"Number Nine"
Ch. 19: Where the truth lies.
"Sometimes I lie awake
I dream of everyone
Who walked the path I take
Who ran beneath the sun
And I believe it's my destiny
Bound to survive against all odds."
- Exchange, "Where the truth lies"
Stella didn't know what time it was anymore.
Or which day from what week of the month.
She was vaguely aware that they still were in February… weren't they? After all, she had been captured at the end of the month, so it may be safe to say that now they were in March… right?
What she now knew for certain was that there wasn't any certainty in her new world… apart from the inescapability of her situation.
She had learned a thing or two about being a woman amidst a titanic encampment filled with Legion scum in the form of men dressed as ridiculously as possible.
What she couldn't ridicule about them was their strength. A strength they cultivated and earned every day with the Spartan-like training they underwent for hours.
While looking at their training grounds and platforms longingly from a gap on the tent canvas, wishing she could use their facilities as well to kill boredom, she knew better than attempting such a suicide move.
She had learned it the very instant she had gotten on her two feet again after the incident with the shock anklet.
It had been the middle of the night, and her monthly period had arrived at the worst possible moment. When her 'Master' had been soundly asleep and the chamber pot too close to him for her to even dare to approach.
So, long story short: when the cramps had gotten unbearable, she had gotten out of his tent with a bottle of clean water, knowing the communal latrines weren't too far away for her to be caught scurrying away from the anklet's radius.
It hadn't been the anklet what had betrayed her, but the scent of her own blood attracting one of the patrol mutts once she was done.
The dog had come accompanied by three muscled brutes who had worsened her already bad cramps when they had wiped the floor with her face until, luckily for her, before something else happened, her 'Master', puffy eyes and a freshly-shaven buzzcut, had appeared out of the blue. And he had given them his take on the matter in the form of formidable, pissed-off as fuck punches while 'lecturing' them about the consequences of 'damaging his personal propriety'.
Afterward, he had picked her up from the ground and carried her wordlessly back to his tent. Once there, he had practically showered her in healing powder paste, put the chamber pot and a clean rag near her with a towel for her bedroll… and he had gotten back to sleep.
Everything without uttering a single word.
She hadn't known how to react by then, a bit confused since she had thought Legion men to be closer to the Neanderthal type, knowing next to literally nothing about how women's reproductive systems worked beyond where to stick their dicks when they had the itch.
Next morning, her wish to strangle him had come renewed when, after bringing in some breakfast – maize gruel, per usual - he had lectured her for his good twenty minutes about, citing his words, 'how NOT to fuck up while under Caesar's rule'.
Mainly being a series of instructions of either getting out of the tent at her best or not getting out at all without his direct supervision.
She had ended up so sick from listening to him that half her breakfast had been eaten by his two dogs, which had seemingly taken a liking to her after feeding them that morning.
Stella didn't like dogs one bit.
She didn't like how they smelled, the inhuman amount of fur they left wherever they passed, and the unbelievable amount of drool one can get coated in when they felt like giving their love to you.
And these mongrels didn't know when to quit.
Like now, lying by her side, rolling up with folded paws and whimpering for the umpteenth time for a belly rub she, out of sheer boredom, had ended up giving just for them to shut up.
They seemed to leave her alone once their owner got inside the tent stinking of sweat after one of his marathoning bets with fellow Decani (she had learned those were from the rank he pertained to, a captain of sorts) to see how many pushups they could get done in sixty seconds.
Here, the primary entertainment among legionnaires when they weren't training, eating, sleeping, patrolling, or accosting female slaves, were demonstrations of physical power in the form of competitions and the arena.
Where they made bets against 'Profligates'. The ones they captured alive.
Like her.
Despite having been the first one mentioning the arena back at Ranger Station Charlie, her 'Master' didn't seem in a hurry to set a match with her. In fact, Stella got the distinct impression that the young man was trying very hard to make her stay at Fortification Hill as best as possible despite not being one bit gentle or courteous.
Besides ensuring that she was adequately fed and clean, he would sometimes make small conversation with her even if conversing wasn't his strong suit, and, half of the time, both ended up making snarky comments and rude gestures to the other.
Nonetheless, if it wasn't for those small verbal sparrings, Stella felt she would have gone insane even before the first week had passed. For not even the other slaves would deign to exchange more than useful commands with her in a highly botched up version of the English tongue mixed with a variety of words she swore they might have pertained to at least five different languages besides their common Latin-thingy nobody, but a handful of them were genuinely fluent in.
That had told her just how vastly different this alien world with an alien culture from hers was, trapped within an ideology that represented both the best and the worst of military prowess.
An ideology that rejected her as a soldier. A defender. A fighter.
Bitching with him – primarily due to their vast cultural differences – was the only thing constant in her life right now besides basic bodily functions.
So, the moment he was accosted by the canines upon entering the tent, earning eager lapping whereas he picked the mutts on his two muscled arms, accommodating the animals on his hips and shoulders as if they were but babies to him, she didn't waste the opportunity to mess with him.
"Socializing with your ilk, Decanus?"
She preferred to refer to him by his rank as he would do the same to her sporadically.
As if her Ranger status still meant something in a world where she was at the very bottom of the hierarchical and social chain.
He seemed in good spirits today, as his reply wasn't as mordacious as she had anticipated.
"Laugh if you will, Ranger, but there's much joy to give and take with creatures whose loyalty is as unwavering as their ferociousness the very instant a member of the pack is threatened." - he replied, allowing the big furballs to give him a thorough face wash – "If they recognize you as one of them, you can be damn sure that such a bond is not as easily broken as human relationships go by."
That picked her attention.
"Talking from personal experience?" - she probed.
However, he snorted inelegantly as he sat cross-legged with the animals on his lap, kicking his boots off.
"Don't psychoanalyze me, Stella." - he replied nonchalantly – "It doesn't suit you."
"Oh, wow, didn't know you were capable of even pronouncing such a fancy word, much less to apply its meaning correctly in context." – she bit back – "Maybe there's still a chance to salvation inside that thick skull of yours yet."
"Yeah, 'salvation' as in Profligate ways counts." – he retorted sardonically – "The day I'll want to switch sides by bending my knee before Kimball instead of Lord Caesar, you will be the first one to know, Ranger."
That was still a sore point in their conversations, and every single time either he or she would rise to the bait.
"At least my President is a war hero that supports the rights of every single Republican regardless of gender, race, age, or social status." – she spat – "A system a woman successfully implemented more than ninety years ago."
"A system a woman helped to implement." – he corrected – "It's so funny how your people tend to idolize Tandi so much and kind of forget the role her father, Aradesh, played in your Nation's shaping."
Stella's mouth went so agape that she almost forgot how to form a reply correctly.
"You know about our History?" – she asked, incredulous and amazed.
He shrugged.
"Gotta pretty strong connections with our Head of Intelligence." – he clarified – "Dunno how many truly care about who the NCR are. I honestly didn't give a crap, but information is crucial to our high echelons, thus to the Decani." – he shrugged again – "The more you know your enemy, the better the advantage over said enemy. Your country should apply the same principle if they wanna know what they're facing in the first place."
Stella's eyes squinted, a dangerous suspicion already forming in the back of her mind.
"So, this is it?" – she asked, suddenly furious and defensive – "You capture a Ranger to try wringing her out of information for your bosses?" – then, she flipped him her middle finger – "Fuck you. Ain't telling you shit."
