Kellogg's terminal revealed nothing useful about the Institute or Shaun. The one log entered was cryptic and brief, a mention of a "renegade" as Kellogg's next target, but no location or name.
"You sure there's no file called 'my evil plans'?" Nick stared at the screen over her shoulder, then reached around her to poke a few keys with his metal finger. The terminal gave an ornery beep beep at his intrusion. "No? Damn. Guess that would've been too obvious."
"I would have thought even less of him if you'd found one," she said, fighting to keep her voice normal. Invading her personal space was a positive sign, or another baiting tactic, a test to see what she'd do, what buttons he could push and how hard. "Nicky, Nicky, you can push them all," a bolder version of herself would say.
In her mind, her mother warned: make him work for it. Then Ellie's words chased her mother's: a loose goose never flies.
Nick paused a moment more, leaning a little harder on her metaphorical buttons, then withdrew. The sweaty strands of her hair fluttered with her exhale. Now that he wasn't behind her, the buoyant rush of her arousal fizzled. As did her mood. "So I guess that's that then." She punched at random keys. The computer protested her abuse with a flashing screen. "Doesn't look like Kellogg left us with anything other than his ugly corpse and more questions. We're back to square one."
"Square two. Kellogg is dead at least." Then, after a moment of consideration: "Alright, fine…square one and a half. But at least it's something."
"Yeah…something." Her forehead itched. Rubbing it brought flecks of dried blood. Kellogg's parting gift.
"Hey, I know the night just got darker, but we're not leaving completely empty-handed."
"You're not, maybe, but I'm glad you found that stuff you were looking for."
That stuff being three white tubes of something called BND-R. Brand new, seals unbroken. Nick had uttered a boyish cry of delight when finding them, like he'd stumbled upon secret buried treasure that only synths knew about. And after some verbal elbowing he finally told her that BND-R was like stimpaks for synths, but better. It bonded the silicones in their synthetic skin, healing cracks and small holes. "Only fresh injuries," he'd said, turning a tube over in his hands like he couldn't believe it was real. "Anything over a day or so and it just burns. Found that out the hard way when I tried patching this mug and this flapping excuse for a neck." Apparently he had come upon the stuff via a firefight with a small synth patrol, but that had been twenty years ago. What remained in his last curled up wad of aluminum could barely bond a fingernail.
His shadow fell over the terminal. "I'd trade every tube of it for a way to your son."
"I wouldn't want you to."
"But I would."
She gave him a watery smile. "Thank you, Nick. And I mean it. Thank you. I was rude not to have said it earlier. If you hadn't been there…gotten him off me…"
"You and your prewar manners. And while we're at it, thank you. You saved my neck, doll, literally." He cleared his throat, the sound raspier from either emotion, or whatever damage Kellogg had done to his voice modulator. "Now uh, if we're done blubbering on each other, let's get the hell outta here. These dead synths are still moving their eyes around. It's awfully damn creepy."
"Okay, but before we go, I'm getting my bat."
"Nora —"
"He's not keeping it. I spent way too many caps on it."
"With all this Institute junk in our pockets, you can get a new one, or one of those rocket sledge things."
"No, I named it."
"You named it? Nora, it's a piece of wood."
"She's called Queen Buzzy."
"Oh for chrissakes. Fine, we'll get your bat. Just let me do it."
Okay, so maybe she hadn't really named her bat until just now, but seeing his eyes roll and hands fly up in the air was more than worth it. Some of the gloom and doom eased up, but that silver lining behind it still needed a good polishing. That meant not seeing Kellogg's corpse, or her handiwork that had put him there. She wasn't the hero in this tale of retribution. Killing Kellogg had killed the old Nora for good. Sure, she could rationalize it all day, tell herself it was in self-defense and in the defense of Nick, but it had been deliberate. No matter how righteous her motives, she'd killed a man not only because he deserved it, but because she'd wanted to.
It's always easier after the first.
A few minutes passed…Ten...Fifteen. Looked like Kellogg's skull wasn't giving up Queen Buzzy without a fight. Maybe she should stop being so squeamish and help him out. But when her tush slid off the chair, the thuds of Nick's footsteps approached. He held her bat in his metal hand, sans one blade, and his human hand held something red and...wet.
"Um...Nick, what the hell is that?"
