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You can feel glass in your veins, your throat closing up and your body spasming, sending further waves of the worst pain you’ve ever felt through the entirety of your body.
Worst of all, you can’t see. You know your eyes are open, but there’s nothing there. Not even the blackness of nothing, but nothing.
Your skin feels like it’s sloughing off, or sheets of blisters are appearing almost instantaneously. You’ve suffered before, but you can’t remember if anything has ever reached what you experience in this exact moment.
Moreno’s voice floats around in the invisible space around you, your world now shrunk down to what you can immediately feel and it’s nothing but agony. You feel yourself getting closer to death, if from the pain if nothing else.
But just as the torment appears to reach a crescendo, a wave of catharsis pulls you out of the black hole and into the arms of the sweet embrace of death.
You open your eyes, unable to feel the rest of your body. If this is heaven, it looks very similar to the Hidden Valley Bunker design scheme. Very slowly, you move your head one way and the other, getting a better understanding of your surroundings.
While your sight is blurry, you can make out the medical room at the Brotherhood of Steel’s Hidden Valley Bunker. That’s a long way away from Hawthorne. You also make out a number of medical machines surrounding your bedside, all hooked up to you.
A blob moves into the room and heads over where you lay helpless on the medical bed. The blob comes into focus and you recognize it as Doctor Schuler, the medical officer at the bunker.
<span class="mu-b"> It’s good to see you again, Courier. Though we both wish it was under better conditions. </span>
You try to ask a question but a raspy moan escapes your lips instead.
<span class="mu-b">I would hold off on talking if I were you. Your throat isn’t fully healed yet, you’re still breathing out of a tube. Anyway, you’re probably wondering what you’re doing here. Unfortunately, I can’t fill in the details. You were rushed here from one of our Vertibirds, it turned around to pick you up after some sort of accident during the operation. I’m not sure what happened exactly but you had all the evidence of a nerve agent exposure. You’re lucky I took that extra course or you probably wouldn’t be here right now. Someone you were with stripped you of everything you were carrying and loaded you up on the Vertibird here.</span>
Wait.
You make a writing motion and twirl your fingers in an urgent manner.
Doctor Schuler rolls her eyes but goes and gets you a piece of paper on a battered clipboard.
You shakily write out, “Everything?” Before handing it back to her.
She gently shakes her head.
<span class="mu-b"> Yes. You were as naked as could be when we rushed you inside. It saved your life. If you had any of the contaminated material on you longer than you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. </span>
It’s gone. The Platinum Chip is gone.
