<span style="font-weight: bold">Then...</span><br/><br/><span style="color: orange">“So let me get this straight...”</span>Hale paces around Molly as she sits in his office. Behind her, guards leer menacingly from the doorway.<span style="color: orange">“You make an unannounced visit to the jail, claiming that you suspected the bandit girl was pregnant. Then after you leave, she somehow manages to slit one guard's throat and break the other's neck. Fair enough – she's a raider, after all. A dangerous woman. But wait! There's a dead guard at the motorpool now. And suddenly she disappears right as those two mercs leave.”</span><br/><br/>Molly swallows hard. “T-they threatened me...”<br/><br/>Hale places his hands on Molly's shoulders.<span style="color: orange">“Of course they did. Because if you went ahead and helped one of our enemies escape on your own, that would make you a traitor. And you'd never willingly betray your home and your people to a couple of bandits, would you?”</span><br/><br/>Her lip trembles as tears begin to well up in the corner of her eyes. Shaking her head, she looks up at Hale. “I'm sorry... I--”<br/><br/><span style="color: orange">“Shh... Shh...”</span>Hale embraces her, cradling her head in his arms.<span style="color: orange">“It's over now. What's done is done.”</span><br/><br/>She begins to feel a tightness around her neck. Her hands move up to his arms, gently at first, signaling that his embrace is too rough. But the pressure doesn't cease. It increases, and suddenly she realizes that this is no comforting measure. She cries out, muffled by his shirt, her hands swatting and scratching. She bites down hard into his belly but the grip doesn't let up. As her cries turn into screams, he wrenches upward, and a sharp crack resounds through her flesh as her body goes limp.<br/><br/>He sets her down gently, shirt sticky with saliva, a bruise beginning to form where she bit him. With a sigh, he turns to his guards and says,<span style="color: orange">“Put her near the jail. Make it look like the bandit girl killed her while escaping. As for the gun-hands... Find them and destroy them.”</span><br/><br/>As the guards nod and carry Molly's body off, Hale gazes out his office window. If his dream of a united wasteland is ever to be fulfilled, he knows he must make sacrifices when necessary, and be diligent in removing weak links. Dissent can never be tolerated.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Now...</span><br/><br/>It's a grisly scene: two dead guards in the cell, both stripped of gear. And just outside, Molly's body lies with a snapped neck, her expression frozen in one of horror. Mariel curls her nose at the sight. The guards are expected casualties, but an unarmed woman? Hale had been right about the raiders. They knew neither honor nor basic human decency. She was a fool to have trusted Vivian, that much is apparent. But Tyler and Deckard's betrayal is unsettling. These were men who risked their lives to keep her and the other civilians safe. Why, then, would they aid a woman who so brutally murdered the same person they had protected earlier?<br/><br/>Something doesn't add up.