Alright, let's get a couple things out of the way before we begin. I absolutely fucking HATE Glasslands' portrayal of Lucy, so that's right the fuck out. Legacy of Onyx is not relevant to this fic because: 1) This happens years before it, 2) I haven't read it, and 3) according to the people I've asked, it doesn't add anything relevant to Tom and Lucy anyway.
Lastly, I've never been taught any Sign language, so I'm operating off what search results tell me. If I'm wrong, tell me.
"How are you sure we're alive?"
—Lucy-B091
"I can't tell you why I left or where I'm going. I don't want you to follow me. . ."
—James
Word Count: 5635
The dreams—the nightmares—never truly went away. With time and therapy and support their frequency diminished, but they were always there in the background. A ragged psychological wound that would not fully heal.
He had done this a thousand times before; he would do it a thousand times more. He was in the drop pod approaching Target Area Apache. In life the sky had been thick with clouds to hide the danger, but here it was clear and he could see the seven cruisers hovering serenely over their objective.
Before he was fully aware of it, he was down in the dirt, trading fire with Jackals and attempting to find his team. In his dreams, it did not have to end the same way. They saw the danger now, and there remained only one way to remove it. If they were fast enough, fierce enough—
Two of his oldest friends were gone again, and the rest would follow them shortly. He hit the water feet first, lost his hold on the only one who mattered now, and kept going down. He fought against the press of the water, the weight of his failure, with all the pained fury he could muster. It was not enough. It never was and probably never would be.
The dream never had to end the same way, but it always did.
Another took his hand in theirs; they were smaller without the armor encasing them, warm. Alive. The world stopped, faded away.
Tom-B292 blearily opened his eyes to see the room's only other occupant. Dark brown eyes set in a pale, slender heart shaped face watched him back with knowing concern; black hair disheveled, as much as hair kept within regulation length could be, from sleep. He didn't need to look to know the rest—the lean, muscular body that would have fit the best of Olympic decathletes or the collection of scars accrued from fifteen years of training and service.
Lucy.
The two of them had met by chance during SPARTAN-III Beta Company's initiation on Onyx when her drop pack had gotten tangled in the jungle canopy and she ended up falling into a stream bed below. He had followed the sound of her swearing, helped her up and out, and then they had huddled together beneath his own pack for warmth to wait for the instructors. They were six years old at the time.
An assignment to the same team during training had followed. They spent the next five years as one half of Fireteam Foxtrot, sharing in each other's triumphs and failures alongside hundreds of other candidates. They had been taught to move like phantoms, how to track and trap and kill, to think and act as one; doing it again, after the augmentations pushed their bodies beyond the limits of normal men. A family; united at first by shared loss and hate, then by purpose. They wouldn't have traded places with anyone else in the universe.
Then 51 Pegasi B. Operation TORPEDO. There were other worlds, of course, other missions, but they paled in comparison to that barren rock where they had lost everything. They alone had barely survived, though accepting that as a positive had been a long and hard process. Retraining themselves to work on their own, because Adam and Min were gone . . .
She released his hand, held her left flat and twice made a short, rapid 'v' off the palm with her right. Alright?
He smiled slightly, curled his right hand into a fist, and gently knocked on her chest. Yes.
The exchange, and its reverse, had become something of a morning ritual for them over the past eight years. They knew that there were better manners with which to start the day, but it was comforting enough in its own way and put life in perspective.
He glanced at the clock on the wall—0428 hours—and sat up. He knew he wouldn't be going back to sleep after that and they would have gotten up in an hour anyway . . .
Lucy wrapped her arms around his chest from behind and rested her head on his shoulder.
Or we could stay like this for a while. That worked too.
Paxopolis, Lucy had decided shortly after they had arrived, was the most pretentiously named place she had ever been to. It had taken longer for her to conclude that being reassigned there was good for them. No ONI hit jobs or training another class of SPARTAN-IIIs as she and Tom had feared would happen; no dumpster fire personality cult SPARTAN-IV program (Where had Chief Mendez gone so wrong with Jun and Musa, that they held routine training exercises as more important than someone's life?) and the suspicion that one of their trainees could be a traitor. Just them, together, using the skills they'd accrued turning five year olds into Humanity's most efficient killers to create the first fully integrated Human/Sangheili/Unggoy combat unit. In the middle of the galaxy's biggest bomb shelter.
