Chapter 5: Decision
In Rep's quarters, it was far more barren than it was when his father was still alive. Most other people in the Vault had shared dormitories, not unlike old army barracks or old time, "Summer Camps." Rep kept some of his father's effects in the corner of the now minimalist quarters, which he was allowed to keep when he was granted his late father's title. The door to the room opened, the lights of the hallway being blocked by a large figure. Rep entered the quarters and closed the door.
He had a very stern look on his face. The gears turned as he looked around the room at everything he had. He had his bed, footlocker, his personal workbench, the terminal desk, and finally, everything his father owned including his footlocker. Putting the toolbox in his hand down, he opened the beat up steel box and looked to the printouts only to toss them to the side. He pulled out the inner tray and pulled out the old notebook. He remembered as a kid…
An 8 year old Rep had walked up next to his father who was sitting at their terminal reading from an old ratty notebook. He was copying something from it when Rep managed to take the notebook while his father wasn't looking. There were commands, computer code, illustrations… all handwritten, "Oh, cool!"
Robert looked to where the notebook was and quickly looked around to find Rep behind him holding it. He hastefully snatched the book from the child and snapped at him, "Don't you ever touch this book! Not for any reason, understand?!"
8 years later, Rep and Robert were talking after Ariel's parents' funeral, "Hell, they might have been trying to stop you."
"Me?" Rep asked, confused.
"For some reason, every time one in our line had a child, all hell broke loose. We in our line are hellraisers; question things; fight authority; it's just our way."
That confused Rep more, "But you're friends with the Overseer. Mitch is my best friend and he's gonna be Overseer some day."
"It's good to have authority on your side, too, but…" Robert stood from his chair and went to pace the room, rubbing the black armband on his arm, reminded of Ariel's parents and the others in the Vault that died in accidents, some preventable, "as of late me and Tommy haven't seen eye-to-eye. I've also been doing unscheduled - and permanent - repairs."
"How?" the 16 year old's question made him stop pacing. He looked to his bispeckled son and saw his still-puzzled expression. He walked to the locked terminal drawer and pulled out the notebook, "This book contains all of the information and work our family has collected and passed down since before the war."
Rep was screaming and smashing objects in the room. The 29 year old took a baseball bat to everything around him in his quarters. He threw the bat across the room and smashed a framed Vault-Tec poster. He grabbed a hammer off his workbench and chucked it across the opposite side this time striking the lock on the flipped terminal desk. The lock busted open causing the drawer to slide open and dump its contents on the floor.
The distraught engineer had finally worn himself out enough to sit on his father's footlocker. After a few minutes of heavy breathing and being vaguely cognitive, he looked to the damage he caused and realized he made things worse. He put his head in his hands and groaned.
That was when he saw it; the worn, ratty, faded-green notebook his father had. He stood from the locker and walked to the book. He picked it up and remembered what his father had told him…
Robert walked from the desk to his 16 year old son, "The information in here must be used for the good of the people. Son, if anything happens to me, it's yours, but with a warning: Be careful; this book can and will cause you a lot of trouble."
"You were right, Pop," the now current Senior Vault Maintenance Engineer said aloud, "this book caused me trouble." He took the once crumpled picture of him, his father, Mitch, Ariel, and the Overseer out. He looked at how his father and the Overseer had their arms around each other's shoulders. It made his blood boil. In the midst of his anger, a small, sly, smug little smile formed at the corner of his mouth. He had one thought on his mind…
"Time to cause more."
Parts dropped off the workbench as Rep's arm swept over its surface. He dragged his soldering station forward and powered it up. From various places around the quarters he started pulling pieces of a device out and placed them on the bench. He went into the desk drawer, dresser drawers, under his mattress, his footlocker, and even in his personal refrigerator.
