Chapter 38 "Sister."

“Knock it off.” Virgil yelled to the empty auditorium. Then came the tapping. He’d been arguing with an old professor. An argument Virgil found especially grating, as Professor Crandall had been dead for the better part of a century and a half. Yet there he sat, tapping on the chalkboard instead of answering a question.

His visitors had become more frequent. The trip back to the deepest circle of his personal hell had taken a heavy toll. A single image fixed in his mind. His bed decayed and collapsed, the ceiling above rotted through. The only place in the staff quarters that the radiation spiked. As if smote from on high.

Virgil went into the back room, deciding to brew a fresh batch of lsd. He perfected the recipe over the years, developing a potent hallucinogen. The red light above his head blinked on, so he left the flask to boil and distil.

“Yeah, what is it?” He growled, annoyed at the disturbance of customers. Virgil didn’t recognise them at first, then he saw the blue eyes. “About time you two showed up.” He softened his tone, slightly. “It’s good to see you.” Virgil didn’t respect a lot of people, but these two had earned it.

“We’ve been busy.” John dumped a heavy bag with a clatter.

“I have that data you wanted.” Rosie tapped her hidden pipboy.

“You look at it?” He asked, old feelings stirring.

“I did. I couldn’t make much sense of it.” She seemed disappointed in herself.

“We’ll go through it together.” He lit a cigarette and headed for the back room. “Come on, let’s get this done.”

He took them through the back room and down into the school basement. Amidst the hoard of weapons, equipment, and spare parts, he’d prepared an old leather chair.

“I’ll go first.” John stepped forward. Virgil saw the fear in the eyes that looked like his.

“This won’t hurt, I promise.” He booted up the terminal. “Alright Red, turn around and cover your eyes.” She did as he said. Virgil triggered the lights.

“Just relax.” He told them both. Her face worried at the sight of John’s vacant expression. Virgil snapped open the latches on the lead lined case, retrieving the primed Ultracite core. “Put your arm out please.” John did. He clamped the old core in his metal hand and yanked it free. Instantly slotting the new core in and twisting it into place.

“How do you feel?” Virgil asked a minute later, checking John’s pupils with a penlight.

“Fine.” John sounded surprised. “It didn’t hurt.” He told her, Virgil saw the fear on her face.

Virgil repeated the procedure on the far more nervous Rosie. He’d noticed the frag grenade and spare core she carried. “Great minds think alike.” Shaw appeared, in a sharp grey suit, tossing the white phosphorous grenade like a ball. He nearly shouted at him, but knew the grenade was in his desk. He gave them a moment, before heading back up.

“What’ll you give me for this?” John took a rifle from the bag and handed it to him. A copy of a Chinese ar. New, grey steel body, heavy rubber in place of wood. “They shoot, trust me.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but everything I sell is vintage. Classics, like me. That’s my brand.” Virgil found himself giving a lesson in marketing. “You should put a maker’s mark on them, a brand.”

“I didn’t make it.” John leant closer, lowering his voice. “I had the Vault make them.”

“Yeah.” He tried to seem like it wasn’t obvious from dull steel. “All the more reason then. Take them to the Chop House, north side. Ask for Wesley. He runs a stall on the Night Market, should give four hundred a piece. As long as you don’t mention me.” Virgil felt a sense of admiration as the young man set about his business. Rosie lingered sheepishly, like a child who wanted to play.

Virgil started the data transfer from Rosie’s pipboy. She milled round the shop, picking out bits of junk and orders of exotic ammo.

“What is this stuff anyway?” She asked, feigning disinterest.

“It’s a virtual reality simulation.” He scrolled through the near garbled code. “Or at least it was.”

“I knew it!” She exclaimed, the casual act falling away. “Those kits.” She pointed to the repair and test kits.

“Yeah they’d run, if you had a sim in better shape.” The sparking of a curious mind brought a grin to his ravaged face. Till he remembered the task at hand. “Somewhere in here are eight biometric signatures, we need to find them.”

Virgil typed away at his terminal. Rosie paced, working from the display inside her eyes. Stopping only to ask the occasional smart question. Between them they soon hit upon a pattern. Each loop of the sim took a fresh neural scan to establish a baseline. Then they switched to patching enough of the damage to run the most basic version of the sim.

“I got it!” Rosie looked right at him, eyes wide. “I’ve got EEG data sync’d to user id’s. All eight of them.”

Virgil sat back and inhaled smoke. His eyes fell back to the girl. Never took a real class. Never had any education. And yet more capable than anyone he’d ever known. He kept thinking about an old Renaissance painter. A great artist himself, who broke his brushes at seeing the work of a student.

