Talia awoke gradually, with visions of mutants and monstrosities swirling in her mind. She didn't want to know which were dreams and which were memories.

She blinked her eyes open and didn't recognise anything. Machinery hummed around her and a quiet beep kept time. A woman stood at the foot of the bed in which she lay, wearing a white coat and studying a clipboard. Talia looked down at herself and found her wrist devoid of its Pip-Boy and handcuffed to the rail that ran along the hospital bed. The beeps came more frequently as panic rose in her throat, and she tried lamely to pull her hand free and sit up to escape. Her vision swam and the doctor turned at the noise.

"Hey, calm down," a hand pushed her back into the pillows. "You're fine, just relax."

Talia resisted and screamed. All she could think of was the man she'd found in the Vault, locked in an isolation room like Fawkes, screaming and ranting about something being under his skin. Presumably he knew his transformation was on the horizon, and not even the sight of another human to rescue him could snap him out of his frenzied state.

The doctor put a lot more weight into keeping Talia down. "Calm down right now, or I'll have to sedate you, you hear?!"

But Talia was tiring already. Her writhing slowed, she looked up at the doctor and shook her head. "No, please, don't turn me into one of them. I don't want to. I won't. I won't! You'll have to kill me instead."

"What?" The doctor frowned and mumbled to herself. "Are they supposed to have delusions afterward? I don't recall…"

"The mutants," Talia whispered, "they're people, aren't they? If you inject me I'm coming back for you first. I'll remember."

The doctor turned her attention back to Talia and scowled. "There are no mutants here. You're in medical bay two, and I'm trying to monitor your vitals. Now stop this insane yammering or I will have to sedate you. Do you understand?"

Talia blinked several times. "No mutants?"

"No. None. It's just me and you in here, and some other doctors and sick people out there." The doctor tentatively lifted her hands to test if Talia would remain still, and she did. "Good. Now, you've been unconscious, and I've given you something to revive you. I need to check you haven't suffered any brain injuries or other related problems."

"Oh…" Talia relaxed a little while she acknowledged the place didn't look like the run down Vault where the supermutant experiments took place. The ceilings were taller, the walls were painted and not crumbling, built with sweeping curves instead of corners. The room was warm, well lit, and full of working medical equipment; some she recognised from her dad's clinic, some she'd never seen before. "Where am I?"

"You're in an Enclave facility. That's all you need to know."

Talia remembered following Sarah and Fawkes out of the labs, then a flash…

"We're not in space are we?"

The doctor looked over her shoulder sternly while she collected something from the desk. "Why would you ask something like that? No, we're not in space. Do you want me to assume you have a concussion?"

"Oh… good. I just can't tell what's going to happen next anymore. It would be just my luck."

The doctor raised an eyebrow and returned to the bedside.

"What's going on?"

The doctor brandished a penlight in front of Talia's face. "You've been brought here for some reason- now, look into this light for me- but I'm sure you know more about that than me."

The G.E.C.K. But they already had it if her memory was correct. They took it when they took her. "Why do I feel so weird?"

"Weird?"

"Hot. And cold. And like everything is shaking. Inside."

"That could be the anti-radiation drugs you've had. I suppose you're not used to the potency. They've run their course already, the symptoms should be gone in an hour or so."

"Anti-rads…?" Talia relived what she remembered while the doctor checked her reflexes. Her captors had entered the Vault not from the direction of Little Lamplight, but the main entrance. The entrance blanketed in so much radiation only supermutants could use it. The Enclave must have chems far more effective than the old Rad-X available to the wastelanders if they could cross the area that the Brotherhood of Steel could not.

Whatever the doctor had given Talia to wake her had set her mind whirring, as she connected this information to the overload in the purifier control room. "That's how he survived…! It must be."

"Hm?" the doctor hummed absently while moving to the other side of the bed.

"Autumn. He must have had those chems to survive the radiation overload? At the purifier?" Talia looked expectantly at the doctor for an answer, but she only received a cursory glance.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Whatever cleverness she felt was fleeting, as she realised James' actions to take out one of the Enclave leaders along with their chance of controlling the purifier was in vain. A wave of nausea left her wondering if it was still the drugs or not.

After several rounds of balance, strength, and memory tests the doctor was satisfied Talia was fine. She made a brief call on a phone and a few minutes later two soldiers entered the room. Talia was uncuffed from the bed and given one minute to change from her hospital gown into a jumpsuit. Then her hands were cuffed behind her and a hood was pulled over her head.

