The Stranger

When I pressed her for a reason
she refused to even answer.
It was then I felt the stranger
kick me right between the eyes.

They decide, with surprisingly little deliberation, to make camp. The sun is a few hours yet from setting, but they have just killed a few metaphorical birds with one stone, and Nora is eager to get some more practice in before it gets too dark. MacCready, for his part, is always willing to oblige. He’s a little…eager for Nick’s taste, but if it really bothers him, he doesn’t mention it.

The double-decker overpass is declared safe from the Gunner troop that had been occupying it, and noted to be so easily defensible that it would be more trouble for less worth to try and strike a camp farther out. So Nora signals the Minutemen with a flare, and in good time they confirm on the radio. Another settlement given peace, another alliance forged. Another potential safehouse for the Railroad. And, as if that wasn’t enough, a new weight off Mac’s shoulders that brings an infectious kind of grin to his face. All in all, not a bad day.

So Deacon and Nick set up loose cinderblocks to house a fire, and Deacon wanders off to “secure the area” conveniently when it comes time to warm up their rations. Though Nick grumbles, pointing out that he doesn’t even need the food he’s preparing, he sets about doing it just the same. It isn’t much – three cans of Pork’n’Beans, and not a lot can be done to make them palatable, but they are at least always more bearable when heated.

Nora and Mac are perched like two strange birds on the thick, rusted railings that face sunward, both with long rifles secured against their shoulders, both heads tilted to peer intently down their scopes.

“Okay. Pick your target,” Nora demands, though her voice carries a smile with it.

“Don’t rush me.”

“I’m not letting you wait until it’s too dark so you can say you win on a technicality again.”

“You’re just raw ‘cause you lost.”

“Pick a target, Mac!”

“Okay, okay!” He laughs, and slowly sweeps his magnified vision along the ground far below, finally settling at a leftward angle. “There. Middle of the zero on that bent sign.”

“The speed limit sign?”

“The what?”

“The –” she laughs a little, fixing her mind to a post-war point of view “—the white one, just right of the cowpie.”

“Gross,” MacCready chuckles in that low, childlike way of his, “but yeah.”

“Got it.”

A silent minute passes. A sound not unlike a can with high-pressure contents being viciously punctured cracks through the air, and Nora watches the sizeable hole appear under the upper curve of a long-worn zero warning long-dead drivers to stay below 70.

“Lucky,” Nora hisses, but her body stills like a cat on the hunt, and Mac keeps his scope pointed at his selected target.

She shoots. Her suppressor imitates MacCready’s in its delivery, but her bullet only serves to clip the corner of the sign. She swears quietly, and Mac lets out a triumphant, “Ha!”

He finally lowers his rifle, grinning at her. “That’s Brahmin!”

She frowns, dropping her gun to her lap as well to glare perplexedly at him. “No it isn’t, I’ve still got an N.”

“No,” he declares, more than a little smugly, “that was N. The weird tree was ‘I’ and you got M on the fence post a few turns ago.”

Her brows knit in a moment of mental arithmetic, and she sighs in frustrated defeat. “Fine. What’s your price?”

He doesn’t even hesitate. He’s been planning this. “I want your Unstoppables #107.”

“What!” She is positively affronted at the very idea. “No way! It took me two hundred years to find a copy!”

“Don’t be stingy. It’s not even in mint condition.”

“It’s probably the last one left! Ever!”

“You’re being an awful sore loser about this,” Mac chides in a sing-song voice, and she replies with an annoyed grunt. “If you’re that mad about it, win it back from me. Look.”

He slings his rifle around to dangle against his back, and reaches out to lift the muzzle of Nora’s with one hand, and gingerly situate the stock against her shoulder with the other. “Your form is still good. You’re just shooting too fast. This far away, the advantage is taking your time. It’s not like your pistol, it’s a lot more precise.”

She is peering down her scope again, shifting her grip to match the way he positions her. “I’m not used to the kick.”

“Better now that you’ve got the silencer though, yeah?”

“Yeah, but I keep expecting it to pop me in the face.”

He laughs a little, but not unkindly. “It’s an adjustment, but trust me, it’s much better to learn on an unmodded gun. You get a better feel for it all around. See, it’s not gonna pop up nearly as much, all the kick’s gonna be right here.” He pats the back of her curved shoulder with an open palm to indicate, and she rolls the joint to better brace it against the butt of the gun.

“It’s gonna be practically straight back. You can’t flinch like you’re expecting it to come up because it’ll throw off your shot. You gotta be ready for it here, and use your hand to keep it balanced. Try for the zero again.”



Silenced shots punctuate the crackle of the cooking fire, which currently has most of Nick’s attention.

“You believe she used to be a lawyer?”

Deacon appears at his shoulder as if out of thin air, and Nick wrangles himself in time to keep from jumping just a little at the surprise.

“Military law,” Nick notes by way of explanation.

“Yeah, but all that means is Basic like a million years ago. Doesn’t exactly prepare her to be raining silent death down on enemies of the Commonwealth.”

