A/N: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the madness of King Braun!

Ahem.

We're heading in new directions here; I hope you enjoy the deviations from the original plot, because as much as I enjoyed the Tranquillity Lane mission, there are things in the game that just don't work in fanfiction... and, I occasionally feel the need to paint the work with my own weird, esoteric tastes, morbid and extremely fucked up as some of them may be.

Anyway, a huge thank-you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed; I hope you enjoy the next chapter! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Fallout is still not mine.

She'd almost given up hope.

Ever since she'd arrived in the Vault and been incorporated into Braun's demented fantasies, Tessa Dithers had been plunging steadily deeper into despair, somehow finding herself falling further even after she thought she'd finally hit the bottom. The events of this past year had driven her to the absolute nadir of human existence… but no sooner had she believed that it was impossible to be dragged down any lower, Braun had found some new torture to make things even worse.

For a while, she'd found solace in the laboratory she'd been given, trying – as she once had – to lose herself in the reassuring routine of chemistry. But as she'd moved away from the old formulas she'd worked upon at Lee Rapid all those centuries ago, gradually delving into more hazardous compositions, her nerves had gotten the best of her: what if Braun was still watching her? What if he was waiting for the moment when she finally created something explosive or caustic or poisonous, just so he could appear behind her and jam her face in it? Before long, she was right back to peering over her shoulder, unable to concentrate on work but unable to do anything else, and she knew that the moment Braun did appear, she'd be cowering in terror all over again. By the time she'd left the house for fresh air, she was just about ready to prostrate herself at the Overseer's feet and scream at him to get it over with.

Instead, as she'd staggered helplessly across the back gardens of Tranquillity Lane, Tessa had seen a new face in the neighbourhood.

Whoever it was, the newcomer obviously hadn't been Braun: Betty was still amusing herself with the swings. Nor had it been any of her neighbours, for most of the residents were exactly where she'd expected at the time; true, Timmy was nowhere to be found at first, but once Tessa had noticed the horrified-looking garden gnome sitting behind the Neusbaum residence, all uncertainties were immediately resolved. The newcomer's movements were too unpredictable to be any of the computer sprites that Braun had conjured up. So, the figure making his way out of the Henderson residence could only another uninvited guest, the first since the stranger's arrival.

He hadn't exactly been the most impressive sight: he couldn't be a day older than ten years of age, so either the wasteland children had decided to explore the ruins of Vault 112 for a change, or (more likely) Braun had been playing games with the visitor. In any event, he was even skinnier than Timmy and only marginally taller, his narrow face and unsmiling features locked in an expression of growing anxiety – and who could blame him? However, there'd been something else in those eyes, something that looked just a tiny bit like determination… and as he'd carefully scanned the neighbourhood, Tessa had realized that he was doing something that no other resident had done up until now: he was searching for an exit.

This boy knew this wasn't the real world; Braun obviously hadn't wiped his memory – either because he couldn't or because he didn't consider it worth his time yet. Whatever the case, this boy still had his own mind… and if he'd been spared the destruction of his identity, he might just have a chance.

It had taken all of her self-control not to run. Even with two walking sticks, Tessa wasn't very steady on her feet, and trying to navigate the back yards of Tranquillity Lane at speed would have been an open invitation for her to topple over and break another limb. So, she'd simply hobbled as quickly and carefully as she could across the neighbourhood, hoping that the new arrival wouldn't creep into Braun's line of sight before she reached him. Eventually, she'd wound up right on the edge of the Henderson property, calling out to the new arrival as quietly as she could.

Then she'd ambled away before Braun could see either of them, hurrying back to her house, praying that the boy was following her, her heart hammering so violently that she briefly wondered if Braun might be setting her up for a cardiac arrest. After that, things had been nothing more than a blur of excitement: she dimly recalled slamming the back door behind her, hearing the pitter-patter of children's shoes following her through the house, thinking please let it not be Braun, please let it not be Braun, please let him not have noticed us…

And now…

…here they were, back Tessa's basement laboratory, staring at each other as if neither of them could be real. For nearly a minute, there was silence, as Tessa took a deep breath to steady herself and leaned heavily against one of the benches, hoping it'd support her weight better than her walking sticks.

"You," she panted, voice almost quivering out of control. "Y-you're not like the others. You're new, aren't you? You still know what's real, right? You know we're not really here and we're not really talking, that it's all made-up, make-believe? You know we're all sleeping, dreaming, yes, yes?"

