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Sammie Hartwell couldn’t sleep.
It was somewhat understandable: Finding a comfortable – and more importantly, safe – place to rest your head out in the wasteland wasn’t the easiest of things, but usually sheer exhaustion was enough to make sure you fall into unconsciousness in a reasonable amount of time, regardless of the risk.
What was unusual, was that she couldn’t fall asleep despite being in possibly the safest place she had visited since leaving Vault 111.
The Cambridge police station was well fortified, with at least two heavily armed guards keeping watch at any one time, and a couple of suits of fully functional and properly maintained Power Armour just two rooms over should the need for them arise. Sammie was even able to set her sleeping bag up on top of a proper mattress for once, and that day’s events hadn’t been lacking in excitement to wear her out either.
And yet here she was, staring blankly at the ceiling because her brain refused to shut off, while her new Brotherhood of Steel acquaintances slumbered peacefully on the beds they had claimed, or went about their late night business in other rooms, mindful to keep the noise down. Except for the Paladin who lead the squad: It turned out that Danse is a terrible snorer, but as much as Sammie wanted to blame her current predicament on the soldier wheezing up a lung over the other side of the room, she knew better than that.
Truth was, she just had too much to think about right now.
If her first couple of days in the post-apocalypse had been a whirlwind of confusion and information overload, then the last two spent trekking across the Commonwealth with no one but Codsworth at her side had been a genuine cyclone. She had been expecting for the journey to be rough, even going so far as to say that she was almost prepared for it, but now that she had the chance to lay back and take a quiet moment and actually reflect on her experiences, everything just came crashing down at once.
To start with, Sturges had been right about feral ghouls, and an icy shiver ran down Sammie’s spine as she recollected the event which had led her to that conclusion. Trying to avoid Lexington and its various dangers, she and Codsworth had followed the train tracks that ran by Concord to the south only to wind up in the thick of it anyway: She had thought that a locked up, easily defensible train station would be a perfect spot to hole up in for the night, but thirty minutes, a lot of screaming, and a very sore patch of scalp where a fistful of her hair and been yanked straight out proved her oh so very wrong.
The first thing she had done upon finding safety in the form of a derelict water tower further along the line was to arrange an unscheduled haircut. Doing so with a knife didn’t exactly produce a professional look, and combined with the blood and her newly acquired bald patch she couldn’t have been more thankful for her hat, but it was a preferable outcome to what might have gone wrong if she had tried to do it with the only alternative blade around for miles: Codsworth’s buzzsaw.
With that thought, she turned her head to eye the Mister Handy beside the door, resting on the floor with his limbs and eyestalks tucked away in standby mode, and supressed the urge to snicker. The robot had claimed to be no Mister Gutsy, but his two hundred and ten year vigil of Sanctuary must have forced some adaptations in his programming on top of the flamethrower modifications, because his handling of whatever threats they had stumbled across so far could only be described as “curiously bloodthirsty". Even the Brotherhood personnel had been impressed.
Rolling over, Sammie’s mind followed a natural progression to what had followed that. The next day she had joined up with a trading caravan headed for Bunker Hill, amongst whom she had met her first normal ghoul. He had been a refreshingly pleasant fellow, positive breath of fresh air in a world where most air was dead and stale: He had been sympathetic to her as she retold the scuffle with the ferals, and had recommended aiming for the legs next time she found herself in the thick of it. That had been accompanied by an example in the form of his own tale, about this one time he had gotten way too drunk at a bar and broken his arm while trying to stack two chairs on top of each other so another, equally-smashed patron could dance on them.
Between him and the two-headed cow most of the group’s possessions were strapped to, it had been a struggle to not make her naivety to the new world obvious by asking too many questions.
Alas, all good things come to an end, and her jaunt with the caravan had been no exception. She and Codsworth parted ways with them just before nightfall when one of the guards started getting a bit too adventurous and touchy-feelsy. Sammie scoffed at the thought yet again. She didn’t consider herself to be a looker by any means – sure, she was slim and blessed with good cheekbones, but she was also all freckles and moles, made many fourteen-year-olds look busty by comparison, and had about as many curves as a cement brick – and this applied doubly so with her hair in its current state, but by now she figured that average life expectancy wasn’t long enough that wastelanders could afford to be picky. Thinking about it, simply having all of your limbs intact was probably enough to qualify as attractive in the Commonwealth.
And so that brought her to where she was now, surrounded by properly trained soldiers who had come to let her make use of their quarters and some supplies through – fittingly enough – an encounter with even more ghouls. The things had been swarming the police station when Sammie and Codsworth passed through on their search for somewhere to camp the night, and it was only the right thing to help: If not for the sake of trying to save a few lives, than at least make sure the feral creatures didn’t turn upon her once they were finished picking their teeth with the remains of their previous targets.
The Brotherhood had been thankful for her timely intervention, and surprisingly polite about it in their own way (with one notable exception), but more importantly they seemed to be only group she had met that actually appeared to have something resembling organisation about them. A proper command structure, or at least commander – a commander that she had even managed to win some respect from.
