A Rose Among Thorns

10 | Parallel Connections

Briar Rose continued to astound him: even with her dead-set on finding her son, she didn't push the people of the Commonwealth out of her way—she took time to help them. On their search for a hazmat suit for Briar Rose to wear in the Glowing Sea, she accepted jobs of killing Raiders terrorizing nearby settlers or something like restoring power to a water treatment plant.

They had been sent to Back Street Alley to rid the place of some Raiders, but this little group of Raiders was not to be shrugged at. Ever since they walked through the door after killing the guards outside, they had been locked in a severe gunfight. He and Briar Rose took cover behind anything they could: the counter, wooden display cases, pillars, mannequins; the Raiders at the other end seemed to have an endless supply of ammo.

But they had slowly begun to narrow out the group: seven became five, then four, and now only two remained.

"Fuck this; I'm tired!" one of them yelled. Nick heard something pop like a pin in a grenade that then hit the floor near him. He peered around the barricade of tables he and Briar Rose had quickly put together to see that he had heard right—the male Raider had thrown a grenade.

"Grenade!" he shouted at Briar Rose as he kicked a table toward the grenade in hopes of lessening the blast.

Just as Briar Rose started to vault over a display case to take cover, the grenade exploded in a deafening boom. He saw Briar Rose be catapulted over with too much force as the table was blown back into him and sent him flying.

When he landed on his back, he quickly took stock of his body as his ears recovered from the ringing and the smoke cleared—all limbs were still connected and his body was still functioning: good. He started to get up to check on Briar Rose when he heard coughing, and the outline of two figures at the end of the room materialized through the smoke. Nick decided to play dead to catch their guard down—being a robot, he could completely freeze his face and eyes.

"Dammit; did you have to throw a grenade?" one asked as they waved away the smoke—The duo was a man and woman.

"I stopped them, didn't I?"

The smoke cleared enough for them to see the destruction. The taller and thicker one jumped back at seeing Nick's unmoving eyes. "Jesus; one of them's a synth!"

"But he's a dead synth; look, he's not moving. I bet the other one's a synth too."

"Where is she?" the man asked as he started to peer over the display cases.

Because they weren't looking at him, they didn't see Nick move his hand to aim at them. He shot the man through the shoulders; the woman he got straight through the heart. The floor vibrated when their bodies hit the floor.

"Never challenge a robot to a staring contest," Nick said as he got up to his feet. He headed over to the display case Briar Rose went over. "Flower?"

He found her on her chest with her head turned to the side—unmoving.

"Briar Rose!" He ran over to her, then lifted her onto his lap. The left side of her face was drenched in blood coming from a long and wide gash on her temple.

Nick tried to keep fear from smothering him as he cradled her limp form in his arms and ran out.

***

The settlers at Starlight Drive-In did a good job at stitching Briar Rose up, but he remained at her bedside through the entire night, not taking his eyes off her. He had no doubt that it needed to be more than just a grenade to take her down, but he also knew how easy it was for humans to take a turn for the worst; they may appear fine, but the next second, they could be dead—humans were so fragile.