The sun was dawning pale when they emerged from the underground; the sky was a mellow, washed-out gold as the sunlight reflected through the cloud of dust and grit that hung ceaselessly over the divide. The ruins were transfigured in that light, concrete fragments and burned-out cars taking on an elegaic aspect more suited to the ruins of temples; the overpass was washed in rays of yellow and pearl and cream. The highway, its lanes divided with a shattered row of concrete barriers, slanted up past the overpass arch; at the top of its rise, a defunct light post and the twisted wire skeleton of what had once been a highway sign were outlined in stark black across the soft pastel of the sky.
Leaving the protection of the overpass, they climbed along the right lane of the highway. The slope was steep enough that Arcade had to work at it; his Combat Armor Mk. II seemed to weigh twice as much and he found himself breathing hard as he levered himself uphill. He watched Samara's back as she strode ahead easily in her Powered Armor, and her little eyebot bobbed after her whistling happily to itself. Its whistles ground on Arcade's nerves, and he thought distantly he would gladly have seen the damned thing melted down for scrap.
They were almost at the top when Samara froze. One hand reached for her weapon. Arcade, coming up alongside her, started to ask what it was, and then he saw: two black forms, silhouetted against the sky at the crest of the overpass, coming toward them.
"Samara-"
"I see it. God-damn," she snarled, raising her weapon. "ED-E, if you-"
"Wait." Arcade laid a hand on her rerebrace. "Not yet."
She glanced at him, dawning anger on her face. "Arcade, what are you doing?"
"I don't think they're attacking." And he pointed. "Look."
Both individuals were so heavily backlit that it was impossible to make out any fine details; but they appeared to be approaching slowly and neither of them had drawn their weapons. The figure in the lead stopped and gestured sharply to the one behind to stay still; then he raised his hands.
"No...fight."
With those words, the lingering question in Arcade's mind was settled; the man's voice was the same harsh, painful-sounding gurgle of the other Marked Man, Blister, that they had questioned before the overpass.
"Closer. No...fight. We...no fight."
Samara glanced at Arcade. "What do you think?"
He shrugged. "What have we got to lose?"
"The last time..." She trailed off, and her hand clenched on her rifle.
"If they wanted to attack us, they could have done so by now," Arcade countered. "There'd be no need to go to all this trouble."
She considered that briefly, then nodded. "All right. But be on your guard." To the two figures above them, she called, "Keep your hands where we can see them!"
The lead figure gurgled assent. Slowly, Samara and Arcade climbed up the remaining stretch of slope that separated them from the Marked Men. The eyebot bobbed behind them, whistling every so often.
As they reached the top, they found a small camp that had been built across one lane of the defunct highway. To the east, a windbreak had been constructed out of a military transport truck and some large business signs; the north side of the shelter was a concrete divider that had been reinforced with sheets of corrugated metal to make a "wall" of sorts. A small fire was burning in a hearth made of an old truck tire; two mattresses, some ammo boxes and a couple of chairs filled in the rest of the area. Arcade took this all in at a glance, turning his attention on their two hosts.
They were Marked Men, all right; if that hadn't been obvious from the man's voice, it was immediately apparent from the flayed surfaces of their arms and legs, where their armor left them bare. The armor, Arcade observed, consisted of damaged and crudely repaired Legion armor, and the one in front-
"That mask," Samara murmured, nudging him. "What is that? I've never seen anything like that before."
Arcade guessed what it was-a copy of the mask belonging to Legate Lanius, Caesar's brutal second in command-but said nothing. He tightened his fingers around the stock of his weapon.
The leader had an assault rifle at his back and several frag grenades at his belt; his companion was carrying a shoulder-mounted machine gun, but laid it on the ground at a barked command-"Pone telum!" Still, the follower remained tense, watching them closely. Arcade thought he could see resentment in the set of his shoulders. The leader kept his hands well away from his waist. "Truce," he rasped, his eyes remaining on Samara.
Samara glanced at Arcade, who nodded. "Truce," she agreed warily.
The Marked Man with the mask indicated her. "Cou...ri...er."
"Samara," she corrected, then gestured to her companions. "Arcade. ED-E."
"We ... know. We all know. Sa...ma...ra. Cou...ri...er." The Marked Man's voice sounded hollow and tinny, coming from inside the mask; the sentence died with a choked gurgle. He tapped his own chest. "Beast."
Arcade frowned. "What's this about?"
Beast turned that grotesque mask toward him. "Not ... you. Her." He turned back to Samara. "No...fight. Leader say...no fight. My...leader. Bonesaw." Arcade's throat and chest hurt just listening to that rasping voice. "At village. See...see you." He pointed up the road. "Safe...no fight. Go."
Samara looked over at Arcade blankly. "What's he talking about?"
Arcade frowned, trying to put together what Beast had said. "It sounds like, there's a village up ahead with a leader named Bonesaw who wants to see you. He's offering safe passage."
"Safe passage." Samara frowned. "Why does this Bonesaw want to see us?" she called to Beast.
"Talk." Beast gurgled. "Talk...you. You...Cou...ri...er. Bonesaw...talk."
Once again, she glanced at Arcade. "What do you think?"
"What have we got to lose?" Arcade replied. "Look, they haven't tried disarming us, or taking us prisoner."
Samara considered that, then nodded.
"All right," she called to Beast. "We accept your terms. Safe passage. But you better not be doublecrossing us," she growled, glaring hard at the Marked Man.
Beast choked a negative. "There. That way," he rasped, pointing down the highway. "Go...to end. Village...there. Sentinels...will stand aside. Watch-" he coughed, a horrendous sound as if he were hacking up his own lungs; Arcade winced inwardly in sympathy "-Deathclaws," he rasped.
Samara glowered, but Arcade hastily called out, "Thanks for the warning. We appreciate it. Come on," he said, turning to his Power Armor-clad companion. "Let's go."
Beast and his companion stood aside as Arcade, Samara, and the eyebot started up the High Road, watching them go. The subordinate still did not look happy-Arcade could tell by the set of his shoulders-but he was silent as they passed by. Arcade wondered distantly what he was thinking...and what they would find when they reached the village of Marked Men at the other end.
[*]
The High Road was a strange and rather eerie place, Arcade thought to himself as he and Samara traveled along the elevated freeway, their boots grinding on the pavement. Looking over the side, he could see the remains of a town far below, the buildings, ruined streets, and destroyed cars rendered small and somehow pristine by distance. From up here, the damage didn't look so bad; Arcade could almost pretend that the war had never happened and he was gazing down on a flourishing community. Except for the silent streets, that is. The wind blew continually, a light breeze occasionally gusting strong enough to make him reel sideways a bit. As he walked on by Samara's side, grit lashed their faces, but the road itself was mostly clear, except for drifts piled up in the lee of the walls on either side of the roadway and the concrete dividers in the middle.