The parts slid into each other, secured with screws. Multi Colored wiring hung from places on the body of the device as Rep wrangled them into place and soldered the wires to electrical connections and electronic boards. Wafting smoke loomed above the bench as solder flux burned off the tip of his iron, progress showing in the form of the overhead cloud. Connectors snapped and clicked into place before enclosures were secured showing a Nixie tube number display in the side. After labels were placed, the device was complete.
Rep dragged the device off the bench and turned toward a Vault-Tec poster depicting Vault Boy standing within a circle with his thumb up. Across the top and bottom of the poster read, "Surface - Never! Vault - Forever!" He looked at the poster with disdain. He kept looking at Vault Boy's cheerful face as he gave Rep a thumbs up. It was a face that lied; a happy mascot that told possibly a million people they were going to be safe. The engineer sneered at the cartoon as an electronic whirring sound filled the quarters followed by a low pulse WHOOSH!
Vault Boy's face was gone.
Rep lifted an unusual pistol up to his view. It was large - black in appearance with a green canister on top and a large silver heatsink on the barrel. The tip was smoking, the smoke itself had a faint green glow to it. He blew on the barrel, "Excellent."
Digging through his father's effects he discovered an old black messenger bag with the RobCo logo embroidered into it. Further digging yielded an old drill holster that fit the massive plasma pistol perfectly. He packed the messenger bag with the printouts, the pistol, a bottle of Buffout, a couple of bottles of Nuka Cola, and was about to put the notebook in when he stopped and looked at it in thought. He walked to the terminal.
He popped a holotape into the terminal and started writing code to the storage device every so often checking the book. When he was done, he ejected the tape and inserted it into his Pip-Boy. He then proceeded to access more network resources and do more typing.
He placed the terminal in standby, put the notebook in the messenger bag, and looked at the clock. It was 0300. Rep sat in his father's old chair and folded his hands. He went over in his mind what he had to do and prayed.
"God," he spoke aloud, "I don't understand why you placed me here with such horrible people. All I ever did was the right thing, or at the least the best I could do. Why must good deeds be punished? Good people killed? Is Satan just an illusion of your dark side? A puppet? Or are the evil people placed in this life an extension of your dark side? For the longest time I never believed in you because others talked of your benevolence, but I never saw it. Now I have to believe you exist. Not because you are trying to save us; you exist to destroy us, and fool us into absolving you for the evil you allow. For that I say: Go fuck yourself."
He looked at the clock again. He had 5 hours. He spoke aloud again, "Pop, wherever you are, I need you with me."
0758. Messenger bag slung over shoulder and Ariel's father's hat on head, Rep braced the door to his quarters. His heart was racing. Knowing how large a man he was, he knew this was going to be a ridiculously difficult endeavor to pull off. He looked to his Pip-Boy's clock again. 0759. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing.
0800 - An alarm sounded as the P.A. System announced aloud, "Fire Alert: Fire in Common Area. All citizens report to Level Two staging area and await all clear." Rep crossed himself, hit the door controls to his quarters, and when the door opened his sneaker-boots squeaked as he took off running into the hallway.
He ran through the confused rabble of Vault citizens who were stepping out of their dorms, some half dressed, and even some of the men with half shaven faces covered with lather. Rep had hoped through the chaos and confusion the main entry hallway would be cleared because it was part of the common area; it would be abandoned due to the fire alarm. It was a damn simple plan.
Perhaps it was too simple.
Rep made it to the main floor by way of the stairs. There was a fire door dropped on the stairwell. Rep took the door's control panel apart and overrode the lock. He was drenched in sweat and was breathing heavily. The door hissed as it opened revealing the common area of the Vault.
As well as 20 well-armed Vault Guards.
The guards turned to the sound of the door to the stairwell opening and saw Rep run into the room. When the engineer finally noticed them he froze in panic. One of them yelled out at him, "What are you doin' in here? Get back to the staging area!"
"Sir!" another guard called, "That's him!"
"What?" the first guard asked.
"The Engineer we're after!"
