Denouement
(A Fallout/Borderlands Crossover)

- Chapter 3 : Hypoperfusion -

"It's ... a cow," said Fiona disdainfully, looking over the creature with repulsion. "A really gross-looking two-headed cow."

"It's a brahmin," scolded MacCready. A frown creased his ruggedly handsome features. The mercenary lovingly rubbed one of the brahmin's chins, cooing, "And her name is Betsy."

"Which head is Betsy?" She was rewarded with a glare. Fiona threw her arms up in defeat. "Fine, sorry. Her name is Betsy and she's a very nice looking ... um ... brahmin. Can we get moving now? We're burning daylight."

"If we don't go in with some provisions, we might as well be wearing dinner bells."

Her eyes flitted to the large bell tied around Betsy's throat. Don't say anything about the dinner bell, don't say anything about the dinner bell ... MacCready followed her gaze and repeated the lines verbally. "Don't. Say anything. About the bell."

"Yeah, you saying that doesn't make this any easier."

Vault 81 had, luckily, been close enough to Rhys and her that the walk didn't take too much stress. Or it wouldn't have if Rhys hadn't passed out about ten steps in. She was lucky MacCready had been there to help her carry him. And she was equally lucky that the merchant MacCready had been guarding was extremely well-armed ... Fiona didn't know what a Fat Man was, but that nuclear bomb-styled explosion was impressive and terrifying at the same time. While it didn't kill the giant lizard keen on devouring Rhys for dinner and her for dessert, it definitely scalded its hide and sent it packing.

Everything was a bit of a blur after that. They moved way too quickly for her to take in the sights and sounds other than some burned trees and rocks. When they stopped. they were in some metallic underground den they called a 'Vault' (that sure as shit didn't look like a Vault Fiona had ever seen, even if she had only seen one). There was an elevator ... and not even a foot out of it, Rhys had crashed and a team of doctors flooded in to revive him. It was like a tsunami of people in white lab coats - sweeping in, sweeping out, and taking the debris (Rhys) with them.

Fiona was no stranger to blood. That didn't bother her one bit. But the flecks of Rhys splattered on her coat disturbed her as much as it did seeing him so ashen and lifeless.

She wasn't sure how to feel at the time, so anger poured out like molten rock. She raged as a man named Carrington gave her a once-over and issued a clean bill of health. She raged when somebody called an 'Overseer' and another woman (Desde-something-or-other) explained that they needed some kind of bio-implant to expedite Rhys' healing or he would be dead within a day. And she raged when they called upon MacCready to find the item and not her. It took some persuasion (and a lot of thrown objects) to get them to change their minds.

MacCready was not so amused, and his snarky demeanor earned a full-scale blowout on the way up the elevator. She ranted at him about how "this shit was so fucking unfair" and how "the fuck dare he keel over now right after we just got into a goddamned Vault". But MacCready said nothing. The words rolled off him like rain off a plastic sheet. So he let her rave and holler until there was absolutely nothing left and she was left red-faced and breathing heavily. And when all of the Vault guards were cowering behind their posts from her outburst and all was silent, MacCready just chuckled, shrugged, and asked, "What is he, your boyfriend?"

Fiona made a disgusted noise. "Fuck no, he's my sister's."

"So what, he's like, your brother?"

That shut her up for a good long while, following MacCready wordlessly down one set of stairs and up another until they stepped out into a sun-warmed landscape of deadly rock and monsters. Brother? Shit. She hadn't thought about that. Fiona wondered what Rhys' expression would be if she called him that one day and was rewarded with mental image of a former Hyperion stooge and his dumbfounded jaw-drop.

Tapping her foot back in the present, Fiona's head shook. "We've got guns. What else do we need?"

"Christ, have you never fought feral ghouls before?"

"Is that what we're fighting ... ?"

MacCready stared. "Were you ... even listening to half of what Desdemona said?"

