The Neighbours
"I always thought that, if anything could truly unite humans, it was a threat as dire as the end of the world. And yet they still persisted here, in banditry and deceit, killing and robbing with unfaltering delight. We were nearly at Kenmore Station when I had my first encounter with the so-called 'Raiders'. Piper had not exaggerated their barbarism..."
They spent the night at Packards Corner. Piper was visibly uneasy with their host, though she kept up a friendly smile whenever he addressed them. Martin, for his part, retained his wariness from when Tom had shoved a weapon to his neck and laughed. Neither trusted the bald, spectacled man, and took shifts throughout the "night", as it was determined. He wasn't sure if it was even night when his time to sleep came, or morning when they packed up.
The night shift consisted of sitting two people at each known entrance to the station, the doors leading to the outside world and the tunnel to Babcock station. Piper gave him her firearm when his time to stand guard came, and instructed him in the basics of its use. Not that she'd needed, beyond pointing out the "safety" on the weapon. Beyond such a brilliant switch, the weapon for all intents and purposes felt and weighed like he'd imagined a crossbow would, albeit one of far greater power than its counterparts. Time passed... oddly, underground, especially when you stopped moving. There was no sun or moon or stars, no wind or warming air to signal the sun's rise. There was only intuition, which he pointedly did not have, allowing those native to this world a semblance of awareness.
"You two be careful, yeah?" Tom said as they were departing, the same reassuring, easy smile on his lips, flashing teeth and all; "Wouldn't want Diamond City to lose its only redeemable feature."
"We'll be fine," Piper nodded, curtly, then added as she hefted her weapon; "...good luck."
"My luck's always good," he grinned.
"Farewell," Martin offered, somewhat reluctant to leave behind the first group of human beings he'd met in this world, Piper aside.
One person with a weapon was reassuring, but a dozen was outright comfortable. Even if they were creepy, and seemed off. At least Tom - if that was his name - hadn't slit their throats or poisoned the tea. The tea had been awfully harsh regardless, but still. It wasn't poison. How could you even make tea of something called Silt Bean anyway? Nowhere in that name was anything resembling or indicating a capacity for being turned into tea. Tom had shown them his map of the subway tunnels, a mess of criss-crossing red and blue and green lines, and shown some that were crossed over in black. Those were dead tunnels, he'd said, though he'd been vague on what exactly that meant. Piper had seemed to get it.
"There's about a kilometer to Babcock," Piper said as they left behind the safety of the station. Even then, there was something almost familiar about the tunnel as its black maw gaped and swallowed them whole. It was not a comforting feeling, but also...not an outright offputting one. Maybe it was because Piper was with him, and armed, that he did not feel anxious about it. The night's rest had at least allowed his reserves to restore, mostly. There was still a sensation of being hollow, that something was missing. If he'd been an hourglass, there would have been a small pile of grains at the bottom, representing what he still had not recovered.
But it allowed him some light, once they'd left sight of the station. Even though the tunnel was, far as he could tell, entirely linear, there was still no way of knowing how far they had walked, when all they could see of the world was a ten meter radius around them. Had he been at home, without whatever phenomenon allowed him magicka but still restricted its flow, he could have sent a light down the tunnel, just to see how far ahead until it vanished from sight. Here, he wasn't allowed that expenditure.
"What'd you think of them?" Piper asked, once they were well and truly away from the station. He glanced to her, uncertain of what to say. His suspicions, or something entirely else? "Tom gave me the shivers, can't say why..."
"He was lying, I think," Martin hummed, frowning at how he'd worded it; "At least, I think he was. And the people with him... did they look... uneasy?"
"I'd say they looked damned jumpy," she nodded; "Not scared of him though. More like... scared of something around them?"
"Ghouls?"
"Maybe..." Piper glared ahead, their lights casting her face in unnatural shadows. Martin caught himself staring, and pulled his gaze back to the tunnel before she noticed. He still all too well remembered the boat, and her body pressed against his back. With all the rags and the coat, it was hard to notice her forms. And with all the grime and darkness, all the harder to notice... that she was pretty. And he wished he'd not noticed. Something inside him tugged at her; "Ghouls aren't smart though, the feral ones I mean. That looked more like someone was after them..."
"Raiders, then?" he asked, thankful for the distraction. Silence would have left him to his thoughts.
"More like, probably, yeah..." she sighed, pulling at something on her weapon. The shotgun shifted, and a sound like something inside sliding around; "There's probably raiders dumb or mad enough to run around in a Radstorm. If we're lucky, they're all that dumb or mad, and not down here..."
"We've been lucky so far."
"True, but..." he turned when she didn't say anything more, a strange frown on her face; "Sorry, about the whole... stand-off, when I aimed the gun at you. If they'd been Raiders, I... don't know how we'd have gotten out of that."
"We were lucky."
"Luck, huh?" she seemed less than convinced, though... maybe there was still something there; "Wasteland's not a place for those who need luck, you know. Thing's bothering me, he said he was taking them back up north, right?"
