Critical Mass (Fallout / Worm) 1.2.6

A/N: Well it's a bit longer than intended, and delayed, but I'm currently in Europe at the moment so that made it a bit awkward when it came to giving me time to write and edit. There are likely some minor changes and sentence revisions I'll make, further detailing and characterization, but I want to get this out before it sits fallow for a few days so… here we go. I hope I did well.

—

Within seconds the woman's warning cries were violently cut short as Eta smashed into her while moving at speed, first hitting her with the dead or dying body of her friend before viciously diving on her where she hit the floor several feet back. Eta fell on her, hard, and I could hear the snap of breaking bones as she was practically crushed beneath the corpse and Eta's weight.

I stepped forward to stun her as the woman's screams turned shrill as she moved weakly beneath her compatriot's corpse. My weapon shifted, but as quickly as I was moving forward it released its hold on the corpses head and arm to grip the woman's temples before brutally wrenching her head to the right.

A lump of what had to have been her upper vertebrae bulged grotesquely from the side of the woman's neck.

The scene was still for a long moment, quiet, and I stared at the tableau before me. Then time reasserted itself and shouts and screams erupted from the direction of the lobby

"Fuck me," Blasto grunted before spitting out a whistle. Eta: Return!"

At Blasto's command, his creation rolled off the two bodies just in time for shots to ring out and the corpses to jerk in place. Crouching low it leaped back into cover as a spattering of gunfire peppered the walls and shelves of what, now that I was standing in it, appeared to have been the hospital's outpatient pharmacy.

"Goddamnit." Stepping forward beside Blasto growled, punched the door, and quicker than I thought him capable drew his revolver, raising and holding it at the ready while leaning to the side to peek out into the lobby. Catching my eye he shook his head in what I assumed was exasperation. "Sorry that, she can be—" he shook his head as more gunfire rang out and the people in the lobby jeered. "Give me ten seconds. I'll keep their attention on me while you hit them from the side?"

"Can you do it without putting yourself at risk?"

He shot me a smile that was part discomfort and part patronizing confidence; it made him look constipated. "This won't be my first rodeo," he said.

Simply acknowledging him with a nod I turned back to the hall, concentrating on the immediate problem before me rather than his aggressively defensive bodyguard, our situation as a whole, and the fact that I hadn't spotted the dark clothing the captive had been wearing.

Beginning a mental countdown I stepped out into the hall as gunshots rang out behind me.

Ten seconds.

Weapon shifting to my grenade launcher I held it at the low ready and advanced down the hall; my steps measured, pace steady.

Another gunshot rang out, immediately followed by a muted scream and retaliatory gunfire from the hostiles in the lobby as insults were exchanged. A distant part of me noted that the Bio-Tinker was still exceeding my, low, expectations of him and adapting to the situation well enough. Being what he was, his specialty, I wouldn't have expected it of him and yet here we were.

Nine seconds.

Mad, mocking cackles echoed down the hall toward me, "You inbred cannibal fucks really do suck! Your shooting is worse than the worst small dicked puto down in the 'basin! The village abuelas' could shoot better than you, and they were fighting off the villanos'!"

Ahead, the crash of a door slamming open and firelight flooding into the T-junction narrowed my focus.

Footsteps pounded and hushed voices echoed.

Eight seconds.

In a flash and blur of shimmering green and black the grenade launcher became a shotgun, the chamber and tube loaded with six less than lethal shells; an alternating combination of knockdown gel slugs and shock shells. It wasn't ideal, the latter were prohibited to use against non-brutes according to some regulations and illegal in some states across the Atlantic legitimate health concerns. But, with little way of restraining these people save for using Blasto's limited supply of drugs, putting them down hard was the best I had to work with.

And, a small part of me whispered, they deserved it for what they had done to that woman.

Seven seconds.

The first hostile, the man in a patchwork flannel, rounded the corner in a scramble gripping a bulky pistol with an extended magazine jutting from the grip and a heavy recoil compensator.

At just over ten feet away I shouldered my shotgun and squeezed the trigger.

Six seconds.

The rubber slug caught him in the diaphragm, bringing him up and around with the blow as I compensated for the recoil and racked the action to advance a round, shifted my aim to his upper torso, and fired.

Five seconds.

My taser round caught him in the chest, and the barbed shell sent an electrical current through his muscles he dropped to the ground, twitching— convulsing, actually, but he was neutralized for now.

