Begin Recording

The Hunter

Recording by Scribe Ellison

"So, Nick, I need to take out the Institute's greatest killing machine. Virgil was sure I wouldn't survive. Want to come?"

"Love to. Ellie, hold my calls."

I caught Ellie's expression and said, "Don't worry, I'll bring him back in one piece."

"You'd better." Ellie said, smiling but troubled. "Have fun out there."

My feminine intuition and high school memories delivered a message. Ellie so had a thing for Nick, and he didn't have a clue. As a fellow girl and someone who wished happiness for my friends I was obliged to help if I could think of a way. But this wasn't high school, it was a dangerous wasteland. A really bad place for love.

I wasn't just thinking about Nick and Ellie.

But that thought was accompanied by a rush of guilt. Finding my son was more important than any of this, and that meant finding this courser was more important.

I had worked out that the synth in Kellogg's memories, the one that took Shaun away, must have been a courser so we knew what we were looking for. And that synth had been weirdly robotic. Human looking but the way it spoke revealed the synth inside. So I didn't think I'd have any hesitation about killing one, I'd just have all the other problems with trying to kill this warrior synth.

At least the two of us knew what we were looking for when we got to the ruins of CIT one fine morning. And it was fine, a day with a perfectly blue sky like the war had never happened. The buildings were well preserved too, the rotunda stood almost white. And large. "Hope we don't have to search inside, this place is huge."

"And full of super mutants, so I hear." Nick said.

It was, and the Minutemen took care of them later, but thankfully we didn't have to go inside that day. The courser's signal on my radio led us east along the river—and right into a raider nest. So we had to use up half our ammo before we even found the right place.

After that little side trip we tracked the signal to a tall green building, its metal facade marked with rust.

Inside we found a very nice lobby, or it would have been before the war. Now the ornamental plants were long dead and a corpse was sprawled over the check-in desk.

Nick said, "Gunner. Wonder what he was doing here."

My pip-boy radio indicated the courser was here, somewhere above us. The nice convenient stairs up from the lobby had fallen down so we were going to have to find another way up. I did find the name of the place—Greenetech Genetics. Whatever that was. Not a company that had ever crossed my desk at the law office.

So we crept up the back stairs, and found another dead Gunner. I jumped a foot when the building's intercom crackled. "The courser's on the second floor. Kill on sight. Send reinforcements to the lobby in case there are more!"

Nick and I looked at each other. I guessed, "Gunners are going after the courser."

"Wonder who hired them. Maybe we'll find out."

The Gunners were not interested in telling us. They'd wired up a bunch of turrets, and there were a lot of Gunners. We spent a lot of time huddled behind walls while bullets whizzed past us. There was an awful moment when Nick went down and I had to drag him out of danger. "Nick!"

"I'll be fine. Just give me a minute to put my leg back on!" And he put his leg back on and we carried on.

The Gunner on the intercom spoke again, reporting on the courser's location and the intruders in the lobby. They'd noticed us.

"Great." Nick rasped. "If we're lucky they'll be too busy with the courser, wear it down for us."

We saw the first sign of the courser through a window across the open center of the building. Up on the next floor someone was using a serious weapon, something that thundered and made the air ripple. Gunners didn't have whatever the hell that was.

Virgil had been quite sure the courser would kill me. But when we got to the bridges—we had to cross bridges through the building's atrium—all we saw were more Gunners shooting at us from above. Nick spotted the one with the missile launcher first and took him out with a head shot. Man and missiles slid from the bridge and all the way down. I gave Nick an appreciative, "Damn."

"You doing all right?" He asked after we'd gotten safely across.

"Yeah. Good to go." I was out of ammo for my ten millimeter, but the Gunners had been dropping plenty of energy cells and I'd found a good laser pistol plus I still had my rifle. And half a dozen stimpacks left.

We both looked up as another Gunner report came from the ceiling. "The courser's after the girl. Anyone alive needs to get up to the top floor immediately. That's an order!"

Girl? Me? But at least we knew where to go.

