New Vegas: Sheason's Story

Chapter 113: Red Rocks

At precisely 10:07 am (and a bit) the next day, we set out. There were only four of us in the car this morning; myself and Cass in the front seats, and Veronica and Arcade in the back. ED-E was flying around somewhere else, having offered to scout out ahead. For a while, the car was pretty silent, and I wasn't entirely certain why. The party last night had been fun, but hadn't been too raucous, and it didn't seem like anyone was hungover. But then, as we drove past an abandoned gas station somewhere west of Vegas in the middle of nowhere, the silence was broken.

"So, where'r we goin' again?" Cass asked, surprising me. The way she was reclining, I thought she was asleep.

"Weren't you paying attention earlier?" Arcade leaned forward, clearly annoyed, and grabbed the back of Cass' chair. Cass shook her head and leaned back in her seat even more.

"Nope," Cass sniffed loudly. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we're headin' out to shoot some folks. That's what we always tend to do, right? Just not sure who we're goin' to shoot." Arcade rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.

"With any luck," I said, before Arcade got a chance to say anything. "We won't have to shoot anyone. I don't plan on any shooting taking place, at least." Cass snorted out a laugh.

"Yeah, well, what you plan an' what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar."

"Thanks for that," I said, forcing a smile. "We're going to Red Rock Canyon, because that's where Yes Man said the last of the Great Khans in the Mojave are holed up. I'm gonna try and talk to them, and see if I can get them on board with this whole Independent Vegas scheme I've been putting together."

"Hold up, the Great Khans?" Cass finally sat up, and tilted her hat back with her thumb. I nodded.

"Yup."

"The same Great Khan assholes who Benny hired to ambush you when you first arrived in the Mojave?" Cass asked. "The same fucks who tried to kill you and buried you alive? Those the Great Khans we're talkin' about?"

"Yeah," I said simply. "And then Benny fucked them over just as soon as he was finished using them."

"And then the NCR killed them in Boulder City," Veronica said absentmindedly, staring out the back window. Ah, so she had been paying attention to the conversation after all.

"And let's not forget the Bitter Springs Massacre," Arcade spoke up. "Which, I can only imagine, is why Boone isn't joining us today. Yes?"

"As always, Arcade, your powers of deduction are beyond compare," I said, doing my best to make the sarcasm at least sound playful and friendly. It seemed to work, since he just smiled, shook his head, and leaned back in his seat.

"Y'know, fer the longest time, the only thing I'd ever heard about the Khans is that they were drug dealers, an' raiders, an' shit..." Cass shook her head. "As a rule, I tend not to deal with raiders, unless it's down the barrel of a shotgun. I guess I just don't understand why we're goin' to talk to 'em."

"Because," I said forcefully, glancing over my shoulder at Veronica slightly. "I want to give them a chance. If I go in there, guns blazing, without even giving them that chance? I'd be no better than House if I did that, when he wanted me to wipe out the Brotherhood. And that would make me a terrible hypocrite..." I turned my attention back to the empty, straight road ahead. "I'm tired of being a hypocrite."

"Alright, whatever," Cass tilted her hat forward, and she shrugged back down in her seat. "But if they turn out to really be raiders like the Fiends, then I'm gonna open fire no matter what."

"How about this: first body we see hanging from a meathook is our signal to go nuts." I offered. From behind me, I heard Veronica snort out a stifled laugh.

"Yeah, that's fair." Cass nodded. She seemed pleased with that. I was just about to settle in for a nice, relaxing rest of the trip... when suddenly my Pip Boy started making noise.

"Friend_Courier," ED-E's voice emerged from the speaker. "Are you there, Friend_Courier?" I steadied the steering wheel with one hand, and hit the button to transmit on my Pip Boy.

"Yeah, I'm here ED-E," I said into my wrist computer. "What's up?"

"We may have a problem, Friend_Courier..."

"Lay it on me, ED-E," I said, with a sigh. "You know how I love bad news..." The bottom of my stomach fell out as I spoke. This was gonna be bad, whatever it was. And as ED-E explained, another conversation took place in the car.

"Who's he talking to?" Veronica said from the backseat. "I mean, it sounds like ED-E's beeping, but..."

