CHAPTER 54
Down Below.
The inside of the Pieumont Hotel was a complete and utter wreck, just like every other building in the wasteland- halls and rooms piled knee-deep with strewn plaster, boards of wood, garbage, bits of concrete, a common mess.
This started right from the getgo after you entered through the front doors of the establishment- Sanford hadn't been able to fit through the revolving entry, so Blad unlocked the pull-open door nearby of the Hotel's stoop.
"-Welcalm ta' Cassal Brawn, suh!" Blad spoke enthusiastically - his robes flowing everywhere as he held his flabby arms up for the dilipidated, ruined foyer of the Hotel's main wing.
"I thought it was 'Bran'." Sanford sighed- ducking through the arch, holding his rifle two-handed over his cuirass chest.
"T'is wat I sed." Blad frowned. "Cassel Brawn."
His accent is cringeworthy...
Sanford angled his helmet at the expansive lobby.
"You live here?"
"As Voivode of Wallachia I'm destenned tu, suh." Blad nodded.
"Why do you keep calling me 'Sir'?"
"-Why, yur meh roiyale gest!"
"...Royal...?"
"Aye, suh."
"...F-Fine, whatever, you said you know something about the Institute?"
"The Metuul-Peepol, aye! Dis waeh, suh."
"Mmhm."
Blad lead him past a few piles of blocky rubble that were strewn with plaster, and strips of wood that had tumbled from the ceiling of the lobby.
There were 'Walkways'- in a sense -dug out among the floor-covering layers of debris and toppled furniture- sofas and loveseats that, when glanced at, brought words to mind like- 'Fancy' or 'High Class' -bronze painted wood with red cushions and arms, sort of stuff.
All these once nice pieces were buried, snapped in twos or threes, had legs missing and holes driven straight through them. There was a staircase in the rear center of the large room that divided for two smaller flights going up to the second floor, left and right.
The oak railings of the red-carpeted stairs were snapped and fractured everywhere- there were paintings that were hung on the gray plaster walls all over the chamber, and they either had fallen, and become buried like all the furniture, or they had aged and been ruined into blank sheets of dust in grimy frames.
Sanford was peering all over the room, at the staircase, at the cracked and stripped ceiling above- he looked for anything even coming off as a hint of strangeness- something like a physical trap, or someone or something hiding- even though his sensors were clean besides Blad.
"-Ya' knoe', suh," Blad stuttered ahead of him as they went through a doorframe- lacking said wooden doors- which were sprawled on the floor on either side of the frame on the other side. "-I taint' hawd guests ina' long time!"
"...I can't imagine why..." Sanford raised a brow at the old man pinching the sides of his matted, dusty robe and hiking it over his ankles. What a loon. "...You live here?"
"Aye, suh." Blad smiled cheaply. They emerged into a seating area, square in shape- floor was red carpet, there was a hall leading to the left, lined with broken oak doors, presumably entering into some of the bottom floor rooms of the hotel.
There was a wrecked information desk on the other side of the room, facing towards the length of the hall across the room from it- it was curved, like a 'C' shape, open on either back side, and had a few rusty computer monitors seated atop its grayed, ruined surface.
"-The cawsuul' shuurly' has seen bettah' daies' it has..." Blad ranted in the background as Sanford stepped over to the desk, his boots crunching against the debris-laced carpet.
"Yep, castle." Sanford muttered- leaning to look over the desk's top- he saw an unrolled sleeping bag back there on the floor, there was a red drink cooler with little black, plastic wheels against the wall next to it, its lid was closed, and there were some stuffed animals strewn around the bedroll.
A brown furred teddy bear, an orange and black, beady-eyed tiger plush, and a purple dragon with orange wings and horns- children's momentos, and Sanford had a mighty good guess WHO they belonged to.
"The royail' sleepin' chaembah', suh!" Blad clapped his hands behind Sanford- causing the Power Armored man to jump from his staring. "Fraid' I doent evun' let theh' royail' guests back dere I don't!"