"What's going on, Doc?" she called out nervously.

"You can't stay here. You're just being moved to a cell. Is that right, Corporal?"

"Yes, ma'am," the guard holding her arm answered.

That was the last she heard as she was marched out of the room and along what she assumed were hallways. The floor was metal grating, she could feel the slits against her bare feet, and it rattled under the guard's footsteps. The air was dry and hot and filled with the familiar hum of an air circulation system. They must be underground, though what she'd seen didn't look like a Vault. She stumbled as they descended a flight of stairs and the other guard gripped her other arm, taking most of her weight so her feet only skipped across the steps.

She didn't even have to try to hold her tongue. She still felt strange from the drugs she'd been told about (and worried there were others she wasn't). The hood made her movements clumsy, regularly sending her into the corrective grasp of one of her chaperones. The overalls were entirely too baggy to be of any sense of security. She tried to deepen her breathing and focussed on the fact a doctor had spent quite a long time checking her health. That had to be a good sign.

The guards stopped and Talia heard a door being opened. That was the short way to describe what sounded like a big, heavy, vault-type hatch transitioning from a state of being extremely locked to something more passable. She tensed up, unable as she was to move her hands from behind her.

"Relax, sweetheart," came the voice beside her. "Home sweet home."

She did anything but, and she was directed through the door. The guard pushed her against a wall. She gasped as he yanked off the hood, scrunching her eyes closed in the bright light.

"You keep still now," he warned, and she heard the jangle of keys. A second later her hands were free, the guard had stepped back, and a blue translucent wall of light had sprung up in a semi circle around her, pinning her close to the wall where the guard had put her.

"Prisoner ready for handover, sir."

She heard people talking by the door. As her vision adjusted to the light she saw she was in an oval room with the same metal floor as outside. It was empty but for a lavatory in what would normally be a corner. She saw the guards that had brought her here hand over some papers and a bag to a young man in a smart uniform, who inspected them and then her briefly from just inside the room. She expected him to come over and give her some sort of talking to, but they all left, the door closed, and the force field dissipated.

She didn't know where she was, when it was, or whether Fawkes, Sarah and Dogmeat had been caught too. Or worse. Until somebody came to talk to her, and she had no idea when or if that would happen, she was alone with nothing but her thoughts. She slithered down the wall to the ground and hugged her knees. Her thoughts were no kind of company right now.

There were strange tales being passed around travellers to the north. The investigator had followed the Vertibirds out of Little Lamplight in pursuit of Mr. Burke's girl. They'd drawn out of sight within minutes, but he wasn't able to charge his fee because he gave up easily. He couldn't know where they would land, nor could he just walk that direction forever and hope to stumble into their destination. Unless he was very lucky, and he didn't really believe in luck.

What he could do was ask around, and ask around he did. The wasteland wasn't very populous, but there were well trodden routes used by traders, refugees, or settlers looking for a better lot. Flying machines, they said. Clear as day and loud as anything. Others talked of a mutant, but not the usual kind. It wasn't ripping people apart or carrying them away, though it was devastating to anything that got in its way. A child spoke of a monster that shot lasers from its eyes and saved him from becoming a yao guai's lunch.

All very interesting. But it didn't help him pinpoint the girl. After a while he began to suspect the trail had run cold, but in his experience strange coincidences tended not to be entirely unrelated. And so he continued north, walking and talking. His wife said curiosity would be the death of him, but it hadn't got him yet.

"Let's keep this nice and simple. You're going to tell me the code for that purifier and you're going to tell me now."

Autumn stood in the centre of Talia's cell like a ghost, a bad dream come back to life. She hadn't had to wait long before he came to her, but it was long enough for her to have lived out every worst case scenario in her head already.

He was one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen, but his eyes were cool and piercing and looked straight through her as if she were no more than an annoying bug he wished to crush under his boot. He sounded exactly as he did before he shot Janice, and the scene replayed itself in her mind.

"Why would I help you… you killed my dad you son of a bitch."

Autumn struck her with the back of his hand. He continued, irritation edging his words until his voice slowed to his previous, somehow grandfatherly drawl. "Why do you choose to provoke me? Technically your father killed himself. His loyalties lay with the wrong people and he paid the price. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to learn from his mistakes."

Talia held back tears that were only partly down to her stinging cheek. She stared hard at the floor, voice a whisper. "What's happening?"

