Breathing hard, James leaned heavily on a rusty beam for a few seconds. He glanced up, squinting through the glare of the sun, and couldn't help but smile at the familiar sight of the aircraft carrier. It was, perhaps, a little more weathered than when he'd last seen it, but the sight of its silver towers, stacked on top of one another almost like child's toys, were a welcome sight.
The last time he'd traversed the Wasteland he had held a small child in his arms. This made the going a little more difficult, certainly, but two Brotherhood guards had accompanied him. He had also been 19 years younger. There certainly was nothing like three stories of steep inclines to remind him that he was now over 50.
He pressed a sweaty finger to the button on the intercom. He could not see, but he certainly felt, the eyes of whoever was on guard immediately sweep over him through a pair of binoculars from somewhere on the carrier deck.
"What's your business?" a gruff voice barked through the static.
"I'm here to see Dr. Madison Li. She and I are old colleagues."
A pause followed this statement, as the guard likely contemplated these words.
"Okay," a reply finally came through. "I'm extending the bridge. Stand back."
James regained his balance and took a few steps back. He was careful to avoid treading on the beggar sleeping nearby.
The bridge gave an almighty groan of protest before it began to crank out toward him. James supposed it didn't get much use anymore: the only people he'd met outside of Megaton and the Galaxy News Radio station were not civilized enough to enter Rivet City.
He stepped onto the bridge as soon as it creaked to a halt in front of him. The wind was fierce up here, and he glanced uneasily down at the radioactive waters of the Potomac below him. Even if he was successful in completing Project Purity and purifying the basin, no one would survive a fall like that.
He was glad to reach the other side; despite the unfriendly look the guard was giving him. The man wielded a 10mm SMG menacingly. James tried not to hold it against the man; he was simply doing his job.
"I don't want any trouble from you, got it? We had a slew of slavers almost get in here last week, and I won't stand for it."
"I'm not here to enslave or harm anyone," James assured him.
"Hmmph. Dr. Li's in the science lab. Just follow the signs."
"Thank you."
James' first thought, as he pushed open the heavy door marked "Stairwell", was that he would like to show Sara this place. She could skip Megaton and the downtown ruins, but this place…it was oddly beautiful in it's own, strange sort of way. And, more importantly, it was one of the most secure locations in the Wasteland. He knew she would enjoy touring one of the mysterious boats she'd read about in old books but had never seen in real life.
The sheer size of the ship was mind-boggling. James seemed to have forgotten in twenty years of Vault living how gigantic the world could seem. He ran a hand over the steel railing as he traversed a set of stairs and headed in the direction a sign labeled "Science Lab" pointed him.
His thoughts turned to Madison. He had been thinking about her a lot since leaving the Vault, repeatedly rehearsing what he would say to her once they met again. He knew she would likely to be bitter. The last time they'd seen one another ended with her storming out of the room and slamming the door behind her after he insisted he must leave and take the baby to a Vault. She had accused him of abandoning the project.
He knew he'd done the right thing, but Madison Li was an exceptional grudge-holder. The one time he'd seen her and Catherine fight was terrifying. His wife was ready to let the argument go after a few hours, but Madison held out for a solid week before speaking to her friend again.
How could she not want to continue the project though? Yes, it had taken a nearly twenty year hiatus, but James' short time back out in the Wasteland had convinced him more than ever of the importance of their work. More people showed signs of radiation sickness than he could ever remember. And even though the project had lost Catherine it had gained two more great minds: Jonas and Sara.
A young girl scurried past him, and he thought fondly of his own little girl tucked safe back in the Vault. He would not allow himself to imagine how betrayed she felt right now. He knew he had hurt her deeply. But that would all change once he went back and brought her out into the light. She would know he had only wanted to keep her safe, know that she meant so very much to him that he could not risk losing her too.
James came to another heavy door and shoved it open with great effort. The sign above it marked the area as the science lab.
He was suddenly nervous. His stomach twisted up in painful knots simply at the idea of seeing his old friend after so long. Hopefully she had come to understand in their twenty years apart. He briefly entertained the notion that maybe she'd had children of her own and would understand, but the very idea of Madison Li as a mother was entirely laughable.
He glanced down into the science lab from his perch on the stairwell above it. A young brunette woman seemed to be running some tests on what looked like some real vegetables. If growing actual food was what Madison Li had been up to for the past two decades, James was impressed.
He finally caught sight of her, seated and bent over a clipboard. Occasionally she reached up and impatiently tapped a bubbling beaker just to her right before jotting down something else onto her sheet of paper. From here, she seemed remarkably unchanged. Her dark hair was pulled up into a tight bun, exactly the same way she'd worn it nineteen years ago. Her impatience was visible in her repeated tapping on the beaker. He felt relieved that she was so instantaneously recognizable. Perhaps she had not changed too much but just enough to understand the decision he had made for his daughter.
The young brunette inspecting the row of vegetables caught sight of him and smiled politely.
