Chapter 1
Location: Vault 24
"Hey Adam!" I look up to see one of my friends, John, walk into the technician's room.
"Hey John, you need something?" I asked, wondering what he broke this time. John has had a history of breaking things. Usually it's something unimportant like a pencil or a spare mirror. However, leading up to the G.O.A.T,the stuff he was breaking started to become more important. I know that he's broken several lights, two terminals, a T.V screen, and 3 Mister Handy robots before, and that's just what I know. In fact, if it wasn't for him constantly breaking stuff, I wouldn't have developed many of the mechanical or technical skills I got from constantly. While he hasn't broken much since the G.O.A.T, he still tends to have his 'accidents' from time to time.
"I need you to check my pip-boy, I think it's broken." He said, holding up his pip-boy 3000. "I know that you're not the pip-boy technician, and no where near as good as Alice, but if I give it to her, she might report this, so…" he finished, giving me an innocent look.
I grab the pip-boy and try to look at the damage. I couldn't see how bad it was, but due to the fact that the glass was broken, one of the dials had been jammed, and the radiation detector wasn't working, I could guess that it was pretty bad. I was stunned that it was this damaged, after all, pipboy were near impossible to destroy, of course, assuming that it wasn't blown up or…
I looked up at John and bluntly said "This is beyond my help, so you'll have to talk to Alice, but… how did you damage it this bad?" At that John looked to the side and said "I might of… sort of… um, possibly-"
"Oh just spill it!" I said, rapidly growing impatient.
"I broke into the armory, okay!" John said, looking at me with concealed pride.
"Th-the Armory!" I stammered out. "How did you get in there?!" I was amazed that he was able to do this, but also worried. What would happen if the overseer found out. After all, he's been getting more and more paranoid about people who might be against him.
"Well, as a guard, I'm able to get away with certain things, such as looking up the guard schedule and getting the armory keys. Alice also owed me a favor, so since she had some skill in hacking, I gave her the task of wiping the camera footage and creating a distraction." He said, happy about himself.
"Wait, Alice set the overseer's door to malfunction?" I said, remembering trying to open the door a few hours ago.
"Yep, was pretty excited about it too!"
"So, how does this lead to you breaking your pip-boy?" I asked, deciding to leave the subject of Alice actually helping John for now.
"Well, I was testing some of the things I 'borrowed' from the armory, and I accidentally had a grenade with me…"
I look at him, piecing the story together, "Let me guess, you accidentally activated it and threw it away, which ended up near your pip boy…" I say with a smirk on my face. After suppressing his surprise, John let out a "yep!"
After a couple minutes of awkward silence, I broke it by asking "Hey John, that party tomorrow still on?"
He immediately wore a smile and replied "Yep, besides you and me, I got Alice, Alex, Roy, Nat, Chris, and Dusk to come."
This was our inner circle of friends. Alex and Nat were both doctors, human and animal/nature respectively. Roy was another guard, except that instead of being average like John, he was skilled with short range and melee fighting. He also showed me that he had some skills in lockpicking, which I took a few notes on. While she was a pip boy technician, Alice was good at anything involving computers, whether it's programing a robot or creating a virus. Heck, she could probably find some way to shutdown the reactor from a storeroom terminal. Chris was the guy who was always optimistic and came up with ideas. As a result, he is part of a small committee that came up with ideas for the vault. Finally, there was Dusk. She is the brains of the group. Not only does she have two jobs, researcher and head librarian, but she's a major bookworm and loves to study new subjects whenever they arise.
"Well, I'll see you there." I said as John went to leave with his pip-boy to talk to Alice. "Cya!" He replied as he closed the door.
After John leaves, I decide to go ahead and make my room a bit more organized. My place was a standard Vault-Tec living quarters attached to a slightly larger room where I did my job as a mechanic and technician. On one side of the room were a bunch of cabinets and storage lockers filled with spare parts and scrap. On the side of the room with the door leading to my quarters was a desk with a terminal on top of it, along with a couple of filing cabinets and a shelving unit filled with books. On the other two sides of the room were my various workbenches, items needing fixing, and some personal projects.
