Hello everyone, hope you are doing well. In today's chapter, Damian and Dogmeat enter Vault 87 in search of a G.E.C.K.
What will they find inside ?
Damian checked his assault rifle magazine. He did the same with his pistol and quickly inspected the pockets of his belt to count his ammunition.
He glanced towards Dogmeat. The dog sat next to him and sniffed the steel door leading into Vault 87.
Damian leaned against the wall and opened the door. The door slid open with a long squeaking sound. A foul odor escaped from inside the Vault. Dogmeat sneezed several times and scratched his nose with his front paws. The smell was probably even stronger for him.
The only source of light inside the Vault was the emergency lighting at the base of the walls and above the doors. Damian tilted the beam of his Pip-Boy in front of him.
The floor was littered with human corpses. Skeletons, wearing remnants of vault suits, gowns or rags. Bloody pieces of flesh ended up rotting among the bones. Damian shivered when he realized that some of the skeletons were those of children.
He felt his stomach turn and quickly tied his bandana around his nose and mouth, hoping that the unbearable smell of putrefaction in the corridor would be alleviated. Damian entered the Vault, being careful not to step on the human remains around him.
The hallway in front of him led to a room, similar to the one where Hood had been injured. To the left, a staircase leading underground. Damian had no idea exactly where he was. Since he knew the G.E.C.K. was in Vault 87, he hadn't stopped thinking about where it would be stored.
Two possibilities seemed possible to him. As a technological marvel, capable of creating life from scratch, the G.E.C.K. would be locked up in the Overseer's office. If Vault 87 Overseer had taken his mission, whatever it was, literally, then the G.E.C.K. would be in there.
The other possibility, more likely, was that the G.E.C.K. was in a specially designed room somewhere in the Vault. All that remained to be done was to find this room and avoid the Super Mutants and the radiation that would invade the corridors of the Vault.
Dogmeat seemed to have become accustomed to the atrocious smell that floated in the air and stretched out his ears, picking up sounds that were inaudible to Damian.
Damian looked at the walls around him but saw nothing but rust, moisture and traces of blood. He had hoped to find a map of the place as he had in Vault 101. Each new section had a detailed plan, hung near the entrances. There was nothing here. Nothing but an oppressive sense of unease and the smell of death and fear.
His only option was to explore until he had a vague idea of where he was. He would then have to locate the Overseer's office and its terminal, which, if it was still working, would tell him where to go to find the G.E.C.K. and bring it back to the Citadel.
Dogmeat didn't seem to smell or hear anything dangerous. Damian took a deep breath and searched for the courage to enter the Vault and move forward. Despite his mask on his face, the smell entered his nostrils and made his head spin. He walked down the stairs, slowly and quietly. The silence around him was heavy. He felt as if the sound of his boots on the steel steps resonated throughout the entire Vault.
The hallway at the bottom of the stairs went in two directions. The door on the left led into a collapsed tunnel, dug out of the cave, where, strangely enough, a mannequin and a wooden crate full of objects and books had been placed. The smell was a little more bearable here.
The door on the right led him to a small room, occupied by tables and a rusty computer, destroyed data banks and various electronic or listening devices dating from before the war.
Damian tried to turn on the terminal there. The screen gradually turned on and the computer began to hum. It belonged to a man named Peter Stevens, probably a former resident of Vault 87, assigned to maintenance.
Damian tried to open the various files, but most of them were corrupted and only displayed an error message. The only usable files did not tell Damian anything about his location in the Vault. The only thing he learned was that this man, Peter Stevens, was upset by his son's death and had been prescribed painkillers by the Vault's physician after hearing hallucinations of children laughing.
The last entry made no sense. It was as if the man had typed his thoughts in incoherent and disorderly ways, without bothering to put spaces or make his words understandable.
