It didn't seem like it at first; though at a glance it appeared somehow familiar, Carolyn had very little reason to suspect that she woke up in another Vault, only because she hardly remembers through the trauma of waking up from cryogenic stasis in Vault 111 what it had actually looked like. However, the minute she flies out of the room in her panic, she looks out and over the rails of the narrow balcony and the appearance is like a universal picture. The sliding doors, the shape of the stairs, the walls, the color, and even the smell, it's all familiar though it's the smell that hits her immediately. An odour that sticks to the inside of her nose, something metallic and sour, a stench from behind the walls that smells like rust, what she would assume is rust, but it's something she recognizes now that she may not have many years before now. It's old blood, stale and forgotten but somehow leaking from the walls and painting everything dark with the stench of death. Her stomach immediately turns; the following sense of dread and panic quickly following, she doesn't stop for anything more than the second it takes her to process her environment, her feet can't run fast enough, even as her tired and aching body erupts into a sudden bout of adrenaline. Her boots grip the stairs on the far end of the balcony as she scrambles, missing the last step and yelping as her foot slams down onto the ground, falling to her knees with the inertia.
When she scrambles back to her feet, an explosion of firepower erupts from the top of the stairs, bullets echoing in the hollow space as they litter the ground not two feet from her position, bouncing with a bright flash of sparks as Carolyn screams, falling parallel to the staircase and scrambling back until her rump hits the frame of the handrail.
The man second to the leader of the three who had entered the office stands two or three steps from the top, his large black weapon braced up and pointing directly at her, poised and ready to fire with the intent not to miss a second time. Her body goes rigid; her muscles tensing as if waiting for the second barrage to assault her, to pierce her body, an instinct awaiting the assured pain it would bring her before death.
"That's right, you stay right fuckin' there!" His face is bright red, knuckles white around the grip of the trigger and under the barrel of his weapon, "You make a single fucking move and I'm going to-"
BOOM!
Carolyn flinches back as a single shot rings in the air, much louder than the earlier gunfire, and coming from the doorway through to the narrow balcony next to the office. The man standing near the top of the stairs collapses forward following a burst of crimson muck exploding out from the right side of his forehead. His trilby hat takes off skywards to land and roll down the stairs, stopping at Carolyn's feet as she stares slack-jawed in awe, his body soon following and coming to a halt as a limp and tumbled heap at the bottom.
Out of the concealed hall connecting the balcony to the staircase, the third man appears, his large black weapon slung around his shoulders, and instead wielding a large silver handgun. The young man looks down at his fallen comrade, and then down to Carolyn as she sits frozen against the bottom of the stairs. His eyes are wide with horror, but he doesn't make any move to shoot her as well; instead he swallows thickly and calls down to her in a voice that sounds on the verge of breaking.
"Y-you gotta get outta here, Miss!" He says, "At the end of the room, go through the second door... follow the hall and find Tony, h-he'll... he'll help you get out, okay?"
Carolyn, staring up at him, can see the gleam in his eyes betraying whatever composure he mimicked in the office earlier as he followed his superiors like a puppy. He may not even be twenty years old. Carolyn feels her sudden maternal instinct rise, giving her enough courage to get back to her feet despite her body begging her for a more extended rest. He must have been too scared to go argue, not wanting to go along with whatever they had planned, and this retaliation must have given him the opportunity to finally do something about it.
"What's your name, honey?" She asks gently.
"Vinny..." Even standing at the top of the stairs, she can see that he's shaking.
Carolyn presses genuine sincerity in her voice, "Thank you, Vinny."
His face brightens and he quickly nods, "Y-you're welcome, ma'am."
Carolyn offers her nod in response, small smile across her face, and she then turns to continue her escape. Immediately her legs begin to burn, running to the other side of the room where the dual doors sit, she opens the second one from her immediate path just like he told her, watching as it slides to reveal a long and dimly lit hallway.
Carolyn finds she pauses, if only just for a moment, considering looking back over her shoulder, back up to the Overseers office, through the circular window to try and catch a glimpse of... something. She doesn't know what she's hoping to see because that thing, whatever he is, it isn't Val... However he had sounded, maybe it was just her trying to manifest anything at all resembling her old friend. Her desperation, her unconscious damsel in distress mentality making her hear things, even see things, Val can't be here, he's not going to come out of the woodwork, and the sooner she accepts that, the sooner she can move on, move forward, even if...
...Even if she's all that's left of her family.
The notion sets a rot to her stomach, a dark mass that squeezes her from the inside and she feels as though she may be sick, but instead of giving in to her body's protest, she begins to make her way through the long narrow maintenance hallway, closing the door behind her. Carefully she steps over the tools littering the floor, twisting to avoid the possibly hazardous open panels of exposed wiring, quietly as possible, though she's not actively being pursued that might quickly change if she makes too much noise.
