(+)12

2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

12102 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-SLAUGHTERHOUSE"

INITIALISING…

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 67%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 95F

HEALTH

BP: 170/120

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 18

HR: 160

TIME

Day: 28 SEP. 2279

Time: 17:13

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 58F

Atmospheric Pressure: 507 mmHG (WARNING! SEVERE WEATHER ALERT!)

Background Radiation: 0.121 RAD

When father died, I'd been right there- I'd seen him run backwards, and slam against the wall. I'd seen him bleed. But that had been dark, and surreal, and so strangely distant. I'd run away before his heart stopped beating.

When the bullet hit Ollie, it was not distant, or surreal, or any of those things. The glass shattered, and then Ollie's head was all ragged and his face was covered in cuts. The shrapnel had cut me too, but I didn't notice.

And there was something else- the other side of his skull, it bloomed out, like a pink cactus-flower. His skull hadn't exploded, but a big chunk had been tossed out against the wall. His wide open mouth and both of his nostrils were all spilling out rivers of bright-red blood. So, so much blood- layers and layers of it, more than could possibly be in his entire body.

That's all I noticed before his knees gave out and he fell to the ground, started leaking all over the floor. A solid red stream, pouring out from between his eyes.

"OLLIE!" Shouted the other man, in a voice that was far too shrill for his massive size. Before he could react, Gram had grabbed one of his guns off the counter and fired it over and over again into the large man's body. He went reeling into the bar, stumbling over one of the stools and slipping forward onto his face in a huge crash of glass cups and empty bottles. I didn't see no blood, but I could imagine all the tiny little holes- all the burst arteries, fractured bones, ruptured organs... Ollie just kept squirting bright-red blood out the side of his head, and even though the stream had slowed, it was still an impossible amount. Gathering, pooling, bubbling…

"Ollie," I said, staring at the dead man. My ears were ringing loudly, and the buzzing wouldn't stop. "Ollie, Ollie Ollie…"

"Let's get outta here," said Gram, sliding back into his jacket. There were little flecks of blood all over the plaid pattern. It didn't smell like cigars no more.

"Ollie. That's a nice name. I'll bet his real name was Oliver," I said. I felt around my face; there were deep, bloody tracts in my skin where the glass and shredded copper had sheared through. They itched and burned.

"Isaac, come on!" shouted Gram. I covered my ears.

"Don't make me think about it,," I said, trying not to speak too loud. The blood was pooling around my feet.

"Come here-" Gram almost grabbed my sleeve, but then thought better of it; he'd learned his lesson. Instead, he made a big moving gesture, and started walking towards the back door. I could feel the rain misting in through the shattered window as I stood completely still, rooted in place. My eyes were stinging with tears now.

"I didn't want them to die. I was scared of them, but I never wanted them dead." I looked at the bigger man. He was still breathing. "Do you think-"

"Do you want us dead too? There'll be more of them, we have to-"

"Isaac!"

Slowly, I turned my head to look at the source of the noise, minimizing my movements like I was still being held at gunpoint. Savanna came bursting into the room, completely ignoring the bodies and the blood and running towards me, Tandi marching on in behind her. I backed up into the wall.

"Give me five seconds to process- just, FIVE SECONDS!" I shouted, and pushed her away. I covered my face with my hands, which forced the shrapnel into my skin and made the sweltering cuts sting even more.

I tried to pull my thoughts together.

Ollie is dead. He is not breathing or twitching.

I turned to the larger man- 'Volker,' the smaller man had called him. I tried to remember where he'd been shot.

At least five exit-less wounds across the chest, gut, groin, and thighs. Likely wounds to the lungs and intestines- possible damage to kidneys, spleen, liver, and heart. Possible artery damage.

I got down on one knee and checked the man's neck-pulse; I could feel it, so his systolic blood pressure was at least 70. But, when I checked his radial pulse, I couldn't get anything, so he was probably going into decompensated shock. I rolled him onto his back to try to find where the bullets had hit.