I looked over two of my most prized projects. One of them was a reinforced U.S army combat helmet I found in the Vault's junk room. After fixing it back up, I started adding personal touches to it, such as a radio set-up and attachable mini-flashlight. The addition I was currently working on was a glass overlay which would, in theory, connect up with my pip-boy. This would enable me to set certain things to pop up on screen, like my body's status. The feature which I hope to connect it up to is a V.A.T.S system that I found on a hard drive.
The other main project I'm focusing on is a deactivated Mister Gutsy. The mister Gutsy I found at the market area one day. I guy there called Rick said that the Mister Gutsy had been assigned to the vault, but due to programing issues it was deactivated. After I bought it I immediately brought it to the shop to fix it. After about two months, I had fixed the programing issue with help from Alice, and I was now working on how it could be used. I figured that I would use it as an occasional assistant and to protect the shop. Unfortunately, the mister Gutsy had been stripped of its weaponry before being sold, so the only I could arm it was to steal from the Vault's armory, which I wasn't going to do.
I sighed as I left the workshop, ready to go to bed. I took a look around the living quarters I lived in as I walked through. I didn't have many personal possessions, just some vault suits, my pip-boy, a crossbow and bolts I got for my 10th birthday, a mini-terminal to take with me on the job, and a couple of photos. One showed me when I was just a baby, with my mom holding me and my dad standing next to her, looking proud. Another showed me as a toddler and my dad together after one of the vault's rare movie nights. My mom wasn't in the picture because she was dead. My Dad said it happened when my mom, who was also a mechanic, was fixing a gas line when something went wrong. Short story, that level of the vault wasn't open for two years due to explosive damage. My dad, who was an advisor of the overseer at the time, fell into a sort of depression. Shaking those heads from my thoughts, I went to my last few pictures. They included my 10th birthday, where I got my crossbow and pip-boy, me together with my friends just before the G.O.A.T test, and finally, an old one that showed my great ancestors back when they lived on the surface.
I looked away and went into my bedroom and happily moaned as I layed on the bed, feeling pops going through my back as I layed there. As I feel asleep, I was thinking about the party tomorrow, which was for the 5th anniversary of us passing the G.O.A.T tests…
-Inside the Vault Overseer's office-
"Dammit dammit dammit." The overseer said, pacing around his office.
After he got out of his room from the faulty door, he immediately checked to see if anything had happened. He just had a feeling that those rebels had done something. He wasn't sure who they were, or if they even existed at times, but he knew something was wrong.
He was right.
There were numerous items stolen from the armory. The Head security chief had just delivered the final report of what was stolen:
Items stolen from vault on March 3, 2292:
X1 Vault security armored uniform
X1 U.S Army combat rifle
X2 10mm pistols
X2 Riot shields
X1 Night-vision goggles
X2 Gas masks
X3 Security batons
X3 tear gas grenades
X3 U.S Army Fragmentation grenades
X94 4.5mm rifle ammo
X140 10mm ammo
Report made by: Vault 24 Chief Security Officer
To: Vault 24 Overseer
After some searching through the area, one of the guards had noticed there was a large scorch mark and dent inside one of a nearby janitor's closet, likely from a grenade. The overseer wasn't sure why it was there, but maybe it was a bomb that had been planted mis-correctly. He wasn't sure what to do anymore, but he knew he had to find these rebels and destroy them. He figured that cracking down with security forces wouldn't do much. They might even make people MORE rebellious, and he didn't want that.
After some thinking, he realised that there was help that he could get, so he went to his secretary's desk and told her "Jane, get the radio up, I need to make an outside call."
Jane nodded grimly, and after making a couple of calls and adjustments, handed a hand-held radio to the overseer. "There you go sir" she said as she left him to talk.
After a moment of silence, the overseer clicked a button on the radio and said very clearly "Jackal, I have a job for you."
