(Author's Note: I am not using the theoretical default model described by the game play notes but have opted to "customize" the main character to my own preferences. I have, however, tried to stay in keeping with every other aspect of the game apart from this.)
Tibbets Prison
A loud klaxon from not too far off startles the young woman awake in her bunk. She leaps to her feet, keeping her arms rigid at her sides, as they trained all prisoners to do. When no guard can be heard shouting roll call, or the klaxon turning off, she gets nervous. The young woman "breaks formation", as the guards liked to call it, to nose around the immediate surroundings.
She hadn't given the appearance of her cell much thought, but it dawns on her that the prison cell's interior and her clothed exterior are actually different. The light bulb and chain is now a large, rusty lamp hanging precariously by a flimsy steel chain, the two single cots on either side of the small cell are now two double bunks still at opposite ends, with the other bunks unoccupied. The bathroom facilities, however, haven't improved.
The woman presses her face against the foreign cell bars for a better look outside. "Hello?!" The halls to her left and right are devoid of uniformed sentries, familiar or otherwise. "Guard?!" She shouts a few more times, wondering why her grey jumper with the numerical bar code on the breast pocket is suddenly a sleeveless blue jumper with a yellow border and no number code.
The ground beneath her feet shakes violently as a distant rumble reverberates through the cold, cement foundation. She looses her footing, falling onto her backside with a hard thump.
A series of earthshaking hiccups cracks the surrounding cement walls from the ground up.
The lady makes an attempt to stand in between the violent, irregular tremors. The thin chain holding the lamp to the cracking ceiling falls free, dropping it onto her head. She crumples to the ground, unconscious.
The lady Prisoner comes too some time later, holding her aching head as she finds her bearings in the conscious world. The throbbing knot at the top of her head answers her question as to why the rusty lamp is sitting on the cracked, grey floor next to her.
"FREEDOM," someone shouts from down the adjacent hall.
In unison, heavy metal gates of nearby cells swing open. Dozens of pairs of frantic feet stream into the halls, loudly racing toward any feasible exit, even the very prominent hole in the wall inches away from the block of cells.
The mass escape happening outside her open cell presses the young woman into action. Cautious and cringing, she steps through the open cell gate and crosses to the blasted-out wall one foot at a time, holding her breath.
"Halt," the modulated, metallic voice of a Robo-Brain commands, raising it's only weaponized arm toward the girl. "Do not escape!"
She exhales, making a mad dash through the hole to the other building on the opposite side of the large, dirt prison yard. Her first thought is to climb the twenty foot fence surrounding the perimeter, but climbing twenty feet of fence with others trying to kick you off seems more dangerous than finding a hiding place in the nearest building.
The Prisoner does her best to avoid the yard skirmishes between the similarly dressed inmates of this foreign facility, and military guards in their unmistakable tan and brown uniforms. As she races through the unhinged door of a cement building with the Pre-War symbols for medicine and science painted on its sides, a barrage of rifle fire from inside disables an aged Robo-Brain from behind, shattering its brain case.
Four Republic soldiers wearing silver chest plates run by, shouting to anyone who can hear that they have their freedom if they can get out.
The Prisoner immediately crouches, ducking underneath a desk near the entrance way. She waits for the soldiers to exit before crawling along the dusty floor on her hands and knees toward the science labs. More out of a morbid sense of curiosity than anything else, the young woman sneaks down the hallway, poking her head into every room along the way. She finds two bottles of clean water and a roll of bandages inside a derelict break room, saving it for future use.
The hollering and gunfire in the distance begins to fade away the farther she heads down the hallway. On tiptoe, she inches along the hall, keeping her sweaty hands primed for anything.
The young woman flattens against the wall as familiar heavy boots rush by the adjacent hall. As the figure stops to check its bearings, she catches sight of the uniform connected to the boots, and is confused for a moment. The cloth may be the same dirt color as the NCR, but the plating is all wrong, like before, and so is the strangers weapon of choice.
"They don't have Gauss rifles and silver chest plates," she mentally notes, furrowing her brow in confusion.
The booted man consults a picture in his gloved hand before running down the hall once more.
She runs down the corridor in the opposite direction, seeing an open lab door at the far left end. The cracked door leads to a recently vacated lab with some of the experiments still in the process of being set up on the long, wooden tables.
"Is that…" The Prisoner stares wide-eyed at the genuine Vault-Tec issued Pip-Boy, feeling her itchy fingers demand she take the object. Being well-read in the modern sciences from her years of incarceration, pictures from Pre-War magazines about Vault-Tec technologies always intrigued her, and having a near mint relic sitting powered down in front of her is too tempting to pass up.
Her penile servitude has curbed her urges to steal and pickpocket, but she also needs a map of the outside if she is too survive her escape. Her divided mind wrestles with itself only interrupted by a loud crash and bang from just outside the open door. The young lady scampers under a table, cringing at the sound of rusty treads squeaking over the grey tile floor.
The clearly unstable sentry bot waves its equally erratic arms and claws about the place, knocking electronics and scrap parts to the ground, shouting for any and all nearby prisoners to stop escaping and go back to their cells. She watches as the olive colored robot makes a round of the room before it suddenly short circuits and stops dead at the doorway.
