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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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"Yes," he snapped.  For a long moment he scowled at me furiously but before I’d decided whether or not I could find some alternative for him, he sighed.  Pain and frustration had lent his normally rugged features an almost commanding quality, but now that faded and he just looked broken.  I wondered who he might have been when he was healthy.  Maybe Veronica only judged his life so harshly because she’d known him before it had taken this toll on him.  Max turned and shuffled back towards the hallway, "If you feel like giving my vodka back, I’ll be on my couch."
The elevator must have arrived while we’d been speaking because he nearly ran into the courier.  Max’s sullen demeanor vanished so quickly that I don’t think Lucia even saw it.  He gave her that crooked smile and bowed playfully, "The victorious queen returns."  I would have thought he was mocking her, except he had no reason to do that and Lucia responded with some kind of regal attempt at a curtsy, though she clearly had never seen one.  It struck me that Max must have seen bows like that in old holotapes, which meant he’d had access to holotapes at some point in his life and reinforced my theory about him.  Right now he was making something up, probably to conceal what we’d been talking about and distract Lucia.  What I’d seen of them in the past few days suggested she’d been taken in by his charm and probably didn’t or wouldn’t see what he’d been doing to himself.  
Lucia laughed, "Well, someone’s been reading `Tales of Chivalry.’"
"Guilty as charged," Max replied, his mask of a smile never faltering.  The whole exchange seemed too saccharine for him and had all the sincerity of a poker table now that I’d learned how to tell when he was lying.  Lucia hooked a finger under his collar to pull him forward and she must have scratched him, judging from how he winced.  She didn’t notice and looked from me to Veronica.  
"Are Cass or Boone here?"
Veronica frowned.  "Cass is passed out in the bedroom and I haven’t seen Boone in days.  Do you think he’s alright?"
"I’m sure he’s fine," Lucia dismissed before turning to me, "Arcade, you won’t shoot Max if I ask you to come with us, will you?"
Veronica frowned in concern and spoke before I could, "You sure that’s a good idea, Lucy?"
Lucia nodded, cutting me off a second time, "I’d appreciate someone else who can shoot and Raul won’t be back for days."
"Why not just give Max a gun?"  It was Veronica, and she realized I’d still been trying to say something by my scowl as she finished her suggestion.  "Sorry."
"I’m a terrible shot," Max admitted, not noticing me.  He dropped his voice to add, "Especially at the moment."
When I could finally talk, I pointed out, "I’m not going to shoot Max.  I’ve been basically alone with him all day, if I wanted to shoot him, he’d already be dead."  Maybe not the most comforting way of putting it, but Max glanced my way as I spoke and I glimpsed what might have been a slightly more genuine smile before he went back to watching Lucia with his usual smirk.  
"Good," Lucia resolved, beaming, "then we’re off to Cerulean Robotics."
All the way there I tried to have her explain exactly what she expected us to do at Cerulean Robotics, but to no avail.  Both of us knew where that was, so Lucia and I kept pace with each other, walking on either side of Max who strode through the streets in his suit, smirking as usual.  He managed to move so gracefully despite what must have been excruciating pain; I could see the tension in his jaw and abdomen even though he hid it expertly.  I had to wonder how often he’d been in pain like this before and I hadn’t noticed.  
With Lucia’s service rifle and my plasma defender we made short work of the rats in the factory and left Max to have a look around.  
After her dismissive insistence that I’d "see" I hardly expected Lucia to explain why we’d come here now, but I asked anyway, "Now are you going to tell me what we’re supposed to be doing here?"
To my surprise, Lucia nodded to Max.  "Max?"
The lean young man raised an eyebrow questioningly.  
Ignoring my incredulity that they apparently hadn’t trusted me with this until now, Max gestured around the crumbling building.  "Aside from the obvious structural damage, most of the machinery is intact.  The basic components would be decently worth salvaging and I can repair and reprogram those protectrons using materials already around here and that terminal, but if you really want, and if the building can be reinforced so it doesn’t collapse, this same machinery could be rigged to manufacture more protectrons, eyebots, sentrybots, or maybe securitrons."
Apparently I wasn’t the only one stunned by that explanation.  Lucia frowned skeptically at Max.  "You could do that?"
He shrugged.  "Theoretically.  I’m not too familiar with the construction or programming of securitrons; they might involve some alloy or polymer that would be difficult to synthesize here, but I’m familiar enough with most standard `bots that, given raw materials and a structurally sound work environment, I’m sure I could set up an assembly line using these parts."
