Chapter Four:
Locked

Disclaimer: I don't own anything of the Fallout franchise. That is all © to Bethesda. I just (barely) own the slightly fleshed out humdrum backstory and writing contents of this story. Any vague mentioning to any shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this story are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them either.

Note: I'm Fallout trash and suffering pretty bad brainrot, y'all. Here, enjoy a story. I have no clue what direction I'm taking, other than a wild ride and stupid blurb adventures and shenanigans.

Alliance: None

Companion: Dogmeat

"Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks."
—The Tenth Doctor, "Doctor Who"

Quill had debated having a fire for the night. He went back and forth on the pros and cons with himself, but in the end, the weather had decided for him. It was much too cold after the sun had begun bleeding on the horizon and the grey shadows grew deeper and darker and colder. Quill took the risk and began setting up his shelter for the night.

Quill gathered up fallen branches and twigs for firewood and camped out inside of a building that could provide protection from the wind and rain and had doors he could close. He also made sure that there weren't any back doors or blown out walls that could admit any critters or unwanted visitors to sneak up on him.

Especially Azog and his merry little band. He was more than sure that the large white mongrel had his scent now and was prowling about, following after him.

So much for trying to change out of my sweaty clothes, he thought.

Quinn had loaned him her hatchet with the fire starter, to which he was grateful for. And yet, he worried about her. She hadn't found him. She was alone out there in the wilds, without the tools she'd need for her own use out there.

That train of thought came back around when he had to remind himself that this was Quinn, and she would probably just…walk in the dark. Her low-light navigation has only improved since her time in the military, and while he worried for her, he firmly believed that she'd be all right. She would just…find him. In the dark.

Like an idiot.

A brave idiot who would definitely find him, but an idiot, nonetheless.

He shook his head as Quill gathered together the shavings of bark and kindling and set it all underneath the tent of larger branches and twigs. He set the fire starter at an angle in one hand and set the hatchet at the base just below the handle, and struck down once, twice, a third time.

The sparks caught on that third time, quickly growing from a soft glow to a quick, hot blaze. Quill alternated between blowing on the embers to keep it alight and adding more kindling. The fire grew until he had it cheerily crackling away, ringed by stones to keep the cinders from catching elsewhere. He sighed when he felt he didn't need to do much else to keep it going and sat back, feeling like he could finally relax.

Quill took his time in winding down, and eventually turned to his rations for dinner.

He found himself turning to his iPad for distraction and groaned when he found it was completely dead.

"I didn't set out my charger to catch some sun, so I can't charge it either. Great. Dumbass." He kept berating himself as he found the solar charger he had designed and created himself was also completely dead.

Left underground for over two hundred years probably does that to some equipment. He clipped the charger to the outside of his pack, determined to have it fill its tanks up by midday, and have his phone at least charged sometime later on. He needed to keep a log of this. He needed—he needed…

Quill nearly dropped his dried venison but caught it at the last second before it hit the ground. He set it aside in its wrapping. He dug around in his pack, and found what he needed: his video camera, and the extra battery pack. He took out the battery already inside the camera, recalling it had been nearly dead the last he'd used it.

The thought of when he'd last held his video camera in hand stilled him.

Bits and pieces were coming back to him like a slowly dripping sieve inside his head.

He and his dads had been together in Washington D.C. and enjoying the sights of their nation's capital. They'd already been in D.C. for a few days, taking that time to rekindle their relationship together by visiting the various museums in the area, attending tours of various landmarks, and even a tour of the White House.

Quill had missed the quality time he'd spent with Mateo and Charlie. He only wished he could have had Quinn with them to complete the family, but she had been gearing up for graduation from the Academy of the FBI. It was only through a number of phone calls and emails that Quill had managed to wheedle his way into securing three seats to attend Quinn's graduation ceremony, but he had wanted it to be a surprise. He didn't want Quinn to know they had been in town and well…

He had his last moments leading up to his abduction on this camera, with his dads.

She should be settling in at a new field office right now. I should be finishing up my dissertation for my film classes. I should be graduating soon, and Quinn and our dads should be watching me walk across a stage next.

A lot "shoulda-coulda-woulda" scenarios kept playing out in his head, and the frustration at how so much had been stolen from him, from his sister, from their fathers…

A sob that had been building at the base of his throat tore its way out of his mouth, seizing his lungs and leaving them paralyzed. The tears came next as the wordless sounds fought to escape him, leaving his face heated. He set aside his camera, trying to breath it out, but it was a vain attempt at control.

