Work Text:
War Is Declared
The Legate's forces had moved out of the Fort in the night. The Courier and his allies headed for the Dam, because all hell was within days -- if not hours -- of breaking loose.
Arcade had rendezvoused with the Remnants at the bunker and traveled with them, but he'd been sent in on foot from a short distance to keep the vertibird out of sight until it was "proper showtime". It felt like being sent to school, like back in the NCR. A little humiliating, but tempered by fondness: he would always be a kid to them, and that thought wasn't discomforting. His mind returned to his powersuit training as Arcade walked the armor up the road. His skills were a little rusty: he was very conscious and careful of how his legs were working. The feedback systems pushed the metal armor in a lagged mime of his movements. His steps were very deliberate. He didn't want to fall on his face.
Daisy and Judah had first gotten him into Judah's powersuit on his sixteenth birthday. He had already been shooting for a year and a half. They went to the same private spot outside of town and taught him how to work with the armor, to use it to walk, crouch, roll. Later he had learned to climb and run. It hadn't been Enclave indoctrination. It had been adults arming a skinny, sensitive kid against the worst life could dish out. They didn't talk about the Enclave at all, just Arcade and the future and at the end of his training Daisy and Judah had been pleased not because there was young blood animating one of the concrete pieces of the Enclave's legacy, but because it meant they had given him one more weapon for a harsh world. Always looking out for him. He tried a few quicker steps and found it was -- what was that Old World phrase? -- that it was like riding a bike. Apparently you never forgot. He broke into a run.
Arcade slowed when he reached the final stretch of the sloping road, wove around a logjam of rusted automotive carcasses, and approached the Hoover Dam entry checkpoint with his hands raised in the universal symbol of harmlessness. He had a piece of paper in his hand like a little white flag. He was waved forward to the barricades and met by a dark-haired trooper who was suffering from a bad case of sunburn across his nose and cheeks.
"Who're you?" the soldier asked.
Arcade smiled quickly, just to himself, and presented the scrap of paper that had been stamped at the Courier's behest by General Oliver himself. "Reinforcements."
The trooper thought that was funny, and snorted. "Some reinforcements," he said, giving Arcade the once-over. It was just like command to send one fuckin' guy in some freaky wasp-suit. Gonna scare the Legion off the Dam, maybe? He didn't know the plan, all he knew was he didn't get paid near enough for this. He'd only joined up so he wouldn't end up shoveling brahmin muck like his dad. He had been damned disappointed to find that life in the army was just as full of crap. Letter looked official enough. That was definitely the General's stamp and sig. He nodded at the guy in the weird armor.
"So you're Gannon." Arcade gave a small salute as the NCR trooper looked over the paper again and clicked his radio. "He's here, LT." The trooper gave Arcade a wan smile. "We weren't sure you'd really show up, but that courier said to keep an eye out."
Over the trooper's radio, they heard the lieutenant announce Arcade's arrival. "All personnel note: a non-NCR military asset is attached to Sigma Squad at the west end of the Dam."
The trooper handed the paper back and Arcade, without an available pocket, folded it up.
"Welcome to the party." The trooper nodded him past.
"Thanks," Arcade said. He tried to make his voice strong like his had been.
Arcade had done his training in Judah's outfit, but once or twice throughout his life he had put on his father's armor. Symptomatic of the ups and downs of trying to come to grips with his death, alternatively trying to bury him and resurrect him. He had maintained the armor meticulously, kept it stored tight like a sacred relic, and putting it on always felt like climbing into someone's coffin. Arcade wasn't at all superstitious and not particularly theological (he believed that human life was a short day in the sun between two unknowable nights), but he felt his father here in the armor, in the heavy pull of the joints and the soft hiss of the air circulator. It was almost a physical presence, the way the rhythmic air flowed across his cheek. Arcade passed through the barricades onto the broad expanse of Hoover Dam. The memory of his father walked with him onto the battlefield.
