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He only came here to get some readings. There weren’t supposed to be any transmissions today. He has studied and studied and studied the patterns, committed them to memory, learned them as he’s learned every other pattern that guides him through the wasteland. What he learns, he can predict. What he predicts, he can survive. And Hermann Gottlieb has survived a very great deal out here.

But he has not predicted the surge of energy, the flash of blinding light, and the sudden appearance of a strange man in the ruins of CIT.

This was not supposed to happen.

The former scholar ducks back behind a pillar in the rubble. He does not imagine that he’ll go unnoticed, not if the Institute has become aware of his interest in them and sent one of their coursers to eliminate the threat. But hiding is the best he can do, where a man with two good legs might run.

Hermann is perfectly capable of keeping silent when he’s able to move slowly, but when speed is required, he doesn’t often do so well.

This is one of those occasions. He might have known he’d have trouble on this rough terrain. Sure enough, a chunk of concrete turns under his foot, sending him tumbling backward, cane falling from his hand, with a clatter he can’t hope to suppress. Swearing inwardly, Hermann presses his back to the pillar and draws his laser pistol, trying to crouch in a way that won’t strain his hip too badly. They’re at too close quarters for the sniper rifle he prefers, and, while he can be quite devastating with his cane when necessary, the pistol is his best bet at a time like this. He is not about to let a courser get within arm’s reach.

When he dares to peek out from behind his scant cover, the stranger is picking his way directly toward him. He raises his hand in a cheery wave.

“Hello there,” the man calls.
With a gasp, Hermann ducks back down.
“Hellooooooo? I totally saw you over there! Listen, I’m coming over, and—whoops!” There’s the sound of debris sliding about as the stranger trips over some of the rubble.
He certainly doesn’t sound like an Institute courser out for blood. That alone keeps Hermann from opening fire the moment the man is in range, but he knows better than to let his guard down. The moment the stranger leans around the pillar, Hermann raises his pistol and takes aim.
“That’s close enough.”

“Oh,” says the man. His smile falters as he looks down the barrel of the gun, but he doesn’t look nearly as frightened as he should be.

“Show me your hands,” Hermann orders.

“Yeah, okay. Number one…” He flutters his left hand in the air for Hermann to see. “And number two.” He presents the right as if performing a magic trick. He’s unarmed, at least for the moment, but somehow that fact is hardly reassuring given where he’s come from.

“Don’t get cute! Give me one reason why I shouldn’t blow your head off,” Hermann snaps.

“I can give you two,” the stranger says, with what he undoubtedly thinks is a charming smile. “First, that’s a laser gun. No concussive force. You could fry me, but you won’t be blowing anything off of anything.”

“Semantics.” He ought to pull the trigger right now and be done with it.

“Okay, fine, but the thing is? You won’t.” He points at Hermann for emphasis. Hermann’s scowl deepens. “You think I’m cute. You wouldn’t want to hurt a cute guy, would you?”

“I—you—I don’t—that was a figure of speech!” Hermann sputters. To his dismay, he finds himself lowering his weapon anyway. The stranger is, undeniably, quite attractive, but more importantly, he seems entirely nonthreatening. He’s fairly short, actually, and as well-fed as a vault dweller without being at all physically imposing. His thick, black-framed glasses only serve to magnify the startling green of his eyes, but they somewhat obscure the faint smile-lines that surround them, giving him a youthful appearance even though, on closer inspection, he might be somewhere near Hermann’s own age.

The man surveys Hermann with frank curiosity, and a distinct lack of hostility that comes across as far more alarming than any amount of aggression would have. This is not how strangers behave with each other.
“That’s a cool gun, by the way. I didn’t know you had stuff like that up here.”
Hermann continues to frown, silent. Is the man not even going to attempt to hide where he’s come from? Well, perhaps he’s aware how little good it would do. His stark white uniform with its bright green sleeves practically screams ‘Institute.’ It’s far too clean to have seen any use aboveground.

“Nice mods, too. Sharpshooter’s grip, reflex sight, and is that a quantum gyro lens? Seriously nice. You do that yourself?”

“If you’re thinking of trying to take it, think again. I won’t give it up that easily.”

“Just making conversation,” the stranger says. “I have my own. Standard model, but I added a photon agitator when I decided I was coming up here. Had to get my buddy in Advanced Systems to help me out.”

“Are there more of you lurking about, then?” Hermann asks. If this man is not a courser, then he could still be some sort of trap designed to keep the target occupied until the heavy hitters arrive.

“Nope! I’m one of a kind, baby!”

“Quite,” Hermann says flatly. “Thank goodness for that, then.”

“Aw, mean.” He inches closer. Hermann’s finger finds the trigger, then eases off. “Actually, if you want to know the truth? I’m kind of running away? They don’t know I’m gone yet, so no one should be coming after me for a while, but it’s probably not super safe to be hanging around here.”
“You’re an escaped synth, then?” That doesn’t seem unlikely. Other than the coursers, only runaways ever come to the surface. But it doesn’t fit the pattern. Whoever is behind the escapes is quite clever, undoubtedly avoiding notice from within the Institute, but Hermann’s aptitude for pattern analysis makes it far too easy for him to predict. It should be at least a week before the next one emerges.
“You know about synths?” the stranger asks. “Well, doesn’t matter. I’m not a synth, I’m a scientist. Dr. Newton Geiszler, BioScience. Call me Newt.” He holds his hand out for a handshake. Hermann ignores it. “Okay, so, uh, do you have a name, guy?”

“As far as you’re concerned, no.” He has no intention of getting to know this person. He would do better to shoot him and run, whether this…Newton is being truthful about his human state or not. Letting more Institute operatives run loose in the Commonwealth is simply asking for trouble.

And yet, Newton’s disarming smile has him unsettled. He can’t bring himself to behave at all rationally.

“Joe Incognito, huh? I can respect that,” Newton says. “But anyway, I gotta go. Can you point me toward civilization?”

“I’d say you’re about two centuries too late for that. But there are a number of settlements just across the river.” Which he might be putting in danger by directing this person to them. “You don’t…mean them any harm, do you? What are your intentions?”

“Oh.” Newton’s smirk softens into something so earnest, Hermann wants to believe it. “No, I just—I want to learn about what it’s like up here. To study something without…I mean, I don’t know if you can even understand this, no offense, but it’s kind of not great down there if you go against what the Board wants, which, let me tell you, that’s all I do. I just want to learn something just because it’s cool, and add something to the betterment of science without it being turned into a weapon, you know?”

Ah. Yes, he does know. While Hermann might bristle at the implication that Newton thinks him some uneducated savage, he does intimately understand the man’s difficulties. Unconsciously, his hand moves toward his throat, the identification he still keeps tucked inside his shirt despite the danger he’ll be in if it’s ever discovered. He drops his hand immediately when he realizes what he’s doing. Then, grudgingly, he holsters his weapon, confident that he can draw it again if Newton presents a threat. But, really, the man seems harmless.

“I hear there’s some sort of science facility in Diamond City, if that’s what you’re interested in,” Hermann suggests.

“Yeah? That sounds great! Uh…Diamond City is…” He points in a random direction, with a questioning look.

“South,” says Hermann.

“Uh…” Hesitantly, Newton points west, toward the police station, where he would be shot on sight.

“That way.” Hermann gestures toward the river. “For heaven’s sake. You’ll need me to guide you, I suppose. You’ll never find it on your own.” That, and he could keep a close eye on the supposed scientist in case he is up to no good.

“Really? You would do that for me?” He looks entirely too happy. Hermann draws back in alarm.

“For you? Certainly not. I don’t even know you.”

“Oh,” Newton says with a disappointed slump of his shoulders. Then he brightens again. “Oh, I get it! Capitalism! You’d do it for money, right?” He drops his pack on the ground in front of Hermann and falls into a crouch to rummage through it.

Hermann tries his best to unobtrusively ease his way into a more comfortable position. The more heavily he sits, the harder it will be to get back up, but the ache in his leg is becoming less tolerable by the second, and he suspects he’s going to be at a disadvantage there no matter what.

“Here.” Newton takes a good sized box, emblazoned with the Institute’s logo, out of his bag. “I heard you people use bottlecaps for currency? I don’t have any of those, but I brought some food to trade. Are you hungry?”

Food? Hermann eyes the box warily. He can’t remember a time when he hasn’t been hungry, but he restrains himself from snatching the alleged food out of Newton’s hands.
“You cannot be seen with Institute property,” he says. “You’ll get yourself killed. And while we’re at it, you shouldn’t be wearing that…thing. Don’t you have anything less conspicuous?”
Newton plucks at the sleeve of his Institute lab coat, frowning, then shoots a deeper frown at Hermann’s sweater vest and slacks.

“Do I have to dress like you? Civilization really has gone down the tubes if people think it’s okay to go around looking like that.”

Hermann folds his arms across his chest with a huff. He likes what he’s wearing. It’s clean, with no visible patches or holes, which puts him well ahead of the average wastelander. Besides which, it keeps him warm. And it’s not as if he has an extensive wardrobe to choose from. All he has besides this is what he’s taken off the bodies of various raiders who have tried to kill him this week, and none of that is quite the height of fashion.