But he sprawled all over his bedroll and allowed the mutts to settle with him, scratching one behind its ears.
"First of all." – he said, index finger raising up lazily – "Fuck YOU." – fingers middle and index switched briefly as he kept talking – "Second: don't give me ideas." – he added, fingers adding to his count – "And third: I'm NOT a fucking Frumentarius. Never was, will never be. That's the Fox's sphere."
Stella's ears perked up, unfamiliar with the title the man had used on their Spymaster, if they were talking about the same person, that is. Never know when this information could be useful… as long as she managed to ideate a solid and viable strategy to escape from this hellhole.
"Fox?" – she asked – "Wasn't your Spymaster nicknamed 'Snaketongue'?" – she snorted humorlessly – "He's been elected for five consecutive years as 'Most Popular Asshole' on the NCR Mojave propaganda campaign, you know."
She was surprised when he tsked at her casual flippantness.
"Outdated, as expected." – he said, shaking his head condescendingly – "See what I mean? You're so full of paperwork and shitty stuff, if the boresome sample we found in your archives and reports at the Ranger Station is of any measure to go by, that already old news gets years late to your superiors."
"What do you mean?" – she found herself asking, but the bastard had already tuned out and was playing with the smelly mongrels, rolling around with them while rawring and showing teeth.
She envied him, how easy his life seemed in comparison, throwing information carelessly around for her to digest.
For her to process how much of a failure her country's politics proved to be in her direst time.
Rose of Sharon Cassidy, 'Cass' for her friends, was glad she had gotten ahold of a whiskey bottle from the Mormons' supply agreement with the Garrets that Six had worked up months ago before braving the complex, obscure world of Vegas' underground.
At least, when she was drunk, her nose and cheeks got so puffy and red that her sense of smell got blessedly dwindled.
Because, in this place, the combined stenches of piss, shit, vomit, and general putrefaction had surpassed any previous experiences with humankind's worst of the worst.
"Blergh… if we weren't in a hurry, I would totally have taken some of the breathing masks Six told me she found in a canyon wreckage West of Primm from the 38." – Veronica complained, her voice slightly nasal as she was pinching her nose with her left hand – "This is, by comparison, worse than being in the immediate radius of a brahmin with diarrhea. And, believe me, unfortunately, I know what I'm talking about."
As she swung yet another mouthful of harsh liquor, Cass couldn't agree more: you could, literally, taste it.
And she would join Lil' Riding Punch in the bitching to feel better… if it wasn't because she feared that her taste buds were still too sober to ignore the overpowering bouquet.
Red Beret, as usual, was silent as a rock. The lantern he had borrowed from the Followers tightly strapped with duct tape over the scope of his rifle, making way for the rest to see where the hell they were heading.
Because they hadn't the slightest clue about directions down here, without the sun to even guide them through the day.
"Look, Leo." – somehow, after a while in silence, Lily's voice got every single one of them off-guard as even Beret jumped slightly upon hearing her speak – "It seems like somebody has been doing some plague cleansing down here."
An astute observation, given the already half-eaten state of the corpses of mutated rodents and roaches littering a particular corridor.
To a casual observer, it would have looked like the two groups of vermin had gotten in a territorial skirmish with several casualties on the way.
But Boone had been trained to detect not only how old wounds caused by bullets looked like on decaying corpses but also to get a general idea of the caliber used.
".44 and .357 six-shooters, a rifle and a 10mm." – he declared after finding several shells on the lower part of said corridor as it descended into a ramp to a lower level, thus making the shells roll to the bottom – "That would back up what you saw before losing them: Raul, the girlie and the tribal. The .357 must be from the other guys you said they were with." – he confirmed, nodding to Veronica, who waited impatiently for his verdict - "No signs of plasma, though." – sighing, he got up – "Might be the best clue we will come across here. Let's see where it leads."
Nobody objected a damn thing.
With that, Rex stepped in, picking up the scent of powder and battle, trotting ahead for the rest of the group to follow, a clear destination set that, by how things looked, was taking them to the Northern part of Vegas' old sewage system.
Cass secretly made a toast for that as she ran after the cybernetic mutt, caravan shotgun already prepared for action.
The situation in New Vegas' underworld, she had grown to know in a matter of hours, was a long shot from being 'ideal'.
In fact, she still didn't understand how House could have been so utterly oblivious to it… or how little he cared about the world outside The Strip's walls.
It had shown every time, after experiencing the post-Apocalyptic splendor of New Vegas, when the Courier's feet had walked the streets of the Freeside. As if the rest of the city only mattered to House when it served as a tasting sample of what was about to come behind the checking point at The Strip North Gate… or to pay those home rents nobody knew whom they were truly paying to, but added on the submerged economy of New Vegas.
Robert Edwin House was supposed to have absolute control over everything that happened within his territory – despite how much Freeside and Westside inhabitants liked to boast about an independence that, in practicality, was only theoretical.
Then, why would he allow this to continue? To even exist in the first place?
She had seen the distant drones that patrolled from the furthest point of the Westside to McCarran, Veronica and Arcade being the only ones knowing the whole extent of their rotative presence, Boone so accustomed to them that he mostly didn't care… and Zorro searching for blind spots where those unwanted flying spies couldn't reach.
House had the technology and the resources to control the sewers as well.
Did he think that blowing off most of the communication tunnels sufficed? Could he be so impossibly overconfident…?
Or was his complete disregard, despite his claims, for human life what made him so passive about it?
Anyway, her circular reasoning turned into smoke that vanished as quickly as it had come the moment her right forearm brushed lightly against Zorro's knuckles.
The jolt of electricity was instantaneous, and she had to make an extra effort to make her not-so-casual distancing look as natural as possible.
For the last hour, she had found herself walking way too close to him several times. And no matter how many times she would retreat, somehow, her body always would find the means to end up orbiting around him again, seeking unconscious closeness.
She knew she should contain herself. They were running from Charon and also on a mission, surrounded by his men, and with half the group missing (because they weren't the D-Word, no, no, no, no, no. No D-Words, lalalalala).
Yet she found herself daydreaming shit. Cheesy shit, to be precise.
The realization of how badly she had been crushing without even being aware of it couldn't have arrived at a worse moment.
How did she allow this to happen? The holding-hands thing, the growing mutual invasion of personal space (an invasion she had started in the first place, an invasion she did to nearly everyone she cared for, damn her affection-starving issues), the deal with sitting near him every time they camped, the back-to-back sleeping while on their respective bedrolls… Silly details that hadn't held any importance at the moment now were magnified inside her head, seeking clues to when that trust had evolved into this… hormonal-thingy mess.
She wasn't eleven anymore! This wasn't cute! This was downright pathetic and desperate! She should have grown out of these things long ago!
Then, she caught herself almost stepping into his boots… yet again.
The facepalm she delivered to herself echoed all through the cylindrical passage they were in, startling almost every single legionary in tow.
"Hey, Boss, hey…" – Raul's raspy voice came from behind, his skinned hands coming to rest upon her shoulders – "You okay?" – when she gave him a helpless look, the ghoul took her hitting hand, patting it softly as one would do to an impatient, violent toddler – "Don't do that again, okay?"
She repressed the impulse to pout. Raul was right, and she wasn't a child. She just would have to sort out how to work ou…
"What was that about?"