"He did." Though in truth, that part had not stuck in his memory as well as the people. Still, it was true; "There aren't any settlements up north?"
"Oh, there are." Piper nodded, pausing to read something old and faded on a yellow patch on the wall. It was too far gone, though, and the letters looked more like weak hints than anything else; "But nothing this far out you'd wanna go through with anything less than an army. Concord's in the way, same as Lexington, overrun with ghouls, both of them, far as I remember."
"Dangerous places." he surmised, to which she simply shrugged; "I'm starting to understand why people haven't rebuilt after two centuries. It's safer up north, though?"
"Theoretically it's safer the further north you go." she said; "Further south you go, that's closer and closer to the Glowing Sea. Further north you go, as a result, the safer you get. At least from ghouls. Safer from ghouls means more people, of course, which means more raiders."
"Glowing Sea?"
"Glowing everything, more like it," the tunnel echoed her sigh, the walls alive with shadows at every bob of her headlight. It only reinforced the impression of trudging through the intestines of some great, primordial beast. Maybe even the insides of the Brass God itself, only here there was no brass but concrete and iron; "It's where they dropped the bombs on Boston, back then. Two hundred years, and it's still so heavily irradiated it'll pop your eyes like a pair of tarberries," she made a 'pop' sound, as if to really drive it in; "Machines break down, organic things fry... basically don't go there. Ever. A bullet's faster if you feel like shedding the mortal coils, you know?"
"Hmpf... sounds almost like entropy magic." Martin huffed. An image appeared in his mind of a curtain splitting the air itself. sickly green and pulsating with arcane energies that would strip the flesh from mortal beings, and erode to dust even the most articulated suit of armor. Was that really what these bombs had been? Some sort of entropical detonation, massive and terrible enough to scour mankind from the world? Piper gave him an odd expression at that, but said nothing.
It was hard to tell how far they had walked already, and in the silence between their banter, he found his thoughts once more wandering to home. Would he ever see it again? The gleaming streets of the Imperial City seemed almost a dream now, fading into memory as the reality of broken concrete and rusted iron took over. He missed it more now than he'd ever thought he would, for why would one miss a city, even one as magnificent as the Capital?
But it had been a living city. The Imperial City had breathed, its heartbeat that of bartering traders, music in the streets and the songs of birds. A cacophony of life, tens of thousands of voices merging like the noise of the waves on the beach. In the spring and summer, the air was thick with the scents of flowers and freshly baked bread, wafting from open windows. It would be the smells of life and culture, of a prosperous civilisation. Here, the only smells were of damp rock and iron, and only the sounds of feet trudging through gravel filled the air.
In this necropolis, there was no culture or prosperity. There was only a seemingly futile and endless struggle to retain some semblance of a culture lost, a civilization that had once been so grand as to make the Empire pale. And it had all been lost, at the hands of those who wrought the very greatness they then destroyed, wiping this world clean of the monuments to life itself. Instead it was all ruin now, all an image of sorrow and regret, of trying to hold onto some kind of soul. Where were the birds in the trees, when the skies themselves bled poison? Where was the music, when sound attracted horrors from the darkness of the deep?
And Piper had been born into this desolate world, having never seen the splendor of a marble city. When she looked upon these ruins, did she even understand how much had been lost? Could those who had never experienced a prosperous, blossoming culture, truly understand what a theft had been played upon them? It was a travesty, and near enough to make a man weep.
"How far yet?" he asked, voice straining from the thoughts. He blinked, realising there was a stinging, wet sensation in his eye, forcing it away; "I can't tell how far we've walked."
"Not much yet," Piper said, turning to look at him. Her expression changed, though he couldn't read it. Could she see what he'd been thinking, or that it had affected him? "Counting our steps, I'd say there's about two hundred meters left, give or take a few. Babcock should be clear too, safe for vagrants or... well, hopefully it's clear. It's one of the last stations we left when the air upstairs got breathable again, and you could walk outside without getting fried..."
"That name, Babcock..."
"Don't even ask," she snorted, a sound that managed to make him smile; "Pretty sure it's from a time when cock meant something entirely else."
"Like a rooster?" he quickly asked. He couldn't quite bring himself to openly utter the other word, not in front of Piper. It wasn't made any better by her so easily doing so. Discretion was not a thing here, it seemed; "Maybe it referred to a chicken farm?"
"Who knows..." Piper sighed, shaking her head; "Anyway, it should be free of mutants at least. Might even have some salvage we can pick up. People in Diamond City usually pay good caps for 'intact relics of the past', as they call it. It's really just things from before the bomb that somehow still work, like a toaster or a hairdryer, or cutlery."
"Good caps?" was this why she'd picked those bottlecaps up, that they served as an actual sort of currency? He'd thought it was just a collector thing, back then. It seemed a strange system, to base an economy on the emballage of drinks. It would be as if the Empire's coin was used for flask-stoppers. Cork-coins... what a thought.
