Ferdinand was finally behaving. Marian was grateful to the caravan guard who showed her the trick that made him easier to deal with. He was now clomping happily behind her as she walked past where they started and continued south, like they were supposed to go the entire time. A small flock of birds flew away to give them space.
As they approached the bridge, doubts about finding a possible ambush this far north were crossing her mind. This is a group that, if Marian’s hypothesis were correct, was only attacking caravans heading to Goodneighbor. How would someone know rather a caravan this far north was heading to Goodneighbor or to Bunker Hill, or even Diamond City?
As she crossed the bridge, she heard a quiet splash. Marian had to force herself to not look at the noise. She had to ignore all of her instincts in order to act like she didn’t hear anything as she told herself that Nick was actually following her. She couldn’t help but wonder if his cigarettes were going to survive the swim. She was sure she could get some in a barter by the end of the week, she’ll pay him back.
Marian’s main worry was about what to do if the ambush didn’t happen. She tried to picture a map of the Commonwealth and couldn’t do it. After staring at that thing for hours, why was it so hard to recall what it looked like?
She heard another splash behind her as she entered the city, she hoped it was Nick she was hearing and not someone else. Would he abandon her? He didn’t seem to like her idea, and he had no reason to like her. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to leave her to die, at least not without getting the location of the lost caravans. She had been wrong about people before. It really didn’t matter if she didn’t see the end of the job, as long as Valentine helps end this Raider group. He can shoot her in the head after, she deserved it anyway.
She couldn’t help but go hyper aware as she walked down the streets of the Commonwealth. Too many years looking for danger made her too aware of her surroundings. She tried to ignore Nick as he ran below the street and behind the Weatherby Savings and Loan. She tried to gawk at the ship on top of it, but there were two people on the ship, and another in the bank. They were well hidden, but it was her job to find hidden people. That was why she could go over a decade in the Capital Wasteland without ever having to wear a collar.
Marian tried to slow down her pace enough for the real detective to get into place. He needed to be able to watch what happens to her. Then she remembered his promise to end the mission at the first sign of danger. Marian went back to her casual walk, hoping the danger would be too much for him to stop before he realized the danger, she knew what she was walking into.
As she was passing a cross street that led to where she stayed when she was near Bunker Hill, the first shots rang out at her. Marian pulled out her new pipe pistol and began firing back. She found herself surrounded, as she would have expected from an organized ambush. Three people behind her, two in front, and two more blocking her retreat down the side street.
Her first instinct was to duck into one of the shells of a building. Fortify herself and return fire. But that would be counterproductive. She needed to be caught, and she needed to not lead the attackers to Valentine. Instead, she could only pathetically fire down the side street and take shots like an initiate. She was not as comfortable firing a pistol as she was a rifle, and pipe pistols did very little damage. The fight was over the moment she passed that banked ship.
Just as she killed one of the raiders, she felt something hit her head. She heard her weapon clatter on the ground before she realized her arm was in pain, and then she was looking up at the sky with her jaw feeling like it was on fire. Was it broken, or just dislocated?
Before she could take her injuries into consideration, she felt herself being dragged to her feet. She tried to get away. Damn Nick! He can gloat all he wanted to about how much of a stupid coward she was, she just wanted to get a stim and make the pain go away.
“Keep fighting, and I’ll end you.”
Marian looked up and saw a M10 pointed right at her face. She had no doubt the woman holding it was telling the truth. Marian let herself go slack and regretted it immediately. She wasn’t sure if her arm was broken, or just very badly bruised, but the hands on it seemed to be tighter than they needed to be, and the person holding her seemed to keep twisting his hands around her injury.
The Raiders started leading her down the way she was going. She tried walking herself, but the two holding her arms kept making her part more difficult than reasonable. They kept changing their pace, neither of them ever seemed to be walking at the same speed as the other. The one holding her right arm would give her random squeezes, making the pain shoot through her.