"Kellogg's brain," he said with disturbing nonchalance, like it was the most normal thing in the world to be holding. "A piece of it anyway. Your Queen Buzzy sadly lost her throne — and a few screws."
"Never mind the bat, why is Kellogg's brain...blinking?" Blue filaments sticking out of the lump of flesh in Nick's fingers twinkled like a string of tiny Christmas lights. "Oh my god, Nick, it's moving. Why is it moving?"
"Cybernetics, Institute made. And don't worry, it's not alive, not in the traditional sense anyway. It has its own power source attached to all these little wires you see here. It's the electrical impulses that are keeping it...fresh. And this isn't the only implant. Found out Kellogg was full of them once I dusted off the old optical sensors and took a good, hard gander at his corpse. No wonder he wasn't fazed when we clanged our bells. He was barely human."
"He didn't need implants to be a monster."
"True, but at least with this — " Nick wiggled it for emphasis, grossing her out on purpose — "We might have a way to your boy."
That got her attention. Now Nick wasn't holding a lump of pulsating meat, he was holding a lump of beautiful, radiant hope.
"Yeah, thought you might like that. This architecture though, I know it. It's similar to mine, particularly to my neural interface, and that puts this tech well over a hundred years old."
"So Kellogg was walking around with hand-me-down tech in his head, or are you telling me that he was over a century old?"
"Cybernetics can slow aging to a crawl for humans. It's possible he was even older."
"Oh my god, and all that time doing the Institute's dirty work..." Her stomach quivered in disgust. A hundred years of killing, learning more efficient methods, honing his skills. Now their survival seemed even more miraculous.
"Which makes what we've done here practically a community service. Good riddance to that bastard. As for the Institute, they just left us a mighty big bread crumb. We need to go to Goodneighbor. There's a place I know there called the Memory Den, run by a Doctor Amari. I don't know what kind of intel this implant holds, but if anyone can get a dead brain to sing, it'll be Amari."
"How far is Goodneighbor from here?"
"Boston, what used to be Scollay Square back in the prewar days. Quite a hike from this old Fort, unfortunately. But go ahead and grab a few winks in one of the beds upstairs. We could leave at dawn and be there by sunset."
Her Pip-Boy showed Goodneighbor's location when she searched "Scollay Square" on her map. Holy hell, Nick wasn't kidding on the distance. Sanctuary's marker blinked closer. It would still be a ways to walk, but it would make more sense to resupply and sell this Institute crap there. And then there was the other thing. The thing she'd been putting off since leaving Vault 111; The thing that seemed logical and necessary now that Kellogg was cold on the floor. To heal fully and put the past behind her, she had to get it over with.
"No, I can't sleep here. Not with him. I've spent a week out here chasing after prophecies and killers and shady organizations. I want a break — I need a break. One day that I'm not getting myself hooked on chems, or being attacked by ferals, or being smothered to death by a crazy man. I want my own bed under my own damn roof. I just…want to go home, Nick."
Nick searched her face, always seeing more than she wanted him to. "Say no more, doll. Sanctuary it is."
Another hour later — with their pockets and packs brimming with Institute goodies — they were riding the elevator to the roof. A comfortable silence settled between them. The memory of Kellogg and his synths was already fading like a bad dream. Not one she would recall with nostalgia or laugh about it later. Too many personal demons for that. But perhaps a version of this encounter could be shared with Ellie or Piper, or even become a thrilling tale to regale Preston and his flock of settlers. It may be two hundred years later, but everyone still loved a good story.
The elevator slid open, and the setting sun greeted them with all the shades of fire. Nick stepped onto the roof, and then drew up — sharp and straight — as if he'd run into an invisible wall. She bumped into his back and got a delightful noseful of old trenchcoat. "Nick, hey, what's the matter — "
Her bag slipped free, fell on her foot and stayed there. In the sky, something unreal. Something…impossible.
Silhouetted against the flaming roil of the sunset, a massive airship glided by, its appearance like a divine harbinger for a deity with conquest on its mind. The design, a streamlined cobbling of prewar tech and salvage, its tail divided into four sections by fins and propellers of a plane. Spotlights mounted on its framework underside swept over the Commonwealth like the eyes of God, judging and condemning all it touched. Prewar Vertibirds descended from docking arms like war angels, their dark forms showing no signs of age or neglect. Their rotary hum brought back that autumn day, Shaun crying in Nate's arms, their breathless waiting on the vault elevator platform, the blinding plume of the first nuclear explosion — her neighbor, Mister Able, stupidly holding his thumb up and choking back a cry when the cloud swallowed it whole.