“She picks up quick.”

“That’s a bit of an understatement.”

“She’s…definitely unique.” Nick doesn’t understand why he feels like he owes Deacon any kind of justification, and that fact alone only adds to his slightly surly demeanor.

“One of a kind, our Bullseye,” Deacon agrees.

“How come you always call her that?” Mac and Nora have torn themselves away from their game, and he pops an unceremonious squat on a cinderblock with his eyes on Deacon.

“It’s all codenames in the Railroad,” Nora explains as she takes up residence on a chair with rather severely bent legs. “Even have to use codenames to talk about you guys. I got to pick ‘em, though, since you technically aren’t agents.”

“You gave us codenames?” MacCready’s face is alight with youthful interest, his pinched features stretching into an anticipatory grin. “What’s mine?”

Deacon hides a snicker as he’s handed his serving by Nick, and he sits lazily on the ground beside Bullseye. Nora doesn’t look up at Mac, but she’s grinning a little mischievously into her portion of beans. “Mungo,” she answers.

“What!” The sheer force of offense in Mac’s tone sets them all laughing, and he huffs into his can of food, jabbing a spoon into its contents viciously. “What’s Nick’s, then?”

“Robogart.”

Nick snorts despite himself, but Mac is only further incensed.

“That’s not fair! What does that even mean?”

“It’s an old world thing,” Deacon explains, feigning an overdramatic sneer, “that’s kinda their thing.”

“That’s dumb,” Mac grouses, and Nora leans down to ruffle his hair and knock his hat a little askew. He shifts a shoulder to shove her off, but there’s no force behind it, and a traitor of a little smile is already tugging at his mouth.

“Relax, kid,” Nick chimes in, and Nora wonders not for the first time if he keeps employing that nickname just to see the way it makes MacCready’s nose wrinkle in distaste. “It’s not all bad. I have my uses.”

“Like what?”

“Like this here cooler I found with cold beer inside.”

“Cold!” Nora practically cries.

“Beer!” Is Mac’s immediate reaction.

“I’m Spartacus!” Deacon shouts with conviction. They ignore him.

Nick passes the bottles around, even taking one for himself. They drink in satisfied silence for a little while before Mac speaks up again, voice navigating a mouth full of pork-and-beans.

“So Nick. You can eat and drink, right?” Nora swats his shoulder, but Nick seems unfazed.

“Eating’s more trouble than it’s ever worth, but I can drink just fine.”

“But you don’t have to?”

“No.”

“So like, when you do drink – where does it go?”

Deacon guffaws out loud and Nora stuffs a fist in her mouth to ineffectively silence her laughter.

Nick’s expression is all grump, no fun. “Some of it gets recycled into the cooling system,” he answers in a stoic voice, “and everything that doesn’t make it through the filter gets let out through exhaust.”

It takes a little while, but sudden, horribly delighted glee takes hold of MacCready’s face, and Nick knows instantly that he has made a dire mistake. “So – so wait. You’re telling me you fart out everything you drink?”

There’s no controlling the laughter now, and while Deacon and Mac enjoy it openly, Nora at least turns her face away while she tries to get control of herself.

“That’s not how I’d put it,” Nick mutters – then, more loudly: “Laugh it up, wiseass. I know where you all sleep.”

“Are you threatening to fart on us?” Nora can’t help herself, and Nick fixes her with an et tu, Brute? expression while the raucous laughter redoubles.


When night descends, Mac has tucked himself up in the back of a broken-open bus, while Nora and Deacon have set up sleeping bags on the roof of the vehicle and lie side by side in opposite orientation. Nick quietly tends the dying fire, relaxed against the back cement guard of the overpass, legs sprawled comfortably in front of him.

“So,” Deacon prods his partner’s shoulder with his nearest foot, “you still thinking about stepping down as the celebrated leader of the Minutemen?”

“You know,” she answers, smacking his toes away with a smirk, “for someone who claims not to like the minutemen, you care an awful lot about how they’re run.”

“Hey, I told you I like what you’ve done with them. I just don’t have a lot of faith they’ll maintain their good standing if you’re not there holding the leash.”

Nora sighs, tucking her hands behind her head. “I just – can’t, you know? Everything with the Railroad, with all the new synths out like armies – it feels like it’s all coming to a head. I can’t juggle both. The Minutemen are on their feet again, and I can’t really be a good ‘general’ if I’m always flying under the radar and going radio silent.”

“You thought about who you’re gonna name as your replacement?”

“Well, my first instinct was Preston. But he told me ‘no’ in no uncertain terms when I asked him. I can see where he’s coming from, really. He’s a great second. It lets him maneuver with authority but he doesn’t have to shoulder the responsibility. He can still be a peer to troops on the ground, keep his hand on the pulse. It’s a good position for a man like him.”

“Makes sense,” Deacon agrees, rolling onto his side and propping his head in an open palm so he can look down the length of her sleeping bag at her. “So what was your second instinct?”

