22
They all gathered around the main terminal once more. Vincent, impatient to return back through the city ruins before dark, took the longest to convince. Reluctant, as the tallest he stood behind Valrie and Gia as Patience prepared to show them what she had found.
After watching the emotional video showing the effects of Sara's loss of her wife, Patience had scrolled through to the last video in the sequence, dated two weeks after the last one. Two weeks in which Sara, her previous self had spent a year in the Reality Simulation for every hour passing in the real world. For Sara, this was decades later.
"I found this and I need to know what you think." Patience's finger hovered over the 'Return' key. "The last one was disturbing, but this? This is horrific."
"Is there blood and guts? 'Cos I'm okay with blood and guts. Just not, you know, my own." Gia fidgeted as she tried to find a comfortable position to watch.
"For fuck's sake, Gia! Just watch the fucking video." Valrie glared at Gia. She kept her eye on Gia for a second, then turned to Patience. "Ready when you are."
Patience glanced at Vincent. He shrugged his shoulders and Patience took that as a sign to continue. She pressed the key.
"Name, rank, serial number." The grey haired man sat in the big leather chair, looking through the pages in a file.
Stood, ram-rod straight before his desk, Sara looked different. Cold, stern, more muscular. None of the fresh, fun woman remained. Her face an emotionless mask. She wore combat fatigues, dirty and tattered. Her face filthy and drawn.
"Porter-Diaz, Sara. Private, first class. Serial number, one-one-three-eight." Her voice seemed different, too. The original Sara seemed full of life and that came through in her voice, always on the verge of laughing. This Sara was cold, mechanical.
"How long have you been a soldier, Private?" The grey haired man, still looking through the pages, reached over, without looking, and picked up a pipe from a stand. He tabbed down into the bowl with his finger, then took a match and lit it, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth until the tobacco remained lit.
"I ... I don't know, sir." The little confusion at the beginning of her reply didn't reach Sara's face.
"And what are your current orders?" For the first time, the man looked up towards Sara.
"To seek out and destroy the enemy, by any means necessary, sir." Sara had not moved an inch. Even the blinks of her eyes appeared timed to the precise second.
"And who is the enemy?" The grey haired man continued to hold Sara in his gaze.
"Whoever the army says, sir. The army points, I kill." A slight tightening of the facial muscles showed the only emotion in Sara's face.
"Good. Good. I think you're just about ready to leave the simulation and enter the real world." The man closed the file, dropping it on the desk. He sat back, crossing his legs, drawing on his pipe and letting the smoke escape from the corner of his mouth.
"I'm sorry. Simulation, sir? Real world?" A momentary look of confusion crossed Sara's face and then disappeared. "Yes, sir."
"Go to sleep, Private. When you wake up, it'll be a brave new world for you. Dismissed." He waved her away with the hand holding the pipe and picked up another file from his desk.
Sara snapped to attention, saluting, then turned on her heel and marched out of the room. The video ran on for a few seconds more then turned to static.
"What the fuck did we just see?" Valrie stared at the terminal screen. "That was like you, but with the 'asshole' dialled up to eleven."
"I don't like that you. She wasn't sexy. I mean, not sexy. At all." Gia crumpled up her face, a look of disgust upon it. "I prefer you you, not cute and pretty you, but definitely not grrr aargh soldier you. You you."
"So, you became a soldier in this 'Reality Simulation' thing. What's the problem?" Vincent scratched his armpit. It was clear he didn't see anything wrong. "Welcome to the club."
"The problem is this." Patience turned back to the terminal, typing in several numbers. A list of videos appeared on the screen.
She started one video. It looked exactly like the one they had already watched, except it wasn't Sara stood before the grey haired man, it was Diana, Sara's wife, not dead after all. The video played out almost exactly the same. The same questions. Almost the same answers. Patience stopped the video and started the next one.
She played that for a few seconds, stopped it and played the next, then the next and the next. All the videos were almost exactly the same. Only the person stood before the desk differed. Patience clicked back to the list, tapping downwards, showing video after video after video.
"How many videos are there?" Vincent seemed interested now.
