"Question nine: you decide it would be... fun to play a prank on your father. You enter his private restroom when no one is looking and..."

I frowned. I didn't like where this was going.

A. Loosen the bolts on some pipes. When the sink is turned on, the restroom will flood. B. Put a firecracker in the toilet. That'll be sure to cause some chaos.
C. Break into the locked medicine cabinet and replace his high pressure medication with sugar pills.
D. Manipulate the power wattage on his razor, so he'll get an electric shock the next time he shaves.

... The hell? Okay, sure, they had talked about the GOAT exam being pretty weird as far as tests go, but... paternal sadism wasn't really what I was expecting.

I leaned back in my chair, squinting up at the fluorescent striplights lining the ceiling. One of them was flickering slightly; I concentrated on it. Okay. Maybe this was a trick question. Maybe we weren't supposed to answer this one. Yeah... that must be it! But then again, Mr. Brotch had specifically instructed the class to answer all questions. Crap.

Mr. Brotch looked at me questioningly and I quickly hunched back over my desk, pretending to look over the question more thoroughly. Shit. He could tell I was turning this one over too many times and was mentally marking me down as indecisive. Shit! The Overseer hated indecisiveness almost as much as he hated incompetence.

I tapped the eraser side of my pencil against the paper of a few times, biting my lip. Okay, think. Flooding was a serious problem in a vault, since most of the rooms were small, and as it was the vault's purifier was in such bad shape we were rationing water like crazy. And of course water damage was very difficult to repair...

Amata's brow was furrowed in concentration as she carefully marked in the circles, always sure to never have any lead outside the lines. That was such a cute expression. Made me want to kiss her nose.

Dammit, concentrate! Okay. Firecracker in the toilet is the obvious worst answer. The Overseer must've put that one in just for Butch. But then again... there would be no way to light the fuse of a firecracker in a toilet- it would be wet! So obviously the firecracker would be completely harmless. Dammit. Unless blowing up the toilet beforehand was supposed to be the prank, in which case it would be a pretty crappy prank.

Amata was chewing on the end of her pencil, licking the lead before completely marking the circle. There was something distracting about the way she would-

I smacked my forehead. Behind me, Butch snickered at my agitation. The dull throb in my jaw had become a sharper stab, and for a second I wished I had dropped by Dad to get it set properly. But I guess I was trying my best to impress Amata. By looking like a diagonally-jawed idiot. Yeah.

Dammit, dammit, enough fucking around! Answer number three was just plain bad, combining punishable activity and something actually damn dangerous. Then again, they didn't specify the kind of sugar pills, maybe they were harmless... no way. This was my Dad they were talking about here! The guy who raised me! I wasn't going to take chances with his health like that! Fucking Overseer, fucking test, fucking Amata distracting me... fucking Amata... dammit! Come on-

Answer four. A shock from shaving. Wait... shaving...

I scratched at my stubbled chin, a slow, painful smile coming to my face.

Dad never shaved.

Son of a bitch.

Those four words played over and over in my head non-stop for the next ten miles. Even with all that food (if you'd call random crap food) in me, I was still stuck in a mindset of complete angst, rage, and apathy.
I finally understood why some freed slaves would just stare at you blankly once you've unsnapped the collar; they've lost the understanding of what joy and freedom are. There's just nothing there to care about and caring about anything is too much of an effort.

But knowing what I could be mentally reduced to, I fought those negative impulses. The best I could, anyway. Instead of bottling all that anger inside myself, I directed it at the son of a bitch walking in front of me with that detonator dangling lazily from his fingers.

Sparky. That son of a bitch.

My legs weren't used to being used. I had walked back and forth in my cage a few times to wake up the muscles, but exhaustion kept me from making any real progress. So add a hot sun, a fucking long ways to walk, a scratchy steel collar snug around your throat ten sizes too small and a captor who you could probably kill without a second thought. Not a good combination. Especially with those redone stitches in my shoulder itching like fuck and my right leg still stiff from the bullet holes. At least that slaver medic had given me something for the swelling and stiffness.

But having the whole wide world right there made me feel slightly better. After that cage, seeing the cloudless sky and far-off cliffs and overpasses and cracked roads and platueas and random wreckage here and there made me feel almost alive again. Almost. The vibrations in the collar reminded me I was almost dead.

Fuck, I was pissed. That asshole slavemaster in his fancy suit had found a buyer. Isn't that nice- like I was a fucking gun to be traded off or some shit like that. Sparky was overjoyed by that- the guy he captured was bought! He had made a good investment! Well woop-de-fucking-do, you son of a bitch.

