The Minuteman post at Carlisle Station was northwest of Concord, a long day's walk from Diamond City. For Nick, since he was getting a late start, it meant over-nighting either in Lexington or Concord, depending on which road he took. Which meant the first order of business was figuring out which road Lily had taken. The Lexington Road was the most direct route. But it wasn't the only one, especially if she was trying to duck any pursuit. There was also the possibility she'd changed her mind on the way there. Or run into trouble. She might even be on her way back. If so, he didn't want to miss her.

There were daily passenger and freight coaches to both Concord and Lexington from DC, but they left early in the morning. Leaving after lunch, Lily would have missed the coach and so, like Nick, been forced to walk. She might even have planned it that way. He stopped to talk to the ticket agent anyway, on the office chance she'd inquired about fares.

"Haven't seen her," the woman said, handing Nick the photograph he'd shown her.

"You're sure about that?" he prodded, holding the picture up. It showed Lily sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, pencil in hand and a harassed look on her face.

"Annie's girl, right?" She shook her head. "Sorry, Nick. She definitely didn't buy a ticket. I see her, I'll tell her you're looking for her."

"Thanks."

On a hunch, Nick showed the photo to a pair of off-shift drivers lounging in the sunshine nearby, finishing off their lunches.

"Sure, I seen her," one said. "Saturday, on the way back from Lexington. Just the other side of the bridge. Blonde hair, red backpack, right? I was running empty. Told her I'd turn around and give her a ride if she was willing to pay the fare, if you know what I mean." He spat juicily at a crow eyeing the remains of his sandwich. "Flipped me the bird, the little bitch. Too bad for her. When Big Jim Baker gives you a ride, baby, you know you been rode."

Nick glared at him. "She's in high school."

The driver waved dismissively. "Sure, pal, sure. I'm just talkin'. Don't get your shorts in a knot."

Nick left them. He guessed it would have been getting dark by the time she hit Lexington, but there were a couple of good travellers' inns on the road in and he was reasonably certain she would have stayed in one of them. Carlisle was a half-day's hike after that, which meant she'd have arrived yesterday afternoon. Which, Nick thought, meant she had probably been a sworn-in Minutemen recruit for a full day now. Barring catastrophe or cold feet along the way.

It was a good day for walking and Nick let his stride lengthen. The sun was warm and bright over his shoulder and there was a light breeze out of the west that carried with it the scent of wet earth and green, growing things. He smiled to himself. It had been some time since he'd left Diamond City. As always, he was amazed at the way Boston had changed in the half-century since the fall of the Institute. Although many of the sturdier pre-War structures still stood - nowadays largely refurbished and re-built - the endless swamp of shattered buildings that had made post-War Boston such a charming place to live was being gradually cleared. There were rough areas, still, but there also new buildings and vegetable gardens in places that had once been the haunt of raiders and ferals. He waved to a young couple planting potatoes in an empty lot next to the old Parkview Apartments building. He was digging, she was following behind, plopping the seed potatoes into the holes and covering them with moist earth. They waved at him as he passed, smiles on their dirt-smeared faces.

The same went for the ubiquitous piles of collapsed rubble and the fleets of ruined vehicles that had once choked the streets. Like the ravaged buildings, they had been scrapped and cut up, melted down and re-purposed.

It hadn't all been peace, love and kumbaya. The fall of the Institute had left a power vacuum in the Commonwealth that a number of groups scrambled to exploit. It had been a near thing. Welded together under the charismatic leadership of Nate Howard, the Minutemen and the Railroad stayed loyal. But they weren't enough. The Minutemen were still re-building in those days and the Railroad had suffered badly in the assault on the Institute. In the end it was only the arrival of civilian militias from the outlying settlements and the heroic last stand of defectors from the Brotherhood of Steel led by a renegade named Danse that saved Diamond City.

The Brotherhood itself had stayed aloof, calling its ground units back to the Prydwen,the flying fortress that served as their base of operations. There they waited, preparing their own assault against the weakened city below. It had been a mistake. Realizing the danger, agents of the Railroad infiltrated the Prydwen, capturing the control room and then, when the explosive charges they'd set failed to detonate, flying the giant ship at full power into the ground. Cut off from all support, the few remaining Brotherhood units had either attacked and been slaughtered, or surrendered.

