New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 153: Identity

Hey, everybody! This is Three Dog, your friendly neighborhood disc jockey. What’s a disc? Hell if I know! But I’m gonna keep talkin’ anyway! Got lots of great tunes to brighten up this depressing sea of brown and black, listeners – the Ink Spots, Bob Crosby, and a bit of Nat King Cole, too. But right now, I’ve got a special treat, listeners: a record I found just the other week! I know, right? It’s the amazing, the astounding, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald singing about that feeling you only get once in a “Blue Moon.”

The Moon.

Of course.

All around me, I could hear the faint sounds of bickering, and arguing, and incoherent shouted hysterics thanks to this news. The noises were buzzing around my head like wasps, and I couldn’t really make sense of any of it. I wasn’t paying attention. Chris and I were just standing there, looking up at the screen in silence.

“You seem to be taking this very well,” I broke the silence, turning to Chris. He just kept staring up at the screen with that confident smirk of his.

“To be honest?” He shrugged. “It makes a decent amount of sense that they’re coming from the Moon.” It felt like my eyebrow was going to pop right off my face.

“How’s that?”

“It explains what I found when I attacked the Redstone Arsenal,” he said. “The base was mostly empty when I ransacked it. But I did find a lot of highly advanced designs and schematics. Stuff like mass driver launch systems, artificial gravity hoppers, plasma-powered rockets, that sort of thing. I couldn’t find any prototypes or any evidence that they were anything more than drawings on paper, so I wasn’t able to make heads or tails of it at the time. But now, it seems obvious!”

“Fair… enough…” I nodded slowly.

“What about you?” he asked. “You seem strangely calm as well. What, are you overcome with shock, and it just hasn’t sunk in yet?”

“No, it’s not that…” I went back to staring at the image on the big monitor. “I was just thinking. After all the other shit I’ve seen like giant man-eating plants, multiple omnicidal maniacs, mad scientists, teleporters, intelligent talking deathclaws, a power mad AI trapping me in a death maze, the fucking Divide, and a robot dog who can drive a car… hell, space Nazis from the Moon doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched.”

There was a long, pregnant pause.

“Really?” Chris asked, throwing me a knowing smile.

“No, not really,” I admitted. “But, I figure if I say it enough times, I might actually start to believe it.” Chris started laughing, and slapped me on the back – with his cybernetic hand. Damn nearly knocked the wind out of me. “Al-alright… so. What’s the plan? How do we deal with a bunch of assholes with a base on the fuck-mothering Moon?”

“Well,” Chris tapped his chin, turning back to the screen. “I’ve taken down a lot of Enclave bases before. We definitely need a lot of firepower, but speed is the key. Too many people, and things get messy, like that time the Brotherhood helped me take out Fort Knox. Twenty Paladins backing me up, and Sarah Lyons and I were the only survivors.” He paused again, and then snapped his fingers. “A small strike force should probably do the trick. Maybe… four people? Any more than that and it’ll be too unwieldy; any less, and we won’t have enough firepower to take them on.”

“Okay…” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “But how –”

“Besides,” Chris continued, oblivious to my annoyance. “If only four of us go to the Moon, then there’ll be enough people down here to protect Vegas. You know… just in case that cloud cover you made dissipates, and they start teleporting more troops and war-droids down. With any luck, we should be able to blow up the place before that happens, but just in case, you know? Fawkes and Dogmeat are the best pair of defenders I know, and if they’re backed up by your pet deathclaw and his minigun? This place should be locked up tighter than a nun’s skirt.” He thought about that for a second, and then waggled his eyebrows at me from behind his sunglasses. “Ironic, considering where we are!”

“You don’t want to bring Stripe with us?” I asked quickly, to try and grab his attention. “Are you sure you don’t want his big gun watching your back?”

“I’ve got some pretty big guns of my own,” he replied. “Besides, he probably counts for four or five people all on his own. You don’t want that big a profile on something that isn’t expendable.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s fair…” I pointed at the screen. “But, there’s still the larger issue at hand. It’s the Moon. How are we gonna get to the Moon? It’s the MOON!” Chris just grinned broadly.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve…” Great. That wasn’t cryptic or anything. Before I got the chance to ask what he meant, he looked down at his Pip Boy, and held up a finger. “In the meantime, we should get our fourth soon.”

“What do you mean, ‘our fourth’?” I asked. He didn’t look up from his Pip Boy.

“Wait for it… and…” He looked up, snapped his fingers, and pointed at the monitor. “Go!”

