A/N: BTW, the Railroad is still at the Switchboard and not yet in the crypts of the Old North Church. The massacre by synth 1 and 2s has not yet happened.
"Deacon," Desdemona's hands and voice both shook as she tried to light her cigarette, her fingers fumbling with the trigger, "if this is just more of your bullshit, then this time you've gone too far."
"On my late wife's soul, Des, this is for real," he told her.
"The Institute's director, dying," Drummer Boy shook his head. "I know they'll pick another one, but how long has he been the director? Thirty years? Thirty five?"
"Nobody really knows," Deacon said.
"The Gen Threes say they all call him 'Father' in there, humans as well as synths. Anyhow, he's been the guiding hand behind all their policies for a lifetime. When he goes, who knows what will happen?" Desdemona drew on her cigarette, making the coal at its tip flare bright.
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," Deacon quoted. "It's going to be a huge shakeup, however it plays out. Anyway, after Kellogg dropped that bombshell on us, things quieted down for a few hours. In terms of events, I mean, because man, do they know how to party up that way! Seven different polkas—but that has nothing to do with Kellogg or X6 and what happened to them.
"Most of the people left after the music, but some spent the night in the new guest house. Meanwhile, Sturges, Valentine, Garvey and I were taking turns watching Kellogg and the Courser, two at a time. You'll remember that Sturges was the one who got the funny look when I told them 'Exodus' was a Courser.
"Raina had gone home; she lived just a little out of town. As it happened, I was asleep in the next room when the Courser decided to do something really stupid. He tried to use Sturges' recall code on him…"
Deacon was having a truly horrible dream in which he found Barbara alive and well, only she didn't recognize him because of all the face changes he'd gone through. Even he didn't remember what he looked like. So he was peeling off his faces, one at a time, like sheets from a pad of paper, paper which caught fire and flared up in an instant before turning to into ash and blowing away. It was painless and bloodless, which was okay, but then she cried out, 'Stop, stop, that's it. That's you!' Except her warning came a little too late. He'd already peeled that face away and it was gone and lost. He tried to reach out to Barbara, but she had already turned away. 'I don't know you, You're not the man I married,' she said.
It wasn't the thunk of a wrench meeting a skull that woke him, it was Valentine shouting, "Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
Deacon had had to wake up in a hurry before, his life sometimes depended on being able to rebound out of dreams and into full alert mode, but even so he wasn't quite prepared for what was in the next room: the Sanctuary handyman-mechanic, Sturges, standing over the Courser with a wrench in his hand, the Courser bleeding from the scalp, sprawled out on the floor. In the lantern light, the blood was dark as old oil, and the smell of it mixed nauseatingly with the traces of vomit and diarrhea which hung in the air.
"He was going to wipe my mind," Sturges explained, his voice hoarse.
"So you are a synth," Deacon said. "I thought you got this antsy look when you heard he was a Courser. Is he alive?" The question was addressed to Nick Valentine, because he was checking on the Courser's vitals.
"Yeah, but only just. You put quite a lump on his noggin and I don't like how it feels. Pass me that biometric scanner, would you?" Deacon obliged. "If his skull's fractured—. Damn. It is. And what the hell is that?" He frowned at the display before he set it aside. "Okay, Sturges, hand me the wrench, nice and easy. Under the circumstances, I'm willing to call it self-defense, but I wanted to interrogate this guy as soon as he stopped throwing up. Now go rouse Garvey. You probably ought to send Codsworth to get Raina here with her bag of remedies, too."
"What about Kellogg?" Deacon looked in at the older man, who was still asleep, slumped to one side.
"Hasn't been a peep out of him for hours," Valentine said. "Y'know, he was around when I was still in the Institute, and that was quite a while ago now. He hasn't aged a day over the last sixty years or so. You gotta wonder how that is…"
The young Courser was still unconscious some half an hour later when Raina arrived. "Subdural hematoma," she diagnosed. "Simply put, his brain is bruised, and bruises swell. When there's no more room to expand into, and it keeps on expanding anyway, it can kill him. Now I'm not a brain surgeon, but there is something I can do. I can take out a piece of his skull in the area where he's bruised. It's called trephination, and it's a form of surgery that goes back into prehistoric times."