Rep's eyes went wide, "Uh oh, not good!" "Remember your orders: Shoot to kill!" the guards charged up their Urban Plasma Rifles. "Definitely not good!" Rep turned back to the stairs as a barrage of plasma bolts came flying at him. As Rep reached the top of the stairs to head down a plasma bolt hit a steam service pipe causing it to rupture. The guards couldn't follow through the cloud of vapor for risk of getting scalded.
The explosion knocked Rep off his feet and down the stairs onto the next landing, slamming into the wall. "Goddamnit!" he exclaimed in pain. He heard the guards get close enough to the steam and charge their weapons. He moved behind the dividing as plasma shots cut through the steam and into the landing's back wall. The engineer rolled over and got back onto his feet with the help of the handrail, then slid on both of the stairwell's handrails to descend quickly.
"Hold your fire!" one of the guards called out, "Peters, take half of the men and head to Stairwell C!"
Rep had gone down a level. He was confused, "Security in the sealed fire area?" he took off the hat and his glasses and wiped his forehead, "That's not procedure! What the fuck is going on?" He had just put his glasses back on when he heard the footsteps of more security guards. He had one way to go and it was opposite of where he both wanted to go and where security was coming from. He put the hat on, "Here we go!"
As he started running toward another staircase more Vault security came around the corner down the hall. When they saw him they yelled out his location, dropped to their knees, and started firing at the stairs. Rep jumped back into the well effectively trapping him. On the other side of the hall the group from upstairs came down the hall and held a position just as far as their counterparts on the other side.
The security leader held up a hand and signaled to the others to hold fire. The others followed the command, "Leroy Teehan, this is chief security officer Comiskey. We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands behind your head."
"Am I under arrest?" Rep asked, safely tucked partway up the stairs, "What did I do to get shot at?"
"You're wanted for the murder of one Ariel Townsend." When he heard the name, his hard-pounding heart skipped a beat. It ultimately confused him, "Bullshit, she was alive last night!" "Sounds like a confession to me." Rep mentally kicked himself for that; he visibly winced, "Walked right into that one. It's gotta be a lie!"
"You've got exactly to the count of ten to surrender." There was a silence from the stairwell as Comiskey simply believed the engineer would just give up. He started with the countdown, "One…"
WHOOSH! A plasma bolt rang from the stairs as the heavyset engineer rounded the corner and ran at the guards. The bolt struck Comiskey in the chest and knocked his men over like bowling pins. The guards still standing in confusion were subsequently shot by Rep as he passed. Some of the guards on the other side of the hall tried to shoot the engineer, but ended up causing friendly-fire, one of the guards calling a cease-fire while shouting expletives.
Another stairwell. Rep was having a hard time keeping up the pace he did. The alarms were still going off, the program he coded with help from the notebook making it hard to disengage it. The rest of the Vault most likely didn't know what was going on, which ended up as a good thing keeping people out of harm's way of the trigger-happy guards. He was already accused of murder, and he had to kill people in self-defense too much already; having another innocent bystander nailed with plasma would be an end of a day he wouldn't be able to bare.
Rep reached the Reactor Level. He crept a look out of the well and found four guards at the guard post rather than the usual one. He had to think quickly. Pulling up the local map on his Pip-Boy he checked what was down the other side of the hallway. Looked like the emergency medical center for reactor accident-related injuries. When his father was killed, the center was filled and they moved triage closer to the Auxiliary Decontamination unit just past the security checkpoint. The amount of people exposed to radiation was high that day, but all was calm at current moment.
Seeing the amount of guards at the checkpoint made the task he needed to do much harder, the task already stupid and risky as it was. Nevertheless, Rep needed a distraction. He reached into the messenger bag slowly and pulled out a bottle of Nuka Cola. Taking out his Vault-Tec bottle opener he very slowly pulled the cap off. A hiss escaped the underside of the cap which sounded too loud to Rep, causing him to stop and peer around the corner again. The guards didn't hear. With that he pried the cap off.
