Vincent 'Vinny' Moretti locks the door behind the woman in blue, his fingers twisting the dial and reaching under the end of the panel to yank two of the wires free, effectively cutting the power so it can't be opened from either side until repaired, his hands are shaking, and his breath is hard and burning in his throat as he turns to press his back to the cool metal and polymer frame. None of this is going as planned, as he's more than willing to admit that he's just making shit up on the fly and going with whatever stupid plan pops into his head next.
The Drone's weren't supposed to know about where the woman was moved, and the only guy accompanying Tony who them who wasn't yet a Triggerman was Dino, so either one of Tony's own guys betrayed him or Dino lied about wanting to switch sides. Fucking prick was only ever concerned with saving his own damn hide, he doesn't care about what it really means to join Tony, and Vinny tried to tell his Pop that but he wanted to give that scumbag at least a chance to prove himself otherwise.
Well, he sure as hell did, shit has effectively hit the fan, and right now all Vinny can think of to do is send the lady off to where he knows she'll be safe, and that just leaves the detective to deal with. Looking after the wellbeing of someone who can't handle themselves is terrifying; but at least he knows Mr. Valentine can hold his own.
Hell, he should have known the old bot wouldn't just give the dame up willingly and now Johnny the Hat is dead, and Vinny... he shouldn't feel guilty about what he had to do in order to make sure she got away safe.
Vinny finally pushes himself up from the door, knowing full well that he shouldn't stick around too much longer given the situation is time sensitive, but when he crosses the room again he stops dead at the base of the stairs where the contorted body of Marko 'Big Hands' lay and his stomach flips. It's not anything he hasn't seen before, and he's seen some really messed up shit growing up in the Commonwealth, but this feels different because it wasn't just some random john that took him out, it was is very own hand, using his own gun. He didn't hesitate either, the minute Marko chased after the dame, he knew he couldn't wait around and do nothing. He saw him aiming down at her, threatening her, so Vinny just reacted, aimed his revolver and shot him right in the back of the head.
That was the easy part... it wasn't thoughtful or complicated, it was just something he knew he had to do, but he didn't know how it would make him feel afterwards, and how Marko's dead body would look all crumpled at the base of the stairs. It doesn't look real when it isn't moving; it looks more like some kind of costume prop, a detailed mannequin. It's unnatural, like everything that made him Marko is gone, there's nothing left, and Vinny has to quickly sidestep the corpse as he resists the urge to vomit, ascending the stairs with haste.
He takes the steps two at a time, half jogging down the balcony until he just about rams himself against the terminal next to the office, making sure he had remembered to leave it unlocked, though it doesn't look like the Dick figured that much out.
When he opens it, however, he isn't prepared to immediately find himself staring down the barrel of an SMG.
It's unlocked.
Nick stares at the notch on the door trying to pinpoint if at any point in the past few weeks he'd actually tried to open it through conventional means. What really hits him is that he can't really remember if he had just simply tried the door switch after bobby pins failed.
There's no way it should be unlocked, and in no way is he to assume that it's been unlocked this entire time, because if so, his entire world might have to halt for a minute or two while his processor force reboots to compensate for the strain of his total outrage. No, it's far more likely that the kid had forgotten to lock it behind him in the mad scramble; he managed to forget an entire SMG on his dead superior after all, a young kid, nervous enough to be the first to point his gun.
For the moment, Nick considers it's just chance that he finally finds himself in a fortuitous position after two weeks of the opposite, though in his gut he knows better than to believe in blind luck. The air is wrong here, it can't just be some kind of simple oops-my-bad on the rookie's part.
So the kid left him a weapon, forgot to lock the door behind him, and now Nick has a long list of questions not including his suspicion and hesitation of his own personal sanity. If the kid does happen to be on his side, or on the side of whoever wanted to hide the dame up here with him, he can't help but wonder what would have happened if Nick just let them take her. As it stands... from the ruckus he heard down a level only quietening minutes before now, he suspects he might have done a far better job keeping his heroism to himself. Now she's in real danger, and he has to get out of this hell-hole if he wants to be any kind of help, and half an hour ago he was more than happy to rush the door, take out any Triggermen in his way, and hit the surface faster than anyone could say 'Rampaging Synth on the Loose'.
Before he has a chance to reach out and twist the dial himself, it slides open. Nick jerks back with his hands gripping hard around the body of the SMG as he aims it directly at the figure revealed, ready to fight his way out until the perp throws his arms high to reveal he's armed, but not open to shooting back, and Nick immediately recognizes him as the young man who'd been in this room not moments ago, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy Mr. Valentine, I ain't gonna do nothin'!"
