^

s.wbones

ROCKET RADIO: 'The Emerald City'

Diamond City, Summer, 2078

Nick Valentine watched the rain sluice down the gutters of Diamond City. It was a rough gem, this city. She'd just as easy leave you in the cold as take you into her arms. But he had it good. Real good. The Public Occurrences sign blinked on and off in the downpour, and he pulled a lit cigarette to his lips. He'd stepped outside for just a moment - hadn't wanted to smoke with Gnat in the room.

Nick Valentine was a synthetic man: a metal monster, a robot with human feelings and thoughts.

His skin was synthetic and rubbery, attached in certain places with glue and stitches. It was starting to come loose from his cheek, and he'd had to sew the right hand back on five times, at this point. Maybe it was better to just give up on it entirely.

But things were looking up for old Valentine. The new detective agency was doing a brisk turnover in cases. Diamond City was finally starting to trust him to clean up their dirty laundry. Political intrigue. Cheating partners. The usual day to day of human misery was his bread and butter. The worse off the world, the more meat on his table - so to speak. It was a hard pill to swallow for a man who only wanted the good in the world.

You did your job. You did your best. He'd lived too long to think the good would ever stick, but you gave it your best anyway.

He took a drag on the cigarette, pulling black tar into his internal mechanisms and staining the gears. It was a dirty job. It stained you, when you tried to make things cleaner for the world.

Sounds of a fight in the back alleys caught his attention. Raised voices. The sudden thump of a body, and a meaty crack.

"Shit," Valentine murmured, and shook the cigarette away before breaking into a run.

His coat flapped as he broke around the corner. He'd left his gun in the holster. No need to waste slugs on a bar-fight, was his thinking - but as he ran up to where the bodies were lying, he realised he'd got it wrong. It was the boys from the Stands again. They'd got a ghoul on the floor, and were pushing around some Mr. Handy robot and laughing at its protests.

And there was Piper, in the thick of it.

Soaked by rain, in the melee, Valentine also spotted the McDonough's kid throwing wild, stumbling punches. It was odd that he'd jumped into things: usually, he stuck to the back. Stick your nose where it wasn't wanted, chances are you'd get it broken. As he watched, the kid took a blow and went reeling to the ground, as well.

"Stop!" Nick roared.

The gang flinched. Security were nowhere to be seen. He jumped in the way of the next punch, and his head snapped back.

"Oh shit!"

"Fuckin' Valentine."

Valentine rubbed his jaw, and cocked his head to each side. That was a steel-frame skeleton for ya. The guy who'd thrown the punch was holding his wrist and biting back tears. You could call it poetic justice, if you went in for that sort of thing. Something was definitely fractured.

The skin of his face had come loose again. He sighed, and left it hanging.

"Now, boys." Nick Valentine put his hands up - no gun, not a threat. "Why don't we all calm down. Let's take this easy - how about it?"

"Fuckin' Valentine."

"Get out of the way, synth."

"Can't do that, Chuck. You wanna hit someone, I ain't gonna move."

Chuck balled up his fists, but glanced furtively towards the other guy who'd tried it, and didn't swing. Nick stayed where he was.

There was a disease in the city. It was breeding in the nosebleeds, in the upper families of the city. And at night, it washed down here, to the gutters, where the well-off boys from the Upper Stands - boys like Chuck - decided to drive out the ghouls in their own way, in roaming gangs late at night. There were far too many familiar faces in this old crowd.

"What'd this ghoul ever do to you, huh?" Slurring drunk, the younger McDonough kid stumbled to his fists and made as if to start swinging again. Good heart, but not much in the way of brains, Nick Valentine thought.

Good old Piper, though. She put a hand out to hold him back and said, quietly, "John, isn't it? Can you check on my friend there for me, make sure he's still breathing?"

John, shamefaced, knelt down. The Mr. Handy had floated closer too, now that the fighting had stopped. The rain was cooling heated tempers, and Valentine could see the gang was rethinking their chances.

