I've cut the Big Mountain arc out of story. I wanted to focus on Jocelyn Song, my take on the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3, and how she was doing after the events of the game and how she got back on her feet, with the Doctor as this story's deuteragonist. So originally, the Doctor would show the holotape that featured the Courier explaining what happened to him and his experiment in improving the Transportalponder, motivating her to find him. Plus, I had a plan of another storyline for her, which doesn't involve finding the Courier, which made me realize that didn't make sense. But don't worry; I have plans for the Big Mountain part, likely in a different story with a different protagonist.
I just don't see a clear direction with this part. The prologue stays, of course.
Chapter One: A Touch of Glass
Consciousness returned to the Doctor. With a pained groan, he stood up to his feet, using the console for support. The main control room was still well-lit, sparing him the pain of stumbling around in the dark. He moved the monitor toward him and pressed buttons and flicked switches. The screen lit up, revealing an image gathered from one of the satellites. He would have dismissed it as his own world by the early 2010s, if not for a sickly shimmer over select parts of the planet, the year 2286.
"Something happened to this world. Radiation, most likely," he muttered to himself, his expression grim. He took another look at the readings. According to his current coordinates, he was somewhere in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. "Something's not right here." He stood up with his hand on his chin and paced around the console.
"Normally, traveling between parallel universes would drain the TARDIS of all energy. Without the Time Vortex, it would be out of commission. Now, if I were prepared, it would be a temporary setback." He snapped his fingers together.
"Question: if all that applies, then why does the TARDIS still have power? Why is it still running?" He pointed his finger upward. "Answer: There is one of two possibilities. One: The Time Vortex also connects to this universe. Two: A rift in time and space has appeared, preserving the TARDIS's energy."
The Doctor looked at the monitor after pressing more buttons. The monitor now read:
RIFT DETECTED
SEVERITY: LOW
SIZE: SMALLER THAN BELGIUM
"Well, that sounds more than anticlimactic," the Doctor commented. "Question is, where is it?"
Another command prompt and the monitor now read:
SCANNING – IN PROGRESS…
He scoffed. "Of course, you ol' girl. Of course."
He was about to step away from the console, if not for the sudden buzzing coming out of the radio attached to the console. The Doctor recognized it was a distress signal.
"This is Knight Jefferson of the Brotherhood of Steel, requesting backup," the man on the radio spoke. "We arrived in Baltimore at 0432 hours today. Something has been picking off my men. They're not deathclaws, super mutants, not even those ferals. Whatever these creatures are, they're worse. Much worse." The radio buzzed as the man paused before continuing.
"There were… eight of us. Now, there's me and Initiate Samuel. There's a RobCo facility in Baltimore. You'll recognize it when you see the sign at the front. We're holed up in one of the storage rooms. Whatever you do, avoid the broken pieces of glass. I repeat, avoid the broken glass. They form bodies around them. That's how they got to my team!"
There was a faint echo, almost like a growl, followed by banging noises soon after. Another voice, that of a younger man, said in a panicked tone, "Sir? They're here."
The older man sighed as if he resigned himself to his fate. "I see." A hum sounded out. It wasn't the man humming. It was a machine humming to life. "Relay the signal and loop this message. Steel be with us."
The message ended right there before looping back to the start. The Time Lord turned off the radio. He heard enough.
"I don't know if I'm too late to save him," the Time Lord stated. "But whatever is causing this nightmare, I'll put an end to it. Wherever the universe—or any universe, really—call for help, it shows its true face. I show mine by my response."
He set out to the exit behind him but paused, nodding with a small smirk on his face. "Hm, I probably should say that again someday. With some refinement, of course." He smiled. "Bet Clara would love to hear it."
Stepping out of the TARDIS, he looked around and saw crumbling, ruined buildings that stretched for miles. Rusted and broken down 1950s-style cars filled the streets, something that made the Time Lord raise an eyebrow. What inconvenienced him as he walked around was the debris that randomly fell from some old building many years ago. Centuries, by the looks of it.