As if on cue, the monitor flickered. The wireframe scan of the lunar surface disappeared, and Yes Man’s face winked into life.

“Hello, sir!” his voice boomed and echoed throughout the chamber, causing everyone to stop and pay attention. “I have news from down below!”

“News?” I asked, looking up at his big cartoon face smiling down at me. “What kind of news?” As I spoke, the screen winked again, and became a video feed. It looked like it was a real-time broadcast, from one of the securitrons guarding Tuera downstairs. She was still stuck in the chair, but she was looking directly at the camera. Even with the black and white picture, I could tell her eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks were wet.

“-alk to Sheason,” she growled, staring straight at the camera. “I want to talk to Sheason. I want to talk to Sheason…” She just kept repeating herself over and over again, like a robot. The image disappeared, and Yes Man returned.

“I could be mistaken, but I think she wants to talk to you!” Yes Man said. I turned to Chris, who was looking at me with an expression of smug self-satisfaction.

“Okay, seriously. How do you do that?” Chris shrugged.

“It’s a gift.”

While Fawkes rallied everyone upstairs, going over the finer points of fighting off these Moon Enclave, Chris and I caught the elevator downstairs.

“So, this ‘Tuera’ is an old flame of yours, huh?” Chris asked. “The fabled One Who Got Away, yeah?” Oh, right – he was busy trying and failing to interrogate her during that conversation. He wouldn’t know.

“I wish people would stop calling her that…” I grumbled, leaning against the wall of the elevator. I shook my head. “I hardly recognize her. She looks the same, but she’s…” A lump formed in the back of my throat. “She’s nothing like I remember.” Chris started laughing, and I looked up at him with a scowl. “Something funny?” I snapped.

“No, not really. But I can definitely relate to… this. That’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” I cocked an eyebrow, and Chris nodded.

“You know how you never forget your first?” He asked rhetorically. “Well, my first was a girl named Amata. She was the daughter of the Overseer in Vault 101, where I grew up. We dated in secret for a while, but that ended pretty abruptly when my dad left the Vault. I went after him… a clueless nineteen year old Vault kid who didn’t know Jack about the world, searching up and down the Capitol Wasteland for his old man. I tried to convince Amata to come with me, because I thought it would be like those old road-trip romances she and I liked to watch…” Chris started chuckling and shook his head. “But she said no. I left the Vault, and she stayed behind…”

Ding.

Chris was silent as he and I walked out of the elevator. He almost looked contemplative… but quickly shook it off.

“Long story short, I made my way back to the Vault after a whole bunch of adventures in the wasteland, because –” he furrowed his brow as we walked, like he was looking for the right word. “– well, there was this whole thing. It’s not important. The point is, I tried reconnecting with her, but even in the relatively short time I’d been gone… she’d changed a lot.” He looked down at his robotic arm, and flexed his hand several times. “But I guess… I had, too.”

“No dice, huh?” I asked. Chris shook his head, and looked up at me with a smile.

“There are some days I wonder if it could ever have worked out. I just stop and think about what my life would’ve been like – what both our lives could’ve been like.” He shrugged. “But I can’t dwell on the what if, the could’ve been, or the if only. You start pulling on those threads… and the whole tapestry of your life is bound to unravel.”

The two of us continued our walk down the cell block hallway in silence. Personally, I welcomed it; I needed the chance to focus. When we finally reached it, Tuera was looking up, waiting for us. Then again, it’s not like she could go anywhere, could she?

The door slid down into the floor, and I stepped inside. Tuera stared up at me with puffy, bloodshot eyes and wet cheeks. Apart from that, her expression was carved out of granite.

“You’re going to attack the Enclave Headquarters when you find it, aren’t you?” Tuera asked, before I had a chance to say anything. That was enough of a surprise to stop me in my tracks, but it wasn’t nearly as surprising as what she said next:

“I want in.”

“You – what?” I asked, just a little caught off guard.

“You’re going to fight the Enclave. I want to help you.”

My mind was reeling. I tried to ease the pain by rubbing my temple, but it was no use. I couldn’t handle this emotional roller coaster any more. Someone, please stop the crazy thing! It’s time to get off.

“And why… the fuck… should I believe… anything… you… say?” I was taking very deep breaths, still trying and failing to keep calm. I was gritting my teeth so hard, it felt like they were going to fuse together. Tuera just kept staring up at me with her bloodshot eyes.

