CHAPTER 2: LET'S PLAN, SHALL WE?

It took twenty minutes before I was even able to stand; albeit with a seriously sore chest and a great urge to cough. Brogan sat beside me with a bottle of water in her hand. As I sat down on a desk chair beside one of the terminals, I began to cough violently. My friend handed me the bottle, which I sipped at in an attempt to stop the agonising fit of coughing. Eventually, it helped me from blowing up from the inside-out. "Fuckin' Tunnel Snakes, I'd kick their asses one by one, I bet you; but they always pretend to be tough in their little gang. Immature assholes if you ask me!" I exclaimed, imitating my mother. "I don't know why they won't leave me alone, it's not my fault my Mom is the overseer... idiots!"

"Callum, you've got 2 black eyes. That must have been from earlier, but they're just showing up now." she added, obviously worried.

"Shit, I can't go see my Mom like this. I can't be bothered with her crap! Have you had to sit and listen to one of her dramatic lectures?" I said, now worried as well. I reminded myself that I had to pretend to be brave in the presence of my lady friend, so quickly added. "But fuck 'er, I don't care."

"I have, many a time. They're not the most stimulating things to attend. No, Callum, here, let me put this on you..." She reached into her jeans pocket and fished out a small cylindrical object (we had re-designed her jumpsuit as well).

"No! Fuck that, I'm not wearing make-up!" I turned away in disgust and stood up, wincing in pain and holding my chest by hugging myself with both arms.

"Your Mother isn't going to let you stay at mine tonight if you walk into your quarters looking like an old banana!" She teased.

"Oh... good point. Awk, well she'll just have to deal with it. I'm sorry, Gogo, I'm putting my foot down here. Not even one single chance are you attacking me with that powdery shit." I laughed, pretending to be annoyed in an attempt to be dramatic.

"Right okay then." She huffed, forcefully blowing a cloud of skin-coloured dust at me, "And another thing, you're not three any more, why do you still call me that?"

"That's the way I said your name when I was a wee guy, I'm keeping it that way!"

I urged her toward the doorway and across the atrium so we get to my quarters.

We walked into Mom's office several minutes later, and Mom turned round with a beaming smile on her face.

"It's really nice that you and those boys have made up. For that, I'm going to drop any charges on them." She cheerfully spoke, completely unaware of the assault that had occurred not half an hour previous. Brogitch looked at me, expectant of a response, but I stayed silent. "Oh Brogan, I heard you achieved nurse in your G.O.A.T., that's wonderful, so it is! My Callum managed to get Doctor, didn't you baby?" I looked away in disgust of her attempt to embarrass me which was working perfectly. "But security chief as well... that's peculiar." She stated.

"Yes Miss Overseer..."

"Amata, Brogan... Amata."

"Yes... Amata, Callum never told me about that last part. Did you, Callum... Callum?"

"What? Um... yeah." I replied, my thoughts elsewhere.

"What's wrong baby?" My mother asked.

"Everyone keeps saying that what I got in the G.O.A.T exam is peculiar. Why is that?"

"Well... hmm." she sighed. "Maybe you two better sit down."

"Emm... OK." we both replied in unison.

"Well, Callum, all I've told you is that your Dad lives in the Wasteland. Right?" She asked and I nodded. "Well your Dad, Gavin, used to live in the Vault, until he was 19 years old. He was forced into leaving because your Grandfather left. Oh, by the way, that was Gavin's Father that left, not mine. Anyway, apparently, their leaving had something to do with the framed quote in the clinic that I used to read to you when you were a kid... well that and purified water. Do you remember it?" My mother asked, clearly enjoying telling the story as it was not something she would be able to speak of on a regular basis.

"Revelation 21:6: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely." I replied. Brogan looked at me in awe, clearly taken aback by my biblical ties. I'd never taken an interest in religion before, in fact, quite the opposite.

"That's the one. Well basically, last I heard, your Father had started the water purifier and the "waters of life", so to speak, flowed. Free and clean, for any and all. But that didn't stop the hellish Wasteland from being dangerous. That is why when your Father came back here and put the Vault to rights; I closed the door to the Vault and sent him out: knowing the wandering nature your Father had, he would likely open it again and you would just walk out there with him and be killed. He doesn't even know you exist. Now Callum and Brogan, I want you both to promise me something..."

