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It's Letting Go

Chapter One: A Strange Signal

The distant, static laced transmission was on a loop, endlessly repeating that same lengthy message over and over again, but also just a little more clearly each time that Tonya Greene tuned in. The station that the words were broadcasting on was at the lower end of the radio band, so much that it could easily be missed if the person listening in didn't know what to look for, but thankfully she had been getting better at finding it, having been tracking the source for several days.

Tonya was a Courier for the Mojave Express, and therefore used to trekking long distances across hostile terrain, but for the time being she had decided to take a break from delivering packages. During her last delivery, a rather exhausting trip that had taken her into Arizona where an unpleasant group called Caesar's Legion was in control, the Courier had been exposed to a level of oppression and cruelty that she had never seen before.

Everywhere she went, there were men and women affixed to large wooden crosses for crimes from theft to murder, and simply left there to die in the heat for days on end. There were also slaves of all ages, bound like cattle, and forced to do manual labor to the extent that many of them died… and women had no rights at all. In the Legion, the best a woman could hope for was to be the wife of someone important, but even then, her only value came from how many children she could produce.

For some reason, though, couriers were allowed to come and go as they pleased, but this hadn't stopped every single Legionary that Tonya passed by from whistling at her or loudly commenting to each other about exactly what they wanted to do to her. Luckily for her, the law about couriers kept them at bay… that is, until she had reached the destination of her package. The contents had been for the ruler of that part of Arizona, a tall, imposing man called Aurelius of Phoenix… who apparently had a thing for slender, green-eyed brunettes.

Although he had not been directly hostile with her, through subtle hints, and a show of who was in charge by having a slave beaten to death in front of her for a minor infraction, it was obvious to the Courier that she would never have been able to simply walk out of there unless this man allowed it. Having been born in New Reno, and familiar with how many good looking girls were pressured into making adult holovids, she knew what he wanted.

Given the alternative of either being crucified or beaten to death like that slave, Tonya had chosen to spend the night with him… a degrading, painful night where he had become even more of a chauvinist asshole, and also nearly choked her to death. Fortunately for the Courier, he had also passed out immediately after, and Aurelius of Phoenix was such a heavy sleeper that she had been able to slip out of his tent unnoticed.

The entire trip back to Nevada, she had bene on edge, as if expecting the Legion to come chasing after her at any moment, but apparently Aurelius was even more chauvinistic than she thought, and had apparently forgotten about her already. Of course, this experience wasn't quite so easy for Tonya to forget, prompting her to take a short vacation from the Mojave Express, after getting paid for the job, of course. So the climbed onto her restored pre-war Lone Wanderer motorcycle, and that was when she first heard the broadcast.

Mostly static at first, the Courier had been just about to change the station on her motorcycle's radio, when she thought she heard a word spoken in the noise. It was probably because she was camped up on top of a hill that the signal came in as good as it did, and the following day after stopping at the top of another large hill, the signal was clearer. Traveling constantly east from the start point, every day the woman talking on the looped broadcast could be just a little better understood, until finally the whole message was received.

Repeating over and over again, the message was too good to be true, Tonya thought the first time after hearing it. There were no pre-war paradises left in the world, except for those lucky enough to be born inside of one of those old Vaults… at least, the ones that hadn't gone horribly wrong in the early days of the war. However, since the Courier was using this vacation to get back to her prospecting roots, she decided that the source of the signal would be fun to track down… although one of those Pip-Boy things would have been nice to have, since the fantasy had been brought up.

Tonya was no fool, immediately suspecting that the broadcast could have been an ambush point for raiders or worse, but on the other hand, this time she wouldn't be surrounded by fifty armed Legionaries, while her own weapons had been taken away. One on one, she was capable of holding her own in a fist fight, and for everything else there was the 9mm pistol that was holstered on her hip. For anything too big for the pistol, such as the green-skinned Super Mutants or reptilian Deathclaws… she had no business messing with them, and was pretty good at sneaking away if needed.

Still, there were some people who purposely hunted such creatures, but those people were idiots, and deserved to have their bodies scattered across the rocky ground… which was what usually happened to them. It was said that the New California Republic paid bounties to anyone lucky enough to kill a Deathclaw without dying themselves, but as far as she was concerned, the NCR could keep their money.

Another day of traveling, and the strange signal was as strong and clear as if she were standing right on top of it, but looking down at all sides of the hill she was currently standing on, there was nothing around but open desert. Traveling past that point, but finding that the signal started to get weaker again, Tonya went back, and did a more thorough search. She had expected to find a radio tower, or a populated encampment, but there was just… wait a second… what was that?

Down at the bottom of the eastern side of the hill, the terrain changed over a small area, becoming smoother and even, as if placed there instead of being natural. There was also something in the center of the patch… something gray that could be just barely seen against the ground from where she was standing, so the Courier left the motorcycle where it was, and started down to investigate. At first she thought that it was a rock, and this left her feeling disappointed, but then Tonya realized that it was a hatch.

Was the signal coming from an underground bunker? This would certainly explain why it was so hard to find, but then how was it broadcasting? She couldn't see any antennas sticking out of the ground nearby, and there weren't any footprints around the hatch either, so… was this one of those pre-war shelters where a whole family of skeletons was going to be found inside? Tonya hated finding really old skeletons, especially the child-sized ones, and that was why she tried not to go wandering around any old Vaults unless she really had to.

Oh well, she hadn't come all this way just to turn around and go home, so after doing a careful check around the hatch for booby-traps, the Courier pulled the release lever, and opened it. Well, it couldn't have been undisturbed since before the bombs fell, since there was no dust cloud or rush of pressurized air that had been trapped for two hundred years, but there was a sound that could now be heard. It was faint, and muffled, but there was no mistake that it was the same broadcast that she had been hearing this whole time.

However, instead of coming from her motorcycle's radio, it was coming from down within the hatch. Listening intently for any other sounds that could indicate danger, Tonya was left with no choice but to climb down into the bunker… surprised to find that she could see what was around her at the bottom of the metal ladder. There was a light on, hanging from the ceiling at the center of the room, meaning that there was still power to the bunker… and Tonya could now hear the radio broadcast more clearly.

Moving down the only corridor, the Courier spotted a small side room, and from the mattress on the floor along with empty food wrappers, it was clear that someone had been living there fairly recently. No sign of anyone now, though, but she still kept her hand on the holstered pistol as she moved back into the corridor. Up ahead there was another room, but it appeared that this was the end of the bunker, since there were no other visible doors, just a bunch of cots around the room as if this had once been a sleeping area.

The last visible feature of the room was a small end table that was positioned on the center, and on top of that end table was a radio with its indicator lights on. That same broadcast was being originated from that point somehow, but this mystery was forgotten immediately after the Courier stepped into the room. Clang! The door behind her slammed shut, and Tonya was reflexively turning toward it, when a sudden hiss of released air reached her ears. No, it wasn't air… it was gas!

Brownish-yellow, foul smelling gas was being pumped into the room through every vent, and even the attempted quick inhalation to hold her breath left the Courier feeling light-headed. There was no way to hold her breath, and she didn't have a gas mask, meaning that Tonya's vision blurred the next time she tried to breathe. Tripping over one of the beds, and collapsing to the floor, she made a last effort to reach the door's manual release, but could no longer muster the strength to lift her arm.

It now felt like she was floating, unable to see, and hearing sounds that were like she was underwater until there was nothing but the darkness… slipping away into the darkness…