Charon stepped from Dupont Circle Station and shoved aside the metal grating, squinting against the sun. Picking his way through the metro tunnels took longer than he'd hoped. It was late evening, and the concrete rippled with a dry heat that hit him like a wall. He wasn't happy about it, but anything was better than the stale air of the Ninth Circle.
He picked his way up the station steps, his back to the far wall, his shotgun gripped at the ready. Ahzrukhal's orders still looped in his head, louder than he'd ever heard them before. Charon knew consequences when he felt them. The thoughts were borderline deafening, a reminder that he'd taken things too far. The failsafe in his head had kicked into overdrive, and the stink of Ahzrukhal's cigarette smoke clung to him, reminding him every step of the way. Disobedience, however small, wasn't an option.
It didn't matter that stepping into a raider hive was the last thing Charon wanted to do. The prospect of being flayed alive threatened to drag him back into the metro, but Ahzrukhal's orders were a solid substitute for bravery. As long as Charon moved forward, he felt normal. Any hesitation, and his head threatened to spin. He'd never had such a hair trigger for mental punishment. Halfway through the metro, he'd pondered turning back, but after a few minutes of dry heaves and clutching at a guard rail, he learned why that was a mistake. Even letting his mind wander set it off. At least that was a blessing in disguise. Thinking was too tempting, and all it brought with it was uncertainty. The slavers, the urge to kill, Ahzrukhal's mind games, those damn blue rings. It was a puzzle too agonizing to put together, and there were so many pieces. Finding truth in any of it was impossible.
He leaned out from the stairwell, choosing to focus on his mission instead. Connecticut Avenue stretched out ahead, a dusty strip covered in rubble that led straight to the center of Dupont Circle. He caught a glimpse of the fountain at the roundabout's center, along with the barricade that stretched around it. The camp seemed much more imposing now that he had to breach it alone. Charon squinted up, watching the tops of the buildings. Someone had fired on him the other day, right at the metro entrance. Sniper shot. No sign of them now. Steeling himself, he kept to a strip of shadow and darted across the street into the cover of a gutted building. The floors had busted from the ceiling all the way to the ground, leaving only crumbling concrete shelves and rickety catwalks of two-by-fours. He held his breath and made his way around the back.
A sun-bleached staircase led up to the first catwalk. It was littered with landmines. He disarmed them as he went, left them in place, and picked his way up to the maze of boards on the top floor. He stepped from the staircase, then immediately darted back, choking down a curse. A raider crouched against the opposite ledge. She pressed her eye against the scope of a sniper rifle, aimed the center of the Circle.
Charon peeked around the corner. All that separated them was a single straight catwalk. The raider wasn't armored, save for a few useless leather straps and a ripped tac vest. Her buzzed head was bare, unprotected by the helmet she'd dropped at her feet. At least that made things easier. He slung his shotgun over his back and pulled a trench knife out of his leg holster. The raider stirred, but didn't pull away from the scope, deepening her squat to settle in.
"C'mon, Misty..." she muttered, licking her lips. "I know you hate it when I stare at your tits. But I got a new toy... Super zoom, heh... You gotta turn around..."
Charon took his first step onto the catwalk. It creaked instantly. The raider twitched.
"God dammit," she breathed.
He froze. The raider fumbled with her rifle, sending the barrell skittering across the ledge.
"Don't be a coy bitch, Misty. The rear view's great, but I need some love. Please?"
Exhaling as quietly as he could, Charon kept moving. He was halfway across when she shifted again, dropping her ass in the dirt.
"No, no, no, don't go..." she whined under her breath. "You're almost there. Just a little bit more, you're almost..."
He was almost within arm's reach. Three more steps, barely.
"Yes! There it is. The best rack on this side of the Potomac. God, this scope is so good!" She reached out and stroked the barrel. "Send some more slavers, you dillweeds, the loot is-"
He clapped his hand over her mouth. Before she had a chance to struggle, he ripped the knife across her throat and dropped her on the ground. She sputtered for a few seconds, then went quiet.
He looked around. She'd fashioned a decent excuse for a sniper roost. A hoard of snacks and a radio were tossed in the corner next to a sleeping mat. Half of a once-fancy wood desk was shoved against the wall, an improvised shelf for all sorts of chems and booze. By the ledge, a sniper rifle rested on a tripod, next to a neglected BB gun and a pair of binoculars. The rifle looked practically new aside from a small sprayed-on stencil on the body. Paradise Falls. As expected. She'd ripped it off his backup.
