Warm wind blew across the parched soil sending small cyclones of dust whipping around the ring of debris that acted as the small town's perimeter wall. The remains of a highway cut through the small town like a seam of a chipped obsidian blade, and the small cluster of buildings clinging to it stood quiet and dark in the early morning. As the sun rose the inhabitants of Myrtle Beech began to wake, and star their days.
A sentry sat at his post tucked in between two slabs of wall, and drunk the last of the coffee from his thermos. It was the end of his shift and a box of sugar bombs was calling his name. He faced east and watched the sun rise slowly painting the landscape in sterile brightness. The sentry almost didn't notice the small flash of blue light a few hundred yards out from the town's border.
He raised his weapon and looked down the scope to see a man walking towards the town with a large white bundle in his arms. The man was tall and wore a dark black leather duster that billowed out in the wind. Dawn light shone of his bald and the deep red of his goggles glowed softly. Looking closely the sentry saw that it was a body wrapped in a white sheet, and as that thought came to him the sentry saw other forms materialize in blue light. Four women appeared behind the man in flashes of blue light followed by a dozen hulking robots.
One of the women had her hands bound with zip ties and a blanket thrown over her head. Another woman had a shaved head and tattoos covered her mostly bare mid-section. Two other women held the rear, one was an obvious military type with clean black hair and shiny armor, while the other wore leather armor and a power fist.
The sentry turned around and pulled a small lever activating the siren and summoning the other sentries from their posts. He took his position and aimed his rifle at the man in the lead and took aim. When the group were about three hundred yards from the perimeter he yelled out:
"Stop right there"
The group stopped and the leader regarded him with deep grey eyes. A flash of memory ran through the sentry's mind he'd seen those eyes somewhere before. He lowered his gun for a moment and examined the man's sharp features.
"I know you" The sentry said as the other sentries arrived.
The man looked up at him and sighed "Little Jim Harlee, right? You were six when I left town"
"How do you know my name?" Jim said confused "How do you know me man?"
"because he's the reason your mother died Jim"
The sentries turned let an old man through to address the group. He was big man with white hair and arms like tree trunks.
"Mr. Shaun what are you talking about? my mom died of the sickness." Jim said.
"A sickness this one caused" Shaun said turning to the man "I thought I told you to never come back"
"I have business with you" the man said glaring at Shaun.
"What business could you possibly have with me?" Shaun asked grabbing a pistol from his belt and took aim "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."
The man reached across the bundle and undid a knot allowing part of the sheet to fall away revealing a woman's face.
"Mirada?" Shaun said almost dropping his gun as he recoiled "How's that possible?"
"We need to talk" Rex said rewrapping the sheet around Mirada's head "Privately; we have a lot to discuss."
Shaun glared for a moment before gesturing for Rex to follow.
"Keep your freaks outside" Shaun said as they walked into the town.
/
"Can I please take this off?" Penelope asked peering out from under the blanket "It's getting hot."
"Nope" Veronica, the courier's second, said as she sat on a stone bench adjusting her powerfist.
"please, my stitches are already uncomfortable and the heat isn't helping" Penelope pleaded.
Veronica shot her an icy glare with her remaining eye. Penelope returned the scowl and looked to the other two women.
"Don't look at us buttercup" the one called Jack said flipping her the bird "IF it was up to me you'd bed dead."
"At least tell me what your inept surgeons implanted in my chest?" Penelope asked "I have a right to know."
Jack ignored her and joined the woman called Shepard on another stone bench. Penelope scowled at them all and silently cursed them. She had awoken from surgery that morning with a long stitched up wound across her chest before being handcuffed and taken by the courier. From the location of the incision she could surmise that something had been placed in her rib cage. What that was Penelope could only hope it wasn't an explosive.
The cuffs around her wrists were made from the same black metal as the courier's arm and seemed to be magnetically locked. A small fusion cell hummed in the center of the cuffs and no matter how she twisted her hands Penelope couldn't reach it. Under the blanket Penelope seethed in the heat and stoked her anger at her captivity. It was easier that way; if she didn't stay angry she'd collapse. The weight of the last few days was waiting to crush her, and she wouldn't allow that to happen.
A hand drew the blanket off her and Penelope looked up to see a weathered face looking down at her. The old man examined her intensely for a moment with a mixture of shock and hurt on his face. He was silent as her examined her face and just as Penelope was about to speak he wrapped her in a suffocating hug.
"You're Mirada's child" he whispered trembling as he hugged her.
Then she knew who the man was.
"You're her Father, Shaun" She said as he released her "Biologically my grandfather."