"Wow, these are some tough customers," Piper said, wiping away blood from a pouring nose. "They only needed ten guys to take out one ghoul. Someone better write an article. How's it going, McDonough?"

It was two heads that turned: the kid, John, on the ground - and his brother, at the back of the crowd.

The older McDonough scanned the situation, gestured quickly to a bunch of his pals to follow him, and then made his exit. The rest, seeing their back-up disappear, didn't seem all that far behind.

Chuck still met Nick chest to chest though, clearly aching to get one good hit in before he high-tailed it.

"What are you playing at, Chuck?" Nick said, low and angry under his breath. "Three times this month, you've roped your friends into this mess."

Chuck grinned. "Just polishing the jewel, sir."

"Get the hell out of here. Before I tell your mother what you've been getting up to."

"Oh, she'd be proud of me, sir. You should hear what she says when you've left the room. 'Deluded robot playing at detective' I think her words were…?"

"You're a real piece of work," Nick bit out, but the hit had landed somewhere very soft.

Chuck knew it. He grinned, satisfied.

"You killed him!"

The cry shocked the group, and sent the rest of them running. Chuck's face fell open in horror as he wheeled round. John was bent over the guy on the ground, and had opened his jacket to reveal a broken arm, and a body that, even for a ghoul, had clearly suffered too much to still be alive.

Nick's vision went red.

"You goddamn idiots," he began, sadly, but they'd already fled.

His hand fell from the gun, slowly, where he'd instinctively reached to un-holster it. Waste of bullets, when Security would sort them out. Once they'd arrived, anyway. They were still nowhere to be seen.

"Wait - he's okay." John said, slowly. Valentine unclenched his fists, and breathed again.

"Are you sure, pal?"

But no, the guy was impossibly, somehow, moving slightly. The Mr. Handy floated up.

"Thank goodness you're here! I'm so dreadfully sorry for the fuss. We'd barely arrived when those ruffians attacked us! I was so startled I couldn't fight back, and they got in a few good blows. That's when this heroic fellow jumped in…"

"He keeps muttering something." John was still drunk and rambling. "No…. no… 'nowhere'? What's that mean - is it a code?"

"Nick, where's Gnat?" Piper was pacing anxiously. Her eyes were wide and dark in her face, shiny with the rain.

Right. Gnat. Nick looked up and down the dark alleyway. No need to wait for the boys from the Stands to get brave, again - if you could call it brave, ganging up on random people. The storm was still coming down hard, and the trash of the gutter was starting to pool around the guy on the ground. He waved John up.

"Hey. Hey, kid. Let's get him out of the rain. You get his arms, I'll grab the legs. Piper - your office. Meet us there."

"Isn't that risky?" John said, doubtful. "They know she's with us. We can take him back to mine. My brother's not home."

"Not a good idea," Valentine said. "'Sides, there's a kid waiting. They won't try anything if we're all there."

He'd seen the older McDonough in the back row, when the rest of the group had run off. It was rainy, though, and dark. It only now occurred to him that… maybe John hadn't.

Piper ran ahead, and Nick took the pack of them into the market square of Diamond City, casting his head from side to side. The Mr. Handy brought up the rear.

A dark thought snuck up on him, sharp and ugly, that perhaps someone had told Security to take the night off - let the boys have a little fun. Blow off some steam. Gangs like that didn't happen without public opinion backing them up, and he could name several families with the power to allow it, without having to think very hard at all.

When they got there Nick knocked on the door. "Piper? Are you there yet?"

The door swung open. Within was a warm, yellow glow, and a bloody-nosed Piper. She turned back to someone behind her. "Get back, Gnat. Get in here, Nicky. Bring the boys."

Piper murmured softly to her sister as the two of them brought the ghoul in, and laid him out on the ratty couch by the door. The guy was saying something under his breath, and seemed partially unconscious, but couldn't be woken. If he was concussed, there wasn't much they could do except hope his ghoulish healing kicked in soon.

