Author's Note: Considering how many stories I've seen floating about where ONE or TWO other people survive Vault 111, I'm actually surprised I haven't run into any stories where the rest of the participants survive. That being said, expect some canon divergence with the AU due to the interference of multiple prewar OCs, loose ends from other Fallout iterations, and even plain old logic and shit.
Rated M for covering the things you would find in the Fallout Universe, and my imagination.
Special thanks to Pro Assassin for agreeing to beta for this story.
Prologue
"What took so you so long, and where's Glory?" A familiar voice asked her from the other side of the service entrance.
"She'll be down here in a minute, Deeks. It's getting nastier up there, but at least stealth comes easier. Where's Tom?"
"Right over here, Professor." Another man chimed in from behind the foggy plexiglass of a rad suit. "I wouldn't miss this for anything."
"Nor would I Tom," came the voice of Glory from above. With a grace one would not expect from a heavy, she quietly slipped down to meet them in several layers of bulletproof clothing and a fucking 80 pound pack.
"Alright, we got about a half hour before shit hits the fan. There's only a small picket around every other way down and of course there's the other demolition teams setting up their little staging ground. They won't look at you too hard if you follow me down the tunnel. Once zero hour happens though, that might change. Thankfully, we should be deep in the maze by then." He gestured for them to follow.
By the top of the hour, at 22:00, all hell would break loose beneath the mask of a blizzard on Christmas Eve. All those soldiers hiding above ground would emerge from their posts, and rush for the tunnels amid radio silence. By the time anybody else caught on, they would be deep in the labyrinth of their greatest enemy.
Regime leadership called it Operation Trenton behind closed doors. Under the cover of a Nor' Easter, the supreme will of the Commonwealth had jockeyed into positions all over the campus in great secrecy. And now, they were growing restless.
Riverboats floated down the icy waters of the Charles, making a dozen different stops, and playing vicious mind games with anyone brave enough to be within earshot on a night like this. As a general rule, you didn't even get to figure out which side of the river the death squads were on until you heard the songs of battle and if it was enough of a surprise, you could probably rule out the Brotherhood when following the stench of burning flesh.
The Brotherhood of Steel were known to send birds out sometimes on clearer nights like giant metal rad buzzards. Officially, they were allies, with a vested interest in seeing Cambridge purged of monsters (at least the less politically adept ones.) Unofficially, they had become territorial motherfuckers after Saugus, just like everybody else here was. "Contractors" from Easy City were known to show up on occasion and strip whole places of anything that could be recycled into the Brotherhood's war machine. And of course, behind all the mutual gestures of friendship, there was bad blood between leaders.
She had a feeling things were going to get hairy when the storm passed and the skies finally cleared. The landscape of Boston could very well change overnight, and whatever happened would likely result in a mountain of bodies.
"Your team?" barked an unpleasant voice up ahead from the shadows.
"My team, sir" Replied Deacon without skipping a beat. "Just came in from the cold, and ready to set up the charges."
"Get to it sergeant," the figure waved him off.
They passed by the checkpoint without any further challenges or even second glances.
Further down the sewer, they could see a handful of men huddled close chatting among themselves.
"Do you actually think the Institute can pick up heat down here?" A man with a heavy French Acadian accent anxiously asked while rubbing his hands together.
"Wouldn't surprise me, Jacques. Ever hear the old tales of the Institute?"
"What, like Broken Mask?" asked another.
"No, I mean like before that. When our world was new. I heard a few whispers back when I was a Gunner, but every story seems to disagree with the others."
"I'm still kind of new to the area, I haven't heard many of the old tales."
The ex gunner laughed. "They have become the stuff of myths. Invisible watchers who control all that happens in the Commonwealth from secret bunkers. Some say their shadowy hand goes as far west as the Pitt."
"What do you believe?"
"After the beginning, the creation, when various remnants of the pre-war government still dominated the new settlements in the wasteland, they walked among us as mortal men. There was relative stability for a time among what remained of our race as long as we had a hope to rebuild. But the old shepherds died off one by one. Their flocks ran off, started turning on each other. The towns, the tribes, the clans, all of them started going to war with each other when they couldn't find the resources they wanted. Somewhere in the chaos, the simply Institute just vanished one day, they say. Even many of the ghouls forget about them now, but that of course hasn't kept them from living. On the contrary don't you see? They are all around us. Their eyes and ears are everywhere."
