Oh, shit.
Those two words were the first thing to come across Alex's mind at that moment, when he saw Cain and Arcade staring at him with that familiar mix of incredulity and fear and realized that he was practically naked before them, his monstrous claws out for all to see. They were also his second thought, third thought, and all continual thoughts for quite a while, and even when his brain managed to move past that milestone, he saw no reason to revise that initial opinion.
When he fought, he tended to move without thinking – it was the easiest and often most efficient way to do things. Fighting was ultimately instinctive. Every inch of his shifting biomass and coiled muscles knew how to react without any input from conscious thought - it was rare for him to find a foe that actually required him to think to bring down. He was, for all intents and purposes, a born killing machine.
The problem was, his instincts never really compensated for the more… social adverse effects of his actions. Their job was to make things dead and keep his body alive; he had no built-in reason to care if civilians around him were flailing around like headless hydras or if his sister was staring at him in slack-jawed horror.
Except he did care, whether it be from the inconvenience of having to flee and hide out from a Blackwatch patrol for a few minutes, or the clawing guilt that inevitably followed those few awful times where he had genuinely managed to terrify his sister with his monstrousness. It had not taken long for him to learn that society and its expectations did not cater to him in the slightest – from humanity's viewpoint, his methods of action were 'violent' and 'brutish'. From his viewpoint, life was just frustratingly complex regarding problems and how they were supposed to be solved.
And of course, while his instincts had no qualms about bringing out his claws to most effectively neutralize a threat, the action tended to be detrimental toward his social prospects where his two watching and naïve allies were concerned.
As his sister once would have put it… nice fucking job, Alex.
The way he would have phrased it involved a lot more expletives, cursing, and tearing things apart. He only managed to refrain from the last bit through some vain hope that the situation could still be salvaged.
Alex condensed his multilingual plethora of unspeakable profanities into a single, concise word. "Shit."
"Oh my god," Cain uttered, eyes wide as dinner plates. Beside her, Arcade was holding his strange glowing gun level with him and looked twitchy enough to use it. Alex tensed, bracing himself for the inevitable fallout.
"That," Cain began slowly, "was possibly the coolest thing I've witnessed this month. And you're going up against glow-in-the-dark ghouls and invisible eight-foot-tall blue super mutants right now, so fuck if that's not an accomplishment. I mean, seriously, he had a cult and everything. The ghoul, I mean, not the super mutants. Wait, no, they had a cult too. I think. Not sure if it was a one-man-thing or if they were all in on it. Guy was taking orders from a Brahmin skull. And people call me crazy."
Alex's defensive scowl melted into a slightly less defensive and more confused scowl. "What?"
"Man, you could have told me you were a mutant, I totally don't judge. Were you vat-dipped, or is this something else? Oh! Can you go invisible? Breathe fire? Glow in the dark? I've never seen those claws before and now your arms are all wiggly. How do you do that, anyway? Does it feel weird? Is that how you usually look or are you just hiding-"
Alex was beginning to wonder if Cain was as intelligent as he was giving her credit for, or if she was just absolutely insane. Okay, so maybe she wasn't doing the 'pointing, screaming, running' routine he was used to, but he was starting to prefer that to the stream of incomprehensible questions he was getting in lieu of a rational response.
"What are those made out of? It kind of looks like tubes, or wiring, but it's way too organic for that. Doesn't look like rock, either. Shell? It's pretty metallic. But then your claws look like somebody replaced your fingers with straight razors, and I'm thinking it'd kind of suck to hold things with those. What happens if you go to scratch your nose when your hands are all knifey? Have you ever done that?"
"I don't want to talk about this," he ground out, cutting her off. "Later. When we're not in the middle of some infested underground base, then maybe."
"Oh no no no we are talking about this right now." Arcade's voice was about half an octave higher than it normally was, and Alex didn't need a his heightened senses to catch his rapid breathing. "Generally, when people start mutating horribly in front of each other, it's expected that they have the common decency to explain what particular pit of irradiated waste they fell into before they eat the other guy. Of course, I'd be a lot happier without the eating thing, but the explaining part sounds particularly appealing right now..."
Alex briefly considered pointing out that if he was going to eat them, he would have done so already - or that he wasn't particularly hungry right now - but that didn't seem like it was going to salvage the situation much. His preferred diet always tended to go over like a house on fire… but did he even have to share that? They had only seen that he could transform himself, his arms specifically. If they couldn't recognize him as Zeus, then it was actually pretty harmless, as far as his abilities went. He could do damage control here.
The doctor's babbling trailed off as Cain waved him off and stepped forward, a clear act of taking charge. Alex eyed her warily.
"Fine, we can do this later." Arcade started to protest, but she waved her hand at him again. "And it's going to be a nice, long discussion, with no nasty plant monsters jumping in to interrupt us. Won't it, Alex?" she finished sweetly.
Alex's lips drew back into a snarl. He didn't owe her anything. What right did she have to demand information from him? If she had any idea what she was dealing with - oh, no sane person would try to lord anything over him. "As much as I feel like spilling my whole sordid past to whoever the hell I come across," he growled, "you'll have to forgive me for wanting to leave it alone."
"People sometimes get a bit interested when their travelling companions start growing claws." Cain's words sounded light, but there was a touch of steel behind them. "You'll have to forgive me for wanting to know what hand of cards I've been dealt, here."
Alex growled, a long and low sound. Cain, for her part, didn't flinch; just gazed back at her most recent companion and his shiny new claws with naked curiosity.
"You can't just start showing blatantly superhuman powers and expect nobody to care where you got them," she added. "Or how. Or why. Especially when you were trying to hide it. Sorry, but now I'm interested. You're not getting off the hook that easily."
"Fine," Alex finally sighed, the sound thick with frustration. "Fine. But we're doing this my way."
"As long as your way involves answering every single question I can put together between now and when we get out of here, sure, I'm game."
He glared at her. "Don't push your luck."
"Oh, it always does most of the pushing for me," she said blithely.
There was no use in arguing, Alex decided. His arms rippled, and in a smooth, melting motion, the twisted black spikes and protrusions sank back into his coat. The redheaded woman watched with obvious interest, while Arcade's expression twisted into an almost comical mixture of fear and confusion.
"So," Cain started, "are we just going to stand around here all day, or can we get a move on so I can get paid and you can spill on everything you're hiding? Not particularly in that order."
A frustrated growl rumbled in the base of Alex's throat.
"Are we seriously just going to go with this?" Arcade finally said. At Cain's raised eyebrow, he frowned. "I mean, does this happen a lot?"
She grinned. "Doc, you have no idea."
"I am seriously rethinking my decision to follow you around."
"If I remember right, you wanted to see the world."
"If this is what the world is actually like," the doctor sighed, "then I'm quite content hiding in my own little microcosm and pretending that none of this ever happened, yes."
Alex hunched his shoulders and glared at the floor. He had time to work with this, to divvy up what he could afford to tell and what he could keep under wraps. He was working with the truth here, and that made things easier. He just needed to see how good he was at telling half the story and making it sound like the whole thing.
Then again, with a story as twisted as his own, he wasn't sure that even the unadulterated truth would make enough sense.
Arcade was keeping his distance, he could tell – and he really didn't have a problem with that, either. But he could feel Cain's eyes drilling into the back of his head, and it was agitating enough to make him purposely fall back to the rear of the group again.
