A Rose Among Thorns

6 | Reunions

Dogmeat led them out of the city, where they had to stop a few times because the trail grew cold; Briar Rose and Nick would search until they found something with Kellogg's scent—either a Gwinnett Stout Beer or a used San Francisco Sunlights. Once he got the smell again, he would take off, and they were behind him.

On their trek to find Kellogg, Briar Rose was introduced to two new creatures: a monstrous hairless bear—called a Yao Guai—and a flying group of insects; Nick warned her to watch out for their stingers. The bugs were called Stingwings. They also disturbed a few more of the zombie-things; Nick said they were Feral Ghouls.

A flickering light ahead caught her attention and outlined a slumped human form; Dogmeat headed straight for it. As they drew nearer, Briar Rose found it to be a decapitated robot with one eye and short-circuiting.

Nick put a hand out to stop Briar Rose from going to it. "Careful; that's an Assaultron. Lethal."

Dogmeat walked up to it, sniffed it and whined; he looked back at her like wanting her to come over. She did, with Nick right beside her, looking on edge like he was prepared to throw her out of harm's way.

"Alert: critical... ention, assailant... weapons imme..." Its voice was strictly monotone and robotic; no hint of pain.

"What happened?" Nick asked.

"Operator deceased... Threat level: Omega. He killed us... Fort Hagen."

It sounded like Kellogg had overpowered the Assaultron. And Fort Hagen, she knew that place: a military base.

They left the dying robot and continued down the road; Briar Rose just figured they could've followed the road to Fort Hagen if they didn't have Dogmeat guiding them. Instead, he followed Kellogg's exact path by taking them off the road, into the woods, and through a broken chain fence warning against trespassing. They entered the small military town, and Dogmeat took them to the front doors of the large and concrete military base. The entrance was all boarded up and barricaded; Dogmeat whined as he scratched at the doors.

"He's in there? You sure of it?" she asked; he answered by pawing at the barricade more ferociously.

"There's got to be another entrance," Nick said.

They went searching around the squat structure to find scaffolding leading up to the roof. On the way up, a mechanical buzz beeped in alarm and once again, Nick threw an arm out to stop her.

"That's a machine gun turret; if one's up here, it's guarding something."

They ascended more cautiously to find the machine gun turret rotating in jerky movements—it believed the danger was gone, so it had resumed its programmed watch. Briar Rose shot it, and it exploded. Nick shot another one before they found a metal hatch opening to a ladder.

Nick held Dogmeat under an arm as they climbed down. Reaching the floor, she saw a silver form of a man with an odd gun walking around in alert.

"Intruders detected. Must protect Kellogg." Other robotic voices repeated its announcement.

Nick got closer to Briar Rose to whisper. "Gen 1 Synths; dumb as rocks in their head, but dangerous."

No matter what they were, they served Kellogg and needed to die. There were quite a few synths to kill and, as Nick said, once she ducked out of view, the robots became confused and thought she had disappeared. The guns they shot at them with resembled the laser musket but with a blue beam.

As they delved deeper into the trashed military base, Nick hacked a terminal to make a Protectron—a large robot with different personalities to choose from—fight by their side. With its help, the main two floors were quickly cleared of synths. They found a still-working elevator to take them down underground.