"What is it?" I asked, giving her a face that a child would do whilst being told a ghost story.

"That you must never try to go out there, that is a life that I would never want for anyone in this Vault."

"Sure." Brogan replied quickly, before I could argue or ask a stupid question that would only arise suspicion.

"Mom, can I stay at Gogan's tonight?" I asked.

"Sure, as long as you don't get into trouble, I know what you're like, the two of you. The dynamic bloody duo. One is just as bad as the other. And, of course, as long as that's okay with Christine?"

"Yep, she said it was fine. I asked her after class today." She assured Mom, turning to her left and giving me a wink with her left eye so Mom couldn't see it. I had to turn away so Mom couldn't see me smiling. Had she fuck asked, at least not yet!

We were sitting on Gogo's bed in her quarters, playing a game on my Pip-Boy. I died in the game and lost my last life. I bared my teeth in anger as an annoying 'game over' sign flashed in my face. I hit my right arm off of the bed in fury (because I was left handed, my Pip-Boy was unorthodoxly on my right arm).

"I have a really serious question for you, little one." I spoke slowly, as if deep in thought.

"Shoot." She replied, eager to know what was so important.

"What do you think it would smell like if you managed to get your Pip-Boy off? Like can you imagine the seven-year-old sweat that's lying in there? And with you it's eight years old! Foosty arm!"

"Oh my God... only you. Seriously... only you would think of that. To be fair you can remove some of the older models. What's foosty? You inventing words again?" She laughed and playfully punched me in the arm.

"No, it's a word I saw in a book about some Old World country. Can't remember which one though."

"Fair enough."

"Okay, now for a real serious question."

"Only if it's not about something else that's disgusting."

"Obviously not. That was a one-off."

"Right, go on then."

"What would you say about me having a plan to escape the vault?"

"Stop kidding around, Callum. Ask me what you really want to say."

"I'm not joking, that's it, Brogan."

"What? Are you fucking delusional! Why the fuck would you want to go out there?" Her face darkened. "You heard what your Mom said: it's really dangerous out there."

"Yeah, but I really want to find my Dad, just to tell him that I exist... because she said that too... that he doesn't even know I exist. I mean if I had a kid... not now obviously, but at some point later on in life... I'd want to know. I mean I've always wanted to know who my Dad was but I just assumed he was some deadbeat who'd probably be dead by now. Obviously a good looking one mind you 'coz I don't really look much like Mom. The way Mom was speaking though, about what this 'Gavin' guy had done. I dunno... he sounds really important. Maybe he can really handle himself. He might still be alive."

"Well, I suppose I understand that, but what's going to happen once we get out?" She replied, either not hearing or choosing not to listen to my over-confidence that I knew she loved so much.

"We?" I asked not believing what I was hearing.

"Yes... WE... you idiot! Wherever you go, I'm coming with you." She insisted.

"But you have a nice life here, you shouldn't leave that behind." I pleaded with her.

"So do you though."

"Yeah... but... emm... I've got a reason to go out there: my Dad."

"Yeah... but... emm... so have I." she replied, mimicking me.

"Oh yeah, really, what's that then?" I asked dismissively, annoyed that she copied me.

"You..." she said in the cutest voice possible and started to cry softly.

"Oh, come on Bee, don't cry. Think of it as an opportunity for me to get away from here. You know, more than anyone that I've hated it in here since before I even realised there was a difference in body structures in boys and girls."

"But I don't want you out there all alone. That's why I need to come with you! So tell me this escape plan of yours, then!"

"Keep it down! Your Mom is just through the wall, remember! All she needs to do is tell my Mother we're planning this and she'll have us locked in her office while she reinforces the Vault door or something."

"Sorry, right, go on then."

