Vault 101.

Where no-one ever enters.

And no-one ever leaves.

Where two-hundred years of Vault residents had toiled to maintain their solidarity from the outside world, locked beneath the earth. Eternally entombed, under the orders of Vault-Tec. Never to open, never to see the light of the sun. Never to feel the breeze of spring, or the coarse texture of earth in ones hands. But on that day eleven years ago, the mighty door of Vault 101 slid open for what many believed was the first time, revealing many truths taken for granted had been nothing more than lies.

Chauncy Littlewood was shaken awake to the sound of claxons blaring in his ears, and emergency lights strobing to the tuneless din. Half asleep, his arms acted of their own accord to tangle the limbs that disturbed him, to try and get his legs between him and the unseen attacker as his heartrate raced upwards. Senses overwhelmed; it took him a moment to recognise the desperate feminine voice that hissed in his ears as his mind struggled to catch up to the rest of him. He felt dizzy at the sudden motion so soon after waking. "Chance, Chance! It's me, Amata! Let go of me!"

Instantly, he relaxed. He didn't know what he had been thinking. Of course it would be Amata. Or his Father. For a moment, with all the commotion and noise, he'd thought it must be Butch and his Tunnel Snake flunkies come to rough him up again. It was probably just a Vault security drill, his mind told him as he untangled himself from his friend and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "What the hell Amata? Your dad is such a fucking asshole. Safety drill now? What time is it?"

"I don't know. Listen, we don't have much time!"

He blinked, seeing, and hearing the panic that Amata was feeling. Her brown hair was tangled and messy, though now that he looked at it that might be because he'd just tried to strangle her. But nothing could explain the real note of desperation she had in her voice. Or the chunky 10mm pistol hooked to her Vault Suit belt. "Jesus Amata, why the hell do you have a gun," he hissed, retaining the presence of mind not to bellow the question at the top of his lungs. Snitches get stitches. He wasn't about to be the one to let Overseer Almodóvar know his daughter had managed to snaffle a 10x25mm Pistol from the armoury.

"There's no time," Amata replied in the same sort of hoarse whisper that sent her voice down an octave, to a level that some might describe as husky. Or inadvertently sultry. That voice and the mussy hair, and their extreme closeness, suddenly made him uncomfortably aware of the fact that he slept in nothing but a pair of boxers. 'Not the time,' he thought, quashing the sudden urge from his nineteen-year-old mind.

"My father has told security to arrest you, Chance. He's gone completely mad. He had them kill Jonas! My god, there was so much blood," Amata whimpered the last sentence, eyes unfocused, reliving the moment when Jonas's skull had cracked beneath the soles of the security officer's boots, rising, and falling like the head of a hammer.

Chance's blood ran cold and hot at the same time. Jonas… his father's medical assistant? His friend? Dead? It didn't make sense to him. He stuttered what might have been a denial, but the panicked thousand-yard stare in Amata's eyes told him all he needed to know about the truth of her news. She shook herself to fully conscious thought and unhooked the pistol from her belt. "You have to leave, Chance. Now! Your father left the Vault. It's what set my father off. You need to get out too before my father's security team gets here. If they could do that to Jonas, I don't want them anywhere near you."

His hand closed around the butt of the pistol as if in a dream, finger laying itself naturally across the trigger guard in the manner he'd come to know by heart from long hours playing with his BB gun. And the many issues of Guns N' Bullets he'd flipped through in his free time away from school or playing with Amata. His eyes found the safety and made sure Amata had possessed the wherewithal to keep it on. It was.

"Jonas is dead?" He whispered, shocked.

"Yes, and you might be too if you don't get the hell out of here!" Amata hissed. She shot across the room and jerked open his dresser to pull out a bundle of clothes. The Vault had standardised ways of delivering clothes back to its residents from the laundry. In set bundles of everything you needed to get dressed of a morning. One Vault Jumpsuit, one sleeveless undershirt, one pair grey socks that had at one point been white, one pair of grey underwear which were wearer choice between boxers or briefs. No-one wanted the tighty-whities, predictably. Except Paul Hannon Jr. But he was weird like that.

