AN: Trigger warning for bodily horror. I'm also adding a major character death warning for the fic as a whole (not specifically this chapter).

Stab. Stomp. Schlunk. That schlunk was Megan's favorite part, the sinking sensation of the shovel sinking under her weight and momentum into the earth, the blade biting through even the hard-baked crust. It got harder to jump as the day wore on - the joints of the suit would fill with grit and, besides, she was tired and nothing she did changed that. She ate, drank, and slept in the shadowy, in-between times but she was always empty. Always unsatisfied. There was no end to the work she had to do. As long as there was power for her suit, however, she could keep moving. That mattered more than anything else.

Approaching the end of a fusion core was the worst, like dying a slow, torpid death. It was one of the few times she absolutely had to concede to natural limits. She hated the long, ponderous slog back, feeling like she was moving through water or a particularly bad nightmare. Once, it froze up completely fifty feet short of shelter, stuck between one step and the next. The struggle to escape her prison, collect a power source, and return to retrieve the suit - facing exposure to the elements all the while - had been sufficiently painful to teach her a lesson: always carry a spare. Thankfully, the silo's commissary had them stocked in great quantities. As soon as the Followers had broken through the multiple layers of security, Megan had seized the opportunity to bogart as many as she could carry, concealing them at several strategic points throughout the town. No matter what, she wouldn't be caught out helpless again.

Things had gotten better… or, rather, her response to things had gotten better. Engrossed in the work she must do, she had stopped caring about the way the others treated her. She didn't hear the gossip, see the suspicious expressions, or notice the way a group fell silent when she passed through a room. The only emotion she did feel was mild annoyance when someone asked her to do things that distracted from her main task. She did them, of course: collected specific supplies, carefully detached the payload from any warheads she found, and reported occasionally to the expedition leaders on her discoveries. Most of her discoveries. Some she kept to herself.

Not the detonator. It didn't occur to her to hold that back. Intuition told her its likely purpose, but she shrugged it off and put it in the scientists' hands along with the papers she'd found with it. The ghouls had been keeping it like a sacred totem in a crate atop one of their hideouts, but there was no evidence that they'd ever used it. Megan, for her part, had no interest in adding any more ambient radiation to the environment. Not frivolously, in any case. By then, she knew that the Divide was a loss as far as people were concerned, but another part of her knew that it might someday recover, if only it was left alone. Even if that was a geological age away, she'd not do anything to delay that day. She'd spent too much time with the Followers to do that.

The things she kept secret were the memories of people and places that came to her unbidden. Like how she knew that the partially mummified man found pinned under the roof of his tiny shack had been disabled, a simple-minded person the whole community had looked after affectionately. Or how she recognized at once that one of the children who had lived in a farmhouse on the edge of town was missing. She ate up half a day frantically searching for a third small corpse, giving up in despair only when her Pip-Boy started flashing warning lights of the thirst and exhaustion she hadn't noticed. If anyone had seen her and asked, she would have said she was looking after her neighbors. No one noticed. She was alone out there.

Megan succeeded in bypassing Arcade almost every day. She left before he woke up, and returned as late as she could manage, letting herself in with the security code the Followers had set up on the blast doors. She told herself she wasn't avoiding him, only giving them both a break from each other's company. When they did happen to meet, she gave him every assurance she could muster, betraying only cheerful impatience and exhaustion, neither of which would invite much scrutiny. She didn't want him to interfere until she was done. She also didn't want him looking too hard at her actions, unsure of what he would think. He was so much more perceptive than Lily, after all, and so much more likely to raise a fuss. She straight-up told Lily how she spent her days, knowing that she wasn't one to ask invasive questions or tell tales on her to the others.

"Do you think it's the right thing to do?" she finished. Wrapped up in blankets and tucked in against the furnace of the nightkin's side, she could say anything, ask anything, without worry. Lily had nothing but approval to offer in return. She was the safest of safe confidents.

