Chapter One

His mind dreamed. Real dreams, as real as reality itself. He dreamed of what is. Of what was. A world on the brink, balanced on a needle. It was a world of strife, domestic and foreign. He saw a crowd, banners angry and red held high. They were chanting, snarling, roaring; a beast with a thousand mouths. He saw hulking behemoths barring their way, soldiers of contempt and blue. He heard the jeers and the booming call to disperse. The beast refused to submit, to tuck tail and cast off into the gloom of irrelevance.

Gunfire. A heavy heartbeat as violent flame spat out righteous injustice. There were bodies. Bits of bodies. Limbs torn from sudden corpses. One, he counted though he had no eyes to see, two, three... ten. Ten became twenty in a heartbeat. Twenty became fifty, and fifty a hundred. The beast wailed. People wailed. Mothers and fathers. Sons and daughters. Sisters and brothers. They convulsed, vomiting blood and lung and spine.

Silence. A dead, weighty silence.

Shadows shifted like water. Reforming. Forgetting. The same dream? Different? There was a body. His body. A body like his. He was running, fleeing. The world was silent. Silent save for the klaxon, a mournful siren blaring louder and louder as its song covered the world in sorrow. People blurred past him. Dogs and trees and houses were like mist all about him. The klaxon would not quiet, no matter how far he ran, nor how fast. He reached a hill, an outcrop of buildings sat against its flank, like mushrooms sprouting from a dark pond. Soldiers ushered him forward, pointing towards a hole in the earth, a maw wide and dark and cold. The klaxon blared loud and long. He stumbled, an arm reaching out to steady him. He was there, inside the great maw, illuminated in a stark, sterile white. Behind him the great steel door rolled into place. Safety, a voice seemed to murmur, confused. The klaxon spluttered, casting a final saddening note.

There was screaming, beyond the steel. Screaming a torrent of emotion that made mere words meaningless. Screaming for help. Screaming for the white.

Screaming. Screaming. Silence.

There was a voice, words so distant that they could barely pierce the gloom of the darkness. No, not words. Nothing so complex could exist in the black recesses of his mind. Sounds, simple emotion rumbling from beyond the shadows. Louder and louder the sound rose, the emotion reaching a colourless crescendo that struck him with as much force as a hammer blow.

Then finally… light.

He eyes peeled open, the gummy glue breaking to reveal a world of colour. Clouds of cotton danced over water blue and green and black, a churning of life's vitality that stretched out far beyond what a mortal eye could ever see. Beyond the rolling waves sat a thick rainbow line, dividing ocean and sky with certainty of a zealot. Land, he mind seemed to say in reference to the rainbow. It was a wonderous riot of greens and browns and greys, unmoved by the brilliance of its own colour.

It took him a moment to separate the colours, to see the shapes which broke them apart. He saw spires. No, his thoughts declared, the spires. They were jewels all, ruby and amethyst and emerald sparkling under a golden sun. Up and up they stretched, fingers of wealth reaching towards the sky and space and heaven.

He sighed, breathless at the sight. At last, he had made it.

"So you finally woke," a woman's voice barked, familiar in its dry rasp. "Will be 'nother twen'y minute or there 'bout," she announced to an answering cheer from the waves. She was a tall, stocky woman, never to be seen with a smile and never to be seen without a hand grasping the grip of her pistol. "Abbey," the woman had told him to call her. He hadn't ever done so, instead referring to her equally as "Captain" and "Bitch". She was an honest seaswoman with a nose for rooting out dangers no sailor had a right to know, but by god had she made him pay for his fare with hard graft.

The jewelled fingers grew as the minutes counted down, becoming spears and then old oaks in turn, rising like mountains to misty heights. For a moment Nate could only look at them in wonder. A hundred years had passed already, if you were to trust the tales of the zombies. Four generations had grown up and died in the time since the sun's power had been harnessed to scourge the earth clean. Yet still the symbols of humanity's greatness stood, proud sentinels against the ravaging blue of the universe that would forget them. It seemed to be a message of some description, though he had no time or mind to work it out.

"We're omin' up on the quay," the captain announced, as if unhappy that she was to lose her one-time slave. "Best get your gear 'gether. Knowin' was become of the 'wealth, you're gonna need that pis'ol o' yours."

He frowned. That wasn't what he had been told was the case, and his reports were the closest to reputable as could be found in the wastes. He had staked his life on them before, more times than he would normally dare to admit. "I was told that the Commonwealth was the safest place this side of the Pitt."

Abbey gave that a soft snort, as if she had heard the same claim a hundred times already that day. Though from what he had gleaned from her infrequent tales his one-time master had never struck out across land beyond the sight of the ocean blue. At least not since she had been a wide-eyed girl in the arms of steady parents. If the lines about her eyes were anything to be going by, that was a long time past.

