Hello again, readers! Welcome to a fanfiction DLC! If you have just now read the previous chapter, please take a little break now. Let the main story settle in your brain for a day or two, enjoy the ending, before reading on. As with the game, you have just read the real story and this is just an add-on. A really long add-on, but an add-on. This story is finished and chapters will be posted every weekend-ish. Please be merciful in the reviews.

It looks like this fanfiction DLC will be just the story of Nuka-world, which happens in the postgame timeline about five years after the peace conference. So there won't be any Daily Life in Sanctuary chapters and I'm sorry about that since I know some of you really like them- and so do I- but that's just how it turned out.

Begin Recording

Collared

Recording by Scribe Ellison

Hey, you want to start recording? I'm sure half the Capital Wasteland would love to hear about this. But I want books from the Arlington Library in exchange. If you're hearing this then anything worth invading the park for has been moved or buried or… 'don't bother looking for it.' Just enjoy the story with the pieces I'm not giving Piper.

Dogmeat and I were traveling with the Monteiros, Carlos and Nina and their daughter Marta. They have a big farm out west with animals we haven't got in the Commonwealth, some with actual fur. I wanted to buy one or at least see them so I offered to hike home with the family as an extra gun since they were carrying a lot of caps. They'd come down with a brahmin loaded down with dried meat and hides, in the end they even sold the brahmin. A good day in Diamond City! Should've been simple: we walk west, reach their settlement, I talk trade with the guy in charge.

Instead we almost got killed.

It's bleak out there, the soil's bad so there isn't much growing, just rocks and hills. Those hills weren't like that before the war, it's like something shoved the ground up… but it's not irradiated. Who knows. We were in the middle of this, camped for the night cooking up a molerat that Dogmeat brought in and I'm talking to Nina about butter churns and how they make cheese and Carlos saw someone coming.

It was a young woman, maybe eighteen, Marta's age, in road leathers with a big backpack. Road leathers with flowers painted up the legs. "Yoohoo! Can I join y'all's fire? S'just me."

The family looked at me and I shrugged. "Sure. There's enough meat on this molerat."

"Well thank ye kindly. Y'all traders?"

So we chatted and had dinner. The girl was named Dixie, a courier up from Texas. Of course I wanted to know everything about Texas and all the places in between so I invited Dixie to walk with us the rest of the way because I wanted to know all about the stilt houses in the toxic swamps of Louisiana. So everything that happened next is my fault.

A few days on we all trusted Dixie enough that when she offered to take a watch nobody thought anything of it. Until we woke up with a dozen raiders on top of us.

I remember going for a gun before I was entirely awake, but it wasn't where I left it and there was screaming and laughter and torches flaring. I grabbed my knife and slashed at the guy grabbing for me. He reeled back with blood spraying from his face but someone else got up close and shoved a shock baton against my side before I could turn.

Down I went, every muscle locked up. That was my first close encounter with a shock baton and let me tell you, they hurt!

So all I could do was lie on the ground panting and trying to get my arms and legs to move while rough hands stripped off my armor, my guns. The Pip-boy. Our wedding rings. I grabbed for the person who'd yanked the chain off my neck but then Dixie said, "Give her another jolt. In fact—let me do it." And she jammed the shock baton against my ribs and held it there until I passed out from the pain.

Due to unconsciousness I missed the raiders locking slave collars onto the four of us and marching the Monteiros for miles. I was slung over some raider's shoulder like a bag of grain and apparently he complained the whole way that if Dixie decided to knock somebody out she should have to carry them.

They were still at it when I came to, with Dixie saying, "But sugah, she's biggah than me but you're so big and strong… Oh, she's wakin' up at last!"

The big raider dumped me on the ground, which didn't help anything. Lying there moaning was about my limit. Someone in a terrifying metal face mask leaned over me and said in Dixie's voice, "Good mornin'! You're a slave now. Notice the fashionable collar ya got on. If you get too far from this transmitter that I'm holding it'll blow your head off like a cork from a bottle, so keep up!"

So I kept up. Nina came back to let me lean on her shoulder. "No we're not hurt, but we're slaves!"

"My fault." I coughed and rubbed the collar, which felt too tight and far too heavy. "I trusted her."

Nina sighed. "So did we. Think she's done this before, she had that mask in her pack and she signaled these goons somehow. Can you get us out of this? At least Marta? Before one of those men thinks to..."

I was so tired and hurt that even that horrible thought didn't clear my mind much. "I don't know. Not right now. Where's Dogmeat?"

"The raiders shot at him and he ran."

"Can't do much now. Maybe when we get where we're going."

And maybe not. Collared, injured, outnumbered. I'd heal, probably. And I'd promised Preston to check in once I found a radio, so he'd expect a call… what day was it? Tomorrow. We should've hit civilization tomorrow. Give it a few more days for Preston to realize something was wrong and a few more to get someone searching… I stumbled and fell against Nina and was forcibly reminded of the burn on my side. Rational thought sank below a wave of pain.

Then there was a long miserable slog. Marta and Nina wept. Carlos kept his gaze to the ground after the raiders shoved and laughed at him. I tried to look around, get a sense of where we were, but I kept sliding off into how much I hurt and how scared I was. Some time back, I'd talked with the Railroad about their plans to move on to helping non-synths escape slavery. Just an evening with friends, eating delicious mutfruit tarts in the Third Rail and chatting. But Tinker Tom's version of chatting is always highly educational so I knew a lot about slave collars. Enough to be useful, maybe, but knowing there was a small explosive just under my chin was not pleasant. And if Dixie didn't want to blow my head up, the metal of the collar could be electrified, doing to my neck what she'd already done to my side. Deacon described meeting former slaves in the Capital Wasteland with rings of scar tissue around their necks where repeated electric punishment had burned the skin. So even if I had the strength I couldn't fight back against whatever the raiders might want to do with us. And some of the things they might want to do with us stole the breath from my lungs for fear.

