CHAPTER 11.
I Threw it, it Boomeranged, and it Bit Me in the Ass.
The mutated scavenger birds that harried the air and general noise vicinity of the Commonwealth, were cawing, screeching, and yelping as their travels started to take them farther and farther from the mainland.
It bugged him a lot- they were trapped with a sentient monster, and it was leading them somewhere that they did not know all that well.
The shorelines of New England were a grim place- not say as grim as the actual city of Boston itself -but the whole area, or, the multiple zones that ran in a strip down the eastern fringes of the land -were becoming more and more like swamps as the years rolled on.
There were some people that said the world was slowly, unsteadily, but gradually recollecting itself after the nuclear conflict 200 years ago, and the fact of the matter was that that assumption was completely false.
If anything, Earth was degrading. Even further.
People normally found better spots of civilization further mainland than they did by the oceans. Earth's seas had become more irradiated than the very soil of the crust not directly impacted by a warhead, marine life was few and far between, and it was utterly ferocious, vicious.
Like he had scoffed within his mental scans before- Sanford's belief of gigantic monstrosities was limited, at best -but he could not deny that things like Mirelurks, or the predatory Razorphins that swam outside the shallows, were a big problem.
The Mirelurks especially- they reproduced out of control, they had shelled bodies that made them near impervious to physical trauma or the piercing qualities of projectile ammunition, and for their size, they were pretty fast.
The unbelievable heights of aggressiveness didn't make the whole conglomerate of crazy shit that WERE the Mirelurks incarnate, any better for the unfortunate souls to run into them.
Finding his boots sliding through the mud that branched off in brown vines from the buried, moist pavement of the coastal roads still intact- Sanford was holding his gun, the SMG, one-handed, gazing around at both sides the party.
Hancock didn't like the situation either, and he had better reason for such besides physical sights.
"Sir, just to let you and the iguana know, my motion sensors are screaming. Screaming I tell you!"
"Let me guess..." Sanford trailed off.
"-They are indeed, BENEATH the water around us, sir."
"Not cool."
The Deathclaw didn't give much attention to what they were saying- but she did keep keen when the robot said what he did about the scans of the water.
All around them, the several lanes of the road gave way for muddy, or water-filled indents and landslides. Old warehouses, factories, and skeletons of beachline structures ribbed and lay strewn like hundreds of chess pieces on a board of clay that had melted, and warped.
Boats and small sloops jutted out from the shallowest edges of the ocean, and from the wet wastes of sand that bordered the continent from the waves.
They walked mostly without noise, or even glances to the other- she hadn't said a word the entire time since their last 'Discussion' -if you could call it that.
The stupid little chimp had actually made her uncomfortable. Not easy to do.
He was right, in a sense- she found it scary that he could read the whole situation and say it for what it was.
She was a loner, she made that pretty clear- and yes, the last time she had conversed with another sentient being was when her pack had been wiped out by the Enclave years ago... So, with as much of a shadowy sludge of anathema it hit her with- she could admit the isolation was awful.
Years and years ago, mind you- if this 'Sanford' had come across her during her younger life, the role of annoyer, and the one annoyed and unwilling -probably would have been evened in scale, if not completely reversed.
In her earlier life, all she did was ask questions to herself, because not even the other intelligent specimens of her species, had mastered the level of communication, or understanding of the world around them, as SHE had.
And that was because she was closer to humankind than even she understood.
There was a reason that a national tint to her very speech, and to the way she spoke, existed in her dialect.
Sanford had wanted to know.
But she didn't LIKE Sanford.
He was annoying. Like she had beaten to a pulp in reasoning this whole time.
He was nosy. And, most of all, forget all the other offenses- he was a God-damned human. A HUMAN. Humans pissed her off.
Yet with all that animosity towards him for being HIM, and for what he was- she realized she was taking out years of pent-up frustration on someone who had been willing to just talk with her.
After all, she complained every night before she at least TRIED to sleep -that she had shrugged off the attentions of the only other 'Person' in her life that had been willing to know her.
That opportunity- at least, it seemed as so -had reared back, and she was repeating the same thing she had done in her youth.
Ironically, the Enclave was intervening again too.
Sanford- for the few hours she had known him -seemed friendly enough, he seemed civil. Maybe a few words wouldn't be such a hassle. Maybe. She'd think about it.
-But forget that robot, that 'Hancock' thing. He was a sleezebag. He was loud and obnoxious. Fuck him.
Testing the air with her flecking tongue- she grew anxious at the myriad of scents of crustaceans she picked up.
