"You're a moron," a voice cut through the darkness. A... familiar voice. Was that...
"Benny?" I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back, in... actually, I had no idea where I was. Some kind of office? I looked around, and realized I was lying on some kind of leather couch, in a room full of wood paneled walls and books. Benny was sitting across from me in a red leather, high backed chair. Smoke hung in great rings around his head.
"You expecting Dean Martin?" Benny chuckled. "How many times have we done this same scam? Like I said... you're a moron."
"Alright," I sat up, clutching my head. It felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Or a freight train. "Let's hear it, then. Why am I a moron?"
"Is this even a question?" Benny looked downright insulted, taking a long draw from his cigarette. " You're a moron for letting that 18 karat, ring-a-ding broad out've yer dimmers, daddy-o." I blinked several times, trying to make sense of that convoluted mess of jargon.
"Was that even English?" I asked. Benny just shook his head and laughed, more smoke billowing out everywhere.
"The foul-mouthed bird always knocking back shots of whiskey, dig?" Benny said, tapping his cigarette on the lip of a nearby ashtray. "I wasn't expecting you to push her away like that. And just when the clam-bake was getting good, too."
"What, are you spying on me or something?" Benny took a draw from his cigarette and shrugged. I shook my head. "Until she squares things with Veronica, Cass is off limits to me, end of story. It just... it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair." I balled my hands into fists... I had to focus on something else. Anger seemed like a pretty good option, given who was near me. Yeah, let's go with that.
"Oh, and you were doin' a marvelous job being 'hands off,' weren't ya? Come on, you had her charlies out and everything! I mean, hello!" Benny leaned back in his chair and laughed again. Damn. As much as I hated to admit it... the dead asshole sitting across from me had a point.
"Yeah... well... I'm only human," I started wringing my hands. I refused to even look at him. The more I looked in his direction, the more I wanted to kill him again. Especially since he just kept laughing.
"Off limits... I can't believe what I'm hearing. That wouldn't have stopped you ten years ago, would it?" My head snapped back instantly to look at him. Was he talking about... How would he even KNOW about that? I coughed, and tried to shake it off.
"A lot can happen in ten years. Maybe I've just finally figured out my actions have consequences." Benny didn't look convinced. He just shook his head and sighed.
"Yeah, I don't believe that. Either way, you're probably better off. She's a bit of a harley quin, if you catch my meaning," Benny got up off the chair, and patted me on the shoulder; without really thinking, I got up as well. "As much as I'd love to sit here and do this all day and then tomorrow, I didn't come down just to have a laugh at you and your non-existent sex life. I came down here to deliver a message."
"We did this gag already," I said, thinking back to the last time I'd had a chat with Benny. "And like I said before, I should be the one delivering the messages. I am The Courier, after all."
"Yeah, I heard you finally got around to making that title your own. Took you long enough. How's that working out for you?" I was about to respond, when I looked around and realized... we weren't in that office anymore. We were definitely somewhere else - a hallway of some kind - but I couldn't remember how we'd got here. We hadn't walked anywhere... had we?
"So what's the message?" I asked. Benny smirked at me, and hit a button on the wall. A door seemed to appear, and slowly opened as he talked.
"Congratulations." I looked down... and realized with horror that Cloud was spilling out of the open door! "You passed your first test."
"Shut the door! Are you crazy?! This shit's gonna kill us!" I yelled, grabbing Benny by the collar. He looked down, seemingly annoyed at me. Cloud was pooling around the floor, billowing out in great lumps... but somehow, the air wasn't any harder to breathe.
"Hands off the merchandise, you'll wrinkle the suit," Benny shoved me off, and tried to fix his collar. "And this toxic crap can't hurt you. Not anymore. Not the way it hurt him."
"Hurt... who?" Benny motioned with his head toward the door when I asked... and I was met with a sight that made me stop cold, half in fear, and half in confusion.
