well, is this loud enough for you?"
There was a slow, rolling laugh, and then a deep sigh.
"Your son, though, wee Jack...now there's a lad with a good head on his shoulders. Why, you should have seen the fire in his eyes when he talked about changing this city for the better! But I think you and I both know that talk isn't exactly his strongest suit. You and I both know he was born for better things."
At once, Ryan remembered the theft from Fontaine Futuristics. He remembered the documents that had turned up missing, and as he remembered it, the sound of that alarm grew to drown out all else but the heavily-staticked strains of the voice on the tape.
"So now you've got the big picture, don't you? I've found the aces up your sleeve, and now I've got them up mine. You'd do best not to stop us, Mr. Ryan, because all it'll take is...how'd that go again, doctor?"
There was a heavy, wet noise, a pained cry, and a voice that sounded unbearably like Suchong's:
"Rapture... Rapture is glory..."
"Ah, that's right." Atlas laughed again. "Three little words... That's all it'll take to bring you crashing down, Mr. Ryan—and you know bloody well which three words I mean, don't you?"
A long silence followed, before Sullivan's man Patrick spoke again:
"Sir... That's the end of the reel."
Ryan slowly leaned back in his chair, raised one hand to his chin, and gripped the armrest with the other. He didn't look at Sullivan; his rage was too strong to chance eye contact at the moment.
"Mr. Ryan, sir..." The gravity of the situation was clearly not lost on Sullivan, but the sheer depth of that gravity could not possibly be within his realm of understanding. "If you don't mind my asking, just what—"
"I do mind," snapped Ryan, his voice both sharp and quiet. "Your orders haven't changed, Sullivan. Dr. Suchong, wherever they're keeping him, must be found at once."
"Now hold on just a minute, Mr. Ryan," said Sullivan, leaning forward in his seat with unexpected fortitude. "You want us to find your son, fine, but you still want us to find Suchong too? From the sounds of that tape—I mean, who knows how long ago Atlas recorded it, but it sure as hell don't sound like Suchong's going to be alive and kicking by the time we do find him. And besides that—look, Mr. Ryan, I hate to be so frank with you, but we just don't have the resources to keep a tight watch on Apollo Square and protect the rest of the city and organize search parties for two different people. It'll have to be one or the other."
If Ryan stopped to consider it rationally, he might have agreed with, or at least understood Sullivan's side of things. But the size and weight of his fury made it remarkably difficult to consider anyone's logic but his own.
Before he could properly lay into Sullivan for his audacity, however, another voice—not Patrick, and certainly not Atlas—came crackling through the radio.
"Officer Sullivan, sir, we need backup, we need backup now— Oh, God—"
Sullivan snatched back the radio at once. "Sullivan here, what's your location?"
"I was patrolling the grounds in Arcadia, and then—and then it sounded like a bomb went off— Jesus Christ, they're everywhere—"
Before the patrolling officer could say anything more, a sharp popping noise cut him off. From the cries that followed, it seemed he had been interrupted by a hail of gunfire.
Sullivan looked up at Ryan, who met his gaze this time. Ryan's hands shook, and his face was livid with fury.
"Find my son."
JUNE 9, 1959 — 7:07 AM
Jack had no idea how long he and Tenenbaum had hidden away in her safehouse. Tenenbaum had insisted on making certain that he was fully recovered before they set off on the plan they'd devised, but Jack didn't feel much like he'd recovered at all.
Tenenbaum had made her escape with him through the emergency access tunnels, navigating them as easily as if she'd done it a hundred times before. Perhaps she had. It wasn't something Jack had the presence of mind to think or ask, not at the time.
At the very bottom of Neptune's Bounty, Tenenbaum had explained, deep below the docks, there was a secret chasm which Fontaine and his smugglers had used to sneak in and out of the city years ago. It was still there, she was certain, as was the submarine they had used to transport their goods. It was in this submarine that she and her girls could safely make their escape to the surface—but with the chaos that Atlas was now causing, and with the girls now scattered across the city, someone had to secure the sub in her stead while she gathered them again.
"Go through the transit hub," she had told him before setting off on her own way. "There you will find passage to Neptune's Bounty. The path to the hideout is below Fontaine Fisheries; you may have to break down the door, but I know you can do this. Call me on the radio once you have found the submarine, and I will be with you as quickly as possible."