Arcade surveyed the Dam. A few NCR rangers were loitering, trying to look alert and busy while sticking to the small pools of shade to escape the worst of the sun's glare. The Visitor's Center was on his right, and a monument on his left. Arcade turned for a closer look, driven by natural curiosity and because he needed a moment to calm his nerves. The monument was still recognizable: The two Winged Figures of the Republic, seated on black blocks, and -- Arcade peered, toed aside some of the rubble and some cigarette butts dropped by NCR troops. He tilted his head. The lines were familiar, they meant something. He couldn't quite put his finger on what.
Ah. There. Zodiac signs, a few of them. A word that might be "EQUINOX." Arcade traced the broken lines, his imagination making them whole. The two winged figures sat above, and the Earth -- an abstraction of it, anyway, a representation of the Earth's place in the universe -- was engraved in the slab of stone at the figures' feet. Man triumphant, ascended to godhood, master of his domain. The terrazzo was cracked and crumbling, and Arcade felt the corners of his mouth pull into a bitter smile. Masters of a broken world. Sitting so proudly, unaware that it was all falling to bits beneath their feet, unaware that their self-importance was a castle built on sand. The two figures had neutral faces. No savagery, no impotent nobility. They were ready to welcome whoever took this shattered ground next. The NCR or the Legion, equally self-righteous and both unworthy of the task of shepherding the Mojave and its people. So it goes.
The scrap of paper with his orders was still in Arcade's fingers. A gust of wind swept the reservoir, rushed over the small figures on the massive concrete rib of the Dam, and Arcade let the paper go. He watched it catch an updraft, flutter past the wings of one of the statues, and sail toward the east and the Legion's black campfire smoke.
He was on the steps of the Visitor's Center when the trumpets sounded. Like their Roman precursors, the Legion loved their pomp and circumstance. The sound of the shrill trumpets echoed through the canyon, rolled across the water behind the Dam, crashed into the mountains, and reverberated back over them.
That was the signal. The gates of Mars were thrown open, war was begun, and as the NCR on the Dam burst into motion Arcade was glad no one could see his face. And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here... right. His hands felt frozen and his heart thudded as he groped for the trigger of his plasma pistol. He was no soldier. But his father was, and Arcade would make him proud.
And the Courier. Arcade would make him proud, too.
The NCR troops were manning the small sandbag barricades and the dark-haired soldier with the peeling nose shouted at Arcade to move inside and hook up with his squad. Arcade scrambled up the remaining stairs, pushed through the doors into the lobby of the Visitor's Center, and took up position alongside the Heavy Troopers of Sigma Squad.
And Battle Come Down
Their orders, as far as Sigma's CO could determine, were to sit tight. The sergeant wasn't getting any word from further up the chain, not in these first mad moments, and he was irate. He jammed a clip into his pistol and addressed the small crowd of people at the circular desk. "Okay. We've been caught with our pants around our fucking ankles. So our orders go like this: if you see some Legion, shoot the bastards."
They didn't wait long. The first wave washed over them in blood, and Arcade, perhaps an instrument of the Furies, fell into a flow of sight, fire, duck, repeat, working with the patterns of the NCR troopers around him. The Legion liked to get up close and personal; not the best strategy when a whole rainbow of lasers and plasma rained on them in almost perfect unison. These must be the expendables, Arcade thought. The cannon fodder sent to feel out their defenses, trying to slip through the holes. Rather stupid tactic, but who knew what went on in Legate Lanius's mad brain? This kind of balls-out insanity had won him favor from Caesar -- but surely he couldn't believe a disciplined force like the NCR would be a loose net? Arcade knew how Caesar conquered Gaul, as it went, and could quote the fights historical, as someone else had put it1, but he was no tactician. Even to his untrained eyes, though, these Legionaries with axes and power fists looked remarkably like a costly feint. A distraction.
