The hatchway squealed as it was pulled wide, sending a shaft of light down to illuminate the deserted Rivet City Laboratory. Dust motes swirled in the air, kicked up by the wash of fresh air through the new opening, and the swift fanning of the door itself being thrust aside. A tough pair of leather boots rattled the walkway with each step, the black outline of a heavily armed, hooded figure, thrown into sharp contrast against the brightness of the hallway.
A fingerless-gloved hand rested lightly on the scope of a matte black R91 assault rifle, infiltrator variant, slung underarm and hanging like an armrest against him. Along the side, a steady hand had scratched a name into the otherwise spotless paint. Perforator.
The Wanderer made his way down the walkway stairs, making no attempt to mask his normally quiet footsteps. Each footfall rattled the metals grating underneath him. As he reached the bottom, a rattling and a coughing announced that the Laboratory was not nearly as empty as the dust would indicate.
A generator sputtered to life, sending black smoke flowing through a pipe that routed it up through the ships superstructure and out into the midday air far above. Floodlights flicked to life, illuminating the Lone Wanderer's cybernetic eyes in the glare. He blinked, eyelids chaffing on the slight ridges on the synthetic eyeballs' surface. He pushed back his hood, the unblemished skin of his shaved head and the rough beard he was cultivating now on full display for the other occupants of the room to see.
"You better have a good reason for asking me to meet down in this sorry excuse for a laboratory, mercenary," Dr. Zimmer scowled beneath his black thick-rimmed spectacles. The old Institute scientist stood perfectly erect and dignified in his plain black suit, secured with a singular button at his sternum. The Wanderer's cybernetic gaze flicked to the bulge barely visible against the old man's slight frame. A sidearm, probably. Chinese made, by the distinctive shape of the outline.
Next to Zimmer stood his pet bodyguard, Armitage, whose cold hazel eyed gaze met the Wanderer's black orbs as soon as he had released the starter cord on the side of the generator. His weapon, a bulky AEP7 laser pistol was carried openly, hooked onto the side of his belt, in easy reach of the bodyguards sure grasp.
The Wanderer blinked, switching his inbuilt vision modifications to thermal, then to EM in quick succession to see if they were really alone in the room. They were. He paid special attention to the way some parts of Armitage's body glowed under EM based vision. Significant parts, like his brain, and his torso.
"I've got that name you asked for," Chauncy replied evenly.
"And you asked to meet down here, in this abandoned laboratory…. why?" Zimmer pressed, staring at his hired help with the glacial cold expression of a man who was convinced of his interlocutor's bad faith. Armitage had his hand hovering close to his sidearm, fingers steady, nerves as rigid as steel.
"Because the name is Harkness, Rivet City's Chief of Security."
Dr. Zimmer's grey eyebrows shot up, his wrinkled forehead creasing even more at the news. Armitage nodded coolly at the news; his hand no longer quite as rigid as he realised what that could mean for them. "That makes things complicated, Dr. Zimmer. He has all of Rivet City's security force at his beck-and-call."
"Are you sure of this? Quite certain of your facts, mercenary?"
"Absolutely and positively certain, Doctor," the Wanderer replied, grim expression making his words seem wooden and business-like, "Here."
Producing a sheaf of notes and a holotape from the side pocket of his backpack, he tossed it to Armitage, who snatched it out of the air with his left hand whilst simultaneously keeping his right still within perfect grabbing distance of his pistol. The bundle was passed to Zimmer, who opened it and looked through the compiled dossier with interest, and growing triumph.
"He came here and put the word out to local doctors and programmers. I tracked him through those requests to the only man in the Capital Wastelands capable of performing the operations. With a little prodding, he fessed up and provided me with the details. It's all there," the Wanderer summarised, "Right down to a recording of the fat lady singing."
The good Doctor was smiling now, nodding as if this all now made perfect sense.
"Harkness, you say. Yes..." Zimmer paused as the smile spread wider.
"Yes, that makes sense. He used to work for a special branch of the Commonwealth Police, after all... And he's right here in Rivet City."
The Doctor looked up sharply, the smile fading to an enquiring stare, "And this man who you say performed the operations? We will be needing his name also, in order to question him regarding his connection with the organisation that assisted Harkness in his foolish sojourn."
The Wanderer's eyes narrowed, expression becoming guarded in response to the query.
"No."
Armitage's hand touched the butt of his laser pistol, eyes never straying from the hand that the Wanderer still had resting on the scope of his rifle.
"No?" Zimmer asked, mildly.
"Yeah, no. You promised payment for the synth. For Harkness. If you want the name of the guy who performed the surgery, that's a separate matter. With a separate price. I don't work for free."
