For the first month after the bombs drop, Staff Sergeant Nate Prescott is a good little soldier. When the hardest fighting in Anchorage had concluded, Fox Company had been assigned to the garrison at Geneseo. Leave hadn't been on the cards; being stationed at some small town on the East Coast was the closest they were going to get to home. At least it didn't take as long to send messages to their families.
Which means that on October 23, they're too far away to do any good.
Even with the scramble order, they only have minutes. Just enough time to assemble outside and watch the world crumble. Mushroom clouds split the horizon, city after city consumed by a pillar of nuclear fire. Streaks of greasy black smoke belch into the gray atmosphere, blocking out the sun.
What Nate hadn't in a million years anticipated was how little time it took. Done and dusted in just two hours; that's all the time they needed to irrevocably fuck the world. Go team.
Somehow, it's worse than the drawn-out engagement he'd pictured.
The EMP from the bombs knocks out most of their electronics, so while the eggheads desperately try to reestablish contact with Washington, Fox Company's Captain Madeline Harvey orders them to travel the old fashioned way into Geneseo. The town didn't take a direct hit, but that's all that can be said in its favor. Civilians are panicking in the streets, some fleeing with all the belongings they can carry, others trying to start their dead cars, and a few just standing there shell shocked. On the horizon there are too many fires to count, casting a red glow that bounces off the low-hanging plumes of ash.
Fox Company establishes contact with the local rationing center, then sets up a shelter in a nearby town hall. By midnight the place is full—and starving.
A week later, it rains. The water is black.
Captain Harvey once again proves herself worthy of their loyalty when she orders her personnel to remain indoors unless necessary and to fall back to the locations they've secured. Of the patrols sent out to secure food and medicine, only the personnel in power armor survive the week. When they return from their forays, the plating is streaked with soot and corroded from acid rain. Some poor bastards set out bowls to collect the water, and it gets mighty quiet in the streets after that.
Plants shrivel and die, poisoned by the cancerous spread of black. Funny, how the gentle patter of falling rain sounds so sinister when he knows it carries death. It drums of the roof like the soft footsteps of some lithe many-legged monster—something from Grognak, probably, only a lot less entertaining and a lot more horrible.
Worse, radiation disperses into the air, the ground, their bones. They may be safe—relatively speaking—from the initial explosions, but radiation isn't half as spectacular or half as obvious. Not until people start keeling over, at least.
Worse still, the screams. Gunfire.
In those weeks, it's hard enough to keep a lid on the pot with a company of veterans. Nate can't imagine how bad it is for the civilians out there on their own.
Kaelyn and Shaun are—
It's easier to focus on his duty, to push away the reality that looms behind him like a shadow. And like a shadow, tethered to his feet, he can't quite escape it. In the quiet minutes he spends maintaining his gear, or in the stretching hours of his sleep shift, the truth rattles just out of reach. For a long time, all he can see when he closes his eyes is the imprint of a mushroom cloud.
In the hellish turn the world has taken, it's easier to just follow orders. Their current directives are to secure the area, prepare for another attack and wait for further instruction.
What's left of Nate's squad assembles: Corporal Irene 'Dylan' Brenner, Corporal Gina Miller and Private Gilbert Sculley. Stupidly, Nate still expects to see his second, Sergeant Hanson to waltz in and take her place beside him. But no, he hasn't seen her since their final push in Anchorage, when she charged a Chinese holdout and never came back. Weiss and Moreno too are gone, and he feels their absence keenly.
For that first month, Fox Company does its damnedest to maintain order between the fires and riots. No one has managed to establish contact with DC, so in the absence of any orders Captain Harvey orders the company to maintain order while they prepare for an invasion that isn't coming. Not if the USA gave as good as its got on October 23. They scour the town hall for documents on the town's infrastructure or anything that could help the army establish control over Geneseo. Squads comb the town for sites of interest—Super Duper Marts, doctors' clinics—to secure supplies.
