Adam had never considered himself gullible. He hadn't ever been swindled in the Capital; he always found that he was able to avoid and disarm traps. In Vault 101 he knew he'd been complacent in his last few years but he never fell for a practical joke Butch and his tunnel snakes would try to set up (which usually boiled down to Butch trying to trick Adam into getting to a place away from prying eyes and trying to give him a black eye or two). He was smart.

Very little could get past his eyes and mind, which themselves had both developed a now permanent caution when dealing with strangers. Years of listening to his teacher, Mr. Brotch, talk about math problems and principles had allowed Adam to do mental math with ease - well, if the Wanderer was honest with himself, it was that and not wanting to disappoint his father. And so, now, as he stood before the entrance to Vault-tech's DC headquarters, Adam felt a small twinge of uncertainty.

He'd come there specifically to find the location of Vault 112, which he'd learned from the holotapes his father had left behind in project purity. He'd spent five minutes working at the lock to the safe they were locked inside, and said holotapes currently resided in the beaten-up, stained backpack that was slung over his shoulders. Those holotapes had opened up a whole nother can of emotional worms for him, and something in his gut told him that Vault-tech's Regional Headquarters was going to do something similar; he had, in his wanderings, visited Vaults 106 and 108, an found them to be experiments on the human condition (the former using hallucinogenic gas whose visions still left Adam waking up in a cold sweat numerous nights and the latter being a cloning facility). Those two had left him with a mixture of disgust and horror, but also a new fear:

Had Vault 101 been an experiment?

Adam had toiled with that thought for the past two months, and still found it made his insides lurch. He'd've laughed a thought like that off a year earlier, and likely gone back to whatever work he was doing at the moment. But now… Adam shook his head. He was going to find out today. He was going to if it killed him.

"Hey, kid," came a voice to his left. Adam glanced over, immediately knowing who the voice belonged to; it belonged to Clover, the former slave he'd been traveling with for the past month. "You plannin' on heading inside this place? 'Cause I don't like our chances out here… specially with what we were just running from." Adam took a breath.

"Yeah... yeah. Let's go in," he said. An eyebrow of Clover's arched, but she followed still. The pair had just ran into and away from a group of super mutants that were lead by a master that took a rather keen interest in Adam, shouting 'Vault-Dweller!' over an over at him. Adam's hair was still slightly singed from when the master had tried to nail him with a volley from a tri-beam laser rifle. Clover had blown the thing's head through with her double-barrel shotgun for that. Said tri-beam now was being leveled at the double doors that marked the entrance to the Vault-tech headquarters.

Adam pushed open the door to the Vault-tech Headquarters with a small, near-imperceptible tremble in his breathing pattern. The door, whose glass had been caked with so much dirt and concrete dust that it may as well have been made of the stuff, creaked as Adam pushed it open. It revealed large foyer that had two large staircases with impressively dusty banisters that rested against the far right and left walls, respectively. A large, crescent-shaped desk whose wood paneling had rotted away was in the very center of the room, with terminals that were either cracked or dented or, occasionally, blown-out. Armchairs and couches that had lost their cushioning were laid against the bottom of the staircases, and Adam found that two shot-out couches with frayed stuffing were laying a few feet ahead of him. His also found two pitch-black shapes were hanging upside down from the ceiling. Clover had entered and the doors shut behind her when Adam spun around and grabbed her wrist. The ex-slave's eyes went wide.

"Kid! What're you-" Clover was cut off, however, when Adam yanked her forward and broke into a sprint toward the staircase that was against the far-right wall. Clover's body was lurched forward just as flashes were emerging from the black shapes hanging from the ceiling. Adam, whom Clover had never seen so panicked, was dragging her along at a breakneck pace. The ex-slave heard bullets kick up dust and cement flakes mere inches from her feet. When Adam reached the foot of the stairs, he wasted no time and throwing Clover, who still carried a considerable amount of momentum, over the barricade of living room decor. The ex-slave grunted as she landed painfully on the other side of the barricade. Her back burned with pain, and her world was spinning for a moment, before the ex-slave saw Adam throw himself to the left, losing his tri-beam in the process.

