As it turned out, Mikhail was right. By the time we reached the Red Rocket, the only sounds coming from the old back office of the gas station were the occasional cough and desperate calls from a cracked and dry voice.

The fear of the dark and the unknown is the most primal instinct in the human animal. It can break a grown man as easily as a two-year-old.

Why do you think fire was our first invention?

That is one way of dealing with it; avoidance, I don't like this, keep it away from me, a perfectly reasonable response.

The other way is to throw yourself into the darkness and immerse yourself in it until you drown or learn to breathe.

There are only two kinds of people in the world, those who hide from the darkness, and those who take their power from it.

That was the difference between the raider trapped in that office, who fought the darkness by pretending he was a big enough monster that he had nothing to fear, and Mikhail, who was a big enough monster to make the darkness his friend.

It didn't take the raider long to realize that. Most of what he had to say, we already knew, but it helped cement the fear into him. I always enjoy a good interrogation, a comparison of styles. As I've said, spetsnaz are blunt instruments. You can best understand that when you're on the other side of the door, listening to the screams and sobs.

"Uncomfortable?" Goris seemed slightly out of sorts, he flicked his tail more. Even someone as inhuman as him had a body language, and I had a skill with languages.

"Slightly," The honesty was refreshing. "Your methods are much more… elegant than your friend's."

Fair, "Mikhail is sending a message, these raiders only understand brutality. The only way to deal with them is by making them believe that you're worse than they are. You saw them all the time in Africa way back when." I wondered if somewhere in the world a university still functioned, those similarities would make for a great sociology doctoral thesis. "But you are right, my girlfriend put it best, I wine and dine, Mikhail throws you down on the bed, tears your clothes off, and gets right to business."

"I believe the word for that is rape." Not necessarily, there were a few nights when Ming or I would get off of our classes or work, nights where we didn't need words or wine.

Still, Goris might have more delicate sensibilities than I gave him credit for. "Considering what that bastard's probably done, he deserves a little turnabout of the mental variety."

He must have read my mind, "Madison, I have no problem with doing objectively terrible things, so long as they create more good than the evil they are. Do you have an endgame this is building up to?"

A utilitarian consequentialist, a deathclaw after my own heart. "You mean, do I have a specific plan that all these fear tactics are building up to."

He nodded, "yes."

I was used to assuaging guilty consciences. So I sighed and rolled my shoulders. "The short answer is no."

I could almost feel his eyebrow going up, metaphorically speaking of course. "No?"

"No," I shook my head. "Only a fool creates a battleplan and sets it in stone, a single plan of attack can't account for the human factor. A wise strategist leaves his opponent many paths that all lead to the same place."

A particularly loud scream cut me off. "Please General, I'll do anything you want… just please stop!"

I hoped Mikhail wasn't doing his job too well, the raider was replaceable, but I hate wasting effort. "As I was saying, leave them many paths that all lead to defeat."

"And what paths are you leaving them?" there was a shift in his tone, from discomfort to curiosity. Good, I much preferred dealing with an intellectual equal than a moral objector.

I leaned back on the wall, "Ideally, fear infects them and creates dissension in the ranks. I'd bet on this Lonnie woman that Asher told me about. She's the only remaining lieutenant, and she doesn't get along with the leader. If she can lead a revolt, then in the best case scenario, they do our work for us and kill enough of each other that they're no longer a significant threat." I was considering recruitment, I had an in through Asher, but I'd need more intel before I even thought about making the approach. "Otherwise, we push them to make a move, if they come after us, if we can get them on open ground, we can just mow them down with the minigun, mines, and sniping." I grinned, "And you, of course."

"And if they don't do either?"

"Then we've rattled them, made it harder to sleep at night, made them paranoid and jumping at ghosts. That will make them make mistakes and make the infiltration and assault easier if we're forced into that." I'd worked out all the trajectories for this.

"An interesting strategy, Mingan would approve of it." Goris muttered the last part, as if speaking to himself. I made a mental note to ask who Mingan was sometime.

Mikhail stepped out of the office, making sure to slam the door behind him. I threw an eyeroll his way, "General Winter, really?"

He just smirked, "You have room to talk, Reaper?"

I put two fingers above my heart, "Touche. When are you cutting him loose?"

He was already heading for the door, not that it mattered much, the windows worked just as well without glass. "Tonight, He knows his way to Lexington. Apparently the Corvega group had very strong ties to the other two locals."

"About what we got from Asher," As I said, we weren't getting anything we didn't already know.

"Apparently Ack-Ack and the Corvega leader used to be lovers. Things went south when Jared started spiking her Calmex with Psycho, got her addicted. She has not been entirely right in the head since." We were joined by Dogmeat as we stepped into the sunlight.

"Can we use that?" Kidnapping an old flame might be something out of a Silver Shroud episode, but it worked more often than not.

Mikhail shook his head. "Apparently she hates him for experimenting on her, and he hates her for not letting him experiment on her. Same plan as before, we liquidate the Olivia group and move on to Lexington."

That reminded me. "Hold on."

"What is it?" Mikhail brought his weapon up, scanning for hostiles.

I held up a hand. "Not that kind of hold on. While we've got some privacy, Goris, perhaps you'd like to reintroduce yourself."

Goris nodded and, without ceremony or pause, threw back his hood to reveal his face. To Mikhail's credit, he barely reacted, I suppose that by now he already knew Goris wasn't going to randomly gut him. In the end, he just offered a restrained, "Alright then."

