"We all make choices. But in the end, our choices make us."

– Andrew Ryan

From that Sea of Time,

Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;

O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!

Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held,

Murmurs and echoes still bring up—Eternity's music, faint and far,

Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica's rim—strains for the Soul of the Prairies,

Whisper'd reverberations—chords for the ear of the West, joyously sounding

Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable;

Infinitessimals out of my life, and many a life,

(For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give;)

These thoughts and Songs—waifs from the deep

– Walt Whitman

Beneath The Atlantic Ocean

1958

August 15th, 1958

Security Chief Sullivan was very drunk. But he had seen a leadhead splicer gun down a good friend of his that afternoon, so he wanted to get drunker. He stumbled into the Silver Fin restaurant on the upper pavilion of the department store and ordered a beer. And when he finished his first beer, he ordered another. Patrons kept stealing glances, and Morris Lauderman, the restaurateur, looked like he wanted to say something in protest. But Sullivan was Ryan's man, and anyone with half a brain rattling in their skulls knew better than to cross Andrew Ryan. So when Sullivan opened his third bottle of Old Harbinger in the lobby of the Silver Fin, no one said boo to him.

The evening hours grew long and thin. The restaurant was nearly empty by the time Sullivan put his sixth Old Harbinger on his tab. He sat alone at the bar, a sour Morris Lauderman wiping glasses behind the counter. Somewhere in the department store, a voice urged shoppers to make their final purchases. Lauderman dimmed the lights of the restaurant; the bioluminescent plants behind the windows began to glow pearly green and purple.

"Closing soon, Sullivan," Morris mumbled, half meaning it.

"Fuck off."

"Suit yourself. Securis will close automatically on your way out. Don't hang around."

Lauderman emptied the cash register and went upstairs, muttering something less than flattering about Ryan's security detail. Sullivan ignored him.

After his seventh bottle, the security chief struggled to string a coherent thought together. So when the woman in the blue dress appeared seemingly out of thin air, right in the middle of the restaurant, it took Sullivan several foggy moments to realize that something was wrong.

"Hey! Hey you!" His words sounded thick and slurred. The woman froze. For a second, she looked startled. Then her face hardened, and she crossed her arms defiantly.

"What?"

Sullivan struggled to find something reasonably intelligible to say. He pointed at the woman with his empty bottle. "You… you just appeared out of the air…"

The woman arched an elegant eyebrow. "Did I?"

"Don't… no, don't deny it, lady. You weren't there a second ago."

The woman took a step forward. She looked towards Sullivan's belt, at the gun holster strapped to his right hip. She noted the man's crumpled white shirt, untucked tie, a few errant strands of hair combed over a bald patch on the top of his head. There was a security badge pinned to his breast pocket.

"You're drunk, chief," the woman said calmly, "I didn't appear––"

"You fucking did!"

"Think about it. Do people go around appearing out of thin air? Is that something people are liable to do?"

Sullivan paused. He blinked myopically at her. His gray eyes were bloodshot and watery. The smell of cheap alcohol peeled off him in waves. Even with his drunken sneer, the woman didn't think Sullivan looked aggressive, just incredibly sad.

"You ain't," Sullivan muttered, "ain't one of them Houdinis, blinking in and out… Christ, you are, ain't you?"

The woman didn't know what he was talking about. She stayed quiet, observant. She watched Sullivan's hands, continually glanced towards the pistol hanging at his belt.

"Freaks, the whole bunch of you." Sullivan spat at the woman's feet. She didn't flinch. "Killed my men… you fucking psychopaths. You one of Fontaine's, huh? You one of his? All those good guys, down at Port Neptune, at the fisheries. Christ…"

"Go home. You're drunk. You're upset. You need to sleep this off."

Sullivan didn't seem to hear her. He staggered out of the Silver Fin and into the atrium. The woman followed.

The restaurant was on a balcony overlooking a boulevard of boutiques and showrooms. Neon lights sparkled against the crystal staircases. Advertisements plastered the walls, grinning back at the shoppers from the reflective surfaces of the windows and the floors. Sullivan stared aimlessly at several of the posters. One of them advertised casinos and strip clubs in a place called Fort Frolic. Another featured a caricature with a finger pressed conspiratorially to its lips. The words Peeping Tom Plasmid were scrawled above its greasy head.

"It's hangings now," said Sullivan miserably, "down in Apollo Square… is this what Rapture's come to? I ain't making the rules down here, no. No. I just enforce them. Got to keep things in order… got to impose the laws in a place that ain't got any…"

Sullivan stumbled down the stairs to the show floor, bracing himself against the curve of the wall. The woman watched him go. She didn't move until Sullivan had disappeared from sight.

"Rapture…"

The woman took a deep breath. The air tasted stale. Everything smelled damp and briny. Hidden speakers played tinny music on repeat. The atrium looked garish with its blinking lights and rotating display cases. The walls and floors were all translucent crystal; everywhere the woman looked, a tired face stared back at her, her gaze half a world and half a lifetime away.

