A/N: Of course, Charon can't give the in-game answer to Xen's question, which is "I have a very high Perception attribute. Since I'm an NPC, I'm not limited to things like line-of-sight when detecting enemies, which are flagged hostile by the game engine for my convenience."
14
After another six miles, which took two hours (or possibly a year), Xen saw another set of upright shapes glowing faintly in the infrared. They were up around the next corner, out of normal light vision range. There was a faint blue pulse of gamma as well. "Stop," she whispered. "I've got three signatures up there. Positive for rads."
"Affirmative," said Changeling.
Xen edged over to the tunnel wall, merging her shadow with its shadow. She glanced behind her. Charon was still there. His shotgun was still on his back. He showed no sign of any urge to run forward and kill whatever-they-were. She looked forward again, frowning. The strangers were moving closer. They're almost certainly Ghouls. Is that why he doesn't see them as a threat? "Changeling," she said. "You will not fire unless ordered. Acknowledge."
"Acknowledged," said the packbot.
After a moment she heard voices speaking quietly. All had the scratchy off-timbre sound of Ghoul voices. She couldn't make out what they were saying until they walked around the corner. "-Heard some weird stuff is going on in D.C., you know?"
"Nothing to do with us," said another.
"Yeah, but the BOS might – hang on."
The three Ghouls, all of them of a size that indicated they were probably male, drew back from the nearest light. Xen heard a series of metallic clicks. Weapons?
"Whoever that is, you better speak up if you don't want a bellyful of lead," said the first voice. "I can see the light on your bot."
The sensor tower. I didn't tell her to turn it off, so she didn't do it. Xen felt momentary annoyance with this passive resistance, but set it aside as unimportant for the moment.
"We're not hostile," said Xen. "We're just trying to go North."
"Sounds like a smoothskin," said one of the other two. "Sounds pretty young, too. You out here by yourself, kid? This ain't exactly a safe place."
"No," said Xen. "I'm not alone."
Behind her there was another soft click. She glanced back and saw that Charon now held the shotgun. He wasn't shooting it, though. The sound is a warning, she realized. Like the noise the laser makes powering up.
"Okay, take it easy," said the first Ghoul. "We'll be on our way. You don't shoot us, we won't shoot you. All right?"
"All right," said Xen. "Go."
There was a sound of quiet footsteps as the strangers moved on down the tunnel. Xen turned and watched them out of sight. She waited a few additional seconds until she couldn't see the heat signatures, either. Then she said,
"I'm getting tired. We'll stop next time we find something defensible." They hadn't approached the twenty mile mark, she was sure, but with sore muscles and an empty stomach she couldn't hope to do that well. "And Changeling, cloak your sensor light," she said levelly. "You've got power to spare." And I'm not going to say anything about the fact that you were trying to scare me just now. Guessed they weren't hostile, did you? Or did your threat assessment just register that you and Charon could take them?
"Acknowledged," said Changeling.
Xen moved forward. There was a dry, itchy feeling on the surface of her eyes, as if they were covered with a fine layer of sand. She was suddenly very tired. After a while she whispered, "Charon?"
"Yes," said Charon.
"Walk by me for a minute?"
The big Ghoul's shadow eased up next to her, blotting out the tunnel's flickering lights on that side. He glowed in the infrared like a small sun, the heat artifact of a large and active male metabolism. Which means anything that sees in that spectrum will pick him up yards before it sees me. Not that it's likely to matter down here, unless we run into one of the more specialized rogue Robco bots.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"I do not unnerstand your question," Charon said.
"How did you know they weren't feral?"
"If it is your order dat we converse, den I will converse wit' you," said Charon. "But I do not think I can adequately answer dat question."
"You mean you don't know?"
"No," said Charon. "Dat is not what I mean."
"But you knew the Raiders were hostile," said Xen. "Before you saw them."
"Dat is correct."
"Do you usually know things like that?" Xen asked.
"Always," said Charon. "Speaking of which, would you please excuse me for a minute?"
"All right," said Xen. She watched him draw the long knife and slide off toward a side tunnel they were approaching. Stare as she might, she couldn't see anything. As they came closer and the tunnel yawned wider, she saw that it inclined sharply downward. There was a doorway at the bottom, black under the dim lights. But if he's inside, there are still too many walls between us for me to read his heat signature.
"Stop here," she said. Changeling stopped beside her at the edge of the tunnel mouth. She didn't have long to wait. It was less than a minute before Charon emerged from the doorway, dragging two rapidly cooling mole rats. She only saw the knife wound on one of them. It was at the upper back of its skull. Where it would kill instantly without bleeding much. They must not have seen him coming.
He hauled the two carcasses around the bottom curve of the tunnel, out of sight. A moment later he reappeared, jogging easily up the slope.
"What's down there?" Xen asked, when he was close enough to hear. He stopped beside her, resuming his former position. He didn't seem to be breathing hard.