Inwardly, Tessa winced at the sound of her own inane babble. Between the strain of living with old age before her time, Braun's constant torture and the impact of forced isolation, her speech was so disorganized she could barely string a recognizable sentence together. She probably sounded about five minutes removed from a psychotic episode right now… not that she had that much faith in her own sanity.

Fortunately, it seemed that the boy understood her. More to the point, he was now blinking in astonishment. "I know this is all a simulation, yes," he said, tentatively. "But how do you know it? I thought Braun wiped everyone's memories."

So he knew about Braun. Not so surprising: judging by the diction, this kid had once been an adult before the Overseer had gotten his hooks into him, so he'd likely had a chance to learn a little about Tranquillity Lane prior to this meeting.

"I'm… I'm different," Tessa replied, struggling to remain coherent. "Something happened to my Lounger, maybe a year ago, and ever since then Braun can't make me forget anymore. I've remembered everything he's done. Everything. He's killed me so many times I've lost count, done everything he could to break me, but… I'm still me. I think."

She extended a trembling hand, cringing as her arthritic joints screamed in protest. "I'm Tessa Dithers."

The boy awkwardly returned the handshake. "I'm Matthias – call me Matty," he added, almost on reflex. "Um, not to sound rude or anything like that, but are we safe down here?"

"For a while, maybe. I don't think Braun saw us talking or saw you leaving Mabel's house, so he doesn't know you're down here; he's not omniscient – just likes to think he is. Bastard thinks just because he helped create this place, he's God here. But I know he still uses the Failsafe terminal. I know it," she added unnecessarily.

"The Failsafe terminal?"

Once again, Tessa took a deep breath, wishing her thundering heart would slow down long enough for her to get a word in edgewise. Between the roar of her blood in her ears and her frayed nerves, it was a marvel she could speak at all, but now she had to focus on explaining herself: Matty might just be their only chance of ending this madness.

"You know everything that's been happening here by now: if you've spoken to Braun, you've seen how the dream can become a nightmare. It has to end, it just has to. We don't have any say in it, not while Braun's in charge of this place. But there's another way: there's a secondary terminal, one that Braun uses if he wants to make serious changes to this dreamworld. You see, it's the only terminal to the outside; the only way to shut the whole thing down. You've got to find it."

"Brilliant! Where is it?"

"The abandoned house: it's right next-door, between my house and the Neusbaum house. You'll know it – looks like something out of a haunted house, now. Braun doesn't want us going in there – he's afraid we might find it. But he's hidden it somewhere inside, behind layers of tricks and nonsense, and I couldn't find it before I got caught. But you… you've still got a working body, and you're not fooled by his tricks, so you might just be able to find it, stop it all."

Matty hesitated. "What does the Failsafe terminal actually do, though? What can it do to stop Braun and get everyone out of here? I'm not doubting you for a minute, Tessa, because I wanna get out of here as much as you do, but I need to know what I'm gonna need to do first."

"There was one program I saw on it before Braun took it away – the Chinese Invasion Failsafe. I don't know what it does, but I know Braun doesn't want any of us getting our hands on it. And even if it doesn't do anything to actually stop him, there has to be something on that terminal that can end it all! There has to be something! There has to be…"

"Tessa, are you alright?"

She was trembling now, her body shivering compulsively now as her body began to fail her once again; her grip on the bench was beginning to slip, her heart was pounding so rapidly that she feared it might be about to explode, and her lungs could barely squeeze another puff of air out of her mouth.

"Don't know," she wheezed, struggling for breath. "Can't sleep sometimes... Hear voices... My own skin doesn't feel right. None of this is right. None of this is right. It has to end. It all has to end. It…"

And at that point, she fell forward – and might have landed flat on her face if Matty hadn't caught her on the last second. Groaning with the effort of supporting the weight of a grown woman, the boy who was not a boy hauled her upright with near-herculean effort until he was able to find a chair sitting in the corner of the lab and painstakingly lower her into it.

For the next minute and a half, Tessa sat there in exhausted silence as Matty began checking her vital signs. "I think you're okay for now," he said at last. "I don't have any means of gauging your blood pressure, but I'm guessing it's not good. I wouldn't go pushing yourself in future if I were you."