“I do have a pair of jeans that might fit you,” Hermann says. “Although why I should bother to help someone as disagreeable as you, I’ve no idea.”

“I’m disagreeable? I’ve been up here all of five minutes and you’re already bossing me around like you own the place! Trade you more food for it?” He digs through his pack again without waiting for a response. Hermann shifts his own pack to the front so he can go looking for those jeans.

“I haven’t agreed to take your Institute rations off your hands,” he grumbles. “You do realize it’s no safer for me than it is for you.”

“Then we’ll have to hurry up and dispose of the evidence,” Newton suggests.

“Hmph.” He pulls out his own beloved parka and lays it across his lap, ignoring the stranger’s incredulous laugh. The jeans are underneath. He tosses them at Newton, and accepts the boxes marked “assigned nutrition” in exchange.

“So where do we stand on nudity taboos up here? ‘Cause all my buddies used to treat me like some kind of freak if I walked around in a t-shirt, but I have the feeling maybe it’s not as big a deal up here?”

“It isn’t,” Hermann says, thinking of the straps and harnesses raiders tend to favor, “but—oh.”

Newton slips out of his lab coat and drops it unceremoniously on the ground. Hermann averts his gaze just in time for the trousers to follow.

Hmm. Yes, all right, this is a conversation they’ll need to have later, but for now, Hermann busies himself reading the nutrition information on these food packets.

It takes him a moment to understand what he’s reading. The serving size listed is one bar, each of which makes a good, calorie-dense meal with greater nutritional variation than he’s had access to in a good long while. But there are twenty in each box. Forty in all. Enough to feed him for weeks—a month, if he’s careful. This is far too valuable to trade for a change of clothing and an escort into town. And the stranger has no idea. Good God, what are these people living like down there?

Hermann could accept the deal without enlightening him to the value of what he’s trading away. The temptation to do so is almost overwhelming. He might never find a windfall like this again, and all he has to do is take advantage of a naïve stranger who’s unlikely to survive long in the wasteland anyway.

He clutches the boxes to him, scowling. It’s not fair. Doing the right thing shouldn’t mean yet again having to go to bed with an empty stomach. But he can’t lie to this man. Hermann promised himself a long time ago that he would be better than the people he left behind, and if he can’t stick by that when it’s not convenient, then it doesn’t mean as much as he thought it did.

“Dr. Geiszler,” he says reluctantly.

“Newt. I told you it’s Newt.”
“Newton, then—“ He looks up from the boxes at last, only to break off at the sight of Newton standing there in his undershirt and jeans, looking considerably more like a normal wastelander except for the riot of color swirling up and down both arms. “What is that?!”
“They’re called tattoos. Don’t you have them up here? Fuck, don’t tell me it’s a lost art!”

“I know what tattoos are—but what are they?” He leans forward to get a closer look at one of the beasts inked into Newton’s skin, which looks like some unholy mix between a gecko and a deathclaw.

“Extinct megafauna! Isn’t it cool?”

“I thought you were meant to be in hiding! Those are far too distinctive. Your people will have no trouble tracking you if you don’t cover them up.”

“Aw, but I wanted to show them off,” Newton whines. “It’s not like anyone’s coming after me, anyway. They don’t care.”

That seems unlikely, but Hermann doesn’t question it just now. Instead, he stuffs his parka back into his bag, and hesitates just one moment longer over the food packets.

“Newton. I really don’t think you understand how things work around here. I can’t take these from you.”

“Sure you can! That’s supplement 77! It’s the best one. Trust me, I should know, I’m the one who developed it, and I swear the boss discontinued it just to piss me off. I got the last of the supply. You’ll like it if you try it,” he urges.

“Yes, I’m sure it tastes fine, but that’s not the point. This is not a fair trade.”

“It’s not enough?” Newton asks, the bloody fool. “I can give you one more box—“

“No! Keep it for yourself. It’s far too valuable. Food is much harder to come by than you must imagine, and you’ll never survive here on your own if you give it away so easily.”

“Oh,” Newton says with a puzzled frown. “But if it’s so hard to find, how come you don’t want it?”

“I didn’t say I don’t want it, you great bloody idiot!” Why does he have to make this harder than it already is? Hermann reaches for his cane, intent on getting to his feet where he can tell himself they’ll be a bit more equal. Newton tracks his movement with belated stirrings of alarm.

“You gonna hit me with that?” he asks.

“It’s a mobility aid, not a weapon.” In Hermann’s hands, it can be both, but he keeps that to himself. He often finds it useful to allow others to underestimate his abilities until the opportune moment.

“Are you hurt?” Newton asks. “I’m not that kind of doctor, but I could take a look at you.”

Oh. Hermann tells himself not to soften his resolve. A stranger is not to be trusted just because he seems to want to help.

“There’s no need. It’s an old injury, and I’ve recovered as much as I’m ever going to. My sister is a highly competent surgeon. She took good care of it.” He gets his cane braced under him, but can’t quite work his way up. Damn. “I understand if you change your mind about traveling with—er…” He falls silent when Newton sticks a hand in his face. Uncertain of his intentions, Hermann places the food packets in Newton’s hand.

“Dude, I’m trying to help you up,” Newton says. “You know, that’s really cool, actually. I read this paper one time by this prewar anthropologist that posited that the first sign of an early civilization is, like, a broken femur? Because on your own, you couldn’t survive an injury like that long enough to heal, so if it does heal, that means people are helping each other out and stuff. So that kinda gives me hope for what the world is like now. You want a hand up or not?”

He holds his free hand out until Hermann gives in and takes it.

“Cool.” He pulls Hermann to his feet, with a smile so bright Hermann can hardly stand to look at it.

“This world is not full of helpful people being kind to each other,” Hermann warns him.

“Okay, I can buy that. But some people are good, right? That’s a start.”

“You’ll be dead within a week,” Hermann sighs. Not even a vault dweller could possibly be so earnestly optimistic.

“Hey, okay, I’ll tell you what: you’re so worried about ripping me off if you take my food? You hang onto it, and I’ll go around with you and you can show me the ropes out here. You can make sure I don’t die—“ He rolls his eyes, as if he doesn’t believe such a thing is possible. “—and by the time you run out of meal packets, I’ll be okay to go out on my own, because you’ll have taught me everything you know. Then we can go our separate ways, no big deal.”

“Well,” Hermann says, “I…suppose that would be acceptable.” He’s not at all sure what to make of this odd little man, but it might not be entirely unbearable to spend a month in his company. It’s been an awfully long time since Hermann has had anyone clever to talk to, and Newton is—

Is still, quite enthusiastically, holding onto his hand. Hermann is not at all used to that sort of thing, either. Carefully, he extracts himself from Newton’s grip.

“Dude, this is gonna be awesome,” Newton says.

“I beg your pardon, my name is not dude.”

“You didn’t tell me your name, so I have to improvise.” He throws an arm around Hermann and pulls him to his side in an uncomfortably close embrace. “Listen, Joe—“

“Also not my name.”

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“I find that highly unlikely,” Hermann says. But he does not remove Newton’s arm from around his shoulders.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Since Hermann refuses to enter any proper settlement with Newton until those tattoos are hidden, they don’t cross the bridges toward Diamond City or Goodneighbor. Instead, they head west, toward Bunker Hill. It’s rumored to be safe from Institute agents, which may or may not be true, but it certainly does see plenty of traffic. It’s a trading hub, at any rate, so they should be able to find an inexpensive shirt to cover those tattoos before Newton attracts too much attention.

Newton proves to be unexpectedly chatty. Hermann doesn’t mind entirely, not at first. It’s been so long since anyone has spoken to him except to threaten his life. It’s…nice, not to be alone. But as they walk along the riverbank, Newton gets louder and louder, and Hermann’s attempts to shush him come to nothing.

“Newton, for heaven’s sake, if you don’t shut up—” Hermann finally snaps, and Newton turns to face him with an innocent who, me? expression.

The next moment, a pair of mirelurks burst up out of the riverbank and scuttle toward them, closing half the distance before Hermann has time to draw his gun.

He’s trained for this. Muscle memory would guide him even if he didn’t have the presence of mind to process the situation tactically. Smoothly, Hermann passes his cane to his off hand and draws his laser pistol, taking aim with a steady hand. Beside him, Newton screams and falls over his own feet.
Hermann shuffles sideways, a wide arc that takes him away from Newton’s side. He can’t move fast enough to flank his enemies, but even slow side-to-side movement is enough to confuse a mirelurk, and it keeps their attention on him and off the screaming ninny over there who hasn’t even thought to draw a weapon.
They stand upright, momentarily unprotected by their shells as they track his movement. He squeezes off a shot at the nearer beast, and then another, quickly, while its face is exposed. The thing staggers, and Hermann drops his muzzle and continues firing into its legs as it tips forward, bringing its shell down to protect its softer parts.

