This story will follow Johanna Polowski, a refugee of Vault 75 who is my own creation. Bethesda obviously owns everything else. I do not own the cover photo. Don't sue, I'm not making money on this crap.

AN: This story is a work in progress and I'm currently editing chapters for content and consistency. 2/22/19

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It was nearing nightfall, but Johanna wasn't feeling the relief she expected to feel at the approach of familiar darkness that would remind her of the vault. In exchange for a reprieve from the blistering sun, visibility would dwindle down to almost nothing. Out here, in this wasteland, that could prove more dangerous than she had accounted for.

It had been three hours since she had left Vault 75 and the endeavor was starting to seem like a huge mistake.

The land itself was dead from the poison of radiation.

There was vegetation, but very little, and almost none of it was edible according to her Pip-Boy.

Buildings were leveled, reduced to rubble, and she had yet to find shelter that would provide enough safety to get some sleep.

Coming within ten feet of any water source made her Geiger counter protest with its nagging clicks. Even a short rain shower left her skin burning and her stomach throbbing.

The local wildlife was huge in stature and almost always hostile. In the vault there had been the occasional visit from a radroach, but nothing compared to the creatures that inhabited this wasteland. Not only had the roaches grown larger and more aggressive, but outside the safety of the vault existed huge, irradiated versions of rats, mosquitoes and crabs she had seen from a distance.

Armed only with an ancient, pre-war 10mm pistol and two clips, Jo kept her distance. She didn't know what to think of these creatures. Evolution was a subject she had studied in the vault, but nothing could have prepared her for the twisted, terrifying animals that she now faced.

The scientist in her was intrigued, but in the end she was still barely more than a child- eighteen years old, and fighting her instincts to run back to her vault. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting... something more than the dead landscape, perhaps freedom. The right to make her own life away from the horrors of Vault 75. The right to make her own choices. So far the only choice offered to her was whether to fight a giant crab, which had apparently wanted to eat her, or run away and save her bullets.

She hated to admit it, but the Overseer was right about Uptopland. Its deadliness hadn't been exaggerated. In just a few short hours her exposed skin was red and sore, she sweltered uncomfortably under her bright blue vault suit and her eyes were strained from squinting because the sun was a force to be reckoned with.

No one had warned her how harsh and unforgiving that weather was, it was clearly more powerful than she could have understood from a few outdated textbooks. There was the sun, beating down relentlessly, causing migraines to form behind her eyes from the brightness. Then there was the rain. She was excited when it started, having read about meteorology and weather patterns and eager to see it for herself. She became sick in minutes and was forced to take shelter under the overhang of a ruined building and administer some Rad-X.

If you could get over the irradiated atmosphere and the killer wildlife, then there was the desolation. It was so dead and barren.

Joanna craved the simple sight of another human being. She wanted to hear something other than the sound of her footsteps on the hard ground.

There was a long moment where a lump formed in her throat at the thought of roaming the Wasteland alone forever, and the girl froze, unwilling to take another step away from her vault.

She was positive, for however fleeting the moment, that she had made a mistake by leaving. She had been stupid to take the leap of faith and assume she understood the dangers of a life above ground.

But they would never allow her back in, not after being caught hacking the Overseer's personal terminal and learning the horrible truth about Graduation.

She had been lucky to escape without harm. Her scores for physical testing had never been anything more than acceptable, but she had subdued two security guards and then ran with strength and determination that deserved superior ratings. It was a good thing that no one followed, because once the sunlight assaulted her sensitive eyes, Jo sat on the ground, tearing up for several minutes as she tried to open her eyes against the brightness.

There was no turning back. If death awaited her in Uptopland, she was really no better off in the vault. Perhaps if she had just accepted her position in the science department rather than break into private terminals, she would be sitting behind glass while everyone she knew was killed. Either "harvested" for their good genes or "disposed of" like trash.

Her mind's eye flickered back to the vault, lingering on Joseph, the show-off. He was perfect. Top scores across the board along with dark good looks and a charming personality. Graduation day was in a few short months and then he would be dead, along with everyone else she knew.

Jo turned her face to the sky and took a few deep breaths to center herself. She couldn't help them. She was no hero. She was just a skinny little girl who was going to die and then probably be eaten by a giant rat. Somehow that thought was more bearable than imagining poor Joseph dead on an operating table, surrounded by scientists eager to finally cut him open.

Just when Johanna had steadied herself, she turned the corner around a ruined bookstore and ran straight into a mesh bag filled with indistinguishable red pulp. She touched her cheek, where contact with the bag left the entire side of her face covered with a sticky wetness. Maybe Johanna wouldn't have recognized the mess for what it was, but her eyes fell to the ground where the partial remains of a human lay, roughly cut in half and leaving a long trail of intestines behind. The red smear was still warm and her stomach lurched and emptied its contents onto the ground.

Jo knew she was being too loud, but she could not calm her heaving stomach until it was empty. She was bent over, gasping for breath, when a loud voice made her jump in fright.

"HUMAN!"