From the airship, the booming voice of God himself:
"People of the Commonwealth, do not interfere. Our intentions our peaceful. We are…the Brotherhood of Steel."
Then Nick's voice, troubled and low."Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing…"
When anyone quoted Poe, it was never out of joy. On his face, a distant gaze, seeing something beyond the ship, something that made the sprocket of his jaw turn and set. He looked at her with eyes of palest topaz, his brows knitted into a tight knot under his crosshatch scar. In the time she'd known him, Nick had taunted a mob boss and his goons, taken on a legion of synths without a thought, attacked a century-old mercenary without hesitation. But this Brotherhood airship had that metal hand at his side trembling…trembling.
Nick Valentine was afraid.
Already she hated them for that.
"Who are they, Nick?" She invaded his personal space as he had hers, distracting him the only way she knew how. Anything to wipe that fear from his face. "Why are they here?"
"The Brotherhood are remnants of prewar military," he said, staring at the sky as if expecting fire and brimstone to rain down. His metal hand balled into a fist. "But they've gone back to the middle ages, giving themselves titles like Knights and Paladins and some such nonsense. They're obsessed with controlling prewar technology, stealing it if they have to, and not giving a damn who they have to hurt in the process. And now they're here, swooping into the Commonwealth as if they own the place already. 'Our intentions are peaceful' — what a load of bull. The Brotherhood is here to start a war."
"Why? A war on who?"
"Anything not born and bred human. Super mutants. Ghouls. And…my kind, especially my kind."
"I don't understand. You're tech…technically. Wouldn't they want to keep you for themselves?"
"I'm an abomination. Everything that's wrong with technology. Machines can be anything to the Brotherhood, but they can't be a person." He snatched up the bag he'd dropped when the airship appeared and stalked to the scaffolding stairs. He didn't let up his pace until they were on the street, the airship a cylindrical shadow in the darkening sky. Then the bag hit the ground with a thud and he faced her, squared shoulders, his face a mask of tempered steel.
"Alright, I'm just gonna say it. I haven't been honest about who I am. I'm Nick Valentine, but…I'm not Nick Valentine."
"Uh…okay?" She set down her dufflebag. The thing weighed a ton anyway. The warm breeze of evening lifted the back of her hair and carried the faint scent of decay and stagnant lake water. "This is about all those hints isn't it? The prewar details you keep mentioning and pretending you didn't say."
"So you did catch those. Was starting to wonder if you were just thick in the head, or ignoring me. And I know you're not thick."
"I wasn't ignoring you. Waiting, yes." He had a way of making her squirm without even trying. "But I wasn't going to be baited."
His smile, fleeting and fragile. "Will you let me reel ya in now?"
"Only if you promise not to eat me."
His smile became a laugh, short and humorless, then it faded under the gloom of his melancholy. The flickering flames of a candle in his eyes, his face cast in silvery blue from the luminescent mushrooms climbing the telephone pole beside him. "Don't worry, doll, was never one for sea food, not that it's an option now. I can count on my hand how many folks know about this. Ellie for starters…and Piper, and my last partner, Marty. Though I doubt he'd even remember the conversation, giving he passed out drunk halfway through it. Just figured since I've seen a fair share of your dirty laundry, you should have a hard peek at mine."
"You don't owe me anything, Nick, but you can always tell me anything. Anything you want. That's what partners do, right?"
"Yeah, but it's a two-way street, and I haven't bothered meeting ya halfway yet. And I'm sorry. It's just that…sharing doesn't come easy for me." He peered at the sky, searching for the ship he couldn't see. His burdened sigh carried more weight than all their bags combined. "A few years back, a Brotherhood Knight came through Diamond City. Not sure why he was alone, maybe got separated from his patrol and what not. Anyway, as my luck would have it, we ended up running into each other at Power Noodles — and it was some hell of a first impression. The fella took one look at me, and the next thing I know, his laser rifle's waving in my face and he's screaming about the Institute and their filthy abominations. Woulda shot me dead on the spot if Diamond city security hadn't finally wrestled the gun away and thrown him out. Couldn't leave the damn city for a week because he was roaming the Fens. Security thought he'd try for me. They were probably right. He ended up disappearing soon after, but he made me realize something important that day. That I can wear the clothes, talk the talk, but when it comes down to it, I'm nothing but a damn machine pretending to be a person."
