And Wolves Beneath Their Seams
Part 21
Beyond the gate, finally, V returns to her place at Charon's side. He feels her return like a warm gun, and though they face untold hostile numbers, he breathes easy for the first time since Jefferson Memorial.
They find the tunnels and corridors of Murder Pass not unlike the bunkers of DC, well suited to traps and bottlenecks. Falling into an old pattern, worn smooth and easy with use, they sneak through the shadows, dispatching those they can in silence.
When V's latest knife breaks in the neck of the third before she can sever its vocal chords, the super mutant howls in rage and pain. Charon puts a slug through its eye socket—too late, the alarm already raised.
In the distance, more pound down the hallway towards them, howling threats. They wait. They wait until the shuddering steps draw close and bite pins, rolling grenades around the corner.
Mutants scream. In the cloud of blood and dust and noise, they fall back, hidden in wreckage, in shadow, and aim high. Soft flesh splatters—eyes, mouths—and twisted bodies thunder to the floor. Easy as practice.
When there is silence, bloodied to her metal elbows, V brushes her arm against his. Their metal suits grind, jarring and unfamiliar, but Charon appreciates the gesture.
They move on.
Soon they reach larger chambers, wider hallways. Clearing the vault is not easy, but they have trained for this—four months in the belly of DC, they have trained for this—and super mutants litter the ground behind them, bleeding into their own bags of body parts and gore.
V draws them to her with the radio. And because Three-dog is nothing if not relevant, her cufflink plays her theme song.
"Come and hear, all thee that fear War, and I will declare what she has done," Three-dog intones over heavy drums, over their gunfire, and the sound of their boots against the metal floor. "Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of your avenging angel. V walks! Welcome, the Saint of the Wastes."
Grim, blood-spattered, V shakes her head.
"Even super mutants shouldn't have to listen to this shit," she mutters, but the alternative is Enclave and so she does not turn it off.
They fight on, carefully, leaving traps behind them and slinging frag mines ahead, around corners, to break unwary legs. Eventually, under their assault, the super mutants thin.
Backs to the wall, they creep through a chambered corridor. Inside, each room houses a twisted mockery of a human corpse, violently mutated, in various stages of decay. Beneath her metal sleeve, over the radio-actress swearing vengeance, V's on-board Geiger counter begins to complain.
"That green stuff's radioactive, I guess," V whispers to him, pointing through a window. "Fuck. Hope that's not what we came for dripping all over everything."
Before Charon can reply, an intercom engages from a room at the cross-halls up ahead, a super mutant pressing close to the glass. "You! Over there! Please, come speak to me."
V drops back. Charon flattens to her side, gun ready, waiting.
In DC, they encountered several Super Mutants smart enough to beg. Dangerous and cunning, the beasts had learned V came when she heard a human's cry, mimicked it in hopes of drawing her in. But, while clever, none of them were patient. If she and Charon lingered within their hearing, outside their vision, they would always break, attack.
This one, however, makes no move to open its chamber. Only pounds at the glass to catch their attention, saying again through the intercom, "Please! I will not—cannot—hurt you. Please, come speak to me."
Keeping careful aim at the door, Charon glances at V. She shakes her head. "It's smarter than the others. I don't trust this."
"You must use the intercom," the mutant insists, still with one massive hand pressed against the glass. "I cannot hear you otherwise. Please!"
V considers one of the few remaining grenades left in her shoulder storage compartment, but closes the hatch on her armor. The doors and glass within vaults were designed to withstand explosions. From here, they can do nothing to hurt it.
Slowly, Charon creeps forward, eyeing the door. In the low lighting, around the corner, he can just barely make out the labels of its hydraulic system.
"Locked," he tells V. "It is trapped."
The knowledge does little to comfort either of them. How dangerous must a super mutant become to frighten its own kind? What had it done to earn its imprisonment, but win its life? Could it not be killed, only tricked, trapped?
V shakes her head again. "Let's go," she says, flicking off the radio. "I want no part of this."
"Wait! Please, I can assist you!" it howls as they pass, its voice dogging them down the hallway well after its bulging flesh drops out of sight. "You are here for the GECK—you must be—but I promise you, you cannot reach it alone. Free me! Allow me to help!"
As it turns out, the monster is not wrong.
They fight their way through the last of the super mutants, into the science labs. There, they find a flaking sign above a doorway—once Research and Development, now search Devel—and V smiles. Smiles, until they walk inside and her Pip-boy starts growling.
They reach the mouth of doorway labeled Equipment before the Geiger counter forces V back, digging in her pack for a bottle of Rad-X, the lid still stained with river mud.
"Fuck," she hisses, tearing off a glove to run fingers through her hair. "Of course, it would be in there. Of course."
Charon steps a little closer, feels radiation like sunlight on his face, a warm and swelling strength. He looks at his employer, stricken and frustrated, and the choice is not so difficult.
