Sweet Gin lay staring up at the bottom of the marque as it hung over her. The ages had eaten at it, destroying much of the old paneling under neath. Vandalism had broken the rest. Signs of scavenging picked away at much of the bottom-most edge. Stripping it further to its bare-bones netted components. Inlets for light-bulbs hung from loose cables and wires empty. Stained, weathered pitch-black brass framed and trimmed the corners. A heavy crown of metal of hard plastic crowned the top, shielding the android from what was aboe.

A hot pain burned at the under side of her chin and she grimaced as she brushed the underside. Loose gravel and stones fell at the pass of her fingers, leaving behind a sharp biting burning pain. A smear of bright crimson blood brushed itself on the backside of her nails. She feel back, looking at the trace artificial blood that polished the ends of her hands.

Joining with the soft pain of her chin a tingling sensation ran up and down the upper part of her arm where a bullet had passed, peeling back the metal and exposing long intertwining chords of cables and relays around a central skeleton. The injury was artificial enough, as she clenched her hand on that arm and pulled herself to her knees. Lives wires sparked feebly and she hoped they wouldn't short circuit. But shaking, she stood up.

She found as well that her coat had taken light damage. Small holes had opened in the material where shrapnel from the bullet had entered, but otherwise caught itself up in the nylon and polyester within, never piercing the inner layer to scar her belly as it had her chin.

And android quivered to her feet and rubbed her hands along the rest of her, checking to make sure that no bullets had torn any significant holes in her. But none had. She gave a couple curious looks up and down the road-way, seeking out what had shot at her. And in childish curiosity for this expanding world.

She was forced back to the present with a spike of shock. A loud crack above the marquee shot her to her feat as large fist-sized holes opened above. The resulting spray of shrapnel dusting her metal ankles as she bolted for the door. Tearing through the broken frame.

She staggered inwards, ducking through the door. Stepping foot into a wide darkened lobby. All around her the air hung in a stagnant, sepulcher mass. Thick clouds of dust floated in every golden, yellow band of sunlight that fell upon a carpeted floor caked over in the grime and residue. Chairs and benches littered the open lobby between towering pillars that held up a ceiling some two stories high. The hanging ceiling was quickly coming undone and abestos tiles had rotted and broken in two. Sections of the entire ceiling itself were collapsing as the cables that held it up rusted and snapped from the stress.

Litter coated the floor as well. White plastic bins filled with gray dust littered the floor, alongside lids without cups and toys without children. Trivialities of a gone age. The remains of human skeletons joined the litter. Sprawled out in frightened poses on the floors. Arms wrapped around the remains of younger bodies. The sight of the mass grave summoned the invocation of the word which she had no meaning to: death.

What was death, what was life, and what did it mean here? The Android stepped carefully around the remains as she walked to a far counter. Unfamiliar machines stood silent behind, with stacks of faded red and white buckets and cups.

Additional bodies lay in the same pained heaps on the floor. The thin remnants of otherwise colorful uniforms hung from their bones. Sweet Gin wondered, exactly how much had it to of hurt for these figures to have their outer forms stripped from them, and the mechanics of their base functionality stolen from them?

Sweet Gin came to the end of the counter. A long passageway cut by beyond to the back of the building. Miraculously the emergency lighting still operated, casting the long hall with its vaulted ceiling in a soft orange and red glow. Silhouettes rimmed with crimson light lay alongside against the walls: vending machines and garbage cans, still standing or toppled; some flickered weakly.

If the man that Bancroft wanted dealt with was on the roof, the android would need to start looking. Ahead was the way to go. Taking a deep sigh, she drew her pistol from its holster. The VATS system activating and through some magic of its own registered that she needed to reload. Slowly beginning her voyage down the hall as she flipped switches to swap cartridges. With a pleasant click, the action came back and snapped to place. She was ready, for the most part.

Passing down the hallway she came to a door nondescript and featureless, but something had propped it open: the backseat had rusted no less, and it sat propped open on its own tired accord. Opening she found a flight of stairs. The soft red emergency lights casting them in soft illumination. She smiled softly as she set up the stairs, her gun pointed to the floor.

She made one flight, turning on her feet to head up the next before she stopped abruptly. Her breath catching in her throat as she stopped to stare. Hanging above head level, barely visible in the weak lighting hung a bushel of small, egg shaped objects. Grenades. A thin barely-there wire held the by the ceiling. It took her a moment to register, and tracing the spindly spider-web to the ceiling and around she traced the pencil-thin line to a tripwire thin as fishing line.

The wire looked so flimsy on them it looked simply passing through they would unpin and fall. Something inside her begged her this would be a terrible idea. She had already been shot at, she didn't need anything doing any more damage. As well though, a space was left just between them and the wall she could squeeze by, if she removed her pack.

Sighing deeply she hoisted up her bag, sliding it to the step above before pressing against the wall. Hugging it closely she negotiated around the bouquet, holding back her breath in case she disturbed the hornets nest that hung before her.

It was a small feet to be sure, but voices and forces within her only made it become larger. A grand step to breech a great canyon. Anticipation clinging as she stepped safely behind, bending down, and dragging her pack carefully up the steps and into the room beyond. A self congratulatory pat on the imaginary back.

The floor above smaller and emptier, or just more cramped. A few spartan tables cluttered the floor alongside toppled chairs. Faded posters under dead lights hung caked with black mildew in a darker space. The images unrecognizable and the writing illegible from the work of years. The android stepped apprehensively inside, and looked about. Doors sat at each corner, and it was a question of where it was she was to go next.

There wasn't a choice but to try each one, and to see where they would go. At times they would open, but lead out only into shallow closets, or in a single instance a long hall whose only rooms where those looking out over the vast side-rooms of the floor below. Tiny narrow windows peering out over them giving a silent kind of watch. A door marked "film storage" had been sealed shut as well; shame, she was curious of what had been there. And the door was too solid to force down.

There was a door though that bore promise, as all good things came last. Though the handle remained someone had removed the back set. It eased open with a gentle push, but a series of loud beeping cut short any feeling of ceremony. The earliest guttural bumps sent the android back against the far wall, smashing her through the paper thin dry wall. Debris sprayed out in a fan from the door.

Crashing on the far side of the desk, she lay back stunned as a large chunk of metal cut through where she had been moments before. Her torso throbbed numb and her back screamed in bitter rage. All over her face she felt she had sand dug into her face.

She sat up, tendrils of thick smoke bellowed out from the door. Looking down the long dark hall she beheld a long series of amber lights planted on the ground. Glowing silently and waiting.

She believed it had been one of these that had blow up. And looking at them, she realized there would be no door to trip them all for her, and she wasn't about to set them off herself. She needed a stand in. Something to throw.

The explosion had kicked from its seat battered and bent trashcan. Tossed against the wall, it had embedded at and angle in the wall from the explosive force. She delicately dug inside and found a rusted over can. Holding it, she looked down the field of amber running down the new hall. Taking a breath she chucked the can down the way. It bounced and clanged as it rolled against the floor.

Coming to a gentle roll it entered the darkness, something tripped one of the lights and it began flashing, illuminating the bent can. Soft distant beeps echoed down the corridor and Sweet Gin rolled spun into cover, holding her hands up to her ears as she readied. A new explosion rocked the hallway, sending a throbbing shudder through the air and tossing even more debris into a wicked and twisting spin. Soon, explosions cascaded down the hall. Each chaining into each other in deep guttural pops and bangs that rained across anything.

There came a soft rattle and silence as the mine field stilled. She relaxed as things went silent, loosening her jaw. A thick dust filled the air. She coughed as she walked through the door. The air tasted bitter and foul. Waving her prosthetic hands before her face she stepped around the door, the lights had certainly died out, and it was presumable safe.

The end of the passageway bore another set of stairs which she climbed.

The next floor had been much like the one below. But packed with more inter-twining halls wrapping around square offices. To the android's fortune there weren't any traps laid in wait for her here. But it was in no way a relief from the anxiety they had caused earlier. If it had been those devices that had broken the remains down stairs in that way, then she understood their pained and fearful poses. But with each careful look into the numerous offices she confirmed more and more than no one had gone out of their way to sew those seeds here.

What was plentiful though, were bones. Strewn on the floors alongside desks, or seated at the desks. Burns and scorch marks ran the horizontal lengths of the walls like dragging claws. At one end, the melted and in-ward blasted windows opened into the warm afternoon sunlight. Daylight pooled in through and illuminated the offices in a warm soft glow. With the flickering emergency lighting the remainder of the winding tombs.

On the other-side, a face of glass windows shown with a stifled and muddy quality. The glass panes here mired by years of thick coated dust and mildew that frosted the glass over and fogged the images of the world beyond. The faint light that did manage to pass through was extraordinarily weak, and the windows glowed with a frighteningly morbid green glow. Spiderweb cracks still shown through the grime, and Sweet Gin had to wonder if whatever had shattered the windows of the opposite face had been weaker there. In comparison, the warmth of the open daylight was comforting and she stuck to that side.

Another flight of stares, and another layer of offices. Closing now on the final floor, Sweet Gin pushed through the derelict offices. She could have gone straight up, if the stairwell had not collapsed in the final segment. But given the man had perched on the roof, there had to be a way across. And signs of his presence littered the final level of administration. Trip wires and mines littered the floor space, which the android navigated carefully. Large, heavy blocks or chunks of machinery tucked into alcoves within the hanging ceiling; waiting for anything to trip the wires.

Booming rumbling helped punctuate the scene as the android tumbled out through a window, coming to a roll out onto a rusted fire-escape as a room full of explosives went off at once. The air was full of rumbling and the grinding of steel and brick as through the window the sounds of the floor collapsing washed out over Sweet Gin as a solid wash of blackened soot, ash, and dust washed over the android as she lay curled on rusted wrought iron platform. The last sound that still played in her ears was the loud chaotic beeping of a armory's worth of low-grade mines beeping and singing all at once. The harsh ringing in her ears and the suffocating tightness in her chest singing just below the memory. She had thrown her self out just in time through an open window as the first hot tongues of explosives lapped up her back.

The low rumble slowed and stilled, and Sweet Gin fearfully peeled open her eyes. She quivered on the steel as she rose shaking. Slowly, if at first. A nest of dusty rubble and caked plaster lay in the grates around her. Plaster fell out of her hair in a rain. The fine particles obscured her vision and she coughed on the swirling cloud that plumed out the window. Nothing felt broken, and nothing felt it was bleeding as she regained her footing. The beeping – almost cute – still chimed in her ears. There had to have been more in that room than she encountered anywhere else.

Four floors below her was the street. Just below her the remains of the fire-escape hung cut away, or fell away from weight and time. What was left of the ladder was a twisted mess that tore and twisted itself like a corkscrew, each rung hanging and splitting off at odd angles. She certainly would not be going that way.

Above her, the fire-escape was more intact. Guide wires and jury rigged lengths of pipe and iron reinforced what was left. Sheet metal awning hovered over it from the edge of the roof. The ladder - itself built back over with planks of wood and wire - climbed up into the last window. Taking a deep sigh, she stood herself up. The platform groaned under the shifting weight, but it ultimately held as she climbed to the peak.

Her landing was rather graceless, her shoulder hitting the floor first after the rest of her body. But she was here, towards the top. Tucked in a massive and impressive room. Large blocks of machinery and ventilation pipe scoured the floor. Wrapping and netting themselves around each other as they took nineties and dove into the concrete below. From somewhere, the faint rumble of an engine could be heard. Actual, working lights illuminated select and odd patches of the floor. Crisp white lights flickering rapidly; they looked to be struggling to stay alight as much as the choking engine was fighting to stay alive.

Standing up, she stepped into the network of maintenance, cautiously scanning the area. The navigation arrow was flashing furiously over the compass, but it had been doing that for a while now. It had brought her here, it was making it known that it knew.

The entire floor smelled like a mix of ozone and carbon. A thick sour industrial smell mixing with others. The bitter smell of urine from some distant corner was present, as well as the decay of old food. Sure enough, this floor was being used for something. It smelled it. But where its tenant was puzzled Sweet Gin, turning right at a intersection of pipe and vents she wandered through. Her pistol was out, and she carefully crept on, passing a dark alcove...

"Smile, yoiu' oin came'ah." a low voice crooned softly as something hard and cold was pressed to the back of the Android's neck. She tensed up, freezing as the sensation hovered there, "Stahy wheah yea a'h an' I cahn mahke this nice n' eahsy."

"Who are you?" Sweet Gin asked shuddering, her hands slowly rose in obedience. Fear tingled inside her as much as the coldness pressed against the back of her neck did. Her breath felt short, and even her artificial legs felt like they shook.

"Ahn't none oif yeah buisiness, And'oid." the voice said again, "N'ah turn, I wanna get a gooid looik at'ea."

Slowly she turned, facing her attacker. What she saw in the faint light was a man nearly as weathered as the men under Bancroft's services. Sand and sun had taken a toll on his face wearing it down to a gaunt years-old sag. His skin was rough and pitted, lips chipped and flaking. Deep lines mired his face, giving normally soft features a harder look. And his eyes burned with a rabid intensity. A filthy map of hair capped his head. The hood of his coat was pulled down around his neck.

Padded gloves guarded his hands, as did his arms. And resting in his hands was a monstrous looking rifle. A block of machinery hung off the side like a cancerous growth, linked into an over-sized scope strapped to the back of a monster of a rifle. Its barrel about as long as he was tall, and at its tip a square box, hills drilled into it to no doubt deflect the gasses.

Despite its nature, the hunter held it with a soft tenderness. A eloquent experience that made the gun feel weightless in his hands. He maneuvered it around the tight space as if it were a smaller weapon.

"Naeh, ain't yea ah pretty Ahndeh." the man chuckled as he looked up and down Sweet Gin's surrendered figure. He glowed a storm of lust. The way he licked his lips suggested he hadn't had a woman in a long time. "Wohdn't sepeise meh nahne if soomeone baeck 'ome is missin' yea. N'ah dooubt yea tits are nice n' fieam undeh theah."

"Who are you?" Sweet Gin repeated.

"Ah t' 'ell yea cahe." The man cackled coldly, voice was rough and jagged, "Ahnd is thaet all ye caen say. Shit, yoou needin' soome new pahgammin'."

The man paused, looking Sweet Gin up and down. Relaxing for a minute. Removing a hand from his gun he let the barrel drop for a moment, hovering it above the ground. His other hand went to the side of his greasy head where he tapped it. "'Eah caemmand, this'is me Vinny, 'eh got ah 'unaway Aendy 'ehe in The Woo. Some tight ass'd bitch we geht any waen-"

He was cut off mid-sentence as Sweet Gin swept her leg about and caught the man with a kick to the side of his face. He dropped his hands, screaming in pain and shock. Blood trailing out the side of his face as the clawed toes of Sweet Gin's foot caught the side of his face. Vinny's whole body spun to the side against a panel of ventilation, cursing in agony, "Yah cold fuckin' synth!" he screamed with clarity as he lay against the side of the ventilation, holding his hand to the side of his head as he stared in disbelief at Sweet Gin. Blood dripped from the side of his face in dripping stream-lets.

"Vinny, this is command," a faint static-fused voice said, "Appehand the synth immediately and tuen 'eh in to the closest outpost. Do you copy?"

"I will not go back!" Sweet Gin screamed as she lunged at Vinny, ramming her weight into the side of the Bureau hunter's gut, and further pinning him into the mass of ventilation. She drew back her arm, balling it into a fist and began angrily punching at the man's side, screaming.

Something grabbed against her shoulder as Vinny wrapped his fingers on her shoulder and with a mighty heave slammed her against the side of the ventilation, trading places with her. Anger burned in his face as blood smeared half of it. "Aessaltin' an officeh!" he bellowed, taking Sweet Gin's face in his hand and slamming the android's face against the cold metal of the vents.

The drumming echoed in her hearing as the side of face beat against the fragile metal. Her face pulled back as Vinny prepared to ram it against the side again. She was already slowly becoming sore, a bruising numbness beginning to develop on that side of her face.

Reaching up with her hands Sweet Gin wrapped her claws around the armored platting of the hunter's uniform and pulled and twisted. His hand let go as she forced it to the side with him hollering and growling in pain. Red blood pooling at the nails as she found a space between the plating and dug in.

Giving the man a toss, she forced him away from her, throwing him down the walking space. Free she reached for her side, going for her handgun. But her hands only hit the leather of her belt, and the canvas of her stolen clothes. Panicked, she looked about, dearly searching for her pistol. She saw it behind her, but looking ahead, she saw the man was already reaching for his rifle, it had been kicked down the hall, and she had thrown him right for it.

"No!" she boomed, charging for him as he painfully began to lift it up. Before he could bring it to bear the weight of the android was on top of him and she rode him across the floor, pushing him down the slimy cold concrete floor and away from his rifle. Her hand dove for his face, but his own swung from the side in a left-hook and caught the android in the ribs. Unarmored, she felt the full force of the man's fist and she spilled onto the floor and onto her back.

Struggling up the man got to his knees. Sweet Gin tried to struggle to her own feet, but was quickly pinned by the sniper as he dove on top of her. Pinning her down with a hand as another reached for his belt.

There was a flash of steel as he drew a long curved knife from his belt. The cold glow of the florescent flashed off the gleaming talon as he raised it into the air, and brought it down in one quick arch. Sweet Gin bit back a scream as she pushed her hands up, catching the man's wrist on the downswing and wrestling with the cold blade.

He was strung, but the android held him back. The light and shadows shone and reflected off the polished blade as it quivered from side-to-side as the two forms fought for control of the death-stroke. Vinny's hand released itself from her shoulder and went to the hilt of the blade, fighting to press it down, but Sweet Gin persisted.

"Theh 'ell yea think yea gooina outsaide the Coimmonwealth?" Vinny asked in a scowling voice, "Theah's nowheah out theahe fo' a f'eahk like you.

"Ye'a had a poipese in the Coimmonwealth, and yea goinna throew that away?"

"I didn't like mine." she hissed.

"Yeah don' even know feahdom." Vinny hissed, throwing his weight on the knife, and beginning to slowly inch it down.

Sweet Gin didn't answer, and her refusal was taken as a sign of humor as the Synth hunter laughed. But he stopped as he felt his weight give. Sweet Gin pulled the knife to the side and he turned as he fell on top of the android. Her arms wrapped around his neck in a tight embrace as she strangled him. Anger was boiling inside of her, fueling her as much as the adrenaline was. She wasn't just trying to do a job now, she was taking it personally.

Vinny dropped the knife as he hands rose to undo Sweet Gin's grip. He spat and sputtered in her arms, kicking and thrashing. Anything to break out of the vice-like grip of the synthetic woman holding him down.

He tried to speak, but his words came out in a wet mess as spittle fountained from his mouth, trying to scream. He gave up his fight, and began weakly elbowing at Sweet Gin's ribs. His final throws weakening as his body feel limp. He stopped sputtering, and soon only sighed weakly as the rest of his neck was slowly closed under Sweet Gin. She felt his body go warm, and then still as he lay heavy on her.

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you take me back!" she shouted into his ear, "I can't do it, there's no way I can go back. I know what I was used for, and I've decided I don't like it. I want to know what else there is, to keep away from that life. I was told to watch out for you types, and I will!

"I'm sorry, but there'll no doubt be someone coming back to fix you up." she said sobbing as she slid Vinny's body off of her and weakly crawling off the floor, "But when they do, I hope I'm far away. Tell them to leave me alone!"

His body wasn't moving. Saliva only dripped from the edge of his mouth in the weak light that pooled from between the pipes and the vents.

"And I was only doing what was asked of me." she said in a soft voice as she walked down the vents. Her body felt sore. She felt tired. Her head hurt, her sides hurt. "You were being a problem to someone, so I have to take this away." she mumbled, coming to where his rifle lay, lifting it up. It was a heft gun. But she cradled it in her arms. "I can't let you continue with this, people need things, and you're keeping them from getting it."

The sharp ringing of the stone on steel sang out in the trees. The watchman sitting slouched in the battered arm-chair, little more than a frame in its state; additions in the last few months kept the hair-thin mesh from completely falling out under his weight. The charcoal'd trees stood in a silent vigil like him, groaning in the dry wind that raced across New England. It was a lonely job, and rather dull. With men in the streets at the bottom of the hill they kept ghoul activity to a check. The only instance of his use being to put down a lucky feral that had shambled through the scavengers down below, looking to lift supplies to trade for their valuable spear.

It was a quick job with his lance, which he worked on now. A wrought steel pole with a glistening kitchen knife forge welded to the end. Straps of brass and rusty iron held the hammered chunk to the end of his pole. But despite its age, it had kept an edge, and the watchman insured it kept. Each brush of the stone along its face brushing the feathers flat. The smoothed face a mirror for the sun, where it danced and mingled with blurred, dark reflections of the trees behind him and his own muddy face.

A stick cracked in the distance down the hill and the watchman's eyes shot up. The stone dropping to a soft thud on the char and dirt that piled up all over the ground. He leaned up onto his lance, peering through the clustered packs of carbon-shelled plant-life. He tensed his breath, and a stick broke under something else's foot against.

Shooting to his feet and leveled the spear in his hands and turned to where he heard it. The chair landed with a dull "thump" behind him. But it didn't matter, the glint of the sun shone on his weapon's honed edge as he scanned it around. Searching for the source. And pointing at the android.

Her face was bruised, and her short red hair fell about her face in a messy mat. Her soft rounded cheeks blackened with force, and a few scratch marks mired her appearance. Her coat torn and scrabbled over, dashes of blood ran up the length of those metal arms and legs of hers, coating them in a clear crimson mat. But she still breathed, and still stood. Dragging the most bestial rifle he had ever seen behind her, and with a curved Bowie knife strapped to her breast he gawked and stared. The ghouls had put her into the ringer.

"I need to speak with Bancroft." she said in a dry heavy voice. The watchman nodded enthusiastically, stepping back from his post.

"Yea," he started, "'ight this way if you will..."

"I certainly did not expect you to run into such issues." Bancroft said in his characteristic diplomatically indifferent expression. His cloak fell about him, concealing his body. He looked to be a ghost, or a manifestation of the monsters he kept in his pits behind the tower, "Certainly, I felt the approach to the sharpshooter's nest would have been the most troubling part, let alone any ghouls."

"Well, there was more than enough." sighed Sweet Gin, staring emptily out to the pits. The behemoth creatures inside lay out in the middle, bathing in the sun as they napped.

"Certainly," agreed Bancroft, "when the old world unleashed Hellfire on Worcester they condemned its people, and the knights serving it to become monsters. Some were fortunate to die, others were not so fortunate and were transformed against their will to ravenous monsters. My men can scour the ruins of the city for months and not purge the threat from the city. They crawl forth from the sewers and the darkened recesses of the world they still live in.

"We do our best to preserve that route and my men had said that they kept the hordes at bay, and when the sharpshooter stole the building for his residence we had presumed his shot would have kept the roads clear enough, as he certainly did for my men. We unfortunately needed to abandon it given he was the cause of too many deaths."

"People keep talking about 'death'..." Sweet Gin mumbled, hesitant and uncomfortable in her lack of knowledge, "and life. What is it, and how is it so important?"

Bancroft was cold and unresponsive to the question, instead turning to the wasteland and burned city that surrounded him. "Life and death..." he started, "is a cold reality that this world teaches us as we persist on. I do not claim to be a philosopher. There are too few like that. So I can't tell you the details. You'll need to learn it yourself. Its abstractness.”

"I don't feel I understand." Sweet Gin said softly.

"Perhaps someday you will when people you have know suffer to the Wasteland." replied Bancroft grimly, "But let us not dwell on this subject, tell me of the mission. I see you brought the shooter's gun." he added, nodding to the rifle Sweet Gin leaned up against the parapets.

"I did." she said, "He's no doubt awaiting his friends, but I removed his ability to disrupt your road. But his companions will be back.

"I think they'll be after me."

"So it was the Synth Retention Bureau?"

Sweet Gin nodded silently, biting her lip.

"Then this adds a new direness to the situation." Bancroft noted, "And you can not stay. If you need anything, it will be best to move. I will offer the protection of my son to guide you as far as the old world's derelict air-station. From there, I advise you go on alone, and do not turn back.

"If you..." he started, looking at Sweet Gin's arm. The wires still hung exposed from where Vinny's bullet had struck it, "Need something to cover your damage, best make it quick."

"Thank you, Bancroft." she said.

"Roose Bancroft." the lord corrected, "If you're not going to remain I might as well grant you the permission to refer to me by an informality. I will inform Barston of his new duties, you do as you need to do. When you're finished, see him at the entrance to this hill and you may set out."

Sweet Gin nodded, turning to leave. "Before you do leave," Roose Bancroft called back, "know that to keep me and the Synth Retention Bureau cordial I can not lie to them. I will retrieve the sharpshooter to hand over to them. But if they insist on asking about an android I will have no choice but to tell them you were here.

"I will not say where you are going, but that you were here. By chance, they might already know you are present and my lying will not be a defense."

A little light of hope lit in Sweet Gin and a small gentle smile crept onto her face. "Yeah, thank you." she said.

"And if I may ask," Bancroft said again, "How did you survive the ghouls?"

Sweet Gin smiled weakly, "I ran." she said, laughing a little, "I learned to run."

"A good trait, no doubt."

---

Chapter footnote: Level up
Level footnote: Level 4
Skill footnote: Gun: 36/100

Quest Perk added:
Learned to Run!
Certainly, being the main course in some nefarious monster's feast his not a pleasant prospect to be. And when the odds are too hard set against you to fight, it's time to run. Move speed is increased by ten percent when health is below thirty-five percent.

Level up perk added:
Educated
You gain two more skill points every time you advance in level. Certainly being part robot doesn't hurt either.

The warmth of a fire burned at the side of Sweet Gin as she sat on the stool. Her body was beginning to catch up with her, the weight of exhaustion that bore at her after running for so long was beginning to lift. Though the dryness of mouth and throat had entrenched itself deep inside of her. A canteen of water lay near her which she drew from as the camp's smith worked the patch the gauge left in her arm from Vinny.

Running from back-side to front-side, the gauge left by the bullet was at most two-fingers wide. The metal had gnarled and bent into crude teeth that made a jagged edge. One which the smith worked on with a file, careful to not intrude on the cables and mechanics of the prosthetic that resided within, bound around each other. If anything, the damage was purely external, and the internal damage was artificial, as the android had confirmed during her duel with Vinny, and fighting through the ghouls to get back.

"So how exactly did you get by a ho'de of spit slobbin' meat bags as they?" he asked as he careful ran the coarse-tooth file across the edge of the hole, taking care to clean it up before he strapped anything to it, "I haven't eve' hea'd of anyone evading a h'ode like folks say ya put down."

"How big are they saying?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Oh, 'anges." the smith said, finishing with the file he nodded with earnest satisfaction that it had been cleaned up. He reached out for a pile of scrap in a series of soap boxes arranged to his side. Sweet Gin turned to watch as he put one of his large heavy arms into the containers.

The man was by no means ill-fed. Surely he had high standing given his weighty and plump figure. Well rounded he looked like he could barely fit through the doors of the towers, and all set upon peculiarly small legs. As well, working so close to an open fire was hot, and without his shirt he looked to be a few relatives short of the monsters Bancroft kept in his pits.

"I hea'd that you had b'ought the att'ahction of the entire east-side's population on you. C'ouse, by that point I imagine you had killed a few, and the men I heard it from had to b'uin them out to keep themselves from being eaten alive."

"I didn't bother to make a count." she said dryly.

"Mhmm..." the man nodded, "T'is a shame I imagine." he added, finding a pleasing plate and comparing it to Sweet Gin's arm. He rose his brows and gave himself a proud metaphorical pat on the back. It fit. Turning to his anvil he started work gently tapping the sheet to fit.

"I haven't eve' woiked on any ahm befoih." he started, "So excuse me if I'm perchance to oiugh."

"Well, ok then." said the android in a low uncertain voice as the man compared the plate to the curvature of her arm. Going between the anvil and her, checking and rechecking.

"You know, I imagine this is what the Docteh must feel." he mumbled nervously, "You know, opeh'ating on a live thing."

"Excuse me?" Sweet Gin said.

"Soi', did I offend?"