The victory at Diamond City broke the back of the local raider gangs and sent the much-more dangerous Gunners scrambling back to their bases around Quincy. In the years that followed Quincy was re-taken and the Gunners finally destroyed. That, together with the pacification of the super mutants after the Siege of Goodneighbour, had finally brought stability to the Commonwealth. For nearly 20 years, peace had reigned.

With peace had come prosperity. An entire generation had come of age without knowing war or hunger, fear or want. But the lessons of the past remained. People still built with an eye toward defense, and at ground-level, buildings showed an armoured face to the street. The Boston Nick walked through now lacked much of the warmth and openness of the one he remembered from before the War.

On the other hand, you rarely got jumped by ferals anymore.

The nuclear chain reaction that destroyed the Institute had also had destroyed the only real possibility of re-building the Commonwealth as it had been before the Great War. "What if?" It was a game Nick and some of the others often played. Would Father's unswerving fanaticism have survived his death? Could the ingrained mistrust of the Institute in the Commonwealth have been overcome? Or even: "What if the Institute had won?"

They would never know, now, and the gradual deterioration of the technical infrastructure that had survived the War was nearly complete - the victim of scavengers, of war, and of the ravages of time. The seemingly inexhaustible micro-fusion plants that had kept so many lights burning and equipment functioning gradually failed, and when they did, there was no one left who could repair them. Nor did the tools and technology exist to make those repairs. With some exceptions, the Commonwealth of today was a lot like it had been in that long-ago time when the first Minutemen scrambled to defend their homes against their erstwhile redcoat masters.

Except for the guns, of course. No matter how far civilization fell, people always seemed to manage to hold onto their guns.

There had been refugees a-plenty after the Fall of the Institute. That had been a problem. Most of the escaping synths had moved on to new homes farther up the coast; the Railroad had seen to that. But the humans – hapless civilians mostly, fleeing for their lives with nothing but the clothes on their backs – had to be integrated into Commonwealth society. There had been difficulties. Many had fallen victim to raiders and slavers. There had been gang rapes and lynch mobs. Nick growled at the memory.

He crossed the Charles over the old lift bridge. It wouldn't lift again any time soon, but someone had patched the worst of the holes and the crossing wasn't quite the adventure it had once been. The road was closed at the other end of the bridge and a large "Radiation Zone" sign marked where a detour swung wide around where the Institute had been. A fortified guard tower stood there. Owing to the high radiation, the ruins here remained largely unchanged. It was one of the few places in the Commonwealth where dark things still lurked and Nick was glad to fall in with a patrol heading in his direction. He asked for news of Lily. Someone had indeed noticed her - "a girl with a red backpack, travelling alone" safely past the danger zone. Nick breathed a small sigh of relief.

To the north and west stood Cambridge University, on College Square just past the old Cambridge Police Post. It was the first institution of higher learning to be built in Boston in 250 years. It was modest as yet, specializing in agricultural research and environmental remediation. Nate's adopted son, Shaun, was Rector there. He'd been at Ellie's funeral but there hadn't been much chance to talk and Nick promised himself he would stop in on the way back.

The sun was westering by the time he reached Lexington. The pre-War elevated superhighway through here had been largely restored and was home to a glitzy new retail and commercial district. But there were several small, family-run hostels near the old bus station, and Nick guessed that Lily would have found these more to her liking. He struck pay dirt on the second one.

"Oh, yeah. I seen her." The big woman behind the counter handed Nick back his photo. She was middle-aged, pleasant-faced but with shrewd eyes, and hands roughened from work. She had a motherly smile, though, and Nick liked her immediately. "Told me she was up to see her brother at Carlisle. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't, weren't my business to pry. But she seemed to be in good spirits and she weren't hurting none that I could see. And she had the caps to spend."

"Did she stay here?"

"Oh, sure. Not so many travellers come in since the coach line moved its stop up to the overpass, but I still keep my rooms clean and fresh. Most of my income these days is from selling drinks." She nodded at the open door across the room, through which Nick could see a few rough-looking men standing at a long bar.

