New Vegas: Sheason's Story

Chapter 42: The Sierra Madre

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You know, it's weird how sometimes your life leads you in completely unexpected directions. I thought that after being shot in the face and getting back up, nothing would surprise me anymore. But I keep getting proven wrong.

Like what happened that morning my Pip Boy decided to alert me to a new transmission. I'd never really paid too much attention to the radio tab on the computer on my arm. Never really liked listening to the radio. Of course, my bias could just be from that time my Corvega's radio got swiped near Gecko and I never bothered to replace it. But then again, most radio stations always seemed to play songs from before the bombs dropped - and each station only had a library of about 20 songs.

This, on the other hand... whatever this was, wasn't like a normal radio station. It was just the same message about the Sierra Madre broadcast constantly, over and over again on a loop. What made it even stranger was my Pip Boy alerting me. Had it been doing that for every new radio transmission, or just some of them? Or had I just not been paying attention?

"Mornin' Shea!" Veronica's voice broke me out of my reverie; I'd been so distracted with trying to figure this out, that I wandered into the kitchen without realizing. She had a mug of coffee in her hands, and took a sip. "... why are you staring at your Pip Boy?"

"Because I'm trying to figure out where this radio transmission is coming from. Here, listen to this, see if it makes any sense to you." I turned the volume up on the radio, and let her listen to the transmission. "Does that make any sense to you?" The two of us listened until the message started repeating. Veronica only started to look interested when she heard the words 'Sierra Madre.'

"When did you first hear this?" Veronica asked.

"This morning. I think it must be a fairly recent transmission, since my Pip Boy only alerted me to it a few hours ago." Veronica looked surprised, raising an eyebrow at that.

"Your Pip Boy alerted you to it?" I gave her a nod.

"Yeah. Warning beep and everything."

"That doesn't make sense..." Veronica scratched behind her head. "If it's mentioning the opening of the Sierra Madre, then... this transmission should be hundreds of years old. The Sierra Madre was a hotel from before the war."

"What, like here in Vegas?" I asked. Veronica shook her head.

"No. It was definitely not a casino in Vegas - if it even existed at all. Or... if it still exists... I mean, I'd heard the legends and the rumors about the Sierra Madre before, but I always thought they were just that. Rumors" That piqued my interest. I looked down at the Pip Boy, and then back up at Veronica.

"Do you think you might be able to figure out where the signal is coming from?"

"I think so..." Veronica set down her coffee cup on the table, and started to reach for my Pip Boy - and then stopped herself midway. "Do you mind if I take a look at your Pip Boy for a few minutes?"

"Sure," I said with a shrug. "But I think we better sit down. I have a feeling you're going to take a while. Am I right." Veronica nodded.

"Probably."

The next few minutes was spent with Veronica grabbing hold of my arm, cradling it in her hands like an old sensor module. Her eyes were moving rapidly, following the data she was pulling up on the wrist computer's screen. And all the while, she remained silent and focused on the task at hand - or, at wrist. Eventually, the suspense became way too much for me to bear.

"So, what exactly are you looking for anyway?"

"I'm trying to decode the RDS that's piggybacking off this transmission's frequency."

"Decode what?" I asked, unsure of what she was talking about. She kept flicking through the screen.

"Radio Data System." She looked up and, seeing my blank stare, rolled her eyes and continued. "Most radio broadcasts that transmit on an unencrypted FM channel use about 200 kilohertz of bandwidth, but only a small portion of that is devoted to music and audio. The Radio Data System, or RDS, is a completely separate signal that transmits information alongside the normal radio wave at 57 kilohertz, with a data rate of -" I had to stop this madness before she got too far. It was like talking to Arcade!

"Hold up, hold up, stop with all the technical speak for a minute. Just tell me what you're doing. Slower this time, and with smaller words, please." Veronica rolled her eyes again.

"Alright, look. You know how your Pip Boy can tell you the name of the station, the song that's currently playing, or the artist?" I nodded. I had noticed that, even though I didn't really listen to the radio. "That information comes from the RDS, which 'piggy-backs' off the audio transmission. I'm trying to decode it, because sometimes there will be streams of data embedded, encrypted, or otherwise hidden in the signal."

