Oz shuddered as another wave of pain swept over him, his body healing itself slower than usual, going in stages and obviously struggling to cope with the amount of punishment he had taken. His mind was swimming with the pain, his eyesight was blurry, he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.
He knew he was moving somewhere, through bright places with splashes of red coming and going. He knew he was being carried by black beasts, green eyes occasionally looking at him balefully.
Another wave of pain swept over him and he shuddered again, but this time it swept away some of the fuzz in his mind. He looked up, saw the black armoured Enclave soldiers hauling him down a bright corridor by his arms. He looked back, spotted a few behind him, heard them talking.
"The General isn't responding to calls," the one holding Oz's left arm said.
"Fuck him," the one holding the right spat, "our job is to get this piece of shit out alive. We do it, we get out too, and that's all I care about"
"But we could be heroes" the first one insisted.
"What do you think we're doing with this?" asked the second, roughly pulling Oz's arm up to indicate who he was talking about, "we get this out and we're in the history books, baby!"
Someone behind them hollered his encouragement.
"I guess..." the first muttered.
Oz let his head sag back down, finding he was staring down the long corridor. Something was coming closer, something black but with spots of cream and a tuft of brightness as its top. His eyes were still fuzzy, so he couldn't see what it was, and he found he didn't care. His heart was in his stomach, well and truly resigned to more pain. He forced his eyes to the floor, watching the lines as they passed.
"Ma'am," he heard the first say.
"I'm here to take the prisoner," a woman said, her voice cold, flat, and strangely familiar.
Oz felt the two men shuffle a little. "We were given strict orders to take him to the vertibird ourselves," the first said.
"Piss off tart," snarled the second, "this is our ticket out..."
There was a loud zap and Oz felt heat rush past his face. The man on his left fell away and he felt his body tip that way, until the man on the right let go and he completely fell, watching as the lines got closer and closer and closer...
His chin smacked against the metal ground, his teeth digging into his tongue. He groaned, but he couldn't hear it over the next 3 zaps that followed, feeling heat pass over him with each one.
Blearily he looked up, became aware of black shapes surrounding him on the ground, before he was heaved back up, coming face to face with a blonde haired woman, one long lock of her fringe covering the right side of her face. She looked him over, piercing blue eyes travelling up and down his damaged body, holding him up easily with one hand.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
His head lolled to the side and he spat out a mouthful of blood, his tongue bleeding from the fall.
"I'm good" he managed to slur, before the world started swaying again. He lurched to his left, legs collapsing under him, but her firm grip kept him upright.
"Come on," she growled, pulling him along the hallway, "we've got to go."
"Patrick? PATRICK?"
The radio blared static, then other voices, panicked, frightened. But there was no Patrick. Sam's stomach lurched as he realised there never would be.
Get out of this life, while you can. Don't die like me... The words echoed in his head, reverberated around his skull. Don't die like me...
The door to the room burst open and Sam turned, came face to face with an Enclave soldier in power armour. The man stood there for a moment, arms spread and blocking the door. He seemed to stare at Sam, stare through him, and Sam felt his hand dropping to the hilt of his revolver, his breathing slowing, sure he had been found out.
"We've got to get out of here, man!" the soldier suddenly screamed, panicked like everyone else, before disappearing back out the door.
Sam let out a deep breath, let his hand move away from his revolver, let his mind get a hold of itself.
He took two large strides and reached the door. There were less people now, the majority of them having already moved through before, but there were still enough to crowd the corridor. Here and there, when Sam caught glimpses of the floor, he would spot a body, unmoving. Dead.
The overhead lights had gone out, likely because of the generator. Charity had explained before that the alarm meant someone had overloaded the power supply; a catastrophic event that would destroy the entire base. A fitting end for Patrick, Sam thought suddenly.
But with the overheads out all that was left was the red emergency ones and they continued spinning, casting demonic shadows on anything that moved. Sam looked up and down the corridor but, like before, he could see nothing distinguishing, so he re-checked his Pip-Boy. He had to get back to the hangar and according to the map it was to his left.
He surged from the door, knocking a few people down. They weren't much, dressed in Pre-War clothes, clutching suitcases and prized possessions like they were the only thing keeping them afloat right now. He gave them a glance, maybe a slight apologetic nod, but then continued down the hall. There was no time for them now.