“I was thinking Glory, actually.”

“What!” His voice is a laugh of disbelief, and she tilts her head up to match his gaze.

“I’m serious! Think about it. It’s tactically sound. She’s not a known associate of the Railroad, like me, so we don’t look like we’re trying to play puppetmaster. But she maintains the interests of synths, and we still have the Minutemen as close allies, and unrestricted access to their safehouses. Plus, she’s a tough little shit. No one will look at her and think she’s not capable of leading an army.”

“Yyyyyeah…” Deacon’s voice is entirely unconvinced. “But she’s also pigheaded and rash and foulmouthed and she does all her thinking with her gun.”

“I thought you liked Glory!”

“Love her! Still wouldn’t put her in charge.”

“Well, I’m pigheaded and rash and all that.”

“You hide it better.”

She laughs, sitting up and stretching her back by reaching forward to wrap her fingers around her toes. “Glory has a really strong sense of right and wrong. Her ethics are clear cut, right there on the surface. That’s the kind of decisiveness a leader needs. It’s not like she’d be going without counsel. Preston’s a hell of a voice to have in your ear. And Ronnie practically makes it her mission in life to play devil’s advocate no matter what position you’re taking. Anyway,” she throws her hands up in a dismissive gesture, “it’s moot right now. I haven’t asked her, and I won’t until things die down.”

“Maybe that’ll give you time to come to your senses.”

Nora gives his nearest leg an admonishing smack, shaking her head and freeing her legs from her sleeping bag in order to swing them over the edge of the roof.

“Where are you going?” Deacon’s tone is almost a whine. How dare she abandon such a decorated conversationalist!

“I gotta pee,” she answers, sliding down to the ground, “that okay with you, mother?”

“How dare you use that tone of voice with me,” Deacon replies, all affront and parental disappointment, “you’re grounded for a week, young lady.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Nora chuckles through mock-petulance. She’s already walking away when Deacon hisses after her: “You wait until your father hears about this!”

She doesn’t immediately return to the bus when she comes back from a more private section of the overpass. Instead, she enters the low glow of the fire, and taps the bottom of one of Nick’s shoes with her toes. “Hey, old man,” she greets, tucking a chunk of hair behind one ear, “mind if I sit?”

“You’re no spring chicken yourself, you know.” But his tone is friendly, and he scoots to one side slightly as if to make room for her.

“Yeah,” Nora agrees, lifting his arm at the wrist and tucking herself under it, pulling his coat open a little so as to include herself in some of its warmth, “I’m just better preserved.”

“Oh, so it’s personal remarks, now.” He’s smiling slightly in the flickering light of the embers, and he lets her curl up at his side without complaint. When she drapes his arm around the back of her neck, he pulls her in just a little bit, mindful not to let the dwindling cigarette clamped between two metal fingers drift too close to her hair, and she rests her head snugly against his shoulder.

They sit like this for a while, sharing a comfortable silence. Eventually she plucks the cigarette out of his grip and tucks it into the corner of her own mouth, freeing her hands to examine the skeletal fingers resting over her shoulder. “Can you feel with this hand?”

“A little,” he shrugs, flexing his joints against her probing fingertips. “Mostly pressure, some temperature. Most of the sensory network is woven into the skin.” He doesn’t resist as she gently tests the extent of movement in each finger, in the stretch of each knuckle, in the servo at his wrist. When she briefly brushes her lips against the back of the metal plate that is his palm, however, he feels his system grind to a sudden halt.

“Does it, uh, bother you?” It’s a stupid question, and he knows it. He’s just talking for the sake of saying something – anything. Nothing good ever comes of that.

“Have I ever given you reason to think that?” Her tone is rather stern, even as she slips the filter out of her mouth and passes the cigarette back to him, which he gratefully accepts in the fingers of his good hand, thankful to have some excuse to fidget.

“No, but—”

“Then don’t.” He quiets under the scolding in her voice, and after a little while she heaves a small sigh. “Feels like things are about to get really big really fast. Don’t need you doubting me.”

“Never,” Nick answers, far more immediately than he intends to, but he stops thinking about it when it coaxes a wide smile from her. “With ya ‘til the end.”

She nods happily, and returns her head to the crook of his neck and shoulder. He gives in and turns his head slightly to tuck her under his chin. They fall into easy quiet again.

“Nick?” Nora asks eventually.

“Mm?”

“What happens when you eat?”




The Third Rail smelled like an asscrack, and MacCready intimated as much – though in less colorful language – to the woman on the stool to his left.

“Yeah,” she answered in an Irish lilt, “it’s great, isn’t it?”

“Not the word I’d have picked.”

“Hey Chuck,” Cait called over the general hubbub of the bar, lifting a hand to flag down the Mr.-Handy-Gone-Barkeep. “Gimme yer strongest, yeah?”

“Thought you were on the wagon,” Mac sniffed.

“I stopped shootin’ chems, I didn’t drop dead.”

“Right. My mistake.”