Charon knelt down to peer through the scope. The sniper had it honed in on the camp inside the barricade, centered on another raider with a green mohawk. 'Misty', he guessed. She slouched against a sliver of shade beneath the fountain, scowling at the sun, the slavers' mesmetron propped between her legs. Around her, a few other sweaty raiders slumped on the ground. He zoomed out and nudged the scope upwards. A huge aluminum sign nailed to the fountain came into focus. It wasn't there the night before. In bright blue spray paint, it spelled out an amusing message.
EAT SHIT, ROACH FUCKERS
Charon smirked, despite himself. Below, what remained of Bug and Knicknack hung from a series of chains. A welcome sight. Their limbs had been ripped off and turned into pincushions for rusty nails. Nailed to the other side of the fountain and painted with a lopsided smiley face, another sign cheerfully accompanied the first.
SLAVERS GO HOME!
He zoomed out, surveying the rest of the roundabout. As the sun slipped below the buildings, it left the ruins in shadow. The raiders began to perk up, crawling out from beneath aluminum lean-to's and kicking aside lawn chairs. Someone cranked up a radio. A few gathered around a table to suck at jet inhalers and stick themselves with psycho. Things got rowdy, fast.
Charon pulled back from the scope and checked the magazine. There weren't many rounds left. With a scowl he glanced back at the roost. A stack of .32 caliber boxes sat by the bed, but no signs of sniper rounds anywhere. The desk to his left had a few drawers. It was worth a shot. He made his way over.
The wall over the desk was plastered with old pin-ups ripped from a magazine. The top few drawers were much of the same - ripped up erotica and a few rotted pages of a swimsuit calendar. Charon tossed it all aside. The last drawer sported a rusty padlock. Promising. He bashed it off with his shotgun. He moved aside rolls of mildewy cash and a few more portraits of scantily dressed women that were in notably better condition than the rest. At the bottom, one last pinup, with a green mohawk crudely scrawled on top of her head. Beneath her was a metal tin. Charon pried it open. No ammo. Only a few ancient-looking cigars. Useless.
He rose to his feet when a smell seeped up from the drawer. Vanilla tobacco, weak and dusty. An image flickered in his brain, jarring, like a smack in the face. It was too fast to recognize, but the smell... He definitely knew that smell. Thinking about it too hard made him shudder. Ahzrukhal's mind games were one thing, but this was far too close to a real memory.
Right on cue, the spinning set in. Charon shook his head and reached down, tucking a cigar into his pocket, and the feeling waned. Point taken. Whatever the fuck this was, he didn't have time for it right now.
He rifled around in his pack and pulled out a few mines and a mag of shotgun ammo. He laid the mines along Connecticut Avenue, back to the staircase leading to the catwalk. As he made his way up the stairs, he armed the sniper's mines for good measure. He plunked himself down where she'd sat and waited, shotgun in his lap and magazines at his side. The hours passed like that, staring into the dark, half dozing to the music and shouts. Occasionally, the smell of the cigar leaked from his pocket. It dredged up a few uneasy feelings, but nothing like the jolt from before. He chose to ignore it.
Dawn came, and gradually, the party in the circle died down. Charon returned to the scope. Many of the raiders had passed out, lying in half-clothed piles on the ground. A few slumped over tables and lawn chairs. Only four were awake in the Circle, including the mohawked raider. She picked at her teeth with a nail, reclining against the fountain by a pile of pilfered loot, the slavers' mesmetron propped on her leg.
There was a light in the rubble opposite his roost. On a ledge at the other side of the Circle, three raiders surveyed the camp, armed with beat up hunting rifles. Charon took aim. Two shots rang out, two clean kills, and he missed the third. They screamed few angry curses before he capped them. At the sound of his rifle, the raiders below jolted awake, scrambling, grabbing guns and scrabbling for clips.
At least one of them down below saw his muzzle flash. He was counting on it. He ditched the rifle, grabbed his shotgun and pack, and slipped onto a catwalk to the adjacent building. Leaping from the ledge to the ground floor, he waited. Twenty seconds, thirty... The landmines on Connecticut went off, one after the other, belching dust into the air. A few raiders sprinted by just ten feet to his left. Blinded by dust, they missed him completely. Charon slipped out into the street. He couldn't see the raider's camp through the dust, but he could hear it. The shouts behind the barricade got louder with every step. In no time at all he pushed up against the outer rim, listening through a gap in two dented sheets of aluminum.