"Why did they hide?" Asked Jacques the Acadian.
"Because Jacques, even in a world of mutants that threaten man's natural spot on the food chain, humans are still the greatest monsters of all. We rejected them and ever since they disappeared they have evolved differently than us. They sought godhood, and the gods are creatures of a new order whose logic is alien to us."
"So now we seek to find where the gods live?"
"Do you know any better ways to attain god hood?" asked the ex-gunner amused.
She tuned out the rest of the conversation as they went further down the tunnel to the direction of the designated site, not even a thousand feet from where the radio signal had been triangulated.
"How much time we got?" Deacon had asked her once they arrived at a suspiciously new looking wall of bricks (new meaning it looked decades old instead of centuries). He was donning a hazmat suit not unlike the ones that R & D specialists wore out in the field, as Tom started setting the charges. The man was already planning the next hour's worth of moves in his head.
She checked the time on the Pip-Boy mounted around her wrist. It was 9:42 PM. Whether they had too much time or too little she could not say, as the rest of the crew donned their protective gear.
"Eighteen minutes till shit gets real down here," she reminded the rest of her group.
They had one chance to snatch their prize in the Institute before a winner was declared in the race.
Lord, how did it come to this?
"Manual Override initiated. Cryogenic stasis suspended," the automated announcement carried through the cold air; air that seemed to penetrate his containment suit and bite away with its invisible teeth.
"Vault computers are still working, that's good. Checking through the logs, hopefully, it's all..." Adam voiced his thoughts, for Lana Orman who represented Robotics, and for Conrad Kellogg, who represented both himself and the old man. Squinting at the array on the screen, he analyzed the list, and found what would probably be the best choice. "Pod C6, down the hall near the end." Adam jabbed his index finger at the end of the hallway.
They made their way in that direction, Lana and Kellogg.
"This is the one, here." Lana found the pod and pointed to it so that Adam could also it see from where he stood.
"Open it," Kellogg ordered in his usual gruff voice. He drew his pistol, no doubt expecting the inhabitants of the pod to fight him upon release.
The Doctor quietly obeyed the order and pulled what had to be the handle for the manual override. The pod door opened upwards with a hiss.
As the wheezing of the human refrigerator subsided, he could hear coughing and the soft cries of an infant. When the coughing ended, the voice of a young woman - maybe a few years older than Lana, spoke up, "Is it over? Are we okay?"
"Almost." Kellogg motioned for her to stay where she was. "Everything's going to be fine."
"Come here... Come here, baby," Lana cooed the words as she cheerfully moved in for the subject.
"No wait, I got him!" The mother's tone went from groggy and confused to defensive and terrified. He could see Lana struggling to grab the baby whose cries were louder for the obvious reasons.
Kellogg raised his right arm, and calmly levelled that .44 revolver of his at the woman in the pod, in a manner that made Adam downright uncomfortable.
"Let the boy go. I'm only gonna tell you once." Kellogg pulled back the hammer.
"I'm not giving you Shaun!" She did not back down. Then again, she could never have known who she was dealing with.
Kellogg's gun spoke with a roar which reverberated through the hall.
Adam put his hands around his ears in agony. The report of the gunshot in the narrow passage, was louder than anything he'd heard in his life. All the sounds in the room seemed to blend together into a confused hum that bore into his eardrums with a fury. When he looked back at the scene, Lana was holding the baby in her arms. Kellogg was saying something, probably profane wastelander slang as he pointed his smoking gun towards the floor. Lana walked back up the hall with the bundle in her arms.
Kellogg took a moment to holster his weapon and then took a moment to study the pod across from C6. It was a long moment before Kellogg turned to follow Lana.
After what seemed like minutes, Adam recovered his senses and the confused hum diminished.
"What's the hold up?" The wastelander snarled.