"It's not an escape plan, because that suggests that we're going to be caught and half to hightail it out. Right, anyway, to summarise: we sneak out of your quarters; somehow get into my Mom's bedroom and steal her gun from her wardrobe while she sleeps; walk out the main entrance like we own the place; and, all the while avoiding security." I explained, "But that's only if we plan on leaving tonight. We can wait for a few days, but that would complicate things because we'd have to establish where and when to meet."

"But, either way, that doesn't explain how we're going to get past the main entrance guards..." She replied with concern.

"That's where this comes into the equation." I said cockily, gesturing at the pretend gun I made with my right hand.

Her eyes widened in shock and she managed to say. "You can't shoot them Callum; you're not a murderer!"

"No, you clown, no! I'll shoot it into the air or something and then they'll come running out and we'll just sneak by them."

"You sure that will work?"

"It has to. I said 'or something'. You know I'm good at quick thinking though anyway. It's there if it comes to it. Anyway, it's up to you: do you want to leave tonight, or wait a bit? And remember, if at any point you think it's not a good idea, you can turn back and I'll leave myself. I'm not forcing you to go with me, it's completely your choice."

"I'm coming with you, and that is that. As for when we leave, that's up to you because remember, it's your so-called plan. When would you like to leave?"

"My preference? Tonight. Because, I don't know if someone told you but I head-butted Mr. Brotch and burst his nose. He's going to tell my Mom about it tomorrow. I think I'd rather leave the vault with my Mother having a happy last memory of me. Just in-case I don't make it back, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get you. So when we doing this?"

"Wait until two in the morning to leave here. That's when the guards switch shifts. So there will be less of them around."

"Maybe you really have done some homework?" She asked with a laugh.

"I've been snooping around in my Mom's office for weeks now planning certain only really reason why I haven't come up with much is because there's not much to come up with! Most of the Vault's layout is below the level of the entrance."

"If you say so. Right, so now we wait?"

"And now we wait."

We stealthily sneaked past Christine Kendall and her boyfriend (but also Brogan's Dad) Freddy Gomez sleeping in their shared bedroom. It seemed they never wanted to get married. And so, our escape quest had begun.

All was uneventful until we arrived at the atrium, where we saw our first obstacle; the door guards. In order to access the upper-atrium stairway we needed to cross right by their field of view. Although, if we were caught in this early stage of the game, it wouldn't be too bad because we could always just say we needed the toilet or something stupid like that. It was once we had a gun that we couldn't be caught, because that would break at least five of the Vault rules and we'd be done for. I decided that we would have to back-track to the dining area, where we would go through the atrium door there. That door would take us out to the same side that the upper atrium stairs were on, which lead up to the Overseer's family quarters. This, sadly, cost us about twenty minutes of time where my friend's Mom and Dad could have found out we were gone.

Once we entered the atrium again from through the diner, it was a simple u-turn to the right to the upper-atrium staircase. A lone guard was crossing the catwalk in the upper atrium as we reached the top of the stairs. I crouched down low and crept into a shadowy corner of the corridor. Brogan stayed behind the wall. In the position I was in, I could see the guard but he could not see me. The guard sat down at a table with his back to us and I signalled to Brogan to come with me. We didn't need to worry too much about making noise as the large computer mainframes in the (funnily enough) mainframe room next to the upper-atrium gave off a low hum that covered small amounts of sound. We got to the area outside my quarters when I had a great idea. I stopped dead in my tracks and Brogs, who was looking at the ground, bumped into the back of me. "Are you mad?" she said in something that was barely anything more than a whisper. "We can't stop now, we'll get caught."

"Shhh..." I said. "I've got an idea." I crept over to the desks in the hallway and tried to open up the drawers. They were locked. "Fuck."

"What were you trying to do?"

"That's where my Mom keeps our money. We'll need it if we're going outside."

"Good idea, where's the key do you think?"

"It'll be in my Mom's room. Next to her gun probably."

"Right, let's go."

