After Bright left, Murphy wandered around for the rest of the day, feeling vaguely at loose ends. He was out of Sugar Bombs, so could make no more Ultrajet; instead he cleaned the laboratory apparatus and set it in order for the next run, though he was not sure when that would be. If ever, he thought morosely. He did some light cleaning throughout the rest of the small three-room apartment, and a few small repairs that he had been putting off for a while as well. They were the sort of things that he would have let slide until Barrett eventually ended up doing them...but there was no Barrett to do them now. He managed to get through them without another fit of weeping, though it was a close thing. The look of fear on Bright's face before she had left kept recurring to him at odd moments throughout the day, as did the moment when she had embraced him. He wondered if this "Chains" person really would kill her for not bringing him enough Ultrajet.

Eventually dusk fell. Murphy could not tell from within the walls of the lab itself, but when he carried a bunch of trash outside to burn in the oil drums he could see it through the chain-link gate. He returned to the lab, pushed a chair up against the door again—for all the good it did last time, he thought bitterly—and settled in at the desk in the front room. He had taken the "presents" Bright had given him and organized them along with the rest of the apartment earlier in the day; now he took a Nuka-Cola from the fridge and opened it. One sip was enough to convince him that it was every bit as nasty as he remembered; a sickly-sweet acidic fruit taste that had long since been staled by time. The carbonation that had originally been in the beverage was gone too; drinking it was like drinking syrup right out of the bottle. Two hundred years took its toll on everything, Murphy guessed. Even ghouls. His mouth twitched.

Barrett had loved the stuff. For the life of him, he had no idea why.

He tried to leaf through Desire's Passion, but gave up after twenty pages. Not only was the print barely legible, but on page fifteen he came across the phrase "throbbing manroot" and after that he simply could not take the book seriously anymore. Plus, the prose style was horrendous, the dialogue was awful, the plotting retarded, and the characters so thin they would disappear if turned sideways. He tossed the book aside with a thud, and suspected he'd be picking it back up within a week or so, if only to help fend off the crushing silence.

He tilted back his chair and put his feet up on the desk. "To you, Barrett," he murmured, lifting the Nuka-Cola bottle to the air. "Damn, I wish—" His eyelids prickled; he gulped some more of the drink, grimacing at the saccharine taste, and gave a shaky sigh. His eyes fell on the collection of medical instruments, laid out on the edge of the desk on top of the scrap of Brahmin hide in which they had been wrapped. He'd meant to put those on the shelf next to the First Aid kit, but had gotten distracted.

How did she know? he mused, studying them. But she hadn't known, he remembered; she'd just guessed. What was it she said, "a smart guy like you…?"

He sighed again, righting his chair, and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the desk. He laced his fingertips together and rested his forehead on them. Bright, he thought. Bright, Bright, Bright….

He didn't want her to come back. He didn't want ever to see her again. She'd beaten him and murdered Barrett. For a room with a mattress. Somehow that detail seemed the most incredible to him. She ended Barrett's life for that? The only reason she hadn't murdered him was that she needed him alive to make Ultrajet. She was a Raider, and Raiders were the stuff of nightmares.

She was coming back, whether he wanted her to or not. She'd said as much. And she'd warned him not to try and run away.

Maybe she's not, he thought. If this Chains person kills her… He bit his lip, remembering her fear. He'd thought at first she was in her mid-twenties, but that look—no. She was younger than he'd thought, maybe not even out of her teens yet. Just about the same age as—

She'd hugged him. And brought him presents. He hadn't been hugged by a smoothskin since he'd changed, but she had hugged him. A burst of sheer rage, as strong as it was unexpected, flashed through him at the thought. Where the fuck does she get off thinking that she can do something like that after what she did to me—to Barrett? How the fuck does she think— After a moment, the anger faded, leaving him shaken.

She'd been every bit as afraid of this Chains person as – as he was of her, he admitted to himself. Did that make a difference to anything? Should it?

He gave another trembling sigh and rubbed at his temples with his fingertips. Goddamn, Barrett, I wish you were here.