She might not have any real love for the assorted species that once made up the Covenant, but what was accomplished in Paxopolis could keep the Gammas from being sent on a suicide run like Alpha and Beta Companies were, could perhaps spare the kids from going through what the two of them had—the silence, the isolation, the nightmares, the depression, the tears streaming over her cheeks as she held Tom down because how dare he even think of leaving her like that—so she'd smile and soldier on like she had been trained to because the shield world was a key to a brighter, better future and after the War, that was all they could ask for.
So she held to the only person who knew her as intimately as she knew herself, and she him, long after his breathing had eased and the tension in his shoulders had drained away. There was the future they were working towards and the past they could never forget but, in the here and now, they needed one another.
0600 HOURS, JUNE 22, 2554 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\ZETA DORADUS SYSTEM, SHIELD WORLD TREVELYAN, PAXOPOLIS
As a true Dyson Sphere Trevelyan, or rather Onyx, had no day and night cycle, with the closest substitute coming from either cloud cover induced by the construct's automated environmental systems or, if one held a very loose definition of the concept, eclipses caused by the planets that orbited the star at its heart. The latter was completely inadequate and using the former to fake it had been pushed down the priority list until it was determined that there were no swarms of starship mulching kill bots that might take issue with such alterations. Until then, auto tinting windows and the standardized, if arbitrary, Military Calendar would have to suffice.
The structure's sole settlement, Paxopolis, had begun its life as the Office of Naval Intelligence Research Facility Trevelyan before the Unified Earth Government and UNSC HIGHCOM had taken over and made it a joint venture with the Human-friendly Swords of Sanghelios. Officially, this was both to strengthen ties between the UEG and SoS as well as to bring in a larger talent pool than would ever have been admitted by the ONI alone. Rumors amongst the Fleet cast it as a deliberate slight against retiring ONI Section III head Vice Admiral Margaret Parangosky and her successor/protégé Admiral Serin Osman.
Whatever the reasons, the city's layout reflected its origins. Every building, from the landing field, its hangars, and control tower to the roads, labs, and housing, was a prefabricated module with only the central utilities having been built on site. The airfield was separated from the city by two kilometers of low cut grass, with a similar lack of cover on all other sides as a stowaway catching measure. The road from it terminated at a division level command center turned seat of civilian government; flanked on one side by the motor pool, armory, and assorted research centers; on the other by barracks, a hospital, and mess hall. From there, however, the martial rigidity broke down with a nebulously demarcated business district and the ballooning civilian housing zones—be they apartment complexes, single family domiciles, the Unggoys' armored, subterranean methane warrens, or the Sangheilis' communal quasi-keeps—that had received only cursory urban planning.
Tom and Lucy had been assigned a private flat on the edges of the settlement. In other milieus, such quarters were the privilege of O-4s and higher rather than a pair of Petty Officers but—between their status as SPARTAN-IIIs (classified well beyond Top Secret); their positions as both joint third-in-command of the Paxopolis Security Forces and primary architects of the training regimen that would turn said peacekeeping unit into a cohesive, well oiled formation rather than just a collection of people the best psychologists of either polity had concluded were the least likely to start sticking knives in backs; and the not unreasonable line of thought by those in the know that placing a pair of deeply traumatized child soldiers in the middle of a bunch of strangers they had nothing in common with was a recipe for disaster—an exception had been made. That said exception had immediately caused an absolute deluge of increasingly lurid rumors about the nature of their relationship was a source of constant amusement for Mendez and constant exasperation for the two of them.
Those rumors, of course, weren't helped by how they were rarely if ever seen apart. From early morning runs, to paperwork, to meals, to missions, they were each other's shadow. Which was why when Charlie Company found an enthusiastic Unggoy taking morning roll call rather than the outwardly subdued and vaguely disapproving super soldier who normally did so, no one was surprised when the woman who routinely took upon six-to-one odds in sparring matches and won was also absent. Maybe, they all quietly hoped, they'd actually be able to beat her replacement.
