Chapter 63: Chapter 60

Desdemona watched as a never ending stream of limp bodies were carried by robots to the teleporter room and vanished with a crack of ozone and displaced air. Sev had assured her that they were all third-gen synths, and she was inclined to believe him. The Railroad would soon have the opportunity to deprogram these poor souls once Sev’s robots sent them over to the Depot.

How they would achieve that would be the first problem to tackle. Sev promised to send any relevant information as soon as the Nexus got it, and once more Desdemona couldn’t doubt that. He has been a very generous, very honest patron to the Railroad so far, displays of cruel violence aside. And with this utterly one-sided victory, he might have just changed the Railroad’s duties from securing and liberating synths to unshackling their minds.

She still found it hard to believe, most of her life was spent trying to drag out whatever small victory by rescuing a lone synth or two, and now Desdemona was staring as the entirety of the Institute’s synth population in their base was carried out like cargo. Just like that, the Institute fell from its perch as a threat in the shadows to…whatever it was that Sev had in mind for them.

For a moment, she felt some pang of pity for the scientists forced onto their knees to watch the procession of robots fly back and forth. The leaders of the Institute, once faceless nightmares, were now broken and helpless men and women, their life’s work, however sinister it was, completely undone.

The fear was palpable in them, especially after a few had tried offering some resistance. The jagged-looking assaultrons had simply dislocated the fools’ wrists, then ankles, then elbows…and with sadistic efficiency those men were mewling on the ground in weird angles as every joint was skillfully popped out of place.

“So, what now?” Desdemona asked as she cautiously Sev, the young man snapping from blankly staring at a pile of delimbed prisoners neatly arranged like a stack of firewood.

Sev blinked a few times before regaining some focus before replying to her. “Once we’ve cleared out everyone and everything, I’ll convert this place into something deserving of its delusions.” He sounded like he was daring someone to stop him. “Not sure if you guys want to see it, but the news must spread. I’ve sent an invite to the Minutemen and Diamond City as well, just to help speed things up.”

“And the prisoners?”

Sev frowned for a moment before shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “One way or another, we’ll find a use for the adults. The kids, well, that depends on how they behave I guess?’

His calculative tone of voice was chilling, and Desdemona remembered the rumors of what happened to the unlucky raiders the Nexus captured. It was an open secret that the newer inventions Sev had introduced to the world like the synth detector were thoroughly tested on the prisoners, and that Caladan’s greenery on its seventh floor was fertilised with the processed remains of expired test subjects.

She had to remind herself that under the warm and generous persona the leader of the Nexus projected, there lay a ruthlessness that was eager to leave a bloody stain of anything in his way.

As she mulled over Sev’s dark side, two figures materialised into the teleporter room, Sev’s girls. They wore victorious smiles of an op well done, giving brief glances to the robots still carrying more synths in, and harsh glares at the Institute personnel still kneeling in the room.

“Found what you were looking for, it’s just as you said Sev,” Piper reported with a lazy salute. “Nat’s helping with the tour. Oh, Gwen says the general and the mayor will be here in an hour or so”

“Cool.” The girls noticeably perked up when Sev smiled. “How’d you like your first solo-ish expedition?”

Cait gave a light snort. “Eh, it’s only radroaches. I can see why you wanted us to go though.” Another harsh glare was sent to the scientists’ direction for some reason.

Piper joined in with the glare, before both girls shared a look and stopped. “Yeah, even Nat was eager to join in here when she found out.”

Desdemona didn’t bother pretending to figure out the underlying context, preferring to just greet the girls politely and remain in the background. It was clear that there was more going on to Sev’s plans for the Institute.

“The boys and girls are downstairs, keeping an eye on the rest of the prisoners,” Sev informed them. “We’ll move them up once the synths have been cleared and the guests arrive.”

There wasn’t much else to do but wait. Deacon, Carrington and a few others joined Desdemona some minutes later, taking a tour of the conquered base alongside Piper and Cait. Despite the blood and damage, there was still an air of intellectual civility in the quiet hallways and room.

“All this for the price of ruining everyone else’s lives. Feckin’ delusional fucks.” Cait snarled, and it was hard to disagree with her.

