26
She had seen the Super Mutant coming towards the door as she began to enter the bunker. In a flash, she had taken another grenade, removed the pin and let the lever fly, counting a second before launching it towards the creature. Ducking back out of the door, she pressed herself flat against the wall. The bunker door swung out from the pressure of the blast, twisting off one of its hinges.
Even before the dust cleared, she reentered the bunker, ready to pour bullets into the Super Mutant, only to find it collapsed on the ground, a sizeable hole in its chest, the thick skin peeled back exposing damaged, burnt organs and seeping blood.
She sidestepped the creature, holding her rifle to bear upon it until she had passed. It didn't move. Further into the bunker, she could hear shouting, or screaming. She couldn't tell which, the voices echoing and distorting as they travelled through the concrete and metal tunnels towards her. There was an oppressive air about the place. A feeling of claustrophobia that only worsened the further she edged deeper into the bunker.
Reaching a room at the end of a short flight of stairs, she saw only one door, opposite the entrance, and tensed as she heard movement coming towards her. Her Pip-Boy flashed a warning. It couldn't discern whether whatever was approaching was human or not, switching between displaying 'human' and 'unknown'. When the approaching figure burst through the doorway, she understood why.
Like the man she had killed above, another human, a woman, racing towards her, screaming. The woman had already begun to transform, her hands and arms extending beyond normal lengths, thick veins pulsing, skin yellowing. The Pip-Boy identified several points to shoot, flashing upon the chest area. Patience did not hesitate.
The bullets ripped into the transforming woman's chest, tearing into her hardening flesh. Flesh that was not yet hard enough. The woman dropped to the ground like a brick, almost rolling over her head with the momentum of her mad charge. Patience did not have time to check her magazine before two more semi-humans flew through the doorway.
She fired without settling on the designated area the Pip-Boy highlighted, catching one of the semi-humans on the shoulder tearing off a large chunk of the muscle, before he, it, slammed its body into her. She lost her grip on her rifle and it dropped, dangling against her chest. The semi-human and its companion fell upon Patience, dragging her to the floor.
The semi-humans grunted and growled as they attempted to rip into her flesh with their bare fingers, growing larger every second, pressing greater and greater weight down upon her, forcing her rifle to dig into her chest. She couldn't breathe. She tried to push back, to gain some space, but the semi-humans gave her no quarter. Desperate, she reached for her sidearm, bringing it up under the chin of one of the semi-humans and firing until the action locked back, out of bullets.
The semi-human's head almost exploded from the stream of bullets sending flesh and blood spattering upwards in a grotesque shower. The other semi-human dragged the dead one from atop Patience and fell upon her, punching at scratching. Patience knew there was little chance of reloading her sidearm. All she could do was fend off the scratches, twist and cover from the punches, but the semi-human was becoming more Super Mutant by the second.
In desperation, she twisted her hips to the side, pulling her legs out and upwards. She dragged the semi-human's arm to the side, with much effort, and wrapped her legs around the creature's neck. Gripping the creature as tight as possible, tying her own legs together, she pushed the creature's arm across its own throat and squeezed with every ounce of strength she had left.
The creature struggled, its strength increasing by the second, but Patience held on. It lifted her into the air and slammed her back to the ground, knocking the air from her lungs, and still she held on. Soon, its movements became sluggish, weaker, but Patience did not loosen her grip until she felt certain the thing was out cold. As soon as she felt sure, she rolled it off her body. Rising, unsteady, to her feet she moved behind the semi-human, grabbed its chin and the back of its head and twisted, as hard as she could, until she heard a horrible cracking sound.
She collapsed against the bodies of the creatures, her chest heaving, her body aching from the blows and the scratches from their attack. She almost closed her eyes, leaning her face against the blood covered bodies, until she saw her sidearm on the ground a foot or so away. She crawled over the bodies to reach it, releasing the weapon's magazine.
It even ached to reach into her ammo pouch for a fresh clip, but she got one, slipping it into the sidearm and ratcheting a fresh round into the chamber. She fell. So tired. Injured. She had to get back up. To continue further into the bunker. To find Valrie and Gia. Somehow, by sheer force of will, she made herself stand, returning her sidearm to its holster. She began to reach for another magazine for her rifle.
