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aaaaaaaagh_skyEllen awoke with a start, the rusty, rippled ceiling still as unfamiliar a morning sight as she had ever seen. It took her a moment to remember that yes, she'd slept in her house in Megaton.
Not her quarters, her house. What a bizarre concept that was...
She shook herself off and hopped out of bed, waving off Wadsworth's offer of breakfast. After yesterday's adventures in sweating (so very strange after a lifetime in the climate-controlled Vault), she needed to be as close to clean as possible. She'd eat when she got back from the women's john.
There being no window in the door from the women's john to the walkway outside, Ellen nearly smacked into someone when she opened the door. "Oh! Excuse me, sir, I'm so sorry-"
"That's all right, miss." The speaker was an old man, white of hair and leathery of skin. He wore a heavy leather vest over a faded reddish shirt, and unless she very much missed her guess, he seemed to have three human teeth on a cord around his neck. Before she could say a word he went on: "You're that new kid from the Vault, aren't you? The one who shot that fool Burke?"
"Um. Yes, sir," said Ellen, a little taken aback at her reputation.
His weathered face wrinkled into a mass of smile lines, and he stuck out a hand for the shaking. "Well, now! That's a job that needed doing, all right. Welcome to Megaton, young lady. My name's Nathan. Quite the public service you did this place."
Ellen shook his hand, but she wanted to shake her head as well. "Was he that bad before?"
"Young lady, when a man like that comes to town and spends all his time meeting with angry young men in dark corners, he just can't be up to anything good," Nathan informed her. "That's exactly the kind of thing the Enclave's going to put a stop to, once they come through here and set things right."
"Oh! You know about the Enclave?" Ellen brightened. "Are they the ones who make those Weixing robots?"
"I wouldn't go calling their robots that if I were you, missy," said Nathan. "That's a Commie name, and the Enclave's the government of the good old U. S. of A.! They send those robots out to make sure everybody knows just what they're planning, and what we can all look forward to when they rebuild this country just the way it deserves."
"Um..." Ellen glanced around at the town of ruins and patched-together metal. "There's a country to rebuild?"
"Dang straight there is! You might have been born in a Vault, but that Vault was under the United States, and that means you were born in the United States. And that makes you an American citizen!" Nathan smiled; his teeth were... well, Ellen had seen worse. "And it's all of our duty as Americans to support our government no matter what."
Ellen frowned at that. "Even though we've never seen them."
"Oh, they're out there," said Nathan. "They're just marshalling all of their resources to make sure they can bring this country back properly, without wasting any time at all."
"Yes-" Ellen fidgeted. "Um. Mr. Nathan-"
"My last name's Vargas," said Nathan. "Guess I should've said."
"All right. Mr. Vargas- speaking of wasting time, I honestly don't mean any offense, but-" She glanced over her shoulder. "I had some things I needed to get done this morning."
"Oh! Of course, of course." Nathan smiled again. "I won't keep you any further. We've all got to do our part. You take care now, miss- and come find me again if you ever want to find out more about the Enclave!"
"I'll be sure to do that," Ellen promised, and hurried away.
She'd intended to get back to her house and eat something first, but the encounter with Nathan had left her a little off course. Ellen still wasn't quite used to the maze of walkways and ramps that connected all the buildings of Megaton. Somehow she'd wound up behind the giant metal 'nucleus' that marked the roof of the Church of Atom instead of going where she'd wanted to be. If she ever found her way to Moriarty's again, she was going to ask Gob about a map of the place. Meanwhile, she needed to get her bearings properly, so she turned around-
Oh. Well. Craterside Supply, right behind her where she should've seen it. That... okay, that was good too, she could do that.
She ducked through the door into the dusty shop, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust. Somewhere in the back she could hear Moira's humming. Up front was mostly empty, except for the omnipresent man with the assault rifle. "Moira?" she called.
"Oh, hey! Just a minute-" Moira emerged from the back, dusting off her hands. "Good to see you again! How's your friend?"