Autumn began to pace. "I'll tell you: you lost. The good guys won this one and now we're just wrapping up loose ends. We've got the purifier, we just need the code to start it. You're going to give me that code now and save us all a lot of trouble. Maybe I'll even let you go. So- out with it."

By the look on his face when he walked in, Talia thought he'd have shot her by now. "You want this real bad."

"And you should know why. We can't start the purifier without it. The longer it isn't running, the more people suffer. Do you want to be responsible for that?"

He paused and Talia looked up to find him watching his words sink in. He really seemed to believe what he was saying, and he didn't care how many eggs he cracked to make his omelette. Or who those eggs were.

He carried on though she didn't answer. "Now I'm running out of patience, missy. I want that code and I want it now."

Talia didn't know where to go from here. She didn't know about any code, she'd spent her time at the purifier tightening bolts, twisting wires, and annoying Daniel. "I… I don't know the code."

Autumn frowned deeply. "You lie!" He turned away in disgust, then turned back and drew his pistol.

Well, this is it. To Talia's surprise, her life didn't flash before her eyes. She didn't run or fight or even think of anything witty to say just to go out in style. Her legs actually went weak and she staggered back against the wall, slowly sinking to the ground.

Autumn glared at her for several long seconds, twitching as he wrestled with his temper. He finally subdued it and whirled around with a huff. "You better give it up soon. I don't like having to waste resources on you."

He left and once again Talia was alone, weeping a pool of shamefaced reprieve.

"Hold it, civilian. It's dangerous out here. How did you-"

"It's me you idiot."

"Oh- Sentinel Lyons! Sorry, I didn't- what are you doing here? Where's your armour?"

"Long story, Brother. I need to see Three Dog. Is he still yapping in there?"

"Does a yao guai shit in the wastes? Yeah, go right on up."

"Good. And we got any food in this place?"

"Yes, ask the Sarge inside."

"Good. I'm starving." Sarah passed by the soldier guarding the GNR Plaza. Albeit she'd slogged another day and night back to the city from Vault 87, taking power naps and issue stimulants in order to make good time, but she was glad they held this spot. It was relatively easy to reach and saved her having to go another few hours to the Citadel. They guarded the Galaxy News Radio building so Three Dog could broadcast his incessant chatter about the Good Fight, and the Brotherhood got a defensible base within the city ruins. At least that's the benefit she saw. Her father said the radio was good for morale and the Brotherhood's reputation out in the wastes.

She went inside and relayed what she could to Knight-Sergeant Wilks in the time it took her to eat what was on offer in three bites. She was waiting in the caverns' parking lot with Talia's dog- she didn't see the supermutant she released and it clearly hadn't walked through Little Lamplight (but she didn't mention that to Wilks)- when she heard aircraft. She moved around the clearing and sure enough saw two Enclave Vertibirds leaving the other side of the mountain, where the main Vault entrance was located. The kids confirmed Talia had not come back through yet, so she had to go back into that horrific Vault to look for her. She assumed the Enclave had tailed them somehow to steal the geck. She didn't find the geck nor, thankfully, Talia's body anywhere inside. Dogmeat whined and scratched at the door to the main entrance, which she took to mean Talia was taken along with the geck. She hightailed it all the way back to the city, and on the way realised Three Dog might be of some help.

Sarah headed up the stairs to where the man lived and worked. The whole floor, which was once an office presumably staffed by several people, was now effectively one large apartment. She swore it got messier whenever she ventured up here. The studio took up one whole corner, a kitchen another, while all around lay assorted radio equipment, cups, clothes, useless memorabilia, office supplies, and whatever broken stuff remained from the original setup. The building had been damaged quite badly before the Brotherhood shored it up and set up shop downstairs. He was probably the most protected civilian in the wasteland.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps before she had a chance to speak. He might have been getting older but he didn't act or dress like it. For someone living amidst the endless conflict in the Capital Wasteland, he managed to keep up appearances that suited his profession.

"The look on your face says it all. You're wondering who the heck this guy is and why you should care. Well, prepare to be enlightened. I am Three Dog, jockey of discs and teller of truths. Lord and master over the finest radio station to grace the wastes: Galaxy News Radio. And you, well- oh. I know who you are."

"Hello Three Dog. Sentinel Lyons, from downstairs. You run that spiel across everyone you meet?"

Three Dog waved his hand in exasperation. "Man, those cats downstairs called up to say I had a visitor."

"Sorry to disappoint."

