Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

A twelve-year-old girl wants to rip her brain out and put in a new one.

“Kyrah, focus.” The voice is short, clipped—unamused.

The girl sighs and spreads out the papers on the cheap pre-war linoleum of her mother’s kitchen table. Even 200 years later the grit of destruction is etched into the scratches. It’s etched into the collective American mind, too, even though America does not really exist anymore.

A young man wanders the American wastes, wearing tattered clothes—one of which is a tacky American flag T-shirt—and Kyrah is considering who the man is and how he got there.

“Kyrah.”

She’s violently pulled out of her mind.

“Sorry, Mom,” she says softly. “I’ll do better.”

There, she sits, at twelve years old, and struggles over the pages. Words swim in front of her eyes and she has to keep rereading, The camshaft controls the valve timing via the lobes. The crankshaft turns the engine over. By the time she’s onto the second sentence she’s forgotten the first.

“So, what’s the difference between the camshaft and the crankshaft?”

Kyrah huffs. “Mom, I don’t know! Why’s it even matter what it’s called?”

Her mother rolls her eyes, like eight balls in the pool games her dad likes to play, except like the fortune-telling eight ball gift she got, which reads out answers like Yes, she can never tell what he mother is thinking. Her slick hair is back in a perfect bun, and her slim, prim fingers—though calloused by hard work—fold together as the woman leans forward. “Are we going to have this talk again?”

“No, no, I got it,” Kyrah grumbles. “I need to know this, because it’s probably gonna be something to do with my future job, because the NCR needs functional tech, because whenever this place was founded we happened to become the industrial state. See? I got it.”

“I will not take sass, young lady.”

“Yes, Mom.”

She sighs. “Look, Kyrah, honey, you know I want the best for you. How about you try it again?”

Kyrah spends the rest of her time until dinner at that table, rereading the same two sentences. It’s six o’clock when Dad comes home; she groans and her forehead drops to the table, utterly exhausted.

“Hey, pumpkin.” The man’s face is kind, if worn. Like the page of a favorite book. Dust from the mines—black and brown and gritty—paints its streaks of desperation and poverty across his face and etches itself into the lines of his wrinkles.

He sets a hand on the linoleum table and brushes the papers aside.

“Boring homework again, huh?”

Kyrah nods and mumbles, “Can’t understand it.”

Her dad sits down next to her at the kitchen island and gently rubs her back. “Y’need help?”

“I have to do this on my own. I wanna show Momma I can get it.”

He frowns as he looks over the two lines she was struggling with. “You’ve been at this, what, an hour?”

“And a half.”

“Right,” he says slowly, and she can tell he’s pondering. It’s that look on his face. “Why don’t you walk me through tryin’ to get it.”

“Okay.” Now, Kyrah thinks. She traces her eyes over the words again: The camshaft controls the valve timing via the lobes. The crankshaft turns the engine over. Meaning eludes her. She does better at the hands-on work, where she can see how things go together. Then she reads it aloud. Still, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. She feels like she’s sleepwalking.

“Well, I reckon you been staring at it too long. But why don’t we talk about how come you couldn’t focus?”

Kyrah sighs at the final word. “Dad,” she whines.

“Kyrah,” he mimics playfully. “Seriously. Think about it, honey.”

“I just—I mean, I read it, and then I lose focus and I daydream, and then I have to reread it, and none of it sticks!”

“Why don’t we try breaking it down a word or three at a time?”

“But I did. I just can’t focus. I can look like I’m focusing, but I’m somewhere else entirely.”

Dad frowns a bit more, and this time, he’s quiet for a couple of minutes as Kyrah stews in her frustration. “You can’t control the daydreaming anymore?”

“I guess not,” she says miserably.

“Kyrah, let your father take a shower. Now clean up your homework and prep the dinner table.”

Both dad and daughter glance over at the mother, and they nod.

“It’s okay, we’ll work on it,” he encourages, and kisses the crown of her head. Then he and his dust and mended clothes are gone up the stairs.

“I’m gonna try to do this, Mom, I promise,” Kyrah says. She’s laying out three plates, three sets of cutlery, and three empty glasses. It’s all cheaply bought or from scrap.

“In the Hub you must earn a seat at the table. Otherwise, the brahmin barons would be happy to set this state aside entirely. So you will do this. The work force depends on it.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And don’t forget, tomorrow you have that test, no?”

“I do,” Kyrah confirms. “I’m gonna be with Katie and Will on it. We’ll get our engine running, I’m sure. And Will’s good at welding, so he’ll get us through that part, too.”

“Good.” Even the affirmation is clipped. Kyrah imagines her mouth as a pair of scissors. “The Hub isn’t what it used to be, Kyrah. I know you think you know that, but you don’t. But you’ll see. Work hard, get the rest of your generation to work hard, and we’ll be back to our rightful position as a powerful state.”

“How come the NCR doesn’t just give us, I dunno, a loan or something? Or puts more regulation on the brahmin barons? It’s them who took our power, anyway.”

A ghost of a smile crosses her mother’s lips. “So you have been listening to my lectures.”

Actually (and luckily), her mother has a tendency to repeat herself. In between Kyrah’s daydreams and thoughts she’s able to gather enough information to put it together. Still, she says, “Of course, Mom.”

“Well, honey, the brahmin barons back the NCR—namely our old president. Hopefully this new William Alistair will get his head on straight. He needs manufacturing, you know. He needs us. We just need to prove that he needs to shift the economy back to the Hub.”

“Right,” Kyrah says, and she stares at the stack of papers—about engines and metal alloys and bolt thread pitches—now set aside on a free counter, and she knows this depends on her. The work force.

Twelve years old means nothing in the wasteland.

“Kyrah!”

Two cheerful voices sing in unison, and Kyrah smiles at the sight of her friends. She walks easily into the shop and the familiar crunch of soot under her work boots lets her know she’s home. She bumps shoulders with Katie and Will is going over their paper.

“Well, today should be the last day,” he says after a moment. “The engine should run, welding might take an hour, and the written test is only a hundred questions.” He looks up, grinning from ear to ear. “We pass this and just think of the caps that’ll come in!”

Katie snorts and grabs the paper, creasing it as she does so. “Yeah only a hundred questions. And we have to make a super fucked-up engine run. No biggie, right? A job is just around the corner!”

“I’m gonna find a job out of state and send the caps back here,” Kyrah says, puffs out her chest. “A full salary for us in them rich states is, like, one cap out of their pocket to them.”

Will chuckles this time. “Unless you forget cam and crank again.”

She sticks her tongue out. “At least I know how to ream valves, Will.”

“That was one time!”

All three children are giggling as they gear up for the day; safety glasses (admittedly too cheap to even stop a BB), pencils, and notes are all carried out to the engine room, where a couple dozen groups all lean and fret over their machinery.

Kryah nods in one of the group’s direction. “Those kids will see. Can’t steal our parts if we graduate, and they don’t.”

“They’ll get what’s comin’ to ‘em,” Katie agrees. “Stupid Logan.”

Logan. A kid with a weasily face and a ratty personality. Thinks he has the right to other’s parts because he’s just so much better. But Kyrah’s going to prove herself, remember? She said so.