With a cockney grumble of complaint, Whitechapel set down a dark glass bottle that, when opened, emitted a scent so sharp it might have melted the hairs in the noses of anyone too close. Cait inhaled with a satisfied air, and promptly tossed back an overlarge gulp. Mac couldn’t help but laugh, and she grinned down at him in his hunched position, licking her lips in an outlandishly lewd fashion.

“You gonna sit there all shy like a school girl all night or you gonna show me the caps you won?”

Mac’s grin was easy and a little overconfident, and he leaned back in his seat to arch a challenging brow in her direction. “What makes you so sure I bet on you?”

Her hand shot forward with honed reflexes, snatching Mac by his collar and yanking him none too gently closer, the tips of their noses touching as a result. “’Cause you know I’d give ya a good kickin’ if you did anything else.” She met his matching grin with a rough sort of kiss, and he laughed against her.

“Get a room or start chargin’ for the show,” Whitechapel barked, and Cait turned her signature, devil-take-me smile on him.

“Y’jealous, Chucky? Do bots even have naughty bits?”

MacCready couldn’t hold in the uproar of laughter at this, and he sat back more comfortably on his stool, fishing in his pockets to retrieve a sizeable tin heavy with the metal-on-metal clink of bottlecaps. “Come on, Charlie, lighten up a little. Cait just made it to the finals!”

“No more’n a fat lip, either,” she boasted, tonguing the split at the center of her lower lip.

“Congratulations,” Charlie answered, tone lacking any trace of enthusiasm.

“Ah, you won’t say no to cold hard caps, will you?” MacCready shook the tin in his hand indicatively.

Eye stalks swiveled and mechanical pupils constricted in displeasure. “I have been instructed not to charge tonight’s champion. Mayor’s orders.”

“Good ol’ Hancock,” Cait chimed, taking another swig. “We should find a way to thank him.” This was directed to Mac, and she did nothing to hide the suggestive melody in her tone.

“I would need to be a lot drunker for that to even enter the realm of possibility.”

“Better start catchin’ up then, yeah?”

They laughed.



Irma was cooing on the edge of her lounge before the group had taken more than two steps into the building. “Nicky,” she practically purred, “it’s been too long.”

“Agency keeps me busy,” he answered with an easy smile, giving the woman a debonair little dip of his hat. “But I’m always glad to be back.”

“One day you’re gonna have to make good on all your flirting, detective.” Her smile was one of the spider waiting patiently at the center of the web. Deacon did not miss the sudden storm cloud on Nora’s face, and he goosed her ribs playfully. She blew him a quiet raspberry. Piper rolled her eyes.

“The magic’s in the suspense, Irma.” Deacon was grinning outright now. Nora very pointedly did not make eye contact. “The doc in?”

“Downstairs,” Irma answered, eyeing the group as the moved like a herd in the direction of the stairs. “Don’t know if we can accommodate all of you today, though.”

“No worries there,” Deacon answered, bracing his hands on Nora’s shoulders from behind and issuing a friendly squeeze. “I gotta bug out for a bit.”

“What?” Nora spun around, suddenly panicky. “Why?”

There was an earnest kind of regret in Deacon’s normally unreadable expression, and he planted his palms on her biceps as if to steady her. “Gonna head home. Anyone sees us here before Dez hears from us, we’ll both be in hot water. I’ll take your report, too. I’ll be back.”

She held him in place with her gaze for a few silent moments, and though their conversation had become wordless, the pain in it was practically a physical force in the room. At last Nora seemed to relent, and Deacon he looked like he was in gunshot-level pain as he tore himself away from her. Piper had already descended a few steps, and Nick waited patiently at the top of the small stairwell, occupying himself with shucking his coat and folding it over his arm. Nora merely stared down at the descending steps, chewing the inside of her cheek.

Deacon bent low enough to breathe into her ear, and no one heard the sentiment he shared. Nick did catch the discreet item he’d clandestinely palmed into the back pocket of her jeans, and though he couldn’t tell precisely what it was, it seemed to steady Nora a little, and he supposed that was what mattered most.

When the agent made his departure proper, Nora turned back to the stairway, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides a few times.

“Blue?” Piper’s tone wasn’t quite as pushy as it usually was, and she canted her head with a look of concern. “You comin’?”

“Mhm.” She didn’t move.

Gingerly, Nick reached out to rest a hand at the small of her back, and the way she jumped in response felt like a cut. She met him with a somewhat flustered, apologetic smile, gathered herself with a deep breath, and took the stairs two at a time at a fair clip. It took a few seconds before Piper and Nick had registered this, and they scrambled for a moment to catch up.

The din of six feet hitting the lower landing together caused Amari to glance up from her terminal, and though her face registered recognition of them all, her gaze was fast and sharp upon the woman sandwiched between reporter and sleuth.

“Nora.” Her tone was so gentle it took Nick by surprise. He’d never seen Amari handle anyone with kid gloves. “I could have met you upstairs.”

