"You sure y'all don't want to stay a little longer? I can't say I haven't enjoyed the company these last few months. The house'll be kinda quiet without you." Doc Mitchell stood on his doorstep as his two houseguests returned with one last delivery of clean spring-water. They'd volunteered to lay in a good supply for their host as a parting gift, knowing that the long trek from the well was hard on the old man's leg. Anxious not to appear sentimental, he added, "Least-ways, I liked having someone to fetch fuel and bring in fresh meat. You kids are kinda rowdy, but you do good work."
"No, sorry, Doc. I appreciate all you've done, but I've got things to figure out that I can't here. Plus, Arcade has pulverized every useful herb in a five-mile radius. It's time for us to move on." Megan put down her bucket and gave the crotchety old doctor a hug. "I've asked Sunny and Trudy to look in on you from time to time. I don't think any of them realize just how hard it is for you up here by yourself. Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it."
"Don't worry about me, girlie, I got along just fine before you came and I'll get along when you're gone. You just worry about not getting yourself killed again. Don't know how many lives you got left, and it'd be a shame for the world to lose you." He then addressed himself sternly to the 39-year-old Arcade, who looked a little affronted over being called a "rowdy kid." "And you, young man, take care of her."
"I'll do my best," he answered. "I left you a couple dozen packets of my latest formula for healing powder. It's still not up to stimpak standards, but it's a lot better than nothing for speeding up recovery on minor injuries. Also, if you get low on medical supplies, send word to the Followers of the Apocalypse, and we'll do what we can."
"Thanks. Y'all take care out there." He watched them leave until they were a dark speck on the road to Primm, then went inside and sat down in his too-quiet living room. "Well, Caroline, I admit I feel kinda responsible for that kid. Sorta glad we never had any of our own – it's a heartache waiting to happen." He paused, as if to listen for his dead wife's response. "I don't know. Heads she survives, tails she doesn't. But I ain't got a coin on me. We'll just have to wait and see."
The road to Primm was uneventful. As they skirted the patches of glassy, irradiated sand, Arcade kept a wary eye out for bloatflies, geckos, and Powder Gangers, but saw none; Megan, for her part, seemed frustratingly oblivious, poking idly at her Pip-Boy and humming along to the Ink Spots. Knowing the doctor's aversion to avoidable violence, she had elected not to mention that she'd already cleared this stretch earlier in the week, leaving the convicts' looted corpses hidden in the weeds for the bugs to scavenge. After seeing what Joe Cobb's gang had done to poor Ringo when he tried to slip out of town one night, she had felt no compunctions about sneaking up and pulling the trigger on the likes of them. A single stick of dynamite, thrown into their midst, had been enough to touch off a chain reaction in their own munitions and take out the entire roadside camp. Other that a ringing in her ears that persisted for a full day afterwards, she'd come out entirely unscathed, if a little horrified at the spectacularly violent effects of her actions. Still, if anyone deserved it, they did.
Oblivious to this inner conflict and trying to get her to pay attention to her surroundings, Arcade commented, "I'm glad you finally upgraded to a hunting rifle. I wouldn't trust a varmint rifle against a radroach, let alone anything bigger." He had been unusually edgy all morning, nervous about leaving the relative safety of Goodsprings for the wastes. Primm might have the answers his friend sought, but it had a reputation for being all too "wild west" for his tastes. Arcade preferred things to be safe, comfortable, and civilized.
"Tell that to Sunny," Megan countered without looking up. "She can shoot the eye out of a coyote at a hundred feet. And we can't all have bizarre energy weapons that eat up a whole town's worth of energy cells in a month. Are plasma defenders standard issue for the Followers, then?" She kept her tone deliberately light, but knew the question would provoke her companion. Ask him any pointed questions about military tech or his personal history, and he'd stammer out some ridiculous deflection, his voice going up an octave, and then change the subject. It was all very mysterious, and Megan was determined to figure it out, hopefully without pushing him too far. It was at that moment that curiosity drove her to ask something she'd been wondering for weeks. Easy Pete had marked Hidden Valley on her Pip-Boy map a month before, and while she hadn't yet made the hazardous trek over to check it out, the rumors surrounding its occupants had intrigued her: energy weapons, Old World technology, and total secrecy. Arcade had preemptively refused to accompany her on any hypothetical visits ("I'd rather teach a radscorpion to dance than set foot in that bunker."). This seemed more than a little telling to her.