“All my life, I’ve considered myself a patriot,” Tuera said calmly. “I wanted to serve my country, because I thought the Enclave stood for America… stood for the America I believed in…” Tuera finally broke eye contact, and hung her head. “But after the destruction of the Oil Rig, and I found out what the Enclave had really been doing, I started to question all that I’d been fighting for. And even when I got new orders, the doubts remained. Scratching away in the back of my mind…” She picked her head back up. “I kept trying to tell myself that I could accept all the terrible things I had done – all the terrible things the Enclave had done – because the ends would justify the means. I kept trying to tell myself that the Enclave was working to make a better world… working to restore America.” She paused, shaking her head. “But I can’t keep lying to myself. Not anymore. The Enclave has steered America wrong. And I need to try and put it right.”

I glanced back at Chris, who was no help at all. He was standing on the other side of the Plexiglas wall, giving me two thumbs up.

“Nice speech,” I said as coldly as I could manage, turning back to her. “Did you come up with that on the spot, or did you write that down first?”

Tuera didn’t say anything.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Why should I believe you? An hour ago, you were saying we couldn’t win.”

“You can’t win,” she replied. “We can’t. The Enclave is an unstoppable military colossus, with overwhelming firepower on its side. We can’t possibly hope to win if we fight them…” She hung her head and shook it. “But I’m dead either way.” She picked her head up, and fixed me with a look that turned my blood to ice water. “If I am to meet my end, it won’t be in this concrete box. It will be with a curse on my lips and my finger on the trigger.” Tuera’s expression softened, and she practically whispered her next words to me: “Sheason… please. Let me die fighting.”

I took several backwards steps away from her. The horror of the situation was hitting me so hard, it was almost palpable. It was like trying to chew a mouth full of sawdust. With every word, she distanced herself more and more from… from…

I stepped out of the cell entirely, and reached over to the control panel next to the Plexiglas on the concrete wall. Chris was staring intently at me. My hand hovered over the buttons, and I hesitated.

“Do you believe her?” I whispered. Chris nodded. “Why?”

“Because recruiting her is listed as an optional quest objective?” I blinked in confusion. He was using words, but they meant nothing.

“Wait, what?” I asked. Chris raised an eyebrow, like he wasn’t sure why I was confused.

“I said, I believe her because you can’t fake conviction like that,” he stated simply. He didn’t… Had I misheard… never mind. I shook it off, and he continued. “You can fake quite a lot of things in this life… but that’s something you can’t cheat.” Chris paused, smiling at me and nodding. “It reminds me of what I saw in your eyes when you were talking about all the people you swore to protect in the city.”

I looked back into the cell, staring at Tuera through the glass. She stared back at me, intent and unblinking.

“Alright.”

I tapped the button on the small control panel, and all of the electromagnets immediately shut off; the metal restraints keeping Tuera tied to the chair unlatched, and she leaned forward with nothing to hold her down anymore.

“You’re wrong about one thing, though,” I walked back into the cell and offered Tuera my hand; she accepted it cautiously, and I pulled her up onto her feet. “We’re gonna fight. And we’re gonna win.”

For the first time since her helmet came off, a faint smirk crept into the side of her mouth.

A few minutes later, Tuera and I were in the armory – technically, one of the spare rooms in the suite. It’s where we’d been keeping all the weapons we’d stolen over the last few weeks (like the giant pile of guns we’d grabbed from the Silver Rush) but at least it was more organized now, what with all the ammo shelves and weapon racks. If we were gonna take the fight to the Enclave, then she needed her gear back, and I needed to restock as well. Chris, meanwhile, said he needed to contact our “ride,” but when pressed, he kept his answers intentionally cryptic like before. Apparently he didn’t want to ruin the “surprise,” whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.

The only thing I was really worried about was how the rest of the gang would react to Tuera being free. Then again… knowing all of them, they’d been up in the penthouse, watching the whole thing go down on Yes Man’s big screen. So maybe I didn’t need to worry after all.

“You know,” I said, reaching for some plasma grenades. “I still have a lot of questions for you.” Tuera didn’t turn to look at me. She focused herself on the nearby table, where we’d piled all her gear, and was inspecting it, one piece at a time.

“I imagine that’s so,” she said softly.

“The first one should be pretty obvious…” I said. “You haven’t aged – that’s because of Project ASCENSION, isn’t it?” She froze in place, and the piece of tech in her hands clattered back onto the desk. Slowly, carefully, she turned to look at me with wide-eyed astonishment.

“How… how do you know about that?” she asked. I shrugged.