The woman waits for what seems like minutes before poking her head out from under the table. She sees the bot still motionless and still blocking her only escape from the electronics laboratory. Without a second thought, the girl takes the Pip-Boy, fitting it onto her wrist. To her surprise, the screen stays black.
A large spark thunders through the Robo-Brain head case, jolting the machine back to life. It turns it's chassis one hundred eighty degrees wheeling backward toward her. "Halt!"
The Prisoner lifts her gaze to meet the simulated voice, but the table between them pins her against the computer desk.
The Robo-Brain swipes at the young woman as it keeps up its advance, squeezing her tighter against the desk. It catches her angry, grabby hands in each two-pronged claw, digging the cold, sharp metal into her tan, squishy flesh.
She isn't sure what's worse, the table squeezing her in half, or the robotic pincers crippling the palms of her hands. She tries to cry out to the other prisoners racing up and down just outside the door, but the air in her lungs is progressively being forced out of her inch by inch.
From the open doorway, a deep, feminine voice says "Emergency override code four-four-six-nine-eight-Jilly."
The Robo-Brain's treads go still, humming quietly in place.
"Return to base."
It does as it's told, letting the girl and table go. It wheels out and down the left hall.
The Prisoner doubles over, coughing and cradling her torso. "Thank you *cough* whoever you are," she rasps.
The middle-aged Hispanic woman in a tight ponytail gives her younger, braided counterpart a once over before giving a rebuttal. "Do you know why you're here?"
The Prisoner shakes her head, standing back upright. "Do you?"
The older woman's grey eyes fall on the dead Pip-Boy strapped to her right wrist. "The glove is the second, exterior part of the battery on a Pip-Boy." She overturns boxes all over the laboratory until the dark grey glove is found. "The bio-electrical impulses of the wearer's body are synced to the glove-"
"Which is then collected and converted in the nodule on the leather gauntlet to power the internal battery of the Pip-Boy," the younger of the two finishes.
She throws her the article, watching her grimace as she slips it over her fresh puncture wounds.
Chunks of green lettered data flash across the screen for several minutes before a generic outline of a labeled body dominates the miniature screen.
The woman sidesteps to the terminal on the desk behind her. With a proficiency that only comes from years upon years of computer training, she hacks the difficult system with ease, reading over the logs on the screen.
A name in the capitalized header catches the Prisoner's eye. "Who's Doctor Presper? Is he the Warden?"
The older woman skims through the last log ignoring her question. "Put these map coordinates into your Pip-Boy," she orders, rambling off numbers in quick succession.
The young lady does as she told, seeing the wrist computer fill in the landscape with a negative green image of land one square section at a time.
The older woman logs off, leaving as swiftly as she came. "Are you going or staying," she asks.
The Prisoner swallows her shock at gruff helpfulness of the woman. "Going?"
"Then stay close, you have the escape route," the woman says, turning to leave.
She keeps a few steps behind her savior, seeing her lead them both deeper into the science facilities.
"I never got your name, Miss," the young lady points out, keeping her eyes peeled for the out of uniform soldier.
The older woman rounds a corner, scanning the letters and numerals on each of the doors. "Just nine." She indicates the bold, yellow number sewn into the back of her sleeveless jumpsuit with a jab of her finger.
"Then I'm thirteen, thanks for saving me."
Nine stops at a door labeled "MAIN OFFICE 2", shaking the door knob. When the lock doesn't yield, the woman kicks at the door a couple of times, but even that doesn't work.
"Go away!" A man's voice shouts, cocking a heavy pistol. "They're my guns!"
"We need those," she says without hesitation, looking the unsure younger woman in the eye. "For outside."
The young girl's first instinct is to scamper away and look for a less violent room with available weapons, but her new partner doesn't yield to her suggestion. She swallows hard, ignoring her twisting guts. "Then allow me." The Prisoner takes a hidden hairpin from her long braid, sliding it gently into the locked knob. She gingerly moves the pin into the place, trying to lever the lock face with her nail.
"That won't work." From a leg pocket of her blue jumper, she hands her a dwarfed screwdriver. "Try this."
Keeping the pin carefully in place, the young woman twists left and right until the lock clicks open. As soon as she opens the door, gunshots fly past them as they huddle against the opposite ends of the doorway.
"I said go away!"
"Now what do we do," Thirteen wonders, cringing.
"Stop shooting at us," she demands, keeping her voice loud and even. "We're here to help!"
The man shoots at them again, emptying his clip.
The middle-aged woman shoves her way past the upturned furniture, making a grab for the empty weapon in his hand.
They grapple back and forth for the single gun until Thirteen takes up the other laying on the desk, pointing it at the cowering man in the office.
He lets the woman wrench the gun from his hands as he raises them at the younger woman's behest.
Nine knocks him unconscious with the butt of the pistol, rummaging through his jumper pockets for an extra clip. She sighs in disappointment. "Nothing."
"Do you want mine?"
"You keep it." She searches through the overturned filing cabinet and the desk, scrounging up a newly sharpened letter opener. "You're going to need it out there."