"I'm almost finished, Kellogg... Give me a moment." Adam Thompson turned away and took a deep breath. He switched from the spreadsheet layout to the command line interface. After a few keystrokes, he stopped for a moment.
Right now, the power of life and death was in his hands. It was not just one individual, but entire families. There were enough people in the pods to fix the gene pool which would become a problem in a couple generations.
Sure, they recruited an outsider now and then when they happened to have an interesting skill. Though the directorate would never admit it, the Institute's gene pool would soon be getting shallow without the occasional fresh and tainted blood. Almost as loath to admit as the fact that there was no truly untainted except possibly those in the pods. He had not been directly ordered to let them die of asphyxiation which would happen if he did not refreeze them, but the Director considered the need for secrecy more important than human lives. Especially ones who cared nothing for the Institute.
On the other hand, his direct boss would not mind access to additional unmutated genetic material. Maybe even a young woman of breeding age once the old man passed, and was succeeded by someone with the simple mindset of a scientist or an engineer rather than a paranoid security hawk. Even Zimmer that insufferable prodigy from security, would be a better choice all things considered.
If he was honest with himself though, enough people died today.
He unplugged the cable and adapter from the computer, and tucked them into the storage compartment beneath his wrist. It was one of the older unpolished models, one that had been produced by Vault-Tec and had to undergo a heavy-duty overhaul to suit Institute needs. Needs such as the inclusion of a relay chip set among other things.
With his first command, he muted the speakers. With the next, he rebooted the cryogenic sequence.
"Alright, there's confirmation. Let's go." Adam hastily left the computer in hopes that neither noticed what he did.
Kellogg nodded and led the way out of the vault.
Nobody spoke as they navigated the passages of the Vault. At one point, he checked the Pip-boy on his wrist. They would have to surface long enough to catch the signal before they could relay in.
They passed by what had to be the main office for the vault. Behind a desk, a lone skeleton in a Vault-Tec lab coat sat in a well-preserved armchair. Lana asked for a moment to cover the baby in protective gear.
"You'll want him to have as little exposure to the world of everyone else," Kellogg nodded. "Take a minute, or two. Mr. Thompson and I will wait."
They watched her duck into the private quarters behind the office. When she had disappeared, Kellogg turned to face him and took a few steps closer. "Care to tell me why you did it?" His voice was low.
"Did what?" Adam asked defensively, but there was no use in playing dumb.
"The dwellers, egghead. Why'd you refreeze them all?"
"Why not refreeze them?" Adam returned in a voice barely more than a whisper. "They're not going anywhere. What's the harm in leaving them as we found them?"
"The Director will not be happy if he finds out."
Adam wasn't going to make any pleas to decency, or explain his conscience to somebody who committed murder for trivial things like caps for pre-war beverages. No, he would only use words that the filthy mercenary would understand. "Neither will Bio science if they find out we disposed of perfectly good genetic material."
"You're loyal to your directorate, but not so much your leader. I understand, I really do." The bald man looked at him curiously. "Problem is, I take orders from whoever sits in the Director's office."
Adam saw an opening that Kellogg would probably take. "But what of his successor? Even his cronies in security and robotics are eager for a leader who doesn't see enemies around every corner. Besides," he added, "what if he needs backup material?"
By the look on Conrad Kellogg's face, he seemed convinced. "Fair point," Kellogg conceded. "Very well, we will not speak of this unless the need for backup arises."
"Agreed." Adam reluctantly nodded.
The first thought that came to mind, was that time in high school when he woke up without his wisdom teeth. Except now, he was waking up in a freezer, upright. The sound of a hiss came from every direction. The hatch popped open with a mournful groan.
James Tyrell Rodgers tried to step out of the pod and found out, a moment too late, just how sluggish he was. He didn't even have time to brace himself, before hitting the concrete floor.
A strange sensation tingled in his body, which did not feel impact like it should have. His skull was ringing as he tried to look up.
He laid there for a few moments dazed. Unable to move, unable to think. When James finally mustered the strength to do so, he found himself staring at the closed pod before him. He thought about the occupants who made his family.
His mind was still too muddled to make sense of what he had seen.