Alas, a number of civilians have the same idea. Most of them have guns. Quiet little Geneseo never experienced food shortages like, say, Boston's inner city, but you would never have guessed it from the way mobs gather in front of the rationing center, flinging vitriol and debris at the personnel stationed around the perimeter. As civilians get more desperate, they're less intimidated by the heavy gunners in power armor. Looters comb their way through every building; when the obvious pickings are gone, they set their sights on more lucrative targets. Some survivors band together into gangs, marauding through the city and picking fights for food or fun. Patrols are attacked more often, and no matter the gap in equipment and training, all it takes is a lucky shot. And hungry people with guns can get in a lot of lucky shots.
Just a few weeks, and suburbia is nigh unrecognizable.
One night someone sets fire to the town hall. Nate's on guard outside, facing away from the hall to preserve his night vision. Shadows dart through a nearby car park, and he slides his finger inside the trigger guard.
"Eyes peeled!" he calls, and the others snap to.
There's a tinkling crash behind him. Someone whoops from the darkness. In the corner of his eye, Nate sees another blur of orange sailing through the air to land explode in a gout of glass and fire.
"Contact!" he shouts and opens fire.
A single soldier in power armor can turn the tide of a battle. With four, it's almost laughable. The aggressors realize that while they can scurry between vehicles, they can't land a solid hit—not after a molotov cocktail explodes on Miller's shoulder and she shoots the thrower in the throat without missing a beat. Three hostiles cut and run, to snarled threats from their abandoned compatriots, and at that moment they've lost.
By the time the soldiers eliminated the last hostile the hall is ablaze, pouring smoke and civilians out the windows. They evacuate as many people as they can but—not enough. A number of soldiers stationed in side don't make it out either, with the notable exception of one Gilbert Sculley. Singed his eyebrows off—not that it makes much difference with his pale blond hair—but Nate's too relieved to tease.
Keeping an eye out for any remaining hostiles, Nate nudges the nearest body with his toe. The man's hair has fallen out in clumps, the bare patches on his scalp as grimy as the rest of him. On top of his leather jacket is a chest piece of standard-issue combat armor. From his array of crude weapons and lack of discipline, Nate doubts this guy ever served.
A single shot rings out and Nate's head snaps up. Brenner moves from one body to the next, checking this one is dead-dead.
The old adage 'things look better in the morning' is a confirmed lie. Despite the best efforts of their depressingly experienced salvage teams, there's not much to be saved from the hall. No one's seen the sun since before the bombs dropped, so the perpetually overcast skies provide an appropriate, gloomy atmosphere for them to work in. Outside the town hall's smoldering foundations, the grass has withered into black mud.
Barely a handful of civvies are left; Nate requests permission to escort them past the roadblocks and out of town where they might find someplace safer to stay. His petition is denied. Instead his squad is assigned to a Super Duper Mart, and upon their arrival there are only eight other soldiers there to greet them.
Not all of the losses the company has suffered are casualties; there's been a rash of desertions. No matter the saber-rattling from the officers, Nate can't condemn the bastards who run. Not entirely, anyway. Every soldier with a family's thought about it, and he's no exception. But he can't abandon his post.
Besides, there's nowhere to run to.
Grief, like the most insidious radiation poisoning, eats from the inside out. It hits Nate in an empty corridor of all places, all at once like someone in power armor punched his chest, and he buckles.
They're gone. They're gone. I never got to hold Shaun again— never told Kaelyn how much I lo—
She'd asked him not to leave again. She hadn't begged, aware that this is his life and not hers, and too poised besides. But still. She'd asked, and he'd signed on for his next tour anyway.
And then there's the rest of his family. His parents and three brothers. Shit, Anders recently moved to New York City.
Nate's far from the only one with bloodshot eyes. No one mentions anything, but the people who know he has a family won't meet his gaze.