"Kind of like sifting through white noise to find the password when hacking into a RobCo terminal," I added, hoping I was on target. I didn't know anything about radio, but I knew the basics of hacking a computer at least. Veronica nodded.

"Kind of. If I can sift through the data, then I might be able to figure out where this transmission is coming from, or something else important." And with that, Veronica went back to studying the information on my Pip Boy's screen.

"Hey boss, is there someone else here?" I heard Raul outside the kitchen door about a minute before he stuck his head in. "My hearing hasn't completely gone, but I could swear I heard another female voice a minute ago."

"Hey Raul. Nah, it's nobody. I just... my Pip Boy started picking up a new transmission. Something about the Sierra Madre. So I'm having Veronica take a look at it." Raul went stiff, and his eyes went wide. "What? What did I say?"

"Oh, man..." If he didn't already look almost dead, I could swear that Raul looked even more pale than usual. He shook his head. "The Sierra Madre? That's bad news boss." There was a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Bad news? How do you mean?" I asked.

"You mean, you haven't heard the stories, boss? I thought everyone had. The legend... the curses?" I shook my head again. "I've heard that the Sierra Madre... It lies within a city of the dead. Buried beneath a blood-red cloud. Treasure hunter after treasure hunter have searched for the place, boss. None of them have ever come back."

"Please. Superstitious foolishness, that's all it is." Veronica said without looking up from her work. "I don't even think the Sierra Madre exists at all. It may have, at one point, but from what I've heard it was set to open on October 23, 2077. The day the bombs fell." Raul just shook his head again.

"A lo bueno, dejarlo estar." Even though I couldn't speak Spanish, his tone of voice gave me an inkling of what that meant. Still...

"Which means?" I asked.

"Basically? You should leave well enough alone, boss." Raul's voice seemed more gravelly than usual when he spoke. "Especially when it comes to the Sierra Madre. Nada ms que mala suerte. You'll find nothing but death there, boss."

"Well, I guess it's a good thing I wasn't planning on going to the Sierra Madre." Raul raised what was left of an eyebrow, and took a step back, so I continued. "I just want to find out where this transmission is coming from. I mean... a transmission like this, just coming out of nowhere? It's a bit odd, you have to admit." Raul sighed.

"Well... do what you like, boss. I mean, I 'm just a broken down old man. What do I know?" Before I could argue that point, he left the kitchen again. So I shook my head and sighed, turning back to Veronica.

"So, any progress?" Veronica didn't respond. Instead, she just stared at the Pip Boy's screen, wide-eyed and slack jawed. "Veronica?" I said a little louder, waving a hand in front of Veronica's face. It seemed to snap her out of it.

"Uh... sorry... I just..." Her breathing started to become slightly ragged and irregular, and that same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach just got worse. "There's something buried in the transmission that I recognize. It's a fragment of a coding signature, but... it's a familiar signature. A unique dual-encryption that I've never seen anyone else use."

My brain picked up on that - it was the same wording she used when she and I talked about the Brotherhood, almost two weeks ago.

"You don't think..."

"It's Father Elijah. It has to be."

It didn't take much longer after Veronica's revelation for her to figure out the origin of the transmission. According to her, it was coming from a point close to the Colorado river, between the NCR's Camp Forlorn Hope and Nelson. She plugged the coordinates into my Pip Boy, the two of us got our gear together, and decided to meet ED-E down in the car park.

This was the third time in as many days that I'd left the 38 with the combat armor I'd received from the Gun Runners. I wonder what that said about me? I asked Veronica if she wanted to bring anyone else before we left, but she said no.

She was... unnaturally quiet on the way there. She looked pensive and deep in thought as she sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window. By the time we started passing through Henderson, I couldn't take the silence from her any longer.

"So, what do you think we're going to find out there?" I asked. She turned her head back to me slightly, and shrugged.

