A/N: Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and happy holidays to everyone else! Also, as a heads up, I may or may not be able to post a new chapter next week, being New Year's Eve and all.
Thanks again to Mr Ninja Pineapple for betaing!
The zealots at the entrance to the Nucleus welcome Kaelyn back with uneasy smiles. She only wonders until she steps inside and hears Tektus's voice boom around the open chamber.
"—and this, brothers and sisters, is why we must be disciplined to better serve Atom! When we forget our duty to Atom and the family, torpor takes hold!"
A whimper of pain echoes off the concrete. Two zealots beat an unlucky brother, one zealot pinning his hands behind his back while the other punches him in the gut with her gauntleted fists. The first zealot kicks his legs out and throws him to the ground with a painful crunch. From the top of the Vessel, Tektus watches. Richter is a silent golem at his side.
Kaelyn feels sick. Her instincts waver between interceding and keeping her cover, blurring to a haze of anxiety straining her nerves. The zealots proceed to kick the fallen man until the concrete is smeared with blood and tears. At a nod from Richter, the two zealots cease their beating at once and resume their posts. A hush falls over the chamber, the last echoes of the blows fading to an accusatory silence.
Kaelyn winces. And you just watched.
When the Vessel lid clangs shut, signaling Tektus and Richter's withdrawal, a slight figure darts down the stairs. Sister Mai crouches beside the fallen man, resting a hand on his hair. Kaelyn crouches on his other side and the two women glance at each other in wordless agreement.
Mai looks to the nearby zealot. "If you don't mind?"
The zealot's eyes flick to the Vessel, then he nods once. Hauling the man to his feet causes him to cry out in pain, his breaths short and harsh. Through the holes in his shirt, his stomach and ribs are peppered with dark bruises. "N— no. I have sinned against Atom and against the family. I deserve this."
"Maybe," Mai says, "but you can repent somewhere other than the middle of a walkway."
Plenty of Children watch with varying degrees of subtlety, but no one dares assist them take the injured man to the Archemist. She takes one look and ushers them to a nearby gurney, possessing few qualms about wrapping his broken ribs and cleaning the grazes on his skin.
"Thanks for your help," Mai says. She wipes her hands down the front of her robes and turns to go back to her station.
Kaelyn calls after her, "Mai? What... did he do?"
She digs her heel into the ground. "He neglected evening prayers to talk with someone."
The shock of it leaves Kaelyn wandering the shacks, trying to process what just happened, until a nearby zealot asks, skeptical, "Have you finished your prayers already?"
Anxiety rushes along her nerves. "Uh, that's where I'm going right now. Glory to Atom."
"Glory to Atom!"
Kaelyn kneels in a niche on the catwalk, hands raised to the Vessel. Pretending to fulfill her required hours of prayer gives her an unimpeded opportunity to plan. In the week of her absence, the unrest in the Nucleus has only grown. One would have to be dense to mistake the Children's subdued air for docility—a number of eyes watch the zealots' turned backs, and Kaelyn worries for Ware. The only time anyone speaks at normal volume is in the middle of a particularly impassioned prayer.
She's already destroyed the letter she picked up after leaving the Archemist, but its words prey on her mind. Now there are at least four dead drops spread across the Nucleus for trading messages on the sly, courtesy of Aubert. She doesn't know how many people are involved, but she's torn between hope that their numbers grow and fear that a Tektus supporter might catch wind of it.
Zealots under Richter too many. Tektus protected.
Indeed, the Confessor is never without a quadrant of personal guards, bolstered by Richter's constant attention. Any fight would be bloody, if only for the superior armor the zealots' raiments offer. Kaelyn only has one suit of power armor, hidden near the Nucleus.
Need weapons—written in another hand beneath it.
At the bottom of the page—Need Atom.
Kaelyn has the solution to that last one: the Mother. And yet, she's already faking belief in their faith. Faking a sign from their god is dangerously close to a line Kaelyn isn't sure she wants to cross. But it's the only trump card they have against Tektus's stranglehold on the Children, who might place more faith in their god than in their leader. Only the zealots, whose loyalty will be conflicted, remain an unknown. If Richter picked his people with care, they'll be loyal to him above anything else.
So Kaelyn lifts her hands and begs anything that's listening to work around the zealots.
Heavy footsteps rattle behind her; she relaxes at the sound of Ware's gravelly voice. "If I'm disturbing you, you can tell me to leave."
Loudly, Kaelyn says, "Pray with me."
