-TO FEEL SOMETHING-
CHAPTER 1
Dead End
"In a hundred years, when I finally die, I only hope I go to Hell so I can kill you all over again, you piece of shit."
Grey grimaced, fingers tightening around her glass.
She could still see the sneer painted across Kellogg's lips as she'd pressed the barrel of her pistol against his skull. The sneer had remained, even as half of his face painted the wall.
She felt her pulse quicken with the memory. Her ears still rang from the gunshot. Too close range. But fuck, how she'd relished in his expression. That split second before he'd died, when his bravado ruptured, replaced by a look of unfiltered hatred. Hatred that he'd finally lost—lost to the pre-war frozen dinner.
She raised the glass to her mouth, the foul taste of irradiated Bourbon and dirty ice pushing past her tongue. She slammed it back. She didn't need the alcohol, wasn't even sure if she wanted it. Booze never soothed her nerves. She didn't understand drinking to forget either. It was a temporary solution at best, one accompanied by too many adverse effects and too few rewards. That didn't dissuade the populous from the practice though. Humans were nothing if not persistent.
She'd said as much to Nate once. He'd only smiled in response, mouth slightly pouted, eyes all sex and promises. He'd thought she'd meant it as a compliment, an acknowledgement of his efforts, his persistence. She hadn't meant it that way though. That persistence? It was pathetic.
Yet there she was, licking her wounds in the Third Rail, brain sputtering, skin reeking of booze. All that she'd done—the dubious decisions she'd made, pain she'd endured—and still no closer to reclaiming Shaun. But that's what she'd been, wasn't it? Persistent.
She fought against the urge to spit the whiskey back into her glass.
She hadn't won against Kellogg, she realized. Not really. She'd lost, too. Different battle, same war. Except now she knew who she was actually waging war against.
The Institute.
She'd heard the rumours, watched the citizens of the Commonwealth cower and slaughter their own out of fear. It was almost admirable, commanding that level of influence, provoking that much paranoia, and never once showing your actual face. In another life, she would have been intrigued by the Institute; a professional curiosity and appreciation. But now? It didn't matter. The Institute was just another obstacle in her path. She was used to those.
She'd only been out of Vault 111 for eight weeks, but she'd seen enough of the wasted Commonwealth to expect nothing less than a challenge. The world was different, the rules had changed, but there were still some universal truths. If practicing law had taught her anything, it was that there was no such thing as a perfect crime. No matter how carefully someone thought they'd covered their trail, something always remained. Kellogg could encrypt his messages and scrub his terminals, but Grey knew something would linger. What she didn't anticipate was unearthing it by rupturing Kellogg's skull.
She remembered Nick having said something as she plucked the cybernetics from the mess of grey matter, blood, and nodes. It was likely something sensible, something wise, yet she couldn't hear it. Her mind had been elsewhere, overtired and drowning in adrenaline and Med-X. Twisting, plotting, planning. The terminal had confirmed Kellogg's perimortem rant: the Institute had Shaun. "Delivered," he'd written, like the boy was some fucking package of catalogue odds and ends.
She'd grit her teeth and pocketed the cybernetics, feet rushing for the elevator, bits of brain tissue still dripping from her hands. She'd thrummed her fingers against her leg as the elevator rose, blood and tissue soaking through her Vault jumpsuit. She hadn't even been sure whose blood it was anymore, and she'd been hard pressed to care. As the lift opened, she'd rushed the security door, throwing all her weight behind it and tumbling through to the other side. Nick grabbed her arm before she teetered off the roof, pulling her back as the first spotlight turned her pale skin white.
Dogmeat had leaned back on his haunches, a growl seeming to emanate from the pit of his gut. Nick had pulled Grey close, hiding her blood-soaked frame in the coolness of his coat. She, in turn, had wrapped her hands around his metallic limb, hiding its glint. The night's sky had brimmed with Vertibirds. Searchlights had danced without target, adding to the sheer ferocity of the post-apocalyptic Hindenburg approaching Boston, its body blaring announcements of condescension and false peace. Not announcements: threats. The Brotherhood had arrived.