"Or what?" Tessa chuckled mirthlessly. "That's not my real heartrate you're checking; if you could actually find a pressure cuff, you wouldn't be reading my real blood pressure. It's all made-up, make-believe, just another way Braun can torture me. Even if I had a coronary and dropped dead right in front of you, it wouldn't be real: Braun would just bring me back to life easier than blinking."

"So I hear. But, like you said, there's got to be some way of stopping him. Hopefully, this Chinese Invasion thing is the key to it all, and if not, hopefully it's somewhere else on the terminal. If not… we're shit out of luck."

Tessa only just managed to stop herself from laughing with real mirth: once again, Matty was speaking and acting as an adult might, not realizing just how unintentionally hilarious it'd look when combined with his new childish appearance. But as her heart finally began to slow to a much more reasonable crawl and her anxieties relaxed enough for her to speak coherently, she couldn't help but wonder a bit about the newest visitor to the Vault… and though she told herself that there were much more important matters at stake, her curiosity was already in the process of overriding her common sense.

What harm could it do? After all, Braun doesn't know where he is: as far as he can tell, Matty's still in Mabel Henderson's place. Even if he gets curious enough to hunt him down, he won't think to look here first, will he? So what's the harm in a few questions?

"What brought you here, Matty?" she asked. "I mean, how did you find Vault 112? Why did you take a seat in one of the Loungers in the first place?"

Matty looked ever-so-slightly abashed. "I was looking for my dad," he admitted. "Truth be told, I've been looking for him for… Christ, maybe a few months by now. I'm not sure anymore. I've lost track of how much time I've spent looking for him: it's not like back in the Vault, where there's guaranteed access to a calendar."

"Wait, you were in another Vault?"

Again, that slightly-sheepish look. "Vault 101, yeah. I used to think I was born there, but it turns out that I was actually born in some secret lab hidden under the Jefferson Memorial, and my mom died just a few minutes later and dad decided it'd be safer if he took me away from it all so he headed south for Vault 101 and he somehow managed to talk his way in even though the Overseer always told us that nobody ever enters and nobody ever leaves and I still don't know why dad lied to me and-"

Perhaps realizing that his voice had been involuntarily picking up speed, Matty paused for breath. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "That's been weighing on me for a while now. Basically, I grew up in Vault 101 and I thought I'd be spending the rest of my life there. But then I turned nineteen and everything went crazy. Dad escaped the Vault, the Overseer thought I had something to do with it, and I had to fight my way out into the Capital Wasteland. So here I am, trying to find dad and following his trail all the way to Vault 112."

Tessa slowly digested this. "The Capital Wasteland?" she echoed. "You mean Washington DC? That's what it's called now?"

"I'm afraid so."

"What's it like out there?"

"…well, there's not much to tell, really. It's exactly what you'd expect with the name like 'The Capital Wasteland'-"

"Come on, Matty, I've been trapped down here for over two hundred damn years: at least give me some idea of what it's like on the surface. I'm not expecting to recognize everything and I'm not expecting you to know what it used to be like. Just give me something to go on… please?"

Matty sighed. "It's a mess: ruined buildings, old houses like skeletons, roads cracked right down the middle, overpasses left half-collapsed, memorials falling to bits… you can still find some houses that you can use as proper shelter, but I've only seen a few that are completely intact. The grass is gone, the soil's wrecked, the trees are all dead… except for Oasis, way up north," he added brightly. "Other than that, the only place you're likely to see healthy trees are in books or old films, just like I did. As for water, it's usually irradiated or worse. From what I've found, dad was supposed to be working on a project to fix all that, but every time he's tried, it's never been able to get off the ground."

"What about people? Are there actually people living there, outside the Vaults?"

"Sure, thousands of people. There's settlements all over the place, some built on old overpasses, some in old caves or subway stations, some have reclaimed the odd pre-War suburb. There's one, Megaton, built around an unexploded nuclear bomb, if you can believe it; another, Rivet City, was built on an old aircraft carrier beached on the shores of the Potomac. Of course, it's not all great." He laughed, but the pain on his face was all too obvious. "There's plenty of raider gangs around. Slavers, too. Ghouls who've lost their minds and gone feral. Super-Mutants looking for travellers to butcher for fun. And monsters – always monsters: radroaches, bloatflies, centaurs, radscorpions, Yao-Gui, Deathclaws…"

Tessa tried in vain to picture everything that the boy had just described. To her bemusement, it sounded oddly attractive compared to Tranquillity Lane: after all, even if there were monsters, radiation, and deprivation a-plenty, it at least sounded as if there was a slim chance of making a life out there. But then, the people of the Wasteland at least had the advantage of not being under the thumb of a monstrously sadistic deity intent on being amused at any given moment of the day.