Damian cast a nervous glance at Dogmeat who was sniffing the ground. Damian turned off the terminal and searched the room without finding anything useful. A second door allowed him to leave and he entered a room, only occupied by a large reactor. He was probably on the other side of the door blocked by the terminal. Damian approached one of the steel walls and stuck his ear to it.
He didn't know if it was his mind trying to prove him right or if the little noises he heard were those of children talking and playing.
Now that he had a clearer idea of where he was, the plans of Vault 101 and its maze of corridors came back to his mind. If Vault 87 was built the same way, then he should be able to get to the Atrium and the Living Quarters, and then to the Overseer's office.
He went up the stairs and entered the next room. Radroaches of various sizes were swarming over a remnant of flesh, and in one corner of the room, a pile of skeletons and bones were rotting away. The walls of the cave where the Vault was located could be seen through large windows. A strange, even unhealthy concept. The few people who had been able to find refuge in the Vault just before the Great War would probably have preferred to see through these large windows, images of large green field or a seashore. The illusion of seeing a landscape untouched by death and atomic destruction was probably preferable to the sight of a stone wall, a brutal reminder that the residents of the Vault would have to live the rest of their days in a cold, impersonal bunker without ever seeing daylight again.
For Damian, it didn't make sense or matter. The only green landscapes he had ever seen were those in the picture books of his childhood and his only close sight of a coastline was that of the banks of the Potomac River and its radioactive wildlife.
He had certainly felt an immense sense of happiness when he could finally see the sky, the sun and the night he had spent at the Citadel, outside observing the stars and the moon, trying to think of something other than the death of his father and his desire for revenge. But these things, unlike the rural, urban and coastal landscapes, had probably not undergone drastic and radical changes since the bombs fell.
Dogmeat growled. Damian turned around and pointed his rifle at the door. He heard heavy footsteps and a hoarse voice. He listened and managed to pick up some bits of conversation.
"...green stuff. It takes more like us to stop the humans."
"Then we need more humans. To make them like us."
"Stupid Fawkes says the humans will come to us one day. To take the green stuff."
"Bloody humans."
Damian walked down a corridor with his gun aimed. He flattened himself against the wall and slid to the corner before looking. At the top of the stairs, two Super Mutants were talking. Damian could also hear others walking further up the stairs.
He was beginning to see a little more clearly. He had found it strange that the Super Mutants, which he thought were the result of radiation, still seemed to be present in the Capital Wasteland, despite the many clashes between them, Brotherhood, the Raiders and basically anyone else. Apparently, it was not high radiation exposure that caused these changes, but rather contact with something "green". In other words, if the Super Mutants could reproduce in this way, then it explained their proliferation in the ruins of D.C. and the surrounding area.
The two Super Mutants did not seem to want to move and continued to chat, or rather to emit laughter and boast of having killed the most humans. Damian switched his rifle to automatic mode and installed his silencer at the end of the barrel. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he jumped out of the corner of the wall.
The first mutant collapsed to the ground, hit in the temple. The second mutant made a gesture to grab a piece of studded wood but collapsed in turn. A multitude of footsteps resounded at the top of the stairs. Damian saw the skull of a Super Mutant appear and fired. A large mass collapsed forward and tumbled down the stairs, spilling a long trail of blood in its wake.
Damian retreated, taking Dogmeat with him. He crouched down by the door and pointed his rifle at the incoming Super Mutant. The shape of the first mutant appeared at the other end of the corridor and Damian fired. He heard a cry of pain. He fired again but the bullet ricocheted off the wall next to the mutant who took cover against the wall.
Dogmeat leapt towards the Super Mutant. Damian tried to stop the dog, but it was faster. He heard Dogmeat bite the Super Mutant in the leg. Damian ran across the hallway. When he got to the corner, he saw the Mutant fighting with the dog. Dogmeat avoided a rifle butt and jumped to grab the arm of the Super Mutant.
The Super Mutant struggled, and Damian saw a large piece of bloody flesh tearing off its arm. Dogmeat fell back a little further and Damian took the opportunity to finish off the Mutant with a shot in the chest.
