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The energy blast hit me in the back of my armor, crackling with red sparks, and sending a numbing tingle down my spine. I thought it was an Institute synth, and whipped around, ready to hack them to bits with one, maybe two strikes of my sword. I nearly fell backward with the force it took to stop my blade mid-swing, and gave a nervous laugh.
It was only Nick.
Though his face resembled the early model synths we were fighting, Nick had the mind of a human being in his cybernetic brain; and he was my friend. That was close. I worried often about accidentally hitting him, but he was almost as resilient as I. He must have zapped me by mistake, in the chaos, aiming for an enemy just over my shoulder.
I hurried onward through the smoke of battle, deeper into Bunker Hill. Gen 2 synths were everywhere, with their plastic skin stretched unnaturally over metal skulls, glowing yellow eyes seeking out the four Gen 3 synths that the Railroad was protecting. Their goal was to wipe out the Railroad, and stop them from smuggling runaway synths for good… but they would kill anyone in their way.
With one clean stroke, I decapitated a Gen 2 in a shower of electricity. I felt a twinge of irony. I was fighting for Synth freedom, and to do so, I had to kill Synths-- Synths who had no choice but to follow their programming; Synths who resembled my best friend. The Railroad agent it had cornered grinned back at me, gratefully, and I knew I had made the right choice. The machine could have been programmed to act human, but the Institute programmed it only to kill.
Now it would kill no more.
Invigorated, I sprung back into battle; the sweat, the blood, screaming, and the crash of metal on metal. Those four synths deserved to be free.
You could argue the nature of true sentience; of the soul. When does programming become free will? The first and second generation synths were still robotic, at their core, but the Gen 3's were as close to human as a synthetic lifeform could be. They operated on wetware, the same as a human brain. They were assembled of flesh and blood. No medical test, short of autopsy, could distinguish them from human. This was by design, so they could better infiltrate the populace, but it had a side effect. They had dreams. They craved freedom, away from the their Institute creators who treated them as slaves, and pawns. Inside the Institute, showing even a glimmer of that humanity which they all innately felt was grounds to be “reset to factory defaults,” or “terminated.”
Cold terms for murder, couched in the antiseptic language of science. It was how the scientists working for the institute could live with themselves.
When I infiltrated the Institute's ranks, they tried to tell me synths merely mimic human emotion; they don't truly feel it as we do. They are perfectly happy performing menial maintenance work day after day, being experimented upon, and tossed away when their usefulness expired. Signs of free will or personality were considered defects. I don't know how they could convince themselves of this, when dealing with their own creations which they had taken painstaking efforts to make perfectly human. Even early model synths, still operating on servos and hardware, showed clear signs of sapience.
If I ever began to believe what they told themselves about androids merely “mimicking” humanity, I would remember Nick.
His memories were uploaded from a detective who lived two hundred years ago, before the war. “Nick Valentine” was the man's name. Nick awoke one day in a trash heap, with no memories except for his life as a human. He first noted, with horror, that the world had become a radioactive wasteland. Then, slowly, he realized the radiation had no effect on him. That he could no longer hear his heartbeat. There was something wrong with his body. It was no longer his body. He was no longer himself. He was a machine.
The Institute had experimented with some old gumshoe's brain scans, implanted them in one of their synths, and then, apparently, discarded it when they were done. Discarded him to grapple with the horror of his identity in an unforgiving world.
People of the wasteland feared him at first, but he was still Nick Valentine, private investigator. He built a life helping people, and now he was helping me.
I loved him.
He had that effect on women. He was handsome in his strange, ghoulish way. When he spoke, his words were gentle, using diction and jokes from an era long past-- like someone's father. He was a comfort in every way, a replacement for a lost husband.
No, he was not anatomically correct (though I'm certain I could have improvised some… modification). It wasn't like that, anyway. Not exactly. Nick was safe. That was part of his draw, knowing nothing could ever happen. He still had the memories of a fiance, Jenny. She was murdered even before the bombs fell, and she was the original Nick's. My Nick never even met her, but he still remembered, and she still haunted him. He could never move on any more than I could.
