THE LUCKY 38
AUGUST 18
14:09
Her rage was visible in every tensed muscle, every quick flicker of emotion in her eyes as they locked on target.
When Brianna looked up, she was back in the police station. She was facing a cold, broken girl who had abandoned everything she'd ever known, everything she'd ever loved, and left herself with nothing but hate and rage to fuel her. When Veronica Santangelo reached for her pulse gun, Brianna knew there was no going back.
She climbed to her feet, reaching for her axe and swinging in blind anger. The blade sliced through metal with a shriek of friction, but left only the slightest dent in the paladin's power armour. It didn't matter. While Veronica loaded her weapon, Brianna O'Reilly was a distraction. And her aggressor was certainly distracted, knocking her off her feet with a powerful uppercut. She didn't stay down for long. While Christine fought back the others, Brianna came at the paladin in front of her with all the strength she had, hacking mercilessly with her axe. Plasma flowed towards her in a hazy wave, sticking to her chest and burning through her armour.
With a yelp of distress she hacked at him again, burying her blade in his neck. The metal between his shoulder and neck was strong, but less sturdy than the surrounding plates. She'd found a chink in his armour. If she could manage another few hits, she could send him to the ground. She forced the heavier man back with the handle of her axe, swinging once more for the neck. And once more, and once more, before he punched another jet of plasma into her gut. She stumbled back, glimpsing Christine as she wrenched another paladin's weapon from his grip and swung it over the head of the other behind her. Brianna lunged, feinting to one side before slashing again for the weak spot. Steel met flesh and the paladin's legs buckled.
She stepped over the body and wrenched the axe out. She turned on her heels to face the nearest attacker, but before she could take her first swing, the paladin jerked violently. Lightning crackled across his armour as his legs kicked out in a wild dance. His whole body trembled; it took only a moment for his legs to give in and send him crashing down. The others collapsed in a similar fashion, jerking and twisting grotesquely with every pull of the pulse gun's trigger. Within a few seconds, they were done. It was over. Veronica tossed the weapon to the ground, letting it land in the centre of the fried heap of corpses. It was an unspoken threat, a promise of what was coming for them. A hopeless gesture, yet it mattered all the same. Journeyman Scribe Santangelo was finished. There was no turning back for her now.
"God," she breathed, staring down at the bodies with blank surprise. "This is what I'll have to get used to, isn't it? When people get desperate, they turn on each other. First thing to go is trust. I don't think it's ever gonna be the same for me in there. No matter what I do, it's going to end badly. God. God. How am I supposed to stay in there knowing what's to come?"
"So you're leaving?" Christine asked. "Is this it?"
"They haven't left me any choice. It's this or a lifetime of scavenging and watching my friends die in losing battles, wondering if the person who slits my throat in the middle of the night is gonna be NCR or Brotherhood. This way is better for me and for them. I just wish they would've let me make up my own mind first. But that was a clear warning. I don't think McNamara sent them, but if he suspected Richards was planning anything, he would have turned a blind eye. Just like all the others."
"I'll stay with you," Christine promised. "Better that The Circle think Christine Royce is dead. They don't care what happened to Elijah as long as they never hear from him again. They'll think I chased him out of the Mojave or died along with him. They don't need me."
"Not like I do," Veronica whispered, wrapping her arms around her. When their lips pressed together, Brianna almost smiled.
Maybe this could last.
Veronica left for the bunker and returned with her bag full. She'd gone back to retrieve old things from her room, she said, some scrap electronics and spare gadgets, posters from old bands she liked, a few of her favourite books. The Elder hadn't said much, only that things were better this way, and that it was best for her to leave as soon as possible. "That was the sweetest thing, I guess. Not having to say goodbye."
She'd been keeping a strange type of photo with her - a long strip of paper with four different images of her and Christine. It was from a photo booth, she explained as they walked, an old pre-war attraction that people used at carnivals and amusement parks. Veronica didn't look much different; it was Christine who had changed. She'd never quite been beautiful, even before the scars. Her jawline was sharp, her eyes bright and sly, her nose long and crooked from too many breakages. Her brows were angled in a way that made her look eternally threatening and her hair had been a wild tangle of red, shaved at one side. But it was the way she looked at Veronica, the way her cold eyes lit up and her thin, pale lips stretch into a warm smile. That was what had made her beautiful. It still did, even now.
"So what next?" Veronica asked, when Hidden Valley was far behind them. "I've always wanted to see Goodsprings. Wanted to see where it all started."
"Actually, that sounds like a good idea," Brianna replied. There was something she needed to bury.
Goodsprings hadn't changed a bit.
