Chapter 117: Man of Many Faces.
After outlining the plan everyone knew their roles and what they needed to be doing, so while Tom and Wisp headed back into the Railroad HQ, everyone else save for Fuller who was still on overwatch made their way to the ambush site in order to prepare it.
"Do you think your team will be able to contain this guy if we manage to lure him out?" Tom typed into the pipboy that Wisp was currently occupying on his wrist.
"Hard to say as this guy if he's switched on has the capability of seeding absolute chaos thanks to that be anybody he wants the ability of his," she wrote back.
"Damn man I'm still trying to wrap my head around this superhuman bio-weapon bullshit, and here I thought that the Institute creating synthetic humans to replace people and as slave labour was bad but this is fucked up on a whole new level," Tom wrote.
"Yeah tell me about it, as someone who had to leave their dying flesh and blood body to die so that she could escape the lab in the body of an Assaultron while taking Seven with me it's a feeling I can seriously relate to," Wisp wrote.
"Man that sucks on a whole other level, I know there would be some around here that might be a little twitchy about you using the body of a dead synth like maybe Glory for instance so might want to not mention that part when you possibly meet them all later down the road," Tom wrote.
"I think honesty would be a better policy as I don't want her to feel that I'm hiding things from her, if we want your people's trust we're gonna need to be open about stuff, plus it's not like I killed an innocent synth and took her body, merely liberated it from the Enclave who had far more sinister plans for her, she was already passed on I was in need of some flesh of my own so as morbid as it is a win-win so to speak, trust me if there was a way to print up a body that had never been inhabited by another consciousness I take that over and give the poor girl who was once in my skin before me a proper burial in a heartbeat," Wisp wrote.
"You know what, I believe you would, your people as scary as all hell as they are don't strike me as bad people, I mean with the muscle you guys got on hand you could have easily come in here and popped the doors open with this ability of yours and those two Claws of yours would have torn this place and the people in it apart before we knew what hit us, but you didn't, instead you not only try to make peace with us but expose a traitor in our ranks and then offer to help us out in the long run, so yeah that makes you pretty solid in my book," Tom wrote.
"Thanks, Tom that means a lot, this is exactly the sort of thing we are trying to do, we are trying to build bridges with people, not burn them down, we genuinely want to help people, it's like our leader Seven said, it would be too easy for us to simply go underground and say fuck it to the whole world, but then things never get any better if we do, people go on hating other people and shit never gets any better, at least this way we can all hold our heads up high and say we tried to make the world a better place, we tried to bring people together no matter what skin they wear and show them that things are better together," Wisp wrote.
"Yeah I can genuinely see that, I think you guys would be a pretty good fit around here and with the skills you lot have on hand we could make some serious progress with your help I think," Tom wrote back.
"That's the plan or at least it is once we stop Eight and the Enclave from bringing whatever shit storm they cooked up down on our heads," Wisp wrote.
"Here's hoping," Tom wrote.
A couple of hours later everyone was up and about and with Wisp's help Tom managed to convince one of their better scav teams that there was some valuable salvage in the area that Wisp's team had designated as the capture point for Eight, he also began to litter the system with numerous false sightings of Wisp's team though never making deliberate reference to them as to make them seem legit.
He wrote things like 'Saw a strange group operating out of a warehouse, seemed to have two captive deathcalws with them and some kind of spider creature, have tagged to be monitored, possible threat,' and things of the like.
It was their hope that this would catch Eight's attention and draw him to the area to investigate, they also referred to possible sightings of a heavily armed team in power armour that were not Brotherhood as Wisp was aware that Eight would have no clue that his team had been wiped out save for Nine who was now on their side, so with the hook baited all they had to do now was wait for a nibble.
As it turned out they didn't have to wait very long as the figure that they believed to be Eight in disguise came into the HQ later that morning.
She made herself a cup of coffee while Wisp told Tom to stop staring at her as she didn't want him giving the game away, then she went and sat at one of the terminals in the back of the main room and began scrolling through the data, seemingly looking at a list of currently ongoing operations for free agents who weren't currently assigned to anything to take care of when they could, kinda like a bulletin board for non-critical ops.
But Wisp thanks to being in the network now could see that they kept opening the intel tabs and looking through all the inbound reports, they'd been careful to trick the system into inputting the reports they'd entered with fake time indexes so it didn't look like they'd all come in at once, Wisp had also made sure to shuffle them about so they looked more natural.
The person they suspected was Eight opened every single one of them but it was when they came across the false report of a team seen in the same area in power armour that they really seemed to get interested.
Once they'd read them they quickly erased their history from the machine and quickly packed up before heading for the door.
"Alright Tom thanks for the lift and the help but it's time for me to head out for a bit, I'll be back soon to show you how everything goes, here's to hoping," Wisp wrote.
"Good luck I hope you get the bastard, the last thing we need is someone with a million faces running around the place," Tom wrote back and with that Wisp quickly left the same way she'd once entered back through the pipes to her body which was waiting with Fuller.
"How's it all going in there?" Fuller asked as Wisp's body sprung to life.
"Looks like Eight took the bait, they are on the way I believe to the warehouse, have the rest of the team checked in?" she asked as she got up and collected her gear.
"Yup Malakai said the place would make a whole nest of social spiders very happy whatever that means but I'm guessing it means he's got the place webbed up good and proper, the rest of the team is in position, I saw the Railroad scav team heading that way a while ago so they should be there combing through the place by now," Fuller said.
"Good heres hoping this goes smooth because if not I can see Eight being an absolute bastard to catch, if he slips us now we may never find him again until it's too late," Wisp said.
"Look I didn't want to ask this but did you umm see Glory down there?" Fuller asked suddenly and Wisp shot him a sympathetic glance.
