Nate was up all night, after showing Piper a hammock she could cozy up in with a pillow, Nate returned to the captain's quarters and pulled the blinds shut.

"Hey there Meathead? How's my good boy?"

Meathead was wagging his tail, glancing behind him to make sure the doors shut. "<I'm good, and the pegasus is still out. You sound like you've got something on your mind.>"

"I do. I brought food and water. Is there anything we can do for her? Won't it be a problem feeding her? She'll need food and water eventually."

"<I put her in a cocoon and she's recuperating. Let me show you.>" Meathead trotted to the door to the bedroom of the captain's cabin, and pulled it open, hanging in the corner of the ceiling was a large pod, large enough to house the recovering pegasus in a black resin pod with a clear green sap keeping her in. It looked like a large wasp's nest painted black, with a green window made from gel.

"What is this?"

"<It's a cocoon. It's what changelings do for any creatures we capture. It can draw emotions out, or...very much like the cryogenic pods, preserve them, but better. The subject absorb nutrients, they absorb liquid, It even filters out their waste too, and all it needs is a little raw emotion to keep it going. It took a while for me to make, but she'll be okay. If she tries to wake up, I'll know. I've entangled the with magic like a net, so if she subconsciously starts waking up, and tries to push her way out, I'll feel it. Until she's ready to wake up, she can rest and truly recover.>"

"Any muscle atrophy?"

"<The gel inside each cocoon shifts around, moving their limbs. It would be better if there were more of me to watch over the pod and maintain it, but for now we can go for about a week without disturbing her.>"

"It takes care of all the things I was planning." Nate said, "Did you ever try putting a human in one of these things?"

"<Yes. He was a criminal though, so don't feel bad for him.>"

"Was this during the time you were a dog with us?"

Meathead paused, "<Yeah. I was a busy dog. So how was your trip, did you find the detective?>"

Nate shook his head, disbelieving it. "Yes, we found him. We're heading back to Fenway Park in the morning, but first, I need you to do something for me. I want to take a picture of the man who shot Nora with a polaroid camera I bought from Daisy. After the photo develops, and since we can't just go straight to Piper and say, here's a picture of the shooter', I'm going to sketch it onto some paper, and get around the explanation that way."

"<Smart. That's what I would've done too now that you mention it. Do you want me to do it right now? I saw him too, so I know what he looks like.>"

"Yeah. Let's get this done and over with, because tomorrow we're tracking the man down."

Meathead took a few steps away from Nate, looking up at him, a circle of green fire flashed around him, and there stood the man who was at large.

From head to toe, he was balding on the top of his head, with hair around the sides of his head, and a beard with sideburns and a mustache all black. There was a scar over his left eye, and Nate noticed the other scar running along his cheek and neck. Wearing a black leather jacket, Nate swore he was wearing a green trench coat when he saw him, funny how the mind works like that. A button up t-shirt and a piece of metal on his left shoulder for armor.

Nate took the picture, a bright yellow flash illuminating the dark space, and a little 3x3 inch photograph spat out of the camera like someone sticking out their tongue.

Taking it to the desk, Nate took a piece of paper and laid it over the photograph, pressing it hard onto the picture. Etching over the details of the man's face, he was done in ten minutes.

Nate let out a long-winded sigh, feeling exhaustion come over him. He felt like he won a small battle against the evil that was against him, it was now given a face.

"Do you remember what the other people were wearing?" Nate asked, turning around in his chair.

Meathead nodded, in another flash of green light, the figures in the orange, grey, and white hazmat suits with the Vetruvian man logo above their right breast were in the room. Nate drew the symbol and set down his pen and pencils. Meathead transformed back into the form of a German Shepard, and sat next to Nate at the desk.

His shoulders sagged, he felt tired. "Alright, sorry for waking you, Meathead. Let's go to sleep."

"<Do you want the bed? I don't mind sleeping on the floor.>" Nate looked down, picking up his dog with both arms, and walked into the back room with the captain's bed. Dropping his dog onto the bed, he laid down next to Meathead who was busy readjusting himself into a better position. Blowing out candles, Nate sank into the bed, scratching Meathead's ears, and the back of his head, falling asleep very quickly.

"Night, Meathead."

\111/

In the morning, Nate fixed a bowl of fish, rice, and vegetables with a very old bottle of sesame oil, and a crusty bottle of soy sauce that he needed to use a knife to break off the plastic cap. Piper was roused early by Nate banging around in the galley kitchen. She was surprised when Meathead came clambering down the steps and hopped up onto the bench by the table and waited for food. Piper reached over and scratched Meathead on the back, he threw his head up and let his tongue hang out, slowly leaning into her as he enjoyed the free back scratch.