These weren't normal crustaceans of course, thus, the nervousness.
"Your machine is right, human." She spoke out of the blue. "There are several of these creatures about."
Sanford raised his head in alarm at the alien speech coming from the massive being next to him- and looked back at Hancock.
"Huh. She speaks."
"There has to be a muzzle lying around this pile'o trash somewhere..."
"Why not check by the water's fringe, hm?" She asked venomously. "Be sure to lean forwards HEAVILY to see beneath the waves."
"You know what?!" Hancock cried. "-Here's a wad of dirt! EAT IT!"
As if to make a point- she sighed when a small crumbling weight slacked off her rear-shoulder and silted down her back before vanishing from her senses.
"What is your name again?" She asked.
"HA! Like I'd tell you, COMMIE'!"
"Be quiet. I'm talking to YOU." She shoved her wrist a bit to shift Sanford in his walk. "Name again. Please."
"Sanford, Ms. Anger-problem. Name's Sanford."
"Mm. 'Sanford', where do you come from?"
"I thought this wasn't a 'Get-Together', Deathclaw."
"It isn't."
"Then why should I answer you?"
"-You were complaining before about the lack of communication, monsieur'... Now you say no?"
"Well... I suppose if this is the ONLY way I'll break the ice with a giant reptilian creature."
She snorted.
"-I was born 200 years ago when the bombs dropped."
"Very funny. Now where do you come from?"
"...I, uhm... I just said, scale-mail."
"Fine. Then I'm done talking-"
"-I'm not joking, or making nonsense of your question," Sanford snapped. "-I was born 200 years ago, me and my family lived in a small housing development towards the north, I snuck them into a Vault when the bombs hit."
"He's telling the truth shit-zilla." Hancock confirmed. "I thought it was hogwash too! But, ya' know, the old stereotypical epic-tale of the hero's origin…. Not apparent until it's in yer' face! Hoo-rah!"
"'Hero'?" Sanford scoffed. "No."
Hancock's eye-like stalks all made a rolling motion, coupled with a static-garbled sigh.
Not noticing that particular part of the discussion- the Deathclaw had a bewildered edge in her expression- she opened her elongated chops, and stuttered on the next word.
"-Ahem," She cleared her throat. "How is that possible? A 'Vault'?"
"Deathclaw, if you weren't looking to talk beforehand, having me explain that whole thing will blast it out the airlock times ten, I warn you."
"How are you two-hundred years old?" She asked.
As if unable to process her prior wants- the reptile basically repeated the question.
"I guess that means I'm explaining it…?" Sanford looked at Hancock, who made a shrugging motion with all three arms. Adjusting with a shift of his hips around her imbedded fingers- he found it strange the reptile watching him closely, waiting.
"… I was born in the year 2059, I lived a life completely different from this- I snuck my family into Vault 111 when the bombs started to fall, the staff put us into containment pods, they were cryo-pods specifically- they put us in stasis for the next two-hundred years... I woke up a few years ago to a Vault empty of people, filled with Radroaches.
All the people that had worked there, the soldiers that had gotten in beside the actual residents, and the others I had come in with, were all skeletons lying on a dusty floor... I never found my family though, their pods were empty... My mother and father, the late makers of my life, huh?"
Sanford had told that story a few times, not to many people, but to a fair amount that had asked in the past. It was terrible, in his life 200 years ago, he couldn't imagine wallowing in a hell-hole like this world, and now, he couldn't imagine NOT wallowing in it today.
The story was very personal to him- he didn't tell anyone he did not trust, so Hancock, and maybe two or three other chance encounters in his time here, had earned him a retelling of the tale to a pair of willing ears.
Sanford never expected he'd be pouring out his life story to a Deathclaw, however. That was just ludicrous.
On such note- the reptile was still looking at him in a daze, it was all a blurry conception to grasp for her.
"I've only heard of one or two other humans that have survived in that way, and, they... They... Quel' est le mot...- Their skin falls off."
"Ghouls?" Sanford asked. "Yeah. They've been mutated. I'm pretty sure I haven't been MUTATED, or nothing..."
"-You don't need to be! You've already been maliciously ousted by nature in the looks' department, sir!" Hancock laughed.
Sanford grumbled some horrible comment as only heed to the jest- kicking at a stone by his boot as the Deathclaw processed it all.
A Vault? That sounded so familiar to her.
