Chapter Text
The air is rancid.
That’s the only way that he can describe it.
Something acrid and foul has tainted the wind here, he’s sure of it.
Each breath he takes in is burning and sharp, painfully scouring the tender flesh of his throat as it crawls its way down into his lungs. There’s nothing wrong that he can see, no noticeable difference that he can attribute to the constant stinging in his chest. But each intake of air feels like a test of endurance. He can feel an accumulation of impurities and sickness slowly building up along his insides, rows of miniscule teeth biting and scraping along walls of inflamed tissue. He feels raw and sore from within, like something is methodically dissolving inside of him.
Even the air is trying to eat him alive.
Digesting him slowly. Acid stripping layers of fat and cells bit by bit. Converting a living, breathing body into nourishment, into food, for something else.
Shaun’s getting used to it, he thinks.
Maybe it’s the radiation? He’s never encountered it before, wouldn’t know what it felt like beforehand. Though this far away from the city, he can’t see anything near him that could be toxic or dangerous.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t still there though.
The ground itself is probably tainted with it. Years past, and the world is still sick.
Still alive, but painfully so.
Shaun’s…. getting used to it.... he thinks?
He’s out in the open, but just barely. Still dangerous even if he’s only on the outskirts of the city, you never know what or who could be lurking nearby. There’s suitable distance between himself and the few scattered, crumbling structures that may have been houses at one point in time, but he’d rather not get closer just in case.
The cracked dirt he stands on is arid and brittle, too light in color to be healthy, and splotched irregularly with stalks of dry grass and unearthed roots. A couple gnarled and gangly trees stretch grotesquely from the ground, boney fingers desperately reaching upwards towards a surprisingly blue and pleasant sky.
They had trees in the institute. They didn’t look like this though.
Back there, the trees were healthy and lush. Well-nourished in their aesthetically placed plots, shiny green leaves providing a pleasant pop of organic color against the stark white walls of the laboratories. Why couldn’t nature grow like this naturally anymore? These ones are hard and twisted, large swaths of wood either stripped bare or scarred by whatever was passing by. Very reminiscent of the area’s people, he supposed. Though he’d rather not find out what exactly caused those particularly large gashes in the tree’s bark.
Seeing those markings on the trees was almost enough to warrant vacancy. Hell, almost everything in the commonwealth gave rise to scrutiny as far as he was concerned. But he supposed the quiet atmosphere at least meant that whatever clawed its way through here had already long since passed, meaning he could afford to take in the much-needed lack of immediate threat in relative peace. It’s only for a few minutes anyway, a small break, and this is as peaceful as it gets out here. Might as well enjoy the horrid sight of ugly trees and the caustic feel of “fresh” air while he still can.
He is still being followed after all.
Since the encounter with X6, Shaun has been much more conscientious in his actions, hyperaware of his surroundings at all times now. From the most subtle and gentle of noises, to the almost imperceivable shifts in atmosphere and tone, he notices it, and his heart races in dreaded anticipation. Eyes bulge against the stinging air, searching, peering out from behind walls and alleyways. Running, hiding, waiting.
He can’t risk being found again.
He had slipped up only once, gotten too comfortable, stayed in one location for too long. And he paid for it, almost got caught.
He needs to remain vigilant at all times, he knows this. He won’t make this mistake a second time. He can’t afford too. Not when it’s not just his life on the line.
He’s trying not to think about Danse again.
Everyone knows you can’t fight against coursers. Can’t really unrun them either. The best one can do is learn how to evade them like he did, sneak past their patrol and cover your tracks as best you can until you’re in the clear. The institutes best are manufactured for perfection, results guaranteed every time.
Shaun had ran until he couldn’t hear the fighting anymore, but that hadn’t been very far.
The breeze picks up slightly, stinging across his face. He doesn’t want to sit here anymore.
He’s still far from where he needs to be, too far to get comfortable, but he’s still taking the long route in the hopes of keeping X6 out of the know. The last thing he needs is to walk blindly into an ambush in waiting, or worse, to arrive on the scene and find his only hope for the commonwealth dead. He just hopes that Danse didn’t let his name slip, he doesn’t want X6 to get to him too.
The dirt crunches beneath his boots as he treks back towards the city, coarse and brittle like unpolished grass. It’s loud, disturbingly and dangerously so, but he doesn’t see anything around him. Each crunch of earth breaks apart the silence of the area like a beacon, and he flinches against the change in tone.
