Nick Valentine was bored, which is a terrible problem when you don't have any of the usual distractions sentient beings have, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, and the need to go to the bathroom. Having those issues, thinking about them, and resolving them takes up quite a lot of the attention span and keeps people busy most of the time, especially in a post-apocalyptic world where survival is a day to day or an hour to hour business. Nor had he any of the distractions people invent for themselves, like a good book or chems. After two weeks locked up like that, even baiting Dino was getting old…
…Until he saw someone enter the Vault from the other end, moving quickly and silently through the area from one spot of concealment to another, hardly more than a shadow. Someone was coming to his rescue? Who owed him that kind of favor? Maybe Ellie had arranged something, or maybe it was unrelated to him entirely.
Whatever the reason, he wasn't about to let the opportunity slide. He raised his voice, "Go ahead, Meathead. It'll give Skinny Malone more time to think about how he's gonna bump you off."
"Don't give me that crap, Valentine. You know nothin'. You got nothin'," Dino retorted.
"Really? I saw him writing your name down in that black book of his. 'Lousy cheating cark-shark', I think were his exact words. Then he struck the name across three times." Anyone who spent any time with Skinny knew that he wrote down the names of people who got on his bad side, pulling it out of his breast pocket, wetting the tip of his pencil on his tongue, and then scrawling the name with powerful strokes. When it came to Skinny nearly all his sides were bad. Inside, outside, upside, downside. Three strikes, and like in baseball, you're out. Nick was taking a shot in the dark as to how Dino might have transgressed, but it didn't it really matter. Skinny was the paranoid type and if he even suspected someone was cheating…
"Three strikes? In the black book? But I never—Oh, no, I've got to smooth this over, fast!" He made as if to run, but then the shadowy figure clocked him a good one with…a shovel? Interesting choice of blunt instrument, but it worked. Dino crumpled to the ground.
"Hey, you! I don't know who you are, but…" Then he saw his rescuer's face. A woman. Young, with dark hair that tumbled around her shoulders. Hazel green eyes, indeterminate skin tone, a wide and generous mouth, and an intelligent expression. He knew that face very well. It was the face of Theodosia Queen, and of Elizabeth Queen, and of two other unnamed women. "You!" he sputtered. "How—never mind, we've got about three minutes before they realize muscles-for-brains ain't coming back. Get this door open!"
She nodded and disappeared for a moment. Then he heard the hiss and clank of the maglocks releasing, and a moment later she dashed into the room, a German Shepard dog at her heels.
"Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel-in-distress situation. Ms. Queen, I presume? Not Ellery, by any chance?" He lost no time, but bolted out the door, followed by the young woman and her dog.
"No, it's Raina, but good one!" Ellery Queen was the name of a fictional private detective from the 20th century, and since the War and the destruction of practically all books, he had been completely forgotten. That she had immediately known who he was talking about was impressive.
"Raina? 'Reign a Queen'? Why on earth would anyone saddle you with that moniker?" he threw behind him as they went.
"I don't think they considered that when I was named. You are the first person who ever pointed that out, in truth. Ah—are you a synth?" she asked. She sounded curious rather than judgmental.
"Yeah. The skin and the metal bits really give it away, don't they? Thank you for not freaking out at the sight of them, by the way. Thanks for the rescue, too. I've been cooped up in here for weeks. Turns out the runaway daughter I came here to find wasn't kidnapped. She's Skinny Malone's new dame, and she's got a mean streak. Since you didn't ask how I knew your last name, I'm thinking Ellie pointed you my way?"
"Yes. Piper told me you had a file on my…on my family, and—." Raina said. He did not miss the little hesitation and correction she made. Yeah, she was hiding something.
He suddenly stopped in his tracks, threw his arm in front of her to brake her. "Another locked door. Shouldn't be too hard. I smell trouble up ahead. Skinny Malone and the rest of his boys are waiting for us. Don't let the name fool you, it's, uh, ironic. He's dangerous." Nick fiddled with the lock for a moment, felt the tumblers give.
"What about your dog? Is he going to get in the way?" he glanced at the animal, who was carrying around a large bone with a few shreds of meat still clinging to it.
"He knows how not to get shot, or he would've been dead a thousand times over the last seven months. King's the best. Aren't you, boy?" Raina scratched around the Shepard's ears, and he grinned, dog fashion, around his bone.
