It's been 3 months since I have been captured. I am now a slave to an abusive, insane scientist. I am also a chem fiend. I have grown to look forward to the daily injections of whatever he is shooting into my arm. I like it, because after the poison enters my veins, I am no longer in this world, it takes me to another place, a happier place.
Every morning I wake up withdrawn on his couch. Sometimes I have fresh bruises on me, and I do not know how I got them. It has become a routine. My day consists of waking up and eating breakfast and me being extremely careful not to upset Flieute in any way, because that is when he becomes violent and abusive towards me. After breakfast is when he injects me, and I remember noting until I wake up the next day.

The first morning that I can remember, I accidently knocked my half-eaten bowl of sugar bombs on the floor because the chems made me fidgety. I have uncontrolled movements. He wasn't in the room when it happened.
"What was that?" he yelled hearing the glass bowl break after it hit the floor.
"Sorry," I say to him hoping he wouldn't come into the room. "I'll clean it up."
He stomped into the kitchen to see me on my hands and knees carefully trying to pick the broken glass out of the spilled milk and cereal. A sharp blow came to the back of my head which knocked my head into the chair I was sitting in. It made my hand which had a piece of the bowl in hit the floor hard, causing it to go into the palm of my hand. Blood started trickling out of the wound.
"Damn it, you clumsy cunt." he pulled me up by the back of the sweater and threw me backwards, making me slide a few feet across the kitchen floor. "Tinker get in hear and clean this mess up."
He pulled me to my feet by my arm and grabbed my hand and pulled the glass out of it. This caused it to bleed more.
"You're making a mess of the place," he slapped me hard across the face then dragged me into his lab where he stimpacked my hand. I held back the tears and cries of pain. Crying only seemed to get him angrier. I quickly wiped my eyes as his back was turned so tears wouldn't drip down my face. Seconds later a needle jab pierced my arm, making me blackout again. I began to look forward to the injections, they took the pain away.
It's a pretty miserable existence.

I woke up in the middle of the night one morning in December. I looked around for Tinker, he was facing the kitchen, slumped down low, and his mechanical eyes were focused on the floor. He appeared to be asleep. I don't know if robots could sleep, but he was not fully online.
I slowly got up and walked toward the elevator and pushed the down button. Tinker didn't move. When the door opened I got in and it closed. I breathed a sigh of relief. I punched all of the floor buttons. I got off on the floor below the one that Flieute resided on. I couldn't just walk out of the building. He had a security bot in the lobby.
The floor looked like any other hotel floor. Long hallways with rooms on each side. I quietly walked down the hall until it turned into another hallway going right. At the end of that hallway there was a stairwell. I went up passed Flieute's floor up to the roof. I pushed the doorway to the roof opened and a blast of cool air hit my face. The breeze was clean, and I breathed it in deep into my lungs. I hadn't been outside in months and the air tasted sweet.
I walked out on the roof in my bare feet, noticing the cold, but not caring about it. I looked up at the star filled sky, the wasn't any moon out. I walked to the edge and looked over towards the river. In the distance I saw small patches of light in the dark landscape where settlements were. A gust of freezing wind blew across the roof and chilled my body. I couldn't escape in the outfit I was in. I would surely freeze to death in hours, if not minutes. I walked towards the door and went back inside, leaving the door opened. I went down to the floor just above Flieute's and walked through another floor that contained hotel rooms. In the middle of one long hallway, there was a supply closed that was unlocked. I went inside and grabbed a few blankets that were dusty and pushed a few large boxes filled with Abrzxodyne products that were stacked against the wall. I placed the blankets on the floor behind the boxes in my mini fort that I had created. I had to think of way of escaping.
I fell asleep on the floor, waking up to a protectron's voice.
"Continuing search for unlawful fugitive," was the message it kept repeating. I heard it open the doors off the hotel rooms. It continued to move closer towards the closet.