"It is ED-E," Cass replied. She turned around in her seat and looked back and forth at the two sitting behind us. "What, d'he not tell ya?"

"Tell us what?" Arcade asked.

"Whatever happened to him in th' Big Empty did somethin' with his mind," Cass circled her ear with her finger several times. "I don't know if he's tellin' the truth or if he's just gone completely koo-koo bananas, but it seems like he can understand ED-E now."

"That's... not possible," Arcade said, shaking his head.

"But... hang on..." Veronica pointed at my Pip Boy as I listened to both their conversation and ED-E rattling off what he'd found. "That- that's just beeping. Are you trying to say that Sheason can understand that gibberish?" Cass shrugged.

"Maybe, I dunno. Seems t'be workin'..." Cass looked around with concern; clearly, she'd noticed that the car had been slowing down to a stop for the last few seconds. "Shea? What's -" She blinked several times as I looked at her. I'm pretty sure my face was conveying the nervous feeling of trepidation in my gut. "What's wrong?"

"Gear up," I said, pulling Roscoe off my hip to make sure it was loaded. "Something has gone horribly, badly wrong."

About 15 minutes later, I pulled my car to a screeching halt just outside the entrance to Red Rock Canyon. It was far too narrow for my extremely wide Corvega to even attempt to drive through...

"End of the line," I said, grabbing the anti-materiel rifle I'd stashed next to me. "Everyone out... and get military."

All four of us poured out of my car and walked into the canyon entrance. We all looked ready for combat, each of us wearing very obvious armor and laden down with weapons - well, with the possible exception of Veronica, that is. But then, she always wore that power armor under her robe anyway. There wasn't anything else she needed to do but grab Oh, Baby!

I wasn't wearing Susan the stealth suit, though. When I'd gone to the Gun Runners to re-supply and re-arm, I picked up a replacement chest piece for the riot gear that had been destroyed when my arm got cut off. This one wasn't a gift like the first set of armor Raphael gave to help me deal with Alice McLafferty and Gloria Van Graff, and it cost a fucking fortune. Buying all the munitions to re-arm all the hidden weapons in my Corvega didn't cost as much as that single piece of armor. The bill was absolutely astronomical, I just want to make that clear.

Ah well. Still worth it. The Gun Runners do good work, after all. The armor would provide better protection than Sue if things got loud... and as I took point, leading us into the narrow entrance to Red Rock Canyon, I was certainly expecting them to get very loud.

How did I know we were even in the right spot? Well, there were a couple of clues. The first was the simple fact that all the rocks in this canyon had a sort of burnt reddish-orange color to them. Would definitely fit for a place called Red Rock. The second were all the totems and war banners lining the canyon entrance. Pictures of yellow skulls with thin black mustaches and wide, bloodshot eyes staring out from underneath red horned helmets, lined with fur. Vaguely human-shaped effigies made out of scraps and topped with a brahmin skull, painted red. All very pseudo-Mongolian, Khan-like. That sort of thing.

But the thing that clinched it most of all, however, was what I saw as we walked further into the slowly widening canyon. Conformation of what ED-E had told me he'd seen only moments before.

Everything was on fire.

"What the..." Cass stared wide eyed at the spectacle before us. And I couldn't really blame her. All around us, at every layer of the multi-tiered canyon, I could see tents... or, more accurately, the blazing remnants of tents completely consumed by flame. There were more totems like the one I'd seen mounted to the entrance, except these were also on fire. Enormous, dirty clouds of oily black smoke were billowing and swirling into the sky from every nook and cranny above us in the canyon. And the smell... was awful.

"What... what happened here?" Veronica asked softly. I shook my head slowly, taking the time to scan the area.

"Don't know," I grunted out. "But whatever it was, it happened recently. Whoever set these fires might still be around, so stay alert." From behind me, I heard Arcade let out a strained, wavering sigh.

"Where is everyone?" he asked. That's when I realized, he was right: all the buildings around may have been on fire, but there were no bodies anywhere. No wounded Khans. No screams. Here and there would be a bit of blood - splotches against the canyon wall and on the ground. They were mostly red, but swiftly turning black in the sun and the heat.

