Super Mutants as Faith found out, were a mutated form of humans. Calaway wasn't too sure how the mutation had happened or where the creatures even came from. He had explained how they had been reported to more often than not kidnap people opposed to killing them.

Faith had asked where and what concerning the captives but he hadn't any answers, nobody knew what the Super Mutants did with the people or where they took them.

He had described them as large, freakishly so and an odd yellow gray color.

"You'll know them when you see them."


Washington D.C. was a lot of rubble, stone and steel. Faith was astonished by the sheer size of some of the remaining buildings, wondering how they managed to survive the bombings all those years ago.

She did quickly see a problem however. The rubble blocked a lot of paths, it would be very hard, very dangerous to attempt scaling it. Providing they somehow did manage to scale it, they would be open targets to whatever walked these desolate streets.

"What's wrong?" Mark asked, seeing the look on her face, frowning.

"How do we get through?"

Now he was looking a bit squeamish, something Faith was a bit surprised to see. She had been sure that nothing ever bothered him.

"Well?"

Mark let out a resigned sigh. "The metro."

"What's that?"

Her lack of a proper education was going to drive him insane. "The old subway system. Some of it collapsed but for the most part, everything is still intact."

"So... what's the problem then?"

Mark gritted his teeth.

"Well?"

"It's underground."

She looked really confused now.

Mark shot her a deadly look. "If you really must know, I'm not that comfortable with being underground."

"Oh. Why not?"

"Not all of us were born in a fucking vault you know."

She recoiled at the scathing tone, for a moment. "But you slept in a cave last night."

"That was different, it was above ground."

"So, we could have been closed in and that would have been okay?"

"So long as it's topside."

"Fair enough, I guess." Faith hunched down behind the dumpster they were hiding behind, raising her wrist to look at her Pip-Boy. "GNR is three miles from where we are."

"Three miles if we were to take a direct route." Mark corrected, sitting with his back to the dumpster, a cigarette firmly tucked between his lips. "Your little gizmo there doesn't compensate for all the crap in our way."

"Okay." She said slowly, tilting her head back to look up at him. "So how long then?"

"Depends on what we find in the tunnels."

That sounded ominous.

"Why? What's in the tunnels?"

"Besides the raiders, ghouls, mole rats and occasional fire ant?" Mark's lips quirked into a hint of a smile. "Nothin' much."

Growling. Faith snatched the cigarette from his mouth and finished it before flicking the butt away. "Great."


"What the fuck is that?"

Mark rolled his eyes and followed Faith's panicked stare. "Feral ghoul." He said after a moment, sounding disgusted.

"A feral ghoul... like Gob?"

"No, retard, does that thing look anything like Gob?" Mark demanded, shooting her a look that clearly said she was a moron.

Well, physically Gob and the feral resembled one another, flaking, cracking skin that was peeling off in disgusting strips; chunks. The muscle had deteriorated, drawing the skin taunt across what muscle mass remained and the skeleton, adding to the overall frightening appearance.

The tunnels smelled particularly foul to begin with, rare it was for fresh air to penetrate the stale, hardly bearable air of the metros. She could smell the faint scent of lingering radiation on the slick, damp stone walls. Wisps of smoke, the unmistakable scent of gun oil, rotting bodies...

That's what the feral ghouls smelled like, decaying bodies. Which, was technically what they were.

"We're not going that far down, it won't notice us." Mark assured her, though he was already aiming his sniper.

Mark was handling the tunnels differently than Faith. As she had been born underground -minus the sickening stenches- this almost felt like home, in a very odd sense. Or would have been, if the constant fear of dying wasn't a factor.

He was constantly smoking and just about every hour, on the hour, sipping from the flask he kept on the inside of his black leather vest.

She had wondered just how much whiskey was in that flask, at least until she seen Mark pulling out a bottle of the amber liquid from his satchel and refilling the flask.

Men.

She kept checking her Pip-Boy at regular intervals to check the time and see just where the hell they were. "Where are we?" She held out her arm to Mark, watching his eyes dart back and forth over the screen.

"Well," He said after a moment, frowning slightly. "I have no idea what that thing says but we're in the Farragut tunnels."

"What do you mean you have no idea what the Pip-Boy says? It's plain English."

"Can't read."

Faith could only gape at him, remembering all his little jibes about her not having a 'proper' education and here he was, unable to read. "Okay then, skip the words, can you make out the map?"

"Sure, that's easy." Mark studied it for a moment. "But I don't see the point; I already know where we're going."

"If you can't read, then how?"

"You don't need to be able to read to have a sense of direction you little fucking tart." He snapped, pushing her arm away. "Not to mention I've spent a lot of time in these damn tunnels. Christ kid, you really aren't very smart, are you?"

"I-"

"I don't mean book smart, I mean LIFE smart."

"I manage." She replied frostily, turning her head angrily from him.

Snorting, he began moving again, one sure foot in front of the other, gun at the ready and hugging the wall.

Faith followed him, knowing she really didn't have any other options at the moment.