Finally we got on a road so the walking was easier and then we saw our destination on the horizon. Walled, surrounded by a flat sea of parking lot. Colorful.

"Oh my god." I stopped suddenly. "It's the Nuka-cola park."

"You've been here?" Nina asked.

"No but I've heard of it." On television, before the war. Commercials with grinning children running through a colorful amusement park. We'd never been; Nate's idea of a day out was a baseball game and mine was a concert on the Common. If I'd thought of the park at all it was that we'd probably take Shaun someday, when he was old enough to enjoy it.

Carlos said, "Heard it was a trading hub. Not any more I guess."

One of the raiders grunted, "Now you're the merchandise." and Nina sobbed.

Our escort of a dozen raiders seemed to consider their job done and started wandering off. Dixie picked up the pace and didn't stop moving when she turned to say to the last few guys, "Stick my new property in a cage somewhere wouldya sweetie? I have to report in. Oh, and make sure everyone knows they're mine and I'm gonna sell 'em later so hands off! Anyone breaks my slaves and I'll chop off the body parts they used! Clear? And you go tell Gage I found someone that might be just what he's looking for."

And we got hauled off and tossed in a cage. Hauled fast, so I got a look at the big front gate as we went under it and then a confused glimpse of buildings, empty fountains, trash piled in corners and ragged people everywhere. Then we were in a building and tossed in a cage. With real bars and a back wall and floor of concrete, and a trough down the middle that clearly saw use as a bathroom. Animal cages. The smell wasn't good but was mild enough that I guessed the whole place got hosed down occasionally.

The Monteiros huddled together talking quietly, making plans for what to do if they were separated. I finally pulled up my shirt to look at what the shock baton had done to me. A hand-sized patch of skin on my left side was turning unhappy colors around the central mark where the baton had burned through my clothes. Red puffy skin surrounded a worrying patch of dead white. That could be very bad. A stimpack would keep it from getting worse, but the raiders had taken everything but my clothes and boots.

Everything. My hand went to my throat where our wedding rings should have been. Under the slave collar I could feel a welt left when someone yanked the chain off, broke it, maybe lost my rings… I pulled back from that thought. Getting the Pip-boy back was more important. I could use it to contact the Institute—only in emergencies; the Institute doesn't want to be bothered with surface concerns but Allie is my friend and doesn't want me to die. And if the molecular relay worked this far out… no, I couldn't think it might be that easy. Even if I could just vanish, there wasn't just me. There were other slaves in the room's other cages, their ragged clothes showing that they'd been here longer. Men and women, sitting or lying down, with lifeless eyes. None of them tried to talk to us.

I lay down myself, it was hardly comfortable but I needed to rest. I tried to lie there and think, but passed out again instead.

Bright and early raiders banged on the bars of our cage and all the other cages, waking the maybe thirty people in them. We were let out to file past a faucet and drink and I suddenly, sharply missed having the Pip-boy to tell me if the water was safe. It didn't taste great but I was so thirsty I couldn't refuse. Then we filed past a table with uncooked mutfruit and carrots and things. Nobody tried to grab more than they could carry which told me there would be more food later. We wouldn't be starved. Then we were all led outside and given assignments. The older slaves got different assignments but the Monteiros and I and half a dozen others were left at a giant pile of junk and told to dig out anything useful. We were in a back alley with parking spaces painted on the ground, clearly not a part of the park that visitors were supposed to see. A single raider sat up on a balcony over us, with a rifle and a collar transmitter that could shock us.

An older man in rags came over to us. "You must be the new ones Dixie dragged in last night. Nice vault suit. Hope you like it since you'll be wearing it 'til it falls off you."

Which would be a while; this was one of my lookalike suits with the lining that can't be cut and even stops small caliber bullets. No idea what they're made of, some high tech fabric. Deacon gave them to me—on my birthday, which he somehow found out.

So there we were. In an alley with blank walls on either side. Other slaves hauled in baskets of junk from all over the park and our job was to pick through and sort out anything that could be resold or reused. I'm not bad at this; helping Sturges put things together in Sanctuary taught me about pulling things apart to reuse the pieces and my own dear son is just a master at it. I wouldn't have known what-all you can make out of a typewriter if Shaun hadn't taken one apart on the kitchen table once. So the work was possible.

There was a sign on our cage, "Dixie's property, hands off!" which I soon learned meant the raiders wouldn't try to get under our clothes. But they were happy to grab over clothes, get a good feel, then laugh and wave the collar transmitter to remind us that we couldn't hit back. That was sort of low-grade demeaning, not nearly as bad as it could've been but plenty bad enough.

One of the other slaves gleefully informed us that it was an equal opportunity threat too. "The Operators invented a perfume, just one whiff and anyone's up for anything. And if Nisha wants a man she'll just stretch him on the rack until-" I made frantic 'please stop talking' gestures and she stopped and laughed. I wasn't sure I should believe every word of that, but it certainly didn't make my life better having heard it.

And doing the job from dawn to dusk on just enough food was very unpleasant, and the burn on my side was slowly getting worse.

It lasted for days—weeks? Two weeks at least, it all blurred after a while. Long enough that someone must be looking for me but long enough I was starting to worry if they'd get there in time.