They travelled through a series of corridors and rooms without incident, taking care not to step in any of the overgrown spots. The plant-creatures didn't stir unless they got too close, and that allowed Cain and Arcade to take the time to scope out and land good shots on them from afar. Alex kept watch on the less obvious areas. Unfortunately, his heat vision wasn't proving particularly useful in discerning regular plants from aggressive ones, and he quickly gave up on that. Getting caught with glowing yellow eyes would just be another thing for him to explain, and just the thought of the upcoming interrogation was tiring enough.
He'd walked right into it, though. It was his own damn fault for acting first and thinking second.
They passed into a larger room, this one dark save for a black light that illuminated a corner full of plants. There wasn't anything hiding in it, but Arcade found an intact terminal that Cain quickly powered up.
"Whoever was here before managed to come this far," she noted, green eyes bright in the screen's light. "And from the looks of this, they found out the same things we did. Oh, and this is interesting. I've taken the proper precautions," she read aloud, "but the lichen doesn't seem to be contagious, at least to ghouls. Looks like our former explorer was a ghoul. Huh. Hildern didn't really seem the type."
"Contagious? Why would lichen be contagious?" Arcade frowned.
"Ghouls?" Alex asked, at exactly the same time.
Cain chose to answer the latter question. "You need to get out more," she laughed. "Ghouls. You know, people that spent one too many nights warming their hands over the irradiated glow of an old warhead. Not too common – usually the radiation will just kill you – but the lucky ones walk out of it. You'll know 'em when you see 'em. Some of them are nice, some of them will try to eat you. Not too different from a lot of the people out there, I guess." She shrugged. "Try not to stare, though, they tend not to like it."
Alex decided to keep that in mind. Extra-irradiated people would probably not be a good thing to consume if he valued his continued health. Although 'you'll know them when you see them' was pretty unhelpful as descriptions went...
Cain was reading the terminal again. "Apparently, there's a backup of data in the lowest sublevel. That's probably what we're looking for."
"How many levels are there?" Arcade asked.
"I have no idea!" she proclaimed cheerfully.
"Well, that makes me feel confident," Arcade muttered.
A couple hallways and lurking plant-things later, the group found themselves back at the stairs. Halfway down to the next sublevel, they were surprised by another plant creature lying dormant around the bend. Alex was the quickest to deal with it, grabbing it by the chest and ripping it in two. He didn't use his claws, but for the looks on his companions' faces, he might as well have.
However, any questions he might have had to fight off were quickly trumped by a more pressing concern. "Oh, this is just bullshit," Cain swore. The next flight of stairs to the fifth floor had caved in; a mixture of clutter and debris from the collapsed ceiling left it impassable. Right next to the blocked staircase was that damned elevator again, extremely useful in this situation and currently shut tight.
"Does this mean we came down here for nothing?" Arcade wondered.
Cain shook her head. "There has to be another way down," she said. "There always is." After a moment of thought, she glared at the elevator. "If there were some way to get this open, we could go straight to the bottom. But it looks like it's in lockdown. Why would you even shut down an elevator? Were they trying to prevent people from getting out?"
"Don't know." Alex spoke up, voice rough. "I could try and clear the stairs, but it's not stable. Without that stuff to prop it up, the rest of the ceiling might collapse in. It's an option, but I'd rather look for another way down first."
Arcade raised an eyebrow. "You do realize some of those pieces might weigh close to half a ton, right? Or shall I just add superhuman strength to the list of things you conveniently forgot to mention when you introduced yourself?
Alex growled. "Look, you've fucking got me, okay? When I said I'd talk later, I meant later. Let's just keep moving."
Cain eyed him for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, that's a good plan. Things tend to try and brain me whenever they get the chance, so I'm a little unenthusiastic about trying to get down those stairs unless we absolutely have to. Come on, let's go this way."
'This way' led them into an abandoned cafeteria; the upper level of a two-floor area. A walkway wound around a cocktail bar, an entertainment lounge, and a cinema; below them stretched what might have once been a recreational garden before the vault became an overgrown hellscape.
The cafeteria itself was located on end of the walkway, on the other side of the room. It was also, incidentally, filled with mantises. Cain and Arcade made short work of those without needing his intervention; he wasn't too enthused about getting in the crossfire anyway. Cain's weapons wouldn't do much to him, but he didn't trust anything glowy and green, and Arcade's weapon was glowy and green and spat glowy green projectiles. He was not particularly eager to learn what those would do to him.
The dining area was a mess. A century or two of being inhabited with nothing but giant bugs would probably do that to a place, Alex reflected. Booths were torn and tables overturned, bottles were strewn about the ground, and everything was coated with a fine veneer of dust. He watched with a raised eyebrow as Cain found an old refrigerator and began stocking up on its contents.
"Are you sure that's safe to eat?" he ventured, watching her try to cram a few packages of 'Fancy Lad Snack Cakes' into a bag that really did not have enough room for them.
"I have no idea how they package this stuff," she answered, "but it's pretty good if you stop to think that it's two hundred years old."
Arcade made a face. "I try not to."
Alex shrugged. Human food wasn't his area of expertise anyway.
She offered him a cake. "Want some?"
Alex grimaced and shook his head. He doubted whatever this ancient, processed stuff was would sit well with him. He was an obligate carnivore, and he preferred his meat so rare it was still screaming. Dana had always been trying to offer him bits of her snacks; the few times he'd accepted, just for her sake, his body hadn't known what to do with them. He frowned, the memory leaving him feeling forlorn. Hell, it seemed like that had happened only a few weeks ago. For him, it had. But now…
She shrugged and took a bite out of it. "Wohks foh' meh." She swallowed. "I wish they'd left recipes around before they blew the world up," she sighed. "Be nice if mole rat and gecko kept this long. Or if I knew how to make that cream filling."
Alex doubted that centuries-old, prepackaged and processed food was the pinnacle of the old world's cuisine, but refrained from commenting.
Curiously enough, the vault overseer's room was also located in the cafeteria. Alex supposed it would be the vault's control center; it ended up being an office of sorts. It looked kind of like a conference room, or at least the remains of one. A few plush chairs surrounded a desk that had been completely overgrown with flowers and ferns; over the desk hung several screens that might have been camera feeds at some point in time.
The rest of the room was rather cluttered. Two chalkboards covered a large portion of the far wall, and Cain wasted a few minutes rifling through each and every wall locker she came across. Next to some empty shelves sat a smaller desk with an active terminal – this managed to distract Cain from gathering up every little trinket she could find long enough to read the logged information.
"Yields continue to improve," she began. "Splicing together cultivar GN188 with the existing corn samples has produced a hybrid that responds better to the artificial lights we have. On a side note, Dr. Peters has missed his third straight day due to illness. His work ethic hasn't exactly been stellar to this point, so I'm requesting confirmation from the clinic that he is in fact sick."
She leaned back. "Huh. This looks like it's from the overseer, not our mystery explorer. Maybe they didn't get this far."
"There's more in here," Arcade pointed out. "There might be information about the work they did down here."
"Maybe," Cain agreed, looking over the next entry. "On a lark, the guys down in pest control sent up a sample of a substance one of their specimens secretes to attract insects. Tests show that the substance has a mood altering effect on smaller mammals. If anyone volunteers, we can begin human testing soon. Quite a number of the staff have begun to show symptoms of some sort of viral infection. I've begun to order them to stay in bed and recover, but at this rate there won't be anyone left to do the research!"
"A sudden viral outbreak?" Arcade muttered. "That's not ominous or anything."
Alex frowned, privately agreeing. Of course, he tended to get a little paranoid where the word 'virus' was concerned. Sometimes it was easy to forget that a viral infection usually just meant a few days in bed. Usually.
