Chapter 1
The Rise and Fall of a Vault
I am Alexandros, I was given the title Deadshot by my father when I was 10 after I took out a bandit with a single shot from half a mile away with his M24. He knew I would make a reputation for myself.
I may not have been born in a vault but I was raised in a similar manner, mainly due to my parents' vault opening a year before my birth. They always told me about how similar life in Vault 50 was to the surface. I found it strange that their vault was the only one of its kind, prepared as though it was going to open in the middle of a massive war, it was heavily connected to famous mythologies, and it was able to manufacture it's own weapons and ammo. I guess one could say that Vault 50 was the only truly successful vault ever made.
Sure the super mutants and the Enclave have gotten in...they didn't last long. The entrance room was the size of a small apartment complex, the walls covered in holes for the citizens to shoot through, catwalks with armor plating, and a pit of fluorosulfuric acid for quick and clean body disposal.
The original purpose of Vault 50 was "Create and maintain a protective civilization to distribute to other Vault populations that were forced to fail." We have been able to maintain that purpose with a minute amount of change to the ideology, instead of distributing our forces we took in settlers who wished to have protection and semi-peaceful lives.
I was lucky enough to start a kind of government for the town that grew around the entrance to the vault. There were 10 men and women on the council, 5 Vault Citizens and 5 Settlers, all of which were highly skilled in many fields. There was Leroy Krow, an ex-Brotherhood Outcast that lost a good portion of men trying to move west, he came here with Akiba Cerus a skilled mechanic, Celina Adams one of the best medical personnel we have now, and Clark "Wrath" Green best damn soldier I've met that wasn't from the vault so far. The fifth settler was Sarah Paxton, a 224 year old ghoul strategist, she was stationed in Anchorage when the bombs fell.
The five Vault Citizens were Durante, Celestina, Akantha, my wife Kyra, and my best friend, Farrell. I was deemed Protector. The system was made to keep order among both the citizens and settlers, citizens are punished severely if caught antagonizing settlers, this can't be said the other way around though, the citizens know they are superior to the settlers. The matter has come to the council and we all agreed that we needed to erase the line between Citizen and Settler.
The following morning I had announced that all Citizens should learn from the Settlers about life in the wastes, sure we had good experience from the vault but we needed to know from other sources, we needed to know the dangers. I saw many agree that day, but I saw many more disagree, I was even questioned by my own officers about the decision...I gave them the option to either take lashes for insubordination or brave the wasteland for a few years without their preferred weapons and armor. They chose the whip. "You were supposed to be officers of the peace, for the people, not just those you know, but those that live under your protection." I looked down on them as I said the words that stung worse than the whip. "You're all being demoted."
That was the first time I sub-consciously thought of self-induced exile, how that would fix anything, I had no idea.
3 weeks after my officers were replaced I had to do a public execution of a guard that went one step too far, he had been caught interrogating an innocent Settler for no reason other than to have a laugh. The execution occurred the day after he was caught. It seemed like everything that we had worked so hard for was falling apart, why were the Citizen guards doing this? Are they scared that the Settlers will take their jobs? Are they mad at me for some reason? I wouldn't find out until after I left, I shall save that little story for later, I'm telling the story of the years after I exiled myself, sure I had a wife, a son and daughter, but in order to protect them I had to leave and they knew that.
When I left I took my trusty Barrett .50 Cal; modified with a lighter, stronger stock, a detachable silencer, and reduced recoil; my AK-74U, a few boxes of ammo for both, some food, a few bottles of water, and medical supplies.
Two years after I had left a massive super mutant army came from the southwest and destroyed the town, the survivors were only those smart enough to know that the concrete walls couldn't stand against the mutants, the citizens tried in vain to combat the army. It was a 15 minute war, they may have had an excessive amount of firepower, but they didn't have nearly enough soldiers.
I should've known that nothing lasts forever, I was naive...but, at least, now I can start anew, learn from what I did wrong, stop dwelling on the past and look to the future.