Damian raised his rifle to the top of the stairs and listened. There was no sound coming from him. He turned towards Dogmeat. The dog snorted and gave his master a satisfied look, its jaw stained with blood and the tongue hanging to the side, panting.
Damian climbed the stairs and arrived in front of a second reactor. He took another staircase and came to a sliding door. Before opening it, he checked his charger. If the Super Mutants ever came in force against him, he could use the stairs and doors as a bottleneck, and as a last resort, he had a few grenades with him. Dogmeat could also help him in combat as it had done before and make a good diversion, but the dog didn't have any armor capable of stopping a bullet. If this eventuality were to happen, there was only hope that the Super Mutants were poor shooters or that Damian was fast enough to eliminate them beforehand.
Damian activated the gate. He was in another reactor room. He approached the sliding door and activated it. He saw the legs of a Super Mutant disappear around the corner from the stairwell. Damian waited a few seconds. He heard Dogmeat growled and the Super Mutant's footsteps coming closer. Damian stayed in the dark and aimed his rifle. The Super Mutant began to descend the stairs. It was holding what looked like a bloody human leg in its hands and Damian heard unpleasant chewing sounds.
The Super Mutant's head finally appeared, wearing a leather aviator's cap, its mouth overflowing with pieces of meat and blood. Damian fired. The snap of the shot, muffled by the silencer, gave way to an organic noise as the bullet penetrated the mutant's skull. It collapsed on the stairs with a metallic sound.
The stairs led Damian to the atrium, identical to that of Vault 101. Above him, Damian could hear the footsteps of the Super Mutants on the upper catwalk. The light from the emergency lighting, combined with the smell of dead bodies floating in the air, the human remains on the floor, and the nets of meat and bones hanging from the ceiling, made the place look grim and gloomy.
Damian tried to listen to the footsteps of the Super Mutants and count how many he could see in front of him. He could feel his heart pounding against his rib cage. All his senses were alert. Damian stuck his head through the opening and tried to discern, despite the dim light, the humanoid silhouettes of the mutants.
Then an idea came to him. He rummaged through his bag for a few moments and pulled out the bottlecap mine that Moira had given him as a reward for his trip to Minefield. He activated the detonator and threw the object into the center of the atrium. He stepped back down the stairs and listened.
As the Vault-Tec Sandwich Box hit the floor, Damian could hear grunts and shouts coming from all over the Atrium. He was aware that getting noticed by the Super Mutants was a very risky idea, but he saw no way to sneak past.
Several Super Mutants rushed around the area where Damian had launched the mine. Dogmeat growled softly. Damian held him by the collar, but the Super Mutants made so many noises that it was impossible to hear the dog growls.
There was a total of six Super Mutants in the Atrium. One of them grabbed the mine and picked it up. He called out to the others and showed them the explosive.
Damian waited until they were all assembled and activated the detonator. A small cloud of dust appeared where the mutants were. Numerous shards of metal, bottlecaps, bolts and small steel balls flew in all directions, tearing skin and muscles, ripping flesh off and sinking into walls and floors.
Damian released Dogmeat who entered the Atrium and rushed towards the Super Mutants lying on the ground. He turned around and looked at them before returning to his master. Damian entered in his turn, watching for the heavy footsteps of a pack of Super Mutants.
The corpses of the Super Mutants were horribly mutilated. Parts of their jaws and skulls were missing. The one who had the mine in his hands had both arms torn off and his face was nothing but a slurry of flesh and blood with small pieces of steel and Nuka-Cola bottlecaps sticking out.
The Atrium had suffered heavily from the ravages of time and the occupation of the Super Mutants. Strangely, Damian could not find any room dedicated to rest or relaxation for the residents. All of them were storage rooms or laboratories and unlike Vault 101, there was no circular window that allowed the Overseer to watch the Vault from his office.
