For the first time since she'd first set foot in the wastes, Amari set aside her double layer of protection for the morning's walk to the GNR station. The gloves and boots stayed. No sense in taking risks. But she left off the goggles and scarf for once, wanting to take in the city she'd always read about without that extra filter.

Reality wasn't as breathtaking as she'd imagined: sure, the Washington Memorial was at least still standing, but it looked nothing like the picture in her textbook. A distant glimpse of a seated Lincoln across the marshy Mall told her that his landmark was intact as well, but there was a complicating element to the sightseeing. Namely, the supermutants and their pets, which had entrenched themselves in the major thoroughfares, forcing their small group to stick to lesser by-ways. And sometimes, even this caution wasn't enough.

The mutant's guard dogs, called "centaurs," were not what Amari had expected from the name at all. Far from the majestic creatures of myth, these were horrid, bulbous chimeras, made so much the worse by the vaguely man-like faces nestled among the tentacles and splayed-out limbs. Had they really been human once? She could believe it of the mutants, their masters, but she didn't even like to think of the process that would turn a person into a misshapen monster like one of these.

"FEV," said Colvin shortly when she asked, kneeling beside him to examine the body. "A damned virus. Unholy experiments. You don't want to know the details."

He was right. She didn't. But if they were suffering inside those bodies - and she hoped they weren't - their suffering was over when Lyon's Pride was done with them. And yet again, she was ashamed to admit that she hadn't helped at all: had frozen, rather, when the first of the creatures appeared.

After two hours on the road, winding through the broken buildings of the city - and just after their party's second scuff-up of the day - she got up the courage to approach the youngest of the entourage with a question. Since Richard was no longer around to watch her back, there was something she needed to figure out for herself. The urgency of the matter didn't make the request sound any less ridiculous when she said it out loud.

"Penny, how do I... do what you do?"

She seemed honestly confused. "Do what?"

"Shoot. Fight. Leap into action. You know." Be the kind of person that runs toward a fight rather than away, she mentally supplied.

"We-elllll…" she began. "First, I'd recommend being born in the wastes. I had a gun of my own before I was ten. That was before my parents died, but by then I was comfortable with it, and a good shot too. It was just another tool. You, you look like you'd rather be holding anything else when you've got a weapon in your hands."

Amari winced. "Yeah, I guess I could stand to practice more." What experience she had under her belt was mostly from the Anchorage simulation, and so far it hadn't translated well into actual combat. Not that she'd really tried, or that she'd needed to try lately. Walking in the middle of the Brotherhood phalanx, she felt as safe as she'd ever been out here.

But Penny wasn't done. "You're so nervous you make me nervous. I'm afraid you're going to shoot your toe off or something. I would not want to be downrange from your fire."

"Okay, I got it."

"...and I've seen you shoot. If you hit anything, it's by accident. You're terrified of your own weapon and it shows."

"We've established that I'm terrible, Penny. Tell me what I should do."

"If going back to your vault's still not an option…" Correctly interpreting the look on Amari's face, Penny hurried on. "...then I recommend that you join the Brotherhood. No, don't look at me like that. Not as a soldier, silly - a scribe! One of those nice, dusty scribes that gets to spend their entire life trying to make old computers work. You'd never have to leave the Citadel. Talk about boring, but you - you like boring."

"You think I'm Brotherhood material?" Amari asked incredulously.

Penny nodded vigorously, looking slightly ridiculous in her helmet. "Sure! We recruit all kinds… and, not to put too fine a point on it, you're better than some of the people we pick up. You're clean, you already think like a civilized human being, and you know all your letters and numbers. That puts your application at the top of the pile. I'm serious. Talk to Scribe Rothchild when we get to the Citadel. He'll be thrilled."

Amari didn't know if she could buy wholeheartedly into the Brotherhood ethos - Deacon's casual disdain was echoing in her ears as she considered this option - and she made a polite but noncommital noise. "Didn't you have any doubts?" she asked Penny.

Amari could almost see her frown under the helmet's opaque mask. "I was a homeless kid living hand-to-mouth in a hellhole. I would have put my name to almost anything just to get out. Luckily, the Brotherhood has the right idea about most things."

Jennings, never far from Penny's side, had been listening to this exchange with interest. "She's right, you know. My ma and pa struggled for years to keep up a farm against the raiders and mutants. It ended with them and half my siblings dead in the last attack. My older brother took over the place and I guess he's doing okay, but I've never regretted leaving. Especially since I get to help protect people like my family."

