Anon and jdboss: thanks for the enthusiasm, guys. I'm most assuredly going to continue writing, and you're going to continue getting to read it!
Bridgedweller: there isn't a lot of wiggle room with the first section of the game. Besides sending Courier Six up I15, I was always going to be following Highway 95 around. The further into the story we get, the more you'll see it altered and changed from what the game presents us, but keep in mind this is a retelling, not a rewrite. Stick around, you might decide you like it.
Here is the conclusion to the Jason Bright arc, and a chapter that was very fun to write. The Nightkin are always a joy to be around, aren't they? I mean Tabitha, Lily, Davison, God... they're all such funny, funny people.
Ninth Hand – Orbit
30th October, 2281
The basement was dug well into the earth, a series of metal corridors and large, dimly lit rooms piled with chunk and torn apart by rabid searches; the hands of a century of scavengers delving into the long-abandoned facility in search of that one cache of Pre-War treasure that would set them for life. Failing that, they'd scavenged anything remotely shiny and hoped for enough money to reach Vegas and strike it grand at the betting tables. How many made it that far?
Didn't matter. Another metal door opened, the two sides sliding back and leaving the slab in the middle to slot into the floor.
Something stomped through the darkness and growled, thick and heavy chords in its throat.
Six slipped through and promptly jammed the lever back into the door frame, watching as the door slid back up and locked. His eyes were wide one moment, then squinted narrow and suspicious.
Jason had not lied. The 'demons' in the basement really were something just shy of invisible. Their silhouettes were only noticeable if one looked hard, hulking outlines shimmering in what little light there was, distortions rippling in the air. Certainly no demons, but something he knew he'd heard of before. No, he'd probably seen them before, when they weren't hiding.
"What's that, Antler? We have a visitor?"
A growling, thick voice, like the demons outside. In the room with him. He spun and took stock. An old office, a desk in the middle of the room with a long-dead terminal sitting on it, and on top of that a bull skull looking at him. The walls on both sides held filing cabinets, most hanging open and some outright torn out with their contents all over the floor, paperwork preserved well for decades within their metal safe-boxes.
Beyond the desk was a hallway leading down to another door, which seemed… odd. At the top of the door it jumped in the middle, running horizontally across and then spontaneously blurring upwards a short way before returning to its correct placement.
"Oh shit," the courier muttered.
There was the sound of electricity in the air, and suddenly the blurring around the door warped. Electricity arced across the distortion, revealing the bulge in the door to be the light bent around a form standing between it and Six, as he feared.
A moment later and the electricity ceased, revealing the massive form of a super mutant. Looking for all intents and purposes like a bulkier human, most super mutants also had a difference in skin colour. Traditionally they were green; however a specific class of the mutants was different. Their skin was a dark blue, changed by excessive use of a kind of Pre-War technology manufactured for covert special operations. Unfortunately, their skin was not the only thing that had changed within these mutants.
"An assassin, more like! I say kill it, Antler! For safe's sake!" the mutant growled, talking to the bull skull.
The enormous former man wore scraps of red cloth around his neck and chunks of leather put together around his shoulders. His torso was mostly bare, displaying a thick-skinned and muscular body. The rest of him was dressed in scraps of rags and more leather. His face, like all mutants, was set in a permanent grimace, aided by something akin to a rubber band stretching around behind his head and ending under the inside of his upper lip, curving under it and holding it up. Six didn't understand why, and no suppressed knowledge within him did either.
"Huh?" the mutant growled, looking between the drifter and the skull. There was a moment or two of silence. Six noticed that this mutant didn't carry a concrete hammer like the last mutant who'd seen him and dropped his stealth field to charge; screaming at the courier and brandishing a deadly chunk of former overpass support held in place by two rebar wires. This was even more intimidating: the bumper from a car, with one side cut shorter and then sharpened into a massive edge.
"Okay Antler. I'll ask," the mutant grunted, then turned back to Six, who could do little beyond return the attention. His heart was still beating from the first encounter, and since then he'd been creeping through the corridors terrified of every flicker of the basement's failing lights.
The mutant placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward, looking at the comparatively small, frail creature cowering at the other side. The grimace curved upwards as far as the mutant's lip would allow. Not a pretty smile. "Hi human. I Davison. Why you come here?" he asked as politely he could manage in a voice that was three quarters gravel and one quarter molasses.
