Dusk is a sedate affair, trading one sort of gloominess for another. Kaelyn lets Valentine walk ahead when they reach Far Harbor, watching the sweep of his shoulders under his coat.
When she realizes she's staring, she looks away. What are you doing? Shaun is gone and you're flirting with Nick?
Guilt trickles into the grief in her chest like opalescent water, glistening on a cave wall as it dribbles into a subterranean pool. Kaelyn turns to the nearest market stall for a distraction even though its owner is clearing the benches for the night. Ammo. Can never have enough ammo. She stands under the awning of a shack that was built to sell seafood, not weapons, but the incessant wind drives rain against the back of her neck.
"Nothin' but mainlanders these days," Allen grouses into his beard.
"Is that so." Her flat tone turns it into a bland statement.
Allen snorts. "Barely spoke a word. Well-armed, but an idiot to wear sunglasses at night. Claimed he was here on a hunting trip. Avery wouldn't let me shoot him. She's going to regret that. A man that quiet doesn't bode well."
"Wait. Did he have a black coat down to his calves? Speaks in a monotone?" Out of the corner of her eye she sees Brooks in the next shack over stiffen. No time to wonder why.
Allen spits. "That's right. Why, he another friend of yours?"
Ice water down her spine. Kaelyn leans over the counter. "Where did he go?"
Allen jerks a thumb to the Hull. "Went through the gates, hasn't been back."
She knows what the courser hunts.
Kaelyn checks her weapons are loaded and strides into the Fog. Crumbling shacks loom on either side of the road, granting her passage through the ruined township. The ground is slick with dew and she sidesteps a pothole only for her foot to catch on a tire. If she can track the courser down and find a good position in the Fog, her sniper rifle will do the rest. The conditions are poor, but in a worst-case scenario she can fall back to Acadia and alert Chase to the danger.
Enveloped by the soft, depthless gray, she soon loses any means of navigation except the road. The blocky silhouettes on either side change shape, closing over her head in fine knitting branches, and her stride morphs into a prowl. An understory of ferns and gangly grasses creep up to the road, gnawing at its edges. Rotting timber provides a feast for an array of fungi, some of which glow in the Fog like fragments of the sun shining from the ground.
Kaelyn draws in a deep breath, letting the tension ease from her temples. All she can do is put one foot in front of the other, and the rhythm of it consumes her. In these dangerous moments of weightlessness, completely untethered from reality, a burden lifts from her shoulders and she's glad she no longer has to carry it. Worse: the sheer relief that fills her up when she is too far gone to feel guilty.
Funny, she'd never before noticed the true depth of the Fog. It isn't gray at all but a deep blue, haloed in gold where distant lanterns shine and wreathed in violet where the moon glows. Light scatters in all directions, luring silver-green tendrils out of the depth of the Fog and filling the forest with a pearly incandescence. Her feet slow as she stares up at the canopy; it's writhing net of black limbs try to snare the moon.
She prowls on. The landscape shifts from forest to rocky beach and back to forest. There is... something to remember. Something about the road. To stay on it, or maybe off it.
Distant pops ahead. Kaelyn follows the luring crackles, stumbles over a rotting branch. She freezes, but hears nothing in pursuit. Crouching behind a moss-laden car, she takes stock of her surroundings. Shouts and orange bursts tremble through the gloom, framed by the car windows. To her left trees converge on the crumbling road. To her right, a stony incline.
She takes the hill. Crawling on all fours soon becomes clambering on hands and feet, her boots wedging into any crevice for purchase, while ferns brush over her face with itchy fronds. The Fog swallows any wet crackle of leaves. The hill evens out, offering an excellent view of the road. She can distinguish rough bursts of orange from slick blue laser fire. The latter is always followed by screams. A two-story house looms over the road, its windows lit; black silhouettes move inside. A shadow detaches from a car, punctuated by another scream from the house.
She slides towards the drop off on her belly, taking cover under the sickly branches of a low-lying shrub. Flicking out the stand on her sniper rifle, she sights the shadow again. The courser.
She watches and waits.
The courser is crushing his foes in the house. Naturally. She tracks him as he ducks behind cover, then strafes out into the open. Lining up the crosshairs on his chest, she slides her finger inside the trigger guard. Her sniper rifle bucks with a thunderous roar.
The courser falls—and gets back up. But now he's searching for her, scanning the slope for any sign of his newest foe. She crawls away to a new position but her hands slip and air rushes by her face and the world tumbles—
She skids to a halt in a mess of wet leaves and gravel. The courser sights her. Diving behind a car and activating her stealth boy buys her seconds. His footsteps crack on the asphalt, the remaining trappers forgotten. She tracks his legs as he approaches, thumbing the safety off Deliverer.