"So how'd you get up here, anyway?" Piper asked.

"Right." Nate said, "Did I tell you this already? No, that was...Hancock. Anyway. I was over in Bunker Hill when Mayor Kessler told me to go take a peek from the top of the monument, she said I could see this ship. I recognized it because I've seen it before. There's a few books written about this ship, how it was one of the oldest ships used by the United States Navy still in service. The captain needed some spare parts to get the ships rockets moving again, and Meathead and I were carrying around some old junk that we scavenged from a car factory in Lexington. It was a turbopump bearing, something that gives the rockets a lot of fuel during take off."

"And because of this, they let you on board?" Piper asked.

"They scanned my face, and let me walk right on board."

"Interesting." Piper said.

"Here's some fish and rice," Nate offered, dishing up three bowls. "Here's the picture too."

Nate set the drawing of the gunman infront of Piper. Her eyes widened as she took the details in. When she saw the logo of the Vetruvian man, she stood up.

"I saw this guy a long time ago. Yeah, he's in Diamond City. And that logo...You saw him with this?"

"Yes. There was a team of scientists or soldiers or a just a strike team of people all wearing hazmat suits. On every one of them was this logo."

"That's the Institute's logo! It's on all of their guns! Every synth generation one or two carries around a laser pistol or a laser rifle with this logo on it! That proves it! He works for the Institute!" Piper was brimming with excitement.

"Can you print copies of this drawing?"

Piper nodded. "It'll be the first thing I do when I get back. Public Enemy Number One. Wanted for Murder, Kidnapping, and for kicks, Association with the Institute. I'll make sure everyone knows what a spy from the Institute looks like, oh this will be so exciting!"

"Alright then, eat up and we'll get going."

\111/

From The U.S.S. Constitution, the three of them jogged all the way back to Diamond City, turning up Newbury street, and running past Trinity Plaza when Meathead started whining, they came around the backside of the baseball stadium again, and went straight up to the gate barring access.

Piper was about to go up to the intercom, but Nate stopped her. "How about you let me try this time around." Nate offered.

"Hello?" He asked pressing the button.

"Who is it?"

"Nate. The guy in the blue vault suit. I'm here to see Nick."

The gate intercom buzzed and the gate was lifted upwards, allowing them inside.

"I'm gonna go write up a few quick articles, and I'll catch up with you later. If you're heading out, swing by and come knock on my door and I'll be ready in two seconds. Be sure to bring by the picture after you're done so I can run it."

"I will. See you soon, Piper."

\111/

Knocking on the door and entering Nick Valentine's detective agency on third street, Ellie and Nick were standing there, smiling as Nate walked through the door.

"Good to see you again! I was just singing praises about how I don't need to change jobs or move out anymore! You saved my boss, so thank you. If you're ever in need of some work, there's a few case files Nick could use your help on."

"Whoa, there. Easy Ellie, down girl, one case at a time. Our new friend needs help first." Nick pointed his thumb towards the chair across from his desk, "Grab a seat, and we'll get started."

Nate sat down, with Meathead sitting down next to him. "When you're trying to find someone who's gone missing, the devil is in the details. Tell me everything you can, no matter how...painful it might be."

Nate looked down at Meathead for a second and inhaled. "There was a man and a woman, a third person there as well. They didn't say much, but I remember they called me 'the backup'.

"So we're talking a small team. Smart cookies who know how to get into a Vault, I presume?" Nate nodded. "Sounds like they're the type who can keep their lips tight when they're on the job, or someone else can be paid to make sure those lips stay sealed. Not sure what 'the backup' means though..."

"I've been trying to figure it out for days, and what I've come up with would probably be beyond what most people know about outside of a vault."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Genetic engineering. They wanted my son's DNA."

Nick's smiled stretched flatly across his face, and Ellie paused from writing the details down for a moment to let Nate explain. "You got me there. My memory doesn't have much on what you just said," He looked up to Ellie.

"What about you, Ellie?" she shook her head, turning back to Nate, "Didn't think so. Anyway, what else can you tell me?"

"We're looking for my son, Shaun, and there's things that've happened that might of muddled up my timeline. I was thrown into a cryogenic freezer that gave out. I'm not sure if he was taken last week, last month, last year, or even earlier this decade."

Nick frowned, "That could be a real damper on the progress, it would be a good question to of why they targeted your family in particular. Why an infant, why not the mother...why the violence? And then, if you haven't already noticed from the state of things outside Diamond City, they would be taking on all of his care...and an infant needs lots of it. What you're describing confirms that this isn't just some random kidnapping, whoever took your kid had an agenda. There's plenty of groups in the Commonwealth that might be behind this. The Super Mutants, Raiders, the Gunners, and of course, the Institute."