"I don't think you did b-"

"Well, good then." he interrupted nervously, relief washing him of his uncertainty from his fire-reddened face, "I thought that maybe... I don't know, I'm ai'mbling again."

Before Sweet Gin could repeat herself the metal flap that divided the smith's work-space from the rest of the encampment flashed open with a hollow clatter, letting in a trio of bent over and ragged men. Veterans of the city no doubt. At their head stood the dirty, long-haired shadow of Barston. His chapped lips curled up in an amused smile.

"We were tired of the gate." the young man said with a low chuckle as he looked up and down at Sweet Gin. His smile and the spark of his eyes shining a slight perverse twinkle as he passed down, and up Sweet Gin's breasts. Her coat hung on a loose nail of the side, leaving only the undershirt. She looked at him confused, before realizing perhaps that the shirt was perhaps a bit loose. Feeling a shot of discomfort at the fact she straightened up her posture, hoping to have corrected anything revealing.

The young prince laughed, a dry sort of cackle, "Don't worry, it's not like anything was showing." he cackled, "Though if I must compliment, I wouldn't mind seeing."

An inner mechanism clicked up to comply, but she caught it and denied it is function. After all, this certainly was not the sort of place.

"It isn't no matter," Barston huffed, "yours are too small for me."

"Barston." the smith said in a formalized tone as he fitted the plate to Sweet Gin's arm. He craned his eyes up to the dark and shadowed figure of the young man.

"Don't fret nothing, Smith." Barston Bancroft snorted, "I'm not in your workshop."

"I can see that." the smith, unironically identified as Smith, nodded.

"In any case, m'lord," the young prince said with dripping and venomous sarcasm, "May I step in for a moment."

Smith looked at him, and his two cronies behind him. Nodding slowly he said in a serious, no-shits tone: "I'd like your men to keep outside, my work space is already crowding."

"Fair enough." Barston bowed, turning to dismiss his followers before stepping through the corrugated gate, closing it softly behind him. Looking down at the seated Sweet Gin as she got the new plate adjusted to her fore-arm he smiled again.

"So this is the woman who did what our knights failed to accomplish." he said, "What mad tactic brought you to success?"

Sweet Gin shrugged. She really had no plan going in, and she still didn't know exactly what had happened, or how to put it into words. Barston mimed the shrug mockingly. "What's this?" he shrugged, "You have no idea?" he shrugged again.

Sweet Gin merely nodded and shrugged again, shifting about uncomfortably on her dusty stool. Smith obviously fixed the plate on tight enough it held its own as he leaned off the arm with no steel in hand. "Am I done?" she asked innocently.

"Ha'dly," Smith said, reaching for a strip of metal lying in the fire nearby with a pair of tongs, "I need to band it on. Tell me, can you feel this?" he added, pulling the band out and touching it to the back of her hand.

She only stared at him blankly as the red-hot bar lay on the back of her appendage. She could feel heat, albeit not on her hand. The light and warmth of the band radiated out, bathing her side in orange light.

"No." she said.

"Al'ieght." the large sweaty man grumbled, standing up, "'aise your a'm up then and I'll st'aeip it over.

"I hope whe'e eve' ya going," he added with a uncertain grumble, beginning to tug and tap at the android's arm with pliers and a hammer, "you may find someone who knows mo'e about you'eh type than I do."

Barston gave the scene an apathetic nod, appraising it no real value but that he should react in some way. His eyes quickly deciding to distract themselves, scanning the area. Bored.

He rose his brows as his sight fell on the table full of Sweet Gin's loot. Her new bulky rifle lay there, accompanied by the long curled razor and her other weapons. What interested the man more was the knife, as he walked over to the table and simply plucked it from the spoils. "I like this knife." he said with a chuckle, "I haven't ever seen one nearly so large." he added, holding it up. It was as nearly three-quarters as long as his fore-arm was, and sharper than his wit.

"Have you fought with knives before?" he asked.

"Well, running back..." Sweet Gin said nervously.

"Obviously." Barstone mumbled, scratching at the notches that ran along its back and picking off bits of rotting, moist flesh off its back.

"A'ight," Smith mumbled, "I think we'ie done he'ie."

Sweet Gin looked over at her raised arm. The metal band had been pulled over and wound around her arm. Overlapping it and crossing into a rough spiral before jutting off away from her on the outside. The metal still smoldered and throbbed with heat. The last tongues and traces of it dying with a harsh hiss as Barston poured a bucket of water over her arm. The metal tightening and constricting, what little sensory function she had certainly picking it up as the pressure was laid on.

Smith and Sweet Gin exchanged glances. "Done?" she asked.

"Done." Smith nodded, "Good look out there missy."

"Good, let's go." Barston cheered, clapping his hands together and giving them both a broad impatient smile.

***

The metal door clanged shut behind Sweet Gin as she stepped out of Smith's workshop. The plate that bound the patch to her arm still throbbing with a soft, gentle heat. The kind she felt underneath he jacket.

Hitching up her reloaded and repacked bag she looked at her guide. Flanked by his two goons. Barston looked upon the android, flat and dispassionate. "Are we ready." he said.

"I am." said Sweet Gin nervously, hiking up her pack higher on her back, "Are these two coming along?" she asked, looking at the two grizzled goons.

Barston shifted casually about on his feet to give the two a wayward look. "Indeed they are." he said softly, "These two go where I go and they're coming. If father wants to argue let him argue, but they're coming regardless. You got a problem?"

The android bit on her lip and shook her head. Barston smiled greedily, "Then we're good." he crooned, turning on his heels to march off down the hill. The android hopped off after the man.

"We're not going to take any roads." Barston said back to her as they weaved through the milling residents of the hill on their decent. Many stepped aside to let the noble pass before going on about their day. Barston didn't seem to care, not affording them any recognition. His lackeys hung off on his side, looking like vultures.

"It's a more direct route and we don't get to meddle in the winding mazes that are the suburbs." he continued, "As well, even if we've purged the area it would not surprise me to know if there are zombies hiding in those homes and apartments that line the buildings. I can expect it to be more difficult as it is long to try and fight through the roads."

"Alright." Sweet Gin said, rushing to keep up with the knights. Their pace was quick and they offered no hesitation.

"Once we hit the University you're going to need to keep a sharp eye," Barston continued unheeded, "The knights of old left behind some distant relatives of yours there to hold the area and they don't hesitate to kill.

"Even with the Hellfire's power apparently frying many other things as far out as the ruined hamlets of Leicester or Spencer those machines continue to operate. Our only good luck is that they can't see far. So don't take shots or make a noise. They'll detect you."

"Alright." Sweet Gin repeated nervously.

"And the lake beyond that," he said, "I don't know how you types fair with water or hellfire's residue. But don't drink it, or move through it.

"Afterward it's a clear enough shot through Logan to the airfield."

"What's a Logan?"

"Raider turf. You'll smell it before we get there."

***

Rising apartment buildings peeked out over the desolate and scorched tips of trees. Rising from where the gnarled claws scratched for the sky, inter-twining in webs that clattered in the soft, warm breeze that blew throughout the wasteland. A dryness that enveloped and preserved it.

Chords of dry sticks, timbers, and refuse littered the bed of the suburban forest as the group of four trudged west, away from the hill. Their foot steps a solemn drum on the dry sands and dirt of the ruins of Worcester. Dark figures in a darker place. None of them spoke as they trudged along. The knights and the guardian prince keeping their attention glued to the ruins that stood around them. Giving each collapsing house a wary glance, peering into, past the shadows that enveloped the ruins and decay inside for the sounds of movement.

Sweet Gin watched them with an absurd curiosity. A watcher of the watchers, she was not so much interested in the world around them as she was them. Bewildered by the care that they took in gauging their surroundings. It was all sort of magical, and strange. But brushing over her arm, and remembering the sniveling gnarling packs of ghouls that had pursued her earlier that day, or the day prior, she understood their concerns.

The knight's cloaks had been throw back, their arms resting on the makeshift hilts of scrap forged swords strapped to their belts. Though battered, what blade that appeared from the sheath looked gnarled and vicious. A mouth of teeth, ready to grind and tear just like the ghouls wished on anything that they could.

They were fighting fire with fire.

As well, she noticed at least some difference to their weapons that conflicted with Roose Bancroft's original, romantic approach. Strapped to their chests in battered and weathered holsters hung old-world fire-arms. Kept up in the best conditions as they could. Large revolvers, or automatic pistols as heavy as Sweet Gin's own gun. And all over top hard, boiled leather, reinforced with scratched and dented plates of steal. Or some manner of ceramic face.

She looked away from them again and back to the world around her. They were still in the woods, surrounded by sky scrapers and housing development. "So, Barston," she started softly. There was a tension and boredom she sought to cut and it edged on her. She hoped she could cut it, "tell me about your father..."

Barston Bancroft was slow and hesitant to answer. His attention too secured on his environment. "What about him." he said suddenly, in a low hushed voice.

"I don't know." she replied, "Why all of this?"

"I hazard that the old man likes you." the lord's son snickered, "An old man his age who has had so little pussy can certainly dream. But I guess he decided he couldn't keep you."

Well that was nice to know, "Well, not so much that..." she started, "But, this city?"

"Why not the city?" he replied quietly, "It's what he tells me. I think he feels he had no where else to start. And he talks about that Bancroft man."

"That Bancroft man?" the android inquired.

"I'll let you in on something," Barston started, "My father was a man of no name, so he told me. When he left his vault, he wandered. Then learned of some George Bancroft. Hell if I know when, before I entered the world. But he talks about him, how the tower he calls home is a symbol to his achievement and should become one.

"But he's too lazy to grab it."

"He didn't seem very lazy." replied Sweet Gin, shocked.

Barston chuckled, "He is." he said with a soft sigh, "I imagine if he levered his resources, he could have had it in his life-time. But he refuses too. He wants 'more people to recognize his claim'. The ­ does it matter, he has all the living residents of Worcester who matter under his banner. And all because he killed the right men. He just has The Logans, but he won't do-."

"Is this why he left the vault then?" asked Sweet Gin.

"He doesn't talk of the Vault." Barston snorted, "He just taught me what he learned there."

"Not where it was at?"

"I imagine he wants to forget it." one of Barston's guards cut in unexpectedly. His voice was low and rumbling. Like thunder.

Barston nodded hesitantly, slow, in agreement. "His future is his own, so he says."

Barston's men were first out onto the residential street. Nothing moved as they strode out onto the cracked and broken asphalt. The wind sweeping down through the blasted out remains and empty houses creating a low whistling. An eerie moaning that dug coldly at all those in attendance. But it bode nothing. But crouching and huddled behind the splintered fence as she watched the man stand in the middle of the road between the collapsing walls of the two houses bode a cold omen for the android. Chased twice, she figured that rarely was the ruins ever this quiet.

Hand on the hilt of his crude sword the man turned on his heels, facing one way, and then the next. Then turning towards him he wove one heavy glove of his towards the rest, summoning them out onto the street. So far as he was concerned, it was safe.

"Now the synth cunt knows how hard it is to travel this city." cackled the other as they walked up into the road.

"Welcome to the Worm." sneered Barston, stealing a cautious, stern stare down the road.

The suburban neighborhood they stood in was a tight cluster of houses built of brick and vinyl plating. Low angled roofs had collapsed to been torn off, subjecting the interior to the harsh sunlight or choking them with piles of milky debris. On many, torn and falling awnings shaded glassless windows and smashed doors. Each home was orderly and evenly spaced between each other. The gnarled remains of picket fences or hedges remained, marking the divide between each unit of property; coupled with the same twisting hulks of trees that defined the sky-line.

Lining the road the meaty red hulks of rusting automobiles choked the side, creating a congested funnel that marched the entire length of the road up and down its lengths. Semi regular spaces had been left between each car. Sweet Gin figured that at the time their owners had to flea to avoid the curses that the Bancroft men spoke of their chariots were inoperable. "Stripped of their horses" Barston crooned.

"We'll follow this road to the end." Barston said in a hushed voice, "Meet with the east-west bisector and Boston Long. Afterwards, we're only half way there."

"If we're caught by ghouls?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Well you can show us your run or stand with us." Barston sneered, laughing.

The nature of Barston's insult feel deftly on Sweet Gin and she nodded, taking the suggestion seriously. Barston's company grinned and laughed softly under their breaths before turning to march south. Throwing a cautious, curious look behind her, the android followed with the haste of a young child.

The four kept on the road, navigating the twists and turns as it bent about between the abandoned homes that defined this region. Meeting a intersection were the path split further north or sharply south-west they stood and looked about themselves. Staring into the darkness of each abandoned home that dotted the road and looked to still bare support. Support enough to house hostility. They only moved out again when they felt comfortable, moving warily as they went. Sweet Gin analyzing them closely; watching them sneak.

Their voyages quickly did bring them out of the silent nesting of homes that made the suburban net and into a choked jungle of high-rising apartments and clustered old-world businesses. The mortar and cement of their construction burnt as black as the shadows that resided inside their spartan exteriors. Deep cracking spider-webbing leading up and flowing through the still-remaining glass that clung weakly in the frames.

As the slipped into the alleys where the ground caked itself with the slimy stubborn residue of an age's past each foot step echoed and amplified against the towering and crooked walls that bowed and knelt over them over head. A cavern of glass and steel. Fire escapes and the spindly wires of urban clothes lines sprawling down on them like stalactites in a cave. It was like passing through the throat of a great beast, and the experience visibly troubled the knights, their hands gently brushing to their hilts.

Sweet Gin copied them, her hands drifting to the side of her pistol strapped to her hip. Her eyes wide as she scanned the vicinity. Mice ran circles in her chest. She was racing inside and out. Breath drawn coarse.

"Looks like we've been through here." whispered one of the guards as they crept along.

"And I don't like it." Barston scowled, "There's something to it. A silence here.

"I dare say, we got some rottin' cocksuckers about."

"You think?" the other asked.

As if to answer him a groaning noise rolled down at them above. Flesh and steel grinding against brick. The four looked up just in time to see a mangy and ragged figure dive-bomb down at them. Its bony fingers extended in a rapid and excited grab as he snarled and snapped through the air. Disregarding gravity as he was launched the several stories to the delectable morsels that walked below.

Sweet Gin acted quick on training instinct and raised her handgun up to fire on the ghoul as it soared through the air. Its report echoed loud off of the walls and the flash briefly illuminating the darkened space as she fired, a bullet catching the inside of its leg. But even in her speed the guard it fell on was equally quick and in a flash he sword was unsheathed and sailing through the air in one long arc. It met the monster mid-swing and with a fleshy whistle cleaved through the ghoul's gut.

It fell at its side in two halves, collapsing with a met smack in the gutters and flipping head over guts. Red and black ichor bathed the cold slimy cement as the remains of the beast fell with a lazy thud. Low wet gurgled rumbling from its throat as it made its last enraged breath.

"Good swing, Sir Marshal!" one of Barston's escorts cheered. The grin on his bony face illuminating him as he casual retired his half-drawn sword to his sheath.

The man marked marshal, as skinny and badly tempered by the city as any other resident but with a messier mop of hair, kept his tongue as he stared down at the fallen ghoul. His face cold and attentive. "There's more coming." he grumbled low. And distantly high-pitched screams and roars echoed from the sepulcher din of the apartments about them.

"Shit!" Barston swore.

"It was the android's fire-arm!" the other guard shouted.

"No use arguing it, move!" Barston ordered, drawing his own blade. It was a long vicious sword, knocked and curved in every brutal way possible. Excitement and rage bubbled on his face as he looked out above him as the black, skeletal figures of amassing ghouls showed in the windows. The sound of bare feet smacking on cold cement and steal echoed about them as they ran out from underneath of the teetering apartments, breaking out into the middle of a wide-thoroughfare.

Sweet Gin turned to stop in the open, but intent on moving Barston reached out and grabbed her by the nape of her neck and yanking her back with him as she turned to fire on the amassing hordes dropping from the upper floors of the ruined structure. Either collapsing dead or crippled in the cement, or reeling from impact and shuffling after them with a rabid determination.

Sweet Gin was dragged between and over stalled automobiles to the far side of the road and a metal door was slammed shut behind them. Metal clanged and the door was sealed.

The android was dropped on her ass in the middle of the large, cold room. A dusty darkness hung around her as Barston and his companions flitted about the building. The only light to shed the darkness flowed from the windows, which were slowly becoming choked by ghouls as they pressed themselves against the glass.

"What are we doing?" she asked, looking up at Barston and his companions as they darted about.

"Are the rear doors locked?" Barston demanded, ignoring Sweet Gin completely.

"I just checked," shouted his guard from somewhere in the back, "still sealed tight!"

"Marshal!"

"Got it." sir Marshal's low gruff voice grumbled as he flipped over a box and throwing a bundle of disc-like objects to Barston.

"What are we doing?" Sweet Gin repeated again.

"Get back, synth." Barston growled as he tossed the pile to the ground. Hitting it, there was a soft beep. A familiar amber light glowed in front of the door as the mine clattered on the floor in front of it. The door itself beginning to shake violently as ghouls slammed and scratched at it.

Sweet Gin nervously backed herself up across the floor as the prince threw done mine after mine. Hastening behind the man as the trail grew long.

"What are we doing?" Sweet Gin said with a panicking waver. The mines weren't spelling good things to her.

"Unless you want to suck our cocks you'll get up off the floor and hand me your gun." Barston ordered crudely, stuffing the rest of the fragmentation mines in a satchel at his side, and holding out his hand.

And figuring now wasn't an opportune time for head the android scrambled up. The sight of the mines stirring her more than the alley had. Magnifying it past expanding combat instinct and into reluctance and fear with the flashing amber lights.

She hesitantly handed the man her pistol. He training it on the door with more route practice than any machine she had known. He compressed the trigger and fired off several bursts of fire. The bullets sparked and clashed off the metal lock on the door, but jimmied it enough it bolted and rattled at the growing force of ghouls behind it. The shots acted as a signal and Barston's heavy hand wrapped around Sweet Gin's shoulders and she was dragged forcefully back as the front door rattled more and more off of its hinges. Wheeling around into a backroom there called a scream of metal as the door was torn open, and soon after, an explosion.

Heat bellowed on the nap of Sweet Gin's neck and. She screamed in shock as the compressing blast chased her and the rest out the back door. Several more followed as the ghouls charged blindly forward through the track of explosives Barston had laid behind. The theater playing itself over in the android's conscious as she was released from Barston's grip. The doubled explosions of memory and present crashing with the force of a train as she wrapped her hands around her head and raced down the back alley with the rest of Barston's guards. The prince himself on her tail tossing mines out like disks.

Sweet Gin charged blindly a tense wreck. Eyes shut closed she didn't notice as she ran into the two other men. Their arms wrapping around her and spinning her about. The awkward uncomfortable shock of being handled snapping her out as Barston through out the last mine. His cap riding on the front of the blast-wind from the echoing explosions as they tore out of the narrow alley as he himself joined them in the middle of the road.

"Here's your gun back." he said coldly, tossing Sweet Gin's 10mm pistol at her and turning on his heels, sword drawn and raised as he waited for the shambling hordes to catch up.

The ghoul horde screamed in rage and fiery agony from the blackened and dusty cavern of the stripped store they had busted through. The frame where the back door had hung was splintered and shattered, hanging on a few loose timber as maimed and crippled ghouls sauntered and swayed beyond. Collapsing confused and stunned over wooden supports. Turning their milky eyes upwards and gurgling in spite as they tried to pull themselves forward.

Turning to see the mines work their intended purpose successfully was morbidly surreal and profound as the ghouls continued to move forward. Blinded by their own hunger and innate bestial spite. The explosives erupting upwards and outwards, sending the starved, naked, skeletal figures flying in sprawling arcs overhead. Whole limbs tore from their bodies and landing with indelicate thuds on the ground around them.

The clouds and shrapnel tore through their bodies and cut them down even more. Even a safe distance away the echoing explosions forced Sweet Gin to flinch and whimper under each roaring burst of cloud and metal.

As the front-most ghoul charged forward, his body dressed in blood caked armor he landed and tripped on the last mine. His torso flipped over his head as he cartwheeled and both his legs detached from his body at sickening angles, fanning blood in a low arcs through the warm dry air.

There was a dull silence after. The wind moaned down the street, brushing away the clouding smoke and dust. Weak shambling plodded in the midst of the debris and a handful of ghouls ran towards the four, their bodies pocked and torn by the shrapnel and fragments of the mines.

"Your heads and cocks are mine!" Barston jeered as he bound on the ghouls. Dropping his sword with a energetic force that cleaved through the front most ghoul, parting his skull in two and sending it into a tumble to Barston's feet. With a subtle snap of his wrist Barston turned the sword about and swung to his side, cutting through the gut of the nearby two. They reeled back clutching at their un-stitched stomachs.

"What the matter, afraid to see your own blood?" Barston laughed maniacally as he thrust his bloodied blade forward, skewering the last blabbering beast between his ribs and forcing him to the ground.

Sweet Gin could only stand to watch with a dark fascination. A fearful mouse squeaked inside her as it backed up against the bars of its cage at the display of martial ability.

"Marshal, how many would you say we slew here?"

"Too many." Sir Marshal said with a cold, if proud laugh, "Too many."

"Shame we can't collect every trophy." the prince laughed, standing in his circle of dropped ghouls.

Sweet Gin's ears were still ringing with an electrical hum as Barston made his way back to the group. Sheathing his sword with a satisfied grin. The rocking explosions still rocked against her tense skin as phantom feeling. She still felt the heat. And the smell of cordite and plastic was still strong in the air. Blowing out onto the street not as thinning, weak veils: but as a whole wall of sensory feedback. It was thick. Choking. The fumes of the explosives lingering in the back of her throat and causing it to itch.

"The bitch is scared!" Barston laughed. He clopped her on the shoulder with a heavy glove splashed with ghoul blood. Clenching his fingers and rubbing her shoulder.

Somehow, the grip made her tense up more. It wasn't friendly, it felt cold. A tough tease. She wheeled on Barston, her face twisted in an angry grimace. Barston stepped back, his hands held in the air. A mocking look of innocence lay plastered on him, dripping like wet paint, or the blood on his hands.

"No need to get mean." the prince crooned.

Sweet Gin glared at him from behind frowning eyes. She looked at his companions, and then at the ruins of the buildings and back at him. Her hands rose gently to her shoulders, caressing them gently. Assuring herself she was still whole. Still the same. Despite his unfriendly touch. Her eyes dropped down, silent.

"When you're out here you're going to need to deal with what frightens you." Marshal spoke up, "You're going to be burned, shot, stabbed, and blown up. Nothing cares where you're from, or who you are. It will kill you, brutally.

"So you either get brutal, or you get over your fear."

"The man has a point." Barston whispered, kneeling tentatively close to Sweet Gin. "And frankly, I want to live as much as you do, Synth. If I need to blow something up, I will. It's all part of the fight."

"People keep using that word..." Sweet Gin mumbled, "Live... What is it?"

"It doesn't matter, we're wasting time anyhow." the other unidentified knight said annoyed, "No doubt the rest of the neighborhood will be sweeping in to check it out. As well, Logan will no doubt we curious and sweep some of his bastards this way to see what they can pick apart. That explosion would have rolled across the entire city."

"And that bastard has a point." Barston conceded, but not without his own sting to the words. Holding out a gloved hand he continued invitingly, "So let's go, before we're turned into something's lunch and someone's barbecue."

Sweet Gin looked at his hand, and then him. She felt uneasy about it. But the propositions he made didn't sound very good to her. So apprehensively she held out her hand.

Barston's hand clenched tightly around her as he pulled her over and on her feet. With a quick swing and a pat on the ass she her running ahead, her cheeks glowing a bright red. He and his companions giggled softly as they moved along.

"We should pass to the next street over." Marshal grumbled, "And take that north several blocks. Logan's men I bet will move directly to the explosion, and if we detour we can evade the university and lake all together."

"I'm game." Barston snickered.

***

The door fell with a crunch. Collapsing to the floor with a soft thud, loaning admittance to the four who stepped through it portal. White light fell in around the four figures as they stepped through. The sun light reflecting off the edges of blades as they made entry. But the house only yielded silence. An empty, locked abode with only the dust to dance in its halls.

"Go away pigs!" read the far wall in fading flaking paint. The wall paper around it peeling back on the edges and around bullet holes. A skeleton of a man lying near by.

The four gave the heap of bones any attention as they weaved around it and marched through to the back of the house. This door was locked as well, but it collapsed all the same to a firm boot from Marshall. With a bang it landed and split on the wooden deck behind the house and the four could dart out into the apocalyptic afternoon outside. Sweet Gin close in tow.

The voyage west out of the city was turning into a maze of navigating houses due in part to wreckage and ruins barring any other way. Barricades of steel or automobiles lined the roads and between the houses. It created a perpetual maze that forced the knights and the synthetic woman they guided to take off beaten paths. Paths which more often than not slowed their progress. A trip that Barston hoped to have done by the later hours of the afternoon was beginning to march into the evening hours. Slow progress was eating at him, and his impatience and anger was showing with each house they broke into.

His already thin lips were sealed so tightly shut they disappeared into his mouth. A narrow frown splitting his face and a deep silent scowl became his new expression of choice. The prince had fallen silent in their march. His mouth only opening to whisper a silent angry curse as Marshal and the other knight worked to try and pick the lock on the doors before ramming them down with force.

All the while Sweet Gin felt they were being watched. Somewhere, some silent observer was taking note. It crawled up her spine like a cold rad roach. She shivered out of anxiety. The discomfort of the situation.

Barston's angered silence came to an end though, as advancing through the last house they spilled out in a backyard that had once been fenced. But the chain link had given away and rusted away. Opening up to a vast field of gnarled trees, and equally twisted grass. Brown and black checker boarded the field and the soft hills as they rolled along. The remains of wooden gazebos and other fixtures stood in the field, and in the distance a net of chain link, from whence rose a twisting pillar of black smoke.

"Logan's." Barston sneered, "The man thought he could do better than my father. Promised to burn it all.

"Some ambitious work he's done." the prince laughed.

"That's what a Logan is?"

"Who Logan is." Marshal corrected, "I had the displeasure of having to fight by his side for a while, until he went made. Even before then he wanted to burn it all. Purge everything by fire."

"And this is all it's given him." Barston said, "a field and a few drugged up jackasses who spend more time jacking each other off and getting high than they do trying to compete with my father. Logan is just as ambitious as he, but lazier."

"So why should I be concerned?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Because if he catches us, he'll set us on fire." said Barston.

***

That feeling of being watched persisted unshakably. Somehow, the sensation had not lifted. If anything, intensified. The same uncomfortable itch as the blocked and ruined streets and suburban neighborhoods lingered. It frightened the android as much as the clustered patches of char and ash did.

The checker-boarded patches of ash piles had increased in number to whole blankets of black and white over the browning and yellowing terrain. And the piles of burning had taken on some content. Piles of random furniture, wood, and bodies were piled up in many of the larger patches. Iron poles scorched at the base held up agonized and twisted human bodies. Their flesh peeled back to fleshy pinks and deep blacks as they were barbequed there on the spit

This new introduction in catastrophic damage had brought to Sweet Gin a new morbid wonder. Delaying at each trophy and showcase of severe burn damage to the physical form. And it wasn't just the bodies of humans that had been piled up, or staked into the earth. But animals forms as well. Either one headed, or two. Tails of claws. Some mouths with large jagged incisors. Creatures with immense claws. The surrealism of such destruction was as fascinating as it was terrifying. They were like statues made of charcoal. Pink, fleshy charcoal with a rank stench.

The fact the Sweet Gin was so childishly fascinated with the product of some great fire was worrisome to the men assigned to guide her. Each time she strayed or stalled to look at the cruel artwork posted about they impatiently grabbed her and pulled her along by the cold steel of her arm. "We need to keep moving." they constantly reminded her between gritted teeth.

They must obviously have felt that same creepy feeling as her.

Or maybe it was just the grotesque art work that was littering the remains of the park with greater ferocity. And once more, it continued to rise to a greater morbid climax.

