AN: Dear guest (Mikoto), thank you for your review! Don't worry, I haven't given up on this story - I write every day, actually, on this and two other projects - but various factors have slowed me down a bit lately. I'll still try to update regularly, but it may well be closer to three weeks than two in between chapters for a while.


"Is there anything Moriarty could have offered you to turn on me?" This question had been troubling Amari for the past two days, as she re-lived those tense moments in the saloon. Alone with Richard, after an uneventful morning on the road, she could hold her curiosity back no longer. "I'm not upset that you killed him. Not at all. But I'd like to know why."

"I can't be bought." If she hadn't known better, she would have said that she'd offended him. "Your body language said that you wanted him eliminated. The situation was dangerous and required action. So I killed him." He was sitting in the corner of the decrepit shell of a diner where they'd stopped for lunch, facing outward and eating mechanically as he scanned the view outside for danger. They'd met no one on the road so far, and nothing more hazardous than a handful of blowflies and a half-dead radscorpion missing two legs, but he was ever alert for trouble.

She hung her head in despair. They were back to the most basic of all her questions, one that he never failed to answer unsatisfactorily. "But why are you loyal to me at all?"

"I don't know how to answer that." She wasn't imagining things. There was an emotional quality to his words today, a clear note of frustration not concealed by his usual even tone. She rejoiced silently, even as he continued, "Do you wish I wasn't?"

His counter-question was one she hadn't expected and she had to buy a moment to think by taking a large bite of her stale cornbread - the last of Moira's inconsistent experiments with baking. Did she want Richard to leave? No. Hell no. She needed him. She could have spared her own left arm more than she could have done without his help as far as survival was concerned. But as time went on, the inequality of their arrangement bothered her more and more. She did little more than make the decisions, contributing only a little navigation and social nicety to their team, and he was gradually getting better at even this latter skill.

"Of course not. It's just that I feel bad about taking advantage of your generosity," she explained for what must have been the dozenth time. "There are people who would pay a lot for your services. People who actually have a plan and the means to provide you with decent gear. I'm trying to tell you that you're selling yourself short. You could be doing a lot more with your skills than just babysitting me."

"It's my job," he said firmly, with the air of one pronouncing the final word on a subject. "Finish your meal. It's not safe to stay in a place like this for very long."

She stuffed her last bite in her mouth and forced it down with a drink of water. She wasn't done, however, and now tried a new tack. "What would you do if I died?"

He was quiet for so long that she thought he had chosen to ignore the question - which was something he did fairly often - but just as she rose to repack the remains of their food and drink, he spoke again, grinding out the words reluctantly, as though his vocal chords had gone rusty.

"I… I guess… I'll return… home. For reassignment."

"Where's home?" she asked, eyes intent on his face. "Are you remembering?"

He shook his head. "Maybe it'll come to me if you die," he said helpfully. "Let's move out."


Leaving another home behind had been strange, but not as hard as it had been the first time. And Megaton had been a home to her, even if it was for only a few months. Without Moira, though, it wouldn't have been the same, even if she hadn't just seen the worst and weakest of what the other residents had to offer. As much as she tried to make herself hate Sheriff Simms for his cowardice, she could manage only tired resentment and grudging understanding. The same went for most of the others who'd turned their backs on her. They had their children and their livelihood to think about. Amari had only herself to watch out for - well, herself and Richard, who didn't seem to care where he went or what he did. So she left without a quarrel, and without many hard feelings.

As if ashamed at itself, the decimated town had appeared almost deserted, although it was well past sunrise when they exited the Craterside Supply for the last time. No one met her eyes, people ducked into their houses ahead of her steps, and even Simms was missing from his usual post. There was one surprise as she hit the bottom of the ramp. Church - weaselly, apathetic, probably-complicit Church - stepped down from his door and handed her three stimpaks, then disappeared again without saying a word.

She didn't know if the doctor felt guilty, grateful, or what, but she was thankful for the gift. Most of the medical supplies that had been in Moira's stores had gone to help those injured in the attack, and her own kit had only the barest essentials. After months in the wasteland, she'd finally learned to sit up and take notice when someone showed kindness without the possibility of a reward. It was rare, much rarer than it had been in the relative luxury of the vault. She treasured these gestures now.

