When It All Falls Apart

by CallMeWisteria

When the conspiracy began to take shape in the late 2060s, the faces, names, companies, contractors, and entities behind it all thought they had until the turn of the century to implement their plans. As it turned out, they were a little more than twenty years off when it all fell apart. Series of one-shots zooming in on ten of the biggest players with a stake in a nuclear war – on

10. X – Vault-Tec Corporation

To beguile the time, look like the time – bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.

"Ten years! It's been ten years, and look where we are now! Look where I am now!"

With a pep in his step, Bud Joel Askins sauntered through the frosted glass, double doors into the office of Vault-Tec's CEO Laura Grace Thompson, who barely looked up from where she was sat at her desk. Barbara Francine Howard, stood just beside her and in conversation, however did, though the look in her eyes when she glanced at him gave him pause. Turner, he corrected himself. She took her maiden name back three years ago in the divorce, there's no reason to slip up. The man on the other side of Thompson stepping away from the discussion with her and Barbara, he approached shook hands with Bud, the beginnings of a smirk on his face when he saw with whom the other man had entered. The arrival politely inclined his head towards COO Hugo Mansfield Stolz when he let go of Bud's hand but saw very little of his countenance when no more than a minute later he was barely looking up from his mobile. In a much more sociable mood and, instead, carrying a bucket containing a bottle of champagne resting atop ice in one hand and a charcuterie plate in the other, the favourite of Bud's Buds, Hank MacLean, set the spoils down on the larger table in a corner of the CEO's office overlooking the skyline of Los Angeles. Hearing two more of Bud's Buds stepping in apparently last and behind the visiting Joanne Liane Strausser, Thompson finally looked up from her computer terminal and eyed them closely, a smirk dawning on her face when they all stiffened.

The least fazed of them, unsurprisingly, was Barbara's own personal assistant, Betty Kay Pearson, the young woman herself one of Bud's Buds. Similarly, though standing a little straighter and smoothing out her skirt, was Stephanie Elle Harper, who set down the box of champagne flutes in her arms and began to take them out individually in a neat line on the table. PR Director Joanne Strausser being of almost the same mind choose to, by her gait and folding her arms loosely over her chest, take Thompson's gaze the same as she would those of the press. Hugo Stolz slipped his mobile into his back pocket the moment he realised Thompson was looking at all of them, and held himself a little tenser when her eyes fell on him whilst he walked back over to stand beside her. Not wanting to let the CEO spoil his good mood, Bud waved at Hank to start pouring champagne as soon as Stephanie got all of the flutes out of the box, and turned back to her with a smile. Thompson's face betrayed nothing but, to her left, Barbara offered him a faint smile. She raised an eyebrow when she saw how swiftly and cleanly MacLean and Harper had prepared the flutes of champagne, but her attention soon dropped upon getting a notification from her mobile on her Pip-Boy. Janey is enjoying being my assistant at the birthday party so far today. Looks like it'll be a long day, but she's happy. Refusing to look at the photograph attached to the message or to even acknowledge it, she dismissed the notification and, when she looked up again, Bud was walking over with two flutes of champagne in his hands.

"It's barely nine in the morning, Bud," Thompson said, looking almost amused when she accepted the flute. "Why the champagne?"

"It's been ten years since I made my first, real call as Senior Junior Vice President of this company, getting some of the best corporations in America together, and," He chuckled. "Of course, starting my collection of Bud's Buds. I thought I'd bring Hank, Stephanie, and Betty with me today in celebration of that – and of them being three of my earliest and most successful projects!"

"I'm well aware," Thompson said, narrowly observing him over the rim of the champagne flute as she took a sip. "I should think we all – though I certainly do for my own sanity – are pleased that you proved to be worth the gamble you were at the time. Then again, I did always doubt that your specialities laid in Product Management And Manufacturing, otherwise I, Hugo, and the rest of the Board never would have given your application a second look."

"I knew what I do best and sought out people who would recognise it," He said with a smug smile. "I had been piecing together my form for workflow optimisation of management timelines, and I had a feeling, when I presented that thesis, Vault-Tec would recognise they needed me."

Stolz snorted. "You're far from what anyone could call a scientist, Bud. I wouldn't risk earning their ire by using their language."