"I don't know. But whatever it is, I don't think it's going to be the endpoint of the signal."

"You don't?" I asked. That was surprising... and just a bit troubling. I was starting to get that sinking feeling in my gut again. "Why not?"

"Just something about the signal... I have a feeling that what we're going to find will be a relay station - something that takes the signal from somewhere else and boosts it."

"Do you think we're going to find Elijah there?" I asked, hopefully. I mean, he was Veronica's mentor. Maybe it would be good for her to see him again. She was quiet for a long while.

"I... I don't know. Maybe. But... I mean, it wouldn't make sense."

"Why wouldn't it make sense? Didn't you say that was Elijah's signature you found?"

"Because... do you remember the other thing I told you about Elijah? How nobody had seen him since the battle for HELIOS One? That wasn't exaggeration. NOBODY has seen him for years. And the point on the map where the radio is pointing us toward... it's only 10, maybe 15 miles east of the solar power station. I know Elijah. If he truly was hiding, why would he stay so close? He's careful, he wouldn't do something like that."

"So, what do you think we're going to find there?" I asked, mulling over the new information she was giving me.

"I... I don't know. I just don't know."

It was a pretty uneventful drive down highway 95, right up until I decided to turn off the road and head east towards the signal, just past a long abandoned gas station on the side of the road.

"Hang on, why are we turning here?" Veronica asked, looking up after I turned off the highway. "There's no road."

"Yeah, well, I figure this is probably the best place to turn. North of here is the road that leads past Camp Forlorn Hope, and I don't know about you... but I'm not really in the mood to try and get past NCR troops without Boone to back me up. And if we head further south, and turn at Novac, that'd lead us way too close to Nelson."

"Didn't the NCR take back that town from Legion after we chased down Boone a couple weeks ago?" Veronica asked. I shrugged.

"Maybe. I mean, it's possible, but I'd rather not take any chances. Legion doesn't give up. Evil like that never does."

"So, if you didn't want to take any chances, why are we heading this way?" That rumbling in the pit of my stomach was starting to get worse.

"What do you mean? What makes this path risky?"

"Don't cazadores like to nest in hills like these? If we keep going this way, we'll probably pass right through prime real estate for a cazador colony." As anxious as this talk was making me, my curiosity eventually won out over my growing apprehension.

"Okay, that's like the fifth time somebody has mentioned the word 'cazador' since I came to the Mojave, and nobody has ever stopped to explain what the fuck a cazador actually is! What the hell is a fucking cazador already?"

Veronica stared at me for a very long while; the only interruption came when the car jumped a rock or hit a patch of rough ground.

"You've... never seen a cazador?" Veronica looked at me like I was crazy, and all the color seemed to drain from her face.

"No, that's what I keep telling you! Seriously, what the fuck is a cazador already?"

"Well, it's - ED-E?" Veronica looked past me, out the drivers side window. I turned around, only to see the eyebot flying sideways, a few inches from my car. I hit the brakes and turned the engine off, bringing the car to a stop so I could hear him. Immediately, I could hear the sounds I'm sure he'd been making the whole time: frantic beeps, worried sounding whistles, and a few bars of a familiar music he always played when shit was about to hit the fan. I got out of the car and faced the floating eyebot.

"ED-E? What's - OW!" ED-E headbutted me! I clutched my face, sure that ED-E's speaker grill was imprinted on my forehead. When I opened my eyes, I saw ED-E shifting his body to my left, and he made an annoyed noise at me.

"That doesn't sound good..." Veronica said. I had to agree.

"Yeah, ED-E sounds real worried." As if in response, ED-E's buzzing just got louder.

"Not that, numbskull!" I turned back to look at Veronica, who was leaning out of the passenger window and pointing behind us. "THAT!" In hindsight, I should've gotten the hint earlier. I finally looked behind us, towards one of the hills we'd drove over less than a moment ago... and that's when I realized the buzzing wasn't coming from ED-E.

