It used to be the sight of the Pitt that made Nick's stomach turn, as though the steel produced by the slaves had been melted down and now churned as a volcanic geyser in the pit of her stomach. Eyes reflected the flashes of the mill's fires, and the red glow bounced off their burnt cheeks. Nick had always imagined it would be at the end of her days that she would be met with the infernos of Hell, but here they were, and tended not by Devils with pitchforks, but by back-bent, bleary eyed workers with blow-torches.

Looking sky-ward and wiping sweat from her brow, Nick was reminded of Nadine. Nadine, as in the orange-haired daughter of Catherine (not Nick's mom); as in ex Ark-and-Dove-Cathedral cult member and current captain of her very own luxury ferry. "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning," she'd always say as evening washed across the deck of the Duchess Gambit and the two women drank cool Whiskey, lounged in comfy armchairs, and worked their way either to or from the Capital Wasteland. Well, the sky was always red here in the Pitt. What did that mean to those that lived there? Not a thing.

Yeah, it used to be the sight of the place that made Nichole sick. Now, however, it was the smell that got to her. Sweat and sulphur mixed with ebbing hope. It was that last thing that really stunk.

Nick hadn't been a slave, but she shared their pain. It had been about two months since the 'workers revolution', and admittedly in the beginning, the future looked even brighter than the sky over the city. With Ashur and his cronies gone, Wernher had promised that things would be easier. The slaves were no longer slaves, but they still had to work. Now, however, they weren't working for Ashur's indulgences. They were working to better their living conditions, and for trading contracts with whatever cities they wanted, and for the goods they felt they needed. Better food became available, and they had Saturdays off. Of course, Ashur had always given them Sunday as a day of leisure, and now, without Ashur's men to regulate, clean water was becoming scarce as everyone delighted excessively in this previously-scarce commodity.

The workers had hope, but not a lot else. As of late, Wernher gave the bad news that they weren't yielding enough to fill their production orders, and if that happened, their contracts with Ronto and the settlement of Shadow might be cancelled. If that happened, it was bye-bye to the medical supplies, which included the all-important radiation medicine. And, of course, no more fresh fruit which the citizens of the Pitt had just gotten a taste for.

So it was as it had been before, except at least the workers now had their pride. Nicole didn't get to share in that. She stewed quietly in her own secret guilt.

Staying the blow-torch's blast, Nick stepped away from her work and wiped her brow once more. She'd never been so grimy or stiff in her life, but if it meant that one worker was spared a few hours of back-breaking labour, then she didn't mind. And Nicole knew that Josephine, the woman whose place she'd taken, had advanced arthritis in her fingers. She didn't deserve to be stuck behind a torcher's mask.

"Quitting time, eh, Nick?" asked a man named William who was working beside her. Leaning on a shovel nonchalantly he watched her over his gloved hands. Will's own mask was flipped up, and it revealed a large burn on the side of his face, but the disfigurement didn't deter him from trying to get into the pants of every girl in the Pitt. Nicole really didn't care. If sex was something that distracted him from his piss-poor life, well, so be it.

"Yep," Nicole sighed and dropped her instrument. Pulling the thick gloves off her hands, she waved and stretched her fingers, working out the kinks and trying to cool them. "Same time tomorrow, buddy."

As Will waved her off, Nicole was really, really glad that no one knew who she was here. Sure, she'd been very important to the workers' revolution, but as far as anyone was concerned, that was only a part of the big picture. There was still so much that had to be done; that, at least, was what Wernher was always assuring them of. Here, she wasn't the girl who had climbed out of Vault 101, coddled and ignorant, to become the woman who delivered the DC area from the Enclave and brought fresh water to the masses. She could get down and dirty, and people wouldn't look at her in bewilderment, wondering why she hadn't retired with her ego fulfilled, and wealth endless.