Two more shots. He’s already vitally wounded it; the thing just has to be reminded that it’s ready to die.

Hermann stops circling and backs up in a straight line, as fast as he’s able to move. He loathes shooting from the hip, but there’s nothing for it; he can’t spare his cane hand to steady the pistol while he looks down the sights. At least he’s done this often enough that he can ‘eyeball’ it with reasonable accuracy. The ruby beam pulses against the mirelurk’s legs, once, and again. With a final shriek, it dies.

His circling has put the first mirelurk directly between himself and the second. The one still living has to skitter around its dead companion in order to reach him, buying him a few more seconds of firing time as he continues to back away.

This one will be more difficult. It’s already locked in on him as its prey, so it has no need to stand upright looking for him with its face exposed. It might as well be a boulder with legs, and while those legs and its two snapping pincers are vulnerable to laser fire, they’re not nearly fragile enough that he can take it down with a few well-placed shots.

He keeps backing away, shooting steadily at the legs on the creature’s left side in hopes of slowing its pursuit. From the corner of his  eye, he sees Newton scrambling to his feet, having finally thought to draw his gun. Hermann could almost laugh. The man is worse than a child. It’s as if he’s never seen a mutated animal before.

“Aim for the legs if you want to help,” Hermann calls out.

“Coulda figured that one out on my own, thanks!” Newton fires wildly in the mirelurk’s general direction, which is quite alarming. His aim is terrible, and Hermann does not look forward to becoming a victim of friendly fire.

“I changed my mind, stop helping!”
“Oh, shut up—look out!”
Hermann certainly does not need this bunker-dweller’s advice in a fight, but he heeds the warning and ducks under the claw that’s aiming to take his head off. Those pincers are strong enough to crush bone; if they get around any part of him, he’s done for. Luckily, common mirelurks are clumsy enough that they tend to bash rather than snip. If a claw catches him from the side, he’ll feel it, but he’ll still have the chance to walk away.

He switches his target from legs to claw, circling around to the side again. There’s no point trying to slow it down anymore, now that it’s mere inches away. He dodges, and dodges again, a bit too slow to avoid a blow to his shoulder that numbs his arm. His leg is dragging, breath rasping in his throat, and he can’t get off a good enough shot to definitively end this. He’s no good for this kind of fight.

Newton keeps spraying blue laser beams indiscriminately at the mirelurk, most of them diffusing harmlessly across its shell.

“Hey!” he yells. “Hey, hey ugly! Over here, look at me you big weird crab monster! Hey!”

“Are you trying to annoy it to death?” Hermann jabs his cane at the mirelurk’s underside in an attempt to drive it back. He’s not nearly strong enough to push it, when it’s more than twice his weight, but it’s startled enough by the sudden blow to rise up and reveal its face.

“I’m trying to get it off you, and you’re welcome for caring, by the way!”

“Quiet, Newton.” He shifts his stance, raising his pistol to finish the fight, but—damn it all, damn everything—he’s asked too much of his leg already, and before he can get the cane down to brace himself, his knee buckles.

He lets the fall happen. He can take a fall, muscles loose and body angled just so to ease the impact. It jars the breath out of him, but nothing worse than that. And now, looking up at the creature looming over him, he has a clear shot at everything its shell would normally protect.

The mirelurk raises its pincers, to bring them both down on him in a killing blow. Hermann lets go of his cane and, with a steady, two-handed grip, shoots it three times in rapid succession, directly in the face. With a final rusty screech, the mirelurk collapses. On top of him.

Newton, wordlessly bellowing, continues to shoot at the corpse.

“It’s dead,” Hermann says. Newton keeps shooting. “Newton! You got it. It’s dead.”

“Ohhh shit.” Newton reluctantly lets his pistol drop. “Big crab.”

“Yes, big crab.” He strains against the carcass, trying to drag himself out from under it. After a few seconds, Newton notices that he’s being crushed and moves to help. Together, they roll it off of him, and Hermann pulls himself to an upright seated position.

He takes a breath. This wasn’t so bad. A few bruises, but he’s walked away from worse than getting knocked around by a mirelurk. He looks for his cane, only to find Newton already holding it out to him.

“Ah, thank you.” He takes it, but doesn’t try to get up yet. In the absence of further danger, his adrenaline is fading enough to let him feel what he was ignoring before.

“Holy shit,” says Newton. “I mean, you’re welcome. Are you okay? That looked like it hurt! Um—again, if you need it, I’m better at first aid than I am at killing things.”
“You’d almost have to be!” Hermann regrets his outburst when Newton’s face falls, but it’s too late to take it back.
“We don’t have giant crab monsters in the Institute,” Newton mutters. “It’s not like I’ve ever had to shoot anything before.”
“We can work on your aim,” Hermann offers. He’ll certainly need it, if he ever wants to protect himself up here. “That was…not the worst I’ve ever seen, if it was your first time. But!” he adds sharply, when Newton looks a little too pleased with himself. “As I’m sure you noticed, I am not at all suited to close-quarters combat. If I’m going to be at all effective, I need to engage from a distance, which means that you need to keep your voice down and stop alerting everything within a five mile radius to our presence!”
“Sorry,” Newton says meekly. Then he perks up. “Why do you sound like that? ‘Close-quarters combat,’ you talk like you’re in one of those old war movies. But the guys in those movies don’t sound like you. Are you from another country or something?” He gasps in apparent delight. “Are you Canadian?”

“No.” He doesn’t bother to elaborate. The man obviously has no concept of how far Hermann has traveled.

This has been more than enough sitting around. Hermann gathers himself to stand, and Newton instantly stretches out a hand to help. Hermann accepts, this time, without hesitation. He must admit, it’s easier with assistance.

That old ache runs down Hermann’s leg, electric-bright, but it holds his weight. He can push on. Standing now, he pulls his flip lighter out of his pocket.

“Is this really a good time for a smoke break?” Newton scoffs.
“Is this a good time for a survival lesson?” Hermann counters. From his pack, he removes two vodka bottles, one empty and one partially filled, an oil can, and a scrap of cloth.
“What’s this all about?” Newton asks.

“Mirelurks nest. Safer to get the eggs before they hatch.” He goes about the business of assembling a Molotov cocktail while Newton watches.

“Is this, like…a celebratory drink?” Newton guesses. Hermann pauses to look at him in equal parts irritation and confusion.

“You think I would drink this?”

“I dunno, man, I heard you guys do all kinds of weird stuff up here.”

“Good lord,” Hermann says under his breath, and lights the fuse.

“Oh, hell yeah! Let’s fuckin’ go!” Newton yells, quite as if he’s never seen fire before.

“What did I just say about making noise?”

“Let’s gooooo,” Newton whispers.

Hermann scans the riverbank for the telltale rounded shape of more adult mirelurks hidden in the mud, but he spots nothing but a nest of eggs. Good. He can’t manage another mirelurk two-step so soon after the last. With an eye out for Newton’s reaction, he hurls his handmade explosive at the nest.

“Oh, shit!” Newton yells as the bottle shatters and a rush of flame engulfs the nest. A few of the creatures are close enough to their time that the heat of the fire causes them to burst, shrieking, from their shells. Hermann readies his cane to bash any that come his way—no sense wasting his ammunition on something so small—but none of the hatchlings make it past the conflagration before they expire.

“Right,” Hermann says as the flames begin to die down. “I’ll collect the eggs if you’ll butcher the meat.”

“What the fuck,” Newton says.

“What?”

“You—you—you—it exploded! What was that? Teach me how to make one of those!”

“I will, if you’ll tell me why your laser is blue,” Hermann agrees.

“Hell if I know, that’s not my department,” Newton says, to Hermann’s disappointment. Maybe, before they part ways, Newton will let him take that gun apart and get a look at its inner workings, because he’s never seen anything like it and he needs to learn how it functions. If his father could see—

Well. Never mind that. His father is a long way from here, and he wouldn’t likely be interested in studying Institute weaponry, anyway.

“So, uh…” Newton pokes at the dead mirelurk with his toe. “What does ‘butcher’ mean?”

“For crying out loud,” Hermann says. “Where does your food come from down there?”

“The commissary.”

“Of course it does.” Hermann draws his longest knife and rolls one of the mirelurks onto its back. “And what’s it made of?”

“Oh, we have a big hydroponics bay, and we’ve gotten pretty good at synthesizing proteins. Not a big jump between that and growing the Gen-3 synth bodies, y’know?”

“You…” Hermann’s stomach turns. They eat the flesh of those things? The synths that are physically indistinguishable from humans? Hermann has done a great many things that he’s not proud of, but he’s never stooped to cannibalism.

“Oh, dude, no, it’s not like that,” Newton protests. “Come on, no, it’s totally different DNA. It’s derived from cow. You have cows up here? Big furry animal that goes ‘quack’? Not even close to human, I promise.”
Hermann’s eyes narrow. He’s fairly certain that cows were a prewar ancestor of the modern brahmin, and he’s almost positive they didn’t go ‘quack,’ but he has no real evidence to support an argument.
“Just…watch me,” he says. “You won’t find a commissary up here.”