"Yes, he is" The courier said brushing the big man aside and held out a silver key "I made a promise and now I'm going to keep it."
The courier unlocked the cliffs and they disengaged and fell to the ground with a metallic clunk.
"I'm free?" Penelope asked.
"Yes and no" The courier explained reaching into his duster and withdrawing a small flat device "Shaun is going to take you in, and in exchange Myrtle Beech gets all of the benefits of allying with the Mojave."
"I would've taken you in regardless" Shaun said taking her hand "I know you're not my Mirada's child, but that doesn't change the fact that we're blood."
Then he hugged her again and said "I'm sorry about your mother, and just know I you want to talk about it I'm here for you."
"Thank you" Penelope said glaring at the courier over Shaun's shoulder "It will be nice to get to know you; My father killed you in our universe."
"Oh" Shaun said breaking the hug and backing away slightly "Why?"
"I don't know" Penelope said a sudden headache building behind her eyes. That hadn't happened, had it? Strange distortions of memories flooded her mind's eye and she could smell the stench of shit and blood in the air. What was once pristine memories of her father transformed into horrible eldritch caricatures of him.
In that storm of recollection, she saw herself as a teenager cutting into flesh and altering the insides of screaming children. She saw Rose screaming as she gene treatment after gene treatment into her spine and watching her father laugh as his little sister twisted and convulsed as her body morphed. Every time she drew back and saw herself growing sick and every time she saw her father injecting pink liquid into her neck and hitting her. And when she finally returned to reality every muscle screamed in fatigue as her twisted life was illuminated in cruel cold clarity.
Her legs turned to Jelly and she fell forward. Shaun tried to grab her but the courier reacted faster and hoisted her back onto her feet. He leaned in close and whispered something into her ear; a phrase she had never heard before but knew were etched into her soul "Care for a Pomegranate my goddess". Penelope's every muscle locked and she felt a wave of cold splash onto her brain and descend her spine.
The cold flowed into her veins and quieted the ache behind her eyes, but left the memory of her father as it was. New memories, or perhaps they were old memories, were illuminated with cold brilliance allowing her to see every atrocity she had been a part of. Stomach acid bubbled up her throat and she began dry heaving as tears flowed down her face.
She felt a cool metal hand take her by the chin and gently turned her face upwards. The courier looked at her with a profound sadness in his deep grey eyes, and lightly brushed the hair from her face with his other hand. He looked at her for a long moment and sighed before speaking:
"Don't look away from what you've done" The courier said stroking her cheek "Own it before it owns you."
"You have no idea what he made me do" Penelope said as the horror of a century of memories returning to her "The things I've done, oh my god the things I did to Rose."
"Then this is your chance to find some redemption" The courier said standing up "The road to redemption is straight through hell and whether you find absolution or damnation is entirely up to you to decide."
"How?" She asked tasting bile in the back of her throat.
"Give everything you are to others" The courier said reaching out a hand "become someone people think of as good person and maybe one day it'll be true."
She took his hand and he helped Penelope to her feet. The courier handed her the small device and kissed her forehead before letting go. In that instant, she almost fell but she managed to stay upright on her own power. Penelope looked to the courier and asked:
"All I've done for the last century is create monsters and hurt people, what do you expect me to do?"
"Heal; my personal belief is that if you help enough people to heal than maybe you have a shot to heal yourself" The courier said turning away.
"All you're promising me is maybes and might-bes" Penelope yelled at him.
The courier turned and smiled sadly at her "That's life kid"
"At least tell me what you out in my chest"
He pointed at the device in her hands and made a boom gesture with his hands "We didn't put anything in, but we did take that nasty little number out."
Then the courier walked off, grabbing the bundle of sheets that contained her mother's corpse made his way towards the dusty towns cemetery. So, there in the dust of the courier's old life, a woman, who was his daughter and at the same time not, made a decision. She turned to the man who was her grandfather and at the same time not and looked at his old weathered face.
The knowledge in her mind, dark secrets of the institute and years of experience locked away by her father, was hers to use or shun. Finally, she was free of chains she never knew bound her, and now that she was free Penelope had no idea what to do next. Her father was dead and his plans rendered moot, and in that uncertainty Penelope felt something that was both disturbing and exhilarating. Excitement.
/
Rex laid Mirada to rest just as the sun rose to center of the sky, and in the shade of an old tree he said the words he said almost a decade earlier when had laid his wife to rest. When his work was done, he met the others in the dusty town's tavern: The Post. They sat a table drinking from a shared bottle of whiskey, and when Rex reached them he poured a glass of whiskey and gulped the slug down.