I took a long sniff of the foul air. I grimaced as realization dawned. I had a feeling that I knew exactly why this fire smelt so bad. And if that was true... it likely meant that nobody got out of here alive. A smell that bad could only really come from burning bodies - a lot of burning bodies. Piles of them...

"ED-E, you readin' me?" I asked, hitting the transmit button on my Pip Boy. There was a short burst of static.

"What do you need, Friend_Courier?" ED-E's voice poured out of the speaker. I looked up, and saw the eyebot circling in the air high above us.

"What's it look like from up above? Do you see anyone around?" I decided against just asking if he saw any bodies. There was a short pause, and for a while all I heard over the speaker was the faint buzzing from ED-E's anti-gravity generators, mingling with the dull roar of the blazing inferno all around us. I scanned the area again, but still... nothing.

"No, Friend_Courier. Aside from yourself, Cassidy_Rose, Steel_Veronica, and Remnant_Arcade, there are no living human life signs that I can detect within this area. I am, however, picking up large clusters of rapidly oxidizing carbon-based organic matter in -" ED-E paused, and there was a single beep I couldn't understand. "Hold. There is something el-" A shorter pause. "There! Quickly! Above you!"

I halted in my tracks and looked up, just like he said... looming above my right was an enormous sheer cliff face. Fire and smoke was pouring off the top, but there was a surprisingly clear patch of sky directly above me... and then something moved along the top edge of the cliff. I couldn't quite make out what it was, at first, but then I saw the form seem to materialize out of thin air. Even from this distance, it was obvious...

Completely black, like light itself was scared to go near her. A pair of horns on her head. And three yellow eyes looking down on us.

"Oh no..." I breathed as the bottom of my stomach dropped out. "Oh no oh no oh no no no no no..." I hefted up the anti-materiel rifle in my hands, planted my feet, chambered a round, and brought the scope up to my eye so I could get a better shot.

"Shea? What's -" Cass began.

"Run!" I turned away from the scope briefly to look at the three of them behind me. "GO! Back to the car! NOW! You cannot handle her!" I looked back down the scope, put the assassin standing above us squarely in my crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger. I could feel the ground beneath my feet shake from the rifle's kickback, and huge clouds of dust swirled around me. Half a second later the edge of the cliff exploded in a burst of fire and shattered rock.

After my brush with the deathclaws, I'd decided that a few high explosive rounds for the big gun might prove useful.

I pulled my eye away from the scope, to get a wider view. The edge of the cliff was starting to crumble... but a black, shadowy figure was hurtling through the air away from it. And she was falling down... wait, no. She wasn't falling. She was diving! That... that's crazy! That has to be a height of at least seven stories! There's just... there's no way she could-

Doesn't matter. I reset the bolt as fast as I could to chamber another round, and brought the scope back to my face; she was indeed hurtling towards us, face-first, like she just jumped off a high dive at a swimming pool. I did my best to level the shot as quickly as I could, squeezed the trigger... the rifle's kickback was just as intense as before, but it wasn't followed by a second explosion higher up. I'd fucking shot wide! She reached into her outfit for something, and then quickly splayed out her arms in front of her. Had she just throw-

All around me, the ground erupted. They weren't huge explosions, designed to maim or kill; these seemed like distractions. I tried to chamber another round as quickly as I could, and realized that she'd set off half a dozen smoke bombs all around me. Swirls of red, blue, purple, and green smoke surrounded me, obscuring everything - and then something swift and heavy and black cut through the smoke and landed on the ground in front of me with a heavy thud.

"No more warnings," the filtered female voice echoed all around me. I finished chambering the round and brought the rifle to my shoulder, but the black figure was far too quick. By the time I finished squeezing the trigger, she was already holding onto the barrel. The end of the gun exploded in flame behind her as the round was fired at nothing; the smoke was slightly blown away, but there was far too much of it to disperse completely. The assassin looked me square in the face with her three yellow eyes. For the brief half-second that she was close enough, I was able to clearly see that the horns on either side of her head were actually a pair of some kind of high-tech antennae. I didn't have time to absorb any more details than that, because that's when she yanked the anti-materiel rifle out of my hands - and then immediately hit me across the side of the head with the stock.