It was strange walking into the town with Veronica and Christine to see that nothing was different. The villagers wore the same surly expressions, hard at work on their tiny patches of land. Some looked up, surprised to see her, while others didn't spare a second glance. There were faces she remembered from the Powder Ganger fight and others she had never seen before. It warmed her heart in some tiny way to know that the town was growing. She supposed she'd started to care for the place after all she and Sunny had risked to save it.
They waited at the saloon for Sunny and Cass to return. The bar was quiet, just a few locals heading in and out to get a break from the burning August sun. Trudy looked the same as she always had - it startled Brianna again and again to realise that it had only been a month since she'd been shot. Her eyes darted from Brianna, to her companions, to the door, as if she was waiting for an army to march in at any minute.
Five minutes passed without a single goddamn hello.
"Can I get a drink over here?" Brianna snapped, waving impatiently towards the bar. The barmaid went white, her lips disappearing into a thin line as she moved towards them. She could only imagine what they must have looked like among the gaggle of drinking farmers and traders. A Brotherhood scribe with a pneumatic gauntlet, a brutally scarred and scowling woman in black armour, and the courier who had just taken over New Vegas. Trudy eyed them warily for a moment, staring Brianna down before finally inclining to respond.
"Nice to see you're still alive."
"You don't look so sure about that."
She sniffed. "This place has been peaceful since you helped us with the Powder Gangers. Don't know much about the situation out in Vegas, but you're doing a good job. NCR's the reason this town can't grow - too many taxes, not enough help against convicts. And if the Legion was down here we'd all be packed off to those prisons. Anyway, Sunny dropped by a while ago, had to call a town meeting. Glad to see Cheyenne was with her too."
"See? I'm more responsible than I look."
"You must be taking good care of that girl if what happened in Vegas wasn't enough to scare her back."
"She doesn't need me looking after her, trust me. What we have is a vastly different arrangement."
Trudy either missed the hint or ignored it entirely. "Three beers?"
"I'll have a Nuka Cola with a shot of tequila," Veronica corrected. "It's been a long day."
Sunny and Cass arrived after an hour of storytelling between Brianna and the Brotherhood exiles. When she stepped out of the booth to take Sunny in her arms, Trudy's eyes narrowed with suspicion. When Sunny stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss her, the barmaid's mouth dropped so suddenly that she almost dislocated her jaw.
"How'd it go?"
"Okay," Sunny replied breathlessly, cheeks flaming. "Primm's battening down the hatches, getting ready for war. The NCR packed up a while ago and left Meyers in charge, so I got him to call a town meeting. People were saying things would improve if they could get some trade going between Freeside and Primm. They need weapons and armour if they want to defend themselves against a raid, which is likely to happen considering it's still NCR territory. Every single person we met knows in their gut that there's a war coming soon. It's almost scary. But, uh, Novac's not supporting you. They're all sticking with the NCR, except for one. Some old woman called Daisy literally ran out of town when she heard that the Boomers were opening up to outsiders."
"They are?"
"That's what the radio said. They're taking in pilots, doctors, engineers, things like that. Looks like you inspired them."
"Looks like I did."
"So what's the plan?" Cass asked. "Feelin' like I should be doin' a little more than preaching to a bunch of dead-end towns."
"You will," Brianna promised. "We can spend the night in Primm, head back to Vegas in the morning."
"What for?"
"You can ask Veronica all about it. She made a tough decision."
They paid a visit to Doc Mitchell's before sundown, planning to head down to Primm later to find a place to stay. The old man nearly had a heart attack when he saw the ragtag group of wastelanders standing on his porch, all holding bottles of beer. When he saw Brianna's face, he laughed and shook his head, inviting them all inside for something to eat. They had some catching up to do, the doctor said. He wasn't wrong about that.
They spent a few hours with the kindly old doctor to answer every question he'd been 'wranglin' since them reports on the radio started'. He wanted to know about the situation in Vegas, how Brianna's injury was healing - very well, he assured her - and how Sunny was faring out in the wasteland. Her awkward announcement of "Doc, me and Brianna, we're- we're kind of together now, so-" made the doctor choke on his scotch. The old man looked happy, Brianna decided, comforted by the thought that he trusted her with not only the fate of the Mojave, but with the smiley girl from Goodsprings he'd once cared for like a daughter.
Their next stop was Graveyard Hill.
"What exactly are we doing here?" Christine asked as they headed up the slope. "And why did you bring a shovel?"
"I'm paying a visit to my grave," Brianna replied. "You didn't have to come."
"I want to know who you are. The Courier Ulysses always talked about - big, bad Courier with a capital C. I wanted to find you, actually. Not as much as I wanted to find Elijah, I mean you weren't exactly a priority," she added with a smirk. "But something about you scared him. And a man like Ulysses doesn't get scared. This hill is a tiny little gateway into Courier Six's life. Wouldn't pass up the opportunity."
