Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nate stared at the machine he and Sturges had built on the hill overlooking Sanctuary. It was put together impeccably, but still looked like scrap metal.
"And we're sure this will work?" Nate asked. Sturges raised an eyebrow at him.
"Well, according to these schematics, yes. Granted, they look like they were drawn by a child, so I'm not sure if we should put all out faith into them, but yes, it should work." The mechanic replied, frowning at the blueprints Virgil had given Nate once more.
Nate sighed, and walked around the machine once more. Preston was leaning against a tree, a worried look on his face. Nate laughed at it, and Preston responded by glaring at him.
"I'll be alright, Preston. If everything becomes FUBAR, Ronnie will make a good second." Nate tried to reassure his friend, who didn't look amused.
"First, you still haven't told me what that means. Second, if you die, I'm going to bring you back to life just so I can kill you again." Preston warned him. Jeremiah Koumal perked up from where he had been standing guard.
"Wait, you don't know what FUBAR means?" He asked the general, incredulously.
"You do?" Preston replied. Koumal nodded. "Tell me."
The former vault-dweller leaned over and whispered in the general's ear, and Preston spluttered. Nate laughed loudly, and Koumal joined in.
"Christ, Nate!" Preston exclaimed. "I forgot how much of a soldier you are."
"Oh, man. I was hoping to hold that over you for a while longer." Nate managed to get out, still laughing. He turned towards Sturges. "All right my man, let's see if I can invade the Institute."
The mechanic nodded. "Take this holotape. When you arrive at the Institute, plug it into a terminal. It'll sweep through all their files, making a copy of each one. Should come in handy. Step on."
Nate did so, and Sturges began tapping into a terminal. "All right. We're searching for a signal. Nothing so far… There! Okay, we're tagging onto w signal."
One of the tubing burst off the machine, and started waving around. Sturges didn't look perturbed in the least.
"Uh, don't worry about that flailing tube. That was just there for decoration."
"Sturges, if I don't make it there, make sure to kill your-" Nate didn't finish speaking, because at that moment, a blinding white light made him stop speaking.
When he recovered, he noticed the incredible amount of whiteness. Not only had he been blinded by a white light, he was now in a room that was predominantly white. This would wreck his eyes, he was sure. He looked around the room, and found a large table with a terminal built in. He slipped the holotape that Sturges had handed him into it. Nate left it there to do its data mining, and he walked towards what looked to be an elevator.
"Hello. Welcome to the institute. I know you have come a long way. My name is Father." A serene voice came on what Nate assumed to be an intercom system.
He looked around, and spotted the speaker in the corner of the room. It blended in well, but it was visible. He could barely make out the tiny camera underneath it, but it was there. Nate waved at it, and he heard a chuckle.
"Not many people know that is there. Some of my department heads are not aware either. But please, let us continue." The elevator began spiralling down towards Nate, and he arched an eyebrow. "I'm sure you've heard stories about the Institute, about what we have done. Who we are. I'd like to show you the truth. Who we really are." The voice was calm, slow, and deep. He was trying to put Nate at ease. It was a tactic Nora had used when he had woken up from his nightmares, after he came home.
Regardless of how he felt, Nate entered the elevator. It took him downwards, spiralling as it went. Nate could see hundreds of people walking around, but he didn't know if they were synths or not. But what terrified him more was the thousands of earlier model synths he could see. They were everywhere, but most of them were doing menial jobs. If the Institute wanted, they could reprogram the synths for combat operations, and it would be an incredibly tough fight for the Minutemen. Hundreds, if not thousands, would die.
When the elevator stopped, Nate was in what he assumed was a lower level, he was greeted with nothing. The hallway was empty, and that worried him. He hadn't really thought the situation through, and only had his P220 and his trusty knife with him. He drew the pistol from his holster and moved slowly through the hallway. IF there was an ambush, he didn't want to be surprised. Despite his worries, the hallway seemed to be clear, and each doorway Nate approached didn't yield any traps.
He entered a large room that had a glass room on the other side, with a young boy in it. Maybe ten years old. The boy looked like Nate did at that age, but he could traces of Nora in her.
"Shaun?" He breathed out. The little boy looked up.
"Yes, I'm Shaun. Who are you?"