"Wha- what…?" He mumbled, staring at me with dull, glassy eyes. I put a hand on his ashen cheek.

"I'm here to help you." His eyes started getting all red and shiny.

"No, you- you gotta help Ollie! He got shot in the- it, it looked really bad," said Volker, weakly brushing my hand away. I nodded.

"I already helped Ollie. It wasn't as bad as it looked."

"Isaac, the fuck are you doing?" snapped Tandi, stalking up behind me with her barking-iron raised. I didn't look at her.

"I have a stimpack in my coat. I think I can still help him." I drew my utility knife and flipped out the blade. I started to slice along the front of his road leathers, opening it up along an uneven seam. I wasn't seeing any wounds yet, but-

BANG! There was a flash of light and heat from behind me, and Volker's entire body jerked. Every muscle in his body tensed up, and his mouth filled up with blood, far, far too fast to really be happening. The bullet had gone right through his forehead and exited messily out the back. As his head twitched erratically against his shoulder, the massive puddle of blood and brains under the exit wound kept growing. Streams of the stuff slid down his forehead and out his nose, too fast to be solid but too slow to be liquid. After a few seconds, the blood finally started to well up in the tiny little hole in his forehead, and seeped down between his eyes.

He was still breathing, and moving his arm around in involuntary circles, so Tandi shot him again, this time blasting off his jaw and sending chunks of his teeth and mandible flying into my face. After a few seconds of shocked stillness, I covered my ears, trying to make the ringing stop that many seconds too late. It was all that I could hear now.

Volker didn't move after that.

I was covered in blood, all over my skin and clothes. The lenses of my glasses were covered in little tiny droplets of red. I didn't even try to process that- I knew I couldn't. I just sat there, staring at Ollie, and staring at Volker, while Tandi blew the smoke away from her gun. I was simultaneously taking it all in, and processing none of it.

"Ó, gāisǐ Tandi!" screamed Savanna, looking away from Volker's ruined corpse. His tear-filled eyes stared on, unblinking and unmoving. They didn't sit right in their sockets.

"Legion fuckers get killed. Back off or I shoot him again."

"Alright, now you're slowing us down. You too, Isaac- they're both dead, we gotta go."

It took me a second to realize that Gram was talking to me. Who was dead? Oh, right, the men on the floor. The ones with the pink flowers coming out of their heads. Ollie wasn't leaking much anymore, but Volker still had blood pouring out of his nose. The ruined jaw wasn't bleeding much, though the blood from his throat was starting to flood over the edge, out between his jagged, shattered teeth.

I needed time to think, to process what had happened. It would only be a few seconds- if they'd just give me five seconds, then I could finally parse it all and understand what was going on again.

Apparently, they didn't want to let that happen.

"I'll just grab him," said Tandi. She put a firm, crushing hand on my shoulder and tried to move me, so I yanked her arm forward and pulled it out of its socket. I couldn't hear the crack over the buzzing and ringing, but the scream of pain let me know I'd done it right.

Of course, I had no plan to follow that up with, and I was on the ground in half a second flat as her other hand smashed into my forehead, throwing me onto my back. I gnashed my teeth together as the rim of my helmet impacted the hardwood floor. A little chunk of one of my molars slid down my throat.

"He broke my arm! Motherfucker broke my arm!"

"Yeah, I learned my lesson with a face to the floor. He's stronger than he looks."

God, why were they still talking? Hadn't I just told them to shut up?

"Make the buzzing stop!" I shouted, since they weren't listening. Everyone stopped talking for a second, then they kept talking, and moving around, and getting closer to me. The buzzing and the ringing filled my whole head, all the time, without any sort of break. There wasn't room for anything else but the occasional fleeting observation.

I wanted to make everyone shut up. I would use one of the guns on the floor, but those were all too loud. What could I make them die with? I had my utility knife. I could stab Tandi in the kidney or the eye, and she wouldn't be able to talk anymore. Maybe if I stabbed her kidney it would hurt so much that she couldn't scream.