“There’s something you...deserve to see.” He poured himself a strong drink. “Grab two boxes of three three eight, and follow me.” He asked Suzette to mind the shop on his way out and headed to the Tower.

“Hope you’re ok with heights.” He pulled the lift door open at the base of the Tower.

“I’ve jumped from twelve thousand feet, at night. This is nothing.” She bragged, relishing the opportunity.

The wind howled through the open floor at the top of the Tower. He stepped out, walking to the couches lit by a burning barrel. The moment he sat, one of the Shrikes emerged from the shadows. Like always. “I need to see you. All of you.” He looked at the black goggles and fine chainmail mesh, trying to gauge a response. “Show them.” He tapped his metal arm.

He watched as Rosie took off her long, leather coat and unwound the bandages. The Shrike stepped forward sharply. “Sister.” The single word brought all eight of them from the shadows.

“They were trapped in the simulation for months. Must have felt like years to them.” Even now that thought still haunted him. “When the change took them, parts of the chair fused to the nanofilment around their bones.” He set out the EEG machine he’d made, getting one of the Shrikes to sit, and remove their mask. Rosie took it better than he expected. A face more ravaged than his, fused with circuitry, eyeless and without expression.

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“We are...one...now.” The Shrike’s words were shared between them.

“Hello, my name is Rosie.” She had a physician’s bedside manner

“Entanglement.” Virgil connected the machine to the embedded electrode. “Spooky action at a distance. For years I tried to understand it, tried to fix them. What I did to them.”

“We will never...be what we were...now we...keep people safe.” They gave the answer they always did.

“The mesh is a Faraday cage.” She held the mesh up to the work lamp. “A partial one, they can hear each other without interference.” Her mind started to work. “They see through the bots and sensors hidden out there. Helps them plot shots.”

“I’ve done what little I can for them. The floor below is theirs. They eat, they sleep, but…” He took a belt from his flask to steady his nerve.

“Their neural activity spikes when they take a shot, doesn't it.” She sounded certain.

“That’s the only time it does. I made them into killers.” He took another drink, it didn’t help the bile in his throat.

“It’s the maths.” She said something that had never occurred to him. “Plotting a shot, especially a long shot on a moving target, under pressure. That’s complex.” She paused, thinking. “They don’t miss either. Plus there are easier places to shoot from. They like the challenge.” Her observations made sense to him, given the only happy time they’d known.

Virgil ran the EEG machine on each of the Shrikes. Ending up with eight different brainwave patterns, printed on paper from an old till. He showed them to Rosie in turn, getting a reassuring nod after each one.

“There’s something you should know.” He knew the Shrikes would not like this. “I went back.” All eight of them flicked their heads as if looking at him.

“You...should not...have gone back…you swore.” The last two words came from them all.

“I’m sorry, I had him at gunpoint.” She shaded the truth. “My partner and I, we needed cores.” Rosie looked at her boots. “He keeps people safe. I’ve saved some people, but...I did that for me more than them. I’m trying to be better.” Her honesty diffused the tension. He took the opportunity to hand her a strip of paper. “Thirty two.” She announced

Virgil walked over to one of the Shrikes. “Your name is Frederick Banks. You grew up on a farm with your grandparents.”

“I am Frederick.” He spoke the words alone. A hint of surprise in his voice, like he’d pictured himself as someone else in the swirling ocean of minds they shared.

He repeated the process seven times over. Each one with the same hint of surprise. Each one given back their names. They left them to get back to their routine.

“Thank you for letting me help them.” Rosie kept looking ahead as they rode the lift down. “Don’t tell John about them, please. It’ll freak him out.”

“You really love him don’t you.” He’d seen the way they acted around each other. And had spent enough time in both fake and real marriages to tell.

“He’s a fixed point.” She used a mathematical term. “Everything in my life is different now. The food I eat. The clothes I wear. The people I know.” Her voice broke for a moment. “The things I see.” She nodded to the view. Stars and shifting cloud above dots of light along the ground. “Everything except him.” She smiled and looked at him. “Plus those blue eyes get me every time.”

“He’s a handsome young man.” He complimented himself. “I need you to hear me on this. If, for any reason, you two ever get into a real fight, one of you will kill the other.” He had to make her understand.

“That would never happen.” She looked at him like he’d told her the sun wouldn’t rise. It helped set his mind at ease. The lift clunked to a stop and he got out, leaving her to catch up.

Laughter echoed up from the stage. John and Suzette sat talking. “This is a place of business, not a social club.” Virgil made a joke that only Suzette got.

“I’ve made three sales, I should charge you commission.” Suzette fired back.

