In my life I have been all kinds of places,
I have lived for the action and the thrill,
Yes, I've seen a thousand children sing of a sunset in Japan,
When I close my eyes I see them still.
But the road seems to lose its fascination,
And I find there's a picture in my mind of a room with windows on the sea,
Yes, she's waiting there for me,
I drop out of space and time.
Back in the maze with Lazy Nina,
Walking the dog and watching Soul Train
Reading the paper, going to movies
- "Lazy Nina", Greg Phillinganes
Man has a need for hierarchy, a need for classes and statuses. Without them, he is like a blind dog without a leash. It is cruel not only to his environment, but to himself also. A dog will always hunt, attack, and destroy, but a blind dog will do these things arbitrarily. Man is much the same, he too must have a leash on him, whether it be the state, his family, or God.
It is just this, that Eris has always tried and failed, to find a loophole around, solely for herself. But she is no outside, impartial observer as she'd like to be. She, too, is a citizen of this world, she thinks to herself with a snort.
Socrates had said that too, but he'd meant it differently. As a citizen of this world, she's subject to its laws, its constraints, and sometimes, she understands why House wishes to be removed from its confines entirely, to escape to a higher form where the rules could be made by himself and himself alone.
One of her many dreams is to be able to observe and speculate without any consequence – to torture the proverbial insect without getting its guts on her.
Terrible analogy, she thinks, rolling her eyes at her meandering inner monologue.
However, the point still stands. She imagines a faraway laboratory wherein she can test every single idea she's ever had or will have, without bothering the extremely delicate stability she's managed to found in her life. Of course, she loves the unpredictability of people – one jab in the shoulder might cause any number of limbs to twitch or only one – but she finds that they become much less exciting over time. Her pattern recognition is too rigorous for her to really be surprised by them anymore.
Home is a shockingly engrossing affair, she's found, but it's subdued in such a way that her voracious appetite for novelty isn't met with easy, unremarkable immediacy. With a gambling addiction, the need can be fulfilled with stunning ease, if not a few lost caps. So it goes with drugs also. Home, however, is an entirely comforting and never-ending pleasure, and its pleasure is impossible to rush. There aren't any shiny red buttons she can push, nor can she simply inhale harder.
This time, she is alone in Camp McCarran, deep in the territory of the force she's planning to sabotage. For the most part, civilians ignore her, but those troopers know who she is by virtue of having bypassed the monorail's security, a thing of poor quality as is. And of course, her hair is a rather good tell, it's like a bright gold beacon in the gray, repurposed airport.
Eris sits alone on a bench in the bustling space, filled with militia and civilians alike. Wives visit their husbands, planting kisses on their cheeks and leaving gaudy pink lipstick behind. None of the troopers look especially content with their position, indeed many of their gazes fall longingly on the men who have families they can return to. She wonders if a small, unacknowledged half of them knows that this war may not end well for them, that their welcome home may be little more than jeering, protesting crowds.
That is profoundly sad, her distaste for their government aside. She's always been of the opinion that no man should be blamed for the sins of his collective.
For this 'job', no, she refuses to call it a job – she prefers favor – she's stumped on how to proceed. All she can do is watch and observe the NCR in their base, trying her best not to look suspicious. It's an easy job, she is good at looking innocent and vapid, until a conversation is extended past the one minute mark. The time constraints are very real, and hang over her head like that big ugly sign on the front of the airport.
He's told her that a week is generous, two is preposterous, and that she must take great care to remain friendly with the Californians, until their great battle. All this she knew, even in their weakened state, the bear is not to be trifled with.
What he had suggested was quite contrary to anything he'd ever suggested before. That was, to be late, to push the override as late as she possibly could, as close to the eve of battle as possible, so that they'd have no time to react. She predicted that it would come to the attention of the senate immediately, but their intervention would take weeks in the midst of the war effort, and by the time their intervention was to be seen through, their forces will have left the Mojave. Even if she fails him, she foresees the NCR losing this war anyhow. Caesar, Inculta, Lanius – that is the trinity of atrocity for the NCR.
House has missiles and a competent defense grid, so even if she is killed, she can at least rest easy knowing that his vision could be seen through. Although, it is not entirely his vision she believes in, it is in his ability to achieve it, and in him. Eris doesn't miss the irony in it all – that someone as absorbed with politics as she was, subscribed to someone on a purely apolitical basis. Perhaps he could've won her over much earlier if he'd known that her heart could be as soft as it was. No, he was too proud for that, and she was far too suspicious to fall for it.
