Editor's note: This is the original version of Chapter 82 that I published roughly concurrently with my play through these events. In my original outline for Book IV, I didn't plan for Charley to start the mission "Dangerous Minds" until some time later - roughly around chapters 88-90, depending on B-Plot elements - but the game started the quest automatically with a cutscene when I reunited with the relevant characters. At first I thought I could just roll with it and rearrange the sequence of events in the outline, but when I sat down to start on Chapter 83 it was really clear that this wasn't going to work. I've preserved this blog entry in the "miscellaneous" category because it has some good technical information in the comments, and just as a 'behind the scenes' exercise, but once I've finished rewriting Chapter 82 the link in the table of contents will go to the revised version.

 

Morning eventually came around, as it tends to, and we set about getting Winter back into her suit. I'd thought about switching with her now that we knew I wouldn't be getting my checkup for a while, but I remembered the request from the cabinet for me to keep my use of it to a minimum. Moreover, Winter didn't have the unusual healing factor that I'd acquired, and having her inside the suit made it a lot less likely that she'd get hurt if (when) we ended up in another fight.

 

Heather seemed very interested, but also a little intimidated, by the process of equipping the suit. Of course, the plugs drew the sort of morbid curiosity you'd expect, but our guide seemed even more intrigued by the process of installing the implants for the lymphatic monitor. And to be fair, maybe I exaggerated the process just a little bit... but I wouldn't be the last, either. If you've ever seen the Publick Occurences article about using the suit - yeah, it sensationalized that part a bit too.

 

The only real complication we ran into was when I went to fill up Winter's bladder. Anticipating Winter might need to change her suit, or even switch it with me, Dr. Cain had supplied us with a few bags, each one sterilized and then thermally sealed in a waxed paper package. And we'd graduated from using modified IV bags to 1.5 liter, screw-topped vinyl bags. Cain had bought a whole case of them from Trashcan Carla, and she explained that they'd been originally designed for patients on feeding tubes. While I'd been out fighting Kellogg, Winter and Lucy had tested them for Cain by integrating them into their dominant-submissive game, and they'd found the screw top made the filling process a lot less messy, while also providing a tight seal that simplified the injection part of the procedure.

 

That was all well and good, except apparently I hadn't been hydrating sufficiently (or maybe I'd just sweated off too much between the stress of dealing with Maxson and the terror of the battle for Fort Strong), and I barely filled it up a quarter of the way. That probably would have been sufficient from a technical point of view, but I knew Winter had been practicing holding her movements with Lucy, and she'd probably trained herself to accommodate - and tolerate - quite a lot. I knew the discomfort of the process excited her, and I didn't want to disappoint.

 

So I turned to Heather and said, "can I ask you to do me a favor?"

 

"Sure, what's up?" was the cheerful response I got. 

 

 

"Have you done your morning business yet?"

 

"Business?" she asked. 

 

I didn't giver her long to figure out the idiom, clarifying, "you peed yet?"

 

"Oh, um... no? Why?"

 

I offered the vinyl bag towards her. "You mind filling this up for me?"

 

What a curious response I got. She blushed, she scrunched her brow like she was still a little confused, and she also recoiled a little from the proffered bag. "I ah... I... that's kind of, uh, messy? Yuck. Why... why?"

 

I pointed at the partially-suited Winter. "The medical system works by injecting drugs in a saline solution whenever the user needs them. And the suit makes its own saline solution from the operator's pee. Recycles it. So Winter needs a full bladder for the suit to start working at its best right from the start. Once she gets all her plugs in, we need to top her off, if you know what I mean, to kickstart the recycling process."

 

"You know, I have heard a lot of weird stuff in my day. All kinds of crazy mad scientist shit. I've never heard of... that, before. Who even comes up with an idea like that?"

 

I shrugged, chuckling. "Apparently there were studies about it in Europe before the war. I suspect its one of those things where there's a very strange story behind it, but who knows? But that's one of the big differences between this suit and the patched-together one that Susan has. The medical system is bizarre, but it's amazingly effective. So, mind making a donation?"

 

Heather blushed deeper, and she looked like she was almost about to say no, but then her posture shifted a little bit and she said, "I don't know if I can do it with you watching. Can I take that with me?"

 

"Sure," I said, and Heather disappeared around a corner. A couple minutes later she was back, with the bag mostly full and securely screwed closed.

 

"You want to watch me fill up Winter?" I asked as I took the bag off her hands.

 

Heather blushed again, struggling to maintain eye contact. "Is it OK?" she asked, at length.

 

"What do you think, Winter?" I asked my fiancee, "you want Heather to watch while I put..." I checked the bag, "725 ml of fresh, hot piss into you?"

 

"That sounds kind of hot," Winter said in a teasing voice. "Though you guys are rookie pissers. I've got up to 800 before, and that's playing with petite little Lucy." 

