Jagged Steel Throne

Title: Jagged Steel Throne

Author: Saerzion

Games: Fallout 3

Characters: Female Lone Wanderer, Charon, Gary, Jericho, Clover, Female Courier.

Pairings: Female Lone Wanderer/Charon, Female Lone Wanderer/Gary.

Disclaimer: Bethesda owns the Fallout series.

Summary: Four years after abandoning the Capital to reign as master of the Pitt, a powerful and depraved Lone Wanderer returns for some unfinished business in the bowels of Vault 108, where the very first Gary clone may have information on her greatest threat: her own double. As a ruling force of the Wastes, she proclaims the other must die. Only one can exist; only one gets the throne.

x-x-x-x-x

Scourge of 108

The familiar sound of creaking metal and unlocking mechanisms grated on her nerves as the dilapidated door to Vault 108 groaned open. Four years after she'd left one of these subterranean hellholes for good, that particular noise still left a bitter taste in her mouth. Her numerous subordinates coughed at the dust and rust particles that flew into their faces, and she rolled her eyes from behind her biker goggles, silently daring any of them to complain after she had told them to wear respiratory protection. Adjusting the breathing mask over the lower half of her face, she led the way into the decrepit abyss.

"Lover, this is the first time I get to be with you after however many fucking years you've been gone," Clover whined from beside her, coughing after every few words. "It ain't no fun spending your first day back in this rundown old Vault."

"I already told you I'm only in the Capital to deal with a longstanding problem I just recently found out I had," she snapped, her sharp voice filtered through the breathing apparatus. "After it's taken care of, I'm heading right back to the Pitt."

"Yeah, back to your goddamn throne sitting on top of your industrial kingdom of slaves," Jericho drawled from Clover's other side as he removed a tattered handkerchief from over his nose. "Master of the Pitt, Queen of the Underworld. Ain't that right, Persephone? Some fancy titles you got there, but can't even remember the people who helped you along. 'Cept when you need us again. Like now."

She halted in her tracks so abruptly that her attending raiders almost bumped into her. Tightening her grip around the hilt of the Vampire's Edge sword secured at her waist, she pursed her lips and turned in a slow, methodical movement. The surroundings went quiet when she stepped toward him, cold eyes gleaming red as her cybernetic enhancements flared. Although Jericho stood his ground and fixed her with an equally vindictive expression, the slight waver in his gaze revealed his intimidation.

"And yet you still came running at my beck and call when I sent for you," Persephone declared, low and hard. Glancing at Clover's growing pout, she sneered. "Both of you did. Want to hold a grudge against me for leaving you like abandoned strays after that Project Purity shit was over? Fine. But be honest. You're here because as much as you might hate me, it's not enough. I gave you something when I plucked you from your meager existences and turned the Capital Wasteland upside down with you at my sides. Think I should be grateful for your help? You're the ones who should be thanking me. I gave you status. Thrill. Adventure. A purpose. I gave you life."

Her words echoed throughout the vast interior, and no one said anything to refute her statements. A muscled ticked in Jericho's jaw, but he merely scoffed and crossed his arms, glowering off to the side. She glared at both of her former companions in turn, sensing their discontent, but also their begrudging respect for her role in elevating their positions in the Wasteland hierarchy. Although they liked to deny it, she had brought them to power just as they had aided her to the top. Clover now controlled all slave trade in the Capital out of Paradise Falls, and Jericho now operated as the sole leader of Talon Company at Fort Bannister. All arrangements had been reciprocal.

The underlying issue, she believed, centered on envy more than anything.

And not toward her, either.

She switched her line of sight to the hulking, necrotic man awaiting her next order, the only companion she had kept by her side all these years. "Charon. Scout ahead to the living quarters. Use the map copy if you need to navigate around. Take out anything that moves until you regroup with us at the cloning lab."

He nodded once, not bothering to look at her as he drew his combat shotgun and went off alone.

She smiled derisively to herself. And there lies the irony of it all. He stands at the place coveted by the other two, but he's the one who despises me with every fiber of his being.

