Hollow frowned down at the barely visible tracks in the ground, which made Abercrombie frown. The pair were crouched on the trail the group had been on, following the Regenerating Man and his party for several days now.
"What is it?" he asked the tribal. The darker skinned man didn't answer for a second, his eyes sweeping the area as if looking for something, his gloved hand running over the ground, stroking it almost.
"Tracks change..." he finally grunted, "that way." His hand shot out, pointing roughly north-east. Abercrombie reached into his pocket and pulled out the map the General had given him, examining it closely. North-east was...nothing, literally. No known towns, outposts, just a whole lot of sand and desert.
"There's nothing out there" he whispered, turning to look in that direction, squinting his eyes, as if he might spot something interesting. But there was nothing, just like the map said.
"What's going on, sir?" Leon asked, crouching down next to Abercrombie and Hollow.
"Hollow says the tracks are heading north-east" Abercrombie explained, still focused that way. Leon frowned.
"North-east?" he asked, disbelieving, "there's nothing north-east of here..."
"I know..." Abercrombie growled, "so what the hell are they doing going that way?"
"Maybe trying to avoid something on the trail?" Leon offered.
"Circling 'round" Hollow said, confidently. As if him saying it was enough to make it fact.
Abercrombie turned towards him. "What did you say?"
"Circle 'round" Hollow repeated, then he shrugged, "what I do, in their skin"
"What? Like they knew we were following them?" Leon asked, more disbelieving this time, "how in the hell would they know that? Aren't we days behind them?"
"They didn't know we were here," Abercrombie said softly, "but they will when they find our tracks. Damn it! Whoever is leading them is more careful than we gave them credit for."
"Closer, too" Hollow said suddenly, his hands moving over the tracks in the ground. "Tracks fresher today then the day before this one"
Abercrombie nodded. "They must have had something to do with that village we came across. A battle like that would have taken some time" he finished knowingly, as if he had sacked his own share of villages in his time.
"That was a hell of a mess," remarked Leon, "are we sure we know what we're getting into with them?"
"No, but we have our orders" Abercrombie said sternly, putting an end to any further discussion. He looked around, taking in the area that surrounded them. Mountains still rose up around them, like bars on a prison, but this area had a ridge about two men tall overlooking the road, as well as a sparse collection of desert trees, cactus and the like. "We'll set up here, catch them when they come through. Leon, get Hannibal and a few others on that ridge, then tell everyone else to spread out. Stay out of sight until I give the signal." He took a step forward, resting his foot on a rock nestled into the trail, and looked back over the trail they had just come through. "They might figure out we're following them, but they won't see this coming."
For the first time since this started Abercrombie allowed himself a brief smile. If everything went right, this might be over quicker than anyone could have expected. It might even be enough to wash away the outcast label he and his men had gotten over the years.
If everything went right, he thought suddenly? He stifled a snort. When did everything ever go right?
"This doesn't feel right," muttered Oz. Sam agreed.
They had been walking for hours, yet the scenery hadn't changed. The same mountains rose up around them, the same plants squatted beside them in the harsh sun. Even the clouds seemed to hang in the sky, like the world around them had been put on pause.
This wasn't all that different to the rest of the trip; after a while, all of the desert terrain looked the same. But there was something nagging in the back of Sam's mind, a sense of déjà vu he couldn't quite shake, like these surrounding didn't just look familiar, they were familiar. What was worse was their guide, Isaac, had disappeared further along the trail, so there was nobody to question about it. He cursed silently. He hated feeling helpless.
He sighed. At times like this you have to just grit your teeth and keep moving. Push through the doubts. Put your head down and put one foot in front-
He saw the tracks now, clear as day. They weren't visible until you were standing right on top of them, with sand having blown in and half filling them, but Sam could see them now that he was looking down. And they looked suspiciously familiar.
"Hold up," he ordered, kneeling down for a closer look.
"What is it?" Mo asked, kneeling down next to him. Sam pointed at the tracks and Mo frowned. "Tracks?" he asked, as if it wasn't obvious. Sam nodded. "Who's are they?"
Sam wasn't much of a tracker. He couldn't tell what colour an animal was from the depth of its footprint or how scared a man was by the length of his. But he had a working knowledge, more than enough to recognise these tracks.
They were his.
Looking around, it wasn't long before he found the others'. Abby's, smaller than the rest. Mo's, deeper and larger. Oz's, seemingly behind the others. Isaac's appeared randomly, wherever one of the others hadn't trodden over it. No sign of Original's, though, which meant they had passed through here a few days ago at least.