It took only a single whisper, and then, her hormones screamed again. It was the voice, wasn't it?
Another gap of time had passed. They were walking again, everything was quiet, and she had magnetized herself towards Zorro for the umpteenth time. Thus, inviting unwelcome questioning.
She was a lost cause.
"Sullivan?"
She suppressed the building growl of frustration she wanted to unleash. So many self-imposed restrictions were starting to wear on her. And she was hungry.
It must be well past breakfast time. She detested going to a confrontation with an empty stomach.
A confrontation with dangerous retarded junkies.
"Gotta question." – she replied to him instead of answering his question, her right index finger oscillating in midair – "How in the Holy Cow did you manage to locate me when Charon was after me, and you knew exactly which building to blow off?"
Zorro cocked his head to a side in a very avian-like manner, his blue eyes inquisitive.
"Charon?" – he asked – "You mean our ghoul persecutor?"
"Yup."
"That's his name?" – he pressed, suspiciously intrigued – "As in the Styx's ferryman myths?"
She held up her index finger again.
"Nununununu, Fox-Man." – she chided – "No question-deviating."
He snorted incredulously.
"I could say the same to you…" – he murmured, more to himself than to her – "But fine: it was thanks to Yes Man."
She almost tripped on her own feet.
"What?!" – she nearly yipped, indignant, struggling very hard to keep her voice low enough so Gabban and the rest wouldn't overhear what wasn't their damn business. Frumentarii = nosy guys – "You talking now with Yes Man?!"
"Why, yes, Sullivan." – he replied arrogantly, his voice sounding as indignant as hers – "Is there a problem?"
"How did you two get into contact?" – she pressed.
"Is this an interrogation?"
"Do you see any pliers or any other torture instrumental?"
"That's the way you interrogate people?"
"Stop deflecting questions!"
"So, it is an interrogation."
"No."
"Yes."
"I said no!"
"Bit moody, aren't we?"
"Because you're pissing me off intentionally!"
"And you are rising to the bait, I'd say."
"Fine! Be that way!"
"Oh, I wouldn't dare to disappoint, Sullivan."
"Go kiss a Deathclaw!"
"After you."
"URGH!"
It was obscenely easy to walk off Zorro once she was effectively pissed with him. She was too incensed to ponder onto a very deliberate auto sabotaging tactic as a result of her altered state. For she wasn't admitting shit, even to herself.
There are just some things you weren't prepared to admit, and much less when you were this irrationally angry with an empty stomach and a stupid crush getting in the middle of your normal cognitive processes. Some things in the Wasteland were a No-No.
Nonetheless, her little display had attracted attention, for Gabban and Miguel had turned around their heads to exchange questioning glances with their leader, who had clamped down to his usual hermetic self, giving away nothing.
Raul and their newest addition, Irina, having a more dilated experience of life in general, merely exchanged knowing glances, shaking their heads in unison.
This was suspiciously starting to resemble a traveling circus; Arcade and the oldest of the two Afro-American legionaries, Licaón, were the only ones who still got their feet on the ground and reacted in time by warning the others when the ambush happened.
The exact point had been the terrain under the Sharecropper Farms, where a widening of the path had led into a set of control rooms that, ultimately, were meant to guide the pre-War Maintenance staff into what looked to be an unusable sludge digestion chamber.
The Fiends had been hiding inside the higher pipelines.
They fell upon them armed with chainsaws, Shishkebabs, knives, and flamethrowers, dirtier than their average disgustingness, mohawks up with grime and grease, faces painted in black with oil sporting bloodshot, deranged eyes. Mad clucking noises and hysteric laughter began to fill every inch of the space as they closed in the group, dancing around them, switching weapons between hands cockily, clanking spiked knuckles on the pipes, directing disgusting obscene gestures to their prey, playing unabashedly with them. One of the junkies was daring enough to get too close to the Master Frumentarius, who, already unsettled from his last quarrel with the Courier, cut the other down with a violent slash he accomplished with Cass' combat knife, effectively opening up the bastard's throat and getting himself sprayed in the Fiend's blood.
The rest of the Fiends didn't waste any time attacking the group in disorganized retaliation… and the legionaries responded in kind with a rain of bullets quickly backed up by Raul's twin revolvers, Arcade's Plasma Defender and Six's 10mm.
Tactical formation and strategy went to hell the very instant the first wave fell, and they started pouring in non-stop.
Gabban and his men quickly ran out of ammo, so they resorted to close-quarters combat armed with the long knives dead junkies had dropped. At the first taste of real blood, the men frenzied.
Historically, and following the thirty-five years since Caesar began his expansion campaign, Utah tribes were renowned for their ferocity, for their land was as unmerciful and hard as the very Mojave they later had campaigned on. Not for nothing, the Legion's current Capital was Flagstaff in Arizona, as life in the Utah had been beyond physical endurance to even some legionaries. And they were trained to survive in any manner of hostile environment.
Lanius' tribe might have hailed from Arizona… but their roots could be traced back North, to the angry sands of the bordering lands of Utah.
And so, La Jauría, their more peaceful neighbors, Los Nuevos Nahuas, and the other nine tribes the Burned Man had conquered and assimilated for Caesar, were now the youngest and toughest batch of 'adult' soldiers under the Bull's banner.
If the Blackfoot founders – descendants from a pre-War ex-military group, now turned into Legion veterans - had been merciless; Utah legionaries, descendants from the survivors of many botched-up Vault-Tec social experiments, were bloodthirsty.
La Jauría's initiation rituals for women had been harsh, but for men had been thrice the worse. Pretty much like the Great Khans did these days.
Gabban had to remind this to himself every time he engaged Profligates in combat, as he had always found his own belligerence… kind of lacking when he compared himself to either Alexus or Vulpes.
Since the assimilation, Gabban's siblings had become rabid, pushy, competitive. Many Legion instructors had found them dangerous for the rest of the boys. And so, the remnants of their tribe followed in their example.
Gabban had been an unwilling accomplice, along with the other boys of their tribe, of three infanticides during their basic training instruction before turning fifteen when Alexus' real nature had been discovered by another child: if they knew, the Legion knew.
Whereas it had felt natural to defend a sibling from a life sentence, it had felt incredibly wrong to murder another boy in cold blood and play stupid in front of the instructors once the corpse was found… if it was ever found, that is, for Vulpes had ideated quite the ways to get rid of them once the first one had proven his efforts insufficient.
Since the Burned Man had forced their hands during the Dimidio, Gabban had to put an extra effort into recognizing Vulpes and Alexus as the siblings he once had loved, and not the angry pack leaders, each in their own way, they had turned into with the years.
Like now.
If the men didn't need any further motivation than blood to turn berserk, Vulpes' example wasn't helping at all: having taken one of the Shishkebabs from the fallen Fiends, he was having the time of his life carving his merry way from charred flesh to charred flesh, hunting down even the ones who turned heel from the battlefield.
Gabban had even heard him hissing that phrase he often employed when he wanted to scare off new Milites (1): 'Pile body upon body'.
Not that the Courier wasn't keeping up with the general madness: once her 10mm ammo reserves had run out, she had started picking more and more loaded guns from their backpacks non-stop – going from a standard 9mm caliber to a monstrous .50 MG from an anti-material rifle that, despite being too big for her, she managed to shoot with a downright frightening accuracy – until she had picked up the mood to join in the hunt-down the scattering junkies.