The road was almost empty. Here and there were a few wrecked cars and trucks, a motorcycle or two, but for the most part the highway stretched out before them, clear and open, except where jagged chunks had been taken out of it by destruction and time. Once or twice by the dividers or in the lee of a car, they came upon a fire circle and perhaps a mattress or two, indicating that someone had been using the spot as a campsite recently. Marked Men, Arcade thought.
Halfway down the road, a toppled skyscraper leaned at an angle over the risen bed of the highway. Two Marked Men waited up there, one carrying a sniper rifle, the other carrying a strange, boxy weapon that looked like some kind of missile launcher. Samara tensed, and her hand strayed toward her weapon, but the two sentries just gestured them through.
Samara strode ahead silently. The distant air that had hung about her before was back, and thicker; she seemed wrapped in thought, distracted. Something about the darkness in her eyes made Arcade uneasy. He considered reaching out to her-trying to engage her in conversation-but didn't think she would hear anything he said.
They walked on, through the sighing winds, the golden, diffuse light from the permanently overcast sky, the grit lashing their cheeks. Samara called a brief halt for lunch at what looked like a ruined highway interchange, but was silent and withdrawn throughout. Then they walked on.
It was late afternoon, nearing evening, when they came to the village. The highway sloped down to dead-end in a collapsed tunnel through a high bluff; the mouth of the tunnel was filled with tons upon tons of rubble, concrete and stone. A wrecked semi was lodged under the mountainous mass of debris, and a few splintered, shattered crates were strewn around the rocky hillside. The faded, almost obliterated stencils on the crates revealed them to once have held military ordnance. To the right, an off-ramp branched down in a long sweeping arc; another ramp led up a steep hillside to the left, between piles of jagged rock.
Someone was lurking there, in the shadows under the bluff. Samara raised her weapon as the figure came forward, revealing itself as a Marked Man in what appeared to be damaged NCR Trooper armor. The Marked Man raised his hands.
"You...Courier," he ground out.
Arcade stepped forward. "Are you..." He strained to recall the name they had heard earlier. "Bonesaw?"
"No," the man rasped. "Sen...try. Follow. I...take you. Come."
Without waiting for their acknowledgement the Marked Man turned and began heading down the road. Arcade followed readily; Samara did so after a slight hesitation. The tension in her shoulders was visible even through the Powered Armor.
Arcade glanced at her. "If they wanted to kill us or hurt us, they would have by now," he said in an undertone.
Samara's jaw tightened. "This is wasting time," she said at last. "We need to be finding Ulysses."
"Well, maybe they'll know something that will help us," Arcade tried to reason. "If they can tell us where he is..."
"You! Follow!" the Marked Man barked from up ahead, cutting him off. Arcade complied; Samara did likewise, though the distance did not leave her eyes.
The Marked Man led them down the offramp past a burning trash drum, and up through a cleft between two towering rock bluffs. He stopped and turned back to look at them. "Care...ful," he said, pointing. Looking closely, Arcade saw the yellow disk of a frag mine nestled in among a scattering of rubble on the highway's surface. "Follow. Close."
"Will do." Arcade tried to repress a shudder. Samara said nothing, just shifted, glowering impatiently. She showed no sign of fear at the sight of the mine; then again, she somehow always managed to stay clear of mines and other traps. Arcade had no idea how she did it. As their guide started off again, Arcade made sure to follow his path almost exactly, avoiding the hazards he pointed out.
The stony heights to either side of the path loomed over them, shadowy and oppressive; cars were scattered here and there on the road, including one red fire truck. In a couple of places, what looked like radio towers had fallen from the heights of the bluffs above, forming arches under which their little procession passed. The path slanted upward to a new intersection, with a road to their right leading to a collection of ruins surrounded by high rock walls. The main road continued to a wire fence with an open gate, and a small square cement building beyond it. The dim and lurid light from the overcast sky gave everything a flat, unreal appearance; Arcade found himself wondering for a brief instant if he'd strayed into some sinister dream.
"Come," the Marked Man rasped. "Bonesaw. Leader. Come."
He led them past a couple more overturned trucks into the large, open space among the stone bluffs. Two one-story ruined buildings stood by the road, one on each side-really little more than skeletons-and the empty shell of a much larger, multi-story building was beyond them. It must have been under construction at the time of the war, judging by the rusting, mangled crane nearby and a couple of faded yellow vehicles-Arcade recognized them from prewar holotapes as construction equipment. He wondered if the smaller structures had been temporary quarters or offices related to the building project.
Among the ruins were five or six of those small, beehive-shaped stone huts he had noticed before; they were clustered in two groups, each around a central fire ring. More Marked Men were sitting around the rings, occupied in repairing weapons or armor.
As the sentry led Samara, Arcade and the eyebot into their midst, the activity slowly came to a standstill. At least two dozen pairs of milky eyes shifted to the newcomers.
One by one, the Marked Men began rising to their feet.
Samara visibly tensed, her fingers tightening around the stock of her weapon. Arcade felt a chill himself, but the Marked Men made no hostile move-merely stood, watching in total silence as he and Samara followed their guide through the small village, past one of the wrecked bulldozers. The corpse of a Marked Man was pinned to this one, and their sentry commented, when he saw Arcade looking at it, "Old...leader."
The sentry led them to a huge chunk of concrete that had probably once been a wall-floor join; it was massive, placed on an elevated pile of rubble, and formed an angle like a crude throne. A man sat on this throne, his arms folded, watching them approach. His armor was an indeterminate mix of what looked like scrapped Powered Armor pieces, old tires, and a Legion kilt. His face was hidden behind a steel mask. In form, this mask was like the one Beast had worn earlier, but it was more finely wrought; Arcade thougt it might even be an intact piece of Legion equipment, carried into the Divide. At his side the man carried a chainsaw; one hand rested on it as he watched them draw near. Their guide went straight up to the man, and bowed roughly.
"She...here. I bring... Her."
The man on the throne rose. He leapt down from the mound of rubble, as agilely as if the armor he wore weighed nothing. "You...do well," his voice came, hollow and tinny from inside his helmet. He turned to face Samara, noting and dismissing Arcade with no more than the briefest of glances, then held up his hands and rasped, "Cou...ri...er!"
"Cou...ri...er..." came the gurgling, grinding affirmation from many throats, and slowly, in twos and threes, the Marked Men around them dropped down to one knee.