I had hoped the cryogenic pod would have kept my husband alive, somehow, even after I watched him shot in the chest. When I staggered out of my own cryo chamber, I opened his, and found him covered in freezer burn worse than an old TV dinner. I shook him. I tried… I tried anything I could think of, but there was nothing to do. He was gone. I took his ring, and wore it with mine. I'll never take it off.I promised him I would get our son back, but in truth, I felt only rage at the man who killed him. I finally got my revenge… but it was hollow. Now, everything feels pointless. Like Nick, I'm a relic. All that keeps us going now is helping people.
Any time I doubted the sovereignty of synthetics, I thought of Nick. Any time I doubted the Institute's malignance, I thought of how they left him discarded and alone. I thought of how they took my son away, and killed my husband. Because of them, the only one who could make me feel normal was a robotic P.I. who told corny two hundred year old jokes.
The synths would be free, I would see to that.
No sooner did I feel that the battle battle was swinging in the Railroad's favor, the roar of a Vertibird engine filled the air above, and my heart sunk. What are they doing here?
The Brotherhood wanted to destroy the Institute, which could make them powerful allies. But they also wanted to destroy any technology they deemed dangerous. That included those four synths, hiding somewhere below Bunker Hill. They didn't believe in artificial free will any more than Institute scientists, and whatever they were doing here, it was not as allies.
It was one thing for me to dismember killer synths in order to save more advanced, peaceful synths. It was another thing entirely to take down the very human, if dogmatic, Brotherhood. Would I kill humans to save artificial lives? That didn't matter, now. Bunker Hill had erupted in chaos, as Brotherhood Knights in full power armor stormed down, opening fire on enemy synths and Railroad allies alike, while alarmed traders and residents of the once-peaceful town fired back. Spooked brahmin galloped wildly through the streets. The Minutemen, ironically, were the only armed faction not present. As their general, I might have led them in support of the Railroad, but I didn't need to bring my people into this bedlam. They didn't need to know that their leader would slaughter humans for the sake of synths.
It didn't matter now who was human and who was not. People were going to die today. Only I had the power to decide which side lived.
Without thinking, and without regret, I slashed down everyone I could who wasn't helping the Railroad. Most of the townspeople fled in fear, and despite the Brotherhood's superior armaments, the Railroad dug in with guerrilla tactics sharpened from years of working in secret. I ran below to find and defend our “stolen property,” who looked no more than frightened humans, cowering from the fight above. We cleared the safe house, and my friends in the Railroad cheered. The four stammered their gratitude, unbelieving that anybody would go through so much trouble to see them free. When I reached the surface again, the fighting had largely died down.
Pzzzztew! Another red laser beam struck me on the shoulder, and pins and needles coursed under my skin like my arm had fallen asleep. Institute synths all fire blue lasers.
“You really want this to be the last mug you see?” I heard Nick taunt. There must have been an enemy nearby. I strained my eyes ahead of me, but I couldn't find anybody, then a laser blast struck me again. I turned to face Nick, and his cold yellow eyes were locked on to me. He snarled, raising his gun again.
“Nick! What's going on? The battle's over.”
He didn't respond. My armor absorbed another blast.
“Did I hit you earlier? If this is about that, it… it was only an accident.”
Another red beam whizzed past my helmet, and Nick backed away with agility, taking cover behind some debris. As if I were an enemy.
“Was… was it because we fought those synths? We've fought synths before… I didn't know it bothered you… talk to me! Nick!”
Not a day ago, he said he admired me. That I was the best partner he'd ever had. This wasn't right. Then I remembered Kellogg.
Nick and I tracked down the man who killed my husband, and kidnapped my son. When we killed him, we recovered cybernetic implants in his head. Nick thought we could use the implants to uncover Kellog's memories, and find where he had taken Shaun. Nick brought me to the Memory Den, where he volunteered to have one of that murderer's implants installed in his cybernetic brain, even though he knew it was dangerous. It could help me track down my son, and he wanted to help me find Shaun. Everything seemed to go smoothly, but afterward, just for a moment, Nick spoke to me in Kellogg's voice.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he threatened. Moments later, Nick was himself again, and had no idea what had happened. He was afraid we shouldn't travel together anymore-- he could be a liability. I told him then and there, there was no one I trusted more… and frankly, if he did turn bad, I was the strongest person to have around to stop him.