"That is correct. Many ancient societies practiced it. There are fossils which show new bone growth around the burr holes, indicating that the patient lived. It was done to let out evil spirits or to let in good ones, depending on the culture. So you weren't joking when you said she performed brain surgery," Dr. Carrington frowned. "I would call it decompressive craniectomy rather than trephination, however. What tools did she use?"
"Well, you know how Mr. Handys have a saw blade attachment? Her Mr. Handy had a medical mode—which for some reason had a French accent, don't ask me why. It did the cutting at her direction, but once the chunk of cranium was out, underneath the corner of the hole, this was peeking out." Deacon pulled out a matchbox and opened it to show a small rectangular device trailing some filaments finer than silk thread; only the light gleaming on the wire showed that they were even there.
"A Courser chip?" Desdemona nearly dropped her cigarette. "A real Courser chip, recovered intact?"
"A real Courser chip, yes. Intact? Well, as intact as it can be, considering the guy got hit on the head. Oh, yeah, and the Mr. Handy did nick it when he was cutting—see?" Deacon pointed to a nearly microscopic groove on the surface. "The connections were monomolecular wire, and they broke off inside his brain. They had to take out a second chunk of bone to remove the chip. They wouldn't have dug it out of his head at all, except that once it was disturbed, the wires were cutting into the brain tissue."
"Still, that it was recovered at all…Did the Courser live?" Desdemona asked.
"He was still alive when I left," Deacon told them. "He might live, he might not. He's going to be brain damaged to some degree. I mean, he had the most primitive brain surgery performed on him at a moment's notice, and then there are all the broken bits from off the chip that got left in there. What that means, if he lives—he might recover fully, he might not. Probably it'll be somewhere in between."
"What are they going to do with him?" Glory asked. "He may be a Courser, but he's still a synth. He's still one of us."
"It depends on him. They won't punish him, but they can't just leave him go either. I suggested that Amari might be able to help, and they said they'd keep her in mind." Deacon pushed his glasses a little further up his nose.
Desdemona nodded slowly, more to indicate that she heard what he was saying than because she agreed. "What about Kellogg?"
"That's…the other thing. He's dead."
"Dead! What happened?"
"Remember when I said he was slumped in his chair? Well, when the operation was over, he was still sitting the same way."
Kellogg never actually fell asleep after he was taken into custody; he just rested and waited for his chance. It felt like he was watching everything through a telescope from very far away as X6 said something to the mechanic, who replied by laying a wrench upside his head. Even the sounds were muted. Then things got very busy, and he seized the opportunity to twist his wrists in their shackles, testing the fit. If he could only get one of his hands free, that would be half the battle won, right there…
Even as he struggled with the shackles, he saw bruises bloom like purple flowers under his skin, and then the skin of his wrists tore like wet tissue paper. Thin blood seeped from the tears to soak his cuffs.
It didn't even hurt. It was damn strange, that was all….
Something came back to him from lectures read to him by the doctors of the Institute, about how delicately balanced all the cyborg anti-aging implants were, and how they worked together to keep him alive. About avoiding abdominal strain as much as possible, and what would happen if the system were damaged.
So: that was what was wrong. The system was damaged, maybe even failing, and a hundred odd years of hard living was catching up to him. Ordinarily he would have fought what was happening to him , he would have wrenched at the cuffs until he got them off, even if he broke bones in the process, but now, now he was just so tired, so very very tired. He would just rest a little longer first, that was all. He'd rest until they were too busy with X6-88 to look his way.
Funny, his eyes were closed, but he could still see, except that it was like he was floating above them, watching the scene like an Eyebot. He could see his own body down there, like he did when he used one of the Institute's Memory booths.
"…Some time during the night, he passed away. None of us noticed until after he was gone. Nick Valentine said the guy had to be at least a hundred years old, and the autopsy confirmed it. That guy was at least as much metal and plastic inside as he was flesh and blood. Fully cyborged, from his brain down. As to what killed him exactly—Imagine the worst case of food poisoning you ever had, and multiply that by five. It's a terrible strain on the body. Then some of the cyborg parts tore loose because of the cramping, which caused internal hemorrhaging. Basically he bled to death," Deacon concluded. "And that, my compatriots of the Railroad, is the complete and unadulterated truth. Mostly."
Desdemona let out a long plume of cigarette smoke. "Very well done, Deacon. Tom, the chip is yours. Learn everything you can from it, but be careful because I don't think another one is coming our way any time soon. Everyone else, other than Deacon, back to your posts. There's still work to be done. Deacon, let's go talk to PAM."