The troopers' radios were crackling with confused chatter: no one seemed to know where the Legion was coming from, where their squad commanders were; the whole operation was trying to shift gears from embedded to besieged and the transition was chaos. Arcade listened grimly between volleys of gunfire to the frantic reports from lower levels, the voices full of confusion and terror just barely reigned in by the tight, military clip of their words. Perhaps there was something in Lanius's tactics after all.
And the Courier was down there ... somewhere. He had Boone with him. But Boone was a sniper, how long had it been since he had seen action up close? Arcade didn't doubt Boone's skills, but they were all out of their element here. Arcade fumbled with the dial on the suit's forearm and tried to tune the headset in his helmet to the NCR's narrow-band radio frequency.
The lobby fell quiet. No NCR casualties, no Legion survivors. Two of the troopers started pushing the bodies toward the walls. Arcade finally got tuned in to the NCR's channel and kept his position at the desk's end, trained on the door and elevator that lead down into Power Plant 01.
"Delta squad, redeploy... back up Unit 8..." Arcade was half-listening, most of his mind on keeping his sights aimed steadily at the far end of the room. No Legion. The reports were all in plants 03 and 04, and still no word of --
"Epsilon, redeploy. Unit 5 pinned down in Power Plant 03 and needs assistance. Note: two non-NCR military assets are with them. Check your targets. Unit 6 rendezvous with Unit 12, sweep and hold Power Plant 04."
Arcade's hands started to tremble. Sigma's sergeant was beside him, still trying to pick up any orders for Sigma Squad. "Sergeant."
The sergeant shook his head. "Now's not the time for a chat."
"Permission to move down into the Power Plant." The phrasing sounded half natural, and half like Arcade had picked it up from war movie holotapes -- which he had.
"Why the hell would you want to do that? It's a war zone." The sergeant laughed at his own little joke.
The reasons weren't discrete, rational things in his mind. They were an instinctive roar, deep down, impulses born from lust, and possession, and oxytocin's nefarious pair-bonding work in the brain, and his own fears, all weaving a limerent bond that was white-hot, pulling for his attention even in the midst of the grinding war machine. He wanted to be with the Courier because that was where he should be.
At that moment, the clipped, cool voice on the radio: "Sigma Squad, hold position."
The sergeant called in a brief affirmative and turned back to Arcade. "Hear that? We're staying here."
Arcade's hand squeezed the grip of his pistol until his knuckles were white. He was a "non-NCR" asset. He didn't take orders from this sergeant, or any of the other officers cowering in their safe spaces, well back from the action while they ordered men and women to their deaths. And somewhere, right in the middle, was someone he cared about very much. Not quite loved, not quite yet. His thoughts about the Courier were untested, his devotion colored by lust, still immature and caught in that sensual music. But he understood viscerally, for the first time, Aeneas's impulse to arm himself and stride into the flames.
The counterpoint rose before he had finished the thought: break ranks, and do what? Sow confusion? There was enough of that, and confusion got people killed. He couldn't understand what it really meant to be a soldier, but this glimpse of insight -- the totality of immersion, the symbiotic reliance, the iron chains of personal responsibility -- was enough to dampen the fires of irrationality.
It was a comfort to know that his wits were still about him. He wasn't head over heels, he hadn't gone stupid. He could still think past the animal instinct to love and fuck. That was always paramount in the past: that he could feel these things, but escape into the cold rational light if he had to. Nothing surprising about this, Arcade supposed. It was how he had survived, even if it had made him cold. Unwilling to throw both body and mind into something, unable to surrender to someone with a total, self-annihilating passion.
