"Excuse me." A dirty faced man in tattered rags approached them with palms facing the two of them. "I have a letter to deliver for the Lone Wanderer."

Leah had been in the middle of inspecting the inside of a dead feral's mouth when she looked up. She was annoyed, her thoughts disrupted. "Yeah?"

Charon was at the corner of her eye, lowering his arms from his chest and preparing to reach for his gun.

"Uh - yes, all the way from Tenpenny Tower. It's urgent." The man slowly took out of his pocket an envelope while casting nervous glances over at her ghoul bodyguard.

Leah stood up from the corpse and retrieved the letter. The paper was surprisingly clean and unbent. The familiar matte texture brought back memories of those many love letters Moriarty complained about receiving whenever she visited the saloon.

Back when she was on Burke's good side.

She gingerly broke the wax seal, unfolded its contents, and braced herself as she read.

My greedy little song bird,

I knew I had overestimated your ability to dance out of my nets when I never received you.

I think of you, constantly. Your scent. Your face. I dream of you every night and look forward to the day I have you, once again.

For I will have you. This, I promise.

I will take the very knife you twisted in my heart and turn the blade to you. And I will take my time.

This is what I first thought, when the sting of your choice to save that squalor of a town still felt as a betrayal. But now, I understand.

And I wish to express my sincerest regrets.

For I have need of your services. My employer will pay you in riches beyond your wildest dreams. Please come to Tenpenny Tower. You are welcome to bring any companions, though it will weigh heavily on me. I assure you they will be treated well.

I hold no hard feelings and wish to let bygones be bygones.

For you are the only person in this cursed wasteland competent to accomplish what he needs done.

Yours truly,

Burke

She grimaced and folded the paper up. Charon was watching her.

"Is it that man?"

She nodded and shrugged, deciding there was no point in keeping the contents from him. She handed him the paper. He took it, eyes scanning the pages. She watched him crumble the page and toss it at their feet.

"It is a trap."

She nodded. "I don't doubt that."

"You shouldn't go."

She nodded, trying to resist that playful smile that twitched at the corner of her lip. "I shouldn't."

They stared at each other, long and hard. It felt like a game. She couldn't help it. She giggled.

Charon let out a groan. "We are going, aren't we?"

"Burke is never going to stop trying to kill me. This may be the only opportunity I have to settle things. Besides, I hear Tenpenny has been treating some ghouls there with little decency. Would be nice to help fix that."

Charon narrowed his eyes. "Leah. Shouldn't we go back to Rivet City instead?"

She stiffened. "I'm not ready yet." She went back to study the ghoul's molars, admiring the surprising lack of decay. Most feral ghouls had no teeth. This one had a full set, indicating his age as being younger than most.

"Leah." Charon sounded worried. She picked it out from his gruff words, that slight urgency that laced them.

"Charon." She turned back to him, shaking her head. "My father made his choice, to answer his calling. I am doing the same. Like he said, I'm an adult now. I can make my own decisions. He wants to bring clean drinking water to the wasteland and I want to cure ghoulification. There's little room for overlap. There's no need to go to Rivet City. At least not yet."

"Still. Tenpenny Tower is not safe."

She shrugged. "Yeah, but what else would I do? Things have been quiet lately. I need a little danger." She ignored his disapproving look. "All right, let's get going."

(Necro)

Charon was worried and found himself frequently checking their stash of chems, counting the med-x syringes to find that the number stayed the same. Twelve. We have twelve syringes. Good.

Leah had been distinctly cool whenever he brought up her father. He personally didn't like the man. But he knew she cared for him, having devoted her life outside of the vault to finding him. Now that she had, now that she knew where he would be, she suddenly wanted nothing to do with him.

It was as if, now that she knew he was safe and they had received closure on why he abandoned her, she decided she would do the same to him.

He didn't think that was a good approach.

He wasn't an expert on the matter of family. But he knew that avoiding the issue would lead to regret. He didn't want Leah to suffer with regret.

