Original Sin

"Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant"

They make a desert and call it peace. Calgacus

Prologue

June 10th, 2277

The mighty slab of concrete known as Hoover Dam shudders with the sound of gunfire, the air around it sings with the whistle of flying bullets and swinging blades. Hundreds of trained soldiers march to their deaths, giving their lives in exchange for resources and their own commander's bragging rights. Above the carnage, vultures have already begun their spiraling dance, waiting for the last shot to ring out before descending. Their wait is almost over; the Malpais Legate is sending his men to Boulder City. In a few hours, the Legion's forces will be decimated, and Joshua Graham will be burned alive for his failure. The blast of C4 will be their dinner bell, and the scavengers will descend with ravenous intent. They will eat their fill, and then leave as quickly as they came.

They need this meal for the journey ahead. For as soon as they're ready, the entire flock will travel east. Not for some annual migration, nor to avoid predators, but simply out of an instinct to follow the stench of war. This battle is over, and will not resume for another four years. Until then, another conflict is brewing, and more blood will be shed in a different wasteland. Only the vultures know that the first step towards this war is being taken now, deep underground. There, a decision has been made, half a bottle of scotch has been drank, and a displaced doctor has just found a file titled "Dr. Stanislaus Braun."

Chapter 1: Out for a Stroll

August 17th, 2277, 9:35 A.M.

"Slow down, sweet pea. Wait for me."

Billy Creel walked through the ruins of Springvale, with his adoptive daughter, Maggie, in tow. Although, it may be more accurate to say that Maggie was towing Billy.

"But you said we need to hurry! We shouldn't be out in the open too long," Maggie recited, running up to a rusted mailbox.

Billy sighed, in the exasperated yet content way that only a parent can. "That's true, Maggie, but if you keep running around like that, you're never gonna find anything." To emphasize the point, he knelt down next to his charge, picking up a small bullet she hadn't seen.

Maggie finally stopped to breathe, pouting slightly. "I would have found it eventually."

"I'm sure you would have, sweetie, but we don't have time for 'eventually.'" Billy took a moment to dust off the round: .22 LR, hollow point, slightly dented. Just north of worthless, but also just as weightless. Billy stuck the bullet in one of his pockets, and stood up to observe his surroundings. 'Yep,' he thought to himself, 'still alone out here.' Nobody came through Springvale anymore, so he was sure that his precious Maggie was safe, but it wouldn't hurt to teach her a thing or two out here. Well, it might, but that's why he was with her, just in case.

"Hey, Billy?" The little girl's question broke Billy out of his internal monologue. "What's up there?" She raised a finger to the cliffs north of town, where a sharp eye could just see a small blue sign and a wooden door.

Billy sighed again, though without that sense of satisfaction. "That, little Maggie, is a Vault. It's a big man-made cave full of people from before the war. Way I hear it, there's still folks living in it."

"Whoa," Maggie said, stars in her eyes. "Can we meet them?"

"No, we can't. They don't want anyone bothering them, so they keep themselves locked up behind a huge metal door."

"How huge?" She pressed.

Billy furrowed his brow, trying to remember the exact number. "Shoot, I don't know, like, 20 tons or something?" He hoped that would satisfy her curiosity.

It didn't. "Wow! Can we see it?" Before he could say otherwise, she was off like a rocket, running up the weathered road as fast as her short legs would take her.

"Maggie, wait! God dammit," he muttered to himself, chasing after his personal helion. She won't see blue sky for a month once they get back to Megaton. By the time he caught up with her, she was already at the old wooden door. The boards themselves clearly came from Springvale, but had been salvaged and rebuilt here at the mouth of the cave. "Christ almighty, Maggie, don't run off like that!" As soon as the words left his mouth, Maggie's excited face fell, and her eyes hit the ground. She didn't say anything in her defence, but she didn't need to. Billy could feel his willpower draining out his body, swallowed up by the thirsty wasteland. A third sigh escaped his lips. "Fine, we'll look at the door, but then straight home." He tried to be stern at the end, but at this point, who knew. The little girl immediately lit up, and nearly ripped the door off its hinges. Billy followed her closely, keeping a hand on his revolver.