While their trainees fantasized about a day on easy mode, Tom and Lucy were being briefed on their new assignment.
"The analysis group found an . . . anomaly," Mendez began, "in sector M32-56. While it's listed in Onyx's databases, it isn't part of the regulatory apparatus or the portal network, nor is it a hanger or manufacturing facility. Beyond that, we don't know anything because the Huragok are restricted from it and the glyphs in its entries are almost completely made up of nonsense no one's ever seen."
He tapped on the hologram projector on the desk in front of him, dimming the lights of the utilitarian briefing room as a three dimensional scan of the target and surrounding area came into being, giving an ethereal glow to his silver hair. Topographical data followed, and was swiftly committed to memory by the two.
"The two of you and Bravo Eight will be running escort for Professors Vahlen, Ray, 'Zorah, and their team. Once you've gotten inside, they'll be conducting a preliminary assessment. Ideally, it'll be fast and smooth, but I've authorized the quartermaster to outfit you for two weeks and a fight. Any questions?"
Lucy caught a glance from Tom, exaggerated for Mendez's benefit, and gave a slight shake of her head.
"No Sir." Tom replied. Mendez was at least nominally a civilian now, even if his job as Paxopolis' Chief of Security placed him in charge of a force composed overwhelmingly of active duty personnel, precluding a salute. He was also the closest they still had to family.
Lucy knew Tom had an older brother who had survived the War whom he didn't care to meet, as by now the only things they shared were some DNA, which meant next to nothing to either of them, and a surname her partner had forgotten until the ONI had handed it to him. To say nothing of the beyond classified, crime against humanity nature of the SPARTAN-III Program itself; to show themselves could draw attention to it and, by extension, the Gammas. Osman had already considered having the younger SPARTANs killed because of her own incompetence, and they couldn't risk Section III doing something drastic.
While several of their fellow Beta Company graduates were still alive, they hadn't seen any of them for nearly a decade and couldn't contact them. Faster than light communications hadn't disseminated to that degree yet, and even if it had they lacked the clearances to ask about another command's SPECWAR unit.
When it was just the three of them, maybe they could afford to be more informal, but that was as much as they could bend fifteen years of protocol.
"Good. You leave from Pad 12 in an hour. Dismissed."
Suiting up in Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor was a familiar routine. The Mark III (1) suits they were assigned back in March for the Gao operation leveraged late War breakthroughs to substantially reduce weight compared to the Mark II as well as improving its ability to maintain operator temperature, the resolution of, and recovery times for the photoreactive panels that allowed it to blend in with the surroundings. Theirs had been modified to include sync-up points for similarly armored cases or mimetic cloth pouches on the abdomen, thighs, calves, and lower back—because it didn't matter how good the SPI's optical and thermal camouflage systems were if someone spotted a bandolier of grenades hovering in the air. It still couldn't accommodate the servos that were found in newer iterations of ONI or ODST gear, but the improvements were welcome nonetheless.
After a visual and diagnostic check to insure that all systems were performing optimally, and a swift glare to send three techs scurrying scurrying away in fright (Lucy didn't care how little Tom's bodysuit left to the imagination, that wasn't what he was there for.), they gathered their armaments. Onyx Sentinels, the expected opposition if such arose, carried velocity triggered energy shields strong enough for them to float through heavy machine gun fire as though it were a gentle rain—the only recorded kill with conventional, infantry scale heavy weapons had involved four 102mm HEAT rockets and as many 14.5x114mm armor piercing rounds delivered nearly simultaneously. All other kills made by ground troops had involved ambushes using large rocks, falling trees, or (by Tom and herself) very carefully timed fragmentation grenades; the only defense against the machines' particle beams was not to be hit.
