She looked around the pod, desperately.
"How do I get him out?" Charon looked too. They finally checked the computers.
"Oh…I have to get the overseer to shut the program down." She looked over; one lounger was empty.
"Can't be that hard, right?" Charon said, slightly confused by her hesitation.
"I just…I have a feeling that whatever's going on in there isn't good. Something's wrong…my father's logged several weeks worth of time in, but I know for a fact he only intended to stay long enough to talk to the overseer about some technology he needed for project purity…" She held up the jumpsuit; there were small plugs in the back meant for the tranquility lounger. "I guess I'll have to go in." Charon looked up and started to find Anastasia undoing the clasps on her armor, pulling it off and dropping it on the floor. He turned away from her, trying not to imagine what article of clothing he just heard unzip and hit the ground. "Here, Charon. Help me in, will you?" he heard her ask, and turned to find her standing by the open lounger, in the vault suit, which was slightly too tight, and not zipped all the way. Charon concentrated on looking his boots as he walked over to her, and helped her step up into the lounger. "Charon?" he heard her ask softly, and he looked up at her.
"What is it?" She looked down.
"I'm nervous. We don't even know what this machine does…"
"You'll be fine, kid." She smiled, and reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze. He felt her shaking.
"Just…don't leave while I'm in here, and if it looks bad, I picked this up along with my jumpsuit." She handed him a small holotape. "Use it to get into the overseer's office. If something happens, I think there's a default program that lets people out if something happens to the overseer. You understand?" Charon nodded. She leaned over and kissed him. It was silent for a moment, until a nearby Robo-brain chirped
"One person per lounger, please!" Anastasia smiled, a little nervous laugh escaping her lips as Charon stepped back and let go of her hand.
"Good luck, kid." He said, raspy voice cracking as the lounger closed around her, and her body relaxed as she slid into unconsciousness. He checked her stats as soon as the computer screen for her lounger lit up. Her stress was through the roof, but she was good and healthy. So now all that was left to do was wait. He sat down, leaning against the main machine, under Anastasia's computer, where he could see her, and starred his long wait.
xXx
Anastasia.
After ten minutes of talking around and having pretty much every resident tell her that Betty was waiting for her on the playground, she headed over. Not only was she confined to the body of a gangly thirteen year old, she was in this annoying little pink dress, and her pip boy was gone. And she was alone. He dad was nowhere to be found, and Charon was not behind her; no clumping of his combat boots, fining of his shotgun, grumbling about something. No, it was not them, it was only her.
Charon.
Charon started thinking after about ten minutes of staring at Anastasia. What else was there to do? He looked over her for the umpteenth time, wishing that he were not a ghoul. It was at about the fifteen-minute mark that he began to feel bad. He remembered when he and Anastasia had come across the settlement of Girtershade, where they met a young man that lived there purely for the purpose of seducing the town's only other resident, a naïve young woman obsessed with Nuka-cola, into having sex with him. Charon knew that he was above that, but still felt that the lust he felt toward his employer was just not appropriate.
Anastasia.
Betty was an evil, sadistic young girl who was, in fact, not a young girl at all. It was the form that a Dr. Braun, the man her father had come searching for, took on to hide from outsiders. Anastasia learned this only after being forced to make a young boy cry for Braun's own entertainment. And he'd turned her father into a dog. Although he didn't say it straight out, he'd hinted at it. He now asked her to kill one of the residents…The guy was sick.
"Make it creative." The young girl said, waving her away. Anastasia walked away. There had to be another way out, but the trail had gone cold. Suddenly an old woman ran up to her, flustered.
"You're not supposed to be here!"
Charon.
He jumped up and hit his head on the console above him when a loud beep emitted from it. He checked it, and a new bar had come up:
MASTER TERMINAL ACTIVATED
What the hell did that mean? Suddenly it happened: Anastasia's stress levels shot up higher than could possibly be healthy, and one of the screens next to Charon went red. He checked the vitals: they were dead. The terminal two pods down lit up red, then the one next to him, and the next one after that. He rushed over to Anastasia's pod and looked through the glass: although she was not conscious, still in the machine, tears ran down her face.