It wasn't the word, per-say- it was the way the word sounded, what it sounded similar to. It matched a smaller word she knew, and they formed a title that she had read in labels and signs and all manner of things since birth...
Or, rather since creation.
Did it matter?
-No, not to her. The word 'Vault' matched up with... Something...
Something technologically significant.
Technologically...
TECH-nologically! Yes!
TECH.
The word was 'Tech', and they went together.
Vault-Tech.
That was it.
"Was that place made by 'Vault-Tech'?" She spoke unevenly, the name finding a strange flavor off her tongue.
Sanford sounded surprised when he responded.
"Yeah, yeah it was!" He smiled. "How'd you know that?"
"They were at the head of many projects revolving around me." She admitted. "At least, I think."
"No one knows much about Deathclaws," Sanford shrugged. "-I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if the knowledge alludes even the DEATHCLAWS themselves..."
"My kind were a weapons project, everyone knows that..." She waved a claw dismissively, jaws rolling in thought, eyes off in the horizon.
Sanford's own eyes bugged underneath his helm's visors- he raised a finger, and shut himself up.
No, not precisely. The fact that Deathclaws were a, in quote- 'Weapons Project' -was not generally accepted as common know-what and fact. Actually, there were scientists and warlords across not only the Commonwealth, but in D.C. that would KILL for that knowledge.
Now it was his turn to be confused.
It explained much, of course, if it were true- Deathclaws were just too... PERFECT, to be simply naturally talented predators. Their agility, speed, accuracy and lethality were all balanced in harmony- he could see a computer doing that more than mother-nature in her mutated glory today.
But that didn't explain how or why there was a difference between when she was saying as 'Intelligent' and 'Regular' members of her species.
What was the deal with that?
"...What do you mean, 'Weapons Project'?" He tried first.
"You don't know anything about that, monsieur'?"
"Uhhhh... Listen, I dunno' who you've been talking to, but, NO ONE does."
"The humans overseeing the old rulership hid it?"
"'Overseeing'? 'Rulership'? Do you mean the U.S Government?"
"It... Involved something with a white-home?"
"AYE! The White House! The good ole' home of the U.S.A, and UUUNNNCCCLLLLEE-Sam!" Hancock interrupted with a cheer. "HOO-RAH! Communism equals death, pansies!"
The Deathclaw sighed, and tried again with a lapse in tone.
"-Mon Dieu'... FINE, White HOUSE. That is what you speak of, monsieur'?"
"The Government used to be the head power over this place and the places around it, yeah." Sanford shrugged. "They're gone though. They've been gone."
"-Well, your old 'Government' are the progenitors of my kind. My pack and I were rather appalled by the idea when we started digging through records we'd found. It took years to piece it all together."
"Did someone attack your pack?" Sanford just asked it to get it out. It ate at him.
The Deathclaw chewed her teeth together, and answered curtly.
"Yes."
"Was it the Enclave?"
"Yes."
"Were you the only one who survived?"
"...Yes."
"...Then, I... I think that makes it easier for me to understand... At least, a bit."
"It's not so simple."
"THAT, I understand."
"Do you?" The Deathclaw became dull in tone."If you tamper with the shadows, you get lost in the dark."
"I know not to screw with things out of my reach, Ms. Deathclaw, thank you."
"You're not very convincing."
"Arguably, this entire conversation could be a lie," Sanford reasoned with a snap. "-We both could be spewing made-up tales, and leaving out the extent of our life stories- arguably, this ENTIRE conversation, is not very convincing...
-BUT, we're both here. We're both carrying on with the talk, we're both listening, and I sense a bit of intrigue with each word, and personally I don't feel much of a need to skew what I've seen when I describe it to you, or ANY of the other people I've told it to before."
The Mr. Gutsy floated up beside him and cuffed his left pauldron with a quick swipe of his buzz-saw's side.
"It's true, ya' walking Iguana," Hancock said. "-He told me the same stuff, in the same way when I first asked!"
"But you're a... MACHINE." She trailed.
Hancock hovered there for a good second- whipped his vision between the two of them, and activated his buzz-saw with a whir of motors.
"RACIST!" He belted. "EAT A GYM SOCK, BIGOT!"
"Oh, please, just SHUT UP." Sanford growled. "All you've been doing is SCREAMING for the last few hours."
"There's a lot to scream about!" Hancock answered. "-In fact, if I had no mercy- I have all the opportunity to jab my arm at the reptile and cry out- 'Gorijra! AYYIIIIAAAA!' every few minutes, but because I'm a benevolent soul... I will not! Sir."
