Chapter 151: Shadows and Ghosts

Chapter 151: Shadows and Ghosts

THREEEEEEE DAWG! That's me, kiddies! From the Capital Wastes to Dayglow, The Core to Metrolina and everywhere else in-between, it's Galaxy News Radio! Keep that dial tuned to 103.8 anywhere in the wasteland, and I'll keep broadcasting the truth, 24-7, from sea to irradiated sea! You can't stop the signal, baby! AWOOOOOOO!

I stared at the severed metal head in my hands. Looking at it up close, it obviously wasn't like those robots used by the ZAX ai. I suppose I only made the connection because both types of robots were more humanoid in appearance than something like... like a protectron or a sentry bot, say. But those ZAX robots had a distinct skeletal appearance to them, and the heads looked like skulls, complete with a mouth, teeth, eye sockets... even a hole for a nose. But this head looked like someone had taken a skull, filled in every detail with putty, and sandblasted it until every surface was smooth. The only real imperfections were two tiny divots around eye level for a pair of minuscule cameras buried deep beneath the face armor.

I tossed the robot head aside, and surveyed the carnage all around. Because really... 'Carnage' is the only word that could possibly describe this mess. We were half a mile from The Strip's front gate on Vegas Boulevard, but if I didn't know better, I'd say we were in The Divide. All that was missing were the sandstorms. The road was so chewed up and broken that it looked like it had been hit by an earthquake. All the buildings on either side of me were completely ripped to shreds and one of them still had the largest pieces of the crashed aircraft lodged in the roof. A few small fires were still burning, and smoke was rising in dirty pillars of ash from the half a dozen craters.

About the only piece of light relief among this madness was the deuce. Sure, it had crashed onto its side, but it did its job, allowing Stripe to get here in just the nick of time and with quite the dramatic flair, to boot. Not only that, but Roxie was sticking her head up out of the cab, panting at me as I walked by... which removed any doubt in my mind as to who drove it here.

"So..." Chris said to Stripe, a few feet away from me; except for the helmet, he was still wearing the T-51b. "You can talk?" Stripe snorted, leaning in and staring intently at the blonde Vault boy.

"Yes. I can speak. What of it?" Stripe growled right in Chris' face. For as tall as the Lone Wanderer was exaggerated by the bone-white power armor as he was wearing Stripe still towered over him.

"Well, I just never met a pet deathclaw who could talk before, that's all," he said, matter-of-factly. Stripe's whole body shuddered, and he snarled right in Chris' face, gnashing his teeth.

"I am no one's PET, tin can!" Stripe bellowed, snorting through his massively flared nostrils. "I follow Alpha-Courier because I respect his power and he respects mine! Insult me again, and I will tear that smug head from your shoulders!" Chris laughed... but tightened his grip on the gatling laser all the same.

"I'd like to see you try!" he grinned.

"KNOCK IT OFF! The both of you!" I yelled, storming over to them. I walked straight up to Chris, and prodded his chest plate. "Alright, you: start talking! What the FUCK just happened?"

"The Enclave just happened, that's what..." Chris looked back up at the sky. "What I don't get is why so many showed up..."

"So, this has happened before," I grumbled, balling my hands into fists. "You knew those power armored fucks could just teleport down when ever and where ever they damn well please right into the middle of my city, where they could hurt all these people under my protection and you didn't think to WARN ME?!" My blood was boiling. Chris took a few steps back, his expression faltering slightly. Hell, even Stripe started backing up.

"Look, I didn't except him to show up, and certainly not with that many!" He shot back. "Usually, when that... that Pansy teleports in to fight me, it's with four or five shock troops - at most! Maybe a handful of combat droids... but... but he's never arrived with that much firepower at once! And besides, it was too soon!"

"What do you mean, too soon?" I asked. Chris shrugged an impressive feat for someone wearing so much metal.Updated from novelb(i)n.c(o)m

"I can generally count on a gap of a month between his attempts to bring me down. Or he arrives while I'm in the middle of wrecking an... Enclave... base..." He trailed off, and then smacked his forehead with his metal hand. "Oh, how could I have been so stupid?" He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. "Those deathclaws we fought at Quarry Junction they had metal helmets, didn't they?"

