Fallout - Chapter 111: Little Lamb (Patreon)

Fir branches intertwined overhead, forming a gloomy gray-green canopy. Dense, straight trunks rose from the frozen ground like countless gray-white bones.

Tim Shoots was running for his life.

He did not dare look back.

He did not dare slow down.

He even kept his breathing as quiet as possible.

The instant he realized he was inside Nate's mindscape, where he held no advantage whatsoever, he made the most ruthless decision he could.

He tore his own soul apart.

Not enough to destroy himself completely. More like a lizard shedding its tail, he deliberately split off pieces of his soul and turned them into several illusory copies that fled in different directions.

As he ran, Tim tried to reassure himself.

Nate's mental strength was absurdly powerful, far beyond anything he had expected.

But being powerful did not necessarily make someone a good hunter.

This was a veteran who had spent six years fighting brutal conventional warfare. He knew frontal assaults, defensive positions, and artillery exchanges.

That did not mean he knew how to hunt someone through a forest.

If Tim could drag this out until Nate's consciousness became exhausted, he might still have a chance to turn things around.

Just as he was trying to convince himself of that, a scream suddenly came from somewhere far away.

It sounded as though it had come from the other side of the forest.

Or perhaps from the sky itself.

Tim stopped dead.

That was his own voice.

One of his copies had been found.

Then came a second scream.

A third.

Each one felt as though someone had reached into the depths of his soul and violently torn something away.

His copies were being erased one by one.

Completely.

Nothing remained.

Tim could not stop himself from glancing back.

He saw nothing.

The dense fir trees blocked his view.

But he could feel them.

His copies were still running.

Still fleeing.

And not a single one was escaping.

A black figure was moving through the forest, catching them one after another.

The first copy did not even have time to react.

Nate's fist punched straight through its chest.

Through the copy's final glimpse, Tim saw everything.

Nate pulled his hand free from its chest, clutching a pulsing ball of green soul-light.

His fingers closed.

The light shattered.

The second copy died in the shadows.

Nate stepped out from between the trees, his footsteps so light that he did not crack even the thin crust of snow beneath his boots.

A tactical-gloved hand clamped over the copy's mouth from behind.

A blade drove into the back of its neck and pierced through its throat.

Quick.

Clean.

It did not even get the chance to struggle.

The third copy died to a long-range sniper shot.

The gunshot shattered the silence of the forest and sent an entire flock of crows into the air.

The running copy's head burst apart and dissolved into motes of light.

Tim could not take it anymore.

He stumbled against the trunk of a fir tree, bent over, and gasped for breath.

Every time one of his copies was destroyed, the shock struck his true soul as well.

Again and again.

The accumulated damage was already destabilizing his consciousness.

Only one thought remained in his mind.

Damn it.

This Anchorage veteran was not some brute who only knew how to fight head-on.

He was a hunter.

Tim pressed himself tightly against the tree trunk and held his breath, listening to everything around him.

The wind stopped.

The sound of falling snow disappeared.

Even his own heartbeat seemed to have been muted.

Ten seconds.

Twenty.

Thirty.

The prolonged silence was driving him mad.

He tried to reassure himself.

Maybe Nate was tired.

Maybe he had lost the trail.

Tim cautiously leaned his head out from behind the tree.

Nothing.

The forest ahead was empty.

Not a soul in sight.

He pulled back and breathed quietly.

"Damn it... where did he go..."

A few seconds later, he peeked out again.

This time, Nate's face emerged from the opposite side of the same tree at the exact same moment.

Their faces were inches apart.

Their eyes met.

Tim could see Nate's eyes perfectly.

There were no whites.

No irises.

His entire eye sockets were pure black, like two bottomless wells. Only at the very center, where his pupils should have been, hung a pinprick of pale light.

It was fixed coldly on Tim.

Then the corners of Nate's mouth pulled outward with unnatural precision.

No more.

No less.

Exactly eight teeth showed.

The smile was so perfectly measured that it became disturbing.

"Found you, little lamb."

...

At Station 4, Nate's body suddenly stopped convulsing.

Everyone noticed immediately.

His limbs stopped thrashing.

His back stopped arching.

His fingers were no longer digging into the ground.

