Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 26 Part 2

Almost casual, the King pointed towards her Pip-Boy. There was, indeed, a flashing message on the screen. 'Location two - Confirmed' and, below that, 'Activate infusion'. She touched the screen and saw her fingers had expanded, fattening, even in the short time she from awakening. She began to move her hand to the dial, to start the infusion, and stopped.

"Why would you want me to do that?" She dropped her arm, squinting her eyes, furrowing her brow. "This, this is a weapon. I'm a weapon. Against you and all your fat headed yellow buddies. Why would you want me to activate it?"

"Good. You're a smart one. Just what I need." A low, rumbling chuckle emanated from the King's barrel of a chest. "Go on. Activate it. Become the weapon. Do it! Destroy the big bad Super Mutants once and for all."

"Fucking answer me, damn it! Why? What will it do?" She heard a cracking noise. It came from her leg as the bones stretched, broke and stitched back together. The leather pants, that fitted so snug before, popped at the stitching. She tried to manoeuvre back towards the Super Mutant with the knife.

"It will make you like me. I mean, you already are becoming like me. I saw to that." It waved a slab of a hand, showing the dwindling gash on its palm. "Those idiots in the vault thought it would infect the Super Mutants. Return them to their human states. They were wrong. It made something better. I'm bigger, faster, stronger than any Super Mutant ever and I kept all my smarts. That flashing button won't destroy Super Mutants, it'll improve them!"

She stared at the flashing words on the Pip-Boy screen. She didn't know what to think, what to believe. The King could be speaking the truth. It could transform her into the same kind of creature as it, a Super-Super Mutant. It could also do exactly what she thought it would do, release a virus, incubated inside her, that would infect and destroy the Super Mutants once and for all.

"You're lying." Her voice sounded deeper, a growling accent to it. She looked at the King and the creature didn't seem as tall as it once had.

"Maybe. Can you take that chance?" The King pointed at the other two Super Mutants holding her friends. "Better choose quick, or you'll end up like them. Dull. Stupid. Disposable. Press that button and you become like me. All the benefits, none of the drawbacks. Stupid Mutant or Super-Duper Mutant. You decide, kid, but the clocks ticking. Tick tock, tick tock."

"Patience? Don't." Gia struggled against the arms of the Super Mutant, ineffectual, not affecting the creature in the slightest, tears in her eyes. "Please don't become one of them. Please! Not again!"

Tears rolled down Gia's cheek. Patience turned to Valrie, she looked so small now, but Valrie's eyes told her nothing. All Patience could see was trust. Trust that Patience would know what to do. That she would win. That she would beat this. But Patience wasn't sure. The King was right about one thing. Her mind had begun to cloud, her thinking becoming simple, disjointed. She was turning into a Super Mutant, she didn't know anything anymore.

"I don't have time for this." The King covered the distance between them in one step. It grabbed Patience's arm, thick muscular, a sickly yellow. Turning the arm, he flicked the dial with surprising dexterity, then pressed the button to activate the infusion.

Patience felt pain, then. She felt freezing cold liquid flush into her arm through the various tubes embedded in her flesh. Electric shocks erupted through the wires, firing sharp, painful pulses into her body. Then, a second flush of liquids streamed into her veins, turning her blood to fire.

She screamed and couldn't stop screaming.

-+-

Valrie had never been one for attachments, always keeping people at arm's length, wandering through the broken society of the Capital Wasteland but never a part of it. Even as a child, growing up in a small community north of Megaton, now a barren empty place, she had felt removed even from her parents. When her parents died during one of the more severe winters, it almost came as a relief to have the chains holding her down broken.