THE LUCKY 38

AUGUST 18

10:35

"Crawl out through the fallout, baby

When they drop that bomb!

Crawl out through the fallout

With the greatest of aplomb!"

Her laughter was like poetry when they danced. They twirled and laughed with eyes as bright as the Mojave, with lips red and swollen from sleep. Roses bloomed in the valleys of Sunny's cheeks and her smile was like sunlight and they both were barely dressed, all tousled hair and stumbling motions.

"When your white count's getting higher

Hurry, don't delay

I'll hold you close and kiss those

Radiation burns away!"

God, this woman was enough to make her choke out metaphors instead of curses. The morning had left her shaken, guilty, grieving, but sunshine didn't go away. Sunny Smiles burned on furiously, holding Brianna's hands like the courier was a fleeting cloud, like her flesh would soon turn to vapour and disappear from her sight, impossible to reach, impossible to hold.

"Crawl out through the fallout, baby

To my loving arms

Through the rain of Strontium 90!"

They found comfort in each other, singing with joy at having found each other again, singing though they wanted to scream. Brianna could scream forever. She'd seen enough, suffered enough, knew rage that sent shockwaves through her bones. She had learned to use her mouth as a shotgun, and she could scream bullets into the air for the rest of her life. Terror had its vice-like grip around both their hearts. Indecision was clawing its way up Brianna's throat and spilling out from her mouth in the form of a million different ways she could compare her lover to the sun.

"Think about your hero

When you're at Ground Zero

And crawl out through the fallout back to me!"

But still they sang and still they spun, because in this hazy morning of bitter truths and coffee cups and half-finished thoughts barely strung together, they found some joy to cling to. They found each other, and that was enough. Because the sky was shining brilliantly through the windows and Veronica had fixed up the broken radio and Mr House was dead and finally, finally, they had a chance. When Sunny asked if they would be alright, Brianna couldn't find it in her to agree. But she melted into Sunny's arms nonetheless, and hoped that even if they lost this war, these memories would remain.

"If you cannot find the way

Just listen for my song

I'll love you all your life

Although that may not be too long!"


Hidden Valley was located a short ways outside the Powder Gangers' camp, just a few miles east of Goodsprings. The group took an hour of the morning to organise their things at the Lucky 38, restocking their ammo at Mick and Ralph's and picking up some food and water from the surrounding stalls. Sunny and Cass planned on branching off to Goodsprings to spread news of the events in New Vegas. As much as Brianna was reluctant to part ways with Sunny already - reluctant enough to pin Veronica against a wall and threaten to shove a barrel cactus into one of her more intimate areas - she understood the necessity of sending her away. Though the sun was burning fiercely above them, the Mojave Wasteland was still in the dark.

"How exactly is this hidden?" Brianna asked. The hill was high enough to allow her a clear view of Hidden Valley, but she could see little more than a large stretch of desert separated from the surrounding area by a collapsing chain link fence. A distant slope of rising sand indicated the entrance to a bunker. The place was hard to differentiate from any other forgotten patch of sand in the desert, but the bunker would only be hard to spot if you didn't know what you were looking for.

"The DERVISH camouflage system provides visual and electronic interference to prevent airborne or long-range enemy weapons from targeting the bunker," Veronica droned. "The surrounding soil has been supplemented with a combination of aluminium and various silicates, which are then dispersed using a widespread network of industrial fans to blanket the area in a cloud of what is essentially chaff."

"Combined with the electronic countermeasures of the nearby array at Black Mountain," Christine finished, "the bunker at Hidden Valley is effectively impossible to target."

"Looks like you people really are robots after all."

"We're scribes," Veronica explained. "This stuff is drilled into us from the second we're out of the womb. The moment you learn to say 'mama' is the moment you're dragged off screaming by Head Scribe Taggart. We know everything they keep on those terminals, right down to the letter. Basically, this place is completely hidden by a synthetic windstorm at night, almost impossible to see anything but the bark scorpions coming at you."