So no one had argued when he agreed to her request to crash here that night.
Danse seemed to be a good man, actually reminded her of Nate in a way, though it seemed that the air of obliviousness about him was downright genuine rather than a constructed shield against the worst the world had to offer. Admittedly, that had probably played a factor in her curiosity getting the better of her when, that morning, he had asked if she would be interested in helping them one more time before being on her way.
She wasn’t entirely sure if she regretted that decision or not yet.
On one hand, their journey to and through the ArcJet Systems testing facility had answered so many of the questions that had plagued her mind since leaving Sanctuary: What the Commonwealth was like now, if technologically-literate society still existed anywhere, and whether Fancy-Lad Snack Cakes were still edible after all this time (Answer: Yes. If Danse’s attempt to stuff some they happened by into his pack when he thought she hadn’t been looking was anything to go by, at least).
Standing out from all these, was that the soldier had shed light on something that she had almost managed to forget about: The Institute.
Her strange encounter with the man named Art and his insistence to run as far away from the Commonwealth as she could had almost become a footnote to Sammie. She had been so focused on other things – like not dying – that her pondering about exactly what he had been on about was soon tucked away for future reference, to be brought up only when needed and only when it wouldn’t get in the way of her day-to-day struggles. It was when Danse explained the nature of his faction’s mission here in the Commonwealth when it dawned upon her that this was her chance to get the answers, and she had made adequate use of their time together to ask every last one that she could.
Danse had a one-track mind and had stopped answering once they arrived, but what little light he had shed made the vague responses and evasive language she had gotten from Art make much more sense. Even with that information dump, though, she didn’t need a law degree to know that there was more to the story than she could begin to imagine, and it was that wild speculation that kept her awake right now.
A group of scientists, holed up underground with no outside contact since Armageddon? Who could know what sorts of crazy things could be going around in their collective heads? And more importantly, what did that mean for everyone else up topside? Based on what she and Danse had found in the rocket testing facility, the answer to that question would be far more than the destructive consequences of your typical out-of-control college frat party.
Remembering the wrecks that those synths had turned the automated security systems into made Sammie shudder and roll over, partially curling up to ward off the sick feeling pooling in her gut. The facility had been almost entirely stripped of anything valuable or potentially useful, to the point that it was a miracle they had even found the transmitter part they were looking for in the first place.
And then there was the synths themselves. Their skeletal frames, monotone voices, and soulless, yellow stares… Macabre things, the thought of which sent a shudder down your spine with just how wrong they were, even more the splitting image of your typical horror-genre zombie than the damn ferals. She had said that if she never saw another synth again it’d be too damn soon, and still stood by that assessment now. Danse had glumly agreed with her sentiment, but both of them knew it wasn’t something that could be avoided forever, because synths were just another part of reality in the Commonwealth today.
The worst part, though? They had only been fighting old, outdated models! Sammie had been utterly convinced that the Paladin would call her mad when she brought up her encounter with Art and his clone during their hike back to Cambridge, or even agree with her theory that they had been twins in some dispute, making up nonsense to try and vilify each other, but the man had actually confirmed what she had wanted to disbelieve so much.
Not only would there almost certainly be synths in her future, but they could be literally anyone.
You ask and you ask, but their hearts are locked tight with fear, and suspicion…
Sammie sighed, repressed another shudder. She had never been expecting her search for this person with a “bright heart” to be easy, simply due to how people nowadays treated strangers in general, but this was a whole other type of stacked deck.
Was it really any wonder that this Brotherhood of Steel wanted to take on the Institute? To get a foothold here, in a land unfamiliar to them, and finally put an end to the paranoia?
Even if that was likely just a cover story for their stated intentions of looting any technology they could find, but still: Sammie now had the chance to help that happen. Her reversion to old training in an effort to adapt to the new world had kept her alive this long, but it had impressed Danse enough to potentially become so much more. An offer of a place to call home… An organised team to be a part of… Access to all the resources she could ever need to not only survive, but possibly even thrive? She hadn’t ever thanked her brief stint in the military as much as she had during the past six hours.
But… Would that be worth the cost?
Danse said that he only expected honesty and respect out of those he instructed, but Sammie wasn’t quite sure she was ready to return to the life of regimented command structures and following orders without question. That had always been far more of Nate’s thing: A fair cost for his need to always have a purpose to stand by, people to protect, and something to devote himself too, lest he get lost in the minefield of his own, war-torn head. Meanwhile, Sammie had always cared more for the smaller things in life rather than the big picture, finding enjoyment in whatever she could manage, and standing up for the underdog so that they could a fair chance at enjoying the same privileges as everyone else.
Yes, armies protected people too, but the scale was just so different – if she couldn’t see that, why else would she have left as soon as it was allowed to, to go and study employment law? And she was able to see it here, too: The soldiers about the police station certainly wanted to help out when it wouldn’t get in the way of their mission – there was no doubt about that – but the restraint in their actions in her presence, and the aloofness with which they addressed her, all betrayed that a significant portion were fighting against the urge to look down their noses at anyone who wasn’t them.
