Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 22 Part 1

They all gathered around the main terminal once more. Vincent, impatient to return back through the city ruins before dark, took the longest to convince. Reluctant, as the tallest he stood behind Valrie and Gia as Patience prepared to show them what she had found.

After watching the emotional video showing the effects of Sara's loss of her wife, Patience had scrolled through to the last video in the sequence, dated two weeks after the last one. Two weeks in which Sara, her previous self had spent a year in the Reality Simulation for every hour passing in the real world. For Sara, this was decades later.

"I found this and I need to know what you think." Patience's finger hovered over the 'Return' key. "The last one was disturbing, but this? This is horrific."

"Is there blood and guts? 'Cos I'm okay with blood and guts. Just not, you know, my own." Gia fidgeted as she tried to find a comfortable position to watch.

"For fuck's sake, Gia! Just watch the fucking video." Valrie glared at Gia. She kept her eye on Gia for a second, then turned to Patience. "Ready when you are."

Patience glanced at Vincent. He shrugged his shoulders and Patience took that as a sign to continue. She pressed the key.

-+-

"Name, rank, serial number." The grey haired man sat in the big leather chair, looking through the pages in a file.

Stood, ram-rod straight before his desk, Sara looked different. Cold, stern, more muscular. None of the fresh, fun woman remained. Her face an emotionless mask. She wore combat fatigues, dirty and tattered. Her face filthy and drawn.

"Porter-Diaz, Sara. Private, first class. Serial number, one-one-three-eight." Her voice seemed different, too. The original Sara seemed full of life and that came through in her voice, always on the verge of laughing. This Sara was cold, mechanical.

"How long have you been a soldier, Private?" The grey haired man, still looking through the pages, reached over, without looking, and picked up a pipe from a stand. He tabbed down into the bowl with his finger, then took a match and lit it, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth until the tobacco remained lit.

"I ... I don't know, sir." The little confusion at the beginning of her reply didn't reach Sara's face.

"And what are your current orders?" For the first time, the man looked up towards Sara.

"To seek out and destroy the enemy, by any means necessary, sir." Sara had not moved an inch. Even the blinks of her eyes appeared timed to the precise second.

"And who is the enemy?" The grey haired man continued to hold Sara in his gaze.

"Whoever the army says, sir. The army points, I kill." A slight tightening of the facial muscles showed the only emotion in Sara's face.

"Good. Good. I think you're just about ready to leave the simulation and enter the real world." The man closed the file, dropping it on the desk. He sat back, crossing his legs, drawing on his pipe and letting the smoke escape from the corner of his mouth.

"I'm sorry. Simulation, sir? Real world?" A momentary look of confusion crossed Sara's face and then disappeared. "Yes, sir."

"Go to sleep, Private. When you wake up, it'll be a brave new world for you. Dismissed." He waved her away with the hand holding the pipe and picked up another file from his desk.

Sara snapped to attention, saluting, then turned on her heel and marched out of the room. The video ran on for a few seconds more then turned to static.

-+-

"What the fuck did we just see?" Valrie stared at the terminal screen. "That was like you, but with the 'asshole' dialled up to eleven."

"I don't like that you. She wasn't sexy. I mean, not sexy. At all." Gia crumpled up her face, a look of disgust upon it. "I prefer you you, not cute and pretty you, but definitely not grrr aargh soldier you. You you."

"So, you became a soldier in this 'Reality Simulation' thing. What's the problem?" Vincent scratched his armpit. It was clear he didn't see anything wrong. "Welcome to the club."

"The problem is this." Patience turned back to the terminal, typing in several numbers. A list of videos appeared on the screen.

She started one video. It looked exactly like the one they had already watched, except it wasn't Sara stood before the grey haired man, it was Diana, Sara's wife, not dead after all. The video played out almost exactly the same. The same questions. Almost the same answers. Patience stopped the video and started the next one.

She played that for a few seconds, stopped it and played the next, then the next and the next. All the videos were almost exactly the same. Only the person stood before the desk differed. Patience clicked back to the list, tapping downwards, showing video after video after video.

"How many videos are there?" Vincent seemed interested now.

"Hundreds. Thousands, maybe." Patience turned back to the terminal. "There are two more videos. The last ones the vault sent back to HQ, but they're broken. Corrupted. God knows what's on those. Maybe Moira could fix them? I don't know."

"Maybe. That girl is genuine fucking genius. If anyone can do it, she can." Valrie shrugged.

"Can we get going now?" Vincent turned to leave the room once more.

"Can we get going? Did you just see what we just saw?" Patience barged past Valrie and Gia, pulling Vincent around by his arm. "You just dowloaded all those videos, all the information about the hidden vaults. If there are hundreds more like me, you can't give that information to anybody. Not the Brotherhood and certainly not Moriarty!"

"I have a mission. A mission! I'll follow my orders. Remember those? Because it sure looks like you used to know what that meant." He pulled his arm away from Patience's hand. "What does it matter to you? The Brotherhood gets hold of these people and that's it. Can you imagine those people in Power Armour? Even Super Mutants would be dealt with, easily. I don't see what the problem is."

Patience's hand thrust out, lightning fast, catching Vincent in the throat. Before his hands even began to move up to clutch at his neck, before he could even begin choking, Patience grabbed one of his wrists, twisting it and sending Vincent to his knees. In the same movement, she removed his .45 from its holster, stripped it down and dropped the pieces to the floor in front of him. By the time Vincent had started coughing, gasping for breath, Patience had taken out a knife, holding the sharp blade to Vincent's throat.

She removed the knife, returning it to the sheath on her belt at the back. She crouched down and looked Vincent in the eyes as he struggled for breath. She helped him to sit up, his back against an upright on the railing. After a while, he started to breathe more normally, staring at Patience the whole time.

"That's the problem. I'm the problem." She ran her fingers through her steel grey hair and sighed. "For some reason, I have a mind of my own. I'm not that ... that drone on the video. Why? We don't know, but if the rest of them are like they are on the videos and as good and as fast as me? We can't let anybody have that power. I can't let anybody have that power."

She sat back against the railing opposite Vincent, Valrie and Gia watching in shocked silence. Vincent wasn't convinced. She could tell. And that meant she would have to do something to stop the Brotherhood or Moriarty from getting that information. By any means necessary.