Hello everyone, hope you are doing well.
Today, we end the Pitt DLC arc.
Please enjoy.
Ashur possessed an undeniable charisma and Damian had difficulty supporting his gaze. The Lord of Pitt remained silent for a few seconds, observing the young man before starting to speak again.
"You are no ordinary young man," he said. "You showed some sympathy in the Hole. You fight like a soldier, you triumph over my best gladiators without a single scratch and your arrival here comes at an… Interesting time. Hence the question, which burns my lips: Who are you really and what are you doing in my city?"
Damian felt that Ashur knew that he was not a slave, captured by his men or sold by Paradise Falls and that he had come here by his own will. He felt as if the Lord of Pitt was playing with him, like a cat plays with a mouse before killing it.
"It's quite complicated," Damian said. "Let's just say I'm going where the odds take me."
"I see..." Ashur replied, slightly suspicious and unconvinced. "Allow me to tell you that you've stumbled upon a place out of the ordinary. Pitt has a powerful army, a thriving industry, and soon perhaps we will be able to boast a cure for radiation. But, perfect as it may sound, there's still a shadow in the sky."
Ashur moved slowly to the side and glanced at one of the reports on his desk.
"Tell me, do you know a man named Wernher?"
The tone Ashur had used and the expression on his face left no room for doubt. He knew that Damian had entered thanks to Wernher to help him free the slaves and steal the cure, and his eyes shone with the desire to see Damian lie to him and to be able to take his words apart one by one.
"Yes," Damian replied, who saw no point in lying.
"I appreciate your honesty," answered Ashur who seemed strangely calm. "It's such a rare virtue these days."
He faced the head sculpture behind him and continued talking.
"Wernher must surely have made you an offer to free the slaves, with a lot of talk about oppression and freedom."
Ashur glanced over his shoulder at Damian, waiting for a reaction or for Damian to contradict him.
"I suppose he must also have told you that he was my right-hand man and that after he tried to overthrow me, he became suddenly interested in the slaves condition and fate, given the fact that he was one of them."
When he saw Damian's troubled expression, a small grin appeared on Ashur's lips.
"I see that dear Wernher has been impeccably honest with you," he said. "So, what do you intend to do? Do you intend to continue working for a liar, or do you choose to join me and my army? I hope that you will continue to be honest with me, and that the two automatic turrets behind you will not influence your answer."
"Even if what you say is true," Damian said. "I don't care. You and your men have enslaved hundreds of people and you exploit them, why? For the crazy dream of rebuilding a civilization at the image of the pre-war one, the same one that throw us into atomic flames and caused the near extermination of the human race?"
"I offered these men and women a home, security and a future," Ashur replied.
"By enslaving them?" Damian cried.
The unpleasant sensation of feeling the automatic turrets pointing at his back commanded him to shut up. Ashur did not seem to be upset and even seemed to enjoy this verbal joust with him.
"You are committing horrible acts and justifying yourself by claiming that you are acting for the greater good of these people."
"I see you've made your choice," Ashur said sadly turning to Damian. "Before ending this conversation, I would like to know what offer dear Wernher has made you."
"I've agreed to work with him to free the slaves at Pitt with the cure you spoke of. How could I refuse?
"It's very simple, Ashur smiles. You can still say no, because once again Wernher has lied to you. This discovery is a miracle, it's true, but not the kind that can free a people from slavery."
He stared at Damian, who could hardly believe that he had been manipulated so easily, for a brief moment before speaking again.
"Everything would be so much easier if..."
The intercom on Ashur's desk whistled and Krenshaw's voice came out.
"'Lord Ashur! The slaves revolt! They have weapons and have already taken control of Downtown! You must come, and quickly!'"
Ashur's face displayed an expression of incomprehension. He must not have foreseen the slaves would revolt so quickly. Gunshots came to them from outside the building. The two slavers standing guard in the corridor burst into the office.
"You two," Ashur cried, pointing at them. "Stay here and stand guard, I'll come down and sort things out."