"It was a political science," Bud said, taking a champagne flute from Hank when he came over with one. "I have always been in the business of what makes people act the way they do, and how to get them to do what I – we – want from the political side, not the psychological one. That was part of why I called the meeting in '67 in the first place. Until the time comes for us to act, we'll still need external support and the best way to obtain that is to put those you might otherwise see as your competition on your side. West-Tek, REPCONN, RobCo, Big MT…all of them and more want control over the future and keeping them out of our way and of the same mind as us is the closest we can come to outsmarting them."

"I would like to see someone outright outsmart Robert House," Stephanie Harper remarked, laughing at the thought. "Every time I've seen him on the news, or he's come up in conversation, or the few times I've seen him in passing, it has always been all too clear that he thinks he's the smartest in the room, and I think it'd be satisfying to see him be shown that isn't always the case."

"The problem with House is he doesn't see the larger picture," Bud said. "Most people – including him – think scale means increasing global market shares and gaining as near to total control as one can get in a market, but that's thinking in three dimensions. I look at it in four, in what's beyond my nose, something House doesn't, and it's because of that I was able to recognise the ultimate weapon to destroy one's competition isn't outselling or outsmarting them but time. Time is and always has been the apex predator, and what we are focused on here is outlasting and outliving everyone else, including people as well educated and intelligent as House."

"House does, however," Thompson put in. "Have reason behind his assumptions of his own intelligence. He graduated high school when he was twelve, and had a master's degree by seventeen. He easily could have studied for a doctorate but was shrewd enough to go into business instead. If he weren't smug about it, I don't think I'd believe he's human."

"As for Bud and his 'political science,'" Stolz added, stepping over to the table to fashion himself a small cheese plate. "I agree your talents were wasted at West-Tek, and the Board made the right decision to take you, though I'm sure the 'favours' you called references helped with that, seeing as we all know political science isn't a real science or a sphere of precision dealing in identifying certainties and developing tangible results from variable manipulation the likes of which you see in the fields of real science."

"Exactly why I prefer the term management!" Bud said, snapping his fingers with a smirk. "Sure, you and your friends in academia could argue what is or isn't political science, political theory, political management, etc, but I find management to be the all encompassing word to describe both the what and the how of the future!"

"That's why you're the boss!" Hank dutifully exclaimed, raising his champagne flute in a toast. "To our continued success and the future!"

"I knew I've taught you well!" Bud chuckled. "With all due respect to the both of you, Steph, Betty," He said as he stepped over to Hank and gave him an almost fatherly slap on the back. "I think Mister Hank MacLean might be my biggest success!"

"In that event, perhaps you'll consider promoting him," Stephanie joked before taking a sip of her champagne. "Or all of us. There's going to be a new round of potential trainees coming in soon, aren't there?"

"Yes, there will be, and perhaps it is time I let my most successful assistants train the newcomers," Bud said cheerfully, barely noticing when Strausser rolled her eyes. "With the responsibility for creating the future of humanity falling to us, we'll need the best of the best to ensure it works out."

"Seeing as my job partially entails ensuring that information never leaves the company, I don't know how I feel about the idea of you lessening any of the intense supervision in your assistant training programme," Strausser said. "This country might be a lost cause, but the public are never going to see it that way until the time comes for us to prove it, which will be at least another fifteen years from now. Until then, they would perceive it as a betrayal of their trust and nothing more or less than a way to control them for our benefit rather than for the ultimate benefit of humanity."

"If you put it that way, it sounds downright morally questionable, which is exactly why it will never come to light," Bud said almost dismissively. "You do your job well, and so do my Buds. Vault-Tec will remain alive and continue to be the hope for the future, and no one will have to question it or dwell on why America decided to outsource the survival of this country to the private sector."

"The Federal Government might be the biggest employer in the country, but they're certainly not run by people as cynical as some would have you think," Betty said, accepting a small plate of cheese and crackers from Stolz with half a smile. "Otherwise they would have realised ending the War and preventing further conflicts is in their best interest rather than completely crushing the Reds by any means necessary. The Feds will cease to have power and relevance after a major nuclear exchange."

"Precisely!" Bud said with smile. "And in no small part because they've drained the money they had these last twenty years in the War."

"The flaw at the heart of the Federal Government," Thompson said after taking another few, long sips of her champagne. "Rests with their hubris which has developed and been reinforced after over a century of being one of the world's only two true superpowers and, for the first thirty years of this century, at one time its only. There is no one with living memory anymore who can attest to anything different. Gruesome and truly horrific as the Second World War was, the only country who truly benefited from it was us, and knowing that has reinforced our exceptionalism ever since. Rightfully so, might I add, but to the disadvantage of the Federal Government today and to the benefit of ourselves."

