THE VILLA
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"Ah, there she is again," Dean Domino chuckled, clapping his hands together. "Vera darling, lovely to see you! How are you, my dear?"
The hologram didn't respond.
Veronica gazed up at the female hologram, standing with one hand on its hip as it gazed out at the ruin of the Sierra Madre. "You knew her?"
"We were acquainted. Guess she got lost among the rest of the holo-archives when The Bomb hit. Shame, that."
"Who was she?"
"Vera Keyes, ghost in name and image. She was a big star back before The Bomb. Not much good at acting, but she had other talents. Nice voice, nice legs."
Dean moved closer to the fountain, studying the hologram with a look of appraisal. Until it flashed into Elijah's face.
"New boyfriend, dear?" He asked, taking an alarmed step back as Brianna headed towards the fountain.
"Alright, Elijah, we're all here. Now what do you want?"
"Where's the reject? You can't do it without the fool's brute strength."
She raised her Pip-Boy, searching for the mutant's signal. "Dog's close. Close enough to hear your voice, I'll bet. He'll come running to you soon."
"Good. Well done. Now for the festivities - and your parts in all this."
"I always considered myself a solo performer," Dean muttered below his breath.
"The owner of the Sierra Madre," Elijah went on, "for whatever reason, keyed the Grand Opening to the Gala Event itself. It needs to be fired off in order for the casino doors to open. As I've discovered, one person can't do it. So get your team into the positions I've marked on your Pip-Boy then trigger it properly. I'll tell you where to continue from there. If you work together, trust each other, the Sierra Madre will open tonight. My advice?" He lowered his voice, though it was very much audible as he continued, "be wary of the extra. Collar 22, she's the only one who's not supposed to be here."
"You mean me?" Veronica snapped. "None of us are supposed be here. What happened to you? Why are calling me by a goddamn number like you don't even know my name?" Dean hastily slid aside to allow her a place below the hologram. "I'm Veronica! I was your friend, Elijah, you know me! I was the only one who never thought you were insane, even after everything! But now I know." She took a deep breath. "This is what you were talking about. That message at the comm station, this is what you meant. You're not looking for treasure in this place, are you? There's something else. A weapon. This is how you plan on saving the Brotherhood, isn't it?"
"She's unruly," Elijah continued, as if she hadn't spoke. "She doesn't have a role in this, doesn't have a place. Nothing's stopping her from marching over to the gates and being the first one to gain entrance as soon as they open. Actually, that isn't quite right. There is a way to get rid of her, if that's what you want. She's only alive thanks to Dog's foolishness, so I gave the mutant more specific instructions after he brought you both here. Collar 22 is an old collar, one that was discarded after I decided to tune the rest of them together, synchronise their frequencies."
Christine shook her head, features twisted with hatred.
"You can't do that! What have you done, Elijah? What have you become?"
"What's he talking about?" Brianna demanded. "What does he mean?"
"It's simple," Elijah rasped. "The collars were not originally connected. Used to be that I was the only one who could trigger the explosion. I synchronised the collars of the last team and found that it was a far more effective method of controlling them, so I had synchronised collars put on all of you. Except for hers. Collar 22 can detonate without triggering the others. You can kill her now, get rid of her before she becomes a threat."
Christine pointed accusingly at the hologram, mouth opening and closing as she tried hopelessly to speak. She used two fingers of one hand to form a walking motion atop the palm of the other. Then she drew back one of the fingers, leaving only the middle which she raised pointedly in Elijah's direction. To convey the message further, she stepped away from Veronica and drew an invisible line between them, then pointed again at Elijah's face, mouthing the word you.
"Yes, yes, you were separated, I know, but a tragic tale of heartbreak won't sway me into releasing you. I would suggest, 22, that you give the team a reason to trust you. It would be unfortunate if you were to perish here in the Madre. But if any of you plan on killing her, I would suggest getting it over with. This is the time to start trusting each other, working together. This is where the real work begins."
Brianna cracked just a little bit more. She could feel pieces of herself falling away with every word of accusation, with every scratch of her nails on her palms. "Real work?!" She yelled. "What exactly is 'real work' to you?! You dragged us here unconscious, strapped bomb collars around our throats and told us to fetch! Is that not real work?!"
"You know this isn't some simple fetching mission, some cheap casino heist. No. This is The Heist of the Centuries. We're not plundering the Sierra Madre, we're plundering history. Taking from the Old World itself. It won't let its secrets go easily, not without a fight. The outlying areas of the Villa are thicker with the Cloud, filled with Villa inhabitants, traps, toxins. If you want to survive this place, use your team as I use you. Listen to your collar, watch your step, and don't be stupid. You're no use to me dead."
His image disappeared from the fountain.