This sounded absurd.  He had to be bluffing, so I pointed out the obvious, "Powered by what?"
"Well the dam could theoretically handle it if power’s diverted from Helios 1, the Strip, and NCR facilities," Max casually supposed, "but that would leave most of the Mojave with minimal electricity and the Archimedes would be rendered inoperable, so it would be much better to just use the Lucky 38’s main reactor."
Lucia reacted before I could and more calmly.  "The Lucky 38 can’t power the Strip, it can’t power more than the securitrons and its own systems."
Max shook his head and cut off my protest that the Archimedes was better left without power and that as it was we weren’t in the best position to divert the kind of power he was talking about.  "Not with just the emergency generators.  The main reactor’s offline, my guess is that House’s defense systems caused it to overload during the Great War, but all my projections suggest that the system had an off-site facility which can restart the reactor given proper input; I haven’t been able to locate such a system myself, but House must have records somewhere, perhaps Yes Man can access them?"
Lucia frowned at him and the girl actually looked suspicious.  "You’re sure there is a main reactor and it isn’t just what we have running right now?"
Crossing her hands over her chest, the courier actually looked threatening as she insisted, "Max, how exactly do you know all this?"  
He shrugged evasively and I swear I saw actual fear in his eyes.  The Enclave was disbanded, right?  Why did he know this?  Was there some chance that a branch still existed and he’d been sent here to investigate or spy?  Maybe he just used what he’d learned to great effect.  If he was the child of Enclave scientists, they might have figured this out and told him even without any sort of orders.  "I’m just very good at figuring things out."  Lucia scowled, the first time I’d seen her look angry even if it came off as a child’s pout, and Max elaborated.  "I knew the current level of power wouldn’t have been sufficient to protect the city during the Great War and a basic investigation of the Lucky 38— viewed through binoculars from across the street— reveals inoperable defenses that need more power to function.  Besides, House wouldn’t have built a system which would degrade this much intentionally, he’s all about immortality and preparing for the future.  He has to have a more powerful generator which is not functioning right now."  
Lucia accepted that.  She nodded.  "Salvage anything you can make into something without the machines and let’s go.  I’ll see what I can do to keep this place safe and locked from anyone else who might try to use it."  Max did as he was told and I followed him, just in case he found another giant rat that hadn’t come after us yet.  
"If you can repair robots that easily, why were you working at the Gomorrah?"
"Because I like sex."
"I figured that much," I answered, sighing internally at his constant deflections, "but you could have sex without doing it for money.  Did you even have any say who you slept with?"
He scowled over his shoulder, dropping his facade because Lucia was inspecting the door, trying to figure out a way to lock it.  "That’s not what you’re really asking.  You want to know why I never mentioned this or used it.  The answer’s simple.  I couldn’t see any reason to bother."
I wanted to explain how he was wrong, or just tell him that he couldn’t think like that, but  Lucia could walk over here at any moment and I hesitated.  
*       *       *
I saw the outrage and pity warring in his mind and I chuckled dryly.  "I figured that’s how you’d react.  Stop worrying so much."  I gathered the last of the good scrap into the satchel Lucia had given me and slung it over my back as the courier walked back towards us.  "That’s everything I can take back to the suite, are we going?"
She joked, "You want to stay here with the dead rats?"
Arcade and I both chuckled enough that I doubt she realized we’d just been talking about anything serious.  I knew that he knew.  Even if he hadn’t figured it out on his own, I took off my bracers every day when I woke up, before I washed my face, and he’d tied my bracer with the left lace over the right, not the other way around, as I always did.  It had taken me a few moments to notice why it seemed different.  He knew what I’d done to myself, even if I hadn’t done that recently, and he probably feared that I might try it again.  
I know he was thinking about that as we walked back to the suite in silence with Lucia beside us.  We’d nearly reached the Strip when desperate thugs ambushed us from all sides.  
"Arcade!"  He turned around at Lucia’s yell and both of them started shooting before my pounding headache let me realize what was happening.  Two of the thugs fell, one shot and one liquified before I saw the other two charging towards us from the front.  
I shouted Arcade’s name without even considering any other cry and heard Lucia shoot the fifth thug behind me as Arcade started to turn. He noticed the thug to my right and took aim without noticing the one on our left.  I glimpsed the gleam of a straight razor and ducked past him.  