James found his footing with the help of the red handle bars on their pod. As he stood, he realized that they were no longer a bright red save for a trace of bright crimson beneath a thin layer of frost that seemed to snake around and cloud everything in the room. That was strange, he was not quite sure what to make of that little detail.
It only kept him for a moment, before he levelled his eyes towards the window of the pod. There within, he could see the disturbed outline of Jenny through the icy window.
Without even thinking, he started fumbling with a lever on the control panel that he was sure had to be the release. With a hiss, the seals on the pod were released, the door lurched forward before swinging upwards.
The first thing he noticed was a trickle of blood that ran out of the pod as the mass of foggy air dissipated leaving a horrible stench. Not even that could have prepared him for the sight. Her body was propped against the pod, her head had lolled to one side. Hazel eyes were wide open and starring at the massive bullet hole where a bullet hole the size of his thumb, marked the ruins of her heart.
Of Shaun, there was no sign. Whoever had come wanted him.
This was not happening. No fucking way.
Instinctively, he gently grabbed his wife's wrist, waiting for the throb of a pulse. None came. And that's when he noticed the color of her skin.
Jenny's face for some reason, held the pale complexion of milk. The skin of her lower arm on the other hand, held a pinker tone. How bizarre.
Suddenly, the stench was too much for him, and he jerked his head away from the scene. In doing so, he fell to his knees, and retched the contents of his stomach on the cold cement floor of the hall.
He stayed on his knees after puking his guts out. His chest was heaving with every breath in despair.
A torrent of emotions overwhelmed James. On the concrete, confusion slowly faded and in its void, terror gripped him. Jenny was gone, Shaun was missing. It felt as if the world had passed him by entirely. That was when he heard a knock down the hall.
The sound was somewhere to his right. Acting on instinct, he looked around for a weapon. His search was instantly rewarded when he found a rusted fire extinguisher.
James heard it again. Taking the weapon, he slowly moved towards its source.
After another round of tapping, he could see a hand from within a pod.
James lowered the extinguisher which shook in his hands.
He flipped the switch for the release, and the pod opened. This time, someone stepped out of the pod.
Robert Reuven landed on the hallway floor, without even stumbling. For a man whose features and somewhat round form gave the impression of a cleaned pig, he moved with the grace of a cat. "Thank you, neighbor." His voice was deep and lightly flavored with the accent of a New Yorker.
"Mister Reuven," James tersely addressed the man trying hard to kept his voice from cracking while he avoided eye contact.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Hell, if I know." His voice failed him.
Robert's eyes were all over the place, and settled on the scene behind him. "It was Jenny wasn't it?"
He nodded.
"I only caught a glimpse, but they didn't look much like Vault-Tec."
"Whoever they were, they..." All that remained of his rigid composure melted, and he struggled to continue as if saying it aloud would finally make it reality. "They stole Shaun," James finished.
The fat man shook his head. "And here I thought humanity had already hit rock bottom." He took a deep breath, and the expression on his fat jowls turned even more sour. "Fuck, I hate that smell."
Something in Reuven's mannerisms just pissed him off. Maybe it was the apparent lack of sincerity. "That would be my wife!" He snarled.
"Of course, it is. and sorry for your loss." Robert spread his arms wide as he talked, speaking almost as if he were a parent scolding a child for sulking over stupid.
Before James could respond, he heard another hand banging on glass somewhere else. Robert Reuven took notice of the noise too.
"Now if you can put that aside for a moment, let's get the rest of the neighborhood out of these death traps before the air supply runs thinner than it already is."
Though he was bothered by the man's tone, he knew Robert was right. He was never the best at reading people, but there was something about Reuven that seemed too fucking casual when it came to death.
"How'd you get me out of this thing?" He gestured towards the pod.
"The big lever," James stated quietly.
"Thanks."
The two went to work freeing the participants of Vault 111 from their pods. Reuven opened the rest of the odd numbered pods, while he brought out those in the even numbered pods on the other side of the aisle.
One by one, the inhabitants of Vault 111 minus two, left their pods. They were only coming to terms with the fate of the rest of the world, as they staggered onto the hallway with expressions that must have looked as confused as his own.