The protectron pushed the closet door open its metal clanged as it walked inside. I held my breath and stayed as still as I could. The red glow of the light shined on the ceiling, moving as it moved.
"Scanning…" it said. "No life detected. Resuming search."
It didn't shut the door as it left. I listened to it search the remaining rooms on the floor until I hear the faint sound of the elevator ding.
I breathed a sigh of relief, amazed that whatever was in the boxes, masked me from being detected. After about an hour of sitting in the dark closet I got up to look in one of the rooms.
The room had a musty aroma to it. There was a sunbeam was coming through the window highlighting the bed that had the remains of a person in it. Most of the bones in the skeleton turned to dust, but the skull looked intact. It had a blue bathrobe on. I couldn't tell if it was male or female. In the closet, there was a tan business jacket and pants with 3 dress shirts on hangers, revealing that the person that used to be lying on the bed was male.
I took out the jacket and put it on. It was very big on me, I immediately knew that the pants wouldn't fit. I went through the dresser drawers and found wool socks that I put on my feet. Next to the dresser there was a mini-fridge that I opened. The air in it was stale, but it seemed to haver preserved the contents. Miniature bottles of liquor and wine were on one shelf and below it a row of individually wrapped Fancy Lad Cakes that I knew for a fact that were over 200 years old. I grabbed all of the contents and headed back to the fort I made in the closet.
The cakes were edible, but flavorless. I could have eaten wrapping and it would have had more flavor to it. The bottles of liquor, on the other hand tasted normal. I drank four of them and began to feel the effects of the alcohol. Knowing that I would soon crave a shot of chems, I decided to drink four more bottles. I was feeling pretty good. I pulled the blanket up over me and fell asleep.
I stayed in my hiding spot for 3 days. On the 3rd day, the withdraw from the chems could no longer be suppressed by the alcohol. My body was achy and shaking. I needed a fix and wasn't thinking of escape anymore. I was now thinking about the consequences of me trying to escape Flieute and what he would do to me if I returned I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant, but whatever pain he would inflict on me would be temporary. I could handle the pain, the withdraw felt like it was killing me.
When I finally got up the nerve to return, I entered the elevator after downing 6 bottles of liquor.
When I exited the elevator, Flieute was in the kitchen with a syringe in his right hand.
"I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before you returned," he said calmly. "I have to admit, you lasted longer than expected."
I walked over to him, and he injected the syringe into my arm. I felt the effects almost immediately. He didn't the full syringe. I looked up at him.
"You broke one of my rules," he pushed me to the floor. "You didn't think I would just let you get away with it did you?"
I tried blocking the blows he threw at me, but this only made him angrier. He pulled me up off the floor by my hair. He grabbed the syringe and administered the rest of the dosage. This time it made me unsteady and the pain subsided. The punches he threw at me no longer hurt. A final blow to my head made me black out.

It was mid-January, and it was snowing outside. I looked out of the window, that faced north because it was the only view of landscape. All of the other windows had buildings blocking any view of the city. Vegetation started taking over the landscape due to the waters in the Potomac being cleaner from Project Purity. Along the river, brown and wintery foliage took over what was once concrete and buildings. The earth looked like it was healing itself. Looking at the beauty of the world was the only thing that gave me joy, if one could call it joy. I think it made me feel human.
Flieute wasn't awake yet and Tinker was keeping a watchful eye on me as usual.
"Tinker," I summoned him.
"Would you like your breakfast now miss," he asked. He called me miss, but I had no authority over him, even though he was a robot.
"You watch me all of the time don't you?" I asked him.
"Yes miss," he replied.
"What does he do to me during the day?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" he questioned.
"After he puts the chems in me, what happens?"
"He takes you to his lab, miss."
"What does he do to me in his lab?"
"He shackles you to the bed then takes the cable from you pipboy and plugs it into his mainframe," he said. "Then he puts a helmet with wires coming from it on your head."
"Is that it?" I ask. "Does he do anything to me? Does he rape me?"
