At the end of the fourth day, she made it to the edge of the town called On-the-Bay. Lilian had shown her on the map where it was, tracing the lines of the roads that she'd followed as a child. Celia stopped and looked behind her, into the darkening sky. There was no going back now. She was starving, tired, and her chest didn't feel much better than it had when she first felt sick.

Maybe they are right, she thought. Maybe I am a stupid, inconsiderate child.

She got angry, then. She climbed up a stand of rocks and jumped onto a roof, then sat cross-legged and pulled out her binoculars. The distance was almost too dark in the new moon, to see anything. There would have been a good view, she thought.

She waited patiently. Two fires in barrels on the beach flared into vision, outlining the sands, driftwood, corrugated metal sheets, and something on the beach, moving in a circle. She focused on a spot near the fires. Was that a robot?

No, it wasn't a robot. Looked like someone wearing power armor. There was power armor at the base; Celia had looked it over and found it entirely too complicated to figure out. Celia chuckled to herself. Robots certainly didn't throw their hands up in exasperation, either.

There were two figures standing by one fire. She panned her binoculars down to the other barrel. Two more on this one, one standing with its back turned. The other pulled out a long rifle and crouched, then aimed it directly at her.

Well! She dropped the binoculars and raised her hands above her head. No shot was forthcoming, so she relaxed and laid down onto the roof. She wondered who they were. If they could afford that much armor, they must be some sort of mercenaries or military group. Didn't Mayor Rowland mention about men in power armor rounding up extra people, once before?

She stayed put. She was too tired to leave, anyway, and if she hadn't been shot yet, she probably wouldn't be. Would the explosions happen tonight? She'd always been fascinated by exothermic reactions. How long could she lurk in the town, if they knew she was here? It wasn't like she couldn't hide. There were plenty of places in the town to slither into. But who were they? Why were they here?

She felt the phlegm in her chest catching on every breath. She should get some sleep, at least. Celia turned onto her side, and tried to take a nap.

She woke to gunfire, a staccato of fizzing and zaps, laser weaponry. She heard a metallic thud, like someone had taken a bag of scrap metal and hit the side of a building. Scrambling to her feet, she pulled up the binoculars and tried to focus on the figures down by the water. Laser beams shot up out of the darkness, terminating against some sort of inky rope that hung suspended in the air.

What was that thing? She walked to the edge of the roof and steadied her hands on the binoculars. The rope wiggled against the flares of a gatling laser, then came slamming down onto the beach. She sighted it pulling slowly back into the water, a tentacle as wide around as a barrel, glistening as it passed the fire. One of the figures ran up and brought some sort of tool down onto the tentacle. It whipped around and grabbed the figure, dragging it off into the water with haste.

Celia dropped her binoculars to the ground below. The people here, they didn't just leave on their own, or get taken away. They were pulled out of their homes by a real monster, and dragged down into the water to drown or get eaten. She swallowed fear, and looked down. She felt like she should do something―the black tentacle came up into the sky, outlined by lasers. Two more appendages slammed down onto the sand.

How did the monster see? It tossed those arms out onto the sand with remarkably little noise for as large as they were, then drew them back. When something in motion came into contact with a tentacle, it wrapped itself around the object, and pulled it into the air. Maybe it didn't see, or didn't need to, what it was aiming for. She guessed it must have a mouth, below the water. She had an idea.

She jumped off the roof and moved into the town. She remembered when she was younger, and she'd gotten told off for taping together two propane tanks and pretending to be a spaceman. It had dampened her desire for space adventures... but opened a path to Celia the grenadier.

The three others were still fighting off the tentacles as she ducked into the general store, searching for what she needed. She came out of the store with a propane tank duct taped to a lamp and battery, some surgical tubing.

Celia reflected that she'd never needed help figuring out how to bomb things. She made her way down to the boardwalk along the shore, and tied the tubing to the bollards. She sat, placed both feet on the bollards, and pulled the tubing back, then placed the propane tank into the tubing. She glanced up, aimed, and adjusted herself.

What was it that the soldiers on the holotapes shouted, when they tossed a grenade into combat? She eyed the distance to the nearest tentacle.

"Fire in the hole!"