He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes in another attempt to stem the flow of tears. This too proved futile. The tears didn't stop, and the wails didn't dissipate. They tore from him, and he knew he must have sounded like a wounded animal, bleating away into the night and attracting the mongrel pack that was still undoubtedly hunting him, but right now? Quill simply couldn't find it in him to care.

He was in mourning for the life stolen from him and from Quinn. The floodgates were open, and he couldn't hold it in any longer. What right did these people have, spiriting him and his sister away to this world? What right did they have to take anyone from their home?

He cursed the assholes who had stolen their family's future from them. He cursed the people for having taken him and Quinn from their home world. Most of all, he cursed Todd Howard and Bethesda for making this fucked up game that he and Quinn were now a part of and, quite possibly irreversibly, trapped in.

The minigun was a heavy payload to carry. Quinn kept telling herself it would be worth it in the end.

Her aching back begged to differ. She'd found a bag she could carry a few rifles and pistols in and had thrown in what she felt she could feasibly carry—and while she physically could do so, her head wasn't in the right space for it.

Just dump the bag, a tiny little voice whispered venomously away at the back of her mind. Drop the bag, no one has to know. You can just focus on the big gun. It's the better option!

And she had to talk herself out of doing just that, running through the pros and cons of dumping either the bag of guns or such a large weapon in the middle of the woods and leaving it for someone else to stumble across.

On the one hand, a bag of guns could potentially equate to this minigun, and you're screwed either way. On the other hand, this is a big fucking gun. So, which one is it? A lot of guns with a lot of bullets all at once, or one big gun with a lot of bullets?

Dogmeat trudged along faithfully at her side, most of the time, only occasionally breaking away when he went to relieve himself or to sniff out something.

He always came back, though. Quinn found herself warming up more and more to the German Shepherd. She also decided that it didn't matter who had trained him previously. Chances were, they weren't around any longer, and to the victor go the spoils.

And that's why you shouldn't dump any of this gear in the wilds, for anyone else to get their hands on. This is your pay, your victory spoils, for borrowing Mary's rifle, and possibly your bartering chips for…whatever may come.

The sun had set not too long ago. The only light she had was from the half-moon hanging low and swollen in the sky above, cold and distant, with a few wisps of clouds tracing across its face.

The temperature dropped so quickly that her breath ghosted away every time she breathed. Quinn took a much-needed break to layer up, to catch her breath, and most of all, to rest her body. Her thigh ached, right along the seam where flesh was held together by metal. She'd need to pull herself apart, to separate the mesh from grinding against her skin in the socket of her leg, to allow her body a moment of further rest.

The thought of growing blisters and weeping pustules, of cracked and bleeding skin, did not appeal to Quinn in the slightest. She'd done it before, and it hadn't ended well for her the last she'd ignored it. Quinn would prefer to not have to learn the same lesson twice. She didn't want to run the risk of needing to amputate farther up her leg, not again.

You've still got miles to go before you sleep, King. Get off your ass and on your feet, she told herself and rolled upright to do just that. She fed pieces of food to Dogmeat and guzzled down half her canteen and took a hit from her hip flask for good measure before heading out.

"We'll regroup with Quill in Concord. I think he said there's something we need to do there, besides look for people and supplies. And then we'll deliver this locket back out to the Abernathy family, and then…" Quinn stopped talking, thoughts coming to a standstill.

And then what?

What else was there?

Quill was holding back. She didn't like that. She didn't like when her brother withheld information from her. She didn't like this shock and awe suspense he was pulling with her. It served no one out here, and he knew exactly what was supposed to happen here. This wasn't a surprise party he was pulling; this was a world that was both designed and evolving to kill them.

She'd wring the details from him later when she found him.

Right now, she was more focused on actually finding him.

Dogmeat stilled from his trek, tail held stiff and straight. Slowly, his hackles rose to attention along his scruff like a tiny hump along his shoulders and he growled.

Deep, from within his chest, the sound permeated the air around them as Dogmeat's muzzle peeled back into a snarl. Quinn reacted in kind, dropping the payload of weapons she had and lifting the muzzle of Mary's rifle up. Her low-light vision was good, so long as nobody flashed a light in her face.

She tilted her good ear in the direction Dogmeat was growling in, straining to listen. She could hear barking, just barely. They were at least a mile off, give or take. Quinn could feel a slight breeze and she stuck her finger in her mouth to get it wet and popped it back out, holding it up. It was coming from the direction of the barking. They were downwind, for the time being.