I sneaked into my Mother's room alone and started rifling through the top drawer as quietly as I could, where I saw the password to the vault door written down on a piece of paper. It quite simply read: 'The Password for my terminal and the vault door is: CallumGavin101'. I pocketed the small piece of paper, as well as my Mother's fabled 10mm pistol; that had the Vault 101 insignia printed on it, and 3 full magazines of ammunition. The key for the drawers outside was in the second drawer down, next to a picture of my mother and I on my tenth birthday. I took the picture out of the frame and left it on my Mother's bed as my own way of saying goodbye. I then crept out of the room, not nearly half as quiet as I had entered, which I never actually noticed until I had closed the door behind me. I grinned and stuck out my tongue at Brogan, pulling out the pistol, showing it to her whilst inserting a magazine and flicking back the hammer of the gun with ease.

"Wow, watching those pre-war action movie holotapes really paid off didn't they?" I pointed out cockily.

"Smartass." She replied and smiled back.

I opened up the desks drawers and almost creamed myself at what I saw. In total I had $800!

"Holy fucking sh-..." I hissed but was stopped with my female friend's hand over my mouth.

"Shut it you idiot!" She hissed into my ear, which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and sent a shiver down my spine. I licked the inside of her hand and she ripped it away from my mouth and wiped her damp fingers on my face, disgusted with me.

As we entered the upper-atrium again, I thought that I heard someone coming up the stairs. I noticed that the guard was gone from the table that he was sitting at previously and thought that the noise might be him coming back again. I listened intently so I could confirm my suspicion. My ears were met with the rhythmic sound of footsteps climbing stairs. There wasn't enough time to run back and hide in the mainframe room and before I knew what I was doing, I had jumped the rail of the catwalk and landed hard almost three meters below with my feet stinging from the shock they absorbed. I mouthed up to Brogan to 'hurry up and jump' which eventually she did. The security officer turned the corner at the top of the stairs and missed seeing her by at most half a second. I caught her as gracefully as I could but let's face it, I'm not an action movie hero. and she landed in my arms, taking me down with her. I did well to drown out some of the noise of the fall which was hopefully enough. We waited for the patrolling guard above to disappear from view before we moved behind one of the support pillars for the upper-atrium. I now had to distract the two guards away from the main entrance door. Brogs whispered in my ear to shoot the gun at the far wall to get their attention. I decided it was a good enough plan and let off a single shot. The bullet ricocheted away with a spark and I could have sworn I heard the bullet whizzing past my ear. Although, that being said, it was probably the ringing in my ears from the aftermath of hearing, by far, the very loudest thing I'd ever heard in my life! The noise was deafening! It must have woken up everybody in the vault. The two guards, who I recognised as officers Wolfe and Park, made a beeline for the back wall, batons drawn. It was then easy enough to slip past them but sadly as I was closing the entrance door behind us, one of the officers shouted after us.

"Hold it right there!" Cover blown, we ran straight to the vault door where I wirelessly connected my Pip-Boy to the control panel as fast as I could. I typed in the password that was in Mom's drawer on the touch-screen input command box that came up on my Pip-Boy and pulled the lever. Just as I did that a booming klaxon blared out.

"Oh my God... you actually opened it..." Blurted an innocent voice from Gogo. The door behind us burst open and out came the two security officers. I quickly stopped them by holding the gun up at them threateningly.

"FREEZE!" I shouted, shaking violently in fear.

"Come on, Callum, don't do anything you'll regret." Officer Park said, visibly calmer than I. The vault door made a grinding sound and I turned round slightly to see if we could move back and get out of the vault. That small loss of concentration was all the security members needed. I felt the gun being wrenched out of my hands and my face held securely against the floor. I no longer cared about myself so I sprung my left arm free which was being held at the wrist by Wolfe. No prizes for guessing why I, being left handed and a teenager, had surprisingly strong wrist muscle! I took out the $800 from my back pocket and threw it at my horrified friend.

"Bee, RUN! I will follow soon! Wait for me." I shouted when I noticed Wolfe making a move towards her. She didn't need to be told twice; as soon as I said it she was off. Sprinting for the wooden gate that separated Vault 101 from the atomic wasteland.

"I don't care what the Overseer says, I'm not going out there." Said Wolfe rather sheepishly as I was handcuffed and taken back to my raging Mother.

My Mother and security chief, Suzie Mack, were standing whispering quietly to each other as I sat on my bed sulking (but secretly trying my best to listen).