"Oh yeah," she nodded, turning a little to look at him as they walked. It looked awkward, and he sped up instead to walk next to her; "They won't admit to it, of course, but most of the DC upper class got there because their parents salvaged some good stuff. I think one of them's ancestors got rich by bringing the only surviving chickens up from the tunnels. A radchicken magnate, you know? Imagine getting rich on your poultry being slightly less irradiated than the rest..."
"Coin's coin," Martin shrugged; "I've heard of people who got rich from selling everything from sugar to horses, even plants and bottled bees. Poultry's less insane."
"Your world sounds a lot more fun than this one," Piper snorted, almost becoming a laugh; "Wouldn't mind seeing it, someday. If nothing else it's not radioactive... okay, tunnel's coming to an end here."
Martin blinked at her change of subjects.
"That was fast," he looked to where she pointed, yellow stripes on the concrete just barely visible after so many years. The paint had faded into almost obscurity, but still stood out against the dark background. Apparently these marked the entrance to the stations, but didn't seem like they stemmed from when the tunnels themselves were dug; "Yellow marks the borders of the settlement, yes?"
"Nice catch." Piper smiled, nodding; "Yeah, people used them back in the day to mark the perimeter, then threw up sandbags roughly..." shining her light forward, she pointed to a chest-high wall of brown and beige; "...fifty meters behind, just in range of the spotlights, and far enough that anything running down the tunnel would get shredded before reaching the perimeter."
"A spotlight?"
"Big-ass lamp, basically," she explained, striding past the ancient barrier. Here were no old shells, and no bones. There were still old chairs stood against the wall, surrounding campfires long-since extinguished; "People here left at their own pace, leaving behind only what didn't work anymore. Or maybe just what seemed unnecessary to bring."
"But people still find salvage here?" Above them hung lamps, though he did not recognize the designs. They were probably of the same make as the one she used, and strands of withered, moldy rubber hung between them. Strangely, there were no glass orbs in them, only holes; "Wouldn't they have brought anything useful along?"
"Useful to them, sure." Piper said, actually pointing at the hanging lamps; "Used to be there were lightbulbs in those, but you think people bothered unscrewing them when evacuating the station? Nope, that's what I mean. Scavvers did that later, because intact lightbulbs are pretty valuable. Brass shells too, won't see any of those around here."
Babcock station came into view a minute or so later, opening up on just one side of the tunnel. The design was becoming familiar by now, and though it was unlit and black as night, he felt he knew its layout already. His own light snuffed for sake of his reserves, Piper's instead brought illumination to the cave, revealing it the twin of all those before it. Still, it bore obvious signs of habitation. Long, steel-grey and red wagons - trains, he now saw - had served as housing blocks, and their insides were stripped naked for all but what could not be torn from their places. An old stove had been abandoned in one of them, its frame riddled with holes that seemed to have come from violence.
"Cozy, right?" Piper chuckled, swinging her light about. In a strange way, she was right. Though desolate and void of life, there was nothing here like what he'd felt at Sutherland. This was no mass grave. It was just...empty. If he'd seen only this place and nothing else from this ruined world, he would have thought her mad for describing it as such. But next to its neighbors, filled with monsters, ghosts or shady people, this emptiness was a comfort; "Let's try and see if there's anything worth hauling. Fifteen minutes, yeah"?
Martin still had no concept of time in this place, but she seemed to have it. He offered a nod and watched her walk off, a sway to her hips he could have sworn was absent before. His eyes lingered for longer than they probably should have, until she'd left the sphere of his own light. He sighed and drew in a breath, steadying himself. It was hard, suddenly being aware of Piper being a woman, rather than just...Piper. Women hadn't been like this at the Institute. They hadn't been this strange. And he didn't know how to deal with it.
The wagons around him and in the station were obviously well-worn with time and use. There were clear marks where fires had once been, for cooking or heat, and he could tell where mattresses had once been, now ripped out from their fastenings. People had lived here, for more than twenty years. It was a strange idea before, but now that he stood in it, surrounded on all sides by the signs of life, it really struck him how alien a lifestyle it was. To be born and grow up underground, knowing no light but that of campfires and artificial torches. To never see the sun was a... disturbing notion.
"Found anything?" Piper called, somewhere across the station. He could only really see her light, casting the rest of her in darkness. A clattering of metal and wood accompanied her words; "Huh, a mirror...Nat's gonna like this..."
"Not yet," he didn't shout, didn't need to. The station amplified all sounds anyway. There was nothing much for him to find, though a smell did permeate the place. It smelled a lot like the Mirelurk nest, only here was neither water, mud nor eggs; "Do you smell something?"
"Dead animal somewhere," she replied; "Let's hope it's dead at least. Not a lot of friendly fauna."
