Chapter 1: Overseeing the Problem

It had been a long night. A very long night. Lexi sat up in her bed, wishing it was more comfortable. She rubbed her eyes, blinking at the sight of the lights hanging above her. It was nothing new, sleeping in this rubbish bed and waking up to same nonsense each day. She had been going on with the repetitive nature of the Vaults for twenty three years now. The first ten years were alright, since she was too young to be forced to do any work, but the moment she hit ten, it was like everything changed. She received a BB Gun for her birthday, shot down some creatures that had snuck in from the world above, and ever since had been expected to work as hard as the adults. Plus, she had to manage school beside that. Talk about a double whammy. Lexi rose to her feet, stretching her arms into the air. She still felt very tired and her back was stiff from laying on that uncomfortable bed. She crossed her room nonchalantly, keeping her eyes to the ground so the light wouldn't bother her.

She was dressed in the usual outfit for a Vault dweller. It was a bright blue and yellow jumpsuit with the number of the Vault she was living in on it, which for her was twenty four. Her hair was stark white with two long strands crossing on either side of her face, going down well below her shoulders. Her hair also swung out like an animal's thin and long tail. Most people were against her hairstyle, saying she ought to get it cut before it killed her, but she wasn't planning on getting it cut anytime soon. She liked her hair just the way it was. Her eyes were an off shade of purple and her face was flecked with freckles, but she minded neither.

Today was the day. The Overseer had been speaking about this for a while and he seemed pretty excited about whatever he was going to be telling everybody at today's meeting. Lexi couldn't help but groan. Every time the Vault Overseer hyped everyone up for something, it ended up being something incredibly stupid like they were serving beans for lunch instead of the slop they call food. Like she really needed to waste her time just to hear the Overseer go on about beans.

The Vault Overseer was kind of like the president, except instead of ruling a nation, he ruled over the inhabitants of the Vault. Nothing was ever confirmed without going past his ear first and he was taken to calling meetings every time something changed in even the slightest. Most people respected the Overseer and saw him in a good light, but for every hundred people that like the Overseer, there is that one who simply doesn't. Just like a country's ruler, you can expect everything to like him.

Lexi picked up a comb sitting on her nightstand, gazing into the cracked mirror at her visage. She had never liked the way she looked, but she had come to terms with it. She began to work her comb through her hair, trying to yank apart the knots caused by a rough night's sleep… or so she assumed it was night. When you lived in an underground Vault, it was difficult to tell night from day. You just took the Overseer's word for it.

As she was fighting with her hair, there was a gentle knocking on her door. Lexi didn't bother to look up. In fact, she didn't even stop combing her hair. She continued to work the comb through her knots of hair. Continuing her fight with her hair, Lexi called, "Come on it. The door's open." It always is.

The door slid open automatically. Lexi had grown up around automatic doors. She had never had to turn a doorknob in her life, though she certainly knew how. She remembered when she was really young she used to sit in front of the automatic door in her father's room and playfully swat her hand into where the sensor was located, confusing the door into opening and closing for no one. People complained to her father, hell, even to the Overseer, about her playing with the door. 'She's going to break that door, just you watch.' They would always say. Neither her father nor the Overseer ever did anything about it, though, so it must not have been that important. Besides, the door never actually broke.

In walked a male that was much taller then Lexi, although many people were taller then Lexi, because she was rather small. Her father was very tall, but her mother wasn't. So it's easy to see where she got her height from. The male had an almost jade green hair, which was brushed back against his head. "Hi Lexi." greeted the male, walking into her room. He stopped beside her, watching as she fought with her hair. "You should probably give up on your hair." He added gently. He was always so gentle and that was what Lexi liked most about him. She couldn't tolerate people who were super hasty. It drove her nuts.

Lexi slammed the comb down on the table, then turned around to meet with her new visitor. "Yes, hello Roary. It's nice to see you too." She walked past him as he stood frozen in the middle of her room.

