Author's note: I feel like I constantly need to apologize to you guys for how slowly the story progresses. And then I need to apologize for apologizing so much and now I'm just being stereotypically Canadian. Thank you everyone for reading! Review if you feel like it and please don't hesitate to tell me if I'm doing something weird!

Edit: The last scene in this chapter with Cass and Riley was edited. So if you haven't read the new version, I highly suggest you do!

Concern turned to worry after half an hour of searching turned up no sign of Christine anywhere. After an hour, worry turned to panic and Veronica was well on her way to lost. The streets looked the same, the garbage and the cloud and the pink… everything. It all blurred together until she couldn't even tell which paths she'd already taken. She pushed through gates, clambered over corpses and dragged ladders over to buildings so she could get above the Cloud. She had to find radios herself to progress forward, running in a mind-numbing swirl of hysteria just to find a switch.

More often than not she said screw the switch, and ended up throwing the radio to the ground.

To top it all off the city was covered in graffiti that only seemed to mock her.

Tick tick tick.

NOWHERE TO RUN!

RUN RUN RUN!

We'll be together soon.

Finally, frustrated, tearful and shaking, she stopped at a crossroads. She pivoted, looking one way, then the other, blinking tears out of her eyes so she could see the empty roads that were her choices. The sign above her told her she'd left the Medical District, so she was even more lost than she thought she was. But the Medical District was where she needed to be, because that's where Christine had to be, so at least she had a direction to go on.

She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve, took a deep breath, and started walking again. She ignored the door on her left that read 'Maintenance', and was even less aware of the distant rasping that told her she wasn't alone, unable to hear it over her laboured and shaky breaths. She screamed when the hands came from behind and grabbed her. Then, wide-eyed and furious as one clamped over her mouth, she started to fight back.

Except she was exhausted. She'd just spent over an hour frantically running to and fro in a growing panic that was neither becoming of a lady nor tactically wise as a soldier. Her movements were sluggish and she still hadn't caught her breath and her attacker had no problems whatsoever in dragging her back into the closet he'd hid in.

Still, she couldn't just give up. She struggled—weakly, yes, but she struggled all the same—kicking and wrenching against his hold even as he kicked the door shut, enveloping them in darkness. She might have had enough strength left to flip him over her shoulder, and was working up to do just that when he hissed her name.

"Veronica. Stop— It's me. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Veronica, it's me," his hand jerked at her head, trying to keep her still. Stubble rubbed against her temple and she froze, eyes wide. She knew that voice.

"Mmph?" she said, and he removed his hand from her mouth, letting her go. She turned around, eyes straining against the darkness while she caught her breath.

"Boone?"

"Yeah."

"Holy shit," she lifted her hands to her face, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyelids. And then she reached out and hit him. Hard. "You jerk! You scared the living hell out of me!"

"Nice to see you, too." His tone was not amused. He was probably scowling at her right now.

"Oh my god, you're such an ass," she laughed humorlessly, but the relief she felt at hearing his voice was practically palpable. "You win an award, okay? For unbelievably shitty timing at rescuing damsels. Why didn't you just call my name instead of grabbing me like something out of a horror holotape?"

"I did," he retorted. "You didn't hear me. Any louder and I would have alerted the group of hostiles around the corner. That you were going to run into. Alone."

"Group of—" she frowned. Her eyes were adjusting now, and she could make out his form against the deeper darkness of the room around them. "The ghost people. Right." She took a breath. Nodded. "Okay. We can take them."

"Are you armed?"

"I am covered in the blood of my enemies," she declared.

"Is that what that smell is?"

"Ha. Are you armed?"

He sighed and lifted something heavy. "I have this. I don't think there's much ammo. Not even sure how to load it."

She blinked. The idea that Boone didn't know how to handle a gun? Yeah. Not exactly what she thought she'd hear. Ever. So, it could only mean one thing, and luckily that thing was something she could help with. "Energy weapon?"

"Yeah."

"Let me see it."

He reached past her to prop the door open a crack, letting in the dim light from the street outside. He held out the weapon and she stared at it.

"Where did you get that?" she whispered. Her throat had gone dry at the sight of the holorifle in his hands. She looked up at him when he didn't answer, found him watching her curiously and found herself unnerved by him without his aviators. But he still didn't answer her. "Where did you get that?" She repeated, her voice harder.

