Even with the epidural she had been given, her contractions were still painful. Nora dropped her head back against the pillow as she stared at the ceiling of the hospital room. One of the nurses held out a small cup of ice chips to her "The baby's head and torso have turned again so we should see it crowning before too long. You're doing great."

Nora angrily snatched the cup away and shoved one of the chips into her mouth "Goddamn it, I told you to give me drugs! This still hurts like hell!" She glared at the doctor and other nurse in the room to express her displeasure at the situation. "Where's my husband!? Someone kick him in the nuts for doing this to me!" Nobody said anything but she continued to stare suspiciously at them suspecting that they weren't taking her seriously. She would have ranted further, but her next contraction interrupted what she was going to say.

It was all worth it at the end when they brought her child to her. She reached out nervously to take the swaddled infant in her arms and drew him close to her chest. Nora gave a trembling smile as she tried and failed to keep herself from leaking tears of joy as she cradled her newborn son. The baby stirred and opened his eyes to look up at her and her husband standing next to the bed "He has your eyes Nate. What should we name him?"

Nate reached down to lightly caress his son's cheek "What do you think of Shaun?"

"Shaun... I like that." She planted a soft kiss on the boy's forehead "We'll introduce you to Codsworth when we get home and then you'll get to meet your grandparents." The baby stirred in her arms and he began crying.

Nora jolted awake at the repetitive wail of an alarm going off somewhere in the distance. Her entire left side felt numb from the tiled floor she had fallen asleep on. She groaned as she slowly pushed herself up to her feet. Nora turned to check on Piper fearing the worst. To her relief, the journalist was still breathing but her pulse felt as shaky as it had earlier. The downside was that she was still in the comatose state she had fallen into before Nora had fallen asleep.

Her attention turned towards that alarm that had woken her. A shrill klaxon was sounding every few seconds but there was nothing to tell her why. Nora stepped past the curtain and looked around the lab for a clue to what was going on. There was no sign of Nolan or anyone else for that matter. It took a moment for it to sink in, but her eyes widened at the distinct lack of the synth who had been guarding that door on the far end of the room.

She ran as fast as she could in a pair of heels to the now unguarded door, a tentative hope rising inside her. Nolan had said she couldn't open the doors, but the man may have been lying. Why would they have put an armed guard on a door she couldn't open? Nora slapped her hand against the wall next to the door.

It didn't open.

Nora's shoulders sagged in disappointment and her forehead landed against the doorway with a dull thud. It had only been for a moment, but the thought of being able to achieve something and then being thwarted was even more discouraging to her than not having the opportunity at all. She slammed one fist against the offending door and turned to head back to Piper's bed. Nora hadn't taken more than a few steps when she heard a loud slam behind her.

She spun about as whatever it was hammered a second dent into the door below the first. Nora began quickly backing up as the door continued to shake from repeated blows until a small gap appeared on the edge. A set of metal fingers forced their way through the hole and clamped down like a vise. The metal of the door began to screech as the intruder began to pull backwards. It bent in the middle before snapping free from the frame and being tossed aside.

Nora froze like a deer caught in the headlights as the person in the suit of power armor stepped through the door. The armor looked a bit beat up with plenty of scratches and a few dents but nothing that would make it any less dangerous. There wasn't much in the way of paint aside from an emblem she didn't recognize on it's chest plate. A pair of wings flanking a sword atop three gears, all in white. Just behind the power armor were two men wearing what she clearly recognized as military uniforms even though she didn't know what army they could be part of. Both of them were carrying laser rifles but she was more worried about the enormous laser rifle held by the suit of power armor.

The armored head swiveled back and forth as it swept the lab before settling on her. Nora felt her instincts warning her of danger just in time for her to dive out of the way before a barrage of lasers tore through the air where she had been. She frantically crawled on her hands and knees back through the curtain to where Piper was and grabbed the metal stool she had been sitting on to use as a weapon. Nora held it in front of her as she turned back towards the curtain. She could hear the clangorous footsteps of the armor as it drew closer to where she was standing. "Why are you shooting at me!? Who are you?"

The suit's noisy footsteps slowed and a gravelly voice distorted by the suit's speaker responded "The Institute and all its members die today."