"...Again, I can't imagine why..." Sanford blinked. He realized it smelled like feces in this corner of the room. And piss. Some other elements he didn't want to identify. "-You have a whole hotel filled with beds, and you're sleeping on the floor?"
"-W-Wehl," Blad suddenly frowned. "A-All da' otha' beds gawt recked' they did."
"Huh. What about the second floor?"
"-Cawsel Brawn's entieh' secunnd' flor' colawpsed! Reelay!"
"DID it now?"
"Aye, suh!"
"Right. So when are you going to tell me what I want to know?"
"Suh?"
"What do you know about the Institute?"
"...W-Wehl, suh," Blad smacked his chops, taking a step back, hiking his robe. "...W-Wud' ya' like a bawtel of pop? I-I have the royail' reeserv' ere'!"
Blad ran around the edge of the reception desk and started trying to pry open the lid of the cooler by his apparent area of squalor.
Sanford looked up at the ceiling, rolled his jaw- the armor creaked as he turned around, lowered his gun by his hip, and planted his fist into the desk's top.
PMM -It rumbled the whole room, and rattled the computer monitors on top.
Blad stumbled away from the cooler, and quivered in a stance over his bedroll- blinking a few times.
"-LISTEN," Sanford growled. "I am NOT, here for pleasantries with you, now shut the hell up, collect yourself, and TELL ME, what you know about the Institute? Tell me right now."
"...S-Suh... W-Wot' e-exzactly' du ya wont' ta' noe?"
"God DAMN IT, man!" Sanford shoved away from the desk. "-DO YOU. KNOW. HOW. TO GET IN?!"
"...W-Wehl the metuul peepol' liv' in da' seeyiehtee' ruans..."
"...T-The what?" Sanford snapped. "Do you mean the 'CIT' ruins?"
"Aye, suh... seeyiehtee..."
"...Ugh... GREAT, now, WHERE, in the CIT ruins?"
"In da' dome bulden'."
"Where, in the dome building?"
"Bawtum floor..."
"Is it a door?"
"...N-Nawt reallay..."
"Then what is it?!" Sanford roared- making Blad jump. "-You fucking freak! Stop pissin' all over yourself, and HELP ME!"
"-I DON'T KNOE' WOT IT IS!" Blad hollered- shrilly- raising his arms over his face, like a child. "-D-DON'T HURT MEH, SUH! SUH! DON'T HURT MEH!"
"...I... UGH," Sanford punched the air and stared down the hallway of rooms on the other side of the chamber- his eyes big, teeth grinding. "...If the Institute doesn't have a door, what are they using to get into the facility? Is it underground?"
"...D-Dere's a big, flawsh o' lite,"
"Uh-huh."
"...A-And da' peepol standin' dere'..."
"Yep."
"...Just... Poof, vawnish."
"So they're using teleporters... Just like the synths with that pod."
"...Aye, suh."
"Anything else?"
"...M-My pewrsonull' techmawster' got capped tryin' ta get in dere'..."
"Your who?"
"Royail' techmawster."
Sanford wanted to yell at him everytime he said 'Royal' with his God-awful accent... Was that accent even a THING when the bombs went off? British people didn't talk like this, this was just... Madness. Blad was out of his mind.
But this at least explained where he got the robot from before, from.
"That where your robot came from?"
"Aye, suh."
"Who was he?"
"Cawlled himselv', Gengah."
"Gen... Gah...?"
"Aye, suh."
"...Holy Christ- RIGHT, so, GENGAH, died trying to do... What?"
"Tryin' to uze' the lite' thingies' tu get in da metuul peepol plase..."
"How'd he figure doing that?"
"...He uze' an antenny' thingie'..." Blad was now holding one of his stuffed animals- the tiger -in his arms, and he looked at Sanford forlornly. "...It's stil' dere, suh."
"The antenna?"
"Aye, suh, and awl' a Gengah's bots are dere' too... Ded, like 'im."
"How'd he die?"
