There are several things in this world that never remain the same for too long. Technology, boarders, ideals even people and laws. Though the one thing that never changes is conflict… war never changes. The mission, the objective, the cause, the weapons and methods change over time… but the essence of war never changes.
The morning the bombs fell… my wife Nora and our infant son Shawn… we barely made it to the vault before the nuclear warhead detonated outside the Boston city limits. I thought we were safe… but we were lied too. Vault-Tec treated us like an experiment… preserved us in cryogenic suspension and monitored like we were specimens in a test tube. The first time I came to my senses… my Nora was killed right in front of me… and our son kidnapped by an unknown group of people… I was helpless to stop it. I barely remember the second time I was thawed out… I just remember hitting the floor hacking my lungs out, and the moment my senses hit me I was on my feet trying to get to my wounded wife hoping and praying there was something I could do… but she was already gone.
I had to get out… I fought though the small vault and it's new irradiated inhabitants… I reached the door hoping with all my soul that I would wake from this nightmare and find myself in bed with my wife the morning before… before the bombs. But this was not to be, fate was not merciful in the slightest. Now… I must search the wastes of my home… to find my missing son. Completely unaware of just how much time as gone by.
The glaring sunlight hit's the elevator platform's sole rider as if it hasn't shined on him in years-even though that was technically the case. His military-issue short cut auburn hair beading with sweat did little to shield his blue-green eyes from the light. He looked down upon the remains of Sanctuary hills, Concord, Lexington and the remains of the Boston skyline-namely the Mass Fusion building- beyond it. He saw the bomb detonate to the southwest he knew that the area would have been bathed in nuclear radiation… but it seemed excessive… four, five no six towns wiped out by one nuke. The nuke started it, then paranoia and extreme civil unrest sealed the fate of what was formally the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The air arid almost devoid of moisture as he started hacking on the dust as he inhaled the air for the first time in years. Pistol shaking in his hand and baton clipped on his belt the man made his way down the path as his adrenaline rush started to recede at the same time as hunger and muscle fatigue from being recently thawed started to assault his body, and certain spots on his chest and limbs as if being frozen had irritated the. As soon as he stepped off the bridge crossing the creek he dropped to his knees, eyes rolling to the back of his head and landing on his face passing out.
The last thing he heard before he faded consciousness was someone calling out to him. He wasn't able to make out the voice… but he could tell it was a woman's.
His eyes opened with a start he found himself in his bedroom, his wife gently snoozing on his chest. They were both obviously nude… with them being a married couple it was normal. Smiling gently he ran his fingers though his wife's messy brown hair.
That action along with almost sitting bolt upright had roused the sleeping woman from her sleep. "Nathan?" she said a little hazy, "Whats a matter?"
"Nothing Nora…" he lied, "Just a bad dream…"
Before she could answer, Shawn started crying in the other room with a slight sigh followed by a soft giggle she reached up and gave her husband a kiss before pushing off him, letting her modest yet generous chest come into view. "Well, you just lay right there… I'll be back to help you forget about it." picking a bathrobe up off the floor and slipped it on she disappeared from the room to see to their son.
Nathan relaxed back into the bed looking around, taking it in seeing everything intact safe and sound. He let out a relaxed sigh closing his eyes… he heard the door open again, he expected to feel his wife's gentle hands on this chest, not the cold painful pressure of a syringe plunging into his chest.
His eyes snapped open as he now found himself not in the safety of his home… but the restrained to a cold operating table with a DNA infuser buried into his chest, and smaller similar devices shoulders and hips. The pain was white hot, almost unimaginable.
"The Lieutenant is awake Doctor!" he heard a voice as his body thrashed against the infusers and the restraints.
"Robots, continue the procedure." the head physician, "Inject the D34 FEV performance enhancing serum according to the project guidelines."
The robots complied, as four held Nathan down and continued with the injections, pricking him in other places on his body the infusers didn't reach.
"Doctor!" The assistant objected, "The Subject is awake! We shouldn't…"
"If we don't we'll loose our progress, we need to keep our edge… we need our weapon." the Doctor pressed , "What are his Stats?"
The Assistant just shook his head and checked the monitors, "Injection at one hundred percent, no side affects as of yet… and we won't know the affects until next month when he redeploys into Asia."