Satisfied with the tense silence, she signaled for the rest of the group to follow her.

The sounds of their footsteps reverberated throughout the hollow halls of the underground facility. They numbered six in total, but Persephone considered the nameless half expendable. She focused on the ominous task ahead of her, feeling the sweat gather inside her combat armor as she consulted her Pip-Boy. Pulling up the local map, she studied the layout information acquired from some long ago terminal hack at the Vault-Tec headquarters. She had overlooked this particular Vault during her initial reaping of the Capital, an unfortunate mistake on her part, for unbeknownst to her at the time, something inside required purging.

And if it hadn't been such a dire issue, she wouldn't have bothered seeing to it herself.

They made their way past a series of corroded reactors still zapping short electrical charges. The first signs of life came in the form of mole rats, which she skewered one by one with lazy prods of her sword. As they neared the cloning lab, she steeled herself for what resided within. Oh, she'd already read the leaked entries about the Vault's purpose and the creation of the psychotic Gary clones. She had observed the corpse of an amputated one at the Outcast outpost. Those clones offered the lesser threat.

The others, the ones created without consent, turned her belly into lead.

She spotted several discarded objects of Enclave property near the entrance to the lab. Her blood boiled at the large "E" symbol on the crates, and if she hadn't already ordered the eradication of their remnants across this region of the country, she would have done unspeakable horrors to all the personnel affiliated with this project.

"Can I just say somethin'? I don't understand why we're even here. What else could we have to worry about?" Clover piped up, scratching at her stomach through her worn leather vest. "We've kept everything all in order when you left us in charge, lover. We killed off the last of the Enclave earlier this year when you sent word. See, they're gone."

"They are, but their work isn't," Persephone replied as she wiped the perspiration from the shaved side of her head and opened the lab door. "You remember hearing about them knocking me out when I was in Vault 87 and dragging me to Raven Rock. Years after the fact, I learned they took something from me while I was there. This is where it ended up."

"I'm surprised you didn't just send your runners to tell us to come over here and get it back for you," Jericho remarked, still sounding sore.

Persephone grabbed her plasma rifle from over her shoulder and proceeded forward. "It's not something to take back. It's something to destroy. And I need to make sure of it."

She sensed the questions hitting her from behind, but chose to ignore them. The answer would come soon enough.

They progressed down several flights of stairs, using the limited light sources to guide themselves. Fewer fluorescent bulbs still worked the deeper they descended, flickering over the decaying surfaces as they passed. Persephone glimpsed several old bloodstains on the walls, her boots crunching over the glass of broken test tubes. Even through her breathing mask, she smelled something foul; something either dead and decomposing or still alive and rotting.

In the distance, she heard the familiar blast of Charon's shotgun. Once, twice, three times in quick succession. She wondered what he had run into. Before she could mull over it, a figure rounded the corner and darted toward her.

"Gary!"

Caught by surprise, Persephone took a heavy knife slash to her left cheekbone. She swore at the assailant, firing her plasma rifle twice into its chest. It gurgled and crumpled into a heap at once, the combat knife clattering to the floor several feet away.

"Christ, what the fuck!" Jericho yelled as the raiders echoed with similar expletives. "People are still living down here?"

Persephone reached up and pressed her fingers to the new burning gash on her face, feeling the adamantium bone beneath the exposed tissue. "Goddamn. I don't know how I didn't detect it."

Clover bent down over the clone, reading the designated number on the right shoulder of its jumpsuit. "'Gary 43'?"

"That means it's the forty-third clone out of more than fifty, if my sources are correct," Persephone said, injecting a stimpak directly into her cheek below the bleeding wound. "Get used to it. I don't know how many are still in here since they scattered over the past two hundred years, but they're all insane, hostile, and dumb as shit. They won't be that much of an issue if my fucking Pip-Boy would actually pick them up on the radar."

"But they're not what we're here for, right?" Jericho asked, giving the clone's leg a hard kick. "Why're you keeping us in the dark?"

She tossed the empty syringe aside and frowned down at Gary 43's frozen expression of rage. Because trust is a very expensive commodity these days.