Another thing that hindered him was the streetlights. He dreaded that at any moment, a streetlight could shorten out and leave him in utter darkness. Either that, or it would flicker in and out.
He looked up at the nighttime sky. "At least there are stars," he remarked to no one in particular.
Aside from the howling winds and the scuttles of old paper flying about, there was an uneasy silence filling the air. He never saw a single soul. Of course, he mused. Pockets of radiation, a ruined city; it was clear this Earth had suffered from atomic annihilation, as some had predicted back on his Earth.
Going down another block away from the blue box and around a corner, he saw a sign flashing and flickering on the front side of an otherwise unassuming office building, only about a few stories tall. There was only one word plastered on the wall: RobCo.
With a determined look, the Doctor brisk across the street and opened the double-doors. Inside was a large lobby room complete with formerly comfy chairs and a desk at the other end of the room. The plain paint was peeled off from the walls and ceilings due to centuries worth of wear and neglect. It was surprising that the lights were functioning, albeit yellow and worn down from years of neglect.
He even tasted something in the air. "Mold. And… dust particles." He licked the dust off his fingers before spitting them out. His face wrinkled in disgust. "How this managed to get through environmental regulations is beyond me," he remarked sardonically. "Oh, right…"
There were also inert robots placed on display all around him. Most of them were biped in shape with stiff legs and wiggly tubes for arms, like they shamelessly ripped off The Forbidden Planet and other B-movies. One robot that stood out was very large and very bulky, standing on four-legged wheels; the other was a round torso with three arms and eyes folded toward it.
No doubt this Earth stuck with everything about the 1950s to the bitter end.
Much to his disappointment, however, each inscription was scratched off in some chaotic pattern.
Everywhere he looked, from some of the bathrooms to the offices, there were signs of an intense battle. Scorch marks on the floor and the walls, random metal pieces laid out everywhere, and strangely enough, claw marks, three parallel to each other and in equal length and depth.
And on every occasion, he heard heavy footsteps above him, creaking as bits of wood fell off, trailing along with them. While the Doctor's hearts nearly leaped with joy, he couldn't help but wonder: was that Jefferson? Samuel? Or was it somebody else?
While exploring another office adjacent to the lobby, he spotted a glowing screen in the darkness. When he crept closer, he found it was a blocky computer with an integrated keyboard and no mouse attached to it.
A smile spread wide across his face. "Oh, I do love those pop-up buttons. Everything was so swipey these days!" he made a sweeping motion with his right hand before pressing the red power button next to the screen.
A series of green letters line out as a block of the same color traveled to the right, spelling out:
ROBCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM
COPYRIGHT 2075-2077 ROBCO INDUSTRIES
-Server 16-
Welcome, Kevin Ross.
Below were several lines marked as dates. Pressing the enter key on the first one brought him to a log detailing his first day on the job. He found it really boring and skipped that one out. The next one detailed his date, claiming that his girlfriend would always belong to him, and all that creepy and melancholic stuff.
8/16/2077
Out of the blue, one of the researchers came from another facility in Portland with a glass orb. He said he got it from an expedition in Afghanistan. He showed it to the others, and I admit it does look rather pretty. Why he didn't bring it over to the government, a museum, or whatever was beyond me. Never got the chance to ask some questions.
My shift ended early, so I'm outta here.
Intrigued, the Doctor selected the next one and pressed the enter key once more.
8/30/2077
All I did was ask him how he was doing, and he gave me that look—the one that screamed, "I am going to kill you." Aside from him muttering about the orb, he said he kept it in the basement, he said nothing. That creeped me out bad. I filed a complaint with HR and they said they would look into this. Matter of fact, he was never transferred here, like he decided to live here or something.
9/17/2077
I swear to god, I thought someone was standing right next to me, whispering in my ear. But no one was at my desk. What the hell is going on?
I'm leaving early. My boss will understand.
10/19/2077
Bastard scientist tried to attack my coworkers. All he got was being institutionalized. Good riddance. That wasn't the end of it, however. Things have gotten worse since he left. It started out with glass breaking, mostly mirrors and windows. Our janitor wasn't thrilled about cleaning up the mess. Neither was our boss.
