Excuse the shorter chapter, this was the natrual-ish breaking point.
/
Callie woke still exhausted. Her head was too full of other people's lies and plans to stay asleep any longer.
When she woke it wasn't to the ceiling of the Vault, or the Mojave sky, or Benny's suite. No, right, this was House's penthouse. House had been eliminated and Yes Man had assumed control of the systems under her orders, serving Benny's plans. Her head throbbed something fierce but she willed herself up and out of bed. The world certainly wouldn't wait for her now.
Benny was gone. That was reasonable enough. She wasn't sure how long she had been out, but it had been early evening by the time Benny, Swank, and Cass eliminated House, and now the sun was down. It was different, being inside but surrounded by glass.
Yes Man's screen was off. No reason really for it to be on if no one was conversing with it. The screen was purely auxiliary. These pre-war robots came with exterior displays because it made them more expressive and accepted by those who were initially wary of incorporating bots into the home. Mr. Handys lacked them as entry-priced robots. Cheaper to manufacture without the fragile, largely useless screens.
"Yes Man."
"Pretty Lady?" Its screen came on, aglow with synthesised happiness.
"Are you done with the file transfer about the Securitron units?"
"I'm still scraping, but everything I've found so far should be on your Pip-boy."
"Where did Benny go?"
"He returned to the Tops. He had something or other to talk with Mr. Swank about."
She turned away from Yes Man and took a place in the chair she had left Benny in, likewise throwing her feet up on the coffee table. It rattled as her feet hit the glass. Scanning through the files on her Pip-boy, she realized how much useless information there really was. Well, not useless, really, under other circumstances she would have combed through all of it, absorbing as much as she could, making fine grain adjustments and optimizing paths. But there was urgency all around her. Having control of the bots was one thing, but not the only thing. Benny had proclaimed himself the new master of New Vegas, but his hold on the territory would be tenuous if the NCR decided to make a move.
Right, she had received a message earlier. The flashing letter icon on her Pip-boy screen reminded her.
It was an obituary, for House. The fuck. It was full of conceited language and grandiose, sweeping statements. Like the man itself, it was too long-winded and disconnected from reality. She couldn't even finish reading the whole mess, but skipped to the end. 'Who knows how many are even literate!' It made her a little sick that she had even wondered the same thing about Benny, underestimating education in the Wasteland. But how had she ended up with the obituary?
"Yes Man, did you get this message too? A tragedy has befallen all mankind."
"Sure did, it was set to release upon Mr. House's death, looks like. All the Securitron units would have gotten it, all the Pip-boys in range, probably other active terminals as well."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." Callie jumped to her feet and began stalking about the room.
"Why, Pretty Lady, that's not very pretty language."
That was a whole lot of possibilities she hadn't accounted for. The Securitrons, whatever, she had control of them now. Other Pip-boys, well, there just weren't that many of them around. She hadn't seen anyone else with one since she had abandoned the exploration party. Arcade knew how to use it right away. She still didn't know what vault he had come out of. Veronica didn't have one, so the Brotherhood didn't have units to spare, if they had them at all. But if the message went out to other networked terminals, the NCR knew, they knew and they would assume a power vacuum. Sure, eventually they were sure to find out. Just she hadn't been expecting them to get notified instantaneously that House had kicked it.
They weren't ready. Callie knew that Benny ultimately wanted to keep the NCR away from the Strip and the immediate surrounding area. He wanted a buffer zone of influence. But New Vegas turned a pretty cap, that was for sure. The idea that the NCR would stay away willingly was unlikely. The best they could hope for was that the NCR hadn't anticipated House's death and weren't ready to come after the Strip yet. But they would have to make a lot of noise, and soon, to act like they were ready to repel an attack.
"Yes Man, can you reach Benny?"
"Gee, I could try to send a unit after him, but I don't think the doormen at the Tops will let my buddy in."
"Send it to the doorman, have it tell the doorman to find Benny."
"If you say so, Pretty Lady."