Instead of responding out loud, she motioned for them to continue on, her harsh scowl leaving no room for argument.

They ran into at least a dozen more Gary clones, each one only able to scream its own name. The gunfire drew one after another until a pile of dismembered body parts lay on the ground below the last set of stairs. Clover wiped her bloody sledgehammer on her skirt as Jericho performed quick repairs on his hunting rifle. Persephone glanced at her three Pitt raiders, two shooting themselves up with Med-X while the third lay dead. As far as casualties went, not bad at all.

Stepping over several Gary heads and pools of blood, she grimaced at the increasingly putrid stench, which now permeated the air. The others made gagging noises as they trailed after her, and one raider paused to vomit in a corner. She cranked up the filtration in her mask, but it did little to spare her from the odor. Once she reached the bottom of the stairs, a look at her Pip-Boy map told her they had entered the heart of the facility.

A wide corridor loomed in front of them, illuminated in the center by one remaining fluorescent light. The stillness raised her caution, as the atmosphere felt off, eerie. She surveyed the dark observation rooms on either side of the hallway, shining her flashlight through the glass, but seeing nothing inside. Her footfalls became soundless as she inched forward, fingers tight around the stock and barrel of her weapon as she listened.

This doesn't feel right. Something's here. And it's coming.

Persephone squinted at the brush of movement up ahead. She raised her arm to stop the group behind her. A dragging sound reached their ears, alternating with loud, raspy breathing. As she readied her plasma rifle, a figure came into view from the other end of the corridor. It limped toward them at a slow pace, irregularly shaped and shuddering the whole way. She made out a lumpy mass for a body, the spine curved to a horrendous form of scoliosis, and four deformed limbs jutting out from the torso. Some sort of dirty white fabric had been draped over it as a garment, and she concentrated on its face, waiting for it to enter the shine of the light.

And when it did, she experienced something akin to terror for the first time in many years.

The head appeared fixed in an angled position, the face bloated beyond recognition and covered in pustules. One eye was missing, but the other sported an iris the same shade of green hers had been before her body modifications. Although its hair hung in missing patches, it matched the chestnut color of her long braid. And when it opened its twisted mouth, it spoke with her voice.

"PROOOOSSSSSEEEERRRPIIIIINNNAAAAA!"

Persephone jolted when it broke into an unexpected run, its entire form half-hobbling half-leaping as it reached out for her. A barrage of microfusion cells blasted from her plasma rifle, hitting various points of its front and turning chunks of flesh into green goo. It collapsed flat on its face before it came within ten feet of her, but she had to disguise the tremor in her hands, as the reality of its existence chilled her to the bone.

"What. The fuck. Is that thing?" Jericho demanded, sounding as uneasy as she secretly felt.

Clover's hand grasped onto her arm. "I-I don't want to be here anymore. I'd rather go up against feral ghouls and deathclaws."

Persephone shook her off and forced herself to approach the corpse. The rancid smell emanated from it in waves, made worse by the discolored bodily fluids leaking out of its orifices. She circled it and leaned closer when she noticed some written black text on the back of its garment, realizing it was a label that served the same purpose as the ones on the Gary clones' jumpsuits.

Persephone 13.

She straightened and reloaded her weapon in an effort to bring her vitals back down to normal. "The Enclave created twenty-eight total, so there are twenty-seven more of these things lurking around in here. I'm going to keep count on my Pip-Boy. We need to kill every last one."

"But what are they?" Clover inquired, standing a bit behind Jericho as she shot a look of revulsion at the dead creature.

Persephone gave it one last grim stare before turning toward the far end of the corridor, where the rest of Vault 108 finally stirred to life. "Me."

She led the charge through every section of the cloning lab, encountering more Garys in addition to the varying results of her scientifically mutated DNA. Her clones ranged from other hideous monsters to more human-looking replicas. Every single one unnerved her, as she had to meet her own eyes every time she put one down. Some were more hostile than others, and, in a surprising development, it seemed the Gary clones had left them alone all these years. Had Persephone not been in the midst of searing blood rage at that moment, she might have stepped back to study their dynamics.

