Christine Royce, twenty-two years of age, Knight of the Circle of Steel and attempted assassinator of Father Elijah, could not believe how dark the world felt.

The blackness was total, an overwhelming absence of light. She felt the darkness all around her, in the air she breathed, in her clothes, even deep within her core she felt heavy darkness. At first, all she wanted was to be let off her medical examination table, to be let off from those robotic experiments, to be set free from this place – now, all she wanted was a speck of light, a speck of goodness in the evil that coated the hollow room. At the periphery of her consciousness, she heard and saw everything yet heard nor saw anything – the vague clicking of medical technology, the steady hum of an Auto-Doc, the robots… they could all have been unreal, for all she knew.

There was one undeniably real thing existing in that dark room: panic and fear. Her panic and fear.

After mere minutes of hearing the machinery and its monotonous beeping and ticking, Christine's mind slowly began to focus as she laid there, paralyzed. Christine's initial panic was beginning to give way to a sense of purpose, the very task at hand. Random muscles started to flex under her command, but she could not organize them. What had been done to her?

Get those legs moving, and get them moving now. Off the bed, to the door, to somewhere, anywhere where I can get away!

Minutes passed. Feeling rushed into Christine's left leg, and she was certain she could get the muscles to move. She focused all of her inner will and conviction in readying the limb for a quick move, to fling it off the mattress, letting her foot in the ground-

Pain. Searing pain shot through that very leg, an otherworldly feeling that was started to buzz inside of her entire being, a fantastic pain.

More clicking and humming. The medical machinery breathing and reveling in the darkness of the room. A faint groan from upstairs. Pain again as Christine vaguely moved her right leg – eating, devouring her mind.

I have never believed in Hell… but it's here. If there is a Hell, it exists here!

Suddenly, just as her thigh had reached the threshold of the mattress's left side, the emergency lights came on. Pop! Two dim beams that shot from the corners of the ceiling over the door; it was barely enough to see by. Christine examined her legs… nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong – how well-formed her legs were.

Another faint groan from upstairs. Whatever was occurring above her, it wasn't going to reach her quite yet.

The minutes passed. Finally, finally, Christine got to a sitting position and dreadfully, agonizingly stood up. Her muscles were screaming, unused to such forced motion after being inactive and in desperate pain for so long; a cold sweat broke out from all over her, and heat was simultaneously spreading through her veins. Under the dim red light, the room was visible at last. This helped some of Christine's complete disorientation fade away. There was the bed, metal tables containing pill bottles, stimpaks, a chrome basin, an oxygen tank that had been disconnected long ago, and… a table. A table with some things… no, a holotape.

As part of the Provisional Constitution, Section L, Paragraph 75 – Each member of the Circle of Steel is required to keep tabs on any excursions to distant lands, whether by holotape or journal.

The pain… somebody please make it go away…

It's so dry in here…

Section L, Paragraph 75!

She moved to the table, calibrating the distance and direction the whole way. Calculating how many steps she took, the pain-

The fire!

And then she had reached the foot of the table. On the table was her equipment – all of it. The faded, somewhat blood-stained Circle of Steel light armor, which still smelled faintly of oil. The meagre weapons she had brought-

Springfield .45, Plasma Rifle, Laser Pistol, pain, pain, Paragraph 75…

Christine grasped the holotape. Can I even speak? Will I be granted my voice?

She'd observed a holotape enough times to know the ritual – how to turn it on, how to stop it. Faint sounds from above, slightly louder. Her muscles squealing. Darkness, vague emergency lights. Click, hum… click.

Click.

"...This is Christine Royce."

A weak voice, but there – her vocal cords were okay, they worked but were parched and dry…

"Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel… the Circle of Steel, actually…" The tremendous amount of effort it took to talk, though, was almost too much to bear.

"Not going to make it through this, hope someone finds this message, gets it to the Brotherhood in the West. I have tracked down a rogue Brotherhood elder, Elijah, here, to the Big Empty."

Elijah. This was all his fault. All of it. The muscles, the faint noises that grew ever so subtly in intensity with each passing minute, the clicking and humming, the pain. With each word, talking became easier.

"Place is more than it seems, there's a crater hidden deep inside. Junkyard of pre-War labs scattered across the crater's surface, all still running... like this one. Elijah's dissecting these centers, one by one... I tracked him to an old Chinese-American internment camp… called it Little Yangtze. Survivors, ghouls, have bomb collars. Robots moved in when I tried to intercept him... Elijah sent the camp ghouls against us both, like walking bombs. Got hit by the explosions, woke up here. Guess the medical robots were programmed to bring wounded victims from the camp to this center."

And I would happily take it all away…

"Some kind of Auto-Doc prototype lab... manned by corpses trapped inside suits that keep them moving, no idea why."

Those corpses. Those hollow men who walked about, lifeless and insane, unable to comprehend reason or emotion or sense or idea, only prone to murder and madness and- stop the pain, stop the pain…

"Not sure how long I'm going to last... cut open my head like a lot of the humans I've seen here, feel strange, can talk… I have to leave this dangerous place, for…"

And then, before she could generate another thought, there was a great concussive bang, and a terrible roar that ended in a second explosion, louder than the first, bringing with it a deep, sonorous trembling, like an Earthquake. The room shook with the exertion of staying afoot, and Christine was met with the tremendous pain of falling on her back.

Horror, growing in intensity with each passing second. The room was expanding and was closing in on her all at once. An alarm started ringing. Only the alarm's harsh notes were reality. The holotape remained running.

"An explosion! Outside!" Little more than a croak. Christine felt… funny…

A hiss of equalizing pressure – the door. The door swung open into more darkness, but Christine could sense a solitary figure vaguely outlined in red and black at the threshold of the door.

"Someone…"

And then blackness. Soon enough, she wasn't reality either.

[*]

It was amazing how light the world felt to Christine.

At first, Christine believed she was dead. That's it – gone, entirely. To live is to die. Yet… everything Christine remembered before passing out had disappeared. The sounds of the alien alarm, the clicking and humming of the medical machinery, the door hissing open, the agony… all swept away.

It could be Heaven itself. Though heaven was awfully uncomfortable, being a rock floor and all.

Christine shifted restlessly on the floor, a rock pressing into her back. The air was vaguely fresh and genuine, not artificial as it was inside the medical facility… vaguely fresh. Vaguely. A cave.

She—

Suddenly, something invaded her vision. A hand extending a flask.

"Drink. Your strength will return soon enough."

[*]

TBC!