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mickume

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"Stu-!"  I stopped and glared.  "It’s the same Max."

"You let him into the Lucky 38?"

didn’t let him in, he tailed... someone I know." 

Emily groaned.  "No!  Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!"

"Enlighten me."  I continued walking, taking this as an over-dramatic judgement of my actions.  

"You gave him access to House’s system!"   

"If House’s systems could be that easily hacked, the courier would already control Vegas."  

"They can’t," Emily insisted, in something of a panic by now as she jogged along beside me.  I didn’t make eye contact.  "House’s computers are heavily encrypted and protected, it’s nearly impossible to even hack one securitron while it’s connected to the network." 

"Then what’s the problem?"  House’s systems were practically fool-proof, that was the whole reason Lucia had Yes Man installed rather than just control the system herself without a middleman.  

Emily stepped in front of me and grabbed me by the shoulders.  "Because Yes Man can bypass those precautions and control the entire system itself.  Whoever controls Yes Man, controls Vegas."  It didn’t occur to me at the time to ask how she knew about Yes Man.  

"And?"  I shook her off and continued towards the gate to the Strip.  "Emily, I don’t have time for this.  Just make your point or go away."  

Emily called back to me as I passed the first securitron guard, "Because Max helped me program Yes Man.  He knows the codes to override the entire system."

I woke up alone after that.  Between the drugs and the lack of windows, I had no idea how long I might have been out.  I wasn’t completely sober yet either; I spent the first few minutes after I woke admiring the ceiling.  I came to my senses just enough to wonder what had happened.  I could vividly recall the conversation with Lucia, but little else.  She had drugged me.  She had drugged me, and I was alone.  I staggered through the suite to make sure, but I knew I was right.  Arcade was gone.  Cass was also gone, and Lucia had to be with one or both of them.  I don’t think that Arcade knew enough to suspect just yet, but it still worried me to think that the courier had drugged me and taken him somewhere.  But why take Cass as well?

My unsteady search of the suite turned up no sign of her except an open, half-finished bottle of whiskey in the kitchen.  It looked like she’d stopped mid-drink and knowing Cass, I wondered if she’d been coerced into sleeping with me or if she just valued sex that much more highly than drink.  

I could still smell burnt meat.  I hadn’t noticed it for a while, at least not consciously, but I’d been oddly hungry since I woke up.  I dug through the fridge, figuring I might help myself and found no sign of anything cooked recently.  I settled onto the floor without bothering to close the fridge.  I could only feel the cold if I thought about it and I couldn’t be bothered to care right now.  I wracked my brain to remember what had happened.  I knew Lucia had mentioned that smell.  Had she told me what it was?  We hadn’t been cooking.  My hair had clumped with semen or sweat or something else that I couldn’t think to identify and I brushed it off my forehead absently.  My fingers resisted the motion and my wrist turned stiffly.  I didn’t have any theories about that, I just lay my hand across my lap like a chunk of meat and studied the patterns on my skin.  I saw the scars first, I always did.  My bracers were off.  I’d taken them off before, but I’d been wearing them when Lucia woke me.  Had I put them back on?  I hoped that I had.  I didn’t care who knew anymore, but if Lucia had strapped my bracers onto me again when I hadn’t been wearing them in the first place... it just seemed wrong.  I didn’t wonder at the time if she might have had a reason aside from tormenting me.  