Nora flapped her hands a little desperately, shaking her head. “It’s fine, I’m fine. We’re here – we need your help. If you can help us.”

“I can certainly try.” She stood from the chair she very obviously used to wheel about the room in lieu of standing up every five seconds, and ushered them all – though primarily Nora – to the little couch against the wall. “What are we dealing with?”

The explanation took a lot of repetition and rephrasing, and Nora barely let anyone but Amari get a word in edgewise. She spoke like she was racing to the end of every sentence, and it brought to Nick’s mind the image of her smoking.

At last, Amari sat back in her chair, looking a little weighed down and more than a little taken aback by the flood of information. Her eyes shifted from face to face, for once at a lack of words.

“You kinda hooked me up before, doc.” Nick was speaking finally, now that Nora seemed to have lapsed into hesitant silence. “We were wondering if you couldn’t do something similar.”

“We could certainly try,” Amari repeated, sitting up a little straighter as her mind cranked slowly into gear again. “It would be fundamentally similar, I think. You would have to play both host and visitor, though, and that could create severe instability. I’m not sure we could hold anything down long enough to glean any decipherable information.” She was scowling in thought, tapping one elbow with the fingertips of her opposite hand.

“Could we use a third party?” Nora was stiff in her seat, but her eyes belied fire. “Like before. Someone to provide a foundation so Nick wouldn’t have to keep switching back and forth.”

“I…suppose.” Concern was leaking into her expression, and she was eyeing Nora like one might watch someone toeing the edge of a steep cliff. “They likely wouldn’t be able to be an inactive participant, however. Nick was the filter through which one party accessed another previously. There were three distinct parts to the equation. Most notably, two parts of that equation were human. Here, Nick is both subject and object, and he is the only conduit through which we can access his particular neural structure. We would have to use a human mind, given that we don’t have another Nick. That could prove…precarious.”

“Why?” Nora demanded, and both Piper and Nick looked to her with surprise. She wasn’t usually so terse.

“They would be present, but not in control. Ostensibly, direction and content would be split between Nick and this rogue code. The third party, as you say, would merely be providing a kind of stable baseline, allowing Nick to untangle himself from another in-house entity without having to strain himself by maintaining the memory environs.”

“God, don’t you science types ever talk to people under the assumption we’re not all versed in seven different dialects of jargon?” Piper finally found room to express her frustration at being left so far behind – again – and did her best to fit it all into one sentence in case she didn’t get another opening.

Amari sighed. “Nick would be using a great deal of mental energy attempting to separate his own personality from another that, for all intents and purposes, has been hiding by intertwining itself with Nick’s consciousness. They have formed a single person out of two separate individuals. Granted, this subcode is likely not as developed as Nick, and so would lack a great deal of depth given that it’s confined to a mere handful of lines of code. But it would be – like trying to extract a splinter from your whole body.”

Piper grimaced, regretting just a tad that she’d even asked for a more understandable explanation.

“This would be a strain on any mind, but once the two entities were separated – and even in the process of doing so – Nick would also need to be fabricating an environment in which this can take place. Think of it as – Nick would have to be the interrogator, the interrogated, and the room in which they conducted the interrogation. In this kind of scramble, it would be difficult to maintain, and it would be even more difficult to ensure Nick’s cohesive return to consciousness.”

“So he’d like – fry his brain?”

“Essentially. It would be a high probability. Introducing someone else to allow their mind to take on the burden of supporting the environment would lessen the risk to Nick, but I fear even the strongest human mind would find it…disconcerting.”

“Why is that a problem?” Nora’s tone was clipped, her fingers curling into fists periodically atop her knees.

“Nora,” Amari began, again with that gentleness that seemed so foreign to Nick. “Imagine being forced to produce, but having no control over the product. Imagine not being able to determine when or where you exist, or if you exist at all. We would be using the brain as a kind of battery, and you can’t separate the consciousness from the brain. But a battery doesn’t control what it powers, it merely fuels it. Being so disconnected from your own living experience – I fear it could be dangerous even for the well prepared.”

“So let’s say someone was willing to take the risk,” Nora began, in a tone that indicated this oncoming hypothetical was very much not hypothetical.

“Now, wait—” But Nick fell quiet at the brace of her palm against his knee. He felt strangely helpless.

“Could it be anyone? What would they need to be able to do it?”

Amari sighed again, this time with clear exasperation. “If someone were foolish enough to try, they would ideally be close to the subject. Shared experience could help strengthen the connection, and it would not hurt to have a safety net of trust. Giving over control of your being is not an action I can imagine taking lightly.”

Nora barely took a second to consider. “I’ll do it.”

There was an immediate uproar. Amari started what would surely be a long-winded lecture, Piper was immediately questioning Nora’s sanity, Nora was trying to fend them both off at once, and Nick…

Nick was burning.

“Can I talk to you?” It sounded like a question, but he had Nora by the elbow in an instant and was marching her out of the basement office with an atmosphere of steaming incredulity. She was still blinking in surprise by the time he’d rounded the corner into the empty restroom, releasing her arm and staring down at her with a deeply dissatisfied expression.