It’s so much more quiet here than the institute. He didn’t realize it at first, not coherently, compared to the commonwealth, the laboratories held more evidence of life than they had any right to. The low, monotonous humming of vents and air pumps, the light tapping of soft padded heels against slick, polished floors, the light murmur of politely delicate voices echoing off the white tiled walls, were a cacophony compared to the long stretches of barren and empty lands that lay thick and heavy as far as he could see in every direction. Dead is the first word that comes to mind. An obvious absence of life that used to be present here but isn’t anymore. There’s the knowledge, the distinct feeling, that it wasn’t always this quiet here. It wasn’t ever meant to be.
The silence here is deafening.
As much as he hates it, loathes it in fact, the lack of noise can at least reassure him in the most macabre sense that he is in fact alone here. “Safe”, somewhat. For now. He knows coursers can be quiet, deathly so, but the natural inhabitants of the commonwealth it seemed were not. At least X6 wouldn’t bite if he saw him.
Ahead of him, that mass grave of steel and stone lay unnaturally still, massively imposing. Against the backdrop of barren land and unclouded skies the city stands out ominously and disturbingly abnormal. Shaun has been trying to muster the courage to enter for at least a day now, skirting cautiously around the edges of roads, but something is holding him back from going inside.
Something feels wrong about the city. He isn’t quite sure what it is, but something is continuously repelling him against traversing within it. A feeling of danger seems to emit like a siren from somewhere deeper in the concrete jungle, warning him to stay away.
It’s too crowded, yet too empty at the same time.
It’s probably just nerves. The constant vigilance isn’t doing any favors to his health, aside from keeping him alive that is. Although he’s doing it in his best interest, he might be letting himself get carried away with his own thoughts now. Caution can very easily slip into paranoia, something that can actually be detrimental to his progress rather than aid in it, but it’s hard to quell the feelings of intimidation when he’s standing in the shadow of the largest building he’s ever seen in his life. He knew the skyscrapers would live up to their namesake, in an abstract sense; but seeing it, actually standing beneath it for the first time, was something else entirely.
Just letting his eyes trail up to the very precipice where the buildings touch the sky is making him dizzy and afraid. These could have been considered a feat at one time, a symbol of mankind’s conquest over the natural elements and decrees of the world, a marvel of engineering and willpower to create unnatural monuments that shone victoriously in all their constructed glory. But to Shaun, their marvel had faded into dread. Dread that these marvelous constructs, cruelly abandoned and neglected for years, would suddenly collapse over top of him. So powerful was their making, their undoing would surely be just the same. The tips of the unyielding concrete seem to sway slightly in his vision, rocking gently against the breeze like leaves of grass, teasing the notion of suddenly and sharply descending back to the earth. Why did God knock down the tower of Babel?
He wants to slap himself for this, but he settles for shaking his head vigorously. Avoiding the area is just going to make things more difficult in the long run, he can’t afford to get lost in his own thoughts and overthink it like this. He already wasted enough time in this place anyway, he needs to get going. He knows the city is his best bet at keeping a hard to trace profile; So easy to get lost in, so many places to hide.
He might not be the only thing hiding in there though.
Forcing himself to keep his eyesight level ahead of him, Shaun set a cautious pace along the road into the city.
The pavement is cracked and sun-bleached, irregularly pocked with potholes and littered with fallen debris. Each step kicks up a small cloud of loose soil that blew in off the road. Rusted metallic shells lay stripped of parts amidst piles of broken glass, once vibrant paint now washed and grossly peeling off in strips. The steel titans surrounding him encompass his vision, a seemingly endless series of fragile walls on the brink of utter devastation. Despite technically being outside, the feeling that he is now within something, cornered, keeps Shaun’s movements light and quick.
The urge to check his map for reference is continuous. Shaun must have memorized the crude layout thoroughly at this point, but something is tugging at his mind, insisting that he inspect it just one more time to be completely sure. Securely concealed within his pocket, folded carefully to ensure minimal wear and tear overtime, the hand drawn paper map was far from foolproof, but it was all he had to work with at this time. Weeks had been spent sneaking glances at monitors he wasn’t supposed to be near, trying to commit to memory the topography of the commonwealth and putting it to paper as thoroughly as possible. It was rough in the best of circumstances, but it was better than nothing, even if he was technically still walking blind through this. The map was just outlined enough to give him a rough estimate on a path northwest, but it was completely worthless in navigating the intricacies of the city beyond a casual framework of how large the area was.