I ran a finger along the thickest scar and noticed the bruises underneath.  It was a Lichtenberg figure, the pattern left by electricity.  I’d been electrically shocked.  It was my right arm, so I traced the lines to my implant.  It seemed odd.  Despite my lack of concern for my own safety, I wasn’t so reckless that I’d made the implant without any safety measures.  I’d designed it carefully so that any unwanted electrical discharge should have escaped without harm to my body unless the casing itself was damaged.  If the casing was damaged, the battery was designed to shut off automatically, so the odds of the device shocking me this badly were incredibly slim, especially considering there was no physical trauma to my hand aside from what the device had done.  I could understand this happening if I’d slammed my hand in a door, maybe, but not just spontaneously.  The electricity should have shut itself off before it did this much damage to my arm, this only made sense if I’d been shocked by something else.  Mostly on a hunch, I had Yes Man unlock the courier’s room and rummaged through her stuff.  I found what I was looking for pretty quickly— trusting the locked door to keep me out, she hadn’t bothered to hide it.  Lucia had a modified cattle prod stashed in her wardrobe.  Someone, certainly not Lucia herself, had modified the thing to produce lethal voltage and then some.  It was as if they’d taken a device meant for non-lethal use and intentionally modified it to not only kill but to cook its victims.  For all I knew that someone might have been me.  

I knew the cattle prod must have been used on me, but I wasn’t dead, and at the time it didn’t occur to me that someone else might be.  I was still heavily drugged.  Whatever my lack of investigative skills, I had enough presence of mind to realize that being less high would be helpful.  I had chems in my stash to help clear my high more quickly and I took them.  It took a grueling hour in the bathroom, but once I was mostly sober, I realized I could still find out what had happened even if I couldn’t remember it.  

I addressed Yes Man.  Lucia had tried to reprogram him so he would only respond to her, but she wasn’t very good with computers and I’d given myself a few dozen different overrides back when he was reprogrammed.  Some of them were only intended to bypass a single restriction so he would answer a question or play a file, but I did have a master override to give me control of the whole system and automatically lock out anyone without my passwords.  I’d also changed House’s override codes, so even if Lucia could find them out, I had control of the system.  The problem was, she didn’t need control of Vegas to be dangerous; if I staged a coup now, she’d just kill my friends and she knew I knew that.  That’s why I wasn’t going to use that override unless she gave me no other choice.  She had Arcade with her and I still didn’t know if she knew where Veronica had gone, or even if Vero had actually made it to the bunker.  Right now, I just used my access codes to bypass her attempt to hide the audio recordings of the suite.  I hadn’t known for certain that she’d really been recording us, but I asked Yes Man on a hunch and he happily informed me, "Yes!  I have approximately seven-hundred and eighty hours of audio and video recordings from each room of the Presidential Suite, would you like to hear the recordings?"

"Just from last night, audio only."  I did the math and specified the exact times.  Yes Man played the audio over the speakers.  I didn’t need video; it was pretty clear what had happened.  

I’d settled onto the floor when I heard Arcade’s voice confirm my fears and I didn’t bother to tell Yes Man to turn off the play back until I heard the recording of the elevator taking them downstairs with Cass’ body.  "T-turn it off. 

."  The recording stopped before I finished that last word, but not before I felt that I couldn’t stand to listen to another second of it, even if it was just static now.  

I stared at the burns on my wrist, wondering if the implant even functioned anymore.   If I’d still had anything left in my stomach, I might have thrown up.  Lucia had killed Cass.  I’d known she was capable of murder, just... I hadn’t expected her to kill someone so close to home.  Me, yes.  Arcade, hell, I expected that.  But as far as I knew Cass had never posed a significant threat.  At most, the caravaner annoyed the courier; I had never thought that annoyance would lead to murder.  I didn’t even hear Cass’s voice on the recording.  Lucia had drugged me before she’d even moved me to the bed.  I knew I’d been conscious when I’d had sex, but nothing I said made sense, so I must have been completely incoherent at the time.  I couldn’t tell if Lucia had raped me this time or if she’d just used me to rape Cass while the red-head was unconscious.  Or maybe even dead.  

