Chapter 11. Garvey's Invitation.

I wasn't aware of it at the time I met Preston Garvey the first time, nor the second, that evening in the clinic. He struck me as genuine, but also a man with whom I had little, if anything, in common. If I had known then what I knew only a month later, would I have leapt into his arms? I don't know. But I would have spent my days in Diamond City differently.

Martin had underestimated the work before him.

The realization was a damning one, as well as dawning, as it became increasingly clear that something was different than back home. At first, it had seemed only a minor irritant, a side-effect he'd not foreseen yet all the same not a hindrance worthy of note. He had known, of course, that he handled ingredients no Tamrielan scholar had likely ever laid eyes - much less hands - on, from the outset.

At home, most if not all one might find and peruse amongst the ingredients on the shelves of an alchemist or potioneer had been catalogued and examined, then once more examined and catalogued, time and again, with varying degrees of accuracy, until it was believed all there was to know was known. In the laboratory he could have plucked any item from the shelves, and the books so widely available for perusal would have told him all there was to know, be it some rare, mountain-growing flower or herb from the coldest north, or exotic mushrooms from the jungles of Valenwood. Everything, from its genealogy to the class and the family of any piece of flora, it was there, free and open for any seeker of knowledge.

Here, he worked with complete unknowns. The root before him, like some twisted mockery of the mandrake root, seemed to stare back in open defiance. The problem, in its very core, was that every ingredient, every piece of flora and fauna he had ever worked with as an ingredient in any sort of potion, held within it the characteristic, thought-to-be universal mark of the Aetherius. A spark of the magic that created all things, absorbed by virtue of simply existing. Most plants were believed to absorb it either through sunlight or the water their roots sucked up, the latter in particular for such ingredients as the canis and jarrin roots, the miniscule amounts of magicka they contained - far too little for even the most talented of mages to draw on - was sifted from the soil. The poisonous qualities of the latter were entirely natural and mundane, in truth, despite what many thought. The same, really, with the mandrake, its effects being a result of symbiotic relationships with fungal growths amongst the root-branches.

But they still all held that spark, the essence of any living being on Nirn. He'd expected... In truth he wasn't quite certain what he had expected, but at least that there was something similar here, or nothing at all. In a land with no magic to speak of, and barely any coming to him from their sun, expectations were the folly of man, he had found. Undaunted by his frustrations, the root still lay before him, slices cut from its end with the only knife he'd found in the clinic, not clearly meant for surgery. He hoped it wasn't Sun's dinner knife.

There was a wrongness to the root. In truth there was a wrongness to almost everything in this land. He'd noticed it earlier, but thought it a consequence of his own reaction to the transition, and then to his waning magicks. The panic had settled, eventually, and he had found a measure of calm in his new routine. Yet, now, that he was once again handling the fruit of the land, so to speak, the realization was back in force. He had sampled it, yes, and determined its qualities beyond the mundane. There was a healing quality there, certainly, but it felt...off. Putting it to words was a futile task, the best he could do being that it was as if a root of the same qualities at home feeling green, here it felt blue. And even then, he almost laughed at the notion.

By Zenithar, what was he doing wrong?

Martin scowled at the small piece of root, not yet ground to a mash in the mortar. It looked perfectly innocent, so very mundane, and yet the wrongness persisted, like a seeping resin from a wounded tree. All who practiced magic knew of the breath of magicka, the pulses of energy within. It was how magic, at its most base, was practiced and understood. A mage who spewed fire at his foe was no different in this than one who healed, or wished to lift a stone from a distance. It was push, until you had to pull, or risk the arcane fever, and even then, regulating the flow only lasted you so long until it was necessary to wholly halt the spells, or the fever was a certainty.

The magic in the root, in all things in this land, felt as if push was pull, and pull was push. When he sampled the cube, barely the size of his thumb, it was as if he needed to exhale for air to enter, and inhale to blow it back out. As if the magic was a reversal of what it should have been. The bitter taste barely even registered in the face of this, not a revelation, but a piece of information he could use for... what? He was no theologian, no scholar on the arcane beyond what the medicinal studies had required and taught. There had been nothing on the possibility of this, this reversed magic.

The notion alone of such a thing filled him with feelings most foul.