I stumbled backward slightly, caught off guard by the unexpected force behind the hit. I planted my back foot, and reached into my duster for the Ranger Sequoia - but I wasn't quick enough. By the time I thumbed back the hammer, a pair of boots came flying out of nowhere to kick me square in the chest like I'd been hit by a semi truck. I was thrown off my feet and flew backwards, tumbling end over end through the swirling multicolored smoke. The Ranger Sequoia was knocked out of my hand and flew off somewhere.

I was upside down. I knew that much. Above me, I could see ground screaming past me, inches from my head. I reached down with my cybernetic hand, and dug my fingers into the rocky ground as hard as I could; the rock buckled and cracked beneath my fingers, leaving deep gashes. It was enough to slow me down, and gave me just enough time and leverage to right myself and land both feet behind me on the ground. I looked up at the mass of swirling smoke - about 10 feet away - and saw the black-clad, three-eyed assassin burst out of the miasma rushing straight at me.

I bolted to my feet, grabbing my sawn off shotgun off my left hip, and pulling a chunk of rock from the ground with my right. She was coming at me with... a pair of knives? I didn't have time to question. I just had time to aim.

I let off a burst from the shotgun, but I shot wide; she deflected my arm up and away from her before I could aim properly. I let go of the shotgun in midair, and moved back to dodge out of the way; she tried to hit me with a downward slash. I grabbed the shotgun with my cybernetic hand, and tried to hit her with the shell in the other barrel; again, she deflected it just as I pulled the trigger, knocking the shotgun out of my hand. She spun in place, and raised a leg, trying to roundhouse kick me in the face-

And her foot was stopped when my cybernetic hand grabbed her leg.

"Not this time," I snarled, and mustered as much strength as I could with the robot arm; I grabbed her leg with both hands, lifted her up over my head, and slammed her back down into the ground as hard as I could. She hit the ground with a rather satisfying thud, followed swiftly by her other foot coming out of nowhere and smacking me across the side of the head.

I shook my vision clear just in time to see her pushing up off the ground with her hands and flipping back onto her feet. In a flash, she threw a pair of knives my way. I brought my arms up to protect my face, and I heard the knives bounce against metal, sending a shower of sparks everywhere. One of the knives hit my Pip Boy, and the other hit my metal arm.

I reached for Roscoe and That Gun, hoping that she wouldn't throw any more knives my way in the time it took to draw them... and then a super sledge came out of nowhere and hit the ground with a crash, sending chunks of rock flying up into the air.

Veronica had hit the spot where the assassin had been standing, but the woman in black was just too fast. The assassin placed a foot on the head of the high-tech sledgehammer, grabbed the handle, flipped upside down, and wrapped her calves around Veronica's face. Within seconds, Veronica was thrown to the ground and disarmed. She lifted up the hammer, looking all primed and ready to smash in the face of the prone Veronica lying at her feet.

"FUCK OFF!" I shouted as I hit the assassin with a running tackle, burying the elbow of my cybernetic arm square in her back. She dropped the super sledge and flew through the air several feet, and came to a stop several feet away, crashing face first into the rocks. I reached down to help Veronica back up on her feet with my right hand, and aimed That Gun at the assassin with my left and fired off round after round...

How the fuck was she on her feet already? Even with VATS helping me, I don't think any of the shots were hitting. Five rounds in That Gun burned through quick, so I dropped it and grabbed Roscoe; 13 rounds, and that was empty too. When I dropped the magazine, she finally stopped running. Did she think I was out of ammo? She skidded to a halt, faced me, and pulled a wicked curved dagger off her back with her left hand.

Boom.

She toppled backward in a shower of sparks. Cass was advancing on the assassin to my left with the AA-12 leveled and firing over and over again. I reloaded Roscoe, and fired at the assassin as well; the bullets seemed to be staggering her, but it didn't actually seem to be doing any damage. The rounds and shotgun pellets were sparking off her armor, and bouncing away. She reached up through the hail of fire, and ripped something away from her face. It appeared to be some sort of mangled box, which she tossed to the side.

Cass stopped firing. She must have been out of ammo. I knew Roscoe was out once again. The assassin looked at me with only two eyes now - yellow and angry looking. She looked over at me, then at Cass, and then at Veronica (who had grabbed the super sledge and was holding firm). I started to reach for another magazine.

