Tobacco smoke rises from the smouldering end of a cigarette in an uninterrupted, smooth, off-blue stream. There's nothing within the room to stutter its flow, no breeze or draft, and certainly no exhale of breath. Even so, it sits between the lips of Diamond Cities finest, and certainly only genuine Institute souvenir, Detective Nick Valentine. His eyes, glowing bright yellow in the low light of the room, only illuminated by a single overhead light directly above him, stare down wistfully at the stream almost totally caught up in its ironic serenity. It's quiet, been so for quite a handful of hours now, the Triggermen usually open the Vault door early in the morning to send out droves of wannabe gangsters to keep an eye on the entrance and the entire subway system leading up to it like their hideout was in constant threat of being subverted. It's clockwork he's familiarized himself with; the vibrations in the floor are distinctive, even though he's most likely leagues from the surface. Generally they open it around the same time of day, a good indication of their time management, but for some reason this morning they're late. Might have had something to do with their acclaimed mobster boss leaving them all unsupervised the night before with his pretty new flame latched to his arm adorned with a blood soaked hickory baseball bat.
It's not like anyone would have the gall to dredge all the way up the tracks and through the Vault unless they had an unnatural hatred for trilby hats and submachine guns. Of course, if someone happened to be looking for a young kidnapped girl only to find out her parents forgot to mention her proclivity for overweight mobsters and blunt melee weapons... now that there was his first surprise of the evening. The next had something to do with her lover wanting to keep an old Synth locked up in the deepest pits of the underground instead of kicking his keester right back out of Park Street Station.
The third surprise, and here he thought he'd only been so lucky as to be graced by the first two, came about a few days after when Nick realized that there was just about the same likelihood of them letting him go as them taking over what remains of the Boston of old and turning it into some post-war gangster paradise that would make even the Brotherhood shake in their giant metal boots.
That being it was highly, damn, unlikely.
Now it's around noon on day fifteen, give or take, but he hesitates to put too much faith in an internally mechanized clock that has had no real way to calibrate to the earth's rotation other than his good 'ole fashioned guesswork.
It's just about the time when the citizens of Diamond City start to file in from the sun, or rain, or whatever weather happens to misfortune the lot of them that day, and crowd around the few places of fine post-war dining that the market offers. Whether it's the Dugout Inn, Takahashi's Noodle stand, Colonial Taphouse, or avoiding the crowds entirely and just eating in their homes, everyone seems to congregate about the same time of day like some unconscious social obligation that followed genetics straight through the apocalypse.
Just thinking about it makes him realize that he'd do just about anything right now for a lick of sunlight, even though he tends only experience it in short bursts. His coolant already works hard enough to keep him cool when the heat spikes without him standing in direct sunlight to boot. He's afraid if he isn't careful something important is gonna go and he'll end up leaking from a busted hose in his leg or blow a fan out entirely. A hard restart of his system ain't exactly the most comfortable thing he's experienced, and he isn't too sure he wants to collapse in the middle of the market leaving a crowd of folks scratching their heads about what to do with him next.
He knows damn well he'd end up waking up behind a building soaked in rain water with a kid sitting at his side asking if he's dead... again.
He already has a long list of embarrassing malfunctions to reminisce over; one mechanical heat stroke was enough.
At least now all he has to worry about is trying to keep himself sane, and he's had all the time in the world to think, mostly about how he manages to always get himself caught in these kinds of jams. Fifteen days is certainly the longest vacation in the claws of enemy territory he's experienced, not including however long he was in the confines of the Institute. He doesn't recall it ever rusting his noggin like the last two weeks have, but staying in the same room with the same ugly mug keeping him company for the most of it is certainly doing the trick.
As for the case he'd taken, it was a crying mother and angry father that done him in.
It was on a day that called for clouds and rain, the kind of mild weather Nick preferred out of the total hell the Commonwealth could dish out on one of its moody thralls. It could toss trees with wind and thunder that delivered ferals on the doorsteps of the unfortunate to boot, dampen everything with thick radioactive fog, sand blast and choke travellers with dust storms that can lodge sand so far into Nick's gears should he find himself outside it normally takes him hours to shake himself clean, and of course dry everything off with a sun so hot that it threatened to shut him down on principle alone. The kicker is that all of it could happen in the course of a week, so a little rain and cloud cover was a Godsend.
