The sunlight blinded us as we emerged on the surface, considering we hadn't seen sunlight in who knows how long, it should have done more than that. A side effect of the cryostasis probably stopped it from outright searing our corneas. Once our eyes adjusted, we were afforded a remarkable view of the ravaged landscape. The ground was mostly a dull brown with leafless trees and aging ruins scattered across the landscape. In the distance, you could see what had to be the decaying remains of Boston All in all, it was better than what I'd been expecting.

China was my prime suspect in launching the attack. Our best intelligence had estimated China had a stockpile of roughly seven thousand and three hundred nukes, with a little under eighteen hundred on active standby. At any given moment, we estimated roughly two hundred of those were pointed at Washington DC, a hundred a piece for New York and Los Angeles, and varying numbers for everywhere else. If I remembered correctly, Boston was slated for about twenty. I'm not an expert in nuclear annihilation, but this definitely wasn't the result of twenty high yield nuclear weapons. I would say five at most.

Mikhail and I swept the perimeter around the vault entrance, no hostiles, not even the roaches. After that, we searched the area for supplies. We found some ammo, a stimpack, and some other minutiae that might come in handy later, then we began making our way back down the hill. Memories came rushing back as we descended, having my morning coffee, watching the news, going to comfort Shaun, it had been a normal morning. Then the sirens went off, everyone screaming and panicking, sprinting down the street, Shaun in Nate's arms, Mikhail and Natalya close behind us. Climbing the very hill we were coming down now, the soldiers, the people being left out to die. The whole world had gone to hell in less than a minute.

We reached the bottom and crossed the bridge to the street, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. "Contact," I spun around and leveled my pistol at the possible hostile, knowing that Mikhail was following suit. The contact, as it turned out, was a Mister Handy trimming the bushes in front of my house.

It saw us through one of its robotic eyes and whirled around. "As I live and breath," it exclaimed as it hovered over to us. "It really is you, Miss Madison, Mister Volkov!"

What's it talking about? I looked at it in confusion for a moment, then the realization dawned on me. "Codsworth?" I asked tentatively, "You're… still here?"

"Well of course I'm still here." He said in that cheery English accent. "Surely you don't think a little radiation could deter the pride of General Atomics International." He poked an eyestalk at me, "But you seem the worse for wear. Best not let the hubby see you in that state. Where is Sir, by the way?"

I slid the pistol into my pocket, emotion burning in my throat, and out of the blue I hugged the damn robot. Strange, yes, irrational, probably, did I nearly get a burn on my hand from his thruster, oh yes. But at that moment, he was a little piece of my old life that hadn't been destroyed. "He's gone Codsworth, He was killed and they took Shaun." Tears came rushing out, this time I didn't do anything to stop them.

Codsworth didn't have the ability to display body language, but I could almost feel him shaking his nonexistent head. "Ma'am… these things you're saying. These… terrible things… I… I believe you need a distraction. Yes! A distraction, to calm this dire mood." I stepped away, wiping the tears from my eyes, realizing just how strange a thing I was doing. "It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. Checkers, or perhaps charades. Shaun does so love that game. Is the lad… with you…?"

I looked at him, he wasn't comprehending what I was saying. "Codsworth, how long has it been since I last saw you?"

Codsworth blinked one of his robotic eyes. "Ahh, that must be the problem ma'am. It's been too long since you had a good meal, you're suffering from hunger-induced paranoia. Two hundred years of not eating properly will do that to you, I'm afraid." Two hundred years… it had been two hundred years since I went into that pod.

Mikhail put a voice to my thoughts, "Two hundred years, what? Are you…" He shook his head, struggling as much as I was to come to grips with the situation. The roaches had told me enough for me to make a scientific estimate, but there's a huge difference between making an intellectual abstraction and having concrete reality shoved in your face by a robot butler.

Codsworth was unfazed by our shock. "A bit over two hundred and ten actually, Sir. Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some dings to the ole chronometer." Okay, two hundred and ten years. And at one point in that time, a pair of individuals, possibly a whole team, infiltrated the vault, executed Nate, kidnapped my son, and exfiltrated without issue. That could have occurred at any point within that time, I shook my head in frustration, there went any hope of being able to rush down the road and catch the bastards as they made their escape. Not that there was any hope of that to begin with, but… In short, I needed to start coming up with a long term plan to find Shaun, or failing that, learn what happened to him.