A skeleton was slowly walking out of the door through the mass of Cloud. It was wearing a tattered blue robe with a weird metal trim, and clinging defiantly to the skull was a matted mess of scraggly white hair and beard. Several of the skeleton's teeth were missing, and a large section of the left side of the skull was cracked and broken. A large, roughly square hole was torn into the torso of the robe, and a surprisingly untouched Pip Boy was loosely hanging off the left forearm bones.
"I wonder if he'll figure out how to pull himself together, like I did?" Benny seemed to wonder aloud. The skeleton limped through the Cloud and slowly turned to look at me with hollow, empty eye sockets; it was deeply unpleasant, let me tell you. Eventually, Benny shook his head. "Probably not. He could never accept that he wasn't in control of everything when he was alive; there's no chance he'll accept it, now he's dead. He really is the original loser, isn't he?" The skeleton turned away from the two of us, walking back into the open door. As he moved, he seemed to take the Cloud along with him.
"You... you said something about congrats?" I asked, trying to shake off what I'd just witnessed. Benny smiled, wrapping an arm around me, and leading me further down the hall. Which seemed odd, given that I couldn't feel my legs moving...
"Yeah... you passed your first real test, like I said."
"Test?" I asked. "What do you mean, test?"
"I told you about the coming storms in our last little shindig. You already weathered the first one. But more are on the way..." With that, the two of us turned a corner and into another hallway... except it wasn't a hallway. The hallway had disappeared. We were suddenly standing in the middle of a desert. I saw mountains all around us, but... they didn't look natural. It looked almost like... were we standing in the middle of a crater?
"Where are we?" I asked.
"A shadow of the Old World," Benny said, lighting another cigarette. He offered me one, but I waved him off, because I noticed something odd, far in the distance - it looked like a massive metal dome, illuminated by blue spotlights. And then, in other part of the crater, I saw a cluster of towers that almost looked like a skyline... until I saw something written in big bold letters written on the side of one of the hexagonal pillars.
"Wait a minute... X-88? I've seen that before..." I recognized that... I recognized all of this... I wheeled around, trying to get another look at the dome, but it was gone. So was the crater. In it's place was a large, cavernous chamber; it sort of looked like an Old World military installation of some kind. The walls were lined with... oh no... were those warheads? I was in a room full of nukes! "Where... where are we now?"
"The end of the world." Benny didn't elaborate, and I didn't get a chance to question, because a noise drew my attention to the far end of the chamber. A large hole in the ceiling started to open up, light flooding in and onto a missile rising up out of the floor. But that wasn't what caught my eye: standing on the lip of a circular platform ringing the missile was a man. He was standing with his back to me, underneath the suspended and tattered remnants of the American flag. He was wearing a dark leather duster with no sleeves, and a symbol painted on the back: a blue circle ringed by twelve white stars, with a large star in the center, and five vertical red stripes falling off the circle, almost like claw marks. He was holding a large staff in his hands that he was resting on his shoulder... at least, I thought it was a staff, until I saw the gold eagle sitting on the top. That's not a staff - it's a flagpole.
I turned to Benny to question what - or who - I was looking at, but he was gone. The world had shifted again without me realizing. It was night, with the inky blackness above my head marred by hundreds of tiny pinpricks. I was standing in some kind of desert, but not like any desert I'd ever seen. When I looked down, I saw that all the sand and dust and rocks were... white? No, not white... sort of grey...
"Where the fuck are we now?" I asked, looking around to try and find any kind of identifying landmarks; there were none... until I looked up. At first, when I saw the bright ball in the sky, I thought I was looking at the moon. But then my eyes went wide when I realized that sphere in the sky wasn't bone white. It was covered in blue and green and swirls of yellowish-white clouds...
That... No... no that wasn't... this was impossible! A wave of nausea and vertigo washed over me, like a bucket of ice water had been thrown on my face. I felt dizzy, and just a little bit faint.