“After our tussle in Red Rock canyon, I did some digging to try and find out who you were,” I hesitated briefly, trying to figure out exactly what I should say. I didn’t know if she knew about the Remnants from Squad Gannon, and didn’t want to give them away on the off chance she didn’t. “The guy I talked to seemed to think that super soldier program was just a fairy tale, and that it never got past the code name. But it was real. Wasn’t it?” Tuera nodded slowly, and turned back to her gear.

“Yes. Not a lot of people on the oil rig knew, but… they were able to get the word out discreetly in the winter of ’39. 100 subjects were gathered for the project. Volunteers. Or…” Tuera paused, clearing her throat. “People who were volunteered. We were all injected with some manner of serum. We were never told exactly what it was. But FEV was the basis.”

“Wait, back up,” I said. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Did you… a hundred people? Holy shit! How many…” Tuera cut me off.

“Only three people survived the process,” she said grimly. “Staff Sergeant Stone, Petty Officer Corvus… and myself.” She paused, still fiddling with one of her weapons. “For the longest time, I thought I was the sole survivor. Not only that, but the serum must have halted my aging… or made it slow to a crawl, if nothing else. I haven’t aged a day since ’41. It’s probably the FEV, doing the same thing it does to ghouls and super mutants…”

“How old are you?” I asked, and then quickly added: “Y’know, if you don’t mind me asking.” She shrugged, continuing to work on her gear. She thumbed a button on the pistol in her hands, and it folded into a box, which she attached to her thigh with a click.

“68,” she replied flatly. I couldn’t help but let out a low whistle.

“If it’s any consolation, you’re the most attractive 68 year-old I’ve ever met,” I said with a smirk. Amazingly, Tuera actually started laughing. Well, chuckling, at least. Well, okay, a single sort of laughing-snort. But I’ll take it! That was progress!

“Thanks…” She grabbed one of her rifles with her left hand, and started checking it; I couldn’t help but start kicking myself. The fact that she was a southpaw should’ve tipped me off to her identity ages ago. “But… the lack of aging wasn’t the only… there were other less… wholesome side effects to the procedure.” Oh shit. She’s starting to go back into herself again. I needed to do something to pull her out.

“Does this mean that when we first met,” I absentmindedly grabbed a handful of armor piercing 5.56 rounds for That Gun as I spoke. “And I beat the shit out of those three dudes who were trying to mug you in that alley… you didn’t need my help at all, did you?” She tried to hide it, but she actually – legitimately – smiled.

“Of course not.” The rifle in her hands folded up, and she attached it to one of the mounts on her back. “The thing is, though… no one had ever stuck up for me like that before. I mean… yeah, I didn’t need the help. But it had never happened before. I really appreciated the gesture. I thought it was…” she paused, looking at me over her shoulder and smiled. “… sweet.”

“Oh yeah?” I smiled back at her, and she shrugged.

“Well, I did agree to dinner after, didn’t I?” I couldn’t help but smile and laugh, thinking back to that first date. That… was a good night. While I was reminiscing about better days gone by, Tuera turned back to her gear. She grabbed the larger rifle, and it immediately opened up and transformed itself into a sniper rifle. Fully unfolded, it had to be longer than my anti-materiel rifle.

“So, Tuera Smith is your full name, huh?” I asked after a while, grabbing some ammunition for the Ranger Sequoia. “I always wondered about that. We never really talked about names when we were together, did we?” She hesitated, pausing in the inspection of her rifle.

“Uh…” she thumbed a button on the side, and the massive sniper rifle folded in on itself and turned into a relatively small box. “No. No, that’s not my real… Tuera is… it’s my code name. It’s the call sign I chose for myself when I became a Shadow. It comes from a mangled French word I learned in school. It’s supposed to mean ‘to kill,’ which I thought was appropriate for an…” She sighed, placing the sniper rifle on her back with a click. “Anyway. When the oil rig was destroyed, I… decided to keep using it, instead of using my real name.”

“Really?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Why’s that?” She shrugged.

“I always hated my real name. I never felt like it… fit me. It didn’t make me feel like myself.” She sighed again, and turned around to face me fully. “Tuera is who I really am. I never thought of myself as a Mary Sue Smith. Not really.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said with a smile, nodding at her. “I can’t see you as a Mary Sue, either.” Tuera smiled weakly and shook her head, turning back to her gear.

“It’s kinda funny,” she sniffed loudly, inspecting the many small boxes – each no bigger than a cigarette lighter – that Chris had informed me were grenades. “All the horrible things I’ve done over the years, all the people I’ve killed, all the lies I’ve told… and that one fact about my real name is what embarrasses me the most.”