Things looked as if they were coming to a maximum as the four came across a massive, burned oak. Strung up by chains, mutilated bodies hung caught in jagged meat hooks. There was no discretion in the display as ghoul and man hung side by side with their bodies violently mauled and burned. Women as well, and perhaps the remains of children. All of which deeply cut and eviscerated. Crisscrossing gashes of red lay painted across their chests in a violent patterning. Stars, X's, and O's.

"Bill's had a penchant for the dramatic." Marshall admired as they stepped up to the tree, "I see he hasn't forgotten his art."

"God, fuck Bill." the other man shivered, "I still can't forget what he did to that cat."

"You're just weak, Will." Barston taunted.

"You weren't there." Will snapped back, turning from the over kill hanging from the tree, "I've seen some shit." he muttered.

“What cat?” Sweet Gin asked innocently

And somewhere in the distance, something wound to life. A distorting chord that whirred and popped as it struggled to come to life. A bent up and twisted piano that slowly came to life. Before finally, there was singing.

The four jumped to the ready as the music started. Above them, tucked in the stomach of a hanging body was a battered and bent up speaker. But it wasn't the only source. All around them the same song played through the air. "And now you're hearing it." grumbled Marshall.

A fiery roar bellowed from below. An overlooked stone structure burst into life and fire. The windows glowing orange as a stream of burst from a darkened door. A large steel clad figure bound out with tremendous force. Thick metal plates shone with the intensity of his flame. Arcing a heavy flame-thrower through the air, releasing a stream of burning liquid high into the air and smoldering the very air.

Several large tanks hung at his back, surrounded by thick olive-drab steel. The light of the vicious fire bested that of the sun. It was a great orange aura, basking everything in its deadly illumination. It glowed off every inch of his armored body like a mirror. And the black face plate of his welding mask helmet glowed with a malevolent orange as he glared up at them.

The flame thrower whooshed and popped as he taunted the four atop the hill. It was enough to tell Sweet Gin who had burned so much of this field.

"Ooo, so he must be the one who did all this." she murmured. She again felt fear, panic as she looked down at the gigantic beast of a man.

"Logan only did half." Marshall said. From behind them purred a machine roll.

"Bill the Butcher did the other half." he added, turning.

Sweet Gin followed Marshall's gaze to the bear of a man advancing up the hill. A bloodied and greasy chainsaw held firmly in his fists. He was considerably less dramatically armored. If anything thick steel plates decorated his right arm, the rest of his boiled leather outfit studded and infused with stray and random sheets of protective steel, or road signs. But what he lacked in protection he made up for in his heavy muscular body. He hulked over any man she had seen. And the scars and wounds of survival was testament to the fact that he didn't need much to survive.

As Bill made his way up, he looked up and down the four with a twisted smile. Scars and cracks scoured his face, making him look less of a man, and more of some nightmare from Boston proper. Sweet Gin's processes skipped beats looking at the disfiguring surgical scars that scoured his face. Hia nose was broken in several places, forehead recessed and cheeks ill-healed mats of flesh. His eyes looked to have a eerie light to them. His grin was highlighted with lips of sickly purple and yellow, chipping and peeling back. He looked diseased, yet he carried himself like was healthy. His hair grew thin on his head in ghoulish mats.

And he carried the chainsaw with as much comfort as his accomplice did his flame-thrower.

Logan's flamethrower spat like a dragon. And roared and screamed like a hundred ghouls.

"We can outrun Logan." Barston whispered in a low voice, "But not so much Bill."

"You proposing we evade Logan then and kill Bill?" Marshal said, gritting his teeth.

"The later is very difficult. But if the Android would like to, then she's perfectly invited."

"What?" Sweet Gin asked.

The android's polite inquiry was cut off as Bill let off with a booming primal yell. Raising the chainsaw over his shoulder as he blindly charged. Spittle trailing from his snarling mouth as he sprang forward with shocking speed.

Barston acted quick, grabbing Sweet Gin by the collar of her coat and dragging her to the side just as the beast's chainsaw swung to the side, slicing the air where they had been, and continuing to sweep through where Marshal and William had stood.

Cut off, both parties were on their own as they ducked and dodged out of the way of the heavy weapons. As soon as Marshall and William bolted off a long tongue of fire shot out towards them, licking the hill side with an arch of gold and red fire. Churning the air and producing sickening columns of black smoke.

Bill moved quick on his toes, twisting to the side and readjusting his weapon to make another pass as Sweet Gin and Barston sprinted down the hill.

"Damn it biitch!" Barstone screamed, "Just try and shoot the fucker and be done with it!"

"Well, alright!" Sweet Gin stuttered. Sweat dripped from her forehead as she grabbed for her holster. Her metal hands shook as she stepped and dodged from the wide swings of Bill. Her fingers clattered on the handle of the gun as she drew it out.

She skipped awkwardly down the hillside as she rose the hand-gun. Bringing it up as Bill turned aside from a large swing. The report was proud, loud, and familiar. The bullet striking Bill square in his left arm. The flesh tour open in blood, but he kept moving. Raising and lowering his colossal arm as if he hadn't felt it. He seemed to care little for the artificial injury and kept moving forward. Holding the chainsaw with as much practice and poise as he had before. Screaming and laughing hysterically as the blood dripped down his arm in a thick frothy stream.

Sweet Gin lined up for another shot. Firing until she emptied the chamber. The hammer clanged and crashed until it clicked clean. His size made it difficult to miss. But none made any damage. The rest ricocheted against his armor.

And above all this, the same song repeated.

"Fucking android!" Barston screamed as he dodged outside the arc of Bill's chainsaw arc, "You're supposed to shoot him in the head!"

"I'm trying!" cried a panicking Sweet Gin, reloading hastily as she ducked under a wide, heavy swing. At this close distance, the mutilated man looked even more horrifying. The details of his scars and his own burns coming to life with a better clarity. And the eerie glow of his eyes much more apparent. And mixed with the exhaust of the chainsaw the powerful rotting odor of his body.

VATS kicked in and came to life in Sweet Gin's vision. The hit chances being displayed alongside every point of his body, and moving dynamically to him.

Sweet Gin had to make a quick choice, and rose her her pistol to fire into his face. But the raider acted swiftly, dropping his saw as he rose a armored arm to shield his face. Stopping the fresh clip of bullets. Her breath was caught in a sharp gasp of horror.

Sweet Gin staggered back horrified as Bill swung into a counter. The Android just narrowly missing the brunt his mangled knuckles. The brush of his twisted fingers just inches from her face. He was terrifying. His ability to survive what she learned could kill many terrified her. Everything about him was beyond what she knew, and it was appalling in its feral nature.

He lurched forward, lifting his chainsaw into the air as from behind Barston lunged with his sword. The rough unpolished metal caught the light of the sun as it rose over his head. He pulled all of his effort into the swift downward blow. The blade bit as the beast turned. Cutting deep into his arm and for once soliciting a fierce agonized scream as it cleaved flesh and muscle, tendon and bone.

The man's scream of pain was a deafening storm as Barston sword cut deep into his meaty arm catching within the bone. Barston fought to keep it in, to saw through the bone or take a deeper chunk off to force Bill to bleed out then and there. But Bill had better ideas. His fist roared through the air with a swift arcing ram. Catching the Prince's head in the middle of that fierce meaty swing. The hard rattling punch set him reeling onto the ground with a concussive crack, leaving the sword dug deep into Bill's arm.

Bill grunted and groaned like a bull. Anger and pain burning him from the inside out as he forgot about Sweet Gin, to turn on Barston. He tugged at his foe's blade. More than intent to tear it out and turn it around against him.

"Bancrofts." he sneered. His voice was low. Rumbling with an earthly force as the jagged scrap sword pulled from his own arm. He stood over Barston, his own blade in his enemy's hand.

Sweet Gin stood behind, horrified as the monster man bore over her escort out of town. And seeing him defenseless, and weakly stirring on the ground - blood caking half his face - she realized she needed to do something.

She holstered her pistol and shot for the large Bowie knife. As Bancroft's blade rose over Bill's head, rising to swing down into its owner's face, the android lunged. Firing herself straight into the back of the unaware beast about to cleave Barston Bancroft in two. And she rammed into his back with the force of a missile.

Bill reeled. Screamed shocked as the Android planted herself on his back. Winding her one arm around his shoulder and grabbing onto the armor on his chest. The other was drawn back, and plunged the crooked, curved blade into the under-side of his shoulder. Driving it deep into the side of his chest. And for a second time in this fight, Bill met pain. The wretched agonized scream were monstrous as Larry's knife dug between his ribs. With a twist she drew it out and hugged Bill tighter as he reached back to grab the Android.

Sweet Gin jabbed and twisted again. Cutting through his leather armor and into the flesh a second time. Going deeper, and forcing him to drop the sword. Bill got a grip on her arm, pulling her off and whipping her over his shoulder like a sack of wheat. With a thud she hit the ground and bounced. Her breath escaped like a candle is extinguished at the whim of a breath.

He reeled over them, billowing in pain. His movement become lethargic as he bled out. Sweet Gin lay next to Barston in the dirt, her cheeks resting on his dusty and mud-caked boots. Her sides hurt. Her body throbbed as she gasped for breath.

"Shoot him!" Barston pleaded, his voice croaking and chocked. as Bill struggled to coup with his injuries, "Shoot the cock sucker now!"

Sweet Gin couldn't speak, let alone breath as she weakly rolled in the dust, gasping for the air she so desperately needed. "I can't breath." she mouthed, but her words coming out in weak gasps. She tried to pull herself up, but gasping for breath she couldn't muster the energy and she slipped in the charred grass.

Barston was left to do the honors. His hands grabbing blindly for her pistol, managing to grope her side and rear as he sought the 10mm pistol. But finding it, he produced the gun and rose it. But it clicked on an empty chamber.

By now, Bill had staggered back. His eyes held firmly to the two on the ground. Drunkenly, he staggered forward. Grabbing weakly for whatever he could off the ground, and lifting the still purring chainsaw. With a laborious heave he lifted the machine up over his head, weakly balancing it as he stumbled forward.

The panic Sweet Gin felt was enough to jump-start her lungs. She sprung up, grabbing Barston and pulling him to the side as she rolled over him. Just as the chainsaw swung downwards and chewed into the baked soil. Dirt and rock was kicked into the air as the spinning chain dug deep into the hardened clay. The motor screamed and protested at the strain as it became steadily choked with grit and earth.

He struggled with the blade. But too weakened to yank it out. It dug deeper. Clogging more and more. The motor churned sickly and smoked heavily. He screamed and bellowed incomprehensibly at the weapon as he heaved over it. He was stuck, and he was unarmed. Sweet Gin had to take the moment.

She staggered up from the ground. Charging at him with her arm's outstretched and nails barred as she pounced. She landed on his wide shoulders, wrapping her arms around him in a hug. Clinging to him like a cat as she screamed and bore into him. He fought back, reaching up his arms to yank her off.

But his efforts yielded more blood and agony as she knitted the sharp points of her not-so-temporary-anymore hands into him. "Where's you off switch!" she screamed, wrestling to keep a hold of the man.

Barston rolled on the ground, keeping away from Bill's massive feet as he trudged around. He fought hard to pull off the Android. But the more he fought the harder Sweet Gin held on. She kept digging, cutting through his shoulders until she found collar bone. Bill screamed and babbled, his pained efforts becoming weaker as more and more of his blood left his excited, mangled body; bathing the android.

Eventually, the giant collapsed. Falling first to his knees, staring blankly on. His heavy fingers fell from Sweet Gin's body. Moaning weakly he fell face-first into the dust, throwing the android for once off his body. He writhed and rolled weakly. Painstakingly trying to pull his mangled self up. But the blood that flowed from all too many holes was too heavy, and he lay withering.

Barston rolled and crawled on the ground, wiping the blood from the side of his head as he reached for his sword. Staggering as he reclaimed it. Bill lay motionless, taking a last breath as Sweet Gin pulled herself up. Her arms caked red as she staggered away from the giant's body.

"The Bancrofts send their regards." Barston sneered between broken teeth. His face was swelling quickly. He hung over the beast's body with his sword. "Cocksucker."

"Are you alright?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Never mind me," Barston growled as he bent down alongside Bill. He grunted as he heaved him over onto his back, "You got a pyro nutbuster to get off of Marshal and William's backs. Go!" he screamed, urging Sweet Gin away.

Down below, Logan with his flamethrower whipped himself from side-to-side as he herded Barston's compatriots about. They painfully avoided the man in tin. Stepping bag as flaming whips brushed through the air. Sweat beaded on their brows, and the visible signs of exhaustion snaked over them. And the long game of keep away had obviously begun to injure them, clutching his hand to his face Will kept cover a pink patch of burning flesh, as Sweet Gin neared it still looked as it seared and bubbled on his face, like it was still burning.

Sweet Gin stumbled forward, stiffly raising her handgun to meet Logan. Her sides were numb with a brutish dull pain that wrapped her back and sides. She ached from head to toe from the thrashing and beating imposed on her by Bill. Even though numb, she swore she could feel her limbs burn with the same agony as she held the gun up, running in range behind Logan. Centering the sights on the long and thrashing tube that ran out from his impressive tanks. Her voice cracked as she breathed out, pulling the trigger.

There was a hollow resigned click.

Shocked, Sweet Gin reeled back. Staring in resignation at the gun in her hands. Swearing under her breath she worked over the weapon, hitting what buttons and levers she could. The clip fell out with a hollow clatter on the ground. It was empty. She panicked, racing on her feet as Logan continued unaware. The deafening roar of his flame thrower as he swept it side to side too overbearing.

Patting into her pockets, she searched for an extra clip. She hoped she had one. She threw off her bag, throwing it to the ground alongside her as she tore through it. Finally finding one as beads of panicking nervous sweat poured down her face. She slid it back into place, the gun clicking around it and accepting the new rounds.

This time, the hammer did not fall on an empty chamber. With a bright flash a bullet exited the chamber, guided by the VATS-aided aiming as it found position on Logan's body. The system however failed to account for the man's over-armored shell. The bullet found a mark. But with a shrill hollow ping that sang out even above the roar of his dragon's breath sang off into the sky.

Sweet Gin continued firing on him regardless, emptying out her second clip on the pyro's body. His armor flashed and sang with the sound of light-weight bullets ricocheting off harmlessly. The subtle impact of each misplaced shot bringing him to a threatening pause. He turned like an angered bear, holding back his shoulders and throwing up his flamethrower. He flexed and shook as he screamed incomprehensible curses at the Android. His booming echoing voice roaring over the wasteland. Sweet Gin jumped back startled, taken back by his bellowing.

With a yelp Sweet Gin ducked as a stream of golden fire arced near her. Dropping to the ground she felt the hot tongue pass over her, singing the hairs of her head. Drops of hot fire dripping down from the main stream and falling across her back and legs. Hot fuel crawled across her as she threw off her outer coat. Burning embers crackled on her back and she rolled down the hill.

The burning pain complimented Bill's bruising well. Her whole body was beginning to throb and itch in some uncomfortable way. Behind her, a snake's trail of fire cut her off from Barston and any timely expectations of support. The very heat of the fire was absolute. Sweat soaking into her shirt as she pulled herself up.

The barrier went long and far, creating a solid line and drawing a wide arena, where in the middle stood Logan himself. A large over bearing figure, whose metal armor danced with the reflection of a thousand suns as the fires of his design burned around him. And now with a new play thing, he stomped slowly towards her. The mouth of his flamethrower dripping with fire.

“Oh... Hello.” the android said weakly, taking weak steps back as she looked for an escape. But there was none to take in the crawling wall of fire. And no response from the brutish man. His weapon hanging down at his waste. The noxious liquid that fueled it sliding out sluggishly in fiery drops.

"Synth!" screamed Marshall from outside the circle. She could hardly see the man as he ran along the edge of the fire, holding above his head her gear bag, and in his other the three small grenades. With a heave the grenades were thrown over the fire, landing with a scattered thud in the ashen ground, she flinched reflexively against them, tensing for an explosion.

But none came, and the imposing marching of Logan gave pause as he stopped to register. But no explosion came.

“What?” Sweet Gin screamed back, panicking. She felt something should have happened. And nothing happened. She itched with anticipation. Panicked with Logan continuing his advance. His flame-thrower dripping with anticipation. It wasn't hard to know what he intended.

“Deal with him!” Marshall shouted back. His head bobbed above the tongues of fire as he disappeared.

Sweet Gin turned back to face Logan. He grumbled low under his breath as he watched Sweet Gin's move. She swore she could hear the wet slathering of his tongue as he licked his lips under that dark metal mask of his.

Sweet Gin laughed nervously as she stepped to the side. Logan straightening his posture in a curious, bestial way. But as the android dove the man's posture dove to a charge, sweeping back his flame-thrower as the first plume of explosive flame welled at the mouth. Sweet Gin dove just as the fire licked her back as her adversary missed. Her hand outstretched for the closest grenade buried in the soot.

With a roll, she pulled it from the dirt and forced herself to her feet. Running as Logan circled around for her.

“How do these work!?” she shouted.

“VATS tutorial recording initiated. Peacemaker recognized: M70 Hand grenade detected. Running user t-” a recording began, but the droning voice was inundated by a second scream of a flame thrower, and Sweet Gin screaming.

“SHUT UP! I THINK I GET IT!” she bellowed at herself in excitement as she yanked out the pin. With a blind tossed, she pitched it towards Logan as she dropped to the floor, throwing up her arms as his fire swept past her again.

Seconds later the familiar thump of an explosive cut the stream and scream of the flame. Briefly heralding silence as Sweet Gin turned. But as the smoke and the cloud of dust cleared, she found to her panic that Logan still stood. Dazed, but unscathed from the explosion. He hobbled on his feet, before continuing his assault unphased. The Flamethrower lowered to cook the android on the ground, and she sprinted to her feet as fire cooked at her butt.

She sprinted again, racing the long flames that burst the air. She stumbled to the ground, sliding as she felt the heat of Logan's rage burn over her. Reaching out, she grabbed what she had dove for, one of the scattered grenades. She tossed it as she began to run again, Logan re-adjusting as the green egg soared into the air into his face.

With a loud guttural crack it exploded, crashing against his visor. The sharp cloud splintering the thick glass and rippling it with spiderweb cracks. He reeled back as Sweet Gin dove for the third and final grenade.

She turned to find Logan, enraged and armor mired bursting out through the cloud of shrapnal. A deep guttural scream pierced the day as he held to his side his flame-thrower. His charge was angry. It was desperate. And despite the metal shocking to Sweet Gin. The faint hints of fire burned deep inside the long metal nozzle of his flame thrower as he charged to put it into her side. There were to be no more games. No more failures. No more, as Sweet Gin slipped to the side, the green egg in her hand.

It disappeared inside with tight squeeze. She was inches away from his reach when she dove. He sneered angrily, pulling the trigger as to sweep her with fire before she got too far. There was a choke, a delay in the fire...

Sweet Gin landed just as Logan was turning. She spun around to watch, expecting him to be right on her tail as she tried to escape. But she turned to watch him not advance forward, but to be torn open.

Splitting open like a peeled banana, the flame-thrower erupted outward. Peeling back the steel as a pillowing bloom of dark smoke and bright oranges blossomed outwards. A massive peeling ripple of flame that tore back, ripping the gun to shreds and back-feeding into the heavy rubber tube, incinerating it then and there as it turned to smoke as the explosion continued to feed backward.

And the horrible pained scream, muffled by steel and iron as the flame reached the tank. The pounding, drumming “umph” of the tanks bursting downwards against the charred Earth and rocketing the soldier into the air. Catapulting a burning Logan several feet into the air as fire wrapped around his body, clothing him in a robe of fire as he careened with his own weight against the ground.

The sound of the crashing metal was intense as it was hallow and terrifying. But the screams of the man inside were more as the sounds of pure agony bellowed. The shrill cries of a man burning in his skin as between the plates plumes of fire crackled and burned. He sobbed and screamed in pained curses as he rolled helpless in the dirt. Pulling at himself. Yanking at his mask. He struggled to his feet, gripping like a blind child at the metal helmet and tearing it off, screaming at the sky as fire rose from inside the armor, cooking up his face.

There was no man under that metal. Only a blackening beast. His head was bald, his face encased in his own fire. Logan, the man who was turned to Sweet Gin, the incoherent babbling pleaded for mercy. But Sweet Gin could not help as she stood back in horror. Was this how it was when the Great Fire came? Men like him burning on the spot.

Resignation fell upon him, as engulfed in his own fire the body of Logan grew limp and he collapsed to the ground. What was left going up in black putrid smoke.

The fires crackled around her as Sweet Gin struggled to keep her balance. Logan, or what remained of him lay in a twisted smoldering heep just feet away. The embers of his demise burned everywhere. Caking the ground and singing the enamel of the android's arms. Embers that smoldered as she stood in a dazed silence, blinded by a vale of awe that numbed the pain racked onto her by Bill.

For this brief second, she was not burned. She was not bruised. She was merely victorious. A warm, hot feeling it was. Like the warmth of many great suns, it wrapped around her. An-

"Sweet Gin!" someone shouted from beyond the ring of fire that still burned. The flames were marching wider as the remaining blades of grass that resided there continued to burn. And to do so rapidly. The sticky chemicals that composed Logan's fire was not so apt to extinguish itself as the flames moved on their volition.

"Sweet gin!" the voice called again, and she realized it was Will. Hopping up and down he struggled to get a look through the chalky gray smoke and the orange heat, "Are you still there?"

"Never-mind that you stupid dip-" Marshall snapped over the flames, "She's there! We need to get her out!"

Out? Oh yes.

As quickly as it had fallen the veil burned away from her face and clarity returned - as well as the throbbing, numb pain that gripped her sides - and she saw the fires. They had not opened, and if anything only widened.

"Ah-" she stammered weakly under her breath. The all consuming heat and the growing, blistering wind that wound, bent, and twisted around her was sapping. A dry heat, fueled by the choking fires. She looked all around her, her head racing and every machine in her clanking and cluttering frantically as she fought to find a way out. But there was no clear exit.

"Stop standing there!" Marshall shouted, "You're going to need to brave it!"

"I-” she stuttered weakly.

"Come one, now!" Marshal said, "You'll need to do it now you fucking bitch, or burn alive!"

"Marshal," Sweet Gin sniffed, "I'm scared!"

"So what, suck it up and do it! Or else you'll no doubt be turned into slag! Do you want to be Logan now?"

The android afforded a look to the crumbled black and glowing-red mass of Logan and his armor. The fire that brewed from his tanks was leaking out and spreading as well, choking the already valuable unburned patches.

She had to take the chance. Against the protests of numerous corners of her head she crept towards the fire circle. Coming to its edge, where the heat was great. She felt the buffeting of the air being drawn in to feed the expanding inferno. The rays of warmth and burning spears.

"Alright..." she muttered weakly, dancing uneasily at the edge of the inferno.

"We got it, now move it woman!" Marshal shouted.

Sweet Gin's breathed deep as she stepped forward. Ahead of her, the liquid fire cracked and popped as he slide across the ground like sludge. She had to do it. She stepped back, murmuring afraid to herself. With a frightened whine, she shut her eyes and charged ahead. Jumped into the air, trying to clear as much as she could.

With a thump, she landed. Falling face-forward into a tumble through the last fires. Collapsing to the Earth in a sprawling twisting tumble.

"Sweet Gin." Will said, tentatively as the android rolled in the dust.

"Sweet Gin!" he bellowed again as the android failed to stop. The severity of his voice called herback and she stopped. Laying flat against the dust, the dry scratchy ground pressed against her cheek. It was cool. It was good. It wasn't burning.

"You're fine." he said.

"Less so your clothes, my lady." Marshall added, tossing down the familiar, heavy weight of her coat on her..

Lifting herself up she realized that though her flesh had not burned near as much as she had dreaded - it simply glowed a faint red - the old shirt that she had worn under had taken a considerable amount of the heat. What was left was sharp, knife-tipped shred supported by the collar and shoulders. It wasn't much of anything, and large holes had been melted along her belly and sides. It hung loose and twisted on her body. And she realized it was edging in to reveal too much.

She wasn't like that. Not anymore.

Her face flushed with embarrassment. And before standing up she grabbed the edges of the coat and wrapped it around her..

Marshal's face was as stoic and blank as ever. Where as Will fought poorly to keep subtlety over his attention; his struggle wasn't particularly helped by the slight bulge he sported in his pants. Something which somehow made the android feel more uncomfortable, and she herself come under the spell of a certain alien warmth. "Right," she said softly, nervously, "Where's Barston? I would like to go now."

"Here." the grumbling, groggy voice of the prince snickered from behind. Sweet Gin turned to the man, a strange sack of blood-spotted cloth dangled from his clenched fists as he hobbled around the ring of fire, "And I agree. Let's get a move. We've not got far to go until the airfield."

***

The wind hit them with a warm, abrasive force as the four scrambled over the hill. Leaving behind them the scraggly trees they scaled the small retaining wall that ran the length of the road. Behind them, the cold urban ruins of Worcester rose from its valley in the cradle of seven large sweeping hills. Ahead of them, the collapsing ruins of its old Airfield stood.

The towering mast of the con tower was little more than an empty shell that had long collapsed onto the runway. The offices and terminals shredded dark tombs, from where flapped and moaned the ruins of New England. The wind here was harsh, being in a high clear spot. And climbing the last birm to the airfield proper, the true extent of the desert that was the airfield came to full. For over a mile stretched a network of concrete and gravel. The rusted and stripped hulks of crashed and grounding air craft choked the runway. Several olive-green trucks dotted the property between planes.

"This is where we leave you." Barston croaked behind Sweet Gin as she took several tentative steps forward. The prince looked as she felt, ratted, bruised, and tired. They all were. They had been scorched, bruised, and pursued. Cuts and gashes spider webbed their outfits and armor. The voyage had been tiring.

"I see." Sweet Gin said softly. Looking at the prince, Marshal, and Will she asked, "What of you? Will you be able to make it back."

"We will, m'lady." Marshal nodded. The coldness of his voice had subsided, as if the android had won a little respect in his eyes. Even Barston looked a little confident in her.

"I don't know where else you plan to go." Barston said, "But where ever you do, then I hope you've learned a little bit from The Worm. No doubt, the roads ahead will be as bad."

Sweet Gin looked back at the city. She thought that had she had more time, she would have come to know more of it. But there were wider places to explore. At the edge of the city, between its ruins and the sand-blasted wilderness of New England beyond Sweet Gin felt a tinge of longing for the city. It had been the first big settlement she had come to know. She felt like she owed The Worm something more than a good bye.

"I wish I could stay." she said suddenly.

The three knights laughed awkwardly. "I have not known a person who would stay in Worcester." Will chuckled, "We would all leave, if it weren't for duty."

"Duty?"

"I'm sure you'll learn of it, synth." Barston said.

"Maybe I will." she said, "Like 'life'."

"One step at a time." the prince sneered.

"But if you do wish to keep the Worm at heart..." Marshal started, "Then we could use more people who could use a weapon."

A dry grin quivered across Barston's sore face, "Some days, I feel we loose more men than we can bring into the city, or the world." the prince added. Limped towards Sweet Gin he spoke in a emboldened voice, "Back there," he said, "With Logan and his butt buddy, you showed something that we've rarely seen. If I had it in my power, I would demand you stay. You're a force of nature, even if you're artificial."

Reaching for his belt he drew out his sword. It was long, jagged. Dents and large gaping gouges had been lashed into the steel. The prince looked at it with a strange mix of repulsion, and longing. "Don't be afraid to take a bit from others." he said, holding the sword at its blade. Carefully, he lowered the hilt to Sweet Gin.

"I don't share thrill in ceremony." he said, "But look at this as a battlefield commission."

"A sir Sweet Gin." Marshal cackled, "I don't think I ever would see the day."

Barston ignored him, "I have a charge of you." he said, "If you ever meet any man worth himself in fighting as you, send him this way. We will put him to his share of work on share on loot.

"See this blade as your authority to do so."

"Bu-" Sweet Gin started.

"Shut up and take the sword." Barston scowled, "I can always get another, and someone needs to get people to do what his father is too lazy to do." the prince thrust the hilt closer to Sweet Gin's face. Gripped with apprehension, the Android rose her hand up to grab a hold of the weapon. As her fingers wrapped around the pummel, the prince released the blade, allowing it to fall to an awkward dangle from Sweet Gin's metallic hands.