"Hundreds. Thousands, maybe." Patience turned back to the terminal. "There are two more videos. The last ones the vault sent back to HQ, but they're broken. Corrupted. God knows what's on those. Maybe Moira could fix them? I don't know."
"Maybe. That girl is genuine fucking genius. If anyone can do it, she can." Valrie shrugged.
"Can we get going now?" Vincent turned to leave the room once more.
"Can we get going? Did you just see what we just saw?" Patience barged past Valrie and Gia, pulling Vincent around by his arm. "You just dowloaded all those videos, all the information about the hidden vaults. If there are hundreds more like me, you can't give that information to anybody. Not the Brotherhood and certainly not Moriarty!"
"I have a mission. A mission! I'll follow my orders. Remember those? Because it sure looks like you used to know what that meant." He pulled his arm away from Patience's hand. "What does it matter to you? The Brotherhood gets hold of these people and that's it. Can you imagine those people in Power Armour? Even Super Mutants would be dealt with, easily. I don't see what the problem is."
Patience's hand thrust out, lightning fast, catching Vincent in the throat. Before his hands even began to move up to clutch at his neck, before he could even begin choking, Patience grabbed one of his wrists, twisting it and sending Vincent to his knees. In the same movement, she removed his .45 from its holster, stripped it down and dropped the pieces to the floor in front of him. By the time Vincent had started coughing, gasping for breath, Patience had taken out a knife, holding the sharp blade to Vincent's throat.
She removed the knife, returning it to the sheath on her belt at the back. She crouched down and looked Vincent in the eyes as he struggled for breath. She helped him to sit up, his back against an upright on the railing. After a while, he started to breathe more normally, staring at Patience the whole time.
"That's the problem. I'm the problem." She ran her fingers through her steel grey hair and sighed. "For some reason, I have a mind of my own. I'm not that ... that drone on the video. Why? We don't know, but if the rest of them are like they are on the videos and as good and as fast as me? We can't let anybody have that power. I can't let anybody have that power."
She sat back against the railing opposite Vincent, Valrie and Gia watching in shocked silence. Vincent wasn't convinced. She could tell. And that meant she would have to do something to stop the Brotherhood or Moriarty from getting that information. By any means necessary.
Vincent picked up the pieces of his .45 and left the room in silence, leaving Patience, Valrie and Gia staring at each other. Patience hated having to do what she did. She needed to prove a point and it became clear that talking did not have the effect she hoped for. If she was honest with herself, it didn't seem like violence worked, either.
She leaned her head back against the railing upright, digging her fingernails into her scalp. In the back of her mind, she knew, and understood, the soldier's perspective. That ingrained need to follow orders. Individual thinking got hammered out of a soldier before leaving bootcamp. Only when their individuality had become overwhelmed by the chain of command did the process of building it back up again begin, but only under the auspices of respecting their superiors' authority.
Follow orders. The only time orders could be disobeyed were in those times the orders could be deemed illegal. Yet, Patience had no idea what was legal or illegal in this devastated world. She didn't know if anything was illegal and that boiled everything down to following orders, no matter what those orders may be. Vincent was a soldier. He had orders and those orders must be followed. His moral code, if he had one anymore, was irrelevant.
"Am I the only one that thought that got a little intense?" Gia, as usual, broke the pregnant silence and, as usual, added little.
"You don't fucking say. Was it the blistering argument or the fucking bitch-slapping he got from her that gave it away?" Valrie spoke to Gia, but continued watching Patience. "What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know." Patience chewed on a fingernail, glancing at the main terminal. "Every instinct in me says I should kill him. Right here, before things get worse."
"But?" Patting her coat's many pockets, Valrie reached in and took out her cigarettes, lighting one and staring at Patience through the smoke she released.
"But, I can't. I can't kill him if I can at all help it." She held out her hand, bending her fingers a couple of times, urging Valrie to pass the cigarette. She took it and drew in a deep draw of smoke, passing the cigarette back. "He thinks he's doing the right thing. He's wrong. Very wrong. But that's what he thinks. I can't kill him for that."
"Which, and I'm no expert, just brings you back to what you're going to do about it?" Gia, for once, made sense. It was a circular reasoning. "And, for the record, I'm okay with the killing thing. I like him, but I don't think he's going do what you want."