She aims and squeezes a trio of shots. He's wounded—she can smell the blood—but still too fast as he fires back one-handed. The rifle bucks, spraying wild laser fire across the hill behind her. His other arm dangles, all but useless, blood sheeting from his mangled shoulder.
Drawing her switchblade, she lunges. Stealth boy or no, there's no hiding. He lashes out, trying to twist the knife from her grip, and the world reduces to their mad scrabbling. She draws blood, down the forearm he raises to block. Flashes of black and bared teeth and—
She knows when she jams the knife into his ribs. Not because he stiffens, but because he latches onto her wrist and twists. The pressure on her joints, threatening to dislocate her shoulder, forces her to her knees. Her knife clatters to the ground.
The courser trembles, breathing accelerated, and the fingers that have snared her wrist loosen a fraction. She shoves her weight into him and yanks her arm towards his thumb and forefinger, breaking his hold. Instead of grabbing his discarded laser rifle, she grabs her knife and launches herself at him again.
This time she hits the center of his chest. The courser stiffens and falls back into the peat. She watches to make sure he's dead. Pulls out the knife to be doubly sure.
Sitting back on her haunches, panting, she tips her face back to let air cool the sweat from her face. She hunts around for Deliverer and finds it in a pile of leaves. A crackle behind her causes her to whirl, teeth bared. Gun in one hand and knife in the other; she points both at the interloper.
"Whoa, whoa. Easy there, doll. 'S just me."
Two yellow pinpricks watch her. She shifts her feet, widens her stance, but he doesn't close in on her.
He looks between her and her weapons. "It's okay, doll. You can drop them."
She looks at him. Blinks. Looks again. "Nick?"
"That's right. You can put the weapons down."
Blood drips from the tip of the switchblade. It takes several moments to remember how to uncurl her fingers. One clatter, then two.
"That's good. I'm going to take a step forward, all right? Are you injured at all?"
She stretches, limb by limb, to find a sharp pain in her knife arm at the wrist and shoulder, as well as aches in her hip and legs. Her cheek stings. The smell of charred leather pervades her nose; the ballistic weave is hot against her skin. "No."
He's close enough now she can make out the edges of his coat against the Fog. He ducks to collect her fallen weapons and surveys the scene over her shoulder.
She wonders what he sees.
Then, with an arm around her waist, he leads her out of the Fog.
It's the lights that she sees first. A row of blue-violet lamps blur in the Fog. Beyond them, smears of gold and orange. The ache behind her eyes coalesces into a spike of pain at the brightness.
They're halfway up the stairs when she realizes her lungs are free. Breathing is easy, and she can see the stars.
Her companion leads her inside, down too many stairs to count, to a small room with cracked walls and a piercing white lantern. Her next memory is of musty, pine-scented sheets. Real pine, not the sanitized store-bought flavor. She jumps when something cool grabs her arm.
"Sorry," he murmurs. Crouching beside her, he peels back her sleeve with one hand and squeezes out a wet cloth with the other.
That's when she notices the blood. Smeared and sticky, with a metallic tang that hangs in her nose. He turns her hand palm-up to scrub at the mess with a warm cloth. For a moment, she can feel cold water on her thighs and a solid wall of heat at her back.
All she knows for sure is she never wanted him to see what she did.
"Nick. Nick. I can take care of it myself."
"Never said you couldn't." He only stops when she tugs her arm free, but lets her claim the washer as well.
Turning away, she strips the filth from her skin, remembering to clean her fingernails where red sits in the crevices. The water bowl is murky by the time she's finished.
"I need to clean up. Properly. So scoot." She isn't sure if those are the right words, but her tongue seems to know what it's doing.
Valentine moves so suddenly she starts, taking a seat on the mattress beside her. Gripping her chin, he turns her head to examine her stinging cheek. "This needs to be looked at."
"I'll do it."
She meets his gaze and her steadiness seems to convince him. Even so, Valentine's retreat is a reluctant one. His thumb smooths over her chin before he retracts his hand. "First aid kit's on the nightstand. Yell if you need anything."
The door clicks shut behind him. She presses her fingers to her brow and tries to think. Her cheek aches in the cold. Right. That's a place to start. Cleaning the graze only makes it sting more, so she pokes through the medical kit for something to help. There are several syringes, but the IV bag catches her eye. Radaway.