By December, the rains have stopped but the sky's still poisoned, and there's no snow despite the plummeting temperature. After they lose the Super Duper Mart to a street gang, Nate's squad is assigned to yet more guard duty around the rationing center.
On one chilly afternoon, a group of strangers cluster on the street corner. There's a rattle as eight soldiers raised their guns in sync. One of the unknown possibly-civilians-possibly-hostiles detaches from the group to limp to the barricade where Nate and a kid named Ferguson stand. Nate's emotions are at odd with themselves, the heady joy that swells in his chest at seeing more survivors unable to displace a wary instinct that warns him they could be hostile. Bundled in layers of winter clothes, the baggy drape of this guy's five shirts could hide weapons or even the rough leathers the gangs favor.
"Hold it." Nate trains his rifle on the ground by the man's feet. "State your business."
The man raises his grimy hands. "Please don't shoot! We're starving and Lori's sick and— and we've got nowhere else to go. Please help."
Nate glances back at Sculley, who stands by the door. "Alert Captain—"
"Look out!"
Too late. In Nate's peripheral there's a whirlwind of motion and a wet thunk. Time slows as he looks down, his brain giving him ample time to truly appreciate the knife buried in his side between the ballistic plates of his armor, before the pain hits. And boy does it hit. Fire spears through his gut, white-hot and raw-edged, chasing up his ribs to constrict his lungs. One knee gives out beneath him as he staggers back—and that's enough distance for his squad to open fire.
Under the starburst of red, all Nate can think is, He didn't really have a limp.
Nate spends Christmas in a makeshift basement-turned-infirmary, getting third hand reports that can be summed up as 'shit's going from bad to worse'. At least he has a familiar face in Brenner, who works in the infirmary when she isn't on patrol. Medics are worth their weight in gold at the best of times; now they're worth their weight in clean water. Occasionally she even doles out some sympathy for an old friend.
"Dylan." Despite the precise dose of med-x—enough to cloud his senses but not enough to make the pain go away—Nate manages to snag her wrist. "In my bag there's a Nuka-Cola lunch box. Can you grab it for me?"
"When my shift's over, yeah." She has to pat his hand to remind him to let go.
Brenner's as good as her word and at whatever unholy hour she's finally permitted a break, she fetches the lunch box before slinking away to her bunk. Nate runs his fingers across its dented surface and something in his chest eases, just slightly. Popping the lid, Nate paws through the holotapes to check the letters and photos are still in the bottom. They are.
With a grim—borderline masochistic—anticipation, he flips through the stack of photos and stops on a dogeared close up of Kaelyn. It's a poor facsimile of his wife: her smile is a pale, flat thing while her copper skin is reduced to a dull gray. Her hair curls in loose waves around her collarbones in a way that only makes him want to brush them over her shoulder and press his mouth to that sensitive spot on her neck.
Just a month before the bombs dropped Nate had received the latest photos of Shaun, weeks out of date by the time he tore open the envelope. His little man sports a dark tuft of hair that could only have been inherited from his mother, cause it sure ain't anything like Nate's own auburn. In one photo Shaun is asleep, his chubby hand poking out from under a blanket. In another he's sitting up with Kaelyn's hand supporting him, peering at the camera with big, dark eyes.
He's going to be crawling soon.
In Nate's chest, his heart aches as hot as the moisture in his eyes.
Miller visits on Christmas Eve and, as it turns out, she doesn't just come to taunt her superior with a bottle of bourbon he can't drink. She kicks back in the seat beside his bed, resting her feet on the edge of his mattress. Runs a hand through her black hair, which has grown out in springy coils that bounce around her head like a cloud. No one has time for personal grooming anymore, regs be damned.
Miller takes a sip from her bottle and purses her thick lips. Can't pry words out of her with a crowbar if she doesn't want to talk, so Nate doesn't even try. She moves his lunch box from the bed to the floor, and all that stops Nate from snapping at her is the knowledge that she keeps her family photos in a pouch on her heavy engineer's belt.