Danse tightened his grip on his laser rifle and stared at Nate.

Preston immediately crouched beside him and pressed a hand to his chest to check his heartbeat.

It was still faster than normal, but the chaotic rhythm from before was gone.

Slowly, it was becoming steady.

Then the radiation reading on Nate's Pip-Boy began to fall.

"It's dropping..." one of the Knights whispered. "His radiation level is dropping!"

"Did it work?" a Minutemen veteran asked cautiously.

Jace stood several steps away.

He was not looking at the numbers.

He was watching Nate's eyes.

The fluorescent green light that had filled Nate's entire eyeballs was fading layer by layer, dimming like a filament slowly cooling.

His eyes were still unfocused.

He was not fully conscious yet.

But at least he looked like Nate again.

Jace spoke with certainty.

"It worked."

Preston let out a long breath he had been holding for far too long.

Danse did not lower his rifle, but his fingers loosened slightly around the grip.

Some of the tension left his face.

Then Nate's body lit up.

Blinding green light burst from every pore, forcing everyone around him to recoil.

"Get down!" Jace shouted.

Everyone immediately dropped low.

A moment later, a dense mass of green light erupted from Nate's chest.

It flowed out of him like liquid being poured from a container, stretching and gathering in midair until it formed a blurry green specter.

The apparition was much weaker than before.

Its color had faded.

Its outline trembled as though it might disperse at any moment.

It hung in the air for half a second.

Then it suddenly accelerated toward the edge of the station.

"He's getting away!"

"Open fire!"

Red laser beams and metal bullets poured through the air like rain.

Every shot passed straight through the spirit and struck nothing but air.

Tim fled at full speed.

All he could feel was lingering terror.

Back in the fir forest, Nate had nearly caught him.

That face.

Those eyes.

Those two words.

Little lamb.

Tim had nearly broken down on the spot.

But at the last possible moment, he had made an insane decision.

Using Kremvh's Tooth, the ritual blade, he had severed more than half of his own soul.

The pain had gone far beyond anything a physical body could experience.

It was the agony of forcibly tearing apart his own existence.

For one instant, Tim had genuinely thought he would rather let Nate catch him than endure another second of it.

But he survived.

While Nate dealt with the severed fragments of his soul, Tim escaped from that deadly hunting ground inside his mind.

Now he wanted nothing else.

He only wanted to run.

As far away as possible.

These people in power armor might live for a few years.

Maybe ten.

Maybe twenty.

But eventually, they would die.

Tim only had to wait.

Then he could begin again.

The gunfire behind him kept coming.

Tim did not care.

Bullets?

They could not hit him.

Lasers?

They were nothing more than a breeze.

He kept flying.

Then pain tore through his chest.

Tim looked down.

There was a hole in his soul.

A large opening had appeared in the chest of his translucent, dim green spirit form.

Green smoke curled from its edges as though his very existence were evaporating from the inside out.

"What..."

He never finished.

Another green bolt tore through the air and passed straight through his soul, opening a second hole in his torso.

Tim staggered in midair and looked back.

Jace was standing there with a glowing rifle raised to his shoulder.

The weapon gave off green light.

Not the ghostly fluorescent green of Tim's spirit.

This was brighter.

A rich emerald glow, almost like liquid jade.

A plasma rifle.

Jace fired again.

A high-energy plasma bolt struck Tim in the abdomen.

There was no explosion.

Instead, the plasma ate into his spirit like concentrated acid.

Tim released a distorted scream.

The sound erupted directly inside everyone's minds.

It was filled with pure agony and terror.

Jace showed no expression.

He took aim again.

He already knew plasma weapons worked against ghosts.

Because Fallout 2 had a quest called "Return Anna's Locket."

Normally, the quest involved finding Anna's locket and returning it to her so that she could finally rest in peace and move on.

But Fallout 2 gave players an enormous amount of freedom.

So naturally, there were other ways to handle it.

Anna's ghost had extremely high resistance to physical damage, lasers, fire, explosions, EMP, and electricity.

Her plasma resistance, however, was zero.

That was her only weakness.

And now it was Tim's as well.

Disrespecting Anna's remains after she moved on would cost the player a substantial amount of Karma.

But there was nothing stopping you from simply killing her ghost with plasma beforehand.