It was the longest speech that Amari had ever heard the soft-spoken initiate make and she could only nod. They were happy. They'd found their place in a dangerous world. She couldn't fault either of them for wanting to be a part of something bigger. She just wasn't at all sure that she did. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Alphonse Almodovar was heaping scorn on her head for her reticence, but she pushed his intrusion away with an effort. It's my life, she told him. My choice.

Unaware of the voices clamoring for Amari's attention, Penny was still singing the her people's praises. "Besides," Penny concluded, head half-turning toward her fellow soldier, touching her glove to his with a slight question in her tone. "We... or I, anyway, want a family someday. The Brotherhood offers safety that no other place in the world can." She swung back around to Amari. "No pressure. And, to partly answer your original question: if you're too scared to ask Dusk or Colvin, I can give you some one-on-one marksman training once we reach the Citadel. I'm not the best, but I'm sure as hell better than you."

From up ahead, Vargas wheeled on the trio of them, barking out an order that put an end to conversation for the time being. "Intiates! Civilian! Enough talk back there. The muties don't care if you're making friends. This is not a walk in the park."

The three of them lapsed into silence and Amari tried to look small and unobtrusive. The Sentinel and her right-hand man had not been happy to see her alone - sans Richard - waiting in front of Rivet City this morning. Without Richard's prowess to balance out her utter lack of skill, she was a net liability, and everybody knew it. Luckily, no one had voiced an objection to continuing on with their previous plan, and Amari didn't intend to make them regret it.

She wanted to improve - had been getting steadily better, in fact, back in Megaton, driven by Moira's sometimes unrealistic expectations. Her old employer had overestimated her abilities more than once, but in retrospect, Amari had to admit that it was those intense challenges that had forced her to grow the most. It pained her to think about how much she owed Moira - and how poorly she had repaid her in the end. Like a drowning swimmer, she'd taken every opportunity to save herself; this had been a natural thing to do, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd climbed to safety at Moira's expense. Not to mention Billy Creel's, whose murder had also come as retribution for helping Amari escape. Who else would pay the price for her survival?

Maybe I should just be a scribe, she thought. Even with her obvious disdain for that role, Penny made that branch of her order sound appealing. Can't really get anybody killed there. And it'd probably be… easier. Closer to my comfort zone. I wouldn't have to change as much to fit in there.

Poor, pathetic Amata wouldn't recognize Amari as she was now, but she was still miles behind people like Deacon and Penny, or almost everybody born and bred in the Wasteland for that matter. She didn't know if she would ever catch up. Didn't know if she really wanted to, either. The Citadel sounded like another, more bracing version of the vault, and she supposed she should leap at the chance to bury herself there. Before she would commit to that, however, she'd need more information, preferably from people that weren't starry-eyed idealists like Penny.

Amari considered her future in silence for the remainder of the morning, wondering idly if scribes had to carry a gun. As they drew near to their destination in the heart of the city, however, she returned to the present. Something was wrong. Even Amari could tell that the sounds of sustained weapons fire were bad news when they were still a quarter mile away. Even if she hadn't, the way the others became more alert and tightened their ranks would have been a good clue. They broke into a run, and she did her best to bring up the rear, afraid of what lay ahead, but not wanting to be left behind.

At their first sight of a pack of mutants in the open square, facing off against a ring of people in power armor, Lyons immediately began calling orders to her squad, directing them to take their positions to join and support the others. Vargas slapped Penny on the left pauldron, beckoning her to follow him. Looking behind him, he shouted back at Amari, "You. Civilian. Stay out of this."

Amari didn't need to be told twice. It was one thing to want to be prepared to survive in the wasteland, and quite another to pretend like she belonged in the middle of a Brotherhood operation. She ran in the opposite direction, aiming for the remains of a precariously-tall office building at the far end of the square. She would watch Lyons' crew at work and try to learn from them, but only from the safety and vantage point of the old ruin. She wasn't particularly worried about them. There were a lot of mutants - she counted eight of them at a glance - but she'd seen the team in action now. They'd be fine.

The walls of her chosen shelter were full of cracks and holes, but the stairs were relatively intact. Amari took a perch just inside a glassless window on the second floor - as high as she dared to go in the old edifice and a safe distance back from the action - and watched, studying their movements, and still trying to catch her breath. It occurred to her then that what worked for Brotherhood soldiers would never work for her - or not unless someone offered her a mobile tank to wear. How much damage they could take, however, she didn't know. She winced at the sound of minigun fire rattling over someone's - Kodiak's? - armor, and was relieved when he kept moving, pressing closer to the enemies that were using the pillars of the building itself for cover.