"Metuul peepol shawt 'im, they did..."
"Does this antenna work?"
"Aye, suh."
"How do you know?"
"Cuz' everythin' Gengah bult worked purfectaley..."
"...Blad, how long have you lived here?" Sanford looked around a bit more, sighing. "Where did Gengah, come from?"
"Cawssel Brawn has' been mine fer' aigizz... A-And mawstuh Gengah came ttu' me lookin' for a plase ta' sleep... He awffered to beh' me' tech masteh'."
"How long did that last?"
"...I-I'm so alone..." Blad was in a fetal position on his bedroll, he had his stuffed animals with him, all bundled in his arms- Sanford got a stronger whiff of urine, and cringed.
His armor creaked, feet working extra hard to carry him away from the pathetic scene of the broken man. He poked around the first floor of the hotel for a bit- he opened some of the doors of the rooms lining the hallway.
Each opened with a creak of wood, the knob rattling, and dust cascading off the oak from all the crevices and cracks- Sanford could see into some of the rooms already through holes in the doors.
Every room was pretty much the same- a dusty, ruined mattress for two, or sometimes two singular beds- little oak nightstands, green or blue carpeted floors, broken, marble-looking lamps with yellow, rotting shades.
ccccRRRREEAAAKKK... -The last door at the end of the hall slithered open, revealing the darkness of the hotel room to him, illuminated by a stark pillar of dull blue emerging from the dirtied, matted window on the far side ahead of him, he saw dust particles swirling in the light from outside.
Standing in the doorway for a minute- Sanford glanced around the room before he actually stepped in it, he looked out the frame, and he heard the faint sounding, distanced sobs of Blad still coming from down the hall.
The reception desk was almost a dot to him for how far he had come down here- Sanford looked back inside the room, sighed, and stepped in.
The carpet hissed quietly under his boots- he looked at the double-size mattress over a shattered frame of wood, whose legs had snapped away, and the whole frame lie compressed to the floor. There was a nightstand, its two drawers tugged wide open, and the lamp on its top missing a shade, and bulb.
Sanford trotted over and looked in the drawers- he saw a rather large book in the top one, with a tan, ruined cover- he squinted, reached inside, and wrapped his armored fingers around the spine.
Reclining with his new find- an arm of translucent dust followed the tome's slow sail through the air- he shook it, dispelled more gunk into the atmosphere- and he took both covers, hard, and flipped them aside for the ragged pages between them.
Most of the paper had been torn out, symbolized by ragged stubble making half the pile inside at the spine's interior- what pages were still left were matted, browned, and almost incomprehensible.
Sanford balanced the book in one hand, and used the other's finger to slide through a few of the pages.
There were chapter titles in white letters on orange colored tabs- it was a colorful book, and, as Sanford looked more and more through it... He started to get a feeling of... deja'vu. He knew this book.
He looked at the bottom left corner on the left page.
It read- 'Chapter 15, History of Eastern Europe- Romania- Pg33'
This was similar to the textbooks he'd read in history class as a school student, when he was a kid.
-He looked at any of the blocks of texts still audible.
Blad had torn out everything that didn't discuss Eastern Europe- particularly Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Sanford flipped through a few more pages- and he started to get the message more and more as he found all kinds of random sections in the book spared from Blad's tearing fingers because they mentioned Romanian or Hungarian culture, or geography, or political leaders.
...How long had this man been scouring a children's textbook for these things? How long had he been in this hotel? Withering away?
The faint sobs from down the hall were quiet.
Sanford underhand tossed the book onto the mattress, and he stepped out of the room, and went out into the hall. He then stood in the center of the hallway for a minute- torn between going back to the seating area, and moving for the other end of the hall.
Listening to the mutterings of Blad from the extreme distance eventually rebuffed Sanford to decide on the right of the hall- down the way he hadn't been yet.
When he rounded the corner of the wall, he saw that the hall made an abrupt turn right for another square seating area- the walls lined with wrecked, bronze-tinted, red cushioned chairs- ruined paintings still hanging from the walls.
