Nick stepped out into the night. A full moon was riding high above the city, casting weird, sharp shadows along Diamond City's crooked alleyways. It had been raining off and on for the last couple days, but the day had dawned clear and cold, with frost on the windows and a thin rime of ice on the puddles. Now, clouds were drifting in again, thin wisps of them obscuring the moon, throwing the world into darkness before gliding onwards. Even now, the overcast was moving down from the north. Unless the cold weather held, it would rain again tomorrow. If the mercury stayed low, it would snow.
The city was alive in the night. The smell of cooking hit him as he stepped outside and from somewhere he could hear laughter riding a beam of lamplight from an upper window. He turned aimlessly, letting his feet take him wherever they wanted. The symbol on the card meant "An ally is near". It had come more quickly than he expected, but after the fruitless day he'd had, it was the only lead going. Now all he could do was be available. The Railroad would find him.
He let his feet pick their own path. Down the alley to the market, around past Takahashi's noodle stand then up towards the chapel. It was more brightly lit here in the market than in the cramped alleys that made up most of Diamond City's lower quarter. A crowd of children racing toward him parted then re-formed again, like a river around a boulder in mid-stream. Here and there a friendly smile or a wave as people passed him by, occasionally a frown or muttered curse. Not all of Diamond City loved Nick Valentine. Somewhere a guitar was playing and people were standing around a fire in an old barrel, clapping in time. Two guards lounging against a wall watched him suspiciously as he went by. Nick laughed silently, recognizing the ancient enmity of the flatfoot for the private dick. Only now, he was on the receiving end of it.
It felt strange not to be a cop anymore. Not that he'd ever been one, technically. But the real Nick Valentine, the human whose memories he carried, had been a cop in Boston in the days just before the Great War. He wondered, as he often did, what had happened to Detective Valentine when the bombs fell. Had he escaped to make a new life somewhere? Or been killed in the initial attack? Probably neither. The bombs had missed Boston almost completely; most had died in the madness that followed. Nick liked to think that Valentine-the-man had died on a barricade somewhere, fighting to keep the peace and restore order. But there was no way of knowing. Any clues that once existed were long buried, on a trail that had been cold for almost 200 years.
-OOO-
The gates were down for the night by the time Nick got there.
"Just your usual day, Nick," Danny said in answer to his questions. "A couple of farmers came in a little while ago and there's a been a few of the local scavvers in and out, but no one I didn't recognize. Sorry."
"Thanks, Danny." An idea struck him. "Maybe I'll get you to open up for me, do you mind? It's a nice night out. I might go for a walk."
"You sure about that?" Danny eyed him worriedly. "The guys surprised a bunch of ferals just up the block this afternoon, and it looks like some super mutants might be moving back into the old Parkview Building. All the patrols are in for the night; you get into trouble out there, I don't know if we can help you."
Nick grinned, his eyes glowing in the darkness. He patted the bulge under his arm. "I'm carrying a little trouble of my own," he said. "I'll be all right."
"Sure you don't want something heavier?" Sullivan motioned to the locker in the guard post behind him. "We picked up a shotgun today off a guy didn't need it anymore. And a box of shells. You don't even have to pay for it; just bring it back when you're done. You don't want to be out there alone with just that popgun you've got."
Nick shook his head. "You don't worry about me. But thanks."
"Okay, then. But keep your eyes open. We'd miss you around here." Danny cupped his hands and called up to the guards stationed on the catwalk above. "Look alive up there! One to come out." He clapped Nick on the shoulder as the gate clattered open. "Take care, Nick."
The old detective touched the rim of his hat in salute. "Thanks, Danny. I will." Nick waited while the gate was ratcheted up, then looking left and right to make sure the coast was clear, slipped out into the darkness, out of the safety of Diamond City and into the ruins that had once been the city of Boston. The gate dropped closed behind him and he was alone.
He lost no time in finding a shadow to cover himself with. There was a ladder just to his right leading to a watch platform that was unoccupied now that the night patrols were in. It would make a good place to scout from before heading out. Checking first to make sure it really was untenanted, he scrambled up then hunkered down behind a low wall to peer out at the city. He slitted his eyes to keep their faint glow from him giving away.
