Author's Note: First of all, I would like to apologize for the four months it took to complete this chapter. Life has been crazy; I've been super stressed out and haven't had much time to concentrate on writing anything. Anyway, today is a major day for Wasteland Survival! This marks the third anniversary of this story, so happy birthday to WS! Thank you all for sticking with me for so long and encouraging me with your kind words, despite my terrible update schedule :) Also, major questions answered in this chapter, so read on and enjoy!
Wasteland Survival Part 26
The man had not spoken a single word. Not one single goddamned word in the entire five days that she had been his property; no matter how much Sarah said to the stoic man, he said nothing. Was the man deaf? Mute? Or perhaps he was simply ignoring every word the Sentinel uttered. The silence was becoming maddening. She began to regard her own voice as unnecessary noise and she soon stopped trying to engage him altogether. Her master never gave her his name either; he didn't have the courtesy to scratch it in the dirt with his boot.
The days were spent wandering around the ruins of DC, scavenging what they could, exploring different neighborhoods, and taking down whatever enemies they faced. The man was surprisingly effective with the crossbow, firing with nearly impossible agility and speed. Due to the fact that he would not provide her with a weapon, Sarah was usually forced to hide during battles, much to her own humiliation. She was a Brotherhood Sentinel, goddamn it; not some fragile fucking princess that needed to be protected and saved.
On her mind was constantly one question; why the hell had the man purchased her? He did not use her as a bodyguard (he clearly did not need one), he did not use her as a pleasure girl (thank god), and he never ordered her to do anything. She never even carried anything for him, so she was not being used as a pack mule. She just followed him around; if anything she felt like he was taking care of her, a strange air of protectiveness surrounding the man. He had given her a simple leather bag, which she used to carry what meager possessions she had: the dress and heels that Clover had given her at the behest of Eulogy, and a Pre-War book that she had found in a house. The book came in handy for the nights; when the sun started to go down, they would retire to the same townhouse that she had woken up in five days ago.
It was the same schedule every night: the man would make sure no one was in the house, then he would go about preparing whatever food he had scavenged or killed that day; she would eat in silence, then Sarah usually went upstairs to the small bathroom to clean up a bit before going back downstairs, reading, and going to sleep. Her strange captor would usually clean his weapons before leaning back against his duffel bag and crossing his hands over his stomach. She couldn't tell if he actually went to sleep or if he just stared into the nothingness, due to the damn helmet that he never took off; that damn Blastmaster helmet was another constant. His lack of removing it made her question when he ate. Possibly when she went upstairs or maybe after she went to sleep?
Despite all this man's habits, his silence annoyed her the most. The silence provided her with too much extra time trapped inside her mind. All of her worries and concerns were bubbling up, making her a nervous wreck; unwarranted questions about her beliefs hammered away at her sanity in the brief moments that she wasn't worrying about her friends. Her body followed this man, running seemingly on auto-pilot, but her mind was far away, in Paradise Falls. Gruesome images ran through her mind of Eulogy torturing and killing her friends. Were they even alive? Did he sell them? Was he torturing them somewhere?
She worried about Ray and Jericho, of course, that was a feeling that had not gone away since she had first killed Bronson and gotten hauled off to Eulogy; but her new and ever present worry of Clover was absolutely foreign to her. The pale woman popped into her mind far more often than was reasonable. In some ways, it made no sense to her, but in others it made perfect sense. She barely knew the slave, and knew nothing about her history before Eulogy; but she had spent most of her time in Paradise Falls bonding with the woman in an attempt to gain her trust, and to the Sentinel's own shock, she had actually created a bizarre, yet close, friendship with the slave.
The pale slave was the only person in Paradise Falls that displayed any modicum of civility and kindness to her, other than the time she had kicked Sarah in the back of the head to keep her from killing Eulogy when they had first arrived, of course. Yet that incident had never been brought up again between the two, despite how much Clover spoke of Eulogy. The more the two talked however, the less Clover spoke of Eulogy, and the more she became curious about Sarah. She wanted to know everything about the Sentinel; what was her favorite color, her favorite song, did she prefer sweet snacks, or savory ones?
It was strange at first; Sarah did not see the point in Clover knowing these little facets about herself. They were frivolous, insignificant little things. How would the fact that her favorite color was blue or that she detested Fancy Lads Snack Cakes have any effect on her skills? Surely information about her background with the Brotherhood would be far more useful. It was something that mattered, skills that were valuable and useful.
