Fallout - Chapter 126: The Deserter and the Church (Patreon)

Danse made no move for his weapon.

Instead, he stepped forward, deliberately closing the distance between himself and Mother Isolde.

With every believer around him armed and their weapons trained on him, the gesture looked almost suicidal.

But Danse knew exactly what he was doing. Backing away now would make him look guilty, and looking guilty could get him killed.

"I know some things are better left buried."

Every word came out heavy and deliberate, carrying through the radioactive haze.

Mother Isolde stared intently at his face.

Whenever Adam Whately lied, the corners of his mouth would curl upward slightly. It was an almost boastful smugness he could never quite suppress. He enjoyed the feeling of knowing something others didn't, the sense of superiority that made him believe he was closer to "God" than everyone else.

Danse was nothing like that.

All Mother Isolde saw in his eyes was deep exhaustion and absolute seriousness. He looked like someone who had genuinely stared into the abyss and experienced its horrors firsthand, someone who now spoke of them with nothing but restraint and caution.

Some of her wariness faded.

She could tell that this man was sound of mind. He certainly wasn't a madman like Adam, someone intoxicated by power.

But she still wasn't completely convinced.

"Where is it now?"

The pressure disappeared from her voice, replaced by her usual calm solemnity.

Danse didn't hide anything.

"The Minutemen have it. We only helped them recover and contain it."

The tension in the crater immediately eased.

The believers began murmuring among themselves, their voices rising and falling like overlapping waves. Quite a few quietly lowered their weapons.

Across the Commonwealth, the Minutemen had built their reputation through actions, not intimidation or propaganda. For years, they had protected vulnerable settlements, driven off raiders, and distributed survival supplies.

They had earned people's trust one deed at a time.

Especially after the Winter of Atom that had swept across the Commonwealth the previous year.

Adam had ridden out of the Glowing Sea atop a giant mutated centipede, slaughtering people and destroying settlements on a massive scale.

In the end, it had been the Minutemen who stood against the disaster and dealt with its aftermath.

During that catastrophe, radioactive snow blanketed the entire Commonwealth.

Even a region as rich in resources as the Commonwealth suffered localized famine, and countless small settlements that had failed to prepare simply vanished.

To deal with the crisis, the Minutemen led large numbers of refugees toward Diamond City, only to find the city already overcrowded and desperately short on food.

To gain entry, they ventured into the outskirts of the Boston ruins and recovered a supply train that had been raided, securing desperately needed provisions.

At the same time, they cleared an underground sewer route for use as a trade corridor, allowing food to reach settlements suffering from shortages.

Mother Isolde drew a deep breath and gestured to the believers behind her.

Everyone lowered their weapons.

Within seconds, every gamma gun, radium rifle, and heavy Fat Man launcher aimed at Danse's squad slowly dropped.

The hostility filling the crater receded like a falling tide.

Her voice carried genuine apology.

"I'm sorry. Last year's catastrophe made us overly cautious and suspicious. I hope you won't hold it against us."

"I understand."

Danse nodded.

He only wanted to leave this strange crater as quickly as possible.

He had no intention of creating more trouble, much less discussing the secrets of Dunwich Borers or Kremvh's Tooth.

"We still have a mission. We'll be going."

The entire squad left almost as if fleeing.

The heavy feet of their power armor ground against the brittle, vitrified walls of the crater, producing harsh crunching sounds like some enormous beast chewing bones.

At last, they climbed over the crater rim and stepped back onto the scorched, hardened ground of the Glowing Sea.

One Knight lowered his voice.

"Never thought the Minutemen name would be that useful."

Danse didn't look back.

He simply quickened his pace.

Once they were clear of the crater, the group followed Mother Isolde's directions and headed west along a collapsed trench.

Half-buried remnants of pre-War buildings lay everywhere along the route. Broken reinforced concrete, twisted metal pipes, and crumbling pieces of wall were scattered across the ground like the remains of a city buried beneath the earth.

