Lux

The NCR Embassy on the Strip is a squat, ugly building squatting among the neon palaces like a tired bureaucrat who crashed the wrong party. Inside, the air is stale and air-conditioned, smelling of old paper, scorched coffee, and the faint, acrid whiff of burnt wiring that never quite goes away. The carpet is the color of dead grass. The walls hum with the rattle of a struggling generator. And somewhere below, in the cramped holding cells, a drunk trooper is singing a sea shanty about the Boneyard.

Lux doesn't mind the noise. It's the closest thing to home she's found in weeks.

The suite she's been given is small but clean. A single bed with military-tight sheets, a wooden desk, a dresser with a cracked mirror, and a window that looks out over the Strip's impossible glow. At night, the lights from Gomorrah and the Ultra-Luxe paint her walls in shifting reds and golds, like a fever dream she can't wake from. She's left the curtains open. The darkness scares her more than the glare.

She's sitting at the desk, her hair loose, wearing only the white blouse and the simple cotton panties she was too hot to keep under the riding skirt. The blouse clings to her back where the heat has made her sweat. Outside, someone fires a gun into the air—celebration or murder, she can't tell—and she flinches, her hand going to her chest.

Garen would know. Garen would already be out there, rifle in hand, handling it.

But Garen's not here. He's out east, chasing Legion scouts through the canyons. She's alone in a city of sin, with a power she can't control and a body that won't stop humming with a restless, unnamed want.

The knock comes hard and fast. Three sharp raps against the cheap wood of the door.

She startles, nearly knocking over the half-finished letter on the desk. The ink smudges under her palm. She stares at the black smear, her heart thudding. Visitors at this hour are never good. The ambassador wouldn't knock. Cass would barge in. Boone would never come to the Strip at all.

"Just a moment!" she calls, her voice higher than she means it to be. She grabs the first thing within reach—her NCR-issued jacket—and drags it over her shoulders, too flustered to bother with the skirt. The jacket hangs past her hips, at least. That's decent enough.

She crosses the room, bare feet quiet on the thin carpet, and pauses with her hand on the doorknob. The metal is cool. Grounding. She draws a breath that shudders on the way in.

If it's Legion, I'm dead. If it's the ambassador, I'm humiliated. If it's a courier with news about Garen, I'm ruined.

She opens the door.

The hallway is dim, the emergency bulbs flickering. The generator hums louder for a second, then settles. And there, framed by the sickly yellow light, stands the last thing she expected. And the only thing she'd been secretly hoping for.

For a long, suspended moment, she simply stares. The jacket slips a little, baring one pale shoulder. She doesn't notice. Her lips part, but no sound comes. Then, with the kind of effort that makes her blush all the way to the roots of her golden hair, she manages a small, breathless smile.

"You're late," she says, the words trembling at the edges. "I was beginning to think the Strip had swallowed you whole." She steps back from the door, one hand still clutching the jacket closed. "Come in. And please don't mind the mess. I wasn't expecting company. Or, well, I was hoping you might come. But I didn't know if you would. And now you're here, and I'm rambling, and I'm not wearing any trousers."

She laughs, a fluttery, embarrassed sound, and it's like a crack in a porcelain mask. The light in the room shifts as she moves, the shadows bending toward her, just for a second. It's easy to miss. It's also impossible to ignore.

"Would you like some water? I have a little left. Or we could go somewhere else. But not Gomorrah. Please not Gomorrah." Her cheeks burn. "Unless you want to. I suppose I could try to be brave."