Doctor Henry looked up from the optics of his microscope and rubbed his eyes before moving his glasses down from his forehead with a sigh. He stood from the wooden bench where he had spread his instruments and petri dishes from which he performed his experiments. Currently he was examining a sample from the brain of a Nightstalker sitting in a glass bowl reeking of formaldehyde. Nightstalkers were a genetic nightmare that Henry was certain wasn't the result of natural mutation. The bizarre mish-mashes of reptilian and mammalian characteristics were impossible, even with the higher levels of background radiation twisting and destroying DNA. However, the Nightstalkers displayed a natural camouflage ability similar to pre-war Stealth Boy devices. By studying the brains Nightstalkers, he was certain he was close to finding a treatment for the madness that afflicted Nightkin supermutants from prolonged Stealth Boy use. Sadly, under current circumstances such an achievement was moot, and he knew the only reason he continued his research was to give him a reason to get up in the morning.
A heavy tread made him turn to the door to his impromptu lab, which he built in what was once a lounge in the ancient lodge he called home. A huge shape lumbered through the door to the lobby, ducking its head to clear the doorway.
"Afternoon Marcus." Henry greeted the hulking green-skinned mutant. "Has Calamity returned yet?"
"Not yet." Marcus replied with a deep but surprisingly refined tone. "I wanted to tell you that Lilly's come back."
"Really?" Henry asked, his forehead wrinkling in surprise. "After we'd lost the Bighorners, I thought she'd left to follow the others."
"Apparently not." Marcus rumbled. "She found a female and a calf, so I think she's decided to replenish the herd instead of leaving."
"That's good news." Henry said with a smile as he rubbed his gray-bearded chin. "She took it hard when the herd was wiped out. I was afraid her Leo personality would permanently take over. Maybe I'll get a chance to use my research for some good after all."
"I hope so." Marcus replied with a nod. "We may see more Nightkin, and it would be helpful if we can spread the word that we have an effective treatment."
"Too late for the others I fear." Henry said wearily.
"I promised them a place free of persecution, not free of troubles." Marcus replied with a shrug. "The Master didn't create the Nightkin with their longevity in mind. A race created as living weapons has a lot of trouble adjusting to anything resembling "normal" life."
"Marcus!" A gravely voice bellowed from the lobby as the door banged open. "Calamity's back with Jimmy and Becky!"
"Who?" Marcus rumbled in confusion as he swung his massive head about and stumped back into the Lobby. Puzzled, Henry followed him and his eyes opened wide in astonishment as he saw the group standing inside the double oak doors.
In front of the gathering was the brutish purple form of the Nightkin Lily, 'her' eyes hidden behind horn-rimmed sunglasses under a wide-brimmed straw hat. Over her massive shoulder was a heavy sword hammered from a truck bumper. Beside the hulking Nightkin was Henry's lab assistant, the ghoul Calamity. She was dressed in heavy denim and leather with a pistol at her hip and scraggly wisps of red hair falling over her milky white eyes. Behind them were two strangers, one a young woman wearing a hide robe and a thick gray hood. She looked exhausted and was leaning on the arm of her companion who towered over the others.
She, and her scanty steel armor did little to hide her gender, was the reason Marcus and Henry were staring. Although clearly female, her massive limbs and torso were comparable to a supermutant's, and her white eyes were staring at Marcus from under a shock of equally white hair.
"Welcome to Jacobstown." Marcus rumbled pleasantly. "Excuse me for staring, but we don't get many visitors up here."
"Thank you." The huge woman replied, smiling and revealing long canines. "I'm Valeria and this is Veronica." She nodded to the smaller woman. "I don't mean to impose, but is there a place she can lie down? We've walked all day and she just had surgery."
"I'm fine Val." Veronica protested, straightening up from Valeria's arm.
"Of course you are dearie." Lily growled. "Now Becky, you listen to grandma Lily and take a nap like a good girl."
Veronica stared at the Nightkin in confusion and opened her mouth to reply when Henry interrupted. "I think you're a little confused Lily. This is Valeria and Veronica."
Lily swung her head back to peer at the two women, than shook her head.
"I'm sorry dearies. I get confused sometimes." Lily growled apologetically.
"That's quite all right Lily." Henry said with a smile. "Why don't you show our guests to a room, if that's okay with Marcus?" He turned questioningly to the huge mutant who nodded expressionlessly.
"Use one of the rooms on the second floor." Marcus suggested before turning to face Valeria. "If you have a moment, I'd like to speak with you."
