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Lucia flung up her hands and turned back towards me.  Tears glistened on her face.  "Arcade, don’t you trust me?"  She looked away and continued before I could answer, "I-I just can’t right now.  It’s just too...  Can I.... Can I just tell you later?  When we get back to Vegas?  Please?"

Her breathing was heavy.  She sounded so upset, I felt terrible for just asking the question.  I guess telling me once we got back was reasonable.  "Okay."  I tried to apologize, "I’m sorry, I just-"

"Arcade!" She was crying.  

I relented.  "Okay.  Shutting up."

We walked the rest of the way to Novak in near silence.  Lucia calmed down, but I continued kicking myself for upsetting her.  It hadn’t even been a full day.  Lucia wasn’t a soldier, as far as I knew she’d never really lost anyone before.  She was traumatized!  She needed time to process this and it really wasn’t the kind of thing we needed to discuss right now anyway.  It could wait at least a few days.  Damn it, I’d been trained to deal with this kind of trauma, people in these situations often had unreliable accounts of what happened, I should have seen it sooner!  The last thing I should have done is acted like she was lying.  This was Lucia, she wasn’t the kind of person who would do that.  

I rubbed my temples.  First I upset Max and probably drove him into a relapse and now I was pressuring Lucia to recount a highly traumatic memory.  

I stopped by the motel to pick a rock out of my shoe and Lucia stepped away to trade.  She was polite, as usual, about asking me to wait, but I got the sense that she just wanted to get away from me for a few minutes and after my recent questions, I wasn’t surprised.  As soon as she disappeared into the dinosaur, I drifted over to Daisy who was, predictably, standing on the balcony, staring at the sky.  

We spent a few minutes catching up before she pointed out my mood.  

"You thinking about telling her?" Daisy asked, nodding towards the dinosaur where the courier had vanished.  I wasn’t surprised she had guessed that.  Daisy had known me pretty much all my life, she could easily tell when something bothered me, even if she wasn’t quite right this time.

I shook my head.  "Not quite."   She quirked an eyebrow.  I didn’t have time to tell her the full story, but I could summarize.  "I admit, the thought has crossed my mind, but..."  I eyed the cracked green plaster leg.  I didn’t want to say I didn’t trust the courier, I did... at least for the most part.  Max had raised questions that I needed answered and although he seemed the more likely to lie, something about this didn’t add up.  I sighed.  

"I know that look."  Daisy chuckled and stepped back to smile at me.  "Who is he?"

"Gabriel Maxson," I admitted bluntly.   

Daisy frowned slightly.  "Maxson?"  

Daisy’s eyes widened and she shook her head.  "Well, if that’s what’s bothering you...-"

"It’s not," I explained, "At least not entirely.  He’s a Maxson, but... it’s more complicated.  Some things have happened and it’s his word against hers."  I nodded at the door in the dinosaur and frowned thoughtfully, not looking back at Daisy.  I half expected Lucia to emerge any second now and call me off on another long, tense walk.  

Daisy considered.  "Did you tell him?"

"He figured it out," I answered glancing back to see her surprise.  "He’s smart, he’s able to read people uncannily well.  He also... isn’t always the most honest."

"And you trust her?"  

I started to tell her I did, but that wasn’t entirely true.  I didn’t

the courier either, exactly.  I considered my words carefully.  "He’s afraid of her.  He’s paranoid, with good reason considering his heritage.  The NCR would want a piece of him even more than they’d want us, I think, but this is different.  I don’t believe that Lucia would ever knowingly threaten him- or me- but he does."  

"And he saw right through you, so you wonder if he’s right."  Daisy reasoned and I nodded.  She thought for a long moment while the sunlight gleaming off the metal door bored into my retinas.  

"Watch her." Daisy suggested.

I turned back in surprise.  "You’re siding with him?"

"Arcade," Daisy explained a bit bluntly, "you’ve never really been the best judge of character.  If this Maxson fellow saw right through to who you are, he’s perceptive, and if he doesn’t like her, there’s probably a good reason.  Now, I’ve never met the courier, but what I hear is she’s got a silver tongue.  Maxson saw who you are and it doesn’t sound like he’s done anything to hurt you with that knowledge- and he really could have.  I’m not saying you should shoot her, but watch your six."