She'd never had the perspective to study mutants without the blurred perception of terror, and was interested to note that they were organized, strategic creatures. Not only could they effectively wield the weapons they'd acquired somehow, but they knew how to deploy their numbers intelligently. Where had they come from? What did they want? That was another good question for Colvin to refuse to answer, but maybe someone else - a logical and dispassionate scribe, perhaps - would know.

Even from a distance, the sound was overwhelming. She didn't know how anybody could stand being in the middle of that without panicking. Both the attackers and the defenders were using heavy weapons now - lots of grenades, and (she was pretty sure) there was a missile launcher in the mix somewhere, though she couldn't tell which side was carrying it. When a bus flipped over suddenly on a side-street partly obscured from view, Amari assumed that the explosives had something to do with it. Nothing had prepared her for the monstrosity responsible.

When it came onto the scene, her vantage point no longer felt completely safe. It was unreal. No living thing could be that big. A creature built along human lines would be crushed, suffocated under its own weight. This thing, though, was humanoid - barely. Stooped and lumpy, it wore no clothes, no real armor, but only scrap tied to its back and chest. Its weapon was a crude club fashioned from a light pole, cement and asphalt still clinging to its base.

Without knowing what she was doing, Amari stood, moving forward to lean out as far as she dared. It was on her mind to shout a warning to the others - as if they could hear her, as if they wouldn't notice the newcomer immediately. In a moment, she could hear them, though.

"Behemoth! Retreat!"

"Back! To cover!"

Vargas's yell rose above them all. "No dead heroes, Reddin!"

The creature - the Behemoth - wasn't in the least slowed by its incredible bulk; its long legs bypassed obstacles with ease, and what it couldn't step over, it battered out of the way.. It didn't seem to care that most of its smaller brethren were already dead. It didn't even react when a misaimed missile passed just over its head.

One of the Brotherhood soldiers - Amari had long since lost track of whether it was one of the original defenders or one of Lyons' crew - had been too slow to get out of the way, and found his or her way blocked by a tangle of smashed vehicles. The creature - the behemoth? - swung its crude weapon at the human scuttling by its feet. It missed, but before Amari could breathe a sigh of relief, it reversed the attack with surprising speed and brought it back the other way. The club smashed into the metal-encased torso, sending the broken body flying in a brutal arc that ended at the wall of the GNR building.

"No!"

Amari's cry, heard by no one, was echoed by the others in a shout of rage that carried over the space. They retaliated with concentrated fire, a barrage that only seemed to drive the creature into a frenzy. Turning and bellowing, it fixed upon a lone figure in power armor that had been firing long, red lasers into its well-protected back.

Run, she urged them. Get out of there. She gripped the concrete window frame with one hand, her hated, heavy pistol with the other. For a moment, it seemed as if there was about to be another pointless death, but then their foolish, brave stand broke and they ran. Zig-zagging in front of the monster's charge, leaping over rubble, bypassing larger obstacles, they had a specific destination in their flight, Amari realized with apprehension. The very building she had taken cover in.

The creature was visibly hurt now, with patches of its scabrous hide flaking away in black patches where the powerful weapons had scorched it, but it showed no signs of laying down to die. It grew larger and larger with its deceptively lumbering movement, filling the entire frame of the window where she stood. Here was a target she couldn't miss, if only she could bring herself to shoot. And shoot, she did, though not with a steady hand or any particular attention to hitting vital spots; most of the eight bullets presumably struck it somewhere, but did nothing at all to slow it down. The attack did cause it notice her, though.

Somewhere below, out of sight, the fleeing soldier had disappeared into the building. They resumed firing from the floor below - Amari could see the streaks of red light hitting the target low - but now it was more interested in the harmless annoyance at eye level, twenty-five feet above the ground. She jumped back, just in time to avoid the questing hand it thrust through the window, blindly grabbing for her; it came so close that she could have reached out to touch it. Amari could see the knotted veins under its yellowish skin and the stubby bristle of black hair on its knuckles, and shot at it again, forgetting that the gun was empty. Frustrated, it withdrew its hand, leaving her to retreat to the top of the stairs shaking in relief but wondering what she should do next.

It can't reach me, Amari reminded herself. I'm safe in here. The guys out there will burn it to a crisp and-

WHAM! Walls shook, dust trickled to the ground, and somewhere high up above, something creaked ominously.

It can't actually knock this place down. It's not that big. Even as she was thinking this, another shattering blow dislodged a ceiling beam, bringing it crashing down on the piece of floor she had just crossed. Vividly remembering her narrow escape from another crumbling building - and her last direct conflict with supermutants - Amari broke for the ground floor. Perhaps she could escape out the back while it tried to batter down the front.

