Fallout - Chapter 146: Tattered Skin and a Broken Body (Patreon)

Minutemen Base

Courser C1-37 squeezed himself into the gap between the shipping container and the wall.

The metallic, rusty stench stung his nostrils, and the burrs along the edges of the sheet metal tore at the cuff of his uniform, where the Institute crest and his Courser ID number had once been embroidered. Now only a few loose threads remained. He held his breath as shallowly as possible; his heartbeat pounded in his ears, beat by beat, so heavy it felt as if it would shatter his ribs before it stopped.

On the other side of the shipping container, there was a sound.

Wet. Sticky. Like a thick, soaked canvas blanket being torn apart inch by inch, accompanied by a slick, fibrous ripping sound that set his teeth on edge. Then came the sound of liquid sloshing against the metal floor, slow and deliberate, each splash like a blunt hammer striking his temples.

He dared not move. The shadows in the gaps between the metal panels weren’t enough to completely conceal him. If that thing’s optical sensors turned this way… He forced himself to stop thinking.

On the other side of the shipping container.

A bizarre Assaultron robot was tearing apart the corpse of a Courser, clutching a severed arm. The cuff of the dark gray uniform was still intact, the fabric soaked in dark red, semi-coagulated blood, the edges of the skin ragged.

Its claws tore at the remaining tissue slowly and intently, its movements clumsy yet imbued with a kind of morbid reverence; every inch torn away felt like the completion of a ritual.

C1-37 closed his eyes. Images from not long ago surged forward, so vivid they didn’t feel like memories, more like a hot iron pressed against the back of his retina.

By the time they realized this was a trap, it was already too late.

After Director Justin’s death, their organization attempted to fight back, but the disparity in firepower was laughable.

Eight heavy Sentry Bots sealed off all escape routes; strangely enough, they did not attack the Institute’s technicians. Those figures in white lab coats wandered back and forth between the lines of fire as if strolling through their own backyard.

This gave them an opportunity to retreat.

Then, just as they neared a medical bay, that thing burst out through a side door.

It had the appearance of an Assaultron, but its movements didn’t resemble any known model. No reconnaissance gait, no scanning pauses, no tactical logic.

It didn’t even glance at the scientists as it passed them, charging straight at the Synths.

It was crying and laughing as it charged. The two sounds twisted together, as if something deep within its processor were gnawing at it, causing it such agony that it could only make that noise.

The Coursers were almost wiped out.

Only C1-37 survived, simply because he ran fast and had good luck.

But now his luck seemed to be running out.

At that moment, the crazed Assaultron crouched beside the Coursers’ mangled remains, pulled the sleeve up to the shoulder, and, like peeling a banana, stripped a whole patch of human skin from the muscle.

The motion was meticulous. The tips of its claws advanced along the natural seam between skin and muscle, slowly and patiently, as if disassembling a precision instrument.

With every strip it peeled off, it paused and let out a distorted, shattering howl, like a wounded beast, or a tape recorder stuck in a loop between fast-forward and rewind, with high and low frequencies jumping back and forth, unable to settle on a single waveform.

Occasionally, it would raise its slime-covered claw and slam it down hard against the side of its own head. Metal struck metal with a dull thud, and a few sparks flew from the impact of the joints.

Then it would continue tearing.

The cycle repeated endlessly, like a faulty program that could never be completed.

C1-37’s scalp began to tingle at the hairline. His fingers spasmed uncontrollably.

The only way out was to wait for it to leave, but would it even leave? This assumption required one premise: that it possessed the logic to “leave.” But did it have any predictable logic at all?

This crazed robot, clad in the Coursers’ skin, was dancing, laughing and crying, and self-mutilating.

What was left in its processor?

Time was warped beyond recognition by fear. Every second dragged on like a lifetime, every tearing sound felt as if it were happening on his own skin, and every drop of liquid hitting the floor resonated deep within his chest.

The enhanced implants deep within his body emitted a faint warmth, operating at full capacity to suppress his stress response and barely maintain a sliver of clarity.

He counted his heartbeats to stay calm, but stopped at one hundred seventy-three.

Because the base intercom went off.

It was a synthetic female voice, tuned to an excessively saccharine tone, like a voice template ripped from some children’s toy:

“Sweetie, your kind is behind the shipping container.”

C1-37 jerked his head up.

On the ceiling, a surveillance camera was trained directly on him.

A red indicator light flickered in the darkness, like an open, cold eye. How had he not noticed it before? How long had he been in here, fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? Had it been watching him the whole time?

Behind him, a mechanical claw instantly pierced the sheet metal; its alloy fingertips were polished to a shine, and a dark red, semi-solid liquid trickled down its knuckles.

C1-37 closed his eyes.

Forget it.

Then a deafening crash of shattering metal, like the roar of a colossal beast, drowned out everything.

...