"Me? Oh, yes, who else would it be?" the courier blubbered, before taking a breath. This one wasn't trying to kill him. The least he could do was talk straight in gratitude. "The ghouls asked me to come down and see why they weren't allowed downstairs. I'm Courier Six, by the way."
"A human who is friend to ghouls? Suspicious," Davison replied, looking him over. "You mean the ones upstairs. Antler used intercom, told them stay put. But they want to come down anyways?"
"What can I tell you?" Six sighed. "They need the basement for a job."
Davison was shaking his head and mumbling. He looked back up at the courier, still shaking his head. "I cannot allow. My kin are… not right in head like I am. They attack you on sight. Ghouls too. They crazy," he explained, almost all facts Six already knew.
Except the one about Davison being right in the head. That was new and contradictory information, but you roll with what you're given. "Your ghoul friends have to wait until you find what Antler brought us to get."
Courier Six looked at him. "Me? Well… alright," he decided. Another courier job, essentially. If nothing else, he seemed to be good at those.
"Good. Antler brought us here for a reason… Why was that, Antler?" the confused mutant asked, looking to the bull skull for reassurance. Yes, clearly Davison was right in the head. "Right! A piece of paper! Shipment invoice! Hundreds of stealth boys, sent here a long time ago…"
'Stealth boys', the rather un-threatening name for a device that when activated could turn a person nigh-invisible. The blue-skinned mutants had been changed by gaining a specialty for them, helping them utilise the technology, but with extended use came a number of drawbacks, all of them on the mental plane. One such example could be developing a split personality believed to be the deity soul inhabiting a bull skull, for example.
"But stealth boys must be in the one room we don't search yet – the one we can't search," Davison concluded.
"Why not?" Six inquired.
Davison growled. "A ghoul. But not squishy like others. This ghoul is tough. I thought Antler said send my kin into that room, but three died. Ghoul is a crack shot, and set traps too," the super mutant rumbled, crossing his enormous arms and standing back to full height, a hint of embarrassment in his face. "After, I realise I heard Antler wrong. So I lock the door to keep kin out and wait for Antler to tell me what to do. Then you come along. Antler says you are solution."
Twice in one day Six had played the role of divine messenger. Once for a radiantly glowing ghoul, and now for the dark-blue skinned mad mutant. He could open a business in celestial couriering if this was his average order rate. Hell, maybe his real name was Hermes!
"Alright," he said, his confidence returning to power now that the initial shock of the murderous building-sized beings wore off and his introverted joking setting him at ease. "So I find those stealth boys, you guys clear out, and the ghouls can come down and do whatever it is they need to do here. Sound alright?" he rationalised.
"Yes, Antler says we leave here as soon as we get the stealth boys," Davison agreed. "We uh, had incident with one of the ghouls who tried force her way in for key. Tell tough ghoul we sorry. Here, I give you key."
The mutant rummaged around in the scraps of clothing he wore and produced an old-styled iron key, which he tossed over the desk. Six ducked as the mutant's superhuman strength sent it clanging into the wall behind him with enough kinetic force to give him double vision for the next few hours.
Picking it up, he gave a wave, pivoted on the spot, and turned the wheel to open the door, crossing his eyes in an outward sign of 'cuckoo!' while Davison couldn't see.
Immediately he dropped low and began creeping through the metal corridors once more, somewhat cautiously but also unable to stop himself from being a little lighter of step for Davison's less brutal method of communication. The rest of his mutant friends might have been psychotic, but at least he was just unaware of his multiple personality disorder. Antler seemed nice too.
Really though, this whole thing was a little ridiculous. Blue super mutants had an almost one-hundred percent tendency toward insanity, sure, but the religious ghouls was a little less realistic.
Still, the world was a strange place. According to Morgan there were even legends of albino talking Deathclaws back in California. Six still didn't remember exactly what a Deathclaw was, but he knew they didn't talk.
He pressed himself against a corner as something huge stomped down the hallway around the corner, and once he was sure the footsteps were again moving away from him he slipped past and down a flight of stairs. The door he was looking for was one he'd already tried to open. Not like it'd be anything else, nowhere else in the basement was locked.