"Well, it was years ago, right? Whatever it was is gone now. Probably. Let's look at the last one.
"Not much to report today. The mood is unusually somber in the wake of Dr. Peter's passing. There's a strange rumor going around that the commotion downstairs was caused by, of all things, Dr. Peter's corpse suddenly animating and attacking people. I don't know who would start such a vicious rumor, but it's in exceptionally bad taste.
"Well," Cain finished. "That's a new one. Hey – Alex? You okay?"
Alex was not okay. Most of the message had meant little to him, but that last bit had struck very close to home. He remembered another time a patient had risen up from the dead. It was hard to forget the circumstances of his birth, after all; that first panicked, desperate night was all but branded into his mind.
"Let me see that," he demanded hoarsely, scrolling through the terminal's messages. "That's it?" he said, eyes flying over the logged entries. "There's nothing else here?"
"No. Not on this one, anyway." Cain peered at him curiously. "What's wrong? You're about twice as pale as you used to be, and I didn't even know that was possible. Any further and you're going to have negative color."
"I don't know," Alex said honestly. "But I really don't like this. This reminds me of something that… look, let's just say it was bad, okay?" A virus, people seemingly waking from the dead… but there was no trace of Blacklight here. He'd know. Instead, this place was infested with walking plants. Walking human-shaped plants…
"Of course, mister amnesiac who does not remember anything whatsoever," Arcade said doubtfully. "When you feel like sharing your sudden knowledge with the rest of us mere mortals, let us know, okay?"
Alex shook his head. "I don't know anything. I just have a bad feeling about this."
"Yes, well, I think that may well be the one point of common ground we have right now," the doctor replied, unconvinced.
"The only thing I'm feeling is that this place could really use a new air filter," Cain commented. "Even Freeside smells better than this. No offense."
Arcade sighed. "None taken. I don't run the place."
There wasn't much else of interest in the room. Cain groused a bit about that – she'd hoped that the mainframe would be in the overseer's office, but it was quickly clear that there weren't any cohesive data records on the terminal. In the end, they left the room only a tantalizing but incomplete scrap of information and two bottles of soda richer.
There were a lot of dead ends and small rooms in the general cafeteria area, but eventually they managed to find a staircase leading down to the gardens below.
"Careful," Alex warned as they descended the stairs. "Lot of plants down here. Perfect spot for those things to be hiding in. Don't move until you've checked them out."
It really was an awful spot to navigate past – the old atrium was divided into squares of greenery, even thicker and more concealing than the occasional patches of plant life they'd encountered across the vault. To make things worse, Alex was distracted. He knew that he was by far the keenest member of the party – if anyone should have been keeping an eye out for hiding enemies, it was him – but it was hard to focus when his mind was whirling in overdrive and the thick reek of must and mold clenched down on him like a fist. It was possible that this Dr. Peter's reanimation had just been a rumor like those naïve civilians had thought, but it was the same kind of possible as Blackwatch deciding to give up on hunting him down or Cain losing interest in all of his secrets. He knew better than that, and always planning for the worst was part of what had kept him alive for so long. They needed to find another terminal, another chapter to this story. Something to put his suspicions to rest, one way or another.
On the other hand, a plant monster leaping at his teammates was an effective way to pull him out of his thoughts. He snarled and sprang at the creature, meeting it in midair, slamming it into the wall, and proceeding to pound it down into a large green smear.
Unfortunately, this had the effect of rousing every other spore creature in the room. Which happened to be a lot of them.
The next minute passed in a blur of gunshots, punching things, and Arcade getting to prove that he did, in fact, know how to use his gun. Cain might have been a better shot, but his weapon had more of an effect – where bullets simply tore through the plants, his blasts burned them. A couple of cases even melted into piles of gently glowing slop, and Alex silently resolved to try and remain on Arcade's good side. He kicked around a few of the plants nearest to him, but the farther ones were already dead by the time he had a chance to intervene.
After that, the garden was relatively free of surprises, bar Cain nearly stepping on one plant thing that had apparently missed the memo earlier. Alex was the quickest to deal with it, throwing it halfway across the room. Really, these things were pathetic – the slightest amount of force and they splattered. How were these even supposed to be a threat?
On the south end of the atrium was a doorway to a utility room, judging by the sign overheard. Inside, they found a large, dangerously-sparking piece of broken machinery in the center of the room, and several weapons lockers scattered around it. Cain took about fifteen seconds to examine the setup, then went straight for the lockers, fluidly sidling through the narrow spaces between the machine and the wall.
"I really do not think that is a good idea," Arcade ventured from the doorway, cringing with a stray flicker of electricity missed her ear by inches.
"I wasn't asking you," Cain replied, rifling through yet another wall locker. "Besides, my boots are insulated. Totally safe. I think. Ooh, is that a flamer?"
Alex blinked as she struggled to heft an honest-to-god flamethrower out of the locker. It had been wedged in a too-small space between two shelves, and Cain wasn't exactly the strongest person he'd ever met. She didn't have much room to maneuver, what with the machine behind her, but that wasn't stopping her. He was less interested in her efforts and more interested in the flamethrower itself, though. He hadn't seen one of those in a long time... and it had been an equally long while since he'd last had any fun with one. He preferred his own claws and blades for efficiency, but he'd eaten too many pyromaniacs to not get a thrill out of a good explosive. But on the other hand… he frowned. They were a couple stories underground and surrounded by plants. It probably wouldn't end well. Logic was always such a joyless thing.
"Do you really want to carry that around?" Arcade wondered, watching her struggle to get the flamethrower free without backing into the wildly sparking machinery behind her. "Not for anything, but that looks rather heavy. Also. Big metal thing. Massive thing spitting out high levels of electrical discharge. Bad combination. Just thought I'd point that out."
"Just – give – me – a minute – and… yes!" she exulted, tugging free her prize. "Something like this could fetch a good amount of caps."
Alex frowned. Why anyone would want a handful of bottlecaps over a flamethrower was beyond him.
"Cain, stop it and get away from that thing before it fries – oh my god get back!" The doctor grimaced as a spark leapt out and connected with the locker she was in the process of opening.
She briefly let go, wringing her left hand. "Ow!"
"Cain, please. Just looking at this is painful."
"Will you stop that?" Cain demanded, collecting what looked like batteries of some sort from the locker. "I'm fine!"
Arcade sighed and turned to Alex. "I can't watch."
"Then don't," came the reply. And then, "Ow. Hey, that kind of tingles."
Alex eyed the broken machinery warily. Electricity was not one of his favorite things – Cross had taught him all about that. But hey, if Cain wanted to go blatantly risk her life, that wasn't his problem.
…He frowned. Was it? He wouldn't go as far to say that Cain or Arcade were friends, per se, but he knew them and they knew him and neither of them were trying to kill each other. That was more than he could usually say for anyone. That meant something, didn't it?
"And done!" Cain emerged from behind the machine, red hair standing up and a stark singe mark on her hat. "Found some energy cells, if you're running low. Hey, why are you shivering?"
"Desperately trying to figure out how you aren't dead," Arcade replied honestly. "That was more painful to watch than an amputation."
"Hey, have a little faith!" she protested, frowning and poking him on the arm. Arcade flinched at the slight static shock. "I stopped asking myself that ages ago. Anyway, here." She proffered him a handful of faintly glowing power cells. "Thought you might need them."
Arcade mutely accepted them, shaking his head all the while.
Alex cocked his head. "What are those?"