As such, Lucy opted for an XM510 (2) 30mm grenade launcher, thirty rounds for it, and a MA5K carbine equipped with an under barrel launcher as a fallback. The XM510 had never been used against the Sentinels, but had better odds than most of the armory's stock. Tom, possessing the best marksman scores of everyone currently in Onyx, had chosen a SRS-99 sniper rifle and four extra magazines to be used in conjunction with Bravo-8's medium and heavy weapons and a similarly outfitted MA5K. Next came six Covenant plasma grenades, two of the recently introduced Disruptors (3), four flares, three canisters of C7 foaming explosive, two meters of thermite-carbon cord, and five magazines of 7.62x51mm AP ammunition for their carbines; because, if nothing else, they could try to get on the machines and shoot them point blank. It might not be as impressive as punching one to death, but it would probably work. The rest of their gear—personal trauma kits, fiber-optic probes, combat knives, emergency stimulants of the there-will-be-no-breaks-for-the-next-96-hours kind, their allotted food, and water—standard NAVSPECWAR or Forerunner expedition fare, was wheeled out to them on a motorized cart alongside a pair of regulation backpacks. They got to choose where everything went.
From there it was a simple matter to drive the five Sangheili and seven Humans of Bravo-8 before them to the airfield ahead of schedule so that when the Professors and their gaggle of assistants arrived they were ready for immediate departure. The transports were a Covenant Spirit, which traded armament for a durability and cargo capacity of exceeding anything else in its size class, and a new D79-TC Pelican which was faster and better configured to provide close air support. Risk mitigation protocols demanded they split up for the trip, so Tom had boarded the Spirit alongside the Sangheili arm of the operation, looking incongruously small in a troop bay made for two and a half meter tall aliens, while Lucy accompanied most of the Humans in the other.
Lucy's reliance on Sign (or Tom) to communicate with others meant that she spent the flight aloof from the banter of the other passengers. Were she anything less than a SPARTAN, she would have been discharged years ago for such a crippling liability. It was only a combination of her skills, humanity's dire straits during the War and its aftermath, and Onyx being classed only as a potential combat zone that allowed her to stay in the only life she remembered with the only people she knew. She never had found out what the ONI would have done with her if Commander Ambrose had not successfully argued, all those years ago, that he needed SPARTANs to train SPARTANs.
She wasn't sure she wanted to.
The transit and landing was the smoothest Lucy had ever experienced, mostly due to the lack of hostile fire but also from the D79's newly devised energy shields. The structure itself—a blue-silver triangular pyramid a kilometer to a side with the top third removed to leave an intricately detailed but flat summit—was placed directly in the center of a perfectly circular kilometer and a half diameter clearing of wavy, red-topped grasses that changed so abruptly to the conifer-esque forest that dominated this sector of the shield world it might well have been cut out by a laser and dropped in from somewhere else. As aerial passes had failed to reveal an entrance, either to instruments or the Mark One Eyeball, they would have to try it on foot. Tom, Lucy, and Bravo-8 had disembarked and the noncombatants had piled into the Spirit, which now loitered two hundred meters in the air waiting to land or flee with its squishier, academic cargo; whichever came first. The pair had formed one team, three Humans—transponders tagging them as Specialists Gilligan, Lincoln, and Beatles—and two Sangheili—Rangers 'Temar and 'Lewai—formed a second, both to search the base of the installation while the rest established a perimeter around the landed Pelican.
Which was how Lucy found herself once more in the field, covering Tom's back as he covered hers. It was reflexive, so second nature they could do it as easily as breathing, and despite the potential danger, despite how waist high grass like what they were currently standing in was the scourge of camouflage operators everywhere, it was calming. They could have hugged the wall they were searching, but the odds of being translocated into a time dilated pocket dimension were much lower if they kept some space between it and themselves.
As they neared the middle of their first side, Tom tagged a section of the wall on her Heads Up Display. Lucy advanced past him to inspect it, since she did not quite come up to his shoulder and he was thus far better equipped to pull her out of harm's way than the reverse, and promptly identified a three meter across hexagon recessed less than a millimeter into the edifice. She drummed her fingers along the barrel of the XM510, but made no move to touch it. Too risky.