Actually, she forgets about him as she works; really, she forgets about mostly everything, and lets her world narrow down to the task ahead of her, so absorbed in it she hardly remembers doing it. The group easily passes the engine test—it starts up with none of the issues it had when they received it—and then they are onto the welding room of the warehouse-turned-tradeschool.

Unsurprisingly, Will bends over the workpiece and does his portion. Katie is up next. Kyrah last. At first, she’s watching the way the sparks fly, somehow bright enough to show through the heavy visual protection of her visor, yet too weak to last. It is quite the paradox, she thinks, that something so bright and strong and true just fizzles out before it even hits the ground.

And that’s only the sparks.

What is even more fascinating is the way that Will knows the metal, like it is a friend of his, or a comfortable old shoe. He fits right in with it; knows it inside and out; he knows the way it will warp and how to account for it, is ready to pull the blowtorch away just at the right moment to examine his progress. Kyrah wonders if she’ll ever know another thing the way he does. She knows engines in the way of what parts go where, she knows manufacturing in the way of schematics and running machinery, but she’s sure there’s a certain... spark, that is only visible when you block out the other distractions. To see the soul beneath the work.

Sometimes Kyrah is selfish enough to think that’s what she can do—see the soul. Not of people, but of reality’s fabric. She can remember a handful of times, when she was a small, that she felt she could see the hand her mother raised before it hit her.

Then again, she might have dreamt it up; she’s not sure. So she keeps it to herself. And her daydreams? Well, now—frivolous to dwell on the ones that seem to vaguely align with what happens later.

Still, she likes to let her mind wander, sometimes. Follow the tracks until her head hurts—it’s when a daydream makes her head hurt that she knows she’s come across some probability of the future. Her mother says she simply dreams up so many possibilities that sometimes they come—

CRACK. FIZZLE. POP. BURNING FLESH.

Kyrah reels back from the work table, hand at her head, eyes tightly shut as searing pain races through her skull. It's white-hot, blinding, splitting the whole of her in half. She sees burning flesh but doesn’t smell it. She gasps for air and whips her head around, to see Logan coming up behind Will. His hands look faint as he grabs Will’s blowtorch, which is off, but the lack of flame somehow feels faint, too.

She shrieks, because Logan is in Will’s blind spot, and what if Will reacts and accidentally hurts the kid? Annoying or not, she doesn’t want him to get hurt. She only wants to be better than him at their work.

Kyrah reaches out to shove Logan aside, and then she’s blinking away faint movement, all too much, she can’t figure out what’s going on—because suddenly Logan and Will are screaming, a faint-looking Katie is halfway across the room to fetch an adult, but Kyrah can physically feel the girl’s hand on her bicep.

And just like that, after Kyrah is shoved out of range of the blowtorch, the overwhelming whatever that was is gone and she’s staring at what she’s done; empty, horrified.

Logan is clutching his hand, burned and charred—there’s a line of hot, ruined flesh that matches the seam which should've been on Will’s project—and Will is howling as he cradles his arm—mangled from the elbow down; somehow, the blowtorch ended up on the floor and there’s a burn mark down his torso. Will is seething, chest heaving, curling in on himself, eyes half-open and baleful.

“Kyrah, what the fuck was that?!”

Her breathing picks up in her tiny chest as Katie brings over a supervisor and medical aid; Logan backs off from his position behind Will, arm to his chest, tears on his face.

“He—you—Logan was taking your torch,” she stammers.

Logan scoffs. “I hadn’t even touched him!” The yet is unspoken, and while not unnoticed, it is dismissed by everyone except for Kyrah—she knows this because they’re all still angry at her.

“You just snapped,” Katie says, voice flat as the concrete floor, eyeing her like a rabid dog. A thing you feel bad for, sure, but back away from nonetheless.

Kyrah swallows past the lump in her throat. “I just wanted to help.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Will and Katie say in unison (the former screaming hoarsely and the latter still in shock), and then Kyrah is taking three steps back before she turns on her heel and runs out of the building.

She runs down the block, avoiding stares as she goes. Layoffs have meant a lot of people sit on the street, staring—either waiting for someone to rob or to lay with. Two rights, a left, then about a half mile straight away. She’s almost home.

Too bad she sees someone grabbing her by the left bicep a handful of seconds before it happens, and she’s too disoriented to try to figure out why she saw it coming.

“Got you,” a man’s voice says, and she squirms in his grip to find that it’s an NCR officer. “You that kid behind the Manufacturing Tech accident just now?”

Kyrah freezes, wide-eyed as she stares at him. He must be thrice her size.

“Thought so.” And then he’s dragging her to an enforcement station; a loose set of spindly arms and pale skin and scared blue eyes are thrown into a cell. He leans down and levels himself with her. Why can’t she go home on her own? Where else could she run to? “Look kid, I get it, you’re scared. But you gotta stay here until a report is filed and your folks come get you. You’ll be fine. Color on the walls or something.”

If he’s attempting to be gentle, Kyrah thinks, all he’s done is scare her more. Because it is her mother who will get her; her dad is deep in the mines and the dust and fumes and damp are slowly killing him, and now that she’s not going to graduate from this school, she’ll be consigned there too—and mother is going to be mad, she will rant and rave and probably want nothing to do with a daughter that can’t even earn a seat at the dinner table.

“Shit, the kid’s going apeshit,” a voice says, but it’s far away. She’s staring at something else, something that isn’t the cell she’s stuck in, but what it is she’s got no idea. Her chest is too small and she’s in need of too much air. Her mouth is dry and she thinks she might be gasping. She can't say what her limbs are doing. Her face is wet.

Just like that, a set of hands are on her shoulders and a feminine voice is curt as it says, “Kyrah, calm down. Now. You’ve been like this the last 15 minutes. You’re freaking out the officers.”

“Sor—sorry, Mom,” Kyrah says, breathless, and her small body is hoisted up in her mother’s arms.

“There, there. Calm down.” Curtness attempts to sound gentle.

Kyrah slowly settles down enough to glance at the two men in the small enforcement center. She vaguely remembers a lecture from her mother that mentioned city plans to triple the size of this place. They aren’t nervous as they stare at her; just put-off.

“She’s not eighteen, so she’s free to go home with you,” one informs—it’s not the man who dragged her off. “The initial report was already telegrammed here.”

“Repercussions?” Her mother prompts. The child rests her forehead on her mother’s shoulder.

“Undetermined.” The second officer is talking now. “Likely expulsion but not any legal ramification. It’s already determined to have been an accident.” He pauses. “You sure do seem unstable, kid.”

It’s a good five or so seconds before Kyrah realizes he’s speaking to her, and then another two to formulate words. “Yeah, I—I guess I am.”

“Thank you, officers,” her mother says and carries Kyrah out of the building, then ungraciously slumps her daughter down onto the ground. Her knees vibrate a bit from the impact. Kyrah stares down at her feet and traces the curves of the cracked concrete. “Come. Now.”

She does.

Kyrah is sent to her room, where she curls up in her bed and bawls her eyes out for hours. Soon enough—and yet it’s taken forever—it is six o’clock and she hears her dad come home. Part of her desperately wants him to come upstairs, hold her, tell her, it’s okay, pumpkin, we’ll fix this, but the other part of her refuses to be seen. She’s failed her parents, her friends, and herself.

Downstairs:

“Where’s Kyrah?” It’s her dad’s voice, followed by a thump. Probably putting his belongings down.