"Stupid human." In her exhaustion, she hadn't heard them coming.
Two more semi-humans. No. Almost Super Mutants. They stood inside the doorway, hoarse breathing coming out as grunts from flattened, almost nose-less faces. Heavy eyebrow ridges hooding their beady eyes, their shoulders rising and falling with the heavy breaths, fighting to fill their expanded lungs with oxygen.
Patience stumbled back against the wall, the Pip-Boy flashing targets upon the Super Mutant bodies, but she didn't have the strength. Instead, she begged for Valrie and Gia's forgiveness, in silence, as she tugged at the clasp on the bandolier of grenades. In a haze, she counted four left and, with shaky fingers, clasped all four pins and pulled. She threw the bandolier at the feet of the Super Mutants and collapsed behind the bodies of the semi-humans she had killed.
The explosion picked her up and tossed her against the wall, shrapnel tearing into her body. The brunt of the explosion, however, had slammed into the bodies of the semi-humans, ripped apart by the grenades, as were the almost fully transformed Super Mutants. Patience had been lucky.
She didn't feel lucky. She felt like she was dying.
"Oh, no, no, no, little vault dweller. We're not having that." As she slipped into unconsciousness, she heard those words. A deep, reverberating voice and thick fingers moving her grey hair from her eyes. "We're not having that at all. I can't have my queen dying on me."
She felt sick. She should be in pain, but all she felt was sick.
Opening her eyes, she tried to look around. She could move and, when she saw the leering face of the Super Mutant King looking down upon her, she scrambled backwards, reaching for her sidearm at her hip. Her hand enclosed on nothing, however. The sidearm wasn't there. The strap that held her Chinese assault rifle dangled upon her chest, the rifle also missing.
The King stood up to its full height and towered above her, yet she still stared in defiance at the monstrosity. To her left, from the corner of her eye, she saw Valrie and Gia, held by two Super Mutants. Still tall, still hulking, they looked like children next to their King.
"Patience! That bastard ..." With a wave of its hand, the King ordered Valrie silenced and Valrie's voice muffled as the Super Mutant holding her clamped its huge hand over her mouth.
"Leave her alone! Or I'll ..." Patience tried to stand, pushing against the floor, and felt a discomfort, not pain, on her palm. She lifted her hand to see a deep gash in her hand, the edges knitting together as she watched.
"What your foul mouthed friend is trying to warn you is that I've infected you." The King crossed its arms, grinning, its distorted face curling into thick wrinkles. "The virus that made me? It's working its way through your system as we speak. Healing you. Changing you. Soon, you'll be just like my friends here. A Super Mutant. Ready to do my every bidding."
The King wasn't lying. She could feel her body changing. The slight yellowing of her skin. That thought sickened her even more. She looked over at Gia, the girl's eyes almost pleading with her. She couldn't let her see someone else transform into one of those things. She glanced at the Super Mutant nearest to her, holding Valrie, and saw a long makeshift knife in its belt.
She launched herself towards it, only for the King to move with surprising speed, catching her arm and pulling her back. She swung a fist at the King's jaw, feeling it connect and several bones in her hand crack against the creature's transformed skin and skull. It didn't faze the creature in the slightest.
"Let them go. You've got me. You don't need them." The King flicked his hand, sending her spinning to the far side of the room, away from the other Super Mutants, Valrie and Gia. She caught her balance, steadying herself. "Let. Them. Go."
"Let them go? Are you crazy? After the stunt you and your friends have pulled upstairs, I'm going to need every body I can get to rebuild my army." The King paced up and down in front of her friends. "And when you transform and join me, we'll take the Wasteland. We'll feed on it. Chew on the bones. Suck on the marrow. My kingdom growing fat until we spread out across the whole country. You have a message, by the way."
Almost casual, the King pointed towards her Pip-Boy. There was, indeed, a flashing message on the screen. 'Location two - Confirmed' and, below that, 'Activate infusion'. She touched the screen and saw her fingers had expanded, fattening, even in the short time she from awakening. She began to move her hand to the dial, to start the infusion, and stopped.
"Why would you want me to do that?" She dropped her arm, squinting her eyes, furrowing her brow. "This, this is a weapon. I'm a weapon. Against you and all your fat headed yellow buddies. Why would you want me to activate it?"