Newton watches him crack open the mirelurk’s claw to get at the best of the meat. To his credit, the man takes to the job rather well when Hermann tells him to try the next one himself.

“Smells weird,” Newton comments as he works. “You really eat this?”

“Not if I can help it.” Mirelurk isn’t kosher, which he does not at all feel like trying to explain, but it sells for good caps. He does well enough trading it when he can. Others eat it happily enough despite its tendency to try to crawl its way back up.

Hermann gathers the remaining eggs while Newton finishes demolishing the mirelurks. He will not admit to being impressed with what is, after all, a task fit for a child, but Newton does pick up the knack rather quickly. That bodes well for him.

By the time they’re ready to go, Hermann can hear a pack brahmin calling in the distance. The same call he’s been hearing all his life. Distinctly not a quack.

It’s likely a trader heading back to Bunker Hill. Maybe Cricket. He sees that madwoman often returning from Diamond City, where she supplies the guards with all the weapons and ammunition they need to fight off the super mutants encroaching on their territory. Cricket is, if not trustworthy, at least reliable, and she’s been fond of Hermann ever since she saw him toss a plasma grenade into a nest of ferals, because, in her words, “there’s no kill like overkill.” She and Newton might get on rather well, actually, but it’s still best if no one sees him while his identifiable tattoos are on display.

“You stay here,” Hermann tells his companion. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to ditch me already?” Newton asks.

“Certainly not! I am a man of my word.”

“I was just teasing, man. I trust you,” Newton says with a soft smile that leaves Hermann feeling unaccountably flustered. He beats a hasty retreat.

The trader turns out to be Lucas Miller, not Cricket, which is even better. Hermann has found work with the armor merchant in the past, pulling guard duty on shorter runs where his difficulty keeping pace presents less of a problem. He’s always found Lucas to be a reasonable sort of man.

“Hermann,” the merchant greets him as he approaches. “Still not bothering to protect your flank, I see.”

“You know my philosophy, Mr. Miller. Concealment is the best defense for me.”

“Until somebody creeps up on you, then you’re down in one. Gonna get yourself killed someday.”

Hermann nods his acknowledgement of the well-meaning advice, but he has no intention of changing his strategy. He never has liked the heavy pieces his older brother favors. Hermann is slow enough as it is; he’d rather not sacrifice what maneuverability he does have just so he can pretend to be a tank.

“I’ve got some mirelurk meat, if you’re buying,” he says.

“Fresh?”

“Hasn’t been dead five minutes.” He shudders at the thought of what becomes of ‘lurk meat when it’s gone off. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

“Sounds good. I can offer carrots if you want ‘em, straight from Hangman’s Alley.”

“The raiders’ nest?”

“No, hadn’t you heard? Some vault dweller cleared it out. Turned it into a workshop with a rooftop garden. There are settlers.” Lucas shrugs, mystified by the actions of those underground weirdos. Hermann can’t say he understands their motivations himself, but if it means he has access to fresh vegetables, he won’t complain.

“I was wondering if you might have any flannel shirts for sale?” Hermann asks as he presents his goods for inspection.

“Hmm, nothing like that.” Lucas frowns over a particularly ragged cut of meat, the first one Newton tried to hack apart. “You need a better knife? I have a whole set here.”
“My knives are fine.”
“Eh, suit yourself.” He thinks for a moment. “I have a leather jacket. Might be a little big on you, but it’s in good condition.”

“Let’s see it.” Hermann’s clothing is all a size or two too big for him, anyway, but if this jacket is bigger than that, it should fit Newton just fine.

It is in good condition, and the asking price is reasonable, so Hermann makes the trade, exchanging his freshly butchered meat for the jacket and a bundle of carrots under the watchful eyes of Lucas’s guards. He would not, under ordinary circumstances, make such a purchase when he could be stocking up on water and microfusion cells instead, but this is a necessity if he’s going to be seen with Newton.

“Nice seeing you again,” Lucas says as they pack their things away. “Business is booming in Bunker Hill. Caravans going out every day. Stop by if you’re looking for work, any time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Hermann agrees. He’s a better scavenger than he is a guard, but the steady caps the traders pay are not unwelcome when times are lean. When he’s on his own again, he’ll almost certainly make his way back.

It’s dark now, the sun having set while he was talking to Lucas, but he finds Newton easily enough. The man is just standing there, right out in the open, staring at the sky with his mouth agape.

“Have you seen this?” Newton whispers, all hushed wonderment.

“Seen what?” Hermann looks up, but sees nothing unusual. Only the evening sky.
“It was blue before. They always told us it would be blue. But then it changed! It went all pink and gold and—there were colors I’ve never seen before! And the, the big—what is it, the sun? It disappeared! And it got dark, and there’s all these tiny lights…” He gestures up at—
“The stars?”

“Is that what stars are? They’re incredible!” There are tears on his face. Something in Hermann softens at the sight of Newton weeping, unashamed, over the beauty of the night sky. He has never met anyone who loves the stars as much as he does, but of course they must seem wonderful to someone who has never seen them before.

“I could tell you about them, if you like,” Hermann says. “I’ve studied—a bit. It—it’s sometimes practical to use the stars for navigation.” He’s almost ashamed to admit his interest, having been told so often, growing up, to put his mind to more useful things. But Newton doesn’t turn his nose up the way Hermann’s father always did.

“Please tell me! I want to know everything! How long will they be here? Do they come and go, or is this long-term?”

“They come out every night.” He can’t help being amused by his companion’s enthusiasm. It’s delightful. But they do have other matters to attend to, no matter how he’d like to give his full attention to the study of astronomy. “We should look for shelter. Once we’re settled in, you can stargaze to your heart’s content.”

“Aw, can’t we stay here?”

“No. We have no cover, and I can’t handle another fight just now.” He can’t even stay on his feet much longer. His leg is aching fiercely now, and his back is sore from hitting the ground, and the bruises the mirelurk’s claw left on his shoulder are coming into full bloom. He needs a rest.

“I could fight,” Newton mutters.

“You absolutely could not. I wouldn’t trust you to take down a radroach. Here.” He thrusts the leather jacket at Newton.

“Is this for me? I could totally fight a radroach. Thanks, man, this is badass! What’s a radroach?”

“I’ll point one out to you the next time I see one.” Hermann plants his cane while Newton slips into the jacket. He doesn’t have much left in him. He’s going to collapse if they don’t reach a stopping place soon.

“This is really cool. You should wear one of these instead of that scratchy-looking thing.” Newton pops his collar, then looks Hermann over with a thoughtful frown. “So where are we going? Not too far?”

“We could rent a room in Bunker Hill, now that you’re covered up, but I’d prefer to save the caps. I know a place nearby that’s usually unoccupied. There’s a bed.”

“And we can still see the sky?” Newton asks.

“We can still see the sky.”

“That’s okay, then.”

They make their way east along the river, slow but steady. Hermann keeps an eye out for danger; Newton keeps his eyes on the stars.

Hermann talks as they walk, describing constellations and explaining the rudiments of astronavigation, then, when Newton doesn’t seem the least bit annoyed by his rambling, moves on to the movement of celestial bodies and the mathematics behind their effects on each other’s paths through space. No one cares for this sort of thing, and he stumbles a bit over his words, expecting to be shut down at any moment. But Newton listens attentively, even breaking in with a few pertinent questions that suggest an understanding of the concepts, unfamiliar though the field of astrometry may be.

“Are you really interested in any of this?” Hermann asks, as they approach the derelict building he’s made use of in the past.

“Yeah, totally! I’m kinda wondering, though, where a guy like you learned so much about math and physics.”

“A ‘guy like me,’” Hermann echoes frostily.

“Yeah, you know. Living up here. It’s not like you went to college or something. I mean, there aren’t any.”

“The prewar facilities still exist, Dr. Geiszler, even if no one is able to make use of them anymore. There are libraries. There are universities, full of textbooks and computers, and—”

“You know how to use a computer?” Newton interrupts, with a skeptical sneer. Hermann bristles.

“I have built computers, powerful enough to run—“ He breaks off. Newton has no need to know the details of his past. “Programming is one of my areas of expertise, as are advanced robotics and energy-based weapons systems. There is a wealth of scientific knowledge in the world, if one merely knows where to look. Now get inside before you attract any more attention.”

Newton, thankfully, goes right through the door Hermann indicates. Hermann follows him into the old shop, seething. The man is irritating. An arrogant lout with no understanding of the world he’s stumbled into, with a grossly inflated sense of his own superiority. And it’s made all the worse by his apparently genuine interest in Hermann’s studies, which no one has ever shown before. That bit…that’s almost painful, to learn that a man can hold an admiration and respect for astrophysics, but not for him.

“There’s a place to sleep at the top of the stairs,” Hermann says, his tone still chilly. “One wall is gone, so you can observe the stars as much as you like.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Newton asks.