It was because of the end of the world, he surmised, that the magic of this land had become what it had. Clearly, though she meant well, Piper did not know as much of the world before the War as she thought. He'd not yet confided in Clements about his magic, but doubted the cleric knew more. That knowledge was lost, as well as the magic that must have been before. In its stead, this antithesis to the arcane lingered, like a wound on the world itself, defying nature and the order of what ought be, what had been, he surmised. The wrongness was man-wrought, by the hands of those who'd perished in the flames of the war, or perhaps, undeservingly, survived the apocalypse they had unleashed upon others.

The notion once more filled him with an indignant wrath he'd not foreseen at the start of this trail of thoughts. He knew there existed cultists to the more malicious of the Daedric princes, entire cults dedicated to their veneration. It was less of a concrete knowledge, one he could point out the sources to, and more... the certainty that they existed, for evil always lingered somewhere. It would always find a place to sprout roots into the souls of men and mer alike. The Dunmer even openly venerated Azura, who though not an outright cruel entity, still to him seemed across the line which he and most would have drawn in the sand. And again, it was the principle of it all, that some would scrape their knees on the ground for the favor of being so beyond his understanding, so beyond moral reasoning... It would one day lead to what had happened here. It was blessedly not a certainty, but the risk was great enough that it left within him a festering knot of despair.

This land, this... Armerika, they called it, had once been so great and mighty, it defied his understanding. Power on a scale no humans could wield, that made the Empire, his Empire, seem so fragile and meager by its side, it shook his knees and drained his nerve. They had been all but gods, like Dwemeri, only there lingered no mystery as to how they had vanished from existence, for their descendents still lived, here, in the decaying ruins of what had once been great. Now it was a hellish hole, filled with degenerates and barbarians, and those lucky few to inhabit the town of Diamond City, eking out an existence below even the village where he had grown up. It was not the first time the tragedy of it all nearly struck him to the ground, but this time, there was more to it than the simple despair at what had been lost.

Piper was wrong. There was magic here, or at least there had been.

It was the only conclusion he could reach that made any kind of sense. No one here could sense or use the magic that was left, the scraps, for they had been born almost entirely deprived of it from the very start. He had been born where magic was still all around, not yet despoiled and raped by humankind's exercises in vanity. The thirst for destruction had been slaked, he hoped, but he had seen what was left out there, and it seemed instead to have left behind some nihilistic spirit, that could find meaning only in the scars further rendered into the land. The magic that had been seemed scoured from existence, all but whisps and whispers, shadows of what had been before. Even he could scarcely grasp a hold of it, enough for the simplest of spells, but it felt as if he clutched at smoke. Visible, tangible to the sense, yet he could neither touch nor restrain it. At best he could breathe some in, and hope that it was enough.

What was left now in its stead was some sort of abominable animal, a creature wrought of mutation and violation of the laws of nature. Like the ghouls it was a child of the apocalypse, but so much more disturbing than any shambling creature of the underground. It was the very reason, he suspected, for their existence. The ghouls, Piper had said, were people subjected to radiation to the point of losing mind and reason, their body revolting and mutating in the face of such a force. Radiation. This was what they called it. Radiation, a force of nature, seemingly, yet entirely toxic and harmful, destructive to the body and mind. An arcane plague that had gulped down and devoured what magicka it could find, and spat back out death and disease and feeble-mindedness.

What he was to do with such newfound knowledge, however, he could not yet grasp. Did it mean he would merely need apply the opposite of his wont methods, to extract the use of the root? That alone seemed as stupid and useless an effort as any, but the man he wished he could ask of this, of all these things... He hadn't seen Sun now in, what had it been, three days? Four? Five? What the man was doing, he didn't know, nor could he find him in the Dugout. That had been a surprise in and of itself, that the man supposedly finding the answers to his trouble at the bottom of a bottle, was not there?

And it was all because of some gang of mercenaries and thugs butchering a town in the south. Not for the first time - even today - Martin found himself wishing he could have somehow thrown the Legion in its might against the barbarians of this land. But even the vilest and lowest thugs here held firearms, and the Gunners supposedly were anything but low. They possessed weaponry he could scarcely imagine, arms and armor from before the world was rent into ruin. The destructive power of such was on a scale he found he dreaded, and even the Legion, mighty and noble as it was, could do little but become like lambs to the slaughter against such a foe.