"... Why do we keep him? He's a liability!"

"Because he's useful, and it's predictable! If you hadn't touched him, he wouldn't have broken your arm!"

"How the hell was I supposed to know that!?"

They kept arguing about me while I curled up on the floor and covered my ears. The ringing wasn't getting any better. The nails that stuck out of the floor were stabbing at me through my wet, disgusting clothes, so I kept squirming and trying to not be on top of any, but then I was lying in the blood that was all over the floor so I had to move again. Gradually, I made my way back to the booth, where I tucked myself in and screamed until I ran out of energy and wasn't able to move anymore. It was a very small space, but I could fit if I squeezed all of my arms and legs together very hard.

I like tight spaces. They make me feel cozy.

-Break-

After that, I vaguely remember being dragged out of the bar, out into the rain. If I hadn't been completely catatonic, I would have said something, but I couldn't- I could only observe, as the world popped in and out around me. All of my senses were dulled. All of the sound that I could hear sounded like it was pounding through ten feet of water. I heard some people yelling, and cart wheels spinning.

Then we were on an airish, windy hilltop, and the rain had somehow picked up even more- I couldn't see much out of my glasses, and even if I could, I would mostly just see fog and rain covering everything. Then I was inside a house with a metal roof, and something was making my skin warmer even though my clothes were soaked through. I decided that it would be a good time to sleep, because we were finally standing still, and I hadn't felt so drained since the night of my father's death.

The sky was still bright, but I slept for hours.

-Break-

I woke up to the soothing sound of a crackling fire, and the gentle pattering of rain on the tin roof above. That's always the first thing I notice when I wake up- the sounds. It's not always the most obvious sound in a room that I'll wake up to, just the one that makes me feel the most. It helps me get oriented.

So, I was a little pissed off when I woke up and my ears were still ringing. For some reason, I couldn't smell anything, and I didn't have my glasses so I couldn't see very well. My body ached too, pretty much all of it, and I knew I was probably covered in welts and bruises. All across my face, I felt something that I knew should be painful, but wasn't. Loose, irritated skin, jagged, itchy lines… marks from the fight, I guessed. I wasn't remembering specifics, but I vaguely remembered getting my face ripped up when a bullet went through a window. I'd been standing, or sitting maybe, at a booth in the bar…

"Gram?" I asked, looking around the dry, toasty shack. I didn't see anyone else there, but I could hear someone moving. Who was behind me- no, didn't matter. What had happened to Gram? We'd been together, I think, and he'd been in danger. But, then he'd shot the two of them- no, one of them, and I don't think he died after that. Had anyone else gotten hurt?

I'd hurt someone, I remembered. Gram, maybe? No, it had been a girl. Tandi had been scaring me, so maybe I hurt her? But, I couldn't remember, and there was one other person who I could've hurt...

"Savanna?" I asked. I heard the rustling of towels behind me.

"I'm here."

"Did I hurt you?"

She was quiet for a second. The ringing in my ears intensified, and I wanted desperately to make it stop. Tinnitus is way too nice a name for something so horrible.

"You never touched me- just told me to back away. You hurt Tandi's arm, but she fixed it."

"Good." I could deal with hurting Tandi, after what she'd done. Executing my patients is a one-way trip to hurt-town.

"Are you feeling alright? Like, I don't expect you to be perfect, after all that, but you aren't like, paralyzed or anything?" asked Savanna. I shook my head.

"Everything works except for my nose. Why doesn't my nose work?"

"I don't know."

Neither of us talked for a while. I tried to fiddle with the buttons on my coat, then realized that I didn't have that. I didn't have my shirt on either, just my pants and a bunch of towels and the sleeping bag by the fire. I didn't usually mind not having clothes, but I felt oddly exposed without my coat beside me. I looked around the shed for it, but didn't see it anywhere. Of course, I could have missed it- the shed was surprisingly big, and it had lots of shelves and cabinets and appliances. It'd probably been someone's hideout, once.

