Once upon a time, there lived a man in a tent in the middle of a desert. He spent his days gathering native plants and searching for their secrets. The cuffs of his sleeves were stained green and his hands always smelled of creosote and jojoba oil. He looked up only when he had to and resented every interruption.

He called himself content, if not happy. He was safe, and that wasn't something he could take for granted. He had work he could feel proud of and colleagues who didn't ask too many questions. This is life, he told himself. The best I can hope for.

When a young woman threw a rock into that calm puddle, however, he was almost relieved. A new path had opened before him. It might end in discovery and death, but at least it forced him to leave the tent behind. He found himself out among the smelly, suffering people he had always professed to care for, but had always avoided. He was uncomfortable, and often frightened, but not unhappy. This is where I'm supposed to be, he said.

Within a year, things had changed again. The man found himself making hard decisions at every turn, breaking promises to the dead and to himself, doing things he thought he would never do. He became a reluctant accomplice to things he couldn't sanction. Slowly, very slowly, he lost everything he had, everything he was. Hindsight being crystal clear, he could point to the single event that had changed everything.

The cook had used all of his broc flowers.

o - o - o - o - o

If I hadn't gone so far from Freeside, Arcade thought wildly, searching for something or someone to blame, none of this would have happened. If that stupid apprentice hadn't stolen my plants, I wouldn't have needed to go foraging in the first place. If I had taken guards with me. If Caesar's dogs hadn't chosen that day to go hunting for doctors. If Benny had done the job properly... He stopped there, disgusted and angry with himself.

All of this was unhelpful nonsense, and he knew it. The Legion would still have marched on Vegas - and would probably have taken it, in a world without repentant Enclave allies - and a madman would still have his thumb on the Button at the end of it all. He couldn't help but feel a grain of truth in the sentiment though, however selfish: he would have seen these events and suffered, but he wouldn't have been involved. He would have stayed pure and clean in his grubby little ivory tower in the Old Mormon Fort and probably died there, his father's armor where it belonged, in dusty storage and well out of reach.

The sight of the approaching mountain brought him back to the present and his responsibility. If not me, then who? If not now, then when? I am a Follower. Followers do their best to act with good intentions. Today, I will kill with the best intentions possible. Feeling resolve and despair in equal measure, he climbed the slope at a run, looking neither to the left nor the right, only straight ahead.

The doors opened to him of their own accord and closed behind him. He had his gun out and ready, but he could see nothing in the darkness. Movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn, but it was too late. A flash of light and a muted explosion and he knew no more.

When he finally came to his senses, every muscle and nerve in his body felt like it had been strained its breaking point, alive with pain that seemed to have no specific source. He thought he could - hypothetically - sit up, but decided against it.

Someone leaned over him, blocking out the dirty lights above. "Finally awake. Good. Less time left than I thought. Your vigil begins now."

Arcade blinked. He'd seen that face in the McCarran witness box, though it hadn't been hidden behind a mask then. This was Nemo. Ulysses. The voice behind the eyebot.

"My armor?"

"Your weapon was destroyed. No one will wear it again. That should give you comfort."

"How long?"

An indifferent shrug. "Some hours. Too many, perhaps. Time is short."

Not knowing what else to say, and entirely unable to defend himself, Arcade looked at the ceiling and confided irrelevantly, "My father was killed by an EMP attack. He was younger than I am now."

"And mine met his end by a Legion machete. Yet here we both are."

"And you served Caesar?" Arcade let the contempt he felt come through as much as he could, sitting up with a groan. "After what he did to your people? I found some holotapes. I know what those braids mean to you."

"The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Another weighty silence. The man shrugged. "Abandoned Caesar's way before the end. He was wrong. The Bull was doomed to burn itself out before it reached the great waters."

"Did you… did you stop Megan this way? With a grenade?" If so, she could already be dead, and he didn't know how he felt about that. It wasn't relief. It wasn't sorrow. More of a bone-deep weariness that pinned his mind and body down like weights. It shouldn't have ended this way.

"No. She came unarmed, a willing lamb to slaughter. Her own weapon lies beyond my gates, destroyed by her own hand. You chose an unusual day to switch roles, Follower. So much for non-violent resistance. Or have you forgotten your own credo?"