Ware settles on his knees beside her. "Something's eating at you."
"I'm conflicted," she says softly. Her words plop onto the concrete and roll off the edge to the glowing pool skulking thirty feet below.
"About? I'm no expert with the visions, but I can listen."
I'm going to lie to your high priest about a religious sign to get him to back off Far Harbor and stop hurting his own people. If that doesn't work, I'm going to start a coup.
"There's something I have to do, but I don't know if I can. It's important—not just for the Children, but the whole island—and yet..."
"What's right and what's easy are rarely the same thing, but I think you know that. The Mother found you worthy, and I know you can live up to that."
It's always going to come back to her initiation and that strange journey through the radiation-ravaged wastes, on the heels of a phantom who laughed and whispered—
"Preserve. Bring them peace." Kaelyn traces the words, one by one, with her mouth. "That's what she said. Bring them peace."
"Who said?"
She looks up. "The Mother."
Even with a vision-slash-hallucination that gave Kaelyn a stamp of approval, her guilt is diminished, not destroyed. In a move of pure procrastination, she detours to the dead drop in the locker room and, after removing the false bottom in the last locker on the left, she rifles through the letters. The topmost paper conversation features several different sets of handwriting:
Zealots must have weapons cache. Where? In case we need them.
Gamma guns useless against most of the family.
Who has Atom's blessing and who doesn't?
That one sends a little thrill of fear along Kaelyn's spine for Ware and Devin. The conversation continues:
By Atom's Glow—too risky!
We could meet somewhere quiet to plan. Risky, but not much more than usual these days.
As much as Kaelyn would like to attend a meeting and see the faces of her unknown allies, it's too dangerous in the current climate.
So she writes: Zealots will know if weapons missing. I can get into command center and see if there are any pre-war guns in there. Need place to hide them. Let me know if this is a go.
"Hear me, brothers and sisters!" Tektus's voice is a faint boom that makes her jump. "After today's lapse, we must all prostrate ourselves before Atom and beg His forgiveness!"
Replacing the false bottom of the locker, Kaelyn rushes to the assembling Children and braces herself for the coming tedium. Tektus leads the prayers, punctuated by over-enthusiastic shouts from the gathered Children, for hours. Kaelyn's arms soon ache from holding them aloft and her knees hurt from the hard concrete. Sweat dampens her skin from the cloying heat of radiation and fear.
When Tektus shouts that Atom advocates sacrificing Far Harbor to Atom as a show of devotion, Kaelyn feels guilty for calling her agreement in chorus with the rest of the Children.
Amidst the curdling shame, however, is a solidifying thought: Kaelyn isn't the only one here manipulating their religion for her own benefit.
At last, Tektus seems to tire and, with a croaking voice, calls, "Atom is surely pleased with our obedience tonight, brothers and sisters! Glory to Atom!"
No one quite believes it's over, the chants dropping to a resonant murmur, until the clang of the Vessel lid signals that it's—not safe, but that they're free from the Confessor's suspicious gaze. Kaelyn stretches then slumps her shoulders, scrounging the will to rise to her feet. If Tektus' plan is to exhaust the family so they have no energy to scheme and plot against him, he may be onto something.
A nearby brother halts by her side. "Let me help you, sister." He holds out a hand.
Seeing no way to gracefully refuse, Kaelyn lets him haul her to her feet. The man staggers a little under her unexpected weight and they bump into each other, off-balance. His hand strays to her waist and she's about to snap at him when she feels something slide into her belt pouch. The man backs off with a sheepish smile.
"Thank you," she says, and finds a quiet corner in the communal sleeping area, facing a wall, to take a peek at the folded note.
Want to prove your usefulness? Find weapons. Hide them where we talked last time. Also, appreciate not being hauled off by zealots yet.
Aubert's handwriting.
The man who helped her to her feet causes a ruckus in the dining area, suggesting they compose new songs in Atom's honor, and a number of Children freeze, their eyes glassy with exhaustion, before they call their support with plastic smiles. Sensing her opportunity, Kaelyn murmurs to Mai that a bladder never waits for Atom, and slips away. Once inside the command center, she searches for storage areas or other stockpiles.
The cold lights burn away the eerie atmosphere of the renovated Nucleus, returning a sense of normalcy, but there's no forgetting she's still inside the Children of Atom's stronghold. Kaelyn turns down an unfamiliar corridor, alert for any previously undiscovered protectrons or assaultrons, and is welcomed into the storeroom by glaring silence. She hurries to the nearest shelf to check its contents.
