Chapter 21

Suspense

Deacon walked us out.

"Hope you didn't mind the reception. When you tango with the Institute, you gotta be careful when someone new gets on the dance floor."

I shrugged. "What's done is done."

"We ain't the type that needs coddling," said Hancock.

"A healthy attitude. But it's all good now. I vouched for you. Nobody got shot. Still, I would consider it a close personal favor if you didn't sell us out to the Institute. Thanks."

"So, tell me. Why did you vouch for me?"

"In our little outfit, it's my job to know things. And with everything you've done, it's pretty clear you're capable. A dangerous enemy. And, I'm betting, a valuable ally."

My eyes narrowed as we walked through the long hall and back into the main church. "So why the trust? You can't just be taking it all on faith."

"I don't know if we can trust you, but I hope we can. We just survived a hell of a crisis. So we may just be a teeny, weeny bit desperate for new members. If everything was sunshine and bottlecaps, we'd probably play a longer 'getting to know you' game. But we don't have that luxury."

"Really? Is that all? I recall you saying you 'know me,' though we've never met before."

"You just don't give up," he smirked.

"I'm tellin' ya," Hancock chuckled.

"All right, I have a short list of people I think would be a good fit for our family. You piqued my interest, so maybe I asked around. Did my homework. If you hadn't found us, there's a chance I would have found you instead. Thanks for saving me the trip."

"Well, consider this our official meeting." We entered the main church room and took a seat on some old pews. I held out my hand to him. "Nora."

"Deacon," he said, taking my hand and shaking it.

"John Hancock." Hancock extended his hand to Deacon as well. Instead of Deacon shying away from it like I've seen so many others do, Deacon took his hand in a hearty handshake.

"I've heard all about you, Mayor Hancock."

"Not all good things, I hope."

"Oh, no, don't you worry about that." Deacon turned to me. "So, Dez wants me to make you a 'tourist.' That's what we call someone who helps out with the odd job here and there. What a waste . . . I'm just going to come out and say this: the Railroad needs you."

"You sure about that? Desdemona didn't seem to care."

"She's just thinking of the time and manpower it would take to train you. And if you were some hick from the 'burbs that didn't know your ass from a rocket launcher, she'd be right. But I'm betting someone like you just needs a few pointers and a target."

"I'm not sure. I've got a lot on my plate already."

"I'll tell you the game plan, then you decide. I got a job. Too big for me. Just perfect for the two of us. You help me out, we turn a few heads, and Dez invites you into the fold. Then if you get into a bind and need some help, your buddies in the Railroad got your back."

"What's the job?"

"So, up front, the only thing I'll say is that it's going to be a wild and dangerous ride. But probably nothing new for someone like you."

I sighed. I looked over at Hancock who lounged on the pew next to Deacon.

He shrugged. "Hey, it's your job offer. Your call. I will say this, though: it'll be nice to have the Railroad at our backs if you have to take on the Institute."

"You're right. The Minutemen are still young and wouldn't be up for the task. I guess I'll take the job . . ."

"Perfecto. Let's meet up at the old freeway outside of Lexington. I'll fill you in once you get there."

"How about I just meet up with you here once I'm done with this? It's really important that I do this first. It's about finding my son . . ."

He nodded. "I understand. Take all the time you need to. But try not to wait too long. I'm not sure what could happen between now and then."

"Fanciest crypt in Boston. Little glue, some duct tape, think we could fix this right up," Hancock said as we left the old church building.

"Oh, yeah. Totally. It'd look brand spanking new."

"All joking aside, though, I think you're making the right choice here."

"You didn't seem to trust them," I pointed out.

"Yeah, I still don't know if I trust 'em. But they're the best chance we got if we're starting a war with the Institute."

"A war . . . I never thought about it like that."

"Believe it, sister. You're the spearhead of the good guys' team. And I'm just itching for a good fight. So, where are we off to next?"

"To the closest place with a bed. I'm exhausted. Tomorrow, I need to pick up my armor from your State House room and head back to the Glowing Sea."

We returned to Goodneighbor, because it was the closest place with a hotel. As we entered the gates, I took my caps out of my bag and counted them out. I only had 67 left. I was pretty bummed out to find that I was almost broke. I needed to make some caps, but I simply didn't have the time.

"Hey, you alright?" Hancock asked as we passed up the State House.

"Yeah, I just need to make some caps soon."

"Don't even worry about staying at Hotel Rexford. You can crash at my place. Save your caps."

"Really?"

"Yeah, sure. I got a couch with your name on it."