"We circled around," he whispered, frowning at the trail ahead, at where Isaac was somewhere. Questions began to bounce around in his head; why would he do it? Why wouldn't he tell us? Are we being led in to a trap? A whole lot of questions and none he had an answer for or even liked.
"We did what?" asked Abby, peering over Mo's shoulder. Oz and Original had come over as well, forming a huddle of sorts around Sam.
"We circled around," grunted Sam, getting to his feet.
"Why?" she asked.
"I don't know" he answered, softly.
"I intend to find out" growled Patrick, who turned and started moving down the track after Isaac. Abby was the first to follow with Oz pulling Original along after. But Sam stayed a moment, frowning at the tracks. He knew he wasn't a great tracker, but as he looked over the tracks again he noticed something strange. Oz's prints, at least the ones he thought were Oz's, would turn regularly, as if the man had been looking behind them. He hadn't noticed it before but, for some reason, it stuck out.
He couldn't quite explain it, but after years of listening to his gut instincts he wasn't going to start ignoring them now. And they were all screaming that something was wrong. His eyes left the ground and slowly moved up, eventually looking down the trail.
The others had already disappeared around the next bend. Hefting his bag, Sam followed, expecting anything.
Anything, of course, but this.
The area around the bend was more built up, the rocks from an old landslide forming strong walls that rose up on both sides of the path and narrowed to a point at the end, barely wide enough for a man to fit through. Sam remembered walking through it days ago. He remembered hating it, too. That feeling of claustrophobia, that something bad was going to happen and he would be stuck in that small gap, unable to move. He had the same useless feeling now, although for a completely different reason.
Original was the first one he saw, crouched over a rock further back than the others. His eyes were squeezed shut, a dull whimper escaping through his lips, his knuckles white as he clutched to that rock as if his life depended on it.
Isaac was on the other side, a few steps in from the narrow gap. His glasses were off, his eyes focused, his arm up and his pistol pointed directly at Oz. Oz's back was to Sam, but he could still see the man's pistol aimed at Isaac in kind. Abby was a few steps from Oz, gun loosely pointed at Isaac, while Patrick, his helmet off and the scowl back on his face, had his firmly pointed at Oz.
"Ah, our employer!" Isaac shouted. Abby turned to look and Patrick gave him a glance, but otherwise nobody moved. "Why don't we let him settle this?" Isaac asked, a smile tugging at the edge of his lips.
"What the hell is this?" Sam growled, storming over.
"Oz sold us out!" Patrick spat.
"Fuck you!" roared Oz.
"Traitor!" Patrick shouted back.
"ENOUGH!" screamed Sam, louder than he had meant, but it got the job done. Everyone stopped talking. Everyone stopped...period. Twitching, blinking, breathing. The world paused. "Is someone going to tell me what's going on?"
Patrick opened his mouth to speak but Isaac got in first. "You can read tracks...look around you"
Sam frowned, but looked down and saw the tracks. Saw a lot of tracks, now that he looked. More than the 5 of them could have made. These new tracks were heavier too, sinking roughly the same depth as Patrick's. These new tracks seemed to gather together just in front of Sam, like they had huddled around something on the ground. Like they had been reading the tracks themselves.
And not just anyone's tracks. They were looking at Oz's and their tracks stayed close to his. It was clear enough; someone was following Oz.
"Someone's following him," Isaac said, obviously not waiting for Sam to speak.
"Everyone lower their guns" Sam said, striding forward until he was standing in the middle of the standoff. Nobody moved. "Now," he added, coldly, his hand resting ever so gently on the hilt of his pistol.
Patrick grumbled, but lowered his rifle. Oz followed, holstering his pistol angrily. Abby's rifle was already slack and it didn't take much for her to lower it further, the barrel touching the ground, her hand resting on the stock. Isaac was the last to move, that smile still tugging at the edge of his lips. But he shrugged and his hand disappeared behind his back, emerging without a pistol.
"As I said, you're our employer" he said wryly.
"As you said..." Sam muttered, turning towards Oz. "Explain"
"You don't seriously believe this-" Oz started, waving his hand at Patrick and Isaac.
"Explain" Sam repeated, the coldness creeping back into his voice.
Oz opened his mouth to say something but stopped short, seeming to think better of it. His mouth closed, his eyes drifted to the floor and breath noisily swept from his nose as he sighed.
"I thought I'd lost them..." he whispered.
"Told you," Isaac said, but Sam cut him off with a glare.
"They've been hunting me for...as long as I can remember..." Oz continued.
"Who?" asked Abby.