She jammed two bundles into his Vault schoolbag, tossing him a third that he barely caught with his free hand before it burst all over his face. "Quickly!"

He complied, laying the first real gun he had ever held to the side gingerly, well aware of the caution he had to observe while handling it. He was dressed in less than a minute, minus a few seconds for Amata to finish rubbing her head after slamming it into the wall light in her haste, being distracted by his sudden nakedness. Chance pulled on his Pip-Boy and strapped his baseball bat to the sling on the side of his schoolbag. Where he always kept it in case Coach wanted him for practise. Or Butch wanted to make another sleezy pass at Amata and wouldn't take no for an answer. It paid to bring an equaliser to a fight when it was three-on-one.

"Dad left the Vault?"

Amata whirled around to snap at him, bursting with nervous energy the likes of which she had never felt before and was struggling to control. But he looked just as lost as she felt. She grabbed him by his jumpsuit collar and pulled him into a hug. She didn't know what else she could do. "Chance, I don't know why. I don't know how. I just know that you need to go now. Please, I know this is hard. But you need to…just hold it together. Can you do that?"

Her voice was pleading. He had always been the decisive one of the two of them. Even if he was shy and standoffish, a bit of a nerd, preoccupied with whatever gadget or subject that he had chosen to fixate on. She had come to him the second she realised what was happening, not just to warn him, but because she knew he would know what to do. And how to do it. She hadn't considered just what she might do if he couldn't hold it together.

But as soon as she pulled away from the embrace and saw that indefinable light returned to his hazel eyes, she knew everything would be fine. He glanced towards the door, nodding slowly to himself and to her question. "Yeah, I can do that. Amata," he grasped her shoulder, feeling her heartbeat and the defined ridge of her collarbone beneath the vault jumpsuit, "You need to go. Hide! If I leave and you stay, then your dad can't know you warned me. Go back to your room, close the door, and wait there. Or run and find your dad! Pretend the alarms woke you and you went to go find him, but whatever you do don't let anyone know you warned me! Can you do that?"

Amata nodded fervently, looking at him as if there was something she wanted to say, but hesitated to voice. He returned a similar gaze, wondering if what she was clearly considering was the same as his own internal monologue. He gritted his teeth so had he thought his backmost molars would crack from the pressure. It was ludicrous that now, of all times, when he clearly had much more important business to attend to, was when he finally mustered the courage to speak the words he'd daydreamed of saying so many times.

But, it would have to be now.

He would have been brave enough to tell Amata that he loved her under different circumstances. Any day of the week. If not for who her father was. He had never thought it could be anyone else; not since thirteen-year-old him had looked upon thirteen-year-old her and felt that strange sensation of butterflies in his gut. When he suddenly noticed how good she smelled, or how soft she felt when they played 'Catch the Mutant' together, and everything he thought he knew about their friendship changed overnight.

He had never had many friends. He was that weirdly serious kid who never seemed to get any of the jokes the other kids told, had trouble reading subtext, and spent hours upon hours fixated upon a single subject to the exclusion of everything else. She had never had friends either, despite being perfectly sociable; much less of an oddball than him. But being the Overseers daughter was a barrier to friendship. It was akin to being the daughter of the teacher in middle-school. None of the other kids could separate her from the influence of her father. All except him, with his innate obliviousness and as-yet unearned, juvenile confidence.

Despite everything, the two of them had always had each other. And he knew that if he didn't say anything now then he never would. The great steel door of the vault wasn't a revolving glass door at a pre-war hotel. It was the definitive boundary between themselves and the rest of the world aboveground. Leaving was an impossibility that had only just been proven a possibility to the residents of 101. Coming back? Coming back was an insane proposition. So he mustered all the bravery he had, which for his age was an impressive amount, and lifted his hand to her cheek. They stood there for a moment, which felt like an eternity. He, with his hands on her collarbone and her cheek, stroking the skin as he tried to convey everything he felt just through the feel of his skin upon hers.