 

 

"How'd you manage that?" I asked, "I don't think her stomach could hold 800 milliliters, much less her bladder."

 

I beckoned Heather to follow me back to where Winter was relaxing, sitting with her back against the wall, and connected the bag to her catheter while she explained.

 

"She was off duty the day it was her turn to be the toilet, and I hooked her up to one of these bags and just let it fill up over the course of the day. Made for quite a heavy-duty training session that night."

 

"I bet," I said, as I lifted the vinyl bag up over Winter's head. Talking to Heather I said, "Winter likes to just squeeze the whole thing in right away under pressure, but Susan told me it's better to let gravity start and only put pressure on when it stops draining on its own."

 

"Wimp," Winter said, laughing. 

 

"Maybe, but I don't need you out of action if I bust your kidney or something." Maybe 30 seconds later, the pressure equalized between the bag and Winter's bladder, and I slowly started to squeeze down the bag to push in the rest. Winter let out a long sigh of apparent satisfaction at the start, which gradually transitioned into groaning and wiggling as she got more and more uncomfortable. She was actually panting a little when I ran my thumb and forefinger along the tube in order to get the last few drops into her.

 

"Are you sure you got to 800?" I questioned.

 

"Ha, yeah, I didn't say it was easy."

 

I noticed Heather hadn't said anything and I glanced back over my shoulder. The raiders had set up their mattresses in what had once been the brewery's outlet shop, and she was perched on the sale counter, watching intently. Her hands were folded on her lap, but from the way her hips were wiggling and the way she'd positioned herself on the corner of the countertop, I was pretty sure she'd found a different way to get some gratification.

 

"OK, my love, you are fully loaded. Let's get your neurofeedback sensor hooked up, and then we can finish with the suit."

 

I seated the 'U' shaped sensor over the hood of Winter's clit, then turned the little thumbscrew at the top to narrow the inside until it was snugly connected. That was one feature I'd never been able to try out - the sensors in Winter's uterus and lymph nodes monitored her endorphin levels; when they got outside the target range, the neurofeedback device would apply vibration - or painful electric shocks - directly to her clit. According to the manual, over time this conditioned endocrine responses that would improve her performance in the field. 

 

It didn't work for me because the sensor didn't fit on my oversized clit. As you know, we'd kludged together a solution using the adapter part for male operators, but it didn't really do anything. The male neurofeedback system had different monitoring processes and because I didn't have testicles to connect the hormone monitoring and injection probes to. The medical computer instead picked up the uterine probe and just errored out and shut down the neurofeedback program. Susan had told me that I could probably stop attaching the penis cage to my clit altogether since it wasn't working, but whenever Winter helped out she enjoyed the process of attaching it, and she'd told Cain several times that she expected me to get the same treatment no matter who was assisting me. 

 

In any event, once we had that last sensor attached, the rest of the suiting-up went quickly. Once the skin of the suit was up over Winter's breasts, she made sure her nipples (or, if you want to split hairs, her areola) were seated against the external connecter pads and locked them in place. She only jumped a little bit when the implants seated behind her nipples extended their spines to connect with the pads. From there, we sealed the suit at the neck, get her helmet on, and then I got to listen with amusement as Heather gasped and winced as Winter swallowed her breathing and feeding tubes like a pro.

 

With my wife-to-be sealed back up, I slapped her on the run, flipped on the backpack-mounted medical system, and pronounced her mission-ready. I heard a long sigh, faithfully recreated by her suit's loudspeaker, and gave Winter's lower abdomen a little squeeze.

 

 

Turning to Heather I said, "that relief she's feeling is the recycling system starting to work. If we hadn't had your help, she would have had to wait for half an hour or an hour before it kicked in."

 

"I'm, uh, glad I could help?" She said, uncertainly.

 

"I appreciate it, you did good," Winter said. "Next time you should get more hands-on, it'll go faster." 

 

"I... I don't know," she dissembled.

 

"Don't worry about it," I said, "you helped plenty. OK, let's hit the road. Diamond City's waiting for us."

 

The rest of the trip down to Boston was uneventful - a fact that, after the Synth ambush the day before - I welcomed. I suspected that Vault 81's growing presence in the area had edged out some of the raider gangs we'd butted heads with in the past; I hoped that meant that Diamond City was under less pressure, though I supposed it might have meant that the raiders had to migrate into Boston proper and thereby increased the density of human garbage near the Great Green Jewel.

 

Ultimately it wasn't raiders we had to worry about. Instead, a small army of ghouls was milling around the entrance to Diamond City while the DC guards fired at them from barricades. Our group swung in behind them, but even with our superior position it was a tough fight. And, once again, I noted that Diamond City's armored door wasn't closed. What a mess; at best it was negligence, and at worst it pointed to a serious vulnerability.

