The ride back to the Farmstead was a heavy, suffocating silence. The desert wind whipped through the open-topped jeep, but it couldn't clear the mental fog.
Case gripped the steering wheel, his eyes darting between the dark road and the soft emerald glow of the Pip-Boy MK IV on his wrist. It was surreal. In his "past life," the game started with a blank map, forcing the player to earn every icon through sweat and radiation. But this interface was alive.
As they drove, the GPS smoothly panned across a pre-loaded grid of the Mojave, highlighting old-world ruins and military outposts with terrifying precision. It didn't feel like a tool; it felt like an eye was watching them.
In the back, the container of 10,000 bottlecaps jolted with every bump, a frantic, metallic rattling that served as the only soundtrack to their retreat. Beside it, the 14.5mm anti-materiel rifle—the "God-killer"—clanked in its housing, its massive barrel a grim reminder of the power they had just unleashed.
Jacob sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. Usually, the old ghoul had a sarcastic remark or a bit of wasteland wisdom ready, but now he looked hollowed out.
Case's mind was racing, trying to reconcile the Mojave he knew with the one he was currently standing in. The "Ghost" in the T-51b was one thing—a relic of the old world. But Joker and his Sentinel Outcomes mercenaries? That was a different kind of nightmare.
The Mojave was a place of scavengers and scrap. Even the NCR Rangers, the elite of the elite, wore "Riot Armor" that was mostly refurbished pre-war police gear, pulled from the dusty lockers of the Divide or the restricted zones of the north. Once they lost the industrial capacity of those regions, the armor became a finite resource—every tear in the leather was a permanent scar.
But Joker's crew? They had brand-spanking-new equipment. A pickup truck with a factory-fresh engine hum, light machine guns that hadn't seen a speck of rust, and soldiers wearing combat gear that looked like it had been rolled off an assembly line yesterday.
"Jacob," Case finally broke the silence, his voice barely audible over the rattling caps. "Mercenaries don't look like that. Not here. Not ever."
Jacob turned his head slowly, the green light of the Pip-Boy reflecting off his scarred features. "Well, they do. Always have been, kid. You just haven't been looking in the right shadows." He leaned back, the leather of his seat creaking. "Case, I'm not the only pre-war soul still kicking in the dirt. There are others. Some hid in vaults, some were lucky, and some... well, some were like Joker. I earned my Elite Riot Gear—the Integrated Assault Armor System, Mark IV—by ransacking Fort Benning, my old place."
Case pulled the jeep up to the Farmstead's peripheral fence, killing the lights. The engine ticked as it cooled, the only sound against the backdrop of the Mojave's nighttime hum.
"Fort Benning," Case repeated, the name tasting like history. "You ransacked an Army base?"
"I prefer reclaiming, kid."
He looked down at his own Pip-Boy, watching the status lights blink in rhythmic perfection. "And these... these are the keys to the kingdom. Joker didn't give us these because he's a 'thankless bastard.' He gave them to us because he's tagging us. We're his assets now, whether we signed the contract or not. It's a leash, kid. A very shiny, very expensive leash."
Case looked down at the MK IV. The interface was eerily smooth. He scrolled through the menus—vitals, inventory, and then he hit the Data Section. Unlike the static journals he was used to, this was a live feed. One entry was highlighted in amber.
Contract Update: Target Neutralized. Recovery of Asset "Aegis" Successful.
Bonus: Network access granted to "Ranger" and "Marksman." Welcome to the Net.
"He's already categorized us," Case muttered, a chill running down his spine.
"Whoever these boys are, they must have been from the government, pre-war. Could be US Army, could be Enclave, could be the Brotherhood... I don't know," Case muttered, his eyes locked on the sleek, black device on his wrist. It felt too clean, too functional for the wasteland.
Jacob finally hopped out of the jeep, his joints popping with a sound like dry branches breaking. "Better to be a unit with ten thousand caps and a satellite uplink than a corpse in the sand. Now, help me get the AMR under the floorboards before Amelia smells the cordite on us. That woman has a nose for trouble, and we're carrying enough of it to sink a vertibird."
The heavy container of caps thudded onto the rug as Case and Jacob hurried into the tent, the 14.5mm rifle still slung between them like a hunted beast. The air inside was thick with the scent of old canvas and gun oil, but the atmosphere shifted instantly when they saw the figure silhouetted by a small battery-powered lantern.
Amelia was sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs crossed, watching them with an expression that was far too calm for two men coming back from a high-stakes assassination.
"Well, well, well," Amelia said, her voice cutting through the tension. "It looks like I won the bet. Well done, Case."
Jacob almost jumped, his hand instinctively twitching toward the holster at his hip. "Woah—I thought privacy was still a thing around here."
"It is," Amelia replied with a faint, knowing smirk. "But Milla bet that Case wouldn't come out of that canyon alive. She didn't account for the fact that Jacob would be tagging along to play guardian angel."
Case rolled his eyes, exhaling a breath he didn't know he was holding. "That girl... she has a lot of faith in me, clearly."
"Case, if Jacob is like a father to you, then Milla is like a daughter to me," Amelia said, her tone softening but remaining serious. "She simply can't lie to me. I've known her ever since I found her near the 80s territory. She was worried, even if she won't admit it."
Amelia stood up from the bed, her shadow stretching long across the tent's canvas walls. She lingered for a moment, her eyes fixed on the emerald glow emanating from beneath Jacob's sleeve, but she didn't push for more details.
"Pip-Boy, huh? It looks like the hunting went well after all," Amelia added, a trace of something—perhaps envy, perhaps concern—flickering in her voice. She made her way toward the flap of the tent. "Enjoy the spoil. I'm just here to check in on you two. Have a good sleep; I'll see you in the morning."
With a quiet rustle of the tent flap, she was gone, leaving Case and Jacob alone with the heavy silence of the Mojave night and the rhythmic, low-frequency hum of the new technology on their wrists.
Case let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding since they pulled the trigger at HELIOS One. "That went better than I thought."
"Don't kid yourself," Jacob grunted, finally giving up the ghost of trying to hide the Pip-Boy. He sat down heavily on a wooden crate, his milky eyes staring at the sleek interface. "She's smart. She knows we didn't just find these in a footlocker. Still, she isn't angry with our decision—just wary."
"So… what's the split?" Case asked, looking at the heavy metal container of shimmering caps.
"We give 4,000 to the Rangers—consider it a 'donation' to keep the local command from asking why our farm is suddenly smelling like high-grade propellant," Jacob said, his voice dropping into a business-like drone. "I'll take 1,000 to cover the brass, the primers, and the pure headache of hand-loading those 14.5mm rounds. You take the rest. That leaves you with 6,000 caps, kid."
Case opened his mouth to protest the logic, but Jacob held up a weathered, scarred hand.
"I know, I know, you must be pissed. You pulled the trigger. But the last thing I want is for both of us to get ratted to Centcom for becoming bounty hunters. If the centcom thinks we're freelance killers, they'll tax us into the dirt or, worse, press-gang us out of service. 4,000 caps buys a lot of silence and a lot of 'official' protection for this farm."
Case looked at the pile of caps. Six thousand was still a small fortune—more than most wastelanders saw in a lifetime. It was enough to buy a high-end combat armor set, a decent stash of stimpaks, and still have enough left over to live like a king for a month.
It meant more ammo, and Case could afford more hardware that he needed to hunt down those Legionnaires at the other side of the river. Heck, maybe, just maybe, he could buy a mortar or a grenade machinegun to deal with those… red bastards.
"Get to sleep, kid, meet you tomorrow."