"Yes dear, of course. Grandma would help you if she could. That wind is very, very bad for her complexion, though." Her every word was punctuated by the clickety-clack of needles the thickness of railroad spikes, tools that never seemed to rest. Under different circumstances, it could have been annoying, but Megan found it soothing. "Who else would take care of them, if not you?"

"No one, I guess," she mumbled. "They'd just stay there until the sand wore them away." This thought, the thought of so many left, made her tense sore muscles, aching to return to it. She must finish. Even in the sleep that eventually came, she kept up that same motion: Stab. Stomp. Schlunk. A heave and a toss, and repeat. Six feet long and three feet deep. The shovel made it easy to measure. Her days were measured in new holes. She could do about twenty, in addition to her other duties, if she didn't slack off. Sometimes more, sometimes less. She'd bring her number home to Lily and her nonsense comfort would make her inadequacy bearable. There were still so many to find.

Of course, all this was before the bottom dropped out of her sanity. After that - after the big discovery - she kept digging, but couldn't talk to Lily. Not about important things, anyway. Even Grandma had her limits (presumably) and Megan didn't want to find them.

If Arcade had been less distracted, and not privately rehashing the total disintegration of his way of life, he might have noticed the warning signs sooner. To all appearances, Megan was doing well under the circumstances. Too well. She smiled too much and spoke very little. She was alone for nine or ten hours at a time, coming back only to eat and sleep. These patterns did not fit his prior experience with her, but when she more or less politely rebuffed his questions about where she went and what she did, he didn't press her, assuming that "calm" meant she was alright. He'd assumed that Ulysses was her primary problem and, when she didn't even mention him, he relaxed. Something about Hopeville had piqued her interest and she seemed content to spend her days exploring every nook and cranny of the town. Nothing wrong with that, he decided.

Around the two-week mark, there was a change in her demeanor and behavior, and no amount of distraction could keep him from noticing. She moved her bedroll away from Lily's, shifting it closer and closer to the exit until it was just a few hundred feet away from the door, near the remains of one of the sentry bots. This allowed her to come and go without interaction. If he saw her at the evening meal, it was only a glimpse. When he tried to talk to her, it felt like a confrontation instead of a conversation, with her eyes darting around him, already mentally gone, answering his questions with quick disinterest. She was too tired for talking, she said. When he asked, almost in earnest, if she was ready to move on from Hopeville, her response was immediate and surprisingly vehement: "Not yet!" He wasn't ready either, not really, so he let this drop, ignoring the pricklings of unease.

It was Lily, of all people, who brought him a second warning, a few evenings later, and again he failed to take immediate action. It was so easy to not take Lily seriously, and the nicknaming didn't help.

"Archie?"

"What it is it, Lily?" He willed himself to have patience, but found it in short supply. Only yesterday, she'd brought him a hat with ridiculous ear-flaps, refusing to leave until he'd tried it on.

"Grandma doesn't need her medicine anymore. But she did bring it. Just in case of emergencies."

"Oh?" Surgery aside, Arcade wasn't at all sure the nightkin wouldn't benefit from a regular dose of antipsychotics. However, he had no idea who would fill the prescription once Dr. Henry had passed. It was best not to create a unsustainable dependency. "That's good, Lily." He wondered where she was going with this.

"Can Grandma give them to Miranda? She's been talking to herself. She doesn't say it, but she thinks she's two people. A good one and a bad one."

The nightkin had never once called their mutual friend by her correct name, but he knew who she was talking about. "No. Negative. At the dosage that works for you, it would poison her." He took a deep breath, trying to decide if he should demand that she hand over the remainder of her pills, but ended up going in a different direction. "In any case, she's not psychotic. She often talks to herself. That's not unusual. It can be healthy," he added dubiously. "Who does she think she is?"

"Someone she doesn't like. Someone named Megan." Lily looked at him expectantly, a glow of trust in her eyes, waiting for his answer.

He blinked and stared back, fumbling for a response. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll watch out for that. Remember what I said about that medicine, okay? It's just for you." Within a few minutes, he had mentally filed this strange encounter with every other random thing Lily had ever told him, and gone back to his book.