"What the fuck is happening?" howled a raider. "Why didn't we get a warning? Didn't we give that bitch posted at Connecticut a sniper rifle? The scope on that thing was-"
"It doesn't matter," said another. "We're getting fucked now. I ain't gonna just lay here and bite the pillow. How many of them? Did you see? Shit! Didn't any of you blind assholes get a visual?"
Charon reached into his pack and pulled out two grenades. He chucked them over the barricade. After the blast, a promising silence. He slipped inside.
The ground was littered with bodies. A lone raider stood right at the entrance. They fired at the sight of him. Bullets peppered the dirt, and Charon ducked just as another raider skidded out from cover and took the brunt of friendly fire. They went slack and smacked the ground. Another raider stumbled around a pile of sandbags, shirtless, pants sliding down her ass. She gripped a nail board and squinted against the dust. Another spray of bullets rained down right next to her feet.
"Stop! Stop shooting, damn it!" she screamed. She leapt back and looked right at Charon. "Oh shit. I got one! He's right over-"
Charon shot her in the face. Finally, the discomfort from earlier started to wear off. This was going better than expected. He was in control, in his element. He was following orders. Another pair of raiders skidded around the barricade. His shotgun bucked once, twice. A raider fell face first into the dirt. The other balked with a snarl.
"You like that, you bastard?" Charon jeered. He had an axe to grind. Coming back here was the last thing he wanted to do. Still, turning raiders into swiss cheese made it easy to forget how most everything else in his life had taken a turn for the worse.
The remaining raider bared his yellow teeth and hoisted the dented powerfist strapped to his arm.
"You fight like old people fuck!" he howled. "I'm gonna beat your ass, zombie!"
"Yeah?" Charon laughed. "You want some of this?"
He blew the raider's head off before they could twitch a single muscle, and for a moment, the roundabout went quiet. Charon walked towards the center, passing by a chain-link cage. The captive wastelanders startled at the sight of him. One half-yelped, silenced by the other. He hardly gave them a glance, slipping up the steps toward the fountain.
The dust in the air was thick. A blue light passed through it, lighting up the clouds. Charon ducked behind a pile of rubble and watched. The light bloomed brighter, until the front of a humming mesmetron emerged from the dust. Misty clutched it close to her, a deranged smile on her face. Another skinny raider with a rifle slinked close behind her.
"Boss," he hissed. "We should just ditch this joint. It's not worth it. We haven't even gotten a count. Who knows how many they sent, if they-"
"Shut up," she barked. She cleared her throat. Her voice rang out through the camp, a shrill rallying cry. "I won't stand for this shit," she screamed. "If slavers can't take a little competition, that's their problem. They'll regret coming here. You all work for me, so don't you fuckers forget it. Any of you run off, I'll find you."
She looked directly at Charon's pile of rubble and sneered victoriously, hoisting the mesmetron against her shoulder. He ducked and readied his shotgun, listening as she clicked her tongue.
"Oh? Don't be shy. Here, kitty kitty... C'mere and let Misty spray your brains on the pavement. God, do I live for that..."
He fired over the rubble. The male raider jumped back.
"H-Holy fuck, is that a ghoul!?"
Charon fell back a few feet, ducking behind a long strip of sandbags. Unfazed, Misty howled with delight.
"Perfect! I was starting to get bored... Here we go! It's a corpse hunt, now!"
He waited, then darted to the right, letting her catch another glimpse of him. She took the bait, screeching with laughter.
"Take the pain, motherfucker!"
She blasted the mesmetron at him. Circles of blue light burst from it. She staggered with the recoil, and he ducked. The second the ray passed over him, he threw his shotgun over the rubble and pumped her full of lead.
He stopped to watch as she hit the ground. Stupid mistake. The raider behind her fired, burying a bullet in Charon's shoulder plate. Charon hurtled backwards. Before he could pull himself to cover, they fired again. It hit right in the chest. His breastplate collapsed inwards, crushing his ribs and knocking the breath from his lungs. He steadied his shotgun and fired. Another miss. The raider bolted, and he lined up the shot again. This time, it jammed.
"Fuck!" he choked.
The raider was gone. Charon jostled his shotgun, then threw it aside. He didn't have time to fix it. He staggered to his feet, snatched up the nearby mesmetron, and dragged it back to cover. Just in time. The raider sprinted back around the corner. He had backup now, a twiggy woman with a beat-up .44 magnum. Charon fumbled with the mesmetron. He didn't have a single fucking clue how to use it. It was clumsy, front-heavy, hard to lift. It looked like a toaster.