"You know, today's the Overseer's big announcement." commented Roary, trying and probably failing to make conversation. "What do you think it will be?"

Lexi paused at the memory of the announcement due today. "I don't know, but if it's beans for lunch again, I am going to punch him in the face because frankly I'm tired of him making such a big deal over something so stupid." Lexi huffed snidely. She crossed the room and took a seat on a small wooden chair in the corner of the room, putting her face in her hands. "I hate these announcements."

Roary gazed blankly at Lexi for a few moments. If she was so certain that it was something idiotic like beans for lunch, and Roary wouldn't put that past the Overseer at all, then why did she seem so stressed out about it? Surely beans weren't worth the stress. "What's wrong?" asked Roary, sitting down on her bed, since it was the closest thing to an unoccupied chair in the room.

Initially, Lexi mumbled her answer into her hands, but nobody could make sense of what had just come out of her mouth. Roary gently informed her that he couldn't hear her and thus she lifted her head back up. "It's just this vault. I've been here for twenty three freaking years and it's driving me insane." cried Lexi, wiping her arm over her eye to block the oncoming tears. "I thought this vault thing was just temporary until the above world was safe to inhabit again. Do you know how long ago that was? None of us were alive at that time. None of our parents were probably alive at that time." She sighed sharply, turning her head to the side. "The point is, I don't want to spend ninety three years locked up in a vault, doing work for someone I don't even like!" Roary seemed oblivious to Lexi as she became louder, yelling now. "Yeah, Overseer! I don't like you! What do you say to that?"

"I understand that you don't like the Overseer." Roary responded. He lowered his head and added with a mutter, "Nobody does." When Lexi asked him what he had just said, he quickly looked up and acted shocked, pretending like he had said or done nothing in that period of time. "The point is, that these Vault doors are sealed for a reason and if the Overseer doesn't want us going outside, then we're never going to."

"Bah!" huffed Lexi, twisting her head to the side. "It's all about the Overseer, isn't it? Overseer this and Overseer that!" She rose to her feet, picked up her BB Gun which was sitting on a nearby table, and pointed it at a camera in her room. "Here's something for you, Overseer!"

Roary quickly jumped to his feet and raced to Lexi's side. He pushed down gently on her arms, guiding her to lower the gun. She huffed hatefully, fought back for a moment, then surrendered, allowing Roary to push the gun downwards so that it now pointed at the floor and not at anything that could possibly be furious by having a gun pointed at it. "Lexi, you know those monitors are linked to the Overseer's room. You'd better hope he wasn't looking at your screen when you did that."

Throwing her gun to the floor, Lexi howled, "Everything is linked to the Overseer's room! Did you ever notice that? I bet even the damn toilets are linked to the Overseer's room!"

Lifting an eyebrow, Roary dared to ask, "Why would the Overseer want toilets linked to his room?"

"I don't know. Some stupid reason. So he can like monitor our shit and see if we're trying to create biotic toilet robots." answered Lexi, obviously creating her sentence as she went along. Roary smiled at her and though she tried not to smile back, he could see the slight crease in her lip that revealed she was indeed smiling. "I don't like how the Overseer has to monitor everything we do."

Attention! Attention! The Overseer's meeting AB43323NC has been moved to eight hundred hours. Attendance has been deemed mandatory for all working Vault citizens. Repeat. The Overseer's meeting AB43323NC has been moved to eight hundred hours. Attendance has been deemed mandatory for all working Vault citizens. Thank you. That is all.

Lexi and Roary appeared to be staring at the speaking in the corner of the room as the announcement was made. They listened silently, their eyes focused on the speaker. When it finished, they immediately looked back at one another. Roary was about to speak, when Lexi butted in first. "Oh lovely. He moved the meeting. Just what I wanted! Now I get to get dressed and go straight to the Meeting Hall to listen to the Overseer talk about beans." She crossed the room swiftly, stomping her feet as she went. Roary wanted to say something to her, anything to calm her down, but it seemed like nothing he could say would be quite a bright idea. Instead he remained silent, watching as Lexi dug through her drawers, searching for something. "Do you think I should change into a clean uniform or just wear this one?" she asked, her face buried in the drawer.