"Good. You're a smart one. Just what I need." A low, rumbling chuckle emanated from the King's barrel of a chest. "Go on. Activate it. Become the weapon. Do it! Destroy the big bad Super Mutants once and for all."
"Fucking answer me, damn it! Why? What will it do?" She heard a cracking noise. It came from her leg as the bones stretched, broke and stitched back together. The leather pants, that fitted so snug before, popped at the stitching. She tried to manoeuvre back towards the Super Mutant with the knife.
"It will make you like me. I mean, you already are becoming like me. I saw to that." It waved a slab of a hand, showing the dwindling gash on its palm. "Those idiots in the vault thought it would infect the Super Mutants. Return them to their human states. They were wrong. It made something better. I'm bigger, faster, stronger than any Super Mutant ever and I kept all my smarts. That flashing button won't destroy Super Mutants, it'll improve them!"
She stared at the flashing words on the Pip-Boy screen. She didn't know what to think, what to believe. The King could be speaking the truth. It could transform her into the same kind of creature as it, a Super-Super Mutant. It could also do exactly what she thought it would do, release a virus, incubated inside her, that would infect and destroy the Super Mutants once and for all.
"You're lying." Her voice sounded deeper, a growling accent to it. She looked at the King and the creature didn't seem as tall as it once had.
"Maybe. Can you take that chance?" The King pointed at the other two Super Mutants holding her friends. "Better choose quick, or you'll end up like them. Dull. Stupid. Disposable. Press that button and you become like me. All the benefits, none of the drawbacks. Stupid Mutant or Super-Duper Mutant. You decide, kid, but the clocks ticking. Tick tock, tick tock."
"Patience? Don't." Gia struggled against the arms of the Super Mutant, ineffectual, not affecting the creature in the slightest, tears in her eyes. "Please don't become one of them. Please! Not again!"
Tears rolled down Gia's cheek. Patience turned to Valrie, she looked so small now, but Valrie's eyes told her nothing. All Patience could see was trust. Trust that Patience would know what to do. That she would win. That she would beat this. But Patience wasn't sure. The King was right about one thing. Her mind had begun to cloud, her thinking becoming simple, disjointed. She was turning into a Super Mutant, she didn't know anything anymore.
"I don't have time for this." The King covered the distance between them in one step. It grabbed Patience's arm, thick muscular, a sickly yellow. Turning the arm, he flicked the dial with surprising dexterity, then pressed the button to activate the infusion.
Patience felt pain, then. She felt freezing cold liquid flush into her arm through the various tubes embedded in her flesh. Electric shocks erupted through the wires, firing sharp, painful pulses into her body. Then, a second flush of liquids streamed into her veins, turning her blood to fire.
She screamed and couldn't stop screaming.
Valrie had never been one for attachments, always keeping people at arm's length, wandering through the broken society of the Capital Wasteland but never a part of it. Even as a child, growing up in a small community north of Megaton, now a barren empty place, she had felt removed even from her parents. When her parents died during one of the more severe winters, it almost came as a relief to have the chains holding her down broken.
She had chosen the life of a scavenger because it was a lonely life. Because it kept the contact with others at a minimum. She had taken in Wintergreen because he wasn't a human, with all the problems that humans brought with them. Even her sexual dalliances were brief and faded away once her partners became too close. Wanting more. She always wanted less.
That had all changed upon finding the half-dead woman in the wastes to the south. At first, she had wanted to help her regain her strength and then set her on her way but, as time passed, the woman stirred something inside her. A motherly instinct? The need for a friend finally surfacing after all these years? Valrie couldn't put a finger on the reason. All she knew was that she cared for Patience. A deep, pervading affection for the stern, earnest vault dweller.
And now her heart was breaking.
The thing before her was no longer Patience. It knelt upon one knee, one enormous fist resting on the ground, the other hand on the thick, mucous green thigh. The now bald head bowed. Shoulders heaving as it breathed air as if for the first time. The tight, leather armour hanging in tatters from a body that resembled the human form, only so much larger.
"Oh, Patience. My god." The Super Mutant holding her had released the grip upon her mouth, its shoulders rolling as a deep, grating chuckle ran through its body. "You had to try to be the hero."