He hadn't responded at all to her jibe about his gun, so she tried again. "Arcade, did you used to be a member of the Brotherhood of Steel? It's okay if you were. I wouldn't judge you for that."
This got his attention. The look he gave her at this point, mixed anger, exasperation, and (unless she was imagining things) fear, made her duck her head in shame. "Exigua est virtus servare silentium, sed culpa gravis esse loqui de quibus didicit. It is but a small merit to observe silence, but it is a grave fault to speak of matters on which we should be silent. Ovid. No, I've never belonged to the Brotherhood of Steel! Perish the thought. And stop asking things like that. I'd really rather not tell you any lies." He sounded genuinely offended at the insinuation.
She answered boldly, tongue stumbling over the foreign phrase he'd taught her, "So, it's 'or something,' then. Veritas per violentiam, vel per mendacium silentio. Truth is as violated by silence as it is by a lie. Can't remember who said it first. Who, then? Where are you from? I only thought the Brotherhood because you've got an otherworldly vibe and a fancy gun. That is the limit of my knowledge about them. I don't know very much about any group, really."
"Cicero said that," he said shortly. "And I mean it. If you keep pressing the point… I... I'm going to expedite my return to Freeside. This line of questioning doesn't end well. Not for anybody. Either you accept that or you lose me as a travelling companion. Okay?" He turned away from her, physically as well as emotionally, his longer legs speeding up and leaving her behind in his wake. She trotted to keep up, but didn't dare say anything else. They travelled the remaining miles in chilly silence, except for the occasional warning: "watch out for animals in that ditch" and "let's go around this spot - my Geiger counter is clicking." She felt bad for transgressing his boundaries and wanted to apologize almost immediately; she was actually on the verge of doing so, several times, but irritation and hurt feelings won out each time. Why shouldn't I know? Aren't I his friend? What can he possibly be hiding? She'd definitely touched a nerve with her guess, but didn't know how to interpret that meaningfully.
At last the crumbling loops of the ancient roller coaster arose on their left, and they pulled aside to examine the strangely-silent town from a safe distance. There was no sign of any guard or patrol, and no sign of danger either, only a slight smell of decay wafting over from behind the walls, like meat left out in the sun too long. Pointing to a flag among the crumbling buildings on the perimeter of town, Megan led them off the road and toward the overpass. She spoke carefully, without looking at him. "Looks like there's an NCR encampment just ahead. I've never been out this far - we'd better stop and check in before we go into town."
They hadn't gone far before a soldier in desert browns ran out from nowhere to accost them. A relatively young man with the beet-red appearance of someone unaccustomed to the heat, he fingered his rifle nervously as he tried to inject an air of toughness to his challenge. "Halt! Where do you think you're going? Primm's been taken over by escaped convicts and the bridge is mined to keep them in. We don't need any more civilians in the mix."
"I'm a courier with the Mojave Express and I have business with their office in Primm. This is Dr. Gannon. I'm escorting him to the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside." Noting the guard's suspicious look, she added breezily, "Yes, I know we're going the wrong way. We're… er… taking the scenic route. Too many deathclaws to the north, anyway."
"Like I said, Primm is not where you want to go right now, courier or not. No one who's gone in in the past week has come out." He hesitated, then turned to Arcade, "However… are you a medical doctor? Only, one of our new recruits blew off half his fingers with a faulty mine last night. All we have is an inexperienced field medic and he doesn't really know what to do to keep the wound from going septic. He's in a lot of pain. We can't spare any caps, but could at least share some supplies and allow the girl access to Primm. At her own risk," he added hastily. "We've already lost a few men to the head-on approach."
"Certainly, I'd be glad to help if I can-"
"And while you're doing what you do best, I'll slip into town. No, Arcade," who had opened his mouth to protest, "that white coat is the opposite of covert. At least I can pass for a raider at a distance. Go help that guy. I'll be in in and out before you can say 'military intelligence.' It's just a trip to the post office."