His eyes narrowed. "I found it."

"Where?" she demanded. He was still watching her face, eyes hard and appraising while he took in her reaction.

"What's this about?"

"Where?"

His jaw twitched angrily as he stared her down, and she got the distinct impression that she was not going to win in a war of wills when it came to Boone. She had to try something else. She took a calming breath.

"Can you take me to where you found it?" She asked instead. He didn't budge. "If you take me to where you found it, I'll explain what's going on."

His frown deepened. "More secrets? After the stunt you pulled with Riley, forget it. Find it yourself."

She gaped, speechless. Maybe she was just so used to him backing up Riley on everything that it hadn't occurred to her that he wouldn't do the same thing for her. But no, she reminded herself, in their little cohesive unit, Riley was the bonding force. Boone's loyalty was to her, not to Veronica. She floundered to find her voice. "It's not like that. Just—"

"I don't want to hear it," he said curtly. "You can tell it to Riley. She's the one I had to drag kicking and screaming from following you into a god damn minefield in a sandstorm." He all but snarled the last word and she stared at him, horrified. Riley had done what? She'd cared enough to do what? A curling fist of shame was starting to take hold in the pit of her stomach and she looked down at her feet.

"I didn't—"

"If you need to go, then go. I need to get back. I've already been gone too long and Riley's probably up by now. She'll want to know what's going on."

Her head snapped back up. "She's here?"

"You think I went looking for you alone?" The faintest hint of amusement crept into his voice. "She's here. And Cass. Found that bunker after the storm died down." His gaze flicked down to her collar. "Like you did, I guess."

She hadn't noticed his collar until now. Elijah said something about getting more help, didn't he?

Boone took a step towards the door, paused, and looked down at her. "Are you coming?"

When she didn't answer, he turned to leave.

"Wait. Boone, wait." She gripped his sleeve. "I was looking for someone. Someone I was with. We got separated and I—" she ran a hand over her face. "Okay. Okay. The holorifle. I gave her the holorifle. That's why I freaked when I saw you had it. I can't just leave her out there. There's more going on here than you know and— look I just have to find her. Okay?"

He turned to face her. "What do you mean, more going on here?"

She gnawed on her lip. "When you got here, did you speak to a man? At the fountain. Did he tell you what he wants you to do here? Did he explain the collars?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Did he mention me?"

Now he just looked baffled, and the knife in her heart twisted deeper. Pawns. They were just pawns.

"I'll take that as a 'no'. Look. I will explain everything. Everything," she repeated when he narrowed his eyes at her. "When we meet up with the others, I will. But I can't just leave her out there without trying and you know where she was last. Help me," she pleaded, her voice strained. "Please?"

He exhaled, long and hard, head bowed as he pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. She swallowed nervously, and then he sighed again. "Fine. Let's go."

Following Boone's lead, and Veronica's descriptions of what she remembered of the area she lost Christine in, it took them maybe ten minutes to find it. She was flabbergasted that he could know his way around so well already. She'd run around in a blind panic and probably circled the area three times over, but he just calmly took two lefts, hopped a fence, scaled a wall and went down a narrow alley before she found herself standing in the courtyard with the room above her.

"This is it?" Boone asked, looking around as they climbed the stairs. Veronica nodded, still dumbfounded, hovering in the doorway while he checked the place out.

"How did you even—"

"Recon mean anything to you?" He turned slowly in place, arms folded. "We're not just snipers. We scout. You need a good sense of direction for it. Don't always have maps."

She nodded again. Of course. "Collar started beeping here," she said, stepping farther into the room. "Christine left to find the radio—"

"Christine?" he rubbed a hand over his face, turned to stare at her as if suddenly tired. "Your Christine?"

She blinked at him, startled that he remembered. More startled that he heard that conversation at all, because the day that conversation with Riley went down, they were somewhere between Primm and the border Outpost and Boone was trailing behind them at a distance.

Note to self, she thought, Boone has mutant hearing.

"Yes," she said. "My Christine."

His eyebrows went up, but he said nothing else as he stood there, staring at her. It was awkward, like he was reading her, placing several facts in order and coming to a conclusion. She fidgeted. And then he stalked past her and she had no choice but to follow him out and back down the stairs.

