Morning came rather quickly. The Lee sisters didn't feel exactly refreshed, as they were woken up harshly by a Legion Praetorian guard.
"Get up! Caesar is expecting you."
"How can I get up when I am bound?" Alice asked.
The Praetorian guard cut her loose.
"Come, come now."
The two sisters looked at each other, confused. They followed the man over to Caesar's tent.
Caesar was waiting for them inside, sitting on his bed.
"Thank you, Lucius," the bald man said.
The man named Lucius bowed and then exited the tent.
"Ah, the Lee sisters." he said.
Both women froze.
"How do you know us?" Alice asked.
Caesar grinned. "Let's just say it's a hunch. Does the name Martin Lee mean anything to you ladies?"
Alice and April were stunned. How could Caesar know who their father was?
"How do you know our father?" April asked.
"Oh so he IS your father?" Caesar chortled. "Well, well. What a surprise."
Again the women said nothing.
"I'll tell you how I know your father. I knew him through Joshua Graham, my former Legate. Your father accompanied Graham to do so called missionary work. Though your father wasn't a founding member of the Legion, he was there when we incorporated the Blackfoots and other tribes, but decided to flee afterwards because he didn't want to raise his little family to be apart of the Legion. He was smart for being a man that came out of an idiot tribe, oh how stupid those New Canaanites were. You see, Martin was a close friend of mine, until he decided to go to the NCR to become a ranger. What an idiot, thinking he and his little wife would be safe if he stayed in NCR territory instead of staying with the Legion. Martin should have known it would come back to haunt him later. Look at him now. The fool."
"You're lying!" The sisters cried out.
"I am not, sadly. I wish I was." Caesar said sarcastically.
"Don't speak of our father that way, our father was a good man!"
"He was an idiot." Caesar said simply.
The sisters glared at him.
"And why aren't you wearing your clothing that I had given you?" he asked.
"I don't want to wear it. I won't serve you." April said.
"I'm afraid you don't have a choice." Caesar said sternly.
Caesar looked to his Praetorian guards that were standing by and nodded in approval. Four of them grabbed the Lee sisters, two to each sister, and mezzed them with a Mesmetron. Then, the Praetorian guards proceeded to place slave collars on the women. The women didn't even put up a fight, they were overpowered. Before they knew it, the Lee sisters were wearing slave collars and forced to bow to Caesar.
"Alright. Now that that's out of the way, I can get you two to listen to me. What I need for you is to repair our weapons and make new ones, unless you have other hidden skills. I normally do not trust nor tolerate scientists, but for you two, I suppose I could make an exception. We went through your journal, or the one that, Alice was it? Yes. The one that Alice had. We noticed that you had notes on nuclear research in there among other things. And you, what was your name?" Caesar pointed at April.
"April." She said shortly.
"Ah, yes. You're the impressive one. You killed one of my men just by stabbing him with something. What was it? I know it was a syringe, you had it filled with a dark orange liquid. It turned his skin purple and yellow, and it killed him quick. Can you tell me what it was?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about." She said.
"I did it, I made the weapon. And it was an enhanced cazador poison infused with batrachotoxin that I concocted in a lab."
Caesar looked at Alice. "You?" he laughed. You are nothing more than a frail person. I don't even know how we ended up with you. Your sister was the one to fight back with that weapon, not you! Lies."
April shook her head.
"It was Alice who gave it to me right then and there. She had five of them, five syringes with the poison."
"Very well then." Caesar said. "My task for the both of you is to continue making these poison filled syringes. We will need them for another attack. But first, allow me to bring you your first test subjects."
"What? No! We won't test on people! We will test on anything like a deathclaw or radscorpion, just not people!"
"Ah, but no. You will test on these profligates that have I have no use for. I was already going to dispose of them anyways. It's time you get going to the large tent I have set up as your 'lab.' Guards! Take the Lee sisters over to their work tent. Make sure they are working!"
The Lee sisters were pulled out of the tent and then taken over to the "lab." They couldn't help but notice that the entire Legion was watching them walk by.