He was about to just abandon the bottle, but looked at the bottle and shrugged, "Can't let it go to waste," he whispered. He started chugging the soda as fast as he could when his geiger counter started to tick. He suddenly didn't feel good as he looked to his wrist-mounted processor. He crossed from minor radiation poisoning to advanced radiation poisoning, "Shit," he whispered, "I forgot about my weekly treatment again. This is gonna make this worse."
"Has anyone seen Cindy on level one?" asked one of the guards. The other three looked at each other to gauge each other's reactions, two of them didn't seem to know or care what he was talking about. One guard did, however, "You mean the new nurse in the medical center? The Schmidt's kid?" "Yeah! Hadn't seen her in a few years, but she friggan grew. And I mean grew!" to emphasize his point, he took a hand off his weapon and held it in front of his chest. The other guard had a look of mild disgust on his face, "Aren't you descended from the Schmidt line, you dumbass?"
"It's been six generations," the first guard defended himself, "besides, aren't we all descended from everyone that entered the Vault?"
"No, you dipshit," the other guard said bluntly, "Damn near every family aside of the Schmidt's only had one kid before some of them died in an accident. We're only 12-13 generations in!"
TINK! The sound of a bottle cap ran down the hall. The first guard turned to the noise, "What was that?"
"We'll check it out," the other guard responded, "You stay here and think of Cindy's rack. Let's go." The three other guards walked toward the auxiliary medical center talking amongst themselves, "Who let that tool into the security program? Always picking his ass, wanting to fuck every family member, I swear…"
"Heard he's the Overseer's nephew," the lead guard commented. The voices were starting to fade as they rounded the doorway, "That old fucker's losing his mind…" They were gone. Rep crept from under the stairs and saw the one guard left. He recognized the guard; he was the normal one at that post, "They weren't wrong; he is an idiot." He gathered his things and the empty Nuka bottle and casually walked to the guard post.
"Hey Paul!" Rep acted as casual as he could as he approached. The guard stepped up and put up his hand, "What's the reason for your visit, Lee?"
"I forgot something in the Control Room yesterday, I was…" Rep tilted his head to the side as a look of concern came over his face, "What the hell's on your forehead?"
"My forehead?" The guard asked, worried.
"Yeah, what is that, a lesion or something?"
The guard started to panic as he took off his helmet, "Look closer! What does it look like now?"
"It looks like you got hit with a Nuka bottle!" CLANK! Rep nailed the guard in the head with the heavy glass bottle knocking him out. He fell over with a thud, "It's not your fault you're stupid, but you need a career change," he placed the empty bottle in the guard's hand and shut the Decon chamber behind him.
Once the door toward the control room popped open he grabbed a radiation suit and was about to put it on when he heard muffled yelling from the other side of the chamber. He turned and saw the other three guards rushing toward the checkpoint, "Damnit!" The guards started shooting at him, but the glass of the chamber wasn't affected by the plasma. When they realized what was happening, it was too late; Rep escaped the chamber and made way to the Reactor.
Rep made it to the next level down where the Control Room was. When the door opened, the three younger operators jumped like the day before. One of the operators turned to Rep and approached him, "Rep, what are you doing down here? We aren't supposed to install the barium-graphite plates until next week."
"Mike, I don't have time to explain, but," Rep raised the pistol, "get out."
"Jesus Christ!" the operator raised his hands and started backing out of the door as Rep instructed the rest of them out. The last man out exclaimed, "There's people in the reactor!"
"I'll get 'em out," Rep assured, "I'm trying not to kill people today."
"Could of fooled us," one operator said while looking at the pistol.
"You guys know I wouldn't do something like this unless I had a reason, and I wouldn't kill the three best operators this Vault has," Rep reached for the door controls, "Bye, guys. Keep the Vault safe." He dropped the door and locked it. Flipping a switch on his pistol he took the pistol's tip and placed it against the seam of the door. Pulling the trigger, a green light flashed as melted steel was left in its wake. Rep had sealed the door.