She was carried along by the lobotomites' odd, loping gait, thrown about without the ability to compensate for speed and her own weight, unable to pull away and unable to lean in closer. She felt sick, stunned, disconnected, watching her limbs flop uselessly as they moved.

"I've had to increase the absorption of oxygen into your blood," the stealth suit's voice seemed dulled in her ear. "You're not breathing enough."

"I can't," she said, barely able to hear herself. "I can't, my lungs don't-"

The lobotomite that was carrying her looked down at her, his goggles blank black spots boring into her eyes.

She fell silent under his gaze.

She was carried further and further away from the Think Tank dome, its blue spotlights lighting up as the sun began to set. She wanted to reach out for it, sure that if only she wanted it badly enough, she could manage it, but her arms stayed stubbornly still.

They walked under a tangle of pipes and then began climbing into the southern hills she'd seen in the distance. They passed what looked like amakeshift graveyard on the ledge below, recently dug soil heaped in piles, and then into the darkness of a cave.

She could barely see, but as able to make out movement. Someone was walking towards them. A hand was slipped under her head, and began to prod at her neck gently, testingly. The sensation as the fingers slid from pressure on her neck to numbness as they moved down towards her back was eerie. She could feel her hair tugging as it caught on the fingers as they moved lower, but the skin itself was sensationless.

Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and she saw that the figure that had been touching her was a lobotomite as well. He gave a wave of his hand and began to lead the lobotomite that was carrying her further into the cavern depths.

Her head was spinning dizzily as they began to move again, but she was lucid enough to catch a glimpse of where they were going.

An operating table stood in one of the recesses of the cave, a bonesaw and scalpel lying discarded on its surface. Her eyes widened as she realised what the lobotomite had been feeling her neck for.

"What is it?" asked the suit. "Your heart rate just doubled."

"Gonna-" she slurred. "Gonna operate. Med-x. Please. Three?"

She wanted to scream as she was brought closer, but she could barely manage a whimper. As they began to remove the suit, though, her worries began to fade. One, two, three doses of med-x began to flow through her bloodstream, and her consciousness was fading even as they pulled the stealth suit from her back and lowered her to the table.

She opened her eyes to see a blurry face above her. Boone, again. He looked down on her, concerned.

"I fucked up," she said, her voice indistinct. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to end up like this. I shouldn't – shouldn't have pushed you so hard. Or- or anyone. I just wasn't – I didn't know what was right. I wish I could change things." She tried to blink away the fuzziness of her vision. "Please don't – don't leave me alone. Here."

She lifted a hand to his face, but it felt – wrong. "Cr- Craig?" Her throat was dry as sand.

The hand that caught her wrist was all wrong, too. The grip was strong, unconsidered, where Boone would be gentle, almost as if he were afraid of hurting her.

"You," the blur said. "Fixed." She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced her back down.

"What?" she asked desperately. "How?"

"B-bone-stem," he said, uncertainly. "Broken."

The blurriness was slowly fading from her vision. "Bone- oh. My… spine?" She was aware, now, of an ache at the back of her neck, though it was pushed far to the back of her mind by the med-x haze she could still feel. She sat up, slower this time.

The lobotomite in front of her had his goggles pushed high onto his forehead. "My spine was – replaced. It was meant to be stronger than my real one?"

"Broken," he said, again.

She ran her fingers up the back of her neck. It was bandaged with layers of gauze. "I don't understand. But – thank you."

He smiled, hopefully, and took her by the hand. He helped her off the table. She had been dressed in a thin, short, backless hospital gown, and she felt the hairs on her arms rise in the cool cave air.

As they began to walk, Verity began to see the cave properly for the first time. There were piles of rotting meat lying strewn around the place, and, to her alarm, ancient, decomposed parts of human corpses lying casually by sinks and fridges. She tensed, but the lobotomite held on to her hand firmly.

A pile of bones lay in one corner, both animal and human, partial and whole skeletons, carefully grouped together. The lobotomite led her around it and brought her to a halt in front of an ancient chalkboard. She stared at it, uncomprehending. He beamed at her.

More lobotomites came walking silently out of the darkness to watch her, standing warily in a loose semicircle as if they were expecting her to perform a trick.

"I don't know what you want," she choked out.

The lobotomite who had led her there pressed a piece of chalk into her hand and smiled at her. "Teach," he said.

She looked around, from one pale face to another, slack jaws and empty, hopeful stares.