No, it was better that they never come here, his kin. It would be even better had he never come here. But he was, and for the moment, much as it grated on his pride, he could see no way home. There was a saying that all roads would lead to the Imperial City. But, when the roads were cracked and cratered, and teemed with monsters and thugs, and alien stars dotted the skies... what road was there then, for him to take? None was paved for him, nor even merely strewn with dirt or beaten through the wilderness. The only path home, if one indeed was possible, he would have to himself cut and carve through the wastelands and whatever jungles and wilds here existed.

Had he been much too confident in his skills at potioneering? It was true he was no savant, no master of herbs and medicines. But he knew he could have done this, an easy task if any, at home in the confines of a properly stocked laboratorium. If the ingredients had been familiar and the alchemy table familiar to his eye, he could have produced what he'd promised the mayor, and within a single day too, at that. There should have been by now, before him, a dancing flame that heated and brought to boil vials and flasks and pitchers, essense of roots and herbs mixed within to the point of perfection. The Aetherius itself would have shown when the potion had reached its finale, a red color as of yet with no explanation but the divine. Divines, what mockery of me is this fate? What jest at my expense?

His fingers clenched around the top of the root, yet untouched by the knife. For a moment, it was all he wanted, to hurl the offending lump of malformed flora at the wall. Restraint found him, though the desire remained. He would achieve little - if anything he would suffer setback - from such rashness, and the lingering knowledge that he had as well as pledged to the mayor that he could produce results... aided in his restraint. Outbursts might be noted, and reported. Instead he slumped back, shoulders striking the wall before he let himself slide to the floor. What am I doing here?

Sun was nowhere to be found. From the man's state of mind, for all Martin knew he'd gone and hung himself somewhere, or wandered off into the wastes. And if Sun wasn't coming back, he would have no one to teach him how these people produced their medicines. How they got around the mutated magic in the ingredients. It was a nasty reminder of how alien this place was. For all that it was inhabited by human beings, who spoke the common tongue, and for all that their houses were of brick and wood and steel, it was undeniably alien.

"Why cannot this shit just be natural?"

It was not oft he swore, but time spent with Piper - in truth it was Natalie who had the fouler mouth - had lasting effects, one a baser language. The sentiment was all his own, however, his ire at the unnatural state of this damnable root. In all theory, likely he could merely produce a potion along the same methods as he would at home, but here... he could not predict the outcome.

...he couldn't, yes?

It was not a rational thought, he knew that. It came borne from fright and frustration at the state of the world and his own task at hand. There was no accounting for the antithesis to all natural laws infesting everything organic in this world, no records to his knowledge of something as wrong. It would be against the laws of nature itself, and yet here he was, handling such impossible materials all the same. Its existence alone offended and caused him headaches, ironically to which the best solution was a potion of the sort he was meant to brew.

But it would require him to... what, exactly?

Certainly, masters of the arcane, or brilliant potioneers could have simply, somehow, reversed the reversed, and forced the malignant magic in the root to become rather more natural. But he was neither, much to his shame. There had been better students than he at home, it was true, but he doubted even they could have simply done so. Alcohol had been a keener friend to some than he, and yet they had performed with greater success in the grades. It had been a slight jealousy, back then, to hear the tops of the class complain when they scored only the second-highest grades, whilst he himself fought tooth and nail to forge his way through what they seemed to float above. It was to his detriment that he was no Breton or Altmer, those oh-so arcanely attuned races. Martin's smile was a twisted one, he thought back to the propaganda posters he'd seen around the streets, near the institutes. Oh, the excellence of the Imperials, the craftmanship of all he wrought, his silver tongue... but never had there been such of the arcane works, for it was well known only few were worse off from birth than the common man.

And here he was, just such a common man, fighting forces the Divines themselves ought had decreed beyond the bounds of mortals. The irony was what caused his sneer. By the gods, he loathed this. He knew Piper would resent him for it, but he loathed this land. He cared for people that lived within it, Piper foremost among them, but the world in which they lived was one he would have consigned to Oblivion, had it been his choice. It was made no better by the Lord Mayor himself taking interest, and his own ego inflating thereof, making promises of potions when he scarcely even understood the ingredients he was handling.

