Fallout - Chapter 110: Want to Play Hide-and-Seek? (Patreon)

Nate felt himself sinking deeper and deeper.

He was not sinking through water. It was a fall through absolute nothingness.

There was no up or down, no left or right, no light, no sound. His awareness of his own body grew increasingly faint, and his consciousness slowly began to unravel.

He could vaguely sense voices calling to him from the outside.

They came and went in broken fragments, muffled and distant as though reaching him through a great depth of water. He could not make out a single word.

He had no idea how much time had passed when his feet suddenly touched something solid.

Nate looked down.

Gray-white stone lay beneath him.

His surroundings gradually took shape, not because they were illuminated, but because his consciousness somehow perceived them directly.

The contours of the rock walls.

The dim glow overhead.

The heavy, damp smell of metal and rust in the air.

Everything slowly became clear.

He was standing inside a cave.

More precisely, before an altar.

Directly ahead stood a crude altar built from rough stone.

Its surface was covered with dark brown bloodstains that had dried countless years ago. Around it lay rotten lengths of rope, scraps of torn cloth, and other things too decayed to identify that had once belonged to human bodies.

A man stood beside the altar.

He wore a pre-War white work uniform, now yellowed and brittle with age. His hair was thinning, his face haggard, and a strange, nervous smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, barely concealing his satisfaction.

He was calmly arranging the ritual implements on the altar.

Tim Shoots.

The Project Manager of Station 4.

One of the participants in that insane sacrificial plan.

Now, deep within Nate's consciousness, inside another man's soul, Tim had recreated the altar exactly as it had existed before the War.

"You know something?"

Tim continued arranging the bloodstained ritual tools as he spoke, his tone as casual as if he were chatting with an old friend. After all, both he and Nate were Americans from before the War.

He raised his head and looked at Nate.

There was more than triumph in his eyes.

There was also two hundred years of accumulated rage.

"I did every filthy job Management ever asked of me."

His voice was calm, but Nate could hear the hatred grinding beneath it.

"I was the one who tricked workers into walking to their deaths. I covered up the accidents. I dealt with anyone who knew too much. I did all the dirty work."

"I thought if I kept my head down, did everything properly, and the plan succeeded, I'd get my share when it was over."

His lips twisted.

The smile vanished almost immediately, replaced by bitter contempt.

"But in the end, they sacrificed me too."

His voice trembled slightly.

"The backlash from the sacrifice killed everyone in the mine."

"Management knew that would happen."

His gaze became distant.

"That's why none of them came."

They had summoned everyone who "needed to be dealt with" to Station 4, while they themselves remained safely outside the danger zone, planning to return and claim the results after the sacrifice was complete.

But they never got the chance.

Because the day the sacrifice ended was also the day the bombs fell.

A warped sense of satisfaction crept into Tim's voice.

"Management never came back to claim the god's blessing."

He spread his arms as though proudly displaying a prize.

"The divine power that should have belonged to them had no one left to claim it."

"So it all came to me."

His expression suddenly twisted.

"When I woke up and saw what I'd become, even I couldn't accept it."

"For the last two hundred years, people have wandered into this mine from time to time. But their bodies were either too weak or so badly ravaged by radiation that there was barely anything left worth using."

"Not one of them was fit to become my vessel."

He paused.

"There was one who might have worked."

"But Bob's ghost got there first and took him away."

"I was ready to give up. I planned to go dormant and wait quietly for the next suitable prey."

"Given enough time, radiation would eventually produce the perfect body."

"I had all the time in the world."

Then his eyes suddenly brightened with excitement.

"Luckily, someone on the surface set off a nuclear bomb a few days ago."

"The shock traveled all the way down here and shook me awake."

Tim smiled.

This time, the smile was genuine.

He was truly delighted.

"So I came out to have some fun."

His gaze shifted past Nate, toward where Jace was outside.

"And then I saw him."

"A half-ghoul."

"Perfect."

"He can withstand radiation, yet he still looks completely human."

"I don't know how he became like that, but whoever did it saved me a great deal of trouble."

"I kept calling him closer."

"He almost made it all the way here."

"Just a few more steps."

Tim's expression darkened.

"But that's all right."

He turned back to Nate and looked him up and down.

"Your body isn't bad either."

"Terrifyingly strong."

"You're an Anchorage veteran, aren't you?"

"Once I use your body to kill everyone outside, I'll take that half-ghoul's body for myself."

Tim reached for the blade resting on the altar.

Kremvh's Tooth.

"All right."

"Enough talking."

His hand closed around the hilt.

"Your body belongs to me now."

...

Outside, at Station 4, everyone was frantic.

Nate lay on the ground, still convulsing violently.

The spasms had slowed slightly, but their force remained terrifying, far beyond anything a normal human body should have been capable of producing.

The green light inside his eyes was growing brighter, nearly filling his eyeballs completely.

His radiation levels continued climbing without pause.