Damian went upstairs. Dogmeat growled. A door slid open and a Super Mutant came out. Damian dove to the side, narrowly avoiding a laser beam. He heard Dogmeat yelp. He pivoted and fired a burst towards the Super Mutant. The Super Mutant staggered and collapsed on his back. Another door opened. Damian slid his rifle and fired. A thud told him that whatever had just come through the door had slumped to the ground and had just died.
Damian jumped up on his legs. He was beginning to regret using the mine. All the mutants in Vault 87 knew he was there, and they would come to him one by one. Damian looked nervously at the various doors.
After a few moments, nothing had happened. No other mutant had come. Dogmeat was standing next to him. Damian turned on his Pip-Boy's lamp and pointed it to his dog. It didn't seem to be hurt, but Damian noticed that the fur on its neck had been burned a little.
He gave a quick pat on his dog's head before moving on. The hallway on the other side of the Atrium went both left and right. On the right, Damian saw a staircase. He decided to explore to the left first.
Another room occupied by a reactor. Damian stumbled upon a working terminal and turned it on. The various usable files were from the engineering section of the Vault. Apparently, the residents had complained about problems with the water filtration and electrical system.
Damian frowned. He found it strange that the Vault had experienced difficulties with its electrical system, given the many reactors Damian had found. Vault-Tec reactors were to provide energy for years without maintenance, sometimes centuries. Sure, they could sometimes dysfunction and Damian knew that back in Vault 101, they sometimes had energy shortages lasting a few hours or days, but, there was only two reactors in Vault 101, while in Vault 87, Damian had already walked past four of them.
"Seems that Vault 87 had an experimental section that was requiring a lot of power," Damian thought as he read the file on the screen. "At least now, I know where to look for the G.E.C.K.".
He moved on to the next file, hoping to learn more. He let out a sigh. The message mentioned a malfunction in the radiation purge in the G.E.C.K.'s room. If the miracle device emitted radiation, Damian would turn into a ghoul before he could leave the Vault and return to the Citadel.
Damian put his hand over his face. He opened the last entrance to the terminal. He had to read the message on the screen twice in a row to make sure he understood it. The author had written that the experimental section of Vault 87 was responsible for his wife's death and that this was not an isolated case. He had also written that serious things were happening in the experimental section.
A shiver ran down Damian's spine. Several gloomy hypotheses were beginning to germinate in his mind. Damian chased them away with a flick of his head. He had to stay focused.
He went back to the Atrium and followed the corridor before climbing a staircase and arriving upstairs. Part of the corridor was blocked by lockers and tables, set up as a makeshift barricade. Damian walked down the corridor. He came close to a window, with traces of bloody hands. He approached to look.
The window shattered and the huge hand of a Super Mutant sprang up and grabbed Damian. The Mutant dragged him inside the room and threw him against a computer console. Stunned Damian, felt the Super Mutant grab him again and throw him this time into a corner of the room. Damian hit a table with a computer on it and it fell to the floor.
Dogmeat jumped on the Mutant and stuck its fangs in the mutant's calves. Damian drew his pistol and fired. The Super Mutant cried out in pain and fell backwards. Damian sighed. Good thing the Super Mutant chose to fly him around the room instead of crushing his head.
The room he was in looked like a laboratory. Vials, test tubes and chemistry utensils were gathering dust on one of the tables or had broken on the floor when the Super Mutant attacked him. A safe occupied part of the wall, and the rest of the room was occupied by lockers and computer equipment.
Damian listened for a moment, his gun ready to fire, and approached the terminal on the floor. In the fall, the terminal had lit up. Damian put it back on the table and began to look at the files and messages. The fall had damaged it, but it was still possible to read what was on the screen.
"Any Vault member marked as deceased by the special EEP section will be tagged and coded in the computer as an unexplained or undefined death.", read out loud Damian. "What the hell does that mean?"