From above, the fluorescents begin to hum and blink, partially blinding her and causing an underestimation of the distance between her and the small metal table sitting diagonally and jutting into the passageway. Her hip clips the corner of the table with a plush bounce, sending the toolbox and wrench clattering noisily to the floor, and with it, a small faintly flickering radio. The paneling and glass shatter on impact, its dying sound is in the form of a hesitant zap of faulty wiring, blinking into total darkness within seconds and going dead with barely a fight left in it.
She curses gently under her breath, (rubbing the place of impact instinctually though it barely hurt), and continues down the hall not worrying about the mess, trying to focus on continuous movement, but her head is starting to swim. The adrenaline of her escape is slowly wearing down and she can feel her exhaustion creeping slowly behind her like an inevitable shadow.
When she reaches the next door, raising her hand to switch the dial to 'open', the radio she'd knocked over suddenly begins to whine once more. She pauses, glancing back to see it no longer sitting in pieces on the floor, but on back on the table where it had been, mostly none the worse for wear.
She knocked it over; she knows she had, because the pieces that broke off on impact are still littering the floor around the tools it followed. Her confusion is stark, but not as prominent as the sudden fear that rises in her gut as a thick malicious energy begins to seep into the hall. The shadows feel like they're darkening, the lights at the end of the hall begin to flicker with more intensity until they flash and die with a loud pop of electricity. The shutter shock blinds her and as she blinks through the impairment she's sure... she's sure that she can see the dark silhouette of a person standing in the shadows at the end of the hall.
That's when the radio, previously flickering with an obvious malfunction or frequency adjustment, bursts to life with a bright yellow signal that fills the hall with an upbeat tune, it startles her. The music is clear though the radio itself appears like it should no long be functioning, and the song is something she recognises, but the beat does nothing to mask the ominous energy that follows, giving the lyrics a kind of twisted and alternative meaning that makes her blood suddenly run cold.
Well, you can run like a rabbit! Fly like a bee! No matter what you do, you'll never get away from me because I'm right behind you baby! Right behind you baby! Oh, I'm right behind you baby and you're never gonna get away!
Carolyn finds her fingers trembling as they fumble on the doors dial. Experiencing a fear she can't explain but nevertheless is familiar with, it's the same as what she's experienced in her reoccurring nightmare, the same dark pull that howls in agony in the bowels of her old pre-war home. The lights are humming with an audible intensity, growing brighter and brighter until they all burst in one large electric clap, blinding her once more and allowing a large black mass to manifest directly in front of her.
That's when the door behind her suddenly slides open. Revealing a man in a tan suit that Carolyn identifies in her peripherals as another mask of deep red burns, grotesque detail and texture, just like the man outside of Corvega, the immediate terror seizes all reason within her and she shrieks louder than she has yet, dropping down and pulling herself into the bend of the wall supporting the vault door frame with a terror wail that sounds to her more like a broken scream.
Immediately racking with sobs, she doesn't even register that the burned man does nothing to harm her, but retreats and returns with someone else, someone who places a warm suit jacket around her shoulders that almost dwarfs her size. She can hear him say something, muttering to another person, before he leans over and speaks to her in a soothing voice, "Hey, you're alright, come on."
She doesn't know why, but she allows him to hoist her up to her feet, guiding her farther down the hall and into a brightly lit room that smells of cologne and cigarettes, warm and humming with the presence of a crowd. She's gently urged to sit on a black leather office chair, the material peeling back to reveal the mesh and cushioning underneath, Carolyn's sobs reduce to quiet little sniffles, feeling a decade younger like a delicate troubled teenage girl as she's handed a stained white handkerchief to clear her tears.
The humming in the room grows quiet for a moment and she can immediately feel the eyes on her, but she doesn't look up to acknowledge it, instead a man kneels down in front of her and gives her another offering, a can of purified water. She takes it, muttering her gratitude wetly, and gently pulling the grey suit jacket top snug around her shoulders, meant to complete his ensemble from the look of the pattern on his slacks.
"Do you know where you are?" He asks her, keeping his voice low and remarkably gentle.
Carolyn looks up to meet the eyes of the only face she could picture to match the vocal tone, a softly squared face with a high airbrushed brow and droopy hazel coloured eyes, she feels herself relax almost instantaneously and answers as truthfully as she possibly can, "A vault..."
When the man smiles, it feels warm, "Well, that's close. You probably don't remember me either then; you were pretty out of it when I took you from the Drones. I'm Tony, and this here little operation you see behind me is a bunch of old geezers who called themselves Triggermen."
