20
They reached the top floor without any further incidents, but they took their time anyway. As the booby trapped terminal and the hidden mines had shown, they could take nothing for granted. More robots, destroyed or dormant, littered the corridors and rooms. More shell casings found upon the floors. Patience didn't like it. It seemed too easy.
The final floor held several computer terminals, each booby trapped. Someone didn't want the terminals used. When Vincent took the time to disarm one of the booby traps, they found nothing of consequence in the memory. Some internal memos, marketing and purchase options for Vault-Tec merchandise which Gia insisted upon ordering, even though no-one alive could send out the orders. It seemed a waste of time for their predecessor to booby trap them.
On the second level of the top floor, they encountered automated turrets. They hung, useless and impotent. Switched off from some central station. Even so, Vincent reached up to each one, disconnecting their power cables, not taking the chance that they could come live once more and tear them apart with streams of bullets they would be unable to withstand.
They found one Robobrain, larger than any other in the building. A different colour scheme, a larger brain and covering dome and the word 'Masterbrain' stencilled on its cylindrical side. This, too, appeared dormant. A hatch at the rear, opened and hanging, showed several components missing from within the chassis.
"The main terminal room should be at the end of this corridor." Vincent pointed a thumb behind him. "I suggest the civilians stay here. If the basic terminals had booby traps, who knows what's been done in there."
"Not a fucking chance, 'Brother' Vacant!" Valrie squared up to Vincent, almost reaching his shoulders. "Where Patience goes, I go. Don't think you've earned my fucking trust, even if she's giving you the benefit of the doubt."
"Yeah and where Patience and Valrie goes, I goes .. I mean, I go. Bitch." Gia, a little taller than Valrie seemed even less impressive against the big man. "And bitch isn't cursing. Is it?"
Gia looked towards Valrie with a questioning raised eyebrow. Valrie scowled, nodding her head and Gia's shoulders sagged, mouthing 'sorry' once again. They all looked at Patience, then, as if seeking her arbitration.
"We'll play it by ear." She avoided Vincent's scowl and Valrie's smug look, hefting her rifle and setting off up the corridor. "Or maybe I'll lock you all into a cupboard until you learn to play well together."
They passed two more automated turrets in a dog-leg section of the corridor, and a simplified, fold-out terminal that served as a control system for the powerful weapons attached to the ceilings. Again, Vincent disconnected the power cables and checked the terminal for booby traps. He didn't find any and Gia flicked the fold-down keyboard and checked the terminal.
"It's just dedicated for the turrets. I don't think it's connected to anything else." She flicked the keyboard back up and then back down again. "I don't even think it can do anything else. It's the dumbest of dumb terminals."
"You're certain?" Vincent, like Patience only had a rudimentary knowledge about computers.
Gia pointed to her chest, "Good. With. Computers! I'm certain."
Reaching the end of the corridor, they found a heavy, barred gate, hanging open, leading into a square room. Empty, save for an even more heavy security door with a circular handle attached to two thick, heavy bars keeping the door closed. A green light flashed above the door.
Patience turned the handle causing the bars to retract from their seats in the metal door frame. Unlocked, she gripped the handle with both hands and nodded to Vincent. He returned the nod and she pulled the door open, allowing light to flood in from the room beyond.
Without hesitation, Vincent slipped inside as Patience prepared to follow. Valrie and Gia hugged the wall at the side, awaiting Vincents signal.
"Clear and we've got a problem." Vincent sounded deflated.
Stepping into the room, Patience found herself on a walkway suspended above the first level of the top floor. Below, she could see bank upon bank of cabinets, filled with whirring tapes, flashing lights. The largest computer bank towered in the centre of the room, reaching from floor below to ceiling above, at the end of the short walkway.
Vincent stood before this computer bank, rifle slung over his shoulder, examining something before him. Patience lowered her rifle and stepped towards Vincent, trying to look past the big man's frame and, when she reached him, he stepped aside.
The terminal, connected to the huge computer bank, was no longer of use. She saw the keyboard, smashed. The screen shattered. Cables and wires dangled from inside the casing. Whoever had reached this room before them had trashed it completely. Patience crouched and picked up a couple of letter keys from the floor.
