This is what I do.
It has been almost two days since Heather has spoken to me, but on the positive side, at least she is looking at me now.
Between Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday morning the settlement of Covenant and the torture complex it ran were wiped off the map. Within 12 hours, 30 souls were sent back into the ether. Of those, 9 were buried, 20 burned. and one made an example of.
Dan had heard people in town whispering about a "complex" that they were keeping secret. From what he was able to gather, it sounded like they were running some kind of experiments in this complex and that they also had Stockton's daughter. We let Dan lead the way and found it around 8pm, Wednesday night. Shortly after entering, we were greeted by a collection of eight armed guards covered in body armor, telling us to leave. We, of course refused, and much to their credit, opted to take us to the person in charge. It was nice to know that we had enough of a presence that they figured it would be in their best interest not to fuck with us. That, and I am sure that they wanted to show off the size of their force to intimidate us. On the way to see Dr. Chambers, I counted 20 guards in the place, numerous cells with all forms of torture occurring, and at least two bodies of what appeared to be fairly recently deceased "test subjects."
The short version - Dr. Chambers had set up Covenant to be a specimen collection point for her experiments designed to help detect synths masquerading as humans - we ended that.
The long version - After speaking with Dr. Chambers, it became obvious that she was not going to give us the location of Stockman's daughter. When she got down into the numbers and was describing her test as having a 60% success rate, and then justifying killing four humans for every six synths as collateral damage, I asked her one last time to tell us where in the Compound Stockton's daughter was. Her response sealed her fate.
"I would die before I told you that."
"No... I won't let you." was my response. Luckily, it was enough to alert Heather and Xao to what was going to happen next.
I shot her in the left kneecap to incapacitate her and she hit the floor screaming. That was fine with me, it meant we wouldn't have to worry about her shooting us in the back while we cleared the place. It took us about an hour to sterilize the Compound of hostiles. I think that one or two got away and that was going to be a problem. I had to work as fast as I could. I didn't have days to get the information I needed. The good Dr. had passed out and when she woke, she found herself fastened to a chair watching as I read through her journals. For five years the good people of Covenant have been providing her with subjects for her testing. In that time, over 93 people had been processed by the Dr. Of those 34 had been human. Each one had undergone all sorts of torture and at the end, all were summarily executed for autopsy.
It takes a monster to deal with a monster.
I asked Xao and Heather to leave, and they did. Xao understood and Heather complied because Xao urged her to come with him.
I didn't have the time that I would have liked and I had to resort to a quicker, even more brutal path.
"I told you, I would die before..." I cut her sentence short by bringing the bone saw down against her left wrist and starting to saw. A tourniquet stopped the bleeding this time. Without saying a word, I started on her right ankle until she passed out. I stopped the bleeding again and woke her with bitters. She looked up at me.
"You're a monster!" She spat at me.
In silence, I began to remove the skin from her right arm. She screamed until she had no voice left. Then I started at the base of her jaw on the left side and worked my way up to her brow. She tried to scream the whole time, but couldn't.
"We have been at this for just less than an hour..." I finally broke my silence. "This is what I do... I am very good at it. I can go on for days... and force you to do the same." Any of the arrogance and pride she had left, slipped away at the thought.
"Down the hall in the back of the lab, hidden door behind 3 file cabinets... you will find her in there..." I didn't even have to ask... I walked down the hall and found the door exactly as she had said. Inside was a young woman, no more than 17 or 18. She looked at me and I simply extended my hand. She reached out and took it.
"You're here for me? My father sent you?" I just smiled in response and led her out of the lab, keeping myself between her and the Dr. I walked her out to Xao and didn't see Heather.
"Xao... Where is Heather?"
"I tried to stop her Cain..."
"Fuck."
I walked back down to the lab and searched around until I found her. She was sitting on the floor, back against a desk, hand over her mouth, shaking.
"Heather..." I reached out to calm her.
"Don't fucking touch me!" She pushed herself harder against the desk. "Don't fucking talk to me..." Xao had come in behind me to check on things.
"Take her.. get her out of here." I whispered.
She let him help her up and get her legs working again. As they left, I turned back towards the Dr.
"You will kill me now." It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact. "I have been too long in this world. I have seen too many things and I became what I am. Kill me now, so that I might never become whatever it is you are."
I did as she had asked. One shot and she was released.
The water washed the blood off as we left, but it did nothing for the memory that Heather has now. As soon as we let the water of Mystic Lake, the residents of Covenant were coming at us. Just as I expected, the two guards that got away had alerted the settlers that the game was over. I had grabbed the holotapes from Dr. Chambers lab that outlined the entire operation, including the notes on torture and autopsies performed. This was getting dropped off at Piper's paper. People would know that there was a reason for what had to happen. It took us no more than about 20 minutes to eliminate everyone from Covenant. I started to dig graves for the settlers - Xao and Heather joined in. Burying them took longer than killing them.
So now, here we are, almost two days later and at least heather is looking at me now. When shit happens, she is there, being heather, killing what has to be killed, but the silence is deafening. I will try again tomorrow to talk with her about what happened.. about what I did and what she saw.
The fucked up part is that Dr. Chambers was sure she was doing what needed to be done, as surely as I am now.
Good, evil... It doesn't matter...
Everyone thinks they're righteous.