"Alright, now get to work!" one of the men said. The other man had carried the slave clothes.
"Put these on," the other man said, handing them to the sisters before walking outside.
As soon as the sisters were alone, they looked at what they had. It seemed Caesar had supplied them with everything a scientist in the wastes could ever ask for, even things a repairman would dream of having. There was a workbench in the left corner, and a desk beside it with flasks, beakers, and jars containing multiple elements. Near the workbench were many parts for all sorts of guns, swords and other weapons.
"Well, this is a neat place. Almost like the lab back home," Alice said.
April hit her in the side.
"Ow! What?"
"How is this nice? We're being ordered to create weapons of mass destruction! That isn't nice!" April said.
"Well the setup is."
"My God, you're so selfish, Alice!"
"You think I want to use human sacrifices as test subjects? I'd honestly rather use myself as a sacrifice, to put an end to our misery!"
"Mom, Dad, and Nathan wouldn't want this! Stop talking like that! They'd want us to live!"
"Well then how is this living if we are slaves?"
April dropped her shoulders.
"We need to try, at least. Remember what I said, comply to gain trust, and then make a break for it."
Alice went over and hugged her sister tight.
"Alright, let's do this."
They each grabbed lab coats that were on the desk and put on gloves, masks and hairnets to begin working.
"Okay, so they left us radscorpion poison. How is that going to be lethal?" April asked.
"It doesn't have to be, it just needs to be a venom of some kind for a base. The main ingredient to this super poison is batrachotoxin, which consists of 31 Carbon molecules, 42 Hydrogen molecules, 2 Nitrogen molecules and 6 Oxygen molecules."
"How will you concoct that without killing yourself?" April said in disbelief.
"I've done it before. You just have to be careful when combining molecules. The end result is milky, like that of bufotoxin. Why do you suppose I have a gas mask and dark goggles? Not that my eyes will be damaged. But still."
April shook her head. "Alright. Well, make enough of it, so that Caesar doesn't get on our ass for this shit. I just want to get it done and then hopefully get out of here."
"We'll see." Alice said. "Put on a gas mask and some heavy duty gloves, please."
"I won't need them."
Alice shrugged. "Suit yourself."
April stood there quietly watching Alice for four hours, not falling asleep or losing interest. It kept her mind off of her family and loved ones in Everwood. She made multiple mental notes about everything that Alice was doing, and also observed how Alice seemed to be calm and collected when dealing with elements, never showing any emotional reaction to anything. April secretly wished she could be emotionally stable when doing research and experiments like Alice. It wasn't that she couldn't keep her cool, but sometimes April couldn't keep a neutral attitude when dealing with things such as morals with science.
Though April and Alice were both intelligent scientists, it was Alice who was more careful and better at measurements when working with chemicals, even if she had a habit of rushing her math when explaining physics. April hated dealing with chemicals and elements mainly because she had a shaky hand and miscalculated sometimes with liquid measurements. Alice was more of a chemist, and April was more of a physicist. Even if both were involved in different forms of science, the Lee sisters were nevertheless very serious about their work and took pride in it.
"Done," Alice said, laying out around 70 small filled syringes.
April gasped.
"That's a lot of batrachotoxin! How much is that?"
"Well, it's about seven gallons worth."
"And how much is necessary to kill someone?"
"Oh, not too much. It can kill someone on its own pretty quick, like in fifteen or twenty minutes. But combined with another poison means instantaneous death upon contact. It doesn't have to be injected, just exposed to cuts or openings in skin much like radiation. But injection makes it work so fast, it's like taking candy from children."
"So we won't need syringes."
"For safety purposes we will. For those of us handling it."
"And there is no known antidote?"
"You would have to be on an IV of nothing but antivenom for it to be flushed out."
April shuddered. Just then, Caesar walked in.
"Is my weapon ready?" he asked.
"Yes." Alice said while combining the radscorpion poison with the batrachotoxin and filling the rest of the syringes.
"Good, let's test it!"
The women followed him out, feeling nowhere near enthusiastic.