Chapter 6

Transcription of Holotape 6 - by Nat

I avoided Knight-Commander Albert Landers whenever possible. He was the most unpleasant man I knew besides almost all the raiders or gunners I have ever had words with.

His looks of disgust when he looked at me always made me wonder if there was spinach in my teeth or I had somehow sprouted a hairy wart on my nose.

It should be me giving him those looks as he wasn't good looking to begin with. His small eyes were set too close together under beetled brows and grizzled beard. He had the same haircut as Maxson, the same beard as Maxson, and sported a scowl that was an obvious imitation of Maxson too. His skin was pitted, although it lacked any visible battle scars. His bulbous nose was threaded with broken capillaries, which made me wonder if he liked the bottle a little too well. His body was short and squat, thickly muscled, but was past its prime and turning to lard. His short fingers and club-like thumbs on powerful looking hands made him look brutish.

I finally found out through a bit a careful questioning and gentle probing what his problem was with me.

Elder Maxson highly favored me. I was field promoted, twice, faster than any other officer under him.

Knight-Commander Landers was approaching 50 years old and had just finally gotten his current rank. He had been fully expecting to be the next Paladin. And he was furious about it.

I overheard him twice - yeah, sneaky me - talking to other knights about the upstart vault dweller and my lack of training and lack of proof of my loyalty to the Codex.

But in order to adhere to the Codex, he had to obey my orders and show respect to me. This was eating him up.

The Codex states that of the Elder shows trust, you have to as well.

So, he wasn't really following the Codex 100% anyway, what with his gossiping about me and all.

So there, Landers, you jerk-face.

Even though, in truth, he was right on all counts.

I observed him surreptitiously when possible, and I realized that he did everything possible to get Elder Maxson's attention. He was dying for praise and recognition from his Elder. And Maxson was completely oblivious to this, it seemed.

Landers, in charge of security of all the BOS bases took every opportunity to bring his reports directly to Maxson. Then he would wait for a compliment like a dog waiting for his treat after performing a trick. More often than not, Maxson barely acknowledged him, and when he gave a rare, "excellent, Knight-Commander" or "good job, Landers," poor Landers face would light up and he would be seen smiling for hours before his affected "Maxson scowl" was put back in place.

Needless to say, I avoided him like the plague. Unfortunately, he was not trying to avoid me, as I was going to find out, rather painfully, later.

End of Holotape 6

Holotape 7 - Transcribed by Piper

There's way too much to tell. What the hell day is it? What the hell year is it?

I'm not sure where I left off.

But I did get into the Institute. I will record here a little of that nightmarish journey.

(Audible sigh) There's no going back now. No changing the history I helped create. And it's not a pretty history.

Brian Virgil had told me I had to kill a courser and get the chip out of its head to be able to get into the institute. So I did.

Assassin Z. That's me. Maybe Kellogg was right – he and I are a bit alike.

Danse and I found the courser and the whole situation was very weird. A group of gunners had captured a synth and the courser was there to reclaim her. So it was the gunners vs. courser vs. Danse and I vs. courser versus gunners. I killed the courser and let the synth go free. What else was I going to do? Danse didn't argue or kill her – even though our orders are to kill all synths on sight.

Maybe he isn't the Brotherhood's completely after all.

We did the awful return trip to the Glowing Sea and to Virgil. Going directly there, since it was marked on my Pip-boy was a lot quicker than that first trip. We were there in two and a half hours of jogging in power armor, avoiding likely sites for radscorpions and deathclaws. We were lucky in that respect, running into some bloodbugs and one radscorpion, but that was it.

Danse waited outside the cave, knowing it was too hard for him not to want to kill Virgil.

Virgil gave me rough schematics for the Molecular Relay that would be able to get me into the Institute one time and one time only, using the courser chip. He reminded me about the serum and gave me directions to his old lab. I renewed my promise to do everything I could to retrieve it.

We returned to give our report to Maxson who was very well pleased with our find. (Landers must be seething!) He sent us to Proctor Ingram who sent us to find the necessary components she would need to make the thing.