"Whoa holy shit" Jack said "I thought you didn't drink"
"Sue me; I've had a bit of a week" Rex said slamming the glass down and pouring another drink "Besides I'll need to be a fucking sloshed for this"
"For what?" Shepard asked.
"Are you sure about this Rex?" Veronica asked.
"Absolutely not" Rex said taking another gulp of whiskey before turning to Shepard and Jack "You both want to know more about my past; where I came from? What I've done? Well congrats you're about to get your wish."
"Why now of all times?" Shepard asked.
"Let's call it therapeutic release, and besides Shepard you've shed blood for me twice now" Rex said pouring another whiskey "And dealt with two of my doppelgangers so you deserve to know."
"What about me?" Jack asked.
"Jack I realized something in captivity; you are very important to me" Rex said sipping the alcohol rather than gulping "If we go any further you deserve to hear the story; to know what I've done."
"All right Rex, I 'll hear you out." Jack said nodding.
"All right, just so you know only three people know the full version of this story and one of them's an autodoc" Rex began "I was born somewhere in the NCR around twenty-eight years ago, and for some reason my parents left the NCR shortly after I was born. We finally settled in a town called Dust somewhere in northern Oregon when I was about one. My parents were a strange pair to be sure; My mother was a master engineer and my father a former follower of the apocalypse and combat medic. I wish you could have known her Veronica; she had a way with machines that makes me looked like a child ripping up an alarm clock."
"I used to stay up late at night and listen to talk to herself as she worked. She'd talk to the components of a machine like they were alive, and whenever I talked to my dad about it he'd give me this look. You know the look, the look of a parent trying not to worry his kid. It's only now that I deal with my own mental health issues that I recognize it in my mother. My father on the hand was a hard ass combat medic who served for ten years before retiring to the followers. Despite being a more than competent doctor my father also loved language; something I'd come to hate as he made me learn Chinese, English, and Spanish."
"Wait you speak three different languages?" Jack asked.
"Six actually; I've picked up tribal languages in my travels" Rex said taking a swig from his whiskey "The first ten years of my life were nothing but constant lessons from both my parents. I think my dad was a little disappointed I took to fixing machines rather than people. Things changed a little after Rose was born. Dust grew a lot under my parents' guide; my mother's technical skill combined with my father's military skills turned a small fishing village on the Oregon coast into a respectable trading outfit. They were always busy so it fell to me to keep track of the little rugrat."
"Rose was my everything. I practically raised her on my own and we were inseparable as she grew older. Partners in crime and punishment. Whenever she'd get in trouble for bringing some wasteland beastie home I'd stand with her and vice versa when I blew something up or stole something. I loved that girl like nothing else in this world, and she loved me back. My father was cold by nature and my mother wasn't consistent with any form of emotion. It was nice to have someone who acknowledged that you were important to them."
Rex smiled warmly for a moment before he frowns and takes another swig of whiskey. He withdraws a small red leather bound pack from his duster.
"As with most good things in the wasteland it all has to come crashing down at some point. It happened on my fourteenth birthday; My mother gave me a pre-war stainless steel lock pick set, it was my job to salvage parts from the factories nearby for the shop. I was tired of using bobby pins and now I could break into old man palmer's snack stash. As I was thinking of things to break into my father pats me on the shoulder and points me to a factory just up the mountains."
""You'll find my gift there" he said giving me a rare smile. Rose wanted to come of course but I wouldn't let her. The last time I took her into one of those factories she almost been crushed by a collapsing pillar. So, my father made her stay home, and as I left we said our usual goodbye "Bye Bye Rexy" an she yelled at me as I walked of and I yelled back "See you soon Rosie."
"I spent half the day walking to the damn place and when I got there I found building filled with safes full of sugar bombs and gizmos for me to tear apart and remake. And in the final room of that old factory I found it; a Berrington 4550. One of the most secure prewar safes ever made. Took me three hours to crack that monster and when I finally opened it I found my reward."
He drew his pistol from its holster and placed it on the table.
"One of his prized pistols. Family heirlooms apparently used by the Vault dweller decades ago. If you ask me he was full of shit, but it was still unbelievable. Inside with the gun was a stack of comic books and three Nuka Kola Quantums. I spent the rest of the day drinking soda and reading comics before drifting off. When I woke up it was dark outside and I booked it back home. Half way there I was wondering how much trouble I was in when I noticed the smoke."
Rex paused and reached for his cigarettes and tried to light one, but his hands began shaking. Jack grabbed a lighter and lit it for him.