What would happen if he couldn't deliver?

"Am I... interrupting?"

Root still in hand, Martin nearly hurled it at the door when a voice spoke, so utterly unexpected and unheard had the man been. He halted himself, just in time, though he still flinched with the mutated turnip clenched between his fingers. Against the single lightbulb outside the clinic - When had night fallen? - he could make out the Minuteman leader, Garvey. It took a moment to recall his name, and some surprise yet lingered on the fact that night had somehow already fallen, despite it being not later than three or four in the afternoon last he'd been outside.

"Do people in this place not knock?" Martin grumbled, rubbing a free hand on his brows. Gods, why was he only starting to feel so exhausted now? It was like a hand pressing him down by the shoulders, another forcing his head. Sleep would be nice, yet would bring little comforts against this nightmare, partly of his own making. Maybe alcohol. Both, actually, that would be nice. To throw to the winds this entire endeavour and go follow Sun's example, noose and all; "What? No, nothing. What, Garvey, yes? Sun is not here, I don't know where."

"I noticed there were still lights on in here, thought I'd check all the same," Garvey said. This time, his hat was held in front, exposing the strangest hair Martin had ever seen. Short, black and curled like... In truth he could think of no example. Like if a child had drawn scribbles; "When he stopped coming to the bar I figured he'd gone back to work."

"Hasn't been here, no," he put the root down, scratching at the beard he was already growing. Diamond City did have a barber, of sorts, but the place did not appear sanitary. A beard was preferable then, to uncleaned knives; "I thought your people had left? You said you were only staying for a short time, yes? Your man has had a new leg?"

"Josh has received his prosthetic, yes, thank you again," the man nodded, glancing about. Martin hadn't disturbed much, aside from what he'd thought needed for the potioneering. Again, a reminder of his own ineptitude; "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that, if you've got the time?"

"Solitary work is better," Martin sighed. Better, perhaps, but so far fruitless all the same. He knew he wasn't at his best, and should treat Garvey with more courtesy than he was; "But I can listen. You can answer my questions too, then, when you have asked whatever you wish."

"That's fair," Garvey nodded, putting his hat back on. Had it been a gesture of respect? "You're right, we're only here for a short time. I've been in contact with folks up north, some settlers up in Concord, and they said we can come there, settle down. Lot of folks in our group could use that."

"I don't know where that is."

"Not a local, right," for a moment, the man did not speak, and Martin wondered if he'd simply forgotten what he came to say, or ask, or if that had been it. Strange enough things had already struck him down, a bizarre conversation would be the least of them. And it would still not be as strange as the one with... what was his name, the man in the subways? "Anyway, I heard about how the clinic works. You do some occasional charity work, for the settlements too out of the way to come in with the caravans, right?"

"If Sun was here, yes," Martin sighed; "But I do not know where he is, or has gone. I think he knew people in Quincy?"

"Well, yes, that's what he said. Was pretty vague on exactly who, but yeah, seems like it, the way he reacted," Garvey nodded; "Thing is, even if he don't seem to come back, at least right now, the settlements still need doctors comin' round. I saw what you did, with Josh. Dunno how, exactly, but didn't seem you needed stims or chems for it. You can do that stuff just with your hands?"

"It is my skill, yes," he nodded, wary; "I am a Healer."

"Heard a lot of folks call themselves that over the years," the Minuteman eyed him, one brow raised barely visible in the light of the single lit lamp inside the clinic; "Usually they turn out to be chem-addicts or pushers, or just mystics throwing sand at people. What makes your stuff work?"

"I received... a sound educadion...education..."

"Where?" Garvey frowned; "There's seriously places giving out educations in Europe?"

"In Cyrodiil, yes," Martin nodded, again, discarding his work in favor of Sun's chair. His legs were sore and the soles of his feet hurt; "I obtained my Journeyman's papers under Madame de Crue at the Imperial Institute of Restoration. I am licensed to practise medicine."

"Licenses are rare things these days."

"Sun said as much," Divines he was tired. There was genuine temptation to simply drop his forehead against the desk and sleep right as such. If only Garvey would sod off; "Why didn't you come ask at a time folks ought not be asleep?"

"You're not asleep."

"I ought be," he sighed.