"Hello. Can I help you?" she asked.
"If it's that Horace Pinkerton, you tell him I don't have time for any of his nonsense right now!" Dr. Li hissed without turning away from her work.
"I don't know who it is," the young woman confessed.
"Then I have even less time!"
"Madison, it's me. It's James," he said, carefully coming down the steep stairs to approach her.
She froze, her hand halfway extended out toward the beaker. The young woman glanced curiously at James, wondering how he'd had this effect on her mentor.
Madison slowly stood up, arms locked with one hand still extended toward the beaker and the other's fingers splayed across her clipboard to support herself.
"It's been a long time, Madison," James continued, unsure of what to make of her behavior and a little wary of how she'd frozen up at the sound of his voice. "Too long."
"You son of a bitch."
She whirled around to face him, and her eyes were blazing. He vaguely noticed that twenty years had not left her completely unchanged. Faint wrinkles extended from the corners of her eyes, and she looked more hardened and bitter than he remembered her.
"You think you can just waltz into my lab and pretend that we're old friends meeting up for dinner?"
"Listen, Madison, I know there's a lot we have to talk about-"
"You think?" she interrupted shrilly. "No, James, you listen. I have done just splendidly without you for the past twenty years. I haven't heard a damn word from you since you ran off twenty years ago, and you think you can just come in here and expect me to listen to anything you have to say?"
Her words stung. He had expected, even been prepared for, some bitterness and some harsh words. He had not, however, expected that she would want absolutely nothing to do with what he had to say to her.
"I just…" he began pathetically.
"How's that baby of yours, James? All grown up now and of no use to you so you thought you could just abandon her too and come back to me? You sicken me! You discard people when they're no longer of any use to you. It's a damn good thing Catherine died when she did, so she didn't have to face your inevitable abandonment."
"Enough!" James snapped. She could throw all the insults she wanted at him, but he would not have her accuse him of not loving Catherine or his daughter. "You know damn well I wanted nothing more than to stay! But then I would look down at the little girl in my arms, and the thought of losing her too was unbearable. How dare you bring Catherine into this."
This was going terribly. He didn't want to fight. He needed her help, not her animosity.
"Please, Madison." He raised a hand in apology. "I just want you to come back to work with me on Project Purity."
She made a noise of disgust, but he pressed on.
"There's so much we can do, that we need to do. There's hardly any purified water left in this entire area. We owe it to the people of the Capital Wasteland to offer them a chance at life!"
"Maybe you owe it to them. When you walked out that day, Project Purity ended. And, as far as I'm concerned, that was for the better. We were fools, James, to think a group of three young scientists could change the world. I don't know what you've been doing down in that Vault, but I'm channeling my abilities into more effective solutions." She gestured violently at the vegetables on the nearby table.
"There's nothing wrong with dreaming, Madison. We can do this-"
"Seriously, James, just stop. I don't want to hear it. Catherine's dead, you and I aren't getting any younger, and the Jefferson Memorial is overrun. It's done."
She made to turn away and return to her work with the beaker that was dangerously close to overflowing.
"Do you want to see her?" James asked, in desperation. "She's so much like Catherine."
Madison gazed back over at him. He thought, or perhaps imagined, her features had softened just a little bit.
"You were the first person to ever hold her. Don't you remember?"
"Of course I remember." The venom was gone from her voice. Her hands were shaking.
James reached down into his pocket and pulled out a carefully folded photo. He slowly began to unfold it, cautiously smoothing out the creases. He held the photo, face down, out to Madison. She took it, but did not look at it.
"That picture's hardly a month old. Jonas took it on her birthday. She's nineteen now and smarter than I could ever hope to be." He chuckled. "She's just like her mother."
Hands still shaking, Madison slowly turned the photo over in her hands and peered down at it. Something halfway between a laugh and a sob escaped her lips.
"She's the spitting image of you, James."
"That's what everyone says. She's got Catherine's nose though. Can't you see?"
"She does…and she's still got that red hair."
"I still don't know where it came from. She's training to be the Vault's doctor."
Madison's face hardened again as she continued to look at the photo, and when she spoke again it was more venomous than before.
"And you thought it would be okay to just leave her there? Did you tell her why you were leaving?"
His silence answered her question.
"Of course you didn't, James. You don't care for anyone but yourself and your dreams. You gave up everything for this girl nineteen years ago, but now you're too much of a coward to even stick around to be her father."
"I…though she was old enough…"
"She's nineteen. She's still a child."
Madison shoved the photograph back into his hands.
"I don't want anything to do with you or your project or your purified water. Go back to the Vault where you belong and stick to something for once in your miserable life."
She turned back to her work, and he knew it was hopeless. He was alone in this one.
Six hours later, sporting a busted lip from a scuffle with a Super Mutant, he tossed back a shot of scotch in the Jefferson Memorial and spoke into the recorder.
"Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me."