Nick considers for a moment whether or not to drill him for information while he has both the opportunity and the intimidation factor literally in his hands; however he finds the first thing that actual comes out of his mouth isn't what he expects, "Where is she?"
"The dame is okay, I swear!" The kid takes a shaky step back, "I sent her off to Tony. He'll look after her."
"Tony?" Nick lowers the SMG in his hands, not taking his finger off the trigger, but allowing the kid to relax enough to give him some Intel, "Son, what the hell is going on down here?"
"Look, I ain't got time to explain," He skirts into the office with his hands up as if trying to squeezing between two brick walls, that being the barrel of the SMG and the doorframe, "but we gotta get moving before the Drone's figure out what happened, and they ain't gonna be nice about it either."
Nick watches as the kid folds himself over the desk in the middle of the room to grab at something, apparently his urgency trumps his fear of getting shot, and Nick doesn't know what he means when he talks about any 'Drones', but he has a feeling it has to do with whatever's going on down here, "You got some sort of plan?"
"Meet up with Tony near the entrance," He lifts himself back up with what looks like a Vault-Tec lunchbox that rattles noisily in his approach, "Sneak you out with the dame before anyone gets none the wiser, but we gotta go through the dorms downstairs, I cut the power on the other door."
He's fumbling with the lid now, trying to pry it off to get whatever happens to be inside, and Nick has no idea where the damn thing came from because he's sure he would have noticed it being in here this long, "And if we get caught?" Nick inquires, "We're not exactly easy to miss..."
"I pretend you're the one who killed our guys and let the dame go free; you can't die from getting shot right?"
Nick watches him for a minute, a little bemused, as the lid finally comes off with a comical pop, "Kid, you shoot a radio enough times with a BB gun it ain't gonna keep playing Ink Spots."
He looks up at Nick sheepishly, "Yeah, sorry, I don't know much about the whole, you know, synth thing."
"That's the impression I got, yeah," Nick sighs, "Look, your plan's got holes, but if you really think you call pull off smuggling a synth to the surface, I'm willing to give it a shot... hopefully without actually getting sh-what the hell are you up to?"
The kid pauses in the middle of stuffing what looks like loose ammo in the pocket of his slacks, eyes wide, "Uh, reloadin'?"
"Wh-" Nick turns to look back to the desk, bewildered, "You just had a cache of ammo hidden in the desk?"
"Where else would I put it with all the Drone's runnin' around?" He outwardly shrugs, "No one came up here before you got tossed in. I hid all kinds of neat stuff around the Vault. Hey, you probably ran out of smokes, right? Here."
When the kid reaches into the tin box and pulls out a full unopened pack of cigarettes and holds it out to him, that's when it happens, that's when he loses it, everything immediately goes black. Vinny speaks up after almost a solid thirty seconds of silence on his part, wherein he feels his processor force reboot.
"...H-Hey, Mr. Valentine... you okay?"
Nick finally blinks as his vision resumes, the machinery behind his eyes humming angrily, "Sorry, blacked out there for a second. What'd I miss?"
"Uh," He fumbles with the white box, apparently hesitant to respond, "Guess that means you don't want no smokes?"
Nick reaches out and plucks them from his hand before he can pocket them himself, "No-no, I'll take those, thanks. You wanna go ahead start leading me on this plan of yours? I could really stand to get out of this prison sentence."
"Sure thing, we just need to go before the Drone's come snoopin' around. I don't know how well gunshots echo in here."
Considering Nick could feel when the Vault Door opened just by sitting on the desk, he figures the lot of them are beginning to swarm like a hive of angry Stingwings, "Better than you think, we'd better get moving."
Armed, they close the office behind them as they exit, and Nick feels for the first time in a long time he may actually personally hold a grudge towards any future office space he happens upon in the future. As it stands, he feels the rush of escape flood his circuits and relief beyond words, at least until he and the kid stop dead at the top of the stairs, looking down to see four Drone's lead by Dino all standing around the dead body of the man who knocked him on his hind laying at the base of the stairs.
Next thing he knows, Vinny reaches over and yanks the SMG from his grip, murmuring a quick and almost inaudible apology right before he kicks out the back of his leg, Nick collapses to his knees with a hard gasp, pain shooting up to his hip and flaring alarms in his skull, and immediately all the Drones look up with wide eyes to see Vinny standing over Nick, watching the synth detective freeze as he feels his supposed ally press the barrel of his revolver to the back of his skull.