How she misses him already. She misses teasing him, she misses his self-absorbed diatribes, and she misses his voice, and especially the antiquated way it curls around certain words and diphthongs. While the base of the NCR was stimulating, entertaining, and a never-ending learning experience, she cannot help but think that he is all of those things and more.
Eris lights a cigarette, and for once, reminds herself that everything is at stake here. The fragile stability of her life, of Vegas' survival, of his contentment were resting on her success. There are a few things she can do here.
El Dorado was guarded by a few men, no more than ten, but far too many for Eris to handle alone. Being neither a sniper nor a terribly good fighter, she must instead rely on her quick thinking and charm. Her usual mode is to choose one weak link out of a group and convince them to snitch on their kin, but in this instance, she's unsure she'll have the opportunity to get well-acquainted with any of the guards at the station.
Nothing is impossible though, only close to it. If she had the time to spend, there was a good chance that she could get to know one of the guards, and somehow use that privilege to enter and use the override chip. Unfortunately, she doesn't have much time to spare, and she can't watch the station directly, or else she'll have the finger of suspicion on her.
Eris takes another inhale from her cigarette. She'd considered paying someone else to do it, someone nobody would miss, but House had shot that down immediately, and she understood why. Who could be trusted with a priceless chip that had the power to override the electrical grid? Besides, it was only an idea she'd thrown into the air, without any intention to put it to good use.
A far more risky one was to disguise herself, and somehow learn the mannerisms of a run-of-the-mill NCR soldier in the span of a week. First, she'd need a convincing story as to why she was posted there. Secondly, she'd need to hide her hair and make sure that in the process, her bullet wound wouldn't be seen. That scar was more recognizable than her hair or speech, or anything else really.
If she could sit here and think for another week, she would. That sufficed better than nearly anything else, especially physical labor.
Ever so often, she'd feel a ruckus on the other end of the bench, and find a civilian perched next to her. Small talk would be made, and for ones she liked, she even through in a sales pitch. As soon as they knew who she was, there would come the endless stream of questions – about her bullet wound, about Mr. House, about her time in Legion captivity. Eris answered them with effortless pizzazz and no small measure of chutzpah, though she was noticeably unsettled, angsty from so little time afforded to her.
She is no good at choosing one out of a hundred, otherwise known as the prioritization of a useful thing among useless things. Most subversion she's undertaken has had three or four thoughtlessly bad options, two mostly bad options, and one very wise option, and these were plain to see. But here, there are many roads to approach the destination, and if she had a more strategic, pragmatic mind, she'd be able to narrow it down to one.
Breaking and entering would be simple and efficient, and would require less alibis than a disguise. To break and enter would require a Stealth Boy, but fortunately, she is cozy with its proprietor. Eris has heard that prolonged use of them can cause intermittent psychoses both in humans and in FEV subjects, thus she's never used one before, but he'd surely be able to tell her what to do.
All of this she pondered while she shared a cigarette with a departing NCR citizen, who called himself Curt.
"-leaving because, well, it's rather obvious I think. These motherfuckers are gonna get us all enslaved by fucking Legion," but of course, he wasn't through, and he had an irrational proclivity for the F word so she didn't complain. "General fucking Oliver, heh."
He snickers at her, showing a full set of dirty, stained teeth. Eris takes another drag of her cigarette and doesn't even try to keep a straight face. In one hand he smokes his borrowed cigarette, and in the other, he takes deep gulps from a bottle of Westside hooch.
"What a fucking knucklehead, can't tell if he's dumb, a warhawk, or fucking both. My fucking blood alcohol level is higher than his approval rating at any rate." At that, Eris is no longer able to contain herself, and her eyes bug out as she guffaws both at, and with, Curt, the most risque, most degenerate, Californian civilian she's met.
A small crowd stops to stare at the two of them, giggling between each other like two schoolgirls.
"Schrodinger's Knucklehead.." Eris nods to herself, flicking ash into a bin that's next to their bench. "Even my blood alcohol level is higher than his approval rating and I haven't had a drink in two days. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, the moral of the story is that we're both alcoholics, and we just don't have the stuff to understand Oliver's precocious stratagem."
Both of them erupted in laughter, drawing the attention of more guards and another small crowd. Playfully, Eris put a finger over her lips and shushed him, noticing a second later that her Pip-Boy had lit up with a server message. Sobering somewhat, Eris read through House's message and her resulting frown was thoughtful rather than melancholic.
