Hello everyone, hope you're doing well. Today something a little different in Damian's adventures in the Wasteland. Please enjoy.
The man was lying in the middle of the road. He slowly turned his head around and held his hands against his stomach. Behind him he could see a small group of men, wearing black power armor, hiding behind a house and a line of car wrecks. Under their large black helmets masking their faces, they must have been looking anxiously at the surrounding hills and ruined buildings.
The man dropped his head on the cracked asphalt and looked up at the grey sky above him. A dark red, hot, sticky liquid slowly flowed from his belly and began to form a small puddle around him. He opened his mouth and began to call out to the others hidden behind the rusty wreckage.
Damian took his eye out of the scope of his rifle. Crouching near the window of a ruined building, with the muzzle of his gun resting against the ledge, he listened silently to the calls for help and pleas of the Enclave officer he had just shot. A clean shot. A single round lodged in the belly. Damian pulled the bold handle of the rifle and the .308 casing ejected before bouncing off the ground in a slight metallic clink.
He raised his eyes to the sky and after a last look at his victim, put away his belongings and discreetly left the ruined apartment he was in. Night was about to fall, and he had to make a detour to avoid being spotted by the soldiers of the Enclave who were freely patrolling the Capital Wasteland.
About ten days had passed since the Enclave took control of Project Purity and since James' death. Damian had remained at the Citadel with Doctor Li and the other survivors, hoping that the Brotherhood would react and launch the assault on the Jefferson Memorial. Instead, Elder Lyons, the commander of the Brotherhood of Steel, decided to wait and research the G.E.C.K., while interrogating Damian and the survivors to try to learn more about the Enclave. While he was describing to Lyons, Sarah and other Brotherhood officers what he had seen, the Enclave had set up a force field all around the Memorial, making it accessible only by air, and every day the Enclave's flying machines brought equipment and troops to the site.
The "awakening" of the Enclave, as Damian had heard from a Brotherhood soldier, had redrawn the balance of power and the situation in the Wasteland. One of the main consequences of the occupation of the Jefferson Memorial was that Rivet City was almost completely cut off from the world. Small boats crossing the estuary from the South had been targeted and the waters were now frequented only by mutants. On top of that, the Enclave's strategic ability to move through the air with its Vertibirds gave it a significant tactical advantage over the Brotherhood.
Researches on the G.E.C.K. were inconclusive. The only thing the Brotherhood knew was that the G.E.C.K. could create life, even in a completely sterile environment. Lyons was unwilling to engage his troops at the Enclave. The Brotherhood was already struggling to contain the spread of Super Mutants in the D.C. center, and now that the Enclave had come to the forefront, things had become more complicated.
The Brotherhood's only lead was a Vault-Tec computer they had recovered from the company's premises in the heart of Vernon Square a few months ago. Unfortunately, the terminal was quite damaged and most of the files were still impossible to open or read. Lyons had ordered his Scribes, led by a man named Rothchild, the man in the red dress that Damian had seen upon his arrival at the Citadel, to repair and decipher the terminal at all costs. Even an attempt to transfer the files from the computer to Damian's Pip-Boy had failed. A few Brotherhood soldiers then asked permission to accompany Damian to Vernon Square to retrieve another computer but with the disappearance of the recon teams sent there made Lyons reject the idea. The population of Super Mutants in the ruins was still a great threat and there was no doubt that Vernon Square was still as deadly, if not more, since Damian and the Rangers had passed through, and any attempt to enter the neighborhood would turn into a suicide mission.
After five days at the Citadel, which Damian had spent training with Sarah and other Brotherhood recruits, he returned to Megaton. If the Brotherhood wouldn't lift a finger against the Enclave, then he would. On his way back to Megaton, he had discovered through the radio and the accounts of a few travelers that the Enclave had encampments all over the Capital Wasteland. On the radio, Three Dog frequently announced that a small farm had been wiped off the map by an Enclave commando and Damian had seen it for himself when he came across a group of Enclave soldiers in power armor accompanied by a black-painted Protectron, setting fire to a small house and piling the bodies of three ghouls, like Gob or the one in Underworld, in a small pit before burning the corpses with a flamethrower.
In the following days, he had roamed the Wastes in search of some of these camps, moving as far away as possible from Megaton and after locating one, he settled nearby and killed as many soldiers as he could before retreating. Luckily, these camps had only two or three soldiers, six for the largest, allowing Damian to decimate the soldiers and the officer in them.