Bidding farewell to Arcade, who actually seemed to prefer the prospect of a maiming to gangsters and explosives (but who didn't let her leave without first issuing his usual invectives for caution), Megan left all but a light bag of necessities - first aid, food, water, and extra ammo - with the soldiers and examined the hazardous path which led into town. She began the nerve-wracking task of picking her way across the booby-trapped bridge. When one of the frag mines began beeping its warning, she didn't think twice before kicking it over the side, where it exploded on the pavement below. Looking back sheepishly at the NCR guard behind her, she yelled, "Sorry! Just add it to my tab." Exercising more care, she reached the other side, took a deep breath, and sprinted across the open courtyard to the old post office, feeling very exposed. Her Pip-Boy wasn't showing any nearby hostiles, but it had been wrong before; there could easily be a half-dozen enemies around the corner, their heat signatures blocked by the crumbling brick walls.
The town seemed deserted, but the atmosphere was nonetheless foreboding. This impression was augmented by a desiccated body slumped against the wall of a building bearing the Mojave Express's symbol - the same that she'd seen on the paperwork that Doc Mitchell had found on her person, the primary clue to her identity. She wondered if the dead man was a courier too, but didn't want to search his stinking pockets to find out. "Glad I'm out of that business. It's too dangerous if you ask me," she said to the corpse, trying the door of the office and slipping inside when she found it unlocked.
It was almost completely dark inside, with only a small, battery-powered lantern breaking the gloom. "Hello? Is anybody here? I'm looking for the postmaster to ask about a package..." Spotting a scared-looking old woman hiding behind a counter piled high with scraps of metal and broken gadgets, she went on soothingly, "Sorry to barge in, ma'am. I'm not with the convicts and I won't hurt you. I'm just trying to find out about a package I was supposed to deliver. Are you in charge here?"
The woman blinked, stood up slowly on creaky knees, and answered tremulously, "No, that would be my husband, Johnson. He's over at the casino trying to talk the cowards in this town into taking a stand before those gangers burn it down or kill us all. I'm Ruby Nash." She looked uncertainly at the her battered armaments and piecemeal leather armor. "I didn't think the NCR was letting anybody in or out, for all that food and water's running short. Did they send you to help us? Because if they did, they're not paying you enough. There's at least ten of those murdering bastards holed up in that old hotel, and more creeping around outside. You can't do it by yourself."
Some instinct for self-preservation fought briefly for survival against her more altruistic side, but it surrendered almost immediately, quashed by her unwillingness to say "no." "I didn't come here to help, but I can try. Can you think of anybody who'd be likely to come with me?"
"Try the sheriff and his wife, in the corner house by the gate. Both of them are pretty handy with a shotgun. I ain't heard from them for a few days, though, so I'm worried the Gangers already paid a visit. There's a deputy around someplace too, but he's 'bout worthless for anything that risks his sorry hide." She paused and looked around helplessly. "We don't have much, but if you can help this town out, I'll pay you back somehow." She pointed to the messy heap of electronics on the counter. "Do you like robots? I'll give you this old hovering bot here, plus any parts you need to fix it up. My husband usually has some extra caps from selling scrap, too. Just get rid of those convicts. Please."
Megan ran a hand over at the device's spiky carapace, interest piquing at the possibilities of having a flying pet. Perhaps it could hack terminals and zap things for her. Although the head trauma had blocked the specifics of her prior self, she had somehow retained the skillset of a reasonably adept mechanic. Some of the more intricate work was difficult for her sluggish left hand, but daily exercises were helping with that. In any case, the damage to the robot's propulsion didn't look that bad and would be an easy place to start. "You've got a deal, Ruby. I'll see you later."
Outside, the mid-morning sun still overlooked a deserted town, although she now noticed a plume of smoke arising from the raider-infested hotel. The sheriff's house was an ugly construction, corrugated tin with only one small screen window. She approached the door cautiously and knocked twice. "Hello, sheriff? I'm a courier from Goodsprings. The NCR let me in. Can we talk?" There was no response. She stepped off to the side, standing on her tiptoes and shading her eyes against the sun to see inside the dim dwelling. This move saved her life, as just then a shotgun blast from the inside tore a ragged hole through the flimsy wooden door, throwing it open from the force of the hit. The wielder of the shotgun, a bulky thug clad in Powder Ganger blue, stupidly stuck his head out to see what he had hit, and without hesitating she reversed the stock of her rifle into the side of his head, dropping him to his knees. He made as if to bring the shotgun to bear again, and received another crushing blow for his pains. And another. And another. Long after he'd stopped moving, she continued bashing away, her movements more panicky than rational. Breathing heavily, she looked down at her blood-flecked clothes and at the ruined mess of what had previously been a human head.