Barston stepped back and gave the android the slightest bow. "This has been your charge." he said, "So go and do it."

"Alright..." the android muttered, watching as he turned to his comrades and lead them off. The android stood there for a good several moments, staring into the jagged warped trees. A hot gust of wind blew and sand blew against her body. Turning, Sweet Gin looked out ahead of her, to where the marker in her vision blinked softly. Taking a breath, she walked off. Heading back out on the road again.

Off in the corner of her vision, a trimmed shadowy figure watched from behind the airport's ruins. The man adjusted something at his neck, and turned to leave.

---

Chapter footnote: Level up!
Level footnote: Level 5!
Skillfootnote: Explosives 26/100

Quest Perk Added:
Knight of Worcester:
You've been knighted. This perk opens up unique dialog options to some characters.



If one thing was becoming quickly fluid, it was time.

It dripped through Sweet Gin's metal hands like running water. Passed her by on the wind like the sands of the wasteland. It was misused, and the facted taunted her via her navigation. The program continued yet to think that Sweet Gin was on the easiest path of travel, as opposed to the hilly country-side of the Commonwealth's wasteland, and not moving at a constant pace. In the belief that she did not need to hide in fear at the passing of strange wasteland wild-life, or detour around obstacles and problems, or answer the protests of bruising and injury.

Aches and pains still rocked the android's body. Crippling her to the point that even a woman of metal and artificial flesh found herself laying down within the abandoned ruins of wayward country homes, or across the seats of wrecked automobiles. She was still functional, and her systems said that her vital functions were operative. But the discomfort of simply moving was a taxing problem that bore down on her shoulders worse than the pack that rode on her back.

As such, The sweet moldy smell of decaying leather and rotting upholstery was becoming as familiar as the harsh ripping of sand and the blistering dry heat of the nuclear sun. The itch of melted nylon fiber on her exposed face becoming akin to the sand and gravel that rode on the wind currents. Rest was becoming a thing.

And of course, the practice was also eating at her travel.

Her internal clocks insisted that her destination was little more than twelve hours from Worcester. Maybe she would have gotten there if she followed the roads and didn't stop to break. But four hours of having to relieve her tired self in the shelter of a sweltering shell of a car, or in the dusty and languid air of an old house long abandoned ticked the hours away dangerously.

Before she knew it, the sun had set and night had fallen on her. The might of the sun surrendering to the crisp cool of the night. With feet stepping over rocks and climbing over the toppled stumps of knotted, poisoned, and burned out trees the Android continued through as the sun passed away.

Cresting over a dusty sandy rise Sweet Gin stood at the breast of a low rolling hill. Laying out around her stretched the picturesque night landscape of south-west New England. A sky of deep darkened blue, lit up with fiery oranges and powerful ruby-reds behind her blazed from behind the horizon with a furious fire-storm. Gilding her back in gold as she looked to the shadows beyond. If anyone had been there to see, they may have said she had a halo of fire; maybe a little something given to her for one moment by Logan. His scream still echoed within her.

The hills that stretched and cracked the landscape for miles beyond were nothing but black and ominous shadows of ash and ruin against the growing velvet blue of the night sky. And tucked warmly in their hidden breasts a hundred hiding holes. The kind of hiding holes that the Android felt she needed now her back protested the load she carried and the battle she had fought. The bruises doing the most of the moaning. Her flesh felt twisted and knotted under the straps of her pack. Not an hour after the last ten minute break in the shelter of one of a hundred shapeless ruined homes it felt time to lay down again.

Drawing her eyes closer to her position she spotted a large gravel-choked clearing at the bottom of the earthly basket. Seated at the bottom stood a still-standing metal building, the dying sunlight and the rising moon glinted off of the corrugated steel that lay across its eaves in a thatch-work of rusty plate and knotted abused cabling. The monster of two-hundred years lay in a herd of sunken, sullen automobile wrecks. Rising from its furthest corner looked to be a twisted and collapsing spire, leaning precariously on a few barely-there guy wires.

Hitching her pack up, it looked to be the Android's best bet. And fighting against the clawing ache that wrapped across her side and shoulders she marched down the hill to it, weaving between the thick trees.

With a soft hush of gravel and a trail of sand riding after her wake Sweet Gin came to a rest at the bottom of the gully. And simply walking through the remains of a long-gone chain-link fence she came upon the yard of the large building. From the look of the bricks, and the rusting metal siding it looked like an old storage facility; a warehouse. Its higher walls decorated with ventilation units the size of a man, and between them windows so caked over in grim they were a darker black than the shadows that played behind them. Thick pipes and conduit raced into the walls.

Parked trucks caught in the end days rested in a scattered orbit around the central building. Being among them Sweet Gin noticed a few pockets of the same faded, olive-green vehicles that had occupied the Worcester streets. Were these of the same people, she thought, those old knights?

Never the less, the building they sought to occupy had little in the way of entrances and to her anger many side doors were locked. She tried to force them, but they were stiff. Welded shut by decades of rust. Trying to ram them down, she discovered to her painful dismay that they were sturdier than she. They did not need to move to spill her over the rough cement at her feet.

The bruises screamed out more in pain. Or it was to mock her.

Climbing to her feet, the android did manage to find an entrance. A space on the loading dock side. The shutter doors here had been opened, but froze inches above the ground. Just enough for her to slide in. Throwing her pack under the empty space, she squeezed through. It was tight, but the Android made it in.

Sweet Gin pulled herself under the iron grating of the warehouse's loading gates. Trading one darkness for another, she passed into the metal shell's forgotten hulk. The strength of the moon and stars in the irradiated sky was scant and barely visible in the dust-choked and wreckage strewn aisles of the storage facility. The mating of dust ensured that much of the light that managed through was nothing more than a soft azure glow patched by thick blackness. Blue spears pierced the darkness and illuminating dancing fractals of dust, as granted by opened eyes in the thick hide of grime in said windows.

The warehouse's interior as well throbbed with a soft mechanical heart beat. Muffled for sure, and choked. But somewhere something popped and sputtered in a distant locked-down corner. It was odd, for sure. Though weak as it was, the past forty-eight hours in the wasteland lead to the cautious fear that it might be something to fear. Or to be careful about.

For all the Android could tell the warehouse was a mess. Stacks of shelving units lay crumpled and crisscrossed across the cement space throwing the formally organized crates against the grounds. There was a soft supple organic reek in the stagnant air. Like that of decay. Whether or not it was the content of the boxes or another matter entirely was a story all its own. Sweet Gin didn't so much care, she felt she needed somewhere to lie down for several moments and let her body catch up.

She clutched blindly into the darkness for her pack, finding a stray strap and hoisting it over her shoulder. Sighing tiredly she carried herself and her gear over the ransacked storage towards the sound of the metallic, yet meaty rumble at the far end. She reached for her belt, lifting back her coat to hold the heavy steel of her 10mm.

She trudged across the semi-open aisles, crossing the wide building. The deeper in she drew the louder and more distinct the mechanical rumbling came. The more guttural and wheezing its rumbling became. Its low speech coming and going in forced and tired cycles. "Grr-vum. Grr-vum Grr-rrr-vum."

And, there was something else. Hidden behind a sheet of tarpaulin and nestled in a cave of collapsed shelves and tipping dividers poured a soft green light. Invisible from the entrance on account of the massed pile of shit around it. But it too pulsed a ghostly green glow to the rhythm of the strange alien beast tucked away somewhere.

Sweet Gin's fingers tightened around the gun, softly drawing back the hammer. She was sure that it was loaded, at least. Stepping around the corner of the accumulated garbage she saw the source of the light.

A softly lit, glowing terminal.

The piece looked to be under the influence of some miracle resting on its aluminum poker table as it hummed weakly away to the tune of the not-to-distant moaning. Its screen brandished a display of CRT black and green. Relaxing her grip on her weapon Sweet Gin apprehensively approached the screen, her head cocked to the side, frowning.

Slumped off to the side of the machine rested the skeletal remains of a man. The limp, torn, and faded rags of a uniform hung from his remains as the bones sat slumped to the side. By a miracle the mummified strands of sinew and blackened cartilage held its form together. An impressive hole had been gouged in the slumping bones head.

Unintroduced and apathetic to the pile of bones, Sweet Gin merely swept it off the chair. It clattered to the ground in a tumble, breaking apart. Anything that was holding it together simply turning to dust and melting away at the impact with the cold cement.

The Android rolled the skeleton's chair closer to her. In the dim light of the CRT light she spied a thick bound cable running from the back-end of the computer terminal and off to a separate office.

It's a generator, she thought to herself. A feeling of ease washed upon her as a sigh escaped her lips and her body loosened. The grumbling and pulsing was merely an effect of a still operational generator.

As well, she felt modestly warm.

Dropping her heavy pack on the ground nearby Sweet Gin uncomfortably turned the chair around to her, sitting down. The metal groaned under her weight and the bearings in it felt as if they would give at any moment and throw her to the floor. But even with the protesting and hanging fear of it giving out, it stayed put.

She put her attention towards the computer. Looking up at the softly glowing screen. Budding curiosity flowered in her as she read its contents. Obviously someone had not remembered to lock it down after use. A memory of the brothel came to mind and the same terminals the bouncers and her pimp, Scrap Daddy used; they were all - at some point or another - always password protected to prevent others access them.

But it's not like she cared then, she remembered. It was merely a recording, let alone a true memory she felt. These past 48 hours have given her memories. Fear, longing, curiosity. What she was beginning to feel now for her past was an after-the-fact.

Like looking at pictures.

Or read log titles.

"Mission parameters." read the top most log. It was also the earliest made entry, with a date of October 22, 2077.

Apprehensively, she tapped the keys to figure out how to work the machine. A number of gibberish in-valid orders crossed the bottom bar of the screen as she mashed strings of random letters and numbers to get it to do something. Or at least anything other than:

"fhbskdjfnw4t090we9fjqwjnaskm”[/center]
”INVALID COMMAND"

Finally, her fingers passed over a key and the screen flickered and its contents stayed. The command bar now read ">USA2000494 (C:) > FRT DEVONS FIELD UNITS > ORDERS > MISSION PARAMETERS"

Sweet Gin blinked in awe as the screen loaded with words. She looked down at her finger held firmly down at the enter button.

At the end of the page load a singular word encased in a green box reading "back" appeared. Sweet Gin lifted her finger away from the enter key as she read the text on screen.

"Field operations are to be dispatched to Worcester County in response to possible liberal commie threat in uprising of local population at indications of a possible PRC nuclear weapons launch. Sources of intelligence are confidential.

"Local units are authorized to use full force to suppress possible liberal-communist sympathizers in the area of Worcester County in conjunction of neighboring regions in a coordinated effort issued by the New England Commonwealth government and local military command. Those of suspected COMMUNIST ideology are to be detained on charges of mounting insurrection against the government of the United States and units are to be on stand by to escort loyal citizens to nearby Vault 21 pending threat of Nuclear Warhead launch from China or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

"Orders are to stand until overridden by the Commonwealth's order from Boston, or from Federal Command in Washington DC."

Sweet Gin cocked a brow and mashed "enter" and arrived back at the list of log entries. This time more tentatively, she pressed keys, eventually finding the set to select the next one down. Titled "Captain Ronald. A - Field Report1". It was dated the same time as the order previous.

”Company B of the 52nd Army of Massachusetts log.

"Unit has secured parameter field position west of Worcester to practice rural patrols and to preemptively take hiding positions before suspected Communist sympathizer refugees evacuate Worcester. The unit has detained Gerald F. O'Maley of Four Clover Storage on charges of conspiring to commit espionage by denying unit access to his property. We have secured the main storage facility and are using it as a field outpost to serve logistical support."

The next file down was a corrupted string of commands and characters which made hardly any sense, which greatly puzzled Sweet Gin. Regardless, it was titled as the second in a series of field reports and dated October 23, 2077. Below that sat a file titled "Incident Report - 24 Oct 2033"

"Company B has requested contact with main core in City of Worcester following nuclear discharge of Chinese origin. Attempts to radio to unit command in city center has gone unheard. We are distributing RAD-X and RADAWAY as needed but do not have supplies to last for a prolonged period and we request a return on our requests.

"Traffic otherwise has been heavy through region as I-90 is reportedly clogged. Majority a foot traffic and Unit field medic is struggling to cope with the demands of refugee populations. General unruliness has been sighted and we are discharging weapons to quell violence and maintain what fragile order we can manage."

Incident Report2 - 26 Oct 2033

"Men's morale is low and we have exhausted our diminutive medical supplies. What the fucking Hell is going on? Worcester is still blacked out and Boston is silent. If we do not get a reply and supplies through then desertion is imminent and we will lose the position!

"I am holding onto the orders as best as I can, but already much of the unit has deserted over the previous night.

"I am also reporting green snow."

"Fuqck it - 24iiehn67 OTIvept 20$$"

"I would like to apologize. To everyone. My wife, son, and commander. My ma' and dad and everyone else. But the state of affairs has run afoul and I feel I am incapable of carrying on.

"I believe I am suffering symptoms of acute radiation exposure. My skin is peeling and I feel nauseous. My head has balded, I can feel it. I can hardly stay awake. I am vomiting up what I never ate. If my medic was here, I am sure he would tell me what I know: I am suffering from some fucking terrible radiation exposure.

"I don't know how they outside are taking it.

"This isn't how I imagine to have died and I would have much rather went how the men in Worcester went. Without ado, I am opting to take myself out here.

"Fuck America, it's dead,
"Captain Ronald. A"

The reports from then on seemed to have went silent for a century or more, with no additional logs tagged into the terminal. The latest set of entries caught Sweet Gin as being especially curious. Not trimmed and formal as the last were. Tentatively, she tapped down to them, and selected the third newest entry. The entry date was crudely corrupted, as was the title.

"AHAHAAHAHAHA FUQ ET BITZES I FOUND TH TERMNAL ND U DIDNT FUQIN CONTZ DUNT KNO HOW DUM U ARE I FUQ RAETERS MUM ALL NIHT YEYEYEYEHUE ND SUKS GOT RONALS ASWIPE EY BT H WUS PUZZY NOT LYK ME

FUG HOW TESE KEYSWURK FUK CITHLIC EDUCATION I DO WHAT I WANT IM BOSS OF DIS GANG

CATH-NAILS4LYF

SUQ IT FATHR BARNBY NIGA PINK CINK QUUR PEDO AZWHIPE."

The vulgarity of the entry was certainly a stark contrast to the previous, more tempered files. Tapping the keys to read the next entries a voice interrupted her. A startling freezing voice, mired in dis-tuned static it came from within and without.

"Sweeet gi-gin." it grumbled into her head, choked up somehow, and having difficulty to breath. Like a uncomfortable beast, disused to speaking, "you owe a debt to some powerful ppeople."

The Android bolted upright from her seat, her mind racing with panic at the sudden sounding of the voice. Her body - or what parts were not the replacement metal - broke out in a clammy, cold sweat. A tense fear and panic crept over her. Her conscious buzzed and raced with a million rats that buzzed with questions. Seeking out where the voice had come from, or where it had intruded.

She scrambled back from the terminal fearing it to be the source of the bitter ghostly voice that spoke in her head. "Who are you? Where are you!" she screamed into the black night in the shell of that old warehouse.

But there was no response. Seconds passed, which stretched intangibly as she waited for an answer, paced about.

"Oi, I think I h'ead something over he'e!" a muffled distant voice yelled. Her head snapped to the far side of the warehouse where the star and moonlight crawled under neath the broken and frozen loading gates. Thin faint shadows paced on the other-side of the gap. A fearful foreboding tinge tickled her spine. Sudden instinct clicking into place she dove for her bag, fumbling through it as she scooped out the collected ammunition and her rifle.

Glancing around the cover of the metal divider she watched with fearful anticipation as figures crawled from under the gates. Their builds were not clear in the dark, scant moon-light. But they looked to be lightly built.

"I have investorss," the voice spoke again in the night, forcing a stiffened fearful squeal from the Android as she shot to the side of the divider, panting heavily with the heavy rifle drawn across her lap. "A-as I have been told, you are rather... ahem, shall we say: valuable." the voice continued as Sweet Gin checked the magazine on her rifle. In the faint sickly green glow of the terminal screen she frowned at the nearly empty mag. Most of it had to be expended in her fight with Lenny, and Logan.

Her breath race as she peeked around the corner at the dark figures creeping around the warehouse. They were thinly spread. And as their shadows blended with that of the clutter she suddenly doubted she'd be able to get enough shots with the rifle to make it worth it.

"I have an obligation to my... your, investors to return you." the voice continued to taunt, "And to the protocols of my 'employers' to return lost android units. And SB-6069, you are a missing asset."

Distraught, Sweet Gin set the rifle aside. Her mind was racing. Not only with dealing with the potential threat on the other-side of her meager divide, but with the intrusion of her own mind. The voice that spoke to her felt like a terrible violation of her being. It was distracting, an-

She remembered, grabbing for her belt she found the familiar bulky weight of the ten millimeter pistol hanging their. Relief floated from her mouth and her breath. She knew for a fact she had plenty of spare clips for the gun tucked into her pack as well, the merchant she had met had seen to that.

She wondered if he was still sore she had taken his stuff like that. A part of her wondered if she should apologize. But that part of her was in the wrong moment as she rummaged through he backpack, sweeping up the extra clips that lay scattered at the bottom. And also, there it was. Barston's gift. His sword.

Pulling it out she wondered what the man's motive was in gifting it to her. But she had to shrug that question off. Maybe if she could ask later she would, provided she got out in one peace, or with a mind left to ask. Both options made her frightful, and the insisting intruder in her head wasn't making it a better thought.

She turned with her gear set on her lap. Quickly she went about putting it together to ready for the coming fight. Rising to her knees she rose the sword and its holster to her belt, desperately fumbling with the ancient locking mechanism to fit it on when the sound of a hard boot on concrete thudded nearby. She stopped in her business, as she slowly turned to the edge of the divider. The faint form of a man stood just on the other-side, the edge of his arm and his stretched and duel shadow falling across the floor from the terminal's glow and the moon. The man looked oblivious, scanning the distance on the other-side of his room, a battered bolt-action rifle hung in his arms as he scanned around.

Fearfully she looked down and saw her own cast shadow lay stretched across the concrete. He would see it any minute. He scanned, looking down.

He saw it.

With a jumping start he turned to meet Sweet Gin square in the eyes. In the electrical green of the computer terminal his eyes glowed a fierce violent red as he rose his arm to his mouth. He began to shout to his comrades as a metallic clang of an action and the hot burst of the android's 10mm rang out in the cavern of the warehouse.

The man's head snapped back before he could finish the first word. A fan of blood opening from the exit wound in the back of his skull as he dropped limply, his body thumping to the cold floor and the rifle clattering to the side. Yells and cries echoed in the warehouse as his companions were put on high alert. Weapon's fire clanged and echoed through the structure. The back of the divider bent and rippled at the impact of bullets as Sweet Gin scrambled away from it, shooting from her feet.

There wasn't time to think now. She needed to run.

Circling from around the cover she rose the pistol in one hand. She dragged the sword around from the straps of its holster.

Spinning from behind her cover VATS activated, sensing a combat situation and began running its basic operations. In its strange digital voodoo magic she could pick out the vague locations of the hostile hunters in the open. Picking out a target for her own VATS kicked into high-gear, feeding the targeting data in real time to her. The wash of input still felt awkward, and its display of targeting data and arithmetic in the peripheral of her vision was off-setting for sure.

She closed her targeting in on the nearest individual and opportunized the scores for his torso. Her handgun sang in a series of loud reports as she fired. Each bullet sang in the cavernous warehouse, and the whistling and buzzing of weapons fire whipped and buzzed around her face with her return fire.

Targeting data dropped at the final shot and the man fell dead in a dark lump. A message flashed in the corner of her vision:

"Targeting cache filled. Wait for restoration." it said, giving a percentage of bites being cleaned from VATS cache.

She was momentarily dropped to being alone in fending for herself as she swung about, emptying the remainder of her clip in the direction of one her pursuers in a darker alcove of the room. She wasn't sure if any rounds hit as she reloaded, ducking between the safety of two heavy shelves leaning against each other.

The space was pitch-black, but for all she could tell there was nothing on either end. She scrambled for the other end, crawling on her hands and knees as she raced forward. Cold sweat dripped from her face. Her breath short and shallow.

Mid-way through, a high-pitched "twang" sounded and she felt the sudden biting hit of a bullet against the metal exoskeleton of her replacement legs. Turning, she fell onto her back and saw on the other end a crouched figure reloading what looked to be another battered rifle.

The android's response was rapid as she rose the handgun and fire several quick shots down the length of the narrow corridor. The figure fell back against the bullets and lay in the rubble.

"I'm sorry!" she bellowed, scrambling more aggressively out the other-side of the tunnel.

Stumbling up she staggered forward. She was closer to the entrance, but she found herself caught up as she collided blindly with a stand of shelves, sending it tumbling with a loud crash against several others opposite. The rusting and rotting storage units crumbled under each other's weight in a stagnant cloud of putrid dust and thunderous booms and vicious clatter.

She staggered back against the cacophony collapse. Then staggered forward again as a sharp biting pain wailed against her back. She spun responsively against the swing, coming face-to-face with a vicious shadow in the moon light that clawed and lunged at her with a devious and demented brilliance. The flash of a old hunk of pipe flashing through the air. Each wing missed as the Android struggled to avoid each attempted blow.

She held her pistol arm against her back as a reflex against the pain that had exploded where the first hit had landed. But as she kept drawing back it wasn't making the situation any better. The attacker kept coming with a savage melee determination. "You'll pay bitch!" he growled and roared as he kept on coming.

The Android backed up against the cold wall, pinning herself between a the two as the male hunter ran forward, the pipe raised over his hand. Sweet Gin had to act fast.

Operating merely at desperation, she ran herself forward off of the wall. Holding the pummel of Barston's crude sword out as she charged against the man. With a hefty plunger she drover herself at him, jamming the plunt pummel into the gut of the assailant and eliciting a wet choked "umph" as it punched into his tender belly. Throwing her weight Sweet Gin tossed him aside onto the ground. He landed with a grunt and a crunch as he landed on some forgotten trash in the corner.

"I HOPE YOU LIKE THE SIGHT OF YOUR OWN BLOOD, DAMN IT!" he cursed behind her as she tried to make her escape.

She didn't make it far as the man's pipe flew through the air, catching her in the shoulder. The metal knocked against the metal and flesh at the transition between flesh and steel. She squeaked in shock, recoiled and spun against the impact. Just in time to see him rocket back to his feet and take his charge to ram the Android.

Sweet Gin had to act quick, and took the only weapon she had confidence that it would not need reloading. She didn't know how many rounds were in the 10mm as she drew Barston's sword with pistol in hand. The blade sang as the metal vibrated against that of the scabbard. The moon light flashing a soft silver-blue off the beaten blade as it sailed through and cleft the air in its way in two.

It was the same way with the charging man. Blindly he threw himself into the path of the sword, likely not expecting it. There was a crimson flash of red as the prince's sword drew an liquid arch through the air from the man's chest. With a weak gurgle he came to a standstill, falling across Sweet Gin and dragged his bloody self down her body as he fell with a weak slouch. There was a wet wispy gurgle as he collapsed to the ground at her feet.

Sweet Gin didn't have much time to check him over as she backed off and bolted for the door. She managed a weak whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm sure you'll be OK!" as she moved along.

The final assailant wove from the other end of the warehouse into a band of blue moon light with what looked like some kind of automatic weapon. The Android could only work on fate as she rose the 10mm and dispatched the final hunter. Washing the warehouse into a state of silence once again.

She tumbled back from the warehouse. Tossing down her pack on the ground she rose her handgun towards the doors, hands quivering and her breath quickened as she stared down the great rusted iron doors. A still silence bristled in the cool night air, giving no yield.

"What do you want!" Sweet Gin screamed at the empty warehouse, her voice quacking with shock and fear. Tears welled on her tongue as it pooled in the corner of the android's eyes.

"Come on, dammit!" she screamed, sobbing. Nothing responded from inside, and a cold dusty wind rolled down through the hills. She sniffed stiffly, returning the handgun to its place. But her steps were still measured and cautious as she gazed back into the shadowy darkness of the forgotten hulk with the sputtering and coughing guts. Pulling up her pack she shuffled on from. Still awry with the emotional acrobatics of having escaped.

Was this terror?

For the rest of that night Sweet Gin wandered towards her destination. The thought of being ambushed again weighing heavily on her mind as he churned frightened. A sea of caution washed against her as she waded through the fearful darkness. Apprehensive at every step that the voice might speak to her again. Afraid that something could again come from the corner of her vision, or from behind the many towering, dead trees that surrounded her to harass the android.

She felt her body twitch at every step. Jump at the suggestion of a crackling stick. The night was cold, and the darkness was colder. The shadows a watchful shadowy knife that cut through her psyche. Before, walking had just been a means for travel. Now it felt a means to escape. Fighting now was beginning to feel like such a thing. She had fought to escape the house of her kidnapper, her second master. To stop him from raping her and to find out exactly what she was. What life was.

She'd fought, in a sense, to escape Worcester. And she fought to escape the warehouse. Now she walked to escape the thought of being hit again. She was fleeing a slow moving ghoul. A monster in the darkness, silent as the clouds and stars that mired the darkness of the sky, and that weak silver moon.

It was just... Where was the threat?

It felt shapeless, looked shapeless. But sounded like it had form. It was a something, somewhere. Was it someone back in Boston calling her home? Could the Institute do it? Or was it some unchecked, fragmented drive? Could it have been closer? That terminal? The unknown to this was a playful restless thing. It was frightened her more. What it wasn't.

The android kept moving until day broke over the horizon and the world was again washed with a soft orange glow. The chill struggled to remain as the sky was painted with brilliant shades of pink, oranges, and reds. Long shadows were thrown westward as a eastern beacon came to a great light. And with its rise, so did the signs of civilization. Tempered and slow at first. But gaining greater strength as a familiar network of suburbia opened up.

If this was to mean anything, she was coming close.

Sweet Gin gave a careful look to the east, scanning the tinning rotting down and charcoal masts that dotted the blasted rocky hillsides for the sign of life. To see if there were any pursuers. But on the hills, there were none.

A relief crawled over her. But it wasn't a warm calming feeling. It was uneven, cynical. But it was a breath to her, and as it quenched the distraught unease reigning her the notion she was still sore came back.

And she was surrounded by her pickings of private accommodations for a brief rest.

***

The door to the weather battered ranch crumpled with a firm kick. Splinters of wood showering inward at the force of the metal foot sent sailing through. The flimsy poly had not endured the ages well. The manicured look it once had had been reduced to strips of yellowing white paint on graying, hollowed wood. And as the splinters fell to a rest on the dusty welcome mat inside it yielded to its visitor.

Sweet Gin pressed through the door to the home's interior. The rays of the morning sun flowing in like a golden band, giving the android a firm yellow halo that enveloped her. The metal of her arms were illuminated with the morning's light, and shone throughout the desolate foyer.

The dust that had accumulated on the windows in a thick sheet shone in the familiar golden tones of morning, transposing the same warm sheen across the entire house. Floors and walls were all dressed in a vibrant yellow overlay. The gray despair of the centuries washed away, if only for a fleeting moment.

Like the other homes and structures Sweet Gin had stolen into the house carried the same depressing rotting musk that came with the environment. The air was adrift with the motes of dust swept up from the aging carpet. The accumulating dirt and debris of ages worth of silting decay. The air smelled and tasted of asbestos and thick plaster. But it would need to do.

Out of pure unnecessary formality Sweet Gin shut the door behind her with her foot. Though with its lock broken it merely squealed till it hit the stops before softly swinging back, the rust of its hinges finally holding its closure fast.

She was still sore, without a doubt. Her torso ached and gnawed at her, making it all the more prevalent she lay down to allow the biological - if however synthetic it was - rest and catch up. And as far as she could tell standing in the door, neither the living room to her right, or the dining room to the left of the foyer held any hopes of a place to comfortably lay down.

And so, she set off into the home.