"Do you…" Hoarse from dehydration, Nate's voice gives out. He clears his throat for take two. "Do you think they could still be out there?"
"Maybe. Maybe not." She shifts in her seat, her feet sliding across the mattress to bump his shins. Her gaze is distant. "Not knowing is worse, you know?"
He does.
Miller quietens for a time, but her ebony fingers tighten on the neck of the bottle. "It's always busy in the garage—you know we've got more power armor than people now? But I've gotta wonder what the long-term plan is here. All we're doing is putting out fires and doing a shit job of it. Do you…" her voice drops, black eyes flitting around the room. With the Christmas Eve party in full swing upstairs, the only potential eavesdroppers are a dozing medic in the corner and a Jangles the Moon Monkey some asshole thought would be 'good for morale' pinned to the wall with a switchblade in one ear. "Do you ever wonder how things might've been different if you'd been at home when the bombs dropped?"
He closes his eyes. "All the time."
"Maybe—maybe—I could deal with it if we were doing some good out here. Making sure someone got out of this alive. But we aren't. So all I can think of is Kenzie and my girls."
Kenzie, Miller's spouse—they're a pro at handling trouble, like Kaelyn. But also like Kaelyn in that they aren't prepared for war to break out in their neighborhood.
He and Miller don't say anything more, although they do have a half-hearted foot fight. With the bottle only half-drunk, she retreats to her bunk for some shut-eye. Instead of following her example, he hangs one arm over the bed to touch the lunch box and thinks.
On January 8th 2078, the real winter kicks in. With glowing snow. The sewers may have been a clever place to hide from the bombs but now they become an icy crypt, filled with irradiated slush. The only good part is if it hits the remnants of the army hard, its hits the gangs harder. Attacks plummet as surely as the temperature.
Once Nate's cleared for duty, his only outside forays involve power armor, but it doesn't protect his eyes from the green glare that shines upward with an eerie incandescence, or the bodies in the streets, at once frozen by snow and burned by radiation. Word from the infirmary is they're worried about running out of anti-rad meds. As for the rest of the time, well, being cooped up on base isn't so bad when he still has fifteen holotapes to listen to. Brenner can throw him as many wayward looks as she wants; he only counts down the hours until he can hear Kaelyn's smooth voice and Shaun's soft coos again.
In April, the snow melts under a sudden rush of heat that doesn't quite manage to escalate to full-blown summer. Captain Harvey take a bullet in the spine and things really go to hell. By this point the chain of command is so muddy Nate stands a chance of getting a promotion. But no—one of the few remaining officers assumes control. Under Lieutenant Thompson's command, Fox Company is little better than the gangs that roam the streets. Their orders are to shoot all non-personnel on sight.
Enough is enough.
Nate and Miller get talking. Off the record, of course. Having known him since high school, Brenner knows all his tells and invites herself into their little discussion. And of course they can't leave Sculley behind. Trust him to still be an ass after an atomic war, but he's the last of their squad. They consider asking a few others in Fox Company, but in the end opt to keep it among themselves. No telling who might sell them out for an extra coffee ration.
By the time they desert, barely anything remains of the company. What's left scrabble like dogs for supplies, gunning down any civilians who stray too close to their stockpiles.
It's almost too easy. Nate volunteers his squad for a patrol, and they don't report back. There are so few people left his squad are assigned two suits of power armor. Miller takes one, of course, and Nate designates Sculley as their second heavy gunner. Before they move out, Nate takes a final look around the rationing center, knowing this is the last time he'll ever freely move among the army, and tries to quash the fear.
Drawing in a long breath through his nose, he closes his eyes. He pictures Kaelyn, imagines her dark, steady gaze and the feel of her lips ghosting along his nape.
It's a mistake, he knows, as the memories lance through what defenses he's built around his heart with the precision of a laser, but he could use some of her fortitude right about now.