Even on moonless nights, it was rarely fully dark in the city. The radioactive wasteland to the west, where the missile aimed at Boston had struck, cast a pale glow that never fully dimmed. And while the street lights had failed when government collapsed, some buildings had automated, atomic-powered lights that still dutifully turned themselves on and off with the setting and rising of the sun. Nor were the ruins empty. Watch fires and cook fires burned in sheltered places throughout the city and many of the darkened windows looking down on her streets contained watchful eyes.
Nick eased the .45 from its holster and slipped the safety off. He held still, listening carefully as he looked up and down the street that paralleled Diamond City's west wall. His night vision was no better than a human's but his hearing was considerably more acute, a fact he was careful not to reveal. Some distance off to his left, past the life-sized copper statue of the baseball player at bat that was the symbol of Diamond City, he could hear a pack of wild dogs yelping and snarling. A pair of automated turrets below him hummed quietly to themselves, almost masking the thin rattle of gunfire that ghosted up from the south. Small calibre, he thought – pipe pistols and hunting rifles, it sounded like, maybe half a dozen in all. Not an uncommon sound in Boston these days, but still something to be avoided.
His decision made for him, he headed north toward the Charles River, staying close to the overhanging city walls and slipping like a grey ghost from shadow to shadow. When the city walls turned to the east, Valentine followed, working his way toward the old Boston Public Library Building. The street here was made up of two- and three-storey brick buildings, low-end retail at one time, mostly, with apartments or small offices above. These buildings had been old even before the bombs fell and now all were in varying stages of collapse.
Though he felt alone, the city was alive with noise. Twice more he heard gunfire in the distance and once a hoarse, wailing scream that went on and on before fading into a choked gurgle. One time he slipped into a deep shadow and waited while a small group of feral ghouls shambled by. He let them go. Of all the crimes inflicted on the world by the Great War, it was the ferals – mindless horrors stripped of their humanity by the hellish radiation – that aroused in Valentine the greatest pity. He usually killed them without mercy and hoped they had souls which could thus be set free.
Once he caught a sound like soft footsteps behind him, causing him to freeze in place for a long moment. Another time it was the murmur of quiet conversation from a rooftop, and then a voice: "Did you hear that?" and sudden silence. He froze again, listening carefully and searching the shadows with his eyes only, keeping his body completely still. The silence stretched. It was impossible to know if it was him or something else the speaker had heard, or if someone was at this moment taking a bead on him with a nightscope from a window across the way. Then he relaxed as he heard quiet laughter and the resumption of conversation. There was the sound of a lighter striking, and a moment later the whiff of tobacco smoke drifted down to him. Whoever it was must have decided they were safe after all.
He marked the location in his mind. Honest folk tended to stick to the fortified farming settlements scattered around the city's fringe. The urban ruins were the haunt of raiders gangs and scavengers and other, worse, things. Still, it wasn't a complete jungle. There were rules and accommodations, and if you knew how the game was played and kept to the marked routes, travel could be reasonably uneventful. During the daytime, anyway. Nighttime was a different story. Anyone lurking on a rooftop in Boston after dark was probably up to no good. The caravan companies kept the main routes through Boston reasonably clear, and occasionally Diamond City and Goodneighbour got together to clean up any particularly troublesome hotspots. But it didn't seem to matter how many you killed or how many times the raider gangs or the super mutants were driven off. Difficult as life was in post-apocalypse Boston, it paled in comparison to the wastelands, and so the city attracted an endless stream of thugs and hoodlums, drawn by the hope of easy pickings.
Nick turned toward left, cutting through a narrow alley that led down toward the river. Still no sign of the Railroad. A set of stairs to his right led up to what had once been an open-air café in a courtyard with buildings looking down on all sides. A memory slid past – cold beer on a table, sunlight glittering off the beaded sweat on the glasses. People laughing and a pretty, blonde girl with green eyes smiling up from under his arm. Hard to reconcile that with the ruins around him now. Some broken chairs huddling by the remains of a fire pit hinted at more recent occupants, but whoever they were, they were gone now.