That did not cost any Karma.

It was certainly not the most humane approach.

But in the Fallout universe, ghosts that insisted on remaining among the living had no human rights.

In every possible sense.

That was why Jace had brought a plasma rifle.

Just in case.

After several more shots, Tim's spirit was riddled with holes.

Green smoke poured from his dissolving form.

The being who had once made the entire mine tremble, both while alive and after death, now twisted helplessly in midair.

He was completely cornered.

He could no longer fly.

Like a bird with broken wings, he fell from the air and struck the rock floor.

Ripples spread through his spirit form on impact.

With the last of his strength, he still clutched the ritual blade.

Kremvh's Tooth.

As long as he still had the blade...

He could still...

Jace walked slowly toward him and looked down at what remained of his fading soul.

Tim raised his head.

His face had already blurred beyond recognition.

"No... please..."

His voice sounded as though it were coming from somewhere impossibly far away.

Broken.

Fading.

Like a signal about to disappear.

Jace said nothing.

He pulled the trigger.

The final plasma bolt struck Tim's head.

His soul burst apart.

Countless motes of ghostly green light drifted silently through the mine, glowing faintly as they scattered.

Beautiful.

Unsettling.

All that remained was a single weapon.

A curved, blackened ritual machete shaped like an enormous fang.

Its blade absorbed the dim light with a deep matte sheen.

It lay motionless on the ground.

Kremvh's Tooth.

Jace bent down and picked it up.

The instant it touched his hand, a faint vibration ran through the blade, as though something sleeping inside had shifted slightly.

He raised it and examined it for a moment.

A wave of dizziness immediately washed over him.

Jace looked away at once, pulled out a strip of cloth, and wrapped the weapon tightly in several layers.

Once he was done, he returned to Nate.

Nate lay quietly on the ground.

His breathing was deep and steady, although his face remained pale and weak.

The physical damage caused by the radiation would take time to recover from.

But he was alive.

"Pack up. We're taking Nate back."

...

Meanwhile, the crypt beneath Old North Church was damp and oppressive.

The air carried the unmistakable smell of a place that had gone without sunlight for years.

Mold.

Machine oil.

Old gunpowder.

The mixture seemed to cling to everyone's lungs.

Dim tactical lights hung from the stone walls, their glow shifting unsteadily.

The shadows cast across the walls stretched long and distorted, like ghosts waiting to come alive.

Desdemona stood beside the long table with her arms folded, her brow tightly furrowed.

Not long ago, an encrypted message from Dr. Li had arrived.

"The Institute has established a wired teleportation channel through the power lines beneath the C.I.T. ruins.

The Enclave's radio jamming has been bypassed.

Your headquarters has been located.

A Courser strike team is being assembled."

The Railroad did not have much time left.

Desdemona quickly made arrangements.

P.A.M was evacuated under the protection of several agents and taken into Minutemen-controlled territory.

If P.A.M's prediction was correct...

If the Railroad really was destined to fall today...

Then at the very least, P.A.M could not be allowed to fall into the Institute's hands.

Just then, footsteps came from the rear passage.

Not the steady rhythm of a patrol.

These were stumbling footsteps.

Uneven.

Barely able to remain upright.

A figure tumbled out of the passage.

His face was covered in dust and blood.

His left arm hung uselessly at his side as though it were broken.

He braced himself against the wall and gasped for breath.

Then he forced out a word.

"Boss..."

"The back entrance... they found it..."

The air seemed to disappear from the crypt.

Desdemona's expression tightened.

"Not just the back entrance." The agent raised his head, his voice trembling. "Every passage. Every hidden route out. They've sealed all of them..."

He gave a weak smile that looked worse than crying.

"We're dead."

Silence.

Carrington moved first.

He hurried over, supported the injured agent, helped him into a chair, then opened a medical kit and began treating his wounds.

Glory leaned against the wall with her arms folded.

Her expression was dark.

"They cut off every escape route at once?" she said slowly, grinding out each word. "Since when did the Institute get this efficient?"

Deacon crouched in a corner, his sunglasses hiding his expression.

"The back entrance is blocked..." he asked casually. "What about the front?"