"Yes ... ?" His gaze never left her. "No, not really," she conceded. "I don't remember what we're even going there for, actually ... "

The mercenary sighed. He pulled a rucksack off of the stack piled high on Betsy's back and rifled through it. "We're looking for a Phoenix Monocyte Breeder implant. There's a place in that big city there - " he pointed to the crippled buildings lining the horizon " - that used to be the base of this group called the Railroad. An old scientific technician used to make a bunch of weird shit that could either kill you or cure all your problems. It got overrun with feral ghouls - which are like zombies but really fast and mean as shit - and the hideout had to be evacuated." Fiona nodded. She really was listening this time, honest. "Tinker Tom - that's the tech - got killed in the assault but his goodies are still there. We're gonna go there and grab every little gem we can find, and then we're gonna haul ass back here so your bro doesn't bite the big one. You get me?"

"I got you," acknowledged the up-and-coming Vault Hunter. "For the most part. But ... is it just gonna be us?"

"We'll be meeting Strong - "

"Strong?"

"Yeah. And yes, that's his name." MacCready furrowed his brown in frustration. "You'll know him when you see him, believe me. But we'll all bust through there. Strong is all the melee manpower we need. I'm a marksman, and that little magic pea-shooter you've got will do good in close range - especially with those nifty little tricks it was doing on that Deathclaw. Now what bullets does it take?"

"Uh? Oh." A flick of her wrist and the copper-plated three-shotted emerged from her sleeve. "5.56 millimeter."

He pulled out two boxes of ammunition and handed them to her. Fiona was grateful for deep pockets and slipped them into her inventory.

"We'll need stimpacks and Rad-X as well," he told her while handing her several more strange-looking objects. Fiona rolled the bottle of pills over in her hand. "Radiation storms are a pretty common thing out here. If we get caught in one, we'll be soaking up rads like a sponge. The stimpacks will heal any minor injury you might get. They'll also help smaller bones mend, but don't count on them regenerating an amputated limb."

"I'll ... take your word for it, I guess?"

"It's good to hear you not try and argue with me for once." Fiona shot him a disdainful look, to which he replied, "And don't you start now. The sooner - oh hell, what are they doing?" Brushing aside his sickly-colored duster jacket, MacCready stood and held his hand out. He was peering across the landscape. Fiona looked to see where. "They're gonna go right through the Deathclaw nest at this rate. HEY!" Jumping and waving his hands to get the stragglers' attentions. "THIS WAY! TURN RIGHT!"

His ruckus was enough to get three heads to look at him. It was also enough to get the Deathclaw's attention. She leered out from her cave entrance, stretching her still-soaked-in-red meat-cleaver talons. If the message wasn't clear before, it certainly was now ...

"That's Nick," muttered MacCready. "And Piper. They should know better ... " Two of the figures sprinted towards the third, who was striding in way too fast and not paying nearly enough attention. Both grabbed her shoulders and jerked her back quickly - and just in time. Noting Fiona's wide-eyed gaze, MacCready told her with an exasperated sigh that, "The Matriarch won't attack anybody who doesn't go into her territory. She won't leave her eggs unattended. There's the Alpha Male to contend with, yeah, but he won't go for folks who don't step into their turf. It's some kind of mutual understanding between the Vault-dwellers and them. I don't know."

Fiona looked positively bewildered. "Those things have an agreement with humans? Then why the fuck did they attack us?"

"You landed next to the nest. The mom is super protective of her eggs. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, sorry to say. Normally they only go for raiders because they're the only ones dumb enough to march in front of the damn cave." MacCready didn't bother to hide the insult. He steadied himself for an assault of berating words, but he was lucky enough to find her distracted by other things. Well, thing. And that thing was the third person among the group: the one Nick and Piper had culled before her ass was grass.

"Is that ... ?" Fiona squinted, then jolted upright. "SASHA!"

"Fi?!" Sasha began sprinting up the hill and a fatigued Nick and Piper followed close behind. At least she'd had the sense to follow the designated path to avoid dismemberment that was pointed out to her. Fiona took off running and MacCready walked in her shadow. They met halfway and leapt into each other's arms. "Holy shit, Fi! This planet is strange as hell!"

MacCready sauntered up to Nick and Piper, giving the former an awkward half-hug and the latter a more enthusiastic one. "How the hell ya been, Nick?" he was asking. Fiona drowned his voice out.