Once they had passed through the gates, it had taken only a hour to move beyond the region familiar to Amari, past the girders of the old highway and to the south. She had spent the previous evening plotting a southeast course toward Rivet City, giving Fairfax ruins and Greyditch a wide berth, having heard disturbing rumors about both these locations. Their choice of a lunch-spot was located at a crossroads equidistant between these two, and she had taken this opportunity to reorient herself to the new geography, and continued this effort as she resumed walking, maps in hand.

Amari had spent most of yesterday's leisure hours searching through Moira's haphazard filing system, and preserving the documents that she considered useful or valuable. There had been two relevant maps among these. One was a hand-drawn representation of the places her various assistants had visited (to which Amari had added very little in her tenure). It had a lot of localized details for a scattershot array of places, most of which she had no intention of ever setting foot in. Moira had not been much of a cartologist and this map had very uncertain scaling; to add to these drawbacks, the entire northeast corner was obscured by a dark purple wine-stain. The second map was extremely fragile, a pre-war artifact that had seen some rough handling, but it was far more useful: it showed all of the the DC metro stations and their lines. Superimposed upon this, Moira had penciled in several significant locations, including Rivet City.

Intent on deciphering the tiny, cramped handwriting, Amari didn't notice that Richard had stopped until she ran straight into him when he froze in front of her. He dropped into a crouch, pulling her down with him. He then crawled forward, off the road, until he was peering over the ridge onto the lower ground below. She followed, alarmed but curious, and looked down in the direction he was pointing.

Three figures - humans, she decided, though it wasn't obvious at first glance - were conferring amongst themselves perhaps fifty yards ahead of and thirty feet below their position, standing at the feet of a rusted-out water tower. She couldn't be sure of what they were because they were dressed head-to-toe in bulky armor, resembling the power-armored soldiers from the old war vids she'd seen in class, complete with high-quality energy weapons. Only instead of the the gleaming chrome of the Anchorage heroes, these were a matte black, bearing no insignia visible at this range.

"Who are they?" she whispered.

"I don't know. Not a fight that I want," he muttered in return.

"They might be friendly. Can you hear what they're saying?"

He shook his head. "Not much. Something about ants. And research. I'd have to get closer to get more." He looked at her as if he expected her to make that request of him, and when she said nothing added another warning. "I'd advise not making contact. There's nothing obvious to be gained from that, and they may be dangerous."

She groused internally at this, but followed his guidance, staying low and flat until the others had moved on. The strangers took a northwestern route that ignored the road altogether, striking out for a destination that only they knew. Only when they had completely disappeared from sight did Richard motion for them to continue on their way.

The shadows were growing long and the air slightly chilly, but no likely shelter presented itself in the hinterland of the city she was actively avoiding. To her, the tall buildings - those still standing, anyway - represented uncertainty and danger, an environment she was utterly unfamiliar with.

"There's a metro station about a mile and a half to the east," she said to Richard, frowning at her Pip-Boy, which had in the last hour taken to flashing a concerning message at random intervals across the screen: "Return to RobCo facility for routine maintenance." The battered device must have gotten a ping from some long-neglected satellite, however, because it was finally displaying a map that more or less resembled the land she saw in front of her. "The caravan hands say those are pretty good places to stop for the night. Except for the zombies, raiders, and mutants that also like them," she supplemented gloomily.

Richard made a non-verbal sound, whether of agreement or of concern, she wasn't sure. Tired of second-guessing herself, she decided to commit to a decision. "That's where we're going," she said firmly. "It'll bring us in among those buildings, but not too far."

It was a pleasant surprise to actually see the arch spelling out the name of the station, directing the way down the steps to "Bailey's Crossing." It was her first real confirmation that they weren't yet lost, and that Moira's maps weren't pure fiction. The narrow streets, heaped high with rubble, were perfectly still and quiet. Richard hadn't said anything, but she could tell he didn't like it. She didn't either, come to think of it. They were too exposed here.

"Let's get underground," she said happily. It wasn't the vault, but the prospect of tons of rock above her head made her feel warm and comfortable.

Richard, surprisingly, agreed, his tone distant as he replied. "Underground is good."