God, the ringing was distracting! I tried to cover my ears to make the ringing stop, but then remembered that it was inside my head. Also, one of my ears had a bunch of skin hanging loose, so I shivered a little when I touched it. Nothing hurt very much, but it did feel really weird. Somehow, the body will always find a way to remind us that we're miserable.

Eventually, Savanna stood up and poked at the fire with a rusty crowbar. I couldn't actually see the fire, on account of it being in a little hearth, but I could see the flickering light, and hear the crackling noise. I still couldn't smell it, which was disappointing. I liked the smell of fire, as long as it wasn't close to me and I wasn't also inhaling smoke and getting it in my eyes.

"So… do you want to be left alone? I get the feeling you're kind of tired of people," asked Savanna. I heard a couple of heavy-sounding things fall over in the hearth, and a bunch of sparks came flying into view. I clenched every muscle in my body until the sparks cooled off and turned into harmless flakes of ash.

Savanna looked at me expectantly, and I remembered that she'd asked me a question- I guess I thought that the answer had been obvious enough that I didn't need to say it.

"Oh- no, I don't think so. Long as Tandi stays out," I said, thinking back to the evening leading up to now. I wasn't really sure if it was daytime the next day, or nighttime of the day before, but the deaths were still fresh in my mind.

"I don't think she wants to. She doesn't really care that much about the arm, but she's pretty sure that those guys you were treating were legion assassins. I don't know about the specifics, but the Legion did some pretty awful things to her once," said Savanna. I nodded.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. She said something about them trying to take her body away from her, and how what I did reminded her of that." I paused for a moment. I wasn't sure how I wanted to say my next sentence. "Do you think they did… that to her?"

"You mean rape?" Asked Savanna. I nodded. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe? I mean, that's what the legion does to women, so it could be. But, I'm pretty sure it went deeper than that."

"What do you mean, deeper?" I asked, leaning closer to Savanna so I could get a better look at her face. It was hard to parse her expressions, since I wasn't wearing my glasses.

"Who knows? All I know is that whatever they did to her, it ended her career. The NCR doesn't really have tight standards for mental stability, so she must have been a complete wreck to get booted out of the military. That was her life, after all- she probably fought against it all the way."

Just then, the door opened, and my breath caught in my throat- the subject of our badly timed conversation was standing in the doorway, metaphorical lightning flashing behind her. I guess the literal lightning was too frightened to show itself.

She walked inside, hunching over to fit through the doorway. For the first time since I met her, she was voluntarily not wearing a single piece of her uniform. She'd changed into a pair of baggy hiking shorts and a shirt that was too small for her, with a stained towel wrapped around her head. Even though I'd seen many of the scars before, it was still shocking how many of the things she had; all over her arms and legs, there were welts and burns and hairless patches where bullets and blades had gone through her. I hadn't noticed before, but the back of one of her thighs was also severely disfigured, with the mottled skin nearly clinging to the bone. If every scar told a story, then Tandi's body was The Lord of the goddamn Rings.

I was less than happy to see her.

"Heard you talking about me. What about?"

Savanna and I exchanged a look. I didn't know what it meant, but I felt like it was compulsory in situations like this. Tandi started tapping her foot impatiently on the rough wooden floor, which was kind of scary because she did it so slowly and stared at me the whole time.

"Just- just, wondering what exactly the legion did to you. You know, out of curiosity," I said. Tandi narrowed her eyes at me, and Savanna gasped a little; I wondered if maybe I should have lied about that one.

"They ended my life. What y'all are looking at now? It's a ghost." She walked into the middle of the room, and picked up a little brown bottle that had been laying there- peroxide, I think, from my medical kit. She tucked it into the crook of her splinted arm. "I think you should stop wondering. You'll live longer."

She gave Savanna an angry look, and then she left. A bit of rain blew in before she slammed the door shut, and then Savanna and I were alone again. She sighed, and I couldn't tell if it was a relieved sigh or an angry one. The difference is very small, and after what had happened, it could be either.

