Callie was back in the Ultra Luxe nursing her glass of vodka, this time in a corner and out of the line of sight of Heck Gunderson. The vodka was warming in her glass as she kept her hand curled around it. She wasn't exactly keen on helping Gunderson, but she also wasn't keen on the idea of doing nothing all day. Swank had been gone for a solid twenty-four hours and she was starting to get nervous about the whole thing. If something were to happen to Swank she would never forgive herself. Benny would probably never forgive her either.

Benny had a private meeting with the Omertas scheduled for today and while he invited Callie along, honestly she was more comfortable keeping her distance at this point. He had freaked the fuck out of her last night. She had just sort of shut down when he said that thing. Being that weirdly-perfect murdering gentleman that he was, he had become quite concerned, asked her if she felt a fit coming on, and doted on her until she faked sleep. But she had learned well enough that Benny wasn't an idiot when it came to reading people. Hell, he considered it one of his finer skills. He just knew to avoid the subject, at least for now. Callie wanted to avoid him, at least for now.

She had sort of taken Marjorie's suggestion to heart and she wore nicer black dress slacks, actually bothered to button up her dress shirt, and carried a matching suit jacket over her arm. So she didn't put on a dress, at least she matched one gender's dress codes for dinner. That was a start. Dinner wasn't actually the reason she was here though. The disappearances did strike her as a little suspicious, or rather, she wanted them to be suspicious. If there was something there she could provide more leverage to Benny. Besides she would go absolutely nuts if she didn't get out of the suite. Funny, spend your entire life in a vault, all cooped up, and then suddenly the whole world seems so small when you finally do get out. The world beyond the Mojave was only a rumor as far as it concerned her.

Mortimer was the current object of her surveillance. Of all the creeps at the Ultra Luxe he was certainly the creepiest. That was quite the accomplishment. Maybe she should start handing out medals. Marjorie had expressed some distrust regarding him and his subtle power-plays to gain control of the White Glove Society. It was as good of a lead as any, but thus far he hadn't actually done anything suspicious. Being a creeper wasn't criminal. He treated patrons in a cool, professional manner, with none of the enthusiasm Callie felt from Marjorie. While she sat out of earshot, she carefully observed the body language of each interaction, hoping for something out of the ordinary. Any sort of confrontation would do at this point.

Obviously this was getting nowhere. She would be better off talking to Mortimer directly at this rate. But she didn't really have much to go on. 'Hey, I heard you used to eat people, so…how'd that go for you?' Yeah, brilliant. Real charismatic. Maybe he was secretly a robot? That would have been awesome on a few different levels, but unlikely. All those rumors about androids but Callie had never actually seen one. But, then again, the point of an android is that she wouldn't know one if she saw one.

With her vodka done she slid off the barstool and headed over to the reception desk. She'd just have to wing it and hope she didn't mess up too badly. Maybe if she pretended she was Benny it would work. Pretending to have that kind of speech skill might actually translate into not performing like an idiot. Yeah, maybe it just was about confidence.

Or maybe if she pretended she was speaking to a robot? Yeah, that could work.

"Hello." She waved and made her face unequivocally bright. "Marjorie told me there was an investigator about. I was hoping he could help me with a problem I'm having."

Her smile probably looked fake and weird, but Mortimer was too much of a professional to let on that she looked like a nutcase.

"Hm, yes. He is still checked in according to my records, but I have yet to see him this afternoon."

"Well, it's important, I could stop by his room."

"We are not in the habit of giving out guest information. Many of our patrons value discretion." There was the barest hint of a snarl on his lips.

"It's really important. And as an investigator, I'm sure he's looking for work." Batting eyelashes, that was a thing women did to get their way, right? She thought back to the pretty girls in short skirts in her holovids and thought of how to replicate charm without taking off her clothes.

Mortimer sighed in apparent exasperation. "He is on the fourth floor, room 418. He did seem a rather, exuberant individual."