She tried paying attention to where she was. She tried looking for Valentine without making it obvious. She even tried thinking of a book that this would remind her of. It was too hard, she felt like she was thinking through a fog. Was it the head injury, or just her mind trying to shut out the pain? She just wanted to get free and take a nap.
She walked down the streets listening to footsteps around her. They weren’t hiding, they weren’t being sneaky now they had her. They were walking as a group. She kept trying to count them, but couldn’t see them, and forgot the count whenever she stopped looking at one to find another. Did she hear a splash? Did she hear it just now or a while back?
They turned into an alley. She looked up at the building, she knew this building. She looked for the name of it above the door to remind her of where she was. She found the name by the stairs as she was being dragged up the steps. H something. Will Nick know where she was with an H something? Of course, he would, he would have time to look at the full name. She was so stupid. Maybe it would be better if he just let her die in this building she was entering.
She was lead through a maze of hallways and rooms. Some people looked up at her. Some people were licking their lips as they looked at her, or was that for Ferdinand? Right, Ferdinand was outside still. Some were ignoring her completely.
Marian eventually entered a room that seemed like their destination point. The smell of death and vomit and feces caused the fog in her head to clear as she felt the molerat chops Nick gave her earlier, force their way back out, escaping her stomach the way she suddenly wanted to escape the room. She heard the taunts of the guards who continued dragging her, letting her leave a trail of filth along her front and down her chin.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The room didn’t look quite right, there were no other people, just the smell of people. It was small, but there were piles of boxes and trunks all around them. She could barely make out the sound of Geiger counters proclaiming low doses of radiation. She could hear Alex berating her for being close enough to radiation to set off a Geiger counter. She really didn’t want to become a ghoul.
She tried forcing herself to focus, but the fog was moving back in. She saw glass above her, blurring everything above the ceiling. She couldn’t look long, and she continued to vomit from the smell. She wanted to tell Nick that this was why she didn’t eat much, but he wasn’t there to hear her.
“Take this bitch,” one of the Raiders holding her said.
Marian felt her back thrown against the wall, with a forearm pushed into her throat. She was still retching, as she saw the trunks being thrown aside from one another. Some of them had obvious weight, but those the raider seemed to focus on making sure they would flip over. Sometimes a liquid would drip from one of the heavy ones. Marian did her best not to think of what that liquid was.
Soon he seemed to find the one he was looking for and opened it. He pulled a man out of the box. The person was obviously hurting. His face had yellow marks from prior bruises as well as some dark black ones that looked only a few days old. His clothes were wet and hung on his body, as if he had lost fat and muscle very quickly. His hands were bound in front of him, but it was obvious his finger had been broken weeks or months ago. Marian was unsure if a stimpak would help his fingers heal straight at this point.
“Today is your lucky day,” the Raider holding him taunted. “Today you get a chance to go free. You won’t even have to sign the oath of loyalty. All you have to do, is kill this bitch.”
Marian watched as the Raider placed her pipe pistol into the poor sop’s broken hands. She knew that even a head shot could take several hits to finally kill her, but this man didn’t seem interested.
“I…. I won’t,” he mumbled.
Was this a caravan guard? Marian wondered. Someone who was broken enough to be helpless, but not broken enough to kill in cold blood.
“What was that?” The guard asked. “I can’t hear you.”
“I said I won’t play your fucking sick game!” he shouted. “You might as well kill me, because I’m not going to change my mind!”
“Aww, that’s too sad,” the Raider mocked. “I guess you will have to see how long it takes to die in the box. Maybe next caravan.”
He pushed the tortured caravanner back into his box. The raider then shut the lid on the man’s exposed leg. The man screamed in pain before the Raider opened the lid back up, moved the leg around, and closed the lid securely. Marian watched him lock it. She knew she shouldn’t envy the man, but the fog was still there, and the thought of curling up in a dark place sounded good.
