Hello Everyone! I know I checked out (again) for a while, but I am still working on Familiar Taste of Poison and I'm just having a really off writing period.
Anyway, this is not based on any of the games, there is no "Lone Wanderer" or "Courier" this is just borrowing a few of the concepts from the games (Mostly environment, tech, and vaults) and placing my characters inside.
I jumped as a man crashed against the metallic door that separated me from the crazed members of the vault that I used to call home. I had retreated back to my room, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to stay in here long. Another crash as the man slammed the door again. "No one's home" I muttered to myself, glancing out my window and watching them beat senselessly against the walls and windows. There were other survivors, like myself, who had somehow resisted the chemicals that were released into our airflow by the Overseer, the leader of our vault.
I went back to my desk, looking over a map that I had swiped from the control rooms back when I was a small child. "There has to be a way out of here." I heard an abnormally loud thud and heard a small crack that made my skin crawl. When I looked up at the window, a large, bright yellow 38 glared at me through a thin crack in the glass. They were going to break in, this was certain. My only question now was how much longer did I have before they did? I surveyed the air ducts. I had nearly eliminated them as an option, seeing as the very chemical that turned these people mad had emitted from there, but I'd resisted it so far. And honestly, what was the worst that could happen? Instead of getting ripped apart and chewed on by the people I once considered my friends and family, I turn into a creature like them?
I chanced it. Grabbing a screwdriver, a couple of holotapes and my 9 mm, along with all three full magazines, I shoved them into my go-bag along with a change of clothes and ran over to the air duct and quickly crawled in, sealing it back so they couldn't crawl in after me. There was no way these crazies would be able to figure out how to get that grate off. They'd move on to another room.
I was abnormally calm, which I had no idea what to think of. I lit up my Pip-Boy and looked at my map again. The Overseer's office was my best chance. It didn't seem like these things knew how to open the metal doors and the only window was inaccessible unless you were inside the office. Once I crawled through the ducts, I glanced through the grate into the room that was to be my safe haven. At least for the time being. "Coast is clear." I said to myself, then kicked at the gate as hard as I could once. Twice. Three times. Finally, after the fourth kick, the screws gave way and the grate flew from the wall. I hopped down quietly and strode toward the wooden desk before the computer and began looking through the Overseer's notes.
"Miranda?" A man's voice called behind me. I knew the voice, but I didn't know if he had survived the chemicals or not. I drew my gun and turned on him.
And thanked whatever gods there were that he was normal. "Miranda, take it easy! I'm okay!" He yelled, his hands held up for me to see. I sighed in relief and smiled at him.
"James! James, I don't know what's going on. We've got to get out of here though." I said, allowing him to wrap me up in his arms and slowly wrapping mine around him too.
"Miranda, I'm just so happy you're okay." I felt him bury his face in my hair and allowed just a moment of happiness before pulling away from him.
"I'm glad to see you too, James. But let's get out of here before we go through the happy reunions, hm?" I said with a slight smirk, turning back to the papers on the table. I didn't have time to go through them all so I stuffed them in my pack as well and turned to the computer behind me. I was useless when it came to technology. What was I thinking coming to the Overseer's office with the intention to use his tunnel if I couldn't get in his computer to activate it?
My face must have fallen because James laughed and gently pushed me out of the way, his fingers flying expertly over the keys. "One of these days, Miranda, you're going to have to face the fact that you need my super nerd skills." He tossed over his shoulder, winking playfully at me. We shouldn't be this calm in a situation this dire. It was unnatural. But I couldn't make myself worry about it.
I kissed his cheek. "I already have. Will you take all of the data off of that and put it on my Pip-Boy?" I asked with a small smile, watching the color flush his cheeks. He complied and opened the tunnel and I gently took his hand and began running down the tunnel.
If my maps were right, which I had no doubt that they were, then this tunnel would take us right to the entrance of the vault. "Do you think you'll be able to open the door to the vault quickly while I defend us?" I asked him quietly as we reached the end of the metallic sanctuary. He nodded and I opened the door to three of our former vault dwellers looking at us with blood red eyes and torn up skin. I promptly shot all three of them in the head. I had to be very frugal with the ammunition that I had. Three spare magazines loaded with eight bullets each, added with the five shots I have left meant not a ton of defense and those gunshots probably attracted more.