"They're used to war and specifically this War. They don't know any other state to be in," Barb said, glancing up from her Pip-Boy as she dismissed a new text message from the link with her mobile. "The rot is at the core because of the lack of intentional guidance in what formed the world we have now, a world they're clinging to with no purpose. They – and certainly the leaders of the military – are no hopers. If they weren't, it wouldn't be on us to establish a new world free of war."

"They'll bleed themselves completely dry by the time we intervene and won't even know it. The people, however, will be relieved to find someone looking out for their best interests," Stolz said, laughing. "What the Feds – including those in the Enclave – don't realise is that their ability to retain continuous leadership will more than likely fail because of their own failures in management. They'll start squabbling within weeks, I'm sure, whereas we are clearly defined inside and out without the limitations of failed nation."

"We also have more locations spread out from which we'll be able to coordinate or take important data and scientific developments from," Thompson said, a smirk gracing her lips. "To my knowledge, the Enclave have less than thirty locations, most of them military bases, while we have nearly two hundred, and their crucial facilities – such as the Presidential Oil Rig – are smaller and capable of housing less people than any of our reserve Vaults for ourselves. Some of our research Vaults are significantly larger. Vault 111…in Massachusetts, isn't it? Their cryogenic facility is set to hold two thousand people in suspended animation indefinitely to get the most out of our research into cryogenic life preservation."

"The research that developed it is what gave us what we needed in order to ensure Vault 31 will be the perfect, secure facility for my Buds and, of course, those important enough in industry and their families we found to be worth preserving for their intellect or because they paid their way in," Bud said, taking another few sips of his champagne. "But most of them," He said, turning to Stephanie, Hank, and Betty. "Were chosen because they'll be instrumental in creating the super managers who will inherit the Earth, the people with positivity, who make lemonade, who are undeterred by the difficulties that will come as they establish our peaceful world in lieu of the violent one we have now."

"Something, again, people will not understand until they reach the end of the rope," Strausser said, setting down her empty champagne flute and looking sympathetically towards Barb. "Cooper fell into the same trap as most who have served or are still in the military, that everyone needs to look at even the good things as though they have the potential to be bad and to plan for the worst. I'm sorry you've had to deal with someone so paranoid and unreasonable still having some custody of your daughter."

"In a perfect world, she wouldn't still be around him," Barb sighed, crossing her arms and shutting off mobile notifications on her Pip-Boy. "But he made himself sympathetic enough to earn minimal custodial rights. He's never hurt her – and, seeing as Janey just turned ten back in March, she could and would say if he had or is – but I am concerned he'll try, one of these days, to convince her our divorce was the fault of anyone but himself."

"You reapplied for deployment to Alaska? You were forced to leave for nearly six months just after Janey was born, and you want to go back after everything you saw? It's only been three years, Coop, why –"

"Does knowing he has her today while he performs at one of her classmate's birthday parties, then, bring back all the bad memories?" Thompson said, an eyebrow half raised.

"She's six years old and hasn't seen her father in three years because you were out fighting up in Alaska a second time, for no good reason! I know you don't like socialising after filming, but she'll be with us. And you know how she loves it when you give your thumbs up in the Vault suit. It was one of the strongest memories she had of you before you left three years ago."

"I know, but after the party following the wrap of filming Vault 4's advertisement, I had to smile and nod when people like Askins bragged about how great the T-45's they approved looked without giving a damn about the people who've died because of the flaws in the –"

"He wasn't trying to –"

"– I know what I've seen and heard, Barb. I'm getting tired of having to go to all of your work events, of having so many advertisements to shoot back to back. I can't even enjoy bringing Janey to work anymore, and she'll be in school all day when she starts first grade next year. She needs to adjust to not going everywhere with one of us, and I want to take a step back. I'm losing out on film and television roles now, too, with all the work I've done on and off for Vault-Tec. Going back to it when I came home from Alaska was a mistake I shouldn't have made."