"And you've been looking for your father through all that?" she asked.

"Yeah. I get lost easily, and I keep accepting jobs from just about everyone along the way, so it's been even longer than it should have been. God only knows how I'm still alive after all this time."

"And you think he's here?"

"I know he's here: I saw him asleep in one of the Tranquillity Loungers outside. But now I'm here, I don't know where he is or even who he is – I mean, I've seen what Braun did to Timmy: dad could be just about anything here!"

Tessa briefly reflected on the stranger's arrival in the simulation, and the rather confused-looking German Shepherd that had been seen wandering around Tranquillity Lane soon after. In all likelihood, "Doc" was probably Matty's father… but with Braun's ability to erase memories, there'd be no way of being certain.

Meanwhile, Matty was starting to look even more downcast than usual. "And now I've got to wonder what the hell I'll even say to him if we can ever get out of this place. I don't know if I should ask him why he thought leaving me behind in the Vault was a good idea, or if I should be angry with him for lying to me. I don't even know if I'll be able to look him in the eye."

"Why's that?"

But for once, Matty's eagerness for conversation appeared to have dried up.

"Matty, you don't have to get shy now of all times: I'm over two hundred years old. I've been tortured in over a million different ways, and by now, I'm beyond being shocked. If you want to tell me, I won't judge. If you don't, then it doesn't matter. Just don't tiptoe around the issue."

And then, as if by magic, he told her everything:

He told her of how he'd shot his way out of Vault 101, killing any guard that stood between him and the exit, including one that might have been about to surrender, of how he'd only just stopped himself from gunning down Overseer Almodovar in cold blood. He told her of how he'd saved Megaton and its Sheriff, but only by gunning down a dying man. He told her of his forays into debt-collecting, of the things he'd done just so a tight-lipped bartender would point him in the direction of his father. He told her of how he was a thief, a burglar of struggling wastelanders and a hoarder of necessities. He told of her that he was a murderer, how he'd shot raiders who'd dropped their guns and fled, not trusting them to stick clear of him in future; he'd even shot a few who might very well have been surrendering, convinced that they might go for their guns if he let his guard down. Worse still, he'd enjoyed it. He'd even cooperated with the earliest of Braun's games, agreeing to make Timmy cry and break up the Rockwells' marriage in exchange for the chance to be reunited with his father.

But the strangest tale of all he left for last – the story of a man who'd been trapped in a tree, a man who'd begged for death… but at the cajoling of the tree-being's worshippers, Matty had refused him, and left him to linger on for all eternity in the hope that some good might come of it.

Matty was too upset to add explanations for the things he'd encountered, but Tessa didn't doubt he was telling the truth: he had clearly held onto these stories for too long for his own good to hold anything back… but for all that, she couldn't bring herself to judge little Matty as harshly as he had. Maybe it was because he was currently stuck in the form of a child, maybe it because he was only just holding back his tears, but she couldn't look on him with the same kind of fear and disgust this confession might have prompted.

"I can't pretend to understand everything that's happened to you," she said at last. "And I don't know if your dad would approve of what you've done; maybe the fact that you can at least admit your mistakes can somehow make this right. Who knows? Right now, it doesn't matter: what matters if that you have a chance to stop Braun once and for all… and you might be the only one of us who can pull it off."

For nearly half a minute, Matty looked as if he couldn't even muster the self-confidence to reply, much less react. Then, that tiny spark of determination flared in his eyes, and he looked up with newfound eagerness. "How?" he asked.

"You've played along with Braun's games so far: there's a chance he might let his guard down now, maybe enough for you to sneak into the house and find the failsafe terminal. Plus, from what you've told me, you've got way more experience with hacking computers and reprogramming machines than any of us here, so that's got to work in your favour at some point."

"But it can't be as simple as that: if the terminal's as vital as you think, then he's not going to let his guard down no matter how much he trusts me, and if there's no back door, the only way in will be right under his nose. Besides, he'll be investigating Mabel's house sooner or later, and once he realizes that I've chickened out of killing her, the jig's up. No, there'll have to be some way of distracting him, some way of keeping his eyes off the house while I sneak in."