There's something about dosages she can't quite recall, but she does remember to disinfect her skin and the needle before sliding it into the crook of her elbow—her wrist hurts too much for it. Some tape holds it in place while she sees to cleaning up the rest of her. While she's at it, she injects a stimpak and bandages her wrist. Her shoulder throbs, sharpening to full-fledged pain when she raises her arm. With some ginger prodding she determines it isn't dislocated.
Lying back on the bed, she presses her good hand against her forehead. While there's no Fog around her, it swirls between her ears.
When she wakes, her head pounds.
Blinking away the crusty seal from her eyes, Kaelyn almost rolls off the mattress. Moments later, she realizes the ceiling is unfamiliar.
She lurches up and stars burst in front of her eyes.
When Kaelyn's vision clears and her ears stop ringing, she inspects the room. There's a med kit and a bowl of dirty water on the crate that serves as a bedside table. Her two rifles lean against the wall with her satchel beside them. Crossing the tiny room, Kaelyn inspects her belongings for clues. No kidnapper would leave her weapons nearby. The magazine in her sniper rifle is missing three bullets while Deliverer is empty but for the chambered round. And, oddly, enough, dried blood spots her switchblade's sheathe. That knife is more a tool than weapon to her.
Kaelyn doesn't remember how she got here, so she jumps to what she can recall. The robobrains in their decadent Vault 118. Returning to Far Harbor. Being preoccupied by Valentine's mouth. And because of that—which warms her cheeks despite her current situation—she needed some distance. That's when she—
The courser.
There's a dim memory of lining up the shot. Falling through mist and stone.
She runs her thumb over the blood stains and knows. The courser is dead.
That still doesn't explain how she got here. Or where here even is. Kaelyn probes her cheek with careful fingers. It's swollen and achy and scabbed. After a once-over, taking stock of the bandage around her wrist, the deep ache in her shoulder, and whistling at the dark bruises mottling her skin, she stumbles to her feet. Her jacket sports several laser burns that were absorbed by the ballistic weave.
The door is unlocked. When she opens it, relief strikes as quickly as recognition. Acadia. She's in Acadia.
Kaelyn wobbles down the hallway, towards the murmur of voices in the common area. Her legs are stiff and her back is a mass of pain. She doesn't feel up to navigating the stairs just yet. Chase leans against the wall halfway down the corridor, a silent specter watching over her charges. While she doesn't glance over her shoulder until Kaelyn is a dozen paces away, she has no doubt known Kaelyn's exact location since she stepped out of her quarters.
Kaelyn gestures to the wall beside Chase. "Do you mind if I...?"
Chase's eyes are sharp, taking in the sweat on Kaelyn's brow and the slight lean in her stance. "Go ahead."
Kaelyn looks over Chase's worn courser uniform, its leather cracked and faded with mud, but the look somehow suits her as much as the pockmarks that roughen her peachy complexion. "I've never seen a courser go rogue before. After all the Institute puts you through, I didn't know if anyone could slip the leash." Her thoughts turn to X6-88, then. She hopes he made it out of the Institute safely. And didn't kill too many of her people along the way.
"You know too much about the Institute." Chase turns her head enough to knife Kaelyn with an accusatory look. "If you're human, that doesn't leave many options for how you gained your knowledge."
There's no room for offense when safety is at stake. Kaelyn stares at a gouge in the wall across the corridor. "The Institute kidnapped my son. They got what they deserved—I made sure of that."
"No wonder you took out that courser in the forest." Chase pauses. "Did you ever find your son?"
Beneath the gouge is a series of tiny chips in the wall, like a stony constellation of dark stars. Hairline fractures criss-cross over the concrete, betraying centuries of wear and tear.
Chase sighs, short and tight. "Whatever they did to him, I'm sorry."
For the length of a blink Kaelyn is almost tempted to tell her. To ease the weight of the cold-stone grief that anchors her to a crater in Cambridge. But instead she pulls away from the wall and, rounding the corner, almost runs into Dejen. He's too close for it to be a coincidence.
They restore a comfortable distance between them as quickly as they can. There's no distaste in the gesture; only respect between two mistrustful people. Dejen looks her up and down with his black eyes. "Shit. Should've guessed you were the real deal. I thought you were a risk, but here we are."
Kaelyn's head hurts and her heart hurts, so she's a little slow on the uptake. "I'm sorry, Dejen. What's this about?"
"I have my own set of contacts. They warned me Chase screwed up, and that the courser was on our tail. But you took him out without anyone asking you to. You put your life in danger for us. I want you to know that's not for nothing."
Kaelyn nods once. "Thanks, Dejen."