Hearing rushed boot steps and shouted orders not too far away, they pocket their weapons, leaving hastily.
The Prisoner checks her Pip-Boy, still on the run. "At the end of the hallway there's a window that leads back out to the yard."
"Better than nothing."
The small, high window deters neither of them very long. The two drag a heavy desk to the underside of the unbarred rectangle, forcing the rusted pane open far enough for them to squeeze through.
A pair of Republic soldiers happen along down the other end of the hallway, each holding a piece of paper. One of them checks their note with a quick glance. "Hey you!"
As the older of the two reaches back through the rectangular pane, the younger turns to see who's shouting. She recognizes the incongruous higher tech armaments of them both, like the one searching with his photograph.
"Stop right there!" They aim their Gauss rifles at her just as she ducks out of the way of the energy bullet.
"I'll find you," she shouts toward the poking face in the window, ducking away from the high powered energy shots. "From the map!"
She nods, slamming the pane shut.
Thirteen runs for her life at the sound of heavy boots pounding toward her direction. She darts around random corners, avoiding smaller offices until she happens along the back entrance of the Science/Medicine building, her assailants not too far behind. The young lady bursts through the back double doors into the mayhem of the yard once more.
The pair loose her in the numerous skirmishes happening all through the dirt grounds, distracted by the threats and weapons thrown in their direction.
The girl crouches low in the middle of the frenzy, checking her wrist bound computer for directions. When she finds what she needs, the Prisoner pushes and shoves and punches her way to the west side of the grounds, toward the Cafeteria building labeled with a pyramid cut into six stacked trapezoids.
Thirteen rushes toward the back of the building to the largest room inside, the kitchens and dining area. She runs as fast as her booted feet can carry her, finally collapsing on the floor in the midst of the kitchen shelves and appliances abandoned haphazardly everywhere. As she catches her breath, she grabs onto the nearest solid object to keep her scared, spinning head grounded in reality.
The mostly empty shelving wobbles on a loose tile as she drags herself to her feet.
The Prisoner inches the feet taller metal shelf across the grey and white tiled floor until she can make out a cluster of six loose tiles underneath. She grabs for the nearest kitchen utensil and pries up the corner of the flooring, placing them off to the side one at a time.
Underneath the floor is a hole just big enough for a large man to fit through, and more than enough breadth for a medium sized woman such as herself.
She wonders to herself how far the hole actually goes as she begins to scoop out handfuls of the compacted dirt blocking the way down.
"Yield, now!"
She almost jumps out of her skin at the shouted order before realizing it wasn't meant for her, but in the dining area next door.
The young woman peeks her head through the small serving opening, seeing two regular NCR soldiers holding Nine at gunpoint.
The older woman raises her hands in the universal gesture of surrender.
"Do you surrender, prisoner!"
The woman does just that, cringing as she gets to her knees.
From her leg pocket, Thirteen pulls out her stolen pistol, aiming it through the serving window. She takes careful aim, not daring to waste a single one of her fourteen bullets.
"Will you get back in your cell voluntarily," the one on the left asks her roughly.
She sighs, but keeps her tone absolute. "No."
All at once, her perception slows to a stop and her whole field of view becomes a large green-grid landscape. As she moves her unbelieving eyes about, the people in her field of view are segmented into their individual body parts as well.
She whispers a "wow" under her breath, picking the nearest arms of the rifle-toting soldiers. As her unconsciously held breath is let go, the shots crack off in quick succession, crippling their shooting arms.
"Over here," she loudly orders of her friend, watching as they drop their weapons immediately, gripping their arms in agony.
She follows the young lady to the kitchen, bolting the door behind herself. With any miscellaneous large kitchen appliances she blocks the serving window, hurrying to her younger counterparts side.
The two women frantically dig out the dirt hole until the bottom gives way to a deep cool pit and a shaped mound at the bottom.
The crippled soldiers on the other side can be hear shouting away from the kitchen area in an excited manner. Extra boots clopping along the mostly clean tiled floor makes a bee-line toward the prisoners' location.
"We know you're in there! Come out!" Angry fists pound on the decrepit brushed steel door.
"They'll follow us," Nine states plainly eyeballing the rest of the kitchen. "We need a distraction."
Thirteen dangles her legs over the unstable lip of the pit, readying herself to jump. "We just need to hurry, come on!"
The freshly arrived soldiers use the butts of their rifles to knock away the wedged appliances in the window. One of them manage to fit their weapon barrel though the near unblocked window.
"Yield, now," he demands, cocking his weapon as a subtle warning.
"Gillian," the woman whispers in her ear, pushing both her hands into the middle of her back.
Thirteen lets out a cry of surprise from her sudden hard shove before landing face down in moist dirt at the bottom of the pit. By the time she looks up toward the dim light of the prison, two guards holding their bleeding arms look down into the pit as another one crosses behind the hole toward where the woman was. From above, all she can vaguely make out from the reverberation is "leave her for the-" and "we almost got the other one."
The soldiers point their guns down the hole, forcing their escaped prisoner to run farther down the long, musty corridor out of fear of being shot.