He always did like the rain.
Not that he was out that morning to enjoy it though, he was stuck behind his desk with Ellie at his side listening to an enraged father yell about how Diamond City Security refused to help find his daughter, Darla, on account of her supposedly leaving of her own free will. He said there were at least several guards letting him know that there was nothing wrong with a young girl wanting to leave home to be with her lover, well he ended up spending the night in lock up for calling them lot of them a string of insulting slurs.
Nick might have agreed with the guards had it not been for the crying mother insisting that her daughter was a good girl and would have never run off with a troublesome type, especially not a gangster like Skinny Malone. She got herself worked up into a tizzy and started rambling off in her bundle of tissues about how the malicious mobster boss was going to make Darla his wife and she'll end up having to slave over him, have his kids, and that all of her grandchildren would be gangsters too.
Suffice it to say, it was enough to give Nick a headache.
He finally accepted the case because they insisted she'd left on false pretences and had a solid lead on where to find her, Nick figured he could let her know her parents are distressed, maybe even get her to write a letter telling them that she's alright and that she's happy. That is, if she did end up leaving to be with her boyfriend instead of it being a kidnapping like they insisted. Well, surprise enough for him, she ended up not being as innocent as the two of them insisted and just about beat him to the ground with that baseball bat of hers while Skinny Malone, who'd assumed the supposed kidnapping, was trying to get her to calm down before she ended up breaking something. Not even necessarily anything of his, his frame can hold up pretty solid against wood.
Well, after Darla damn hear broke her bat over his bruised metal behind, and just before Skinny instructed his men to toss him in the hole, he got an earful about how hurt he was that Nick would even consider that he took Darla from her home with anything but the intent for the two of them to be together. Then he went on about how they were in passionate love and going to run the show to take over the Commonwealth from the inside just like before the bombs.
They didn't even let Nick get so as much as a single word in his defence before they locked him in the overseer's office without any apparent intent to ever let him out, what a hell of a way to end the week.
Nick even considered that Skinny wouldn't keep him locked up more than a few days to get his point across not to mess with him and his operation, maybe even get Nick to agree to never come back. Well, he hasn't seen hide or hair of the man even coming up to say hello, he's seen him down in the cafeteria with his boys, so he knows he's around, just doesn't appear to really care about making an appearance. Nick has even gone so far as to let his guard, Dino, know that he'll agree to whatever terms Skinny offers if it'll get him out of this office. Especially since Dino started using Synth related insults that, really, weren't even that good, painful to hear honestly because he could tell that Dino thought they were downright genius.
When that didn't work, either because Dino forgot to pass along his request, or he didn't care to even try. Nick considered how he might try to escape by either overriding the door to the office, or pretending to malfunction so they would come in. Similarly to how a convict would fake an illness to get one or two guards in his cell so he could overpower them and take their weapons.
Of course that thought process didn't get him far when he realized that even if he manages to get out of the room, weapons or not, it'd be a hell of a trick getting out of the Vault considering he's several layers underground with about two dozen Triggermen between him and the exit. However, sitting tight hadn't really done much except make him loose his marbles and smoke through the last of his cigarettes. If they think he's grumpy now, wait till they meet him a day or two after his last puff, which, after the one currently in his mouth, will be approximately one or two days from today.
Might make for a hell of a story if that's what finally tips him over, got stuck in the hole for two weeks and decided that running out of cigarettes was the final straw. He can imagine the look on Skinny Malone's face if Nick came out of the Vault with two dozen dead bodies behind him to ask if he's got any smokes.
He starts to chuckle, but stops himself. Damn, he's definitely been in here too long.
After initially hearing the Vault door open from the rumblings under his rump as he sits on top of the Overseers desk, he hears a sudden commotion from two floors down in the cafeteria about twenty minutes later. From the window of the office, he can normally see down to the first floor through the open concept railings of the second floor. It's usually where he'd gathered some form of entertainment in watching the lot of younger members act like old timey gangsters, but this time he elected to stay put and wait for his favourite meat headed gangster wannabe to gift him a new arsenal of mediocre jabs like Nick had been totally unaware until that point that he was made of metal. At least this time he's been thinking of a way to retaliate that would scare the pants off of him.