Before long, their destination came into view.

A cave entrance, mostly blocked by rubble.

The edges of the stones around the opening had been worn remarkably smooth. Someone had clearly been coming and going for a long time, repeatedly shifting the rocks aside and putting them back.

Danse stood outside the cave and studied it for several seconds.

Kyle stepped forward.

"Captain, what do we do now?"

Danse didn't answer immediately.

His mind returned to the top-secret dossier the Minutemen had given him before the mission.

He had read the file only once, but its contents had been burned into his memory.

Brian Virgil.

FEV research lead.

Stationed for years in an underground Institute laboratory, Virgil had watched countless innocent people dragged into experiments day after day, suffering agonizing deaths or grotesque mutations under the effects of FEV.

The horrors he witnessed gradually wore down his conscience.

He repeatedly petitioned the Institute Directorate to terminate the inhumane project.

Every request was rejected.

In 2287, Virgil finally decided to rebel.

In a single night, he destroyed all of the laboratory's FEV data, equipment, and virus samples. Dozens of completed strains and hundreds of experimental records were wiped out.

Afterward, he injected himself with a special FEV strain he had secretly spent three years developing.

The strain had not been designed to create Super Mutants.

Its purpose was to grant its host extreme radiation resistance, enough to live, move, and think normally inside a radioactive hell like the Glowing Sea.

There was only one price.

Becoming a Super Mutant.

Danse's gaze hardened.

He hated Super Mutants from the bottom of his heart.

His fingers tightened instinctively around the grip of his plasma rifle.

The final image of Cutler's horrific mutation and death resurfaced vividly in his memory.

Danse forced down the murderous impulse rising inside him.

Virgil was different from the violent mutants he despised.

He had occupied a position near the heart of the Institute's power structure, yet had refused to become complicit in its atrocities.

He had sacrificed everything to destroy the FEV project and save countless innocent people who would otherwise have ended up on its operating tables.

I can't let a personal grudge control me.

I can't take my hatred out on someone who still had a conscience and dared to stand against evil.

Besides, Danse himself wasn't truly human.

He was a Synth.

Danse closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed the thoughts aside.

"Capture him without hurting him if possible."

The moment he finished speaking, all four power-armored soldiers practically competed to be the first into the cave.

Their heavy armor crushed loose stones underfoot with sharp crunching sounds.

The cave sealed out the radioactive haze outside, but the interior was humid and stifling. The air smelled of mold and lingering disinfectant, creating an oppressive atmosphere.

They advanced about twenty meters before the first defensive trap activated.

Two modified automated turrets embedded in the passage walls detected the heat signatures of their power armor.

Their barrels immediately spun up.

A dense stream of bullets tore through the passage, striking the T-60 armor and throwing off showers of sparks.

Before the turrets could maintain their fire, two Knights stepped forward.

Power-armored fists came crashing down.

BOOM!

The hardened gun barrels were crushed and twisted into useless scrap.

Two mangled barrels broke loose, rolled several times across the ground, and came to a stop.

The squad continued forward.

Deeper inside the passage, the red light on a Protectron flickered to life as it charged out to block them.

One Knight kicked it.

The heavy power armor boot sent the Protectron crashing into the rock wall.

Its casing caved in instantly, internal wiring burned out, and the machine went completely still.

After passing through the narrow tunnel, they finally found Virgil.

At the end of the passage was a crude space assembled from old pipes and damaged steel plates, barely enough to qualify as a temporary laboratory.

Several aging terminals sat on a wooden workbench. Handwritten experiment notes and data charts covered the walls. In one corner were several crates of bartered food and purified water.

Virgil was even larger than Danse had expected.

He stood nearly 2.6 meters tall.

His skin was a deep, glowing dark green, and his entire body bulged with massive muscles, their contours so exaggerated they looked ready to tear through his skin.

But the most surprising thing was his eyes.