"Uh... yeah, they..." I was honestly a little caught off guard by his question. Somewhere behind me, I heard Stripe growl: "I thought I smelled the blood of a rival clan..."

"I knew that radio tower I crashed into looked familiar!" Chris shook his head, grimacing with clenched teeth. "Those deathclaws were fitted with 'domestication units' mind control helmets used to turn deathclaws into Enclave bioweapons! That assassin we captured wasn't just using that place as cover she turned that quarry into an outpost!" He looked back up at the sky. "Son of a... I am such an idiot..."

"Okay, seriously, why do you keep looking up like that? What's wrong with the sky?" I asked. Before I even finished speaking, he pointed at the crashed aircraft in the side of the nearby building.

"Those things usually fly a lot higher," Chris explained. "Rothchild examined a few I've shot down, and he's pretty sure their ideal flight ceiling is around 25,000 feet. The Enclave mostly use them as high altitude surveillance drones or for dropping in those teleport beacons! A cloudless day like this, they could be right over our heads, and we'd never see them coming! Hell, they probably still have a few up "

There was a loud screeching whistle that cut through the air, followed by a crash. Vegas Boulevard to the north of us on one of the undamaged sections, to my annoyance was filled with a massive dust cloud and a shower of debris.

"No..." Chris actually sounded legitimately worried now. "No, no, it's too soon!" Stripe hissed and snarled; Sasha barked, and started spinning up the minigun.

"Alright, fuck this," I ran straight between the two giants on either side of me, leveled the Jury Rigger, and started firing LAER beams. One after the other, I kept firing, and for the first few shots it didn't seem like anything was happening... but after the fifth blast, the plating on the teleport homer started to rip apart. And after the eighth, I was close enough to punch it.

So I did.

"FUCK YOU!" I shouted. The metal cylinder split apart, ripping open from the force of my metal knuckles. Shards of metal were sent flying in every direction like they were torn up pieces paper blowing in the wind. I turned back to Chris; he was walking up to me with a confused smile. "They can't teleport if we destroy the teleport homers." There was a long silence. "Let me guess: you never thought to do that?" Chris laughed nervously.

"Truth be told, I never did." He paused. "Blowing them up seems obvious, now that I think about it, but... I guess I just always thought of it like a scripted event, and it was tagged essential." I sighed and shook my head; my brain was starting to get hoarse from all the internal screaming at the nonsense he was constantly spewing. Okay, focus, you idiot. This is definitely not good... we had to think of something... to...

"Hey, Chris?" I looked up, an idea starting to form in my head. "You said they fly on cloudless days? Well, what about cloudy days?" He seemed confused by the question, but thought about it all the same.

"I'm not sure. I think Rothchild mentioned once that they couldn't fly when it's overcast. Something about a line-of-sight problem, screwing with nav-control, maybe... why?" I just smirked, and turned to Stripe and Sasha.

"If any more of these teleport beacons come down before I return, make sure they don't stay in one piece for long. Can I count on you two for that?" Stripe snorted, giving me a nod, and Sasha barked.

"Do not worry, ! We will keep point secure for BLU team!" Sasha replied, spinning the minigun barrels again.

"I'll be right back," I pulled the Big Mountain Transportalponder! out of my duster. Chris raised both eyebrows behind his sunglasses, and opened his mouth wide in glee but I pulled the trigger before I could hear what he said.

The crack of lightning around me died down, and I stepped off the platform and into The Sink.

"Jeeves!" I rushed to his console. Immediately, the room was bathed in the glow of his holograms appearing in midair. "I need your help!"

"Certainly, sir," he replied. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to get some heavy cloud cover over Vegas as quickly as possible. How are the repairs going on X-17? Have the robots got it close to being finished?" The holograms over his console changed as I spoke; it started with a map of the crater, and then narrowed the focus onto a wireframe of the X-17 meteorological station. Several parts of the building in the canyon were highlighted in red.

"The installation is... nearly complete, sir," Jeeves said after a slight hesitation. "While most of the secondary and tertiary subsystems are still offline, most of the primary systems in X-17 are 97% functional. However, while they have not been physically stress-tested, I have been running simulations. No promises, but initial results indicate that X-17 will be, at the very least, partially operational in just a few more days!"

"We don't have a few more days," I grumbled. "What happens if I try to use it now?"