Quinn clicked her tongue and got Dogmeat's attention. He glanced at her, then resumed his hard staring and growling.

"Hey. Let's move out, now. Let's go."

She shouldered the rifle and picked up her discarded gear, bearing the brunt of her self-inflicted burden. Dogmeat reluctantly broke from his growling standoff and followed her. He took longer to catch up, pausing often to break into another fit of snarling. A part of her worried over his standoffishness and lack of reception to direction in those moments. He could bolt and she had no way of keeping him tethered, no vest to grab him by, no leash to keep him from rushing off.

She recognized the vestiges of some self-control, however. Quinn recognized that Dogmeat was struggling with whatever training he'd had; struggling to adhere to them and to also follow his instinct to just run wild.

Dogmeat was a good dog; she came to conclude. A bit conflicted on what he wanted to do at times, but a good dog regardless of all that.

And we have miles and miles to go before we sleep, she mused, and hoped that it would be a long while before that time came.

Quill startled himself awake with a heart-stopping gasp that stabbed at his lungs with a thousand tiny glass shards, seizing them tightly their needle-like clutches. He awoke drenched in his own sweat and near-freezing, even with his coat on for extra warmth.

The fire was nothing but cherry-red embers and coals amid ashes. Quill, at first, panicked and began to blow on them, to clear the ash and soot and moved the unburnt pieces of wood still in the fire pit. His initial intent to get the fire going stopped altogether when he heard what it really was that had jerked him so unceremoniously from sleep: gunshots.

Quill hurried smothered his progress with his dying fire, hissing in pain when his fingers laid upon a particularly hot ember. He sucked on them, trying to will the dull, burning ache to go away. Quill tilted his head to get a better scope of things.

It was a funny thing, this little habit, one that nobody picked up on except when he was together with Quinn.

The day Quinn had lost her hearing, Quill had begun losing his at the same time and in the same ear. He hadn't known at the time why it was happening. All he knew was just how alarming the degradation was that it warranted a visit to the doctor's office. It was only after he'd gotten the call regarding the accident overseas that Quill fully understood everything. His loss wasn't nearly as significant as his sister's, but he still struggled to hear certain pitches, tones. Sometimes voices tuned out in favour of a sharp, consistent ringing that set his jaw to grinding.

The gunshots right now were something he could hear with damning clarity, however. Quill hurriedly packed everything up, stomped on the ashes of his fire for good measure, and rushed out of his shelter. He could feel his pulse climbing higher and higher in his throat right alongside his heart.

He was only a street away from all the commotion, he came to find out. Only a street away from where Preston and the other Quincy Massacre survivors were holed up. Quill had stumbled right onto the main downtown strip, with its hanging decorations and abandoned cars, with chunks of street missing. A few raiders were rushing away from where he stood, having not seen him yet whilst firing at the third-story balcony of a familiar building. There were fires burning inside of a few trashcans, strategically placed along the sidewalks, giving him some light to see all the action by.

Quill stared, slack-jawed, and he could hear himself in his head screaming to move, to duck and get behind cover, to hide, to do something!

His hand began hurting and he wondered why, and it was more from detached curiosity than from actual concern. He looked down and saw that he was holding his bow in such a white-knuckled death grip, the joints were creaking with protest. Quill looked up and a tickle of panic was rising in his throat.

Now or never, a thought with a rasp whispered at the back of head.

He drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it back, and muscled back the bowstring, ignoring the burning friction of his muscles as they objected the action.

As soon as he felt fletching kissing his cheek and he had a target in sight, he released his hold, and let loose the arrow. He almost collapsed with relief when it struck true, right in the backside of a raider. He went down with hardly a sound, just keeled over onto the ground. None of the others seemed to notice, more focused on the blasts of red bolts firing back at them.

Quill crept closer, ducking behind a dusty red pickup truck, and lined up his next shot. He cursed when it went wild, shattering on impact against the building beside the raider he was aiming for. He ducked when the man whirled back, having noticed the shot taken. Quill tucked himself down, breathing too quick and he had to tell himself to slow down.

Breath control, Quill! You lose your breath; you lose a good shot! Breath in slowly, hold it for five seconds, and then count backwards from ten as you let it out. Slow and steady, Quill could hear his dad Mateo say in his head.

Quill did just that, and he could feel the panic draining from him as he slowed himself down. He rose again when he felt like he had control again and lined up a third arrow, then released. His aim was truer this time, slamming into the raider's rib cage, right where the lungs were. He collapsed with hardly a sound, slumping against the building.

