Trigger warning: Mild body horror in the 3rd section
Author's note: Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read, review, or favorite this story. I'm quite slow at updating but a story of this scope needs a singular and satisfying ending. I've storyboarded the remaining chapters and I have a clear end game and conclusion that I hope you'll all like. I am not abandoning this story!
Chapter 11 — A Crucible
"Elder Maxson I think you should hear this." Knight Rhys said as the Elder was doing his routine patrols of the recruits' barracks.
"What is it Knight?"
Rhys flicked on the radio that sat on the table in the barracks common area and turned the volume up.
A young man's voice broke in as the Old World song finally ended and announced, "Travis 'Lonely' Miles time a good friend once told me that you gotta fight the good I have a woman here who's been doing just that and she's got a special message for each and every one of my loyal it away babe."
The shrill feedback of a microphone echoed through the Prydwen's hull and then a wavering and unsure voice came over the airwaves.
"Uh … thanks Travis." She cleared her voice and then began speaking with a little more confidence.
"We've all heard the rumors about the Institute and unfortunately many of the rumors you heard were Institute did kidnap people and replace them with synths including the former Diamond City Institute has committed unwarranted acts of violence against innocent people for standing in their way, and the Institute is responsible for the Super Mutant menace in the over sixty years ago, the Institute hired a mercenary to break into Vault 111, kidnap my son, and murder my kidnapped me and used my love for my friends to coerce me into five months of slavery.I did horrible things in their the perpetrator of much of this violence, turmoil, and bloodshed is now dead, and I've been named the Institute's new leader."
Elder Maxson sat on the aluminum bench and angled his body closer to the radio in interest.
The woman speaking took another breath. "Look, I am not here to justify for the Institute's past I know there is nothing I can say that will bring back the loved ones who were taken from time and I hope a small amount of grace will heal those wounds."
"What I'm here for today is to tell you that the Institute is changing, and I am changing have scientific and technological capabilities to improve everyone's lives have clean running water, the ability to grow and harvest crops which are more resilient to disease and radiation, and people with advanced medical training who are willing to diagnose and treat people who are sick, free of now we've established trade lines with a few local shops where you'll be able to buy raw materials, advanced armor, and weaponry for a fair Institute is tired of hiding in the shadows as the want to emerge into the wasteland, not as a force of violence or oppression, but as a force of hope and improvement for the for listening … for those of you who still are."
The microphone screeched again and the young man added, "There you have it you have any questions or concerns, the wonderful Nat down at Publick Occurrences will be taking your thoughts and sending them on to the Sole Survivor the meantime, here's that sweet crooner Bing Crosby and the wonderful Andrew's Sisters with 'Pistol Packin' Mama.'"
Maxson flicked the radio stroked his thick beard and considered his next enemy had just provided them with its flank and Maxson was trying to decide how he should make the killing blow.
"Knight Rhys." Maxson snapped.
"Yes sir!" The soldier saluted and stood at attention.
"I want you and Paladin Danse to assemble a team of four more soldiers and bring me this Vault Dweller.I want her back here that understood?"
"Sir, yes sir!"
"Ad victoriam." Maxson saluted which Knight Rhys echoed back before running off to Paladin Danse's quarters to tell him of their new mission.
Maxson turned back to the dormant had come all of this way to pull the Institute out of the ground like a weed, but now it seemed like this Sole Survivor was doing a good enough job of it should've just been patient and let the eventual mutiny tear the Institute apart from the inside out, but Elder Maxson wasn't a patient man.
He needed to meet this woman, this Sole Survivor, and end her once and for all.
Nora licked her lips as she stood in front of the assembled Goodneighbor populace two days later.
Her announcement in Diamond City went about as well as she expected but now everyone except Piper, Nat, Ellie, and Travis looked at her with suspicion.
Arturo refused to make eye contact with her and Vadim and Yefim all but kicked her out of the bar.
"Your presence here is bad for understand, yes?" Yefim said as soon as she came into the Dugout Inn."I'm sorry." He added with a genuine air of remorse.
Without Nick and his sterling reputation to back her up, Nora was adrift in a sea of trip from Goodneighbor to Diamond City and back took less than eight hours so she ended up spending the rest of her two days trying to help establish more safe houses for the newly freed synths with Deacon.