“In her room.” Some shuffling. “She had an incident at tech today.”

There’s a pause. “Was that—that was Kyrah? Shit.”

“Mhm. Freaked out and severely injured two classmates, in addition to ruining the project in the mayhem.”

“And she’s...”

“Not going to pass,” her mother says, curt as always. Kyrah cries even harder; her mother’s not sad for her. “She will be working the mines, or the streets. I suppose it will be her pick.”

“She could work with you. You know, management.”

Mother tuts. “Kyrah isn’t capable of paying enough attention at desk work, let alone enough attention to manage others’ desk work.”

“Marlene, listen yourself,” her dad snaps.

This is one of the rare times he sounds angry. Kyrah whimpers and curls in on herself, buried under the covers save for her ears.

“I get that you’re pragmatic,” he goes on. “I get that. It’s what has kept us off the streets, Christ, it’s kept her out of stranger’s homes. But let that go for one goddamn minute and worry about her. Not the family name.”

“I am worried about her, that is why she’s going to be harshly punished for this!”

“We both know that she’s had issues since she was little. She’s, in all honesty, not stable. People make mistakes.”

“She severely injured two students!”

“One of which deserved it!” He hollers. “Don’t pretend that Logan bastard didn’t deserve it after bullying Kyrah for so long. Besides, at least she didn’t kill anyone. Worse things have gone down in places ran by better people.”

Better people?

Even Dad knows she isn’t enough.

Kyrah cries and cries; she isn’t invited back downstairs for dinner. Neither of her parents come to visit. After some inordinate amount of time, she glances at the clock on her dresser: 9:30. Bedtime. When Dad would come upstairs and tuck her in and tell her he loves her and remind her that mother loves her, too. But no one shows.

She screeches at the thought and hurls her pillow across the room, then shakily gets out of her bed and stamps it for all it’s worth. One of the old seams split when she angrily tears at it and sinks her teeth into the thin fabric.

Now she’s hurling herself back into bed, little fists flying as tears and snot race down her face, seeing which can beat the other in the effort of dripping down and staining her sheets. Another loud sob.

This goes on for another half hour.

Eventually, her dad tip-toes his way in and gently rubs circles on Kyrah’s back, and she stares numbly at her twisted and wet bedding.

“Hey pumpkin,” he croons gently. “Mom wanted you to calm down on her own. But, well, I know you’re feeling really bad about what happened.”

Kyrah sniffles. She glares at him. “You’re only here ‘cause I’m keeping you up.”

“Wrong, kiddo. Mom put some ear plugs in, she’s out now. You know how early she has to get up. But I figured I’d wait till she was out before coming to see you.”

Kyrah, slow as molasses, settles down and eventually allows herself to be pulled into his arms. She buries her face into his warm shoulder; he takes a clean rag and wipes up her face. They sit like this for several minutes.

“I can’t do nothin’ right.”

“Oh, sweetie. That’s not true.” Dad sighs heavily, and adjusts her in his arms. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her in his lap. Kyrah’s soothed by the gentle jostling and her eyes fall half-shut. “Were you daydreaming when it happened?”

“I don’t—well—I don’t know. It’s like—I was daydreaming, I think. And then suddenly it was like a daynightmare and I saw Logah trying to steal Will’s blowtorch, which would’ve hit me in the process, ‘cause Will would’ve wrestled him for it.” Kyrah pauses, considering.

How could she come up with the events that well? It’s not like she had enough time to run through several possibilities and one happened to come true. No, she saw exactly what went down, and it did–so why is she even bothering calling it a daydream?

She says as much to her dad, then adds, “It was like... Everyone I saw was super vivid, but faded out a bit. Kinda like my old drawings. And then it became vivid and was actually happening, only I was in the mix and trying to fix it. I only wanted to help.”

“Kyrah, sweetie.” His voice is urgent, and it freaks her out; she clings tightly to his shirt. “Don’t tell anybody about this, okay? Those daydreams?”

“What?”

“Just listen to your father. I’m going to talk to Mom about this tomorrow.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, pumpkin, you’re not in trouble. Not with me, at least.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and she’s forced to chew on those words as he tucks her in. Dad grabs blankets that aren’t tear-soaked and covers her in them; he grabs the extra pillow and puts that under her head. Lastly, a kiss to her hairline.

“I love you, Kyrah.”

“Love you too, Daddy.”

Kyrah rolls over in bed, burrows in to get comfortable, and he switches her bedroom lamp off. She’s about to fall asleep; exhaustion has pooled in her mind and it drags down her eyelids.

Dad’s halfway through the door when he pauses and turns his head to her. “We’ll figure this out. Promise. Just don’t spread this, especially not to strangers.” His smile is gentle.

“Got it,” she says, but she doesn’t. What harm could possibly come from sharing her daydreams? He’s about to step out when she blurts, “Can I have my song?”

“‘Course, kiddo.” And he comes back across the room, like it’s not an inconvenience to be made to walk back and forth, and kneels down by her bed.

It settles her. Kyrah burrows down into her bedding, face squished into her pillow. Dad looks at her tenderly, like she can do no wrong, and is too cute to bear. “Better?” he whispers.

“Better.”

Kyrah receives one more kiss to the forehead, and then he’s out for real, and her body is achy and she wishes she were a better kid, but Daddy loves her.

There are three NCR officials at her breakfast table.

Kyrah’s in PJs; her eyes are wearing a blank look. Mother and Dad are sitting at the table with them. Mother seems almost... excited, and there are bags under his eyes.

“Come sit with us, honey,” her mother says, and pulls out a chair. Kyrah sits.

The three newcomers in her home all have a gruff look about them. The two men introduce themselves as Boskov and Chase. The woman is Irene. All of them are wearing buzz cuts. They are in NCR attire, she knows only because the clothes are prim, clean, uniform, and slate gray. But they aren’t military fatigues nor officer uniforms. She’s too caught up in working out who these people are to remember to introduce herself as well.

“They have a program up in Shady Sands for kids like you,” her mother goes on, after an uncomfortable silence.

Boskov adds, “We’ve heard this isn’t the first incident where your daydreams have had real-world consequences. Miss Wright here says this is beyond her capability.”

“Kids like me?” Kyrah asks, brows pinched.

Her dad’s eyes are tired and worried. “Yeah, pumpkin. Kids like you.” Kyrah gets the sense that everyone here knows something she doesn’t. They are dancing around the subject.

What is the subject?

“They’ll be taking you there today. You’ll get to ride in a car, doesn’t that sound fun?” Mother encourages. “They’ll find out how to deal with this and you’ll come right back to us.”

“Oh... kay,” Kyrah says slowly, and her dad gets up and says something about packing, and he ushers her upstairs. Panic is squeezing her chest and the room is spinning. She jumps when he shuts her bedroom door. “What’s going on?”

Dad crouches down on her level and sets two large hands on her slight shoulders. “Listen to me a minute. I spoke with your mother about this. Both of us think you have the Sight.”

“Like them kids from the Cathedral?”

“Exactly, yes. And while I don’t doubt the NCR has the means to take care of you, there’s no way they'll spend all those resources without their own gain.”

Kyrah sniffles, trying to blink the tears from her eyes. He sounds urgent, like something important is happening, but she doesn’t really know what’s going on at all.