"It's useless." Her head swam and she fell backwards to sit on the floor, letting the keys fall from her fingers.
"That's not all." Vincent offered her a hand. Reluctant, devastated, she took the hand and stood back up. He pointed over the rail towards the other computer banks. "The son of a bitch has rigged the whole damn place to blow."
"Why?" She slammed both hands on the guard rail. "What's on this damned computer? I mean, apart from my entire fucking history! Apart from my life! I don't want much. All I want is to know who I am. That's not too much to ask, is it? Is it?"
She felt an arm wrap around her shoulder and then another, from the other side, wrap around her waist. Valrie squeezed her shoulder and Gia laid her head against her arm and Patience felt like crying. She could feel the prick of a tear in the corner of her eye, but no tears came. She couldn't even cry about it.
"I can have a look at the terminal. I'm no Moira, but I might be able to do something." Valrie, usually so loud and coarse, spoke in soft, gentle tones. It was a nice offer, but the terminal was beyond basic repairs. Unless Valrie could build another one, she couldn't help.
"Wait! Moira!" Now Patience's head buzzed, like lightning flashing in the clouds. "Moira can help. And why did the other person booby trap the other terminals? Why not the turret terminal? Every other working terminal was booby trapped. Rigged to blow if anyone touched them. Why?"
"Because they're assholes." Gia chirped in, doing that fake angry look of hers.
"Yes! But, no." Patience pointed at Valrie, urging her to join the dots.
"To kill whoever used it?" Valrie offered. Then Valrie's eyes widened as she figured it out. "Parts! They wanted to stop someone using the fucking parts. But, Moira's back in Megaton. Are we going back for her."
"We don't need to." Patience lifted her left arm, showing her Pip-Boy. "How much are you willing to bet that distracted little genius has worked out that two-way radio idea?"
She switched on the Pip-Boy and flicked through the options to the 'Radio' section.
"Can you feel it?
Something in the air like, I don't know, a warning? A promise?
Things are quiet out in the Capital Wasteland. And, as the cliché goes, it's too quiet.
Old Three Dog's been getting a steady stream of reports coming in, from all across the Wasteland, but mostly from here in the Downtown ruins. Reilly's Rangers reports that most of the raider gangs seem to have departed for greener pastures. The Brotherhood of Steel, my buddies right here in the GNR building, tell me that something's even got the feral ghouls spooked and anything that can spook a feral ghoul is sure to give me the willies.
Our non-feral ghoul friends in Underworld tell me that something big is happening in the Mall. Something terrible, they say. Don't even think about heading out to Underworld anytime soon. Those doors are locked and blocked for the foreseeable future.
So, what does this all mean?
sighs
I don't know, Brethren. I really don't know.
Be careful out there. Stay safe.
This is Three Dog, battening down the hatches."
Patience rubbed the bridge of her nose. The conversation was slow, halting, prone to veer away to subjects that had little to do with the problem at hand and her arm was becoming tired. She rested her hand on the walkway rail and the signal began cracking and distorting again. After trial and error, they had found that there was a small window, within the mainframe room, where the interference from all the high-powered equipment dwindled enough to hold a conversation.
"Ooh! Almost lost you there for a second. Have you tried holding your hand above your head?" Moira, her voice a continuous, effervescent happy tone, called across the two-way connection. "Over."
"Yeah. We tried that." Valrie gave Patience an apologetic look and helped Patience hold her hand back up into the zone of less interference. "So, you were saying about the connections needing to be made in the right order? Um, over."
"Yes! Oh, yes! From what you've described, there are safety connections, colour coded to specific levels of danger. Don't connect the red cables until you've connected the green ones and then the orange ones. Red cables always last. Always!" Moira sounded as if she had walked away from her microphone and then remembered, darting back to say one last word. "Over."
"That's great, Moira. Thanks. Over." Valrie looked over at the main terminal, now with the casing removed.
"Oh! And Patience," Before Patience could turn off the two-way radio, Moira continued talking. "I've been looking at your blood work and there are some irregularities. I'm going to need to take another sample, though. I kinda accidentally irradiated the last one. Over."
"Wait. You took blood from me? How? When did you take blood from me?" That woke Patience up. "Over."