He didn't totally forget about it, though. When an impatient Ignacio asked him to approach Megan about a simple job the following morning - the work of a few minutes that would be made easier by two pairs of hands in armor - her answer was puzzling. "I can't. I have somewhere I need to be then. Maybe when I get back?" As if she had a schedule to keep. But she didn't come back, or not until after dark, and by then they'd made do without her. He wasn't upset at her for this; as far as Arcade was concerned, she didn't owe the Followers anything. (He was beginning to wonder if he himself did at this point.) The incident left such a disquieting mark on his mind, however, that he resolved to have a heart-to-heart the next day, whether she wanted it or not. There was such a thing as too much alone time.

That was the day she didn't come back at all and Arcade knew then that he'd allowed her to drift too far. Nine o'clock passed, then ten, eleven, and midnight. He paced the tunnel for a long time, eyeing the blast doors and debating the wisdom of a search. In the end, he decided to wait until morning. He knew she had a "place" out there - she'd alluded to it vaguely; he knew he had little or no chance of actually finding her out there in the dark, in unfamiliar territory. He resolved to leave at first light.

She beat him to the door, just barely, dragging herself in with a puff of dust, leaving reddish-brown tracks in her wake. He would hardly have known the original color of her suit was black, it was so dirty. He noticed with a new flutter of unease that she'd exchanged the shotgun for what appeared to be a modified tri-beam laser rifle. It had a lot of power and matched the armor very well, but it wasn't like any other weapon she'd ever voluntarily picked up.

"Where have you been?" he asked, trying not to sound like a disapproving parent. "I worried. And what's that smell?" The faint but unmistakable smell of rotting flesh wafted out to him, as she'd been sleeping with carrion.

"Not now, Arcade," she sighed, climbing out of her armor as if every joint hurt and leaving it standing at the ready. "There was a dust storm. I got pinned down. Slept out there in my armor, which could explain the smell. I didn't think you'd notice my absence, but I'm sorry. I'm just coming by to refill water and grab some food. Let me by."

"Stop a second. I haven't seen you in two days. You owe me more than that." He tried to examine her, not liking the dark circles under her eyes or the pallor of her skin. "How are your rads?"

She waved a hand. "They're okay." She started walking away.

He stopped her. "Show me your Pip-Boy."

Reluctantly, she held out her left arm. "You got me. They're a little high. I was going to go grab some more radaway from stores, actually. If that's alright? I did pay for a lot of that stock."

He did a double-take, appalled by the numbers he saw. "Dangerous. That's what this says to me. What are you doing out there? Is your armor damaged? Are you eating or drinking contaminated supplies?"

She pulled her arm away. "No. I had some hands-on work to do out of the suit. Got some exposure. It happens. Leave it."

"I won't leave it. You can't feel good. You have to be feeling symptoms. Why wait so long?"

Still grousing, he followed her from the canteen where they kept potable water and all the MREs they'd found in stories. She grabbed three of these, then made a beeline for the impromptu clinic where they kept their medical supplies. She grabbed a half-dozen bags of radaway and a bottle of rad-x and tried to side-step him to make her way back to the exit.

He didn't move. "You're not going back out."

She bared her teeth at him in a feral expression that was not a smile. "Watch me."

He stood in the doorway, hoping he wouldn't have to physically prevent her from leaving, that she'd see reason. "You need to run that now - not in twenty minutes, not in an hour. Now."

"If I had left my armor on, you wouldn't still be standing there. I'd make you-" she began darkly, then stopped herself mid-threat. "If I take it, will you leave me alone?"

"I'll stop bothering you... about the radiation," he promised.

She accepted this answer and slumped into the chair in their impromptu clinic. "Fine. Hit me."

Silently, he hung the bag and fed it into one of the veins on her right arm, trying to avoid the old scar tissue from her former habit. "One's probably not enough," he said quietly. "You could use a second, but I'd stagger them at least a day."