She never admonished him when he tried to press the issue, for which he was grateful for. But she was stubborn. She would not see him until she was ready.

He half worried that her decision to go to Tenpenny was more to punish him for his constant badgering. He didn't think so, not really. After all, Three Dog kept howling on the damn radio for the Lone Wanderer to help bring peace to the snobs down south. The nosy bastard.

And Leah, seemingly stuck in her research, had gotten impatient and irritable with the lack of progress. "I need to find more ghouls to interview. We need more data. There's supposedly a colony over there." He didn't approve, knowing that any supposed colony of ghouls wouldn't take kindly to Leah or any smoothskin who thought they could come and rescue ghouls from their blight.

He loved Leah, but at times she could be oblivious to how some ghouls generally didn't take kindly to that. And Charon did not look forward to the day when she met a particularly mean one that let her know. It would get messy, quick.

Underworld was full of puppies compared to some of the ghouls he'd known.

Like Azrukhal.

"Shit," Leah swore while glaring into her Pipboy. The sun had set. It was dark and the clouds had covered all the stars and moon. "I think I'm lost."

He looked around, realizing that he had not seen the tower for a while. How could they have missed it? He wanted to curse himself for not paying better attention. But he had. He was sure he had.

Now that he thought about it, he had been more on edge than usual. He felt himself breathing faster. He kept looking to the shadows, expecting an enemy. There was this sense of impending doom that was festering in his chest and made his stomach feel shaky.

He tried to recall why he felt so fucking afraid. Never had he felt as if all was lost; that there was no hope.

"Oh, there's a building! We can camp in there for the night. I have this feeling, you know? That camping outside is just a bad idea."

Charon stared, surprised now that there was a great large building before them. It was no Tenpenny Tower, but it still loomed over them with its big black bricks and cracked windows. It almost looked like a face, the great doors teeth hungry for them to enter. "Leah."

"Hm?" She took his hand, her eyes wide as well.

"I don't like the looks of this place."

Thunder crackled above their heads, making Leah flinch.

"Me neither. But… I think it's safer in there than it is out here. Come on."

He felt confused. He wasn't sure what was better. But he fell back to the comfort of following. Leah was in charge. And he was happy to let her take the reins on this one. The rolling roar of the sky added to their anxiety and both were happy to escape it.

All he had to worry about was to keep her safe. And if they could hole up in a room with only a door as the point of entry, it would likely be easier to defend than out in the open.

She was right. It would be safer inside.

He followed her into the building.

(Necro)

Leah blamed the molerat they had eaten for lunch as to why she felt so nauseous and on edge. Paranoia gripped her throat and made her jumpy. She was just glad this building was there to shelter in from that storm outside. She looked to Charon, finding his presence a comfort and she found herself clinging to him by occasionally taking his hand and squeezing it.

As soon as they entered the building and saw the skeleton in the foyer, both took out their guns. Charon cocked his shotgun and let out a breath. "Leah. Be careful."

"You too," she whispered. She heard a familiar hiss from a feral ghoul and relaxed slightly. Ferals were nothing new. They took slow steps forward, towards the pitter-patter of damp feet trotting in the next room.

The explosion of Charon's gun jolted her and she turned to see him facing off with a band of ferals - a glowing one heading the attack. She joined in, feeling her trigger finger rapidly dispensing more laser beams than necessary, until the glowing one collapsed in a puddle of its own green goo.

They cleared the area and found themselves in an office room. Leah saw a holotape and swiped it, curious to know what this building once was, while Charon kicked down a nearby door and investigated.

"This room looks good." He called over to her and she joined him, finding a couch and a minifridge with the usual stacks of crumbling papers and dust strewn about.

"Great. Let's sleep." She tried to muster up a yawn but found herself struggling to relax. "I'll take the first watch." She nodded towards the lone couch for him to rest in and she began to tidy up the space.