"I'd needle you on how you seem to know absolutely nothing about anything at all, but I'll save it for later. Energy cells," Cain replied. "They power certain kinds of plasma weapons, in case you have no idea what those are, either. Arcade has a plasma pistol. Small, but pretty effective when you need something melted."
Alex didn't. Okay. Green glowy guns were plasma weapons. Fired what appeared to be energy projectiles and gave him positively hellish indigestion when eaten. Good to know.
"Found some .308s, too." Cain patted her rifle. "And nothing went wrong! Told you everything would be okay. …Uh, by the way, I kind of can't feel my hand. Is this normal?"
Arcade sighed. "All right, sit down." She obediently sat down cross-legged, and he knelt next to her and took her left hand. She had long fingers, Alex idly noted, but to call her hands delicate would have done a disservice to the several calluses and scars that decorated them. He wondered how she'd gotten them.
"Yeah, that's a burn. Not particularly bad, but you may not want to move it around much once feeling comes back. Can you wiggle your fingers?"
Cain poked him in the chest.
"I'm going to take that as a yes," he sighed. "It's just lingering numbness from the shock; it'll go away soon. Here, I've got some aloe for the burn."
Cain watched as he took a salve and a roll of clean bandages from his pack. "Why not just use a stimpak?" she wondered aloud, once he had evenly spread the salve on her singed hand and started with the wrappings.
"If it had been the other hand, I would," he said, carefully bandaging around the device on her arm. "This would not be a good place to hurt your dominant hand. As it is, this should clear up in a day or so, and I'm not made of stimpaks."
Cain shrugged, and Arcade made a noise of complaint when the movement caused his latest bandage to unravel. "I just use stims when this happens."
"Yes, well, I'm a doctor. There are other ways to treat injuries. It's best to save the stimpaks for serious situations." He paused to inspect his handiwork. "Okay, done. You'll have just have to manage with your pistol for a day; I'm not sure how well you could use that hunting rifle with one hand."
"Won't be a problem," Cain said, standing up. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Arcade replied, putting away the salve. "I don't suppose begging you to stay away from massive sparking machines in the future would do any good, would it?"
Cain's face scrunched up in thought. "Nah," she finally decided. "Sorry. But I'll be careful!"
Alex had been half watching the exchange and half wondering what a stimpak was. He leaned forward when Arcade at last got up. "Are you ready?"
"Yep! Alex, will you carry this?" Alex blinked as the flamethrower was suddenly pressed into his hands. "Thanks, you're a lifesaver."
It took him a few seconds to process what had just happened. "Hey!"
"Well, I can't carry it," Cain protested. "Not supposed to be using both hands. Doctor's orders."
"Please leave me out of this," Arcade sighed.
"I need both of my hands to fight, you know," he grated.
"Just tie it to your back," Cain advised. "There's straps on it for that sort of thing."
Realizing he wasn't going to get out of this, Alex grumpily complied and secured the straps around his arms. He did not like the arrangement. The flamethrower bounced awkwardly against his back when he moved, and if he weaponized his arms at all, he could easily cut the straps to pieces by accident.
On the bright side, he now had his own flamethrower. That could come in handy. But he preferred his weapons with the freedom to drop them the second they became an inconvenience.
There were two more doors on the north end of the atrium – one straight across and one to the west. Cain headed for the closer one, and her two companions dutifully followed.
"Well, this is the clinic," Arcade noted, eying the labeled entryway as they went into the next room. "I find it mildly depressing that it actually looks to be in better shape than what we have at Freeside."
"Gotta love the free medical supplies," Cain agreed, stashing away the contents of a first-aid kit. Having one hand covered in an unwieldy glove of bandages slowed her down, but only slightly. "Not like anyone here is using them anymore, anyway."
The room itself was empty of plant-creatures, which was a relief after the gardens. Another terminal sat on a rusty desk; Cain had powered it up and was poring over its contents before Arcade had finished mentioning it.
"Alex, you might want to take a look at this," she said, and he looked up. "There's more on that Dr. Peter guy."
In a flash, he was by her side, almost intrusively close as he scanned over the messages with her. "These look like the medical records," he said.
"Well, we would happen to be in a clinic," Arcade pointed out. "Forgive me for not keeling over in surprise."
Alex ignored him, eyes glued to the string of messages. According to these records, Dr. Peter had fallen ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. As his condition worsened, two more groups of patients had been admitted to the medical facility with the same symptoms. In spite of all of their treatments, the doctor was the first of them to die. An autopsy had revealed the man's lungs to be full of an unknown fungus, which had oddly continued to grow even after its host had died.
And then, the very last entry confirmed it. Dr. Peter had risen from the dead, before the nurse's eyes. Except it wasn't quite like Alex's case. He hadn't been there to witness it, but according to this report, there was no sign of intelligence – or aggression had utterly overpowered it. The newly reanimated man had proceeded to attack the medical staff, and was subsequently sealed away by more proactive members of the staff. Not as powerful as he was, then, if a number of ordinary humans could subdue him. Or it. What was going on here?
He didn't like this at all. Human-shaped plants wandering around, an unknown contagion... and a fungal infection in the lungs…
It hit him.
"Oh, shit," he swore, stepping back. "Oh. Hell. This is just all kinds of wrong."
Cain tilted her head. "Alex?"
"I get it now," he growled, gesturing at the open door. "I get what happened here. And it is not pretty. Those things, they're just husks. A husk of a person. God," and Alex's voice sounded even hoarser than usual. "It's like the fucking Infected all over again."
"The Infected?" Arcade demanded.
Alex swore under his breath. "Later," he said harshly. "Look, those things we've been fighting – they were people once. I can't believe I didn't see this earlier. I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious. Plant colonies don't just grow to look like close replicas of human beings on a whim. And it's not like there was somebody around making topiaries. I just didn't…"
That chapter of his life was over – had been over for close to five years. Blackwatch had never left him alone, no, but some mixture of his and their efforts had purged Manhattan of its sickness in due time. He'd chased the last dregs of the Infection to their source – the derelict subways, the sewers – and consumed it down to the last fleck of diseased biomass. The city had taken longer to heal, but it had scabbed over its wounds eventually, new life filling into those areas that had been destroyed. And he'd gone on from above, his prey changing from straggling Infected to street gangs and lowlifes, withdrawing to his shadows. Redlight's extinction had been a gradual thing, but an absolute one; to see something so disturbingly akin to it shocked him.
On the other hand, when five years had turned into about two hundred and fifty in the blink of an eye… he didn't really have the right of expecting anything anymore.
"I wouldn't have exactly considered parasitic fungus spores to be an obvious conclusion." The doctor still didn't seem willing to drop it.
"Yeah, well, you and me have got some different areas of expertise," Mercer snapped. "Look, I think I know what happened. So this vault, it's agricultural research, right? Fuck if I know what they were doing here, I wasn't a part of this. At some point, they managed to create a fungus capable of infecting humans. Accident, maybe, or they just weren't doing a good enough job containing it. It got out and killed the inhabitants, starting with the researchers. But when they were dead, the stuff inside them wasn't – I don't know, I'm not an expert on fungal infections – and it got into their nervous systems, or something."
"And then they started walking around?" Arcade said skeptically. "Because I really do not think that's how fungal infections work."
"Three words," Cain said. "Pre-War Science." She frowned. "Actually, that's two words. Two and a half. Ish."
The doctor blinked. "Forget I said anything."