"She's all right," Ellen said. "I'll be meeting her later. Was the land mine stuff really useful yesterday?"
"Oh, my goodness, yes," said Moira. "We don't get a lot of people around here who're even willing to try that kind of thing, let alone talk about it afterwards. Then again, we don't get a lot of people who can talk about it afterwards." She wrinkled her nose. "But as they say, a little bit goes a long, long way. Your advice is going to do a lot of people good out there in the Wasteland."
Ellen nodded slowly, considering.
"And speaking of which- I'm not done with that repellent yet, but there's still two more day-to-day danger portions left to go," Moira said. "I don't suppose I could convince you to take a stab at one of them? Scavenging for food or handling radiation, your choice."
The scavenging prospect didn't sound too bad, but Ellen remembered the sight of the dogs and that... flying thing, whatever it was. Weren't dogs scavengers? Didn't they eat the same stuff as people? The prospect of having to deal with more strange animals wasn't really high on her list just yet. But the other option- if her father was forced to take shelter somewhere highly radioactive, he wouldn't be able to help himself afterward. Ellen was going to have to take care of him if that happened, and she couldn't do it unless she knew what to expect.
"If I help you figure out what someone has to do to survive radiation sickness," she said carefully, "what kind of guarantee do I have that I won't end up like Gob?"
"Oh, my goodness, I don't want you to fool around with that much radiation!" Moira exclaimed. "No, goodness, no. Just enough to get radiation sickness, like anyone who drinks too much unsafe water or camps out in the wrong place. People need to be able to recognize the symptoms, know what's likely to give it to them, know when to take the right chems, all that good stuff."
"And if I do this," Ellen says, "you can fix me up afterwards?"
"Of course! I've been working on my own remedies as a supplement to standard Rad-Away."
Demyx had purified the water around the bomb. Ellen knew that much. But the bomb itself was still radioactive, deactivated or not, and that wasn't very far away at all. Heck, the town doctor had his clinic right near the crater, if things got too bad...
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Oh, you're a peach!" Moira beamed. "Or at least some sort of hardy fruit that grows in the savagely irradiated mockery of agriculture we have nowadays. You've got a Geiger counter, haven't you?"
For answer, Ellen held up her Pip-Boy.
"Oh, fantastic. Two hundred rads' cumulative exposure should make you sick to start with, but if you can pick up six hundred rads' worth or more that'll make my tests even more accurate. Just make sure that you make it back here, and I'll see to it that you're well taken care of!"
Ellen blanched.
As far as the Children of Atom knew, Ellen was just another pilgrim among the devout. Who else would park herself in the water under the bomb's narrow end and sit with her back pressed against the bomb and her head in her hands? Clearly, though this person was a stranger, she understood the true nature of Atom's glory. Far be it from any of them to interrupt her silent devotions.
It was a lucky, lucky thing that Moira's shop was as close to the bomb as it was. Ellen would never have been able to make it otherwise. How Confessor Cromwell survived this sort of thing so often she didn't know, but she was positive she could feel her kidneys shutting down. She had to pause twice along the way, grasping the railing and doing her best not to be sick; she didn't want to see what would come up if she did. Eventually, she managed to pull herself through the door.
"Don't you go and die on me," muttered the man with the assault rifle as Ellen swayed on her feet. "MOIRA! Your lab rat's back!"
"Oh!" Moira came trotting out of the back again. "Oh, dear. Feeling a bit under the weather? Or a bit over the Geiger-counter?"
If it weren't for the possibility that this could be happening to her father, Ellen would've snarled at the woman. Or at least wanted to snarl, anyway; she didn't think she had the energy to muster that kind of rage. "I'm about as irradiated as I can get without burning a hole in the floor," she managed.
"I can tell. You're positively glowing." Moira patted her on the shoulder; Ellen winced, half-imagining she could feel her bones coming apart at the touch. "Now just hold on and try not to move."
"I think I can hear my genes crying."