The two of them were angrier than neither their family nor their companions had ever seen them, and it showed on their sloppy leadership when more Fiends kept coming and neither of them, too focused on their targets, gave the order to retire.
And Gabban's desperate command fell on deaf ears.
Irina, who had been attempting to scare the junkies off to prevent getting surrounded, had but vanished without leaving a trace. And so had happened with the Mexican ghoul as well once the human part of their group - Courier, legionaries, and Follower alike - got corralled against a slimy wall; the junkie who attempted to grab the girl for, no doubt, devious purposes, got headbutted by a snarling Vulpes until the nozzle of a huge service rifle was pointed below his chin.
"Well, well, well, what in the holy fuck we've gotta here?" – a gruff, gritty voice broke through the hysteric victory clamor of the drug addicts – "Fresh meat, I'd say. Whaddya think, boys?"
The answer was a deafening chorus of maniacal hollering.
The owner of such a voice (and the service rifle pointing at the Master Frumentarius, too) was a forty(ish)-year-old piece of crap that Six had already the displeasure of getting acquainted with.
"Duke…" – the girl spat, eyeing the Fiend leader as if he were the most disgusting and diseased radroach she had ever seen.
That seemed to get the Fiend's attention, for he turned his helmeted head and squinted his bloodshot eyes until he recognized her.
"What the fuck…?!" – the man exclaimed and, to the girl's immense disgust, he was smiling – "I'll be damned! If ain't Lolita Khan and her boot-licking, cunt-suckling band of losers!" – after eyeing the rest of the legionaries, he added perversely – "So full of yourself now, surrounded by tough dicks instead of tough dykes." – he laughed at his own bad pun – "Bit far from your beloved Red Rock Canyon, huh?"
"Never too far from ears sharp enough to reach Papa Khan in no time, telling him to take a big fat dump on the next ship delivery to Vault 3." – she defied – "So straight up those knickers, for they've gotten so twisted that your balls are irrigation-lacking. Thus, your brains."
"And she even loses the accent now. Cute." – the Fiend leader mocked – "Bet having your little mouth so full of cock all the time has improved your speech. Mind if I add on your education, or do I have to sign for an appointment?"
"Keep dreaming, Duke. Go back to your basement and jerk that frustration off until you rip it off the roots." – she spat.
"Did you know that, sometimes, dreams become true, Lola?" – the man replied, his deviated sight getting more and more deranged as he neared his motorcycle helmet to his prey – "You come to my territory, kill my men and lie to my very fucking face expecting a free pass without getting that pretty ass slapped? I'd say you've been a bad, bad girl, and I happen to have the remedy for that. Call it a payout for the men I lost today."
"Touch me, and you aren't seeing a single Jet inhaler for the rest of your putrid existence."
Usually, threatening a drug addict with cutting their source would be enough for the evil being pulled from the root… so she hadn't been expecting the chorus of laughter that filled the sewage chamber.
"We don't need your stupid supply line anymore, Lola." – Duke replied, laughing with his men – "Screw the Khans. We've gotta nice place down here where we got supplied by those slackers at the Black Market. Give it time… and soon all the fucking Westside will be ours."
"Yeah, and then The Strip too." – the girl mocked in return – "Do you really think that such a move wouldn't be stopped either by the NCR, House, or even the Legion once they see your ugly faces all over the city they covet so much?" – watching the raider leader froze in place, she got cockier and added – "There are bigger, meaner players on this board than the Khans or your pathetic excuse of a tribe."
"NCR can't cope with us, and Bot Man doesn't give a crap so long he's getting caps flowing in, which we can control by striking a deal with him 'bout the traffic getting in and out New Vegas." – Duke assured, his plan evidently sounding brilliant as fuck inside that addled mind of his – "As for the Legion…" – he smiled – "They've already invited us to join them. We're the Legion." – he declared triumphally.
However, by Six's right, Zorro started cackling. First softly, then uncontrollably.
"Y-you?" – he asked incredulously as if the notion were the funniest thing he had ever heard – "With the Legion? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
As if infected by his merriment, Fénec, Licaón, and Pequeño Chacal laughed madly as well, finding the Fiend's statement as funny as their leader did. The only ones not finding it amusing in the slightest were Gabban and Miguel, too horrified by their leader's suicide move to even react, whereas Arcade, being the closest to Six, took her little hand in his, ready to put himself between her and that bunch of psychos if they but dared to touch her.
Livid from the ridicule he was subjected to, Duke shoved his rifle's butt into Vulpes' stomach, making the young man double over himself. That released a chain reaction where Six kicked said rifle off the Fiend's hands and attempted to put herself between Vulpes and Duke to ultimately end up being pulled by Arcade, who interposed his body between her and the blows that immediately came over from everywhere.
Gabban and the rest made a barrier between more blows aiming for the Courier and the Master Frumentarius when the latter drove a fist through the face protection of Duke's helmet, crushing the plastic and the Fiend leader's nose in the process.
However, the fight was quickly extinguished when Duke's iron knuckles connected to Vulpes' temple, rendering the growling young man unconscious.
What in the goddamn had she been thinking?
Standing at the training grounds with almost half the encampment looking at her hadn't been what she had devised when, out of pure and unadulterated boredom, she had given in to the teasing of her 'Master' regarding her fighting technique, challenging him to a wrestling duel.
The bastard had been patiently waiting for this moment to come as he had given her the most disturbing, excited grin she had ever seen in another human being as an answer to her challenge.
Now, hands and feet tightly bandaged and both of them dressed in training tunics, Stella doubted herself for the umpteenth time since her big mouth got her in this trouble.
Was it worth it? To trade her comfortable, incredibly dull existence under the Legion's boot for training and fighting surrounded by savages that could turn her already shitty life into a nightmare if she but dared to overstep their boundaries?
And what exactly were 'Legion boundaries' in training grounds for their standards? How much could she push her luck breaking bones before all turned into plain aggression?
How much was she ready to give out regarding her training for them to take notes?
"Legionaries!" – the Decanus' voice rose above the general ruckus fueled by curiosity – "One of the first rules you're taught since you start training is that a Legion warrior shall not fear the enemy!"
This declaration was met with a unanimous short battle cry.
"That we are but extensions to the power of Mars!"
Another confirmation translated into hollering. If Stella wouldn't have been so incredibly intimidated by the sheer amount of them congregated around her, she would have laughed at their macho-men antics.
"That a weak link is intolerable on a battlefield where poor judgment can cost you and your Brothers' lives!"
She recalled an old pre-War holodisk she used to watch when she had been fifteen at the local cinema, now banned from the RODAM or Republic's Official Database of Audiovisual Media.
"Your duty is a warrior's duty!"
In the movie, a king from the Ancient Times guided his people to battle against a self-proclaimed god from the East. A monstrous man surrounded by gold and splendor whose slave army was bound to conquer a city of progress, mother of great minds and philosophers: Athens.
The king and his men were an independent country allied with Greece: Sparta.
"Your compromise is a warrior's compromise!"
Among Athenians, Thebans, and Thespians their numbers were great, but what they brought in quantity, they lacked in quality.
Sparta, on the other hand, brought only 300 Spartans.
When questioned about his compromise, the king asked his men what their profession was.
"Your profession is a warrior's profession!"