Four Seconds.

Even as the first man fell, a second man hot on his heels skidded to a stop beside the still convulsing first, thrusting out a hand to try and catch himself on the wall and keep from tripping over the other man. Eyes widening and lips parting to reveal yellow and blackened teeth, his free hand rose to reveal a thing of splintered wood, bent metal, and rusted piping backed with springs.

Three seconds.

A pair of rapid gunshots echoed up the hall from Blasto's position were echoed by my own as I put the shotgun on target and squeezed twice.

Two seconds.

Listening, and hearing no one coming this way but not sure, my weapon again shifted to a fragmentation grenade that I bounced around the corner and slowed my step for a second.

Two seconds. Three seconds to detonation.

Then footsteps scuffing against the floor, a metallic clatter, and suddenly the grenade was rebounding back off the wall.

Reaching out it came to me as I rushed forward, blurring through the air as an indistinct and unformed smear of green and black. Reaching the halls intersection I dropped to one knee and peeked around the corner just in time for a man in what, at first glance looked to be a hooded and armored chem-war gas mask, stepped out from behind the door frame.

One second.

Caked in grime, enough to partially obscure the dark lenses, the heavy looking respirator hissing faintly in time with his breathing; It was a wonder they could see or hear anything.

My weapon leaped almost eagerly into my hands and despite the disrepair of mask, the man staggered back a step when my shotgun took shape. Two more shots and he dropped as I rose, stopping only momentarily to disarm the three hostiles and struck out to dissuade any movement for the immediate future.

Zero seconds.

Time.

My fingers furiously worked at control surfaces to eject magazines, empty chambers, and disassemble or otherwise disable the pistol, scrap built shotgun, and heavy military rifle the men had carried.

Minus five seconds.

You had better be ready, Blasto.

Tossing parts up and down the hall I stood and turned to the doorway, quickly sidling left as I approached the door, checking the angles in case anyone was hiding in the blind spot behind the door frame or to the side of the door, then right, and stepping back into center I raised my grenade launcher.

Fixing my memory of the lobby into my mind's eye, mentally superimposing it over my vision, I breathed in and pulled the trigger.

With every pull of the trigger, shells left the barrel with a soft "Thoomp!" as I glided back and forth across the hall; I stepped forward, back, and side to side scatter the volley of grenades throughout the lobby through the small window available to me. The moment the sixth shell left the barrel I spun in place, catching the door to the lobby with a boot heel and kicking back, slamming it shut an instant before six near-simultaneous detonations shook the building as it was struck by light and sound.

My reactive earplugs saved me, but they didn't stop me from making out the muffled screams, cries of pain, and confused shouting. The noises preceded me as I spun, pulled open the door, and with my shotgun tucked into my armpit, held and low ready, quickly advanced into the lobby.

The hostiles were strewn about the cavernous room as I took in the lobby at a glance.

Through the smoke left from their gunfire I picked them out: most had fallen behind their cover and concealment, but the noises they made gave away their positions. In the case of a small few though, they were either out in the open and were huddled in on themselves, or lay sprawled and bleeding out in a literal no man's land between the grisly cook area and the dust shrouded pharmacy Blasto hid in.

Not his first rodeo indeed.

Putting the casualties out of my mind I stepped out into the lobby propper and raised my shotgun, pivoting to take in the rest of the room but there was no one else.

Clear. Though, as I stood there, listening for anything out of the ordinary, I caught the growing smell of smoke under the scent of viscera from the cannibal's victim; the unfortunate downside.

Lowering my shotgun it reformed itself as I turned in place, searching out the source of the smoke. We're clear," I called out, my voice echoing in the cavernous room.

Noises from the pharmacy and a few moments later Blasto emerged with Eta in tow.

Covering his mouth and nose he stalked through the dust-choked the air with his revolver in hand, eyes moving about to take in the room before settling on me. His eyebrows rose.

"A fire extinguisher? Really?"

"Oxygen deprivation in an enclosed space and blunt-force trauma," I said in lieu of an explanation and getting clear of the dust he cocked his head in thought before nodding.

"I suppose that makes some sense," he said, "but it also seems rather ambiguous." He coughed once and pocketing his revolver absently brushed the dust from his coat. "It makes me wonder what the hell your power constitutes as a weapon." He turned to me, eyes on my weapon, then shaking his head he drew his injector and quickly went from person to person; putting them to sleep as I moved about the room to deal with several smoldering spots of trash or debris.

