They don't talk to me as they lead me out of town along some back road, entering a patch of long-abandoned buildings. My captors' torches illuminate patches of overgrowth endemic through the entire area. The strange noises from the trees and fields continue from around me. All I know is that we've left Forked River behind, headed – I think headed northwards.
If there's anything about being captured and having your hands helplessly restrained behind you, it's that, once you come to terms to your situation and resign yourself to the fact that you're no longer in control, you now suddenly have plenty of time to think, and few real distractions.
Feeling the smooth roughness of the plastic cuffs they've used to bind my wrists, I can only curse myself. My childhood training should have kicked in. I should have been able to easily throw off my attackers with some well-placed CQC – oh yeah, we were also taught plenty of odd-sounding words like that – and made a run for it. Yet that woman – she's still walking next to me, her joyful greeting replaced by flat, militaristic determination – the moment she laid her hand on me, it had been impossible to get away. I guess, really, I could snap them off any moment – but it would be tantamount to suicide, being surrounded by these types.
In retrospect, I really don't know why I'd trusted her at all. No, I knew why. I'd just been particularly stupid.
It's been over a decade since you last saw a Scarlet Knight, I tell myself, don't be too hard on yourself. But Kenji is back there, fighting – whomever that had been. He'd been mentioned by those two militiamen back in Manahawkin – if they'd even been militiamen at all, that is, and not spies, informants, or agents of some sinister conspiracy. A mercenary from Timbuktu.
In any case, it crosses my mind that this is exactly the sort of situation the Scarlet Knights like poking their heads in. This most peculiar collection of orange-skinned people who seem to have originated from Vault 98, who have made it as far south as Manahawkin – almost to the heartland of the Republic.
"What are you people doing?" I whisper aloud, not quite loud enough for my captors to hear and respond, but still enough for the night wind to carry my words.
This almost reminds me of those stories I've heard from up north, from the Commonwealth, of this strange and mysterious organisation who had been steadily replacing people with these "synths" - birthed and programmed in a lab. Supposedly, you couldn't trust anyone up there - even your neighbours, your closest friends, your family members, they could have all been replaced.
In any case, a loud crunching noise from somewhere ahead pushes this caravan of thoughts from my head. A large shadow moves in front to block our path, and the torches illuminate something that makes my eyes widen and my feet start taking shallow steps backwards.
"Deathclaw!" someone shouts.
As if they were robots following programmed instructions, six of the party automatically take formation in front, around the fearsome animal, which roars and flashes its claws, barely missing one of the men.
Wilkins's hand falls on my shoulder. "Oh Zoe," her voice coos in my ear, "you're not going anywhere." Out the corner of my eye, I see my plasma pistol at her belt. If I can just get to it – but I don't even consider that train of thought. It is an impossibility.
This poor creature, the monster who haunts every New Jerseyan child's nightmares, tries to lash out, but it only lasts a few agonising seconds of writhing before a hail of silenced bullets brings it down.
I swear I can hear a faint, sad whimper as it hits the ground, before the elderly woman who Wilkins had talked to before stands atop and fires another half a dozen rounds into its head, to unnecessarily ensure that it never opens its eyes again.
Wilkins lets go of me, and I just stand there, utterly dumbfounded by what I have just seen unfold before me.
"Continue."
Dawn is still hours away.
At first glance, New Berkeley is just like the other towns in this part of the coast: an otherwise unordinary settlement that's only started peacefully blossoming thanks to the Parkway – and, according to what little news I read tells me, thanks even more to Republic protection. I don't really know why someone put a sign marking the edge of town here, since my shoes keep finding in the asphalt ankle-deep potholes and foot-long chasms filled with fuzzy plants and the road obviously hasn't been used regularly in decades.
But nonetheless, there it is, lit in the flickering blue-orange of one of the fusion-powered torches my captors are using: WELCOME TO NEW BERKELEY, scrawled in white on a sheet of corrugated metal, a crudely Republic flag painted above it.
The faintest red and orange rays of a radiation-tinted sunrise are not even close to visible. Aside from the guards – who I don't doubt have long ago been infiltrated by these Vaulters, if we're passing through here – there is more likely than not no one awake in the entire town. I have no way to communicate and no one to communicate with, not here.
It is at this moment, walking down a dark, deserted, dilapidated street, when I swear I can hear the faintest sound of something whishing around in the wind, endlessly. In a different context it might even have been some sort of maddening white noise.
"What the fuck is that?" one of my captors says.
"It's nothing," the elderly woman leading the pack responds with an unconcerned bite. "Just keep moving, just another few hundred feet to the south entrance."