As she grew accustomed to shooting down the abominations, she searched for other signs of Enclave occupation throughout the lab. No other Enclave-labeled equipment lay in sight anywhere in this wing, and she frowned when exiting the fifth room, tucking away that detail for future contemplation. Her group members had worked themselves into a frenzy, obliterating everything that came at them. Clover had gone over the edge at some point, mowing down every clone in her vicinity in an attempt to speed up the job so they could leave sooner. Another raider had perished somewhere back in the second observation room, but Persephone spared him little thought. She checked her Pip-Boy tally and saw that only eight of her clones remained, not counting any Charon may have wiped out in the living quarters.

Breaths heaving, she and her companions took a short break in the middle of an adjacent corridor that wrapped around to the central lab area. She wiped the blood and sweat from her forehead as the others administered stimpaks to themselves. When one of the connecting doors slid open, they all swung their weapons in its direction, but the individual that emerged stayed their hands.

"Charon," Persephone called out, lowering her plasma rifle and noting the dark stains on his leather armor. "How many?"

He stationed himself a few paces from her. "Five of the male clones. Six of yours."

"Hold up, so he gets to know the details but we don't?" Jericho growled.

"It's why I sent him alone. We'd cover ground faster this way," Persephone answered as she shifted her mask and produced a Jet inhaler from her pack. "Anyway, he was there when I found out about this in the first place."

"Sugar, you really should let us know when you're bringing us along to kill off your doppelgangers from hell," Clover told her, picking out guts from her short tuft of blonde hair. "I ain't never seen anything like those things."

A crack splintered the air as Persephone crushed the inhaler to dust in her palm. "I didn't reveal what they were because I don't need this shit spreading around. I had to wait until only the three of you—oh, you're still alive?" she snarled at the last Pitt raider. He jumped when she pointed her weapon at him. "We've cleared out most of the place, so you're no longer needed."

Before he could even get a word out, he disintegrated into a pile of glowing goo.

"…Was that necessary?" Charon muttered.

Persephone glared at him briefly and brandished the plasma rifle. "As I was saying. I had to wait until the witnesses were down to you three. If, after we're done here, one of you breathes a word of what you've seen, I will find out and I will kill you. No one outside this group can know. That is an order."

The expressions around her varied from puzzled to vexed to indifferent. She expected as much, but she'd done what was necessary. Now only two clones served as threats, and in the next few minutes, the problem would be resolved. She replaced her breathing mask and gestured to the last room: the central lab.

"Let's finish this."

She crept to the door, pushing the button to open it. When nothing reacted to her intrusion, she shined her flashlight ahead, roving it over the abandoned research desks and terminals. The large space housed three times as many supplies and equipment as the other rooms, but again, no signs of any Enclave property.

Persephone ventured inside and peered around, her brow furrowing. The smell of rot from the corridors was noticeably absent in here. She lowered her mask again and whispered to the others to spread out, wondering if the clones had even heard them yet. A pair of overturned desks lay near a wall to the far left, and she opted to investigate them when a faint indicator on her Pip-Boy interface blinked toward that section. As she approached, the indicator grew larger. Her mouth lifted into a smirk when she reached the first desk, which overlapped with the second to create a small crevice. Seizing one of its upturned legs, she yanked it out of the way and aimed her plasma rifle at the figure nestled against the wall.

However, a split second later, she froze.

The pale figure uncurled from the ball it had been positioned in, casting wide green eyes up at her. High cheekbones and a slender jaw defined its face, shapely pink lips forming an "O" of surprise. Long waves of chestnut brown hair fell over its shoulders. It wore a grimy patient gown, and when it straightened to sit on its haunches, its skinny frame showed no spinal deformation. Both hands bent in odd angles, and it kept its arms close to its chest in some sort of defensive pose, but the rest of it appeared anatomically correct.

Persephone blanched. An almost-perfect clone. It looked exactly like her before she'd augmented herself with cybernetics, but with an odd sort of innocence she had never possessed.