And she didn't pull away. On the contrary, she lifted her hand to his and tilted her head against his palm, closing her eyes to the claxons and the strobing safety lights. This was all the encouragement he needed. He leant in and pressed his lips to hers. It was his first kiss. And he was almost certain it was her first, also. It was clumsy and innocent, like a child's kiss. Unaware of what the gesture could be with a little more ardour. But it contained everything a kiss should. Love. Affection. Desperation. And, tragically, just a hint of despair.

They separated, and the words came unbidden to his lips, "Come with me."

The second he spoke the words he knew it was a fools hope. Her expression crumpled like a wet paper bag, reality intruding upon the culmination of every fantasy he'd ever had that started and began with the kiss they had just shared for the first time.

"I can't."

The words were hollow. Broken.

They had always had each other.

And in a world where nothing ever changed, this had seemed a certainty. Reality intrudes.

He leant his forehead against hers, taking the last lungful of her scent.

"I know. Had to ask."

She squeezed his hand, trying to reassure. Whether it was for her sake or his, he couldn't tell. And he suspected that neither could she.

Then she was gone from his grasp. She hesitated at the door, looking back over her shoulder at him one last time. He'd taken a lot of punches in his short life. Butch and his gang loved the thrill of violence, and he never learned how to stay down. But her final gaze hit him harder than a Vault Little League bat. Then she was gone.

Past the clawing pain in his heart, his mind remained oddly focused, as it always did. He counted backwards from ten. Giving her a head start, so there wasn't any chance of them being seen in the hallway together, or merely at the same time. Then he left the room he had lived in his entire life for the last time.

Scarcely had he entered the long hallway before he was seen. Officer Kendall, Christine Kendall's father was out in the hallway, backlit by the fire that had burst out at the end of the hallway and striding towards him. Obviously intending to force his way inside the Littlewood's small domicile. He shuddered to a surprised stop when he saw Chance. Behind the hard plastic visor of the Vault security helmet, Chance saw John Kendall's eyes narrow. There had never been any bad blood between them. John was a straightforward and diligent man, something that Chance respected. He was like that himself, although in his case it wasn't because he emulated it, but rather because straightforwardness was just his nature.

He saw in those eyes a kind of grim uncertainty. John Kendall wasn't sure he wanted to be the one to collar Chauncy Littlewood, the little kid who'd gone to school with his daughters. But that was the problem with duty. He'd been given orders. He had been handpicked by the Overseer to serve as Vault Security. That deserved a certain degree of loyalty. And John Kendall was nothing if not loyal. And when his eyes saw the pistol at Chance's hip, it sealed the deal. He drew his N99 service weapon with a snap of the disconnecting holster strap. "Stop right there, Chauncy! Just keep your hand where I can see them!"

Chance, who had never handled a real gun before in his entire life, hadn't even had time to get his hand onto the butt of his own weapon. He raised his hands instead, wondering how exactly he was meant to get out of this one. No sooner had the thought entered his mind, than it was answered by a peculiar source. Radroaches stormed around the corner, a swarm of them, bigger than any Chance had ever seen in his life. He'd killed small specimens of the greater periplaneta americana birthed by the radioactive fallout of the Great War. Stranglers that had found their way into Vault 101 at some indeterminate point in the past and had cultivated a sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting, but ever-present kingdom in the darkest corners of the vault maintenance levels.

These were larger by far. Fresh from the surface, he realised. Let in by his father's exit into the grand Outside. And Officer Kendall was forced to turn away from Chance to fight them. And Chance honoured the lesson his many bouts with Butch, Wally and Paul had instilled in him. He went for the Security Officer like shot. John's N99 roared once, tearing through the thick chitin of the foremost Radroach before Chance's elbow rocked the guards head to the side and threw him to the ground. The Radroaches, fixated on the first target they had sighted, swarmed him as the pistol skittered away.