Too late. The raiders closed in. He pointed the business end at them and crawled backwards, frantically running his hands over the front, feeling for any switch or button. They both grinned, practically drooling at the sight of him.
"Hey," the skinny one laughed. She stalked closer. "How do you kill a zombie anyways?"
"Gotta shoot him in the head," said the other. "Maybe twice to be sure!"
They both snickered, vibrating with glee. Charon tensed.
"Aww," one crooned. "Ghoulie's shaking. Don't worry. We won't hurt you... Much."
Charon scooted back, his vision blurred. He squinted as bright blue speckles crept in from all sides.
"God dammit," he croaked.
Why now? Why was this happening again? What did he do wrong? He struggled to catch his breath, his breastplate was crushing him. He ripped at it blindly, clutching the mesmetron, when he remembered. He remembered something.
The mesmetron in his hands. A smoothskin, in a white coat, moving closer. Too close.
"Put it down," the man urged. "We won't hurt you. Just put it down."
He didn't believe them. He'd counted at least four guards with glowing plasma rifles pointed at his face. The mesmetron was heavy, too heavy for a kid. It was practically as big as his torso. He hid behind it, shivering.
"Get away from me," he squeaked.
He struggled to hold it up. It bobbed and weaved in his hands. The man listened, for a moment, and backed away to look at the guards behind him.
"Subject 03 remains non-compliant," he said. "Shoot to immobilize. Do not kill him."
His small hands crawled all over the weapon until he found the buttons on the side. He'd seen them press the right ones before. The one at the front. Bingo. The mesmetron vibrated, glowed, heated up.
"Subject 03. Last warning. Put it down!"
Next button. Trigger. The blast knocked him back with a shockwave of blue rings. Then, a mist of blood.
"Oh shit! You fuckin' mulched him!"
Charon snapped back to reality. The raider's headless body twitched, skull splattered against his companion. The remaining raider shrieked and scrambled back. Not quick enough. Charon's finger was already on the button. Another pulse of blue shot right at her skull, and the raider stopped in her tracks. Her head rolled back and forth on her shoulders, still very much intact.
"Whoa..." she slurred. "Everything's spinning... What's... Going on...?"
Charon sat in the dirt, dazed. That was a memory. A real memory, something from before Ahzrukhal. Remembering hurt like hell. It felt like he had a railway spike in his eye socket.
"Ugh... Who are you again...?"
Charon tossed the mesmetron aside. He tugged at his armor straps and ripped off the breastplate that choked his torso. He needed to pull it together. He wasn't about to lose focus and get killed. He stumbled to his feet. The raider staggered a bit, but stayed put. Charon pried the revolver from her hands and shot her in the chest. She collapsed, burbled for a moment, then went silent.
"Teach you to mess with me," he muttered.
Charon dropped the gun and kicked her body aside. He was sick of raiders. The chemical smell of their sweat, their stupid costumes, the scabs on their arms, all of it. It wasn't fun anymore, and the shooting pain in his head wasn't going away. Nearby, a chainlink fence rattled, and he cringed, mashing his palm into one of his eye sockets. Behind him, one of the prisoners fumbled with the padlock on the enclosure, jamming a nail in it over and over in an attempt to break it open. Charon stalked over, grabbed a rifle from a dead raider, and pointed the it at the cage.
"Be quiet," he said.
They scrambled back. He stood for a minute, listening. The roundabout had gone silent, for good this time. He looked towards the center. The fountain was just a few feet away, and under it, beneath the dangling corpses of the slavers, was the pile of their equipment. He stalked over and snatched the pack with the collars on it, passing Misty's body on the way. Sure enough, a key ring hung from her belt loop. Charon reached down and ripped it off. He set to work on the padlock as the two wastelanders plastered themselves against the furthest corner of the cage.
"P-P-Please," one of them stammered. "What do you want? Caps? Chems? Anything, we can make it happen somehow, just please-"
Charon raised the rifle, and the wastelander's mouth snapped shut. He opened the cage with one hand and gestured with the weapon in the other, prodding them until they stood where he wanted. One at a time he fiddled with the collars, pulling them from the pack and snapping them on their necks. The collars lit up with a series of shrill beeps the moment they locked shut. Scowling at the sound, he walked to the entrance and shoved the cage door aside. He felt like throwing up.
"Paradise Falls," he said. "Start walking. Or it will detonate."
They didn't stop to question it. Charon kicked the fencing, rattling the whole cage and sending the wastelanders running. He walked back to the sandbags and picked up his busted shotgun. On his way out, he paused under the hanging slavers, admired the raiders' handiwork, and spit on the ground.