"You're hanging around so you can figure me out, then?"
"Actually I'm hanging around for Veronica," she said, rolling her eyes. "And for the Mojave."
"But changing the world is second on your to-do list," Veronica reminded her, waggling her eyebrows.
"Jesus, do none of you people like dick?" Cass scoffed. "Not even a tiny bit? Feelin' a little out of place here."
"If it helps," Sunny replied, "I'm not a huge fan of the other thing either."
Cass slung her arm around the shorter woman with a laugh. "You're not too bad, sunshine."
"Hey," Veronica said, "I think Brianna's having a moment."
She was. But this was different from the first time she'd been here. When she'd looked down at her own grave, head pounding and legs trembling after forcing her way up the sandy hill, she'd felt herself beginning to crumble. It had been so easy to picture herself buried there, waiting for the pain to end, waiting for the last drop of her blood to seep into the soil and nourish the barren desert. Back in July, she had wondered how the Mojave would have changed if Brianna O'Reilly never made it to New Vegas.
It wouldn't have. Her parents would still trade scraps in Arefu, blissfully unaware that their only daughter was buried six feet under Mojave soil, her grave marked only by a few drops of blood. New Vegas would remain New Vegas and no one would miss the hooker with intense dark eyes and a nervous twitch in her right hand. Zion would forget about the woman who'd saved them such a long time ago. There would be no mournful broadcast on the radio to alert them of her passing. If Heaven was real, and if Heaven would take her, maybe Grace Arlyn would introduce her friends to the poor dead Regulator who had come too late.
Things had changed since then, Brianna most of all. So she dumped her bag on the ground and felt around its contents for that familiar scratching fabric. Benny's jacket was buried at the bottom of her supplies, wrinkled and creased but still much the same. The man hadn't crossed her mind since she'd returned from the Sierra Madre, but Benny wasn't all she was burying. When she tossed the chequered jacket into her grave, she was burying everything she'd been before that bullet had met her skull. She was burying Brianna the hooker, Brianna the scavenger, Brianna the interrogator. She was burying cold, vindictive, angry Brianna who chopped off fingers for fun.
She would hold onto some things. Like Brianna the Project Purity rebel. Brianna the Regulator. Brianna the courier. She would always love the chaos of the wasteland, find joy in killing people who deserved to die, but she would never let herself become a mercenary again. She would never let herself become a causeless rebel again, fighting back against every force in the world but so eager to let herself be told exactly where to go and what to do. She buried the phrase "This is the fucking wasteland" and she buried the phrase "You just have to accept it and move on".
She threw in the lighter and became someone who would set fire to the world if it came down to it, because there were far worse things than burning.
She threw in the pistol and the bullet casing and knew that life wasn't about who you would kill for. It was about who you would die for.
She picked up her shovel, took a swig from her beer, and began to bury the past.
"I would do anything for you."
Her world was a tangle of sheets. It was hands gliding across every inch of her body. It was lips that followed quickly after. It was soft gasps and breathless laughter as Brianna drank down the galaxies that swirled behind Sunny's eyes, traced names across the constellations that freckled her skin.
This was as beautiful as it was strange. Asexual was not a word she understood. She was promiscuous and greedy and adventurous by nature; she couldn't fathom ever thinking sex and responding with a shrug of her shoulders, but this was Sunny Smiles. If kisses - even hungry, longing, desperate kisses - were all she would allow, Brianna would take that with a "thank you" and a "you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen".
"I think you might be someone I'd die for."
She hadn't died for the last woman she'd loved like this. She'd killed for her, killed for her time and time and time again, but to sacrifice herself for Grace Arlyn seemed unthinkable, unfathomable. But this was different. She was different. They'd met only a month ago, knew so little about each other, were as different as the sun and the moon in the most beautiful ways. Without the moon, the earth would spiral into chaos. Overpowering waves dominating the ocean, volcanoes gushing liquid fire at unpredictable rates, devastating earthquakes rumbling out their protest. But to lose the sun was to lose the world. Losing the sunshine meant imminent darkness, meant a quiet death, meant no chance of survival.
"What are you thinking?" She asked, burying her face in Sunny's neck. "What are you feeling? God, just tell me everything about yourself. Who are you?"
"I'm the smiley girl from Goodsprings," she laughed. "What more do you want?"
"What were you before that?"
"You already know."
"Before that, then. Who were you?"
"A scavenging trader with hippie parents. We made chems out of natural materials in the wasteland. My mom grew the weirdest plants you've ever seen. We smoked them and sold them and had the time of our lives. We walked the roads with a brahmin called Ellie and a creaky shopping cart full of plants. We grew them in tin cans, rubber boots, beer bottles, everywhere soil would fit. It was good. I was safe with my parents, happy. About as sheltered as the wasteland allows you to be."