Hovering above the crest of the hill behind us was... an insect. It was a large black-shelled wasp, obviously mutated to enormous size, but still just an insect. It boasted a pair of red eyes, two pairs of orange wings that moved so fast they almost looked like a single solid object, and an enormous stinger protruding from its backside. The sound of it's insect wings beating so fast was producing a shrill buzz that sounded much too loud to be coming from a single creature.

"That's a cazador?" I said. Sure, a giant mutant wasp could be trouble, but that was no reason for Veronica... to be... worried...

Suddenly, another cazador hovered up from behind the ridge. Followed by a third. And then a fourth. And then dozens more. All buzzing. All hovering. And all staring right at me.

"Right, time to go." I practically jumped into the car, turned the key, and hit the gas. The car took off, with ED-E right beside; he was flying backwards, blasting lasers towards the cazadores. I didn't know if he was hitting any of them.

"So! Cazadores are giant mutant wasps that hunt in packs! Glad I could finally get that cleared up!" I yelled over the roar of the engine... or was that the buzzing of the cazadores behind us that I was hearing? Both were equally loud. "Anything else I should know about them?" Beside me, I could see Veronica shifting around in her seat; apparently, she kept a 10mm pistol hidden underneath her robe, because she had a weathered N99 in her hands, and was checking to make sure it was loaded.

"Uh... they're poisonous?" she yelled with a grimace.

"Oh, wonderful!" I shouted, trying my damnedest to pour on more speed - not easy when the ground is broken up more than a teenager's face. "That's just fucking marvelous!"

There was a horrendous thud, and I felt the back of the car shake violently. I almost lost control of the back end, and really had to work to get the steering wheel back under control.

"Oh, what the FUCK!?" I only glanced behind me for a second, but that was long enough to see one of those massive insects completely filling my back window, it's six spindly legs clamped tight, twitching and hovering right over the engine. Veronica fired her pistol at it, but I have no idea if it even did any good. I didn't know where ED-E was. I was just trying to concentrate on driving us away from the swarm of giant mutant killer wasps.

There was another series of thuds from right above us; the buzzing from their wings, amazingly, got even louder. I checked above my head, and realized that in several places the roof had large new dents. Thankfully, the roll cage was holding and keeping the important parts of the car in place. Question was: for how long?

I planted my foot to the floor, and tried to weave the car around to see if that would shake them off. I slid the car around a nearby boulder, and heard a series of thuds behind and above me. With any luck, that was the sound of the mutant insects getting tossed off the car.

"Keep it steady!" Veronica said still firing her pistol behind me. I looked back, to see if the bugs were still following. Of course, they were. I had no idea how we were going to shake these things.

"Look out!" Veronica shouted and I snapped my attention back to the front of the car - just in time to see us smash windshield first into a cazador. The windshield cracked in several places, but held firm; the cazador rolled around on the hood in front of me, wings and insect limbs flailing. I turned the steering wheel violently again to try and shake it off, but it twitched to get itself upright again, and the insect limbs clamped down on the hood.

"Oh, give us a fuckin' break already!" I kept trying to shake it off, but it kept hold. Suddenly there was an awful grinding noise, the Corvega swung around, and flung Veronica and me forward. I could hear the engine revving, but still the car refused to move. I kept my foot hard down on the accelerator, but no matter what I did, the car wouldn't budge. The cazador hadn't even been fazed - and I watched with a mounting sense of dread as it lifted up the massive stinger on its backside and plunged it into the windshield. The glass around the stinger shattered and exploded inwards, and even more spiderweb-like cracks appeared, but thankfully the windshield didn't break completely.

"Motherfucker!" I yelled, grabbing Roscoe out of the holster on my leg. Veronica had the same idea, and the two of us started firing our pistols point blank at the cazador through the hole it had created. There was no way we could miss, but somehow it didn't seem affected, and just kept pounding on the hood.

"The car won't move!" I yelled to Veronica. "We've gotta get out of here!"

"On foot?!" Veronica reloaded her pistol and looked at me with a wide-eyed expression. "What, are you crazy?"