"You fucking bastard! You ugly fucking bastard! Bring her back!" Beside her, Gia struggled against the meaty hands of the Super Mutant holding her, tears streaming down her face. Valrie had taken the young ex-raider to her heart, too. Seeing her broken up in this way almost causing Valrie's heart to break all over again.
"Don't cry, little one. This isn't an end. It's a beginning." The King rubbed its hands together in glee, staring wide-eyed at its creation. "A new beginning. And you're going to be part of it and you, old scavenger. You'll both be part of our new army."
"Stick your fucking army!" Valrie didn't struggle, like Gia, she couldn't find the energy. Everything seemed lost. All she had left, now, was her defiance. "So, you've won. So you're going to take over the world. I don't care anymore. There's nothing worth living for, anyway. Fuck it."
"Valrie! You can't just give up. What would Patience do? What would she think?" Gia couldn't even wipe her eyes, her voice beginning to croak from the tears and the stress and the terror.
"Patience is gone, Gia! She's gone!" She jerked her chin towards the new Super Mutant kneeling before them, still unmoving. "Look at it. Look! That's not her. She is gone!"
"Aww, listen to you two. Patience didn't exist. She never did." The King circled the creature that they once knew as Patience. "She was a product. Fed the same line as I was. 'This is my wife ... Oh! She died, so now I'm going to train and train and train until I become the best soldier ever'. It was all an illusion. Layer upon layer of illusion. She didn't even have a name, just a number."
"What are you saying?" Valrie's eyes narrowed. She wanted to believe the King was lying, but there would be no point to that. Patience had transformed. There was no reason to lie.
"She got to Vault-Tec HQ, right? Found some videos. Learned her 'real' name and that she was married?" The King turned its back on the nascent Super-Super Mutant. "It was a lie! I found the same thing. The 'before' video? That was layer one of the Simulated Reality. Me and her? We're vault babies, born in the vault, brought up in the vault and turned into soldiers in the vault. There was no 'wife', no 'cancer'. Nothing."
Valrie looked upon the hunched form of the creature that used to be her friend. The whole thing, from the beginning, was some sick joke. A game played by psychotic scientists hidden in their nice safe vault. Twisting the minds of people and then setting them loose in the Wasteland. One had become this hateful thing, the King, the other became a hero. For a short time. Now, she had become another monster in a world full of them.
"Patience was real. The rest of it? Maybe. Maybe you aren't lying. Maybe she was just some experiment, but the day she opened her eyes in the Wasteland, that's when Patience was born. My friend. And she was more real than anyone I've ever known." Valrie slumped, held up only by the hands of the Super Mutant holding her. "And now she's dead."
"'Maybe' I lied? Why would I lie? You know what? I don't need you in my army. You're too old anyway." The King knelt in front of the new creature, holding it by both arms, pulling it to stand upright. It glared at the King. "I know. I know. It's confusing at first, but the fog will clear. And you know what helps to clear a foggy head? Anger. Anger and violence. Gets the blood pumping. Now, kill the old woman."
The King manoeuvred the new Super-Super Mutant, guiding it towards Valrie. The thing towered over her, almost as tall as the King itself. Almost as big and muscular. It stared down into Valrie's eyes and Valrie could see nothing left of her friend in them. They were dead. As dead as Patience. The creature continued to stare at Valrie, breathing heavy, growling, curling back its lips.
"Patience! Don't listen to it. You must still be in there. Please! Patience!" Gia hadn't given up hope. There was little she could do, but she could hope, as Patience would have. Valrie wished she could find it in her to hope, but she couldn't. She matched the creature's stare, daring it to kill her.
"Go on. Kill the old woman, taste your first blood in your new body." The King rubbed the shoulders of the creature. It came across as some kind of grotesque sex play. "Kill the woman and you will finally be my equal. My queen."
"Nuh ... not ..." The creature struggled to articulate the words with its new mouth. "Not queen. Pay. Shens. Name Pay shens ... My name is Patience!"
The creature's eyes widened. Its fists clenched and it roared. A deep throated roar that almost shook the walls of the bunker. It raised a fist and slammed it into the face of the Super Mutant holding Valrie and Valrie dropped to the ground. Patience may not be so dead after all.