Between running PR and working with The Railroad, Nora barely had any time to think this morning Hancock came to her and said that he called a town meeting at noon; so here she was, standing atop of the balcony looking out at a sea of over one hundred stressed, emaciated, and dirty faces as they all glowered up at her.
Hancock watched her from the side. His black boot was kicked up against the wall in his usual devil-take-me tried to compose herself and project the same confident and self-assured manner that she had while she was in the courtroom, but the blank stares and thinly veiled looks of contempt did little to assuage her stage fright.
Nora cleared her throat and spoke in a rushed, tight breath. "Look.I know that I'm the last person you'd probably want speaking to you right now so I'll make it all saw the giant airship fly over Boston ten months ago, but if you're anything like me, you had no idea what it signified.I've talked to people, people who've had direct contact with the Brotherhood in the past—" Nora nodded at Dr. Amari, "And they are not here to help you have something they want, they'll take it by , just this morning I recieved a report from Preston Garvey, General of the Minutemen, that they descended on Sanctuary Hills and robbed them of half their food and some of their much needed supplies."
"At least they didn't fucking kidnap my brother and turn him into some mutant freak!" A high-pitched man dressed in a dirty business suit half hissed from the heads nodded and some citizens patted him on the back.
"And what about my daughter?I found her half-eaten corpse on the way back to my camp." An elderly woman wheezed."The Super Mutants ate her and then threw the rest of her body off the guess who made the Super Mutants?"
The crowd's murmur grew to a dull growl in dissent. Nora had to cut them off before the crowd had a chance to build off one another and escalate.
"I am truly sorry and my condolences go out to each and everyone who —"
"—Fuck your condolences." A man yelled out. "Your condolences wont bring my Maria back."
"Yeah!" The half the town echoed.
She looked in the crowd and saw that Hancock locked eyes with Dr. Amari and Dr. nodded her head and then whispered something into Virgil's nodded too and then pushed his way through the towered over half the Goodneighbor residents and physically pushed pass the others who blocked his climbed onto a stack of wooden crates and loomed out over the crowd.
"Listen! You all have lost loved out your anger on the innocent wont bring them back." He boomed out. "But if you need a place to direct your anger, direct it at me.I use to work at the Institute in the FEV they did was an atrocity and I did my best to put a stop to it.I destroyed the lab but I still have my research, and with it I've created an antiserum — a cure — which could reverse the mutation process."
"Bullshit!" A man yelled out from the crowd.
"Yeah, you're lying to us!" Another echoed out.
Then Hancock jumped up onto the boxes and stood next to crowd fell silent as soon as the ghoul rose his hands.
"Look. He ain't lying.I saw it with my own I first met him he looked as ugly and smelled twice as bad as any of them Super was one of them, and I damn near shot him on he's standing before you like this—"Hancock gestured up and down at Virgil. "Still just as ugly but not as green or simple-minded or prone to bouts of cannibalism and stringing up people like fuckin' piñatas."
"I know it is hard to believe but I do have proof." Virgil said, ignoring Hancock's editorializing.
Then what happened next was beyond whistled and the massive barricade near the entrance split in half as four men from the Neighborhood Watch pulled them and MacCready pulled a hulking green form through the gap and towards the crowd.
Thick ropes were tied to both of the creature's wrists but it looked like either man would be thrown through the air if the Super Mutant had the inclination to jerk one of its arms too then Nora saw what was truly keeping the Super Mutant docile.
KL-E-O came up behind the mutant issuing orders as her fully charged red laser eye was aimed at the mutant's back.
"Citizens allow maximum space of up to ten feet from the safety is not guaranteed." Her robotic, authoritative voice commanded but then her sultry voice added, "But a little danger never hurt anyone."
The crowd backed up against the buildings as the mutant was lead into the town square, some even drew weapons.A multicolored gag was tied around the mutant's mouth which muffled the beast's angry roaring and broken threats.
Virgil rose his hands and motioned for the crowd to calm down. "Please!Don't be patient and watch."
Sweat beaded off his forehead as he pulled out a syringe rifle from the holster that was slung across his checked the cartridge to ensure the correct vial was loaded, and then took aim at the mutant's jugular.