He took a moment to return to Jenny. He wanted to make his way out of the vault and find Shaun. Consequences be damned, but for some reason he felt completely lost without her. "I'll find Shaun," James chocked out the words, for once not caring about the six sets of eyes he could feel on him.
The frozen stare on her face was posed with an eternal question. Why? Those glassy, lifeless eyes stared right into his soul and seemed to remind him of the times he fell short.
Suddenly, he could not stand to look at her, and resealed the pod. He turned his eyes to the end of the hallway.
I will find him. I will find our boy. James nudged his way past his neighbors, and walked through the hall. Up the stairs, he made a beeline for the next door only to find it stuck.
"Open up you piece of shit! "James banged on the unyielding metal door with his fists, still numb from the cold. He looked around for something. Anything. He had to get through the door and catch the trail. James frantically searched his surroundings, and found a ball peen hammer. He was about to try and force his way through the door, when he saw through the window...
From where he stood, he could see three pods in the room, possibly a forth.
He looked at the door for a second, and back at the glass before making his decision.
James fumbled with the door, which opened with a creak. Inside, he went to work on the pods, freeing them of the residents. Frank DiPietro was the first to be rescued. He stumbled out of the pod as if drunk, which knowing him he may very well have been. Next came the Whitfields, who left their pods with considerable grace. Then came the Kovacs, all three of them. Mother, father, daughter.
Finally, there were two other pods in the middle of the room, which looked as if they had been jury rigged to fit in the centre of the room. He released both inhabitants. The first one was Stuart Baker, a former Seabee who both dreaded and eagerly awaited the apocalypse for some fucked up reason.
The inhabitant of the last pod began banging on the glass as he approached. When his pod opened, he saw a somewhat overweight middle aged man in a Vault-Tec lab coat.
"You!" Stuart howled with rage when he saw the man. "You have some explaining to do right now!"
"Calm yourself sir, everything is going to be just fine." The man spoke with an accent that marked him as Bostonian aristocracy.
"It's not going to be fine!" James angrily replied.
"Well, things will never go back to the way they used to be, but the good thing is we're alive." He paused for just a moment and studied his surroundings. "If the condition of the room is any indication, we've been on suspension for decades at least. The worst is behind us ladies and gentlemen."
No. James shook his head amid the murmurs of uncertainty.
"So what happened to your friends pal?" Frank asked over the commotion.
The man in the lab coat shrugged as he stepped down from the pod. "I don't know, but I would like a chance to find them if you may. For all I know, my services as a medical professional may yet be required." He motioned the gathered to step aside, who allowed him through unchallenged despite their clear anger.
James followed him out of the room and into the hallway.
Instead of trying the main door, the doctor went straight to a door across the hall which opened without issue. Behind them the others followed the trail.
Beyond the door, a passage snaked around various rooms clearly reserved for vault staff. On the left there were a couple offices, and on the right was a reactor room from which the vault drew power.
Near the end of the hallway he could see the entrance to the reactor room, through another nearby doorway, he saw what appeared to be a mess hall of sorts.
The portly doctor grabbed a baton left on a table within reach, and looked around the mess. Barely ten seconds had passed before he turned away disappointed, and entered the reactor room.
A walkway hugged the walls of the room, the man in front of them gestured to keep a safe distance from the reactors.
He pressed for a few steps before leaping backwards and shrieking in horror.
Suddenly, James found himself taking point. When he focused on the path before him, he could see the object of fear.
In front of him, a cockroach as long as his arm was staring at him, its antenna twitching in his direction. With some high-pitched screech, it scurried towards him.
James stumbled back and swung his hammer at the creature, hitting it in mid-air. The impact of his twelve-ounce hammer sent it flying into the wall of a reactor. It made a disgusting crunch upon contact, sending sickly green fluid in every direction.
He stared at the bug for a moment like an idiot. What the fuck did I just kill?
Then he saw the skeleton. It had been there for sometime, reduced to nothing but bones in a jumpsuit probably torn to pieces by flesh eating insects.