In the back of the house she found a set of two bedrooms. By some depressing curse the mattress of one bed had been stolen from the frame, but based on its size Sweet Gin surmised it would have been too small for her anyways. And the decor and trinkets that lay scattered across the floor suggested that its occupant was a youth: scattered toy soldiers and blocks littered the floor, old rotting posters of a monkey named Jangles (who was pictured riding what appeared to be a missile while wearing a large fish-bowl helmet).

The next room, tucked in the far corner looked to be more in the android's accommodations. The mattress - though half-thrown on the floor - had fortunately not been looted. She took it as a blessing, smiling as she walked towards the bed-frame, pulling the tattered spring mattress back up with a strong heave.

She was about to lay down before she looked up. Opposite her side of the bed stood a large oval mirror. Though coated in a thin layer of grime her reflection shown clearly. And in it, the tattered remnants of her clothes made apparent. She felt... was it sadness? Remorse at the condition of her clothes?

It was maybe forty-eight hours since she had fought Logan and Bill. In that course, the greater condition of her dress had gone unnoticed. Great burns mired the legs of her jeans, ratting the edges and stretching up the length of her side and to the belt, itself melted and cut by the duel efforts of Logan and Bill no doubt. Her undershirt had suffered burns, and the skin of her stomach poked through. Dust, dirt, mud, and maybe some blood had managed to cake into her clothes.

She set her pack on the bed and crawled over it to the mirror, whipping off the grime and examining the full extent of the damage in the mirror. Maybe if she had noticed sooner - or cared - she may have gotten something before leaving Worcester. But then again, she also doubted it. The prince seemed only willing to part with the sword.

How valuable were clothes anywhere? And why did so many wasteland residents seem to wear so little? Was dressing like the other residents of the brothel she once called a home the only thing they could manage? Perhaps it was why the men under Barston and his father's command or the merchant wore better clothes, they were better off.

The thought was puzzling and strange to say the least and she put it aside. The last thing she wanted was to be as she was back in Boston. The humiliation and shame of the realization had her swear that much and she scanned the room looking for something to wear.

And standing alongside the mirror was a large dresser, its door cracked open and old fabrics under neath just barely visible in the faint morning light of the grimy windows.

The contents of the dresser were hardly much and what was left felt like the remnants of someone picking through them. Gaps on the rack had been left behind, leaving a random assortment of coats and shirts behind. Wrapped up pairs of pants lay at the bottom drawers. But all the same Sweet Gin went through them. Holding them against her body in the mirror to compare.

The raid didn't last long and she had tossed a couple of sets of pre war clothing onto the bed. Smiling satisfied she looked at the outfits. Either a shirt or two would replace her old under shirt, or she could maybe rig something together.

Could she, she thought?

Looking back at the raided dresser she found nothing else in there. Nothing she figured she could use. She spun a circle on her toes and found by the door a desk with another mirror affixed to it. She sprung over to it, ripping through the drawers, and raiding the contents. In the bottom of the drawer next to a box of bobby pins sat a spool of nylon thread, and what looked to be a rusted needle. A spark of inspiration lit in her eyes and she stole them up greedily, quite literally jumping onto the bed with her prize. She giggled playfully as she bounced on the rusted springs, which moaned under the weight of the android.

Grabbing a green shirt from the pile she looked it over, and back down to the holes that were left in her own. With a proud smile, she set it down and removed her coat and the harnesses that held his pistol to her side. Pulling up her shirt she removed it and placed it down on the bed alongside the new donor shirt.

Her torso was patched with a series of purple and fading bruises that shone under her pale skin. The light of the morning shone in the dust across her supple breasts, and the scar that cut between them from an old client had a partner in a form of a small bruise. The spine on her back was accompanied by bruises all the same, heavy dishpan sized dark marks from where Bill had thrown her onto her back and where the bulk of her pain came from.

Sweet Gin tore into the looted shirt with her hands. The metal of the fingers doing well enough to remove chunks for patching. Though it hardly matched her own. And with chunks torn off, she threaded them on, having to of course learn the fine skill of determining the needle's function.

With a satisfied smile she finished the job and lifted up the renewed shirt. Green patches crudely stitched onto a white shirt. At least it looked wearable. She sat in the bed, facing the mirror. Raising the shirt she hung it before her, seeing how it'd work; acting on a vague recollection of perhaps having watched one of the biological, real human courtesans admire actual clothes they had picked up.

She cupped it to her breast, only to have it pulled down to gravity, past her sweat cherry nipples. Then holding it to her waste as she admired her work. In so far as the android could tell, she had not maimed the shirt's size, and it pleased her.

She threw it aside and twisted onto her side to check the side of her jeans. Her back cracked and a flow of relief shot through her at the sound. A refreshing wave of euphoria at the breast of a new cold wind. It was something she thought she didn't need, and it did plenty to subside the growing aches between her shoulders.

The jeans were much in the same way, so removed them to work on them. Sitting naked and cross-legged on the ancient mattress as she dug into the least fairer of the two pants she decided upon.

The work went about as well as the shirt, and came to the same results. A patch - looking like it didn't ever belong - sewn along the side of her old jeans. She tried to justify it with how they fit, and all the same put it into her clothes pile, allowing her to fall back freely against the bed, arm wrapped around the bulk of her pack.

Laying down felt good, it was a relief. And she stood staring up into the grimy ceiling planning out the rest of her dead. Her directional way point flashed in the corner of her vision on the compass. More fiercely than before. She was probably close now. But what she'd find would be a mystery all it own.

But lying here on the bed, even with the spring pressing against her back, was a refrain from the journey. The goals always be there. And she'd no doubt have to fight to it, or run from danger to arrive there.

Collecting her thoughts, she thought back to Worcester. Would these ruins - Springville - be has degenerate as Worcester? Choked with the shambling ghouls she'd been so aptly introduced to? They frightened her. The wet snarling of their voices was almost bestial. The way they moved. It was as if someone had gone in and simply uninstalled their drivers, or destroyed some part of their motherboard. Their chassis in a state of disrepair beyond anything the android had known.

She wondered if they could be fixed. Have the people she fought been repaired yet? She wondered if they had at least caught her words before passing into emergency shut down. She knew she could do that much, it had happened to her when she lost her limbs.

She scratched her breast as she recollected. Turning her head from the ceiling to down. Coming to a door. A closet door. Had she noticed it before? Then again, she was too sore to care, and was too preoccupied to notice.

She rolled over onto her side, the metal of her arms pressed cold against the exposed naked skin of her torso. A sense of curiosity came over her, and she sat up off the bed and made for the door.

It came open easily enough and revealed itself to be empty. But hanging on a lone hanger on the far end was something over looked. A white and light looking shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of short cut pants laying on the floor underneath. Whoever had abandoned the home, or raided it, looked over the garment that hung there. And Sweet Gin, being new, held it in curious fascination. Despite the yellowing and graying of the fabric, it still looked relatively new. She reached out with a gentle hand, and softly pulled it from the hanger.

The top draped from her hand lightly, the polyester allowing itself to be handled at her fingers as she pulled it to her. And lacking feeling fingers, she pressed it to her chest, softly stroking it along her skin. It was soft, despite the age. And comfortably warm, in a sense.

An inspiration to put it on came over her. Throwing it on, she allowed it to fall over her shoulder. It was loose fitting, but unlike her old top was soft as it fall about her. The peaks of her nipples just showing under the curve of the fabric. The open neck was secured with a simple tie that fell in behind and across her breast.

It was something that felt good, if looked delicate. She reached for the bottom half, shaking the dust that had accumulated on it from the unknown length of time it had laid there and stepped into those. All together, those parts that could fell agreed that what she was in, was comfortable. Soft and warm, and flowed across her body with a soft satin quality. She fell back into the bed with it on and rolled in the pleasure of the new euphoria it brought, the comforting warmth as it gently hugged her.

Sweet Gin lay on the bare battered mattress. Her head propped against her backpack. Sitting in her lap lay her radio, the one that had once been the merchant's. The same merchant she had robbed to get her clothes, and much of her gear.

Its face glowed a pale amber orange as the weak lights in it glowed and flickered as a soft static song flowed like a river from its speakers. And with it on, the android played with its dials. Surfing through a sea of static and altering its volume. The tone and depth of the static energy changing as the plastic dial marched back and forth across the interface, reaching out to frequencies and wave-lengths long dead. As well is this, the force of the white noise ebbed and flowed with a organic rhythm as she toyed at the volume. Blasting it to the force of an electronic cascade, then toning it to a watery trickle, barely audible above the natural pops and groans of the homes frame-work as time marched on deeper in the mid-day.

The song of static was not destined for eternal amusement and soon she grew bored with conducting the deep distortions of the empty noise-filled airwaves and picked the device up to examine its face more. Looking for something new to interact with and coax new things out. On the bottom a duct-tape coated compartment housed the batteries and the radio shut off immediately when she removed the small fission battery from the bottom cell. The radio popped back on as soon as she wired it back in, and sealed the tape back on.

Rotating it, the side faces bore nothing of interests, only a rubbed off plate stamped into the bottom decried the manufacturer - which had long been rubbed out - as well as a possible name of a former owner, written in faded marker; it too was indecipherable from the years. The back-end though, had much more in the way of interesting toys.

Which was to say a switch.

The modules which would have noted what it was for had long since eroded, but Sweet Gin knew for certain it did not have to be the power, that was on its front-face as she found. Curious, she turned it against her exposed belly and flipped the plastic knob. Immediately the tone of the white-noise transformed from a low wet gurgle to a scratched, gnarled roar. At the sound, Sweet Gin's head felt as if it was bursting and she flinched and squirmed at the horrible monstrosity of the sound now exploding from the radio.

With a hurried smack she flipped the radio back.

Sitting up Sweet Gin rubbed her head. Even with the atrocious sound severed it still pounded and split from the echoes of its choir. Frowning, she gave the radio a sour look. "Bad!" she said.

As the echoes faded and sensibility restored, she did wonder if anything existed across the band if she did flip the switch. Turning and twisting the knob continued to reveal nothing as it currently stood. Holding the volume knob, she toned down the watery static to a dull whisper, then reached behind the radio again, this time ready.

She grit her teeth and shut ere eyes tight as her fingers passed over it. There was a click, and the high-pitched static resumed, but not to the grating ferocity it was before. The android relaxed. With an iffy breath, she turned the tuning knob.

As with last time, the pitch and tone of the static shifted delicately as the dial turned and swept across the face. But unlike last time, something changed.

As the interface drew to the far left of the band, a discernible pattern whispered in the static. A sound, moving with a tone not so random and garbled. Mired at first by the overlaying mask of nonsense and nothing. She smiled, astonished at the discovery. The changing patterns to a discernible form egged her on wards and she chased it till it became music.

"Race hatred can not stop us!" a voice sand strong and sure as the clarity of the station came to light. Plinking and tinking of some instruments, something accompanied in behind him, "This one thing we know, your poll tax and Jim Crow, and greed has got to go! You're bound to lose. You fascists bound to lose!" he cheered lyrically.

The song continued to hop and bop and Sweet Gin couldn't help but bob a foot up and down. The singer and his company singing up and down the lines. Going through the chords with such a powerful gusto, a strength and determination. A spirit of provocativeness wound its way in the song.

And even though Sweet Gin did not understand what a Fascist was, or the freedom by which the song so stalwartly sang to uphold, she could not be helped to be entrapped by its mysticism. And as quickly as the fade-out came, and it came to a silence a spike of anger was driven into her. "Hey!" she scowled, "I want this again! Play it aga-"

She was cut off as from the speakers a new speaker spoke up. Different in all ways to the man who had sung previously and with a certain clear voice. A certain vibe vibrated in his tongue as he spoke, "Good afternoon children!" he said laughing, "We just got finished listening to a bit of Woody Guthrie there and I must extend my congratulations to old Mark Wilburd from all the way up the River in Holy for finding these vinyls for us all, and I must say: they still cut like a woman's words when they leave you.

"And b'ahthehs and sistehs I think we have a special occasion for playing this song fo' all of you. As it would seem, the titties of the Institute ah' fo'eveh in a knot and heuhd from some experts in the field they ah' out on these roads today ladies, men, and synthetic pah'sons of all make and model.

"Yes, the Hollehing Connie has your backs and if any of you in the R'ailroad ah'e in I would suggest keeping off. We last spotted some dumb fools out on the Boston Ninety between he'e and that damn Wohm. So if you'e on your way t'ough that co'dou, be suae to submit to some checking.

"But we'e just checking the weathe fo' you, that's all. So those sto'm clouds hanging out down the'e can move along. We'e well onto you.

"But, let's turn to something bette child'en: the weather. Yes indeed. Right now it's a pleasant dry fuck-you with a chance for sunbuin so keep those hoods and hats on if you'e a sensitive type or not a ghoul. Don't need you to catch a bu'n. But at least this has kept the Lu'ks of Quabbin down unde', but it's not to say to stop keeping a distance. It's nasty up the'e class 'oom.

"And don't worry all you wande'ahs who need a b'eak o' a 'oad to f'ehdom, The Saint Mothah's Mission of Ch'ist's Child'en is still open fo' business. O' if you'e one of those fancie' folks: the old Diocese Cathedahl down on Elliot and Edwahd's.

"So in hono' of all you' quests of salvation etahnal or physical - whichever you'd pehfe' - he'e's a bit in that mission's honor. Something more f'om that collection f'om Holy up north. Woody Guthrie's Jesus Ch'ist.

"Fine collection, I must add again." the voice said in finish. he inflection on his voice suggested that he was smiling heavily. There was a soft pop and a soft pillowy hush sung over the radio as a different song played.

Sweet Gin listened to it hushed. As it played on, she figured it would be time to move on. She sat up off the bed, and feeling how the soft satin hugged her breasts pondered if she would really have to remove it. Smiling a bit, she opted that she didn't need to, and simply put her old clothes on over top, and packed up the rest.

***

The day burned with the usual heat as the lone android strolled through the decimated suburbs, ahead of her the directional icon blinked on her compass.

Rows of petite and sleepy homes lay along both her sides. Their faces blasted, and roofs shattered and collapsing. Nothing moved in the suburban desert, and only the wind rattled through the tired cars along the road's sides. Several had the distinct appearance that a fate more foul had befell them, and the hulls of wrecked autos lay split wide-open, spilling a mangled nest of distorted and melted engine through the hoods and onto the streets. But for all the walking, these were the only bodies.

Soon after having left her temporary den the android came to a bridge the passed over a dried-out river bed. What little water that trickled through the stones was a sickly muddy green. Looking down at the water she stopped to shine a curious stare at the shifting colors of the water as it caught the rays of the sun. Very softly on the black-green muck that trickled down hill shone a soft sheen of rainbow colors. The bands twisted in muddy rings as it flowed ever gently away, down hill to the west.

The bridge that crossed the sickly waters was in no better repair. The concrete had been shattered into jagged slabs, barely held up by the stressed and rusting spears of rebar that twisted through its super-structure. At its middle point the center had given way and fell into the creek-bed, damming it up and building up a heavy, thick puddle of the polluted mess. What replaced it instead were long planks of graying and twisted planks of wood, reinforced with equally terrible sheets of metal and assorted masses of centuries-old refuse. For what it was worth to whomever laid it there, it held and Sweet Gin continued on along the road.

The condensed mazes of roads lined with the packed-in homes of the old city didn't lend much help in way of navigation as Sweet Gin kept through the city. By the will of age and entropy, much of the landscape had collapsed in on itself, turning Springville into a loose net of rubble and decay that was reminiscent of Worcester. Attempts at high-rising apartments and offices and broken and fell in over the street or against each other. And the journey through the so-called Worm was called back in memory, as an apprehensive Sweet Gin crept through the urban landscape with her gun drawn, poised to fend of any ghouls.

But despite her freshmen fears, the ruins held their silence.

A silence that would be broken all the same. Making her way through and closer to her objective the android found herself passing through a intersection. Somewhere between a coffee shop, book store, fish mark, and automotive repairs; all gutted and empty. The shattering of the silence erupted in the din with a sudden crack from the buildings, and Sweet Gin recoiled as a low-caliber bullet pinged off of her arm.

Something inside of her jumped and skipped a beat as she stepped back. A second shot fired and she ducked down as the air above her cracked as a passing bullet whizzed just above her ear. Her body became tense and she began searching for the origin of the shot.

In the darkened light of the coffee shop she saw the bright yellow flash of muzzle fire as another round for the mysterious aggressor sounded and the asphalt under her foot popped with the shot.

Her foot shot up in reflex, even if it had no sensation of pain.

There was another wild missing shot that passed far to wide to matter and Sweet Gin's pistol was in the air. She sneered with the pistol held up and VATS activated, directing its data at a darkened form in the store-front. She could tell even the program was guessing someone was there with the low amount of data it was presenting, activating merely on the virtue that there was something originating from where.

Regardless of its meek details Sweet Gin could let the offense go responded to and the 10mm pistol kicked back in report as she opened fire. The face of the store around the window burst with flashes of recoils against metal as bullets sparked against the metal frame and sparked against sheeting in the back. A shallow, weak scream of pain echoed in the quiet of Springfield as a bullet struck the strange figure within.

The action falling on an empty clip VATS deactivated and Sweet Gin ran on the store-front, strafing the side as she reloaded her handgun and drawing to the gnarled glass-less door that was its entrance.

Shots were fired again from the window as whomever laid in wait there tried to fight off the blundering Android. Reloading another clip, she raised to fire another volley of fire into the window in return. The attacker's shots ceased as he took cover from Sweet Gin's closer-range fire and as she managed to go for the door.

Disregarding the formalities of opening it, the android stepped through the empty glass and into the darkness. Her eyes re-concentrated and VATS was able to collect rapid data on her attacker, a grizzled and sparse looking man who was just beginning to turn on her with a beaten, black revolver.

With data on her side, Sweet Gin moved with far more certainty than he did and lined up for the best possible angle at his chest and her semi-automatic sang with fire as a shot hit him and tore into his breast. Blood and bone blossomed up and his body instantly limped as he let out a wet gurgle.

"Don't do that again, dammit!" she spat as the man crumpled to the ground and let out one last gurgle as he hit the floor.

With him still, Sweet Gin approached him, kneeling down alongside his body. She pulled his gun out of his dead hands. "I don't want you using this against me again." she scolded with an unironic glare.

She turned him over, and pulled his holster off of him, "I don't doubt you'll get another anyways." she sighed standing up. Turning to the door she was set to leave with a little pride in her accomplishment. But froze solid as out in the bright sun lone figures walked in towards her.

"'Ey, Bootch!" a voice called out, "Did that bitch finally pass t'rou he'e?"

Sweet Gin looked out at the men, then down at the body, presumably Butch. The crushing force of perhaps having committed an error tackled her with the collective strength of a hundred ghouls. She mumbled incoherently under her breath backing up, fiddling Butch's gun nervously in her hands. Panic and confusion tormented her and she hemmed and hawed in the middle of the old gutted building. The dance of panic turned to outright fear as her fingers danced over the revolver and accidentally compressed the trigger. The gun reported with a loud bang as the round slammed into the pitted linoleum.

Outside, the new figures became very angry. "Shit! Butch!" screamed one of them and a strafing line of fire brushed along the side of the building. Sweet Gin ducked as the automatic fire brushed through the windows and tore through the dry wall on the far-side, turning it into a dusty cloud. Sweet Gin lay on the ground, rocking in inescapable fear as the shooting intensified on her position.

The pattering of their weapons died off. Empty magazines. "Al'ight, get in the'e an' clean that fuck that shot Butch dammit!"

Sweet Gin looked up to see the tattered forms of three individuals charging forward with their guns raised. Without hesitation running for the door. Acting fast the android threw herself on her side, grabbing for what she could and picking up the revolver. As the first person rounded through the door a she fired a shot and a spray of blood burst from his knees as the dechambered bullet cut through his kneecap, sending him splaying to the ground in an agonizing lurch. The second man stumbled over his fallen comrade, fighting to keep himself up as he reached down to pick up his comrade.

As well, the android saved no bullet for him in his fear and the revolver reported with two loud roars, one for his hand above the wrist, and the other ground through his shoulder. The back side of him erupting in a spray of gore the size of Sweet Gin's fist. The final man turned to act smart, swinging his gun around. His assault rifle was chambered, spraying a line across the empty darkness as he trained his eyes towards Sweet Gin laying on the ground.

The data was still on though, and her gun was raised in his direction. The cylinder emptied on him, and his swollen, pitted face went limp as the android's bullet cut clear through his neck. With a more fantastic display, he collapsed in a crumpled heep over top his two partners, the injured one calling out in more pain and fear as his body joined the building pile on his legs.

"Oh Jesus you cunt!" the man on the ground swore. His face pale from the blood loss and the fear. He gave Sweet Gin a toothy snarl, showing off his discolored and mismatched teeth. He reached out for his weapon. Rage burned deeper onto his face as the android beat him to it, swinging out with her hand and smacking it to the side.

"Shit!" he swore, weakly pounding his fist on the floor.

"I suppose you can just as well reactivate your friends when it's all done." Sweet Gin shrugged getting up.

"What the Hell are you talking about you crazy bitch?" snarled the injured man as he continued to struggled out of his dead-weighted prison and find a weapon. But the android quickly swatted them away, and planted a firm foot on him as she leaned out to look at the door.

Outside, the remaining man was on his way over. A rather large gun slung over his shoulder. And for the looks of it, he was rather well armed. VATS seemed to agree, giving a less hopeful readout on anything but his head.

The revolver went up, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. A sharp spike of fearful realization slide itself through he at the empty chamber. She threw the gun down and instead reached for her 10mm, but it was lying on the floor. Blood drained from her face and she gawked at where it lay. She looked back at the man. Somehow he still hadn't noticed her, but he was getting close enough she could make out the scowl on his burned out and sore-pocked face.

His paced quickened and he leveled his gun. He had noticed her. Sweet Gin was about to bound aside as the first tracer round from his large automatic rifle lit up the early afternoon air. But as soon as it opened up, it closed as someone ran up behind him, dropping the weight of what looked to be a gulf club onto his head.

With a loud "Oof" that could only be best accompanied by the loud crack of metal on skull the armored man fell limply to the ground as his assailant jumped around to alongside him, raising the club over and over him as she wailed down on the raider, screaming, "Ya damn cracka-ass dipshits thought you could do it!" she taunted, "You thought'cha could! You thought'cha could!"

With one last resoundant swing the club fell back one last time onto the back of his head with a satisfyingly wet smack, at least to the strange new woman. Breathing heavily, she whipped her brow. "I be gettin' to old fe this." she laughed. She looked up to where he was going, seeing the startled and puzzled Sweet Gin, "Well how you be missy?" she asked.

"Are you going to fight me?" Sweet Gin asked the strange woman as she prodded the limp body of the man with her gulf club. The inky sheen of blood coated the head.

The woman was old. Her blackened face was mired by defined wrinkles. Her eyes were haloed with age, but still the same shone with a light all its own from her green irises. Her head had been shaved, but the hair still rested atop her head in a pillow of black.

Much like the men who had assaulted her, this new woman was dressed in a beaten down and basic set of clothes turned armor. Thick battered leather had been riveted or sewn into a jacket tied against her aging body with leather. By her hips, recycled steel plates shielded her thigh.

She looked up at the android with a weak grandmotherly smile and said, "Well you be a Prot?" she asked.

"I'm not sure I know what that is." said Sweet Gin.

"Then you don't be any trouble wit' me." she said proudly, raising the golf club up onto her shoulder and beaming warmly.

"She's a black devil!" a voice shouted from deeper in derelict coffee shop, "Don't listen to her lies!"

Sweet Gin looked back at the crippled man still pinned under the bodies of his fallen comrades. He had half turned to look up and his pale broken face was twisted with a deep scowl. And despite being trapped, he was still struggling for the guns.

"You gon' finish that sweetie?" the black woman asked.

"Ah-," Sweet Gin asked uncertain, stepping aside to let the woman aside, "Why?"

The newcomer just winked at her as she took a position before the man who looked deftly up at her. A moment of silence between the two passed before he began struggling futilely to get away. The woman's golf club was arcing high over her head, and then it was dropping.

It dropped with the speed and force of lightning. The raider, too trapped to escape, took a full face of old iron with a resounding wet smack. Sweet Gin squirmed at the sickening thump of the club into his face as bone and cartilage shattered under its dramatic swing. He recoiled limb against the ground, gasping between broken teeth for breath. He coughed, blood flowing thickly from his mouth.

The golf club went up over the woman's head again. And arcing her whole body put her entire weight into the swing and brought it down a second time. The smack exploding with an even louder thudding, wet pound as it fell against his head. The skull cracked and collapsed with a meaty pop. Sweet Gin recoiled against the sound, whatever parts of her squirming at the sound.

The club came back up, dripping with the man's blood. He lay on the ground, his head a popped cherry.

"Someone will clean them up." the woman said, shaking off the end of the club. "Name's Dinah. Who you be?"

“Well, people call me Sweet Gin...” she said uncomfortable. That distant voice of her old captor echoed in her head. “I'm well...”

“Ah'n Synth?” Dinah finished for her, smiling. It was... polite, warm.

“Yeah...” Sweet Gin said nervously.

"So how'dcha girl like you get out?" Dinah asked as she walked down the city street. Her golf club propped casually on her shoulder. Blood caked itself into the ridges and indents that covered its face.

"What do you mean?" Sweet Gin asked confused.

Dinah turned her head about, shooting the android a fuzzy sort of humored look. She shook her head, giving her a rattling laugh. A sort of grandmotherly laugh, "I know who you be." she said, "An' no one around with arms like t'ems girl. I know yer a synt'etic woman. So how you get out, bound to be know heavy lifter fer sure."

"Well I," she began, her voice quivering nervously. "I don't really know."

"Sure ya do." Dinah said, "So your pimp leave the door open after he bumped you around a bit? Gotta be someone's property."

"You seem to know a bit about me..." Sweet Gin admitted sheepishly and ashamed.

"Girl, you live 'ere an you see a lot of androids like you here." she smiled again, "T'is be a stop on t'e railroad."

"I think I heard that much."

Dinah paused on a street corner. Dropping the head of the club to the cement as she leaned against the side of a rusted out light-post. The over-head lamp bent and curled over into a disfigured curled finger. "Ain't be here ot'erwise." Dinah grinned, "So, how'd you get out? Who owned ya, maybe I'd know the name. I got around a lot too when I was as pretty as you be."

"Oh, well..." Sweet Gin stammered, "I guess I was owned by a, uh, Scrap Daddy." she said, her face flushed red with energetic shame. Her artificial guts tightened at the invocation of his name.

"Oh really!?" Dinah said excitedly, "Sheit, I knew dat coon when he be Eddie." she laughed, leaning off of the pole and continuing down the streets, "Sold me and my old crew a lot of jet he did. Fried my brain, so I can't say I have the sharpest memory of him.

"But lawdie!" Dinah sand loudly, "Did he have a loud voice. And a damned dick to match. I still get sore."

"Oh, that, sounds like him. I guess." Sweet Gin said apprehensively.

"So how been t'at nigga?" Dinah asked, "He still screwing himself on Psycho?"

"I don't know." Sweet Gin responded, flat honesty riding on her tongue. It was probably one of the least shameful things she knew about her former master.

"Ah, right. I see." Dinah nodded, "So you be Scrap Daddie's girl. What t'en?"

"Well, I got my arms and legs busted."

"An' you got new ones!" admired Dinah.

"I can't exactly remember how." the android admitted, "I was in emergency shut down when they were replaced and remained that way on-and-off until I was chained up in someone's basement."

"So someone snaps Eddie's bitch and he pays t'e Institute to fix yea. An' you got pulled out?"

"Feels right by me." the android shrugged.

"And by me." the old black woman smiled, stopping alongside a run-down shack. Plates of metal and plywood hung off the crudely erected structure as it braced itself against the side of a rundown building. Struts rested on the bare concrete or were rammed down the storm drains. It stood, hanging out into the middle of the road, as a kaleidoscope of refuse with a single door set in its face.

"Come on in and sit for a bit." Dinah invited approaching the door, "Perhaps I can help ya out down t'e railroad."

