Chapter 25: Not a Kid Anymore

I woke again to something that was unfamiliar. I heard footsteps walking towards us. I figured it was Manny, so I tried to rest as much as I could until he poked my face. Moments passed, and the footsteps only grew louder. I opened my eyes and looked at Manny in his sleeping bag; he was in a deep sleep with high pitched mumbling. I grabbed my shotgun from my side and woke Manny, poking him hard in his head. I covered his mouth so he wouldn't speak, and he just looked at me with his eyes wide open. I signaled with my hands that there was something outside. He grabbed his pistol out of his holster and pointed it outside. We slowly crept towards the zipper flap to the fence. I counted to three with my fingers, and we burst out, aiming our weapons. Raiders surrounded the camp, and were surprised that we got the jump on them. We shot the raiders that were near our tent, and they flipped onto the ground. Dimitri woke up, and had Sasha out, ready for the fight. He started yelling guttural sounds as he shot the raiders, spraying out bullets like a hose of death.

Manny and I split up to flank the remaining raiders. Doc and Tai woke up, about to argue with each other about waking them up, but they then heard the gunshots. Raiders heard us and more started coming towards us running from all sides. I started shooting the reinforcements until I ran out of ammunition, and my gun clicked. I turned towards Manny, who got punched by a raider and fell to the ground. The raider went on top of him and aimed a pistol at his head. Dimitri smacked the raider in the stomach with the large barrel of Sasha and he flew off him. Dimitri and Manny looked at each other as Dimitri pulled him up. Manny was surprised by the help and returned to battle. I reloaded my shotgun and pumped it, continuing to shoot at the raiders. Tai's hands worked fast as she shot the raiders surrounding her and Doc. They started to get outnumbered, so she gave Doc a pistol. Doc stared at it and looked at Tai who was almost out of ammo.

"Fucking shoot it!" Tai screamed at him.

Doc aimed down the sights as his arm shook. Tai's gun clicked as a raider approached them. The raider ran at him with a knife, sticking forward. The raider flew back and blood popped out of his head as Doc shot him. His mouth opened as Doc looked at his gun. He looked as if he was about to vomit, but his expression immediately changed to a malicious smile as he started shooting at more raiders.

Joe lazily dropped his empty whiskey bottle against the controls to the Vault 101 blast door. He pressed his finger on the intercom.

"It's me. Open up." Joe said in a low voice.

"It's—It's Jace." A voice said to another person on the other end, confusing Joe for me.

"Let him in." A woman's voice said through a radioed intercom.

The doors screeched open as Joe lifted the bottle back up and walked inside, his head down low. An empty paper case of jellybeans floated from his knuckles to the floor as he stepped into the vault.

Joe was not going to be the one to tell anyone how he felt when he walked inside. To be honest, he didn't even know the full story. All he knew was that he had someone to blame.

"Hey, wait a minute!" A guard yelled at Joe as he tried to stop the impostor from entering.

The guard put his hand on Joe's chest to stop him, and that was when he lifted his head to glare at the guard through his eyes. He stared into the guard and the gears in his head began to turn. The fascination with Jace, the looted armory and the kidnapping. He had enough cards to make a bet, and that's just what he did.

Joe snorted and lifted the whiskey bottle above his head and smashed it into the guards face. Joe dropped the remaining glass and stepped over the body, walking slowly into the inner parts of Vault 101.

Alarms sounded and the intercoms buzzed as Joe looked up to a security camera and sneered at it, as if he looked into Rachel's eyes directly.

"Attention citizens of Vault 101; we have been breached by outside raiders. Please barricade your houses as our security force handles the problem. Please move in an orderly fashion." Rachel said as the alarms whirred and yellow lights spun around the halls.