"Wouldn't that look . . . scandalous, though?"

He laughed. "Wouldn't be the first girl I've brought to the State House. Besides, anybody who knows you would also know that you're not that type of woman. Since when do you have time to care about what other people think, anyway?"

I shrugged. He had a point.

Fahrenheit was already upstairs and sitting on the couch with a beer in hand when we walked up the spiral staircase. "Back already?" she asked.

"Yeah. Turns out our destination wasn't as far as we thought it was."

I had a seat on the little black couch on the far side of the room, to the right of the double doors leading into Hancock's office. The couch was small, but had just the right amount of room for me to curl up. I felt like I was going to pass out as soon as I sat down. I allowed myself to fall asleep, listening to Hancock and Fahrenheit talk about petitions and strategy and chems.

Sleeping felt so good. So serene. I didn't have any dreams – at least not that I could remember. I felt like I was asleep for damn near forever.

When I woke up, I had drool on my arm and my cheek. My hair was a horrible mess. I looked around the room, and fresh sunlight was spilling through the windows. I was the only one inside the room. I got up, gathered my things, straightened my hair, and started searching for Hancock.

I heard his voice across the State House, past the staircase and by the door that led to the balcony where he normally addressed the town. He sounded serious. Fahrenheit's voice joined the mix, and I became too curious for my own good.

I leaned my ear against the crack of the door to hear what they were saying without the neighborhood watch guards seeing me and ratting me out.

" - can't seriously be thinking of going back out there. It's a miracle you came back the first time."

"Not just gonna let her wander around by herself."

"She. Is. Insane. How many times do I have to tell you that? She obviously has a death wish."

"You don't know her. Why are you givin' her so much heat?"

"Do you know her?"

"Yeah. I do."

"No, no, you only think you do. You've walked around with her for, what, three or four days? And you suddenly think you know her. What has gotten into you, Hancock? All this trouble over some woman."

"She's not just some woman, Fahrenheit. I'm tellin' ya, she's the one that's gonna bring the Commonwealth back from the brink and set shit straight. She's gonna fight the Institute."

"Whatever you say. I just don't understand how any of that stuff has anything to do with you."

There was silence. "I don't know," he finally answered. "I just feel like I need to help her."

"And what am I supposed to do? Babysit?"

"Listen, I'll pay you double caps if you just stop riding me about this."

She scoffed. I could hear the tension in the air between them. "Alright. Fine. But if you wind up dead, I won't have to say 'I told you so.'"

I could hear Hancock's footsteps getting closer to the room, so I jumped away from the door. I sat on the couch and pretended to look through my bag for something.

He opened the doors and poked his head in on me. "Morning, sunshine. Ready to get this freak show on the road?"

I faked a smile. "Yeah. Let's do it."

"Done." He grabbed a bag from the coffee table and slung it over his shoulder.

"Mind if we stop by Sanctuary before we go to the Glowing Sea?"

"What's in Sanctuary?"

"Better power armor, hopefully."

The trip was pretty easy. It was a beautiful, sunny day, not a lot of hostiles along the roads. Bloodbugs and bloatflies were the main pests, but easily remedied. My shoddy raider's power armor clanked noisily the whole way. I was excited to see what Sturges had finished on my other set.

The gates at the bridge were opened up for us, and I walked in with a lighter heart. I always felt a little better to be home.

"Nice setup you got goin' on here," he said, taking in all that we had built.

"Thanks. It's definitely a work in progress."

The Vault-Tec rep was sitting next to a small campfire down the hill, about ten feet away from the field, watching the others work. I walked over to him. "You! You actually came to visit! I . . . I didn't think you would."

"Hey, now that you're back here in Sanctuary, would you like a job? It beats sitting over here by your lonesome."

"A job? F-for me? Really?"

"Yeah, I think your . . . sales experience . . . can be a great asset."

"You do? Well, that's . . . that's great! I won't let you down!"

I showed him where he could set up shop as a general store salesperson. We had market stands surrounding the great big tree at the end of Sanctuary Drive. He was ecstatic.

"I'm . . . sorry. About the vault. They didn't tell me much. Vault-Tec, I mean. Just to make sure that everyone filled out their forms. I was supposed to win a pack of steak knives . . . Look at you. Two centuries and your skin is as smooth as a baby. You have no idea what it's been like scrounging around for two centuries with this ugly mug . . ."

"In the end, they screwed both of us."

He nodded. "You know what? Since we talked, I'm feeling swell! Look at the two of us, here in Sanctuary. 'Prepared for the future!' Heh. Things are looking up. I can feel it this time."

