Author's Note: I'm going to have to agree Absolute Configuration. Where are the reviews? On the one hand, if I get no reviews I can't improve. On the other hand, if I'm writing for one (or three) people then I should just send them a private message telling them the ending instead of typing out the hundred or so chapters to come that I have in mind.
Sorry if that seems a bit snappish.
STORY
The General pulled at the gag out of his mouth. The man, dressed as a Minuteman, was bound to a chair. In her office. Surrounded by Minutemen guards. In armor. With Institute make, Minutemen model mark one laser rifles. And other weapons. And a type 2 synth. Because why not?
She paused a moment. "Are you absolutely sure he can't get loose?", she asked one of the actual Minutemen.
"My brother used to use this on me when we were boys.", he replied. "We lost more good rope that way. On account of our pop had to cut me out after a night of trying to figure out how to untie it. And he wasn't tied up in it."
The General nodded. "Alright, then. Dismissed."
The Minutemen nodded in agreement. Then realized what she had ordered. "Wait a min/"
"You heard me.", she cut off. "Everybody out. You see the synth? He's halfway out the door.
"Now guard the door and storm in here if you hear a struggle. Don't be stupid. But the conference still needs security. I might not be the only target."
The surrounding soldiers nodded in more understanding. They shuffled out of the office slowly, giving the prisoner a few suspicious glares on the way out. "You want the door closed, ma'am?"
"Yes.", she replied. "Oh, and calm down anyone that's upset after 'the excitement'. Assure them that we have everything in hand."
Once the room was empty, she ungagged the man. "Now, Deacon. If you wanted an invitation, I just needed a forwarding address."
For once, Deacon had nothing to say. Well, for a moment.
"You know what, just kill me.", he replied.
The General sat down on the table in front of him. "Why in the world would I do that? Especially after all the work I went through to not kill you the first time."
"You stormed into the Railroad's headquarters after you gained our trust!", Deacon fumed. "You shot up everything in the Old North Church."
"You know that isn't true.", the General countered. "P.A.M. shouldn't have a scratch on her from me."
Deacon spat, "Oh, pardon me! I should have said 'everyone'."
"You really don't get it, do you?", his captor asked. "And you're supposed to be the best liar in an espionage agency."
The General pulled an object from her pocket. "What's this?"
"What does it matter?", Deacon asked.
"Just answer the damn question for once, Deacon."
He sighed. "It's a STIMPACK."
"Exactly!", the General declared. "Healing wounds instantly in a single syringe. Even before the war, we could heal minor wounds pretty quickly and the war itself drove that chemistry and technology to the point that even now, in the wasteland, STIM PACKs can be made en masse. And in the headquarters of an underground, espionage group at war with super scientists there were how many of these? Dozens? Scores?"
Deacon frowned and his eye began to twitch. "Hundreds."
"Exactly!", she continued. "You've seen what I can do with a pistol. What I can do to a pistol."
The general opened her coat. "If I was going to kill a person...make sure they were dead...Kellog levels of dead, what do you think I would use?"
"I understand what you've done to the three friends at your waist.", the spy conceded.
"And yet, what did I use in my - how did you say - 'storming' of HQ?", she prodded.
"A basic LASER PISTOL.", Deacon answered.
"A basic LASER PISTOL.", she repeated. "Not even something with a bullet for penetration. And none of the nastier plasma or guass either. If we had phasers, you would have been hit with stun.
"How much danger do you think I took upon myself not using a heavier weapon? Considering that Glory totes a MINIGUN? One that could actually take a ballistic weave protected Heavy down without the chaos that went down that day?"
Deacon nodded absently, thinking.
"And you were all surrounded by these pretty little STIM PACKs, right there in your HQ?"
Deacon still made connections.
"Let me ask you this.", she cemented. "What happened to safe house Kingsport Lighthouse? What happened to Ticonderoga?"
His head came up to meet her gaze from behind his sunglasses. "Nothing."
"If I wanted you dead and I made it out alive, why did nothing happen to either? Why didn't something happen there simultaneously?"
