Just a quick anti-porn scrub (permanent?)
The smoke rose thick and black into the sky. As they moved closer, she could hear a recorded message, repeating over and over.
"The perimeter has been breached. Please remain calm and stand by for further instructions."
The smoke was coming from the remains of the train tunnel next to the entrance to the Forbidden Zone Dome. The last time they'd passed it, abandoned rail cars had been scattered like toys outside, and the tunnel itself had been packed with debris and cement. Now the rail cars were nothing but red twists of metal lying scattered in a hundred-foot radius, the tunnel mouth a gaping hole in the mountain.
The sky was beginning to darken, and she could see the huge red gems that lined the paths glowing in the dimness.
There was something moving in the rubble. She swivelled the cyberdog gun, its metal ears pricking up.
Gabe started making a sound she'd only heard once before; a territorial snarl that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
It was Boone.
She sighed, slumping down in the armour's saddle. "I wish you were actually here," she said. "This place is fucked up and I don't know what's going on."
"Verity?" he asked, incredulously.
She blinked. "What?" she asked. He'd never spoken in her hallucinations before.
Another figure moved through the clouds of dust and smoke. "Are you riding a dog?" a familiar voice called out.
"Ronnie?" Verity straightened. "Is that - what the fuck? How did-"
"Please remain calm and stand by for further instructions."
"Your dog is terrifying!" called Veronica. "Why is he so big?"
Gabe was snarling ferociously at the intruders, and Verity patted him on the neck to calm him down. "It's okay," she said distractedly. "They're friends." She raised her voice again. "I think a bunch of chems?"
"See, I keep telling you chems are bad." Veronica grinned at her. "That's just not natural."
She saw Arcade picking his way carefully through the debris. The sensation of relief and familiarity began to wash over her, and she felt herself relaxing. "I can't - how are you even here?"
Veronica gestured behind her. A tiny figure stepped cautiously out of the destroyed tunnel.
She looked up, guardedly, and raised a hand.
"We found her already," Veronica called back. "I thought you said this place was huge and confusing."
Christine grimaced, and didn't reply. She seemed even smaller out here, somehow, and stayed close behind Veronica.
"The perimeter has been breached."
Raul was the last out of the tunnel, and he squinted up into the dying light. "Oh," he said. "Found her. Well, that was easy. Told you that you wouldn't need me along."
Veronica waved a hand at him vaguely.
Gabe was quieter, now, but she could still feel the rumble of the growl in his throat. She leaned forwards and tapped him on the nose lightly. "Stop that."
Boone was walking towards her. "Stay," she cautioned Gabe firmly, and slipped down from her seat.
He seemed tightly wound, like a coiled spring. "Verity, we need to g-" he began, but stopped short when he got close enough to see her properly through the dust.
She felt suddenly awkward, the long scars down her chest and spine and across her face burning. She was different, now.
"What did they do to you?" He lifted a hand to her face, traced the scar across her forehead.
She pulled away, just a little. "They- they took my brain out. It doesn't – hurt, it just… feels weird."
"They took your brain?" he repeated, in disbelief.
"That is not even possible," said Arcade.
"It's true. My brain and some other things," she said, miserably. "Heart. Spine. It's okay, I can fix it. Even-" she lifted her own hand to her forehead. "Even fix the scars. If I find the proper… autodoc… upgrade." She swallowed.
"Please remain calm and stand by for further instructions."
He swept her into a fierce hug. It took a moment before she was able to relax into it, his smell, his warmth against her, his stubble grating on her cheek.
"Tremble in fear before the might of my – er, mighty army of robo-scorpions!"
"Okay, that one sounded distinctly more menacing," said Arcade. "Although a poorly-formed sentence. What's going on here?"
Verity stepped back away reluctantly. "That's Mobius. He lives just through that door over there. He's – I don't even know what he wants. But he's got my brain."
"Well than, let's get it back," said Boone coldly, starting towards the Dome entrance.
"No no no," she said hastily. "I don't have all the things I need to put it back in, yet. And I don't know what's back there yet."
She raised her voice. "We have to leave here," she said. "I don't know what they're going to do to you if they catch you. You're not safe, they're – crazy. Dangerous. They're like children, they do whatever comes into their heads-"
"Who?" asked Boone. "Who are 'they'?"
"They're brains in jars," she said bitterly. "They used to be people and now they're not. They're afraid of Mobius, so they won't come outside, but – I don't know what they'll try to do. They probably know you're here already – or maybe we're too close to Mobius' laboratory, I don't know what they can see. But it's not safe here, this place is…" she trailed off, looking around her. "I don't know where I can keep all of you."
"I know a place," Christine said, quietly. "South."
Verity offered her the pip-boy map so Christine could point it out.