A siren went off and a mechanism that hadn't moved – if vault paper records were correct – for a hundred years squealed it's protests and screwed angrily into the vault door. More of the crazed vault members came in and I continued to unload my bullets into their heads. I emptied my clip and tossed the empty magazine on the ground, loading a new clip in. I fired off two more shots before we were free of the metal and James was closing the door. A man tried to come out after us and ended up getting trapped in the door. He screamed in pain as the door continued to close and I shot him in the head to put him out of his misery.
James and I stood for a few moments, just staring at the door with our hands intertwined. Finally, James spoke, "Do you think there are other survivors in there?"
"I have no doubt in my mind." I replied, the sadness in my voice took me by surprise, but more than that was the moisture I was suddenly aware of on my cheeks. "I just pray that they find the holotape I left in the air ducts."
The blood-stained Vault 38 door glared back at us, as if ordering us to retreat above ground and never to return.
"Come on, Miranda. Let's go." James tugged gently on my hand and pulled me toward the door at the end of a rocky tunnel that housed a rickety door that seemed about ready to fall off of its hinges. When we pushed through the wood and wire ridden opening, I immediately felt my heart drop.
"There's nothing out here." I wouldn't have recognized my voice if it weren't for the fact it was only myself and James. "James, there's nothing out here! We might as well have let them kill us in there! There's no shelter, no water in sight – and who even knows if it would make us sick or not! There's nothing." I collapsed to the rocky ground beneath me, feeling the warm rock beneath me. It was nothing like the vault, where the temperature was closely monitored. This was warm, almost hot, as was the air. It felt primitive. It felt as uninhabitable as the brown, hard earth around them.
James held my head against his leg and I turned into it to cry. I could tell he was trying to be strong for me, but honestly, there was no way to survive in this place. He rubbed my hair, and the black mass fell into my face, hiding it from the bright light coming from the sky. I'd only read about it; something our ancestors called many things, the great fire, sol but the most recent name was the sun.
"What is that?" James seemed like he was speaking to himself, but I pushed my hair from my face and looked up to see where he was looking. I followed what I thought was his line of sight and saw the rock briefly change in surface before going back to the earth I was kneeling on. I shook my head and looked back down again, allowing my dark curtain to shield me again. "Come on, Miranda. There's a cropping of rock over there that looks like it'll protect us a little from the elements overnight. The sun is pretty low. It's probably going to set soon."
He worked a hand under my arm and offered his other hand to me, pulling me up from the ground and guiding me over to an overhang. We settled in for the night, tossing our bags furthest under the cliff. I leaned back against the bag, staring out at the wasteland before us when James's arm wrapped around me. After the sun sank behind the hills in the distance, a bright light glowed quite a few miles in the distance. I felt James breathing evenly beside me and knew he was asleep, but this glow of hope seemed worth waking him up for. I shook him gently and wordlessly he stirred, his hand going straight to the pistol on his hip.
"Ever the protector, huh? Well relax, sweetheart, I just wanted to ask you what you figured that was." I teased him lightly, pressing a kiss to his cheek before pointing out in the distance to a swell of lights. They weren't particularly bright, and they were broken up by something that seemed to encase them and I was fighting the hope that it was a city. If it was a city, I was going to tell James that we needed to get up and walk toward it right this moment.
But he beat me to it. James stood quickly, gathering the supplies that we had spread in front of us and pulling me to my feet. "A city?" I asked, fighting the hope out of my voice. James nodded silently and pushed his glasses a little further up his nose as he started to shove things back into my backpack. James had only taken what he could carry, but that was probably because he hadn't had the warning that I did. After all, the Overseer's son was like my brother.
Everything his father told him, he immediately came to me about. Michael had told me not to tell anyone about this, but if I started to notice people acting strangely to make a go-bag for myself and not to tell anyone where I was going. Two days after that I had to fight my father off when he suddenly turned violent after a misunderstanding at his job. I packed my bag that night. I didn't see Michael again after that day, but I hoped against hope that he got out of the vault safely.
I pulled my bag onto my back, being the stronger of us. James was all brains, though he was decent in a fist fight. I was much more useful in a fight though. Since I wasn't particularly smart, I worked out a lot so I could be exceptionally strong. When we took the G.O.A.T.s, I was placed down in the reactors to move metal and change things manually that the smarter people, engineers like James, told me to.
