He awakened to the sounds of explosions, weapons fire, shouting, and dying screams only to open his eyes to pure darkness. He tried to move his arms but found that whatever he was trapped inside of was too cramped to even bring his hands to his face. If that wasn't bad enough the sounds outside his coffin-like cell were getting louder and more intense and he began to fear that he would be killed by a stray shot. However, before panic could set in the sounds of battle ceased as quickly as they had begun and he could hear two voices speaking outside.
"All hostiles in the chamber have been eliminated but the occupants in four of the pods were killed." He could make out one gruff sounding male voice as saying. This would be followed by a female voice saying, "Wait! We have a survivor in pair five."
"Is it the male or female?"
"The male. There seems to be some sort of interference blocking our scans and his pod is slightly damaged. It's why you thought he was dead. I can't determine the source of the interference. Strange."
"Never mind that. Let's just get these people out of here." And with the completion of that sentence, his pod opened to reveal a hovering medical bot. It was a Mr. Handy variant with a round central body, three antenna appendages with cameras which both act and even look like eyes, three mechanical arms with various medical and scanning equipment protruding from its center, and a rocket like thruster on its bottom that helps it fly around a couple feet in the air.
"Please hold still while I scan you for injuries." The robot requested of him in the female voice he had heard. He looked around as it performed its scans and could see uniformed bodies, of two different types, bleeding all over the ground alongside many demolished sentry bots, Mr. Gutsys, and Assaultron units.
"All right scans are complete, you should be happy to know that you are perfectly fine." The medical bot then flew off before he had a chance to ask any questions, like why he was naked.
Careful not to step on anything, or anyone, he hopped out of his pod and began exploring his surroundings. He found himself in a large domed chamber with a large green stoned statue of a grotesque creature covered in human bodies with pained expressions. Encircling the statue were twelve pods, his own included, with eight other people, four men, and four women, of multiple races and all about eighteen years of age. Curiously, he noticed that they were all completely bald without even eyebrows or eyelashes. He felt his head and face and realized that he was the same way.
A damaged Mr. Gutsy, a military model of the medical bot which he now realized to be the likely source of the male voice he heard while in the pod, began barking orders to everyone when twenty-four Assaultron units, human shaped military robots designed for close range combat and possessing a powerful lazer in their heads for long range attacks, entered the chamber. "Alright everybody, I know you are confused and have questions but that will all have to wait. This facility is under heavy attack from two warring factions, one that wants to enslave you and another that simply wants to kill you, and we can no longer keep either of them out. Your new bodyguards here will escort you to a secret escape tunnel where..."
The Mr. Gutsy was interrupted by the sound of gunfire coming from the hallways on the opposite side of the chamber. "Get moving now!" It shouted as it and six of the Assaultron units rushed to intercept the oncoming invaders. Neither he nor any one of the others around him appeared willing to question what the robot had said and they quickly followed their mechanical escorts without question.
As the naked fugitives ran down the hallways it became harder and harder to avoid the invading troops, who now seemed to be primarily halted by each other than by the facility's robotic defenders, and their guards would occasionally have to fight through enemy checkpoints. The first one they encountered was manned by a group of commandos in brown body armor similar in design to ancient Roman troops. This group, which had just survived an attack by their white and grey uniformed rivals, was easily wiped out by the Assaultrons but one of his male companions was killed by a stray bullet. This sad pattern would repeat itself constantly until only he and one Assaultron remained.
He eventually reached a large crack in a wall guarded by five Sentry bots, large truck sized machines that looked like a cross between a man and a tank, and what he was pretty certain to be the same medical bot that had examined him in the main chamber. On a table in front of it were black jumpsuits, socks, underwear, shoes, and Pip-Boy 3000s, extremely powerful but clunky looking portable computers that connect to a persons brain and allow them to control almost all of its features with their minds once attached to the left arm. In addition, the Pip-Boy possess an incredibly advanced targeting system that can notably increase the speed of its users mind and body for brief periods of time.
"Where are the others?" The medical bot asked and was answered by the surviving Assaultron, "This is the only one to survive the journey. Immediate evacuation is strongly advised."
Grateful to see clothes he immediately began getting dressed but had only gotten on his underwear and socks before hearing one of the Sentry bots say, "Enemy contact," and open fire on five enemy soldiers in Power Armor down the hall to his right. When he saw one of them aim a missile launcher in his direction he instinctively grabbed one of the Pip-Boys and a pair of black boots before lunging into the hole in the wall just before the missile hit the Sentry bot. He got to his feet just in time to start running down the dark tunnel and the roof above him began to collapse.