Astounded, Arcade had nothing to say to this and Ulysses continued, "Your daughter is alive, in chains. I require her confession before I'll discuss the Bear's fate. You'll listen." It wasn't a request. Arcade didn't think the man did requests. He summoned the strength to stand and weighed his options. He estimated he had an inch or two on the man's height, but he couldn't have taken him barehanded on the best day of his life, let alone the worst.

"She's not my daughter." The automatic protest lacked weight. Ulysses' words were distracting him: the Bear's fate. The NCR. Dear God, he's going to bomb the NCR.

"Long days and nights listening to your conversation through the Enclave machine, I believe otherwise. Come. Observe."

Ulysses pointed to a row of windows overlooking a small prison block. There were six cells, two of them occupied. He had been speaking metaphorically about chains, but he hadn't lied about having Megan prisoner. The glass was badly smudged and dirty and Arcade struggled to see the other captive. It was a grown man, he thought; huddled in a corner with his head bowed, he looked small.

"Who is that?"

In answer, Ulysses handed him a set of dog tags. Examining them, Arcade saw a name he recognized from that distant, dreamlike time (had it ever really existed?) when he'd lived in a house instead of a tent. This man - no, the man's father - had broken bread at the Gannon table. Arcade couldn't remember the face (more than likely, he had been sent to bed early on those nights), but he suspected he'd been one to chuckle at Israel's dry humor and compliment Miriam's cooking. He couldn't be sure, but he thought theirs had been one of the families to take the escape offered by the vertibirds in 2250. They had to be.

"Oh."

Ulysses nodded. "Found him crawling on the high road. Had lost his own weapon somewhere. The change had already begun."

"The change?"

"You would call him a ghoul. My people called such as him by another name. You wouldn't have heard it." He coughed wetly, the sound harsh through the filters of his mask. "You saw his rank there? He was the most senior of that small company. Your daughter - the Courier, if you prefer - was the least."

Arcade nodded. Another missing piece, helpfully collected for his observation. "Four down, two to go."

Ulysses shrugged. "Don't look for the last of the six. Buried somewhere. If I haven't found them, you won't. Watched the thinking lizards take their prize into the caves. Saw the Hopeville survivor slowing to a stop. Didn't interfere. They weren't the ones I wanted."

Arcade digested this information. "What do you expect her to tell you? Her recollection is shaky to nonexistent. The injury was real," he admitted grudgingly. "She became someone different in the Mojave, even if this place has changed her back."

"She'll learn it when she says it out loud. Because she has changed. The truth lies nearer the surface than it did before. You've seen it. I've heard it."

Arcade looked back down, studying the room below. He kept his voice level. "A confession extracted under torture or psychological manipulation is useless. Particularly if she doesn't know what you want. Eventually, she will say anything and everything. She may even believe it. Memories can easily be manufactured through suggestion."

"There will be no suggestion. She will find it."

"It won't happen." He dropped into a chair, fearing his rubbery legs would betray him otherwise. He felt bizarrely euphoric despite the pins-and-needles pain that persisted and the terrible situation he faced. He blamed the shock. I survived an EMP grenade! In power armor! "And there isn't time. The Brotherhood of Steel will catch up very soon, you know. You may find your defenses outmatched in the face of fanatics pursuing known Enclave agents into a missile silo. There will be no chance of negotiation under those circumstances." As odd as it would have seemed even a few hours ago, he hoped to see his ancestral enemy very soon.

"Acquainted with that faction and their beliefs," Ulysses said serenely. "Know they'll come. She may yet break before then. The best in her wants to know. Can't be one person without knowing. Listen."

He turned a knob on a wall speaker that Arcade hadn't noticed until then. Sure enough, Megan was talking, hysterically fast through tears, "...do you want me to say? Evidence says I was here. I killed your friend to become a courier. I made a trip to Navarro. How many times do you want me to say it? I don't know what happened. I don't remember..."

It went on and on in this vein, eating up their time, until Arcade had heard enough and protested, "Stop this. This is a trial of absurdity. She has no idea."

Ulysses turned the volume down to a whisper, sighed, and explained in the manner of a man tired of repeating himself. "She does or she wouldn't have destroyed my messengers. The part that knows is hiding from the part that doesn't. But," he added, "since your loyalty has earned understanding, you may as well know."

He pressed another button, cutting off Megan's voice. Mercifully, there was silence, though Arcade knew the stream of denials continued on.

"The cells are soundproof. She cannot hear him and he cannot hear her. Speak to the ghoul. Ask him about the orders he carried here." When Arcade hesitated, Ulysses repeated the command, more harshly this time. "Do it, or you'll join her in willful ignorance."