"Evil men who wear black armour...black like their souls..."
"The Enclave?" said Sam, as everything began making sense.
Oz nodded. "That's what they call themselves, at least. There are other names for them"
Patrick snorted. "The Enclave was destroyed at the Rig 50 years ago, everyone knows that. You're full of shit"
"The next man who speaks, whispers, or makes a noise without my say so dies," Sam said coldly, turning on Patrick. "Understand?" he looked them all over, glaring, half expecting one of them to challenge what he just said. They were, after all, fighting men. But none of them did.
He turned back to Oz. "Why do they want you?"
Oz sucked in a deep breath and let it out, trying to calm his nerves. "That's...harder to explain..." he finally whispered.
"Try" insisted Sam.
"They've been hunting me for...200 hundred years"
"Two...hundred...what?" Isaac asked. This time, Sam didn't cut him off with a glare. He couldn't even move, he was completely focused on Oz. 200 hundred years?
Oz swallowed loudly. "I was alive before the war..."
"How is that even possible?" Abby asked.
"I don't know, exactly...I woke up underground, after the war, when the world was still on fire. I was surrounded by machines, of all kinds, I...can't remember much, after that. I remember fear. I remember feeling it, seeing it on everyone's faces. I remember killing because of it, they were...still are, bad times," he sighed, "When I finally figured out the way the new world worked I decided to leave. I headed east, towards the rising sun. And after a few years I eventually ended up here..." he finished. Everybody stayed quiet, thinking it over for themselves.
"Did you ever find out what happened to you?" Abby asked.
"Eventually...the Enclave called me 'Lazarus' back then..."
"A few years could take you from one side of the country to the other...they cover the entire country?" Sam interrupted.
Oz nodded. "They were less organised, though. The bombs disrupted radios, so they couldn't communicate with all their different forces like they can now. Still, they came...and I killed. It was all I knew how to do. But they had a computer with them, in their transport, and I went through it...There were no real details," he said, shaking his head, "just bits and pieces, but it was more then I'd had.
"It talked about the 'Lazarus' project, a pre-war attempt to create the perfect human, able to survive and thrive in the radioactive wasteland that they knew was coming," he took a deep breath, "Well, it worked...better than they could have imagined," he leaned forward, using his hands for added emphasis, "see, surviving radiation is harder than they thought. Any seemingly radiation-resistant cells they created would be mutated when they were irradiated due to the base genes they were using. Some kind of evolutionary virus, but that's not important. What's important is that, since they couldn't create new cells, they got the idea to simply re-use the old ones. By boosting the body's rate of repair they found that radiation had no lasting effect.
"But these boosted cells offered so much more. The repairs weren't only for radiation; any minor cut would heal in minutes, any major injury in hours and even fatal wounds could be healed in days. They had created an un-killable man. The rate of survival in test subjects, however, was incredibly low. But it didn't stop them, not until their money ran out. Then the project was scrapped, the surviving test subjects frozen. Test subjects...like me..."
"Wait..." Isaac started, raising his hands, his face screwed up in confusion, "are you telling me you can't die?"
"Yes"
"Seriously?"
"Yes"
Isaac's hand whipped out, his knife slashing across Oz's face. The man squealed and then turned, fury across his face. But it disappeared as he saw everyone staring at him.
Sam had never seen anything like it. The wound stretched from one side of his face to the other, and it was deep too. He watched as it, ever so slowly, got smaller and then disappeared entirely, as if it had never been there in the first place.
"It can't be..." he whispered.
"How is that..." started Patrick, leaning forward for a closer look.
"Incredible," whistled Isaac.
Oz sighed. "So now you've seen it."
"I didn't believe it till I did," grunted Patrick.
"So that's why the Enclave is after you," said Sam knowingly.
Oz nodded. "If they can re-create this..." his hand motioned towards his body, "they'll be unstoppable. And after their last few setbacks...they're getting desperate," he stared at the ground, "look, I'm...I'm sorry to involve you all in this..."
"So Vault 16...does it even exist?" Sam interrupted.
"'Course it does. It was on the same computer I found, all those years ago. There's something important down there, something I know you could use. And when we've found it, all you have to do is hold up your end and the world is safe"
"Your end?" Abby asked.
"Never mind" Sam said with a dismissive wave. He sighed, long and loud. This was a lot of information to take in all at once and that was if you even believed it all, but it's not what was important now. "The important thing is we're being followed"
Isaac raised his hand. "I might have an idea about that,"
"Yes?"
"Let's get rid of them..."