When I turned I found him examining the woman strung up to the bed frame.

Looking past the man, my eyes landed upon the areas they had cut at; her hips, breasts, shoulders, calves. My immediate thought was that she had been cut up like livestock.

My eyes fell to the pooled blood beneath her.

And while she was alive. My gut clenched.

We had to have only been no more than an hour late.

How many though? How long did a person last? Were they picky? Did they have options? Who else had they captured and eaten, why?

My wrists itched, a suspicion, and a detached part of myself pulled on the fact. I thought it was a clue about the state of this world, that they would be reduced to cannibalism. I forcibly revised myself though. They had not been 'reduced' to it, no. Replaying the insults the woman had shouted to the now-dead 'jack', her comment about the 'meat' standing out.

Looking to the corpse my gut unclenched only for the unease to solidify into a steel determination. They hadn't been reduced to anything, this was a casual act. Something that happened often enough they were comfortable enough with it to use slang when referring to the person they had butchered for their meal.

This was the normal state of things for these people

Inhaling and letting out a slow breath I looked up from the pool of blood to meet Blasto's distinctly flat facade.

"So, this is" he began then coughed, shut his eyes, and shook his head before starting again. "So did you find whoever it was you saw that got nabbed," he asked, the word coming out in a rush.

As he spoke a soft thump sounded in the hall, barely audible, and in that brief moment, his lapse in control was shelved as I placed the source: The mezzanine.

I didn't respond as I glanced back to the platform overlooking the lobby, at the solid railing that ran its perimeter until it connected to the stairs.

"I ask because if she's an indication of what they were planning for them, I think they may be alright for a bit— probably stuck in a holding pen somewhere. I mean, if you're resorting to eating lean pork then you aren't just—"

He was rambling when I cut him off. "Blasto."

Half looking back I put a finger to my lips before my attention returned to the mezzanine.

"There's three men back in the hall," I told him, summoning my weapon; first the heavy pistol the man had carried back in the hall, then to a reliable AR-Pattern rifle. "Do you mind making sure they don't wake up for a while?"

He was quiet for a moment before breaking the silence. "Sure," he said, and walking past me his gaze was trained on the mezzanine as he left the lobby, Eta trailing close behind him.

The hostage wasn't here, so maybe… Maybe, but maybe not. There was a lot of building left that these people could have held up in. So many rooms ambushers could be lying in wait.

A part of me hoped it would be simple though.

I wasn't exactly liking the idea of having to clear the hospital room by room, the hospital with likely structural instabilities that could possibly collapse at any given moment. And doubted that Blasto would have the stomach for it despite his apparent experience with combat. But, as he said, the person I had seen was no doubt being held somewhere, possibly with others, and I couldn't just leave them to the same fate as the dead woman.

Slowly sidestepping I made my way to the stairs while keeping the AR-Pattern rifle cradled in my arms, held at the low ready. I didn't once look away from the bannister that could be hiding a hostile though, not once.

While there may be a captive up there, I wasn't going to discount the possibility that the noise came from some with dangerous intent. Not for a second, not with the casual savagery they had displayed in killing their own and others.

Reaching the staircase and putting my toe on the first step I was preceded by a loud "Creek!" and a man in rags and another chem-war hooded gas mask popped out of the cover; he came out with a bolt action hunting rifle, but where he had to bring it up and around I only needed to sight him in less time than it took to blink and pull the trigger to let off a three-round burst.

The rifle's magazine was loaded with rubber bullets, strictly riot control munitions, the same as those the police used and what I used on patrol.

However intellectually I knew less-than-lethals like rubber bullets were little better than a copper-jacketed slug when impacting certain vulnerable areas. In that moment, rubber bullets impacted the gas masks faceplate, drilling into the forehead and shattering the lenses, I knew it was the same as a lethal one; it just made less of a mess. It took intent or poor luck to make them lethal.

The stairs creaked under me as I advanced up their stairs, my peripheral vision letting me know my right flank clear and allowing me to concentrate on where the hostile had appeared.

Part of me wanted to say it was because that was all of him that had been exposed, but I knew there were other options available to me; I could have fired off another grenade and rushed the position, actively suppressed as I ascended the stairs, or even fired a stun-net and let the area it covered take care of things.