"Ugh. One down… a dozen to go… oh, crap…" Retching, she added a layer of vomit to the messy scene. She'd killed people before - Legion, Gangers, and miscellaneous raiders - but this one had been particularly sudden and horrible. And close, damn it. Not for the first time, the former courier wondered if she was cursed, living on borrowed time. Perhaps the universe thought she belonged in that grave, and it was only stupid luck that had saved her thus far.
The smell inside made her gag again, forcing her empty stomach into a hard ball. She breathed through her sleeve while she made a quick survey of the interior. The sheriff and his wife were dead, the bodies unceremoniously dumped in the kitchen, and the house was otherwise empty. With an apology to the dead, she claimed the lawman's nice leather cowboy hat from a hook on the wall, gladly discarding her cheap straw one. At least now she looked the part. Venturing outside, she surprised two more criminals who'd come to investigate the shotgun blast, but was able to dispatch them both with a .308 to the head before they had even drawn their weapons. Yes, I am awesome. All must fear me! she thought triumphantly and with just a hint of hysteria. Trying to get ahold of herself, she admitted that if she was being fair, none of these opponents had even been sober, judging from the smell of cheap liquor on their corpses. Megan wondered scornfully if the NCR had even attempted to retake the town, because it didn't seem to her that they could have properly tried.
Tensions in the casino were running so high that a dozen people drew their guns when she pushed through the door. "Easy! I'm not one of them. Who's in charge here?"
A weathered old-timer stepped forward, hand on a holstered pistol, looking wary. "That'd be me, hon. I'm Johnson Nash. Where'd you get that hat from?"
She stood still and kept her hands visible. "Found it in the sheriff's house, along with two bodies. I killed the guy who did for them, along with two others out there. I'm going to take a shot at the hotel now, and I'd prefer not to go in blind. Do you have any advice?"
The old man nodded, relaxing his hands to his side. "Funny you should ask. We do have a plan, uniquely suited for a team of one, but hadn't yet decided who should 'bell the cat,' so to speak. If you think it sounds up your alley, I've got… let's see… 167 caps with your name on it when the work is done." He eyed her, a little doubtfully, "You are a mercenary, right?"
"It's a career I'm considering, but this would be my first job. Anyway, your wife already offered me a robot and I said I'd do it for that. Also…." Megan pulled out her crumpled courier order and handed it to him. "Later, if you can tell me about this package I was supposed to deliver, we'll be square. So, what's the plan?"
He had turned aside to a crate of gear standing beside the door and was rifling through it. "Hotel's a dark place. What windows it has are mostly boarded up. Our plan is to swipe the fusion core from the external generator, and at the same time send someone in with these night vision goggles while the gangsters are stumbling into walls. It should be easy now that you've killed the ones wandering around outside." He handed her a heavy, green-lensed helmet and showed her how to switch between regular night vision and thermal imaging. "I'll grab some people to guard the exits with me. If any of them try to escape, they won't get far. As for that courier order - it looks like it's several months old and I'll need to reference my records back at the office, but that won't take long once things are calm over here."
Megan took a deep breath, set her new cowboy hat aside, and slipped the helmet over her eyes. It muffled her voice and made the well-lit casino look like an over-saturated fever dream. She pushed it up again, and nodded to him. "Okay, let's do it. Y'all won't shoot me when I come out, right?"
"We'll try not to. Wait outside the front entrance until you hear two pistol shots - that'll be the signal that the generator's off. That's when you'll head in. Also, they kidnapped our deputy a few days ago. If you find him alive in there, you might could press him to help you finish the job. You can take this flashlight for him, should give him a fighting chance." He looked pained. "Look, kid, be careful in there, okay? I feel bad about throwing you into our fight, even if you did volunteer. These guys are bad business."
"I'm not totally sure yet, but I don't think I'm the kind of person to keep my head down when other people are in trouble." This felt true when she said it, and it made her happy to claim a little piece of identity that was just hers and no one else's. Too much of her personality was a cheap copy of the people she'd spent the most time with. Whatever else she'd been, before she'd been shot, that person must have been brave. Of course, she reflected, that person had also almost been murdered; this reminder dampened her joy, but only a little. She said aloud, more emphatically, trying to convince herself as much as him, "I'll be okay, Mr. Nash. This isn't my first rodeo. I usually come through things okay."