“It’s okay. I promise, it’s okay. They won’t hurt you. Just be careful. And...” He sighs. “Mom thinks it’s best if you don’t know about this, as if that somehow lessens the responsibility, but you need someone to be straight with you. So. This is the hand you’ve been dealt.”

The sniffling has turned into hiccups as she wipes her eyes. She leans around Dad’s body to see her bedroom door. She feels that what lies beyond it will be misty and uncertain, instead of the stairwell leading downstairs. Because those NCR officials mean a change, and normally Dad likes it when there's change, because he says you need a breath of fresh air now and again to stay right. But he's not excited this time. She asks, “Am I gonna see you and Mom again?”

“I... am not sure,” he admits.

“Would you come get me if they did hurt me?” The question is a whine.

Dad draws her straight to his chest and kisses the top of her head. “Of course I will, pumpkin. I don’t mean to scare you. Just to arm you. They’ll make sure you get three squares a day, somewhere to sleep. But it’s best to practice a healthy skepticism when it comes to the government.”

“Got it. I will.”

“Good. If you need me or Mom, come right to this address, we’ll take care of you. No matter the time.”

“Got it,” she says again, and she still doesn’t. No matter the time. Surely fixing her mental issues won’t take an age?

Dad’s already moving to throwing her week’s worth of clothes, three books, and stuffed bear into a duffel bag—all of her belongings, right there. She wonders if her parents’ inheritance would consist of more or less the same: scraps. Wordlessly, the bag is handed to her, and she clutches it to her chest as she’s guided back down the stairs; her legs are as unsteady as a newborn Radstag.

“Alright, Miss Wright, let’s get you going,” Irene says. Boskov is at the car: an actual, running, painted car and Chase is holding the door open. All of them have tight smiles on.

Kyrah decides she doesn’t like it. She’s got to give them an actual reason to give an actual smile.

She climbs into the backseat. It's plush beneath her, and the vinyl creaks. It's warm where the sun hits it. She runs her hand over it, wondering how it's without rip or stain or patch. Irene sits next to her and takes her duffel—no question asked—and sets it on the floor. Carpeted floor. Boskov is driving, Chase has called shotgun. They trundle down the streets at about 30 miles an hour, according to the analogue gauge on the dash, and Kyrah shifts so her face is glued to the window.

Dad has his arm around mother’s face, and they are waving goodbye. Kyrah wonders if this is what it was like for the families of soldiers; waving and waving and waving until the horizon eats up the vision of their loved ones.

She is around the bend of the first block away from home when she realizes instead of waving back, she cried.

Kryah then sits back from the window, face no longer pressed to it, and instead watches from the corner of her eye as the streets roll by; homeless and miner and old and young alike stop their daily goings to watch. She presses a hand to her face, finding the wetness there, and wipes it away. The Hub is meant to manufacture cars, military vehicles, raw material—not use them. Everything is shipped out for meager caps; that is the way that it goes. No use in crying.

This makes her wonder if Shady Sands might be any richer. Perhaps most girls there don’t work the streets. Maybe they get new dresses from the store on a regular basis. Maybe she’ll get to buy one—silken and soft and some pretty pastel made of dye to spare.

The drive takes a handful of hours. Halfway through, Boskov and Chase switch seats. Then they are on their way again: slow-moving scenery—buildings risen from pre-war rubble, people, Brahmin fields—the gentle roll of the tires, and small pebbles hitting off the sides of the vehicle. Kyrah's ass hurts on the seat. It had been so comfortable when she first sat down. She starts to cry again, silently, face still to the window so her captors won't see.

Soon, the car comes to a stop again, and this time everybody gets back out. Irene has Kyrah’s bag; she wordlessly slides across the seat and climbs out behind the woman. Kyrah’s legs are shaky, and the first few steps feel strange, after spending so many hours moving without having to move her body at all. It's like the concrete and dirt beneath her feet is bending and twisting, but she gets her footing soon enough.

The building is boring and short, in comparison to the many rebuilt skyscrapers they'd passed as they headed into the city. It is made of plain concrete, two stories high, and the most interesting feature is the wooden frames around the uniformly placed windows. Windows, which, are inset with thin metal bars. It’s kind of similar to an insane asylum she heard that Ceaser’s Legion built (of course, this is a rumor from Katie with the ‘proof’ of a grainy image, so she can’t be sure).

Boskov and co. show ID badges to someone at a front desk, and then they are all let inside. There are a few offices leading down one corridor, two desk ladies, and a handful of waiting chairs. Everything is sterile: gray chairs, undecorated desks, and there’s a few people milling about in plain shirts and slacks. The walls are slate gray and the ceilings are white, and textured.

Irene smiles kindly, but it’s like she took the face of kindness, and had to stretch it just a little too thin over a scowl. Kyrah feels unwell. “You’ll be staying here for the time being. We’re going to work tirelessly to help you cope with this.” Then she’s leading Kyrah up a stairwell and the second floor is nothing like the first. The carpeting is blue. There are several dark brown doors lining the hallway. Artwork is hung up between each door, and the trim is a baby blue. Irene gestures to the second door on the left; an overhead light is buzzing, and her name tag is on the door. She tries to peer further down to look at the other tags, but Irene opens her door before she can see.

It’s a bedroom.

It’s a nice bedroom, actually. A queen-size mattress, a nightstand and dresser, plus a desk, and some stationary. Irene sets her duffel bag on a footlocker at the base of the bed.

Kyrah tests the light switch, and a ceiling fan light comes on. She tries the switch next to it, and the fan comes to life. She turns both off, and then on again. She thinks maybe this is a place where the power is always on.

“This is all... mine.” She tests the word mine on her tongue. It tastes weird.

“Right,” Irene confirms. “Downstairs, on the right wing of the building, is the cafeteria and a few other facilities. You’re free to enter them whenever, just make sure there’s no postage that the room is an exception. Oh, and that door over to the left—yes, that one—that’s where the bathroom is.”

“But I didn’t work for this,” Kyrah says, utterly bewildered. “My mom taught me to, y’know, work for stuff."

“Well, Miss Kyrah, sometimes people like to give you things. This is just one of those things. Not to mention, the Sight is very rare and from some of the incident reports my team and I have read, very debilitating for some. We’re here to help.”

Debilitating for some. “Kids like me.”

Irene pauses a moment, brow furrowed. Then, “Right.”

Kyrah gets the sense that Irene doesn’t actually know which part of the sentence she was referring to, but she elects not to correct it, so this doesn’t wind up any more awkward. The girl walks a lap around her room—twice as big as her old—and traces a hand over the empty dresser. Her meager personal belongings will not fill this place.

“What exactly are you gonna do?”

“Oh, the usual,” Irene says, as if this is a usual event. But Kyrah knows it isn’t. The last time there was a facility housing kids with the Sight was decades ago and it was a cult. “We’ll run some diagnostics here and there, work with you on discerning what’s normal sight and what’s the Sight.”

Kryah makes a hum of acknowledgement and sets to unpacking her things upon Irene’s request. The woman leaves the room in uniform steps, closes the door shut, and after the soft click in the doorjam sounds, Kyrah sets to work. Three books on a vast shelf; a handful of various articles of clothing—stitched and mended with scrap fabric—go in a gaping dresser, and her one toy is laid upon the pillow of her bed.

