Ugh… what the hell is going on?

I'm still in the decontamination pod… why am I still in the decontamination pod? Where are the Vault-Tec people?

The glass was frosted, not foggy, frosted… this wasn't a decontamination pod. What the hell is going on?

There was movement outside of the pod. "This is the one, here."

Someone in full hazmat gear, a woman, and a bald man in a leather jacket. "Open it."

His voice was low and rough. They were in front of Nate's pod, the woman in hazmat gear pulled a release.

An alarm, Nate's pod opened with a hiss. He stirred, still cradling Shaun against his chest. "Is it over? Are we okay?"

Deep Voice again, "Almost. Everything is going to be fine." Were they an extraction team? Part of Vault-Tec maybe? Was the military still operational?

The woman tried to take Shaun, "Come here… Come here baby…"

Nate resisted, pulling Shaun back, "No, wait," the woman kept trying to take Shaun. "No, I've got him."

Just let him hold Shaun you idiots. God, this is why I only worked with Special Operations. Deep Voice spoke again, "Let the boy go." He drew a gun, a 44. Pistol, "I'm only gonna tell you once!"

What the hell is wrong with him? I start pounding on the glass. I have to do something, anything. I have to stop this. Nate and the woman kept fighting over Shaun, Nate clearly stronger but weakened by the time in the pod. "I'm not giving you Shaun!"

I have to do something, I bring my leg up and kick the door, but it doesn't budge.

A single booming shot, Nate slumps back in his pod, blood pouring down his face. The woman takes Shaun as Nate's grip goes limp.

No! I pound on the glass, I kick at the door, I search the pod for some kind of emergency release. I have to get out. I have to save him; I have to save my son.

I have to kill these people.

Shaun starts crying, the man with the gun turns. "Goddamnit! Get the kid out of here and let's go…"

They close Nate's pod, the woman walks out of sight, taking my son with her. The man turns to my pod, putting his face right up to the glass. I instinctively memorize every detail, tan skin, a deep scar running down the length of the left side of his face, a scruffy round beard, dark eyes, a muscular neck. "At least we still have the backup." He walked away and I started outright thrashing. I have to get out!

A computerized female voice came through hidden speakers, "Cryogenics sequence reinitialized." The temperature began to drop, some kind of gas was pumped into to the pod, and everything started to fade. A few seconds later, oblivion.

I came into consciousness again coughing and sputtering, that alarm was blaring again. The computerized voice was speaking again, "Critical failure in Cryogenics Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately." I pounded on the glass again, and this time the door came open. I threw myself out of the pod, I had to get to Nate, the cryogenics could have slowed down his body processes enough, if I got to him soon enough, I might be able to get him to an infirmary. The Vault had to have an infirmary, I could pump him full of stims, hopefully they had an auto-doc but I had enough medical training that I could at least attempt performing surgery myself.

My legs refused to support my weight and I collapsed on to my hands and knees. Without pausing, I crawled over to Nates pod. Latching on the pod, I pulled myself to my feet and yanked the release. Hanging on to the side of the pod on shaky legs, I waited for the door to open. As soon as it did, I knew I was too late. The entry wound was a neat little hole in his temple, blood from it was still frozen on Nate's face. The exit wound was much larger, the bullet had taken a good part of his skull with it. Bits of frozen blood, bone, and grey matter were spread across the pod's headrest. Still, I checked his pulse, nothing. He was gone.

I collapsed in front of his corpse. It wasn't fair, over a decade with special forces, and he's executed in a damn cryopod. Twelve years with the Activity, and all I could do was sit and watch while my husband was executed and my baby stolen. First I'd lost Ming, now I'd lost Nate and Shaun. Then it dawned on me, the nuclear blast as the elevator descended, the world had ended. I hadn't just lost them, I'd lost everything.

Tears threatened to come flooding out, but I held them back. I knew that if I let them start I wouldn't be able to stop. I laid there for a while, just staring up at him. "Madison," when I heard the Russian accented voice, at first I thought I was hallucinating. Then it came again, "Nate, blyad! Madison, are you injured? Do we have hostiles in the area?"