Leon sighed, long but silently. Abercrombie nodded at him. At least someone was following the plan.
They had been camped in the same area for the last few days, stretched out in various hiding places around the trail, waiting for their targets to come to them. It was a lot harder than Abercrombie had thought when he ordered it a few days ago.
Not for him, of course. As a career soldier he knew that the most time spent in war was sitting around waiting for one thing or another to happen. This was no different. But his men, his experienced veterans, didn't seem to grasp that idea.
He didn't truly blame them. They were irregulars, guerrilla fighters; sitting and waiting wasn't their usual MO. No, usually they would be stalking someone, taking the fight to their enemy, not waiting for it to come to them. Still, the fact that they couldn't keep themselves under control was annoying at best and infuriating at worst.
Nobody had been allowed to move from their positions. They ate and slept wherever they were; Hannibal and a few others on the ridge overlooking the road, Abercrombie and Leon crouched under a stone a few metres from them, the rest scattered around. The only time they were able to leave their places was to relieve themselves; Abercrombie didn't want the stink of refuse to give them away. But with nothing to do and several days having passed, they were all getting restless. Dangerously restless.
Something moved to Abercrombie's right, a clattering of stones revealing someone's position. Abercrombie frowned and Leon stuck his head slightly out of cover, trying to see who it was. When he looked back he just shrugged; obviously the hiding spots were good enough to cover them under any circumstances. But if the enemy had been watching...
"Enough," someone shouted, followed by the sounds of more movement. Leon stuck his head out again, but Abercrombie already knew who it was. The voice was clearly female, leaving only 1 possibility; Charity.
Abercrombie looked out and watched as the blonde haired woman stepped out from her hiding place and strode in to the centre of the trail.
"There's no one here...and there's no one coming," she said, her eyes sweeping across all of their hiding places. None of them moved, however, so Abercrombie had to give them credit for that. "They were good enough to circle around so they're good enough to avoid this half-assed trap. We ought to keep heading north, try and catch them-"
A bullet took her in the back of the head, spraying blood across the trail. She went down with a combination of a squawk and a groan, her hand shooting up feebly to her head, hitting the ground with a thump.
"Fire!" Abercrombie roared and his men responded, firing down the trail. But there was no real sign of the enemy, they were just as well hidden as Abercrombie's men. Hell, they could have been hiding there for days, waiting for something to happen. Something, like Charity striding out in to the middle of the path.
Bullets seemed to come from everywhere. There were no defined positions, no clear lines of attack. Just bullets zinging through the air, slamming in to the desert ground around them.
Then Charity moved, and the situation changed entirely.
"She's alive" someone shouted over the noise of guns firing, although how they had managed it Abercrombie would never know. A big, black shape emerged from a trench a few metres in front of Abercrombie, his gun firing bullets faster than any of theirs.
It was Grim, his huge mechanical frame lumbering forward, his minigun spraying the trail in front of them with bullets. The enemy fire slowed and he continued moving forward, inching closer to Charity. So close that Abercrombie thought he could make it, could save the one female from their group.
But the enemy's fire picked up, bullets ricocheting off Grim's metallic skin. But one found a gap, in his knee, and he went down with a grunt, minigun stopping and dropping to the ground.
"Grim!" Julio screeched in horror, rising to his feet. Before Abercrombie could even move Leon had leapt from their cover, crossed the no man's land between them and tackled Julio back in to his trench, just as enemy fire intensified on that area.
Grim was on his knees, bullets constantly pinging off his armour, but they were beginning to find the gaps. He was bleeding, Abercrombie could see it from here, and the giant was breathing heavily. Julio was thrashing under Leon, who held him in a vice-like grip, knowing that Julio would gladly throw himself into the bullets to save his brother.
"Grim!" he was screaming, screaming like a man who was about to lose a limb, a part of himself. He probably was, thought Abercrombie suddenly.
As if in answer of his dark thoughts there was a lull in the shooting and a dull thump could be heard. Grim looked back just long enough to catch Abercrombie's eyes, those huge, bright blue lights looking strangely human in that instant, before his torso exploded in fire, his bodiless legs slumping to the ground.
Abercrombie stared at those legs for a moment, disbelieving, his jaw practically hitting the floor, before his years of experience kicked in.
"Fall back" he called, although it left a truly sour taste in his mouth. "Fall back!" he roared it this time, loud enough that everyone heard it.
Julio was struggling, fighting Leon's hold, but he had him in the same vice-like grip and pulled him out, pushing him down the trail as Hannibal and the two others with him on the ridge provided covering fire. Slowly, Abercrombie's men peeled off, each heading down the trail and providing covering fire for the man coming afterwards, working with machine-like efficiency despite all of them feeling the loss of Grim and Charity. Abercrombie had never left men behind like this.