And in that moment, Tessa smiled. In spite of everything she'd suffered, in spite of everything she'd lost, in spite of all the horrors that Braun had inflicted on her in the last two centuries, she found a genuine smile slowly creeping across her age-creased face.

"There is," she replied, gleefully. "Because there's only one other character in this sick game that he wants to serve him voluntarily. And that, as luck would have it, is me."

It took a little over a minute for the two of them to formulate a plan.

While Matty crept out through the back door and ducked into the undergrowth bordering the abandoned house, Tessa prepared to leave via the front entrance, headed straight for the road. For the time being, Matty would remain hunkered down in the long grass until Tessa got as far as the sidewalk, just out of view for everyone except her.

The plan was relatively simple: as soon as she saw Matty give the signal, Tessa would make a beeline for Braun, doing her level best to get his attention in the only way she could: she would claim to have accepted his offer and would serve him in any way he pleased, just as long as she was spared from any further isolation, torture or involuntary transformations.

There was no way of telling whether Braun would accept this or not. After all, he had a new toy to do his bidding, and given that Matty had proved to be much more willing to entertain the demented Overseer, he probably consider Tessa to be surplus to requirements. In all probability, he'd probably kick her right back into another round of torture just for wasting his time.

But of course, the goal of this exercise wasn't to get Braun to accept her surrender or even consider it, but to keep him occupied: as long as his attention was on her, he wouldn't be keeping an eye on the house. The distraction didn't have to be perfect, it didn't have to last very long, and in point of fact, it didn't even have to be all that convince: it just had to keep him busy long enough for Matty to pick the lock on the door and sneak in.

Fortunately, there were plenty of hairpins around Tessa's house.

What with Tessa's busted hip and arthritic joints, it took her a while to get out of her house and out onto the street, so Matty didn't see her amble into view for several minutes. To be fair, neither of them wanted her collapsing in the middle of the street where she couldn't be of any help to either of them, and she certainly didn't want Braun getting suspicious at the sight of her approaching at her nearest equivalent to running speed.

Whatever the case, as soon as he saw that distinctive white hair and moth-eaten dress creep into view, Matty waved his hand in a "go ahead" motion – and hoped that Braun couldn't see it from here. Nodding silently, Tessa hobbled towards the park and out of Matty's eyeline.

A moment later, Tessa's quavering voice rang out across Tranquillity Lane as loudly as humanly possible: "Betty! Betty! We need to talk about something – it's very important!"

In the distance, Braun could be heard replying to her in Betty's voice; Matty couldn't work out the specifics from this far away, but he could tell at once from the tone that Braun wasn't interested in anything that the old woman had to say.

"No, no, no, I came here because I've finally made up my mind. I've decided to accept your offer: whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. Just… just make me young again and give me somewhere reasonably comfortable to live, and… and I'll entertain you. Torture, maiming, murder, whatever you want – just give me a body that doesn't have this arthritis and I'll do anything you want."

There was a pause, and when the reply finally arrived, it was in Braun's own voice. Once again, the specifics were indecipherable from this distance, but he seemed to be amused, maybe even a little contemplative.

"Well, maybe you have got a replacement, but I'm betting that whoever it is, they don't know what you really want: you're trying to dupe them into working for you, and once they understand you, they're not going to cooperate. No, you want someone who already knows everything there is to know about you…"

At that point, Tessa's voice – which had already been growing steadily quieter as she presumably drew closer to Braun – abruptly slipped below audible levels. From then on, all that could be heard of them was incomprehensible murmuring, Tessa still cajoling for all her worth, Braun responding with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

Matty very carefully peered over the edge of the long grass, risking a peek just to make sure that the coast was clear. To his immediate relief, he could see at once that Tessa was shuffling purposefully around the park in a semicircle as she drew closer to Braun, drawing his gaze away from the abandoned house – until at last, he had his back to it.

With that, Matty hurried across the front lawn of the abandoned house as quickly and quietly as he could manage; he didn't want Braun to hear him crashing through the overgrown lawn, and he didn't want any of the neighbours to start asking where he was going in such a hurry… but at the same time, he didn't want to risk moving too slowly and getting caught in mid-slink.