Nick glances down at the last half inch length of smouldering cigarette in his lips, deciding it wouldn't be worth keeping even if it is his last one. Hell, who knows, maybe a little simulated withdrawal might give him the fire under his ass he needs.
He sighs and smothers it on the desk top next to where he'd been sitting for the past few hours and prepares himself, but he doesn't hear just one set of footfalls approaching like he expected, he hears several.
Suspicious, maybe even a little hopeful, Nick waits and watches the window intently as two people pass in front to access the door directly with Dino following quickly behind. However, the young Triggerman pauses to address him instead of going to the door, and he doesn't look nearly as happy as he usually does when he's sure his wit will get Nick good, in fact he looks downright terrified.
"We're opening the door Valentine," He calls in, "You try anything stupid and we'll put you down, got it?"
Nick had a feeling this might not actually have anything to do with him, he'd like to hope that Skinny Malone finally decided what he wanted to do with him, but that kind of thinking was two weeks overdue, so he doesn't say a word, and only passively raises his hands from where they sat crossed and resting on his knees.
Dino doesn't so much as nod at the two that joined him up before they go ahead and open the door like it isn't the very thing standing between him and a timely escape. In fact, it slides open like it's the easiest damn thing in the world and Nick can't help but feel overwhelmingly frustrated. If they don't let him out today, he might really lose it, smokes or not.
Actually, he hadn't considered planning anything, or really gave too much thought into what he'd do the minute the door finally did open because he didn't think the damn thing ever would, at least not from the other side, but still, he finds his body tense like someone waiting for the gun to go off at the start of a race. He'll go for the door the damn second it's clear, no doubts about that, and they'd have to knock him stupid and drag him back unconscious to get him back inside.
That's what he'd like to think, at least, right up until one of the older Triggermen walks in. It's one of the few that has more of the natural tone and energy of some of the old classic mobsters that those younger wannabe's are trying to embody, Nick quite likes the few he's met already, and Tony happens to be one of them.
It's not out of his respect for the man that Nick doesn't immediately rush the door, but for the fact that he walks in holding an unconscious woman in his arms. It's not anyone Nick's seen in the Vault; and it certainly doesn't look like anyone who'd take a leisurely stroll out into the commons. She is a Vault dweller though, suit and all, but the fabric's torn to hell and stained in three kinds of filth, her blonde hair matted, crusted with dried mud and blood. She looks like she's been through absolute hell and Nick immediately jumps up to his feet with the inertia of his most likely suicidal attempt at an escape translated into immediate professional concern.
"Keep your hat on, Valentine," Tony turns and immediately places the woman on the floor underneath the Overseer's window, parallel to the wall with her feet pointing to the corner next to the dishevelled file lockers. From his back pocket, he pulls out a stained white towel that looks like it was haphazardly crammed in, and tucks it under the woman's head as a lumpy pillow.
Nick studies his tenderness; at six foot even he demonstrates the textbook definition of 'gentle giant', "Friend of yours?"
From behind Tony, Frankie, another senior Triggerman, leans against the doorframe flashing his submachine gun in case Nick decided to get any wise ideas, which he most certainly did, but he doesn't need to know that, "That ain't your business." He snaps.
"I'd just like to know if I should be at all worried about your boss starting a collection," Nick crosses his arms, "Because if she's a victim of one of your frequent kidnappings, you better bet your hat it's my goddamn business."
Before Frankie can retort, Tony turns back around and looks at the detective sincerely, Nick could see a thinly veiled sheen of desperation in his eyes, "It's not like that. Look, we don't got time to explain, but could you just keep an eye on her? Make sure she's okay?"
Nick glances over to Frankie as he plays doorman, his fingers are tapping impatiently on the barrel of his SMG as he casts quick and fleeting glances down the rail into the cafeteria. Through the window, he can see Dino fidgeting restlessly, hopping from foot to foot like he's getting ready to take off. With the final observation of the look in Tony's eyes, it suddenly hits him that there's something wrong, real damn wrong, and he's immediately aware, and awfully unsettled by the tangible air of dread surrounding the lot of them.
