The smell of dry rot assaulted Dunya’s nose as she stepped out of the elevator. She walked down the carpeted hall in the well-lit club. She glanced at the pool table as she passed it and turned her attention to the main room of the club.
Several skeletons graced the chairs that they had died in. Some had fallen out of their chairs, probably in their death throws, and still sat on the floor. The wine bottles filled with rat poison showed what had killed them. Was this a mass murder, or a mass suicide? Marian couldn’t believe that people would continue drinking wine after the first person died. Then she thought of how she would kill a dozen people with wine, she would have encouraged a toast, downed a safe glass of wine, and watched as everyone else died.
Still, the bottles were marked that they had poison. Someone would have noticed before the toast. This had to be mass suicide.
It didn’t matter. These people died long before she was born, they won’t become any less dead any time either. She had to focus on finding Nick. She had a lot of catching up to do.
The sound of music came from the bar area. Marian turned her attention and her body towards the bar and made her way behind the counter, ignoring the skeleton that was draped over it. She reached the radio playing “It’s a Man”.
Dunya pulled her backpack off and placed it on the floor, then laid Faenus against it. She reached into the main pocket and pulled a book out of a compartment. The book was hardback with a simple blue cover and no words on the outside to denote a title. She reached into another pocket near the front of the backpack and pulled out a pen. After opening the book, using the ribbon bookmark that showed where she left off, she laid the book down on the counter. The page she looked down on had a name neatly written on every line that she created years ago meticulously using a ruler and a pencil.
She took a moment looking at the list of names. Each one was a reminder of how she had failed someone. Now it felt like she was failing in a different location. How did anyone trust her with their lives? Some days it felt like there were more names in her conscience than names of people she could freely forget.
One at a time, she wrote the names of every member of the Appleton family. Leaving out only Kaylee’s name. She even took a moment to write in Tanya’s name, knowing she would not live long after being drafted.
“Dunya Appleton,” the mourner said out loud, trying the name out one last time.
They would have adopted her. They would have taken her in and loved her as if their mother gave birth to her, and she helped raise the children as an oldest sister would have. She was an adult when she met them, but they were willing to become the family she had abandoned. She had already learned how dangerous it was to be around her by then. She couldn’t let eight people die because they were nice to her. Instead of putting eight names in her book, she was able to only put seven down.
No, that wasn’t it. It was because she believed that if she agreed to their offer, they would realize they made a mistake. They would get to know her for the monster she really was and would hate her for it. She didn’t want to disappoint them. She didn’t want to argue with them as they would try to convince her she was wrong. Instead, she left, hoping they would learn to hate her without her having to feel the results of that hate.
She put her writing tools away, took a tato out, and closed the backpack up. She nibbled on her meal as she looked around herself. Where was the kid? Why did he leave this place?
The song came to an end and the overconfident DJ started talking. “And now for the latest news,” he stated. “Rumor has it that a group of ghouls from out of town have moved into The Crater House. Apparently, these ghouls have traveled here several weeks ago from The Capital Wasteland and were staying in Quincy until they got enough resources to set up their own settlement. I say good luck to you, and welcome to the neighborhood. Speaking of neighborhood. It’s “Good Neighbor” by Magnolia.”
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So here friends have settled in The Crater House. Dunya was glad to hear they were safe but couldn’t help but cringe at how they would fuss over her if she ever visited them. She knew where The Crater House was, she had visited Kingsport Lighthouse before. She knew that her friends were living over an irradiated lake and were probably very comfortable there.
A scary thought passed through Dunya’s mind. She knew a hostile group of The Children of Atom, had moved in there. Did Hancock have them cleared out? Did he risk the lives of several of his guards just to fulfill a promise to her? Worse yet, was he trying to decrease the population of his city in preparation for the population boom that was coming with the increase of refugees?
Dunya put the thought out of her head. These were things she was trained to consider when she was a child, but she didn’t have the authority to do anything with the considerations now that she was an adult. Mayors had to make hard decisions, and sometimes it came down to deciding who lives and who dies when you can’t save everyone. Maybe that was why he did what he did when he tricked her, he couldn’t save everyone, so he was willing to sacrifice a friendship to save lives.
The bodyguard decided to focus on finding Davey and by extension Valentine. She looked around, trying to think of how to tell if they were there. Davey wasn’t there at this moment, but that didn’t surprise her. There was no food, no viable way to spend more than a few hours in this room. She thought about what she would have done as a child trying to get away from Christopher.
She would have come into this room, maybe have a few spots to hide if he was following her. After he gave up, she would sneak out to a different hiding spot. But to where? Jasper said Davey liked listening to the Silver Shroud. But the Silver Shroud wasn’t playing. The radio was on the wrong station.
Dunya touched the dial on the radio and slowly spun the knob, she listened as the needle cycled through the frequencies, but she only heard three stations. The one from Diamond City, the Minutemen Station, and the Classic Radio Station. She wasn’t sure where that frequency was from, and there was never an announcer who spoke. All she knew was that she liked listening to the melodious tunes on occasion.
There was no Silver Shroud station in the Boylston Club. Why would Jasper have thought there was? It also still doesn’t explain if Valentine had come looking for him either. Dunya stopped wondering if he had when she realized she had finished putting the radio back on the Diamond City Station. The exact station that was actively playing when she entered the club.
She turned around, and of course there was an ashtray right next to where her book was when she was writing in it. There was also a single snubbed cigarette in the tray. She went up to the tray and leaned down looking closely at the cigarette. It had been burned down to the butt. The butt was dented like it had been pressed between a pair of lips but there was no saliva on the butt showing that the mouth that it was in would have been dry. Even ghouls have saliva. Dunya learned that when she watched a vivisection as a teenager.
She leaned in and smelled the cigarette. There was a faint hint of burnt tobacco to it. The ember that burned it was long dead, but not nearly as long as the skeletons in the room. It was most likely burned some weeks ago. Most likely by Valentine himself. So, where would Theo go? And where would Valentine follow him to?
Magnolia’s voice ended and the song changed once again. This time the music chance to “Sixty Minute Man”. A song Dunya could imagine Hancock singing to seduce someone into his bed. And then it hit her. She had only seen people in Goodneighbor listening to the Silver Shroud. She couldn’t think of a time when she had heard the radio show outside the city.
She could picture herself as a child, hiding from her brother. After he got frustrated with her and left, she would change hiding places. What better place to go to than where her favorite show would have been? Jasper wouldn’t know to look for him there, he was convinced this was always Davey’s last stop. But part of hiding was being unpredictable to the person searching for you. Davey had been misdirecting Jasper for his own safety, but still couldn’t help but give Jasper hints.
He was hiding in the Boylston Club, but not to listen to Silver Shroud, but to wait until the danger was gone. Then he left the Boylston Club, to listen to the Silver Shroud. Davey had gone to Goodneighbor, most likely to be part of the Silver Shroud’s story.
“Come on, Malta,” Marian said to the bear strapped to the outside of her backpack as she slung it over her shoulders.
She picked up Faenus and left the bar. The skeletons can enjoy the music. She needed to find out who was playing the Silver Shroud. She needed to talk to them. Marian needed to find out if they knew where Nick Valentine was.