In the makeshift monitoring room, Virgil stood before the holographic screen, his green face behind the mask turning deathly pale.

On the screen, M7-91 was tearing apart the remains of Courser C1-37.

Its movements were slightly more skilled than before. It had learned to rip open the clothing first, then peel off the skin, and finally drape the hide over itself.

With each section completed, it would pause to emit a sound that was part cry, part laugh, then tap its head twice with its claws.

The force was even, the spot precise, as if confirming the pain. Or confirming that it was still alive.

This deranged Assaultron was the same Synth infiltrator who had posed as a Railroad agent before Saifu sold him to Jezebel.

Jezebel had torn him to shreds while he still retained full consciousness, pulling out nerve fibers one by one, but he refused to yield even in the face of death. Even when only his head remained, with even his vocal module removed, his eyes stayed fixed on Jezebel. He kept staring.

Later, Jezebel had a thought: Since personality programs can be uploaded into a Synth’s brain, why not do the reverse and upload a Synth’s consciousness into a robot’s body? Why not give it a try?

The result was what stood before them: a mad Assaultron that Jezebel called the Skinner.

Due to the Assaultron’s limited processor capabilities, even after Jezebel had completely charred M7-91’s face, what was uploaded was still merely a mass of residual consciousness: a collection of consciousness fragments, dregs of memory, and the embers of emotion.

That drove M7-91 into a frenzied craving for living flesh and blood. It wanted to touch and immerse itself in warm flesh, using skin to remind itself that it once had skin, and using warm blood to remind itself that it was once warm.

As if that would help it remember something.

Jezebel stood beside Virgil, watching M7-91’s every move through cameras positioned at five different angles, recording the timing of each movement, the duration of every pause, and the spectral diagrams of every sound wave analysis.

The data piled up on the secondary screen as endless waveforms and bar charts.

“Interesting,” Jezebel said calmly, but Virgil could detect an almost morbid excitement underlying her tone.

“It has developed a ritual of its own. First crying, then laughing, then self-mutilation. This isn’t the program I set. It generated this on its own.”

Virgil didn’t respond.

On the screen, M7-91 draped the last piece of human skin over its own head sensor array, the face of the Courser C1-37. The skin didn’t fit snugly across the forehead; M7-91 pressed down on the edges several times before it was barely secured.

Once it had put it on like a mask, it stood up and let out a long howl, a mixture of crying and laughing.

This howl lasted eleven seconds; sound wave analysis showed the waveform fluctuating at irregular intervals between two extreme frequencies, with no repeating pattern.

“Why didn’t it attack those scientists?”

Jezebel paused for a moment, its standard delay when processing complex issues.

“M7-91 seems to be able to… perceive Synths.”

“So it lunged at the Coursers because M7-91 prefers the flesh and blood of Synths?”

“That’s the theory. It may have retained some form of recognition ability. Its behavioral patterns when approaching Synths differ significantly from those when approaching natural humans, and its attack priorities are entirely different. These differences have ruled out random factors.”

Virgil stared at the screen, a chill creeping up his spine.

“But the problem is that M7-91’s body has no hardware capable of distinguishing Synths. How does it know who is a natural human and who is a Synth?”

On the screen, M7-91 was dragging the mangled remains to the side of a shipping container. It crouched down and began arranging the pieces of skin draped over its body. It adjusted the facial skin to the center of its face, wrapped the arm skin around its mechanical arm, and smoothed out the wrinkles one by one with its claws.

Its movements were gentle, as if caressing a treasure.

Jezebel remained silent for a long time.

“The data is insufficient. I need more observation samples.”

Virgil turned to look at the Robobrain and immediately concluded: the pre-War technology for isolating brains had massive flaws and must never be used on humans again.

The Jezebel before him was still under comprehensive surveillance. If an unregulated Robobrain were allowed to directly control a robot factory like this Minutemen facility, or even more advanced military-industrial research facilities, he dared not imagine the consequences.

“If the processor were powerful enough…”

Virgil asked softly,

“Would it still go mad?”

Jezebel’s green indicator light flickered once, like a blink.

“It might stabilize.

My simulations show that if the processor possesses a parallel processing architecture with sufficient capacity and a neural interface simulation layer with adequate bandwidth, a complete personality program can remain stable, but the energy consumption of such a supercomputer per second would be astronomical.”

Virgil turned his gaze back to the screen.

M7-91, clad in human skin, was dancing slowly amidst the flesh and blood, a frenzied, ritualistic, and hopeless dance.

It spun in circles, its mechanical joints bending and stretching at unnatural angles, tracing chaotic paths through the debris-strewn floor. It moved to a rhythm that existed only within its fractured consciousness, as if attending a ball with no other guests.

“Then let’s put it out of its misery.”

...

C.I.T. ruins.

Courser X6-88 tried to stand up, but failed.

His right leg had completely vanished below the knee.

