Lone Wanderer

"Don't look at me like that. Despite what you might think, I'm not completely stupid."

Charon's face was the picture of incredulity, but what had he really expected? For me to skulk away with my tail between my legs because some big-shot slaver told me to get out of town? Not bloody likely. I wasn't afraid of him or his pathetic little empire - even though I certainly should have been. Of course, I didn't see that then. I suppose I would just get swept up in my own momentum, so that I could never see what was right in front of me. That's why I needed Charon, to pull my head out of the clouds.

"I don't think you're stupid, kid. Just off your fucking nut."

"I do have a plan, you know. I don't intend to just waltz on in there, guns blazing."

"No, you expect me to do that for you, so that you can free a bunch of slaves and wallow in your own sense of self-righteousness."

His arms were, as usual, folded across his chest and he gazed down at me with a look of disgruntled dismay. I smiled back in return on purpose – I sort of liked his churlish, sarcastic sense of humour. It kept me on my toes, and I appreciated the fact he always said exactly what he was thinking. Too few people knew the importance of honesty, these days.

"Oh, ha ha. How very astute of you. Must you always be so cynical? Just trust me, Charon! My giant brain and I have got together and devised a cunning plan."

"Let's hear it then, genius."

Neither his scepticism nor mockery could discourage me one tiny bit. I may not have known my way around a gun, but I sure enough knew my way around a solid plan. I always got the feeling that Charon thought I was some silly, defenceless little kid who couldn't look after herself – and I absolutely hated it. I was determined to show him that I could handle myself, that I could pull my own weight. I nodded at him and crouched low to the ground. He did likewise – we were in a secluded ditch beyond the entrance of Paradise Falls, out of sight and out of earshot; a perfect vantage point from where we could plan and plot and strategise.

"So, those two sentries at the front – they're pretty much secluded from the rest of the settlement. We'll kill them and take their guns – quickly and quietly, so as not to raise any alarm. We'll open the gate – not fully, just enough to get through and get back out again, of course. It'll be dark, and there's only two of us. No one would expect an attack from just two people-"

"No. That would be absurd."

"Heh, right. But that means we can stay in the shadows, hopefully remain undetected. If we run into any slavers on the way through to the cages, well, we'll just have to handle them too. When we get to the cages, we arm as many of the slaves as we can, and we get the hell back out again."

Charon caught my gaze and held it solemnly. He seemed to finally be taking me, and my plan, seriously. For few moments he weighed up what I had said – testing for flaws, running through the idea in his mind. Charon was nothing if not meticulous. Finally, he spoke.

"I have some reservations, the first being the glaring fact you seem to have forgotten that the slave pens will be locked."

"There has to be a terminal or a key somewhere. I'm hoping that a sentry might have one on him – but if not, I'm sure I'll be able to find my way in, even if I have to pick the lock. You know, I'm not half bad at that."

"And the slave collars?"

My face fell. In my defence, this flaw in the plan was more to do with my lack of knowledge of the practices out here in the Wastes than any error in judgement. But still, it did throw the proverbial spanner in my works.

"The what?"

Charon's features registered a transitory moment of satisfaction. I don't think that he wanted me to fail, exactly, I think he just found my unfailing belief in my cleverness and ability slightly frustrating. I can understand that – looking back now, even I find it frustrating. But in the Vault, I had been a big fish in a small tank. I was a scientist, a technophile, daughter of the Vault doctor – I was used to being one of the cleverer people in the room, used to having bright ideas and being complemented on their successful execution. I hadn't quite yet managed to acclimatise to my new environment.

"That's right, brainbox. Those poor sons of bitches are tagged. They do anything or go anywhere they're not supposed to and boom! Decapitation for one."

"I can disarm them. I disarmed the bomb in Megaton – it was hard but I did it. I can do the same for a couple of slave collars. They seriously can't be any more technologically advanced than an atomic bomb."

"But what if you can't?"

"I can do it, Charon. I know I can. I just need some time, and as long as we stay under the radar, I'll have that time."