The Wanderer's head banged against the linoleum tiling of the foyer, and he saw the turrets turn their barrels on him. His world slowed. He saw Clover struggling to her feet, eyes still the size of dinner plates. Adam reached out for his recently-acquired tri-beam laser rifle. Clover's eyes flicked between Adam and the turrets, and she realized that she didn't have weapons with the range to even come close to denting the turrets. She saw Adam's hand desperately reaching over for his tri-beam and realized he had no way in hell of reaching it in time before the turrets loosed bullets with his name on them. She only had a handheld shotgun and a rusted sword. There wasn't any way she could take the turrets out of the fight those armaments. But, Clover realized, she could distract them.

Bullets ripped through the the material of Adam's vault 101 jumpsuit and dug into the meat of his right forearm as Clover leveled her double-barrel shotgun in the direction of the turrets. Adam was midway through a desperate roll left when he heard two loud, consecutive bangs. He got a glimpse of Clover pointing her firearm in the direction of the turrets as he completed his roll and the turrets spun to face the new threat. Clover immediately made a beeline up the stairs as the turrets' targeting software calculated it's next volley of rounds. Both Adam and Clover realized she had nothing to hide behind and the former at last wrapped fingers around the grip of his tri-beam. The Wanderer wasted no time in bringing the weapon to bear in the direction of the turrets. Adam aimed at the closest turret and squeezed the trigger.

Three bright-red lasers exited the barrel of his weapon and the Wanderer felt it dig into his shoulder. His right arm screamed in protest at the stress, but adrenaline suppressed the pain to nothing but a faint burning. Adam fired again as the first three lasers shredded through the thin armor plating of the turret, and then once more for good measure. He saw Clover topple to the ground and cringed at the scream that followed shortly afterward. Angrily, he turned his weapon on the other turret as the first exploded in a puff of blue-gray smoke when one of Adam's volley's hit it's power cell. The other turret stopped firing at Clover as it saw it's comrade explode. It quickly found Adam once more, but this time the Wanderer was ready. He squeezed the trigger twice as the turret's targeting software calculated and then loosed another series of shots. Adam dove to the right, swearing as he felt a bullet graze his calf. The lasers he fired tore into the turret, and one managed to burn through it's barrel. It fell to the ground with a clattering sound and the adrenaline quickly streamed out of the Wanderer.

He groaned as pain shot through his forearm where he'd been shot. He saw Clover get to her feet, a light shaking wracking her frame. She gripped the banister of the right staircase tightly to support herself, and alarm spread through her as Adam got to his feet; his right arm had blood slowly flowing down it, and she saw a that his face was paler then it should've been. Quickly she raced down the right staircase and threw herself over the railing as Adam let out a low groan. Quickly, she rushed over, seeing that the kneepads he'd installed on his jumpsuit were ripped slightly. Adam lurched his body upward into a sitting position, groaning again. Clover dropped to a knee in front of him, worry written across her face.

"You okay?" she asked quickly. Adam shook his head, and jerked his head in the direction of his backpack.

"Medical supplies," he croaked, and Clover deftly slid his backpack off his shoulders. She unzipped it, and began rummaging around inside it.

"They're in the smallest part," Adam said, voice a tad faint. His head was throbbing, and the wound on his right arm was stinging like there was no tomorrow. Clover quickly reached inside his backpack's smallest compartment, unzipping it with far more force than was necessary, and quickly withdrew a pair tweezers, a syringe of med-x, a stimpack, and a bandage. Adam's lips curled into a pained smile and he took the med-x, injecting it into an artery on his neck.

"Thanks," he said, voice going mellow. The med-x was something he'd acquired from Rivet City's local drug dealership, and was of surprising quality. The Wanderer leaned back a bit and let out a sigh. Clover still looked worried. His mouth still formed a smile, though it wasn't as pained. He nodded the tweezers from Clover's hands.

"Mind taking it out?" he asked, and his companion nodded vigorously. Clover murmured a 'This might hurt,' and closed the tweezers around the bullet within moments. Adam hissed lightly as the ex-slave pulled the bullet out, and he scrunched his nose up at the strange and rather revolting slurping sound as Clover it was pulled out of his arm.

"I'll take it from here," he said, and Clover, with a look of slight resistance laid the medical supplies out before Adam's lap. She sat back as the Wanderer tended to and dressed his wound, applying disinfectant and making a tourniquet with practiced ease. She'd always been surprised by how competent he was for someone who hadn't even fired a gun - much less been shot - only a few months before. Adam very rarely talked about what his life had been like, other than saying it had been relatively safe. He'd said that his father was a doctor, and had had him reading on how to care for others since he was ten until he was sixteen. She assumed that's where he got his competence from, but also wondered what he wasn't telling her. Because she didn't remember half the things she'd learned three years ago, let alone something in a book that probably would've seriously tested her patience.

