Chapter 4

Lydia helped Max back to Tulip's shop upon his insistence that he not be taken to the Chop Shop. Tulip closed the store early, turning around her sign and placing a screen in front of the doorway. She fairly ignored Lydia after she told her what had happened, she was so absorbed in making sure Max was alright. Lydia was pretty sure that if there had been a door on the entryway, she would have shut it in her face.

She took the hint and left them alone. She didn't have any idea where Harris was. She wandered Underworld for a short while, sticking her head into the different rooms, scanning them for a familiar profile, and withdrawing.

After she'd checked everywhere else in the exhibit, she reluctantly went to the door to the Ninth Circle. Opening it slowly, she stepped halfway inside and looked to and fro. Straight ahead was a bar, none of the patrons of which turned around when she entered. The room curved around to the right, and Lydia leaned forward to see through to the other side. In the corner to the right was a table with two women sitting at it. Behind them was a tall ghoul with a shotgun who was busy kissing a smoothskin girl in a vault suit. Lydia blinked.

"He ain't here, girl," one of the women at the table said to her. She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray in the center of the table as she looked at her, then went back to talking with her friend.

She left the exhibit and went back into the room with the mammoth and the dinosaur skeleton. Willow turned when she heard the door open and close. Lydia shrugged at her. Willow shrugged back and looked back out the door, still watching the metro entrance.

Lydia checked the room where they slept, but it was empty. With a sigh, she went back into the large room. Finally she decided to check the Lincoln wing.

The ferals shuffled around near the entrance, as usual. They moaned and hissed quietly, but didn't bother Lydia as she hurried past them. As she reached the top of the stairs, she tripped over an inconveniently placed chunk of fallen ceiling and fell forward. She put out her hands to stop herself as she collided with the floor.

She climbed to her knees and looked at her hands. The right had a small bleeding scrape. She wiped it on her jeans and went to get to her feet, and saw there was someone standing in front of her. She looked up, and was met with the wide, clouded eyes of a feral ghoul staring at her, its deteriorated mouth hanging open. The thing stared at her. She walked quickly around it and into the hall beyond the landing, glancing back at it over her shoulder to make sure it wasn't coming after her. It followed her with its eyes, but thankfully stayed in its place.

She wound her way through the halls until she reached the very back of the wing. There the corridor opened up into a big room, and on the far wall was a crack near the ceiling that let in a slant of yellowish light from the evening sun. Under the fracture was Harris, sitting with his back against the wall and a book in his hands. He lowered it when she came in.

Finally. Lydia stopped and frowned at him. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?"

She went over and stood next to him. "You're reading?"

He rolled his eyes.

"I didn't know you read."

"You thought I was illiterate?"

"No, I meant, I didn't know you liked to read. I've never seen you doing it before."

"I'm usually busy." He shut the book. The Once and Future King. "Now that we've got nothing to do but wait for those humans to decide whether to attack..." he shrugged.

Lydia crossed her arms. "You won't have to wait much longer."

He gave her a sharp look. "What does that mean?"

"They already attacked."

Harris unfolded his legs and was on his feet in one seamless movement. "Where are they?"

"Calm down, they're not inside."

"Tell me what's going on."

"We ran into one of them in the subway tunnels. He started shooting when he saw us. He got Max in the leg, but he's okay."

"You're alright, too?"

"Yeah."

"What happened to the shooter?"

Lydia's shoulders drooped. She could feel the melancholy creeping into her face. She was afraid he was going to make her say it, but he understood without her speaking and moved on.

"Where did you find him?"

"Maybe a half a mile into the tunnel," she replied. "I think they're hiding out in a corridor down there. Let's get back to Willow and I can tell you both what happened."

When they were back with Willow at the front doors, Lydia told them both about the footprints that they'd followed to the maintenance room in the tunnel. Still no one had emerged from the metro. "I think it's safe to say you weren't followed," Willow said. "But I think we should have someone on watch all night, just in case. We can go down there tomorrow. I don't think we should bring anyone else, they'll just attract more attention. If it's just us, maybe we can find them before they know we're there. I'd still like to figure out what we're up against before we have to fight them."

"Do you know what 'SRB' means?" Lydia asked. "He had it on his uniform."

" 'SRB'? Never heard of it." Willow looked at Harris questioningly, but he shook his head. "What do you mean it was on his uniform? He painted it on?"