The men at this encampment, dressed in red rags and worked to the last fiber, were the closest embodiment, as they cheered the Decanus, that Stella had ever seen to those once fictional, now frighteningly real Spartans waiting for a chance to show the more prominent, much better prepared NCR army, that the First Battle for the Hoover Dam, instead of defeating them as it had happened to the ancient warriors at the Thermopylae, had been but the first act to a much larger-scaled battle, that could very well culminate in Salamis, with the Republicans turning tail the same Persians were forced to do.
"A profession you are expected to perform to the best of your capabilities!"
If these last three years since she got her Ranger badge had been Hell on Earth putting up with the general hopelessness of the Mojave Campaign… now Stella feared that Chief Hanlon's words at Camp Golf could be true: that holding on to the Dam and New Vegas would eventually kill the Republic.
"You are expected not only to be a warrior but a GOOD warrior!" – she heard the Decanus' declarations from a distant reality, vaguely aware that his passion had congregated even children among them. Children training to be soldiers. Children training to become killers – "And do you know what a GOOD warrior does?"
The tension, at this point, was almost palpable.
"A GOOD warrior learns from his enemy!" – and now, suddenly, all the eyes were upon her – "This woman is a Republican warrior. A Ranger."
The jeers and boos were almost instantaneous, but the Decanus' words somehow silenced them.
"A Ranger that could kill any of you with some well-placed moves!" - he continued – "Many of you have only seen battle against troopers, and even more of you have never battled against the Republic at all! The Rangers, though, are a very different story from the bland Profligates you have engaged in battle so far!"
His grand discourse, though, was cut by a presumptuous brute. The likes that train their bodies like a pro but have the brains of a retarded ten-year-old. Those abounded in the Republic's Army as well. None of them passed the Rangers' most basic standards.
"But that's a woman!" – said brute bellowed – "Women are but weaker, incapable beings meant for bearing children and ensuring the survival of our species!"
She wasn't sure, but Stella could swear she saw her 'Master's' blue eyes darkening.
"Wanna test that, legionary?" – he asked, and there was a challenge in his voice – "Would you be willing to bet your life upon that statement against a Ranger?"
The daring peas-for-brains scoffed disdainfully.
"I wouldn't waste my time fighting against an inferior being like her."
"Is that so?" – the Decanus asked; a venomous, forked smile dawning upon his lips – "Or is it that, deep inside, you are afraid of engaging in battle with a woman who could very easily break your neck?"
The sod's face got several tones scarlet as he bellowed again.
"I don't fear the enemy!"
Stella then realized the trap in which her 'Master' had corralled the poor idiot.
"Prove it."
A space was made for the two combatants to begin.
"Stella." – she heard her 'Master' saying from behind – "Kill him… if you like. You have my blessing."
And she, with great pleasure, did so.
Guilt was something Raul Alfonso Tejada was well-acquainted with.
Something he had learned to live with like a second skin underneath the already rotten one after radiation's kiss.
Something that had been weighing on his conscience since he could barely remember.
Mexico City, much earlier than when the bombs fell, had been a lair of corruption and violence despite the washed-up face it had put in front of the gringos and overseas tourists, treating them with Mexicans' exotic, magnificent gastronomy, their colorful traditional garments, their mariachi bands, their tequila, and their beautiful, soft-spoken women. Raul's family ranch had been reasonably far from the immense Capital… but, before the War, one could never have been far enough from its siren's chants.
The Tejadas had been poor. Half of their country had been in the same situation, and even more since the '50s. That had been when the United States had decided to start putting pressure on Mexico to destabilize its economy and, ultimately, militarily invade them, so Raul's parents had never thought much about it.
But he had. He had wanted to give his family a better life.
He had gotten into one of those criminal thieving gangs at the tender age of thirteen.
Money had nearly blinded him.
It had been so easy… to prey on small stores, bursting open their cash registers by night; to pickpocket overweight tourists who couldn't chase after you even if they tried their damn hardest; to bully less powerful gangs into handing up their money from time to time…
They had been one of the meanest, toughest bands South of Mexico City, their territory.
And they had risen to power too quickly.
What did they know about drugs and human trafficking before petty thefts evolved into much more extensive operations? They had been children, stupid kids who had been seduced by adult's promises of luxury life, of easy money in exchange for small, apparently innocuous collaborations at guarding entrances while, inside unnamed warehouses and shady brothels, steep illegal transactions took place.
The only rule that mattered was to keep your trap shut.
Cartels in Mexico City had abounded, and Raul had been quick on the take to bid his farewells before he got himself inside a world he knew that, once it seized you, you could never walk off it.
He had returned to his family ranch with a low head and several police detentions on his back, but nothing too serious.
Unlike those friends he left behind. And the tiniest part of him that had died with it.
Despite its usually sensationalist content, El Periódico de las Aburridas had kept consistently coming to Hidalgo Ranch, Raul's family business, throughout the years.
And so, amidst superfluous content, Raul had caught glimpses, from time to time, of familiar names stealing the newspaper's front page in the format of arrested or shot down relevant mob criminals who, once, had happened to sit in his same class at Primary School.
And then, the annexation happened.
After Jingwei's forces had landed in Alaska with a large parachute assault in 2066, the United States didn't take their defeat too well.
Canadians had resisted longer than they should have, but Mexico, already impoverished down to the point of no return, had given into North America's demands… and then, all their History and proud Tenochtitlán roots had, finally, yielded to Uncle Sam's monster and had become the fifty-first State.
Nonetheless, all of this had been but mere news to read in the newspaper as the only real change Raul had noticed in his new life as an American citizen had been the total disappearance of their currency, the Mexican peso, to deal exclusively with North American dollars.
Becoming one with Uncle Sam greatly helped Mexico to economically grow again.
Pity it had only lasted less than a decade.
He hadn't understood the bombs the same way his family, isolated in a big, prosperous ranch, hadn't understood how charity and goodwill would have brewed such a monster once their food reserves had begun to dwindle too dangerously close to starvation.
They should have seen it coming, for there's not a more powerful drive for people than hunger.
The night the arson had stolen his family in almost its entirety away, he had felt how yet another part of him had died by leaving his parents, his grandmother, and his brothers and sisters behind as his hand had gripped Rafaela's in an iron grip while they had run away from the violent refugees their family had received in their house with open arms and Christian solidarity.
Radiation started kicking in just a few months after arriving at the ruins of old Mexico City. He hadn't known what that had meant at the time, but the increasing tiredness, the trembling, the hair-falling thing, the blood coughing… he hadn't wanted to die. He still had to take care of Rafaela, the only family he had had in all the world.
He hadn't been strong enough. Radiation had bested him.
And then, Rafaela had been too young, too naïve, and too good to survive on her own in a world where the only law that mattered was the law of the strongest.
She hadn't stood a chance.
But so the bastards who had raped, tortured, and mutilated her hadn't also stood a chance against the devil the bombs had created.
He didn't have many bullets, but he had enough.
With yet another piece of himself irremediably lost and broken, he had attempted to begin again, first pressing North, then East. To Arizona.
Two-Sun had been the bastardized version of its pre-War counterpart, Tucson, but he had been happy there.
As happy as an old, broken, over a century-year-old ghoul with a false name on his clothes and a profession he didn't enjoy could have been anyway.