Carolyn glances over to the group of men as they chuckle in a dull roar, like the ones from before they're all adorned in different styles of suits and hats, wearing either ties or bows to match, and some without jackets and only black suspenders over lightly stained white dress shirts. The general aura around them as they smoke cigarettes and sip caramel coloured tonics from short glasses feels less like a threatening mob and more like a gruff and classy group of pre-war gangsters. They look slightly out of place in the brightly lit vault room, but the smoke that hangs around the air in a thick sheen gives the impression of the lot relaxing in a speakeasy or back room gambling table.
Tony notices her staring and smiles gently, "Alright, miss. What's your name?"
"Carolyn," She answers a little timidly, understandably intimidated.
"How'd you manage to get all the way down here, Miss Carolyn?" He asks the question plainly, truly, they found her in the middle of an attempted escape; at least that's what she'd hoped when taking that young man's advice on which way to go.
"I had some help," She starts, "I was told to come down this way; do you know a young man named Vinny?"
"Vinny?" Tony's face grows immediately concerned, but it doesn't do much to hinder his soothing appearance, "Yeah, he's my boy."
Carolyn's heart softens, simultaneously feeling an unbearable constriction that threatens another bout of tears as she recognizes the same look in his face that mimicked genuine parental concern, though at face value they look nothing alike, Vinny's skin tone is quite a bit lighter, "...he's your son?"
"Not by blood, no, but," He sounds like he's about to explain, but quickly stops himself from digressing, "Wait, what the hell was he doing up in that office?"
"It's not like that, he wasn't alone. There was..." She quickly assures him, trying to keep her voice steady as she explains what had happened, but the image of the two men dying in front of her are staining her recollection, "There was two other men, they... they came into the office with guns...I don't know what they were going to do, but... I was able to get away, and when one of them came chasing after me, Vinny shot him."
Tony's eyes widen like a deer caught in head lights, and then he quickly rises back up to his feet to quickly rub a hand across his face, cupping his mouth with a hard exhale, "Oh Jesus, Vin... what the hell did you do?"
"I told you I heard gunshots, Tony!" One of the Triggermen snap, an older man dressed in a tawny brown suit with a red handkerchief stuffed sideways in his chest pocket. Apparently some had begun to listen in amongst their own murmured conversation, but his outward exclamation made the rest go silent to listen as well, "That kid of yours blew his cover!"
"We don't know anything yet," Tony turns sharply to address the crowd, "Only thing we do know is someone spilled the beans about where we put Miss Carolyn, and they sent up some Drone's to go get her. Sounds like if it weren't for my boy, she'd be locked down under their watch, and god knows they'd use her to make sure we don't clean house."
"My money's on Dino," Another pipes up with a grumble, "Squirrelly... cheeky little shit wouldn't know class if it came up and bit 'em."
A few members chuckle, while others murmur their agreements.
"Alright, plans change," Tony places both fists on his hips, "Which means we need to get going before they have a chance to pull together some kind of resistance, if they're smart, they'll head up to the front door and block us in, take us out as we come out, or comb through the halls. We need to get up there before they do; they ought to have at least one brain between the lot to figure it out."
"Why don't we just wait and come out when they start lookin' for us," A man in a dark suit and hat pipes up, "We know this vault better than those damn kids."
"Yeah, you gonna be the first one in the hall when they charge with two dozen SMG's?" His neighbour claps back.
"Alright, hey," Tony interrupts before the argument can continue, "If we had all the time in the world, I'd agree with you, but the boss is coming home tomorrow, maybe sooner, and we need to get this place back in shape before he does. For now, we wait to hear back from our runner on Malone's position, get your gear ready, if we don't hear anything in ten minutes, we head topside."
The two seem to reserve any more comments while the rest of them nod and murmur their agreements. When Tony turns back, the room suddenly bursts into activity, the men knocking back any drinks they had, putting out their cigarette's, pulling jackets back on, reloading large black rifles and polishing melee weapons that range from a dulled hickory baseball bat to a rusty crowbar.
Carolyn considers for a moment, that for the first time in days she may finally be somewhere safe, if not in location, in people. These men are not unlike the family she found herself working for exclusively for the last three years of her career before going on maternity leave to have her son. The DiAngelo family, possibly the biggest network of underground crime Boston had ever experienced, and whenever one of them, a headstrong son, a cocky daughter, a stray uncle, or anyone who inherited the last name through marriage, had run into trouble with the law and needed a defence lawyer, she was only a phone call away at a moment's notice, and it was like that for years.