"What choice do we have?" I was about to leap out of the car before I realized there was another cazador hovering right outside the door. I grabbed the door handle and pushed as hard as I could, smashing the door into the head of the massive insect with a crunch. The mutant wasp flailed and twitched on the ground. I fired at the cazador, to make sure it was dead, but Roscoe went dry after two shots. Every cazador in sight immediately started flying directly towards my now open door, and I had a sneaking suspicion that I was done for. There was no way I could get to any of the heavier ordnance in the trunk before those wasps cut me to ribbons.

Before I knew what was happening, I heard a boom in the air like some kind of old world explosion, and a beam of bright blue light lanced through the air from behind us and hit the cazador still perched on the hood of my car. The top half of the insect broke apart and disintegrated, leaving nothing but a charred abdomen. The dozens of mutant insects around us stopped, and turned as one in the direction of the shot.

"What the fuck just happened?" Veronica asked, bolted to her chair. I looked behind us, suspicious as to the cause myself. As it turned out, I was right.

Standing on the crest of the hill where the cazadores originally appeared was a single, solitary figure dressed all in black. That figure wasn't standing still, however. Whoever it was, they were blasting the incoming cazadores with energy blast after energy blast. I didn't see another bright blue beam like before, but there was a multitude of red lasers, green lasers, green plasma blasts, and... bolts of blue energy. That last one was the strangest, because the only kind of energy weapon that made a blue bolt like that before was the strange pistol carried by the alien who crash landed north of Vegas. The mutant wasps buzzed towards the darkened figure, but every single one of them was cut down by the fusillade of incoming energy fire.

Less than thirty seconds after making themselves known, the shadowy figure was the only thing left standing. The ground was littered with smoking and blackened cazador carcasses. I got out of my car to get a better look at the person who had saved us... and I was just in time to see them turn around and start to walk away.

"Hey, wait!" I yelled, starting to run toward the shadowy figure. Whoever it was stopped momentarily, and looked over his or her or its shoulder back at me - and stared at me with three glowing yellow eyes. That clinched it - this was the same person who killed Orris in Freeside. I ran faster, hoping I could catch up with them - but I was too late. The air filled with the smell of ozone, there was a crackle of electricity and the air around the figure shimmered slightly, before they disappeared altogether.

I searched the area for a few minutes after whoever it was had disappeared, to see if there was any sign at all... but no. Obviously there weren't any shell casings, since whoever it was killed all the cazadores with energy weapons. The ground was too rocky, so I couldn't even see any footprints. Granted, I'm not exactly an adept tracker, but this was ridiculous.

"What the FUCK?!" I shouted at no one, completely baffled by what just had happened. By this time, ED-E and Veronica had finally reached my spot at the crest of the hill; Veronica was carefully making her way around the cazador corpses.

"Nothing, huh?" I shook my head and kept looking around. "So, who was that? I suppose we should thank him for saving our skins back there."

"I don't know." I started walking down the hill, back toward my car.

"You don't?" Veronica said, keeping pace.

"You remember when I told you how Orris got killed?" Veronica nodded. "I think that was the same assassin." ED-E made a strange sounding series of trilling beeps.

"That's... weird." I had to agree. "Why would an assassin go bug stomping?"

"Why would someone with those kinds of guns kill a fuck-up like Orris?" I shrugged as the three of us got back to my car. I knelt down to check and see why my car had stopped working. From what it looked like, I must have driven over a rock, and it got stuck under the front bumper. I grabbed at the car under the bumper, and tried to lift it, but it wouldn't budge. "Hey, V? Think you can give me a hand?"

"Sure, but..." She grabbed me by the shoulder and gently nudged me out of the way. "You might want to stand clear." With one hand, she grabbed under the bumper, there was a crunch, and she lifted the whole front of the car up to about waist height - well clear of the rock it was caught under. The motion made the half-burned carcass of the cazador roll unceremoniously off the hood and onto the ground with a wet crunch. She gave the car a shove, and it moved back about 5 feet, kicking up a massive cloud of dust in the process. I was a bit stunned; she just smiled at me, looking smug and flexed her arm.