 

 

After we'd finished mopping up, I tried to talk with Danny Sullivan, but he was cagier than normal. I put on my best impression of Piper's wedeling though and eventually he let slip that the door had suffered a mechanical breakdown in the morning. The activity of a team of mechanics is what actually attracted the ghouls, and DC security had been fighting them for a couple of hours when we showed up.

 

"There's going to get in some day, Danny," I said. "It's going to be a fuckin' nightmare."

 

Danny looked left and right, evidently checking to see if anyone was in earshot, then confessed. "I know. We're doing our best, but this place is old."

 

"Have you asked Vault 81 for help?" I pressed.

 

Danny shrugged. "The mayor said that if we let them in, they'll take us over, so its only DC mechanics who can work on the door. Above my pay grade, you know?"

 

 

"Yeah," I conceded, "I know. Maybe next time I'm down at 81 I should drop a hint for them to come by and spontaneously offer to help."

 

"I don't know," he said. "That might just make McDonough dig his heels in deeper. Don't worry about us, we'll keep this place safe... one way or another."

 

"I hope so. Don't take offense though if I tell Piper and Nick that it's time they move out for good."

 

He looked disappointed at that, even a little sad, but he nodded. "I gotcha. It'll get better though, you'll see."

 

On the inside, nothing seemed to have changed about Diamond City - other than the conspicuous absence of the Publick Occurences sign, at least. I wondered if the people living here had even noticed the hours-long gunfight outside.

 

 

The sign might have been down, but I saw Nat Wright outside hawking papers from her soapbox. Evidently she planned to run her business until the last minute. I waved to her as I approached, saying, "Nat, good to see you. Is Piper around?"

 

She waved back, smiling, "she's out back. You've got great timing."

 

Almost as soon as the door to Piper's shack closed behind me, I heard her voice. "Well, well," she said, "It isn't every day that Nick Valentine comes to my place for advice."

 

"What can I say," the Synth detective replied, "You, me, and hard luck all run together like acid rain and an old sewer."

 

 

"I don't mean to interrupt," I said, "but 'honey, I'm home'. Good to see you too, Nick,"

 

Piper's face lit up with a huge smile. "Charley, you have the best timing. Nick was just about to let me in on this super secret case of his."

 

I gave her short, tight hug, then gave some way so Winter could do the same. "What's the story, Nick? Did you find something out about Kellogg?"

 

 

"Let me tell you two, if you're looking for easy answers about the Institute, you're barking up the wrong tree," Nick said. "This is going to be like finding a needle, in a haystack of needles. It's going to take a lot of time, effort, and frustration."

 

Piper put in her two cents. "I've been investigating the Institute for over a year. Feared and hated by everyone, Commonwealth's boogeyman, you know the drill."

 

"Also sending death squads after me now," I added.

 

Piper blanched. "Seriously, you're not kidding?"

 

 

"I wish I was. We ran into two different Synth ambushes on the way here. I definitely made a bad impression when I rubbed out Kellogg."

 

"I bet," Nick said. "I'd say you're probably near the top of the 'people to disappear and replace with Synths' list by now. Which just puts more urgency on finding out the one thing no one knows: where the Institute actually is."

 

"Or how to get in," Piper added. "But there's one person who has to know, the guy who handed them Shaun."

 

"Except he's dead," I pointed out.

 

"Yeah, I knew he wasn't going to go quietly the moment I saw him," Nick said.

 

 

"So I do love these meandering conversations, but now that we're on the topic of Kellogg getting his brains blown out, I've got some new information for you."

 

"Oh?" I asked. "This wouldn't be about that implant Curie pulled out of his head, would it?"

 

"Guessed it in one," Nick said. "Look, there's a place in Goodneighbor called The Memory Den. They've got a machine that lets you relive the your past memories as if they happening right here and now. If anyone could get a dead brain to sing, it would be Doctor Amari. She's a certifiable genius."

 

"Oh, wow, I've heard of her," Piper said, "what are you thinking? Can we plug Kellogg's implant into her machine?"

 

"Only one way to find out, I guess," Nick said. "Thing is, she isn't going to take any risks with her machines till she at least meets you. I was coming here to see if Piper could convince you to pull yourself away from whatever project the mayors had you on, but it looks like I'm in luck."

 

"So... just like that, we're going?" I asked.

 

"No time like the present, right?"

 

"You coming too, Piper?"

 

She shook her head. "Sorry, Nat and I are leaving for Concord in two days. I have to stay here and finish packing up. Winter's going to have to take care of you this time."

 

"No objection there," Winter said, "I've always wanted to visit Goodneighbor. Have a safe trip up to Concord."

 

"Alright, let's get going," Nick said. "Don't worry, we're gonna get your boy back. Just a few extra steps."

 

And just like that, I concluded what I think was my shortest-ever visit to Diamond City.