It was inconsequential, Grey'd decided—a distraction. Let the Brotherhood of Steel put on an air show and scare the local raider gangs. She and Nick had needed to speak to Piper in Diamond City.
Everything had been a blur from Fort Hagen to the Fens. She remembered the extra Diamond City guard, the weary looks cast at the sky. She remembered Piper and Nick arguing, something about Goodneighbor and memories and a Doctor Amari.
Grey's feet had led her to Goodneighbor on automatic, Dogmeat close at her heels. Nick had trailed behind, his pace faltering as the sound of Vertibirds reverberated along the remnants of Boston's cityscape. She didn't remember entering Scollay Square, let alone the Memory Den. She remembered holding the cybernetics in the palm of her hand, how the bits of loose tissue had begun to shrivel and dry. There had been discussions and pleas and a woman tinkering with Nick's head. And then Grey had found herself in that chair, in that motherfucker's goddamn brain, Doctor Amari's voice guiding her along a nightmare she'd lived two too many times.
Kellogg's memories were still fresh. No amount of whiskey, no matter how irradiated, would cleanse his imprint from Grey's mind. It didn't change how she felt about him though. The experience hadn't humanized him because he'd always been human to her. Only humans killed for the thrill of it, for the utility, for the money. Even as she'd watched him put a bullet through her husband's head, she hadn't thought him a monster. Just a human, a pawn, a gun. One who killed the wrong parent. Because what Kellogg didn't know was that she was just like him. Well, perhaps he did figure that out in the end. Maybe that's what the sneer really was.
Grey had felt numb as she woke in Amari's lab. It was the only feeling she could tolerate. Amari had gently helped her from the chair, skin clammy and throat thick. Grey didn't think of the boy who was whisked away, didn't think of the years lost, the emotionally stunted machine that gripped his tiny, pale hand. No, she thought of the dossier Kellogg had thrown across his desk, the faceless name printed along the front. Virgil. The Institute's missing scientist and her final chance. But then she realized where he was and her world shattered.
Nick had sensed her frustration as she fled the Memory Den, feet pounding across Scollay Square and toward the Third Rail. His metallic hand wrapped around her wrist, breaking her stride. She'd stopped, tearing herself free.
"We'll figure this out, kid. You and me."
It had taken all of her strength not to scream at him. He deserved better than that. She'd known she was running on heightened emotions. Too much adrenaline, heart beating too fast, muscles quivering beneath her skin. She'd exhaled, running a hand back through greasy, uneven tresses.
"The Glowing Sea, Nick. The Glowing fucking Sea. That Institute bastard, Virgil, may as well be on Mars."
She'd heard settlers talk about the Glowing Sea after she'd left the Vault. Chalked it up to exaggeration-meets-urban-legend. But then she saw it when she and Piper chased down a dead-end lead in the southwest by Natick. Even standing along its edges, she'd felt the Sea's prickle of radiation against her skin, heard the faint click of her Pip-Boy's Geiger. And she had been miles away. She was sick for a week after that. She'd had Doctor Sun flush her system of radiation, twice, and still the nausea had lingered.
"We'll find you some Rad-Away, Rad-X, a hazmat suit—"
"Nick." Grey had said his name quietly, but that was all it took. "One: I don't have the caps for those provisions, and two—"
"Kid, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. We'll find a w—"
"No. Just…" She shook her head. "Even if we found those things, the Glowing Sea is massive. It would take weeks to canvas the area, maybe even months. And you've heard of the monstrosities that live there. We just… we wouldn't survive."
He had opened his mouth to protest but no sound came. He'd realized she was right. Instead he'd sighed, pulling a pack of Grey Tortoise from his coat pocket. Grey held out her lighter, igniting it as Nick leaned in, cigarette perched between his synthetic lips.
He blew a line of smoke past her shoulder, eyes distant, processors whirling. "We'll find a way, Grey. You, me, Piper—we'll find Virgil, locate the Institute, and we'll get your boy back. I promise."