Feeling like he was in a dream - or a nightmare - Arcade cleared his throat. "Hi. I'm Arcade Gannon. Your parents knew mine… at Navarro. Like you, I am a prisoner of Ulysses. Can you tell me what your mission was?"

After a ten seconds of waiting, the gravelly voice answered grudgingly. "Gannon. I don't remember that name, but I don't doubt it. I told that fucking tribal everything. More times than I can count. Ask him."

Arcade glanced at Ulysses, who shook his head. "Uh… I don't think he'll talk. You know what he's like. Can you humor me?"

"Fine. Just tell me one thing - you know this girl next to me? Martus?"

"Yes. Pretty well." Or I thought I did. "She figured out where I came from and stuck to me. I felt obliged to aid a far-flung ally." Let him believe I still have some sympathies for the old cause.

The ghoul snorted. "She's no ally. As far as I'm concerned, she should be court-martialed and shot. How does she explain what happened? How has she survived for two years with that mistake on her head? Hell of thing. She was always soft, always ducking orders. I knew it was a mistake to conscript vault dwellers… and Eden insisted that we bring her. Call it insubordination - at this point I don't care because I'm never leaving this room - but I blame him for what happened."

"What did happen? I don't know. She doesn't remember. Not long after she arrived in the Mojave, a gangster shot her in the head. Ulysses wants her to confess anyway."

"He would," the tired voice replied. "The president wanted us to spy on the NCR. Discover its weak points. Report back, if possible, radio it back from Chicago if not. The third part of our mission…" Here, he hesitated. "If possible, given time and opportunity, we were to steal a specific device from Navarro and use it to launch as many missiles as possible at the NCR. It was kind of a… a 'nuclear football', I think they used to call it. A Pre-War relic they saved from the Oil Rig. It had been there from the very beginning."

He said this so calmly and matter-of-factly that Arcade didn't register it at first. "What?"

"We had a list of targets," the voice continued, sounding almost bored. "Major trade routes, cities, and so forth. It would have crippled them, made them vulnerable to a future attack. The NCR, in their boundless ignorance, didn't know what they had. We, on the other hand, had the manifest, though it was impossible for us to intrude upon their excavations. In the end, they made it easy for us: they summoned a courier to Navarro to collect it, to take it to Hopeville for study. The markings matched, you see. We intercepted those orders and had one of our own leave to collect it. That was Martus," he added unnecessarily. "She resembled the courier we waylaid the most, a mouthy little chit of a waster who cried when we seized her. This was a mistake. I should have sent Pemberton. Everything would have been different." Though he'd been reluctant to begin, the man seemed to be warming to the subject. Maybe he was just happy to have the chance to speak to someone other than Ulysses.

Arcade surprised himself by staying outwardly calm even as the bottom was falling out of his world. "Last I heard, the NCR wasn't bombed to hell." Not yet, anyway. "You failed. What went wrong?"

"Martus is what went wrong. I don't know what she did. The idiot probably dropped the damn thing or started playing with the buttons." His voice rose in agitation. "She knew what it was! How stupid could she have been?"

"So what happened?" Arcade asked, though he already knew. In retrospect, he felt like he'd known for a long time and hadn't wanted to admit it.

Irritated, the ghoul growled, "What does it look like? You've seen this place. Twelve days after she set out, the ground began to shake. Abortive missile launches, some of them trapped underground, others with random and misguided courses that came to earth almost immediately. They turned Hickville into Hell. We were all caught out that day. I don't know if anybody made it back to the bunker, or even if the bunker survived. Until today, I didn't know Martus was alive, God damn her."

The Divide. She's responsible for the Divide. Arcade's threshold for horror was at its max, but this added a new layer. Somewhere, a distant voice was replying to the ghoul, "The bunker is intact. Pemberton was even alive until a week ago, before she succumbed to radiation sickness. Beyond speaking, though. I learned nothing from her."

Another pause and the ghoul responded, this time with real regret. "A pity. She was a good officer and a good friend. I would have liked to have seen her one more time."

Completely numb, Arcade didn't have the energy to give the man the condemnation he richly deserved. The appalling crime he described so casually seemed far away and abstract compared to the oppressive reality of what Megan had done months before he even met her. Even so, some strange impulse worked on him to defend her aloud.