The three digested the situation for a few moments. "Wow," Cain said. "That is really, really fucked up. So, these things walking around, they're the Vault's inhabitants? Or anyone else who wandered in here. Probably everyone Hildern sent in. Without saying anything about the man-eating infectious plants. Dick."
"What's left of them, anyway," Arcade said grimly. "They still looked like people when the last of the vault dwellers were getting attacked, but by now, the human bits have all rotted away." He sighed through his nose. "You know, the Wasteland has enough debilitating diseases without them creating more just for amusement. The sooner we can get out of here, the better. According from these terminals, it manifests itself in the lungs first. If either of you come down with a chronic cough, let me know immediately."
"Duly noted." Cain looked out towards the atrium. "What the hell were they doing here?" she wondered. "I mean, I shouldn't be surprised. We're talking about the same kind of science that decided it'd be fun to see what happens when you fuse a coyote with a rattlesnake, but… hell."
"I don't know." Alex said, voice low. "But whoever they were… they're lucky they're already dead, or I'd kill them myself."
Nobody had much to say after that particular proclamation.
After cleaning out the clinic for supplies – an altogether quiet and stilted affair – they looped back into the empty gardens and to the second door. This one was labeled Quarters, and when Cain pressed the button at the side, it only beeped dolefully. Another push gave the same result.
"Damn. It's locked." Cain pursed her lips and rummaged through her pockets, pulling out a bobby pin. "Well, good thing I always carry these around."
"How do you plan on using that?" Arcade wasn't impressed. "I'm not exactly seeing any padlocks or keyholes here."
"I've seen these types of doors before. There's an override keyhole, in case the door stops working," Cain replied, running her hand over the door's side. "Aha! Here we go…" She fiddled around with her lockpick. Alex watched with mild interest. Lockpicking had never been a useful skill to somebody who could just as easily bash a door down, but he had to wonder where she'd picked it up. It wasn't exactly the sort of skill an honest person toted around.
"And… there!" Cain pulled out the bobby pin with a triumphant flourish as the door slid open.
Arcade sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not going to ask how often you use those, because I get the distinct feeling I'm not going to like the answer."
"A wise choice, Doc."
The fourth level was pretty obviously a residential floor by this point, unlike the previous three. The halls were lit by dim, flickering strips, but the rooms themselves were very dark. Cain's little arm-device – which was apparently called a Pip-Boy, when he asked – doubled as a flashlight, but after turning it on once and immediately getting spotted by a group of mantises, nobody felt particularly keen on using it. Alex managed just fine with some subtle adjustments to his eyes, but there was a lot of bumping and muffled curses coming from Arcade's general direction.
The rooms here were dormitories. Clothes lockers, desks, broken terminals, one or two beds – the vault dwellers' possessions were sparse, usually consisting of a few outfits and jumpsuits each. Some had small bundles of money – dollar bills, which Alex recognized, though the faces on them had changed – and a few other items cropped up from time to time, like children's toys or bottles of liquor. Some of the rooms were a mess of overgrown plants, but a couple of them were surprisingly empty, looking eerily normal in the gloom.
In the third dormitory, they were rudely interrupted by the fact that Vault 22's original inhabitants were still around and weren't taking visitors. Having a plant monster literally jump out from under a bed was a shock, but Cain was quick on the draw and managed to put enough holes in it to make it stop moving.
After that, they checked out the rooms a little more carefully.
"Are you sure you don't know anything about this project, Alex?" Arcade broke the silence as they rounded a bend in the corridor. Clearly, his mind was still on the conversation earlier. "You seem to have a rather… uncanny grasp on the situation here."
"Does he look all green and spongy to you?" Cain said, as Alex tensed like a hunting hound and then stalked over towards another mound of foliage. "Nah, I bet with him, they were doing something with FEV and Deathclaws." She glanced over towards his arms, which had once again transformed into his vicious claws. "And, um, spiky things. And hoodies. I've never seen a deathclaw in a hoodie, actually. Although I think you come pretty close. So, were you always a jackass, or did that come after the whole spiky arms thing? Not that you're a jackass, but…" She paused, looking thoughtful, as if it had suddenly occurred to her that Alex was, in fact, a jackass. "You're kind of a jackass."
"Can you two shut up and start killing things already?" Alex demanded tetchily, jabbing his claws down into what looked like a nondescript pile of moss before it took offense to said jabbing. "Because there's still a lot of stuff that needs killing."
"Oh, fine," Cain grumped, reloading her pistol. "But we're getting back to the speculating part later!"
"No, you're not," Alex ground.
"Why?" Good god, only this woman would start pouting in the middle of a fight with vegetable zombies.
He sighed through his nose as he gored a spongy approximation of a torso with a splortch, a disemboweling strike sending green bits everywhere. "It's… complicated. Later, all right? We're doing this when I want to."
Alex was surprised when her response was an "Okay," followed by a quick series of gunshots. He'd been expecting resistance, not consideration. Unless she was just playing a longer game with him. Gah, he hated having to second-guess himself. This was why he didn't deal with people.
These spore creatures were larger than the ones they'd seen before, and considerably tougher as well. He sheared one's arm clean off, only to have it come clawing at him with the other, completely unfazed by the loss of limb. One solid punch to center mass was still sufficient to destroy it, but Cain and Arcade lacked the sort of strength to casually toss around cars, and he ended up landing the last blow to three of the four that had reared their ugly heads.
There were two more rooms after that before a short stairwell leading up. The one on the left was empty, save for an overturned table. The one on the right was a little more striking.
It was lit, and brightly; a lamp shone brightly from a cluttered shelf, somehow still running after how many years. The room itself was a mess; furniture was torn and cast askew, the red vinyl covered with flowers and ferns.
And tucked in the corner was a crib, upon which lay a tiny plant creature.
Cain exhaled sharply. Arcade started to say something, but quickly trailed off. Alex made no sound; he stared at the crib, neck prickling as he eyed an old teddy bear lying in a patch of mushrooms next to the ex-child. He wasn't shocked over what had obviously happened – nobody who stayed in the Vault would have been spared, after all. Diseases weren't the sort of enemy that differentiated between the strong and the innocent. His viewpoint was hardened. The thousands of personalities he'd subsumed over his lifetime were not. And as those echoes of countless minds blanched as one at the sight before him, he wondered, not for the first time, what that made him, when he felt nothing at all.
There was a sharp crack, and he jumped. Cain's pistol was raised in a slightly shaking hand; when he looked back to the crib, it had been shattered, its occupant little more than a green stain.
A long silence followed that.
"I don't want to think of what we just saw," Cain said, voice unusually serious. "I just… fuck. I could use a cigarette right now."
"If we weren't several floors underground and surrounded by flammable things, I wouldn't begrudge you one," Arcade said.
"Later, then." Cain started up the stairs. "But I definitely need one holy fuck."
The last words had not been aimed towards cigarettes, but rather the enormous thing at the top of the stairs. It looked sort of like a venus flytrap, if venus flytraps were about six feet tall and snapped their jaws together like angry pit bulls.
It reared back like a snake about to strike, then spat something at Cain. Alex roughly shoved her aside, hissing when the liquid collided with his arm. His biomass burned and sizzled as the poison ate into his flesh—
Then his other arm was clawed and he sheared that part away, cutting out the affected area before the poison could spread. A second later and both arms were weaponized, knitting the damage closed with new biomass and jagged, metallic spikes. There was an audible tear from behind him, and he swore - he didn't have time for this. He sprang up the staircase and swiped through the plant's stalk, snapping it like a dandelion.
Poison was dangerous, but without mobility, these things were hopeless against him.
