VERONICA
The world has gone mad today,
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today
MacCready was aiming his rifle directly at Nick Valentine's forehead. I was still trying to process what I was seeing. This is the thing that Piper told me to find? A synth? Weren't Diamond City quaking in their boots at the very thought of these androids, yet one was running a detective agency within their walls? I couldn't understand it. His yellow eyes were staring right at me, not even blinking. I could tell that MacCready was confused about what to do as well, because his head kept flitting between me and Nick. Maybe only five seconds had passed but it felt like a life time before a strange, tinny-sounding chuckle came from the detective's metallic lips.
"Are you people on my side or what?" He quipped. "I don't mind the rescue, if that's what this is, but don't you think we should get the hell out of here?"
"You're a… synth." I gestured at him and he nodded slowly.
"A prototype synth, yeah," He offered.
"You didn't know you were rescuing a synth, I take it?" MacCready nudged me in the arm. "And here I was thinking you were a Railroad nutjob."
I didn't know what that meant, but I didn't have time to ask. I knew that Piper wouldn't send me after someone who might harm me, and the logical side of me understood that he wouldn't be allowed to operate in Diamond City if they feared him in any way. Besides, I may as well have been born yesterday for all I knew on the matter – whispers and stories couldn't be the basis of my opinion.
"We can trust him," I announced, and turned to leave. MacCready lowered his gun and grabbed my arm.
"Are you sure about this?" He looked a little annoyed, which I could understand. I shrugged him away, gave a curt nod and started for the exit again. He sighed and gestured for Nick to go second so that he could tail us.
As we jogged the halls of the Vault, I considered the situation I'd found myself in. I was rescuing a robot detective from an underground vault currently presided by a criminal gang with the help of a random mercenary I'd found in a jazz bar. All of this was occurring after already having helped a group of people called The Minutemen from Raiders, making friends with a stray dog and sleeping in a settlement that had been built slap bang in the middle of Fenway Park. What the hell was happening to me?
We burst through a door that led to the main entrance of the Vault and I saw a cog-shaped whole in the wall opposite where we'd entered – but we weren't alone. An overweight, sweaty man in slacks was pointing a gun at us already, with two more Triggermen behind him and a bedraggled young woman slouching to his side. She looked like she was on drugs.
"Not one more step, Valentine!" The fat guy's voice boomed in the open space. I reached for my own pistol, levelling it with his.
"This is not how you treat guests, Skinny," Nick retorted.
"Why'd you have to go snooping around the place, huh?" Malone's top lip was beaded with sweat, and he quickly licked it away. I tried not to gag.
"Darla's parents miss her," Nick shifted his attention to the woman now. "How was I supposed to know that she'd chosen this life."
"You should've killed him when you had the chance, Skinny!" Darla shrieked, her voice so high pitched I had to wince.
"Shut up Darla, I'm handling it! Look Nick, in this vault, I'm king of the castle. I'm not letting some Private Dick ruin what good thing I got going here."
"Well maybe you should tell your dame to write home more often."
"Kill him, Skinny!"
"Shut the hell up!"
I couldn't take the voices anymore. None of these people were important right now; I needed to find my baby and I was wasting time on all of this drama. I cocked my gun and yelled: "Why don't you all shut up?!"
MacCready turned to me for a split second before putting his attention back on the people in front of us.
"Just move aside and let us pass." I reasoned. "I don't have time for this."
"You come in here, shoot up my guys," Skinny Malone grimaced at me. "And now you're expecting a free pass? I don't think so!"
With that, he squeezed his trigger, aiming at Nick, who ducked down and snatched a gun from his belt. I quickly found cover behind some metal containers as the gunfire began, and I watched as MacCready crouched behind a low wall, rifle over the top. He seemed to be trying to take out the two goons, whilst Nick was now wrestling with Malone hand to hand. I barely looked up at Darla's position when she came screaming at me, grabbing a chunk of my hair and ragging it downwards. I cried out in pain and tried to aim my gun at her, but she kept shaking my head back and forth, hitting my ribs with something heavy. I couldn't get a clear shot, but I had to do something – so I pushed my gun into the nearest part of her body and pulled the trigger.