"Penitent Vigil, this is Bravo-8 Actual . . ." she heard him begin, before her attention was taken by the appearance of a small, unidentified contact on the edge of her motion tracker's range and its rapid advance through the grass. Lucy brought up her left hand to get his attention, though he was probably already aware, and pointed towards the unknown.
"—Break break break! Abort descent! Unknown at ten meters and closing—"
And then it was in sight, rising from the grass less like the pigeon it was the size of and more like an anti-personnel mine. Silver-grey in color, the machine looked to be little more than a mostly spherical yellow-white sensor array and drive unit. It flitted about erratically, like a hummingbird, seemingly scrutinizing the two of them in turns before beeping shrilly and fixing its mechanical gaze upon her. The array brightened and her visor automatically polarized, HUD flickering with static as the yellow ray it emitted panned up and down her body. Her initial, automatic response was to go for her MA5K and empty the magazine into the machine's lens. However, between Tom's wary but not worried stance and a distinct lack of pain on her part, conscious thought quickly subdued instinct, and the grenade launcher merely remained fixed on the Sentinel as it did its work.
As swiftly as it had appeared, the drone cut off its scan, turned, and rushed headlong towards the center of the indentation. Before it could dash itself upon the unyielding wall, a flicker of light appeared in the middle of the hexagon, spreading outward like fire. The drone passed through unharmed, leaving the two Spartans to watch the depression melt away.
They moved as one, taking positions on either side of the doorway as the light died. She listened with half an ear to her partner's voice as he directed the other team to rendezvous at their position. The newly revealed corridor, laser straight and made of the same maybe-not-metal as the structure's exterior, matched the dimensions of the entrance exactly and was devoid of any noticeable branches along its four hundred meter length. It was well lit, in the kind of sterile white that reminded her of a field hospital, though no actual lights were visible. Less than half the distance to the opposite side. No obvious traps, but no Sentinel and no cover. The floor was only half the width of the hallway and the ceiling only just hit two hundred sixty centimeters. Fine for Humans, but cramped for Elites.
The second team arrived several minutes later and Tom immediately motioned 'Temar into the passage, then Lucy. He followed and she could tell from the heavier footfalls that 'Lewai was bringing up the rear of their line. The three regular Humans, lacking the shields, camouflage systems, or enhanced physiology the four of them possessed, remained behind in cover; where they wouldn't get underfoot in an ambush.
As they silently walked single file into the heart of the building the walls began to shift, melting away as the entrance had, though now they revealed more conventional doors—all of which stayed stubbornly locked against their efforts to enter. Still, as the floor and ceiling remained unaltered and no Sentinels materialized to stymie them, they reached the end in short order. Here, again, the wall vanished to reveal a door, which opened with a discordantly cheerful chime when she approached it.
The chamber beyond was illuminated as well, but more warmly, like sunlight through trees. They entered in a smooth breach and clear: 'Temar first; Tom and herself after, low and cloaked; 'Lewai was close on their heels, but by then they had confirmed it empty.
They spread out and Lucy scanned the room: perfectly circular and the expected sixty five meters across according to her HUD; ornate geometric inscriptions in blue, red, green, and orange so elaborate she couldn't find a place where they repeated; a subtle thrum of power in the background, less heard through the ears than felt through the bones; the floor a matte black that seemed to suck in the light, both infinitely deep and—
Wait—a memory clicked into place.
The hum of power spiked.
Black floor—Dante dead, the Covenant pressing in.
"Out now! Teleporter!" Tom barked. She was already moving.
The door was sliding shut. She saw 'Lewai duck back out, then 'Temar followed a heartbeat later in a desperate roll, Tom not far behind. Lucy automatically assessed the distance and realized that she wouldn't make it in time. Tom would though. He'd be safe and find her if she couldn't make her own way back, no matter how long it took.
On the cusp of salvation, he stopped. Looked at her.
No.
Bolted to her, grabbed her hand in his. Drew her close.
No.
The door closed.
Sound rose beyond hearing.
The light turned blinding white.
And they were unmade.
7:30 am August 31, 2277, Megaton
Shiloh Breen stood in the shadow of Megaton's entrance, soaking up the last of the morning's fading cool. She gazed past the bizarre mutant cattle, the armed guards, and the eccentric trader that employed them; past the centuries ruined town of Springvale; staring both at nothing and something only she could see.