I nodded… and decided to help ease her embarrassment.

“Jason,” I said, as clear and as loud as I could manage. She stopped what she was doing, and looked over at me in confusion.

“What?”

“That’s… the name my parents gave me. It’s Jason. Jason Fisher.” She blinked at me several times, and her mouth slowly opened in surprise. “Y’know how I told you I grew up on the back of a caravan?” She nodded slowly. “Well, the guy who took me in…” after my dad dropped me off like a sack of potatoes, I didn’t say “…was this crusty old prospector that people called Harry. And the thing you need to understand about Harry…” I grinned, baring my teeth, and started waving a finger back and forth at my mouth. “…is that he was missing all four of his front teeth.”

Tuera was still looking at me, completely stunned and confused, but she did smile and start chuckling. And I took that as a good sign.

“He pronounced ‘Jason’ about as well as you might expect, complete with gallons of spittle every time. He was the only one who ever spoke to my dad, so everyone assumed my name was ‘Sheason.’ It wasn’t until years later that I found out the truth, but by then it didn’t really matter. I liked Sheason better, and decided to keep it.” I leaned against the wall, and shrugged. “The point is… just because your parents called you one thing doesn’t mean that’s your ‘real’ name. Who you really are is whoever you’re most comfortable being. And there’s no reason to be ashamed about that at all.”

Tuera stared at me for several seconds. Her look of confusion did not seem to be going away any time soon.

“You… you never told me that story,” she said, finally managing to find her voice again. I shrugged, and went back to finding ammunition.

“Yeah, well…” I sighed. “I suppose we both kept a lot of secrets from each other, didn’t we?” I glanced her way briefly, and she turned back to what she had been doing as well.

“I suppose so,” she said softly. The two of us worked in silence for a while, at opposite corners of the room. I wasn’t even really looking for anything else – I had pretty much all the gear I needed, since that was kind of the whole point of the Jury Rigger not needing ammo.

“Hey… Tu?” I finally broke the silence. “Could… could we have ever worked?”

Tuera didn’t answer me at first. She just kept grabbing her knives, one by one, and sheathing them in the various hiding spots on her armor.

“No,” she said, not even bothering to look up at me. “No, we… we couldn’t.” She sighed heavily. “When I met you, I… I thought that I could hide what I am.” Tuera glanced over her shoulder at me. “I may… look human. But only on the outside.” She turned back to what she was doing. “I thought I could pretend that I was anything more than the monster they made me… but… it was a dream, Sheason. We were… nothing more than a dream…”

“You just woke up first,” I completed for her. She hung her head, and started nodding slowly.

“I’m sorry…” she whispered. “I-if… if it makes you feel any better… you were the only…” she gulped loudly, in an attempt to buy herself some time. “You were the closest… I ever got. It just wasn’t close enough, I guess.”

“Hrm…” I grumbled. I glanced up, and saw that the table where we’d kept all Tuera’s gear was now completely empty. She took her helmet in her hands, and reattached it to her suit with a hiss and a pop.

“Let’s go,” she said firmly, her voice altered by the filter in the helmet. The two of us started to make our way out of the armory, but were stopped by the appearance of Cass in the doorway. She didn’t seem to be freaking out that Tuera was free and moving about, so I guess I was right that everyone had seen our conversation go down on the big screen.

“Cass? What –”

“I’m comin’ with ya, an’ I need some ammo,” she cut me off, brushing past the both of us, casual as you like, and making a beeline for where we kept the 12 gauge shells.

“But y-” Again, I was cut off.

“Shut up,” she pointed at me with a smirk. “B’fore y’say shit, I got words fer yer dumb ass, motherfucker. Every time you’ve done this kinda shit, you’ve gone all by yerself. It happened with th’ Sierra Madre, it happened with th’ Big Empty, an’ it happened when y’went to th’ Divide. An’ I’m here to tell ya: not this time. You may have those rocket boots an’ th’ grapnel gun t’give you an’ edge, but y’still need someone t’watch yer back. It’s gonna be me. This is non-negotiable, motherfucker!”

“CASS!” I shouted to get her attention, and she finally shut up. I couldn’t help but shake my head and laugh. “I agree with you.” That seemed to catch her off guard.

“Y’do?” I nodded.

“I was actually coming to get you, because I know I can count on you to back me up when shit rockets skyward,” I said. “I only have one suggestion, though: Sue. If things go seriously tits-up, then she’ll help you stay alive.”