"You just got the lead again in the sequel for The Man From Deadhorse. In what world are you losing out on –"

"I was the lead when the original movie began shooting after I returned from Alaska the first time, and that was in September of '67. They chose me because people can't associate anyone but me with the Sheriff, not because –"

"I wouldn't say all of my memories of our marriage, even towards the end were bad," Barb eventually said. "But, yes, knowing he has her and is likely performing as though nothing has changed from his days on screen does bother me. It'd bother anyone. He had just finished shooting The Man From Deadhorse II when we filed for divorce, and…"

"The truth partially depends on your point of view, Coop. You served first in the Marines and then in the Army and are well respected as a serviceman and as an actor. A few people you were once friends or close colleagues with saying you're 'the pitchman for the end of the world,' are bitter and wrong. Vault-Tec –"

"Everything always comes back around to Vault-Tec with you these days, Barb! This isn't you. If you would just leave that shill behind, we –"

"I need this job for your, my, and Janey's future! How can you say otherwise with everything you've seen on the frontlines of this War? Or when you've started buying guns to keep in the house despite the fact we'll be perfectly safe and have no need for them in the Vault should –"

"– I didn't go to War defending our freedom so we could end up living in a cellar under the boot heel of Chairman Bud Askins, chained to the damn wall and being forced to trust –"

"– You're looking for a bogeyman where there isn't one! Are some of your former friends honestly getting to you this much? Using your attention, thinking you see more than everyone else, against you? I'm doing what I can, Coop. None of this is ideal, but, if billions of people are going to die, I'll do whatever it takes to ensure the people I love – you and Janey – aren't among them! Just trust me. Please."

"How can I trust you when you told Robert House that Vault-Tec will be the ones to drop the bombs just six years ago?"

"Well, you did the right thing in divorcing him," Bud said encouragingly. "He may not be a real Commie, but he was a potential loose thread who refused to understand. You did the right thing for you and your daughter, and the right thing for the military, keeping him from going back to escape what he had done."

"Which he absolutely would have," Thompson said, turning towards Barb and eyeing her closely. "Have these last few years really eaten away at you because of him? You really ought to get out just a little bit more. You're only forty five. You've got plenty of life left to live."

"I also have a ten year old daughter with an unstable father who gets to be with her most weekends unsupervised," Barb replied, glancing out the windows at the city running far down below them. "Including this one, yet claims I'm the one who isn't there for her the way she needs when it's me who drives her to school, me who sees she's brought home safely by our au pair when I have to work late, me who laughs with her when she and her friends come by to watch movies, or to listen to music from fifty, sixty, seventy years ago and joke about how different it is. I'm the one who ensures she gets her nails done, her hair trimmed, her homework done. He does none of that. He never has, not fully."

"Unfortunately, the courts don't like to completely sever parental rights unless there's clear signs of abuse or psychological disturbance," Thompson said, accepting a second flute of champagne from Hank. "I, as you know, am sympathetic to your case, Barbara, but you need to let some of this frustration and anger with him go. His remaining wealth is running out, otherwise he wouldn't be trotting out – literally from what you've said – to birthday parties, even for your daughter's classmates and friends, in order to have enough money to pay alimony. You are the one with all of the wealth, power, and influence. You have no reason to let him get under your skin."

"I was married to him for almost fifteen years. That, you could say, made it inevitable," Barb said before letting out a sigh. "I've had enough talking about this. My personal life has nothing to do with our work, and certainly isn't something to celebrate."

"No, but the 2077 Vault-Tec Corporate Convention in Coswald is in just two weeks!" Bud said with a laugh. "Filming the training videos for it for our newest regional managers was more fun than I anticipated it being, although I've found filming training videos in general to be more and more enjoyable. There's something about knowing all of our trainees be it local or regional managers or door to doors salesmen are looking up to me and want what I have that's deeply satisfying."

"I'm glad to have been able to help write and film them!" Hank eagerly said, smiling when Bud winked at him and gave him a brief thumbs up.

"And your input, and yours," Bud went on, tapping his almost emptied champagne flute against those of Stephanie and Betty. "Were also key in the formulation of the training video for my potential, future buds! It should be the perfect sales pitch to them and, hopefully, something they'll learn from too."

"'A rising talent full of harvestable optimism and crippling debt with no time to climb the rungs of vocational training and earnt experience,'" Thompson quoted, her lips pursed as she took a sip of her champagne. "'Speed skate up the slopes of success with our new, experimental Bud's Buds Young Graduating Scholars Rotational Internship Programme, or, in metadata terms – glory!'" The pitch of her voice went up and down in mimicry of his. "'Hustle, major, desperate, flashy, pliant, crave, and winning!' Yes, Bud. We have heard it more than enough times, and I would ask you to stop attempting to humbly boast about your success."