He paused again as he slipped down the stairs. Something was breathing heavily right in front of him. Closer inspection revealed he'd nearly walked straight into the back of another mutant, its shimmering outline right in front of him, slowly moving up and down as the former human stared at the door Davison had locked.
Taking a step back as quietly as he could, the courier looked around frantically for an alcove to scurry into and hide, but the closest was the corner back where another mutant was wandering, and he couldn't risk rounding the corner just to have his head pulverised by one of those hammers. His poor head had already been through a lot.
He could make a run for the door, but even unlocked they took a few seconds to open, and with a monster like that weighing down on him he doubted he'd get the key in the lock let alone turn it and then the door valve.
He drew his gun from his coat and held it approximately where the mutant's head would be if he turned around, and took an insane chance.
"This Antler. Let human pass, or Davison give you no stealth boys we find!" he said in his best impersonation of Davison. It was off, he knew. His voice carried a little more bass and not quite the thickness of the super mutant's voice no matter how hard he tried.
A burst of electricity and the mutant before him spun, his eyes wide with panic. "Antler speaks to me!" it said incredulously.
"I speak through human. He is messenger of Antler. Let him pass, he find stealth boys!" Courier Six growled, getting closer this time.
He could almost hear the grinding and whirring of the mutant's mind as it worked. The human said it was Antler. No, Antler spoke through the human and commanded he let him pass. If he didn't he would receive no stealth boys. The human really ought to be smashed into thin red paste on the floor though. But then Antler might be mad, and when they got past the ghoul in the room he'd get none of the hundreds of stealth boys. He really wanted the stealth boys. But why would Antler use a human? Then again, Antler's wisdom was unfathomable to lower minds. Could Antler actually speak through someone other than Davison? Shouldn't Davison have just come down himself to sort this matter out? This human was incredibly suspicious. But at the same time, Antler's blessing meant that harming him would cost him stealth boys. He really wanted the stealth boys. Maybe Antler could transfer its powers through Davison into others via some psychic link? Still, using a human seemed highly unnecessary when there were so many durable mutants around to do the job. Then again, Antler's wisdom was unfathomable to lower minds.
Six had already unlocked the door, opened it, stepped through, closed it again, and nearly walked into the first bear trap.
"Come and get it, you big dumb – Hey! You're not one of those things out there. Who the hell are you?" the guttural rasp of a ghoul asked, and Six looked up to see the 'tough' ghoul standing on a catwalk up above aiming a shotgun down at him.
He grinned. "Nice to meet you, I'm the cult courier, running religious messages from Antler to Bog. I'm here about your demon infestation. Bright sent me," he said, feeling thoroughly pleased with himself about getting past the 'checkpoint' without firing a single shot.
The ghoul spat, which verified that yes, ghouls did still produce saliva, before replying. "And I bet he told you it's the creators will for you to risk your ass, instead of him, right?" he wondered. Like most ghouls, this one had a gnarled face, but he still retained some of his hair, suggesting his ghoulification was somewhat more recent than many others. He wore some kind of combat armour, thick material in a vest and wrapped around his wrists, all of it black, and on his hands were black gloves.
"I think it may have been somewhere in the verbal contract, yes," Six replied, nodding.
The ghoul chuckled and lowered the weapon. "Well, good luck with that! I'd give you a hand, but no thanks. I may look like a corpse, but I'm partial to living!" he stated solidly.
The drifter slipped his own gun back into its holster and looked at the room before him. It was an expansive area once again, with crates stacked all across the ground floor and a square of catwalks above it. The ghoul had set up a number of bear traps on the floor, and the headless corpse of one super mutant was nearby, its foot still trapped in the cold metal jaws. Another slumped against the back wall, its entire front gone from blue to sick purple with red blood. The alleged third was nowhere to be seen.
"So how'd you get trapped back here?" he tried, launching a different dialogue to avoid talking about Bright and his religion.
The ghoul seemed to take offence. "First off, I'm not trapped. This was a tactical choice, all right? I'm no match for those things out there, so I found a good defensive position, and I've been defending it, right?" he explained, irritated. Then he sighed and let his gun fall completely to his side, the barrel aimed at the floor instead of somewhere around Six's feet. "Aw who am I fooling? I'm trapped. Name's Harland. Pleased to meet you."