Well, the dog did have serious armor on him, like the K-9 corps the real Nick Valentine remembered from his days as a cop. "A king and a queen both come to rescue me. Your Majesties are too kind. Okay, let's do this. Be ready for anything on the other side of this door." He pulled his gun, she pulled her…syringer? Well, if it worked for her, who was he to judge?
The 200+ year old door groaned as the hydraulics and mags did their work. On the other side were Skinny, his gal Darla, and a few chumps who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Malone shook his head. "Nicky, whatta ya doin'? Ya come into my house, shoot up my guys—do you have any idea how much this is gonna set me back?"
Valentine replied, "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your two-timing dame, Skinny. You ought to tell her to write home more often."
Darla, who already had lines around her mouth like she was sucking a lemon, despite being relatively young, put on a syrupy coo, "Aww, whassa matter? Is the great Nick Valentine sore about getting beat up by a girl? Skinny, I tole ya, ya shooda iced him weeks ago, but noooo, you had to go get sentimental about the old days. Now look! He prolly brought her in here to bump us all off!" She gesticulated with a baseball bat she was holding.
"I'm only here because Mr. Valentine may know what happened to my sister," Raina said, sounding a little bewildered. "If he wasn't being held prisoner, I wouldn't have had any reason to come here and if your men weren't inclined to shoot first and ask questions afterward, I wouldn't have had to kill them. I don't go out of my way to kill people. I never killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill me first."
One of his thugs was looking at the syringer in Raina's hands and back at her. He stepped forward to whisper something in Malone's ear. The big man suddenly looked a lot less sure of himself.
"Hey, those darts in that thing you got there. Are they—." He paused and wetted his lips. "Are they the ones that make you choke on your own blood with one dose?"
"These darts?" She lifted the syringer. "No. I use those for supermutants, ghouls and deathclaws. One dose of this causes paralysis within five paces, but it doesn't actually kill you for half an hour to forty-five minutes, when the paralysis gets to the heart and lungs. If you had someone willing to perform CPR on you continuously for a couple of hours, you would survive. That's when you learn who your real friends are. Now, as for why Mr. Valentine was here: Miss, are you eighteen?"
"What? What does that have to do with anything?" Darla lowered the baseball bat a few centimeters. "Yeah, I am, if you want to know. Not that you'll ever see eighteen again!"
Nick concealed a smile. Darla would never see eighteen again herself. If anything she was nearer to thirty-six than to eighteen.
"And you are not married? It was your father who hired Mr. Valentine to find you?"
"My father ain't got any right to tell me what to do," the dame shrilled. "Nobody does!"
"Is your family going to lock you in the attic or the basement if you go back?" Raina persisted.
"Hah! Like they'd dare!"
"Hey, why is this broad doing so much talking?" Skinny wondered aloud to Valentine.
"Beats me. I only met her ten minutes ago," Nick replied. "But I have an idea where this conversation is going, and I gotta say, I like the destination."
"Then why all of this? Go home, tell your family you are old enough to do as you please and you want to be with Mr. Malone. Then leave and come back to him. None of this was necessary," Raina pointed out.
Darla's jaw dropped open. "That's—Skinny, why do I gotta put up with this mouthy broad? Are you gonna let her make out like I'm, I'm stupid or something?"
"Hey, if the shoes fit," Nick was now enjoying himself a great deal, because Skinny was looking at Darla less like she was Love's Young Dream and more like she was a millstone around his neck. "In fact, if you would just state, for the record, and by record, I mean the recording device I have built into my CPU, that you're with Skinny here of your own free will and can leave any time you want, I believe it'll be enough to satisfy your family, if not enough for me to get paid for this. Actually, what you said already is probably plenty."
"Unless, of course, she was playing both sides against each other—making out to her family that she was in the clutches of a ruthless gangster and to him that they would never let them be together," Raina Queen speculated.
Now Skinny was looking stormy. "Darla. Say out loud whatever you have to say, or I'll give ya your walkin' papers right now. Your choice."
Her expression sourer than ever, Darla made her statement for the record.
Nick chuckled. "Skinny, I think we're done here. If your girl'd been honest with her folks in the first place, I never would have entered the picture. If I were you, I'd rethink my choice of dames. That one is the wrong kind of trouble."