One went for Chance, who stomped it repeatedly with his booted foot until it stopped moving and the gore coated the underside of his foot. Then he heard John Kendall's cursing, and the sound of his security baton cracking chitin. He turned to see the swarm of Radroaches savaging the officer. They hadn't done any permanent damage yet, as most of their efforts had been directed towards his standard issue flak vest and thick-visored riot helmet. But that could go either way.

And that was the problem with honour. When it was in your nature, you just couldn't help yourself. Chance, however, was one of the brighter spoons in the drawer. He retrieved the second pistol from the floor, flicked on the safety, and hooked it beside the gun Amata had given him. Then he walked over to the wildly writhing pile of insects that piled atop the unfortunate officer and timed the moment that he took the last step carefully. His forearm intercepted the baton and twisted the officers wrist just-so, in the way he knew hurt like the devil, because he had tried it on Butch who had tried it on him in turn. Neither of them had been gentle. And neither was he as he separated the baton from the security officers hand and grasping it lengthways across his arm by the protruding handle, he dropped his entire bodyweight into a blow aimed at John's helmet.

It rocked the fully grown adult man like a wrecking ball, denting them helmet and knocking him unconscious. Then, goody-two shoes that he'd always been, Chance stomped the insectoid guts out of the remaining Radroaches. He stood panting after he was done, staring at the flak vest John wore, and reminiscing upon the fact that he'd always wanted to know what wearing one felt like. He ducked down and unstrapped it, pulling it over John's head and knocking the helmet aside in a clatter of reinforced plastic on metal flooring. John's head, receding hairline and all, bounced off the flooring with a dull thud. Well, maybe only goody-one shoe then? The vest had pouches for three spare magazines for the pistols on his belt. All three were full.

Chance dropped his schoolbag and pulled the security vest over his head, fastening it down by manipulating the straps as best he could guess. Security Vests were one-size-fits-all, but it felt uncomfortable no matter how much he adjusted the straps. Well, beggars couldn't be choosers.

He shouldered his schoolbag again and bolted, security baton held at the ready. And he didn't get far before a familiar voice managed to find its way to him through the thickening smoke that built along the ceiling of the hallway and the wailing sirens. "Help! Somebody! Fucking help me, anybody!"

Chance recognised that voice anywhere. Butch. Butch DeLoria. He had known his voice for years, in a variety of pitches and tones. He'd seen Butch's face so close to his own he could count the pores on his brow, and the veins that stuck out on his forehead underneath his artfully slick-back greaser hairdo. His face twisted in rage and effort as they struggled for dominance over one another. You could say that he knew Butch better than he knew Amata. Two teenagers that had known each other since childhood and whose primary method of communication involved attempting to beat one-another unconscious with their fists, elbows, knees, forearms, feet, heads, and on one particularly memorable occasion, when Butch had tried to smother Chance with his stomach.

Don't ask. Butch was sensitive about that particular month when he had hurt his leg fighting with Chance and had needed to lay up in bed. He had consequently gained rather a lot of weight. Something that Chance, who had understandably had it out for Butch, had made a point of waxing lyrical upon at every available opportunity.

Chauncy came to the intersection of the hallway that he knew led down to the door of the DeLoria's residence. And saw Butch stomping the hell out of a particularly large Radroach at the door. His jumpsuit pant leg was torn, soaked in blood that smeared the flooring around him. Butch was no coward.

Even Chance, though he reserved a special kind of dislike for his peer, admitted that much. Despite his position as the Vault's resident bully, Chance hesitated to call Butch a bully in good consciousness. In his mind, a bully was the type to pick on the weak, and back away from the strong. He'd learnt that from comic books. But of all the people Butch chose to pick on, he chose Chance. The kid who never backed down from a fight, three-on-one or otherwise. And who always gave as good as he got.

