Authors Note: Chapter 4/5 contain explicit rape/non-consent scenes. Read at your own risk.
Since exiting the vault, her search had taken her through what had once been the state of Massachusetts. The state where she had grown up, all the places she had remembered, the schools she had attended. All of it, destroyed or reduced to a mere shadow of what had come before. She had searched high and low, questioned anyone she could and eventually it had led her to this military fort's basement.
Nora could feel her anger being to boil over as she glared balefully at the man who had stolen her son and murdered her husband. His bearded mug was exactly the same as it had been when he had been looking at her through the cryo pod's window. The left side of his face was disfigured by a large scar shaped like the letter 'L' and he reeked of cigar smoke and alcohol. "So where is it? Huh? This 'Institute'? How do I get there?"
Kellogg smirked at the questions "Heh. Haven't you been paying attention? You don't find the Institute. The Institute finds you. But I think we've been talking long enough. We both know how this has to end. So... you ready?"
Her knuckles began turning white as she squeezed the grip of her laser pistol. 'I wasn't able to protect you or Shaun Nate, but at least I can find some justice for what this piece of shit did to our family.' "Oh I'm ready. Question is – are you?"
As soon as she finished speaking both of them reacted at the same time. Kellogg dived behind the desk to his right as her shot burned through the air where his chest had been. At almost the exact same moment she could hear the roar of Nick Valentine's submachine gun discharging as he opened fire on the synths accompanying Kellogg. Nora turned her pistol towards the nearest synth and fired twice before ducking behind cover herself. The first shot only hit the machine's shoulder, but the second burned it's way through the outer covering and severed what would have been the spinal cord in a human. Nick's bullets took care of the second as they left it's head partially shattered and filled with holes.
She could hear the second synth thrashing on the ground but put it out of her mind as she began creeping towards where Kellogg had hidden. Nora raised herself just high enough to see over the desk only to see him shimmer and disappear into thin air. "Nick, he just turned invisible somehow. Be careful!"
Nick's response was as straightforward as she had come to expect from the synthetic detective. "Probably a stealth boy so stay out of sight and listen. He's invisible, not silent." She ducked back down to a crouch and began slowly putting one foot in front of the other as she inched her way through the small maze of desks. Other than the broken synth, everything was quiet as she focused on listening — a muffled footstep, clothes rustling, an exhalation of breath or anything else that would give Kellogg's location away.
Her blood ran cold as she heard the metallic click of a pistol's hammer cocking directly behind her. Nora flung herself to one side in desperation just before Kellogg's slug slammed into the ground where she had been crouching. Her return volley only served to briefly light up the room as the lasers missed the mark and splattered against the far wall. She cursed to herself as she scrambled back to her feet and scurried away before he could fire again.
Nora stopped short a few feet away from the door they had entered this room through and took cover again. Nick was one row in front of her and a few feet off to one side, his yellow eyes sweeping the room as he looked for any sign of the invisible mercenary's location. As she peeked around the edge of the cubicle she was hiding behind, Nick stood up and started spraying bullets at chest level in a horizontal arc that moved from one wall towards the other. When his shots began passing through the middle of the room, a single shot rang out amidst the din and Nick cursed as it struck the metal fingers on his exposed right hand. For a brief instant she could see a small cloud of smoke appearing in the air before vanishing.
At the same moment a small metal object came bouncing off the wall behind her and clattered on the ground as it landed at Nora's feet. She stared down at the trash can shaped grenade frozen in surprise before something clicked in Nora's head as she grabbed it with one hand and hurled it back towards where the smoke had been. She could hear Kellogg's voice as it landed back on the ground "Oh shit..." before the grenade exploded in a dome of garish green light. She covered her eyes until the blinding light had vanished before hesitantly moving out of cover.
Nora slowly made her way towards where the explosion had been, half-expecting Kellogg to fire again any second. A pile of ash lying on the ground was lying there on the ground to greet her after she walked around the last corner. She lowered her pistol as she stared at the man's remains before eventually turning away.
By the time Nick had made his way over to Kellogg's remains, she had already begun trying to log into a computer nearby. All of the terminals in the base, broken or not, had been of prewar design except for this one. Nora didn't recognize the design and there wasn't any manufacturer's symbol but it was clearly much newer and more advanced then any computer she had ever seen before. "Nothing left of Kellogg but ash. Can't say I'm sorry he's dead, but we might have been able to get a lead if his brain had survived. That computer tell you anything?"
Nora shook her head as she felt her spirit beginning to sink "No, it's just a report he made. It says Shaun was delivered to the Institute but Kellogg already told us that and it says he was after some renegade... at least I got to avenge Nate so that's something." She picked her pistol up off the desk as she got back to her feet. "How's your hand? I saw you get hit."
The detective looked at the digits he still had left on his right hand, seemingly bemused. "It's nothing I can't fix though Nicky Three-Fingers has a nice ring to it. Let me know when you're ready to head back to Diamond City."
After they were back on the road, Nora stuck her pistol back into it's holster but left it unbuttoned. A full month of running around the Commonwealth had made her rather cautious when out in the wilds. Super mutants, synths, raiders, gunners, yao guai bears, deathclaws but the worst were those damn giant insects. She shuddered at the thought of a bloatfly spitting it's maggots at her—that had not been a good day.
"So if you don't mind me asking, what's the deal with you and Piper?" Nora lifted an eyebrow at Nick's question before shrugging dismissively. "I don't know what you're talking about." He snorted at that "All right, I won't pry if that's what you want. I do have another question then, why did you ask me to come to Fort Hagen with you? You had Piper go with you everywhere else, why the change?"
Nora gave the area around them a quick scan and reflexively brushed her fingers against her gun even though she didn't see anything. There was a long silence before she eventually replied "I wasn't sure how I was going to react when I found Kellogg. I might have panicked, had a meltdown, gone berserk... I didn't really know. I brought you along because I figured you'd handle it better if I had a bad reaction. And I didn't want to risk Piper seeing me going ballistic." Nick considered that for a moment "Piper woulda been fine, but it was your decision to make. What do you plan on doing when we get back to Diamond City now that the trail's gone cold?"
"The Institute will find out that Kellogg's dead sooner or later but if all the stories I've heard are true then I wouldn't be surprised if they already know. If I'm lucky then they might contact me but that's a long shot. I have some caps saved up from some of the weapons I sold and Piper said they're selling a house near the market so I was going to go buy it from Geneva." Nick looked surprised at that "You're not going to stay in Sanctuary Hills? That was where you lived before the Great War right?"
Nora stopped walking and her surprise was evident in her voice "I never told you that." Nick laughed, though not unkindly, at the look on her face. "I am a detective remember? You told me that you were frozen in Vault 111 and I know that Sanctuary Hills is the closest city so it's the most likely candidate. Why move to Diamond City?"
"It's... some of the buildings are still there, but it's not the same place anymore. All the people and the things that made it home for me are gone. Nothing's left there but memories of the old world and I'd rather not hang onto something that doesn't exist anymore. Diamond City is as good a place to start over as any that I've seen."
"Doesn't hurt that's the city where Piper lives does it?"
"What was that Nick? I think your vocal unit is malfunctioning. I grabbed a screwdriver while we were in the fort and I've been working on my mechanical skills if you want me to give it a shot."