"Don't worry! It was just a little sample and you were asleep. Anyway. Gotta go! Bye. Bye. Bye. Over." The connection clicked off leaving Patience staring, open-mouthed, at the Pip-Boy on her forearm.
"You better check you still have all your organs." Vincent had lost interest long before, as soon as the conversation turned technical. Now, he stood up. "Can we leave these two to fixing the terminal while we disarm the explosives?"
"Sure you can!" Gia poked her head up from looking at the innards of the main terminal, giving a thumbs up. "With Valrie's help, I'll get this thing working in no time."
Valrie grabbed Gia's arm and pulled her away from the visible wires, cables and circuit boards.
"Go. I've got this. Unless Mistress fucking Disaster here gets in my way." Valrie turned away and stared at the main terminal, scratching her temple with a screwdriver.
Patience and Vincent left them to it and navigated their way back through the twists and turns of the corridors, down the short flight of stairs and through more corridors, until they reached the bottom level of the mainframe room.
Vincent stepped towards the first computer bank, slow and careful. Without touching it, he moved around several times to get a look at the explosive device attached to the cabinet. He reached up and, with great care, pushed a couple of wires aside to better see their connections. Patience, a little further back, watched him with intense concentration. Each move studied and stored within her mind.
She knew that all she needed was to see him disarm one of the devices and she would be able to copy him, almost down to exact movements. She didn't know how she knew this, but she knew.
"There doesn't seem to be any anti-tampering mechanism. Looks like it was done quick." Again, he moved a wire aside and then traced it to another part of the cabinet. He looked up towards Valrie on the walkway above. "Hey! Scav! Don't connect all the wires til we've cleared these devices. They're set to go off as soon as the computer banks start doing their thing. Okay?"
Valrie didn't even look around, only her hand, giving a thumbs up showed any sign that she heard him. Vincent shook his head and returned to the device. After another few seconds, he came to a conclusion, slowly removing first one wire from the device and then a second one. He breathed out then pulled the device from the cabinet. He tossed it to Patience, giving her a wink.
"And they're all the same?" Patience turned the explosive over in her hands and then placed it against the wall, out of the way.
"Should be. If you see anything different, anything at all, no matter how minor, shout." He rubbed his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. "Right. One down. You take that side."
It took them more than a few minutes, but it became faster as Patience became used to the new skill. It amazed her how quick her mind memorised the process. In some ways, her mind appeared to be brilliant, in others, like with her memory and the technicalities of using computers, it was almost useless. Anything to do with fighting, weaponry, strategy, her mind was a wonder. Anything not of a military application was almost an afterthought. It didn't disturb her as much as it should.
By the time they finished, they had a pile of eight explosive devices lined up against the outer wall of the mainframe room and Patience could hear heated bickering from the walkway above. Leaving the explosives, she ran back up to the second level, Vincent following close behind.
"What the hell is going on?" Patience reached the walkway to find Valrie and Gia squared up to each other, each pointing a finger at the other.
"For some unknown fucking reason, Daisy Dumbass wants to use the fold-out keyboard from the turret terminal." Valrie turned to Patience, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "I told her it doesn't fucking matter, but she insists."
"Because it is cool! Patience deserves the best work." It was almost adorable how Gia's forehead and bridge of her nose wrinkled in anger. "And I'm not a dumbass! But I like Daisy! That's a nice name!"
Vincent covered his mouth to hide a snigger. Gia had even shouted those last two sentences, even though she didn't need to. Patience sighed. It was like having two children. One, an older cursing teenager and the other one just about to hit their teens and not quite understanding their own personality yet.
"Will it take much longer, or be more difficult, to use the fold-out keyboard?" Without looking, she punched Vincent's arm as he struggled to contain his laughter. This was not the time for him to discover his sense of humour.
"Well, no. Not really." Valrie pushed her football helmet back off her forehead.
"Then it won't really hurt, will it?" Patience stepped aside to allow Valrie and then Gia to pass as they moved to get the keyboard.
Less than half an hour later. The keyboard attached, all the wires connected, in the right order, and they were ready to switch on the main terminal. They all held their breath as Patience switched the mainframe on and waited for the screen to flash to life.