"We need to get more ammo. Who knows what's out here and I've only got twenty-one shots left" I said, pulling out my own 9 mm and walking toward the lights out in the distance. 00
"Well maybe we'll be able to find some in the town up ahead." James supplied, taking my free hand and pulling out his own gun.
"How many shots do you have in that?" I asked, noticing he didn't seem to even be holding the gun right, I doubted he'd ever fired one. Yup, completely useless in a gunfight.
"I… don't know." James said, looking away because, I assumed, he was a little embarrassed. I chuckled a little under my breath and stopped walking.
"Have you ever fired a gun?" I asked, smiling in what I hoped was a reassuring way. He looked away and shook his head. "Well, let's see what you grabbed ammunition-wise." I said as he began to pull out a few magazines from his jumpsuit.
I sat on the ground and he followed my lead and sat with me. I looked down at what he'd brought with him and he hadn't brought anything for his gun. "What exactly were you planning to shoot out of this?" I said, trying to keep from laughing. "You have ammo for my gun, not yours."
"But we have the same gun!" James sounded shocked.
"No, we don't. Mine is a 9 millimeter, yours is 10." I said with a laugh, sighing just slightly. "They take completely different ammunition." I sighed and tucked the three extra magazines into my jumpsuit and stood again, walking once more toward the swell of lights and James fell into step beside me again.
"I'm sorry Miranda, I'm pretty useless, aren't I?" James said, walking a couple steps behind me.
"I wouldn't have gotten out of there without you. Don't sell yourself short. If these people have guns to spare up here, I'll teach you how to shoot, okay?" I offered, not glancing back at him. I knew he was feeling inferior and I didn't want to make him feel like I was talking down to him. He grunted a response, but I couldn't tell if it was affirmative or negative.
We walked in silence, and according to my Pip-Boy, after three hours we finally came upon the walls of the city. A man walked out with a rifle in his hands and trained it on me, since I was the one holding a weapon. I holstered it quickly and watched him approach. "What's your business here?" He growled, glaring between the two of us.
"We just left the vault three hours northeast of here. We're just looking for a place to stay." James said before I could lose my head. The man looked us over, likely taking in our jumpsuits.
"And just what made you come here?" He grunted, lowering his weapon a little and keeping his eyes on James.
"Come on." I scoffed, gesturing back toward the wall he had previously been guarding, "you guys are lit up. We saw the lights miles away from here. You mean to tell me you guys don't get travelers here often?" Something about this man just pissed me off.
"Not often travelers that only have one gun. Not often Vault Dwellers either. What happened down there to make the handful a' ya leave?" He asked, his gun completely lowered now and coming to a more civilized tone. James and I immediately looked to each other. So others had escaped the insanity?
"There were others through here?" James asked, taking a step forward. The man put his finger back on the trigger of his rifle, but kept it lowered.
"Yeah, two. Still in town, the both of them. You guys seem pretty genuine, so I'll let you in too. They're staying at the end of the road in Casa Rosa. Watch your step and don't piss anyone off, will ya?" He said, pulling open a section of the wall that obviously functioned as a door.
"Who got out, I wonder." I mused as James and I walked through and down the road. He took my hand again and we made our way down the street, passing by the staring residents of the nameless town. Casa Rosa came up on the left side and we walked in as quietly as we could.
"Welcome to the Casa Rosa, finest and only hotel in Graystone. How can I-" The woman behind the counter interrupted herself when she looked up and saw James and I standing before her. "Oh, more Vaulties! Lookin' for your friends?" I nodded, taking in her frazzled appearance and she gestured to the stairs. "Go up to the second floor and it's the first door on your left. You guys are going to have to get a bigger room. There's only one bed in there."
James and I thanked her and walked up the stairs quickly, knocking on the door that housed the people the woman had referenced as our friends. I raised my hand, rapped the door sharply twice, and waited, taking hold of James' hand again. I heard the room go silent, felt James' reassuring squeeze of my hand, and watched as the door handle slowly turned.