"He carried a .44 magnum revolver with a bull tapered barrel." Nick looked across Nate, then up to Ellie who wrote the detail down. Nodding, Nick was silent and let Nate continue.

Nate showed Nick and Ellie the picture of the gunman.

"This is the best drawing I can do of him, and there was this logo on all of their hazmat suits."

"Well that about confirms it."

"What can you tell me about the other gangs you mentioned, I've run across the Gunner's before, but who are they?"

"High-end mercenaries. No job too brutal. I would've said they were the likely suspects, but they wouldn't of been the ones pulling the strings anyway."

"The Super Mutants have a weird tick to them. I've heard of a few that get really smart. They're the ones who set up traps, and can even lead hunting parties against settlements. There's talk of a few mutants with enough brain cells between the lot of them to keep attacking Diamond City hiding somewhere in the Fens. Most of them are dumber than a box of rocks...especially when I've seen some eat rocks and break all their teeth on it and keep on going. Wasted fifteen minutes of my life watching that, seeing if the dumb sob could figure it out. We can safely rule them out. They're big, green, muscles on muscles, and hard to miss.

"The raider's were a close runner up for last place, but they can organize themselves every once and a while and be a force to be reckoned with. That is, when they're not shooting at each other. About a year ago there was a big commotion way west of here at Nuka-World, a few lesser gangs banded together and took over the trading community set up out there. Now we get talk from some traders who brave the route and what they have to say isn't very promising. They haven't done anything except for stay put, and for people around here, that's more than enough coming from that lot. Pulling off something this complicated doesn't put them very high up on the list."

Nate nodded at the mention of Nuka-World, the collar on Thunderstruck's neck and the chain shackles around her hooves built a small picture of what was going on over there.

"And this logo I saw all of them wearing marks them as the Institute?"

"Well, they're the boogeymen of the Commonwealth, something goes wrong, everyone blames them. But, this is one of the very first times I've ever heard any sort of physical presence of humans on the surface. They usually send early synth models to do their dirty work. Gen ones would go out and strip whole towns for parts, killing everything in their way. A few people collected weapons off them over the years, and that little four-legged, four-armed man confirms it."

"It's not a four-legged, four-armed man. It's the Vitruvian man. It's a very old picture that they're only using a stencil of."

"Who's the Vitruvian man?" Ellie Perkins asked.

"The Vitruvian Man was a drawing based off the work by a Roman author in the first century, Vitruvius. In the late 1400s, an artist by the name Leonardo Di Vinci, one of the greatest renaissance artists of that time period drew a man superimposed on a circle and a square. It was supposed to represent the perfect proportions of man and architecture at the time."

"Well then, I've read some good books in my day, but nothing about that. It doesn't take a mind of great feats to know that perfection is fleeting, otherwise the Institute would've stopped with me and every synth afterwards would've looked like me." Nick said.

"About that, I've been putting it off since I met you, but mind if I ask what the heck are you?"

"I'm a synth, a generation two prototype synth with a personality installed. I don't know what their plan is anymore than the next person who walks through my door. No one knows where the Institute is either. They were sure to rip that memory out of my brain, and every other synth's head that people have managed to capture and try to beat the information out of."

"You're a prototype?"

"As far as I know. Never seen any other synth like me, except for myself. The Generation threes came before me. I got to town about a year after there was the whole kerfluffle with the Broken Mask, incident. You read or hear about that, yet?" Nate nodded.

"Yeah. It was a little hard for me to gain people's trust back then, but that was...about seventy years ago now. I can barely remember things past fifty years, and what I do, I try and hold onto. The older ones are dumb as rocks, and you can literally throw rocks at some of them and they wont move. They're all metal. Then there's the newer ones which are almost human. I'm somewhere inbetween. Enough speculation, this is getting us off track. With the drawing you gave us, I know who did it. Did at any point you hear the name..."Kellogg? At all?"

Nate shook his head.

"This is way too big of a coincidence...Ellie, give him the details about the Kellogg case."

"Bald head, scar. Reputation for dangerous mercenary work, and no one knows who his employer is."

"Kellogg bought a house here in town a few years back, he had a kid with him, didn't he, Ellie?"

"That's right. The abandoned house in the West Stands. The boy with him was about ten years old."

Nate gripped the sides of the chair and leaned in, "He's here? He lives in town? Is he still here?"