X6-88 glanced down. A laser beam had burned through his knee joint; the intense heat had fused the synthetic tissue and reinforced bones into a twisted, black mass that was still emitting blue smoke, accompanied by a faint crackling sound.

His left eye was also destroyed. The left half of his field of vision flickered with static, behind which lay shapeless, blurry shadows, occasionally flashing with a burst of color.

He struggled to focus with his right eye and saw corpses, parts, and the boots of the Brotherhood of Steel.

The ground was littered with shattered components. The torsos, limbs, and heads of First- and Second-Generation Synths lay scattered across the charred pavement.

The bodies of the Coursers lay among them, once the Institute’s finest warriors, now sprawled among the scrap metal, their bodies charred to cinders, their augmentations exposed beneath cracked skin.

A Knight approached.

He stopped in front of X6-88, flipped up his visor, revealing a face streaked with dust and blood.

He had short brown hair, and a fresh wound on his chin was still oozing blood, which trickled down his jawline to the edge of his neck armor.

The Knight crouched down. The joints of his power armor hissed under the strain as the knee armor plates ground against the gravel and glass shards.

“You’re a worthy opponent.”

X6-88 gasped hoarsely.

The Knight looked at him. His gaze shifted from the half-charred face to the damaged implant ports, then to the blood-stained uniform. Finally, his eyes settled on the Courser insignia.

“Excellent tactics. Setting up defensive positions behind the natural cover of the ruins, using crossfire to block every advance route. You even set up three decoy positions to make us think we’d found a breakthrough, and you repelled two of our vanguard waves. It wasn’t until our third push, when we lost three men, that we realized the seemingly weak gap on the west side was a ruse.”

“You successfully held off our entire main force for four hours.”

There was a hint of genuine respect in the Knight’s voice.

“Your men were also very brave. Not a single one surrendered.”

X6-88’s right eye, the only one still visible, twitched slightly. The pupil shifted within its socket, trying to focus on the Knight’s face. His lips moved, and he finally managed to force out a faint, breathy sound.

“That was my duty.”

The Knight stood up, drew a 10-millimeter pistol from his waist, checked the magazine, and pushed the slide back into place. His movements were slow, each step performed clearly so that X6-88 could see exactly what he was doing.

“You deserve a warrior’s death, side by side with your men, dying together on the battlefield where you fought.”

The muzzle pressed against his forehead.

“Any last words?”

X6-88’s lips quivered, and he finally managed to utter a sound, hoarse and faint, but the Knight heard it clearly.

“The Institute… will remember me.”

The Knight nodded. As he did, some of the dust on his face fell away, revealing a small patch of clean skin beneath.

“I hope so, too.”

The gun fired.

X6-88 fell backward onto the charred road. His sole remaining right eye gazed up at the sky, its pupil slowly dilating. The sky was a deep blue, with a few wisps of cloud drifting lazily by, as if utterly indifferent to the carnage below.

Yet his expression was surprisingly calm; a faint, almost resigned smile even tugged at the corners of his mouth.

The Knight holstered his gun and stood up, gesturing to the soldiers behind him. Two of them brought a stretcher, handling it with far greater care than they had shown the other bodies. They placed the remains on the truck and covered them with a clean, bloodstain-free canvas.

Then he turned and looked toward the ruins of the C.I.T. main building.

Once the Commonwealth’s premier institution of higher learning, it was now nothing but rubble. More than half of the main building’s exterior walls had collapsed, leaving the exposed reinforced concrete framework jutting out at all angles, like the skeleton of a giant beast that had not yet fallen after its death.

On the plaza in front of the building, debris and fragments scorched by lasers lay scattered across the ground. A thick, murky current hung in the air, the acrid smell of burning, the scorching heat of metal, and the cloying aftertaste of evaporated coolant, all mingling together and pressing heavily into their lungs.

An engine growled in the distance. A tank rolled over the remains of Synths, its tracks crushing the metal with a crunch. A laser excavator extended from the front of the tank.

Its surface was etched with energy circuits that glowed a faint blue in the sunlight; the patterns, like blood vessels, wound and crisscrossed along the drill bit.

The circuits lit up, and a hum filled the air. It rose from a deep rumble, growing sharper and sharper until it finally became a piercing screech that made one’s teeth ache. Blue light flowed across the surface, converging layer by layer at the tip, condensing into a dazzling point of light.

In the next second, a blazing red laser beam pierced the rubble.

Concrete shattered, rebar snapped, and a muffled roar surged up from deep within the earth, like the death cry of a dying beast. Dust and smoke billowed upward, swallowing the daylight and coalescing into a suffocating, grayish-yellow cloud above the square. The sun was obscured, reduced to nothing more than a blurry speck of light floating behind the haze.

The path leading from the surface to the Institute was being carved out.

The Institute was losing its sky.

Sunlight from the surface was gradually seeping into its tomb.