I shut my eyes. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't real. This was just a dream. This was... I felt a hand on my shoulder. I cracked open my eyes to find Benny smiling at me; we were back in the same office as before.
"As fun as this has been," Benny said, snuffing his cigarette completely. "It's time for the bad news."
"You're a walking pile of bad news, Benny," I did my best to calm down my breathing and get myself back to normal. "How's that different from normal?"
"Because this is bad news you can actually do something about," He shrugged. "Just like every bit of bad news I tell you..."
"Alright, let's get it over with," I said, tired of the mindgames.
"I've been watching you a lot, Courier. And you know what I've noticed? You've got a problem. A big one."
"Yeah, like the fact that I'm having an extended conversation with a guy I beat to death with my bare hands," I said. Maybe being snarky would help channel my anger more, so I stuck with that. Benny just rolled his eyes.
"Shut up and listen for a minute, I'm being serious. Something I've noticed about you, Fisher, is a real bad habit of yours. Whenever you're presented with a really important job, you'll put it off. You'll put it off, and put it off, and just keep putting it off until you're left with no choice but to face it. And it hasn't just been here in the Mojave, either. You did the same thing with Tu-"
"Don't you DARE even bring her into this!" I shouted, cutting him off. "I don't even know how you'd know about her, but don't you dare - don't even say her name!"
"I'm just trying to make a point," Benny said, staring me down, obviously unfazed. "You've become a lot stronger since getting hold of that Platinum Chip, and you may become even stronger still. You may be able to weather any number of shitstorms that get thrown in your way to stop you. Hell, you might even be able to pull it off. What was it you said to Christine? Pulling off the impossible is what you do?" Benny chuckled, and shook his head. "But if you keep putting off the important things like you've always done, then you'll never be in control of your own life. You'll just be another bunter, like all the other crumbs in Vegas who think that all they need to fix their luck is just one more pull of the one-armed bandit. Those losers never figure out that the game is rigged from the start, like I told you during our first, rather unfortunate, meeting. The only way to win in Vegas..."
"...is to rig the game for yourself," I said, finishing his sentence. Benny just smiled and nodded, obviously pleased with himself that I'd finally seemed to get the point. But that wasn't enough for me. There were still too many questions that remained unanswered. And the first...
"What are you?" I asked as forcefully as I could. Benny stepped back, confused.
"What?"
"I know I'm dreaming. None of... nothing here is real, and I know that. And the first time this happened, I thought it was just my subconscious, putting a face to my stress. I mean... hell, why else would you turn into me? I didn't think anything of it at the time... But this keeps happening, and the more it does, the more I realize - you know things that I don't. That I couldn't possibly... You showed me the Cloud before I'd ever even heard of the Sierra Madre. Before I ever knew what it was. You're trying to show me things that are going to... It's like déjà-vu, I won't make the connection until it's already happening. But the only way that would make sense is...Areyou really Benny? His ghost, come back to haunt my dreams?" During this whole rant, Benny merely listened, taking another cigarette out and lighting it as I talked.
"I didn't think you believed in ghosts." Benny said simply.
"Enough weird shit has gone down lately, I'm open to the possibility." This was wearing thin - I knew I was asleep, and I STILL felt tired...
"You know what else it could be?" He blew a smoke ring that seemed to hover in the air over my head. "It could be a side-effect of contact with The Forecaster."
"Who?"
"The psychic kid at the 188. The one who gave you that puzzle-box, sitting on your car's dashboard." I could feel my eye twitch at the news. I hadn't even thought of that.
"So which is it?" I moved, trying to get away from the smoke ring; it seemed to follow me wherever I went. Benny chuckled to himself, and shook his head.
"Nah... I'm not gonna tell ya. It would ruin all the fun of watching you guess like this! Besides... you've got bigger problems than me to worry about right now." Before I got a chance to question further, he pointed with his cigarette behind and above me. I wheeled around, and was face to face with a Securitron. Wait, was that -
"Victor?" The cowboy face on the screen made him unmistakable. "What are you- MMPH!" A metal claw reached out and wrapped itself around my face. I couldn't see anything, I couldn't hear anything... and everything went black.