Charon had not argued or commented on her suggestions since they entered the building. She wondered if he was angry with her but couldn't find a justifiable reason. But it was likely just him still upset with her for insisting they go to Tenpenny Tower. He would get over it.

So she laid out mines outside the door and began cleaning her energy weapon while sitting on the floor, listening intently for any sign of threat outside. She wanted the night to pass by quickly.

Something about this building was making her feel more on edge than when her dad would go to work and leave her in their vault apartment alone.

"Bored, missy?"

She jumped and swung her weapon around. She had heard Mack's voice, right in her ear as if he had been pressing his mouth to her cheek. They were in darkness.

Only a pair of glints in the dark, Charon's eyes shimmering, appeared. "Leah?"

She squinted. "Sorry. Thought I heard something."

Charon sat up. "Perhaps you should rest first."

She shook her head. "No, I can handle it."

He hesitated. "If you are sure." He returned to lying down and she went back to staring at the closed door. She squinted and blinked, shoulders trembling.

What's wrong with me? She was behaving like a nervous wreck.

"How about a small taste of med-x? To help calm you down?"

She slowly turned again, not knowing who that voice belonged to. It certainly wasn't Charon's. It almost sounded like… herself?

The idea was tempting. And she had certainly considered sneaking a quick high during a few days of downtime in Megaton the week prior. But it would be foolish to do so here. Especially when she had a job to do.

"Half a dose. Just a little taste."

She grit her teeth and willed for her mental voice to stop. She felt as if an ink was seeping into her thoughts and slowly drowning her into a sea of malevolent whispers.

(Necro)

Charon had not fallen asleep. He had tried but could not, not while his employer was in a terrible state.

She was talking to herself. And this alarmed him to secretly watching her as she sat on her knees, whispering to herself in a language he did not understand. She was hugging herself and pressing her forehead against the dusty floor, muttering fast.

Something was terribly wrong, and he did not know what to do. He had waited for her to make any sudden movements when she collapsed to her side, her breathing calm and deep. She had fallen asleep, as if she had been knocked out.

"Leah?" He got up from the couch and reached for her. He put his fingers to her lips and felt warm air blowing upon them. He checked her pulse, feeling a steady heartbeat. He was about to shake her shoulder when he heard a distant high-pitched squeak of a door slowly being opened.

Investigate.

It was an order, in Leah's voice. He looked down at Leah, surprised to find she was still asleep.

Charon, I order you to investigate. The voice was more urgent this time, full of comforting authority.

He retrieved his shotgun immediately and carefully stepped over Leah as he approached the door. He opened it slowly and disarmed the mine, closed the door and rearmed it. He then turned to investigate the noise.

It was so quiet, he couldn't hear his own breathing. He ventured, deep into the darkness.

When he entered a room, he found himself in a bright laboratory. The familiar smells of must sharpened into sterile alcohol and cologne. His eyes stung by the sudden change in lighting and forced him to shut his eyes tightly as he winced. When he could take in his surroundings, he found himself in a familiar scene that paralyzed him where he stood. He blinked. "No," he whispered. "Impossible."

He recognized one of the scientists, draped in his lab coat as he approached Charon with clinical curiosity. "You are late," the man sounded annoyed. "Lance Corporal. Disrobe. We're on a tight schedule. We'll take your vitals once we enter the enrichment chamber."

He found it easy to obey. He fell back into familiar habits, removing the buckle of his belt and unbuttoning his shirt. He realized his armor had transformed into the camouflaged fabric of his prewar cammies. He realized he had all his skin but he barely paused to admire how smooth his arms were.

He was late. He had to comply.

"Lance Corporal," the scientist looked angry. "You're being slow. Have you noticed any other dexterity issues since your surgery?" The scientist took out a penlight and was shining it into his eyes. It made Charon's head hurt. He felt himself losing balance.

