Scene 17

Lawman and then Vyatch both stepped through the tenebrous doorway and into the Overseer's office once more. Behind the intimidating desk of the long deceased Turnbull were stood Carter and Katherine. An orb of ghostly pale light emanated from the flickering monitors, casting a butterfly net of shadows. It was like an artificial, flickering moonlight that made Carter and Katherine's angular shadows feverishly dance on the far wall, as though the black figures were enraptured by the whispering silence that remained within the now desolate vault. Vyatch's heavy footfalls resounded through the old world chamber as he pressed his gun into the small of Lawman's back. Each step from his heavy boots punctured the silence like a dagger softly punctures a lung when you stab someone in the back. Carter and Katherine looked on (Impatiently? Impassively? Lawman couldn't quite tell). Their faces were half lit by the glaring light of the screens, and half shrouded by impenetrable darkness.

"Well?" Carter grunted as the two stepped closer. "Did you learn anything? Anything at all?"

"We know Lost Orleans exists – or at least did exist," Vyatch rumbled from behind. "What state it's been left in I've no clue, but this place and its Calculator was a, uh, network relay point for, uh, all the other -."

"And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Carter snapped. Lawman saw he was pugnacious as ever, and no doubt what little patience he possessed had been eroded away by his waiting in the shadows, trying to faff with the Overseer's terminal and failing to get it running. Lawman saw that the screen flashed with streams of code and no doubt Carter had made a mess of the damn thing. However, if any of them were going to find the location of Lost Orleans then Lawman knew that they had to hack into Turnbull's terminal. It was the one through which information was streamed to Lost Orleans. Perhaps there was still a connection…

Lawman's pensive gaze turned from the terminal back towards Carter for a moment. He noticed that Carter had holstered the Colt 45 for now and had left his satchel with his other guns by the side of the monitors. Lawman licked his lips without quite realising it. He stepped forward slightly, not enough to raise caution in any of the Cazador's but just enough to be noticed.

"This vault was responsible for passing on data to another facility in New Orleans," he interjected with a calmness that didn't match the sweatiness of his palms. Lawman began to feel the effects of the Med-X that Vyatch had hit him up with slowly fade away from him. He felt his lust for a cold stiff drink rear its ugly head out of the pit of numbness the Med-X had placed him in, his right hand beginning to twitch. Not right now, he thought desperately, not fuckin' now. I need my fuckin' wits about me. I need to think…

"And?" Carter clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, his lips twisting into an unseemly sneer.

"Lawman, honey, I hope you have more information than that." Katherine flicked her wastelander ponytail aside. "'Cause if you don't…"

"You're what? Gonna kill me? And then what you gonna use the terminal over there for? Cracking peanuts and holding your Pina Coladas? I don't think you're gonna crack that code any time soon. Not without me, anyway. And you're gonna want what's on there. Trust me. It's the only connection to Lost Orleans we might yet have. So why don't we get down to brass tacks."

Lawman knew he was playing a dangerous game. Carter's gun might be holstered, but he could see Katherine's revolver was held quite firmly in her pale hand and it was pointed directly at his chest. He was getting reckless, and the lack of food and water and alcohol was making matters worse. Still, that Med-X he was on continued to slip further out of his system. He wiped back a strand of his silver hair from out of his eyes.

Carter just glared.

"Go ahead then, Lawman," Katherine purred, in delicate yet sinister tones. Her narrow eyes glinted like shards of ice. "Tell us what you've learnt. You might want to keep from cutting off Vyatch like that in future though." She laughed. "He looks like he's about to take that gun and brain you with it."

Lawman glanced around and saw Vyatch's lips curl to reveal clenched teeth. Lawman turned back around to Katherine and responded with what he hoped was a winning smile. "Funny you should mention the word, 'brain'…"

He hoped it was a winning smile. He didn't feel like he was winning. He felt like he was sinking. He felt like he was a gambler fixated by the spin of a roulette wheel and that he'd already left his lucky streak far, far behind. But like any gambler he didn't know when to quit. He knew that, with Vyatch studying his hacking and his pip-boy when he used it, it wouldn't be long until he proved to be superfluous to the crew. He decided to hedge everything he had on one last gambit.

So let the roulette wheel spin and lady luck dance, Lawman thought. It's time we settled this…

He revealed everything. He told them about what had happened in the vault, the testimony of Zelda Winfred, the sordid details of what the Calculator had been and the sort of unnatural experiments that took place down in the basement. Finally he told them about how Zelda, in her last words, spoke of a connection that fed data to Lost Orleans – a connection that was linked directly to the Overseer's terminal.