"I'm not part of the Institute! I'm a prisoner here, my name is Nora. And I'm not alone either. I have a friend here, her name is Piper Wright. We're from Diamond City, she's a journalist there."

There was a moment of silence as the man came to a halt before she could hear him speaking to one of the men accompanying him. "Go find Paladin Danse, he knows the Commonwealth better than anyone else in the Order. As for you 'Nora' there's no way out of here if you're lying."

"Yes Paladin Brandis."

Nora let out a small sigh of relief. It wasn't much, but at least he didn't seem likely to shoot her anymore. She let go of the stool and slowly stood, deciding to gamble further. "I'm opening the curtain all right? Let's not do anything we'll regret." She waited for a response but there was only silence in return. Nora grabbed the material and slowly began sliding it to the side and giving them an unobstructed view of Piper and the bed she was lying in.

She couldn't see the paladin's face but the barrel of his gun slowly lowered to point at the floor as he saw Piper's bed. Brandis turned to look at her "What is this? She looks... ill."

Nora pointed at the folder attached to the end of the bed where Nolan had left the records he had been writing on. "Those will explain better than I can. I don't know if everything is in there, but it should let you know what they're doing to Piper."

A moment later and the second soldier was flipping through the documents, his face swiftly growing disgusted as he did so. He started holding the papers up high for Brandis to look at before sticking them back into the folder. Brandis looked at Piper for a moment longer before turning his attention back to his subordinate "Go fetch Elder Maxson. He'll need to see this. As for you Nora, I must apologize for threatening you. I thought you were one of the Institute's scientists or maybe a synth. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry for what's happening to her."

"Thank you." It seemed like an inadequate response to an inadequate apology but it was the only one she could muster. And the man did seem genuine if she was going to be fair about it.

It wasn't long until a man who could only be this Elder Maxson swept into the room with another man in power armor and several other soldiers behind him. The Elder was just barely shorter than her but his burly figure combined with the black hair and bristly beard reminded her vaguely of an angry boar. To top it off, he had an air of someone accustomed to authority and his eyes were those of a zealot. The second person could be Paladin Danse she decided. The power armor hid his body but he lacked an armored helmet like Brandis was wearing. His eyes lacked the same intensity of Maxson's but she could tell right away this man was a Believer but in what she didn't know.

Maxson marched through the lab up to Brandis with Danse following at his tail. He paid no attention to Nora as he stared at the Paladin with unblinking eyes "Paladin Brandis. I trust you have a good reason for calling us here and putting the advance on hold."

Brandis gestured at Nora and Piper "I found something I believe you should see sir. It's... I'm not sure how to explain sir." He gestured at the soldier who was still holding the folder with Nolan's report in it. Maxson took it with an ill humored look on his face but he didn't open it and instead turned towards Danse. "Paladin Danse. You led our second recon team into the Commonwealth. Can you verify that these people are who they claim to be?"

Danse slowly shook his head "Not completely sir. Piper Wright is known in the Commonwealth for her newspaper Publick Occurrences though she's not exactly a popular person because of it. There was an article she wrote about a woman named Nora where she claimed to be a survivor from before the Great War that I remember reading. As for whether these are them, I can't say for certain since I never met either of them and they could still be synths even if I had. But there was a report from three weeks ago that said both of them had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. They were last seen entering a house in Diamond City and then they disappeared into thin air. Ever since then that synth, Nick Valentine, has been searching for them but without success. It is possible that this is them and that the Relay was used to abduct them from Diamond City however."

Maxson grunted in response as he opened the folder he was holding. It didn't take long for the Elder's hands to began shaking in rage as he pored over the reports, reading each page faster than the last. For a moment, he looked like he was about to crush the papers in his hands before he hurled them to the floor. "I knew the Institute was evil and had to be destroyed, but this is beyond anything I ever could have imagined. Why didn't Doctor Li tell us about this?"

Danse shrugged as much as someone wearing power armor could. "She may not have known sir. The sign says this is the BioScience area and she was working in Advanced Systems. We can ask her once this mission is complete sir."

