6. The Report
Deacon watched as Finn, that smug lowlife, approached Myra and her companion. “Well, that’s a mistake,” the spy muttered under his breath. He hoped the young man’s error wouldn’t come at too high a cost.
As Deacon observed their interaction, he mentally flipped through the imaginary dossier he’d compiled on Myra’s soldier friend: Paladin T. Danse, head of Recon Squad Gladius and trusted advisor to Elder Maxson. In the art of non-human extermination, the man was a prodigy, his record filled with the blood of ghouls, super mutants, and synths alike. Deacon shuddered to think what would happen if he were ever to find the Railroad. It had probably been a mistake to let the Paladin live.
He overheard Danse threaten the interloper, “I think you might want to reconsider.” The soldier’s dark eyes fixed on Finn as he towered over the young man, sheltering Myra behind him protectively.
Keeping his head down, Deacon slipped out of Goodneighbor’s gate once the commotion started. Thank God for Finn and his idiotic extortion scheme taking the heat off of him. He wasn’t sure he could have taken much more of the Paladin’s scrutiny.
He sighed as he skulked down the last leg of the Freedom Trail towards the Old North Church, kicking the top half of a shattered beer bottle idly with his left foot as he walked. His worst fears about Myra’s involvement with the Brotherhood of Steel seemed to be coming true. There was no way a man as protective as her companion would let her out of his sight for a moment, and Deacon couldn’t afford for Danse to catch wind of the Railroad’s activities. The spy’s job was about to get much, much harder.
Of course, first he had to deal with his actual assignment, which was gathering intelligence on the Institute’s activities in the Commonwealth. He suspected something truly terrible was about to go down in Goodneighbor, something that would make the town’s usual petty crimes look like a neighborhood bake sale. Something that, for now, trumped the danger presented by the Brotherhood of Steel.
For months now, he’d had the sneaking suspicion that the Institute was finally beginning to get bold enough to infiltrate the seedy settlement. If he was reading the situation right, the Railroad’s whole operation was likely in jeopardy.
The mind wiping procedures run by Dr. Amari out of The Memory Den were a crucial part of the Railroad’s synth liberation process. Without the ability to implant new memories into the synths they rescued, the risk of their operations being exposed increased tenfold. If the Institute recaptured a synth with memories of which safehouses they were processed through, the Railroad would certainly find themselves under attack again. This time, they might not survive.
The signs of Institute infiltration were always subtle. A strange glance from an old informant here, a relationship between two drifters suddenly on the rocks for no reason there...anyone without a trained eye might miss the writing on the wall. Deacon, however, had seen this all before when they’d lost University Point a few years back. If the Institute’s infestation was left unchecked, it was only a matter of time before Goodneighbor, too, would fall.
“Dez is going to lose her mind over this,” he muttered to himself. “It’s not like we have enough agents to spare to protect Dr. Amari if Kellogg comes calling.”
Conrad Kellogg, faithful attack dog of the Institute, had long been a thorn in the Railroad’s side. The fearsome mercenary had led the massacre of several prominent safehouses and friendly communities over the years, including University Point. His actions sent a clear message: if you side with the Railroad, your entire family, everyone you know, will die. No wonder recruitment was down.
More than ever, the Railroad needed numbers. More than ever, they needed agents like Myra Larimer, fearsome fighters with nothing to lose. If they were able to recruit her, maybe they stood a chance. If not, there was a pretty good chance that the Railroad was in for rougher weather than they’d ever seen.
As Deacon hauled the door to the church’s escape tunnel open, trying not to gag on the noxious fumes emanating from the old sewer, he cocked his head, listening intently to the faint mumbling of voices from inside HQ. For him to be able to hear them from this far away, there must be quite the argument going on in there.
“...If we don’t establish more…” Desdemona’s voice resounded.
“With what personell? We are completely...to spare!” exclaimed Carrington.
Deacon sighed. The old safehouse argument. Ever since the Switchboard massacre, the Railroad had been down four safehouses -- two which had been definitively wiped out and two which had gone dark -- leaving their infrastructure severely weakened. It had been a sore spot between the Railroad’s leaders for months, and Deacon knew that it wasn’t going to get resolved any time soon. He approached the door to the main crypt, sliding it open quietly.
