Chapter 1: Blood and Bandages
The rain had finally stopped, leaving the Commonwealth air thick with the smell of wet rust and decay. Drake shoved the heavy door of the Red Rocket with his shoulder, the motion sending a fresh spike of agony through his side. He stumbled into the dim space, his boot catching on a loose floor tile. He righted himself, breathing hard, one hand pressed against the soaked leather of his coat.
The place was a makeshift clinic, chaos organized into stacks. Boxes of scavenged supplies lined the walls, and the flickering remnant of the rocket-shaped sign outside cast a sickly red glow over everything. The hum of a broken fridge filled the silent gaps.
He wasn’t alone.
On a stained mattress in the center of the room, a young settler was laid out, his face pale and sweaty. A woman was bent over him, her back to Drake. Her hands moved with a swift, confident economy—cutting away fabric, cleaning a jagged wound on the boy’s leg with a clear liquid that made him hiss.
“Almost done, Eli. Just breathe through it. You’re doing great.”
Her voice was calm, a low steady rhythm in the ragged space. It was the kind of voice that could talk a man down from a ledge or stitch him back together. Probably had done both.
Drake leaned against the doorframe, the world tilting slightly. The blood was warm where it seeped through his fingers. He’d taken a nasty blade slash during the ambush, a parting gift from a raider who’d gotten too close before Drake’s combat knife found his throat.
The woman—Mandy, he’d heard her name from a trader—finished tying off a bandage and patted Eli’s shoulder. “Don’t put weight on it for a week. Try. I know you won’t.” She helped the boy sit up, her movements strong and sure.
Then she turned, and her eyes found Drake in the shadows.
For a second, they just looked at each other. He saw her take him in: the mud, the blood, the way he held himself rigid against the pain. Her eyes were a clear, direct brown. She had a smudge of dirt on one cheekbone, and her dark hair was tied back in a messy knot. She wasn’t pretty in a soft way; she was real, etched by the same sun and worry that marked everyone.
“You’re blocking the light,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. No fear, no dramatic gasp. Just an observation.
Drake grunted and pushed off the frame, taking a few heavy steps inside. The tile floor was sticky under his boots. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your party.”
“It was just getting good.” She stood, wiping her hands on a rag. “You’re bleeding on my floor.”
“It’s seen worse.”
“Probably.” She walked toward him, her gaze clinical, assessing. “Let’s see it.”
“I’m fine. Just need to patch it myself.” He started to shrug his good shoulder out of his coat, but the motion pulled at the wound and he stiffened, a sharp breath escaping his teeth.
Mandy didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped close, into his space. He caught the scent of soap and something herbal, cutting through the coppery smell of his own blood. Her fingers were surprisingly gentle as she pushed the coarse leather of his coat aside. The touch was so unexpected, so devoid of the usual violence of contact, that he froze.
“Raider blade?” she asked, peeling back the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt. Her brow furrowed.
“Mirelurk claw.”
“Liar. The cut’s too clean.” She looked up at him, a faint challenge in her eyes. “Sit down before you fall down, Sergeant.”
He didn’t ask how she knew his rank. News traveled. He reluctantly lowered himself onto an overturned crate, the wood groaning under his weight. The adrenaline was draining away, leaving a deep, throbbing ache in its wake. He watched as she gathered supplies—a clean cloth, a bottle of purified water, a needle and thread.
“This’ll hurt,” she said, damping the cloth.
“Everything does.”
She began cleaning the gash, her touch firm and precise. The water was cold. He stared at a patch of crumbling concrete on the wall, focusing on its shape, trying to distance himself from the sting. Her head was bent close to his side, her concentration complete. He saw the faded freckles across the bridge of her nose.
“You always this chatty with your patients?” she asked without looking up.
“I don’t usually have patients. I have enemies. They tend to be less talkative.”
“I bet.” She switched to a bottle of stronger antiseptic. The burn was instant and fierce. His jaw clenched. “So you’re the Minuteman they sent to clear out the raider camp near County Crossing.”
“Was.”
“Was?”
“They’re cleared.” His voice was flat. “We lost two. A rookie and a good man named Fields.” The words tasted like ash. Fields had a wife. A baby on the way.
Mandy’s hands paused for a fraction of a second. Then she continued, her movements, if possible, even more careful. “I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t change it.” The old bitterness rose, familiar and tired.
“No. It doesn’t.” She picked up the needle, holding it in the flickering light to thread it. “But saying it isn’t for you. It’s for me. So I remember not every soldier is just a statistic walking through that door.”