An elevator on the far side of the atrium led to showrooms for home appliances and bathyspheres and plasmids, and many more things the woman didn't recognize. Above the elevator was another sign, larger than the rest, the words paraded in big, block letters:

FONTAINE'S DEPARTMENT STORE

… a face… a man. A name within a name… the long game, and I'm gonna make the kinda scratch that'll have Ryan look like he's runnin' a paper route…

The woman felt her insides grow cold. She rubbed the thimble that had replaced her right pinky finger. It was a nervous habit, and something about the department store made the woman feel distinctly ill at ease. The Doors were veiled. Many of the Tears had been sealed up behind rivets and aluminum. It was hard to see through the walls dividing one world from another, to peer into the kaleidoscope of space and time fractured inside her head.

Elizabeth suddenly felt very small, and very alone.

A few men and women milled around the atrium. They ignored her, walking fast and clutching their shopping bags close to their chests.

"Bicycle clip hats and saddle shoes." Elizabeth allowed herself a tiny smile. "Late 1950s…"

She had jumped forward in time. She could feel it. Stepping through the Tear had been like lurching over a hill, her stomach rising up into her throat, the adjacent years stretching her mind like elastic while the rest of her body dragged behind. She had felt a pressure change in the air, a rush of cold wind buffeting her body. It wasn't her own time anymore.

Elizabeth chuckled at the thought.

She didn't have a time. She didn't belong anywhere, and she belonged everywhere. She could see all the Doors, and what was behind all the Doors: the clip hats and the saddle shoes, the neon branding, a shining city at the bottom of the sea…

Elizabeth stopped rubbing the thimble. She looked up, towards the skylight in the ceiling, and watched a school of silvery fish undulate through the murk. Behind the glow of the city lights and the iridescent fauna, the blackness went on and on, like a universe without stars. Or a million, million lighthouses that had all gone dark.

"He's here," she said aloud.

"So it would seem." A British woman appeared at Elizabeth's side. If Elizabeth was surprised, she didn't show it. "When he runs, he runs fast and runs far, doesn't he?"

"He can't run anymore." Elizabeth looked around the atrium. Through the huge windows, a patchwork of lights glowed against the gloom: apartment complexes and department stores and skyscrapers, reaching for the ocean surface instead of the clouds. "There's nowhere else to go."

"You may be more right than you know." A British man, with the same aquiline, freckled face and red hair as the British woman, faced Elizabeth from across the balcony. "Although there remains the matter of actually finding him."

"I'll find him."

"How?" They asked in unison.

Elizabeth turned to Rosalind Lutece. "I'm resourceful."

"We don't doubt that. But the devils in the details. You know Comstock is in the city, but where in the city is another matter entirely."

"I know he's in this city," Elizabeth argued, "and unless he has another Lutece device––"

"He does not."

"Then he can never leave this place."

"Rapture." Robert Lutece gave Elizabeth an indulgent tilt of his head. "The city at the bottom of the ocean."

"The perfect hiding place," Rosalind Lutece added.

"They say the perfect prison is one with the illusion of freedom."

"They say the perfect trap is one with many doors."

"Ensnaring everyone."

"Predator, and prey."

"Bird."

"And cage."

"I know what I'm doing!" snapped Elizabeth. She hurried up the stairs, towards the elevators. The Luteces did not follow her. When the door of the elevator slid shut and the car began to rise towards the upper floors, Elizabeth turned around, and the Luteces were still standing behind her. "I've done this before, remember? Countless Comstocks, across countless worlds. What makes this place any different from the dozens, no, hundreds of others?"

Rosalind and Robert Lutece glanced at each other. They didn't speak for what seemed like a very long time. The elevator stopped on the highest floor of the department store.

"This is the last," said one Lutece.

"The final iteration," said the other.

Elizabeth grew quiet. She went through the Securis door and emerged into a small plaza, across from a gentlemen's store called Cupid's Arrow. She could see herself reflected in the display cases, haloed in the pink neon. She looked older, wearier. Sadder. Her dark hair had grown long. The blue eyes that gazed back at her were somewhere very far away.

"What comes next?" Elizabeth asked quietly, not expecting an answer. "If Comstock is erased from every version of history, then what becomes the point of me? What do I do when all of this is finished…"

Elizabeth trailed off into silence. The Luteces were gone.

The store crowds began to dwindle. Shop owners pulled metal grates across their doors. Somewhere in the plaza, twelve toles of a clock signaled midnight. Elizabeth was suddenly aware of how incongruous she looked, standing alone in the dark department store in attire that hadn't been in fashion for the last 40 years. Lady Comstock's velvet skirt had been mended so many times that very little remained of the original material. The jacket and corset had grown worn and faded. Elizabeth looked up at the boutique posters of women in their white frocks and buttoned collars, and then she looked towards Cupid's Arrow, where several dresses hung in the display case.

"Once more unto the breach," Elizabeth murmured. She stepped into the shop.