Nick has an inkling that it's not because they're at all scared of Skinny Malone.
"Sure," Nick agrees before he can think much more on it, though he already had full intentions to check on her without Tony's request, he considers that if he helps, he might just find himself in the full brunt of whatever consequences are following close behind.
"I appreciate it," Tony rises to his feet and retreats from the room, taking the corner sharply as he and Frankie march off in a hurry leaving Dino to scramble and shut the door that they left open.
It takes him all of a minute to lock that door again, firmly, before he scuttles off after his superiors. Nick watches him go like he was giving a silent goodbye to freedom and an open sky. In another circumstance, it would have been a perfect opportunity to rush the door like he'd half-planned, but he's not at all hesitant to admit plans change when new factors join the equation.
For better or worse, his escape plans no longer involve just him.
Nick reaches back and grabs his trench coat from where it he'd tossed it over the dusty Overseers terminal, quickly rushing to the woman's side as she lays boneless on the floor, so limp and motionless that he fears she may in fact be dead after all. Even so, he opens and lays his coat over her body, covering the skin exposed by the tears in the suit.
Gently, he lifts her jaw and turns her face to check the pulse point on her neck, leaning down to listen for her breathing. The aroma of oil and gasoline on her skin and hair is sharp, completely overpowering the smell of the blood and dirt on her face. Where ever she's been, he'd bet a spark anywhere nearby would set her completely aflame.
Under his fingertips, he detects a faint but fluttering heartbeat. She's alive, but he can barely hear her breathing, it could be blood loss, or maybe they gave her something strong to keep her unconscious, either way, she's not moving an inch. He's no doctor, but he should make sure she hasn't been hurt in a way that could immediately threaten her life, lucky for him he's pretty familiar with what bullet holes and stab wounds look like.
Nick leans back and begins following the tacky blood on her face that's half dry and caked in her air on the right side of her hairline. He brushes a lock of hair aside and reveals the source, a large swollen and purplish gash on her temple. It's a hell of a hit, might even have given her a concussion, but it's not recent, maybe a day old. Therefore, unless the Triggermen had her locked away elsewhere in the Vault until now, he doubts they had anything to do with her state. However, he should keep his mind open because there happens to be plenty of reasons they could have brought her up here, not limited to someone in the Vault trying to cover their tracks.
Tony is the kind of john who would help someone out if they were desperate too, he's a good man.
Gently easing her limbs up, he checks her for any other serious wounds, making sure he doesn't agitate any other injuries she may have that he can't see, he discovers the fabric over her elbows and knees scraped to hell and dried stiff with blood. Her palms are scabbed raw with a rash of swollen skin leading down to her wrists and encircling her exposed skin, signs of restraint by hand cuffs or rope maybe.
Settling her arm over her stomach, he eases her shoulder and hip up to check her back, and discovers a hell of a serious surface gash lying diagonally up her back, sealed with more scabbing, blood hardened fabric, and a fair bit of mud that seems to cover most of her suit as well. Hell, she looks like she's been rolling in it.
Most of her wounds look superficial, aside from that crack on her noggin, nothing immediately serious that harboured the threat of her bleeding out on the office floor. Then again he isn't qualified in anything but detective work; she could still be in serious trouble anywhere internally. All he can say for certain is she was taken and held somewhere, nabbed by Raiders, Gunners, or whoever else, and was able to get away. He guesses a couple of Triggermen went out for air, saw her wandering around in a daze, and took her in. Doesn't explain why the lot of them decided to drop her off to visit their keepsake prisoner looking about ready to wet their pants.
He doesn't like it, not one bit.
"Damn." Nick pulls his jacket up to cover her again, tucking it under her chin only for his eye to catch something sitting right on her jaw. She's quite fair skinned under all the mud and grime, looking a lot like someone who'd been cooped up inside for years without a lick of sunlight to color her cheeks, but he can see the faint lining of a patch of bleached skin, a pattern of missing pigment that for some reason looks real damn familiar.
Nick raises his hand to brush hair from her face to get a better view of her features, something to help him remember because he doesn't recall working with any Vault residents, not in quite a few years, but the second his knuckle touches her cheek the woman suddenly lurches.