Maxson looked back down at the papers then at Nora and finally Piper as he came to a decision. "Knight Rhys, you will escort Nora to Proctor Ingram. Scribe Haylen, you will accompany them and contact Knight-Captain Cade. Inform him of Miss Wright's condition and have him prepare for her arrival. Do whatever it takes to make sure she gets there. Paladin Danse, Paladin Brandis, we have a reactor to secure."

Rhys was a dour faced man with sunken eyes and buzzed hair. Like the other Brotherhood soldiers, he was holding a laser rifle in his hands and wore an identical uniform to the others. Rhys gestured towards the door as Maxson and the two paladins disappeared through it to whatever lay beyond. "Follow me civilian."

The door led to a short tunnel that opened into a much larger room filled with numerous plant beds and a fair amount of computers and scientific equipment. Laser burns marred the walls everywhere she looked and the remains of older synths scattered all about throughout the room. It wasn't just dead synths either. Their weren't very many but she spotted a few corpses that had evidently been gunned down based off the smoldering holes in their lab coats. The Brotherhood must not be interested in taking prisoners she guessed. She was hoping to see Nolan's body on the floor as they walked through the room but luck wasn't with her in that regard. The most curious sight was a pair of slain gorillas that smelled of burnt hair. She frowned at them before hurrying away to keep up with the soldier.

Rhys stopped short at what Nora assumed was the exit to the outside. She started to push by him, wanting to put as much distance between her and the room where she had been held captive but the knight stopped her with an outstretched arm. "Wait here for a moment. I need to make sure that it's safe to proceed before you go any further." Nora crossed her arms across her chest in annoyance but she wasn't exactly in a position to argue with him. The knight stuck his head out the door as he swiveled his head before raising his hand and waving her forward as he started moving again.

Outside of the BioScience lab was the hub of the Institute itself. Nora came to a halt as she realized the extent of this place. The ceiling stood well over a hundred feet above her and the circular plaza held multiple buildings that curved all the way from the floor to the very peak of the room. And to her surprise, the room had several sizable trees lining the room's inner circle and cascading fountains that flowed in-between all of the staircases. If Nora had come here under different circumstances, she might have called this place beautiful. Her view was marred however by the dozens of destroyed synths haphazardly strewn about like toys that had been discarded.

In the very center was an enormous glass tube extending up and through the ceiling. Rhys gestured to her wordlessly as he made his way down the stairs and onto the clear platform. After she joined him, he pressed a button and the lift slowly began to rise. Below her, she could see Maxson and the two paladins planting something on a door and backing away. The last thing she saw before the elevator cut her view off was an explosion and Danse leading a charge inside.

The elevator stopped short in a significantly shabbier looking room than the places she had seen down below. If she hadn't known what lay beneath her feet, Nora would have thought this to be just another abandoned husk of a building somewhere in the Commonwealth. In front of her was an old computer terminal and Scribe Haylen was talking to the woman standing behind it. Nora frowned at that. How had Haylen gotten up here ahead of them? The other woman was the real curiosity though. She was wearing a suit of power armor but all of the actual armor had been removed leaving just the frame behind. Her somewhat short hair was a darkish red and both of her legs ended in a rounded stump above the knee.

Haylen fell quiet as the two of them approached the computer terminal. The redhead pulled out a holotape from the computer and handed it to Haylen. The scribe pocketed it then scrambled her way up a pile of rubble and through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Rhys gestured at Nora "This is a civilian we found during our assault. Paladin Danse believes she may be from Diamond City but we need you to confirm. Can you run a search for a 'Nora' or 'Piper Wright' Proctor Ingram?"

Ingram's lips pursed for a moment as she looked at Rhys "Scribe Haylen has already informed me of the situation and I just finished looking it up." She turned to Nora, a deeply sympathetic and saddened look on her face "I... I saw all the reports the Institute had on the two of you. If there's anything you need, anything at all, come to me or Scribe Haylen and we'll make it happen."

Nora gave a half hearted smile in response as tears began silently flowing down her cheeks. Ingram muttered something to herself and stomped over to loom over Nora. She reached out and brushed some of the tears away, those clumsy looking metal fingers showing an unexpected grace. "No, don't do that. I know what you went through and I'm sorry, I really am, but this won't help anything." She hesitated as she reconsidered "It won't help anything right now. You can cry later."