Valeria nodded before turning to Veronica. "Go on Ronnie. I'll be up shortly." Veronica clearly wanted to protest, but the pain and exhaustion clear in her face won out and she nodded in frustration to Lilly.
"Come this way dearie." The Nightkin said with a sneer clearly meant as a smile as the mutant turned and lumbered toward one of the stairways leading to the second floor landing. With a glance back at Valeria, Veronica wearily began to follow Lily upstairs.
"Sorry to spring this on you Marcus." Calamity rasped. "I just sold the hides to my contact at the old Horowitz place when a Cowboy Securitron rolled up with these two in tow."
"House sent you?" Marcus asked Valeria in surprise.
"House hired Veronica and I for a…mission up north. Victor…uh the Securitron brought us to Calamity so we could get supplies from the community up here."
"I'm surprised House knew anyone lived up here." Marcus replied shaking his head. "But you're too late. All that's left of Jacobstown is who you see in this room."
"What happened to everyone?" Valeria asked as she looked about the darkened rafters of the lodge.
"We were a community of Supermutants and Nightkin, all survivors of the Master's army." Marcus explained.
"The Master?"
"The first mutant and the creator of all my kind." Marcus said soberly. "He tried to unify humanity under one banner, but it didn't work out for him. A few years ago I tried to set up a refuge for my kind up here." He nodded toward Henry. "Doctor Henry and Calamity arrived later and have performed research to find a cure for the Nightkin's madness. You may have noticed Lily's confusion when she met you."
"She called me Jimmy, but Calamity didn't seem to notice so I didn't correct her." Valeria said with a glance toward the ghoul.
"Lily's condition is fairly benign by Nightkin standards." Henry explained.
"Apparently she was a grandmother to two children named Jimmy and Becky in one of the old Vaults, number seventeen I believe. The occupants were taken by the Master's army and subjected to FEV treatments, turning her into what she is now."
Valeria looked up the stairs where Lily had gone, a look of deep sadness in her eyes. "You're trying to cure her?" She asked looking back toward Marcus and Henry.
"With her permission I've been performing tests for a possible treatment." Henry replied, also glancing up the stairs. "Unfortunately progress has been slow."
"Too slow for the other Nightkin." Marcus rumbled grimly. "Tabitha and Davison both left with their followers. Then a Nightkin calling himself Magog arrived. I knew he was trouble, but Jacobstown wasn't meant to be a prison so I let him come and go. It wasn't long before he convinced all the remaining Nightkin and Supermutants that there was a new Master gathering an army somewhere up North. I tried to remind them what happened before, but after years of madness and confusion, most just wanted someone to tell them what to do again. One day Magog left, and all the other mutants left with him."
"Why did Lily stay?"
"She takes care of the Bighorner herd, or at least the herd that was here before NCR mercenaries killed them all." Marcus shook his head wearily before continuing. "From what I've heard, outlying settlements in the Republic were raided by what survivors claim were Supermutants. Not too long ago, mercenaries from the NCR began harassing Jacobstown. The last incident was when they wiped out the Bighorn herd."
"That's where I got all the hides to sell." Calamity added. "Things were bad enough without letting them go to waste."
"Why would the NCR attack you if the raids are coming from the north?" Valeria wondered.
"There have been rumors of Supermutants living up here for years." Marcus explained. "I suspect the mercenaries were hired by Heck Gunderson or one of the other Brahmin barons. An incursion by Rangers or NCR soldiers could provoke a border war with the Legion, and nobody wants that kind of trouble."
"So House was wrong." Valeria said with a sigh. "There aren't any supplies we can buy here, is there?"
"I didn't say that." Marcus replied. "There were several dozen mutants living here before Magog arrived. We still have extra provisions, more than we'll be able to use. We'll sell you what we can."
"Thank you Marcus." Valeria said gratefully. "We had to leave everything behind in New Vegas, and we've got a long way to go."
"North you said." Marcus said narrowing his eyes with a nod. "A lot of mutants heading that way lately, and although I'm familiar with all the mutant strains from Mariposa, I don't recognize yours."
"All the Supermutants are genderless." Henry added. "Clearly you're not. I wasn't involved in the Supermutant research during my time with the Enclave, but I don't recall any breakthroughs on that front."
"You were with the Enclave?" Valeria asked, her eyes widening with alarm.
"A long time ago." Henry replied, noting Valeria's reaction. "When President Richardson ordered all our research be directed toward his genocidal ambitions, I had a falling out with my superiors and left."
"Sorry Doctor." Valeria apologized. "I had a bad experience with an Enclave branch on the East Coast. You just startled me."
