Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 67: Perfect Chaos

He was a demon.

A demon in man-skin.

But the demon could bleed. And if Maxson didn't give her what she wanted, then he would bleed again. Oh he would.

One. Two. Three. Just a few more steps, and you're there.

Kelly bluffed a confident walk to where the Brotherhood had stashed the slaves in a metallic prefab field structure. Internally, she brooded.

She didn't care that he'd come back to personally lead the effort for her rescue. So that he could gain brownie points from her gratefulness? Save the helpless damsel in distress and be the hero? Fuck him. Danse got to her first. How's that for a dead synth? And what about the Minutemen? The ones who were slaughtered, tortured, raped out in the open before they were then ripped apart. The ones that were still alive and would suffer all that tenfold.

She didn't care what Danse said. Maxson did this. Set it up. Wound the battlefield around his cunning finger and then let it fall apart in perfect chaos.

He probably thought it was all a masterpiece of art. He would probably jerk himself off to his masterpiece later tonight while sucking on a fat cigar.

The little big fuck.

Her brooding was enough to distract from her exhaustion, and she was inside the metal shelter before she realized it, not hesitating to lean a hand on a support column near the entrance. The sight of the recovered slaves hit her with just as much horror as the first time she had seen them. These poor, tormented souls. She suddenly felt wizened by the tragedy of everything around her, overwhelmed by the weight of it, and rubbed raw by her failure. Just standing still in the entrance felt like an uphill climb.

The turn of heads at her entrance cascaded across the huddle of slaves as they sat together in the sand. There had to be at least fifty of them. All looking to her with hope on their hollowed faces.

What am I doing? How do I do this? Thinking I can take on Maxson and the Brotherhood and save these people? What was I thinking?

You weren't thinking, she heard back. You're going insane in the mind, rotting inside, and now you've taken on the world. You will fail them all and lose yourself along the way.

Fuck off.

The feeling of Danse's steady presence close at her back helped to settle Kelly; he seemed to sense the emotional effect seeing the slaves had on her. But even so, she still desperately wanted to turn and stuff her face into his chest to cry out the day's horrors. Plenty of time for that later, she assured herself.

"We saved as many as we could from the fire, but we lost a few. We counted six bodies in total," Paladin Svensson explained with a note of regret. Kelly nodded silently. He looked to be in his forties, with greying auburn cropped hair, and with the eyes of a kind man. But Kelly didn't let that influence her. He was one of Maxson's. "Our Scribes have given them water and small field rations. They don't want to overload their stomachs with too much food too soon. They're being rotated through anti-rad treatments a handful at a time and being given brief medical exams. We'll give them full checks once everyone's been made comfortable." He indicated to a far corner of the shelter, where there was a medical booth separated by privacy panels. Several slaves were seated around a small unit of Scribe Field medics, who were administering doses of RadAway from I.V. stands.