The sun hadn't yet reached the top of the Megaton walls when he heard the banging on the door. At first, he was sure there was a push at the gate. Raiders or Ants. Maybe Slavers. He was in his pants before his raw feet hit the cold steel floor and, forgoing his shirt and leathers, he grabbed his shotgun and sniper rifle. He threw them over his shoulder and grabbed an ammunition box. He bounded down the stairs. It would Jericho, not Simms. Simms would be at the top of the gate, blasting away with his rifle. Charon grabbed the door and nearly tripped right out the door. It was not Jericho, it was not even Simms. It was a Steel. A motherfucking Steel blasting away at the door like the devil was behind him. Charon looked quickly out the door, searching for signs of panic or sounds of shooting. Nothing. The morning hummed with people and construction, but no shots. No threat. He saw the girl, Lucy he thought, walking down the ramp toward their door. She looked at the Steel and could not hide the popping interest in her eyes. She hurried past, perhaps off to the Lantern. Gossip was as precious as caps in town.

He turned back to the Steel, who looked young and as shocked as Charon had first been. The ghoul let his face harden and spoke in the well trained voice of the bar bouncer.

"Help you?"

"I am, uh, I am Initiate Grouper. I need to see, uh, Jack. I need to speak with hi-her."

Nervous. He must be young. Early twenties, most likely. After a moment of silence that Charon hoped would put the kid a little more on edge, he spoke,

"You'll have to wait." And he closed the door in the kid's face. He could wait on the step. Charon walked up the stairs and unloaded his stuff onto his bed. He reemerged and stepped up to Jack's door. Amazingly, he thought it was the first time he had ever woken her. She slept late if she could, but she always seemed to roll out of her room about five minutes before Charon would have dared rouse her. For a moment, he did not want to knock on the door.

He raised his hand. Tak, tak, tak, tak.

For several seconds, he heard nothing in answer. And then, he heard the dog whine. A thump and groan filtered through the door. A moment later, the lock clicked, the door swung back, and Dogmeat slipped through the door and bounded the stairs, barking happily. A flossy fuzzball poked through the door. Her eyes were dull and bleary. It did not seem as if she saw him, but a blur of color that had no face.

"Whm." She mumbled.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, but the Brotherhood of Steel is at the door and wants to have a word with you."

Her face did not change immediately. Her sleep faded from her face, the fuzziness drained from it. When she spoke, her voice was still thick with sleep, but the tone was alert and not very happy.

"Two minutes. Invite them in. Do not give them a fucking thing." The door clicked softly closed before he could reply. He turned and trudged down the stairs to the door.

Opening the door had the same effect on the kid the second time as it did the first. He seemed to jump into himself again.

"Come in. You can sit but touch anything."

The kid came in cautiously. He looked almost comically. The vision of a young boy entering the Yao GUI cave on a dare. His eyes scanned above and below as his feet whispered in, strangely soft despite his bulky armor. In the light of the house, that armor looked much too big sitting atop his slight frame. Again Charon pictured a small boy, not trespassing in a place of dead danger, but clunking around in his father leathers and boots. The Steel sat in the chair and placed his hands on his lap and the image was complete. Charon stood there, watching the kid. The kid looked about him in an almost guilty looking awe. For lack of nothing better to do than stare at the star struck little bastard, Charon went into the kitchen to cook breakfast.

What had began as two minutes became twenty. The smell of fried Brahmin steak, Mirelurk eggs on the boil, and coffee heating in an aluminum tin filled the house. Charon grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. He looked at the crude blueprints on the small table Jack had insisted be in the kitchen corner.

If we eat together, we eat at the table. It feels better.

The schematics were for the new purifier. It looked pretty simple. In his human life, those short twenty seven years, he had studied as many books as weapons. Schematics had particularly delighted him. He could probably pick up the pencils and draw out a damn near perfect blueprint if he wanted too. The one on the table gave him a good grasp on the amount of work involved. It would be a project that would last long into the cool season. He turned his head up toward the main room. The kid still sat with his hands in his lap. And he was staring holes in the wall between himself and the stove. Charon looked back to the sizzling meat. It occurred to him the kid could be very close to starving. But he was under orders.

"Hmm." He pondered. A clanking whir answered his problem. The robot whirled into the kitchen.

"That breakfast is done. Serve it out. And coffee for your Mistress. With cream and sugar."

It gave him a nasty shock when he suddenly realized it had been nearly two hundred years since he had said the words cream and sugar. He shook it away.

The robot gathered plates and clanked cups. Charon continued to read the blueprints.