"I wish we could test this sooner but our lack of funding prohibit it…" The Doctor was annoyed at the roadblock but it couldn't be helped, "This… Lieutenant Nathan Anderson, is going to be our first true super soldier, those other worthless projects in Bio R&D can keep their money… I'll show the world what this one man can do, he is our future… our legacy when this world finally burns."
"And if there are infectious side affects?" the assistant voiced worriedly, "He's married with a son…"
"The fool volunteered… but he also indirectly volunteers his wife when he goes home and back to his normal life."
With that another round of infusions forcefully pierce though his skin causing him to scream in pain…and causing him to once again wake up.
Nathan shot up right, finding himself alive and in a ruined mattress that was placed into his room of his now bombed out home seeing his Pip-boy on the table next to him switched off and his vault suit opened exposing the injection sites from the torturous experiment… "Damn it… It wasn't a dream…" he growled.
"Mr. Nathan?" a robotic came from the corner of the room as a dented sphere of a appeared at his bedside… "Sir are you well?"
"Codsworth?" he recognized the voice, "What's… where am I?"
The lightly dinged domestic robot promptly answered happily, "You're finally home sir! You have no idea how long I've missed you!"
"What happened?" Nathan tried to get his bearings, "How long was I out?"
"The better part of a day and a half dear sir." Codsworth answered with his usual chipper tone before remembering that.
"Why do I feel like shit?"
"Sir, my scans say that you're bowels are fine. You were however suffering from dehydration, mild starvation with a touch of freezer burn." the robotic companion summarized , "Your rantings are the result of hunger induced paranoia. In all honesty you are two centuries late for dinner."
The soldier just about felt his heart stop 'Two centuries?! I've been unconscious for two hundred years?' he tried to rationalize. "Hold on… are you saying I just spent the past two hundred years in the freezer!?"
"A little over two hundred and ten actually… its just… its just that…"
"Codsworth?"
"I've missed you so!" he started to rant, "Do you know how hard it is to stay sane with no on to talk to?! No one to serve! I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waxed, nothing gets nuclear fallout out of vinyl wood… NOTHING." After pausing as if to take a breath he continued, "And its futile to dust a collapsed house, and don't get me started on the car… the car…. how do you polish RUST!"
Nathan just threw his hands in the air defensively, "Hey easy their buddy, I'm sorry we couldn't bring you but we really didn't have time to bring anything… not that it mattered…" he just looked the robot in the optics, "I'm glad you're okay buddy… How's the neighborhood holding up?"
Codsworth swerved some of his eyes to get a good scan in, "Some of the houses are gone… fallen to shambles others like this one are still livable… we did have a few residents up to a few days ago then they headed to Concord. Miss Janus did find you out and about and brought you here to recover, and then for some god awful reason she had to leave in a hurry."
"So that's who I heard… I guess I owe her my thanks." Nathan mutters as he threw his legs over the side of the bed, subconsciously licking his dry lips reminding him of one of the reasons why he passed out. "Do you have any water buddy?" he asked the handy.
Codsworth suddenly beamed with purpose and jetted out of the room. Not even a moment afterward he returned with a clean aluminum can and presented it to the thirsty man. Nathan just eyed the much needed water, "Do I even want to know where you got this."
"Why, Its from my personal cooling unit!" Codsworth explained with some inflection of pride. "Its cool, refreshing and more importantly, radiation free!"
Nathan just knocked the water back letting it settle in his stomach handing the can back to the , "Do we have any more?"
"Of course sir!" the Codsworth took the can and placed it underneath his cooling reservoir valve and released warm clean water into the can before he handed it back.
'So he just basically pissed in a can and handed it to me… Nice' Nathan's scared face wrinkled slightly in mild disgust as he took the can an hesitantly drank it, it was clean. Tasteless but clean. 'At least I don't have to worry about radiation.' "Codsworth… You didn't ask about Nora or Shawn…"
"You were muttering in your sleep sir…" The Handy explained, "I know everything, the experiment, what Vault-Tec did… Mum's… and the young sir being taken."
The soldier locked his jaw anger starting to slightly flare up, "Did you see anyone enter or leave the Vault since the bombs hit?"