He ended up on the ground and partly buried further down the tunnel but was able to dig himself out in the darkness. He fumbled on the ground before finding the Pip-Boy and eventually managed to properly place the thing onto his left arm. He turned it on and was overwhelmed by pain as it connected to his nervous system. After almost passing out he eventually regained his senses as the pain subsided. He then took a moment to get himself accustomed to the computer's digital interface which was now being projected directly into his brain, allowing him to actually see and hear everything the device can do without him ever having to look at it or turn on its speaker.
He then turned on the Pip-Boy's flashlight and quickly found and put on his boots, which were a perfect and comfortable fit.
He began walking down the tunnel until he heard a small screeching sound up ahead. He stopped in his tracks until an impossibly large cockroach came into view. The thing was about twice the size of a house cat and did not seem to be afraid of him in the least.
With nowhere else to go he cautiously tried to walk past the impossibly large insect, but once he got within three feet the creature flapped its wings and lunged at him. He grabbed it in mid-air just before it could bite into his throat and forcefully slammed it into the cave wall and then to the ground. With its belly pointed up he quickly stomped on it with his right foot until it was clearly dead.
He knelt and examined the creature's remains and for the first time since waking up to his nightmare spoke. "How can something like you possibly exist?"
He stood up at the sound of another cockroach up ahead. When two more of the nasty creatures came into view he ran straight at them and quickly dodged them as they lunged for his throat. Knowing that there were likely too many of the things in this cave for him to fight off he knew that his only hope for survival was to get out as soon as possible. He continued to run past and, when given no other choice, kill giant cockroaches until he came across an intersection full of dead bodies, both human and cockroach, and bullet shells.
He knelt to examine the dead humans and found all of them to be almost completely devoured, likely by the cockroaches, and wearing the shredded remains of black military fatigues with an E encircled by a ring of stars as some sort of insignia. After looking more closely at the carnage around him it was not hard to figure out that these people were cornered and overwhelmed by the local wildlife. He found several guns, but no ammunition and was forced to settle for a combat knife sticking out of a dead cockroach, which looked to have been largely eaten by its brethren as well. He then went to the three bodies dressed in white, in the center of the massacre, it would seem that the soldiers had died trying to protect them. He searched their bodies and found a large pack and several holotapes along with chewed out containers and water bottles. Evidently, the bugs leave nothing to waste. He then heard movement coming from the tunnels behind him and decided to start moving again before ending up like these poor bastards.
He finally saw light at the end of a tunnel he came across and raced towards it with a large hoard of carnivorous giant cockroaches right on his heels. He could hear explosions and gunfire outside but quickly decided that the possible danger outside was far better than the very real danger only inches away from his feet! He leaped out of the cave and rolled to a stop next to a tree. He looked back and saw the hoard stopped at the edge of the sunlight. They appeared to contemplate continuing their chase or returning to the deeper levels. Eventually, they chose to retreat when a stray shell landed behind his tree, far too close for comfort.
He walked east, away from the battle, in the hot sun and suffocating humidity. When he came across a stream of water he rushed over to take a drink, but decided against doing so when his Pip-boy alerted him to high levels of radiation and other contaminants, several of which were unknown to it. He looked at his reflection in the water and quickly realized that he did not recognize the face looking back at him. It was at that moment when he finally realized that he could neither remember his own name or anything before waking up inside that dark pod.
"What is wrong with me?" He thought to himself in panic.
He walked passed ruined buildings, cars, and roads and noted that they all appeared to have been abandoned for centuries. He would sometimes come across giant flys, wild dogs, and other lethal-looking monstrosities along with roaming groups of armed men and women in spiked leather armor. Although he was starving, sunburned, covered in various bug bites, likely dying from dehydration, and possibly developing a fever he thought better about revealing himself to these people after noting their twitchy movements and he assumed to be dried bloodstains on their clothing.
After six more hours of walking, he heard voices arguing behind a group of trees ahead. Cautiously, he walked up ahead, the combat knife in his right hand, and saw six men and three women wearing the same strange punked out clothing as the other people he has seen down a small slope pointing what looked to be homemade guns, built from pipes and pieces of wood, at a deformed man with melted looking skin and no nose kneeling in front of them.
"You guys are making a mistake. The eight nations will never allow any of us to live, so surrender simply isn't an option for us." The deformed man said to his captors.
"Who said anything about giving up old man? Were just changing tactics, going underground, and operating in the shadows. We'll hide in plain sight."
The deformed man laughed before speaking again. "You've been reading too many of those trashy crime novels from the Commonwealth kid. Things don't work like that in the real world, and even if they did you're too stupid and trigger happy to pull it off. Even for a day."
"Fuck you Derecho! You're just too damn stubborn to understand that the wasteland is finally dead. The Brotherhood proved that to us in the Carolinas. We can't win."