"Gosh, you really need to work on not saying stupid shit! I'm pretty sure she almost just shot you."

Ah, so a little of both. I scratched at the back of my neck. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes, I have a hard time figuring out what will make people mad." Savanna had been looking away from me, but when I said the second part, she turned around- I couldn't figure out the face that she was making, but I don't think it was angry. Just kind of tired.

"Isaac… you've got some problems, haven't you?"

I nodded. Not the most elegant way to put it, but she wasn't wrong.

"Yeah. Father was always real big on the specifics, but I didn't 't ever care enough to ask him about it until he was dead." I thought for a moment. What had he called the disorder I had? I always used to snicker at the name because it sounded like something dirty…

Oh, right. Aspergers. Say it out loud, and try to tell me that it doesn't sound like two other familiar words.

"He called it Asperger's, I think. Mild form of autism, and it was connected to something called Apraxia that makes me kind of clumsy."

Savanna looked at me funny. "Clumsy?" I nodded.

"Yeah. Ever noticed how I fall over all the time?" Savanna just squinted for a second, until realization dawned on her. She laughed.

"Oh, doplich! Sorry- My second tribe spoke mostly normal English, but they had some weird words. Instead of saying Clumsy, they'd say, "Doplich." Part of conserving tradition or something," she explained. I nodded.

"Neat. Anyways, dad wasn't no psychologist, so he could've been wrong on both counts. Mom's always insisted that it's just my personality, but she's… mom."

"That's kind of sweet, honestly. My mum wasn't at all like that, she was the kind of person who would have tried to pray it out of me. Well, my adoptive mum, anyways; I can't really remember my first one."

And then there was a comfortable silence, where all I could hear was the crackling fire, the rain on the roof, and the ringing in my ears. To this day, I'm entirely convinced that we were both thinking the exact same thing.

"We both had pretty screwed up childhoods, didn't we?" I asked. Savanna nodded.

"Yeah, let's not get into that tonight. You want to help me make dinner?"

"You have no idea how much I want to do exactly that."

And so we got to work- getting dressed, gathering supplies, cutting vegetables... I still had no idea how to properly cut Tatos, but Savanna always seemed to make do with the mess that I made.

Savanna was cool like that.

-break-

"Alrighty… now, just stand very still while I put this is in. Don't worry, it don't hurt too much." Savanna squirmed uncomfortably as I brought the butterfly needle against the big purplish vein that runs along that really squishy bit where your humerus connects to your radius and ulna. It's called like the, sefalis vein or whatever. Sephalic. Cephalic?

"You know, that doesn't… you're right, that doesn't hurt! Just feels sort of funny. Why is the blood so dark?" Asked Savanna, placing her finger on the clear little pipe that ran out the back of the syringe and into the bag. I moved the butterfly needle a bit. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a couple of my brain cells started wondering why it was called a butterfly needle, cause it don't look nothing like no goddamn butterfly that I'd ever seen...

"I think its cause vein-blood don't have much O2 in it, see? Your body's pumpin it back to your heart, and then through your lungs, so that it can get more of that good stuff."

"Oh, that makes sense. Y'know, actually, a lot of organic stuff changes color when you take oxygen out of it!"

After another twenty seconds of fascinated silence, I clamped the pipe shut and took out the needle. Immediately, I picked up the bit of gauze that I'd been keeping on hand, and pressed it against the wound. Savanna kept looking at the blood bag as I tied the gauze in place around the tiny little wound. "Alright, now that I've got that, we're gonna compare it with the gecko blood… what blood type are you?" I asked, tying off the knot. Savanna shrugged.

"I dunno. Does it matter?

I thought about that. Did it matter?

"I don't think so," I said, lifting up the blood bag and hanging it on one of the nails in the wall. I retrieved the vials of gecko blood, and put them on the table next to our improvised microscope. Savanna tapped me on the shoulder as I rummaged around my medical bag for something to put a drop of blood on.

