Disclaimer: I do not own Fallout 3...there I said it.

Ten years.

It's been ten years since I've been forced out of the safety and security of Vault 101. It's been ten long, hard years since I've been forced into a post-apocalyptic nightmare from which I can never wake. Ten years since I've even eaten a rad-free meal. Ten years since the most dangerous thing I had to deal with was a trio of obnoxious greasers and the occasional radroach. It's been ten years since I'd truly had a peaceful night's sleep, and most importantly, it's been ten years since I've last laid eyes on her...

Sorry...got a little ahead of myself there. I guess a little history lesson is in order before I start rambling on about things that you wouldn't have any clue in the slightest about.

You see, around 210 years ago now, there was a lengthy war between Communist China and the good ol' capitalist U,S, of A. Looking through the endless amounts of bullshit propaganda spewed by both parties, it was obvious that resources were running out and the two superpowers of the world were fighting tooth and nail over what was left.

Nobody was gaining an edge over the other as China occupied Alaska only to have the US annex Canada and violently oust the commies off of 'American' soil. However, this victory came at the cost of heavy casualties at the tune of well over a thousand American soldiers. Both sides were getting desperate and decided to unleash their ultimate weapons...

To this day, nobody knows which side launched their nuclear warheads first but the results more than speak for themselves.

Everything that wasn't mutated by the radiation was destroyed.

And when I say 'everything was destroyed,' I mean that everything was completely and utterly destroyed. Cars, houses, bridges, roads, offices, skyscrapers, Old Lady Ming's little grocery store at the corner – EVERYTHING was blown to fucking oblivion.

All that remained was twisted, blackened and burnt remains to serve as permanent reminders of humanity's greatest fuck-up to those lucky enough to find some way to survive. Hell, the only way that I could think of how anyone survived the nuclear hailstorm was by mutation or by somehow finding their way into a Vault.

Ah, the Vaults...home sweet home. The Vault-Tek Vault was designed by Vault-Tek industries as a self-sustaining and self-sufficient underground fallout shelter. Sealed by 20-ton metal doors, Vaults were built all around the country just in case the war went nuclear like it did. Whoever came up with that idea would've deserved the biggest goddamn raise humanly possible because when the bombs fell and everything was blown to high hell, the Vaults worked exactly as they were designed to and kept everyone lucky enough to be inside one safe and radiation free.

As the years passed and the radiation gradually decreased into non-lethal levels, people began to venture out of the Vaults and started trying to rebuild something resembling civilization in their now shattered world.

One Vault never opened. This was the Vault I came from – Vault 101.

I was born there, raised there, and I expected to live my life and die there. The Overseer (tyrannical dickhead in charge of the Vault), had a policy where the residents of Vault 101 were never to leave. He made us start working at the age of ten and we didn't stop until the day we died. It was hellish but at least it was safe from the radioactive horrors we were told was waiting outside of the Vault.

In the Vault it was just me and my dad, James. My mother died giving birth to me and left my dad to try and raise a newborn baby boy alone. My dad was the Vault doctor and for all intents and purposes, expected me to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor as well. At the time I wasn't patient enough to take medicine seriously, so aside from learning intermediate level first aid from Dad, I strayed away from it. While he never showed or actually admitted it, he was deeply hurt by my rejection of his chosen profession and was never the same towards me. He became more brisk in his speaking to me and started to distance himself from me. While I could still sense that he cared for me, he just seemed to lose interest and left me to my own devices.

It broke my heart to see my dad's apparent disowning of me and it pretty much left me all alone in the monotonous safety of the Vault. I wandered aimlessly around the Vault, completing my duties with no clue as to what to do. I was lost with no guidance and no friends to help me. If it wasn't for her I don't know how my life would've turned out...

Her name is Amata Almodovar. Or was...I honestly don't know how well she's fared in these last ten years. For all I know she could be...no. I won't think that – I refuse to think that!

I've seen (and caused) a lot of death in my life, and though I have been largely desensitized to the horrors of it due to the harshness of the Capital Wasteland, the thought of Amata dead...it hurts me more than words could ever describe.

Amata...just saying her name brings back a tidal wave of memory. A surprise birthday party she threw me when we were ten...me saving her from the Vault's resident gang when we were sixteen...endless conversations and hours spent together... She always seemed to know the right things to say to me in my emotional funks after my dad's apparent rejection of me, and her laugh and smile were just infectious. She had the type of personality where she made friends everywhere she went just by being herself and always had a joyous glow to her whenever I saw her.

She was my best friend – my only friend actually – and I would've...no...would do anything for her and all it would take is a simple request from her beautiful lips. It didn't matter to me that she was the Overseer's daughter. As long as I had her, I could deal with the disdain of the Overseer and having nobody else in all of the Vault. I was content.

But of course, everything had to get fucked up.

It was the day of my nineteenth birthday when Amata shook me from a pleasant dream (which of course was about her). She told me that my dad escaped the Vault.

What. The. Fuck.

To make things worse, she told me that her dickhead father put the Vault on lockdown and killed my dad's assistant and was after me next. On top of that, there was a massive infestation of radroaches that was overwhelming our inept security force and had killed a good number of Vault residents.

I was only mildly upset upon hearing of the deaths of Jonas and the others (by that point, I cared very little about the people in the Vault other than Amata and my dad...to an extent), but hearing that there was a hit out on your life is never incredibly pleasant. Thankfully, Amata – as always – had a plan. She told me that she knew of a secret tunnel that led to the "front door" through her father's office. Through all of the confusion, she figured that I could slip out of the Vault without anyone noticing. After a quick assurance that I would be safe and would try to meet her in front of the blast doors, I left her with her father's gun and started towards the door.

A/N - My first chapter of my first story...well, tell me what you think and if I should continue. Don't hold anything back in the reviews, I can take it. Just leave some kind of feedback for me.