Nicole made her way to Haven. It wasn't like it had been when Ashur had been around; now it was a rather quiet place. Wernher had said that it was the symbol of Ashur's regime, what with the large statue of a shackled man made of twisted steel right outside the door of the compound. In rejection of that regime, the workers readily avoided it. Of course, that was where Wernher was to eventfully move to, permanently. It was, after all, where the science lab was. It was where a cure was being made for the Trog illness. It was where Marie was.

Today Nicole was taking a toy car to Marie. She'd found it on the bridge between the Pitt and the tunnel back to the Capital Wasteland, a place she didn't even considered home anymore. She hadn't seen its starry sky in two months, or felt the cool air come across the quiet hills.

Approaching the door which had once been Ashur's office and was now Wernher's, a man stood before the doors which were closed. They'd never been closed before. Not even when Ashur had been there.

"What are you doing here?" asked the man. He had a very dirty face, and undoubtedly dirtier hands. One of those hands moved slowly across his holster where a small pistol was nestled. Two months ago that might have been an invitation for an altercation, and even if she had no weapon, that would have meant nothing to Nicole. Two months ago. Now, however, the movement sent a shiver of fear through her spine.

"I'm here to see Wernher," Nicole said. At least she sounded confident. It came with the knowledge that she knew she wouldn't be turned away.

"Got an appointment?"

Nicole was dumbfounded. "An appointment?"

"Yeah. No one gets in without an appointment."

"Since when?" Nicole blurted out. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sniffed, "Look, do you know who I am?"

"Hey, now, no one here is better than anyone else," the man cautioned, his tone betraying how he actually felt about that statement. Nicole sighed.

"My name is Nicole. I've never been turned away before. Please get on the intercom, and we'll have this sorted out right away, alright?"

A few minuets later she was breezing through the door, but Nicole couldn't ignore that shiver which hadn't yet subsided. Wernher was sitting behind his desk, absorbed in some papers on his desk, surrounded by empty Scotch bottles and butted out cigars. He looked up at her as she approached, and the whites of his eyes were tinged with red. Either he was sleep deprived from stressing over the situation with the work orders, or... he was Jetting.

"Nicky," he croaked, putting some effort into correcting his posture. Sitting up straight, he motioned to the chair across from him. "Scotch?"

"No thanks," Nicole said, but politely took the seat. Shrugging, Wernher poured himself another glass.

"So, what's on your mind, blondie?"

Nicole never had been a fan of Wernher's nicknames.

"Well, lately I've been thinking I might head back to DC," Nicole said. When Wernher didn't have a smart-ass comment, she decided to jump right into the heart of the matter. "Have you ever been to Point Lookout?"

"Nope," Wernher took a large drag of his cigar. "But I've heard of it. Nasty, wet place."

"Yeah, well," Nicole eased back in her chair as the cigar smoke billowed around them, the smell wretched. "It's also where punga fruit is grown. I'm assuming a smart man like you knows what that is?"

Wernher gave her a 'Yeah, so what?' look over the brim of his glass of Scotch. Nicole eyed him steadily as she plunged into her proposal.

"If you established some sort of trade agreement with the people who cultivate punga, you could have a food source that not only fills stomachs but helps with the radiation problem."

Nicole expected the man who was clearly out of his mind on Jet to be impressed, but he just rolled his eyes and his counter-argument, as it would turn out, wasn't as half-brained as the woman had anticipated.

"Don't you think I know what's best for my people? The expenses of that would be huge. How much land would we have to cross to get our product to Point Lookout? And I've tried punga, it's real nice. Real... bourgeois. But we have enough trouble filling orders for Shadow and Ronto, as you so kindly reminded me. You want to add to the work load? Or do you think I should break with those contracts? Because I know punga isn't the answer to the radiation problem, Nicole."

Wernher stared her down. Her. By a fucking Jetter.

"How's Marie?" she asked quietly. With a stab of his cigar into the bottom of the ashtray, Wernher stretched out in his chair and scoffed.

"Peachy. Got another toy for her? The brat has been really fussy lately, but she just lights up when you bring that garbage around."