In spite of herself, Nora couldn't help but give a small laugh at the Proctor's candor "You're not very good at sympathy are you?"

Ingram shrugged her shoulders and waved one hand at her two stumps. "This happened when I was stationed in the Capital Wasteland. I was on top of a cliff that took a nuke and it collapsed beneath me. The fall was about a hundred feet or so but I was test driving a suit of power armor at the time. It saved my life, but not my legs. I wasn't happy about it but I had a choice. I could have given up or try to put it behind me and move on. After I made up my mind, I modified this suit so I could control it and I'm still here."

"You must have a hell of a time going to the bathroom."

The comment just slipped out before she knew it and Nora clapped her hands over in mouth in horror at what she had just said. Ingram looked at her in complete and utter surprise for a moment before shaking her head and laughing "I like you."

The Proctor turned away and made her way back to the terminal as she resumed doing whatever she had been working on. Nora watched in silence for a few minutes as Ingram inserted and removed holodisks from the terminal. "So what are you doing?"

"I'm copying the Institute's data by Elder Maxson's order. We may be here to destroy them but it's likely they have information that we can put to good use or at the very least keep it out of the wrong hands. And once the Elder gives the order, we're leaving. I'm not sure what he plans to do with you however."

After that, there was nothing to do but wait until the Elder finished his business down below. Nora seated herself on the floor as she waited while Rhys paced the room as if expecting to be attacked at any moment. The only other sound aside from his pacing was Ingram typing on the terminal with those metal digits on her power armor. Eventually the monotony was broken by the crackle of a radio and Maxson's voice came through "Our work here is done. Miss Wright and Scribe Haylen will be going to the airport. The rest of us will be going to the Mass Fusion rooftop."

Ingram finished depositing the holotapes into a box before responding "Roger that Elder." She began typing again as Rhys came to stand near Nora. The Proctor looked up after a minute as she eyed Nora "Ok. Don't move from that spot. You'll screw up the Relay if you're moving during transit."

Nora frowned as she heard that name yet again. "Relay? What is -." Nora was cut off as the room disappeared in a flash of light and she felt herself dissipating. There was an omnipresent sense of nothingness and then she found herself standing on a rooftop towering above the Commonwealth. She stumbled to one knee as a sense of vertigo overwhelmed her "What the hell was that!?"

"The Institute calls it the Relay. It's a device of their own design that allows them to teleport to anywhere they choose in the Commonwealth." Maxson was standing behind her and looking no worse the wear from his trip. "But it won't be an issue after today however."

The Elder moved towards a switch set atop a pair of crates near the roof's edge and began flipping the switches on it. He turned a circular switch to lift a red safety cover over a red button when the Proctor interrupted him. "If I may sir, I think Nora should be the one to do this. If anyone deserves to press that button, it's her. She has more reason to hate the Institute than any of us."

Maxson looked at his subordinate for a long moment before turning to Nora. "This detonator is linked to a fusion pulse charge attached to a reactor in the Institute. Once that button is pressed, the charge will sabotage their reactor and cause a nuclear explosion and the Institute will be no more. If you want to push it, then you're free to do so but I won't wait forever."

Nora stared at the detonator, the weight of this sudden decision weighing upon her. All she had to do was press a single button and the Institute would be gone. All of the stories she had heard about the Institute ran through her head as she tried to decide whether or not she should swing the axe herself. Whether she should set off the explosion that would kill everyone still alive down there, including the man who had once been her son. The Broken Mask incident, the decades of fear suffered by those living in the Commonwealth, the people who had been replaced with synths, and then there was what she had personally gone through. And worse, what they had done to Piper.

As Nora stared out over the city a hot wind from the southwest blew through her hair and the words of a man haunted by the terrible device he had helped create echoed in her mind. "We knew the world not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says..."

Nora pushed the button.

"...Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

There was an enormous but silent flash of light in the distance and seconds later she could hear the thunderous roar and felt a wave of heat washing over her. An enormous plume of fire reached up to touch the sky as clouds of dust blanketed the city in every direction.

Nora took a step closer to the edge of the roof as she stared at where the Institute had been, her face hidden from the people standing behind her. And she smiled.