That wasn't the choice of a bully. That was the choice of an insecure kid with something to prove, even if it were only to himself. A boy who wondered at night why he didn't have a father like the other kids. Why his mother drank more than the other parents, and why she sometimes borrowed his switchblade to cut jagged red groves in her own wrists, half a bottle of vodka deep to the wind, tears dripping from her eyes to patter on the stainless-steel sink. Crying out her dead husbands name, as if her torment would call Lewis DeLoria back to life.

Butch had listened to that many a night. Wondering if it was his fault and hating himself and everything around him. And especially Chance, who saw him every time he had to walk alongside his mother to the clinic to pick up her pain medication and have her wrists looked at. 'Yes doctor, clumsy me. I must have dropped the bottle again.'

But everyone had known. The young Butch had been sharp enough to realise that much. And he hated the fact that Chance and his father saw. Even if James Littlewood did his utmost to manage Ellen's depression. Because in a young mind, if it was his fault, then he didn't want anyone to see. His shame. Real men helped when things went wrong. But little Butch didn't know how. So he started dressing like a greaser, because in the magazines from before the war, the charismatic gangers with great hair and a devil-may-care attitude always had a smart quip and a fast blade. They festooned themselves with glory, and a crude form of a code. They looked out for their own.

Butch had caught sight of the security vest and had opened his mouth to cry for help, but when his gaze panned upwards, and he caught sight of his victims face, his own expression plummeted faster than a stone at terminal velocity. Chance knew what was going through his mind. Every single fight, every exchange of insults, every time Butch had made a sleezy pass at Amata to annoy Chance. Because, despite never being able to admit it, he too had realised at a young age that Amata was a looker.

The two teenagers stood, frozen, as all they had ever shared flashed through their minds at breakneck speed. Chance never fought anyone beside Butch and his pals. And Butch never fought anyone apart from his pals or Chance. It was a disservice to call Chance Butch's victim, or Butch Chance's bully. They were more like rivals. There was a certain amount of equality in that. "Please," Butch yelled, "They're attacking my mom! You've gotta help me, man!"

'Gotta help me?' Chance thought. Why did he 'gotta have to' help anyone just because Butch DeLoria of all people was pleading for him to do so?

Then he heard Ellen DeLoria scream from within the small room down the hallway past Butch. Butch whirled around and began limping towards the room as fast as his gimp leg would carry him. And Chance followed him at a run.

That was the problem with honour, see?

When you have it, you just can't help yourself.

"Butch!"

DeLoria turned to see the baseball bat flying through the air towards him, and he grabbed it out of sheer reflex, astonished to find Chance at his side. Then they were through the open sliding door into the apartment. Butch smashed a Radroach with the bat, as Chance did the same with his baton, both of them screaming their nerves away like maniacs. A bunch of the Radroaches had converged on Ellen's room. The untidiest room in the Vault that stank with the kinds of smells that Radroaches, and more to the point, most roaches in general loved to congregate in. Ellen DeLoria was in the room, beating ineffectually at the Roaches that swarmed about, screaming at a pitch only professional opera singers could reach naturally.

Her jumpsuit was torn, and her frail body was shaking like a reed. Butch, who loved his mother in spite of the worst of what she put him through, came into the room like a raging bull, fighting how Chance had always known him to fight. With sweeping blows that combined his natural heavyset frame with the precision and brutal ferocity he had learnt from fighting Chance. They laid about themselves with their blunt weapons, covering the room with a thick coating of splattered insect. This they did without ever striking one another by accident in the close confines of the room. After all, they had been fighting each other for years. They knew almost instinctively where the other was and what he was doing.

And before they knew it, it was over. Butch rushed his mother and gathered her up in his arms, kneeling on the gore encrusted carpet as the baseball bat toppled to the ground beside him. Ellen bawled into his shoulder like a child, clutching at him as if he would dissipate into the ether. Catatonic with shock and the adrenaline dump. "Lewis! Lewis, I knew you'd come!"