Armitage raised his hand away from his pistol, as Zimmer smiled a shark-like smile, glasses catching the light of one of the lamps, seemingly glowing under the glare. "Ohh, of course, of course. I cannot offer you technology in payment of course. The tech I promised you is one of a kind, and I don't have anything else to trade. Apart from caps, of course. Armitage, if you would?"
The bodyguard reached into his pocket, retrieving a heavy pouch of caps from the depths. This he tossed underhand, still with his left rather than his right, which remained orbiting the pistol.
The Wanderer matched his show of agility by catching it mid throw without straining his body from one side or the other, just a smooth interception that would have made his Vault baseball couch proud. He opened the pouch, sorting through the caps to get a rough idea of their number. Five hundred, or thereabouts. He wasn't a good barterer. Not that this mattered.
"Horace Pinkerton. He's in the broken off bow of the carrier," the Wanderer said, closing the drawstring of the pouch tightly closed once more, and stowing it in his backpack.
"Excellent! I must wait, find an opportune moment to confront both of them," Zimmer crowed, smiling benevolently at his beneficiary, "Thank you for your discreet assistance, and continued discretion regarding this matter. And now for your payment. This combat module will directly affect your central nervous system. I think you will find it quite beneficial."
Another object arched through the air, this time from Zimmer himself, who had pulled it from within his pants pocket. His aim was worse than Armitage's, but the Wanderer still caught it with swipe of his hand. "How do I use it?"
"It is an implant, mercenary. I dare say you will need to find some meatball surgeon to install it for you. Unhappily, if you expected to use Mister Pinkerton's services in this regard, I'm afraid he will be occupied from now until," Zimmer made a show of checking his watch, squinting at the quartz display, "…the end of time, I think."
Zimmer turned away, and Armitage fell in behind him with a backwards glance towards the Wanderer.
What he saw gave him pause. The Wanderer had shrugged off the straps of his backpack, propping the bag up underneath one of the tables left behind by Madison Li's team before they left for Project Purity. The bodyguard's hand flew to the butt of his laser pistol in alarm when a load bang echoed through the compartment. His eyes and Zimmer's flew to the door on the other end of the room, that had just been slammed closed. The sound of the hatchway wheel being locked closed drifted eerily down to them.
"What is the meaning of this," Zimmer asked the empty air, his hand undoing the solitary button that separated his hand from the pistol holstered under his suit jacket. Both he and Armitage turned back around immediately, only to find the Wanderer gone, bag still propped up underneath the worktable. Armitage pulled his laser pistol, activating it with a dull whine as the energy cell connected with the emitter, ready to send a concentrated burst of energy out a magnifying crystal and through a betrayers skull.
"Spoke with Harkness before I came down here," the Wanderer's voice echoed around the room.
Armitage immediately squeezed of a shot, which missed an indistinct heat haze that was quickly lost in the darkest shadows as it flittered around, in and out of their field of vision, in the corners of their eyes. Circling, waiting, judging distances. Zimmer's mind found itself focused with fierce intensity upon the laser rifle he'd seen on the mercenaries back, and the sleek and deadly R91 variant under the Wanderer's arm. He tried not to let his imagination, practised through years of innovation, dwell too much on what weapons like those could do to his suited body.
Armitage put a hand on the neckline of his bosses suit and dragged him down as he crouched and made his way towards the hatch the Wanderer had entered through.
"And I gotta say Zimmer," the ghostly voice drifted through the dark confines of the laboratory, prompting the bodyguard to transition through into a smooth series of shots that scythed through a rack of test tubes and beakers, sending shards of half melted or heat-fractured glass screaming across the tabletop.
The harsh ratchet and staccato pop of the Perforator discharging heralded Armitage's torso blossoming in holes. On a human, this would have been his end, but the disguised Institute Courser wasn't human. He was a synth, and the impact of the 5.56mm rounds did nothing but rock him gently back onto his heels for a brief moment. Then he returned fire, shots narrowly missing the Wanderer's indistinct form as it ducked behind the fridge and leant out for another double-tap of the trigger.
"I agree with the synth."
Armitage pulled Zimmer to the side and shoved him into cover behind a mess of pipes. "Stay down," the Courser grunted, the two shots striking his back to be caught by the discrete body armour underneath. He spun around and advanced towards the Wanderer's spot behind the fridge, one hand blazing death through the barrel of his pistol, the other fishing a frag grenade from inside one of his numerous discrete hiding places.
He pulled the pin with his teeth and counted to two before tossing it underhand. It made it all of a foot from his grasp before the Wanderer leaned out of cover, receiving a blast of laser against the chest, but neatly picking the grenade from its trajectory with a singular round from the Perforator.