At the lives they'd tried to rebuild; the familiar things they'd gathered, the tricycles and teddy bears and toy cars; a shrine dedicated to toasters, the ovens they'd dragged far away from power or gas, piled high with meat they didn't know could never be cooked. They remembered these things, they knew they were important, but there was no sign that they knew what they were or how they walked, and at last the corpses made sense. They'd been trying to use them to replace their missing brains.

Teach.

She looked down at the chalk in her hand hopelessly. They wanted her to try and teach them what they were, what they'd lost. Because she was one of them.

She almost wanted to cry.

"Fuck," she said, instead, pressing a hand to her mouth. "Alright, I've got – I've got mentats." She wasn't sure they'd even work on them. "Um. I have books? Books that could teach you things, about…" she let her sentence trail off. They couldn't be able to read. She didn't even know if they could understand her. Books couldn't help them.

"I'm going to find out where your brains are," she said. "And – I don't know. Okay. I'm going to leave you the alphabet. And some numbers."

She turned to the chalkboard and began to write. Her stomach felt like stone.

"Dala," Verity said, forcing a smile that felt wrong onto her face. "I was wondering about the lobotomites."

"My beautiful empty-headed, big-eyed creatures. Of course."

"Can they learn things? At all?"

Dala's eye monitors tilted at a curious angle. "You seem to learn quite quickly."

Verity shook her head. "The others."

"Simple things, perhaps. They show little capability for academia, I'm afraid."

She bit her lip. "So – where are their brains?"

"Their brains?" Dala hadn't seem to consider it before. "I – well, with Mobius, perhaps, or even gone entirely. It has been rather a long time for some of them, and brains do degrade over time, even if properly preserved. And I believe the vast majority of the lobotomite brains were of… minimal interest once divested from their skinvelopes."

"Mobius might have them?"

Dala paused before answering. "I believe it is possible, however – unlikely. I do not believe even Mobius, with his nefarious plots, would have much use for a large number of human brains of varying ages. But," she said diplomatically. "The possibility exists, of course."

Verity's heart sank. Dala was right – from everything she'd seen so far there wasn't much that hadn't been left to waste and wither. She knew – guess she'd always known, really – there was nothing she could do to help them. She pressed her lips together hard. The Think Tank didn't care, barely even acknowledged they'd used to be the same species. They spoke about the lobotomites like lab-animals, like inconveniences once they were no longer useful.

"Pardon me for being impolite," Dala continued. "But have we had this discussion previously? Or maybe this is a conversation topic I've purged in the past?"

Verity was still staring at nothing. "Purged?" she asked, half-heartedly.

"Oh. Sometimes – infrequently, that is – certain thoughts and memory sequences become… unsafe to keep within our consciousness. So they must be partitioned and suppressed."

She looked up. "You take bits out of your memory? But – how can destroying your own knowledge make anything better ever?"

"You doubtless know that knowledge can be dangerous in the wrong hands."

"In your own hands?" She stared at Dala's monitors, trying to spot any sign of humanity remaining. The monitors glowed gently in the darkness of the Dome, but the images didn't move. The features probably hadn't even belonged to her as a human.

"Experience has shown us that not even we are safe. One of our visitors before you was able to take advantage of weaknesses in our security – you've heard Dr 8, no doubt. Reduced to communicating in RobCo soundwaves. A shame."

"Yeah," said Verity. "Yeah, that's a shame."

"Although he is a lot easier to get along with now," Dala added.

"Yeah. Um… I think I hurt my neck," Verity said. "I'm not quite sure what happened with it. Can you maybe check to see what's wrong?" She turned around.

Dala cooed gently as she scanned her.

"I think," she said at last. 'That the spine may have become partially detached from your Tesla coil receptors. A large enough impact could partially or totally sever the connection. In your case, it seems to have been an incomplete break, but it looks… messy. How unusual. It's a simple enough connection. Some damage has been done to the surrounding skin and flesh, but it is insignificant. Unlikely to cause you trouble unless you aggravate it further. I cannot help you with it now, but if you want it to be fixed, the Auto-Doc in your quarters, once upgraded, could help you with it."

Verity shivered, raising a hand to the back of her neck subconsciously. The lobotomites couldn't be as mindless as the Think Tank thought they were. They'd been able to help her – even if the connection was as simple as Dala said. They were human, still, no matter what had happened to them – which was more than she could say about the Think Tank.