By his estimate, assuming no complications occurred, it would take maybe five days to traverse though here using his looping and backtracking method. Not ideal, not by a longshot, but the false sense of security that the guesswork provided him at least helped to quell his ever-present feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty at least somewhat. It wasn’t just the unknowingness that left his head spinning and his breath short, it was the experience of complete and total freedom that left Shaun the most terrified. Ironic that he had once longed for a time when voices would stop giving him commands and expectations and schedules, only to now feel the most absolutely lost and afraid without a guideline to work with. There was nothing to tell him what to do, no timeframe for scripted events or happenings, a lack of standard procedure. No safety net, no security, no punishment. He had never known what it was like to be left to his own devices, barely knew how to carry himself like a person with actual organic shreds of independence. Shaun thinks he wasn’t ever supposed to be on his own like this.
Time didn’t flow the same to him anymore. Whether through stress or environment he couldn’t say, but without a watch he couldn’t accurately portray the time anymore. It wasn’t dark out yet; he couldn’t have been too terrible deep within the concrete jungle from the pace he was walking, but Shaun hadn’t realized how lost in his own thoughts he had become until he was drawn out of them by a faint metallic creak in the distance. It wasn’t very loud, and the slight echo it held made it apparent that it was fairly far off from his current location, but it was still enough for him to turn down a different street.
It would probably do good to start mapping out turnabouts and potential hiding spots, at the very least he could probably afford to poke around the ground floor of the one of the high rises for a bit if the idea didn’t immensely terrify him. Too many options with too uncertain potential was making it difficult to do anything other than walk a brisk pace down the street; eyes wide despite the stinging air, which had grown even more bitter since entering the city, looking for any signs of imminent threat that could be possibly lurking nearby. Instead, he only saw stretches of ruin and decay. Miles, perhaps, of overflowing scrap packed in between piles of rubble, marred with age and damage. The evidence of decay, of past life long since faded and worn, left the city with all the countenance of a graveyard, something Shaun had also never encountered before.
And it made the signs of new activity even more unsettling.
The visage was faded to a degree, left to the exposure of the elements it would of course have been cruelly whipped by sun and wind (he was almost certain it wouldn’t rain here), but the spray paint held evidence of being placed within recent history, and that did not sit well with him.
The visage itself was only a smiley-face, very crude and childish and overall plain, but the contrast between its colorful blue and simplistic appearance well nestled within the dregs of the inner city gave it an air of foreboding unease. The wall it was painted on was connected to a half-collapsed high rise, the metallic paneling along its outer coating having been stripped away with years of rust, and the dull appearance made the color pop vibrantly against it. Facing outwards towards the street, Shaun noticed a noticeable circumference surrounding the wall was surprisingly free of laying debris, leaving the visage free from potential obstructions and making it visible from a considerable distance away.
…Shaun recognized that this was done deliberately, but for what purpose he didn’t want to know.
He also recognized the feeling of being watched.
Attempting to steady his breath and keep his limbs from shaking, Shaun cut through a side alley an onto a separate street, trying to keep his body language obliviously casual and calm. There was no noise or movement that he could pinpoint as a threat, really this was just a sudden flare in feeling that even he wasn’t totally sure of. But something was making his skin prickle in agitation, like someone had noticed him, and he’d rather not let on that he knew he’d been spotted and risk agitating them in turn if that was the case. This wasn’t the first time he suddenly felt seen in a very abstract sense, even when he was sure he was alone and out of sight.
Looping through the seemingly endless city streets, Shaun attempted to analyze a series of routes he could possibly take and backtrack through without getting cornered. The city was dense enough to lose someone fairly quicky, assuming he took to traversing within some of the buildings. He could theoretically through someone off his trail by cutting through some of the ground floors then backtracking through the streets and keeping hidden with the rubble. Seeing as how the feeling of being watched was only getting stronger, that seemed a good a plan as any in this case.
He just had to not think about the building suddenly collapsing overtop of him. Really, that was the least of his worries, but gazing up at the large, exposed scaffolding and metal frames that peaked out from the noticeably cracked stone of its foundation, Shaun couldn’t help but think that the fear was at least justified somewhat.
