A/N: I'm dilating the amount of time that the Rad-X lasts. I think we can probably agree that nobody would develop an anti-radiation drug that lasted thirty seconds per dose.
Of course, it didn't even occur to me that Bell shouldn't even logically have anatomy that would allow her to be raped until Thug-4-Less mentioned it. Oops. I can of course come up with a couple of possible explanations ex post facto, but I can't see Xen asking about that, so I'll just have to ask you to suspend disbelief again...
24
Before dawn, they were in sight of a long treeline at the base of rolling hills. Old nightmares and new ones chased themselves through Xen's head that day when they stopped to rest. She woke up before dusk, fist in her mouth to stifle a scream. She felt behind her for the big rock in whose shadow she lay and scooted back against it, even though it was uncomfortably warm. Her goggles were still on.
The last she remembered of the dream was Charon coming toward her with the combat knife, saying something about the contract. There had been a super mutant as big as a house behind him. It was about to obliterate them both with a stomp of one enormous foot.
She shook her head to clear it. Charon caught the movement and turned to look. He sat slumped in the shade of the same rock, close enough to touch. For an instant she caught a glimpse of his lips moving in some internal dialogue, and then he straightened abruptly and looked down at her.
Waiting for orders. Just like always. She felt a peculiar warmth at the thought.
Changeling hovered near them, her teacup chassis so dull with dust that it barely reflected the sun. The packbot's shadow stretched out long and black toward the East, merging with the shadow of the rock. Xen could hear pacing footsteps nearby.
"Is that Bell I hear?" she asked.
"Yes," Charon said. "Apparently she does not sleep."
"Changeling, what time is it?"
"Approximately seven o'clock p.m.," said Changeling. "The sun will be setting shortly."
"All right. Charon, help me up." Xen waited for the Ghoul to unfold himself gracefully upwards, then reached for his extended hand. She winced at the popping noises from her joints as he pulled her effortlessly upright. Sleeping on the ground was not like sleeping on a desk. For one thing, desks and counter tops were notoriously lacking in small rocks. It had been too warm for her blanket again. She dusted herself off as best she could.
Ugh. I hate being dirty. I'd give every cap I've still got for a shower.
"What's our distance from the site?" Xen asked as she buckled her gun belt back on. She had asked more than once yesterday, too.
"If nothing unforeseen occurs, we should reach it within four hours," Changeling said. "Allowing for travel over uneven terrain and the necessity of pathfinding among the trees."
Charon, at this point, was heard to mutter something about nothing unforseen. The accent was too heavy for the words to be quite clear, but Xen thought a couple of swear words were included.
"Come on, Charon," Xen said. "Let's get some food and get going. Bell, do you eat?"
"No," said Bell. She stopped pacing, and the taut line of her shoulders relaxed a little. "Are you all right? You made sort of a funny noise a couple of times."
"I get bad dreams," Xen said. "Things out here aren't like things in the – things where I grew up. I'm only just getting used to all the violence."
"I'm having a little trouble with that, too," said Bell dryly.
Xen rinsed her mouth with water as she passed packages to Charon. Then she dug out a hair brush and brushed the dust out of her hair as best she could. It was a little greasy when she tied it back, but she felt better.
"How's your processing?" Xen asked Bell as they started off. "You seem less talkative today."
"I did a lot of reorganization last night. I had to dump some sectors, but I think I'm over the worst part now," Bell said. "The error messages are a lot less frequent." She looked around. "I'm trying to evolve some new subroutines for dealing with live threats."
"I guess that's good," Xen said.
Bell shrugged. "Maybe. I'm still working damage control on the fly here. That means I'm creating programming myself, and I'm not supposed to be able to do that." She smiled tightly. "The techs would have a collective aneurysm if they knew. Ha."
"Wait," Xen said, going back one remark. "You had to dump some sectors? Of memory?"
"That's right," Bell said.
Xen tried to picture this. "How do you decide what to give up?"
Bell's smile was small, and tight across her teeth.
"I started with all of my original command overrides," she said. "Including the locational function check that they used to catch me to begin with."
"Which is why none of my bots can do that," Xen said, imagining the havok possible if Changeling were able to simply delete her own overrides. Then, belatedly, "They used a what?"
"Originally it was meant to make us easy to locate if we were buried under debris or hidden in smoke," Bell said. "If someone says our model number and 'location,' we have to say 'here.' Of course, it's also a way of confirming that someone is an android – if you know their model number."
"But you still remember that," Xen pointed out.
"Sure I do," Bell said. "It's in positronic memory. It's experiential. I deleted the subprogram-level record that makes it a compulsive response."
"So if you can't delete experiential memories, does that mean you can't actually make yourself forget what happened to you?" Xen asked.
"I wish I could," Bell said. "But no. That takes special tools and it has to be done from outside, by a tech. Not even hard trauma will do it unless it's completely destructive."
"You mean unless it kills you," Xen said.
"You could put it that way," Bell said. "If I were human. But it doesn't really bother you that I'm not, does it?"
"No," Xen said frankly. "I'm only seventy percent myself – which I think you've probably guessed. All my friends have been robots, except for Charon. And he's not like other people. Believe me, I'm glad," she added quickly. "I'd never have survived the last few weeks without him."
