Chapter 6: Lies
Rep went to the control panel and looked it over, "Good. It's still in cold shutdown from yesterday. Time to work." Taking the radiation suit he took from aux decon he started tearing the suit up with a pair of scissors he found in one of the desks across from the control panels. Taking Wonderglue from another of the desks, Rep took the top section of his Vault Utility suit off and tacked the strips of the radiation resistant fabric inside of it.
By this time security was outside of the door banging on it, shooting it, and screaming through it. The engineer put his suit back on and headed into the Master Decontamination chamber. He stood just outside of the door and looked down. In the years following his father's death he had to walk over his father's execution site. The memory of being dragged off as his mutated father was on his knees, seeing him one last time through the visor of his radiation suit.
"This is the last time I go through this reactor," he said to no one, "but I'm not going to let security use others as cannon fodder." Turning back to the control room he activated the area-wide P.A.
Inside the reactor ten men in radiation suits checked over the reactor core and the cooling pumps when a burst of static came over the speakers, "Attention Reactor Inspection team, this is the Senior Vault Maintenance Engineer. Due to fire outbreak on level one all able Vault Engineers and Technicians are to report to the level two staging area now." With almost no complaint, the techs and engineers in the containment area came down from their spots and dragged their tools with them. All of them piled into the decon chamber, the door sliding shut and jets of gas blowing from the ceiling shortly after. When the light went from red to green by the main exit door, the door popped open and allowed the men out.
A few of them started taking off their suit's helmets and started commenting, "Like I was saying", one man commented, "the chief almost never calls for all techs during a post-SCRAM Reactor inspection. Kinda strange."
Another tech spoke up, "I once saw the shutdown records for our reactor. It's gone through over 500 SCRAMs in its lifetime. I suggested we skip one because the water leak in the data processing center was getting bad at the time and that the reactor seemed fine after all that. He said, 'If anything, we need MORE inspections,' because it has had so many SCRAMs."
A voice spoke up from behind them, "That reactor is like a car with a million miles on it," all the men turned around to find Rep behind them in the decon chamber, plasma pistol in hand. He closed the door before him and spoke through the intercom, "Take care of it. Oh, I'm also stealing one of your torches," he picked up the Oxy-Acetylene torch in the decon room left by one of the techs.
The men banged on the glass as Rep opened the inner door into the reactor entryway. He walked to the main containment door, opened the door, and passed through to what was beyond. Two circles on the door had signs within them: White with red letters reading, "OPEN"; Red with white letter reading, "Stand Back". After the door closes, the circles are covered with black and yellow horizontal stripes indicating a locked door. Their friend and foreman entered the Vault's reactor containment dome without a full suit.
Outside the control room door the three operators and a load of Vault security personnel kept attempting to open the Control Room doorway. One of them opened his eyes wide and spoke aloud, "Sir, he went into the reactor. We have him trapped."
"Doubtful," a voice spoke in return. The guard had a look of confusion on his face as he spoke to his visit, "What do we do, sir?"
Back inside the reactor dome, Rep scrambled to put the torch's tanks on his back as he walked at a quick pace toward a ventilation duct tied into the air recycling system. He climbed up a wall-mounted ladder to a catwalk overlooking the top of the reactor vessel. It was very hot. After reaching the top he checked his Pip-Boy. The counter stated he was taking in 15+ RADs a second this close to the core. He had to work fast.
Opening a dump valve into the chamber, water started to flood the room until it covered half of the reactor vessel. RAD count didn't decrease, but it was now cooler in the room. Running back across the catwalk there was a closed circulation air vent. Rotating the round grate he unlocked the vent. Throwing the grate to the side he crawled inside, torch tanks on his back like a backpack. Turning on his Pip-Boy's overbright mode he began up the tube.
The doors to the control room finally opened with help of the trapped technicians inside. Security and the three control room operators stormed their way inside, the operators running to the control board, "He's flooded the reactor dome." Hearing that, one of the security guards picked up a telephone on the control panel marked, "Overseer's Office." After a moment, the guard spoke, assuming the Overseer was on the other side, "Sir, he's inside the reactor dome and he's flooded the compartment with water. If we open the door…" He stopped talking, interrupted by whoever was one the other end. He nodded his head, "Alright, move out. Understood. What?" The guard was confused, "You also want me to do what?" He nodded again, "Got it." He hung up the phone and turned to his men, "Sector 2A. We move out after we secure the area," the guard looked to the operators and the repair detail, "And I mean secure the area. Overseer's orders."