Lucia’s girlish voice rang out before I could answer.  

"Arcade!  Let’s get going!"

I thought about what Daisy had said as we walked southeast.  I really wasn’t a good judge of character.  I knew I could sometimes be blind to serious red flags simply because I didn’t

to see them.  Was that what had happened here, or was I just being paranoid?  Was Max just concerned because she helped the NCR?  Part of me wondered if he was acting like this to discredit her, so I wouldn’t believe that he’d gotten high and slept with them willingly.  Part of me refused to believe he would do that.  

I remembered what Max had said about Boone and Raul.  I knew he had asked Veronica to leave.  Lily had gone back to Jacobstown for more treatment, according to Lucia.  Supposedly Doc Henry had fixed Rex and she’d left the dog up there for now until he recovered- that I believed.  I hadn’t really sent Henry a letter recently, but this was the type of thing he would do and a cyberdog would need at least a month to recuperate from that kind of surgery.  It was reasonable enough that Boone had reenlisted; he seemed the type.  Raul

very old and I’d heard him complaining enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if he really had returned to his shack just to work without getting involved in combat.  But I didn’t fail to notice that most of these explanations relied on Lucia’s word.  

I considered her, walking ahead of me over the hard and dusty hills.  I thought back on all the countless times she’d talked down someone who had tried to attack her.  I remembered the way she’d lied to the Omertas once we got Joana to Freeside.  Bill and Jacob both claimed she’d talked them into quitting cold turkey and actually convinced them to come back to the Followers.  Having seen how drunk and strung out they had respectively been just the week before, I never would have expected anyone to convince them to quit, even with an armful of fixer.  

But, if she really was deceiving us, why was Max so afraid of her?  If Lucia really was lying, Max must have figured it out, but that alone shouldn’t have made him this afraid of her.  Even if she knew, he was helpful, and he seemed reasonable enough that even if she had lied, Lucia was undeniably

the Mojave.  Given my own Enclave ties, I wouldn’t expect Max to be so against the NCR that her allegiance would set him off like this.  The way he acted, I’d almost expect them to come to blows if they were left alone.  Was there a reason she might have gone against him first?  He was fairly... skeevy sometimes.  I suppose there could have been some misunderstanding and she decided he couldn’t be trusted.  I’d learned long ago that I couldn’t talk Lucia out of anything; once she got an idea in her head, she’d never let it go.  And Max had already proved he could be just as stubborn.  I wasn’t sure I could talk them out of this, though I wanted to try if I could figure out exactly why they were so at odds.  Unfortunately, they really were a lot alike.  

Lucia had outpaced me on the steep hill while I’d been lost in thought.  She paused at the top beside a rocky cliffside, no doubt overlooking our destination.  I jogged up the scree to stand beside her.  With the sun setting behind us, shadows hugged the rock and the valley below us, leaving only dots of torchlight to mark the camp.  I could see a sniper post ahead, presumably she planned to camp there.   Eyeing the cliff above Cottonwood Cove, I edged between Lucia and the rocks to keep a safer distance from the no-doubt unstable edge.  The sniper post seemed stable enough, but I didn’t trust the loose dirt overlooking the drop.  

At the time, I didn’t realize Lucia had carefully chosen to stand near the edge.    

The Legionary hidden in the rocks beside me moved as silently as his namesake.  I never even had the chance to draw my gun.  

The instant the elevator doors closed I knew I should have stopped them.  

I sank into one of the chairs in the hall, unable to continue standing.  Lucia knew I was suspicious and in all likelihood, she knew that I had tried to tell Arcade.  She wasn’t going to give me another chance.  When she returned, she would kill me.  If I couldn’t kill her first, I had to ensure that someone would.  

I overrode the elevator to reach the penthouse.  Yes Man watched from the giant monitor (though technically he was getting his visual feed through cameras throughout the suite and in the securitrons.)  I read off the codes to give me control of the system.  

"Would you like to change any of the current settings?" he asked, ever helpful.  

"Nothing public, but I have a modification I’d like to add to your code, along with three commands."  

"No problem, buddy!"  He paused as I walked down the stairs to the console and began to edit his programming.  "What can I do for you?"

I waited until I added the new capabilities to his system.  The face on the screen flickered as he integrated them.  

"Oh!"  He paused.  "You gave me the ability to lie!"