"This was your fault," he muttered. He knew it wasn't that simple. The dizzy spells, the memories, all of it - the slavers were only the beginning. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something he needed to know. Something behind Ahzrukhal's lies, behind that unnerving memory. This wasn't just passing discomfort. Something about his employment was deeply wrong, and it had everything to do with the slavers he'd killed.
He turned and headed through the barricade towards Connecticut Avenue. Halfway down the street, his eyes wandered to an alleyway between the gutted buildings. The wasteland stretched out, a never-ending strip of grey rock. The errand was done. He had to go back. He knew that things could only get worse from here, but running away was just as impossible as reaching for his shotgun when he needed it the most. Or was it?
The answer came quicker than he'd hoped. The ground dropped from beneath him, and he fell to his knees and drew in a breath. It was happening again, so much worse than before. He braced himself as the spinning started, placing both hands on the ground. From his pocket, the smell of the cigar leaked out again, and it was too much. For what little his headache had waned, it returned in full force, thrusting another spike of pain through his head.
The pain came with an image. Bright light. Painfully bright. There were four of them, surgical lamps, aimed right at his face.
He was laying on his back, somewhere. His wrists were strapped down against a gurney, the belts pulled as tight as they could go. They weren't meant to hold a child. The light turned hazy with cigar smoke. It smelled sweet, like vanilla.
With a clang, the room went dark, like someone had flipped a breaker. A blue light bloomed from a few feet away. It started at a pinpoint, then swelled into a stream of glowing rings. Pulse after pulse passed through his head. The room began to turn. He was spinning faster by the second, and he clung to the gurney for dear life. He'd forgotten where he was, if he even had an inkling in the first place.
"Subject 03," said a voice. It was rough, inhuman, like someone dragging their boots through gravel. He didn't reply. For a moment, there was silence, nothing more aside from the sound of his own gasps.
"Subject 03. Respond."
The voice was stern this time, but no louder. Another pulse of blue rippled across his vision. This time, the gurney dropped out from under him.
"Your name is Subject 03," said the voice. "You will respond to that, and only that, without hesitation."
"No... No. I a-already have a-" His voice came out a strangled squeak. He was falling, plummeting downward.
"Your name is Subject 03."
They were lying. He had a name. Why couldn't he remember his name?
"Response non-compliant. Your name is Subject 03. Repeat."
Blue light illuminated the room. The ceiling stretched away from him, his fall quickened. The rings got brighter.
"Alright," he gasped. "My name is..."
Gravity kicked back in, and his breath flooded back into his lungs. He caught on quick. The only way to make it stop was to listen. He inhaled, the vanilla smoke seeping into his nose.
"M-my name is... Subject 03." He gasped.
He opened his eyes. He could see again, just barely, in the dark of the room. There was someone next to him, looming over the gurney, their face in shadow.
"Subject 03. Respond."
"Y... yes."
"Good. Now for our usual exercise. Repeat to me. Condition one."
The blue glow swelled next to his head.
"Please. Stop. Please. I don't want to do it again. Just.. Please let me go..."
The room flipped upside down. They took over his vision again, pulse after pulse of blue rings.
"Get acquainted with that feeling. Put it to memory, Subject 03. It's what happens when you disobey."
"S-Stop..."
"I'll do no such thing. You know how this works. We'll continue until you comply."
His temples throbbed. Any more of this and something bad was going to happen. His head hurt so much that it seemed ready to explode.
"Now. Repeat to me. Condition one."
"Fuck."
Charon grimaced. He managed to pull himself out of it this time, and not a moment too soon. Blue rings were burned into his eyes, and his head felt ready to split in half. This was a hell of a punishment. He didn't want these memories, whatever they were. They didn't help him understand a single thing Ahzrukhal said to him. All it did was prove Knicknack right, which felt more disgusting than Charon had ever anticipated. They had scrambled his brains, whoever they were. And this was what he had to show for it - a mind that kept him in line.
He staggered to his feet and dragged himself towards the metro tunnel, shuffling down the steps. He understood now - he'd never so much as think about running. He didn't need any more spinning to drive the point home. He should have known better than to try. He was supposed to follow orders - that's it. If he wanted this to end, if he wanted to pay off that debt Ahzrukhal dangled in front of him, he had to play by the rules. That is, if there even was a debt to begin with. It was idiotic, but Charon couldn't help but hope. The only way to know was to stick it out. Every order, every errand, every single miserable request. He'd follow them to the letter, just like before, just like he always had.