She squealed and fell to the floor, allowing me to gather myself up and look at what she'd been hitting me with – a lead pipe! My ribs ached horrendously, but not as bad as hers must've felt at this moment. I'd shot her in the side. With each person I killed, I was beginning to care less. I repulsed myself.
Looking up at the chaos, I could see that MacCready had managed to kill the two Triggermen. He saw me and ran over, placing a gentle hand on my ribcage. The room was spinning, but I knew I had to focus.
"Are you okay?" He asked, and I nodded as much as I could. He nodded back and left me, turning his attention to where Nick was standing over Malone. The fat idiot was sobbing on the floor, begging for the synth not to kill him.
I assessed the pathetic man before me and pursed my lips. "Let's get out of here."
Nick knew a short cut out of Park Street Station via a maintenance tunnel, and we were soon back out in the cool night air of the Commonwealth. I marvelled at how it was evening already, seeing as though it was daylight when we'd got here. MacCready began checking the area for anything that might be lurking and I smiled at Nick, who was looking up at the sky.
"So, like I said, I appreciate the rescue, but who are you?" He asked me. The exposed wiring on his neck glinted in the moonlight.
"Ellie sent me," I offered. "I came looking for help and you weren't there, but she told me where to find you."
"And you risked your life for, what?"
I took a deep breath, incredibly aware that MacCready had come back over to us and was just a few feet away, within ear shot. "My baby boy."
#####
MACCREADY
It was almost pitch black by the time we'd managed to walk to Diamond City. I'd never been allowed to enter this mysterious settlement before, so a small part of me was eager to get in there. Upon arriving, I was sort of impressed by the size and by the sturdy market stalls that lined the centre, but underneath all the paint and glam, I could tell that it was just another cesspool disguised as a town. I wanted to look around further, but Veronica was pulling me along. Apparently, the citizens of this place weren't too comfortable with 'my type' and I had to keep my head down.
I pulled a face at her. Okay, so I was a little mad that she hadn't told me about her missing son. I understood that I was just a gun to her, hired to help beat up Skinny's gang and then be on my merry way, but it would have been nice to know her motivation. Besides, she seemed to be able to tell everyone else freely – I already knew from her conversation with Nick on the walk here that she'd told a group of people who she had just met fresh out of the vault, who had in turn told her to come to Diamond City. Then she'd spilled the beans to the mayor and some nosy journalist called Piper. I seemed to be the only person she hadn't been completely honest with.
Our trip here also gave us time to ask about Nick and the fact that he was a synth. Apparently, he knew very little about the whole thing, other than he woke up in an alley one day with no memory of how he got there. He'd only assumed that since he didn't look like the older style synths and was nowhere near as humanoid as the recent ones, that he must've been a prototype that went wrong and was dumped out here. I felt for the guy – he might've been the product of an evil corporation, but it wasn't his fault. It was something I could relate to.
Upon entering Nick's office, I already admired this guys style. Sure, it looked like a museum for dust mites, but it was dark and comforting, with plenty of corners to slink into. I found a good spot to rest, leaning against the wall and placing my rifle by my leg. Nick offered me a cigarette which I took happily, although Veronica declined. They took seats at either side of the large desk that filled the room.
"Nick!" A voice called from upstairs, and a young woman came bounding down towards us. "You actually found him! Thank you!"
Veronica gave a humble nod, and then gestured towards me. "It was no problem, Ellie."
Ellie thanked me quietly, glancing at my gun. I really made people uncomfortable, which made me chuckle.
"It is nice to see you again," Nick couldn't smile, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he wanted to. "Now, Veronica, I need you to start from the beginning. Tell me what happened."
I tried not to seem like I was listening in, considering how I was probably about to learn a bunch of stuff she didn't really want me to know.
Veronica took a deep, shaky breath and began to talk slowly. "We were given space in Vault 111, due to our family's service to the government – my husband was in the army. But when the bombs starting falling and we were rushed into the vault, we discovered that it wasn't a safe haven at all, but some sick cryogenic experiment. We were… frozen. Like popsicles."
I had to stop the cigarette from falling out of my mouth as my jaw dropped. Was she telling us that she was pre-war? She was alive before the bombs fell? I knew she had seemed a little out of her depth in this world but I just guessed that she'd be born in a vault, not frozen for, what… 200 years?