There was a golden chandelier that had snapped off its chain from a hang in the center of the seating area's ceiling- it had fallen and shattered in a great gold mound of bent metal, broken crystal, and shattered light bulbs- the piece was big enough that Sanford had to traverse the room AROUND it.
He ringed around the pancaked fixture- his boots kicking a few bits and pieces to hollowly ring away on the carpet- he aimed for a set of double oak doors on the other end of the seating area- eyes locked to them, a feeling of curiosity overtaking him.
chk-chk-ccccRRREEEEaaaakkkk... -He gripped both knobs, turned and pushed them outwards.
The two wooden entries rattled and groaned the whole way, sluggishly, and then bounced roughly off the walls on either side of the frame, interior the dark recesses of the room beyond.
Shadows were heavy here, there were twin pyramids of damp light that cascaded into the center of the carpeted room's floor- particles swirling in the faint blue illumination, and contrasting greatly for the shade throughout the rest of the chamber.
Sanford saw two windows to the left- they had yellowed, cracked, plastic blinds pulled down over them, so the light was thin and layered with shadowy lines in its projection- there were chairs lining the wall underneath the sills, and in the center of the room were... things... that... shouldn't have been here?
What WAS all this stuff?
Sanford saw metal stuff- it looked like aluminum desks, tables and shelves against the walls across the room's length, and around another doorframe that lead deeper into the hotel to the far right. There were computer monitors on some of the desks, disassembled parts for computers, robotics, machines...
-The levels of complexity were varying too for these unfinished projects- Sanford picked out motherboards that had parts torn and incisioned from them, there was a coffee machine that had been entirely taken apart, a toy car, and the frame of a robotic model's claw.
There were wrenches, hammers, mallets, screwdrivers- all kinds of tools strewn on the floor, across tables and desks, gathered in ajar toolboxes stacked or in individuals on the ground or on the counters... Scrap metals, electronics- if this was Blad who had done this... then he thought similarly to Sanford, like how he did things in his garage.
Though the garage back home was WAY way more organized than THIS.
Sanford stepped over to the cones of light from the windows- his suit appearing a black mass in the shade- he looked across the makeshift laboratory- and he jumped when he saw a rather tall shadow suddenly become highlighted in his suit's night vision filters.
He reached for his Laser rifle, stuck his bolt action over his back, behind the Nukalizer- and then he stopped getting ready for a fight when he saw specifically, what the case with this figure was.
Propped up against the corner of the room, on the side Sanford faced- was an inactive Protectron model, rusty, darkened, with its chest plating parted in varying ways- some of the rib plates had been unscrewed, other plates had been broken off, for example.
The robot had been smeared with yellow, and some purple paint- Sanford saw tiny buckets of opened paint on the floor by the robot's feet- the paint inside having long solidified. He stepped over to the robot, and looked around its mangled hull, the empty cans on the ground, some tools strewn in a pile nearby.
He peered inside the opened cuirass of the Protectron- ran a scan from his helmet, and found that whoever had run this lab, had removed the robot's main power fluctuator- basically the coupling needed to allow the power source, to distribute power to the actual systems themselves.
Blad couldn't have done this, he was too... Insane, and not in a good way, like Hancock's digitally rendered madness.
This had to be the work of this- 'Gengah' -character.
Who the hell had a name like THAT?
Gen-gah.
What the hell was a 'Gengah'? Was it like that stupid tower building game with the wooden blocks Sanford had played when he was a kid, Jenga? People out here were freaks.
He nosed around more- yanked open some drawers on the aluminum desks- they all smelled like grease, and, having thoroughly become agitated with smelling other people's shit- Sanford switched off the external rebreathers of the suit with a blink activation inside his HUD.
He tugged around the contents of the lab with fresh filtered oxygen whirring around inside the X-01 like some kind of miniature all-around air conditioning unit- it was a cool feeling, literally and figuratively.