The door swung open and before I could react I was staring down the barrel of a rifle of some sort, unable to see past it to the wielder. "Who the hell are-" the man's voice halted itself and the barrel immediately fell out of my vision. "Randi! You're safe!" I briefly got a look at Michael's face before he wrapped me in his arms and spun me in a circle like he had when I was younger. Michael was three years older than me, but my mother was his father's mistress, so he had always thought of me as a sibling and I felt the same.
"Mike!" I exclaimed, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding on tightly. "Mike, you were right. They're going crazy in there. Everyone has lost their minds! They're cutting each other, cutting themselves, raping, butchering, killing everyone that is still sane. What's going on? What was your father releasing into the air supply?" Michael set me down and took my hand, pulling me into his room. James, taking my other hand possessively, followed us and closed the door behind.
"James!" A flash of blonde flew past me and right into my blonde savior's arms, forcing him to release my hand. "James I was so worried when I couldn't find you! I looked everywhere but when I found Michael trying to break out of the vault, I couldn't help but leave with him. Things were crazy! People were starting to fight with each other at every turn. Michael told me all about it! The Overseer, he must have been off his rocker to try something so crazy!"
"Emily! Emily, slow down. We have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe Michael should explain it to us, hm?" James said, untangling himself partially from his friend and sparing me an apologetic glance. Michael wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled me to the bed, pushing me into it plopping down beside me.
James grabbed a chair and Emily went to do something on the floor. Michael sighed, taking my hand in a friendly manner and rubbing his eyes with the other hand. I felt James' glare, but avoided eye contact. "Michael told me four or five days ago that his father had been releasing a chemical into the vault's air supply for some reason and that if I noticed anything strange to start packing a bag." I started, glancing at Michael for him to continue.
"My father told me that there was a chemical that was stored in the security wing locked up in the strongest safe with the only key resting with the Overseer. The key was passed down from generation to generation, Overseer to Overseer, until my father stumbled across an entry in his computer from the Vault's first Overseer referencing the chemical. The entry he found told him that the chemical was meant to be used upon sealing of the Vault, but that the Overseer of the past hadn't felt comfortable 'drugging' his residents." Michael sighed, looking away from me and to James. "That Overseer didn't tell the next one about the drug and the secret was lost forever. Or so he had hoped.
"When my father found out about the chemical, he immediately started to dig around for more information on it. Apparently it was meant to create a perfect society, causing all of the residents to forget about themselves, live in total tranquility without any thoughts of violence. It sounded ideal. Unless you looked at the tests. When given to small groups, ninety-percent of the subjects turned hostile, mutilating themselves. The other ten percent? It calmed them so much that they began to only laze about. They didn't care about the pleasures of life; not love, not entertainment, and soon they lost interest in food and water. Self-preservation was completely disabled in their brains.
"Nevertheless, my father decided to pump this chemical into the Vault's air ducts and watch for the reaction. I knew that it wouldn't be good and I told Miranda to prepare a bag. I left when my father tried to kill me the following day." Michael lay down on the bed and sighed, relaxing all of his muscles except for the hand that held mine tightly.
"You knew about it, Miranda?" James sounded so hurt, it killed me. "You knew and you didn't warn me?"
"James, I-"
"No, Miranda. There's no reason for you not to have told me." James interrupted, and I pulled my hand out of Michael's to walk over to him.
"James, just listen to me, please. I didn't have a choice." I pleaded, walking close to him and putting a hand on his cheek. He pulled away.
"You always had a choice, Miranda, and you chose not to tell me what was going on." James stood and began to walk to the door.
"She didn't have a choice, you know. I made her swear not to tell a soul so she wouldn't cause any panic. Then I had her put under surveillance, just in case. She didn't know I was gone."
"You stay out of this!" James roared, pointing a finger at Michael. "You have no right telling Miranda to keep me out of the loop. Who do you think you are, anyway? You know what? Forget it. I'm getting my own room. If you can spare your loyalty to your very best buddy there, you're welcome to stay with me, Miranda." And with that, James left and slammed the door shut.
Quickly, Emily hopped up and excused herself, chasing after James I knew. "I should have told him." I said, sinking into the chair that James had just occupied.
"No you shouldn't have. If you had told him, he would have told his family. If he had told his family, they would have told their loved ones. If their loved ones told their loved ones, the entire Vault would have panicked and the chemical would have acted quicker on the residents. You did the right thing." Michael said, sitting up and staring me down.
