Cigarette smoke made thin, hazy clouds inside the Concord speakeasy. Despite the rad storm raging outside, the interior was curiously muffled, perhaps an effect of the intact sofas and dirty red carpet. Four men and two women sat on the couches around a low coffee table near the front door. They were dressed for life in the wasteland: layers of tattered shirts and coats and scarves and hats. Despite relaxed postures, their weapons lay close to hand. The table between them was covered in piles of caps and playing cards from an ancient deck, lit from above by a slowly rotating fan. This did nothing to dispel the sluggish heat brought on by the storm. A radio at one end of the table played static and the somber voice of Travis Miles murmuring into the station microphone about loss.

A guy with a cigar stuck between his teeth made his play—the cards riffling against the table's dusty surface—and leaned back in his seat. "We better not've come all the way to the corner of fucking nowhere to buy just one kid," he said around the cigar.

One of the women, this one wearing a red cap, sighed a longsuffering sigh, as if she'd already heard this. "'It's bad for business,'" she said. "We know."

Another guy with long stringy hair and something of the snake about his eyes watched the next person's play intently. He said, "Simon's gone back to get some more. Once we've made it worth the trip, we can ditch this place."

"Rad storm'll slow 'im down," said the other woman, a big blond who looked like she had oak trees somewhere in her lineage.

"Not if he knows what's good for 'im," said Cigar Guy. "Keepin' us waitin' ain't good for 'im." He removed the cigar from his mouth and blew a big, messy smoke ring. "Can't believe he only brought one. Spineless scum."

"Now that," said Gale Anderson, "is something we can agree on."

The wastelanders all looked up to find a lanky woman leaning against a column behind the cashier's counter. She had short, spiky hair and held a cigarette between her long fingers. It had been tricky as hell for her and Nick to get through the back door and into position without alerting their quarry. They'd had to shut off the Geiger counter function on Gale's Pipboy just to get the damn thing to stop clicking in the rad storm. But it was worth it to see the looks of total shock on the faces of this bunch of filth.

Nick, standing back in the shadows where only his glowing yellow eyes could be seen, felt a smirk coming on. He let it.

"The one thing I don't think we can agree on," Gale continued in her level tone, "is the ethical ramifications of the deplorable business of child trafficking." She gestured toward the group with her cigarette wielding hand, leaving a drift of ash and smoke in its wake. "You would say I should let you live, but frankly, you're biased in your favor. I, on the other hand, say you should die." Now she shifted just enough to reveal the 10 mm pistol she had aimed at them. "In the interest of full disclosure, however," Gale said as she flicked the spent cigarette away, "I'm biased, too."

With her next breath, she squeezed the trigger and blew a hole through Cigar Guy's head.

Damn, that woman liked to put on a show.

All hell proceeded to break loose. Nick and Gale dove for cover behind the counter as the wastelanders returned fire, yelling as they turned over couches and the coffee table. Dust flew and gunfire roared in the confined space, no longer quiet amidst the shouting and the cursing. Nick peeked around the end of the counter and nailed a guy in the arm. The metallic scent of gun smoke filled the air.

The radio cut out when a stray bullet went through it. In the brief pause afterward, Nick heard a clattering noise and looked up to find the greasy-haired guy topping the staircase to the balcony above. He and Gale were too far back beneath the overhang for him to have height advantage, so what was he doing? It was then that Nick also registered the sound of high pitched yells coming from somewhere on the second floor. He recognized the voice as Jaycee McGoffin's.

Woodchips flew past Nick's head when a bullet ricocheted off the floor. "Gale!" he shouted as the gunfire resumed.

Gale's eyes tracked the escapist up the stairs for a second before snapping back to the fight in front of her. She said, "Go get him, Nick."

Nick dumped fresh rounds into his revolver and slapped the cylinder shut. "You'll be okay here alone?"

Gale rose up and aimed a shot over the counter. "I've got these guys."

For the first time in a long time, the Vaultdweller smiled.

Chilled, Nick made for the stairs as Gale laid down a barrage of cover fire. At the top, he followed the sound of a shriek around a corner, his boots thumping on the old wood flooring. In one of the intact bedrooms, he found the greasy guy holding a gun against Jaycee's temple. The wastelander had her small body in front of him to serve as a meat shield. But one of her arms was still cuffed to a bedpost.

"Nick," Jaycee breathed, voice catching. Her elfin face and wispy blond hair were filthy and tear stains tracked down her cheeks. A fresh bruise bloomed under one eye, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.

It could've been a whole lot worse. Nick realized he had expected a whole lot worse.

Nick had his revolver trained on Greasy Guy. But with that pistol so close to Jaycee's head, he couldn't shoot without risk of the man pulling the trigger. He would've spat if he had the saliva to do it. "Making off with your stolen goods, eh?" Nodding at the handcuff around the girl's wrist, he said, "How're you planning to use her to get outta here like that?"