Suddenly he froze. On one side of the plaza the moonlight shone against a boarded-up doorway. In the shadows beyond it, he had just seen the reflection of something tall and vaguely man-shaped changing position. He stood still, excruciatingly aware of how exposed he was. Slowly, he thumbed back the hammer of his pistol, letting a bullet feed silently into the firing chamber. In the darkness or under cover of camouflage, searching eyes simply slid past a motionless figure. But movement drew the eye. Movement killed. Valentine did not move, except to bring his gun hand up inch by agonizing inch into firing position.
"Where's your geiger counter?" a voice asked suddenly from out of the darkness behind him. Nick jumped convulsively at the sound, bringing his gun up and turning to face it, then relaxing as he recognized the Railroad code phrase from a job he'd once worked.
"It's in the shop," he replied, giving the appropriate countersign. They were a secretive lot, the Railroad, and he'd never actually met his contact that time, just delivered a letter to a disembodied voice on an overpass up near Lexington.
"You took your time getting here," the voice said.
"Would've helped if I'd known where 'here' was supposed to be," he answered crossly. "Better still, you could have just come to the office."
"Well, wouldn't that just take all the fun out of it." The stranger stepped around, holstering a sleek, long-barrelled pistol as he did. Valentine glanced over at him quickly. He was about medium height, caucasian, with several days growth of beard and short, dark hair poking out from under a wool stocking cap. He was dressed in raider leathers but lacked the tattoos and face marks that most raiders affected. Strangely enough, he was wearing sunglasses.
"They call me Deacon," the man said.
Nick nodded. "I've heard of you. But look - if you're here, who is that over there?" He motioned with his gun at the tall shadow standing next to the doorway.
Deacon looked to where he was pointing and laughed. He whistled softly and a moving shadow detached itself from atop a larger, stationary one as a small, black and orange cat, barely more than a kitten, jumped noiselessly down from the pedestal on which it had been sitting and stepped into the moonlight. Gathering itself, the cat leaped up into Deacon's arms.
"This is Zephyr," Deacon explained, scratching the cat behind the ears. "She's still learning the ropes, but I'm confident she'll make a fine operative someday." The cat settled herself inside Deacon's jacket and poked her head out to regard Nick with wide, yellow eyes. Deacon looked up at the windows above them. "You sent a message," he said. "Let's go somewhere a bit less open and we can talk."
Deacon led the way. Zephyr ("That's just her Railroad name," he said. "Mostly I call her Harley. Unless we're on official business.") climbed out to balance swayingly on his shoulder, facing backwards to watch Nick as they cut through a series of narrow alleys and ruined buildings before finally finding themselves in what had once been a small bar on the top floor of a three-storey building facing the river. Deacon dug around behind the bar to bring out a lantern, which he lit. There was a bottle of scotch there, too, and glasses.
"Convenient," Nick said, pointing to the lantern.
"We stay here sometimes," Deacon said. "I keep it stocked. Drink?" Without waiting for an answer he poured two shots, sliding one over to the detective. Nick toasted him silently and they drank together. Deacon refilled their glasses. "Cigarette?" he asked, shaking two out of his pack. Nick took one and accepted the proffered light. Harley wrinkled her nose at the smoke and jumped down to prowl silently around the room.
The room was long and narrow, with a row of booths along one wall and a long, stand-up bar on the other. A little light filtered through a pair of boarded up windows at the far end, opposite the short hallway next to a coat check booth where they'd entered. Torn, water-stained wallpaper hung in long streamers from the walls and ceiling and the table tops were covered with dust. A pair of human skulls sat side-by-side atop a jumble of debris pushed into one corner, next to a relatively clean sleeping bag stretched over some cushions salvaged from one of the booths. A crazy-cracked mirror on the wall behind the bar reflected Nick and Deacon back on themselves as they stood leaning against the old-fashioned brass rail.
Nick raised his glass to the reflections. "I remember this place," he said, looking around. "Smilin' Joe's. A retired cop used to run it, just before the War. Good beer, crappy food. It's a bit more rundown than the last time I saw it."
"To Joe," Deacon said solemnly, raising his glass. Then he turned to face Nick. "So, Valentine, how can the Railroad help you?"
Nick laid out the details of the murder and his investigations, holding back only the cause of death but including some of his growing suspicions about the identity of the victim.