The detective jerks backwards and unceremoniously slumps onto his hind, startled out of his wits, as her entire upper body pops up from the ground as though spring loaded. His jacket flinging onto her lap, her mouth hanging open with harsh and distressed pants, airy gasps in the place of any scream she may have cried out.
Nick stares, frozen in place just out of her line of sight as the woman in blue shakes, rigid, her face hidden from his immediate view as she stares out and into the corner where her feet are pointing. Slowly, her breathing begins to even out, her fading gasps turning into deep calming breaths and he actually only now considers making himself known, he reaches out to touch her shoulder, but hesitates, thinking that would just about do the job of scaring the absolute dickens out of her, so he decides to speak instead, saying the first thing that comes to him in a voice as gentle as he can muster in the confined space, "Uh, 'scuse me."
She shrieks.
The abrupt sound causes Nick to jump just about as high as she does as her scream just about shatters the sensitive inner mechanical workings of his ears, the receptors send all kinds of warning flares into his noggin' letting him know that that the sound was real damn loud.
Like he couldn't damn well figure that one out for himself, at least she isn't too hurt to move.
"No! No, God, please, no!" She scrambles forward and curls herself into a ball in the corner of the room with her arms over her head like she's expecting a brutal attack.
"Hey, hey, calm down," He urges gently, pushing himself to his knees as he keeps an ear on any activity outside the room because her scream must have alerted someone, the lot of them ain't deaf, "I'm not going to hurt you, alright? But you're gonna want to keep it down, if they know you're awake, they'll come lookin' to collect."
The woman goes real quiet, which is a bit of a surprise to him because telling an upset dame to calm down generally does the exact opposite, and he knows that too, but he'll admit he's panicking a little. He doesn't know what's going on, why she's here, or who she is, but it's causing all kinds of interference in his processor on top of going near crazy.
After a long minute, she slowly lowers her arms to reveal a pair of wide and terrified amber brown eyes that peer at him through the filth of her face. A fearful and hesitant gaze that immediately twists into confusion, her brows knitting as she focuses onto Nick with a kind of sudden studying intensity that makes the gears in his chest involuntarily stutter.
"...Val?" She asks slowly.
Nick, torn between trying to tear his processor in three different directions not including trying to figure where he's seen this woman before, or why his gears feel like they're suddenly flooding with week old gummy fluids leaking from somewhere in his chest, opens his mouth to speak, but the words fall out a lot like if his mouth were full of something thick like oil and he had completely forgotten that it had been until the very moment he parts his lips, "Huh-what?"
The confusion in her face only deepens and she opens her mouth to utter something that sounds a lot like she's echoing what stupid thing he just said, but the door to the Vault suddenly springs open and tears both of their attention towards the three triggermen that suddenly march into the room.
Nick first spots the gleam of their weapons, black SMG's wielded in their arms like prized badges of membership, and not a one of them are any of the senior triggermen that Nick particularly like. New members that Skinny Malone brought in one or two days into his confinement that had to prove themselves by beating the weakest members senseless and bringing in a load of supplies that look like they were either stolen from a caravan or a smaller settlement.
They stand in a group next to the door and stare down at Nick with various expressions of contempt, the detective tenses, his gut is telling him that he's not going to have to wonder for very much longer why this woman is here or who she is, because they're not here for him, not with the way Tony was looking at him earlier.
As Nick sits effectively kneeling in front of the woman in blue, his mind goes to the left pocket of his trench coat where a long red handled screwdriver sits tucked away for the occasion of the frequent re-tightening of the loose bolt keeping his right hand from falling to pieces.
However, he tucked his jacket over the young woman, and now it sits tangled around her feet as a result of her mad scramble to wad herself into the nearest corner of the room.
"On your feet, both o' yous," The young man leading the other two jerks the barrel of his gun up, "Keep your mouths shut unless you want I should shut 'em for you."
Nick doubts he means to shoot either of them, but instead of arguing the point, he ducks his head in compliance, taking his time standing up as it can have some serious side effects on his joints if he doesn't. However, when he gets vertical, he glances back at the woman to see she's still huddled up in the corner looking startled as all hell.
"That means you too, toots," The Triggerman growls, "Nice and slow like, no sudden moves."