"That would make you twenty times more annoying than already."
"Ha! You're a funny man! Kill yourself."
"Ah-hah. Listen, Deathclaw, Han' may be a robot, but, if anything, I have nothing else to challenge my own beliefs..."
"Which means?" The reptile frowned with its sharp-toothed underbite.
"Hancock is another 'Person' in my book, I'd appreciate it if he was in yours too. At least while I'm around."
She was apprehensive of simply going with what she was being asked. But, looking between these two characters, 'People' that had annoyed her for hours on end- it felt like -she had bit of a respect for how willing they came off as. At least the human. Again with that detail.
Reaching up to lightly draw the tips of her claws in a itch-destroying scratch to her chin, she sighed, and nodded once.
"Fine."
"Finally, some RESPECT! Thank you!" Hancock victoriously announced.
"You know, we still don't know what to call you, exactly..." Sanford angled his helm's chin. "-Doesn't 'Deathclaw' seem a little weird?"
"No." She simply stated. "I call you 'Human'. What is the problem?"
"Why not address me by name? Why not tell me YOURS?"
"I don't HAVE a name. Or a title. I just AM. I have always been that. JUST ME." She said flatly. "I prefer it that way. Names carry too much."
"Names give you identity." He reasoned.
"Names remind me of my own life. Which I dislike."
"You don't like... Your life?"
"No. I never have."
"Why though?"
"The Enclave were not the first of your species to wrong me. That is why I do not respect humans. That is why I do not like them. That is why I am unable to make sense of your attempts at mere communication. Can you blame me really?"
"No. I can't."
"Some measure of reassurance..."
"...Listen, about this mill... It's on the coast?"
"It is not far."
"You're not worried about the Mirelurks?"
"...Mire... Lurks?"
"The crabs? The mutant crabs, yes? No?"
"The crustaceans?"
"...Fine, yes, them."
"They tend to stay away from me."
"I guess that's why we haven't been jumped yet..."
"Yes. Now, monsieur', I want to reach the location in mind. I want to reach it soon."
"Just one last thing,"
"Mm."
"Where are you gonna' go when we get your fingers out of my armor?"
"Away."
"...That's a shame."
"Don't humor me."
"Have you purposefully detached from things before?"
"You are asking personal questions about a life I do not want to discuss."
"But it's YOUR life."
"And it's my choice to keep it silent. In the shadows. Lost in the dark. I do not appreciate your badgering to unlock it from me, please stop."
"Alright, look, you're right, I'm sorry. I can't help my nosiness- I haven't had a full blown talk with someone in years. Can you at least cut me some slack for that?"
"I never penalized you for your reasoning."
"...Good. Good, that's, uh... That's good."
"Mm. I'm moving."
"So you are..."
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Here's a big shift of gears.
The world is reoriented, and for the moment, the eyes do not observe the same subject in question. The landscape is still dead, the highways blasted, still and cold- and the cities strewn and ruined like giant, stone corpses.
Robert Cannary, was a rather slim built guy, he was always hidden- both figuratively and physically -from those he did not trust, which, in his shoes, was half the world.
He was shadowy, unseen during the day but very active at the times of night- and to add in a rather poorer or better off combination- (It depended on who viewed it and how) -he was also the most curious man in the city.
Robert was never satisfied with things he claimed as 'Chain-link fences and yellow tape' -he always wanted the full idea, the full story, all the material in the bucket right down to the scrapings at the bottom.
He was honest about it, but not so much to those he performed his makeshift espionage on- notably, those he targeted tended to be less than high on the scale of morality.
Rob made enemies really quick- it was so bad, that he had been shot at -many times, and one of those times had been from a trained individual, a sharpshooter in employment from someone or some group he'd angered.
The sniper put a round clean through his cheek bone one night- and when Robert's luck seemed to just barely be holding out, he went to a 'Surgeon' near the borders of the Diamond City in Boston's heart- and it turned out his would-be doc' was ALSO less than a good-guy.
The doctor was a freak, he had a thing with 'Tampering' with patients.
Half of Robert's skull was either outright replaced, or hard-wired with bionics by the end of the operation. When he woke, he was in pain, his face on fire- the doctor and his surgeons were nowhere to be found.
Having his entire head ridden with synthetic plates, a synthetic jaw, pipes and wires- Robert knew that anyone worth their salt in the Commonwealth would start reporting him to everyone and everything as a SYNTH of the dreaded Institute.