"How the fuck did you do that?" I had a suspicion, but I thought it best to ask anyway.

"Semi-powered armor. It's a bit of an experiment of mine, based on some notes Father Elijah gave me and built around a set of recon armor. It doesn't offer the same level of protection or strength enhancement as a real set of powered armor, but it does the job in a pinch."

"Wait, are you saying you're not as strong as you would be if you were wearing real power armor?" The implications of that were staggering. She just shrugged.

"Even if I was wearing an old model like the T-45D, I could probably bench press that car with one hand. In T-51B, I could probably throw it." I could feel my left eye twitch, and Veronica just moved back to my car. She looked back at me with a smile. "So, are we going or what?"

"So... is this it?" Veronica asked at the edge of the small ridge. I looked at my Pip Boy, and nodded.

"According to the coordinates, this is it." I furrowed my brow and stared down the ridge. It was like a small sinkhole, at the base of which was a small ring of concrete and a manhole cover in the center. "I don't like it."

"Yeah... there's something about it that seems kind of odd. I mean, I don't see anything that could relay a signal, which means it must be underground..." Veronica nodded, and ED-E beeped next to me in agreement. "So, are we going in?"

"Of course." I started to slide down the side of the ridge, and lifted up the manhole cover. Inside it was almost pitch black, and there was a metal ladder bolted to the wall leading into the darkness. I turned on the light on my Pip Boy, and slowly made my way down the ladder into the darkness.

"What do you see down there?" I heard Veronica say from above. I looked around, and I found myself in a small metal box, with a set of stairs leading yet further down. There were a few dim lights on the rusted walls, and the floor was littered with trash and bits of debris. There was some graffiti on the wall, however: all of which seemed to reference the Sierra Madre.

"Not much," I said, walking toward the back, where one of the lights had burnt out. "Just some trash and... wait, hang on. I think I see something." I shined my light on an irregular shape, and immediately came to a halt.

There was a body lying on the ground. It was wearing a light blue, almost grey jumpsuit with a red "X" spray painted on the back. More worrying than anything else, however, was his head - or lack thereof. There was just a stump left. I switched my eyes to thermal. The body was ice cold. Add in the fact that it wasn't a skeleton, and that meant this body had been dead for a while, but less than a month since the skin hadn't started to liquefy.

I pulled out Roscoe and flicked the safety off. Something wasn't right here, and I wanted to be ready. Maybe there was time to get more weapons from my car before heading further in? Unfortunately, no there wasn't. There was a sound like metal grinding against metal, and I turned in time to see Veronica slide down the ladder.

"I don't think ED-E is coming. I'm pretty sure he can't fit through the manhole." I heard a series of loud indignant mechanical squawks from above us, and Veronica shrugged. "Yeah, those antenna can't really get into tight places."

"Something's not right here..." I said, aiming my gun down the stairs, and slowly making my way down. Veronica fell in behind me. "Do you have anything other than that 10 millimeter?"

"Just my fists," Veronica held up her hands, to illustrate the point. "Left the super sledge back at the 38."

"Well, just... be prepared for anything." The two of us made our way down the stairs until the hallway leveled out again. "There was a body up there without a head, and I don't want any -" There was an extremely loud noise of metal grinding against metal from right behind me, followed by a thud that reverberated throughout my whole body. I looked behind me, and was face to face with a steel blast door. "What the fuck?!"

"Sheason!" Veronica's muffled voice sounded from the other side of the door. "Sheason are you alright?" I heard a few dull thuds. She must have been beating against the door.

"Yeah, I'm fine, but..." I grabbed hold of one of the levers on the door, but it wouldn't budge. It was like it was welded shut. "The door's sealed. I don't think I'm getting back out this way." I looked around, down the hallway. It was a short metal hallway, and at the end I saw what looked like a small table with a radio in the middle of it. I steadied Roscoe.

I didn't like this. Not one bit.

"V, I'm gonna... I'm gonna try and find another way out." I aimed Roscoe down the hallway. I heard more banging against the metal door. I made my way slowly down the hallway toward the radio.