"No, sir. Everything is fine." His head was killing him. The surgery. Right. It was part of the special program he was in. He was helping the U.S. government with their experimental project. It would help the nation against the Chinese. There were possible side effects.

"I lost my skin," he told the doctor. "I lost my hair. I am a ghoul."

The scientist laughed. "Always with the jokes, Lance Corporal."

"My name is Charon."

The scientist's laughter swiftly stopped. His face twitched, faster than humanly possible. "That's not your name," his voice had contorted into a dark guttural sound, hideous and loud. "Alhazabreb vulyeah. G'yag rikaeq." And for a moment, the doctor became Azrukhal himself, the snake smiling and laughing.

He went to strike the man, hatred rushing into him like a fire. He reached for the man by his tie, wanting to strangle him in his pinstripe suit. "Well now," Azrukhal rasped, "Charon, come to say goodbye?"

"You're fucking dead," he snapped.

"No, I'm not dead. And you know better, Charon." Azrukhal held up his contract, the familiar yellowed paper with the exact bents and creases, exactly as he remembered it. "I still hold your contract. I think you need a reminder on who your employer is."

Charon stared, horrified. "No. What about Leah?"

"Oh, the vault dweller? Don't you remember, Charon?" Azrukahl laughed and pushed Charon back, gently. He felt himself lose grip of the tie and fall back onto the floor, frozen in confusion as he looked up at the man. "I ordered you to bring her to me. And, like my good employee, you did. You see?" Azrukahl turned to the bed.

He looked and he gagged. Leah was face down, eyes glazed, naked. Her wrists were tied. Her back was bloody and jagged with broken flesh. Azrukahl had whipped her. Carved into her.

Just like all the smoothskins before her.

"You delivered her to me, as I instructed, so I could have a little fun with her. Why don't I let you have some fun, too, as a reward for your hard work. You can have the scraps. There's parts of her that still work. That's soft and smooth and delicious. You can tear her apart and make her not so smooth anymore."

Charon screamed and tried to block the vision. But he found himself over her, smelling decaying flesh and realizing what he was doing to her, on Azrukhal's bed, thrusting his hips while she let out low pained moans as he took a box cutter in his fist and scraped it into her back as if he was mixing a bloody batter.

Charon heard a high-pitched scream, at a frequency that made the inside of his skull feel like he had dull razor blades scraping into the bone underneath his forehead. He tried to cover his ears but found that they were dripping with blood.

Everything had changed. He was inside a chamber. Inside with several other men. All naked. All covering their ears and contorted with pain. The light was so bright. They were in a giant round room, where the walls were made of glass and a bright line of light kept spinning around them. The mechanical hum was so loud that it vibrated his joints and made him want to just die. It hurts. It hurts so much.

Help me, Leah. He wanted to scream but he couldn't hear his own voice over the sound of the machine he was inside. A wave of light was rotating around him, along the curved walls. He was in that giant tube, that horrible metal circle as his skin began to grow hotter than the worst sunburn of his life. He saw his smooth skin begin to bubble and pop, each burst seeping out sticky fluid that smelled like vinegar and shit.

He was going to die.

And then, everything stopped. He found himself in a hospital bed.

A doctor stood over him, face grim. "Congratulations, Lance Corporal. You survived."

"What's…?" He had reached his arm up to touch the man, to find his skin was flaking off. He looked completely red, like a freshly cooked lobster. "...happening?"

Fascinating. Truly fascinating. The only survivor of the experiment. Perhaps it's due to his exposure to the forced evolutionary virus. Lance Corporal 423 has historically overperformed compared to the standard pedigree of men in the program.

He tried to scream again, but nothing escaped.

He was back on his feet, still nude, but now standing before a great black monolith. It hummed so sweet. Around him, fellow ghouls were kowtowing in rhythm to a chant. Beside him, was Azrukhal, who paid him no mind. "G'yeth. G'yeth."

He felt himself join them. He was tired.

He needed to rest for a while.