Slowly he sat up again, taking another swallow from the Nuka-Cola bottle. Somehow, it didn't seem quite so sickly-sweet this time; maybe he was getting used to it. His eyes fell on the medical instruments again and he reached out, dragging the Brahmin-hide scrap they lay on toward him. There was a cleaning cloth in one of the desk drawers; he got it out now. Carefully, he picked each instrument up one by one, examining it, rubbing it with the cloth, wiping it down and setting it back down neatly in its place.

He'd been a surgeon in the days before the war: an orthopedic surgeon and a pretty damned good one, if he did say so himself. He had been intensely passionate about his craft. Being able to take people who were broken and make them whole again, being able to restore functionality to people who had been crippled their whole lives…. Murphy had never been a particularly religious man, but when he had operated, he had truly felt that in some dim way, he had touched God. That he was doing God's work, beating back, surgery by surgery, the forces of death, decay, despair….

Then the bombs had dropped. In the aftermath of the Great War, Murphy had come to see more of death than he had ever thought possible for one lifetime, and as for decay—what the hell am I now but decay's walking avatar? he thought, staring grimly at his flaking hands. He hadn't touched his tools in over two hundred years. And now she—

With a savage curse, he slammed his fists down on the desk. He stared at the lines of shining metal, suddenly possessed of an intense urge to lash out and sweep them all to the floor. He hurled the empty Nuka-Cola bottle instead, and watched it shatter into a million gleaming glass fragments.

Damn it all. Damn the war, damn her, damn everything.

He got to his feet and went into the back room, flinging himself angrily down on the mattress. He put one arm over his eyes, and in the intense quiet, he tried to sleep. Eventually, he succeeded.


Floating cocooned in the haze, it took Bright some time to notice that the blows had stopped. She hadn't been feeling much of anything since Chains had smashed her into the ground; maybe that was why. He had been gearing up to beat her to death, Bright thought, and she guessed he had finally succeeded. She giggled at the thought.

"You think that's fuckin funny, you lyin bitch! You laughin at me?"

The voice boomed and echoed from all around her. Maybe it's God, Bright thought, and giggled again; she couldn't help it. There were more words, shaped into a roar of fury, but Bright couldn't make them out. Then the pounding came back, more blows thudding into her back, her chest, her midsection. They didn't hurt though; in a strange way they were almost comforting. She burrowed deeper into her warm cocoon, sinking into the gray fog surrounding her, letting it muffle the sharp edges. Maybe, she thought, she wouldn't come back.

"Get up. Get the fuck up, you bitch!"

She felt the world revolve around her, a sensation of herself being lifted and spun through vast reaches of space; then there came a violent shaking. The shaking seemed to go on and on, lifting the murk surrounding her somewhat, until she came back to herself enough to attempt to open her eyes. The right one would only open a crack, and the left one wouldn't open at all for some reason. Her vision was blurry, and it took a moment for her to make sense out of what she was seeing.

Chains was holding her, shaking her furiously. His eyes were so bloodshot the whites looked red. Psycho, the word drifted through her mind; she didn't recall what it meant or why it was important. His whole face was twisted in rage, and he was screaming at her, "You wake up right this minute, you fuckin' traitor! You fuckin' bitch!"

I'm awake, I'm awake, Bright tried to say, but her mouth didn't seem to cooperate. She swallowed a bit, and a flare of pain shot through her, dispelling the murk a bit more. "'Shoo want, Shains?" she mumbled. "'M up, 'm up. Lemme 'lone a'ready, a'right?"

"Where's my fuckin Ultrajet, bitch!"

Ultrajet… The word drifted dimly through Bright's mind. After a moment, something came back to her.

"To'dju," she mumbled hazily. "Don't got it, Shains. On'y t'ree—"

"You think I'm fuckin' STUPID?"

"Sure," Bright said, and giggled again. Chains bellowed like a wounded yao guai, and a moment later she felt herself arcing through space, to slam into the ground at the end. It didn't hurt, though.

