Author's note: Short chapter this time. Took longer than I thought; my beta was swamped. Hopefully next chapter should be finished sooner.
Samara said nothing when he rejoined her, but the line of her shoulders relaxed a bit. Arcade said nothing either, though inwardly he was grinding his teeth and muttering a thousand curses in English and Latin.
At Samara's touch the door folded itself away, revealing a blue-lit metal room with a table and banks of computer equipment. A staircase sank into the floor on the left. Above the stairs were the words:
LAUNCH
DECK
Samara headed briskly toward the stairs, with Arcade trailing resentfully behind her. Below was a concrete passageway, which came to an end at another metal door. The door had a sign over it:
ASHTON
LEVEL 2
The door opened to reveal a ruin-scape.
A metal walkway ran around the edge of a large pit perhaps 30 feet across, with a circular depression in the ground. The bottom was a jumble of rock and twisted metal, with small fires burning here and there. Arcade could feel the heat baking up from the ground.
A quick flash came to him of the missile launch they had seen above, and he suddenly realized they were at the bottom of the launch silo. It came from here. The twisted wreckage before them sent a chill down his spine, and his arms prickled with gooseflesh despite the heat. This was what it did when it launched, he realized. The thought of what it could have done if it landed-
"Arcade." Samara broke into his reverie. "Come on."
One look at her and he could see the destruction hadn't even registered. "Fine," he said with bad grace.
The unsteady walkway led to a set of stairs down to the floor of the pit. Stepping off, Arcade could feel the heat from the rock baking right though his boots; he felt like he was back in the Mojave at high noon.
Samara's PIP-Boy 3000 led them through a tunnel in the rock that opened into a lofty underground space: a cavern that appeared to have been created from fallen rubble. Shafts of light in which particles of dust danced illuminated the vast interior. Across from them -
"It looks like the ground floor of a building," Arcade murmured in surprise.
Red brick walls punctuated by broken windows stretched up to the roof of the cavern, above a set of arches with a gaping door frame.
"Must have settled during the war." Samara's voice was shaded with relief, and she tossed Arcade an almost grateful look - clearly taking his comment as an olive branch. Arcade was stubbornly silent. It's not that easy, he thought.
They crossed the cavern and stepped through the open door. As they did, Arcade realized the tower listed severely to the right, enough to throw him off balance. The walls were a dingy gray and the floor was carpeted in a filthy tattered red that squished unpleasantly under his feet. He followed Samara to a set of stairs, and they climbed up and around past three landings to find themselves facing a door marked EXIT.
Samara pushed it open.
[*]
The now-familiar piercing whistle came from the eyebot almost the moment they passed the door; Arcade had a brief impression of a flat rooftop on the edge of a yawning chasm stretching out to a wall of solid rock in the distance, but it was no more than a flash as his gaze went to the bot. Samara jolted as if from an electric shock, and her face set into a rigid mask of fury. Once again that grating, grinding voice rolled out of the eyebot's speakers, echoing back from the rock walls of the canyon.
"Hopeville, High Road, Ashton-tiny cracks in the earth. Nothing compared to the road carved ahead. Before you-this is the edge of the Divide. Ahead lies your work, the history you burned in the earth. What you brought to the people here."
"You son of a bitch, what do you mean!?" Samara raged back at him.
Arcade could feel his own temper flaring. "You know, what the hell is your problem?!" he demanded of the floating eyebot. "I don't know what kind of effect you're going for with this cryptic game playing, but it's just making you seem like a dick. If there's something you want us to know, why don't you just tell us straight out intead of ... of jerking us around like this?"
The bot turned toward him. "Not 'us,' child of the Enclave. Her. You don't count here. Lost son of a dead and dying people, there's no place for you in the Divide ahead. No place...and no reason. This is between me and her. Might as well turn back now...walk away while you still can."
I tried that. Arcade's jaw tightened. "Just tell us the big damned secret and let's get this over with. We already know most of it," he added. "There was a town here that had something to do with Samara and it was destroyed. Just tell us the rest already!"
The eyebot hummed. Arcade was reminded unpleasantly of Dala's hum, back in the bowels of Big Mountain, and he felt himself tense. "Not for you to ask me, shadow man," crackled from its speakers. "It's for her."
The amount of emotion in that single word made the bot's speakers whine with feedback. Arcade glanced over at Samara, who was tense, rigid and staring hatred at ED-E. He reached out and rapped on the surface of her armor. "Well, ask him."