Codsworth was still talking, but I'd stopped listening. The first thing I needed to do was find someone who knew what the hell was going on, if so many buildings survived, then people had to have survived as well. Where there were people, there was a balance of powers, there are agendas being pushed, factions pushing those agendas, and those factions were made up of followers. Sometime in the last two hundred and ten years, two followers of one of those factions had broken into Vault 111, killed Nathan Shields along with almost everyone else in cryostasis, and kidnapped my son to help push their agenda and tip the balance of power in their faction's favor.

Once I had the lay of the land, I needed to figure out which faction was behind the infiltration. That would need a whole plan of its own, but that was something I'd get to later. It would probably involve developing a network of assets, penetration of the various organizations, and establishing a cover for myself. After I'd learned who I was going to have to deal with, my first priority would be learning whether or not Shaun was still alive, after that would be rescuing him, and after that, whether Shaun was alive or not, I would strike them from the face of the Earth with the fury of God's own thunder.

"Focus," Mikhail said, "You must stay with us moj drug." That's when I realized he wasn't talking to me, he was talking to Codsworth.

Codsworth answered using his most distraught voice setting, "I'm afraid I don't know anything, sir. The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain that Ma'am and Sir and Shaun and all of you were… dead." His eyestalks dipped as if he were hanging his head. "I did find this holotape. I believe Sir was going to present it to you. As a surprise. But then, well… everything happened."

Codsworth dispensed the holotape from one of his hidden compartments and gave it to me. It was no different from any other holotape, it's only distinguishing mark being a piece of tape with 'Hi Honey!' written on it in Nates sloppy handwriting. "Thank you Codsworth," I tucked the holotape into the pocket of my suit. Vault-Tec may have been evil deceptive pricks, but they made a damn good suit.

Codsworth made a sniffling noise, "You're welcome." His tone changed back to the standard 'Stiff upper lip' Englishman, "Now. Enough feeling sorry for myself. Shall we search the neighborhood? The hubby and young Shaun may turn up yet."

I had severe doubts about that, but we needed to secure the neighborhood. "All right. Lead the way." Cleaning out the neighborhood was relatively easy, though it did bring some delightful revelations. As it turned out, the roaches weren't the only new creatures that had emerged from the nuclear apocalypse. Some type of fly, I'd guess a blowfly, had mutated to not only become huge, but had also gained the ability to shoot radioactive maggots with razor sharp spines. Let me repeat that, Radioactive. Maggots. That. Stab. You.

God, I hate FEV. At the very least they were easy to kill, one shot could do it. We let Codsworth handle the majority of the bugs with his buzzsaw so we could conserve ammunition. There weren't too many bugs in the neighborhood, thankfully. We only encountered them in two of the houses, Codsworth's flamer made short work of their nests. When we were done, Codsworth turned to us, his eyestalks hanging in despair, "I'm sorry ma'am, your family isn't here either. They're… they're really gone, aren't they?"

"It's alright Codsworth, I didn't think Shaun would be here, but don't worry, I'll find him." Or failing that, I would find his body.

Codsworth perked up, an idea apparently forming in his electronic brain. "What about Concord, ma'am? Plenty of people there. And last time I checked, they only pummeled me with sticks a few times before I had to run back home."

Exactly what I needed. If I could find people, I could gather intel. Once I had intelligence, I could start coming up with a plan. "There are still people alive in Concord?"

Cogsworth hovered up slightly then down again, his version of a nod. "Yes, although they're a bit rough. You remember the way?"

"Yes," Mikhail answered before I could speak. It wasn't hard to remember, especially considering, as far as my memory was concerned, I'd been there with Natalya for drinks only two days ago.

"I shall remain here and secure the home front." With that Codsworth turned and hovered off to do… things. I don't know how he's spent his time for the past two hundred years. Maybe I should have shown some more gratitude, he'd waited for me for over two centuries after all. But I could get to that later, now I needed human intelligence.

We debated whether or not to gather our equipment beforehand. On the one hand, I wanted to move fast, we needed to know the kind of world we were dealing with and I was pretty damn sure that the situation on the ground was fluid. Hell, I was pretty sure that the situation in the whole damn world was fluid. And if the situation was fluid, then the longer we took to get to concord, the more likely some roving band of post-apocalyptic warlord wannabes were to slaughter them for a can of Nuka Cola. Seem unlikely, cut out the 'post-apocalyptic' part and I've lost more than a few potential sources that way.