He took her words to heart, though still unsettled. It didn't smell like any dead animal he'd ever seen, not that he'd seen a lot. Usually a mammalian carcass would smell much more harshly, and nowhere near this sweet. There was an almost seaweed-like stench to it. Martin frowned, because something about the stench didn't feel right at all. Piper seemed to have not noticed, or maybe she was so used to these things already. He was the outsider, the one who knew nothing about this world. Still he followed the stench, leading him around one of the wagons used for housing. He needed no sensitive nose - in truth he wished his was less sensitive now - to track the smell, pungent as it was.
"Vaermina's rot..."
It was a strange beast, or the remains of one at least. Massive, like an overgrown and deformed crab, torn open with its shell shattered, and its insides splattered across the iron tracks. Several places more marks of great, rending claws, and the area around the carcass was black with dried blood. He tried breathing through his sleeve, and to not vomit from the stench. No dead body he'd ever worked on had smelled this bad, human or beast. He couldn't tell immediately how long it had been here, dead, for it was impossible to tell natural decay from the results of being devoured. One thing though, he couldn't help but note, was that the creature was clearly aquatic in nature, its mouth was still intact enough that mandibles with crab-like hairs remained. How did it end up all the way here?
Did such creatures wander off into the tunnels to die, and for scavengers to then eat? Or, had something large enough killed and dragged it here? The claw-marks definitely seemed to hint at the latter, and instilled him with no greater sense of comfort.
"Hey, Piper?" he tried keeping his tone neutral, keeping the excitement from it. He didn't know if it worked; "Those Mirelurks, what did they look like?"
"Big, crab-like." she responded, the echo resounding in the station. It had not bothered him before, but now he wondered if whatever had killed this thing, might still be near; "Massive pincers... why?"
"I think... there's one here." he said, hoping she'd lower her voice if he did too; "Dead."
Piper, for her part, said nothing to that, but her footsteps grew quick as she approached, a fast-paced beating of boots against the stone. Then she was next to him, her own light fully illuminating the carcass. For a moment's time, she said nothing, only holding an arm before her nose. When she did, her words did not inspire confidence.
"We need to leave," there was an urgency to her voice he'd only heard at the nests; "Now. We need to leave now. Right now."
He wanted to ask why, but understood from her tone of voice not to. Instead he followed as she led them away from the center of the station. She'd mentioned side-tunnels before, but this was the first time he'd noticed the iron-bar doors, small enough that one wouldn't notice unless they knew. Piper yanked it open, tearing off a lock that seemed like rust had reduced it to little more than dust already. He was honestly surprised the bars themselves didn't simply crumble to pieces. Shotgun at the ready, she ushered him inside before following, slamming the door shut behind them.
Where before they had been in the cavernous station, now the walls closed around them so tightly, he had to walk in front of her. There was no room to walk side by side, so he called his own light out again to illuminate the claustrophobic tunnel. It was only a dozen meters or so before they emerged back out into a new tunnel. Piper hesitated, for only a moment, before she too emerged into the wider space. He watched her peer back into the side-tunnel, unsure of how to react.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah... yeah, nothing to worry about," she huffed, relief evident along with the stress. Something about the dead Mirelurk had set her off, probably its killer, whatever it might be; "Good find, you know. I'm not exactly keen on sharing an open space with a Yao Guai or a Deathclaw."
"A what?" he nearly stumbled at the strange names, the first making even less sense than the second. "Death Claw" he at least could interpret as something with claws that could ensure your death. He couldn't even begin to contemplate what in the name of Hircine a "Yao Guai" was. Was it a dragon, or a large tiger? Maybe it was some sort of snake, or an aquatic predator? Was it something unique to the underground?
"Well it's..." she trailed off; "...it's like... a big predator, mutated from... something back before the War, I guess. Mammal, muscular and with some nasty teeth... not really sure how else to describe it. I'll tell you if we find one."
"A Deathclaw, then?" he asked, feeling no greater sense of reassurance when she glanced back at the cramped corridor again. Whatever this creature was, it had stolen away all her confidence. If it was outright fear, he couldn't say. She certainly seemed to grasp ever tighter her weapon, for all the hopeful good it might do.
"Big, mean reptile." his question seemed to at least have shaken her out of her paranoia, turning her attention back to him rather than the passage now behind them; "...it's one of those monsters you grow up with as a scary story, only it's real, and you can't really do anything about it. It's nearly bulletproof, can tear a man in half and definitely outrun you. Only upside to it is it won't fit in small spaces, relatively speaking..."
While a Yao Guai sounded almost like some sort of troll, the Deathclaw reminded him more of a dragon or maybe a wyrm. Either way, something he'd count himself fortunate if it simply never came near him. Dragons almost more so, being all but myth and stories anyway.
"...anyway, we'll keep to the Worcester line from here on, I think," The change of topic was welcome. They shifted the backpack around to him, though she kept hold of the gun, and set off into the receding darkness; "We're still on the Green Line, by the way, just in a parallel tunnel. We'll hit Hawe's Station next, though it's a bit of a walk. After that it's Saint Mary's, and then we're at Kenmore and Diamond City..." something in her tone changed at the end; "You don't know who Saint Mary is, right?"