The wanderer waved up at him. "Just call me courier, it's easier," he replied.
Harland nodded. "Alright then, courier. What happened was I was escorting folks down to work when those things attacked us. Most of the fight was upstairs, but some folks panicked and made for the basement. And I went after them. Well, turns out there were even more of those bastards down here than upstairs, and things went to shit fast. I couldn't find the others, so I fell back to this room and set up a nice little kill zone. End of story."
"Ouch, those things hit hard. Alright Harland, if I can have a look around in here I might be able to find something to get them out of the building, and then you and Bright can all go about your business undisturbed by psychotic blue mutants. Sound alright?" Courier Six asked, taking a careful step forward, past a bear trap.
Harland's shotgun was back to being pointed at him. "Ha, well you're polite, I'll give you that, and if it were just between you and me, I'd do as you ask. But it's not. I had a friend with me when those mutant bastards came out of nowheres. She panicked and ran the wrong direction – further into the basement. She's probably dead, but I ain't leaving until I know for sure. I'd have gone looking myself, except I wouldn't last a minute out there," he detailed, keeping his shotgun held steady, keeping Six on his toes between two bear traps, rather precariously.
He looked up at the ghoul and sighed. Davison had already explained her fate. "The mutant leader, Davison, says he's sorry about that. He thought she was trying to steal one of the keys, and it got a little messy."
Harland visibly sagged. "I see. Damn it, I'm going to miss that crooked, yellow smile… All right, look around up here if you want," he sighed, letting his weapon drop again and turning away.
Six hopped past the bear traps and scurried across the room to the staircase, feeling sorry for the mercenary. Clearly ghouls weren't incapable of love, or at least affection. Not that he'd expected they were mind. Even if it was basically necrophilia. Still, who exactly decided what was right and what was wrong in this impossibly fucked up world? Two corpses in love weren't so different from two humans in love. Except for the skin and hair. Possibly bodily- really, enough of that kind of thinking.
Behind the catwalks was a small alcove in the upstairs where a desk was set, atop which was a computer, this one still in working condition. Six wandered over and checked the desk drawers. A few bottle caps which he quickly snatched up, a toy car and a few scraps of rusted metal. Nothing impressive.
He tried the terminal next, and found it unlocked, remarkably. Tapping on the keyboard, he found himself looking at a small collection of notes arranged by date.
The first was about the shipment of stealth boys, two whole crates sent here by mistake. The next was about employees swiping them and using them illegally. Office pranks mostly, and a few episodes of harassment. The third claimed they'd been sealed in this very room.
Aha! The fourth told him that they'd been sent back to RobCo HQ, where they were manufactured. Davison wouldn't be pleased.
"I'm going to make a break for topside," Harland said, passing Six on his way to the stairs.
"Hang on," Six said, stepping back from the console and following him. "I'm going to go speak to Davison about the shipment he's hunting for. If I tell him they're not here he should take the mutants and leave."
"Or kill you," Harland pointed out.
"Or kill me," Six agreed. "Either way it'll cause commotion. Slip past then. Your signal will be either gunfire, mutants screaming, or me coming back to tell you."
Harland paused and looked him up and down. "All right," he said eventually. "What's another ten minutes?"
"That's the spirit," Six said with a grin, carefully making his way over the bear traps once again and turning the door valve.
It slid open, and he passed through, closing it again behind him.
The super mutant hadn't cloaked himself yet, and was still staring hard at the patch of ground in front of him. Six cleared his throat quietly. "Antler thanks you for your patience. Please proceed to the upstairs with the rest of our kin, and Davison will explain everything shortly." He'd have to work more on his super mutant voice at some point.
The super mutant regressed into thought once again. He really really wanted to just pulverise the human, but the upstairs speech from Davison must have been important. Why use a human messenger again? Ah well, Antler's wisdom was unfathomable to lower minds.
Slipping through the corridors, Six was getting the hang of the subterranean collection of corridors as he opened the door to Davison's 'office' to find the mutant seated at his desk
"Yes, Antler, but don't queens move like 'L's? Oh, that's knights? Hurhn."
"Not interrupting am I?" the courier asked, stepping forward. Davison looked up, his conversation about chess pieces interrupted.
"Antler sings for stealth boys. Have you found them?" he demanded.