Mikhail wanted to gather all of our equipment before setting out. His argument was simple, he also thought the situation was fluid and we were likely walking out into a hostile rich environment. Taking that into consideration, he wanted to go armed for bear. More specifically, he wanted to go loaded for a Kodiak Arctic Assault Vehicle and an infantry platoon. That meant the heavy duty anti-armor and anti-personnel weaponry that he had stashed in his basement. As well as the special equipment in my basement. Yeah, needless to say, we epitomized the urban legend about dark secrets beneath suburban bliss, both metaphorically and literally.

We compromised in the end. Just our go bags, which had by some miracle, survived the nuclear fire and the intervening two centuries. Between the two of us, we were outfitted with tactical vests with ballistic inserts, a suppressed SMG, a standard issue spetznaz modular assault rifle, four frag grenades, two smoke signals, two sat phones, two first aid kits, and enough food and water to last us each seventy-two hours. That was along with the pistols, Pip-Boys, and everything else we were able to scavenge from the vault.

We were out of Sanctuary in roughly fifteen minutes. Strangely enough, we found a couple of frag grenades in the trash can on the way out. The bridge was mostly intact and the road was clear other than a pair of corpses lying just over the bridge, a man and a dog. Judging from the cuts on them both, that bore an eerie resemblance to those inflicted by a circular saw, Codsworth hadn't taken too kindly to attempts at looting.

We didn't talk much while we walked. We were both on-mission now, we had a set of objectives, we had the means to achieve those objectives. We were going to achieve those objectives.

We reached our first checkpoint when we reached the Red Rocket gas station, I'd been there just a week ago to get some parts to tinker with my Rocket. God this was weird, two centuries in less than a day. I had to stop thinking about that. I needed my head in the game.

"Contact, two o'clock." I turned, bounding toward us across the cracked asphalt was a German Shepherd. Not a giant German Shepherd, not a flying German Shepherd, not one with a ten-foot tongue that could be used as a whip, just a normal German Shepherd as far as I could tell. I cannot put into words how comforting it was to see a normal, non-mutated, animal.

I dropped to a knee and held out my hand for the dog to sniff. "Hey boy, what are you doing out here?" He nuzzled my hand and I ruffled the fur on his neck. He barked and looked up at me with a big friendly grin. I scratched behind his ears and his tail started wagging, "You have an owner boy?" The dog shook his head in a strangely human gesture. "So what are you doing out here?" He shoved his head against my stomach and then thrust his head toward Concord. "We're going there already; you want to come with us?" He nodded, barking affirmative.

"Madison," Mikhail spoke slowly, "You are having a conversation with a dog." The dog turned to Mikhail and growled. Mikhail looked him in the eyes, unfazed, "Be careful comrade, you are in the presence of wolves." The dog snorted, his hackles up. Mikhail laughed and stood up again, "I like him." The dog relaxed and let out a soft bark that sounded eerily similar to chuckling.

Then I asked the question that had been rattling around in the back of my mind. "You understand everything we say?" The dog nodded. Great, hyper intelligent dog, nature giveth, and nature puncheth you in the boob. "You don't talk right?" He shook his head. Well, there was that at least. With our new canine companion, we cleared the station and its perimeter, introducing us to another of the wasteland's creatures. giant naked mole rats. These creatures were seriously making me consider the possibility that this was all some crazy drug trip.

We found a number of items that could be of some use, but we left them for later. On the way to Concord, we encountered giant mosquitoes. At this point, I had given up on any hope for biological normalcy. But if I saw a giant mutant spider, I swear to god, I was going to nuke the world for a second time.

Reaching Concord, I was surprised to find so much of it intact. Most of the buildings were boarded up, but almost all of them were still standing. Noise led us to main street, just as I was about to round a corner, a laser flew in front of us, passing from my face. I dropped low and rolled behind a sandbag barrier while Mikhail darted across the street.

"Multiple hostile contacts!"

…

Alright guys, second chapter, tell me what do you think so far? Good? Bad? Ugly?

In any case, two things. The first, when is best for me to publish for you guys? Does it work better for you guys if I do it in the morning, at night? That's not a content issue and I've got a free schedule, so it's up to you guys.

Second thing, at some point I will be moving the rating up to M. I haven't decided when yet, but it gives me more artistic freedom to write. That'll take me off the main page and you'll have to adjust your filters to see M stories.

Oh yeah, and a big thank you to my first few favorites and followers for this story, big thanks to HayabusaDragonForce, . .dark, revanchist131, and VoodooValkyrie.

Either way, R&R people