"Thanks." She turned away quickly. The guy really was a creeper. His eyes looked, well, strange. It was as if he was appraising her through her clothes. While she had been out in the Wastes for a bit now, and had gotten some attention from people, after all, she looked fairly different from them. But before she hadn't felt so much like prey.

The elevator walls were covered in mirrors that infinitely refracted her image back at her. She rode up alone and retied her ponytail. It always started drooping after a few hours. Maybe she needed to cut her hair. A ding denoted she had reached the correct floor.

Once she found herself in front of the correct door she knocked sharply. When no response came from the other side she assessed her options. Either she could walk away empty handed, or she could pick the lock. Yeah, lock picking it was. This was maybe even better. She took a quick look around, got down on one knee, and took a look at the lock. She wasn't really looking forward to meeting with the investigator, but hopefully she would be able to glean some information from his notes or something similar. Before she started on the lock, she toggled her HUD on, in case the investigator decided to show back up she would get some warning and maybe she could hide in a closet or something. Callie Washington, super spy. Yeah.

She had both a bobby pin and a mini-screwdriver in her pants pocket and was able to make short work of the lock's pins. Satisfyingly, they clicked into place one after another. She stood and turned the handle.

Fuck.

That was one dead investigator. The left side of his face had been beaten in, blood and skull fragments had pooled on his shoulder and dribbled onto the floor beside him. His jaw was slack and his eyes open, staring ahead into nothing. This did not bode well.

Callie closed the door behind her. It wasn't as if dead bodies freaked her out, they were kind of par for the course by now. Besides, she had to find something in the way of clues, even better if it implicated the Society. Turned out her feeling had been right. Something was amiss here. The scene before her was pretty bad for the Ultra Luxe's reputation, even if the Society hadn't been directly involved in the murder.

The room had been turned over, clearly someone else had been canvassing for something as well. All the drawers had been ripped out of the dresser and the investigator's suitcases emptied onto the floor. The likelihood of finding anything was slim. It was probably best to start with areas that looked fairly untouched. She slid her hands between the mattress and the box spring and lifted.

Two hostile tics appeared on her HUD. Shit. Shit. Shit. It was too much to hope for that they would pass this room by. She dropped the mattress with a thud and instinctively went for her waistband. Of course there was no laser there. She had left her pistol back at the Tops, since she would be unable to bring it into the Ultra Luxe anyway. Okay, she would have to do this hand-to-hand. It wasn't her preference, but she had made it out okay in the past against way worse odds.

The two masked Society members burst through the unlocked door brandishing canes. Their faces were obscured by their masks and they were dressed for formal dinner, not a fist fight. The canes meant they had superior reach, but at least they hadn't surprised her.

One came at her full speed, leading with the cane, which was a mistake on his part. Callie struck her hand out towards the weapon and managed to grab ahold of it, wrenching it towards herself. His grip on the cane tightened and the other Society member came at her from the side, managing to hit her hard in the ribcage.

She couldn't let go of this cane, it was her best hope, to get one of the weapons off of them. The pain in her side was awful. If her assailant wasn't going to let go of the cane, she'd just drag him down with her. She slammed the uninjured side of her body against him, pushing him against the wall and twisting his arm at an unnatural angle. He was close to her size but not as muscular. She managed to pull him back away from the wall, gripping his shirt in one hand and keeping the cane firmly locked with the other, only to slam him back against the wall. In shock he dropped the cane and Callie took full control of it.

She turned just in time as the other Society member rushed towards her, looking to steal her own trick of tackling her against the wall. He was clearly a little more skilled than his partner and came at her low, rather than standing straight up. Callie barely had time to brace for the blow.

Her back hitting the wall and his weight thrown against her knocked the wind out of her. Fuck did her ribs hurt. Broken, one-hundred percent. Definitely broken. Still, she had to get out of this. She was not going down to some losers in top hats.

The Pip-boy on her wrist started beeping; the lazy notes signaling that she had a message. She hadn't received any messages since she was shot. In fact, she couldn't remember a single message since she had left the vault. The distraction was not a welcome one and gave the Society attacker another moment to bring down his cane on her shoulder, narrowly missing her head.