"Same thing," the agent rasped. His voice sounded like sandpaper scraping against his throat. "They came up from below. Subway tunnels, sewers, every entrance. There are synths guarding all of them."

The atmosphere in the crypt grew even heavier.

Someone whispered,

"There's a mole."

The words fell into the room like a drop of cold water into hot oil.

Nothing exploded.

But everyone tensed.

They looked at one another.

Suspicion was nothing new to the Railroad.

Infiltration.

Betrayal.

Extermination.

They had seen it too many times.

When every escape route was sealed with perfect timing, there was always one word that came to mind first.

Mole.

What they did not know was that the Institute had never truly made a serious effort to destroy the Railroad before.

Third-generation synths were simply too human.

Not only physically.

Psychologically as well.

Once a synth left the Institute, the desire to defect was almost inevitable.

That was why the Institute had been forced to install a mandatory shutdown mechanism in every third-generation synth.

The moment a synth heard its recall code, it would immediately shut down.

Even with that safeguard, synths continued to escape in large numbers.

And the vast majority of synths who left the Institute did so on their own.

Only a small number specifically sought out the Railroad because of a certain second-generation synth inside the Institute.

The Institute's Synth Retention Bureau was constantly overwhelmed.

So overwhelmed that it had never had the time to properly deal with the underground rats of the Railroad.

Until now.

Now the Institute was finally taking them seriously.

Tinker Tom's voice suddenly broke the silence.

"Someone's coming through the tunnels."

Everyone tightened their grip on their weapons.

Tom sat at the surveillance terminal, his fingers moving rapidly across the keyboard.

The display switched.

A dim tunnel appeared on the screen.

Everyone stared.

Rows of figures were advancing.

Second-generation synths.

Perfectly ordered.

Mechanical.

Every step synchronized.

Even through the monitor and layers of earth, their march felt like a solid slab of steel rolling forward.

Ahead of them walked three figures in black coats.

Coursers.

The one in front suddenly stopped.

Its head turned directly toward the camera.

The movement was perfectly precise.

Not a single unnecessary motion.

It raised its weapon.

A standard-issue Institute laser rifle.

The screen instantly dissolved into static.

"Surveillance feed lost," Tom said calmly, as though reporting an ordinary equipment failure.

Everyone understood what those words actually meant.

Desdemona took a deep breath and turned toward the heavy iron door leading to the main entrance.

It was a solid pre-War door built from heavy materials and secured by a password lock.

Right now, it was tightly shut.

She grabbed a minigun and aimed it steadily at the door.

"Everyone."

Her voice was not loud.

But every word struck like a nail.

"Prepare to fight."

The crypt filled with metallic sounds.

Bolts being pulled.

Rounds being chambered.

Safeties being released.

No one spoke.

Every weapon pointed toward the door.

Then vibrations began coming from the other side.

Not violent impacts.

Something heavier.

Steady.

Blunt.

Pressure struck the metal again and again.

BOOM—!!

BOOM—!!

BOOM—!!

The iron door shook.

Dust trickled from the stone around the frame.

A tiny bulge appeared in the center of the door.

Something outside was slowly forcing the metal inward.

The Institute was using some kind of tool to pry open the defensive barrier.

No one spoke.

No one moved.

Even their breathing became quieter.

Then the rhythm changed.

The steady impacts stopped.

For a moment, there was confusion outside.

As though something had suddenly interrupted them.

Then silence.

Those ten seconds of silence were more suffocating than the pounding had been.

Then came a sound.

Click.

The hydraulic lock disengaged.

The massive iron door slowly swung inward.

Darkness poured into the crypt.

Then a headless body fell through the doorway.

It wore the black coat of a Courser.

The cut across its neck was so clean it looked as though it had been made by a laser.

The corpse hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Everyone froze.

Their weapons remained raised.

But their expressions changed.

Then someone stepped out of the darkness behind the corpse.

A pale blue Type 92 Powered Suit with sharp, clean armor lines.

Two white five-pointed stars were painted on the shoulder armor.

Josie.

Her eyes swept across the row of weapons aimed at her.

Across every tense face.

Then her gaze stopped on someone standing near the back.

"Dr. Amari."

Her voice was calm, as though she had simply happened to pass by.

"Are you all right?"