The door to the stairs smashed open and Arcade fired without hesitation. He professed himself one of the Followers, but his pragmatism always far outweighed his dogmatism. How many people had he killed? Thugs, raiders, countless Legion. "No life was below another" -- one of the cardinal doctrines of Follower philosophy and a nice sentiment. For all his protestation of "exceptions" (as he had told the Courier he made when it came to Caesar, or the Fiends), he found such an idea more honorable in the breach than the observance. Putting down dangerous people was better than ... than not doing so. Utilitarian, perhaps, but not naively Utopian. His morality sometimes felt like one constant retreat from absolutes, but absolutes were without merit in a complex world. He fired again. The Legionaries were the tendrils of tyranny and should die, and as his shots landed two of them did. He wasn't a good enough person to feel torn up about it.
Then things happened very fast: Arcade was still at the desk, Legionaries still coming through the door to the Power Plant. The elevator chugged to the lobby and the metal doors opened --
The Courier was suddenly beside him, his back against the wooden desk, crouching next to Arcade's bulky metal form.
Arcade noticed him and his attention ripped away from the sights of his plasma pistol. The Courier was still in one piece. "Thank God."
Boone was next to the Courier, scoping the enemy forces. He fired three shots in quick succession: three arcs of blood across the walls, three more bodies on the floor. Boone nodded to Arcade, and Arcade made a brief, triumphant fist. Boone smiled.
Arcade took his turn. He aimed and melted one of the Legionaries, whose axe clattered to the marble floor. The Courier fired too. Another down.
"Quite the soldier boy," the Courier teased over the din. He started reloading.
Arcade let loose a hail of plasma at the Legionary with the assault rifle and dropped back down onto his heels. "Learning as I go. You two okay?"
"Never better. We're here to meet a few friends."
As if on cue, a few NCR Rangers wearing brown and their faces obscured behind black bandannas and dark sunglasses, came in the front double-doors. With their help, it was a quick matter to mop up the remaining Legion fighters, and the soldiers of Sigma, the Rangers, Arcade, Boone, and the Courier grouped at the reception desk in the center of the room.
The Rangers apparently had orders to report to the Courier. "Gamma."
The Courier nodded to them, and turned to Arcade and the rank-and-file NCR troopers. "The intake tunnels were compromised," the Courier explained. "We took care of it."
Gamma's leader had been receiving status updates, too. "02 and 03 are under our control, 04 should be ours soon. Without reinforcements, they're just rats trapped in a maze."
With the Power Plants being slowly secured, the battle shifted topside, troopers filing up from the tunnels to shore up the defensive barricades in the open air.
The Courier and Gamma conferred intensely for a few moments. The Legion had passed the midpoint of the Dam, infested the water intake towers, but the NCR was holding the line at the westernmost guard tower.
The Legion wasn't moving forward. Waiting. Alpha Squad was just past the checkpoint at the middle of the Dam, pinned and cut off by the sudden appearance of Legion in the water intake towers. They wouldn't hold both ends against the middle for long.
Arcade stood beside the Courier, once again a bystander just on the periphery of heroism, and listened. The entire eastern half of the Dam was overrun with Legion, while the no man's land between the western guard tower and the first water intake tower was locked tight, propped up on either side by hails of rifle fire. The NCR had dug in its heels, trusting to reinforcements. Momentum was already losing out to inertia, and if it all ground to a stalemate it would mean fortified positions on either side and a long, drawn-out battle. This wasn't what the NCR had in mind. The NCR higher-ups decided it was time for a sortie, a push up to the checkpoint to rendezvous with Alpha. Gamma's CO and the Courier agreed. Arcade wasn't given a vote.
The group broke apart to check their weapons and strap a few extra ammo clips to their bodies. The Courier and Boone moved a few paces away and Arcade followed them, prying his stuffy helmet off. He shook his head and inhaled. A lot of dust from shots cratering the already-cracked walls, and the tang of blood in the air. He looked down at the Courier, who was crouched and making sure his boots were laced tight.
"Where do you want me?" Arcade asked.
"Right here. When we push, there's going to be a lot of carnage. And if it doesn't work, we'll need a place to fall back to." The Courier pulled the laces on his right boot into a tight double-knot and switched to the other foot.