The wanderer shook his head. "I'm afraid there aren't any in the building anymore," he explained.
"Liar!" Davison bellowed, slamming his enormous hand through the desk. Suddenly Six was scared of mutants again. "The invoice said stealth boys here! Antler read it out loud to me!"
Taking a deep breath, Six looked at the enormous being. "They were sent here by mistake. They got sent back to RobCo HQ, wherever that is."
"But invoice said stealth boys were here! Why can't that note be true?" he demanded further. "What, Antler…? But human could be lying! Stealing the stealth boys for itself!"
Six began to reach for his gun again. The other hand slowly went for his machete.
"Oh Antler, you trust so easy!" Davison growled in a defeated tone, and Six relaxed somewhat. "Your lucky day, human, Antler believe you," he continued, like a child deprived of sweets. "Nightkin will follow the new note to find stealth boys. Better be there."
As Davison picked up the bull skull – Antler – and walked away, Six stepped aside and realised that 'Nightkin' was the name of Davison's class of super mutant; the stealthy blue ones who were able to harness the powers of the Pre-War stealth boys.
Before long, the basement was empty. He and Harland made their way back upstairs in silence, both wrapped up in their own thoughts; Harland probably of the fallen ghoulette, and Six on Nightkin, cults, and walking corpses.
As they stepped out of the basement and began making their way up the catwalks, the wanderer was roused from his thoughts as Harland spoke.
"You did good, smoothskin. Never thought I'd get out of that room," the ghoul thanked.
His companion nodded, and his hand twitched as if he was going to clap Harland on the back, but he never got that far. "You're welcome," he replied, simply.
When Harland stepped through the door to Bright's hideout, he was greeted with an enthusiastic chorus from the robed ghouls inside, and Six could see he appreciated the attention.
Through their midst, the glowing ghoul that led them walked, stopping a safe distance from the courier. "Is the way clear?" he asked, and the chorus fell to silence immediately.
Harland looked at him and grinned in a crooked, heart-warming way. "The 'demons' shall trouble you no more," Courier Six stated.
Once again, the ghouls were celebrating, even greater than before. The rasping, guttural sounds of their voices seemed an odd throng to Six, but it was not unwelcome.
Chief among them was Jason Bright himself, who… shone with appreciation. "Praise the Creator! And bless you, wanderer! The way is clear. I will lead my flock through the basement to the sacred site," he said joyously. "I hope you will come with us, wanderer. There is much to be done."
"More, on top of all that's already happened?" Six inquired, stepping backwards as Jason began advancing toward him. With no choice between the oncoming radiation and the catwalk behind him, the courier moved backwards until he could stand aside and watch the congregation go past, down into the basement, to the 'sacred site' Jason spoke of.
Almost forgetting his robotic companion, Six nearly made to follow them immediately, before dashing back upstairs to collect the floating orb with an apology. ED-E's static hissing and beeping seemed to indicate it was aware that irritation was an acceptable response to this treatment, and it enjoyed the opportunity.
As the last of them vanished into the lower levels, Six sighed and followed. Despite what he'd done here, the ghouls had yet to actually leave, and he'd told the sniper he'd see them gone. It was certainly too late to just start killing them all.
Following them down through the maze of the underground, he noticed that they were passing through the office Davison had occupied. As they went, Harland stopped to collect the fallen ghoul's body and carried it with him. Clearly she'd meant something to the once-human creature.
He passed through a door Davison had previously barred and found that a secret staircase had been concealed beneath one of the floor panels, technology built before the Great War by secretive businesses that needed ways to hide the darker offices of their research and agendas.
Another tunnel followed, this one long and narrow, sunken in the middle, like a sewer passage, though if it had once served any drainage purposes that had ceased; it was dry as a bone. Yet still the building's power kept the dim lights to lead the way.
Nothing hid in this darkness; it was a tranquil, inky black in the shadows where the pitiful lights could not reach, untouched by the more disturbing aspects of life beyond the world's death. At least, until recently, when a cult of ghouls had arrived.
A large metal door, bigger than the others he'd previously been through, stood open before him. Beyond it hundreds of little lights lit up a room, and as Six stepped in he found himself in a technological archive of Pre-War computers, all linked and still operational.
