Two things:

I've forgotten to address this since chapter 1. A long time ago I talked about art for this story. That's quite hard for me to do regularly. That being said, I did draw a cover specifically for this story that is of Knox and Ava. Thought I'd let you all know.

Special shotu out to atromancy for writing probably my favorite review of all time. Thank you everyone for reviewing, but atromancy, that review made me smile all damned day.

May 16, 2280

19:00

REPCONN Test Sight

Chris Haversam was not a runner.

He was a man of science. He found other people to do the running. He had them go and fetch whatever he needed and then he'd use his big, overdeveloped brain to solve problems beyond most normal Wastelanders' comprehension.

The girl chasing him down REPCONN's cramped, decrepit corridors was most assuredly not a normal Wastelander.

Ava tore down the hallway in hot pursuit of Chris. The overweight scientist was struggling to keep ahead of her and she could hear him wheezing uncontrollably as he sprinted faster than he had in a long time in a futile attempt to get away.

Chris slid around another corner and bolted through a door. He stopped long enough to palm the door control and lock it down. Ava slammed into the closed door with an angry shout.

"HAVERSAM! GET BACK HERE!"

Ava fumbled with her knife, Stab-happy, to pry the door control panel away from the wall and expose the wires beneath it.

"Oh, no you don't," she muttered under her breath as she hooked her PipBoy up to the door and began to work her way through its protocols. Hacking a door wouldn't take long, but she had to get after Chris before he got to the rockets.

With a click and a whoosh the door slid back open and Ava continued the chase. Despite the delay, Chris was not much farther ahead of her than he was before he'd locked the door. In fact he seemed to be slowing down.

"Chris! Stop!" Ava commanded, drawing her dart gun and training it in the center of Chris's lab coat.

Chris stumbled to a halt and rested, gasping for air, one hand clutching at his chest. He gave a mighty cough in an attempt to clear his throat and turned around. He leaned against the wall and glared at Ava resentfully.

"Running was not… smart," Ava huffed, catching her breath too. She'd started running back at Clark Field just outside of Novac. At the time she'd been one of the people Chris would send out to fetch something. Right up until she'd figured out what was being fetched.

Chris had given Ava and Knox a shopping list to get the Bright Brotherhood's rockets off the ground. He'd initially been upset with Jason that he had to continue working with the "smoothskins" especially seeing as Ava hadn't stopped trying to convince him that he was human.

Yet her cries had fallen on deaf ears. Ava had even asked Knox to give it a try. The Courier had seemed ambivalent to Chris's delusion, but he'd had a quiet word with Chris too. Knox hadn't had any luck either. Instead Chris banished them off into the Wasteland to find a bunch of obscure parts to finalize the rockets.

It was between arguing with Old Lady Gibson about thrust control modules and skirting radioactive pits searching for a radioactive isotope that it occurred to Ava why Chris would have Knox out searching for Sugar Bombs.

And thus Ava had started running back to REPCONN.

"I've… been sprinting… for an hour… You running away was not nice," she said as calmly as she could taking a step closer to Chris.

Chris harrumphed before launching into another coughing fit. Ava gave him a moment to regain his composure. He wiped a hand across the back of his mouth and straightened his tie before glaring at her again.

"You just had to figure it all out didn't you, you stup-"

Ava made an irritated noise and cut him off. "I'm just going to assume you were going to say 'stupendously wonderful girl'. Because my tolerance for people calling me stupid is rather low."

She shook some loose hair out of her face and Chris's eyes locked on the barrel of the dart gun as it dipped with the motion, but his eyes fell as it just as quickly returned to being trained on him. He started to as slowly as possible straighten up and slide to a control panel on the wall.

"I've actually had a fairly impressive education," Ava continued, seemingly oblivious to the doctor's movements.

This comment caused Chris to snort in contempt. He strongly doubted that the mercenary he'd been ordering around was educated. Ava narrowed her eyes at him.

"Hey. I figured out your plan, didn't I? Sugar Bombs are too unstable to be used for a rocket's fuel. Unless of course that is your plan and you're trying to make it unstable."

