Where was I? Yes, just before entering the Silo. The place was going to hell. Explosions shaking me up, tunnelers crawling around... Then I realised I had to ride an elevator that went right through the explosions and flames. Not only that, fucking tunnelers kept falling of the ceileing to eat me up!
Once in the Silo itself I saw how much the launch had fucked it up inside. It was all burned up and the place was hot and some of the metal pieces melting. There was also this fucking alarm buzzer always beeping, Jesus.
The only way we had to proceed was through some tunnel, directly beneath the Missile Silo. The tunnel led to an office building, collapsed all the way there, underground. I fought my way up the building against some tunnelers. When those motherfuckers grouped up they really were deadly...
When I got to the roof the Courier talked to me again. He told me to look at the landscape. The Divide itself. A big crack on the ground. Said it was my doing. My mark on Earth. He said I once delivered a package that bared the markings of the military base, for the NCR. I remember that package, always did. I remember all my works for the NCR, I only did them because I had to make a living. To survive. He told me he followed me from the moment I accpeted that job, knowing it was a detonator he had never seen before. Then, after I left it at the Divide, as ordered, that detonator made most of the nuclear missiles beneath the ground, inside their Silos, go off. He was the sole survivor of the blast. He and the machines, the AI that keeps the security bots online and that created, on its own, a system to replicate ED-E from the distance. So that's what happened to the Divide. Maybe I shouldn't think of it this way, but I did make it happen, in a way. If not for me, the Divide would still be a living, on-going community. If only I didn't deliver that package for the NCR...
I pulled myself together, had to. I told him it wasn't my fault, there was no way I could've known. He told me I carry death wherever I go. I don't know if he meant you and... her... but if he did, then for how long as he been following me? One thing for sure, he meant The Divide. He hated me for delivering that package. I could feel it. It all built up to this. An elaborate plan to get the person he hates the most brought to his feet. He told me that if the Mojave didn't know yet that I only carried death, it would soon. A proof of that was the nuclear warhead I sent to the other side of the Divide, yesterday. But fuck I didn't even know it would launch. Sure I wasn't sad for it, but can you blame me? This place is a hell hole filled with strange-always-spreading-underground creatures, deathclaws and men that don't have skin and should have died a long time ago. Jesus.
He told me my curiosity was the death of everything. My choices, led by that curiosity. The choice to deliver those packages; the detonator, the Platinum Chip and even that nuclear missile, yesterday. And also the choice to answer his... Invitation to the Divide. Curiosity. Told me I'd know then the why of it. But I stopped him and asked him his "why of it". Why was he doing all that. He said he wanted my answer for what had happened to the Divide. I guess "it was an accident" wouldn't cut it, but he told me that ignorance was a choice and that the anger he carried against me was the anger of the dead. Of History. That's why he's obsessed with the Old World flag symbols. He believed the Divide was a mark of Pre-War America. The Old World lived in it and he lives for the Old World. He lived for hope that the Old World would bring something better for America. Not the Bull that he worked for, not the Bear that he so well understood, but the Old World, who had much to teach. And I ended that. I crushed his hope. And he hates me for it.
Even worst, he saw it happen. He survived it. He lives with it every day.
He told me that he learned from me the message he had to carry. Death. The Divide. He knew the Bear was deceased, clinging to life. He knew the Bull was unstable, once that they had much more territories they'd turn on themselves. So the message he knew he had to send was fire. First to the West, giving it the same fate as the Divide. Then, if needed, the East, letting it burn and scar the Earth, too. He wanted to nuke both the NCR and the Legion. I... dwelled on that. Still am dwelling on it.
Then I saw him, as I went down the building. Shit, I had chills all over, overwhelmed by fear. I don't remember ever feeling like this since you died and I was left alone. Not even when facing death in the face, against Benny, tied up in the cemitery. The thought of those unkown eyes, watching me, my movements...
God.
Love you,
Bill
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