Chapter 1: An Unhappy Birthday

July 2268

War. War never changes.

After decades of global privatization, and strong international competition, the so-called "Resource War" began in 2052. The major conflicts were fought between the great powers looking to control the scarce global oil supplies. The United Nations and the European Common Wealth collapsed. China invaded Alaska, and the United States annexed Canada.

To protect its citizens, our great government…

"Bo-ring," said the brown-haired boy, leaning his chin against the desk. He tore a page from his notebook and crumpled it with his hands.

"Butch!" Amata shrieked as she felt a small spitball hit the back of her head.

The boy laughed out loud but Mr. Brotch, apparently bored out of his mind by Vault-Tec's projection, didn't even notice —or chose not to. Amata crossed her arms and refocused her eyes on the slides.

Alice slumped in her seat. She was uncomfortable watching her best friend having to deal by herself with Butch DeLoria but, at the same time, she was feeling more convinced of her decision to sit two desks behind that bully.

It wasn't the first time that the boy bullied her or Amata; during the last three years, DeLoria had taken a special interest in making their lives miserable: he pestered them in the halls, called them horrible nicknames, stuck chewing gum on their hair, and basically took every opportunity to make them uncomfortable, one way or another.

In a way, Amata was lucky one of the two, having to deal with the ridicule and jokes from Butch and his cronies; even though the girl didn't had many friends, she did get along with the other children of the vault. Unfortunately, Alice wasn't as 'popular': her peers seemed to be intimidated by her; sure, they didn't bully her as Butch did, but they also didn't get anywhere near her or spoke to her. If wasn't as she even tried to please them; since the beginning of the school year, she had decided that it wasn't worth wasting her time with the other children.

With the day's lectures finished, every kind was eager to leave the classroom. Alice waited patiently for Amata to finish picking up her school supplies.

Amata was the Overseer's daughter, the man in charge of the Vault, one whose word was law. Alice knew the girl since the two of them wore nappies, being her father who, so to speak, had introduced them and incited them to be friends.

She was her best and only friend. Alice didn't need anyone else.

"Hey! How about if we study together?" asked Amata, while finishing to place her books inside her Vault-Tec backpack.

"All right," Alice answered dejectedly, although showing a smile on her face.

"Then let's go to your house!" The other girl exclaimed happily, as she clutched her friend's arm.

To call 'house' the small vault's apartments was stretching the concept, especially when compared to those huge homes that existed before 'The Great War'.

According to the overseer, the war devastated the world, and the only habitable place in what used to be the United States —and perhaps the whole world— was the Vault 101.

Those were the facts, and all Vaults' inhabitants accepted them.

The girls hadn't taken more than two steps outside the classroom when they heard a mocking voice calling at them:

"Look! It's the fatso and the pipsqueak!"

"But, which is which, Butch? I say both of them are sacks of lard."

Butch DeLoria and Wally Mack's blatant laughter filled the corridors. Alice felt her friend's hand squeeze her arm with excessive force.

"It's best to ignore them," Alice said, without inflection in her voice.

"Leave us alone!" Amata screamed, turning on her heels to face Butch. Reluctantly, Alice did the same.

"Or what? Are you going to tell your daddy? 'Look at me, I'm Amata the fatso, I will go and cry to my daddy, boo hoo."

"Shut up, Butch!" Amata's eyes began to fill with tears. The girl wasn't fat, and couldn't even be considered robust, but her weight had always been a sensitive subject for her. The bullies of Vault 101 knew very well what her Achilles heel was.

Alice stepped between Butch and Amata; she was ten years old, much taller than him, and heavier.

"Go away, Butch."

Butch just twisted his mouth and said:

"You don't scare me, freak. What you gonna do? Crush me with your big fat ass?"

Wally laughed again. He approached Butch and began to grunt like a pig.

"Hey! What are you kids doing?"

The four children, startled and afraid, turned their heads to look for the stern and authoritative voice.

