Below the raiders constructed their poorly designed cart, loaded up the drums of fuel, and headed south. The Recon scouts melted into the trees and Rosie lost sight of them. The feeling that someone could be stalking her from the shadows, as she had done, enjoying it as she had done, terrified her.
As soon as silence became the only sound Rosie darted down the stairs, bounding down each flight in three steps and ducking out of a hole in the wall. “Janey, follow in five minutes.” Rosie couldn’t wait.
“Confirmed.”
Rosie kept herself flat and quiet, watching the noisy raiders squabble and complain. At least until they took another pill each. Every moment she looked for good hiding spots, a dense patch of trees, the husk of a car, a fallen log. Only instead of using them, Rosie watched for others hiding in the shadows. It quickly became maddening, like trying to play against someone who cheated.
The raiders stopped and prepared to go off road by chomping more pills. Rosie took the only advantage she had and bolted. She made it to the lakeside ruins in less than an hour.
The shadow left by a person getting vaporised a century ago wasn’t visible, yet Rosie felt her eyes drawn to where she knew it stood. At least until the sun went down and the dancing ribbons of purple light from the Glassedlands flickered up against the night like a slow burning campfire.
With time to spare Rosie found the best position she could. The tallest building in the ruins looked like it had been a restaurant before the bombs fell. A few tables and chairs strewn around, kitchen stripped to nothing. Upstairs the floor to ceiling windows had shattered inwards, sharp fragments worn smooth over time like pebbles in a stream. She hid from the dust on the wind behind a table, tiny flecks of purple embedded in it, and passed the time by checking in on Janey.
The view remained still even as Janey ran, the head kept stable so that it stayed on target. Rosie brought her in wide. Leaving her to walk through the thinning forest, and hoping Janey could make a shot with the sniper rifle from that range. Setting off a lightning bright laser blast with Recon in the trees would be a bad idea. For anyone foolish enough to shoot Janey with anything smaller than fifty cal.
Rosie stopped watching the raiders when they started walking downhill. If the Recon scouts out there were one tenth as good as her team they could’ve tracked the raiders with their eyes closed. Rosie’s night vision proved little use, as did the infrared. Her black fatigues, and even the full face balaclava, had a lining that reduced the wearer’s thermal signature. No doubt the scouts out there had them on too.
The raiders ditched the drums inside the shell of a building facing the dried lakebed. As they clattered and banged around Rosie caught a glimpse of shaking in the leaves. Zooming in showed her the glint of a scope. Not much, but enough to see at least one of the scouts had followed the raiders. That bought her a moment of calm, till she wondered where the other one, or two, or three currently were.
After the raiders left, Rosie moved to the opposite shell of a building. She could make out the round lids through the collapsed wall. Janey stayed positioned at the top of the slope down to the ruins, covering the street.
The best leads for the Vault hadn’t turned up anything, and now because of Rosie’s need for revenge, this operation looked ready to fall apart. Drawing the attention of the Brotherhood on the way down. She wanted to kick the rubble out of frustration but stopped herself by checking in with Janey.
Sounds drew Rosie back from looking through Janey’s eye. At first everything looked the same, then she saw the drums had gone. Rosie moved to get a better view. She’d been watching the street and didn’t see any movement outside.
As she slipped closer Rosie peered through the window and saw the wooden floor had rotted away long ago. Exposing a concrete basement with a recently demolished hole on one side.
Rosie dropped her belt and engaged the stealth field. Leaning down far enough to see a hole had been smashed clean through the defunct sewer, and onto the lakebed. She grabbed her belt and bolted for the edge of the ruins. There, cutting across the lakebed, she saw a shadowed figure in a fluttering cloak. A drum held in each hand, the same way Paul carried them in his power armour.
Determined not to go back empty handed for the second time in a week, Rosie dropped to the lakebed and started running. The loose surface looked like the kind that hid a Radscorpion. It didn’t worry her, despite only carrying her sidearm and hand grenade. Rosie had felt invincible since the battle. Besides, those creatures were drawn by vibrations on the surface, and the figure ahead of her made more of a disturbance than her.
She kept a steady pace, yet the figure ahead of her moved fast. Paul and Brandon moved fast in their armour, although Rosie didn’t think they’d moved this fast. Not carrying that much weight.
“Admin Rosie,” Janey’s signal sounded garbled over the comm. “Current scans indicate you are entering an area of high electromagnetic radiation. Third law protocol will prevent me from following unless it is an emer—” The signal dropped as Rosie ran after the shadowed figure. It wasn’t hard to realise why Janey couldn’t follow. Every step brought her closer to the Glassedlands.
Purple light bloomed brighter to her side. The figure ahead became illuminated, tall, broad shouldered, wrapped in a thick canvas cloak. It moved the drums like dumbbells. Rosie lost her footing and skidded to her knees. She watched as the rocks bounced once then slid along a flat surface. Rosie looked straight up and the sight frightened her.