Quill hurried closer, dropping to a knee for a better stance and let loose his last few shots.

He wasn't as quick on the draw as his sister, but he was far less rusty than he'd given himself credit for. He almost began to pat himself on the back when the last raider dropped like a sack of potatoes, but he heard someone calling out.

"Hey! Hey, who's out there?! Please, don't leave, we need help!"

Preston, his mind supplied for him, and he winced. Quill was wedged in a dark corner of the street, as far from the light as he could make himself to avoid being seen.

I shouldn't be here. I can't do this, this is something our dads drilled into us in dry runs as kids, not in actual practice! And Queenie—she, she's the real fighter. She's actually seen combat. Goddamn you, Queenie—where are you?! You should be here, saving these people! I shouldn't be here, I can't help them—

"Please!" Preston's voice called out again, cracking with desperation. Quill shuddered and cursed himself again. Stop being a coward, he could hear Mateo saying.

"I'm not a coward. I can do this. I can do this."

Quill mustered up his courage and pushed away from his hiding spot and into the light. He could barely make out Preston on the balcony, but he noticed the man stiffen as Quill rushed closer toward the Museum of Freedom.

"Oh, thank god—please, don't go! I've got civilians in here and the raiders are almost inside! Hurry!"

Quill hesitated as he approached the door and shot a glance at a man lying on his back, dressed in garb that would have been more appropriate for the late 1700s.

"Grab that laser musket and get inside!"

Quill spotted the weapon and made for it, just out of reach of the man—and he screamed when something grabbed his leg.

He scuttled away and fell on his ass, dropping his bow when he saw the man on the ground was not at all dead, like he had originally assumed.

He wheezed at Quill, reaching for him. "Y-you're still alive!"

"Please don't leave me out here," the man begged, his voice barely above a whisper. "M-my leg…they got me good."

Quill shot a glance at the man's leg and saw what a bleeding mess it was. He immediately dropped his pack and fished out the first aid kit Quinn had given him and began working triage. He tore off his belt and used it as a tourniquet, tightening it around the man's thigh. His leg was bleeding badly, but Quill knew just enough that could stymie it—at least, long enough for him to get the guy proper help. Quill had his dads to thank for that nugget of knowledge.

I guess all those emergency med classes they had me and Queenie take all those years ago paid off, he thought.

"I can't fix it more than this right now," he said in way of apology as he began unraveling the roll of gauze and applying it tightly to the man's leg. He didn't have the trauma kit on him, only the first aid kit that Quinn had given him. Quill could only hope that this would be enough to slow things down. The man whimpered.

"S'okay, just do what you need to do."

"Do you think you can walk?"

"Yeah. Just get me on my good leg, I'll pogo along with you. Take my musket, Preston said you should take it…"

Quill tied off the gauze, threw everything back into his pack, and helped haul the man up, slinging his arm over his shoulders, with an arm pinning him at the waist to Quill. He had his bow and the man's laser musket gathered in his free hand as they hobbled to the door.

"Just get me inside the door, I'll be fine. Or I won't, you know. Either way. At least I won't be out on the streets."

"Yeah, you got it. Just don't fall asleep, I need you to keep staying awake. Hey, man—what's your name?"

"Frank. It's Frank Dupont."

"Okay, Frank. I'm Quill King. Let's get you inside."

Quill winced as bullets pinged around him, some pot shots meant to scare him, others genuinely aiming to find him. Frank was tucked into a corner in the reception lobby by the museum's front door, well out of sight from the raiders. He was still lucid enough when Quill had left him. He also made Frank keep his musket, just in case.

He heard someone cursing and the potshots stopped. Quill stole a peek around the corner he was hiding behind, saw the raider he was engaged with stopping to reload. Quill sucked in a deep breath and took aim with his bow.

The raider looked up just in time for the arrow to smash through his eye socket. He crashed to the ground, the bloodied end of the arrowhead dripping and upright like a flagpole.

Quill shivered at the sight and hurried past.

Oh my god, he's dead. He's dead, he's dead, dead as a doorknob, yep, I killed him.

His legs began wobbling like jelly, and he stumbled a few steps. Quill crashed into a wall and let his weight drag him down before he began throwing up. His gut was a hard, painful twisted knot as he puked what little he'd managed to eat earlier that night. He puked until he had nothing left to upchuck, and he could only dry heave.

I just killed someone. Oh, no. No, that's not accurate. I just killed several someones, not just one.