"It may well have been an accident. I had a… a colleague… who made a study of such old world devices. Under the right circumstances, it might have acted automatically, requiring only proximity, sending out its signal as she drew near. You might never have had a chance to wield it as a precise instrument." This didn't absolve any of them, of course: in trying to enact a new apocalypse, they had managed one on a lesser scale instead. "The original courier could have done the same thing, quite innocently, unaware of what she carried," he added, half to himself. Would that long-dead girl have found her way to the Mojave as well? There was no telling.

"No difference," Ulysses rumbled above him before the ghoul could answer. "Would have brought her here to face the consequences as well. The telos, the ending, all that matters. Good intentions. Bad intentions. Same conclusion."

Hearing this, the ghoul whined. "Tell him to shut up, Gannon. Please. I've heard enough of that crap to last me a lifetime."

"That's a moronic ethical doctrine to apply to this - or any - situation," Arcade snapped at Ulysses, forgetting the ghoul at the other end of the speaker, not to mention his own precarious position. "At the end of the day, intent is more important than anything else. The original courier would have been innocent." Why am I still stuck in hypotheticals? It doesn't matter! Focus!

"How do you weigh intentions, doctor? An impossible task. They are irretrievable, obscure to doer and observer alike. Results have an objective quality." Ulysses reached up to turn off the speaker. "Your Courier. Were her intentions in the Mojave good or bad?"

"Mostly good," Arcade conceded reluctantly. "Like most halfway decent people. She tried very hard to meet the bar I set for her. At least in the beginning," he amended, remembering what came later. "Things beyond her control happened. They changed her."

"How was her ledger at the end of that sojourn?"

"A net positive," Arcade answered stubbornly. "Misery for her, of course, but the Legion was stopped. She's despised there, but many lives were saved. That's to her credit."

"You've walked the Divide with her. Seen the crimes. Heard the truth. What do you say now?"

"She's so far in the red that she could never dig herself out in one lifetime," he admitted. "By any ethical scale. Ends, intentions, character, whatever. She meant to kill a people. She succeeded. Then there's the launch at Ashton. The woman in Hopeville. Relatively minor, but bad enough. And recent."

"My hand launched the missile at Ashton," Ulysses told him, the ghost of humor in his voice. "You can blot that out."

No. I can't. "She wanted to. In my book, that's bad enough."

Ulysses nodded approvingly. "Consistency. Admirable. But there's more you should know."

Arcade listened helplessly to what came next, the captive audience of a madman's master plan. He learned the fatal secret that had traveled from a broken eyebot in Primm to this place via an old piece of RobCo technology.

"I wanted to destroy that thing. If only I'd insisted… you stole the code from her Pip-Boy? You intend to use it?" This was a stupid question, he knew. Of course he would use it. "She didn't know," he almost wept. "I won't add that to her crimes. I won't. She was an unwitting mule."

"You can't believe that, Follower. She carried another package. That's what a courier does. This courier brings death. Always. A person is responsibility for every result of every action. She did this... and you helped her."

Arcade took a deep breath to keep from screaming. "This is going nowhere. If you consider me guilty - as her father, her champion, or whatever - let me try to undo it. I can think of several good reasons why you shouldn't bomb the NCR. They're humanity's best chance-"

Ulysses cut him off. "No. I want her to defend the nation that condemned her, in full knowledge of what she has done. If the wolf reaches the door first, I will have no choice. Wanted both Couriers as witnesses, whole and alive. Can do it with one."

Arcade's mouth went dry with fear. It didn't occur to him to doubt the man's word. "Let me talk to her," he pleaded. "I can help." If that failed, he would try to stop him physically, and probably die in the attempt. Though unarmed and clearly ill, the man would snap him in half like a twig.

"Can help. Cannot tell her outright," Ulysses said, continuing to lay out the ground rules of his twisted game. "Five minutes. No more."

Five minutes! Eighteen months wasn't enough. Even so, he knew what her subconscious was hiding now. That ought to count for something. He thought for a moment, reviewing the last half-hour's conversation in his head, and made his decision.

"I'm ready." He stood again and faced the window.

The sound of crying told him that Ulysses had enabled the speaker again. "Speak," he commanded.

"Megan. It's Arcade. Obviously." You killed everybody here. You used nuclear weapons on a scale not seen for two centuries on civilians.

In the room below, she sat up straight. "Arcade! I thought you were dead. He said you were coming… a long time ago, hours, but then he didn't talk to me again. Why did you follow me? I told you I had to do this alone."