Samara took a taut step backward. Mounting unease showed in her face and again, she started to reach for her weapon.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, her voice harsh and strained.
Arcade reached out to her. "Samara-"
She turned on him, glaring accusation. "Arcade, what the hell is going on here?"
He drew a breath, biting back the temptation to say, How should I know? "Samara, just calm down, all right? I don't think-"
"You." Bonesaw spoke over him as if he weren't even there, addressing himself directly to Samara. "You. Ulysses. Dei."
Arcade was not expecting the final word, wouldn't even have understood the gurgled syllable, if it weren't for the fact that the other Marked Men repeated it as well, in their harsh, grinding tones.A chill ran down his spine.
"What are they saying?" Samara's anger had mounted higher, and her scorching glare redoubled. "Day-ee? What the hell...?"
Arcade turned to Samara, who had incomprehension written all over her face. "Not 'day-ee.' 'Dei.'Samara," he said quietly, "They just called you a god. You and Ulysses both."
The unease on Samara's face deepened into something like alarm, and she stepped backward almost automatically. "What? That's the craziest-" Arcade frantically gestured for her to keep her voice down. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard," she said in an undertone, scowling ferociously. "I've heard stuff from Freeside junkies that makes more sense than that!"
Arcade felt himself frowning as well. He looked back at the Marked Men surrounding them, all kneeling, all watching Samara with-not reverence, exactly, he thought to himself-but at the very least a profound respect. "No argument here," he mused. "I don't get it. I mean, for the Legion it almost makes sense-Caesar does a hell of a lot to instill credulity and gullibility in his followers; he likes to keep his men ignorant and superstitious-makes them easier to control. But the NCR? The NCR are good little children of the Enlightenment, they should know better than this-"
Samara shifted impatiently. "Arcade, take a look at these guys. They're ghouls-"
"They're not ghouls-"
"Close enough. They're all probably half-feral already." She grimaced. "Of course they're going to pick up a few stupid ideas along the way."
"You're saying that the ghoulification process might render potential ferals more susceptible to implausible ideas? Possible." Arcade considered for a moment, while Samara stared at him blankly. "But why you? Why not just Ulysses? I'd like to understand-"
"What does it matter?" Samara demanded. "Why are we even here in this village anyway? Why aren't we out looking for Ulysses right now?"
"Good question." He looked back at the chief. "Why did you bring us here?"
Bonesaw's mask completely obscured his facial features, but there was something to the set of his shoulders that seemed to indicate he was considering carefully whether to answer. From deep within that metal helm came the rumbling words: "You. Not Courier. Why ... you here?"
"He's my friend," Samara said at once. "He speaks for me."
"You...say...he talk?" The Marked Man leader coughed, once, a deep, painful rumbling in his chest. "You say. Good." He coughed again, and Arcade winced in sympathy; he half expected to see Bonesaw cough up a chunk of lung.
"Why did you bring us here?" Arcade repeated.
"See...you. Speak...to you. U...lyss..es. Wan...der...er. He say...kill you. I say-" here he pounded his chest "...No. I. Bonesaw. Say...no kill."
Arcade glanced at Samara. No help there. Samara was glowering at Bonesaw with a blank sort of impatience. "Why?"
The Marked Man shrugged. "You...gods. Gods...fight. Not us." He paused. The masked face turned, as if he was surveying the Divide, and all that lay within it. "This...ours. Once. Before...Wanderer. Ours. Ours." He pounded his armored chest again. That blank mask was unreadable, but Arcade thought he saw a sudden fierceness in the set of his shoulders. "No...Legion. No...Enn See Arr. Only...Marked Men...here. Now. Courier...kill Wanderer...ours...again."
"Why don't you kill him yourself?"
"Arcade..." Samara growled.
"No, it's a serious question, Samara," he said, turning to her. "If they want him dead-"
"Ulysses is mine." She turned on Bonesaw. "Understand this, ghoul: If anyone so much as touches Ulysses, there'll be hell to pay!"
A horrible, wet, tearing, rumbling sound rose out of the Marked Man's chest, rendered hollow by the metal helmet; Arcade scarcely recognized it as a laugh. "Yes," rasped Bonesaw. "Wanderer...yours. Cou...ri...er. Dea sola Deum caedere potest."
Only a goddess can slay a god. Arcade's frown deepened. "Sounds to me like you're just trying to get someone to do your dirty work for you."
"Who cares!?" Samara snarled, shouldering past him. "All I want to know is, where is Ulysses?! Where is he?!"
Again, that horrendous wet laugh came from deep within Bonesaw's chest.
"You...ask," the man rasped. "You...kill?"
"Damn straight," Samara growled. Her pale eyes had that flinty, stony, hard light in them.
"You...kill. Good. Good." Bonesaw moved forward. "I ... show. Come."
He beckoned them over to a flat piece of ground that had been cleared in the center of the village, leading them through the gathering of onlookers. The Marked Men rose from their kneeling posture as he led them, following them at a respectful distance. The concentrated, focused way they watched Samara gave Arcade a creepy feeling, though Samara didn't seem to notice it. He wondered if Bonesaw's adulation was fully shared by everyone in the village.
As they approached, Arcade saw that the space where Bonesaw was leading them had been smoothed out and incised with artificial lines. Objects were scattered here and there on the flat surface, and it took Arcade a moment to recognize what he was seeing. It's a map, he realized with a start.
He glanced at Samara to see if she had recognized it also. Her pale eyes narrowed as she compared it with her PIP-Boy 3000, and then glanced up at the eye-bot behind them. "ED-E," she told the bot in an undertone. "Record this."
The bot whistled acknowledgement. Some of the Marked Men in the crowd muttered among themselves at this. Sounds like they don't like the bot any better than I do, he thought. Bonesaw knelt at the side of the map, and Samara joined him, looking slightly ludicrous as she kneeled in her huge Powered Armor, still fiddling with her PIP-Boy 3000. Arcade quickly knelt as well.
"Map," Bonesaw said, his masked face turning toward them. "See. You...see. Map. Divide. I...show."
"Is it accurate?" Arcade asked Samara, who was still staring at the green screen on her wrist.
"Seems to be," she murmured. "Roughly at least." She looked back up at Bonesaw, her face hard. "Show," she commanded.
Bonesaw laid his hand down next to a large stone on the map. "Here," he rasped, his iron mask unchanging. "Came in...here. Wreckage." He tapped at places on the incised network of lines in the dirt. "Came...past...Bunker. Past...High Road. Here. Village of Marked Men. Here."