I just… never expected it to happen.
Of course he would break down sometime. Everyone gets old and dies eventually, and Nick was old. He was an older model, being crudely maintained without any assistance from the Institute that made him. He had been traveling the wasteland for so many years, in the harshest conditions. He showed such wear-and-tear, he once convinced a man that he wasn't a synth, he was just “a very sick ghoul.” He didn't look much better than a feral ghoul. This battle could have been the last straw. His cybernetic brain was failing.
Again, and again the red blast of his laser rifle hit me. My armor was strong, but I couldn't take it forever. One good head shot and I was done. I injected myself with a stimpack, and feeling my energy return, I ran. I didn't know where to run to, without my closest companion, but I could't kill him, and I wouldn't let him kill me.
A week went by. I carried on arming settlers under Minutemen protection, and taking out camps of raiders, or super mutants for them. I continued plotted with the Railroad on how to free more synths from their Institute oppressors. After a complete victory at Bunker Hill, there was no one to report back on my betrayal. I told the Institute that we were ambushed, and I barely made it out alive. The sole survivor of a massacre. I half expected them to have had surveillance on me, but the lie held. I could continue being the Railroad's undercover agent. Sometimes I forgot that Nick wasn't with me. I'd turn around and ask him to hold something for me, and he wasn't there. I'd expected a wry comment on my terminal hacking skill, but there was silence.
However deep I got with the Railroad and the Institute, I always returned to Sanctuary to unwind, and resupply.
Sanctuary Hills had been my home, two hundred years ago. The Minutemen set up their base in my neighbor's house, and across the street, my home was still untouched. Shaun's crib was still in one piece, though the bed I shared with my husband had long disintegrated. I left the broken frame where it lay, in memoriam. Notes about our busted HVAC system were still posted to the rusting refrigerator. It was a museum of my shattered life.
I was talking with Preston about a new settlement that needed help, when a pale figure appeared up the road.A long trench coat and battered fedora nearly matched his lifeless skin, which was equally patched and full of holes. Sun glittered off the exposed metal bones of his right hand as he wandered toward the settlement, ragged coat tails billowing in the dusty air.
I ran to him, hoping.
“Hey,” he hollered, “You, uh, forget something?”
I threw myself against him, wasteland dust puffing out of his coat on impact. “Nick?” I asked, voice shaking, as my hands cradled his upper back.
“I can run a diagnostic to be sure, but that's my name.”
“What happened?”
“What happened? I've been wandering the wasteland looking for you. I, uh… worried you didn't make it out of Bunker Hill. I seem to have been disabled during the fight. When I came to, you were gone. Guess you took me for scrap, huh?” He spoke with some concern his his voice, artificial muscles pulling his brow together as he considered that I might leave him for dead.
I pulled back from my embrace and tried to stifle the tears clouding my vision. Nick saw them. He knew something was wrong. “Nick… how much do you remember?”
“Those Institute goons wanted to destroy all of Bunker Hill.We were going to ambush them, and save those runaway synths.” His face creased and twitched with the effort of accessing memory files that were corrupted or missing… He was afraid of what those missing memories might contain, but their very absence said enough. “Then, uh… I went back to the agency, see if Ellie had scrounged up any new cases. When you never turned up, I thought I might find you here.”
He gave me a pained look, like he knew there was something else, but he didn't want to ask. He didn't want to know. Who would? Nick's mind was proud, old-fashioned, and fiercely human. How could he stand to find out his programming was glitched? That his very essence was coming apart?
If I told him, it would destroy him. He might not want to travel with me anymore. He would consider himself dangerous. He might question the existence of his own soul.
But I never would.
“Welcome back, partner.” I choked out, tears spilling involuntarily down my cheeks. I leaned in to embrace him again, and felt his arms close around me. I hid my face in his shoulder until my sobs slowed. The heat of my body pressed against his warmed his servos, and for a moment, he thought he remembered what it felt like to have a heartbeat.