Reflecting on this moment in the ample leisure time she had in the hours and days that followed, Amari would remember leaping from the first step to the third - clutching the railing for support when another almighty bang struck the exterior walls. She wouldn't remember jumping or falling down the last few steps, only the sting in her palms from where she caught herself on the ground, pack hanging off one shoulder, canteen twisted awkwardly to her front. By great good fortune, she held on to both.

From the dirt-packed ground floor, Amari had a muddled impression of great clouds of dust, of lasers cutting through the haze, and a great cacophony of noises from outside - roars from the monster and weapons fire from those attacking it. Forgetting her plan of leaving the building, Amari ran toward the only hiding spot the bare space admitted - the artificial cave under the stairs. It was solid and protected on three sides. She'd curl up there and wait for someone to shout the all clear. She hadn't quite reached it when an ominous whistling sound preceded a shattering explosion which brought the whole world down in a shattering crash.

"Respawn. Respawn. Respawn, damn it!" The prospect of her own impending death was a reality her mind couldn't take. She'd endured a hundred simulated demises in the game, but couldn't cope with the threat of the real thing. Reflexes threw her down and forward, arms protecting her head, but her mind was already expecting the cool numbness of the simulator's release. She'd put in hours of training in that safe sandbox - many times more than actual field experience. For that reason, for the first few minutes after the walls thundered down around her, she was relatively calm. Only after the darkness stretched on too long, when the dust got into her nose and made her sneeze, did she consciously acknowledge her predicament. Then came real, desperate terror.

Amari couldn't see her hand in front of her face. I've gone blind! No, her eyes were closed, sealed shut by the grit that covered her from head to toe. Even open, though, there was nothing, not even the tiniest glimmer of light. She tried to suck in a lungful of air, but only succeeded in making herself choke on air that was mostly stirred-up sediment. Panic made her stupid, her flailing movements bruising her hands as she encountered boundaries too close to be tolerable. She was in a tiny prison of concrete and jagged rebar and that was not okay. Losing her head entirely, she tried to sit up too quickly, earning a flash of stars in the darkness and an irritating warm trickle running down her temple into her hair. Stunned, she fell back, staring sightlessly at nothing, heart threatening to burst.

Pain woke her up a little, at least. So, she couldn't move. That was bad and there was no obvious solution. She couldn't really breathe. That was very bad. Wishing she hadn't chosen this day to drop the scarf, she fumbled for her bag. She was still wearing it, thankfully, but it was pinned beneath her and partly buried. She dragged it out and fumbled for the clasp. It should be right on top. In a hurry to pack and find Deacon - not to mention look for Richard - she'd merely stuffed it in there this morning. There it was. Soft, scratchy fabric - exactly what she needed. Wrapped around her mouth and nose, it would filter out the worst of the dust. She hoped. If only she could see. A slow, maddening click from her wrist - a familiar sound that she couldn't quite place at the moment - was the only thing she could hear.

"Oh. I'm a idiot," she muttered, the first sound she'd spoken aloud since the cataclysm. Her own voice was strange to her, rough and almost inaudible. Turning on the Pip-Boy light - the first and most obvious thing she should have done - gave her a picture of her prison. If anything, it made it look worse that it had seemed before. The stairs above had held - or she wouldn't have survived - everything else had given way from the looks of it. Her legs were partly buried and going numb; they stung when she pulled them free of their prison, but everything seemed to be in one piece. It took a few minutes to be sure of this, because somehow there was blood everywhere from the cut on her forehead, smeared around by her fumbling hands. Lucky, she thought. Or not. Now I can die slowly instead of instantaneously. Like that poor soldier.

As if she'd spoken aloud, someone answered her from somewhere outside of her light-filled cavity.

"Who's there? What's that light?"

Even through the filth clogging her ears - and despite the muffled, distorted sound of the sound coming through the chinks in the rubble - she recognized that voice.

"Penny? That was you down there? You're alive?" Relief made her giddy. It also made her feel lazy. Someone else - someone more capable - was here to tell her what to do. She wouldn't have to do this alone.

There was a groan and the sound of metal on stone. "Alive, but stuck. I can't even roll over. Can't begin to move whatever this thing on my chest is by myself. How the hell did you survive that?"

"Luck." Amari tried to work a gloved fingertip into her ears to clean them out. It sort of worked, though they still felt like they were packed with sand. "I figured out pretty fast I didn't want to be on the second floor when he started hammering away. I really didn't think it was going to knock this place down, though..."

"It didn't," Penny said glumly. "Didn't you hear that sound right before the big boom? Someone used a Fat Man. I'm going to go with one of the GNR guys. Glade wouldn't have missed a target like that. At least the collapse probably crushed the monstrosity in the process."