BANG!

I blinked my eyes, and clutched at my ears. Fuck-mothering flashbangs! Son of a bitch! I shook my head and tried to concentrate through the deafening shriek in my ears. I was seeing double, and everything was still suffering some blurry afterimages but I was able to make out enough: the assassin was making a break for it.

Fuck that! She's not getting away that easily! I started running as fast as I could, focusing intently on the figure ahead of me, forcing my eyes to clear. Pretty soon, it wasn't white blurs I was seeing. It was red. Or were those laser blasts I saw streaking out of the sky from above me? That must be ED-E, trying to give chase. She slipped into the canyon, and I was only seconds behind. She jumped over my car with a single leap... and kept running. What, did she think she was going to get away on foot?

I didn't question it. I vaulted over the hood and practically jumped into the seat. The engine rumbled to life, and I slammed into reverse. I looked over my shoulder as the car got up to speed; the assassin was still running. I twisted the wheel, spinning the car in j-turn. As soon as I was driving forward, I flipped open the safety cover protecting the grenade machinegun button. The two grenade launchers mounted above the wheel arches popped up with a clank.

And then something really unexpected happened.

She lifted up her right arm as she ran - somehow running slightly faster than my car - and after punching in something on the super-advanced Pip Boy she wore on her right arm, a shape materialized in the air directly ahead of her. Whatever it was, it was hovering slightly above the desert brush and grasses. Like her armor, it was matte black, and looked... it looked like a motorcycle without any wheels. She hopped into the seat, and it immediately took off like a rocket. It took no time at all to pick up speed, and practically flew along the ground, hovering at a height of about a foot and a half, complete with jet-looking things in the bottom, each one spewing out some kind of blue energy.

A hovercycle. She was riding a motorcycle turned into an anti-gravity hovercraft.

What.

I shook it off, and slammed my thumb down on the fire button. The car shook as the grenade machineguns fired off grenade after grenade over in her general direction. The terrain ahead of me exploded in displaced dirt and fire, and momentarily, she was completely obscured by the explosions...

And then the hovercycle was in the air, flying above the explosions. She soared through the sky for a few seconds... and then she disappeared, bike and all, with a crackle of electricity. I braked hard, bringing my Corvega to an abrupt halt and getting out; a cloud of dust swirled around me as I looked to the sky.

All it did was remind me how badly my eyes were still watering from the flashbang.

"What's the damage," I said, returning to the spot in the canyon where Cass and Veronica were still licking their wounds. The multicolored smoke from the grenades was finally starting to disperse, but traces of it were still lingering. Veronica was sitting on the ground, holding her head, and Cass was helping her. "Report," I barked out forcefully.

"The fuck if I know!" Cass said, standing up. Her AA-12 was still slung across her chest, but didn't have a magazine. "Who the fuck was that, anyway?"

"The assassin..." Veronica said, shaking her head and trying to get on her feet; I reached down and helped her up again. She nodded at me with a half-hearted smile. "The one who killed Orris, and wiped out the cazadores trying to kill us when you got lost in the Sierra Madre. It's the same one, isn't it?" I nodded back.

"Yeah. Almost certainly," I looked around at our battleground. There were a whole hell of a lot of discarded weapons and spent shell casings. I lifted up my Pip-Boy arm, and hit the transmit button. "ED-E, have you been able to find her?"

"Negative, Friend_Courier," ED-E's electronic voice wafted out of the stereo. "Whatever method of stealth this individual is using, it is quite beyond my sensors capability to detect. It would explain why I was not able to sense her presence until after the cloaking device was intentionally disabled."

"Damnit. Alright, well... she's probably long gone, but keep looking, just in case." I turned back to Veronica. "You alright?" She grimaced and shrugged.

"Yeah. Bitch just wounded my pride. Gave me a hell of a headache when she slammed my face in the rocks. Why would she be here of all places?"