They had already used several doses of RadAway and Rad-X, but each dose was becoming less effective than the last.

The chems entered his body and seemed to be instantly overwhelmed by the radiation pouring from within him, disappearing without leaving any noticeable effect.

"He can't keep this up," Preston said quietly.

He could no longer hide the anxiety in his voice.

Danse crouched beside Nate, staring at his pale, contorted face.

Long-buried memories began surfacing one after another.

Rivet City.

The abandoned aircraft carrier floating on the water.

The place where Danse had grown up.

As a child, he had survived by scavenging through piles of scrap.

His only real friend was Cutler.

The two of them had depended on each other, scraping out a living in the harsh margins of the wasteland.

In 2260, the Brotherhood of Steel came to Rivet City recruiting.

Danse and Cutler enlisted together and were assigned as initiates under Paladin Krieg.

Krieg was brutally strict with his unit, and even harder on Danse.

But it was that discipline that transformed a scavenger who had grown up among scrap piles into one of the Brotherhood's finest soldiers.

Danse rose from initiate to Knight, and eventually to Paladin, following the Brotherhood's main force east into the Commonwealth.

Cutler remained beside him.

They fought together.

Until one mission, when Cutler's entire squad disappeared.

Danse led a search team and spent three frantic weeks looking for him.

Eventually, they found him inside a Super Mutant nest.

His former comrade.

His best friend.

Cutler had been forcibly transformed.

And yet, even after everything that had been done to him, some fragment of his old consciousness remained.

Enough to recognize Danse.

With what little strength he had left, Cutler begged Danse to end it.

In the end, Danse killed his best friend with his own hands.

It was the most painful memory of his life.

And now the same choice seemed to be waiting for him again.

Was he really going to have to kill another comrade himself?

"Is there really nothing else we can do?" one of the Knights asked, breaking the silence.

Panic crept into his voice.

No one answered.

They had no idea what to do.

Then Jace spoke.

His voice was still hoarse and exhausted, and the headache from earlier had not completely faded.

But his mind was much clearer now.

"Normal medicine won't help."

Everyone turned toward him.

"Bedlam went through something similar," Jace said.

His gaze settled on Nate, and especially on the strange shadow beneath him, where several distorted human silhouettes seemed to overlap.

"The raider outside said Bedlam only started losing her mind after she'd spent some time at Station 4."

"She wasn't bitten."

"And this wasn't ordinary radiation poisoning."

"Something got inside her mind."

"Medicine can treat radiation sickness."

"It can't treat this."

He paused.

"He's the only one who can force that thing out."

"Easier said than done," Danse said helplessly. "He's completely unconscious."

"Then we need to reach his consciousness somehow," Jace replied. "Wake him up."

"Even for a second."

The others looked at one another.

Then they started trying.

"Nate!"

"Nate, can you hear me?!"

Preston shouted directly into his ear, straining his voice almost to the breaking point.

Nate did not react.

It was as though he had sunk into another world.

Not even his eyelashes moved.

Preston slapped his cheek.

Nothing.

They slapped his face, pinched beneath his nose, shook his shoulders.

They tried every method they could think of to wake someone.

Nate only jerked upward again and again before dropping back onto the floor, like an empty puppet hanging from invisible strings.

Danse shook his head.

"His consciousness is completely suppressed."

Jace's eyes moved rapidly over Nate's body.

Then they stopped on his hands.

There was a ring on Nate's left ring finger.

A simple silver band.

No decoration.

No elaborate design.

Years of wear had polished its surface to a soft sheen.

A wedding ring.

"Lift his hand," Jace said immediately.

Preston did not understand why, but obeyed.

He raised Nate's left hand.

Jace carefully slipped the ring from Nate's finger.

Then he bent down, placed it in Nate's palm, gently closed his fingers around it, and pressed them shut.

"Nate Connard."

"Wake up."

His voice was not loud.

But every word was clear.

"Think about Nora."

Nate's convulsing body suddenly went rigid.

"If you die, when she wakes up..."

"How is she supposed to survive in the Commonwealth without you?"

...

Deep inside Nate's mind, his consciousness was still sinking.

Still being consumed.

Tim's power ate away at him like concentrated acid, slowly dissolving his memories, emotions, and sense of self.

His soul was being erased piece by piece.

Replaced.

The force was overwhelming.

And Nate was tired.

So tired.

He had fought in Anchorage for six years.

After finally leaving the military, he had barely enjoyed a few peaceful days before the bombs fell.

Then he spent two hundred years inside a Vault.

When he woke up, the world was gone.

Since then, he had fought.

Struggled.

Lost.

Again and again.

He was exhausted.

Maybe he should just let go.

Maybe sinking away like this wouldn't be so bad.

Then, just as the last of his consciousness was about to disappear, he felt something in his hand.

Small.

Cold.

Circular.

The sensation was carved so deeply into his soul that his fading consciousness reacted before he could even think.

A ring.

His wedding ring.

