A/N: Recommended listening: Ghost Town by Adam Lambert.
Their first introduction to Far Harbor involves a fight, of course.
Someone cries the alarm and Captain Avery abandons her welcome speech to race up the nearest stairs. "You two! Help us defend the town and I'll answer any questions you have!"
With a shared look between Kaelyn and Valentine, they follow her and the disgruntled Allen to the commotion. A makeshift battlement looks down on three sides over a courtyard of sorts, while a row of blue lampposts demarcates the entrance to the harbor from the street. Thick pearly fog slinks along the ground, softly evanescent with blue-violet light from the lamps.
With her laser musket primed and ready, Kaelyn shifts her weight. The uneven planks beneath her feet groan in a way that is not reassuring. At least a dozen people stand in uneven increments along the wall, peering into the gloom. Waiting.
"Are you sure you saw something?" a man calls. Rather than piercing the night, his voice seems to be swallowed by the fog that prowls beyond the perimeter, rebounding through the salt-laden air.
"Eyes peeled!" a beanie-clad woman barks, her face stark white in the gloom. "This is not a drill!"
The fog rolls. The lights crackle and hum. Peering into the dark, Kaelyn strains to make out the silhouettes of houses across the street. No movement.
"Wait for it," Valentine rumbles. His sturdy pistol is pointed towards the courtyard.
Shouts—and Kaelyn almost fires before she realizes the figures materializing out of the fog are friendlies. The beanie-clad woman at the forefront of the wall—the Mariner—keeps the gates shut. The hunters press their backs to the wall that is in fact a re-purposed boat hull.
Lumpy silhouettes leap out of the fog.
Under the night's colorless shroud, visibility is poor. Figures and faces and names Kaelyn doesn't know, calling out to one another and grouping in patterns she can't predict. She picks her shots with care, firing at the lumbering forms, trying to make sense of their shapes.
"Watch out for the folks on the ground!" Valentine calls.
Fire bursts among a cluster of those foreign shapes, sending them scattering, and then a second molotov cocktail hits one square on the back. Among the whoops and animal screams, Kaelyn lines up her next shot and fires. Cranking the handle, she sees blue ripple off an oily hide that then flares red and disintegrates under her next shot.
She sweeps the area once, twice. Nothing twitches.
Acrid smoke mingles with clammy fog, along with the smell of cooked flesh. Kaelyn peers down to the street, but the gates have opened and she can't distinguish the bodies on the ground. A few people are already dragging the large animal carcasses inside.
With the threat taken care of, the grizzled Captain Avery divulges some local knowledge. Far Harbor is a mule-stubborn settlement that has the gall to call itself a town. Tensions are running high with the Children of Atom, who have a commune on the island.
Allen, the same bearded man who attempted to intimidate them on the dock, butts in. "I'm done cowering behind your damn wall, Avery. It's time I dealt with the problem."
Avery doesn't miss the way Allen hefts his assault rifle, tendons stark under his white skin. "The Children didn't make the Fog, Allen."
"Before those rad eaters came, the Fog was under control. Now look at it! It covers the whole damn island. It's more lethal than ever!"
Kaelyn recalls Kenji's words on Far Harbor: I've only been there once, as a boy. My father did not want to stay long. Something about the air being bad.
That turns out to be a little more literal than Kaelyn expects. The island is blanketed in the Fog, with a capital F: thick, clammy and radioactive. The strange blue lanterns standing sentinel at the edges of the town are Fog condensers, and they are the only thing that permits the settlers to stubbornly cling to their pier.
There's some good news, at least from Avery. "Yes, this Kasumi you're looking for recently arrived and made her way inland. To the synth refuge, Acadia."
At last, a name for the place. Kaelyn's surprised to hear it dropped so casually, without so much as a blink let alone an opinion on synths. She shivers in the clammy coastal night, pulling her jacket more tightly around her middle. Her nose has long since gone numb, and a thin trail of fluid leaks from one nostril despite her best efforts at sniffling.
"Thanks for your time, Captain," Valentine says, touching the brim of his fedora. Despite the fact he hasn't looked in Kaelyn's direction, she wonders if he noticed her discomfort when he then asks, "One last question. Where might we get a meal and a bed?"
Their second introduction to Far Harbor involves the bar, of course.
Upon heaving open the salt-stained door to The Last Plank, they are welcomed by the universal atmosphere of low-quality dives: desperation and vomit clouded in a balm of alcohol. A working jukebox leans against the wall, its neon lights out of place among the oil-fueled lanterns that hang from the rafters and cast warm yellow light around the room. Brine and sweat and smoke have sunk deep into the wooden pores of the room.
Kaelyn sniffles, glad for the stuffy warmth to sting her nose. There's a crusted stain by her left boot. Half the tables are already occupied by gaunt and wary Harborfolk who eye the strangers and mutter 'mainlanders' as Kaelyn and Valentine pass.
The bartender, a roaring drunkard by the name of Mitch, offers Kaelyn and Valentine a free beer apiece and laughs at Kaelyn's 'mainland niceties' when she thanks him. After she's ordered dinner and arranged for a room, they pick one of the unclaimed booths. The cracking vinyl groans and the padding deflates when she leans into the backrest. One of her boots remains solidly planted on the floor through the strap of her satchel. Valentine slides into the seat opposite.