But I didn't, and as I reached the top step and found him the mezzanines only occupant, my attention was drawn to the ground floor.

What was the difference between what was easy and what was hard, I had asked Blasto. What a hypocrite I was lecturing him.

Shaking my head I took in the space at a glance and knew the person I'd seen wasn't here. But where, that was the question. I moved to a series of doors at the opposite end of the mezzanine.

I was clearing the last room the few doors leading from the mezzanine accessed, offices turned flop rooms going by a few ratty mattresses scattered about the floor when I heard Blasto ascending. When I came out he was kneeling beside the ambusher, injection gun in hand.

Looking up his tongue darted out to lick his lips and he stood, pocketing the pneumatic injector.

The tinker briefly looked around the mezzanine, past me to the doors I had left open in my wake. "Any luck?"

Shaking my head I holster my weapon though it didn't remain; jumping back into my hand, taking the form of a small, polished grey pistol fitted with a suppressor. It fit uncomfortably comfortably.

"A few of them may have been sleeping up here," I reported, "but I haven't seen any sign of other captives.

Nodding, Blasto twisted to point to a bank of elevator doors at the top of the stairs. "And that?"

For a moment I didn't know what he was referring to, but glancing my attention fixed on a now steadily blinking yellowed elevator button. As I stared a faint but distinct humming filled the silence, growing louder with each second, the source of it 'clicked' for me. Unlikely, but if not… And I hadn't seen any accessible stairs.

Moving so the door was directly in front of me, my fingers rolled over the pistols grip until I let out a slow breath and my power reacted; I pressed the shotgun to my shoulder and took aim at the doors.

A second passed, two, the humming grew louder until stopping and a light appeared above the elevator doors with a cheery "BING!" that didn't come close to reflecting the dilapidated state of the building's interior. The doors creaked as they parted, groaning open to reveal a pair of men in the threadbare and patched clothing that seemed to be the norm. Of all things, the pair each loosely cradled a Thompson Submachine gun in their arms, and an unknown late model variant at that.

Curious.

Facing each other they weren't prepared to see us and jumped at my presence. "Freeze!" I followed the book. My voice firm and loud, commanding, enunciating my words clearly; all standard procedure despite what I had done just minutes earlier. "Drop the weapons and put your hands above your—"

The one on the left turned and tried bringing his gun up. I put a gel slug into his ribs before snapping the barrel onto the second man— no, little more than a kid, now that I got a good look at him. He even had pimples, if hard to see as they were under the layer of soot covering his face.

Backing away into the corner of the elevator he dropped the Tommy-gun and his hands shot up.

"D-Don't! Please don't! Please just don't kill me. I got caps hidden, I—"

"Stop! I want you to exit the elevator, get on your knees, and place your hands behind your head. If you comply you will not be harmed," I told him, raising my voice to speak over pleas.

Fortunately for him and us, he complied. Stepping out and lowering himself to his knees, I circled around and pushed his face down to the floor from behind. My weapon flickered and I holstered it then knelt to lightly pat him down before moving to the downed hostile laying half in and half out of the elevator.

A few quick cuts to get strips of cloth, a few moments binding the teens wrists and I was hauling him back against the wall, crouching in front of him while my weapon flickered and changed in my hand; It shifted to conscious and unconscious queues, shifting from pistol, to bowie knife, to knuckle dusters, to bolt cutters, and more, never repeating.

"Now. I have questions that you're going to answer."

The teen's eyes were locked on the bone saw my power stopped at momentarily before snapping up to meet my eyes.

"I'll answer! Anything you want!"

"Good."

-I-

"This is a really bad idea."

Blowing a bit of dust from the lug of oiled steel, I dropped the bolt into place and listened to the mostly lubricated mass of metal slide back and forth when I pulled the charging handle. Barely any sound other than the clean slide of metal on metal.

My eyes narrowed at the sound and I did it again, though I knew it would be the same. The internals had been immaculately clean, too clean, and the gun itself too undamaged.

My initial assumption had been that the weapon had come from some surplus stockpile, but the lack of kremoline or lingering scent of other preservatives had been the first clue otherwise. Now, unlikely as it was, I was leaning toward the gun, as well as the second which was in identical condition, being new production.