Hermann eyes the stairs with distaste, and shakes his head. He’s climbed them before, but it’s no longer possible tonight, with his leg gone so stiff he can barely move it. He can wrap up in his coat and sleep on the floor down here behind the counter, and hope for easier movement in the morning.

“I was, um…I was kind of hoping you could tell me more about celestial mechanics. I mean, if you want.”

“And why would you want to hear all that from someone who hasn’t even been to school?” Hermann asks, more harshly than he intends.

“Uh…Because it’s cool and you’re obviously interested in it? I didn’t mean like you don’t know what you’re talking about, dude, you seem smart, it’s just it must have been hard to learn all this up here, which makes it even more impressive, honestly. I’m trying to compliment you, okay? You don’t have to be so touchy.”

“And you don’t have to be so condescending, but here we are,” Hermann snaps back.

“Ugh, whatever. I’m going up. You can be a little baby about it if you want.” He looks at the stairs, suddenly a bit less sure of himself. “Hey, is this place, like, structurally sound?”

“As much as anything ever is.”

“Oh. Okay. What a ringing endorsement.”

“You’ll be fine,” Hermann says.

“Uh-huh…If it’s fine, how come you’re not coming?”

“You’ll be safer if I can keep an eye on the main entrance,” Hermann says, not untruthfully. He does not, by any means, trust the scavengers residing just across the street, and there’s no telling what else might have moved in since the last time he was here.

“Dude,” Newton whines. “Come on. I thought we were in this together?”

“Forgive me for asking you to climb a flight of stairs on your own.”

“Oh.” Newton’s frown deepens. “Are stairs, like…a problem? For you, I mean?”

“They are not,” he lies.

“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”

“I do not have to prove anything to—”

“Did you get hurt?” Newton interrupts. “When that crab thing knocked you down?”

“That’s hardly—”

“Did I get you injured, asshole?”

“Don’t call me names! And stop talking over me!” Hermann shouts. Then, taking note of Newton’s stricken expression, he straightens up and lowers his voice. “Please, just go upstairs. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“How bad are you hurt?” Newton presses.

“I won’t slow you down.”

“I don’t care if you slow me down, I don’t have anywhere to be! I mean, what is this even about? Are you pissed off because I got you beat down by a monster? I didn’t mean for that to happen, obviously, and it won’t happen again, and if you were smart you’d let me make it up to you. I can help you up the stairs, it’s fine.”

“That is unnecessary! I am not blaming you for the mirelurks,” Hermann says, which is not entirely truthful; if Newton had listened to him and kept his voice down, they wouldn’t have been taken by surprise. But he isn’t holding a grudge over it.

It’s only that he is in dreadful shape now, and the more difficulties he has, the sooner Newton will tire of having to deal with it. He doesn’t mind so much, being left behind by former traveling companions. He’s learned not to expect to get to know anyone long-term. But the way some of them have left has been unfortunate. Like the one who vanished in the night, along with all of Hermann’s water and medical supplies. Or the one who left a bullet lodged in his shoulder. He certainly doesn’t expect Newton to shoot him—even after such short acquaintance, he doesn’t seem to be that sort of man—but still. Still, he’d be a fool to expect too much.

“Doctor, I am very tired, and I should like to get some rest,” Hermann says, in the most measured tone he can affect.
“You’d rest better in a bed. And don’t call me Doctor. Um.” He points a finger in Hermann’s general direction. “Guy.”
“It’s Hermann,” he says with some reluctance. “Hermann Gottlieb.”

“Oh, good, cool. I thought you were being all secretive because it was something weird.” He holds a hand out to Hermann. “Come upstairs with me, Hermann Gottlieb. If you don’t, I’m gonna have to grab whatever bed is up there and drag it down the stairs.”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Hermann mutters.

“What nonsense? I’m doing it!” He takes off running, boots pounding up the stairs as he vanishes out of sight. Hermann stares after him.
“Wait…” For the first time, it occurs to him that there could be something dangerous lurking up there. Likely nothing worse than bugs, but who can say for sure?
With an aggrieved sigh, Hermann grasps the railing and makes an awkward hop onto the first step.

Newton’s footsteps slow from a sprint to a crawl. His voice floats down: “Shit, that’s a lot of stairs!”
He’s breathless. Out of shape. No endurance to speak of. Granted, Hermann is no better, even on better days than this, when the ache in his hip is manageable. As Hermann approaches the first switchback, Newton cries out from above, “Fuck me, are we going to the third floor?”
Yes, that is where the beds are. The people who owned this shop before the war lived in an apartment above it, with a kitchen and sitting area on the second floor and two bedrooms on the third. The double bed in the parents’ room has long since fallen to pieces, but the children’s is still intact. Last time Hermann rested here, he dreamed of his childhood, and woke expecting his brother in the bunk above him. He imagines it will be rather different, sharing the space with Newton.
“Would you—just wait for me?” Hermann calls as he reaches the landing for the second floor. His leg is ready to give out on him. He’s accustomed to pushing himself past his limits when necessary, but he genuinely can’t make it the rest of the way. He’s going to have to stop here.
Newton doesn’t answer. There’s an awful lot of scraping and thumping going on up there. Maybe he can’t hear.

Hermann eyes the distance from the doorway to the couch, and, with a sigh, admits defeat and eases himself down to sit on the steps instead. This is as far as he goes for now.

He rests against the wall, angled to relieve the pressure on his hip, and listens to Newton’s movements in the room above. It seems he needn’t have worried that the space would be occupied. There are no sounds of violence up there. Only heavy footsteps, and something dragging across the floor.

Hermann only needs a moment to catch his breath, but once he’s sitting, it’s all too easy to remain where he is. It’s exhausting enough traveling the wasteland without these additional complications. He’d have been better off listening to his father and staying home, in relative safety even if he did chafe under the many, many, innumerable and unnecessary restrictions his father placed upon him. They’d have had their falling out even if he’d made the effort, but he’s tired enough now to imagine that things might ever have gone differently.

Before he has a chance to feel too morose, there’s an especially loud thump from above, followed by a cry of, “Look out below!”

Hermann turns to look, just in time for a mattress to bounce around the corner, come tumbling down the rest of the stairs and knock him to the floor.

“OHHHH, SHIT!” Newton wails. His footfalls thunder down the stairs while Hermann simply lies there, too stunned to move. “Are you okay? Hermann? Are you dead?!”

“Ow,” Hermann groans. Newton wrestles the mattress off him and tosses it aside.

“Holy shit, I’m sorry! I was trying to help—I didn’t mean to—why were you sitting there?”

“I didn’t expect you to throw it down the stairs,” Hermann grumbles.
“It slipped! Dude, are you okay?”
“No! You hit me with a mattress!”

They stare at each other for a long, silent moment before Newton bites his lip and looks away.

“Yeah, so I guess now you get why no one from the Institute is coming after me. I don’t exactly have a lot of friends back home.”

“Because you beat them to death with furniture?” Hermann asks.

“No, that’s just you. You’re special.”

“Lucky me, then.” He reaches for his cane, only to find that it’s been flung some distance away. Newton offers him a hand up instead.

“I’m really sorry. Can I get you to the couch?”
“Yes,” Hermann sighs. He might as well accept the help, at this point.
Newton gets an arm around him and hauls him upright. The man is quite strong, for someone who must have spent most of his life up until now in a laboratory of some kind. He’ll be able to haul his own gear, at least, which is better than some people can do.

Newton deposits him with little ceremony, and Hermann stretches out with yet another sigh. He hurts all over now, but what’s another set of bruises in the grand scheme of things?

“I promise, not everything I touch turns to shit,” Newton says, with such an earnest look, Hermann is almost tempted to smile at the odd little fellow.
“Let’s hope not,” Hermann says with what severity he can muster. “Tomorrow we’ll be handling live ammunition, and I hope you’ll make a better show of it than you did today.” Newton perks up.
“Really? So you’re not just going to run out on  me, after all that?”

“What, and miss out on a full night’s sleep for once? Sorry, Doctor, I’m afraid I’m much too comfortable to get up and sneak away.”

“Dude, you don’t have to call me Doctor,” Newton mutters.

“Are you not…proud of it?” Hermann asks. He would give a great deal for the opportunity to earn such a title. For his skills to be recognized would mean more than words could say.

“I dunno, I just feel like what you do is more important than what people call you.”

“Mm. Well, if you’d like to do something…” Hermann rummages through his pack until he finds his laser tripwire, which he hands to Newton. “Unfold that and lay it across one of the stairs. Flip the switch to activate it. If anything tries to come up here in the night, it’ll set off an alarm.”

“Oh, this is cool! Did you build this?” Newton asks, turning it over in his hands to examine what he can see of the mechanism.
“It’s nothing special. They’re not that uncommon. My only real innovation was making it portable.” Despite his protests, Hermann can’t help the swell of pride that buoys him up, just a bit. He does have a way with lasers of all kinds.
“Man, you would fit right in with the Institute. Put you in Advanced Systems, you’d be running the place in a week.” Newton flops down on his belly to set up the tripwire.

