Chapter 26: Void

"Is everyone okay? Did anyone get hit?" Tai asked the Special Forces group as Doc ran over to my body and examined me.

Everyone looked at each other. They were all clean. Dimitri checked his body for wounds and turned around so the team could point out any wounds for him. Blood dripped from his back and out of his clothes.

"Um, Dimitri? You got shot." Manny said; confused on how he was not affected by it.

"Da, it happens." Dimitri said as he brushed himself off.

"Heat exhaustion. He needs to be watched and given water. Ich can handle this one." Doc announced as he got up from my body. Dimitri dropped his ammo box and Sasha on the floor and took off his shirt. Doc took out his medical bag and treated the wounds as Manny dumped some water on me. Doc shook as he stitched up Dimitri, and sweat dripped down his face, and looked nervously at the wound, inspecting it as he stitched it up.

"Thank you, doctor." Dimitri said.

"It is meine pleasure, truly." Doc said as he ran his fingers through his hair.

"So… now what?" Manny asked the group.

Dimitri walked over to me on the ground and dumped another water bottle on my head. When I didn't move, he picked me up and slumped me over his back.

"We must move." Dimitri told us as he walked away.

"We're not even going to talk about what this guy did?" Manny asked the group as they packed their things up.

"He's a lunatic. Can't do anything about it now." Tai told him.

"Ich agree. His mind is obviously working through something." Doc nodded.

"It takes a lunatic to know one." Dimitri muttered.

"We are done talking." Doc said sternly.

They saw nothing on our way out of the area. The city was seen clearly at that point. It seemed more destroyed than when Victoria and I saw it, we were probably busy paying attention to something else. Buildings were completely brunt down, and anything standing was barely so, having pieces of the skeleton completely broken off. The group had wasted some walking time during the fight, so we couldn't get as much distance that day.

Joe gasped the loudest inhale his body could create as a needle was brought into his chest. His face was pale and sweaty, his hair was slumped down over his eyes from moisture, with strands of brown hair clumped together in small bundles, scattered across his brow. As the blood returned to his face, he could see who was administering it. She looked at him as he sat against a wall, his chest bobbing up and down quickly as she held his head still.

"Stop breathing so quickly or you're going to have another heart attack." Rachel told him.

That didn't calm him down at all. Joe held his breath and exhaled through his nose as he tried to wretch his head free from her grasp. He forced out slow breaths until they were involuntary.

"Don't touch me." Joe wheezed.

"Fine." Rachel said as she let her hands go from his body.

Joe looked down to see blood pouring from his body. Joe gasped and tried to move, but his body wouldn't let him. Rachel placed her hands back over the wound.

"Now sit still and let me fix it." She told him.

"No…" He told her in defiance.

"I can call Andy in to fix you if you want." She suggested.

Joe glared at her.

"Exactly." She looked back down at his wounds.

Joe breathed faster again as she stitched up his old gunshot ailments. He looked at her as she cared for him.

"Why… are you doing this?" He asked weakly.

"You ruined my vault. Jace wasn't returned and Chain is keeping Sarah for his own personal reasons. You need to answer my questions if you want this problem to end."

"No… I'm done fighting you."

"You seem to forget he has your wife and your friends."

"My wife thinks I'm a loser and so do my friends. That's not something worth fighting for. Trust me, you saw me try. This is the extent, and even that was a stretch."

"Hell of a time to change your mind." Rachel stared at him with gray rings circled around her eyes, as if I child came in and painted them on for her. Rachel's hair was dry as it sat in a bun on her head. This bun needed to be fixed, as long strands of hair popped out from their confinement. Joe looked up at her. He spotted long, gray hairs all across her scalp. Her eyes were strained, as if she were staring into the sun (or a computer terminal) all her life.

"And you're right about that last part. I saw what you did and my security want you executed for it." She told him.

Joe inhaled deeply. "Then stop helping me." He said with a sigh.

"You have a lot of pride."