He grabbed a shotgun and turned towards Damian.
"If you're so anxious to find out the truth before you decide, why don't you check the lab next door? We'll see if Wernher's speech and the morality you seem to be demonstrating will still be relevant afterwards."
Ashur ran to the hallway and the elevator. The two slavers looked at Damian, not quite understanding what was going on. Damian walked to one of the rooms adjacent to the office. He crossed a small corridor and entered a small laboratory.
The place was occupied by several monitors and computer consoles and a work surface with several test tubes and chemistry equipment.
A woman was in the laboratory, sitting at a desk and copying handwritten notes onto a computer. She turned her head towards Damian. Of Hispanic descent, she had black hair cut short and amber eyes and was wearing a white blouse over a blue shirt and black skirt.
"Oh, hello," she said surprised before giving a shy smile at Damian. "I didn't expect Ashur to let anyone into the lab. Excuse the mess, I'm quite busy with my research and I don't really have time to clean."
She stood up and approached Damian.
"My name is Sandra. Knowing my husband, he must have asked you to join us, right?"
"Your... Husband?" Damian asked.
"Oh, yes, sorry. I'm Ishmael's wife, well, Ashur's."
"You're Ashur's wife?" Damian asked puzzled.
"Yes," Sandra smiled. "It's true that it may be hard to believe that under this thick old power armor hides a man capable of love, but it's the truth. He and I are husband and wife."
Damian heard a little hiccup coming from the lab. Sandra turned around and walked to a small table next to the desk. On the table was a small cradle connected to various medical monitoring devices.
"You must be here to see our little miracle?" asked Sandra. "Come."
Damian approached and remained silent before what he saw. In the cradle slept an infant, carefully swaddled in white cloth.
"Look, Marie, we have a visitor," Sandra smiled.
Damian blinked several times. The baby was very real, and he never imagined he would see one in a place like this.
"This little baby you see is our daughter, Marie."
Sandra looked at the baby and a huge smile lit up her face. She stroked the baby's forehead and kissed her daughter on the cheek.
"What... What is this baby doing here in this laboratory?"
"Oh, actually, it's as much a nursery as it is a laboratory. If we ever want Marie to be able to take care of the city one day, we have to take care of her first."
"Wait, you mean the cure for radiation and Trogs disease is your daughter?"
"Yes. Didn't Ishmael tell you about that?"
Damian stared at the infant in the cradle. Wernher had lied to him all the way, or rather, he had deliberately not mentioned the fact that the cure for the disease ravaging Pitt was a baby, let alone that it was the child of the Lord of Pitt. He understood why Ashur had insisted that he go to the laboratory."
"So, your daughter has a natural immunity to mutations," Damian said.
"Yes," Sandra replied. "Our little angel already has her temper, but one day she will heal the whole town. And if I can figure out the reason for her immunity, then maybe I'll find the key to the Trog problem, and maybe even more mutations!"
Damian looked again at little Marie and the machines around him in the lab.
"You're experimenting on your own kid?" he cried.
"No, no!" Sandra cried out in turn. "I would never do anything to endanger Marie's health. All these machines are there to observe her vital signs and store data for a day, to discover a complete vaccine against Trog Degeneration. If finding a cure means putting Marie's life in danger, then I will stop everything!"
Damian took a few steps back. All these efforts to free the slaves were based on Wernher's lies and assumptions. Apart from the fact that Wernher had not told him anything about the "state" of the cure, the chances of the cure ever becoming a reality were close to zero.
Sandra and Ashur would never harm their daughter, Damian had clearly seen this, and they would put the welfare of their child before the discovery of the cure, thereby condemning the scientific advance it would represent.
"Are you sure you can synthesize a cure to eradicate the mutations based on your daughter's immunity?" Damian asked.
Sandra watched him a little taken aback by the question.
"Well, to be frank, I don't know until I've done further tests on Marie, tests that I refuse to do on her while she's a baby."