Farilla was becoming more aware of her surroundings. The red flashing lights, the dull whining noise, the rush of people around her. She knew something was wrong.
She looked up at the man who was leading her through his chaos by her arm, his back to her. For a moment she thought it was Augustus, as he was when he was younger. But as she thought of him she remembered his dead body, his glazed eyes, the pool of blood widening underneath him. She almost doubled over and, if not for the hand on her arm, she would have.
Steven, the chubby faced, doe-eyed young love conquest. Murderer. Kidnapper. She expected rapist might be added to that list when it was all said and done.
Strangely, though, she felt no emotion when these thoughts crossed her mind now. Her emerging clarity seemed to come at the expense of her feelings. She felt no twinge through her stomach. Her heart didn't seem to be beating any faster than it would normally. She was thinking clinically, detached from the world.
Someone bumped her shoulder and jerked her back to reality.
Steven pulled her through a set of double doors into a large, cavern-like area she knew to be the hangar. The roof hung miles above them, it seemed, and hundreds of vertibirds were grounded in front of her. Each vertibird had a crowd of people around it, all pushing and swarming to get aboard, those on the ground screaming to be let on while those aboard screaming for the pilots to go. Noise, more noise than had been in the corridors, noise that seemed to echo off the high ceiling and bounce back, doubling what was on the ground. Her head began to throb rhythmically, as if to the sound of a beating drum.
She saw Steven, still pulling her along, trying to look over the crowds. He pulled her sideways, trying to find a gap to any of the vehicles, but there was none. The mass of people surrounded every vertibird, swarmed over every inch of ground. It was getting hard enough just to move, let alone trying to get somewhere. More people kept coming into the hangar too, all pushing and shoving and inciting more from those that were already here.
Someone fell over, or was knocked over, and she watched with morbid fascination as the man was trampled to his death. These people, her people, were the last bastion of civilisation left in the wastes. And yet here they were, grunting and groaning like any other wastelander. Like any other animal, she thought.
Steven continued pulling her along until they passed the masses by completely, moving along the large wall on the right. There she got an even better view of the situation; every vertibird in the hangar, it seemed, had people surrounding it. Several took off and one desperate person, clinging to the landing gear, plummeted back to the ground as they retracted. His weight was enough to throw the vehicle off balance however and, as it went through the open hangar doors, one of its engines clipped the ceiling. It bellowed black smoke and the vertibird dipped, eventually disappearing beneath the floor of the hangar, down into the valley beneath the mountain base. A few moments later an explosion could be heard, faintly, barely making it above all the other noise.
Steven was cursing under his breath, his grip tightening on her arm to the point where it hurt. She was going to say something, scream for help maybe, but as he eyes flicked back to him she saw the pistol still in his other hand, swaying around with each step he took, like it was dancing for her.
He stopped so suddenly she ran into him, making the pair stumble a few steps further. She looked up to see what was wrong, saw him staring at the closest corner of the hangar, just to the right of the entrance. It was steeped in shadow, the lights having gone out a while ago, but she could just make out a glint of a reflection, light that poured through the entrance bouncing off dark metal.
A vertibird. It had to be. Even better, there were no crowds around it. Nobody could see it but them.
Steven quickly started walking again, pulling her along with him. She was surprised she wasn't putting up much of a fight but, as those thoughts would cross her mind, her eyes would always find that gun in his hand, dancing and swaying, daring her to do something.
He was running now, practically dragging her along. She looked around for a moment, wondering whether people would see them and caught a glimpse of a blonde helping a hobbling man, seemingly going in the same direction as Steven and her.
His grip continued pulling her forward, however, and she couldn't see anything clearly. The ground, the walls, all rushed past with increasing speed. The entrance loomed ahead of them, slightly to their side, growing ever larger by the second. It opened out to blue mountains, to fog that drifted down from them and settled in the valley like clouds. It was a beautiful, peaceful scene, contrasting all the more brightly the chaos still erupting in the hangar.
Suddenly the ground went dark as they entered the shadow and a moment later they stood before the vertibird. Farilla was hauled forward, practically thrown through the door. Looking up she saw a slight man curled up in a seat in the back corner, arms around his knees, knees at his chest, rocking backwards and forwards.