"Maybe in D'amond Ci'y, where the militia can keep you safe. Gunshop to the south is fine if you got the cards to pay for protection. Not much left to scav from the ruins of Boss so the rubble is safe enough from people. Mos'ly, though ah heard some talk o' a new gang makin' their claims. But where the trees can grow? Out there you can't find a place to set up home where the raiders or bugs won't get you. Bodysnatchers as well, though you'll be 'ard pressed t' tell what it was tha' got you when you dead. And if it's no one of them, you'll get snapped by the dragons."

Nate responded with silent acceptance. A dozen questions seemed to line themselves up, waiting their turn to be asked. However the heavy tang of salt seemed to clog up his tongue, enough to kill the words in infancy. Her answers are going to be as useful as drinking saltwater, he decided, perhaps unfairly. There was nothing to hold him from getting his answers from the locals, who endured their land with as much stamina as the captain used to keep to sea. Besides, she was as much a foreigner as he was, even if her ship came to dock on the coastline of the 'wealth every season.

Despite his misgivings, curiosity demanded at least the illusion of satisfaction. "Anything I need to know about the towns?"

"D'amond Ci'y has a new mayor from what 'av heard," Abbey finally muttered as she pulled the boat into the wide open arms of the bay. Her eyes refused to settle, scanning the shorelines with as much scrutiny as that of the buffering waves under them. They paused on a shadowy figure, training in on the black smudge for a moment before dismissing the sight for a threat too negibile to be worth her time. "Scrubbed the place clean from top to bottom. Even kicked out the muties that 'fected the place. A fair good job ah heard 'em say he did. The muties are hol' up in Goo'neighba' now, unable to go anywhere else. Down in Gunshop they have started a bug hunting competition, and are wanting the traders to pay for it."

He stored away the information with a sigh. Town politics were not really his problem. Not yet at least. And even if they were, he had no interest in taking a stand for or against the lives of some mutants. Like any child, he had grown to fear the Shepherd and his army of reavers. And as for the wildlife, it was almost certainly a good thing that they were getting culled. Would mean he would have to only be wary of people.

"There any other towns out there?" Nate inquired. "Someplace out further west?" Settling into a town built among the skeletons of the old city was not ideal to his thinking. And he had a letter that promised something more.

"There is two that I know of," she allowed. "Le Town is where them Minutemen thugs hangout. They got some factory set up so if you know how machines work, they can pay you."

"And the other town?"

"San'uary." He almost flinched at the venom in her voice. "They call it San'uary, but I ain't heard of anyone being safe there. Guns on the wall shoot at anyone no invited and they got themsel's patrols huntin' down anyone who sets up shop too near 'em. People still try though, since the traders claim that they got ever'thin', even some weapon to keep the dragons at bay. A life worth killin' for, though I don't see how livin' behind a wall tha'd sooner shoot at them for nothin' is good."

Sounds like a vault, Nate reasoned. There had to be at least one about for all the people who lived in the Commonwealth, and it wasn't like anyone else had that sort of firepower without owning everything from horizon to horizon. "How does one get invited?"

"You looking to get in on their action?"

They hadn't spoken of his desire to come to the Commonwealth, no more than they had discussed his life choices from infancy to adulthood. Their histories, their futures, were left as untold stories for the price of a contented cruise. That was the way most people found a contentment out in the wastes. He wasn't going to start divulging into what brought him here, especially now that they had already dared the open water journey. No, he would hold onto that freedom at least. The captain could see that, though whether or not she was happy with it now was another matter. A matter that didn't concern Nate.

"If I can't farm, I'll take a soft bed if the price is not too dear."

"I'd tell you t' stay 'way, but I take it you wouldn't listen."

She was a good judge of character or, more likely, educated enough to add one and two together to make three. Yet it was not her fight, to stop him from plunging into the unknown. Perhaps if he had proven himself at navigation then she'd have offered him a job that didn't involve splitting the skin from his fingers. Or maybe she knew what it was that drove him from the moment he set foot onto her tub, seeing the reasons with her ocean eyes as surely as she spotted the towers looming tall and majestic above them.

"You know the best way there?" He felt weird asking, a child revealing they had indeed taken from the store without permission. Though, giving the older woman a look, he might have a reason to fear admitting that he had a real chance of wanting to make a go at forgoing her advice and signing up with Sanctuary's inhabitants. There was always the allure of payment holding someone's convictions better than any sort of moral code towards helping a stranger, especially when that code conflicted with personal distaste for what was being asked of them. Hell's fire, he couldn't find it in him to feel angry if she would have preferred to send him straight into the arms of a slaver. Better that than betraying her own ill-conscience of allowing someone join up with such a settlement. That was a conflict everyone had, at one time or another in their life. It was as close to a law of the land as might making right.