She followed his gaze. "I run a decent house. I don't allow trouble and I got rules about minors in the bar, especially pretty, unaccompanied girls. Even honest-looking ones. My clientele is mostly single men working salvage up at the old Corvega plant, and they like their whiskey. Letting a girl in there on a Saturday night is just asking for trouble."

"Was she any trouble?"

"Hell, no. I told her the rules, she was fine. Took her meal up to her room myself, made sure she was settled and comfortable then saw her on her way in the morning."

The woman looked at Nick. "I recognize you," she said. "You're that detective fellow, ain't you? From Diamond City." She looked smug. "I pegged her for a runaway minute I laid eyes on her. Her people sent you to bring her home, I expect." Nick nodded, not wanting to get into complicated explanations. "Well, I'm sure you'll find her," she continued. "All I know is she said she was heading up to Carlisle Station. There's a town there, just down from the fort. It's no place for a girl alone, but I told her to stop at Hank Pretty's place if she needed somewhere to stay. It's on the road into town. He's an old friend. You go there, tell him Linda Sykes sent you. He'll do you right."

"Mighty kind of you," Nick said.

"Least I can do," the woman answered. "You tracked down a deadbeat once, years ago. Owed my pop a considerable sum of money. Lemuel Sykes, my pop, ran a little trading outfit out of Bunker Hill back in the day."

Nick shook his head apologetically. "Sorry, I don't remember."

"That's okay. It were small potatoes for a high roller like you, I expect. But you did us a real service and my Pop was always grateful. It'd be an honour if you stayed here tonight. On the house."

Nick accepted the offer, ignoring the little voice that was urging him to press on. He'd felt a growing sense of urgency about this trip: a desire to see it through quickly that had less to do with worrying about Lily and more with his own need to return to familiar surroundings. He was, he suddenly realized, out of his comfort zone, and it was making him feel a bit dislocated. It jarred him to think that he even had a comfort zone, or that being out of it could cause him this much anxiety. On the other hand, he was tired. Even with his new plates, his charging system wasn't what it had once been. What he really needed was to get some organics into his system, run a diagnostic and shut down for the night.

The room was small and simply furnished, but it was clean and quiet. Nick ate the meal she brought and took a couple healthy slugs of whiskey, then ran a series of maintenance routines on himself before stretching out on the bed preparatory to shutting himself down. On an impulse, he took the letter out of his pocket and read it again:

"…If I could tell you everything, I know you would understand. This breaks my heart, too. Love, Meredith."

Funny thing was, he didn't remember anyone named Meredith.

He closed his eyes. In the darkness, he dreamed…

-OOO-

There was a light, and then darkness, and then a long, confused time: a tumult of voices and faces, scattered images wrenched out of context, pouring over him like a river in spate. He tried to concentrate. There was a name, and he grabbed on to it like a drowning man reaching for a rope. He felt the beginnings of memory tease him, and he reached for it. But there was a noise from somewhere, like a door banging repeatedly in the wind. Memory fled, running out between his fingers like a dream fading on sudden waking. Despair filled him. And then it was just him and the gate, banging, again and again, and wherever he'd been before, now he was here. Wherever here was.

He opened his eyes. The world swam in shapeless blobs of light. Unnamed colours flashed and faded and there was a blast of music, shrill and discordant, that swirled around him like an angry demon learning to play the bagpipes. And cold. A deadly, life-taking cold that pawed at him with icy fingers. Oddly, he did not actually feel coldness, nor the rough, broken surface on which he lay sprawled, his body tilted at an ungainly angle. Instead, he simply recognized their existence, as if they were a story told by a stranger or something he'd seen on TV.

He tried to marshal his thoughts but they kept drifting off, and he realized his grasp on consciousness was tenuous. There was an insistent hum in his ears, a high-pitched buzzing that slowly rose in volume. There were voices within it, he realized. Dozens of them, all talking at once. Voices that murmured and shouted, that chanted and droned, that mumbled and roared, all mixed together in an incomprehensible babble.