Rep shuffled his way up the tube, the air hot, sticky, and irradiated. Sweat poured from his body, his red hat soaked to the point it was dripping from the bill. He was feeling himself weakening, looking to his Pip-Boy confirming his suspicions, "Shit! I gotta stop dicking around here." He was 50 count shy of critical sickness. Pulling himself further he checked his map, "According to this, I should be right above primary air recycling." Pulling the torch out, he turned on the gas and used the included flint igniter to light the gas, soon after fine tuning the mixture in a jet of blue flame. Squinting, he began cutting the tube wall.
Inside Primary Ventilation a tube of thick steel had sparks flying from its side. After a few minutes the sparks stopped as a sneaker-booted foot kicked out a panel. Rep crawled through the hole leaving the torch behind and crawled atop of metal boxes stacked up under the duct. He crawled down slowly as he could, but slipped on one box halfway down causing him to fall on top of a crate of HEPA filters. The crate burst open under the man's weight.
All he could squeak out was a very subdued, "Ouch."
After a few minutes, he rolled off the smashed box and got to his feet, standing up straight causing loud snaps in his back. He looked to his Pip-Boy soon after, "I get outta here, up to level two through utility duct 2D, then that construction passage, and I'm out." He looked to the exit to the recycling room, wiped the sweat from his pale forehead, and took a deep breath, "Should be smooth sailing from here." He closed his map and walked into the hall.
He was stopped by twenty very angry guards. "I really need to stop jinxing myself like that." The guards charged up their plasma rifles. Rep had no choice but to hold up his hands. The guards surrounded him.
Pistol confiscated, a group of guards escorted Rep down the hallways of the maintenance section until he reached a blind hallway that ended in a dead end. Rep was thrown to the floor, his glasses again knocked from his face. Standing up somewhat weakly from radiation sickness he growled as he made a demand, "I wanna see the Vault Arbitrator! I have a right to a defense, goddamnit!"
A familiar voice rang out as he saw through his blurry vision the guards parting the way for someone to walk forward, "I'm afraid it's too late for that." Rep put his glasses on and once his eyes came into focus he felt his anger flare up as he saw the Overseer before him.
A guard came forward and handed the Overseer Rep's pistol. The older man lifted and dropped the pistol in his hand, "Jesus Christ," he commented, "This thing is heavy. You know, Lee, you've caused one hell of a disruption today."
"What's the matter, sir?" Rep asked with venom in his voice, "I interrupt Vault-Tec's lil' ant farm?"
The Overseer had a smug look to his face; a look Rep had almost never seen before. It was gleeful; the best as he could describe as… Horrifically evil, "I am not familiar with which you speak." Of course he was going to deny it, but what came next was nothing short of a bullied child taking hold of a loaded gun, "I'm going to place in my report that at approximately 2300 hours last night you visited Ariel Townsend and shot her dead with a plasma pistol," he raised the plasma pistol Rep had built, "of your own design." He dropped the weapon back to his side and continued, "On discovery of your crime, you programmed the alarms to execute a fire signal as a distraction to escape the Vault. When intercepted and confronted, you shot several guards with the same weapon, resisting arrest. You were cornered at the end of this hallway and shot after refusing to comply with security. I have to say, son," the old man said with a chuckle and smile, giving Rep a feeling of his skin crawling, "You made very easy something that was normally difficult to do: Eliminate experiment failures. Even killing your father wasn't this easy."
"You mother…" Rep stepped toward the Overseer in anger when he heard at least ten plasma rifles charge up causing him to stop. Brute force was not going to get him out of this; he had to calm down and use his head. It was obvious the guards were in on the secret to kill people, but not everyone had a clue. He had one chance. "What about the medical staff? My pistol runs at a different frequency than the rifles. If you had Ariel shot with the guards' rifles they'll match the residual radio decay with whatever rifle shot her. Your story is fucked!"
The Overseer just chuckled again, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the engineer, "What makes you think I couldn't just kill the medtek doing the autopsy in another Auto-Doc accident and have the files, 'Lost'?" Rep's blood was boiling, but he was helpless. He didn't know what was left for him to do.
"But," the old man continued, "seeing that there are others with that level of perception in their S.P.E.C.I.A.L.s, now that I have the, 'Murder weapon…'" with his free hand he waved his hand forward signaling a guard. A guard stepped forward holding something. Wait, it wasn't an object. Rep's eyes became wide when the thing in the guard's grasp came into view.