The latter were surprisingly easy targets. Soldiers were harder to shoot because of their thick power armor, but officers wearing only black caps and grey uniforms were ideal targets. In addition, their tactical and technological superiority over the rest of the Wasteland must have made them a little too confident and arrogant, sometimes making them forget where they were and what dangers might befall them, whether it was a sniper or a mutated animal.
These skirmishes against the Enclave patrols or camps were beginning to draw unwanted attention. Damian had listened to rumors of a mysterious sniper targeting Enclave soldiers and he had decided to stop attacking every camp or patrol he would see.
Damian moved away from the ruins of Fairfax. When Simms had warned him that the ruins were home to a large group of Raiders, he had no idea that they controlled almost every street and building.
Hiding behind a bus stop, Damian watched as a party of Raiders made its way to his former firing point. With any luck, the survivors of the Enclave patrol would also come and see and bump into the Raiders, giving Damian time to get away undetected and perhaps the Enclave would also believe that those responsible for the attacks on their patrols were the Raiders. He let the Raiders walk by and a few second later, heard gunshots. At first, he thought that the Enclave and the Raiders had engaged each other, when he realized that the shots were coming from somewhere else. He shrugged and left.
Damian was almost out of the ruins when his Pip-Boy started making little sounds. He put his hand on the speakers to muffle the noise. He quietly walked away and when he was sure he was safe, checked his little computer.
He had just picked up a radio frequency. He wasn't too surprised, since he had already picked up some strange emissions in the Wasteland. Most of them were just Morse code messages, but the most intriguing had been the one picked up near the Citadel. It was an old clandestine radio station, owned by Communist Chinese insurgents, calling on the American proletariat to revolt against their capitalist oppressors. Today, the pre-recorded message continued to be broadcast, ignoring the fact that social classes had long since disappeared from this planet and that the Communist Revolution against Western imperialism was at the bottom of the list of concerns of the people of the Capital Wasteland.
Damian activated the frequency, believing that it was just another Morse code message from a computer or that a scavenger had accidentally reactivated an old pre-war program while exploring a nearby building.
Noise saturated the Pip-Boy's speakers until a man's voice was heard.
"To all allied units, this is Defender Morrill. Our position is about to be overrun by Super Mutants in the Bailey's Crossroad sector. We request immediate assistance."
Behind the voice, Damian could hear gunfire, that would correspond the one he was hearing in the ruins, to the West. He was now sure that the radio frequency was not a pre-war advertisement and did not seem to be the work of a joker.
The transmission cut off for a few seconds and then resumed. The man repeated his message, more nervous and pressing. The rank of "Defender" was unknown to him, and Damian convinced himself that it could not be the Enclave, as they obviously preferred to refer to the old US Army rank system. Only an engaged squad of the Brotherhood remained. The rank of "Defender" sounded no stranger than that of "Paladin" or "Sentinel".
Damian checked his assault rifle and adjusted the strap on his scoped bolt-action rifle and went to the source of the shooting.
The shots came from a place in downtown D.C. Again, the only way to get there was through the metro tunnels and Damian searched for the nearest station. He found a metro exit next to a ruined factory. The metro entrance had collapsed. Shooting intensified on the other side of the buildings.
Damian noticed a door ajar next to the metro entrance, leading in a building. A damaged brown sign indicated that it was a service entrance to the station. Damian turned on the light of his Pip-Boy and pushed the door open with the barrel of his rifle.
He entered the maintenance corridor that went down to the station. The shots were still audible, despite the walls of the station. On the way, Damian realized that he had not been back in downtown D.C. since he had left the Ranger HQ for Rivet City.
The station was destroyed. The tunnels and escalators had collapsed and one of the trains had derailed and crashed into the mezzanine, the only area in the station that was still passable. The bones of the train conductor, probably ejected on impact, were laying against the wall next to the information desk. Damian looked briefly inside, but saw nothing but dust, objects too damaged to be identifiable and some two-century-old remains. He thought of taking one of the maps of D.C. but the decrepit and moldy appearance of the streets, coupled with the fact that most of the streets had become impassable and the surface looked like a vast pile of rubble, made him give up the idea.
Damian walked through the rest of the station and came across the bodies of two feral ghouls. He approached cautiously. The ghouls had recently died, their bodies entangled in what was left of the gate that was used to close the station. The shots came from behind the gate.
Damian climbed the stairs to the surface. At the top, a figure in power-armor took cover behind the edges of the escalator and fired a minigun. A shower of shell casings poured down the steps to Damian's feet. The power amor was identical to that of the Brotherhood, with the difference that it was painted black and that parts had a blood red color. He also wore an insignia like the one of the Brotherhood on his shoulder pad, a gear crossed by a sword.