The deformed man, Derecho, seemed saddened by his own reply as he spoke, "Maybe not, but we can at least go out with some dignity."
He felt something hard press against the back of his neck before hearing a man speak to him, "Look what we have here." The man shouted to his companions down the hill, "I got a bleeder here!" The leader of the group down the slope quickly replied, "Bring it down here then."
"Get up asshole!" The gunman ordered as he backed up. He slowly got to his feet and began considering his options.
On top of the fact that they were clearly about to execute a man in cold blood, their man referring to him as a "bleeder" and their leader referring to him as an "it" were both pretty clear signs that these people were going to kill him no matter what he said or did. And likely in slow and painful ways too. So simply surrendering to them was not an option. He had noticed that their guns were not in good shape, even for homemade pipe guns, and concluded that they were likely not very accurate. He had also noted by their occasional twitching that they were likely drug addicts and were only barely paying attention to him, they didn't even seem to notice the large knife in his hand. Hands the gunman behind him didn't seem to care about seeing. Their deformed captive on the other hand was clearly focused and planning on making an attack of his own with the two ten millimeter pistols holstered on his back.
"Our captors must be overly confident in their chances if they had neglected to disarm him. Either that or they are complete idiots." He thought to himself as he made his choice to fight back.
He quickly ducked as he spun himself around, grabbed the gunman's wrist with his left hand, and jabbed his knife inside the man's throat with his right before the man's gun fired into the tree next to them. He then used the dying gunman as a human shield and grabbed his pipe pistol as he dropped it when his friends below opened fire on him. Derecho used this opening to grab his own guns and took four of his attackers down before they could react to him. He then activated his Pip-Boy's V.A.T.S targeting system, which sped up his rate of thinking so much everything around him seemed to move in slow motion as the Pip-Boy used his eyes to locate and lock onto certain parts of targets, to help bring down the others. As he had suspected the gun he stole from his assailant was not that accurate and his first three shots missed their intended marks, but he quickly compensated and nailed three of the other gunmen. The rest were finished off by Derecho.
"Holy shit kid! You did that with Fred's Pipe gun? Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that? Heaven or Hell?" Derecho asked him once he was sure his captors were all dead.
"Where did I learn to shoot?" He thought to himself as he realized that he simply had no answer to that question. Not only that, but now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember anything about himself before he woke up in that pod. Since then he had simply been too focused on staying alive to think about anything else until right this moment.
He lowered his gun and dropped his now dead human shield to the ground without ever giving Derecho an answer. This led to another question from Derecho. "I see you got yourself a Pip-Boy there but no clothes. What's wrong, your Vault make its residents wear only their birthday suits?"
Ignoring the snarky joke at his almost complete lack of clothes he simply replied. "Vault? As in Vault-Tec?"
"Well yeah, kid. Where else could you get one of those things? I know the Brotherhood of Steel has been trying to copy the ones they recovered from a few of the failed vaults in their territory, but they haven't started production yet and you sure as hell aren't one of them since you're talking with a ghoul?"
"This brotherhood doesn't talk to deformed people? Why?"
"Deformed? Now I know you're from a vault. No other way you couldn't know what a fucking ghoul is. Or why the Brotherhood of Steel wants us all dead. So which one are you from kid? I thought all the vaults in this region have been found and opened already, at least the still inhabited ones anyway."
He was about to answer when he heard a familiar skittering sound from behind. He turned around just in time to see a red, dog-sized, scorpion-like creature attack him with its three tails. He managed to dodge the attack in time to only receive a small cut to his left leg, but this caused him to fall down the hill.
"What the hell is that?" Derecho yelled as he began opening fire on the grotesque monstrosity.
The creature kept coming after him down the hill, doing its best to ignore Derecho's bullets. He quickly got to his feet and ran towards one of the Pipe Rifles dropped by the dead thugs, turned and emptied everything the gun had into the oncoming beast. Killing it just before it could touch him.
"Are these giant bugs new?" He asked Derecho.
"Giant bugs? No. Whatever the fuck this thing is? Yes! Radscorpions are normal, but they are never red and always have only one tail."
"I wonder why it..." Suddenly he could no longer speak and began going numb all over his body. He dropped down to the ground just as his vision began to blur.
"Looks like our friend here dosed you kid. Tough break. Lucky for you, I might need an antidote for these things myself, and doctors need guinea pigs like you to test it out on first. Otherwise, I would just leave you here to die. Plus, I owe you for saving my ass here. But in the future you should be more careful, you won't always find people as honorable as me. If you survive everything those idiots you killed owned will be yours, if you die, that Pip-boy and what little else you're wearing will be mine to sell. Welcome to the Wastes."