The purple light now flowed overhead. She’d ran to the edge of the Glassedlands. A toxic scar left on the world by a nuclear bomb hitting polluted water over a century ago. And her target kept moving across it.
Instinct and feelings of invincibility drove her forward for a few more minutes, only then did she realise the mistake she made. The rocks gave way to a flat surface of purple and green crystal, hard enough that she felt vibrations from her own footsteps. The light being emitted washed out the horizon, it shifted like low flying clouds, disorienting her further.
As she neared the clustered crystals poking up from the flat surface, each seemed to resonate at a different tone. The sound made her queasy, ears ringing at different pitches and all sense of direction gone. The electromagnetic radiation spiked.
The crystalline structures were hard as stone on the outside. When the once beautiful lake got hit, the water evaporated the instant the blast wave formed. So fast that whatever toxic substances were left crystallised, shrinking and compressing the insides, storing the energy away. It would have been interesting to see physics and chemistry pushed to the extremes, if she could have seen clearly.
Rosie focused on the only thing that didn’t seem to shift, the black block she’d been following. As she staggered forward something started to sink in. If Janey couldn’t get close then neither could power armour. Both were shielded, but the mix of interference made the visible miasma overpowering.
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If that isn’t power armour, Rosie thought, forcing the static from her mind, what is it?
Spurred on by something she recognised in the otherworldly landscape, Rosie took a few more steps towards the only fixed point. Rosie stopped when she saw why the black shape didn’t seem to move.
The drums had been put down. For a few seconds she wondered if this might be planned, another drop for someone to collect, then she felt the vibrations in her feet.
Steady and strong, pounding through the purple crystal forged from nuclear fire, and drawing nearer. Bait. Rosie remembered a word Brandon taught her. Bait!
She knew she’d been arrogant, reckless, and above all, stupid. She looked left, right, behind her, seeing only the shifting purple light and clusters of crystals. It all looked the same. Suddenly Rosie felt a presence.
An oversized fist and thick forearm swung for her. The dreamlike state surged, giving her time to pivot. A fast cross followed that came quickly through the slowed time. Rosie flung her head back to dodge it, letting herself fall back into a handstand and drawing her sidearm.
She fired rapidly at the distorted person shape, the canvas tore, yet the flesh beneath shrugged off the bullet like dirt from a boot. Rosie flipped back again to put more distance between her and what turned towards her.
Wrapped in canvas and chains, grotesque overgrown musculature, chest and shoulders like the front of a truck. Rosie stared into the beady yellow eyes, set in green skin, feeling pure dread at seeing the intelligence and menace behind them.
“What are you?” It spoke. Play for time, Rosie thought, slipping the grenade to the front of her belt.
“What are you?” Rosie threw the words back, in a far less deep and ominous tone.
“I am what they made me.” The creature stretched out its thick arms, cable like veins pressed against bulbous muscle.
“What do you want?” Rosie shouted, trying to keep it talking. She slid her fingers around the grenade, pacing slowly sideways, ready to put a cluster of crystals between them.
“To meet my maker.” The creature took half a step towards her. Rosie saw the inhuman eyes burn with rage, and hint of something else she knew, isolation.
Seeing something she recognised in the eyes of the ten foot monster became too much. Rosie snatched the grenade from her belt, pulling the pin and sending it pinging across the glass floor. The creature let out a grunt as the grenade went off, protected from the shrapnel by the hide that protected it from this awful place.
Rosie ran in the opposite direction. A brutal kick broke free a hunk of crystal that became a projectile immediately after. She kept running as it landed in front of her. The hunk of crystal shattered and exploded with ten times the force and shrapnel of the hand grenade.
The usually calming dreamlike state took over, feeling more like a nightmare. The shock wave hit her. She kept moving but the long stored charge now released a pulse of electromagnetic energy. The pipboy used a massive amount of power to keep running. The fusion core had been at fifty two percent an hour ago, now the data in her eyes showed it at thirty six, and dropping.
The system began to work overtime. Plotting trajectories for the largest, quickest, deadliest shards zipping through the air faster than bullets. Rosie could feel the heat from the device as it processed more and more. She whirled and span, dove and slid, as more crystal hunks dropped liked bombs.
Staying in the dreamlike state this long made her muscles burn and her nerve endings fry. Rosie felt her vision become like a tunnel, the core dropping into the twenties. She kept running till she couldn’t balance anymore, then fell into a tumbling slide that lasted for twenty feet.
Rosie vomited in the suit. Unable to do anything about it, she got to her feet, feeling the crystal splinter in her hip. It burned for an instant then the system turned off her pain receptors. She fought the urge to pull the splinter free knowing that would do more harm than good in this awful, yet incredibly beautiful place.