Holy fuck.

"Proserpina?" it inquired in her voice, sounding curious. "Proserpina?"

Persephone's teeth clenched. Not only was it clearly more advanced than the other clones, it proved to be the only civilized one. This is exactly what I was worried about. It has the ability to function and learn. It's intelligent.

"Proserpina?"

…Although not smart enough to say my name right. Did the Enclave program all the clones to do that on purpose?

Her finger began to squeeze the trigger of the plasma rifle, aiming straight for the clone's heart. "It's 'Persephone,' you replicated bitch."

"GARY!"

Something heavy smashed into the side of her head, sending her staggering to the right as her weapon flew out of her hands. She crashed into a metal table and growled out a stream of profanity when she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Snapping her furious gaze to the source of the assault, she witnessed a Gary clone grabbing the desk she had moved and pushing it back so that the figure on the floor disappeared from view. He then spun around to face her, teeth bared and stance aggressive, drawing a 10mm pistol as he stood between them. She hesitated when he refrained from attacking her, taking in the way he merely hovered there, blocking, guarding…

And then comprehension hit.

He had hidden her clone. He was protecting it.

A bullet grazed his right arm and ricocheted off the surface of the desk. Enraged, he opened fire on her companions, who advanced on him from the other side of the room.

"Wait!" Persephone cried, shoving off from the table.

She tackled the Gary clone to the ground before one of the shots managed to kill him. Using the weight of her adamantium bones to her advantage, she pinned him down and snatched the pistol from his grip to toss it behind her. He thrashed around and bellowed his own name over and over as her companions skidded to a halt a few feet away. She tapped into her synthetic strength and drove her boot into one of his legs, breaking the fibula. His howl of pain filled the entire space as she quickly tore off her breathing mask and used its strap to tie his wrists together behind his back. During the struggle, she had spotted the numeral designation on his right shoulder.

Gary 1. The first Gary clone.

Jericho waved the barrel of his rifle at him. "What're you doing with that one?"

Breathing hard from the exertion, Persephone hauled Gary 1 to his feet, supporting his weight when he nearly collapsed again. "Let me show you something interesting. Charon, push those desks apart."

The ghoul did as told, sliding both pieces of furniture to opposite sides of the floor. He tensed when he discovered what lay beneath, backing away slowly so the rest of them could see. Clover gasped as the clone peered up at all of them, and Jericho murmured an oath when it flinched from the beam of Persephone's flashlight.

"She… looks just like you," Charon commented, unable to take his eyes away from it.

Persephone bristled, shaking Gary 1 when he tried to move toward her clone. "It is the closest in resemblance compared to those other monstrosities, but it's leagues away from an exact copy."

"Proserpina," the clone mewed when it glimpsed Gary 1.

He made a shrill noise and tugged at his restraints, but Persephone held on tight with her free hand as she continued pointing the flashlight straight ahead.

"The Gary clones were supposedly hostile and murderous toward everything except each other, but they allowed my clones to live amongst them," she stated, licking away the blood on her lower lip. "From what we saw out there, both sets of clones ignored each other and kept to themselves. No sense of community or cohesion, though I don't know how the Garys could stand the smell of the most mutated ones."

Her clone began to crawl toward them, seemingly mild-mannered and inquisitive. Its malformed hands slipped on the floor a few times, but it progressed toward Gary 1, the look in its gaze almost sweet. Charon twitched in the slightest, as if about to step closer to it.

Persephone did not miss the movement. A malicious grin spread over her mouth. "Charon. Shoot it."

In a rare moment of unguarded emotion, he whirled on her in shock. "What?"

"You heard me," she said, knowing very well he couldn't defy her. "This particular Gary clone seems to behave differently than the others. He was actively protecting this clone. He went through the trouble of keeping it hidden and even defended it when I was about to fire. It's obvious there's something special about this one. I want to see what happens when he has to watch it die."

Charon actually stayed paralyzed for a good thirty seconds, his countenance dark as he regarded her.

