Bit of a mini-segment this time. :3 At least in comparison to the last two.

[ 20 :: One Big Happy Family ]

Sentinel Lyons and the rest of the Eastern Brotherhood's diplomatic detachment were not nearly so thrilled with the notion of staying where they were. Even Jameson, initially pleased with the idea of being able to study the Midwestern Brotherhood's archives in detail for the East Coast's own records, had begun to find the atmosphere just shy of oppressive, though it was for much different reasons than those given by the others.

For one thing, the archives themselves had proven to be something of a trial to get through. She'd expected to run into database entries that were locked down from outside viewers, with or without the assurances from the General that she was being given unprecedented access; it was only natural to keep the most sensitive information away from prying eyes, and their privacy was something she'd intended to respect. True, some of the locked articles hardly looked as though they possessed anything that made them worth the increased security, but whether or not the measures taken to keep them from her view were warranted wasn't her judgment call to make. But after three weeks had passed, she began to take note of a rather puzzling phenomenon.

It appeared as though some of the articles she had access to were actively being altered.

The alterations were small enough that she'd barely noticed anything at first. In her line of work, having to read and re-read a wide variety of documentation for clarity's sake was necessary to ensure she hadn't missed or, in some cases, mis-read anything. It wasn't until she'd written down what she'd thought were a couple interesting tidbits of information in a small notebook she made it a point to carry- mostly on the Elder's predecessor, General Dekker- that she'd noticed an alteration first-hand. The notes she'd taken down didn't correspond at all with what she saw when she'd referenced the entry a second time, details concerning the General's age, origins and his rise to power shifted around. She'd wondered if perhaps she'd jotted down something incorrectly, blaming fatigue and the stress of having to stay in an unfamiliar location for the mishap- but then it happened again.

And again.

Every time it was something that seemed innocuous, and every time it was altered in such a way that what she'd written down appeared to be an honest mistake. It was vexing; she'd worked under incredibly stressful conditions in the past, situations in which a slew of small errors would have been completely understandable, but she couldn't remember a time when she had made mistakes so consistently. Even as an apprentice she'd done better. It made her wonder if, perhaps, something about the circumstances the diplomacy detachment had found themselves in was getting to her. Something about their morbidly assembled emissary or the fact that not once had she seen a Midwestern paladin wearing anything other than their full suits of power armor, helmet and all. She hadn't seen them eat, sleep, recreate... she'd only seen them stalking through the hallways and the grounds above, constantly on patrol.

Through the weeks, she'd refrained from mentioning everything she'd noticed to the Sentinel, instead doubling down in her efforts to check and double-check the notes she'd taken as they corresponded to the information she read from the terminals, the notes themselves becoming far more detailed than they had been. She started to keep track of what sentences preceded the information she jotted down, the context, the number of screens she'd cycled through to get to the data- all of which required many long hours and many late nights.

At that point, the fatigue was doing her no favors.

But, the practice of being more detailed, more stringent in her process of making sure her notes were accurate had lead to fewer mistakes, at first. It had helped; helped to know that she wasn't losing her edge or, god forbid, losing her mind little by little- but then it started to happen again. At those times, it was more blatant, and it had become clear that data was genuinely being altered; the first instance she'd seen of it, the first instance where she knew with absolute certainty that she hadn't made an error, had happened within minutes of her going back to an entry she'd just finished reading.

The entry concerned a tribe named the Beastlords, a tribe that had established itself in Mardin, a location northwest of St. Louis known for harboring an underground, radioactive network of caves. The tribe had made life exceedingly difficult for Quincy, a small town at the Illinois border comprised of both humans and ghouls; not only were the brutes capable of commanding the local wildlife- including, as improbable as it sounded, deathclaws- but they were known to be cannibalistic. After suffering through several raids, the townspeople of Quincy were understandably concerned that the Beastlords' intent was to take advantage of what they deemed to be a readily available food supply.

The Brotherhood's aid had been requested when the Beastlords finally made a move to occupy the town. The situation had been dealt with, and the barbarians had been chased back to their point of origin, a network of caves beneath Mardin, but not all of them had been eradicated from the area. Some, it seemed, had survived; enough to breed, at least. It would be well over a decade before the tribe became a nuisance again, but when they did, their appetites had grown considerably. Again, the small town of Quincy was threatened, and again, the Brotherhood's help was requested. There was, however, some sort of problem; though the Brotherhood had an alliance with the town, they refused to send patrols, citing the reluctance shown by the town's mayor as a blatant breach of a treaty that had been signed after the first Beastlord occupation.

It was indicated that this had gone on for some time, but that eventually, the Brotherhood had intervened. The Beastlords were displaying some kind of illness- the infection that the General had told the Eastern detachment about- something that affected not only their motor skills but their cognitive abilities. Those afflicted no longer showed the same affinity for animal husbandry, had poor reaction times, and in the worst cases, sported what appeared to be dark contusions along their skin, contusions that would eventually become lesions. Once again chased back to their newly-established lair, the Beastlords' troubles were made even clearer: men, women and children could be seen suffering from far more advanced cases of the disease, and it was rumored to have a near-100% fatality rate.