"I don't know..." I walked over to one of the more noticeable pieces left from the fight: the mangled box that came off the assassin's face when Cass shot at her. I picked it up and turned it around in my hands. It looked like a pair of goggles with three lenses, almost like a night-vision kit or something. I looked up. Even with the oily smoke clouds still spewing up into the air, I could clearly see the sun beating down brightly. Something wasn't adding up. Quite a few somethings weren't adding up, in fact...

"Maybe we should ask someone who might know something..." I said finally, tossing aside the mangled wreck to join the rest of the discards littering the canyon floor.

"Who?" Cass and Veronica spoke in unison. I walked right past them - straight at the man who'd been standing in the same place, stiff as a board, since the fighting started. He was staring blankly at nothing in particular with a slack-jawed open mouth. He was limply holding onto the plasma rifle with one hand, and it was hanging from his fingers at his side.

"Arcade," I grabbed his shoulder, trying to shake him out of his stupor. He seemed to be in shock, so I shook him some more. "C'mon man, snap out of it."

"That's... that's not..." he muttered to himself. I let out a frustrated grunt, spun him around to face me, and gave him a soft backhand... with my cybernetic hand. So, who knows how soft it actually was. That seemed to do the trick. He wasn't giving the thousand-yard stare anymore, and instead was reaching up to clutch his jaw. "OW! What the -"

"Alright Arcade, c'mon," I grabbed him by the edge of his combat armor and held firm. "Start talking. What do you know?" Arcade looked like a molerat caught in the headlights, seconds before a wheel turned it into a pancake.

"I... I don't..." Arcade stammered out. I grabbed him by the top of his head, and stared at him with the most intimidating scowl I could muster. He let out a surprised squeak, and dropped the plasma rifle completely.

"Now is NOT the time to be fuckin' around with me, Arcade," I snarled in his face. I shoved him away and let go of his hair. "No more secrets! What. Do. You. Know?" He stumbled backward, but kept his footing... mostly. He looked up, straightened his glasses, and tried desperately to compose himself.

"That... uh..." He gulped loudly. "That armor pattern she was wearing. I recognize where it came from. I didn't make the connection earlier, because your descriptions didn't have enough detail, but that... that's definitely..." He ran a hand along the top of his head, still clearly distraught.

"What?" Veronica asked, definitely interested now. Arcade looked over at Veronica with a very, very worried expression on his face, and then looked back to me with renewed resolve.

"Enclave." He said, finally. "That was an Enclave pattern armor. Or at least the helmet was. The suit wasn't... I've seen stealth suits, but nothing that... that looked way too advanced, even for them. I don't think..."

"Enclave?" Veronica asked in a hushed whisper, advancing on Arcade slowly. "How on earth would you know that?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Cass chimed in from behind us; all three of us turned to look at her, as she casually reloaded her shotgun. "Oh, c'mon. If I could figure this out, then it should be easy for you chuckleheads. I bet he used to be part've the Enclave, am I right?" Veronica let out a short, sharp laugh.

"No... no, that's not possible," Veronica looked back and forth between Cass and Arcade like they were both crazy. "The last time the Enclave were seen in the wasteland was... like... 40 years ago."

"34, actually," Arcade coughed, pushing his glasses further up his nose. I decided to ask the obvious question when nobody else seemed to.

"Arcade, how old are you?"

"35." He looked at the ground and cleared his throat. "And... no. I... personally was never a member of the Enclave. As far as I know, the last holdouts stopped fighting the NCR and the Brotherhood around the time I took my first baby steps."

"You were brought up by one of those holdouts, weren't you?" I said, everything falling into place. Arcade nodded somberly.

"You hypocritical son of a BITCH!" Veronica yelled, stamping her feet angrily. "Accusing the Brotherhood of being genocidal, when all this time, you had ties to the ENCLAVE, the most vicious, genocidal vestige of the Pre-War government!"

"Hey, V, hold on-" I started to say, inching myself between Arcade and Veronica, hoping to stop a fight before it started.

"I know what you're going to say," Veronica snorted. "And... and... I'm not going to... As much as I'm gritting my teeth right now, I'm not going to try and beat Arcade to a bloody pulp for his dishonest hypocrisy."

"Okay..." I said cautiously. Veronica continued, pointing at me.