Another person in power armor stood beside him. He noticed Damian and tapped on his comrade's helmet to draw his attention.
"What the hell...? Can't you see this is a war zone, you idiot!" yelled the man through the speakers of his helmet. "Do you want to die or what? Get back to your dump before..."
He stopped in the middle of his sentence. Damian raised an eyebrow. He recognized the man's voice in the radio call.
The second man in power armor was shot in the head and collapsed on the stairs. Morrill turned around and sent a hail of bullets at a Super Mutant running towards them.
Damian approached the soldier on the ground but found him dead. The shooting ceased and he reached Morrill and looked over the railing of the escalator. The subway entrance opened onto a ruined crossroads. Several destroyed office buildings surrounded the area. The streets were clogged with lines of burnt-out cars and pieces of buildings or the fast voice that ran through the neighborhood.
Morrill sighed through his helmet. He glanced at his dead companion and then turned to Damian again.
"All right, let us resume, shall we? What are you doing here?" asked Morrill.
"I picked up your radio message. Are you Brotherhood?" asked Damian in return.
"You know these filthy traitors?" Morrill said with contempt. "No wonder, that bastard Lyons and his cronies are busier saving this place's yahoos than gathering tech. But... If you'd tell me more about that computer on your wrist."
"That's my Pip-Boy, and no, you're not getting it. Now, if you'd tell me who you are if you're not Brotherhood."
"Relax, I'm not gonna take it from you, but if you follow me back to my base, I'll explain. And I think Protector McGraw would like to have a chat with you.
Damian didn't like that. Still, curiosity compelled him to follow Morrill. The soldier led him through a ruined building. Shredded bodies of Super Mutants and soldiers wearing the same armor as Morrill littered the tiled floor. Morrill proceeded with caution, inspecting every nook and cranny and ordering Damian to keep an eye on the roof.
The building was completely devastated, and Damian repeatedly almost fell through the floor.
"Here we are."
Through one of the destroyed walls, Morrill showed him a steel structure. The steel frame of a building under construction. Installed in a concrete shaft next to a large construction crane. Morrill motioned for Damian to follow him. At the same time, two soldiers in power armor burst into the building.
"Defender Morrill, we heard your radio call and were on our way to..."
They fell silent and stared at Damian. He noted that they lingered on his Pip-Boy and Damian began to regret following Morrill. The Defender glanced over his shoulder before addressing the other soldiers.
"This is a local I found in the ruins. He apparently picked up our message too. I'm taking him to see Protector McGraw."
Morrill and the other two escorted Damian to the construction site, while a group of soldiers in power armor passed them, gun in hand, probably to secure the ruins and retrieve the bodies of their comrades.
The steel girder structure was even more impressive once inside. Morrill and his companions were obviously using it as an outpost. At first, Damian wondered what the strategic importance of such a place was. The building had never been finished and only the metal frame stood in the sky. He understood, when he arrived at the bottom of a small concrete ramp. A red freight elevator led underground and was to lead to a network of pre-war tunnels.
Placed on a series of metal boxes was a military radio, used to communicate with what and who was underground. Morrill stopped in front of the radio and spoke for a few seconds. While talking, he glanced at Damian several times. Damian could feel the inquisitive glances of the soldiers on his back and on his Pip-Boy.
Morrill and Damian took their places in the freight elevator while the other two soldiers went back to their comrades towards the ruined building.
The descent lasted several minutes, during which time Morrill took off his helmet and lit a cigarette. Morrill was an African American man in his thirties with very short black hair.
"Why don't you tell me who you are?" Damian asked to break the silence.
"We call ourselves the Outcast. We were members of the Brotherhood, under Lyons' orders. But Lyons distanced himself from our cause, deciding to put the recovery and preservation of rare technology after the preservation of locals like you. But I don't expect a dirtbag like you to understand.
Damian just grumbled an answer. The attitude of those Outcast was the antithesis of the Brotherhood members. Except for Sarah. Damian still remembered the scornful look she gave him when they met at Chevy Chase and her attitude toward non-Brotherhood recruits.
The elevator came to a standstill in a jolt against a metal door of a similar design to the pre-war installations. The door opened, revealing a half-collapsed room. Pipes and electrical cables were running down the ceiling, supported by aluminum bars.
In the room, two soldiers in power armor were chatting. The one on the right was not wearing his helmet. An African American man, with very short brown hair and a mean look on his face, seemed to be in the middle of a heated discussion with his companion.