But soon she became accustomed to the questions, even welcomed them. The simple fact that Clover was interested in these seemingly random little segments of information about her that made her normal Sarah, and not stoic Sentinel Lyons, had begun to make her feel a strange sort of carefree bliss; she felt human when Clover brought around her carefree nature and random inquiries. Was this how normal people felt? People that weren't always on dire missions, people that were looked at as friends, sisters, neighbors? People that were just human and not a weapon to be pointed at an enemy?
Her heart and soul were always with the Brotherhood. She was the most respected member in their chapter, other than her father of course, but it had occurred to her that she was always just that; a respected soldier, at best, a weapon to be wielded against enemies of the Brotherhood, and at worst, a piece of cannon fodder too valuable to be lost.
Did Ray and Jericho view her that way? She was, of course, a valuable asset, a feared warrior, a force of nature, but…a friend? They had mostly spoke about the enemies they faced in Talon Company, Alistair Tenpenny, and now Paradise Falls; they showed concern for her well-being when she was injured, and joked with her in their more light-hearted moments, but did they view her as human Sarah? Or as the weapon that was Sentinel Lyons?
Not that the stoic woman questioned her loyalty to Ray and Jericho, or the Brotherhood; she would always care for them and protect them, even if the price to pay for that protection was her life. But Clover had awaken a longing in the soldier to have more human moments. For as far back as Sarah could remember into her twenty six years, she had been going through grueling training to carve her into the one of the best warriors that the Brotherhood could create; constant drilling, training, exercising, firing practices, sparring matches, and life or death situations. She had been all business and necessity for her entire life; duty would always be her prerogative, but she wouldn't mind having some lighthearted human time every now and then. Keeping a balance between the two would be essential; moderation was important.
The disturbing cacophony of a Super Mutant screaming in pain and rage broke the Sentinel from her reverie. The man motioned for her to duck behind the corner of the building they had just rounded, a mutie lunging toward the two with a gruesome looking Super Sledge gripped tightly in his greasy yellow hands. Sarah ignored the man, scanning the situation unfolding before the duo. They had stepped right into the middle of a war between a scraggly group of Raiders, a larger group of muties, and about three Talons. One of the aforementioned Raiders was barreling towards the man that had claimed Sarah, his skin streaked with his own blood and a bandolier of grenades strapped about his emaciated frame. Sharp emerald eyes focused on the grenades, and she noticed with a start that none of them had pins in them.
"Fucking hell!" She screamed, barreling back around the corner without a second thought. She flew down the sidewalk, her sneakers slapping the concrete and her breath coming heavily. The sounds were lost on her ears as a thunderous explosion sounded from somewhere behind her. No doubt the explosion had killed the man that was, or had been, her owner. If it hadn't, there was no doubt that the mutie's Super Sledge had popped his helmeted head like an overripe melon. The Sentinel tasted freedom, if she could outrun the war raging on behind herself. The sight of the Talons disturbed her greatly; but surely they still couldn't be hunting her? She knew that selling their marks into slavery was not common for the bloodthirsty mercs, so did that mean that they thought she, Ray, and Jericho were dead?
Sarah found herself dashing down alleys and between buildings, her breathing becoming ragged and strained far faster than it would have prior to being trapped in Paradise Falls for so long. Ragged breaths escaped her lungs and she began to regret not keeping up with any sort of fitness during her imprisonment. A muscle in her calf stretched painfully, pulling hard under her skin. Hot pain shot through her leg, causing her to grit her jaw hard, a small whimper of pain trying to escape her, but she bit the sound back and pumped her legs even harder.
She could barely hear over the sound of her own pulse roaring in her ears, but she could faintly make out the sound of heavy boots thundering after herself. The Sentinel pumped her legs harder, soaring around a corner like a bat out of hell, ignoring the inarticulate cries that echoed behind her. She snapped her head back momentarily to check the distance of her pursuer, but they had not rounded the corner yet. Whipping her head back around, she shoved her blonde hair out of her face, only to see a figure standing directly in her path of flight. A gasp escaped the Sentinel's lips, but by the time that her brain had managed to convey the message that there was an obstacle in her path to her legs, she had slammed into the figure with such force that she bowled them both over.