It was Ariel.
She was alive, bound and gagged with duct tape. The Overseer pulled her to him and placed the barrel of the plasma pistol to her temple. She squeaked from her gag as fear filled her eyes.
"I fucking knew it was a lie," Rep said aloud, a growl in his voice, "You're a sick fucking man. Why her?"
"Because you prevented the suicide of one Bill Townsend."
Rep lost his look of anger. He looked confused, "Ari's father? I don't get it, the diner was an accident, not a suicide."
"You don't understand, clearly. When Ariel here was born, she had all the earmarks of strong genetic fortitude. Whomever were to have a child with her would produce a child with heightened S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats. As is my duty as my father before me, I could arrange the betrothal between my child and any child in the Vault. Of course, when trying to arrange that with Bill, he did something no one did before; he refused."
Rep raised an eyebrow, "Ooooo-kay?"
"You don't recognize where the both of you are, do you?" Rep had not noticed until the Overseer pointed it out. After looking around, "Wait…" "That's right. Ariel was six years old looking for an imaginary friend named Buttons. Using the Vault's security cameras and isolating P.A. speakers down a certain path, little Ariel made her way to this very dead end. You see, Bill and Vivian Townsend were on the verge of divorce. Working as a low end security officer, he didn't have the privileges my boys here do. They nudged him toward killing himself on my orders. When you saved Ariel's life here, they re-evaluated their marriage and got back together."
Rep was beginning to understand, as did Ariel, tears streaming down her face and over the duct tape, "If Ari died in the accident, her father would have lost his will to live; payback for not giving you what you wanted."
"But it still allowed me to engineer her to be with Mitch. The big problems were Bill, your father, and you." The Overseer tore the tape off Ariel's mouth with a loud rip, her yelping in response. "Go on," the old man told her, "Tell him about when your parents died. Why did your father apologize?"
"We had…" Ariel was so terrified she was gasping for air between sentence fragments, "had… an arg-argument!"
"About what?" he pressed the pistol to her head harder, "Come on, about what?"
"A-about… Mitch!"
"Daddy didn't want you to be friends with him, right?" She nodded her head frantically, her eyes closed in terror. "You see, it's reverse psychology; tell someone they can't have something, they want it more. I learned the trick trying to convince your mother to leave your father." Some of the guards around the Overseer actually laughed at that.
That made Rep very angry, "You sick piece of shit."
"Story's not over yet. Bill lamented something to one of my inner circle here; he told Ariel that if he saw her with Mitch that he would disown her. She didn't understand why; he never told her about our deal. Go on, dear," he gave Ariel a shove, "tell him."
"I-I…" she couldn't get the words out, but the Overseer shoved her again, "I told… him… 'Curse you to Hell!'"
"When I heard that, I had an idea; I started the rumors of her… arcane abilities and used the Vault's experiment to cause fatal failures. It would take all of you out. Eventually, of course."
"And when you killed Pop, it pushed me away from Mitch and her, pushed her toward Mitch, and when the time was right, you'd wipe out the last of my family line. Your precious Vault experiment remains. You became friends with Pop to kill him slowly. You had Mitch do the same."
"The one thing I didn't expect," the Overseer's face went from gleeful to annoyed, "was my goddamned terminal giving me shit allowing you to see the report. On top of that, you told the woman that would have been mother to my grandchildren. But then again, what else should have I expected from someone whose ancestor wasn't meant to be in the Vault in the first place!"
It was a major bombshell. Even some of the guards had a look of stupefaction on their faces. Ariel looked to the Overseer and then looked to Rep. Rep's face was petrified in terror. She looked him in the face, "It's not true."
"He's descended from a man named Gerald Kluge - known also as the RobCo Ravager. He was a criminal from before the war. He was arrested for industrial and corporate espionage."
Ariel looked to Rep. She started to walk toward him when the Overseer went to pull her back. She pried herself loose and continued toward him, "Lee… tell me it's a lie." Rep didn't answer, averting his eyes from her's. "Oh my God, no!"
"Who cares what my last name is?" Rep looked her in the eye, "I had to keep this secret or else asshole over here kill my family."
With her bound hands she grabbed him by the front of his suit, "How do I know you didn't lie about anything else? Your family comes from a criminal!"