On that note, she crushed one of the approaching scorpions into the ground with her metal fist.

They reached the bunker after a few more minutes. The face of the slope was scribbled over with graffiti, displaying phrases such as YES TO PEACE! and NO TO THE BOMB! It was surprisingly easy to access, the entrance opening just as any other vault door would. Brianna had expected some sort of high-tech defence system, a locked terminal, even just some kind of key, but it opened into a dark hallway with only a turn of the handle, leading down to a long set of metal stairs. Veronica led the way as they moved down into a dim warehouse. The place was cluttered with fallen rubble, with no further access to the bunker aside from another heavy door. This time, it had a locked terminal and an intercom.

"I'd like a large Atomic Shake and a double brahmin burger," Veronica said into the intercom. "And easy on the agave sauce this time."

"What? Veronica, what the hell? Who's that with you?"

"It's fine, they're not hungry. Just make it three Atomic Shakes and open the goddamn door."

"Veronica-"

"I know where you live, Ramos. Open up."

"Oh, for God's sake, fine. Opening up."

The door swung open.

"Welcome back, Veronica."

After stepping through the next empty room and descending another flight of stairs, Brianna came face-to-face with the man from the speaker. Dark skin, a shaggy beard, thick black eyebrows. He was pointing a gun at her face, but didn't seem overly concerned about pulling the trigger. "Listen up," Ramos said, "I'm in charge of security here and I can't say I'm too happy about having outsiders waltzing around. But since you came in with Veronica, I'll cut you a little slack. Just behave yourselves and we won't have any problems, okay?"

He directed his attention to Christine before Brianna could respond. His brows furrowed as he searched the woman's face. It was clear that he was trying to look beyond the scars, see the woman who was underneath, someone he might recognize. Christine had picked up some armour from Freeside, light black leather with a belt of ammo strapped around it. One sleeve had been cut away to reveal the fresh bandage on her arm.

It happened in a ringing blast and a flash of light. She was pressed against the floor, ducking beneath the torrent of flame. The air was on fire and Christine's arm was red and blistering, skin peeling off the bone in blackened strips and Veronica was gasping for breath and she remembered the shadow creature crawling down the steps with its fingers snapped, scuttling towards them, the air was on fire, her lungs were on fire, she-

"You're not Brotherhood, are you?"

"I'm a knight of The Circle," she replied evenly. "Knight Royce."

"You the one who was looking for Elijah?"

"Yes."

"Did you find him?"

"Yes."

"Then the Elder will want to see you."

The bunker was gigantic. Tunnels snaked off in every direction, a colossal network right beneath the Mojave soil. This vault was more spacious than any Vault-Tec hole Brianna had explored, and promised to be even larger. Open doors led into wide classrooms with pre-war blackboards and a terminal at every table, others to vast rooms filled with technology, like a Silver Rush was open for business every few doors. There were doctor's offices and sleeping areas, bathrooms and kitchens, long boardrooms for meetings and gatherings. The Brotherhood themselves were effortlessly intimidating as they walked by. Knights strode past in heavy power armour while scribes opted for red leather tunics or roughspun brown robes. They found a turret locked on their position with every corner they turned. Brianna felt like the bunker was lining up its sights, just waiting for the chance to eliminate its target.

Her companions knew the bunker like they knew how to put together a plasma rifle. Veronica stopped by every door to say hello, greeting every member with a private joke or an amusing comment. She waved eagerly to those passing by, some barely glancing in her direction. Although many stopped to talk to her and Christine, few dared to meet Brianna's eyes. She became painfully aware of the hostility towards her, suddenly understanding that, to these people, she didn't have an identity. She was Outsider, and she could not be trusted.

"Hey, Lorenzo! Woah, nice differential pressure controller!"

"Lookin' good, Stanton! Didn't think that swelling would go down for a while."

"I know you're stealing my haircut, Torres. The jig is up as soon as I pull this hood down."

