"There's a door." MacCready nods toward the far right wall.
The two fit themselves between the haphazardly stacked boxes at the far wall to their right, seeing said door broken open. They traverse the first set of stairs quickly and quietly, abruptly stopping on the middle landing at the sound of heavy boots pounding around the upper floor. The adventurers slow their pace up the second flight, cautiously poking their heads around the corner.
Muffled screams of agony and toppling furniture press the young woman into action, dragging her companion along with her.
The Sole Survivor rounds the corner, weapon at the ready, seeing a leather-clad woman pistol-whipping a baby Mirelurk from her face.
Without hesitation, she jumps to her aid, yanking the animal from her face. The Vaultee tosses it over the second story railing, hearing a satisfying squelching crunch as it hits the cement floor.
The Raider tries to shoot down her good Samaritan, but MacCready is quicker on the draw. "Don't try it, dirtbag." The arming of his energy weapon freezes her in place.
The Survivor cringes a little at the thought of almost being shot. "I though that was Nick's line."
He shrugs in a nonchalant manner. "Sounds better when I say it."
The female Raider raises her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Who the fuck are you?!"
"Lost," the jump-suited woman admits. "What about you?"
"Bullshit! You're here for the treasure! I got a whole buncha people around here comin' to kick your asses!"
"Don't count on it," the young man snarks. "I already found 'em dead. The two of them," he adds as a vindictive aside.
"What kind of treasure," the Survivor wonders.
"The weapons the Institute stashes in here for their Synths," the harness-clad woman barks in exasperation. "How the hell don't you know?!"
The vault dweller and MacCready give each other a knowing look, keeping their assumption to themselves for the time being.
"So are you gonna kill me or what," their enemy wonders.
The Sole Survivor strongarms her mercenary companion into non-violence with her best impression of a sad puppy dog.
He grunts his dissatisfaction, submitting to her whim. "I'm not wastin' a bullet on you." He nods in the direction of the open door to the stairs behind him. "Get outta here."
Seeing herself out manned and out gunned, the enemy makes a hasty retreat to the lower levels.
"That was uncharacteristically nice of you, MacCready," she compliments with a smile as they move on toward the second story door.
He keeps his frown in place, ignoring the implication. "There's only fourteen shots in this rifle, and I'm not wasting one on that thing."
The second story provides more of the same wide open floor space, only this time instead of crates and boxes, it's rows of desk terminals with rusted filing cabinets lining the left and right walls.
A thought strikes the young man as his employer searches through every single drawer and overturned filing cabinet in the room. "Hey, ya don't think it's still here do you?"
She pockets a handful of paperweights and a small desk fan. "Well, if the scientists died here, and the Synths are looking here, then it might really be here in the warehouse."
"Would it still work?" He scans the large room for any signs of activity other than their own.
"Probably." She noses into the cabinets next, collecting old paper and a handful of bobby pins. "Depends on how old it is, and if the spare parts are available if it doesn't."
Soft, scratchy clicks in the distance unconsciously has the gung-ho fighter gripping his foreign gun tighter. "Do Mirelurks need water," he inquires, taking a step back from noise.
"They prefer water, they don't need it." She carefully reads through a near-tattered note, squinting at the faded pencil scribbles.
He suppresses the urge to drop the F-bomb, following her across the floor to another room. The door opens up to a large hole in the floor, which the woman would have surely fallen in to if not for MacCready catching her by the back of the coat. "Watch it, will ya?!"
She grabs the lapels of his leather jacket, pulling herself upright. Once over her shock, the Survivor clicks on her Pip-Boy light, shining it down into the murky darkness. She listens intently for any noises of the scratchy aquatic kind.
Deciding that now is as good a time as any, the mercenary takes the initiative for the two of them. "Well, ladies first." He gestures down the dark hole with a wave of his gun.
She sighs her disapproval, jumping down carefully, the mercenary cohort close behind.
Despite the claustrophobic dishevelment of the few imploded office walls, the intact desks and stacks of molded crates leave large enough holes for the explorers to squeeze themselves through.
As more of a practiced reflex than any sort of genuine curiosity, the woman opens every unblocked door she can. A serious foreboding washes over her as the last door opens to a decently-sized conference room housing a Mirelurk egg nest.
MacCready's face reads the exact feeling the Survivor attempts to hide.
One of the slimy, large eggs nestled amongst the centuries old chairs squelches.
She slams the door shut, hurrying through the debris and crates to the other side, putting as much distance between the clutch and themselves as possible.
The caved-in, having broken down a considerable portion of wall opens up to an unexplored part of the underground dug-out.
The young woman recounts the adjacent pipe way they abandoned in favor of running. "This must be the other side."
"Where we heard those damn things scratching around," he angrily admonishes. "Great."
The Vaultee clicks on her light, heading off to the left, deeper into the dark.
After a handful of minutes, the path begins to slope, gently at first, but the farther they go, the harder the slope becomes. By the time the two find the end overlooking a cliff, they have to carefully keep from sliding into the underground cavern sprawled out before them.
The mercenary can see clusters of glowing mushrooms in the distance. He suggests they find a way down, without breaking their necks, and head that way.