Chris, the human who believed himself a ghoul, wandered about between the consoles checking lights, displays, flicking switches, and other things that presumably promised success in whatever venture they were designed for. A window sat at the front of the room, through which a mild green glow could be seen, and Six immediately knew there was more radiation down there. He wasn't about to push his luck by scavenging then.
Jason stood in front of the window, one hand in the other, watching Chris work. Behind him, in the green light, the drifter realised something else was looming. A cylinder of some kind.
"I waited to speak with you one last time before I descended to the launch pad, wanderer," the ghoul leader said, stepping forward. Six backed up as Jason's presence pushed him back into the tunnel and Bright shut the door behind him again.
"What's the deal?" he inquired. "Don't want me hanging about your holy site?"
"I do not want Chris to hear us," Jason replied, looking at the courier seriously. "I want you to know that we will remember for all eternity how you delivered us to the threshold of the Great Journey. If you would still help us further, speak to Chris. There are a few aspects of the launch he could use your aid with."
"Speaking of Chris…" Six pointed out, cutting through Jason's talk of prophecy and messiahs.
Bright nodded. "After all that you have done for us, I suppose you deserve to know," he admitted. "When Chris came to us, we tried to convince him that he was human. But this only seemed to anger him. He seemed… lost. We decided to let him stay with us for a few days, over the course of which we learned that his technical skills far surpassed our own. It became clear that the Creator sent him to us, to ensure the success of the Great Journey."
Six cocked an eyebrow at the explanation disbelievingly, but Jason ignored him and continued his story.
"Equally clear was that Chris should labour in blessed ignorance of his humanity, and his inability to make the journey himself," the glowing one explained.
"What kind of an excuse is that?" the courier questioned, his eyebrow rising further. "You've had him help you get ready for this… 'journey' knowing full well he could never join you, but promising it all the same."
"It is no coincidence two humans have been vital to the success of the Great Journey!" Bright justified. "It is my belief the Creator sent you and Chris to expiate the sins of your kind against mine. You are redeemers both."
"Bottom line: you're leaving him behind," the courier said flatly.
"Such is the Creator's will. Vision upon vision has shown me that, were Chris to accompany us, he would die in minutes. The radiation around the launch pad alone would kill Chris. The radioactivity in the Far Beyond is much stronger," the cult leader continued to justify and excuse himself.
Six turned away from the ghoul and crossed his arms, scowling.
"It is the Creator's will, and I must submit!" Bright stated in the double-layered voice. "There is no malice in it; we would take him with us if we could!"
"You justify this to me. Chris is right there beyond that door, yet you're talking to me. I don't know what to say, Bright. Maybe I should have interpreted that radioactive glow you give off like I would any other, instead of giving you special treatment. I've done my part, and I'll send you on your 'Great Journey'. Tell stories about me or condemn me for all eternity, I don't care. Just go," he spat venomously over his shoulder.
The sigh that echoed through the tunnel was eerie, like a ghost. "There is no way we can thank you enough, wanderer. Your arrival here was a blessing. We will remember you. Always."
The door opened again, and Jason walked away, taking his beliefs and excuses with him. Six stood in the tunnel for some time, letting the storm of his own indignation burn itself out. Finally, he sighed, nowhere near as audible as Jason's, and turned around.
The cylinder – he saw it was flanked by two more – stood ready on the launch pad below. Three rocket ships, to carry a cult of ghouls away on a journey to a promised land. How absurd.
"Jason says I am to cooperate with you on the final tasks necessary to launch the Great Journey," Chris growled, watching him.
Six stared at him. Smooth skin. Bald head. Very much human. "Chris, why can't you go down onto the launch pad?" he asked.
It was Haversam's turn to sigh. "When I joined the flock, Jason made it clear that he wanted me to supervise repairs, not do them myself," he explained.
"Because the radiation on the launch pad would kill you. Because radiation kills humans," the courier jabbed again.
"I thought we were past all that, smoothskin. But you just can't resist the chance to mess with me. Typical human. I was human once, you know. Grew up in Vault 34, east of here," Chris replied nostalgically. "Nice upbringing, if you like assault rifles and target practice. But oh, you prefer machines that don't kill people? Not so nice then. 'Who should maintain the Vault's reactor? Houser? Mitchell? No – make it Haversam. He likes machines! Haversam won't mind getting irradiated! Haversam won't mind mutating! He's already ugly as it is! Haversam won't mind when his hair starts falling out after a few years! There's no connection, Haversam! You're neurotic!'"
