Chapter 3 – Let's Danse
Max looked across the table at the two men her eyebrow raised, her lips pursed and her face skeptical.
"That's the whole message?" She asked. She had led them to her office in the Vault. The Courier sat before her on one of the wore office chairs, his feet thrust out in front of him. She had pushed thoughts of Danse from her mind, but it was distracting to have his eyes looking back at her.
"Yep," The man known as the Courier answered with a nod, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest.
"You walked all the way from Las Vegas… for that?" She reiterated doubtfully.
"Yep... it was good caps."
"Someone paid you good caps to walk almost three thousand miles from Vegas to Boston for a message consisting of one sentence… that I don't even understand." She said. Going over the message in her head again trying to make heads or tails of it.
"You understand the concept of a courier, right?" The Courier said with a chuckle. "People pay me caps to carry messages and/or packages from one place to another… the meaning behind said messages and/or packages are not the responsibility of the Mojave Express."
The other guy, Boone, said nothing as he leaned against the wall, cigarette hanging from his mouth and a grim set to his features.
"And who paid you to bring the message to me?… How does anyone in Vegas even know who I am?
"Elder Nolan McNamara. And, I don't know"
"Elder? Fucking Brotherhood…" She sighed. "I need to talk to Maxson again."
She shook her head slowly as she contemplated another trip to the Prydwen and to her would be suitor. She cringed. The courier watched her silently, her faced showing her distaste at talking to this Maxson person. Her eyes softened after a moment as she thought. Huh? Not entirely distasteful then.
He flexed his shoulders and stood up.
"So my job is done then. Don't suppose you have anything to send to New Vegas or anywhere in between? He said hopefully.
She snapped out of her reverie and looked up at him. She drummed her fingertips on the desktop for an awkward moment or two, contemplating him.
"I'd like to get a DNA sample from you." She said thoughtfully. Her pretty eyes boring into his face and moving over the rest of his body with interest.
"DNA sample?"
"Mmmm…" She nodded. "I have a theory about you, I need to see if I'm right or I won't be able to sleep at night. I'll pay you for your time, of course."
"Does this have anything to do with me looking like your friend?" He asked.
"It has everything to do with you looking like my friend… What do you say? A hundred caps for some blood or whatever?" She leaned forward anticipating his answer.
A hundred caps for some blood. Hell, he spilled it for free all of the time. What could it hurt, if it gave the pretty lady some peace of mind. He shrugged and nodded in consent. "Sure, why not… caps up front though."
She smiled and he caught his breath. She sure was pretty.
She left her chair and went through a door into an antechamber and came back a moment later with a bag of caps. "Count it, then we can go."
"Go?" he asked, taking up the bag and emptying out the caps on the desk.
"CIT will draw the blood from you… or I can just open a vein right here if you want? It may be a little painful and a lot more messy…"
He glanced up from his counting. "You wanna do this thing right now?"
"The sooner, the better. You wanted to leave in the morning, right?"
"Yeah." He continued counting.
She walked over to the ham radio on the corner of the desk. She tuned it and depressed the talk button.
"Hey CIT, come back?"
"General." Came the tinny reply through the speakers.
"I got one to relay to CIT in a few minutes. Can you stand by?"
"Yes Ma'am. Standing by."
"Can you also get Curie and Dr Virgil to meet me in the control room?"
"Yes, ma'am, consider it done." The radio crackled and then fell silent.
"Relay? And one? Am I going alone?" The Courier asked, casting a look at Boone, who had tipped his head forward and was looking over the rims of his aviators, eyebrows raised.
"A relay is a method of travel. A teleporter." She explained. "I can use this…" She tapped her pipboy. "but you can't."
The Courier pulled back the sleeve of his duster, exposing a pipboy of his own secured on his wrist.
"You're from a Vault." She asked in surprise.
"Nope, it was a gift. I can use it to 'relay' though?"
"No, you need a special chip to access the relay tethers." She said. "Your friend can come too if you want… it won't take long though."
"Yeah, I'll come." Boone rumbled from his position on the wall. He pushed himself off it and came to stand next to the Courier who rose slowly from his chair.
"OK then, you ready?" She asked walking back to the radio.
Both of the men nodded and exchange long dubious looks. She amended her order to the guy on the other end of the radio and grinned at them. "See you on the other side, boys."
There was a crackling sound and a flash of blinding blue light as they relayed from the office. They appeared seconds later in the relay room. Wide eyed and shaken. What a rush!
"Well, Fuck Me Twice," the Courier breathed. "I say, God Damn!"
A young guy behind a desk outside the room motioned them forward.
They moved towards him hesitantly and turned as the room behind them began to make a whirring sound. The General appeared a split second after they exited the room.
She grinned at their stunned expressions.
"Welcome to CIT." She greeted them. She was going to say more but a door at the other end of the hall opened and two people in Lab coats hurried into the room. The small dark haired woman stopped when she saw the Courier. "Merde." She gasped. The other doctor blinked in surprise as well. The Courier wished that people would stop doing that.
Max nodded at them. "Virgil, did the Institute ever make two copies of the same synth?"
Virgil shook his head eyeing up the Courier with interest. "Not that I know of, but I didn't have too much to do with the synths."
"How far afield do you think they went for samples? I thought they took the original people and disposed of them, like with Roger Warwick." She continued.