In a week's time, the Molecular Relay was built. Elder Maxson at first was going to choose someone else to go, but I convinced him I was the best choice. He finally concurred. I was given two missions to accomplish inside the Institurte if possible. One was to download data off an Institute terminal – as much as the holotape Ingram gave me could hold, and to try to recruit Dr. Li to help get Liberty Prime, the BOS giant robot, up and running.

I dressed in a simple but clean dress and went with only one pistol and one knife each taped to a thigh. I had no idea if I would even survive being taken apart molecule by molecule and put back together underground somewhere. And I had no idea if I would be killed on sight if I got there in one piece.

But to find Shaun, I would face this and 100 deathclaws.

As I got up into the relay and looked out among the faces of those around the monstrous apparatus for the only one that mattered - Danse.

The molecular relay came to life with arcs of power and a loud hum and deep vibration.

And our eyes locked. I tried to give him a smile when there was a blinding white light – like the kind you're supposed to see when you are dying – and I was there.

All alone in a pristine chamber. Not a soul in sight.

Then a voice. It had to be him. The old man Kellogg spoke of. The old man greeted me through an intercom system and guided me through two elevator rides to Shaun. Except when the boy began to panic and scream for Father to some rescue him from the crazy lady trying to kidnap him, the old man entered the chamber and shut off my son. Turned him off like a battery-run GiddyUp Buttercup. The boy was not my son, he was a synth. The boy Kellogg had lured me to Diamond City with was this synth. I had been chasing a non-existent child.

He then informed me that my search had not been fruitless at all and then he revealed that he was my son. My 60ish year old baby.

He wanted me to join him. To live with him, get to know each other. But, of course, that wasn't all. If it had been, I might've stayed. He wanted me to prove myself to him and to the other scientists and residents of the Institute. I had to do missions for him.

So much for a loving reunion with mom.

I was in such shock, that the whole thing is a bit of a blur in my mind, but the things that stick out in my memory was that he called Nate's murder "unfortunate collateral damage." My Nate. His own father. Ugh!

He didn't answer my questions about synths murdering people and taking their places in the Commonwealth.

He just kept saying that the Institute would be the one and only savior of mankind – the rest of the fools out there didn't know what they were doing. In other words, the Institute and its leaders in their superiority and wisdom were the only one fit to rule. A bit of elitism, anyone?

He admitted it was he who ordered my revival from cryogenic sleep, and it was also his orders that while I was to be surveilled I was not to be aided. He wanted to see how I fared. He also wanted to see how hard I would look for him.

How could this cold-blooded creep be related to me?

He then sent me out to meet all the department heads of the Institute.

I numbly went about as ordered and met everyone. I got a chance to talk to Dr. Li in private, but we were interrupted. It sounded very much like she was unhappy there and dissatisfied with the goals and methods of the Institute.

I would have to come back, when I was able. She seemed to be ripe for the picking.

Downloading the data on a holotape was easy. "Father" gave me the run of the place. I couldn't get into the FEV lab, though, there were too many people hanging too close to me to allow my poking around the bioscience lab. Which had – get this – synth gorillas. Go figure.

I wasn't thinking clearly.

Dr. Li programmed my pip-boy to be able to relay in and out of the Institute at will – she said I was the only one who had such access besides the coursers. I was so special.

Then I returned to my son. He gave me my test mission. To prove myself. To retrieve a rogue synth set up on a large ship leading a gang of raiders and wreaking havoc on the Commonwealth. My kind of mission anyway. But he wanted the synth - his 'property' - returned to him intact. He said the courser would give me the synths reset code which would turn him "off" like he had done with the boy synth.

I left. I had to. I needed space and distance to try and process this whole paradigm shift of the meaning of my life. It had been "find Shaun!" for so long, my brain was having a very hard time realizing that I had accomplished this – and it was a stranger I had found. A stranger who was the "old man" I had come to hate by following his handiwork and the effects of them in the Commonwealth.

When I got back, Danse was there, waiting for me. He grinned at me and it made him look boyish and sweet. I wanted to throw myself into his arms – I was so relieved to see him, but of course, I didn't. But the look of relief on his face told me he was glad his only friend had come back to him alive.