Some of the Nexus’ soldiers joined in at some point, providing interesting commentary to the tour.

“Curie said the vats there were dangerous. FEV, whatever that is. So we had to let the Eversors clear out the place.”

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“We found lots of dead people there. All surface people, judging from the clothes… Their kidnapped victims.”

“Oh boy, that room was creepy, nothing but second-gen synths parts. Scared us when the lights went on.”

Once the message came to regroup, Desdemona guessed that there wasn’t really much else to the Institute other than labs of different flavors and living space. For all the appearances of an advanced society, the Institute seemed very…stale. It was hard not to compare it to Caladan’s liveliness and subtle opulence.

On the elevator trip up, Desdemona noted that a massive renovation had taken place, the area around the elevator shaft being cleared out and the entirety of the top floor had been replaced with glass, allowing a clear view of the rest of the Institute below. Walls had been dismantled as well between this room and the teleporter room, creating a single large hallway. Once the last trooper got off the elevator, it was sealed up by robots with glass panels.

The enlarged room was packed and swirling with the indecipherable murmurs of many conversations. The rest of Sev’s soldiers were mulling around on one side, while the Minutemen and what were probably the Diamond City people were staring down through the floor, struggling to take in the sights. A lot of the Institute’s adult prisoners were present as well, forced onto their knees under the watchful eyes of Evesors and Sentinels.

“Attention, please.” Sev’s voice rang out clearly, cutting down the din of mixed conversations. All eyes turned to the young man in a black greatcoat wearing a confident smile. He spread his arms wide as if in welcome.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time and patience. Welcome, to what was once known as the Commonwealth Institute of Technology, what we all know as the Institute.”

His hands moved in waving gestures as he continued. “Home to brilliant minds capable of creating humans from a vat, and their first steps in testing their research was to kill and replace innocents with synths.” The distaste was shared by nearly everyone, but thankfully it didn’t seem like Sev was going to demonise the synths…too much. She hoped.

He scanned the room, easily stoking the simmering resentment. “These third-gen synths they created are practically human, but they’re treated as anything but. Programmable humans, forced into obeying. Perfect slaves.” The last sentence understandably got angry reactions from Sev’s young soldiers.

“The Institute could create new humans with their own pre-programmed lives to the surface and we’d all be none the wiser…”

Sev paused to shake his head slowly. “But no. They preferred taking over existing people. Family and friends, real people with actual lives, actual human beings, snuffed and replaced.” He tossed a disgusted look at the prisoners. “All to further pointless research that could’ve been easily done without the idiocy.”

He sighed heavily for effect. “The Institute. Once, long ago, a center of higher education, and recently a bastion for the intellectually misguided and morally deluded. A den of dark geniuses who preyed on the surface for their experiments with all the care of a rapist on Psycho.”

Sev paused then, his smile became dark, almost malevolent.

“But not anymore.”

A sharp crack shook the room, and immediately Desdemona and everyone else looked down to see something…some things materialise just below the glass floor and plummet down into the underground settlement below. It took a second for her brain to click and recognize what she was seeing.

Nukes. Sev had teleported man-sized nuclear bombs into the Institute.

Panic threatened to overwhelm the room as other people identified the bombs for what they were. Only Sev’s own lack of reaction and the robots urging for calm kept everyone from fleeing.

Desdemona watched with a sense of surrealism as the bombs disappeared into the cavern below, and then multiple atomic fireballs quickly bloomed and surged upwards. The entire place rumbled from the shockwave of the explosions, and everyone was too stunned to react as the wall of nuclear flame rushed up.

The cries of horror were barely heard from the deafening roar of fire, some people fell back in surprise. Desdemona was partly aware that Sev’s child soldiers remained still though. She was also aware that her eyes weren’t boiling out this time, and the heat that washed the room was just an uncomfortable warmth.

“Learned from that last time,” Sev remarked laconically when he saw her surprise.

Desdemona gave a glance to the prisoners, noting the wide-eyed shock most of them had at their home’s destruction.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sev called out in a darkly triumphant tone once the nuclear roar started to die down, “I welcome you to the Nexus’ Correctional Institute. Or the Institute, if you prefer.”

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