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Project Achilles succeeded in imprinting Gavin West, the first personality template, to a hybrid's body for the second time. All necessary precautions were explored and implemented the day his pod was opened, including the use of a kill-team tasked with neutralizing him should he act aggressively.
The latter proved to be more cooperative in the second procedure, but was still carefully watched as the hybrid underwent his physical examinations and psych-evaluation. West, over the course of the week, found himself subjected to numerous tests that were designed to determine his new body's physical capacities and adaptability. He was, after all, the first of a new species of human. His introduction into the new world was kept under wraps, as the colonel deemed the revelation only necessary when all other variables were eliminated. There were still a lot of unknowns concerning the hybrids.
There was one facility in the Vault that was restricted to non-military vault-dwellers which allowed West to explore his new body's abilities. As a reaction to his harrowing introduction into his new life, West poured all his attention and efforts into getting through the tests so he could reach the one goal that was on his mind- leaving the Vault to explore the Wasteland.
Strength assessments, like weight-lifting and demonstrations with hand-to-hand combat, set him above the average human. Increased muscle mass and accelerated hypertrophy allowed him to outperform many of Vault 115's combat instructors, all who were in peak physical condition and possessed more years of experience than he did.
His perception stats were outstanding, due to improved depth perception and hyper-reactive pupils in his eyes. Increased adrenal neurosympathy also gave him faster reaction times, which allowed him to adjust quickly when missing his targets in the shooting range.
His endurance tests determined the full extent of his body's resistance to fatigue and capacity for extended strain, which was nothing short of superhuman. He could go for days without food or water, even sleep. And any activities, no matter how strenuous, he always excelled in. But the most interesting part about his new body's physiology was that, with the seamless process of meticulous genetic modifications, his body showed a higher radiation tolerance. While this fact showed promise in future missions to the surface, West would not be allowed to leave without proper gear or equipment to survive the harsh environment of the Wasteland.
Finally, his psych evaluations, however, did not yield as well a result as his physical examinations. The trauma of his experience in Vault-Tec's extraction lab had left a great impression on him, not to mention other underlying factors he wasn't keen on discussing. Psychologically, he was deemed unfit for active duty. Further tests involving West were suspended, but his qualification for use of the shooting-range and other military training facilities in the Vault remained at the orders of the colonel.
And so, Dr. Holiday's team was tasked with bringing in another template to imprint on a second hybrid.
The rifle's recoil barely registered to him as it snapped back from the shot.
The bullet left a hole the size of a fist on the target dummy. Blue gel trickled out of the wound in its torso, which was universally considered a fatal one. West squeezed the trigger again, adjusting his fire a few centimetres higher, and hit the dummy in the spot right between where the eyes should be.
The chamber clicked empty. West detached the clip and set it down on the crate next to him, replacing the magazine with a fresh one to resume his brutal game with the defenseless target dummy.
A shrill cry in the booth some twenty metres away from his kept him from firing the first shot out of that new mag. West took off his mufflers and hung them up on the wall of his booth. He made sure his weapon's safety was on before slinging it over his shoulder as he walked across the floor to investigate.
He found the second hybrid, surrounded by weapons specialists and Project Achilles scientists, loading and shooting one of Vault 115's experimental gauss rifles. This wasn't the same gauss rifle he'd seen in the US Army recruitment posters. It was sleeker, without the exposed copper wiring that made it look like a cobbled-together piece of junk you could buy at a dealer's shop, and looked like something out of a science-fiction film. Almost like a thin metallic pincer, with just as much firepower as a tank's main gun.
And shooting it, with little difficulty, was a female hybrid.
When she finished her demonstration, she handed the weapon over to the specialists and turned to face him.
Like West, she had pale alabaster skin and was a head taller than anyone else in the room. She was also slender, and possessed less muscle mass than her male counterpart. West had seen her before, but that was during his time in the storage facility, where the hybrid bodies were stored in nutrient pods and awaited imprinting. She looked different, being awake and walking around like that. The sight of her made him feel both amazed and concerned, for what other reason would the colonel have to bring her here than replacing him?
The group left the shooting range with the female hybrid, and West started to follow.
"Hold up there, soldier." One of the officers barred his path with six MP's to back him up. "You're to head up to the war-room for mission briefing." The hybrid and her entourage disappeared through the doors.
"Understood." West replied, "Who's the girl?"
"Girl?" The officer guffawed, "That's Danny Fade, The Gobi Fox."
"Yeah, never heard of her."
"Seriously, you don't know her? One of our best snipers? 100 confirmed kills, half of them being high-profile targets including General Sun Li-Jen at the Yangtze Takeover. A stealth kill-squad left her paralyzed from the neck down, and she was brought back to the mainland for brain-extraction. Lucky for us, her template wounded up here."
"Huh, lucky for us…right." West muttered. He didn't really care for her service record or how she could become an asset to his future endeavors. As he turned in his weapon and ascended the elevator to enter the war-room, he took solace in the fact that they couldn't possibly look to replace him as he was being briefed for a mission he would undoubtedly be involved in. No one was getting replaced, he repeated this thought over and over until his worries were well behind him.
The briefing, presided by both the colonel and some of his aides from the research division, was fairly short. As he expected, the mission was all about reconaissance. They were to determine the extent of the contamination, analyze the wildlife and explore the ruins of nearby towns. Afterwards, they were to report back to the Vault with their findings.
At the briefing, he was properly introduced to his new partner.
"Mr. West, I believe you've already met Ms. Fade." The colonel said as the two faced each other after the aides have spoken.
"Hey, how's it going?" Fade extended her hand and shook his with a firm squeeze.
"Just fine. You ready to head out?"
"Absolutely."
The pair were sent to the outfitting center to get their equipment. First, West and Fade each donned an underlaying bodysuit, designed to monitor their vitals and relay the information back to the Vault, before putting on their military jumpsuits. Then, they each proceeded to climb into their power-armor.
West had the standard T-60 with several modifications installed, such as increased protective layers to help resist the effects of the Wasteland's radiation storms and a flamer gauntlet to scare off the wildlife. In terms of other armaments, West had a 20 gauge auto-shotgun and a 10mm submachine gun.
Fade had an experimental variant of the T-60, which was modified to house a single eye-bot on its back. The eye-bot, designed as a signal-resonator to boost their communication signals, would be launched at exactly 30 minutes to hover some miles up in the sky after they exited the Vault. Fade, aside from providing cover for her partner, would transmit their coordinates every so often to help their headquarters to map out the surrounding area. The map would prove vital for future expeditions.
Fade carried the experimental gauss rifle she had been training with in the shooting range earlier, and also had a 10mm submachine gun as a sidearm.
The outfitters provided them with the usual food, drink and medical supplies as well as several satchel-charges for clearing debris or obstacles.
When they were finished, the two were sent upstairs to the hangar for departure. Colonel Stern watched them both on the monitors from his office as they walked through the massive metal doors and out into the Wasteland, and he kept an eye on their progress as they began their journey mapping out the area.
Dr. Holiday was there to report on his findings concerning the templates, and judging by his grim expression, Stern knew it wasn't good. "Go on, doctor."
"Like I said, we've detected significant neural degradation in Gavin West's template. We've found that, after his second imprint, the onset of deterioration started immediately. All evidence points to the very process of imprinting the templates onto the hybrids to be the cause of this."
"Is the process reversible?"
Holiday shook his head, "No sir."
"Hmm." Stern mused, "So if he dies out there, we won't be able to bring him back. Is that what you're saying?"
"I'm afraid it's a lot worse than that, colonel." Holiday cleared his throat, "He's not the only one whose template's suffering neural degradation. Ms. Fade's template had begun its own process of deterioration, even though it has just been her first imprint."
Stern nodded slowly, "I see."
"What do we do with them, sir?"
Stern glanced at him, then to the monitors displaying the hangar as the doors slid shut after the two had left. Just when things were turning for the better, "Terminate the templates that have been used. Prep them for resyk."
Resyk. Stern's term for recycling of human remains, to reduce them into a fine red paste and use them as fertilizer for the greenhouses. Nothing should be wasted, and Holiday by this time knew this was the most efficient way to handle their dead in a post-apocalyptic era.
"Yes sir."
Stern, left alone in his office, got off his chair and poured himself a glass of brandy. Drinking on the job was something he actively discouraged with his subordinates, but in this case he was willing to break his own rule. He'd killed civilians before without so much as an afterthought, but for those brains he'd just consigned to be terminated- it bothered him.
They weren't civilians, they were his men.
"It's tough being the boss." He muttered as he sipped on the burning liquid.
"Okay, so where to next?" West asked.
The two had gone on for two hours walking through the dusty fields. Fade had launched the eyebot as instructed, and just a few minutes before a heavy gust of wind started to blow from the north. Soon, a storm of sand and debris brewed in the area. The sandstorm swirling around them was loud and thick enough to conceal their movements, but was also thick enough to mess with their communicators.
His words were a jumble of mixed syllables, so Fade called out. "Sorry, didn't catch that! West, say again!"
They were only two feet from one another, so neither were worried about losing one another in the storm. The only thing that annoyed them, more than anything else at the moment, was the bad signal. The logical solution to their problem was to seek shelter, wherever it may be, and wait for the storm to pass- if it would even pass at all.
"I said…" West took a second to glance at the HUD in his visor, "…where to next?"
All she heard was 'where' and 'next', and it was enough. "Shelter!" Fade stopped to motion for him to follow, "We have to find shelter!"
"I gotcha!" West gave her a thumbs-up and followed her through the haze of the sandstorm.
A few minutes later, they ended up at the ruins of an old and very dilapidated building. The sands had blasted the letters clean off the billboards, but Fade could make out from the scratched image of a waitress that this place used to be a roadside diner. A Gas n' Gulp Stop, or something.
Fade sighed, "What I would give for a burger and fries right about now."
"Tell me about it." West pushed through the doors with ease, knocking them soundly onto the dusty floor as he entered the diner. Glass shards mixed with sand filled the dining area from where the blasts had shattered the windows, with tables and chairs still holding the customers wherever they had died. Skeletons, dressed in fading and tattered clothes, were hunched over their seats. Their gnarled, dry bone fingers stuck to the white ceramic plates, where the remains of their unfinished meals had been reduced to a black, ugly smear.
"Didn't even know what hit them." Fade remarked.
There were about twenty corpses in that diner, including the staff. Just a regular holiday, a dinner outing with the family, another night in the job.
"I heard we bombed them back." West replied, "The commies, I mean. Whatever they shot at us, we definitely paid back tenfold."
Fade didn't answer, as her attention was drawn to the corpse of a child. It was the corpse of a little girl, based on the pretty polka-dot dress that hung loosely on her bony shoulders, and she still carried the melted remains of her doll as she leaned against her father's side.
They died happy. Maybe.
Fade liked to think it ended that way. "Let's go, I don't wanna stay here."
West immediately understood what she meant, "Yeah, I get you. We'll find another place to wait out the storm."
The two headed out the back. As they emerged from the doors, the storm passed them by, letting them see clearly the marred earth left by the bombs.
A crater the size of a small city had been dug deep into the valley, stretching from the diner to the face of a nearby mountain. The earth had been exposed to temperatures so hot that the blast had changed the terrain to nothing more than a glass landscape. The crater itself looked like a concave impression on a cookie mix, and had hundreds of car wrecks where they had fallen from the collapsed highway.
"Well, that's something you don't see everyday." West commented.
Fade updated their coordinates for the eyebot to relay to headquarters. "Come on, let's move."
"So, what kind of a name is Danny Fade, anyway?" West asked, eager to chase the bleakness of their future away with idle talk.
"It's my name. You got a problem with that?" Fade replied nonchalantly, as though she'd heard the question before.
"No, it's just that it's something I'd never expect a girl like you would have for a name."
"Well, what would you expect I'd have as a name?" Fade humored him.
"Oh, I dunno." West shrugged in his power-armor, a gesture he found hard to show as the suit didn't allow much movement above the arms. "Probably something like Tessa or maybe Nancy."
Fade didn't take much offense to that, so she ignored him.
"Becca. Kate. Nora. Alicia." West continued, "You're technically a newborn, so why not change it? I'm just saying."
Fade rolled her eyes, "Danny Fade's fine, alright? I grew up with it, I owned it, and so it stays."
"Fine, fine. Danny Fade it is." West relented, "Danny Fade. Sounds like a baseball player."
"Actually, I do happen to have played baseball."
"Really? You any good at it?"
"Better than you, that's for sure."
West paused as they approached a STOP sign, and an idea came to mind. He attached his auto-shotgun onto his back and broke off the sign, "Oh yeah? Let's see you hit one out of the park."
Fade looked at him through her helmet with incredulity, "Come on, really? We're on mission here."
West was relentless, "Yes, really. Take the sign and I throw you something to hit. Go on, I'll give you all three tries to prove yourself."
"West-"
"Come on, what's the harm? Wasteland's still gonna be here even after we're done."
Fade, exasperated, sighed wearily. "Fine." She set her weapon aside and took the broken sign, "I'll hit this one in a single pitch."
West picked up a rock, gave her a second to prep herself, then let it sail through the air towards the waiting marksman. The sign hit the rock with a resounding crack, shattering it into a hundred pieces and sending the biggest chunk flying through the air and some hundred metres away from where they stood.
"Oooh! That's a homerun for Danny Fade! The crowd goes wild!" The sniper made a mock shuffle as she walked over to pick up her rifle. "Okay, enough messing around. Let's go."
"Best two out of three?" West pleaded.
"No, let's move." Fade stated firmly.
"Ah, you're no fun." West grumbled as he marched after her.
The two tread the desert wilderness until they chanced upon the ruins of the old BIA headquarters. The main gate had been left open since the evacuation had been done at the last second, so it wasn't that hard for them to enter the compound. Some old cars were still parked where their owners had left them, and overall the buildings themselves held pretty well considering what they've weathered through.
As they surveyed their surroundings, another sandstorm blew right over their shelter, as if the elements shadowed their every move.
"This place looks to have held up pretty well all things considered." West observed.
"Yeah." Fade agreed, "Let's scout it out and mark it. They might just set this place up as an outpost one day."
They ventured in, through the long hallways of the old research facility. As they went from door to door, Fade took the chance to get to know her partner better. "So what's your story, West? How'd you end up as a template in Vault 115?"
"Wasn't by choice." He said, "I was on leave, driving out to eat dinner at my buddy's house, when I got into an accident. What should have been a routine procedure in the emergency room turned into a Saturday night horror flick. Vault-Tec doctors gutted and cut me up. They took my brain, and then some. Next thing I knew, I woke up in a jar."
"And how're you holding up, being in this new body and all?"
"I'm just happy to breathe again." West replied, "And walk, and talk. Things could be worse, but I'm alive. I'm sure you think the same too. I heard you were paralyzed before donating your brain to Vault-Tec."
"Yeah, I guess that's what separates us, huh?" Fade recalled what it was like, being locked up in her own body, unable to move or breathe without a respirator. It was the worst form of torture she'd ever endured. When Vault-Tec came to her with a promise to give her a new body, she never hesitated to give her consent. "But we take what we can get."
As they ascended to the second floor, the noise of something big skittering across the hallway floors caused the two soldiers to halt in their tracks. Fade activated her helmet's flashlight and a bright beam illuminated the dark hall, revealing a swarm of large crimson ants steadily approaching the pair.
"Ah finally, something to shoot at." West said, flipping the safety off on his weapon. The auto-shotgun roared as it shot out spray after deadly spray, effectively turning the ants into an ugly black paste on the walls and ceiling. Fade joined him in fending off the critters, but opted to using her flamer gauntlet.
The monsters chittered as they rushed the tall, two-legged metallic figures. The ants weren't scout ants venturing out into the wastes looking for food, these were soldier ants. Their zeal in their duty for protecting the colony showed as they relentlessly pursued West and Fade, who were slowly backing out the way they came.
The flaming gel coated even the floors and walls, forming a fiery wall that held the horde back and allowed the pair to assess the current situation.
"What do you think? Ant colonies usually have a queen at the heart of it, right?" West asked.
"I think so, why?"
"What do you say about us clearing out this infestation right here and now?"
"How? We don't even know how to reach the queen, even through those soldier ants. They may have burrowed deep into miles and miles of ant tunnels. That's not part of our mission."
"You're the one who said this could be a good place to set up an outpost."
"Yeah, that was before these ants started crawling out of the woodwork!" Fade retorted, "We need more men. We're not equipped for this kind of thing."
West thought a bit about what she said and relented, "Hmm, I guess you've got a point there."
"Come on, we'll clear this infestation at its own time. Right now, we've got a job to do."
The two quickly exited the building, leaving a trail of fire and spent shells in their wake.
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