"...What's this..." Sanford muttered, coming out with a medium-sized spiral-spined notebook from one of the desk's tops- all the washers and the cerebral connector port for a Robo-Brain model sifted off the cover as he lifted it up.
He flipped open to the first page, and, inside, the paper was so matted with notes and scribblings that he couldn't make sense of it- it was a wad of inky black paper, for how much scribbling was on it.
Sanford cringed and started flipping through.
Despite this would-be engineer having a dumbass name, he did certainly know his robotics- there were diagrams depicting almost every model running around the East Coast in this notebook- there were bullet detailed weak points, manufacturer variations of internal components- heavy stuff.
Sanford couldn't find any information he didn't already know about the models- there were diagrams of Protectrons of varying type- industrial models, service models, secrity models kind of thing -there were diagrams of Assaultrons, Mr. Gutsy's (Sanford smiled worryingly at the thought of Hancock)- and even Sentry Bots.
Eventually he reached a page that differentiated from the robotic side of things- it depicted a box, or, what LOOKED like a box, Sanford couldn't identify what it had been before this Gengah guy had modified it- but it had an antenna sticking out of that.
According to the specification box in the side of the page- that antenna was six feet tall, as tall as a man- and it was constructed from pure silver. Coils wrapped around the antenna's base and draped over the box, were connected to what looked like electrodes on varying surfaces around the device.
"...What the hell is a Temporal Distortion Resonator?" Sanford asked himself outloud.
...Wait a minute.
If the Institute accessed their base through some kind of teleportation mechanism, and the synthetics had to go into the bottom floor of that big domed building at the north end of the university, and they were using teleportation...
...This Gengah fellow was trying to figure out a way to 'Hack' into the teleportation networks, or devices, whatever, that the Institute was using to get inside their facility.
...With the way fate was working over the last few days, Sanford bet that the synths had shot the poor bastard before he could get it to work, because it WOULD have worked.
Sanford bent down and stuffed the notebook in his rucksack- shoving it between the books he had acquired for Nyx.
He stared at those for a moment afterwards.
He would be... In a really, really bad position for himself if something happened to that Deathclaw. Sanford saw himself reacting brashly to something like that, in a way that was detrimental for no one else but him.
He would be miserable.
Lost, even.
Sanford huffed and stomped out of the lab, back into the seating area, into the hall, down the hall.
"Blad?" He called out to the desk as he stood at the mouth of the hallway. "Blad, come out."
...Nothing. He heard nothing from behind the desk.
Sanford moved closer, and leaned over the top of the counter- to find that the bedroll was empty, the stuffed animals were gone, and the cooler had been knocked over on its back.
"...Blad?" Sanford called out to the lobby.
...Nothing.
It seemed 'Castle Bran' was empty.
Who knew, with what Sanford had seen with Han', all the weird stuff, the encounter in the Quarry with him, Hancock and Nyx... It might've always been empty from the start.
Sanford was at least relieved to see that the remains of the Protectron robot were still sprawled out in front of the fountain like he had left them. But, descending the stairs, standing in the parking lot gave him a feeling of loneliness before he turned for the wrought iron gate.
He gazed at the Pieumont Hotel for a little bit- a place he had only been in for a few moments, at best, with a man who had utterly lost his mind, that had divulged some kind of hint for Sanford to get closer to his goal.
He was right, going with the robot, surely did prove beneficial for his cause- at least, that was if the old guy had even been telling facts, and the device he had seen in the notebook WORKED, which Sanford believed both did. However, it had also provided him another outstanding example, of the world he was always trying to save.
He saw Blad appear briefly in the doorframe of the swivel doors- peering out from inside the shaded recesses of the building, like a child, a rat- before he zipped back inside when Sanford met his eyes.
Sanford had gone in annoyed, and hateful towards the wretch.
Now he left the hotel grounds feeling terrible for him.
A lost soul.
What had this world turned into?
See, these were the things he saw in his life, that made him not know if it was worth saving.