Unlikely perhaps, but not far outside the realms of possibility with this particular gun. All that a skilled enough gunsmith would have needed was steel bar-stock, a milling machine, a lathe, and a drill press. The thompson machine gun wasn't simple, but it wasn't complicated, the manufacturing tolerances had wiggle room, and if they were only making these... easily doable, even with the apparent state of society and concerning coloquial allusions the teen had made.

"We don't know how much of what that guy told us was bullshit."

"Enough of it was true," I said simply and tapping the magazine against my thigh, I slid the stick mag into place and racked the charging handle.

Giving it a final look over and making note of the finer details I had overlooked previously, such as it not being the simplified late war production model but something even further simplified in areas that would have cut down on machining time and material cost, things like the fact that the front sight was a simple wedge soldered in place, the lack of a complicated muzzle break, and more. Simple changes, minor changes, but changed that wouldn't have been important enough to skimp on in a large scale production run where a minor resource expenditure like that would have been a negligible cost.

Even the wood furniture was telling of it being scratch built, now that I was looking close enough.

While well-shaped and nearly identical to an example I had seen, the wood was actually multiple pieces of different woods glued together to form a contiguous piece and darkly stained so as not to be noticeable.

"Well, you do realize I'm half out of my formula, right? The number of people he described..." Blasto pulled out the pneumatic injector and waggled it for emphasis. "This isn't going to cut it."

He wasn't wrong. Really though, had I expected to be able to do this bloodlessly? With no support network to source extra material and personal? No, not really, and not after seeing some extent of their actions. Maybe I'd just been hopeful.

Hefting the submachine gun I held it at low ready glanced at the Tinker. "The plan is still the same," I told him, "don't kill when not necessary to give the impression of a larger force, but at this stage, I'm not going to hold back." Turning, shouldering the heavy wood and milled metal machine gun, I squeezed the trigger to put a short burst into the wall.

Lowering I stared ahead at the dusty holes in the wall then looked down at the gun, checked it over. "I'm doing as you said," I said idly, "I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I just need you and Eta to give me cover and I'll get us out of here."

It was all rather nice work for what seemed to be someone working with limited materials. Very nice work, in fact, it implied an established workshop in which the machine guns had made; A shop that almost certainly wasn't this ragtag bunch.

Unfortunate that Blasto had already put him to sleep, I already had a dozen new questions.

The meditative process of stripping down the weapons the two men had held had given me a bit of clarity on the situationupon reviewing and examining the details of the situation, using the basics of analysis as Alexandria had taught me so long ago. Diamond City, Pre-War, 'Caps, Chems, Skinny Malone and The Triggermen, Hancock and Goodneighboor, Shujin, Courser, Gunners, The Institute; keywords, names, and titles that he'd mentioned coming together to give me a vague impression of something existing in the wasted city we had seen. Not all of it was good, from the connotations I'd gotten in the context they were used, but maybe not all of it bad. Not enough information to say for certain.

Still, now wasn't the time for that sort of interrogation or analysis. We were on the clock with how long Blasto's drug would last and how long it would take before our intel became outdated.

Satisfied the weapon was functional, I flipped the safety on and thrust it at Blasto.

He hesitantly took it, giving me a wary look. "For me?"

"You and Eta keep me covered, and I'll get us out of here." I handed him a handful of six stick mags that he awkwardly accepted. "If able to, I'll give anyone we encounter the option to surrender but if they don't take it then that is on them. I won't risk the captives to take these people alive."

"Right. The lean pork." Holding out the machine gun he looked down at it and, sighing, dropped the magazines into one pocket and reached into another to pull out a package of wet wipes to wipe down the surfaces.

Regardless of what he may have thought, he followed me into the elevator without complaint and examined with Thompson as I pressed the button for the sixth floor.

"Lets go be big stupid heroes, I guess," he said, and ejected the magazine for a moment before slamming it back home.

I cut a glance to him. Noting that, despite him saying that, he held the submachine gun in an easy carry, a familiary carry, and didn't seem to be shying back from what may have been an intense fight to come.

Progress, or maybe it was something else, but ultimately what mattered was that he was stepping up.

"Keep close but don't crowd me," I told him, "I'll be moving quickly. If you can't keep up then don't bother using the drugs…"

—

So that was that, the first new production snip for this in… good lord, far too long considering I had the last snip in an unedited state for at least a year.

Anyhoo, thoughts? Comments? I think I went into MM a bit more to explain how she is how she is in this, at the moment at least, but as usual there is authorial blindness to deal with.