“What’s this all about, Nora? What’s gotten into you?” His hands sat on his belt, coat discarded atop a nearby sink. “You’ve never gone into something this half-cocked before.”

Her face was suddenly steel, and he wanted to scream. She’d deadened her expression to him, made herself decidedly unreadable. And she’d done it on purpose. To him.

“Do you not want to do it anymore?” Nora’s voice was flat, but iron hard.

“I didn’t—I just don’t want to jump into something that might hurt you – especially if there’s a chance it won’t work. At least not without thinking about it, first.”

“I have thought about it.”

“Bull.”

Their eyes locked, and they both seethed. Nora’s hands were fists at her sides. Nick rubbed his forehead with a metal send of fingers, pushing his hat slightly back on his head in the process.

“I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t want to, Nick.”

“I didn’t—”

“But this is not not happening because of me. I’ve made my choice. You have to make yours.”

“That’s unfair and you know it. You’re not making a choice in some kind of vacuum. This is my brain we might be scrambling here, too.”

“If you don’t want to—”

Nick issued a wordless cry of frustration, spinning on his heel to pace a few steps away from her, if only to expend this suddenly pent-up, heated energy. “Damn it, Nora, you know that’s not what I’m saying. But you can’t just – expect me not to care about what happens to you. You can’t make me choose to hurt you. You fly in after a damn year and you’re barely around three days before you’re betting your well-being on a coin toss and asking me to just – support it. To enable it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some kinda death wish.”

Nora simply glared straight ahead, more or less at the crooked knot of his tie. “If you don’t want to go through with it—”

“Don’t—”

“I’m not going to hold it against you. You don’t have to feel guilty. I’m not going to resent your choice. I don’t want to make you compromise your beliefs. But you don’t get to tell me how to make my choices. You owe me that respect, too. You can’t ask me to go against what I think is right, either.”

He heaved a sigh, feeling the fight flood out of him with it. In a sort of desperate last attempt, he lifted his hands to cradle her cheeks between them, trying to catch her eye again. “Just – tell me what’s going on. Can you trust me that much?”

“Please.” Nora’s voice cracked at last, and Nick’s heart split. “Just let me do this for you, Nick, okay? Just let me do this one thing. This one – fucking – one thing.”

He felt like a black hole in a fedora. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to prove anything to him, that he’d help her whatever way he could if she’d just let him in. But all he could say was “okay,” and gather her to his chest, wrapping an arm around her and bracing the back of her head with his other hand. “Okay.” He ran his fingers gently through her hair while she trembled for a little while, choking back constrained sobs and knotting her hands in the back of his shirt.

“Okay.”


They took a little while to steady Nora, to allow Dr. Amari to run a battery of diagnostics on the pair of them, for Piper to wear out her “we’re-not-really-doing-this” routine, and for Nick to let that lead weight settle in his stomach. Or – whatever his synth equivalent was.

The pair were settled into familiar, comfy pods, and Amari used her chair to drift between them, monitoring vitals, testing dials, being generally very cryptic and doctory. She stopped at Nora’s side, finally, and with an almost motherly concern, brushed a palm over the woman’s forehead. “It will be strange.” Nora nearly laughed at this – what a bedside manner. This was going to be the most dour pep talk. “You will be aware, but you will not be in the pilot seat, so to speak. Things will feel like your choices – or perhaps like someone is making choices through you. Nick is the predominant mind in this session, and so you will be experiencing his point of view. You’ve done that before, but you had more ability to navigate. I can’t assemble memories or a path for you this time. Nick will have to supply you with the information and you will have to construct it.”

“Sounds like a lot for one person,” Nick said, trying to keep the resentment out of his voice and not entirely succeeding. Nora simply closed her eyes against it.

“It is,” Amari answered, sliding her chair to Nick’s pod and glancing over the digital display. “But you are not taking on a less difficult task. You will have to fight to control your path. It is likely that, if this code, this – stranger is latching on like some kind of parasite, it does not want to be found. It will resist, and it will try to make you do the resisting.”

“Sounds like a fun time all around.” Piper’s voice drifted in from the corner of the room, and she made absolutely no effort to hide the reservation in her tone.

Amari withdrew from the sight of either subject, though they could both hear her fingers dancing across a keyboard. “It will help to start on neutral ground. Something that is familiar to both of you would be ideal, but primarily it must be a calm location. One that you do not associate with stress or strain.”

“Find my happy place,” Nick summarized sardonically, “you got it, doc.”

The doctor sighed, but maintained an even tone. “I’ll be easing you into it. Just try to relax.”

Relax.

At first, nothing. Then something like a whole-body hiccup. Then endless, endless black.