I had always seen that the courier was a woman who would use any means necessary to accomplish her goals, and I’d known that she reveled in causing pain, but I’d never thought she would go this far.  I lay back on the stained pre-war carpet, folding my hands over my chest.  What was her goal?  Getting rid of Cass?  Cass was good with a gun, but she was drunk and nothing I’d seen from her suggested the slightest suspicion towards Lucia.  Keeping the drunk around kept up appearances at best, making Lucia appear to put up with her friends in good times and bad, or at least keep a roof over Cass’s head and make sure she didn’t join the starving masses outside the Strip.  Killing Cass, admittedly, didn’t harm her reputation too much at least as long as everyone blamed me, but there was no real reason to do so.  I tried to think the way Lucia did.  Although I did my best to be moral, I’d spent too much time around men and women who used everyone around them for their own pleasure and schemes.  It wasn’t difficult for me to think the same way.  She meant to turn Arcade against me, to isolate me, beyond that there was no reason for Cass’s death.  Looking back, I wondered if she had given Cass whiskey intentionally.  Start the caravanner down a dark path and just keep providing the means to numb her pain, cater to her vice.  There was no greater meaning to that part, she was just controlling Cass.  She was having fun, in her own sick way.  And she’d broken her toy because she needed Arcade not to trust me.  She knew I saw her as she was, which meant that she knew I would turn him against her if I had the chance.  She had tried to prevent that, which meant she planned to keep me around.  She still needed me for something.  

But that scheme only worked in the short term.  

Given a week, maybe less, Arcade would realize I was telling the truth, he’d finally notice all her lies, all the inconsistencies about her and it would be over.  She couldn’t have made that mistake.  Either Lucia had some long-term plan she hadn’t enacted yet, or... 

My heart sank with a truth I’d expected for a long time.  She only needed us for the short term.  She only needed to cover that tiny gap before one or both of us were permanently out of the picture.  Probably both, I revised.  I had to tell him quickly.  

In the soundproofed room, I couldn’t hear the elevator until it dinged as it reached the suite.  Still nude, I got to my feet, hoping this wasn’t Vero or Boone.  I didn’t have time to move before the doors parted.  

Lucia’s cold brown eyes traced the lines of my muscles more coldly than most of the clients I’d had.  She didn’t simply view me as a piece of meat; she saw me as prey.  She looked forward to doing more than simply raping me and she wanted to draw out my suffering.  Her gaze lingered on the scars and fresh bruising.  

Any time we spoke we read each other beyond the words we used.  When I spoke to her, each of us struggled to read the other’s most subtle tells, to guess what they were planning.  As much as I might learn from her now, I couldn’t risk her figuring out my own schemes.  I braced my arm against the wall behind me and stumbled over the worn carpet, trying to pretend I hadn’t cleared most of the drugs from my system.  

"You’re still stoned?" Lucia asked with a giggle that came off more sadistic than happy.  

I feigned surprise.  "Oh!  I didn’t see you there."  I smiled and stumbled back against the wall.  Her eyes narrowed.  I pretended not to notice, but really I could feel my right arm tense.  If I had to, I might be able to electrocute her before she could kill me, but the odds were against me.  She was a better fighter than she let on.  

Lucia kept half an eye on me as she stepped into her room.  She rummaged through the dresser and changed her clothes in plain view.  I watched her slim body for weapons.  She had a silenced pistol strapped to her thigh.  I could see how she got so many people to trust her; she had this dainty build and an innocent smile.  With the old-world dresses she normally favored, she came off like a naive and child-like girl just struggling to survive in the wastes, oblivious to the danger around her and helpless against it.  Really, it was a look I’d once tried to emulate.  Without the dress.  Apparently innocence didn’t come naturally to me, even when I had still been fairly naive.  

"Stand by the bed," Lucia ordered, pointing once she’d slung her backpack over her shoulder once again.  She wore one of her nicer dresses.  It was a lacey red and white number a bit more fancy than what the White Gloves wore.  I half wondered what she was doing that she had decided to wear that, but her order was really a more pressing concern.  Did she plan to do something or just want me away from the door?  She’d have to walk within my reach if I stayed where I was now.  

Lucia drew the gun on her back.  "Don’t make me shoot you."  I slowly obeyed.  The carpet crunched with dried blood that blended into the red fibers.  If she shot me, she could probably cover it up.  It was feasible enough that I might have left.  