Brotherhood paladins were instructed to dispose of the tribe entirely, and ensure that the bodies were disintegrated by repeated energy blasts; not even the animals the tribe had so heavily relied upon for backup were spared. Appended to the entry, it was mentioned that one of the surviving Beastlords the Brotherhood had hunted down had slipped out from under their radar, but that they'd found the brute's armor and tell-tale head dress at the end of the trail. Of the Beastlord himself, there had been no sign.

There was no mention of what happened to Quincy's former inhabitants, human and ghoul alike.

The history of that region had been fascinating to read about, but upon returning to the article, Jameson noticed one glaring omission: any mention of the treaty with Quincy, of the conflict that had made the Brotherhood abstain from lending a hand, had vanished. Only the request for help and the discovery of the disease remained. It took several minutes of staring at the screen for her to realize that something was genuinely amiss, wondering if perhaps her eyes weren't playing tricks on her.

Turning to glance towards the atomic clock keeping time on a nearby wall, she felt her heart skip a bit upon catching sight of the General standing in the doorway.

The sound of footsteps, a regular feature in the Vault, hadn't been enough to call her attention away from the disparity, but that she hadn't even noticed his presence- hadn't even noticed hints of it resonating through the room...

Had he spoken to her? Had he announced himself at all?

Doing her best to calm down, she took a slow breath and watched the robot carefully, taking the opportunity to say, "General," though her tone was tentative, "I'm glad you're here." A blatant lie, but she would've liked to think she told it well. "I've been wondering... do you know anything about a town called Quincy?"

The General hadn't replied; instead, he remained in the doorway, unblinking eyes staring plainly at her. The robot already unnerved her to some degree, but having it simply stand there, its bulk blocking the only exit in sight... the longer the silence persisted, the more discomfited the scribe became.

"Your Brothers up in Bunker Beta apparently had some kind of dispute with them?" she prompted him, brow furrowing.

Again, he failed to reply, the clawed hand at his side flexing once, fingers then curling inwards. The move would have hardly been noteworthy had there not been a few mild tics to follow, movements that appeared wholly involuntary. Minutes passed, the two watching each other quietly, the scribe's tension growing exponentially as she raised from her seat with her notebook in-hand.

"General?"

Silence.

The only answer the scribe received was the dull scraping noise that emitted from those lengthy metal claws shifting against one another, the sound becoming more erratic- rapid. Her heartbeat accelerated to the sound, though she took a slow breath in a vain attempt to calm herself. Eventually, the scraping stopped, but the cyborg still had no answer; he just continued to watch her, the silence that spanned between them growing deafening.

It made her wonder, briefly, if she was just dreaming.

Startled by the sound of his voice as it raised to say, "It's on the Illinois border," rather abruptly, as if there'd been no delay whatsoever, her confusion was only amplified by the conversational tone he took with her. "Why do you ask?"

...Like what she'd just seen was nothing out of the ordinary. If she'd seen it at all.

Jameson paused, eyeing the robot uneasily, uncertain of what to make of the response- or what she'd just witnessed. "No reason," she said, dimly aware of a slight waver in her tone. "I just- ah..." She smiled haltingly, saying, "General, do you mind- moving to the side a little? You're blocking the only-"

"Oh-" He chuckled softly. "Sorry, ma'am- didn't realize."

"It's alright," she said, though even to her ears it sounded like a blatant lie- even moreso as she hurried out of the small room she'd occupied for what had apparently been far too long.

"Ma'am?"

She turned briefly to glance at the General over her shoulder, though instinct told her to keep on walking.

"You feelin' alright?"

"I'm fine," she assured him, managing the most sincere smile she could muster. "I could just use to get some sleep." Again he began to simply stare at her- and again those claws began to click together. "Goodnight, General," she said after another lengthy, uncomfortable pause.

He didn't answer.

As discomfiting as the whole situation was, at least it gave her some method of solidifying that she wasn't just- seeing things. In part, anyway. It... seemed like that she hadn't just dreamed it into being thanks to some bizarre form of monitor hypnosis, but...

No. Something was definitely wrong in Fort Carson. Very, very wrong. Of this, she couldn't afford to have too many doubts.

Scurrying off to the room she shared with the Sentinel and the others, she hoped that she could finally prove, once and for all, that she had no reason to doubt her worst suspicions. That said... she was as grateful as she was disappointed to find Sarah and her subordinates fast asleep when she arrived; as much as she wanted some outside presence to calm her frayed nerves, she knew the younger woman would offer little in the way of solace. 'The place is just getting to you,' would undoubtedly be the first answer she got, until she could find some proof that something was actually happening.

[...]

In the days that followed, Jameson took the opportunity to poke holes in the stories both the General and the archives were telling her, started to watch everything that transpired around the Fort. She watched the initiates, gaged the way they behaved, listened to the stories they had to tell as closely as she could; watched the paladins that shuffled around the Vault, none of them showing signs of ever taking that power armor off, none of them leading her to any room that could even be considered sleeping chambers. On at least one occasion, she could swear she saw one jolt awake after standing stock-still for well over an hour, but in that particular instance, she allowed for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, her paranoia was getting away with her.