He didn't, though Saints he understood well enough. There was almost a kilometer to Hawe's Station, and he was content enough to spend it walking while Piper explained. Apparently it was about the gods of this world before its ruin, or more specifically the one god, and saints aplenty. It reminded him a lot of the Skaal, way up north, and their belief in a single, all-creating god. At home, those stories had been ridiculed and laughed at, for why theorise on a single deity when evidence of the Imperial Pantheon existed for all to see and experience? He'd never heard of shrines to the Skaal god curing people of illnesses not even the most skilled of healers could, after all. Meanwhile, the temples of Kynareth were a real source of competition for his own profession. Cheaper too, but far too reliant on the whimsical will of the Divine. Healers at least understood what they were doing, and worked from a scientifically arcane perspective and background, even if they were limited by the very nature of the Restorative magicks.
Saint Mary, as it turned out, filled a role not too dissimilar to the Lady Mara. It was, in a way, surprising and yet not, for the gods would surely have their presence felt wherever life existed, even if it was not on Nirn. The similarities between the two, female figures were great enough indeed that he voiced as much.
"Maybe."
Piper's answer was irritatingly vague, for something as important as this. At the same time, he understood her reluctance. This was a world without magic, and with but one God. The idea that they had been wrong throughout their entire history was not something likely to be well-received. Much less, or more, he didn't want to offend her by calling what had become apparent as her own, strongly held beliefs, into question. Also, in a world so destroyed, people had little else to cling to but faith.
Jesus Christ, however, seemed more of a sensible approach. At first he didn't fully understand the difference when Piper spoke about her God, because it seemed like it both was and wasn't Jesus. There was something about a "Holy Trinity", which made even less sense to him... but Jesus had been a human being, at least partially. That he could understand, and moreover respect as she told him in broader strokes the stories of what she referred to as the testament, a sort of holy scripture. The notion that a man could leave behind such a legacy, thousands of years after his death, and without the use of violence, spoke of a strength of character and a charisma most mortals would never possess. What truly piqued his interest, however, were the 'miracles'.
"...so when you saw me walking on the ice, back then, I heard you say something about walking on water..." he was hesitant to make any comparisons, mostly out of courtesy. If there had been magic in this world, it would have been a simple and straightforward assumption to make that Jesus had been a mage. The lack of magic, however, left the truth somewhat more... vague; "How did he do it?"
"Who knows?" her reply, and the accompanying shrug of her shoulders, was a great deal more casual than he'd expected. He'd almost thought the very question could offend her, yet the opposite seemed the case. It confused him; "Maybe he did, maybe he didn't and it's just a story to teach a lesson? Point is more the moral of the story than the story itself, but honestly I'm the wrong person to try and remember all this."
Even he could recognize when someone wanted to change the subject. It wasn't even the least obvious way of saying you didn't want to discuss something. Whatever lay behind it, it wasn't worth prying.
Hawe's Station was vacant, devoid of life but for insects the size of cats. Piper explained them as Radroaches, the very same that probably had been responsible for the backpack he now carried, and the shotgun in Piper's hands.
The sound of the station reached them before they even saw it, however. It was closer to the surface, and it showed from the gaping hole in its ceiling, exposing the skies above, green with toxic dust. They kept well away from the hole, edging along the station walls. The water that ran down from above did so in slow, echoing drips, eating holes into the concrete floor as the water sizzled away on impact.
It was not a good place to stay, and he didn't even need Piper telling him that. It did make him wonder how the hells anything could survive such a climate.
"Saint Mary's station..." it seemed a safer subject than theology, and it almost seemed as if the tension left her at the name; "What's likely to be there?"
"Hopefully nothing." she muttered; "Used to be traders came through, once. Oberland was one of the last settlements out here west of Diamond City, but raiders overran it some years back, butchering or enslaving the settlers there. People kind of avoid it now."
"So, if anything is there..." If anything was there, it would not be friendly. He understood as much, even if she hadn't outright said it. Raiders, he was coming to understand, surpassed the run-of-the-mill bandits of Tamriel in their cruelty and abject lack of respect for life. A bandit, usually, cared mostly for coin. The really nefarious ones had long-since been driven from the Heartland by Legion patrols. Could he kill one, a raider, if it came to it?
Killing the Super Mutant had been an instinctive response, almost a reflex. But could he kill another human being? Even if it was a deranged murderer, could he kill them? It wasn't a thought he relished. Could Piper do it? She'd seemed ready enough, back at their meeting with "Tom", but... had she, before? Would it change his perception of her if she had? He didn't know, and didn't much like thinking it would either. This world was, for all the prestige of its lost culture, a barbarous one. There was no Pax Imperii here, only violence and darkness.
"Yeah," had she picked up on his thoughts? He couldn't tell, but understood well enough what she meant. Anything or anyone at the station was probably going to be a threat. It made him happy enough that he carried the backpack, and allowed her to focus on wielding the shotgun. He still did wonder, to himself, what kind of effect it actually had. It shot out those little red shells, but in what form? What would it do to a human?
