Author's note: The songs for this chapter are Ke$ha - Die Young and Carly Rae Jepsen - This Kiss.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Trielle

After my interrupted grope session with Harkness the previous night, I wasn't eager to face anyone in Rivet City, least of all the man himself. Reluctant to stay holed up in my room all day, I decided that today would be a fine day to try my luck with the broken off bow section of the ship where Horace Pinkerton was rumored to live. Well, haunt was the word people had been using, but I thought it couldn't hurt to see if the man was still alive. By all accounts, he was the only one in Rivet City who knew how the city had really been started, something that Moira in Megaton dearly wanted to know for her Wasteland Survival Guide.

For that alone, I was willing to brave the mirelurk infested area, but I had another motive for seeking him out. I'd been finding holotapes all over the Capital Wasteland about a runaway android from the north who was looking to lose his past. According to the last tape I found, he'd been directed to Pinkerton for the facial reconstruction and memory swap, and I desperately wanted to know just who the android was, even though I'd been warned off by a belligerent woman named Victoria Watts who ran an underground railroad for escaped androids. She had given me an android component, had instructed me to give it to Doctor Zimmer if I felt any mercy for the escaped synthman, and tell the doctor that the android was dead. I had no intention of turning the android over to the doctor, no matter who he was now, but never let it be said that my overweening sin isn't curiosity. It had gotten me into trouble more than once, but I could no more stop poking my nose into everything than I could stop breathing.

So I buckled on my spare set of armor, shouldered my trusty Chinese assault rifle, and set off to beard the wild Pinkerton in his lair. Since I didn't fancy a dip in the river to get to the underwater entrance of the broken bow, I spent a frustrating half hour picking the lock on the other door into the area, only to be confronted with a bewildering array of traps and several very nasty mirelurks. I'd missed breakfast in my haste to get away from anyplace public, so I munched on barbequed mirelurk, charred over the flames of one of Pinkerton's booby traps and seasoned with a splash of Nuka Cola. Thus fortified, I thought I was prepared to deal with anything the world could throw at me.

I was wrong.

When I finally made my way to Horace Pinkerton, he was obliging enough to interrupt his work to tell me all about how he founded Rivet City. Perhaps obliging wasn't the word, but he didn't throw me out on my ass, so I considered that a plus. He rambled on about how the city had been an abandoned aircraft carrier, taken over by the Naval Research Institute for the hydroponics bay in the bowels of the ship, interspersed with grumblings about how Doctor Li had come in and taken over his lab, co-opted his team for her purposes, and driven him out of the lab into the broken bow of the ship. I sympathized with him over Doctor Li's serious lack of people skills, and took copious notes for Moira's book, but all too soon his egomaniacal ramblings started to get on my nerves. Despite his hatred for my nemesis, he was starting to repeat himself, and I hastily changed the subject to his work on the android. At first, he tried to act like he didn't know what I was talking about, but after I played him the holotapes I had collected and stroked his ego a bit, he readily spilled the beans.

Harkness, he had said. The android called himself Harkness now. Through the thundering in my ears, I vaguely registered him droning on about how easy the whole thing had been, how he'd kept detailed records of the process in case he ever needed to use them against Doctor Li. He offered me a couple of pictures and a holotape, and I automatically put out my hand for them, belatedly registering that I was staring at a picture of a completely unfamiliar man, coupled with a picture of Harkness. Before and after, though both shared the same sad look in the eyes, the same sense of hopelessness. The after picture must have been taken before he got the Harkness memories, and I ached for both the man he was and the man he had become.

Pinkerton gave me the passcode to his computer and told me I could download the android's last recording before he had his memory wiped. He advised me not to say anything to Harkness because he wouldn't believe a word I said on the subject. I came out of my haze long enough to determine that he hadn't, in fact, told me the whole truth about Harkness. Horace Pinkerton had not erased the android's original memories; he'd just buried them deeply under a new layer of memories. He gave me the code to recall the suppressed memories, and I managed to get my lips to form coherent words to thank him. I accessed the information he had indicated in his computer and downloaded everything to my Pip-Boy, still reeling from the unintended revelations. Pinkerton's notes indicated that he had stolen the memory profile from some guy named Braun, and that he hadn't known whose life he was putting in the android's head, until the android woke up and started calling himself Harkness.

He can't be serious, a little voice in my head screamed. There's no way Harkness is an android. He's playing a horrible joke on you.

But he has pictures, replied a darker side of my mind. Pictures and a holotape in Harkness' own voice. What if it is true? What if he's not human? You practically threw yourself at him last night in a totally embarrassing fashion. What if he can't have those kinds of feelings because he's not human? What if he was just being polite and wanted to let you down easy?

He sure acted interested, and so what if he's not human? What does that change? He's still the hottest guy you've come across since leaving the vault, someone who really seems to get you. Pinkerton said that androids were indistinguishable from humans in all the ways that matter.

Only one way to know for sure, whispered that insidious little voice. Use the memory recall code on him. If it works, then you'll know. If it doesn't, no one's the wiser, and you can still go give that android component to Dr. Zimmer like you were planning all along.