"Well, considering that you don't appear to give a damn about the Overseer or what he has to say, why should you bother changing into a clean jumpsuit?" replied Roary nervously, wondering if he should really be encouraging her wrath or not. It wasn't that he didn't like her. Sometimes she was cute when she was angry, but she was also unpredictable and that was something he didn't like.

Abruptly, Lexi quit digging through her drawer. She pushed it closed swiftly, almost as though something were inside the drawer that she didn't want getting out. "You know what, Roary? You're right. Why should I bother changing my uniform for an announcement about beans?"

Roary rose a finger into the sky, meaning to contradict her. Not every one of the Overseer's announcements were about beans. That had only happened once or twice before. However, when he saw the gleeful bliss lit up in Lexi's eyes at the thought of being a rebel against the Overseer, Roary decided against saying anything. He simply shook his head and chuckled slightly.

Lexi must have heard him chuckling, because she looked over at him and asked, "What's so funny?"

Continuing to shake his head, but trying not to chuckle anymore, Roary replied, "Oh nothing. It's just that you're cute when you're rebellious."

Placing her hands on her hips, Lexi said, "Then I must be a sexual goddess because I'm always being rebellious. It's in my nature." She had been smiling when she said that and Roary couldn't help but smile alongside her. However, her smile quickly faded to a frown and Roary's followed in pursuit. He wondered what could have upset her all of the sudden. She appeared to be looking up at the camera in the corner of her room, her eyes desperate pools of dark purple ocean water. "Do you ever wonder when the Overseer is watching you?" asked Lexi timidly. "Do you ever wonder what he's expecting to see when he observes your daily activities?" She lowered her head a little, but Roary noticed the way her eyes were still duly focused on the camera, the little round ball that projected the image of Lexi's small room for the Overseer to see. She wondered in the back of her head if he was watching her at this very moment. She couldn't imagine why, if he was. There was nothing of interest to see. She rubbed her eyes, though this time she wasn't going to cry.

At this moment in time, Roary wasn't quite certain how he should proceed to respond to Lexi. He thought about it for a moment, allowing Lexi some quiet time while he thought. Eventually, he came up with a conclusion and thus responded, "You can't worry about what the Overseer's doing. As long as you're not doing anything wrong, there's no reason for him to observe you for an elongated period of time."

Narrowing her eyes at Roary, Lexi replied, "That makes me feel a million times better. Being rebellious isn't considered doing something wrong at all." Narrowing her eyes further, she finished, "Not."

"No, you don't do anything extremely horrible. You're not threatening the Vault's safety at all." Roary tried to explain to her, keeping calm as he spoke. "You're just being a little rebellious. The worst I've seen you do is swipe an extra cookie at lunch or sneak out of work ten minutes early. Nothing horribly bad."

Lexi smiled at Roary and Roary was glad to see that cheerful smile on her face once more. She was much better when she was happy. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I've gotten away with being rebellious for a long time now. I guess if someone had a problem with it, they would've reported it to the Overseer."

Roary turned towards the door, heading towards it in order to leave the room. Lexi called out to him, asking what he was doing. He paused, turning back to face her. "I just have something I wanted to finish before the Overseer's meeting. I thought the meeting was at twelve hundred hours, so I thought I had plenty of time to finish it." He laughed sheepishly, brushing back his jade green hair. "I guess I was wrong. All those times I wished the Overseer would call his meetings earlier and he doesn't. The one time I'm ok with a later meeting, he reschedules."

Roary sighed and shook his head. Lexi smiled and said, "It's like he knows you needed the extra time, so he decided to be a douche and reschedule the meeting just so it would be inconvenient with your schedule."