"In all likelihood? You will lose your other arm." Jeeves snarked. "In truth, it is highly probable that a premature firing will merely break the installation. Again."

"Alright, so is there a way to get some cloud cover over Vegas in a hurry?" I asked, rapping my knuckles against the side of his console. "C'mon, we're on the clock here!"

"One moment..." Jeeves started scrolling through various images on his projected holograms, most of them faster than I could even see. And then suddenly, he settled on one: "Ah, yes... Yes, I believe I may have found a suitable alternative, based on sirs' parameters. According to the records, this is the design for a small-scale prototype to one of the larger systems in X-17. It was meant to be a technological stepping stone to bridge archaic cloud seeding technology to the much more advanced weather control devices. It can fire a single-use ionized pulse beam that can temporarily excite a localized area in the ionosphere." I paused, staring at the hologram that was slowly spinning on its axis in front of me.

"It can make a lot of cloud cover, is what you're saying," I deadpanned.

"In a sentence, yes sir." Jeeves replied. I nodded, looking it over.

"...why does it look like a potato gun?" I asked aloud, watching as the holographic cubes pulled themselves together and took shape.

"That, sir, is beyond my ability to explain. I was not privy to the nuances that went into the devices design aesthetics, sir."

"I've been doing a lot of scanning today!" Yes Man said cheerily. "It's been almost constant since you acquired the new arrivals!" I opened my mouth to protest, but didn't see the point and just let him continue. "I was monitoring your fight on Vegas Boulevard against the invaders earlier, and recorded everything about the fight most notably, the teleport signatures!"

"Teleport... Wait, are you saying what I think you're saying?" I asked, hopefully. Yes Man's monitor flickered.

"I certainly hope so! Thanks to all the wondrous new technology you've brought back from Big Mountain as well as some timely assistance from Jeeves! I was in an ideal position to collect some highly detailed scans of the energy waves! It's highly likely the invaders either didn't know or didn't care that they were being monitored otherwise, the data stream piggybacking off the teleport signal would've been much more heavily encrypted! Given adequate time, and more assistance from both Jeeves and Emily, I should be able to backtrace the signal to their point of origin!"

"How long?" I could practically feel the gears grinding against each other in my skull.

"A few hours, at most! Back when I was working for Benny, this sort of thing might have taken days assuming I could've even done it at all! But you've assembled a good team! This should be easy!"

Ding!

The elevator doors opened up, revealing an empty space. The others must have sent it back my way. I gave Yes Man a thumbs up, and started making my way over to the elevator.

"You're the best, man! Let me know when you're finished." I only got a few feet before Yes Man spoke up again, bringing me to a screeching halt.

"Do not worry, Friend_Courier!" He said. "I will definitely beat the encryption this time!"

Silence.

Slowly, carefully, I turned around. Yes Man was staring at me with his unmoving cartoon face.

"... ED-E?" I breathed out, a lump forming in the back of my windpipe.

"Pardon?" Yes Man asked, tilting his whole body to the side since he couldn't tilt his head in confusion, what with it being a monitor and all. "Are you alright, sir? You look as if you've seen a ghost!"

I let out a single weak chuckle, which felt more like a whimper than anything else.

"Y-yeah..." I turned away from Yes Man, heading back to the elevator. "... a ghost..."

My mind was just playing tricks on me again.

That's all it was.

That's all.

"Oh, there y'are," Cass greeted me as I finally caught up with the rest of the group. "Bout time yer happy ass showed up. What, you stop fer drive through?"

Everyone was down here, in a sort of office-like antechamber in the underground security station Yes Man had told me about earlier. The walls were concrete and steel; there were a few metal desks, a wall of broken and disused monitors, and a thick layer of grimy dust coated absolutely everything. This place must have been so disused, even the maintenance robots keeping the 38 clean didn't come down here. And even though both Fawkes and Yes Man (inhabiting a securitron) were down here, there was just... something about this space that felt uncomfortably small... like the walls were going to close in around me at any second.

I tried to shake it off. I had to deal with bigger problems, and couldn't waste time with a sense of unexplainable claustrophobia.

"How's our guest?" I asked, looking around once, and adding: "Where's our guest?" Yes Man moved to the side, and pointed at a sign above the door he was guarding: CELL BLOCK. I was first in the door, and judging by the sound of footsteps, everyone else was following my lead.