This is... not what I told Arcade I was going to do. She was beginning to feel a numbing sense of panic, waiting in tense expectation of the signal, muscles tensing like a runner before a race. It was genuinely hard to see anything with these goggles in broad daylight, but she didn't want to waste valuable time by taking them off. At least someone was watching her back while she was temporarily blind. A middle-aged couple whose names she had learned and forgotten already stood by the door with her, each clutching crude but effective pipe rifles. One of them patted her on the back, whispering words of encouragement, "Good luck in there, girl. Make you get inside and close the door as fast as possible - you'd be a great target backlit by the sun."
Two sharp cracks from the other side of the building and she plunged into a shadowy world of green and black, the sound of the door clicking shut sounding abnormally loud in the gloom. She overheard someone yelling into a radio from a lobby desk in the next room and crept towards his voice, hugging the sheltering wall until his illumined silhouette came into view. If he hadn't been shouting into an an unresponsive mouthpiece, he might have heard her approach; she wasn't all that stealthy. A silent machete, a spray of blood, and he was down and she was moving on, his unfired 10 millimeter pistol an extra weight on her hip. Groping his way out of a pitch-black hallway, another man appeared, this one a veritable giant armed with what looked like a sledgehammer. Moving low, she hamstrung him to bring him to his knees, and finished with a savage blow to the back of his neck. Her body had gotten stronger in her weeks of exploration and foraging, and she knew instinctively how to move in a fight; how she knew, she couldn't say. Muscle memory had been generous to her, one of the few things she had inherited from that person she'd been before.
Trying not to slip in his blood, she stepped over the body into the hallway, which was apparently some kind of maintenance access corridor. It appeared completely empty. She could hear confused shouting not far away, but nothing nearby except her own breathing and heartbeat. Opening a double door at random, she walked into a large kitchen and saw a man crouched on the floor, head down. Resisting the irrational urge to shoot him on sight, she called out softly.
"Deputy Beagle? Is that you?" The figure gave a muffled reply, which she took as confirmation. She felt for a gag and pulled it out, then stooped to use her gory machete to cut the ropes hog-tying him in place, trying not to slice his wrists in the process. "Hi there. The NCR let me in and the town hired me to kill the Powder Gangers and rescue you. I've got a gun and a flashlight for you - can you give me some backup, please?"
He took the proffered items and clicked the flashlight on, but said nothing as he stood up and stretched. A balding fellow with a weak chin and a ridiculous wisp of a mustache, he seemed unenthusiastic about her request. He looked nervously at her, at the kitchen's other exit, and back to her, all the while edging slowly into the hallway she'd just come from. "Most of them are in the old ball room out there," he whispered, "along with their leader, the aptly-named Flamethrower Bill. But I think you'll do just fine without me. I'm only a small-town deputy, not some NCR commando. I didn't sign on for this. Toodle-oo!"
"Come back here!" she whispered as loudly as she dared, but he was already gone, footsteps disappearing with the light. "Fucking coward…" Taking a deep breath, she raised her rifle, slipping between the double doors, and stepped into some real trouble.
They can't see me. They can't see me. They can't see me. She aimed for the nearest one, a burly thug fiddling with something on a table. At this range, with the night vision, she could hardly miss. At the exact moment that she sent her first bullet into his skull, someone else shooting from the far side of the room came within inches of killing her, the bullet striking the door behind her head, sending stinging splinters into her unarmored neck. She flung herself backward into the kitchen again, pushing the goggles up and trying to peer through the smoky glass porthole. Viewed in the normal spectrum, it was obvious that they had some light in the ballroom - a low cooking fire and at least one small lantern. Before she had time to think, the rightmost door swung inward with considerable force, knocking the wind out of her, thumping the back of her head hard against a row of cabinets, causing her to lose her rifle in the clutter on the floor. Whoever had burst in must have tripped upon entering, however, because a heavy body fell across hers, and brass-knuckled hands were hitting and grabbing whatever they could find. She couldn't breathe, couldn't roll away, and couldn't begin to match the strength of his arms. She would only have one shot at this, and hopefully the lack of light would play to her advantage - as the doors closed upon them once more, they returned to near-total darkness - he had yet to find her head or neck, but she knew exactly where her machete was. Putting all of her strength into a upthrust knee, she thrust it as hard as she could into her attacker's stomach, making him gasp and push away; given the space, she drew her machete and found the same target with its sharpened tip.