He still entered the ground floor lobby with practiced grace in the end, and quickly walked the length of the floor to the opposite side entrance that led towards to back of the building with relative ease. The street he exited on seemed to be trailing south, if his guess was right. But that was ok, preferred actually. He could always check his compass to reinstate his directions and get back on track after he shook this feeling.
Only the feeling wasn’t lessening, despite his efforts. Maybe that should have been a clue that he was perhaps overthinking things, getting naturally tense and attributing it to an outside factor rather than acknowledging that he was most likely just doing this to himself. But fear is strange like that, illogical in its rationality and justified in its caution. He was obviously being hunted down, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was in immediate life-threatening danger at this moment, maybe. Besides, X6 and the other institute coursers didn’t really hesitate when it came to tracking and capture. If X6 had spotted him, he could have already had him in custody considering how much more physically capable he was compared to Shaun.
Still, Shaun took another short cut through the lobby of an old building just to be sure.
He was foolish to have expected to the building to be empty.
He hadn’t seen the man at first, the lobby was quite dark and secluded compared to the last building he entered. The walls held very minimal damage leaving large portions of the ground floor starved of natural light, the few windows that he could see from the outside having been boarded up at some point. A few titled countertops and faded plush seats were visible at first glance, the walls decorated with framed images that upon closer inspection had held cartoonish pictures of families at dinner and exaggerated food products accompanied by slogans advertising taste and wellbeing. No wonder this place would have attracted a hungry wastelander, it used to be a restaurant.
It was only after he realized what the building had been that he heard the shallow breathing gently rasping very close to him; lethargic yet wispy, unmistakably unhealthy. A cursory glance showed a hunched humanoid figure crouched beneath one of the booths along the wall, a hallowed face just barely visible in the dim lighting looking up at him, sharp shadows pulling the taunt skin into horrifyingly ghoulish proportions. He was just sitting there on the floor, gaunt body folded awkwardly in an attempted defensive position, but it was clear from his emancipated form that any movement was a struggle. His gaze was unfocused and dull, aimed at his general direction but otherwise lost to the finer details. Something in his face showed vulnerability and weakness, but not by choice; the hard lines in his face were etched by years of misery cruelly inflicted upon him until he cracked and shattered. If it weren’t for the very faint and difficult breathing, Shaun would have thought he was looking at a corpse. On a technicality, he probably was.
Although working himself up for this possibility, Shaun was still stunned by the actuality of running into someone like this. At the least he had expected to see X6, not this gross parody of a human tucked away in the dark. This…person, he wasn’t quite sure it was a man to honest, didn’t look outwardly dangerous, but neither did the one that bit him upon encounter, and he had looked just as frail and grim as this one did.
A hasty look around the room did not reveal any other characters in hiding, but nothing could be certain. Keeping his sights locked onto the visage in front of him, Shaun cautiously backed slowly towards the door he entered from, hoping to make an anticlimactic exit without drawing any possible hostility.
This movement seems to draw the being out of their own shock, for the lines in their face creased harshly and their eyes tried to focus on the slowly retreating form.
“…wa-ter…?” Their voice was coarse and abused, pathetically exhaling with each struggling breath in a vague approximation of words.
It had stopped Shaun in his tracks instantly, though not out of curiosity. The voice was so scarred and torn that he hadn’t fully understood what the person had even said, or if they were even speaking to begin with. It was caution that made him stop; worried that something had triggered an unwanted reaction out of them, and Shaun would have to make the decision to either proceed with further caution or just start running outright.
The person spoke again, just as rough but with slightly more effort put behind the syllables; recognition of opportunity, hope maybe?
“…Wa-ter…pleasssee…?”
Those unfocused and dazed eyes were large and pleading, glazed with desperation and anguish instead of moisture. Human longing the only recognizable trait of being aside from the bipedal form. They were asking for water, something that seemed more surprising than anything else about them. Perhaps if the person were not in this condition, they would have simply taken his water for themselves, attacked him for it like Shaun had expected them to. Desperation gives rise to cruelty; he had seen that firsthand more than once.
Or maybe they wouldn’t have attacked him even if they were physically capable of it. Shaun felt a pang of guilt shoot through him at the idea that he assumed that this person pleading with him for water held ill intent towards him by default. It felt logical, but not necessarily right.