"Do you think that the sniper scope is going to work up close? I feel kind of like it isn't," she said, glancing doubtfully at the abominable implement on the counter. I laughed and threw my arms in the air.

"I don't know! Don't worry about it!" I kept searching for something to put the blood on, cackling all the way. Savanna started laughing too, which just made me laugh more. It was kind of terrifying, to an outside observer- two supposed adults, laughing madly while surrounded by improvised scientific implements, gecko corpses and blood. Lots and lots of blood.

"Oh man, what are we- what are we even laughing about?" Savanna asked eventually, then started laughing again. I staggered over to the counter, and took another swig of whiskey. The safehouse had a stash alongside a few boxes of chemical reagents, and it seemed like a waste not to drink as much as we could. Hell, I must have downed half-a-dozen full shots worth of the stuff already!

"I don't know. Lemme test the 'scope." I got up on my tippie-toes so that I could see through the lenses, then squinted as my glasses pressed against the rim. All I saw was black blurriness, but I also hadn't put anything under it yet.

"Does it work!?" asked Savanna, leaning over in her chair. I shrugged.

"Dunno. We got a flashlight?" Savanna grinned.

"We have Tandi's rifle!"

It was true. We did have her cool green rifle, which we'd taken the 7x-40x scope off of to make our microscope. There might have been a flashlight on that thing.

"Um, it has got a flashlight on it, but I don't know how to get it off. It's stuck through one of them ring things," I said, playing with the flashlight on the end of the gun. I hit a button, and suddenly it was doing a bright red laser instead. I laughed at that, for some reason. Why'd she have a laser on her gun if it couldn't shoot stuff?

"Ooh, lemme see it! I think I can get it off." Savanna staggered over to the counter, and started messing with one of the bolts on the side. Her hands were perfectly steady- just like mine, I realized. It took me a second to remember why, but then I realized that when we'd mixed alcohol and caffeine and mentants, our hands got sort of jittery. So, we'd agreed to take some Steady from Tandi's stash after I broke my fourth graduated cylinder. There were a bunch of those things, just sort of laying around- the place had a fully stocked drug lab, with a bunch of testing stuff and chemicals that only Savanna seemed to know the name of.

Eventually, Savanna took off the bolt that was holding the flashlight and/or laser thing in place, and held it in her hands.

"Hell yeah!"

I gave her a congratulatory hug, and she hugged me too, did one of them big old bear hugs where she clapped me on the back. Then she took the flashlight and started to painstakingly position it so that it shone right under the improvised microscope, while I went back to searching for something to put the blood on. A slide.

"Aha! I think I've done found us a slide," I grumbled, yanking one of my clear plastic gloves out of the bag. Never-mind that I could've used a plastic-bag to the same effect, I was drunk and it vaguely reminded me of the prepared glass slides, because it was clear or something. Therefore, it was a sound choice.

"Oh, it's perfect! Quick, get some of the gecko blood on there before it dries," whispered Savanna, looking around the shed like something was going to attack us. I chuckled to myself.

"Oh, it ain't gonna dry- if it's really anything like our blood, it'll stay nice and hwet, cuzza the… christ, what'd I put in it? We scraped it off a wipe, I think…" I explained, gently tipping over a vial of gecko blood. I think I tipped it a little bit too much, because it splattered all over the glove and the table. But, that was okay, I could just use a new glove for Savanna's blood. I had lots of gloves.

"It was anticoagulant, and also I hated that. Why did you say… why'd you say, "wet" like that?"

I thought for a second- how had I said it? I think I'd done the weird 'W' thing with my throat. I said it again really quietly, just to test it. Immediately, Savanna shrank back, and I started grinning like a madman.

"Oh, you mean like, Hweeeettttttt?" I asked, licking my lips for effect. Savanna giggled.

"Hywett. Hyet. HHhhhhweettt. Oh, I did it! Hwet! How's it sound for other words?"

"You mean how's it sound for other… Hwords," I said slyly, drawing up a disgusting amount of spit in my throat. Savanna burst out laughing.