He kicked at the plant's massive jaws, pushing them out of the way. The flamethrower thudded against his back like an unwanted passenger. "What the hell were they making down here?" he demanded, gesturing widely with his claws. "What the hell is this thing supposed to be?"
Cain shrugged as she climbed up the steps to stand next to him. "Dude, welcome to the Mojave."
"Er, I think I have to agree with Mercer here on this one. I was much happier living in a world where that," Arcade gestured to the now-dead plant, "did not exist."
"Well, it's dead now." Cain glanced back over at Alex. "Thanks for the pushy rescue thing, by the way. In the future, though, I bruise easily."
"Whatever." Alex wasn't paying her much attention anymore; he had other things to deal with. He changed his claws back to fingers and hauled the flamethrower over his shoulder for a look. The weapon itself was undamaged, but there was a tear on the straps where one of his spines must have ripped it, about halfway across. Not entirely ruined, but it probably wasn't going to last long. Damn it, this was why he didn't play packrat.
Past the stairs, there were two more dormitories, both crawling with spore carriers. And then…
"Damn it," Alex swore. "It's a dead end."
"Crap. There's no other way down. I was hoping there'd be some other staircase or something, you know?" Cain sighed and turned to Alex. "Can you clear that stairway without causing the whole thing to come down on us?"
"I can try." Alex frowned. "Can't think of anything else we could do."
They backtracked their way through the fourth level without incident; everything that would have gotten in their way was already dead, after all. It was only a matter of retracing their steps and making their way through the mess of a cafeteria before they were back at the ruined stairwell.
"You sure you can dig through that?" Cain asked, giving the elevator another halfhearted kick. "Because, uh… yeah. That's one hell of a mess."
"Positive," Alex grunted. His face settled into a scowl as he surveyed the damage. It looked like part of the ceiling had caved in, and somebody had shoved as much junk as they could into the hole to plug it up – lockers, tables, desks. Whatever the case had been, it was extremely inconvenient now.
But Alex had lifted far heavier things in his time, and he wasn't going to let something like this daunt him. It was tedious work, though. He could have clawed his way through the junk easily, but the trick here was to destroy some things and leave others standing – making enough room to pass through while supporting the ceiling. He tried to move larger, sturdier things to the side as supports for the rest of the tunnel, while crushing the rest down. He could survive the ceiling suddenly collapsing on him, even tear his way through it without much difficulty, but his companions wouldn't be so lucky.
Luckily, only about half the stairs were blocked. Once he'd opened a path a little ways down, Alex found that the rest of the way was relatively clear. He casually killed the two mantises he found scuttling around on the lower half of the stairwell, then turned back to his handiwork. His makeshift supports didn't collapse when he gave them a weak kick, so he figured they were steady. He spotted a mangled gun of some sort lying on the ground - he must have accidentally destroyed it while he was pushing the rubble around. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He didn't need guns anyway, though it was always a shame when good firepower went to waste.
"It's clear," he called up.
Cain gingerly picked her way through the path he'd cleared. "Wow. Not a bad job at all."
Alex just shrugged. "If it doesn't hold up, I'm sure I'll be able to do something on the way back."
Arcade met them a few seconds later, looking extremely uncomfortable in the makeshift tunnel. They continued down to the fifth floor rather quickly; none of them were particularly eager to linger in the cave-in.
The fifth floor was the most overgrown yet – the air was thick was musty, and only patches of the metal flooring were visible beneath the thriving veneer of plant life. It was nearly impossible to tell where the plant monsters were hiding, so Alex took point. It was the most pragmatic thing to do, really, when you were the only person who wouldn't be that bothered by having a hole clawed through your chest.
It was just as well. The ex-Vault-dwellers down here were even more stubborn, and they hardly seemed to notice gunshots at all. Cain decided to save her ammunition once she saw how little of an effect her nine-millimeter was having. She tried to bring out her rifle, but after a couple of shots, even she had to accept that using one hand just didn't cut it.
They quickly fell into a pattern. Alex went ahead and did what he did best – namely, reducing everything in his path to a finely-blended paste – then let Cain and Arcade search the rooms when the way was clear. There was a lot more scientific-looking stuff on this floor, samples and laboratory equipment that prickled his skin with phantom recognition. Aside from a few bundles of old money and the occasional bit of ammunition, though, there wasn't much of value to be found.
Then there was the case where Alex opened a door and found another one of the venus flytrap things right in his face. He lost a precious second to surprise, and by the time he managed to process that there was a venus flytrap thing right in his face, it had already spat a stream of poison at him.
There wasn't enough time to form his armor. He ducked, but the thing was just too damn close; for all his effort, he ended up getting a gob of acid to the face instead of the chest. He hissed through clenched teeth as he viciously yanked the plant out of the ground, ripping it in half and tossing it aside. The damage was superficial, but that didn't mean he particularly enjoyed the sensation of something eating away at his skin.
Apparently it looked as bad as it felt, because when he turned around to give the all-clear, both Cain and Arcade gasped. His depth perception was a little off, and he frowned; one of his eyes wasn't working anymore.
"Holy shit, Alex, your face-"
"It's not as bad as it looks," he grated, dragging a hand over his face and wiping it against the wall. It got some of the acid off, at least, and the rest of it seemed to be burning itself out. He let his face reform, tendrils of biomass darting out from under his skin to reposition his features and patch over the damage.
When his face stopped rearranging itself long enough to let him see, Arcade's eyebrows were nearly level with his hairline. Cain merely blinked once, then smiled at him, and he glared at her in response.
"Later, right?" she reminded him.
He growled back.
A quick turn around the corner revealed that somebody had piled a bunch of lockers in an attempt to blockade off the rest of the hall. Cain nimbly climbed over the mess, showing surprising dexterity in spite of the numerous bags and weapons that weighed her down. Alex patiently waited for her to finish, then stuck his arms in the middle of the pile and casually crushed the lockers to the side.
She gave him the finger for that.
Past this was a slight fork in the hallway; the corridor continued off in one direction, but ended with a small protrusion on another. The shorter area ended in three large vents, blocked off by wire mesh.
"This looks like the air distribution for the vault," Arcade noted. "It's possible that the spores that caused this disease originated on this level and then got circulated throughout the vault."
"What makes you think that?" Alex asked.
Arcade flipped his palms over. "Judging by the records we found in the clinic, the vault's inhabitants began contracting the disease in droves. If it had spread naturally, things wouldn't have progressed nearly as quickly – people that came into contact with patient zero might have come down with symptoms around the time he died, and so on and so forth. Having so many people suddenly get sick at the same time means that they all caught it at the same time, and even if all of them had been in contact with, say, a plant that had originally produced the spores, the odds of everyone contracting the disease is low. It takes more exposure than that. Now, if the spores had been regularly circulating around the vault's airways, something everyone was constantly exposed to… then the turnout suddenly makes much more sense."
Cain had taken a few steps closer to the vents and had her hands outstretched, coat flapping. "Ooh. Breezy."
Arcade shot her an irritated glance. "Are you even paying attention?"
"Spores circulated throughout the vault, everyone got sick at once, giant fans feel nice. If that's what you were talking about, then yeah. Incidentally, that probably doesn't mean anything good for us, but you're a doctor, so hopefully we won't die."
The doctor shook his head. "How in the world did you convince me to follow you?" he sighed.
"In your question lies the answer, Doc."
"My knowledge of Zen Buddhism is a mite fuzzy, but I'm fairly certain there are parts forbidding the use of its wisdom for being really annoying."