His stomach roiled at the thought, and he fought the instinctive urge to just stay there and continue dry heaving. Quill wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pulled himself upright. "Keep going, King. Don't stop, don't think. Just move."

He swung around the corner of the hallway out into the main foyer for the museum. The staircase had seen better days, but half the steps were still usable. Quill rushed up them and very nearly tripped right back down them as bullets began dogging him like hailstones. He ping-ponged off the walls until he managed to swing into an open doorway on the second floor.

His hand brushed the pistol at his side, and he groaned, jaw tightening itself as he berated himself on yet again forgetting he had a fucking gun on hand. He slung his bow over his chest, and unholstered the pistol, moving as quietly as he could to the next torn up exhibit room. He could hear two men chattering away to one another. Quill pressed his back to the wall, just out of sight of the next room ahead, his good ear tuning in to the two raiders.

"—thought I heard something. Ya think that dumbass downstairs is dead?"

"—dunno, man. Don't care. Let's just get this shit over with. I'm hungry."

Quill edged closer, just enough to peer around the corner and saw one of men disappearing around the bend of a torn-out wall leading out of sight. The other was busy reloading his weapon. Quill raised his pistol and took aim, firing two quick shots. The first clipped him in the shoulder, the second hit his skull. The raider dropped, his own weapon clattering to the ground. His partner wasn't far behind, gun drawn and opening fire. Quill ducked back behind the wall, wincing as plaster and sheetrock exploded beside his head from the shots fired at him.

"That was my friend, you asshole!"

"And those are unarmed people you're trying to kill! Tough shit!" Quill shouted back, hoping the raider didn't hear the tremor in his voice. More gunshots that left his ears ringing.

"It's a kill-or-be-killed world. Not my problem."

"Well, then by that train of thought, your friend knew the risks. Tough fucking shit," Quill shot back, finding more bite to back them up. Another shot, and then a curse.

Quill dared to spy around the corner, saw the man crouched just behind the torn-out wall, trying to reload. Quill stepped back out and took a shot. It missed and so did the second. The man scrambled out of sight and Quill gave chase. He was more than a little surprised to find the raider hadn't gone far, and he stared at him, briefly dumbfounded. The raider finished reloading—and Quill shot him, right in the head. A spray of blood, bone, and brain matter exploded out the back of the man's head as he collapsed to the ground, dead.

Quill's stomach coiled into that tight, sickening knot again and he covered his mouth with his free hand, clamping it shut. A few tears leaked out the corners of his eyes and his breath came in short, quick bursts.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck!"

It was horrifying. All of this was…gut-wrenchingly horrifying, just how easily a life was ended with the pull of a trigger. Pow, right in the brainpan, squish went the bullet as it tore right through. All the movies, shows, video games, none of it could prepare him for the actual act of killing, except, well…killing. The most he'd done before was hunting deer and elk, and that had seemed less...personal. That had been to collect meat and materials for homemade materials, like tallow for candles, catgut for cording or makeshift sutures or compost for the communal garden.

Something fired upstairs and Quill was wrenched out from his head. He glanced down at the body in front of him, and at the body in the room beside him. The one in the dark hallway only had a pistol. The other in the room had a shotgun. He snatched the shotgun up and the red shells lying on the ground and rushed up the narrow staircase leading to the third floor.

He checked the chamber, saw two shells already loaded and snapped it shut again. The wood creaked beneath his weight and he winced at the noise. He could hear two voices, just behind the wall to his right. Quill wiped the sweat on his brow, hating how his hand shook. The hallway ahead of him was dark, he could barely make out any light at all.

He was seeing shadows dance and shift around him—he very nearly pulled the trigger twice when he thought he saw something slinking after him from the corner of his eye.

A shadow passed beside him to the right, right past a hole in the wall. Quill froze, seeing someone's back to him. He lifted the shotgun and took aim, keeping the shotgun as level as he could. Quill yanked back on the trigger and cried out when the buttstock slammed home into his shoulder.

"FUCK!"

His shoulder sang with pain, and he gasped. The kick was a lot stronger than he was expecting or prepared for. He'd forgotten what shooting a shotgun felt like.

The raider he'd shot was gone, as was a good chunk of the wall around the hole, having opened it up further. Someone ran past it, and Quill fired again, this time better prepared for the kickback, but he missed. Quill's hands shook as he popped the shotgun open, letting the spent shells spill out and pushed in the new ones. He got it reloaded just as someone began firing at him. Quill dove to the side, landing on his shoulder.