While he does, Hermann removes the other necessary supplies from his bag. His parka, to use as a blanket. One of the Institute meal bars. And his Vault-Tec lunchbox, packed with all the necessary chems he keeps back for himself, not for trade. He can save his few remaining stimpaks for more serious injuries down the line, but he’s taken enough hits today to warrant a dose of Med-X, so he removes one syringe from the box and puts the rest away. He’s running low—he’s always running low—but there’s nothing for it. Pain management is a necessity.

“Do you need a hand with that?” Newton asks.

“I’m fine. You go on and stargaze. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Newton wanders over to the open wall and leans out to gaze at the sky. “It really is so cool,” he says. “Will you tell me more about how all this works?”
“Of course.” He can talk about the stars until the Med-X makes him too drowsy to go on. If that’s what Newton wants from him, he’s happy to oblige.
But first, he unwraps his meal packet and takes a careful taste.

It’s like nothing he’s ever experienced before. He has no desire to admit it out loud, but Newton is right. This is delicious.

39 Ration Bars Remaining

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

He dreams—

“There are too many!”

—of a time long past, a place miles away from here—

“Hermann! Take the baby and run!”

—a gang of super mutants, a band of human scavengers—

“Keep him quiet, and don’t let them see you.”

—the crack of rifles and the shriek of lasers—

“No matter what happens, don’t come out.”

—and the slow, heavy footsteps of a hungry beast, sniffing out their hiding place—

“Hermann!”

He wakes to hands on his shoulders, and reacts without conscious thought, drawing his laser pistol and pressing its muzzle into the other man’s ribs.

“Whoa, hey, take it easy!” Newton squeaks. “You’re having a nightmare!”

Ah. Yes. Nightmare. Just a dream. And Newton—Newton tried to wake him. With an effort, Hermann relaxes, and slips his gun back into its holster.

“Do you sleep with your weapons on?” Newton asks.

“Not all of them.” He passes a hand over his face, fighting for control. Let him not sit here, shaking with fear in front of his new traveling companion. Calm. Let him be calm.

“That sounded really bad. Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?” Newton asks as he settles himself back on the floor.

“Certainly not.” He becomes aware that Newton is trying to press a whiskey bottle into his hand. “Where did you get that?”

“Found it.”

Oh. He found it. Well, the man has a scavenger’s eye. That’s good to know.

“You keep it,” Hermann says. Prewar whiskey is too rare to waste.

“You look like you could use a drink.”

“I…” Hermann shakes his head. “It’s the Med-X. Makes dreams more vivid.” That, and thinking of his family just before he went to sleep. They were on his mind. That’s all.

“I have nightmares sometimes,” Newton says. “About the other labs. The ones that aren’t as benign as hydroponics and biomedical research.” He chuckles softly. “That’s probably not all that scary compared to giant crabs and shit. What do you dream about?”

“Super mutants,” Hermann says flatly.

Newton says nothing, frowning slightly, moonlight gleaming off his glasses in the dark. Belatedly, Hermann remembers that there are only synths and humans in the Institute. Newton won’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

“Greenskins, some call them. They’re bigger and stronger than any human, and they run in packs. Not very bright, fortunately, but they can be dangerous. You don’t want to run into them if you can avoid it.”

“Are they common?” Newton asks.

“Awfully, yes. Not so much on the west coast, where they come from, but we suspect the ones that made their way out here have found some way to propagate themselves. There’s too many to account for, otherwise. You’ll find them often in the ruins. Places they remember, from when they were human.”

Newton uncaps the bottle and takes a swig. He won’t be saving it to trade, then.

“Sure you won’t have some?” Newton asks, rough-voiced from the alcohol burning its way down his throat. Hermann smiles in spite of himself, and holds out his hand. Newton passes it over.

The stuff tastes like robot fuel, but a drink is a drink.

“Do you have alcohol down there?” Hermann asks.

“Yeah. Not like this, though. I have a still in my office.”
“Do you? I had—” He breaks off, annoyed with himself for wanting to open up to this strange man.
“Had what?” Newton takes the bottle back. Hermann watches him: a faint suggestion of movement in the dark, followed by a slosh and a swallow.

“I…We settled in one spot for a while, when I was a teenager. I thought it would be a good idea to brew what I optimistically referred to as wine under my bed. I had to keep it a secret from my older brother—he’d have told Father—but I got my younger brother to help me. In the end, our sister decided what we’d made wasn’t fit for human consumption, so she confiscated it.” He frowns. “In retrospect, I think she drank it herself.”

“You have a big family?” Newton asks.
“Had,” Hermann corrects. He reaches for the bottle, and, once he’s had a fortifying gulp, adds, “Two brothers, one sister. Dietrich, Karla, and Bastien.”
“Sorry for your loss,” Newton whispers.

“What? Oh—no, they’re not dead. Not as far as I know, anyway.” He’ll likely never see them again, but they were fine when he left them. “Our father won’t let anything happen to them.”

“Is it hard, being away from your family?” Newton asks.

“No, not really.” He’s glad Newton can’t see his face in the dark. His voice sounds perfectly steady.

“I guess I’ll never be allowed to go back to the Institute,” Newton says softly. “Unless they decide they have to catch me and lock me up. They do consider it a crime, running away, stealing Institute secrets and giving them to the surface dwellers. I don’t know, though, maybe they’d just shoot me. My dad and my uncle…they’ll be okay without me, but…”

“Sorry,” Hermann says. He would like to say something encouraging, but there’s nothing to say. He and Newton are, in a way, equally far from home. They’ve made irrevocable choices. They might not be the wrong choices, but there is no going back for either of them.

“Hey, y’know, whatever.” Newton flops back on his mattress with an explosive sigh. “You feel like you can go back to sleep now?”

“Yes, of course. Sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s all good. Do it again tomorrow night, we’ll share another drink.”

“It’s a date,” Hermann says, before he gives himself a chance to remember that this odd little fellow did not come all the way up here in search of romance. Damn the whiskey, damn the Med-X, and damn his own tiredness for relaxing his inhibitions this much.

Fortunately, Newton has nothing more to say.
  
When he wakes again, properly, in the morning, Hermann is remarkably well rested for having spent the night in close proximity to a stranger. A small part of him is pleasantly surprised that he hasn’t had his throat cut in the night. One never can be quite sure of these things, even with a man who seems endearingly harmless.

Newton is already up, hanging halfway out the window to look at the street below. He isn’t wearing his jacket, and the stretch of the thin white shirt across his back is quite distracting for the few moments before Hermann remembers his tattoos.

“What are you looking at?” he asks. If it’s the scavengers, he’d better not be letting them see him.

Newton turns to face him, smiling brighter than the morning sun.

“You’re finally awake! I thought you’d sleep all day. You must have been exhausted, man.” He bounces over to sit on the end of the couch. Hermann draws his feet up out of the way. “There’s a little robot trundling around out there. I can’t tell what it’s doing. You hungry?”

“Mm, a bit, yes.” He pauses to cover a yawn. It’s been ages since he’s slept like this, even with nightmares to interrupt his rest. “Is the robot a Mr. Handy?”

“Maybe? I dunno, I’ve seen diagrams, but never the real thing.”

“Do not mention that to others.” Everyone in the world is familiar with the Mr. Handy model. Everyone except, apparently, members of the Institute. “That Mr. Handy is the lookout for the USS Constitution. I wouldn’t point any weapons at him, but he’s nothing to worry about as long as you don’t present a threat.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Newton says. “What’s that mean?”

Oh. Of course.

“The Constitution is a ship. A, er, a kind of boat. Do you know what that is?”

“I know about ships! I have all of Captain Cosmos on holodisc back home. The TV show and the radio drama, they’re great. I heard there used to be comics, but I guess they were probably all destroyed in the war.”

“No, they weren’t, I—” Hermann breaks off, embarrassed, as Newton’s face lights up.

“You’ve read them?”

“W-well…all but the final issue,” he admits. “I’ve never been able to find a copy. My brother Bastien has my collection now, or else I’d let you read them.”

“I knew you were cool!” Newton cheers.

Hermann can only shake his head. He had to restart that comic book collection three times as a child, because his father kept finding them and throwing them away. Comic books are frivolous trash, and space stories are nonsense. He has been told many times that he needs to be more serious. He has never been told that he’s “cool.”

“At any rate,” he says, pulling himself up to sit properly, “it isn’t a spaceship. It’s the sort that belongs in the ocean.”

“We’re near the ocean?” Newton asks.

“No, not really.” Sort of, but—no. They’re near enough, but he is absolutely not venturing one step further east, not in this area. They might visit the coast to the north before their time together ends, though. He’s quite sure Newton would like to see a proper beach, but his view of the ocean will have to wait for now.

In the meantime, Newton is handing up his pack, pressing it into Hermann’s hands rather than opening it himself, which is a relief. Hermann will grant this man some leeway for his ignorance, but he will not tolerate anyone going through his things, not even done in plain sight.

“Eager to be going?” Hermann asks.