Nicole regained some of her composure and all but yelled her retort. "Yeah, I do. Mind if I go and see her?"

"Of course not," Wernher said, changing his tone suddenly. He was bright, affectionate. "Look, Nicky, I appreciate your suggestions, I do. I just don't want to add any more work, you know? The people have enough on their plate as it is. Otherwise I'd be all over your punga thing."

Nicole couldn't take her eyes from the floor as she made her way to the lab. She wondered if she should sneak back into Wernher's office and scoop her pride back up off the floor, but decided it wasn't worth it. In reality, the punga idea had been something floating around in her mind for some time, but she hadn't planned to approach Wernher with proposal yet. Nicole hadn't even been thinking about leaving and returning to DC. No matter how much it stunk, life had gotten easy to the point of being comfortable in the Pitt. But she could feel her old self shrinking away. The only part that remained of Nicole, daughter of James and Catherine and all her experiences, was that voice deep down in her belly that felt angry every time she saw what Wernher was doing. So she'd leapt before she looked and Wernher had shot her down.

Looking up as she entered the lab, she noted that it too, like Haven, had changed since the first time she'd entered its sterilized walls. Now it had become littered with used equipment, papers and broken down terminals. In the corner was Marie, laying down in an altered crib, fussing slightly. She was moving her head back and forth and kicking her legs. It was too cold in the room for her to be uncovered, but she was, and also completely unattended. There was no one in the lab at all. Marie's tufts of dark hair seemed so thin.

"Good God," Nicole sighed as she stared down sadly. There was a quiet shuffling behind her.

"Hello?" asked a soft voice. Nicole turned and noticed a petite, homely brunette girl. She spoke again just as quietly. "Who are you?"

Nicole stood up straight. "I brought something for Marie." She dug into her pocket, glad to know that there was in fact someone checking in on the baby. Nicole pulled out the toy car and the girl took it, looking at it suspiciously.

"The edges are sharp. She's only a baby."

Nicole's optimism turned. Wouldn't want to hurt your precious chances at a cure, would we? But she tried to remain civil. "So, are you one of the scientists working on Marie?"

"No, I don't have the head for that. I can't even write," the girl answered timidly and took Marie up in her arms. "The baby still needs to breastfeed, and that responsibility is mine. I'd like to feed her now, so if you could go..."

Nicole left the woman and the small child in her arms to make her way to one last stop before she got out of this hellhole. It had been a long time since she'd seen Midea, but Nicole was sure if there was one woman she could talk to about her frustrations, it was her. After all, she'd been the one to ask Nicole to bring toys for Marie out of concern for the child. Nicole had heard that Midea had taken ill, but it had sounded like gossip at the time. Nichole had just never found the time to get away from her work to investigate.

Slowly opening the door to Midea's quarters, she saw that the light within had been dimmed to barely a flicker, and that a figure was laying motionless in the bed. The air was still and hot.

"Midea?" Nicole asked tentatively. The heap of dirty cotton clothes shifted slightly.

"Nick?"

The blonde moved across the room to the side of the bed, taking the woman's hands in her. They were thin, like the rest of her, and cold despite the warmth of the room. The whites of her eyes had yellowed. The older woman spoke.

"I'm going to die tonight," she wheezed.

"How did this happen so suddenly?" Nicole asked sadly, yet in truth she wasn't that sad. Despite the fact that the woman was dying, and wasn't oblivious to how Marie was being treated, Midea had still been in favour of kidnapping to further her own ends. But what was one life for the freedom of many? And after all, if it came down to hating Midea, Nicole was going to have to hate herself as well.

Nicole wasn't sad, but she was angry. Angry that the only other person in the Pitt with an ounce of sense, or empathy, was about to die.

"Radiation," Midea finally managed to whisper. She shuddered under the blonde girl's touch. "Thank God it wasn't the mutation."

"But if it's radiation... I mean, there is medicine for that."