He had no answer for that. He just watched as she began to suture the wound. Her hands were steady, each pinch and pull deliberate. She was good. Really good.
“You trained as a doctor?” he asked, the question rough.
“Scavenger. You learn what you have to. How to put things back together.” She tied off a stitch. “People aren’t so different from broken machinery. Just messier on the inside.”
A faint, dry sound escaped him. It might have been a laugh. “Philosophical.”
“Practical.” She snipped the thread. “There. It’s deep, but it’s clean. Don’t do any heavy lifting for a few days. Try to keep it dry.” She began applying a final bandage, her fingers smoothing the tape against his skin.
Her touch lingered for a moment, warm against the chill of his side. Then she leaned back, looking at her work, then up at his face. Her smile was sudden, a small, bright thing that reached her eyes and made them crinkle at the corners. It was like someone had lit a candle in the gloom of the station.
“See? That wasn’t so bad.”
Something in his chest, something hardened and locked down tight, gave a faint, rusty crack. He looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “What do I owe you?”
“A promise that you’ll actually rest. And maybe next time you’re passing through, you’ll bring some extra antibiotics. We’re running low.”
“That’s it?”
“I don’t deal in caps for blood. Not that kind.” She stood, gathering the soiled cloths. “You can bunk here tonight. It’s not safe out there in the dark, especially not with that fresh stitch job.”
He should refuse. He had a report to file, duties waiting. But the weight of the day, of the loss, pressed down on him all at once. The thought of stepping back out into the hungry darkness was profoundly unappealing. The crate he sat on felt like the most stable thing in the world.
“Just for a few hours,” he muttered.
“Sure.” She turned to wash her hands in a basin. “Just for a few hours.”
Outside, a feral ghoul shrieked in the distance. The broken fridge hummed its constant, broken tune. In the red, failing light, Drake finally let his head rest back against the cold wall, his eyes on the steady, capable shape of the woman cleaning up the aftermath. For the first time that day, the silence didn’t feel entirely empty.
For the first time that day, the silence didn’t feel entirely empty. It was just quiet. The settler boy, Eli, had drifted into a fitful sleep on the mattress, leaving Drake and Mandy in the red-tinted gloom. She moved around the space, putting instruments in a pot of boiling water on a hotplate, wiping down surfaces. The routine of it was strangely peaceful.
Drake watched her from his crate. The pain in his side had settled into a dull, manageable throb. He should be planning his route back to the Castle, should be mentally drafting his report. Instead, he found himself tracing the line of a faint, pale scar that peeked out from the collar of Mandy’s shirt, trailing down toward her shoulder blade. A old burn, maybe. Or a laser graze.
“See something you like, Sergeant?” she asked without turning, her voice cutting through his thoughts. She was scrubbing a metal basin.
“Just wondering how you got the scar,” he said, his own voice gravelly from disuse.
She paused, then shrugged, the fabric of her shirt shifting. “Supply raid gone wrong. A year ago. Supermutant had a flamer. I got the medicine. He got a piece of me.” She finally turned, leaning against the counter. “Fair trade.”
“You call that a fair trade?”
“The medicine saved a kid with radiation poisoning. So yeah. I do.” She crossed her arms. “What about yours? The one on your jaw. That’s not from a mirelurk.”
His hand went to the raised, shiny line that cut from his ear to his chin. He’d forgotten it was there most days. “Raider boss. Back when I was greener. He was trying to make a point about territory. I made a counterpoint with my kneecap.”
A small, genuine smile touched her lips. “Violent diplomacy.”
“The only kind some people understand.”
She nodded, looking down at her hands. The quiet stretched again, but it was different now. It had questions in it.
“You from here originally?” she asked, pushing off the counter and pulling another crate over to sit facing him. The distance between them was just a few feet.
“No. North. Near the old Quabbin Reservoir. My family had a small settlement. Sturdy walls. Good land.”
“Had?”
He was quiet for a long moment. The hum of the fridge seemed to grow louder. “Gunners. Wanted our water purifier. We said no.” He cleared his throat, the memory a cold stone in his gut. “They didn’t ask twice.”
“I’m sorry,” Mandy whispered, and this time the words felt different. They hung in the air, acknowledging the specific, not the general.
“What about you?” he asked, wanting to steer away from his own past. “You didn’t learn all this in a vault.”