“You know as well as I do that we can’t continue operating like this,” Dez shouted. “I don’t care what we need to do, Carrington. Something’s got to give.”
Deacon cleared his throat as he entered the room, drawing Dez’s attention to him. “You guys know this is supposed to be a secret hideout, right?” he asked playfully. “I could hear you arguing from the street.”
“Deacon. Where have you been?” replied Dez, her brown eyes sweeping over him. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
“Like it?” he asked, taking a slow turn to show off every angle of his new outfit. He’d picked up the greaser jacket off of a caravanner a few weeks before, but it was his first time wearing the disguise at HQ. “I think it makes me look tough.”
“I think it makes you look ridiculous,” muttered Dr. Carrington. “I don’t understand. If the point is for you to blend in, why are you dressed like you’re on your way to a back-alley brawl?”
Deacon shrugged. “Hey, I wanted to spice up the rotation. The lab coat gets boring sometimes. You should know.”
Carrington fumed under his breath as he went to check on his supplies. Deacon knew it was probably a bad idea to piss off the Railroad’s main physician, but it was just too damn easy...and too much fun.
Desdemona sighed. “Thanks for that, Deacon. Now I’m going to have yet another crisis to deal with today.”
“Sorry, Dez. I just can’t help it if Carrington still refuses to grow a sense of humor. At this point, I think he just likes being angry.”
“You might be right. All the same, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop antagonizing him and fill me in. So, I ask you again, and I do expect an answer: where have you been?”
“I was in Goodneighbor, taking in the sights. Gotta say, Dez, things aren’t looking great there. Lot of potential Institute spies in play. We may need to pull Amari out.”
Dez’s eyes hardened. “Shit. You know she won’t evacuate. She’s too well-known, has too many important clients.”
“Well, if you have any better ideas,” the spy shot back, “I’d love to discuss them with you. But the way I see it, we got three, maybe four months tops before Goodneighbor’s no longer hospitable to our cause.”
“I…” Dez frowned, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Damn it! We need more agents. That’s the problem, no matter how we look at it.”
Deacon nodded. “That, I might be able to help with. I’ve been following a lead on a pretty promising recruit. She’s fearless, smart, charismatic, and best of all, doesn’t have any family to speak of. You’d love her. She’s pretty much the perfect candidate.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” Dez replied coldly. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s… well, she’s a vault dweller, so I’m not sure she’s met enough synths to care about them one way or the other. And she’s made some interesting friends since she emerged, not all of them Railroad-friendly. It might be hard for us to approach her.”
“A vault dweller? Which vault?”
Deacon understood Dez’s hesitation at bringing in a vault dweller. There were several known vaults in the Commonwealth, but most of them were destroyed or abandoned. Some had simply never been found, their locations lost to time. Then, there were the ones like Vault 81, known for being so xenophobic that they didn’t even trust other humans, let alone synths. Not exactly Railroad material.
“She’s from Vault 111. You know, the one up by Concord. I saw her emerge myself.”
Dez sighed heavily. “Deacon, you haven’t been following this woman since your mission in Concord, have you?”
“Maybe...I mean, just to gather intelligence on her.”
“So every time you take off without a word, you’re stalking her? You know how creepy that is, right? It’s been months. Why haven’t you approached her yet?”
“Like I said, some of her friends aren’t exactly the sort of people I’d invite to my next dinner party.”
Dez frowned, her eyes glowing dangerously. “If you really want to bring this woman in, I think it’s time you elaborate on who these ‘friends’ are.”
Deacon gulped. This was a can of worms he didn’t particularly want to open. So many of his decisions in the past few months had been entangled with his choice to recruit Myra. But Dez deserved to know, even if it was going to come back to bite him in the ass.
“Well, the good news is that she’s the new General of the Minutemen,” he replied. “We still tolerate those guys, right?”
Desdemona thought for a moment. “We’ll see. You know as well as I do that the Minutemen have traditionally had a fair number of anti-synth bigots in their ranks. Still, it could be very useful for us to have their General on our side. But I know what you’re doing, Deacon. Tell me the bad news.”