But as he made his way down the front yard, he couldn't help but notice that there was one resident of the park that was still looking in his direction: Doc the dog had paused in his usual meandering patrol of the swings and the slide, and was now staring right at Matty, head cocked in canine puzzlement. For one horrible moment, Matty thought that the animal might might bark, or worse still, hurry over for a pat and blow his cover, but instead Doc remained perfectly still, staring uncomprehendingly at him.

Not for the first time that day, Matty couldn't help but wonder a bit about Doc. Having spent several weeks in the company of a fairly amiable Wasteland Mongrel - and months on end being mauled by wild dogs - he at least understood dogs at least enough to guess at how they might act under predictable circumstances. But in Doc's case, the behavioural patterns seemed off somehow, and not just because it was a programmed computer sprite; programming would have made its behaviour rote and predictable, and definitely didn't explain why the dog seemed so friendly. After all, if Doc was Braun's pet, then surely he'd want an attack animal, or at the very least, something that would bark loudly and angrily enough to sound the alarm. Just having some big friendly dog on duty in the park just didn't make sense based on everything Matty knew of Braun's character, unless this was really another element of his camouflage as Betty.

Could it be possible that...

From the centre of the park, Tessa's voice briefly spiked in volume, a sure sign that she was struggling to keep Braun's attention from drifting away from her. Whispering a few well-chosen expletives, Matty put aside the conclusion and made for the abandoned house as quickly as possible. Against all probability, he managed to make it over the tumbledown fence and through the morass of waist-deep grass to the front door in less than fifteen seconds; now came the hard part.

As soon as the door was within reach, he went to work with his makeshift lockpicks, trying to find the sweet spot as fast as he could without snapping the pin. Not for the first time in his life, he was immensely relieved that he'd had plenty of experience with this particular skill, and even more grateful to find that the locks in Braun's fantasy world worked the same way as reality. Still, time stretched out more than could be considered comfortable. He briefly considered giving up and trying to jimmy open one of the windows around the back, but then he remembered the brief glimpses he'd gotten of the boards behind each pane of glass around the front side of the building: he hadn't gotten a good look at all the windows of Braun's house, but he was willing to bet that the creepy bastard wouldn't have left such an obvious gap in his security, not from what Tessa had told him so far. So, it was the front door or nothing.

Ten seconds, he thought frantically, as he tweaked and twisted the lockpicks. I have been standing here for ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… oh god, please don't let him turn around now, I really don't want to die down here in digital hell, not after having travelled so far and done so much. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-se-

Click.

For one second distended into what felt like a thousand, Matty could only stare in astonishment at the picked lock, unable to believe that he could be so lucky. Then, pausing only to glance over his shoulder just to make sure that Braun was still preoccupied, he swung the door open with a tortured squeak of old hinges that made his skin writhe in anxiety; to his ears, it sounded so loud that Braun had to have heard it… but no, he was still deep in conversation with Tessa. Just an illusion, then, just a trick of overstressed nerves. Sighing in relief, Matty scuttled across the doormat – nearly tripping over it in the process – and hurried inside the dusty house, quickly closing the door behind him as quietly as he could.

He immediately regretted it: with the door shut and the windows boarded up, the house was nearly pitch-black, and it took precious time for his eyes to adjust to the oppressive gloom. More ominously, the perpetual background music of Tranquillity Lane was instantly silenced the moment the door shut, plunging him into a terrifyingly natural kind of silence that seemed horribly out of place in this artificial reality.

Once he'd finally grown accustomed to the poor lighting, he saw the house exactly as Tessa had described to him: the sagging staircase, the cobweb-shrouded hall, the carpets layered by snowdrifts of dust, the front room clustered with rubbish, all of it. And of course, he heard the ominous sounds rippling down from somewhere upstairs, past the draperies of webs, past the rotten steps. Judging by the way the racket seemed to increase as he tiptoed towards the rotten steps, it would have been logical to assume that the failsafe terminal lay somewhere upstairs and that the noise was there to dissuade nosy neighbours from investigating further.

But Tessa had tried that already: from what she'd told him during their brief prep-work, she had searched almost every inch of the upper floor in the brief window of opportunity she'd taken. If this was true and she hadn't missed anything, it might not be unreasonable to assume that the noise was actually a lure to lead saboteurs off-track. What if the failsafe terminal lay somewhere much closer?

