The thumping sound from the door surprised Ellie. She was familiar with the sound; it was someone kicking the door instead of knocking on it. She barely went one week without hearing that noise.

“Ellie! Open up!” Nick’s voice came through the door. A call that often followed the kicking sound.

She filed the receipt away and hurried to the door. As she opened it, Nick pushed his way in, carrying what looked like a body. Another thing she was too familiar with. He had carried in bodies on a regular basis over the years. Normally they were still alive. Sometimes they were not.

Ellie moved out of the way as Nick carried the person past her. She made sure to close the door behind him before following into the bedrooms. She entered the room to see him carefully put Marian down on his bed.

It took a few moments for Ellie to even recognize her friend. Marian was normally so full of life, constantly talking loudly about this book or that story, sometimes it is about something she read years ago that she still wanted to talk about with large gestures and fun performances. Now, she was unmoving. Ellie wanted to believe she was just sleeping; Nick had brought in sleeping and drunk friends before. This was an almost daily event when he was teamed up with Marty.

The lack of color in Marian’s skin was enough to convince her that she wasn’t just sleeping or drunk. All the blood that she needed to have that color looked like it was covering her armor. Ellie could guess there was plenty more on her clothes under her armor.

The look on Nick’s face as he stroked the thick stubble on her head also told Ellie that this wasn’t another case of letting a friend sleep it off. She rarely saw him look so worried. It was enough to make her stare at Marian, looking for enough movement to tell if her friend was still alive. It wouldn’t be the first time that Nick kept a corpse on his bed.

“Ellie!” Nick snapped. How many times did he say her name before now? She didn’t ask.

“I’m sorry Nick,” she responded.

“I said, I need a stimpak. Hurry up and get one, she doesn’t have all day!”

Ellie just stood there for a moment, unable to come to terms with the bad timing and the news she had to give Nick. She looked towards the filing cabinet, wishing she could turn the receipt into a stimpak. “Nick,” she said slowly.

He looked up at her. They had worked together for so long he could read her almost as well as she could read him. His face was a quiet patience, she hoped he stayed that way after she told him.

“I’m sorry Nick,” she continued, “but Geneva came by while you were gone. She said the mayor had issued a decree that all citizens had to surrender all their medical supplies to the city to help the injured guards.”

Nick stood up in front of her. She could tell he wanted to yell. He was probably getting ready to start yelling at her for giving all of their stimpaks away, even the few ones he kept hidden for such emergencies.

“I thought I was helping Diamond City,” she pleaded before he could start. “I thought that if Marian was injured, she would have been taken care of by Doctor Sun. If I knew, I would have hidden some.”

Nick let himself relax and shifted a bit. “I’m sorry, Ellie,” he finally said. “I know you did what you expected me to want you to do. I shouldn’t have expected there to be any left in the office, they got me on the way out the wall. Doctor Sun did want to treat her, but the mayor told him that he had to treat all of the guards first. The best he could do for her was med-x.”

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Ellie was angered at the idea that Marian had sacrificed her life for the city, and all the city could do was give her a comfortable death. She looked down at Marian. Marian who was always full of life. Always talking, always moving, and now she was laying there losing blood and losing her life.

“How could Mayor McDonough just leave Marian to die?” Ellie asked.

“It’s Isabel,” Nick told her.

“What?”

“Her name, her real name is Isabel Monroe,” Nick clarified. “Those holotags she sent weren’t her brothers, they were hers.”

A cold chill shot up Ellies spine. It had been over a year since the Brotherhood of Steel were evicted from the Commonwealth. A lot of people died in the process. Nick wasn’t friends with any of them, and Ellie couldn’t support a group that believed Nick wasn’t a person and would destroy him if they could. “It doesn’t add up,” Ellie finally said. “How could she be a member of the Brotherhood of Steel?” She doesn’t behave like one, she never spoke down to anyone for not being a member. “Could Piper be right? Is she a spy?”

Nick took Marian’s…Isabel’s gun off his back and slipped it under his bed. “I don’t know. If she is a spy, then any behavior that was out of character for a member could be explained as part of her job.” He sat down on the bed again and looked at Isabel, stroking her head. “Truth is, I don’t care. She saved this city, and that’s enough reason for her to be saved.”

“Why did she give you the holotags? You already believed she was a member. The holotags didn’t tell you anything more.”

Nick sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, bowing his head. “I think I know why, but I want to talk to her about it first.” He raised his head up again and kissed Isabel’s forehead. “Please let me talk to you about it,” he whispered. “Please hang on, Doll.”

Ellie didn’t like the thought of Isabel dying. She was already thinking about the possibility of not spending anymore time with her for Nick’s sake, but he didn’t care about what she was. Ellie knew since she met Marian that she would get along with Nick, and she turned out to be more right than she expected. Unfortunately, there may not be a chance to see how right she really was.

Nick stood up and walked over to where Ellie was standing. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a piece of paper before handing it to her. “I want you to file this away for me. We won’t let the City get a single free cap from us over this,” he instructed. “Before that, I want you to get on the horn and call Mayor Hancock. Let him know what’s going on and see if he can get a stimpak out here. Don’t tell him what Marian really is though. Don’t tell him anything about the holotags or anything else that may lead him to figuring it out. I’m sure he already knows, but we can’t risk that. He is in love with her, and if he doesn’t already know he may not send the medicine she needs. I’ll let him know later.”

Ellie accepted the paper and looked at it long enough to confirm that it was a receipt for the stimpaks Nick had on him. She went to her desk to call Mayor Hancock. Before she turned on the radio, she saw Nick was following her and passed her desk to go back to the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked, more concerned than anything.

“She didn’t have her backpack with her,” Nick explained. “I’m going to go find it. Rather she lives or dies, I will be damned if I let a scavenger get her stuff. Stay with Isabel, keep talking to her. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Worse case, I want to be here to say ‘goodbye’.”

“You don’t think-?”

“I don’t know what I think anymore,” Nick interrupted. “Marian’s life goal was to die a hero. I don’t know what Isabel’s life goal is, but it’s something that a member of the Brotherhood of Steel would work towards. I’m such an idiot.”

“No Nick, you’re not, none of us knew. If any of us thought she was a spy, we would have gotten her out of the Commonwealth, not tried to keep her in.”

“Piper knew,” Nick corrected. “That’s not why I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot because I know she wants me dead, and I don’t care. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Nick hurried out of the office, shutting the door behind him. Ellie stood at her desk for a moment. Would he let her kill him? She didn’t know where her friend ended, and the spy began. Was there a difference between them? Ellie wasn’t sure she knew, and she wasn’t sure if she cared any more than Nick did.