He laughed heartily. "You could never disappoint me Miss Lyons. I wouldn't dare ever be anything but delighted to see you. C'mon, take a load off, what can old Three Dog do for you?"

Sarah absorbed his usual manner with a careful sigh and gratefully took a seat.

"Man, you look shattered. Burning the candle at both ends since the Enclave showed huh?"

Sarah stopped him with a finger at the word. "The Enclave... they have our Vault girl."

"You mean… that kid from Vault 101?"

"Yeah, the uh… what do you call her…?"

"The Lone Wanderer. Yeah. Came up with that one myself."

"Right. Well they've got her. Must've tracked us the whole time we were on a mission."

"Shit. Think she's still alive?"

Sarah blew a heavy sigh. "I hope so. Probably. I think they'll want her for the purifier. Anyway, I saw them fly away, but I don't know where they were going. Do you have any idea?"

Three Dog stroked his goatee. "There are rumours of an Enclave hideout to the north, but that's all this dog's got on that. You'd be better off having this one sniff them out." He threw Dogmeat a scrap from an open box of cakes on the table.

Sarah looked on the mutt that had somehow become her ward. "Well, do you think we could find out? Would your listeners know, or someone might have seen something?"

"Well we'll find out won't we? Wouldn't be able to call myself Galaxy News if I didn't report this particular sequence of events." He whistled a long note. "Man, this Vault 101 story just keeps gettin' crazier. I wonder what that bitch is feelin' right about now, deep in the Enclave's lair. Or maybe they're cosying right up. Birds of a feather 'n' all that."

Sarah blinked. "You want to repeat that?"

"What?"

"What are you getting at?"

"C'mon, Sarah, baby… you musta heard all about her and Megaton. Looks to be in cahoots with old Tenpenny. She probably struck a fuckin' deal with these guys. If not, I hope they give her the welcome she deserves."

Sarah glared. "She's on our side."

"Says you…" He shifted in his seat under the force of her gaze. "But... you've met her so, alright, we'll take your word for it." He threw Dogmeat another scrap.

Sarah sat back. "So, you'll get this news out asap and let me know immediately if anyone comes forward with any intel we can use to find her or the place she was taken?"

"Sure! I'll break it down very next news break. But no one'll hear it."

Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. Everything was a performance with this guy. "Why not?"

"Months ago some brainless supermutant thought it would be funny to shoot the shiny round thing on top of the Washington monument. That shiny thing was our broadcast relay. Without it our range is quite limited. Barely any signal just outside of downtown. Any further and it's snake city."

Sarah narrowed her tired eyes and cocked her head to one side.

"Nothin' but 'hisssssss'," Three Dog elaborated.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut tight and sighed. "Can't you fix it?"

"Love to, but the thing is swiss cheese. Need a replacement, and of course the factory that made them is long gone."

"Three Dog, is this going somewhere or are you just bitching about your problems to the first person stupid enough to come up here? Because I'm in quite a hurry."

Three Dog laughed heartily again. "Alright Sentinel, don't hold back, say what you really feel. Alright, one of your guys actually mentioned seeing a similar dish in the Museum of Technology. It's the dish from the Virgo II Lunar Lander. Can't believe it hasn't been looted already, but I guess the supermutants kept people away. They giveth just as they taketh away, huh."

Sarah drummed her fingers on her thigh. She usually avoided this guy, let others deal with him so long as the outpost was running just fine. But it felt like her only option at the moment to maybe help Talia. And anyway, her father said Three Dog's broadcasts were important, that wars were mental and spiritual battles as much as physical. Plus, if it helped them discover the location of an Enclave base the Brotherhood would finally be one step ahead.

"I'll get the dish, Three Dog. You start telling the story, okay?"

"You will? Wow, I'm honoured as always to have the Brotherhood of Steel at my back, Sentinel. I'll be sure to sing your praises- oh hell, I'll play you a tribute song. What's your request? Whatever you like, you name it, I've got it. Well, maybe. It is the post-apocalypse after all."

"Oh- no… tell you what. Play a tribute for all the Brothers who have died honourable deaths in this fight against the Enclave and the supermutants. It's the best any of us can hope for." Sarah got up then and left, returning briefly to drag away Dogmeat who was patiently waiting for more scraps.

Downstairs she gathered the troops not on patrol or watch. "I need three volunteers. Who's up for a little sightseeing?"