*       *       *
I only noticed as I pulled the trigger that Max wasn’t looking at the thug I thought he’d warned me about.  He ducked under my arm and I glimpsed an odd motion.  He swiped his left hand across the palm of his right and pulled something off of it before lunging upwards in what I initially mistook for an uppercut.  Max performed a palm strike that proved he’d actually had some form of combat training and instead of the typical momentary daze and ensuing fight, his palm had barely touched the man when I heard a burst of energy.  The thug dropped, dead and sizzling to the pavement.  Steam rose from his corpse and perfumed the air with the stink of burnt flesh.  
If I hadn’t been so disturbed by his apparently unarmed attack, I’d have been much more distracted by the face that it had left him standing so close to me that me that his crotch brushed my thigh.  Ducking beneath the arms holding my gun, he’d stepped over the leg I had forward and ended up straddling it to strike the man behind me.  To make matters worse, this left him off-balance and I couldn’t back up without moving my arms and possibly knocking him over.  
Lucia turned around and chuckled, apparently failing to notice the corpse.  "Well, come on, lovebirds, let’s get back to the suite!"  She stepped towards us and then she saw it and frowned at Max.  "How’d you do that?"
The prostitute struggled to balance while I stepped back and reholstered my plasma defender.  His struggle failed and I caught him before he fell over completely.  I was careful not to touch his right hand.  
Regaining his footing, Max showed Lucia his palm in the least threatening way he could manage.  "It’s basically a zap glove in the form of an implant," he explained somewhere between his facade of happiness and genuine fear.  "The device draws power from body heat and neuroelectric energy, discharging it as electricity through this wire.  Everything’s very insulated in my palm, but I have this to cover the wire so I don’t electrocute myself."  He held up a small ball of some kind of pink polymer that camouflaged perfectly with his skin and set about carefully coating the wire.  
I stared at him, dumbfounded.  "Max, that’s exceedingly dangerous."
"Not as dangerous as being unarmed in the Gomorrah."
"...fair point."
Lucia seemed to consider this for several minutes but said nothing.  She hadn’t brought it up even as we returned to the Lucky 38.  At the suite, we left the elevator and she didn’t, continuing to the Penthouse, presumably to ask Yes Man about the reactor.  
I followed Max, thinking he was headed for the couch, but he turned into the bathroom so I went to check on Cass.  Cass was gone and so was Veronica, I found the suite empty aside from us.  Someone had put the cushion back on the couch and dried it off.  I got my book from the kitchen and sat at the other end of the sofa, figuring that Max would return to the couch where he usually slept once he reemerged.  I’d only just opened it when I remembered Lily and what I’d been wanting to ask Max about her.  
*       *       *
I found Arcade reading by the couch nearly two hours later when I reemerged.  I couldn’t drink vodka right now, he’d been correct.  If I drank vodka I’d bleed more badly.  I seemed to have clotted again, but exhaustion gnawed at me worse than it usually did, and my bruised and torn insides felt dead inside me, though I knew they weren’t.  I needed rest and hopefully the courier wouldn’t wake me for sex.  Even if she tried, she might not succeed and it might not matter if she wanted to kill me for that.  I couldn’t bring myself to care that she had done this to me; she’d only done some of it.  
I eased myself onto the couch, tugging the blanket until it spread over top of me and lying down as if my body was filled with glass.  That wasn’t far from how it felt.  I could have fallen asleep right then except for a lingering anxiety just strong enough to keep me conscious.  Maybe I did fear death.  I didn’t fear pain, but I hated it, and for years I’d just wanted it to end, but I don’t think I wanted death, not really.  I just wanted not to hurt anymore.  Maybe that was why right now I felt so afraid to shut my eyes.  I didn’t know if I’d ever wake up again.  It didn’t matter where I slept because I never fell asleep easily and I was always tired; no one ever knew for sure that they’d wake in the morning, but with no idea why I’d always felt this ill, I always hoped and worried that this night, it would end.  
Paralyzed with this thought, I studied Arcade as he read.  "Were you really going to shoot me?"
He looked up, marked his page with a card and shut the book.  He must have been planning to stop reading and talk to me; I’d just preempted him.  My question made him pause.  I didn’t except him to answer directly, but after a long, somber moment, he admitted, "Yes."
I tried to process some reaction to that admission but couldn’t decide between relief and regret before he changed the subject.  