Adam put the medical supplies away and zipped up his backpack where Clover had opened it, snapping her out of her reverie. He rose to his feet promptly and Clover hastily mirrored him. She saw his eyes scan the room again, and then freeze one something behind her. She raised a brow and turned around, and then froze; on the far wall, hanging from the ceiling, was a large, steel-gray cog with the numbers 101 emblazoned upon it in peeling paint. The ex-slave glanced over at Adam, and saw something flash through his eyes before he tore them away from the cog. She opened her mouth to speak, but Adam quickly strode over to the barricade.

"Come on," he said, "let's get over this thing." Clover wanted to ask him if was alright - do something - because she could tell her friend was uncomfortable. But it was also clear from his behavior that he didn't want to talk about it. Internally gritting her teeth, Clover approached the barricade.

It took Clover and Adam three hours to open the mainframe. The security was mainly made up of rusty protectrons and turrets, though Clover had gotten a scare from a Mr. Gutsy who decided to sneak up on them. Adam got his own when a sentry bot had shot him and his cover several feet across an office space on the administration floor. He got a black eye from that, and the sentry bot got four shots worth of tri-beam laser fire for it's offense.

So when the pair at last stepped into the elevator that would take them down to the server room, they were both thoroughly exhausted. Clover's leather armor was torn at the shoulder blades, and Adam's jumpsuit had sustained yet more ripping from when he'd been hiding behind a cubicle wall and a sentry bot had decided to make his cover more open-air. His head was still throbbing, though this time it was from when a protection had clocked him with it's arm. Adam used to love repairing robots, finding that they scared away Butch and his cronies rather well, but now he wished that they'd never been invented; the Vault-tech Headquarters had been nothing but trouble, and he nearly vomited the cram he'd eaten before they entered when he entered the men's bathroom and saw numerous nets filled with bloodied human parts. It didn't help, either, that there was two rotting super mutant corpses inside, too.

But it wasn't that that made him uncomfortable at the moment. No, it as the fact they'd opened the mainframe itself. Some part of him was celebrating that he'd finally get the location of Vault 112; that he was one step closer to finding his father. But another part of him was worried over what he'd find inside the mainframe. Specifically, about Vault 101.

Adam had barely found the time to open the overseer's tunnel in Vault 101 when he'd fled, much less download all the files on Alphonse Almodovar's personal terminal. He hadn't the faintest clue of what to expect in Vault 106, and all he'd gotten from there was nightmares and combat experience. In 108, all he'd found was psychotic clones of some guy who was long dead. In Vault 101 he'd been isolated; shunned for reasons he understood now but didn't then. He was bullied and security ignored his requests for help from Butch's gang; the only person who even showed much affection toward him at all was the daughter of the man in the vault who hated him the most. Adam ran a sore hand through his hair as the elevator came to a stop. Clover glanced over at him.

"You okay?" she asked, gasping his shoulder and turning him to face her. Adam was silent for a moment before he let out a breath.

"Yeah," he said, though he averted eye contact. "Yeah. I'm fine. Just…" The Wanderer trailed off. The elevator doors were open by this point.

"Worried." Adam finished, and he stepped out of the elevator. Clover raised an eyebrow again.

"About what?" she asked, placing a hand against her hip. Adam turned to face her, and a veritable host of emotions passed through his eyes; Clover made out anger, anxiety, and concern. Adam took a deep breath.

"What I'll find," he replied, and Clover opened her mouth to speak again, but the Wanderer had turned around and was making his way to the mainframe too fast for her to get words out. So instead, Clover followed. She tried to initiate conversation a few more times, but Adam was focusing singularly on navigating through the server room, which was awash with wires and pipes that snaked toward the mainframe, which was large, steel-gray box that was emitting a faint red light that painted itself across Clover and Adam as they got closer. It painted a over Adam's face in a ghostly manner, and Clover's eyes narrowed in concern as he approached the mainframe and began typing on the keyboard, whose keys were themselves a faint ruby.

The olive-green screen on the mainframe lit up after several attempts on Adam's part to guess the password. Clover approached it, finding it to read:

Welcome, user. You are using a Vault-tech™ mainframe system.