Damian selected the next file. The document that appeared had a series of codes in the header. Damian scrolled through the document and a list of names followed by a date and an alphanumeric code appeared before his eyes. Almost all of them had the same code "UD000", relating to an undefined death. Damian scrolled through the list.
"What the hell were they doing in that Vault? Almost all the residents died right after the Great War in this EEP section," Damian whispered.
Damian walked out the small laboratory. He climbed up a staircase and through a sliding door. He found himself in a hallway. A door on his right led him into a storage room where he could get a magazine for his assault rifle. He kept moving forward. Another door, connected to a terminal, was on the left, as well as a large bay window. Damian approached cautiously.
He jumped back and aimed his rifle at the window. Lying on a surgery table, a deformed corpse, vaguely identifiable as human, stared at him through the window. Its right leg was deformed, the bones protruded in places and its ankle was bent at an unlikely angle. Its upper body was disproportionately out of proportion to the rest. An imposing chest, broad shoulders and a neck resembling that of a brahmin. Its right arm was the same size as the body and its face, resembling the one of a Super Mutant was frozen in an expression of terror and horror.
Damian noticed that the thing was wearing a torn vault suit. He took his eyes off the abomination.
What he had begun to imagine in his head turned out to be true. The Super Mutant's discussion of this "green stuff", the presence of a secret experiment room in the Vault, the suspicions of the head of the engineering department, the impressive list of deaths classified as unexplained, the directives of the medical department, and now this test room and this horrible corpse. The Super Mutants were created in Vault 87 and were born just after the Great War. Contrary to what everyone thought, they were not the result of a mutation due to radiation, but of a two-century-old scientific experiment orchestrated by Vault-Tec.
Vault-Tec had knowingly planned everything. Damian thought that Vault 112 was just a whim of Braun and that he had diverted the purpose of the Vault to satisfy his thirst for power in order to become the God of a new world. Here, Vault 87 had been specially designed to take in residents when bombs fell on the Earth and use them as guinea pigs to create God-knows-what.
Damian's thoughts slipped to Vault 101 and Amata. If the leaders of Vault-Tec had designed the Vaults as giant laboratories and used the residents as guinea pigs for experiments, what did they have planned for Vault 101? Were descendants of Vault-Tec still observing them, hidden in another uncharted bunker, right next to the corridors of vault 101?
He had to get out of here. Find the G.E.C.K. and give it to the Brotherhood and return to Vault 101 to Amata out of there. The Wasteland was a dangerous place, but it seemed that Vaults were even more dangerous if Vault-Tec decided to turn them into giant laboratory.
Damian was pulled from his thoughts by a growl. He turned around and saw Dogmeat with his lips rolled up. Damian prepared his assault rifle. He heard a rubbing sound, as if something was sliding on the floor. A Centaur appeared at the corner of the corridor. Damian fired but the Centaur began to spit out a brown, foul-smelling bile before it collapsed. Damian heard his Pip-Boy sizzling. The liquid spattered by the Centaur reached his armor. His Pip-Boy's Geiger counter went crazy. Damian dropped his rifle and grabbed his knife. The radioactive bile was also corrosive. He cut the straps of his armor and kicked it away.
He stepped back and palpated his body. The liquid had not penetrated his armor and his Geiger counter was no longer making any sound. Unfortunately, his armor was now unusable. Damian sighed and picked up his rifle and continued to move forward.
The corridor seemed endless. On either side were doors connected to terminals, with windows, leading to a test room. Some were empty, others were occupied by the corpse of a Centaur, and others had one of those abominable corpses, all more deformed and terrifying than the others.