Bud's laughter weakened and his lips turned up into an awkward smile.

"Your social skills are abysmal for someone so competent at his job," Strausser said, sharing a look of agreement with Stolz as he lit his pipe. "I don't think you've ever been able to stop yourself from talking when you get excited enough about something. Let's hope you never do this to someone who might take unkindly to your work."

"I think I may have already," Bud said, rubbing at his neck with the same forced smile. "Dr. Dorothea Dias from RobCo – the one who designed all of the hybrid 'brain and robotics' robots – seemed a bit touchy when I asked her if she was sure her software would be able to safely extract my brain and implant it into the 'rollerbrain' as she called it without error. She showed me some rather disturbing footage of the developmental process that led to the technology I'll be relying on one day, although I'm sure whatever further developments they make and implement will be…let's just say I don't want to see the process again."

"She's intimidating to put it lightly," Stolz half heartedly agreed. "In my opinion, a budding psychopath as well. The way she discussed the methodology of the research and the way the subjects were handled wasn't clinically detached as it should have been. She seemed to enjoy the fact her job mandates her executing people and, previously, animals, on a daily basis. I can't say I find that comforting."

"Dias is a product of Robert House's partiality towards strange people, nothing more or less than that," Thompson set down her half emptied champagne flute. "His own mother –"

"Laura, she may have raised him but she isn't –" Strausser irritably cut in.

"– Has an uncomfortable sense of knowing about us, if what I've heard of the things she's been saying are accurate, despite never having met most of us," Thompson continued without hesitation. "His wife – and I will call Jane Blanchard his wife whether he wants to think of her as such or not – is both a paradox of being incredibly public and incredibly private, and he himself has more scorn towards the notion of having a personal, public presence online than most people have towards those who've cheated them. And he, too, has become a recluse the last few weeks. Of course he favours and hires people like Dias for the most sensitive projects at RobCo. He probably sees a decent bit of himself in her."

"Minus the psychopathy," Bud said to no argument. "House is smug and can be eccentric, but he's not a psychopath."

"One would hope not," Strausser said, raising an eyebrow when Stolz started laughing. "You disagree?"

"No, I concur with the rest of you," He said, taking a draw from his pipe and pointing her to the skyline. "I simply found myself wondering if that could be his brother doing the remains of the H&H Tool Company in – have you heard any of the most recent news around that? It's rather funny how deranged Anthony House is – because whatever factory that smoke is coming from is going to get fined like hell for pollution. Honestly, the air quality in this damn city has been terrible for decades. I hope the son of a bitch responsible gets slapped by the Feds, because it's only been two years since the air –"

The pipe dropped from his hand and the sound of it hitting the floor became subsumed by a harsh, snapping noise louder and longer than a thunderclap ringing out. Hearing another, when he turned to look at the horizon again and away from the startled faces of his colleagues, he froze where he was stood, a thousand mile stare glazing over his eyes. An orange, red, and yellow bloom began to form in the sky, quickly expanding in the distance and taking over the horizon for a moment. The piercing blare of sirens outside crashing into him next, he barely registered, at first, what was happening. The glib self amusement entirely left the countenance and gait of Bud Askins. The man ran towards the doors, all but diving into the floor when, finally entering the correct passkey on his Pip-Boy, it opened its entrance to stairs down to the escape tunnels. Ever on his heels, and either not hearing or wilfully ignoring Thompson shouting at all of them to wait, Hank MacLean, Stephanie Harper, and Betty Pearson followed after him without a thought about it. A few moments passed. A rage Stolz had never seen before overtook Thompson's face as she pulled out her mobile phones, trying desperately, it seemed, to get in contact with someone – anybody – capable of telling her what she was seeing was false.

The building shaking underneath their feet that knocked them to the ground and the sight of more fiery blooms on the horizon proved otherwise.

Refusing to waste any time longer, Joanne Strausser pushed herself up off the ground and ran over to Barb, dragging her to her feet and towards the stairs down to the escape tunnels. She tugged harshly on her wrists when Barb paused, fighting to pull her mobile out of her skirt pocket. A gunshot rang out behind her, then another; Thompson screamed, and so did Stolz. The sound drawing her back to the moment, Barb looked back for only a few seconds when she wrestled her mobile out of her skirt pockets and began to follow after Joanne. She paused again, however, when she got her mobile unlocked; the time almost mocking her. 9:59 AM, PST. Her hands shook as she continued down the stairs, Joanne moving faster and faster before breaking into a sprint down the stairs. With no floors numbered and no exit but to go back up or continue heading down to safety, the two women kept going down, driven by instinct. Giving up on her heels, Strausser paused for barely a second to snatch them off and cast them aside. She ran faster still, disappearing around a corner before Barb could realise she was struggling to breathe as she kept running. Her pace began to slow, her heart beating faster. Remembering why she had pulled out her mobile when she nearly dropped it turning a corner down the stairs, she found herself starting to feel nauseated as she paused to stop her hands from shaking around her mobile, beginning to dial.