"Dere is a small room with a private restroom," Charon said. "Probably intended for d'convenience of engineering personnel."
"Could we stop there a few hours?"
"Certainly," said Charon.
"That's why you moved the mole rats," Xen guessed.
"Yes," said Charon.
"Good. Let's go." Xen walked as steadily as she could down the slope. Now that an end was in view, it was harder and harder to go softly. From out in the tunnel, the room looked completely dark. Good, thought Xen. She stopped in the doorway, looking around. It was hardly more than a square box made of concrete, with a desk, a chair, and a door to the washroom on the other side. A thick layer of dust lay over the surfaces. The floor had been scuffed about, undoubtedly by the mole rats and Charon. There were no droppings. They must've been smart enough to use the tunnel for that. Interesting.
"Changeling," Xen said. "Use the vac attachment and clean in here as best you can."
"Shall I also sterilize the porcelain surfaces?" Changeling asked.
"Yes. Do that." Xen moved out of the way as the packbot glided past. She looked up at Charon, who stood in the tunnel beside her. "It'll be crowded with all of us. If I sleep on the desk, can you sleep on the floor?"
"Yes," said Charon.
"Do you need a blanket?"
"No."
There was a hiss from inside as Changeling laser-sterilized the toilet. The packbot was too large to fit all the way inside the tiny bathroom. Xen went to look in the drawers of the newly-dusted desk. There was an ancient clipboard, a pair of metro passes for the Blue and Red lines, a litter of miscellaneous writing utensils, five bottle caps, an empty Nuka-Cola bottle, and a leather belt. Xen pocketed the caps and the metro passes and went to tuck the belt into Changeling's cargo net. You never know.
They ate and drank silently in the small room, listening to the air rush through the tunnel outside. Xen slept curled up on top of the desk surface, under a blanket that smelled slightly of disinfectant and the plastic from Bunni's worn padding. Home.
Four hours later, she woke up screaming. Even waking, the nightmare did not end. It wasn't until she felt the cold metal of one of Changeling's arms against her shoulder that the images cleared.
Xen's teeth chattered. She sat back against the wall, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. She was sweating. The bot hovered in front of the desk, cargo net discarded in the corner on the floor. Charon loomed behind her, a broad and menacing shadow. The room seemed even smaller than before.
"R-run first aid subroutine," Xen stammered. Changeling's sensor blinked twice. Xen couldn't hear the hum over the blood pounding in her ears.
"Scan indicates elevated heart rate and blood pressure," said Changeling. "I am unequipped to read alpha wave activity. Your behavior and physiological activation is consistent with post-traumatic stress." The packbot moved to pick up the net and return to the doorway. This was more reassuring than anything else could have been. Because it means that no matter how bad I feel, I'm not going to die right now.
"I saw them again," she said. "The Doctors. Except they were..." She waved a hand ineffectually. "Cut up. Like the Raiders were. And I saw that body on the wall, except it was screaming. It didn't have a head, but it was screaming. Will this keep happening?"
"It is likely," said Changeling. She rotated so that her sensor faced outward again. Belatedly, Xen hoped the noise had not attracted anything's attention. "Episodes like the one you just had are a typical human response to unaccustomed extreme violence. Your subconscious mind will continue to attempt to process stimuli you cannot absorb consciously."
"It didn't happen to Charon," said Xen. Her eyes were adjusting behind her goggles now, and she could see him looking down at her. The dim light reflected faintly from his red eyes. She didn't remember seeing him rise from the floor.
"Charon is psychologically abnormal," said the packbot. "It is questionable whether he is capable of ordinary human responses."
"I used to be," said Charon.
Xen looked at him in surprise. It wasn't like him to volunteer information.
"As time passed, the nightmares went away," he said.
"How long?" Xen asked.
Charon shrugged minimally. "Ten or fifteen years. But I have unnerstood from my previous employers dat the circumstances were unusual."
"You are still young," said Changeling. "If the stimulus is consistent, which is highly unlikely, it is possible that in a few months you will grow accustomed to it."
"What if I don't?" Xen asked.
"Then you will probably experience what in layman's terms is known as a nervous breakdown. There is a high probability of this outcome," said Changeling. "Our information on Charon's upbringing is that it was deliberately designed to inure him to violence. Yours was not. Neither Bunni nor Tori ever intended to allow you to be exposed to situations such as your current one."
"I know," said Xen. "That's why I reprogrammed them. I need to know. The only way to know is to find my third contributor's ship. The only way to get there is through here."
"Any further discussion of this issue on my part will probably be perceived as manipulative," said Changeling. "Therefore I will not attempt to further advise you at this time."
"Good." Xen slid off the desk. She was still shaking, but the tremor had receded until it only seemed to affect her hands. "I'm not going back to sleep. We might as well go on."