Dakota Michelson
A Fallout 4 Fan Fiction
Chapter 2: Out of Time
I fell to my knees. Everything is gone. The buildings are ruined. All of the trees are dead. Most importantly, there is no sign of life in sight. It is so quiet and ominous. "Am I the only one left?" I asked myself. "No... I can't be." I knew that there had to be some life out here. I began to walk back to where I first entered the fence. The place I fell down in front of the soldier. I couldn't help but to think, "Maybe my bike is still there." When I got to the fence, not only was the bike nowhere to be found, but even the land look slightly different. I don't remember there being these small hills before. Maybe the explosion shifted the terrain. That was the more positive of the two thoughts crossing my head, the other thought being "has it been that long?"
I passed a neighborhood of ruined houses and a ruined bridge. I saw a ruined gas station off in the distance. As I am thinking these things, I decide I should not say "ruined" anymore, because "ruined" seems to be the default state of everything; it should just be implied.
I have no idea where I am going or what I am going to do, so I figure the best thing to do is to go back to where my old apartment was and see if anything is left. If my memory serves me right, Cambridge is pretty close by. The sun is already starting to set and I wonder what time it is. If it will be getting dark soon, I should hurry. I am already scared of something bad happening at this time and I know it will be worse during the night. So instead of my slow pace that I am walking now, I decide to pick up the pace and come to a light jog.
I start finding some familiar landmarks and I know I am going in the right direction. "Shouldn't be too much further" I tell myself. I still have seen no sign of life up to this point and I begin to panic. "There's got to be someone." I keep running and eventually I reach my apartment complex. It is severely damaged, but the structure seems mostly intact.
I enter into the lobby, littered with rubble and glass shards. I glance at the elevator and chose not to even try them. Even if it works, I'd rather not take the risk of it falling or malfunctioning. As I approach the stairs, I start to hear a voice. "Someone is up there!" I think to myself excitedly. I begin to run and find two people sitting in one of the apartments. The door is missing.
The two people look at me and make a face at each other. I'm not sure why they did that, but I ignore it. I'm just glad I am not the only person alive. The man looks over at the woman and says, "Well look what we have here. A vault dweller!" I begin to speak to ask them for help, but I'm interrupted. The woman pushes a gun that is sitting on the table toward the man and says, "You want to take care of this?" I stop in my tracks. The man looks back at me and tells her "I won't need that. I'm gonna have fun with this one" and picks up a knife. My eyes widen and I turn around and run down the stairs. I can hear his footsteps behind me. The man yells, "Don't run! I'll make this nice and quick." I run out of the apartment complex and I can hear the woman yelling out from the window. She's cheering him on. The man throws something at me and it lands right in front of me, but I quickly move around it. He threw something else, a rock maybe. It slams into my back, but I keep running anyway. If I stop, it will be the last mistake I ever make.
I turn around a corner and see a police station with some fortifications set up around it. They must have been there from before the bomb. I figure that would be a better place than any to go to. With any luck, I can find a gun inside. I run and slam the door behind me, then run further inside. Another man is inside. He yells, "What the hell?" Then the door slams open. The man from inside the police station pulls his gun out and shoots the other man right in the head and he falls to the ground. He then points the gun at me.
"Who are you?" he asks. "Please don't shoot!" I say. "My name is Dakota. I'm from Vault 111." He squints his eyes and asks, "And what are you doing here?" Between breaths, I respond, "I didn't think anyone was here."
He lowers his gun and a woman walks in from another room. "Who's this?" she asks. "Some stray from Vault 111," he says. The woman seems friendly and walks closer to me. Despite this, I take a step back anyway and she notices my reaction. "Don't worry. We won't hurt you. I'm Scribe Haylen, Brotherhood of Steel. Over there is Knight Rhys. And you are?"
Leaning against the wall for support, I say, "Dakota." She looks very carefully at me, like she is examining me. "Are you hurt?" she asks. I shake my head and say, "No. Just out of breath."
"Lay down over here," she tells me. Rhys turns to her and says, "That's Keane's bed." He gives me a cold glare. Haylen gives him a glare back and I stay back and watch this awkward situation play out in front of my eyes. Rhys just turns away and walks through a broken wall into another room of the station. Haylen looks at me and nods, so I get up and walk over to the sleeping bag. "Thank you," I say to Haylen. She shoots a small smile at me and then walks over to the room where Rhys was.
I lay down and decide to take a nap, but it's no use. There are too many things racing through my mind. I try rolling over to see if that helps and I see two shoes in front of me. I look up and see that it's Haylen. She asks, "You alright?" I'm not sure how to answer that question. I guess that means that I'm not alright, but I'm not sure if I should tell her why, so I shrug my shoulders. She sits down next me and asks, "Rhys says you're from Vault 111. What happened? Why leave?" I look up at her and decide I can at least tell her about Vault 111.
"I was frozen in there. The Vault tricked all of us into thinking we were entering decontamination pods, but they were cryogenic pods." Her expression changed from worried to surprised. I sit up and ask her, "What's today's date?" She pauses for a second, maybe to prepare for my reaction. "November 6, 2287," she says. My heart drops and I look down at the ground. "Dakota?" she says. I'm shaking. I manage to get a small chuckle out and think that life must be playing some kind of sick joke on me. I look up at her.
"That means that I am two hundred and thirty three years old."