I let him get to work at his market stand while Hancock and I stopped by Sturges' workshop. And there it was. My new baby. It was all shined and polished, fresh with a new coat of metallic blue-gray paint, and a Minutemen insignia on the chest plate.

"Well, how's she lookin'?" asked Sturges from the doorway of the workshop.

"You've outdone yourself. It's better than I hoped for." I stepped out of my old one. "You can do whatever the fuck you want with this trash heap."

He laughed. "I'll see what I can do. No promises, though."

I stepped into my new suit. It was much more comfortable, and didn't smell like sweat. "Thanks, Sturges. I owe you one."

"We look out for our own. Just be careful out there."

"Now that looks good on you," said Hancock.

We finally set out for the Glowing Sea. We had just as much trouble out of radscorpions as we did last time, but we were more prepared for them this time. My power armor was really soaking up the damage. I felt so lightweight. I wondered what Sturges did to this suit. It was like Heaven.

We cautiously entered Virgil's cave again.

"Virgil, we're back," I called.

He looked up from his stove. "Ah, you. Wasn't sure I'd see you again. You managed to get what you need?"

"I have the code."

"Suppose I shouldn't be surprised. You did get rid of Kellogg, after all. Not too much of a leap to take down a courser. How'd you manage to get it decoded?"

I didn't want to compromise the Railroad. "I've made some friends in the Commonwealth."

"Better you than me. Face like this, I'm not going to make too many friends. But you're not the only one who's been busy. I did the best I could, from memory and things I've overheard through the years. Came up with some schematics for you. Wasn't easy; these hands are ridiculous. Fine motor skills have gone to shit. Here's the simple explanation: you need to build a device that will hijack the signal that the Institute uses to teleport coursers, and send you instead."

He handed me a roughly folded piece of paper. I unfolded the large schematics and the revealed sloppy drawings of technology. I'd imagine this is what Sturges' blueprints would look like if he was drunk.

"You know the craziest part of the design? That classical music station . . . That's the carrier signal for the Relay. All the data's on harmonic frequencies. You've been hearing it all along."

I never would have guessed that the frequency was on my pip-boy radio all along on that silly classical music station.

"I want to be clear that this isn't my area of expertise. I was BioScience, not Engineering or Advanced Systems or anything."

"I'm sure it'll work. It'll have to . . ."

"For the record, I haven't made any promises. But if you can build this device, and make use of that code, you should be able to override the signal from the Institute's Relay. Can you? I mean, can you build it? You have people that can help? This is a lot for one person, even you."

I looked at Hancock, and Hancock looked back at me with a grin. "Sturges," we said in unison.

"I've got it covered," I assured Virgil.

"Good, good. Because you've gotta make it in there. For both our sakes. And don't you forget our agreement. I've helped you as best I can. If you make it in there, you find that serum. It's my only hope for ever being . . . normal. So you find it. Now go on, take those schematics and get to work. You do whatever it takes; call on whoever you know to help you."

"Thanks, Virgil. You haven't let me down. I won't let you down."

We walked out of the cave. I was a little disappointed that I was going to have to do even more waiting around. We were quiet for a while. The only thing that could be heard was the thunder of an upcoming radiation storm and the light clanking of my power armor as we marched back home.

"Anybody in there?" Hancock inquired playfully when I hadn't said anything.

"Yeah, yeah. It's just . . . how much longer is my little boy going to have to wait? How much longer until I can see Shaun again?"

He pursed his lips. "Dunno. Life's a bitch."

We made it all the way back to Sanctuary again. I was sad to take my power armor off already. I felt like I barely got to use it. The air was so cold when I left it at Sturges' workshop. I didn't see Sturges anywhere around, so I looked for Preston at the usual lookout.

"What do you need, General?"

"I have these schematics. A scientist named Virgil said that they could get me inside the Institute."

"The Institute? Why in the world would you want to go messing around with them?"

"I didn't tell you? Oh . . . They kidnapped my baby."

"Damn. It was them all along? That's some bad business, even for them. Well, you'll always have my support, so don't worry about that. But assuming we could build this thing . . . what exactly does it do?"

"The Institute has this teleporter they call a Molecular Relay."

"Teleportation? For real?" He took his hat off and rubbed his head. He had a thin layer of black hair, almost as short as a buzz cut. "Wow," he breathed.

"Yeah."

"That would explain a lot about how the Institute manages to operate. If anyone can make heads or tails of those plans, it's Sturges. I haven't found anything yet that he couldn't build or fix."