Rolling away from the dying man and trying futilely to wipe his blood off her leather chest piece, she pulled the helmet down again and sought the lost rifle. Spotting it in the corner closest to the hallway, she crawled to it on trembling hands and knees, pulling it to herself as she sagged against the kitchen island, keeping it between her and the remaining hostiles. There were at least two more in the ballroom - the one who'd almost shot her and Flamethrower Bill - and she was spent, scratched, bruised, and almost paralyzed with fear, all boldness forgotten. Making a break for the exit to regroup sounded good, but as she prepared to force her traitorous legs to move, the doors opened again and a heavy, tread paced into the kitchen behind her. She tried to control her treacherous breathing, staying perfectly still, when a gravelly voice growled out, "That you, Beagle? You finally grow some balls?" To an unseen person behind him, he added, "Follow me with that headlamp, Rusty. If anything moves, shoot it. Damn civvies finally wised up. It's high time we finished off this lousy town."
The heavy footfalls passed the island, revealing the broad back of a man wielding – what else? – a primed flamethrower, the small blue flame illuminating the hallway beyond him. Megan didn't stop to think or aim, but squeezed the trigger, hitting him somewhere in the lower back. He groaned and spun around, reflexively unleashing a wall of fire across the kitchen. She flinched as the heat licked her left hand, but fired twice more, hitting center mass both times. He sank to the ground twitching and the jet of fire stopped, but an unearthly screaming arose from behind her. Terrified, she looked around the corner and wished she hadn't - the aforementioned, Rusty, who'd been following close behind his leader, had gotten the full force of the misaimed fireball. His clothes, hair, and skin were ablaze, but he was still alive and in agony. Horrified, Megan unloaded the rest of her clip into the dying man, continuing to shoot even after the screams had stopped. The smell of burning flesh was more than she could take, and, crawling out into the hallway, she gagged and heaved until there was nothing at all left and white stars danced in her vision. Wrapping her arms around herself, she curled up and closed her eyes until her body stopped shivering, but she still felt too overwhelmed to even sit up. Knowing that this would be a dangerous place to linger, even if the first floor was cleared, she tried to pull herself together to assess the situation and her resources.
I'm losing it here. What do I need to get back to equilibrium and useful consciousness? Water, rest, light…and other people. Hands still unsteady, she pulled a bottle (thankfully, unbroken) of pure Goodsprings water from her pack and drank it slowly, rinsing her mouth to get the sour taste of bile out. Rising carefully to her knees, she patted her body down, searching for serious injuries she might have missed in the moment. Everything hurt, but nothing (except her burned hand and pounding head) was clamoring for immediately relief. Standing invited some dizziness, but it was manageable and she stumbled back toward the entrance she'd come in. The green world of night vision – of which she was growing profoundly tired - seemed to conceal new enemies behind every turn, and it was with the greatest relief that she finally found the door and stepped into daytime again, tearing off the helmet and filling her lungs with fresh air. A leathery hand steadied her when she threatened to fall on her face, and she heard a familiar voice, cheerful but concerned.
"Hey kid, you look like hell, but you made it! We picked off a half-dozen convicts trying to hightail it from the second floor. How'd it go in there?"
Her tongue seemed oddly heavy and she couldn't focus on Johnson's face for some reason, but she tried obligingly to answer: "I killed… six, I think. Flamethrower Bill… he's dead for sure. Found Beagle but he ran away. Bad deputy. Don't wanna go back in, but I didn't go upstairs yet." She was shaking, but didn't know why. She had no reason to be scared. It wasn't cold; quite the opposite - she was sweating hard now. "I don't feel very good. Can I go lie down for a while?"
She heard him give instructions to the others and felt two pairs of hands half-supporting, half-carrying her somewhere. "Take her to my house; my wife can take care of her while I go find an NCR medic." To her, he responded, "You've done enough, girl. We can take it from here - with their leader dead, any survivors are going to wish they had left while the leaving was good. I'll bring your hat and caps along in a little bit. Just take it easy."
He said something else, but his voice trailed off until it faded into the distance, along with her vision. It seemed to Megan that she blinked and found herself transported indoors instantly, now lying on a lumpy mattress with some kind of sticky salve on her hand and a damp cloth on her head. Her armor was gone and someone had dressed her in clean underthings and a long men's t-shirt. Every part of her ached, and her head in particular hurt abominably. She wondered how long she'd been out and groaned aloud. "Ow… oh no, Arcade is going to be pissed."