Damian entered a laboratory. The terminal taught him a little more and confirmed the terrible truth about Vault 87. It was one thing for human beings to kill each other in a war, or to fight over food, water or shelter. This had been the case many times in the History of Mankind and was still common in parts of the Wasteland. But what madness could have seized these people to experiment, what they called "FEV", the Forced Evolutionary Virus, causing mutations, on human subjects. Probably the same madness that led Vault-Tec to build giant laboratories and camouflage them as fallout shelters. Damian thought back to some of his classes in the Vault. In the end, it was just a simple repetition of History. The experiments at Vault 87 were nothing more than a continuation of the sadistic tests that Nazi doctors had performed on prisoners of war and a defined segment of the population during World War II. Inoculating a virus that mutated the human body and rejoicing in the results was just as crazy and despicable as dissecting living men and women and marveling at the sight of a functioning digestive system. Surely, they all thought they were participating in science advance and regarded their test subjects as disposable piles of flesh and bones, not human beings.
The doctor at Vault 87 seemed to welcome some of the test advances, noting with pride the physical transformations the residents had undergone without their knowledge. All those who worked for Vault-Tec were nothing but a bunch of fools who wanted to play God and play with science with contempt for human life. Another proof that human beings and their civilization should probably have disappeared during the Great War.
Damian left the laboratory and continued walking down the corridor until he reached a fork. A hissing and sizzling sound was heard in the corridor, followed by a guttural voice.
"You! Over there! Please, come!"
Damian was startled and turned around, looking for where the voice came from, pointing his gun in all directions. Dogmeat walked down the corridor and approached a test room.
"The room on your left.", said the voice.
Damian followed Dogmeat, who had stood up and leaned against the glass. He approached slowly. A Super Mutant appeared on the other side. Damian jumped back and pointed his rifle at it. The Super Mutant was staring at Dogmeat, stunned. He was wearing a torn vault suit. It raised its head and saw the rifle, and Damian standing behind it.
The mutant scratched its head. It slowly approached the window of the test room and bent down until it stuck its face against the glass. Damian thought he saw a look of surprise and incomprehension on the mutant's face. At the slightest suspicious gesture from the mutant, he would empty his magazine on it. The Super Mutant stepped back and turned its head to its left. It raised its arm and Damian heard the same hissing and crackling that had preceded the voice.
"Are you... Are you really here?" the Super Mutant asked. "I'm not going crazy, am I?"
Damian raised an eyebrow. He looked around and lowered his gun a little. He noticed an intercom next to the window. He pressed the button and approached the microphone.
"Uh... Hello?" he said without knowing what else to say.
He heard the Super Mutant breathe a sigh of relief.
"Are you a pure human being?"
Damian hesitated for a few seconds before answering.
"Yes, I'm human, but what are you?"
"Me? What am I?" the Mutant asked sarcastically.
"You're a Super Mutant, but... You seem... Different."
Through the window, Damian saw the Super Mutant looking at him.
"Forgive me, but I'm not used to that kind of joke, or discussion that doesn't involve grunting or hitting other people."
Damian could not believe it. The Super Mutant expressed itself with that raucous and deep voice, specific to its kind, but its diction was almost perfect and its vocabulary very rich. He was used to hearing other Super Mutants screaming, grunting or shouting unintelligible words, but here, he was looking at a Super Mutant that was capable of having a conversation with a human and, even more surprisingly, had not already tried to rip his head off.
"My name is Fawkes," the Mutant continued. "I am indeed what you call a 'Super Mutant', but if you don't mind, I prefer the term Meta-humans. I've lived here, in this... Cage, all my life."
Damian remembered hearing the two Super Mutants in the reactor room mention someone named Fawkes. He had no idea it could be a Super Mutant.
"Your friends seem to think you're a mutant. Quite ironic," Damian said.
"Yes, ironic indeed." Fawkes replied.
Damian saw the Super Mutant sketch the nearest thing to a smile.
"Please forgive my surprise, but I didn't expect to find someone so cultured and intelligent here. It's a rather pleasant change, I must say." Fawkes continued.
"That makes two of us," thought Damian.
"But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After all, it was only a matter of time before someone would come looking for the G.E.C.K.", the Super Mutant said.