"Just a cave," she said, touching the screen. "Near a big hangar, or a warehouse maybe."
"Higgs!" Verity exclaimed. "It's right next to Higgs Village. You could stay there, it's big and it has houses and the lobotomites never go inside."
"The what?" asked Arcade. "Did you just say what I think you did?"
Verity sighed. "Yeah. It's - this place doesn't make sense. They're people who had their brains taken out and they walk around like empty shells and they try to find things to remind them of themselves but there's just not enough left of them-" she paused to take a shaky breath. "And they're scared and angry and I think they only accept me because I'm like them too, sort of. But I don't think they'll be okay with a big group of – normal people."
Christine smiled humourlessly. "I haven't been inside," she said. "What's it like?"
"Creepy pre-war village. The doctors used to live in it." She noticed Christine mouth the word 'doctors', as if she were trying it out.
"Oh yeah," said Raul. "Great idea. We'll go stay in their houses. That sounds secure."
Boone's hands were clenched into fists at his side, but he stayed silent.
Gabe was lying down, watching the group balefully. Verity approached and scratched his huge ears with both hands.
"Up," she said. He got slowly to his feet. "He's a good boy," she said to the others reassuringly. "He knows heaps of commands. He's smart, too."
She turned back to the dog. "Aren't you?" she cooed. He licked her face with his huge tongue, and she stumbled back, spluttering. "Ugh." She backed off. "Go scout," she commanded. "Keep things away but don't kill anything."
He took one more dubious look at the group before bounding away.
Verity led the group on a winding path, while still trying to get the group to safety as fast as possible. She skirted around the major research centres and landmarks, and avoided areas the lobotomites liked to haunt. They walked close together, trying not to attract attention.
"So," Verity asked, after they came out into the open, and she was relatively sure they were alone. "How did you figure out where I was?"
"Well," Veronica said. "When you disappeared, we, uh, had a variety of opinions on what we should do about it. Boone wanted to try find a way to go through after you, but then Arcade said that he couldn't even guarantee that you were still alive and hadn't been - I don't know, vaporised or something, or teleported into space where you couldn't breathe, it's a satellite after all – which, you know, Boone wasn't really that happy about. But then Arcade said that it looked like pretty advanced technology, and it reminded me of some of the stuff Christine had told me about what she'd seen in the Big Empty - so I went back to get her. The Brotherhood thinks you owe us a favour, now, though." She grinned. "That tunnel was the way she got out last time. We didn't know it had been sealed, though. Took a lot of hastily-improvised explosives to get through that lot, too."
Her smile was such a welcome sight that Verity thought she could almost feel her heart aching. She hugged Veronica impulsively. "Thank you," she said, quietly.
Veronica gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. "Oh, shh. As if I could just be like 'oh well, team, guess we should go back home now', and leave you missing and all alone. I'd have no one to fund my research habits, for one thing."
Verity turned back to Christine. "And thank you so much for- are you alright?"
Christine was pale and wide-eyed, her hands clasped together tightly in front of her chest. "This place," she said. "It's-" she closed her mouth abruptly.
"I'm sorry," said Verity. "It must be hard being back. You don't have to stay if you don't want to, you could take Ronnie and head back?"
Christine smiled at the use of the shorter form of Veronica's name. "It's okay," she said. "I need to face things here. Everything that hurt me, or scared me. I want to prove that I'm stronger than they are. Maybe I should be thanking you. You gave me another chance. A lot of other chances. And I'm not going to let myself down again."
"So how come the rest of you all came along for the ride?"
"Eh," said Raul. "Nothing better to do, boss. It's not like I just got back from a long trip or anything."
"I'm not going to lie," said Arcade. "This place sounded really interesting."
Verity grinned at Raul, then turned to Arcade. "That's adventurous of you," she said, teasingly. "I thought you weren't into fortune and glory."
"Fortune sounds nice," he said. "Getting shot at less so. Feel like showing me anything particularly interesting later?"
Verity grimaced. "I could probably manage that, if we're quick and quiet. You could maybe help with a couple of things I'm trying to figure out."
"I'll look forward to it."
The hangar moved slowly into view, under the shadow of the huge satellite tower of the antenna array. Verity looked up at the tower uncertainly, at the antenna that she'd been putting off collecting, glowing blue in the darkening night.
Higgs Village was almost eerie in the dimness. With such a large group of people, the tiny settlement seemed like it had been invaded. Violated, somehow. They didn't belong there, didn't seem right.
"I'm taking 101," she said, ignoring the feeling. "104, I think, is the creepiest; 00 doesn't have a proper bed; and it's best not to go downstairs in 103. It's been a long day for all of us. We'll talk in the morning."
After the group had split themselves among the various houses, she brought Gabe inside , leading him around the back of the houses carefully. He sniffed at his old doghouse, poked his nose inside carefully, then settled on the ground next to it and curled up.