I gave the holo to Ingram and told Maxson I would have to make a second trip to try again for Dr. Li. I had to go do Father's mission immediately if I were going to be able to get back in. I had to go alone, as I was being partnered with a courser. He concurred.

But he asked that before I made the second trip to the Institute he needed me for one crucial mission. And because of both my and Danse's familiarity with the Commonwealth, he didn't trust anyone else for it. He told us to see Ingram for details of this mission.

Proctor Ingram's mission was to locate nukes for Liberty Prime. Elder Maxson had felt like things might escalate very quickly from here, and that Liberty Prime was going to be the deciding factor in the conflict.

Yes. Back into the Glowing Sea.

I won't go into details this entry. We travelled through one rad storm after another.

We finally found them set up a homing beacon, then Danse told me he had to stay and I was to report back to Maxson. I was saddened by our being separated. I had come to depend on him deeply.

When I arrived, Procter Ingram in charge told me Maxson wants to see me right away and thanked me for making Liberty Prime possible.

"We still need Dr. Li, though, Paladin. I need for you to recruit her," she said.

I promised, "if she's recruitable, I will get her."

End of Holotape 7

I am writing this to take up where the last holotape ended.

I left off with going to Maxson as ordered.

Elder Maxson looked like he had just bitten into something rotten. There should have been thunderclouds over his head.

"Is there anything you wish to tell me, knight?" He asked.

"Not at all. I have nothing to hide." I was bewildered. I was still reeling from my world being turned upside down and inside out.

"I find that hard to believe," he growled. "Dr. Quinlan looked at the data that you retrieved from the Institute…" the rest of what he said is kind of a blur.

The gist of it was that the man I was in love with wasn't a man at all. He was a machine made up of human tissue.

No, no, no, no. First I lose my son all over again and now I am losing Danse –now my only heart's connection to this world.

I couldn't wrap my mind around this.

He was too perfectly human to be a product of someone's clever programming. And Elder Maxson was sending me to end him. Assassination. Was this a test of my abilities or a test of my loyalty? Both, I would assume. This having to prove myself was getting very, very old.

Maxson told me to speak to Quinlan, who had whatever intelligence there was on Danse. He said we would find him through process of elimination. That could take forever. I was supposed to get back to the Institute and find Virgil's serum and get to Dr. Li.

It was Haylen who told me where to find him, away from prying eyes and listening ears. She begged me to let him explain himself before I decided to kill him or not.

On the trip to the Station Bravo, I tried to quiet my raging emotions, unsuccessfully. I would have to find Danse first, in any case. I thought about Haylen's plea. Of course I was planning on speaking with Danse before I took any action. Haylen obviously didn't know me very well. But I know she had great affection for her superior officer, maybe even more than admiration...The thought of Danse holding her in his arms caused an ugly flare of jealousy in my heart, which I quickly quenched - that was the least of any of our worries. I didn't have the luxury to indulge in being petty.

I had to come to grips that Danse's affiliation could very well be with the Institute and everything I had seen and heard had been an act - acts of an extremely adept spy. But it had to have been a long term assignment...Danse's DNA taken when he joined the BOS was what gave him away. Hadn't he been in since he was a teenager? Do synths age physically? Danse has the body of a mature man in his late 20s or early 30s. And his boyhood scavenger friend, Cutler...they grew up together and joined the Brotherhood at the same time. This was too confusing and I didn't have enough information.

Maybe Danse had answers. Maybe he would share them, maybe not. Would he be hostile now that he had been exposed?

The vertibird dropped me off a few miles away, so my approach wouldn't be too obvious. The hike helped calm me down.

There were armed turrets active there. I took them out easily, one by one from behind a large boulder.

The interior was a shambles and empty, but there was an elevator.

I followed the wires from the elevator to a terminal and easily hacked the code to unlock it and powered up the elevator.

My heart was beating a staccato and my mouth was dry.

I stepped off the elevator and this room too was empty. I spotted a gaping rough hole in the concrete wall which opened into a tunnel. I picked my way carefully through the tunnel which opened up into a damp cavern. And there he was.