"It's officer Gomez. Let's go before he gets over here," Wally said, holding Butch by the sleeve of this jumpsuit.

"Bah! I'm not scared."

"Neither I am! But I don't want to hear my old man scolding me again," Wally cried, almost shrilly.

"All right, all right, but we aren't done here, pipsqueak."

When Butch turned around to follow Wally, Alice took the opportunity to take him by surprise. She had been saving her chewing gum during the entire lecture, just for this moment. Using all of her weight, she grabbed him by the hair and pushed him down.

"What- You stupid pipsqueak!" Butch screamed, as he got up on his feet.

"An eye for an eye, Butch," the girl said curtly, and stuck out her tongue.

"I hate him," Alice said, as she finished sharpening one of her pencils.

Like almost every afternoon, after the end of the school day, Alice and Amata were at Dr. Whitaker's apartment, placidly accommodated around the coffee table that adorned the narrow living room.

"I know," Amata smiled, "I hope he has to cut all of his hair! Can you imagine him bald?"

Alice tried to fight the urge to laugh out loud. She couldn't help but, unconsciously, raise a hand to touch her short brown hair. She used to wear it long and in a braid, however, two months ago, Butch had stuck a ball of chewing gum on her head, making sure to get it on her scalp. Alice threw a tantrum, devastated by the loss of her long straight hair; for a ten year old girl, an event like this was simply a tragedy.

"Yes, he deserves it," Alice muttered, "He's such a moron, a useless good for nothing idiot."

"Well, I… I almost feel sorry for him. His father died a couple of years ago, remember?" Amata said, squirming nervously on her seat, "That's just sad."

Alice frowned. Her mother was dead, and so was Amata's; even though Amata had the opportunity of meeting her mother, she was just too small to remember her. The fact that Butch didn't have a father was no excuse for his behavior. Even Alice's father had said as much.

She couldn't feel sorry for him, much less sympathy.

The memories of Phillip DeLoria's funeral were somewhat blurry for Alice: It was one of those rare days when the Overseer allowed the use of clothing different to the usual blue vault jumpsuits. Amid shouts and protests, his father managed to her get to wear a black dress that reached below her knees. Alice had hated that dress; sure, it was a comfortable, much more comfortable that the vault jumpsuits but, when she wore it, she just didn't feel like herself.

The girl spent most the funeral sitting on a small wooden chair, as far away as she could from the coffin; her father gave his condolences, and spent the next few minutes chatting with Ellen DeLoria. Alice couldn't hear their conversation but, frankly, she couldn't care less about it; death wasn't a concept she usually included in her daily life, even though her father was the Vault's head physician.

She thought about her mother; she thought about those blurred photographs that her father kept locked away and rarely allowed her to look. It was in that moment when she saw him: standing in the far corner of the room, with his hands in his pockets, and with a bowed head, was Butch DeLoria.

Alice felt a pang of sympathy.

She walked up to him and, with a sweetish voice, said:

"H-hi Butch, how are you?" The girl put her arms behind her back and stared at the floor, "I-I'm sorry about your dad. You know what? My daddy says he is now with God," She looked up and gave him her biggest smile, "Don't be sad."

"Go away, pipsqueak," the boy answered, unkindly.

Alice wasn't going to let herself be intimidated by him. After all, the poor boy had just lost his father, so he had a good reason to act in such a rude manner.

"Butch, do you wanna come to my birthday party? It will be the ne-,"

Before she could finish her sentence, she felt as two hands fastened around her shoulders and shoved her. She fell heavily on the ground; her beautiful black dress was torn at the hemline.

"I told you to go away, fatso! Leave me alone!"

"I… I just…"

Her eyes filled with tears, and the girl struggled to hold them back.

"Ugh, now the little baby wants to cry for her mommy. Oh, that's right; you don't have a mommy, because she didn't want you. That's why she left you!"