"But you need to understand. You need know what the Enclave tried to do 40 years ago." Veronica shouted at me angrily. "FEV Curling-13. That was the codename of their doomsday weapon. A viral agent based on the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and dispersed in aerosol form. It was capable of killing indiscriminately, and the Enclave were planning on deploying it against everyone in the wasteland. EVERYONE. Why? Because everyone who didn't come from the Oil Rig - everyone who wasn't ENCLAVE - was a mutant in their eyes! They tried to kill everyone and damn near succeeded! Every member of the Brotherhood knows that story, either because they fought the Enclave first-hand 40 years ago, or learned it from the people who fought them!"

"YES," Arcade finally shouted out over Veronica's ranting. "My parents were Enclave. I can't change that. I can't change who gave birth to me or where I came from. And yes, the Enclave did terrible things! Terrible, horrible things... but an organization is more than just the leaders responsible. There were good people in the ranks. Honest, decent patriots, who felt that the Enclave... they were just trying to do what they felt was right."

"Oh, yeah?" Veronica sneered. She didn't sound convinced.

"Yes. And you know? I didn't think there were any good people in the Brotherhood for a very long time. I thought they were just as bad as the Enclave. And then I met you, Veronica. You managed to disabuse me of several of my preconceptions. And you showed me that, like the Enclave, there are still good people in bad organizations."

The air between us was silent for a very long while after Arcade said that. The only thing any of us heard were the creaking embers of the fires all around us finally starting to flicker away.

"Why didn't you tell us any of this before now?" I asked. Arcade actually laughed.

"Yes, well, believe it not, telling people about my ties to a genocidal para-military organization, linked to the government responsible for ending the world? Not really all that high on my list of priorities." Arcade looked around. "But that's not... my association with the Enclave isn't what's important right now."

"It isn't?" Cass asked.

"If that assassin was really and truly a member of the Enclave..." Arcade shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "Well. That answers one question..."

"...and raises dozens more." I finished for him. Arcade nodded.

"It doesn't seem possible..." Arcade looked very worried. "But if she's truly working for the cause of the Enclave - even if she's just a rogue element, still fighting the same war from 40 years ago - then that's going to cause some serious problems for everyone in the Mojave." Veronica laughed, picking up her discarded super sledge.

"Tell me something I don't know," she laughed again, setting the giant mallet on her shoulder.

I paused as a perverse idea popped into my head, and I briefly wondered if it was entirely appropriate. Probably not. But I decided to say it anyway.

"I had sex with a hologram in the Big Empty," I said, pulling a straight face. Everyone stared at me like I'd gone insane. I couldn't blame them, so I shrugged it off. "Hey, you said to tell you something you didn't know."

"That... is true. I... didn't... I didn't know that." Several separate and rather distinct emotions - all variations on shock, amazement, disgust, and thinly-veiled interest, to name a few - all tried to manifest themselves on her face simultaneously. All it ended up doing was making her look like she was having a stroke. "Probably could've gone the rest of my life without knowing that particular factoid." She finally managed to squeak out after shaking a few facial muscles free.

"The point is," Arcade rallied himself quickest of anyone. "At least... I hope the point is that we're not going to figure this out standing around like idiots in a dead canyon where everything is on fire."

"Agreed," I said, reaching down to pick up Arcade's discarded plasma rifle. I tossed it to him, and he caught it in midair. "Let's grab all the weapons and whatever else might be useful..." I found the mangled goggles, and picked them up again. "...and head back to the 38. We can regroup there, and maybe... just maybe we can try and figure out what the fuck is going on."

The four of us worked in silence for a few minutes until we were sure we'd grabbed everything. I was the last to leave, unable to keep myself from staring at the still burning wreckage of the tents all around the canyon. As much as I wanted to feel sorry for the Great Khans, and as disappointed as I was at not getting the chance to talk to them, and finding out their side of the story... I couldn't help but shake a feeling of immense dread and unease.

Dozens of questions were swirling around the inside of my head, bothering me. But the one that stood out in my mind and was bugging me most of all? I'd seen the weapons she'd used in the past. Energy weapons that made my laser rifles look like squirt guns. Why hadn't she pulled out any of those and just turned the four of us to ash?

Something had gone seriously, badly wrong with the world. I was more confused than relieved about why I wasn't dead.