Saint Mary's Station, as it turned out, was inhabited. However, it became apparent as they moved through it, that no one was home. Fireplaces were extinguished but still warm, and sleeping rolls dotted the grounds amongst crates and empty bottles. The whole place was warm, and smelled like people. There was even a faint, buzzing sound like from a marketplace. Among the sights, however...
"Raiders." Piper spat the word, tightening her grip on the gun; "Damn it."
Along the walls of the station, iron spikes jutted from sandbags and gravel, ending in the decapitated heads of men and women both, young and old. Martin held his breath. He'd seen dead bodies before, of course. The Institute had trained him in the dissection of corpses to understand human organs, but... he'd never seen this kind of death before. More and more now, everywhere he looked, pieces of humans seemed to take the place of decorations, hands and fingers, heads, arms and legs and even entire bodies, dangling from hooks and chains.
"Arkaj gi začuva.." he whispered, shocked to a standstill.
This was another kind of horror, to realize people had done this. That human beings, in a world that already sought them cleansed from its surface, had visited this kind of atrocity upon others. Some of the bodies were smaller than the rest, children, he realized. The sight was nauseating, and the smell, now that he knew, even more so. The faint buzzing he'd heard before now became apparent, as flies in their innumerables swarmed the bodies, black patches covering the decaying flesh; "...people did this?"
"No. Raiders," there was a clear distinction, and he now, only now, understood it. This could not be the work of those who still had the right to call themselves human beings. They were monsters, subhuman creatures; "We should get moving before they come back, wherever they went. Keep quiet, and no lights."
He had a hard enough time keeping his bowels in check, and so merely nodded. Magelight snuffed, Piper extinguished her own light as well and led the way into the darkness of the tunnel ahead. Only, it was not the complete darkness of the other tunnels. Here, a weak, reddish light glowed from lamps in the ceiling, bringing some measure of light to their surroundings.
Were those lights installed by the raiders, or were they remnants of the lost city above, somehow still working? He'd heard of Dwemeri artifacts that still worked, but... was this the same kind of lost culture then, or something even more advanced?
"Those lights..." he knew she'd said to be quiet, but his curiosity became too much. The question was out before he'd realized he'd spoken aloud; "...how do they still work?"
"Emergency lights, they're hooked up to a fusion generator somewhere.." she explained, punctuating her words with a finger over her lips, wordlessly telling him to stop speaking. The weak light was enough that the darkness he'd worried they'd walk in was not a factor, and they did not stumble about blindly. He had no idea what she meant, but knew to speak no more. Around the next corner might be evil in human skins, and he'd no desire to let them know in advance.
Except the tunnel barely bent at all. Far as he could see, it continued on more or less straight, light after light bathing it in a reddish hue until they simply melted together in the distance. He couldn't tell if it was his own sight or if the tunnel was actually turning, when it seemed as if the lights moved to the center of the tunnel rather than the right side.
Eventually it became evident that the tunnel was indeed turning, as when he looked back, the station had disappeared from view. It had been clear enough, otherwise. The tunnel was moving left, so that had to be north, he surmised. Unless he'd been completely turned around at some point. North was towards the river, wasn't it? Or had they walked around so much that the river now lay elsewhere?
Piper raised a hand, suddenly, bringing them to a stop. It wasn't until they did, that he could hear something up ahead, a stattaco of sharp, hacking noises echoing up the tunnel. It was weak at first, but almost seemed to increase the more he listened. Like lightning, but harsher, lower and sharper.
"What's that sound?"
"Gunfire," Piper's voice was low and hard, crouching down. Unsure of why, he still mirrored her movement. Nothing was hitting them, and he couldn't even see anything ahead. There was only the noise, and the surge in his stomach it brought on; "We should be close to Kenmore though..."
"Isn't that the last station?"
"It is." she nodded, frowning; "I don't like this. Subways' one of the places DC guards, but there's not a lot of men there. If the Raiders attack and break through, that's straight up to the gates."
Then she stood, racking something backwards on the shotgun.
"Come on."
He hesitated, for a moment. Piper had been the one to say they should avoid raiders at all costs. Had something changed, or was something about where they were headed important enough to disregard her own rule? Diamond City was her home, of course. If her home was threatened, it... didn't surprise him, that she wanted to help defend it.
So he got up, and followed her towards the gunfire, even as it grew louder with every step they took. Piper was first, clinging to the wall opposite from the lights, as if trying to hide in the shadows. He did the same, but couldn't shake the feeling of it being a useless endeavour. They were visible enough even here, and he'd rather not go near people with that kind of weapon. He could fight, if he must, that was true, but... how much could he? His reserves were nowhere near what they ought have been, and merely keeping his own light on had drained them more than he'd like.
He'd never learned to throw a ward, even though it was such a simple thing. It was the first thing most mages learned when entering schools dedicated to the more destructive applications of magic, after all. But the Restorative School had, ironically, pushed it to the back of priorities. Now he regretted such a choice.