Unable to take stand it any longer, the little girl burst into tears. Butch covered his ears, and ran away from the pitiful scene. Moving with the speed of a distraught father, Dr. Whitaker approached his daughter, who was sprawled on the floor.

"Honey, what happened?" he asked her in a soft tone, helping her stand up.

"I hate him. I hate him!" She said between sobs.

Alice promised herself that, from that moment on, she would never let anyone see her cry.

"I can't believe you still got that!"

Alice blinked rapidly.

"What?" The girl turned her head and stared at what Amata was pointing at with her index finger. "Oh, well, I think it's very interesting. Did you know that, before the war, radroaches were called 'cockroaches', they also generally just reached the size of a thumb. Can you imagine? What kind of mutations they suffered to end like this?"

Amata bit her lower lip. It was obvious that she didn't share the interest her friend had in that radroach preserved in formalin.

"This is why they say you're weird," Amata murmured, and Alice pretended not to hear her.

They continued quietly with their homework, until Amata asked:

"So, what would you like for your birthday?"

"Oh, I really don't know. How about a date with Freddie Gomez?"

Amata face was completely deformed with a grimace. Meanwhile, Alice just stared at her, not uttering a single word.

"Freddie 'The Freak' Gomez? Are you serious? He's going to give you cooties!"

"Amata… that was a joke," The girl smiled, holding her hands to the side of her hip.

"Good to know, because if it wasn't, our friendship will be over."

This was, without a doubt, the worst day of her life.

It all started this morning when she realised that neither her father nor Amata o Jones seemed to remember her birthday. She stayed at home most of the day, feeling too disappointed to get out of bed. When evening came, Amata stormed in her room, showing a big smile on her face and wearing a silly party hat.

Apparently, all of her friends conspired to make her a surprise party. For some reason, that she couldn't began to fathom, her father considered a good idea to invite Butch DeLoria, Wally Mack and Paul Hannon to the party.

The Pip-boy was the best gift of the day —it was a 3000A model, but it was still an amazing piece of technology, one which Alice was sure she could experiment—nevertheless, the Grognak comic gifted by Amata, and the baseball cap from Stanley, were also a pleasant surprise. Certainly, the party could be considered a success, despite the incident with the birthday cake.

As always, the idiot of Butch DeLoria had to ruin everything.

The girl was in her father's office, hunched over on one of the metal chairs, and bleeding profusely from her small upturned nose.

Stupid Butch, piece of…

I was, in part, the fault of the Mr. Handy, Andy: If the robot hadn't destroyed her birthday cake, perhaps Butch hadn't tried to snatch from her the sweet roll that Mrs. Palmer gave her. On the other hand, poor Andy didn't have true artificial intelligence, so she couldn't really blame him for his faulty programming.

Of course, DeLoria's behaviour was still out of place.

Everyone in the vault knew that Butch's mother spent their ration coupons on vodka o beer, so the child often went hungry; feeling generous, Alice offered to share half her sweetroll with him; however, all she received in exchange were taunts and insults. Determined to give the bully his due, she spat on the sweetroll, tossed it to his face, and said: 'Maybe you're so hungry because your mother drank all of the ration coupons instead of feed you'.

Her little joke gained her a punch to the nose, courtesy of Butch. Within the blink of an eye, the boy was on top of her, using all of his weight to keep her on the ground. Alice stretched her arms and tried to get him off her, but Butch anger had reached unimaginable limits: he encircled the girl's neck with both hands, squeezed it hard and didn't let her go even when she fought to scratch his face.

"Don't you dare say those things about my mom! Stupid nosebleed!"

When Alice thought that all was lost, Officer Gomez came to her rescue. He grabbed Bitch by the collar of this jumpsuit and, with extreme ease, forced him to let go of the girl's neck.

"What are you doing? How dare you to hit a girl!"

"That nosebleed isn't a girl! She's just a freak! Didn't you hear what she said about my mom?"

"Silence, Butch. Don't expect me to believe a single word of what you say. Either you behave or I'll call your mother."