"Nicole, please. Now that you're here, I have something we have to talk about, and it's not an old woman's health. It's about Wernher... and Marie."

Nicole nodded knowingly. "I know. It's all gone to hell."

"You have to take Marie and get her far away from here, my child. Take her to that place where you come from. They're going to kill her with those tests, and they don't care. I think... I think it might have been better here when Ashur was still alive."

Nicole gaped.

"No, listen to me," the woman struggled to get up. Once Nicole helped her to sit up, and she'd taken a sip of some murky water, Midea continued. "When we had Ashur, it was easy to hate him. He worked us like dogs, but Wernher does the same thing, and gets away with it under the disguise of our own self-interest. And that poor child... she just lays there all day. At least... at least when she had her mother around, there was also someone with knowledge of science to work on the cure. I don't think they've come any closer to a cure in the last two months. Just closer to killing that little girl."

Nicole stared at the woman. She knew why Midea had cornered herself off from the meek medicines available. Midea saw Wernher for what he had become, and hated him for it. At least Midea wouldn't sell her soul for him.

"How?" Nicole found her voice hiding in a small corner. Midea chattered away her plan almost happily, and when she was finished, sighed deeply and closed her quivering eyelids. Nicole knew it was true the woman would die that night. She wanted to stay, to hold her hands and wait until the citizens of the Pitt had laid themselves down in their cots; even Wernher found his bed at night. Nicole wanted to stay with the woman so she had someone there when she died. But Midea told her to be off.

"You need to gather your weapons. You might still have a fight before you," Midea urged as Nicole collected herself and moved to leave. She took a last look over her shoulder, as it was not in the plan to make it back this way once she had the baby.

"I'm sorry," Nicole said. She opened the door, and the light that poured through highlighted the lines on the older woman's face.

"Go," Midea said in a tone without forgiveness for the blonde, or for herself. "You'll have your redemption when you've rescued that baby."

Sometimes Nicole really wondered how the hell she got herself into these quests.

Night was still in the Pitt. Wernher imposed long hours on his workers, but he didn't dare reinstate the night shift, lest it appear to the masses that the old days were coming back. So Nicole found movement to Haven unhindered. Of course, the only interference she might have faced had it been day was a friendly hello.

Due to the smooth sailing thus far, Nicole hadn't expected the door guard to be there. But there he was, leaning against the wall, cracking his fingers one by one. He stiffened his posture and turned on the defence at the sound of her approaching steps, but taking in the sight of her, he relaxed, and let a wry smile spread across his lips. Nicole wasn't the dirty mill-worker she'd been 6 hours ago. Nicole had suited up, as it were. Despite perhaps not being the most practical of clothing choice, her curvaceous form was fitted with sleek, tight-fitting leather. Practical, no. Distracting? Oh yes.

"So, you got a name?" Nicole asked casually, and pulled her hand through her blonde locks.

"Damn, you clean up good," growled the door guard as Nicole recoiled inwardly at his attempt at a compliment. "Are you here to see the Boss?"

"Actually, I was hoping to buy a boy a drink," Nicole lifted her eyebrows and spoke in a tone which suggested the guard himself, and the flash of her eyes made it unmistakable. "What say we take a dip in Wernher's private stash? I won't tell if you don't."

Apparently it wasn't a stretch to assume Wernher had a horde of alcohol for himself. As soon as the guard turned to open the doors, Nicole pulled out her silenced pistol and neatly popped him thrice in the back. Black-widow indeed. Moving quickly through the rooms to the lab, she was glad that Wernher's room was on the other side of the compound. The floor wasn't exactly without clutter, and she found herself stepping on a lot of cracking glass.

As she approached the crib, perhaps Nicole shouldn't have been surprised to find it empty. After all, the tiny child was so often in neglect, why should anyone care to move her for the night?