All the while, as he spoke, Lawman inched his way gingerly around the desk.

Carter looked over to Vyatch, leaning over the intimidating desk, which was elevated a foot or so above the floor around it. "Is this true?" he asked him.

Vyatch gave a silent nod of the head.

"So what you're telling me," Carter hissed. "Is that we might as well have logged onto this terminal in the first place instead of wasting time searching the Science Offices!"

"Not at all," Lawman riposted. He held his ground but held up his hands in a placating gesture. "It's only by discovering what they did that we know what sort of data we're looking to track on the Overseer's terminal, and roughly when that data would have been sent."

"What?" Carter retorted.

"Look," Lawman explained, knowing not all of what he said was bullshit, but also knowing he didn't understand half as much as he was letting on. "When one computer communicates with another they share data. But that data is encoded so that no one can intercept the message, right? What that means is that the two computers share a key needed to break the code. That key is sent by the computer that wants to receive the message allowing the other computer doing the sending to encode it…"

"What's your point Lawman?" Katherine intoned.

"My point is this computer didn't just stream data to Lost Orleans. In order to stream the data, it had to receive a key from Lost Orleans itself…" And it was at this point that Lawman knew he was out of his depth, but he was on a roll, and instead of slowing down he ploughed straight on ahead.

Let lady luck dance.

"…That key can reveal where Lost Orleans is located. You see that portal there?" he pointed to the socket by the terminal that he could plug his pip-boy into. "I can use that to upload Lost Orleans' location straight to my Pip-Boy. Satisfied?"

In truth, he didn't know if the key would do anything of the sort. He didn't know if the computer was too damaged to allow access. He didn't know if the data had been corrupted. He didn't know if he could access the key. He didn't know a lot of things and all the time Lawman felt the roulette wheel make its final spin. The clock was ticking. He felt sure that after the trip to this vault he wouldn't be needed. If things went Carter's way then he wouldn't need Lawman to hack anymore terminals. If things didn't go Carter's way then Lawman wouldn't be able to turn it around for them. It was a catch 22. Vyatch might be a brute but Lawman knew that he was shrewd enough to pick up on the basics of his pip-boy. Soon it would be more valuable in his hands than Lawman's.

Besides, if Lawman played his cards right, the key might not matter.

"Alright then, Lawman," Katherine spoke with a deceptive calmness. She drew back her gun and slipped it into its holster. "Take the floor…"

This was it. He wasn't the world's greatest scavver and his hands were twitching and slippery with icy cold sweat, but he'd have to take the chance. He stared directly ahead at the terminal as he stepped forward. It didn't look too bad. As he got closer he could see where they'd both gone wrong hacking it. It would be a simple step to rectify what they'd done and then hopefully he could work his magic on what data was left on the ancient bundle of wires and circuit boards. But it wasn't his hacking skills that concerned him.

He stumbled slightly on one of the stairs and brushed against Carter. He had slipped past the satchel and the monitors when, before he could apologise, Carter's fingers snapped closed around his neck like a bear trap.

Lawman gasped as he found himself shoved against the desk, his eyes burning as they turned red, and his breath whistling through his throat. He staggered backwards as Carter leant over him. His breath was rank as Lawman's bleary gaze swam with the vision of Carter's ugly sneer.

"What's your game, Lawman?" Carter hissed.

"Wha…ch…wha' d'ya mean," Lawman gasped as Carter shoved him down further, tightened his grip and Lawman's fingernails scratched and scrambled against the surface of the table.

"You think you can bump into me and keep on walkin', you fag? You think you can talk big like nothin's gonna happen to you and then crash into me like that? Don't think I don't know you did that on purpose, you son of a bitch!"

Lawman' eyes glanced over to the screens. He couldn't help it. They locked on the thing that glinted dangerously in between two of the monitors. The gleaming metal cylinder slipped in and out of focus like a pendulum swings back and forth.

"Carter…" Lawman choked, struggling to not fight against the psychotic bastard's grip. His hand reached out, slowly inching towards the gap between the monitors. "…Carter. Let…go. You need… the terminal."

Somewhere behind Carter's face Lawman heard Katherine laugh.

Carter's hand inched towards his holster. If it reached it then Lawman knew his gambit would be over. He could sense that roulette wheel in his mind losing momentum, the ball clattering to a sudden stop.