The station was cool and dark, so much so that they needed the Pip-Boy light almost immediately. It was silent, except for the occasional drip of water and the echo of their own footsteps off the walls. Wolfgang had told her that he seldom ventured very far into these tunnels, that the rails themselves were inevitably infested with dangerous things, namely the wretched remnants of the people who had sought refuge from the bombs therein. Many of them were still there, technically alive but… lost. Not like Gob at all, these ghouls were feral. Vicious.

She spotted the corner of a mattress inside the gaping door to a restroom, but didn't propose stopping just yet. It was too close to the entrance. Anything could come upon them, even if they set a watch. She kept walking, but it occurred to her then to ask Richard something.

"How much sleep do you actually need?" She had never actually seen him sleep, even for the two nights they'd spent in the house together. With him on watch for the majority of the night she would feel much safer, wherever they ended up.

"About two hours," he said shortly. "It made Walter uncomfortable. Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?" But before the words were out of her mouth, she thought she knew what he was talking about. Worse than the expected funk of dampness and decay, there was something rank and rotten ahead. Meat left out to spoil. Dead things lying in the dark.

"We need to get out of here," Richard said, a note of real alarm in his voice now.

"Just a minute longer." She could see where the tunnel broadened out into something wider just ahead and wanted to see what it was. As she stepped toward this opening, however, her foot brushed something - a string or a wire - and she didn't have time to breathe before Richard had rushed her bodily forward, safely away from the tumble of rocks and jagged metal that the trap would have dumped on her head.

"Whoa. Thanks." When the rocks stopped shifting and rolling down the slope, even Amari could hear a second noise coming from behind them: the rattle and clank of the gate, far behind them, as someone - more than one someone, from the sound of it - entered the tunnel behind them, heavy footfalls echoing on the ancient tile.

"Assumed hostiles approaching," Richard said urgently. "I'm not prepared to engage this enemy. We should run. Straight ahead." So they ran.

Amari had never been swimming in any body of water, let alone the irradiated, mirelurk-infested Potomac. Nevertheless, she felt that running with Richard must have been a little like being dragged along by the powerful current of that river. He could move faster than he was currently doing - she'd seen it before - but as it was, it was all she could do to keep her feet under her, and to keep his grip from yanking her arm from its socket. They were flying through the darkness, over a bridge that transversed an enormous concourse - a vast, cavernous space, many times bigger than the foyer of the vault - intent on the other side. How he could see the way ahead, she didn't know. Her dim light showed her only things close to her feet - bones, both human and animal, glistening heaps of offal, and bloodstained piles of armor and clothing.

"What is this?" she gasped, not expecting him to spare the attention for an answer.

"FEV experiments run amok. Don't talk. Run faster." He wasn't even out of breath, and Amari marveled at him despite her fear. He could already have been a quarter mile away if he wasn't pulling her dead weight. She tried to push herself to match his effort, but knew she was nearing the end of her slight endurance.

They had entered a new tunnel on the opposite side of the station, a perfect twin to the one behind them. It sloped upwards, winding this way and that as they climbed towards the light. As fast as they were moving, though, it wasn't enough. Deep-voiced shouts and the quick tread of heavy feet advanced on them from the darkness behind. They'd either heard their trap fall or found the rubble, and now they pursued their would-be prey with enthusiasm.

They reached the gate, the outside light gleaming through the gaps, and Richard dropped her arm, bruised where he'd grabbed her, and reached to open the door. The noises sounded very near now, and Amari choked back a sob when she saw that the gate on this side was padlocked from the inside, with chains woven in and out of the metal slats. Richard pushed his pistol roughly into her hands, growling, "Watch my back. Aim for the knees."

She took the gun, too frightened to refuse, and gripped it with both hands as she waited for a target to round the corner, lungs burning from the unaccustomed running as she panted for oxygen. For a moment, she thought he intended to try to tear the chains with his bare hands - with links as thick as her thumb! - but no. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pull a twisted piece of wire from one of his many pockets and set to work on the padlock. Their pursuers had a light of their own - she could see shadows thrown onto the curve of the wall nearest them - and she lifted the gun, prepared to fire low into their midst. Luckily, that moment didn't come, at least not yet.

A shake, a rattle, and a gust of fresh air behind her, and they were off again, choosing an uncertain danger over certain death. It had grown darker since they'd entered the tunnel, and now only the very tops of the constructions around them gleamed with the red light of sundown.

"What's your plan?" she asked, as he hauled her up the last few steps and across an open square, toward the windowless hulk of an old office building.

