Spliced: A Story of Rapture

Chapter Eight

October 1958

It had been three months since Lillian had found Willie dead in her lab, and nearly one month since Frank had been killed in a now infamous shootout with Ryan’s men. The conflict between the two men had been simmering for months and had finally come to a boil that fateful day in September. As if the two murders weren’t enough, Ryan, in the wake of Fontaine’s death, had seized control of his company, and then, as a further insult, fired Lillian.

He had called her to his office, just two weeks after he had her lover and friend killed, and told her that she was done working with the apes. Lillian tried to protest, but her protests fell on deaf ears. Ryan said she was lucky that he didn’t exile her like the rest of Fontaine’s “followers.” He knew she wasn’t violent, but he certainly could not keep somebody on staff who had been so close to the dead man. It was what was best for Rapture, he had said, and he hoped that someday, she’d understand. She most certainly did not understand. Not then, and not now, and she resented the condescending way Ryan spoke to her, as if she were a child.

Ryan, in taking control of Fontaine Futuristics and all associated entities, had seized Lillian’s lab. He had assigned the primate research to another primatologist, Charles Lester, but the animals had reacted poorly to the new man. It only took a matter of weeks for Lester to declare them “corrupted” by Lillian, and dangerous, and to have them euthanized, thus effectively ending the primate research program, at least for the time being. The last Lillian had heard was that Lester was importing a new batch of apes for his research, baboons if she remembered correctly. As far as Lillian was concerned, he could have the program. She was beyond caring.

Now, Lillian felt like Andrew Ryan had taken everything she ever loved from her. First Roland, to whom she rarely even talked any more, then Willie, then Fontaine, her job, and the rest of the gorillas, who seemed like her last and best friends in the world. She hated Ryan, and she hated Rapture.

Additionally, Lillian’s relationship with her husband was deteriorating further. Now that she was jobless and depressed, she often found herself moping about the apartment, drowning in unremitting melancholy. She just wanted to crawl into herself, to disappear and through inertia cease to exist, at least for now, at least until the pain subsided. But Roland was always there, working at his desk or milling about in the parlour. His presence was infinitely irksome, as her need for peace and quiet was continually being interrupted by a chair scraping across the floor, a cough, or the clink of a coffee cup being set down on the table. It was driving her mad. Why couldn’t he just leave?

Lillian had a suspicion that he was not getting much real work done anyway, but he at least made a show of sitting at his desk for long hours, shuffling papers around and writing furiously. One night, after Roland had retired to the parlour, and fallen asleep reading, Lillian tiptoed to his desk to see what he’d been working on. Quietly, she picked up his topmost pages from the pile for inspection. Instead of notes, or diagrams or equations, she found nothing but a crudely drawn picture, copied several times on several pieces of paper. It appeared to be one of the Hindu gods, probably Kali, face twisted in a terrific grimace, each of her many hands gripping a weapon. On her neck was a garland of severed human heads. Lillian squinted, trying to make out the faces to figure out who they were, but it was a hopeless endeavor as the drawings were simply too inexpertly done. Beneath the goddess’s feet lay a mountain of dead cats, dead fish, and, to Lillian’s horror, what looked like one dead gorilla, crumpled on the bottom, head caved in and bloody.

Shaking with fury, Lillian gripped the drawings in her hand and stormed out into the parlour. Roland was still slumped over, asleep in his recliner, snoring softly. He did not stir until Lillian was standing right in front of him, prodding at his shoulder, drawings clenched in a tight fist.