"I could have told him to be quiet. He would have listened to me." I said, but I knew how wrong that was the moment I said it.
"That's a lie and you know it. He would have told someone." Michael rolled his eyes and laid back on the bed, throwing an arm over his head and raising a knee in a relaxed way.
"Could you at least pretend to take this seriously?" I shouted, standing from the chair and glaring down at the man I sometimes couldn't stand.
"What did you want me to say, Miranda? That you should feel like shit for doing the right thing? Well I'm not going to. He's pissed, but he'll get over it. At least he will if he really cares about you. And if he doesn't get over it then fuck him." Michael said, shrugging his shoulders to the best of his ability. "You saved his life. It's that simple."
"You're only saying that because you don't care about James." I came back, glaring at him out of the corner of my eye.
"No, I'm saying it because I don't like James." He came back, ignoring my glare completely.
"Well, I do. And he saved my god damned life in that hellhole. So if you care about me, you should at least be grateful to him." I stood and walked to the door, opening it fully before announcing that I needed to take a walk and was going to see what I could sell to get ammo or a gun.
I roamed the streets for a while, just glancing in the old, grimy storefronts and looking through the windows at the wares. Since the sun was a while set, the stores were all closed and their wares were protected, not to mention there weren't any prices or values on them, but it was good to know what places were going to be hits and which were going to be misses. I just was hoping I had something that they would be interested in. It seemed like us "Vaulties" weren't exactly everyone's favorite people. Maybe I could do some jobs for people around the town, get them to accept me. Or at least pay me so I could buy some of their wares.
With nothing accomplished in my walk, including clearing my head of the events of the last twenty-four hours, I walked back into the hotel. The perky woman was still sitting behind the counter, doodling on the notepad in front of her. 'Such a waste of precious paper,' I thought to myself before drawing her attention.
"The man I came here with. He said he was getting another room?" I assumed she was going to give me the room number and send me on my way. Instead, she gained a kind of fearful look and looked back down at her doodle.
I turned around and a giant of a man was standing over me, a sleazy smile resting crooked on his ragged face. "Well, I think I'd remember seeing you around. You must be new." I nodded my head and cursed myself for leaving my gun in Michael's room. "Couldn't help overhearing your man parted ways with you. Need a shoulder to cry on sweetheart?" He put a hand on the counter behind her and leaned in, the stench of alcohol leaking from his mouth.
"No, I think I'll manage just fine on my own. Thanks." I said tersely, glaring back at him and pushing his shoulder as I walked out of the small cage he'd been setting up. He grabbed my right wrist forcefully and whirled me back around.
"Come on, sugar. I'll please you in ways a Vault boy never could." I could tell he was trying to use his most seductive tone, but it came out as more of a plead than anything else.
"Believe it or not, I'm not interested. So release my arm and no one will get hurt. Clear?" I said with a glare, pulling lightly away from him to see if he would comply.
"Crystal. But I won't be the one getting hurt." Instead of releasing me, he tightened his grip and back handed me before pulling me into his chest. Instantly, I drew up my knee and hit him straight in the family jewels. He doubled over, but his grip didn't lighten and I twisted myself to knee him again in the face. This time, his grip did loosen as his other hand went to his face.
"Is that so?" I huffed, my adrenaline and exhaustion causing me to lose my breath.
"You fucking whore. I won't forget this." He cursed, blood running through his fingers that clamped his face tightly.
"I'm counting on it." I replied, smirking now and watching him leave the building before turning back to the girl behind the counter. "The room number. Please." I tried to make my voice as polite and kind as possible, but really, this hadn't been my week.
"He's in the room directly opposite of your other friends." The girl supplied, looking at me with these shining eyes that I faintly recognized. "Hey, how did you do that?"
"Do what? Kick his ass? Years of practice. I can teach you a couple of moves after I get some rest, how about that?" I offered, wanting her to just leave me alone so I could patch things up with James and go to sleep. I could tell the girl was afraid of him. He'd probably done the same thing to her. But she hadn't been deflowered, she would have shown more fear if that was the case. Someone had swooped in and saved her.