Claudia had worked in the local brothel. He had wanted to protect her, to keep an eye on her most violent clients. He even had fantasized about helping her out of her harsh way of living, about procuring for her the same an old brother would have done.
She had reminded him so much of his Rafaela…
And then, more raiding scum had arrived at Two-Sun. And he had been the idiot enough to think that selling them ammunition would appease them enough to leave alone the place he had grown fond of calling 'home'.
Since when does selling means for violence buy peace?
At his already advanced age, he should have known better.
They had found entertainment in raiding the brothel, killing the working girls there, and kidnapping Claudia for their own sick amusement.
They had been prostitutes, considered by both pre-War and post-Apocalyptic societies as the lowest form of human life. Nobody would have missed them more than they would miss a glass of whiskey in which to drown their pathetic existences, right?
Wrong.
Raul had tracked them. Claudia had been dead by the time he had caught up with Dirty Dave and his brothers.
He had made sure they had paid dearly for it.
But then, once he had given Claudia proper sepulture, the only thing he had been able to provide for her in the end, Raul had felt more of a ghost than the man he once had been.
His body already so deteriorated that it had suited the broken state in which he had abandoned Two-Sun to find the Grim Reaper.
But then, again, the Reaper didn't seem too interested in him, for he had survived the desert, and then Tabitha…
And then…
The glowing hand that had pulled insistently at his' when the raiders had become a swarming cloud of angry wasps had not abandoned him since they had firstly hidden inside one of those broken pipelines, then pressed through said pipeline down to lower levels.
As she was unable to elaborate on why or where they were going, his companion was proving to be quite a challenge to follow not only because she was half a head taller than him, but she was quicker than she looked.
And every time he had dared to question her, the only gesture she had given him in response had been one of urgency, as if every second was counting dearly for her.
His inner tour revisiting bittersweet memories had kept him occupied whilst following her, too focused on the growing denial he was developing in the face of losing something that now was precious to him.
Jefecita, the chavo, and the others.
Whereas Raul was well aware that he was an old sack of bones, those two sweet, violent, and a tad too emotional for their own good kids, along with Brotherhood's niña bonita were the ones he cherished the most from their strange group.
They were simply too naïve, quarreling like the lovebirds they were, too focused on how confused they felt around one another to think straight in a situation they shouldn't have found themselves in the first place.
What were they doing, commanding people like war veterans and pulling triggers instead of fooling around like they should be? Did the world learn nothing from the bombs, allowing children to play with guns instead of toys?
They needed someone to protect them, even from themselves.
Someone that knew more about life, someone who could guide them. Someone like him.
Raul wasn't abandoning them. He wasn't failing again.
And he would have turned heel, back where he was needed the most… if he didn't intuit that his mute companion had a plan.
They weren't running away as he had initially feared when Irina took his hand, signaling him to remain quiet as the humans were taken away by the Fiends.
She was heading for something.
And that very something was revealed to him in the worst possible manner.
Raul saw all of his life parading before him the moment a vast space shrouded in shadow came into view.
An almost gargantuan space with several levels connected with precarious, rusty pre-War auxiliary ladders.
But what scared him out of his mind wasn't the deep pit of blackness that was opening its maws for him to sink… but the unholy amount of greenish glow that swarmed below their feet at the bottom.
Raul knew he had frozen on edge, his silhouette visible to all the moving life below him.
Because the several sources of that swarming glow were alive.
Very much alive.
Despite counting several dozens, he still didn't know how they moved so impossibly organized and quick, climbing slimy walls like overgrown salamanders while others simply dropped from several points above, tucked as they had been in the most unsuspected spaces, taking advantage of every single hole and every single corner. Their raspy, almost inhumane growling made Raul aware that his sweat glands were still very much operative since he was acutely aware of how drenched and cold his back and hands felt.
Irina let go of his hand.
A towering, elongated Glowing One male barely clothed in rags stepped in as soon as he got sight of her.
The two were reunited in the most tender, passionate embrace Raul had ever watched between two necrotic beings, used as they were to physical reject even amidst their own kind.
The elongated male cupped Irina's emaciated face as if it was the most precious thing in the world for him, and then, the two of them… sort of kissed.
Because they hadn't any remaining lips to do so.
However, to Raul, it was the most magical, beautiful thing he had ever looked at, no matter the viscous glowing threads that hung between their mouths briefly after they pulled apart to gaze at each other.
And then, the male's white orbs landed over Raul, questioning, a low warning growl coming from the depths of his throat as he cradled his beloved between his skeletal arms.
Irina then pulled from him, demanding that he look her in the eyes with gestures.
Her beau was the stubborn type, for she had to slap him hard in the arm to gather his attention again.
Whereas he attempted to gather her in his arms once more, she was having none of it, for she took a step back and repeated the gesture to look at her.
The other seemed frustrated but did as asked.
And then, suddenly, they started conversing. With their hands.
Raul, in truth, had very little knowledge in Sign Language, and they were going full speed, every exchange punctuated by growls signaling how they felt: him first worried, then angry; her sad, then increasingly frustrated.
A third Glowing One, a female, stepped into the conversation, briefly brushing Irina's cheek with her fingers, signaling her fondness, then adding to the frenetic gesticulating.
Raul was fascinated how the conversation, as far as he could tell, evolved into both females heatedly arguing with the tall male, as he apparently was having none of it, but they were slowly corralling him, their much shorter stances growing pissed by the minute.
Two more females added into the discussion, siding with Irina and her friend, and then a timid male stepped in as well, playing the mediator part when Irina's valentine crossed both his arms in a hermetic gesture Raul found hilariously resembling a certain chavo he knew.
As the argument continued, the only non-glowing ghoul present swept his eyes around, taking in the different shapes and bone wear of the whole group present. He was startled when he spotted the tiny silhouette of a child, holding a tamed giant rat pup between their fragile arms.
This was a community, a whole underground community of luminous necrotics. The rejected, the banished, hidden from a world dominated mainly by dangerous creatures and prejudiced humans.
And they were still sane. Perfectly so.
Somehow, after a while, the discussion went to a halt, the tall Glowing One still giving Raul the eye but nodding in understanding.
Then, someone brought him a rusted pan and a metallic pipe.
And then, Raul had to cover both his auditory cavities as the bashing the other made with his instruments echoed throughout the gargantuan structure. The sound repeating a pattern.
And so, in a matter of minutes, most of the community was making preparations.
Irina turned around and met Raul's eyes. She then pointed at his revolvers, making a gesture of taking off the safety mechanism.
Raul's rotten smile could have competed with a vintage mailbox.
Magister Arrius had allowed them to watch the slave Ranger woman fight with some of the strongest foot legionaries at The Fort.
Lupus was excited, having never seen a girl knock out guys twice her size with barely four well-thrown kicks and punches. He didn't know someone as small as she could be so powerful!
Some of the boys around him mimicked her fighting stances, but he was utterly taken.
She had killed a legionary on her first round with the explicit permission of her owner, the blonde Decanus that reminded Lupus so much of Gabban, Master Inculta's Second-In-Command.
He had interacted only once with Gabban, but Lupus had found him quite nice and funny, having told him a joke about two Lakelurks swimming into a concrete wall and one turning to the other saying 'Dam'.
However, this Decanus didn't look one bit nice to Lupus, his expression slightly feral and his stance tense once he had been the one engaging the slave woman in combat.
The wrestling had been, with a difference, the most long-winded since the round of fights had started.