Add that bruise to the collection, he thought when it began throbbing, almost in tune and intensity with his growing collection of dings. The running footsteps were heralding closer, and Quill scrabbled upright, lifting the barrel of the shotgun up just as the last raider came skidding into view.

He was a smudge of dark in the shadows, but Quill could see the meager light from the large hole he'd carved out settle over the raider. Quill pulled the trigger and fired again.

Preston couldn't have been much younger than Quill was, but when that door swung open, he looked far older than Quill imagined. There were stress lines streaking the angles of his face, a bone-deep exhaustion that was pulling at the edges of everything else, and bruises from lack of sleep around his eyes. He still somehow managed to muster a smile as Quill hobbled into the back room he and the others were in, giving Quill a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent him collapsing to the ground. It probably didn't help that Quill wanted to do just that and his legs were once more filled with jelly instead of bones.

"I don't know where you came from, but man, are we glad you showed up when you did."

Quill couldn't quite find his voice, so instead he nodded mutely.

"Yeah," Quill finally managed to rasp out. "Yeah, I guess it was a good thing. Um…I'm Quill. Quill King."

He looked around and saw familiar faces in the room: Sturges, hunched over a computer terminal; Mama Murphy, sagging in a squashed armchair; Jun Long huddled on the floor beside another computer desk, legs drawn up tightly to his chest; and Marcy Long, pacing around the small room, teeth set in a snarl, looking much like a caged tiger begging for release. She glowered at Quill and stopped pacing.

"What? Just you? That's it? You're our only hope of getting out of here?"

"My sister's clearing out raiders elsewhere. She said she'd meet me back here." Quill offered meekly. Marcy gave him a hard stare before snorting.

"Good fucking riddance to them," she muttered.

Quill turned back to Preston and straightened up from his slump. "Sorry that there wasn't more…pizzazz and pomp."

"You showing up here was enough. I can't thank you enough. I just hope your sister makes it back here. I'm Preston, by the way."

"Oh…right. Your friend, Frank? He's downstairs and still alive, but he's…he's hurt bad. Someone needs to go down and fix his leg up."

"I-I can go do that. I…I can do that, Preston." Jun piped up, raising his hand as though he was asking permission to go to the bathroom from a teacher at school. Preston nodded wearily and Jun stood.

"Take the med-kit and see what you can do."

"I'm coming with you. You might need some help," Marcy added, hot on her husband's heels. Jun picked up a tin marked with a red cross from a filing cabinet as they headed out. Quill stepped aside to let the pair out and flinched as Marcy slammed the door shut behind her.

"You'll have to forgive the Longs, they…they've lost everything, back in Quincy. Their home, their business, their kid…" Preston shook his head and ran a hand over his face. "Just one disaster after another…and now, this with the raiders."

"I'm sorry to hear that, I really am. But is this it?"

"I'm afraid so. There were more of us, but we've been dropping like bloat flies ever since we fled Quincy. And the worst part is, all those raiders you just helped clear out wasn't their whole contingent. There's at least a dozen more out there."

"Jesus fuck-all," Quill groaned. He wanted more than a five-minute reprieve to catch his breath. He wanted to take another two-hundred-year nap just to recover from this shit.

"Not exactly the way I'd put it, but I feel ya on that front," Sturges pipped up, straightening up from the computer desk. Sturges turned around, and leaned his hip against it, arms crossing over his chest. "We got a plan though. I know it's dark and all out there, but I guarantee you there's a crashed vertibird up on the roof of this here museum, and there's a suit of power armor and the best treat of them all, a minigun. Problem is, we'd need a fusion core to get the ball rolling."

"I feel like there's more coming on," Quill interjected, even as he knew what it was. Sturges grinned and Quill hated that in the throes of all that was going on, he felt a little pleasing tingle shoot through him at the sight. Fuuuck, this is not the time.

"There's a fusion core here in this building, down in the basement. You get inside the safety cage it's locked up in, then we're home free. You get that power armor working, rip the minigun off…"

"And those raiders are as good as gone," Quill finished. Sturges wagged his finger approvingly at him, his smile broadening.

"You catch on quick. I like that."

In spite of how his body creaked and protested and twinged with the flaring bruises and bumps he'd acquired, Quill straightened himself out and nodded to both him and Preston.

"Okay, sure. How hard can it be? I'll just…stroll down and grab the fusion core."

Additional Note: I think we all know Todd Howard is personally responsible for everything in Fallout 4; every glitch and bug and feature we come across was programmed by him and him alone. He sits in an empty building and does everything. It's all Todd's fault.