Yeah, and this was going so well for you. "I couldn't not come when I learned what he was doing! Listen, you have to remember. If you don't, Ulysses is going to nuke the NCR. You're the only one who can stop it."

"I know, I know. But I can't remember what I don't remember! If he'd just tell me what I did… do you know?"

"Yes. Before you ask, I can't tell you. His rules."

He couldn't see her face clearly, but he imagined it when she asked, in a tiny voice, "Is it… bad?" Sad, scared, and confused. He'd seen that look many times before. Well, he wouldn't let it sway him emotionally this time.

"Worse than I could have imagined," he said hotly. "Unforgivable. I can't… Megan, I can't even begin to express how bad this is. There's no coming back from this."

Beside him, Ulysses murmured, "No clues, doctor."

"Then I don't want to know," Megan moaned. "I can't. I can't live if I know. I'm not sure I can live now that you know."

It was time for a little applied cruelty, Arcade decided, speaking quickly now. "That's not important. Your life and happiness don't matter, can't you see that? You came here to stop Ulysses, right? Here's your chance: let yourself see what you've been avoiding your entire life. There's been ample evidence. I should have guessed it myself… but you're not the only one to blind themselves to the truth."

"No. I won't." Arcade heard the fatal difference. Not 'I can't', but 'I won't'. Ulysses might be right. He pressed on.

"Look. That ghoul next to you? He's the captain who gave you the order. You've always called yourself the Courier? You killed a courier for the privilege of going to my boyhood home. Remember your dreams. Remember where we are. Lex talionis. Ulysses craves balance and symmetry in his personal myth. Think about what he wants to do."

"Enough," Ulysses warned. "Let her think. She can't just guess."

Megan, it seemed, had only heard one thing, was still hung up on the least significant thing he'd said. "It doesn't matter if I survive? To you, I mean?"

Arcade clamped down on what little pity he had left, a tiny speck of a thing. That was for the future, if it came. "Honestly? No. Yesterday, I considered killing you to avoid a future incident exactly like this. Today, I learn that you already did it! I'm infinitely more concerned about the ten thousand strangers Ulysses will kill. This is your one, dubious shot at redemption, and probably the last thing you'll ever do. What I think shouldn't matter to you at all. Grow up already."

"Oh. Okay. You must be right. You always were. I will." She stopped talking. Physically, she sank into herself. Long minutes passed and Arcade stopped hoping. Memories didn't work like this. Brain injuries didn't magically get better after arguments. That's when the confession began.

It sounded like a corpse's voice, without inflection, interest, or emotion of any kind. "I remember walking forever, always in the back, five people in black armor in front of me. My head really hurts, Arcade. We killed people who got in our way. Animals as well, God knows why. I knew where we were going. Captain… I forget his name, but Captain reminded us often enough. To sabotage the NCR by any means possible. It really, really hurts.

"Forests, rivers, plains, deserts, mountains. A long, dreary, unmemorable winter in Chicago. Got careful when we reached the west, moving at night. Our armor meant something out there, he said. We didn't want to draw suspicion." She stood up and walked back and forth in the small space, as if acting out the journey, pressing both hands to her temples as she did so. "I remember, one day, we camped by a lake somewhere. My head didn't hurt then. I wish I could be back there. The sun came up over the mountains and it was beautiful. I probably could have slipped away then, in the early morning before the others awoke. I wanted to stay there forever, not climb back into that stinking suit and go who knew where. But, of course, I went with them.

"We got to Hopeville. The farmers there were nice. They accepted whatever story Captain gave them. Maybe we were prospectors? I don't remember. We stayed there for… about a year, I guess. Or was it less? Or more? Long enough that we sort of knew our neighbors. Their bodies were still there, in and around their homes - I guess that's why I buried them. Guilt. We took turns doing reconnaissance in pairs while the rest of us stayed home and kept up the act. God, I hated walking the High Road into the NCR. Scary."

She was quiet for a while and Arcade began to fear that she'd talked herself out. Before he could prompt her, she resumed the tale, losing a bit of her flat affect as she got closer to the painful part. "I guess I became Courier 6 by murdering my predecessor. I don't actually remember doing the deed, but I suppose I did if Ulysses says so. I went to Navarro with the appropriate papers. They handed off a little box wrapped in waxed paper and string. I knew what it was, but I wanted to look at it with my own eyes and did. It was small, black, and boring. Completely inert, I thought, and rather scratched and dirty, dented on one corner. I seriously doubted it would do what Captain wanted." She stopped and looked through the plexiglas wall at her former commander, her expression unreadable at this distance. "I hoped it wouldn't, but you don't have to believe that." She stopped, but started quickly, forcefully now, as if she needed the momentum to keep going.