How do you intend to infiltrate El Dorado if you stay in the airport?
Just how he knew, was one of several things the universe itself may never know. Perhaps one of his cameras from afar had recorded her entering, and hadn't recorded her leaving. Although possibly counterintuitive, she wasn't disturbed by his watchfulness, her own sense of privacy was zilch, non-existent. Leaning over the Pip-Boy and hiding it from others' shifty gazes, she began typing her own message.
Words simply can't express how flattered I am by your attentions. Knowing I'm being watched by you is heartwarming, I truly do feel like a woman now. She laughs to herself, and makes short eye contact with Curt, whose intoxication made him safe. He'd not remember this tomorrow. Any chance you can lend me a few Stealth Boys? I have an idea that an efficient industrialist would love.
"It's my boss." That word leaves a nasty film in her mouth, but she has to leave Curt somehow. Only a few minutes ago, he was complaining about his own boss out west, surely this frame would be palatable, especially since his last few brain cells were working in overdrive. "Gotta run, but it's been a pleasure.. and a half, getting to know you, Curt. Before you go, won't you stop by on the Strip? Can't promise you'll find your fortunes, but in the off chance you can't leave the Mojave in time, it's the safest place to be, honest."
"Might be. Gonna nurse the rest of this bottle, to the victory of the fucking New California Republic, and the.. impeachment of Oli-Kimball." He slurred, getting deeper in his bottle. By the end of the hour, he'd likely be in a cell. Eris has found that alcohol is an enabler of free thinking in those who otherwise didn't have much of it.
That wasn't anything Eris was interested in interfering with. This clown should know better than to get drunk in the base of a military that was preparing for war. His choices were his own, and that's all that's keeping his dignity intact.
"God bless the New California Republic." Eris gives him a cheesy smile, and lights another cigarette as her feet find the public restroom.
A foul mechanical hum is emitting from the roof of the airport, near to where the monorail was located. Vertibirds are coming to collect supplies and distribute it to the dam, where many of their troops are now relocating. However, this was a dreadfully slow process, and with the amount of people in the camps outside, it would take a week or more before McCarran was guarded by little more than a skeleton crew.
As soon as Lanius arrived on the other side of the river, all of these tiny details and sequences will have culminated into something monumental. It was at times difficult to imagine the sheer magnitude of just what she was working within. From her vantage, she was a young woman, albeit gifted in some aspects, playing at a game of grown men, and absolutely outclassed by all of them.
In the restroom, she was able to look at her Pip-Boy undisturbed, if not for the woman in the stall next to hers.
Yes. Do make haste. There is a rather long line of customers forming at the north gate.
A device that scans their visas would be quicker, you know. It's something to think about. Preferably there would be several devices functioning at once.
Indeed? That sounds like a wonderful first device for you to design under my tutelage. The sooner you arrive here, the sooner this world will have said devices.
She smiles at the screen, and slides the sleek keyboard back into its slot, unlocking the stall door and making her way through the airport, narrowly avoiding a line of patrolling soldiers. A few of them she recognizes from the Strip. How seedy.
Impassive, Eris watches the substation from a safe distance, camping outside, and admittedly within, the nearby Vault 11. Last night, she had checked the vault's terminals and learned of a rather clever social experiment that had taken place.
Clever, but unbearably cruel. The two can, and often do, coexist. All residents were told that each year, one of their fellow vault dwellers needed to be sacrificed or the consequence was death for all involved, by the imaginary computer-god of the vault. Eris cannot help but be fascinated by it.
What's more, is that the vault dwellers had fallen for it, and over the span of two centuries, one human was sacrificed each year through a twisted democratic process. Several political parties had risen to compete in this process, and instead of campaigning for their own leadership, they campaigned for another's – whoever was elected to be overseer would then be sacrificed at the end of their term. However, this had been a farce all along, as no quasi computer-god awaited them should they have refused.
"Bamboozled!" She exclaimed to herself, watching the substation through binoculars.
Indeed, she wasn't sure who she was more disgusted with – Vault-Tec, or Vault 11's residents. If responsibility is to be charged to all individual persons, responsibility must be acknowledged both for predator and for victim, exclusively when the victim has a choice. In a situation like Vault 11's, it's easy to blame Vault-Tec, and it's more difficult to blame the victims. Naturally, this means she tries as hard as possible to look for their crimes.