Callie went back into action, bringing her knee to his groin as hard as she could. She did it twice for good measure. He staggered back but certainly wasn't out of the fight. She held the cane at both ends and rushed back towards him, keeping her elbows bent. She got him right in the stomach before pulling the bar up the length of his torso and smashing him in the face. He went down, hard. Callie switched her grip to that of holding a baseball bat and thwacked him in the head, splitting his skull grotesquely. The other attacker hadn't moved, but her HUD still read him as a threat.

While every fiber of her being was just screaming for her to get the fuck out of there, she still wasn't any further along. True, she had been attacked by Society members, so at the very least Benny was going to be pissed, but something still wasn't right. Had she read Marjorie wrong this whole time? Been taken in by an act? She used to be much more suspicious than this.

Before turning her attention back to the room, Callie aimed the cane at the center of the downed man's head and took a hard swing. The tic on her Pip-boy flickered out. Blood got on her dark-colored shoes. Now there were three bloody messes wrecking the carpet. She took a moment to take a closer look at the wounds in her two attackers' heads and compare the breakage pattern to the side of the investigator's face. It was certainly possible the investigator's wound was inflicted by a cane as well. He must have died recently because the body had only the faintest signs of bloating, and while the room was kept cool, it was nowhere near as cold as a refrigeration unit.

Callie started with the pockets of the Society members' trousers, looking for a slip of paper, a key, anything. Other than an ancient stick of gum she came away with nothing. Again she turned her attention to the mattress, flipping it over and letting it crash into the bedside table, shattering the lamp that had been sitting there. Nothing.

Fuck she was nervous. She didn't want to be here anymore. There was another tic on her HUD, this one wasn't marked as hostile, but she was too jumpy now, knowing how easily people changed colors. She didn't bother trying to hide anything, but did set the door to lock when it closed behind her. Someone was certain to discover what had happened in the room before long. And fuck, Mortimer had sent her to the room. He had tried to kill her. But why? Was she somehow broadcasting to the whole world that she was a threat?

Rather than take the elevator down and have to pass Mortimer at the reception desk, she took the stairs at the back. She would still have to cross the lobby somehow to make her way out of the building.

Once she reached the ground level she took a deep breath and opened the door. She was in a hallway identical to the one on the fourth floor, lined with guest rooms. Shit, there was no way to avoid Mortimer at all. She was going to have to walk past him.

Her attention turned momentarily back to her Pip-boy. She had received that message while occupied upstairs. So strange. Back in the vault, messages were sent back and forth via the Pip-boys, but she hadn't seen any really around in the Wastes. Heck Gunderson had implied they were rare, that only vaulties and those who killed vaulties got their hands on them. Her stomach dropped, was it another survivor from Vault 3? The prospect of encountering someone so far back in her past was unnerving, even if it had only been a few years since she first left. She didn't really have any positive memories from the vault.

No, the alternative was even more shocking. The message was from Benny, at least, claimed to be from Benny.

"Girlie, Swank's back with your book."

But Benny didn't have a Pip-boy, he wasn't particularly savvy with technology, although he got along with Yes Man just fine. It seemed suspicious from her perspective. Then again, about everything seemed suspicious lately.

One way or another she had to make it back to the Tops. She would only find out what was going on there.

She peered around the corner, damn now she was the suspicious one, and caught sight of Mortimer at the reception desk. He looked utterly nonplussed. Weighing her options, it was probably best for her to just walk by. If Mortimer was going to kill her out in the open, he was going to do it. There wasn't a way for her to covertly eliminate him, just as there wouldn't be a way for him to covertly eliminate her.

At the very least, she waited until he was engaged in conversation with another patron and then began her stroll out. Rushing through would just draw more attention to herself. Walk like a human being and he might look straight past her.