She lies down.

Above her head, a beige ceiling; it matches the walls and the itchy-looking carpeting. The walls and ceiling are textured, as if to dampen sound, but it's in a more decorative pattern than the ground floor. Her eyes trace over the curves and the grit.

It’s a nice feeling to be lost in something outside of herself.

The first full day in her new home consists of everything completely unordinary being labeled as perfectly normal.

It starts with being escorted to the first level of the building, where one of the desk ladies makes some notes of everyone present (Kyrah, Boskov, and a head doctor named Calvin). Then she’s ushered into the left wing of the building, and it occurs to her that this place might be far more sprawling than she originally thought.

She’s proven correct when, after being poked and prodded and examined as if a horse in need of it’s health checked, they bypass some additional offices and head to an elevator.

Elevators: rare in the Hub these days. Only big manufacturing buildings, those that were built before the economy shifted away from her state, or those that the occasional rich Hub resident owned could afford to run these things. They eat up space, time, energy: resources that are ripped apart by dozens of hungry mouths.

And yet, here she is, the elevator treated as if it’s just another installment in a building they erected on a whim for the sake of one girl and perhaps a handful of other patients. Boskov clicks a button to head to some sublevels; Calvin impatiently taps his foot against the floor; Kyrah watches them and then catches herself running a hand along the wall of the little space—as if to ensure that she’s in it at all. Mentally, she's trying to go far, far away.

More ushering. Kyrah decides she’s tired of being herded around like some unstable little kid, but she keeps it to herself since she’s yet to prove otherwise. They pass two more small labs and then enter a large room.

Boskov is gruff. Kyrah misses her dad; the two men look remarkably alike and it makes her ache for his gentleness.

“Alright, Wright, here’s the deal: you’re gonna sit in that chair there, let ‘em plug you in, and then go from there. After that we’ll just have you stand in here and we’ll see how you handle a few things. Nothing bad.”

I’m a lab rat. “Sure, easy,” Kyrah says, and sits down, getting comfortable. “Why exactly am I bein’ tested on?”

Boskov is strapping her down. Like a feral dog to a veterinary table. “Not tests per se. More like... a diagnosis, if you will. To confirm.”

“Right… What if—what if I don’t really have it at all?”

Boskov stares at her steadily. He doesn’t say a word.

After a long moment, staring into his emotionless hazel eyes, he gives her a curt nod, and exits the sterile room. It's only her, her chair, a small camera and speaker in the juncture between a corner and the ceiling, and a mirror lining the entirety of one wall. There’s a handful of probes on her temple and the base of her skull, as well as over her pulse points. Two sets of cuffs for two ankles and wrists. There’s an IV drip in her arm. Cold dread settles into her stomach. She has to take deep breaths to keep still and control the beating of her heart, just like how Dad always instructed. Nothing about this feels right. Wrongness is in the air she breathes—it’s choking her and nothing’s even started yet.

Then comes the pain.

It’s short and sharp and right behind her eyes. The machine chair is whirring. She gasps for air, and thrashes about, trying desperately to reach her wrists up to take off this stupid thing. Whatever this thing is.

Kyrah blinks rapidly. Blinding light seeps into her vision and she tries to look away, but no matter where she gazes, it’s there and it’s pouring right into her brain and flooding it and pushing it out until all there being is all there is, right now, in the moment, and she thinks she might go blind—

Now it’s receding and dots swim in her vision, and those dots are slowly forming people and things, but she has no idea how or why, and the concept of where and when she is currently is fading, replaced instead with something that has yet to be, but the Sight is supposed to be natural—

A rainbow is present in a large, sweeping arch over what she’s looking at; vague faces present themselves and the most vivid is a girl with red hair, but then others sweep her aside, and then she’s looking in a black pool and a vague image of her face peers back, and her chest is burning and so are her eyes and her cheeks are wet and she’s coming back to the now instead of the will be—

She's in her backyard. She is eight years old. She's squealing, as her daddy comes out to play. He's still in his work coveralls. He smothers a cough in his fist, and it turns into rasping laughter as she launches herself at his chest. He squeezes her tight and sweeps her up—and her hair whips in the wind, chapped lips stinging in the cool fall air, pudgy little fingers grasping at his dirty hair and beard. His eyes are wrinkled around the corners, the lines around his mouth trained from smiling, and the way he looks at her is the best thing she has ever seen. This is her favorite memory to come back to, and if she tries hard enough, she can feel like she's still there. Demanding, "Daddy, Daddy, I want to fly!"

He tosses her. She screams in delight, body weightless for the briefest of moments, until she is caught in his arms. She wants to fly again.

It’s over.

Kyrah’s head falls forwards and she’s sweating, crying, blinking this out of her vision. Why on earth did her mother consign her to this? Doesn’t she know how bad this hurts? How terrifying it is? And why don’t these stupid doctors fix it? Aren’t they supposed to help her live with the Sight instead of make it kill her? How can they even induce whatever–that–was?

“Just breathe.”

The voice is Calvin’s, over the speaker. Kyrah does her best; the burning in her chest subsides, and the cuffs auto-release, allowing her to wipe up her sullied face.

“Take it easy,” he goes on. “The second half of diagnostics won’t be as hard.”

Kryah’s throat is dry, but she speaks anyway. “How—what—was that the Sight?”

There’s a pause. It’s a heavy one and Kyrah feels as though it’s swimming in the air, as if whatever he’s going to say is doing its best to avoid treading the wrong depth. Then, “In very simple terms, we’ve had data collected surrounding the Cathedral and a few other cases of psykers. Several cases have found that certain chemical compounds can induce a vision. Very important that we confirm this.” He sounds almost dismissive now: don’t think too hard. “Anyway, it just helps us decipher how your Sight manifests itself.”

“And now...?”

“Just sit still and respond how you see fit.”

There’s a click, and that must mean the speaker is off and the line has been disconnected. Kryah has no idea what to do with this information. Up until now, she’s been used to having blueprints; schematics, diagnostic charts, if this then that, and so on. Now she’s supposed to know what to do without any guidance?

So she waits. Kyrah isn’t sure if she’s meant to be upright or not, but she absolutely refuses to sit back in that chair, so standing it is. For several minutes she waits and there’s a faint tingling in the soles of her feet.

Then she sees the faded image of a man clad in NCR military fatigues walk through the door, baton in hand, and she shrieks and presses herself to the corner of the room. A handful of seconds later, he actually walks through. She freezes. He flicks his wrist to the baton will extend, seems to consider something, and he shrugs.

“Easy kid, I’m not actually going to hit you.”

“Then what’s with the weapons?!” Kyrah’s small chest is heaving and her pupils are dilated.

“Classified.”

“Oh my sweet Jesus,” she says, mimicking her mother’s exasperation, and then adds, “Can I be done with this?”

“Yeah. Your handlers will collect you in a minute.” And just like that, he’s out of the room, shutting the door with care.

Then comes Boskov and Calvin; the first of the two stands idly by and walks with them as they go to a lab, meanwhile Calvin is talking her ear off about how utterly fascinating this is and that he has so much to work with.

Soon she’s allowed to sit again—in a normal chair, in a normal office—where Boskov stands guard at the doorway and Calvin is logging information in a terminal as he goes on.

