- II -
(July 2276)
"This had better fuckin' work, man, or I swear to Christ I'll gut ya," Butch rumbled into his Pip-Boy as he shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair next to his dresser.
"Hey, be happy that I even have a way for you to get your shit back," Wally's voice retorted from the small speaker on the device. "When Stevie confiscates things, they tend to stay locked up."
Butch took a minute to run a comb through his meticulously styled hair even though the effort was likely pointless, considering where he was going. "Yeah, well, your brother's a wanna-be rent-a-cop on a damn power trip."
Wally snorted. "True enough. He's always been an insufferable bastard, but it's gotten worse since he switched jobs and started security training." He paused as someone called his name in the background. "Okay, I gotta go. My parents are both at work, Stevie's maintaining batons in the lower level, and I'm helping Susie study in the rec room, so my apartment should be empty for at least a couple hours. But if you get caught, I had nothing to do with it."
Butch's forehead creased as he went over the plan again in his head. "Yeah, yeah, catch ya later."
Once he hung up, his stomach tightened into knots, but he'd never admit to feeling nervous. He shook out his limbs and did a few boxing moves in front of his mirror to loosen up. No mistakes. One more serious demerit and he could kiss his barber career good bye to start one in the septic tank business. His Majesty the Overseer had said so himself. If there was one thing Butch's father had gotten right before his death, it was the accurate classification of Alphonse Almodovar as a supreme asshole.
Satisfied that he was as ready as he'd ever be, Butch left his room and headed for the front door, hollering to his mother that he was going out. Game time.
He sauntered down the fluorescent-lit corridor of apartments, trying to look inconspicuous as passing neighbors glared at him in suspicion. The only drawback to spreading the Tunnel Snake name was the public scrutiny, which made tasks requiring stealth next to impossible. Fortunately, the Tunnel Snakes took care of their own, and he had more than enough help to pull this off. As he rounded the corner, he caught sight of Princess 101 flagging down Jonas Palmer, who was heading in the opposite direction.
"Jonas! Hey," Amata greeted, hurrying up to the medical technician when he stopped and turned around. "Do you know where Ivy is?"
Butch kept walking, but glanced at the small decorated package in her hands. A peace offering? Word around the Vault was that she and Ivy Ashburn had had a falling out a while ago.
"I'm afraid I don't," Jonas replied. "She tends to disappear when she's not doing her intern work at the clinic."
"I know," Amata said with a sigh. "Could you please give this to her for me? I'd visit her when she's on duty, but my training classes are scheduled at the same time, so…"
"Sure, no problem."
Butch had already passed by, but he listened until they bid each other good bye and went on their way. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen Ivy more than a handful of times in the past few months. Now that they were all busy preparing for their assigned vocations, he didn't see much of any of his peers except when the Tunnel Snakes planned hangouts. And the last time he'd run into Ivy, she had practically been a different person. Not that he cared, but the change in her personality over the last year or two had made her utterly boring to mess with. She just didn't… react anymore.
Dismissing all thoughts of his childhood quarry, he ducked into an empty hallway and reached the maintenance closet at the end. One glimpse at the upper right corner told him that Paul had already hacked into and shut off the security cam. After double-checking to make sure the coast was clear, he tried the switch next to the closet and determined that Paul had also overridden the lock for him. He'd have to stop giving the guy flack for going into engineering because these new technical skills were proving to be valuable. As the door slid open, he dove inside and swiftly shut it behind him.
The strong smell of cleaner hit his nostrils, and he activated the flashlight on his Pip-Boy, the interface casting the small space in a green glow. Standard cleaning machinery sat against the back while cluttered shelves lined the adjacent walls on either side of him. He pointed the light toward the ceiling, where a hatch to the Vault's ventilation system hung open. Wally had been correct about Stanley's failing memory in his old age, and Butch issued a muttered thanks to the maintenance worker for forgetting to close the cover.
He removed most of the scrap metal and detergent from the shelves before testing their sturdiness. Keeping the light trained on his route, he took a deep breath and climbed toward the opening. A rush of cool air hit his face when he poked his head into the metal shaft, and he grunted as he boosted himself up, landing noisily inside. The height was approximately three feet, so he situated himself into an army crawl and glanced down at his Pip-Boy to read Wally's instructions again.
Since the long lines of text were too much for him to memorize at once, he followed the first set of directions straight ahead and to the right. The loud echoes of his movements forced him to slow down, lest someone mistake him for a radroach or something. He shuddered at the thought as he crawled along on his elbows, only now wondering if radroaches did indeed scurry around in these vents. When he stopped to read the next set of directions, he swept his flashlight ahead and behind him.
Fuck… how did I not think about this before?
Luckily, there were no signs of the pests.
He started to perspire despite the chilly temperature, feeling a little claustrophobic in the enclosed darkness. However, his determination drove him on. He progressed as such for about fifteen minutes until coming to a point where the shaft widened enough for him to rise to his hands and knees. Soon, he reached his destination: the wall vent overlooking Stevie Mack's bedroom. Butch found it almost absurd that gaining access to someone's home was this easy, but then again, not many people living in the Vault would have risked this mission.