“Well, what do you know!” I heard Sue’s cheery voice chime in from Cass’ armor. “Great minds really do think alike!”

“We’re wasting time,” Tuera grabbed me by the shoulder. “We need to go.”

About a half hour later, everyone was gathered outside the Lucky 38 – and I mean everyone. Stripe lumbering out into the open, straight onto Vegas Boulevard and into the Strip, went about as well as could be expected. Most people who saw him screamed or ran for the hills, but the few that stayed seemed to calm down when they noticed he wasn’t actually attacking anyone.

“You guys gonna be okay while I’m gone?” I asked, petting Stripe on the top of his head. Suddenly, I heard a bark, and Roxie popped out of his mohawk, licking my face before I could react.

“Do not worry, курьер,” Sasha said; Stripe reared back and nodded with a loud snort. “We will make sure to defend point from enemy team!” And then, without further warning, Stripe opened his jaw wide and dragged his long, slimy black tongue across the side of my face. All around me, I could hear the spontaneous eruption of laughter.

“AUGH! D-damnit, man!” I said, trying to wipe the slime off my face, and laughing the same as everyone else. “Couldn’t you have waited until after I put my fuckin’ helmet on?!”

“That’s no fun.” He started chuckling in that deep, pulsating sort of growling-laugh of his. I couldn’t complain too much. The slime was coming off pretty easily, and I think everyone needed the laugh. Once I’d cleaned off my face (more or less), I walked over to Chris. He was standing in the middle of the street, checking his Pip Boy.

“Alright,” I said, securing my helmet. “I think it’s about time you told us: how are we getting to the Moon?” I looked around at the mostly empty street. “And where is your ride?” Instead of answering me, he held up a finger.

“Hey, Sally?” He said into his Pip Boy. “Have you got a fix on my position?”

“I’m seeing green all across the console!” the same feminine voice from earlier buzzed out of his Pip Boy’s speaker. “Transporter room three is ready to receive visitors. Hope you like the view!” Chris looked up, to make sure that Cass, Tuera and I were all close by.

“Make it so, number one!” He flicked a switch on his Pip Boy and nodded at us. “You may want to brace yourselves. This could feel a little odd.”

Before I could ask, there was a massive thunderclap above us. I looked up, and there was some kind of turbulence in the clouds… and I would’ve assumed that the flashing lights coming from within the cloud cover was natural lightning if it wasn’t for the rainbow of colors I was seeing. Blues, yellows, greens, oranges, purples, reds… every color in the spectrum seemed to be pulsating and flashing above our heads.

Suddenly, a column of blue light fell out of the sky, and surrounded our position. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I suddenly felt lighter… which made sense, since the four of us seemed to be levitating off the ground. Only Chris seemed to be used to this, as he was looking up with an unconcerned smile.

It wasn’t until I felt the familiar pulling sensation deep in the pit of my gut that I realized what was happening: there was a bit more pomp and circumstance to it, but we were definitely getting teleported up to something. It didn’t feel quite the same as the Big Empty tele-

-port. Wait… that was – okay! So, that was a whole lot smoother and a whole lot faster that I’m used to!

“The fuck?” I looked around, trying to get my bearings. Three of us were standing on a large circular platform, lit up from below by several strange orange disks. The walls all around us looked… chrome? Chris, meanwhile, had already stepped off the platform and was making his way to a nearby wall.

A curved wall. That’s odd. Of course, that wasn’t nearly as odd as how light I felt. I knew how much armor, weapons, and ammo I was carrying, but I felt stupendously light on my feet.

“Since you were so gracious as to let me into your house,” Chris said to me with a smile as I approached. “I thought it only fair to return the favor.”

“Where are we?” I asked. Chris pressed a round panel on the wall next to him; it glowed and hummed at his touch… and then the wall split apart, revealing a window. And outside?

“What th’ fuck?!” Cass shouted.

“Oh, wow.” Even Tuera sounded impressed.

I saw a large, curved horizon of brown, blue, and white stretching out below us, backed by an infinite curtain of stars, shining brighter than I’d ever seen before. I tried to quiet down the sense of overwhelming vertigo that desperately wanted me to start screaming hysterically. That… that was definitely Earth below us!

Space. We’re in SPACE! Holy fuck, we’re actually in space!

“Welcome to my home,” Chris said, beaming at us with the biggest shit-eating grin in the entire universe. “I give you… Mothership Zeta.”