"Pandora isn't much better," laughed Fiona, hugging her tight with consideration to Sasha's cast before releasing her. Concern clouded her judgement. "How did you even get here?"

"It's a long story. But it's just me. Vaughn and the others are still back at home." Tears brimmed her auburn eyes and she wiped them away hastily. "These two," her arms swept to the robotic man and the woman in the red coat tailing her, "brought me here. I heard about what happened ... What's a Deathclaw? Did it get you?"

Fiona felt the best answer to her primary question was to point to the monster in question. It sat on its haunches, peering at them through milky white orbs while rumbling so deep it shook the ground. Seeing it caused Sasha's face to fall. Or maybe it was the fact that there was still blood on its claws. "I got nicked, but only when I ducked out of the way," Fiona said while pointing to a small scratch on her cheek. "But, uh ... "

"It's huge," whispered the darker-skinned lady. An evident note of fear lingered in her voice. Her eyes scanned over the scenery surrounding it, locking onto another red smear decorating the cave's outer wall. Her disposition tensed considerably. "And ... Rhys?"

Despite the words forming on her tongue, Fiona found that blurting it all would be tactless. Shifting from one foot to the other with unease wasn't helping either, and it only raised her sister's anxiety. It's better to give her some kind of an answer than none at all ... I'm sorry, sis. "I gotta be honest, Sash. It doesn't look good." Her voice was grim. She wished she could change that and everything that was happening just to dissolve Sasha's withered look. "We, uh, we had to drag him to the Vault back there because he passed out. And they started doing CPR on him inside." Say something positive! "But they brought him back. They're operating on him right now. MacCready and I are about to go into the city to find some kind of implant they need for him, though. Something that'll heal him quicker."

"A Phoenix Monocyte Breeder," explained MacCready, rubbing the dusty stubble on his chin. "It'll jack up the regeneration rate of his cells."

"Do you need any help?" Nick Valentine asked of MacCready. Tilting his hat in Fiona's direction, he introduced himself as, "Detective Nick Valentine, ma'am."

"Appreciate the offer, fella, but I think you should keep an eye on her more." MacCready grinned. "Strong's going to meet us there. If we've only got a couple of ghouls to worry about, this'll be a cakewalk."

"I'm Piper Wright." The reporter watched Sasha's mouth open and close sadly and gingerly touched her shoulder in a show of subtle support. "We should ... probably get her inside."

Fiona agreed, but pulled her sister in for a tighter embrace. "It'll be okay, sis. We'll handle this. We always do, don't we? Besides, he's handled a homicidal maniac living in his head, a fall from space, and generally getting the crap beaten out of him. He might be more stubborn than you." At least that got a stifled laugh from Sasha. It was better than nothing.

The mercenary stepped up to Fiona, lightly tapping her on the back to get her attention. "We should go. If we hurry, we'll be back before the sun sets."

Sighing deeply, Fiona kissed Sasha's forehead and pulled away. "Go keep him company. We'll be back as quick as we can. Don't lose hope, okay?" Sasha gave a numb little nod. As she took her first few steps towards Vault 81, Fiona looked to Nick and Piper. "I know we really don't know each other, but thanks for getting my sister here ... Could you, uh, keep an eye on her?"

"Of course," Piper firmly stated, following the distracted Pandoran's ascent up the hill.

Nick held back, hesitating. "MacCready's a crack shot and Strong, though extremely brash, is true to his name. They'll take care of you. Just make sure you stay in one piece. Sasha is going to need your support more than anything else."

Fiona winked. "Don't worry, I've got more than one trick up my sleeve." With that said, the gun vanished beneath her sleeve. "C'mon," she called behind her, pacing herself downhill. MacCready was next to her in under a second.

"That was your sister?" he asked, perplexed.

"Yeah."

"She doesn't look anything like you."

"We're not," Fiona explained to him, not surprised that the topic came up, "technically related. No biological connection, you know? But we were both orphaned, both grew up together ... So whether or not we're blood, we're still siblings."