Files available:

Vault 87

Vault 92

Vault 101

Vault 106

Vault 108

Vault 112

Employee Information

Floor Plan of Vault-tech Regional Headquarters for the District Of Columbia

Adam's eyes traveled down the list of options quickly, and he selected the file on Vault 112. He read aloud.

"'Vault one-hundred twelve was created at the request of Dr. Stanislaus Braun, who wanted to experiment in simulations after Virtual Strategic Solutions Incorporated received a contract from the United State's military to create a simulation to train troops. His request was granted, and the vault was completed in June, 2074. This vault is an investigation as to the effects of a long-term simulation on the human mind…" Adam trailed off, and he fell silent. Clover reached out for his shoulder. "It is located underneath Smith Casey's Garage, with Mr. Casey having sold the land to Vault-tech™ during the fiscal year of 2068. It has been outfitted with prototype tranquility loungers that will provide the simulation for the experiment.'" Adam took a breath, and Clover shook his shoulder. He didn't look at her.

"I'm fine," he said, though his voice betrayed him. Clover kept her hand on Adam's shoulder for another moment before stepping back to a respectable distance. She watched as the Wanderer selected the file on Vault 101. A sickly-green-coloured paragraph of text appeared on the screen of the mainframe. Adam took a shaky breath and read aloud.

"Part of it's corrupted," he muttered and he sounded a bit annoyed. Then he cleared his throat. "'Vault 101 was completed as an experiment in the effects of the autocratic power of the overseer on a population indefinitely. It was been built with twice the normal number of greenhouses and the storehouses have been specially enlarged to fit the doubled default store of food provided to it. It is never to be opened under any circumstances unless the current overseer receives an approved signal…'" Adam fell silent. The first paragraph had ended, and the rest were simple numbers that would've been useful to the bureaucrats Vault-tech once employed. But they were dead. Adam took a shaky breath.

It had been a lie. All of it. His first nineteen years of living had been to serve the twisted curiosity of some scientist and government that didn't exist anymore. It had all been one big trick. Adam let out a bitter laugh. Clover blinked as he threw his head back, making his mud-brown locks become even more disorganized.

The Wanderer felt sardonicism wash over him. Alphonse had broken the experiment. What was worse, his only friend from Vault 101, Amata Almodovar, didn't know. She was still a part of it. Just as he'd been. Adam slowly began to reach for his tri-beam, and Clover stepped forward to stop him from doing something with it before he'd leveled it on the mainframe's screen. Clover froze. Adam's arm shook as he held his weapon, and for a few tense moments the thought struck his companion that he might shoot it. But then he lowered the barrel and let it droop toward the floor. A tremble wracked his shoulders.

"Adam…" Clover began, reaching out toward him. The Wanderer flinched back from her touch, glaring at the mainframe as if it had just slapped him.

"I'm fine," he said, but again his voice betrayed him; frustration managed to filter into his words, along with a hearty amount of anger. Adam dug slung his tri-beam over his shoulder angrily, and let out a large sigh. "I'm fine."

But Clover could tell he wasn't. It was as clear to her as the Capital was barren. Adam wasn't fine. But he wouldn't talk about it at all. Not when they passed through Springvale on their way to Vault 112. Not when they'd stood before the massive cog of that same vault, and Clover sprang the question, hoping to catch Adam off-guard and get his answer. The Wanderer refused to admit it to her, but he felt horrible; used. He would prove that when he got out of one of Vault 112's tranquility loungers and reunited with his father.

Clover could empathize; she knew she could help him. But Adam was stubborn, and she wouldn't get another word out of him pertaining to Vault 101 until that fateful day outside the cave where it was hidden...

Hiya.

First things first: I'm literally starting school again the day after this is published. I wanted to get one more thing out before the school year began, and this is a scene I've wanted to do for a while. I haven't read much stuff with LW featuring a scene like this, but then again I've kind of taken an interest in Be More Chill recently, so I haven't been consuming as much fanfiction on Fallout in general, too. This is just a small vignette, but I hope it was a good read. Oh, and feel free to point out an inaccuracies in the lore I might've made.

Anyway, I hope you found this good enough warrant a review or favorite. It would make my day if this got some traction. And this takes place after my last one-shot, "The Right To Ask" (which I'd love for you to check out, too). 'Till next time - Raging Celiac