This was the same Institute, mind you, that had murdered people and replaced them with duplicate synthetic operating systems. Obviously, the citizens of the wasteland here did not LIKE the Institute in the slightest.
In fact, people HATED them. With a passion.
Enough people were gunning for him, might as well not make it worse.
The heat no longer effected his horrendously rebuilt bionic internals- as, once during a trip to the bathroom, he discovered the doctor had replaced A LOT more, than just his face -so, with the lack of physical discomfort from, say temperature, he walked around all day hidden in a big coat and hood.
Even at night, Robert Cannary NEVER took off his hood and coat. NEVER.
But on the lonely streets of the city of Boston, this evening, he had his hood pulled back, and for the first time in weeks- he strolled the dark alleys with his real face.
The plates covering his bionic/organic mesh of his skull, crackled as he smiled, pushing the ones replacing his laugh-lines upwards in an arc. He blinked his organic eye, gazing around at the dark husks of apartments and office complexes.
The night was crisp, it was silent, and the fighting had slackened.
Tonight was a good one for a stroll.
With risk, of course. He mentally reasoned.
Robert was around thirty in his physical existence- though with the bionics coursing through his body, he really did not have a set lifespan anymore, as he found his own systems did not age as did his name.
His inability to stay away from exposing the more stealthy of the world's many criminals, did him no good in the looks department- but he would never take away what he had done, or what he had learned, just to get his face back.
Boots clacking against the sidewalk- he made an effort to stick to the darker portions of the streets he traversed- a safety precaution. It was that, and never walk directly down the center of any aisle or passage, stick to the side against the walls.
Brushing past a dented street lamp- his coat flurried in a light swoosh of air from the windy dusk.
Robert saw his goal that night when he rounded a brick corner of an apartment's first floor.
Stopping, back-peddling with a slight chuckle at his own lack of perception- he rolled his one organic eye, picked out a pair of binoculars from his coat's inner collar, and pressed them to the synthetic structure of his face.
"Bingo." He spoke with a deep thrum in his mechanical vocal emitters. "There you are. C'mon, show me the goods."
Through the view of his lenses- a collection of soldiers, armed people wearing all manner of ragtag armor and blunt protection, hauled a group of wooden crates, unlabeled, and filled to their tops with cylindrical containers and cardboard boxes- to be tied on the flanks of Brahman.
The two-headed, mutated bovines mewled in agitation as the Raiders slung these massive containers over their shoulders, one on each flank.
Robert Cannary smiled again, grew agitated with his synthetic jawline- and scratched at it with a fiddling finger until a spark leapt out by his right-side hinge.
Taking out a pad of stained, old paper- he snatched up a pen, jotted something down, and immediately grew stiff when he heard the metallic swipe of a ignited piece of war equipment.
SHSK-VMMM
"-Don't you fuckin' move, Robby'." The ugliest man he had ever seen in his life, stood there, with spiked, metal shoulder pads held aloft by leathers and padded slabs of thicker material across his torso and legs.
The Raider chewed a cigarette as he jabbed the barrel of a primed Laser Rifle in the sneaking half-bionic man's direction.
"We got'ya this time." He added, smugly.
"Now, just hold on, Feng," Robert sighed, standing straighter from his hunched lean on the corner of the apartment- his wrist flicked out, and the notepad and pen vanished in the shadows of the sidewalk corner.
"-I'm not resisting, just, let me get the pistol on my belt..."
"Smart man."
"Aye, sir. Hold on, hold on..."
"Faster."
Robert snatched up a scoped magnum, sighed, as this was the hundredth-millionth time someone was taking it from him- and dropped it by his feet, right as two pairs of arms wretched his wrists behind his hips, and started shoving him closer to the one called Feng.
Feng, with a strip of black hair above his lip that acted like a sick comedy of a stache'- smiled with half of his yellow teeth, and nodded towards the operation down the street.
"Let Hark see 'em."
"Hark?!' Robert snapped. "Now-now, boys... You all didn't say anything about old Hark running this gig."
"OOPS." Feng snarled. "I got him."
Keeping his rifle leveled with Rob's back, the two other goons holding him shuffled him towards the larger group of Raider thugs down the pavement.
Robert Cannary had gotten himself nabbed.
Again.
"Aw, shit." He cursed lowly. "Is there at least good room service?"
"Shut the fuck up, Cannary."
"Do you have 'Services' at least?"
"None tha' you'll be seein'."
"What about alcohol?"
"None fer' you."
"Get out of jail free cards?"
"Nah."
"Well, shit."
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