[Content Warning]:
This work contains strong elements of psychological horror.
"Oh, hell no." Hancock thrust the accursed book back into the old Synth's arms, clearly repulsed by the unholy thing's mere existence. "I didn't wanna be the one to say it, but I know you felt the exact same way I did when she shrieked in that fucked up language. I'm not in any hurry to experience it again." He glared at Nick, reminding him that he had indeed felt it, too. By some treacherous miracle, his mind had all but blocked out the experience completely, sparing him from even recalling the memory – but only up until this point. He relived those few minutes that his lover had reveled and writhed in her paralyzing, insane laughter, shouting to some great, mythical cosmic entity in what may or may not have been its own bizarre dialect. For the first time, he cursed his cybernetic brain for its ability to hold perfect short-term memory, despite its deficient long-term storage. The feeling was nothing less than the deepest, most primal fear he'd ever known – even stronger than his fear of not being a person, or, in Jill's words, not having a soul.
"I won't blame you if you go, but I have to talk to her. If there's a way to help her, I have to find out." Nick shuddered, catching a chill from out of nowhere. It was the middle of the summer, and all the windows in the room were shut. Some of the panes of glass were cracked, but none of them had any holes going through them. He decided that it must have been his fear response causing him to feel the cold air around him, but he quickly came to realize that it truly was out of nowhere. There was no draft. The icy chill had settled in around him without any apparent source whatsoever. For a split second, as he looked over his shoulder into the pitch black corner behind them, he could have sworn he'd glimpsed a shadowed mass, wriggling just out of sight. It was gone in an instant, making him wonder if what he saw was real, or if he was somehow susceptible to hallucinations.
The Mayor sighed in exasperation, clapping his hands on the detective's shoulders. "Why do you always have to remind me how much better of a man you are?"
"Don't kid yourself, old friend. I suspect fear is a normal response to this scenario, and there's no shame in admitting it." Nick offered him a sincere smile, although still thinking of what he may have seen in the corner. "You and Jill both have taught me that sometimes, you have to do the wrong things for the right reasons. You're a good man, Hancock. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise." The detective stole a glance at Jill's Pip-Boy, realizing that it was already four-forty-five in the morning. Dawn was not too far away. "Besides, it's almost time for the burials. I hope you'll forgive us if we don't make it."
"Don't sweat it. You gotta take care of your girl." The Ghoul shook his head, giving a firm squeeze to Nick's shoulders. "I have to go, pal, but I'll be back as soon as it's over. Thanks for understanding."
"Same to you." The Synth watched as his friend left the room with his lantern, shutting the door, and leaving behind an eerie silence. Nick was in darkness once more, unable to blame Hancock for wanting a light source in this damnable blackness. Turning his attention over to the bed, he was no longer able to see Jill. He placed the repulsive tome on the coffee table, picking up the Pip-Boy, and turning on its flashlight. The soft green glow illuminated a decent portion of the room, much to his relief. In his mind, dawn couldn't come soon enough. Strange notions of paranoia had begun creeping into his thoughts, and he couldn't help but feel as though he was being watched by some lurker in the shadows. Shaking his head, he sighed heavily, telling himself nothing was there, thoughtlessly admitting that he indeed could be susceptible to hallucinations. If there's one thing he's learned from his time with Jill, it's that theoretically, anything is possible if there's no clear-cut explanation for something.
Nick shuddered at his thoughts, somewhat scared by what it could mean for him if he was capable of hallucinating. He shook the fiendish ideas away, refocusing his mind on his mission to speak to his beloved, and get this mess sorted out. Approaching the bed, he carried his torch with him, stepping cautiously across the old, creaking floorboards. Something felt terribly wrong. The closer he got to Jill, the more his artificial heart ached, and the longer he looked at her, the more he thought he saw wisps of shadows dancing in his peripheral vision. He would turn his head to look at them, only to chastise himself for it when he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, the off-putting sensation lingered, steadily growing into a hideous fear that was beginning to cloud the detective's mind. The last time he felt like this was while the two were at the Dunwich Borers, about a month and a half prior to their last stand with the Institute.