"Neither do I." With a sigh, Patience dragged herself back to her feet. Putting her hands on her hips, she turned back to the main terminal. "You two go make sure he hasn't disappeared. I'm going to finish copying all my files onto my Pip-Boy. And Diana's."
Gia seemed to be about to protest having to leave, but Valrie grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her out of the room, leaving Patience with her thoughts. She reconnected her Pip-Boy and began the transfer of all her files. The documents, the videos, the reports, everything. She did the same for Sara's wife, Diana. Patience felt no connection to the woman, but it was possible, some time in the future, that her memory could return and Sara would want those files. The woman Patience used to be would need to know the Vault-Tec people had lied to her. Her wife had not died. She paused and then began transferring all the files about the secret vaults.
Once the copying completed, she reached into one of her ammo pouches, pulling out one of the slabs of explosive she and Vincent had disarmed. Attaching it to the main terminal's cabinet, she backed out of the room, taking out her sidearm. Half-closing the door, she took careful aim, fired and closed the door, ducking to the side.
The explosion buckled the reinforced door. She didn't try to open it and check her work. It didn't look like the door would be opening any time soon. Instead, she holstered her sidearm and set off back through the snaking corridors. Not finding Valrie, Gia and Vincent anywhere, she retraced her steps through the building, moving faster and faster as she passed each floor without any sign of the others.
Finally, she burst through the doors to the outside and there she found her three companions.
Vincent held Valrie and Gia at gunpoint, around twenty feet apart.
"It didn't have to come to this, Patience. If you'd just toed the line, I was going to tell Moriarty I killed you and we'd all be happy." He held the gun steady, keeping Valrie and Gia at his periphery while he focussed on Patience. "We still can. All you have to do, is let me go. Let me take the information to the Brotherhood and then Moriarty. You go find your answers, I do my job. But you won't, will you?"
"Nope." Patience held her hands up in a non-aggressive stance. "That information is dangerous. Those people, people like me, are dangerous. I can't let those people loose in an already shitty mess of a world."
"If it's already shitty and a mess, what difference does it make?" Patience could see the sweat beading on Vincent's temple. "Come on, Patience! Why are you making this so hard? Why can't you just let it go?"
"Because I have hope." She could see it now, the desperation in his voice, the wavering of the .45 pointed towards Valrie and Gia. The battle between orders and what his own thoughts told him. "I have to. I have to hope this world can be better. I have to hope that this, this is as bad as it can get. Why make it worse, Vincent? Share my hope."
"God damn it, Patience. I like you, I really do. I like all of you." He cycled a round into the chamber. If Patience had known, she would have shot him already. "But I can't disobey orders. I ... I just can't. I'm sorry."
"Just shoot the fucking asshole, Patience!" Valrie stepped in front of Gia, pushing the younger girl behind her. "He can only get one of us before you kill him and I'm okay with it being me. Seems a fair fucking trade."
"Will you, please, for the love of fucking god, shut the fuck up, Valrie!" Vincent's eyes flickered towards Valrie.
And that gave Patience all the opening she needed. Everything seemed to turn into slow motion. Even from here, she could see Vincent's finger release the tiniest amount of pressure from the trigger of his .45. Like swimming through syrup, her hand moved downwards, instinct and practice, decades worth of practice she knew now, dropping to the grip of her sidearm.
Unlike Vincent, she always kept a round chambered. All Patience had to do was turn off the safety as she raised her weapon that had no hammer to pull back. Still moving in slow motion, or so it seemed to her, Vincent had seen her hand moving. Now it was a race to see who could bring their weapon to bear first.
Vincent's weapon swung across. Patience's weapon swung upwards. It was going to be close and Patience couldn't be certain who would catch the other in their sights first. Only inches remained. Patience began squeezing her trigger.
It was in the corner of her eye that she saw it incoming, faster than she could move. Faster than her hands or body could react. The smoke trail landed almost directly between them all and the explosion rippled outwards, sending everyone sprawling, flying. She felt herself thrown backwards, crashing through the doors of Vault-Tec HQ, landing on her back. The last thing she heard as the ringing in her ears threatened to overwhelm her and the sweet dark embrace of unconsciousness took her were two words.
"Stupid humans."