"The G.E.C.K.?" Damian repeated. You know where it is?"
Fawkes seemed a little surprised. He looked at Damian for a moment through the window before answering.
"Yes," he replied. "I know what it is, I know where it is and I know how to get to it. And I can help you access it."
"Help me? Why do you want to help me?" Damian asked a little suspiciously.
"Because you can help me too."
Fawkes pointed to the room where he was standing with a great gesture of his hand.
"Get me out of here! I can't take it! I can't take it anymore! I don't even know how long I've been locked in here!"
The Super Mutant's tone was almost begging.
"If you set me free, I'll get the G.E.C.K. back for you."
"Why would I need your help to get it?" asked Damian who already knew the answer.
"Because the room where the G.E.C.K. is located, is bathed in radiation, and I doubt you'll survive it for long, unlike me."
Damian hesitated. He looked around again and pressed the intercom button.
"If I get you out of this room, how do I know you're not going to try to kill me or get the hell out?" he asked.
"I understand your reluctance to help someone of my kind." replied Fawkes. "But you'll have to take my word for it. I could have also not warned you about the radiation in the G.E.C.K. room."
Fawkes was right. Even if Damian already knew about it from the Vault's engineering department terminal, the Super Mutant could have never mentioned this obstacle.
Damian pressed the intercom button. He took a deep breath before answering.
"All right, then. How do I get you out of here?"
Fawkes let out a sigh of relief.
"On your right is a maintenance room at the end of the corridor. Once inside, you'll find the medical fire control. If you sound the alarm, the doors to the test rooms will open. But beware, I'm not the only one locked in these cells."
Damian walked away. He didn't like the idea of having to release a Super Mutant, no matter how polite and friendly it was. He walked across the hallway, where there were many test rooms. As he passed by, he glanced out some of the windows. Centaurs slid across the floors of some of them, surrounded by fresh human corpses. In one of them, one of those deformed mutants stood motionless. It turned its head towards Damian. With its jaw open, its eyes wide open, it stared at Damian without moving.
Damian stepped back, staring at the thing in the cell. He moved to the side and a shiver ran down his back when he saw the huge eyes of the abomination following him.
One of the cells contained a human. Damian approached the glass and tapped it with his fingers. The prisoner, a man with red hair, wearing a t-shirt and fatigues, was sitting against the wall and did not move. Damian started again but the man did not react.
Damian arrived in front of the maintenance room. Two generators were intermittently generating electric arcs. After another hesitation, he activated the fire alarm. A bell rang in the Vault. He returned to the corridor. The Centaurs had come out and were slowly sliding towards the deformed mutant who had also left its cell. With incredible speed, the monster rushed at the Centaurs and went after them, tearing off their heads, limbs, and long tongues.
It turned towards Damian and began to run towards him. Damian aimed up his weapon and fired. The mutant fell to the ground. Damian fired three more shots to make sure the thing was dead.
As he walked past the cell where the man was, he felt something hit him. The man had rushed at him and hysterically tried to strangle it. Dogmeat jumped on the man and knocked him down. In a final hiccup of fury, the man collapsed when the dog crushed his throat.
Damian straightened up by massaging his neck. He went back to Fawkes' cell. The door was already open. The Super Mutant came out. It closed its eyes and took a deep breath. It turned its head towards Damian, who moved slightly backwards. Fawkes bowed forward, and Damian couldn't stop thinking about Toshiro.
"Freedom! At last, freedom!" cried the Mutant. "I can never thank you enough."
Fawkes looked behind him to the corridor that led further into the Vault.
Now it's my turn to help you," he said, turning to Damian.
He began to walk. At the corner of the corridor, a Super Mutant, wielding a large mass of steel appeared. It looked at Damian and Fawkes and screamed, running towards them waving its weapon.
