Hiding In The Green: A Fallout 4 Story

Temptation

Deacon wasn't simply a liar; he was a master of the art, capable of weaving elaborate tapestries of aggrandization, where the weft was truth and the warp was....warped truth. However far he strayed from the Platonic ideal form of reality, he always tied it up nicely and the result was as iron clad as the story about Washington and the cherry tree. After all, a lie was a kind of myth, and myths were ways of passing on important truths in a form people could understand. So lies were, in fact, the truth, if you looked at it the right way.

A crowd of Railroad agents had gathered around to hear him unfold his tale, but now Dr. Carrington was shaking his head. "Utter nonsense. That young woman did not save the old peddler's life in a four hour long session of open heart surgery performed with only a kitchen knife."

"All right, maybe it wasn't open heart surgery, but if you don't believe that, how are you going to believe the part about the brain surgery later on?" Deacon asked, "Anyhow, she did patch the old lady up and gave her Med-X for the pain and to make her sleep. By that time, Garvey and Sturges had come back with shackles, manacles and buckets for Kellogg and X6, the Courier."

"Why did they have shackles and manacles on hand in the first place?," Des asked.

"They told me the restraints were for raiders who got taken alive. The Minutemen are experimenting with making the bad guys work for the settlers they injured until their debts are paid off. It's gotta be better than killing them, right? The buckets were for any more bodily fluids. Or bodily solids. There were some of both. Then the two of them, Garvey and Sturges, that is, went back out while Raina cleaned up from administering first aid. We'd agreed that there had to be at least two guards on Kellogg and X6 at all times, and Valentine volunteered to be one of them, as he didn't need to eat or sleep. I was the other. The first other, I should say...."

As conversations went, it was one of the most intense and remarkable Deacon had ever witnessed.

Raina was putting the bloodstained clothing into a laundry bag when Kellogg lifted his head. His color was not good, but there was a curl to his lips and a jut to his jaw that said he wasn't done yet.

Kellogg knew he wasn't going anywhere soon. They'd taken his boots and his pants, not to mention all his weapons and his stimpaks. He was shackled and manacled with enough metal to slow down a charging deathclaw, and they'd stuck him on a chair with the seat cut out and a bucket under it. He needed the bucket, although he was damned if he knew why, because surely everything in his digestive system had already been shit out. However, the cramps hadn't stopped yet and there was still a thin dribble coming out of him. At least the pain inhibitor had kicked in and it didn't hurt so damn much. He felt weak and chilled, between the diarrhea and that damn freezing creek water they'd dunked him in.

So it was just as well he wasn't going anywhere soon. He eyed the girl, the one they'd been sent there to find. She was cleaning up after saving the old lady's life. It rankled that he'd screwed that one up. Overconfidence on his part—he'd do a better job next time.

Meanwhile... If he couldn't complete the mission right now, he could still work on it. It was a matter of psychology. He was willing to believe the story compounded from the newspaper and the seed catalog, because she was too well-fed, too fresh looking, and too knowledgeable—but more than that, she didn't have the air of hopelessness and desperation which set in on Topsiders and Vault-Dwellers alike when they realized what the world had in store for them—which was nothing.

"It's Raina, right?" He had to repeat himself when the first effort came out as less than a whisper. "We came here to rescue you."

That made her stop for a moment. "I wasn't aware I needed rescuing," she said.