"I hate radaway almost as much as rad sickness… well, early rad sickness." Her eyes slid closed and she learned her head back against the back of the seat. "I'll take the others with me. I need to stock up at my safehouse for… next time this happens, I guess."

"Is your 'safehouse' where you soaked up all of this?"

"It's sealed. It's safe. An old military... thing. Fallout shelter, I guess." She was breathing slowly and regularly now. The bag was only a third through, but he thought she'd fall asleep before it was empty. Good, he thought.

"You need to be careful, okay? Radaway isn't a miracle drug. There's only so much it can do for severe radiation poisoning."

She laughed at this for some reason. "Yeah. I know that. And I am careful. This was different. A special case. It won't happen again. I'll take precautions. I got most of it last night. My fault."

"I'd like to come out with you next time. There's not much left for me to do here and-"

Her answer was immediate, almost panicky. "No." After a second of silence, she seemed to repent of her rudeness, and added, more contritely, "Not yet, Arcade. There's a few more things I need to wrap up. No offense, but you'd only get in my way."

Neither of them said anything until the course had finished. He was about to try to guide or carry her to a nearby cot - radaway had a way of knocking people out - when her eyes opened again and she pulled out the needle herself.

"Thanks. I'll be back tonight." And she was gone again, footsteps leading her back to her armor and back out into the wind and sand.

Arcade gave her ten minutes, waiting until he'd heard the distant sound of the heavy doors opening and shutting. Then, he followed. His armor waited for him, neat and clean, and relatively unpitted by grit - he'd not used it outside since those first two scouting days, and had cleaned it thoroughly since. He was reaching for the helmet on the top shelf of the closet, when he saw it. Daisy's armor - Megan's armor - lay in a filthy, lumpy pile on that same shelf, pushed far to the back as if she'd been trying to hide it.

"Oh my God," he whispered. He tried to imagine what would have made her go out without protection. How long she could last out there, hammered by the elements, particularly in her weakened state? What had begun as an attempt at spying had just become a rescue mission. Dammit, Megan. What are you doing?

Once outside, he ran. She hadn't been lying about the dust storm. The visibility was still very poor and he was clumsy in his fear. He chose a clear path down, past the first line of buildings where they'd fought the ghouls, noticing that Megan had done a lot to clear the way since that day. Too late, he realized that he should have brought the empty suit with him. He'd have to talk her into taking shelter, then go back to get it.

He kept running, blindly, until he reached an open space. It was then that he fell into the hole that opened up unexpectedly under his feet. It wasn't that deep. Standing, the edges were barely up to his waist, with dry, crumbling sides, but it had surprised him. He stepped out and looked around more carefully, realizing for the first time that he was surrounded by dozens - if not hundreds - of fresh graves, dug into the deep trenches between the furrows of an old field, row after row of them, as far as he could see. A shiver went up his spine. Was this how she spent her time? Why would she do it?

He ran onward, and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement as someone stepped out of one of the grey-plank houses near the edge of what had once been the tract of cultivated land, several hundred yards away.

He moved to greet her, apprehensive but relieved. She hadn't gone far. A little care, and she'd be alright. He wouldn't let her stay out alone anymore. Solitude - particularly solitude in a hell like this - wasn't good for anyone, least of all Megan. The wind died for a second, giving him clear visibility: whoever it was - and who else could it be? - they were wearing power armor. Not Daisy's power armor, clearly, but someone's.

Hand on his weapon, he approached the figure, who'd begun digging on a new row. He was fairly certain it must be his friend - he recognized the weapon lying beside the hole, in any case - but was inclined to proceed with caution anyway. "Megan?" he began incredulously. "Whose armor are you wearing?"

She jumped and half-reached for the weapon before looking up at him and settling down again. Then, she squared her shoulders and faced him directly from the bottom of the hole. Arcade prepared himself for either a bold-faced lie or an uncomfortable truth. Megan went with the latter. "Mine," she said simply, swiping a hand across the red dust coated chestplate. "See? It is, right? I spent about an hour looking at the letters, trying to be sure."