Charon didn't look happy, but I knew I could do this. I had to believe that I could help these people, because I knew that no one else would. If I just turned around and left now, even if it was to find this mysterious Dr. Salvatore and bring him to justice, I would never be able to sleep peacefully at night, or say that I had always unfalteringly tried to fight the Good Fight.

"You're leaving a lot to chance, kid. This is goddamned dangerous territory you're stepping in to."

"I know. But it will work. I just know it. Trust me."

Getting in past the sentries without raising the alarm was, in my mind, the most difficult part of the plan. I knew we were going to have to deal with them up close and personal, because gunfire would attract attention; we'd have to slit their throats. When I told Charon what I had in mind, he seemed surprised at my willingness to shed the blood of others. But this wasn't just anyone's blood – back then, I saw a division clearly. There was good and there was bad, black and white - and there was no grey area. These were the bad guys, and they deserved to die. Which was why I was happy to take one of them out myself.

As far as I knew, I had as yet only taken the life of one man for certain. It was a raider I had run into while doing errands for Moira, and it had been in self defense. And most importantly, it had been at a distance. This was going to be different, I knew that - but I also knew that I was doing the right thing. I just needed Charon to give me a couple of pointers first.

Charon

So now the kid thought she was some sort of tough shit and wanted me to teach her how to slit a man's throat. Like I said, just when I thought I had her figured out, she'd go and do something like this and fuck up all my preconceptions. Well, so be it. She commanded, so I had to obey. The kid had her own knife, at least, but a combat knife is pretty much a staple of survival in the Wastes, anyway, so I wasn't really surprised. It's remarkable how often a simple knife can save your life – from hacking a molerat to pieces for a bit of meat, to hacking open a man's throat.

First, I asked her to show me how she thought the best way to do it was. I even gave her a hint and told her to take me by surprise from behind. Admittedly, I was much taller than she was – but the sentry was going to be taller than her, too, and she needed to be prepared for anything. Her approach was clumsy at best. By the time she had her arms around my neck, I would've had the chance to turn around and incapacitate her. To top it all off, when she finally had the knife in position, she managed to drop it, laugh, and say, "Whoops!" like she'd dropped a fucking table knife at a dinner party.

I didn't see the funny side, personally; this was serious business. I was already in a bad mood, to start with - being at such a close proximity to the kid made me feel uncomfortable, and I fucking hated feeling uncomfortable. As a rule, I tried to stay as far away from smoothskins as possible; enough times I had felt them physically recoil from me, and it was never exactly a riot being reminded of just how repulsive I was to behold.

The kid was the opposite of me in every way possible. When her arms enclosed around me, her sleeves hitched and she exposed her wrists; her skin, unlike my ravaged body, was pale, soft, and invited touch – and it reminded me all too well of what I had lost. Not just my own humanity, but the ability to have anyone else see my as anything but a walking corpse. That sort of shit was bound to sour anyone's mood.

But desperate times called for desperate measures, and if I didn't show the kid what to do, likelihood was she'd get herself shot to pieces. Or enslaved. Or raped and mutilated. Or all of the above. She was going headfirst into the snake pit and she didn't have any idea how potent the venom was. Luckily, I knew all too well.

So, she bent to pick up her knife and waved it in front of me with a stupid grin on her face. I couldn't believe her attitude, her languor towards what I was trying to teach her. This was her life. This was my life. This was the lives of the slaves she wanted to free and the slavers she wanted to kill. She needed to get her priorities right – stop thinking about the glorious result and focus instead on how she was going to get there.

"Stop messing around. Try again."

She did as I asked, just as clumsily as before, and so this time I took the opportunity to knock the knife from her hand, and elbow her in the stomach - not enough to hurt her, but enough to make her gasp and step back in surprise. It was all the opportunity one of those slaver sentries needed to turn the tide and shoot her full in the face. I turned around to face her, and she was holding her stomach and glaring at me. The kid was clearly angry, but what she didn't understand was that I wasn't trying to humiliate or hurt her, but protect her.

"That was completely unnecessary! You weren't supposed to actually hurt me! that seems somewhat counter-productive."