"It's not pride." Joe declined.

"You're right. I was being nice. It's actually stupidity."

Joe's eyelids flickered at her.

"I know you're just saying this because you hate me. I know you're going to get Sarah." She told him.

"You're wrong."

"Why is that?" She asked.

"I'm not her father."

"You're right again. Her father thinks she's safe and sound at home meanwhile she's being brought into a crumbling city where she will die."

"How do you know that?" He asked her.

"I know a lot of things, Joe."

She injected another needle into him and his heart jumped.

"You have an hour to get up and leave the vault or my security team will come in here and kill you. It's your choice."

Joe inhaled through his nose. "Of course it's my choice."

"Here's your stuff. I marked your map of where they're going." Rachel shoved her hand into a zippered pocket in her jumpsuit and dropped a keycard on the ground.

"Second door on your left." She told him.

"And what exactly are you getting out of this?" He asked her.

"Right now, nothing. But eventually I'm going to come back to take the people that belong here. And if Sarah's left alive, she's going to have to come with me."

"Why do you want her?"

"I need her. If I don't get her or her father, people will die." Rachel got up and walked to the end of the room. "Fifty-eight minutes." She said as she looked at her wrist-mounted computer.

The door closed, leaving Joe in the room by himself. It was a room that seemed familiar to another man, but it wasn't familiar to him. He was in my old home, but someone had apparently moved into it, or at least redecorated. A bible quote was framed and placed on a nightstand. A pen with a red rubber ball sat next to him. A toy chest with a single child's book next to it was to his left. It would be a month until a broken family would habit that place. Only a few more buttons had to be pressed.

The group set up camp. Dimitri let my body fall to the ground as Doc checked my pupils. Manny went over and gave me water. I began to choke on it and wake up. I backed away, slapped the canteen away and kicked Manny in the face. I got to my feet and ran at him as Tai and Doc held me back. I fell back onto my hands and rear and looked at the group. They had awoken me from a dream where I was drowning. Manny held his face on the ground as the team looked at me.

"What?" I asked them.

I got to my feet. "Where's Amata?" I asked them as I stepped away.

I looked at my surroundings again.

"W—Where am I?" I asked them. The group stared at me in silence.

"Did I fall asleep in class?" I continued.

"Mr. Brotch! Mr. Brotch, can you hear me?!" I yelled to escape my haze.

Doc held my arm. "It's okay, jus—"

"No, don't worry, my dad's the doctor, he can fix this." I assured him that my wounds were nothing as I walked away. My nose began to bleed again and I wiped it from my face and looked at it. I turned around, out of breath.

I took a deep breath in and exhaled. "What are you people looking at?" I asked them as I reloaded my shotgun. "Loot the bodies, pack up the tents, we have to keep moving." I told them.

"What the hell, dude?!" Manny asked on the ground.

I stared inquisitively at him. "Did he get hit in the fight?" I asked as I walked over to him and looked at him.

"You broke my fucking nose, dude!" Manny screeched.

"What are you talking about?" I argued with him.

"A—I—I—Ah, WHAT?!" Manny was flabbergasted that I had already forgotten.

Dimitri yanked me away from Manny and held me down as Doc walked over to me.

"What's wrong with him, Doctor?" He asked.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" I shouted at him.

"He just awoke from a coma. There will always be confusion. Give him water." Doc told him.

"Is water the only thing you have in that medical bag?" Dimitri asked him.

I tried to break free from the grapple from the large man. "Coma?! What are you people talking about, let me go!" I ordered Dimitri.

Doc nodded at him and I slipped free from Dimitri.

"Are you people out of your goddamn minds?! Do you think we have the time for this shit? We already wasted the morning with that ambush, an—"

I looked up at the sky and realized that the sun was not rising, in fact, it was setting. I squinted at it with my mouth open and looked around. There were no dead raiders; we were not in the same camp I thought we were in.

"My nose… is off my body!" Manny whined as Doc bent down to him and reset it.