It had been shocking watching a slave make her owner bleed as the two of them had kept throwing punches at the other, all the fighting keys the woman had previously used with her former opponents utterly useless against the Decanus.
However, despite having both her eyes black and a split lip due to her Master's quick punches, the woman still managed to put up a move that surprised all of the present men and children.
For she took a step back when the Decanus threw a blow and then took him by surprise when she turned her evasive maneuver into a palm strike right into his face quickly followed by a leg sweep that, ultimately, rendered the man at her mercy all over the sandy ground.
A tense silence had ensued, many of the onlookers ready to grab the offending slave to punish her for having bested her Master when the Decanus, far from being angry, began to laugh.
"That's it!" – he exclaimed as he got up off the ground – "See? Rangers are not to be underestimated!" – he added, now turning to their public, wiping his bleeding nose with a hand – "Today, you have learned how the NCR best of the best fights. This…" – he emphasized, pointing at the woman with his index finger – "… is what you should expect on the battlefield. Coming from men and women that might look like weaklings to you… when they could be the very last thing you'll ever see." – he finished, making a mute signal to his slave to follow, ending the improvised class for today.
Lupus was so awed that he didn't hear the command Magister Arrius gave them to get back to the children's grounds. The woman and her owner passed right before him when the man stopped, turned his head, and, out of a sudden, Lupus had his electric, inquisitive blue eyes on him.
"You, the boy." – he addressed, his tone firm and commanding – "Come here."
Lupus didn't react to the command immediately, unsure if it was truly meant for him in the first place.
"Come here, boy." – the Decanus repeated.
The child approached the towering, hulking young man still eyeing him with inquisitive, cold eyes.
"Look at me when I speak to you."
Lupus raised his head almost instantaneously, knowing how meek and pathetic he must have looked to a superior, going with his head low like a dog. Master Inculta would be so disappointed with him.
However, instead of anger, he found confusion and something vaguely akin to warmth when his eyes met with the Decanus'.
"What's your name?" - the man asked, though his voice had lost a great deal of its harshness this time.
"Sir, Numerus Novem, sir!" – he replied without hesitation like a true legionary would.
However, he didn't expect the following words that came out of the man's mouth.
"Not your temporary name. Your true name."
Upon hearing that, Lupus panicked. Did he know? About his secret name? How was it possible?
Did he also know that he had given Master Inculta a hug? Magister Arrius said that hugs and kisses were for little children, not for men. That a man should only hug and kiss his wife and that he should do so in private. Showing that kind of affection for another legionary was improper and a weakness. Punishable by five lashes.
Lupus didn't want him or Master Inculta to get punished for hugging. The priestesses at the Temple in Flagstaff had always given them orphans lots of hugs and kisses… and he kind of missed it.
Once you turned eight, you were deemed old enough to start training.
And, suddenly, all your friends you had been hugging since you were little were now 'off-limits'.
Whatever that meant.
"Numerus Novem." - then, relief that came with the weight of Magister Arrius' hard hands over his tiny shoulders, signaling the interrogation as officially over – "Appreciate you keeping watch of my disciple here, Decanus. However, I think I can take it from here."
Lupus wasn't sure, but he swore he detected a tense undertone in his instructor's voice.
The Decanus did not dignify the older man a reply but instead bid Lupus vale.
"Until we meet again, boy." – he added as a farewell.
Whereas he was a superior and a man stronger than most; a man – quoting Master Inculta – he could learn from, for 'knowledge is power' … Lupus wasn't so sure he wanted to speak with him again.
Six wasn't sure that her 'cell' would qualify to be called so.
Between maintenance rooms and ample concrete shafts meant to serve in the pre-War as holding tanks for combined sewers, the Fiends had constructed a series of platforms, guard posts, and individual rooms from scrap with old wooden planks, reused pipes, pressed junk, plastic panels, pieces of old pneumatics and the like, all sloppily connected and/or screwed with all manner of nails, duct tape, and even staples.
She feared more the precarity of such structures than their inhabitants.
And Duke and his men were not something one took lightly if you valued your life.
They had separated her from the others, putting her inside a medium space that she had already deduced was someone's bedroom. For it had all the 'commodities' one could get while living in the sewers: a bedroll with some actual straw pillows and a military blanket, discolored from use; an old cabinet no doubt tightly closed and packed with stolen goods, a rusty trunk and some insignificant trifles all over a broken table.
Her first instinct upon finding herself alone had been to pick a small piece of a broken mirror resting over said table, tucking it away inside her pants' waist.
They hadn't even bothered to chain her or to take her clothes off, only her Pip-Boy, so she could put up a fight if she managed to get a single target alone and close enough.
The rest would be a matter of stealing a weapon and...
Her chain of thoughts was violently interrupted when the door of the room she was in was opened to reveal the armored silhouette of Duke.
And he had her Pip-Boy.
"Well, Lolita Khan, you and I gotta some quality time at last."
He closed the door behind him. Six could hear muffled laughter outside.
The fact that he still was in full metal armor minus the helmet would pose a problem, as the raider leader was considerably taller than her.
And she wanted her Pip-Boy back.
"Been thinking…" – he continued, passing the unstrapped device from one hand to the other – "What the fuck is a wisp of a kid like you doing in the Khans, anyway? They ain't famous for making it easy for their rookies." – then, he started pacing around her, like a vulture smelling blood – "You don't look to me like you could resist much abuse, but maybe ol' Duke is wrong, eh?"
That gave her an idea.
"Try me." – she said as defiantly as possible whilst, deep inside her mind, she was screaming, kicking, and crying like the little girl she sometimes felt she still was. If she could get a hold on her Pip-Boy… – "You might find my endurance quite surprising." – she forced herself to vomit, word by word, adding a suggestive cadence she wasn't feeling in the slightest – "Unless you are all bark and no bite, Duke."
The man paused his circling, sizing her from head to toe. His nose still swollen and slightly crooked due to Zorro's punch. Fiends had literally next to no medical knowledge if the botched job they had done to it by putting on a piece of duct tape and clogging the bleeding with a dirty piece of cloth was of any measure to go by.
"Lil' manipulative bitch, ain'tcha?" – the man replied, though his bloodshot eyes told another entirely different story. The pig was interested, but he still got two neurons to put up a tough act – "Wonder if that's gotten you so far double-crossing your folk all fine and dandy while sucking Legion cock."
The transformation her face must have shown was cue enough for the man to start laughing.
"Didn't think I wouldn't put one and one together?" – he asked, clearly pleased to have his suspicions confirmed – "Your boyfriend. Bit mouthy for his own good, eh? After that display, I had to check it for myself." – he added, enjoying every second of his clearly essayed explanation – "Guess stripping down a Legion soldier ain't that easy when they're conscious. You would know, since you're a Legion whore." - he added sardonically – "Was looking for some tribal tattoo or some shit like that, but found something better. Nastiest thing ever, the marks on his back. Son of a bitch must be tough as shit to survive something like that. Bet he fucks as hard as a rabid bighorner bull, huh?"
"What have you done to him?" – she found herself asking, the threat behind her words unmistakable.
She wanted her Pip-Boy back. And she wanted Zorro back as well.
"Now I'm talking business, ain't I, Lola?" – Duke replied, savoring the moment – "Tell you what: we're still interested in allying ourselves with the Legion… with conditions."