He had never seen a better illustration of the term "boneheaded obstinacy" than Samara's face right at that moment. "That's just what that bastard wants me to do."
"I thought that was what you wanted too?" Arcade needled her. "To find your history?"
She swung toward him, looking surprised and maybe a little hurt; Arcade sighed. He stepped closer to her. "Look," he said in an undertone, "the son of a bitch is going to keep jerking us around until he gets what he wants. You might as well ask him to tell you and just cut this short." As she continued to stare at him, he added, "I suspect he isn't going to tell you where he is until he's gotten you to ask for his precious little secret anyway, so the faster you get him to spill that, the faster he'll tell you what you want to know."
For a moment, she remained tense, her eyes hard; then, to his surprise, she growled, "Fine," and jerked away from him. "All right, you bastard!" she called to the eyebot. "Tell us. What's this history you want us to know?!" She paused. "Or haven't I earned it yet?"
"Never thought you'd make it this far. Thought the Divide would finish you, leave you lifeless, bleeding, like it has so many others-that you'd be just another body, left in the sands. I underestimated you, Courier. Shouldn't have. You've come this far. You've earned your history."
Samara looked like she was about ready to attack the eyebot with her teeth, and Arcade couldn't blame her; even through the eyebot's speakers, Ulysses's voice dripped condescension. Samara started to say something, then stopped and fought it back. She drew a deep breath.
"Tell me."
"Your shadow man had the right of it," that booming voice rasped. "You've learned most of it already...what it was, anyway. Not the how of it, nor the why. And the 'why'...that's what matters. As if anyone can ever truly know." Samara was almost trembling with rage. "Started with a package...or perhaps, I should say, ended. We're Couriers together, you and I; you walked the West as I walked the East. Both of us know what sort of power lies in packages. Messages.
"Town, your shadow man spoke of. A town, and destruction. A town you built, a town you maintained-"
"I never built a town!" Samara raged at him.
"But you did. Opened the road, cleared the path, prepared the way-and kept those roads open, after the settlers came. Settlers, wanting a new life, a life of neither Bull nor Bear. Something new. Something beautiful, combining the best of the Old World and the New together. I saw this town myself. Following you."
"What do you mean, following me?" Samara spat. She was standing as straight as a lightning rod, watching the eyebot with fixed attention.
"Caesar sent me ahead, sent me to scout the lay of the land. Cut supply lines, cut NCR off, starve the Mojave...Bite and hold. Methodical, separating the NCR from its sources of power, until the two-headed Bear itself must die. Heard of you, Courier, caught whispers of you, like a long-lost ghost. Saw it all. Knew you saw it too-you must. Why there is no future in either Bear or Bull. Bear...Bear is diseased, barely clinging to life. And the Bull-when it reaches the end, the sea, it will turn on itself and die. That must have been why you built this town. A new way forward."
Incomprehension shone on Samara's face; Arcade felt himself bristle again. It was strange-the dismissive way Ulysses spoke of the NCR ground on his nerves like broken glass. "The NCR is stronger than you think," he found himself calling to the eyebot. "I wouldn't bet against them."
"I would," crackled from the eyebot's speakers, short and contemptuous. "They're soft. Weak. Divided. Bull is strong. Determined. All the things they're not. That's why Bull will win."
"The NCR may look divided, but if they sense an existential threat, you'd be surprised at how fast they unite. Their social structure and institutions are a great deal more developed and robust than those of Caesar's Legion, and they have a lot more practice at this," Arcade parried. "The Legion was a creation of Caesar and Caesar alone, and now that Samara's taken him out, I'd give it less than a decade before it falls apart completely. You know it and I know it." Samara was staring at him with that same, blank, uncomprehending stare; Arcade barely saw it. He could feel anger starting to tighten its grip on him.
"NCR is built on the foundation of the dead. Old structures, old institutions, old knowledge, worn out relics of a dead world, dead people. Is that why you care for them, shadow man? Because they remind you of your Enclave, clinging to the past, to traditions that failed? Your Enclave failed and NCR will fail too. You of all people should know."
That anger tightened still further. "First, I already told you: they're not my Enclave," Arcade called back. "And second, the Enclave and the NCR are nothing alike. Where the Enclave drew on - drew on the worst of the Old World traditions-" he stumbled only slightly over that admission "-the NCR draws on some of the best. When the NCR takes the Mojave, unlike your Bull, they'll actually work to improve-" He caught himself. "Wait. Why am I arguing this with you? I don't even support the NCR!"