The figure, revealed now to be a strange woman, scrambled away from the Sentinel and jumped to her feet faster than Sarah could blink. "Dumbass! You trying to get yourself killed?" Her voice was low and angry; Sarah stumbled to her feet, mumbling an apology, but her eyes were not drawn to the other woman's face. She was nearly the same height as Sarah, but about two inches taller. A worn black duster with no sleeves showed lightly muscled arms, and Sarah's eyes were drawn to the sleeve of tattoos that covered the woman's left arm. The skin was canvassed in different designs of colors, words, weapons, and intricate designs of strange symbols and spiraling, twisting colors. Near the top of her bicep began a highly detailed tail and clawed feet of black and red; the green ridge that protruded from the top of the tip of the tail continued along the rest of the creature's body until it, and the body, vanished under the woman's clothing.
Finally drawing her emerald eyes up and away from the tattoos on the woman's arm, Sarah looked at the woman; her auburn hair held loose curls and fell just a few inches past her shoulders, but the left side of her head was shaved from where her hair began behind her ear and up to about an inch above her temple. The creature on her tattoo was now revealed to be a dragon, as it snaked up and out of her collar, up her neck, and onto the shaved part of her head. The maw of the dragon hung open, exposing a serpentine tongue and long, sharp teeth; the creature's eyes were wide and wild, the red irises burning into Sarah's.
Her otherwise pretty face was painted with an expression of irritation and confusion. A single pale line of a old scar ran vertically through the middle of her left eyebrow, stopping just short of her eye; another thin, old scar began at the left side of her mouth and went up into a half grin, indicating that someone had attempted to give her a Glasgow Smile and hadn't quite gotten to push the blade all the way through her cheek. The scars were not what shocked the Sentinel however; it was how much this strange woman resembled Ray. Her pale grey eyes may as well have been plucked from Ray's eye sockets and placed in this woman's head, her strong jaw line was distinctly feminine as opposed to Ray's, but she had his high cheeks and perfectly shaped brows.
The woman's pale grey eyes ghosted down to the metal collar at Sarah's neck, and her eyes suddenly softened, her tense posture relaxing slightly. "Are you an escaped slave?" Her voice was low and gentle, like she was concerned that if she spoke too loudly she would scare Sarah away.
The Sentinel shook her head rapidly, suddenly jolting back into reality. "Someone is chasing me; you have to help me get back to Paradise Falls!" She didn't care who this woman was; she looked intimidating, but she was the only friendly face Sarah had seen in what felt like a lifetime. Plus, her resemblance to Ray couldn't be a coincidence; but the man had never mentioned having any relatives.
As if on cue, Sarah's pursuer appeared in the alley, revealing himself to be the Sentinel's owner. His body was heaving with the exertion of sprinting, but still he wore his thick armor and helmet. The filter on his helmet wheezed and crinkled loudly; though his grip on his Scoped .44 was slightly shaky as he kept the barrel trained on the tattooed woman, he strode forward confidently.
The auburn haired woman growled in anger and pulled Sarah behind her with her tattooed arm, pulling her arm up to expose that her right hand was covered with a Deathclaw hand that had been converted into a gauntlet. Her left hand pulled a Silenced 10mm Submachine gun that had been holstered at her hip and trained it on the man's helmeted head. "Back the fuck off, you slaving piece of shit, or I'll put twenty holes in your fucking head."
Sarah looked over the woman's shoulder, noting absentmindedly that a Silenced Sniper and a strange, jury-rigged looking gun that Sarah had never seen before were crisscrossed over her back. The Sentinel contemplated dashing away and leaving her owner to duke it out with this woman, but this strange tattooed woman was likely her only chance at getting away from the man and back to Paradise Falls.
For some reason, the man sighed loud enough to make his mask's filter crackle, before holstering his weapon and dropping to a knee, shouldering off his leather pack as he did so. Sarah and the tattooed woman watched as he quickly dug through the pack before pulling out a thick piece of white chalk. The woman with Ray's pale grey eyes arched an auburn eyebrow as the man turned to an adjacent wall, quickly scratching a sentence onto the brick there. The chalk made dry scratching sounds as it was quickly worked onto the wall in small, elegant scrawl. 'The girl is mine.' He turned back to the auburn haired woman to stare at her, his eyes hidden and unreadable behind the mask.