"They coming," he was muttering, repeating it over and over, almost in time to his rocking. He didn't look like someone from the Enclave. She felt her heart jump into her throat. Something was very wrong.
Steven had meant to merely help her into the vertibird, not shove her as violently as he did. Nor did he mean to grab her so hard that he'd left a bruise that he could now see forming on her arm. But the chaos, the panic, it made people do strange things.
Like killing the General.
He hadn't planned to do it. If he was being honest, he hadn't had a plan at all. Get Farilla, that's all he had been thinking.
He wondered idly what Paul would say about this, before he remembered the man was dead. They, along with several other soldiers, had been ordered to guard one of the civilian entrances to the military arm of the base. People came, their numbers uncountable, all demanding to be let through, to be escorted from the base like they were VIPs, each and every one of them. Their demands turned to pleas, which turned to begs and finally to anger. But all through it, the soldiers had remained stoic. Steven knew that the might of the Enclave would prevail and, as a soldier, it was his responsibility to see it through.
Then it happened. A civilian, likely a merchant judging from his clothes, produced a gun. It was a Pre-War weapon, a heap of rusted junk someone probably sold him for a cap or two, more to get rid of it than anything else. But it still fired and, by random chance or fate itself, the bullet that wouldn't have even dented the soldiers' power armour found its way into one of Paul's eye-holes. His helmet exploded in blood and that was that; Steven's closest friend was dead.
That's when the chaos really started. Soldiers began firing, civilians died but still managed to surge forward in a frenzied mass, overwhelming their attackers. Steven had gotten away, like some of the others, but he knew now what the stakes were. There was no more Enclave, no more restoring the old world, no more unity. It was every man for himself, so he went and got the only thing that mattered to him; Farilla.
Reaching forward with his free hand he gripped the door frame and pulled himself aboard. Just as he'd hoped the vertibird was empty, except for Farilla...and a slight man in the back, arms around his knees, rocking backwards and forwards. Steven frowned. He didn't look Enclave.
Something jabbed Steven in the back. He heard Farilla scream, loud and shrill, but he didn't know why. It didn't feel like anything more than a jab, like someone had poked him with a finger or two. He tried to see who the jokester was but found the vertibird lurched around him. That had to mean they were taking off, but Farilla wasn't properly strapped in.
He took a step forward, intending to help her. His legs collapsed out from under him and he watched, with a detached curiosity, as the ground leapt up to meet him. He felt another jab, tried to tell whoever it was that they should stop playing around during takeoff, but instead of words something warm and salty trickled out of his mouth.
The ground wasn't as hard as he would have thought. The metal felt like a bed, but not just any bed; the bed he had as a child, the one his mother would tuck him in to every night. His head felt like it was on the softest pillow and, he found, he was struggling to keep his eyes open. He was so very tired from the running, and the killing, and everything really. A short nap would help him, he thought brightly.
Or, tried to think. He found he could no longer hold on to thoughts. The words formed and drifted away before the next one could come, leaving sentences disjointed and broken. The darkness closed further around his vision and he thought only one word now; sleep.
He took one final look up at Farilla, staring down at him with complete terror. He just smiled at her. What was she afraid of? A little nap and he would be back on his feet, back to take her far away from there, to start a new life and a family together. They would be happy, she would see. She would see...
Sam was breathing hard as he finally let himself slow down. He had made it out of the base, back into the hangars and over to their vertibird somehow without being seen. He counted himself extremely lucky on all counts.
He gripped the edge of the door with one gloved hand, pulled himself through and almost fell right over a body lying in the middle of the cabin. It was dressed in green fatigues, like the man with the clipboard had been, and was spread eagled on the floor, its back sickly red with blood. It was a man, Sam could tell by the shape, and the knife that killed him was still sticking out his back, the rough handle instantly familiar. He leaned forward slightly to get a better look when someone grabbed him from behind.
He swung his elbow back on an instinct, feeling it hit flesh and causing a grunt from whoever was behind him. He turned and, leading with his forearm, slammed the man into the wall of the vertibird.
He saw it was Isaac, his eyes narrowed, his arms clawing at the armour.
"It's me," said Sam, letting Isaac down. The tanned man looked up at him suspiciously and, with an annoyed sigh, Sam took his helmet off, a slight hiss sounding as the suit was de-pressurized.