"Tell that to the Legion guy you've just kicked and stripped." – she hissed, willing her eyes not to remain on her Pip-Boy for too long.
She wanted it back so badly!
"And here's where you come in, Lola." – Duke said, too overconfident for his own good as he got closer to her – "I've noticed you two wear these." – the Pip-Boy's screen was now a few inches from her nose as he held it with a single hand – "I'm familiar with them since we got a handful from Vault 3." – she shuddered, thinking of the walls filled with blood and explicit graffiti she saw the first time she got inside the occupied Vault to deliver the first batch of chems to Motor-Runner – "This thing. It's blocked." – he sentenced – "Bet there's tons of Legion intel inside it, just what I need to negotiate with your Cesar. I just need the password." – then, his ugly face replaced the device's screen – "We can do this the easy way… or the hard way, Lola. With my dick in your ass while my men stick theirs in your boyfriend's in turns as the rest of your friends watch. Your pick. One chance."
She couldn't believe that, having planned this so thoroughly, the stupid junkie could be so unbelievably RETARDED.
But she didn't tell him otherwise.
"You cannot unlock it without me." – she told him, willing her eyes and body language once more not to seem too eager to betray her attachment to the electronic device. The less they knew, the better – "I have installed a software that deals with my voice patterns."
"Then unlock it and change the settings." – Duke replied.
She recalled Burke then, how easily would he have played this poor imbecile to his convenience.
"Do we really have to do this?" – the correct intonation, the correct amount of defeatism, a slight touch of resignation – "The Legion…"
"The Legion can suck me dry!" – Duke exploded – "Just the very fucking same you will if you try to fuck with me again!"
Allow the other to interrupt you. Let their control slip from their very hands.
"Alright, alright…" – resignation, defeatism, a momentary olive branch – "I can unlock it, but you'll have to wear it."
Bloodshot eyes squinted.
"Why is that?"
"Because the device reads your vital signs. If it reads mine, it automatically would assume it's me. If you want to switch ownership, the device must recognize your vitals to update data and react to your touch and vocal orders."
It had been too easy.
"Alright." – Duke conceded, strapping the gauntlet around his left forearm – "Now what?"
"I'm gonna give it an order, and it should unlock the interface." – she explained. Calm, collected, and cold. The way Burke liked it the most - "Once you have the device working, wait for the system to load your characteristics, and then we can go to the settings."
She could tell that the man understood only very little of what she had told him if his face was of any clue, but it didn't matter.
"Okay…" – he nodded – "Give it the order."
Too easy.
"Very well." – she acquiesced, taking a step back – "Yes Man… fry him."
The amount of voltage that stemmed from the device right into the Fiend leader's system was so tremendous that not a single sound escaped the man's lips as he dropped to the concrete floor, where she left him contorting - nose and ears bleeding, eyes white and tongue-biting - allowing her time enough to calmly gather her hidden weapon and sink it right into his gullet.
Too damn easy.
Once the bastard stopped moving, she waited for Yes Man to give her the green light to pick back her device. She also took the small key with a chain rounding the corpse's neck.
She didn't feel complete again until the Pip-Boy was strapped back on her left forearm.
The screen loaded several maps without further command on her part, hinting at a hidden line of interconnected ventilation tunnels, an advanced interface she didn't recall the device had installed on its internal memory, even highlighting the best path for her to escape.
Yes Man had been busy.
She localized the opening grill on a higher level.
Before using the broken table to bar the only door in the room, she used the small key on the old cabinet.
Bingo. – she thought once her eyes lay upon its contents.
Then, the show began.
He found the Black Market.
Or what was left of it anyway. Everything had been destroyed and conscientiously looted.
It would have fooled a less seasoned observer into believing this had been nothing but a typical raid.
However, besides how his Pip-Boy had started beeping, detecting slight remnants of radiation permeating the ample space, the staging was unmistakable: 10mm ammunition mixed up with several more gun shells and plasma goo.
And then, the shooting methodology on the corpses that had the 10mm holes.
He would recognize the work of a Sleeper anywhere.
He had hunted down his good share of those… along with their Captain.
When the two of them had combed the whole DC District in search of running targets.
Rarely alone, those kids always surrounded themselves with more people, usually gullible individuals ready to die for them. He recalled a particularly nasty incident, with demented Children of the Atom worshipping a glowing obelisk at the Dunwich offices: they had killed the raiders and ghouls that had been infesting the building and then erected the Sleeper as their new preacher.
He had never seen a fourteen-year-old as deranged as that one, commanding dozens of zealots as if they were pawns, and he was simply amusing himself by playing a sick variant of the chess game with them, sacrificing them without even batting a lash.
That one had stood more bullets than a human being had the right to before going down.
Such kinds of monsters Vault-Tec would be so proud of. Such kinds of monsters the Wasteland didn't need.
The girl had been different, though. Humanity still present in her eyes despite the trauma.
But her mind was a Sleeper mind.
They had been able to catch them with very little information on their hands just because she had known how to track them down.
Both had done it out of a sense of honor and respect for their disgraced comrades, still betrayed human beings despite everything… but the evil bastard had been the one giving them a longer leash to do so, as his water trade business had been threatened by those crazed child soldiers who had wanted revenge for having been sold to Eulogy Jones.
The girl had taken care of the slaver boss as well.
He had seen her doing her executions, naming her target, and listing off all of their crimes. Acting in the name of Old America.
Jones had wet himself before receiving the coup de grace.
The girl had been broken beyond repair, but her trickery and violence had escalated to the point that even the evil bastard had started to have his doubts.
He had wanted to control her, and she had begun to revolt. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
This hunt was meant as a lesson, a reprimand for her disobedience.
The sick bastard wanted her to experience what she had done to her comrades. To make her feel like prey, to show her who was the real boss there.
The son of a bitch was psychological as fuck, the only advantage he counted with anyway.
For being so fucking twisted and intelligent, the idiot still didn't get that the girl wasn't his pet anymore.
Kids grow up, and, eventually, they stop fearing the Boogeyman.
And so, when the Boogeyman feels his authority challenged, he evolves into something worse.
Something even adults fear.
Like General Chase.
The piles of human corpses he found along further tunnels did nothing to hush his fears.
Could she have gone mad? Like the others?
He had to press on before she turned the cards against the NCR.
Before she turned out a faction of her own.
Before she loses her humanity and becomes what Vault-Tec had planned for her in the first place.
LATIN:
(1) - recruits
A/N: got this written like EONS ago, but so floppy and disjointed that it has taken too long to get it in one piece AND legible enough. Plus, I got the flu (the regular one), so my head hurts like a bitch.
Let's see... tons of Lore stuff for your pretty head start hurting like mine, eh? Raul's part was a mess, I know, and I've gotten Charon's scene even messier. Don't feel like changing much now, but I might revisit this chapter in the future (no promises, though). Anything you see unrelated and/or incoherent, just let me know and THAT, I will revisit it.
Another S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: you got me there. Vulpes finds it fascinating how Six is capable of switching from violent to perfectly civil just that easily and gathering the most unsuspected people by her side :D Had to, since I think that Vulpes being Vulpes have to admire some qualities of the one he's attracted to. He otherwise wouldn't be, too boring for him XD
Already working on the next. Still undecided if releasing Burke's part or not, as it deals with F3 Main Plotline events. We'll see.
Cheers!
