บท 541: Just needs a Keye
With that, the group split off to do various things. Dean, left to look around in areas he had exclusive access to due to his status as a singer. Though, Afton was cautious about giving the ghoul too much independence, he'd shown that he was more than willing to 'crack a few eggs' to make an omelette. Still, if he was ever worried about what the ghoul was up to he could always contact him via his collar... If he didn't answer it meant that he'd either betrayed them, gotten knocked unconscious, or been captured by Elijah.
Veronica wanted to stay in the lobby to take care of Anja and Christine, even if the latter wanted to be active in hunting Elijah. In the end she'd actually pulled Afton to the side and almost begged him to persuade Christine to stay behind and not do anything dangerous.
Yeah, that surprised him... Fortunately, he'd ended up stumbling across something that could be useful... Apparently, there was an upper limit on the amount of cash you win in the Casino... Once you hit the limit, you'd be stopped from playing and granted a VIP position, this might allow them to gain access to some of the more secure areas without having to fight through hundreds of Holograms and Auto-Turrets.
With that, he'd left the trio at a Blackjack table as they attempted to reach the VIP status. Afton wasn't sure if they'd manage it, as all of them had pretty terrible luck, but maybe they could overcome it with skill? Veronica could probably count cards? Christine probably could have before her injury... Now however he was unsure if she was even able to count.
Obviously, Anja would be less than useless at this sort of task... The first problem was that she was blind, the second is that she'd never seriously gambled...
That left Afton, who was currently clambering through maintenance tunnels with an annoyed look. He'd crawled down here to see if there was some kind of secret bunker that produced the Cloud, but was thoroughly annoyed when he spotted the thick red mist lingering partway through.
He could see the fans nearby, but none were working, meaning that the ventilation system was malfunctioning, which led to this obstacle. He sighs to himself, first things first is fixing the ventilation then... Though, how he was going to locate it in this monolithic casino was another matter entirely.
Like this, three days pass with almost no progress whatsoever... The Sierra Madre Casino was simply so huge that navigating through it took hours alone, let alone trying to map out and figure out what is where. It wasn't like there was a map of the place lying around, so the group had to do things via trial and error...
During this time Afton had found a few things of interest. Aside from the dorms which the group liberally use to rest in, he'd found a number of security rooms that controlled specific parts of the Casino's Holograms and Turrets. The only bad thing about them was the fact that they weren't the main security hub, meaning anything in the room could be overridden if Elijah found it.
Still, using his newly gained authority over local Holograms, he started investigating the more restricted sections. These places, in particular, seemed to be more damaged and ruined than the rest of the Casino... The reason for this? This was where the VIP rooms were, and these rooms had large balconies that looked over the Sierra Madre mountain range.
Obviously, the Cloud had come in through the doors left open by their former residents, making this place far more dangerous than the rest of the Casino. Walls were chipped, cracked, and fragile, the floor had large holes in it leading to god knows where, and the overall structural stability was suspect.
Afton was very nervous about walking through it while wearing his Power armour. He weighed over half a ton with it on, and he was quite sure the floor was barely rated for that weight even before everything went to shit.
Searching through the rooms, he didn't find much aside from a few malfunctioning Holograms. He had to put them out of commission by destroying their emitters, but other than that it was uneventful... The Cloud had peculiar effects on technology he'd found, while it corroded and destroyed most of it, sometimes it seemed to only target specific components, which didn't really make sense due to what he'd seen of it.
He had found something interesting though... A room affectionately labelled 'Vera Keyes', he'd asked Dean about that name a while ago, but all he'd said was that she was like him, a singer invited by Sinclaire. to perform.
Strangely, once he entered he found a number of seemingly random things... Vera Keyes skeleton was lying in a chair in the corner of the room, still wearing her trademark starlet dress. In the next room he'd found an Auto-Doc?
Afton scans through the prerecorded data that'd been collected two hundred years ago and realises that this was Vera Keyes personal Auto-Doc... It held almost all the information about her body, from her DNA, to her eye colour, to her hip shape.
Vera Keyes, it seems, was terminally ill. And had had this Auto-Doc secreted to her room so nobody would know about it... Judging by the many used dosages of Med X next to her corpse, she was using Chems to stifle the pain.
Quite depressing to say the least... "*Bzztch* Dean, I found your friend, Vera." he states into the radio while waiting for a response.
"Oh? How did you manage that?" the ghoul curiously asks via his collar.
"I located her room and found her dead in the corner... Did you know she was terminally ill?" he abruptly asks, quickly silencing Dean.
Dean stills at this, memories flashing in his mind while dots were quickly connecting... No, he hadn't known that, but it did explain many of her choices in the end... Choices that could've led to the deaths of both of them. Well, that did to one of them.
ความคิดของผู้สร้าง 
Niggross
Niggross Hope you bois liked the chap, if I missed anything please let me know. Thanks!
Also, thanks to my patrons for their support :
ShinAmazake
Chris Lindsey
Kingsprovince
Michael Jarrett
Nazlican Erdem
บท 542: Vent it out
"No. I didn't know that... I thought she was just another Chem addict with all those Med X's she was popping, but I see now that I was mistaken..." he mutters through the radio, "Thank you for revealing this to me, Afton.*Bzztch!*" he says gracefully before ending communications.