“I mean, yeah. I have a whole world to see. But you have time to eat first,” he chirps. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” And when Hermann doesn’t move to open his pack, he whines, “Come onnnn, Hermann! Eat up so we can go!”

“‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day’? Who told you that?”

“My dad,” Newton mumbles with an awkward shrug. “He—he’s not a nutritionist, he’s not even in BioScience, he works in Cultural Preservation, but it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He raised a kid, and that kid was me, so it couldn’t have been easy.”

“I’m sure your father is a very intelligent person,” Hermann agrees. He’s just wondering how many meals they eat down there, and what makes breakfast so much more important than the rest. He’d have thought it would be the one at the end of the day. There are so many dangers in the dark, and it’s easier to stay alert when one isn’t distracted by gnawing hunger.

“What about you?” Newton asks. “Did you have parents?”

Hermann decides it’s a good time to eat, after all. He busies himself opening his pack, finding a ration bar, carefully unwrapping it.

“My father is living to the south of here, in the Capital Wasteland. My mother died years ago.” He bites into the bar, hoping to signal an end to the conversation. He does not wish to speak of either of his parents.

“Sorry, man, that’s rough,” Newton says.

“Mm.” He had two living parents until he was twelve years old, a more secure upbringing than many can claim. It was difficult to watch his mother die, but that was a long time ago. He can’t weep over it anymore.
“I have a mom,” Newton says awkwardly. “I don’t know her very well.”“Oh,” Hermann says, with his mouth full.
“So, um. Yeah. Can we go look at the ship?”
“Not just yet. Last time I was here, the captain—well, conscripted me into what remains of the United States Navy, if you want to get technical about it.” He smiles, just a bit. If circumstances were different, he might have liked being a sailor. “They’ve tasked me with retrieving a set of turbopump bearings for their fuel system. I don’t like to return empty-handed.”
“Oh. Well, let’s get those, then!”

Oh, no, that will not be happening. Hermann knows of three locations where the turbopump bearings might be found, none of which he wants to visit with Newton by his side. The easiest to get to is in the old Corvega assembly plant near Lexington, but that’s a raider stronghold. Newton isn’t ready for that just yet. There might be one hidden in an old army base, further west than Hermann has ever ventured. He has only a vague idea of its location, somewhere near the Glowing Sea, and he has no intention of going there. And then there’s the General Atomics factory, which is too near the airport for his liking. He wants to visit that one least of all.

“Let’s get your shooting up to snuff before we try any difficult retrieval missions,” Hermann suggests. With any luck, he can teach Newton the basics of stealth as well, and they can have some hope of getting through the Corvega plant undetected.

“Okay, fine. So where are we actually going today, like the library or something?”

“You are not ready for the Boston Public Library!” Hermann snaps, which sets off a giggling fit in his companion. What a peculiar little man. Hermann certainly can’t see anything amusing about wanting to avoid that death trap. “We’ll stop at Bunker Hill, if you think you can avoid saying anything incriminating, and see if anyone has any work for us.”

“‘Work’? You are so uncool! I completely changed my mind about you, dude.”

“Then you’re free to leave at any time, but I’m going to keep earning caps so I don’t starve to death after you’re gone.”

“All work and no play, dude. You’d be fine if you did one thing for fun,” Newton sighs. He frowns when Hermann rewraps the remainder of his nutrition bar and puts it away. “You’re not gonna eat that?”

“I’ve had enough.” He stretches, testing his limits before he tries to get up. He’s still sore, after yesterday, but the stiffness should ease with movement, so long as he doesn’t push his pace.

Newton offers him a hand. As they’re both sitting at the same level, Hermann dismisses it as unnecessary and heaves himself up on his own.

“We’ll have to get past those scavengers to reach Bunker Hill,” he says. “I’d prefer if they didn’t get a look at us. You might be all right, but if they see me, they’ll open fire.”

Newton laughs, disbelieving.

“I stole something from them,” Hermann says.

“Oh—you mean—they’d actually kill you?” He looks unaccountably distressed at the thought. Of course, there must be very little chance of anyone in the Institute shooting anyone else. There is no outgroup to incite violence, unless one counts the synths, which are entirely under the humans’ control. Or so the rumors indicate.

“Don’t forget your jacket,” Hermann says. He doesn’t care about synthetics. He’s never wanted anything to do with them. But he does care about humans, and he’ll do what he can to keep this man safe.
  
Hermann has a few odds and ends he hasn’t traded yet, broken items that wouldn’t have interested Lucas Miller, but can fetch a better price from the junk dealer in the market. Deb will repair them and sell them for a tidy profit, which he could do himself, but he doesn’t often have the time.

While Hermann is unloading the last of his goods, Newton wanders over to the radio that someone has tuned to the classical station. That puts him in conversational range of Old Man Stockton, who doesn’t do any trading himself, these days, just manages his caravans from a comfortable chair. Hermann keeps an ear out, but Newton doesn’t talk to him about anything but the music.

Hermann comes away with as many microfusion cells as he can get away with, plus a few tatoes and a freshly killed squirrel. He calls to Newton to follow him out to the farm.

“But I love this song,” Newton argues, pointing to the radio.

“They’ll play it again. Wherever this signal is coming from, their selection is limited. It’s on a loop.”

“I know.” Newton trots up to him and whispers, “That’s my mom.”

“What?” The music swells, a woman’s voice rising, singing in a language no one around here has ever been able to identify.

“They rerecorded a bunch of stuff before I was born, really old stuff from way before the war. Mom did all these old opera pieces. She’s a singer. My dad’s a pianist. I’m pretty sure that project is how they got together.”
“Are you telling me this radio station is…” He doesn’t know how to say it without attracting attention. No one has ever been able to track down the source of the broadcast, but consensus is that it’s automated, pre-war. He never would have imagined it was sent out by the Institute.
“My Uncle Illia maintains the signal,” Newton says. “It’s practically one of the only projects the board has ever approved that doesn’t have any, you know, other applications. He just does it because he loves music.”

“You should not be talking about this.” Fortunately, no one is close enough to listen, but they still need to be more careful.

“It’s just music, dude.”

“Newton, shut up.” He leads the man to the communal cooking station, conveniently located near the crops all nestled in along the inside of the settlement’s wall. He has always admired this town’s defensible structure. It still stands, even as the whims of raiders and wildlife shape and reshape the rest of the Commonwealth.

“Do you guys just have open flames, like, everywhere?” Newton asks as Hermann sits down at the cooking station.

“Not everywhere. Now, pipe down. Do you want to learn to cook, or do you want to make yourself useful filling bottles at the pump?”

“Is that a thing we need to do?”

“Yes, Newton,” Hermann sighs. “You can’t trust most water sources up here, but water pumps in towns like this are generally safe, and Ms. Kessler won’t charge us for its use.”

“Okay, I’ll do that, then—and you don’t have to be such a grouch about it!”

Newton wanders off with Hermann’s collection of glass bottles, while Hermann sets to work making a batch of squirrel stew. Handy as those ration bars are, he intends to supplement them with as many other, standard meals as possible. The meal bars will keep, and squirrel will not.

Newton has a bit of trouble with the pump at first, so much so that Deb and Kay’s little girl senses an easy mark and comes wandering over to “help” him.

“He’s with me,” Hermann calls to her.

The girl—an accomplished grifter even at such a young age—pouts and rolls her eyes, but nods. She knows Hermann, and she’ll respect his companions. She shows Newton how to work the pump, properly, as if out of the goodness of her heart. He gives her a pack of bubblegum for her trouble.

“Your friend is stupid,” little Meg informs Hermann as she passes him on her way back to the marketplace. Hermann looks at the man now happily filling bottles. He’s pumping in rhythm with the song on the radio, singing some kind of half-rhyming nonsense that barely follows the tune.

“Maybe a bit,” Hermann agrees. But there’s something appealing about him just the same.
  
After Newton eats nearly all of the squirrel stew Hermann has made, because “this is fucking amazing, my guy, incredible, how is this even possible, oh my god,” they leave Bunker Hill and make their way northwest, along the river. There was no work for them in town, so they’re on their own, wandering out to see what they can find.

That stew would have lasted Hermann two days if he were on his own.

Clearly Newton does not grasp the concert of moderation.

“Well, maybe you need a little less moderation,” Newton scoffs. “Maybe you should loosen up and let yourself enjoy something for once in your life.”

Hermann swats Newton’s ankle with his cane, just hard enough to make a soft thump against his boot.

“You’re right, I enjoyed that very much,” he says.

“You are so violent!” Newton complains. “Going around breaking people’s legs like a savage.”

“Quiet,” Hermann says. Newton winces.

“Sorry, ‘savage’ was a shitty word to use. I don’t actually think you’re—”

“Newton, quiet. There are raiders ahead.”

“Oh, really? How can you tell?”

What? How can he tell? He can hear gunfire, that’s how.

“Just stay behind me.”