We've been on a shoestring budget for a while, so we had to cancel some projects to pay for the mess. Thrilling.
The other guys went in to investigate in the basement but didn't bring anything up. All they told me was not to go in the basement and not to tell anyone. Didn't stop me from writing this down. Idiots.
10/22/2077
Malcolm was at the hospital. He got cuts and bruises all. How he was alive was anyone's guess. Someone or something attacked him with something sharp, which would explain a lot. I stopped by to check to see if he was okay. In the meantime, the police stopped by my workplace. Their investigations turned up empty. Were they slacking off or am I missing something here?
I got a bad feeling about this.
Strangely enough, the next entry did not have a date, but it was titled. It was labeled 'THAT ORB'.
As if the bombs falling wasn't enough, the orb made that paradise in comparison.
The same thing that happened to the egghead was happening to me right now. It called to me, whispered my name. I couldn't help myself, so I unlocked the door to the basement and looked inside. Now I wish I hadn't.
Something had been killing my friends. I'm getting out of here with that spare hazmat suit I conveniently found. To hell with the radiation. If you want to live, then whatever you do, if the colors of the glass don't match, AVOID THEM!
If you don't, don't say I didn't warn you.
The sound of the glass breaking from a nearby room had impeccable timing, breaking the Doctor's concentration.
The Doctor craned his neck backward with a sigh. "Can't I get a moment of peace to myself? Is that so hard to ask?"
More glass broke, this time from the hallway outside.
He turned around and stepped away from the terminal, his right foot stepping on something that crunched under his weight. He knelt to inspect what he stepped on. Some of the pieces of glass to the floor were of different colors, and they seemed to be moving on their own. Seconds later the small pieces formed into an unsettling smile.
His thoughts turned to what the last entry log on the terminal warned him about. Chitters, like glass pinging together, could easily be heard. He was not alone here.
A quick survey of the room revealed a plain, metal cabinet on the well-lit side of the room. With quiet footing, he hurried across, avoiding the ever-shifting pieces of glass on the floor. As he opened it, he searched every inch of the cabinet, both on the inside and on the outside, for any piece of glass with mismatched colors. With nothing inside, the Doctor squeezed into the only spot he could fit into and shut the door.
It was cramped and no light came in through the silts. The Time Lord slowed his breathing down to not draw attention to whatever was out there, looking for him. Aside from that, the other things he heard were more glassing pinging along with growling and hissing.
The noises went on for minutes. The Doctor considered himself lucky that whatever hadn't found him yet.
Everything went quiet after that. He opened the door and hopped out of the cabinet. He made his way out of the office and surveyed the well-lit hallway. He did not want any nasty surprises waiting in the dark.
Finding nothing, he went to the stairs and onto the next floor. This one was very much like the one below: well-lit and empty but had several doors on both sides. As he stepped in, there was a loud crack, bringing his attention to the source, which came from the end of the hallway in front of him. He froze, his eyes wide open.
It emerged from the shadows. Roughly in the shape of a lizard the size of a dog, its glass shards had every possible color and opacity, with four legs of slightly varying lengths. Its head resembled a spider with three dark orb-like eyes at each side of its face and perfectly smooth pincers at the front. Each spike lining on its back, from the tip of its tail to the base of its head, was a spiral. Its tail had curved upwards in the shape of a question mark, and larger shards jutted out from its underside at such extreme angles.
The Doctor could barely make a move before the creature took notice of him. "Good… kitty-spider… glass…" Now wide-eyed, the Doctor raised his hands in front of him.
The creature hissed and pounced, zipping down the hallway like a lightning bolt. He would have made a run for it, if not for a sudden blue light appearing behind the creature, disintegrating it instantly.
He looked and saw a large, imposing figure in the room at the end of the hallway.
