A/N: It's never clear what powers androids in the game's lore (nor need it be; this isn't hard sci fi, like an Arthur C. Clarke novel or the Schlock Mercenary webcomic). It's stated that A3-21 and those like him "can" eat and digest, but not that they have to or need to. With the game's retro aesthetic, there aren't a lot of super-compact power sources on view except in weapons. My plan is to continue to be vague about it.

Xen's statement about the amount of time that has passed since Project Purity tallies with the chronology from TFW: Thistle.

Chapter 44

"How far is it?" Bell whispered a few minutes later.

"About twenty miles from Underworld," Xen whispered back. They were in another stretch of tunnel very much like the last stretch of tunnel, but there were landmarks she recognized. They passed a set of four undamaged red lights in a row, and she knew an old generator still humming away in its alcove between the tracks.

"You'll never walk that far," Bell said, not unkindly. "I doubt you'll even be able to find your way. Let's stop somewhere. Charon and I will keep an eye out."

"I'll find it," Xen said. "It's not complicated. We just keep going 'til the tunnel is blocked and then go through the offices to the next one. Then it's ten more miles."

"Suit yourself," Bell said. "You should at least eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

Bell shrugged. Charon made no attempt to argue.

It was two or three more miles before Xen started to stumble. Bell helped her without comment. Charon ranged ahead periodically, scanning for threats. He came back with the knife in hand a couple of times, from encounters with mole rats or unusually aggressive radroaches, but there was nothing larger.

Xen stifled a yawn somewhere around five miles from Underworld. She felt she was slowing down – mostly because she could tell Bell was moving more slowly, to avoid outdistancing her – but she hated to stop when they were so close. The dark tunnel seemed bare and surreal, the stuff of dream or nightmare, not of any real physical threat. There was something she should be remembering about that...

"Oh," Xen said, and stopped. Bell stopped with her. Charon jogged back from the corner up ahead.

"Clear," he said.

"For now," Xen said. "It's possible we'll run into Stephanie or Michelle. That would explain why there's nothing big in here."

"Who or what are those?" Bell asked.

"Sentry bots," Xen said. "They'll obey my voice, but they'll try and kill you if they see you first. They're a cooler heat profile than a human." She waved a hand at the nearest wall. "Hard to see through concrete."

"It will not be a problem," Charon said.

"Are you sure? I don't want them hurt. We might need them later," Xen said.

"I am sure," Charon said patiently.

"All right."

They walked for perhaps another hour. It seemed much longer. Xen almost fell once. Bell caught her with stiff, warmish fingers around her upper arm.

"Sorry," Xen said.

"Not to worry," Bell said. "Just be careful. I don't want to bruise you."

"Me, neither," Xen said, and then the tunnel seemed to get darker all of a sudden.

She blinked her eyes open and found herself looking at a flat surface. A moment's squinting and frowning resolved this into a ceiling with a dead florescent light on it. There was something hard underneath her back and buttocks, and her legs were dangling.

"Damn it," she said. "I passed out, didn't I?"

Bell's oval face hovered into view. "Yep," said the gynoid cheerily. "I thought you probably would eventually. Low blood sugar plus exhaustion. Very predictable. You're just really stubborn, aren't you?"

"You have no idea," said Charon's voice. Xen sat up with a muffled groan. Her legs were, as she had anticipated, very stiff. Charon leaned against the wall beside a steel clamshell door that was currently closed. Xen was on top of a desk with her legs hanging off one side. Bell had lumped the net bag on the chair that went with it. It hung off either side, but she supposed it was cleaner than the floor.

"I think I recognize this place," Xen said. "We're about halfway."

"If you say so," said Bell. "I figure we came about five miles carrying you. I didn't want to go further in case of positional asphyxia. It's not healthy to carry a person across your shoulders for too long."

"I don't imagine it did anything for Charon's shoulder, either," Xen said. She looked apologetically at the Ghoul. He looked back almost without expression, but this time she caught the muscle twitch in the vicinity of his lips. It was far from being a smile, but it was probably the closest he'd ever come.

"I carried you," Bell said. "We thought it would be better if he had both hands free."

"You carried me and the bag?" Xen asked.

"Sure," Bell said. "I don't get muscle soreness. And even in the dark, I'm not likely to run out of power as long as the background radiation's at normal or higher. Besides, you're light. You going to eat something now?"

She handed Xen a package. Xen opened it without further argument.

"I'm sorry," Xen said. "That was inconsiderate of me."

"Not so much inconsiderate as dumb," Bell said. Her tone was impartial, even thoughtful. "Like I said, it's no trouble for me to carry you. We'd've been in trouble if we'd run into your sentry bots, though."

"You're right, of course," Xen said. She caught the Ghoul's minute lip-twitch again from the corner of her eye.

"Charon thinks you're funny," she said.

"I am?" Bell grinned hopefully at the big Ghoul.

Xen laughed a little herself, embarrassed but not unable to see the humor. "You weren't trying to tell me off, but that's what you were doing."

The smile vanished. "Oh. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, I earned it," Xen said dryly. "Which Charon also finds funny, I gather."