Her .308 hunting rifle—Simms and Jericho were ardent proponents of select fire guns, but a weapon she couldn't both afford and keep fed wasn't much use—sat propped against one of the support struts, the backpack that contained most of her worldly possessions beside it; both behind cover and within arm's reach. The rest were on her person; stored within the pockets and pouches of the reinforced vault jumpsuit she had been half-gifted, half-loaned. A desperately procured Vault Security helmet was securely fastened to her head (Stockholm, perched in the watchtower above the entrance, had many tales of raiders who had gone without such protection and all of them ended graphically.) and a similarly acquired police baton was nestled in the small of her back; a knife, for utility, was sheathed at her right boot; in a torso holster sat the 10mm pistol her best friend had shoved into her hands one morning, a lifetime ago and a world away (It had been two weeks and four and a half miles to the northwest.). The self defense training she had gotten alongside Amata over the years had been unexpectedly valuable during her flight from the Vault and during her stay in Megaton (Jericho was certainly less condescending now), but being within arms' reach of most wasteland dangers was considered to be a Bad Idea.
And to think, she owed the Overseer for those skills . . . okay, she owed his inability to refuse his at the time eight-year-old daughter and Officer Armstrong's willingness to take on the extra work, more than the Overseer himself. He had intended it for Amata alone, for what he no doubt considered the inevitable attempts by the boys in their class to force themselves on her. It was a mostly unjustified and almost wholly misplaced concern, in her experienced people watching opinion. She couldn't call it completely without merit, because who knew how far Butch and his friends could egg each other on if someone didn't, say, take five seconds to imply that Wally Mack was a follower instead of a leader.
The Tunnel Snakes' belligerence generated spectacle for the sake of spectacle; less concerned with the organized crime that being a gang implied and more, between poor home lives, depression, or the Vault's stifling demand for conformity, intent on having some control over their own lives. If anything, he should have been more leery of Vault Security; Officers O'Brian and Mack were power-tripping thugs and Chief Hannon had never made any effort to rein them in. The two would probably be worse now, what with how O'Brian had gunned down the Holdens without hesitation, and how Mack's interrogation of Amata had ended, in Amata's recounting, with him spitting out teeth. She still harbored guilt about leaving her best friend with the same man who'd killed Jonas, but with the Overseer watching them and half of Security nipping at her heels, it had been the best option. Her only option.
Granted, on August sixteenth she wouldn't have thought that the reaction to one of the Vault's two doctors slipping away would be to have the other beaten to death and to order the execution of their only pupil. Really undermined her belief in how well she could read people, that had.
There hadn't been many opportunities since for herto blend in and watch to reaffirm those skills, either. The bright blue and yellow Vault jumpsuit she'd arrived in meant that she stuck out like a sore thumb to anyone who wasn't blind and maybe also stupid. By the time she'd gone to haggle out a change of clothes or three with Moira, she'd been working sunrise to sunset; be it with Walter in the water processing plant, Doc Church in the clinic, assisting Moira with the Survival Guide in Craterside Supply, or out in the wastes with whoever. She was too tired by the end of each day to linger at the Brass Lantern or Moriarty's Saloon, instead sleeping like the dead in the common house. Purified water and the least contaminated foods were expensive.
At least she hadn't needed to scrounge up a hundred caps for Moriarty. It was amazing, truly amazing, what could be accomplished by treating someone—the Ghoul bartender Gob; it was hard for her to look at him and he smelled a little worse than the rest of Megaton's denizens, but that was no grounds for cruelty—like an actual person, not property or a leper. . . alongside a bobby pin, screwdriver, and the cover of darkness.
Still, the bar owner's tale about seeing her infant self was less of a revelation than it was a crucial piece of the puzzle sliding into place. Offhand comments and mysterious disappearances throughout her childhood had fostered a suspicion that 'no one ever enters, and no one ever leaves' was a bald-faced lie; her father's sudden, secretive flight and the vague goodbye she'd found on Jonas's body had fanned it. The Overseer's private terminal had all but confirmed it. Being flat out told, by a grimy pimp with delusions of being a mob boss, that she was born in the wastes was an anticlimax, really.