Avoiding the human remains that lay awaiting burial, he approached the edge of the grave. He leaned forward, squinting to read through the coating. Sure enough, there was a name embossed there in slightly irregular, machine-tooled letters: M. Martus.

"Yours," he confirmed. A calm, cool dread flooded his mind and mingled with a total lack of surprise. He asked the only question he could: "Where did you find it?"

Instead of answering, she pitched up one more shovel-full of dirt, commenting casually, as if this was normal. "Good soil here. Or at least it was before. No rocks, either. I can sort of see why people settled here, weather and all." She dropped the tool in the half-finished hole and climbed out to greet him on ground level. "You really shouldn't have followed me, Arcade." It wasn't a threat. She sounded almost bored. Or maybe she was just tired.

"You've been acting peculiar. I was worried. Lily was worried. I saw Daisy's armor and assumed that you'd walked outside without it on purpose for some reason."

"Whatever you think, I'm not suicidal. And Lily doesn't even know who I am most of the time," she said coldly. "I had it handled. You being here makes things complicated for me. I'd really appreciate it if you went back to the silo and waited for me there. I can talk to you later."

"Not until you tell me where you found that power armor." He looked around again at the graveyard, shaking his head. "Or why you've made it your personal mission to bury all of the bodies you've found out here."

"That's easy," she said. "It's wrong to leave them out where someone might step on them. If they did, the bones might snap and give them bad dreams. Most of them were probably innocent. I went back and forth on the ghouls we killed. I spent too long trying to figure out which ones were Legion and which ones were NCR. I buried them all… then I dug 'em up again, then buried just the ones that had standard-issue gear... then I second-guessed myself. In the end, they all started coming apart on me and I guessed it didn't matter and put them back. It doesn't, right? I had to cover them all up, otherwise I might step on them."

Rambling, confused, and circular, this was not the explanation Arcade had wanted to hear. He'd come back to that later. "No, it doesn't matter. Handling the dead respectfully is good, regardless of their origins. And the armor?" he prompted.

She made a nervous gesture with her hands. "You're not going to like this. You're going to be angry. Promise you won't be angry?"

"No. No blank checks for you. Tell me anyway. I'm your friend. That gives me the license to get angry from time to time."

"I found it."

"Where did you find it?"

"Less than a quarter mile away, there's a bunker. It's under a house, through a trapdoor." She seemed to be studying him, waiting for his reaction. When he didn't move, she continued. "It's nothing like the one your old friends had. Just one big room with a bunch of supplies. Some cots and weapons and stuff. I think it was a military-grade fallout shelter from before the war. They… we must have had the location tagged and access code handy, somehow. I found it and got through the hatch a week ago. It was locked, but I reached out and entered the numbers in anyway. My hand knew the combination, even if I didn't. Armor was standing there, waiting for me. The fusion core was dead and there weren't any left in the shelter, but I had extras."

"Okay," Arcade began, trying to quiet his growing concern. "You've been here before. We knew that. Why not let me in on your secret?"

"I haven't gotten to the bad part," she said slowly, head hanging down. "That's just necessary background information."

"What's the bad part?"

"I didn't think it would go on this long," she pleaded. "I thought it'd be over that first day. I didn't think there'd be time to go get you. I thought I could manage things without ever bringing you there. I was wrong. It's been… awful. I erred, badly. I'd still be waiting if you hadn't caught me." She kicked a clod into the open grave behind him. "I was so sure that it wouldn't take long, I dug a grave the next morning. I was going to make a marker. I don't know if she deserves that or not, but it seemed fitting. I didn't know any of the others' names. I can't read her name, but I could've copied the letters off of what's left of her clothing..." She trailed off, still refusing to look up.

She. Her. These words cut through the dissembling and excuses and set off all of Arcade's alarms. "You found a survivor?" Fear made his voice harsh in his own ears. "An Enclave survivor? How many are there? Are they hostile? Heavily armed?" I have to warn the Followers, he decided. If there's an Enclave presence here, they need to know.