"Yes," I explained, picking absently at the puddy on my palm, "there

overrides, as always, but only I know them.  Now the commands.  If anyone except myself asks who is in charge of this system, or who is in control of yourself or any subsidiary functions, you are to tell them that Lucia is in control.  Under no circumstances are you to inform Lucia or even hint that I have control of this system.  Secondly," I paused, sighing before giving my next command, "Lucia will inevitably return.  If she kills me, or if she leaves and returns to the Presidential Suite without me, you are to treat her as a criminal and punish her accordingly, but not with securitrons.   You are to seal her inside the Presidential Suite and disable all ventilation and water systems.  This order overrides your usual security restrictions in this case."

"No problem, buddy!  Whatever you say!"

It still annoyed me how Benny had insisted on such a ridiculously upbeat personality.  Not that I cared to correct that right now, not when Lucia could be back at any time.  For all I knew, she’d only taken Arcade into an alley and shot him.   She could be on her way back right now depending on how much of her lie was true.  

"If Lucia kills me," I ordered, "Or if she is killed and you do not have any contact directly from me, in person or via radio transmission, you are to transfer control of this system to Veronica in Hidden Valley and notify her of this.  Specifically Veronica and not the Brotherhood itself."

"What a great idea!  I sure hope the Brotherhood doesn’t kill too many of my messengers, if that happens!"

That was pleasantly close to sarcasm, I thought with a smile.  I thanked Yes Man in advance and returned to the suite.  

The soundproofed, windowless suite had all but become my world, as the Gomorra had nearly been for years before that.  I didn’t dare return to the penthouse, lest Lucia catch me, but alone in the red and black rooms, the silence became suffocating.  I had no one to speak to and I was in no mood to sing, so as the hours dragged into days and days became weeks, I found myself voicing my most random thoughts to Yes Man.  I rambled about sex positions and Old World celebrities, interior design and the chemical properties of amino acids.   My already rough voice cracked and my legs grew sore from pacing the room as I talked.  I was distracting myself.  If I made drugs, I would have used them and I lacked the supplies to build something mechanical, even if I’d been able to focus enough to do so.  Every time I was idle, my thoughts drifted back to Arcade, and the feel of his hand just before he’d left.  His hands had been strong but gentle.  His skin was only slightly calloused, but he’d lived a hard life.  I should never have let him go.  I’d known it already, even at that moment, but I hadn’t done anything.  I could have done something.  Somehow, I should have stopped them!

I didn’t know if he would ever come back and I didn’t expect him to.  Either he’d be used against me or Lucia would kill him.  As much as I always tried to be too valuable to kill, I couldn’t think of a single reason she would need me alive.  Lucia would return and when she did, she would kill me.   This was the end.  Arcade was probably already dead... 

...even though part of me insisted that I couldn’t be certain.  

If there was a chance that he still lived, I had to wait.  Was there any reason I could think of that Lucia might have kept him alive?  He was a doctor.  He was intelligent.  He was a good shot.  ...But he also seemed to have understood what I had told him.  Maybe he had escaped.  Maybe he had finally seen who she really was and fled before she could shoot him.  Maybe he had actually overpowered her.  Maybe

was dead.  Maybe-  

I shivered and stopped my pacing.  I’d worn a track of thinner carpet from tracing the same path through the rooms for so long. 

Maybe Arcade had asked her directly and she had killed him because he knew.

He wasn’t the type to shoot her without trying to discover the truth.  He trusted her.  Given his past, he couldn’t trust often, and I knew that had backfired from how quickly he’d assumed that I was also Enclave.  He idolized her.  She spun these stories and she did these things no one else could do- crawling out of her grave to hunt down Benny, killing House, helping the locals.  And she subtly played it up, all of it.  She painted herself as a hero, a new saint, more than human, nearly immortal, innocent and yet mighty.  And he desperately wanted someone who could change the hell that wartorn Vegas had become.  He wasn’t willing to see through that hope.  

I knew that was true.  Arcade could never see through Lucia’s lies because he so desperately needed someone who would help, someone who could change New Vegas and also someone he could trust completely.  And

had had the chance to become that person, but I hadn’t wanted to.  