"Wise of you, not to back the loser, shadow man," rasped Ulysses. "Perhaps once was enough."
The casual taunt stung him further, and he started to reply, but felt a touch on his arm. Startled, he looked over to find Samara. Her brows were drawn together.
"Don't, Arcade," she murmured. "You're just giving that bastard what he wants."
Arcade drew a breath, released it. "I suppose you're right," he sighed. "Just tell us your goddamned story and let's get this over with," he shouted to the bot.
"Not much more to tell...at least, not the how of it," the voice ground from the speakers. It occurred to Arcade distantly that he really didn't care if he ever heard the phrase "the how of it" ever again. "Story begins with a package-yours and mine, Courier. Story ends with a package: the story of the town you built, the life you brought, the dreams you made, the way you showed."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Samara demanded. "What was this package?"
"Something old, from a land long dead. Old World technology, before the Great War. Piece of equipment, with military markings on it...like that metal machine that follows you now. When you brought it to the Divide, it started speaking...and the Divide answered back, in fire. Codes, most like. Military codes. I was there, watching, waiting. Learning. I saw. What it looks like when a dream finally dies." The eyebot's speakers reverberated with bitterness. "Why did you do it, Courier? That's what I'd like from you. Not that it matters. Or will matter. Doubt there's anything you could say that could lessen the power of the message you carried. The message I'll pass on."
"And what message was that?" Arcade asked.
Ulysses's voice rolled back from the surrounding cliffs. "That one can kill a nation. That one can kill a dream, an idea. That the strongest ideas are no match for a man or a woman who brings death at their heels. This message I will bring home to the Mojave."
"Cryptic bastard," Arcade muttered under his breath. He could see Samara standing still as if she didn't recognize what she was hearing. "Look," he called aloud again. "So this town that you claim Samara killed-this town was your family?"
"Family?" The crackling static voice seemed surprised. "No. 'Family'...that's a word long dead. Died at Dry Wells, died in Vulpes's smile. Not 'family,' shadow man: future. One I never suspected existed, thought could not exist...and in the end, was proved right. Would rather have been wrong."
Arcade frowned, started to speak further, but Samara cut in. "I don't care!" she shouted at the bot. "I don't care about any of this! All I care about is how to find you, you son of a bitch! Where are you? Where are you?!"
The machine hissed and spat more mechanical static.
"All right. Done with words then, won't get you where you need to go. At the end of the Divide, through trenches, wreckage-that's where you'll find me. Here amongst the Dead. Keep your eyes on the tower that cuts the horizon. You'll find your way. Made it this far; not much farther to go. I'll see you there. You. The machine. And your shadow man. Courier."
A final burst of static like machine gun fire, and the eyebot chirped, the presence possessing it gone.
Samara made a sound between a snarl and a sob. She looked for a moment as if she wanted to charge the eyebot and attack it with her fists; the small creature chirped nervously and retreated a bit. Can't blame it, Arcade thought sardonically. He approached Samara.
"I'm going to kill him," Samara choked. Her eyes shone too brightly. " I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, Arcade, I promise you, I'm going to kill him-"
Arcade laid his fingertips on her vambrace. "Samara, we can't stay here," he told her quietly. "Come on. We need to get moving."
She pulled away. "You bet we do," she spat. "We're going to find that bastard, you hear me? And when we do, he's going to regret it." That low, guttural snarl came again, and her body tight with determination, she stalked to the edge of the roof. Arcade followed, clutching his Ripper uneasily.
[*]
Samara crouched at the edge of the roof, studying her PIP-Boy intently. Arcade knelt next to her. The drop was dizzying. He could feel air currents from below wafting up, brushing his face with sand and grit.
"They're down there," Samara murmured, her eyes fixed on the screen. "Marked Men."
Arcade shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting. The building on which they stood was located at one end of a vast, giant ravine or cleft in the earth, demarcated by striated rock walls stretching up high above them, up to the sky. Directly below them was an open space littered with chunks of massive skyscrapers, often several floors' worth, embedded in the ground or fused into the rock walls somehow. The building chunks were strewn about in a haphazard array, like a child's blocks. Beyond the open space, the uneven walls of the ravine stretched into the distance, where, straining his eyes, Arcade could see that they seemed to dead-end in a distant rock face topped with a slim metal tower holding a blinking red beacon.