He ducks behind a low wall that once marked the boundary of some prewar family’s front garden, listening as the sounds of combat move closer. With luck, the two groups will pick each other off before he and Newton have to do anything. He lies flat on the ground, sniper rifle at the ready, peering around the corner of the wall through his scope with as little of himself exposed as possible. Newton crouches down behind him, resisting, for the moment at least, the temptation to pop up and have a look.
“Keep your head down,” Hermann reminds him, just in case. “That building over there used to be the BATFL Regional Headquarters,” he whispers. “That’s the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Lasers. You can imagine what must be inside. Raider gangs have been breaking themselves against this building’s defenses for at least as long as I’ve been in the Commonwealth, and likely much longer than that, but I’ve never heard of anyone making it past the laser turrets in the entryway.” Most often, two gangs will meet outside, like today, and wipe each other out. And the mysterious treasure stays hidden for another day.
“Why don’t we try to get in there?” Newton asks.

Hermann just shakes his head, watching the combatants move closer. If no one has broken through this security in over two hundred years, the two of them aren’t going to crack it in an afternoon.

He can see flashes of laserfire in the distance, and hear the mechanical sounds of repurposed robot parts and, if he’s not mistaken, a single functioning scrapbot. Hermann smiles. How kind of them to bring him a robot.

“You’re about to meet your first Rust Devils. Don’t try to take them on yourself until you’re much more sure of yourself. They wear the heaviest armor I’ve seen outside of the Brotherhood of Steel.” He pauses, scope shifting to mark each potential enemy even as they begin to fall. This fight won’t take long. “They’re up against Gunners. A highly trained military force, but disorganized, and their armor leaves something to be desired.” He watches a high caliber round tear through a Gunner private’s chest in a spray of gore that terrifies the other conscripts into scattering. Laughing, the remaining Rust Devils pick them off.

One Gunner runs straight for Hermann’s position, pursued by the tottering scrapbot.

“Excuse me a moment.” This is his cue.
He’s on his feet before Newton has a chance to ask what he’s doing, frightening the Gunner even further as he pops up from behind cover. She veers away from him, and her change in velocity brings her within range of the scrapbot’s sawblade arm, which lops her head off neatly at the shoulders.
Well. That’s something to watch out for.

Its other arm is a nail gun, and Hermann is too close for that to properly target him, so he keeps his focus on the spinning blade as he angles in. Nails ping wildly off the ground behind him. It’s a shame this thing couldn’t have been used for construction instead of combat; it could have lived a long and happy life.

“Hermann, what are you doing?!” Newton shrieks as the sawblade swings a hair closer to him than he really might prefer.

“Working,” he calls. “Stay down.” A scattering of gunfire emphasizes his point. Newton falls back with another, less coherent shriek.

No matter. If he’s screaming, he’s still alive. And the scrapbot’s body is between Hermann and the Rust Devils, so they can fire all they like without doing him any harm. He works his way along the robot’s flank, dodging its attempts to slice him to ribbons—he has its range of motion calculated, and its movements too precisely timed to be overly concerned. Within seconds, he’s reached its unprotected port.

These scrapbots are all cobbled together from prewar hardware, designed to be accessed by devices that are no longer as ubiquitous as they once were. So Hermann has made his own.
He plugs it into the port and flips the power switch. Instantly, the scrapbot stops swinging as its system drinks in lines of pre-prepared code. Hermann waits for its chirp of confirmation, then unplugs his drive.
The scrapbot rotates one hundred and eighty degrees at the waist, and runs back to its former masters, already beginning to glow at the joints as a series of cascading failures trigger its self-destruct.

Hermann ducks behind the wall just before it explodes.

“Holy shit!” Newton yells. “Who are you?”

“No one of consequence.” He listens. Not so much as a whimper indicates the presence of any survivors of either the Rust Devils or the Gunners.

They sit on the ground together, both of them leaning against the wall, very nearly leaning against each other, and take a moment to catch their breath.

“Hermann,” Newton says. There’s a bit of a tremor in his voice. “Hermann, I…” He leans sideways to reveal a nail embedded in his leg, shot right through his jeans. “It got me in the ass,” he says.

“That’s your thigh,” Hermann points out reasonably.

“Don’t you try to school me on anatomy! I know anatomy, and that robot shot me in the ass!”

“At least it didn’t hit anything vital,” Hermann says, still reasonably.

“Are you kidding me? This is the juiciest ass on the surface of the earth, and now it’s  maimed for life!” He pokes at the nail, and whines in the back of his throat. “Ow, Hermann, for real, man, what do I do? I think—I think—I think I need a tetanus shot!”
“Well, take those off, then,” Hermann says. He has no idea what a tetanus shot is, but he knows how to treat a basic puncture wound.
“I’m sorry, are you telling me to drop trou?”

“I didn’t think you’d have a problem with it.” He raises an eyebrow and waits.

“Okay, but, um…” Newton picks at the nail and winces again. “Can you like help me or whatever? It’s really in there.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Hermann says.

“Hey! I’ve never had a nail in my ass before, okay?”

“Leg.”

“Ass!” Newton yells . “I have been nailed in the ass!”

“Fine, if this is your first time, I’ll be gentle,” Hermann snaps.  His tone is not at all gentle, but his words are enough to catch Newton’s attention. The man stops his dramatics and simply stares, cheeks flushing a vivid red.

“Um,” he says.

“Brace yourself.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he plucks the nail out of Newton’s leg.

“NOT GENTLE!” Newton bellows.

“You’ve got to stop screaming, or you’ll bring something else down on us, and you’ll end up shot with something much worse than this.” Hermann tosses the nail aside and waits for Newton to remove his jeans.

“Mannnnnnnnn…” Newton whines quite a bit, but he squirms out of his jeans, to reveal yet more tattoos creeping out from the below his boxer shorts, decorating his legs to mid-thigh.

Hermann pays no attention to the artwork. What matters is the wound, which is not too deep and hardly bleeding at all. It’ll be the work of a moment to clean and bandage it.

“Lie down and try not to move too much. This is going to hurt.”

“You’re a terrible doctor,” Newton says, but he complies.

“I’m not a doctor.”
“Great, okay, fantastic, thanks for the reminder. Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot? The shooting? And the killing?” Newton asks, cringing away from Hermann’s fingers as he attempts to examine the wound.
“I usually manage not to get hit. And they’re firing bullets, mostly. The nail gun was a surprise.” He determines that there’s no debris trapped in the wound, so there’s nothing to do but flush it with alcohol. “Don’t kick me.”

“Why? Oh.” Newton flinches when he sees Hermann uncapping his bottle of medicinal vodka. “Um, um, talk to me, okay? What did you do to that robot?”
“I hacked it, of course.”
“That fast?”

“I wrote the program for it ages ago. Now it’s just a matter of plugging it in. I could do quite a bit more if I had a Pip-Boy, but no one has access to those things except for vault dwellers.” He pours the vodka over Newton’s leg. Newton yowls and jerks away. “I knew a pair of vault dwellers in the Capital Wasteland,” Hermann continues blithely. “That was ten years ago. Very different circumstances.”

“Did you melt their legs off with acid?” Newton wails.

“Your legs are fine.” He applies the bandage, then gives Newton a pat on the hip. “All done. Congratulations, you survived.”

“No thanks to you, you monster!” He sighs. “Okay, maybe a little thanks to you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hermann says.

Newton pulls his jeans back up, but makes no attempt to stand, simply lies on the ground looking up at the cloudless sky. Hermann looks back the way they’ve come. Not even out of sight of Bunker Hill and they’ve already been halted by what should have been a minor inconvenience. At this rate, they’ll never make it anywhere they need to be.

But he can take a minute or two before he goes and loots the bodies. Maybe, since they’re so close to town, they can bring some of the heavier armor pieces back to trade. And some of the dead Gunners will have more fusion cells for him, if they haven’t burst from the heat of the explosion. It’s a shame Newton had to get shot, but at least it isn’t serious, and now they’ll have a nice haul.

“You’ll be all right,” Hermann says. He can afford to be a bit kinder, now that everything is done.

“I can’t believe I got shot in the—” Newton  frowns. “Leg.”

“Everyone gets shot at, one time or another. You’re in good company.” He could show off all his own scars, but he doubts it would make Newton feel any better. “Now that you know what it’s like, I suppose you’ll be wanting to go home,” Hermann adds, with an uncomfortable stab of something like regret.

“What, are you kidding? Nothing this exciting ever happened to me before, and nobody in the you-know-where was ever this nice to me. I’m never going back! They couldn’t force me down at gunpoint! They’d have to drag me away kicking and screaming. Mostly screaming, to be honest.”

“You are good at that,” Hermann agrees.
“You’re a dick.”
Yes, that’s true enough. Hermann is well aware of his own lack of what one might call social graces. And if the people in the Institute are bad enough that Newton still considers him “nice” in comparison? No wonder the man doesn’t want to go back.

So they’ll be spending a bit more time together. At least Newton has the courage to persevere. But hopefully, the next time they run into trouble, he’ll actually remember to shoot back instead of just screaming about it.

They’re going to have a lot of work to do.
  
38.5 Ration Bars Remaining