"You have a strange, but charming, family." She wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not.

"What about your family? I mean, to raise you they must have been a little odd."

He laughed, which was unexpected considering the question posed to him. "I grew up in a town of children. Little Lamplight, it was called. I was actually the mayor there for a couple of years. Our parents sent us there with the idea that, if we were forcibly taught to look out for ourselves from a young age, we would live a lot longer. It wasn't conventional, but it was a good idea. A lot of us survived as long as we have because of it." Giving her a sideways smile, he continued. "Have you ever heard of it? It's out in the Capital Wasteland."

"Yeahhh ... about that ... " The Pandoran was hesitant. "I'm not actually ... from here? Like, from this planet?"

"Bullshit. What chems have you been smoking?"

"Never touched a drug a day in my life." Contorting her face into a mix of shy amusement and honesty, Fiona crossed her arms behind her back. "We've got some travel time between here and the Railroad headquarters ... and I'm fucking screaming on the inside but trying hard as hell not to show it ... so how about it? I tell you about my home, you tell me about your's?"

MacCready's face was completely unreadable. For a moment he was completely skeptical, his eyebrows doing this funny thing where they crouched so low that they twitched uncontrollably. But then he was completely blank. A long moment of silence passed between them. Then, "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt just because I've never seen a gun do anything like your's does, but I think you're a crackpot. I'll humor you, though ... But you first."

Clapping her hands together, Fiona started with, "I was born on this planet called Pandora ... "

Sasha was trying very hard to distract herself.

And it was very hard to do because every time she looked down, she was seeing drag marks and blood streaks leading to the Vault entrance - which would have been glamorous and awe-inspiring if not for her pending dread and the reality of her very surreal situation. Her boots were soon smacking against metal stairs, then linoleum floors. And everything looked pristine and clean and white ... except for the crimson trail of morbidity that lead to the very elevator they had to take down.

She didn't know them well at all, but Sasha was secretly grateful for Piper and Nick's presence throughout. The reporter kept a constant hand on the crease of her good arm as if to keep her tethered to reality when she wanted nothing but to float off. Nick the Synth (whatever a Synth was) made it a point to strike up some kind of pointless conversation as the elevator brought them down, mainly to help her get over the thick stench of copper.

They were greeted by an array of faces downstairs. A woman who introduced herself as the Overseer kept her words (welcoming her to any amenities she required) brief and concise, having noted Sasha's disembodied state and not wanting to stress her any more than she already was. It was a simple gesture, but one the Pandoran was grateful for.

Nick and Piper walked her along the hall because, after a while, she simply stopped looking down. Sasha felt like she'd glided the whole way. They halted before a large metal door, but it wouldn't open. The red light above it indicated that it was locked, but through the observation window Sasha could see that it was a medical facility. Another closed door was in the back of the lab. This one also had an observation window, but it was blocked out by a dark sheet of cloth. A flurry of movement behind it kept it flapping.

A man in a blue and yellow jumpsuit approached, telling them that the medical facility would be locked until the doctors were finished doing what they had to do. He advised them to sit and offered coffee. Sasha didn't remember saying yes, but she found herself holding the heated mug, staring listlessly into its contents.

There was a shared silence between the three of them that lasted until the ceramic item in her hands became cold. Finally, her lips parted. "Distract me." Her throat felt awfully parched.

Piper spoke first. "What would you like to hear?" she said softly.

"I ... I guess tell me about Earth." She took one painstaking look at the lab door. "It's gonna be a while before they let me see him. We might as well kill the time ... I ... don't know how long I'll wind up staying here, after all." That was certainly a thought, wasn't it? With the flow of events, Sasha hadn't even stopped to consider how in the world they would all be getting back to Pandora. If we all get back ...

Piper looked at Nick, who seemed thoughtful and grim. "Where do we start?"

"Might as well hit it from the beginning."

"From the way you described Pandora," began Nick, piecing together his words carefully as he spoke, "I believe we may have, at one point, shared a timeline. But the events leading to Pandora's exploration didn't happen in our timeline. That's where your reality splits off from our's. Our world is made up of different continents and ... Piper, would you mind finding me a globe? We might as well fill you in as fully as we can so you can best understand what it is you're looking at."

