Jacob Burns and the Order of the Algorithm #Wattys2017

Chapter 8: The Mayor of Diamond City

On the front porch stood none other than the guard from the gate, his jaw clenched tight and a vein popping on his forehead. To make matters worse, he had Ilya in hand and what looked like a brand new laser pistol from the armory. My eyes flitted between all three of them before it dawned on me what must have happened.

You've got to be kidding me.

"Jacob Burns?" the man said more than asked. I looked at Piper, but she only shrugged as if to say, What do you want me to do about it?

Well shit.

"...Yeah?" I replied.

Without another word he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and the next thing I knew we were being dragged off like a couple of common criminals. To my surprise however, we passed right by the security office and instead headed straight for a lift marked "Mayor's Office". Looks like we'd garnered more attention then we'd bargained for. The brute dumped us to the ground as he pressed in the passcode and the lift began to rise into the scaffolding. The man stood in fuming silence as the lift came to a stop and he hurled the both of us into the reception area.

"AHH! Ow, that hurt! How dare you, you great brute! You'll be hearing from my lawyer about this!" Ilya hollered at him, but the man only laughed as he walked by a confused looking secretary and into the next room.

"What the hell happened back there?" I hissed as soon as the man was gone, "I thought I told you to blend in, what ever happened to that?"

"Bottle caps, that's what happened!" She hissed back as we both got to our feet. "You gave me a bag of bottle caps, what was I supposed to do?"

"So you stole a laser pistol?" I groaned, "What the hell do you need a laser pistol for?"

"Well I'm going to have to defend myself somehow if I'm going to find my father's vault," she said as she dusted herself off and sat down on the hard sofa.

"Are you still going on about that? I thought we put that nonsense behind us. What else did you try to steal?"

"Well, let's see, I got a canteen, a pack of stimpaks, a couple bandages, the gun, obviously, and uh... oh right. A little bit of ammo to go with it, but that was right about the time I got caught... of course," she pouted.

"What?! Why not try taking the whole armory with you while you're at it? Sheesh, you could've at least picked a better time. It's packed to the gills out there, and with everyone on edge as they are... Why would you think that was a good idea?"

"Maybe because you gave me junk?"

"I told you to do one thing, one thing." I said exasperated. I slumped down into the seat next to her, barely able to believe my luck. "Just stay out of trouble, that's all I asked, and you couldn't even manage that! And to think you wanted to drag me halfway across the Commonwealth..."

"Bottle. CAPS!" She hissed again.