"So, good news, bad news time," Chris spoke up as I walked down the hall. "Which do you want to hear first?"

"Let's hear the good first," I said, looking at all the cells. "It'd be a nice change of pace..." I couldn't tell exactly how many cells there were down here, but each one was a tiny, cramped, concrete box with no windows, a metal slab for a bed, a stainless-steel toilet/sink in the corner, an inch-and-a-half of dust covering every surface... and a foot thick wall of Plexiglas between the cell and the hallway.

Fucking hell, I thought to myself. When Yes Man said "supermax" he wasn't kidding.

"Well, the good news is that she's still out cold," Chris said, running the metal fingers of his robot arm against the wall. "And that means she hasn't tried to escape." Ahead of us, I saw a pair of securitrons posted outside the last cell in the hallway. That must be where they were keeping her.

"So what's the bad news?"

"She's still out cold," Chris replied in the same tone of voice. "So we haven't been able to question her yet."

I looked into the last cell. This one didn't have a bed or a toilet, just a steel chair bolted to the floor in the center. The assassin was sitting in this heavy-duty chair, with her head slumped forward. Her hands were no longer in the adamantium restraints I'd seen before, because her hands, arms, chest, and legs were bound by thick metal bars shackling her to the chair. Her feet were still in the adamantium box, though.

"Well now..." I grunted, trying to ignore the sinking sensation forming in the pit of my stomach. "I think we should probably wake... her... " I looked to my side and saw Chris standing next to me, staring at his Pip Boy and holding up his open palm. "...what are you doing?"

"Five... four..." he said, counting off the numbers with his hand. "...three... two... aaaand showtime!" He looked up, pointed at the cell, and the assassin's head jerked up. She coughed and snorted several times before looking around, grunting and struggling against her restraints.

"You've gotta show me how you do that sometime," I said, pressing the button marked "open" on the concrete section next to the clear wall. A section of the Plexiglas slid into the floor. I was a bit surprised they'd fit together so perfectly, I hadn't even realized the wall wasn't a single piece.

"Alright..." Cass said behind me, cracking her knuckles. "Time t'find out who's been fuckin' with us this whole time." She gestured for me to go inside. "Wanna do th' honors?"

I felt rooted to the floor. I glanced down at my hands; my cybernetic was steady as a rock, but my fleshy hand was shaking and trembling. The sinking in my gut had gotten worse. I was so close. I knew what was coming... but I didn't want to know. I didn't want to recognize her when the helmet came off. I just wanted to be chasing ghosts...

"Hey, Chris..." I was doing my damndest to keep my voice calm and level, but I couldn't tell if I was pulling it off. "You should do it. We wouldn't have caught her without that souped-up taser gun of yours." He nodded, cheerfully humming to himself as he entered the cell. Cass looked a little confused, but I stayed still. My eyes were fixed on the assassin, trying and failing to get out of her restraints.

"No... no no no no no..." It was like she was grunting through gritted teeth, making her almost sound like a wild dog. Chris just casually grabbed the top of her helmet to keep it steady, and started unhooking it from her suit; I heard several bursts of pressurized gas amid the sounds of buckles unlocking.

"And she would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for us pesky kids and our meddling dogs!" Chris grabbed the helmet on both sides and pulled it away from her head.

The last time I'd seen her was thirteen years ago... and she looked exactly the same. Exactly. It was like she hadn't aged a single day. The contours of her face were the same as I remembered. The smooth curve of her chin. The subtly pronounced cheekbones. The pale red lips. The vibrant green eyes. The locks of raven hair. Stray strands started falling into her face as her helmet was pulled away, even though most of it was tied behind her head in a bun.

Fuck.

Why couldn't I have been wrong, just this once? I just had to be right.

"Hello, Tuera." My voice was hoarse. Surprising, considering how all the screaming I'd been doing was inside my own head. All around me, I could hear soft gasps of surprise, but I didn't look around to see. I was just staring at her, like nothing else in the world mattered. The sinking in my gut had disappeared... replaced by a sharp pain in the center of my chest that just seemed to get worse the longer I stared.

"You know her?" Veronica breathed out from somewhere behind me. Tuera hung her head, and refused to look me in the eye. She'd finally stopped struggling against her restraints.

"I used to."