She gave a short, breathy laugh. “God, no. I’m Commonwealth barnyard born and bred. My mom was the closest thing to a doctor for three settlements. She taught me what she knew from an old pre-war medical guide. I learned the rest by doing.” She picked at a thread on her pants. “She got sick when I was sixteen. Something we couldn’t identify, couldn’t cure. I sat with her and read that damn guide cover to cover ten times. Didn’t matter.”
The raw admission landed between them. Drake understood that kind of helplessness. It was the cousin to the guilt he carried.
“So you stay here,” he said. “Patching up everyone else.”
“Someone has to. The Minutemen can’t be everywhere.” She met his eyes, a challenge back in her gaze. “No offense.”
“None taken. We can’t.” He adjusted his sitting position, wincing. “We try. We fail a lot.”
“But you keep putting on the hat.”
“What else is there?”
Mandy looked at him, really looked, and he felt strangely seen. Not as a symbol, not as a weapon, but as a tired man on a crate. “You could stop. No one would blame you.”
“I would.” The answer came out faster, harder than he intended. He softened his tone. “Fields… he believed in it. The idea. That we could be something better than just gangs with different flags. Someone’s got to carry that. Even if it’s just to the next damn firefight.”
She was silent for a beat, then stood up. “You’re a terrible patient, but you’re not a terrible person, Drake.” She walked to the hotplate and poured a thin, steaming liquid into two chipped mugs. “Here. It’s not coffee. It’s boiled root and a little mutfruit. Tastes like dirty socks, but it’s warm.”
He took the offered mug. Their fingers brushed. Her hands were warm. “My favorite flavor.”
They drank in silence for a few minutes. The brew was bitter and earthy, but it spread a heat through his chest.
“The worst one,” Mandy said suddenly, her voice soft. “The one that almost broke me. It was a trader, just a guy. His brahmin got spooked by a radscorpion, crushed his leg against a wall. The bone… it was outside his skin. He was conscious the whole time. I had to set it, right there on the road with his companions holding him down.” She took a shaky sip. “He screamed my name the whole time. Not for help. Just screaming it. Like I was causing it.”
Drake didn’t offer empty comfort. He just listened.
“He walks with a limp now,” she said, a note of defiant pride returning. “Still runs his route. Brings me extra sugar every time he passes through.”
“You remember the saves,” Drake said. “Not the losses.”
“You have to. Or the losses drown out everything else.” She set her mug down. “Tell me one. A save.”
He thought. The memories were usually a blur of smoke and noise. But one surfaced, clear. “A farm. Oberland Station. Supermutant siege. We were losing ground, falling back to the train cars. A kid, couldn’t have been more than seven, was trapped in a water pump shed. Cover was gone.” He swallowed. “I just… ran. Straight through the open. Took a bullet in the pack. Grabbed the kid, ran back. Didn’t think. Just did it.”
“Why?”
“Because he was there.” It was the only reason. The true one.
Mandy’s smile returned, softer this time. “See? Not a terrible person.”
From outside, a new sound sliced through the night—not the distant shriek of a ghoul, but the distinct, guttural shout of a human voice. Then another. Closer.
The fragile moment shattered. Drake was on his feet in an instant, his side protesting sharply. His hand went to the pistol on his hip. Mandy’s posture shifted from open to defensive in a heartbeat, her eyes darting to a sawed-off shotgun leaning against the wall.
The shouts came again, angry and searching, followed by the sound of trash cans being kicked over.
“You expecting company?” Drake asked, his voice low and tight.
“No.” She moved to the door, peering through a crack in the boarded-up window. “Raiders. Not the ones from the camp you hit. Different colors. Three of them. They’re looking for something.”
“Or someone.”
Their eyes met across the dark room. Eli slept on, oblivious. The red light pulsed.
Mandy reached for her shotgun, the metal giving a soft, lethal click as she checked the load. “You said you shouldn’t do any heavy lifting.”
Drake checked his pistol. A grim, familiar calm settled over him. “Somebody didn’t get the memo.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the door exploded inward.
It wasn’t a careful pry or a shove. It was a brutal, sudden violence. A heavy boot, or maybe a sledgehammer, hit the old metal near the lock with a deafening bang. The door shrieked on its hinges, buckling inwards, and a figure lurched through the opening, backlit by the murky dusk.
Drake’s world narrowed. Time didn’t slow; it sharpened. He registered the glint of a piece of rebar welded into a vicious spiked club. The raider’s face was a smear of paint and scars, his mouth open in a yell lost beneath the ringing in Drake’s ears. The smell of rust, sweat, and chems flooded the room, overwhelming the antiseptic.
