Okay, things were not going according to plan.

This was what I was thinking as this giant clawed thing slammed me against a wall. If it weren't for the set of T-45 power armor I was wearing, my bones would be powder and my vitals would be filled with holes. Whatever the hell this thing was, it was tough. I'd put at least a hundred rounds in it, and I'd lost count of how many times Mikhail and Preston had managed to nail the thing, in the head. I could see the bullets lodged in its skin. This thing was freaking bullet proof.

Things had started out according to plan. We had the fusion core already, getting to the power armor was just a matter of running up a few flights of stairs. I took the power armor because I've had more experience and training with it. The raiders showed up, about twenty-five of them, just like Asher said. They fared no better than the first group, Gristle identified himself as the leader by screaming taunts. Naturally, Mikhail responded by putting a 9x39mm round through his eye. Once he was dead, the others fractured, it was standard bully psychology. I picked off the rest of them with concentrated bursts from the minigun.

Then the super spiky deadly spike monster of death crawled out of a sewer grate. Did I mention it was spiky, and deadly? And FREAKING BULLETPROOF? It tore through the few raiders left, and then it decided to try and crack the giant metal cashew standing in the middle of the street shooting at it, A.K.A. me. And thus I found myself in my present situation, being manhandled around the street by the porcupine of death.

I batted it aside with an armored glove and rolled out of its grasp. I opened up on it with the minigun, but it didn't seem even slightly fazed. I've only ever seen two things ignore bullets, heavily armored vehicles, and powered infantry. I needed a new plan, and I needed it now. Brute force just wasn't going to work. Then a crazy idea popped into my head. It could work, but it was just as likely to get me killed. My go bag wasn't with me, it was back in the museum with the rest of my gear. But there was one thing I needed from it.

I sprinted across the street. "Grenade," I yelled up at Mikhail. After a second he tossed one down to me. By some miracle, I managed to catch it out of the air. Then I turned and did the stupidest possible thing I could do. I dropped the minigun sprinted towards the scaly embodiment of doom.

God, this was a terrible plan. If Ming were around, she'd throw me over her knee and spank me red with her hairbrush for even thinking of something so dangerous and stupid. So would Emma come to think of it. But they weren't here, and this thing needed to die.

I hurled myself at the beast, grabbing it by the arms and throwing all my weight, and more importantly the seven hundred pounds of steel that made up my power armor, at it. Even this hell-born demon couldn't stand up to that much weight so suddenly, we went to the ground with me on top. Then it did exactly what I'd hoped it would do, it roared in outrage. I punched it in the mouth, shoving my hand as far down it's throat as I could. It clamped its teeth my arm, the knives it called teeth dug deep into the metal. Alarms flashed on my HUD, telling me that the pressure was too much, the armor was failing. A few more seconds and I was going to lose that arm, I pulled the pin on the little surprise I had for it and let go. Then I pulled my arm back inside the armor, leaving the arm of the armor hollow, and ripped up on the emergency release.

I was flung out of the armor by what felt like a full-body punch. I landed with a roll a few away and leapt to cover just as the explosion painted the asphalt red and threw the power armor about a dozen yards down the street. My ears were ringing as I peeked up from behind my cover, there was nothing but a red mess where the thing's head and neck used to be. By some work of one devil or another, the majority of its body had remained intact. What the hell were these things made out of?

I made my way up the street, hoping the adrenaline high could keep me going long enough to get back inside and manage a decent debriefing, and if not, praising god I was small enough for Mikhail to carry with relative ease. I took a closer look at the power armor as I passed it, it was pretty badly dented, the headlamp was busted, and the armor on the right arm had been torn all to hell, but all in all, it was in pretty good shape considering what it had just been put through.