I was grabbed by huge arms and pulled to my feet. I blinked and looked at the bear of a man propping me up, "Mikhail?"

The former Spetsnaz operative gave me a slight shake, "Maddie, I need you to focus. Are there any hostiles in the facility?"

His professionalism managed to snap me back to reality. "No, probably not, a two-man team came in, took Shaun, and executed Nate. The system put me back in cryosleep, so they could have been here five minutes ago, or they could have been here fifty years ago. I don't know, in either case, I guarantee that they've extracted by now." I stepped away, and turned back to Nate.

Enough pity, time to get back to business. I slid the wedding ring off of Nates finger, tucked it in the pocket of my Vault suit, and laid a hand on his knee. "I'll find the people who did this and I'll get Shaun back, I promise." Then I turned back to Mikhail, "Natalya?"

Mikhail shook his head, "dead. Along with everyone else that I could find. It looks like the life support system was turned off and not reactivated for most of the people here. The only reason I can come up for my being alive is some kind of glitch. Everyone else seems to have died of asphyxiation."

I issued a series of four letter words, "I'm sorry Mikhail, Natalya deserved better than that."

Mikhail nodded, "Yes, she did, so did Nathan. We need to clear the Vault, see if anyone else might have survived."

I nodded, then looked at Nate one more time and pushed the lever down, sealing the pod. Then it was back to the matter at hand. The room we were in was easy enough to clear, we checked all of the pods, no survivors, everyone had been asphyxiated.

"Clear." We stepped into the hallway, taking up a standard formation. Mikhail was on point while I took six. It was meant for clearing rooms with a two-man team, though said team was supposed to be armed. But one made do with what one had. Every surface had a fine layer of moisture on it, probably part of the cryogenic array failing.

"I already cleared that room when I came to," Mikhail said as we passed the secondary cryogenics chamber.

There was a tool cart in front of the exit, I tried the door. "It's jammed," The panel was pneumatically sealed, we weren't going to get through this way. I grabbed a screw driver, it wasn't my weapon of choice, but it was better than nothing.

"Hallway clear," we tried a side door across from the secondary cryo room, luckily this one worked. We made our way down the stairs until we reached what appeared to be a security checkpoint next to the reactor room

I took a seat in front of the terminal while Mikhail stood lookout. "No encryption or password, guess security protocols weren't a high priority."

"The end of the world can do that." I chuckled as I logged in, gallows humor at its finest. Apparently the terminal belonged to one of the security officers. I opened the protocol manual, "Apparently the goal of the Vault was some kind of experiment. They wanted to study the effects of cryogenic suspended animation on unsuspecting test subjects." Vault-Tec, a better future underground, I thought sarcastically. I switched to the security logs, "They were only supposed to be in here for a hundred and eighty days until the all-clear message came through. The message never came, the overseer wouldn't let people out, so they rioted, doesn't say how it turned out though."

Mikhail kept his eyes on the hallway, "Think it could have been…"

I stopped him, "No, if that were part of a coup, they would have been releasing everyone, or killing everyone, or just ignoring us entirely. They wouldn't be kidnapping one infant. There's an evacuation tunnel in the overseer's office." Finding nothing else of interest, I shut down the terminal and began searching drawers. I didn't find anything that told me anything else, but I did find a few things that could be useful. A stimpack, always a useful thing to have, and a bundle of cash, I didn't know if it was still in use, but it couldn't hurt to keep some on hand.

Finding nothing else, we moved on, going through a curving tunnel toward the reactor room, "Clear."

When we opened the door, we encountered our first hostile. Said hostile happened to be the largest roach I had ever seen. I know the stereotype, woman freaking out over a bug. First of all, don't be a misogynist, I've had a camel spider crawl up my leg and didn't freak out. Secondly, I'm not exaggerating when I say that this thing was the size of a small dog. "Contact," before I could do anything, Mikhail jumped on it with both boots, killing it with a sickening crunch

He turned to me, "At least they still die like they used to, just need to put a little more weight into it."