I don't know what kept me from just tackling him, swiping the detonator and beating Sparky to death with my boot or something. So what if he pushed that big red button? Did I really have anything to live for at this point? I was more lost than I had ever been, and even my Pipboy's map seemed to show me a different world that I knew-

"They almost cut that off," he said.

I stopped dead in my tracks. I slowly looked up from my wrist and into the face of one son of a bitch. Dirty hair, gritty green eyes set too far apart, a mouth that wouldn't fully close- like he was always in shock or something.

He smiled nervously. "Yeah, I, uh- had to beg a while for them not to. When they brought you in."

"What?" my voice was a growl like two cinder blocks being rubbed together.

The smile disappeared as he gestured at my Pipboy. "Couldn't get it off," he explained slowly, as though expecting me to lose it any second, "they thought it was... you know, valuable."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Uh. You were the first-"

"You think I don't know that, you shitfaced fuck? You think I don't know that? How long have you worked with those slavers?"

The wind picked up, blowing sand and debris around us. I paused as my duster flicked about, unused to not feeling the weather directly on my skin.

Sparky had his hands at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them. "I don't..." He looked up at me, a sudden seriousness in his eyes that took me by surprise. "Two months. And- and eleven days."

My fingers were twitching. I wanted my knife so badly. So instead, I focused on the Skorpion SA vz. 82 at his hip. "Why?" I hissed, wondering how quick of a shot he was.

"To stay alive! They killed my-" he stopped, eyes squeezing shut for a second before pointing at me. "You- look at you! You've killed people!" he shot back accusingly.

"You don't know that."

"I do! You have the look!"

"Shut up. You don't know anyth-"

"No! They all have that look, the same eyes- the slavers, the raiders, all of them! That's how I know! You have them too!" Sparky had taken some steps forward as we yelled at each other. He was in punching distance. Good.

But his words... I couldn't move. There was something in his voice I had never heard before out there, out in the wastes. Fear, yeah, heard that all the time, but fear mixed with... disdain?

I didn't say anything. I just glared at him. He just looked sick. Sick at himself, sick at everything around him, sick at me.

"If I let you go," he said weakly, "they'll kill me. I don't- I don't know how to disarm the collar. If the battery runs out, you'll die." He took a steadying breath. "So, I- all I can do is take you to your buyers."

Wait, buyers? More than one? "Who are they?" I asked in earnest. Finally, some information.

"I'm not sure. They just wanted someone who could handle a gun, so..." He shrugged. "We're almost there," he said. "I guess you'll see."

I sure didn't like the sound of that.

Only a few dusty miles more and we topped a steep rocky hill that gave us one hell of a view. I almost got sick looking at all that space, all that open sky.

Sparky pointed to what looked like a deserted town below. Okay, not even a town- just a few houses grouped together that used to be a neighborhood, surrounded by short walls of scrap metal, tires,
stripped down cars. Even had a dry moat, even if it was pretty shallow. Looked like someone was preparing for war...

"There," he said simply, starting down the hill. I sighed and tiredly followed, almost tripping and tumbling to my death in the process.

I might as well say that I wasn't surprised to see the entire settlement's population- half-starved, ragged, and sparsely armed- gathered at the gate, guns trained on us. Once we got close enough, one of the settlers called out at us to stop and sent out a single man to do the buying.

So, this was the kind of bastard that bought slaves. I mean, yeah, Moriarty had bought Gob, but the story changed so much I wasn't even sure. But these settlers... looked like anyone else. Malnourished, holding their guns like they knew how to use them but really didn't want to, dull-eyed. Their leader wasn't doing much better, but the Colt M1911 in his holster was enough for me to pay attention. That, and the patchwork burlap sack over his shoulder...

"This it?" their leader asked. It? Like I was thing? "Yeah," Sparky replied stonily. "Pay up."
The leader tossed the sack to Sparky's feet and a few caps rolled out. Sparky needed only to eye the bulge to know that it was an even hundred- pretty impressive. He picked up the sack, slung it over his shoulder, and handed the detonator to the leader.
"All yours," Sparky stated, almost professionally.

The leader nodded, thought he looked a little uncertain. Sparky turned to go, but stopped and dug around in his pockets for a second. He pulled out a half-pack of gum and tossed it to me.

"You're still a son of a bitch."
Sparky said something that sounded a lot like "yeah, you too," and walked away back up the hill, over it, and out of sight.

Someone grabbed the back of my collar. I automatically swatted the hand away, but instantly froze as his other hand held the detonator- my detonator- with the thumb over the button.
The leader grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. His teeth were yellow and chipped to almost nothing. "Hope you're up for a fight," he said. I slowly looked around the settlement- outpost- and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

... Well, shit. Dodge one bullet to walk into another.

Yeah, filler is boring.