The next week passed without incident. Nora was away on business, although whether she was laying out plans for the Minutemen or conspiring with her friends in the Railroad, she didn't say. Considering the vagueness of her mission, I assumed it was the Railroad.
Her absence left the office quieter than it had been for a while. I listened to the steady whir of the desk fan and the clickety-clack of Ellie's typewriter in the other room. I pored over case files, pondering new angles, but somehow, my thoughts kept circling back to the unresolved tensions between Nora and me. Damn, but I missed her.
I spoke to Ellie from the other room. "Hey, have you noticed anything different?"
She poked her head around the corner. "Different? With what?"
"With, uh, me, I guess."
She nodded. "Actually, I have. You smile more than you used to."
"You think?" I suppose I did. With a good partner at my side, it was easier to look on the bright side of things and leave off brooding about what couldn't be changed.
"And nowadays, when you go out on a case, I can be 99% sure you're coming back," Ellie continued. "There was at time when the odds were more like 50-50, and honestly, I was a nervous wreck."
"Having another investigator around here has its benefits, I suppose."
Ellie smirked. "Huh. Well, you weren't like this when Marty Bullfinch was around, I can tell you that. Must be a little of that Vault 111 magic at work."
I pretended I didn't hear that last smart remark. I lit a cigarette and went back to my paperwork. Ellie returned to sorting through the mail, although she kept shooting me wry looks whenever she passed.
A few minutes later, I heard her laugh.
"How apropos," she murmured. "Hey Nick! You've got a wedding invitation."
I walked out to the main room and stared at her. She handed me a silver-etched card.
I stared at it in disbelief."What in the hell?"
I'd been to funerals, homecomings and several kid's birthday parties (where apparently I was a big hit) but no one had ever thought to invite me to a wedding before.
I opened the card and read it. The text was in both standard English and Binary. Inside, there was picture of Mr. Zwicky and his teaching aide, Edna.
"Well, what do ya know?" I said. "Looks like Zwicky and Edna are going to the altar. Nice to hear some good news for once."
The schoolteacher could be a curmudgeon at times, but he'd always had a soft spot for his robotic helper, and Edna adored him. They might have kept working together for the rest of their lives, never acknowledging their feelings, if Nora hadn't given Edna a little nudge in the right direction. I'd been there, mostly as a witness, but I guess Edna had remembered me too. It was nice to think I'd have a place at their special day.
I wondered if Nora would be there as well. We could go together. There wouldn't be anything too unusual about that, partners keeping each other company at a wedding. It wouldn't have to be a date or anything awkward like that, not if she didn't want it to be.
Ellie's voice broken into my thoughts. "Shall I send an RSVP?"
I nodded. "I'll be there. Here's hoping it's not a fancy dress occasion. My tux is out at the cleaners."
Sleep has never been a concern for me, and those nights I found myself walking the city streets like a man possessed. I passed under arc lights, my shadow writ large on the ground before me, then the darkness swallowed me up again and I listened to the rain falling hard against the tin roofs of the shanties and more gently against the earth.
Old Nick had loved somebody and the loss of that love had stolen his will to live. He'd passed all his fears onto me, who'd never been in love, who carried his life around inside me like the melody in a music box, a half-forgotten dream.
Soon, I was making frequent trips out of the office during the day too. Sometimes I visited old haunts in search of new leads. Sometimes I just shot the breeze with Takahashi. There wasn't much conversation in him, but he was a good listener when I wanted to talk out a case and I always felt he understood my friendly intentions.
I was coming back from one of these jaunts when I saw Diamond City Security massing out front of the detective agency.
"Where's the fire?" I asked one of the guards, a nice kid named Danny Sullivan.
Danny wiped his brow with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry, Mr. Valentine. There's been an incident."
"An incident?" That sounded bad.
"In your office."
My mind flashed to poor Ellie. When I'd said goodbye to her, she'd sitting at her desk, buffing her nails, no doubt bored by the absence of new clients.
"Ellie – is she alright?"
I didn't wait for an answer. I rushed past him into the office before he could get in my way.
The place looked like it'd been hit by a mini-nuke – or one hell of a hurricane. File cabinets had been upended, their contents spewed across the floor. Ellie leaned against her toppled desk, talking to a police officer. The girl looked flustered, but she was all in one piece.
"Are you okay?"
She hurried over to meet me. "Nick, I – I'm so sorry. I tried to stop them -"
"It doesn't matter, kid. Office equipment can be replaced. You can't. If you're alright, I am too."
"These guys were looking for something. They kept asking where you kept the evidence and I told them: anything to be used in a trial doesn't stay with us, it goes to Security. They started ransacking the place and I ran for help."