1-213-266-7374.

Cooper H.

The sound of her Pip-Boy's Geiger Counter startling her, she tightened her hand around her phone; the sound of it ringing out of sync with the ticking of the Geiger Counter making the anxious, twisting, nauseated feeling worse. She kept running down the stairs to where safety beckoned, letting out a scream when a rumbling sound came from above. When she looked back, bits of concrete, metal, and glass were falling. Covering her head the best she could with one arm while holding her still ringing phone to her ear with the other, Barb rolled down the stairs as far as she could go, nearly slamming into a corner. The arm wrapped over her head slamming into the side of the wall, her breathing growing heavier and heavier, she looked back a second time, only to see the way back up jammed with massive chunks of concrete; the brief feeling of relief at the realisation that no further debris – so she hoped – would come flying at her dissipated when she saw she was bleeding; cuts on her hands, cuts through the sleeves of her blazer and blouse, cuts on her tights. The ringing of the phone falling flat to voicemail, she let out an angered cry, not bothering to look at the depth of her cuts or the blood beginning to seep into her clothes. She kept herself going down the stairs, trying to regain her speed, only to let out a frustrated cry when the voicemail tone rang out in her ear.

"God damn you, Cooper!" Her voice broke, and her hand clenched around her phone tighter still. Struggling to catch her breath, she all but leapt down the last few stairs to the escape tunnels, slamming herself against the wall by accident as she rushed to slap her ID badge against the door access scanner. "I don't care what's happened between us, I thought we agreed Janey is more important to keep safe, to –"

The call dropped. She pushed her way through the doors before they were fully open, taking a deep, gasping breath of air when they closed behind her. Safety. For now, technically, she was safe. Looking down at her mobile, she swore at the sight of her falling cell reception.

7G to 5G.

She dialled again, still catching her breath, and making her way down the corridor. She stopped short at the sound of another explosion reverberating well above her, shaking at the sight and sound of her Pip-Boy's Geiger Counter beginning to tick again. She ran, her hand tightening around her mobile, her chest starting to hurt from the panic and running. When she finally reached the door to the Vault, she let out a sigh of relief to find it shut and secure, quickly making her way over to the access point and hooking her Pip-Boy to it. The ringing fell flat to voicemail again, and she started swearing again, snatching the key out of the access point and snapping it back into her Pip-Boy, watching as the clearance to open the door was granted.

"I know you have your phone with you, Cooper, damn it, let me know you and Janey are safe!" Barb snapped into the receiver, her voice shaking in fury. "You know where the fucking Vault is, that party isn't more than…"

She glanced at her Pip-Boy upon it receiving a notification. She dismissed it, but finally opened the photographs sent to her. At the sight of her daughter sat atop the young girl's favourite horse, her father beside her with a proud smile on his face, Barb paused, pressure starting to build behind her eyes.

"We had meant to make war obsolete, we had meant to close the chapter on this world in the '90s, Coop," Barb said, less anger shaking her voice than she had anticipated. "When I suggested we could drop the bombs ourselves, I thought we would have total control, but this isn't…"

The call dropped. A short yell of aggravation escaped her at the sight of the still falling signal.

5G to 4G LTE.

4G LTE to 2G.

A surge of panic sweeping over her, she furiously began to dial again, her hands shaking worse than ever. The call going directly to voicemail, she all but scratched at her face to brush away the tears starting to fall from her eyes.

"I thought we could have a perfect life, and a perfect world for Janey, one we constructed without the influence of the terror and irrationality of the world we've lived in, but I didn't think it would be like this," Her voice wavered as she watched the Vault door open. "I didn't think it'd be like this. China, Russia, the damned Reds…they've taken that away from us, the perfect control, the guarantee of success and…"

The sound of metal grating and brushing against metal dissipating at the door to the Vault finishing opening drew her away from her thoughts a few seconds, and, almost in a trance, she stepped towards the entrance as the bridge into the Vault extended.