"One. Just one." She looked behind her, back toward the direction she had just come from. "As of a quarter of an hour ago. I don't know for how much longer. I've been thinking that for the last six days. I couldn't bring myself to kill her outright. She can't survive what's happened to her, though."

Pushing back the urge to vent his horror at this revelation, Arcade took a direct approach. "You need to take me there. Now. What's wrong with her?"

"Severe radiation poisoning. I'm sorry. I should have come to get you-"

"Go. Yes, you should have! Tell me what you've noticed on the way. Rad-count? Go faster."

She broke into a jog, answering obediently but reluctantly, drawing out the words. "Over six hundred. It was hard to get an exact read. Her skin didn't… hold up very well under the Pip-Boy's weight. Her eyes were gone when I found her. Her hair. Most of her teeth. Her body feels and smells like it's rotting. It was lucky she was in bed when she stopped moving, because I don't know how I would have moved her otherwise. She's leaky and I can't even begin to describe how horrible it is."

Arcade sped up. "And you've done what with this person for the last week?" He didn't care how accusing he sounded. As far as he was concerned, she deserved any ire he cared to dish out and more. What she was describing was negligence, pure and simple. She knew better, or he had thought she did.

"I gave her med-x, radaway, and what I think was saline. There's a lot of clear bags..."

"You're almost certainly not giving her enough med-x. Can she talk?"

"No." She hesitated. "I don't think so. I haven't really tried to talk to her. I was afraid she'd talk back."

"Your sense of compassion leaves a lot to be desired. Seriously, what the hell? You do realize, don't you, that this could just as easily be you if things had been different?"

Megan either wasn't listening or she'd decided to double down on hypocrisy. "She's just an Enclave soldier, Arcade. In the ordinary course of things, we'd shoot her on sight."

"You might. I'd try to-" He gave up in disgust. "Look, let's just get there."

Inside the house and under the rug was a hatch of thick, dark metal. She punched in four numbers - a code he took pains to memorize - and it opened. She dropped into the dark ahead of him and, a moment later, fluorescent lights glowed below. He followed, and found her already out of her suit, waiting for him. As soon as he pulled his own helmet off, he found that the atmosphere inside was overpowering. The sickly-sweet smell of infection and rot mixed with a variety of bodily fluids made it difficult to breathe.

"I didn't think anyone could smell like that and live," Megan said, handing him a wide strip of cloth and tying a similar one around her own face. "First time I came down that ladder, I thought for sure I'd be finding a body. This isn't ghoulification, is it?"

"No," he answered shortly, trying not to gag, breathing through his mouth, but tasting the smell all the same. He'd seen ghouls during the intermediate stages of transformation. That was painful to watch, but it was nothing like this travesty. He approached the figure on the cot, noting that the thin sheet draped over her was badly stained. A cursory inspection told him that Megan had been correct in her prognosis, if not the appropriate course of action.

"Hello. I don't know if you can hear me or not, but I'm a doctor. I'm going to try to make you more comfortable."

The woman - only barely identifiable as a woman at this point - didn't respond in the slightest to the sound of his voice. What remained of the skin of her neck felt hot and sticky, and the pulse was still there, depressingly strong. She might go days yet, he mused in consternation. Living through hell no matter what I do.

"Would it be okay to just give her an overdose?" Megan asked timidly from his elbow. "There was a lot of med-x in the supplies. There's still a lot left. I've seen you kill patients before. Like that Powder Ganger in Nipton."

"He was conscious. He gave consent." Part of him wished Megan had done just that; it would have been many degrees better than her inaction. Now that he was here, however, he felt obliged to put his foot down. It was hard to feel justified in extending this, and hard to believe that anyone would choose this, but actively killing the dying wasn't something he was comfortable with. "No more radaway," he murmured, continuing his examination. "That only delays the inevitable. The damage to the marrow, the intestines, and everything else is too great. It's her bad luck that the heart and lungs are still functioning. Why didn't you come get me?"