Damian ran his hand across his face. Even the cure itself was not certain. Marie's immunity might well be impossible to exploit on a larger scale, and there was no proof that this baby would not eventually turn into a Trog or become sick like all the people of Pitt.
Heavy footsteps resounded in the corridor. Ashur appeared in the laboratory, a large gash on his face.
"Ishmael?" cried Sandra. "What's going on? Are you hurt?"
"Sandra, you have to go! Take Marie with you and get out of town!"
"But I..."
"Don't argue!"
Sandra nodded in silent and grabbed everything she needed for her daughter and threw it in a duffel bag, before grabbing her daughter.
"You," Ashur spat to Damian. "What's your decision? Quick!"
Damian looked at Sandra and the baby. All hope to cure the Trog disease was just one big gamble, but even if there was one percent of success, he could not resolve himself in kidnaping a little girl.
"You should leave with your daughter," Damian said. "I came here to save the slaves from you and your army, not to kidnap a little girl."
Gunshots rang out outside the building. Awakened by the shooting and screaming, the baby began to cry. One of the slavers guarding the elevator entered the cradle.
"Sir! The slaves have broken out of Downtown by using abandoned buildings! They also shut the lights! Trogs are attacking the outside perimeter!"
Ashur seemed to forgot Damian and turned toward the man and barked some orders. The slaver nodded and ran to the elevator. Ashur looked at his family and sighed. He gently pulled Sandra next to him and they ran to the elevator.
Damian followed them. He was not going to help Wernher anymore, yet, he was not going to help Ashur either. Slaves were revolting and they were winning. Soon, the slaver army would be nothing but an unpleasant memory. With Marie gone, Wernher would have to reason to claim power in Pitt and as the slaves would have gain their freedom, they would scatter to the Wastes, free. All he was going to do, was make sure that Sandra and her daughter could make it to a safe place. Even though it meant he would have to kill some of the revolting slaves.
Damian saw the slavers guarding the elevator, motioning and begging Ashur to come quick. A detonation resounded and Damian saw the elevator cabin fall. Among the squeak and tattle of the metal cables, he could hear the panicked screams of the slavers inside, before a loud bang announced that the elevator had crashed to the ground floor.
"Holly fuck!" cried the last slaver guard. "They blew up the elevator."
"The stairs, this way," Ashur said in a calm voice.
He briefly glanced behind his shoulder at Damian. Damian knew that Ashur wanted to kill him, but the urge to put his family in a safe place was more important.
The Lord of Pitt opened a door and pointed his rifle in the staircase and Damian could not help but see the behavior of a highly trained soldier.
Damian, Ashur, his family and the slaver guard climbed down the old staircase and finally arrived on the ground floor.
The slaver opened the door and Damian saw that they were on the mezzanine overlooking the entrance of Ashur's palace. The slaver turned toward them, and Damian heard a gunshot and saw the slaver stiffened and fall to the ground, the top of his head exploded by a bullet.
Ashur pointed his weapon toward the assailant and Damian saw him fall to the ground in a grunt. Sandra screamed her husband name and rushed toward him, still holding Marie in her arms.
Damian heard laughter and footsteps. Wernher, a triumphant look on his face and flanked by several slaves with assault rifles or pistols, and Midea approached them.
He turned to Damian and frowned for a moment before throwing a duffel bag at him.
"Here, your stuff's in it," he said turning his attention on Ashur.
The Pitt Master was sitting on the ground in his large power armor, and Damian noticed that the armor on his leg was crushed and that blood was coming out.
Damian hesitated briefly and opened the bag. His Ranger armor and weapons were there.
"Wernher," Ashur grinned. "I should have killed you myself when I had the chance."
"Shut up," spat out the slave leader.
He glanced at Sandra and the baby before raising his head to Damian.
"All right, get the cure and let's get out of here."
"You never told me about kidnapping a child!" Damian cried out.
"What? Of course I didn't tell you! If I had explained it all to you, you would never have agreed to help me!"