It took a minute for Amari to take this statement in; her thoughts were running slow and stupid as the adrenaline ebbed away. "Fat Man?" A cartoonish image of paunchy Officer Gomez sprang unbidden to mind and she laughed. It made her head hurt. She hastened to apologize for the joke, "He was one of the nice ones, though."

"What? It's a mini-nuke launcher. That's why your Geiger counter's making that noise. Do you have rad-x?"

"Uh-huh." It was in the bag she still held clutched to her chest - somewhere. She didn't want to go looking for it just now. With the adrenaline gone, she was cold and very, very tired. With her body trapped and hurting, it felt better to imagine herself separate from it, like a pair of disembodied eyes floating in the dim light. "What about it?"

"Take some," Penny ordered. "Every ten to twelve hours, as long as we're here. Radiation sickness is bad."

It took a long time of fumbling around to pull the tiny bottle out, and longer still to open the lid that proudly proclaimed itself to be "child proof." She dry-swallowed one and dropped the bottle back into the kit, before belatedly remembering something.

"Y'wan'one?"

"Thanks... but no thanks. My suit's pretty good protection, and besides, there's no way for you to hand it to me, and no way for me to take it. You doing okay? You sound funny."

"Fine. Tired." The harsh green light made her eyes hurt. She switched it off and settled her head back. This wasn't too bad, she decided. She was underground again, where she belonged. Tons of concrete over her head.

"Don't go to sleep yet. We need to talk about what we're going to do."

"Do?" Amari couldn't imagine what Penny expected her to do. "I'm trapped, just like you."

A long sigh, then a patient explanation. "My people will be coming for me. For us. They'll try to dig us out. We need to signal to them that we're still alive and give them an idea of our position. We can take turns tapping on rocks and rebar. Before you completely zone out, do us a favor and turn on your radio. They might be able to hear it. Should get a good signal, right here on Three Dog's doorstep."

This was a good idea. Again, Amari kicked herself for not thinking of it. Again, she envied Penny's competency. She punched the dial with a clumsy finger and got John Henry Eden ranting about "power-armored boy scouts" and she laughed again. It was funny because the Enclave wasn't real, and besides, some of the Brotherhood were girls. Girl scouts. Ha.

Somewhere in the dark, the initiate groaned. "God, not that one. Try again. And stop laughing. You're freaking me out."

She turned the dial one notch to the right and let her hand fall away carelessly. A clanging sound began as Penny set to work on the job she had set for herself; this mingled oddly with the music that filled all the available space and spread out into the shadowy corners, but nothing could disrupt the cool serenity that had settled over her mind.

Into each [bang!] life some rain must fall. [bang!] But too much is falling [bang! bang!] in mine...

Tumbling out of a troubling dream, Amari awoke to confusion, cold, and pain. Her head throbbed, both where she'd hit it and behind her dry, gritty eyes. Her mouth was filled with sand despite the cloth and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She flipped the light on again. Water. I need water. For a frightening moment, she didn't see it - it had slipped aside when she'd searched her pack for medical supplies. But no, there it was. Her elbow had been resting on it all night - or for however long she'd been asleep. According to her Pip-Boy, it was nearly midnight on the same day. She'd missed lunch and dinner, but she wasn't a bit hungry. Only thirsty.

"Oh good. I wasn't sure you were still alive. It's been really lonely over here." For a second, Amari couldn't remember who was talking to her. Penny sounded like a dull, lifeless version of herself.

"Sorry. I feel better now." She really did - her mind was clear and focused, especially once she'd drunk her fill of water. Too late, she realized that she ought to think of saving it.

"Take over on the tapping, okay? I need a break."

Amari remembered a detail from her dream, then. The soldier, the one who hadn't run: in her dream, it hadn't been a stranger, but one of the team she'd gotten to know.

"Who was it that got hit by the behemoth, Penny?"

She got a chilly moment of silence and then a mildly hostile response. "You can't even tell us apart?"

"No, I can't. Not in armor. Not at that distance. Give me a break."

"Oscar. I heard Vargas telling him to move - and he did - but he ran the wrong way."

Amari's heart sank. "I'm so sorry, Penny."

"He might have survived," came the obstinate reply. "I've seen people go through worse and come out without a scratch. I just had half a building fall on me, and I'm fine. He'll be okay. You'll see."

Amari didn't think a human being could have endured that kind of impact, no matter what they were wearing, but didn't argue the point. "You could be right. I hope so."