"They both vanished a while back, no one heard them leave, no one saw them go out the gate. They just stopped showing up and we didn't know who or what happened to them. Their house is still there though."

"Lets you and I go take a walk over to Kellogg's address and see if we can snoop out where he went."

They all stood up and went for the door, Nate went a little bit faster out the door with Meathead right on his heels. Panting quickly they were both angry and agitated, they wanted Kellogg dead and Shaun found.

Holding the door open for Nick, it swung shut behind them and he lead the way.

"I didn't want Ellie to hear this, but you should know. Everything I dug up on Kellogg before his disappearance is bad news. He's more than a mercenary, he's a professional. He doesn't have enemies because they're all dead...except you."

Nick lead them down the third base line, and took a right and a left, leading them up into the stands, "Nine to one odds says he's our man. It's more than the drawing and his distinguishing features, it's his his MO as well. Leading a small team into a vault to kidnap a baby, and leave one of the parents alive for a just-in-case scenario later...not many mercs in the Commonwealth are willing or capable of pulling something like that off."

Reaching the top of the stands, the metal staircases lead halfway up the stands along a metal gang way to a small two story house. Directly above Publick Occurences, the crows hanging from old power cables cawed and flew away, others gripped the wire tighter and cawed loudly.

Nick checked the door, "locked, keep an eye out, will you? Let me see if I can get this open."

"Are you sure it's locked?" Meathead was growling, feeding off Nate's rising anger. "Cause I don't think it's locked." Nate charged the door and slammed his boot into the door beside the door knob.

"Cause I dont!
Think!
It's!
FUCKING!
LOCKED!" Kicking it hard with each word, the door bent inwards and broke off, the knob clattered onto the ground, bouncing against the floor as Nate gripped his shotgun tightly with a white-knuckled grip.

The interior of Kellogg's house was quite barren, there was a two seater leather couch to the right with a table stand next to the arm rest. There was a desk with some tools on it, and a rack board with all the pins missing. Above their heads was a wooden addition to make a second floor.

Nate went to the desk, ripping the drawers open, and they were empty. Squatting down, he yanked open the lower drawers and stopped when he saw a small black case with a red button inlaid underneath the desk.

Pressing it, a panel on the left wall slid open and they were shown a stocked room with food, drinks, ammo, a leather lounge chair, and a stand next to it with cigars and an ashtray.

"Well, look at this...all of a merc's favorite things."

"Gwinnett Stout beer...and San Francisco Sunlights." Nate said, looking at the cigar band, gritting his teeth, he turned his attention to a mannequin jammed behind the racks and balled up his fist.

"Interesting brand there, Nate. On it's own, you can't find much of those out here. But..." Nick looked down at Meathead. "What about your friend here? I didn't even catch his name. Most mutts in the Commonwealth can track a guy for miles...If he was smoking these, he's probably left a trail of his stink all over the place."

Nate looked down at Meathead, silently asking him 'Can you do that?' with his eyes, Meathead gave a quick small nod and looked back up at him. Wagging his tail, like he knew he was being talked about, he tilted his head.

"Before you head out...I know this is personal business. If you have to face Kellogg on your own, just say so."

"I want all the help I can get on this, Nick. I'm bringing him in for Justice, and then I'm marching him to the top of Mass Fusion tower with the longest piece of rope I can find and then we're hanging the bastard." Nate was visibly shaking, his hands felt frozen, but he couldn't stop moving.

"Alright, Let's get that bastard. This is your show from here on out, okay? You say jump, I'll say how high. You good to keep going? I don't need to eat or sleep or anything like that. But, if you need to, you do it."

"I'm good. I'm good. I just need to make sure I have everything. Meathead, come here boy. Can you give this a whiff?" Meathead barked and inhaled the scent of the San Francisco Sunlight cigar. He followed the scent like a string of bad perfume permeating the air.

"I need...I need to stop and get some rounds of ammo. I'll be right back, we're gonna find him and I will blow a hole in anything that's stopping us." Nate said, sprinting down to Arturo's Commonwealth weaponry. He met with Nick and Meathead by the stairs with five mini-nukes strapped to his back. Knocking on Piper's door, he shouted in, "Piper we're heading out! We got the man's scent."

Piper bolted down the stairs and was swinging a backpack onto her back the moment Nate started speaking, "Alright, let's go." She eyed the mini-nukes on Nate, and saw he was ready for some action. Before she left, she grabbed her own aluminum Swatter off the shelves, lined with chains secured in place with nails, it was a heavy hitter.

"I'm ready."

Next Chapter: Ch. 32 Fort Hagen Estimated time remaining: 26 Hours, 44 Minutes