"I agreed to help free the slaves, not to kidnap a little girl!"
"A little girl that owns the cure to our freedom from the Trog disease! What do you think? They'll only use the cure for them, while we, we will die or change in Trogs!"
"Did you know about it?" Damian asked Midea.
"Enough talk," Wernher cut out. "Midea, take the kid."
The woman approached Sandra who was holding her daughter against her.
"If you dare touch her, I'll make sure to keep you alive enough so that Marie is old enough to target practice on you!" yelled the mother.
"Shut up, Sandra!" shouted Werhner. "Give her the damn kid!"
"Think about what you're doing Midea," Damian said. Are you really going to take away a baby from its parents?"
"We're not going to hurt her," the woman replied. "Besides, what kind of parents are Ashur and Sandra? With parents like them, this baby will grow up to become a slaver and a Raider! We only need her to win our freedom. It's the only way."
"You rebelled, didn't you? You could have left, all of you, and you're still here, trying to take this child? Why are you still here?"
"Pitt is our home! You're an outsider, you can't understand us!" yelled one of the slaves.
"A home? Just look around you! A disease-ridden ruined city is not what I call a home!"
Midea hesitated for a moment. The other slaves looked at each other, confused. Wernher clenched his jaw and pointed his gun at Damian.
"Shut up!" he said. "Midea, take the fucking kid and let's get out of here!"
"Look at her, Midea," Damian said. "Is this really what you want? You want to take a child away from its parents? There's no guarantee that his immunity to Trog disease will work. And even if it does, are you, or any of you, capable of developing a cure?"
"The only way to find out is to take this kid and test her," Wernher cried out. "Now take that fucking baby!"
Midea bit her lip. Wernher pushed her and approached Sandra.
"You always have to do everything yourself. If I hadn't told you about the cure and organized the revolt, you'd still be working your ass off for those bastards."
Sandra held Mary tighter against her.
"Give me the baby, Sandra!"
Wernher grabbed Sandra's arm and pulled to make her let go.
"No, don't touch her!" shouted Ashur.
"Wernher stop!" one of the slaves shouted. "Fuck the cure! Let's just get out of here!"
"Not funny anymore, uh, Sandra? Now that it's your kid that's being taken away!" shouted Werhner.
Sandra bit Werhner's arm who let out a hiccup of pain. He hit her on the head and tried to pull his arm away. Damian dove towards him and pinned him to the ground. Ashur grabbed his rifle and shot one of the slaves, shattering his chest in pieces. Midea retreated and took cover from the gunshots. The other slaves did not know what to do. Several of them dropped down their weapons and left, while others tried to take shelter from Ashur, who rained a flood of lead down on them.
Damian and Wernher rolled to the ground struggling. Wernher pushed Damian back. He raised his gun, but Damian managed to kick the weapon out of his hand. Werhner got up and reached for a gun dropped by the slaves. Damian grabbed his ankle and made him fall on the ground. Werhner kicked him in the face. Damian took his nose between his hands, as a reflex and got up. When he opened his eyes, he saw Werhner arming is fist and punching him in the chin.
He heard multiple gunshots and screams. A bullet whistled next to Wernher who looked behind his shoulder. Damian took advantage of the man's blind spot and his eyepatch and charged.
Wernher received Damian's fist in the jaw and stumbled to the ground. Damian moved toward him but froze, seeing that Wernher had grabbed the silenced and scoped R91 Damian was carrying. Damian grabbed the weapon's barrel and struggled with Wernher to disarm him.
"Wernher!"
Damian recognized Ashur's voice. Wernher hit Damian's nose with his forehead. Damian stumbled and felt the balustrade of the mezzanine in his back.
Damian felt a tremor in his chest and all the air in his lungs were forces out. He felt something falling on top of him and the second after, Damian felt the balustrade behind him broke and he fell.