Lucia stepped towards the door once I took my place.  "I’ll be back soon.  If you try to escape, I’ll pull out your teeth."   She said that with a charming girlish smile and slammed the door to her room behind her.  I heard the lock slide into place before the elevator doors opened and she was, at least presumably, gone.  I guess she hadn’t planned to kill me yet.  

I rushed into the suite, planning to have a very well-deserved discussion with Max and get some answers to a lot of questions I should probably have asked him before we’d slept together, but when I arrived, Max was nowhere to be found.  Lucia’s door was locked.  Presumably she’d cleaned the bed and gone to sleep, considering the day we’d had so far.  Max must have gone out.  If he had control of the system, I suppose his enemies may not seem like much of a threat, but considering he hadn’t left before, I’d be willing to bet this wasn’t due to his control of the securitrons; this was because of what had happened.  Either he didn’t think any of us wanted him around or he’d been so disgusted by his actions that he’d left or gone drinking.  Unfortunately, I had no idea where he might have gone.  

I sighed and lay down on the cot I usually claimed.  Something crinkled under the pillow.  Reaching into the pillowcase, I pulled out a crumpled paper.  It was Max’s handwriting, but clearer than usual.  I studied the words, quickly realizing it was a cipher.  There were patterns to the letters and one set had become Max’s name, but running though common three-letter words, I quickly realized that translated to "the."  

"Back to the briars- The chain that binds."    

Briars wasn’t a common term.  It made me think of an old story and given Max’s knowledge of the Old World, I guessed that it was meant to reference that tale.  So back home, or back to some dangerous place; both were equally applicable in the Mojave.  As I had no idea what to make of the latter segment, and considering the paper was badly crumpled, I guessed this might have been the note he’d given Veronica.  Either he’d left it here for me to find or she’d hidden it in the pillow some time while we were out.  But why?  He wanted her to go home?  Home for Veronica.  So a Brotherhood bunker?  Was the second half a reference to some Brotherhood strategy or maybe a note to someone he wanted to contact?  Max was cagey, possibly even paranoid.  I don’t think he’d left the Lucky 38 since he’d first arrived, excluding the times he was accompanied by the courier and excluding today. Was he asking for an escort?  Veronica could handle herself in a fight, and hell, he could theoretically get every securitorn in the city to protect him, so why would he need an escort?  He was Gabriel Maxson.  He had implied that he’d interacted with the NCR on unpleasant terms.   Were the NCR after him?  A Maxson

be one of their top most wanted targets as prisoners of war, probably even beyond Enclave survivors.  Had they already showed up to guard him, and that’s why he wasn’t here?  As dangerous as New Vegas could be, I didn’t expect that a full platoon of Brotherhood troops could have walked in to bring him out without at least somebody mentioning it to me.  

The elevator dinged and I leapt up, rushing to the hallway in the hopes of catching Max for that long-overdue conversation.  Instead, I glimpsed Lucia unlock her door and shuffle a very startled Max into the hallway before stepping past him and closing the door behind her.   

He was still nude, though he’d cleaned himself off and seemingly sobered up.  He had the decency to look uncomfortable.  As much as I really wished I could say that his guilty and frankly pathetic gaze wouldn’t work on me, I felt my resolve lessen- and that effect was compounded by my all-too-recent fear that he might have killed himself while we were out.  

"You’re not off the hook for what happened, but what is this?"  I held out the paper.  I saw Max’s eyes flick instantly towards the closed bedroom door and he moved to lean against the doorway, putting on a very clearly fake smile and replying as he took the paper, "Sorry, I must have lost that while I was drunk."

Why did he care if Lucia knew?  Surely she was already aware of his past?  Granted, she didn’t know about my past, so maybe she didn’t know his either.  Why was he so cagey about this note?  I jerked my head towards the door.  "Can we talk about this?"  It probably sounded more personal, but I just meant if having Lucia on the other side of that door meant he couldn’t.  This was the courier, a fairly naive and often impulsive woman, not some kind of spy or soldier who couldn’t be trusted.  His paranoia knew no bounds, and

was saying that.  

