Ella stepped out of her power armour and leaned heavily on the metal handrail overlooking the floor below. The air was hot and stale, the thick metallic smell of laser fire hanging in the air.
The Courser was dead, sprawled out on the floor. The Gunners were dead, slumped against each other where the Courser had executed them.
She turned around. The left arm of her suit was warped and charred from taking a near-direct hit from a missile launcher downstairs. She touched it cautiously. Flakes of the metal came off on her fingertips, black and rough.
"You okay?" asked Danse.
"Yeah," she said, letting out a long breath.
"You're going to need to replace that," he said, leaning to inspect the damaged power armour arm. "That's not repairable."
"I figured," she said. "Pretty much as soon as it hit. The, uh, sensor readings went dark immediately on my display."
A flicker of movement to her right caught her eye. There was a girl behind a window, watching them. Ella had almost forgotten about her. When she saw Ella look over she took a step back in fright.
Ella moved slowly over to the window, stretching her arms out as she walked. She leaned in close to the glass.
"He was - hunting you, wasn't he?" Ella asked, quietly. "You were bait."
The girl nodded, rapidly. "Can you - let me out? Please?" she asked. "The password's in that toolbox over there, by the stairs." She pointed. "I just want to leave."
Ella nodded. The password had been written down on a scrap of paper in tiny crisp letters, tucked into the bottom compartment of the toolbox.
She curled the paper in her hand and carefully typed it into the computer.
"Th-thank you," said the girl, as the door opened "I'm K-"
"Don't tell me," said Ella, fighting the urge to glance back at Danse to see how close he was standing. "Just don't - say anything. You're not - safe, yet. You know where you're going?"
"Yeah," she said. "Bunker-"
"Don't tell me that either," said Ella, holding up a hand. "As long as you know where it is. Do you need anything?"
"I don't have a weapon," she said.
"Take a look through what the Gunners had," said Ella. "They've got some decent 10mm weaponry. Don't take the Courser's, you'll stand out. Or - if you want it, keep it hidden."
The girl seemed to relax for the first time, giving Ella a relieved smile. "Thank you."
"Good luck," whispered Ella, as the girl stepped lightly over the Courser's body and headed back downstairs.
Ella closed her eyes. When she opened them, Danse was standing over the Courser's body.
"That wasn't so tough," said Danse. "So, what do you need from this - thing?"
"There's a, uh, chip in his brain," she said, "That lets him communicate with the Institute's teleportation - thing. Base of his skull." She looked down at the corpse. Laser burns had eaten through his leather trench coat in numerous places, scorching the skin beneath. He'd taken more than ten of her bullets to the chest before he'd even showed he was hurt.
"Base of the skull?" Danse repeated. "Do you want me to do it?"
She looked up at him. His expression was neutral.
"I can do it," she said.
"Of course," he said. "Do you have a knife?" He offered her his combat knife, handle first.
She took it, feeling her cheeks going red, and crouched next to the Courser.
He looked human. She touched his scalp hesitantly, feeling his hair part under her fingers. His skin was still warm.
She ran her fingertips across the base of his skull and down to the first vertebrae of his spine, trying to feel for the chip the doctor had told her about. It felt normal. Human. She touched the blade to the skin at the nape of his neck and pushed down, hitting bone almost immediately.
She took a breath to steady herself, then dragged the blade down, flinching when the tip of the knife suddenly slid in under the skull. Blood started to spill from the cut, startlingly fast. She tried to push one edge of the wound to the side with the blade, but the skin of the Courser's scalp clung tightly to his skull. Her stomach lurched, and she threw herself back, hand pressed to her mouth. The knife skittered across the floor, spinning to a halt near the stairs.
"Ella-" Danse began.
"I can do it," she said. She crawled forward, picking the bloodied knife back up, and knelt once more in front of the corpse.
She slid the blade back into the space she'd cut and turned it, opening the wound to see inside. She didn't have much space. Thick ridges of muscle bordered the cut she'd made on both sides. She withdrew the blade, slowly, and laid it horizontally against the Courser's neck. Grey spots started to cloud her vision as she pushed down, sawing through the layers of muscle.
The wound yawned open under the blade, slowly filling up with blood. Blood flowed over her hands. She was breathing rapidly.