I stumbled back into the museum bruised and battered and bleeding a little bit, but alive. The others were all gathered in the central room, I ignored Preston's praise and the Asian woman's bitching and collapsed against one of the pillars. I could hear Mikhail and Preston talking about something, it sounded like they were talking about the next move. I'd relocate these civilians to Sanctuary Hills, more defensible, probably not too well known to the local raiders considering the state of the place, easier to set up a permanent residence. Since I had that thought, I knew it had occurred to Mikhail, and he would get Preston to go along with it. So that would be our next move.

The adrenaline high was gone and the crash was coming in full force now. Usually, I could regulate it, part of my training, but scaly monsters of death were a relatively new thing for me. I'd handled the hard part, Mikhail could handle the cleanup. Now… now all I wanted to do was rest. I tucked my head between my knees and… oblivion.

….

I was dreaming.

My wrists and ankles were bound, I was naked, and I was in the arms of the love of my life.

It wasn't Nathan, but then again, that was one title he could never claim.

Sunlight was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the news was on the holoscreen. Operation: Huntress's Arrow had been a complete success, and the effects were on the screen. Emma was on the couch across from us, sketching in her notebook, occasionally looking up at us and grinning. My lover wasn't paying attention to the news, or Emma, and she was doing her best to make sure I wasn't either. She used one hand to gently probe my mouth with her fingers, sliding each one in and out, while every so often using the other to hit one spot after another that she knew would get me moaning. She used to say I was her instrument, and that when it came to playing me, she was a virtuoso.

She wasn't wrong.

"Hmm," I muttered, my eyes half closed, "You know we can't do this forever."

"Shh," she dipped two of her fingers in a glass of Nuka Cola and slid them into my mouth, the unspoken order to suck on them. "You look so much cuter with something in your mouth."

I closed my eyes, when I opened them again, the world had changed.

The sunlit penthouse was gone, replaced with a dark alley under a new moon. It was midnight, I was wearing my old black trench coat leaning against a dark brick wall. I pulled a cigarette out. She offered me a light. The old blue Corvega idled in front of us. I felt the comfortable weight of a pistol in my right pocket.

"Shouldn't be too long now." I took a puff of my cigarette, blowing the smoke into the night air.

She sat on the hood of the car and looked at her watch, "Better be, we've only got another hour before phase two."

I shrugged, "Always a slave to the schedule."

She stepped up to me, getting right up in my face, and grabbed my cigarette. She flicked it away and planted a kiss on me, mashing her lips against mine. She pulled away, "The schedule can get in line, you belong to me."

Then Liam and Nate came out the side door, a bound and hooded man squirming between them, and the moment was over. Emma was right behind them. The man went into the trunk and we all piled into the Corvega. I slid into the passenger seat as she started the car, she grinned at me and I grinned at her, then we all vanished into the night.

The scene changed again, the inside of the car shifted to a helicopter cockpit. My trench coat was replaced by black tactical gear. We were flying back from Operation: Wukong, we'd destroyed the Ao Kuang in its home port, the flagship of the Chinese East Sea Fleet. The U.S. was now guaranteed naval superiority for the invasion of Shanghai and Nanjing.

There were two helicopters, it was a joint Activity-Vympel. I was in the Activity helicopter, while the rest of my team was with Mikhail in the Vympel helicopter. An explosion sent the helicopter spinning, alarms blared, red lights flashed, commandos screamed from the bay, I gritted my teeth and held tight to the safety harness. From my position in the jump seat, I watched the pilots desperately trying to keep us in the air.

"Vampire, Vampire, this is Taipan, we are hit."

"Stabilizers are nonfunctional, controls aren't responding, we are going down, I repeat, we are going down."

"Taipan, this is Dragonfly, ETA to splashdown?"

I ignored them and hooked onto the overhead railing, then disconnected from the jumpseat. The pilots had their own way out. I made my way back into the bay, you could tell the novices from the veterans now. The new guys were panicking, rushing to tighten their harnesses and secure their gear. The veterans just sat there, calmly waiting for the impact like they were sitting in a dentist's waiting room. I clicked on the magnetics in my boots. The impact came a second later, we popped in our rebreathers and disconnected our harnesses. Two of the men hit the emergency bolts, blowing open the doors and flooding the compartment.