Max bobbled his head and gestured towards the group bedroom, "As long as we can talk about it somewhere more comfortable."   

He winked and I stepped back.  "No, you are not seducing me again after what you did."

Max traipsed into the bedroom and I followed.  

"You need to get out of here," Max insisted.  He flipped from seductive to dead serious like taking off a mask and it left me stunned for a moment.  

"What- Why?"  

The bedroom door slammed open and Lucia stepped out.  I heard the clink of her rifle against the buckle of her satchel; she was planning to leave.  Max grabbed my hand and stepped close to me before she moved into the doorway, leaving me uncomfortably close to him when she saw us.  I got the sense she was questioning my priorities.  

"We’re heading south," Lucia announced, "through Novac."

Assuming she meant me and not the three of us, I questioned, "Uh, why?"

She programmed a destination into her Pipboy. "The usual."  When I only raised an eyebrow, she added, "NCR problems."

I stifled a sigh.  The war couldn’t exactly be put on hold over Cass’s death.  "Okay."  I turned to gather my things and Max held onto my wrist.  He had a pleading look in his eyes.  

I slipped out of his grip.  "I’d like to talk to a friend in Novac while we’re there, if that’s alright," I announced so Lucia could hear as well and added to Max, "We’ll talk about this when I get back."

I started to gather up my bag and some more MF cells for my plasma defender.  

Max smiled and leaned against the wall.  "Is Boone off doing stuff for the NCR?"

I probably imagined an edge to Lucia’s voice as she replied, "Yeah.  He reenlisted."

"Back at his shack, fixing up old guns."

"Just got bored here?"

"He’s old.  He got tired of running around after me.  He wasn’t much help anyway."

Max paused.  "Just a lot of people seem to have stopped working with you."

"Or died." Lucia replied pointedly.  

I looked back and found her frowning at Max -understandably, though I didn’t join in.  She noticed I was ready to leave and stepped towards the door.  "Let’s go."

Max caught my hand as I walked past him.  "Stay safe."  He gave that awkward half smile I’d seen a lot when he knew he’d done something wrong.  Part of me wanted to shake him off again after what had happened with Cass, but it was a careless, albeit horrible mistake... and those hazel eyes...  

I squeezed his hand and let go.  "Don’t do anything stupid, okay?"

"Hey! Can we go?" Lucia called from the elevator, "I want to make some progress before we camp."

Lucia waited until the elevator doors had shut and it had begun to descend before she snapped.  "What the hell was that?  Did you forget that he’s the reason Cass is dead?!"

I shook my head and sighed.  "I know.  I know, he just... He has this way of making me forget the things he’s done."

She stared up at me, clearly judging my reaction.  

"Look, this is not ideal.  I’m going to talk to him about it when we get back and he’s not going to distract me so easily."

She raised her eyebrows.  "He’s really got you wrapped around his finger, hasn’t he?"

I sighed in defeat, "And don’t I know it."  Rather than linger on this very obvious point, I changed the subject, "What NCR troubles are we solving exactly?  Legion raids or is there another dangerous gang they want us to deal with?"

She laughed.  The Fiends had been trouble, and so had the Powder Gangers, and it was mostly my shooting that had saved us.   She must have been very lucky just to survive to reach Vegas, with the way she always seemed so helpless in a fight.  That was the main reason I’d even decided to help her- well, that and the supplies she’d donated.  She did a lot to help people, even though things had only gotten so much better around Freeside.  If Max could ever get past this idiotic notion that Lucia was somehow out to get him, the two of them could do a lot of good for the city.  

"Slavers," Lucia replied bluntly.  "I need someone who can hit them from the cliffs over Cottonwood Cove."

"And Boone’s back in the army, so that falls to me," I realized.  "You know, I’m not exactly a sniper."

She narrowed her eyes.  "And that deathclaw you incinerated at eight hundred meters away?"