“Sorry to scare you by the way,” he says, hits enter, and types furiously. The screen scrolls by too fast for Kyrah to see much, not to mention it’s angled away from her and she can merely see the glow of information. “But some cases of psykers have had to do with rad storm control, others with the ability to sense danger. The ladder half seemed more applicable to you considering your incident report. Just had to be sure.”

In all complete honesty, this sounds like wacky pseudo-science to Kyrah, but she keeps her mouth shut, because she at least proved him correct. And that will probably be in her best interest. At least, judging by Boskov's silence, at the notion she isn't a psyker.

“Well,” Calvin says, hits a shut-down key, and turns in his chair to face Kyrah again. He clasps his hands together. “We’ll be running more tests down the line, but for now you can relax. We’ll figure this out soon enough! And you’ll have a way to cope.”

Kyrah’s ruminating how much of an affliction this sounds like as Boskov escorts her back to the second above-ground level of the building and to her room.

From what little public information and folklore there is, she knows that the Sight has been always revered as a gift. Be it from Atom, or a mutated ability, or something else entirely has always been up for debate—but the underlying agreement is that it’s an ability rare, profound, and utterly useful. So why would she need a coping mechanism?

Unless, of course, the issue isn’t the Sight and instead it’s her.

Six years pass, since then.

Once—sometimes twice—every week, Kyrah is subject to being a lab rat. She’s yet to learn how to use her Sight, because save for that first diagnostic test, they seem hesitant to make her feel as if she’s under threat. Then again, they promise her that once she is of legal age she’s perfectly allowed to enroll in a combat program—Calvin says it’s an extension of the NCR military specified to help train people like her should they want to serve. She figures she can start as a grunt, and work her way up, maybe become a mechanic or engineer or somesuch. Then she can use her authority for the better. Pull the people of the Hub back out of poverty. She’s lived in relative comfort for so long—her clothes are new, she never misses a meal, the electricity is always on, and she can see the doctor whenever she wants. She wants that for her hometown, too.

Therefore, Kyrah works tirelessly to do well at those tests—cooperate, keep complaints to a minimum, respond to stimuli as best she can, ignore the pain that chair brings, and so on. If she strives for success, she’ll make it. Her mother’s managerial position is enough to prove it (Kyrah elects against considering if the woman still has that job or not; they’ve not been in contact for a very long time). She’s only four months from turning eighteen, after all.

Other things have gone down, too. A POW from Ceaser’s Legion, Silvia Wormwood, has been confirmed a psyker, and she lives in the room next to Kyrah’s. Across the hall is Jackson Lee, who has the most vivid visions of all three, but he rarely gets them. Silvia is ninteen and Jackson is seventeen. They both will enlist, and Sylvia is waiting until Kyrah is eighteen to do so. There was one child who was enrolled before her—some kid named Oliver, but she never saw him, and only a month after moving in the name tag was removed from his door. No staff member will talk about him.

Kyrah is currently staring at her bedroom ceiling, a valve stem in hand as she turns it over and over. Her current free time project is engineering a generator. Busywork, she knows it, but it’s fun. Her eyes slip shut as she traces a finger over the metal. The stem is heat warped and therefore unusable. Her brow knits in slight concentration as she thinks. Imagine if the stem was a tree sprout, bent slightly for some reason or another—perhaps the intent of being a landmark years down the line, why not?—and it will grow and grow and bloom despite the fault in the trunk.

“Kryah, quit doing nothing!” Silvia sing-songs, popping her head in the doorframe.

Kryah bolts upright and, as usual, is taken. Silvia’s smile is warm and her eyes are gorgeous. Kyrah really wishes she were as pretty as her.

“Is something happening today?” She asks dryly, swings her legs over the side of her bed. The valve stem goes on the bedside table, next to a couple bolts, a copy of her very first repair order, and her alarm clock.

“Yeah, Jackson says Boskov is taking us on a trip to the library!”

Kyrah smiles at that, in earnest now. She pulls on a pair of well-worn (but not second-hand) boots and throws on a light jacket.

In the car, Jackson and Silvia wrestle playfully over a brain-teaser; Kyrah stares out of the window and watches the streets roll by. She will never get used to how well-dressed and unaffected these people are; this car is just another one that the NCR owns and operates. They have supply here, who cares to watch it roll by? That is how they think, she’s sure. Hell, she's the only one around here who hoards her food. The first time Boskov took her to a restaurant, one of the other patrons openly glared at her when she asked Silvia if she could take the leftovers. She stares at the memory for a moment, then mentally walks away.

For the duration of the fifteen minute ride Kyrah loses herself in her imagined realities. She cycles through them like different book genres; one fantasy of hers depicts a life outside of the building, another one of her learning how to use the Sight and figure out why on earth they treat her like a patient, and yet another is of her at home, a small child, cradled and coddled by her parents.

She stops daydreaming when, after spending a few minutes in the third, she becomes upset and misty-eyed. Her obsession with dreaming and seeing other things is probably not healthy, but she can’t be bothered to break a habit she’s had as long as she can remember. She can't imagine how lost she'd be without her daydreams.

Then they roll up in front of a library—some Counselor had this thing built a handful of years before she was born, and had enough hubris to name it Alexandria. But it’s large as far as the wasteland goes, so she keeps that thought to herself.

The trio walk in and Kyrah slides her hands along the bookspines, looking for anything that interests her.

“C’mon, I got this cool thing to show you,” Jackson tempts, voice low and conspiratorial. “Last time we came here, I slipped away from Boskov on a piss break and a section with a load of cool stuff. The one blocked by the rope.”

Kyrah exhales out of her nose. “Jack, please, we’ll get caught if we all go.” Internally, she thinks, I can’t get in trouble, I have to do well here.

Silvia slides in next to the two, thumbing pages in a book, eyes on her friends and not the words. Kyrah notes the way she turns pages; always grabs the bottom corner delicately between her thumb and forefinger, and turns the page like it's holy. Sylvia is always reading, when she's not snooping. “Come on, it’s not like they’ll throw you to the streets if you do.”

“Not happening,” Kyrah says easily. Her friends both roll their eyes, but the genuine disappointment is palpable. “But, I could keep Boskov busy for you two.”

Her friends exchange looks. Then Jackson says, “Oh hell yeah. Thanks, you’re a peach.”

“Anytime.” Kyrah waves them off, and they sit at a different table nearby, while she grabs a book of names, and sits down at her own table. She flips a bit, comes to rest in the K section, finds her name.

Kyrah. Little dark one. Records of the darkness it refers to have been lost.

She frowns at this, but dutifully calls Boskov over, who humors her—and she knows this—only because she’s his charge.

“Found my name,” she says brightly, and Boskov hums feigned interest. Kyrah goes on before he can walk away and see her two friends sneak off on what is probably an innocent endeavor for an adrenaline rush. “I wonder what your name means?”

“Yeah, I wonder,” he says, and leans forward a bit, allowing her to flip to the Bs. He seems curious now.

Boskov. Meaning unknown. Pre-war use only as a surname; now both sur- and fore-name.

They spend agonizing minutes pouring through the pages. Kyrah flips to the Is and by chance sees the name Iris:

Rainbow; delicate flower; pigments of the eye. A vibrant name. Loosely associated with light.

After several more page flips of this, her companions return, each with a handful of books, and they sit at the table with them.