"Stay back!" Greasy Guy shouted, unimaginatively Nick thought.

Gunfire rattled from downstairs and lighting flashed through the windows, followed by a crash of thunder.

"Look," said Nick in his most reassuring tone, "just release her and I'll let you walk away."

"Like hell you will!" The man's face, behind the curtain of greasy hair, was a mess of fear and anger. Being a synth meant Nick had an excellent poker face, but the guy still knew he was lying. There was no other way out. He had seen his own death in Nick's artificial eyes.

Nick Valentine had no intention of letting this man live.

Jaycee chose that moment to jerk forward and stomp hard on Greasy Guy's foot. She screamed as the gun went off next to her head, the bullet driving into the floor. At the same time, Nick squeezed off his shot and it went straight through the guy's neck. Blood spattered in Jaycee's fair hair, the crimson drops standing out like jewels in the snow.

Jaycee gasped softly and Nick was across the floor and pulling her from the man's grip just as the corpse began to slump over. He crouched down in front of her, keeping her from looking as the body hit the floor with a wet smack. Breath hitching, Jaycee buried her face against Nick's chest and he wrapped his arms around her, placing his non-metal hand on the back of her head. Her shoulders shook against him, but she made no sound.

"You were very brave," Nick murmured to her.

By the time Nick had picked the lock on the handcuffs and carried Jaycee out onto the balcony, the gunfire below had ceased. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure when it had stopped. Bodies littered the room below, and he couldn't tell who was who in the greenish-yellow light from the windows. The heavy hand of fear settled on the back of Nick's neck as the possibilities of Gale's fate raced through his mind.

But when he stepped off the last stair, Jaycee in one arm and revolver at the ready, Nick found Gale under the balcony, a long way from where he had left her. She had one of the wastelanders pinned up against the back wall, one fist bunched into his shirt collar and the muzzle of her pistol digging into the soft flesh beneath his chin. He was bearded and scruffy and largely unremarkable. Gale had her face close to his and Nick could see the whites of the man's eyes in the gloom. Nick prudently turned his body so that the kid in his arms wouldn't see this unfold, but he found he couldn't look away himself.

In a soft voice edged with razors, Gale was saying, "Do you know who I am?"

The man's Adam's apple bobbed against the gun barrel as he swallowed hard. "Y-you're the Vaultdweller. The one we been hearin' about on the r-radio."

"So you know my reputation."

The man squeaked and shivered in her grip. Nick wasn't sure he recognized this steely voice as belonging to Gale.

After a moment of letting him sweat beneath her stare, Gale said, "I'm going to let you go" —the guy made a noise somewhere between a gurgle and a whimper— "and you're going to go back to your disgusting child trafficking bosses and deliver a message to them. From me." She turned her head sideways, almost like a lover, and whispered into his ear, "The message is this: Sanctuary and all its children are under my protection."

"O-okay," the man breathed, his head bobbing like a broken spring. "Okay okay okay okay."

Gale released the wastelander and he slid down the wall to land in the trash at her feet. He gazed up at her in bewildered shock, hands shaking. She didn't step back to give him room, just glowered down at him.

"Well, go on!" Nick snarled at the guy. "Before I finish the job for her."

Within the span of one breath, the wastelander scrambled to his feet and careened out the front door into the radiation storm.

In the silence that followed, Gale stood staring at the wall. Nick walked up to her, crushing the rubbish underfoot. He saw that her face was blank as he said, "You did good."

Scrubbing a shaking hand across her forehead and into her hair, Gale turned to face him. Her bleak expression melted when she spotted the girl in his arms. "Jaycee," she murmured, touching the blood in her hair. "Are you okay?"

Jaycee nodded, but she remained uncharacteristically quiet. She had her arms around Nick's neck in a death grip. Lucky he didn't need to breathe.

A faint pattering sound reached Nick and he looked down to find spots of blood collecting on the wood floor next to Gale. His eyes followed their trajectory back up to their source and found red spreading along the hem of Gale's white t-shirt from her hip.

Nick set Jaycee down on the floor. "Are you okay?" he demanded, crouching to examine the wound.

Gale exhaled, the sort of sigh that sounded like weariness or wooziness. "It's just a graze, Nick. I'll live."

Nick tsked and liberated a scarf from the corpse of the oak-shaped woman, a brown and white gingham one. He wound it around Gale's hips and one leg, tying it off in a big knot over the wound to staunch the bleeding. He pretended not to notice Gale's blush and the way she stared at the ceiling as he fussed over her. While he worked, Gale popped open the bottle of Rad-X and handed some to Jaycee before dry swallowing a couple herself.

"Think you can make it back?" Nick said as he stood up. "We probably shouldn't hang around here."

"Yeah, I can make it." Gale glanced out the window and said, "Storm's letting up. And besides, we've got one more rat to catch tonight."