"Aw. It's awful, isn't it? Tell me how it feels, and I'll get you fixed right up. You can tell me about the rest of the whole horrible process after you're on your feet again." Moira started pulling stuff off the shelves; Ellen didn't bother lifting her head to look. "Now, this is for posterity, so be honest."
Ellen glanced sidelong at the woman, a little incredulous, but nodded and took as deep a breath as she could manage.
Somewhere between relaying her experience and getting Moira's concoction dumped into her veins, Ellen passed out. When she opened her eyes she was lying on the floor of Craterside Supply, staring up at the ceiling from the relative safety offered by the counter. Weirdly, she felt... fine. Not merely better, but flat-out fine- no itching, no nausea, not even the least bit of fatigue. She sat up swiftly and was shocked to note that there wasn't even the slightest hint of dizziness. "Wow," she murmured, looking down at her hands- no blisters, no burns, nothing even the least bit unusual to be seen.
"Welcome back!" chirped Moira's voice. Ellen looked up; the woman was leaning on the counter, looking down at her. "Well, you're alive. That's the good news."
"I'd certainly say so," murmured Ellen. Why, her throat didn't even feel scratchy!
"Mm-hmm." Moira nodded. "There was a little side effect, though. A teeny, tiny, um- mutation."
Up went one of Ellen's eyebrows. She started patting herself down for growths.
"No, no! It seems to be benign, at least," Moira hastily said. "It looks pretty much like your body figured out how to adapt to radiation better than most. I could be wrong, but you're probably just going to see a normal rate of body healing and cellular regeneration in the presence of intense radiation, not, y'know, cancer or turning into a Ghoul or something like that. At least, it sure looked that way to me. We could always check-"
"No! No no no," Ellen said quickly. "No more radiation."
"Well, I was just going to suggest you leave a little tissue sample or something, but okay," said Moira. "Here. Take a few radiation chems as my way of saying 'I'm sorry I twisted your DNA like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn'." She held out a box of Rad-X bottles and Rad-X bags.
"Thanks," said Ellen dryly, but accepted the offering anyway.
Not her quarters, her house. What a bizarre concept that was...
She shook herself off and hopped out of bed, waving off Wadsworth's offer of breakfast. After yesterday's adventures in sweating (so very strange after a lifetime in the climate-controlled Vault), she needed to be as close to clean as possible. She'd eat when she got back from the women's john.
There being no window in the door from the women's john to the walkway outside, Ellen nearly smacked into someone when she opened the door. "Oh! Excuse me, sir, I'm so sorry-"
"That's all right, miss." The speaker was an old man, white of hair and leathery of skin. He wore a heavy leather vest over a faded reddish shirt, and unless she very much missed her guess, he seemed to have three human teeth on a cord around his neck. Before she could say a word he went on: "You're that new kid from the Vault, aren't you? The one who shot that fool Burke?"
"Um. Yes, sir," said Ellen, a little taken aback at her reputation.
His weathered face wrinkled into a mass of smile lines, and he stuck out a hand for the shaking. "Well, now! That's a job that needed doing, all right. Welcome to Megaton, young lady. My name's Nathan. Quite the public service you did this place."
Ellen shook his hand, but she wanted to shake her head as well. "Was he that bad before?"
"Young lady, when a man like that comes to town and spends all his time meeting with angry young men in dark corners, he just can't be up to anything good," Nathan informed her. "That's exactly the kind of thing the Enclave's going to put a stop to, once they come through here and set things right."
"Oh! You know about the Enclave?" Ellen brightened. "Are they the ones who make those Weixing robots?"
"I wouldn't go calling their robots that if I were you, missy," said Nathan. "That's a Commie name, and the Enclave's the government of the good old U. S. of A.! They send those robots out to make sure everybody knows just what they're planning, and what we can all look forward to when they rebuild this country just the way it deserves."
"Um..." Ellen glanced around at the town of ruins and patched-together metal. "There's a country to rebuild?"
