Chapter 15: Fighting In The Dark

BAM! Dust fell off the louvers of an air duct grate. BAM! BAM! The grate popped off and fell to the floor below, the brown-haired female pulling herself forward to look to where the duct covering fell. She looked back and forth through the hallway, nothing but black and white tile in a diner pattern below her.

"What do you see?" Clements shouted from down the hall. "Not much. Aside from the duct cover, the floor's barren." Clements didn't like that response, "What do you mean, 'barren'?" "All I see is black and white tile," she looked up and saw the security keypad on the wall, "I'm going for the keypad."

"Wait!" the Initiate yelled, "Don't move! I need you to tell me where the grate landed."

Cheryl raised an eyebrow and looked back into the duct, "What?" "You heard me; where did it land?"

"Just off the wall?"

"Where?"

"Two feet away? I donno!"

"Goddamnit, what color tile did it fall on?"

Cheryl was getting annoyed. She looked back to the floor and found the Initiate's stupid answer, "A white one, okay?! A fucking white one! Why do you need to know that?"

"I need you to take something - anything - and throw it on a black tile. Bolts; bottle caps; pocket lint; anything." This is absurd! Cheryl thought. To humor the man she pulled bullets off her bandoleer she kept on and pulled her body out of the duct enough to ready her arm for a toss. As she tested the weight of the bullets and gauged her throw, she couldn't help but comment, "This is absolutely retarded." She threw the bullets and struck her target.

A blinding light flashed in front of her eyes as she scrambled back into the duct. She heard the bullets explode causing her to shriek.

On the other end of the laser-laiden hallway Clements saw electrical arcs launch from around the corner. Pops and crackles of all kinds were heard from where he stood unable to do anything but watch on, "Holy shit!"

Cheryl had covered her eyes as the light pulsated before her…

It then stopped.

The smell of gunpowder and ozone filled the air as she pulled herself back out to see absolutely nothing on the tile for where she threw the bullets. She felt a twinge of fear. "Cheryl!" the Initiate called out. "Cheryl, are you alright? Talk to me!"

"What the fuck was that?" the woman asked, blinking repeatedly to clear her eyes of her temporary blindness.

"We had a Knight discover this type of security trap left from the old world in a building in the city. Damn near blew his leg off. Told all of us as recruits. You have to listen to me on this, okay?" Cheryl closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. After exhaling she answered, "Okay, what do I have to do?"

"Are you familiar with the game, 'Lava'?"

As Rep walked he started stepping on what felt like metal parts, "Ouch!" he hopped on one foot for a moment, then bent down and picked up what looked faintly like a camera mount, "The hell?"

"It's a destroyed camera," Scrap said with haste, "we must keep moving!"

Rep was confused, "Scrap, you've been acting odd since we got past the main doors in here. Is there something you're not telling me?" The C-27 stopped and turned around quickly, "Quite, they'll hear you!" he whispered, looking side to side as he did.

"Robots in stand-by can't hear you."

"Not robots," the machine grabbed the Vault Dweller by the arm and started pulling, "Come on, we have to move!" Rep pulled his arm free causing him to drop the camera making a loud, echoed clang on the floor, "I'm not doing a damn thing until you tell me…" HISS! Growling was heard down the hallway. More hissing and snarling was heard soon after as silhouettes started to blot out the faint light of the hallways. Turning on his Pip-Boy's Overbright Mode again, they found themselves surrounded by six feral ghouls wearing tattered lab coats.

"Scrap?'

"Yes, Rep?"

"I'm mad," shooting from the hip the Engineer pulled his unique plasma pistol and blew a hole in the chest of a ghoul directly in front of him. A ghoul rushed toward Scrap making him duck in fear allowing Rep to spin on his one good heel and pistol whip/clothesline the creature in the face. The ghoul flipped head over heels and landed face first on the floor; the weight of it's own body breaking it's neck.

Another ghoul came charging from the side, and without missing a beat Rep aimed his weapon under his arm and blew the enraged former human's lower torso in two. Coming from another direction a fourth ghoul came close to swiping him in the face, but ducked just in time. From a semi-crouching position he shot upward and blew the monster's head apart.

As Rep was distracted, a ghoul dove for him causing the Vault Dweller to try standing only to stumble back and trip over the still cowering robot behind him. He tried to regain balance, but was pointless for the angry creature lunging at him tackled him to the ground, knocking his hat off his head and his pistol from his grip. As the ghoul got above him, Rep shook off the cobwebs and managed to put his hand on the monster's forehead keeping it at bay.

"I've had just about enough of being the bottom bitch in this deal!" Rep yelled. Getting his good leg up he managed to get the creature on the bottom of his foot and launched it backward making it trip over Scrap and fall into another ghoul. Rep looked to his right and saw the camera he dropped not but a moment before the fight started. The ghoul began standing up as Rep turned over, grabbed the camera, and started quickly hobbling at the disoriented abomination. He quipped, "Smile for the camera!" Rep wound up and hit the ghoul hard under the chin. It tried to get up afterward, but he didn't give it the chance. He hit it in the head again. And again. He kept striking it over and over, each blow more powerful than the last until there was nothing left but red paste and broken camera parts. He dropped what was left of the camera and flipped off the corpse, "FUCK you!" He doubled over putting his hands on the top of his knees and started catching his breath, the rush of adrenaline still coursing through his veins, "Damn, today's been hell on the body."