The reported nodded and vanished. She reappeared a minute later with a circular object secured by a beam of steel. It spun wildly when she pressed her finger upon it. Sasha allowed her eyes to rove over the item. "Earth, huh?"

A slender metal finger pointed to a spot on one of the larger continents marked on it. "This," he said, "is where we are. We're in a country called the United States of America, in the state of Massachusetts. Not so long ago, we were among one of the many superpowers on Earth ... We, along with every other nation on this planet, have faced wars and long-standing rivalries with other countries. Some were bitter and bloody while others only led to tension and great change. In 1939 ... "

"So you guys all relied on nuclear power?" asked Fiona incredulously. By this point they had arrived in Boston and were steadily making their way to the Old North Church. MacCready hadn't lied when he said she would know who Strong was when they saw him. Fiona never knew what a Super Mutant was, and she still didn't quite understand. But MacCready promised he would get to that. Strong was impressing the hell out of her, though. They'd seen their first feral ghouls upon passing the city's threshold. A single strike from a massive weapon made of rebar and concrete not only sent them flying, but splattered them into several pieces.

"Strong love to fight!" he hollered in a testosterone-fueled rage. "Follow me, puny humans!"

Keeping the pace, the mercenary nodded to Fiona. "Yeah. Looking back on it, it was a really bad idea - "

"- Yeah, no shit."

"But at the time, we thought it was clean energy." He stepped over a mutilated corpse that had once been a trader and made a face. "Oil was running out and nuclear energy seemed almost completely limitless. That didn't stop the demand for oil, though. The U.S. had one of the last remaining stockpiles of it in Alaska - that's a state way to the north of here, up where it's cold and icy. China, another superpower, was keen on taking it from us. Soon we dove right back into war."

"Why humans talk so much?" growled Strong. His small head looked back over his brutish shoulder. "Almost there. Be ready!"

"He isn't one for, uh, meaningful conversation, is he?"

"You should hear him when he stays in a settlement for too long."

At least an hour had passed and still there was no sign of anything different from the medical lab. So Nick continued with his story. Sasha admitted gladly that it was distracting enough to keep her mind off of other things - or at least it was until she strayed a glance over her shoulder, or at the floor ... Luckily somebody was coming their way with a mop and none of them would have to see the grim reminder of death.

"Vault-Tec created massive underground Vaults, like the one we're sitting in now. They built a couple of hundred of them, I believe, scattered all throughout America. You had to meet specific standards to get into each one. For instance, one was dedicated to those of musical talent. Another, for politicians."

Piper threw in her knowledge. "It was mostly a ploy. 'Come to the Vault and be safe in the event of a nuclear holocaust!' Of course the people inside survived, but Vault-Tec took this opportunity to use their population as human guinea pigs. Each Vault had some hidden reason for existing in the first place. The one we're in right now had a hidden section that Blue - " Sasha had come to the understanding that 'Blue' was a mutual friend between her and Nick " - and I found, They were experimenting on Mole Rats, creating viruses and serums. They would then infect the populace to see the effects."

Sasha's face contorted into disgust. "That's wretched. Why do that to their own species?"

"Your guess is as good as our's," Nick shrugged his shoulders. "It was probably an attempt to made humans hardier as a whole, but some of the experiments were just ... sick. But like Piper said, the Vaults did their job of keeping people alive - for the most part. When the bombs dropped in 2077, those underground were saved from the nuclear hellfire. Those above ground were not so lucky. A few were able to hold out based on their geographic location alone. Some completely avoided the radioactive fallout. But those caught in the blast were either killed or suffered the effects of extensive radiation poisoning. They mutated into Ghouls, like the one's you've seen in Diamond City."

Surprised, Sasha asked, "So Hancock is pre-war?"

"Hell no," Piper laughed. "He's a drug addict, always searching for that permanent high. One day he got ahold of something that was laced with uranium. It made him into what he is."

"What about the other things? The Deathclaws?"