Chris didn't acknowledge this, but continued to as stealthily as possible move for the control panel. The dart gun's slide twanged and a dart buried itself in the wall next to Chris. He jumped away from it with a cry of alarm and fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and lab coat.

"Sorry. You looked all distracted by that control panel on the wall. Next shot goes to your crotch, and you do not want to know what Radscorpion venom does to the genitalia," Ava cautioned him. She slid another dart home into her gun and aimed it between his legs. Chris swallowed nervously and shook his head.

"Why are you trying to sabotage the rockets, Chris?" Ava asked, all kidding put aside.

Chris snorted again. "Why? WHY!?" he shouted. "Bright used me! That's all people ever do! Use poor Chris for their own goddamned gain! I've had enough, I tell you! NO MORE!" he ranted from his position on the floor.

Ava rolled her eyes and fired another shot from the dart gun. This one buried itself in the floor between Chris's legs.

"Oops," she said as Chris clammed up again, "Did I step on your speech? My bad." She reloaded again. "But seriously? Stop being such a dick! You're trying to kill them all? That's wrong!"

Chris pushed himself to his feet and gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, that's rich. What do you know?"

Ava crossed the remaining distance between them and screwed the dart gun into Chris's jugular.

"About killing? Quite a lot actually. Consider me an expert. Or did you mean right and wrong? I'll admit to not being entirely proficient in that area, but I can tell you this. What you are doing is wrong!"

Chris refused to listen. He stepped back and turned his back on her, throwing his hands into the air in anger. "They brought me in, pretended to like me!" He whirled back on her and pointed a gloved finger at her. "And then they just use, use, used me! Do you know what that's like?"

"More than you'll ever know," Ava said quietly. "Believe me though. Killing them is not the solution you're looking for. At least not this time. Sure, Bright is an asshole. Let him go be an asshole in outer space!"

"NO!" Chris suddenly shouted. "No," he repeated somewhat more calmly. "Bright doesn't get to have his future. Not anymore, not after what he did to me."

"What he did to you!?" Ava shouted in exasperation. "You are the one who found him. You are the one who wouldn't listen to anyone. You are the one who refused to accept that everything wasn't perfect for you! And now you're going to try to wipe all that away by blowing it all up."

Chris glared at her coldly for a few moments, processing all the blame she was laying at his feet. Ava supposed it wasn't entirely fair to put it all on Chris, but damn it she was tired of his whining.

Not that she'd never bitched and moaned about her lot in life. No, that had never happened before.

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm going to do," Chris said, his voice low with barely restrained rage. "And I had no intention of dragging you down with the ship, but…"

Ava nearly laughed, but realization dawned on her. All the times Chris had fallen, or stumbled, or made a grand gesture and now…

Now he was standing right next to the control panel he'd been trying to reach. Chris smiled frigidly at her before slamming an elbow into the primary control button. The results were instantaneous. The lights dimmed and were replaced by a blinking, red, panic light. An alarm siren began howling deafeningly.

Ava was suddenly propelled forward by a heavy blow to the back, she dropped her dart gun to the floor and slammed into a wall. Groaning heavily she pushed herself up and saw a sentry bot rolling towards her menacingly. Behind it, Chris Haversam was running as fast as his pudgy legs could carry him down the hallway and away from Ava.

"Chris!"

Ava rolled to her feet and made to go after him, but the sentry started whirring up its minigun. Ava dove to the side as the 5mm stream of bullets erupted from the sentry's arm. She sprang off her hands back into the air and activated her cloak before the sentry could gain a bead on her. Landing softly on her heels she backed up as the sentry began to advance down the hallway.

The machine was too damned big for her to sneak past it and finding another route after Chris would take too damned long. That left-

Her thought was interrupted as the sentry rolled forward again, one of its massive wheels going right over her fallen dart gun. The scrapped together weapon splintered under its massive weight.

Ava threw herself forward recklessly, screaming at the top of her lungs in rage. Her cloak flickered in an effort to keep up with her erratic movements, but failed as she spun around, drawing Clarity in one fluid movement and slicing upwards into the sentry bot's arm, severing its ammo belt. Loose bullets rained to the floor as the machine's weapon clacked fruitlessly.

"YOU BROKE MY GUN!"