"What, you think they're not going to struggle? You're trying to kill them, kid. Anything goes. In the end, it's gonna be you or him – and you had better make sure it's that asshole who takes the bow."

"I can't take you by surprise, because you know what I'm doing! This is stupid, Charon. When it comes to the time, I'll-"

I didn't let her finish: I had to teach her how to do this the only way I knew how. The hard way. I snatched out a hand and grabbed her right wrist, spinning her around so that she faced away from me. I twisted her arm – hand bent backwards - up behind her shoulders, before lifting my knife and holding it to her neck. She cried out in surprise, and did her very best to struggle, but every movement she made worsened the pain. Even if she had been stronger than me, she would have found it difficult to break free. I knew, because I had been in exactly the same position once, too. Entirely defenceless, in crippling pain. My mouth was inches from her ear, and when I spoke to her, I wanted her to truly understand the magnitude of what she was planning to do.

"The only way you're going to learn how to do this properly is to know how it feels yourself. It's the only way I learned."

After a second, I released the pressure on her wrist - but left my other arm around her neck for longer than I probably should have, and we stood there for a few moments in an awkward kind of embrace. I don't really know what happened; I expected her to pull away out of anger and pain, but she didn't move, and so neither did I. It was the closest I had been to a woman in a long time; I could feel her chest rise and fall with her shallow breathing, and the warmth of her body as it pressed against my own. By chance, I caught a glimpse of her neck, right at the point where it met her shoulders at her collarbone. Once again I was struck by the clarity of her skin, sheltered as it always had been from the harsh post-apocalyptic sun. It was tantalisingly close to my course, calloused fingers, and I was tormented by the scent of her unsullied flesh and hair. The experience took me by such surprise that it nearly winded me; I was abruptly reminded of all the things I missed from my human life. Of all the things that now were out of my grasp. Fuck this life, this miserable goddamned existence.

Lone Wanderer

Charon's sudden attack had not shocked me nearly as much as his sudden closeness had. It was strange being so near to him, especially as I had grown accustomed to him constantly keeping his distance. When he released my arm and failed to step back from me, I admit I didn't move either. I simply closed my eyes, and it was astonishingly easy to forget Charon's rotten skin and even more rotten temper. He was, deep down, just a man.

In my adult life, I had only ever been so physically close to two other men – Dad, and Freddie Gomez, and as one of those men was my father and the other was the result of inexperienced teenage curiosity, neither had made me feel the same way I felt right then. Not that I knew exactly what I was feeling, of course. I was in the embrace of an unfamiliar man who I had only known for a matter of days, and who I was trusting to hold a knife to my throat. It made absolutely no logical sense - which was the only sort of sense I was ever concerned with - but for some reason, at that instant, I didn't feel like I was just the kid anymore. Or at least, I didn't want to be.

But the moment passed, like all moments do. I pulled free of his grasp and turned around to face him. I looked at him and he looked back, but neither of us said anything. Then I grabbed my knife again. I was ready to take this seriously, now. Having Charon's knife at my throat was frightening, even though I knew he wouldn't hurt me. I didn't want to think how I'd feel had he been a slaver intent on actually killing me; these rehearsals were the only way I'd never find out.

I motioned for him to turn around, and this time I didn't mess about, or laugh, or speak. I didn't even wait for his back to be fully turned, before standing on my toes, and raising both hands above his shoulders. My left I placed over his lips, and the right I made a slicing motion with my knife – quick, seamless and lethal, just as I had been shown. Then I let him go and stepped away; for my success I was awarded a rare nod of approval from Charon, and with a grunt, that was that.

We spent an hour or so going over tactics – what we would do if this should happen, or if that should happen. Charon again gave me a few pointers on ranged fighting, on how to keep myself concealed while maintaining a good shot of the enemy, on leading a moving target when aiming. We went over and over who would go where and when, who would cover who at what points, and the more we spoke about it, the more nervous I became. Neither of us mentioned what happened before.