"I can see that," Garvey hummed; "Working late?"

"No. Yes. What, why?" Martin muttered, the desk appearing more tempting by the minute. Like a siren's song it had an allure unexplainable yet powerful. He preempted the fall by crossing his arms over the desk and digging in his chin. No, wait, bad. Soft. "Yes. I work. I have to work, even though your roots are rotten and everything is rotten and I want to consign your land to Oblivion, but what, why? Why ask?"

He wondered, just how much he was saying out loud and how much was in his head. Was Garvey even here or was he hallucinating? He blinked, repeatedly, forcing some energy back into the retinas. No, no it wasn't dispersing. Preston Garvey still stood before him, material and frowning. How much did I say aloud?

"Do you have injured people? Is there a reason you are here, still, when I say Sun is gone and probably he has hung himself and I have to man this place alone and thus there can be no charity? I am the only licensed medical professional in this decaying hole of a town, but I don't even know if I get a salary. No one has told me. I know nothing and Sun has sodded off and the Mayor wants me to brew a potion that I can't brew because there's reverse magic in everything and no one sels... else, noticed. notices, and... I have tired. I want to sleep. You don't need to answer my questions..."

His forehead struck the table.

There was a lightbulb dangling over his head.

At first he didn't so much register it as the blinding, scorching light it gave off. Nausea filled him, pushing bile forth in what was less of a spurt and more so simply spilling out and over as he rolled onto his side, covers cold with sweat.

"Piper! He's throwing up on the floor!" he vaguely registered a familiar voice through the haze. Natalie, maybe? It was a girl and... yes, it was her, which meant... He retched once more, pale and clear liquids painting the floorboards. This was...

"I can see that, Jesus!"

Much more recognizable, and a more welcome voice for it, was Piper's irritated exclamation. She was closer by, but he could barely make out shapes further away than his own hands. All else was obscured behind fog, as if he required spectacles to see now. The idea alone only further horrified him. This wasn't the mattress he was supposed to sleep on. A plastic bucket was slid over the floor, its red-painted sides coming into view just before more bile forced its way out.

He did his best to aim.

"Where am I?" Each word dragged strength from him merely to pronounce, and came out slurred and weak all the same. His mind spun as if caught in a vortex, free of gravity and endlessly weighed down all at once, a mess of pain and shivering colds; "Where am I?!"

"Home," Piper came into view, her red jacket stripped in favor of the brown blouse he'd gotten used to seeing her wear indoors. It was a nice blouse, long sleeves and a high neck. He liked it. Seeing her, he felt as if a slightening of his pains came on. Stupid, it was, he knew that. But he liked seeing her, even if he could only just make out the outline; "Garvey brought you over last night. How're you feeling?"

"Dying," each word tasted of vomit, and no doubt his breath was rank. And his head hurt, oh so very much. As if it was being ripped in two, like an overripe melon. He was even spilling juices, to complete the image; "I've a fever?"

"Piper! It's dripping through the ceiling down here!"

"Hundred degrees, give or take," she replied, letting her sister's shouts go unanswered. Something warm touched his forehead, eliciting further shivers. By the gods, what had happened? What did she mean a hundred degrees? Water would boil at such heat! "Yeah, you're not exactly in great shape. Bright side is, you were running a hundred-and-two yesterday. Fever's going down." he couldn't tell if she was looking at him, or the puddle he'd made on her floor. But for once he couldn't even muster up the energy to be ashamed; "What happened?"

"I don't... I am not sure," he could offer a multitude of answers to her question, each as likely as the other to be the cause. He barely even remembered the other night - and the fact that it was an entire day's past, apparently - except for... stress; "I was working. Garvey brought me here?"

"He said you collapsed at the desk," Piper stepped away, though he couldn't yet make out much beyond a meter's distance. Squinting caused him only further pain. Garvey had been there, in the clinic? It sounded... right, there was something to it. Like a dream already faded, with only the knowledge that something had been there; "You were talking but started slurring it up at the end. You've barely even left the clinic for days, Martin. Hell is going on over there?"

"It's..." he struggled for the right word, and then struggled again to press it out; "It's all wrong. I kept... trying, but the magic's reversed inside, like..." he breathed, more a heave for air than anything normal; "The radiation in everything, it makes the magic wrong. Like a magnet, but it... pushes away instead of pulling..."