Chance looked away. Even though he had just fought his way through a tide of Radroaches to get to here, screaming his lungs out in a nerve-induced battlecry that had kept his arms steady as he pummelled the insectoid menace that scurried around them, this curiously intimate scene made him feel obscurely embarrassed. Butch didn't seem to care that his shellshocked mother had mistaken him for his long dead father. He just hugged her close and told her that everything would be okay.

Then he turned his head as far as his mother's crying face would allow, and gazed at Chance from underneath his dishevelled hair, which had come loose from his artfully arranged pompadour during the fight. It hung down over his brow like a comically misplaced flap. "We did it. We saved her. Thanks man, I…"

He seemed at a loss for words. Butch had never been the smartest individual. "Butch DeLoria," Chance sneered, "Thanking me for my help. I only you knew what 'irony' meant."

Butch grimaced, "I know, I fucked with you man. I know I've always been a jerk to you. But I swear, from now on I'll never fuck with you ever again. You're my friend."

"I didn't do this to be your fucking friend Butch. Shove it up your ass," Chance muttered, before turning away.

"Hey!" Butch sprang up and shrugged off his jacket, the black leather greaser trademark adorned with the curled and striking snake of the Vault 101 Tunnel Snakes. Green and vibrant against the dark background, with metal studs to add the flair and machismo that Butch liked to believe he was known for. "I fucking mean that man. You're my best friend forever. Take it," he proffered the jacket to Chance.

That was made it clear to Chance that Butch wasn't just blowing hot, cheap air in payment for the help he'd never expected to get and would take for granted now that he had. That jacket was an intractable part of Butch's self-image. He was a poor kid. His two most valued possessions were his switchblade and his jacket. Something he probably would never be able to replace. And he was offering it to Chance, staring him straight in the eyes as he did so. Ellen watched the exchange in confusion, still coming to terms with the last few minutes.

"Butchie?" She asked, uncertainly, realising that the man in front of her wasn't her husband as her pain and panic addled mind had thought, but her son.

Chance took the jacket, looking between it and Butch. He didn't know exactly what to say. He never did, beyond calculated statements meant to wound. He had no frame of reference for this. So he did what he always did with Butch and slugged him one right in the jaw. It was a comparatively light tap compared to what he could have done. It still rocked Butch pack a few steps, hunched over and cradling his mouth. Ellen gasped, a hand flying to her mouth.

"We're even," Chance spoke through his hesitant glower. Butch, massaging his jaw, nodded. He understood. "Even."

Then something hit Chance like a charging line-backer and lifted him off the ground to slam into the wall further into Ellen DeLoria's bedroom. Butch shouted, Ellen screamed, and John Kendall and Officer Armstrong pinned Chance against the wall as he struggled to turn around and engage them. "Hold fucking still, you little shit," John snarled. His hand went for the guns at Chance's waist, one of them his own service weapon. Armstrong twisted Chance's arm upwards behind his back, holding him roughly against the wall. Through the pain of the armlock, Chance looked behind him to see if he could spy something, anything, that could get him out of this.

And past the rageful expressions of Armstrong and Kendall, he saw Butch's hand close on the handle of the fallen baseball bat and knew exactly what was about to happen. The expression on Butch's face told him everything he needed to know. It was the same expression he had seen a thousand times. The face Butch made when he was about to wade into flurry of fists that Chance would throw at him, mouth squeezed into a tight little hole that he'd always thought looked like a contacted sphincter from one of his father's medical journals, face blotchy red with vascular veins popping from his brow. Eyes narrowed as he hyped himself up for violence.

Because Butch wasn't a coward. Butch wasn't a bully. He just had an image of himself that his younger self had created in the hopes that it would save him from the darkness of his life. Of a confident and slick-back greaser who could face down all arrivals in a storm of fists and led his own motely gang of likeminded urban heroes. And he wasn't the smartest, was frequently conceited, stubborn, bull-headed and sleezy. But he had a weird kind of honour.

'And that was the thing about honour, see?' Chance thought as Butch swung the bat at the back of John Kendall's head.

When you had it, you just couldn't help yourself.