"No, it was on a patch shaped like a shield. It didn't look handmade."

"Probably pre-war, if they have uniforms with their acronym on it." Harris observed. "Could be that they just found the uniforms and they don't know what it stands for any more than we do."

"Could be," Willow said. "Either way, it sounds like this isn't just a ragtag group. They know what they're doing. We have to tread cautiously."

"Not that I'm against being careful, but that's a lot to assume from just the fact that they have uniforms," Lydia said.

"It's not just the uniforms," Willow said. She looked out the door again, adjusting her grip on her rifle, then turned back to Lydia. "I've lived here for some 60 years now. I probably don't have to tell you that I know the area pretty well. But those guys managed to keep out of sight for most of the time that they've been here, and they got away from Quinn and Harris and me when we were following them. They're not your run-of-the-mill raider or merc gang. Like I said, I think we should get ready tonight and go in tomorrow. Lydia, you'll have to fill us in on exactly where you went. We can't afford to go to the wrong place and have them ambush us."

"Okay, I'll show you the way tomorrow."

Willow glanced at Harris furtively. "No...just tell us now."

"But I can just..." Lydia trailed off. She looked at Harris. His face was not reassuring. "I'm going with you," she told them forcefully.

"No," Harris replied.

"Why?" she demanded.

"You know why."

"I can help," Lydia insisted.

Harris was quiet. Willow slowly blinked, looking back and forth between them.

"I'll tell you where they are if you let me go with you," Lydia said.

"No."

Lydia was pointedly silent.

"I can just ask the human kid if you won't tell us."

"Fine, then, go ask him."

"It's a mystery to me why you're so eager to risk your life for something that doesn't even involve you. Just stay here where you're safe."

"I don't want to be safe. I've been safe my whole life. I want to go."

Harris just stared at her in puzzlement. Lydia scowled and stalked back to the Resource Wars room.

The next day, her first groggy early-morning thought was that it was strange that Harris didn't wake her up. Usually he woke up earlier than her.

Then she remembered that he was leaving without her today.

She rolled over to look behind her, where Harris was sleeping. He was already gone. She stared at the spot where he'd been lying. She pushed herself up from the floor and picked her way across the rubble-strewn doorway and into the mammoth room. It was quiet. Judging by the small bit of sky visible behind the holes in the ceiling, it was midmorning. What to do for the rest of the day?

She went inside Underworld. There were a lot of people up and milling around the central room. It must have been later than she thought.

That woman with the makeup and the giant hat was standing next to the doors. She turned and looked down her nose at Lydia as she came in. "Hello, dear," she said in a distant, airy sort of voice. In one hand she held a long cigarette holder.

"Hello," Lydia said without looking up.

Ms. Rochelle sucked delicately on her cigarette. "You know, you have very pretty hair. Did that Snowdrift fellow upstairs cut it for you?"

"No," she replied, wondering distantly who Snowdrift was. She walked by Ms. Rochelle without bothering to finish the exchange and entered Underworld Outfitters, which was open again. Tulip smiled and said hello when she saw her. Apparently now that Max was dealt with, Lydia existed again.

"By yourself today, huh?" Tulip said. "Willow came in here earlier and said she and Harris were leaving."

"She told you that?"

"She asked us to entertain you while they were gone," she said with a smile. "It'll end up being the other way around, I'm sure."

She asked them to babysit me? "Yeah," Lydia replied without looking at her. She glared at the wall.

Cerberus happened to be passing by the doorway, and it rotated in place to face her. Its jets fluttered. "Assessing threat..." it said.

"Oh, be quiet," she told it. She wondered what made it stop, and realized how tense she was, her hands bunched at her sides. She tried to relax her posture a bit and went to sit on the rug in front of the counter. "I hate robots," she muttered.

Tulip raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Lydia sighed and shrugged. "No. I don't know. It's just a machine." She sat back against the wall and looked up tentatively. Max was standing at the workbench behind Tulip, watching with the wide-eyed gaze that was typical of him.

"They'll be back soon," Tulip said. "Willow said it'd take less than a day. Maybe sometime tonight they'll be back?"

Lydia nodded. She looked up. Max had gone back to work on what looked like a disassembled coffee maker.

"Max?" she said.

He turned to look at her immediately. "Yes?"

"How's your leg?"

"Fine, thanks."

"Are you sure you don't want anyone to look at it?"

"Yes, thanks." He nodded to her hands. "You've been injured."

