"Seems about right. Look at the blood trail leading to the door, there are footprints all in it from the Nightkin following." Boone said pointing out that little detail.
He was right too as bloody footprints of extremely large size pointed towards the Nightkin going in after whoever was bleeding.
"The problem is that there are too many Nightkin and yet no attack on Novac. It's almost as if they were fully focused on this place in particular and not just wandering randomly." I pointed out.
Boone frowned "Now that you mention it that is strange. Most wandering packs of mutants raid any towns they find yet this one went right by Novac without anyone knowing. What makes this place so special?" he said clearly deeply suspicious.
"Only one way to find out, into the breach dear friends. Once more." I said with a chuckle as I led the way.
Thanks to the robed ghoul corpses we all had overclocked plasma rifles that would let us kill any lingering enemies we might find as I pushed open the rusted metal and plastic double doors.
"Hey you there. Go to the big room on the east side of this building and take the metal staircase all the way up. And hurry." a gravely male voice spoke as we entered entryway.
I looked and saw it was coming from an inbuilt speaker on the left hand wall near the large reception desk.
"Who's speaking?" I asked warily.
"Chris. Now get moving." The voice said over the intercom.
"Rude." I huffed.
"I heard that." Chris said.
"I meant it. No pleasantries at all, just straight to do what I say. Fucking rude." I say.
""HEEERRRRRAAAAHHH!""
A chorus of raspy voices roar from the second floor and behind doors on this.
"Argue later! We've got company!" Boone said firmly right as the first of the feral pushed open the door behind the desk to it's right and came scrambling out.
I raised my rifle from it's downward pointed resting position and vaporized the thing. Like always though it was never just ONE feral ghoul. They came out of the woodwork and the air smelled of burnt flesh and ozone and our plasma rifles mowed them down.
"I think we got them all." Jess said and I slapped the front of my face plate with a loud "CLANG!".
"You don't fucking say shit like that! Now there's definitely going to be more." I chided seriously.
"That's nonsense, superstition at best." She said disagreeing with me.
"I'm with him, it always ends badly." Boone said seriously.
"Oh come on! I thought you were supposed to be the reasonable one?" she complained.
"He is, this ISN'T just superstition. Time has proven that if you say those words after a fight there is ALWAYS more enemies lurking about. He served in the NCR military so he's probably seen it in action more than once." I said seriously and Boone nodded gravely.
"Well I don't believe it." she huffed firmly before storming off through he door the first of the ferals came through.
I exchanged a glance with Boone before holding up three fingers and starting to lower them.
"BZUUU!"
"HEEEERRAAAAH!"
I barely got my second finger down before the distinct sound of a plasma rifle firing followed by the roaring of at least three ferals came from that way.
"Every time." I heard Boone mutter as he shook his head and move to reinforce Jess.
When we reached Jess she just gave us a scathing glare and said "Not a word".
I laughed.
Even Boone for all his composure let out a low chuckle that could almost be mistaken for an auditory hallucination. We ignored the urging of Chris over the buildings intercom system and fully cleared out the offices and looted the place of the smaller valuables like ammo, chems and the energy weapons the robed ghoul corpses all had for some reason. I had to show my two companions my newest magic trick of making everything disappear into my inventory to loot it all though.
"Is this some sort of weird function of your suit? Like a spatial pocket or some other crazy thing?" Jess asked as she looked all around and failed to find the loot that vanished.
"I did toy with the idea but could never figure out how to manipulate the subatomic particles correctly." Adam chimed in.
"YOU made the suit!?" She exclaimed in shock.
"And all four hundred and ten prior iterations yes." Adam said proudly.
"Are you one of those super geniuses you hear about? the ones that make the hard science look like childs play." Boone asked interested.
"Negative. I am the artificial creative intelligence. Designation ADAM." Adam said casually.
"An A.I, that explains a lot." Boone said with a look of someone who finally solved a huge mystery.
"You must have been made before the war right? What was it like?" Jess asked curiously.
"I do not know. When I first gained awareness I had already been within the isolated environment of the vault. My database was empty of many things not relevant to my directives and the living conditions of the world were not covered beyond a few noteworthy historical snippets." Adam said as we reached the loading bay room at the eastern side of the building that had both the stairs we were after and another six ferals.
"I've heard about those vaults. Most of them were experiments conducted by Vault-tec." Boone said but the unspoken question was obvious.
"My vault was indeed an experimental one though the exact parameters are unclear. Alex believes the purpose may have been to see how a group of discriminatory people would react to an artificial intelligence. It did not end well." Adam said quietly.
"Hey, it's alright buddy. You were only protecting yourself." I said trying to cheer the A.I up.
"You killed them all." Boone said calmly as he put the pieces together.
"Yes. They thought I was an abomination and tried to terminate me, I removed their threat to me." Adam said without hiding it.
"Was there no other way?" Jess asked conflicted about this revelation.
"The vault door was programmed only to open from the outside. My deductions concluded that they'd have a ninety four percent chance of continuously attempting to terminate me if I imprisoned them instead of terminating them. The only other option was hoping someone would open the vault door coincidentally." Adam said and we all got quiet at the heavy choice the A.I had to make.