"That's horrible to hear," Nick was writing notes. "Go on."
"Uh…" She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "So, I guess at some point these people came and unfroze everybody. Nate was in the pod opposite me, holding Shaun. I could see them trying to take Shaun, shouting at my husband to let go, everyone was screaming at each other, but I couldn't get out of my pod… and then that horrible man… he shot Nate in the forehead. They took Shaun and everything went cold again. Some time later, the systems must've malfunctioned, because I was thawed for a second time, and I escaped."
The room fell silent. Veronica wasn't crying, but her eyes were glazed and unfeeling. I could tell that she'd looped that memory in her head multiple times, and now it made her numb. I didn't know what to say or do, but I sure as hell knew that she didn't want some merc comforting her, so I stayed in my dark corner.
"I'm sorry to make you relive that," Nick eventually croaked. "If you have any other information, maybe a description of the kidnappers, that would be helpful."
"Two of them wore hazmat suits," She was still staring into space, voice wavering. "The third guy came right up to me. I'll never forget that face. Bald. Scar running down the side of his face."
"Kellogg," Ellie gasped. "He matches that description – didn't he work for the Institute?"
My head snapped up at those words. If the Institute was involved, all sorts of terrible things could happen. I didn't know what they did, other than they snatched people in the night and sometimes replaced them with synths. We were universally afraid of them, whilst also knowing nothing about them.
"He also used to live here, in the stands." Nick commented. He looked up at Ellie. "Didn't he have a kid with him? Around 10 years old?"
"That can't be Shaun," Veronica frowned. "He's just a baby, not even had a first birthday."
"You said yourself, after they took him, it went cold again. Is it not possible you were frozen for another 10 years?"
"No," Her voiced raised an octave. "No, he's a baby."
"Okay, okay," Nick didn't sound convinced, and neither was I. But who wants to be told that they may have missed ten years of their child's life? Just the thought that I hadn't seen Duncan in the couple months that I'd been in the Commonwealth drove me mad.
"So, which house did he live in?" I interjected. "Maybe we should pay a visit."
#####
A while later, we were standing outside of a rickety shack whilst Nick fumbled with the door. Veronica and I stood a little way back, watching out for security. We were high up in the stands, looking down on the rest of the settlement, so it was unlikely that we'd be caught.
"You don't have to stick around, you know." She whispered to me. "This whole thing… it's not worth 200 caps."
"No, I'll stay," I sighed. "Look, your aim is useless and if you're going after this baby-stealing dickhead, I want to be involved. You're going to need me."
She smiled a little before returning her face to its stoic default.
"This lock is impossible," Nick complained from ahead of us, and Veronica strode over, pulling a bobby bin out of her bag.
"Let me," She said, pushing one end of the pin into the lock and feeling around with the other. "I got really good at lock picking as a teen. Don't ask."
Sure enough, after a couple of seconds, the door clicked and swung open. I smirked as we began to enter. "She hacks computers, she picks locks – what can't she do?"
Inside the shack was dark, so Veronica switched her Pip Boy light on and shined it across the space. There wasn't much there besides a bed and a table. Not a single sign that anyone had ever lived here.
"Wait a minute," Nick leant under the table. "There's a button here connected to wires, running under the floor boards… to that wall."
He pushed the button and the wall to our right began to whir and hum, before sliding away to reveal and extra hidden room.
"You don't see that every day," I commented. "He must've had help setting this up."
"Piper told me that the mayor was a synth," Veronica breathed, entering the secret room. "Maybe they were both in cahoots with the Institute."
I followed her in. Shelving lined the walls, filled with food cans, Nuka Colas and Stimpaks. I grabbed a couple of the smaller things, shoving them into the many pockets I had stitched into my clothing, consciously taking extra to put in Veronica's bag. She was busy surveying the room with Nick. There was a desk in the middle, covered in empty cigar packets and beer bottles. Nick picked up a cigar and began to study it.
"This is a rare brand," He mused. "And there's some old clothing over there. If only my nose wasn't just for show, I could try to sniff him out."
It was just a joke, but Veronica's eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together loudly. "I know a dog that could help!"