Stripped, no uniform, no power armor. Naked. Without the Brotherhood, he had nothing, I thought. They were his only family, his only life.

Unless...he was the deepest of deep plants ... placed there by the Institute. But if that were the case, wouldn't they have taken him in at this point? Why would he hide out where he knew his team could find him? Why would he be helping me to infiltrate it?

"You should have told me," I blurted out.

His face showed grief and horror, "Z, you have to believe me - I didn't know. I thought I was as human as you. I didn't know ... I didn't even ever wonder if could be a synth." His mouth curled in disdain when he said the word 'synth'.

I believed him.

Either he was telling the truth or he was the best actor ever born. There was pain written in every line in his face.

"So. Does Maxson want you to take me in, or did he send you to kill me?" He looked exhausted.

"To kill you," I said watching his expression travel from surprise to acceptance and finally, utter resignation.

"Of course." He said. "I ... you must obey orders." He stood, trusting and arms open as if to welcome the death coming for him.

I had made up my mind very easily. "I won't do it, Danse. You have done nothing wrong. Just the opposite. I have seen you put your own life in danger to protect others the entire time I've known you. Danse, you don't deserve any punishment at all."

"I am a synth," he spat out, "an abomination. The science of the best minds run amok. The reason the world looks the way it does -" he panned his outspread hand like a salesman showing his wares. "You have to obey a direct order from the Elder. If you don't, you are betraying the Brotherhood and all its ideals." He grimaced, "My very existence is an affront to everything the Brotherhood stands for. Just, for the sake of our friendship, please make it quick. A head shot would be best."

"Danse, stop. You didn't cause any of this. Let me just ask you a question," I drew no closer to him knowing his perceptions were extremely heightened as they always we're in a combat situation. "Would you allow any harm to come to the Brotherhood? If the Institute swooped in to claim you, would you willingly betray them?"

"Never." he snarled the word with vehemence.

"So, unless the synth makers get a hold of you and completely reprogram you, you are no danger to the Commonwealth or the Brotherhood."

"Of course not." he agreed.

"So, you're telling me you should be destroyed simply because you exist? Not because of any danger you create?"

"Yes. I. Am. An. Abomination." he hissed out between gritted teeth.

"No," I hissed back, "you are not. You are the bravest, most self-sacrificing, most skilled soldier I have ever had the fortune to work with. And you are my best and only friend. I cannot nor will not label you an abomination. Nor do I see any reason to scrub you from the face of this earth. It would be a loss for the world, a loss for me, for Haylen - the loss of a good man who fights to make the world a better place."

"If you won't do it, I will do it myself," he growled and unholstered his laser pistol.

I couldn't help it, my eyes teared up and overflowed, spilling hot down my face. "Danse," I choked out, "I don't want to be in a world where you aren't! Please, please, Danse, just live - don't die on me, or give up yet." I pulled out all the stops and played the guilt card – which I only do in case of dire emergencies, "Danse," I cried, "I have lost my life, my family and my world. You are all I have. You can't take that away from me!"

He was silent, emotions running the gamut in his face. Staring at me.

I held as still as a deer who senses danger, watching him. "Please..." I whispered so quietly I didn't know if he heard me. I sensed that he was teetering on the brink of choosing life over death. "Danse," I whispered, "I'm begging you."

Finally he spoke, as he holstered his laser pistol, "So be it. I will not choose death. It will have to come for me."

A silence settled.

His eyes never left mine. "I would never choose to hurt you or Haylen." He turned and started to pace, back and forth, his mind working. "I will give you my holotags to give to Maxson. You can continue to be in good standing with the Brotherhood, and I will leave the Commonwealth."

"Danse, wait. You don't have to leave. I still need you here. I need you at my back." My heart was breaking. I loved him and needed him like the air I breathed.

He seemed to consider this. "I won't make any move right away. I will stay here for now. I need to contact Haylen. She deserves that from me at least. Make this place livable. You need to go, though. Report to Maxson."

It turned out that was quite unneccesary as Maxson had followed me. He didn't trust me to carry out his assassination. And he was exonerated in his distrust when he saw Danse and I outside the bunker, both quite alive.

What happened next still leaves me breathless.