"I am unused to humans reacting so casually to my appearance." Goris quickly pulled his hood back up, obscuring his head in the folds once more.

"I have lost all expectations for this new porno mir." He shook his head and we continued along the road.

"You remember Gorski, that old nut who used to show up at homeowners' association meetings to complain?" We crested the hill, from here there was a nice view of Concord.

Mikhail snorted, "Yeah, he thought the homeowners' association had something to do with that electric tower they built in his front yard. What about him?"

I popped my fingers as we reached the bridge. "His cabin has a whole pack of what Asher calls ghouls, of the feral variety. You should take Preston and clear them out, work out a little of his anger that way and help secure our position. Take Asher too, he could use the experience."

"Agreed, I'll send Preston your way afterwards."

"Are you sure that is wise? Preston is unlikely to forgive you for this morning so quickly?" there was a slight clacking as Goris tapped his claws against one another.

"Yeah, he'll need something from me to mend his wounded pride, otherwise it'll just fester." Pride was such a dangerous thing, too little and you were a doormat, too much and you were fighting off attacks that weren't there.

I left Goris and Mikhail to their business while I went off to mine, more specifically, the business of chemical warfare. Asher and Sturges had just finished moving everything into the open when I got there. Sturges had managed to pull together my shopping list, so I sent the two of them on their way. Sturges to his secret project, Asher to meet with Mikhail and Preston. Now it was time to set to work.

There are many kinds of chemical weapons, but they can all be classified under one of three types. Nerve agents are, or were, I suppose, a favorite for the US Military due to their lethality. They work by disrupting, as the name implies, your nervous system. Then there are blister agents, also known as vesicants, these irritate and burn any part of the human body they come in contact with. Finally, there are choking agents. These are similar to blister agents, but are specifically designed to fuck with the lungs once inhaled.

Each one, from a combat perspective, has its own pros and cons. Nerve agents are highly lethal and kill quickly, but are hard to make and in most cases difficult to disperse. Blister agents are highly persistent and hard to protect against, but that cuts both ways, so going in to early can cause as many problems for you as for the enemy. It also has the added benefit of disfigurement as a psychological warfare component. Choking agents are easy to make and disperse, but are usually uncontrollable after dispersal.

The unique challenge posed to ISA scientists was to develop an easily dispersible agent with all the lethality of a nerve agent, but did not persist for long after deployment. It needed to be inert by the time an assault force went in, and it had to degrade in the body after death so that it wouldn't show up in a tox screen.

If this doesn't seem like an impossible task, then you clearly haven't paid attention. And to top it all off, there was the general rule of ISA R&D, they had to make it using materials that would be easily available in a third world country. This was the most difficult part, and I have no idea how they pulled it off, probably because I'm not a chemist. They created a colorless, odorless gas, that can clear an enclosed space in fifteen minutes and dissipate within thirty. The only factor that they couldn't handle was making it untraceable, it wouldn't appear on a toxicology report, but no one would ever mistake the death for anything natural.

The effects were not pretty to say the least; hemorrhaging would cause blood to leak out of the ears and nose and fill the whites of the eyes, and the convulsions were so severe that they could break bones and twist the body into unnatural positions. I was of no doubt that it would do the job, clearing out bunkers was essentially what it was designed to do, it was just a matter of how much was needed; because of its lack of persistency, if there wasn't enough to completely fill the bunker with lethal doses, it wouldn't kill them all.

In the old days, its official designation was XX-28, the twenty eighth variation of the twentieth formula they tried. We called it the Lady's Vengeance, or Lima Victor.

You'll notice that I haven't mentioned how it's made, or even listed those easily obtainable ingredients.

Yeah, that's classified, move along.

…

Hey guys, we get two this week, one today and one tomorrow.

What did you think of this one? Quick not, porno mir, translates to fucking world. I don't like doing translations in text because I like to further knowledge of foreign cultures by forcing you guys to look them up… has nothing to do with my laziness, nothing at all. (innocent whistling here) But this one has an interesting pronunciation so to speak.

Also, ISA is basically going to be my primary excuse for lore breaking tech and applied phlebtonium for this story, so if anyone has a problem with that, tell me now. I can't promise I'll change it, but I will look into other options.

One more thing, I have officially found the only type of review I dislike, spam. Messenger777, man I respect all religions to a degree, I think your version in particular is wacky, but I respect it. But get it the hell out of my metaphorical face, this isn't the place for that. I find it especially grating that you left it on chapter one, which means you probably didn't even read the story. Guys, I'm serious, feel free to sing my praises in reviews or tell me just how shitty my story truly is, feel free to throw me story ideas for fallout or other categories, talk about lore, question certain aspects, recommend games or mods or movies or whatever, but do not, and I mean this, do not spam me. Talk about whatever you want in the reviews, I love hearing from you guys, I truly do, just try and keep it somewhat tangentially related to the story.

It is in this sense of newfound appreciation that I thank everyone who's left a real review.

jern0013

Rayven NightShade

KrossPhelps

LotusBlossomGenie

I love you guys, you make my day. To all of my followers and favorites and just anyone who's stumbled in from the cold of the internet, drop me a line sometime, you guys are the reason I do this and I love to hear from all of you.

Okay, rant over, R&R as always.

See you tomorrow people.