To Arcade, it sounded suspiciously like he was being told to stay behind. He hadn't come here as a gesture, he had come to fight. "Let me go with you."
The Courier straightened up. His face was unreadable to Arcade. "Keep this place safe. If we get routed, the retreat needs to be organized. No breaking and running. We'll only lose more people if there's panic."
Boone looked from Arcade to the Courier. He hitched up his rifle and headed over to the Rangers to borrow a cigarette. Boone wasn't oblivious, he could sense the charge in the atmosphere.
Arcade was very cold. Hearing the Courier say these things as if he wouldn't be there -- as if he was bequeathing these responsibilities -- was intolerable. Infuriating. "Okay. Hang on. Which one of us is dressed like a walking metal fridge?" He looked at the leather armor strapped to the Courier's body. "You stay here."
"I've seen four field promotions in the last half hour." The Courier was tense too, and just as snappish. "There are kids who don't look old enough to shave suddenly wearing sergeant's stripes. Oliver's locked in his little hidey-hole. This whole thing's a massive clusterfuck and I'm trying to --"
"I'm trying right here with you. In case you've forgotten." Arcade's eyebrows were drawn together sharply in annoyance.
"It would be nice if you'd help me, then, instead of standing here arguing." The Courier looked past Arcade's shoulder to the Rangers and Boone, who were grouped up and ready to head out.
Arcade saw the shift in his gaze. The heroes, ready to ride. Are you a hero, Gannon? Are you a savior? Going to march to glory? Something inside gave way. "All right."
The Courier closed his eyes, ran a hand through his hair, and rubbed at the base of his skull. The close-quarter shotgun reports, the plaster dust hanging in the air, and the weird buzz of his laser rifle all added up to one hell of a headache. "I'm sorry."
"No. I'm sorry." Arcade wasn't sulking. A hero, a savior? He wasn't even a soldier. Not like Boone, who had so easily slipped back in among his NCR brethren. A soldier through and through. Arcade didn't look like any of those men and women who were so practiced and composed. He knew he looked pale and worried. But he could keep his head, and that would be crucial if the retreat was sounded.
There was more, too. He didn't want this anger to be the last thing between them. If this is the last time fate will let us speak... It hurt like hell, but this was his role to play. "I'll stay here. I'll make sure it all ... goes right."
"Okay. Good." The Courier's hand was still at the back of his neck, trying to work at the painful burn that had developed there.
"Head hurting?"
The Courier shrugged. "Yeah."
"Let me." Arcade went to the desk and returned with a syringe of Med-X. The Courier stood still as Arcade gave him the shot, still wary. Arcade put his hand up by the Courier's, ran his fingers over the Courier's gloved knuckles, and dug his fingertips into the tense trapezius muscles to gently knead them. The Courier relaxed and made an appreciative little noise as the aching, knotted sensation started to ease under Arcade's fingers, and their eyes met. Each destined for their own fights. Apart, yet partners in them.
One of Gamma's Rangers came over. "Sir?"
Arcade's hand fell away and the Courier turned to the Ranger. "Let's go."
One last look at Arcade. The Courier made a fist and pounded on Arcade's armor plating, right over his heart. Be strong, do what you have to. We'll meet again. Arcade smiled; message received.
Quit Holding Out, and Draw Another Breath
They pushed. Arcade heard shouting as the NCR leapt the makeshift barricades, a redoubling of automatic gunfire from the Legion position, and all hell broke loose.
The Courier was right: carnage. The Legion swarmed out of the water intake towers, meeting the advancing NCR forces, and the fighting joined in earnest.
The Visitor's Center was suddenly triage and field hospital. Arcade found himself in the middle of a circle of auxiliary NCR personnel, medics and a few strays who had lost their officers or been ordered back to positions that didn't exist. Wounded were being dragged in and dumped, or crawling in, and Arcade, still in most of his father's armor, found himself the most imposing thing in the room. It wasn't his intention, but with wounded coming in and communication breaking down the initiative was there for the taking. He grabbed it and started rallying the panicky faces around him.