"Oh no miss," he replied. "He asks you questions and then watches images on the screen."
"What kind of images?" I ask.
"Images coming from your pipboy and the helmet."
"What's in those images," I demand.
"People and places," he answered. "Sometimes whole stories of a duck, a rabbit and a bald man with a gun."
Tears fill up my eyes.
"Is it rabbit season or duck season?" I asked.
"Pardon me miss," he didn't get what I was asking. "It's winter right now."
"So, no sound comes from these images?" I asked.
"No just pictures," he replied. "and you describing vaguely what the images are about."
"You ask too many questions," Flieute walks into the room, he was listening to my inquisition. "Did you really think I drugged you to have sex with you?"
"I don't have any idea what you do me," I answered. "Or what you experiments are for."
"The thought has crossed my mind a few times," he caressed my cheek and I take a step backwards. "It's been a while since I felt the soft touch of a woman."
"If you're going to do that to me," I said. "Please drug me first."
"You want to know what your subconscious pours out," he grabbed my arm and pulled me into his lab. "You want to see what my experiments are all about?"
He grabbed a holotape and put it into the mainframe and turned on a large black and white screen. Static filled images came on the screen. Then they came into focus, and I recognized what they were. I saw my mom and dad.
"That's your mom and dad," he said.
More images popped up.
"That's your brother, a younger version of your brother on rollercoaster," he continued. "This is you and your family at the beach."
Tears came into my eyes.
"This…" he said. "This is really amazing, this is you and your family in what appears to be DC, but before the war. The cars are moving.. you see and the buildings… they are perfect… not destroyed by bombs. And that museum that you are in… the Natural History Museum doesn't look anything like the museum that exists now. Your museum has an elephant when you first walk in… the real one is a woolly mammoth."
He ejects the holotape and pops in another.
"This one is your boyfriend," he said. "Shane is his name?"
I shake my head, no.
"Yeah," Flieute sounded agitated. "I didn't think these images were real. Especially this one…. you're at a new years eve party… welcoming the year 2020. This data that you are giving me, makes no sense at all And this...this is your 23rd birthday party… in 2019… see that calendar there."
"The only conclusion I can come up with," he continued stopped the tape and looked at me. "Is that that these are dreams or you are blocking something. Something you don't want me to see."
He popped in another tape.
"This is the latest tape. In this one, you entering a vault before the bombs dropped," he sounded a bit more optimistic. "This one makes sense because it's vault 111. I did some research; I went to the Vault Tech building in downtown DC, and I found out that it was a cryo-vault. Those are common…most of them ended in disaster. Some of them went as planned. The people in them woke up and left their vaults on the set emerging date. Your vault, 111 was one that ended in disaster. The people running the vault died from starvation, leaving you frozen for 200 years. I sent a robot to the Commonwealth to investigate the vault. You are the only survivor, but you already know this, Alice Sylvia Citroni, age: 232 years."
"Now, it brings me to my next question," he said. "Something I have yet to find an answer to. Why do you have memories of a 23-year-old in the year 2020, 28 years before you were born?"
"I don't know," I lied.
"I know you are lying," he got angry. He got up and grabbed my arms and pinned me against the wall. "Alice Citroni is the vault dwellers name, but most of those memories on these holotapes are of a woman named Abagaile Catz."
I froze at the name. That was my name, before I became Alice. A name no one in this world, not even Arthur called me. That is who I truly am.
"Based on your reaction, I have seemed to have hit a nerve," he grabbed my head and pushed me to the ground.
"Stop," I said. "You're hurting me."
"Maybe I have been doing this wrong," he smiled. "Maybe drugging you is restraining your memories."
He pulled me up by my hair and brought me to the bed and tried to put an arm restraint on my arm. I resisted and pushed away from him. He grabbed me by the hair again, this time I as able to break free by kicking him in the leg. I ran towards the door, but the Tinker was there, he extended one of his appendages towards me and delivered an electric shock that paralyzed me. I dropped to the ground.