They didn't go far; down the stairs and out onto the main street. He took a left and stopped after a few feet. "This is it." He gestured at the floor of a doorway, the room beyond the usual shambles. Broken furniture, piles of garbage, scattered books. A radio and a broken terminal sat silent on a desk in the corner. "Found the weapon here."

She paused, hand on the edge of the doorway, quiet. No sign of Christine. Nothing. And it was so close, not even thirty feet from where she left her, and still she heard nothing. God dammit.

Boone kept his eyes on the street. "I know you want to find her. But we need to get back."

She swallowed. "But—"

"Numbers will help," he said calmly. "Tracking your friend with nothing to go on is going to lead us in circles."

"But— you're Boone," she laughed lightly. He was joking, right? "You can track anything. You're First Recon."

He shook his head, just once, and said, "I can track in a desert, I could follow you for days, weather permitting. Not here. We fall back, we regroup, and start fresh. We can't leave them alone anyway, and given Riley's track record, Cass won't be able to keep her there forever. They need to know what's going on."

Right. Christine wasn't the only one who needed help. Cass and Riley were unarmed and alone and Boone was right; they needed to regroup.

"Okay," she nodded. "We'll do it your way."

"How many did you put in?"

"Like, I dunno, forty? Push something."

"There's no buttons. Just a screen."

"So…touch the screen?"

"Fuck you, that won't work."

Riley reached out and poked the screen over Cass' shoulder, and a menu popped up on a bright blue canvas.

"Oh," Cass said. Riley shook her head, a little roll of her eyes that went unseen by the older woman in front of her. Twenty minutes had passed since she'd woken up. She'd calmed down a good margin, but Cass was determined to keep her distracted while they waited for Boone and they took to gathering up the little metal chips scattered in the dried up fountain.

Then Riley found the vending machine.

They argued over what to choose, swearing and bickering because Riley wanted Salisbury steak and Cass was trying to point out they had no way to cook it. Cass wanted pork and beans and Riley declared a veto because she was sick of eating it. A minute later they watched in awe as a box of Fancy Lads Snack Cakes literally materialised in front of them.

"Is it safe to eat?" Cass wondered.

Riley reached out, taking the box and holding it under her Pip-Boy's scanner. "No radiation," she murmured.

"Good enough for me." Cass snatched it out of her hands. Riley turned while she tore open the box, keeping her eyes on the streets surrounding them. Whatever had freaked Cass out earlier had slunk back into the shadows a while ago, but Riley knew they'd be seeing it again. Whatever 'it' was. Now, the streets were left as nothing but deserted remnants to an age long past. She longed to go, to explore, to find Boone and a way out of here. Ten more minutes, she told herself. Ten minutes before her commitment to staying here was over and then she could actually do something.

"Oh my god." Cass groaned through a mouthful of pastry behind her. "Oh my god, Riley you have to try this."

"I've had a snack cake before, Cass," she said without turning, eyes still trained hard on the emptiness around them. Something moved across the courtyard, a shadow in the street beyond it, and she narrowed her eyes, wary.

"Yeah, but—"

The shadow was approaching slowly, and she took a step back. "Cass."

"What?"

"Get down." Her hand reached out, gripping Cass' arm like a vice and yanking her down to a crouch. They shuffled, keeping low, until they were behind the crumbling column. The form hesitated, turning and gesturing in a familiar motion that had Riley jerking her head up. That was—

She breathed a sigh of relief as Boone made his way across to the fountain.

"Well shit, took him long enough," Cass muttered as she stood. They started making their way over but paused when another figure appeared behind him.

"Holy shit," Cass breathed. Riley took one step, then two, then broke out into a full out run. She flew across the pavement, heart pounding. Veronica staggered only slightly when Riley launched herself at her, enveloping her in a back-crushing hug. It had been, what, a day since they last saw each other? It felt far longer.

"You idiot," Riley said, her voice cracking. "You stupid, arrogant—"

Veronica's arms were around her now, and her anger weakened.

"—inconsiderate, selfish—"

There was a hand in her hair, soothing.

"—reckless, naive, stupid stupid girl," Riley finished. Veronica sighed, her voice muffled against the fabric of her jumpsuit and Riley's shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

She tightened her hold a little. "I know."