"Damn right I'm right. We'll be talking about this one for the rest of our lives, Oscar and me."

Something prickly with far too many legs dropped onto Amari's head and she clamped down on the urge to scream. She flicked the beetle away and steered the conversation to safer waters. The important thing now was that they both remain calm and focused on survival. "So… really big supermutants… is that a normal run-in for you guys?" She was amazed at how normal her voice sounded.

"A behemoth?" Penny's voice was glum. "No, I'd only ever heard of them before. The strategy we trained for those was to confuse it, to wear it down. But it closed so quickly… there wasn't time… or room… Gah! I ran. Just like you. No better'n a green recruit. Your scaredy-cat ways are rubbing off on me."

Unperturbed, Amari resorted to practicalities. "Standing your ground would have got you killed."

"I know. Still, some people are properly ashamed of cowardice. I left the others to deal with it - it's just good luck that it followed me and gave them a chance to wear it down. D'you think Sarah Lyons would have run like that?"

It was Amari's opinion that the tough-as-nails Sentinel didn't see bravery as an excuse for suicide, and she said as much, and got a heavy sigh for an answer.

"You asked earlier about the difference between you and me is, and there's your answer. Survival - your survival - is your highest criteria. I care about my brothers and sisters more than that. You don't risk anything for anybody if you don't have to. It's all a probability game for you. You don't care about anybody but yourself."

This stung, especially because part of her thought it could be true. That's not fair. I care. As if to prove it, she changed the subject again. "Do you have water, Penny?"

"Yeah. This suit has a pretty good reservoir to sip from. It's not going to smell good in here pretty soon, but that's a secondary problem. What about you?"

"I started the day with a half-gallon." She'd drunk some of it on the walk across the city as well. Richard had taken his much larger canteen with him, but she couldn't fault him for that. It wasn't like she could carry much more than she already was.

"Better than nothing, I guess. Good night, then." That was the last thing Penny said for a long time, and by the time the sun was rising - somewhere - Amari wanted to scream to wake her up again. Every hour that went by felt like four, the minutes ticking by with agonizing slowness on the Pip-Boy's screen. Sick of the the same old songs and Three Dog's annoying prattle, she turned off the radio, and set to the job of tapping with all of the enthusiasm she could muster. She tried to believe that help was coming. The more time that went by, the less likely it seemed, but optimism was better than hopeless despair.

Amari and Penny went on in this way for an untenable amount of time, the connection between them growing more disconnected as their nerves frayed under the stress. They fought about whose turn it was to signal to their hypothetical rescuers. They fought about whether or not the radio was doing any good. Penny grew irrationally furious that Amari had food and she did not, and pointing that it was mostly unpalatable dry goods did no good. They were both hungry, filthy, and afraid; neither of them was a frame of mind to put up with even the slightest bit of friction. Without a friend - or an adversary - in the dark, however, Amari thought she would have gone crazy. If only she could have seen the only other human being left in her shrunken world.

A full day went by, and then another. Her thoughts became increasingly disconnected, and what little she tried to say to Penny after the forty-eight hour mark came out strange. All she wanted to say is that they would be okay, that wasn't it nice they weren't alone down here, but her voice was the fractious croak of a senile stranger.

The longer she was submerged in it, the more Amari believed that the darkness pressing in on her, seeping into her eyes, ears, and mouth, was alive - more alive, even, than the woman lying a few feet away. Thirst, pain, and discomfort threatened to drive her mad, but the darkness was a constant companion, a friend that would stay with her to the end.

It had been at least fifty hours since the collapse, according to the timekeeper on her Pip-Boy. It could have been sixty now for all she knew. Penny had begged her to shut it off, claiming that the feeble green light was worse than the darkness; in any case, it was showing a low battery warning, so Amari agreed without a fuss, wanting to save it for the radio - the radio that must keep going when it became impossible to keep on tapping. Without light or any sense of the passage of time, it was easy to lose herself. Amari kept her eyes open because she couldn't bear to keep them shut, and she found herself seeing things that she knew couldn't be there. Her mind was trying to make sense of the darkness and her vision bloomed with vivid hallucinations. She saw small, irrelevant, brightly-colored things, snakes and insects, and sometimes faces of people she knew. They were mostly comforting faces, saying vague but pleasant things, and she appreciated the company, even though she knew they weren't real.

At some point, her throat hurt too much for talking, but she kept up with the tapping, resuming it for ten or fifteen minutes every waking hour - or what felt like an hour - just as Penny had told her they must at the beginning. Lyons would be mustering a rescue effort, and Amari knew they needed a beacon to follow. Overcome by despair, Penny had outright refused to work any longer, and even complained about the noise when Amari persisted. After a while, the complaining stopped, as did the sporadic crying and every other form of expression. Amari worried about her friend, but couldn't do anything to help. All she could do was focus on tapping.