They pass the perimeter guard in silence. Nate tells himself they can't possibly know what he's planning; all they see is another recon squad venturing forth. The back of his neck prickles with the weight of their eyes.
His heart pounds behind layers of bone and steel.
So close.
They head down the hill to sweep the suburbs, silent but for the warning tick of their Geiger counters. Bruised skies press down on the teetering buildings that litter the valley like refuse, as gray and dreary as they've been since October. Between the four of them, they've got two suits of power armor, eight canisters of water, four packs of field rations, ammo for their collective arsenal, and all the anti-rad meds Brenner stole from the infirmary.
The crack in Nate's heart widens with every step, so when Miller sidles up to him and murmurs, "Sir?", he nods and the guilt that's supposed to be eating him has apparently gone AWOL too. The motion feels like the swing of an executioner's ax.
They now have one directive: run.
Going AWOL during wartime has always carried severe penalties, and with the number of desertions reaching an all-time high in the wake of the bombs, the consequences have only gotten steeper.
His squad has hours before they're expected to report in, so they're sure gonna use it. A silent agreement propels them forward for almost forty eight hours of no sleep and few breaks. Subtlety is the antithesis of power armor, built to intimidate the Chinese with its bulk, so there's no point even attempting discretion.
Nate narrows his focus to his gait. If he does that, it quietens both the soldier that demands he report back and the husband that aches for his family.
The sun is a pale disk behind the perpetual green-rimmed clouds, sinking towards the black horizon, when they finally stop. Even then, it's only so Miller can take a screwdriver to the radio module in both suits, shutting down any component that could be transmitting back to base. A townhouse serves as their shelter against the encroaching dusk. Brenner walks through the rooms, consulting her Geiger counter while the rest of them check for hostiles and defensibility.
She stomps back into the kitchen to pronounce, "It… should be safe."
When the medic is uncertain, that doesn't fill Nate with confidence.
Sculley is the first to work up the nerve to release the seals on his power armor. When he doesn't keel over—and giving it a minute just to be sure—Miller steps out of her armor as well. Nate stands in the circle of slumped suits while Miller and Sculley raid the pantry and Brenner slips back down the hallway.
Despite not having eaten in almost two days, the thought of food turns Nate's stomach now that he's standing in someone's house, windows shattered and walls ruptured, waiting for its owner to walk through the front door and threaten to call the cops. To distract himself from the itch between his shoulder blades, Nate finds Brenner in the bathroom, searching the cabinets for anything of use. She gives a thin sigh and turns her head enough to look at him. Best friends since high school, and he's never known the expression carved into her face now. Flyaway strands of dark blonde hair have escaped her bun and fresh lines have been scored around her honey brown eyes.
"They bombed the shit out of us; we bombed the shit out of them. We just broke every oath we ever made—to our government and our people." While her voice remains steady, her next breath is anything but. "Now what?"
Nate pinches the bridge of his nose. "Wish I knew."
When it's his turn that night to take watch, he stands in power armor and tries to look anywhere but at the family photos on the wall. Funny that after six months, this is the detail that doesn't compute, that his brain decides to too surreal. Despite his better judgment, Nate scrambles to his pack and draws out the lunch box, careful not to rattle its contents. Picking out a holotape at random, he shoves it in the player and folds over at the sound of his wife's voice.
"You should have received your latest care package. Hopefully your superiors don't confiscate it this time, unless they're in dire need of fresh socks… which, knowing you soldier types, is entirely possible. It's not the most exciting of mail, I know, but the riots are getting worse in the city. Sending you all our love."
Nate mutes the external speakers so no one can hear him weep.
Their forced march is directionless, measured not by where they are heading but by what they are running from.
Power armor makes for a terrible defense against the sight of blown out buildings, their windows shattered in the local blast. Roads clogged with cars that have been strewn about like toys. A teddy bear sitting at a bus stop.