"AAAAAARGHH!" Manny shouted.

"Keep your voice down, the town wall is right there." Tai shushed him. I wondered how we already got there.

"Are you kidding me? Why am I being yelled at?!" Manny argued.

"I like him when he's like this." Dimitri chuckled.

"What… what's going on?" I asked them as I stared at the city wall.

"This is ridiculous." Tai sighed.

Doc looked at me. "You had a heat stroke—"

"And you friggen broke my nose!" Manny yelled.

"Who's hungry?" Dimitri asked us.

"I regret coming with you people…" Manny moaned.

Joe's body was numbed from the syringe and he brought his body up slowly, panting and holding his breath to use his muscles to lift himself up. He threw himself to his feet and fell onto a table with a baseball bat and his backpack. He put the map inside and checked it for his weapons: none. He searched the drawers slowly, ripping them open to see what was inside: A red baseball cap and a picture of a man and his child. The drawer below that was a Vault Boy bobblehead. He closed that drawer and checked the next one. An old BB gun was in there and Joe sighed as he lifted it up. He checked to see if there were BBs inside. When the receiver was jammed shut, Joe put it back, some spring inside of the toy gun needed to be replaced. "This is just stupid." He told himself. Whoever lived here was useless to him, he thought. But no one did, not yet, at least.

Joe spotted the first aid kit attached to the wall that Rachel used to heal him. That was also just as useless. Joe backed away and wiped sweat from his face. His heel bumped against the toy chest. He had nothing else to try so he lifted the chest open. He grabbed at the first thing his eyes found: a child's book. "You're SPECIAL" was the title. Joe dropped it to the ground, silently dismissing the useless object and turned away to leave with a limp. He grabbed at the keycard Rachel left for him and remembered where to go from the exit. His muscles were raw now, the medicines starting to give. He adjusted the pack on his back and dragged himself against the cold metal wall until he saw Rachel staring into a room. She turned to him.

"This is what happens without Sarah or Jace. We need them for people like to me to get better, the adults here won't live without them." She told him.

Joe looked inside the room full of doctors as a woman lay on a cot. She was pregnant, in her late stages, and her heart rate was being monitored on a station to her left, with an Asian woman watching it.

"There's a strong chance this baby may not survive the birth, Catherine." She told her.

Her husband gripped her shoulder and held her head to his chest. He patted his wife and held her close as she wept into his arms.

"Why are we watching this?" Joe asked Rachel quietly.

"Is there anything we can do, Madison?" The father asked the doctor.

"We'll talk later privately." She told him.

"Why aren't you doing something?" Joe asked Rachel as she stood there and watched.

"Because there's nothing I can do. My time's almost up." She answered as she turned to him.

Blood left her nose and her eyes shut for a moment as she stepped back. "It's fun to think I want Jace or Sarah for a nefarious purpose, isn't it? My people are dying. I'm dying."

Rachel sniffled blood. "This is your fault. That baby's going to die because of you." She pointed at him.

"No. You're insane, just like your father." Joe accused her.

"Things seem crazy when you don't understand them." Rachel stared at him. "But without Jace or Sarah, and with those people you killed… people have to die. That's how this vault works. They need to be replaced; they're part of a perfect scientific cycle, and it's been broken. For every person who dies, another must go with them."

"Get away from me." Joe slumped past her and limped away.

"If you want that family to live without a legacy you'll bring me who I need. Unless you only care about yourself." She baited him.

"I do care about myself. And when I have no other reason to, I'll end it. But that's not going to happen now." He said with conviction as he limped away and left the hallway as an Asian woman in a doctor coat walked past him with her team of doctors. She was crying, which did not seem professional, but this situation was different. She just gave her friends the worst news she could ever give.

He used the keycard on a door and walked through a hallway where a locker was waiting for him. He opened it up and checked inside. Joe found two plastic explosives and a detonator, and nothing else. He put them into his pack and held the detonator in his hand. He turned around and began to shift forward.