A group of young men in leather jackets ran at Joe as he walked alone in the halls. The leader of the gang held a switchblade and jumped at Joe. He screamed a battle cry. "TUNNEL SN—"

Joe pulled out his pistol and fired into the man's stomach. He dropped to the ground and bled to death in front of the men. They all dropped their weapons and retreated. Joe's facial expression did not change, he was stern. His forehead had three lines of creases that were seemingly pressed onto his normal face. His eyebrows were tilted down, forming an overlapping bump in between them. His eyes were in almost a squint, but they paid attention to nothing significant, not even the man he just killed.

To another man, the man he killed would have seemed familiar. But it was too early to see what the full story was. Joe was playing it by ear. He was good at that.

Joe swooped down and grabbed the switchblade off of the young man with great hair as he died. The man had a name; several of them in fact. Right now it was Chip.

Joe looked at the security camera. "RACHEL!" Joe boomed at it.

"He was your friend!" He screamed as he walked through the halls.

"You BETRAYED him!"

Joe opened the electric doors to the atrium as a group of guards ran towards him. Joe threw the switchblade at the first one and it pierced his chest as Joe shoulder-tackled him and spun him into another guard. He lifted his pistol and fired three rounds into the vest of a guard with a pistol. He dropped to the ground as Joe popped the blade from the dead guard and slapped the helmet off of a armored guard that was taken down by three bullets that went into his bulletproof vest. He stabbed his skull with the small knife and left it there as he grabbed a new pistol from the deceased man's holster.

"Please remain calm as our security forces handle the breach. Please return to your homes as soon as possible." Rachel said through the intercom.

"I know you hear this! I know you see this!" Joe shouted as he screamed an echo throughout the atrium.

Joe charged through the next door and ran through another group of guards, peppering the halls with a pistol in each hand. He fired until his guns clicked. He then lifted a 10mm submachine gun and held it in his hand as he spotted the Overseer's door. He fired a burst of bullets into the controls to the door and holstered his gun. He planted his fingers to the opening of the door and pried it open in his adrenaline rush. He groaned loudly as he opened the door and limped inside, holding his machine gun at Rachel as she backed away and wiped blood from her nose. The alarms blared in the background as Joe panted heavily, his eyes fixated on her.

"Why are you doing this?" She asked him in fear.

That set Joe off. He holstered his gun and held her by the neck, slamming her head back into the cold metal wall.

"Don't you fucking play stupid with me. I saw your jumpsuits in the armory. I was there at Megaton! I survived! And I'm going to kill you." Joe grunted in rage at her.

"You—don't understand. This isn't about you." She told him.

Joe slammed her body back into the wall and kept choking her. "'This isn't about me'?! They took my family, they took my friends! You—left me—NOTHING!"

Joe threw her into her desk and she screamed. A bone popped, but Rachel didn't know which one. She looked up pleadingly at him.

"You have to understand, Joe. I just wanted Jace. I couldn't control what that raider did. I tried to reason with him but he had his own plan, you have to understand!"

Joe sniffled. His eyes were tearing up. "He has a daughter, you know." He said in a normal voice.

She stared at him from the ground.

"And you took her from him. He has her now. And he doesn't care what happens to her. But I do. Now you tell me everything. You tell me where they went and why this had to happen or I swear to God, I'll kill everyone in here and lock you in this place alone." Joe threatened her.

"This vault… is special. Important things happen here that need every person involved to be here." Rachel told him.

"And Jace is a part of this?"

"Yes."

"Then answer me this…" Joe said as he leaned close to her and breathed down on the small girl's head.

"What is so important that you'd have to ruin their lives?" He asked her.

"He's part of a cycle that needs perfecting, just like me and just like the men and women you killed today." Rachel told him.

"No…" Joe told her as he backed away from her. "What you did… what you helped do. It's not worth it anymore."

"That's because you don't understand. We need him not only for us, but for his own good."

"What are you talking about?"

"You… you care about his daughter? Well she's a part of this too, whether you like it or not. And if they don't return here… I—I don't know what's going to happen to them." Rachel explained.

"You're lying." Joe told her.

"Well there's only one way to find out, isn't there?" Rachel asked him as her hands went to the Project Legacy scanner.