They lacked the cloudy, violent emptiness Danse associated with ordinary Super Mutants.

Those were completely human eyes.

Clear.

Rational.

And currently filled with genuine fear.

When five heavily armed soldiers in power armor suddenly burst into his laboratory, Virgil's first instinct wasn't to fight.

It was to retreat.

He stumbled backward and knocked over a wooden chair, his back pressing against the cold rock wall.

His hands immediately went up.

"W-wait!"

Before he could say anything else, two Knights rushed him.

Virgil was far stronger than an ordinary human.

The moment he struggled, he actually managed to drag the two Knights in T-51 Power Armor half a step off balance.

But Virgil was still only a scientist.

He wasn't strong enough.

Within two seconds, they had him pinned firmly to the floor.

One Knight drove a knee into his back to immobilize him while the other locked an arm around his neck.

Virgil's face was pressed hard against the cold stone.

A low groan escaped him.

"I... I can't breathe..."

His voice was deep and hoarse.

The changes to his vocal cords from becoming a Super Mutant had altered the sound of his speech, but the fearful trembling in his voice was unmistakable.

Danse entered the laboratory and crouched beside him.

"Ease up a little."

The Knights immediately loosened their hold.

Virgil sucked in great lungfuls of air.

Slowly, he raised his head.

His brown, unmistakably human eyes remained fixed on Danse, filled with anxious hope.

"Are you... from the Institute?"

If they were Institute pursuers, at least Virgil knew what awaited him.

If they weren't, the uncertainty was even worse.

"No."

Confusion flashed through Virgil's eyes.

Then the fear deepened.

"Then... why are you looking for me?"

"We need your help cracking the Institute's teleportation technology."

A complicated, bitter expression crossed Virgil's face.

He remained silent for several seconds, quickly weighing his options.

"I can help you. But I have one condition."

Before Danse could answer, an enraged shout erupted behind him.

"You damn mutant think you get to make demands?"

Kyle could no longer suppress his hatred of Super Mutants.

He charged forward.

Danse immediately thrust an arm across his path.

"Stand down."

Kyle stopped abruptly.

He continued glaring at Virgil as though he wanted to burn a hole through him with his eyes.

Danse turned back toward Virgil.

"You can discuss your condition with our commander later. Right now, you're coming with us."

Virgil's face instantly went pale.

"No!"

His voice suddenly became urgent, trembling with barely contained panic and pleading.

"Please! You can't take me out of here!"

He struggled desperately to rise, but the two Knights held him firmly in place.

"The Institute won't let me go!" Virgil's voice rose, desperation turning almost into begging. "They're looking for me! They're searching everywhere! If they find out where I've gone..."

Danse's patience finally ran out.

He had done everything he could to suppress his instinctive hatred of Super Mutants.

He had forced himself to respect Virgil as a scientist who had rebelled against evil.

But every time he saw that green face and heard that hoarse voice, the memory of Cutler's fate stabbed into him again.

"Find a pole. Tie him to it and carry him out."

The squad immediately found a long metal pipe among the laboratory scrap.

Using heavy rope, they secured Virgil's hands and feet to opposite ends of the pipe and tied him down tightly.

Finally, they stuffed a wad of cloth into his mouth, silencing his muffled protests.

Two Knights hoisted the pipe between them.

Virgil's massive body hung beneath it like a pig being carried on a pole.

Once everything was secured, the squad turned around and began making its way out of the Glowing Sea.

...

At the same time, inside the Enclave's Scorched Earth Outpost, Colonel Sterling sat before a terminal in the command center, staring at a monitoring alert that had just appeared on the screen.

[Glowing Sea Sector Three Monitoring: Power armor squad has fully evacuated the radiation exclusion zone and successfully passed the perimeter checkpoint.]

He stared at the message for a moment.

Then he let out a long breath.

All the strength seemed to leave his body at once as he collapsed back into the chair.

"Thank God," he muttered, unable to hide the relief in his voice. "They're finally gone."