A growl came from the tattooed woman's chest. "Don't be a fucking idiot. I don't care how you slavers run shit, but you're all just that; shit. I'm giving you a chance to walk away; if you've got any brain cells you'll fucking take it before I lose my patience with your refusing to talk bullshit."
The man's body language was irritated, and he turned back to the wall to quickly scratch another message, a bit more aggressively this time. 'Silence is not my choice; but ignorance is clearly yours.'
A humorless chuckle came from the woman's throat. "So you're a mute, but you've still got a fucking smart mouth; how refreshing. Why the hell did you enslave blondie here?" Her finger tensed a bit on the trigger, her pale eyes wide and excited and begging the man to say something she disliked so she could end him.
'She is special. I've searched for her for longer than it took the wastes to consume my mind and body.' His posture was suddenly slumped, like an old man that had been beaten down by life so many times that he no longer had the disposition to stand up straight anymore. A strange feeling of melancholy seemed to radiate from him, and before the tattooed woman could ask him what the hell his cryptic message meant, he pulled off one of his gloves, exposing peeling red flesh. The helmet tilted down to look at the skin almost shamefully, and Sarah suddenly felt a wave of sadness wrench at her chest. He pulled the glove back on slowly, the filter on his helmet crackling as he inhaled sharply in pain.
The girl with the dragon tattoo did not relax or lower her weapon. Her expression was hard and unflinching, her upper lip curling slightly at the man. "So what? You want me to feel bad for you because you're a ghoul? I don't know who you're trying to replace, but you would collar this woman that symbolizes whoever you're seeing in her? You would bind her to you against her own will?"
The Sentinel suddenly found her voice, and the gears in her mind began turning rapidly. She gently placed her hand on the woman's tattooed shoulder, making those pale grey eyes turn to meet the Sentinel's of emerald. "Let's all take it down a notch, okay? Maybe we can help each other here; let's start with names. I'm Sentinel Sarah Lyons of the Brotherhood of Steel."
The auburn haired woman relaxed very slightly, before lowering her weapon. She didn't look at the Sentinel or the man, nor did she holster the gun; questions danced behind her cold eyes, but she did not ask them. "Carmen; Commander and Founder of the Black Dragon Mercenary Group." She looked over at Sarah with renewed interest as she realized she was in the Brotherhood.
The helmeted man bowed to the two women before scratching onto the wall with his stub of white chalk, 'Aleksey Sabriv. I must apologize to Sarah for my previous lack of engagement; the past few days have been more difficult than I presumed they would have been in my dreams."
"What do you mean?" Sarah asked, arching an eyebrow at the man.
He rolled his chalk stub in his gloved hand for a moment, seemingly choosing his next words. Stooping down, he pawed through his bag before drawing out a scrap of paper, shiny with layers of scotch tape. Aleksey stared at the paper for a few seconds, before standing and slowly crossing the small distance between himself and the two women.
Hesitantly, as if he didn't quite trust the Sentinel with the square of paper, he handed it to her with a shaky hand. Taking the paper gently and giving the man a smile of reassurance, Sarah brought the scrap of paper up so she and Carmen could see it.
The paper was revealed to be a photograph, the edges bent and slightly burned, of a Pre-War family. The man was tall, with thick dark hair, carefully styled for the photo. His eyes were a shocking shade of blue, pure happiness shining in them. Next to him stood a pretty blonde woman, her skin tan and her eyes a dark green. She smiled, red lipstick coloring her lips brightly, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes, as if her mind was far away. Between the couple stood a pretty teenage girl, she had her mother's hair and eyes, but her eyes were much brighter, full of life and joy. She was smiling wide, as if she had been laughing at something just before the picture was taken. Turning the picture over, Sarah recognized the small scrawl as Aleksey's: Aleksey Sabriv, 38. Alena Sabriv, 34. Allison Sabriv, 15. Date: May 17th, 2075.
"This is you? Before?" Sarah asked gently, pointing to the man in the picture.
His helmet gave a single nod.
"I'm assuming I reminded you of your wife or daughter?" She continued, gesturing to their blonde hair and emerald eyes.
He turned to the wall and began scratching rapidly with the stub of white chalk. 'Allison. She had started to look exactly like you; she even wanted to be a soldier. Before I failed her. I did not fail Alena though. She failed me far before the world ended. I'm sure she paid for her adultery when the world began to burn around her, and she was with a strange man who did not care for her, instead of her husband and daughter.' His scrawl became increasingly large and erratic, his hand flying over the wall with anger as he thought of the woman who used to be his wife.