Joe saw her treachery and slammed her body back away from the desk and onto the floor. For all he knew, she was about to pull a gun on him. Rachel backed away as Joe aimed his gun at her.

"GUARDS! GUARDS, HELP!" She screamed.

Guards flooded the inside of the office as Joe took cover behind the desk. They started firing into it as Joe ducked down. The bullets entered Rachel's terminal and blew it open. The Overseer's desk whirred and lifted itself off the ground, exposing Joe from his cover as the hidden passage opened up. Joe looked up at the desk as it was lifted above his head, removing his cover. He backed away as the guards aimed their weapons at him. He saw a clearing between the guards. If he could cut left he could use the machinery as cover as he escaped the office. He winced in pain and felt his stomach. Small dots of blood poured out through the vault suit. His body burned, his legs were numb and his head was light and dizzy. He breathed quickly as the guards walked closer to him. Joe fell back against the security monitors of the office and collapsed, dropping his gun to the side as machine guns were pressed against his head. He closed his eyes and blacked out.

Tai smiled and reloaded her rifle with her ammo belt. They both continued shooting more raiders. I pumped out another shell into a raider as he ran to my right. He flopped over as I pumped the action again and turned to a raider with a shield made from the rusted metal of a car door. I fired a shot into it and the thick makeshift metal took the pellets. The raider swept his shield and smacked me across the face with it, sending me onto my back. I let my shotgun slide across the dirt to my side as the raider stood above me and brought down an axe at my body. I pushed myself back and opened my legs to let the axe hack into the earth below me. I kicked my leg into his wrist and separated his right arm from his axe as I brought my legs together and kicked him in the face. I grabbed the axe from the ground as I jumped on him and hacked away at this armor plating. I hacked and hacked at the raider as I held his shield down to the ground with my knee. I stared into his eyes and roared over his screams when the axe finally hit flesh. I removed it from the tissue and brought it back down again, separating the skin and flesh. I shouted at the top of my lungs as his screams of terror grew louder and higher-pitched. I took breaths between my blows to his organs and screamed as loud as my lungs could as the axe was brought back down again. My screams of rage turned into hysterical shouts when the raider died. Still, I hacked away at his ribs and internal organs until an intense crimson replaced the bright red splatter, and even then I continued. The camp stopped fighting as the raiders were defeated. They group surrounded me as I wailed still.

"Dude… he's dead." Manny told me as the axe began to break apart from use.

I didn't care. For some reason I needed him more than dead. This specific person needed to feel everything I was doing, even though I was convinced that he couldn't anymore. My voice cracked as my throat gave out. The camp looked at each other and then at me. I needed to make sure he was dead. I needed to vent out everything at once, because deep down, I was alone. I had no support for what I was doing. It's easy to do the right thing when you're called a hero for it, but it was different now. I lost my friends and family because I took too long to finish this. I had a daughter when the world was more dangerous than ever before and I made a fake promise to keep her safe. Little did we all know I had failed that promise, because with rope tied around her small neck, she was led through the wilderness to an irradiated stronghold with everyone around her blaming me for taking too long to end this. They were abandoned by me and thus I was abandoned for it. I was resented by my best friend and wife and I had failed my child. I didn't even know how old she was, meanwhile the drunken man-child that was my best friend researched her since the day she was born. He knew more about my family than I did. He was a better father than me, and I hated him for it. I hated everything about this. Most of all, I hated the dead man below me. The axe head snapped off as it entered the chest cavity once more. I lifted the hilt up into the air and brought it down into the man's head once more and left it in there as I got off and breathed out angry grunts with my failing voice. On the verge of hysterical tears I looked worriedly at the ground and walked through the group over to my shotgun and picked it up. I lifted my head back up and looked ahead to the city as I felt something wrong. Blood seeped through my nose and onto my arm, mixing in with the blood of the raider I just maimed. I turned around to see the Special Forces look at me with expressions of disbelief. I exhaled and fell onto my back, kicking up dirt around my body.

"How do I get paid less than this guy?" Tai asked.