Lydia looked at her scraped palms. "That's just from earlier. They're fine." She looked up at Max. "You can see that from all the way over there?"

"I have very good eyesight. Remember?"

"Yeah, I guess you do," Lydia agreed. "Tulip, I don't suppose you ever have flashlights in stock?"

Tulip tapped a finger on her peeling chin. "Actually..." She went around and dug in a drawer behind the counter, then held up a big black metal flashlight-the kind police used to use. "Like this?"

"Yes."

"You want it?"

Lydia bit her lip. She had five caps. She still had a difficult time judging monetary values, but she was pretty sure the flashlight would be worth at least twice that. She shook her head. "The only money I have is what you gave me the other day."

"Hm," Tulip said. She tilted the flashlight around in a circle idly as she thought. Then she went over to Lydia and held it out to her. She held out her other hand for money.

Lydia looked up at her in confusion. "Five caps for that?"

"And another story."

Lydia took the small collection of caps from her pocket and placed them in Tulip's hand, then took the flashlight from her. She clicked it on and off experimentally. The batteries still worked. She turned it off and clipped it to her belt loop.

Tulip put the caps down and hopped up to sit on the countertop. "You were going to tell us about Icarus, I think."

They talked for an hour or so. After that she spent the rest of the day wandering around the museum, venturing outside only once or twice. She spent a great deal of time slouching on her bench in the shadow of the column and listening in on the conversations around her, as she had on her first day in Underworld.

She didn't think she would ever find a place whose citizens rivaled those of the vault in their capacity to be annoying, but Underworld came close. While the atmosphere in the vault was always eerily cheerful, Underworld seemed largely devoid of joy. All anyone ever seemed to do was complain about the condition of the museum, about the brotherhood or the super mutants, about the patrons of the Ninth Circle, about being a ghoul. Never thought I'd say it, but I think this place could use a few Beatrice Armstrongs. No wonder Harris doesn't like it in here. Then, having inadvertently reminded herself of Harris, her bad mood deepened.

Finally she went upstairs. She still hadn't talked to Carol, so she decided to do so then.

She had been afraid that the woman would be so tired of answering the same questions over and over to progressively younger generations over the years that she wouldn't even want to think about telling her story again. Fortunately, she was enthusiastic enough about having someone new around that she was willing to talk to her. Lydia lost track of time as they talked. It must have been hours. She told her about driving on the highway, about shopping in grocery stores, about the way grass felt, and about rain. Carol reminded her that it did still rain sometimes, but Lydia was particularly interested in it nonetheless. Water falling from the sky. She'd seen it in movies, but hearing it described by someone who had felt and smelled and heard it was different.

"When it rains and you're inside, you can hear it pounding on the roof. It sounds like hundreds of fingers drumming on the ceiling."

It sounded pretty creepy, honestly.

As she was leaving Carol's, Lydia went to the left to go out the other door. She passed a woman in a pink dress who was taking food orders. She looked up as Lydia passed. "Hey. You," she said, interrupting the man who was giving her his order. She spoke loud enough that she could hear but quietly enough that Carol couldn't. "Carol's with me. Don't get any ideas. Understand?" She gave Lydia a subtle but fierce look.

Thanks for the advice, but 200 year old women aren't really my thing. "I wasn't."

"Just so we're clear." She seemed satisfied with that answer, and went back to her customers.

Lydia rolled her eyes to herself. She was about to open the doors to leave when someone else grabbed her arm.

"Hey, kid," said a man's voice.

She could see his shadow on the door, and felt him behind her. On impulse, she violently shook her arm to make him let go. "What?" she snapped.

The man's face changed from slightly annoyed to outraged. "What, I'm not pretty enough to touch you?"

Lydia groaned and turned to leave.

"Hey! Wait. You're that kid Harris is toting around, aren't you?"

"He's not-" She sighed. "Yes, that's me."

"I'm Crowley. I need you to talk to him for me."

"Yeah? About what?"

"About killing someone for me."

That shocked Lydia enough that, for a moment, she was speechless. "What?"

"You ever heard of this guy called Allistair Tenpenny?"

"No."

"You're lucky, then. He's the biggest asshole you'll ever meet. A bigot. He needs to die."

"Just for being a bigot?"

"What do you mean 'just'? He's a fat cat bastard who shares his cash with everyone but us ghouls. People like him are the reason we're stuck inside this shithole museum. Just get him to do it for me, okay kid? I can pay well."