She had to calm down. Her attention turned back to the Securitron files. A number of units were stored in the basement of the Lucky 38. Forty-seven units were downstairs and could be upgraded locally. Another three hundred and twelve units were stored below Fortification Hill. The two batches were not networked together. Access to the Fort units had to be restored onsite. This had been a considerable cause for anxiety on House's part, having no human errand boys he trusted to send. The upgrade process would have to be done at least twice, but the same code could work for both batches.
Returning to Fortification Hill had not been on her to-do list. But it had to be her, she had to be there to oversee the process. While the same programming should work at both sites, they couldn't take the risk of something going wrong.
Next, she looked over what the physical upgrades consisted of. A missile launcher, grenade launcher, these were actually already installed in the units, the Chip simply restored access to the targeting systems. The physical upgrade was an auto repair module that had been manufactured after the initial Securitron run. The units below the Lucky 38 had these modules ready to go, they just had to be attached. The ones under Fortification Hill had the modules, but the fuel for them had never been delivered. It was in-route when the bombs fell. Shit. They would need an energy source patched in somehow.
They couldn't hold the Strip like this.
"Yes Man."
"Yeppers."
"How many Securitron units are currently deployed on the Strip?"
"Thirty-two. Thirty-three if you count me."
Not good. And to think, dozens had been taken out just today. Fuck. They needed the ones under the Fort. Maybe they would get lucky and the Legion remnants had moved on. Yeah, like these plans ever went to her advantage.
There was a chance that she could bring some of the compromised units downstairs back online. Some of them, from the looks of it, were utterly smashed to pieces. Still, it might be worth a shot if they were delayed from reaching the Fort. This was a mess. A fucking mess.
"Hey Girlie. Your welcoming party scared the shit out of my boys."
He had removed the leather armor from earlier and instead wore a dark gray suit. His hair had been styled and he looked every bit the sophisticated, unquestioned, ruler of New Vegas. He was glossy in a way she had been unaccustomed to seeing him display since their first encounter. Well, second, if killing her was the first. But that wasn't really the first time either. She nearly burst into laughter thinking back to that checkered coat that hopefully sank to the bottom of the fucking Colorado, maybe eaten by mirelurks. They could be so lucky.
"We have a problem. Er, we have many problems."
"Don't we always." He had her laser pistol with him. It hadn't even occurred to her she had been without it all this time. She took it from his hands.
"When you killed House, it released his obituary. It released his obituary to any machine that would accept it. I got it on my Pip-boy, Yes Man confirms all the Securitrons received it. The problem is, other computer terminals may have received it as well."
"NCR? Brotherhood?"
"That's what I'm worried about." Shit, she hadn't even considered the Brotherhood. They wanted their mitts on House's tech for sure. Followers too, but they weren't a military threat.
He nodded, "and you said problems, plural?"
"Okay, so second, we've only got 32 Securitrons up and active at the moment. There are about another fifty downstairs, but that's not enough to fight off the NCR. Now, there's another three hundred that are technically under our control, but they're also under Fortification Hill." Callie sat back down in the armchair, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward.
"Great, I was hoping never to see that shithole again."
"You and me both. Okay, and last, at least for now. I can reprogram the Securitrons, easy. Turns out they're not that different than Mr. Handys. Even if they weren't, they're awfully logical. And their weapon upgrade is super simple. I could knock it out in an hour. The problem here is the ones under Fortification Hill need a secondary power source to come up to speed. So that's got to be worked out." She took a deep breath. Really, she only ever had this many words come out at once when they were planning something and the something had bots.
"There's nothing we can do in regards to the NCR?" He lit up a cigarette, the smoke wafting over his red-rimmed eyes. Sleep was getting scarcer and scarcer.
"That message was released hours ago. If they're going to get it, they have it already." Callie was resigned to the fact they could show up at any minute. "I'll get the upgrades done for the eighty bots we've got. But then I've got to go. I have an idea about the power source. I'll know for sure if it'll work as a substitute once I'm done with the first round of upgrades here."
"I can't go," his face was dark. "The other families know. They knew when they didn't get their daily dose of Not-at-home intervention in their affairs."