"Nick?" Jill spoke, startling him. The light must have awoken her. Her voice was timid, shaking almost inaudibly. "Nick, is that you?" She hoisted herself up on her elbows, looking over her shoulder at him. He couldn't see her very well yet, but he knew she was afraid.
"I'm here, sweetheart." Setting aside his caution and inexplicable fear, he rushed to sit by her side. In that instant, the Pip-Boy's light began to flicker, and he stopped dead in his tracks at the foot of the bed. Terror surged back into him as the light faded into an unnatural abyss. The old Pre-War device had lost all power. He gasped sharply, swearing that he felt something brush against his leg as it slithered past him. His mind was screaming at him to run, but his body was frozen in place, stunned by fright. "Jill?!" A low, hollow moan resonated from somewhere in the room. It gurgled and growled threateningly, and Nick heard the unmistakable sound of a slimy, wet slopping, moving slowly in his direction. He began to panic, searching blindly for a weapon.
The frightful groaning grew louder, and angrier. Something wrapped itself around his ankle, eliciting a horrified scream from the old Synth. The terrible thing was disgustingly slick, feeling somewhat pulpy through his pant leg. He kicked at it wildly, forcing it away from him. All logic and rationality escaped him as he dropped the Pip-Boy, sprinting toward the door. "Damn it! Shit!" The handle wouldn't turn. The detective frantically rammed his shoulder into it, but couldn't get it to budge. Hearing a sickening plopping noise, he rushed over to the windows. He tried each one, but none would open. It was sinking in that he was trapped in there, with god-knows-what crawling around in the shadows.
Without warning, the room went deathly silent, the air falling still. The only sounds Nick could hear were his hastened breathing, his rapid heartbeat, and the unmistakable rattling of his metal endoskeleton. For a brief moment, he felt as though he might faint, but his attention was quickly drawn to a figure in the shadows. It lurched forward, bringing the eternal abyss with it, blotting out any visible light, and the poor detective wasn't equipped with infrared or night vision. He screamed, falling backwards in his hurry to get away from the unknown terror. It made no sound, other than a staccato clacking on the floor.
"Nick, is that you?" The voice which spoke to the petrified Synth was not Jill's. This voice filled him with immediate heartache.
"Jenny?" Nick's jaw dropped at the sight of her. She was clearly not all there in person, for she was mildly luminescent, as well as translucent. The detective, although still unable to tell if he was hallucinating, wondered for a moment if it was truly her ghost.
"Nick..." The specter stopped about six feet away from him, staring blankly, her eyes shadowed over. "What happened?"
"I...I don't..." He stuttered, unsure of what to say. His mind was fighting between the part that was him, and the fear that still tried to make him question his identity.
"Where were you, Nick?" Jenny's apparition clenched her fists, now glaring at the stupefied Synth with the kind of rage and animosity that would make a raider blush. "Where were you when I needed you?" She stomped her heel on the floor, somehow audibly producing the sound of a sharp click. The sound echoed aggressively in the cavernous void that surrounded them, and for the briefest moment, Nick swore he saw her face shift into a hollow-eyed monstrosity. It was gaunt and sickly white, without a nose, and grotesque, bloodied needles for teeth. It was over in an instant, but the detective knew what he saw.
"Stay back!" He scooted himself backwards on the floor, reaching out desperately for one of the backpacks he and Jill carried. They were nowhere to be found, and then he realized, he was no longer in the Old State House bedroom. His hands grasped at solid rock beneath him, and he heard the faint rumble of a waterfall in the distance. For a moment, he took his eyes off of the thing pretending to be Jenny's spirit, only to notice it had disappeared by the time he looked back.
"Hey." The phantom whispered in his ear, earning what must have been the desired effect of getting him to jump, and cry out in alarm. He whipped his head to the left to look at it, and found it there smiling warmly, setting a pistol in front of him. The two were suddenly in a Pre-War home, and Nick was sitting at a kitchen table.