"This is insane," came Veronica's trembling voice. "I never thought he was like this. I never thought he could be like this. I knew he didn't agree with the others, I knew he wanted something more, but- but not this! What is this?!" She turned to Brianna. "Something, something inside me wants to say I'll never forgive you for this. But, God, I have this other stupid part of me that's saying it's supposed to be this way."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know. I don't know why I want to forgive him for all of this, for trapping us here, for wanting me dead. But it's ironic, isn't it? The Brotherhood, we've only ever wanted Old World technology, to keep it safe, to keep it for ourselves so no one else can take it. And now it looks like I'm going to die for it. To get whatever's locked up in there, whatever's going to 'save' us. I've spent such a long time waiting for the Brotherhood to just burn out. Waiting for that slow or sudden end. And here it is."
Christine looked to the ground, tracing a circle absently around her arm. Brianna hadn't noticed the tattoo before, hadn't paid close enough attention to the see the image she was tracing around. Three cogs inside a circle, with a sword going up the middle. The Brotherhood's symbol.
"This isn't how it ends," Brianna insisted, wishing that it was. "This isn't how you die, Veronica. It can't be." Her voice cracked. "I don't want you to be like me."
"If we're thinking realistically," Dean interjected, strolling towards them and taking a long drag from his cigarette. "There would be nothing stopping me from putting a bullet between this lovely woman's eyes. And that Dog creature, whatever he is, would thank me for saving him the trouble of mauling her to death when he thinks no one's looking. So you're quite right," he concluded. "I believe this might just be where it ends for you, my dear."
"I know we're married now, Domino, but lay a finger on her and I'll kill you."
"And kill yourself in the process, which certainly won't help her."
"Then I'll just ruin your goddamn life instead."
"Maybe we should see other people."
"Or maybe you crazy bastards could just not try to kill me," Veronica suggested with a weak laugh. "Sudden end or not, I'd like to die heroically."
Christine's face wrinkled into a reluctant smile before another voice became audible.
"So, are we on our way somewhere else?" Asked God. "A Gala Event, perhaps?"
Brianna's hand tensed on the pistol at her belt as the mutant lumbered towards them.
"You heard that?" She questioned. "All of it?"
"His voice travels all around this place. Yes, I heard. I also heard about your friend's... unfortunate situation."
Christine stepped in front of her.
"I could break you in half with one hand, little doll. But don't worry. I'll make sure to save you for last."
Christine seemed to groan silently, glowering at God as she marched towards Brianna and grabbed her roughly by the arm.
"Hey- Jesus, what the hell?!"
The mute ignored her, tilting her head slightly to one side as she scanned and tapped, searching through her Pip-Boy's map markers and pulling the map in closer when she found what must have been the correct one. On the upper right corner, Brianna found the words Puesta Del Sol Switching Station glowing in a clear amber font. Christine breathed a silent sigh, flicking back to the World Map to get a clear view of the rest of the markers. There were four. Her eyes locked on Veronica, then back to Brianna, clearly worried.
Dean seemed to take the hint. "So, Veronica. That's your name, isn't it? Knew a lot of Veronicas back before The Bomb killed them all. Why don't you come over here and I'll tell you all about that?"
"He was right," Brianna said, as Veronica was dragged out of earshot. "There's no place for her here- she's a spare. Is that why he wants her dead?"
She shook her head, mouth opening and closing as she tried to force words out. She released Brianna's arm, gesturing towards the fountain before dragging a finger across her throat.
"He wants you dead too?"
She shook her head again.
"There's something you're not telling us. Something you don't want Veronica to know."
She nodded, lifting Brianna's arm again and pointing to the map marker at the switching station. She gestured towards herself, then repeated the gesture of pointing to a different map marker and gestured at God, who was watching them idly from a distance. She did the same motion for Dean's marker, then for Brianna's. After she finished this charade, she pointed to Brianna and made a walking motion with her fingers.
"That's the order you want? You, God, Dean, and me?"
She nodded.
"And why can't we go own our own? Wouldn't that speed things up?"
She pursed her lips, looking concerned as she attempted to mime a response. She gestured towards Dean then made a familiar twirling action around her head with her fingers. She pointed at God and made a motion with her arms like someone rattling a cage.
"The ghoul's nuts and the mutant's dangerous, that makes sense. But why am I playing babysitter?"
The darting of her eyes said enough. They both glanced in Veronica's direction.
"You really think you can protect her?"
It looked as if she was about to nod, but she stopped herself. Shrugged.
"Hey, I get it. She can come with us. Why does Elijah want you at the switching station?"
She frowned, then pantomimed the act of typing at keys. She pointed at Brianna, raising her wrist and talking silently into it.
"Something to do with the machines in there? You're the only one who can operate them?"