"...I can't tell if that's gibberish or just over my head," she sighed, stepping closer again. There was something in her hands, a mug, and it smelled warm. Then came a clearer smell, like half-spoiled mutton, and he hoped it was not the mug; "Drink this, slowly. You've been puking up water more than anything, stomach's probably all empty and shrunken now. Get some nutrients back there, slowly, yeah? Can you sit up?"

"...this isn't my mattress."

"Well duh," Piper scoffed, waiting for him to crawl up against the wall of the bed 'fore she handed him the enamelled mug, handle first; "Had to put you where I could keep an eye on you and still work."

"...I retched on your floor," he muttered, face almost falling into the steaming mug. The smell was like farmland manure. His father would have said it was the air being full of nutrients. It wasn't quite as funny now, that he faced the prospect of ingesting it; "I apologize."

"Hey, those floorboards used to be green," she shrugged; "You think I've never gone a round of bedside hurling?"

He sat in silence for a while, staring at the mug. Pieces of plant and vegetables floated about in a brownish stew-like liquid. The heat was scalding on the skin touching the actual mug, but in his state it was just another source of warmth. How could people live like this?

"I don't know what I'm to do..." it was not an admission he'd wanted to make before, but now he was too weak to care for pretences. Too weak to care that she saw he still could not find himself, or his place in this land; "I don't know how to undo the reversed magic, the... the radiation, in the roots. If I can't..."

"You say magic and radiation as if it's the same thing," Piper moved in the periphery of his vision, pulling a chair across the floor. When she sat down, the spine was turned towards him, her arms draped over it as she seemed to watch him for cues; "What do you mean?"

"...I don't know," he muttered, pulling the mug closer for warmth as another shiver raked his body. The blanket was a thin thing, once maybe stuffed with down but now a mess of patches and worn to the point of transparency; "It was just... something I thought about. Everything in this land, all the rocks and the trees, the animals... the people, it's all... with the radiation, and it goes against what should be, I think..."

"I still don't really get it," she said, sighing as the chair creaked; "Sorry. Sun's not shown up again yet either, so we can't exactly ask him."

Another day, two days? Sun had been gone for a week now, if not more. Days here were hard to keep track of, since it seemed the concept of a calendar was not widely used. He'd scarcely even heard people mentioning the time of day. There wasn't a clock, there was no hourglass in the corner, no pendulum swinging 'neath the spire of what passed for Diamond City's chapel. There was nothing. Like so much else, the people here seemed to exist in a complete absence of time.

"I think," he started, vomit still on his tongue, the stench as vile to taste as it was to smell. Piper drew away, but not much; "I think, before the War, the bombs, before you... your ancestors, they unleashed something. This radiation, it's like magic. It... it is magic, but it's the wrong way. Like... if you breathed in, but it was breathing out... I'm... not good at explaining, I don't have the words in Common..."

"You mean radiation's like upside down magic?"

"In a sense, yes," A layman's description, but not incorrect either. At least he was making ways, even if... gods, his insides churned something awful. Was it hunger? He couldn't tell apart nausea from his emptied guts; "Your Great War, the bombs, they caused this weather? Yes? The Radstorms, the mutants, it was not so before?"

"Supposedly the world was a lot nicer before the War, yeah," Piper nodded, a curious expression on her face. That is, she seemed curious, less so that her expression was one he found curious. Martin blinked, trying to rub away some of the dizziness with his fingers. When it was all for naught, he instead sated his nerves by ingesting more of the brew. This, at least, was a boon, a soothing effect on nerve and stomach both; "Drink some more, by the way. It's good for you."

"What is in?"

"It's a herbal anodyne, with some chopped molerat," she shrugged; "Molerat's just to get some actual meat in you, you know? You've gotta be famished. So, radiation?"

"Yes, it..." as he sought the words, he drank more of the brew, forcing the mind away from the realization that the chunks he felt slipping down, first thought to be a mushroom of some sort, stemmed instead from rodents. The taste was familiar enough that it made him wonder if he'd been served it before; "...there is magic in everything, everyone. It is a part of nature. You cannot remove magic, but..." there was a hair, he felt, too late to fish it from his mouth before it disappeared downwards. It brought memories of bacon from home, of the outer layers that had to be peeled and plucked of hairs; "Somehow you did. Your ancestors, those who unleashed the bombs, they destroyed it or... something, I do not know this much. And now it hinders me, when I must work with the ingredients of your land."