Success.
Crates of ammunition, a number of them half-empty, sit on rusted shelves near racks of pistols and rifles. If she had more time she'd investigate the rest of the supplies—uniforms and field kits, she guesses—more thoroughly. Kaelyn fills duffel bags with weapons and ammo, cursing when more than one worn strap breaks, and ferries what she can to the upper levels of the Nucleus using the corridors she discovered last time she was in the command center. Finding spots that are surreptitious enough to remain hidden but simple enough to find in the event of an emergency is rather difficult. Any marker to help her co-conspirators will also give the caches away to a hypothetical investigator.
Drawing in a bolstering breath, a flit of anxiety returns as she considers what she must now do. The final piece needs to be laid.
At last, Kaelyn marches up the gangplank to the Vessel where Tektus presides. With a guard in each corner of the room, Tektus reclines in his throne, secure in his domain. A smirk stretches across his face as he regards her, at odds with the sickly-sweetness of his tone. "Atom's favored child graces my presence. Is there something I can do for you?"
Show time. Kaelyn barely has to act for her voice to waver. "High Confessor. Forgive me for not seeing you sooner but so much has been going on and I—" She draws in a deep breath for effect. "When I was wandering the island, I saw— I don't know what I saw. Well—I do, but I don't think you'll like to hear it, Confessor."
"Go on." His voice is a razor over glass.
"When I drank from the spring and the Mother guided me to the family, she whispered something strange to me. I didn't understand her, then, but I think I do now. She said: preserve. Protect the family. And now the Mother has lifted her veil to protect Far Harbor."
That garners incredulous squawks from the watching zealots like birds being shooed off a comfortable perch.
Tektus's feet hit the ground with a thump. "What? Inconceivable! Atom granted this island to us. Are you certain of what you saw, my child?"
"The streets around Far Harbor are clear, Confessor." Kaelyn keeps her voice low, humble, even as she says, "It can only mean Atom wants peace."
Tektus appraises her from head to toe. Leaning back in his seat, he runs a hand over the gray whiskers on his chin. "And what makes you so certain of that, child? Why would such a portent—vital to the wellbeing of this family—come to one such as you?" And not to me, are the words that hang in the air, as cloying as the pungent incense that swirls through the Vessel.
Her smile is grim. "Because a mother always wants what's best for her children. A family afraid, torn apart from without and within—she doesn't want this. Maybe she came to me because she knew I would listen. I can't assume to know Atom's will, or that my will is His." She dares a peek out of the corner of her eye to see if Tektus understands who's will she questions—and, oh, he does. "All I know is I have seen the Fog roll back with my own eyes. Can you safely ignore that sign, Confessor?"
"What if—this is Atom's will? Were we wrong about Atom's intentions for Far Harbor?" The zealot who spoke shifts on her feet under the Confessor's piercing gaze.
Tektus rises to his feet. It's a slow, deliberate movement that has nothing to do with the confines of age: first his hands clutch the armrests in his clawed grip before he pushes himself upright on creaking knees and stretches to his full height—aided by that ridiculous headdress—to impose over Kaelyn. It's only manageable because she kneels; she's taller than an old priest. "I had best fast and pray for Atom's guidance. As for you, my child," Tektus takes her hand and bids she stand, "Richter has a task for you, if you would continue to serve this family. All of you—leave me."
Kaelyn bows her head. "Of course, Confessor."
Just outside the Vessel, someone calls, "Wait." Zealot Theil, a pale woman with unruly red hair, jogs to a halt at Kaelyn's side. "What you said to the Confessor— your vision of the Mother— that was all real?"
"I saw it," Kaelyn answers. Whether it was real, she has her doubts. "I don't think Confessor Tektus was impressed, but if that's what the Mother demands, I cannot ignore her."
"She is Atom's prophet," Theil echoes. "Her will is Atom's will. Even if it's something as strange as this. Peace with Far Harbor? You were... brave, I think, to convey her message to Confessor Tektus."
Since the Children are astoundingly effective gossips, word has spread through the ranks before Kaelyn has even tracked down Richter and obtained his instructions. Even the zealots are wary now of the shifting mood within the Nucleus, and watch Kaelyn out of the corner of their eyes. Before she leaves, she scribbles a note that reads: Atom sent sign—peace with Far Harbor and within family. T may or may not listen to Him. Need to convince zealots. She leaves it in the dead drop in the locker room by the decontamination arches.