I stared at the corpse of the roach, the significance of it dawning on me. I crouched and poked it with the screwdriver. "Mikhail," I spoke slowly, "This is a giant roach."

He looked at me, not understanding. "Da Maddie, your point?"

I flipped the roach over with the screwdriver, "Mikhail, this is a giant roach. Even adding in the excess radiation and FEV exposure that would come with a nuclear war, this wouldn't happen overnight, this wouldn't happen in a year, it wouldn't happen in a decade. This kind of mutation would take a century at least."

Mikhail nodded, "It is safe to drop the assumption that we were only under for a year or two." The revelation didn't seem to faze him, or maybe it was just all the spetznaz training. Mission first and leave everything else for later.

A century, maybe more, I'd said that Shaun could have been taken a long time ago, but that was when it really hit me. The kidnapping could have happened at any point in that time. Assuming that they kept him alive, Shaun could have aged and died a natural death by that point. Mikhail brought me back to reality, "Madison, we need to keep moving."

He was right, we were in an unsecured structure with possible hostiles. Until something changed, I needed to move forward as if this was a standard field op. Secure the area, gather intelligence, gain control of the situation, then devise a next step. I grabbed a security baton that had been laying on a table and we moved on to what appeared to be the Vault mess and staff quarters.

We found nothing in the mess other than coffee cups, the coffee having long turned into a brown stain, and empty beer bottles. All of the appliances seemed functional at least, so that meant power and water were still online. The staff quarters had already been ransacked of all but the beds, either by the security and support staff, the overseer and science team, or Shaun's kidnappers, we couldn't tell. The terminal yielded nothing but an old game on holotape, which I took.

"Room clear." Why we were still making the declaration when it was just the two of us, I didn't know. We were in a completely unfamiliar situation, so we fell back on one of the few constants we had left, our training and protocols.

We made our way into the reactor room, carefully circling around the arcing volts of electricity. The reactor seemed in good repair considering the circumstances, if in need of some regulation and a new surge capacitor. We found another of the giant roaches as well, this time I managed to kill it, bringing my baton down on it as hard as I could. To my surprise, the things proved rather fragile, the strength of the exoskeleton didn't match the increased size. We found only one, another appeared to have been killed by the arcs of electricity, "Room clear."

Then we found our first corpse, a skeleton dressed in a ragged version of the suits we wore. "Any way to tell how old it is?" Mikhail asked as I examined it.

There was a black mark around the corpse, it had gone through a complete decomposition where it lay, a fractured rib and some holes in the suit gave me a good assumption on the cause of death. I was no forensics specialist, but I had enough training to get a basic read on most corpses. "It's old, minimum of eight to twelve years, probably longer. Looks like he was killed by gunshot, probably during the coup."

Considering the terminal dates, the coup had occurred within a year of the bombs dropping, add in the roach evolution, and that put it at a century ago or longer. Despite myself, I had to be a little impressed, Vault-Tec had built a facility that was still functioning after at least a century without a staff, that was one hell of a feat.

Engineering feats aside, we moved on to the next hallway, this was where we encountered the most resistance, if you could call it that. There was a whole swarm of roaches in there, and the damn things could jump. After about two minutes of striking, stomping, and swiping, they were all dead and we moved on to what appeared to be the overseer's office. There was one skeleton in civilian clothing and a couple of overturned chairs, but other than that, no signs of a struggle. On the desk, there were a few things that were truly useful, three stimpacks, a 10mm pistol, and a box of fifty 10mm rounds. I set to work with the terminal while Mikhail searched the rest of the room.

I started with the overseer's instructions, a lot of it was basic stuff. But then there were the fun mini-dictator and mad science protocols, like executing anyone who tried to leave or attempt to save a dying resident. Another mention of the all-clear signal that never came, these people were under the assumption they would be leaving fairly quickly. Then there was an entry about something called a Cryolator, an attempt to make cryogenics portable, that sounded interesting. Then there was the overseer's log. Boy was that a treat.