The range of motion for her arm was only about ten degrees. Amari didn't dare let go of her favorite rock in the dark, knowing she'd never find it again, and as a result her fingers had cramped into claws around the rough fragment. Every new tap on the pipe sent an electric trickle of pain through the bones and up the nerves into her pinned shoulder.

Tap. Tap. Tap. She couldn't hear the tinny clank of stone on metal anymore. All she could hear was a repeating distress signal that echoed through her sensory-deprived brain: Save us. Down here. Save us. Down here.

Tap. Tap. Tap. It was a job, her only job, but it was driving her crazy. And it felt so useless. She was cold, even wrapped in her blanket. Tired and sluggish, despite all of the sleep. After water - rain? - started trickling down through the rubble on the second day, she was also wet, though she tried to lick what she could reach for the moisture. When she finally gave in, her final conscious act was to turn the volume up as high as it would go. That would have to be enough. She couldn't do any more.

Amari clutched the precious rock to her chest with her battered hands and tried to curl up on her side for warmth. She only succeeded is dislodging a new fall of dust on her head and provoking a coughing fit that left her dizzy and panting. Despite the chill and shortness of breath, she slipped easily into slumber, falling into dreams of food and friends and light. The man on the radio was there with her, loud and obnoxious above the party's conversations.

"Three Dog here… Brotherhood friends… if you're listening under there, hang on!"

When she awoke, it was to the worst headache she could remember. The dust seemed thicker than before, and she coughed, sending knives into her sore throat and lungs. Dirt coated her tongue, which felt like a strip of jerky. I'm dehydrated, Amari decided, and she fumbled for the water bottle still slung across her chest, only to discover that it was empty. When did I finish that? she wondered, straining to remember in her confusion. Perhaps it had spilled. At least the darkness didn't seem as complete as before. And she could hear something under the strains of "Uranium Fever": a distant murmur of scraping and muttering.

"Penny," she whispered. She tried again, a little louder. "Penny!" There was no answer, not even a groan, a whisper, or a sob. "Hang on, Penny. I think I hear them now."

Hours or minutes later, there was a change in the monotony. It was daytime when the breach appeared - or at least Amari thought it was. White lights stabbed through her brain, voices jumbled meaninglessly in her head. Heavy hands reached for her, pulled her out, tried fruitlessly to pry the rock from her hand. They lifted her, her arms and legs still locked in position, and began to carry her away.

"I can walk," she tried to tell them, but nothing came out. "Don't forget Penny."

When Amari woke, her limbs were straight, but incredibly sore, and her hands were empty and bandaged. She felt congested and feverish and the pain in her head had gotten no better. A arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her protesting body into a half-sitting position. "Drink this," she heard a voice say. The water was good, but it choked her, made her cough. She wanted more, but the hand took it away.

"Colvin says to take it slow. Now that you're more awake, this will be a lot easier." Penny looked awful, hollow-eyed and ill; somehow, she sounded more impersonal than she had from inside her suit.

"How long?" Amari wheezed.

"Less than a day. He said dehydration and respir.. respira... uh… breathing stuff would be your biggest concern. You don't have the best lungs, apparently. He'll be back in a few hours to check on you. I told him I'd take a turn."

"Are you okay?"

"Better than you," she answered shortly. Amari heard her walk away. Heard the sound of water pouring in the background. The footsteps came back. "If you're not fit for travel in two days, we're going to leave you here. Someone else will come back for you. The new word from the top is that the guy you're trying to find is an old ally of ours. Elder Lyons really wants to talk to him, and he'll give you whatever help he can spare."

Oh great. More entanglement. "I'll be ready." She hoped that was true. "Penny… what about Oscar?"

"We buried him last night. I knew it, even when we were… under there… but I didn't want to admit it." Her tone became stiff and formal, with an undercurrent of guilt. "I'm sorry I fell apart so quickly down there. I should have held myself together. I was the obvious choice to lead by example and I failed."

"You helped me too. A lot. Penny, I'm so sorry." Amari felt guilty, but couldn't pin down exactly why. Was it because she watched him die, unable to help? Had her presence altered the timing of their arrival or the dynamic of the team enough that the scale had tipped against Initiate Jennings? Really, though, she thought it was just a last gasp of lingering survivor's guilt. People died out here. That was just a fact of life. "He was a good man."

"You didn't really know him. But yeah. He was." With that, she left her alone.