"Really? I don't know what Zen is, but I'll keep that in mind if I see it."
"...Just got to remember, Gannon, staying at the Fort still probably would have been a bigger waste of time." Arcade sighed. "Almost definitely."
Cain just smirked. "Come on, we're on a mission."
They searched through another wide laboratory, filled with scientific implements and ravenous plants from hell. In the next room over, however, they struck jackpot.
"Bingo," Cain said, ushering them in. "If this isn't what we're here for, I'll eat my hat."
Alex looked around. The room was small and largely empty, and refreshingly devoid of foliage. A couple of desks were lined around the near wall, but he was more interested in the back of the room. The back wall was practically covered in machinery, all hooked up to a large computer.
Cain was inspecting something she'd found on one of the desks. "Hey, this is the swipe card for the elevator!" she exclaimed, giving the thing an accusing glare. "Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have saved us by being located somewhere else than the very bottom of this mess?"
"But this way, we got the whole scenic route," Arcade quipped. "Flesh-eating plants of extremely dubious origin, watching our least talkative teammate sprout claws. I thought that was your sort of thing?"
"Huh." Cain considered it. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
Arcade pressed a hand to his face. "I was being sarcastic."
She ignored him. "This looks like the mainframe Hildern mentioned," she said, tapping a large monitor. If it's not, I think I'll start screaming. Is there – ah, there's a port." She fished out a slightly battered-looking computer chip from one of her endless sashes and slid it in. "Now we wait," she finished ominously.
Alex blinked. "For what?"
"For –" With a small click, the computer relinquished the chip. "That," she said, somewhat anticlimactically. "Well," she continued, plucking it from the port. "That's what we came for. After all that bullshit, I've finally got something worth some caps. Honestly, I should have known there'd be something weird trying to eat me down here."
Alex stared. "You can't be thinking of giving it back to that guy," he said slowly. Anyone who'd spent enough time with him would have recognized the tone as dangerous. "Not after what we've seen."
"Hey, I didn't come down here for nothing!" Cain protested.
"This isn't about your goddamn money!" the hooded man growled. "You can't let that data get out there. Look at what it created! Have you been fucking paying attention since we got in here?" He took a deep breath to steady himself, aware that his arms were starting to writhe. He hadn't travelled this long just to lose his temper and kill her. "Look, I've seen this before. Not this, but something like this. Right now, it's contained. I know what it looks like when it isn't."
"Oh, you have?" Cain returned pointedly. "Really? When?"
Alex closed his mouth and glared wordlessly at her.
"Mercer's right." Alex glanced at Arcade, surprised; he hadn't expected the doctor's support. "I won't deny that this looked promising when we first walked in here. Being able to easily grow staple crops in the Mojave is an alluring dream, anyone would agree. But that was before we saw, well…" He gestured around. "All of this. This isn't what you came looking for. This data isn't about growing plants, it's about growing monsters. I doubt anything good could come of it."
"I know, but – that guy, Hildern, he's with the NCR. Even if he seemed like kind of a dick. I might not be best friends with them, but they've usually got their hearts in the right place, underneath all the paperwork and executive meddling."
"It'd be safer to give this to the Legion. At least we know they'd just destroy it."
"I know that, I just – look, can't we just warn them not to do whatever Pre-War screwing around led to the plant zombie thing?"
Alex was growing very frustrated with this whole argument. The right course of action was pretty fucking clear to him, and listening to Cain bicker back and forth to try and rationalize not destroying what could be the start of the next apocalypse was wearing him down fast.
Words were getting nowhere, and he didn't like words anyway. So he went with the next best solution that didn't involve horribly maiming anyone and slammed his fist through the mainframe, then held his open hand out to the protesting woman in an obvious gesture. Hand it over.
Cain slowly looked from the ruined machine to Alex's outstretched hand. "Was that really necessary?"
Alex flexed his fingers in response.
"Nothing good's going to come of this data," Arcade insisted. "We've got a plant that's capable of growing in the worst conditions, man-sized venus flytraps that spit an acid strong enough to melt skin, and let's not forget, an airborne disease that turns people into lichen-overgrown husks. The Vault may not have created them intentionally, but their experimenting led to some very nasty results. Whatever they were working with wasn't safe. Trying again could easily produce something just as bad, and this time, it wouldn't be contained in a vault."
Cain bit her lip. "Okay, okay, I get it. I… fine." She took one last longing glance at the chip, then sighed and handed it to Alex. "Get rid of it. But we're going back anyway. If nothing else, somebody's got to tell Hildern to stop sending mercenaries into this tomb."
Alex nodded. "You're making the right decision."
She grimaced. "I know that. That's why I'm doing it. I just wish doing the right thing actually paid."
"Yeah, don't we all," he grunted. Cain only had a moment to ponder that before his fist closed over the chip. He squeezed once; when his fingers unfolded, only a lump of malformed metal remained.
"Goodbye, a thousand caps," she lamented. "Hardly knew you."
"We'll find something else."
Cain sent a sidelong look at Alex. "I'll hold you to it. Come to think of it, somebody with your kind of strength would probably come in handy when it comes to odd jobs."
"I like keeping a low profile," he grated back.
She snorted. "Hate to say it, but you're not doing a very good job."
"As much fun as it is to stick around and banter," Arcade said pointedly, "continuing to hang around down here may not be the best idea. I can't say that this was a rewarding trip, but at least it was enlightening, so let's please get out of here before our lungs start growing mushrooms inside of them."
"We can't just leave this place," Cain said. Arcade turned around, surprised. "It's like you said, isn't it? Pre-War science has fucked up enough things. We've already got cazadores and nightstalkers; we don't need plant zombies running around too. There's got to be some way to clean this place out. I mean, we're here, so it's kind of our problem now."
Alex tilted his head towards the flamethrower on his back. "I guess we could try burning the plants down," he offered. "But I doubt we have enough fuel."
Arcade shook his head. "No good. As long as any of the spores are still in the air, they can take and start it all over again. Not to mention... this should go without saying, but setting this place on fire with us still in it is a terrible idea."
Cain frowned. They were both right. They needed to somehow get all of the plants and their spores, and on every level. She doubted they'd have enough gas in the flamer to empty out this floor, much less the other four, and that'd still leave the air infested.
It was enough to give her a headache. I could really use a cigarette right now, she lamented.
Then she blinked.
Hey, wait…
0o0o0
"This is a bad idea."
"Yes, Arcade, we get it," Cain said kindly.
"This is a really bad idea."
"I don't know," Alex said, pouring the last of the fuel into the vent. A large puddle of it had already been spread across the floor between the openings. "It might just work." He cracked his knuckles and tossed the empty flamethrower aside. "All right, that's all of it."
"I am about to die," Arcade lamented.
The three of them were back in the hallway that ended with the vault's main air circulation. Alex had listened to Cain's plan with interest. Arcade had not been quite so eager to go along with it.
Cain clapped Arcade on the shoulder. "Hey, look at it this way. If you die, we're going to die too, so it's not like you got off worse or anything."
"I probably won't."
"Alex, shh. We're supposed to be a team."
"You're insane," the doctor complained. "Both of you. Did it occur to you that you're going to light this place up like a bonfire while we're still inside of it?"
"Come on, we'll be fine! Probably."
"Just excuse me while I go and compose an epitaph."
Alex rolled his eyes. It had been amusing at first, but now Arcade was starting to grate on him. "Are we ready?"
"No!"