"I didn't even get close. I was still far away when I felt the tremors. The mushroom clouds were just like you see in those old films, but worse. I felt the edge of the heat wave. Got a nice sunburn. I dropped my package in the dust and ran. I was miles away before I admitted to myself that I might have caused the explosions. As far as I'm concerned, I've been running ever since. I haven't taken responsibility until now. I did it, okay? I created the Divide and it kills me to know that. The rest you know, Arcade." She seemed to find his eye through the glass at last. "I'm sorry for the people I killed. I'm sorry for deceiving you for so long. I know it doesn't matter anymore, but there's nothing in the world that would make me do that now. You should have killed me back at Ashton, though you didn't know why. It was a question of justice, not of prevention. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." She stopped, hands falling to her sides. Dully, she spoke one last time, "My head doesn't hurt anymore."

"Welcome home, Courier," Ulysses announced with satisfaction, pushing a sequence of buttons at the dusty terminal. "A gift for you. On the table. Do what's right."

On the screen, Arcade watched as both cell doors swung wide. The ghoul didn't even look up, but Megan stepped out at once. She picked up the indicated item and looked at it. Arcade couldn't tell what it was until she turned back to the occupied cell and shot the onetime Enclave officer in the head. Then she turned the gun on herself.

"One bullet," Ulysses commented unnecessarily. "Expected that. More talk to be had. The way to my Temple is open." He left the terminal and strode purposefully through a doorway that Arcade hadn't noticed before, calling loudly. "We need a witness, doctor. After our business is done, your belongings - and hers - lie at the end of the tunnel that leads out of the Divide. One or both of you might escape, to do what you want with your lives."

Speechless, Arcade followed, his limbs moving stiffly, obeying him only by rote. He noticed that the room below was now empty save for the ghoul's corpse. Emerging out into an immense space that dwarfed the missile chambers of Hopeville and Ashton, he found her in front of an observatory dais of sorts. White as milk, she shook like a leaf in high wind and breathed rapidly in and out through chattering teeth. He hesitated, then joined her on the ground, taking her cold hand in his. He realized then that Ulysses was waiting on the platform above, a standard bearing a brass eagle in one hand, for all the world like a king holding his scepter.

I'm not sure she can talk, let alone form a cogent argument. Not that she's ever been a fantastic debater. "You need to tell Ulysses why he should spare the NCR," he told her quietly, shaking her shoulder. "He says he's open to persuasion. Alternatively, we can try to kill him and hope he's not holding a dead man's switch. This must not happen."

He had as well have been speaking to a statue. There was no change at all. He tried again. "Please, Megan. This is your chance to undo some of the wrong. I don't hate you. I should, but I don't. I'm not sure what kind of person that makes me." He knew it was hopeless, even before she slumped into a dead faint onto his arm. Setting her down gently, he stood.

"I know I'm not who you wanted, but I'm all you have for this moment of yours. That… purging… you demanded was too much for her. I could have told you that. With or without your permission, I will speak for the NCR."

"By what right? You have never served the Bear. Or any flag. You are a man without a nation." The contempt in Ulysses voice was palpable, and Arcade struggled to understand what nuance he meant in the word flag. A government, he supposed. Any government. The Legion - what he had simply called the Bull - had counted. The NCR, obviously. Pre-War America, whose sigil he wore for some reason.

"I spent my life with the Followers of the Apocalypse. We're too few to count as a people, true, but we depend on the NCR like a climbing vine depends on a tree. The stability and infrastructure they provide permits my people to work in their shadow. Civilization, for all its faults, emboldens humanitarians and fosters education. That is my ideal future: one where humans are empowered to be more than animals, living hand to mouth, never seeing beyond their own basic physical needs. Specific flags don't matter because they never last forever. If you cripple the NCR today, though, that vision dies for another hundred years or more." Even as he spoke, he wondered if this was true. Maybe the Followers, or people like them, would go on in the rubble, doing what they always did. The prospect made him feel weary, even though he wouldn't live to participate in such work.