A few seconds of silence fell, and Six processed the ranting. Then he laughed. "You left your Vault because you were going bald!"
"Bald! You call this bald smoothskin! I'm a monster! A monster!" Haversam replied, like something out of a bad movie.
"Oh for fuck's sake," the courier said, frustrated and tired at still being on the job this long past midnight. He grabbed Chris by the back of his lab coat's collar and dragged him over to the window, thrusting his face into it so that he could see his reflection. "Skin. Smooth skin. No hair, something that happens to men, especially the high strung ones like you. Go on, run your hands over your face. Smooth. Get it? Smooth!" he yelled, letting him go and stepping back. "How the fuck did you not notice that you still have eyebrows? What about the moustache? You. Are. Human."
The penny dropped.
"Oh god… you're telling the truth…" Chris realised, studying his reflection for what must have been the first time in a very long time.
Six wanted to cry with joy. Or beat the delusional sod out of his mind. He settled for a triumph for the forces of reason.
"Oh no! How could they do this to me? For two years! My god, I've been a joke to them!" Chris wallowed in self-pity. Then he paused, and turned around, looking at Six hysterically. "Do you have any idea how easy it'd be for me to sabotage these rockets? That'd be a joke, huh? One hell of a joke!"
Perhaps he'd overdone it with the 'proof of humanity'. "No need to go that far, Chris. Bright deceived you, not the rest of them. You're not going to blow them all up."
"What, you think I'm too stupid to pull it off? I know enough to get their rockets working, don't I? So I can make them fail, too!" he said proudly.
The wanderer shook his head. "Let's just get those kooks on their way so we don't have to hear from them again," he said.
But Chris was red with fury. His devotion, in his eyes, had been a lie. Everything he'd worked towards had been manipulation and deceit. "They used me! And now they'll throw me away!"
Six's frustration peaked again, and this time it wasn't a simple grab that expressed it. This time he went straight to violence. His hand clenched into a fist and he slammed it straight into Chris' forehead. To the man's credit, he wobbled, but didn't fall. Six wasn't the best with nothing but his fist, but he knew he threw a decent punch. "They used you? No, they took you in, moron! When you were too stubborn to realise you were just aging! Now you want to kill them all just because your mid-life crisis was solved by lying ghouls? Would you rather you were still running around the wastes telling everyone you were a ghoul? Maybe you could go see one of the patrols from Caesar's Legion, ask them to treat you like a ghoul! Newsflash, lightbulb, you're a goddamn human. We outnumber ghouls. There's a town less than an hour down the road that would love someone who knows about machines! But no, you want to suck those religious idiots into your vacuum of self-pity because they couldn't break through your delusions. Get over it."
Thoroughly stunned, both physically and mentally, Chris fell into a rhythm of rubbing his forehead and muttering.
Finally, his trance ended. "Life amongst humans again, that's what you're suggesting? I guess…" he trailed off, and looked out at the rockets, where the ghouls waited for their signal. "I guess it's the only chance I've got. I can't believe I'm agreeing to this, but I'll give it a try. I'll get Jason and his flock on their way, and then I'll head for Novac."
Six noticed he was still talking as though he was a ghoul. After long enough, it must have just become second nature.
"So what needs to be done?"
"I need to operate things here, but for the launch I need you to go up to the viewing platform and trigger the primary mechanism. Make sure everything up there stays green, and I'll do my part down here," Haversam explained. Already he was showing signs of reform. After the shock, it seems he'd be quite the rocket scientist.
"Alright, that's all?" the courier double checked.
"Yes. Get going. I'll tell Jason we're ready," Chris replied, shooing him away with a hand as he tapped a few buttons on one of the room's many consoles.
The drifter looked about, finding the viewing platform signposted as being down up a long ladder that was set into the wall on the right side of the control room. Chris spoke into the intercom as he left, and in the narrow ladder chute he could hear the strange, delusional man's words echo around him.
"The rockets are ready Jason. The Great Journey can begin. Good luck, I guess."
Jason Bright, leader of the Bright Followers, could be heard over the intercom as he addressed his flock. His voice, already echoing itself when he spoke, filled the tunnel as Six ascended.