"Thanks" Rex said shivering as he smoked the cigarette "I found them in the square. Everyone I'd ever known their hands zip tied behind their backs and a bullet hole in their heads. The adults had been lined up and shot, but the children, I don't believe in god but I hope there's a hell, got it worse. They took the boys and strung them upside down before cutting their throats letting them bleed out onto the ground. The girls were nude and ravaged; most were dead while some of the stronger ones were whimpering as they bled to death from stomach wounds."
"Oh, my god" Shepard said covering her mouth.
"What fucking monster does something like that?" Jack asked in disbelief.
"When I saw the girls, I looked for Rose. A frantic search through a pile of bodies and the flaming wreckage of what had been my home. She was gone, taken by the monsters who had left Dust in ruins. I spent hours just screaming and trying to salvage what I could from the fires; I found my father's other gun still on the counter in his clinic. The rest was lost to the fires; I think after a few more hours of wandering through Dust I passed out amongst the dead. When I woke up I wasn't alone; The Astrolges, a local group of tribals had come to investigate the smoke."
"They took me in and taught me how to live off the land. My caretaker was a girl a few years older than me; Kella. During the year or so I stayed with them She taught me how to forage and hunt and even tried to marry me into the tribe. I sometimes wonder my life would be if I had stayed with her and live my life amongst the Astrolges."
"Why'd you leave?" Shepard asked.
"They planned on taking their animals, big elk looking things called Shielders, north into the Canadian wilderness. I was young and wanted to track down the people who killed my family and took Rose, so I eft and headed south. Eventually I ran into a Brahmin caravan taking a herd to Shady sands. After they saw how handy I was to have around I became a traveling handy man. I spent two years with the caravans before we rolled through Myrtle Beech and I met Mirada. She lured me in with her cooking, and I started making a life for myself here."
"I opened a shop and married Mirada. It was nice, the anger was fading and soon I would have a child of my own to worry about. It still hurt to think about my parents and dust, and in those peaceful days I could forget about Rose for a while and just be happy. It was nothing but selfish cowardice; how could I be happy when Rose was dead or worse? Why was I allowed to move on when all the others were raped and killed?"
"there was nothing you could've done" Jack said knowing exactly how those feelings could eat someone alive. She took his metal hand in hers and squeezed. He placed his organic hand over hers and nodded.
"When Mirada was entering the last trimester of her pregnancy, about two years after I'd arrived here, a traveling trader came here to Myrtle Beech pedaling miracle soil. Said it was taken from a vault in the Mojave and grew plants like crazy. We tested some out and saw that anything planted in it grew in a few days instead of months. You can imagine what a god send something like that to people who pull everything they eat from the dust. I convinced Shaun to lets us a plant a third of the towns crops in the new soil just to try it out."
He drank down the last of the whiskey and sighed.
"A plague came from that soil. Grew across the skin like moss and devoured the cells of the host. Some of us were immune and could fight it off, but two thirds of the town weren't. Wanna guess where Mirada fell. She died along with our child while I once again lived. The wastes had taken everything from me a second time, and this time there was no one to help temper my rage. Something inside me broke that day, and I threw aside my humanity. If the world would so callously take from me than so be it."
"I became a monster. Fueled by chems and rage I carved a niche within the mercenary community and took the name Crimson typhoon or to some the Red Reaper. If you had the caps, I'd do just about everything; collect a debt? I'm your man. Kill a pimp's whores for operating on your turf? Done and done. I can't believe half of the things I did. There was this job; a simple debt collection, only eight hundred caps, but the idiot ran from one of the Families in New Reno."
"So I track him down to a ho dunk town in the ass crack of nowhere, and find him. He's hiding in his house with his wife and daughter. I give him an offer, I'll pay the debt but I get to fuck his wife. She wasn't even that attractive, but I was horny and she was warm. The debtor stutters and trips over himself to come up with another way, but the wife she had some balls. Tells her daughter and husband to go outside. "Oh no" I say "he stays", he looked like he might actually have hit me then, but he just looks down and nods. The girl left the house and I got to work."
The table is silent as he talked.
"I fucked a man's wife while looking him in the eyes. Over an eight hundred cap debt I ruined a man's relationship with his wife. Later, I heard that he ate a bullet in New Reno. That was what my life had become, a never-ending orgy of destruction and violence. You know the wasteland as a way of reducing us to our base elements and that what it had done to me; it stripped me of any decency and left a cruel twisted thing where a man once stood."