At some point Talia stopped flinching whenever she heard footsteps pass her cell door. Instead, as she lay on the floor staring at the ceiling, feet resting on the wall, she visualised her interrogator entering the room. The horrible one. She only knew him as Dean, and she didn't know if that was a first name, last name, or some sort of title, since he insisted she use it constantly when speaking to him. He just called her Wastelander, among other things.

In her mind he would enter her cell and disable the containment field, but before he could get close to cuff her and take her to the room he said no one knew about, or perhaps to the waste disposal like he had threatened, someone would appear in the doorway behind him. He would stop, she now wearing the knowing grin instead. And Burke would call to him, to allow him a second of realisation before ending his life and taking Talia out the way he had arrived.

It was a fanciful daydream, but it passed the time.

Time. The word was meaningless. It might have been one or four days since Autumn spoke to her. She hadn't seen a window since she got here. Neither of her interrogators wore a watch. She tried to sleep whenever she was alone in her cell, but her existence was punctuated by random visits from one of them, sometimes to question her, sometimes just to make sure she wasn't sleeping. The highlight of her day was when she heard a hatch in the door swish open, rather than the thud of the magnetic locks. That meant Williams was delivering some food.

Lieutenant Williams was the officer to whom she was handed over when she was put in the cell. She'd heard somebody address him by name while the hatch was open, much to his annoyance, but he'd already begun to have short exchanges with her. She wouldn't call it conversation yet though. He and the food he posted through the door was the only thing that gave Talia any sense of rhythm. He must work a regular shift pattern, so she gathered if he was around it was probably daytime. But she had no way to know for sure.

She started as the locks began to disengage. She struggled up from her spot by the wall, moving with much more difficulty than usual due to her last visit from Dean. Each thud was like a countdown and she got into position opposite the door, on the containment field platform, as she'd quickly learnt she should. The door opened and she sighed as she saw it was the other guy, Dave.

Dave was nice. He was much younger than Dean, or at least looked it, and far more reasonable. He spoke to her as if she wasn't just a troublemaker from the wastes, and called her by her name. She wondered what he did for the Enclave because he seemed more like a teacher or something than a military man. She'd started to feel happy to see him because he would talk to her generally. It wasn't all questions.

"Hello Talia," he said as genially as always, closing the cell door behind him and deactivating the energy field. "Oh, that's quite a black eye you've got coming on there. For such a talker you really don't want to say anything do you?" He crouched opposite Talia as she worked her way down into a half comfortable seat on the ground, using the wall for support.

"No one seems very interested in conversation to be honest," she joked with a slight smile. She had no idea why she was joking around, but Dave's sympathetic chuckle in response made her day.

"That will come I'm sure. Well, anyway- do you remember what you asked me before?"

Talia shook her head dumbly. The lack of sleep and routine had blurred all memories, nightmares, and daydreams into one big mental blancmange.

"Here. For you." Dave reached into the pocket of his jacket. It was a dark, hunting type jacket this time, over a plain white t-shirt. Talia wondered if he changed daily, or if he wore several outfits just to throw off her sense of time.

She watched with intrigue as he pulled out a pair of black woolen socks. She gasped in excitement, which sent a shooting pain through her sore ribs. She welled up as he leant over to hand them to her. "You actually got them?" She fondled them thoroughly to check they were real. They were. And so thick.

"I did. You've been good with me, Talia. Don't think we're not reasonable. We can make your life a lot better."

But Talia was barely listening. She beamed as she slipped the socks onto her chilly feet. "Fuck, they're so warm. Oh my God, I feel saner already. Thank you." She shifted as to hug him but stopped herself, unsure of the rules and hurting all over anyway.

He smiled and patted her shoulder. "I'm glad you like them. Now… I'm afraid I bring some bad news too."

"Oh?" She wasn't sure what could dampen her spirits now she finally had toasty toes.

"Look… The boss is going to want an update soon. He wants the activation code for the purifier. Like I said, you've been good with me, but that's all he wants. If you don't give us something… I'm worried he'll decide he has no further use for you."

Talia's face dropped. "But... I don't know it. I told you-"

"Which also means you're of no use to him," Dave interrupted softly. "I'm just warning you, Talia. That's likely how this will play out if you stick to this line. Regardless, it's silly to hold out like this. This," he pointed to her bruised face, "doesn't have to happen anymore."

"But I don't know the code," she whimpered.

"Well, you better start thinking hard about what it could be."

He stood and left, not bothering with the containment field. Talia remained slumped against the wall. Despite the warm socks her whole body had chills, and now she'd trade them in a heartbeat for a blanket under which to hide and never come out.