Keep your eyes on the tower that cuts the horizon, Arcade remembered, then cursed under his breath. Now I'm hearing that asshole's voice in my head too?
He dropped his eyes to the open space directly below him and saw what Samara had meant: there was a small gathering of those beehive-shaped stone huts below, and he could just make out the ant-like forms of Marked Men milling in and around those huts. Behind the huts was a windbreak made of debris with - Arcade's blood ran cold - a warhead lodged prominently in among the chunks of concrete and hunks of old signs. Sweeping his eyes over the area, he saw another warhead nestled in the lee of a building to the left.
Makes sense, he realized after a moment's thought. If the Marked Men really were a form of ghoul, then building their encampment around a warhead would be a good way to capitalize on the healing powers of its radiation.
"I see them," he murmured in answer to Samara's earlier comment, keeping his eyes on the milling dots below. "Look like at least half a dozen, maybe more. I don't think they've noticed us yet."
"They haven't," Samara murmured, her eyes still on her PIP-Boy.
"How do you want to play it?" he asked. "Do we go down there or-?"
He never got a chance to answer. Samara lifted her eyes from the PIP-Boy screen and produced an olive-drab, boxy weapon from within her armor. A flash of recognition raced through him.
"Samara, no, wait-"
She leveled the weapon and pulled the trigger. A sizzling beam of light lanced out from the box, stabbing into the warhead embedded in the windbreak behind the camp. Searing white light blinded him, and he felt the detonation tremble up through the bones of the tower to where they stood. A moment later a second explosion smacked against his eardrums, and the tower shivered till he thought it would fall. Then, silence.
Arcade remained still for a moment, blinking to clear the afterimages from his eyes. Beside him, he could hear the sounds of Samara re-stowing the laser detonator within her armor, then drawing and loading Elijah's LAER. He was clenching his teeth so tightly he thought they might crack, and his hands were knotted into fists at his sides. The eyebot whistled cheerily.
After what seemed like eternity, he drew a careful breath, then another. In a studiously neutral voice, he said, "They might have been friendly, you know."
"They weren't." Samara nodded at her PIP-Boy screen. "This said so."
"Did it." Arcade dug his fingernails into his palms.
"It did." Samara turned. "It looks like there's a ramp down this way. Let's go."
[*]
A fallen girder at one side of the roof formed a ramp down the side of the building. The two of them cautiously picked their way down the beam-Arcade worrying that at any moment the beam would cave in under Samara's titanic weight in her Powered Armor-and scrambled through a broken window into a trashed room with a stairwell set into the floor. "Down there," Samara nodded, and they started down the stairs, around and around and around.
White graffiti was splashed against the wall on one of the landings:
the Divide
Arcade frowned at the words. White this time instead of red, he mused. I wonder what it means. He glanced over at his companion, wanting to raise it with her, but she strode past the inscription without a second look. Only a muscle in her throat tightened. After a moment, Arcade sighed and followed her.
The stairs dead-opened into a C-shaped room-probably some kind of office complex in a past life, with joins from interior walls still visible on the walls and floors. The two of them stepped carefully around rusted shelves, through a jumble of desks and file cabinets-past a battered, fallen Nuka Cola machine and a couch tipped up against the wall, in what must have been a lounge space. More broken out windows led to another girder ramp, which ended in a shattered building fragment with concrete steps down to the ground-and then, the two of them emerged into the smoking ruins of the Marked Men's camp.
Here, down at ground level, Arcade found the scale of the destruction simply overwhelming. Huge chunks of skycrapers bulked up on all sides, many times higher than his head, looming like the wreckage of old ships' hulls. The grim rock walls of the Divide loomed higher still, stretching up seeming to forever. Not a place built on the human scale, that's for certain.
The ground in front of them, a level, rubble-covered plain that might once have been a parking lot or part of a street, was strewn with body parts, scattered around the remains of the Marked Man's huts. The stench of burned flesh and decay filled the air. Arcade could hear the clicking of the Geiger counter in Samara's PIP-Boy as she strode out across the open ground, showing no reaction to the carnage around her. She stopped in the center and bent her head, studying her PIP-Boy's screen. Arcade glanced sideways and his eye fell on a burned, bare skull. One of Samara's victims, he thought bitterly. Then as he looked more closely, he saw the deep gouges and cut marks at the temples.