He just didn't know anymore.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Flickering of flame, moaning of wounded people, HIS people, a cloudless blue sky above and a lovely day tainted with the smell of war.
The front of the Museum of Science was a hellhole.
When Corporal Brody and a detachment from both the 6th and 10th showed up to reinforce the degenerating situtation in the area- all they had found were bodies, and all of them were militia.
The dead gardens on the western flank of the museum's front grounds were still kicking embers, there were trees that had been burning for so long, that even as they lay in blackened sprawls on the ground, there were veins of amber glowing on them.
Men were going about- mostly medics -looking for wounded, and, while they had found a mere five guys, and had lain them on stretchers in the middle of the street ahead of the grounds while med-teams tended them- they had mostly been assigned for body cleanup, and so far the number of dead was at twenty six.
"...Found a few more," One of the lieutenents grumbled- and a pair of soldiers hobbled by behind him, with a body in their grips. Brody glanced over his man's shoulder and saw two more lines of people just like that, dragging corpses by their shoulders, hauling them by their arms and feet in pairs. "-Fucking Brotherhood."
"It wasn't the Brotherhood." Brody said, looking at the shadow of the museum's sheer size, highlighted in the early day sun. "Roe, do me a favor."
"Jim?" Roe came up behind him, her Musket in her grasp even though it wasn't needed.
"Call up Freedom and tell them we need more of those 90's out here."
"They torched the one across the bridge."
"We need more of them."
"Aye."
"Have Kallihand's pathfinders located Tobs?"
"No."
"Shame."
"He's not our answer, Jim..." Roe raised a brow under her trifold.
"I don't know about that..." Brody muttered- watching a fire squad emerge from the inside of the museum's front doors- the sergeant raised his arms in exasperation, and called out-
"-Synths are gone!"
"God-" -clk-Brody stomped his boot. "-DAMN it!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
Sanford made haste going back down Vassar Road, the spine of this side of the river that ran right to the CIT campus.
His mind was pretty choked up with thoughts around this notebook he had acquired, the device depicted on it, Blad and Gengah for what little he understood about them- he was still worrying, exponentially, just, WORRYING.
His scanners were going a little nuts- showing some sigs' of local wildlife- pathetic stuff, scavenger birds mostly, some molerats.
He didn't have time for any of this.
He had already distracted himself too much in the Pieumont.
He jumped when he heard a loud, brash noise- an electronic bleeping- and he looked inside his helm's HUD to see his sensors had picked up something else.
Three sigs', all human.
Sanford didn't see an immediate threat with it- a mere three people usually didn't mean Raiders, or highwaymen- but who knew, maybe these people were crazy, like Blad, but they had guns, and Sanford didn't like that combination.
He kept his Laser rifle in his grip anyway as he walked between all the cars.
...clk...
-A single gunshot, laughter, two people, one of the life sigs' in Sanford's helm flared and went dark.
He snorted.
That person better had been as evil as they came for this to happen- or Sanford was gonna' tear these thugs' innards out.
He rounded a few more cars, went past the overturned grill of an eighteen wheeler truck- and down across the street, behind a few dumpsters pushed to the sidewalk, he saw the top of a man's head- overgrown with moppy, black hair- there was another guy sitting on the top of one of the dumpsters, looking down at something, laughing.
They both had rifles slung over their backs, and they had big, dirty, ragged beards- they wore rags with belts tying vests of body armor over their torsos.
Sanford stepped around a car, neared them, and called out-
"-HEY!"
-The two men dropped their little laughter fits- jerked to look over their shoulders at the Power Armored guy stomping towards them- they flailed like fish, and both slid and ducked behind the dumpster.
Sanford leveled his rifle from his hip-
CLK
-One of them stuck his rifle over the top of the dumpster and shot blindly.
Sanford knelt behind the wheel of a car.
CLK
CLK
-Two more shots, one shattered the glass of a nearby automobile.
Sanford peered over the hood- aimed down the sight of his gun, and waited for another set of arms to pop up.