They treated her like family, as far as she was concerned they were like extended family to her as well, and it wasn't until Nate had gotten back from the field that she began to see less of them, she was never sure, but most of the contact stopped a few months into her mat leave. Part of her wondered if they stopped contact because she was no longer their lawyer, or because they were only trying to protect her and her new son.
What she does remember is the correspondence she received a week before the bombs from an anonymous sender about a Vault, not the one that had been under construction in her neighbourhood, the one she walked out of only days ago, but another just North West of it in the mountains, an invitation with regards from a single letter.
G.
Giovanni DiAngelo. The head of the family and an all around intimidating figure standing almost seven feet tall with a barrel chest density to match, like a bear standing back on its hind legs, and not the kind of man to antagonize. He'd sent her an exclusive invitation to join him and the families of multiple other crime figures in the Vault when the time finally came for the bombs to drop, enough space for her immediate family, which at the time consisted of only Shaun and Nate, what he called a time sensitive matter and one she shouldn't take lightly. Carolyn of course thought about it for a long while without telling her husband, as she knew how he would feel about sharing a Vault with criminals, but the decision she'd come to didn't matter anyways, not as the sirens alerted them of the impending destruction, and she knew it was too late to give them her answer. Had she actually taken both the offer and threat of global destruction seriously... everything would have turned out very different.
Suddenly, there's a shift and screech of metal from the large maintenance shaft overhead, almost two meters in diameter and ten feet from the ground. A voice hisses down in an alarmed whisper that pulls the attention of everyone within the room, Tony immediately responds, walking directly underneath it and craning his head back.
"Whaddya got?" He calls up.
"He's on his way," The overhead voice announces, "Five minutes tops."
Tony nods, directing his attention back to the crowd of men that shuffle around him, "Alright boys, you heard 'em, Malone's gonna be here any minute, we got a window between when he gets in and when he finds out what happened with Miss Carolyn here, we gotta get her the hell out of here before that, then we can take him and his Malone Drones out before the boss gets back."
Carolyn glances up in alarm as the men begin to make final touches to their assemblage, ready to move, and suddenly she finds herself being guided gently back to her feet without being given an opportunity to ask for more information. She decides instead to keep quiet and trust that they really want to help her, in fact, she believes it on a level that she would think intuitional.
From behind Tony, one of the men calls over to get his attention, Carolyn peers around him to see they're setting up a ladder leading up the maintenance shaft. Tony offers his arm to help her walk and then picks her up from the waist to set her on the top of the ladder, her body twinges with a pinch of sharp pain from her back, but she buries it to keep moving. Two men stand just inside the shaft with a two foot shelf to balance on, they both offer their hands and pull her up. One of them mutters a polite apology and picks her up by the legs, just as tender as her back, so she can reach the man standing at the top of the shaft. Handed up in moments like a bucket of water and she's standing at the top of the shaft in what looks like a store room with two open doors leading out into a construction zone.
From behind her, Tony finishes the climb and joins her side, giving her a quick look to reassure that she's alright, to which she nods, not too worried about mentioning her pain or dizziness from being back on her feet again. They take a moment and wait for the rest of the group to make the ascent, about halfway through when scrambling footfalls echo on the metal grates just outside the doors. Tony reaches back for a pistol stuffed in his belt moments before a man bursts through the open doorway, panting feverishly and holding his hands up submissively to show he's unarmed.
Tony relaxes, but only to the extent of taking his finger off the trigger, obviously he doesn't recognize this man, "Where's my runner?"
"It's okay, I'm with you!" He gasps, "I promise, just listen, I was with the Drone's, we were keeping an eye on the tram, he ran into us on the way back from the tracks further up the sub tunnels looking about ready to piss his pants. He's okay, but they took him into one of the side rooms to ask him why he's so spooked."
"What's going on?" Tony demands, "Did Malone already make it back?"
"He got in earlier than we thought, he's been inside for only a few minutes though," He explains, "But that's not why the runner was so choked, it's... it's the Boss."
Just like that, all the shuffling in the room goes to a stand-still. The tension rising into something horribly unbearable as Tony swallows heavily, audibly, next to Carolyn as she glances up to see the color drain from his face, "How long do we have?"
The man just shakes his head, hands braced on his hips sweat beading down his face in rivers. Tony takes a step forward, "Hey, tell me, how long do we got!?"
"We don't..." He sets his jaw, terror flashing across his face, "He's home."
Carolyn looks back, seeing every man whose face she can see all wearing the same expression of total dismay and fear as the messenger delivers a cryptic answer than causes even her to shake in her core, though she has no idea why.
Tony just exhales shakily in response not a minute following the horrified silence, "Oh fuck..."