Fawkes stood in front of Damian and, with great ease, parried the shot. He disarmed the Super Mutant and crushed its skull with the club. A second mutant arrived, holding a laser rifle. Damian slid to the side and fired. The Super Mutant, hit in the chest, staggered to the wall and slid along, leaving a large black mark in its wake.
Damian and Dogmeat followed Fawkes down the corridor, through computer rooms and a large empty room where a multitude of pipes ran along the walls and up the ceiling with a locked door.
Fawkes eliminated the Super Mutants in his path with disconcerting ease. He swung his club as if it were a simple piece of wood, shattering the Super Mutant's jaws, chest cages and skulls. Damian noted that Fawkes seemed to hate his kind far more than the Brotherhood soldiers could hate the Super Mutants. Damian and Dogmeat had no need to intervene and stayed back to avoid the fury of their new ally.
Fawkes led them to an L-shaped room, occupied by lockers containing radiation suits and a terminal, used for the maintenance of the G.E.C.K. room.
The Super Mutant opened the door. Damian heard his Pip-Boy sizzling as he approached the door. He signaled Dogmeat to back off.
"Stay here," Fawkes ordered. "Beyond this door, the radiation level is lethal to you, humans. I'll get the G.E.C.K. and bring it back to you. Be careful, some of my... Less evolved brethren may be coming."
Fawkes disappeared in the corridor. Damian stood against the doorway leading to the test chambers and prepared his rifle. He stared down the corridor in front of him, ready to shoot at anything that came into his line of sight.
After a few minutes he heard footsteps behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Fawkes coming back, with a small briefcase in his hands.
"There's the G.E.C.K., as promised," said Fawkes, handing the briefcase to Damian. "I hope he's worth all the trouble you've went through to get here."
Damian tipped his rifle over his shoulder. He grabbed the case. It was gray and had the Vault-Tec logo and the G.E.C.K. acronym on it. Damian opened it carefully. Inside were gauges, meters, tubes, a numerical keypad and a small blue screen. Damian had no idea what a device capable of creating life from the most total sterility could look like, but he had expected something else.
He carefully closed the case before turning to Fawkes.
"I never thought I'd say this to a Super Mutant, but... Thank you," Damian said with a smile.
Fawkes bowed forward.
"I'm afraid we'll have to split up. Don't worry about me, I'll find a way out of here. Good luck. And, thank you."
Fawkes left the room, leaving Damian and Dogmeat alone. Damian leaned over to his dog.
"Come on, pal, let's get out of here."
Dogmeat barked happily. They went back the way they came. Damian would have to cross the entire Vault and Murder Pass again before he could return to the Citadel. He did not care. He had achieved his goal. The G.E.C.K. was in his hands. He felt unstoppable. Now he could take the next step, take the Purity Project back from the Enclave's hands and fulfill his parents' dream.
"I did it, Dad. I finally found it."
He arrived in the large empty room with the pipes. The door opened ajar. Damian saw a small cylindrical object roll at his feet. The object emitted a whistle and a large white flash came out of it. Damian staggered and fell to his knees. He could no longer hear anything, and his vision was blurred. Three black silhouettes entered through the door and spread out into the room. The whistling in Damian's ears gradually faded away. He managed to hear a bang next to him. The next moment. He saw Dogmeat, lying on its side, blood flowing from its chest. Damian rocked on his back. A fourth figure appeared in front of him, dressed in a beige raincoat over a black uniform. It was Autums. The Enclave had managed to locate Vault 87 and enter to retrieve the G.E.C.K.
Autumn knelt beside him. Damian could see his lips moving, but he couldn't understand or a word. The Colonel straightened up and gave several orders to the soldiers accompanying him.
Just before he lost consciousness, Damian felt that he was being handcuffed and carried out of the Vault.
Hope you enjoyed.
The awful looking failed Super Mutant we see is (I think) the only one we encounter in the game. In my opinion, it would have make Vault 87 even more creepy if this things were roaming the place like Centaurs or other Super Mutants.
Until next time and thanks for reading.