There was still the risk of delusion, she knew, and becoming overzealous wouldn't do her any favors... but she also allowed for the grim possibility that perhaps, she really was living in an outright delusion, and at times, that fear seemed well founded. Gathering up the initiative to ask the General about the town of Quincy again was one of those times.

"Quincy..." he'd said contemplatively. "Only thing they ever did wrong was cuddle up with a bunch'a crusty 'we limp-dicked lepers got rights too' cocksuckers. The mayor there tried to give 'em to us so we'd have a little extra cannon fodder, called it a fair trade for all the hard work we'd done."

Jameson squinted at him. "Crusty-" Oh. "You mean ghouls."

"Worthless," the General grunted, "every last one of 'em."

Odd that she felt a slight compulsion to defend the ghouls she'd seen in camp, those that hadn't lost their minds.

Choosing to refrain from comment, Jameson instead asked, "They really traded them to you?"

The General chuckled. "It's just a figure of speech, ma'am," he assured her. "Those zombies volunteered for the job." He paused, considerate. "Quincy," he repeated again, almost absently. "Nope. Don't recall there being much of a conflict with them. The folks in Quincy were good people."

"I read something about them going back on a treaty they'd signed with the Brotherhood."

"What?" The General chortled slightly, a sound that never failed to sound peculiar. "Now why would they go and do a stupid thing like that?"

"But you did have a treaty," Jameson said. "What was that about?"

"Supply trade, mostly," the General replied. "Same as we had with all the agricultural communities."

Jameson paused, glancing down at the notebook in her hand. "I see," was all she said in response, in spite of the litany of answers she had to that. "I'm not sure where I got the idea that something went wrong... I guess I'll have to check the archives again."

"You do that. I'm sure you'll see we're just one big, happy family."

It wasn't the first time she'd heard that phrase, and it wouldn't be the last.

Besides that, there was more than just the idle conversations and the peculiar behaviour of the paladins to hold the scribe's attention. When she wasn't busy reading through the archives, she made it a point to stop into what passed for engineering so she could observe the repairs being done on the vertibird, telling Sarah and the others that she'd do her best to give them regular status updates, something they all seemed to appreciate. What they didn't appreciate was how rarely she came back with any good news for them.

The upshot was that she was learning, slowly but surely, the ins and outs of vertibird tech. The questions she asked, she tailored specifically towards attuning herself to the chopper's various parts; no, she wouldn't pick up months, even years worth of training or be able to rebuild its pieces from the ground up, but she could at least help with what little maintenance might be needed during their various trips. That, however, was just a side benefit; the other one was seeing yet more confirmation, in some ways, that even the repairs had oddities and redundancies aplenty.

The repairs were slow-going, the delicate nature of the task at hand making the scribes leery of rushing the job- or at least, that's what they'd told her. Their reticence was quite understandable- or would have been under most circumstances- so far as Jameson was concerned, but there were a couple times where it appeared as though they'd purposefully disassembled components that they'd previously fit back into place. This was often explained as necessary, that they feared they may have missed something vital when they're wired everything back together, that one or several key systems were experiencing glitches. Had it happened more often, she might have had more reason to suspect their explanations, but as it stood, she refrained from stating her uncertainties out loud.

Instead, she did what she knew she could do best: she took notes, documenting every change that had been made as inconspicuously as she was able. When asked by one of the engineers why she was bothering, if she didn't trust them, she'd wondered if maybe the excessive note-taking was pushing the envelope. Her answer, however, seemed to appease the engineer that was asking.

"We prefer to keep thorough logs of anything that's done to the vertibirds we have available to us," she'd explained. "We're still getting a handle on this particular type of technology, so it's helpful to keep track of all the details." Beat. "You do the same thing, don't you?"

The scribe smiled weakly at that. "Of course," he said, nodding.

"Would you mind if I looked over the repair log you have so far?"

"I'd- have to ask the guy in charge," he said obtusely, smile fading.

"Do that."

They hadn't spoken about it again since, and he'd yet to produce an adequate repair log.

Once that had occurred, Jameson was confident enough to express her misgivings to Sarah, showing the Sentinel the rate of progress and the 'repeat' repairs through the notes she'd taken. The Sentinel had, expectedly, seen little wrong with the diligence of the Midwest's shop jockeys, had said that she would rather the scribes be thorough, but she allowed for the possibility that something was amiss, telling Jameson that it'd be best to continue keeping an eye on the proceedings.

It seemed like a good sign, but the scribe didn't dismiss the possibility that she was being placated.

In truth, it was one of the few things that kept the scribe from feeling too rattled by the continuous oddities popping up in the Midwestern archives. Even as she saw confirmation for her suspicions around every corner, each confirmation always ended up seeming too subtle, too difficult to pin down as anything other than an eccentricity to call them definite signs of duplicity. It was a balancing act that she was looking forward to putting to an end, and soon, as never in her life had she felt so close to doubting her own sanity.

...But then the others began to show their own signs; show proof that it wasn't just Jameson that had to perform regular reality checks. It shouldn't have been comforting to see... but in her situation, it was the only kind of comfort she could get.