"That stuff sounds like the weed to end all wars."
"Burn some of it around Hoover Dam and it'll be the shortest battle you've ever seen."
"As short as you?"
She was turned around and pinned against the bed. "Don't make me finish you off before you even reach the Dam."
"Think you could take me on?"
Sunny reached for a pillow and thwacked it against Brianna's head with a thwump of feathers. "I could fight you one-handed."
"You don't really get a choice."
"I'm pinning you down, remember?" She threatened. "Be nice."
"Or what?"
She pressed her lips against Brianna's, catching her momentarily off-guard. "Or I'll beat you to death with a pillow, Brianna O'Reilly."
"What a pathetic way to go."
"If you want to go out with a bang I could stuff the pillow full of dynamite."
"After Goodsprings, I'm never giving you dynamite again."
She sighed and flumped down next to her. "I used to love mythology. Traded scraps for pre-war books all the time. You know what I'm feeling right now?"
"Tell me."
Sunny grinned. "I feel like I could eat the world raw."
They made it to Freeside by midday - just barely. The roads were crawling with raiders from Primm to the sharecropper farms, packs of them roaming across the desert waving machetes and spiked bats. They encountered a group of over fifteen hollow-eyed men and women with brightly coloured hair and tight leather armour. Some groups bared viciously slashed arms and legs, every visible patch of skin brutally scarred by some kind of blade. Self-inflicted. Others brought children with them, tiny and cowering and doomed to be slaughtered. She'd heard rumours of kids being killed for meat, though most were sold to the Legion for caps and supplies. Their keepers travelled with decapitated teddy bears speared on long sticks, some kind of shared inside joke. There were the obvious chemheads, identified by the bruises on their arms and their wide, vacant eyes. The fiends carried plasma weapons and decorated themselves with colourful make-up and paint. Women with trembling hands and swollen lips walked the roads in stiletto heels, wearing leather vests with plunging necklines and tiny black shorts to fully advertise their wares. Some passed them by without a word. Others caused a little more trouble.
In the end, they made it to the Old Mormon Fort with a few bruises and scrapes. The raiders were in worse shape.
"Well, this is it," Veronica said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I'm not entirely sure what 'it' is yet, but I think it's something good. It's a new start."
Christine took her hand, a warm smile lighting up her face. "You ready?"
"Yeah." She said the word as if she could barely believe it was true. "Yeah, I am."
Together, the exiles pushed open the creaking wooden doors and stepped into the Followers camp.
"Oh my God," Veronica croaked. "Oh- oh no. Oh no."
Brianna's lungs deflated. Her mouth fell open. She grasped for words. For something. Anything.
No.
For a second, for just a split second, everything was fine. She hadn't noticed the Brotherhood paladins marching towards them. She hadn't noticed the unusual hush about the place, broken only by the unwelcome creak of the door. She hadn't seen the ash scattered across the dirt, hadn't seen the overturned tables and the collapsing tents. She hadn't seen the bodies, but they were everywhere. Doctors lay crumpled on the ground, flesh red and seared. Their labcoats were splattered with crimson, so unnaturally bright against the crumpled white fabric.
None of them had survived.
"Passing on Brotherhood secrets to an outsider organisation," the head paladin scolded. "the highest form of treason, Veronica."
"Oh my God. Phillips? Is that you? Oh my God. What have you done?"
"We tracked your movements very far," he continued, "heard your little plan to go running off to the Followers. Did you think we would allow for that? This is a grievous crime against the Brotherhood of Steel; we had no choice but to intervene. Not only have you - with assistance from outsiders - defied the Codex and abandoned the Brotherhood, but you murdered five of our men in an unprovoked attack. What have you got to say for yourselves?"
A familiar icy chill shuddered through Brianna's veins. She took a step forward, her voice deathly calm. She was the eye of a storm. She would not be still for long.
"You mean to question me, paladin? You think you can march into my city and slaughter innocent men and women in their own camp, when all they did was succeed where your pathetic organisation has persistently failed? And you have the nerve to ask me what I have to say?" She took another step forward. "I'll tell you exactly what I have to say." Her face was so close to the paladin's that her nose was almost touching the steel of his helmet. "You are in my city under my rule, and if I wish to cut you down and nail your bodies to the outer gates, no one will stop me. Do you know what I'm going to do now, paladin?" She asked, taking her last pulse grenade. "I'm going to pull this pin. And if you dare take one step towards me, I swear to you, on my life and the life of everyone behind me, that I will cast down your Codex and bask in the dying agony of all who hold it dear."
She pulled the pin. Dropped the grenade. It fell with a soft clink against the paladin's feet.