"Are you alright?" the stranger asked as she stepped out of the room with heavy thuds for every step she took. Her scratch-riddled, gritty gray armor, from head to toe, was massive and covered with backpacks, pouches and fanny packs. Her helmet's visor had angled downward, giving her a menacing look. The armor's bulkiness and its shoulders' blocky appearance made her look like a tank on legs. Her weapons hung at her side, including the rifle and the high-tech sledgehammer, further supported the assumption.
"I'm fine, thank you," the Doctor answered, finally lowering his hands.
The woman approached the Doctor, towering over him by about half a meter or so. She took a glance at him, almost like she was studying him. With her helmet on, he had no idea what she was thinking.
"Most scavengers I've met are hardly this clean. And they tend to carry lots of junk," the stranger pointed out. "Who are you?"
The Doctor stepped past her and stared at the ash pile. "I'm the Doctor." He turned at the armored stranger. "Nice to meet you." He turned back at the pile and took a pinch of it. "So, you came here to investigate the signal?" He tasted the pinch, only to spit it back out. Nothing out of the ordinary, he noted. "Either this Jefferson and this Samuel were very good at hiding or these things have already disposed of them already."
"They're dead." She showed him dog tags hanging from her right hand. One tag informed him of a man's expiration date, was hours before; the other had his name on it—Seth Jefferson.
"I see." He hung his head low. "What a shame. Were you planning on retrieving them?"
She put the dog tags in a pouch wrapped around her waist. "Not a good time to talk about my dealings with the Brotherhood of Steel right now."
"Of course." The Doctor stood up and found himself gawking at a rifle that resembled a grenade rifle but with a blocky scope held in her hands. "What's that?"
The woman in armor lowered her rifle and briefly investigated it. "That's a Holorifle. A friend of mine gave it to me years ago."
"What happened to your friend?"
She fell silent for a moment before walking past the Doctor. "He's gone."
"Shouldn't we be concerned about this strange and mysterious orb that's been causing all sorts of trouble down in the basement? Or is that just me?" he inquired, pointing his finger upward.
The woman sighed as she looked back at him. "I'll check it out, then. You coming or what?"
"Of course," the Doctor replied. "Oh, and what's your name?"
"It's Jocelyn Song. People called me the Lone Wanderer in the Capital Wasteland," she answered. She turned back to her general direction and continued walking, the Doctor following close behind.
They spent the next several minutes traversing from one room to another, their eyes alert for any of the glass creatures. Unfortunately, they had to travel upstairs to traverse around debris that blocked their way to the basement. As they snuck through the assembly line on a walkway, they saw two of the creatures gnawing on one of the dome-shaped robots' heads.
Jocelyn was ready to fire her weapon, but she seemed to hesitate when the Doctor laid a hand on her wrist, silently urging her not to get unwanted attention. She nodded in response and they passed through without incident, despite her armor making some noise with each step she took.
They arrived at a storage room on the ground floor, and the Doctor gazed around the area. The room was stuffed with empty cabinets and broken terminals laid out on top. At the end of the room was a metal door with a cog in the center, with a terminal mounted on the wall at its right. Jocelyn hung her gun around her chest and approached the door. With steady hands, she gripped the cog and twisted it. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't get it open, let alone even move it slightly.
"Need help?" the Doctor asked in a slight snide tone as he watched.
"Nope, I'm good," she grunted.
He cocked an eyebrow in confusion. "Doesn't that armor enhance your strength? I mean, come on, look at you!" He stretched his arms in front of him. "You're huge wearing that thing!"
The Wanderer let go of the cog with a shake of her head and a sigh. "Looks like this door's tied to this terminal, and it doesn't look like there's a lock to pick. They really don't want this orb to get out."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Well, of course they don't want it out! It didn't really work out for them, don't you think?"
She ignored his remark as she turned her attention to the terminal. When she pressed the power button, the keyboard unfolded into view. "Keep an eye out, okay?"
"Yes, ma'am," the Doctor nodded with a smirk, watching Jocelyn do her thing. A casual glance around the room, finding yet again none of the glass creatures in sight. He got a bad feeling about this.