Triage. Sorting. Leave the dead, get the living and breathing under caring hands. Arcade gave orders (wondering all the while where the authority in his voice was coming from), dispersed the few hands at his disposal, and when they were all in motion going about their tasks he looked around for how he could help, too.
A soldier with a pale face was kneeling beside the body he had just hauled in. The body belonged to a female private, already blue around the beds of her fingernails. One pants leg was soaked red. Still bleeding. Bright blood. Arcade fell to his knees, no time for getting to the floor gracefully. He put his ear to the woman's face. Breathing. The woman's eyes opened and Arcade smiled at her reassuringly -- and very professionally -- as he ripped her pants leg open. Deep wound. Probably an axe. Barbarians.
"Give me something," Arcade snapped to the younger man beside him. "Handkerchief. Some shirt."
The man tore into the shirt under his brown jacket and passed it to Arcade. He folded it, pressed it onto the gash in the injured woman's thigh and looked at the dazed trooper. "A-B-C," Arcade said aloud, raising his voice as the building shook around them. It sounded like a bombing run. ...? He banished it. His fight was in here now. "Airway. Breathing. Circulation." He pulled the woman's leg up onto the man's lap as makeshift elevation. He grabbed the NCR Trooper's shaking hand and shoved the heel of his palm onto the wadded-up shirt. He guided the other man's hand to the pressure point further up her leg, and the man didn't even blink. "ABC. Got it? Every five minutes, start again. Check she's breathing. Keep this elevated. Keep pressure here and here. Don't stop until someone tells you to. Okay?"
The man nodded, said "Yes," very quietly, and Arcade saw the blank wall of panic crumbling at the edges. Give someone an order, something to do, and they'd latch on and pull themselves back from the brink.
"Good job," Arcade said. He smiled and moved on to the next body.
This one was dead. Arcade closed the eyes and moved on.
At the Top of the Dial
By Christ, they made it. The Courier staggered into the checkpoint last and stood there panting. Legion bodies were piled behind them, all along the dam. NCR, too. But they had done it. Shoved the Legion back. Not so much shoved as slaughtered, but no one felt any remorse. They were at the midway point. Alpha Squad was holding the other side of the door.
The Rangers were reloading, stabbing themselves with stimpacks. One of them was on the radio delivering a sit-rep on the reserved command channel. The Courier held out his hand and the man signed off and handed the radio over.
The Courier switched to the trooper-wide band. "Arcade." Just the two syllables, but full of everything he wanted to say.
Arcade, who had shed his father's armor and had blood splattering his arms almost up to the elbows, heard his name simultaneously through three radios strapped to bodies. He couldn't look up from his work, trying to establish an airway with a flick knife, but he was listening.
The Courier's voice instantly became monotone, professional. "Moving forward toward the Legate's camp."
A few more medics had arrived, and an officer to oversee them. Arcade was free, then, to put his training to full use. The man he was working on had half his face smashed in. There was a puddle of teeth and vomit on the floor. Arcade decided that this man was going to live. He was fighting right alongside the Courier. They'd both win, and when it was done ...
The Courier had the guns of the NCR and the tech of the Enclave at his back as they stormed the camp. The Monster of the East fell and the Mojave, at least for the moment, was secure.
More personnel arrived, the reserves who had been delayed by impassable conditions on the roads. The Visitor's Center was no longer the epicenter as medics were able to advance across the whole of the dam in search of wounded, and a half-dozen first aid tents popped up. Arcade stayed among the worst of the worst. The man with the smashed jaw stabilized. He'd never be a beauty contestant, he'd be eating soup for the next year, but he would live. Arcade was helping to sew arteries, stabbing limbs with stimpacks to get hearts beating again, while the battle finished outside and an exhausted silence fell on the rest of the dam.
And After All This...