"This isn't our fault, and it's not my fault, but…God, I…I can't…" Barb let out a shaky sigh as she started to cross the bridge and towards the controls to close the Vault door behind herself. "Get Janey here or I'll find a way to safely drag the two of you to safety. I don't care what you think about me, about my job, about Vault-Tec, we are safety, we are security, we're…I can't believe this is it. I can't believe this is how it goes to…"

The call dropped again, and her vision blurred as she kept her mobile held against her ear. Finding the controls to the Vault door staring back at her, she fell quiet again, her breathing unsteady and her mind racing. How did I get…wasn't it farther away from… Almost on instinct, she plugged in her Pip-Boy and hit the button to close the door. Hearing the noise of the Vault door beginning to shut behind her, she turned back towards it, staring and trying not to think about the almost painful ringing sound it left in her ears. Stumbling back into the wall of the entrance corridor, she shakily slid down to the floor against it, feeling almost limp sat on the floor. The analogue hum on the other side of her mobile remained the same as it had been with every other attempted call. Her mobile and body suddenly all she felt she could hold to ground herself, she let out a brief sigh of relief at the realisation that, for the time being, she was safe in Vault 33; safe from the radiation, further bombs falling, fallout being kicked up. Unsure of whether or not she still had cellular service, telling herself she did even if it was almost certainly impossible, she unlocked her mobile again and tried, one last, to place a call. Finally taking in the amount of cuts all over her body, she forced herself back up to her feet. She walked slowly deeper into the Vault, trying to remind herself everything a person could need would be in at least one of the three Vaults, trying to remind herself that she was not alone and her colleagues or, at least, a few of them and their assistants, must have already crossed over into Vault 31, trying to remind herself she was one of the only people capable of accessing all three of them or ever leaving them, only to feel her thoughts pause once more when she received only voicemail again.

"This isn't our fault, Coop, it's not my fault…God, I…" She fell silent, her throat beginning to feel sore from her ever distanced first scream. "I am getting Janey back, Coop. And I…maybe you were right to be angry with me, and I'm sorry but…but it's not my fault. It's not my fault…"

And, her mind taunted the closer she got to the clinic. You haven't won. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

Nobody wins.

Nobody wins.

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air is delicate.

What and whom Fredreick Sinclair had intended to enshrine with him forever died suddenly and swiftly, betrayal another knife twisting in his back before his own fall.

A little water clears us of this deed.

Dr. Leon Von Felden fell at the hands of US Army Captain Roger Maxson while Brigadier General Andrea Von Felden, his wife, stood strong in the Pentagon, believing in the same plan for what to do should the US fall as the two men whom she called her friends and one of whom she would never know executed her husband.

Let every man be master of his time.

Those of whom had their lives unwillingly forfeited to General Atomics International would never have their names known or given back to them even in death.

And nothing is but what is not.

The lies meant to catch up to Mass Fusion would never see the light of day until they were encountered by some of the best minds the world after would ever know over two centuries later.

Look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not.

The military rescue promised to Dr. Ericka Elwood-Woolum, her husband, and their team never arrived.

Nought's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content.

The lives destroyed in a preventable accident of ArcJet Systems would never be vindicated.

False face must hide what false heart doth know.

What was promised to John Caleb Bradberton was built upon lies, and even his elite team of organic chemists turned upon each other.

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other.

Though proven right, Leonard Steeple would never live to see the world after nor know of the true reason why, only a few days before the War, his CFO and once close friend and her daughter flew to Los Angeles; nor would she know what became of Admiral Colin Masters, her husband, or their son brought to the Pentagon by his father when the Admiral stood beside Brigadier General Von Felden across the country in the Pentagon from their Brother in Steel, Captain Maxson.

Thou art the best o' the cutthroats.

Even with his mathematical approach and carefully crafted precision, Robert Edwin House was twenty hours short and, while he survived, lost much more than he had planned for and would return a more cynical, more imperious figure seen as Not At Home; over two centuries later, a survivour from his time would go on to describe him as a once charming man turned recluse who went on to kill a lot of people in pursuit of establishing his own utopia when he made himself known again after nearly two hundred years of silence.

To beguile the time, look like the time – bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.

And, for all they planned for, not even Vault-Tec were able to swing the pendulum of fate into their hands when it mattered most.

When it all falls apart, nobody wins.

Not a damn person wins.