For a few seconds, he checked the ground floor, checking inside every cupboard and under every table he could find for anything that looked like an access switch. No luck, and the clock was still ticking: Tessa wouldn't be able to keep Braun preoccupied forever; sooner or later, he'd want to know what was taking him so long to murder Mabel Henderson, and why Tessa seemed intent on keeping his eyes away from the abandoned house.

In desperation, Matty delved into the pile of garbage littering the front roof and began lifting up every single piece of junk that looked big enough to hide an access switch: the bowling ball, the heap of mouldy paperbacks, the bowl of plastic fruit, the broken cuckoo clock, anything. For the first twenty to thirty seconds, he had no luck… but just as he was about to give up, his hand happened to brush past the battered remains of an old garden gnome – which suddenly let out a single trill of sound, almost like someone striking a note on a xylophone.

He tried picking it up, but it wouldn't budge, as if Braun had cemented it to the floor. Curious, he tapped it again and was once again rewarded with another trill of musical sound; then, with a leap of inspiration, he hastily rooted around the garbage for any items he hadn't touched yet, looking for any that made sound.

After a few seconds of hunting around, he eventually found six other items, each of them playing notes of their own: an empty Nuka-Cola bottle, a broken radio, a cinder block, and a glass pitcher. Matty hadn't been given much of an education in music beyond what he could learn from old books or hear on Agatha's radio broadcasts, but even he could recognize that there was the beginnings of a melody here: unless he was deeply mistaken, this was the keypad to some kind of musically-coded lock, and once he entered the notes in the correct order to form the complete song, the failsafe terminal would appear…

…but what could the song possibly be? There had to be some kind of a clue of some sort around here, a hint to make sure that Braun didn't forget his password in case he wanted to access the terminal – something just cryptic enough for him to leave it out in the open without anyone else making sense of it.

Matty wracked his brains for an answer, inputting any song he could possibly imagine into the disguised keypad: "Anything Goes," "Stars And Stripes," "Civilization," "America the Beautiful," "Into This Life," "The Star-Spangled Banner".

But it wasn't until he'd noticed the unusual echo to the music in the silence of the house that he finally realized the key: the song he was looking for was Tranquillity Lane's background music – more specifically, the same snippet of it that Braun had been whistling on and off for the last hour or so.

Of course the old bastard would want something easy to remember! Either he'd made it such an earworm that even he couldn't forget the infuriating tune, or he'd actually programmed his avatar to whistle it at regular intervals just so he'd never forget. He must have been counting on nobody understanding the significance of that inane melody he kept whistling to himself, and more importantly, on nobody finding the keypad in the first place or even having the time to search downstairs. Well, he hadn't counted on his playthings teaming up – or on anyone seeing through his tricks.

Quickly as he could, he played out the whistle variant of the Tranquillity Lane melody on the keypad, tapping out each note with painstaking care lest he flub the code and have to start all over again. Of course, he'd never learned the basics of musical notation, so all he could do was silently recite the items he touched in order of usage: radio, pitcher, garden gnome, pitcher, cinder block, garden gnome, empty bottle-

There was a muffled whirr from somewhere behind Matty as he entered the last note of the code, and he turned just in time to see the right-hand wall of the room simply dissolve into featureless static, eventually resolving itself into a polished steel bulkhead with a simple RobCo-issue monitor and keyboard set into it.

The failsafe terminal.

Heart hammering, Matty hurried over and logged in. To his immense relief, the terminal didn't feature any elaborate virtual flourishes: it was just a standard-issue RobCo terminal with the usual Unified Operating System, complete with the familiar menu. Most of the options available to him were hidden behind endless layers of menus within menus, a good indication of just how complex this simulation really was, but after a few moments of scrolling through the main menu page, he finally found what he was looking for: the Chinese Invasion Failsafe.

Inside the selected folder, he found a small array of text files alongside the "initiate program" heading. Anxious for anything that might give him some idea of what the failsafe actually did, he opened the second heading in line: program documentation. To his surprise, it contained a letter from one General Constantine Chase to Dr Braun, offering up a requested program with extreme reluctance.

…if you can run this program with the failsafes off as requested, it read, after several lines of grumbling, your real-world test subjects WILL die if killed in the simulation.