Without him and his two invisible friends, Xen thought. But I don't want to have that discussion right now.
Conversation faltered after that. It was very dark among the trees, and Xen pulled down her goggles and opened her inner lids fully. This only helped a little. The hills and the enormous thermal mass of trees radiated all around her, masking living things. Charon was occasionally heard to mutter to himself, but Bell was silent now, staring at everything around them as they went. Twigs and needles snapped under Xen's feet, even in her moccasins; Bell was even worse. Charon's leather boots made no noise at all.
It seemed like much more than four hours before Changeling said,
"Geiger counter is registering an increase in background radiation," at almost the same time that Bell said,
"I'm picking up some rads."
"How many clicks?" Xen asked.
"Twenty per minute," Changeling said.
"Stop." The packbot halted obediently as Xen dug through packages for her small supply of Rad-X. She swallowed the large white pill and chased it with a drink of what was, by this time, very warm water.
That should do for a couple of hours.
"Changeling, note the time at first dosage. Acknowledge," Xen said.
"Acknowledged," Changeling said. "The time is 10:24 p.m."
"Charon, are you still doing all right?"
"Yes," said Charon.
"What about you, Bell?"
The android snorted. "Damn right I am. The only things on me that rads can hurt are inside a half-inch of titanium. And that's under the DCUVRAP." But she was looking quickly from side to side, and her arms were tightly folded against her chest again. Xen didn't even need to hear the obscenity to know she was nervous. There was no knowing what was going on inside the android's positronic brain, so Xen tried not speculate.
"All right," she said. "Changeling, lead us toward the source. It's got to be the from the crash site. Keep your laser charged up and cloak your sensor light." She felt her heart beat faster in a way that had nothing to do with their walking pace.
This is why I've come. This is why I built Changeling and hired Charon. This is why I've learned to use a deadly weapon and made it through all these weeks of long walks and being filthy and risking my life and theirs.
We're almost there.
"Acknowledged," Changeling said, over the rising hum of the laser turret. They had not moved more than a few steps before Charon said,
"There may be danger here."
Xen was not at all surprised when he drew the shotgun from its back holster a minute later. She was watching Bell, to see how she would handle the sudden movement. The android turned her head to watch, but didn't jump or twitch.
"What is it?" Xen whispered.
"Yao guai," Charon said.
He started forward quickly. Xen stared around, but could not find the heat signatures among the thermal mass of trees.
"Charon - "
Charon stopped, without turning to face her. "Please," he said, one syllable with no tone to it at all. "Dis time I can do it. Stay under cover."
"Go," Xen said. She didn't say come back alive. He obviously had the incident with the super mutants too much on his mind already.
"What was that about?" Bell whispered. Xen watched Charon's heat signature dwindle among the trees as they flattened themselves under a low bush. Branches scratched at Xen's hair.
"Some super mutants grabbed me a few days ago," Xen replied very quietly. "They very nearly killed us both. I'd guess he's upset that he couldn't prevent that."
"He must like you," Bell said. The tone of her voice, to Xen's surprise, was wistful.
"I'm not sure he knows what that is," Xen said. "He wants badly to keep me alive because I'm his employer. His contract is everything to him." She spoke as quietly as she could and still hear herself; she was straining after the sound of the shotgun firing. There had been nothing yet. She had read a little about yao guai, the barely-recognizable descendants of the Capital Wasteland's black bears. The pictures had mostly been taken from a distance, and with good reason. The mutants were bigger than black bears and built almost like fighting dogs, tense and hard-muscled. And, given what it took to maintain such a frame, they were much more active hunters than black bears as well. There would be no slinking away from strange noises for a hunting pair of yao guai. They would respond to new circumstances with a fierce and predatory curiosity.
I wonder if they can hear us now. Smell us? I don't remember how they hunt exactly... Which way is the wind blowing? she asked herself. The air seemed very still. What would they make of a scent like hers, like Bell's? Would she even seem edible?
Charon will. They won't be bothered that he's irradiated if they live in the middle of this...
She heard a shot. Another.
"Take dat, ya bastard!" roared a voice from up ahead. Xen smiled, only partly in relief. Bell was staring at her without comprehension. But then, her hearing was probably better than Xen's. She could undoubtedly hear the quieter, moderating voice as well as the loud one.
"Xen," she said urgently. "He's talking to himself in different voices."
"It's all right," Xen said. "He's done it for as long as I've known him. It seems to be a stable arrangement."
"Oh, good," Bell said under her breath. Then, "Is there anyone here who's functioning at optimum?"
"Changeling probably is," Xen said.
Bell glanced up through the foliage at the hovering packbot. Whatever remark she had about this was lost to posterity, since at that moment there was an animal snarl from up ahead. There was a sound of something smashing through the brush, and then another pair of shots, one after the other.
Xen watched the familiar tall heat profile materialize from among the trees, coming unerringly back to their position.
"Xen," said Charon's voice. "Clear."
Bell and Xen wormed out from under the bush and stood up. Xen looked at Charon anxiously as she brushed herself off, but there was nothing irregular in his heat profile.
"Are you all right?" she asked him.
"I have no injuries," Charon said. "And I believe I have found what you are looking for."
Xen's heart leaped into her throat.
"Lead the way," she said.