My magnetics switched off and I began swimming out of the hatch. We'd trained for this, done it a thousand times, or at least I had. I was just amazed we made it this far out to sea before getting shot down. I swam out the back end of the helicopter, the commandos following behind me. There was a slight sucking sound from the helicopter, the pilots submersible ejection seats, they got the easy way out.

Once I was clear of the helicopter I made for the surface, then I heard a gurgling scream and looked beneath me, one of the men was bleeding from a cut throat. A dozen men in sea-colored wetsuits just seemed to materialize in the water around us and my Pip-Boy's HUD lit up with like a Christmas tree. It was a Hai Gui unit, Sea Ghosts!

I pulled a combat knife from my forearm sheath just as one came after me. He thrust the blade at me, I brought my legs up and kicked him in the chest, propelling myself away. The commandoes were doing their best, but most of them didn't have any experience in underwater melee combat. There are two things you have to know about underwater combat. One, it's three dimensional, so be ready for a whole lot of new vectors of attack. The other is that it sucks, and you want to get out of it and onto the surface as soon as possible.

One of them managed to get behind me while another came at me from below. I flipped and caught the first one's knife arm between my legs, then I stabbed the one below me, piercing his suit and sliding the knife just under his collarbone. I pushed him down and twisted myself around, dragging the other one around so that he was beneath me, then I released his arm only to wrap my legs around his waist and bring my blade down at the intersection between his spinal cord and his brain stem, killing him instantly. I kicked him down and started for the surface.

The water around suddenly seemed to grip my arms, a Sea Ghost seemingly materialized in front of me. He must have crept up slowly so as not to break his cloak. I thrashed and kicked, but he held firm. I twisted my knife into a reverse grip and stabbed him in the hand, forcing him to release his grip on me. Bringing my legs back up in a reverse flip, I locked his head between my thighs, then squeezed and twisted until I felt the pop, he flailed around before his neck snapped. His blade coming uncomfortably close to my chest. I managed to avoid the blade, but I felt it cut into my respirator tubes. I immediately held my breath, I had about three, three and a half minutes max. Probably less because I didn't have time to prep.

I kept to my training, releasing and kicking off on the corpse. A cursory glance told me the unit was at half strength. These Ghosts were good. I hit the surface, ripped off my rebreather, and gulped in air. I could see the Vympel helicopter swinging in low and dropping ropes to the pilots. I waved at them and they hit me with an infrared spotlight. I felt one of the Ghosts grabbing me, trying to drag me down, I kicked at him, but he managed to get me back under. I drew in as much breath as I could before my head went under, saw the helicopter doors open and saw a black figure dive out into the surf. Back underwater, I faced my attacker.

He must have lost his blade, otherwise he wouldn't have tried to grab me, he would have stabbed me. He must have assumed I'd lost my weapon too, hubris, it'll get you killed in this business. I slashed at him, but he managed to block it and I only managed a cut on his forearm. He threw a punch, an amateur move for an underwater fight. I twisted the blade and managed an upward slash across his wrist, cutting into the veins there. He rushed to staunch the bleeding, and I took the opportunity to open his jugular.

More came after me, grabbing, and dragging me down. One managed to knock the knife out of my hand. I fought like a cornered animal, but I was at a disadvantage. None of them tried to strike back, they didn't have to. All they had to do was keep holding me under, because they could breathe, and I couldn't.

I kept fighting, my struggles were only making me drown quicker, but I had to do something. If I stopped I was still going to die, so I figured I might as well make it difficult for them. I could feel my lungs burning. My eyesight blurred, back spots began to appear, darkness began to creep across my vision. I was slipping out of consciousness. My thrashing stopped, my limbs went still, I couldn't move. The thought hit me, I was going to die.