Instead of whatever harmful deceit she could have conjured up, however, she simply shook her head. "Fa' west o' D'amon Ci'y is all I know. Ne'ver had a reason to go that fa' from miship."

That sounded true enough to his ears. He could not imagine her wanting to leave the smell of salt for any reason, let alone to throw herself at the walls of some utopia that wanted nothing of her. The grey ocean had to be the only thing left to her she could trust enough to love. Water, and polluted salt water at that. Or maybe the rumours of Sanctuary just scared her that badly.

"Anything I need to know about this harbour?" he said, drawing the conversation to more immediate concerns. The skeletons of the old world were beginning to take stark form before them, and the soft murmur of life drifted out of the coloured lands towards them.

"The locals call it Long Landing, as if they have the only plank o' wood in the 'wealth. Harbourmasters run the show, keepin' the peace and dealin' wi' anyone tha'll try and steal a ship from their betters. Traders come from the other towns, and the fisherfolk can make good money on their catches. Can't say the same is true of the other places I put into. As good a place a' any other to stay, if you have the want of a peaceful life."

Was than an invite? Nate thought he saw her head twitch in his direction, but it could have just as easily have been the fault of the rocking of the boat. A life of peace and contentment, merrily fishing and going course of voice trading supplies from ships originating up and down the coast. It sounded like a lie. There was no peace in the world, not for someone who wanted to see it all. Or for someone who wanted a comfortable life. No, there was no contentment to be had for as long as he did not look upon this utopia of Sanctuary, or the towns in between. And being happy with a life of simplicity did not carry with it the sort of petty merriment that he could accept.

Her hand tightened against the grip of her pistol. "We here."

If the jeweled towers were fingers, then the quay was a thumb. Short, far, and utterly without charm, the landing was swarming with sailing vessels. There were rusted tubs unfit for scrap and brightly-painted yachts with sails as wide as they were patched. He could even see a boat made of naked wood, a dozen slender legs dipping into the water in place of an engine.

"I didn't expect it to be this busy," Nate admitted as Abbey pulled her metal deathtrap into the general melee of the docks.

"Used t' be better, if you would believe. Some folk been talkin' o' a whale that hungers for human flesh. Drove the fisherfolk back t' shore quick enough. And with them bodysnatchers about, there is business in gettin' people away."

Shaking his head at the tale, the newcomer turned to collect his backpack. He had food and weapons enough for several days at least, a small treasure to the eyes of a raider who ate only what could not be used to beat a person to death. All the worldly possessions left to him, barely enough to fill a single crate, had been spent for his trip. But perhaps that was all about to change. The Commonwealth was a beacon for all who would have a new life, a land apart from the rest of the wasteland. At the bottom of his backpack, hidden beneath a flap, rested a small grey box. Stuck to its face sat a well-read note. It was a promise, to him and him alone.

"You are gonna be needin' some cards," the woman declared, in a tone that sounded as if she had just found out he had been living off her ship's mold this entire trip. Pulling out what looked like a deck of playing cards, she counted them off with a soft murmuring.

Nate looked at her for a moment, feeling the twin urges of curiosity of what she was about and drinking in more of his first sight of the Commonwealth becoming real before his eyes. "What cards?" he finally asked.

"D'amon Ci'y Players," she informed him, having the good grace to spare him from a withering look. "They got tha' prin'in' press o' theirs up and runnin' and the whole 'wealth is hungry for them. Says you can trade them in for iron, the good stuff tha' no rus'ed. Why anyone would want that instead o' food and bullets I don't know but it's the only thin' the traders will take around here. So, it's the only thin' everyone wants. Here's twenty. They're all worth the same, though some will pay more if the faces are different. Collectors."

He accepted the offering, reaching into his bag to present a handful of bullets for the exchange. It was a strange feeling, finding himself not trying to gauge whether or not this display of generosity was a trick. At the least, she had brought him here in one piece; that had to count for something. If it didn't then they were all in a bad place.

"Keep them bullets, these came wi' your ticket."

"Thanks," he mumbled, suddenly feeling guilty. He would have said more, wanted to say more, but the words died in his mouth. Instead he turned back to wait out the last moments of his voyage in silence.

His watery steed glided into an empty mooring with all the clumsy grace he had come to expect of it, despite the deftness of his host's skill. Not taking this boat again, he promised himself. It would surely be an easy enough oath to keep.

"Well, you were not the worst passenger I had." Abbet turned her eyes away, gazing out over the Landing, waving towards another ship captain. "Make sure t' have a word with someone at the Port Pub. You'll find someone to go to D'amon Ci'y wi' you for a fair price, and any of them questions you got bubbling in you can be answered by them easy enough. And if you do go to Sanc'uary, you'll be needin' some company."

He offered her a smile, one that was the nearest he could manage towards being genuine. "Thanks captain. Goodbye."