His words were meant to comfort her, but instead they'd sat heavy on her chest. Her boy. She'd wished he hadn't said that. Shaun wasn't really her's. He was Nate's. He should have been Nate's. Not her's. Just Nate's.
Nick had offered to escort her back to Diamond City, but she'd declined. She needed some time, time to herself, time to think. He'd given her one last look, mechanical eyes speaking more loudly than words. Then he was gone.
Grey shifted her weight on the stool, leaning her elbows into the bar. The ice cubes clinked in her glass and she fought the temptation to dip her fingers into what remained of her drink, press the ice into the palm of her hand. A distraction. She craved distraction, an expulsion of energy. Pain, pleasure, anything.
She cast her gaze down the bar. A few withered drifters with more track marks than flesh sipped on Gwinnett Ale, their hands trembling as the chem withdrawal took hold. A young brunette skirted around them, attempting to flag down Whitechapel Charlie with hesitant movements and a whispery voice. She didn't quite belong, likely some settler's daughter having recently abandoned the family homestead to pursue some romanticized thrill-seeking life in the Commonwealth's most infamous town. Grey gave it a week before the girl either called it quits and hightailed it back to the tato field she crawled out of or was found in a back alley, naked and cold, with Psycho leaking out of an open vein.
Grey thought of Hancock then, feet padding around in the State House above, withered mouth huffing back on a hit of Jet. She didn't know the mayor all too well, but he fascinated her. She'd made the mistake of joining a heist to rob Hancock blind five weeks back. In her defence, she hadn't known it was Hancock she was robbing. She'd also needed the caps, but that wasn't an excuse too many victims cared to hear. She'd been three weeks out of the Vault, exhausted, hungry, and unable to afford enough bullets to keep her hide intact. Bobby'd offered to fix that; "the score of a lifetime," she'd said. But when ultimately faced with a lethal redhead packing a minigun, two trigger-happy goons, and the prospect of pissing off a mayor who formally introduced himself by gutting one of his own citizens? Yeah, fuck Bobby and fuck her heist. The fact Hancock then paid Grey for her wandering loyalties earned him a top spot on her list of intrigue. That, and the man's charisma was damn attractive, enough so that some part of her wondered what that half-goulified skin would feel like beneath her fingertips. Or her tongue.
She dropped her fingers into the glass, clutching an ice cube tight. The sting brought her back.
Focus.
Shaun was her priority. The Institute was her target. And Virgil was her way in. But first she needed to track down the illusive fuck. She'd seen the army of synths Kellogg had amassed, the provisions he had gathered, even the modifications he'd made to his own body, but was that enough to tackle the Glowing Sea? Sherborn, Medfield, Millis—all gone now, reduce to irradiated ruin. Twenty square miles, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty. Screw what she'd said to Nick—that wouldn't take a few months to search, it would take years.
Grey was reminded of a girl that had gone missing during her first year of law school. Some fifteen-year-old honour student from south of the Charles. White, blonde, pretty. The media lapped at the chance to report on something other than war and civil unrest, as did the local authorities. Within forty-eight hours, one could scarce find a milk bottle, tree, or lamppost that wasn't bearing the girl's face. By the seventy-second hour, everyone and their dog had been recruited into the search. Grey's criminal law professor took his students to the search site, citing some drivel about civic duty and appreciating "the role of the lesser man"—fucking pompous academics. It was there though that Grey learned the painful, tedious bullshit that was grid searching. They never did find the fifteen-year-old, but, by week two, they did find twelve-year-old Enrique Soto, his body having been dumped in some overgrowth south of Beantown Brewery. There had been no fanfare for Enrique; no posters, no news coverage, and definitely no milk bottle pleas. Even after his body was found, he remained an afterthought. He wasn't the outcome the people of Massachusetts craved. He was reality, cold and harsh, not an idealized distraction with blonde curls and a glowing face.