"Dang straight there is! You might have been born in a Vault, but that Vault was under the United States, and that means you were born in the United States. And that makes you an American citizen!" Nathan smiled; his teeth were... well, Ellen had seen worse. "And it's all of our duty as Americans to support our government no matter what."
Ellen frowned at that. "Even though we've never seen them."
"Oh, they're out there," said Nathan. "They're just marshalling all of their resources to make sure they can bring this country back properly, without wasting any time at all."
"Yes-" Ellen fidgeted. "Um. Mr. Nathan-"
"My last name's Vargas," said Nathan. "Guess I should've said."
"All right. Mr. Vargas- speaking of wasting time, I honestly don't mean any offense, but-" She glanced over her shoulder. "I had some things I needed to get done this morning."
"Oh! Of course, of course." Nathan smiled again. "I won't keep you any further. We've all got to do our part. You take care now, miss- and come find me again if you ever want to find out more about the Enclave!"
"I'll be sure to do that," Ellen promised, and hurried away.
She'd intended to get back to her house and eat something first, but the encounter with Nathan had left her a little off course. Ellen still wasn't quite used to the maze of walkways and ramps that connected all the buildings of Megaton. Somehow she'd wound up behind the giant metal 'nucleus' that marked the roof of the Church of Atom instead of going where she'd wanted to be. If she ever found her way to Moriarty's again, she was going to ask Gob about a map of the place. Meanwhile, she needed to get her bearings properly, so she turned around-
Oh. Well. Craterside Supply, right behind her where she should've seen it. That... okay, that was good too, she could do that.
She ducked through the door into the dusty shop, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust. Somewhere in the back she could hear Moira's humming. Up front was mostly empty, except for the omnipresent man with the assault rifle. "Moira?" she called.
"Oh, hey! Just a minute-" Moira emerged from the back, dusting off her hands. "Good to see you again! How's your friend?"
"She's all right," Ellen said. "I'll be meeting her later. Was the land mine stuff really useful yesterday?"
"Oh, my goodness, yes," said Moira. "We don't get a lot of people around here who're even willing to try that kind of thing, let alone talk about it afterwards. Then again, we don't get a lot of people who can talk about it afterwards." She wrinkled her nose. "But as they say, a little bit goes a long, long way. Your advice is going to do a lot of people good out there in the Wasteland."
Ellen nodded slowly, considering.
"And speaking of which- I'm not done with that repellent yet, but there's still two more day-to-day danger portions left to go," Moira said. "I don't suppose I could convince you to take a stab at one of them? Scavenging for food or handling radiation, your choice."
The scavenging prospect didn't sound too bad, but Ellen remembered the sight of the dogs and that... flying thing, whatever it was. Weren't dogs scavengers? Didn't they eat the same stuff as people? The prospect of having to deal with more strange animals wasn't really high on her list just yet. But the other option- if her father was forced to take shelter somewhere highly radioactive, he wouldn't be able to help himself afterward. Ellen was going to have to take care of him if that happened, and she couldn't do it unless she knew what to expect.
"If I help you figure out what someone has to do to survive radiation sickness," she said carefully, "what kind of guarantee do I have that I won't end up like Gob?"
"Oh, my goodness, I don't want you to fool around with that much radiation!" Moira exclaimed. "No, goodness, no. Just enough to get radiation sickness, like anyone who drinks too much unsafe water or camps out in the wrong place. People need to be able to recognize the symptoms, know what's likely to give it to them, know when to take the right chems, all that good stuff."
"And if I do this," Ellen says, "you can fix me up afterwards?"
"Of course! I've been working on my own remedies as a supplement to standard Rad-Away."
Demyx had purified the water around the bomb. Ellen knew that much. But the bomb itself was still radioactive, deactivated or not, and that wasn't very far away at all. Heck, the town doctor had his clinic right near the crater, if things got too bad...