My eyes snapped open, and I woke with a start. Where am I this time? Okay, I'm in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Yep, I was right. All that was a dream. That's good.
So... why was there still a glow like a TV screen lighting up the room?
"Victor?" I said, sitting up; at the foot of the bed was a Securitron, with Victor's unmistakable face staring back at me. I was getting a nasty sense of déjà-vu. "What are you -MMPH!" A metal claw reached out and wrapped itself around my face. Except this time, I could see what was going on. Victor was holding onto me, one claw wrapped over the top of my head, and the other two wrapped around my neck. I feebly clutched at the metal claws wrapped around me as Victor lifted me off the bed and into the air. He continued to look at me with that same, smiling face, his face-screen unchanged except for the occasional burst of static. My legs flailed, dangling uselessly below me as Victor held me high above my bed.
"Boss wants to see you," Victor said in his distinctive western drawl... and then my world spun. The next thing I knew, I was being thrown through the air, and I hit the door with a sharp crack. I couldn't tell if that was my spine or the door. This was turning into a distinctly bad situation. I tried to scramble to my feet, try and get some weapons on the nearby desk, but Victor rolled toward me and grabbed me by the arm, and shoved open the door, dragging me out into the hall.
"What the hell! If he wanted to - augh!" Victor tossed me against the far wall of the hallway.
"Shut up," He said. The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open soundlessly. "Get in," he pointed with a metal claw into the elevator. I heard noises behind him; on the far ends of the hall, I saw Veronica, Cass, and Boone, all getting out of their rooms, obviously wondering what all the commotion was. I stood up, and tried to motion for them to stay back. Unsurprisingly, only Boone was armed.
"Alright, alright, fine..." I said, looking up at Victor. The expression of the cartoon cowboy remained motionless as the giant hunk of metal loomed over me. "I'll go see the boss. You could've just asked nice."
"Shea, what's going-" Cass started to say, but I didn't hear the rest. Victor pushed me into the elevator, and the door shut behind me.
"Do you take me for a fool, Mr. Fisher?" House boomed when I was shoved into the center of his office. I don't know why, but for some reason the massive monitor with House's digital face plastered over it seemed larger and altogether more imposing than usual... and that was saying something.
"I'm not taking you for anything. I was asleep!" I said, trying to compose myself. This was turning into an incredibly bad situation very fast. I was surrounded by at least five Securitrons - that I could see - all armed to the teeth; Here I was, standing in the middle of this room with only a pair of jeans, and without any weapons of any kind. I wasn't even wearing any shoes.
The whole situation left me feeling incredibly naked.
"I hired you to do a job, Mr. Fisher. I have paid you a considerable sum in bottlecaps, and allowed you access to considerable resources to ensure that the task would be completed - such as providing you and the... 'people' you seem to collect, lodgings in the form of the largest, most expensive, and most luxurious suite in the hotel: the suite designed to accommodate the President of the United States and his support staff. And you have not followed through on our agreement."
"What... what are you talking about?" I asked, rubbing my face. I knew exactly what he was talking about; I was just playing up being half-asleep, trying to stall for time. This was not good. This was definitely not good.
"On October the 28th," House said, annoyance heavily evident in his voice. "I instructed you to make contact with the Boomers living among the ruins of Nellis Air Force Base, to secure an alliance - or, failing that, cripple their ability to lend aid in support of the NCR or Caesar's Legion. And this was your response."
Surprisingly, House's face winked out of view, and for a second, it was replaced with a large "COMMUNICATING..." plastered across the screen. The screen flashed again, and was replaced with... myself? Hang on, this was... this looked like a recording of me, looking up at House from the last time I was here.