And so she sent him off, equipped with one of a pair of radios, armed with a newly-loaded pistol hidden beneath his coat, and with his veins full of EVE. All in all, he should have been more than ready to carry out his mission.
But he didn't feel ready. He hardly felt ready at all. He hardly even felt like a human being.
What more would it take for him to feel human again?
He didn't know. He didn't know if it was something he wanted to consider.
It was early yet, about the right time that the transit hub should have been bustling with people, workers heading to and fro between the bathysphere station and the shops that surrounded it, to the routes between the Medical Pavilion and Neptune's Bounty. But the bathyspheres sat still in their bays. The people left in the streets were wary and confused, seeking answers in the few shops that opened their shutters and doors, at the newsstands that had yet to receive their daily editions. A sickly smell hung in the corridors and at every vent, as though the smoke-filled air of Olympus Heights had cycled all the way through Arcadia and dispersed throughout the rest of the city without losing its scent, as though burdened by the memory of what had happened just the day prior.
Some great chaos had occurred in the night while Jack was hiding away from the world, something too great for him to presently fathom. But it seemed the rest of the world had no greater grasp on it than he.
It wasn't something for him to dwell upon now, however. He had given his word to Tenenbaum that he would give her his aid, and he intended to follow through on it. Only after she was safely gone from the city could he take the time to sort through the mess Atlas had just made.
Jack made his way down the grand staircase at the end of the hub, past the shoeshine stands and in the direction of the bulkhead to Neptune's Bounty. A school of fish flickered past the glass-paned ceiling, casting shadows in the lights of the city above.
As he passed through the center of the street, however, a loud, squealing whine echoed through the PA speakers overhead. It was enough to stop him in his tracks, and it was enough to catch the attention of all the others in the square.
"Good morning, Rapture."
If the noise of the speakers hadn't been enough to stop Jack cold, the sound of Atlas's voice certainly would have done the trick.
"Are you prepared for the dawn of a new day?"
It was enough to stop those around him, as well. Some murmured amongst themselves, voices tinged with confusion, while others pointed up to the speakers with questioning cries.
"By now, I suspect most of you have learned of the bloodshed at Olympus Heights. But did you know those lives could have been saved? Did you know those men and their families might not have been killed, if not for the pride and tyranny of Andrew Ryan?"
Jack could only wonder: why hadn't Atlas given him more of a chance?
"We will not stop until our voices are heard. We will not stop until this nightmare of Ryan's is put to an end. This city will rise on new foundations, and we, who were nothing, shall be all!"
His stomach twisted at the thought of what he could have done differently, what he might have done to prevent all this from happening.
"Now rejoice, ye oppressed of the earth, for this is your chance to join our struggle. Raise up your arms, my brethren, and remember—Rapture is glory."
All at once, the commotion around him came to a halt. The people in the streets were still, and they stared up at the speakers as if in a trance.
"Rapture is glory, and through the blood of the tyrants and the sweat of our brow—by God, that glory shall be ours!"
Those words filled Jack with dread, as did the eerie scene that surrounded him. It was difficult to pin down what unsettled him so deeply, but the stillness of the people around him seemed unnatural.
"As for your first task, my brothers... Five hundred ADAM to the first man or woman who brings me the son of Andrew Ryan—alive."
Perhaps Jack's dread had come to him a little too soon.
The people in the square seemed to come back to their senses, but one by one, their attention fell solely upon him. His scarf had been left behind hours ago; he had no way of hiding his face now.
As they began to approach him, Jack reached for the gun in his coat and started to back away...but there was nowhere for him to escape to, not with this many people in his path. The route to Neptune's Bounty had seemed so short just minutes before, but now the distance between him and the bulkhead seemed insurmountable.
A woman lunged at him, and it was all he could do to duck out of the way, gun outstretched. Before he could raise it to shoot, he sensed someone coming up from his rear—and by the time he turned back, he was too late to defend himself. Someone struck his head from behind, hard enough to make his vision go starry and spotted with darkness, hard enough to knock him to the ground and send the gun flying from his hand. There was a body on top of him before he could reach for it again, a foot on his hand and an elbow at the back of his neck, all pinning him to the ground. Another strike came, then another, and by the time something was slipped over his head and knotted at his throat, everything had already faded to black.