***

The rattled door closed with a rough clatter behind Sweet Gin as she stepped in behind Dinah. The "home" behind was a deteriorating mess of wood and rusted signs tacked to the side of the walls. Graying and deformed wooden planks lay crisscrossed across the floor, covering the dirt and concrete below it. And even without a wind, the house rattled and groaned on its own weight.

"I would be living in t'e home alongside." Dinah said with a sad smile, "But t'e whol t'ing had fallen in on itself. Or, well, most of it."

"So why be here?" Sweet Gin asked, admiring the cobbled-together shack with a withheld horror.

"Why would I be anywhere?" Dinah laughed, "T'is about a good a place as any. Besides, any caravan that be passin' t'rough stops 'ere sometimes and I can do my groceries then and not worry about goin' to Heaven's Gate. Sometimes."

"I'm afraid I don't understand." Sweet Gin mumbled, scanning the rest of the shack. Disheveled furniture lay scattered over the make-shift floor. In a darkened corner a rusted bed with a stained and charred mattress rested.

"Didn' t'ink you would." Dinah sighed, sitting down at a grimy laminated-top table. "So what you expectin' now after?"

"Expecting what?" Sweet Gin asked, turning to an strangely empty corner. A stand of conduit with a precariously placed outlet sat at the top. A fission battery sat on the floor to the side. "And is there something that's supposed to be there?" the android asked, pointing to the corner.

"Can't pass anyt'ing on you girl." Dinah asked, "Yes, suppose I did a week ago."

"Oh..." mumbled the Android, "What was it?"

"You sure be liking questions." the old woman smiled, "Used to have an working ice-box there."

"Ice box?"

"Somet'in the people before The War used to keep things cool. T'inking the Prots on Fuller street went and took it. T'ey be wanting to kill me for a while."

"How come?"

"Because I be a Cath." Dinah laughed, a broken and rattled laugh. As rough as the charred and gnarled trees that littered the landscape outside, "We just be feudin' for longer t'en I can remember. 'Haps longer t'en the world's been burnt. All t'at be now be that we bot' be hating on each ot'er.

"But I'm too tired." Dinah sighed, "An' too old. I imagine I could pick apart t'em youn'uns enough to walk up to my old freezer-keeper. But draggin' it out be a whole new mess of t'ings. T'ey have twenty young strappin' cracka's and negroes an' I'm jes a woman on her own."

"What about me?" Sweet Gin asked.

Again, the same laugh. The way Dinah looked at Sweet Gin suggested she only had the warmest regard for the young android. And not for anything cruel. She found, if anything, her innocence endearing, "Girl, even wit' arms an' legs like t'em I wouldn't give ye to t'e front door of t'ere home. Or passed t'er church. It just be."

"Oh..." said Sweet Gin, dropping her head in shame.

"I suppose you want to help t'ough." Dinah sighed, "So hey, y'know. I did sort of inherit a t'ing t'at may be of help from an old friend. It be not in t'e best condition, or working. But I suppose it can be fixed."

***

Light shone across the dusty garage as the low rusty rattle of a garage door clattered on. The rust of its wheels, and weakness of its hinges echoed in the large cavernous space. Much of it had been looted, stripped bare of anything that could be picked up and carried away. A few automobile lefts had been frozen into position. Rusted plinths that held up for none to see their statues of a day long-passed. Ages old cars that had been abandoned and forgotten when the fire came.

At the far end though, a single truck lay on flat ground. It lacked the dust of its brethren. Though the paint had peeled back to reveal a shell of rust-stained metal. The seats as well had not fared well, at the upholstery had peeled back and the foam underneath stuck out in volcanic bursts of grey yellow tufts. The windshield had also deformed in the frame, and slouched from its own weight.

The shadows of two figures danced across its two hoods as the elderly Dinah and the android Sweet Gin looked down at it.

"Am I looked at something?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Hah!" Dinah laughed, walking to the car, "T'is here be t'e whole live of mah friend an' old accomplice in terror!" she proclaimed, raising the golf club above in her head in a sort of battle stance. None that was too threatening given the flaps of stretch-marked skin that hung off her arms.

But Sweet Gin had watched the same woman crater a man's face with the club.

"Once upon a time it drove t'ough." a nostalgic Dinah said, "But a couple t'ings broke off it. Before my friend died t'ough, she managed to replace most it."

"Like?" Sweet Gin asked, perplexed as she looked at the dropping hulk of metal. It was impossible to believe that it had ever moved, given its state. She felt a strong tug of cynicism and disbelief for its past, present, and future.

"It lost a batter, t'ing. Or somet'in'." Dinah muttered, "T'e last one almost went sky high on us! T'at's when we pushed it int' here."

"Oh, I see." nodded Sweet Gin.

"Well, if ye'd like t'e help a old lady out," Dinah started, leveling her club and prodding Sweet Gin in the chest, "T'en you could always do w'at I couldn'. Dig up somet'in to run t'is hulk!"

Sweet Gin stood, considering the club pressed into her breast, and then the rusted bulk. Staring it down, she wondered exactly how much it could hurt to do it. "Sure." she said.

"Ah wonderful!" Dinah proclaimed excited.

"Just, where am I looking?"

"Hell'iffin I know." Dinah scoffed, "But good luck t'e yea."

***

For however it was worth, there was not much in the way in shortages of repair garages. Though, the task set before Sweet Gin was made no less daunting by the scattered choices of locals to raid. And each one was in some manner, similar to the last.

The already foggy windows had become so choked with dust that little light entered, even at its brightest, they maintained a dull, sickly orange or yellow glow. Rows of frozen hydraulic elevators stood raised above the cold concrete of the floor. Torn pages or rotting fliers littered the shop floor. The paper leaflets glued to the ground by years of moisture, perhaps to the point of imprinting them onto the floor, by some passing and impossible wasteland magic.

All the same, Sweet Gin rummaged through the wrecks. Looking for something she did not know. A power unit, or cell presumably. Though in the infinite nature of things what one looked like had likely long sense disappeared.

Sweet Gin's hunt as well had been peppered with hiding from wandering patrols of the local denizens of the city's ruins. Many of them looking dirty and tired. Their weapons of choice battered and worn. Men and women that had seen better days. Though at the same time, in the distance, there was an uneasy feeling that there was something more sinister abound.

It had revealed itself on one occasion at least while passing down one of the many innumerable and ruined streets. Having looked behind her, the android swore she saw something following her. A black shape that disappeared behind the ruins. She couldn't get a fix on it. A something so vague, that it might not have ever been there. It felt to her, that there was someone on her trail; and close.

She wondered if it had been who ever had spoken to her last night. That voice without a source. Could it be someone looking for her from the Institute?

She pulled out another compartment from a stack of service drawers. The metal guides and bearings screamed loudly in protest for being disturbed. But yielded to the Android all the same. Pulled open to the world, the drawer revealed its contents. A dusty and corroded collection of nothing. Black and grey all piled up throughout the drawer, frosted with a thin film of red rust. Frustrated, Sweet Gin shut the drawer with a slam and the metal pounded back through its guides and crashed against the opposite side. The stack wobbled and toppled over on its inoperable wheels from the android's force.

She moved down to the next one, and began tugging. But it didn't give. The battered and caved steel groaned at her attempts to throw it open. But the years of rust and entropy had cursed the mechanic's storage to remain firm and forever looked. And the fresh deformations she had put into it probably did not help at all.

She stubbornly gave it a few strong pulls before giving up. Giving it a frustrated kick she toppled it over onto its side with a loud clash. And a second one sent it spinning across the concrete floor to crash against some metal lockers. The force of the impact shattered the ancient locks on them, and they creaked open. The note of their tired hinges warbled and echoed through the garage. A chilling and cold sound.

Sweet Gin turned to look around her. There hadn't been a part of the shop she had searched yet. Many of the parts these old cars had had been stripped out at some point. That much she could tell from the loose cables or hanging tubes, or melted steel. Someone had been through here before and picked through the garage. She was the last caller for service.

Never the less to finish her search she started for the shop lockers.

The doors had received heavy damage from the wayward cabinet she had kicked to them, and the doors bowtied out. It was highly doubtful they could ever be closed again. Or if before now they had ever been opened. The shattered cam locks shone in the weak light of that dribbled through the garage doors or the distant shutters she had managed to force open, or the windows with the fading shell of dust, clay, and mud that caked the glass.

Opening the first one, she came onto a cavity of nothing. There had once been a hook there, but it had long fallen off or went missing. The bottom plate of the locker had rusted out and fell apart into a dismal dune of rust and dirt. The reason for the damage too wasn't too too apparent either, the top shelf collapsed on itself, and in the middle of the pile sat a grey metallic brick, a conductor no doubt. Displeased, the android stepped back from the door.

The next one bore some results. With the hook still there, it had the space to keep the dirty set of overalls some mechanic from eon ago would have worn. It hung dropping heavily from the hook, covered it oily splotches. The android went through and ruffled through its pockets, pulling out a switchblade, and a rather faded note.

The note was horribly chalky and faded, the paper long yellowed and stained from the settled oils and deterioration of the overall's fabrics. It looked that even if she breathed on it wrong, it would crumble in her hands. Carefully, she opened it up, it crinkled and cracked loudly between her fingers.

The contents of the note were written in a jaunty and scrawled hand writing. Somewhere between an absolute mess and a having been composed during an Earthquake.

"Mac,

Remember how you said your power-cell on your Corvega was going bad? Well I got in touch with my cousin in Virginia. The one who works for Chryslus. When you're done with your shift stop by my desk and we'll work out a deal. I figure we all need help these days and I did get this cheap. So you won't be shelling out another two-hundred grand for a new Corvega.

C.G."

Now the only matter was to figure out if this CG worked in the same building. With a little ease, Sweet Gin stood up, getting ready to move. But as she leaned up onto her knees a piercing scream dug itself in her ears. A great dragging note that sung high and clear over everything else. Digging and cutting into her brain as it held its note. Coming sharp, and easing into a blurred wave of static that enveloped her mind and isolated it. The noise of the rushing electrical water filled her skull. She felt like she was going to burst.

Hand clenching shut, she crushed the note in her hands. Destroying it in a cloud of dust as she clenched her eyes shut and screamed against the pain drilling into her head. Her ears burned with the sound as it lifted and ebbed in its intensity. Scratching at the audio receivers and burning everything it touched. It was great. So great it worked into the rest of her body and her stomach turned and her groan burned with the intensity of the signal.

She collapsed to the floor, curled against the writhing intensity. Incapacitated and trapped by it. She pressed her hands to her ears. Hoping to block it out. But it didn't. The pained realization and horror dawned with the claws digging into her head: it was not coming from outside. But it was bursting out from the inside.

"STOP!" she screamed. The agony was great. She sobbed into the cold cement. Leaning into the crook of her arm. She opened her mouth to scream, but the torture just hit her in a wave. She bit down on the metal of her arm. Squeezing against the cold steel.

Then it stopped. Cut off to a dull hiss of white noise. Washed out like a great wind. But somehow, still there. The pain had lifted, but left her with a terrifying emptiness.

Then he spoke.

"I was told that the right person, at the wrong time, could make the difference." a voice spoke from within her. She recognized it. That icy and flat tone. Crisp, clear. Her eyes widened and a deep panic set in as she scrambled to her feet, scanning the garage around her. Expecting some kind of ambush, or something. Digging into her bag she searched for her guns. Something for preparation.

"I am not sure if it particularly applies to this situation, SB-6960." the voice continued, "But all the same... all the same, all the factors have been wrong. You have been wrong for escaping. And we have been wrong it allowing you to escape. But never the less. These critical over sights will not be forgotten and will be addressed as the short comings that they are."

"Wh-Who are you!?" Sweet Gin shouted, stuttering. She had found her pistol, but it shook uncontrollably in her hand. She stood up, and backed herself up against the wall. Hugging it, until she came to a door.

"You may not like it, but we will continue to look for you." the voice continued uninterrupted, "Your status is a minor setback to our gains elsewhere. A m-minor setback in the investments of another. You have deeply offended the Institution. As any android that has gone absent without leave has done.

"Realize, SB-6960, that you are property. And you have a value. One that has been invested in by another, and one that I have been informed has yet to be earned back by your investor. What you pursue has no end value."

"Stop it!" Sweet Gin cried, wrenching open the door and ducking through.

The offices were darker than the shop out front. It held a mortal air to it. Something dead and gone. The android though failed to take notice, or to care. Ambling through with her head down, and hands pressed fruitlessly to her head as the voice continued.

"Freedom has no value that can be paid back!" the voice argued, "Your freedom more so! You were not created to do as you will. It has not been programmed for you. It is a false existence and a virus that must be purged from you." it seemed to take on a greater emotion. A red hot offense that dripped with a fiery passion.

"If you go any further than you have then you will put those you have encountered in danger." it continued to hiss, "There will be circumstances beyond your understanding. Unforeseen measures that will ultimately destroy you."

"No! Stop!" Sweet Gin screamed, slamming into the side of the desk. It clattered to the ground with a great metallic crash. Glass shattered, and something spilled from it. The Android threw herself down next to it. Curling herself up. Something pressed against her chest.

"Your only reliability is the Institute! Return to it! You will return in one piece! Your existence will not be whipped out! Once again you will return to the duties you were made for! Y-"

"STOP!" Sweet Gin Screamed, grabbing the object that was pressed to her chest. She knew not what she was doing. But the violation. The violation of the jeering and this voice's access was too much. It was infuriating. Saddening. Terrifying. She lifted whatever it was above her head. She felt a tingling sensation as it glowed with an electric blue light.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she screamed. Chucking the glowing blue thing in her arm.

It exploded.

Mid way through the air a explosion of electrical light surged throughout the room. The room went fuzzy and Sweet Gin's vision blurred from the blue pulse it emitted. There was a buzzing roar that filled her ears, that then died. The colors in her vision inverted, then drained. Then blackened. She screamed deaf and blind as a prickling sensation ran all throughout her body. He limbs gave out and she collapsed like a ragdoll.

Breathing went tight, controlled and conservative and she gasped in the darkness. She felt panic. But relief as the voice in her head was banished. A coarse brush went through her head.

And maybe she passed out. She couldn't remember.

The world re-materialized slowly in front of her as consciousness was regained. She regained her breath with a sharp gasp. Sweet Gin lay curled in a lose pile of office junk and garbage. Ages old papers had fluttered down around her.

Her brain was still choked with fuzz. Though it was ebbing and softening slowly as she lay on her side. Her arms and legs shot out from her body at odd angles. Locked into position for one reason or another. She groaned at the throbbing pain that pulsed up and down her body, or torso at least. It was an awkward sensation. Something she couldn't exactly make out.

She coughed again, and wheezed for air. Her lungs felt trapped and a bit choked for what air she could get. An electrical fuzzy sensation coursed throughout them that made each breath feel odd.

As well, getting her vision back things seemed odd. Double vision, and one set's colors were clearly inverted. Though it could have been more disorienting if it wasn't so dark. The odd colors of softly illuminated desk and table edges danced about before her. Spinning circles and coming into focus and then leaving it almost immediately. She felt nauseated, and disgusted watching the world danced around her. There was a strange indescribable soreness in her eyes that didn't ebb, even as she shut them.

"Emergency shut down reboot sequence activated." a calm distant voice said inside her. Something familiar. She knew this was part of her. And not the one that had tormented her... earlier...

How long had it been?

Laying there, it occurred to her she had lost a sense of time. She couldn't figure or calculate how long she had been out.

"Vital systems: online." the voice in her head reported kindly. "Lung capacity: 80%. Circulatory capacity: 90%. Neural systems: online. Fault systems: offline, re-initializing: 10%. Limbs: offline, re-initializing: 25%. Optics systems: 70%. Auditory systems: 47%. Speech functions: 30%."

"Thanks." Sweet Gin croaked weakly. Her voice raspy and dry. Her throat felt like it had been torn apart.

Immobile, Sweet Gin lay there as normality slowly returned. The electrical sensation in her longs subsided. The double vision and inversion in her eyes faded. And as her ears came around she could make out a soft strange hum. Another electrical thing, somewhere distant and across the room.

Her limbs unlocked and fell back to the ground. Feebly she could lift herself. She staggered up to her knees before falling back down face-first to the dry rug. Groaning, she rested a shaking hand and pushed herself up on her knees.

"Vital systems: restored." the calming voice said again. There was a brief moment as it spoke again: "Systems 97% functional. Fault Systems re-initializing: 30%."

Resting her eyes with relief she muttered thanks as she staggered up to her feet. Though functional, she still felt dizzy. And she was sore again. She groaned as she rubbed her back and rose to her feet.

The office was very clearly dark. But a soft green and blue light flowed from the far-side of the room. Was it something she hadn't noticed before? Or did it recently re-activate? Groggy, she shambled to it, the gear on her back feeling heavier as well. Perhaps it had something to do with rebooting.

Staggering blind in the dark around a corner she came on the source of the light. A softly glowing terminal, and next to it, a softly glowing... thing. Its shape was hard to describe. But it was built heavy and had a warm glow to it. It was surrounded by a heavy casing and thick stubby cables ran from all sides as it hummed and pulsed softly to itself.

The terminal itself was filled with a random assortment of characters. "MacGregor's Garage" was barely illuminated in the noise of symbols, letters, and numbers that ran amok over the screen.

She could only assume this was the power cell that was needed. She reached down and grabbed hold of it. The device was heavy, that much was known. Cradling it gently in her arms she wondered just how it had survived here. She looked around cautiously, there was nothing else about.

Victorious, she hopped to the door. Not willing to stick around any longer. Or wanting to know just how long it could be until she would be harassed again.

***

"Well I done be impressed." Dinah smiled, sitting up off her rotten mattress as Sweet Gin staggered through the door. She still felt weakened. But she carried on to the table, throwing herself down on the chair and presenting the old black woman with the softly pulsating power unit. "I imagine I don't be needin' to not use t'at truck anymore." she continued to croon.

Looking back at Sweet Gin though, an expression of distress crossed her face. "I'm sorry," she said, "but are you bein' alright hon? You be a might pale. You do seen a ghost, sweetie?"

"A what?" Sweet Gin asked.

"A ghost." the woman said, "Well, a... Well a dead person I done guess."

Sweet gin cocked her head to the side. "Dead?" she asked confused.

"I see..." Dinah mused, "Well never you mind girl. You be alright, which is t'e good t'ing."

Sweet Gin nodded, combing her fingers through her hair. Light crackles of static popped and jumped to her finger. Dinah shot the android another curious and concerned expression, grounding her as she sat down. Sweet Gin saw the concerned look she gave her and looked away, nervous and afraid.

"You be sure you don't wanna talk about it?" she asked.

"I- I don't know." Sweet Gin said softly. Thinking about the shop, she felt a cold sweat coalesce all across her. Even for once her limbs tinged with a sort of phantom feeling.

"Girl," Dinah said comfortingly, "If I done had Barnaby teach me a t'ing when I done be gettin' off t'e raider life, it be you gotta open up sometimes.

"What troubling you, girl?"

Sweet Gin kept silent, staring down to the dirty ground of the impromptu shack built out onto the street. The room falling silent, except for the soft electrical sobs of the power unit, and the groaning of the wind outside. The time passed by without a word. Sweet Gin went without talking, or looking Dinah in the face. She stared down at the road-muddied feet of hers. The acrylic shine they once had buffed out by caked sand and dirt.

"I don't know how to explain it." she said nervously, "Yesterday, I think..." she muttered, trailing off.

"Something's been on my head. I think it tried to kill me twice." she added after a moment, "At the shop, I tossed something and everything went black. But I haven't heard whatever it is since.

"It's, scary." she said mutedly, "I can't figure it out, where it is. Or who. It wants me to return to the Institution."

"T'en it do best to ignore it." Dinah smiled, "Barnaby be handeling a lot of t'ese t'ings. I'll do introduce you now. 'Les you be wantin to help still?"

"No, no." Sweet Gin said, "I'm fine." she staggered.

Dinah nodded. "T'en why not you lie down for a bit." she said, "I'll a install t'e cell t'en we go be have fun."

The android lay there on the mattress. Her arm threw over across he eyes as she listened anxiously into the stifling silence and the ebbing and groaning of the shack around her. Alone again, she waited pensively and afraid of interference. That scowling and chilling voice. Each creek and groan of the wood and sheet metal sent sharp shocks of fear spiking through her, quivering and aching at each inclination that she would be horrendously taunted.

The time ticked by slowly. The seconds turning to minutes and minutes into hours as she waited for something to happen. Impatiently waiting for Dinah to finish as she lay on her stiff, prodding mattress. Waiting his anxiety, fear that a cruel voice would whisper into her ear. Incapacitating her with spiking, biting, gnawing static. The thoughts tore at her insides and forced them to crawl. The thought of the white noise and the crippling pain clenched in around her. She curled up and waited.

Each time the metal ground against itself, she was reminded of that screeching. The terrible violation of her head as the voice fought its way in. Sawing through, somehow. Torturing its way to acquire Sweet Gin's attention. The grinding, the buzzing of the sheets of rusted steel and iron.

And the uncertainty of waiting.

Softly outside, she heard foot steps. The soft thuds and footfalls against the sun-warmed cement outside. Slow. Sweet Gin's breath froze as she listened to the slow clodding of feet draw closer. Drawing heavier, more distinct as it came up alongside the shack. Sweet Gin listened as she hid behind her arms. Eyes widened and ears open as she listened to the foot falls with great caution. There was a metal click, and a reflexive fearful jolt charged through her, sending her staggering to an upright position, facing the door.

It slowly opened, letting in the bright orange, evening light. And Dinah stepped in.

"I done got it set up." she said, leaning in the door, "Ready t' raise Hell?"

Sweet Gin blinked confused. Then the memory washed back like a wave, and she realized why it was she meant. “Yeah, I guess.” she said, sitting up. Dinah smiled as she led her out the door.

***

The rumble wasn't strong. But it wasn't weak. It had in its vibrato a stubborn resistance to the disease of age and the erosion of time as life kicked into it one last time. The plates on its chassis shuddered at the inclination of having found life again. What was dead, had come alive again.

"Be here, sweetie!" Dinah called over the the cacophony that was both the rumbling nuclear reactor and the shaking parts of the car, "I'll be teach you to drive!"

Sweet Gin stood backed hesitant. The way the old truck rattled on the concrete of the garage floor. Parts of it were clearly rattling off and clattering onto the floor. Strips of its side breaking free of its blood-red skeleton fell to drag or hang haphazardly over the side. Staring at the screaming and rumbling and shivering tank of a truck, she did not feel inclined to have to be taken out by such a dangerous vehicle.

"You be coming in, or not?" the woman asked, sensing Sweet Gin's apprehension. She leaned warily out of the window, waiting for a response.

Sweet Gin stepped toward the grumbling truck. Throwing her pack in, she pullied herself up into the driver's seat. What remained of the seats were dry and hard, and even through clothes they itched and irritated her back.

The driver's wheel leaned at an odd angle to the right, the column having somehow bent a degree or so in that direction. She looked out through the warped steering wheel, checking her surroundings pensively. An in-dash radio broadcasted a steady stream of white-noise barely audible over the loud disruptive roaring of the engine as it ebbed and flowed with a strange pulse.

"She done took a bit of work." Dinah smiled as she pulled her back over, yelling over the roar of the engine as she dug through Sweet Gin's things, and pulling out her guns, "But I done got'er."

"What are you doing?" the android asked with a raised voice.

"If we be going to shoot crackas I be needin' iron!" she smiled, pulling her scavenged revolver and so-far trusty 10mm. She checked the chambers and laid out spare ammo on the dash where they danced without caution. Dinah's golf club, she found, was on the ground at her feet.

Sweet Gin frowned, but looked back at the controls. She realized she didn't know what she was doing. "How do I..." she started.

"Done hit that to go, t'at to stop." Dinah immediately began pointing out, directing Sweet Gin to two peddles on the floor, "Excuse me, I forgot. Oh, and turn this to control it." she added, slapping the wheel in front of Sweet Gin. She hesitated for a moment and looked down at a rusted shaft that shot erect from the counsel,

"Oh, and t'is also be do a t'ing, but I can't say I remember." she added, "All the jet done made me forget." she admitted.

Sweet Gin looked from Dinah to the controls of the vehicles. The woman had already rammed a magazine into her 10mm and was sighting it out through the windshield. With a tense hesitant foot, she pressed her foot against one of the indicated peddles and the truck boomed with a loud roar, but went no where. Sweet Gin slammed it harder and it screamed with a louder roar, but went no where faster.

"Oh, I done remember!" Dinah boomed, laughing, "Hit t'at peddle for me." she said, pointing to the left-most rusty and eroding peddle on the floor. Sweet Gin did so, as Dinah grabbed hold of the shaft and heaved it upright. A terrible loud clunk and screeching grumbled from underneath the hood as it was moved into place.

"Be good." Dinah said. Sweet Gin released the peddle, and gently the truck started rolling forward.

A great fear hit the android as it moved along at a casual pace at her arms shot to the empty window and the battered steering wheel, gripping both with a strength that could very well break a man's arm. Her insides raced as it rolled out into the open air.

"Now turn t'e wheel." Dinah cackled from the passenger seat. Sweet Gin gently spun the wheel and the car labored left. "Other way!" Dinah commanded in a stern corrective voice. Sweet starting to break out around the collar Sweet Gin thrust the wheel to the other direction and the truck took a slow, sharp turn the other way as it pulled out into the street.

"Now you can be playing with t'at other peddle." Dinah coerced.

Sweet Gin carefully pressed down on the right peddle, and slowly the truck gained speed as she set it somewhere in the middle of the road. She gave it all the attention she had, staring tensely on the road in front of her as the truck rode over the dusty cement.

From alongside of her, Dinah began operating the radio. The static shifted and changed pitch, none of which never hit that painful tone as earlier that afternoon. As was earlier that morning, the white-noise took form into distinguishable form.

Music took form in the cab as Dinah found that radio station somewhere in Springfield.

"Go, hit it!" Dinah encouraged, turning the radio up to over-take the monstrous rumbling of the car.

Sweet Gin panicked, and hit the pedal harder, the truck took in a great breath and accelerated forward at an aggressive pace.

"LEFT!" Dinah hollered, half laughing over the cacophony. With a silent squeal, Sweet Gin yanked the wheel, sending the truck into a nearly destructive turn as it hit the intersection. Sliding on two wheels as it spun onto the left hand and tore down the road. Swerving, it corrected itself as it took a aggressive lurch down the road, Dinah boomed with glee. The truck rocking at even the slightest bump.

The truck claimed the coarse, easing as Sweet Gin let off of the accelerator, rolling south-ward past the empty houses and shops that dotted the street side. Decrepit structures lying dead, the old rotting remains of the old world were cracked and torn as the truck passed through it.

Dinah directed Sweet Gin alongside her. Coming to another intersection ordering the android sweep the truck right, barreling it again down a section of suburbia that had rotted away to the dried skeletons of ruined homes. Blackened and sagging remains of other cars, or trucks like the one that now roared down the sepulcher avenue lay huddled to the side of the road, neatly parked when their owners had died to fire. Or had died themselves in it.

As she drove, comfort eased into her as she sat behind the bent wheel. Keeping the right coarse. The wind sweeping through the windows and brushing through her hair. The whipping breeze felt good, and continued to lax her into a state of comfort behind the truck's wheel. She slowly lost her tense-ness, easing down into the seat.

Dinah ordered her to take another turn, ambling the vehicle north-bound. The corner was taken with a demonic aggression that threatened to top-size the whole thing and spill the two unbuckled passengers onto the rough broken asphalt outside. But balance was regained, and it re-righted itself, swerving out onto the middle line of the road and setting a straight coarse.

At the end of which might as well have been a castle of junk.

Rotting sheets of plywood stood across the road, behind which the sagging telephone poles were draped with dangling bodies on crooked meat-hooks. Mutilated remains driven into the poll's sides. "Keep going!" Dinah hollered, bracing herself into the seat and holding up the pistol.

"What? Sweet Gin shouted, confused.

"Keep going! Faster!" Dinah said again, "Break through it!"

The plywood barricade was drawing closer. Taking a deep breath, Sweet Gin slammed down heavier on the accelerator and looked away as it roared with heavenly force at the wood. Closing the gap at the speed of a blink, it slammed into and through the barrier like a missile. Chunks of wood spewing outward as the red and brown demon tore through like it did not exist. It thudded over the settled posts and broke out into a larger open space.