"It would take other people acting with you to hit different places at the same time.", Deacon pointed out. "And to guarantee success, you'd have to hit those other places too. Otherwise, they'd be evacuated like the Switchboard. The only way they weren't hit would be if you were working alone.
"And not with the Institute? But that doesn't make sense: you're obviously allied with them now.
"But we made it out. And it was because Glory was still mobile after getting hit with that piss poor laser you were using. She managed to stim us back on our feet. Even Tinker Tom. Which you seem to have expected...even though you didn't stick around for that."
He milled it over in his mind.
"If the Institute was testing your loyalty to other factions...
"You genuinely hit the Brotherhood of Steel. Hard. That P.I. Valentine confirmed that. But then again, you hated them from the start - or at least acted like it. You spent all that time building up the Minutemen because you were planning on stuffing it down the throat of whoever kidnapped your son and shot your husband. And then they came to take over and push the Minutemen to the side. Called Minutemen 'civilians'.
"But the Institute took your son. And we were already at odds with the Brotherhood because of their genocidal policies toward synths.
"It still doesn't add up."
The General nodded. "How about another piece of the puzzle? By the time I got to him, my son had grown up without me. Into the head of the Institute."
"And that was your motivation for all of it.", Deacon explained. "So when he was Institute, you sided with him. Betraying all of us."
And then he realized. "You had already served alongside Institute enemies by working with us. To be with him, you had to prove your loyalty. So he asked you to ice us. You were the only one that had actionable intel on us. You could have just teleported synth strike teams into every where you knew us to be.
"But you didn't. You hit us...injured a lot of people but didn't actually take anyone out. And anyone else wouldn't have survived a stunt like that.
"The Institute didn't know about Ticonderoga, did they?"
"They still don't.", the General assured.
"So you hit us to be able to tell the people who make sentient artificial people that you did.", Deacon assessed. "And let me guess, the entire Institute thinks the entire Railroad is dead."
"If you change 'dead' to 'dead enough'.", she told. "It was the only way to maintain the Railroad without bringing the full force of the Institute down on you. And let me tell you: you can't take that fight. If you didn't realize that after the Switchboard.
"So I had to ensure that you survived while having good reason not to believe that you did. A few weaker laser shots later, and here we are. The hard part was preparing for you to be stupid."
"Stupid?", Deacon asked.
"Well not you in particular.", she explained. "Even though it turned out to be you as well. I thought between your propensity to lie, Tinker Tom's conspiracy theories and Desdemona's paranoia that someone would figure out what I was up to. I was mostly expecting a hidden message to have made its way into this very office by now, attempting to coordinate.
"When I didn't get that, I had to assume that the worst would happen. That you would...well, try something like this. So I prepped the Minutemen to expect your assassination attempt. But because I can't trust that they won't leak things amongst themselves and the Institute would catch wind of it early, I had to misdirect them as to why. They think that they're protecting the new Commonwealth government: that my assassination would cancel that, so a lot of random Institute haters would try to take me out. It's close enough to the truth to keep from accidentally slipping up.
"When Mayor Kessler of Bunker Hill told me she was going to nominate Old Man Stockton as her representative, I had an idea. I worked with him to save H2-22. Or as much as someone can be saved with their memories erased. So I made sure to tell her exactly when there would be an open shot at me. Sure, there would be others. But by telling her I was ensuring that whoever Desdemona sent wouldn't get tipped off in the same way that they would if I told Stockton directly. And I was able to make sure nothing actually happened by placing my men on a state of alert ahead of time.
"After that, all that was left was to pick out the Railroad assassin from the crowd. I should have known it would be you. Glory and Hightower can't mix in quite like you, can they?
"It nearly went awry at the Atom Cats, though. If I wasn't in superior power armor, I'm sure Johnny D would have jumped the gun, wouldn't he?"
Deacon just gazed at the General astounded.
"Now that that's settled.", she continued. "How about I offer you everything you've ever wanted?"