Laughing slightly, Roary responded, "I wouldn't put it past him. According to Felicity, he's a pretty conniving fellow."

"Felicity?" asked Lexi curiously. "You mean the Overseer's daughter?" She hadn't heard that name in years. Probably not since she was sixteen. Felicity didn't like being around other people. She usually huddled up in the Overseer's office, keeping close to her father at all times. She was in line to become the next Overseer anyways, so she didn't need to worry about work like the other Vault citizens did. "Why were you talking to her? When did you even see her?"

"You know Felicity comes out of hiding whenever the Overseer calls one of his meetings." Roary interjected, deciding it wouldn't hurt to point out that piece of information. "I spoke with her after the last meeting. She told me something about how her father's planning on permanently locking the Vault door forever."

Lexi gasped loudly upon hearing this news. "He wants to lock the door forever?" Stomping her foot angrily on the ground, Lexi continued, "No! I've been waiting for the Vault door to open for years. Ever since I was little all I wanted was to go see the outside world." She gasped once more, rushing towards Roary and pulling him back into the room before he could leave. The automatic doors slid shut again, no longer sensing a nearby presence. "What if that's what today's meeting is about? What if the Overseer is going to announce that he's going to lock the Vault door forever?"

Roary shook his arm, hinting at Lexi to let go. She released him, but still kept a close eye on his every movement, almost as though she were a security guard monitoring him. "Could be." Roary admitted. "I don't know." He shook his head and stepped away from her. "I've got to go. I'll see you at the meeting." He made his way towards the door, the door sliding open. It would have moved anyways, for an older man was approaching on the other side. "Hi Davis."

Davis stopped for a moment to look at Roary. Sometimes he had to remind himself that these weren't little kid anymore. They were even teenagers. They were all fully grown adults. He was just so used to seeing them as kids that seeing them as adults was new to him. "Hello Roary." Davis answered awkwardly, watching as the boy made his way around the corner and towards his room.

Lexi groaned loudly as Davis entered the room. The resemblance between the two was uncanny. Both had stark white hair and while Davis was lacking the tail-like hair in the back, the front of his hair looked almost identical to Lexi's. The spikes on the top were a bit taller and the spikes hanging down only reached his shoulder. His eyes were a strange shade of red, but not an evil red. It was more of a faded red. A red that had the life slowly sucked out of it. He was dressed in the standard Vault twenty four jumpsuit just like anyone else. Davis was Lexi's father and her last living relative. He rarely came and visited her. When he did, something serious was afoot. She could only imagine what he wanted to lecture her on now.

"How are you doing?" asked Davis in a friendly manner as he entered Lexi's room. To Lexi, he almost sounded too friendly. She wasn't sure what she had done wrong, but she was going to hear about it very soon.

Trying to act innocent, Lexi responded, "Oh, I'm good, dad. I was just hanging out with Roary and talking about people in the Vault and other Vault things, and getting ready to go to that awesome meeting the Overseer is having that was just rescheduled five minutes ago." Twirling her hair around her fingertips Lexi smiled innocently at Davis and said, "Stuff like that."

Unfortunately for Lexi, the way Davis had his eyes narrowed at her said that he knew otherwise. "Alright, cut the crap. I know you hate the Overseer and that's fine. You're allowed to hate the Overseer." He sounded so calm, friendly, passive, even. So Lexi certainly wasn't expecting him to start yelling. "That doesn't mean you can point a BB gun at the monitor!"

Lexi blushed slightly, trying to hide her sheepish laughter as he face turned red. "Oh, so you heard about that?" she asked.

Nodding his head, Davis answered, "Yes, I most certainly did hear about that. I received a call from the Overseer right in the middle of a very important little experiment." Lexi wanted to be sorry, but she couldn't contain her hatred for the Overseer. He had been watching her and he had the guts to call her father on her? How low can people go? "Right in the middle of an experiment! Do you know how important these things are to me? Not to mention the overall embarrassment at receiving a call saying your daughter is threatening the Overseer." He sighed, trying to calm himself down, but obviously failing to hide his overall frustration at his daughter.