“Hey guys,” Silvia says cheerily. She and Jackson stack their books together.

Kyrah’s confused at first, until she sees the slight bulge in both of their pants pockets. Her heart pounds a bit, but she takes three slow breaths, steadying herself.

“I take it everybody’s ready to go?” Boskov asks; they all nod, gather their things, and sign out all the books save for the ones they shouldn’t have. The ride back is tense, at least for Kyrah—because what if he notices?

Luckily, he doesn’t. Or maybe he pretends he doesn't, because there's no harm to it, or Calvin is secretly determining if they'll break rules or not.

Back at home, after dark, the trio get up and climb the ladder to the roof. They’re allowed to do this—there are turrets on each corner of the building, and it’s easy enough to escape quickly back inside. All this secrecy and protection makes Kyrah anxious but, as always, she says nothing. Best not to upset anyone.

“So, what’d y’all find anyway?” She asks, flat on her back; the concrete is chilled but it’s a summer night, so she’s not uncomfortable.

Silvia gets comfortable to her left, Jackson to her right. The sky is clear, but they can’t see the stars for the city lights. It makes her miss the portions of the Hub that didn’t light at night. A lot of the time electric bills went unpaid, or the grid was down, and certain slummier areas had no electricity at all. It was nice to stroll those streets at night, climb up on a roof, and stargaze. Just had to be mindful of which alleyway you were talking down.

“Nothing we can really do anything with,” Jackson says, as if to complain, but he still sounds happy to have done something unsanctioned.

Silvia adds, “But look!” And pulls out a small, ornate music box. Jackson shows off pre-war pamphlet on sex ed.

"Really Jackson?” Kyrah says. She glances at Silvia, seeing the girl shaking her head, smile on her face, so she tacks on a light giggle, even as her stomach knots itself up.

“What! It could be useful, just not like, save-the-world useful,” he protests. Jackson is a gentle man, Kyrah figures. Gentler than most, even if he likes tagging along for Sylvia's escapades. Everyone else kills spiders on sight, but he catches them in bare hands and takes them outside. Stereotypical stuff like that. But he also deeply believes in caring for others' bodies—he likes to cook, bandage cuts, and apparently, sex ed is on the list. Kyrah doesn't think he's fit to be a soldier, when he turns eighteen, but maybe a field medic. Hopefully they let him, what with his Sight and all. Her and Sylvia are much harder people—more comfortable with fighting for their cause, than simply caring for it. Sylvia especially wants to crush Ceaser's Legion beneath her boot.

But right now, Silvia is winding up the box as she says, “It was unattended and no one really seemed to care...”

“You’re crazy.”

“Crazy smart!” She sing-songs.

The little box tinkles as the tiny ballerina turns around. The backdrop on the inside of the lid has stars and planets and the moon. Her skirt and leotard are blue, and her hair is brilliant, metallic gold. The ceramic figure spins round and round, slowing down, as the music softy fades. The melody wanders around the room, lazy and sure, like it's always belonged exactly where it is, and the dancer will always spin carefree.

Sylvia closes the box and flips the latch. “All that besides, what if we figured out how to sell this stuff?”

Jackson has become notably conspiratorial. “Think about it. The next time Boskov takes us to the market, we can sell it right under his nose.”

“And then do what with the caps?” Kyrah asks dryly, but she’s still smiling and chuckling.

“I don’t know, buy something cooler.” He shrugs. “Just celebrate this with us! A little healthy rebellion, no?”

“Right, right, healthy rebellion." Silvia elbows her ribs and then they wind up in a game of seeing who can jab the other in the stomach first.

The Sight doesn’t present itself. She expects this. Nothing about play fighting is threatening, hence she doesn’t see a glimpse ahead—that’s her working theory, anyway.

Jackson then hauls Silvia off Kyrah and jabs her stomach. “I win,” he says smugly.

“Cheater!” The two girls yell in unison, and then they are all laughing the night away.

Jackson turns it in first, and Silvia is not far behind, leaving Kyrah to daydream for a while up on that roof; it’s peaceful up here. Her mind wanders down the streets of Shady Sands, under the handful of cars in the state, over the streetlamps, inside the engines of thousands of generators that keep the place afloat, until she stops at the border of the Hub.

That is her old life. It is what she knew, but it isn’t what she knows now; she is loyal now to the NCR, who fed her and clothed her, even if they poked and prodded some. She won’t waste her life away deep in the mines or on the streets. That, she is sure of. No; she wants to make the Hub feel like part of the NCR again, and not some abscess it had yet to rid itself of. She knows, first-hand, how much the people of the Hub hate the rest of the country—but the NCR is capable of so much help, if only the Counsel representatives from the Hub didn't have so much pride.

Surety is a thing for the youth, her mother’s voice says. Somewhere in the depths of her memory a snippet of a conversation is drawn out. She ponders on it for a bit, but then dismisses it. She’s done with that. She’s been done with that house for six years. When she misses Dad, she just finds one of her handlers and says she wants to learn something new.

Now her life is Silvia and Jackson; Calvin and Irene and Boskov and Chase; tests and inordinate amounts of free time. This is where she belongs, she decides, while staring at the starless blue-black of the night sky. Even if they won’t explicitly tell her, she’s figured they want to know how she has the Sight, and by way of simple logic, how to give it to others. But that’s fine, they’ll help her cultivate her own ability, in a mere couple months (hopefully, anyway—she wants to stop being treated like a patient). She’ll contradict the meaning of her name; she’ll bring light into this fallen world.

Kyrah just needs to continually prove that yes, she has earned her spot here.

It comes all at once. A dam has broken. Water rushes in.

Kyrah is sitting in her room, mid-daydream after yet another session in that chair, when she sees it:

A gun is gleaming bright and silver, but it’s dull compared to blood in the room; someone is crying; masked men flash in and out of the scene and someone is screaming about defending the base; the room is where she and Silvia and Jackson work on hobby projects, Jackson’s painting is streaked red—

More men burst in through the door, some in NCR uniform, some without, Boskov, Chase, and some other handlers are all unprepared because they’re laughing—

There’s screaming, crying, bloodshed, something has been stolen—

A girl bolts upright in her bed and gasps, a clock chimes—

It ends, and Kyrah is gasping for air. Her wall clock chimes ten at night.

She swings her legs over the side of the bed, head dropping between her knees as she sucks air right in through her teeth. She runs through the images in her head: the message is clear.

Kryah gets up unsteadily; her valve stem is still in hand, and she automatically slips it into her pocket as she makes her way to Boskov’s office, where he’s filing paperwork.

“Someone’s coming,” she pants, eyes wild.

He looks up, bewildered. “Kyrah?”

“Someone’s coming,” she repeats, makes a vague gesture down the hall where the shop is. Silvia and Jackson are busy with their personal projects. “I Saw it.”

“Shit,” he says, standing up.

She gulps and carries on: “I was—I was having my daydreams again, and—and I had one where everyone was in danger.”

“Was this a vision or just a daydream?” He asks, and for some reason, he seems settled. He doesn’t press an alarm button.

“Vision!” She emphasizes, and he hesitates, but at long last picks up the phone and calls someone—who it is, she can’t be sure. Her head is still spinning and she’s outraged that he didn’t instantly take her seriously. What will it take to show these people that she’s not some kid anymore? She’s capable!