This place, with its synths living in the open, accepting the inherent risks, and doing all they can to protect each other—it isn't something Kaelyn ever expected to see. Glory sure would have gotten a kick out of Acadia.
Memories of her friend are too raw for the thought to make her smile. A part of her wants to be back in the Fog, where the rough edges of her heart are smoothed away by a soft caress of gray. Alas, breakfast will have to suffice.
Her entrance to the designated common area doesn't go unnoticed. Cole waves her over to the counter where breakfast supplies have been laid out,
When Kaelyn has her toast, a woman offers her a place beside her. "So you're that new gal! I'm Miranda. It's nice to meet someone from back home. Kasumi doesn't want to talk about it, but is there any news from the Commonwealth?"
Kaelyn scrounges up all the details she can think of between picking at her bread roll. The news of the Institute and the Brotherhood of Steel earn cheers from nearby eavesdropping synths, who then drop any pretense of not listening.
Miranda takes it all in, her gaze distant as she imagines it. She tucks a dark blonde strand of hair behind an ear. "I'd like to see the Commonwealth again, once things have settled down. It's not that there's anything wrong with Acadia, but it can get a little boring."
"In a few years, maybe, when people have put it behind them, it might be safe for you to return to the Commonwealth. Is there anywhere in particular you want to go?"
With a few careful questions, it's easy to keep the others around her talking. Kaelyn doesn't mind. If anything, it feels good to let the chatter wash over her, absorbing what is normalcy for these people. They must monitor the wind turbines, clean out the lower levels of the observatory, grow their own crops, and there are always endless repairs to be done.
After the clean up tub goes around to collect all the dirty dishes, Kaelyn sets out to find Valentine. It means braving the stairs, and never before has she been so thankful for hand rails as her stiff legs cry out for mercy. There's no sign of him near Kasumi's nook or anywhere else on the lower levels.
At the top of the observatory, she hears DiMA's gentle voice and Valentine's answering baritone. "—and don't even get my secretary started when I tell her I literally have a screw loose!"
With one hand trailing against the wall, Kaelyn wanders to the telescope room. DiMA and Valentine stand before one of the server hives. Even second gen senses outstrip those of a human, as they both glance up at the same moment.
Valentine looks her over, and his face softens with naked relief. "Good to see you up and about. You look better."
"Morning, gentlemen. I'm assuming it's morning."
"That's right," DiMA says. "I trust you are better rested?"
Valentine trots down from the dais in a movement that is far too energetic. "We'll continue this later, DiMA."
DiMA is already retreating behind his computer bays with a smile. "Of course. It was nice to speak to you again, Nick."
"Chatting with DiMA?" Kaelyn murmurs when he stands before her. It seems curiosity about his family apparently outweighs his skepticism.
"The old synth isn't that bad. I, well, I overreacted when we met him. But that's not important right now." Catching Kaelyn's arm, Valentine steers her outside and up the stairs to a concrete balcony grafted onto the side of the observatory. "I think it's time for you and I to have a talk."
Kaelyn leans on the the railing to ease the weight off her leg. "I've been looking for you, Nick. Where have you been?"
"After you booted me out of your room, I lent a hand to Kasumi tinkering with her latest pet project. Kid's a machine whisperer, let me tell you. Then I was up here with DiMA."
Kaelyn can't recall evicting him from her room. Pressing the heel of her hand to her brow, she says, "Sorry about that."
His voice is suddenly sharp. "For what? For walking out of Far Harbor on your own, at night, to find a courser in the proverbial haystack?"
She blinks, taken aback. "Nick, that's not what I—"
Valentine's hands clamp on her shoulders, one artificial dermis and the other cold steel, forcing her to face him. "You listen and listen closely. I kept my distance because I thought you needed space to mourn your boy. But you've been nothing short of reckless since we got off the boat and it's gotta stop. You shouldn't be wandering the island on your own."
She recoils, stung, and shakes him off. "You're not my keeper, Nick!"
"The difference between you and me is that I'm not affected by the Fog. You are." Valentine shakes his head back and forth. An unhappy smile curls his lips. "Hell, doll, if you saw yourself every time you step into that blasted Fog. I don't want to impose rules on ya. But I'm not gonna sit back and watch you kill yourself, either."
"Not kill myself. That's not what I…"
"Then what?"
She opens her mouth but can't speak. I want to forget it all. The fear, the grief, the happiness I used to have.
Valentine grips her shoulders again. His voice is gentler this time. "We haven't come this far to lose you now. Promise me you'll be more careful? That you'll take me with you next time?"
Kaelyn closes her eyes. She never can resist charming men. "Promise."