That humans sacrificed their own without question is, on principle, sickening. However, instinct can be more potent than empathy, and what's worse is when instinct and empathy mingle and search for an excuse to do what the vault residents did. Eris assumes that these annual sacrifices were done out of a misguided, instinctual empathy. One death, for the lives of the many.
Whether it be personal bias and experience, or simply reason, she reckons that it's crueler to make that decision in an instance like that rather than politically. Making decisions that take others' lives is somehow more excusable when one is doing it with the big picture in mind, but it's still cruel. It's like comparing Caesar and Cook-Cook.
Having no minds to pick for entertainment nor any partner for caravan, she's taken to reading terminal entries inside of the vault when she grows bored with surveillance and solitaire. The latter, she grows bored of within twenty minutes.
Seven Stealth Boys sit cozily in her messenger bag, each lasting a total duration of an hour. She's already calculated that if she walked there, that would dock almost twenty minutes off of her Stealth Boy, but if she ran, she could probably have fifty minutes free to peruse the station. Only, she has to do it when 'Lefty' is on break, and she must do it without causing a stir in the sand and dirt of the desert and alerting them of her presence.
Eris tugs her blanket closer around her shoulders. It's an old, prewar woolen fabric woven in a tartan pattern. She'd recovered it from one of the common areas in the vault. The price exacted for its warmth was its unbelievable itchiness.
Not only was she exhausted, freezing, and completely alone out here, but she'd also come down with a cold. The tip of her small button nose was flush with sickness and the night chill, and this awful nasal drip had taken up residence in the back of her throat. Every time she sniffled or coughed, she disturbed the raw, inflamed membranes back there and winced with the pain.
'Lefty', as she so called him, had consistently come out for a smoke break at 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM, and 4:00 AM, for the past five days she's been watching. He's a creature of habit, so named Lefty because he's left-handed, which is easily taking the prize for her most ingenious epithet to date.
Like a mirage, nostalgia creeps in and Eris is reminded of her unpleasant stay with the Boomers, and how she had watched them before playing the deadliest game of hopscotch in her life. She doesn't look back too fondly on that, and considers herself to be more of an unwilling hostage of nostalgia than anything. Totally and completely held captive by it with no foreseeable escape.
Keeping her cover, she crawled around the corner to reopen the vault with her Pip-Boy, and rest before she tries her luck at 2 AM. That would give her almost four hours of sleep, something her aching joints are practically screaming for. She can't remember the last time she was sick, but it leaves her feeling like an invalid.
Inside of the vault, she falls down on the nearest bed and sets an alarm for 1:20 AM. Any sleep she gets is fitful and interspersed with coughing, or waking up with one or both nostrils clogged with mucus.
When her alarm goes off, she wants to bang her head against the wall, and through what little crumbs of willpower she has, she refrains from doing so, and petulantly makes her way to the vault's door, keeping her mind busy by searching for phrases that rhyme with 'Freudian slip', then moves onto 'house', and finally to 'kirschwasser', which marks the end of her little game. She's spent too much time alone. Some may be able to outlast her, but she's of the mind that a week of solitude is when cognition begins degenerating.
From the overhanging cliffs of Vault 11, she watches El Dorado through her binoculars and checks the time, which happens to be ripe for her brand of espionage. Thirty more minutes, and Lefty will be coming out for a smoke. Eris herself opts to have a stealthy smoke before she heads down, and by the time she's done, it's time to move in.
Her pistol is secure on her thigh, and a backup Stealth Boy bulges from her large masculine pants, held up only by a very tight belt. On that belt is a small, sharpened knife, which she hopes she doesn't have to use – she'd lose any open fight with those men down there. Experience has proven continuously that she won with the element of surprise than with valor.
Eris took one last inhale from her cigarette and ground it out on the earth before she handled the Stealth Boy and activated it with the precision House had advised.
Strange, Eris thought to herself. When she set the device down, its stealth field camouflaged elsewhere, something she knew in theory but was astounded by in practice. She'll have to play with it more when she returns home. As it is, she's grown too stir crazy to trust herself with admiring it.
"Incredible.." She whispers to herself while she creeps closer to the station, witnessing her entire body and its limbs as transparent and barely visible outlines.
The walk is freezing, and she wonders how Lefty's been coming out so late in nothing but his wife beater and briefs without sterilizing himself.