“How’d you do kid?” He asked John, a little surprised by his interest.

“Sold all twelve. Five hundred each, and an order for two dozen more.” He seemed very pleased with his bartering.

“Not bad kid.” Virgil lit a cigarette. “How’d you get five hundred out that cheap bastard Wesley?”

"I told him that I had a buyer in Farmborough offering eight, but my transport fell through.” John smiled, slightly uncomfortable with the deception. Virgil admired his gumption.

Virgil picked up on something awkward between them, Rosie prompting him to ask. “I, we, wanted to ask you, both of you.” He tripped over his words, before taking a deep breath. “We’re getting married at the Rest, in a month. We’d like you both to come.”

“Sure thing, kid.” Virgil found himself saying yes.

“A winter wedding!” Suzette always loved a wedding. “Ask me nicely and I might help with your make up.”

“Make up what?” Rosie asked, forcing Suzette to cover a laugh with a fake cough.

“We found this.” John pulled a crate out he’d left earlier. “We thought you should have it.” He looked awkward. Virgil recognised the type of crate, making an educated guess.

They left, Virgil poured Suzette a drink and started locking up for the night. “You remember when I was young and pretty.” Suzette said to him as he sat next to her.

“No.” He answered in a deadpan tone, making her laugh into her drink.

“He’s a sweet boy.” Suzette seemed to think the invite came from politeness.

“He’s my great grandson.” Virgil topped up her drink before draining his flask in one long pull.

“That’s not funny.” She reached for her drink, annoyed at his bad joke. Then she froze. “Those eyes.”

“Clara was pregnant when they took her to that God damned Vault. Those two busted out of that hell a few months back. I knew it as soon as I saw him.” He threw back her drink while Suzette sat listening intently. “Plus his last name is Blake.”

“Virgil, you have family.” She reached over and took his hand. “It’s a blessing.”

“We have family.” He looked at her and smiled. “And you’re right, it is a blessing.”

“What’s in the crate?” Suzette asked, after the shock had passed. Virgil lifted it onto his desk, the tag facing her. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

“No, stay. Please.” He couldn’t face it alone.

Virgil flipped the latches open. The first thing he saw sat in a Mylar sleeve, perfectly preserved. The gaudy gossip magazine. He and Clara on the front, black tuxedo and a white dress. She looked more beautiful than he remembered.

He gave it to Suzette. She leafed through gingerly, transfixed by the world they knew. The world they lost.

Inside the crate he found an old, grease stained paper bag. The logo of Clara’s favourite chilli dog place still visible. Literal trash preserved like treasure.

Lastly he found a photograph in a frame. A grey and wrinkled Clara, next to a man in his forties. A young boy on his lap. The son and grandson he’d never known. It stirred feelings in him long thought gone. As he stared at the blue eyed Blake men, he remembered one of Clara’s habits. He fumbled at the frame, giving it to Suzette so he didn’t damage it. Inside the frame, written on stationary from The Grand, sat a letter with his old name on it.

“I can’t, you read it.” Virgil didn’t know what the letter would say. She cleared her throat, pointlessly, and started reading aloud.

“My dearest Burton, if by some miracle you’re reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you.” Virgil felt a weight lift he didn’t know he’d carried. “I forgave you about an hour after I got here. You did the right thing. And because you did, we have a son and grandson. I named our son John, after my Dad. He’s a good man, kind and honest. Nothing like us!”

“His son Jack is almost eight. Sharp as a whip and sweet as candy. This isn’t the life I’d have chosen for them, but it’s a noble one. We’re building for the future. I could write another thousand pages, so I’ll stop now. I love you, Burton. Yours always, Mrs Clara Blake.”

Suzette folded the letter away and took his trembling hand. “Close your eyes.” Suzette told him, as she did the same. “Lord, we thank you for the blessing of family. We ask you watch over them as you have done us. And I ask you bring your servant Virgil a measure of peace. His path has been long and arduous. Let him find joy in the time he has left. However long you need him here. Amen.” Suzette finished the prayer and kept holding his hand.

Virgil opened his eyes, staring at the woman he’d loved for eighty years. A love he’d felt undeserving of in every moment they’d been together.

Outside the eastern gate, John and Rosie headed home. “Did you tell him?” John asked, knowing the answer.

“No.” Rosie replied. “Not his call.” She restated the point she’d held since opening the metal crate. John stopped, his expression stern. “Nobody understands these things like we do.” She tapped the pipboy under her sleeve. “No one but us should decide who gets to wear one.” Rosie started walking. Not keen to have the same argument about the brand new, jet black pipboy John’s great grandmother had hidden. The one that now sat in their home.