Ava lunged upwards onto the bot's shoulders and flipped Clarity around in her arms until its point was just touching the bot's neck. She threw her weight down and drove her sword into the inner workings of the machine. Sparks and oil shot out from between the sentry bot's armor and covered Ava in black grease.

The machine's hydraulics shuttered and gave out, and it fell forward onto the ground. Ava collapsed on top of it before rolling off next to the remains of her dart gun. She picked up a splintered piece of it in one hand. Her fingers curled around it tightly into a fist.

She was going to hurt Chris Haversam. Badly.

Launch Pad Control Center

19:10

Knox sighed with irritation. Chris Haversam had rushed up to him and was acting even more neurotic than usual. Knox's tolerance for insanity was almost entirely consumed by Ava on a daily basis, so anyone else looking for patience from him was out of luck.

He'd deposited his cargo for Chris and the man had gasped in relief before hurrying away to do god knows what with the prewar breakfast cereal. Chris had practically snatched the boxes out of Knox's hands and basically ignored the Courier's existence. He merely muttered something about, "needing to hurry," and disappeared. Whatever.

Knox shook his head at the retreating scientist before deciding to go find something else to occupy his time until Bright and his Brotherhood were gone.

He took a step back out the door and turned in time to get bowled over by Ava. The two collided in a resounding crash of armor and curse words. They toppled over, tangled in each other's limbs, into a rickety shelf causing it to collapse down on top of them.

Knox pushed the metal shelving off of them as Ava kneeled on his chest trying to get to her feet as fast as possible. Knox groaned as the reinforced knee pads of her stealth suit drove into his sides.

"Get off me, you psycho," he mumbled as he shoved her off. Ava toppled over with another bang. Knox got to his feet and kicked an empty bucket at his downed partner. "The hell are you doing running around like that?"

"I'm- I- Where's… Haversam!" Ava shot to her feet, various debris falling off of her. "Haversam! Where is he!?" she shouted, grabbing Knox by the lapels of his shirt.

"What? Why?"

"I'm going to kill him!" she roared before releasing him, her head swiveling, trying to find some trace of the scientist.

Knox grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face him again. "May I ask why?"

Ava looked at him, her eyes wild and scattered. "What? He broke my dart- I mean… He's trying to kill Bright!"

Knox stared at her silently for a few moments before replying, "So?"

"Knox! He's going to kill everyone! All of them. He's trying to blow up the rockets!"

"WHAT!?"

Knox's eyebrows shot up under the brim of his hat in surprise. "He's going to do what? How!?"

Ava made a move to grab Knox's satchel, but he sidestepped out of her grasp. She frowned at him. "Did you give him the Sugar Bombs?" she asked urgently.

"I- Yeah? He just took them that way, I think-"

Ava cut him off as she pushed past him, knocking him back into the destroyed shelf again, without a word. He stumbled back unable to stop her as she disappeared down the hallway Chris had just retreated down.

"Ava! Wait! Where are you- aggghhh! Damn it."

Knox shook his head as she vanished around the corner at a full sprint. Knox kicked the last of the shelving off of himself and gave pursuit. Knox was by no means an athletic slouch, but it quickly dawned on him that catching up to Ava wasn't going to happen. At first he was only catching a glimpse of red hair as she disappeared around each corner, but soon enough he couldn't even hear her footsteps. Clearly this was not the best way to go about this.

Knox stopped to catch his breath, planting his hands and his knees and giving a few heaving breaths.

"This… is not… working…"

Knox pursed his lips. He had to get ahead of them. He had to get to Haversam before Ava did. However, that would require him to have a working understanding of the REPCONN facility and it had been Ava tromping around through it while he dealt with Bright.

Perhaps a different approach was in order. Ava and Haversam were headed deeper into the facility to reach the rockets so Chris could sabotage them. The launch pad was quite large. A higher viewpoint might work; a viewpoint just like the window in the launch pad control center.

Exactly where he had just come from.

Wonderful.

Launch Pad

19:15

"CHRIS!" Ava roared as she slid around the corner to see Chris donning a radiation suit in front of the door to the launch pad. Ava could see the rockets behind him through the door's window.