When it's Nate's rotation in the power armor, he lowers the volume the exterior microphones to ignore Brenner and Sculley's latest argument and plays one of Kaelyn's holotapes. As far as pain goes, this one is preferable.
"Codsworth is nothing short of magical, I swear. I don't know when I stopped being afraid he'd hurt Shaun. It's nice not having to worry about the laundry, but he's more than a simple robo-butler. Yesterday we played charades and Codsworth joined in…"
His squad has another human encounter in a Red Rocket Stop: two gents in the middle of clearing out a Nuka-Cola vending machine. They bolt at the first sign of power armor—although shortly after a brick flies through the window to hit Sculley's armored ass. Nate insists they leave the Nuka-Cola machine alone, and tucks a packet of gum in a bag the looters dropped. He hopes there's someone out there who'd do the same for his wife and son.
After another tense, silent night they move out in the gunmetal predawn. By the time they reach the next town they're down to a day's worth of water. The old brick buildings sport hairline fractures and a few have crumbled. As one of two protected by power armor, Miller takes point. She avoids the main streets, cutting through backyards and alleys, hunkering down behind cars whose paint jobs have been pockmarked by acid rain. As much as it leaves a bad taste in Nate's mouth, they scour the houses they pass for any supplies. Most places bear signs of looting—and worse.
With power cut to the town, no tap will release a drop of water. Unfortunately, with the easy availability of town water, few civilians thought to store away bottles. Either that or the looters who came before have already taken whatever had been available.
Shouts carry in the distant wind, followed by gunfire, so Miller leads them in the opposite direction. Sculley complains under his breath because he's a contrary sonofabitch, but even he knows not to argue. They don't bother attempting to search any super markets; no doubt survivors have already claimed those smorgasbords, and if they've made it this long then they know how to defend it.
"… Shaun loved it; he couldn't stop laughing at Codsworth's imitations. Unfortunately most of the challenges aren't designed for a floating robot with three limbs. Next time I'll tape our charades game for you, if you want. Shaun's growing so fast and I— I don't want you to miss it. He can roll around on his own now and I'm morbidly curious to discover what trouble he gets himself into before he can even walk…"
A Mr Handy propels itself out of an apartment block. "I say! Is that the army here at last to rescue us? I haven't seen Miss Springer since—"
Miller shoots. Unlike the Mr Gutsys, the domestic model has no armor so a trio of rounds shred through its plating. Ducking past a flailing appendage, she gets close enough to put a final bullet in its processor. The robot's indignant squawking cuts off at once.
Sculley's the first to find his voice. "Good thing I didn't dress up as a Mr Handy for Halloween."
Nate's the second. "What the hell was that for, Corporal?"
Miller already crouches in front of the Mr Handy with a screwdriver, removing its outer casing. "This model has an inbuilt water purifier. Small scale, but beats having nothing."
They drag the robot into the cover of a ground-floor apartment; Nate and Brenner stand guard while Miller dismembers the Mr Handy piece by piece, scavenging anything that will fit in her equipment belt or vest pockets. Sculley prowls the flat, throwing open every cupboard, but the place has already been picked over by looters. Old sooty bootprints stand out on the once-cream carpet.
There's a whoop from the bedroom. Brenner startles, reaching for her sidearm, and swears as Sculley appears in the doorway.
Sculley's moderate victory encompasses a half-empty packet of cigarettes he found under the bed and a pair of briefs. No one argues his ownership of the latter, but when he holds a cigarette between his teeth—that catches their attention. He somehow sports a sunburn despite spending the day in power armor— no, Nate realizes upon closer inspection, noticing how Sculley's eyes are bloodshot, the red stark against his baby blues. Can't be sunburn.
"I hope you're planning on sharing a smoke with me," Miller says, her tone as mild as ever, without looking up from her work. She misses the resentful look Sculley throws her. "Y'all owe me for saving your asses."