It was three days before she could walk again, and sure enough, the others had already gone by the time she was up and about. The Brotherhood soldiers who remained were polite but distant, and mostly allowed her her own space for recovery. On the third day, she climbed the stairs to meet her host for the first time. He'd been expecting her, apparently.

"Hey there, sister. Glad you made it. It's high time we have a chat, you and me. Have a seat."

The speaker was a black man in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a grungy assortment of pre-War clothes that somehow managed to look cool on him. Amari could take or leave the soul-patch and goatee combination he had going on, but - in a previous, more care-free life - she would have found him moderately attractive. Not today, though. Not after the hellish week she'd had. Especially not given who he was and the distress he'd caused her, however inadvertently.

The face might be new, but she'd know that voice anywhere. Next to "President" Eden's, it was the most recognizable accent in the Capital Wasteland. "Hello, Mr… er, Dog."

He laughed and tipped her a wink. "Just Three Dog. Mr. Dog was my father's name. And you must be Marilyn. Or Amari, as you're going by now. I've been wanting to meet you for a couple of weeks. Ever since I heard about your liberating hand in Megaton."

That's a funny way to describe what I did. It was more Richard's maiming hands that did it. "Marilyn's dead," she said quietly, ignoring the flattery. "And I don't want or deserve to be your 'Lone Wanderer.' I'd like you to leave me alone. Hang your hopes on the weakest of the Brotherhood soldiers, and you'll still have someone better than me."

"I love the folks in power armor, but they're not really 'of the people.' You are. Your dad and you are the best I've seen for a while, and I can't pass up the chance to spin a story around the pair of you. You're the symbol I've been waiting for."

"I wasn't being metaphorical," she corrected flatly. "Marilyn, James Wilder's only child, is dead. They fed her body into the incinerator last August. I'm her second-rate friend who just happened to make it out of the vault."

If she'd surprised him, he didn't show it. The grin on his face didn't even slip a notch. "That doesn't match my intel, kiddo. Care to tell me where my wires got crossed?"

"I lived a lie for a while. I let on that I was following my dad. It was one part deception, one part mental breakdown, and one part accident. The truth is that I was running away from my real father and his men. He hurt me to get to Marilyn and I had no idea what he was going to do next." A lump came into her throat as she explained this, yet again, to someone who couldn't possibly understand what it had been like to grow up in the vault. Or to leave it under such traumatic circumstances.

Three Dog dropped into a cushy airchair, sending a little cloud of dust into the air as he did so. He opened his mouth, but closed it again, struck speechless for once. He seemed to be meditating on his answer. Finally, he said, "That's not so good, 101. That's not the origin story I've been plugging at all."

"No, it's not," she agreed. "So you'll accept that I'm no hero and you'll leave me out of it?"

"Not so fast. As long as you're fighting the Good Fight - however reluctantly - you're one of mine. That doesn't change, no matter what your name is. I'm not letting you off the hook."

She almost screamed with frustration and wished she had the strength and audacity to grab him by the collar and shake that grin away. "I just want to keep my head down and live! Everything I do, I do to survive. I'm going to be selfish, safe, and happy, do you understand? Pick. Someone. Else. Ask for a volunteer!"

"Nope! Volunteers are in short supply. I pick you. Prove me wrong, if you like, but I'm not budging. I'm a big believer in self-fulfilling prophecies. If I wasn't, I think I'd be crazy by now."

She glared at him. "What do I have to do to change your mind? Massacre my way through Arefu? Blow up Megaton? Poison the water supply in Rivet City? Spend the next thirty years of my life organizing the card catalog in a Brotherhood archive?"

He crossed his arms and leaned back, regarding her complacently. "You ain't gonna do those things."

His confidence rankled her. Making an effort to reply calmly, she said, "No. What I am going to do is to fade out of the Capital Wasteland, starting… well, starting just as soon as I can. Keep on telling your work of fiction if you want - I can't stop you - but don't be surprised when the 'kid from 101' is a dud. A waste of your precious airtime."

"Whatever you say."

"You've painted a target on my back, made my eventual conversation with James that much worse, and people will have expectations for me. Unrealistic expectations. I'm not the right material for the kind of character you want."

He flapped a dismissive hand in her direction. "Oh, boo-hoo. People might look for the best from you. What a calamity. It's not my fault you started your topside career by telling lies."

She covered her face with her hands. She had long suspected Three Dog was cracked; she hadn't known he was a fanatic.

"If I die because of something you say over the radio, will you feel bad? Say a nice eulogy for me over the airwaves?"

His reply chilled her, cutting off everything else she had wanted to say.

"Already got it written."