Ulysses seemed to read these doubts in his face. "You are an anarchist, Follower. You repudiated the flag you were born under and, with it, all other flags for all time. You cannot speak for the Bear because you do not care for it in the slightest."

Arcade swallowed, measuring the distance between them. He could grapple for the pole Ulysses carried… and get his brains knocked out for the trouble, probably. He took one step forward, then another. "Can I speak for the citizens gathered by conquest and happenstance under its auspices, then? As a conglomerate of individuals, they are my people as much as those I served in New Vegas. For that matter, I could travel the breadth of this continent and never come to the end of people I consider human. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Even you. I would understand you, if there were time. If it would convince you not to do this thing."

"There is no time." Genuine regret. "Your case is eloquently put, yet inadequate. A nation is no more than the sum of its parts, its sickness divided into a thousand, ten thousand, unequal shares. It could not exist without the will of the governed and so they must bear the guilt of its faults." It might have been his imagination, but Arcade thought he heard the edge of uncertainty.

Another step forward. Perhaps ten feet remained. "If you think the Bear is so diseased, then why not let it die on its own? The Bull died of… 'natural causes', let's say, aided by the agent of chaos behind me. Weak, selfish people stood up and fought against a greater evil. Did you know she fought Legate Lanius single-handedly? I watched it. She lost, badly, but she tried. He died minutes later, indirectly by her hand. She lives. She turned the tide in a war. That's what one broken person can do."

Ulysses bowed his head and seemed to be thinking. Arcade tensed aching muscles for the charge. A deep pit yawned behind the man, leading down to the base of the great missile. If he could only push him hard enough… catch him by surprise...

"Don't do it, Follower," Ulysses warned. "It wouldn't end well for you. Have no wish to end this conversation prematurely. Have no interest in killing a thoughtful man, however wrong he may be. In any case, the countdown has already begun. My death would only ensure the launch… unless the Brotherhood arrives in time and knows how to stop it. Both possible. That woman at Big Mountain told me what her people wanted to be. Maybe they're meant to be here, just as I am, and you are, and she is."

He sighed and turned to the window that overlooked the edge of the Divide, his back to Arcade now, the thirteen stars of America's commonwealths clearly visible on his long, sleeveless coat. "You talked about one person winning a war, saving a nation. Your Courier showed me that a single person can kill a nation - in the case of Hopeville, before it begins. That inspired me to pursue a clean slate, an end to all flags in a world that no longer needs them. I found only confirmation of that dream in my travels. At Big Mountain and those I met there."

"I listened to that holotape too," Arcade said quietly, at the end of his answers. "The entities there told you their memories of America and gave you the means to destroy its direct descendant. Senile robots handing a madman the key to hell. The fate of too many people rests on too ridiculous a fulcrum."

Whether Ulysses heard this or not, Arcade wasn't sure. He seemed to be listening to something far away, though Arcade heard nothing. Without turning around, he said, "We're out of time. The Brotherhood has broken through. The Eyebots, the Marked Men, the defenses of the silo itself will slow them, but not for long. Take your daughter and leave. There's nothing else you can do here."

Arcade looked behind him, rather desperately searching for help. Megan had risen to her hands and knees, a puddle of vomit in front of her. She was no closer to being mobile than before. He, too, could hear the familiar sounds of many metal boots and it was all he could do not to flee. "Not until you stop the countdown."

"Very well. I will. Go!"

Arcade had his doubts, but he made his decision, one that would haunt him for years to come, knowing what he had risked in selfishness. Without thinking about the alternative, he grabbed Megan and dragged her with him to an unassuming doorway marked Exit. The large doors opposite the dais burst open from a concussive blast. From the far side of the room, he saw Ulysses jerk and fall with a sniper's bullet in his back as the Brotherhood of Steel flooded into the room, Veronica among them in black armor.

A soldier in chrome intercepted the pair of them at the door, menacing them with a drawn weapon. Behind them, others battled eyebots, as ghouls streamed in from the outside. He wondered why this one didn't just shoot. Arcade knew what he had to say - it might not save the two of them, but it could well save countless others.

"That man your people just killed started a countdown with codes stolen from Big MT and Navarro. The launch is imminent. You must stop it."

He never knew why the soldier didn't shoot them first - maybe it was because they weren't armed - but those were the magic words to make the threat disappear. In a minute, the way forward was clear and Arcade was through the door, straining to haul a hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight.

