"Fuck, fuck, what the fuck!" I scream at the quickly approaching, utterly massive cockroach that I'm doing my absolute best to beat the shit out of with a baton I found on a table along the way.

Finally, I get lucky and get a good swat in, watching it go down with a disgusting splat.

At least I managed not to get any on me.

Oh shit, there's more of them.

"Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make humongous roaches? What brilliant idiot made that up?!" I squawk into the ether, absolutely certain there's nobody alive in the facility I'm in, after having run across multiple skeletons.

Though, frankly, even if I hadn't been alone, I would've screamed about the roaches. Disgusting creatures, even when they were smaller. Now? Now they want to eat me.

"Not happening, buggos." They get a couple of nips in, and by the time I'm past the damn barrage of giant goo-splashers, my startlingly blue and yellow jumpsuit is less than pristine. I still kicked their asses.

"That's right! I'm... Queen... roach-murderer." I grimace at myself, re-thinking my new title rather quickly. "Sounded better in my head," I mutter, then turn with a shrug and continue to what I hope is the exit of this... wherever I am.

"Oh. Oh! Finally, a console!" I scrabble over to it, nearly tripping over yet another skeleton—this one a male—in my haste. I unlock it with a frighteningly easy to guess password selection and begin to pour over the data within.

It takes a bit of time to go over it all, though I do find a spare holotape in one of the drawers, and copy the data for later, just in case. I eventually find the list of residents in this place—apparently called a vault?—and scour through the names carefully. There! The man and baby... Nate and Shaun Stewart. Alright, great, now who am I? Fortunately for my muddled mind, the list includes the pod number, and I find my own rather quickly.

Shana... Stewart.

Wait.

What?

I look back up the list, back at the man and baby, looking for any indication that there was a connection there, aside from just a name. There's no record of who the man's married to, but as I'm tapping away at the keyboard, I happen to look down at my hands.

There's a plain gold wedding band on my left ring finger.

My eyes widen as I stare at the golden evidence of my connection to someone else. My shocked gaze turns back to the screen, staring at the name of the man who might be my husband, at the name of the child who could be mine.

Holy shit.

I sit in stunned silence for some time, in the vault that would've been my tomb at some point, no doubt. In the vault that is apparently my... my husband's tomb. But wait, what happened to the kid? Er... my kid? Shit, I don't know how to do any of this, what to think, what... ah, hell.

I sink my elbows down onto my knees, my face into my hands, fingers spearing into my apparently short locks and easing pressure onto my scalp in an attempt at calming my turbulent thoughts. None of this is ringing a bell. The names, the man's face, the fact that I apparently gave birth to a baby, none of it. And none of it feels right.

But the evidence all points to it, doesn't it?

Ticking my jaw to one side, I lift my head and stare at the dusty surface of the desk in thought.

What if...?

What if I'm not his wife? What if I'm his sister? I mean, it's possible, yeah? I could be married to someone else entirely. Maybe I kept my maiden name?

I curl my lip at the prospect and shake my head. No, that doesn't sound like me. I'd take on the last name of a person I loved enough to tie the knot with. I sag slightly with the thought, because even as much as it might be the truth, it still leaves me with a dead husband and a missing baby.

And absolutely no leads.

After absently staring at the holotape for a while, I yank it from its port in the console, and stuff it into one of the pockets I find on the garish jumpsuit.

"Time to blow this depressing-ass joint," I murmur, searching my surroundings for anything I want to bring with me. I spot a rather wild-looking contraption that looks something like a gun of some sort in a heftily locked down case, but I know damn well I can't pick that lock. Plus, that thing's way too big for me.

My view gravitates toward the much more reasonably sized 10mm sitting on the desk to the right of the case, and the ammo haphazardly spread out beside it. I stuff the ammo in my pockets, and carry the gun, drawing on the faint memories of my favorite voice's instructions to check my clip and turn the safety off.

Feeling at least moderately safer, I collapse the baton, stowing it with the ammo, and head toward the exit.

Dispatching the last few roaches I encounter is a much simpler and less gory chore with my new ranged weaponry, and before I have time to get lost, I arrive at a room with a massive gear-shaped door.

"The hell?"

I look around the room, noting that the only way to interface with the door seems to be the control panel next to the currently retracted catwalk. I head there, skimming over the controls with a frown. The only obvious means to turn the mechanism on is a specialized key... or something like a key? Is that... a port maybe?

I turn to look for a matching item to slot into the hole on the panel, and my foot smacks lightly against the upper arm of the skeleton at my feet. The entire forearm detaches from the rest of the bones and rolls over to me, courtesy of the round... thing covering the entire arm. But that bit, creepy as it is, isn't what's important. What's important is the little thing I see just to the left of the screen, which looks like it would fit into that port perfectly.

Bingo!

I gingerly pick up the device, clamping it to my arm with a slight grimace. The screen lights up, and begins some sort of booting sequence. I peer down at the screen in surprise, wiping the dust from the interface and fiddling with the key-port-thing until it reveals itself to be a... plug of some sort, with a wire leading into the interface and everything. I plug it into the console, and the device bleeps at me, asking: "Your pip-boy has interfaced with the vault door for Vault 111! Would you like to unseal the vault?"

"Why yes, I very much would, pip-boy-thingamajig!" I answer it, before pressing the affirmative option on the screen.

I jump as a loud 'CLANG!' sounds from the direction of the vault door, the blaring of klaxon's and flashing of warning lights accompanying the cacophony of noise as my new... pip-boy, apparently, blinks up at me with: "Thank you for using Vault-Tec! You are now prepared for the future!" I ogle the announcement with a skeptical expression for a moment, distracted gaze sliding over to the vault door within seconds, trying to get a peep at what lays beyond.

A... cage? Oh. An elevator. I'm underground. Ah. Well, that explains the lack of windows.

I trundle around the metal railing and head over the now extended catwalk, looking all around the room beyond the door as I enter it. Not much to it, really. I mosey on over to the elevator platform, which oddly enough begins to move upwards after I step onto the middle of it. Strange. A little eerie, if I'm honest.

The ride up is a long one, but before too long, I'm being appropriately blinded by the sunlight pouring down on me from what seems to be... the morning sun. At least, if the compass on my er... pip-boy is accurate.

Blinking tears from my eyes as they slowly adjust to the light, I take my first gander at my surroundings.

I scowl in confusion at what I see, narrowing my eyes and stepping off the platform toward the edge of the hill to get a better view of the valley below— before I stop dead, stunned.

"What..." is all I manage to ask, the word barely a whisper in my shock.

Before me stretches out what can only be described as a wasteland. What buildings remain seem to be mostly rusted out shells, the pavement I can see looks cracked and unusable as a road. Everything sags, and peels, and rusts, and decays. Colors that seem like they were once bright and vivid are faded, muted. Grays are the palette the artist chose for this brave new future. Not a single person is in sight.

I sit on the top of the not-quite-sheer cliff overlooking the village below, and simply stare at what remains of the world.