While Piper was busy with the ghoul, John caught Valentine by the elbow and pulled him close, his face beside Nick's cheek. The smell of cheap whiskey was immediately present.

"Hey," John said, grimly. "What's wrong with my place, huh?"

"Like you said - your brother's not home." Nick said, as gently as he could. "He was there, John. Tonight."

He saw John's face fall as he caught his meaning. He shook his head. "No - no, he wouldn't."

Nick turned away from the kid, giving him space. John was right - the older McDonough wasn't the sort to throw punches. Instead he'd been tagging along in the dark, watching everyone else. Surely John had seen him in the back row, too, despite the chaos of the fistfight. He just didn't want to admit it.

Nick sighed. "Don't go home, kid. I'll put you up at the office. There's a spare bed."

John just kept shaking his head. Nick didn't push.

In the meantime the Mr. Handy introduced himself as Codsworth, and his concussed friend as Mr. Oz. They'd come from Sanctuary - the article hadn't panned out, apparently. Piper had picked up a couple strays, instead.

Piper pulled off her soaked red coat, and went looking for the ratty blankets they kept somewhere.

"It was awful, Nicky." She said, as she moved around. "We made good time for most of the day, right up until Cambridge. Raider city. We thought the rain was a blessing, at first, until it was night over Boston, and we're still nowhere near Diamond City, can't see an inch in front of our faces. Got stuck in a firefight in a nasty little alleyway on the way here…"

"Nick?" Codsworth looked around, taking in his surroundings. He turned to Piper. "Would this be the great Detective Valentine I've heard of?" he asked, in an audible whisper.

Nick felt something awful move deep down in the pit of his stomach as he heard this. "I'm nothing special. Don't work yourself up. Been known to take on cases now and then, though, if you're in need of a sleuth."

"Oh, am I ever. But I've been unbearably rude, Miss Piper was speaking. This is all so uncommon. Does this normally happen in Diamond City?"

She looked at Nick. He shrugged, unhappy. Her face was the mirror of how he felt.

"Recently, worse."

"They hit us at the gates." She explained. "Maybe waiting for ghouls. We made a run for it - Oz couldn't run fast enough. By the time we knew to go back, he'd been knocked down."

Gnat, Piper's younger sister, absorbed the situation from the upper loft, huddled in a small mound of blankets on the bed. With Piper's nod of approval Nick got the small red stove running, and squeaked out four hot cocoas from the dusty tin in the cupboard. The one for Nat got the last of the milk.

"Exiting stuff, hey kid?" Nick said, as he brought it up the ladder.

In response she nodded, and took it. It felt like a transaction: as if the nod itself was payment for the cocoa. She wrapped both hands around the warm, chipped mug, and nestled deeper into the blankets to watch.

Piper sat on the arm of the lounge, and pulled a blanket round her shoulders.

"Is he… gonna be okay?" Piper asked, glancing down at the ghoul.

"I've heard some stories from this fellow, and believe you me, madam, he's survived far worse. 'Tis just a flesh wound."

Nick left them be, for a moment, and walked John back out into the rain.

It was still pouring outside, but the rain muddied things, rather than washing them clean. The lights from the Upper Stands above were blurry and golden in the downpour, out of reach of the flood. John handed Nick his empty mug, and walked out into the rain before turning back to face him. He had the beginnings of a beautiful shiner.

"Well," he said. "Guess I'm off."

"You want me to walk you to the office?"

"Nah. I'm going home to face the music." A rakish smirk pulled at the corner of John's mouth. It was a brave smile, a sad smile. In his face Nick saw a ghost of the man he'd one day grow into.

"You did a brave thing, standing up for that man tonight."