But what if it does work, argued the other voice. He was running away from the Commonwealth. His life there was so bad that his only recourse was to become someone else entirely. Do you really have the right to force him to remember who he was? What he was? He's been living someone else's life this whole time. Is it fair to take that away from him?

Zimmer's got people looking for him. Even if you give Zimmer the component, he might not be fooled. Sooner or later, he'll figure out who the android has become. Harkness needs to know that he has a big fat target on his back, so he can decide where to go from there.

I suppose you're right, the voice conceded. God help us all if this really works. I just wonder who the real Harkness was…

I had been pondering this weighty moral dilemma all the way back to the entrance, and it was my extreme good fortune that I didn't encounter any more mirelurks while in my emotional haze. I was so focused on my problem that a bomb could have gone off over my head and I wouldn't have noticed. Obviously, I would have to tell Harkness about his past; use the recall code if he didn't believe me, but where to do it? I didn't want to just walk up to him in the marketplace and announce to all and sundry that the man they knew as hard-assed Chief Harkness was an android. I would have to get him alone to break the news, and the only place I could think of was my room at the Weatherly Hotel.

Great, the little voice said sarcastically, he's gonna think you're hitting on him when you invite him to your room, the one time you're not trying to get his pants off.

I marched into the marketplace, projecting a serenity I certainly didn't feel, and walked resolutely up to Harkness. I drew a deep breath to calm my shattered nerves. Steady, Elle. You can do this. It was hard to look him in the eye after what we'd been doing last night before being interrupted.

"I need you to come with me," I said, without preamble. "Right now."

He looked startled to see me. "What…Elle? I'm on duty." He gave me a sheepish look, rubbing the back of his head with one large hand. "Um…I really want to…to…well, you know, about last night? I get off in a few hours…and we could…"

"This is more important," I insisted, grabbing his hand and dragging him with me until he stopped resisting and followed me, after snagging one of his guards to take over his shift. We reached my room in record time and I ushered him in, closing the door behind us.

"Your room?" He smirked and raised his eyebrows. "I suppose I could take a few minutes out of my day for this." He leaned toward me, and I stopped him, laying a hand on his lips to silence him.

"We need to talk," I said seriously.

"Shit," he muttered. "That's what my wife said, right before she went to go live with her mother. If this is about last night…?"

"It's not," I said. "Last night was...great." I paused, not sure how to continue. "How to tell you this? Those memories of your wife aren't real. You're a robot from the Commonwealth," I finished miserably.

Harkness gave a short bark of laughter, followed by an incredulous look. "What?! Are you high? My wife disappeared while I was in a coma. The only good memories I have are of her, the rest are… Trust me, those are as real as they come."

"I wish it were true," I said sadly. "I talked to Pinkerton, the one who gave you your new life, and I got these from his computer." I held out the pictures and started the holotape for him to listen to.

He looked at the pictures and listened to his own voice on the tape, then shook his head. "But this is impossible. I can't be a robot! I'm a human being." He looked at his hands like he'd never seen them before. "I breathe, I eat, hell, I cut myself shaving this morning." He pointed to a small nick on his chin. "I was bleeding! Robots don't bleed!"

"It's not real blood, Harkness," I said unhappily. "It's synthetic, just like everything else. I'm sorry about this, I really am, but it's true. You're not human."

"I'm not sure what to say," he said in a stunned voice. "I'm not sure what to even think about all this. I'll admit, this is pretty convincing evidence, but it doesn't make any sense. How can this be possible?"

"I'm sorry, Harkness," I said dejectedly, "but this is the only way. Activate A3-21 Recall Code Violet." I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly not the reaction I got.

"Agggghhhh!" Harkness clutched his head, his eyes going from grey to a purple so intense it was hard to look at it, and collapsed bonelessly to the floor.

"Harkness!" I screamed, going to my knees beside his body. I rolled him over, and his eyes were open but unseeing, his chest still, his mouth gaping in a silent scream. "Harkness!" I yelled again, shaking him violently, but got no response. "Goddamn it, don't do this to me! I've already lost my mom and my home. I can't lose you too!" My eyes filled with tears. "Zimmer can't have you," I growled. "I won't let him take you!"

I worked the sling on Harkness' plasma rifle free from around his shoulder and slung it over my own back. Running down to the science lab as fast as my legs would carry me, I unslung the rifle as I opened the door. I heard Dr. Zimmer on the lower level, demanding again for the scientists to drop what they were doing and find his android. As I descended the stairs, I saw Doctor Li standing in front of Zimmer, shaking her finger and insisting that he leave. I aimed at his bodyguard Armitage first, dropping him with one shot, then carefully sighted over Doctor Li's shoulder and popped Zimmer in the head, the plasma discharge dissolving him into a puddle of green goo. Doctor Li screeched and threw up her hands as the remains of the good doctor splattered all over her pristine white lab coat, and I smiled evilly at the sight of her covered in glowing green slime.

"Problem solved," I said flatly, rifling the corpses for anything of value and leaving the lab before Doctor Li could stop sputtering long enough to say something.