A tense voice at her elbow made her jump. "Arcade is pissed. It seems he has a friend whose idea of 'in and out' involves taking on a nest of bandits by herself. This, I might add, is something that not even the greenest, stupidest NCR recruit would do without backup. I would have helped you, you know. I don't mind killing killers for a good cause." He leaned over her, looking both irritated and worried. Shining a penlight in her eyes, he peered closely, frowning but was apparently satisfied by what he saw. "You have a nasty bump on the back of your head, but I think it was more exhaustion and stress that made you pass out. How do you feel?"
"Sore… um, really sore. My hand hurts a lot. A little dizzy. Thirsty." Was this what winning felt like? If so, she'd hate to lose.
"Here you go. Drink slowly." He helped her sit up, bruised ribs protesting, and held a bottle to her lips. It tasted sweet and salty, with a fruity flavor she couldn't place. This was spoiled slightly by a bitter, gritty aftertaste.
She made a face at the first sip. "Whazzat? Not water?"
"You need to replenish electrolytes as well as fluids when running and fighting in this climate, especially if you're vomiting, suffering from diarrhea, or losing blood. This is diluted cactus fruit juice with some added salts, along with a painkiller so you can sleep. I know it tastes bad, but I don't have any med-x." Arcade in lecture mode always gave more information than was strictly necessary.
She finished the bottle and laid back, fighting back a wave of nausea at the sickly taste, but her head did become clearer. "Thanks. I did throw up. Twice. I thought I was used to killing by now, but some of the deaths I saw today were really awful." She held still for a while, letting the throbbing in her temples settle down and examining her burned hand by the dim light of Arcade's lantern. It didn't look as bad as it felt - the skin was blistered under the greenish dressing, but she could still move her fingers. Using her good hand to push herself back to a seated position, she looked around, taking in her surroundings for the first time. They were in a square-shaped room with very little furniture and a closed door hanging crookedly in its frame on one side. A small register on the top of the wall opposition was the only source of ventilation, and it was stuffy and warm. "This the Nashes' house? How did you get here?"
"Yes, this is a back bedroom where couriers spend the night sometimes. Johnson crossed the street to tell the NCR that the Powder Gangers were dead and that he needed a medic for the girl who'd taken care of them. I was done with the patient they'd asked me to treat and followed him back." He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and staring at her intensely. "I don't think you appreciate how hard it is for your companion to be left behind every time you want to do something dangerous. The way Lieutenant Hayes had talked up the hotel situation, I thought I was going to find you dead or dying. As it was, you were absolutely covered with blood, and I had no way of knowing at first glance that almost none of it was yours." He shook his head wearily. "We've been on the road for less than a day, and I'm already regretting it. Right now, I want to wrap you in cotton wool and send you straight back to Goodsprings to live out the rest of your natural life. It's difficult to feel responsible for someone as reckless as you."
"You don't have to take responsibility for me," she muttered. "But sorry. I'll try not to leave you so far behind next time. It's just that, you know, you're the smart, useful one and it's more important that you stay on the sidelines fixing people. I don't want to bring you into a firefight that any hothead with a gun can handle. You're more valuable than that. More good-er. Er, better." She yawned, her eyes closing involuntarily and thoughts slowing. "I'm sorry about what I said before, too. I'll try to… treat you better in the future. Respect boundaries and all. I don't want you to leave."
He sighed. "I'm just not used to living with nosy people, or being close to people in general. When the questions start - and they inevitably do, sooner or later - that's when my relationships generally end. People can't help ferreting out a mystery, and I can't blame them. But I also can't talk about it. Not to anybody"
He looked so depressed at this that she felt like she should try harder to make amends. "Friend, you're… really… fuckin' awful at hiding the fact that you have a secret, but that doesn't mean I should harass you for it. I won't ask you again. You have to admit it's weird, though. You're weird. But nice." She opened eyes that felt like they had little lead weights pulling them shut, and lifted her drooping head with some effort. He was looking at her oddly, at once pained and thoughtful, and she smiled reassuringly, feeling pleasantly light and altogether better than before. A little too good, actually. Even her hand felt okay now. "I feel a-may-zing. Whatever was in that juice is great."
He gently guided her head back to the pillow and covered her with a scratchy blanket. "Don't get used to it. Next time I'll let you suffer to teach you a lesson in caution, but I'm in charitable mood right now. Good night, Megan. Sleep well."