"W-what...?" He stammered, unable to keep up with what was happening to him. He was still in the middle of processing where he may have been that had a waterfall. This place appeared to be an apartment, bearing the dimensions of that of an upper-middle class apartment commonly found in the inner city of Boston. Sunlight sifted in through the windows from above, indicating that it was about noon wherever he was. The room had the basic accommodations; cabinets, a gas and grill stove, a fridge and freezer set, an island counter, and counters up against the pale blue walls. The floor was a checkered black and white tile, and the doorways to other rooms were exquisitely carved arches. The window-wall in the next room over displayed a grand view of Boston, complete with the distant image of what would come to be Diamond City standing boldly in the background.
"You forgot this upstairs again, silly." The pretender laughed, although its demeanor seemed to have changed for the better. Was it showing him one of the original Nick's memories? If so, why would it do that? "You can't be a cop and not carry your gun to work." It clapped his shoulder twice, its movements obviously inhuman by how rough and unpracticed the gesture was.
"What are you?!" Almost instinctively, Nick snatched up the gun on the table and chambered a round, its sights trained on the fraudulent Jennifer Lands.
It stood behind the island, leaning on it and biting into a bright red apple it picked out from a carved wooden bowl. It chewed its morsel at an average pace, but stared at him coldly, almost unblinking. Its eyes suggested undertones of murderous intent, but its calm manner could have been interpreted as a momentary truce. Had this been a human, or even a Synth, the seasoned detective would have been able to make them sing, but this thing was no ordinary being. Its intentions were all but completely unknown to him, leaving him wondering if he was going to survive this experience, or even walk away with his sanity intact. The imposter swallowed its bite of fruit, still glaring at him.
"I'm your fiancée, Nick." When it spoke, its icy voice cracked, momentarily splitting into two; a high and a low voice. "The one you failed to protect." The scenery changed again in an instant, and Nick found himself facing a dreaded moment of the original's life. When Nick Valentine heard of his fiancée's death, he wasn't too far from the scene of the murder. He'd rushed there to find her face-down on the pavement, soaked in a pool of her own blood, and with an outline of white chalk around her corpse. The poor man was so stricken by this, it drove him to volunteer to have his brain tampered with.
"No..." The detective shook his head in an attempt to ignore the intense feelings of guilt that were threatening to overcome him. He cursed under his breath, forcing himself to look away from the grisly scene. "No...no...!" The guilty sensation was winning. He was nearly powerless against it as he began to convince himself that he was the reason Jenny was murdered. The original was warned that trying to take down Eddie Winter could have serious consequences, but he went after the bastard anyway.
"You may as well shoot me, Nick. You already have." The phantom pointed to the gun in his hands, shrugging its shoulders. Every time it moved, there was a vague yet discomforting distortion around it. The old Synth was eerily compelled to do as he was told, but was able to stop himself, trying to distract himself from the manipulative entity. It grew angry with his hesitation, and whistled to get his complete attention. "Take the shot, Nick. Finish what you started."
"This isn't real! You're not real!" The trembling detective forced himself to look away again, and cling desperately to some idea of logic. "Jenny's been dead for centuries...you're not her..."
"Keep telling yourself that. You just can't bear the shame of your failure." The creature before him cackled heartlessly, and then vanished from sight as their surroundings altered themselves again. This time, Nick was watching Jill sitting at a workbench in near total blackness, tinkering with something under the dim light of a couple lanterns. She must not have noticed him, for she busily worked away.
"Jill!" He rushed to her side, only for her figure to fade away, leaving behind only whatever project she was working on. As he scanned the workbench, his terror spiked once more. His own severed head was sitting on it, cracked open in various places, and was stripped of its mechanical brain. Its eyes lit up abruptly, staring at him in a mixture of vile contempt and unearthly fear. Its jaw hung loosely from one bolt as it slacked open, erupting in a hideous, piercing howl. The detective swatted the damnable thing away from him, and it fell silent once more as it dropped to the floor, then rolled away into the unforgiving abyss.