"He's not a mercenary," Lydia said.

"That's not what I hear."

She reached behind her to open the door, unsure how to reply to that.

"Ask him, alright? Somebody's got to do it. Might as well be him. One-hundred caps."

Lydia went outside. On the other side of the door, she paused. 'That's not what I hear'?

No one else interrupted her as she was leaving, and she finally managed to get out of the establishment. She was out in the mammoth room when something else stopped her before she got back the Resource Wars room. There was a noise, like talking or breathing. It was very quiet, but she could just make it out, coming from behind the doors to the Lincoln room.

She followed the sound. Probably just the ferals. When she went inside, the zombie-like creatures were wandering around the stairs, but quietly. The source of the noise was somewhere else. She could hear it clearly now. Someone was crying. Lydia followed the sound into the room to the right. In the doorway, she stopped in surprise.

Ms. Rochelle was seated on a bench in the middle of the next room. Her shoulders shook. She looked up at Lydia when she appeared in the entrance. Her makeup was smeared and streaked horribly, making her look-if possible-even worse than usual. She straightened, taking a square of cloth out of her purse and dabbing at her eyes with it. "Well?" she asked. "What do you want?"

"Ah...nothing. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to barge in like that." She was about to back out of the room, but Rochelle spoke before she could.

"I hate this place."

Lydia watched the woman, desperately wanting to leave but glued in place by conventions of polite society.

"I hate everyone here. I hate being like this. I hate being around other people who look like this." She sniffed, and looked at Lydia longingly. "You're so lovely."

"Oh, I don't-"

"Did you come here just to torment me? Is that it?" she said despondently.

"No."

The woman didn't seem to hear her. She looked down at her hands, running the fingers of one hand over the other in an attempt to smooth out hangnails and nails that were cracked nearly in half. "I used to be as beautiful as you." She gave Lydia a quick glance up and down. "More than you," she snorted. "I was married to a rich man, lived in a penthouse suite in a skyscraper. I had nice things. Friends. For 50 years. Then this happened."

"What happened?" Lydia asked, curiosity getting the better of her. "After you changed?"

"What do you think happened, child? They made me leave. Can't have ghouls in the tower, it would turn everyone's stomachs." She sighed and waved her away. "Just leave me, please."

Ms. Rochelle put her face in her handkerchief and sniffed quietly. Lydia withdrew from the room gratefully.

-lll-

She had fallen asleep by the time Harris got back to the Resource Wars room. She woke up at the sounds of cement gravel grinding under his feet.

He stood in the entrance for a moment, looking down at her silently. She could just make him out in the darkness. He went to the spot where he slept and sat down.

"Well?" Lydia said.

Harris turned to look down at her. "I thought you were asleep."

"I'm not."

He reached over his head to remove the rifle from his back. "Well what?"

"What happened?"

"They were gone. They'd cleared out by the time we got there. We don't know where they are now."

Lydia propped herself up on her elbows. "Maybe you went the wrong way."

"No. We saw the footprints. It was the same place you found."

"So what are you going to do now?"

"We're going out again tomorrow. Hopefully they've gone, but if not, we need to find them."

Lydia opened her mouth, then closed it again. "You can't just leave me here," she said finally.

Harris didn't reply. Lydia drummed her fingertips on the floor. It was hard enough going back to the vault last month. The whole time she was there, she had a nagging worry that he might not be there when she came out. She didn't know what she'd do if that was the case, because she couldn't survive out there on her own. Even if she stayed in the vault, it wouldn't be long before she started looking worse and they kicked her out.

And now he was going off and doing things like this without her. He was probably remembering how nice it was not to have to drag her around everywhere. It was only a matter of time before he left and never came back. She knew she had no right to complain about it. The benefits of this relationship went largely in one direction, and it wasn't his. They both knew it.

It was quiet for a minute, and the sound of Lydia's tapping fingers filled the room. She stopped as she noticed the noise.

"I'm not going to leave you here," Harris said. "But you cannot come with us tomorrow. You won't be able to help. In fact you'll probably get in the way. And there's a chance you'll be injured, or worse."

"Don't you think it's my responsibility to decide when to take that chance and when not to?" Lydia said.

"You don't seem to be able to make appropriate decisions in that regard."

She glared at him. He looked back expressionlessly. Lydia lay indignantly back on the floor and rolled to face away from him.