"They were actually genetically modified before the bombs dropped. I think they were meant to replace soldiers on the battlefield. All that radiation got to them like it did everything else, though, and it made them into the tough, resilient bastards you see today."

" ... So that's how it ended. We were all there to watch the Prydwen fall. Everybody but Danse." MacCready sighed as he rummaged through Tinker Tom's unusual cache of items.

Clearing out the catacombs had been easy. Clearing out the Railroad Headquarters? Not so much. Fiona never knew zombies could glow. but the firefight was interesting and memorable: the three of them against three dozen feral ghouls. It was too close-quarters for MacCready to wield his sniper rifle, so he'd resorted to a serrated machete. Strong had no qualms about slamming several of them with his bare fists. And Fiona's tiny gun had the pleasure of melting many of them down to the bone with acid. The ground was riddled with decimated and disfigured corpses. That gamey smell was overpowering.

"Danse was ... infuriated. He wouldn't listen to reason and stormed off." The merc with a mouth looked sadly through one of the many cabinets, plowing his hand through like it was filled with candy. "I know Nora regretted doing what she did. Especially since they were in love with each other. But it had to be done. Maxson was insane. He would have had every mutant and robot wiped from the face of the Earth, whether they were good or bad or didn't give a fuck. Nick, Strong, Hancock, and every other good person ... gone, eliminated like insects."

Fiona was on the ground, going through some of the items that had fallen during the skirmish earlier. "It had to have been rough. Did you guys have a lot of friends in the Brotherhood?"

"A couple of the scribes and proctors were outstanding people. I ... I'd like to think some of them made it out, but there's no way to know ... We haven't seen or heard from any BoS member since then. It's probably for the best, really. They and the Institute would fire upon the Minutemen and the Railroad in a heartbeat. It's a shame they didn't want to cooperate ... Under those two flags, the Eastern Commonwealth has started to really prosper again."

Something metal clanked against Fiona's searching wrist. She moved several folders and papers aside to see a small metal tin that was taped shut. "Huh," she grunted, peeling the masking tape off with her fingernails and pulling the lid off. She was expecting some secret stash of money or rare coins. The disappointment was palpable when she saw the container held nothing but bottle caps. "Who keeps crap like this?" she scowled, closing the lid and tossing it aside.

Surprisingly, MacCready made a dive for it. "I'll take those!"

"What the hell for? They're useless."

"They're currency," he corrected, waggling a greedy finger at her. "We stopped using pre-war cash a long time ago. There's no factories to make them. Bottle caps get used instead." He smugly held the tin up. "So thanks for the find! There must be 200 caps in here, at least!"

"That's money on Earth?" Fiona was on her feet. She held a hand out. "I'll take them back now. Finder's keeper's."

"And you gave them up, so ... Loser's weep- "

He was definitely not expecting her fist to go flying into his face. In his shock at both her action and her brute strength, MacCready dropped the tin into Fiona's nimble hands and hit the ground hard. Strong erupted into an uproar of laughter from the back of the room.

"Squished like a Radroach!" he roared.

"Something you should probably learn quickly," flaunted Fiona as she emptied the tin's contents into her coat pocket, "is that I really don't play nice when money is concerned." She winked at MacCready as he sat straight, rubbing his cheek and groaning.

"Is it bad," he guffawed, "that I think that was kinda hot?"

Fiona lobbed the empty tin at his head. He sank like a sack of potatoes. Lying on his back, MacCready rolled his eyes to the side and mewled happily.

"I think I found what we came for." Fiona and Strong both made their way over to his supine body. Just out of his reach was a floor safe, positioned securely under what had been Tinker Tom's chemistry lab. "Can you pick a lock?" he asked Fiona directly. "I mean, you were a thief on Pandora, right? I'd do it, but I can't see straight right now." He moaned, rubbed the back of his skull. "Damn good arm ... "

A bobby pin was procured from Fiona's coat. "Don't worry," she told him coyly. "I've got this."

"Sasha?"