There’s sand underfoot and salt in the air, and Nora is kissing a pretty young blonde girl who tastes like peaches. She’s nursing a bullet wound to the shoulder and hauling down an endless stretch of asphalt after a man she can’t see. She’s cradling Jenny’s head and watching the young woman wake up and wondering how it could be this perfect, perfect, perfect. It’s raining and Jenny’s coffin is being lowered while classical music claws at her ears. It’s raining and she’s welcoming the Commonwealth sky for the first time in her life, and she’s looking at a woman out of time and nearly out of hope. It’s raining and Kellogg is dead at their feet and she isn’t better, she isn’t happy, how can she make this better – need to find her son, her son, her son.

The beach. Salt in the air. Chicago trains. Boston boats. She’s smoking someone else’s cigarette and she feels human, really human, for the first time. She’s kissing Nora in the shadow of her rooftop nook and trying to put so many unsaid, complicated things into it.

She’s on the beach in that old dress. Her toes are in the sand. She can breathe. She turns around and calls to Nick, who is smiling vaguely at her, her arms outstretched.

Her palms are two cities of pain and she can feel the modulated Psycho pooling in her thigh and forcing her awake. She is bathing in pain. The smell of blood and burnt skin, and they’re both hers. Somewhere, Deacon is screaming. Zimmer’s voice is in her ear, laden with simple pleasure.

I want you to know,Nora. I want you to know.

She can’t move her arms. The right side of her face is tight and sticky. Somewhere, Deacon is screaming. Somewhere, she is screaming. Somewhere, Nick is screaming.



Nick lurched into a different kind of consciousness and nearly smacked his head against the glass of the pod. Piper was hurriedly trying to help pry him free, babbling in a panicked kind of way. He felt dizzy, off-center, but he had to stand. Had to find Nora.

She was curled over the edge of her pod, face in her hands and knuckles nearly touching her knees. Amari was crouched in front of her, bracing her forearms with her hands and trying to elicit a coherent response. Nora’s sobs were loud and shrill and strange, like an animal caught on barbed wire.

“You can’t let this happen, Nora. You can’t do this to yourself.” Nick was unsteadily on his feet and trying to bring the world back into one cohesive picture. “You’ve never gotten this far, you know that. In three months of sessions you never got this far. You can’t let yourself go backwards.”

Above the general panic and din, something registered at the back of Nick’s mind and sent a white hot signal, slow and molten, to branch out into his body. “Wait…”

“Listen to me, Nora. You missed this last week, it can be very jarring to go back in again so suddenly. This was a lot to take on. You are not there, do you understand? You are here in my office.”

“Wait…”

Nora’s voice had come to a point in a stream of “no no no no no,” as her hands shifted to cover her ears, body rocking just slightly. Amari was still talking, low and steady, but nothing was reaching her.

“Wait!”

Nick’s voice nearly surprised himself. The room went silent. Nora’s head shot up, big wet eyes staring at him. He felt useless, listless, angry.

“What do you mean – three months of sessions?”

“She’s been coming in for the past three months. She pushes herself too hard. I told her I didn’t think she was in a state to leave, but she insisted.”

“Three months.” Nick’s tone was hollow. A volcano was rumbling. The earth was ready to split.

“That’s not – she said she only just…” Piper trailed off, eyes landing on Nora in some strange expression of betrayal.

“She’s been here,” Nick echoed, “for three months.” A dam was cracking. He rounded on Nora with a kind of acid on his tongue that was entirely unfamiliar. “You’ve been back. For three months.”

“I didn’t – I didn’t want –” But Nora didn’t really have an end to her sentence. She watched him as an ant under an inescapable magnifying class.

“Please, Nora.” The harsh quiet of his tone cut to her bone, faster and more effectively than any shouting could have. “Please tell me what you didn’t want. You didn’t want to tell the people who cared about you – who mourned you – that you were back? You didn’t want to see your son, who stayed up every damn night trying to reach you on that stupid radio? You didn’t want to thank the people who took him in as their own? You didn’t want to bother with me – with us – until you needed a better screwdriver for this – insane pet project of yours?”

“Nick,” Piper was uncharacteristically quiet, and he ignored her.

“Tell me, Nora, because I don’t understand. You don’t even take three days to pretend to be happy that you’re back home before you rip us all out of our lives to serve your own ends. Explain that to me.”

“Nick, this is not the time.” Amari’s voice was stern, but it fell on deaf ears. All Nick could hear were the hot, jealous, angry things he’d wanted to say and had thought better of. Everything he’d stuffed down into silence for her sake. It was all bubbling to the surface and it was all coming out wrong, but some animal part of him wanted to hurt. Wanted to see his hurt on her face. Wanted her to know his pain.

“You give us just enough time to settle and then uproot us in a matter of hours. And then – and then you bring us here, on some hunch, on some – ghost story. To do what? Who benefits from this?”

“I’mgonnabesick.” It came out in a rush, and Nora was on her feet, racing on jelly legs up the stairs. Nick tore after her without hesitation, Piper and Amari on his heels with their voices raised in futile attempts at drawing a truce.

She was out of the red double doors with a bang, and had made it across the street before colliding headlong into a tipsy couple winding their way across the square in front of the old state house.

