Before I had the chance to brace against the impact of the object I tossed it exploded just as it passed through the glaring hole in the wall. A burst of violence that I could only describe as blindingly yellow erupted before my eyes, and I couldn't even process the sight. I could hear the roar that quickly followed; it felt as if V.A.T.S. were active, but that wasn't the case.
A heavy force pushed into me and I felt my back crash against the hard ground, but even worse was the starry vision that followed. My ears rang as if I had put my head into a bell and then struck it. My body felt numb as I tried to move, and when I managed to finally force some movement I watched as the world spun and my stomach lurched.
I fought to keep my lunch down, to little effect. I let my eyes slide shut, hoping it'd help, but it, too, did nothing; and worse, it felt as if I were being thrown about by a maelstrom. I wanted to wait this out. I'd wished I could take the time to collect myself and to let the turbulent sensations pass, but that need - that hope - vanished when my hearing started to come back and I could hear the distant super mutants.
Clenching my jaw, I pushed my body; gathering my entire will and made myself move. Surprisingly, it worked. Just like that I was half-stumbling-half-running toward the first thing I could see, even if I had no idea what it was. I'd been lucky, though, as it turned out to be a pile of brick and metal, possibly the remains of the wall.
Yet again, before I had the chance to make heads or tails of the situation the sounds of careful gunfire filled the air. As the world stopped tilting and dancing, I saw that I was the one being fired upon as puffs of debris shot into the air around me. Until my world steadied I'd be a sitting duck. I couldn't even look around, since I wasn't able to focus on anything.
I kept myself low, removing as much of the surface area as possible to make myself a harder target. I couldn't say if I got hit, as I had no feeling in my body; only a sense of coldness wrapping around and consuming all it touched.
How much time had passed since the not-knife exploded? Ten seconds? Twenty? I closed my eyes once more and focused on myself; listening to the soft, slow beat of my heart as if it were pitifully crying out, I tried to wiggle my toes or to feel the ground beneath me. I focused on my breathing, each breath coming and going with an extreme haste.
That coldness, however, continued to consume, to engulf my entire being. I was tired. So very tired. It'd be easy to sleep, just let loose of that last thread I was desperately clutching and I'd fall. I could picture myself loosing one finger, two, and then three. It'd be so, so easy.
But then I thought of my mother, back in Vault 100; of Kyle's expression when I accidentally shot him and how despite my mistakes, he still wanted to travel with me; of Blake as he did his best to remain stoic, no matter how perturbed he became; of Anton as he slithered through the factory yard; and of Addison's warm embrace and her calming scent. With a renewed vigor, I mentally latched on to the thread for everything I was worth.
My eyes shot wide open and in one motion I had my bag in my arms and my hands darted inside to find what I'd need. Without waiting, I injected a med-x and two stimpacks. As if that wasn't enough, I pulled out a strange bottle marked buffout - a steroid, perhaps (I wasn't certain) - but I wasted no time pondering and popped the contents into my mouth.
At first I was greeted to something copper tasting, but as I swallowed I began to taste a tinge of lemon. Then I waited. And waited for what felt like hours. Until suddenly I felt a zeal unlike any I'd felt before, and with it a sense of warmth and life. I was being reinvigorated, and I just knew that I stood at the top of the world - or at least a very tall peak. That was the feeling anyway.
I could feel every motion within my body; from the steady spurts of blood oozing out to a regained warmth being carried within my veins. Even the world around me seemed to right itself and hold steady, whether temporary or permanent I couldn't tell. With all these senses coming all at once, I was almost overwhelmed, but the sounds of the gunfire that continued to pepper my cover and crash all around me kept me oddly focused.
I took a risk and peeked to my side, sliding just farther along my cover to be able to glance past, and what I saw could only be described as too much: no less than thirteen super mutants, each equipped with some kind of rifle, and all pointed toward me.
Am I really that much of a threat? But why weren't they just rushing my position?
Let's push those thoughts aside. I couldn't read those creatures. What were my options? I could potentially use a couple frag grenades to open a path, but where would I go - where could I go? From my spot, I saw no less than five doors or doorways; two were massive, easily twice my height and equally as large; one was a swinging wooden door, it's mostly decomposed; and the last two were hydraulic metal doors.
