The audio files sitting in the Brotherhood of Steel's encrypted system were the last known evidence of the Lone Wanderer's whereabouts. Initially, they were listened to at a near constant, studied for any possibility of a location, a date, anything . Past the daily logs made by Davies in a tired voice, a five minute clip of hushed voices and gunfire made it through the system. However advanced the Brotherhood's technology was, there was no way to find out where the audio came from without a distress pulser. Sarah Lyons, Elder of the Eastern Chapter at the time of the disappearance, had made the official conclusion that they were dead with nothing but a teary glance in Rachel Ingram's direction.
The year was 2280 in the Capital Wasteland when Shiloh Carver, reluctant hero, headed north with a young scribe and two knights. The Brotherhood had just celebrated three years of Project Purity. Sarah had been frustrated with Shiloh at the time, as the younger woman had been slowly easing her way out of the Brotherhood's focus since being promoted to Paladin. She had all but begged Sarah to refrain from promoting her to Sentinel. Sarah wanted her to fully embrace the Brotherhood, but the Lone Wanderer held reservations she wasn't willing to disclose.
Maxson remembered overhearing that fight between the two, the Citadel's old walls doing nothing to disguise their raised voices. He had beelined for Sarah's office after training, but was stopped by the choice words that flew between the two. For two women who prided themselves on being cold and calculating, they grated on each other heavily. Maxson wondered how their friendship had lasted.
Just thirteen at the time and consumed in both combat missions and his own teenage self-consciousness at the fresh scar on his face, Maxson hadn't paid attention to the rapidly decaying relationship between the Brotherhood and the Lone Wanderer. He supposed that he should have had some interest, being a newly minted Paladin of the Eastern Brotherhood, but he couldn't find it within him to be distracted by personal squabbles.
After a few minutes of silence that left even Maxson uncomfortable, the door to Sarah's office slammed open so hard its hinges creaked in weariness. Shiloh strode past him, too consumed in her thoughts to acknowledge his stare. He tried not to be offended at her dismissal of him, but the warring hormones inside him and the tension in the air had him sneering at her, "Watch yourself. When I'm Elder you won't get away with speaking that way to me."
He didn't expect her to look startled when she stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. "Arthur, look-"
He cut her off immediately, "Maxson." Whatever friendship they'd had had soured since the deathclaw incident.
She didn't even argue his correction. "I'm sorry you heard that. I'm sorry anyone heard that." She did look regretful, despite the biting nature of her tone. "I've got to go. I'm taking soldiers with me, Sarah's made me promise that much." She faltered, a flight reaction in her eyes as she glanced towards the exit. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. You don't care." It was spoken as a statement. One Maxson couldn't argue with because he'd rather be fighting something than watch these two argue technicalities.
He didn't know that would be the last time he'd ever see her. Of course he didn't. But her last words had plagued him more than he'd ever a boy, Maxson thought to himself years later, I was just an angry, stupid boy .
Then things took an immediate turn for the worst. After a week with no logs or communication made between the Citadel and the small group, Sarah began to worry. Knight Davies was devoted to protocol and wouldn't have missed a log as long as his power armor was still running. Even if there had been some malfunction, Scribe Anderson and Knight Ripson both carried communicators and distress pulsers. No, something must have happened to the whole team. Whatever happened, happened very quickly.
By a month's passing, two search parties were sent out. Sarah was fretfully at Senior Scribe Quinlan's side as he studied the group's daily logs and that infamous sound bit. He had a whole team on site trying to break down the individual voices and noises from the clip, but the audio file was heavily damaged. Quinlan suspected that something had been trying to interfere its reach to the Brotherhood.
Quinlan's suspicions only fueled Sarah's worry. Despite being the strongest person Maxson had ever known, she was consumed by the disappearance until she had to make the decision to call off the search parties. It had not been something lightly, as Maxson would later read in her Elder logs. She called it the hardest day of her life, behind the quiet death of her father. He attempted not to dwell on the concerned words she'd written about him in her logs as well.
During the ordeal, Maxson would have called himself indifferent. Only, that was a teenage boy's lie. He was training a lot harder, with ferocity not seen before by Danse or the other Knights he'd been in charge of during missions. After witnessing him beat a super mutant to death with his power armored hands, a perceptive initiate made the wrong decision to ask him if his frustration had to do with the disappearances. He'd immediately regretted questioning about it when Danse had to physically shield the young man from Maxson's rage.
In hindsight, he wished he had talked to Sarah more about it. Despite being fifteen years apart, they had a special bond that came with the circumstances surrounding their positions in the Brotherhood. She still mentored him and had included him in her plans to promote him to Sentinel soon. They still had something of a friendship, but Maxson's age and inexperience caused a rift between them that neither knew what to do with. He couldn't imagine what it was like to be saddled with some petulant teenage boy who you knew would take your place someday. Only, Sarah's logs showed that she knew him better than that. She had been worried about him since the deathclaw attack, knowing full well something had changed in him. Killing those raiders at eleven years old had been a fluke, a complete stroke of luck that young Maxson barely acknowledged to be anything significant. The deathclaw...that was different. And Sarah knew because of course she did. But before he had even entertained the idea of talking to Sarah about Shiloh's disappearance and how it had affected him too, Sarah was dead. Enraged, he had stormed a path in the Capital Wasteland that ended with The Shepard, the super mutant that killed her, in pieces. Knight Danse made no attempt to stop him this time. Almost immediately, he was promoted to Elder unanimously by the council.