Not one of Samara's victims at all. He bit his lip. There was only one reason to make those sorts of cutmarks on bone. Arcade's stomach lurched as he took in the implications, and he quickly looked away.
"We need to go straight," Samara said tersely, gesturing ahead, past a looming skyscraper lying at a thirty-degree angle. The eye-bot bobbed around her head. "This way."
She didn't even see them, Arcade thought, glancing back at the mutilated remains. Sourly, muttering curses under his breath, he followed her.
She led him past a ruin of perhaps three shattered buildings to a place where the rock walls narrowed in to each other. With no surprise, Arcade saw that another warhead was nestled right at the place where the walls met. Samara stopped some distance away, withdrawing the laser detonator from within her armor.
Arcade drew a breath, carefully censoring himself. "I suppose you're going to detonate that one too?" he asked, his tone scrupulously neutral.
"Do you see any other way to keep going?" Arcade was perceptive enough to detect the edge of hostility in Samara's voice. Now is not the time, Arcade, she seemed to say.
"Fine," he said, crossing his arms. Samara turned away, dismissing him, and raised the weapon again. Arcade shielded his eyes as the brilliant white light dawned before him, feeling the detonation press against his ears. The ground shook, and he caught himself on the wall of rock beside him.
He raised his hand to shield his eyes and looked back to the road ahead. A segment of building hanging precariously from a cliff in front of them swayed; then there was a cascade of boulders and the building went crashing to the ground with a dull roar. In the distance where it landed, a cloud of dust rose.
Samara studied her PIP-Boy screen. "Goddamnit," she muttered under her breath.
"Problem?"
"I think that building is blocking the way ahead." She fiddled with the knobs for a moment. "Okay," she said at last. "Let's go."
They forged ahead, between two jutting walls of rock, to emerge into a somewhat larger open space. To the right was a two-story building with one corner collapsed, revealing the two floors in cutaway; ahead of them a solid wall of rubble loomed where the building had fallen. Checking her PIP-Boy again, Samara nodded to herself and then gestured to the right.
"Over there," she said. "Around the rock wall, past the building."
And yet again she went and Arcade followed, as the light grew dimmer and the sky darkened above. Faint pangs of hunger were gnawing at him; he contemplated asking Samara if they could stop and rest for a bit...then glanced at her solid, unbending form and dismissed the idea.
They passed between more gigantic buildings lying on their sides, following a looping path until they came to another warhead embedded in solid rock. Arcade didn't even bother remonstrating with Samara this time; he just watched, silent and sullen, as she detonated this one too.
Beyond it was a building, half-embedded in rock, with one wall fallen in. Samara stepped through and into a darkened corridor that dead-ended in more rubble. The corridor wall was shattered on one side, leaving a jagged gap. Samara stopped there, gazing into the darkness beyond.
"What's that?" Arcade asked.
Samara dropped her gaze to her PIP-Boy 3000 screen. She fiddled with it a bit.
"The Cave of the Abaddon."
[*]
They stepped beyond the wall into a small antechamber cut into the rock, lit by the remains of a fire in an old trash drum. There was a short passage from the antechamber that Samara plunged through at once. Arcade went after her...
And stopped, his breath caught in his throat.
Beyond the antechamber was an enormous, cathedralesque space, stretching up and up and up above their heads, with the other end of the cave-a vast distance away from them-lost in shadows. The roof was composed of massive chunks of skyscrapers toppled like dominoes at odd angles, resting against each other to form a vaulting arch. Shafts of sunlight worked their way through the fallen buildings above them, slanting down to the rubbled surface below and spreading a diffuse, mellow light through the huge empty space. Motes of dust danced in the beams.
The ground slanted gradually away from them down to another fallen skyscraper whose face served as a floor; Arcade scraped his foot on the ground, dislodging a shower of rubble that echoed as it rolled down the slope. The echoes whispered back to them dimly from the vast recesses of the cave.
"My God," Arcade murmured-somehow the size of the place seemed to command a reverent hush. "This is incredible. Samara, did you know this was here?"
She shook her head slowly, biting her lip. Arcade turned, craning his neck and straining his eyes to make out details of the roof.
"I wish you still had that camera Michelangelo gave you," he murmured. "You should take a picture."
She shook her head. "We don't have time. Come on, we need to get through this."