"Oh, hi, Melissa! That orange make-up is really going well for you - I almost can't see the lazy eye! Actually - no, wait, Melissa - hey, Melissa, I'm over here, not halfway across the bunker."

Veronica and Christine led the way into the Elder's office. Brianna had seen smaller missile silos in her lifetime. Nothing from any REPCONN facility could match the towering walls decorated with Brotherhood flags, their emblem emblazoned in bright yellow over grey cloth. Paladins guarded every door, plasma flowing through their weapons as they observed the newcomers warily. They were so like the Brotherhood she had known in DC, but at the same time they couldn't be more different. Though their armour was identical and their flag just the same, the Washington outpost had always kept a sense of nobility about them, always had a presence that demanded the grudging respect of everyone around them, from Rivet City scientists, to snooty Commonwealth socialites, to lowly wasteland traders. But the Brotherhood she saw here reminded her more of sewage rats than nightstalkers.

Elder McNamara was younger than Brianna had expected. His long blue robe sent a lurch of recognition through Brianna's gut. It was identical to Elijah's, all the way down to the high rounded collar and large metal belt. His skin was a warm brown, a startling contrast to his shock of white hair. His eyes were dark and serious, his expression more so when he recognized Christine and rose to feet.

"Christine, is that you? God, I- we didn't expect to see you return. It's been a long time. What brings you back to the Mojave chapter? How goes your mission?"

Christine's hands clenched into fists. "You know that Elijah left a trail of crimes across the Mojave," she began in a careful, rehearsed voice. The Elder's confusion was apparent when he realized that the voice did not belong to the knight he knew. "What we didn't know was why. I tracked Elijah to Big Mountain, a research site that we'd previously thought lost to the war."

"Big Mountain," he repeated. "It's still functional? How much is still intact? How did you get there?"

"I don't know how to get back, McNamara. Even if I did, there's nothing for us there. What Elijah did was monstrous. I tracked him to a camp of flayed ghouls wearing bomb collars, some kind of twisted experiment of Elijah's. He captured me, opened up my head. He tortured me until he found whatever he was looking for. I can't read anymore, I can't write. Even if I remembered where the tra- where the entrance was, I would never be able to find my way there. I thought I wasn't getting out of that place."

"And after that? I need to know every detail."

"I found the Sierra Madre," she replied. "But not before Elijah did."

At the end of her story, McNamara's eyes were dark, his jaw set, his muscles taut. "What could have driven him to that?" He wondered, more to himself than anyone else. "To try and release a toxin like that across the Mojave, go to all those lengths. I knew the man was dangerous, maybe even insane, but I never imagined him capable of that. You've done good work, Christine. It's time you were heading back to The Circle."

"She's staying with me, McNamara."

"Veronica, you know th-"

"She's staying with me because we've discovered something amazing, something that could change things for us."

"Tell me this isn't about-"

"Yes, goddammit, it is! But you're gonna hear me out this time. This is more than anything we've discussed before, Nolan. This is more than just other groups succeeding where we've failed, more than just this gun-" she produced the pulse gun from the pocket of her robe and slammed it on his desk "-that has the power to fry a knight in his power armour with only one hit, destroying us entirely in battle if an enemy finds out about it. And they will, by the way, because the Gun Runners are selling them in bulk. This is more than just the fact that everyone in the wasteland is our enemy, more than just the fact that no one out there has ever even seen a Brotherhood knight since we went into hiding, that no one even knows we exist anymore! This is more than even that."

"We've outlasted the end of the world, Veronica."

"And that's your only plan, huh? Just wait in this glorified hole for everyone else to die so we can outlast the next war, and the one after that and the one after that, so we can watch our enemies conquer the Mojave! Your plan is to wait here until the NCR discover us - and they will. And then what? What do you plan on doing when they storm in here with guns and explosives?" She gulped down a breath and lowered her voice. "Please. Please, just listen to me, just hear me out for one second, just one time. Please."

"Fine. Say what you must. If nothing else, I need a reason for this outsider's presence."

"This outsider is the courier who got shot in the head outside of Goodsprings," Veronica snapped. "Not like you'd know."