Grey knew the Glowing Sea was full of Enriques. Tens of thousands of bodies, all forgotten, all in her gridded area. Distractions. There had to be a way to narrow it down. Maybe some parts were more habitable than others? Maybe someone had mapped the Sea? Was there a cave system perhaps? A signal she could track?
She tapped her fingers against the bar, nails long and jagged, the underside caked with dried blood and only god knows what else.
Even if she narrowed down the area, it would still need to be grid searched. For that she'd need bodies, provisioned bodies, fighters. She could hire mercenaries, perhaps—she shot MacCready a look from across the Rail. A good merc was an easy 500 caps; a shit one was, at best, 150. Grey was lucky to have 970 caps to her name, so that plan was out. She'd also need a fortune's worth of anti-radiation meds, which were a good 80 caps per dose. She didn't need an accounting degree to do the math. Maybe I should've robbed Hancock blind, she thought bitterly.
She dug her nails into the bar top, arm muscles tightening. She was so close—so fucking close—she could taste it, but she had enough sense to recognize that charging in half cocked was only going to get her killed. She had a better sense of self-preservation than that. It didn't matter how exhausted she was or the level of frustration brimming within her—logic always prevailed. If only Nate had used his fucking brain when Kellogg put that gun in his face, then maybe—
She tightened her jaw, pushing away the thought. No "what if's", no "maybe's". Her husband was dead and she was alive. Nothing would change that, and torturing herself over it was more than pointless: it was counterproductive.
"—they're a goddamn army is what they are."
Grey's ears piqued.
A ghoul gave a short laugh. "Bullshit. Maybe they were fifty years ago—hell, maybe even twenty—but they're reclusive scavengers at best nowadays. Scary as fuck to stare down, but not the hardasses they once were. NCR saw to that several years back. NCR started seeing to a lot granted, hence why I decided to drift my ass back east."
The man seated across from the ghoul shook his head. "You haven't been to the Capital Wasteland. My brother and his girls, they live there now. I get a letter every so often when a caravan feels ambitious. You have to understand, D.C. was a shithole up to twenty-five years ago, then the Brotherhood marches in, sets up shop in some dilapidated pentagon-shaped ruin—"
Grey furrowed her brow. The Pentagon?
"—wages a war against these Enclave asshats, acquires all their tech, starts distributing free purified water—that's right: goddamn purified water—to any waster brave enough to raise their hand up from their hovel, and they even have the super mutants near culled." He stopped, gulping down something dark and brown and on even blacker ice. "So yeah, they're a goddamn army. Hundreds of soldiers, maybe even thousands by now. All power armour clad, all armed to the teeth. A merc's wet dream, let me tell you." He scoffed. "Good fucking luck getting in with that lot though. Pretty sure even a letter from Atom wouldn't get you through those irradiated gates. Metaphorically speaking, of course, or literally, or—whatever, you know what I mean."
The men started arguing about the nuances of language then—What is a metaphor, Ralph? That's the thing with 'as', right? No, you fucking moron.—and Grey decided to stop eavesdropping before her IQ began to dip.
The Brotherhood of Steel hadn't seemed all too impressive when she'd stumbled into the slaughter that was the Cambridge Police Station six weeks back. She and Dogmeat had climbed onto the barricade, her feet tripping in the legs of some fresh corpse that wore fatigues. She'd picked off a few of the ferals with her 10mm, Dogmeat tackling the smaller ones to the ground, allowing for the power-armoured brute to turn them to dust. She hadn't known what to make of Paladin Danse at first, his face classically handsome and his demeanour catching her completely off guard. He was boundaried, old school, authoritative. He reminded her of the NCOs she'd encountered whilst working for JAG Corps, now that she thought about it. He was practically pre-war, and whilst that should have comforted her, it took everything in her not to turn and run.
She'd evaded most of his questions with little effort; answering questions with questions, appealing to a possible preference for reason. She still didn't know why she'd elected to help them. The Paladin offered no overt reward, and there seemed no benefit in ingratiating herself with a ragtag group of army-wannabes holed up in a ghoul-infested quarter. But she did, even after that Rhys asshole started running his mouth. Hell, she'd probably stuck around to spite him.