"She's got to be Institute," he said, finally. "It's the only thing that makes any sense. Hell, it's the only thing makes sense at all in this whole cockamamie mess. What was she doing in Diamond City? How did she wind up dead in a room at the Dugout? Who killed her? In the absence of any real evidence, I like the kid for it. But why? And why kill her there? And where is he now?" Nick poured himself another drink and lit a cigarette, offering one to Deacon, who declined. "It's not really synth related, so maybe the Railroad can't help me much," he continued. "But from what I've heard, if there's anyone who knows what the Institute is up to, you're it."
Deacon spread his hands. "What can I say, Nick? The Railroad is really just a big, dysfunctional family. With guns. Unfortunately, everything we know about the Institute comes from the escaped synths we help get out of the Commonwealth, and they don't know much." He picked up the photographs Nick had brought and looked through them. "Can I keep these?" he asked. Nick nodded, and Deacon slipped them into his jacket. "I agree with you, though," he continued. "I can't imagine where else she might have come from besides the Institute. I did a little research before I came. One of our field agents spotted a pair something like you describe crossing over the railway bridge toward Oberland Station two nights ago. Can't be sure it's them, of course, but I can show your pictures around. Maybe we'll get lucky."
At that moment the cat, Harley, who had been sniffing curiously at the different bits and pieces on the bar suddenly arched her back, spitting and hissing at something unseen across the room, in the corner by the entrance.
Nick jumped in surprise, spilling his drink. Leaping up, Deacon shouted a warning and threw himself backward into a booth, sweeping the lantern off the bar and hurling it at whatever Harley had seen. The lamp hit the wall and shattered, spraying burning fuel across the floor. A shout of pain and rage erupted from the flames.
"What the hell?" Valentine pushed away from the bar, drawing his pistol.
"Get down," Deacon said, ducking for cover as a bolt of laser fire lanced across the room, narrowly missing him. Nick fell to the floor and rolled into the cover of a booth as Deacon pushed a table over to make a barricade. He popped up, firing twice quickly before dropping again as another laser blast seared the air where his head had been.
Nick wriggled sideways and fired a shot into the flames where he thought he could see the outlines of something moving. "Could he be stealthed?" he called. Rumours of new developments in stealth technology – "stealth boys" in the popular parlance: portable devices that actually warped light, making the wearer nearly invisible – had been in wide circulation just before the Great War. They'd turned out to be true. But the technology was experimental even then, and while it was rumoured that the Railroad made extensive use of them nowadays, they were impossibly rare. Certainly Nick had never encountered one before. Not until now. The idea of it frightened him immensely.
"Gotta be," Deacon answered, firing blindly. "Thank God for Harley. Shit like that doesn't fool her for a second." The next bolt hit the table he was crouched behind, scorching a fist-sized hole in it. The wood started to smoke, while across the room the torn wallpaper had caught fire and already flames were beginning to crawl up the wall and across the ceiling.
"Dammit, Deacon," Nick shouted. "Is there another way out of here? If that asshole doesn't get us, the fire will." He fired twice more through the flames, this time into the coat check booth where he thought the assailant might have slipped. A cry of pain rewarded his efforts and the shadowy shape of a man suddenly flickered into existence behind the counter.
"Got him!" Both Deacon and Nick fired, Deacon squeezing off three more shots, hitting the figure at least once before the laser fired again, this time striking his pistol and sending gobbets of molten metal spraying across his hand. He cursed, throwing the useless weapon away as he dropped. Nick sprang to his feet and threw himself over the bar. The laser followed, drawing a fiery line across the wall behind him. The room was rapidly filling with smoke. Nick dropped in the narrow space behind the bar, flipping out the cylinder of his revolver and shaking the spent shells out on the floor before hurriedly reloading. He jumped up and fired again, feeling his leg buckle in pain from a hit or near miss, unnoticed in the chaos.
"Deacon, if there's a back way out of here, now's the time," he called. He ducked down again, feeling rather than seeing an explosion of light and heat as another shot melted a hole in the mirror behind him.
"Boarded up window behind you. It's fake. There's a latch at the bottom."