"No need to apologize." Henry replied as he shook his head ruefully. "The Enclave did plenty to earn its reputation. I'm surprised to hear that elements made it that far East after the Oil Rig was destroyed."
"So the Enclave was experimenting with FEV out here?" Valeria asked hesitantly.
"Most definitely." Henry acknowledged with a nod. "President Richardson had us turn to tailored viruses, but there were rumors that outposts of the Enclave were still working on perfecting the FEV experiments performed at Mariposa."
A heavy tread on the creaking staircase announced Lily's return.
"Poor Becky was all tuckered out." Lily growled as she reached the floor. "She's taking a nap now."
"I should check on her." Valeria said as she looked up the stairs.
"I'll meet you in the lab Doc after I unpack the Brahmin." Calamity said to Henry before turning to leave. Henry nodded in reply and gave Valeria a long thoughtful look as he rubbed his chin.
"I assume your interest in the Enclave's FEV projects is…personal?" He finally said.
"Yes." Valeria sighed. "Marcus is right. I've never met anyone like me. I know the Enclave was involved in the experiment that…created me, but I don't know what the purpose was or what I'm turning into."
"I can't speak for your individual case." Henry mused. "But I can tell you that all the Enclave projects were devoted to weaponizing the process."
"The Master intended to advance human evolution to what he considered perfection." Marcus added. "He was not totally sane, and couldn't accept that our neutered condition made us a dead-end, no matter how superior our physical capabilities."
"There was a pre-war experiment in mutating humans set up in Vault 87 on the East Coast." Valeria added. "They were similar to Marcus, but bigger and suffering from brain damage. They grew as they aged, eventually turning into mindless…behemoths."
"I'm not surprised there were independent projects." Henry said shaking his head. "The war with the Sino-Soviet alliance radicalized all research performed in the United States before the end. Genetic research was potentially revolutionary and the efforts to study it were widespread. The Enclave built on the work of pre-war scientists, especially from the Big Mountain Corporation. You could be a discovery from before the Great War, although this is the first time I've ever seen a female FEV subject."
Valeria was silent for a moment as she considered what Henry and Marcus had told her. Then she turned to Henry.
"Did you by any chance…know a woman named Catherine in the Enclave?"
"Catherine?" Henry asked with a frown.
"She would have been a researcher, probably in biology or genetics."
"Hmmm." Henry mused. "Actually I do recall a Catherine at Navarro. She was working in the biology lab as an archivist."
"An archivist?"
"As I'd mentioned before, most of the Enclave's technology was built on research recovered from installations that survived the war." Henry explained. "Not all of it was documented so there was a department devoted to identifying and storing pre-war tech. It may have been important to the Enclave, but the work was neither glamorous nor prestigious. I stopped by the archive once for some tech I wanted to try in my research. Catherine was the researcher who helped me. Not bad-looking either, which was probably why she stuck in my mind." Henry shook his head with a chuckle at the memory.
"I don't know what happened to her. After the Enclave was defeated by the NCR, Navarro was seized and all the research confiscated. Any staff that didn't get out earlier vanished at that point."
Valeria nodded as she considered what Henry had told her. It was possible that her mother and the Catherine he had known at Navarro were the same person. But she had always imagined that her mother was the victim of a sinister plot. The account of Catherine studying and cataloguing ancient scraps of technology scavenged from the past was far more mundane and less ominous than she had assumed. She shook her head and turned back toward Marcus.
"Veronica needs to rest, a lot more than she'll admit." Valeria said. "I don't want to impose, but can we stay for another day? I can pay if you need caps."
"No need for that." Marcus said as his heavy features twisted into a wry smile. "We'll be leaving Jacobstown soon, but not before we convince Lilly to leave the Bighorners behind. I thought this place was remote enough to be safe from humans, but the incident with the herd proved how vulnerable we are to snipers. As long as we stay here, we'll be looking over our shoulders for more attacks."
"Thanks Marcus. Doctor Henry." Valeria said as she nodded to both men.
"You're welcome." Henry replied with a shrug.
"Before you go Valeria, a word of advice." Marcus rumbled warningly. "Up north in striking distance of the NCR, someone has gathered an army of soldiers genetically engineered for war. If Magog was any indication, this new "Master" is no improvement over the old one, and his actions have put the NCR on high alert. You had better watch yourself out there."
Valeria nodded grimly as she listened. "Thank you for the warning Marcus. I'll be careful."
"I'm sure you will." The huge mutant replied. "For your sake I hope it will be enough."