When night began to fall, Charon and I watched the denizens of Paradise Falls as they slowly began to filter out of the open air of the settlement to where they presumably slept. When we decided to make our move, there were still a few slavers hanging around and getting drunk together – but we figured that it was about as empty as it was ever going to get, and that we could take them out as and when we needed to. The fact that these guys knew they were the top of the food chain generally worked against them – inside their fortified walls, they were unsuspecting of any attack that might happen.

The two sentries were sat across from each other at a table, playing cards. The good news was that they were distracted, the bad news was that one us had to get behind the sentry furthest away form us without being seen in the lamplight. Charon motioned that he would go around, if I took the one closest to us. I stayed pressed against the wall, and edged slowly towards my quarry, concealed partly by the sandbag behind which they sat. At all times, I kept an eye on what Charon was doing. We had to be in complete synchronisation for this to work.

Mere feet away form the guards, I laid in wait for Charon to get in position at the end of the sandbag wall. My pulse was racing faster than I had ever known it and I had to fight to keep it under control in case I started to get light-headed. I did my best to push thoughts of failure to the back of my mind, and just focus on the task ahead of me, but it was incredibly difficult under so much pressure. I was worried about my grip on my combat knife – my exposed fingers were sweaty from the tension, and I didn't want to drop it. I was worried that I wouldn't be strong enough, or fast enough. I was worried that I would get Charon killed because of my own stupidity.

But then Charon gave me the signal, and the next few seconds were a total blank. I don't remember any sort of rational thought process going through my mind – I don't even think there was one. I stood from my crouching position, and lunged for the man directly in front of me. I aimed for his mouth, missed, and instead yanked his forehead back so that his throat was exposed. He tried to make a noise, but was silenced as my blade slid across his throat. He gurgled, twitched, and clutched desperately at his gaping, bloody wound.

It didn't take much pressure – just the smallest of force and a fountain of blood was spilling out and down his body, which was now slumped on the table and looking as dead as you like. I hardly felt any resistance against my blade when I did the deed, and it terrified me how he had been alive one moment, and dead the next – and all because of me. It was a momentous feeling, to have that much power over someone. Momentous, and absolutely terrible. But I didn't have time to consider the philosophical implications of what I had done – Charon had dispatched the other sentry, and was searching the man's body for something. When he found what he was looking for, he held it up in front of me and grinned his lopsided grin; keys.

Charon

She'd done good, I had to give her that. Part of me had expected her to freak out at the last second, but she had done just what she said she would. The worst part was over now – well, for her, at least. We kept to the plan, opened the gate just enough to get under easily, and unlocked the doors that let us into Paradise Falls. Inside I could see that the drinkers from before had all dispersed in the mean time. So far, so good – it looked like Lady Luck was on our side for once. But one thing I had learned was to never rest on your laurels – too often, everything could all go tits up without warning.

Paradise Falls turned out to be a surprisingly good place to sneak. There was little light, and lots of obstructions to hide behind. We stayed crouched, guns out and ears alert, but we got to the slave pens without a hint of trouble – to be honest, the way everything seemed to go to plan was making me nervous. By the time we reached the pens, our presence had attracted the attention of the few slaves who were still awake. They crept over to us, cowed and unsure of our intentions. Two little children and an unstable looking man met us at the gate. Not surprisingly, they addressed the kid when they spoke, and they looked at me with the same derision I imagined they would have for the slavers. Fucking ungrateful little shits

"Hey hey – who are you? What are you doing here?", the man hissed. That was fucking gratitude for you.

"I'm here to break you guys out! Charon, unlock the gates!"

I moved to do as she had asked, but was stopped by one of the children – a boy, who looked like he hadn't eaten in a goddamned week but was still ready and willing to beat the shit out of any one of the slavers if he got the chance. I could appreciate that sentiment – he reminded me of myself, back all that time ago.

"Those keys won't work, you stupid mungo. You have to go and activate a terminal or something – it's over there by the bar."

He pointed, and the kid and I looked in the direction in which he was motioning. The fact that the keys didn't fit the slave pens made me feel a bit better about the whole deal – things aren't supposed to go right all of the time. Life just doesn't work like that, and nothing the kid ever says to the contrary will change that.