Piper leaned back, exhaling.

"Bummer, eh?" she mused.

"It is," despite himself, he found the choice of word amusing, and it made him smile behind the steaming mug. The smile vanished fast when he inhaled, his nose near enough to the brew that the scent wafted in unhindered; "I need to find information on the world before the bombs. Books, records, ledgers, diaries... pre-War ghouls, except I've seen none here. Sun told me they were evicted."

The curious expression faded from Piper, replaced instead with one decidedly unamused with the subject. Rather, maybe it was that she did not appreciate it being mentioned, or that she was against the eviction itself. A great multitude of things could be read from her face, and he'd not know at all which would be the real one.

"One of the reasons I can't stand politicians," she started, chewing a nail. She stared at it still even as she stopped, as if the nail was the target of her ire, not politicians; "They'll smile, and be friendly with folks, promising caps and clean water. Then they get elected, and one morning your neighbour's getting dragged out of her house because she survived a lethal dose of rads fifty years ago."

"Prognoms?"

"Dunno what that is, but Diamond City's ghoul population got reduced to zero overnight," she scoffed, her expression an irritated frown; "You're out of luck there, unless you wanna risk Boston Commons."

Silently, he cursed the daedric princes for their ploys. But it was old knowledge that even Molag Baal, or Mehrunes Dagon, evil as they were, paled next to the schemes and malice of mankind. There was no daedric influence here, only what seemed a kind of absolute intolerance towards the different and the alien. He only hoped the sane ghouls, the good ones, did not share the horrifying appearances of their feral kin, or he'd likely have shared in that intolerance, if not for Piper.

"There is no one left who remembers the world before the bombs?"

He would admit, though to himself only, that his optimism at Piper's initial excitement was waning. If there were no ghouls who remembered left in Diamond City, and no books on the subject within its walls, where would that leave him? If he had no access to knowledge of the old world, he would be no better off than these people's ancestors had been before any such was even catalogued. Worse, in truth, for at least they had an understanding of the laws of nature of this land. He, however, did not. Or, in truth he did, but it had come to the point now that each time he found himself almost understanding, either the understanding came with dread and revulsion, or he simply turned out wrong.

"No one's still here who was alive back..." Piper's words halted, suddenly enough that it made him as well pause, and glance to her expression. Now contemplative, rather than annoyed, it was a change he'd not foreseen; "Wait, not alive but..."

"I'm no necromancer," he said, hoping to forestall any ideas of... of he didn't know, but the idea of raising the dead, if such was indeed even a notion here, was abhorrent to him. No less so after what he had seen... heard... in the underground. There was no telling the kinds of spirits inhabited this place, only that a sense of malevolence had seemed to make those tunnels home. He did not want it on the surface; "Do not ask me to bring back the dead."

"What?" for a moment he wasn't certain if she'd heard him, for the expression on her face was one of confusion. Then she blinked, as if some mist had gone vanished from her eyes and she could see what he meant. She shook her head, snorting; "No, no, nothing like that. Jesus, Martin, give me some credit here, will ya?"

"You said not alive."

"...okay, I..." Piper halted, her expression scrounged for a moment before she sighed; "Yeah, okay, poor choice of words. Anyway, there's still one guy in town who could help you. Problem is, half the time he's out of town. Don't know if he's in right now, but I'll go check."

She was being vague. He couldn't tell if it was deliberate, but he did not care for it. It felt as if she was making him agree to something that he knew next to nothing of, a deal of such character he'd have spoken out against it if it were anyone but Piper.

"You are being vague," he still did say that, at least, hoping she would not take offense at his being wary. It was the part of him that had lived for years in the city, and longer still in the countryside, that clamored for information when it was withheld; "Why?"

She seemed to consider, for a moment, whether or not to even respond. It made him no less wary of the situation, and irritated. There was a game at play here, even he could tell as much. Piper had, somehow, found something amusing at the situation, and now played it for all its worth. In the end, at least, she seemed to take some twisted sort of pity on him. Or, maybe she simply sensed he did not share in her amusement.

