Chapter 1

Grey, my entire world has always been the dull grey blue of the vault walls. Only, it wasn't just the vault itself. My life reflected the dull color of my world. Get up, eat, go to school, work, come home, eat, sleep, get up, and repeat. I never felt that my life had meaning, never felt a sense of purpose or value. I just ran off routines. Ever since I was old enough for my pipboy, my life has followed the same routine day in and day out for the past 9 years. I had never had friends growing up, I was always the odd one out, and growing up in a vault (Vaults are giant underground complex's built to house groups of people in case of a nuclear apocalypse. At the very least ours worked) with 500 people, when you were labeled something it was hard to change that, specifically in my small class. I was told that my mom had died during my birth, my father had almost ceased to function after that, I think he held it together just long enough for me to be able to handle myself. He is now basically the resident vault drunk and I haven't seen him sober enough to speak with him in a year. It was after the GOAT I discovered I was destined to be an engineer, one of the guys that kept everything in the vault up and running, important right? Yeah I thought it was too, turns out to be a load of crap. See it is also excruciatingly boring. Hardly anything broke. It was always just routine checks and the occasional loose bolt (or every so often old Mr. Springfield would have us save the world by, yep you guessed it, oiling his chair. Seriously, I don't know why we let him continue to do that, guess it's a tradition or something at this point).

In the end, I never made any real friends, save for one girl, Mia was her name (Partly due to me preferring the company of my books than most of the assholes in my class). She had always preferred my company when we were small; said I was kind and gentle, unlike the others. I would sit for hours and listen to her sing, or read my comics with her. We eventually got separated though. She was destined to be the next overseer and had been whisked away not long after her 12th birthday for private tutoring that turned out to take up most of her life. I hardly got to see her anymore, so I secluded myself in my books, and well eventually I ran out. I had even finished most of the technical books and new how to fix just about anything in the vault without a sweat, from firearms, to the water and air purifiers, and even the entertainment systems. Not long after I exhausted my reading material I was struck with an urge to write my own stories(fantasy based of course). Mixing themes from all of the books I had read I started to create new works. My proficiency of working with my hands even let me draw out the characters from my stories. I printed the first one under the name of Raiden, figuring it would be overlooked quickly. It was quite a surprise when I awoke for work the next day, to find the vault was a buzz about this "anonymous writer." I felt a surge of pride and, for the first time in my life, a real sense of purpose and accomplishment. The first real pride I had ever felt sense becoming an engineer (I had been happy about that, weird right?) a smile touched my face as I finished my routines in record time and sat down in front of the monitor spilling out ever more stories while my boss(hah) slept. I held open meetings with the vault as Raiden, easily disguising my voice over the speakers and hiding my face from the monitors that I used to communicate to Raiden's fans. I even got to talk with Mia that way. In a word, Raiden had become famous.

I guess the reason I am telling you this is for perspective. Raiden's stories grew ever more popular, and I became ever more shadowed(seriously, I think the only people that knew my name in the vault was Mia, the overseer, my dad(I think) and the lovely elderly couple that ran the ice cream and printing press shop.

Anyway, I didn't know it but my world was about to get A LOT more interesting very, very, quickly.

I was working on my pipboy one morning, having hit a wall on my latest story, the ETU (Enhanced Telekinesis Unit) built into my head via a chip held all the parts and tools in a blue glow over my head. I had just finished putting it back together when all hell broke loose.

The vaults alarms blared loudly, I heard shouts and screams coming from the main hallway, instinctively I grabbed all my tools telekinetically via the ETU, then, as an afterthought I grabbed the pistol my father had given me. He said it was called a Desert Eagle back when he had first given it to me (it kicked like a sonafabiscuit), along with the few clips of ammo I had for it. Oh, and my baseball bat; not sure why, thinking back. Outside was the first time I had seen the Vault halls any color but greyish light blue. Red sirens flashed overhead turning the entire vault a vibrant, blood red. Security was running back and forth shouting words I couldn't make out over the sirens. Then I saw something. It was a radroach, a giant mutated roach the size of a large cat. Normally, they weren't a problem when there was just one or two, but now there were over a dozen of the ugly things. I saw a security officer firing at them, taking out two, but the buggers were faster and more dangerous than they appeared. They soon had the officer swarmed, dragging him to the ground and tearing into his flesh. Blood sprayed over the walls.

It was the first time I had seen someone die. I wanted to vomit.

Terrified I ran the opposite direction, I saw Officer Patrick shouting something into his comms relay attached to his pipboy. I ran to him.

"I.. what… why…. Red… Sirens…Bugs" I gasped out, trying to simultaneously catch my breath and calm my racing heart. Patrick looked down at me genuine concern on his face. He had always been one of the nicer officers.

"What are you doing here?! This is no place for a civilian, especially someone as vital to the vault as an engineer! Now calm down and use your words lad." He placed a gloved hand on my shoulder.

Vital to the vault? Hah, hardly, but thanks anyway buddy.

I took a deep breath, glad I had started to work out more over the past year, my breath already normal again. "What is going on? Why are there so many radroaches in here? Someone just died!" I finally managed, "I have only ever seen one or two, much less the dozen plus back the way I just came from."

He glowered at me "someone opened the vault door, they got in not long after."

Something told me more than one person had fallen victim to the swarm of radroaches. I'd never seen Patrick angry before, it frightened me a bit.