"Sheason, the door won't - I can't get it open! Sheason!" Her voice started to fade as I made my way down the hallway.

This was not a good idea. In the back of my head, I knew that this was a bad idea. But I couldn't get out the way I had come. So it's not like I had any other choice but to go forward. The way this day was going, I just knew things weren't going to end well. But at the time... I didn't know just how not well. It had already been a long fucking day... and it was about it get longer.

I crossed the threshold into the small room. The radio on the table in the center was illuminated by a small spotlight... as I got closer, I realized the radio was playing the same broadcast about the Sierra Madre.

... if you need an escape from your troubles, or if you just need an opportunity to begin again, join us...

There was a loud metal clunk from above me. A quartet of vents in the ceiling opened up and gas started flooding the chamber.

... let go, and leave the world behind...

I tried to cover my nose and mouth, but it was already too late. I could feel myself go lightheaded, and my vision started to blur.

... at the Sierra Madre grand opening this October...

The room started to spin. Everything went sideways. The last thing I knew before my world went black was... electricity?

...we'll be waiting.

My eyes cracked open, and I suddenly became acutely aware that every part of me was sore. My stomach was churning, and my skin was burning all over. I was lying facedown on the ground somewhere, that much was certain. Slowly, I tried to pick myself up, and the effort made me cough profusely. For some reason, it felt hard to breathe.

Ok, what the fuck happened? I remember going into the bunker, and then... and then... there was... gas? The air feels weird. Like there's still gas around me. I looked down at my arm - I still had my Pip Boy, but... I wasn't wearing the Riot Gear or the duster that went with it.

I was wearing a grey jumpsuit.

I looked up, and couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. I was kneeling on the ground in front of a large fountain. It was a large circular fountain, with tiles lining the rim, and a pedestal in the middle that looked like water should be spilling off the side, but the fountain was completely dry. I also saw the ghostly image of a woman wearing a low-cut evening dress that was slit up the side (allowing her to show off her rather nice legs) standing on the very top of the pedestal in the center of the fountain. The image of the woman was blue, and I saw what looked like scanlines running up and down her body - like the kind of thing you'd see on a flickering monitor with a bad transmission. Was this... I mean, the first thing that came into my head was that it was a hologram. But that seemed a bit too science fiction.

All around me were buildings with grimy, dirty walls and red tiled roofs packed so close they all looked like one continuous building. Looming above everything, directly behind the fountain, was a massive tower, like a hotel. It was perched on the side of a cliff, at the end of a massive flight of stairs... and I couldn't quite make out how many stories the building had.

But the most worrying thing of all? I couldn't see the sky. There were clouds, but they... they weren't natural clouds. It was a sea of rolling, churning, blood red clouds. It was like a mixture of fog and low-hanging storm clouds, except instead of white or dark grey, they were red, and it unnerved the piss out of me.

I eventually stopped staring at the clouds above me when I heard a noise from the fountain. The ghostly woman had disappeared, and a small panel in the rim of the fountain was opening up. There was a soft electric whine, and an image like a TV screen floated in the air in front of me where the woman stood before she disappeared. Projected onto the floating see-through screen was a static image of an old, bearded man with long scraggly hair, and massive bags under his eyes. The image didn't move, but those eyes looked like they were staring at me. It was unnerving. The more I looked at it, the more I realized - these must be holograms. There's nothing else they could be.

There was a sound like a microphone being turned on too close to a speaker, followed by a pair of taps. And then I heard a voice - it was a man's voice, so I assumed it belonged to the image hovering in front of me. It was deep and raspy, like someone who'd spent every day of their life smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, washing it down with two bottles of whiskey.

"Are you listening?" The owner of the voice spoke quickly, and with an undisguised sense of urgency. I nodded, not knowing if it would do any good. Could he see me? "Good. From now on, when I talk, listen - and follow my instructions. Play stupid, play clever, make the mistake of saying 'no?' That collar on your neck will go off, and take your head with it."

