Deacon wasn't simply a liar; he was a master of the art, capable of weaving elaborate tapestries of aggrandization, where the weft was truth and the warp was….warped truth. However far he strayed from the Platonic ideal form of reality, he always tied it up nicely and the result was as iron clad as the story about Washington and the cherry tree. After all, a lie was a kind of myth, and myths were ways of passing on important truths in a form people could understand. So lies were, in fact, the truth, if you looked at it the right way.
A crowd of Railroad agents had gathered around to hear him unfold his tale, but now Dr. Carrington was shaking his head. "Utter nonsense. That young woman did not save the old peddler's life in a four hour long session of open heart surgery performed with only a kitchen knife."
"All right, maybe it wasn't open heart surgery, but if you don't believe that, how are you going to believe the part about the brain surgery later on?" Deacon asked, "Anyhow, she did patch the old lady up and gave her Med-X for the pain and to make her sleep. By that time, Garvey and Sturges had come back with shackles, manacles and buckets for Kellogg and X6, the Courier."
"Why did they have shackles and manacles on hand in the first place?," Des asked.
"They told me the restraints were for raiders who got taken alive. The Minutemen are experimenting with making the bad guys work for the settlers they injured until their debts are paid off. It's gotta be better than killing them, right? The buckets were for any more bodily fluids. Or bodily solids. There were some of both. Then the two of them, Garvey and Sturges, that is, went back out while Raina cleaned up from administering first aid. We'd agreed that there had to be at least two guards on Kellogg and X6 at all times, and Valentine volunteered to be one of them, as he didn't need to eat or sleep. I was the other. The first other, I should say…."
As conversations went, it was one of the most intense and remarkable Deacon had ever witnessed.
Raina was putting the bloodstained clothing into a laundry bag when Kellogg lifted his head. His color was not good, but there was a curl to his lips and a jut to his jaw that said he wasn't done yet.
Kellogg knew he wasn't going anywhere soon. They'd taken his boots and his pants, not to mention all his weapons and his stimpaks. He was shackled and manacled with enough metal to slow down a charging deathclaw, and they'd stuck him on a chair with the seat cut out and a bucket under it. He needed the bucket, although he was damned if he knew why, because surely everything in his digestive system had already been shit out. However, the cramps hadn't stopped yet and there was still a thin dribble coming out of him. At least the pain inhibitor had kicked in and it didn't hurt so damn much. He felt weak and chilled, between the diarrhea and that damn freezing creek water they'd dunked him in.
So it was just as well he wasn't going anywhere soon. He eyed the girl, the one they'd been sent there to find. She was cleaning up after saving the old lady's life. It rankled that he'd screwed that one up. Overconfidence on his part—he'd do a better job next time.
Meanwhile… If he couldn't complete the mission right now, he could still work on it. It was a matter of psychology. He was willing to believe the story compounded from the newspaper and the seed catalog, because she was too well-fed, too fresh looking, and too knowledgeable—but more than that, she didn't have the air of hopelessness and desperation which set in on Topsiders and Vault-Dwellers alike when they realized what the world had in store for them—which was nothing.
"It's Raina, right?" He had to repeat himself when the first effort came out as less than a whisper. "We came here to rescue you."
That made her stop for a moment. "I wasn't aware I needed rescuing," she said.
He laughed, a harsh, dry sound. "You are. You just don't know it. You're wasted here, brewing up herbs, curing these little people of their ailments, cooking their dinners—peddling seeds across the Commonwealth. You don't belong here. You really want to spend the rest of your life wiping their noses and their asses for them? It's ridiculous—when you could be living and working where it's safe, doing real good. Think about it. Clean water, clean food, clean, comfortable chambers with a clean bed, instead of dirt everywhere."
"I like dirt," she said. "Couldn't get by without it, in fact. At least half of my life is spent in dirt, one way or another. Try again."
"Tell me, Kellogg. Why does the Institute want to rescue her rather than kill her? What game are they playing?" That was Parsons speaking, or the guy he'd known as Parsons, anyway, the one who said he was actually Railroad. Kellogg had missed his actual name.
"Game?" Kellogg asked. "No game. They want to recruit her. In a few years—maybe even only a few months, she could be head of a department."