"I know where we are," Samara began, but Bonesaw held up a hand. That gleaming, inscrutable metal countenance regarded her. Samara fell silent, but Arcade, watching her, realized it was not the silence of the cowed. She was waiting.
"To find...Wanderer," growled Bonesaw. "Here." He touched the map. "There." He pointed, further up the roadway along which they had come. "Asssh...ton siii...lo." The words reverberated oddly from behind his helmet. "There. Go down. Inside," he told Samara as she fiddled intensely with her PIP-Boy, recording his directions. "Down. At bottom...tunnel. Stairs. Through ... and out. Sun...stone Tower." He tapped another location. "Down. Village...Marked Men. They listen...Ulysses. Enemies. Fight them. Understand?"
"Enemies." Samara's face took on granite lines. Arcade, remembering some of the tribal confrontations he'd witnessed as a Follower of the Apocalypse, found himself cynically wondering if Bonesaw was trying to get Samara to kill these guys for him as well. No such calculations appeared to enter Samara's head, however; she simply tapped the information into her PIP-Boy 3000. "Ulysses's men. Got it."
Bonesaw nodded. "Go through..." he repeated, drawing his finger down a twisting line that might have been a roadway. "Through...ruins. Buildings. Here. You see?" He touched a dark, greenish-blackish scale embedded securely in the ground; It took Arcade a moment to recognize it as a scale from one of the humanoid creatures they had fought earlier. "Cave... Cave...of Abaddon." The Destroyer, Arcade thought. "Tunn-el-ers. Be cautious. Tunnelers...kill."
"What are Tunnelers, exactly?" Arcade interrupted. Samara shot him a dirty look, but he ignored her. "We fought some already, right before the High Road. They looked humanoid-"
That deep, painful rumbling came from within Bonesaw's chest. "Human. Once. Not now. They...live here. Before. Before great sky fire. Fled. Underground. Changed. They...become. Tun...nel...lers. Divide..." He rumbled again here, uncertainly, and his mask turned toward Samara as if he expected her to know. "Ulysses. He tell. How they come here. What happened. He tell. Enough. Look," he rasped, indicating the map again.
Samara bent to the map, looking back and forth between it and her PIP-Boy, while Arcade listened as well. Bonesaw touched a chunk of concrete, surrounded by small heaps of rubble.
"Cave...come out here. Box...wood Hotel. Roof. Climb-" He traced a fingertip down the side of the rubble chunk. "Climb down. Careful. Dangerous," he said, stabbing his finger at the dirt to emphasize his point. "Here...Blade."
"Like a knife?" Arcade asked. Bonesaw shook his head.
"Blade. Ruler. Here...Village. Stealth Men. Blade...ruler. Blade...Ulysses. They guard...Ulysses. With...their lives. Blade...Kill. Stealth Men...hard. Vicious. They ... kill. Here..." He paused. Something about the tilt to his head made him look uncertain, even behind the mask. "Here...Rawr."
The Marked Man gave a horrible gurgling growl that made Arcade wince, both for its ferocity and for how painful it sounded. Those...Stealth Men...he talks about must be real pieces of work. He thought of some of the worst Fiends he'd heard of. They can't possibly be as bad as Cook-cook...can they? He suppressed a shiver. "Dangerous," he replied. "All right, we'll keep it in mind."
The set of Bonesaw's shoulders suggested hesitation, as if he'd missed some fundamental point. Bonesaw started to speak, but Samara chose that moment to butt in. "Where's Ulysses?" she demanded, putting one hand on the stock of her weapon. "Tell me where Ulysses is! That's all I care about right now."
"Ulysses. Yes. Here." Again, Bonesaw bent to the map. He indicated a structure shown by the broken neck of a beer bottle, jammed into the earth. "Here. Go here..." and he traced another line on the map. "And you find. Tem-ple of Ul-yss-es."
He spoke the words with an evident reverence that surprised Arcade, and made him feel slightly abashed, though he couldn't tell why. The Marked Men gathered around and behind him all silently covered their hearts with their hands at the mention of the temple of Ulysses. Samara frowned.
"Temple? Like, an above ground structure?"
"No." Bonesaw shook his head. "Bunker. Deep...underground. You go...go down. Launch...siii-loo. At bottom...Ulysses is. Be..." He looked up at the two of them. "Be cautious," he warned them. "Ulysses...live down there. His home. He will have...two. Like that." Here, he pointed up at ED-E.
"Eyebots?" Arcade asked.
"Yes. Eyebots. Two. With him. They ... heal."
"Medical eyebots," Arcade murmured, glancing at Samara.
"We'll have to take them out before we can get anywhere with him." Her face stony, she bent to tap the information into her PIP-Boy 3000.
"Yes," Bonesaw confirmed. "Eyebots. They heal. Guard. Ulysses...have guards. Marked Men. Blade's men. They...will fight."
Samara's face was set and unmoving. "We can handle them." Arcade said nothing, but privately wasn't so sure.
Bonesaw, however, seemed to think it was funny. "Handle. Yes." He laughed, that horrible, tearing, wet noise echoing beneath its helmet. "Yes. Handle. Ulysses...temple. Defeat him there...and Divide...is ours. Yours." His metal mask lifted from the map, gazing at her. "Cou...ri...er."
"I don't want it." Samara stood up abruptly, and ED-E chirped. That stony, frozen expression had set on her face, each line distinct and clean. "All I want is Ulysses's head. I don't care about anything else." Bonesaw laughed again, rising to join her.
"That...you will have. Cou...ri...er."
"Thank you for your help," Arcade put in, and breathed a small sigh of relief as the distance in Samara's eyes lessened a bit. "I do have one question for you, though." As Bonesaw turned to look at him, he asked, "On the road, Beast warned us to be careful of Deathclaws, but we didn't see any. Are there Deathclaws around here?"
Bonesaw turned his mask to Arcade, as if pondering. "Death...claw. Yes. Rawr!" Again he made that horrendous gurgle. "Dangerous. Death...claw. Here. Death...claw. Stronger. Faster. Come. See." He gestured toward one of the smaller two buildings, and started toward it through the crowd.
Samara's face tightened again, but Arcade again laid one hand on her rerebrace. "Just go with it," he half pleaded with her in an undertone. "I know this seems like a delay, but look at it this way: any information we can gather about what waits for us up ahead will help."
For a moment, she seemed as if she wanted to resist some more, but then she gave a single nod. She allowed Arcade to take her by the arm and lead her after Bonesaw.
Samara and Arcade followed him around the corner of the building to the place where a burned-out semi had crashed into the wall, collapsing a substantial portion of it. Bonesaw led them through the collapsed portion of the building into the slightly sheltered interior.