The two of them started down from the small ledge, the eyebot bobbing behind them. As they traced a path between piles of rubble deeper into the depths of the cavern, Arcade winced at the sound of their footfalls echoing back to them. He found himself almost instinctively trying to make as little noise as he could, so profound, so almost reverent was the hush.
Not that it did any good. The clanking of Samara's powered armor and the whining of its servos made Arcade want to cringe. The noise carved a wide swath through the smooth stillness. Worse, Samara didn't seem to either notice or care about the assault her armor was mounting on the majestic silence; her eyes were stone white again, and her jaw was clenched as she forged ahead as if bulling her way through concrete. Arcade desperately wanted to tell her to shush, but didn't quite dare.
"Is there anything in here?" he asked her once, as they stopped near a huge concrete wall fallen sideways, jutting up like the prow of a ship.
Samara studied her PIP-Boy. "I don't know," she murmured at last, frowning. "It's hard to tell-all the concrete, I guess maybe I'm not getting a clear signal. Doesn't matter." She looked up. "If there's anything in here, we'll find out soon enough."
They continued on past the fallen wall, past more piles of rubble. Arcade began to recognize medical debris; then, they came upon a fallen sign bearing a large medical cross. Some kind of clinic? Just then he spotted an Auto-Doc nestled against the base of a huge, fallen, sunken building, wedged into the rock and blocking off one end of the cavern. A hospital, maybe? He was about to mention it to Samara when she stopped so suddenly he almost bumped into her.
"What is-" he started to ask, but she hushed him. She had gone completely still, her head raised, poised on tiptoe, her entire body electric with tension.
"Up ahead," she murmured back, so softly he could barely make out the words. "I don't think it's seen us yet..."
"What's seen us?" he asked.
Samara didn't reply. Slowly, she took her sniper rifle from her back. It was a special weapon. Arcade had heard her call it the Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle; he had the vague idea that it was connected with Boone in some way, though how Samara had gotten it and why he permitted her to use it, he had no idea. She raised the rifle to her eye.
"Boone, give me a hand," he heard her mutter under her breath, and could not repress a reflexive wince at the words. He couldn't see what she was sighting; he held himself still, scarcely daring to breathe lest he interfere with her shot.
The rifle cracked out-once, twice. And a second later, he heard Samara hiss in victory.
"Got her!' she growled.
"What?" he asked in an undertone, reluctant to break the silence.
She lowered her rifle, returning it to her back; then glanced over at him with an odd lightness in her face; she seemed almost cheerful. She jerked her head. "Come on," she said, and forged up a slow rise of rubble, headed unerringly in a straight line. She stopped at the crest of one of those billowing waves, and Arcade followed, panting slightly.
"There," she said, pointing toward the ground.
Lying on the ground before them was the largest Tunneler they had seen yet, perhaps twice as large as the ones that had swarmed them in the elevator on the way down. One eye was a bloody red ruin; the other was the size of a dinner plate, glowing faintly in the gloom.
"It's huge," Arcade murmured. A strange unease filled him. "Why is this one so much larger than the others?"
Samara shrugged. "Does it matter? At least now we don't have to fight it."
As she knelt to check the large Tunneler for loot, Arcade let his eyes roam the area until he spotted an outcropping made of chunks of concrete, cemented together. They had seen something similar back in the Highway Overpass; Arcade frowned.
"Samara, look." He pointed to the outcropping. "I think it's another one of those burrow things."
Samara rose from her position beside the Tunneler and came forward. Like the one they had seen previously, this outcropping had a large hole in it, so large that Arcade could not span it with his arms. "Sure is big," she commented. "Do you think this is that Tunneler's - "
"Shh!" Arcade cut her off with one suddenly upraised hand. He thought he had caught the faintest of sounds, drifting upwards to him from the mouth of the burrow.
Samara fell silent instantly. Noticing his fixed attentiveness, she tilted her head, listening too. In the stillness, they could hear sounds: faint, clicking sounds, scratchings, rustlings, hisses, emanating from the darkness within the burrow.
"Something's down there," Arcade murmured.
"Damn right." From within her armor, Samara produced the flare gun they had gotten off the dead NCR trooper. She popped a flare in the barrel, aimed it, and fired down into the mouth of the tunnel. The red flare sailed down, a shining star. The clicking, scratching sounds turned to growls, and panicked scrambles. The light of the flare gun reflected off perhaps half a dozen rapidly retreating dark forms.