I sank to the floor as I realized it.  I’d never wanted to lead.  I’d been broken and addicted and I’d just wanted to die after we met.  He’d helped me recover.  Even as Lucia kept trying to break me down, Arcade had pulled me out of that.  He was the only reason I was still alive, the only reason I was healthy now, the only reason I could finally remember everything I had learned before the pain.  I hated command.  All my life I’d been groomed to lead, expected to take charge, to have a plan, to have everything in my life absolutely under control, and I’d gone to Vegas to finally leave all that behind.  I’d been so determined to escape that responsibility that when I had the chance to change, after I finally had the ability to function despite my disease, despite all the pain I’d suffered, I had preferred to obey.  

And that had most likely gotten him killed.  

I don’t know how long I just sat on the floor, thinking that over.  I’d stopped checking the clock and I kept no regular schedule.  I barely slept with so much on my mind and I admit I didn’t eat as often as I should have.  

I had to stop her.  If Lucia had killed Arcade, I could have stopped that and I didn’t.  I had helped her gain power.  I had worked for her because I was too afraid- of her, of power, of responsibility- to fight her.  That had to change.  It should have changed a long time ago.  

For nineteen days after Lucia had left, I prepared to kill her when she returned.  Yes Man brought food for me from the desert once the stock in the suite ran out.  It was mostly cacti and rats, but edible enough once cooked, and I hardly cared about the taste right now.  Lucia would be ready.  I would need to be careful.  

I woke from an uneasy nap when the elevator doors slid open.  I lay on the couch, not bothering to pretend to sleep, it was more important to keep my eyes opened.  I watched the door, my hands deceptively visible crossed over my chest.  

Lucia stepped into the doorway and saw me.  For the barest instant, she hesitated.  Then she smiled.  

"What was it that Arcade found and wanted to talk to you about before we left?"

She was blunt, as she usually was with me.  She knew that if she shocked me, she had the best chance to see what I was planning.  She had to confront me and then I would falter.  But I wasn’t going to falter.  

She was asking about the note Arcade had found, she

heard some of that conversation, as I’d suspected.  I had a lie already prepared.  I blushed and glanced away from her.  "Oh that.  That’s not important."  

A lethal glint flickered in her stare and I pretended to relent.  I pulled a crumpled paper from the back pocket of my shorts and held it out to her.  Lucia unfolded it cautiously, as if she expected the paper to contain a bomb.  I could have done that, probably, if I’d had explosives.  

When she saw the image, she laughed and tossed it back to me.  It was porn.  The paper was a nude picture of a man stretched out on his side in a seductive pose.  I refolded it and returned it to my pocket.  Lucia shook her head, "He’s such a prude."

He wasn’t, but I didn’t care to argue.  Her casual demeanor as well as the fact that she used present tense threw me off and I felt my brow crease before I could stop it.  

Lucia noticed.  "Did you think that I had killed him?"

There was no point denying it.  I nodded.  

Lucia laughed.  "No, silly!  Why would I kill him?"  She pranced around the couch and perched on the edge of the coffee table, a pose that would have been seductive under normal circumstances.  "He’s the best way to control

There was no point dancing around the question.  "What do you need me to do?"

Lucia’s explanation was both blunt and threatening.  She wanted full control of Helios One remotely.  She’d bought my lie, but realized that it could be done with the right equipment.  She’d brought that equipment and a pack brahmin, along with ED-E and a small arsenal, and intended to take me back there to set everything up.  I didn’t know who had told her what she would need; I presumed Arcade, but he would have questioned why she needed that control and I don’t think he would have liked the answer.  I didn’t question the brahmin either- Lucia had already proven to me that she would kill or steal to get what she needed as long as no one would know.  There was probably a caravaner somewhere in a shallow grave.  I was more concerned by the explanation of Arcade’s whereabouts.  

Lucia told me she’d left him in a bunker.  She said she’d given him food and water for a week and sealed the door.  I must have replayed her words a million times on that long walk south.  

It had been dawn when we left.  She didn’t sleep, I assumed she already had.  I guess she had realized that I could pick the lock of her bedroom door.  My pacing had built my muscles back up to where they were and the last of my food from Yes Man coupled with adrenaline to energize me for the grueling trek.  Even though it was October, today was unseasonably hot and dry.  Experience told me a storm would be coming soon; it didn’t get this dry otherwise.  Sooner or later, something was going to happen to balance things out.  I wished the same held true of politics and pain.

