Case slumped back into the plush white fabric of the couch, the weight of his Ranger armor suddenly feeling like a lead coffin. The sterile, wood-paneled office felt smaller, the air thicker. Emily Stone sat perfectly still, her holographic veil shimmering with a faint, steady hum—the only witness to the total collapse of Case's secret.
"Fine," Case breathed out, the word carrying a mix of surrender and relief. "Fine. Yikes. I'll tell you everything. You're family to me, and you deserve to know why I've been… the way I am."
He looked at Amelia, whose hand still rested instinctively near her helmet, and then at Milla, whose eyes were searching for any familiar flicker of the man she thought she knew.
"The brain... it wasn't entirely lying. I'm just forgetful," Case began, rubbing his face with his gloved hands, the leather rasping against his stubble. He leaned forward, looking Jacob dead in the eye. "Look, you know my past with the Legion. The brain told me that the trauma blocks most, if not all, of those memories. You can't expect me to recall every fine detail." He took a breath, his voice steadying. "Does it really matter? My point is, I'm pointing the way to a strategic advantage using what I know, memory or not. Now that Pandora's box is open, please... keep this between us."
Emily tilted her head, her robotic optics whirring as they focused on him. "A fascinating existential paradox. A man who treats reality like a game, yet treats its inhabitants with genuine, sacrificial love. You've deviated from the 'game's' path, haven't you, Case? Because in the records your brain provided, I didn't exist. My sister, Diana, was the only Stone of note, and this underground facility was never there."
Amelia stood up, the heavy seals of her power armor disengaging with a series of sharp, pneumatic hisses. She stepped out of the massive metal frame, looking smaller without the steel plating but no less imposing. Without a word, she sat down right beside Case and pulled him into a firm, grounding hug.
"That's alright," she whispered, the maternal warmth returning to her voice. "I don't understand half of the talk you're spouting, but you've clearly been through enough for two lifetimes, kid."
Jacob just scoffed, though the tension had finally bled out of his posture. He leaned back, his scarred, ghoulified face cracking into a weary smirk. "Kid, don't be so tense. I was just asking. Like I said before—like we all said—we follow you to the end of the line. Knowing the future just makes you the best damn scout in my book. Still, let's keep this hush-hush. Your knowledge is the literal key to the Mojave. If what Emily says is true, we need to make sure our decisions give us the upper hand before anyone else even knows you are a literal seer."
Milla moved closer, her hand finding Case's and squeezing tight. Her expression was still pensive, but the hurt had been replaced by a fierce, quiet resolve. "Like I told you back at the Farmstead, Case. I follow you. I don't care if a god, a ghost, or a game designer wrote the world. I know who you are. You're my friend. Yes, let's keep this a secret between the four of us."
Case took a shaky breath, his gaze traveling across the small circle of faces around the table. "Let's keep this a secret between the five of us, then? No one else."
Jacob stood straight, the weary smirk vanishing as his voice took on the gravelly, undeniable weight of a commander. "As the highest-ranking officer of the Desert Rangers, I'm marking this Top Secret. I'm ordering that only the five of us—and I mean only us—carry this. Not another soul in the wastes needs to know how the sausage is made."
Emily nodded solemnly, her optic sensors dimming for a moment in a gesture of digital respect.
"Good," Jacob added, his smirk returning, though his eyes remained sharp. "Can't have the whole wasteland hunting our boy down like he's the most expensive bounty in the Mojave. And don't you worry, kid; if any of us starts saying anything that points to your secret, I'll personally make sure they're shut down. Permanent-like."
Emily chimed in with a soft, synthetic hum of agreement. "Don't worry, Case. My lips are sealed. Literally, if you'd like. I can lock the memory of this conversation behind an encrypted firewall, or even keep your original brain in a localized sector where no one—not even the Think Tank or me—can access it without your explicit permission."
Emily watched the display with a flickering shimmer of her holographic veil, her processors running silent. She observed a level of human loyalty that her colleagues in the Think Tank had discarded centuries ago in favor of cold, detached logic. All the data points she had extracted from Case's mind hadn't prepared her for the sheer warmth of the scene unfolding before her.
"Harry? Scones and biscuits, please," Emily said softly, her voice breaking the heavy silence.
"Will do, ma'am," the robotic butler replied, gliding out of the room with a polite, silent whir.
It felt less like a military briefing and more like a family therapy session now—at least as far as Case was concerned. The weight on his chest had lightened, replaced by the simple, domestic comfort of a hot meal and the presence of people who actually gave a damn about him.
He looked at Emily, back to business.
"Professor, to be frank, would you help us in protecting the Mojave?" Case pleaded, his voice gaining strength. "We have slavers on the other side of the river, trying to push us back into a pre-medieval age with a faulty Roman ideology. They'll burn everything you've preserved here if they ever get the chance."
Emily gave a slow, measured nod. "I've heard much from your brain—more than enough to understand the threat this 'Caesar' poses to the progress of the human race. Your wish is granted, Case. My Mark II units and the infrastructure of the Second Level are at your disposal."
She stood up—or rather, the Assaultron chassis stood, the holographic dress shimmering around its legs. "I just have one message: please, do whatever you must, but do it for the best of our people. And keep Big Mountain at heart. Don't let the madness of the Think Tank upstairs define the legacy of this place."
"Will do," Case said.
"Rangers won't disappoint, ma'am," Jacob said.
Case sipped on the tea, then he enjoyed the scone. For the first time, he actually felt something sweet in his tongue that was not Nuka-Cola or Sunset Sarsaparilla, and the tea, it was something else.