"Where did you even get that? Like, I can't think of one English word, ever, that has that sound! Do you know any words that have that sound?" She asked. I shook my head.

"Nah, iss' just a fun sound to make! Sounds' kinda Russian, right?"

"No, no, that's "Nyet!" You're thinking of," replied Savanna, wagging her finger. I waved her off.

"No, not that one word- just, sayin' stuff with a buncha spit in your throat, in general. Like how Tandi does when she's saying swears…"

At this point, I wasn't focused on her anymore, just the microscope. I couldn't stop fixating on the thing- Savanna had done a good job rigging the flashlight. A really good job.

"Oh, you mean, like, "SCHAS PO EBALU POLUCHISH, SUKA, BLYAD!" cried Savanna, suddenly doubling over and shouting at the top of her lungs. I grabbed her arm.

"ShhhHHHhh! Don't wake her up like that, you'll give her war memories!" I whispered, nodding conspiratorially. Savanna suddenly got really quiet.

"Oh, right. My bad!" She started walking towards the microscope but she tripped on something. I tried to pull her back up, but she was heavy and I was a teensy bit unstable, so we both went tumbling over in a predictable, preventable disaster that neither of us was sober enough to stop. We spent a good twenty seconds dying of sourceless laughter before either of us managed to haul ourselves up.

"Alright, alright! I'm, I'm gonna check the microscope now. See if it works." I staggered over to the counter, and leaned against it so I wouldn't fall over again. Soon, Savanna was next to me, peering over my shoulder. I stared into the microscope.

"Are you seeing anything?" She asked. I shook my head.

"Jus' blurry red. Lemme try and focus it." I tried to focus it, and nothing happened. Every level of magnification looked equally shitty at that distance.

"Is it working?"

"Naw."

"Aw, Lemme see it!" Savanna pushed me aside and gazed into the scope. The disappointment on her face was palpable. "Gosh, that is really bad! The lenses are prob- probly the wrong focal length or something. Something like that." We sat in mournful silence for a moment. All of that work, all of that blood, all of that science… for naught.

It didn't last long.

"Well, that was great! Do you know what time it is?" I asked. Savanna made a one-second motion, and checked my pip boy with wide-open eyes. They were very nice eyes, I decided- so brown that they were almost black, and open really wide most of the time. At least, I think they were. Her eyes were sorta naturally thin, so I might've thought that she was squinting all the time if I didn't know any better.

Anyways, her eyes didn't creep me out like most people's did. I liked looking at her eyes. They weren't so confusing, you know?

"Its… 2 o'clock. A little after. More like 3 o'clock," she said. She turned off the pip boy.

"Alright. We should go to bed- wanna do a sleepover again?" I asked, sauntering over to my sleeping bag. I almost laid down right there, then remembered that I'd left the flashlight on. I stumbled to go turn that off.

"I, I um… I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I think I want to sleep alone tonight."

What, really? I wanted to ask, but I wasn't going to press it. People ought to make their own choices about where they sleep.

"Okay! You want the, uh, the house, or the tent? You want the house?" I asked. Savanna clasped her hands together. Suddenly, she looked really serious.

"Tent. You can keep the house."

Well, that was nice of her, I guessed! The house was cozy and warm. I wished it could have her in it, but I'd survive.

"Okay. G'night, Savanna! You're a real good friend," I said, though I probably only got about half of the words out right. Savanna walked out the door really quickly, and suddenly I wondered if maybe I had done something wrong.

"Yeah. Good night."

Then she shut the door, and turned the ceiling light off. I sighed. Now I was worried- had I said something mean? If I weren't so drunk, and the mentats weren't rapidly wearing off, the question might've even kept me awake that night.

Of course, the mentats actually were wearing off, and I was really quite sloshed, so I drifted off in a few minutes. Or hours. I couldn't remember, exactly. Just that I woke up late with an awful headache and a sense of deja-vu that I didn't usually get.

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