Either way, this person most likely could not attack him even if they tried. Despite his lack of combat skills, Shaun could easily overpower this person or at the very least run away from them with ease. This being was of no threat to him, but rather, he observed grimly, he was of more threat to them than anything else.
Desperation and a lack of ability forced this being to plead with a stranger for water. A stranger that, Shaun realized by the slack arms loosely slung over the torso, this person was most definitely also afraid of.
A sick feeling crawled down his body at the notion that a human being was at his total mercy, and the terrible freedom the choices afforded him were terrifying. He could very easily just walk away at this moment and leave the person to their fate. Or he could do worse, and nobody could stop him, certainly not this person.
Shaun didn’t like this feeling.
It was a simple request, but a difficult one to fulfill. Shaun was careful to ration his limited resources, uncertain of when or where he could come across more along his journey. In terms of water, he was scarce, but only slightly better off compared to his meager food supplies. Danse had a couple cans and bottles, most of which Shaun had chosen to carry seeing as though Danse was more liable to draw attention.
Even though it was only for one person now, it still wasn’t much, and his journey was to be long and arduous. He really couldn’t afford to part with anything if he were to survive long enough to see this through to the end. It wasn’t cruelty that made him think to deny this person’s request at first, it was logistics, he thought. Shaun did not want anybody to suffer like this, and that is exactly why he chose to subject himself to these atrocities firsthand in an effort to stop it. He knew it was going to be difficult, but he still made the decision to try anyway. It hurt him inside to think of how common this plight was to so many people of the commonwealth, and how he was directly connected to its source by decree. He wanted to do everything in his power to make this stop.
But in order to do that, he needed to stay alive.
At least, that was part of his reasoning.
There was something profound about the person’s condition, startlingly alive despite assumingly on the brink of death if the protruding bones and atrophied muscles were any signifier. Anybody could see that this person would not survive for long, not without a large number of resources that didn’t exist out here. What would giving them water even accomplish for them? Certainly not survivability. Comfort, maybe? A genuine human connection, a taste of water and compassion one last time before they would cease to ever have the chance to experience it again?
It would be a waste, a lost cause, an emotional effort with a real physical sacrifice. That’s what kept echoing through Shaun’s head as he took out is half empty canteen and began approaching the person under the table.
He needed this water for himself, to save everyone. He was afraid of dying himself, so very very afraid. And seeing this person dying in front of him only cemented that fear, held a mirror in front of him and showed a possible fate he could succumb to.
Would anybody waste water on him just to make his final moments more comfortable?
Twisting off the seal and holding the canteen up to the person’s dry and cracked lips, Shaun allowed them to drink. Allowed, what a horrible way to think of it. Like giving permission, treating it like a privilege. He could have denied this at any moment. He didn’t want to.
The persons arms limply fell from their torso to hang slack at their side. Shaun thinks they might have been trying to grab the canteen but couldn’t lift their arms anymore. Shaun was careful to tip the canteen slowly and methodically, allowing them to take long and fulfilling sips even as the canteen felt lighter and lighter in his hand.
When he finally pulled away it was with difficulty. The person absentmindedly tried to push forward, following the canteen on instinct, already drunk their fill but knowing that a resource should never be left to disappear. Shaun didn’t realize how unsteady his hand was until he heard the loose cap bang slightly against the plastic coating of the canteen. He was shaking slightly, trembling, very unsure about everything he just did and filled with conflicting emotion.
Those eyes looked up at him, slightly more focused yet still dim and glazed over. From this close he could see they were brown, much like his own. There might have been a warmth in them at one point, and soon there would be nothing there at all.
“T-…than-k…you…” the persons mouth was gaped open slightly, slick and moist for the first time in who knows how long, the last remaining yellowed teeth still remaining poking through the taut gums like tombstones.
Shaun brushed a tongue over his own teeth, suddenly very uncomfortable with the feeling of them in his mouth. He couldn’t say anything in response and merely nodded his head lightly. The persons posture began to gradually relax, the tension held in ruined bones dissipating slightly as they slacked against the side of the booth chair. It was difficult to read any coherent emotion on them, they might not be fully comprehensive in their condition; it left Shaun feeling simultaneously guilty and repulsed.
He thought of staying with them for a while and didn’t want to dwell on his reasoning behind that. He knew what was happening, but he had already spent too much time here, and he did what he could. Wordlessly he stood and made is way to the door. The breathing was even more shallow than before.
As he made his way down the street, the feeling of being watched was still present.