No rest for the wicked. The Courier and Boone ended the day in Arizona. They stayed with Alpha Squad, under orders to harass the Legion's retreat as the death knell for the Legion's expansionist ambitions. They saw the Legion ten miles down I-93 back toward wherever they came from.
They had found the armor. One of the Rangers was questioning some of the Sigma Squad troopers with Arcade's helmet in his hands. There was a lot of serious nodding, and then one of them gestured to Arcade. The Ranger got on his radio and Arcade felt his blood run cold.
He put down the armload of medical-grade thread and semi-clean cloth they were using for bandages and started to move slowly, with painful nonchalance, toward the doors. He passed one of the civilian engineers, a perky girl with red hair, who gave him a questioning look.
Terri had been in here almost from the beginning. She worked with the electricians, running wires through small spaces. She had been brought up from the Power Plant by one of the NCR troopers almost beside herself with terror and this handsome, kind man had calmed her and set her to work saving lives. Fifteen minutes in, and she had decided when this was over, if they got out, she was going to go join the Followers and learn to be a proper nurse. Now Arcade -- nice name, she liked how it rolled off the tongue -- looked like he was on a mission. She fell in beside him. Where were they going? Somewhere important, must be. Watching him work, she'd never seen someone so ... dedicated. The NCR medics around here were usually standoffish, surly. They made jokes when they thought nobody could hear them. Arcade was more like a big brother full of concern. She liked that vibe.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
Good question. "Nowhere. I just need some air."
He sounded scared to death and looked like he'd just seen his mother's ghost. Terri looked back and saw that one of those Desert Rangers, all dusty jeans and flapping coat, was watching them. The Ranger looked like her uncle scoping mole rats. Hungry-like.
They reached the doors and Arcade noticed he still had a stimpack in his hand. He was gripping it so hard his palm was turning purple. He pushed it at Terri. "Here. Remember to check with Sam about getting the trays sterilized."
Terri nodded. "Should I --?"
Arcade ducked out.
Terri frowned and toyed with the stimpack. The Ranger was crossing the room. She wasn't the brightest, her mother had always said it didn't do for pretty girls to be too brainy, but she could put two and two together. She stepped toward the Ranger with a smile. Intercept course. "Hey, uh -- could you help me?"
He tried to brush past her but she moved like a butterfly, getting in front of him again. "It's just we have to haul all this stuff out to one of the first aid tents."
Getting in the Ranger's way wouldn't buy Arcade much time, but maybe enough for a head start.
Arcade set off down the path at a fast clip. The sunburned trooper from earlier in the day was at the barricades again. Arcade had set his broken wrist, courtesy of a big Legion bastard with a hammer. He was one of the lucky ones, healthy enough to be back ordered to a post now that the fighting was done. The trooper smiled at Arcade in recognition and waved him by. Arcade slipped through the rusty barricade walls and broke into a run.
He tried to think. His heart was pounding in his chest, his lungs bellowing. He was hurling himself forward, off-balance, every step shocking him with that half-asleep feeling of falling. When he tripped, there was nothing to catch himself on. He crawled a few feet, ignoring the bloody scuffing of his palms, got his legs under him, and pushed off the concrete into a renewed sprint.
He couldn't think. Where was he going? What should he do? He was a child again, Enclave men and women were disappearing, integrated Enclave were being hunted down. He was calling on the memories of a dozen sudden, frightening journeys in the dark -- the adults kept bright faces by day, put him to bed with a kiss, and dragged him out again in the middle of the night. Let's go, Arcade. No, don't stop for that, you can't take it with you -- precious things he had invested with memories, keepsakes, things and people he loved, all left behind as they fled. Arcade thought of the Courier and if he could have, if he had room for anything but fear and adrenaline and sucking air into his lungs, he would have cried. He was running again, carrying nothing but the clothes on his back and absolute terror, as they had so many times before. Only this time, he was alone.
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1 Noël Coward and Gilbert and Sullivan, respectively.