This place was peaceful. It was precious. And this pillar of warm black stone provided comfort to him. "G'yeth," he joined and proceeded to press his palms into the glossy onyx surface, sighing with contentment.

(Necro)

When she awoke, she cursed at herself for falling asleep. She turned to the sofa, expecting Charon to be smug with her. When she realized she was alone in the room, she began to panic. She grabbed her weapon and rushed out of the door, forgetting about the live mine at her feet.

The beeping forced her to sprint as far as she could, followed by the BOOM that brought tinnitus ringing into her ears. "DAMN IT!" She tried to shout over the sound of the ringing but all she could sense was her throat vibrating from her voice.

She saw the feral ghouls before she heard them and she shot at them with little hesitation. She was glad they were all without armor, a few dressed in tatters but for the most part they were all without clothing.

This detail spoke out to her. She rarely saw ghouls in a state of undress unless they were so lost and old that they no longer realized that the clothes they wore had simply disintegrated after decades of wear.

And then she remembered the holotape.

She put it in her pipboy, cursing now at her forgetfulness when she realized she still couldn't hear. She had to wait several minutes for the ringing to subside slightly, while she pressed her cheek against her wrist to hear as best she could the tape.

"Don't like the look of this place... Don't like the smell. Gives me the creeps. Don't want to risk a shot at the crows until I know what's in there. Sneaking in tonight."

She quickly picked up that this was no ordinary building. I should have realized. And now Charon was off, god-knows-where. She needed to find him and get the fuck out of here.

She found more holotapes. A man named Jaime spoke of his father - and how he had to chase him across the wasteland to find him. It resonated with her and she hoped whoever this Jaime was, he had made it out of this building.

"Why do you want to leave?" It was Amata's voice. Kind and familiar. "Stay, stay with us. Stay. Stay. G'yeth. G'yeth."

"Chems. Gotta be some chems in the ventilation. Like Vault 112."

But it wasn't the same. From what she remembered, this was different. She didn't feel good, not by a long shot. She wasn't floating in a sea of blue. This felt unnatural. Alien and cruel. She felt as if a slime was crawling up her nose and down her throat. She felt as if something sticky and spiky was dragging its scales across the walls of her lungs and leaving an infection that would make her rot from the inside.

She felt as if they were facing something truly evil.

She looked in every room. She put down every feral she saw, their emaciated frames easy to pick off. Charon had not cleaned out the building, though an occasional fresh corpse helped keep her on the right path.

And then she found his clothes. His boots kicked off. His leathers dropped with no care. And her stomach dropped. Why did he take off his clothes?

The ferals slowed her down significantly, their rage greater than normal. It was as if they were protecting something. The deeper she went, the harder it was to overcome the neverending bodies that screamed and clawed at her.

She was running out of energy cells. And she was trash with a standard gun. She was beginning to wonder if she would die there, before she got to Charon. She hoped he would at least know to get his contract out of her breast pocket if she didn't make it.

Her secret stash of chems: a case of psycho and an inhaler of jet burned against the cargo pocket of her thigh. But she resisted. She wanted to make it to him without it. She wasn't that desperate.

"Yet." Butch's voice now, jeered and echoed off the walls.

She found a utility door that led down underground, where caverns and a strange and terrible smell made her eyes water. She heard a hissed 'G'YETH' every few seconds, a rhythm that made her heartbeat accelerate.

She crept and stalked, poking her eyes around the corner. "G'YETH, G'YETH, G'YETH."

And she witnessed a tall and terrible black rock. In a circle, ferals kowtowed in rhythm to their chants, slamming their palms and pressing their foreheads into the dirt. Two other ghouls, more well fed, were caressing the stone with tenderness.

One of them was far taller and larger than the other, and she recognized his red face immediately.

She wanted to call out to him but paused. What is Charon doing? This was strange - and she did not understand what was the cause.