The woman swallows audibly, and then braces her arms on either side of the wall supporting her back; she lifts upwards with a groan, her face lightly grimacing in pain. Nick quickly steps over to her to give her a hand, reaching down to grab his jacket the same instant he offers a hand and hoists her gently to her feet. When she's up, he leans in and whispers, "Run when I say so."
She looks up at him in alarm the same instant his hand dives into a snug jacket pocket and curls around the handle of his screwdriver.
"Hey, you got somethin' to say to the dame, romeo?" The triggerman marches up behind Nick and grabs his shoulder, "She ain't yours to be-"
Nick allows the man to pull him around, but the second he can see the grimace plastered against the triggerman's darkened face, his left hand wrapped firmly around the bright red tool thrusts up and plunges the head into the soft tissue under his jaw, horizontally grazing the artery curling under the bend of the bone and slipping it deep to the hilt. He can tell by the look on the man's face, and by the way his cheeks begin sporadically twitching that it dug right under and directly up into the spongy material of his grey matter, a hit like that would just about kill him instantly without a sound.
The boy standing next to the door that he can see over the shoulder of the dead man stares at the back of his superior with startled confusion, not appearing to know exactly what happened from the angle he drove the tool into his skull. However, the triggerman standing a few feet off to Nick's left is slack jawed with an expression of shock, knowing full well that the second Nick pulls the screwdriver out of his head there's going to be a lot of blood right before his body drops deadweight right to the floor.
However, he's not the one who raises his weapon, and he's not the one Nick aims for first. He's a kid who doesn't look twenty years old, but Nick's not entirely sure he won't fire, and he doesn't want to hurt him if he can avoid it, so instead of attacking him, he shoves the body of his superior at him before either of them can make a move to react.
The tension in the room breaks to pieces like glass, the triggerman on Nick's left finally reacts and pulls his SMG up to aim but is quickly subverted as the detective rushes him immediately after shoving the body and grabs the barrel with one hand and the frame with the other, twisting and pushing the man back and up against the wall.
"Go!" Nick shouts, turning his head to look at the woman as she stands stunned and unmoving in the corner of the room, goading her to get her ass moving, "Go!"
Finally pushing herself from the wall, she makes a break for the door. The triggerman uses that split second of distraction to shove Nick back; the body of the SMG rips from his grasp as the butt of the frame socks the detective right across the face, the metal digging a gouge from his cheek. He stumbles down onto his knee, looking up long enough to watch the blonde disappear around the frame of the office door, but the triggerman ensures the detective goes all the way down with an angry kick to the jaw that sends him down to his back. He can feel his head ringing like a gong; alarm's flaring, vibrating in his skull like it's on fire.
Nick forces himself up, straining his processor to realign so his head would stop buzzing, but when he hoists himself up using the frame of the overseer's desk, his eyes glue to the open door of the office as the youngest triggerman, no longer pinned under the body of his superior, stands by the terminal furiously tapping away at the keys looking scared out of his damn mind.
"Hey, wait-!" Nick reaches out with a hand feebly as the door once again seals shut and leaves the detective in a dark room, only now instead of being totally solitary, he's in the company of a dead and foul smelling triggerman.
Somehow he managed to put himself in a slightly worse situation than he started off with, but all he can't think about is whether or not that woman managed to get away, how long she's able to run while she's injured, and how far she'll get before she's lost in the maze of rooms and hallways, he's trying to ignore the feeling that he might have condemned her, but if his gut is right, and he'd like to think that it normally is, there are people in this Vault that don't want to hurt her, and hopefully helping her escape this room ensures that she runs into them instead of the others.
Until he's out of this room too, he won't know right away if he helped her get away or just made sure she ends up dead.
Nick leans back against the desk, taking the weight off of his legs and looks down to the body of the dead triggerman. He has to stare for a moment because he's not too sure he believes his own eyes, the SMG that the man had in his hands when Nick killed him is laying at his side with the corpses hand wrapped loosely around the handle. Forgotten when the men took off and locked the door behind them.
He walks over, slowly, and then yanks the weapon from the dead man's grip to check the ammo count. It's got a full magazine.
For a minute he stares in consideration, deciding, on a whim, to check his pockets too, and in the right inner pocket of his suit jacket, Nick finds an unopened pack of cigarettes.