Shiloh still didn't know why he'd left though, or his ultimate destination. She had guesses, of course: the nebulous experiments he spoke of in his notes for the former no doubt, offshoots of something abandoned almost twenty years now; Rivet City or the Citadel for the latter, the only places in D.C. that possessed both advanced technology and the experience to actually use it, as well as possibly the openness to take him back after so long.
He might even be there now. As long as she'd been in Megaton paying, bribing, or cajoling people for crash course lessons in wasteland survival, the saloon terminal's lead of Galaxy News Radio would probably end up as a pointless, inconvenient detour.
Unless he died on the way there. God, I hope I'm looking for him to give him a piece of my mind and not just for my peace of mind.
He had to have known as well—better than I did that Almodovar's a petty, paranoid tyrant.
He should have known that leaving would cause a crackdown on everyone associated with him.
He should have—a hand clapped down on her armored shoulder.
She was quietly proud that she didn't flinch at the surprise contact.
"You take care now," said a familiar, jovial voice; Sheriff Simms. She hadn't heard him approach. Now she was glad she'd stayed still. Knocking the man on his ass might have eased his mind, but that would have been a terrible thing to do to such a gracious host.
She turned to face the light armor clad lawman, and didn't bother to hide her chagrin. "Thank you, sir. For the help. . . I know that it couldn't have been easy getting people to make time for a wet behind the ears Vault girl—"
"Nonsense," Simms cut in, "you've done more for us in two weeks than some of the people who've been here for years. Kinda want to know what you said to Leo to get him down to Doc Church, though. Kid looked like he'd seen a ghost."
Huh; he wasn't supposed to have known about that. 'Beware old men in a world where men die young,' indeed. She smiled. "A master negotiator never goes out of her way to make herself less in demand, Sheriff."
"Hmph. I reckon so." He chuckled, then reached into one of his duster's pockets and withdrew several Pungas, pricey imported—from all the way across the Chesapeake Bay, apparently—fruits sold down at the Brass Lantern. "Here, from Harden. As thanks for the baseball gear. Don't eat them all at once."
Shiloh nodded. "Give him my thanks."
"Sure thing." He replied lightly. Then, more sternly: "Don't get lost, and don't lose track of time. The metro system's a maze and even by the wasteland's standards, the D.C. ruins are no place for anyone to be wandering through at night. Especially alone."
She suppressed a reflexive, sarcastic 'Yes, Dad'—she'd been hearing that warning from everyone since she'd first mentioned her destination—and settled on a sober "Got it."
"Good. Wolfgang'll be leaving in half an hour; he won't wait. Good luck."
She would walk with the caravan east until the Super Duper Mart—Moira wanted her to investigate it, but that had waited almost two hundred years, it could wait a few days more—then take the bridge north across the Potomac. Farragut West station was just downstream from there, and the Brotherhood of Steel had marked the path to GNR through the subways.
"Thanks," she murmured, turning back to look at the cloudless sky, "I'll need it."
1446 HOURS, JUNE 22, 2554 (MILITARY CALENDAR)\[ERROR: LOCATION UNKNOWN]\SPARTAN-B091 MISSION CLOCK: 0:7:46:20
They existed once more.
Lucy collapsed to her knees, fighting the nausea and the feeling that her organs had been pulled out and stuffed back into her body out of order. She could hear Tom nearby, dry heaving.
Hate. Teleportation.
She forced the bile down and stood, shaking the sandy dirt from her gauntlets as she did, to gaze at the rising sun.
"Where," Tom croaked, "are we?"
(1) The SPI Armor on the cover of Last Light is noticeably different from the one on the cover of Ghosts of Onyx. I'm going with it being the next iteration.
(2) I'm using a piece of Halo: Reach concept art and giving it the name of the one from Halo Wars. The round size isn't from anything official.
(3) From the Headhunters short story in Halo Evolutions. For Fallout fans, it's basically a Pulse Grenade.