He turned his head towards Morrill and Damian. He looked down at Damian's Pip-Boy before turning to Morrill. Morrill nodded his head and crushed his cigarette under his foot.
"You, the local. You keep your gun in its holster, your hands in your pockets and you hold your tongue. Follow me."
He turned around and went through a door in the back of the room. Damian followed him, Morrill on his heels. They went into another empty room under an electric turbine. A railing overlooked the back of the room and served as a firing post for security turrets and two soldiers.
The section of the tunnel where the man led Damian pointed to the rest of the site. Cleaner, well-lit, with white walls and a small path of yellow tiled slabs on the floor. Several barred windows overlooked storage rooms and white painted metal doors probably leading to tunnels, stairs or other rooms.
The man led Damian deeper into the bunker. The facility had clearly been built by the officials before the Great War, but Damian did not know for what purpose. Military bases were usually located outside the cities and only the main command posts like the Pentagon were close to the ruins and had been the main target of Chinese nuclear strikes during the Great War. This place seemed to have been spared this fate.
Damian arrived at a fork in the tunnel. On the left, a large gate connected to a terminal was guarded by two men in power armor. On the floor, several electrical cables ran from a large generator to the right, to a small, poorly lit room. Damian managed to distinguish a big oval shape in the room. The cables would run around the oval thing and disappear elsewhere in the room.
Damian heard the man clear his throat and saw that he was giving him a menacing look. Damian followed him to a room full of computer consoles, tables and shelves where piles of files, miscellaneous objects, firearms being repaired, and pieces of armor were piled up.
The man in power armor stopped in front of another, brown, military cut, with a small goatee. He, too, was wearing power armor and was reading what looked like a report. When he heard Damian and the others arrive, he looked up from his file. He looked at Damian and frowned. He looked more surprised than annoyed to see a stranger in the bunker. Unlike the other members of the Outcasts, who had been saying downgrading things to Damian.
"Protector McGraw," said the man escorting Damian. "This is the local that Morrill recovered from the ruins."
McGraw looked down on Damian's Pip-Boy. He nodded.
"All right. Thank you, Morrill, you're dismissed."
Morrill stood at attention and left the room. The second soldier took a few steps away and stood behind Damian, laying his hand on a laser pistol hanging from his belt.
"Well, what do we have here?" McGraw said, dropping his report on the table next to him.
He inspected Damian from head to toe and lingered again on his Pip-Boy.
"To be honest with you, the only thing I'm willing to entrust to the hillbillies of this region is to polish my armor... And that would be too much of an honor for them."
He grabbed a cigarette and offered one to Damian, who declined.
"But you," McGraw continued, blowing the smoke from his cigarette. "You've got that little computer on your wrist, and I think you'll be very useful to us."
"So, my Pip-Boy makes me unique, and you need it to...?"
A slight smirk appeared on McGraw's face.
"You're not as dumb as the other locals of the Capital Wasteland, I'll grant you that. Now, to put it simply, I need you and your Pip-Boy. If you help us, we'll see what we can do to help you in return."
Damian noticed that McGraw was from time to time looking at the man behind him. Damian looked briefly over his shoulder. The man didn't seem to agree with McGraw, and his looked could kill, his stare would have already sent McGraw to his grave.
"What kind of help are we talking about?" Damian asked.
McGraw dropped the ashes from his cigarette butt with a flick of his finger into an overflowing ashtray. He then pointed to the hallway.
"You probably noticed this big blast door on your way in, didn't you?"
Damian nodded his head.
"As far as we know, this facility houses important military-grade technology. The kind of equipment we are charged with recovering and preserving. The problem is, they're behind that door and it's impossible to open it, let alone blow it up. If you help us open the door, we'll let you have some of the tech that's inside."
Damian heard the man behind him groan.
"I still don't see how my Pip-Boy can help you," Damian said crossing his arms.
McGraw pointed to the corridor again.
"This facility also houses a virtual simulation program, and we're pretty sure that whoever manages to complete the program will be able to unlock the door. Don't ask me why, but the program requires a special interface in order to work. We don't have one, but you do."
Damian turned the screen of his Pip-Boy towards him and looked down at the little computer. When he heard the word "simulation", he automatically thought of Braun and Vault 112 and felt a shiver run down his spine.
"I would like you to enter the simulator and complete the program. Once the door is open, you take your share, and everyone will go on with their lives."
"What kind of simulation are we talking about?" Damian asked nervously.
"The liberation of Anchorage, Alaska, from the Chinese Communists. An important page in this country History according to our Scribe."
McGraw noticed that Damian looked strangely relieved and raised an eyebrow.