Only the Butch-man.
The screwdriver he'd brought along in his pocket undid the screws without much hassle. He turned off his flashlight and strained to listen for any sounds or voices below, but when he heard none, he gently pried the large shutter cover off and laid it flat at his side. The resulting opening was a square barely large enough for him to fit through, but the absence of his jacket left him the right size. His eyes swept around the tidy room, squinting through the dim standby lights and lingering on the wardrobe and desk drawer to the left. If he had to guess, the drawer was his best bet.
He realized then that he needed a strategy to get back into the vent once he dropped down. According to Wally, Stevie wouldn't notice an item or two vanishing from his pile of sequestered objects, but if anything else was even an inch out of place, he would know someone had broken in and entered.
As it turned out, Lady Luck seemed to favor Butch today because a tall dresser happened to be located right underneath him. He shifted his position so that his legs went through first. Heart hammering away, he lowered himself into the room and waited in a crouch when his feet touched the soft carpet. The lights remained low, and he concluded with relief that they hadn't been set on an automatic movement detector. As silently as he could, he crept to the desk, still hearing no signs of occupancy throughout the apartment. His hand reached out to pull the handle, but met resistance as the lock denied him access.
No sweat, he thought, pulling out a bobby pin. As his confidence grew from the lack of setbacks, he began picking the lock. Seen this in those old movies a million times. How hard could it be?
Eight broken bobby pins and many minutes later, he finally heard the locking mechanism release. He shoved the pin remnants into his pockets, decidedly annoyed by this point. But once he tugged open the drawer and sifted through the contents, a grin stretched over his mouth.
He plucked his Toothpick from the other confiscated switchblades and kissed it before tucking it away in his back pocket, where it belonged. Now that he knew Super Trooper Stevie Mack was on the prowl and seizing anything that could be considered a weapon, Butch would make sure the Toothpick didn't make an appearance outside trusted company anymore. Even on the annual Tunnel Snake intimidation parades.
Well, got what I came for. Time to go.
But as he was about to close the drawer, another item caught his eye.
A silver and jade serpent pendant stood out among the heap of weapons and gadgets. Its body, big enough to fill his palm, curled and twisted in similar fashion to the Tunnel Snake logo. The jagged spikes of the spine gleamed in the light of his Pip-Boy's interface, and illegible letters ran across the serpent's side in a sloppy engraving. He picked it up and examined the matching silver chain.
The clasp had shattered when Stevie had walked up to him and yanked it from around his neck. He hadn't forgotten about it, but…
The seconds passed as he hesitated. His arm went to drop it back onto the pile, but retracted almost as quickly. Making up his mind, he shut the desk drawer, pendant and chain in hand, and turned back toward the vent.
An electronic tapping noise right outside the bedroom door set off his internal alarms.
While his blood turned to ice, his brain and body went into overdrive. As stealthily as he could, he lunged for the dresser, vaulting up into the shaft and cursing at the reverberating clang of the pendant hitting the metal. Whoever was outside hadn't entered yet, so he grabbed the shutter cover and slammed it back into place, panic rendering him clumsy and reckless. The impact sent another echo traveling across the ventilation, and with fumbling fingers he shoved the screws back in just as the door opened.
He heard his own pulse pounding in his ears as he froze on his knees behind the shutter cover, trying to keep his heavy breathing quiet. He couldn't tell who had come in, but when the individual strode straight toward him, all his body functions went still. The sound of a drawer shifting caused his eyes to flicker downward, and he stifled an expletive when he realized that in his haste to scramble out of sight, he had kicked the top dresser drawer open.
Fuck! Oh my God… oh shit. Don't look up. Don't see me. I'm not here.
But when the person spoke, sheer shock drowned out all other thought processes.
"What on earth?" a soft female voice mumbled.
Butch's head snapped down as he strained to see through the shutters.
Ivy?!
Her long, wavy auburn hair shielded her face, but he could pick out that voice anywhere. The steady resonance hadn't changed as they grew up, and even when she used to snap back at him, the smoothness of her vocals stayed consistent. She took something from the drawer and studied it in silence, giving no indication that she noticed Butch a few yards above her. He tried to wrap his head around her presence in Stevie's room, but before he could come up with his own inferences, the door opened again.
"Already looking through the good stuff, Ivy?" a man asked in a sneering tone. "You're spoiling the surprise."
Butch heard a lock click into place. Footsteps approached until Stevie came into view, his security uniform still impeccably creased and buttoned. The years had etched permanent harshness to his features, accentuated further by the way he kept his head shaved. He set his helmet down on the desk as Ivy rotated toward him, holding up an item that looked to Butch like an inhaler.
"What are you doing with Jet?" she demanded. "When I came in, I saw these in the—"
"I thought we'd try something new," Stevie interrupted.
Butch watched him take the inhaler from her hand and move it toward her mouth. The hell… security boy is fuckin' around with chems!