"I'll go. I can activate the terminal, no sweat. Stay here and-"

"And watch your back. Got it. Just be careful, kid."

She smiled at me; she was obviously deliriously happy about how the whole thing was going down. But it wasn't the time to celebrate yet, and I didn't want her to get ahead of herself and get sloppy. I heard the boy talking to me through the gate, but I wasn't listening to him - I was watching out for the kid. All I needed now was for some slaver asshole to decide to take a midnight stroll and catch her totally unawares, splatter her brains across the fucking wall. I didn't take my eyes off her darkened figure for so much as a second as she made her way around the bar, found the terminal, and began to work her magic. Sneaky little bitch could've made herself a real good career out of being a common thief, if she didn't have such a hard-on for being the good guy.

I heard a chink behind me to signal that the gate had been unlocked, and sure as shit the kid was up again and making her way back. I heard shuffling behind me, and I looked away from the kid for the first time since she had left my side; I didn't want those goddamned slaves fucking this up for us now. A few more had woken up, and they were edging ever so slowly towards the gate. I had to put a stop to any ideas they had about making a run for it – that would cause all sorts of trouble for me and the kid, and as far as I was concerned, their lives came after ours in importance.

"Stay. Put. If any one of you moves, I'll shoot you myself. We'll get you out of here, in our own sweet time."

The kid joined me again, and together, we moved into the slave pen, closing the gate behind us so that at a glance, nothing would look different to a passer-by. The crowd of slaves began to encircle us, and there was a sort of wave of excitement and fear emanating from them like heat on a cold night.

"Okay, we're here to help all of you, but first I need to get those collars off. Does anyone know anything about them?"

Silence. I could see from the expression on the faces of the slaves around us that no one thought she would be able to disarm the collars. They had obviously tried enough times themselves, with most likely gruesome results.

"Fine. Then I need to have a look at one myself. I need a volunteer."

No one stepped up, the fucking cowards. Too scared to die, even more afraid to live. But then the boy from before raised his hand and sat, cross-legged, in front of the kid. She switched on the light on her Pip Boy, and we made a protective semi-circle around her so that we could block as much of the light as was possible to prevent detection.

I watched the kid as she worked – her nimble, dextrous fingers dipping in and out of a little box full of wires, and her lips moving unconsciously as she talked herself through the task. She was obviously scared about messing it up, and hurting the boy who had volunteered – her face, illuminated by the light, was grave and humourless, and as pale as I'd ever seen it. Her eyes were full of concentration. But, shit, I had faith in her. She may have been a worse shot than my fucking grandmother, and she knew cock all about survival tactics, but she was goddamned clever. Too clever to waste her talents out here.

The slaves were getting nervous – it was taking the kid longer than she had expected, and it showed on her face. I tightened my grip on my shotgun; I had no qualms with putting them out of their misery if they looked like they were going to sour the plan. But thankfully, it never got to that stage. There was the slightest of clicks, and the collar clinked to the ground in front of the boy's knees. He whooped in surprise and joy, and everyone simultaneously made a hushing noise. She had done it, just like she promised, and I was fucking proud of her. She looked up at me and smiled again, and I detected the slightest hint of a smug I-told-you-so. The rest of the slaves got into line, and I turned my back on them to keep an eye on the town.

As it turned out, our luck was about to run short. Before the kid had finished disarming even half of the collars, I saw movement by one of the buildings. I placed a hand on the kid's shoulder to get her attention; beyond the cage doors, a slaver had emerged from the warmth of the indoors and had started heading dead in our direction. I turned my face in her direction and whispered,

"It's the motion sensors on the collars. He must smell a rat. We'll hide. Hopefully he won't see us in the dark, and then we'll ambush him."

She nodded, and the kid released the collar she was working on to move with me to the corner of the pen - but a few of the slaves had other ideas. They were coming tantalisingly close to their freedom, and the thought that it might be snatched away from them before they even had it sent them into a blind panic. Before the slaver had even reached us, they propelled themselves through the closed gates and into the open. It wasn't long before their bodies ended at the shoulders.

Shit.