Sorry this took so long, soon I'll hopefully get a schedule or something


The first thing Nate became aware of was the tightness in his chest, he didn't know if this was caused by the fact he could feel his hard thudding in his chest or the fact he couldn't stop coughing. To be fair one could have caused the other.

After his coughing died down he opened his eyes blearily looking across from him, everything was so blurry. What was that wheezing sound? Or was it an alarm? Both?

"... Failure in Cryogenic Array. All Vault residents must vacate immediately," speaker system announced.

What? Nate was beginning to feel panicked. Without thinking he punched the glass of the pod he was in. Pain blossomed outward from his knuckles but a large spider web of cracks mimicked the pain across the glass.

Leaning back in his seat Nate placed his right foot on the centre of the window and pushed. He could feel the glass give slightly, the cracks spreading as toughness of the glass had been compromised. Placing his left foot on the metal to the side of the glass Nate pulled back his right and, with what strength he had left, kicked forward. His foot went through the window and all the glass fell away in chunks.

Pulling his foot back Nate stood once more, moved his head next to the hole and took several gulps of air. It tasted stale - still it was better than what was offered in the pod. After regaining some of his bearings Nate elbowed out the remaining glass and pulled himself out of the pod falling to his hands and knees awkwardly on the concrete floor. Once more his knuckle flared in pain accompanied by his knees to a lesser extent.

Nate ignored it as best he could and pushed himself to his feet. Looking ahead of him he saw Nora's pod and stumbled forward. Grabbing one of the red handles he tugged. No good.

To the left of the window he saw a valve marked 'Pressure Release'. All it did was spin loosely. No surprise there, after all if there had been any real pressure then there would have either been a rush of air either in or out of his pod when he broke the window.

"Come On!" he shouted, frustration and adrenalin overriding the pain from his knuckle. "There has to be a release..."

As he said this he looked around and saw, just to the right, a box of some sort. It had a series of gauges but what caught his attention was the red switch. Could this be it? Taking the chance Nate flipped it and the pod lifted slightly.

"Come on, come on, come on," Nate chanted this as the pod raised. "Oh God!"

There in the seat lay Nora. On her forehead, about an inch above her right eye, was a hole only slightly bigger than Nate's finger nail surrounded by a small amount of frozen blood. Behind her however...

Nate dropped to his knees tears falling down his cheeks, he couldn't look away from his wife's face.

The anger returned. Rage, hot and burning racing through his veins. He swallowed, hard, suppressing it as best he could.

"I'll find who did this," he said, trembling. "I'll get Shaun back. I promise."

With this promise he stood forcing his legs to hold, and leant forward brushing Nora's hair behind her ear. He ignored the ice crystals that fell from the disturbance.

Taking Nora's wedding ring with him, a silent promise that when he found Shaun this would allow Nora to be with him, Nate stood straight once more.

"I'll be back," he said. "When I get back I'll give you a proper burial." After he said this he closed the pod once more to preserve Nora from the ravages of time and looked away.

Walking through the room that, not so long ago, had been bustling with activity. It was so quiet, the only noises were a slight hum at the edge of Nate's hearing and the slight muffled sound of his footsteps. Nate was hoping the hum came from the pods.

At the end of the pods Nate spotted a wall-mounted computer terminal, if he had woken up suffocating what was it like for others? For that matter why had he woken up?

Soon the sound of the terminal booting up joined the hum. There were three options: Cryogenic Array, Life Support, and Pod Occupant Status. Wanting answers Nate selected the first option and read what came up.

The terminal didn't give any answers as to what the Cryogenic Array was about as Nate had hoped, he supposed there may be other terminals that held that information elsewhere. Nate did however learn what had happened to the pods, apparently the system had gone offline resulting in a system failure. Nate returned to the main screen and selected the Life Support option.

His eyes widened as he felt the blood drain from his face. Offline. that was why he had woken up suffocating.

Abandoning the terminal he rushed over to the nearest manual release and flipped the switch to open the pod. Before he could move to the next to repeat this action, something he planned to do for all the pods in the room, a buzzer sounded followed by the same computerized voice he had heard waking up.