The gun made a soft whooshing sound as it fired a red puff ball tipped syringe into the beast's mutant barely didn't look like the mutant even registered that it had been hit.
Nora and the crowd watched with tense a whole minute of silence, the mutant finally grunted and then swayed on its and MacCready let go of their ropes and backed away from the wavering form just as all 400 pounds of the mutant fell to its knees and then landed face first in the dirt.
Virgil jumped off the barrels with surprising dexterity, ran towards the fallen mutant, and pressed a larger syringe to the mutant's neck and dispensed the rubbed the injection sight as though he was giving a vaccination and then stepped away.
"The serum I synthesized from my own blood successfully reverses the mutation done to the subject's serum was produced with a high powered amphetamine, courtesy of your Mayor, which will speed up the serum's restorative process."
Nora doubted that the crowd understood half of what he said, but when she caught Hancock's eye she found his stony face remained impassive and impossible to read. Why would Hancock help Brian Virgil after what he had done to his brother? Hell, Hancock would have nearly gutted him in the middle of Sanctuary if Nora hadn't stepped wonder what had changed between the two men while she had been at the Institute.
A murmur of disbelief and slight horror broke Nora from her thoughts and drew her attention back to the eight and a half foot tall and 400 pound Super Mutant began shrinking.
Dr. Amari cut through the crowd with her doctor's bag as two Goodneighbor citizens followed behind her while carrying a stretcher.
The awful snapping sound of bones breaking and then reforming rang out like gunshots and someone in the crowd puked into an empty mutant … or rather … the greenish looking humanoid … seemed to deflate like a punctured air mattress.
Virgil nodded to Dr. Amari and she went ahead and administered a dose of 's voice rang out, sounding more confident and more commanding than she had ever seen before.
"Once the serum replicates and replaces the corrupted DNA, the patient will revert back to their original state with only a few minor side effects.I cannot guarantee that this process will work on every Super Mutant — behemoths and those that have excessively mutated or those of an advanced age — will not survive the process, but I hope that this is just one way that the Institute, thanks to Nora's help, can begin to make amends."
By now the mutant's form had reverted back into a human male's sun-tanned skin was marked with blood and dirt from wasteland living but when Dr. Amari turned him over and rolled him onto the stretcher, a shrill cry broke out from the crowd."
"Richard!"
The crowd broke apart again and a sickly-looking blond haired woman stepped was holding a baby and pulling a dirty looking child of 7 or 8 by the arm.
"Is he alive?" She asked Dr. Amari.
The doctor placed a stethoscope on his bare chest and felt like the entire crowd was trying to listen to the man's heartbeat as Amari nodded.
"His pulse is will transport him to my laboratory where we will get him stabilized."
The man named Richard let out a low groan and slowly opened his whites around his pupils were bloodshot and some of the veins had burst.
"M-Mary?" His voice was faint and weak.
The woman sobbed harder and clutched her baby to her 8 year old of an indeterminate gender looked at his or her father with disbelief.
Dr. Amari made a short, deft movement with her head and the two Goodneighbor citizens carried the man away and Amari gently guided Mary and her children down the alleyway and to the Memory Den.
The town sat in stunned looked at Dr. Virgil and then back at the expected more chaos or maybe more all just witnessed a literal miracle, but the entire crowd looked … crowd looked back to her expectantly but Nora had no was lost as could she say that might add context to what just happened?
"Uh so…" She began, "Like I said, the Institute doesn't want to make excuses for their we can, we want to fix we can't fix them and things like that —" She gestured at the spot where the man had been — "can't happen if brilliant minds like Virgil's are I know you're have every right to be angry.I just ask that you hold onto that anger just a bit longer and help me fight off the true menace to our society — The Brotherhood of Steel."
The crowd remained was no clapping or hooting, but thankfully nobody booed her, cussed at her, or tried to attack all just looked at her with expressions of horror, bewilderment, and cautious hope.
"Um…thanks for listening." Nora said and she retreated back into the Old State House.
As soon as the whitewashed doors shut behind her, she sank heavily onto the red chaise in Hancock's office and put her head in her hands.
Soon several sets of footsteps clambered up the stairs and entered the room.
"I gotta hand it to ya." Hancock growled. "I didn't think that would work."