"No, Nick, you're nowhere near pretending — "
"Nora, let me finish. There's more. Somewhere between my activation and getting the boot from the Institute, they uploaded a human personality into me. A prewar cop by the name of Nick Valentine. His voice, his mannerisms, his memories, are all mine. All that I am…all that I ever will be. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. He was a good man, with good instincts. His memories kept me alive, but they're also a reminder that without him, I'm nothing. Just a metal shell wearing a trenchcoat and tie."
"Nick, stop it. You're not a shell. You're —" How could she convince him? She ran her finger along the seams of his shoulder, over the threads that sloppily stitched a patch to the outer layer. "You're wonderful. And brave. And you didn't have come here with me, but you did. You didn't have to help me with the jet, but you did. Helping me find my son, taking on an old cybernetic mercenary — that isn't something a soulless automaton does."
"I'm a walking ghost, Nora." His eyes followed her fingers, then settled on her face. "What I do, Nick would do. That's all there is to it."
That frustrated warble in his voice was more than some scripted subroutine. Even if she hadn't spent the last four days with him, that alone would have proved his personhood to her — and goddamn anyone who had told him different. No one had the right to judge what had a consciousness and a soul. Not everything in this world could be quantified so simply, especially now, when the line between man and machine had finally blurred and merged.
"I don't believe that. Everything is a choice." The ample material of his coat bunched in her fist. "What happened in Fort Hagen wasn't pretend. It wasn't some personalty thing. It wasn't a ghost. It was you. Only you. And I may not understand your design or the tech used in your creation, but I've seen the faces of those other synths. I looked into their eyes and saw nothing. I look into yours and I see — " stuttering, saying too much again, "I—I see intelligence. Sentience. They don't even come close to what you are, and I think that's why they attacked you. They know. Deep down in their empty little skulls they know you're better than them. More alive. And they hated you for it. They're the shells, Nick. They're the abominations."
She let go of his coat and stepped back. He stepped with her — then stopped, trenchcoat swishing with the abrupt movement. The drone of insects hummed in the strained silence. There wasn't enough room between them. One step forward and her lips would meet his. It would be easy, so easy. But after a heartbeat, he moved away, creating distance, safety. For her or himself, she didn't know.
"You…are the most unusual woman I've ever met."
"You mean peculiar." She hid behind her hair, looked down at the street, at all the cracks and debris that had scarred it over the years.
"No, I mean refreshing. Rare." His gratitude drew her out again. "They sure as hell don't make them like you anymore."
His steel mask became pliable again, his expression animate. The taut line of his shoulders relaxed. Under the black dome of the sky, the incandescent mushrooms on the telephone pole dappled him in soft blues, his eyes like the stray rays of sunlight shining though dusk. A sudden and overpowering thought: I could take him right here, right now, right in the middle of the fucking street. And he would let me too. I know it. I see it in his eyes.
Instead she hefted the dufflebag over her shoulder and attempted her version of a proper prewar lady, what he perceived as a prim, grieving widow.
"We have that in common, Nick. We're both limited editions."
"Signed and numbered, eh?"
"And fucking priceless."
He laughed and picked up his dufflebag with ease. Already hers seemed to weigh the world. He winked at her stubbornness. "It's a long way to Sanctuary. If you want me to lug that for ya, I will."
"No, really." She wedged her fingers under the nipping strap. "I got it."
She got a mile up the road before she handed it over. He smirked and bragged he could carry three hundred pounds. So she gave him her waist pack, her broken Queen Buzzy (Kellogg's gun she kept. That sucker packed a wallop), a pipe revolver she could scrap for copper, a bunch of fusion cells from the synth laser pistols, a camera that still worked, a vase with pretty floral designs, two bottles of Nuka Cherry (minus the one she'd gulped down), a ball of pink frayed yarn, a trifold flag in a broken case, a bunch of cram from a hidden cupboard, a teddy bear missing a leg —
He finally drew the line when she asked for a piggyback ride.