"What in God's green Earth is that?" He could hear the Frank behind him, with his voice barely louder than a whisper.
"Super-sized Cockroaches," answered the man of Vault-Tec. "Looks like they eat people."
As if to answer the man's reply, a chorus of screeches could be heard from behind a nearby door. He was no expert on animal behavior, but he was certain they were hungry.
His footsteps were heavy when he moved towards the door. He flipped the door control switch, and readied his hammer.
They came within a few seconds. James flicked the control switch and watched the door smash one of the bugs while the man in the lab coat fought off the other one with his baton.
When it was done, he could see Frank standing beside him with an adjustable wrench in hand.
James opened the door, then brought it down on the first one to attack.
This happened twice more before the screeching stopped. The next time James opened the door, there were none left to attack.
The room was a short corridor with stairs on the end. In a few strides, James reached the stairs and saw the next room.
The by the standards of the vault, this room was spacious. In the center, was a horseshoe shaped desk complete with a terminal and a comfortable looking office chair. He knew little about the layout of the vault, but it was clear that this was the office for the head honcho.
"My god," the doctor gasped upon entering the room "They actually went through with it." Behind the desk, was the skeletal corpse of a man in a lab coat just like the doctor's. It was sprawled across the floor, and held an N99 in one hand.
"They?" James asked.
"Security staff, same ones who forced me into the spare pod," the doctor explained himself as he walked around the desk, grabbed the pistol, and vetted the pockets of the coat. "When the food stores ran low, I imagine every department made a case for why they deserved it more than everybody else." He produced an access card and put in through the reader on the terminal.
"Don't imagine that ended well," Robert made his presence known at that time.
The doctor was silent for a time as he accessed the terminal. "It would seem that security got what little remained," replied the doctor. "I don't think there is much left in terms of provisions for us.
"I guess that means we leave the vault then?" James had to find Shaun, and right now no force on Earth was going to hold him back from chasing his trail.
The man took a deep breath before addressing those in the room, his voice shook with uncertainty. "By the succession protocol, I Henry Remington the III, hereby assume the duties of overseer." He made a few more keystrokes on the terminal. "The evacuation tunnel is now open. Evacuation orientation begins in five minutes."
Less than five minutes later, they all stood in the entry way shoulder to shoulder while Doctor Remington, looked them over as if going over a mental checklist. They had all been equipped as best as they could be.
Every one of them had a personal information processor, or pip-boy as it was known in Vault-Tec speak strapped to their left arm.
Most of them by now held something that resembled a weapon, whether it was a hammer, a security baton, or a handgun. Three N99 service pistols were found, one of them was offered to him with priority going to current and former servicemen. With it, he had a pack of thirty 10 mm rounds. Most impressive though, was the strange weapon the doctor held against his shoulder, the stock resting in the crook of his left arm.
All the while, Remington kept his right hand clear. If that wasn't enough, his strut was vaguely reminiscient of a veteran serviceman, which was fitting for someone who might have taken a comission for a medical officer after getting his degree.
When the doctor was done, he stepped up to the control panel, and made a short, nervous speech about preparing for the future.
Though he tried, he couldn't focus. All he could think of now was Jenny and Shaun… that and the gun he was packing.
Finally when it was over, the speaker produced a cable from his pip-boy and plugged it into the control panel beside him. With the press of a button, the massive door rotor mount rolled forward and began moving the massive lead and steal door.
From the edge of the line up, they filed down the bridge in a strangely orderly fashion. When it was his turn to climb down the steps of the other side, he was greeted by the elevator that had brought him down. As he took his place on the massive cog shaped lift, James Tyrell Rodgers took a last look past the open vault door keeping his eyes on it left his view.
Only then did he put on his protective goggles, and face the unknown.
Authors Note: changed title From "No Place for Justice," to "Where have all the Yankees gone?" There's an awful lot riding on a title in my book, and I wanted something that had felt like it had deeper meaning and less like a draw from the generic title hat. Also changed James's last name from Tyrell to Rodgers (There's going to be many Blade Runner references in this story and this one was particularly strong.) Some other minor changes were made to make the story feel more consistent.