John looked him square in the eyes, and the grin fell away from his stare. "You got me all wrong, Valentine. I was just looking for a fight. When I saw them there, kicking that guy on the ground, I won't lie… I just lost it. Figures, I'd need to be drunk to do the right thing," he spat, self-critical and bitter. "Figures."

"Want me to walk you home?"

Nick was shocked when suddenly John pulled him forward into a hug, head buried into the coat at his shoulder. He just kept shaking his head no, over and over. The rain wept, soaking them both to the skin.

Nick slowly patted him on the back with his good hand. "Ah, kid," he said, sadly. "I'm sorry about your brother."

John released him, and stumbling a little, wandered off down the street. Nick watched him from the doorway for a minute, and then turned back in out of the rain.

Piper had dimmed the stove. Codsworth bravely offered to stand guard outside, as he didn't need to sleep, and likely as not, his engine would keep the others awake.

"I am in need of a sleuth, sir. But it most certainly can wait until morning."

Nick patted him on the back as he went past, and offered what assurances he could. The robot ducked under it, shy.

"Mind if I stay the night?" Nick offered Piper. "I couldn't sleep thinking I'd left you defenceless, after all this."

"You don't need to sleep at all," she returned, grinning. "But sure. I've got an article to write up, and I could use the company. Grab a chair."

A low orange glow of the dying stove filled the room. Nick planted himself deep into a chair by the door, hands in pockets, slumped down in 'low-power' mode. The scratching of the pen in the office was the only sound. After a while, even Gnat's breathing steadied out.

The firelight caught on the glass of the ghoul's gas mask. With a shock, Nick noticed the eye open behind it, black and beady, staring at the wall. The ghoul was awake.

He observed this, but said nothing. He only leaned forward to move the ghoul's cold, untouched mug from the side-table over to the stove, and let it heat up for a while.

When it was steaming, Nick passed it back across the table.

With a faint and seamless rustle, the ghoul - Oz - rolled over towards it, but left it there.

The eyes, black as blueberries, flicked up to meet his.

"Could you turn around?" he whispered.

Without a word Nick Valentine leant back in his chair and pulled his hat low to cover his face, and held up three of his fingers. Scout's honour. He settled back with his hands over his stomach, like as to fall asleep.

After a moment, there came a rustle, and then the sound of the mug being picked up.

The next morning dawned grey and drizzling. While the ghoul and Piper slept, Nick pulled the whole story out of Codsworth, detail by detail, until he was certain he hadn't missed anything. It was a strange, sad story. Missing kids, murdered parents, .44 bullets, a cryogenic Vault. All told, it sounded like a trail too cold to follow, but Nick kept that to himself for now.

When he was done explaining the details of the case, Codsworth turned to Nick. His robotic eyes regarded him with hope - hope that Nick didn't want to crush.

"Well? Is there a chance?"

"I can't promise a happy ending," Valentine said, in a warning tone.

"Understood, sir." Servos whirred as Codsworth processed things. "But are… you saying you'll take the case? You'll find young Shaun?"

"Or die trying."

"Oh! There's certainly no need for that!"

Nick steepled his fingers, and gestured widely. "Look. I've taken cases I haven't solved yet. But I haven't given up on them, either. And I won't give up on you, or your boy."

"I… oh, sir, you're too kind. If it takes a hundred years, I don't mind, sir. Just knowing someone else is out there, trying… that's comfort enough, sir."

Nick patted the Mr. Handy at shoulder height. "It's a rough old world."

"Isn't it just?" It was with some surprise that Nick saw the ghoul attempting to stand. Codsworth leapt in. "Ah-h, Mr. Oz. Might I offer my assistance? I presume you'll want to head home as soon as is reasonable."

Oz cleared his throat. His voice was raspy and low, with a heavy Australian accent. "Got errands."

"Errands? Sir, you were laid low not twelve hours since. Allow me."

Oz sat down again. "All right mate. See if anyone in the market's selling a hazmat suit, would ya? Here's my purse. Don't let 'em rob you blind."