She nodded, then looked at Veronica again and gestured forwards in an urgent motion.
"You're right. Let's go."
The Puesta Del Sol was different from the Villa. Brianna knew that as soon as they stepped through the door, past the faded black lettering that told them to enjoy their stay. The toxic haze had dissipated into the air, leaving the sky above to glow in a sickly yellow swirl of clouds. Trees stretched up beyond the heights of the walls and arches, gnarled silhouettes against the unnatural sky. The paint was peeling from the wall to their right, which opened up into what looked like a small store. They made their way inside, weapons at the ready. Elijah had promised that there would be plenty of residents here to greet them.
He was right.
A distorted shadow crawled backwards through a large gap in the wall ahead. Its palms were flat on the ground, fingers all snapped and brutally twisted at extreme angles. Its limbs jerked as it crawled along the tiles, legs twisting impossibly around as it wrapped its broken fingers around a busted cooker and pulled itself up. The fixation of its gaze was bathed in green as the gas mask zombie looked around, searching the area for its prey.
Brianna fired three shots into its face before its eyes could lock on hers.
And the air burst into flames.
It happened in a ringing blast and a flash of light. She dropped to the ground. A wave of heat washed over her head. Her chin slammed on the floor, teeth clashing against each other. She squeezed her eyes shut and watched the fireworks exploding behind her eyes. When the flames past, she struggled to her feet and fell back against the table behind her. The ghost person was twitching on the ground, hazmat suit bubbling away. She headed for it, taking one of her spears and stabbing down until she heard a tiny shriek. When she turned back, she found Christine leaning against the counter, her face contorted with pain. Her eyes were closed, her right leg jiggling restlessly. When she moved closer, Brianna saw her arm. It was red and glistening was blood, blistering in places and peeling off like a blood-soaked rag in others. Christine's face grew paler with every heaving breath.
As Veronica searched frantically for a stimpak, Med-X, a bandage, Brianna found herself standing still. She stared at Christine's arm with idle fascination, watched as the skin peeled back and cringed away from the burn that feasted on her. When she turned around to check on Veronica, the scribe was tearing through her jumpsuit with wild strength, ripping through the right arm and pulling at the torso. Christine shook her head fiercely, moving to Veronica's side and trying to force her hands away as tears spilled down her face. Veronica was persistent, taking the spear from her belt and slicing at her trouser fabric until she'd created a makeshift bandage out of the strips she tore away. Christine grasped her throat and mimed a person choking, pointing at Veronica's exposed skin.
"Brianna, help me with this," Veronica urged. "What should I do?"
"She needs Med-X, Veronica. She needs a doctor."
"Yeah? Well that's a little inconvenient."
Brianna turned away and rooted through the cupboards for alcohol. She came back with a bottle of vodka and two shots of Med-X, but there were no stimpaks in sight. She handed the bottle to Veronica, who began to ramble apologies as Brianna injected the first shot into Christine's neck. "You'll get the next one after this," she promised, as Veronica doused the burning wound in alcohol. Christine's lips parted in a silent scream as she thrashed violently against the counter. Brianna administered the next shot, which seemed to calm her down a fraction as the bandage was wrapped around her arm.
"We make an excellent pair," Sunny said.
Nobody said much after that. The Puesta Del Sol was a maze, nearly impossible to navigate even with the map at Brianna's wrist. As the Cloud grew thicker, the map grew less and less reliable. Lines would flicker and blur into each other; sections of different areas would disappear then reappear some place else. Her Pip-Boy was no longer reading her vital signs, leaving all the health bars empty. So they continued blind, passing through houses filled with skeletons, graffiti scribbled everywhere they looked. Sometimes the messages were taunts.
NEVER GONNA FIND ME.
DIE, FUCKERS.
CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN.
Sometimes they were warnings.
EYES UP.
TICK, TICK, TICK.
BOOM!
And sometimes they were completely unintelligible.
WHY DID THE BOMB COLLAR CROSS THE ROAD? TO GET TO THE OTHER EXPLOSION!
ARE YOU MY MUMMY?
FINᗡ GOᗡ IN THƎ ƧIMPLƎST OF BƎAƧTƧ
But they found the switching station at the top of a long set of steps, Cloud tumbling down the slope. So they ran, blinded and choking, until they were through the door and inside some dingy old room with peeling paint and busted lights. Brianna was the first to step in, her throat burning. Christine's breaths were heavy and sweat was dripping from her forehead as they stepped further and further away from the door.
The place was littered with ancient terminals, all lying in broken heaps atop a long desk against the left wall. The room opened out further to their right, revealing a large metal door and a number of beeping control panels. As Brianna moved for the door, a loud crackling noise sent her jumping back.
"What the hell?!" She retreated another few steps. Her collar was emitting some kind of static sound.