Said cat is only coming out for his smoke break when she creeps up on El Dorado, as quiet as she can be with a runny nose and a cough. El Dorado's trash bin sticks out like a homing beacon for her – perhaps that is where she's always belonged – and she heads over to it for cover in case hers is blown. Like the stalker she becomes, she enviously watches Lefty make sweet love to his cigarette, with the promise that he'll have a warm place to stay afterward.
She has to remind herself why she is doing this in the first place. While it isn't the first time she's put her life at risk, she has little room for error in this one. The small substation allows for no wiggle room, thus very few opportunities for her usual haunts.
Eris rolls her eyes when Lefty begins to hum hits from the radio, namely Marty Robbins. Of course, for this break, he'd have to sing and hum and light an extra cigarette because he wasted his first one. She is beyond frustrated with the Asshat, no longer Lefty – she's tempted to kill him for this one, single inconsistency, which is conveniently on the night she's chosen to break in.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" She breathes to herself and also to God, as she watches the man light another cigarette and idly disassemble his gun.
The man takes close to seven minutes to finish his cigarette and reassemble his gun, and Eris is shivering by the time he begins angling his body toward the door – she has to somehow sneak in while he opens it, because she has no idea how powerful the lock on the door is. She hasn't quite worked out how she'll get out, but escaping is always easier than entering in her experience.
As quietly as she could, Eris trailed closely behind the guard while he made his way to the station's entrance. In a rare acknowledgment to the universe, she was grateful that the chilly autumnal winds masked the sound of her soft footsteps, so that not even trained military personnel could hear her.
However, it was gross incompetence, not the luck of the wind, that allowed her to repeatedly spy on this station without getting caught. If they were Legion, she'd already be in chains.
Asshat unlocked the door to the complex, and as he strolled inside, she followed closely behind, her slender body easily fitting in the small space between the door and its frame. Under the complete silence of the sleepy station, the door crackled like a thunderstorm, and it was in the cover of that sound that she moved from the vicinity of Asshat, who was making his way back to the surveillance room, where one of his brothers was nodding out over the station's terminals.
Inside, the air was stale and smelt of cheap liquor, the ambience of a disenfranchised battalion of lonely men. They missed their families most likely – these kinds of positions were given to less disposable men and men with less combat prowess.
Now, she gave herself to chance, and hoped that Asshat would go to the restroom or be indisposed long enough for her to override the terminals. If this go failed, she did have five more Pip-Boys, and could try it again tomorrow night with the knowledge she's gained from being inside the building.
Eris waited and observed, keeping a careful eye on Asshat, who was flipping through prewar magazines at his station, making eyes at his sleeping brother to check if he was watching. She strained her eyes to see what it was that had captured his undivided and paranoid attention, unsurprised to find that he was looking at a pornographic magazine.
While she considered that this go might be a failure, she was never one to settle with conclusions and certainty, and she wondered how one might grab Asshat's attention away from naked women and the terminal lab. An idea was quickly taking root, forming like a corrupt little seedling. The only trouble was, it was beyond risky, but so too was failing and having to return tomorrow night.
What would one of the frumentarii do? Well, they would've planted a sleeper agent in the NCR months ago, and pulled strings with the help of another higher ranking sleeper to get transferred to intelligence. In fact, one of these men may well be working for Caesar already, further proving her point of their incompetence.
Ducking behind a file cabinet, she crouched close to the floor and watched as the field around her flickered ominously and threatened to reveal her. Eris discarded the spent device and tucked it behind the cabinet, and reached to activate her other Stealth Boy, reassured by the hour she had left. The promise of procrastination made her feel safe.
She took one deep breath, and kicked small trash can over, immediately gaining the attention of Asshat, who sat straighter in his chair, and shook his partner awake. Again, Eris kicks the can, spilling the putrid garbage on the floor and filling the room with a foul smell that was a sister to Freeside's apartment complexes.
Both Asshat and his brother shoot out of their chairs and come running toward the source of the ruckus, and she hides the sound of her footsteps while they come barging in, muttering about 'poltergeists'. She runs into the surveillance lab, and swiftly pulls out the override module from her deep pocket and begins uploading it to the terminal, watching the progress bar with butterflies in her stomach while the two guards talk among themselves about what they should do, rather than actually doing it.
Either of them have their arms prepared for an intruder, but neither of them consider that an intruder would be interested in the surveillance lab, and fail to check it. The progress bar is rapid, and House's override program is installed within the time frame of less than a minute. It works unlike any other terminal virus, he'd explained. Understanding higher technologies was an advantage she'd once underestimated purely out of hubris, but now that she knows her way inside and out of a terminal, she's able to hang this over ninety-nine percent of the wasteland's head.