It took forever, Scribe. More halls, more stairs, more Gunners jumping out at us. Finally an elevator took us further up to a floor full of banks of electronics and everything tucked behind locked gates. Whatever Greenetech was doing with genetics, they didn't want anyone else to get at it. But by then we could hear sounds from even further up. Gunners begging for their lives.

The courser, it had to be the courser, spoke in an unnaturally calm voice. "All he had to do was tell me the password. Now, are you going to cooperate?"

Weeping Gunners saying they didn't know. The courser repeating calmly that he would kill them until someone told him the password. This thing had reduced a bunch of hardened mercenaries to wailing wrecks and didn't even sound out of breath.

Nick and I looked at each other, reloaded, I swung my rifle down in case I got a chance for a distance shot, and we climbed the last flight of stairs.

The courser did look human… only it didn't. Flat face, flat eyes. The same clothing as the one in Kellogg's memory. It was pacing back and forth before a terminal and some Gunners, most dead, a few curled up and bleeding. I was aiming when it spoke. "Are you here for the synth?"

That thing should not have been able to hear us. We were far away and mostly hidden behind a wall. But it continued, "If you're not here for the synth then you're here for me. What do you want?"

There was no reason to talk. I shot it.

The thing immediately activated a stealth boy and disappeared, but I'd learned the tricks. How to see the shimmer in the air—or just fire in a line and watch what the laser blasts do. And Nick's yellow synth eyes could see through the stealth field a lot better than mine, he thinks he can see an extra wavelength or two. So we shot the thing, a lot. By sheer luck I blasted its stealth boy and it reappeared, and that gave the two surviving Gunners enough hope that they started shooting too. The courser actually ignored Nick and me long enough to kick one of them to death, and Nick got in a shot that shattered the thing's hand.

My borrowed laser pistol was down to one last handful of energy cells when the courser finally stayed down. Neither of us was sure it was really dead. It had taken a huge amount of punishment. Nick got a combat knife off a dead Gunner and cut off its head while I panted and tried to keep standing up while fading adrenaline made my knees shake. My hands hurt when I uncurled them from the laser pistol.

The last surviving Gunner slowly uncurled. He tried to aim his laser pistol at me but it shook too much. I said, "We're not going to hurt you unless you attack us. Just get out of here." And he fled.

There was someone else on the top floor. Behind a window a young woman said, "He… deserved to die. I know you're not here for me, but please help me get out of here."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'll tell you. I won't run. Can you open the door?"

Nick stood up from the courser's body, holding something electronic and bloody in his metal hand. "I think this is it. Em, see if those Gunners have the password somewhere while I try getting through this terminal."

I didn't want to poke around inside the courser's head but I did search the dead Gunners and lay them out. I didn't find the password on any of them but by then Nick had hacked the terminal and opened the door.

"Thank you." The woman said. She looked ragged and afraid and spoke in short choppy phrases.

I asked, "Why were they all coming after you? Who are you?"

"My… Institute designation is K1-98. But I prefer Jenny. So yes, I'm a synth. If you haven't already guessed. I knew they'd send a courser after me but I didn't think he'd find me so fast. I think I could've lost him but then I was captured by these mercenaries and… all this happened. Thanks for your help."

"You know where to go?"

"Yeah. I'll grab some gear off these Gunners on my way out. And before you ask, no, I don't need any more help. The Commonwealth is unforgiving. I need to make it on my own or I'm dead."

Nick nodded to her and I said, "There are some settlements up north. You'd be welcome, if you don't find a better place to stay."

Jenny blinked, I think I surprised her. "Thank you. Maybe we'll meet again under better circumstances." And she headed out, fast.

Nick and I did not move fast. Nick probably could've, but I was feeling like I always did after a long fight: totally drained, nauseous, shaky. The silence was wonderful and with no sign of more Gunners we could make our way back down in peace. I remember thinking a lot about synths on the way down. Nick, who didn't look human but felt human. Jenny, who I'd never have guessed was a synth. The courser, which looked perfectly normal but made my skin creep. Like the Institute had tried to make a human then gone on past, somehow.