Chris looked up in panic and wildly swung a plasma defender in her direction. The gun spewed molten, green globs of plasma at her. She dropped to the ground into a sitting position as the plasma impacted directly above her. Melted metal droplets rained down upon her.

"Stay back," Chris warned. "Don't come any closer, smooth-… Don't come any closer," he corrected himself. Chris struggled to pull the suit on one handed while keeping the energy weapon trained on her.

"Chris, you don't have to do this. You shouldn't do this," Ava clarified. She met Chris eyes, trying to remember how to empathize with another human being. "It's not worth it. Revenge never is."

Chris finished pulling the suit on. "They've used me, made a mockery of me, and I won't let them get away with it."

Ava shook her head in a mixture of disappointment and frustration. "Bright wasn't the human who thought he was a ghoul. You've got that one all by yourself."

A vein bulged in Chris's forehead. "How- how dare you!? They took advantage of me," he said indignantly.

"Because you deluded yourself, it's their fault for accepting you? That's Brahmin shit!"

Chris brandished the plasma defender at her wildly. "You listen to me-"

"No, you listen to me!" Ava sprang to her feet and stomped over to him. Chris's eyes widened as she approached undaunted by his armament.

"They took you in. Gave you a home when you were too damn weak to make it on your own! So yeah, Bright's a dick because his plan is to leave you, but what sort of conversation was it going to be when he brought that up with you? Huh? This isn't all just on Bright!"

Chris looked shaken. "I… I don't…"

"Yeah, you don't." Ava snatched the gun out of his hands and threw it to the side. "Now give me the fucking Sugar Bombs," she commanded.

With a trembling hand, Chris slowly held out the cereal to her. Ava reached forward to accept it.

She heard the glass in the door crack and spray out behind Chris, followed by Chris's head exploding in a pulpy mess. Brain and blood sprayed across Ava's shocked face.

The corpse of Chris Haversam fell forward and met the floor with a meaty thud. Ava staggered back, her eyes wide. She fell backwards onto her butt, never looking away from the body. Slowly she edged towards the wall away from the rapidly expanding pool of blood.

Launch Pad

19:45

"Ava, you down here? Oh! There you are… whatcha doing on the floor?"

Knox looked down at Ava where she was still seated. She had managed to slide herself over to the wall and she was sitting cross-legged, her chin resting in her hand. She was staring at Chris's ruined corpse.

"He gave up," she said emotionlessly.

Knox sighed. "Yeah… the Wasteland does that to people. Some just can't handle it."

"No. He gave up. He gave me the Sugar Bombs. He gave up."

Knox inhaled sharply. "Shit… you're serious?"

Ava nodded silently.

Knox threw his head back. "Ah, fuck."

"Yep."

"Look, I couldn't see. The shot was hard enough as it was… Er that came out wrong. What I mean is-"

"I know, Knox," Ava cut him off. She held a hand out for Knox to help her up. He pulled her to her feet and she stepped past him. "I'm gonna go clean up. I've got Chris in my hair."

Knox looked like he was going to say something, but his mouth hung open silently, no words came out. He watched Ava go and sighed again, before turning around and kneeling next to Chris's body.

He was silent for a few moments longer before he began speaking softly.

"You nearly put me in a very difficult position there, Chris. After our little conversation I thought maybe you'd go put a bullet in the back of Bright's glowing head, but you had to go and try to blow everyone up and that's just no good."

Knox shook his head and straightened up. Knox was gifted at making people dance like his marionettes, but Chris Haversam had exceeded all expectations by thinking for himself. In a decidedly negative fashion of course, but still.

"House wanted Bright dead, but now I'm not sure I'll be able to pull that off anymore, thanks to you. When I met you I thought you were a prick. Now you're the prick who got me in trouble with the boss man. Congratulations."

Eulogy finished, Knox tugged his hat down in "respect" and walked away.

I'll admit this chapter caused me great consternation and may give me some issues down the line. Oh well. Anyways… next chapter. We. Are. In. NEW VEGAS! Like the story? Leave a favorite! Want to know when the next chapter is uploaded? Give it a favorite! Have a recommendation or something you just have to let me know? Drop a review! See you then!