"Gauss rifles help and that was a lucky shot."  

She handed me the gauss rifle I’d been using that day, along with more ammo.  "And the nightstalkers, cazadores, hundreds of geckos, and probably a few dozen Fiends?  You’re a good shot."  

I took the supplies rather than argue.  I suppose she had a point.  

"About Max-" I began, hoping to tell her that Max had the override codes.  

Lucia held up her hands in annoyance, "Arcade, I do not want to hear one more word about Max!  Not tonight, not after what he did.  Can we just stop talking about him for the rest of the day, at least?"

"O....kay."  I suppose it wasn’t urgent.  He’d been left alone in the Lucky 38 many times before and he’d never used the codes, it’s not like there was any reason he’d use them now.  

She didn’t give me a chance to talk the whole way down to Novac.  Walking that dusty, barren road, Lucia took pot shots at every animal we passed, sometimes even before I did.  I preferred to be cautious and shoot anything that might attack us before it tried, but I got the sense that Lucia was just taking out her anger on anything that moved.  I suppose it was lucky that she didn’t shoot any of the people we passed, not that I really expected her to ever attack someone without good reason.  She barely spoke since we left Vegas.  We camped near Boulder City when neither of us could walk any further and aside from asking me not to talk about Max, she didn’t so much as sneeze until we were passing Helios One the next morning.  

The solar panels gleamed like a beacon.  I could see the soldiers and their dogs making their rounds.  A crow perched on the railing near the controls for the array.  Max had gotten that working.  It was thanks to him that Freeside and Westside had power, and he’d made the whole system more efficient.  I’d been thinking over what had happened and whatever it said about my morals, I’d realized that I could forgive him.  He’d been careless, and he certainly needed a long lecture on electrical safety and on not sleeping with everyone he knew, but overall, I believed that he was a good person.  

He was an addict, but beyond that, part of me questioned what had happened.  Cass had been more than flirting with him since he’d first followed her into the Lucky 38 and she had never exactly kept secrets.  If he’d been sleeping with her, I didn’t really expect her to keep that to herself.  Hell, she would probably have bragged about it to anyone who’d listen, considering Max’s looks.  And Max was downright paranoid of Lucia, maybe even afraid of her.  Would he really have slept with her?  Maybe I was just being naive and refusing to accept when my boyfriend had cheated on me, but then again, something didn’t add up here.  He hadn’t been able to finish what he’d tried to tell me, but I got the sense that it was a warning about her.  Why?  Lucia was harmless.  She could shoot, but generally she’d rather talk people into doing what she wanted than hurt anyone.  She went out of her way to help Freeside and the NCR, not that I was a huge fan of the latter, but retrieving dog tags and relaying messages fell a long way short of hunting down their enemies in cold blood.  Okay, she’d killed legionaries and raiders, yes, but they usually deserved it.  Nobody deserved what the Fiends and the Legion did to their enemies, not even NCR soldiers.  

Thinking back on the Fiends dredged up dark memories and Lucia’s voice jolted me out of them.

"Hey, you okay?"

I nodded, trying to keep my expression neutral.  "Just thinking."

Her smile faded.  "Thinking about what?"

"Max," I replied.  It was partly true and I didn’t want to explain my actual train of thought.  

She hesitated.  "Okay."  She turned back to the road and I was half certain she rolled her eyes.  

"Lucia, you should probably know that he-"

She held up her hands.  "No.  Arcade, I really don’t even want to think about Max until we get back.  Not after what he did."

She was really being stubborn about this.  I frowned.  "You know, what exactly happened yesterday?  When Cass died.  I know-"

Lucia halted but didn’t turn back.  I heard her sigh.  

"Arcade, I really don’t want to talk about it.  I don’t even want to remember it.  It was awful."

I nodded.  "Yes, it

, but at the same time, I need to know what happened.  How did they end up in your bed?  A shock like that should have thrown them apart, how did they stay in contact long enough to-?"