Somebody announcing her own name to her caught her rapt attention. Another hour had passed. One hour and thirty-four minutes. The clock perched on the opposing wall had not been helping her cause when Nick was finished giving his history lesson. Piper was slumped backwards in her chair, quietly snoring away. Nick, who finally explained what a Synth was, did not need to sleep ... or anything else for that matter. He sat stoic and firm, throwing Sasha an occasional smile by way of reassuring her. Something about his presence made her feel warm and welcome. No wonder everybody seemed to know who he was.

"Yes?" She looked up attentively, scouting for the source of the voice. To her surprise, it had come from behind her. The medical door was open. An elderly man with gray hair combed to the right and kind eyes surrounded by crow's feet was looking down at her. She couldn't get a grasp on his expression - it seemed oddly neutral - but there was definitely some compassion in there.

"My name is Doctor Forsythe. You can come in now." A hand extended to her. She took it, wearily climbing to her feet. "We've done everything we can for now, but I'm going to go ahead and warn you that his appearance might upset you."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Valentine asked. Those glowing Synth eyes were ever-piercing and robotic but somehow benevolent. Sasha shook her head and the detective nodded back in understanding. "I'll be here if you need me."

The Doctor stepped briefly to the side to allow three other doctors to leave the room before showing Sasha in. The main room was empty, but the back room ... Well, the black cloth had been removed from the observation window. Sasha could clearly see x-rays plastered against a backlight. She was no doctor, and had no medical training whatsoever, but it was clear to her what was portrayed on them.

"He's far from out of the woods," Forsythe was telling her. Sasha felt that drifting sensation again. "In fact, he's been teetering between decompensated and irreversible shock for a while. But we've managed to get both his heart rate and blood pressure up, if not by much. I .. can give you the whole run-down if you want me to. I don't suspect this is easy for you. But I will tell you that once your sister gets back with the implant, we expect his condition to rapidly improve."

Sasha thought for sure she was ready for this after two hours of keeping her mind off of it. But her knees rapidly became weak. She hastily found a seat before she dropped to the floor.

This couldn't have been the same supernerd who'd ousted Handsome Jack once and for all. Not the same one who tried, and failed, to choke a bandit and not the same one who'd shyly tucked a flower behind her ear with all the bravado of a nervous high school virgin.

His skin was way too pale. Sasha reached out to touch it and had to hold her hand in front of him for a moment to observe the stark contrast between his flesh and her own. He's always been a little pasty, but not that much. She touched his cheek and drew back upon the chill that emanated from him.

Several dressings were wrapped about him - one upon his head, extending to cover his left eye, and another around the breadth of his abdomen. All of them sported flecks of red and she imagined there were stitches underneath. What happened to his eye? His right, human eye was surrounded by a dark black mark. Some kind of tube protruded through the left chest wall, close to his collarbone. The arm on that same side was wrapped in a cast like her own except it contained the entirety of his limb, not just the forearm and elbow. Several wires were running to his chest, attaching him to a heart monitor that bleeped every few seconds.

Perhaps the most gut-wrenching sight was the endotracheal tube inserted into his throat ... and the fact that it was hooked to a ventilator. She didn't need to practice medicine to understand what that meant.

A sinking feeling snatched at her heart and pulled it well past her belly. "Go ahead," she said shakily. "Give me the run-down."

Doctor Forsythe looked conflicted about this, but he was a doctor. It was his job to deliver bad news.

"He's sustained skull fractures to the temporal and frontal bone. The trauma lead to intracranial bleeding and it's been wreaking havoc on his body's ability to compensate." His arm indicated the EKG. Sasha noted Rhys' vital signs were both being displayed. She was pretty sure 78/50 was a pretty bad number to have. "The circle you see under his eye is from the bleed in his head. His other eye ... He, ah, was struck hard enough for it to actually blow out, cybernetics and all. Desdemona has a replacement handy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Code for 'if he survives', thought Sasha vacantly. "Several broken ribs resulting in a collapsed lung. The tube is there to keep air from building up in the space around the lung, therein keeping pressure off the heart. His entire left humerus is shattered and the blunt force trauma ruptured his spleen, which we were able to fully repair. He ... hasn't been able to breath on his own."