Up ahead, the noise grew louder again, now mixing with shouts and yells. None of it was intelligible yet, only vaguely recognisable as words. But the gunfire persisted, streams of explosions and thunder filling the tunnel. Corpses in ragtag hides and metal armor dotted the rails, slumped in pools of blood turned black in the reddish light. These were the raiders, then. Piper broke into a jog, and he followed, soon passing by a line of sandbags and spikes, manned by two slumped-over corpses in strange, leather-looking armor.
They were facing the way they'd come, leaving little enough to the imagination as to who they were. If this was the last station towards Diamond City, and Piper had mentioned guards, then... these were the guards, still manning their silent guns. He'd hoped not, and could tell the sight affected Piper as she briefly faltered in her run, then pressed on.
More bodies littered the path, dressed up in the weird scraps signifying raider, rather than guard. They seemed to have almost fallen backwards over, holes and chunks blown through their bodies by something explosive. Had he known nothing of the firearms these people used, he'd have thought it the work of destruction magic and explosive bolts. And the noise grew ever louder.
It was almost deafening now, the constant thunder and lightning stattaco of rapid-ripping explosions. Piper slowed down, edging now again along the wall as they passed by ramshackled fortifications and sandbags, each line marked by two or three more corpses in guard-dress, and thankfully a great deal more in the garb of the raiders.
"Push them! Come on, push'n them- kill them!" a harsh, ragged voice yelled from around the corner of a low, metal-clad tower, sporting a still smoking contraption of ruined steel and dripping oil. It would not have looked out of place in a Dwemeri ruin. Piper was ahead of him already, firearm raised as she took a step around the corner; "Kill them all! We'll rape their fucking corp-"
Martin rounded the corner himself, just in time to see Piper move to a mere meter's distance from a man in ragged, spiky armor, with his hair dredged up in what resembled more than anything a rooster's head. White paint covered his face in a skull-like pattern, as he seemed to notice and turned to see Piper resting the mouth of her gun inches from his face.
Then she pulled the trigger, and his head disappeared in an explosion of gore and bone, throwing his body back. Martin stood shocked, unmoving in the sight of the overwhelming violence wrought by such a simple instrument. He could not himself have matched that with anything he could throw. Before the body even slumped down, Piper had retreated back around the corner, safe from reprisals.
"FUCK! What the fuck happened to Jared?!" someone ahead yelled, half muffled by gunfire; "How'd they-!"
He could only listen, guessing at what transpired on the other side of the metal structure. The gunfire picked up again, punctuated with screams and the sounds of tearing flesh. It was a sound he'd never thought to hear, and now never wanted to again.
"Let's get the fu-!"
"Shit! My arm!" another screamed, a woman by the shrillness of it; "They shot-!"
Then, suddenly, the noise stopped. The constant thunder ended far more abruptly than it had started, leaving the tunnel in almost complete silence.
"Yeah!" a voice yelled, deeper in; "That's what you fucking get!"
"Shit, Danny!" another called, far less bravado in his tone; "Get me a stim!"
"They're shot up, fuck!"
"Hey!" Piper yelled, leaning on the corner; "Don't shoot! It's Piper!"
For a moment, he worried they just might. Out of stress if nothing else. Then a sharp light suddenly grew outwards, bright enough that he finally understood what Piper had meant when she complained at the weakness of her own headlight.
"Who's there?!"
"Piper!" she repeated, waving a hand out from cover. It wasn't immediately shot at, but the sharp light bathed it almost instantly; "We just came from the outer stations because of the Radstorm."
"Okay, step out where we can see you," the voice sounded muffled, while someone else was groaning in the background, sobbing. Piper obeyed, hands raised as she stepped out into the light. Martin followed, his hands likewise held up. The light blinded him, forcing a hand down to cover his eyes; "It's Piper, alright... who's the other guy?"
"Martin," he followed Piper's lead as they neared what turned out to be another line of sandbags and metal plates, nailed together with barbed wire and stakes. Three men stood behind it, firearms lowered as the two approached.
Martin, for his part, kept silent until he could actually see past the blinding light. More than anything, his eyes sought the source of the sobbing, and found it in one of the guards, curled up around an unseen but heavily bleeding wound. Two others knelt by him, pressing cloth and bandages against the wound, already stained a deep red.
A gut wound was one of the worse things to experience, and likewise to heal. Surgeons usually would defer those directly to healers, given the potential damage to the organs. A spear to the kidneys wasn't something you could set right with a scalpel and tweezers. He'd set enough of them right himself to know that, theoretically at least. Working on dummies and dead bodies wasn't quite the real thing. They didn't twitch.
Somehow, he was at the man's side even before he'd registered it himself, pushing away the men obstructing his path. It wasn't even a conscious decision, as much as it was somehow just what his mind told him to do. His legs moved, his hands moved and his mouth worked, without any real directives.