Everything had happened so fast in the year 2280. It wasn't until years later that, after some haughty, agonizing social gathering in his honor that he found himself alone and mourning in his new quarters. All night he'd been desperate to get away from the older elite group of officers and their wives that the senior scribes tried to parade him in front of. He was barely fifteen years old, the youngest and most celebrated Elder in recent memory, but he missed Sarah. Whatever reservations he had prevented him from openly missing Shiloh.
If the deathclaw incident had changed him on the outside, the deaths of the two people he had been closest to as a child changed him on the inside. Sarah was his closest and most cherished friend. Shiloh had been his hero, a selfless individual who went on grand adventures and came back to him with amazing stories. That was, until they drifted apart.
He wasn't afraid of battle and knew only his position as Elder prevented him from being on the field more. After Sarah, the Western Elders warned him against directly participating in combat unless the Brotherhood's home base was in jeopardy. They weren't very understanding of his participation in the destruction of the Institute, but he assured them that it was important that he was there with his soldiers. Maxson would only admit to himself that a lot of his tenacity to be there came from the satisfaction he would have at personally destroying those Institute bastards and their abominations. He would let himself indulge in the glory of a victory despite regulations.
-0-
Maxson stood on the command deck of the Prydwen, a scowl on his face at how the airship creaked during the harsh radstorm winds. The large observation window was completely clouded in green. Sparks of yellow flashed within it as lightning bounced off of irradiated water molecules. Two knights and a paladin had already expressed worries about the airship's ability to withstand the storm. He had dismissed them with a dare to express their worries directly to Proctor Ingram, who'd tell them exactly where to shove them.
The radstorm had made things worse, but his mood was primarily darkened due to reading a manual Proctor Quinlan had presented to him earlier. It seems that some character in the Capital Wasteland had written a survival manual, dedicating much of it to her source, the Lone Wanderer. He scoffed at the notion that she'd referred to the Lone Wanderer as a 'him'. Sarah would have been livid if she'd lived to stumble upon it.
This was not the day to cloud his thoughts with the past, and he'd told Quinlan as much. Lancer-Captain Kells, one of the few who had full permission to speak freely with him, jested that he couldn't glare the storm away. He'd raised an eyebrow at that, taken off-guard by Kells breaking his usual stoic nature. Kells had merely replied that he thrived in high-tension situations. That wasn't much of an answer to Maxson, but he was too distracted by a developing migraine to really care about why his second-in-command was in such high spirits. He'd planned to leave the Commonwealth within the coming weeks, but the radiation damage to the airship could possibly prevent any long-distance journeys until Ingram deemed it safe. His need to leave the region was bordering on desperation; the Brotherhood needed to distance itself from Nora James and her choice of companions.
Despite her promotion to Sentinel, she was essentially ex-Brotherhood after destroying the Institute. If the Western Elders had their way, that wouldn't have been a possibility for her.
Then again, sparing the synth was also something that would not have been possible.
No. Arthur would not think about that. He would not entertain the idea that that thing was anything but destroyed.
The official report was that it'd been his own hand, something Sentinel James had been relieved to find out. Despite the position he had put her in, he spared her the reputation of being her commanding officer's killer. He knew she remembered his first words to her. I care about them, you know. So long as she was his Sentinel, he'd meant for those words to include her. Without much fanfare, she took a backseat to Brotherhood operations, leaving the spotlight to settle in one of her communities as General of the Minutemen. A quiet life. Despite the pressure on him, he couldn't find himself to envy that.
He was broken from his thoughts by a presence in the command deck. Turning to see Proctor Ingram confused him, as he had yet to call for her to ask about the radiation damage to the airship. Thoughts of rusted hulls and irradiated air vents ceased when he saw the struck look on her face. He hadn't seen her look like that since Sarah died.
"Sir," her usually confident voice was laced in trepidation, "we've found a distress signal."
Her words were vague, but he saw the look in her eyes and he knew. Arthur stared back at her, the sounds of the radstorm consuming the silence.
-0-
The first thing she heard was her father's voice. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely. The second thing she heard was thunder.
Suddenly, as if plunged into ice cold water, she let out a gasping cry. Instinct kicked in and despite her blurry vision, she kicked and clawed at the glass in front of her until it released with a hiss. The floor was freezing to her touch as she crawled along the white tiles. Thunder roared outside, but outside sounded far away. She knew she had to stop.
Fighting her flight instincts, Shiloh forced herself to stop stumbling around. She sat against a wall in silence until her breathing slowed and her vision cleared. Only, she immediately recoiled at what she saw. Slumped over in strange, human-sized pods were the three Brotherhood members she'd been traveling with until...she didn't know. Until something placed them there.