"Oh," Isaac said, "how'd it go?" he asked casually, as if there wasn't a body lying in front of them.
"Not good...what the hell is this?" Sam asked, staring back down at the body.
"We had...company," Isaac said, almost happily, and when Sam turned to look at him he saw the man was looking down at the corpse with something approaching pride.
"So you killed them?" he asked.
Isaac snorted. "Come on, you know how it is. It had to be done."
Sam frowned. It had to be done. Just like he had to kill innocents to get here. Just like he had been telling himself since...well, since the bullet in his head had turned his life upside down. It had always made sense to him. He had never liked it but he'd always justified it as being life in the wastes. You've got to do what has to be done.
But as he saw the psychopath in front of him saying the exact same words, he began to wonder. Is it right? Maybe doing what you thought had to be done, without worrying about the consequences, is what lead him to this situation right now. Maybe it was even what caused the war that almost destroyed the planet 200 years ago. Maybe there was more to just knowing what was right or wrong; maybe you had to actually do what was right, even if it wasn't easy. Maybe.
Suddenly it didn't seem to make as much sense.
"...besides, I left the girl alive" Isaac added, waving his hand at the far corner.
Sam snapped out of his thoughts and looked over. He hadn't seen her at first, being pre-occupied with the body. She had dark hair, olive skin, a perfect figure cut into a high class Pre-War dress. She was staring at the body, hands covering her mouth, eyes open as wide as they could go. She was rocking slightly, although not as bad as Original who was curled up opposite her.
He was staring at a space at the wall, muttering something, then his head snapped around and he was staring straight at Sam.
"Donation for the disposition," he said, clearly, his voice flat, the insecurity seemingly gone. Sam felt a slight shiver travel up his spine as he stared into the man's eyes.
There was movement behind him and Sam turned, seeing Charity helping Oz into the vertibird. The man's face was etched with pain, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, his knuckles white, his head lolling and moving all on its own. Isaac, who had taken position beside the door like he had when Sam had entered, kneeled down to help the man in. Charity lifted herself in as well but froze when she saw the woman in the back.
Sam felt his heart skip a beat as she turned to look at him. "What's she doing here?" she asked coldly.
"Who is she?" Sam countered.
"A queen," Charity spat, her voice even colder than before, "she deserves to die"
"Now you're talking," added Isaac, who took a step forward and retrieved his knife from the dead man's back.
"Nobody is killing anybody," Sam said sternly, "there's been enough death today."
"She's a monster," Charity hissed.
"We all are," Sam answered softly. He cleared his throat and spoke louder, "Get the pilot to take off, we don't have much time."
Charity glared at him for a moment, her fists clenched, every muscle tensed. He thought, knew, she was going to hit him, but he did nothing. He didn't reach for his pistol or prepare to dodge, he just stood there. Maybe it was the way his heart didn't work as it should when she was around, maybe he really was just tired of all the killing and fighting. She seemed to be waiting for him to do something but he wouldn't. He just kept staring at her, unable to hide the weariness that suddenly swept over his body. She huffed angrily, but her muscles relaxed and she pushed herself past him to the cockpit.
"Throw this thing out," he added to Isaac, nudging the body with his foot before moving over to a seat and slumping down. The tanned man said nothing, sticking his knife back in its sheath and rolling the body unceremoniously over to the open door, sending it out with one final kick. It landed with a thump on the metal floor just as the vertibird lifted off, Sam feeling the seat lurch underneath him.
"Thank you," the woman whispered, looking him in the eyes, desperation and hope crammed into her eyes in equal measure.
"Shut up"
She slunk back to her seat, sobbing silently, staring at the bloodstain on the floor now. Isaac eased into a chair near the door, watching Sam out of the corner of his eye, a slight smirk on his face. Charity was seated in the cockpit, Sam could see her blonde hair rising over the back of one of the seats. Original was back to rocking and mumbling.
"Where's Patrick?" Isaac asked, that smirk still on his face.
"He's not coming" Sam answered flatly.
"Going out swinging, is he?" the tracker asked.
Sam didn't answer.
Isaac leant back, the smirk turning into a smile. "Good for him," Sam heard him say softly.
Sam eyes drifted lazily over to the woman. Get out of this life, while you can. Don't die like me...