Officer Gomez's threats seemed to calm Butch; defeated, he returned to his seat next to Wally and Paul, muttering under his breath.

"Are you all right, honey? He didn't hurt, did he?"

Alice covered her nose with both hands and watched in horror as the blood started to stain her fingers. Her father, without thinking it twice, took her by the shoulders and led her to his office, before the astonished gaze and murmurs of the other vault's residents.

I hate him. I hate stupid Butch DeLoria, Alice though, as she waited for her father to return with the first aid kit.

"Let me take a look," James put the gauze and antiseptic on the desktop, he knelt in front of his daughter and, with the help of a damp cotton cloth, began to clean the dried blood that had gathered around her nostrils, "You're very lucky, your nose isn't broken, although is likely going to swell. What were you thinking, dear?

"He started it. He tried to take my sweetroll."

"Yes, I saw that, and I also saw when you spat on his face and threw the sweetroll at him."

Alice shrugged; his father was certainly much observant than she though.

"What was I supposed to do, let him take away my stuff?"

"No, of course not, but answering violence with violence is not the solution. You could just tell him, assertively, that the sweetroll was yours."

"Right, Dad, because everyone knows that Butch DeLoria always listens to what I have to say," Alice said, then snorted in disgust.

"Even so, what you did wasn't right."

"So, I should let those… those bullies do as they please? You told me that I had to learn to defend myself, don't you remember?"

James ran a trembling hand through his hair.

"Violence isn't always the answer, my dear." Before she could protest again, James raised his hand and added: "What I mean is that, there is nothing wrong with defending yourself when someone is attacking you, but you should try to use violence only as a last resort."

"If you say so," Alice said, gritting her teeth.

Perhaps her father wasn't as brave as she thought.

"Alice, I am proud of you, I'm happy that you're learning to stand up for yourself, but you need to be careful. You need to learn how to pick your battles."

"Y-yes, Dad."

James finished cleaning the dried blood from his daughter's face; then, he placed over the wound a piece of ice wrapped in cloth, telling her daughter to press it hard on her nose.

Father and daughter looked up when they heard the sound of the automatic door.

"Hello! They told there was a problem at the party. Did Butch and Alice fight again? What happened?" Jonas entered the office almost running and, seeing both the handkerchiefs and the floor stained with blood drops, added: "Dear Lord! It's worse than I thought."

"Don't worry, Jonas, it's only a slight facial trauma, there isn't a nasal fracture."

"You got lucky, huh, kiddo?" Jonas said, patting Alice on the head, "I hope you gave Butch what he deserves."

"Jonas, don't encourage her."

"Come on, Doc! That bully had it coming."

"I know, right?" asked Alice, smiling. Jonas could be her father's assistant, but he wasn't as serious or as severe as him. At this point, the young assistant had become a part of the family, "Mmm, but I didn't get to him hit, because Officer Gomez separated us."

"All right you two, that's enough," interrupted James. "Jonas, is the surprise ready?"

"Surprise?" Alice questioned, trying not to show any emotion in her face or in her voice, "What surprise?"

"Oh, you'll see it soon, little one," Jonas smiled. "Everything is ready, Doc."

"But… what it is?"

"It's something very special that your Dad and I have been working on; after all, you don't turn ten every day, don't you think so?"

"I don't like surprises."

James and Jonas gave each other an incredulous look.

"Since when?" James questioned, "Anyways, looks like your nose stopped bleeding. Come on, follow me."

The girl walked behind her father and Jonas, trying to match their step.

"How does that Pip-boy fits, kiddo?"

"Well, it feels a little heavy, and weird, but I think I'll get used to it. It's true that you can never remove a Pip-boy?"

Jonas shook his head.

"Not at all, that's just an urban legend. Of course, you need to take special care to remove it, and this usually done by a specialist, or you run the risk of the Pip-boy shutting down as a security measure, but their removal isn't impossible. Can you imagine if they couldn't be removed at all? How would you clean them or give them maintenance?"