Nick scuttled back to the far wall. The boarded up window was indeed a dummy. He fumbled for the catch and swung the window outwards. Smoke poured out the opening. On the other side, a metal platform with a ladder promised escape. Thick smoke filled the room now and the flames were everywhere. Behind him he could hear Deacon retching in the flame-streaked darkness. Another laser blast scorched the wall above him and he hastily stepped through the window.
"Hurry," he said, "this whole place is going up."
Deacon coughed in the darkness. "Where's Harley?" he rasped. "I can't find Harley."
"What? It's just a damned cat, for crying out loud."
"Dude – she saved our lives. I can't leave without her."
Nick swore as the laser flashed again. "Deacon?" he called. "Deacon!" There was no answer. He cursed and slid back into the burning room, throwing himself flat and worming his way around the corner of the bar where he could get a clear shot. Here by the floor the smoke was thinner, and he could see the little cat crouching in terror beneath a broken chair, her fur singed and her proud whiskers burned almost to stubs. Nick reached out a long arm and scooped her up, ignoring her flailing claws. "I've got her!" he called. "Now let's get the hell outta here."
"Good job," Deacon shouted back. "Get ready… Fire in the hole! "
Nick drew himself hurriedly back behind the bar as Deacon lofted a grenade left-handed up and into the far doorway. A second later there was an almighty concussion and a blast of heat and flame as it went off. Nick leaped up, firing blindly again into the smoke-filled room. Laser fire lanced back, barely missing him. Unbelievably, the attacker was still alive. But by then, Deacon was there. The whole bar was burning now, including Deacon's makeshift barricade. Quickly, the two climbed through the window and out onto the scaffolding beyond. Deacon took Harley with his good hand, slipping her into his jacket while Nick started down the ladder to the street. They were both terribly exposed, but with Deacon disabled, speed was their only hope for safety, speed in getting down to the street and out to cover before their attacker could come down the stairwell at the other side of the building.
The flames that were beginning to shoot out the second floor windows would attract other attention, too, in ways that simple gunfire would not. It was going to get crowded around here.
Deacon tripped as he reached the ground and Nick reached out a hand – his metal one – to steady him. Deacon was coughing and wheezing, his eyes running and almost blinded from the heavy smoke in the bar. His clothing was scorched in several places and a long, blistered, red mark across the side of his face showed where a bolt had just barely grazed him. Another, low down, had burned through his heavy leather coat. Nick could smell the sweet, cooked-meat odour of charred flesh. He wasn't unscathed, either. He could hear sparks cracking and popping up his left leg and he felt a tingling near his eye socket on that side. But there was no time to run a diagnostic, and he was just going to have to hang on and hope for the best.
Stumbling, the two made it across the street, sheltering behind a pair of wrecked, rusted, vehicles half covered with broken brick from the collapsed façade of the building beyond. Behind them, they could hear running feet. There was a sudden oath and a cry of warning, then gunshots and the sound of laser fire. More shots were fired, and more shouts, panicky now. With Nick still supporting Deacon, the pair ducked into next the alley and stumbled up away from the river. Behind them the shouts were turning to screams.
After two blocks, Deacon shook off Nick's arm. A paroxysm of coughing bent him over, retching and gasping, and he swayed, almost collapsing.
"You go on," he said, when he could finally breathe again. "I have to go back there."
"What the hell for?" Nick demanded. "We need to get you to Diamond City and get you looked at. You can't go anywhere, the shape you're in."
"I have to." Deacon fumbled around inside his coat and pulled out a stimpack, fumbled it inexpertly open left-handed and pressed it against his injured side, gasping in pain. He used a second one on his burned hand, shuddering as the drugs flooded his system. Rare, precious and terribly expensive, the stimpack was a medical miracle, closing smaller wounds, stopping bleeding and speeding up healing a hundred fold. They weren't a cure-all and there would be a price to be paid later, when the drugs wore off. But for now, the effects were dramatic and immediate.
"You go back there you'll die," Nick said. "What the hell was that thing? A grenade blew up in its face and it came out of the building still fighting. What the hell, Deacon?"
"I have to get back to the Railroad and warn them," Deacon said. "It was a Courser, Nick. The Institute sent out a fucking Courser. I'll be in touch." And with that, he was gone.
-OOO-