Brianna waited for the dawn of understanding, but the Elder didn't seem to understand what this implied. "I got shot in the head by a New Vegas Chairman on the ninth of July, because of a package I was bringing to Mr House. I killed the guy who shot me and found out that he was almost ready to overthrow Mr House by killing him in his casino and planting a new A.I into the Lucky 38 mainframe. He upgraded a Securitron to allow him the same control as House had in his suite, one that would obey every command he gave it. But I killed him before he could go through with the plan. I killed Mr House and gained access to his Securitrons, an army of them, at Fortification Hill. I upgraded them to withstand an onslaught of Legion, NCR, Boomers, Brotherhood, anyone who tries to stand in my way. They're outside the Strip right now, awaiting my command."

A harsh bark of laughter escaped from McNamara's lips. "Is this a joke? Is this how desperate you are, Veronica, that you'd go to such lengths to spite me, to humiliate me, to turn me against the Codex? You'd bring an outsider in here with some ridiculous story about killing Mr House-"

"Don't believe me? Check your terminals - the news has been uploaded onto every one of them. Everyone in the Strip knows that I'm in charge. Everyone in Freeside knows. By the end of today, everyone in Goodsprings, Primm and Novac will know too. Even the NCR and Legion are waiting for my next move. And that all depends on you, Elder. We need humans fighting this fight just as much as we need robots. Even if you sent out ten, twelve paladins, it would let the people out there know that you're alive, that you're fighting. Do that, and it could change everything for you. By the end of Hoover Dam, you'll have no organised opposition. You'll be able to come out again, to patrol the streets, watch over Vegas. This is your only chance. I want to help you. The enemies of my enemies are my friends."

He couldn't even look at her. "What does the Codex say, Veronica?"

"A bunch of closed-minded bullshit. This is a dead end for us!" Veronica's voice rebounded off the metal walls, but it carried a tremor of fear. "This is happening, Nolan. The world out there is changing, I've seen it myself! The Legion and the NCR are going to be gone if we can pull this off, and so far, we have. There are people rooting for us, and not because we have a giant army or a hundred outposts across America or big, fancy suits of power armour. It's because they can see us. Because they can see us and hear us and understand that we are just like them, and we're fighting. Things are changing, and we have to change with the world. Otherwise, we aren't going to last."

"I see no evidence of that. We're doing perfectly fine down here on our own, and if you think that some stranger from the wasteland is going to be the solution to our problems, you are badly mistaken, Veronica. There is no way-"

"Then you're going to die!" Brianna yelled. "This is your only option!" I know I'm an outsider, and I know I can't possibly understand your Codex, understand every detail of what you're doing down here, why you hide, but that doesn't matter. Because I am the one who's leading an army. You're overseeing a dying faction while I am risking my life every goddamn day to fight a war I never had any part in, all because I want to fix the problems I never caused. If a group of five wastelanders can do that on their own, then you can get your head out of your ass for five minutes to think this through."

"We simply can't risk-"

"Then you - will - die! That's the only possible outcome for you! Things are already in motion, things are already changing. You have time to catch up now, but not tomorrow. You have time to adapt now or never. Because the world isn't going to slow down for you. The war isn't going to wait for you to wake up and find that the solution to your problems is right in front of your eyes! We came here to give you two options: you can live in my new world or die in your old one."

The silence was hollow and cold.

"We've lasted this long. We will last throughout this war."

"We'll die out," Veronica croaked, one final, hopeless plea. When the Elder didn't respond, she took Christine's hand and turned, moving for the exit and leaving the Elder behind. Brianna fuelled her gaze with all the icy hatred she could muster for this foolish, dying man without a chance. As she walked down the steps, she could have sworn the Elder had told them one more thing, just as the door shut behind them.

She could have sworn he'd said "I know."