In the end they all share one cigarette, passing it around the living room. Nate takes a drag and closes his eyes to relish the stale tobacco before blowing out a lungful of smoke. Kaelyn will have his head if she sees him lapsing—
Nate cuts that thought off, but it's too late.
He'd give anything to see her again. Even if she's angry, even just to argue, the cold professionalism she employs against prosecutors in the courtroom evaporated under the heat of her honest glare.
Something cracks in his chest and he draws in a sharp, hitching breath.
Nate volunteers to stand guard in the power armor while Miller coils several feet of copper wire to squirrel away.
"… Your mother told me all the stories about you and your brothers, so I'm ready for anything. I'd almost say I hope he takes after my side of the family, but— well, you know that's not necessarily better. Love you, big guy."
In the dinginess of the encroaching dusk they opt to stay put for the night after relocating to the second floor and booby-trapping the stairs with makeshift tripwires. Turns out there is a purpose to the wires Miller scavenged. No one's game enough to suggest a fire, not even for warmth when shattered panes of glass litter the carpet, allowing cold air and eerie silence to creep into the flat. No light shines through the windows; the street lights are long dead and the stars are hibernating above the clouds.
After a half-ration meal, Nate hops back into the power armor for first watch while the others pile together in the double bed the same way they'd pile on a bunk in the barracks. The now-familiar impulse flits in the back of his mind, but Nate holds out against it for as long as he can, running through routine maintenance on the power armor. No hull breaches detected, atmospheric seals holding, fusion core with seventy-eight percent juice, Geiger counter still operational
Despite running through every test he can think of—twice—Nate is soon left with the unnerving quiet of a dead street. And the urge to fidget. Boredom is an inevitable part of war, and after all these years Nate thought he could wait like a pro. He owes it to his squad to focus on the job; ears are just as important as eyes when keeping watch. Only he wants to be anywhere but inside this cosy little flat they're squatting in, with its mismatching furniture and damp carpet. One wall has buckled, wallpaper bubbling from intense heat, its shapes a faint impression in the near-total blackness.
Unbidden, he wonders if this is what Sanctuary Hills looks like now. Sounds like.
The elastic band that is his resolve, stretched to its limits, snaps. Giving up never felt so good.
Maybe it isn't nicotine he should be worried about developing an addiction to.
The click of the holotape player is loud in the dark, or at least loud in his ears. "They've started construction on the vault just outside Sanctuary Hills. Can't say I appreciate their work hours, but it isn't like Shaun lets me sleep much anyway. That's right, little guy, I'm talking about you. Heh, don't touch that or we can't talk to Daddy anymore… there we go. Vault 111, it's supposed to be. All those construction workers have to pass Mrs Able's house to reach the track behind the cul-de-sac, and she's horrified at the damage to her garden—" a baby's gurgle cuts her off and Nate's heart clenches. On the tape, Kaelyn laughs. "That's right, Shaun, we're practicing the fine suburban art of gossip…"
All Nate has of Shaun are photos and audio logs and old memories of his birth. Never got to know his own son because he'd been out here playing soldier instead of being a father. Home—that's where he should have been. Who knows, maybe he could have put his army training to better use protecting his family at the end. Maybe they'd still be alive if he'd been there to protect them.
He almost misses Kaelyn's voice lose its playful lilt, softening to something pensive.
"I'm… I'm thinking of signing us up for the vault. It's insurance, right? We shouldn't need it, but… just in case." A heavy silence drops like a rock. Then she hums. "We love you. Please come home, Nate."
He can't breathe in the sudden rush of fear and—hope. It crushes his chest, its weight almost too much to bear.
Ejecting himself from the power armor, Nate scrubs the tears off his face and bursts into the bedroom. Sculley jumps in surprise, almost knocking Brenner off the bed. Miller too flinches, flailing about for threats. Three pairs of hands reach for weapons, only relaxing when their respective owners recognize him.
In hindsight, not Nate's best move. But he barely spares it a thought, breathless and downright giddy with hope. "I know where we need to go."