HISS! Rep slowly stood straight at that sound. He looked over and saw the last ghoul walk out from the surrounding darkness into the green-hued light of his Pip-Boy. Rep reached for his pistol…

It wasn't there.

After doing a quick scan of the hallway, he saw it on the floor just out of his reach. With no weapon all he could do was mutter to himself, "Oh, fuck me!"

The creature lumbered forward making Rep trip over the corpse of the ghoul he just killed and fall to the floor. The live ghoul readied itself to leap at him. Rep covered his face.

CRACK! A set of hands came from behind the ghoul, grabbed its head, and twisted the creature's head around 180 degrees. It fell to the floor with a thud. Rep looked up and found the person responsible for saving his life…

"Oh my gosh! Is it dead?" Scrap clenched his fists at total shock of what he did. At first Rep gave a sigh of relief, then he started getting angry as he began to stand up. As he did, the robot reached into its chest plate, pulled out his red hat, and handed it to him, "Here's your skull covering." Rep harshly snatched the hat from his grip and put it on his head with angry vigor before he started yelling at him, "What the fuck took you so long?"

"I'm sorry, Rep! I'm still not used to fighting!"

Rep grabbed Scrap by his antenna, "The next fucking time you don't tell me of upcoming danger I'm gonna take your ass apart and turn you into a Goddamn toaster, you hear me, Goddamnit?!"

"Yes," the robot said frightened, "I'll try to remember!" Rep shoved Scrap's head as he let go of the antenna, "You're a Goddamn robot; you can't forget, you have total recall!" Rep turned and went to pick up his pistol…

"I'm programmed to forget." Rep stopped short of his gun as he raised his head up then stood and turned to the machine, "What?" "I was meant to simulate a human. Not just be mere intelligence, but have emotions. I was originally a program made by the Commonwealth Institute of Technology in their Psychology department. RobCo bought me and Wyatt's code to use for a software suite. Kandewit was a test company."

"And when you were split from Wyatt you became a separate personality from him."

"The Moody Man didn't realize that my half of the code wasn't a malfunction. He didn't know I was supposed to have emotions."

"When he ordered the code split - since RobCo didn't make it - the emotions were also split," Rep started to pick up his pistol again as he continued the hypothesis, "You got hope, fear, compassion, he got will, avarice and…"

"Anger," the robot finished.

"Yeah," he agreed, holstering his weapon, "on top of that, he has augmented programming controlling this building, its computers, its defenses, and so on. You? You're a mess."

"Well, I do have two things he doesn't have." Rep started limping down the hall again as he asked the robot, "Which is?"

"One, I have an adaptive cognitive capacity," Scrap explained as he followed, "the ability to learn from humans."

"And two?" Rep heard a small chuckle come from the robot, "I have friends." That made Rep stop and look at Scrap as he continued to walk past with an eyebrow raised. The machine was annoying him, sure, but sometimes it revealed more than what he thought he knew about pre-war technology. On top of that, it seemed like it was trying as hard as it could to do what he needed it to do. In the short time they teamed up Scrap had been adapting to the situation decently. Still has a flare up with cowering, but when push came to shove the robot had protected him. It almost reminded the engineer when he was a kid, still learning to handle himself.

A small smirk came across his face as he saw the robot try to open some doors, that is until a thought came to mind, "Hey Scrap, why didn't Wyatt kill these ghouls for trespassing?"

Turning his attention from the doors the machine looked to his human counterpart, "Well, they weren't trespassing," he pointed to the dead ghouls they had killed, "They work here." Rep's eyes went wide with surprise, "Uh… Right, of course," Rep turned his head to the side and shook his head, "Fucking computer." "I could never get to this door because of those things. It looks like there's some kind of lock on here," Rep came up and looked at it. It looked like a type of scanner. He read the sign on the door, "'Master Mainframe Hall - No Unauthorized Personnel Without Proper Clearance'. Fuck."

"Can you access this kind of interface?" the C-27 asked. Rep shook his head, "No, you don't input data into this kind of device. This one is looking for a specific piece of information about a person. Considering everyone who was registered with this thing is… dead…" he trailed off as something has occurred to him. He walked back to the dead pile of ghouls and looked around the floor for something. "Rep," asked Scrap, confused, "What are you doing?"

"You said these guys work here," the man in blue said, "maybe one of these guys can help us. Ah-hah!" he bent down and grabbed something small off the floor. He held it out in front of him as he walked back to the door. Scrap tilted his head to the side, "What is that?" "Something his mother gave him," he held the object against the scanner and heard the door unlock after a moment of humming from the device. After the door opened he dropped the small, white, and round object to the floor and wiped his hand on his suit's pant leg, "Eeeeeewwwww! The things I've done since leaving home," with that, the engineer walked in, his robot friend following along.

Looking down at the object, it's shown to be one of the ghouls' whited-out eyeballs. It may have been possible these ghouls were trying to ward off the two in a primitive attempt to save their lives, but it was a futile effort. The door to the mainframe hall closed behind them, the lock reengaging with a click as the man and the robot continued deeper into the darkness unsure of what awaited them.