CLK
-PMPMPMPM -A quick burst- he heard one of the men gasp, something tumbled, another gunshot- CLK -and then clacking of boots as one of the thugs made a break for it.
Sanford stood straight up, and strafed the guy's legs right before he rounded the side of another car.
PMPMPMPM- "-AGH! AAHHH!" -The body tumbled, the screaming stopped, Sanford switched the battery coils on his rifle for recharge.
He jogged over to the dumpsters- kept his eyes locked on the one guy sprawled on the sidewalk from where he had shot him in the legs- he wasn't moving, and steam was coarsing from his calves.
Sanford sneered- he kicked away the rifle his second victim dropped, and aimed around the back of the dumpsters.
There were two bodies.
One was the other guy- he'd gotten clipped in the top of his messy head, and his cranium had a steaming fissure running down it end to end- bloodied, blackened- his brown eyes were wide open, mouth clamped shut in his filthy beard.
Sanford snorted, and he looked at the other corpse.
He almost dropped his gun.
Young girl, on her back, black and short hair, blue eyes wide open, looking at the sky above- a gunshot wound right in her forehead- her legs were opened, she was bare from the hip down- there was blood everywhere, on her, all over her, over the ground, in THAT kind of place and way.
They'd used a knife.
Sanford looked at the desecration, stonefaced, with empty eyes.
...
...
...He didn't... MOVE, because... How could he?
...How do you react to something like this?
...What was... What was the point?
...Why would you do this to somebody?
...
shsk-shk
...He heard shuffling, behind him, on the concrete.
Sanford's brow twitched- he clenched his teeth so hard it hurt.
The Power Armor creaked and rattled- he spun around and started stomping towards the other guy's body, on the sidewalk- with his immobile legs, and his clawing arms.
"-Ah-AHH! -AH!" The guy cried out like a coward- scrabbling on his belly, futily, not even moving from where he lay- seeing as his legs were paralyzed.
Sanford stood over him- breath hissing out from his teeth, his gun clacking for how much his hands were shaking in his gauntlets.
...This... God damned ANIMAL.
Sanford contemplated all kinds of horrible shit he could do to him.
What would HURT? What would be long? Painful?
Maybe he could rip his dick off, or, maybe he could step on his gut until something ruptured- maybe he could-
...-maybe, he could... stop thinking like the very man he was to kill.
...What was wrong with him?
Deciphering ways to make even the lowest of the low, suffer?
Just shoot him and be done with it.
That was all he needed to do.
Just shoot him.
Sanford shut his eyes- held in his breath, caught it a few times when it slipped out- he raised his gun, and clicked the trigger.
PMPM
-Two bolts clipped into the guy's back, sent steam and the smell of burnt flesh out into the air- the flailing stopped, the motions stopped, Sanford heard the guy cough, and then... silence.
He opened his eyes.
The thug had died with his face in the concrete.
As he should have. With two blackened holes in his back.
Sanford quivered out a slow exhale. He turned around, and looked back at the girl behind the dumpsters. She couldn't have been much older than him, maybe a little younger.
...What was wrong with this God damned place?
Was it not enough that Earth had been nuked? Was it not enough that everything was gone?
Humans had always been doing shit like this... it didn't even seem like the apocalypse could stop people from being animals.
Sanford faltered again in his travel for the CIT.
He leant back against the brick wall of a nearby building, took off his helmet, and let it drop on the dirt by his foot- he pressed his hair back into the arched plating of the X-01 behind his head, and he shut his eyes at the blue sky above.
He wanted to cry, he even tried to MAKE himself cry. But nothing happened.
It was a broiling feeling of corruption that needed release- and it never released. Pent in horror, shame, disgust, ANGER. Boiling anger.
Sanford exhaled again, it sounded like a whine.
...He had a brief moment where he thought of wanting to 'Go Home'.
Where WAS home? The Gas Station... Maybe?
He didn't know.
You still think this dump, this horrible, horrible dump is worth saving?
He didn't know.
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