Inside, lying in the center of the rubble-strewn floor, was the whole carcass of a Deathclaw, cut up in chunks; clearly the Marked Men had been in the middle of butchering it-for claws, hide, perhaps for meat, although Deathclaw meat was so unpalatable it was a food substance of last resort for most people.
While the Deathclaw dominated the center of the floor, it wasn't alone; perhaps a dozen mattresses arranged around the edges of the room held injured Marked Men. Their bodies bore huge gashes and horrible, rending wounds that were clearly the work of the Deathclaw lying in chunks in the middle of the floor. To a man, they were silent, giving no sign of the pain they must have been in, but the air was filled with the rasp of their tortured breathing.
"Deathclaw," Bonesaw explained, nodding to the carved-up creature in the center of the floor. "Come. Fight ... village. We ... kill. You see," he rasped, indicating the men on the mattresses. "You see... These. Hurt. Deathclaw hurt."
"The Deathclaw wounded these men?" Samara murmured. She took in his words with no change of expression. Her eyes flicked over the Deathclaw, the long claws on the hands that were strung on a rack to dry, noting the thick slabs of musculature that had been carved from its body; Arcade guessed distantly that she was assessing combat potential. His own attention was focused on the injured men lying on the mattresses. He approached the closest one, a man bearing huge, rending slashes from his neck to his torso. He was appalled to see that the man had not even been bandaged; the slashes were open to the air, blood clotted dark and black at the ragged edges of the wounds. His clothes were matted with blood and dirt.
A bright flare of outrage lit Arcade's chest. Almost without thinking, he turned on Bonesaw, fighting fury.
"Why haven't these men been treated?"
The village leader's masked face turned toward him. "Trea...ted?"
"Treated, goddamn it!" Arcade knotted his fists. "Look, you haven't even cleaned his wounds! You're just going to leave them here, on these filthy mattresses in this-" He flung one hand toward the Deathclaw chunks, curing in the center of the floor. "This butcher shop? What's wrong with you?"
"Arcade..." Samara's brow was furrowed.
Bonesaw appeared to consider for a moment, then nodded. "Leave. Yes. They...wounded. They... Men... no... fight. Only...die. Leave...leave here. With... Deathclaw. It..." He paused as if searching his memory, trying to find words, concepts to fit the situation. "Honor," he said finally. "They see... They know... It...die...too."
Of course. The goddamned Legion influence. Arcade knew that Legionaries looked down on healing, often devoting only minimal resources to it; they believed that a good soldier would never let himself get wounded in the first place. He rubbed his eyes, trying to keep a tight grip on his temper.
"You can't leave them like this. Let me treat them."
"Arcade..." Samara's voice had grown sterner. He ignored her.
"You...treat...?" Bonesaw asked.
"Yes. I'm a doctor. I trained with the Followers of the Apocalypse. I have-I can help these men, damn it!"
That hollow mask studied him for a moment longer. "You...treat," Bonesaw affirmed, and held up his hands, stepping back as if in permission. "Treat," he said, gesturing to the men. "Treat."
"Arcade." Samara grabbed him by the arm and turned him to look at her; her eyes were solid ice. He could feel her fingers digging into him. "What the hell are you doing?" she demanded, quiet but vicious. "We didn't come here to treat ghouls. We came here to find Ulysses and-"
"You know what? Speak for yourself, Samara." Arcade wrenched away from her, that bright flare of anger stil burning in his chest. "If you're so desperate to continue on your little revenge quest that you can't wait half an hour while I do the bare minimum for these men, then be my guest. But I took an oath, Samara," he said, holding her eyes. "And I am not leaving here until I have treated these men to the best of my abilities."
He faced her, angry and ready to argue, and a little afraid as well; he didn't know how she would react. Her eyes brimmed with that cold fire, her entire body was as tense as a coiled spring...and she backed down. She stepped back and nodded.
"All right," she said. "Go ahead. But hurry."
Samara stood with arms folded, practically tapping her foot with impatience, as Arcade moved among Bonesaw's wounded men, doing whatever he could do for them. It was pathetically little. The Followers of the Apocalypse were used to working with next to nothing, improvising, and making do with rudimentary equipment, and Arcade had worked under conditions more hopeless than this a few times-but not many. The men bore their injuries silently as Arcade moved among them, washing their wounds with irradiated water (better than purified water for ghouls; the rads promoted healing), bandaging them with strips of cloth that might once have been rags of carpet, doling out what chems he had-in the absence of an operating theater, chems were all he could offer. Buff-out, Jet, Med-X, Hydra-recklessly moved by the men's terrible pain, he gave away almost his entire chem stash, keeping only a single dose of Med-X and one of Jet for himself. He knew that he might need the chems later, but he could not, simply could not, deny such suffering. The chems weren't enough-none of it was anywhere near enough-but it was all he could do.
The Marked Men were quiet, accepting his treatment of them stoically, but he could tell from the changes in their breathing, the set of their filmy, white eyes, that they knew he was trying to help them, at least. Their compatriots drifted in from outside, standing silently along the walls, watching; Arcade could not read their flayed, featureless expressions and wondered what they were thinking. As he injected his last dose of Hydra into a man who had both legs and one arm mangled, he saw his ... patient's? ... red, flayed brow furrow. He sat back on his heels, watching the pulpy, fragmented appearance of the limb begin to firm and strengthen, and wiped at his brow with one hand. God damn...
Footsteps behind him recalled him to himself, and he looked up as Bonesaw approached. Behind the Marked Man, he saw Samara, still leaning in her place against the wall; she hadn't moved, but her face was shadowed, and there was something strange in her eyes as she watched him.
"You. Heal...er," Bonesaw rasped.
Arcade said nothing. He didn't feel like a healer at that moment. He felt impotent. Helpless. He knew that the few shots of chems he could provide didn't come anywhere near to being enough. He was swamped with the feeling that the whole thing was futile. The knowledge of what he could have done for these men, back at the Followers' facilities in the NCR or even at the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside, filled him with a grinding, unbearable frustration and rage.
"Change their bandages daily," he instructed Bonesaw as he climbed wearily to his feet, wondering if the other Marked Man was even listening to him. "And when you do, wash their wounds with irradiated water. Make sure they get plenty of rads. It's the best thing for them."
Bonesaw nodded. "As...you say." He paused, then laid one hand to his heart. "Hea...ler."
"Hea...ler," Arcade heard the other Marked Men echo.
"Cou...rier. Wan...derer. Heal...er."