It detonated, throwing Armitage back into the pipes behind which Zimmer was hidden. His body bent the metal tubing with its impact, the rending shriek of metal replaced with a hiss of escaping steam from the perforated piping, scoured and marked by the shrapnel that had ricocheted around the enclosed space like angry wasps.
The Wanderer's satisfied smile died under the cloak of his Stealth Nano Bots, as Armitage's shredded corpse slowly rose from its place in the deep bend it had made in the pipes length. The lower jaw hung loose from the few remaining strands of flesh and tendon to the upper, burnt skin and shredded flesh visible through the singed holes in its clothing. It still had two arms and two legs however, and it's eyes were sharp and focused through the horrific injuries.
"Uhh…" Chauncy remarked, his intelligently formulated comment staggering in its eloquence.
Armitage raised his arm, and began firing, staggering forwards on shredded legs as he blew smoking holes through the wall behind Chauncy's head
The Wanderer rolled away, emptying the Perforator's magazine in a sustained barrage that zipped past Armitage's body with wild abandon, a few clipping him, and even fewer connecting cleanly. The Courser kept coming.
"Okay," the Wanderer muttered, ejecting the spent magazine, and letting the rifle hang freely on the sling as he unslung his other weapon from his back, "Alright, okay."
He strode out into the open, where the synth, weapon having run dry, was now attempting to load an AER7 with a spare energy cell without the use of most of the fingers on his left hand. The first cell he had clearly attempted this with, rolled silently from side to side on the floor. Armitage looked up from the pistol, seeing the Wanderer's movement through his peripherals. The Stealth Nano Bots had disengaged, now creeping back through their cooldown period until they could be used once more.
The barrel of the AER9 laser rifle barely swayed in the Wanderer's grasp, scope blocking one side of the wielders face from view behind its blocky mass. It let out an ominous hum as it drew power from the Max Charged Microfusion Cell held within its loading slot. Armitage fell to one knee as his left leg was severed and cauterised by the first blast, the laser rifle retaining its target admirably without any recoil to cause a stray.
The second blast vaporised what was left of the synths right hand, which let the laser pistol drop with a clatter to the scorched floor.
The Institute Courser just looked at him, sizing the Wanderer up with its cold hazel eyes. Blood dribbled from the remains of the lacerated face, from the few places were the flesh wasn't too burnt to allow the red fluid to flow freely.
"Sorry about this, Armitage," the Wanderer said. His own laser wound was already healing over as the Monocyte Breeder and his own mutations dealt with injury. The third blast annihilated the Courser's skull, burning a neat hole from front to back. Armitage toppled backwards onto the floor, the ashes of his own android brain settling in the widening pool of blood.
The Wanderer sighed in resignation, then brought the laser rifle up once more to the ready position as he advanced on Zimmer's hiding spot. His boots beat the time on the metal floor, pushing aside debris from the blast, crunching on shards of glass.
He rounded the piping with his rifle ready, only to glance left and right in confusion. Zimmer wasn't there.
Immediately he switched to thermals, sweeping left and right. He spotted the faint outline through the metal pipe that concealed it. No surprise, his thermal vision sensitive enough to see through several feet of reinforced concrete. The AER9 hummed and spat a lance of crimson energy that blasted straight through the pipe, leaving a smoking hole through its width, and a smoking hole where Zimmer's hand used to be. The Chinese pistol dropped to the floor, missing it's trigger and most of the handle as Zimmer howled in agony.
"You can't hide from me, Zimmer," the Wanderer stated, black eyes tracking the writhing form of the Institute scientist through the mess of piping, an outline of shifting red and orange shades.
"You barbarous simpleton. Don't you know who I am?" Zimmer yelled past the searing pain at the end of his arm, "I am the head of the Institutes Synth Retention Bureau! Do you know what my colleagues will do to you when they find out you did this to me?!"
"They'll never will find you, Zimmer," the Wanderer enlightened the scientist, grimly slinging his AER9 and reloading his Perforator with practised motions, slotting the fresh magazine of Match grade ammunition into the receiver, and slapping it into the locking position. He walked his way around the piping, boots thumping the ground as Zimmer attempted to crawl away.
"You'll be dumped in the river. The Mirelurks will eat the flesh, and you'll be just another pile of bones at the bottom of the Potomac. They'll need to run carbon dating on every unfortunate fuck that died in that river from now, all the way back to the Great War just to find out which skull is yours."
Zimmer hissed in pain as the Wanderer's boot came down on his leg, preventing him from crawling away. He looked up into the end of the Perforator's heavy suppressor, with the Wanderer's face behind it.
"Why?!"
"Because" the Wanderer growled his reply in a low voice, "Self-determination is not a malfunction."
The spent casing clattered to the floor, with a soft ping of spent brass. One final addition to the days bloody work.