They continue to chat as they walked through the corridors, towards the reactor level. At fists, Alice was reluctant to go down the stairs, until her father assured her the Overseer hadn't installed security camera in the room adjacent to the reactor, since this room only worked as a warehouse.

"This is why it's the perfect place. Wait here a moment, please," James said before disappearing behind the door.

When he came back, he brought with him what appeared to be a rifle with a stock and a recoil pad made of laminated wood; the barrel was worn, although it didn't show signs of rust. Alice had seen the weapon before, whilst rummaging through her father's possessions.

What was her dad doing with a weapon? What use could he have for one?

"Do you like it? This is the surprise I was talking about. Your own BB gun! It may be an air gun of compressed gas, but that doesn't make it a toy, do you understand?"

Alice nodded.

"Thanks, Dad," she said, taking the rifle from her father's hand and examining it closely.

"You're welcome, honey. Be sure to thank Jonas, he helped me fix it."

"Thank you, Jonas."

"Well, Butch also contributed." Hearing Jonas assertion, Alice eyes widened. "Yes, luckily for us, he 'misplaced' his switchblade. It's very difficult to find a spring small enough to fit the BB gun charger." Jonas said, laughing.

"Now, let's show you the other surprise." James led his daughter up to the warehouse. Upon arrival, Alice had to squint a few times to get used to the change in illumination; this room was much darker than the reactor one, and musty.

"What's this?" Alice asked, pointing at the contraption which consisted of three round shooting targets, connected to long metal tubes.

"An improvised shooting range, Jonas and I build it for you. You can come to practice here anytime you want."

"So, I can actually use the BB gun? Can I shoot it?"

"Yes, as long as you do it down here. This will be our little secret, okay?" James took her daughter by the shoulders. "Listen, it's important for you to learn this, I will not always be able to protect you."

Alice didn't understand what her father was talking about, or why his face was suddenly turning sad. Maybe he was suffering from what some adults called the 'midlife crisis' or, he was simply being cautious. Whatever the reason, the BB gun was something new, something unknown to her, and she loved learning about new things.

James showed her how to load bullets into the gun, the stance she should take to shoot, and the safety rules she should follow when handling any type of firearm.

The first shot, as expected, didn't hit the target; instead, impacted against the thick piece of wood that hung behind the target.

"Oh, what's that for, Dad?"

"A barrier to stop the pellets, it's just a precaution. You need to always be aware of the existence of a barrier when you shoot, or you could end up hurting someone."

"But… this are just pellets, plus, you said no one comes down here."

"Pellets can still be dangerous; as I said before, the BB gun is not a toy. Now, come one, try it again."

The next three shots didn't hit the target either, although they came much closer than before.

"It's all about posture, honey." James approached his daughter and accommodated the rifle butt over her right shoulder. "Now, breathe deeply, hold your weapons tightly, and try aligning the sights."

After ten more attempts, Alice finally managed to hit the target's periphery.

"Well done!" Jonas cheered.

"But… I didn't hit the bull's-eye," the girl said crestfallen.

"It's okay, dear; it's just a matter of practice. I bet you'll soon become a sharpshooter." James gave his daughter another box of ammunition, and told her to keep firing at the target.

"So, do you like your gift, kiddo?" asked Jonas with a smile on his lips.

"Yes! Thank you! I love it!" The excitement coming from her voice made both scientists' eyebrows rise up. Alice wasn't prone to express herself in such a clamorous way, but this gift had awakened something inside her: when she fired the first shot, a warm sensation ran through her body, a feeling that she wanted to experience again.

Once the ammunition for the BB gun ran out, James asked Jonas to "photograph the moment", as father and daughter posed in front of the shooting range. Ignoring her father's protests, Alice put on the red baseball cap that Stanley had given to her.

"Okay, let's see a smile! Say cheese!"

Maybe this wasn't the worst birthday ever.