"Sorry, Shains. Cou'dn' help it." Something else floated into her consciousness and she mumbled, "Can get more though—jus' nee' more Sugar Bombs. 'Swha' he—" But she cut herself off; even in her semi-delirium something warned her not to bring Murphy into this. If I mention him, she thought foggily, Chains will hurt him too. And he can't take it like me...

"What!" She was hauled upright and shaken. Chains's red eyes swam into her vision. "What the fuck are you talkin about?"

"Sugar Bombs. Wha're you talkin bout?" Bright squinted owlishly out of her one good eye. "Nee' more Sugar Bombs t' make more Ultrajet. Thass all. Ev'ryt'ing else…."

Chains's bloodshot eyes stared at her.

"How many?"

"Eight…Eight t' one," she mumbled.

"Are you fuckin SHITTING me?"

She was smashed into the ground, and something that felt like a kick slammed into her side. Bright heard herself giggling again and wondered hazily what was so funny.

"Sorry, Shains. Takes 'smany 'sit takes…."

The blows stopped coming. There was a long silence. Bright welcomed it; the gray cocoon of fog began to thicken around her once again, warm and soothing.

"Awright. Awright, bitch, get up."

She felt her upper body being lifted into a sitting position. Something hard was wrapped around her shoulders, supporting her, and cool plastic touched her lips. Jet inhaler, she realized dimly. "Suck on this, bitch," Chains's voice came from somewhere outside her, and she did. The fine spray touched the back of her throat, and the mists cleared from her head. She was in the Raider den, she remembered now; the yellow and flickering light told her they were near the oil drum fire. At the edges of her vision, she could see people gathered around, eating, fucking or just watching idly. There was Daisy, with one arm wrapped around Smooth; Ribbon; Nuka; a tall shape that was probably Moose. None of them seemed to be particularly interested in what was going on with her and Chains. Bright understood that without even having to think about it; they'd seen it a million times before. There was pain now, a whole world of it, but it was not connected to her. She ignored it.

Chains had his arm around her shoulders, helping her to sit up. He stared at her with his jittery, bloodshot eyes. "Let me get this straight, bitch. You're tellin me it takes eight boxes of Sugar Bombs for one dose of Ultrajet?"

"Thass what h—I said," she confirmed, nodding.

"Fuck!" His hand clamped down on her shoulder, digging into it. Bright giggled again.

"Shut up that laughin, bitch, or I'll shut you up. Trust me, you ain't got nothin to laugh about." Chains stared off into space. "I wanted lots," he said after a moment.

"Can make lots. Jus takes time an' ingredients, 'sall."

"Fuck." He dragged Bright over to a wall and propped her up against it, then sat back on his heels. "Well, we're gonna have to have a war with the Fordham Flash guys, then," he said matter-of-factly. "I promised 'em Ultrajet and now we don't got none. Why the fuck didn't you say nothin bout this earlier, bitch?"

It was the same question she had asked Murphy. Remembering that made the laughter start to rise once more in her throat, but she bit down on it. "You didn't ask none," she answered.

"Fuck." Chains cast his eyes down for a moment, thinking. "Fuck!" He swung on Bright, raising his fist. Bright didn't shy away—she couldn't move enough for that—and after a moment, he lowered it again. "So if I get the scav teams out and start bringin you boxes of Sugar Bombs, you can make more?"

"Thass right."

Chains looked back at the wall. "It'll take…I dunno, fuckin' weeks…." He scowled uncertainly. Bright said nothing. She could feel the giggles rising in her again, and did her best to choke them back. "Awright, bitch," he said, swinging back to her abruptly. "Today's your lucky day. I'm in a real generous mood right now, so you get to live. For now. Fuck me up again though, and—" He raised his fist in warning, then jumped to his feet and strode off, bellowing for Wrench. Bright slumped back against the concrete behind her. The gray cocoon of fog was rising around her again. Her eyes found Ribbon, squatting at the edge of the circle of light, watching her.

"Ribbon? Li'l help?" she mumbled. Ribbon regarded her for a moment longer, then turned her attention back to the iguana-on-a-stick she was eating. The fog closed around Bright and drifted her away.


It was a full week before Murphy saw Bright again.