"Ok, House," The me on the screen said, nodding and giving a thumbs up. "Whatever you say. I'll get right on that." And then the me on the screen turned and walked away, back up the stairs to the elevator. The screen flashed, and switched back to House's massive immobile face.
"I have given you over a week to make any kind of progress," House said. Even though the face I was looking at was completely frozen in a self-satisfied smirk, I could practically hear the scowl in his voice. "I am not accustomed to the people in my employ ignoring me. My patience is not infinite, Mr. Fisher, and you have been trying it immensely."
"Uh... Listen, House... I think you have the wrong idea about all this," I said, trying not to look guilty. "I haven't been blowing you off." Yes I have. "I've just been trying to figure out a way to get in without dying. Hell, you told me that the last Securitron you sent that way exploded, right? Figuring out something like that is going to take some time..."
"Oh, really? And yet, based on the evidence I've collected... you haven't even attempted." My blood ran cold.
"Evidence?" I asked quietly.
The screen switched. This video feed was different from before - this didn't seem to have any audio, and the video looked like it was from a crappy, grainy, black and white CCTV feed. Based on the viewpoint, this was from a camera that must have been mounted somewhere in Freeside, because it showed the outside of The King's place - and then my car pulled up just outside it. The image on the monitor shifted, and I was presented with another scene: a familiar back alley, and after the screen crackled and popped with static, I realized that I was watching Orris getting blown in half. Another burst of static, and the viewpoint changed again: this time, the CCTV was tracking my car as I drove it through a hail of gunfire in Freeside, coming to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke just outside the abandoned train station the NCR troopers were using as a bunker.
"So far, you have given aid to that group of thugs calling themselves 'The Kings'..."
The image on the view screen switched again, but this didn't look like CCTV footage. It was much clearer (but still in black and white) and I could see various pieces of tactical data ringing the edge of the image... was this footage taken by a Securitron? The image was of the front gate of Jacobstown, the Super Mutant refuge, obviously taken from somewhere deep in the forest, based on the heavy level of foliage. From the edge of the screen, I saw myself walking up to the gate - and then the Super Mutants dressed up as bushes got up and pointed guns at me. The screen popped with static, and the point of view switched to much later - when I got rid of the mercenaries. I saw myself talk with the four men in combat armor, and then I watched as they went back into the forest to fetch their motorcycles and drive off.
"... you found the time to aid the Super Mutants taking refuge in the remnants of the Mount Charleston Lodge..."
The view on the screen switched to another Securitron, but this wasn't near Jacobstown: this was down near Highway 93, just outside Novac. I knew this, because I was seeing (from a distance, mind you) the firefight between the Legion assassins who tried ambushing me when I went to get Rey from Old Lady Gibson. If this was being played at regular speed... that fight went by much faster than I remembered it. The monitor was filled with static, and switched back to the point of view of another crappy CCTV in Freeside. This one was pointed at the Silver Rush, and even despite the low light and the static filling the image, I could see myself, Cass, and Boone, all dressed in the combat armor with the trench coats kicking open the front doors and shooting up the place. There was a burst of static, but the screen still showed the front of the Silver Rush... which promptly started exploding in a mass of fire and shrapnel. There was a black mass of shrapnel thrown through the air at the image, which disappeared in a flurry of static. When the image came back, it was no longer CCTV footage - this was from another Securitron (or maybe the same one as before?) looking at the entrance of the Crimson Caravan camp, just outside the Vegas wall. I saw Cass and myself running out of the camp, a pall of smoke trying to slowly follow us.
"... you managed to embroil yourself in a number of completely preventable firefights - as well as destroying part of Freemont Street, drawing unnecessary attention to yourself..."
The screen switched yet again. This would be making my head spin, if it wasn't just making me incredibly uncomfortable. I figured that House would be spying on me inside the 38, but this was showing me that his reach was much, much greater than I expected. This time the screen - another Securitron, with tactical data being relayed in a constant stream - moved from Super Mutant corpse to Super Mutant corpse.. and then the screen panned up, and off in the distance I could see evidence of a firefight, further up what was now unmistakable as Black Mountain.