If Mortimer had seen her exit, he didn't acknowledge it. Still, she couldn't breathe easily until she was back out on the Strip. Here she wasn't completely outnumbered, at least. Well, she was, but all of the tourists milling around gave her some sense of comfort. In. A firefight, they might not have any allegiances regarding who to shoot at, which meant some of them might be on her side by default.

Swank still wasn't at the front desk. He may have been upstairs with Benny. It was weird, getting that message. Otherwise her inbox was empty. She must have gotten messages before, there was a possibility that Dr. Mitchell had cleared her inbox. He would have known how. But he hadn't deleted anything else. Then again, maybe he wanted those files for himself. Maybe that was why he had covertly tried to change Pip-boys with her.

She could hear voices on the other side of the suite wall. Benny's and Swank's. Their tone was casual and unhurried.

"It's all well and good, but stick her on another floor. Don't want her too close." It was Benny's voice. Callie's heart dropped. She knew full well that her behavior last night was equivalent to a refusal, but it hadn't been an outright rejection of Benny.

"I agree, I'll get her set up on the 11th floor. Doubt she'll stick around for long, but I've got to be a gentleman about it."

Swank didn't owe her anything though. He had been nothing but charming the whole time she had been here.

"Well, I trust your judgement on these things."

"I'll go see to it now, then."

The door swung open and Callie found herself face to face with Swank with nothing to say for herself.

"Uh, thanks for the textbook."

"Don't thank me yet, I only hope it's one that can help you out." He poked her right in the forehead, miming where the bullet might have gone through. It was a playful gesture, like one between kid siblings. Fuck she was going to be sick any minute now.

"Callie, that you?" Benny came to the door as Swank started down the hallway.

"Yeah," her mouth felt dry, chalky, as if she had been walking outside in a dust storm. Not knowing what else to do she stepped into the suite. "Listen, about last night."

"You don't really want to talk about this." Benny took a long drag from his cigarette, as if to emphasize his point. "I can see it in your face. And I don't really want to talk about it either. Rejection isn't good for the psyche, and both you and I need confidence right now."

"Don't send me away."

"What?" Benny swung back around, his expression showing visible shock. She had managed to surprise him.

"I know you're keeping me around because you need me. I'm still the only one that can replace the Platinum Chip, so I'm valuable." It was the reality of her situation. Even if only Benny knew she could replicate the Chip's programming, plenty of members of multiple factions had implied she was valuable to them.

"Wait, Callie," his eyes narrowed, "are you injured?"

"Yeah, yeah." She had gotten so caught up in the prospect of being discarded that she had simply tolerated the pain in her shoulder and rib cage. They still both hurt like hell when she moved, but standing still and not breathing too hard it was more like a dull ache. Last time she checked she hadn't been bleeding, her posture must have given it away.

"I thought I told you not to leave the Strip." Benny went behind the bar and pulled open a drawer that housed medical supplies.

"I didn't, this happened at the Ultra Luxe. I went looking after those disappearances."

He rounded the corner of the bar with a handful of stims. "Where are you hurt?"

"Here," she pointed to her ribs at the point the pain was most intense. "And the shoulder that apparently is hanging limply by my side."

"Yeah, I figured that one." He shot her in the shoulder first, emptying two syringes into the muscle there. "How many do you think for the ribs?"

"Just one, I think." She looked at her Pip-boy, it had easily registered the trauma wounds. "This is something the autodoc is actually good for. It can fix me up at the same time it works on my head."

He followed her instruction to the letter, only using one stim on her ribs. It wasn't enough, but she didn't dare ask for more.

"Now, explain to me who I need to kill over at the Ultra Luxe." He was entirely serious.

"I don't even know. The family of the runaway bride hired a private investigator to look into her disappearance. I thought he might have more information. I went up to his room. He was dead. Two Society members attacked me, but they didn't have any more information on them."

Now the drugs were taking effect, the swelling in her shoulder was already breaking up and her range of motion increasing.

"It's either Marjorie or Mortimer, or both. None of those chumps would act without permission."