Nicole whipped around, pistol before her as she heard a step from behind. It was the petite woman from earlier in the day, and in her arms lay Marie, silent. The blonde's mind began to race as she tried to figure out how she'd get the baby away from the woman without waking up the entire household.

"You are Nicole?" asked the small woman.

"Yes," Nicole answered, mind too preoccupied with escape plans to be surprised. The woman breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good. Midea said you would come."

"Midea?" Nicole repeated. She thought for a moment. "Wait, you're here to help?"

"Yes," the woman nodded. "Midea didn't tell you?"

"Not exactly," Nicole shook her head. "Give me Marie and I'll be out of here."

"No!" the girl gasped, clinging to the baby. "I'm coming with you."

"What? I wasn't told anything about that," Nicole said, though she was fairly sure this wasn't part of Midea's plan to begin with. It also didn't look like arguing would work, so she attempted to appeal to the girl with reason. "Look, no offence, and I mean that sincerely... but you'll slow me down, and I should already be out of here. If Wernher's men come, they'll kill me, and I'm that baby's last chance to get out of here."

"Well, no offence to you," the woman countered accusingly. "But you don't exactly look like the type with a lot of motherly instincts. You might be able to get her out of here, but you wouldn't even know what to do with her after that."

"Good point," Nicole said before she was able to stop herself. It was one of her defining features: a mouth that ran freely without interest in what her brain had to say. "Fine, we'll go. You know how to handle a pistol?"

The girl shook her head. "Never even held one before."

"Fantastic," Nicole said drolly. She pocketed her pistol and pulled the Chinese Assault Rifle off her back. She motioned for the brunette to follow.

"No, let me lead," said the girl already passing the blonde. "I know something that will take us right to the gate, and we can slip out. It takes us under the ground."

They stumbled through the darkness out of the building and towards a tunnel hidden by sheets of metallic debris. It was about half of Nicole's height, but both women would be able to crawl through with ease, as her companion had created a sling to keep Marie close and snug to her body. As they made their way through the passageway to freedom, Nicole spoke.

"These tunnels are fantastic." she said to herself.

"Not exactly slowing you down, am I?" chided the girl without a trace of cynicism.

"When were these constructed? What were they used for originally?" Nicole asked, glad the black that surrounded them hid the embarrassment which was plain on her face.

"We made them years ago to help in our escape from Ashur. Many of us were spared the life of slavery because of these tunnels."

"You don't say," Nicole said thoughtfully, and saw that a dot of light was approaching them. The exit was near. "So if you knew about this, then why did you never use it to escape?"

"It was dangerous for us to use them often, because we were afraid it would call attention from Ashur's men. And I had a duty to my people. There were many who came to Ashur after a lifetime of servitude in other cities. I always felt they deserved to be freed before me."

Even if the girl had never held a gun in her life, and couldn't write, Nicole was glad to have her along. Moments later they were running through the night towards the train tunnel that would take them to freedom.

And as early morning approached, Midea could hear quiet whispering beyond her door.

"Just come on in already, boys. Did Wernher send you?"

It was the man himself who opened the door, backed by several cronies in various workers garb. He bid them stay out and closed the door behind himself.

"Where'd she take her, Midea?" Wernher growled as he approached the bed. Midea sat up with what strength she had, but wished she had enough to stand up to him.

"You're not even going to inquire about my health? I'm dying, Wernher. Like everyone else here."

"Tell me where they went, and I can get you medicine. It's the radiation, right? C'mon, girl, don't make this hard on yourself."

"Go blow a Trog!" Midea spat, and having never said something so foul in her life, she was glad she had reserved the honour for such an occasion.

"Fine. Rot then, you old hag," Wernher snarled. "You still have some time left, I can tell. You think it'll be the radiation or the starvation, huh?"

Midea could hear Wernher tell his men once he'd left that no one was allowed in that room. Midea was contagious, and whatever she had would kill anyone else. Wernher didn't know how right he was. Sometimes nobility was catching.

The woman's gaze flickered towards the door, then she closed her lids to sleep.