Suddenly, the arms dragging me down went limp. In my fading vision, I saw one of the Sea Ghosts' heads jerk back, blood seeping out from his mask. I felt new arms wrapping around me, a new respirator was forced between my lips. I tried to suck in oxygen, but the command would not go from my brain to my lungs. I could feel myself being dragged to the surface, held by strong arms. As we hit the surface, the respirator was ripped from my mouth and warm lips pressed themselves on mine. Sweet life giving oxygen forced its way down my throat, my vision began to clear, I could feel my limbs again, and there she was.

"I've got you Madison, just hold on." I could see her face, the face of an angel.

"Breathe for me Tianxin, you're okay. I've got you" My angel, pulling me back from the abyss.

"I've got you Tianxin."

"I've always got you."

I blinked and the world faded. I wasn't floating in the Pacific anymore, I wasn't half-drowned anymore.

I wasn't in her arms anymore.

I was in a bed, staring up at a metal ceiling. I was back inside of the Vault. I sat up, I was in my underwear, the room was empty and a fresh Vault suit was laid out next to the bed. I pulled myself out of the, surprisingly comfortable, bed and got dressed. After I was dressed, Mikhail chose that time to walk in. And thank god, he had coffee.

"Feeling better Volchitse?" He handed me a two hundred year old cup, filled with two hundred year old coffee, and that coffee flowed over my two hundred year old lips.

Ah, that coffee was heavenly, "I'm fine, bring me up to speed on what happened while I was out."

Mikhail took a seat at one of the tables while I found a hairbrush and went to work on my hair. "We're back in Vault 111."

"I gathered that."

"We exfilled from Concord back to Sanctuary Hills. Sturges and Preston are working on connecting Sanctuary's power grid to the Vault reactor, checking to see if we can get a reservoir set up in the neighborhood and connect it to the Vault water purifier, seeing if we can't get basic services back online. I haven't broken open our stashes, but I've scheduled a meeting for tonight with Preston to get us all on the same page and start planning our next move."

"And how's Asher," I didn't want to hear that they put two to his skull as soon as I passed out. I still needed to pump him for information. And beyond that, the moment he started giving me information of his own free will, he stopped being a prisoner and became a defector, and that put him under my protection. I have only lost three defectors over my entire career, and I wasn't planning on losing another one.

"Your defector, I've got him locked in Jahani's root cellar. More for his own protection than anyone else's, ever since his little chat with you, he's been nothing but cooperative. I don't know how you break those people."

I shook my head, Spetsnaz training. They were old school interrogators, believed in cracking people with a hammer. Metaphorically, and in many cases literally, a lot of Activity people were like that. Thankfully, I'd had a sarcastic jackass of a mentor to teach me the new school techniques, that a little sympathy and kindness in a dark moment in someone's life went a whole lot further than a pair of pliers and some jumper cables. God, I missed that old Brit.

I set the hairbrush down, it was as good as it was going to get. "Good, I'll dig through my basement and get my gear together, then I'll debrief Asher and start planning for what we're going to do with the kid. Which is a touch ahead of the game considering we're still not sure what we're going to do with ourselves. That should keep me busy until the meeting with Preston. I'm going to assume that he was impressed and wants something from us. Probably to do with whoever these Minutemen he's aligned with are." I rubbed my eyes, god I was tired.

"Yes, we'll go over that at the meeting, but he's seriously a good guy. In the meantime, I'm going to get my own gear together and set up some security measures. We need a base of operations if we're going to go any further, and right now Sanctuary is the best candidate." Mikhail stood up and gave me a concerned look, "You sleep alright? Bad dreams?"

"Worse," I said.

"Good ones."

….

Hey guys, two updates this week, one today, one tomorrow.

This one, I'm not sure if it deserves the M rating. I don't really feel like it does in comparison to my other stories, but I'd like some input from you guys.

This really ties back to my Shadows in the Tunnel story, I'm doing my best to try and make this story as accessible as possible to those who haven't read that story. How am I doing on that front?

Either way, give me your opinions, on the rating, on the accessibility, on anything really.

R&R people.