I thought over what Lucia had told me, analyzing every inflection and choice of words.  She wouldn’t tell me where he was, though I tried to get it out of her.  There was no point in silence; I spoke while we walked and when we stopped to eat, trying to keep up a deceptively casual conversation in the hope of some tidbit of truth or even a lie that might help me.  For nearly a day, Lucia gave me nothing.  She kept a fast pace, but responded in kind.  Every word was playful, seductive, every syllable true to the facade she had crafted and nothing even hinting at the truth.  She didn’t even allude to the many traumas she knew in my life- including the ones she had caused.  She just played the game.  She must have meant to upset me, appearing so innocent, but it was more of a relief.  I’d expected her to taunt me every step of the journey.  

I didn’t trust when she told me that Arcade was alive; she needed me to think that.  She needed that metaphorical chip to manipulate me.  I guessed she was lying, but part of me couldn’t deny the hope.  If it was true, I couldn’t refuse her.  If I did, he really would die.  This was the last hope I had to save him.  

I tried to remember every bunker in the region.  The Brotherhood had mapped them years ago; that was how we’d found and settled in Hidden Valley.  We’d scouted the rest.  We had the details stored deep in a folder on the main computer, rarely accessed and rarely needed even as that old bunker had started to fail.  He couldn’t be in a bunker that was inhabited and it couldn’t be a bunker that was still sealed; that knocked out several options.  We’d found a small bunker near the Colorado- safe enough but too near to dangerous wildlife.  There was the old Vault near the 188 Trading Post.  Otherwise, Hidden Valley seemed the most likely.  If he was there, I could easily check; he might have already been found by the Brotherhood and-

I froze mid step.  The Brotherhood would have killed him.  An ex-Enclave scientist?  It wasn’t even a question.  Under current leadership, especially if he had any tech on his person, he would be executed.  They didn’t take chances.  I stared at Lucia as she stopped and turned to watch me.  

"I need to know where Arcade is."

Lucia laughed.  "`You need to know where he is’?" She parroted back.  "Who do you think is in charge here, Max?"

"I know," It took more effort than I’d realized to keep my voice steady, facing down those utterly cold eyes.  This must have been how my brother felt fighting that deathclaw.  "I know, but you need me.  You can’t build this on your own and you still have me controlled."  I gestured at the eyebot and Lucia’s many guns.  "You can still shoot me.  I can’t exactly run to rescue him."

Lucie considered my argument.  The heel of her boot crunched the gravel as she stepped closer to me.  "I could shoot you just as dead if you just refuse to work."

I watched her evenly.  "And how do I know he’s even still alive?"

Lucia narrowed her eyes.  I could see her analyzing my logic, trying to see if there was any way I had found a loophole, trying to see if there was any way I could rescue Arcade without leaving her custody, or was it any way I had seen through her lie?  

"He’s in Hidden Valley," Lucia replied softly.  "I locked him in there when we came back through Goodsprings.  We needed to restock after the NCR business."

The edge of her lip curled when she told me about the NCR.  She never lost her mask completely, but for the barest moment her amusement sparked through.  She was playing with me, as usual.  It was a lie.  

I stepped back, brushing against the side of the brahmin involuntarily and Lucia laughed like a hyena.  "Hidden Valley

convenient," she explained, "I mean, really, just up Scorpion Gulch?  If you hurry the fuck up already, we can have him out by tomorrow."  She wasn’t changing her story.  Despite the heat of the desert, I felt utterly cold.  Arcade was not in a bunker somewhere.  It was all a lie, and I should have seen that from the start.    

 If Lucia was lying, she had probably already killed him.  She didn’t need him alive, she just needed the lie to convince me to help her.  Even if I saw through her lie, she knew I’d have no choice but to obey in the hope that I could find out what she had done.  It was safer for her to kill him, knowing that I would err on the side of caution, knowing that I could not dare harm her lest I lose my only chance of finding him alive.  But she was wrong.  

Arcade was already dead.  She couldn’t risk him escaping any containment, and if he was alive, there was always a chance that he

escape.  She must have killed him.  I wasn’t letting her kill me too.  

"Yeah," I replied, somehow keeping my poker face despite it all.  "I guess that makes sense."