"I was afraid!"

"Of what? No, don't answer that right now. So you, what, dosed her and left? For hours at a time? Overnight?"

"I give her one in the morning, one at noon, and two in the evening before I leave," she answered sullenly. "She doesn't make as much noise as she did before. I assumed it was enough." She cleared her throat. "She's visibly uncomfortable by morning, though. Not screaming, exactly, but obviously in pain. I try to get here early."

He winced at this. "Don't make ill-informed assumptions when it comes to other people's suffering, okay? If you had told me, we could have worked out shifts. Done this right."

"You're right. I should have." She shuffled her feet. "Do you want some rad-x, Arcade? I don't know if it's her or her clothes or what, but my Geiger counter's pretty clicky up close."

He sighed and stepped away, accepting the pill with his clean hand. "Okay, I'm going to work for a while. I'm going to need you to go tell Ignacio where I am and why we'll be gone. Also get my stuff, in case this takes a while" His eyes fell on a cot at the opposite end of the room, where Megan's pack and belongings lay. "I see you already have yours." His shoulders sagged. "When this business is over, we should just move on. Leave before this place totally erodes your sense of morality."

Megan gave him a startled look. "Tell Ignacio? Tell him what? That I found one of my old compatriots and we have to take care of her? I can't admit that to him. I literally can't. He'll have… follow-up questions I can't answer."

"Really? That's what you're worried about? I think we're way past that." He looked unhappily at the woman, wishing that he could be anywhere but here. "Okay, I'll go. Give me some time to work on her her, and I'll go. You'll stay here," he ordered. "Talk to her. Give her meds if I'm out past noon for some reason. Be a decent human being, if you can manage that. Don't abandon her again. I don't care what personal problem you're trying to work out with all the grave-digging. The living come before the dead. That's basic."

An hour and a half later, he left, having used all of the gauze he could find to cover the frail, oozing skin, and establishing a better IV than Megan had managed. He left detailed directions, not expecting her to need them. He'd be gone an hour. Maybe two.

"I'll be back soon," he promised. "Before she dies. We are going to talk about this later."

He'd left her alone. In the hole. In the stink. It didn't matter that she couldn't smell it after an hour - it was clinging to her clothes and going into her lungs with every breath. Hate, pity, and fear swirled around and attached themselves to a single target. The woman. C. Pemberton, Arcade had said. It was printed on the uniform that he had declined to try to detach from her skin. It would cause more pain that it would relieve, he said.

"That's a stupid name," she called out from across the room, as far away as she could get and still see the slow rise and fall of her chest. "'Pem-ber-ton.' What's the 'C' stand for, anyway?" There was no answer, not that she had expected any. She didn't know why she was talking or why she felt so hostile, but she was. It was all she could do not to kill her, even though it was too late now.

For an instant, before, when Arcade had moved the wasted body slightly and the cracked lips had opened, Megan had been sure that secrets were about to come spilling out. She'd climbed to her feet, ready to shout them down. But it had only been another gasping, pained breath, and she'd allowed herself to relax. For now. What if she did talk?

"I should have killed you the first day," she said out loud. "I don't care if we were friends once. I don't care how far we traveled together. All I care about is what you know."

Hours passed and he didn't return. She paced. She worried. She found herself struggling to remember whether she'd already given the woman her medication already. At one point, she put on her armor, intending to march to the silo and demand that Arcade come back, to tell him that she couldn't do this alone. She only got halfway before she turned back, ashamed. He'd be disappointed. Again.

The day passed. Then the night. Then another day. Every three hours, an alarm. Another needle. Another long period of wondering what had happened, followed by an unsatisfying light doze. She didn't notice it when C. Pemberton died. In the small corner of her mind that was still rational, she guessed it had been two or three doses of med-x ago. Certainly, the body was cold and what fluid remained had settled in the lowest points. In trying to look as little as possible at what she was doing, Megan had totally failed to recognize this. By then, it had been almost forty hours since Arcade had left. The middle of the night, if she was reading her clock right. And she was alone with… that.