The advanced robotic brain installed in an Assualtron body, known formally as the Predictive Analytical Machine and informally as P.A.M, was in noninteractive mode when they entered her office space, but she was ready to boot up and speak to them at a moment's notice. They brought her up to speed on the events, and after a few seconds of whirring, she stated, "The individual known as 'Kellogg' was sent with the expectation of failure. His demise or removal was an anticipated outcome. Further analysis: There is a greater than ninety-five point four percent chance that the Institute will attempt to recruit or suborn the individual known as 'Queen' again within six months' time, but not before at least sixteen days have passed."
Desdemona nodded. "Suppose we recruit her and then use her as a stalking horse, to draw them out?"
More clicking and whirring. While PAM did her thing, Deacon said to the leader out of the corner of his mouth, "Des, I gotta disagree with you on this one. Raina Queen is too important. Whatever advantage we gain from risking her is….if she's seriously hurt or killed in the process, it'll be like winning a battle but losing the war."
"Why do you say that?" Desdemona asked.
"It'll be easier to show you than to tell you," said the chief spy. "You too, PAM. Out the tunnel way, not through the shop."
"Very well," the robot said, and the three of them went out through the escape tunnels and through the storm drain to a spot where it never got completely dry nor too soggy.
There were four saplings planted in that clearing, spaced out so as to allow them room to grow. Although they were only about a foot and a half high, they were valiantly putting out fan shaped leaves which showed an incredible, fresh, living green against the dead, dry brown of the rest of the vegetation.
"These were a parting gift from Raina," Deacon explained. "Gingko biloba superior, bred to thrive in radioactivity and clean up the environment at the same time. One boy—that's the one with the blue ribbon around the stem—and three girls. They were only six inches tall when she gave them to me, but I watered them with the dirtiest water I could find, then left them out in a radstorm, and they grew a foot in a little over a week. In just a week, Des, with me carrying them in plastic pots all the way here. She has thousands more ready to plant across the Commonwealth. What synths are to us, the ecosystem is to Raina—only there's dozens of us and only one of her. This is the bigger picture we're looking at—better quality of life for everybody."
"But—," the red headed leader began.
"Variant factors must be analyzed," P. A. M. broke in. "Analysis indicates…the individual known as 'Deacon' is correct. Further analysis: Do not attempt to recruit the individual known as 'Queen'. The presence of the individual known as 'Queen' will act as a catalyst to the possible dissolution of the Institute. Probability: Sixty-three point six-six-seven percent chance with noninterference by the Railroad. With interference by the Railroad: Less than forty-two point one percent."
"Greater than a sixty-three percent chance?" Desdemona's eyebrows went up. "I'd bet on those odds. All right, it's hands off for us."
"However, there is also a seventy-two point nine six percent chance that the individual known as 'Queen' will meet with an untimely demise in the process." P.A.M. concluded.
"Seventy three percent—I don't like those odds," Deacon said. "PAM, what do you say we try and crunch those numbers a bit? Let me buy you a coolant, and we'll brainstorm…"
Desdemona stood there looking at the little gingko trees for a moment as Deacon walked off with PAM. She tried to imagine a world where there were trees like that everywhere, a world without an Institute. Maybe even a world where it didn't matter if somebody was a synth or a robot or a human, a ghoul or a supermutant. A world that was so full of green that you could get lost in it. It didn't seem likely. Yet her heart did something funny at the thought.
Then she shook her head. They had just learned that Kellogg was dead, that 'Father' was dying, and a girl she had never met had taken down a Courser with a powerful dose of emetic. Right now, that was more than enough.
A/N: Thank you to my readers! FalloutMinutemen, I'm so glad you like the Nick-Raina relationship. It's a lot of fun to write, and there'll be a lot more of it. Zeelee-vallen, thanks! I think Carla will be sticking around Sanctuary for some time. It's not like she can go back to her regular route, since two of the Institute's heaviest hitters disappeared while traveling with her. Val-You have to play. You really have to. I liked these companions even better than those from Dragon Age: Inquisition. (Except for Varric, of course.)
bearybeary: wait and see. But remember, Nate and Nora both died in Vault 111.
The God of Light: Thank you. I miss him still.