"The science was sound but I was doubtful about the process happening that quickly.I'll have to have Dr. Amari give me a full report of Richard's injuries and health to determine if we need to augment the serum so the change is more gradual and less of a shock to the think of all the people we'll be able to save." Virgil sounded far younger than Nora had ever heard gravel and fatigue in his voice was he sounded like an excited teenager.
Nora lifted her head and watched the two slapped the larger man once on the back and then passed him a whisky bottle and two the ghoul saw they had company he added a third glass to the group and gestured to Virgil to pour them all a drink.
"Why the long face sunshine?" He asked. "The crowd didn't try to lynch you.I say you won them over."
Nora didn't know where to begin or if there even was a was irritated, fascinated, exhausted, hungry, and annoyed all at the same time.
"Why didn't you tell me that you and Virgil were planning this? long have you guys been planning this?I could've used you both when I was talking to Diamond that entire town hates me because I had nothing to show that the Institute has changed except my word!"
Virgil interjected, "I understand your frustration this was the first live trial I've run aside for the one on myself.I wasn't sure it was going to work.I figured an audience like Goodneighbor was already waiting for us to fail so the bar to impress wouldn't be set as high."
Something inside Nora snapped and she rose to her feet.
" of cannot leave me out of this kind of crucial intel and we can't leave things like this to chance.I have five different fires going and I only have one bucket with which I can put them out.I need all of us to work as a stunt you guys pulled out there could've blown up in our face, and who would they have blamed? Institute-loving outsider.I don't have Hancock's reputation.I don't have your practical medical people would murder me as soon as look at me and I'm trying to save them and I need both of your god damned help to do so!"
Nora's voice echoed through the had never yelled at anyone to this degree when she was interning, her courtroom demeanor was forceful but was just pure emotion let loose.
Hancock's face was unreadable but Virgil stepped forward and nodded.
"You're right Nora.I'm sorry."
She nodded in acknowledgement and then turned her face to Hancock. "And what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Well thanks to Virgil and his antiserum you just might get your brother you finally willing to bury the hatchet and move on?Are you willing to help the Institute or not?"
Hancock's intense stare seemed to burn through the back of Nora's then he extended a mottled hand.
"I'm with the Institute because its you whose leading them.I could care less about those egg heads but I care about you, 's with you.I'm with you."
Nora took his hand and shook it.
"Thank you."
Dr. Li's fingers trembled from the frigid sea air and the anxiety that twisted her gut into knots as she unscrewed the back panel from Liberty Prime's combat inhibitor and soldered the wires just enough so they'd overheat after an hour or so of Liberty Prime being online.
She had already sabotaged the knee joints by tightening some screws to the point that they became stripped and loosening other screws so they'd pop out of place as soon as Liberty Prime last thing she needed to do was do something about its laser eye.
At full power, that thing could dig through rubble, dirt, and solid concrete at 1 foot a she could somehow cut the power even by 40% or 50% that might just be long enough to buy the Institute and synths an extra 30 seconds to escape into the fortified barracks in the lower , it wasn't much, but it was all that she was working with.
However, Dr. Li wasn't scheduled to work on Liberty Prime's laser weaponry today and she knew that tinkering with its head would be a dead giveaway that something was Ingram trusted her enough to give her minimal security while she worked on the construct, and Dr. Li didn't want to give anyone the idea that she wasn't trustworthy.
She wiped her oily hands off on a rag and straightened back cracked and in these conditions and in this weather was hell when she was a young woman in her twenties, but now she was feeling her advanced age.
Dr. Li struggled to her feet and then half-limped down the catwalk as the feeling came back into her legs.
"D'you need assistance ma'am?" A Knight asked.
"No." She snapped. "I might be old but I can still walk, thank you."
"Yes ma'am."
Dr. Li walked up to a large trash barrel that was on fire and held her freezing hands over the stomach churned and grumbled as she warmed had been over eighteen hours since she had last eaten made a resolve to force down some sort of food no matter how unpalatable it was after eating bioengineered, nutrient-rich foods for the past decade.
" you done for today?" Proctor Ingram asked. She walked out of the airplane hanger and approached woman's hydraulic legs whooshed slightly with each step and it made her sound like a traveling steam engine.