"Ella," Danse said again. "Put the knife down."
She paused, frowning, hand clasped around the handle. "I think I can see the chip-" she began.
"That's an order."
She stopped, finally, and turned to look at him, eyes wide.
"Put it down," he said, gently.
She pressed her lips together and slowly lowered the knife to the floor. "Are you serious?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.
He walked over and picked it up. "I - have some concerns about your ability to handle this situation," he said.
"I can do this," she said, her voice almost a whisper.
"I have no doubts about your willingness to continue," he said. "But as your CO I have to recognise when you're not coping. And you're not."
She looked down at her hands, stained with blood. They were shaking.
"Take a break," said Danse. "I'll handle it."
She felt her face flush as she backed off to the far side of the room. She crouched to wipe her hands on the corner of a dead Gunner's jacket. There was still blood under her fingernails, filling the lines of her palms, clinging to her cuticles.
"You said you could see the chip," Danse said, crouching by the corpse.
"Yeah," she said, looking up from her hands. "It's just - where the spinal cord fits into the skull. Behind the vertebrae. There's something glowing."
She watched as Danse grasped the Courser's head firmly in one power-armoured fist, and his shoulder with the other.
Her eyes widened as she realised what he was going to do, but she couldn't look away, couldn't breathe.
With a startlingly loud crack, Danse wrenched the Courser's head from his body.
Ella felt her legs collapse under her as everything faded to grey.
She opened her eyes. Her head hurt. The linoleum floor was cold and hard.
Danse was leaning over her. "I should have anticipated this might happen," he said. "Are you okay?"
She sat up slowly. "I - I didn't realise power armour could - do that," she croaked.
"The increase in physical strength is one of the reasons the Brotherhood relies on it so heavily," he said. "Did you hit your head?"
She touched the back of her head carefully, trying to forget what it had looked like to cut into the Courser's head in the same area. "Not hard, I think. It might bruise."
Danse extended a hand towards her. She looked at it for a moment before taking it. He helped her to her feet.
She caught sight of the Courser's severed head, lying next to its body, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The side of his head was caved in, just above the temple, where the power armour fingers had crushed in his skull. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
Danse followed her gaze. "You have to remember," he said. "They may look human, but they're not."
"He-" she began, but broke off. "It - that felt - like I was cutting up - a person, I just-"
"It's not human," said Danse. "Here." He handed her the chip. "This is proof."
She took it gingerly. It looked small in her hand, grey and multifaceted, with orange LEDs protected by a clear plastic cover. Coiled wires protruded from the end where the chip must have plugged into the Courser's skull. Scraps of flesh still clung to it, caught in the wires and around its ridges. She pulled a stray clump of hair off it and shook it onto the ground, trying not to look back over at the Courser's body.
"Yes," she said. "This - this is it. It must be."
"So what do we do with it?" he asked.
"I have to get it decoded," she said haltingly.
"And who do we go to for that?" he asked. "Our scribes could take a look at it, of course, but this level of technology may be - more than they're used to."
"I - have no idea," she said, her eyes still fixed on this chip in the palm of her hand. She could feel her heart fluttering in her chest. "I don't know, I don't-"
"It's alright," said Danse, cautiously. "While this is a priority, we don't need to move on it immediately."
"What?" Her head jerked up. "Yes we do. Of course we do."
"We're making progress far in advance of Brotherhood projections," he said. "If you need some time to take a break-"
"It's fine," she said. "I'm fine." She walked back over to her power armour and yanked the damaged arm off the frame. It crashed to the ground in a thick black cloud. Flakes of ash drifted in the air like snow. She stepped back into the armour, her peripheral vision catching the light coming in through her missing armour.
"Doctor Amari," said Ella. "She might know something about what to do with it. She knew what to do with Kellogg's implant, maybe she could do something like that with Nick?" Her voice sounded hesitant, painfully unsure in her own ears.
"If that's what you think is best," said Danse.
She looked over. His expression was neutral.
"Alright," she said. "Thanks."
They walked back down through the floors of the silent building, their steps echoing off the empty halls. They passed corpses, scattered limbs, discarded weapons, turret. As she closed the Greenetech Genetics door behind her, she craned her neck to look up. They'd turned the building into a tomb.