With his arms folded in front of him, he couldn't help but ponder in his mind. If this all could go well, then they would part ways without incident, and he would surely lose his chance to inquire about her history. Given her hesitation, it wasn't a pleasant one. Still, it wouldn't hurt to try.
"Earlier, you mentioned this… Brotherhood of yours," the Doctor spoke.
Jocelyn said nothing. He hoped she was focusing on the terminal and not ignoring him. Because that would be rather rude of her.
He sighed as he rubbed his face. "Look. It's clear you have a lot on your mind, but you don't want to talk about it. That's fine. Really. I understand. Not everybody wants to talk about their traumatic experiences. But I think you want, you know…" He shrugged with curled lips. "Closure. Catharsis. Get it off your chest. Because if you don't, you're going to wonder for the rest of your life whether you would get another chance and regret not taking it the first time 'round." He paused for a second before taking a deep breath. "Wouldn't you want to take that chance? It would do you a whole lot of good. Trust me on this one."
Finally, as if on cue, Jocelyn pressed enter on the right word flashing on the screen among lines of random symbols and other words that made no sense in rhyme or pattern. "Alright, we're in," she said. The cog sprung as the two outer parts sliding into the walls, the metal lowered into the floor with metal grinding against each other. It wasn't a pleasant sound, to say the least. At least nobody else in their vacancy had heard it, judging by the silent response.
Ahead of them was a passageway wrapped in a thick blanket of darkness.
The Doctor took a step toward her with a stern frown. "Have you listened to a word I said?"
The Lone Wanderer turned on the lamplight at the side of her helmet, revealing a stairway just after a sharp turn to their left. "Yeah, I hear you."
"Don't you think this would be an excellent time?" He pointed at the passageway. "I mean, surely this will be a long stairway."
She picked up her rifle and braced it against her shoulder. "If anything happens to me, do you know how to defend yourself?"
He looked at Jocelyn. "Have I told you I'm not big on guns?"
She turned to the Doctor. With the way she tilted her helmet, he had this feeling she was giving him a curious look. "Yeah, you're not from around here."
"I'll explain later."
The Lone Wanderer seemed to take it in stride, as she entered without a word. Since her headlight was the only source of light here, they had to be careful as to where they stopped as they descended on the stairs.
"Why don't we start things out with you?" the Doctor asked. "So… where did you come from?"
"I was born at the Jefferson Memorial. My mom died, and my dad raised me in a fallout shelter. People call them Vaults," Jocelyn answered after a moment of hesitation.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. My dad really loved her. He said she was passionate about a lot of things. About life."
"Sounded like your mother was a good person," the Doctor commented. "What was it like, living in one of these Vaults?"
That question made her go quiet again. "It used to be paradise down there. No fear, no worries, not much fighting, and I had people looking after me…" There was a wistful tone in her voice. "Until my dad left."
The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows, his mouth forming into a frown. "Your father doesn't sound exactly like a good person to me."
"He had a good reason," she insisted. "Besides, Vaults like mine weren't meant to save anyone."
"So they were experiments," the Doctor guessed.
"Yeah. It's pretty rare to find one that did what they were advertised back then," the Lone Wanderer explained. "Mine was Vault 101. Vault-Tec made sure nobody would enter, and nobody would ever leave. I escaped not long after my dad did, and I went out to look for him. Turns out he was looking for a terraforming device that would make Project Purity work properly."
"And this project does what, exactly?"
"To provide clean water in the wasteland," the Wanderer answered. "The Capital Wasteland was one of the worst places to live in. When I found my dad, we resumed the project, but… he died protecting me and his dream."
"And you went to the Brotherhood of Steel for help."
"It took a lot of effort in finding the GECK," said Jocelyn. "If you ask me, Liberty Prime did all the hard work in retaking the facility."
"What, is Liberty Prime a giant robot?"
Jocelyn let out a small chuckle. "Yes. He's this giant, bombastic robot and he certainly lives up to the name."
The Time Lord had to resist forming that smile on his face. "Oh, I would love to see that."