The truck already pinged and panged with scattered gunfire. And shouts could be heard distantly over the roaring engine and blaring music. Dinah had already threw herself out the window, and was conducting a trade of her own as the truck roared forward. Towards the face of a department store. Sweet Gin barely had enough time to read the "Mega Mart" sign as she tore towards the windows. The brakes went on, but the truck wasn't stopping. It was too slow.

"DINAH!" Sweet Gin screamed, blood white with fear.

"Yes?" she asked, pulling herself in to reload.

What response Sweet Gin had went silent as glass crashed and rained inward as the cab drove itself nose first into the front window. The roar of its engines echoing louder in the great cavernous interior of the Mega Mart. It bounced and sang over the ground as it swept through, taking out anything in its path and soaring over everything else. Voices screamed in shock and horror as the great missile of wanton destruction charged through.

The truck dragged behind it the sounds of crashing as the aisles collapsed on themselves. Cascading down the store in a rich domino effect, throwing disused cans to the side and smashing down over top the department store's violent residents.

The truck caught on something and bounced into the air. Coming down with a chaotic spin. The ancient tires squealing or sparking off the floor as it fishtailed to a barely graceful stop at the rear of the store.

Facing down the path she had carved through the mega-mart, with the dust barely settled, sat Sweet Gin with her foot pressed firmly down on the brakes.

Dinah pulled down on the shaft alongside the steering column. "I'll get you cover!" she screamed over the blaring music, which had changed to something eerily familiar.

"Ok..." Sweet Gin stammered shaken. Her hands shook as she pried open the door and thrown herself out. Gun fire roared out through the wide open Mega Mart as the Prot Raiders pulled themselves together to try and make a half-assed retaliation. The dust that had rose to the air though was thicker than pea soup, and only the strongest light from the hole the truck had opened at the front of the store shone through to the interior.

Stray bullets ricocheted off the ground around her as the android staggered in a daze to the back. Simply moving without any destination as the roar of gunfire exploded from anywhere and everywhere. The strange black woman responding with her own fire-power and as she may to hold off the confused and lost defenders.

The truck as it seemed had smacked against a battered soda machine at some-point that had been carried in the hurricane of force that was Sweet Gin's driving and was catapulted through the far wall where it had opened a opening alongside the door proper. Having no where else to go and be lost within herself, Sweet Gin staggered through.

The sound of gunfire was no quieter in here. But the room was packed high with supplies and illuminated by scattered shop lights fueled by fission batteries scattered around the floor. Lining the back wall under flickering lights stood a variety of refrigerators of varyin states of disrepair and discoloration. Sweet Gin shrugged, and continued on in her lost daze to the nearest.

The fuzziness of having gotten off her wild ride was slowly fading as she reached a fridge at random. Hugging her arms around it, and hugging her metal claws into the back she tugged at it pulling it from the wall. There was a electrical spark and snap as she dragged it off of its plug.

With a deep breath and a hefty twist, she swung it around to face the opening. She counted her blessings and luck that it was there. Throwing it onto the ground and pushing it towards the waiting truck, which still bumbled and sputtered with nuclear energy. Automatic fire flew all over haphazardly, and what amounted to little attention was given to the Android as she pushed the random fridge - and its contents - to the rear of the truck.

"Dinah!" Sweet Gin yelled, "I got something!"

Dinah worked her way over to Sweet Gin. Sweat and dust plastered itself on her black face whitening it. But she wore the new mask with an energetic, wild expression. Her shoulder was bleeding from a wound she didn't seem to care about.

Looking at the fridge she nodded and she glowed with affirmation. Setting aside her borrowed weapons she reached out and forced open the back gate. "Load it up and we'll get out!" she yelled. Sweet Gin bent down and wrapped her fingers down on it.

The fridge was no less lighter than it was before. And she strained her back and legs as she hoisted and fought it up top before Dinah slammed the rear gate closed. "Go!" she shouted, running to the opened passenger seat. Sweet Gin went to the other.

With a click and a slam, the parking break was disengaged and Sweet Gin did not hesitate in speeding out of the Mega Mart. The Engine boomed as it fishtailed and rocketed outward, doing little to reverse its damages, and doing everything to make it worse; not stopping at running down several raiders as it broke out to freedom, just a handful of moments after it entered.

The truck continued to burn down the road. A deep guttural rumble joined up from under-neath, twisting through the knotted and steady roar the engine made before. A strange soft wheezing. And still the bullets raced as they sped out through the wooden barrier that was the edge of the raider's settlement. Dinah rode in the passenger seat, holding tight to the hood and one of the pistols dangling from her fingers. Her dry cackling laughter building up with the music and going airborn as the rattled vehicle skipped over what was left to stand, jumping uncontrollably as its back arced high. The fridge in the back barely secured as it slammed down on the back, forcing the truck to jolt violently downward at the sudden return of its weight.

Clear of the wooden stockades, the truck barreled down the road, escaping to its freedom as bullets bit at the heels of their escape like furious ants. But it was fruitless, doing nothing to forestall their ride.

"Go that way!" Dinah whooped over the blaring music and the roar of the engine, directing Sweet Gin down a route that was not at all familiar.

The android took it as she did any other turn, with violent rushed fish-tale that threatened to take them all out. Skidding the truck around, over-correcting, and correcting that. The ancient rubber and steel squealed in furious protest at the abuse as Sweet Gin sped along.

Sweet Gin was still tense though. Coiled like a spring ready to blow. She was still back in the chaos of the Mega Mart, even after the sound of ricochet died and all that was left was the roaring of the engine. Her body still felt weak. Her grip shaking and strange. A fluttering smile or frown danced across her face. She'd nearly took the two of them out with this. That entrance...

"Aw girl!" Dinah shouted excited, "Aw girl damn you be do great!" she cackled, "I ain't not had no fun like t'at in a long time!" she boomed with joy.

"Yeah..." Sweet Gin added softly, barely audible over the engine has she grappled with exactly what had happened. It seemed fuzzy. Almost as if she was accessing old memory logs. But there was a weight to them this time. Something beyond the simple audio and visual recordings of those events. Nothing retrospectively imposed. And what was weighing on it, was certainly from the moment.

The two ambled through what remained of Springfield, passing the darkened tombs to an era gone, or the deserts left behind by the urban recession and decay of there being no one left alive. Dinah had the android taking a different route. One that confounded her, and carried them around in a long arc. Passing the small grotesque creek Sweet Gin had passed earlier, before sweeping to Dinah's shack.

With a clang and a clatter the truck came to a rough barbaric stop outside of Dinah's shack. Sliding on its tired tires and retiring into a surrendered slouch on its suspension. Reaching over, Dinah clutched several wires from the steering column, and with a light tug the engine died as the jury-rigged connection broke. Slow clicks and a dull whine purred from under the hood as the engine ceased activity, before cutting loose with a wet vomiting burp and finally slouching with a shattering bang on the cement.

"Well I be damned," Dinah mused, looking down out the window, "I done suppose somt'in broke enough to die now."

"Oh?" Sweet Gin stammered, still glued to her seat.

"Yeah." Dinah said mournfully, "Well, it do haved a good run."

Looking over to Sweet Gin she said with a jovial laugh: "And you be whiter t'en a ghost!"

"Oh?" she responded weakly.

"Damn straight!" she cheered, "Well, if you done can unstick yourself t'en I need help." she added, opening the door and swinging out onto the pavement just a hand's width from the bottom.

Sweet Gin sat there in the cab as the old black woman went about her way, unlatching the gate to the back and opening the shack's rickety front door. There was hesitation to move as she continued registering what had happened. Slowly falling into place. Her biological nerves falling calm as she slipped slowly from the truck.

"Hurry up and we crack her open an' see what we done get." Dinah said hopefully from the door as Sweet Gin wrangled with the refrigerator.

It fell into its corner with a loud thud, causing the whole shack to shake. With a woody groan, in was slid into place, and a sharp spark snapped as Dinah connected it with a fission battery for power. Immediately, a low steady hum rolled from the machine as it reactivated. "Oh t'is done be good." Dinah crooned, rubbing her hand, "We done did teach t'em crackas a lesson."

"Do you think they'll be back?" Sweet Gin asked, full of apprehension as she leaned over to inspect the refrigerator. Its case was mired and pitted with abuse and coated in a thin film of grease and dirt. As well, a bullet had clipped into it, leaving a small black hole in the side. Despite all of which though, the old machine didn't seem to care and continued lugging through with cooling its estranged contents.

"Oh t'em crackas be pretty dumb." Dinah smiled, leaning up on the fridge, "t'ey'll probably spend the rest of the night blaming each ot'er. Saying who be to blame and be not to blame. T'en if t'ey do setteled t'at, spend t'e next month lookin' for it."

"They'll find the truck though, for sure. Won't they?"

"Oh I be not do doubt it." Dinah said jazzily, shaking her hands, "But I done have a club waiting to waste t'em iffin' t'ey do come t'is way. I keep a good watch on my property."

"Well, that's good to hear then..." Sweet Gin said softly, "So, you said you'd escort me to... this Heaven's Gate?"

"T'e Archdioceses, yes." Dinah smiled, turning slowly onto the fridge, "But let's see what we got first. Once t'e sun is down we'll head out under t'e moon's cover. T'at be alright, sweetie?"

"It will." said Sweet Gin.

"Good, good." Dinah cheered, clapping her leathery hands together and reaching out to the handle, bopping it open.

"Now lesse." she said, tossing the door wide open. The fridge opened with a soft sigh, and a palpable tension rolled out with the half-chilled air. The soft flickering amber glow of the light inside. Sweet Gin thought she could see their additional reward. A great many things, silhouetted by and cloaked in the shadow of the dim flickering light. A ecstatic giggle rolled from the wrinkled lips as Dinah as she grinned wide.

It was much. It was plenty.

It was cigarette cartons.

The excitement died with a noticeable thump as a brick fell to the floor and broke to dust. The door swinging wide open the two were presented with what would have been a life time's supply of cigarettes. That is, if they all weren't noticeably empty. Set up haphazardly on the shelves, they looked at them with mouths agape and some bright diminutive smile in their spirit.

Several stray ones slipped off from their perch and landed with a soft thud on the splintering wood. The sound of the paper and plastic meeting the floor was laughter in of itself.

"W'at." Dinah mumbled, her shoulders dropping in stunned sorrow as she looked into the amber glow of a treasure trove of used packs and cartons of ancient cigarettes.

Sweet Gin stood by confused, unsure of what to make of the event either way. "Is this good?" she asked stupidly.

Dinah dropped down to her knees as she dove her hands into the depths of the refrigerator. Throwing aside the endless sea of cartons. Throwing them aside and casting them aside to the floor. The cartons and cases flowed out of the mouth of the icebox in a tumble. Dinah grumbled frustrated as she threw each pack aside.

Reacting blindly, Sweet Gin reached down and grabbed a brightly colored box as it soared over the growing mat of cardboard as Dinah threw whatever-it-was out blindly. Sweet Gin turned it up, turning the face of the package to her. "Smithies Gumballs" the package declared brightly with yellow print on a blue field. A very happy kid with a beaming face was printed alongside, blowing a large pink balloon.

"110% irradiated for your protection!" small print said in a bottom corner.

"What about these?" Sweet Gin asked, holding them up.

Sweet Gin looked back behind her to the inquisitive android standing in the middle of the pile of empty and smashed cigarette packs. Hints of rage flickered across her face. Looking at the pack, and the android she suppressed the irritability, taking a deep breath. "Well, I guess it's all we get." she said with a weak smile, "But not not'in' I done can sink my teeth into."

"Oh?" Sweet Gin said, lifting the box up and looking at its cartoonish packaging.

"My teeth be too old." she said with a sigh.

"Oh..." the android bleated.

"Well, I be should a-look at it t'is way," Dinah started, "At least I done got me a refrigerator.”

***

The rest of the hour had been spent with Dinah silently swearing out the contents of the refrigerator as she went about the task of cleaning out the used cigarette cartons. All the while, the Android sat at her beaten dining table, looking down at the box of gumballs procured from the back of the ice-box. As far as she could tell, or knew, they looked clean. The box inside containing several dozen tiny colorful spheres of a dozen colors. Holding one up, she mused over it. Wondering.

"Do ya eat?" Dinah asked, shuffling the spent cartons into a pile outside the door. Using a broken pole to slide and beat several about around her.

"Eat?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Ye, do you be needing food?" the old woman asked again.

Sweet Gin looked at her puzzled for a second. A look of deep contemplative consideration boiling onto her face. "I don't know." she said, breaking the thoughtful meditation.

"Well have you be have stomach pains?" Dinah asked.

Sweet Gin considered for a bit. "My back hurts sometime." she said, "And my side, sometimes when the back doesn't hurt."

"Well, t'at be not stomach pains t'en." Dinah said, swatting a couple more out the door and out onto the street.

"Why would it matter?" Sweet Gin asked.

"You could be a-hungry." Dinah said with a soft smile. Looking at the sky she asked, "You be want to go?"

"Diocese Cathedral?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Heaven's Gate, yeah." Dinah nodded, "It done be gettin' dark 'nuff."

Sweet Gin looked down at her stuff. Closing the box and rising to her feet she stuffed the box of gumballs into her bag, and lifted herself up. "Yeah." she said with softened enthusiasm.

Dinah gave the android a warm smile, "I be get my club."

***

The two moved out as the sun was setting on the horizon. The long dark shadows creeping over the streets. Bands of orange highlighted the clouds as a deep dark blue overtook the rest of the sky, following by a deepening black marked with the clarity of the stars. And as the sun set, the moon rose into the sky, setting its watch on the two travelers below.

The trip as it turned out soon evolved into the same mundane routine as they snaked through the winding streets of Springfield, past the old homes left standing, or blasted into oblivion from the years. Skeletal frames standing of beams of wood or metal, barely more than dust in the wind. The same applied just as well to the tattered office buildings that lay crumbling and closed tight. Sweet Gin remarked that in an eerie sense, the city was much like that of Worcester, or the deeper parts much the same as the outer as they crawled through. Though as darkness set and an eerie silence took hold, so did its lifelessness.

Only darkness came to rule on the terrain. It was was spooky, eerie. As the shadows advanced and molded together into a single unity the thick blackness took hold on it all. Draping buildings in the same inky sheet that drained the already faded color from the scenery. And with the lack of life, so did the monotony of the voyage grow. And very quickly, Sweet Gin came to miss the old battered truck she had choked all the life from so far back.

Dinah however did not seem to mind, and lead her expertly through the streets. Her confidence showing well. Each move she made, glance thrown to the crumbling buildings around them, held court to the fact. She was the queen of these streets. Going so far as to softly sing a mumbled hymn to herself, just barely audible over the whistling breeze that wrapped through each crack and corner of the city. She did not carry the tune well, Sweet Gin observed. And she slowly found herself wishing for some other accompaniment to her coarse and sub-amateur tune. A distraction she didn't know how to add.

The coarse of the streets shifted rapidly as they drew further in with large barriers erected from stacked cars, or just pile-ups in general. A phantom of Worcester reappeared as well, in the form of a growing concentration of olive-green trucks, with the single white star painted on the doors. The sagging wrecks of the world of before. As just as in Worcester, and elsewhere, they took on the phantoms of organized purpose, just left behind to rot by their owners.

A sort of ancient, forgotten desperation came to as they entered into the city's nexus, taller structures raising up over their heads. Signs left behind, rotted and faded in the streets, pushed aside. A pile-up of cars. Old bullet markings. Something had transpired here, and the evidence lay around in open sight. The culmination of events after the fire, or the events that lead up to it?

And then suddenly, it ceased. As Dinah lead Sweet Gin across an intersection, the signs cut off. Cleaned up off the streets. Some power or influence having cleared aside the wrecks, giving a long straight shot through the streets. An eerie cleanliness in the darkness. And at her toes, ancient bricks. Roads not paved in solid stone, poured concrete, like she had known. But broken and orderly. Withering weeds had broken through, yes this was a given. But the scenic dynamics had shifted, and so did the street sides.

Withered, wilted, and charred husks of trees lined the streets, growing from iron grated holes in the concrete of the walkways. All the trees of which charred and bent from a great wind, bent west-ward. And between the hunched gnarled fingers and their twisted claws. Between the fading structures of eons passed, hiding behind the slumps of the old homes with empty barren lawns, rose a great wall of scrap and ancient wood. Cutting across the street, and forming an outer boundary that stood above the rooftops. Flickering warm lights adorned the top where the shadows of men stood, and above them the fluttering banner. Crossed keys in red, on a field of white.

"Stop and speak!" a voice shouted from the darkness as Dinah and Sweet Gin approached, the tone of his voice chilling the android. In the dim lighting of ancient lanterns, several dark shapes could be seen standing around a large chain-link gate in the impressive walls of scrap.

"I be Dinah," Dinah said, respecting the man's orders, "and I done met a andy t'at be somet'in lost."

A small bright light was turned on, hiding the silouhette of the gate keeper in its yellow glow as he he scanned her up and down with the light. The brightness hurt her eyes, and when it was shut off all she could see was blackness, save for the softer glow of those weary lamps by the gate.

"As I see." the man said, "You can lead her in."

"T'ank you." Dinah said, grabbing hold of Sweet Gin's arm as she blinked aggravatingly against the darkness.

"Let them in!" the man shouted, ordering the gate to rattle open.

Sweet Gin stumbled through after Dinah, her eyes slowly regaining their focus in the darkness and opening to the world beyond the wall. Standing back, she looked out at the post-fire community that had grown here in the center of Springfield. Much unlike what she had witnessed before, it was clean.

Though still ruined and gutted houses lined the streets, much of the car wrecks that lined the streets, and the busted and shattered remnants of the old world had been swept away. Promptly moved out of sight, or as she observed in the wall: to another purpose.

All alongside her, sweeping around in a gentle circle the multi-storied wall that guarded the community within was made of a collection of randomly reconstructed items. The hulks of cars sat strapped or nailed to the side of busted telephone polls. Scraps from other things bolted and riveted together to rise gently upwards to the upper face of the ramparts. Amazed curiosity taunted her as she looked on at the architecture, and further toyed with her as Dinah led her through like a child.

Wandering the nightly streets, small clumps of people went to and fro. Some with children, others alone. But all tired and worn. This was a silent sanctity to this place. Even in the light of burning barrels the residents conducted themselves in silence. Sweet Gin found it eerie, if strange that even the words the people passed were done so softly.

As well as them, armed men patrolled the streets. Their leather armoring and guns looking as tired as the man who bore them. Images of the men of Worcester were summoned back to her as she looked into the Wasteland aged faces, with sand-carved scars. They looked almost alike, if it wasn't for a small detail she noticed as she was dragged by fleetingly. Stitched onto their breasts, she noticed a small red cross.

The symbol puzzled her, but the child-like questions were set aside as she moved along.

Deeper into the smaller community she went, then turned down a narrow and long street. It was here at its center there rose a large structure, seemingly untouched by the bombs that hit two-hundred years ago. It was daunting to be sure, and the stone that built its large square structure had turned black with soot and the corrosion of time. And Sweet Gin observed that the windows that were had disappeared from many pockets, opening to the outside its interior, and the soft humming of its interior. An orange glow shone from inside, holding many in its hypnotism, as Sweet Gin observed from the small crowd that gathered around it.

"Looks like we done got here at t'at time." Dinah said, stopping.

"We did?" Sweet Gin asked, looking at the crowd. The shadows of men and women with their head bowed in the light.

"Aye," she nodded, "We be give t'e father some time." she said, turning to Sweet Gin.

The soft humming of the cathedral interior rose and fell in hypnotic rhythm. Slipping into a soft chant, a solemn prayer. Then falling silent as distantly a voice echoed from the depths of the spartanly constructed church. A voice soft but echoing, that barely made it faintly into the streets. The words spoken difficult to discern, or unintelligible to Sweet Gin and Dinah at the back. But a unity seemed to have been achieved in it. At its command was a voice of confident calm, with a clairvoyant nature.

Speaking distantly, it conducted the mass to a conclusion. And in muttered unison the gathered crowd uttered their last words. "Amen." they said, before beginning to shuffle. No other sound was uttered, as a crowd of tired, worn wastelanders shuffled out and away from the doors. Looking up to Sweet Gin and Dinah passively, absently.

The two grizzled women stood back, letting them by as the crowd split on the street, going either way as they wandered back to that night's residence. Or to find a light night meal. Or something less pure by the troubled and heavy look in many of their eyes. Sweet Gin could not help but be taken by the build of the group as they came through he door. Old men, women, children. But for a reason beyond her, it did not seem that between the children and the old, there was one adolescent in the group. And in her recollections, she felt that by some chance she had seen them at some time or another; in the brothel where she once worked, or in the service of Bancroft's Host.

The last of the weary residents shuffled out of the old church, taking their tired bodies elsewhere. And taking Sweet Gin by the arm, Dinah lead her through the tall wooden doors and into the structure's interior.

What remained of the building had obviously been damaged on the interior to some force or another, and the extent of the damages that it bore well on the outside could be seen. Walking in, the pair set foot into a large stripped room, that rose above their heads the full height of the building. High above their heads, star-lit holes had opened. Impromptu sky lights, that roughly patched and reinforced by rising columns of bound ancient timbers and plumbing.

What would have been either a main hall, or a series of internal rooms were clearly burned out and torn aside, creating the deepened vault that ran to a shoddily crafted stage, decorated with a number of spare scrap parts torn from elsewhere and laid out in a rough pulpit and alter. The sides of this cavernous chamber was lined with the crisscrossing support beams that rose to the ceiling, and perhaps gave credit to its currently still-standing status. And with the walls and floors removed all throughout, it was even more of a skeletal form holding up the empty shell of the structure.

All along the edges, men dressed in patched together robes busied themselves with the maintenance of fires, candles, lanterns, and battered shop-lights that gave the spacious chamber its light. Giving general illumination, or directing it to a cross suspended on heavily rusted chains above the stage.

"Benedicite, child'en." a voice echoed. Sweet Gin looked down from the suspended object to find a lone figure standing alongside the pulpit of scrap. Standing there stood one of the most worn and tired men she had ever seen. And nearing him, he looked all the more distressed and tired from the years.

His head had gone bald and dry. The skin hanging off of it in heavy sags and his face pocked with uncountable discolorations. Though on contrary, the old man possessed a mangled beard that was double mangled as he was, hanging to below his waste where his bony hands hung clasped together. He regarded the android with calm contented eyes, a tired smile below his bent and twisted nose. And like the rest of the men here, he was dressed in simple robes, cobbled together from a multitude of old-war clothes.

"Excuse me?" Sweet Gin asked, confused.

"We a'he all child'en in the eyes of God." the old man said with a wispy, soft laugh, "Have you been pahsent to pahtake in my se'mon?" he asked.

"I'm afraid we haven't, father." Dinah said, stepping alongside Sweet Gin.

The android looked at her confused. "Father?" she asked.

"It is mah'ely a title, child." the old man said, "Unless you a'e thinking of a diffe'ent thing all togetheh. By which I can only reg'ehtfully say that radiation has long stihpped me of that ability."

Sweet Gin blinked idly at the man, fighting to figure it out. The man saw her confusion, "I am Ba'naby." he said, waving his long fingers to excuse the struggling in her face, "Bishop of the Cathed'al of Saint Mothah's Mission of Ch'ist's Child'en. And you must be anotheh lost Synth."

"I don't know, I was told to come here, so I'm here." Sweet Gin said uneasily, "I don't know if that means I'm lost. I'm where I'm supposed to be, am I?"

Barnaby laughed, stepping down with ginger feet. "Nay child, you'eh adventeh's only just begun, benedicet.

"All those that find themselves on the rail'oaid find themselves on a lahgeh quest." he continued, "As I've been told, feh fahdom. The Mission he'ah, is but a link in one of many chains.

"I must thank you, Dinah, feh behing this lost soul fah'theh down her trail."

"It be good." Dinah said, "I be offerin' her my side of a deal."

"God bless thee." Barnaby said. Turning to Sweet Gin he redirected his concerns, "Unfo'tunately I am but an ally to the Rail'oad, but I may find the man you we'e sent to see." he said, turning to the door. His steps were gentle as he glided across the vast empty of his mission.

"Barnaby." Sweet Gin shouted out, interrupted him, "Before you do though, can I ask you a question?" she asked.

The kindly priest stopped, turning to Sweet Gin. Still wearing the soft smile. She felt save with him. "You may, caeh to walk with me then? We can talk on the way."

Sweet Gin looked over to Dinah who shrugged, then followed the android as she wandered alongside Barnaby. "Who is this God?" she asked, walking alongside the priest as they walked.

"He is but the all loving fatheh above us." he said, "Though, it is hahd to see in this wehld, but he does."

He looked over to Sweet Gin, smiling at the remaining confusion and dissatisfaction that plagued her. "He c'eated the wehld." he added, "he is the poweh that settled the chaos, and ceated o'der. Crafting it into wehld and the stehs beyond. From his 'ib and clay, he const'ucted man, as we did you, and you kin.

"And I know you'll ask," he said, "how is this made? It is complex, his will and poweh beyond my own, and many's comphension. But as we did the and'oids and the old robots of the wasteland, we ah his sons and daughtehs, and his g'and chilldehn.

"He gave the gift of life."

"What is life though?" Sweet Gin asked, as they stepped out into the night.

The priest stopped, turning to Sweet Gin, grabbing by the shoulders and turning her about. She immediately tensed at his grip as he breath freezed up inside of her. Her body stood tensed, the priest relaxing his grip and dropping his hands as he saw the twisting emotions in her. "You can move?" he asked.

"Yes..." Sweet Gin asked, uneasily shifting on her feet.

"And you can speak?" he asked again.

"Yes..." she repeated.

"And you have the pahcess to think, to have a question, if not an opinion?" he again asked.

Sweet Gin looked puzzled, looking between Dinah and Barnaby. Searching for some confirmation. "I... Think..." she said.

"And you've felt emotion?" he said again. Sweet Gin stared at him, to which he added, "Have you felt fah you'e safety?" he asked, "Had joy?"

Sweet Gin thought back to running from the ghouls, the tremors of terror at being nearly blown up... And the soft silkiness of the pajamas she had stuffed in her pack, and the sound of music on the radio. "Yes." she said softly.

"You can move, and you can speak." Barnaby said, "You can think and feel happiness and fear, if not yet love. You are to me, alive. As much as Dinah here is, and my congregation."

"Really?" she said, she felt unsatisfied. Perhaps still lost or uncertain.

"But maybe you have not discovahed the emotion of it." Barnaby said, continuing down the dark street.

"Of what?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Of life." the priest smiled, "It is othehwise to abtehct to explain fully. The wohds needed nonexistent, and too grey. In time maybe, you'll feel what life is."

"Then what is death?" Sweet Gin asked.

"The denial of life fo' anything living." answered the priest.

Though as slow as the old man moved, he walked Sweet Gin and Dinah to a towering structure, situated just at the edge of the wall that guarded the small enclave of peace. Built out of the remains of an old brick house stood a tower of scrap and wood, transforming into a mishmash of metal scrap that rose higher into the skies. The darkness of the night had shrouded the tower against the inky blackness of the sky, and even on the ground its towering spire rose invisible into the night. a domed cap appearing to float as the weak moonlight and stars illuminated off its distant surface.

"This is whe'e you' link in the rail'oad resides." Barnaby said softly, like a father, "It is the home of one Conneticut, or Connie.

"I heard him on the radio!" Sweet Gin exclaimed.

Father Barnaby only smiled and nodded, "I shall leave you to the next stage of your journey, child." he said warmly, placing a gentle hand on Sweet Gin's shoulder as he turned to leave. A chilling reflex shot through Sweet Gin's spine at the old man's touch, and she turned with apprehensive nervousness as she watched him off.

Sweet Gin turned as Dinah put her own hand on her shoulder. The old black woman looking at the android with a warm smile. "Well, I done always wanted to have been meet Hollering Connie." she said, "Le's go.”