Christine frowned, moving next to her and taking a step forward. Her own collar crackled just as much for another few seconds.
But Veronica's beeped instead.
Christine found it first, an old ham radio hidden beneath the control panels. She quickly sent a blue beam flying in its direction.
"What was that?" Brianna asked. "Was that you?"
She shrugged, then nodded decisively and pointed at her collar. Then at Brianna's. She linked both of them with her finger, then pushed downwards into the air with her hands.
"Must be the collar frequency, right?" Veronica guessed. "Looks like you can dampen the signal somehow, slow down the radio interference."
Christine seemed to agree, nodding her head and repeating the downward motion with her hands.
"Then are you sure you wanna go first?" Brianna asked. "That could help me out with the others."
Christine's eyes widened in panic.
"Actually," Veronica replied hastily, "it's probably a one-on-one thing because of the different collar frequencies."
Christine nodded in agreement.
"Just you and me, huh? How romantic."
The mute glared at her.
"Kidding," she breathed, moving towards the door, which opened in front of her with a loud creak and a groan.
She was greeted by a jagged scrawl on the wall ahead, displaying the words TICK, TICK, TICK.
She reached for her pistol and swerved right. A radio was positioned on the upper corner of the wall until she sent a bullet whizzing through it.
The beeping was enough to drive her insane. Everywhere they turned, every goddamn corner came with that deafening crackle before it died down into the familiar beep... beep... beep. They passed through seemingly endless corridors lined with computers and speakers until finally the next door led them into a huge room filled with high metal walkways. Brianna's jaw hurt from gritting her teeth for so long as they climbed endless steps to even higher walkways, her lungs fighting the toxins that rose up from the floor below. They came across weaker strips of metal that collapsed beneath the weight of one foot, and more and more radios and speakers threatened to blow off her head as they went along. But in the end they found it, another metal door that, according to her Pip-Boy, marked the very place they were looking for.
Christine's face was bloodless as the door opened. Her muscles trembled as if she was fighting the urge to flee. As Brianna stepped into the terminal room, followed by Veronica, she stopped entirely. Her eyes were locked on the elevator ahead. She pointed to the door uneasily, then made a pulling motion with her hand.
"Elijah put something down on the Objectives," Brianna said. "Says you have to go down to the manual bypass room and regulate the power."
She shook her head, taking a step back from the elevator. She raised her hands, then lowered them. Raised them again.
"What the hell are you motioning about?" She snapped. "We don't have time, alright?"
Christine glared at her, wrapping her arms around herself and shaking her head again.
"This is because of the auto-doc, right?" Veronica asked. "Is that why you're not going down there?"
She nodded reluctantly.
"Hey, you didn't have a problem with enclosed spaces when you were sneaking me into store rooms. I'll be there with you, okay?"
No, she mouthed, stepping back and continuing to shake her head. No, no, no, no, no.
"Just get into the elevator!" Brianna yelled. "If you can't do this, Elijah will blow our fucking heads off and use the next person who can!"
Christine looked terrified. She backed into the terminal, trembling in fear as her eyes darted from Brianna to the elevator.
Veronica reached for Brianna's arm, taking a tight hold of it and pulling her back. She maintained a vice-like grip on her forearm, eyes burning with anger. "If you even think about shoving her in there-"
"You'll kill me?" Brianna barked out a laugh and pulled out her gun. Aimed it right at Christine's head. "Not if you want her alive."
"Brianna, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"You think I care what happens to me now? I don't. Sure, I want out. I want to go to Heaven, I want to go home, I want a lot of things. But we never had a goddamn hope of getting out of here, Veronica, I was just along for the ride. I'm dead, remember? I'm a fucking corpse and I don't care what happens to me. Elijah can blow my brains out if he wants, I couldn't care less. But I've been trying my best to keep going, to pretend like this is all gonna be okay, because I care about you, because you deserve a chance. So I'm gonna make this simple, Veronica. Get her in there, or watch us all die."
The pistol was twisted from her grip. It clattered on the floor. The tip of a spear was shoved against her throat. She laughed as Veronica backed her against the wall.
"Look at you," she spat. "There's nothing left of you. You don't care about a goddamn thing anymore and now you're nothing at all. You were right, Brianna. You're a corpse. You never left New Vegas, you died in that place, you gave up and the world just swallowed you whole. You're a coward. You're the biggest coward I've ever met. You lie to yourself, you pretend you're in control, you drag other people into Hell with you because you're too afraid to face it yourself. And you know what the worst thing is? I believed you when you said you knew what you were doing, when you said you could change the world. But you never had a chance." She stepped back from her. "Go. I can transfer control to this station. You can go start your next fetching mission. It's all you've ever been good at."