"I bet you would. You should've seen him in action."
She stopped in her tracks, and the Doctor nearly slipped and fell, bumping against her. Luckily, her armor was bulky enough to fill the space ahead of him and sturdy enough to have her hardly notice. As he regained his balance, she turned toward him. "Have you ever done so much and worked so hard to make things right, only to have everything just... fall apart around you?"
The Doctor sighed deeply, letting her words sink in enough to make his hearts throb. "More times than I can count."
She said nothing, even as she looked away and went on ahead.
Just as the Doctor began to wonder if they would ever reach the bottom, their feet met the flat floor beneath them, her left hand meeting the handle of a plain metal door.
"Looks like this is the place," she said. "Ready?"
The Doctor nodded. "Are you? I mean, you clearly are ready."
Jocelyn opened the door quietly as it cracked softly, and they both stepped inside.
The basement was large and had little light, supported only by a single flickering light bulb attached to the ceiling. One of the few things in here was a plain pillar placed in the center of the room, crowned on top by a glowing, transparent orb and blue markings surrounding it.
The other thing—or rather, things were the glass creatures by the dozen, seemingly asleep. They didn't react when Jocelyn shone her lamplight on each of them. None of them made a move nor made any noise as if they were like statues.
The Doctor went past his new companion and looked at one of the markings on the floor with furrowed eyebrows. It didn't look like anything that lacked rhyme or reason. Rather, they were all about the many-worlds interpretation. The uncertainty principle, the measurements of a wormhole, and others that relate to wavelengths, quantum mechanics, and particle physics. There were also a couple of equations that seemed far too incomprehensible for any human being to write.
He looked up at the orb as he rubbed his chin. Something bothered him about that thing. How did it survive for so long in such perfect condition? And how did it manage to withstand a nuclear war? To be fair for that last question, it was stored here. But that begged another question: Why didn't anyone bother to destroy the orb? What exactly stopped them?
For some reason, he wanted to touch it, just to see how it would react.
"Doctor?" the Lone Wanderer called out through a whisper. "Are you okay?"
The Doctor blinked as he spurred himself out of his thoughts. Before he even realized it, he was muttering to himself, and his hand was hovering centimeters away from the orb. He lowered his hand and straightened his posture, clearing his throat in the process. "Sorry, I… uh, got carried away."
A hum vibrated in the Time Lord's teeth, which he found particularly odd. He looked back, and the orb suddenly lit up, taking on a blue hue like it deflected off a daytime's skyline. As if in response to the orb, the glass creatures woke up and raised their heads. All of them screamed in unison, like multiple tuning forks playing all at once. The equations on the floor glowed of its own accord.
Before either of them knew it, the orb grew so bright they had to look away and close their eyes, lest they go blind. He collapsed in pain as a jolt of electricity coursed through his body.
When he came to, the Doctor stood up and found himself back in the TARDIS control room, the same as he had left it. He looked around and saw Jocelyn had also regained consciousness.
The back of Jocelyn's power armor unfolded, and she hopped out. The armor soon folded back into shape as it hunched over. She turned around to the Doctor, revealing her narrow brown eyes, rounded jaw, and wide nose. She was a massive woman with chestnut skin, standing almost as tall as him. Her shoulders were wide and her limbs were thick as tree trunks. How she managed to fit inside that power armor with her backpack and the pouches on her chest was a mystery.
She had a tired look on her face (for that he could relate), her black hair tied in a messy bun. Her gray and bulky polymer armor and leather waistcloth had a similar story, with a green hood being a part of her scarf.
What caught his attention was a contraption strapped on her left forearm. "What's that on your arm?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"It's a Pip-Boy. Standard equipment for vault dwellers, like me. But that's not the…" She made her way to the exit and opened the door, looking outside. It didn't take long for her to close it quickly before going back to the Doctor. "Okay, I have to ask you something."
The Doctor nodded, his back leaning against the railing. He saw this one coming. "Go on."
"Why is it bigger on the inside, why is it a blue phone box, and how the hell did we end up on a space station?"