Case addressed the final elephant in the room. "Emily, if the Think Tank are the directors of this place... then who are you, exactly?"
"Ah, I'm glad you asked. Truth be told, I am the Head of the Biological Engineering Department," Emily explained, her holographic veil pulsing with a steady light. "Strictly speaking, Professor Yumi—or 'Doctor Dala,' as you know her—is my superior, as biomechanical integration falls under her purview."
"What's your story?" Jacob asked, his voice low.
"Back in 2077, when the bombs dropped, the research didn't stop, but the funding certainly did," Emily began, her gaze turning distant as the hologram flickered. "Internal politics grew fractured. The directors were not on good terms, to put it mildly. My department's focus was human-robotic interfacing—specifically the perfection of brain extraction and the Robobrain chassis."
She gestured toward the pristine, silent hallways beyond the door. "I chose to keep my research subterranean. I made a promise to Dala back then to stay out of the way of her 'Primary Research.' I'm not sure exactly what happened to the world above after the static took over the comms, but I stayed here. If you assumed I control the entire facility... well, not exactly. I am connected to the sink, per se, not more."
"So, that's why the CIU can deliver an item to me," Case commented.
"I merely manage the foundation, the thing that mattered. Anyway, Eventually, the human staff began to dwindle, and then, on an uneventful but unlucky day, all of the physical entrances to the underground collapsed or were locked. I was left alone, with only the robots and a ZAX supercomputer for company—save for a single hidden access point in X-42 I only discovered years later."
"Wait," Case interrupted, leaning forward. "You're here... alone?"
"Yes. I let my scientists leave if they wanted to before the collapse, to find their families. I didn't; I continued my research down here, alone. I knew my sister, Diana, had made a deal with her company to have her consciousness uploaded. Knowing my own options for survival were slim after the isolation set in, I decided to take the same route. Though, as a sibling—as odd as it sounds—I did it with a distinct Big MT flavor."
"Uploading your brain into the mainframe," Case muttered, the medical implications staggering.
"A gamble, I'll be honest," Emily admitted, her digital form shimmering with a hint of vulnerability. "Brain-to-computer interfaces already existed—look at the Robobrains—but merging with a supercomputer? To be honest with you, it was terrifying. I gambled my future on the ZAX, letting the machine extract my brain and merge them with its own logic."
She spread her holographic arms, gesturing to the expanse of the underground level. "And here I am. The facility is my body, and the ZAX is my mind. I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome, all things considered."
"Hold on a minute, my brain is not braining," Case commented, rubbing his temples. The information was coming too fast. "The recursion loop—the whole cycle of the Think Tank forgetting and repeating—everything. Was that your idea, or Mobius'? My gut told me you were the one pulling the strings of the whole damn mountain."
"In some ways, yes, but in others, not at all," Emily replied calmly. She leaned back, the holographic veil of her dress shimmering with a soft, cyan light.
"When I finally emerged from this place—after quite a bit of digital digging and realizing I needed specialized tools from X-42—I found that the Think Tank had already become... well, what they are now. The feud between them and Mobius was already in motion. It happened entirely without my intervention."
She paused, the Assaultron's head tilting slightly as she processed Case's accusations.
"I simply studied the recursion loop because I realized their short-term memory is so severely compromised. I've often wondered if a significant trauma would give them a long-term focus again, but I wasn't certain it was worth the risk. For over several decades, I have remained a mere observer. Jacob gives me far too much credit, speaking as if I'm some bossy supervillain."
"Okay, look, my bad," Case said, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "But listen, I've been through a lot here. Not exactly 'normal' things, but a total onslaught of oddball insanity. You've gotta give me some slack. A hidden underground base and a merger with a supercomputer is exactly what I'd expect from the real 'boss' of this place."
Emily let out a digital chime that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. "Fair enough, Case. But I assure you, if I were a 'boss' in the sense you imply, you wouldn't be sitting on my couch drinking tea."
"My bad, Emily."
"Now, I'm sure that you have dealt with Mobius, you're going to confront my bosses, so… do you need anything from me?" Emily asked, gesturing that she was ready to give anything to him. "Bots, weapons? Anything?"
"Erm… your blessing would be nice," Case added, the word feeling a bit heavy in the air.
"Blessing?" Emily asked, the Assaultron's mechanical shoulders rising in a very human shrug. "What do you think I am, Case? A goddess? A digital deity watching over the crater?"
"Just joking, just wish me luck," Case replied, standing up from the couch. He wore his headgear again, then attached it to the riot gear. "The Desert Rangers will be taking over Big MT for us, and for you, Emily."
"I'll be delighted to see how it turns out, Case. In the name of the last remaining conscious Big Mountain lead scientist, I officially grant the Desert Rangers full access and a full grant to the entire facility of Big Mountain. May you use it in the way you see fit."
Case stepped forward and firmly shook her cold, robotic hand. The metal of the Assaultron's grip was unyielding, but the holographic projection of her face held a warmth that was entirely human. "That's what I like to hear."
"Emily, wanna tag along?" Jacob asked, his voice muffled as he snapped his T-60 helmet into place, the mechanical seals hissing as they pressurized.
"I would be honored," Emily replied. Her holographic image flickered for a moment before stabilizing into a determined smile. "I'll help you confront the think tank."
Case reached for the table, his fingers wrapping around the cold, familiar grip of his G3 rifle. He checked the action—a sharp, metallic clack-clack that signaled the weapon was ready for business.
"Rangers, move out," Case commanded.