Another glorious day in Vault 121... The time is 7 am, the night shifts are over and new people are replacing those who worked overnight to keep the Vault running and secured. The Overseer enters the security headquarters, as she does every morning, to learn what transpired over the night, while she was 'sleeping' in her recharging pod. The synth slowly nods towards the three men present.
"What's going on?" she inquires. "I just woke up".
"Don't you mean finished charging?" Jim grins.
"Sure. But I said woke up because it sounds more familiar to you humans."
"Us humans?" Jim tries to look annoyed.
"Am I not a machine? Are you not human beings? Anyway, can we cut the crap and someone brief me, please?"
"Yes, ma'am!" The security chief assumes a serious posture while reporting. "Well, it was a quiet night, nothing worth bringing to your attention. Except... this weird looped transmission coming from Vault 54. We weren't able to get in-touch with them since last night. I fear they are either dead or captured, unable to communicate."
"Valkyrie mierda, I tell you..." the hispanic guy mumbles.
"What's that?"
"People say the Enclave is not dead," Rodriguez is slowly raising his voice. "They say they built machine to take los búnkeres back."
"How come I only hear about this now?" the synth asks.
"Well, it's an urban legend, a myth, a fairy tale," chief Frosst intervenes. "Call it whatever you want, but the Enclave is dead, no way they survived. No way."
"A fairy tale, eh? So were the deathclaws until someone actually faced one and lived to tell the story." The Overseer raises her shoulders. "What do you know about these Valkyries, Rodriguez?"
"Nothing much. Palabra in the wasteland is they are advanced synth model, infiltrators. Advanced not as more human, but more combat oriented. La gente dice their bodies can transform when they enter combat mode. They are all mujeres and they all look the same. If you ever saw one, you should recognize it when you see it again. Their objetivo is to infiltrate los búnkeres, blending in with the caravans or regular gente and to seduce the Overseers, get access to their oficinas and ultimately take control of their búnker. The weird transmission we hear now es probablemente encoded message to Enclave HQ that the búnker was secured."
"Well, I wouldn't call this nothing worth bringing to my attention, chief Frosst. Even tho people might be making up stories about the Enclave because they still have lots of supporters out there, there's definitely a lot of speculation we should start looking into, don't you think? See if we have any cryptographers in the Vault, we need to decode that message as soon as humanly possible. Meanwhile, I'll look into where the transmission is being relayed, its destination."
A few hours later, the security chief, young Jim and the Overseer get together in the Situation Room. The synth looks exhausted, if such a thing is even possible for a machine.
"We have a couple of people working on the message, they should be able to decipher it by the end of the day," chief Frosst starts. "They were only able to decrypt parts of it. To no surprise, they are the coordinates of the Vault. Looks like there is some truth behind the Valkyrie myth after all."
"Well, it gets better. I tracked the receiver to New York City." the Overseer adds. "I can't get an exact location without being actually there. So, if the Enclave is still alive and kicking that's where they are located. Quite clever actually, everyone knows NYC was destroyed in the nuclear holocaust, so no one would ever bother to search for them there. I doubt there's many of them left, but if they're taking the vaults one by one we're going to have a problem. They will eventually target this Vault and try to overtake it. While I am immune to human seduction techniques-"
Jim starts laughing out loud. The young man couldn't contain his amusement. Someone seducing his Overseer? That would be like someone trying to seduce a toaster, literally.
"What is it, Jim?" the Overseer inquires curiously.
"Nothing. Please go on, madam Overseer."
"As I was saying, while I can't be seduced for sure, there are other ways to get control over this Vault, especially if you're a synth, such as hacking into the mainframe. So, I'm not going to sit around and wait for that to happen. The Enclave might still be around, but they're small and there's 40,000 of us. We'll take 1000 men-"
"And women," adds the young security guard.
"Please don't interrupt me, Jim," the Overseer frowns. "As I was saying, we will take 1000 men *and* women, travel to New York and take them out once and for all. We will overwhelm them by sheer numbers and we will come out victorious."
"One thousand people traveling through the wasteland?" Jim almost yells. "Yeah, that's not going to drag any attention. Not at all."
"It's the only way. Gather the people, we leave at first light," the Overseer orders.
"Wait, what? Shouldn't we talk about this? I mean, surely we-" Jim starts arguing, but he is quickly interrupted.
"I'm the Overseer," the synth stares at him without blinking.
"So you keep reminding us..." Jim stares back. It's officially a staring contest now, which the synth will eventually win for obvious reasons.
"Understood, ma'am," chief Frosst intervenes. "I'll put out the word, we'll be ready."