Codsworth disappeared out the door, humming. Oz sat back down again. "Sorry, have we met?"

"Nick Valentine."

"Ah, you're the guy. Piper around?"

Nick jerked his head towards the loft room, where she had crashed heavily, and was still asleep after the exhausting events of the day before. Gnat was curled up at the other end of the bed: the whole of her body barely fitting on the pillow. A finished article sat on the desk.

Oz followed his gaze. "Hm. Looks like she's got a terminal. Might ask to see if I can hook that up to ours, at some point. Get a radio on the roof…"

"Oh, you're Rocket Radio."

"Mate, do I sound like Trash-Can Carla? Hm. Don't answer that." As he said this, Oz's stomach grumbled loudly. He paused. "Hey - the kid's asleep, isn't she? I don't wanna give her nightmares as I eat my breakfast."

"Come on, it can't be worse than my old mug," Valentine said, wry and cheerful.

"Oh yeah? At least you've still got all your skin."

"Almost. Cheek's coming off - see?"

"Tell that to someone who hasn't stopped smiling in two hundred years, how about," Oz said, but he sounded happier about it.

"Hey, at least you're still human," Nick joked, and accidentally meant it.

Oz didn't notice. "I don't bloody look it, mate." He shook his head. "No, I'm fine with the ugly, really. I just know what my face is meant to look like, is all, and this ain't it. Bein' a horror movie monster don't help my self-esteem none, either."

"Shit," Nick said, stunned slow by the accuracy of this statement. "Tell me about it."

"How about not right now, mate? Biology calls."

"Yeah, of course."

Oz stood up, slow. "All right, no spin. Love that in a reporter's office."

He made his way up towards the roof door. Nick made a snap decision.

"Hey pal - mind if I walk y'all home?"

"Sure, mate." Oz gave him a discomfited sideways look though, as he offered. "You're weirdly nice to people you just fuckin' met."

"Hey, it'll make my gears turn smoother at night. Your buddy Codsworth doesn't seem like the bravest bolt in the bunch, and you're barely walkin'. I'd never rest thinkin' ya got yourselves killed."

Oz laughed with a light toss of his head, and then winced. "Mate, you're all right."

He turned to leave via the roof, half-reaching into his post-bag, when Nick remembered something from the night before.

"Oh - Ozzie, right? One more thing."

Oz stopped with his hand on the door, and turned back around. "Yes, detective?"

"Just last night - John said you were muttering some kind of code when you went down. Wondered if that was important to remember."

"Uh… code?"

"Code word. 'Nowhere'. Said you were saying 'nowhere', over and over."

Oz's hand clenched so hard on the doorknob that there was a crack of something popping. He went to stone, and didn't answer.

Nick waited for an answer. "You right, pal?"

Oz shivered all over, and seemed to return without issue, his body relaxing once more. "Not important. Just a long story, boring as sin."

"Try me."

Oz flinched, and rubbed the back of his neck - where, Nick noticed, he was clicking open and closed the latch of the gas-mask.

"Yeah." Oz said, slowly. "Yeah. It's a code word. When I say 'Noah' it means 'get me the hell out of here'."

"Say, you got a funny old accent."

"Australian."

"Old world, huh? I'm Chicago, myself. Bet you got history I couldn't even imagine - to have such a specific code word, I mean."

There was a telling moment of hesitation, and then Oz said, too quickly, "Oh - yeah. Long history."

He was lying. Nick didn't press - it was probably something personal.

Rain beat a steady rhythm on the streets as they moved out, later that day: Valentine taking point, Oz centre, Codsworth taking up the rear. With Oz now in a full-body hazmat suit, nobody bothered them on the way out. Piper rose just in time to bid them a bleary farewell.

They crept through the rain towards Starlight Drive-in, and disappeared into the haze.

< Previous:'Harvest Season'
< First        Archive        Last >

Author's Notes

Chapter Gallery