He fired. The pistol’s report was a flat, concussive slap against the close walls. The raider jerked, stumbling forward instead of falling, his club swinging wild. It crashed into a shelf, sending glass bottles shattering to the floor in a cascade of pills and saline.
Mandy was already moving. She didn’t scream. She pivoted, bringing the sawed-off up in a smooth, practiced arc. It roared, a deeper, angrier sound than the pistol. The blast caught a second raider just coming through the door in the chest, punching him back into the third.
Chaos, then a terrible silence broken by moans.
Drake’s side was on fire, the fresh stitches pulling taut. He stepped forward, placing himself between the doorway and Mandy and the sleeping Eli. His ears rang. The first raider he’d shot was on his knees, clutching his stomach, dark blood seeping between his fingers. The one Mandy hit wasn’t moving. The third, a woman with wild hair and a crude laser pistol, was trying to shove the corpse off her legs.
“Don’t,” Drake said, his voice low and rough. He aimed his pistol at her face.
She froze, her eyes wide with fear and chem-fueled rage. The reek of Jet was overpowering.
“Eli!” Mandy’s voice cut through the tension. The boy was awake now, scrambling back on the mattress, his face white with terror.
“Check the perimeter,” Drake ordered, not taking his eyes off the raider woman. “Make sure it was just these three.”
He heard Mandy move behind him, her footsteps quick and light. He kept his aim steady. The wounded raider on the floor was crying now, a soft, wet sound.
“Why?” Drake asked the woman.
She spat on the floor, her defiance crumbling into desperation. “Lookin’ for meds! Just… just lookin’ for meds. The boss, he’s hurt. Bad.”
“You break down every door you see?”
“Saw the light! Thought… thought it was empty.” Her eyes darted to her dying friend, then to the gun in her own hand, still trapped under the weight of the body.
Mandy reappeared at the broken door, her face pale but set. “Clear. No others.”
Drake didn’t relax. “Mandy. Get a stimpak. A diluted one.”
“What? For who?”
“Him.” Drake nodded toward the gut-shot raider groaning on the floor. “And then get another needle. The thick kind. For sewing sacks.”
Understanding clicked in Mandy’s eyes, hard and cold. She went to her supplies.
“You’re gonna help us?” the raider woman asked, a flicker of stupid hope in her voice.
“No.” Drake finally lowered his pistol, not out of mercy, but because his arms were starting to shake from the strain and the pain. “You’re going to carry a message. To your ‘boss’. To every shit-stain raider between here and Bunker Hill.” He took a step closer, looming over her. “This place is under Minuteman protection now. This woman,” he jerked his head towards Mandy, who was prepping a stimpak with furious efficiency, “is under Minuteman protection. You come here again, you don’t get a warning shot. You get a war.”
Mandy knelt by the wounded raider, not with gentleness, but with a brutal speed. She jammed the stimpak into his neck. It wouldn’t save him. It would just clot the worst of the bleeding, pump him full of enough chemicals to keep him on his feet for a few hours. Long enough to get back to his camp and deliver a corpse-ready message.
The raider on the floor gasped, color flooding back into his pale face for a moment, a grotesque parody of life.
“Now get up,” Drake said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Between them, they hauled the stunned raider woman to her feet and dragged the dying man out the broken door, leaving a smeared trail on the tile. Mandy tossed the rebar club out after them. It landed in the mud with a thick squelch.
Drake stood in the ruined doorway, watching the two figures stumble and half-carry each other into the gathering dark. The cold night air bit through his shirt, chilling the sweat on his back. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a vast, hollow fatigue.
He felt Mandy come up beside him. She didn’t speak. She just looked out at the same darkness.
Finally, she said, “That was a hell of a memo.”
Drake let out a breath, a cloud in the cold air. “They’ll be back. Maybe not tomorrow. But they’ll be back. With more.”
“I know.”
He turned to look at her. In the aftermath, under the flickering red sign, she looked younger and older all at once. Her hands were stained with two kinds of blood now. “You can’t stay here.”
She met his gaze, her own stubborn. “Where would I go?”
The answer was obvious. It was the only answer. It sat between them, heavy and complicated.
Behind them, inside the clinic, Eli began to cry softly.
Drake looked from the boy to the determined, weary woman beside him. His side ached. The Castle was a two-day hike. The night was full of teeth.
“Gather what you can’t live without,” he said, his voice stripped bare. “We leave at first light. You’re coming with me.”