“Oi!” A woman shouted.

“Whoop – try to watch where you’re going, doll, you—”

“No fuckin’ way.”

“What – what – oh my god.”

“Are y’kidding me right now?”

“Nora?”

Each remark escalated in volume until Cait and MacCready were adding their voices to the general din of the party shooting out of the memory den.

Nora threw up. Cait leapt back in disgust. “Y’splashed me, you bloody – you let me go thinkin’ you’re dead and now you just show up here on some kinda bender?”

“Cait, lay off, that’s not—”

“What the fuck are you doin’ here, Piper? You know about this?”

“What the ff- Nora, what the hell!”

“Not now, Mac.”

“You back off, Valentine. You let her get like this?”

“This isn’t the damn time—”

“HEY!”

In true Goodneighbor fashion, a crowd had drawn around the cacophony of an argument, but there came an almost unnatural hush over all of them, even those in the center of it all, at the sound of that voice.

The state house door was standing open, and a red coat wore a mottled, angry face atop the stoop. John Hancock wasn’t a tall man, but he was somehow talented at giving the impression of tallness. Even Deacon, who had a few inches on the ghoul, was only noticed once he stepped sideways out of the mayoral shadow.

“Next person who talks without me tellin’ ‘em gets a Goodneighbor welcome.” He twirled his combat knife idly in one hand, as if unconscious of the item’s presence or his actions. But not a single eye missed its glint as it spun a few more times before finding its sheath at the man’s hip.

“Now,” he began again, entirely peaceful, “I see a lotta old familiar faces lookin’ real unfriendly. So we’re all gonna take a step back and keep our hands to ourselves, you feel me?”

The group shuffled apart slightly, but Deacon seemed to bristle. “Wait. Wait,” he demanded, catching Hancock’s concerned attention. “Where’s Bullseye?”

There was a brief moment filled with a silence that somehow singularly belonged to a group sense of bewilderment. The woman was nowhere to immediately be seen.

“You – don’t fucking—” Deacon’s normally cool demeanor was suddenly the embodiment of raised hackles, and he threw his arms wide in an incredibly furtive What-The-Actual-Fuck gesture. “You fucking lost her?” Deacon gave an unrestrained, brief kind of roar. Hancock reached out to cup a hand over his nearest shoulder. They exchanged some silent sentiment, and then Deacon shot off like a bullet, disappearing into the darkness of Goodneighbor’s alleys with very loud, colorful complaints.

Those black, shark eyes were turned back on the crowd, and the sheer passivity of Hancock’s demeanor was enough to rattle the nerves of his town. “Okay,” he concluded at last, hooking a thumb into his star-spangled belt, “here’s what’s gonna go down. My old pals are gonna join me for a chat, and everyone else is gonna go about their business.” He paused, casting a hard look around the gathering. “Dig?”

As one man, the citizens split off in different directions, leaving the quartet standing awkward and impotent in the middle of the square.

“Come on in,” Hancock beckoned, and the shuffled after him with a palpable atmosphere of disgruntlement.

Amari lingered uselessly outside for a few minutes before once again retreating into the Memory Den.

Once inside, behind the closed door, the mayor’s demeanor changed. He’d gone from a lackadaisy lean to a stance that came to a point. Everything about him was sharp, all at once. “You two,” he barked, gesturing to Cait and MacCready, “you cool your heels down here, and stay put. You –” he turned on Piper and Nick “—come with me.”

As he turned to tromp up the staircase in the center of the room, Cait put up her typical fight against any and all authority. “Y’can’t just keep us here, Hancock!”

“Consider it protective custody.”

“From what?” Mac demanded.

Hancock turned so fast he could have cut the air. “Me, if I hear either of ya set so much as a foot outside before my say-so.” Taking this as their go-ahead, two well-dressed machine guns with faces closed rank in front of the door, effectively barring it from access.

When the trio crested the top of the stairs, Hancock gestured expansively to the couches ahead of them. “Siddown.” It wasn’t a request or an offer. It was a fact. He continued his lazy gate toward his desk, fishing out a tin of Mentats from a drawer. Nick and Piper settled onto the same couch, though a fair distance apart. Piper’s arms were tightly crossed, Nick’s ankle hooked impatiently over the opposite knee. Hancock settled opposite them at last, thumbing the tin open like a clam.

He took his time planting two tablets on his tongue, and pocketed the tin afterward. His head leaned back, his eyes closed, and he seemed either to be communing with the beyond or gathering his thoughts. Knowing the mayor, there was a good chance it was a bit of both.

“Are you just gonna sit there st—”

Nick lifted a hand to wave Piper into silence, and was met with an indignant harrumph in response. “Whaddya want, Hancock?”

“I want you two to listen. Just listen. I got a story for ya, and it ain’t pretty. Deac, he’d never tell ya, ‘cause he’s basically a good guy. Me? I’m a grade-A bastard. And I need you to understand what absolute putzes yer makin’ of yerselves.”