My mind went back to the Gaines case and what Mrs. Gaines had said when we'd given her the Holotape - "Oh, I'll set him straight alright". What if she hadn't just used the evidence we'd collected to get out of her marriage? What if she'd decided to use it to get even with her no-good, cheating husband?
A dalliance with a ghoul was practically a rite of passage in Goodneighbour, but in Diamond City, it was an abomination, especially among the elite circles living in the Boxes. A scandal like that could ruin a person's reputation, spoil business opportunities and even spell banishment from the city proper, if the Mayor got wind of it and decided you were insufficiently invested in the proper Diamond City spirit. For an influential man like Gregory Gaines, all of that would be a hell of a lot to lose and I doubted he'd tolerate his wife holding blackmail material over his head.
"The people who did this - you get a good look at them?"
Ellie frowned, concentrating. "There were three of them. All men, I think. They were dressed like wastelanders, but they came off like soldiers. When they burst into the agency, my first thought was that they didn't seem like they belonged in Diamond City. They were wearing patrolman's sunglasses to cover their eyes."
Poor girl looked exhausted. I didn't want to push her any further, especially when I was almost certain the men she was describing were Gunners in the pay of Gregory Gaines.
"C'mon, Ellie. Time for you to go home and have a rest, I think. Take the day off tomorrow. The agency isn't going anywhere."
I escorted her back to the house she shared with her mother at the far end of the stadium. I rapped on the sheet metal door and Mrs. Perkins peered out, blinking behind her plastic-rimmed specs. Her eyes shifted from me to Ellie, her expression warming considerably, and she opened the door all the way.
"You're home early. Is everything okay?"
I figured it was my duty to offer up an explanation, especially since I'd wound up putting her kid in a messy situation. "There was an incid-"
"Mr. Valentine is giving me a couple days off," Ellie interrupted. "With pay. In recognition of all my hard work. Isn't that nice?" She turned, shooting me a look that said I wasn't to contradict her.
I guess Ellie worried that her mother would ban her from working at the agency altogether if she told the truth of the matter. Mrs. Perkins had been suspicious of me from the word 'go' and it'd taken a long time for us to get to even this uneasy peace, so I could understand Ellie omitting a few of the more crucial facts.
Her mother didn't seem to know what to make of this. "Well, isn't that nice." She glanced at me, clearly deliberating on what to say. Finally she settled on a simple "Thank you, Mr. Valentine", which was not the reaction I'd been bracing myself for on the walk over.
"Ellie has earned it and more," I said. "She's a good worker and she puts up with a lot. The detective business isn't always a walk in the park." Sometimes it was a bunch of goons busting in and trashing your office or getting locked in a cell in an underground Vault for three days straight, but I'd let Ellie break that news to her mother in her own time.
Once Mrs. Perkins had taken Ellie inside, I walked back to the ungodly mess my office had become.
I was surprised to find Nora waiting for me in front of the agency, like a present placed at my doorstep. The neon sign flashed over her face, pink light dancing over her cheeks and reflecting off her hair. I should have said something, but the sight of her made me so glad that words just evaporated and I wound up gazing at her like some fond idiot.
"Nick, I'm so sorry," she said. "What a shitty thing to happen."
Nora wrapped her arms around me, giving me a tight squeeze, and I was so surprised, I let out a chuckle.
Experimentally, I laced my arms around her waist, drawing her in a little closer. There was a warmth in the embrace that didn't just come from my circuitry or the heat of her body. I could hear her heart hammering against my chest and smell a faint, but lovely perfume wafting up from her hair. When she was eased back from the embrace, I was almost...disappointed.
"How did you get here?" I said. "I thought you were out on some very official business."
"I heard Travis talking about the break-in on the radio, so I had them teleport me back here."
Ah, so Nora had been at the Institute then. It bothered me to think of her there, surrounded by heartless bastards in white lab coats. No doubt if you pricked them, they'd bleed formaldehyde. The partner I knew didn't fit in with those people, however much her son tried to sell her on their twisted way of thinking.
"It's good to see you," I said, making the understatement of the year. "It's been one hell of a day."
We went into the office and surveyed the damage. It was worse than I remembered.
Nora shook her head, fuming. "You have any notion who's behind this?"
"Call it Synth's intuition, but the redoubtable Mr. Gaines is my best guess. Ellie described some hired goons who sounded an awful lot like Gunners to me."
She stooped down, plucked a cigarette butt from the ground, inspected it, then gave it a sniff.
I made a face. "Hope you aren't planning on smoking that."
"This isn't your brand," she said. "MacCready has a taste for these."
"You've lost me. I mean, you're not suggesting our friendly merc pal had something to do with this?"
"No, not at all." Nora laughed off the notion. "But I think it confirms your suspicions about the Gunners. They give out monthly rations. Stimpacks, bandages, extra ammo...and cigarettes, just like these. Every time we raid a Gunners' hideout, Mac goes all shifty-eyed and tries to sneak every carton he can get his hands on."