Her job here was done. By the morning, the 38's reactor would be revitalized, and the NCR's resources would be stretched too thin for them to declare war on Vegas. However, there was still the issue of getting out of here with the two guards patrolling the entrance, and she knew she'd need to do further improvisation to get their attentions away as she'd done before.
Absolute silence reigned over the substation, entertained only by the howling winds outside.
"The sergeant told us to be alert for any reds, said they might be interested in sabotage." Asshat said more to himself than his partner, looking hesitant to cause a stir, likely envisioning returning to his magazines rather than look for a potential intruder.
"Do you see anyone? 'Cause I sure don't, might've been a draft." Eris bit her lip to refrain from snickering at the two searching desperately for an excuse not to investigate and wake their superior officers.
"A draft doesn't kick a trash bin twice." Came the wise reminder from Asshat.
Eris has to play this carefully, and while she doesn't like to be a one-trick pony, she's almost certain that she has to make a ruckus again, and as soon as they come rushing to the computer lab, she has to make extreme haste for the front door and run to Vault 11 before their sniper can take position.
So she takes one last look at the successful installment on her terminal, and kicks Asshat's rolling chair to the back of the room, causing both men to run toward the source of the sound, and she takes her one and only chance to escape unscathed, and darts past them before making a beeline for the entrance.
The last time she ran so fast was at Nellis. Adrenaline coursed through her, giving her a head rush, and relieving any body load she'd had before. She felt weightless as she rain across the valley to Vault 11, ignoring the calls of the men behind, only a minute too late from catching her. They'd obviously not seen the terminals yet, but in a little while, their superiors would be panicking, unable to repair the irreversible effect that the override module had.
There was no time for her to catch her breath, much to her lungs' dissatisfaction. Either of those two organs were screaming for mercy, completely run ragged between her exploits and her smoking habit. A gunshot rang from the station, narrowly missing her side and hitting a row of cacti instead. A ranger was aiming at her elusive outline with sharp accuracy, but Eris was exhausted, and her gait was unpredictable and far from stellar, offering her a contradictory boon.
Another shot fired at the rocky outcropping she ducked to hide behind, feeling her way up the rocky hill where she'd been making camp. Going back to her cliff retreat was impossible now, the sniper would be watching it for hours to come, so she went straight for the vault where her bag was located and sprinted northward, away from the station and toward the lights of decadent Vegas.
Eris carefully avoided other NCR camps, and by the time dawn was breaking, they were already mobilizing, preparing for their defense of Hoover Dam as Lanius approached the Colorado.
It was hard to believe that all she'd done, whether by random whim or by purposeful action, had led her to being in the midst – a central player – of this long political game. Her actions can and do have consequences, much to her occasional chagrin, and the consequences of this action will be felt by much of the west within the hour.
Upon approaching the entrance to the Strip, she's completely wiped out, unsure if she's ever ran so far for so long in her life. Apparently she had, or she wouldn't have been able to endure it. Sometimes, she forgets she was a courier, and that was probably children's play compared to the runs she's made.
She braces her palms on her knees and breathes the cool air deep in her lungs, feeling the disorientation catch up to her. Around her, the night sky has lost most of its territory to the morning sun, turning it a pastel purple-orange, something she notices on account of not being able to articulate anything else.
Pain is searing through her joints on every limb. Not only do her legs ache, but so too does her back, her arms, and her neck. She fantasizes about getting each bone popped by a masseuse at Gomorrah, but even more so, about a cigarette.
Unable to hold herself up any longer, she slides down to the desert floor and leans her back against the walls encasing the Strip, quiet in the dawn. While she desperately wants a smoke, her limbs ache too much to move, and she opts instead to rest her head on the wall behind her.
Was she dying? She certainly felt like it.
But no, her life had simply gotten too comfortable. Many people lived their lives like this everyday, sprinting for hours from place to place. Her eyes are brimming with tears of exhaustion, and she can barely breathe out of her nose by the time a securitron comes to collect her from her dignified seat on the ground.
As was now established tradition, she wondered how she had come to be in this position, considering every single action she'd taken to lead here. No matter what she does or who she screws with, she eventually ends up with her back on the ground – Benny, Clanden, Aurelius, Beatrix, and now broadly, the NCR.