Goddamn it. Arcade could think of about a billion things he'd rather have happen than to be inducted into the Marked Men's little religious cult as their newest demigod. He managed a sour shrug. "Whatever."
The Marked Men accompanied the two of them to the edge of the village. "There," Bonesaw rasped, in that horrible, painful-sounding voice, pointing down the roadway that split off and continued between two bluffs.. "Siiii...loooo. There. Go."
"Take care of those men," Arcade pled with Bonesaw, having not the slightest idea whether the other ghoul would actually do it.
"As...you say. Hea...ler," Bonesaw rasped from behind his mask. "And...you. Cou...ri...er. Kill ... Ulysses."
"I intend to," Samara said coldly.
As they took their leave, resuming their journey along the cracked and broken highway, Arcade looked back. The Marked Men were gathered at the edge of the village, dark forms among the ruined pre-war buildings and the stone block huts; they watched silently, their hands on their hearts, receding into the distance as Samara and Arcade continued on down the road.
[*]
They reached the Ashton Silo Control building as the sky was starting to darken. That stony silence had tightened its grip on Samara almost as soon as they had left the village of the Marked Men; it was an almost visible aura surrounding her. It's as if all she can see is the road to Ulysses. The distance in her eyes scared him, but he couldn't think of any way to breach it; he followed her unhappily, clenching and unclenching his hand on the stock of his Plasma Defender.
The Control Station was a one-room concrete building that had been constructed on an overlook, with the right wall abutting a rocky cliff face. A solid-looking metal door was set into the side of the cliff; perhaps it was Arcade's imagination but the door seemed to have an almost sinister air. A crumpled, chain-link fence bristled around the area, with a gate marked by a rusted, bullet-riddled sign:
WARNING
MILITARY INSTALLATION
ANY TRESPASSERS SUBJECT TO F... TRESPASSING... MILITARY PROPERTY...A FELONY ... WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW
The building's walls were jagged stubs, no more than chest high, and its roof was gone. A satellite dish stood on the cliff face above. Wind keened mournfully through the ruins and whined in the links of the chain fence.
One of Ulysses's white symbols had been painted next to the gaping hole where the door had been. Samara said nothing, but he saw a muscle in her throat work. She stepped over the doorframe and inside. Arcade followed, with the eyebot bobbing above their heads.
The interior of the small room was devoid of almost everything save a computer console, standing against the ruins of the north wall like a mute guardian. Its green lights flickered faithfully, signalling that even after centuries of silent waiting, it was still ready to perform its function.
"Those ancients knew how to build," Arcade commented.
Samara did not reply. He wondered if she even remembered he was there. As she went silently to investigate the console, Arcade wandered up beside her. He looked out over the jagged stump of what was left of the wall, taking in the view.
The control station had been built overlooking a large basin, perhaps the size of Freeside. The walls of the basin consisted of the jagged, hollow remains of tall office buildings and skyscrapers, backed by rising bluffs; on the far side, a twisted ribbon of elevated freeway threaded its way through the wreckage. The floor of the basin was almost completely clear of debris, as clean as if it had been swept with a broom, and in the center of it was a low shape that Arcade could not at first understand. It seemed to be a rectangular surface of concrete, slightly elevated, and featureless except for a circular indentation in the middle bisected by a dark line. He could not make heads or tails of it-and then it struck him. He was gazing at the mouth of a missile silo.
"My God," he breathed aloud, feeling sick. He took a step back. The hair was standing up on the back of his neck. He was cold. They put it right in the middle of town, he realized, taking in the surroundings: the ruined office buildings around it, the freeway looping throughout the area. Right in the middle of... His mouth seemed too dry; he wet his lips, wondering if he was going to be sick.
"Samara, did you see-" He reached out, almost unconsciously, to touch her; she shrugged him off.
"ED-E," she said, glancing up from her work. The eyebot chirped and floated forward, examining the console for a moment; then an electric bolt arced from its welding tool to the console, crackling bluish-white. The console beeped pleasantly, and a section of it opened up. A panel with a red lever rose into view.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Going to open the silo lift," Samara replied tersely, without sparing him a glance.
"All right." Arcade looked toward the metal door, inset into the side of the mountain. "If you-"
"Hang on," she interrupted. She pushed the lever down.
A titanic rumbling filled the air; the ground shivered. In the distance, an alarm began to blare, flat and authoritative. Showers of tiny stones cascaded down the rock bluffs to either side of them; beneath their overlook, larger boulders dislodged themselves and went bounding down the slope. What the hell-? Arcade was glancing around, trying to get a handle on what was going on, when an ear-splitting, grinding metallic screeeeeeeech drilled into his ears. His head jerked around automatically toward the source of the screech-and he froze, his blood running cold within him.
Down below, in the concrete structure at the bottom of the basin, the missile silo doors were sliding open.
Arcade was rooted to the spot. It seemed as if he was watching the most hellish nightmares of the Old World made terrifying reality. The alarms continued to scream, echoing across the Divide; that awful rumbling grew louder, stronger, threatening to shake their tiny enclosure apart. Slowly, the rounded nose cone of the missile that had slumbered below the surface of the Divide for centuries was rising into view.
Arcade's skin crawled with horror. It was as if the carcass of some ancient, long-dead monster was coming at last to life, hauling itself out of the grave to wreak untold devastation on the world. As the length of the missile continued to rise from its tomb like the spectre of billions of deaths, he grabbed at Samara's arm, almost completely unaware of what he was doing. "No!" he cried, clutching at her uselessly. "Samara, stop it somehow, you have-"
A brilliant light dawned below as the rocket's boosters cut in, and his words were swallowed up in the thunderous roar of the engines. That roaring filled the world, shaking the ground under their feet. Slowly, the tall column of metal began to lift itself up, into the sky. Samara stood silently, her face turned upward, following the rocket's arcing trajectory.
By the time it reached the top of its parabola, it was evident that something was wrong. The rocket began to wobble in midair, tracing a serpentine trail of smoke. Its gyrations grew larger and larger, and Arcade raised his arms to shield his face reflexively as a brilliant flash of light flared out. The shattering detonation that followed beat against his eardrums and a rush of superheated air surrounded him; he heard the Geiger counter in Samara's PIP-Boy 3000 begin clicking madly. When he lowered his arms, he could see, far off in the sky, an expanding round cloud of smoke and fire.
Oh my God...
Samara's grip on his arm jolted him out of his reverie. "Come on," she said, and jerked her head toward the iron door set in the side of the bluff; it was already folding itself away.
"Samara-"
"Move."Her face was as stony as the bluff above them. She turned and started toward the gaping entryway. Numbly, Arcade followed.