"I will retrieve it."
"No," V blurts immediately, stopping him midstride. Her ungloved hand closes around his arm, tugging him back. "You're nobody's errand boy. We'll find another way."
It is not what Charon expected. Frowning, he turns, twists his arm to catch her hand, gently as he is able through the thick metal. Perhaps, he thinks, she has misunderstood.
"It is within my capability," he tells her. "It is only radiation."
V shakes her head. Her fingers find his arm again, anchoring, claiming. "It can still hurt you. It's at least a hundred rads a second in that doorway. Past that door, who knows? Maybe it gets worse."
"I can tolerate higher," he insists.
"Can you?"
He sets his jaw. "Mistress, you do not understand."
V squares her shoulders. "It's too dangerous."
And Charon is not a man for words, but he—he wants. He wants to make her understand, wants to choose, and so he tries, as best he is able.
"I was designed to withstand greater," he says. "I am built for this."
He notices, then, how fast V breathes, how dark her eyes have grown.
"Yeah, until you're not." Her voice jumps like electricity. "Until you go feral."
Searching her face, Charon hesitates. Something is wrong, something is broken, but he does not know what.
Always before—always—when he offered, V trusted his judgment. But today, she looks at him as though she does not see him, as though she does not know him. She will carry the things he leaves in her pack because he has asked her to. She will clear battle strategies with him before she wades into any bloodbath. She offers him choice when he cannot choose—rebuilds him into something other than a weapon—
But today, he offers, and V does not accept.
Quietly, he ventures, "I will not. Prolonged isolation triggers the change."
Too late, hip deep in her minefield, Charon realizes his mistake.
"Like you're not the definition of isolation! Charon, you lock yourself up inside your head—I can count on one hand the number of times you've smiled—and you want to tell me you'll be okay in there? You want to promise it won't break you? No, Charon. I can't lose you," she says, her knuckles colorless around the arm of his suit.
"V—" he tries, but she only shakes her head, breathing jagged, repeating, "No. No. No," a new mantra, the metal beneath her fingers beginning to whiten under stress.
Before she can break through his bracer, Charon pries her hand away, holds it in his own, though he cannot feel her pulse or her heat through the metal. It feels wrong, he thinks, and perhaps this is the break between them.
Reaching for her leaves him rattled and disjointed—like throwing silverware every time they touch, two twin cans rattling against each other—and before today, before now, Charon did not realize how often he searched her out, how frequently her hands brushed his.
He tries to breathe for her, to give her some anchor, but she cannot see the rise and fall of his chest beneath the suit. V breaks away, eyes wild and dark, looking too young, looking monstrous.
"I can't do this alone," she whispers, hands clenched and shaking. "I can't. Charon, I can't. I need you."
"It is my function to protect you," he tells her, gently as he is able. It brings her no comfort.
V swallows. She nods. Her breathing does not steady—too fast, too jagged—but she straightens, turns whip-fast and eyes the door.
"We'll use the mutant."
"I cleaned DC," V snarls into the intercom, by way of greeting.
"We are aware," the mutant says, standing quiet before the glass.
"So you know that your brothers would scream for help, would play at taking each other hostage in hopes I'd spare at least one."
The mutant smiles. "Yes," he says. "You are cunning. You remind my brothers what it is to be human. What it is to fear."
V meets his eyes, gauging, challenging. The mutant does flinch or attack. At last, V nods. She powers up the terminal beside his door. From what Charon sees over her shoulder of the passing coding, it is not an easy hack. But V fixates with single minded focus. Within five minutes, the door hisses open.
"I'm trusting you," she growls, one hand on the butt of her carbine.
Solemn, the mutant nods. "And it is a rare gift," he says. "Thank you. I will retrieve your GECK."
As they return to Research and Development, the mutant shares his history. Fawkes, he calls himself, after an old world hero, long dead even before the war. When V asks him his crime, the reason for his incarceration, he tells them, "Intelligence. Curiosity. Humanity. Take your pick," and grins a jagged smile.
By the time he hands V the GECK they came for, she trusts him.
"Do you want to travel with us?" she asks, making space for the heavy suitcase in her pack. "You'll have safer going in company."
Charon stiffens. He does not trust the mutant, whatever his name and past—does not trust V's judgment, her eyes still wild, her fingers curling unsafe at her side—but the mutant shakes his head.
"No, there are certain tasks of my own I must complete here first. Then, I believe I will travel." Carefully, he reaches forward with a massive paw, enveloping V's shoulder. "You are changing so much in this world; I would watch it pass."
Thankfully, V does not press the matter. "If you need a place—if you get tired—there's a city in the Museum of History in DC," she says instead. "It's for ghouls, but I think you have at least enough in common."
"I will consider it," Fawkes says, still smiling, hideous and kind. "Go with fortune, wanderer."
They go. They do not go with fortune.