At first he expected her back within the next couple of days. He waited for her apprehensively, jumping at every little sound, thinking it must be her returning. Maybe with this Chains person, to try and beat the Ultrajet out of him. When two days passed without sign of her, though, he began to wonder if she would return—if maybe her fears had been accurate, and Chains had….

Had killed her. The thought was strangely disquieting, and he shied away from it. She had done him a great deal of harm, but somehow he didn't like to think of anyone he had known dying in that fashion.

If he had killed her, that would be pretty fucking convenient. That was another thought Murphy shied away from. The idea of hoping for someone's death because it was convenient gave him chills; it was exactly that kind of thinking that made the Wastelands the hell they were.

Barrett would have mocked him for that attitude, Murphy knew. The other ghoul had been born postwar, had grown up in the Wastes; he had never known anything else. He would have called Murphy a naïve idealist, insisting that the Wastes were the way life really was and all that could be done was to adapt to it. Murphy, on the other hand, was one of the few who still remembered the codes of civilization; he had direct personal experience that life did not have to be this way. The idea that it did have to be this way was a big part of the problem, or so he had often argued with Barrett. Not that he had ever managed to convince the other ghoul; Barrett's experiences were just too different. Now, however, without Barrett's protection, Murphy found that his way of thinking was making a disturbing amount of sense.

As the days went by, Murphy began to cautiously accept the fact that Bright would not come back. Somehow, despite everything, that thought called up a distant echo of loss—nowhere near the magnitude of the grief he felt for Barrett, but there nonetheless. He understood that this feeling of loss was induced by his otherwise-total isolation—that with the death of Barrett and the loss or abandonment of Samantha and his other visitors, the Raider girl was now his only chance for human contact. He knew that this was not healthy, but that didn't make the feeling go away.

She hugged me. The only smoothskin who had done so in years. Not even Samantha had done so.

With Bright apparently out of the picture, Murphy began to contemplate his next move. The obvious next step was to flee; Bright might have been gone, but there were other Raiders who could find him just as easily, and with Barrett deceased, he had no protection against them. Underworld would be the obvious destination, though Murphy also considered Rivet City briefly. But how was he to get there? His protector was dead, and Bright had taken his weapons so that he was now completely unarmed except for the single rickety shovel he'd used to bury Barrett-and that was a flimsy defense indeed against the terrors of the Wastes. If he attempted to set out from his lab to reach Underworld, he would be exposed and helpless against all the dangers the Wastes had to offer.

If Samantha, or anyone were to come by again… He could ask one of them to escort him. But they all seemed to be gone too.

What am I going to do? He dithered throughout the week, afraid to stay, and afraid to go. Lurking over it all was the uncertainty as to whether Bright was really gone. What if she's still here and she catches me trying to leave? The thought made him quail. Finally, he established a countdown for himself. If Bright doesn't come in four days, I'll leave, he thought, cleaning the laboratory apparatus and putting it right, possibly for the last time. If Bright doesn't come in three days, I'll leave. That afternoon, he pulled out a tattered map of the Capital Wastelands, studying the surrounding area and tracing a path with his finger to Underworld. If Bright doesn't come in two days, I'll leave. He searched the lab, looking for potential weapons to take with him. If Bright doesn't come in one day….

The final evening, he wandered around the apartment, putting things away. It seemed that memories of Barrett were in every corner. He almost couldn't bear to think of leaving this place that had been home to the two of them for so many years. His stomach was churning and twisting at the thought of leaving this comparatively safe haven, and striking out on his own across the Wastes, but he couldn't think of what else to do. He was no fighter; he couldn't stay here without a protector. As the last of the light faded from the sky, he went and knelt by Barrett's grave.

"Watch over me, wherever you are," he told his friend. "Wish me luck." I'll need it, he didn't say.

He descended into the depths of Northwest Seneca Station. He ate a light dinner and then spent some time packing. He packed little, partly because there was little to pack; Bright had cleaned out most of what he and Barrett had owned. Finally, he retired to the back room and lay down on the mattress. This, he thought, would be the last night he spent here. He would leave for Underworld tomorrow…..

The next morning, Bright returned.