“She...may have also joined the Brotherhood of Steel.”
Dez stared at him in shock, the surprise in her eyes slowly morphing into anger as the implications of his words set in. “Deacon. You didn’t happen to fail your mission because of her, did you?”
“Does that sound like something I’d do?”
“Deacon…” Dez warned, “you told me that you weren’t able to eliminate that recon team because they were too well-armed.”
“Well, that, and I figured a double agent in the hand was worth more than three soldiers in the ground.”
“But she’s not ‘in the hand,’ now, is she?” cried Dez, prowling towards him angrily. “Christ, Deacon! Do you have any idea how bad this is?”
Deacon retreated until his back was pressed against the wall, Dez inches from his face as she leaned up on the brickwork with one hand. If there was one thing Deacon hated more than anything else, it was being cornered. But he had done this to himself, and had no one else to blame.
“I...I can fix it,” he said, his mouth set firmly. “You know I can fix it. All I have to do is convince her to work for us. I swear, Dez, this one’s worth it. I can feel it.”
For a moment, he was terrified that Desdemona was going to punch him. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But she just inhaled sharply, staring past his sunglasses, her fist clenching and unclenching at her side. Finally, she heaved off the wall with a sigh before turning away from him, heading back to her post.
“You’d better be right, Deacon,” she hissed over her shoulder. “Because if you’re wrong, you may have just put the final nail in our coffin.”
“I promise, Dez. I won’t let it come to that.”
He collected himself as best he could before going to chat with Tinker Tom. The man was crazy as a suitcase full of bloodworms, but he was damn good at high-tech solutions for absurdly difficult problems. If anyone could help him figure out the best way to get to Myra, it was Tom.
“Hey, Deacon! You’re just in time,” called the eccentric inventor. “I’ve been testing out a new version of my anti-nanite vaccine! I really think that this one’s gonna be the one, man!”
“Well, I knew you’d figure it out, buddy! What’s in this one?”
Tom eyed him cautiously. “You really expect me to tell you? How do I even know you’re the real Deacon?”
He chuckled. “You got me. I’m a clone of the man you know as Deacon, sent to my past to protect your future. The world is in grave danger, Tom! And only you and I can stop it!”
Tinker Tom grinned. “I knew it! I fucking knew it! So what do you need me to do?”
Deacon almost felt bad for stringing the older man along. Almost. “There is a great warrior from your time, a woman named Myra Larimer. She is the most important part of our mission. But she is guarded by a powerful enemy. I need to get a message to her without her guard noticing. Can you help me?”
“Well, future Deacon, you came to the right guy! I’ve got all kinds of bugs and gizmos I’ve been dying to try out. Take anything that you think will help.”
Music to his ears. Deacon rummaged about in Tom’s footlocker for a moment, picking out a few bugs, a receiver, and a few other things he couldn’t quite identify but looked like they’d be fun to play with.
Tinker Tom snatched one of the whatsits, a small box wrapped in copper wire, out of Deacon’s hands. “Sorry, that’s not ready yet.”
“What is it?” Deacon asked.
“You’re kidding, right? Aw man, I thought for sure these things would be everywhere in a few years. It’s an adapter for those old decontamination units, nullifies the mind control serum the Institute pumps into them before your skin can absorb it...or at least it’s supposed to. You’re sure you’ve never seen one?”
“If I did see one,” Deacon countered, “how would I know it was working? I think you’d probably put them somewhere discrete, right?”
Tom thought for a moment. “You know, you’re absolutely right, Deacon! Aw, man, now I’ve got to redesign the whole mounting system! Now where did I put those blueprints…”
Deacon snickered to himself as he quietly slipped away from Tom’s station to his own locker, retrieving a few important items of his own. Diamond City Security uniform? Check. Railroad recruitment holotape? Check. Taxidermied owl he’d found a couple years back and had affectionately named Constable Snickers? He patted the lifeless little guy on the head before closing the locker.
Well, it was time to get back on the road. If he was going to have enough time to set his plans in motion, he needed to beat Myra to Diamond City. Desdemona was right: If the Railroad was going to survive the coming war, he absolutely couldn’t afford to fail.