It had to be ghoul-related, judging from how all who surrounded the obelisk were. And it was clear something was affecting them terribly. Well, maybe not. She, too, felt something about this place. But it was not a pull. It was a repulsion. Disgust.

She had no logical explanation and this terrified her most of all.

Her geiger counter had been ticking on and off throughout her exploration. Perhaps madness induced from radiation exposure? She never heard of such a symptom, not in all her years of medical training. What else could this be? Chems? Electromagnetic fields? Some strange prewar tech we don't know about? And why are the ghouls so sensitive to this?

Whatever it was, it was likely coming from that pillar they were worshipping.

Fool. "G'YETH."

She felt the word smack her across the face. She winced at how the earth felt as if it was trembling under her. "G'YETH G'YETH."

And the chanting ceased. Every pair of glimmering, glaucomic eyes had focused upon her.

"Oh, fuck."

(Necro)

Kill this intruder.

Azrukhal hissed while pointing towards the smoothskin woman before them.

His orders were given. He turned to the invader, the threat to Ug-Qualtoth, and fell upon her.

She screamed. He barely heard it over the hissing voices around him. She was shooting at them. From her, bright red lights burst outwards and the scent of burning flesh filled his nasal cavity.

To his right, one of his brethren had fallen. To his left, others were dropping like flies.

He would not allow this desecration. "Kill her!" Azrukhal hissed until he was silenced by a red beam that penetrated his eye, resulting in him collapsing into white dust.

"Charon, please, stop!" He blinked, seeing her face for the first time. It brought back a familiarity. A comfort. But he did not remember her. Nor did he find her important.

Kill her.

He stepped forward, waiting for her to pull the trigger against him, the barrel of her weapon pressed into his chest. He didn't care. He would kill her. She was unworthy. "The Old Ones demand your blood. Yog-Sothoth commands it."

"Fuck Yog-Sothoth. You belong to me, remember?" She was gasping, as if she couldn't breathe.

He blinked. "What did you say?"

"I command you to stop." She looked terrified, tears in her eyes. "Charon, as your employer, I order you to stop."

He hesitated. Her words sounded so familiar, like a divine truth down to his marrow. Do not listen. She blasphemes. "My employer?"

"Yes. You are about to violate your end of the contract. For which I have possession of." She was breathless but pulled out of her breast pocket a crumpled piece of paper. "You are bound to honor that contract. Remember? Charon? I'm Leah. And I'm ordering you to stop this - whatever this is. You are violating your contract."

He squinted at her. She kept saying that. Contracts? What contract? But he felt a twitch in his brain, as if he just got a small electric shock and that snapped the memory back like a rubber band. Pain. That pain was like an old injury that reminded him. That would never let him forget.

"For good or ill? Remember? Unflinching, you serve me and only me, your employer."

He remembered her name; her stubbornness. He shook his head. "Leah?"

G'YETH! G'YETH!

"Yeah, Charon, it's me. Snap out of it. I order you." She sounded confident. Loud and in control. Her voice was breaking through the desperate guttural hisses that echoed in his mind. "And I order you to take your hands off my neck."

He looked down and to his horror he realized he had his fingers wrapped around her throat. He jumped back, pain shooting down his spine. He gripped his temples and let out a groan. His head. It hurt. What they had put in his brain - it was still active. It still knew when he broke the rules. And he was paying for it. "What have I done?" He was growing in between the sharp prods of agony that left his limbs numb and his mind broken.

"Charon!" She had her hands to his head. Her fingers were soft and cool against his burning flesh. "You're back. You're fine. Just hang on. We need to leave this place. Now."

He nodded. "Yes. Whatever you want."

"I want you to survive this. Come on." She took his hand and pulled him. "It's this building. Come on, let me order you away from here. And it'll stop the pain. I promise."

He blinked up at her. How did she know? But the popping in his head was already slowing down. He nodded and got to his feet. "Let's go." He looked down and back at her. "Where are my pants?"