"w-who would open the door?" I managed to whimper out.

He glanced back to me, a cold look in his eyes. "Mia".

WHAT, WHY… WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT!? I thought about Mia, the only kid growing up that had truly been a friend to me. The girl I had had a crush on for over 5 years, the girl I have, to my shame, fantasized about on more than one occasion… she was gone? Out to the world, if there was even a world, above?

I didn't have a lot of time to think as that was about the same time several radroaches rounded the corner and charged toward us. I opened up my E-TAS (Enhanced Targeting Assistant System, an improvement to VATS, something one of our engineers came up with about 100 years into vault life), turns out, reading those technical books helped, they had let me modify my pipboy to perform at 150% capacity (making it more accurate). Turns out it did matter and I felt about 20% cooler now.

My first shot hit a roach square in its head, dropping it, my next two missed even with E-TAS up. I realized how much I had let my skills with shooting slip not long after my dad stopped insisting I practice… wish I had listened to him now.

Thankfully E-TAS let my fourth shot strike home, felling another roach with my pistol.

Officer Patrick performed better, only missing one of his 5 shots.

We both heard a scream come from up ahead, we sprinted full blast as we reloaded.

This was exciting, thrilling, it was adventure it wasn't routine. I gulped, I wanted the boring back.

I lay on my bed. 5 dead, 15 hurt, 1 missing. I stared at the poster on my ceiling, a poster of a heroic knight battling a dragon to save a princess. But I wasn't really looking at it.

I can't believe it… why had Mia done this? Why had she opened the door? Why had she left, she hadn't even said goodbye. I was suddenly hit with how silly that notion was. We hadn't spoken in years, not really. I would be surprised if she had even remembered me. After all, she was not only the overseers protégé, but the best singer in the vault too, had several records. She was probably more popular than Raiden would have ever been. Mia had had everything, so why did she leave? I had to know. I floated my screwdriver and lockpick tool set over, along with a few other tools using the ETU. (What? In my profession, you had to be able to open something even if the power was out! Besides, I had gotten bored one day, read a book or three...)

I was just about to leave when I heard the overseer call for me over the intercoms. Crap I thought, this wasn't good, I was sure of it. I made my way towards her office

"I want you to hack into Mia's computer, as well as my own and decrypt the information therein. Bring it all back to me. I want to know what she plans to do and why she so foolishly opened the Vault door." Overseer Kristine had asked me, a sad expression on her face. Heh, she is asking me to do what I was going to do anyway... This works out well! That was, until I saw the level of encryption Mia had on her computer. Seriously, how did she know how to do this? For god's sake even I could barely break it. Breaking into this would take some serious work. I smiled, but then I thought I –would- get in, and I was probably the only person down here that could now. After Several hours of banging my head against walls and frustrated hand gestures, I finally managed to get in.

Entry #01

I have just found out that the Vault door has been opened before, that there is life out there… I had to hack into the overseers terminal to find that out, but it was worth it. I don't think she even knows I did it. Turns out, a whole scouting party was sent out the year I was born. Including…. His mom... Veronica. They lied to us about that too I guess. The report stated that she had never come back, only two of them had. There were reports of a town not far from the vault that had taken them in, the town was in a bad shape and the others had stayed back to help the town. For some reason the overseer freaked out then. She shut the door and locked it up tight, saying to never open it again. I saw more files, all encrypted, but they looked to be decrypted easily enough. However I had to bail as the overseer almost caught me. Tonight I am going to find out more.

Entry #02

HOW DARE THEY! HOW DARE THEY KEEP THAT FROM US! How dare they lie to us... There was so much life above us. There was civilization, civilization that our knowledge and technology could help but the overseer Kristine decided that they weren't good enough to risk our lives for apparently, that we counted more than them. I can't believe it! It makes me sick to think someone could think that way. I had always had a feeling, some kind of sixth sense that they were keeping something from us. Now I know. I am going to confront Kristine tomorrow; I know she will understand, she will do the right thing. She has too.

Entry #03

I can't believe it…. She... she wouldn't listen. She even apologized to me, she told me one day I would understand, but I don't think I will. I don't think I ever want too. She apologized to me, but she wouldn't make things right, she wouldn't tell everyone the truth. She asked me to drop it, to forget about it. She offered to use one of those… horrible machines to take my memory away. I almost hit her. She also rescinded all of my clearances for using anything but my terminal unless I was under her watch. Fine. She wanted to shut me up? Well this gal is TOTATLLY going to fight back. She doesn't know I have the vault door override code, I am not even sure she knows it exists. I didn't want to do this but she pushed me to this. I cannot sit in here while there are people that I could help outside. I have downloaded all of the information and schematics contained in our vault into my pipboy. With this I just know I can make a difference, I can be somebody's savior. I can help someone. Oh, and I know you are reading this now. You are the only one that could hack into my stuff… I miss you, I'm sorry I never had to time to speak with you, I hardly had time to record new songs with my other work but I really enjoyed your stories, and the talks we had. Even if I couldn't see you hmhm, I just wanted to say sorry… I probably won't get the chance to in person. Good bye, and stay safe.

P.S please erase these messages after you read this,

Yours truly- Mia Ravenmore

I felt tears welling up in my eyes, I had just simultaneously learned that not only could my mother be alive, out there, but that the girl I had loved for so long had remembered me. She had known it was me, knew that I was Raiden and she hadn't told anyone…