"Look at you." Dean Domino sneered, a leer twisting his decaying lips. "Pretty as a picture."
Vera screamed in hatred and leaped at the ghoul who vanished in a swirl of violet mist. Bewildered, her mind tumbling with jagged images like a kaleidoscope, Vera crouched snarling like a beast as she peered into the pulsing violet light surrounding her.
"It's all for you Vera." Said Sinclair's voice from behind her. Vera whirled to see Sinclair appear out of the mist, a sad smile on his thin face. "I have the cure right here..." He began to reach behind him when Vera shrieked and hurled herself forward. Sinclair vanished as Dean had, leaving Vera again alone in the pulsing mist.
"You made me into this...thing!" Vera screamed into the void. "Sinclair! Dean! You didn't love me! You never did!"
"As I recall, you were the one who spurned me...Vera."
"House!" Vera hissed as she turned and looked up at the mustachioed lord of New Vegas, his arms folded as he raised an eyebrow sardonically.
"I didn't ask for much..." House said as Vera tensed to pounce. "We didn't even need to...touch each other." His face twisted into a sneer of disgust as Vera snarled. "But you wanted the dross of Hollywood and now look at you."
"Yes, look at you." Domino added as he appeared beside House, his arms also folded and a sneer on his lips.
"Look at what you've become." Sinclair said as he appeared to flank House.
"Take a good long look...Vera." The three men said in unison as their outlines began to blur.
"You're dead!" Vera shrieked. "Leave me alone!"
"You should know." Dean replied, although their images were now blurred as if seen through violet smoked glass. "After all, you killed me."
"And me." Sinclair added. "After all I tried to do for you."
"I didn't kill you!" Vera shrieked as she recoiled from the three figures, their identical thin mustaches the only feature visible on their distorted faces.
"But you did." The three figures chimed in unison. "You've tried so hard to forget the night the bombs fell, but you can't deny it."
"I don't remember anything!" Vera cried as she shook her head furiously in denial. "Just darkness, hunger, and...blood." Vera's eyes widened as the whirling fragments of her memory coalesced into the image of Sinclair's gory corpse sprawled on the steel floor of the Vault beneath the Sierra Madre, his throat torn open and his staring eyes wide with horror.
"No!" Vera screamed as she covered her head and collapsed into fetal position.
"You can't hide from what you've done Vera." The three figures said as they once again blurred into mist.
"How many have you killed trying to kill me?" Suddenly the three figures solidified into one and it was House who stood before her. However it was House wearing Dean Domino's sunglasses and Sinclair's tan pullover sweater.
"You can't kill me Vera." House scoffed. "Sinclair, Dean and I are all sides of the same soul. You can't eradicate me anymore than you can blot out the evil staining your soul."
"I'm not evil" Vera screamed as she looked up wild-eyed at her tormentor. "I didn't ask to become this!"
"But you embraced it rather wholeheartedly, didn't you?" House said with a mocking smile. "You weren't a blood crazed beast all the time Vera. What did you do when you awoke and found yourself covered with blood? You could have ended it all at any time Vera, but you didn't. Why not?"
"The rage..." Vera muttered as she remembered the blood red haze that would fall over her vision, blotting out all conscious thought.
"The rage." House agreed with a nod. "All directed at the ones you blame for turning you into a deranged monster."
"Die!" Vera screamed as she again lunged at House, but her clawed hands found only mist. Derisive laughter filled the air, echoing again and again until it seemed a multitude was mocking her. Vera clapped her hands to her head and screamed as she tried to drown the laughter out but it continued to grow in volume as it beat her to her knees. And then, the purple void shattered like glass and Vera was plunged into blackness.
After a timeless moment in the void, Vera suddenly became conscious of the sound of the wind as it hissed across sand. She was immediately aware that she was naked and lying on packed dirt, her hands and feet tightly bound behind her. The wind was cold where it blew across her body, telling her that it was nightfall. She could smell a fire and felt its heat on her back so she knew she was at a campsite. She also knew she was a prisoner, although how she had been captured Vera had no recollection.
"The Datura didn't kill you." A deep voice rumbled from beyond the fire. "The Visions of the Datura Root are strong, too strong for most, but you saw, and survived."
Vera's eyes flew open and with a snarl rolled to her knees, facing the one who spoke through the flames. A man in a tattered jacket sat cross-legged on a partly buried timber. He was powerfully built with a dark face as hard as if carved from granite, framed by thick braids of black hair. His eyes glittered in the firelight as he met her gaze impassively and made no move toward the sub-machine gun lying beside him. Vera tested her bonds and found them secure. For now she was this stranger's prisoner and there was nothing she could do about it.
"I tracked you for days." The man said, as Vera glared at him. "Others said a beast was stalking the hills, a creature no one could capture or kill. I heard the tales, got curious and went looking."
Vera shook her head as she listened to the stranger's odd speech. Her memories were a confused muddle of blood and darkness, but now she felt a clarity she hadn't experienced for years. The rage was now an echo of its usual fury, her craving for blood quiet. Marveling at the unaccustomed stillness in her mind, Vera looked warily at the dark-faced man and focused on his words.