Fosythe placed an uneasy hand on her shoulder - something everybody seemed to be doing here lately.

"Rest assured, we will continue doing everything we can. I have no intentions to leave the lab. I'll be here in case anything changes. You are welcome to stay for as long as you wish." Removing his fingers, the doctor turned towards the door. "I'll give you some time alone."

His silence didn't do much to alter the mood. Sasha wasn't much into feeling anything at that given point in time. She could do nothing but stare on and on at the forced rising and falling of his chest and listen to the beeping of his cardiac monitor. Occasionally she would look at the bouncing of his heart rhythm. It changed from time to time, becoming faster or slower but never by much. Sasha swallowed heard and covered her eyes.

"Damn it, Rhys."

There was no way this was happening. Her gut made it feel as though she'd swallowed pure lead. She thought back to the moment when they all - herself included - thought she was going to die. How Rhys had wept like a baby, admitting that he'd always kind of hoped tears could heal people. It had been funny, looking back on it after the fact. Now she wondered why she couldn't conjure tears of her own. Crap, she certainly felt like she could.

But here she was. Totally powerless.

She hated that.

Sasha reached for his robotic hand and held onto the index finger as if that would give her some kind of an answer. Nothing. He was completely still. She exhaled, burying her forehead against the side of his cot and closing her eyes. Maybe she'd fall asleep and wake up to find it was all just a bad dream. She'd be back in the caravan and they'd be leaving the Vault together to celebrate their victory.

She felt his hand tremble under her's.

"Rhys?" Jerking her head up rewarded her with nothing. He was still in the same catatonic state as he was before. Maybe she had drifted off and dreamed it.

But then his heart monitor kicked in. It was picking up the pace, losing rhythm in favor for speed. And his mechanical hand was positively shivering now. Sasha sank backwards, feebly calling for the doctor, and without warning Rhys' entire body writhed into a painful arch. Red splashed across the bandage of his stomach, accompanied by the sickening sound of popping stitches. His fingers splayed open, began scrabbling for something - anything.

Sasha was at his side in an instant. "DOCTOR!"

Still twisted into a position of horrible discomfort, Rhys' mouth snapped open and then clamped down hard on the ET tube, teeth piercing through the thick plastic. And his eye - his good eye - opened spontaneously, his whole pale face contorting into an expression of pure terror she had never seen him do before. His pupil was the size of a pinhead and it rapidly scanned the ceiling, seeing but not seeing. The way he kept pushing himself backwards made it seem like he was trying to get away from something, and his mechanical arm kept grabbing at the area around his throat, trying to rip something away that simply didn't exist.

A flurry of footsteps raced in behind her. Suddenly she was surrounded by the doctors who were there previously and they were working with all the velocity of a well-organized hurricane.

"Shit, he bit through the tube!"

"Bag him!"

"I need Med-x! We're going to have to sedate him!"

Sasha knew she was in the way, but she found it impossible to leave. She grabbed his robot forearm with her good one and leaned in. "Rhys, it's okay!"

She wasn't prepared for the vice-grip he'd launched upon her limb and she screamed first in surprise and then in pain as he dug in ruthlessly. The reaction was almost instantaneous, and as soon as she cried out his grip loosened. Sasha began to draw back, but not before first setting one final glance at his face.

At his eye.

The eye that was now staring directly at her.

It had softened considerably, mixing something of sorrow and fear in such a way that she felt as though he was asking her, What's happening to me? But as the doctor pushed something into his veins meant to knock him out, the eye struggled to stay open and slowly closed on her and the whole world.

She didn't remember running out of the medical clinic. She didn't remember where she had been planning to go - there were some vague thoughts of brutally murdering a Deathclaw with her bare hands or punching the nearest person in the face. Nor did she recall what Nick had yelled to her. But she did remember Piper, who appeared from seemingly nowhere to wrap her arms around Sasha and pull her back and hold her still. "Hey, hey! It's okay!"

With no way to run, the walls just kind of crumbled down. Piper sank with her to the floor, rocking her back and forth as she sobbed uncontrollably into her shoulder.