Damian slowly opened his eyes. His head was spinning and aching, just like his chest, legs, and basically every part of his body. Above him, the black ceiling of a great room and chandeliers. He blinked several times and tried to get up when he felt something heavy on him. Damian looked over his chest and saw Wernher, laying down on him. Damian tried to push Wernher away and felt something sticky on his hands. Damian pulled back his hand and noticed that it was covered in blood.
Damian started to feel his heart race, thinking that it was his blood. He pushed Wernher away, who rolled to the side. Damian put his hand between his chest and the breast plate of his armor. He removed it and inspected it. His hand was bloody, but Damian had not felt any hole.
His chest was aching, and he had trouble to breath. Damian ran his hand on his armor and felt several little bumps. Damian looked down on his chest and saw that the little bumps where crashed buckshot marbles.
He rolled to the side and heard the buckshot fell on the tilled floor. Damian looked around him. The first thing he saw, was Wernher, laying on his stomach. His eye was open and staring at the blank and Damian noticed holes in his back and blood coming out.
Around him were other bodies. Some were slaves, judging by their rags, other were members of Ashur's army, at least that what Damian thought. They were stripped of some of their clothes and boots and they all had that Raider-look and haircut.
Damian got up painfully and felt his head spin. The place where he was, which he recognized as the entrance of Ashur's palace, was spinning and Damian took a minute to regain control and let the dizziness pass.
He slowly looked up and saw the broken balustrade. He looked down to Wernher's corpse and everything came back to his mind.
He was struggling with Wernher when Ashur yelled is name. The slave had turned around and Ashur had shot him. The buckshot had pierced through Wernher's flesh and had come out in his back, hitting Damian in the chest. If the buckshot hadn't passed through Wernher's body before, Damian would have been killed, with or without his combat armor.
Everything around was silent. The gunshots in Pitt had stopped, just like Marie's cries. Damian slowly looked up, toward the broken balustrade. He limped his way up the stairs and arrived in front of other corpses. Among them, Ashur and Sandra.
Ashur was resting against a wall, his power armor pierced in some places and Sandra had collapsed on her husband's legs and her lab coat was stained with blood. Damian did not understand, until he noticed the R91 and 5.56 casings at his feet.
When Wernher had been killed, he had probably pulled the trigger before falling on Damian. Or maybe he had been quicker than Ashur and had shot first, killing both the Lord of Pitt and his wife.
Damian looked around him. There was no sign of Marie. He also noticed that Midea was gone and he assumed that while he was unconscious, she had probably taken the baby. Unless…
Damian turned toward Sandra and Ashur. Slowly, he limped toward the woman and crouched next to her. Damian hesitated for a moment. He heard muffled sound coming from under her.
Damian pushed Sandra's body away and discovered Marie, swaddled in her cloth, stained by her mother's blood.
When Damian pushed Sandra's body, Marie started to moan and cry. Gently, Damian grabbed the baby girl.
He had absolutely no idea on how to deal with children. There were no baby in Vault 101 and it was actually the first infant he ever saw. Damian did the first thing that came through his mind; talk.
"Hey there, Marie, don't cry. It's over."
He was holding the baby girl at arm's length and glanced around him, nervous that the cries would attract someone, or more specifically, Trogs.
Damian looked down at Marie's parents and at the little girl. The poor little girl was now alone. An orphan like many other in the Wasteland.
"Shhh, it's over Marie, it's over."
Damian rocked the little girl in his arms. Slowly, the baby stopped crying and fell asleep. He looked around him, once more. Ashur's Empire had crumbled to pieces. The city was dead silent. With Wernher dead, and Midea gone, probably after seeing Marie in her bloody cloth and thinking she was dead, the slaves had probably left the city. Ashur's men that weren't dead had probably flee. Pitt had become a ghost ruined city.
Damian's mission of liberating the slaves was a success, but he had a bitter taste in his mouth. And he was angry at himself.
The square in front of Ashur's palace was filled with the corpses of slaves and slavers. The white lights that lit up the streets and buildings had mostly been destroyed, and Damian could see the silhouettes of several Trogs, cautiously advancing down the street from the destroyed buildings and dragging back the corpses in the darkness of the ruins.