"I read the signs you left, the marks in your victims and knew I wasn't following a man or beast." The man continued to sit immobile as the wind whipped the flames of the fire. Only his lips moved as he continued to speak, his eyes staring unblinking into Vera's
"Armed, unarmed didn't matter. You killed all you found, consumed some, left others. Not driven by cruelty, but necessity. I learned your pattern, used it to trap you."
Vera growled as she jerked her eyes from the stranger's gaze. She remembered a shadow standing above her, a flash like a bolt of lightning, then nothing but darkness.
"When I saw you, I knew what I already suspected." The stranger rumbled as Vera looked up from the fire and again found her gaze held by his dark eyes. "History had come to claim me once again. Thought I was free of it when Kaiser took the Mojave. Didn't need to do anything but watch while the Bull slowly died. But someone new arrived, a stranger from the East. A woman, changed by the war drove the Bull back across the Dam. Said to have white hair and eyes."
Vera started at the stranger's description, her eyes widening at another memory of a face that looked like hers surrounded by flames.
"The stranger's name was Valeria." The man said and Vera hissed with recognition.
"Valeria!" She exclaimed and the man nodded.
"Thought you were her at first, but the collar you wear shares history with the Legion and the Brotherhood of Steel."
"The...collar?" Vera twisted her neck, feeling the cold steel of the device she had worn around her neck so long she had almost forgotten it. At the mention of the Brotherhood another face leaped into her mind. A bearded old man, his lips twisted with disdain while his eyes burned with the fires of fanaticism.
"Elijah!" Vera growled. "He put the collar on me!"
"Would have ended you." The stranger said with a nod. "But I needed to know your history more. Too many questions needing answers."
"What did you do to me?" Vera snarled as the huge muscles of her shoulders and back bulged and strained as she tested the heavy cords binding her.
"Used medicine of my tribe, the Twisted Hairs to open your eyes to the spirit world." The man said as he leaned toward the fire, his own eyes shadowed and dark. The Datura Root showed you visions while Bitter Drink stilled your mind. The Twisted Hairs would use them to calm fear and pain before battle."
"So you caught me." Vera sighed as she relaxed her arms. "What are you going to do with me?"
"Finish what I started." Was his response. "You spoke during your visions, shared your hate of Dean, Sinclair...and House."
"They turned me into this...thing!" Vera snarled. "Dean took me from my home and perverted my dreams until all I had left was him! He took my name and made me into 'Vera'!"
The stranger sat silent as Vera's rage mounted as she bared her fangs in a snarl of rage.
"House wanted me to be his doll, to be put on display at his whim! When I left him he made me pay by blacklisting me! When Dean took me to Sinclair I had no choice but to go with him!"
"Always choices." The stranger rumbled. "Just not always easy ones."
"I was dying!" Vera hissed. "Dean tried to keep it from me, but I knew. So did Sinclair, although I never told him."
"Love and hate are close." The stranger interrupted. "I hear both when you speak of Sinclair. How did he earn your hate?"
"He didn't let me die." Vera whispered as tears began to fill her eyes. "I didn't ask him to try to save me, he just couldn't...let go."
"It is the way of history to offer life or death before taking them away and leaving us lost." The man rumbled as he stared into the flames. "All you can do is find purpose, so the why of your being is known to you."
"Why?" Vera whispered in confusion.
"I followed your pattern." The man answered. "Always in sight of the tower, drawn to it like a moth to flame. It is the focus of your rage. It is what drew you here and what keeps you alive."
"House!" Vera snarled as her rage returned.
"You remember his tower from the what was." The stranger said as he slowly rose to his feet. "House still lives within it. Offering greed as the answer to the world's problems. An empty promise luring all to its lights, where they are drained of everything and cast aside."
The man pulled out heavy curved knife from behind his back and held it before Vera's snarling face.
"I offer you a chance to end House and change history. Agree, and I will free you. Refuse, and I will end you."
Vera glared up into the stranger's face and somehow knew that he wasn't making an empty threat. He had taken her once, he would do it again but this time for good. Vera lowered her gaze as her mind seethed with rage at her helplessness. She hated the stranger for rendering her helpless, just like all the others, but as much as she hated him she realized she hated House more. If she died now, then she was just another victim, consumed long ago by the greed of powerful men. She had made two of them pay for what they had done to her, now it was House's turn. She looked up at the stranger and smiled sweetly, baring her fangs as she did so.
"Agreed Mr...?" Vera raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"Ulysses." Was the reply. "Not my first name any more than Vera's yours, but it is what I have chosen to be called."
"Well Ulysses." Vera said cheerfully. "Let's make history!"
Ulysses cut the ropes binding Vera's ankles with a twist of his razor sharp blade, then did the same with her arms. He stepped back as Vera climbed to her feet and looked down at him with a cruel smile. Ulysses watched Vera for a moment, then sheathed his knife with one quick motion.
While Vera had been drugged Ulysses had used a conditioning technique long practiced by his people to prepare their warriors, or to break their enemies. Using suggestion and drugs, Ulysses had channeled Vera's rage toward one of the names she had voiced in her fevered ranting. Using his name as a trigger, he activated a personality he created for the deranged mutant from the fragments he had gleaned from her. For now the madwoman was lucid and stable, and Ulysses was confident his conditioning would hold until she had served his purpose. After years of hiding from destiny, it was time to answer its call and change the world.
And Vera would be the key.