Hands aglow, he started feeling around the hole in the man's armor, reaching in without even touching the ruined flesh. He felt something that shouldn't be there. Small, hard and artificial, it was probably fired like a cannonball from the firearms of those raiders.
"W-what the fuck..." Danny, he'd heard the name yelled before, stared at him with unfocused, terror-struck eyes.
"There's something in the wound." he couldn't quite recall what the slugs were called, though he still managed to speak with a voice mostly devoid of fear. His second patient, and no less wounded than his first; "Liver's ruptured. I need clean water."
"Oh fuck..." How old was Danny, he wondered. Older than himself, it seemed, from the haggard eyes and hollow cheeks, clear signs of a life of malnutrition. Or maybe the stress of duty, as Piper showed none of those signs. It had left him with a lot less fat than the bodies Martin would usually practice on; "Oh God, please..."
Here, the heart was still pumping blood, soaking torn flesh and ruptured organs. Here, the patient was still breathing, writhing with agony every single second, still begging the gods for aid. He worked as gently as he could, carefully plying away meat and sinews to get at the wounded organ, and the slug itself. He found it almost as soon as he started, magicka formed into tweezers extending from the tips of his fingers. He sucked more than plied the metal out, leaving it to clatter against the stone floor without removing himself from Danny's insides.
"The water," one of the other guards muttered, handing him a clear bottle of water. Martin nodded, but kept his eyes on the wound.
Carefully, almost hesitantly so as to save what magicka he could, he pooled restorative energies within the wounded organ, urging and nudging the flesh to mend. In the darkness of the body, sinews stretched and reattached, blood absorbing into the walls and arteries. Martin then grasped for the water, slowly trickling the hopefully clean liquids into the still-open wound. Liver mended, he had to clean the wound itself of filth, and dared not waste magicka on fire to do so, nor would he risk it so close to the vital organs themselves. He introduced a spark of cleansing magic to the water as it pooled in the ruined flesh, exciting it and helping along as he poured more energy into the muscle and skin, knitting arteries back together and mending muscles. Already the drain of the spells was setting in, blurring his vision as a headache announced itself.
Breathe.
Steadily breathe.
The muscles were mending. Slowly, far too slowly for his liking. But they were mending all the same, reforming around the hole until, like an old wound, the skin at last crept back across and sealed it shut.
He said nothing, only breathed as he sat down, almost falling onto his back. Would have, too, but strong hands caught and steadied him. Piper, he thought at first, but it was the awestruck face of a guard that greeted him instead.
"Holy shit, Martin..." Piper was instead between him and Danny, a grand cheer on her face. The relief was palpable in her eyes, helping the wounded guard sit upright again; "Is... Danny, you alright?"
"...yeah?" Danny's voice was strained and hoarse, but that he could even speak was enough; "...holy shit...I'm alive?"
Martin allowed himself a smile, wide and proud. Two patients so far, and both had survived his tender administrations. And he'd worked under stress, with far less magicka than most would consider required for such a procedure.
Madame de Crue would have been proud.
"I dunno what the Hell you just did..." one of the guards said, helmet removed to betray sheer disbelief and awe; "But no way Danny'd made it without...whatever you just did. What... what did you just do?"
"My job." he wheezed, robbed of breath. He'd already expended what reserves he'd managed to recover today. On a single patient. Pragmatism would call for distress here, but it had left him too, somehow. Just pride remained, and an oath fulfilled, a life saved. And Piper looked happy. That too, he found, helped on his mood, beating back the headache, if only a little; "...can I sleep here?"
"Ha!" the guard barked a laugh, not unkindly; "Nah, Mart'n, tunnel's a shit place for that. Two of you are headed back to Diamond City, right? I'll take ya, least we could do."
"We should take Danny with us, to get some rest." Piper said, helping the guard stand; "Healed or not, he just got shot."
"I'm...actually...feeling okay." Danny muttered, palming his face; "Holy God... I'm okay...I thought..."
"Tony, keep an eye on Danny?" the guard said, waiting for the named guard to take Danny to one of their chairs, then turned back to Piper and Martin; "He'll be fine. You two just came from Saint Mary's yeah? Means we've got a good while before anything comes knocking."
"Martin," The hand on his shoulder this time was hers, and the smile all for him; "That was amazing. You okay?"
"Tired," he managed. He wasn't going to mention how anything more than a few meters away became a blur through his pounding head. Somehow, as he looked down on his own hands, bloodied as they were, he recalled the very start of their own involvement here; "...I understand now."
"Understand?" her smile diminished somewhat, as uncertainty crept in. Did he imagine that?
"Raiders."
Realization now seemed to come to her, of what he meant. That now, at last, he was starting to understand this world of hers. And the dawning reconciliation with the simple, harsh truth that he saw no way of escaping its toxic existence.
That he was stuck here. And that he comprehended the depths to which mankind had sunken.
It was at that very moment, almost as a counter to those dark, depressing thoughts, that they began their ascent up the stairs. Whatever a shower was, he felt like it was time for one.