"Don't mind the doc, he doesn't count right now." Cain took a cigarette out from her pack and flicked open her lighter. "Yeah. Just give me a moment."
She took a long drag on the cigarette, blowing out a cloud of smoke. "All right. Let's do this thing."
"Wait." She turned around; Alex had stepped forward, one hand outstretched. "Let me be the one to do it. I've got a stronger arm than you do."
She shrugged and complied. "Hey, works for me. Uh… I think you might be overestimating yourself just a teensy bit," she added, as she saw how far Alex had backed away from the vent.
"I'm not," he said shortly, head tilted as he gauged the distance. A cigarette had neither inertia nor aerodynamics; otherwise, he'd be able to throw it much farther. "All right, now get behind me."
"Aww, how sweet," Cain said. "It's okay, you know; the chivalrous thing doesn't really suit you anyway."
Alex glared. "I'm not doing this because I'm a nice guy, I'm doing this because you two are a hell of a lot more flammable than I am."
"I was planning on throwing the thing and then running away," Cain said. "Around that bend in the hallway, maybe into the room behind it if I had enough time. Kind of far from it now, but we could try running back. There's another turn at the end of this hall. Might have enough time; it'd help if you could go just a bit farther."
"Nice of you to inform me of that part of the plan beforehand," Arcade muttered.
"I did! I think that was during the part where you were moaning in abject despair, though. Maybe you didn't hear me."
The hooded man inclined his head. "Well, that makes your end of the plan less stupidly suicidal," he admitted, after a moment's pause. "I was wondering how you were planning on surviving this. But it's still risky that way. It all depends on how big of a boom this makes, and I'm kind of rusty on this sort of thing."
"So was that a yes or a no? To the running, I mean."
Alex sighed. "I'm not in the business of it, but I make a pretty damn good wall. Just trust me on this, okay?"
Cain looked at him shrewdly. Alex usually had trouble figuring out when she was being serious or not, but right now that careless vibe of hers was gone.
"You positive about this? Like, really, really positive? Because I'm going to come back from the dead and haunt you if you're wrong."
He nodded curtly. She held his gaze for a moment longer, then headed back to stand behind him. Arcade followed, shaking his head repeatedly.
"All right. Count of three, I throw this thing, and you two get down. Otherwise, this is gonna hurt. A lot."
"Understatement of the year," Arcade snipped.
"Nah, I think I've heard worse."
"One," Alex said pointedly, and all potential banter was postponed.
"Two." He cocked his arm. The cigarette just seemed so anticlimactic – what he wouldn't have given for a grenade right now…
"And three," he grunted, and threw the thing with all his might. Immediately, his arms spread to his sides, widening into broad, thick makeshift shields. His eyes followed the cigarette as it cartwheeled through the air, center flickering orange as it spun towards the pool of gasoline –
A sizzling hiss split the air.
The resulting fireball was glorious. Even if it crisped his skin and forced him to regenerate the front of his body, Alex could appreciate a good explosion. There were too many pyromaniacs floating around in his head not to. This didn't quite match up to some of the best he'd seen – nothing came close to those thermobaric shells, those had been some of the best toys he'd ever gotten to play with – but feeling the rush of superheated air roar over his biomass, he had to give it a seven for effort.
Those wild, thrilling few moments stretched on until the blazing air stopped rushing off the face of his shields. He waited a couple seconds more, standing up when he was sure that no second flares had caught. The shields sank back into his biomass in a blur of tendrils, reforming into normal human arms.
Behind him, Cain got to her feet. She was looking a bit red, and she was probably going to need a new hat, but she was in overall good condition.
"Do you think that did it?" she panted.
"I don't care if it did or not," Arcade commented, looking slightly dazed as he stared at his hands. "I'm not trying that again. Good lord, I'm still alive."
"See, I told you we'd be fine!"
"Forgive me for having my doubts," Arcade quipped.
Cain ignored him. "Neat trick with the arms," she told Alex. "Guess you weren't kidding."
"I'm never kidding."
She made a face. "Yeah, I didn't really have you pegged as the humorous type. Kind of a shame – you could use it. Badly."
Mercer rolled his eyes. "Thanks. Can we get out of here now?"
"Hmm. I guess that's enough gallant life-risking for one day." He dearly hoped that her thoughtful pause just then hadn't been serious. "Yeah, why not?"
The scenery was considerably different on the way back to the staircase. A few scorch marks decorated the walls, and many of the plants were looking rather crispy. It smelled more like ash than mold, but that was an improvement in Alex's opinion.
Unfortunately, when they arrived at the stairs, Alex was faced with another problem – Cain and Arcade wanted to use the elevator, which Cain had so inconveniently found the key card to. One quick swipe and the damnable thing was open and ready for use.
"Are you sure this thing still works?" Alex said dubiously, not particularly eager to set foot into the now-opened elevator. It struck him as very small and enclosed, and just looking at it dredged up memories of terrified sobs, air thick with tension and the promise of blood, the bitter taste of betrayal–
"You'd be amazed how long this stuff holds up," Cain replied.
"And if it doesn't, you're all going to plummet to the bottom of the shaft. Possibly to your deaths."
"That's a cheerful image. Who wants to go in first?"
"The stairs are still open," Alex said pointedly, gesturing to the unblocked stairwell.
"Good for you." Cain turned around to raise an eyebrow at him. "Why exactly do you want to backtrack all the way to the top?"
Alex grimaced. He didn't have a suitable answer to that, not one he particularly felt like sharing.
So he ended up riding the elevator with them, quietly staring at the ceiling as he took deep, even breaths and tried not to kill anyone.
After what seemed like an eternity, the doors finally slid open. Alex nearly tripped over himself in his haste to push past the others into glorious freedom.
"Hey, watch it!" Cain complained after getting shoved to the side. "What, you claustrophobic or something?"
"I don't like elevators," he said in a clipped voice, staring daggers at the lift they were climbing out of. If he never had to get into another one again, it would be too soon.
"Okay, fine, geez. I think I figured that one out." Cain rubbed her shoulder. "Just warn me next time you go all psycho, okay?"
"Let's just get moving," Alex grumbled. Around the corner, he could see the vault's first room – and a beautiful shaft of sunlight that streamed in through the vault's open door. "I want to get out of this place."
"I can't agree more," Arcade said, stepping gingerly out of the elevator. "I confess, Cain, you haven't done a great job marketing the adventuring lifestyle to me yet."
"Oh, don't worry. If you didn't like this one, there's plenty more things to try out."
"I was afraid you were going to say that," the doctor muttered.
They quickly crossed the threshold and back into the open desert. The sun was fairly low in the sky, and the cliffs cast long shadows on the sand.
"Never thought I'd be this happy to smell the desert air," Cain commented. "Come on – it's a long way to Camp McCarran, and we can get there by noon tomorrow if we cover some ground tonight."
"Wait." Alex gestured over to the vault's cog-shaped door, which lay ajar at the entrance. "Might want to seal the place. Just in case."
"How?" Arcade asked. "The door's off its track. It's not going to respond to any of the controls."
"Then let's put it back on?"
"…Mercer, do you have any idea how much that thing weighs?"
"What does it matter?" Grunting, Alex hefted up the multi-ton door back into place, where it settled with a resounding clang. "There, that should do it."
There was a long and very awkward silence. "What?" Alex demanded, when he saw that his two companions were staring holes through him.
"All right," Cain said after a long pause. "Remember that explaining thing you owed up to earlier? Yeah, I think now would be a good time."
[Achievement Unlocked! Plant Zombies (10pts) –Fuck you, science.]