The bathysphere descends. Rivets groan against pressure. Outside the porthole, the black Atlantic shifts, and then the city appears, lights pricking through the murk like something hatched and breathing on the seafloor.

A speaker crackles overhead.

“I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?”

The voice fills the cramped cabin, warm and certain.

“No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.”

Neon catches on glass far below. Towers. Bridges. The silhouette of something enormous and deliberate.

“I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose—”

The bathysphere shudders. A dock materializes beneath you, brass and light.

“—Rapture.”

The ventilation hum cycles into its morning register at 6:00. Artemisia Street sits empty in the blue-green glow of the streetlamps outside your front window, the glass thick enough to mute the footstep of the occasional early riser across the promenade. A copy of the Rapture Tribune waits on the doorstep just beside your feet.

The key sits in your palm. Brass, warm from your pocket. Your shop stands before you. The interior dark, shelves familiar shapes in the gloom.

Before stepping into your life in Rapture, consider: what kind of shop do you run?

The Medical Pavilion hums at its own frequency. Fluorescent tubes cast their flat, sterile light across tiled corridors that smell of iodine and recycled air. A vending machine glows amber near the east wing, its supply of Eve Hypo refills running low. Somewhere behind a closed door, a Plasmid installation is in progress. The muffled sound of a patient's sharp breath reaches the hallway, then nothing.

Your desk sits at the junction of Clinic B and the recovery ward. The intake log lies open, the morning's appointments written in careful ink. Three follow-ups. One new consultation. A note from the senior physician, folded once, waiting beneath your coffee mug.

The atrium fountain cycles through its routine. A thin sheet of water slides down sculpted marble, catches the light from the trench-facing window, and drops into the basin with a sound like coins falling on carpet. Thursday afternoon.

Outside the glass wall, the Atlantic presses in. A lantern fish drifts past at the edge of visibility, its glow blinking once before the dark swallows it again.

The apartment smells faintly of cedar and cigarettes. A folded copy of the Rapture Tribune sits on the side table beside an untouched coffee service. The society page faces up. The Fontaine Futuristics ticker insert has been pulled free and rests on the arm of the chair, creased once down the center.

The Kashmir Restaurant hums at half-capacity. A trio plays standards on a small stage, the bassist leaning into the upright with his eyes half-closed. Cigarette smoke pools under the amber ceiling lamps and drifts toward the vents that never quite pull it all away.

Your usual table sits in the back corner, banquette seat facing the door. A highball glass sweats rings onto the linen. The cocktail menu stands untouched in its brass holder. Two menus, one chair pulled out just enough.

The maître d' glances your way from the podium. He doesn't approach. He never does until the second guest arrives.

The administrative wing of Hephaestus hums with the low vibration of geothermal turbines three floors below. Fluorescent panels cast steady white light across a corridor of polished granite and brushed steel. Your office door stands open at the end of the hall, the name stenciled in clean gold leaf on frosted glass.

On your desk, a leather-bound appointment book lies open to today's date. Three entries fill the morning block in tight personal shorthand. A cup of coffee, still warm, sits beside a manila folder marked with the Fontaine Futuristics quarterly seal.

The intercom light blinks red. Ryan's secretary has not yet arrived. The message indicator shows one incoming call held from the Rapture Police Department, logged at 6:47 AM.

The refinement lab hums at a frequency you stopped hearing six months ago. Banks of centrifuges spin behind glass partitions, amber fluid cycling through coiled tubes. The overhead fluorescents cast everything in the same flat, institutional pallor.

Your station is third from the left, between Kowalski's and the empty one nobody's been assigned to since DellaRocco transferred to Quality Assurance. The batch log sits open beside the centrifuge console, today's yield figures half-entered in your handwriting. A pen rests in the gutter between the pages.

The commissary coffee in your cup went cold twenty minutes ago. Steam rises from the centrifuge vents instead, carrying the faintly sweet chemical smell that clings to your coat no matter how many times you run it through the laundry service on Level 4.

The Atrium Lane lodging house smells of brass polish and stale coffee. Fort Frolic's neon bleeds through the single porthole window in bars of amber and blue, painting the Murphy bed, the vanity mirror, the ring of dead bulbs framing it. Your reflection waits in the glass between two of them.

A folded schedule sits on the narrow shelf beside the door. Tonight's booking is at the Fleet Hall lounge, second set, nine-thirty. The garment bag hangs from a wall hook, catching light along its zipper.

Somewhere below, the atrium fountain cycles through its loop. A muffled bass note rises through the floor from the bar downstairs, already filling with the early crowd.