Not dwelling on the how or why, she swiftly found her footing and grabbed onto the glass doors of each of the pods. The dim, emergency lighting made her grip more difficult. She hadn't realized the doors were soundproof until Scribe Anderson began screaming.
"Stop! Stop- shh," Shiloh's voice felt rough with disuse, "be quiet or someone's going to hear." The fear of their kidnappers must have overwhelmed the fear of the freezing pods, because Scribe Anderson immediately quieted. She trembled against the wall.
Knight Ripson was violently coughing as he lay in a heap on the floor. His lips were blue and Shiloh couldn't do much to move his heavy weight. As for Knight Davies...she was certain he was dead. He looked to be sleeping, but a closer inspection revealed the bullet holes riddling his chest. Absently, Shiloh wondered if he'd always looked so much smaller outside his power armor.
Scribe Anderson protested, scrambling for the door to Davies's pod, but Shiloh managed to hold her off with a harsh whisper, "We will come back for him. But we have to go...we have to…" she trailed off, completely out of her element. They were all dressed in the Brotherhood fatigues they had been traveling in, though Davies's power armor was still nowhere to be seen.
With another violent cough, Knight Ripson began gingerly rolling over to sit up. He waved off Shiloh's attempts to help him up and she saw a strange calmness in his eyes. Of course, she knew the type of soldier Ripson was, who thrived in battle and stayed calm, but she'd never seen these appraisals so close before.
"We need to leave. Davies is dead," Ripson barely cast a glance at the frozen corpse in the pod, "we need to leave and contact the Brotherhood." Shiloh sighed in relief. Ranking aside, she wasn't the leader in this bizarre situation.
-0-
The facility they were housed in reminded her of the abandoned vaults she'd seen. In its heyday, it would have been some sterile lab, but now it was only dust and grime lit up by emergency lighting. The windows and holes in the walls only showed evidence of a heavy radstorm outside.
They rummaged through every crate and drawer they could find by the light on Shiloh's pip-boy. Anderson managed to gather some mismatched ammo and Ripson found an old .10mm pistol. The supplies they'd been carrying were nowhere to be found. All that remained were the clothes they were wearing and the pip-boy that, wisely, nobody tried to pry off.
Whoever had been there was long gone by the time the radstorm damaged the power grid. Knight Ripson led the charge with Shiloh and Scribe Anderson close behind. All three were shivering despite the heat inside the old building. Ripson's lips were still blue and he continued coughing through his observations. The look on his face kept Shiloh from demanding they stop and rest. She didn't feel right pulling a rank she hadn't wanted in the first place.
Looking out one of the lab's windows, none of the three survivors recognized the territory outside. For all they knew, they could have been on the west coast. Anderson found an old emergency exit map in a dusty drawer on the fourth floor and the group followed it down. Suddenly they stopped at Ripson's insistence outside a room marked as storage.
Anderson had protested, but Ripson had largely ignored her and broke down the flimsy wooden door. Shiloh wondered why a lab's storage room would have such loose security before she was nearly shot down by an appearing turret. Using the .10mm, Ripson quickly dispatched it and the three others in the room. He was actively looking around for something. Anderson stood in the doorway trembling while Shiloh picked through boxes of what looked like illegible paperwork. Suddenly Ripson yanked out a trunk from beneath a pile of old tarps and broke the lock with the butt of his pistol. He opened it to reveal a pile of electronics, including random wiring, a piece of power armor and...a distress pulser. It looked old and weary, but Ripson managed to turn it on after playing with the wiring in the back of it.
"How did you know that was there?" Shiloh asked despite her happiness at the thought of Brotherhood soldiers helping them escape this place. Ripson ignored her as well, not really giving either of the questioning women any acknowledgement.
"We need to stay here until they arrive, who knows how long this old thing's going to last." He used the world old tentatively, as if unsure whether his observation was correct.
Between the weariness in her bones, the chills from the cold, and the irradiated air they were breathing, Shiloh found all the arguments leaving her. Despite leaving the vault at nineteen, she was still more susceptible to radiation poisoning than most wastelanders. She hadn't felt this tired since the purifier.
-0-
It was fifteen hours before the Brotherhood found them. Half of that time was waiting out the radstorm. It still stained the sky green, but the lightning had diminished.
Shiloh felt heavy and cold in the soldier's arms. The geiger counter on his power armor had slowed to a more comfortable staccato. He glanced down at her through a mask she knew wasn't T-45. Her tongue felt swollen and the air tasted bitter, but she couldn't gather the energy to wake up fully. She tried to speak, but the soldier holding her asked her to save her strength as they boarded the vertibird.
She couldn't see the others and turning her head was more difficult than it had ever been before. The soldier must have seen her widened eyes, because he spoke calmly again through the metallic voice box in his power armor. "I need you to relax. The others are safe." When the vertibird took off, he removed his helmet and shut the doors to prevent any harsh winds. She didn't recognize the man beneath the mask. "My name is Knight Rhys, Paladin. You're in the Commonwealth. Any further questions you can ask when you get your strength back on the Prydwen."
"Prydwen? What's the Prydwen?" She mumbled, noting the alarmed look on Rhys's face before everything faded to black again.