"Get to a high position. Snipe. Engage at close range as a last resort."

The stairs were completed blocked by rubble. This didn't discourage Richard from the higher ground he sought, though: he boosted Amari up through the nearest hole in the ceiling, then jumped or climbed (she didn't see which) after her. After that, the shooting started.

She tried to help. She really did. She watched Richard using the old window frame as cover, and noted the way he leaned quickly around the corner to aim and shoot before retreating. She imitated his motions, firing a single shot at a blurry green figure she saw in the open space below. Before she could duck out of sight, it fired back, striking chips of cement off the edge of the building, one of which glanced off the goggles she was still wearing, leaving a white scratch on the reinforced glass.

"Save it!" he shouted. "Wait until you have a close shot." So she watched him instead, mesmerized by his movements. The hunting rifle had five shots, and he emptied them and reloaded three times in the space of about a minute. Well, she thought it was a minute. Time was funny just then, and her sense of its progression got worse after what happened next.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn, however - she looked down and a lumpy, homemade grenade was rolling toward her, tracing a wobbly circle on the floor at the foot of an old desk. She stabbed at it hard with her toe, then turned away, covering the back of her head, and yelled some warning - which came out as more of a wordless cry - before the force of the explosion (along with fragments of the former desk) hit her hard from behind.

For a few seconds, Amari saw only fractured light and darkness and felt only pain - in her forehead, where she'd thumped it against an exposed beam the wall, in her back, which stung in several places not protected by her pack, and in her ears, which could hear only a high-pitched ringing sound. This is how I die, she thought dreamily, lifting her face an inch or two from the ground to observe that, yes, one of the many holes in the ground had grown considerably larger, and she could see the monstrous, grinning faces of the mutants through the gap.

One pulled itself up, head and shoulders appearing on their level. Lifting the heavy gun that she had somehow kept hold of, she shot at it automatically, not really expecting to hit it through the haze that covered her senses, and managed to graze its cheek. Richard's shot, on the other hand, took out its right eye and sent the heavy body crashing back down to earth.

She shot blindly through the rest of the clip, as more of them tried to climb up. Six more shots, six more mini-explosions that she couldn't hear, and her hand relaxed on the pistol's grip, letting it go. They had more .44 ammo - or Richard did in his pack, anyway - but she could no more find it and reload at the moment than she could bring herself to sit up. Based on what she could see, Richard was doing the same, as efficiently as clockwork. It wasn't enough, however. There were too many and they were too tough. And how many bullets did he have left, anyway? He had to have gone through at least fifty by now. His shots were dull, muffled thuds that were barely audible over the ringing, and she could focus on little else.

The floor. The floor was tilting, and she had to hang on to something or she'd fall through the hole herself. I have a concussion, she decided wisely, watching spent shell casings roll past her on the newly-created incline and drop down to the ground ten feet below. She wrapped a hand around Richard's ankle, hoping to steady herself enough not to join them.

He hauled her up before the level beneath them gave out altogether, and there was a leap - a controlled fall, really - from the window, as the collapsing building buried the mutants inside. The jolt of a rough landing was a shock her pounding head couldn't handle, however, and the last image she saw as he put her down was of him drawing his knife - formerly Moriarty's knife - and preparing to engage the remaining monsters at close range. Then there was nothing, the light bleeding into gray, and gray into black.


X6-88 - for that was who he was, despite the fact that everyone now called him Richard - wasn't happy, although he was trying to pretend otherwise. He told himself that he wasn't sad or mad or stressed either. It wasn't his way to feel or express open emotion, except as an act of camouflage. Yet he still found himself slipping in that regard.

The situation was far from optimal and it grated at him as he struggled to right it, confused by his own failure to avoid disaster. The principal had chosen poorly, true, but he had allowed her to choose without making any effort to change her mind, even though he had known this was an unsafe way to come. It confirmed what he'd suspected for weeks - that something was wrong with him. There were huge gaps in his memory that made much of what he considered himself to be incomprehensible. He was behaving inconsistently, thinking strange things, and couldn't even remember how he had come to be assigned to his current protectee.