"Malfunction in Cryo pod manual release override."

For the next minute or so all that could be heard from the room was the buzzer and voice sounding repeatedly until Nate had checked all the pods in the room. Only Nora's pod released, not even his own would. Nate felt a sense of dread at that, what if he had been unable to break the window?

Moving back to the terminal he checked the final option. Each pod had someone's name attached, even Shaun was listed along with his mother. Every name Nate selected said the same thing:

Occupant Status: Deceased. Cause of Death: Asphyxiation due to Life Support failure.

At least all but two said this. The pod Nora and Shaun had shared had 'Unknown' as their status with 'Remote Override Engaged' as the reason, Nate also had Unknown with 'Cryo Pod door damaged' as his own reason.

Nate stepped back from the terminal.

"Why?" he whispered to himself. "Why would Vault-Tec do this?"

Pushing the emotions welling up to the side, not an easy task, Nate left the room. Entering the hall from before Nate was unsurprised to see it was deserted, if there had been any security surely they would have come to find out what he had been doing to cause the buzzer to go off so much.

Nate clenched his fists forgetting about his knuckle, that turned out to be a not so great idea as he ended up gasping in pain. He wasn't likely to be using that finger for a while. With that done he started walking down the hallway cautiously. If his time in the army had taught him anything, and there was much it had, it was to always be on guard in these sorts of situations and he was currently alone and unarmed. Not good.

Making it to the end of the hallway he found a maintenance trolley with a toolbox on it. Nate allowed a grin to make its way onto his face as he opened the toolbox. It was almost empty, which was surprising, however Nate found two useful things in there; an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver. He felt slightly better now he was no longer unarmed, the wrench could serve as a club like weapon if needed and the screwdriver as a knife.

Nate growled as he'd only be able to use his left hand for this, opening his Vault suit slightly and slipped the screw driver in. He could feel the chill of the metal against his skin and, after a few adjustments for comfort and safety (Nate didn't fancy stabbing himself by accident), Nate zipped the suit back up.

Moving the trolley out the way Nate tried opening the door.

"Malfunction in emergency exit door override," the damned computerized voice spoke after the buzzer had sounded. Again. "Please contact your Vault-Tec maintenance representative for service."

Frowning at this he looked around and spotted another door to the side, hopefully this wouldn't also be locked. Moving toward it Nate activated the door and released a sigh as it opened.

"Thank God for small mercies."

Moving into the new hall Nate made his way down a set of stairs, all the while keeping the wrench firmly in his left hand at the ready. As he approached an open door Nate moved to the wall and used this as cover as he looked around the corner. Clear aside from a large window, what gave Nate cause for concern was when he looked at the window initially he thought he saw a shadowed shape move out of view. His fingers tightened around the wrench, he also winced slightly as his right hand flexed instinctively sending a sharp stab of pain through his hand.

"What was that?" Nate muttered to himself.

Another quick sweep around the room and Nate entered, keeping low to avoid being seen through the window. He didn't want to chance anyone seeing him, especially as the last two living people he'd been near had killed his wife and kidnapped his son.

Reaching the end of the room he spotted another room off to the side. This one was much smaller, a type of office Nate guessed given the filing cabinets and desk - upon which sat another terminal along with some things Nate was thankful for; a pack of cigarettes and a flip lighter, and a stimpak.

"Thank Christ," Nate sighed as he placed the stimulant with the screwdriver in his Vault suit, it paid to be ready for the future - Nate just prayed this wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass.

It had been a few years since he'd last smoked, Nate was pretty sure he could justify having one after he got out of the Vault. Opening the pack he saw three straights, nodding to himself he put the lighter in the pack and turned to the terminal. Would this one have the answers he wanted, or would it just serve to help try and break him like the previous one?

Once more there were three options; Vault 111 Security Instructions, Operations Protocol Manual, and Security Logs. Nate's eyes instantly went to the security logs but the instructions might help fill in some details. Nate selected the first option.