This man had all of the marks of a middle manager being handed totalitarian authority. A company man through and through, the guy actually seemed to believe the Vault-Tec party line. Moreover, he had no problem whatsoever writing off a member of his staff or conning us into cryosleep. And like any middle manager given too much power, once real adversity reared its ugly head, he cracked. The last entry seemed to indicate he was about to find out how most power mad despots ended up, scared and alone in his office, about to be killed by the masses he'd yearned to control. Hell, if the terminal entries were anything to go by, he was the skeleton lying at my feet.

"Madison, we're clear, come have a look at this." Mikhail was standing in what looked like a secure storage area. He was currently working on getting a display case open. Inside was a strange looking device that I had to assume was the cryolator.

"Let me have a look at it." I brushed him aside and had a look at the case. I gave a low whistle, "Impressive, a grade one Super Guardian with reinforced rotating tumblers on a titanium case with synchronized mag locks." I knelt down for a closer look at the internal mechanism, "go see if you can find me a bobby pin, I doubt we're going to get lucky enough to find a set of lockpicks."

While he went off to ransack the overseer's bedroom, I took a look around the storage cage. It was mostly picked over, but there was another 10mm pistol and some ammunition, and… "Well hello there." Laying under a shelf, half hidden by darkness and dust, was a Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV. I pulled it out and closed it around my left wrist, locking the latch as I did so. My old Activity issue Pip-Boy was in my, now possibly vaporized, basement at home with all of my other old gear. I wiped off the screen and booted up the OS, the whole process brought back the memory of Ming, sitting at her desk in our room, tinkering away while I tried to drag her to bed.

"Madison," Mikhail's voice pulled me out of reverie, again. I really needed to get my head out of the clouds. "Here," he shoved a couple of bobby pins into my hand. "You found a Pip-Boy," he said looking at my wrist.

"Yes, now be quiet for a moment and let me work." I slid the pin and into the lock and pulled out the screwdriver from earlier. It was as solid of a lock as it looked, it took me two pins to find the sweet spot, but on the third pin, I struck gold. There was that ever so distinctive click and then the maglocks released, after that, it was only a matter of opening the case and taking the Cryolator out. The former overseer had even been kind enough to add a strap to sling the weapon over your shoulder. "I present to you, the Cryolator, portable cryogenics on demand, apparently."

Mikhail took the weapon and examined it with hungry eyes, "The cryolator he called it, you Americans and your terrible names. Winter's Breath, that is what we shall call it, General Winter's wrath at my fingertips."

I shook my head, men and their guns. Personally, I prefer a nice blade, swift and silent. "You don't even know if it works yet." I thrust one of the pistols towards him, "Take this, just in case General Winter doesn't want to cooperate." He took it and we moved on, I went back to the terminal and opened the escape tunnel. This tunnel proved to be thankfully devoid of roaches and led us to the Vault entrance.

The Vault entrance contained the most skeletons we'd seen so far, two, as well as two roaches. We stomped the roaches to death and unsealed the door to the rest of the vault. Once the bugs were cleared, we went over the room with a fine toothed comb, no more weapons, no more meds, but we did find another Pip-Boy for Mikhail. Using the adapter plug on the Pip-Boy, we were able to get the main door of the vault open. A quick sweep of the elevator room and we could officially declare the facility secure.

"So, what now?" Mikhail asked, casting a look towards the vault, towards Nate and Natalya.

"Now," I said stepping onto the elevator.

"Now, we see what the new world has in store for us."

….

Ok guys, this is my newest project, some of you might be coming from my last project, An Imperial Lily. This is a continuation of another one of my stories, Shadows in the Tunnel. I'm eventually going to rewrite that, it was initially meant as a prequel to this story but took on a life of its own.

Beside the point. Anyway, tell me what you guys think, about the content, the title, or whatever you want to tell me. I'm not sure about the current title, so that might change depending on feedback from you guys.

Also, and this feels lazy, but I've got to say it. Feel free to tell me if some things seem like they don't make sense, this is all part of a broader story and sometimes when I'm writing I lose track of what's in my head and what I've published.

I'm going to try and get out at least one chapter a week, publishing every Friday, another one on Thursday when it.

Either way R&R people,

Later people.