"Stupid bitch," Flieute said picking me up off the ground. He then carried me to the bed. He through me in it face down and strapped my arms.
"Please," I said. "I was only trying to defend myself."
"You're a slave," he yelled with ire. "You have no self."
He pulled the cable from the pipboy and plugged it into the mainframe. Then he put something on my head. I heard a humming sound as he powered it up.
"Yes," he sounded pleased. "Look at that reading, that is fear….and that image… that is new more recent… it's a little boy. Who is that?"
I couldn't see the screen.
He turned my head toward the screen that had Bash in it.
"Who is that?" he demanded.
"I don't know," I lied.
"Your lying," he punched me in my leg.
"Please stop," I begged. "Give me the drug."
Then another scene came up, this time it was of Proctor Ingram it was of a night we were getting drunk together.
"Now who is this fine-looking lady," he asked he looked close to see what was in the background. We were sitting on her couch in my old home in Boston. I could see out the window and saw the dilapidated buildings of the Commonwealth. She was giggling and I saw her reach down to grab a piece of mutfruit. She brought it to her mouth and slowly ate it. I looked at Flieute who seemed aroused by this. "Yeah, I like this memory."
He then turned and looked at me.
"It seems pain bring out the real you," he said smiling. "These are real memories, right?"
I didn't answer.
"Answer me," he demanded then thought for a bit. "My research is working. It's not just pulling up nonsensical dreams."
He stood up and paced back and forth for a bit.
"What do you really fear," he looked at me. "Pain…rape…"
His eyes glanced over at the readings from my helmet.
"Yes," he had a sheepish grin on his face. "Fear is the key to getting your real memories."
I tried to think of a happy moment, the only thing that I could think about was Buggs and Daffy. They appeared on the screen, this time in the Rabbit Hood cartoon.
"No," he said pulling my boxers off. "No cartoons for you."
The image switched. This time I was in the sewers, and I could see the Brotherhood knights ahead of me.
I tried to think of Buggs and Daffy again… the image reappeared.
He unbuckled his belt and his jeans fell to the floor. I saw him adjust himself, he big and hard.
The screen flickered back to the knights, but he was no longer looking at the screen. He was on top of me. He pushed his way inside my anus.
I yelled out in pain. He yelled out too, but with pleasure. He pounded me hard.
"Stop" I cried.
But he kept going faster and harder. I continued to yell, hoping that he would get angry and hit me instead. But he didn't stop. Then, it didn't hurt as much anymore, and it began to feel good. The pain was still there, but the sensation was pleasing.
"Are you coming," he asked excitedly.
"Nooo," I cried out. I tried to fight it. But the pain and the pleasure were too intense.
"Those are new readings," he said. Then he let out a grunt of enjoyment. He kept pushing harder and faster until he pushed hard one last time he moved his pelvis against my buttocks and let out a long pleasing grunt. His breath was heavy. Then he pulled out quickly. I no longer felt pleasure. Just the pain emanating from where he was inside of me.
I laid there with my eyes closed, tears were streaking down my cheeks.
He walked naked, into the next room. I heard him turn on the shower. A few minutes later he was singing "Atom bomb baby".
When he came back into the lab and took the helmet off of my head. He then undid my restraints.
"Go clean yourself up," he said to me. "and… take care of yourself."
I stood up and blood dripped down my legs as I walked to the bathroom.
"Tinker," Flieute yelled. "Come clean this up."
I took a long shower. I sat down in the tub, hugging my knees, and crying. When the water started to get cold, I got out and dried myself off and got dressed in just the sweater. My boxers were back in the lab, but I didn't go to the lab.
I walked over toward the kitchen to where my syringes were kept. I grabbed one and injected it into my arm. The pain started going away. I grabbed a second syringe and inject it.
I can't live like this, I thought grabbing a third syringe.
"Sir," Tinker yelled as he floated into the kitchen. "You better come quick."
I push the third needle into my arm and collapse to the floor.