Then Carter's hand froze.

"What the fuck?" he suddenly breathed as something crackled to his side.

His attention had turned to Lawman's Pip-Boy. The sound that all of a sudden emanated from it felt so very distant to Lawman, but as he turned he could see its screen light up and flicker as some scratchy old world tune sparked to life, as though catching a near dead radio signal through a long dark tunnel;

'Children let me tell you…*crackle*…new kinda boogie man…*static*…eerie scream!'

Lawman recognised the tune. It was Glen Gray's Boogie Woogie Man. That didn't explain why it abruptly killed the silence as it reverberated through the dark chamber in chilling bursts of fluctuating sound.

Had Lawman accidentally switched on the radio on the Pip-Boy? But even so there shouldn't be any signal – Lawman had checked obsessively for one during the river voyage and there was nothing but static. Was the signal emanating from somewhere inside the vault? Lawman couldn't think straight.

Carter's grip slipped from Lawman's neck as he darted over to one of the monitors. For a desperate second Lawman almost thought Carter had found what had been hid there. But he hadn't. Carter was transfixed by something on the screen.

'So if you hear a piano…*crackle*…nobodies playing it…playing boogie like no…*static*…can!'

Carter hogged the monitor and it took a moment for Lawman to glance at what he was looking at as he wheezed and gasped, catching his breath at last. Katherine's face grew pale as she looked over Carter's shoulder. Lawman stumbled forward.

Carter jerked at his walkie-talkie and switched it on, its static adding to the static of the pip boy. "Vance!" Carter barked into it, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. "Vance! Can you hear me?"

'…*crackle* every night when you're asleep he starts…'

Vyatch watched on from a distance, his smirk had twisted into a look of confusion, as Carter continued to bark into the walkie-talkie. "Vance! Vance, fuckin' talk to me, you bastard cunt!"

The only response was static.

'When it hits a rhythm and…*static*… feet start obeying it…'

Lawman staggered, wheezing, to the monitor. He looked over Carter's shoulder and froze. It was the screen showing the tram station just outside the tunnel. He could just make out the tunnel's familiar trail of milky white lights, like eyes with cataracts, before they were swallowed by the inky blackness.

What dominated the screen was a perturbing figure standing just outside that tunnel. Lawman only caught a few details on the black and white monitor in the moment his eyes clasped hold of it. From what Lawman could make out on the fuzzy screen the figure had a long trailing overcoat blasted to one side by the gale outside, a black crucifix tattooed across its expressionless face, and blacker eyes that looked up at the camera – no, through the camera – and bore into your own eyes as though he, whoever the figure was, could see you, as though you could never hide from him, as though he'd always known you were there.

'…eerie scream!'

The figure slowly raised Vance's walkie-talkie to his side, for the camera to see. Even on the black and white screen Lawman could tell it was splattered with blood. He dangled it for a moment, and then dropped it into the raging river. All around the figure the railings trembled, the river churned, the gridded walkway shivered in the wind – and yet the figure remained unnaturally still, motionless, amidst the fierce storm outside.

Carter's fists clenched. His knuckles turned white as bone.

"Who the fuck…?" Lawman breathed.

Then, as though the figure knew his message had been seen, he raised his gun. There was a flash before the monitor plunged into black. The shadows of the room inched closer from the corners.

They were left speechless. Only the eerie song from Lawman's pip-boy broke the silence:

'Then look out! –

…It's the boogie woogie man!'

Outside, amidst the howling gale and the crashing waves of the Mississippi, the figure turned to watch Vance die, leaning over him slightly and digesting every last moment with those cruel black eyes.

Vance's body sat crumpled by the side of the tunnel. Blood gurgled from his mouth, frothing at his lips as it drip dripped, first onto the gridded walkway, and then into the churning river below. His neck was snapped, his trachea crushed and splintered like one of those tree branches out there in the gathering storm. A shard of cartilage slit through the side of the dying man's neck, ribbons of rich red blood tracing its way down his side. Smoke rose from the barrel of the now empty luger that was clenched in his fist, slowly rising before being whipped away by the whistling wind. Vance's glassy, bloodshot eyes, for a moment, reflected the shadowy figure before him, before they finally lost their gleam. Slowly Vance's body ceased its twitching and lay still.

That part of his job done, the figure then rose, turned, and paced his way down the tunnel. He slipped away into its velvety darkness. His footsteps punctuated the silence like a full stop punctuates the end of a sentence.

Mr Graves had arrived.