"This continued for three years. Three years of murder and chaos all for caps or chems. The last Job I ever did for the New Reno Families was clearing out a whore house run by a madam who stopped paying her protection money. Simple job, go in shoot the Johns and whores then burn the place to the ground. I walk up to the place and start the work, the madam had hired some local thugs for protection, but I was on three different types of psycho at that point and my blood was boiling. they were easy to kill, but the whores were easier."
"Apparently, they'd been dosed with Chain, powerful chem destroys the mind and withdrawal is a hundred percent lethal. Most didn't even move as I took aim just stared blankly at the wall peacefully accepting their fate. When I found the stash of Chain I poured most of it down the Madam's throat and sent her running off into the night. Just as I was preparing to burn the place down I noticed a whore wandering out of the basement. I take aim and the girl falls to her knees and when I get closer to her I notice her hair. Red."
Rex takes a drag off his cigarette and exhales shakily. Tears form in his eyes and e starts shaking again.
"Sure enough, I look at her face, and yep it's my Rose. Her eyes were dead and her body covered in scars, but it was her. Suddenly all the rage and hated disappear and I revert to the fourteen-year-old I was. I start freaking out coming out of my high knowing that she'd die in the next few days of Chain withdrawal. I feel her hands wrap around the muzzle of my gun and I look down and she's placed my gun against her forehead. She looked up at me with the eyes I remembered; full of life and fire….."
Rex lets out a sob and wipes away tears as he continues.
"Then she closes her eyes and says "Bye Bye Rexy" and with my finger on the trigger I said "See you soon Rosie". I pulled the trigger and she fell backward, and with her death all my rage and hatred was gone. In that moment, I was left with only my guilt and my ghosts. After burning the whorehouse down I left the city and became a courier. It was a dangerous Job and since I was too much of a coward to kill myself I figured I'd let the wastes finish me off. For two years, I don't think I spoke, not one word, all I had was ghosts to talk to."
"Oh my god" Shepard said shuffling backwards in her chair.
"Eventually I delivered to the divide and walked the long road to the Mojave. It was only after I got shot in the head and found myself standing at the turning point for the Mojave did I finally see a purpose for this twisted life of mine. In this world, good men are eaten by the wastes, and made into monsters. So, a monster would the one to drag it kicking and screaming back into civilization. There was no place for god or angels here, only demons, and maybe in the redemption of Mojave and her people can a demon find forgiveness."
Rex extinguished the cigarette butt in an ashtray and steadied himself. He looked up to see Shepard and Jack examining him. The whiskey was fuzzy in his head and he felt fatigue deep in his bones; at the corners of his vision Rex saw the phantom forms of his ghosts begin to materialize. Shepard was the first to speak:
"Rex, I have no idea what to say" Shepard began "Some of the greatest men I've ever known have committed horrible atrocities. While some of the worst have risen to the occasion. I believe that a past is only just that: the past. I've seen the man you've become and he's a man I'm proud to ally with."
"I agree with the girl scout, Rex we all have shit in our pasts we aren't proud of but it's what you do with the present that counts." Jack said taking his hand.
"Shepard let's go and get some more whiskey" Veronica said shuffling Shepard towards the Bar leaving Jack and Rex alone.
"Jack I want to talk to you about something" Rex said facing Jack "for the longest time I was preoccupied with my own death. I've lived these last two years hoping that something would be able to kill me, but that changed when I met you. For the first time in years I didn't want to die, when I talk to you Jack I want to live. I want to be worthy of a woman like you."
"will you shut up with that shit? I'm just a psycho bitch" Jack said pulling her hand back.
Rex grabbed it and said "and I'm a schizophrenic with rage issues. Look Jack, I know if we open and let our guards down we could fuck each other up even more than we already are. But if we don't and pass up on something genuine and real than we'll spend the rest of our lives regretting the only shot of happiness that we have."
Jack looked at him for a moment a tear in her eye before saying "Okay Rex". Then she kissed him, and the kiss was soft and slow filled with their years of self-hatred and sadness. In that release their hands entwined and something began between them, a bond formed from shared sorrows and regrets. In one of the Taverns rooms they spent that night in each other's arms Jack allowing herself to feel safe in Rex's arms and Rex sleeping a sleep so deep that not even his ghosts could pierce it.
?
Watching through the window a figure stood silently observing the pair as they slept. Her red hair was blood red in the moonlight and she smiled as the two slept contently in front of her. Like a phantom she silently walked back to the window and opened it. Before slipping out of the room she turned back to look at the pair one last time and said:
"I'm happy for you Rex; find the happiness I stole from you little brother"
She shut the window behind her leaving no trace.