The slaves were free. The Empire of Ashur and the slaver was no more. Yet, Damian had a bitter taste in his mouth.
He had done very little to help the slaves gain their freedom. In the end, when he had the opportunity to grab the cure and give it to Midea and Wernher, he refused. By doing so, he had chosen to put the well-being of a single person, against the freedom of thousands.
Hurting Marie, or more generally a child was Something that Damian knew he was incapable of, and one of his worst fear was that, one day, he would come across a Raider gang with children that would try to kill him.
He could not let go the idea that, by refusing to kidnap Marie and the cure, he had sided with Ashur.
Damian sighed and gently put Marie on the ground. He unwrapped grabbed his knife and cut through the t-shirt of a dead slaver that he wrapped across his chest to put Marie inside. Then, he grabbed the bag that Sandra had prepared and put everything in his bag, before grabbing his assault rifle and the silenced and scoped R91 and leaving the building.
The square in front of Ashur's palace was littered with dead bodies, of slavers, slaves and even some Trogs. Damian walked through Uptown and could hear the Trogs in the buildings around. Some had come out and were watching Damian from afar. Damian placed his hand on Marie and kept an eye on the Trogs that, fortunately, were more interested by the dead bodies in the street than by him or the baby girl.
Damian felt a shiver ran down his spine. The whole city was silent. Even the banging of the Mill's machines had ceased.
Around him, some Trogs were crawling out of the ruins and started to grab the dead to drag them back in a building and eat them in peace.
On his way toward the bridge, Damian saw several dead slavers, lined up against the walls of buildings on which a dark stain of blood was dripping. Among them, Damian saw Faydra and the lovers he had seen on the building roof in Uptown.
The slaves had unleashed all their hatred toward their captors and had executed them, before stripping them of their boots and clothes.
As he walked, Damian was starting to think and analyze the whole story.
Wernher was a bad man, whose only motivation was power. He was only interested in the cure and Marie because she would have given him an advantage over Ashur. If the latter had tell Damian the truth, then Wernher had already tried to seize the throne of Pitt in the past, which had led him to side with the slaves, of whom he himself had been one of the torturers in the past.
He had lied to Damian and had not revealed his entire plan to him. He had lied to the slaves, telling them that the remedy in Marie's blood was a reality, whereas it was only a hypothesis.
In the event that Wernher had seized Marie, nothing was certain about his ability to develop a remedy from her blood, and he could very well have used it as a means of pressure on the slaves, promising them that one day they would be free of the Trogs disease and that they would just have to be patient and their conditions would not have improved an inch.
Ashur too was a bad man. Although Damian knew nothing about him, he could see the obsession that was eating Ashur, and that had driven him to settle in Pitt, one of the most inhospitable places in the Wasteland. The obsession that had made him one of the most powerful warlords in the Wastes, and had driven him to enslave hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people in order to rebuild a dead city.
Both Wernher and Ashur were prepared to commit atrocious and inhuman acts, and to justify them by claiming that their cause was just. Ripping a child from his parents against the liberation of a people, and the enslavement of hundreds of people against the reconstruction of civilization.
Damian hated them both. Wernher, for lying to him and having an interest in the slaves only because he had become one of them, and Ashur, because his obsession had made him the greatest warlord of the Wasteland and a slaver. And Damian hated himself, for refusing to kidnap little Marie, and thereby condemning the slaves.
Damian had acted in exactly the same way as his father had done twenty years ago.
James had made the choice to abandon Project Purity, and by extension, the future of the inhabitants of the Capital Wasteland, in order to offer only one person, his son, a better future in Vault 101. Like his father before him, Damian had put the good of one person ahead of the good of a hundred others.
Ashur and Sandra had done the same. Had the development of the cure, which could have cured hundreds of people, presented the slightest risk to their daughter, they would have given up everything, and would have preferred to condemn the people of Pitt, and perhaps themselves, to give their daughter a future.