The words continued to echo in his mind. He had saved her life, he knew it. He didn't fully understand why but for the first time in a long time he felt like he had done something right, that wasn't the easy option. Maybe it wasn't enough to push him out of this type of life but, as he watched her crying, he thought it was at least a start. He hoped it was, anyway.
"How much longer until it goes?" Sam asked Charity, leaning on the cockpit's door frame, referring to the generators and the base. The vertibird had been airborne for a couple of minutes now and Sam was eager to get as far away from the coming explosion as possible.
"Not long," she answered over the engines. He nodded and went back into the cabin.
"Strap in," he shouted to the others, "it's going to get rough!"
Isaac was grinning from ear to ear as he looped the harness attached to the seat around his shoulder, clicking it together in the middle. Oz tried to move one of his arms, winced, and Sam moved across to help him. He then continued down the row of seats to Original, who was still rocking, and half helped, half forced the slight man into his harness. Finally he came to the woman who looked up at him dumbly.
"The harness," he said, pointing to the straps on the seat beside her, "put it on"
"Why?" she asked. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted as a great thundering sound could be heard in the distance. The cabin began to vibrate, then shake, getting worse and worse until something knocked the vertibird forward, pointing them down at the ground and sending Sam and the woman catapulting towards the cockpit. The pilot, his goggles around his eyes now, was wrestling with the controls, his arms strained as he tried to pull the steering wheel up.
Warning lights went on, a dull alarm sound, like the one in the base, started. The woman was screaming, her hands scrambling out, reaching for anything and everything. Sam, one hand on each side of the door frame, did his best to keep the pair of them from falling into the cockpit, but he could feel his muscles straining with the effort. The power armour was built to enhance directed strength, like if you needed to move a wrecked car with your hands or hit someone in the face, but in his situation it did nothing but add 30 pounds of weight to his frame. Combined with the woman's weight on top of him, and the fact that she couldn't stay still, it was becoming harder and harder to keep hold.
But just as he felt his fingers slipping the vertibird slowly began to tilt upwards, eventually levelling out, Sam letting himself slide to the floor. He heard the pilot sigh nervously behind him, not exactly a good sign, but they were alive and that was good enough. The woman had stopped screaming too, replaced with harsh, shallow breathing. Isaac was still grinning ear to ear.
"We're clear," Charity stated, getting up from her seat and joining them in the cabin, stepping over Sam as she did. Sam got to his feet with a grunt, his arms aching.
"Open the side hatch," he ordered the pilot.
"But that could de-pressurize-"
"Just do it," Isaac snarled, on his feet now. The pilot grumbled to himself and the vertibird dipped a little, going lower, until finally the door began to open with a hiss. That hiss turned into a roar as the wind blew in, pushed back by both the propellers and the vehicle's speed.
Isaac stepped across to the open door and leant out, one hand gripping the frame. He stretched out as far as possible, to the point where one slip would mean his death, but he still had that grin on his face. It seemed he was eager to see the explosion. So was Sam.
He leant out as well, not as far as the trapper but far enough to see. The base had been built into a mountain which was simply...gone, replaced by a gaping crater probably miles in distance. Parts of the mountain still rose up around it, like legs on an upside down table, but as the pair watched they too fell, collapsing into the crater and sending up great plumes of dust and debris.
Sam turned back inside and came face to face with Charity. Her face had a strange look to it, still steely, still cold, but a hint of softness had crept into her eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said, not knowing why he felt the urge to say it. She continued to stare at him, the softness growing a little.
"I'm not," she answered. She turned her back on him and strode to the back of the cabin, slumping into a chair and taking on a faraway look. Sam sighed.
"Uh..." the pilot started, "we took some damage, we're not going to be airborne for much longer...should I put her down?" he asked, unsure, nervous. Sam caught the man glancing across at Isaac, who was still leaning out the hatch. Sam knew he would have been afraid of the tanned man too, if their situations were reversed.
But they weren't.
"No, get us as close to Idaho as you can. We've got some business to finish..." Sam said, turning to look at Oz, who gave him a subtle nod, still wincing in pain.
The vertibird banked smoothly, levelling out and the engines powering up. Isaac ducked back inside as the hatch closed and everyone took a seat, deciding to get some rest. It had been, after all, one hell of a day.