"We might have to do a little digging into that… I guess some of the originals got away. There are some scientists left here that would have a much better idea than me."
Max Frowned. "Would Secord know?"
Virgil nodded. "I'll talk to her." Max wasn't fond of the remaining scientists from the old Institute, Secord in particular, being the former director of the SRB. Max shot the director before her, Justin Ayo in the face the first time she had traveled to the institute, ending his career rather abruptly.
"Thank you." Max smiled.
"Curie. Mr… ahh… Sorry, I never got your name?" She turned to the Courier and looked at him apologetically.
"Courier." He replied shortly.
"Your actual name is Courier?"
He nodded "Courier Six."
She looked at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. She shrugged and turned back to the lady doctor.
"Mr Six has agreed to a DNA test and can you scan for synth components too?"
Curie nodded and beckoned him forward. The Courier exchanged another long look with his friend before following the doctor, Boone followed him and Max took up the rear of the troop, talking softly to Dr Virgil. They got into a sterile looking elevator and it began to descend.
"Can I ask where we are?" The Courier inquired. He got the feeling that they were nowhere near Sanctuary Hills anymore.
"We're underneath Cambridge… do you know Boston at all?" Max replied.
"Not really…" He drew in a quick breath as the reason for the elevators glass sides came into view and the facility spread out around them. White, bright and teeming with life.
Boone pulled off his aviators and blinked in the light, looking around in wonder as they descended into the central courtyard and the doors of the elevator opened.
They stepped out and followed Max and the doctors up some stairs into a spotless laboratory. The lady doctor motioned towards a chair sitting next to a trolley holding all manner of unholy looking instruments.
"Please 'ave a seat Mr Courier." She invited, her voice sweet and thickly accented.
The courier sat down in the chair and looked around at the lab with interest.
"I have to ask, couldn't help overhearing, considering you were talking right in front of me. But what is a Synth? What is the Institute?' He asked, standing up again to remove his duster so that the doctor could get at the veins in his arm.
"A synth is a Synthetic Human, like a clone. They are wholly organic except for a chip in their heads. The Institute was the organisation that manufactured them, among other things." Max advised him watching as Curie drew a vial of blood and then went back in for another.
The courier flinched back from a device that Curie then held up to the back of his head. It was cold.
" 'e's not a synth." Curie proclaimed. " 'e might be ze original Danse?"
Max nodded. "We still have all of the records, can we do a bit of research?"
She looked down at the courier "Have you ever been to this side of the country before?"
"Nope. You think someone made a clone of me? A Synth?"
"We don't think, we know." She walked over to a terminal and began tapping on the keyboard. She motioned for him to join her. He came over beside her, rolling down the sleeve of his top as he went. He leaned over her shoulder and squinted at the screen. Starting as he saw a picture of himself.
"This is Paladin Major Richard Alexander Danse." She introduced him grandly, a hint of sadness in her voice. "The synth known as M7-97."
The Courier looked hard at the picture. He wasn't sure how he felt looking at the fake him.
Boone sidled up behind them and snuck a peek at the screen. He uttered a 'humpf' and went back to leaning against the wall. He drew a cigarette from his pocket and placed in between his lips before patting himself down, looking for his lighter. Curie walked past him and whipped the smoke from his mouth, crushing it in her hand and throwing it in the trash. Boone scowled after her.
"Zere is not smoking in ze lab, monsieur." She muttered before turning to Max. "Ze DNA matches, 'e is definitely ze template for Danse.'
"Why?" She asked absently, staring at the Couriers face. "and how? If you've been on the West Coast and in the desert all this time, how did they even get your DNA?
"We will go over the files, see if we can find anything." Virgil promised. "Can you lend me Sophie to help?"
"Sure, but that means you'll get Elton as well." Max grinned. Haylen and Sturges were damn near impossible to separate, everyone was expecting a wedding announcement any day now.
"Good, good. I like Sturges, he fixed my coffee maker last time he was here." Virgil ran his hand through his hair. It was habit he had adopted a while ago, after the transformation from a supermutant back into a human had somehow stimulated his hair follicles and regrew his hair. It wasn't a popular method for treating hair loss, so no one else had tried it yet.
"If you don't mind?" The Courier said, "I'd like to hang around a while. Here or Sanctuary. I'm a little curious about this myself."
"You can stay in Sanctuary for as long as you want." Max told him with another one of her brilliant smiles. "We should get back, I've been on the road all day and I imagine considering how far you've come, you'll need some sleep as well."
Max turned to the doctors. "Can you give this some priority? I don't want to hold up Mr Six for any longer than is necessary." Both of the doctors nodded and Max led the Courier and Boone from the lab.
She heard Boone snort and mutter on the elevator ride back up to the relay. "Mr Six… ha"
She heard a light thud, sounded like an elbow hitting ribs. "Shut up, man."
She smiled, keeping her face forward, listening to the two men quietly bicker behind her until the elevator door opened on their floor. She led them to the relay and used her pipboy to load up the coordinates for just inside the visitors house in Sanctuary.
The two men entered the relay room and watched her expectantly. She lifted her hand and gave a little wave and they relayed out.
"Can you please stand by to receive Captain Haylen and Major Sturges?" She asked the controller before she entered the relay herself.
He nodded and she was gone.