"That's a little cold, lover," Clover remarked, studying the clone. "She's kind of cute, to be honest. You sure I can't have her to keep me warm while you're far away at the Pitt?"

"I say waste her," Jericho chimed in. "That thing might be trouble if we let it live. We came here to do a job, so let's get on with it."

"Precisely," Persephone agreed, narrowed eyes still fixed on Charon. "Well?"

A flash of animosity hardened his features for a brief second, but he pumped his shotgun once and aimed it at the clone.

Gary 1 stiffened, glancing back and forth between the firearm and the figure crawling on the floor. "Gary?"

The shotgun erupted at almost point-blank range, spattering skull and matter as her clone's entire head exploded.

Gary let out an ear-piercing scream, a terrible sound of anguish that cut all the way to Persephone's core. She reared back a fist and delivered a blow to his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. As he doubled over, coughing, she snickered at the ridiculous love story that had been at work there. Two artificial beings overcoming their own cognitive limitations to form a mockery of human bonds. It was so heartwarmingly beautiful, she thought she might throw up.

More than a bit smug, she gazed down at the headless carcass and read the label on its back.

Persephone 27.

"All right, so that leaves just one of my clones to take care of," she announced, reaching for her sword to kill the bereaving Gary 1.

"But… there ain't no one else here, sugar," Clover informed her. "We did a thorough check of the place. Everything else is already dead."

Persephone went very still. "No. I've kept track. There's one missing. We have to find it."

Jericho groaned. "You're not gonna make us backtrack through the whole damn Vault, are you?"

She wrapped her fingers around Gary 1's forearms and squeezed hard, her eyes glowing crimson red. "Every level. Every fucking nook and cranny. I'm going to stay here and triple check the record. Don't come back until you've searched every inch of this Vault. So get going. Now!"

Clover rushed out the door on the east side while Jericho grumbled to himself and stomped after her. Charon, stony and silent, secured his shotgun at his back and filed out through the west side. Persephone shoved the still-mourning and crippled Gary 1 to the floor, allowing him to drag himself to Persephone 27's remains. She activated her Pip-Boy's records and glowered at the accurate number of clone kills. The last one had to be here somewhere. And she had confirmed at least a dozen times that the Enclave created exactly twenty-eight clones before abandoning the project.

Unfortunately, several minutes later, all three companions returned to report that no other living thing remained in the Vault.

"Goddammit. Where could it have gone?" she seethed, drawing her sword. Prodding Gary 1 with it, she barked, "Tell me where it is."

He paid her no heed at first, but she bent down and grabbed a fistful of his jumpsuit to pull him back to his feet.

"You're obviously not as far gone as all your psychotic brethren," she snarled, trying to get him to look at her. "And you're the only one who would know. Where is Persephone 28?"

"Gary," he choked out, still trying to peer at the corpse.

"He's got nothing," Jericho said and brought the tip of his barrel to Gary 1's temple. "Let me get rid of him, and we can head back to your place to regroup and figure this out."

Persephone had half a mind to agree, but then Gary 1 finally turned and caught sight of her face in the beam of the flashlight. She paused when he did, vague recognition and calculation churning in his dark eyes. He looked from her to Persephone 27, and back again. The grief evaporated from his expression as he stared at her, seeming to make some sort of connection in his head.

An idea struck her. "Hang on. He looks like he has the ability to rationalize. To a point, anyway," she declared when he blinked at her stupidly. "He isn't hostile to me because I have the same face as his little girlfriend over there. I'm going to bring him back to Underworld and try to get answers."

Charon's entire spine went rigid.

Clover shifted her weight and placed a hand on her hip. "Honey, he ain't the brightest bulb in the Wastes, and he's got more than a few screws loose. You think you can get him to tell you anything besides his name?"

"I don't know, but I'm taking any lead I can get to track down the final clone. The last thing I need is my double running around the Wasteland, trying to usurp me. We can't have that," Persephone hissed, spinning the confused Gary 1 around to begin marching him out. "There's only one person whose ass can sit on my jagged steel throne, and that bitch is me."