Sterling leaned back and closed his eyes, slowly letting his racing heartbeat settle.

Now he could finally relax.

Those 76ers had ventured into the Glowing Sea only to capture a Super Mutant.

They hadn't come for Scorched Earth Outpost.

They weren't investigating the experiments being conducted there either.

"I can't possibly be that unlucky."

Sterling opened his eyes, picked up the communicator, and issued an order.

"Notify all personnel. Lift maximum alert and resume normal rotations."

...

Not far from Scorched Earth Outpost stood a pre-War church half-buried beneath the ruins.

Hopesmarch Pentecostal Church.

It was a typical Victorian Gothic brick-and-stone structure, complete with a steeple, stained-glass windows, and Gothic arches.

Despite two hundred years since the Great War, most of its main structure had somehow survived.

A massive underground laboratory had been excavated beside the church.

Its sole purpose was to dismantle, study, and reverse-engineer third-generation Synths.

The experiments produced enormous amounts of waste.

Half-dismantled Synth bodies.

Discarded bionic brains.

Organic material left over from failed reverse-engineering attempts.

And much more.

None of it could simply be burned in the open.

The overwhelming smell of blood and scorched flesh would attract hordes of mutated creatures.

If that happened, the camp would be attacked, and the hidden outpost would be exposed.

So they had settled on a simple and reliable method of disposal.

All Synth waste and remains were dumped through a hole in the church roof.

Large numbers of feral ghouls lived inside the church.

They would naturally devour and break down the discarded bodies, neatly solving the problem of biological waste disposal.

At that moment, an Enclave soldier pushed a handcart loaded with corpses up a ramp onto the roof.

The cart was filled entirely with scrapped third-generation Synths.

Some consisted of metal skeletons tangled with damaged organic tissue.

Others were complete bionic bodies that had simply ceased functioning.

Their eyes remained open and empty, while frozen expressions lingered at the corners of their mouths, impossible to tell whether they had once been smiles or grimaces of pain.

"Why do I always get stuck with this filthy job..."

The soldier muttered as he tipped the handcart over.

A pile of body parts slid through the hole in the roof and crashed into the depths of the church below with several dull thuds.

He dusted off his hands and turned to leave.

Then he stopped.

Usually, the instant a body fell inside, the church erupted with the snarls of feral ghouls.

Those radiation-twisted creatures were instinctively drawn to the smell of human flesh and blood.

They would go mad fighting over the remains.

Today, there was nothing.

Complete silence.

"That's strange. Why aren't the ghouls making any noise?"

The soldier frowned.

No howling.

No footsteps.

None of the frenzied growling characteristic of feral ghouls.

He leaned over the hole and peered inside for several seconds.

In the dim light, all he could make out were collapsed pews and shards of broken glass.

There wasn't a single feral ghoul in sight.

The soldier couldn't be bothered to investigate further.

He shrugged and walked away.

But if he had dared enter the church, he would have seen something deeply unnatural.

The floor, once uneven and covered in ghoul footprints, was now completely coated in a layer of translucent green gel.

It was alive.

A slowly writhing mass of flesh and tissue, its surface glowing with a faint radioactive green light.

The floor.

The walls.

The collapsed pews.

The shattered altar.

Every surface inside the church had been swallowed beneath the strange living tissue.

The Synth remains that had just fallen through the roof were already being slowly enveloped, dissolved, and consumed.

Organic flesh.

Bionic skin.

Metal skeletons.

Mechanical components.

Everything was being assimilated bit by bit until it became part of the green mass.

Every feral ghoul that had once infested the church was gone.

They had been eaten.

The strange living tissue continued voraciously absorbing every usable nutrient while hidden tendrils buried deep underground carried a constant flow of energy farther beneath the church.

Toward something unknown waiting in the darkness below.

For this lady, the human flesh of third-generation Synths altered by FEV was the real delicacy.

As for those dried-out feral ghouls?

They were better than nothing.