"I'd punch him in the face but he stood at my parent's wedding," Veronica grumbled, as they made there way out of Hidden Valley. Her grip was tight on Christine's hand and she was visibly exhausted, paler than usual though her cheeks were flushed with anger. "He'd always make excuses for me when I fell asleep in Taggart's lessons, get me out of punishment. I thought he would listen. I thought he would do something. But it was like talking to a stranger."

"They haven't changed a bit," Christine remarked, her expression sour. "Elijah's dead and nothing changed. House is dead and nothing changed. They don't want to hear it. If there was ever a time when I questioned the Brotherhood's direction, this just confirms all of my doubts. They didn't listen to you back then and they won't listen to you now. I love the Brotherhood just as much as you do, V, but I'm keeping my distance, staying in Vegas. I can't let Elijah happen all over again. The Brotherhood are my life, always have been. But that just isn't good enough. Not anymore."

Veronica leaned back against the wire fence, shutting her eyes. When they opened, they were glistening with tears. "He wouldn't listen. The truth was right there, staring him in the face. How could he not listen?" She sighed. "His mind was made up from the start. I went out before, brought him back all the evidence I could find of how other societies were doing so much better than us. I thought getting to see the world for real would change things. I thought I could finally change his mind. But now I know that nothing will. There was never any chance."

"Where does this leave you, then?" Christine asked. "You've been fighting against them for years, Veronica. I know, I had to deal with the fallout every single time. I don't want that for you, not for the rest of your life. They won't change their minds. And if the wrong people hear about this - Richards, Coldwell, Beckett - they might do something drastic. They'll cause trouble, send you away again."

"I think you're right." Veronica's voice was small, barely audible, but there was a ring of finality to it. "I don't think I can stay. Maybe it'd be better for everyone if I left. Spent my life somewhere else. It's not like I have nothing. I've got you. Brianna, Sunny, Cass. Everything that's going on in Vegas, there's no way I'm missing out on that. After, well," she shrugged. "Maybe I could work with the Followers or something, put some of my knowledge to good use. Or, you know, I could stay. Stay with them until the end. Even if this stupid plan of ours actually works out, the NCR could discover Hidden Valley tomorrow, or next week, or in an hour's time. I don't know how long I'm gonna have with them. They may be a bunch of stubborn conformists, but anything I did without them would feel empty."

Christine reached out for Veronica's hand. She didn't even seem to notice it.

"Do you ever get the feeling that you're making a huge mistake?" She asked, looking to Brianna.

"All the time," she said. "Look, Veronica, I can't tell you what to do, where to go. That's your choice. All I know is that I don't want you to end up like them. Lying dead in a mass grave underneath the ground with no one but us left to feel a goddamn thing about it - you deserve better than that. You've seen Elijah, you know what happens when the Brotherhood let things go too far. There's nothing for you there. I know they're your family, but family shouldn't be a death sentence."

"You know, I- I think you're right. Not like hanging out with you isn't a death sentence or anything, but I get it. There's nothing I can do for them. If I stayed, I think I'd just end up making more trouble. I can't help it sometimes. I think I could go with the Followers, after all this is done. They're just like the Brotherhood, right? Only minus the laser weapons, add a little more compassion for other human beings. And it's always been a dream of mine to clean up Freeside. Though I always imagined that the Brotherhood would be there helping me."

"Are you sure about this?" Christine asked. "You don't h-"

"There she is!"

Brianna's arms were wrenched behind her back. She struggled uselessly as the paladin's grip tightened around her wrists, breaking skin.

"Richards? What the hell are you doing?!" Veronica demanded as four other knights wearing power armour closed in around them.

"This is the outsider," barked the man behind her. "She's been whispering poison into the Elder's ear, trying to turn him against the Codex. We never thought you'd do anything this drastic, Veronica. But you dare bring an outsider into our home, send her in like some lowly courier to spread your lies? Enough. This has to end now." The paladin tossed Brianna to aside with enough force to bring her to the ground. Blood stained her vision; she heard a sickening crunch as a steel boot connected with her twisted ankle. She heard two words, just faintly above the ringing in her ears.

"Execute them."