"Gather, all. May the Creator guide my words and help me speak true. The almighty Creator has seen fit to answer our prayers! The time has come for us to board the rockets, and begin the Great Journey. Though it may seem that all humans despise us, the Creator has seen fit to instruct us differently. The journey ahead would have been impossible if not for the intersection of two human friends, one new, the other a long abiding companion. To our new friend, we say thanks, and promise to never forget how he cleared from our path the demons who sought to stay our journey. But to Chris… we owe more than thanks. Chris; you have made this great journey a reality. From this moment forward, you will be remembered as the Saint of the Great Journey. We shall never forget you. I ask that you forgive us, Chris, and give us your blessing – and we bestow ours upon you."
Six wasn't sure, but over the speech, he thought he heard the sounds of someone sobbing.
He reached the viewing platform, noting that a fire escape dropped away to the outside. He was in a small metal box atop a cliff face looking out over the REPCONN plaza. The model rocket was a dark entity dominating the courtyard's centre, and in the light of the stars and what little of the moon had grown in the days since its new birth illuminated the enormous dome seated in the rock face behind the plaza. Most of the front of the viewing platform was wide and open, the glass that once was there had fallen away years ago, leaving the air to blow dust across the metal.
There was a large console here, still working, like the rest of the building, which was showing green lights, all except for one. Six wasn't excellent with machines that he could tell, but after looking at it carefully, he found the problem; a slight problem with the rocket trajectory, which the computer could easily compensate for, as long as a human was there to okay the decision. Six did just that, and watched as the last light turned green.
A smaller console sat facing out toward the dome, Six could see in what little light there was the switch labelled 'launch'. He took a deep breath. This certainly wasn't what he expected when he woke up yesterday morning.
The enormous dome began to open, two halves sliding open to reveal the rockets as they rose upon the launch pad.
He spared a glance at the console. All green. He chuckled. Like Bright. All green.
The rocket engines ignited, spewing flames behind them. They were held in place on the launch pad though. First they'd build thrust…
All engines burst into life, one after the other, until the rear of the rockets were nothing but masses of flame, ready to propel the rest of their enormous bulk forwards.
Chris must have been working overtime down there, doing the job a team of engineers would typically do. He pulled it off well though. The doors of the dome were locked in place, open. The engines reached full power, and an alarm began to ring.
For a moment Six panicked. Then, somewhere in the bowels of REPCONN, Chris Haversam, the man who'd believed himself a ghoul, who had left the safety of his Vault in the belief he was a mutant, pressed one last button.
The Bright Followers were released to the skies, as the launch pad released the rockets and they burst forward with ferocious lust for the sky. One swerved wildly and for one heart-stopping moment Courier Six believed his life would be snuffed out by a rocket ship smashing into him.
It corrected and joined the other two, much to his eternal pleasure, and surged into the sky, illuminating the dark heavens with three great trails of fire ripping across the sky and into the atmosphere.
His deal with Manny Vargas, concerned Novac protector, was complete on his side. Now he'd obtain the information he wanted. He'd continue his hunt. And hundreds of years from now Jason Bright would tell the tale of how the wanderer had arrived to cleanse the 'demons' that blocked the path, and how Chris Haversam, balding, delusional moron, had redeemed humanity in the eyes of the ghouls.
He made for the fire escape, choosing not to trouble the scientist as he enjoyed his triumph alone and hid his emotions, laughing all the while. "What a night!" he laughed on the way down, wandering through the empty plaza with ED-E in tow, the robot's sensors alert for any dangerous threats in the darkness.
The road back to Novac was uneventful, and Manny would have been asleep when he returned anyway, so he made no attempt at hurry. Finally, the tee wrecks appeared before him, and he gratefully strolled towards it, eager to return to bed.
ED-E buzzed as he moved, and from experience he knew the sound meant he detected something. A moment later, Six could hear it too. The sound of a lone tire rolling along asphalt two hundred years old. A moment later, the voice was added too.
"Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, if it ain't my old friend from Goodsprings!"
The electronic cowboy who dug him out of his grave.
It was Victor.
~Orbit: A full rotation of all blinds at the table, with each player in turn opting into the hand rather than folding pre-emptively.