Freeside, as it always did, smelled like the chem-bittered smoke of a community--if it could be called as much--held together with string. It was no normal smog, holding a potent uniqueness to it, the wind it rode on picking up through outer Vegas and the wastes, dragging with it the scents of irradiated pits, heaps of Brahmin dung, gang campfires. In the Old Mormon Fort, the scent was washed out with the vomit from radiation victims, recovering addicts, or just plain old-fashioned sick people. Jordan was leaning back against the façade of one of the buildings across the street from the fort’s entrance, watching people filter in and out on occasion. The little bottle of Buffout she had in the pouch at her belt felt heavier than ever, and she mulled over throwing it in the dumpster nearby for some poor old beggar to go at. But she wasn’t that cruel, knowing they’d just swallow down the whole load, get sick, maybe die. She had a…responsibility to keep the chems, to keep them away from those who couldn’t bother to understand the chemistry behind them, their own limits. Yes, this had to be the right way.
It’d been months since she’d bothered even looking up at the familiar brick walls every time she’d been in Freeside to stock up on supplies or visit Maya. It brought back too many memories of her work as a guard, or as a little girl working her butt off cleaning up cots or the outhouses just to get the opportunity to watch an operation performed by the doctors, or to borrow a precious medical book they kept under lock. Sometimes the Kings would be persuaded to carry in the body of some nobody who’d overdosed, or a thug who’d been shot dead, and she would learn alongside the Followers trainees as a doctor would perform a prosection. Pain welled up in her chest at the memories and she forced herself to look away. Someday she’d return, clean as a goddamn whistle, ready to help, to reconcile. But for now her hands would shake, her eyes would dart, and her pockets would feel heavy.
She moved from the building across from the fort and began making her way toward Mick and Ralph’s. She hoped they would be carrying enough paper for what she needed, running short as she had been, what with documenting the oddities of the wasteland in the areas fringing the major blast zone near Vegas. She hadn’t yet dared get too close to the irradiated area just yet. She only had a couple doses of Rad-X and Radaway for herself, and the few Slayers she’d managed to run into had been ambivalent of her presence, but tragically so busy planting bullets and blades into the creatures born of the radiation that she doubted a scientific excursion would interest them much. She sighed and slipped inside Mick and Ralph’s, searching for the old, flat sack she used to hold papers and scientific journals. It was pathetically empty right now, and she weighed it with one hand while stepping up to the counter. “Can I get about a hundred sheets of blank paper, if you’ve got it?” She smiled amiably. "Got to stock up, where I'm going."
It’d been months since she’d bothered even looking up at the familiar brick walls every time she’d been in Freeside to stock up on supplies or visit Maya. It brought back too many memories of her work as a guard, or as a little girl working her butt off cleaning up cots or the outhouses just to get the opportunity to watch an operation performed by the doctors, or to borrow a precious medical book they kept under lock. Sometimes the Kings would be persuaded to carry in the body of some nobody who’d overdosed, or a thug who’d been shot dead, and she would learn alongside the Followers trainees as a doctor would perform a prosection. Pain welled up in her chest at the memories and she forced herself to look away. Someday she’d return, clean as a goddamn whistle, ready to help, to reconcile. But for now her hands would shake, her eyes would dart, and her pockets would feel heavy.
She moved from the building across from the fort and began making her way toward Mick and Ralph’s. She hoped they would be carrying enough paper for what she needed, running short as she had been, what with documenting the oddities of the wasteland in the areas fringing the major blast zone near Vegas. She hadn’t yet dared get too close to the irradiated area just yet. She only had a couple doses of Rad-X and Radaway for herself, and the few Slayers she’d managed to run into had been ambivalent of her presence, but tragically so busy planting bullets and blades into the creatures born of the radiation that she doubted a scientific excursion would interest them much. She sighed and slipped inside Mick and Ralph’s, searching for the old, flat sack she used to hold papers and scientific journals. It was pathetically empty right now, and she weighed it with one hand while stepping up to the counter. “Can I get about a hundred sheets of blank paper, if you’ve got it?” She smiled amiably. "Got to stock up, where I'm going."