Afton sighs, takes his helmet off and rubs his jaw. What's with this place and confusing him... He just wanted to return to the Mojave where everything was 'relatively' simple. NCR grey, Legion bad, House equally as confusing... Nevermind...
He glances back over to Vera Keyes and taps his foot, "I haven't been sheepish about looting before, why should I start now?" he mutters, walking over and stripping the skeleton of its dress... As long as Veronica didn't know its origins, he was sure she'd love it.
The skeleton crumbles to the floor as he removes the dress, revealing the wall behind her... His crooks at brow at the writing on it, Vera seems to have written a message in her own blood... 'Begin again', and 'LET GO'... He wasn't sure what it meant, but maybe it was a message to Sinclaire or something? Who knows.
With everything said and done, he begins heading back down to the lobby to see how the others were doing getting the VIP status... They'd failed thus far, but Christine was actually pretty good... Despite her inability to speak. Still, since he'd managed to gain access to the VIP rooms, the status was less of a priority.
Elsewhere :
Elijah was heavily scowling as he crawled through the ventilation ducts of the Sierra Madre Casino... He'd had this all planned out before Afton and Veronica had arrived... The Ghosts would breach the Casino and put the place on lockdown, he'd use this opportunity to turn off the power and allow Ghosts to continually harass the group to get them moving where he wanted... Yet... That Ghoul had used his former relationship with the place to completely ruin his plans before they'd even started...
Because of this, he was now forced to hide away and crawl through the vents to reach places he needed to go... It was inevitable as if he was spotted by anyone he didn't doubt that he'd be killed. Afton and Veronica had shown incredible combat capabilities, and he'd seen enough to know he stood no chance in a direct confrontation.
Fortunately, knew this place like the back of his hand, the last time he was here he'd almost entirely mapped the place out and discovered the vault... The only problem was the last security system in place, the system that prevented him from accessing the Vault at all.
All he was able to do was gain control of the Turrets, Holograms, and Forcefields around it. But, no matter what he did, the Vault was impenetrable. As much as he hated to admit it, he still needed those fools to succeed... Even if using them could prove more dangerous than the Cloud or Ghosts had ever been.
This was one of the main reasons he hadn't used the main security systems and turned the place completely against them... While Afton and Veronica might survive the initial assault due to their Power armour, Christine would undoubtedly perish. This was unacceptable as she was the most important piece in this puzzle.
He scratches claws his head in annoyance, not noticing the thick clumps of hair falling to the floor as a result, or the blood thick under his fingernails.
Two days later :
Christine had finally broken the chip limit in the Casino as was quickly given access to the VIP sections of the Casino. The trio had quickly made use of this but had yet to find anything of use... Though, they had discovered a ridiculous amount of valuable items during this time... Sure enough, VIP's were very rich, and if you combed through their rooms you'd find a litany of gold jewellery, expensive watches and suits, and large piles of pre-war cash.
Other than that nothing much had happened, aside from the confusing buzzing that'd occasionally occur from Christine's collar. Afton had investigated it but found nothing, meaning it was either a glitch or something Elijah was doing.
Afton hadn't been idle during this time either, having finally found the ventilation systems and hacked into it. Once he was in, he began expelling any and all Cloud left within the Casino, this would clear the blocked pathway he'd found days ago... To be honest, he had high hopes for it... Why else would that place be the only Cloud infested area in the Casino? Everything else was clear of it. He suspected that someone wanted to protect it.
In the end, he was right. Once he headed down the heavily corroded hallway, he'd found himself standing before a heavy Saturenite door, though, it seemed to be lathered in something that actively resisted the Cloud's effect on the metal.
The Saturnite was very dense, tempered, and reinforced, so most attempts by anyone else would prove useless... Afton didn't have such issues however, he ignites his Ultra Chainsword and easily swipes through it, his Perks allowing the weapon to act as a more efficient lightsaber.
Once he'd cut around the rim of the door, he gives it a firm kick, knocking the chunk of metal out and allowing him to step into the pristine yet dusty laboratory... His eyes were immediately attracted by the Big Mt symbols prominently plastered on everything... From the walls, containers, and even the glasses.
Clearly, Big Mt had some serious dealing here, yet, Afton hadn't found any evidence of such in the scientist's database, even Glados hadn't noticed anything of interest, meaning that everything had been destroyed or intentionally deleted.
He scans the room for anything dangerous but only finds a couple of skeletons slumped in their chairs in front of a couple monitors... They had a few empty bottles of whisky scattered around them with even more empty bottles of pain killers...
He takes a glance at the monitors and notices that they seemed to have been observing the town below the Casino... The town which had been utterly annihilated by the Cloud...
He sniffs, "Seems like they couldn't live with themselves after what they had done." he mutters, not feeling an ounce of sympathy towards these people.
ความคิดของผู้สร้าง
Niggross
Niggross
Hope you bois liked the chap, if I missed anything please let me know. Thanks!
If you like my content or want to read ahead please go to https://www.patreon.com/Nagross, I'd appreciate it.
Also, thanks to my patrons for their support :
ShinAmazake
Chris Lindsey
Kingsprovince
Michael Jarrett
Nazlican Erdem
สถานะพลังงานรายสัปดาห์
200+ การจัดอันดับด้วยพลัง 
3 หินพลัง คุณอาจชอบ
ความคิดเห็นย่อย