A crack announced the door of Jack's room closing. She thudded down the stairs. The kid in the Steel armor stood and opened his mouth to speak.

Jack waved a hand in front of her face.

"Stow it, dude. I want coffee and food. I'll talk to you when I'm damn ready." For a heartbeat of a second, she paused and looked him up and down once. "You under a time limit?"

"Three weeks, ma'am."

"I'm, like, your age, man. Call me Jack."

The robot whirred in front of the kid and chirped at Jack,

"Good morning, madam! Your breakfast is set on the counter with coffee."

She turned her head toward the kitchen, the first true interest lighting in her eyes like a pilot light. She looked back to the kid and gave a twist of her lips. He was tearing into a plate only stopping to slug down a few pulls of his sweaty-cold beer. She shook her head gently and continued off into the kitchen. Charon was sitting at the table with his plate in front of him, a new beer, and the blueprints in his hands. He watched her over them. She looked at him before she sat and lift a single brow.

"The robot."

She looked toward the kid again, who was now shoveling jelly-like blobs of eggs into his mouth. Her brow line softened a bit around the edges. She looked down to her plate.

"You know, in the morning, I don't really listen to what I say, so if you see a better judgment than mine, feel free, ya know?" she cocked her head slightly up and looked at him through her one eye. "At least until I've had my cigarette." She looked back to her plate and began to eat. After a few minutes of quiet chewing she looked up at him and smiled.

"This is great, Charon. Thank you."

They sat in the main room, Charon and Jack smoking and gathering their daily assortment of pack filler. Jack was looking at Grouper, her eyes as hard as rivets.

"What does Lyons want?"

"Elder Lyons has sent me to plead with you to come to the Citadel. He says they are desperate. The Enclave's attacks on the Brotherhood are getting harder and closer together. It will not be long until we do not have the resources to get the purifier back. The scientists need the G.E.C.K. Dr. Li said-"

"I don't give a shit what that bitch has to say."

Grouper was silent. Jack gave him a level stare for a near full minute.

"You under orders to tell me what she wants?"

"Yes, m-uh, yes."

"Out with it then."

"If the purifier isn't engaged soon, the cooling system will degrade too badly to ever work again."

"I got news for that bitch. The cooling system is already fucked. Even if the purifier works, it will damn near lethal after year. Year and a half at the most. Long enough to clean out the bay, maybe. Maybe even parts of the river, if it magically holds together for two years. But, it's gonna blow, one way or another. It wasn't ready when my-, when the Enclave took it. It still needed weeks of repair. Hell, the absorbing rods aren't even in place. It's gonna put as much radiation into the rotunda as it takes out of the water. Do you understand that?" her voice finally raised an octave. She was beginning to frustrate herself as she often did when left to talk out a sticky problem.

Charon looked up from his pack. He watched her face. It was twist of frustration and desperation. Grouper began again and Charon decided he was tired of the kid, no matter how young and soft headed he was.

"Elder Lyons has decided you deserve an incentive. I have a pack Brahmin loaded with supplies. He hopes this will urge to finish this task quickly. He says it would be a shame to lose your father's work. He hopes you understand that the Brotherhood is waiting and-" he stopped and Charon heard a click, saw the look on his face, and knew before he turned to Jack that she had pulled her Kneecapper on him.

Jack face was blazing white. Her eyes stood open popping out like a swollen mushroom. Her mouth was a hard line, no more than a fissure in the bedrock of her face. Charon heard Grouper stumble to his feet, his armor rattling loosely in his haste.

"Wrong thing to say, maggot. It doesn't sound like Lyons is even asking. It sounds like an order to me. Get the fuck out of my house. Tell you masters that if I decide to do this, they are never to show their goddamned faces in Megaton again. Anything in power armor that comes within 300 yards of my town will lose its fucking head. Got that?"

Grouper gave a choked gasp and nodded quickly. His throat was now clicking like a Geiger counter.

"Well? Get the fuck out! And leave the Brahmin. The whole Brahmin. Get the fuck out of my town."

Grouper was gone before Charon had torn his eyes from Jack. She was still pointing her sawed off at the wall. Her eye was still huge. He spoke softly.

"Mistress?"

She lowered her gun and then her head. When she looked up at him, he saw nothing but a grim defeat.

"I need you to get those imbeciles trained in the next few days. Give them a routine. Give Billy the list of parts we still need. Grab all the shit that fucker brought and leave it him. I want to sort through it before we leave. I need to go think. I'll be back before dark."

She stood and in a few deft movements and a few quicker steps, she was out the door with her equipment. He stared at the door.

Before we leave for what, Jack? he thought.