[*]
On the other side of the door lay Hell itself.
The door led into a large concrete vestibule that had been carved out of the rock of the cliff face. Its roof was in shadow, and banks of electronic equipment stood against the walls. The vestibule ended in a large, open wire cage inside a steeply slanting shaft; it took Arcade a moment to realize that he was looking at a rudimentary lift.
The vestibule was rocked with explosions. Tremors ran through the floor underneath their feet; the bulwark of stone around them was shuddering as if from a series of mortal blows. Detonations shattered the air, echoing from the rock walls and assaulting Arcade's ears like the cracking and rumbling of thunder. The entire place seemed to be shaking itself apart around them.
Roughly, Samara strode toward the lift. With no hesitation at all, she stepped out onto the platform with the eyebot following. Arcade started after her, the ground heaving under his feet like the deck of an ocean-going ship. When he set foot on the platform, he felt it shiver and sway. The ominous sound of creaking wires and cables could be heard even over the din.
Samara was tapping at a control console near the front of the lift. He had to shout to be heard over the explosions. "Samara, what the hell are you doing!?"
She didn't spare him so much as a glance. "Ulysses is down there!" she shouted back. "So that's where we're going!"
He started to answer, but a huge detonation made him stumble; he caught hold of the wire side of the cage to steady himself. The wire was hot enough to almost burn his hands. Looking over the front edge of the platform, down the elevator shaft, he found himself staring into a solid wall of fire. Superheated air filled his nostrils, reeking of burning metal. As he gazed down the fiery tunnel, cold fear gripped him, turning his heart to ice and his limbs to water. A very clear image filled his mind of what would happen when the two of them attempted to descend on the lift. Nothing could survive that-
"Are you crazy?" he shouted at her. "Going down there is suicide!"
"I don't care!" Samara roared. "That's the only way to get to Ulysses!"
"You're out of your mind!" It suddenly struck him like a physical blow that that might be literally true. Her face was lined and haggard, almost hollow with intensity as she worked the console. Another roaring explosion came booming up the shaft; a blast of desert wind burst past them, and the lurid light of flames flared briefly over the planes of her face, painting it as if with blood.
"Samara, no-!" He grasped at her arm; she shook him off as she might shake off an annoying insect. "You can't- I'm not going!" he shouted desperately. His throat was raw with the burning air and with straining to be heard through the roaring and rumbling shaking the shaft. More cables were creaking, and there were a series of loud, shearing metallic screeches; a horrible clattering was rising up the shaft. "I'm not going, you hear me!?" He stepped back, toward the vestibule and the iron door to the outside.
Samara swung toward him, and he took another step back, recoiling from her almost instinctively. Her eyes were blazing with an absolutely terrifying white light; her skin was stretched so taut over her skull that he half-expected to see bone poking through.
"Get on the platform!" she shouted at him, her face contorted with an almost divine rage. In that moment, she was the avenging goddess the Marked Men had called her. Dea... whispered a voice in his jumbled mind. "Goddamnit, get on now!"
As he stared at her twisted expression, it seemed somehow as if the surroundings dropped away. The booming of the explosions receded into dimness; their lurid light seemed to flicker silently behind Samara, backlighting her and flaring over her features. The planes and angles of her face were suddenly completely alien to him; his eyes could not make sense of them, could not fit them into any recognizable pattern. A brief flash crossed his mind, there and then gone-that this was not Samara at all, that he was standing in the antechamber with a total stranger.
She's mad.
The thought seemed to have actual weight. He turned it over in his head, examining it from all angles, savoring it while Samara's ravaged features filled his vision. The cold, icy fear that had swept him when he looked down the passage into the blazing inferno was back, filling all his senses, sparkling along his nerves; the world seemed to stand out with a numbing, crystalline precision. Somehow, in that strange, disconnected state, it dimly amazed him that he hadn't realized it before.
"You're insane." The words were calm, cool, spoken with almost diagnostic precision.
"Get on the platform."
Arcade slowly shook his head. "No." With that same distance, he found himself wondering who the person was; she bore some resemblance to Samara, but surely Samara had never looked like this-clinging to the ragged edge of sanity by her fingernails. "No," he said again, and took another step back. "Go down yourself. Without me."
"Get. On." And her finger curled over the trigger of her LAER rifle.
Time seemed to stand still. A bright thrill ran through Arcade's nerves and prickled over his skin: not fear, exactly, but not far off. She hadn't raised the weapon at him-not yet-but she didn't have to. The steady, glowing light in her eyes burned hotter than the beam from any laser rifle.
She wouldn't-
But a deeper voice whispered, Are you sure?
Suddenly, he realized he wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: the elevator shaft, or the woman standing across from him.
Arcade's legs seemed to move almost without conscious thought, carrying him forward, out onto the hard metal floor of the lift. Without taking her eyes off him, Samara pounded the console with a fist. The lift lurched into motion. They were on their way.
[*]
The air in the shaft was so hot it felt like it was scorching his throat and lungs. He could taste the metal, an unpleasant sour tang heavy on his tongue. As the floor of the lift sank underneath him, it shivered as if it were about to fall to pieces any moment; the heavy cables holding them groaned as if they were on the verge of snapping. Showers of sparks jetted brightly as the lift's sides scraped the walls.
We're going to die...we're going to die...we're going to die... The thought repeated itself in Arcade's brain numbly as he struggled to keep his feet. The noise was deafening. Shrill screeches and squeals overlaid thundering booms and explosions, assaulting his ears with sound. His eyes fixed on Samara almost as if by accident: a huge, bulky, blocky armored figure standing at the edge of the lift as straight as a heavy concrete monument. His eyes clung to her as if she were the only thing helping him to keep his own balance.
There was a tremendous detonation and suddenly they were engulfed in a wave of fire. Arcade felt the searing heat on his skin. He started to cry out, convinced this was the end, but then the fire was gone, leaving only the stench of burning in its wake.
"Samara!" he shouted. "Samara!"
He had no idea what he was about to ask her to do-surely to go up was as dangerous as to go down-but it didn't matter. She didn't hear him. Even through the armor her entire body showed tense, as if every fiber of her being was focused on the goal at the bottom of the silo.
More detonations rattled the lift. The smoke was so thick it was choking him; the ozone stench of fried electronics seemed to coat his tongue and chew at the back of his throat. His eyes stung, streaming tears down his cheeks. Further gusts of fire belched at them, singeing his skin and leaving layers of soot over his armor. The screeching metal and thundering explosions were digging into his ears, along with a strange clattering sound that he couldn't identify. He fought to stay on his feet, his hands clenched on his weapons so tightly his fingers were numb. This can't possibly get any worse-this can't get worse-this can't-
Another explosion sent him reeling. His armored shoulder crashed into the chickenwire side of the cage, which absorbed his impact, and he looked up to see-
"Tunnelers!"