"...you went to Black Mountain, and murdered your way to the satellite array at the peak of the mountain..."
The monitor was filled with a burst of static once more, and the image was from another Securitron. Like the one on Black Mountain, this was surveying carnage and scanning corpses, but instead of Super Mutants, it was looking at cazadores. The screen crackled and popped, and I saw my car parked off in the distance; the image zoomed, and I saw myself and Veronica disappear into a hatch in the ground, ED-E bobbing in the air over my car. Another burst of static, and I saw myself and Boone, both in armor, and - wait a minute! Son of a bitch, I KNEW I was being watched!
"...and finally, after losing your signal for close to 40 hours, you found the time to visit an NCR forward operations base, three Ranger outposts, and the base the NCR have built on top of my golf resort." I looked away from the screen, and realized that the four Securitrons surrounding me were much closer than they were a few minutes ago... and I had no idea where Victor was. This was getting worse by the minute. I looked back at the screen, and saw House's face looking down at me again. "You have done all of this dithering about, and yet the one thing I asked of you has continued to go undone. So I will ask you again, Mr. Fisher: Do you take me for a fool?"
"Alright!" I shouted up at the screen, putting my hands up (like that would stop the Securitrons if they tried to shoot me) and trying not to look nervous. I felt like I was back in the Sierra Madre, with a bomb collar around my neck... "I admit it, I've been putting off going to the Boomers. But that's just because the last time you sent me on one of these missions, I got beaten half to death and spent two days afterward in the hospital! Everything you've said about these people is that they blow up anything that gets close to Nellis, and if I'm honest? Getting my ass exploded is really not my idea of a good time! I'm quite partial to my ass, House."
"I don't care," House said. "Let me explain it in a way I know you will understand: money. I've paid you to do a job. You have not done this job. If you continue wasting my time, then I shall discard you, and find someone else who will follow my orders." I felt my eye twitch.
"But... hang on, what about... what about the Platinum Chip?" I asked. House was silent for a long while. I couldn't tell if that was good or bad... and then he spoke up, and I realized just how bad it was...
"Do you think yourself special, Mr. Fisher?" House asked. He didn't wait for a response. "Do you think that the Platinum Chip makes you special? The Chip may be in your possession at the moment, but it is - and always will be - mine, to do with as I please. You are not special. You are nothing more than a mailman, who has found himself dropped into extraordinary circumstances completely beyond his understanding or comprehension. You are no more special or unique than Benny - and if you continue to disobey me, you will be rendered just as relevant." House paused for a moment, apparently to let that sink in, and then he followed up with one last verbal right-hook: "I want you to always keep in your mind, Mr. Fisher: you can be replaced."
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened to the suite. Unceremoniously, Victor - who had been holding onto me this whole time - threw me out with such force that I face-planted square in the middle of the hall.
"Sheason!" I heard Cass' voice from above me. Several pairs of hands reached out to pick me up off the floor. "Y'alright?" Cass was probably the closest of anyone, and she wrapped my arm around her shoulder; it reminded me of how she had carried me home last night.
"Remember, pardner," Victor said, pointing a claw at me. Everyone in the hall turned to look at him. The cartoony cowboy face remained static - except when it was interrupted by bursts of static. "You've got twenty-four hours to follow the boss' orders. You best git goin'... otherwise, we're gonna have us a problem." Without a sound, the elevator doors shut.
"Sheason... What was that about?" Veronica looked at me with a concerned expression on her face. I looked around, and saw Veronica, Boone, Raul, and ED-E all hovering near me in the hallway; Cass was holding onto my right side, and Arcade was holding on to my left. I tried to shake the two of them off, and get back on my feet.
"Uh..." I did my best to not look sheepish. I'm pretty sure I failed. "Well... got some bad news, kids..."