It was funnily similar to soldiers before the war, really. When your country and its people were expected to all but worship you for your “sacrifice”, it was a difficult battle not to develop an inflated sense of self, almost impossible. Almost, she hazily reflected, because there was still room in the world for exceptional outliers. Danse seemed to have his head on straight, addressing his concerns about the locals using logical reasoning and some sympathy rather than smug superiority, and made a point out of encouraging his men to do the same, even if it did seem to be in vain.
And of course, Sammie probably never would have fallen for Nate Hartwell if he had allowed his career to break him.
Which led directly into the other thing that had been keeping her up until then: Could she possibly have what it takes to not fall into the trap that was the human ego?
Searching through memories of happier, lazier times – Nate at her side, ever such the smiling goofball that any of her present company save the robot probably would have balked – Sammie couldn’t find a concrete answer. However she didn’t need to just yet, because reflecting on those images was what allowed the sole survivor of Vault 111 to finally drift away into a much needed slumber.
Like so many more questions she had, and even more that she didn’t yet know that she would have to ask, the answer could wait until the time was right.
Of course, the right time doesn’t always have to be an age away.
“I’m sorry, but as much as I appreciate the offer, and… As much as I desperately want access to the resources your Brotherhood might provide, I’m simply not in any position to be able to commit to anything just right now. Especially something so all-encompassing as taking on a whole new way of life.”
Danse responded with complete silence and a slight frown.
The sentence hung in the air for a painfully long time, sounding more and more like scrambled word salad with every passing moment rather than the organised, logical argument Sammie had meant for it to be. She could practically hear Knight Rhys scoffing and the soft admonishment Scribe Haylen would give him, even though they were both still inside the police station while she, Codsworth, and the Paladin were out in the courtyard and an entire closed door away.
Then, much to Sammie’s relief, he shrugged.
“That’s entirely understandable, Ms Hartwell,” Danse said, his expression softening and nodding curtly, “While I am disappointed to hear that, the fact still remains that you need to find your kidnapped child. I’m not a father myself, but I do not need to be to see just how large a priority family must be to a parent.”
The tension that had built up over the long seconds before his reply dissipated in a soothing wave, and Sammie pressed her lips into a warm smile, both to express her gratitude and to prevent herself from openly sighing. “Thank you for understanding, Paladin Danse.”
“There is no need to thank me. In fact, I wanted to thank you once more before you depart,” Danse explained, taking a couple of heavy, hydraulically-powered strides (why he needed to be in his Power Armour already this early in the morning, Sammie couldn’t fathom, but to each their own, right?) across the courtyard to where a couple of AER9s had been laid out against the police station wall and picking one up. Sammie glanced at Codsworth for a moment and then back, leaning over slightly to try and see before straightening back up when the soldier turned around and walked back to her. “More specifically, I wanted to compensate you for your assistance during our operation yesterday. It is a very real possibility that we may not have been able to obtain the Deep Range Transmitter without your intervention, and I do not see that bundle of sticks and masking tape you call a ‘laser musket’ holding out for any significant period of high-stress use, so I thought that you would find this weapon useful.”
He held out the gun, crouching slightly to compensate for the height difference provided by his Armour so that Sammie could reach with less effort. She did so, but not before her eyebrows rose and a surprised stammer of thanks forced its way past her lips, and once the weapon had been transferred, she made sure to properly test its weight and have a good inspection of it while Danse straightened up, clearly proud of himself. “It’s my own personal modification of the standard Brotherhood Laser Rifle: Extra sinks incorporated into the capacitor collect some of the waste heat generated by firing, and store it in the coils along the barrel until it can be used to unleash a particularly devastating blast. May it serve you well in battle.”
To that, there was only one appropriate response that Sammie could think of: Looking down the sights one last time and then lowering the rifle, she let out a low, impressed whistle.
“A special modification to recycle energy that would otherwise be lost… Do you have a name for this kit?” Joking done, she suppressed the urge to giggle. “I’ll use it well.”
“Scribe Haylen has dubbed it ‘Righteous Authority’, if that is what you mean,” Danse deadpanned, the small amount of humour Sammie allowed herself flying directly over his head, much to the surprise of no one, “Now, just to clarify, I also want you to know that my previous offer still stands: I do believe that you have what it takes, and could very well make a difference if you were to join the Brotherhood. So if you ever change your mind – once you have found your boy, of course – I would be glad to provide my recommendation for you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Danse.” Feeling her smile widen, Sammie tilted her head respectfully in a slight bow. “You and your team keep safe, and I hope you’re able to get that transmitter working.”
“And likewise to you. It is a dangerous world out there, don’t let your guard down.” While his words were a warning, Danse’s last look to Sammie that morning was a confident grin: “Ad Victoriam!”
While it felt wrong to use the Brotherhood’s motto without actually being a proper member, it was only polite to respond in turn, so she raised her hand in a salute once she had unhooked her beaten and battered laser musket from her pack, rested it against a wall, and placed Righteous Authority in its previous place.
“Ad Victoriam, Paladin!”
Well. That went over better than she thought it would.