"Scattered them at least," she said, glancing down at her screen. "My PIP-Boy says this part doesn't last too much longer; we should be out before they have a chance to regroup-"
"Samara, what's that?" Arcade interrupted. The concrete lip of the burrow was rough under his hands as he leaned forward, peering into the interior.
"What's what?" She joined him.
Down below, the flare had come to rest, still sparkling. The red light was shining off a multitude of round, shiny shapes, packed together on the floor of the burrow in rough rows. The shapes were a glossy, dark green, the same as the tunnelers, and perhaps the size of a human head. It took Arcade a moment to figure out what he was seeing, but then he looked up at Samara and saw the same realization in her eyes.
"Eggs," he said quietly.
Samara nodded, her face long. "How many do you think there are? Dozens?"
"Maybe. Maybe hundreds." He bit his lip. "That big Tunneler you killed-I think it was a Tunneler Queen."
The two of them stared down into the burrow, silently contemplating the huddled multitude of eggs below them. A strange, cold unease was creeping down Arcade's spine. Somehow, that huge number of eggs down there bothered him. He couldn't say why, exactly, but he found his mind retracing the route they had taken from the Mojave...calculating distances, travel time... attempting to estimate migration patterns, waves of advance... He couldn't guess what Samara was thinking, but she looked serious.
Her eyes met his. As if an agreement had been spoken between them, Arcade rose to his feet and retreated from the mouth of the burrow, while Samara reached into her armor. She pulled out of a couple of landmines, which she dropped down the burrow without arming. The yellow, circular disks smacked into the middle of the egg mass. Then, a bouquet of frag grenades emerged from inside her armor; she pulled the pins, tossed them after the landmines, rose to her feet and retreated rapidly.
...three...four...five... Arcade counted under his breath, when a muffled explosion shook the rock under their feet. Dirt, pebbles and chunks of rock drifted down from the ceiling, and a column of smoke rose from the mouth of the burrow. After waiting for it to dissipate, Samara drew her flare gun again and approached. She fired a shot down; Arcade, leaning over, saw the lurid red light reflecting off a sticky mess of smashed shells, embryotic fluid, and small blackish-green things that might have been tiny tunneler bodies.
With an air of satisfaction, Samara returned her flare gun to her armor. She straightened from the mouth of the burrow.
"Come on," she said, nodding in the direction they had been going. She started off. Arcade followed, wondering in his heart if they had done enough.
[*]
The lowest bank of windows on the building Arcade had speculated was a hospital was completely broken out; and past the Auto-Doc, the rubble heaped up into a small hill that rose to ground level of the nearest window. They went inside, and up the slanting floor; a door led to another switchback metal staircase that shook and rang under Samara's armored tread. Arcade followed, with the eye-bot bobbing silently at their backs.
i am all alone
was scrawled at the first landing, and under it, the word in all caps:
SMILE!
Arcade thought about pointing it out to Samara, but then dismissed the thought. The eyebot chirped behind them.
At the top of the second landing, they stepped out into a long, L-shaped space that had probably been two rooms at one point, judging by the shattered remains of a wall between them. Arcade nodded to a door in one wall.
"There?"
"There," Samara confirmed. Behind her, the eyebot whistled. Samara pushed open the door and they stepped through the door and outside.
The orange-brown Divide sky arched above a flat open space that ended in a sheer, hundred foot drop-off. The building's roof, Arcade realized as his eyes made out details: the flat roof; the wind, the brown canyon wall across from them.. The eyebot gave another chirp-
And then again the familiar high-pitched whistle came, grating along Arcade's nerves like broken glass. He flinched involuntarily.
"You!" Samara raged, drawing her weapon.
That piercing whistle came again, echoing across the vast open space surrounding them, and on the heels of it, that reverberating, booming voice.
"Thought that explosion, that building falling deep in the Divide, might have been your work-wouldn't kill you, maybe close. Perhaps your shadow man-but no. Did you pull him through, I wonder? Knew you'd survive-but no need to go any farther. You've brought me what I need: that machine with you, sealed in the Hopewell silo. Needed someone to unlock it, bring it home. Now the signal's strong enough, no need for you to carry it anymore. I can call your machine to me."
Call your machine- Arcade glanced at Samara, and saw only confusion on her features.
"What-ED-E?" she demanded, speaking to the eyebot as if it could answer. "What do you mean?"