First around a corner, V freezes. "Get back!" she hisses, shoving Charon behind her. "Go, run!"
It is an order.
Charon does not question. Cannot question. He turns.
He obeys.
Behind him, he hears an explosion. He hears V fall.
But he has been given an order.
"Objective is secured, sir," a man's voice filters through power armor speakers.
"Good work, solider," say another, unhindered by metal or mesh. "Make sure the GECK is secured aboard my vertibird." And then, after a moment, "You're certain she's unharmed?"
In the next room, Charon crouches in shadow, feeling ice like knives in his stomach. A fist seizes his lungs. Vertibird, he thinks and cannot breathe. His heartbeat burns in his ears, throbs in his teeth.
V fell. She is injured. It is his function to protect her, but she ordered him to go.
"Yes, sir," he hears. "She'll pass out shortly, but we can revive her."
"Excellent. Prepare her for transport immediately."
Charon chokes, his armor a vice. They are taking her. They are taking his employer. But he has been given an order. V told him to get back. And his function is to protect her, but his standing orders are to engage when she does and she cannot engage, therefore he cannot engage.
Hidden in shadow, sucking air through his teeth, Charon listens to the sound of V's suit disengaging. Listens to orders barked and metal wheels—a gurney, he thinks, hearing buckles and locks.
They are taking his employer, but Charon has been given orders and he cannot engage.
Still, when they move, he moves. He keeps well back, out of sight. Despite their legend—War and Death intertwined throughout the wastes—no one looks for him, and so no one sees him. Expecting no resistance, the soldiers are careless, boisterous. No one guards their back.
He could disable two, Charon thinks. Cripple three more. But ten heavily armed and armored soldiers guard V's fallen form. They fill the hallway, walking three deep, into the main entrance of the vault. And he cannot—he cannot engage; he has been given orders.
But if he broke an order—
Charon vision blackens at the edges. He staggers, remaining upright through force of will alone.
He cannot break an order. He cannot. It is impossible. But even were it otherwise, he would not survive these odds.
So creeping, still, Charon follows them.
The take V to the vault's entrance. The door remains shut, the 87 distorted by the blast that damaged it. Yet, nearby, they've… cut into the wall somehow, left a hole large enough to drive a truck through. Even from here, Charon hears V's Geiger counter spitting static, screaming as the rads mount higher.
It should kill them. It should kill all of them. But like a habit, they shove needles in their arms—plunge two into V's hip—and walk on.
Charon counts to ten and follows, sidling through the opening, looking for any opportunity. They will have made camp nearby, he thinks. Probably to the north, around the sluggish remnant of the river, easily defended and with fresh water nearby. He will follow. It is his function to follow his employer. When V wakes, he will arm her. She will give him orders.
They will be alright. They have survived worse. Together, they will kill everyone.
Outside, the radiation hits him like an open oven. It sings in his veins, searing, promising strength and speed and possibly, possibly he could—
Charon sees the waiting vertibirds. Three, gunned like fortresses.
And he knows the Enclave is not camping nearby.
One vertibird could mean a simple objective with a seat warming higher-up playing tag-along, but three means a mission—always—heavily armed and headed back to base.
Fire screams in Charon's bones. Smoke fills his mouth. Old bullet wounds howl and bleed and he cannot breathe. He cannot think through the crushing pain in his skull—don't break orders; don't lose V—cannot hear the whir of the vertibird blades over Brahms thundering in his ears.
He hears his own breathing through a memory of power armor filters, ragged, bloodied, a different suit reading vital stats, telling him he's bleeding into his lungs, seek medical attention immediately. He feels the floor of a vertibird dropping away beneath his feet, rending metal, a screaming free-fall.
Brahm's Variation on a Theme, sweet like plague flowers, his mouth full of ashes.
Blindly, seeing black, seeing V's—not dead—body, seeing memories, Charon follows the vertibirds as far as he can. He does not get far. He does not even make it to the river before the vertibirds drop out of sight, leaving nothing. No smoke, no clear path, no trail of mist in the sky.
V needs him, he thinks, but the vertibirds are gone and Charon cannot feel his legs.
Numb, he staggers to a stop, still searching the sky.
His employer needs him, a small part of him insists. She cannot do this alone.
She told him so.
But he lost her. He let her go, he thinks as the rads fade from his body. Let her die. And now he is alone—without contract, without employer, without V—and Charon does not know what to do.
He failed. He failed.
An hour passes. Slowly, he begins to walk again, though without purpose, without direction.
He has never failed before.
So why then, of all his employers, did he fail her?
V needs him, he thinks. His eyes fall from the sky and Charon begins to shake.
He cannot follow the vertibirds. He cannot save her. He has not been given orders. He cannot save her. He cannot order himself—cannot choose this—cannot track what he cannot see. He cannot save her. He does not know where to begin.
And so, broken, Charon turns towards Underworld.
He does not know where else to go.