Carmen placed a hand on his shoulder as he went to scribble more, but her touch made him falter and nearly drop the chalk. "Okay man, dial it back. We've all seen shit and had people betray us. Let's move on."
Aleksey nodded and took his hand away from the wall, shaking hard. He shoved the chalk in his pack and shouldered it back on, turning to face away from the wall.
Carmen looked between Sarah and Aleksey, her pale eyes cold and unreadable. She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. "So what the hell do we do now, huh? I guess you two go on your way and I wander off to fucking start over again?"
Sarah drew her eyes away from Aleksey and rested on the auburn haired woman, questions about her past brimming in her racing mind. "Start over again?"
Carmen scoffed and drew a pack of cigarettes from the pocket on her duster. Pulling one of the ancient things out, she stuck it between her lips and fished in her pocket again for a small lighter. She inhaled the smoke deeply and blew it out through her nose; the action made Sarah think of Jericho and urgency blanched deep in her chest.
"Yeah; story of my fucking life. I'm 28 years old and I've got shit to show for it. The Black Dragon Mercs were all I fucking had, and every one of them is dead now."
"What happened?"
Carmen took a heavy hit from the cigarette and stared at the wall across from herself with a strangely practiced detachment, like she had had to do it so many times in her life that she just got used to being detached. "I've always ran with mercs. Got fucking raised by 'em ever since my parents abandoned me to some little group. Long story short, they weren't very skilled, and got wiped out by some Raiders when I was eleven. That's how I got these scars; they thought my 'dad' was dead and started trying to torture me, nearly put my eye out before they decided to try to give me a Chelsea Grin instead, but that old bastard wasn't dead. He shot the fucker that was cutting me, right in the back of the head, blew his fucking brains all over me."
She paused, taking another heavy hit of her cigarette. Sarah opened her mouth to give her condolences about the woman's adoptive parents, but Carmen began speaking again. "Dad got me just enough time to grab his machete off the floor and sink it into the last motherfucker's neck. He fell down, shocked that the little girl he was about to rape after his buddy got finished cutting her up, was suddenly burying a fucking machete in his throat. I kept going and going, I didn't stop until his fucking head was severed." Carmen paused again, and Sarah thought she would take a draw from her cigarette but she didn't; she just froze with the cigarette perched almost elegantly between her middle and forefinger, those pale eyes wide and seemingly staring past the brick wall as she relived the gruesome memory.
"By the time I kicked his fucking head across the floor and remembered that my dad was bleeding out a few feet away, he was already dead. I ran to him, but he was gone and his last sight was watching his little girl chop a fucking man's head off, but I like to think he was proud of me for acting quick like he always taught me to."
Carmen paused and blinked a few times, seemingly coming back into reality as she hit her cigarette. "I'm sorry that you had to experience that, Carmen," Sarah said gently, examining the other woman's blank expression.
Carmen gave her a crooked grin before she continued speaking. "Don't worry, I survived, obviously. After that I wandered and learned how to hide, but how to kill people if I needed to. I kept his machete and the 10mm Sub he carried, and mom's sniper," She paused again to trail a finger over the grip of the machinegun at her hip that had been trained on Aleksey a few minutes ago, and to pat the Sniper Rifle that crisscrossed the other strange weapon on her back. "But anyways, long story short, when I was 18 I joined Talon Company."
At that, Sarah's hackles went up and she felt her body tense. This woman worked for the enemy? Did she still inform them? Was she friends with them? Carmen sensed the Sentinel's sudden shift and scoffed slightly. "Relax Blondie. I worked with them until I was almost 20 and they figured out that I had more of a conscience than them. They were fine with massacring this fucking family…kids and everything, right in front of me. They even killed the damn dog, the fucking thing was so old it could barely stand up, and one of them just stomped it to death." She shook her head in disgust before taking the last hit of her cigarette and dropping the butt of it to the dirt and crushing it under her boot heel.
"They were pissed because I refused to participate in killing those innocent people, and one of them reported it to Jabsco. He sent me out on a 'mission' with some prick named Rilon and a few newbies. Well, Rilon wound up shooting me in the leg and leaving me near a fucking Yao Guai den. They assumed I was dead after that."