"Oh, that would be so nice of you. Thank you." She seemed relieved and I smiled as best I could before walking toward the stairs. Once I was out of her sight, I put a hand to my left cheek and tentatively applied pressure. This was definitely going to leave a mark. Not as big of a mark as his broken nose would though, I thought with a smile.
I reached the top of the stairs and crossed to the room the woman downstairs had said James was staying in, knocking lightly a couple of times and pulling my hair over my cheek to hide the developing bruise. It wasn't too long before I saw the eyehole go dark momentarily and the door swung open.
"I was just starting to wonder if you'd decided to stay with Michael." James greeted, standing solidly in the doorway. He wasn't going to let me off easy.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. But you would have told your mother and father and they would have told their closest friends and they would have told their family and the vault-wide panic would only have accelerated the disease. It seemed kinder to just give everyone their last days with their families than to have everyone watching someone else for signs of insanity." I explained, unable to look him in the face. I stared down at my feet and continued, "Besides, if Michael's friends had seen me tell you, they would have killed us both. That was Michael's rule. He'd share these secrets with me and there were some I could tell someone else and there were some that I could not."
"Sounds like a great friend." James scoffed, but I still didn't dare to make eye contact with him.
"He is a great friend." I said quietly, "But he always put the safety of the vault before anything else. Keeping that secret from everyone let them slip into insanity more or less at the same time and allowed them a few more days of normalcy than they would have gotten if Michael or I had told anyone. It protected their sanity for a just a couple more days."
"We could have evacuated the vault. We could have saved everyone." James said forcefully, I could tell he was still very angry.
"Once even one breath of the chemical is inhaled, the catalyst begins. There's no stopping it. You would have set a group of insane people on this town and the surrounding wasteland." A male voice sounded from behind me and I knew instantly it was Michael.
"It's okay, Michael. He has every right to be upset." I said, turning and making eye contact with him. His eyes lingered on my face and I knew he saw the forming bruise, but instead of coming closer to inspect it he retreated into his room with a face that told me I had a lot of explaining to do. Fantastic.
"Is that true?" James asked me. I kept my back to him when I nodded. "Get your things out of his room. We've got to read over those papers you snatched."
I nodded again and walked into Michael's room without knocking. Emily lay asleep on the bed while Michael watched me as I gathered my things from beside the chair he was in. "You're going to tell me what happened to you." He said quietly, looking away from the open door where James stared in.
"I'm sure I will." I replied, not taking my eyes away from my bag as I stuffed my spare magazines into it and holstered my pistol on my hip. "But not tonight." I walked away from him and kept my head turned down as I returned to James.
As soon as the door closed behind us, James demanded that I look at him. I turned my head so my hair would cover my left eye in a pitiful attempt to hide my wound. He brushed my hair out of my face and seemed truly shocked by the mark that lay behind it. I could have sworn he'd seen it.
"What happened?" He asked loudly, gingerly touching my cheek as if he thought I was going to fall apart.
"Some guy who followed me back here was giving me a hard time in the lobby. I handled it." I said, turning away from him and dropping my pack next to the desk, fishing out the papers I had taken from the Overseer's office.
"Followed you back? You left? Why?" James was just intent on being angry with me.
"Because, James, we need to start thinking. I was mapping out the town, seeing which stores we needed to hit tomorrow so we can survive in this place. Did you bring any food? Do you think this ammunition is going to last us forever? I'll be surprised if it lasts us through the month in a place like this." I yelled, throwing the papers on the table and glaring at him. If he wanted to be angry with me then I was going to show him all the reasons I had to be angry too. "Believe it or not, James, I am trying to ensure your survival in this world. I mean, our survival. And I need you to trust that I am doing that. That everything I have done in the last twenty-four hours has been to protect you."
"But I don't need protecting!" James yelled, throwing a hand on my shoulder. "I'm a grown man, Miranda. I can handle watching out for us too." James took a cleansing breath and looked back down to me. "I don't want you to leave this building alone again. Not if there's some man out there bent on getting revenge against you. Not in a world that we don't know." I opened my mouth to protest but he cut across me. "Please, Miranda. I don't want to see you hurt again."
I nodded and turned away from him back to the papers that I had put on the table before me. I spread them across the table and began to read the one closest to me.
Well, that's that. Review?
Signing off
Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit.