Hello friends and lovelies! Thank you for being patient while I fixed my prologue. I was very unhappy with where I ended it. I added a second part to the prologue as a new chapter, but I wanted them together in the same chapter (because I'm being picky after already starting). So, prologue parts 1 and 2 are now combined into one chapter.

Anyway, thank you for your patience. I have decided to add another chapter today (Out of Time). This coming Wednesday I will upload a new chapter(The Little Road to Concord) which will become the third chapter of this story. I hope you enjoy the story as it continues. I want to get this done early so it doesn't affect the readability of the story later.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from the Fallout franchise and am just borrowing them to create stories.

Out of Time

Adam could hear a hissing noise. He tried to open his eyelids, but they felt stuck together. There was some scraping, and he felt the pod around him shift as the lid opened with a bump. He rubbed his eyes and then blinked rapidly as they adjusted to the low lighting in the vault.

"Hello?" he said when no one moved to the pod he'd been sitting in. "Hello? Doctor?"

He looked out of the pod around the room and noticed it was empty. Two other chambers farther down the aisle of pressurization pods were open, but the rest of the pods were still sealed. The glass on the pod across from him was frosted over. He stumbled across the aisle to it and wiped his hand across it. The face of his next-door neighbor appeared, and he slowly backed away.

"Hello?" he asked again, facing the open pods at the end of the aisle.

He walked over to them. He saw a woman slumped over holding onto an infant. The bodies were dried out and almost skeletal. Is this the neighbor with the newborn?

He turned to look at the other open pod, another skeletal figure was slumped on the ground. The face was caved in, and little dents and divots surrounded where the person's eyes would have been, and a flattened bullet lay in the back of the empty skull.

Adam turned backed away and turned to the door he had entered just moments ago. Moments ago, when the bombs had dropped. He drifted numbly through the sliding vault door and wandered around, searching for anyone.

He heard the shuffling of papers in the distance and hurried toward the sound. When the door opened, he was horrified to see a giant cockroach the size of his mother's lap dog and ran away. Mother…

He walked around the vault in a haze. He searched room after room of the pods for his mother and eventually found her. She looked like she was sleeping. He tapped on the glass trying to wake her, but nothing worked and the tube she was housed in was sealed shut. After a handful of failed attempts, he grabbed his short dark hair in his hands and slid to the ground at the foot of her pod.

"Where is everyone?" He yelled into the emptiness of the vault. "Is anyone there?"

There was no response. He wasn't sure how long he sat at the foot of his mother's pod crying before he drifted into a restless sleep, regretting leaving his lovely Minnie behind on the surface while the people who were his friends and family dwindled away in the cold ground.

When Adam's consciousness returned to him, he could hear the same sounds of the vault from before. He still could not hear anyone else in the vault. He stood up and dusted himself off and walked out of the room that had become his mother's resting place.

He opened every door he could in the vault and found a few items that he felt could be helpful: a stimpak, some radaway, a small box with three bobby pins, and a pen.

He walked through the hallways of the vault. He passed an office, some staff barracks, and a cafeteria, and walked through the reactor room that gave the vault electricity. Another skeleton in a vault suit was sprawled on the ground being picked at by a group of giant cockroaches. He moved quickly and stomped the bugs to death.

He made his way farther through the small vault and found a room with a desk and a computer. There was a chair tipped onto its back. Another skeleton lay next to it on the floor. This skeleton wore the same lab coat and slacks as the doctor who had shown him into the vault. He looked around and opened the computer.

This is the Overseer's office, he realized something was wrong when he scrolled through the files on the computer and read the few entries in the Overseer's Log. What did the overseer mean by 'leaping forward in time?'

He exited the log back into the computer menu and opened the evacuation tunnel from the vault. There were more of the giant cockroaches in the hallway. He made quick work of them and walked into the room he had been in not too long ago, the door to the vault was closed and more skeletons littered the ground. He walked up to the control panel and realized he needed a Pip-boy to open the door. Fortunately for him, there was one attached to the arm of one of the deceased vault dwellers.

He removed it from the body, put it on his wrist, and turned it on. The software started up quickly, and once the interface was calibrated, he flipped the plastic case on the control panel to the vault door. He connected the Pip-boy and pressed the button. Warning lights flashed and alarms sounded. The vault door slowly opened to the lift that had brought him into the vault.

He took one last look into the vault and silently bid his mother goodbye. He stepped onto the platform that began to raise him to the surface, taking him back to Sanctuary Hills. He didn't know how long he'd been out, but he was hoping there would still be a chance of finding Minnie.

As he surfaced the light of the sun blinded him. He blinked and put his hand over his eyes. They blurred at the significant brilliance of the sun compared to the vault. As soon as his vision became clear again, he stepped forward off the platform towards the edge of the hill he was now standing on.

The entire picturesque view of Sanctuary Hills was gone. There was only devastation left behind in the wake of the bombs that had detonated so near the home he had been planning on starting a family in.

Despite the devastation, it was clear that time had passed. There was plenty of new life growing all around him. New trees were in the area and then there were those strange cockroaches…

Adam looked towards his home and headed down the backside of the hill. He was going to get supplies from home that would be useful for him and Minnie when he found her. Then he would bring her back and they would work together to build their life in what was left of the world around them.

Hello again! I hope you are enjoying my new Fallout 4-based story! This chapter was fun to write as I considered how the main story would be different If the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 wasn't Nate or Nora. I hope you'll continue reading this story as it updates. You can expect updates on Wednesday OR Friday depending on my schedule.Until later friends and lovelies!