As soon as Ingram got close enough to Dr. Li, she rattled off the work she did on Liberty Prime before she was asked. "Prime's central motherboard has been re-installed and cleaned up.I also re-soldered the actuators that connect from his memory banks to his central 's been some corrosion and rust damage as a result of keeping it out in the middle of this god damned beach, but the damage was minor enough that I just replaced the parts with spares pulled from a deactivated Mister Gutsy."
"And what about the limb actuators?Have you finished installing the new hydraulics I created?"
"Not yet." Dr. Li replied. "I'm waiting on getting that high powered magnet from one of your scribes so I can do some controlled test runs without having to install it, find out something is wrong, uninstall it, and then wait."
"Our scribe should be back within the day." Ingram replied. "You should get some rest.I'll need you to pull a double shift tomorrow."
Dr. Li bit her tongue at the sarcastic comment that sat ready to fire from her lips. She was effectively a slave to the had no "shift" and if Ingram commanded that she work until she dropped dead from exhaustion, well that would be a blessing in and of itself.
After Proctor Ingram left, Dr. Li trudged back to her own small barracks and shut the she knew that something was 's scrubs were discarded on the hospital gurney that he was laying on and drops of blood peppered the floor.
"James?" She called out.
"O-over here." He wheezed.
Dr. Li followed the blood trail and peaked around the blue dressing patrician that acted as a privacy barrier to their primitive was huddled next to the 10 gallon plastic white hair sat around the plastic toilet seat on top of the bucket like patches of skin and scalp sloughed off and now James was bald and bleeding from nearly two-thirds of his head.
But the worst of the damage was that James's nose had clearly fallen . Li knew that because she saw the evidence sitting in the bucket along with blood, vomit, and ran down his upper lip, over his cracked and chapped skin, and dripped off his chin like rain.
"Oh my God." Dr. Li breathed out. "James…"
He looked at her with a pitiful whites around his eyes had turned a blotchy red and yellow as the tiny veins was missing skin off his entire right forearm and Dr. Li could see the tendons and muscles that chorded around his arm as though she was looking at a realistic diagram of the human muscular system.
She didn't know what to could she do?They were allowed one dose of Med-X every fortnight for fear that Dr. Li would purposely overdose on it to commit other chems like Psycho, Buffout, and Mentats were expressively forbidden, yet she was sure that James was in incomparable pain.
"Just kill me Maddi." James wheezed." is excruciating."
"Stop it James." She snapped. "I—I'll figure something out."
She started boiling water over the small kitchen stove that she had salvaged from the airport's she poured the last of their purified water into a metal basin, grabbed her blanket from the bed and several stimpaks, and sat at James's feet.
"What are you doing?" He wheezed.
"I'm dressing you up like a mummy for Halloween." She deflected with sarcasm but then added, "What the hell do you think I'm doing James?I'm trying to patch you of these open wounds could get think you're miserable now?Just wait until you get a blood infection."
Dr. Li tore strips from her blanket, soaked them in the purified water, and then squirted a small amount of a stimpak onto the rubbed the damp material so the medicine permeated through the cloth and gently wrapped it around James's skinless forearm.
He whimpered but did his best to not jerk slight pressure from the bandage felt like someone was touching his exposed nerves with a hot iron.
"You're wasting your time." He growled. "You're 've lost weight —"
"— Yeah well maybe I'm trying to fit into my bathing suit this summer" She bristled.
His trembling hand pushed away the second bandage and he looked into her eyes. "Just let me go Maddi or let me end this on my terms."
Angry tears bubbled to her eyes and she slapped the second strip down onto his arm so forcefully that he yelped like he had been branded with a hot iron."
"You should've just fucking listened to me James Matthew you would've have gone to Goodneighbor you wouldn't be decomposing next to a ten gallon bucket that we've been shitting this how you want it to end?Dying in this hell hole?"
"If I survive this, there won't be an end." He said. "I'll be like this forever."
"Really James?Immortality? That's what you're worried about?" She asked. "If you and I survive this, I'll fucking drown you in the god damned ocean for the shit you've put me first you gotta survive this."
Then her eyes softened and a single tear dripped down her cheek. "Please 't leave me here alone."
"Alright Maddi." He nodded and said nothing else as Dr. Li applied bandage after bandage to the blistered and raw exposed tissue.