"Collar?" I breathed, and reached up to my neck. I felt something foreign. Something cold and circular surrounding my neck.

Something metal.

"How did I get here?" I asked the image, still clutching at what I was sure was a bomb collar around my neck.

"Hmm! Get here?" He gave a short, curt sort of laugh. I heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by a slow exhale - and then, a series of coughs. When he regained his composure, the voice continued. "You walked into one of my traps in the Mojave... following the Sierra Madre signal. Now, you're here, with that collar on your neck . It's like that Pip Boy on your wrist, except filled with explosives. A little radio of the old world... just needed some tuning. Do what I say, and collar won't go off... refuse, try and run, disobey me? I'll kill you and find someone else. There's no escape from here until I let you go. The sooner you accept your situation, the better."

As if the surroundings I was currently dropped in wasn't enough, I could tell from the tone in his voice that he wasn't fucking around. I had to play along, until I could figure out a way to get this collar off me without blowing my own head off, and I could get back to the Mojave.

"Then maybe you better tell me why I'm here." I said, clenching my fists. I could feel my breathing getting ragged. Why was it so hard to breathe? It was almost like I was back in that bunker underneath Caesar's fort across the Colorado. Was this place flooded with radiation? I forced it out of my mind. I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

"That structure you see above the fountain - the Sierra Madre Casino... you need to break inside. A..." he paused, as if searching for right word. "... heist. Too many years in the making. But to get inside, avoid its traps... you'll need to gather the team. As I've found, one cannot do it alone."

"I'm not alone then," I said, looking around. I looked down at my feet, and saw what looked like a pump-action grenade launcher lying on the ground. I picked it up and examined it as he talked. Whatever this gun was, it most certainly was not a grenade launcher.

"Around the villa are three other collars like yours - Collar 8, 12, and 14. Find all three and get them here. To the fountain. Then, we'll talk more. And should you get any ideas about killing them and taking the treasure of the Sierra Madre for yourself - a warning. All your collars are linked. One of you dies? You all die. If that's what it takes to make you cooperate, so be it."

Boy, this day just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? I cursed under my breath, wishing that I'd never followed that damn signal. I sighed, and looked back at the floating hologram in front of me.

"All right... fine. So, you want me to find the other three people with bomb collars, and bring them back here?" I shouldered the rifle, still unsure as to what it actually was.

"I've downloaded instructions on an audio log to your Pip Boy - in case you can't read," he seemed to add that part with a hint of disgust in his voice. "...as well as map markers to help you get around. And yes, I have access to that device on your wrist. If necessary, I will guide you through the Villa's broadcast systems. Get the other three here. After that... I'll have more instructions for you. Do this, I'll let you go. I'll let all of you go."

As much as I believed him when he said he wouldn't hesitate to blow my collar at the first sign of resistance, I did not believe for even a second that last statement about letting me go. I'd play along, but I just knew I'd have to find my own way out.

"Just one thing. I like to know who I'm working for. You got a name?" I heard more coughing over the transmission; the face stayed completely still.

"Someone who followed the call of the Sierra Madre, just as you did. My identity is irrelevant to the task at hand. But, if you must call me something... I am Elijah. And you will follow my orders to the letter - or I will kill you, without hesitation. Now go." The image disappeared, and the panel in the side of the fountain folded back in on itself.

"Great," I said to no one but myself. So, I'd found Veronica's mentor. And what a lovely meeting it had been!

Alright, time to get my bearings. I brought up my Pip Boy, and opened up the map feature. Like Elijah had said, there were several markers on the map of my immediate vicinity. But I needed to find out exactly where I was, so I started zooming out. And zooming out some more. And zooming out further still. I started to get really, really worried. None of the terrain that was showing up on the map looked familiar. Not even slightly. Eventually, I zoomed out far enough that I could make out coastlines. And when I realized where I was... I just kind of... shut down.

"Oh, you have got to be KIDDING me! How the everliving FUCK did I even get DOWN here?!"

Mexico.

The Sierra Madre Casino was in Mexico.

This is going to be a long day. Isn't it?