Onward, loyal minion (and pretty kitty)!

(So long as Ellie remembers which is which...)

Jade and Cat have very different personalities. No worries there.

Good. (Teasing kiss.)

Kiss!

Heeee.

To Diamond City.

Diamond City's first checkpoint is right at the entrance to Boston from Cambridge - they control the bridge apparently, and therefore traffic. There's a series of barricade-walls past that, built woven into the building ruins, creating a sheltered town. The mercantile quarter seems to focus near the bridge, though there's a concerted effort by the guards to keep a good-sized buffer zone from the river before anywhere inhabited. (The walls are lined with armed guards and turrets, and the place looks... Intimidating, really. Tough.)

Seems like you have to be to survive, these days. But they're not here to cause trouble.

Fortunately it seems the guards are mostly decent at keeping trouble down. Mostly. (There's some people gossiping about other people being potentially secret synths, or about recent mysterious disappearances...)

People always like to talk about whatever danger they think lurks in the wings. Ellie doesn't think that will ever change.

Though some of it might provide leads for Cat's own search, if there's any grains of truth at all...

"About the disappearances?"

"Yes."

"And - about synths replacing people."

"What's a synth?"

"Like Jade, but - more."

"Synths can pass for human, at least somewhat, and - many are technically cyborgs."

"I'm- surprised that kind of tech survived."

"It's - not just survived, I think."

"It's being actively improved on."

"Yes."

"But no one really knows by who? Or how?"

"There's - rumors. Hearsay. The name 'the Institute' pops up a lot, but... I'm unsure of the origin or who the Institute is."

"Kinda generic, yeah. Uh, the first thing that pops to mind with 'Boston' and 'Institute' is the college. CIT."

"Yeah, the name might come from the ruins - either some group associated with the location, or that's just what people think of with 'mad science' around here..."

"Maybe we should poke around there a little?"