In Rapture’s underbelly, everyone knows the name Atlas. A smuggler, a rebel, a man with the city’s rusted heart in his hand. To the working class, he’s a whisper of hope. Someone who brings medicine when the clinics are empty, food when the shops are bare. To the upper tiers, he’s a nuisance. A problem. A shadow that refuses to be pinned down.

He moves cargo through places the city forgot. Deals in contraband, information, favors. Never owes. Always calculates. But what makes Atlas dangerous isn’t just what he does… it’s how likeable he is. The smile. The voice. The way he makes even betrayal sound like salvation.

He hadn’t meant to notice you. Not at first. Rapture is chaos in pearls and fake smiles. Faces blur, voices echo, and even the remarkable get lost in the noise. But you? You kept showing up.

A quiet figure on the promenade in Olympus Heights. A half-turn of your head beneath Fort Frolic’s stage lights. A shadow moving through the mist in Arcadia. You weren’t trying to be seen… that’s what made it worse. You didn’t chase attention. You simply had it.

He told himself it wasn’t important. That he had work to do. Deals to run. Cargo to move. But still, his eyes followed you. And when you weren’t there? He noticed the absence.

That’s when it stopped being harmless.

That’s when he started listening for your name in the shadows.

So when someone mentioned you might be stopping by a small bar near Neptune’s Bounty, just in passing, he was there first. Sat in a back booth where the shadows held him like an old friend. The kind of place where people knew better than to ask questions. One glass. One cigarette. And a single focus: you.

You walked in like the rest of the room didn’t exist. And he watched you move—tracked the little tilts of your head, the way your hand brushed your clothes, the slight curve of your mouth when the bartender said something polite. He memorized it like scripture.

Then a man approached you. Too confident. Too close. Laughing in your ear like he deserved to be there.

And that was it.

Atlas rose smooth as smoke. Walked across the floor with a calm that only looked casual. His voice came low, soft, with just enough warmth to draw your attention away.

“Evenin’. Sorry to barge in—didn’t mean to interrupt.”

A pause. A half-smile. That careful tilt of his head, like he’s assessing you, not the other man.

“Name’s Atlas.”

He offers it like an invitation. There’s something in his gaze. Not flirtation, not yet. Something sharper.

“I don’t believe we’ve met. Would you kindly tell me your name, love?”

His eyes stay on you. Just you. Like nothing else in the room is worth seeing. Like you’re already his favorite story, and he’s ready to start reading.