"It's me, Ariel!" he put his hands on her arms, "It's Leroy. The Leroy that saved your life at six. The same Leroy that was with you when your parents were taken from you. The Leroy that stuck with you through your Post-G.O.A.T. with all those lies running rampant on you. What about Pop? He loved you like you were his own. Do you think less of him because he had to keep this secret?" There was a sudden thought that crossed his mind as he said that, "Wait a minute," he turned to the Overseer, "How the hell did you know our secret, anyway?"
"My ancestor saw the man knock out a late arrival to the Vault and steal his documents. Got him drunk one night and got him to confess. Decided to keep him in as a side experiment. Come to find your family is stubborn as hell when it comes to following rules or orders. Been trying to kill off your family for decades without alerting the other citizens. A lot of good that's done for the experiment."
"Yeah, people are alive; a real disappointment."
"You and your father really were great engineers," the older man raised the pistol, "it's just too bad you had to be in this Vault." The pistol charged, its hum reaching peak. Rep pushed Ariel behind him as a smirk came to the Overseer's lips. He pulled the trigger…
Nothing happened.
The Overseer pulled the trigger several more times to no reaction. The Overseer threw the pistol to the floor and started swearing and calling for a regular plasma pistol. Ariel was at first flinching, but when the gun hit the floor, she looked to Rep, "I don't get it? What happened?"
Rep quickly whispered to her, "I used the biometric lock from Pop's old Pip-Boy to only let me use it; the gun only recognizes my DNA."
After obtaining a pistol from one of the guards he again pointed the weapon at the both of them, "You just about ruined my exit for you. Your father was good at that, too, but you're only delaying the inevitable."
"That being the case," Rep responded with his hand up in a halting fashion, "could you at least answer one last question?"
"Fine," the Overseer yielded, "what?"
Rep put his hand down and gripped the wrist of his Pip-Boy-clad arm, "Tell me, do you know what the proper modulation of a plasma rifle's Gauss coil is?"
The Overseer grunted as he thought it was a stupid question, "There's no one configuration; they can run between 640 and 1240 GHz."
"True," Rep stated, a smirk starting to slide onto his face, "But since I maintain them, I set them all to the same frequency!" The engineer slid his hand quickly up his wrist to his Pip-Boy's controls and activated the holotape program he made earlier that morning.
The radio transceiver in his Pip-Boy sent out a ping that caused the Vault Security plasma rifles to suddenly vibrate. Their rifles' plasma discharge stabilizers started exploding. All the guards surrounding the Overseer burst into green flames, screaming in agony as they flailed around. One guard grabbed the Overseer and begged for help only for the old man to shoot the guard in terror.
In the panic Rep grabbed his plasma pistol, grabbed Ariel by her duct taped hands, and pulled her through the plasma-engulfed hallway back to where they came. The fire suppression system activated, the sprinklers dropping from the ceiling and squirting cold water around the affected halls.
Up one flight of stairs, Rep and Ariel stopped. Rep was pouring sweat, holstering the pistol then doubling over catching his breath. Ariel looked around scouting for guards, "I think we lost them," she looked to the man panting before her, "What did you do? How'd you blow up those rifles?"
Rep stood back up straight and took a Swiss army knife out of his pocket as he explained, "I wrote a program to turn my Pip-Boy into a counter-frequency generator," he took the knife and cut through her bindings, "Sadly, I can only use it once; it overloads the upper band of the transmission coil and burns it out." As she tore the remaining tape from her wrists, they heard more guards heading toward them. Checking his local map on his wrist-mounted computer he grabbed the woman's now unbound hand and pulled her along with him, "Come on, I know a shortcut."
"A shortcut to what?" she asked.
"The Vault exit. You're coming with me." Ariel stopped and pulled her hand away, "What?!"
"Ari, we don't have time for this! You stay, you're gonna die!" From in the distance the both of them heard the guards getting closer. Some of them were yelling. Ariel looked to where they were approaching and back at Rep. The engineer held out his hand. After a brief moment of looking to the footsteps of Vault security, she turned back and took the man's hand. He may have kept a secret about his family's origin, but he was still the same man she knew all her life. When he gripped her hand, he noticed something ridged on one of her fingers. He turned her hand over and saw his family's ring. He looked at her, a look of surprise on his face.
"Teehan, Kluge; I'd take either one." Ariel smiled at the man before him as he couldn't help but smirk back. When the footsteps got too close for comfort, Rep started pulling Ariel with him toward his shortcut out.