"Extremely," said Charon. Bell's mouth crimped up at one corner. In a human this might have produced a dimple, but evidently the structure of her face was wrong for that.

"So how long was I out?" Xen asked. She extracted a dried apple from the box and began to eat it. She was surprised to find she was quite hungry.

"Two and a half hours," Bell said. "It'll be dawn up top before too long, not that that's likely to make much difference down here. Want some water?"

"Please. Charon?"

"I have eaten," Charon said.

"Good." She accepted a bottle of slightly cloudy water from Bell. It tingled on her tongue, though not unpleasantly. "Mm. Rads. You know, the bots tried hard to keep me away from radiation when I was growing up," Xen said. "It wouldn't have occurred to them to test whether I was resistant to it. I mean, they could've exposed a tissue sample or something. But then, I could've done that, too, and I didn't." She swallowed again. "I wonder if they've started a clone yet."

"You'll know pretty soon," Bell said. "Either way, I'm sure they'll be glad to see you. An AI doesn't change its mind that easily. Not even mine."

"God help any other male-looking androids we run into, then," Xen said.

"I feel sorry for the poor bastards already," said Bell. Xen gathered that the profanity was merely for emphasis, not an indication of background error processing. "Want one of these little cake things? Charon seems to like them."

"I had no idea." Xen accepted a snack cake to go with her dried apples. "We have about a million of them in the Lab's storage, or we did. I don't think the Doctors liked them very much. They ate different things when they worked for the Enclave."

"In the Commonwealth, too," Bell said. "But then, they had their own water purifiers. Hydroponics."

"You mean they had fresh plants?" Xen asked.

"Yep," Bell said. "Some fish, too."

"Hm." Xen wondered fleetingly if it might be possible to set up a small tank in the lab, just for growing fresh vegetables. It would be difficult to get hold of the seeds. Five years after Project Purity, surely someone was growing produce again. If nothing else, it would be an excellent source of income for the first several people to do it.

First things first. She finished eating and slid off the desk, stifling another groan. Ten miles to go.

The soreness faded a little as they moved down the stretch of track on the other side of the office space. The first time Xen had stepped out into a subway tunnel, everything had been new and strange and fascinating. Now it was just dull. But then, she'd been out under open sky for a long time, too. Her early agoraphobia was almost forgotten.

For better or worse, I am not the same hybrid who left the Lab. I wonder if they'll be able to tell? She couldn't say that she felt different, exactly. It was just that she couldn't quite remember who the person had been that had first come down this tunnel with Camel. It was someone she knew, perhaps a very close acquaintance, but she found it hard to see that person as herself. And it's been less than a year. I'm sure of it. What will I be this time next year, if I'm still alive?

That thought produced a strange conflict of feelings. On the one hand, the concept of another several months like the last few months was frightening and exhausting. She couldn't imagine choosing to do it voluntarily. But then she considered what she had brought away with her: Charon, and Bell, and the gun at her hip and the knowledge of how to use it; and the alien blaster snuggled down in her knapsack, waiting for her further study or just to shape itself once more to her hand. She hadn't grown much humbler. Hopefully she'd grown a little wiser, although recent events did not, she admitted, militate in favor of that hypothesis.

Well, she must have some kind of survival instinct. She'd bought Charon's contract, hadn't she? Maybe that would always be the best she could do, to keep someone around who would prevent her from being killed by her own stupidity.

In which case, it's a good thing I know how to build more bots.

The miles seemed to pass slowly, though Xen was sure she walked faster than before. It was around the four mile mark that she saw the roach. Charon stopped ahead of her, but did not draw his shotgun, and then she heard the scuttling sound.

"Radroach?" she asked.

"No," said Charon. "Look."

Xen stepped up beside him and looked at the thing that now squatted in the middle of the broken concrete walk. It was shaped more or less like a radroach, with the right number of legs and the long and awkward wing cases; but it was obviously made of steel. It had far too many antennae and no eyes at all. She did not miss the tiny laser turret on top of what would, in an actual roach, be its head.

"How about that," Xen said. "You must be Roach 5 or 6. Respond voice click five."

The small bot clicked loudly, five times in a row.

"So they left in my command access," Xen said. "I guess they at least hoped I would come home. I built three of these, did I ever tell you that?" She said to Bell over her shoulder. "The third one mapped the way to Underworld for me. Proceed with function, Roach."

The small bot scuttled past them and vanished down the tunnel.

"Tori must've built it from looking at what's left of the others. Either they wanted to expand their map of the surrounding subway, or they're keeping an eye out for me," Xen said. "In which case I hope its onboard camera got a good capture. The voice recording will be relayed back, at least."

"So dey know we're coming," Charon said.

"Almost certainly. Keep an eye out for the sentry bots. I'm sure neither Tori nor Bunni expected me to come back with a large, armed male. They'll be less surprised by Bell. They know me and robots. Um, no offense, Bell."

"None taken," Bell said. "I'm okay with what I am."

They didn't encounter any sentries, however. The next six miles were tense, and slower than Xen would have liked, but they passed without incident. Then they rounded a bend in the tunnel and came to a familiar pile of debris.

It was higher than Xen remembered. The side tunnel was completely blocked off.