The three of us searched for Sturges together, and finally found him at the far end of Sanctuary, repairing a broken section of the wall. When he caught sight of the three of us, he stopped working.

"Whoa, is this some kind of intervention or something?"

"No, nothing like that," said Preston. "Nora has got some really important information for you."

"We thought you might be able to figure out these plans for me." I handed him the folded papers.

He unfolded them and looked at them. He squinted his eyes to see the sloppy pencil markings in the dimming sunlight. "Wow, what a mess . . . hmm, looks like . . . encrypted RF transmissions. Okay, so that gets routed through . . . What the hell? Teleportation?" He searched my face. "You can't be serious."

"I'm afraid I'm very serious."

"This is some pretty crazy shit. You're sure these schematics are for real?"

"It's real. I got it from an ex-Institute scientist."

"Really? I didn't know you could be an ex-Institute anything and still be breathing. Anyway, the eggheads never think about the nuts 'n' bolts of actually making something work, but . . . looks like it's all here. Yeah. I'm going to need some time to study this thing. The handwriting is pretty hard to make out. But you can get started on what he calls a 'stabilized reflector platform.' It'll need some pretty high grade metals, but it's basically not that different than the lining of a jet engine or something like that."

"Can you give me a list or something of what I'll need to build this platform?"

"Yeah, sure." We walked back to his workshop. He took the pencil from behind his ear and searched through his desk drawer for a piece of paper to write on. He wrote down everything that was on the list.

"Here's what you'll need for the first piece. I'm pretty sure we've got some of that stuff here at Sanctuary, but we may have to salvage more supplies. While you're doing that, I'll get busy on figuring out how to actually build the rest of this thing."

"Thanks, Sturges. Again, I owe you."

"Keep in mind – I can already tell this is going to take a crazy amount of juice. Like . . . if you had a spare nuclear reactor handy, we could probably use it."

"Damn," Hancock muttered.

"And it's going to be big." Sturges laughed. "So, find a nice, open building site with lots of power available."

"Will do."

Hancock held out his hand to Sturges. "Appreciate it."

Sturges shook his hand. "I'm sorry, you are . . ."

"John Hanock, Mayor of Goodneighbor."

"Oh. Well, nice to meet you."

"Likewise. You do good work. I'm impressed."

"Thanks. My daddy taught me a bunch o' this stuff, but I learned everything else myself."

"Never built much, myself. I'm not supposed to operate any heavy machinery," Hancock stated with a shrug.

"Have you met Preston before, Hancock?"

"We haven't officially met," said Preston, "but I know who he is."

"And I know who you are, Garvey," Hancock smiled. "So, tell me. What's going to keep the Minutemen from falling apart this time?"

"You're looking at him."

He laughed. "I like the way you think."

Preston didn't seem to be taking a liking to Hancock, and Hancock was either oblivious to this fact or just overlooking it like he always did.

I told them that we had better get some rest, because we were going to be busy tomorrow.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And the day after that.

And all month.

Eventually, we made it to the month of February. Hancock had left after the first week of waiting around. He wanted to make it back to Goodneighbor. Preston and I had to salvage parts on our own from the city ruins. When I wasn't salvaging parts, I was doing odd jobs with my new friends. Nick, Piper, Deacon, all of them could have used some extra help, and I could have used the training. I was ready to get my boy back home.

[See secret chapters.]

One frigid morning at the beginning of March, I looked myself in the mirror. I noticed that my hair had been growing. It was shaggy and unkempt. My eyes looked tired and baggy. I had a scar on my lower lip and a faded bruise on my right eye. My face was dirty. My arms were getting muscular and defined. My skin had tanned. I barely recognized myself anymore. Was I really the same woman that came out of that vault?

No. I wasn't that woman anymore. The woman that looked back at me in the mirror was fierce. The woman that looked back at me – I knew she was fucking crazy. She'd do whatever it took to get her boy back.

I geared up for the day. I put on my old Vault 111 jumpsuit for old time's sake. It had been resewn, insulated, and reinforced with ballistic fibers. I slipped on my combat boots, latched my pip-boy on my arm, and threw my bag over my shoulder. I had intentions of going to look for more scrap, but Sturges stopped me before I got to the gate.

"Hey!"

"Hey, Sturges, what's going on?"

"Just thought I'd let you know, the Relay will be ready by tomorrow. I just need a little more oil for the generators, and we'll be good to go."

"Really? That's great news!"

"Where are you headed?"

"Well, I was headed to get scrap, but I think I'm just going to stop by Goodneighbor now . . ."