Richard wanted to ask the principal (Amari, that is) to return him to the SRB for maintenance. Had wanted to do so since the day he woke up to find her expecting his help. They'd issue her a new bodyguard, one without his handicaps, and he'd be returned to optimal functionality. Every time he opened his mouth to make this request, however, something forbade him from speaking. Even the letters "SRB" wouldn't pass his lips in that order. He couldn't remember what they stood for or why he must go there. Yes, something was wrong with him, and it would do the principal no good until it was remedied.

And now she was hurt. That was bad. She was unconscious. Also bad - but, at the same time, it made things simpler. For a time, at least, there would be no stupid orders to contramand or complicate his programming, and no questions to distract him. His highest order was to protect the principal, and he had almost complete leeway to carry out that mission.

He left her on the ground far enough from the ruined building that nothing would fall on her. The creatures would not stop to feed until they were finished with combat, and he wouldn't make that easy for them.

About half of their pursuers had been crushed, the predictable result of tossing explosives around in a structurally-unsound building, but there were still several to go, more cautious and presumably more intelligent. He counted two crude sledgehammers and two hunting rifles, with the four of these parting to allow a hulking minigun to pass through their ranks. Richard decided to eliminate the worst threat first, before it could fill the air with bullets. Mutants were slow. He was counting on that. He was also counting on the fact that these particular mutants weren't used to fighting someone like him. After all, they were pretty far from the… the place that he'd come from, the name of which was dancing on the edge of his memory.

He'd been fast before. Now, unencumbered, he was faster. Rifle barrels swung toward him and the minigun began to spin, but he reached the lead mutant before it could shoot, climbing it like a tree and jamming the knife deep into the hollow behind its right ear before moving on. The quicker of the two wielding a hammer reacted quickly enough to take a swing at him as he ran through the gap between them. It succeeded only in injuring its fellow mutant - Richard himself was already gone, making a break for the decorative wall that ringed the edge of the square behind them.

He dropped below the low embankment, but not before a lucky ricochet skipped off the concrete and lodged in his calf muscle, inflicting damage that not even he could ignore. Sprinting was out, and he unslung his rifle again, preparing for a shoot-out from behind cover. He spared a glance for his charge, now moving feebly at the opposite end of the plaza. He hoped that she'd have the wherewithal to move while the mutants were distracted, because he wasn't at all sure that he'd be returning to her after this.

He exchanged fire twice more before he had to reload, grazing only scalp when his target shifted, and scoring an ineffectual hit on its torso the second time. Before he could fire again, however, another, louder crack from a better rifle finished off the enemy, taking off the top of the skull.

Allies were purely circumstantial when one was desperate and Richard didn't care who had done the shooting for the time being. As the number of enemies dwindled, however, and he saw the newcomers in action, however, he steeled himself for whatever might happen next. There were nine of them, all equipped with T-45d power armor, all toting superior firepower - energy weapons, powerful rifles, and heavy guns - and the handful of mutants remaining were no match for them in the open.

As with the figures in darker armor he'd spotted earlier in the day, the members of this group signified several things to his subconscious - some of them dangerous - but nothing at all to his higher-order processes. Are they friend or foe? In the space of a second, he had done the necessary calculations for a decision and was ready to act accordingly.

I can't win. He knew that at once. Richard wasn't the type to either overestimate or underestimate his own abilities. He had seen this cohort in action, and while some were certainly more experienced than others, they were collectively more than a match for him, equipped as he was.

I could run. His leg hurt, but he could still be out of sight in seconds if left to his own devices. On the other side of the assembled unknowns, the main complication to that plan groaned and rolled over. He wished she would get up and lend her non-threatening presence to the diplomatic situation.

They haven't shot at me yet. He had saved his bullets for the monsters, and these others had done the same. It didn't mean much, but it was something.

Making his choice - the only one he could under these conditions - he set his weapon down, only a slight tremble in his hand betraying his momentary indecision, and stood up very slowly, showing his empty palms. He was nearly as dangerous disarmed as he was with a second-rate weapon, but the gesture was what counted with humans.

Sure enough, they visibly relaxed at this and their leader stepped forward after putting one last laser burst into a downed mutant that still breathed.

The voice could have been male or female, young or old. He couldn't tell through the synthesizer in the helmet. It spoke imperiously, as if accustomed to quick agreements. "You have our thanks for drawing out the mutants, civilian. There's more blocking the way to a bunker and armory ahead. Help us take the position and we'll have shelter and aid to spare. Do we have a deal?"