She'd snuck a look at their terminal entries whilst the Haylen woman played nurse, saw that they were on some reconnaissance mission, tracking some weird signals, and down more than half of their men after only a few weeks. She knew how harsh the Commonwealth was, had nearly lost her life to it five times in the past forty-eight hours, but their failure-to-success ratio had even Grey looking for black cats, broken mirrors, and misplaced ladders.
What are you getting yourself into? she'd asked herself as Paladin Danse briefed her on his plan or "mission" as he'd fancied calling it. She'd bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from laughing. He'd surprised her though; his words curt yet informative, movements near textbook, and his marksmanship rivalled that of her husband's. She was rubbish with laser weapons, always had been. Even when Nate had positioned her body and aim just so, she'd still miss the target by a mile. But Danse, he disposed of both synths and turrets before Grey even registered their presence. He didn't handle her with kid gloves either, nor did he treat her as a subordinate or grunt. He was even, measured, methodical, even with synths around every corner, their creepy metallic frames and bulging cybernetic eyes keeping Grey's heart rate at a good 160 bpm for a solid two hours. Her mortality had struck her as she'd felt the tingle of a shock baton dance across her skin. She'd thought she was done for, clearly ill-equipped with a Vault suit, combat boots, leather jacket, and a flannel shirt wrapped around her waist. One baton strike, one laser shot, and she was dead. The Paladin had shielded her though, having realized her circumstances long before she had, taking the brunt of each attack, knowing she'd fire from behind his cover instead of hightailing it for the nearest settlement. But fuck, had it been tempting.
As they'd left ArkJet, Grey couldn't fight the grin pulling at her face. She'd fingered and tossed the long-range transmitter like a ball until the Paladin snatched it mid-air. From the look on his face, she'd expected him to reprimand her for nearly cooking him alive in his power armour several moments earlier, but no, instead he wanted to critique their combat performance. Typical. Nate had taken her camping once, but instead of fucking like dogs in heat, he'd decided to evaluate her survival skills, treating her like some slobbering imbecile who couldn't figure out that fire was hot.
Grey had smiled at Paladin Danse, the look more seductive than intended, the adrenaline and her hormones clearly playing a little too nice. "I thought we worked well as a team."
He'd glowered at her before reconsidering her words. "Agreed."
He'd offered her his laser rifle as reward, and Grey could only hope she didn't accidentally shoot herself with it before she could get it to the nearest trader and exchanged for a fistful of caps. But then the Paladin kept talking, about her skill, some drivel about wandering without purpose, needing to make her mark. The recruitment speech, modified for a world of flea-ridden wasters and settlers with more tatos than brains.
Grey'd sighed, running a hand back through her hair. Most of the time she'd snort a "no" if she bothered to even reply at all before walking away from an offer she didn't want. But he'd earned some of her respect. Man was a damned good fighter, and he'd treated her well even if, in his eyes, she was no better than any other mindless wastelander. She'd had an infant to reclaim though, and a city to find in the ruins of Fenway Park. This Brotherhood, whatever they were, couldn't help her. They could barely help themselves. Or so she'd decided.
She'd thought she'd seen something flicker behind the Paladin's hazel eyes with her refusal, but his face quickly hardened, head nodding in acknowledgement. "If you change your mind, you know where we are." And that was it, or so she'd thought.
"You keep tapping your fingernails like that and Whitechapel Charlie may start to think you're hitting on him in morse code."
Grey ceased the motion as MacCready approached, the slight man taking the stool next to her's. She cocked her head before giving him a sly smile.
"Robert Joseph MacCready, just the man I'm looking for."
She watched the wheels in his head turn, watched as his expression turned to curiosity to apprehension to alarm. "No, no way, Grey. Whatever it is you're cooking, it's way above my pay grade and I will not be pulled in—"
"I want you to tell me everything you know about the Brotherhood of Steel." She threw a hundred caps onto the bar. "And don't leave anything out."