The Light in the Deep

by Alcoac

Rapture Noir. Exiled Inspector Teddy Nuckles wasted not a single good thought when he set eye on the lumbering brute clutching a bag of blood on Opening Day of Rapture. He shot him. In the bag, a beautiful woman's severed head. Chief Sullivan orders him to focus on the Fontaine case, but Tenenbaum's autopsy brings up many a puzzle, including a link to German experiments in Poland.

11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

That night, I sat up in my apartment with my thoughts and a glass of processed seawater going through medical records from around Rapture to see if any other abnormalities had come up like with the brute and his Zyklon-B reaction. Hadn't found a thing. Worse, I couldn't stop thinking about Cat. She had ended our conversation abruptly, telling me she had to go, but that we'd talk more later. Not that we had talked all that much in the first place. Everything she said seemed to make sense, but no sense at all. Deep light. Dana. Fontaine. Help us all. I felt like I was still missing some big pieces toward seeing how this all fit together, and how it led to a girl like Dana getting rubbed out in a way like that.

What Fontaine had done to her was worse than an execution, it was humiliating, he robbed her of her dignity. Regardless of how she chose to make her living, no one deserved that. That was supposed to be the dream of Rapture, I thought. The whole reason Ryan coaxed us down here. Freedom from oppression, freedom from imposed morality. Freedom from the idiocy of bureaucracy and legal codes that had twisted and snaked their way through thousands of years of kings and lords and politicians and presidents to make their way into what they were today back on the surface.

I remembered firsthand what it meant to be on the side of the law, and it didn't always mean on the side of the just. If I'd learned anything in '44, it had been that. There wasn't any room left on land for the people, let alone an individual, not with Uncle Sam calling the shots and bringing in the army whenever he didn't get his way. Not like he cared who got stepped on in the process, not with his war effort a hundred thousand miles away to keep him busy. I didn't know that meant the people at home didn't matter. The people of Philadelphia he forced to build those flying fortresses and devastating destroyers. He wanted us all to think we were saving the free world, for truth, justice, and the American way. I knew better. Back in those street and factories, I saw was it was really all about. When they asked for my badge, they'd said I had done the right thing, but in the wrong way. I had no regrets about what I did. I'd do it again.

Maybe that's what had brought me to the deep. Maybe that's why I had to make right what happened to Dana. I didn't know, and this seawater wasn't bringing me any clarity. I got up to pour it out and make myself a seaweed tea with milk. It tastes a whole lot better than it sounds, trust me. I began to make myself the cuppa, when I heard a tap on my hatch. I went over to check through the peephole. I'd be surprised if Acey and Deucy had figured out this fast that I'd skipped out on watch. It wasn't them at all.

It was Cat.