Her hands itched to bury it. There was a hole ready. Lead-lined body bags in one of the supply chests. She knew exactly the steps to take. But she couldn't. Arcade would come back and assume the worst - that she'd killed the woman and covered up the evidence. It was exactly the sort of thing she would do. Had almost done, many times. She dropped her face into her hands. Had she killed the woman? Double- or triple-dosed her in the haze that never went away now? She might have. She must have. Because otherwise Arcade would have come back like he promised.

Megan decided to put the body in a bag, just so it'd be ready when he came back. She was concerned, probably irrationally, that it would dissolve if left too long. It took a long time because she was afraid to touch it. Couldn't find gloves and didn't like the way the exposed skin gave under her fingers. It was slippery and gaseous, a disgusting nightmare. It was also poisoning her, as her Geiger counter continuously reminded her.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm sorry for this. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner." Finally, with a squelch and a dull tearing sound as the adhered skin pulled away from the cot's service, C. Pemberton was gone, safely zipped away. Megan staggered away and vomited what little she had left into the bunker's toilet, then washed with rubbing alcohol, there not being much water left. It stung and made her eyes burn, but it made her feel clean. On the outside, at least. Inside, she was a miasma of pain, corruption, and fear.

Time for radaway again. It might help. There wasn't much food left, not that she wanted any, but still her stomach rolled unpleasantly at every movement. This dose pulled her down immediately. She didn't even remember pulling out the needle before she fell asleep. One minute, she was in the chair, staring at the bag with its unholy contents, her overwrought mind pleading for it to disappear. At the next, she was jolted awake, aware that someone was coming through the hatch above. The excuses were pouring out of her mouth before she had turned around.

"I didn't kill her. She died. You were gone so long! I swear, I didn't kill her." She stopped, confused. Was she seeing double or had Arcade found a friend? A second bulky figure was descending the ladder to join the first, both so thoroughly covered in dust - which looked a weird, orange-brown under the cold lighting - that she couldn't make out any identifying marks on the armor at all. They were joined by a third and a fourth in short order, all identical.

When none of them spoke, Megan looked around, taking stock of her situation. Her armor was twenty feet away, along with her weapon. She'd even kicked her boots off at some point. If they attacked, she was helpless.

She spoke up, trying and failing to keep the tremble out of her voice. "Who are you?" They said nothing, only stood and looked at her. She grew impatient and approached the closest one. "This is my place. Identify yourself!" She heard the slow sound of bare feet on the floor, and then a hand covered with red and purple blotches fell on her shoulder. She tried to twist away, but the bony, slimy fingers clung to her, their grip stronger than they had been in life. It was trying to turn her around to face the grotesque thing behind her. She fought it, keeping her eyes shut tight, refusing to look. "Let go of me!" Her hand got a weak grip on the pinioning arm, only to feel the flesh melt away, making it harder to keep her grip. "No! Please, please, please let me go-"

"Wake up, Megan. Wake up! It's me."

She stopped struggling. She was still in her chair. C. Pemberton was on her cot, concealed in the bag. Arcade was standing beside her, still in his armor, his helmet off and his hair horribly untidy. She could have cried in relief and hugged him, not caring that he was probably still angry. "It's you. I didn't kill her. I really didn't."

"I believe you. I was gone longer than I said it would be. I'm sorry for that." He was about to say something else, but something disturbing in the corner of her eye made her interrupt him.

"Arcade… is there someone else in the room?" she whispered. "Radaway dreams, you know. I don't know what's real right now." Behind him, she had spotted yet another person in power armor, standing by the ladder and staring all around the room.

He didn't even look where she was pointing. "That's Veronica."

Megan goggled at him. He met her gaze levelly, uncommonly haggard and serious. "Why the hell would you bring her here?"

"Because something terrible has happened."