"I don't know. Marjorie seems to like me, but that could all be an act. Mortimer is even less of a people person than I am." She swung her arms back and forth as she spoke, testing out her pain threshold.

"Oh he likes people alright, just for dinner though."

She let out a weak laugh. "You changed the subject."

"Huh?"

"You're sending me away. Because I said no."

"You didn't say no, Girlie. Only you didn't say yes either. Are you saying no now?"

"Yes."

"Wait, now I'm confused." He had burned his cigarette all the way down, only to light another one.

"Yes, I'm saying no now."

"Maybe later, then."

Callie was torn between giving in and going against the person she was almost sure she was and the person Benny wanted her to be. But whenever she thought about it she felt even more panicky than she felt about the prospect of being moved to the 11th floor, or moving out altogether before long.

When he was fun and she was fun it had seemed simple enough. Now he was speaking the language of the Overseer, even if it had been in indirect terms. The Overseer had operated by ideology as well, weaving stories of happiness derived from love, copulation, procreation. The first of those was optional, you could fake the first one. Really, people only ever cared about the last two.

"Don't have Swank worry about me anymore, I can just move into the Lucky 38. House offered me a suite there, and I'll probably have better access to his Securitrons while I'm working on the Chip replacement."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Absentmindedly, he put out his cigarette, even though it was nowhere near finished.

"Before I came in, you and Swank were talking about moving me to the 11th floor."

"No we weren't." His face looked so open, honest, that she almost believed him.

"I heard you."

"Swank brought a dame home that helped him. She butted into his business, or he butted into hers. Somehow they lost their pants in the process. It wasn't about you, Girlie."

"What?"

"We were talking, but it wasn't about you. Go see for yourself, she's probably down in the lobby. Red-headed woman, apparently used to be a caravanner. Swank said she's a good shot, must be good at something else too."

Callie hadn't realized she had forgotten to breathe. "So you want me to stay?"

"I want you to stay. And I have a habit of getting things to work out in my favor."

"So do I."

"So it's good we agree on this or it would end in a whole lot of tears for one of us. I assume you got my message about the textbook?"

Her heart had stopped pounding so hard. Even though she had rejected that, he still wanted her here.

"About that, you don't have a Pip-boy."

"Yes Man told me he could hail you."

That didn't make sense, if she was in the Ultra Luxe, she was out of short range communications range with Yes Man's unit. It had limited access to House's network as well, but that still shouldn't have let it contact her at the Ultra Luxe.

She shook her head, "it shouldn't have been able to. I've got to talk to it."

Benny followed her back to the office. He had clearly been working here before Swank came by. Handwritten notes were strewn about the room in his barely decipherable handwriting. It was probably smart to keep separate copies and not simply store everything in Yes Man's memory.

"Yes Man, explain how you hailed me at the Ultra Luxe."

"Well, Pretty Lady Friend, Mr. House's network controls all the Securitrons throughout the Strip. Most of their programming is stored on the hard drive of each individual unit, but commands can be issued to individual robots via the network. When a robot is out of range of Mr. House's wireless signal, messages can be relayed through the unit's short wave broadcast function, bouncing from Securitron to Securitron until it reaches the right unit. Isn't it clever? So I bounced the encrypted message from my unit to the next closest, the system took it from there until it found its way to your Pip-boy."

"Yes Man, is this a secure way to transmit information? Wouldn't House have access to any messages you sent me."

"Nope, not as far as I can tell. I encrypted it to the best of my ability. It was for your Pip-boy unit only. Even if he could find the message, the volume of messages relayed this way is so high it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

The explanation made sense, but she still had reservations of using other Securitrons to reach her Pip-boy.

"Hey, Benny, now that we know Yes Man can do this. Don't send me a message again this way. Not until we control the bots."

"You're the wizard. I'll let you call the shots with bots."

"So you're really not kicking me out?" While her energy was starting to flag, she still had a full evening ahead of her. She had to set up the autodoc to fix her. She could sleep while it either killed her or saved her.

"Right now, I'll take you whatever way I can get you."

It would have to be enough for them both.