Again, that screeching whistle, Ulysses's booming voice-this time with a faint trace of surprise. "You gave it a name. What was it to you? Companion? Slave? Weapon? Like your shadow man...all of that, nothing compared to its primary function. It's a messenger. Like us-and it shares our history." Ulysses's voice sharpened. "If you feel its loss, remember-you could have turned away at any time. Gone back home and none of this would have happened. But you had to make one last delivery. And that's why I knew you'd come. Courier. Couldn't stay away...it's who you are."
Samara was staring at the eyebot with baffled rage. "What are you even talking about?"
"The machine you brought-it's mine now. It's coming home. I'll reduce it to parts, just enough to function, to be aware of what's happening. What's inside that machine, that's all that mattered. All the machines here, made of the wreckage from the Divide...and all that was brought here. Inside its frame, it carries the message you brought here...and it'll do what it was programmed to do: whatever it can to get home. The giants here will listen to it. I'll bring the Divide to your home, your nation. Let its flag burn, just like you let the Divide burn."
The incomprehension on Samara's face did not change; it was clear that whatever Ulysses had said had gone completely over her head. Arcade, on the other hand, felt a cold, crystalline fear unfold in his chest; the implications of what Ulysses had said, and what he meant, burst on him with the clarity of a sunrise. He means to do it, Arcade thought in a kind of numb horror. He means to launch the missiles against the NCR...to punish Samara...for whatever he thinks she's done to him...by destroying her home, just as he thinks she did his... And buried, darker, a flash of grim amusement: If he thinks nuking the NCR will hurt Samara, he really doesn't know her as well as he thinks.
"ED-E's not yours!" Samara shouted at the eyebot. "ED-E's my friend! You can't take him away-"
That whistling screech sounded again, and Ulysses's voice: harsh, rasping, smug.
"Big Mountain access code: Ulysses. Command override: Navarro."
The little bot shuddered. Crackling sparks arced out from its frame shell, leaping over its round chassis. It rose up above them, turned on its axis, and without so much as a parting whistle, shot over the edge of the building on which they stood, arrowing off, deeper into the Divide. Leaving them behind.
"ED-E!"
Samara's face went white. Arcade had seen healthier color on gut-stabbed victims. She lunged forward after the bot, and Arcade's breath caught in sudden terror, as he had a visual of her plunging right over the edge of the hotel roof.
"Samara! No!" Instinctively, if somewhat foolishly, Arcade grabbed her by the upper arm and threw his weight backward, trying to restrain her. She could have thrown him around like a doll in her Powered Armor; there was no way he could have been able to hold her back, and she shouldn't even have been able to feel his grip, but somehow she heeded him. She jerked to a halt spasmodically. Her face was absolutely stricken.
"ED-E!" The word was almost a sob. "You bastard! You bastard! You son of a bitch, Ulysses!" She yanked free of Arcade's restraint and sank to her knees, rocking back and forth like an injured child. "You son of a bitch! ED-E! ED-E!"
Arcade knelt beside her, that churning fear still in his gut. "Samara-"
"He took ED-E away!" she practically sobbed.
"I know," Arcade said, speaking gently-he was still afraid for her, though irritation stirred restlessly within him. What am I, chopped liver? "Samara, I know-but we can't stay here. We have to keep moving. Look," he said, pointing over the edge of the roof, where the bright lights of tracer bullets arced up over the edge. She looked up at him blankly, with total incomprehension, and he cursed internally. "See that? We've been seen by the Marked Men down there. We can't stay here. It's not safe. We have to move. Samara. Samara, please-"
He managed to get her on her feet, though that stricken expression did not leave her face. She was reeling like a ship in high seas. Arcade was half out of his mind himself just from seeing her distress; her white expression and obvious pain ran through his own gut like a knife. Without thinking of what he was doing, he took her arm, trying to half-support, half-guide her. Looking back on it later, he would shake his head at his own foolishness; in Powered Armor as she was, if she had tried to rest any of her weight on him, she would have squashed him flat. With effort, he managed to manuever her over to the edge of the roof, where he had seen a fallen girder leading down to the ground. As he carefully helped guide her down it, he saw out of the corner of his eye that they were passing a billboard with the scrawled message:
LET IT ALL END
Any time now, he thought grimly.
His fingers closed around Samara's rerebrace as he gently urged her downward.