Wade let the chainsaw drop to the bed of the bay. Bradley had instructed him to agitate the creature into grabbing him, and let himself be carried into the water. He was released, after he stilled himself, and drifted down to the rocky floor of the water. Activating his lights, he saw the water was full of tiny bits of sediment.

His armor was heavy, but he lifted a leg and started walking toward the tentacles, working the buckles on his chest. A carefully wrapped package of C4 soon lay in his hands. Bradley warned him, if this operation didn't pan out, they would have to go underwater and hack it to death with combat knives. Wade was careful not to let his hands shake, while moving closer to what he hoped was the body of the creature.

As Bradley had predicted, he was grabbed up by a tentacle and propelled toward its mouth. An enormous beak gaped in the swirling current, lit up by the lights on his armor. Wade grasped the edge of the beak with one hand, and shoved the C4 into it's maw. To his right, a light moved through the water. He realized the monster had grabbed something bright, and was about to swallow it.

With a practiced motion, Wade unlocked his leg armor, kicked out of it, and pushed away from he monster. Behind him, the lighted thing exploded in the water, an enormous bubble moving toward him. He swam away, moving quickly. Water bubbled up into his chest piece; he had to get to the surface before his armor completely flooded, and the explosion caught up to him.

Days of planning and gauging explosions had taught Sigma that the thing would have to be dealt with in the water. Wade was the lightest member of Sigma, so it fell to him. Angus had joked that Mayer should lay off his steaks, and Mayer said he'd gladly swap them for the snack cakes Angus had hidden away. Wade had watched them fight about it with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He concentrated on reaching the surface, powerful strokes pushing him upward. When he broke the surface an explosion rippled through the bay floor, and a wall of water pushed him toward the shore. The water behind him bubbled and expanded, then exploded, in a split second. Bits of the creature and the blood-tinted water rained down onto the sand, extinguishing their watch fires. Wade pulled himself to the shore, unlatched his helmet, and coughed up lake water.

Angus' loud voice broke through the patter of water with a loud swear. Wade looked up to see that Mayer had some thin person by the elbows, pinning them. He sat up, removed his chest piece and stared out over the bay. White chunks of flesh bobbed to the surface as water dripped from his armor.

Bradley brought him clothes, and Wade dressed. "Who's that?" he asked, looking at the person Mayer had pinned.

"An enterprising local with the same idea we had," Bradley said. "Good work, Wade."

"Thank you, sir," he said, shaking out his hair. He rose and grabbed his equipment, then joined the others.

"Sir?" Mayer asked, indicating the local with a nod of his head. Wade saw it was a young girl in a Brahmin-skin outfit.

"That's the little shit I saw up in town," Angus said. "I shoulda shot you."

She stared at him, her face pale and eyes wide. Bradley approached her, pulling his pistol out and aiming at her face. "Where did you come from?" he asked.

"Stockton," she answered.

"And where is Stockton located?"

"Camp Grayling military base." She looked down.

"Wade," Bradley said. "Remove her Pip-Boy." Wade started a little. He noticed she did have a Pip-boy, then. ((Strange, he thought. All the Pip-Boys he'd known were the ones built into the Paramount armors. He moved forward to take it from her.

"No!" she said, and tried to struggle against Mayer's grip.

"You interfered with a military operation," Bradley said. "You're lucky I haven't shot you in the face."

She went quiet, and Wade stripped the Pip-Boy from her. Mayer handcuffed her and led her up to the bollards, where he pushed her down into a sitting position. Wade took the Pip-Boy to Bradley.

"You're one of them techs," Angus said. "Maybe we can get some information from that thing."

Wade turned it on, ignoring the man, and scrolled through the screens. Pip-Boys could hold a vast amount of information, if one knew where to look. For a few minutes, he read the screen intently. "Sir, she appears to be collecting information on the locals. She's made informed notes on various locations."

"Fucking spy!" Angus spat, and stalked over to Mayer.

"Her name's Celia Landis," Wade said.

"A spy would not dramatically present herself to a military force, don't you think?" Bradley mused.

Wade knew this was a trick question. Bradley was asking for his opinion, to gauge his response and intelligence. "Perhaps, if she expected we would think that way. She probably wouldn't have left this information on her Pip-Boy, though." He tapped the screen. "There seems to have been a nearby Vault. The entries here indicate this Pip-Boy and more came from there."

Bradley made a thoughtful noise. "Let's interrogate our local."