The girl, Parsons, and the beat up old synth all started in surprise, looking at each other.
"Head of a department?" she pointed to herself. "No, let's cut to the chase. Recruit me? You said, 'doing real good.' Name me three good things the Institute has done for the general population of the Commonwealth, and I'll consider joining it. I don't say I will join, I merely say I'll consider it seriously. I'll even give you the first one for free: Nick Valentine."
"Hey!" came from the battered old Gen 2.5 synth in the corner, the one with the gun.
"Well, you are," the young woman argued.
It was good that she had identified the synth, because otherwise Kellogg would have had no idea what or who she was talking about. Now that he knew, Kellogg racked his brain, recalling what he knew about that series. "He's a leftover from that failed program, what was it? They were trying for immortality, yeah. Uploading their minds into synth bodies at death, but nobody wanted…wanted to go first. So they used old scans from back before the War. Right." He nodded, remembering.
"Why was the program considered a failure?" Raina asked, drawing closer and regarding him suspiciously.
"An unacceptable failure rate." Rather than holding out the information for some advantage, he was deliberately feeding it to her, because the old synth clearly meant something to her. "I think they tried a first run of a hundred. Some never woke up, others couldn't cope with having human memories but being a synth all the same. So they scrapped them all. End of story."
"So they scrapped the successes as well as the failures?" the young woman asked. "That in itself explains a lot about the Institute."
"You could take it along with you, when you join," Kellogg coaxed. "I'm sure they'd repair it, since it seems to mean a lot to you. Hell, they could even transfer its brain into a Gen 3 body, once you couldn't tell from human without taking it apart."
"I refuse to go along with that under any circumstances," the synth protested. "I don't care what those circumstances are, Raina. If I get blown to bits and I wake up in a new body in that place, I'm gonna walk out on you and into the nearest blast furnace. That's a promise."
"Don't worry, Nick," the girl said. "If it comes to that I'd probably be dead too."
"That's the last thing I'd want," the synth said, "right after going back there and becoming beholden to them for a new body."
"We'll have to hope it never comes to that. So, Kellogg. Name me two other good things the Institute's done." She challenged him.
"Fed the people," Kellogg replied. "They developed tatos, mutfruits and razorgrain, the backbone of people's diet today."
Her face lit up with anger. "I don't know about the tato, but they did not develop mutfruit or razorgrain. That is a lie on someone's part. Yours or someone else's, and I have documentary evidence that will prove it."
"You do?" Kellogg asked.
"Yes. My family developed mutfruit and razorgrain. I can name every plant which contributed DNA to their genome. You don't get credit for that answer, Mr. Kellogg."
"Wait—your family?" Kellogg asked. "Damn, you aren't from Vault 111 after all, are you? I knew it. So where the hell are you from?"
"From a vault without a number," she said. "A Vault that fell off the radar, where we curated the past and prepared for the future. Well, the future is now, and I have work to do."
"Does your Vault have an Overseer?" he seized on that. This girl was too young, too idealistic. The Overseer might be a better fit for the Institute.
"I suppose that would be me, since I'm the only one left. I'll be honest with you. If I'd encountered you when I was fresh out of the Vault, you probably would have convinced me. If I had never seen what the Commonwealth was like for myself, if I hadn't met people and collected differing opinions and points of view, maybe I'd have been taken in. Maybe, because I was naive and had no one to guide me. Now I cannot envision any circumstances under which I would consent to join the Institute. That's all."
"That's your answer, is it?" he prodded.
"Yes."
Kellogg found it in him to laugh. "Good. Don't change your mind."
"What? Why not?"
"Because I only work for the Institute. What I've seen over the years—fuck them. Loyalty to the Institute and forty caps will get you a can of purified water. So will the forty caps on their own. You hold out to the very last inch and then tell'm no. I'd love to see the Old Man die disappointed."
"The 'Old Man'?" asked 'Parsons'. "You mean, the Director of the Institute? He's dying?"
A/N: Happy Easter, if you celebrate it. Sorry for the lateness, since I try to update at least once a week and this is closer to two. Whenever I get into a chapter from the wrong POV, it seems to stall it until I work out whose it should really be. The business about achieving immortality by having one's mind uploaded into a synth body is my headcanon for why Nick exists.