"I think I'm beginnin' to see that. Yeah, Nick. You can go—for old time's sake. But I'm giving ya to the count of ten to do it. One…"
"This way—," he told Raina. She and the dog followed him, and they made for the exit out through the Park Street Station. They emerged into the pitch blackness of the post-apocalyptic cloudless night.
"Hmm," he said, looking left and right to orient himself. "We can go to Diamond City and spend half the night getting there through some very dicey turf, or we can spend the night in Goodneighbor and set out in the morning while the various factions are still sleeping it off. I don't have to sleep or eat and I don't get tired, but you do. At least I'm assuming you do."
"I do and I got little enough rest last night. King and I hid in an abandoned building and waited for day. If you say Goodneighbor is the better choice, I trust your judgement." Raina said.
"It's not ideal, but it'll do. People still kill each other in the street there, but it tends to be personal rather than murder just for the sake of murder. This way," he pointed, then gentled his voice and expression. "Now, you asked me a question before, and you did it without judging me or condemning me out of hand. I appreciate that. Now I have one for you, and I'm asking in the same spirit. You are the fifth woman to show up over the last two hundred and ten years with the same face and general build. Are you a clone of Theodosia Queen?"
She paused for a moment. "Yes," she replied. "through her daughters Margaret, Constancia, Melisande, Catherine and Ulrike."
"How does that work?" he asked.
"She cloned Margaret, who donated cells for Constancia, who in turn gave her cells for Melisande, and so on," Raina told him.
"That's interesting," he said. "Is there a reason for that?"
"Fresh, living cells are easier to work with than frozen ones," she said, but something about her voice said there was more to it. He chose not to pry at that moment. "I was told it would be better not to volunteer that information."
"That's good advice. People tend to distrust…well, that's the whole point. People tend to distrust. Now, the file on your mother and your…aunts? Cousins? Mothers, plural? What do you call them?"
"We always called each other sisters, no matter how great the age difference," Raina replied. "I'm the sixteenth clone. The last, too, unless I can get enough materials to create others."
"Sixteen of you? Damn. Well, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but…three of them that I know of died deaths I wouldn't wish on anyone," Nick pulled out a cigarette and lit it, avoiding looking at her face. (He needed very little light to see by. His eyes were sources of light.) The cigarette did nothing but act as a prop, as smoking for him was a mannerism, a hold out from the original Nick Valentine. However, he knew it made him more human to those around him.
"How and who?" Her eyes were dark pools in her face.
"I only know the name of one of them, but I can tell you when and how the others turned up." He did not go into all the details, because already he could see her in the place of each of the young women.
"The first must have been Margaret, and the third one, Matilda," she said when he was done. "We knew they must have died out there, or else they would have come back. Those are the only ones you know about? Seven of them left us."
"That's all," he replied. "Another question. Why did your vault have a symbol rather than a number?"
"It was an EnviroVault," Raina told him.
"Never heard of them. What are they like?"
"They were intended to replicate environments on a small scale. Piper told me they were for tree-hugging granola eaters," she replied.
"A replica of an entire environment? Sounds like a tall order."
"No large animals were included," she said. "Plants and insects, mostly. You can't have plants without pollinators."
"Of course not. And Theodosia was an agroecologist. So you have, or had, your own little slice of unspoiled paradise down underground. Is it still in working order?" Nick cocked his head and looked at her closely. He was beginning to get an idea of exactly what was in that vault, and it was more valuable than Fort Knox in its heyday. Gold was pretty and it made for superior contacts in electrical devices, but you couldn't eat it, drink it, or keep warm with it.
"Yes, but we're... I'm running out of fusion cores. Also, it's too quiet there without my sisters."
He nodded. "I get that. You have any more questions for me before we get to Goodneighbor? It's not such a good idea to talk about certain matters there. Like Diamond City, they're not too fond of synths."
"None that I can think of right now. I'm too tired to think straight."
A/N: Nick is a savvy fellow. Next chapter, Goodneighbor! Raina gets to meet the mayor and makes a few friends. Maybe an enemy or two as well.
Guestman: Your realistic vault 69 reminds me of a manga called Ooku, about an alternative history where a terrible plague kills most of the male population of Japan. All roles in society, from the humblest to the shogun, are taken over by women. It was very thought provoking for me. Jonny's name is a play on Je ne se quoi, but the connection will become clear later. Heh, if Raina's not careful, she'll end up owning the commonwealth! However, some of her ideas will not pan out and others will outright fail. Got to keep it realistic...
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