Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 42: Blind Betrayal

The moment Kelly breached the hatchway from the Flight Deck, she felt the hostility rolling off Maxson from the observation bridge. It was heat like none other, a continual wave across the distance between them. She disembarked from her power armor and approached with steady, cautious steps, eyeing his demeanor. He stood, hands to back, chin lowered to receive her, a shadow about his gaze as he just stared. She felt the weight of that stare like she never had before. He was a demon in man-skin. This was more than their typical power-play clashes.

Something was wrong.

When she passed into his domain, he stepped in to meet her, coiled. "Is there anything you wish to tell me, Knight?" The question was contained with forced civility, but had a threatening edge.

Shit. Did he find out about her torturing and killing Doom-Guy? That Shaun was the director of the Institute? That she and Danse had fraternized?

Kelly slipped into her hardened guise, halted before his shadow, and tilted her head in disdain. "I'm not sure I like how you're asking me that."

Maxson kept up his forced civility, though his brow was a harsh outcrop. "And I don't appreciate being betrayed by my own soldiers." Her own brow pinched at him in irate confusion. "Proctor Quinlan completed the decryption of the data you retrieved from the Institute. A portion of his findings included a list of synths that went missing or escaped from their underground facility. After careful analysis of the information, we've discovered something... unprecedented." His next words slid out through his teeth. "Paladin Danse is a perfect match for one of the synths on that list."

The world stopped.

Danse. Synth.

Kelly's mind gummed up. "Synth? I... I don't understand..." Maxson just continued to stare, so acutely it unnerved her. Danse is a synth? A cold ripple of shock overtook her. "The data must-" she blurted loudly in denial, then caught herself and dimmed her voice. "The data must be faulty."

"The findings have been validated by multiple sources," Maxson explained methodically, though his words dripped bitterly from his tongue. "Quinlan wouldn't have brought this to me if he wasn't one hundred percent certain of the results. The data you brought back included a record of each subject's DNA. We keep the same information on file for all of our soldiers. Paladin Danse's DNA is a perfect match for a synth they called 'M7-97.'"

M7-97. It didn't mean anything to her, but her subconscious insisted on repeating the name to her over and over. Kelly's heart was thrashing in cold panic, her ears booming with each pump of that cold blood. Her world was so distant. No. No. No. No. No. "No. He can't be. He's been set up. Framed."

She received cold eyes of severity. "Don't insult the legitimacy of my staff or my judgement in their findings. The evidence is irrefutable." His beard bristled as his jaw hardened, clenching in the fumes that roiled beneath his skin. "To make matters worse, he's gone AWOL. Disappeared without a trace."

She stared at the Elder in horror. He ran? Oh god... Maxson was still analyzing her reactions even as he spoke, and it grew more unsettling the more he spoke on, as anger was audibly mounting in his voice. She felt like prey under the merciless gaze of a predator.

"His sudden absence simply reinforces our conclusion that M7-97 and Paladin Danse are one in the same." Hearing him state it aloud made nausea assail her. "I'm finding it difficult to believe that he never confided in you and then swore you to secrecy."