The pair feel around the now cold rock face in the narrow beam of white light, taking each step carefully and purposefully along a reasonably sized ledge.
The young man's boot slips, sending him roughly sliding downwards until his feet meet the rocky ground. He falls backwards onto his hands, clenching a yell between his gritting teeth.
"MacCready!" Her nearly hysterical voice echoes off the jagged walls of the low cavern.
"I'm alive," he shouts, wrapping both his hands around his swelling right ankle. Every swear he can think of comes to mind, but never slips his lips. He squints up at the moving light above his head, wondering how far he actually fell and how come he's not dead from his assumed great fall.
She scans the far away ground, zeroing in on a sitting figure looking up at her. "I'm coming after you, stay there!" The lady grunts and strains to the nth degree of her endurance, rounding the ledge to a corner where the bottom drops off to a hill of mud and rocks purposefully piled into place it seems. She splashes ankle deep in the muddy stones, sliding down to the bottom of the chasm as carefully as she can manage.
The bobbing white light rushing toward him from around an unseen corner eases his very troubled mind slightly, until he sees his savior squishing toward him covered in mud. "Took ya long enough." He squeezes his tender ankle tighter, attempting to keep the throbbing pain at bay.
Notices his injury, she takes a Stimpak from her satchel, stabbing it into his calf. "Found a pile of mud and jumped in."
As the painkillers kick in, his head grows a bit fuzzy. "Are you sure ya didn't roll around in it for good measure," he snarks in unwarranted rebuttal, carefully getting to his feet so as not to put too much pressure on his numbed lower leg.
The Sole Survivor just sighs, wishing the painkillers would numb his snarky mouth. "Did you see any way out while sitting down here?"
The numb throbbing of his bruise fuels his pointed sarcasm. "Oh sure I did, in the complete dark."
"I'm just asking," she gently defends, running her light over the surrounding rock walls. Seeing no other caves or traversable slopes, she grunts her dissatisfaction. "We could climb back up?"
He stubbornly refuses.
"Then we'll go this way." The grimy young woman retraces her steps to the mud pile, moving into the towering chilly shadows beyond.
Many paces past it, a perfectly angular opening leads farther away to nowhere.
He frowns at the unending hugeness of the underground place. "How far does this place go?"
The Survivor looks down at the green gridded map on her Pip-Boy screen. "Not sure, but it looks like there's another open cave at the end of here."
Limping along in the dark, MacCready takes the energy rifle from his back, mumbling about her knack for having natural bad luck.
As her map had predicted, the hall opens up to another grand rock room that has three other tunnels leading off in distinct directions. The most noticeable difference from the other caves is the fact that the lowered floor is flooded ankle deep with muddy water and clusters of moist, grey eggs sitting on piles of rocks.
"I think we found a nest." The lady of the duo stares wide-eyed at the unborn hatchlings crowding the floor.
They tread carefully so as not to disturb the mostly stagnant waters cradling the Mirelurk babies in their shells.
Amongst the seemingly random groupings, a faint glint of metal flickers from under an egg in the bright light of her wrist computer.
The vault dweller kneels to unearth the rusted metal shape out of the debris. "It's a head." The skull itself is bent and battered, but the empty eye sockets and crooked jaw make it out to be part of a Gen one Synth skeleton.
"Where there's one, there's gotta be more," MacCready reminds her. "So where are they?"
"I'm afraid to ask," the young lady says in a soft tone.
Clanking footsteps sloshing about in the unreachable shadows immediately provokes her practiced instinct of turning off her wrist light.
The footfalls make a steady approach almost parallel to where the two humans stay stock still.
"Ahchoo!"
A pair of darting yellow ringlets zero in on their location with ease. The familiar square bulk of an Institute rifle is trained on them, never wavering an instant.
The Sole Survivor cringes, still kneeling in the dirty water, while MacCready unconsciously holds his breath, bringing his own weapon up slowly.
The "naked" Synth stomps over the newborns as if they never existed, halting its approach inches from their location.
From what the young woman's scientifically inclined brain can make out in the unlit nest, the dim, running sparks inside the broken artificial skull means it has a partially damaged cranium.
Instead of shooting, it looks down at the stooping vault dweller and recites lines of a poem. "Thus he replies, the color in thy face, that even for anger makes the lily pale."
It dawns on the mercenary where those words come from, and he jumps on the opportunity to not have to waste all his ammunition. "And the red rose blush at her own disgrace, shall uh..." he stumbles over the medieval words in his brain. "...Plead for me, and uh...tell my loving tale?"
A blue spark blinks randomly inside the part of his exposed brain wiring. "Welcome, Researcher Davies." The damaged sentry steps aside, allowing the two passage to a metal door it was guarding.
She clicks on her light once again, giving her associate a quizzical look.
MacCready gives her his own look of minor disapproval back. "What? I can read too ya know."
Her incredulity is apparent in her words. "But, Shakespeare?"
"Whaddya think I did as a mayor, screwed around all day? I rounded myself," he admits in a proud fashion.
"Handsome and smart," she half jests, leading the way to the bolted door. "No wonder you're so popular."
"My thoughts exactly." He smirks at the idea.