The ring he shared with Nora.

Then he heard a voice.

Nate Connard.

His name.

And then came the gentlest and most devastating name in his entire world.

Nora.

His wife.

Memories flooded back all at once.

He remembered the first time he saw her as a student.

A girl sitting quietly in the corner of a library, reading.

A thick law textbook covered half her face.

Sunlight from the window fell softly around her as she silently studied the page.

She noticed him looking.

Raised her head.

And smiled.

That small smile had warmed his entire youth.

Nora had graduated from a prestigious law school.

She was intelligent.

Gentle.

Kind.

She had lived a stable, respectable life.

She had barely ever needed to argue with anyone, much less face the dangers of the wasteland.

Nate imagined Nora waking up alone in the Commonwealth.

He imagined her facing raiders.

Super Mutants.

Ghouls.

The thought hurt so badly he could barely breathe.

That pain was stronger than the force devouring him.

It ignited what remained of his fading consciousness.

Inside the mindscape, Nate opened his eyes.

Tim Shoots stood over him with the ritual blade in his hand.

Kremvh's Tooth.

He was about to drive it into the very core of Nate's soul.

Then brilliant light exploded through the mental space Tim had created.

When the light faded, Tim found himself somewhere else entirely.

He froze.

His eyes swept across the surroundings in disbelief.

A boreal forest stretched around him.

The sky was gray-white, like an enormous sheet of frosted glass.

Sunlight filtered through cloud and smoke, reduced to a pale, lifeless glow.

A harsh smell hung in the air.

Not pine.

Gunpowder.

Fuel.

Burning material.

It was dusk.

The sky hovered between ashen gray and dark red.

The sun hung low over the horizon, obscured by layers of smoke until it looked like a blurred disk of dark crimson.

Far away, on the cliffs, stood an enormous artillery position.

The guns were beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine.

Each barrel stretched dozens of meters.

Each muzzle was wide enough for a man to crawl inside.

The massive guns stood in rows along the cliff tops, all pointed toward the distant horizon.

They fired without pause.

Every shot shook the earth.

Even from this far away, Tim could feel the vibration coming directly through the ground beneath his feet.

BOOM—!!

BOOM—!!

BOOM—!!

Every few seconds, another volley thundered across the battlefield.

Snow spilled from the branches of the conifers with each blast.

Several enormous oil pipelines, three or four meters across, wound through the wilderness and forest like giant black serpents.

Steel support structures surrounded them.

Most of the pipes had already been bombed apart.

Twisted.

Broken.

Collapsed.

Black crude oil poured continuously from the ruptured sections, spreading across the frozen ground in dark streams.

The cold quickly thickened it into ribbons of viscous black ice.

High overhead, a vast formation of bombers had finished its run.

Trailing faint lines of smoke, the aircraft slowly moved toward the horizon like a flock of migrating birds.

Tim knew where he was.

Alaska.

The Anchorage front.

His face changed.

"How am I here?"

Disbelief filled his voice.

This had never happened when he invaded Bedlam's consciousness.

He looked around.

The endless conifer forests.

Mountaintops flattened by artillery.

Trenches winding through the frozen earth.

This battlefield was more barren and brutal than anywhere Tim had ever seen.

This was not a mental world he had created.

It was stronger than his.

Heavier.

Far more deeply rooted.

Then the sky changed.

There was no gradual transition.

In a single instant, the entire world sank into darkness.

Not ordinary night.

An endless, suffocating blackness with a dark crimson undertone.

Then Tim saw him.

Nate Connard.

He wore a filthy U.S. Army winter combat uniform.

Mud covered him.

Engine oil.

Fresh blood.

Old blood.

His armor plates were scarred by bullets and gouged by scratches of every depth, every inch of him marked by war.

He stood perfectly still.

A thick black liquid continuously dripped from his body.

It seeped from the gaps in his armor and collected in a small black pool on the snow beneath his feet.

Tim stared at him.

An inexplicable chill crawled through him.

This was a man.

And somehow, he was colder and more terrifying than any monster Tim had ever seen.

Nate looked down at the black liquid dripping from his body.

He touched it with one hand.

Raised his fingers to his nose.

And smelled it.

Oil.

The smell of the Anchorage front.

The endless days and nights of fighting beside the pipelines.

Crawling across frozen ground soaked in crude oil.

Running across it.

Killing on it.

Oil had seeped into his uniform.

Into his armor.

Into his skin.

Into his soul.

For two hundred years, it had never disappeared.

It had simply settled deeper.

He looked across the battlefield sleeping within the depths of his own soul.

The frozen ground where he had fought for six years.

Where he had bled.

Where men had died.

Where he had lost countless comrades.

The past he had thought buried long ago.

It had never gone anywhere.

It had always been here.

Deep inside him.

Nate began to laugh.

Then he slowly turned his head.

Tim Shoots stood nearby, his face pale.

Nate looked at him calmly.

"Want to play hide-and-seek?"