Well, that didn't sound too promising. On the one hand, it might be able to kill Braun… but on the other hand, it would also kill everyone else connected to the simulation, including Dad. Probably Matty, too, if he got caught in the middle. Sighing, he read onwards, hoping that something more optimistic might leap out of the program specs:

US MILITARY TRAINING PROGRAM 923-B: CHINESE INVASION, the program title blared.

Purpose: Simulate A Communist Incursion On US Soil.

DOCUMENTATION CULLED: NEW PROTOCOLS ENACTED

- DISABLE SAFETY PROTOCOLS 1-6

- OVERRIDE TARGET ACQUISITION

WARNING: TEST SUBJECTS WILL EXPERIENCE REAL-WORLD TERMINATION. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION!

ADDITIONAL: POTENTIAL SOFTWARE/HARDWARE COMPATABILITY ISSUES DETECTED. INITIATING THIS PROGRAM MAY CAUSE ERRORS IN REMOTE ACCESS, LOSS OF INSTITUTED OVERRIDES, AND PARTIAL OR TOTAL LOSS OF CONTROL FUNCTION IN YOUR SIMULATOR NECESSITATING A FULL SYSTEM RESET OR REINSTALLATION OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION: DEACTIVATE RESPAWN PROTOCOL, DELETE PROGRAM, REQUEST COMPATIBLE REPLACEMENT FROM SOURCE.

If anything, this sounded even less promising: about the only thing that made it sound even slightly hopeful was that the system errors it would induce might just allow Matty and the other residents to break free of the simulation… provided the actual Chinese invaders didn't kill them all in the process.

Finally, there were Braun's personal notes on the subject. It took a little while for the longwinded sadist to get to the point, but eventually, Matty found something halfway useful:

It's true the Failsafe would scare the living hell out of every resident in Tranquillity Lane and lead to their brutal deaths, the notes read. But then what about me? I have no ability to disable my own safety from within the simulation. And any other avatars I could create would be driven by the simulation's A.I. routines – not actual living, thinking, human subjects. Where's the fun in tormenting a machine?

And so, the release of the real-world subjects is more than they deserve, more that I could bear. They'd be dead, and I'd be left here in Tranquillity Lane, alone and tragically bored for all eternity. I can think of nothing more unacceptable.

So what good was the failsafe? It wouldn't kill Braun, only his playthings. It might allow for a system crash that could set Matty free… but it would leave Tessa, Timmy, Mabel and everyone else in the simulation dead; unless they could stay out of range until the program ceased, they'd be killed... and the same went for dad if he was actually here in the physical sense.

How would this help anyone?

But of course, Matty knew exactly what kind of solution the Chinese Invasion Failsafe offered: it was a mercy kill – nothing more and nothing less. If Stanislaus Braun's victims couldn't be saved from captivity, then they could at least be spared any further torment and given the luxury of a quick death. Maybe there could even be some small measure of justice in Braun being stripped of both his human playthings and his control over the simulation… but it wouldn't change the fact that everyone here would still be dead.

And though his only option was clear, Matty found himself hesitating at the last minute. There had to be another way, some other option that he and Tessa hadn't previously noticed: what if he could seize total control of the simulation from here, cut Braun out of his own paradise? Once he had enough time to focus on the problem, he could find some means of saving the residents of Vault 112 without getting innocents killed. Or what if he could use this terminal to unlock the Tranquillity Loungers, release everyone, and leave Braun impotent by forcing him into reality? Come to think of it, why did Braun seem to think that he would remain alone in Tranquillity Lane for all eternity? What was stopping him from leaving and trying to disable his own safeties from the outside?

All the possible solutions swirled around Matty's brain like a plague of locusts, and each one of them seemed a little less likely than the last. Maybe, if he had the time to find the necessary overrides within this terminal, he could make them work, but he didn't have the time: he'd been here for at least eight minutes, and Tessa couldn't keep the Overseer distracted forever. Any minute now, Braun would realize that he was being duped and appear on the scene to investigate. The Chinese Invasion Failsafe was the only thing that could be done… but at the same time, Matty knew that there had to be another way.

Because, after all, wasn't there always another way? When it really mattered, when it looked as if his options were limited to death and cruelty, there was another way.

There'd been another way in Megaton.

There'd been another way in Canterbury Commons.

There'd been another way in Oasis.

There had to be one here; there had to be some hidden third option that would spare these people, because after two hundred years, they deserved better. They deserved anything other than a quick, ignominious death.

What could he do? What should he do?

A/N: Up next... care to guess?