The line between Good and Evil, until now very clear, was gradually disappearing. The most moral choice Damian had had was to free the slaves. It was done, but not thanks to him. The slaves had freed themselves and, in the end, Damian had, by refusing to hand Marie to Werhner, sided with people he hated.
Damian arrived at the bridge and crossed it safely. No matter how hard he thought about it and turned the problem upside down, he could not find a solution. In either case, allying himself with Wernher or Ashur would have had negative consequences and every decision was of questionable morality.
The train tunnel was in front of him. Damian saw several figures. A small group of men and women were searching the freight trains next to the tunnel. They had the same outfit than the slavers, also they looked more like escaped slaves.
They noticed Damian and watched him get closer and grabbed their weapons.
"I recognize you," said one of the escaped slaves, a tall man with a brown coverall and a pistol. "You're that guy who fought his way out in the Hole and killed Gruber and the Bear Brothers."
The slaves looked at them with a smile.
"I heard Midea talk about you. She said you're one of us. We could use a guy like you."
The man frowned when he noticed the baby wrapped in cloth around Damian's chest.
"Who's baby's that? I thought all kids born in Pitt were turning Trogs hours after their birth."
"That's because it's Ashur's baby!" exclaimed one of the escaped slave women.
"If that's Ashur's, why do you…"
The escaped slaves looked at each other and at Damian.
"That baby's is the cure Wernher told us about."
The slaves started to move to surround Damian.
"Fuck the cure," said the man in the brown coverall. "That baby's Ashur's. We gonna make the bastard pay by killing his child…"
"If you touch this baby, you're a dead man."
The slaves looked at each other. Damian was staring at them. If a simple look could kill, then all the slaves would have already drop dead.
"Don't be stupid, dude. She's a slaver's child. That shit's in their brain. When she'll get old enough, she'll become a slaver, like her parents. Give her to us."
"I said that if you touch her, you're dead."
The man in the brown coverall frowned and Damian noticed that he was getting angry.
"You fuckin traitor! You're working for Ashur!"
The man grabbed his gun. Damian drew his pistol and shot. He turned his pistol toward the other slaves who had had no time to react.
Marie, awakened by the gunshots, had started to cry again. Damian holstered his pistol. He looked at the escaped slaves. They were all dead. He sighed and entered the train tunnel, comforting Marie to make her stop crying.
The tunnel stretched out in front of him. Damian lit the flashlight on his chest and swept the tunnel entrance. Luckily, the handcar he had used with Wernher was still there. Damian climbed on it and gently put Marie on one of the seats. She had stopped crying and was asleep, once again. Damian took place in front of the lever and operated it and the wheels of the handcar creaked and slipped on the rails, taking Damian into the darkness of the tunnel and to the Capital Wasteland. He activated the electric generator and two minutes later, the handcar was moving on its own.
Damian took Marie in his arms and sat down, facing the tunnel, faintly lightened by the handcar lights. Damian looked at the baby. He thought back to the slaves he killed at the train tunnel entrance. He could not let them harm Marie. He killed them. He had to kill them.
As he thought about it and looked at Marie's peaceful baby face, Damian started to cry.
Daylight was breaking through at the other end of the tunnel.
On the return trip, he had continued to reflect on the choices he had made at Pitt. Absorbed in his thoughts, Damian left the tunnel and arrived at the slaver camp. The camp was bathed in daylight and a cold, wet wind whipped his face.
Fawkes was waiting for him, along with Paladin Tristan and a strike team of the Brotherhood. Damian approached them.
"Holy hell, are you all right?" Tristan cried out.
He looked at Damian from head to toe and noticed Marie who was awake and looked like she was about to cry.
"What happened? Who's this baby?"
"It's a long story," Damian answered after a long silence.
Tristan stared at him and Marie and turned back to wave at his men.
"We're taking you back to the Citadel. You need to see a doctor and that baby too. You'll explain us everything in details when we get there."
Hope you enjoyed.
Until next time.