“Alright, Kyrah, go sit in the sublevel lab, got it? I’ll send personnel down there after you. Lock the door, stay inside, don’t come out until they override the lock and let you out.”

This irritates her more. “I—okay, yeah,” she says, then trudges downstairs and past Chase’s office, which is now empty as he must be collecting the other two. She’s four strides down the hall when she stops.

She knows where the armory is.

Of course, it isn’t her who found it; it was Silvia on one of her escapades, but thank Atom she gossips about all her finds, and that Jackson likes to distract the guard who watches the compound's CCTV. Kryah doubles back, checks for anyone who’ll stand in her way, then takes the side stairwell that leads straight down.

She rounds the bend, and stops short, hiding behind a corner—several handlers are exiting the room, armed. The doors are closing behind them.

As soon as they are out of sight, she darts forward and the mechanical sliding door is mere inches from shut. She remembers the valve stem, grabs it, and rams it into the door jam—otherwise the lock will reengage, and she can’t get back in.

The door senses that someone is in use of the jam, and it retracts, like the perfectly coded thing it is.

Inside are several weapons; she elects against the long-barreled guns, and instead grabs the simplest 9 mm she can find—the kind her dad taught her to fire. Then she hooks a couple combat knives and their sheaths to the belt in her jeans.

She can help. She will help.

Kyrah rushes back to the second floor, and the whole place is swarming with NCR. She ducks and weaves and ignores commands to return to the sublevels. No one will fire at her, she’s prized goods; every time a hand shoots out to grasp her, she dodges it—she knows where they’ll aim for before they do.

She bursts into the shop in the same moment that a group of masked men break in through a fresh, jagged hole in the ceiling and her friends scream.

Then there is so much in her vision that she cannot see.

Faded images of everyone that poses a threat to her swarm the room, then are followed through shortly thereafter. Silvia and Jackson are frozen still in shock. She blinks rapidly but nothing clears and she knows she’s running out of time. Gunfire and shouts ring in her ears. Her head is fucking pounding. Someone screams for the kids to go downstairs already.

Kyrah aims her weapon at the first unfamiliar person she finds, and she fires several shots into the space where he goes to move—she hits his thigh and he falls down. A handful of people from both sides are lunging to grab her and she twists out of the way.

Silvia shouts something, but Kyrah goes unhearing and Jackson is shoving her friend across the room. Kyrah sees two more men go for her; she fires at one and dodges the other, then whirls around to see even more people locked in for her friends. An NCR soldier falls beside her. She has enough time to glance down at him and grab his smoking gun—a 10 mm. She discards her near-emptied gun for his, and she even manages a handful from his bandoleer as she rolls across the floor. It’s right into Boskov’s arms as he tries to circle the room; he lunges and she snaps right out from under him.

Kyrah bolts back upright and spots one of the intruders. He raises a gun, faded like she expects, and she fires right as Silvia tackles him; his gun goes off and Jackson screams.

Panic bolts through her. There are more of these people than there are NCR personnel onsite. She knows it’ll take several minutes for the men in the next base over to arrive. Fresh pain tears through her skull, between her temples and she screams, falling over. She gasps for air, staring around the room, nerves on fire, and her eyes land on the bodies.

All of the people she knows are dead. Chase is on the floor next to Irene, their bodies splayed out as if he meant to protect her. Boskov is staring blankly at the ceiling. Calvin is the only one not in sight, but she suspects he’s been shot, too. Or stabbed. Or strangled. Or—

Her head twists and there are her friends: Silvia. Jackson. Dead on the ground.

Kyrah’s chest is heaving and she takes one shaky step towards them. Her head is white-hot and she Sees things she doesn't have the presence of mind to comprehend. She blinks, rapidly, clutching her skull, until it clears. It's like trying to force a tsunami out of the way. One of the people who broke in—this one a woman—says something to the others. Kyrah’s mind doesn’t register it. She’s floating, it feels, as she gets back up, then stumbles and collapses to her knees. Everyone else in the room is standing around her but aren’t making a move.

A low whimper escapes her throat as she cups Silvia’s face, flecked with blood. She sniffles when she looks over at Jackson, whose hand is twitching.

“I wanted to help,” she whimpers. “I didn’t—I didn’t see what—what was gonna happen. You gotta...”

“Girl, get up. We’re going.”

The voice is stern but not inherently unkind. The ringleader—a man with a mask on, buzzed hair, gray and cobbled clothes—leans down on her level.

“But—but...” Kyrah says, weakly, accomplishing nothing with her words. She takes in a weak gasp and shakily hovers her hands over the fatal bullet wounds, not quite sure if she should touch, not quite sure why she wants to. “I was gonna help. It—I was gonna prove—stop! Don't touch me!" She thrashes and throws herself at Sylvia. "Wait! I have to—she’s always cold, let me give her my coat!”

He sighs and gently grabs her wrist, this time, instead of her torso. He hauls her up. The fight drains out of her. “We’re getting you out of here. Regina, recon. Tyler, organize troops to keep the way out clear. Cass, get those drugs somewhere safe. What’s your name, kid?” He asks, guiding her up to the trap-door, where out on the roof she finds a couple dozen more people who usher her along.

Kyrah doesn’t find an answer as she watches them split up into groups of inconspicuous twos and threes; she’s herded through back alleyways and soon realizes they’re taking her out of Shady Sands and to the border. Occasionally information buzzes over the ringleader’s walkie-talkie. She’s in too much shock to fight.

He doesn’t seem to care much that she didn’t answer. Instead, he says, “Getting you outta this damn NCR, kid. We're a block from the car. Might be able to get you back home once things die down. Don’t you worry. You won’t be used any longer.”

And then just like that he’s shot through the skull.

His body slumps to the ground and Kyrah starts crying, then. She slides down, back against an old brick building, and hugs her knees to her chest. The Sight doesn’t kick in, so she doesn’t think anyone’s coming to hurt her, but now that twice has it been useless to defend anyone else, she’s beginning to hate it.

The other two that were in this little group drop into a crouch, weapons at low ready, but they’re shot down, too, and the new gang of people after her sweep her away before reinforcements arrive. NCR military and this group of vigilantes alike are roaming the streets in search of her, but she knows they’ll never find her when several raiders bind her. She doesn't care to fight them. Nothing matters.

A cruel looking man kneels down to her level; all condescension and sick pleasure. His smile is slimy as a sewer. “You’re ours now, and you’ll be coming with us,” he says. “Or you can die. Your choice. But we got their little car right here. We'll look like a regular little white-picket fence family.” Next to him is a woman and a boy around her age. He's under-fed and wearing a turtleneck sweater, even in this heat. Distantly, she wonders if it's hiding a shock collar. They taught her all about enemy factions, including raiders. How to take them down. She knows these guys are unorganized, and quick to turn on one another.

But Kyrah is silent and shaking. She’s trying desperately not to slip away into a daydream, but it’s leaking into her world: glimpses of nicer places, nicer faces flash in her head. She doesn't want anyone else to die, so she lets the boy force her onto her feet.

“What’s your name?” The man snaps, and shoves her shoulder for good measure.

Kyrah looks at the dead around her. Thinks of the dead she’s left in her wake.

“Iris.”

This is how it starts.