"So, I'm gonna have to play soldier in hope of opening the door? Is that what this is?"
"Absolutely. The simulation was set up to replicate infantry combat on the front lines and prepare soldiers for their departure for the front lines. But it doesn't have any safety protocols."
"So, if I die in the simulation... I die in real life."
McGraw nodded slowly.
"Cardiac arrest. Look, I'd understand if you'd refuse to do this. If that's the case, you can leave, but..."
Damian looked over his shoulder. He saw the man ready to stand in his way if he tried to leave.
"... These technologies have been dormant here for too long and we might not have another opportunity to open this door."
Damian began to think. He could try to leave the bunker in a fight, but he probably wouldn't be able to stand up to the Outcasts soldiers and the bunker security system, and the idea of having to face a computer program that could kill him and return to a capsule like the one in Vault 112 was just as risky. However, McGraw's mention of these military-style technologies intrigued him. The Outcast did not know what was behind the bunker door and the possibility of finding something to fight the Enclave or getting information about it, no matter how small, was worth the risk. The Enclave prided itself on being the descendants of the United States Government and military. A pre-war bunker probably contained information that would prove useful to Damian, if he survived the simulation.
"If I open that door for you, will you make sure I can take a piece of the material from there?"
"I promise you," McGraw says.
Damian nodded his head, thereby signing the agreement between him and the Outcast.
"Sibley," McGraw said to the soldier behind Damian. "Take him to the sim pod and have Olin brief him."
The man grabbed Damian by the arm and forced him to follow him. They walked to the small dark room containing the oval object Damian had seen earlier. Sitting in the back next to a computer console, a blonde woman in a black Brotherhood scribe's robe, turning her back on them.
"Knock, knock, Olin," Sibley said mockingly. "I bring you someone you'll like."
The woman turned around. After giving the soldier a scornful glance, she looked at Damian, giving him a look of disgust. She got up from her chair and looked at Damian in more detail.
"Try not to damage him like the last one," Sibley laughed as he walked away.
The woman gritted her teeth and kept her answer for her. She watched Sibley leave the room and turned to Damian.
"If you're here to help, put this on and get in the sim pod."
She gave Damian a white suit, with ports for connecting electrical wires or medical hoses.
"What did your friend mean by 'like the last one'?"
The scribe sighed and left the room. She called out to Damian, who met her in front of a metal door next to the simulator room. Olin unlocked the door. It was a small room used for storage. In the center was an overturned chair surrounded by a pool of blood. Tools and a bloody saw were lying on a table with the body of a man in a vault suit on the floor.
Damian took a step back. The suit had the number "108" on the back and the body's left arm had been ripped off at the elbow.
"We found this guy wandering around the ruins. We tried to get him to participate willingly, but he just yelled at us and said "Gary! Gary!" over and over again. We tried to take his Pip-Boy but... It didn't go as planned.
"What did you do to him?" Damian asked, who couldn't help but massage his left arm.
"It doesn't matter. He's dead now. Now it's up to you to enter this simulation and open the door for us."
Olin left the room and turned her back on Damian, letting him change. He put his armor next to his bag and put on the suit. It stuck to his skin and he felt as if he was suffocating inside. He grabbed his things and made a mental list of what he had in his bag. If the Outcast had the idea to steal something from him, he would automatically know. He regretted more and more his decision of following Morrill to the bunker, but it was too late to turn back. Moreover, the Outcast could also do the same to him as they did to this vault resident.
He joined Olin in the corridor, and they returned to the pod. The pod looked like a giant egg. Made of metal and resting on a base, its shape resembled the capsules of Vault 112, except it had no glass allowing to keep an eye on the pod user.
Olin activated one of the computer controls on the large console at the back of the room. The top of the capsule split in two and slid towards the base, revealing a black seat. Damian looked at Olin, who motioned for him to take his seat. Damian put his belongings in a corner of the room and climbed inside the pod. Olin approached and plugged a bunch of cable into his suit.
The scribe plugged in the rest of the cables and checked that everything was in order. The Outcast members had gathered at the entrance of the simulation room. McGraw gave Damian a nervous look.
"Good luck." He said.
The pod closed on Damian, putting him him into total darkness. After a few seconds, the inside of the pod lit up in white and blue. Small squares began to appear on the inside wall of the pod and scrolled faster and faster. Damian saw several shapes appear before his eyes until the light became too intense and forced him to close his eyes.
Hope you enjoyed. We just started the Operation Anchorage DLC. Let's see how Damian will handle the simulation and the ruthless trench warfare of Alalka. Untill next time and thanks for reading.