A female voice rang out above the others, speaking in urgent tones:

"…gency reserves falling. Levels, 2.02 per cent, and falling. … 0.98% and falling. Warning, system failure. Warning, approaching depletion. Repair systems offline. Repair systems offline. Warning: permanent shut down imminent. Shut down imminent… " Other voices – the same voice, maybe, reeling off columns of meaningless numbers, but more quietly now, fading into the background hum that was getting louder and louder. The colours fled from his vision and the world went dark around him. He was, he realized, about to die.

Then he smelled it: a putrid, charnel-house stench that filled his nostrils and triggered a sensation like hunger. But hunger of an intensity he had never felt before, manifesting itself as searing pain. He doubled up and rolled over, feeling something soft and wet beneath him. Something sticky smeared across his lips and face. Reflexively, he opened his mouth, and then he was tearing at it with his teeth, ripping off huge chunks of flesh from something, barely chewing before swallowing down. One mouthful. Two. His hunger was a living thing. Mindlessly, he devoured. From somewhere inside of him he heard a sound like a "click-click-click" and then a surging heat in in his belly. The buzzing in his ears began to fade and through it he could hear the woman's voice again.

"…minent…. Calculating. Energy levels…. 1.25 % and rising…. 2.2% …. 5.5%. Rising. Diagnostic systems on-line. Calculating. Main capacitor failure. Initiating manual over-ride. …. Re-booting…"

Still he ate, repulsed by the smell but unable to stop, until the heat in his belly was a raging bonfire. And still the voices droned or muttered or chanted, and the numbers rose.

Finally he opened his eyes again and looked around. The world spun and turned, then resolved itself into focus. Around him all was ruin: a landscape of reeking garbage and broken things stretching out on all sides under a cold, grey sky. A small shed, weather-beaten, stripped of its paint by time and the elements, stood nearby and its door was open, caught by the relentless wind and slamming repeatedly against its frame. In the distance stood the towers of a city, broken and fallen. A rusted tricycle stood beside him and beneath him was the body of a man, bloated and decayed, eye sockets empty, mouth open in silent horror. Maggots were crawling in and out of it, and the belly was freshly torn open, shreds of skin and intestine glistening wetly in the bleak, winter light. Nick gagged and looked down at his hands. Then he began to scream.

-OOO-

He awoke with a start, jerking himself upright, his main circulatory pump thudding in his chest. He stared around the room, unsure of where he was or how he'd gotten there. Then memory returned and he calmed down, over-riding his emergency systems to bring his metabolic rate back down to normal functioning. He took a deep breath.

"That was a bad one," he said to the room. It had been a long time since he'd had that particular dream, a re-enactment of the day he'd awoken to find himself, not Nick Valentine from Chicago, a detective on loan to the Boston Police Department, but some futuristic cybernetic creature, a robot with human memories; naked, battered and alone on a garbage heap on the outskirts of a ruined city, with no memory of anything after lying back in an exam room at the Cambridge Institute where he'd gone for neurological testing.

It had taken him weeks to learn how to function. The voices were the worst part, the constant chatter of data flowing back and forth that was the various parts of his body talking to itself. Sensory inputs, command-and-control, diagnostic controls, maintenance routines, all the various systems - autonomic and otherwise – the controlled his body. He'd learned how to interpret them eventually. More important, he'd learned to distinguish between things he actually needed and the endless streams of routine information that could be ignored. Nowadays he barely noticed them.

Nick rolled out of bed and ran a diagnostic. He was a bit stiff from yesterday's unaccustomed exercise. Other than that, he felt pretty good. The sun was up, and to judge from the light coming in through the curtains, it was going be another nice day.

The innkeeper was back at her desk when he came down. A dark-haired young man sat on a stool beside her reading a book on the counter.

"Good morning," she said, looking up. "Sleep okay?"

"I did, thanks. Nice room. Very comfortable. I'll be back this way day after tomorrow, I hope. Probably I'll stop in again."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She paused. "Listen, Mr. Valentine. You might want to be a bit careful going through town."

"How's that?" Nick raised an eyebrow.

"Well… not rightly sure how to put this. It's just… we don't get too many like you around here, and folk hereabouts still tell stories about the bad old days. Synths and war-bots, stuff like that. The locals would be fine, of course. We're not some hick town stuck out in the bush somewhere. But them good ol' boys they brought in to work up at the plant, well… Close up you don't really pass for human, and some of them might shoot first, ask questions later." She nodded at the boy beside her. "If you like, I'll have my Sam see you safe to the other side of town."