"I guess that's fair," she sighed, though the smile persisted. His own headache did not permit him much of one of his own, though he found some relief in her mercy, scant as it felt. Piper scratched her cheek for a moment, contemplative, before she spoke.

"Remember Nick, that friend I've talked about? Detective, lives a few streets off?" He'd not known how far away Nick lived, but yes, he could nod to that at least. Much as his mind still remained a haze of nausea and frustration, he could still patch together what had been told; "So, he's not... exactly like most people. Actually I think he's literally one of a kind..." she paused, as if some sort of curious revelation had been unveiled; "He's... kinda like you, now that I think of it."

Thát made him sit straighter, at least as much as his body would allow. And without spilling the brew, which was still hot enough that such would have scalded him through the cover.

"He's a healer?" he asked, blinking to clear away the disbelief. But then, why had she behaved and spoken as if the very concept of magic was alien here? No... he had to throw to the winds any notions of fellow mages in this land. Piper was too observant to not have known of such people, and too honest on such matters that she'd have not told him were it the case. Hopefully. In truth she'd nearly left without saying even this much; "Why is he like me?"

Piper, to her credit, pulled her chair over and sat. At least, this meant she was willing to indulge him. He hoped. She'd not yet left, and instead reclined, fingers interlaced before her. She seemed... oddly contemplative, for the posture.

"Nick's a synth," she started, and it was not immediately that he remembered what that even was. Synths were atronachs, automatons feared by all. She'd told him that much herself, and it seemed a widespread opinion. The massacre at the market, all those years ago, people here still clung to that memory like a day of mourning; "Yeah, see? There's a reason I wasn't even sure how to broach it. Basically, he's a reject, cast out by the Institute when they couldn't find a use for him, I guess."

"I recall you mentioned it, but..." he was missing something, he knew he was missing something. There was nothing about the last ten seconds of Piper's speech that made a scrap of sense to him. Not even just to him, but at all, must be. Were not synths these cold, inhumane killers that passed as humans to sneak in and butcher and abduct? "I still don't fully understand. You, said synths infiltrate and abduct people from settlements, that they are the enemy of all."

"The Institute's the enemy," she said, and he was not quite certain as to the difference; "Synths are just the tools of the Institute, but something made Nick different enough that they gave him the boot. He ended up here, looking like a worn-down mannequin. No way you'd mistake him for a human. Then he started helping out around town, finding missing people, solving crimes... eventually people just accepted him being here."

"And he knows of the world before the bombs?" It sounded implausible. He knew by now that the Institute was a more recent thing than the war, so even if 'Nick' had been the first thing they made, how could he know of the world before? It was just as likely a dead path, with naught by disappointment and wasted time at its end; "How is this?"

Piper, for her own reasons, let slip a small grin. He couldn't see the humor, but then most of his world was a haze regardless. There was much hidden from him now that would have been otherwise clear as day. Martin hid his scowl away in the brew, savoring at least its taste as it burned the taste buds from his tongue.

"Well, he's basically got the implanted memories of a pre-War cop," she hummed. Martin, for his sake, managed not to spit out his brew at her words, but then, he was unsure of even what part of her words was the more incredulous; "It's real clear in the way he talks, too. An old-school dick from the days of the Silver Shroud and working cars."

"The Institute impregnated man's memories into an automaton?"

"Implanted," Piper coughed, halfway a laugh; "That's one way to put it. Either way, he's a person in all the ways that matter. One of the few genuinely good people in Diamond City. Once you get over the peeling skin and glowing eyes, you'd hardly even notice he's a synth," her smile, at first confident, paled a little at those words, as if they brought about troubling implications; "...I guess that's the point of the human-looking ones, really."

Peeling skin. Glowing eyes. Automatons with the memories of men. Dicks.

He glanced at his brew, less scalding now. The words still rampaged across his mind like a herd of bizarre, twisted cattle. Dicks.

He only knew of one word from home like that. It only carried two meanings, though neither was a meaning he much appreciated in this context. And Piper had said Nick was a good person, so it was down to just one. He glanced back up, watching her for a moment before formulating a way to ask that was, he hoped, sufficiently polite;

"...when you say 'dicks'..."