"Am... a... tunnel... office... not guarded. Does... know... it?" Gomez was saying to Mom.

"I don't think he does. I've never told him." Mom replied, finding it harder to keep her voice down in her obviously angry state. My Mom looked at me and I stared back, my eyes starting to water heavily, but I was not wanting to cry in the presence of someone I wasn't related to. I knew it was just tears of red-hot anger, nothing else but that didn't stop it from making it worse. My Mom seemed to notice because she sent Suzie away.

"Callum, what the hell did you think you were doing? What have I told you about this Vault? About how you've to never leave it! That wasn't the first time earlier on I'd told you to promise you wouldn't try to go out wasn't a joke." That doesn't mean you should be able to keep me here against my own will.

"I... I... I really don't know. I just... wanted to see Dad."

"I understand that Callum, I do, but I don't see why you would lie to me so blatantly like that. And what's worse, you've put Brogan in danger now by sentencing her to her fate in the Wasteland. But even still, I'm not angry at you." She said with a tear in her eye, and I looked up at her, "No, I'm not angry; but I'm very disappointed in you for lying to me like that." She explained. "I see why you would do what you did, but I'm just upset that you lied to me. Why can't you just have told me you wanted to find him. We could've sent one of the scouts out to look for your Father." She smiled and hugged me tight.

"I-I wont try go out there a-again." I said, finding it very difficult to string a sentence together without having to take a deep breath. Mom thought it was because I was crying, she was wrong. I didn't even know where this rage had come from.

"I know you won't. I trust you... okay... I'll get you a glass of water, wait here. " She stood up and walked out of my room. Okay... to be honest, at that moment in time, I actually had decided not to ever try and go back out there as long as they got a search party out for Brogan. I calmed down a bit whilst Mom was away, enough for me to realise that she had been gone for over 10 minutes. I just surmised that she was probably talking to a security member or something like that. Finally, after 20 minutes of calming down, she came back with a large glass of water.

"Mom, I only promise not to try to escape if you send out a search party right now to find Brogan." I said with a determined look on my face.

"Don't worry honey, we have already done so." she said with a sad smile. I drank the water greedily. I realised now that I was extremely thirsty and dehydrated probably from all of the sweating that came with the nerves.) My leg was heavy from shaking so much and every one of my nails were down to the quick. I noticed that the water tasted funny and to my horror, I started to feel very woozy and tired. Suzie Mack came back in the room, so I thought I may be able to listen to their conversation for a bit before I really did pass out. I can't believe my own Mother would drug me... what a BITCH! Just another Overseer corrupted by the power. The library was full of books written in the last couple hundred years about previous Overseers doing this sort of thing! I started pretending to sway and, without warning, fell face first into my Mom's lap.

"Okay, Suzie, send a two-man search party out for Miss Kendall in the morning in Megaton. If she was not there, tell the party to come straight back to the Vault and tell everyone that they found her dead. On the other hand, if she is in Megaton, tell the team to give the girl 5000 caps and tell her to live her life happily. Do not, under any circumstances, let her come back into this Vault. If she is allowed back in and she tells people what is out there, then there will be an uprising just like before. I'm not wanting any more lives being lost because of the Almodov..." Was the last I heard before I really did pass out.

I opened my eyes and checked the time on my Pip-Boy: 6:17 am. I then remembered what had just happened a couple of hours previous. I took a quick surroundings scan. Officers Wolfe and Park were standing in the corner of my room, making sure I didn't 'leave' unexpectedly. Great, so now I'm a prisoner in my own home. A brilliant idea came to me. I sat up on the side of my bed, noticing I had a fucking splitting headache. I pretended to fall to the ground and on to my knees, clutching my stomach and making an agonising wail. Sure enough, my plan worked and over came officer Wolfe with concerned look on his face.

"Callum, are you o..." I had pulled my baseball bat out from between my legs that was stashed under my bed. Wolfe had been uppercut perfectly under the chin, which had taken him by surprise obviously and he had flipped back in the air, kicking Park as he did so. With Wolfe knocked unconscious on the floor and Park dazed, I took my chance and went to crack Park with the bat; but he had recovered. He blocked the strike short with his baton and advanced towards me with it. I completely froze up in fright as he took another step.