The irises on Codsworth's oculars just fluttered a little, "No sir, no even after all this time. You're the only one I've seen come out of it." All three of his eyes just looked down to the floor. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of any more help sir…"
Nathan's anger slowly deflated, he couldn't blame the robot, he was a loyal family friend and wouldn't have knowingly betrayed them. "How are your electronics holding up? Need any maintenance?"
"I'm over due for a tuning but I can live with it for know… is there anything you need me to do?"
"Yes… I'm going to Concord, I want you to go though the houses and pull anything you can find from them." He instructed, "Metals, wiring anything we can use to shore up the other houses… People might need a place to stay, and I need to gather information."
"Right away sir!" Codsworth saluted, "Oh before I forget, your floor safe is still secure in your closet under the false panel… I left a holo-tape from the misses there as well… I'm off! Be safe sir!" the Handy finished as he jetted off to begin his task.
After he left, Nathan zipped his vault suit backup despite his skin's complains to the near skin tight fabric pulling on it as it's being resealed. After that he carefully took the Pip-boy, refitted it to his wrist and reactivated it. The device's internal cuff shrank to a fit as it booted up and displayed his vital signs, H2O Saturation, Nutrition , body stress, blood toxicity and radiation levels. Outside of a few stress spikes in his pulse he was fit as a fiddle. Pushing himself off the bed he made his way to the closet, clearing away some of the debris and pulled the panel free reveling the two by two safe embedded in the floor. On top of it, was the holo-tape Codsworth mentioned, he gently picked up the orange and white audio device held it in his hand for about a moment before he pocketed it.
He reached for the leaver and gave it a firm twist, it refused to budge, "Good still locked." he grinned to himself as he dialed in the combination and twisted the leaver again. This time the safe's inner workings softly groaned as it released the door with a hiss, which Nathan pulled on to open and access it's contents. A small document case, a photo album, a box of parts for a 10mm pistol, but what that caught his attention was his old unit patch, of the Second Battalion Fox Company. He held the piece of rough colored fabric in his fingers before letting it slip back down to the bottom of the safe.
He left case and the album alone, he honestly didn't need any ill feelings right that moment, but took the parts box hoping that he'd be able to find something he could use to make his gun stronger.
High tension springs, a few gears, a small tube of oil, small screws and a few molded parts to attach to the pistol. Nathan took the box and left the house, he saw Codsworth happily busy salvaging a nearby collapsing house. Busy to the point the bot didn't see the blue clad man leave. Passing the neighborhood sign as he went to cross the wooden bridge.
On the other end he came across a corpus of a man wearing a patchwork leather coat and some worn down cloth cloths his throat seemed to have been ripped out by some sort of dog. And as it so happens not two feet from him appeared to be a dog that had a severe case of mange, the only other thing that didn't look at all that healthy about it is the tire iron impaling it. Both bodies smelled as if they had been baking in the sun for a few days.
With a sigh and a few minutes of effort, Nathan carefully removed the duster from the body and pulled it over the shoulders of his vault suit… he had to fight to keep from throwing up from the smell that permeated the leather duster. After about a moment he shook the duster off and looked around, and noticed the drifter's duffel bag hastily discarded by a Revolutionary Memorial statue. Helping himself to it's contents he found a chopped down double barrel shotgun with a box twenty five shells. He hastily broke the shotgun open, inserting two shells from the box and snapped it closed. Having another weapon other than his 10mil and his baton really could make a difference. He carefully stuffed the ammo box and the shotgun into one of the duster's pockets, then zipped up and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and kept on down the road to the Red Rocket pumping station.
There he found something surprising, a dog. A German Sheppard if he had to guess the breed. It didn't seem hostile, it was just trying to survive like him, digging though old containers and stacked tires looking for food. Nathan stepped closer causing the dog's ears to perk up and cocked his head in his direction stopping what he was doing and ran to great him.
"Hey there, buddy you alone too?" Nathan asked the dog, who just tilted his head off to the side and whined prompting the man to smile softly and ruffle the pooch's fur playfully. Which the dog pushed his head into Nathan's hands affectionately, "Ok boy, lets stick together." and almost as if his luck couldn't' get any worse the moment he said what he said, the ground started to shift by the station as a trio of giant mutated mole-rats bust out of the ground, "Well boy…" he said to his new companion as he pulled his new shotgun from his pocket holding it up as the dog started growling at the mutated animals, "I think it's dinner time!" he leveled his shotgun at one of the mole-rats… and fired.