Nick was at first inclined to refuse. He didn't doubt he could handle any problems that might arise. On the other hand, the last thing he needed was trouble. His sense of urgency had returned, worse now than before, and the need to get to Carlisle without delay was an almost physical compulsion.

In any event, nothing untoward happened on the trip through Lexington. He bade the boy farewell at the northern outskirts and tipped him with a handful of caps, then turned his face once more to the northwest.

There was a steady stream of traffic on the road. Most of it was slow-moving stuff, farm wagons and the like. A couple of times, mounted couriers had come clattering the other way. Once it was a procession of what were clearly refugees from the north: tired, beaten-looking people pushing their belongings on handcarts and driving a few half-starved cattle ahead of them. Minutemen on horseback accompanied them, armed and watchful.

Nick moved purposefully, ignoring the occasional startled glance or look of recognition. It had been some years since he'd been up this way, and in its own way, the country had changed as much as Boston had. It was all farms here now, with long lines of split-rail fences and neatly-painted houses. It reminded Nick very much of his childhood, of summers spent at his grandparents' farm out in the Midwest. A dog followed him for a while, barking through the fence, and cattle stopped in mid-chew to watch him go by. It was rich country, thanks in no small part to the blood that had been spilled over it. Ironically, in the name of peace.

Nick thought about the General's story, and shivered.

It was just past noon when he arrived at Fort Carlisle. The Minuteman post was on higher ground over-looking Carlisle Station, where an ancient railway crossed the highway a few miles west of where the old town of Carlisle had once stood. At the crossroads below the fort, a busy settlement had grown up. As is the nature of these things, it was wholly parasitic on the fort above. A cluster of taverns and brothels, restaurants and gaming houses lined the main street. On the streets leading off of it were rooming houses and stables, shops and trading posts. One small building announced "Baths – 5 caps – Guaranteed hot" and a small pre-War church stood next to town offices and the Commonwealth Postal Service Building.

Nick stopped in to see Hank Pretty, bringing greetings from Linda Sykes. Hank was a likeable old chatterbox, and Nick got the impression very little happened in Carlisle Station that he didn't know about. Except for Lily.

"Nope, ain't seen her. Sorry. Girl travelling alone, I'd remember. Enlistment office is two blocks up. Big Minuteman flag flying right out front. Can't miss it."

-OOO-

The recruiting station was a small, wood-framed building just off Main Street. Inside there were a few uncomfortable-looking chairs pushed up against the walls and a pair of filing cabinets in one corner behind a desk where a bored-looking young second lieutenant sat. A magazine lay open beside him, but he was currently filling out a form, which he pushed across the desk at the would-be recruit standing in front of him.

"Sign here and here," he said without looking up, "then take these to the recruiting sergeant." He jerked a thumb at the door behind him then rang the bell on the desk. "Next," he called, taking a new form from the drawer. He glanced up as Nick stepped forward.

"Sorry, too old," he snapped dismissively, putting his pen down. Then he looked again and frowned. "We don't take your kind anyway."

"Lucky for both of us," Nick replied agreeably. "But I'm not here to sign up. I'm looking for a girl." He took Lily's picture out of his pocket and slid it across the desk. "She might have been in yesterday or earlier today."

The officer glanced briefly at the picture then pushed it back at Nick. "If you're looking for teenage girls, you've come to the wrong place. Try Mother Kelly's down the road." He reached for his magazine.

Nick scowled. "This is the Minuteman enlistment office, isn't it? This particular girl would have tried to enlist. She's a runaway. Her family is worried about her." He fished out a business card and put it on the desk. "Nick Valentine, Private Detective" it said.

"Look, Mister -" he looked at the card "—Valentine. She hasn't been in today, and if she had, we'd have sent her home to her mother."

"But maybe she came in yesterday?" Nick persisted.

"No idea. Now if you'll excuse me?" He made to reach again for his magazine. Nick put his hands flat on the desk and leaned across, his eyes burning bright yellow.