"I haven't had an attack in two days. I'm fine. I managed to get along this far without you." She didn't mean for it to come across as harsh as it sounded.
"I need a couple days, to consolidate power."
"More than that, you need to be here if the NCR do show up. The bots can do the fighting, but it would be best if you manually issued commands to Yes Man. Just tell him what you want the other bots to do and they'll do it. He'll be combat ready too, as a last resort."
"Yippie!" Yes Man exclaimed, his volume restriction was temporarily overridden.
"Take Cass with you."
"What the fuck? I already told you, you already told me, she's not committed to this. You saw her earlier, she's ready to bolt."
"All the better. If the NCR show up and I've got to kill her, Swank will get testy, no matter what he claims. That's just needless drama. Take her, she'll be useful and that'll keep her out of my hair. If she has an accident, she has an accident."
Callie rolled her eyes, "you're just pawning off dirty work onto me."
Benny smiled but said nothing.
"Fine. After that, we'll figure out how to get back to Fortification Hill. I don't know what the Legion situation is like."
"No one does." He was dead on his feet and didn't want to admit it. Nor did he take one of the empty seats in the sitting room. If he sat down, he might not get back up again.
"Okay, I guess I've got to finalize work on the Chip replacement, then."
"Not so fast." He grabbed her hand and pulled her up and into his arms. "You promised me."
"I didn't realize it would only take you half-an-hour to kill a 261-year-old man. Turns out your mission wasn't very dangerous after all."
"You still promised."
Callie scowled. "Fine."
Benny sat down on the chair and pulled Callie half into his lap, half onto the armrest.
Callie narrowed her eyes and thought about what to share. There were big things and little things and she sort of felt like everything was equally important at this point. Like everything was connected in the mosaic of her life and explained everything else. Yeah, like a prism, not a mosaic. She had confused the words.
"You know we're on kind of a tight schedule here."
"And if the NCR gun us down, I'll blame it on all the time you spent stalling."
"Fine. Fine. I was an experiment."
"This was supposed to be something I didn't already know."
"Back in the Vault. I was an experiment."
"Girlie, I hate to break this to you, everyone in the vaults were experiments. Those kids from 21, they can't even go outside they're so spooked. The brother and sister, they don't even see each other anymore because they can't cross the courtyard."
"There are others, here?"
"Most of them fucked right off when House opened Vault 21, but there are a couple of kids who stayed behind. Wait," Benny stilled, "you're changing the subject."
"You were busy telling me I wasn't special enough."
"I'd never say that about you. Now, go on."
"It's kind of straightforward I guess," she scrunched her face, "Vault 3 was supposed to be a control. I've seen all the records, well, I saw them before I left. It was supposed to open once radiation levels dropped, but then it didn't. We just stayed in there. Other vaults were experiments, but we weren't supposed to be. Anyway, there were inbreeding problems. Babies were all fucked up. My parents were assigned to each other to promote genetic diversity. Then I guess I was given an assignment, I didn't want him though. I only liked girls."
Benny snickered below her, "I think you just didn't like him."
"Maybe, maybe. Once I got out of there I started noticing guys too, I guess. Anyway, I knocked him out, punched him in the face when he tried to have sex with me."
"That sure sounds like you." Benny just couldn't help but add his interjections to the story.
"I didn't know, at the time, that I was supposed to be some sort of salvation from the inbreeding problem. The Overseer was furious with me. He threatened me, smashed me up against the wall. I hurt for days. I was kind of a kid. I was kind of scared." She didn't really want to keep talking, but she didn't want to admit that she knew fear now, even if she had known it at sixteen. "I was scared of him."
Benny was rubbing small circles on her back, encouraging her to keep talking. But all of this was exhausting. It shouldn't have been. It was a very simple story, and not all that special. Benny was right, all Vaulties had been fucked with.