The eyebot sang its threat cue at the same time as Samara's shout. Her silhouetted form raised the glowing inversal axe against the backdrop of the fiery elevator shaft. Arcade flung himself back toward the center of the lift, away from the deformed, greenish humanoid shape clinging to the wire above him.
The tunneler bounded after him in one smooth leap. Frantically Arcade clutched at his Ripper. His hands were sweaty and the weapon felt like it was sliding in his grasp. His heart was beating hammerblows in his chest. Shit...Shit...Shit...Samara- More tunnelers were scrambling over the front edge of the lift, and the crackle of Samara's inversal axe reached his ears. The creature swiped at him with its long claws. Arcade staggered backward another step, still fighting with his Ripper, and the tips of its long yellow claws raked along his armor. Something about those claws seemed to stand out to him, clear and distinct. For digging, he thought in a kind of mad frenzy. Just like a mole rat-
The creature lunged for him again and he dodged, as another burst of fire echoed through the raft-only to have another, unseen tunneler take a swipe at him from the side. The lift was swarming with them-they were climbing up along the sides of the shaft, dropping down from the ceiling-a quick glance toward the edge of the lift showed that Samara was standing in a pile of tunneler corpses even as she continued to hack and scream with the inversal axe. This is insane-we aren't going to survive this-
Something struck at his heel and his feet swept out from under him. Arcade fell heavily, banging his helmet against the corrugated metal floor. The jolt was enough to temporarily blind him. His blood froze as two broad, bright eyes, each the size of the moon, filled his vision, to be replaced by dirty yellow claws. He jerked his head aside as the claws crashed into the metal floor less than an inch from his ear-close enough that he felt the breeze and heard them whistle. Shit! The creature was snuffling and growling. The floor underneath him was so hot he could feel it through his armor: he felt as if he were lying on an oven. He rolled to the side, trying to simultaneously evade the tunneler and scramble to his feet. The claws crashed down again as the creature struck at him-
Then Samara was there, screaming in fury. Her axe swept a glowing blue crescent across his vision as she swung it over her shoulder to embed it in the tunneler's greenish-black neck. Black blood sluiced out, almost scalding hot where it spattered over Arcade's upraised arm. Arcade barely had time to react when Samara reached down with one gauntleted arm and yanked him to his feet, the servos in her armor whining. Her eyes met his in a brief flash, then shifted past him. "Arcade!"
He turned, and had the quickest glimpse of a looming dark-green shape with broad bright eyes, before a powerful impact jarred the side of his head. His knees gave way, and he fell down, down, into darkness.
[*]
Arcade's first conscious impression was the feeling of a sharp stinging in the side of his neck. The wave of strength and vigor that flowed into him suggested that the sting had been the needle of a stimpak. He opened his eyes to see Samara leaning over him, her forehead knotted with concern.
"Arcade?"
"Wha...what happened?"
"A tunneler hit you." Tunneler, his mind repeated hazily. "I killed it. I was worried," she admitted, biting her lip. "The tunneler hit you pretty hard. I thought..." She said nothing more, but he saw her swallow; she still watched him apprehensively.
Slowly, Arcade sat up. His head was aching and he felt fuzzy, out of it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, part of him was running down the checklist of questions he had been taught to assess neurological condition: Name...location...circumstances of injury... a chill ran through him as he remembered the Tunneler coming toward him. He shook his head to clear it and tried to take stock of his situation.
His immediate environs appeared to be concrete: a floor underneath him, walls, a ceiling. Underneath him, he saw the outlines of the same seal that had appeared on the floor of the security room in the base when they had first come in. Exitus acta probat, he thought, and grimaced unconsciously. Slight shivers were running through the rock underneath him, and he could hear muffled booming in the distance, indications that the terrific explosions they had come through were still continuing.
He pushed with his hands, trying to stand up, and almost fell; Samara was there at once, offering her metal-clad arm to lean on. The worry in her eyes hadn't abated. Solicitously, she assisted him to his feet, letting him hold onto her huge pauldron as he pulled himself up. She seemed to have the solidity of a metal pylon. Over her shoulder, he could see that eyebot bobbing and hovering, keeping watch for enemies.
Once on his feet, he had a better idea of where they were. They appeared to be in some kind of a concrete landing platform; the lift they had been on was parked at the side of the concrete floor, and the empty missile shaft ran up above them into the darkness. He could see occasional flickers of light reflecting dimly in the gloom and the distant sounds of explosions still came to his ears. Across from him, set into the concrete wall on the other side of the shaft, was one of the metal folding doors. Next to this was Ulysses' white symbol.
"Are you all right?" Samara asked him again.
"Yeah...yeah, I'm fine." He reeled a little as a particularly strong shudder ran through the landing, but caught himself again by putting out a hand and leaning on Samara's pauldron.
"Good." It was fascinating, some distant part of Arcade mused; he could see the cold stranger in her face advancing, wiping away the brief flare of intense relief that had come before. The stony distance flowed over her like a cloak, drawing her shoulders back, tightening her jaw, coming down over her eyes like a veil. She nodded to the door. "We need to go."
Arcade took a step away from her, unsteady, testing his balance. The floor shivered again, but this time he was able to stay upright. He shook his head.
"No."
"No?" She turned to look at him now, and any concern she might have had for him was gone; her eyes were stone white. "What do you mean, no?"
"I mean, I've had enough." Arcade crossed his arms over his chest. A thrill of apprehension ran along his spine. Samara was staring at him with an immobility of expression that seemed to betoken shock. Arcade read in her features the contours of the stranger who had shown herself at the top of the shaft, and he wondered how well he'd ever known her. "This revenge quest against Ulysses is yours and not mine. I'm not going any further."
He held his breath, waiting for repercussions, not entirely convinced she wouldn't suddenly draw her weapon and shoot him on the spot. Her face remained in that peculiar fixed expression. "You don't want to go any farther with me?" she asked him. "Fine. You can go right back up if you want to." She jerked her head back at the elevator shaft. "But I'm going on with or without you."
The last words were almost a snarl. She turned her back on him sharply and made for the door. The tremors of distant explosions still echoed down the elevator shaft, and shivers ran through the rock. From time to time, showers of sparks drifted into view. Arcade thought of the nightmarish trip down, and whether he could survive the ride back up-alone.
He stood there, staring up the fiery shaft, for a long time.