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The ten minutes after the little boy spoke were both terrifying and confusing for Nate. The boy wasn't his son, but a synth, and the old man in charge of the Institute, twice his own age, was his actual son. His son, who had condoned the kidnapping of dozens, if not hundreds, of men, women, and children, in order to advance the scientific studies of his organization. It sickened him, to be truthful, but he kept that to himself. He wanted to see what kind of man his son had grown up to be. Without him, without Nora. She would have been devastated to see her son like this, Nate knew.
"I want you to go and introduce yourself to the division heads, so that you may understand the Institute." Shaun had asked of him, and he had complied.
For the most part, he actually found the people in the Institute to be rather kind, though it was obvious that in their sheltered upbringing, they didn't really understand how what they were doing was effecting the overworld. The only man he hadn't liked was the man in charge of the Synth Retention Bureau, Justin Ayo. The man was cocky, arrogant, and stupid, a bad combination in charge of what Nate had decided was comparable to the Gestapo. He had quickly put the man in his place when he was confronted.
"Ah yes, the father of Father. We'll be keeping a close eye on you. I'm sure you understand why." The man had sneered at him, and Nate was in his face in a flash.
"If you think you can intimidate me, you're sorely mistaken. The last man that threatened me ended up with a broken arm. Would you like me to demonstrate how I did it?" He had growled at the man, who backed himself into the wall.
"Mr. Thiel, please, Doctor Ayo is just trying to do his job!" A woman, Alana Secord, intervened.
Nate backed off from the man. "I'm not trying to stop him. Just educate. And please, call me Nate. My father was Mr. Thiel." He flashed her a smile.
"Yes, yes, you're a tough brute. Threaten me again, and I'll sic a Courser on you." Ayo warned him. Doctor Secord gasped, but Nate laughed.
"Oh, right, because that worked so well the first time. I've fought flies with more fight in them than your courser." Nate scoffed, and Ayo looked taken aback.
"You must have fought a defective model. Tell me, how did you kill it?" Ayo asked him, and Nate looked around. There was a courser standing nearby with its weapon trained on him, most likely because of the threat he made.
"Oh, it was simple, really. You see, if the courser is expecting a conversation, they don't expect action. Like this." To prove his point, Nate had pounced across the room, and before the courser, which had been standing still, could react, his blade had already been rammed under its jaw.
Secord screamed, and Ayo swore loudly. "Honestly, it's rather disappointing how easy it is." Nate said as he wiped his blade on the courser's uniform. Three more rushed into the room, followed by Shaun- Father- whatever name he went by.
"Please, was the violence really necessary?" His son asked him.
"Was it necessary? No." Nate shook his head. "But it proved my point to your secret police chief here. I'm not a man to be threatened, or trifled with. He'll remember that from now on."
"Interesting. Kellog said the same thing to me one day, after I witnessed him kill a courser as well." Shaun stated, and Nate narrowed his eyes at him.
"The only interesting thing is that you have some secret police, led by an arrogant prick. It's causing division amongst your division heads, so if I were you, I'd replace him. It would lead to less conflict, and optimize productivity." Nate told Shaun, who looked surprised by the statement.
"An astute observation. All my files indicated that my mother was the intelligent one. Traditionally, at least."
"That's not wrong. Nora was a genius. There weren't many people who could hold a conversation with her, and over time, she rubbed off on me. It was one of the reasons I was selected for OCS, after Anchorage. Obviously, that never happened." Nate reminisced. Shaun had an odd look on his face. "You know the official factors of our lives, don't you? How we did in school, when we were married, where Nora went to college, and what I did in the army, right?"
Shaun nodded, "That is true. I know much of what both of you did, but little of who you were, and are. Would you mind telling me about her?"
"You know, most of what I've done today, I did out of curiosity and courtesy, but this will be my absolute pleasure."
MMXVII
AN: Nate had met Shaun-Father-Person. IF any of the dialogue sounded familiar, I probably quoted it from the game. For the courser scene, with Ayo, I hate his character, so I wanted to write a scene where he gets terrified by Nate, a special forces soldier, who spent ten years in war. It was fun. Anyway, I just started school again, and I'm moving my sister into college for the next two days, so there's that. I'm still taking character suggestions, and I'm up to four, now. Keep 'em coming, folks. We'll see some more of the Institute, and the people in it. Till then,
Cheers, SovietBabushka