"I got away, obviously, and things were good for a while. I went back to wandering and when I was 21 I found myself in a bar in Rivet City. Got in a fight with some ex-merc when I was there, and low and behold, that son of a bitch wound up becoming my second in command for the Black Dragons." Carmen paused to laugh and give a genuine smile.
"We came up with the name when we were looking through these old books about tattooing that my mom had. She was always fascinated by it, and was determined to figure out a way to rig up a tattoo gun. She never did; she couldn't even draw a stick-man for shit, and she was terrible with tinkering. Luckily for me, I had both of those skills, so I could make what she was never able to do a reality. Eventually, we met other people and our numbers grew. At our most, there was about fourteen of us; it doesn't sound like a lot, but we were skilled. We didn't take people that didn't know what they were doing, we only took the best and they had to be able to commit; to show that commitment, we all got the Black Dragon tattoo."
Carmen paused, smiling gently as her memories passed behind her pale eyes. "What happened to them all?" Sarah gently put in, taking in the other woman's shift in expression.
The merc commander shut her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall, that detachment coming back to her, a coldness settling over her skin as she compartmentalized her emotions. "We took a contract from this lady. Her husband and son got taken out by Talon Company because the husband went AWOL from them. They tortured her pretty badly, broke her ankle and took out one of her eyes, scarred her face up. Anyway, she survived, and wanted revenge obviously."
She paused, scratching absentmindedly at the tattoo on her head. "We took out the group that did it to her. They were fucking camping out in her old house. Somehow, word got back to Jabsco that I was alive, running my own group and killing his men," she paused to scoff angrily, "well obviously he got his fucking retribution. They attacked last night; killed our watch and all of my men. Of course I survived…don't fucking understand why." Her tone was bitter, and she scowled down at her boots, her upper lip curled in a snarl.
The Sentinel couldn't even imagine that sort of pain. If Lyon's Pride got taken out she wouldn't know how to continue with her life. This tattooed woman was strong; strong enough to keep getting up when life kneecapped her and took everything she cared about. "What do you mean when you say you don't know why you survived? You're strong, you're a survivor. It's what you do."
The merc avoided the Sentinel's eyes, keeping her pale eyes glued to her boots, a sense of hopelessness seeming to drape over her. "Every time I start over, I get it all taken away. I'm tired of starting over. What's the point when it is all going to be destroyed? What's the point of this fucking conversation anyway? We're all just talking about our issues like the fucking camp counselor is here to hug us and tell us that everything will be okay."
Sarah chewed her lip in thought. "I know you're hurting. And Talon Company has caused you unbearable pain. What if I told you that before I was enslaved I was on a mission to take down Talon Company?"
At that, Carmen's eyes widened and came back to life, like a corpse rising from the dead. Her eyes were wild as she looked over at the Sentinel; fidgeting with her 10mm, the merc spoke quickly, "You serious? A chance to take down the Talons with you? Sounds like a fucking suicide mission to me, but I don't give a shit. I'm up for killing as many of those cocksuckers as I can."
Sarah grinned. "Well, it's not just me you'll be fighting beside. I've got people that need my help, back in Paradise Falls. So first thing is first, we have to burn that camp to the fucking ground and free my friends."
Suddenly Aleksey had produced his chalk and was scratching a message. 'I will help you. Perhaps I can redeem my past failures by helping you with this mission before death claims me.'
"Hell fucking yeah; I agree with Mutie! Who are these others that we are after?" Carmen put in excitedly.
"The slaves, I want them all freed. But I need to ensure that the man with scars, Ray, and the older guy, Jericho, survive. And…Clover; a girl in a pink dress; I have to make sure she makes it as well."
Carmen suddenly grew even more intrigued with the situation, her eyebrow arching at the mention of Ray. A strange smirk pulled across her lips, and for some reason it gave Sarah a wave of malice. "Wait a second. Ray?"
Sarah paused for a moment, the merc's sudden smugness making her stomach roll. "Yeah. He's a waster, but a good guy. A survivor."
The merc smirked a bit wider, her pale eyes flashing, her voice low and smooth. "I would love to help you and Ray take down Talon Company."
Regarding the merc cautiously, Sarah gave her a small grin of her own. She had a strange interest in Ray, but she was a valuable and much needed ally right now. This strange woman would need to be watched closely.