“Now for you,” the large Raider said as he approached her. “We have a policy. You can join us any time. We just want your loyalty. If you don’t want to join us, well there is a way to get out. But boxboy has seniority for that method, and he doesn’t look like he’s going to give that up any time soon. So why not make things easy on yourself and agree to join us now?”
Marian tried listening to what he was saying. She heard the words, but she had the feeling she was focusing on the wrong ones. Was his name really Boxboy? He didn’t look old enough to be a senior. She tried getting through the fog, as she watched the raiders tie up her hands like Boxy’s.
“You’re taking too long,” Raider said. “I don’t like having my time wasted.”
Marian heard a snap, the fog cleared out, pain rushed through her arm. She tried tracing the pain to its source but suddenly there was another snap and the fire shot through her arm again.
“Fccck!” Marian cried around an unresponsive jaw.
“What was that?” Raider asked as he snapped another finger.
Marian tried to pull back, but the Raider held onto her wrists, and the other held her shoulders in place. She was trapped, she couldn’t get away as she felt the pain in her other arm. Instead of giving her a rest from the pain, it just felt twice as bad.
“Pleese, stoo,” Marian found herself begging as she felt hot tears rolling down her cheeks and another finger break.
“That’s enough, Tate,” an older man’s voice announced.
Marian hadn’t seen the man enter, but he was there now. He looked so nice, like someone who could smoke a pipe and listen sagely to your problems before giving you exactly the right advice. Marian wondered if that was what Mark Twain looked like.
“It’s ok, child,” the man said. “My name is Anthony Maison. I am in charge here. I am sorry that Tate here was a little rough with you. You see, this group, it is a family. And I heard that you have killed one of his sisters. He tends to take the deaths of his siblings very hard. But can you blame him? I am the father of this family, and everyone who is a member is one of my children. I can promise you Tate will not hurt you again, if you are willing to be one of my family.”
Marian tried to pay attention to everything he said. It was mostly a jumble of words that she forgot as soon as he moved on to the next one. She heard the word “family” and the word “children”. She was pretty sure he was inviting her to join his family. Marian didn’t know what to say. Having a family sounded nice. She adopted RJ before he found out the price for being her brother, and she had to face the fact that there will always be that cost. This man seemed to be more like the family she left than the family she chose to get into. But she remembered why she left, and what she has to do to return. She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t force herself to believe that ghouls weren’t people and couldn’t be around people who did.
She wished she could make a grand gesture; spit in his face, make a witty response that would insult him the way Valentine could, instead all she could do was shake her head and moan around her uncooperative jaw.
“That is too bad,” Maison said. “This family could use a spirit like yours. Perhaps some discipline will help teach you manners. When you are ready, you can join us.”
With that, Maison walked away, still carrying himself like a loving father. Marian didn’t have time to be disgusted. She felt her clothes being yanked, forcing her towards the boxes. A Raider forced something into her mouth. It felt like a pill, she felt fingers in her mouth, forcing the pill down her throat.
“It’s rad-x,” she heard. “Trust me, you’ll need it.”
She was then forced into a trunk. It was big enough to hold her comfortably, but it felt like there was something underneath her. She watched as the lid to the trunk closed, leaving her in the dark. She tried moving, but every time she tried to get more comfortable, it felt like there was something poking her in the back. Were those caltrops she was feeling beneath her?
As Marian resigned herself to immobility, she felt her box being moved until she was on her side. It was moved again forcing her onto her back again. There seemed to be less points in her back, but she was sure her right arm was bleeding, and it felt like it had one stuck in the upper arm.
The box smelled as bad as the rest of the room, maybe even worse. Marian tried not to think about it as she started heaving with nothing left to leave her stomach. She listened to movement, like the boxes were being restacked on top of her.
It didn’t take long until she was alone in the silence of her box. The sound of the Geiger counter left in the box with her was keeping her company, telling her that she was absorbing low doses of radiation. It felt like that was all that was getting through the cloud that was her mind. She felt like thinking was getting harder. She kept thinking of…him…Nick Valentine. Was he going to save her? Or did he finally get rid of her?