As the core dropped further still Rosie checked the fully charged one on her belt. Dead, she thought after frantically tapping the button on top and seeing nothing light up. Dead. Nineteen percent and dropping, and Rosie had used the grenade she always carried to spare her a slow, agonising death.
She kept walking, unable to see anything but purple and unsure if her steps were taking her out, or further in. I’m sorry John, she thought as began to accept her fate. All the warning indicators were blinking frantically in her eyes, error messages pinged, unable to help her. Rosie's strength failed her as the core dropped to fourteen.
Rosie collapsed to the hard ground and stared up into the ribbons of purple light flowing like rivers in the night sky above her. The girl who saw nothing but dull steel and rock for most of her life found a moment of peace and grace. Then she accessed the self destruct protocol.
Rosie held her arm across her face as she worked the manual buttons on the pipboy through the suit. Removing the safeguards and preparing to set the core attached to her to go critical.
I won’t even leave a shadow, she thought, I'll leave family. That thought hurt in a way that she couldn’t have expected. The thought of Matt and Paul looking for her, of Brandon telling John, of Charlie crying. Rosie’s only family had been John and his father, now she’d leave brothers and sisters to grieve for her. Her arm went limp, landing on her chest and giving her a view of the purple lights.
As Rosie lay there, waiting to die and staring up at the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen, something cut across the purple ribbons. A bolt of red, then another, and another still. She let her head roll to the side, looking out over the flat surface and saw a tiny red dot, blinking. No, not blinking, she thought, turning. Like a lighthouse. Janey!
With a direction to go in Rosie found the strength she didn’t know she had, enough to get moving. More red bolts zipped overhead as the turning light grew closer and closer. When the core hit eleven the process Rosie programmed began drawing a residual charge, ready to change to a new core, which she didn’t have. It sapped her new found strength, taking her quick pace down to a walk, then a crawl, then she couldn’t even do that.
Rosie pawed desperately at the flat surface, trying to get any kind of traction. The reduced power brought a fog to her mind, she couldn’t think straight. She kept trying to move towards the red light until even that took too much effort.
“Admin Rosie, First law protocol is in effect. Please remain still.” Janey had clanked her way through the Glassedlands to save her, a place damaging them both by the second. Rosie felt herself slide along the smooth surface, pulled by a tight grip around her wrist. Before long Janey had pulled her back onto the rocks, into the darkness once again.
“Admin Rosie, please remain still.” Janey crouched beside Rosie, her wrist pinched tight in the triple pronged claw and left arm held straight up. The other triple pronged claw pushed in the cover for the core slot till it retracted, and then seemed to stop. A faint whir came from Janey’s torso.
The faux feminine chest plate hinged upwards, revealing the high powered chain motors that drove the arms. The gyroscope stabilised gimbal that supported the head, and behind that, the fusion core that powered it all. A hiss pushed the motors to the sides and the core tilted down. The triple pronged claws pulled the spent core from Rosie’s pipboy.
“Admin Rosie, thank you for…” Janey’s voice trailed off as she pushed her own core into jet black housing. Janey used the last of her energy to twist the core, activating it before the red light in the centre of Janey’s head powered down.
Rose sat bolt upright, drawing in a deep breath through the failing suit filters. She turned and saw Janey crouched and still like a statue.
“Janey.” Rosie knew she couldn’t hear her. “I’m not leaving you.” She got to her feet, still wounded and weary. And according to the alarming medical data, radioactive. Rosie desperately wanted to pull the orange visor open but knew breathing in the dust clinging to the suit would only make things worse.
Instead she braced, took a firm grip on the six inch crystal shard half buried in her hip and pulled. She screamed and collapsed as her hand slipped off without pulling it free. After some shallow breaths she tried again. This time it came out. Blood poured down her leg, although the scans told her it hadn’t hit anything major. The stealth suit compressed around the wound, pressing it tight and beginning to self repair.
Rosie dragged Janey six feet before falling, she couldn’t have done this at full strength. Crying and desperate, Rosie tried again, and again. Each time she fell her hip flared with pain. She took off Janey’s arms and legs, knowing she had spares, tied her belt around Janey’s neck, and pulled.
“Don’t you worry Janey, I’ll hammer out those dents, fresh coat of paint, you’ll look good as new.” Talking kept her calm.
“Tor...do comm ch...k. How co…” Rosie’s comm flickered back to life the further she got from the Glassedlands. “Tornado comm check. How copy?” Rosie heard the worry in Charlie’s voice.
“Solid copy.” Rosie stopped and collapsed one last time. “Request medevac from hot zone. Coordinates to follow. Over.” Rosie saw the Velo overhead in minutes, Charlie leaping from it before touching down. She passed out listening to Charlie’s voice.