4

Paladin Danse withered on the steps of Cambridge Police Station, staring at the myriad of corpses before him. Rotting flesh still clung to the weathered steel of his power armor, ancient and irradiated blood only just starting to dry. The rain would clean him in time. Of the bodies before him, his eyes fell only on two; the ones covered in sheets he'd pulled from the cells in the station. Danse stared down to the two pairs of holotags dangling between his armored fingers. Two names stared back at him; Haylen and Rhys. Danse may not have bothered to clean his own armor, but he'd polished those holotags until there wasn't a drop of blood or filth to be seen. Though they bore the wear and tear that was awarded from years of duty and service, Danse refused to let the end of that service be preserved in dried and putrid crimson stains.

Of all the things that might claim his team, he'd never imagined it would be ghouls.

Rhys had gone out for fresh air. Scribe Haylen had been doing final diagnostics on Danse's armor, simultaneously reading off a few new scavengable locations where Danse might find some old documents worth collecting. Haylen had reported to Danse that she'd collected this intel from a merchant she'd approached on her own. She had even bargained a fair trade for the information. Haylen had sounded proud. He wasn't sure why he remembered that, but he did. It was her first proper, earnest interaction with a wastelander from the Commonwealth and she didn't even have Rhys or Danse with her. It'd gone well. Danse also remembered that he'd scolded her for not bringing backup along before approaching the trader, though the reprimand had rolled right off her back. Most things usually did.

When Rhys had called out for help and started firing his laser rifle outside the police station, Danse and Haylen hadn't hesitated. Haylen had beat Danse to the door, killing a ghoul that had pinned Rhys against the wall. His first injury was some gut wound, raked by old diseased fingernails that'd managed to puncture his suit. Danse wasn't sure what injuries had followed the first; there were simply too many to document. He hadn't taken the time to do a field autopsy when he'd laid the bodies out to be covered. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to do that, even if it was protocol. They were dead; that was all that needed to be known.

Haylen had fought like a proper soldier; that's what Danse truly remembered. Every feral they'd killed only seemed to bring in more from the rest of Cambridge, but Haylen's trigger finger never wavered. Danse wasn't sure why they hadn't faced this sort of opposition before, though he supposed his team had always been fairly quiet when coming in and out of Cambridge, opting to leave through its sleepier western road rather than travel north or south through the heart of it. Still; Haylen fought.

Whenever Danse had glanced back to see if she was overrun, there she'd been, firing burst after burst of laserfire down on the ghouls that had slipped in from the southern entrance to the barricade. Her face was twisted in an acute focus not unlike when she was scribing one of Danse's reports. Before, she had always been nervous, skittish, and hesitant. Danse didn't think she was any of those things in the end. A soldier, he thought. A proper soldier.

He glanced down to the holotags in his hand. Seeing her name glint and glisten despite the rain, he felt immense pride… Mixed with something black and empty.

In the end, it was Danse himself going down that had distracted her. A feral had gotten particularly lucky and gnawed on a hydraulic line in Danse's left leg. The sudden imbalance had sent him toppling, ten or more of the wretched bastards piling on top of him. Danse recalled feeling the weight of Haylen's fire as she tried to shoot the ferals off of him. It was a risky move, but one Danse would have commended if he'd gotten the chance. She'd cleared the ones closest to Danse's face before a feral that'd been creeping along the long-dead flowerbeds near the railing Haylen had been using as a rifle brace emerged and brought her to the ground.

The rest was a blur for Danse. He remembers punching. Lots of punching. He could still hear the hydraulics of his right arm pumping, the sound of old radiation-cooked flesh splitting and squishing under the knuckles of his armor. Hiss-pump, splat. Hiss-pump, crunch. On and on, until he was left standing on one leg, dripping rotten blood. When he'd turned to check on Haylen, she was already dead. The feral that'd gone for her ripped her throat out. Its first strike was its last. Rhys, no doubt succumbing to his own wounds, had managed to shoot the creature off of Haylen...

But not before the damage had been done.

Her eyes were still open. Danse remembered that, too. He, at least, had the strength to close them before he'd put the sheet over her. Rhys' shot had drawn attention to him, pulling two ferals that had broken off from Danse. He'd killed one before the other fell upon him. Danse had tried to nurse Rhys' wounds following the battle, but the man had ultimately succumbed. His death had been slow, agonizing, and full of the bitter hope that he might make it. Haylen's had been swift. Danse felt some amount of relief that it'd been that way. Rhys was a stoic; he went out with his pride intact. Haylen would have-

"No." Danse muttered to himself, lowering his gripped fist. The holotags jingled in the rain as Danse lifted his head, water dripping from his sticking cowl. No. I'm not reliving what didn't even happen. I'm not torturing myself like that. Though Danse found torturing himself was unavoidable, for a single thought continued to roll on and on in his mind; Why was he not dead with his men?

More importantly, what would he do now?

Danse limped his way back into the police station. He'd done his best to host a field repair on his left leg, but it'd been patch work at best. Without Haylen, it might remain patchwork until Danse could find a local with the tools and skills necessary to fix his armor. The thought of a wastelander working on his suit while he was outside of it made Danse's stomach turn with anxiety.

Danse found the collection of notes and reports Haylen had made since they'd arrived in the Commonwealth. For reasons Danse wasn't willing to explore, he felt the need to touch those reports with his own flesh. He exited his armor and undid the upper portion of his suit, tying it around his waist. Danse sat in the old wooden chair that Haylen had claimed to be the most comfortable left in the station, hearing it struggle to hold him, as he held the files in his hands. He combed them, as if reading them, though he found the task laborious. He could't think. His primary target had been Arcjet facilities; he, Rhys, and Haylen were set to assault it tomorrow. With them gone, Danse wasn't confident he could survive the entire facility alone.

He set the Arcjet file aside, looking for something lighter. Anything. Anything that he might be able to do, anything to get him away from this station. A name stood out to him, highlighted.

Covenant.