"You’re making Lily’s medicine, aren’t you?"
"I am."  I couldn’t read the title of his book from this angle and groggy as I was, I just studied his features.  He had lovely eyes.  I’d never really noticed that, even when I’d seen them up close.  
He asked a bunch of questions about the formula I used for Lily’s medicine and I answered softly, apparently leaving him puzzled.  "Why?"
Arcade folded his hands and rested his chin on his knuckles.  "Because she seems more disoriented lately.  But as far as I can tell, you’re making her medicine correctly."
"She’s taking less of it."  Arcade frowned at me and I clarified as best as I could remember from what Lily and the courier had told me, "She can’t remember her grandkids when she takes full or even half doses.  Lucia had me reduce the dosage even further."  I avoided the supermutant whenever possible because apparently I strongly resembled her grandson and she tended to hug me, which agonized my already aching insides.  The constant offers of cookies I refused to eat didn’t help.  
*       *       *
He’d reduced the dose even further?  I tried not to think of the other day when Lily had tried to attack me, but even so, that was incredibly dangerous.  "Max," I insisted, "even if it lets her remember her past, it might not be worth the damage she could do..."
Not for the first time, I wanted to shake him.  "But you don’t care?  How can you just sit by and... and...?!  You’re brilliant, maybe a better chemist than I am and certainly better with machines; you’ve figured out that this place has a deactivated reactor, you might have heard of a spy in the NCR, you uncovered a plot to massacre civilians, and you aren’t willing to do anything about any of that?!  You could at least make sure that Lily takes—"
"It’s not my decision."
"If you’re making her medicine, if Doc Henry hasn’t said anything, that makes you the closest thing she has to a doctor, it’s your obligation to—"
"Doc Henry was treating her?"
"Yes.  ...do you know him?"
"I’ve heard of him," Max admitted.  He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling because he had to turn his head too far to look at me. "Do you know him?"  
"Uh, no.  I...um..."  I trailed off, realizing that he didn’t seem to care.  Either he knew I was lying or he had never really been interested in the answer.  He looked distracted.  A thoughtful frown had creased his brow like storm clouds over the tundra of his bleak stare.  He had his hands folded on his chest and in the suit, with his shining hair still perfectly styled and his face lined and pale he struck an eerily funereal figure and I shuddered.  
I’d wondered since he’d first walked into the kitchen in that suit if he expected or even planned to die today and I hadn’t wanted to ask, but now I couldn’t risk staying silent in case it might be true.  "Max, ...why are you wearing that suit?"
He snorted.  "You saw my shorts."
"That’s not what I meant."  He kept staring forward, so I added, "You didn’t need the jacket if you were just after a change of clothes."  
"I like the jacket."  He sat up, hauling himself upright with his arms rather than using his abs.  He stood shakily and took off the jacket and cuff-links, folding the former and setting them neatly on a desk in the corner.  He hesitated, but took off his shirt as well, folding it just as carefully and setting it beside them.  I worried vaguely that he might strip, but that fear seemed irrelevant compared to the topic at hand.  I followed him as he walked to the furthest bed and sat down.  I sat on the bed beside his, partly so we could talk facing each other, but I’d been planning to lie down and read even if this conversation hadn’t happened.  Max rested his head on his hand and stared at me.  "Why do you care so much?"
"I’m just worried about you," I admitted without really answering the question, "I don’t want you to do anything stupid."  
Max scowled.  "Stupid is relative.  And easy to judge when you don’t know the full story."
"Enlighten me."
He glared and lay down facing the wall.  For a long moment he didn’t move so I took off my boots and lay down to read.  I thought he had fallen asleep, but he hadn’t.  
Max slid off the other bed and crawled into mine, slipping under the blankets and snuggling against me.  He curled his spine either in pain or to avoid the book I was reading as I rolled onto my side to face him.  I replaced the card I used as a bookmark and set the book on the table between the beds.  "Max?"
He had his eyes closed and I couldn’t tell if he was really crying or in so much pain that his eyes watered.  He spoke so softly that I barely heard the agony in his voice.  "I’m not going to do anything tonight."
Forever ambiguous, I had no idea if he meant he wasn’t trying to seduce me or if he meant he didn’t plan to kill himself tonight.  I didn’t miss that he specified tonight; whichever it was, tomorrow might be the day.  I didn’t ask which, I just kissed his forehead.  