"See here, youngster," he said. "That girl should have got into town yesterday afternoon. She was aiming to come here. And I need to find her. That means I need to talk to whoever was working this desk yesterday."

The man's face darkened. "Now, you look here -" he began.

"Sir? Is there a problem?" An older man in sergeant's chevrons poked his head through the door, an amiable expression on his face.

"Finally," the lieutenant snapped, turning toward the new arrival. "This, this person -" he began.

The sergeant ignored him. "Caught some of that from the other room, sir," he said, coming over to Nick. "Let me see that photograph."

Nick held it out. The sergeant took a quick look and gave it back. "Came in yesterday," he said. "A little after lunch, as I recall." He grinned. "Feisty one, too. Wasn't very happy when we told her to come back in a couple years."

"You turned her down? Why? She's eighteen; that's minimum age, last I heard."

"Well, it is and it isn't, if you catch my meaning. She did tell us that, too, but to be honest, she didn't much look it. Officer of the watch told her to come back with a note from her Mama and then he'd think about it."

Nick winced. "I can imagine how that went over."

"Yup. Feisty, like I said. She did say she had a friend up at camp, a recruit named Garcia. We sent her up there. They take recruits there, too. Could be someone up there signed her up. "

Nick thanked the man and left. Walking away, he heard him address the recruiting officer in quiet tones:

"Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but you do know who that is, right? Him and the General were bosom pals back in the day. I heard they took out the Institute single-handed. Blew it right up. With all due respect, word got back you slagged him off, good chance of you bein' the first officer to spend the rest of his career on latrine duty. Also, last time I checked, we were in the business of helping people when they asked for it. Instead of acting like dicks. Sir."

Nick grinned to himself. Maybe there was hope for the military yet.

A troop of mounted scouts were on their way out of the fort as Nick made his way up the road, and he stepped back to let them pass. Close by, a group of fresh recruits were drilling, executing the same manoeuvres that recruits had been sweating over since the Napoleonic Wars, five hundred years before. The air was full of barked commands and the stamping feet raised a cloud of dust from the packed earth of the parade ground. Nick scanned the recruits hopefully, but Lily wasn't there.

He had to explain his mission first to the guards at the gate and then again to the officer of the watch. She listened to him then took his photograph and business card and disappeared inside. She came back a few minutes later.

"Sorry, sir," she said, giving Nick back his photograph. "She hasn't been here as far as I can tell. We've had a ton of new recruits the last while, but someone would have remembered her coming in yesterday. There are recruiting stations at Acton and Zimonja, too. Maybe she went there?"

Nick sighed. "There's a young fellow from Diamond City here, a friend of hers named Howie Garcia, enlisted a few weeks ago. She might have tried to contact him. Is there any way I can talk to him?"

"That we can arrange," she said. "His unit's out on an exercise. I'll send a runner."

She escorted Nick to a small, comfortably-furnished room off a busy office and asked him to wait. Time passed slowly, and Nick found himself fidgeting. Finally, Howie Garcia was ushered in. He was dressed in stained, dust-covered overalls. His face was smudged with dirt and there were bits of twig and dried grass poking out of his hair. But there was a spring to his step and he carried himself with an air of self-assurance that had been noticeably absent just a few weeks before. His face brightened when he saw Nick and he covered the space between them in two long strides, holding out his hand and grinning widely.

"Mr. Valentine! What are you doing here?" Then his face fell. "Did my mother send you? Is everything okay?"

"Your mother's fine, last I heard," Nick said, standing up and shaking Howie's proffered hand. "She says you haven't written in a couple of weeks, though."

"Yeah, I know." Howie gestured guiltily at his dirty overalls. "They keep us going pretty much from sun up to lights-out around here. Doesn't leave time for much else. But I will write. I promise."

"That'd be a good idea. Unless you want her to show up unannounced one of these days."

Howie blanched. "No! Tell her I'll write. Today. Anyway," he added, "graduation's in two more weeks. I'll see her then. But why are you here?"

"I'm looking for Lily."

"Lily?" Howie looked confused. "She's here?"

"You haven't seen her?"

He shook his head. "I got a letter from her last week. But I haven't seen her since I left DC."

-OOO-