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Oh, you're a peach!" Moira beamed. "Or at least some sort of hardy fruit that grows in the savagely irradiated mockery of agriculture we have nowadays. You've got a Geiger counter, haven't you?"
For answer, Ellen held up her Pip-Boy.
"Oh, fantastic. Two hundred rads' cumulative exposure should make you sick to start with, but if you can pick up six hundred rads' worth or more that'll make my tests even more accurate. Just make sure that you make it back here, and I'll see to it that you're well taken care of!"
Ellen blanched.
As far as the Children of Atom knew, Ellen was just another pilgrim among the devout. Who else would park herself in the water under the bomb's narrow end and sit with her back pressed against the bomb and her head in her hands? Clearly, though this person was a stranger, she understood the true nature of Atom's glory. Far be it from any of them to interrupt her silent devotions.
It was a lucky, lucky thing that Moira's shop was as close to the bomb as it was. Ellen would never have been able to make it otherwise. How Confessor Cromwell survived this sort of thing so often she didn't know, but she was positive she could feel her kidneys shutting down. She had to pause twice along the way, grasping the railing and doing her best not to be sick; she didn't want to see what would come up if she did. Eventually, she managed to pull herself through the door.
"Don't you go and die on me," muttered the man with the assault rifle as Ellen swayed on her feet. "MOIRA! Your lab rat's back!"
"Oh!" Moira came trotting out of the back again. "Oh, dear. Feeling a bit under the weather? Or a bit over the Geiger-counter?"
If it weren't for the possibility that this could be happening to her father, Ellen would've snarled at the woman. Or at least wanted to snarl, anyway; she didn't think she had the energy to muster that kind of rage. "I'm about as irradiated as I can get without burning a hole in the floor," she managed.
"I can tell. You're positively glowing." Moira patted her on the shoulder; Ellen winced, half-imagining she could feel her bones coming apart at the touch. "Now just hold on and try not to move."
"I think I can hear my genes crying."
"Aw. It's awful, isn't it? Tell me how it feels, and I'll get you fixed right up. You can tell me about the rest of the whole horrible process after you're on your feet again." Moira started pulling stuff off the shelves; Ellen didn't bother lifting her head to look. "Now, this is for posterity, so be honest."
Ellen glanced sidelong at the woman, a little incredulous, but nodded and took as deep a breath as she could manage.
Somewhere between relaying her experience and getting Moira's concoction dumped into her veins, Ellen passed out. When she opened her eyes she was lying on the floor of Craterside Supply, staring up at the ceiling from the relative safety offered by the counter. Weirdly, she felt... fine. Not merely better, but flat-out fine- no itching, no nausea, not even the least bit of fatigue. She sat up swiftly and was shocked to note that there wasn't even the slightest hint of dizziness. "Wow," she murmured, looking down at her hands- no blisters, no burns, nothing even the least bit unusual to be seen.
"Welcome back!" chirped Moira's voice. Ellen looked up; the woman was leaning on the counter, looking down at her. "Well, you're alive. That's the good news."
"I'd certainly say so," murmured Ellen. Why, her throat didn't even feel scratchy!
"Mm-hmm." Moira nodded. "There was a little side effect, though. A teeny, tiny, um- mutation."
Up went one of Ellen's eyebrows. She started patting herself down for growths.
"No, no! It seems to be benign, at least," Moira hastily said. "It looks pretty much like your body figured out how to adapt to radiation better than most. I could be wrong, but you're probably just going to see a normal rate of body healing and cellular regeneration in the presence of intense radiation, not, y'know, cancer or turning into a Ghoul or something like that. At least, it sure looked that way to me. We could always check-"
"No! No no no," Ellen said quickly. "No more radiation."
"Well, I was just going to suggest you leave a little tissue sample or something, but okay," said Moira. "Here. Take a few radiation chems as my way of saying 'I'm sorry I twisted your DNA like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn'." She held out a box of Rad-X bottles and Rad-X bags.
"Thanks," said Ellen dryly, but accepted the offering anyway.