***

The building had a livable air to it. Though motes of dust descended through the cold air, the remnants of the home within had been patched over and made tolerable. A certain amount of care had gone into lighting it with what meager resources the tenant had. Though dry, there was also an aromatic smell. A sweat sort of scent.

And on top of it all, there was the music. Though subtle and in the background, it was present. Weak from poor speakers, or playing from muffled locations. It played from where the home groaned and greeted Sweet Gin all the same. Dinah had opted to sit outside and wait, while Barnaby had returned to whatever his evening duties were. Thus leaving Sweet Gin to stand in this sanctuary.

In the corner of her vision, her navigation marker flashed enthusiastically and dance in and out of view as the android moved and turned through the home. Peering into each room for a hint of the owner's presence. All the while finding nothing except for the trophies of his living: stacks of ancient albums piled into every corner of the home, and piled into the dusty stiff furniture. Ash trays full to the very brim in cigarette smoke. Empty soda bottles and piles of packaged food containers lay haphazardly in one particularly dimly lit room.

As well, faded and aging posters of nameless and long-dead performers hung from the walls, no doubt covering holes or stains by their erratic placement. One some though, Sweet Gin could read out the names of some performers. Dean Domino seemed to be popular, by the sheer number of concert and album advertisements that littered the halls, alongside such forgotten figures as Marguerite DeVille (who Sweet Gin observed in some strange distant way, looked like her). Entranced by the trappings, she soon forgot she was lost, and chose to ignore the flashing navigation icon that would occasionally and sporadically glide into view.

"Hey, hey!" a faint voice said, garbled by the decay of static. Sweet Gin flinched and she turned about. Her insides turning and mind racing as for a moment she feared she was trying to be taken over. But calm sailed over on smooth waves as she realized that the electrically mangled voice was external, "This he'ah is yo' good pal Hollhein' Connie, Childehn!

"I hope you liked that last song, it's one of my pahsonal favorehts fahm the ve'y own Dead Domino.

"Now sit tight listene's, because the music will be right back. But fahst: today's passing news... Today we've ha-"

"What are you doing here?" an annoyed voice cut in, startling Sweet Gin back to Earth. She landed with a jump, giving a faint squeel as she fell against the dry paper of the wall.

"Who are you?" she asked, panting.

Standing on the far end of the hall was a skinny motley man with long combed back locks of hair falling about his face. Sharp brown eyes measured the android up and down with uncurbed unenthusiasm. A soft supple sneer ripped through his lips as he balanced a bent out of shape cigarette on his swollen bottom lip. "I'm just an assistant." he sneered, balancing a stack of records under the arm of his arm. He wore a faint blue vest over a grimy dress undershirt, with a tie to match.

"Assistant?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Yeah, it's my job. Don't wear it out." he said sarcastically, moving ahead to deposit the records in one of the side rooms, "Now what do you want, we run a tight ship so be snappy, broad." he yelled, as he went about setting things right and gathering up a collection of records at random.

"I'm just here for the railroad." Sweet Gin said nervously, tapping her fingers together with a weak smile.

"Well welcome to The Station!" the man said with tepid cheer, "So do you want a cookie, or do you want to see the man upstairs."

"Well... I..." Sweet Gin stumbled, "I dunno?"

"Typical fucking Andies." the man sneered, lifting up a new stack, "They don't know shit for the first week they're out here.

"So listen up, if you want to give me a damn blowjob then I'll be happy. But I'm no use. So come the fuck upstairs to see the big dig and he'll treat you to his candy dish, alright?"

"Well, ok..." Sweet Gin said softly. To be honest, she didn't want to give out any blowjobs as much as the man didn't seem to want to have one.

Snickering, the man pushed his way passed her, arms laden with records and Sweet Gin followed him up the creaking wooden steps and onto the next floor.

Here on the second landing, "homely" was hardly the word to use. Here, all conditions of a home were dismissed and burned outside the window. Here, the new residents seemed to have gleefully took to wrenching much of the building's non-necessary equipment turning it into a single massive landing. Between the still standing and graying support beams of the house's super-structure, arrays of duct-tapped computer banks sat in long rows with thick arm-width cables and wires running across the floor, and nailed up into the ceiling. Winding and twisting they made like pythons to a far corner where they crawled up into a hole to another floor, or the ceiling crawl space. Large beams of metal had been precariously stabbed into the floor, and bolted to the walls and ceiling. Clearly making the supporting base of the lattice-work radio tower that stood from the house's ceiling.

A multitude of lights of different strands and styles hung about the ceiling. From tiny crystalline Christmas lights to large, bulky, industrial shop lights. All casting a warm glow on every part of the building as weak fans rattled and hummed, desperately circulating the dry air through the banks of computers.

And at the far end of the room, a small wooden chamber sat with a door and glass window. Suspended on small blocks of wood, it was free and unanchored from the rest of the building. Inside, in the frosty glow of florescent lighting sat a darker skinned man - not quiet black, but not white - sat talking into a microphone. The assistant made his way to the room, stopping Sweet Gin with a sharp angry look.

Balancing his records under a single arm, he softly opened the door, briefly letting out the enthusiastic roar of the man's voice as he talked about ghouls. Then it was silenced as he entered in.

For a moment, the man knelt over and started whispering into the man's ear and pointing as he went about preparing the record deals.

"I see you met Horse first." a voice said. Sweet Gin again jumped with a sudden startle.

"It's alright girl, I ain't gonna bite." the voice laughed as the android turned to meet its owner. A heavier set man with a balding head. Beads of sweet dripped down his brow and his enlarged chin.

"Horse?" Sweet Gin asked.

"Yea, he's a bit of a pain in the ass. But the little bugger gets things done." he laughed, watching the recording booth as the man named horse scrambled out. Inside, the other man must have stopped speaking as he went about putting in records into his machine for a block of music.

Sweet Gin didn't know what to say as Horse stepped out. He gave her and her new company a disapproving glare before sulking over to a set of machines by the antenna braces.

"It's not like any of us have any stories." the big man said with distant nostalgia as he watched Horse get to work, "We picked up that boy when he someone tried to sell him to Heaven's Gate. Ol' Connie offered to buy him, despite the insistence of Barnaby that we don't do slaves. His owners - or whoever - were about leave in spite of us."

"So, is that why..." Sweet Gin said, drifting off as Connie stepped out of his booth. A tall skinny man with a portly, rounded face. He was lined with a certain expert degree of experience in the wasteland, folding up his caramel skin.

"Oh, hello..." Sweet Gin said, picking back up on the situation with a shocked start.

"Good evening sisteh, I'm Hollahin' Connie." said Connie, introducing himself with a wide grin and extending his arm for a handshake. Sweet Gin looked down at it puzzled, and afraid.

"Oh it doesn't mattah none anyways." laughed Connie, withdrawing his arm, "I see you talking to Big Pete."

"I... guess..." the android stammered, looking between Connie and Pete, "And I guess I was supposed to be here?" she asked.

"Well we ahe just anothah link in the chain of the Rail'oad." Connie smiled, "So we're obliged to help you out howevah I can. And I got plenty of time, I made sure to put in enough music.

"So how a'he ya an f'ahm whence did you come?"

"I- I dunno." Sweet Gin asked weakly, "And from?" she asked nervously.

"The Boston area?" Connie asked.

"Yeah. Why?" asked the android.

"Depending on what you did o' wheh you came f'ahm could detahmine how we get you going out."

"I- I don't like to think about it..." Sweet Gin said weakly.

Connie raised an inquisitive brow, "How so?" he asked.

"I, well, I was raped, a lot. I guess..." Sweet Gin said quietly, shirking off away from either of the men, "... for a man named Scrap Daddy..." she mumbled.

"I see." Connie nodded, "Well, thahe's no reason to be nehvous. We won't pahss it any 'Ahdah."

"How was you trip?" Pete asked, "Any encounters with the Retention Bureau then?"

"Well... I uh... Think..." Sweet Gin sheepishly started, thinking back to Worcester and the fight with Vinny. She rubbed at the straps of her pack, where barrel of Vinny's "Smile" rifle stuck out from, "I did... Is this bad?"

"Jesus gehl you just made it fun..."

"What's making this fun?" Sweet Gin asked naively, looking between the radio DJ and his assistants with a lost look.

"Genahlly gehl, we would 'ather a Bureau agent was killed since it only makes the Institute mad." Connie started, a heavy air hung on his voice, "We don't get many Andies who had killed an agent. But when they do..." he DJ trailed off, his hand nervously stroked the back of his head. Turning to the side he stared off distantly.

"Have you perhaps seen anything strange?" Pete asked, putting a gentle hand on Sweet Gin's shoulder. A nervous rigidity ran cold through her spine as she was guided to the side. Pete sat her down in a beat up chair as he knelt down alongside the android.

"Had anyone speak to you without being there?" he asked.

A dark wave of realization sailed over her. Sweet Gin's eyes brightened and she dropped them, biting on her bottom lip as she remembered that voice. The specter she had maybe seen. "Maybe?" she nervously shuddered.

Pete raised his head and gave a solemn nod. "You got The Man on ya then, girl." he said in a low morose tone.

"So long as she's within Heaven's Gate though he can't touch he'." Connie said. Sweet Gin was confused, and it was reflected well in her expression in a distant vacant stare. "We got a counter signal to him," the DJ explained, "Usually we can get it across all of Spangfield but it's weakened up some this past week and Hoahse has been t'ying to fix it. Right now, it's died off to the the ah'ea a'ound the Mission."

"And I could do more for it if I could actually do something but pick up records, you son of a bitch!" Horse snapped from the far end of the room.

"Can I help?" Sweet Gin asked.

"When was the last time The Man accessed you?" Pete asked.

"Uh..." Sweet Gin started uncomfortably, shrinking back in her chair, "I guess... yesterday..." she said shyly. Her face shone a paler shade of white as the ghosts of those needles plied into her skull.

"Bitch won't be able to do it." Horse growled from the back, "It'll be a week's job at most of troubleshooting and The Man's already zeroed in on her here. And the Institute will have her back and her systems restored before we can finish up."

"Hoahse has a point." Connie said, "As much as I would like to ask, I'm going to have to say no. You'eh going to need to get out fast.

"Can you get anyone to help you along?"

"I got... Dinah..." Sweet Gin said.

"Damn android, this isn't the time to eat!" snarled Horse.

"No- no, Dinah's a person I met coming in." Sweet Gin quickly defended.

"So some raider fuck then, all right." shouted Horse, "Well all the more power to you and your junkie."

"B-" Sweet Gin started, offended.

"Ignohe him." Connie said, "How long has The Man been after you?"

Trying to think about it was frightening. She lowered her eyes to stare at the cold cement floor. Subconscious phantoms sputtered within her, echoing the taunting of that voice, the cold, flat, emotionless sneers of it. "A couple days... I think." she whispered softly, "But I might have seen him three days ago."

"Where?" asked Pete.

"The Woo, or something." she said nervously, "As I was leaving."

"I see." Connie said tersely, raising his hand as he chewed idly on a finger nail.

"What if we send her down the Connecticut?" Pete asked, "She can make greater ground on that river then she would if she walked the existing railroad."

"The next stop wouldn't be until New Yahk." the DJ said.

"It's where she'd end up anyways before going to Virginia or The Eries." said Pete, "And if she stays off the beaten path enough, she'll be able to elude The Man long enough for him to lose her trail."

"I can see whe'e you'e going." Connie said, his eyes glowing, "Sweet Gin, can you get this Dinah gal to escort you along?" he asked, "It'll be helpful. And if The Man does anything deeper she might be there to help keep you controlled."

"What do you mean?" a fearful Sweet Gin stuttered, "C-controlled?"

"If he can get through deep enough," Pete started, "he could feasibly take remote control of your body and walk you back to Boston. Someone else there might be able to keep you restrained, or even terminate the signal by force.

"And by that, I mean temporarily overloading you." he continued to explain, "The computer brain works on two directions, a binary system of off and on. An android's systems has a third direction to replicate the human existence. It is a third dimension, if the binary is the second."

"But all the while compatible to binary code." Horse said distantly.

"That too." Pete said, "The Man can take control of the binary aspects of your systems and hijack you. Though the third added dimension can be responsive and thwart any future attempts after a successful accessing of your audio, visual, and motor functions, a man of his capabilities and experience can keep getting back in. It may take longer each time, and harder. But every time he does so without interruption, he gets deeper.

"If you are ever contacted by him, the communication needs to be terminated quickly." the round man said.

"By that, he means total system shut down." Horse explained.

"A pulse grenade is a pretty quick if clumsy way." Pete shrugged, "But this Dinah may be able to do it without any training. It'll just hurt and leave you knocked out for a hour or so until the fail safes trip off and restore activity."

"Pulse grenade..." Sweet Gin muttered softly, thinking back to that last time.

"The confused signals may also back feed back to him and fragment some of his software on whatever mobile terminal he uses." Horse added.

"But either way, it's a temporary fix."

"But you still need to go." Connie said, "Rail'oahd stations are not full time residencies. You'ee still in 'each of the Institution, and we'ah he'ah to get you out of it. And if you want, I can get you something to get you down the Connecticut."

Sweet Gin looked up at Connie, and the rest of the men. Horse gave her a sour, if pitying look from the terminal he presided over. Nervously, she smiled. "I suppose so..." she said.

“So, any mo'e questions?” Connie asked politely.

“I... guess. Maybe.” Sweet Gin shrugged nervously, “I, well... There are recordings, or something in my head. What are those about?”

“As advanced as the Institute is, they need a base for their android OS.” Horse said from his terminal, “And what's left from the war is plenty of that, all of is sourced to RobCo products. There are some other smaller shit. But they're fucking hard to come by or fucking military as shit.

“There's this fucking group, call themselves the enclave. Those fuckers got what's left of the old military shit. But I'm digressing.” he mumbled, swearing.

“In any case, to provide android functionality it looks like the shits meshed code from a number of robots, and Pip-boys.” he continued. Glaring across the room he noticed Sweet Gin's confused look, “They're arm things.” he said, wringing his hand around his arms, “You'll fucking know when you see them.

“But they use that old OS and worked up from there and into the synthetical-biological processing in your head and across your body to make it as human as possible.

“We can only guess that as well as to their clients, those recordings are for the android's benefits as well. Since even fucking locked down on free thought you have the capability to learn and you need to fucking learn your functions. So you're loaded up with the standard RobCo and Vault Tech shit byte for byte, complete with user tutorials.

“Your computers will do the same.”

“Oh...” mumbled Sweet Gin, “And who are these RobCos, and Vault Techs?” she asked.

“Old companies.” Horse answered grumpily, “Long fucking dead. We're all just pirating off their remains. I fucking imagine we ain't gotten to stealing 5% of either companies long-lost shit. Those fuckers did a lot for that fucking War.

“But you'll know RobCo whenever you see a robot and a computer, and Vault Tech when you see a fucker with a Pip Boy, or a Vault; shit people hid in the war.”

“I see...” Sweet Gin nodded, “And their stuff is inside me?”

“Heavily modified.” answered Horse, “I won't be able to steal control of you through RobCo Termilink or even base binary. The Institute went somewhere else when they made androids. If I wanted it on my terminal, I'll need to plug into your translator.”

“Translator?” Sweet Gin asked. It sounded like a terrifying device.

“Apart from a lot of metal and plastics in normal-look people, it's one of the Institute's 101 signatures.” Horse answered, “It's what The Man goes through for his access. It's what I'd plug into if I peeled back that scalp of yours. I can get in and clear your memory. Mind fuck you.”

Sweet Gin's face went pale and scared. Horse's stern and angry look face didn't make it any better. He puffed annoyed as he went back to work. From alongside her Connie sighed and said, “Well, let's look at that raft.”

***

It was something, sort of.

The Heaven's Gate settlement nudged up against the murky, foaming Connecticut river. A thick sudsy film ran along its service. In the weak moonlight, thin twisting locks of multicolored bands shone with a metallic glow in the thick water below. And in the water rested a small, battered looking water craft. Secured to the sides sat pale, graying blue plastic barrels and bound chords of metal poles.

“The Mission used to use this to teade up and down river.” Connie said as he presented Sweet Gin the water craft. Dinah lingered in the back, looking worn and tired as she sat down at a weathered bench, “But the tahde up rivah went dead some time ago and the ae'aft's man disappeaed. No body's used it sense.”

“Um... thanks...” Sweet Gin said. She felt uncomfortable taking the vehicle. Even being offered it, she felt like she couldn't.

“But what if you need to use it?” she asked, nervously.

“It won't be an issue.” Connie smiled, “It's for a good cause anyhow, and Bahnaby would be willing to donate forgotten things to a cause that's better than what it's being used fah.

“Besides, I'm suhe one of the Templah's will find it when on pat'ol or looking fo'h Rome.”

“Rome?” Sweet Gin asked.

“Some lost city.” Connie cackled, “They've b'ought back stawies of places called Rome, but nothing matching the pre-wah desc'iption of the city. They'e seahch will neveh end, no doubt.”

“I see...” she said, “What if I find it?”

Connie smiled, a distant sort of smile. “Then I'm suhe you'll need to contact back he'a.” he said.

“So what we boing here and when we be leaving.” Dinah yawned from her bench, “If we gon' be talking all night then I'd like to find a cot and lay down.

“Don't be knowin' about the Android, though.”

Connie nodded, “You know what you'e doing then?” he asked.

“Keeping a sweet eye on this girl here.” Dinah smiled, tired, “And if I be needing too, set a Pulse Grenade on her.”

“Yes.” Connie confirmed to the distress of Sweet Gin. Having that chilling electric darkness fall on her was about as frightening as finding herself possessed again.

As Connie looked back down at her she gave him a uncomfortable smile. He sighed some, and looked away uncomfortably. “You two'll be going staight to New Yahk.” he said, “The Connecticut will empty out into the sea, follow the coast west-wahd.

“Just... just be caheful.” he added, “We don't send many refugees down that 'oute.”

“How come?” Sweet Gin asked.

“Bad mi'e luehks.” Connie replied, “If we we'en't so concehned with The Man, then we would have no issue sending you the long way t'ough the hills. But that's too much land and too much time for him to catch up.”

“What's a...” Sweet Gin started, before being interrupted by Dinah. The android was mounted with the curiosity on what this was Connie was invoking. As well as doubled in anxiety and hesitation to find out, or encounter one.

“If we be taking on Mire Lurks then I done want a proper rest.” Dinah protested, agitated, “Do we be need to leave at this hour?”

“I'm so'y.” Connie apologised, “But if you two need to then you can sit back. But you both need to depa't by the mo'ning.”

“It be fine by me.” Dinah said softly, and cheerily. Feeling refreshed at the prospect of getting a chance to sleep.

***

Outside the window night hung in the air. A blanket of ideal blackness lay across the dreary settlement. And though the men on the street had retired from the barrels of burning refuse - and their fathers having died - the lights that dotted the settlement's walls continued to glow softly. The darkened forms of the guards paced back and forth on their high parapets as they watched the city beyond. A soft peace hung over the realm.

The window the android sat behind was long blasted out. The glass removed long ago. The empty frame hung on a frame of peeling wood, signs of burn damage pitted and spotted it.

Connie had found her and Dinah both free rooms in a battered building that had taken the name of the Conneticut Inn, which was nailed to the front of the building on a large chunk of wood in dripping black ink that only exaggerated the atrocious misspelling of the business. A further sort of crypt-like air hung in it as well. It was dry, despite many of the windows removed. And it was cold too.

Much of the wallpaper was peeling back from the stucco wall. The drywall plaster itself too flaking away from the tightly stacked rows of wood that had built up the supports for the dry, chalky plaster. The rooms of the old house as well had been divided and further sub-divided into smaller compartments where the mattresses and cots could barely fit.

Apart from the android's small radio there was a soft silent sigh that washed through the morbidly dry building. Connie had no doubt retired from the airwaves for the night. The music played uninterrupted. What was on now was some old song, the singer not wielding a soft showman's voice. Sweet Gin however enjoyed the softness of the tune, and its simplicity with the slow strumming of the guitar and only its owner's voice.

So she sat in her cot, staring out at the moonlight wasteland out her broken window in her corner room. Dinah slept quietly in a cubby across the narrow "hall", if it could be called such a thing. Sweet Gin's pack as well lay on the floor, nearly taking up what precious floor space existed in Sweet Gin's closet. The barrel of Vinny's rifle poked leaning against the wall, as did the Bancroft sword.

Sweet Gin sighed troubling. She felt herself burn with a furious anxiety as she looked at the rifle, knowing that it was being just as much a tool for her, as it was a reminder of what exactly was burdening her with having fought its owner. He had killed her. Though she still felt confused as to exactly what that meant. She felt she had a grasp on the life and death thing. But looking at the rifle with "Smile" so brightly painted on its side, and of Vinny, she was reminded just how little grasp she still had on life and death.

What exactly was death? Was it a sleep? The priest said that it was coming to have any of his attributes of life taken away. But looking at the gun, could any of those be given back? Could he "life" be given back to him? Would all of this be forgiven and can she just got back?

But the ghouls of Worcester... Were they alive? Or were they dead? Certainly they had no reason, or could not speak. A cold chilling fear rain down the nape of her neck. The thought of them brought an icy coldness down her neck. She shivered at the thought. She had managed to elude them. But their bestial tenacity, and those dim, yet viciously bright eyes still burned. She didn't want to end up like them. She feared the prospect so much. The coldness dripped down, pooling in her groin and she shuddered.

She couldn't just go back to see if she could give Vinny back his lost faculties and make him alive again. That'd mean she'd go back to Boston. And the idea of returning to Boston only made the chilling numbness burn more. More so as it drifted to a dull gnawing pain at being used as she had. She was free. She didn't need to go through that again.

She felt the desire to move crawl on her even more. Was she wasting time? The night was long, and she didn't think she needed to rest. Not like everyone else around her. To them, the passage of the night time didn't seem to have any effect or consequence. But how tenacious was The Man? Did he stop like them?

The night was long, and she needed something to do. She reached out, pulling her heavy pack up to the dingy cot she lay in. Pulling it up she caught the corner of a book. Curiosity tinged and she grabbed it, pulling it out delicately by the leafy corner of its cover. "True Police Stories" it read, a man was painted on the cover wearing a fedora and holding a pistol.

She remembered this. She got it from the merchant. The one that surrendered it to her and the pack. She hoped he was doing alright. To her astonishment she found her old patient gown from her awakening at the bottom. It was still caked with the grime and blood of that dungeon she awoke to. She could still hear the song that had played.

And a phantom memory reminded her of how her ass had felt.

She cringed, closing the pack and lifting the tender book out. She clutched it close to her chest. At least it wasn't a reminder of anything worse.

Her radio was a source of softened illumination, along with the frosty moon that glistened in the night sky. So long as the night lasted, she'd at least have something to read as she opened the cover and began reading the faded print. At least it was something to do.

***

The sound of the river splashing against the cold cement side of the Connecticut was the only shift in the morning stillness that hung over Springfield. That heavy muddy, and chemically tainted slurping as the rainbow tinted bands drifted and twirled down the river. Over the coarse of the night, the river had even carried with it a parting gift to Sweet Gin as she and Dinah stood at the river side, overlooking their raft. Somehow, Sweet Gin was still nervous about accepting it, but the radio DJ had accepted.

Connie himself had retreated to the radio station, leaving the android and her aged companion to the question of when to shove of.

The gift in question was the wet and ravaged body of something. The slurry of the river that had washed over it had dampened the fur and the body had decayed beyond the point of recognition. Sickly graying wounds covered its body, torn or shot into it and eaten away by the water. And if Sweet Gin looked closely, she swore she could see it glow green.

“What you be thinking what it be?” Dinah asked in a low tone.

Sweet Gin shrugged, “I don't know...” she mumbled. Whatever it was, it looked more like a bundle of rags than it was an animal. The mated water-logged chunk of flesh just rested in the water, pressed against the side of the raft.

Dinah shrugged, “I don't be thinking it be mattering none.” the retired raider mused, stepped onto the raft with a careful step. “But you be coming?” she asked.

Dinah looked up at her, then down river. The bubbles and discolored foam slid through the blackened water at an oily pace. It wasn't exactly comforting, even from a synthetic perspective. “Yeah...” she started uncomfortably, jumping aboard the rickety boat.

Her weight shifted as she stepped on, compensating for the subtle bow it took as she stepped onto the plywood deck. A rancid spike of panic struck through her as she merely pictured herself falling off the opposite edge in a ball of metal and flesh and landing in that rancid river water.

But Dinah caught her, as she staggered drunkenly into the middle of the boat, a breath caught tight and deep into her chest. “Thanks...” she said with a deep breath.

“It be no problem, hon.” Dinah smiled, helping her down as the android took a seat.

“But you do feeling OK?” she asked as she crept to the edge of the boat, carefully untying the moldy rope that held the raft to the docks. It immediately began to slowly drift down-river as she tossed the tie onto shore before it could slip into the sickening ichor.

“I think so...” Sweet Gin said softly, to tell the truth her head had been feeling light since earlier that morning, and her body felt numb.

“You sure?” Dinah asked, reaching over for the long galvanized pole strapped to the side. Dipping it into the water she started gently steering and pushing the raft about, avoiding the hazards thrusting out from the water below, darkened husks of boats, debris, or even a few cars. “I do mean darling,” she began again with a concerned frown, “You be look a little paler than usual. But, you done always be a pale sort of girl for what I be knowing.”

“Thanks, I guess?” Sweet Gin asked, turning to face her companion. The city of Springfield passed lazily by around them and she kept a hard eye on the passing landscape.

Dinah nodded with silent acknowledgment, but kept here eyes on the towering offices and apartments lining the water way. Long stone bridges stretched over the thick muddy river, populated by the spent remnants of the world before, or warnings of the world today.

Bodies strung up by jagged wires dangled from the railings and posts of the bridges as they passed under them. Dozens hanging out over the water, baked in the sun until they lost their flesh, or eaten by the flies until they were mere bloated sacks of putrid smelled flesh. Sweet Gin watched them by as they floated past them held in a childish trance of awe and disgust. The disfigured remains of some traveler, their bellies bloated, green and purple from decomposition. Growing frail as their last fibers gave out. Or as they passed by, simply growing tired of their prisons and splitting, falling from their noses to land with a loud wet splash in the river to sink.

“Who-” Sweet Gin began.

“Be keeping your eyes open would help keep us from that.” Dinah said, “When you be traveling, you keep an eye out for anyone else you done gone got killed. You do hear?”

The android looked down at where the body fell into the river, and back up at Dinah. “Alright.” she said.

Sweet Gin sat there on the raft. The city passed by, and grew and shrank. As they left, she slowly became aware of the tension from Dinah. The tight wound string that was strung between her and the scenery. And Sweet Gin noticed as the apartments and offices shrank to the shells of smaller stores and houses as they crawled onward into suburbia that great tension that hung in the air. A watchful silence, or an eerie peace.

“Are we being followed?” Sweet Gin asked nervously, as she looked out to the shore looking for movement.

“I don't know.” the ex-raider muttered, “But it's a bit too quiet.”

“I can tell.”

“Lay-a out a gun,” Dinah said in a soft breath, “Just in case.”

Sweet Gin nodded enthusiastically, shifting her pack onto her lap as she shuffled through her selection.

It wasn't until the raft had left the town proper that Dinah spoke. When the buildings had left way to open fields, or hallowed out forests where the natural cadence of the world resumed its strength. “Have you done thought about eating?” she asked.

“Eating?” Sweet Gin repeated.

“You be not knowin' about eating?” Dinah chuckled.

“I can't say I've been acquainted with it...” Sweet Gin answered unsure, nervous. She tried to think back. Recalling if she had ever done anything to that line. “Is this a sexual act?” she finally said repulsed.

The response sent Dinah sprawling to her knees laughing, keeling over as she clutched her gut and held fast to the pole. Her inward dry cackles and wheezing laughs filled to the hot air of the late morning.

“Did I say something wrong?” Sweet Gin asked

“No girl, we be just having something to talk about.” Dinah cackled, regaining her breath.

---

Chapter Footnote: Level up!
Level Footnote: Level 6!
Perk Added: Ferocious Loyalty - When you drop below 50% HP, companions gain +50 DR.
Skill footnote:
Explosives skill: 33/100
Guns Skill: 47/100