Boone followed her inside.
"Christ," she said, closing the door behind them. "Do you want a drink?"
He shook his head.
She poured herself a glass of scotch from the bar.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, eventually.
She raised a hand to her forehead. "No," she said. "Well, maybe if I like press on it. But not really. It's weird, though. Heavy. I can't move how I used to; my muscles are still kind of getting used to it."
She gulped down her drink and stared into her empty glass. "Sorry," she said, into the silence. "I didn't mean – for you – for everyone to have to chase after me. I didn't find anyone we were looking for. The mercs we hired. Probably not people anymore." She laughed bitterly. It caught in her throat. "Not really, anyway. I'm just glad no one else was hurt coming to find me."
She cast a sidelong glance at him. He hadn't moved, standing by the stairs, watching her, letting her fill up the air with words. "Are you angry?" she asked.
He shook his head, though she wasn't sure how truthful the denial was. "Should have come through after you," he said.
"Fuck," she said. "No. I'm glad you didn't. You'd be gone. You wouldn't be you any more. Well. Maybe there'd still be a tiny spark left. Enough to realise what you'd lost."
"You don't seem so different."
"I'm the first person that it's worked on," she said, feeling lightheaded. "Can you imagine that? More than two hundred years and they've just kept churning out mindless drones one after another. I don't know what makes me any different."
She poured herself another drink. "I'm trying to help them," she said, hurriedly. "The lobotomites. They don't deserve to live as scavengers here. They're still people – at least a little, and they still know fear and friendship and – small things about what it means to be human." She bit down on her lip. "I don't think there's much I can do for them."
She moved towards him, just the smallest of steps, almost involuntary. He closed the rest of the gap between them and took her into his arms gently. "You don't have to fix everything for everyone else," he said. "Leave something for you as well."
"No one else is going to do anything," she mumbled against him. "I can't just ignore-"
She was cut off as he kissed her roughly, hungrily, reaching for the fastenings of her armour.
She froze. "I'm – scarred," she said. "I don't want you to see."
"It doesn't matter," he said.
"I don't care what you think," she said, the words coming out more forcefully than she'd intended. "I look – ugly."
"Never," he said, his voice rough. He took hold of the chestpiece of her armour and began pulling it open gently.
"Don't," she said, but didn't move to stop him. She turned her head away.
He peeled away the suit slowly, exposing an angry red scar that began at her sternum and ran down, between her breasts, almost to her navel. He traced a finger along it softly.
"Verity," he said. She turned her head back towards him, lips pressed tightly together, and stared defiantly into his eyes.
"You're beautiful," he whispered, sliding his hand under the armour at her neck, and sliding it to her shoulder, peeling the close-fitting armour away from her skin.
"Well hello, handsome!" said the suit. "Aren't you even going to introduce yourself before undressing us?"
Boone was halfway across the room away from her before she'd even seen him move. "What the hell is that?"
"Oh my fucking god, what are you doing?" she snarled at the suit. "You have the worst fucking timing."
"I just thought we should get better acquainted," the suit said plaintively.
"I'll permanently acquaint you with the inside of a fucking closet if you don't stop trying to cock-block me," she snapped. "So stop being a bitch."
"Okay!" exclaimed the suit. "Fine! Sorry!" And it fell silent.
Verity looked up at Boone sheepishly. "It's, um. A stealth suit. With a computer thing in it. And someone coded a personality for it. And she's- uh, it's very high-maintenance."
Boone was staring at her. "Can it still hear us?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"Sorry," said the suit.
Boone took another step back, his eyes wary.
She stepped out of the suit hurriedly, carefully folded it, and left it on the bench in the kitchen.
"I didn't mean to make you mad," it said quietly.
"Oh, honey," she said. "It's okay. It's not you. It's a human thing. I'll talk to you later."
She walked back into the lounge, smiling apologetically, and returned hesitantly to Boone's arms. She leaned into him, and shivered as he traced a finger down the scar along her spine.
He kissed her throat; her collarbone; the scar over her heart, ignoring the way she flinched.
She didn't respond until he stopped, came back to her face, and brushed her lips with a thumb. "Verity," he whispered, concern in his eyes.
And then she was tearing at his jacket, lifting the thin shirt he wore underneath over his head.
She could feel him pressing hard against her, and he lifted her and pinned her up against the wall, with enough force to knock one of the paintings down.
She could feel the muscles in his arms straining. "Um," she said. "You're probably not going to be able to keep holding me up, my replacement brain and spine are really heavy. Sorry." She grinned at him as he let her down, and after a moment he smiled back, shaking his head.
"Couch?" she asked. "Or there's a bedroom upstairs. Break some bedsprings?"
She laughed as he chased her upstairs.