A pair of hazel eyes opened and looked at me and he clarified what I’d been wondering, "I don’t want to die.  I haven’t been serious about it yet and today didn’t change that."  
"Don’t."  His eyes were still wet, but tears had stopped dripping across the bridge of his nose and off his right cheek.  He managed some semblance of determination that I hadn’t expected him to have.  "You understand a lot about me and I’m being honest with you.  I’ve been honest with you.  I’m trusting you with this, but I don’t want everyone to know and I’m only admitting it because I know you’d never let this go if I didn’t.  I am in pain almost constantly.  I’m sick all the time.  I’m resistant, allergic, or immune to everything I’ve tried to fix this, except vodka, which barely helps at all.  I don’t want to live like this.  I just..."  He sighed and continued without giving me time to put my horror and sympathy into words.  "I’m sorry for... I’m sorry I tried to use you to end this.  I won’t do that again.  I won’t end it tonight.  I want you to know that so you don’t worry right now."  
He snuggled against me even closer and I could feel how cold he was.  I rested my hand on his back and felt the skin like a marble statue beneath my palm.  I pulled the blankets up to his neck and hugged him in an effort to keep him warm.  Everything he’d said unnerved me.  I no longer worried he might just be lying; he had no reason to lie and couldn’t fake these symptoms.  It bothered me more that he’d said he had yet to really try.  The man was a brilliant biochemist; if he wanted to kill himself he could synthesize any of dozens of chemicals to end his life surely and quickly.  
"Max," I heard my voice break, "what is this?  What disease do you have?  I can ask the Followers—"
"The Followers don’t know.  I already asked them."
I frowned, mentally cursing whatever overworked, careless doctor he’d seen.  "Who did you ask?"
I lapsed into silence.  Usanagi was the best doctor I knew of, aside from Henry.  And Henry seemed unlikely to bother with even an ex-Enclave dying prostitute, assuming I could get Max up to him without the man dying on the way.  He was so cold even now, he must still be bleeding.  I looked down and noticed his eyes were closed.  
Max mumbled something that didn’t sound coherent.  
He needed a coagulant or a stimpak, probably both.  I got up to get them but tried to keep him talking.  "Max, I think you’re still bleeding, I’m getting you medicine to promote clotting."
Rousing himself with obvious effort, Max tried to sit up and settled for lifting his head.  "Not clotting.  Stimpak.  Cardio..."  He passed out completely.  I had a stimpak strapped to his leg in under a minute but obeyed his warning.  I didn’t expect the man to try and kill himself by internal bleeding; this had to be his disease, in which case his cry of "cardio" had probably been cardiomyopathy which meant a drug to promote blood clotting would likely induce a heart attack.  And if he had heart problems, that could explain the bleeding as well as clotting, so clotting agents could cause just as many problems as anticoagulants.  But Usanagi would have recognized a heart problem, even a heart defect, especially with that autodoc of hers.  This had to be something else, something she wouldn’t have expected or noticed.  If he’d tried to treat himself for this, medication or even the disease itself could have damaged his heart and caused the bleeding and the clotting.  And heart problems didn’t necessarily explain pain, which suggested something neurological and that was bad.  Nerve and brain problems were often incurable.  He might be right.  It really might be more merciful to kill him, but I wasn’t going to accept that just yet.  
I switched my bookmark to an encyclopedia of neurology to research more likely possibilities and lay beside him as I read so my body heat might keep him from getting too cold.  Max woke up sometime late that night.  He scooted a little closer to me and stretched his left arm across my chest.  I set the book down and propped myself up to look at him.  
Max stared up at me.  "Thanks."
I tilted my head.  "I didn’t really expect you to thank me, given what we’d just talked about."
"I’m not quite to the point of slitting my wrists after I take twenty milligrams of coumarin.  Tonight."  Now I felt as cold as he was.  That was his plan?  That much of an anticoagulant that powerful would probably bleed him out internally, let alone if he opened a major blood vessel.  
"You don’t have to."  Max scowled and I pleaded with him, "Give me a chance.  I am a doctor, maybe Usanagi missed something, maybe there’s something she didn’t think of.  You said yourself that you don’t want to die."
"I don’t," he admitted again and rolled onto his back, wincing as gravity shifted his insides.  He frowned for a long moment and then sighed.  "I won’t stop you, but I doubt it will work.  And I can’t guarantee that I won’t overcome my own fear of death in that time."
"...Have a little faith in me?"