Kaelyn rests her hands on the table, then thinks better of it when she feels something sticky. "Have you ever heard of this synth colony?"
"Not a peep. I take it your friends don't know, either?"
"If they do, I sure never got wind of it." Perhaps it would have been wise to check in with the Railroad, given the nature of the case, but she can't face them. "I'm surprised the Institute never tracked them down if they're happy to talk to anyone over the radio about it."
The waitress arrives with a bowl of over-salted mirelurk stew and a keyring that sports a crude carving of a fish.
"This Acadia..." Valentine says, rolling the word around his mouth. "Folks here don't seem much bothered by the idea of a synth colony somewhere on the island."
It seems when people don't really know what synths are, they don't really care. So Desdemona is right about that after all.
"Either they have bigger problems, or they aren't troubled by Acadia. Without the baggage of the Institute..." She closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her throat tightens.
Forgive me, Shaun...
As the bartender calls for a round on the house, a man at a nearby table whoops and leans dangerously far back in his seat.
Her heart stops.
Firelight burnishes the man's brown hair with red, a few shades off Nate's auburn. No matter the thick fuzz along his jaw or his sunken features, she's transfixed by the sight of him, unable to breathe. His hair is even tossed into a loose bun at his nape like Nate preferred.
Her chair scrapes on the floorboards. "Excuse me."
It's too hot, the air is too thick, and she has to move. Kaelyn has to push through the throng of people, several of whom shove back out of spite. Taking the narrow stairs two at a time, she seeks the door with the green fish next to the doorknob. The room is cramped, but she only cares that she can drag a chair in front of the door and flop down onto the bed. It's already damp, so Kaelyn presses her face into the mattress and drags the pillow over her head, letting guilt bite her with rusted fangs.
I'm sorry, Nate. I'm sorry, Shaun.
Heart hot and aching, she cries for the first time since pushing the button.
When Kaelyn had been nine years old, her family went on vacation to Bar Harbor. Years of careful saving by her parents paid off in four days of adventure. In the following years, inflation ate away at her parents' hard-earned savings and talk of another family vacation became little more than hollow words.
Her memories of their vacation are disjointed at best, eroded by age: the ice cream cone she had to share with her younger brother, the taste of Vim! going up her nose, the rows of brightly colored shacks with their steep roofs pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, the feel of sunlight on her face when they stepped out of a souvenir shop.
During the car trip to the national park, Kaelyn's time had been divided between progressing her latest spat with Martin, whining 'Amma, are we there yet?', and pressing her nose to the car window. She remembers the lush landscape of Acadia National Park behind the glass. Sunbeams darted through the canopy to caress tree trunks shawled in moss, like noble ladies poised in their verdant finery.
There's only one problem: Bar Harbor doesn't exist anymore.
Somehow, somehow, the old pain at seeing the world so broken rouses an ache underneath her fresh grief.
During the night, Valentine has done some detective work and enlisted the services of one Old Longfellow. Only a fool would equate his advanced age with weakness; there's a canniness about him as he checks his lever-action rifle and switches off the safety. Under his great scraggly beard, his skin is a sun-kissed tan, scored and mottled as if the great beast called Time chewed him up but found him too tough to digest. Also, his face shows twenty years of hard drinking.
Kaelyn's eyes are also puffy and bloodshot, from a different sort of hangover.
Longfellow's first words to her: "Can't blame ya for not wanting to be sober, but our liquor is stronger than what you'll find on the mainland."
She finds she doesn't mind his mistaken assumption. If anything it seems to have endeared her to him, as he leads them out the gates with only the bare minimum of grumbling about soft mainlanders.
When they step past the condensers, the Fog swallows them whole.
It's a living thing, seething sluggishly, fading the dead street to a haze of blue-gray shapes. The tree line above the harbor is barely visible, little more than dark gray lines slashing down across the clouds. Somehow it even dulls the smells; the ever-present salt is reduced to the faintest sting and the corpses from last night hardly smell. The disembodied wash of the nearby shore creates a soothing ambiance that feels like a snare to attract unwary prey. The Fog slips under her collar, slinks down her spine, sinks into her hair to chill her scalp. Even freshly dosed up on rad-x, Kaelyn feels the heavy slither of radiation seeping into her skin from the moment they step into the Fog.
After twenty steps, she can barely see the Hull behind them. As much as she feels exposed without her patrolman glasses, visibility is too poor for the added impediment.
Longfellow's voice is strangely muted, yet bounces around them. "If you want to survive out here, you go where I say. When I say."
Kaelyn, for one, is more than happy to let Longfellow take the lead, even if she has to remain close or risk losing him in the Fog. At least his black coat is distinctive enough. With a quick touch to Kaelyn's shoulder, Valentine hangs back a step to cover the rear.
"How well can you see, Nick?"
A noise of irritation behind her. "Gray, gray, and more gray. Woulda been real nice if the Institute installed thermal sensors before giving me the boot. Still probably faring better than you, though."