"No!" Ivy cried, recoiling. She seemed to catch herself right after the outburst. "I mean… no, because my dad will know if I'm using recreational drugs. I won't do this."
A dark look passed over Stevie's face. Before she could react, he grabbed hold of her jaw and shoved the device past her lips so roughly that even Butch winced. Ivy choked and coughed as Stevie administered the hallucinogen into her system, her arms pushing against his chest until he growled something into her ear. He bested her in size and strength, but his words alone were enough to subdue her. She settled down and obeyed his instructions to breathe in the fumes, the occasional whimper piercing the air.
From his perch, Butch still couldn't see into the dim area very well, but he found that he really didn't want to. Whatever was going on between those two made him queasy. Maybe they were just messing around, he didn't know. But none of this sat well with him, and he wasn't exactly the model of upstanding citizenship. He'd always thought of Ivy as a personal victim for social harassment, but this…
A sickening feeling seeped into his chest when she collapsed as soon as Stevie released her. The security trainee took a few hits of Jet himself and then tossed the inhaler behind his shoulder before unbuckling his uniform vest.
"Get on the bed," he ordered.
"Wait, Stevie, I need to talk to you—"
"Don't make me say it again."
When Ivy struggled to move from the floor, Butch had seen and heard enough. He moved to crawl back through the ventilation system, but the slightest touch of the surface beneath his weight surrounded him with another round of traitorous echoes.
"What the fuck was that?" he heard Stevie bark.
Shit. Goddammit, I'm stuck here.
Ivy's unsteady staggering distracted Stevie, which allowed Butch to carefully reposition himself. He sat against one side of the shaft with his knees drawn up to his chest. The sharp edges of the pendant dug into his palm as he attempted to cover his ears with his inner arms for the next half hour. He wished he hadn't come here. His Toothpick could have waited another few days for retrieval. But no, he had been impatient, and now he was paying for it. He didn't need to know this about Ivy, didn't need to hear her crying and pleading amidst the creaking of the bed.
"Stevie, you're going too hard."
"Please, it hurts."
"Ow! Ungh."
To which Stevie responded with, "Shut the hell up and ride me like it's your last fuck, baby."
Butch grimaced in the darkness when a loud, masculine groan eventually filled the room. He waited as Stevie's panting abated and listened for anything from Ivy, but she had stopped making noise a while ago. Finally, once he heard the rustle of clothing, he chanced a look through the shutters and found Stevie fully dressed while Ivy sat wrapped in a sheet on the bed. The sight of her, unmoving and withdrawn, brought a strange kind of disturbance to his psyche. He had felt it only a handful of times in his life, and although he wasn't the one who had just ravaged her mercilessly, there it was.
Guilt.
"My folks will be out again tomorrow, so be here at the same time. Then we'll talk about where to meet up next week," Stevie told Ivy.
She didn't answer, and Butch knew what would happen next before Stevie even moved. He struck her across the face, eliciting a gasp from her throat as her head snapped to the side. The action triggered hot, reflexive anger within Butch, and it surged through him as images of his parents' worst fights flashed across his mind. With great difficulty, he restrained himself from bursting out of his hiding place and introducing the other man's mug to his fists.
"Remember what I said." Stevie grabbed his helmet and returned the used Jet inhaler to the stash drawer. "Now stay here until the high wears off. Should take a few more minutes. No one will be back for a while, but you need to leave within the hour."
"Okay," she rasped, peering cautiously at him. "But Stevie, I really need to tell you something—"
"I'm heading out for the evening shift," he cut in. When he reached the exit, he paused before stepping out. "Oh, and…"
Butch, already brimming with violent intent, leaned forward and inwardly dared him to piss him off one more notch.
"Happy birthday, Ivy."
Shooting her a smirk, Stevie disappeared through the door. Butch gritted his teeth as she sniffled once. That explained Amata's gift earlier. He hadn't realized today was Ivy's birthday. She wiped her eyes and tried to collect herself, her motions sluggish from the effects of the drug. After a minute, she activated her Pip-Boy and sighed. Butch stared through the shutters, uncertain what else to do at this point.
Damn… this whole mess is a fuckin' load of bullshit.
"Welcome to Ashburn medical records database, user IVY ASHBURN," an automated voice recited from the device on her wrist. "Accessing classified files for IVY ASHBURN. Accessing last test taken on JULY 7, 2276."
Butch frowned as he tried to make sense of the recording.
"Results for HUMAN CHORIONIC GONADOTROPIN test available. Accessing results."
Human cho-whadda?
"Retrieved. Test results positive. Patient is pregnant."
His eyebrows shot to his hairline as she cut the connection and wept quietly into a pillow. He didn't even notice how hard he was squeezing the serpent pendant until he unclenched his bloody fingers.
Holy fuck…
x-x-x-x-x
A/N: The story will be jumping back and forth over the years for a while, but there's a method to my madness, I promise. Even though this chapter had some pretty intense themes, I hope you're enjoying the story for what it is. If you have any feedback or critiques for me, please let me know. Thanks!