The entrance to the vault was deceptively simple. Several yards of straight stone walls, ending with a giant metal blast door, in the shape of a cog wheel. "Well, here it is. Vault 101, an impenetrable fortress under the wasteland. Lots of poor folks got themselves killed trying to get in."

"Like that guy?" Maggie pointed to a body sitting in front of the vault door.

Billy didn't even bother to look at the poor bastard. "Yep. Died a long time ago."

"So why is there still blood?"

"Wha-" Billy finally took a good look at the old bones and saw the strangest thing; a fresh corpse, red blood splattered over his blue jumpsuit. "Wait here." Billy drew his .44 magnum, and carefully approached the body.

As he got closer, Billy could make out more and more details: bald head, darkish skin, probably wearing some kind of vault suit. That seemed odd, since folks told him that nobody had opened this vault for years. There seemed to be a bullet or knife wound in his gut, based on the collection of blood and the fact that the poor bastard's hands still half-covered his wound. "Is he from the vault?"

Billy jolted up so fast he thought he almost hit the cave ceiling. "Jesus, Maggie, don't scare me like that!" Yet another sigh. "I think so, everybody who lives in a vault wears suits like that."

"So how did he get out here?"

"I don't know. Maybe he was- Hey!" He quickly put a hand on Maggie, who had been reaching towards the body.

"I think he moved a little."

"Bullshit, where?" Billy asked, momentarily forgetting his swear filter.

If Maggie noticed his slip up, she didn't mention it. "His face twitched. See? He did it again." She pointed to the vault dweller's face, and true to her word, one of the muscles next to his eyes was flexing intermittently. As soon as Billy saw it, he knelt down and put two fingers on the boy's neck. After five tense seconds, he turned to Maggie.

"Grab his legs."

Twenty minutes later, Billy and Maggie crested the hill in front of Megaton, injured boy hanging limply between them. "Stockholm, open the damn gate! We got a bleeder!" Although he didn't turn around to see it, he could hear the jet engine spin up, and the familiar scraping of metal that told him the way was clear. Maggie jerked her head, and Billy moved to his left. They had given up on verbal commands two feet past the cave entrance. As the duo entered the town proper, Sheriff Simms walked ahead of them, clearing the way to the clinic. Finding people out in the wastes like this wasn't anything new, and most folks knew the drill by now.

Just as they reached the edge of the crater, Simms started shouting orders. "You two! Take the legs from Maggie. You! Help Billy with the shoulders. On your right, Billy. And you! Wake up the doc! I don't care if he's got Nova on his dick, we need him now!" Crude, but effective. A trademark of everything in the wasteland, and Lucas Simms was no different.

Doc Church was ready for them before they got to the bottom of the crater. "Come on, hurry up! I ain't got all day, and neither does he!" The folks carrying the victim filed into the clinic, and carefully dropped him onto the worn stretcher Doc had prepared. The citizens Lucas had roped in left quickly, but Billy lingered for a moment.

"What do you think, Doc, is he gonna be okay?"

Doc Church didn't even bother to look up. "Hell if I know, but you standing around ain't gonna do anybody an ounce of good. Get out, but stay close. I may need a hand later." With that, Billy left the clinic, closing the door behind him. Finally alone, the doctor could actually focus, unzipping the boy's vault suit to reveal a ragged bullet wound. "Dammit, kid, I don't know what you did to earn this, but I sure hope you learned your lesson."

Years later, people from all across the Capital Wasteland and beyond would ask him about this patient. Every time he came up, Doc Church would tell them that he most certainly did not learn a damn thing.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this story. Fanfiction has been a passion of mine for a while, so I'm excited to finally add my voice to the crowd.

I'm not one for regular updates, new chapters will be posted as soon as they're ready. That being said, Chapter 2 is already mostly written, so expect that in the next day or so.

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought. Love it, hate it, think it needs work, whatever you like. I'm a big boy, I can take it.

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