We turn right at the end of the road, onto another, equally dilapidated path which seems to lead down into some dark woods. The noise seems to grow in intensity, and I see one of the men in front of me bring his hand to cover his face, as if to protect it from air rushing towards him – as I feel something rushing straight towards me, too.
Then the lights come on above, as if aliens have descended from space to abduct us all. Really, knowing New Jersey, that wouldn't be entirely surprising.
No, what it is is enough to send even more shivers down my spine. I've never seen a vertibird in my life, but I've heard enough – both from that hell years ago and from the rumours I'd heard since – to recognise one at first glance, even in the dark of night. And this is one, as it hovers over some kind of crumbling pre-War industrial complex.
The bird sprays an endless hail of loud gunfire in our direction. The elderly woman I hear get shot, I think in the legs, and she yelps and falls. The others pull out their own weapons and start firing back, but all they can muster seems to bounce harmlessly off the side of the bird.
It's the Scarlet Knights, I realise, my stomach twisting, it has to be, who else could it be? Of course they'd have gotten their hands on one of the things! It starts descending to a landing about thirty or forty feet in front of us. No one else would be interfering in these orange people's affairs. And if they get me and find me out, I'm fucked, I'm dead.
In that moment, offer a silent thank you to Kenji, for all he's done.
No, I decide, I have to run, and in the chaos I can probably make it decently far. I close my eyes and clench my fists, feeling the energy start to flow through my increasingly tense muscles. Now, with a concentrated burst of my hands, I first yelp – mostly from the fine plastic digging painfully into my wrists – and then snap the cuffs right off, hearing the pleasant sound of them breaking like a little, pathetic plastic twig.
Sarah Wilkins hears this happen, and turns to try to stop me. But before she can, I feel the side of my flat hand fly laterally into the side of her neck. In her subsequent daze, I manage to pull my gun from her belt, flip it into my grip, and use the barrel to push her down so her legs collapse and she falls to the ground.
The bird touches the ground, bouncing a little as it makes contact, and two figures step out onto the ground.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I come to the realisation that, whoever these are, they are decidedly not Scarlet Knights. They bear precisely none of the distinctive red gear that I'm used to. Instead, these are a pair of hulking, walking tanks, covered from head to toe in impressive-looking, quite bulky steel-grey armour – power armour. Lights are embedded in their foreheads, a bit like those pre-War miners' helmets. Both are holding energy weapons – quite like me, only theirs are orders of magnitude bigger and stronger, as I quickly find out as they fire them back, pushing the Vaulters even further.
I've been backpedaling, in preparation for turning around and running, but a volley of whizzing laser shots flies past me, knocking yet another dead on his back with a shrill scream. Instead, I kneel to stay out of their sight as best I can, pinning my knees on Sarah Wilkins's groaning body. The others either have fallen, or have scattered and fled into the woods.
The trio advances towards me, and I put my gun down and raise my hands above my head. "Please!" I yell out. "I'm not one of them!"
Both their guns' barrels are very quickly rested in the air inches away from my face. "Then who are you?" a deep, feminine voice asks. I can't see her helmet – the lights shining down at me are virtually blinding.
"My name's Zoe Jackson!" I yell over the defeaning sound of the vertibird's rotors. Sarah groans again, and her body shakes, as if she's trying to throw me off, to no avail. "I'm from Atlantic City."
"Then what are you doing with these oranges?"
"These people captured me," I explain. I point down at the body pinned beneath my knees. "Well, she did."
I can see her stiffen. "You know about Vault 98," she says. It is not a question, it is a statement of fact. I want to explain, but before I can open my mouth, I am interrupted.
"Whatever this is, Paladin, make it quick," the second armoured figure says, "we've probably awoken half the damn town by now, and you can bet your ass the Republic's going to be all over this by dawn." His voice is the slightly worn one of a middle-aged male, and now, he looks through his visor straight at me. "There's been enough violence around Toms River already."
The other figure looks back and forth several times. "Alright," she says. She gestures at me. "Come on, get up, I'll need you to tell me everything when we get to base. We have no time to waste lollygagging around here." She looks down at Wilkins. "And bring her with you. She'll be…a valuable asset."
Shakily, I stand up and retrieve my weapon – and stow it at my belt, knowing that these two are watching me quite closely. Helped by one of the armoured figures, I pull Sarah's arm over my shoulders, and we carry her back to the vertibird.
The last thing I see before I am escorted on board is their emblem, almost glowing in the light – three gears and a pair of wings, a sword overlaid.