So much for getting this over with, he thought sourly.
Sam looked across the trail. At the battlefield, he corrected.
The legs were still lying across the trail, smoke drifting lazily from the blasted torso. His doing, Sam knew. It was his grenade, from his launcher, that had sent the giant to hell. A fact he was both pleased and upset about.
On the one hand, taking him out had been a relief. His minigun was firing a torrent of bullets and taking it out of action was a boon. But on the other hand, Sam knew very well that men fighting on the other side weren't necessarily evil.
Of course, propaganda made them out to be that way. Sam knew it was part of the process; a man couldn't fight a man he didn't hate, and they fought all the harder when they believed their enemies were evil. Sam had been on both sides, however, so he knew the truth of the matter. And the truth was that, chances were, the man he had just killed was only doing his job. Following orders, fighting for those around him like any soldier truly is.
It didn't matter now though. Not when the blonde woman was still alive.
Sam was crouched beside her, pack off, rummaging through it for the medical supplies he had packed before he left New Vegas. He cursed as he passed another shirt. Why hadn't he put them at the top?
The blonde was breathing, shallow, but breathing. She had power armour, a lot like Patrick, but missing the arms and helmet. Whether she stripped it down herself or just didn't have a full suit, Sam didn't know. A full suit likely would have saved her too.
He finally found what he was looking for and reefed it, as fast he could, from the bottom of his bag. A leather bag, filled to the brim with medical supplies. Stimpaks, Med-X syringes, Psycho injection capsules, everything he could have possibly needed.
With the supplies in hand he turned his attention back to the blonde. The bullet she had taken had hit her in the back of the head, but wasn't a fatal blow. It had hit her at an angle and bounced from her skull, leaving a small dent in the bone, a bleeding hole and a hell of a headache, but not much more.
Sam took out a Med-X syringe, the most powerful pain-killer drug they had in the wastes. He jammed it roughly in to her arm. The cylindrical syringe hissed slightly as its contents were forced into her bloodstream. Next, Sam took out a larger syringe, a Stimpak, the red liquid shining slightly in the sunlight. This one, he knew, would boost her recovery time and act as a further pain-killer. He jabbed it in roughly the same spot, the same hiss coming as he forced his thumb down on the end, pushing the contents into her.
"What are you doing?"
The question came so suddenly that Sam didn't quite know where exactly it had come from. Did he just think it? He had been wondering, following the first needle but before the second, why exactly he was working so hard to save his enemy, someone whose friends had just tried to kill them all.
"Did you hear me?"
Well, at least he knew it was real. He looked up, his eyes meeting Isaac's, then trickling down to the large knife in his hand. The tanned man's fingers flexed and tightened around the handle.
"What are you doing?" Isaac asked again, forcefully. Too forceful for Sam's tastes. Like he had forgotten who was in charge.
"What's it look like?" Sam countered.
"Saving our enemy, that's what it looks like"
"And?"
Isaac's face screwed up in confusion. "She's our enemy...we should be cutting her throat, not wasting meds on her"
"She could be useful," answered Sam, turning his attention back to the blonde. He took out some bandages, lifting up her head gently and wrapping a few rolls over the wound and around her forehead. "We need to know exactly who's hunting us. Their numbers, their tactics, everything. She can give us that."
Isaac snorted. "You know she won't"
"It's worth a shot," Sam answered. "Why are we even discussing this? If I say she stays, she stays"
Isaac glared at him for what felt like an age, his eyes seeming to examine everything about Sam's. His lips were tight, no smile tugging at them this time, and the knife swayed gently in his hands, as if he was getting ready to strike. Sam's own hand drifted over the hilt of his pistol, an old habit in these kinds of situations. Time froze for a moment as they sized each other up.
Then Isaac shrugged and the knife disappeared into his sheath behind his back. A smile appeared on his lips again, tugging at the corners.
"You're the boss" he said absently, then turned and strode off. Sam's hand didn't leave his pistol until Isaac was well out of sight though.
"I didn't know you were a doctor..." Abby remarked, crouching down on the other side of the blonde and looking the bandages over. Sam's hand left his pistol as he turned his attention back to the women.
"Sticking needles in someone doesn't make me a doctor," he countered, checking that they were tight enough.
"But...then how did you know what to do?"
He leant back and sighed, satisfied with his work. "Experience," he said, sadly, "lots and lots of experience..."