Anger welled up in Lexi's stomach and she tried not to release it on her father. He didn't deserve it. She knew that. Nonetheless, she yelled at him, "Well, nobody told the Overseer to call you about my problems! I'm a full grown adult. I'm capable of managing myself. If the Overseer had a problem with me he could have called me instead of calling my fucking father!"

Davis' shoulders lowered and Lexi could tell he was trying to calm himself down, if not to at least help Lexi to calm a little. "Look, honey. I understand that. I don't know why the Overseer does what he does. He just does it." Davis placed his arm on Lexi's shoulder and Lexi couldn't help but notice once more just how much taller her father was then her. "I know how you feel. I know you don't like the Overseer, but you don't have to deal with him all that often. All I ask is that you watch where you point that gun of yours. It's considered a threat to the Overseer's life, even if everyone knows you can't kill someone through a monitor. I don't want you getting in trouble, alright?"

Lexi was already feeling much more at ease. Her father had that effect on her. One moment he would be pissing her off and the next they would be hugging it out like nothing ever went wrong in the first place. "I understand." Lexi finally responded, heaving a large sigh.

Smiling slightly at his daughter, Davis said, "Good. You can rant and rave all about the Overseer in your free time as long as you don't threaten his life. Just keep that ranting to yourself. We don't want the Overseer overhearing your hatred for him." His smile turning up a little more, Davis added, "I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the Overseer can be a difficult man at times." Lexi shook her head. "Good. Then we can end this conversation. Just remember to show up for the meeting."

Davis began heading for the door and before he could step close enough to it to make it open, Lexi called out, "Dad, wait!"

Davis froze on the spot, then glanced over his shoulder to look at his daughter. "Yes?" he asked.

Lexi thought a moment about whether or not she wanted to ask her father this question. Her father was a very well known person around the Vault and that was half the reason anyone even paid Lexi a lick of attention. Finally, she sighed and asked, "Do you know what this meeting is about?"

Davis fell silent for several moments. It was almost as if he knew, but he was afraid to tell his daughter. Eventually, he shook his head, gave her a melancholy look, and answered, "No, I don't." Before Lexi could say anything else to him, he walked up to the door. He waited for the door to open up for him, which didn't take long. He didn't bid his daughter farewell. He didn't so much as wave or glance back at Lexi. He simply departed the room, his head hung low.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, there was something mysterious going on in this Vault and there were people that knew about it. Lexi could deduce that much from her father's behavior. She couldn't be sure if they were closing the Vault permanently, or perhaps if it was something even worse. Then again, what could be worse then having to live the rest of your life locked up in a Vault? Nothing seemed worse to Lexi, but she knew to other people there were far worse things then having a life condemned to a Vault. Some people, believe it or not, actually liked the Vault style of living. It was, to them, safe, orderly, and peaceful. Well, Lexi was getting tired of it. She wanted to adventure across the world, see the sights, not spend her life in a group of agoraphobic people that hardly wanted to socialize with one another. If the Overseer was seriously going to lock the Vault forever, then Lexi knew she would have to start plotting a way to make it out of here as soon as possible, but how?

Lexi shook her head, deciding not to worry about it right now. She glanced down at the clock sitting on the nightstand next to her bed. It was hooked up to the Overseer's room, and thus was drawing the time from that source. According to the clock, she had forty five minutes before the meeting was supposed to start.

Lexi sat down at the desk across her room, resting her hands over some good old fashioned pencil and paper. Even with all the technology around, pencil and paper would never go out of style. Deciding to waste time while she waited for the meeting to begin, Lexi picked up a pencil and began writing down her thoughts on the paper, whatever spilled out of her head, whatever she wanted. She leaned forward across the desk and continued to write away.