This supplied the answers Nate was looking for, not that this meant he felt better. On the contrary, Nate felt his hand flare up once more as his hands clenched but he ignored the pain. Apparently Vault 111 had been designed to 'test the long-term effects of suspended animation on unaware, human subjects'.

"What the fuck is Vault-Tec up to?" Nate all but snarled. "Seriously, unaware human subjects? Lethal force for insubordination?"

Taking a deep breath, soon followed by a few more, Nate clicked back and selected the second option. This opened up three more options. Nate scowled, he knew this may be the case but that didn't make it any less frustrating, and with his already dark mood he was having to restrain himself from putting the wrench through the terminal screen as it was.

The first of these three was fairly standard, up until Nate read the bit about 'disposing' any unaccounted for residents - Nate had a bad feeling about that. Aside from that, the second and third were perfectly normal types of things; staff duties, what to do in case of an evacuation, and awaiting the 'All-Clear' message.

Back at the main screen Nate selected the security logs, time to see what happened here. Unsurprisingly there were multiple options here, Nate figured he could probably skip quite a few as they would likely be standard stuff. In the end he chose five logs that stood out: October 23, 2077; December 25, 2077; March 14, 2078; April 23, 2078; and the final entry marked as 'LAST ENTRY' with no date.

October 23, 2077 turned out to be better than Nate was expecting. The guard who had written it didn't feel right having not told them anything and lamented the fact that 'The Big Kaboom' , as the Vault-Tec rep had put it (Nate figured he didn't know about what would happen as he had seemed to try and get into the Vault), had occurred.

December 25, 2077 was mostly about a Christmas party the Vault staff had, apparently neither the scientists nor the Overseer came which led on to the writer questioning whether there were other company secrets before dismissing them.

March 14, 2078 was apparently a few weeks before the All-Clear was supposed to happen, due to this people were getting stir crazy and the writer was getting paranoid.

April 23, 2078 was when the door Nate had been faced with malfunctioned, at least that's when the writer had added it to his logs. Now the way out was through the Overseer's evacuation tunnel, good to know. As well as this, the writer was invited to a Support and Security staff only meeting. Something must of happened there then.

The LAST ENTRY was about a mutiny that happened, Nate wasn't sure who had started it but whatever had happened didn't sound good.

Nate stepped away from the terminal . Exiting the office he went over to the closed door he had been going toward before stewing over what he had read. The writer had almost murdered someone over a dropped cracker in the final entry apparently, it looked like there had been some very bad things that had gone down here.

Stepping through the door Nate made his way down the hall with his wrench held at the ready, just because there wasn't supposed to be anyone here didn't really mean anything - after all, he'd seen that black thing through the window when he'd gotten into this room.

Reaching the end of the hall Nate opened the door, making sure to keep pressed to the wall just in case. The room before this had two doors on the other end; one lead to what looked like a mess (if the benches Nate could see were any indication), the other was unknown as it was out of sight - the only reason Nate knew it was there was from the light that was projected on the floor in front of it.

Just as Nate was about to move away from the wall he heard...something. It was a sort of scuttling sound, there was no other way of describing it - at least Nate couldn't think of one. Frowning, Nate looked toward the mess where the sound was coming from - coming from and coming closer.

Less than two seconds later he saw what was causing the noise as a large bug came out of the mess. Standing at just under half a foot high and being about a foot long it looked like some sort of giant cockroach, gripping the wrench tighter Nate moved slowly so as to not attract the bugs attention. This failed about three steps in as it turned in his direction and, after a brief pause, rushed toward him.

Waiting for the bug to get into arms reach Nate swung catching the oversized roach across its back. The force of the hit sent the giant insect rolling and cracked the chitin on it's back. As the bug was dazed Nate came forward and swung down this time, the body of the bug seemed to give way to an explosion of viscera.

Nate grimaced as this happened, as some had made its way onto his Vault suit.


I'll be honest, I wasn't planning on ending this here. That being said, time (and the fact this seemed like a good cut off point) caused this chapter to be shorter than intended. Luckily I have managed to rope some family into proof-reading these now so there should, hopefully, be less errors in grammar and spelling