"When the autodoc was in me. I remembered this. About how I was assigned a husband I didn't want and told I had to breed with him, for the good of everyone else. If only I had been a good girl, maybe everyone from Vault 3 would still be alive. But I kept remembering it wrong in the autodoc. I didn't know why, at first, but the memories seemed off. But then when I woke up, I remembered. I killed the Overseer." Her mouth went dry when she said it. "When I was sixteen I was kind of fooling around with one of the medical staff, she was a little older than me. We were going at it in a supply closet and made kind of a mess." Callie smiled at the memory. "I was already working in robotics maintenance. I sent a bot to clean up, but it also swiped a bunch of chems for me while it was in there. Random stuff, I didn't know enough to specify what. We also used bots to deliver rations to the housing units. I programmed another bot to taint his food. One day he's found face first in his Sugar Bombs. It just looks like the Overseer was a junkie all along and my hands are clean. It made his little girl sick too, she was eight or nine. Saw her daddy die and couldn't finish her own breakfast. I don't know how I got away with it. I didn't care. He wouldn't scare me again."
"Of all the stories, I get Girlie's first murder."
Callie laughed it felt good to be accepted, and to speak the truth, "yeah, I guess so. Real uplifting, that one. The next Overseer took power, forgot all about me, and opened the vault a couple years later. He figured it was a more effective way to handle the inbreeding. Lot of good it did. Can't breed at all when you're dead."
"Now tell me something happy, and I'll let you get to work."
"Who says that wasn't a happy memory?" She fidgeted in his lap. Benny laughed. True to his word, he made no mention of his earlier, failed, proposal, even as Callie was fairly sure her anecdote should have conveyed why she was uncomfortable with the very concept of marriage, he didn't raise the subject.
"Fair enough, I shouldn't keep you. We've both got a lot of work to get to." He nudged her to stand up. She had creased his trousers. When he stood, she ran her fingers through his hair messing it up so it didn't sit so artificially perfect on his head.
"I like it better like this." She was proud of her work. Still, he rearranged it a bit, settling somewhere in the middle.
"Let me know when you're ready for the upgrade." He made for the elevator.
"Hm, yeah I guess I'll just have Yes Man send a bot to get you."
Benny disappeared into the elevator and she flopped back down on the chair. Shit, he still had her Mentats from earlier. Fuck. She stood back up and headed to House's bathroom. If the guy had an autodoc, he might have had some medicine lying around too. Technically Mentats were legal before the war, so it wouldn't have been shady to keep them around.
She cracked open a first aid kit with no luck, just stims, empty syringes, and band-aids. Then she tried below the sink, above the sink, and the small cabinet affixed to the opposite wall. There were a number of medicines there, including a vial with a white powder, unlabeled. Callie turned it over several times in her palm, but it wasn't as if she could identify it on her own.
Still, she carried it with her into the main room. If she hailed Benny just to bring her Mentats back he was pretty likely to be pissed at her. And thus far, he had clearly been trying to keep her habit discrete, so just wandering the Strip looking for a pack wasn't going to happen. If he trusted her judgement of robots, she would trust his judgement of people.
"Yes Man, can you do chemical analysis?"
"I can compare the properties of substances to a database and make a best guess estimation of common chemical compounds."
"Close enough, what is this?" She put the vial into Yes Man's metal fingers. It gripped the bottle as delicately as a robot could and held it in line with his visual sensor, quite a ways above its screen.
"Benzoylmethylecgonine."
"Is it cut with anything else?"
"Nope."
"Awesome, thanks, Yes Man." She took the vial from Yes Man and went back to the chair. "Er, Yes Man, we never had this conversation and you never saw me do this, okay?"
"Sure thing."
It was the same as the active ingredient as Mentats, only concentrated and without the sugar and a few other fillers. She wet her pointer finger in her mouth and popped open the top to the vial, leaving the cap on the coffee table. Placing her finger over the opening, she turned the bottle so the power fell onto her moist finger and stuck there. She pressed the finger into her mouth and against her gums until the powder dissolved away. It took several cycles of the process before she started to feel the familiar high. Sealing the bottle back, she slipped it into her slacks pocket and returned her attention to her Pip-boy and finalizing the OS upgrade.