"Pl... please duh... don't kill me." I pleaded dropping my bat. Don't get me wrong, I'd been in fights and whatever in the past but these Vault security guards, particularly the door guards were beasts! He put his baton away and I knew my ploy had worked as he took out handcuffs. I waited until he was a foot away from me, and then rammed my foot hard into his private parts. I picked up the handcuffs from the floor that he had dropped when I kicked him and handcuffed him to my bed (thankfully it was bolted to the ground). I looked into my Mother's room to see her sleeping with an empty packet of sleeping pills and a half-full glass of water beside her on her end table. I couldn't help but thinking of the irony of the fact that her own trap let me get away and I laughed as I slipped out of our quarters.

I decided that, since I didn't have a gun, I would definitely need some of the stimpaks that Dr. Gomez gave me. They seemed to basically fix anything that was wrong with you, except for this damn niggling pain in my chest! I crept down to the atrium, seeing that the door guards that were on shift now were sleeping. God, are they trying to make it easy for me? I easily tiptoed by them and sneaked to the clinic, where I began searching for stimpaks. There were none in the main clinic room, so I went into the operating theatre in the back room where I was sure I would find a few. I picked up a couple of medical instruments that I thought may suffice as a weapon. Finding none made me explode with anger because I had just wasted at least ten minutes for a fruitless journey. Blinded by rage, I threw a nearby hot plate at the wall in rage. It hit a section of the wall where a Revelation 21:6 framed bible quote was, causing it to smash and implode into a hollowed out part of the wall behind it. I reached into the hollowed out part curiously and found a battered and slightly rusty 10mm pistol plus a good few full magazines of ammunition. After inserting one in and pulling back the hammer on the gun, I put it in the waste band of my jeans on the left side and pocketed the ammo best I could. I weighed out my options.

Well the entrance is guarded by sleeping guards and obviously I can't try the same trick as before because they'll have been told what I did. I quickly raked through my memories of anything the guards had mentioned about other ways to get to the vault door. I found the answer…when I was passing out from the sleeping pills, I heard Officer Mack say: 'tunnel…office…not guarded.' So office... office... my Mom's office!

I ran up to my Mom's office and stopped in front of the door. Oh Shit, how do I unlock the door? I started to panic until I remembered the scalpel and tweezers which I thought would come in handy as potential weapons before I found the gun in the wall and an idea shot to min

I put the thin tweezers in the top of the lock and started to apply pressure to the bottom of it with the scalpel. Finally, after 10 minutes of tweaking and adjusting, I managed to unlock the door which automatically locked behind me as I entered my Mother's office. I looked for the tunnel that apparently existed in every corner of the room. A stab in the dark directed me to the Overseer's terminal. I logged on using the same password for the vault door that I saw on the paper scrap and sure enough, there it was: 'open Overseer's tunnel'. I clicked on the option and almost pissed myself in surprise when a loud hissing noise sounded behind me. It was the sound of a secret tunnel presenting itself from underneath my Mother's desk! I picked up a black marker pen from the desk and wrote on the wall in huge letters: 'You lied to me, Mom. I'm not sorry for this. Absolute power corrupts absolutely!'

After navigating through the tunnel for a few minutes, for the second time in four hours, I opened the door to Vault 101 and for the first time ever, stepped into the rocky cavern outside. I changed the door password of the vault door to something crude and ironic that I would never, ever forget using my Pip-Boy; and closed the large titanium gear behind me. Finally, this was it, I was no longer a Vault Dweller; I was now an inhabitant of the Capital Wasteland. I didn't know how unfortunate I was about to become.

In reply to Radio Free Death's review. Thanks for the review first and foremost. Second, just to confirm, I meant the Goat year has been changed by two years, this character just has a birthday later on in the year. Some characters would be 17 and some 18 when their 'year' does the exam. In the game all of the characters did their G.O.A.T. On the same day so it does make sense. As for the rest, just give it a chance to get in to the swing of things. Difficult to judge on just 3000 words.