It made sense, I suppose. "Hm. Nice catch. I like it when there's solid evidence to confirm a hunch. So, in that spirit, shall we go check in on the Gaines' household? See what we see?"
"No doubt we'll get an eyeful."
Ten minutes later, Nora knocked on the door of the Gaines' apartment. There was no answer.
She reached down, trying the doorknob, no doubt expecting the resistance of a lock. Instead, the door pushed open and she practically tumbled over the threshold.
We look around in astonishment. The place showed clear signs of a struggle. A vase had shattered, murky water pooling across the floor amid the stems of crushed hubflowers.
In the kitchen, we found Hadfield the robot butler lying face-down on the floor.
I crouched down beside his body and rolled him over. He looked worse for wear, poor guy.
"Do you think he's still operational?" Nora asked in a hushed tone.
"They dented his metal plating pretty good, but I don't think it'd be enough to wreck his operating system. Can't promise anything though."
I checked his fuel gauge. He was completely drained.
"Nora, you see any Mr. Handy fuel around here?"
"I'll look."
She came back a few minutes later, canister in hand. I poured some gas into Hadfield's fuel spout, then reset his systems. The robot wakened with aching slowness.
"Oh my," Hadfield said. "This is embarrassing. To be discovered sleeping on the job."
Nora smiled, her eyes glistening with relief. "Don't worry. It happens to the best of us."
"But where's the mistress?"
"We're curious about Mrs. Gaines' whereabouts as well," she said. "Did she say anything to you?"
"No, mum. Otherwise I would've been eager to accompany her."
"And Mr. Gaines?" I interjected. "Where does he spend most of his time?"
"On the road, of course. He is one of the most well-traveled gentlemen in the Commonwealth, I'm proud to declare. When he isn't engaged in business affairs or enjoying the warmth of the home fires here in beautiful Diamond City, then he can usually be found at Gaines Labs and Manufactory."
Interesting, very interesting, indeed. "Where would be that be located?"
"I couldn't say precisely, sir. You see, I've yet to visit the premises. Apparently, it's in South Boston, inside what used to be a high school? Most ingenious, if you ask me."
Nora was eyeing the 'bot with concern. He didn't seem to be all there. "Are you alright, Hadfield? Would you like to go somewhere?"
"Oh, certainly not, mum. Look at the mess this place has become. I simply must tidy it up before the master and mistress return."
It seemed a shame to leave Hadfield in that empty apartment, but he couldn't be convinced to abandon his post. I resolved to check in on him in a day or two to run a diagnostic. The guy had been slapped around pretty good and domestic units weren't meant to take that kind of beating.
By the time, Nora and I left the building, dusk had set in. The darkening sky had a greenish tinge, as if a radiation storm were rolling in from the coast. Nora gave a slight shiver, sniffing the air.
"The weather is taking a turn for the ugly," she said, "Want to wait it out at Home Base? It'll be more comfortable than at the agency."
I didn't dispute that. Nora's house in Diamond City was a cozy little nest, no two ways about it, and I couldn't think of any place better to hole up during a storm. If I'm giving you the straight goods, the idea of being alone with her, somewhere safe and private, sounded like a luxury in itself. It occurred to me that something might happen between us and the prospect sent a jolt of electricity zinging down my spine.
Usually, I liked to have a game plan, but for once, I wasn't sure how I was going to behave. Consulting with Old Nick's memories wasn't much help. He'd been your typical man equipped with regulation-issue human biology. He could suggest a couple lines to make a lady swoon and he'd embedded a few memories of getting between the sheets into my data banks, but he wasn't going to be any help when it came to being a 'bot. That was something I was going to have negotiate all on my own. More than anything, I was afraid Nora might not like me so much without the hat and the suit and the trench coat, once I was more Synth than detective. Or hell, what if I did something wrong, underestimated my strength and wound up hurting her? I tried to avoid contemplated that too much. What would happen would happen. Maybe she'd already given up on me. Maybe she'd spent this past week working any feelings she had for me out of her system. Maybe all this self-doubt and frustrated desire was for nothing at all, a tempest in a teapot.
Anyway, at least at Home Base, I wouldn't have to look at the mess that'd once been my office. Just thinking of the damage to the agency left me heartsick – even if I don't technically have a heart, just a pump pushing coolant. When we found Gregory Gaines, I had a feeling I was going to have a tough time holding my temper, what with the damage he'd done - not just to property, but to people and 'bots and the sense of security we'd all enjoyed at the agency, before his thugs came around and trashed the place. Gaines may have started out as just a no-good dirty bastard, but now I had him figured for a grade-A scumbag. Bringing him to justice would be a genuine service to the Commonwealth and I was real keen to get started.