"Wake up, won't you?" he growled in between heavy breaths, forgetting entirely that he had fully intended to kill or abandon her only a short time before. "I don't want to die for you, but I don't want to go on alone either." As if heartened by this, she found her legs and took some of the burden off of him, though not much. They went on, a quarter mile or more, the rough path sloping further and further downward. True to his word, Ulysses had left their packs down here, two formless bundles in the dim light. He was relieved to find his plasma defender on top. He fumbled to secure his weapon first and looked down with dismay at the weight he was expected to carry now. Well, perhaps Megan had more Buffout in her chem kit... him dying of massive over-exertion seemed a fitting way to end this day. Still, he would have to choose a single bag, though, and there was no time to repack the essentials.

Actually, there was no time at all.

"No, Dr. Gannon. You can't take her with you. You can't."

Arcade straightened and turned to face the new accuser, dropping Megan, who staggered and fell. He kept his weapon held close to his side, concealed by the folds of his clothing. Veronica stood twenty feet away, her scavenged sword drawn for immediate use. The only light was behind her, and she seemed a dark, menacing shadow to him.

"Veronica. Please. Let us go." It was pretty feeble as far as defenses went. He was tapped out. Exhausted. All of his persuasiveness had been spent uselessly on Ulysses.

"I said 'no'. You may leave. I'll tell them you disappeared under a stealth shield and ran. I even have one for you. Because I'm nice, damnit. You should have chosen me. I needed a mentor. I needed purpose. I've lost everything because of her." She set the device down carefully on the ground beside her. "Despite your decisions, I know you're harmless on your own. She is not. I don't know why, but she's a curse everywhere she goes. She'll do worse in her life if she's not stopped."

"No, she's done." Arcade was fairly confident on that score. He'd spend a lifetime making sure it was true. "I'm not handing her over. Turn around and go back, Veronica. I don't want to hurt you."

For the first time, she appeared to notice that he was armed. She laughed inside her helmet. "You wouldn't shoot me. Besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm wearing power armor. That you gave me. I don't think your little pistol can get through that. At least not before I strike you down."

Dear scribe, you have no idea what I would do today. Neither do I, for that matter. "Plasma is a brutal defense against power-armored enemies, Veronica." His voice was dry and matter-of-fact. He could have been lecturing students in the classroom at the New Vegas clinic. "You're too young to remember, but both sides knew that in the old campaigns. I've seen the scars on my father's comrades. Don't make me do this. Turn around. Go back. This is your last chance to walk away whole."

She didn't say another word, but attacked. In the same moment, he fired - and gave up the last of his pretensions to righteousness.

Water. Med-x. Stimpaks. More water. More than they could spare. Anything to wash the plasma away from the limb that wasn't all there anymore. At least it wasn't much bleeding much. Energy weapons cauterized. That was their only redeeming feature. He tied a tourniquet anyway. There was no time for an amputation, but it would have to happen soon. The humerus was eaten through except for a small sliver of bone and the flesh throughout was blackened. At least she was unconscious. Thank heaven for small favors. Her people would find her soon.

If he wasn't so far beyond feeling anything after the last hour, Arcade would have cried over his task as he found himself trying to ameliorate the damage he himself had caused to another human being. When he finally straightened up, satisfied that his patient, his victim, was stabilized, he found Megan standing beside him, watching him. She looked no better than before but she managed to hoist her pack. Her pupils were impossibly large, her breath coming in short little hitches. Silently, she handed him a small, white pill that he swallowed with the last of his water. Retrieving the stealth boy Veronica had so thoughtfully provided, he set off at a jog for the exit without a backwards look, Megan following after. Neither said a word.

None of the missiles launched behind them. Within an hour, they'd left the Divide and its horrors behind them. Except for the nightmares. Those they carried with them for a long time.

o - o - o - o - o

End of Part II: The Courier's Revenge.

Next up is Part III: The Courier's Journey. This one is different, lighter in tone and quite a bit shorter: four episodic short stories in four different settings with a seasonal framing device (Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring), bookended by a prologue which takes place not long after the end of Revenge and an epilogue in Megaton a year later. I expect it to run about 60k words and hope to finish it this year.

An as-yet-untitled novel-length Part IV covers a mostly pre-canon FO4 timeline (2284-2288) in Boston. Major characters include Megan, Deacon, and LW!Dr. Amari (for background on that, see my FO3 WIP We're All Mad Here).

Thanks for reading!