As they turn down the street, the asphalt is not only cracked but slick with dew, forcing them to step with care. Decrepit townhouses clump to the left and beyond the once-scenic boardwalk to the right, the bay rolls. A pier stretches to a seafood shop with a placard that still brags about its quality lobster. This little tourist trap, with its colorful signs and weather-stained umbrellas, sits decaying, confused as to how the apocalypse happened.
At least with the Fog, Kaelyn can keep her eyes on Longfellow's back and try not to remember.
Longfellow explains in his gravelly voice, "See. The Fog can do a number on you. Gets you all turned around. Does somethin' to your brain. The trappers you find around the island? They were mean to begin with, but now..."
With no means to measure time, the only indication of their progress is the townhouses thinning out to homey cabins and the trees thickening on the ridge. Longfellow turns at a junction to the national park entrance. They duck around the boom gate that declares the road closed and drift into the forest proper.
Longfellow crouches down to check a print in the mud. "Game trails crisscross the mountain, so don't be surprised if we got local wildlife to deal with."
The road slithers through the gray-washed forest with its cracked-asphalt python hide. Tree trunks loom around them like phantom masts of ships, sailing on unseen waters. Drops of moisture bead on their bare branches, and then plink to the ground when they grow too heavy to bear. The stench of moss and wet earth pervades the air.
Kaelyn makes the mistake of looking up. The mountain looms over them, silent and gray, but a few brave trees stretch as tall as they can in hopes of piercing the veil. Their branches entwine and scrape against each other in a thorny network. The Fog hazes the canopy overhead, shivering, distorting the world in mesmerizing ripples. Sunlight peeks between the branches, making the Fog an incandescent aqua-white; no shadows touch the ground.
"Look out!"
She jerks, sees the snarling bundle of fur leaping for her, and thinks Dogmeat—
It spasms, arrested in midair by pops from a pistol. But its momentum carries it straight into Kaelyn. She's knocked to the ground, getting a mouthful of wet fur and fetid breath. It jerks once, twice, and dies. More snarls ring through the gloom, along with gunfire. Pushing the wolf off her, Kaelyn rolls onto one knee and aims. Hits another wolf that falls with a yelp and burning fur.
She cranks her musket; finds another target. She fires just as Longfellow's rifle cracks, and the last wolf falls.
Valentine checks her over, his eyes glowing eerily in the Fog. "You all right?"
Longfellow bares his teeth in something too savage to classify as a smile. "You like those puppies? We grow 'em extra mean on the island. Remember what I said about the Fog? Doesn't affect just humans."
Kaelyn shakes her head, but there's no clearing it this deep in the Fog. Her chest feels heavy with more than the bruises from dead, tumor-ridden wolf. She waves Valentine off. "Let's keep moving."
The deeper they go, the more sound softens and warps. Contrast washes out to a bland sameness that presses down on the interlopers with a near-tangible weight. Longfellow, at least, isn't perturbed in the slightest as the three of them squelch up the track in their muddy boots. Curling her damp toes, Kaelyn realizes she should have packed more socks.
If not for the way his voice bounces and reflects back in the Fog, his chatter would be comforting. "Folks got short memories. All this has happened before. When I was a young lad, no higher than your knee, whole island was covered in Fog. Eventually it rolled back. People resettled, but they got comfortable. Started takin' things for granted."
Trying to picture it, Kaelyn can only see a tiny Longfellow with a beard.
"You don't think the Children of Atom are involved?" Valentine asks.
Longfellow grunts deep in his throat. "The Fog follows no will but its own."
Not even the trees have been spared from radiation-induced mutation. Many of them now grow every which way, their gnarled branches looping like overgrown fingernails. Kaelyn tries her best to excise the green forest from her memory. Longfellow imparts more tidbits along the way, pointing out the preferred habitat of a number of strange creatures and puts a name to the animals that attacked Far Harbor last night. Gulpers.
By the last leg of the journey, Kaelyn is simultaneously sweaty and cold, her lungs burning from the climb. Her head feels thick, making it hard to keep her eyes peeled for threats, and she clutches her musket so tightly her fingers ache. Neither Longfellow nor Valentine seem as affected; the former thanks to experience, the latter thanks to mechanics.
But at last the road steepens and the sky gets lighter. And then there's a hint of blue overhead, coaxing out a violet cast where Fog rolls against ground. Ahead the trees thin, then something curved and gray peeks between the trunks. A building—and the shape of it clicks in Kaelyn's memory. The old observatory. Its perimeter is marked by chain-link fence and more of the Fog condensers.
When they pass the condensers, Kaelyn can think again. Her eyes burn in the sudden light, the sky as deep a blue as she's ever seen it.
The observatory sits atop the mountain. The car park is muddy and, while there are rows of barricades set up to defend the building, none are occupied.
"There it is," Longfellow grunts. "Acadia. They've already been watching us for a good spell. Head on inside. You need my help again, come see me. I could think of worse things to do."
"We're much obliged," Valentine says. As Longfellow takes his leave, he looks up the stairs to the dome of the observatory. "A whole colony of synths, just sitting here in the open. No guards, but some means of observing potential visitors."
She says, "Time to find out if Kasumi made it."