Jacob Burns and the Order of the Algorithm #Wattys2017

Chapter 9: The Man Behind the Mask

I was looking into the face of a nightmare.

His skin was deathly pale, his body stiff like rigor mortis. If I had thought the synths in the mine had been terrifying, I had no idea what terror could really look like. It was as if someone had scooped out the mayor's soul and stepped inside his body like a wrinkled old suit.

It was impossible to believe that this was the same man I'd been speaking to only moments before. That smile twisted even wider on his face, more inhuman with every passing second, and I felt myself break out into a cold sweat. My hands were shaking, my heart was thumping, and my mind was reeling as I collapsed into the nearest chair and just stared at the thing sitting across from me.

I knew what that was.

That's a synth.

It didn't matter how weak McDonough might have appeared, that... thing was the single most dangerous abomination in the Wasteland. A Gen 3 synth... and to think I had been speaking to it this entire time. There was no telling what kind of hardware that facade was hiding, but one thing was for sure, the real mayor was long gone, and there was a good chance that I was on the way to join him.

"Who... What are you?" I stuttered, cursing to myself for sounding so weak.

"Well, that depends," the voice said silkily. "The body you see before you is a Class 2 Generation 3 synthetic bio-unit, a perfect replica of the man once known as Mayor McDonough. Now the man currently speaking through him? Why, that would be me." He smiled that mile-long smile again and a cold chill rushed up my spine.

"I am the Director. Head of the Institute and Father to the Future. The synths are my creation." He gave a little bow as the weight of the situation crashed over me.

I couldn't believe it. My head was spinning, floating somewhere between nightmare and reality... This just couldn't be happening. Nobody encountered the Institute and lived to tell the tale, and here I was sitting face-to-face with the single most dangerous man in all the Commonwealth, possibly the entire world.

What the hell do you say to that?

"Yeah? Well, fuck you then!" I said, even as the sweat poured down the back of my neck.

"You always were a charmer, weren't you Jacob?" He said with a dry laugh, "Some things never change."

"Of course, there's no need for me to ask you your name, your reputation precedes you. The fallen knight of the Brotherhood, Jacob Burns... Condemned by his own kin, cast out of every vestige of civilization in the Commonwealth, and forced to scrounge for scraps with the very abominations he once sought to destroy. Quite the tale, isn't it? So many unfortunate twists and turns, so many unpleasant surprises. One has to wonder how a single man can have such bad luck..." He trailed off, but the meaning wasn't lost on me.

"It was you, wasn't it," I said quietly as a lump began to form in my throat. "You ordered the attack. You sent those synths after me, after my vertibird. You crashed them into the main engine block with a nuke on board. You murdered my people and what's more, you let me take the blame for it." He smiled again.

"That I did, Jacob, that I did. Though is 'murder' really the right word? Your people vowed to wipe me and my synths off the face of the earth. What would you have us do? Wait until your dear Maxson was on my front doorstep? Any chess player knows the first move has the most advantage, and this? This is war. You should know that better than anyone, Jacob."

I spat on the ground.

"Bullshit! You declared war on the Commonwealth the moment you started kidnapping people and replacing them with these... these... things! Who the hell do you think you are?"