Just as I began to pick a door through simple means of a child's game, a new sound caught me off guard; or, rather, the lack thereof. It was deafening. Utterly silent, no trace of movement, no breathing, as if the mutants suddenly disappeared. I flipped over to my back, my bag still clutched in my arms, and that's when I came face to face with the reason for this change of environment: the largest super mutant I'd ever seen loomed above me; its weapon, a sledgehammer, tightly held off to one side, and a mean glare pointed down at me.
"'Umans, big drubble. Get in way. Can't 'ave dat." It flexed its fingers along the surface of the handle, then slowly traced the enormous head along the ground until it lightly tapped my thigh. I swallowed. It flared its nostrils and turned toward the rest, "Back work." Then growled as it focused on me again, "Not 'lone. Where rest?"
My mind froze up as I tried to process the situation. For whatever reason, a super mutant I could clearly understand was simply too shocking at that point. Before I could motion toward the thing, it seemed to come to its own conclusion - for better or worse.
"Get up, 'uman." Its voice carried the gravitas of one that had seen authority and assumed the leadership position. It held the cards right now, and it would let me know that it knew.
Slinging my bag back on, I climbed to my feet. Matching the leader mutant glare for glare, except I felt like a kid compared to this thing. The others are pretty tall, but this thing was nearly a full two feet taller than them. It was crazy!
More than anything, though, I knew I couldn't do anything at this moment as I didn't have any sort of weapon to quickly draw, and I certainly wasn't going to beat one of these guys barehanded. Should I risk it? I hadn't an answer.
Still. Now that I was on my feet I was able to observe more. Yet, the most pressing was my own body; even without taking my eyes fully off leader mutant, I could tell that my clothes had gotten new holes, that I was bleeding in multiple places, and I probably shouldn't be standing right now. Past that, I saw the mutants getting back to work...
For a grand total of eight seconds, before gunfire off in the distance drew their attention and the leader mutant waved them off without breaking its attention from me. Most ran right out one of the bay doors, leaving only the leader mutant and two others - their weapons pointed at me.
The leader mutant scoffed, "Always others. Never 'lone." It reached out with its giant hand and grabbed my hair within a tight grip. If I wasn't primarily running on drugs, I think I'd have started squirming right then; instead, I kept my glare as I stared into the mutant's eyes, even as tears threatened to pool.
"Weak one good bait." Before I could garner an understanding, it lifted its thick arm and I subsequently followed. I felt my scalp scream. I wasn't even given the time to reach for my head before something hard impacted my gut and all the air within my lungs came out in one hard puff. The next thing I knew I was back on the ground and my vision was fading to black.
My body ached. There wasn't a single motion that didn't bring with it an aching pain. As my eyes opened, I took in my surroundings; I was in a rectangular room bare of any decorations. The walls were made of some sort of rusted metal and a single door sat against the wall opposite of me. The only source of light came from a fixture set in the middle of the ceiling, providing an equal amount of light to the entirety of the place.
I pushed myself off the wall, ignoring my body's groans, and reached for my bag - only to find it gone. I knew then that I'd have to make do with what I had on me, so I checked for supplies and quickly realized that things weren't looking good. I had a single bobby pin and my knife, hidden in my boot.
What am I supposed to do with these?
I could attempt to use the knife in place of the screwdriver and try and pick the lock, but looking closer at the door... there was no lock in sight to pick. Creeping along the wall, using it as support to keep myself upright, I slinked over to the door and began inspecting it and the surrounding parts of the wall and frame.
Before long I came to the one and only conclusion one could come up with after observing such a door: there was no lock to pick. In fact, it seemed as if the door wasn't meant to be opened from this side.
My legs crumbled and I fell to the floor on my rump. It was around that point that I noticed something practically hidden in the right hand back corner, to the left of where I awoke. I felt that my legs were unable to carry me, so I crawled over to the corner and looked over what lay before me; my Pip-Boy light flickering to life just to make sure my shadow didn't obstruct any view by diminishing the light.
A mattress covered in stains, standing the test of time. Atop it a skeleton, no clothes in sight. Yet, it wasn't bare - not necessarily. Connecting from the area of the ankle was a shackle with a chain leading to the wall. Giving it a test tug, it held firm to the wall.
This room is a prison. And I, the unwitting prisoner.
One of the arms was reaching toward the corner. Had it been the last, desperate attempt of a dying mind, or was there some intent? Offering an apology, I crept over the mattress and reached between the mattress and the wall. As soon as I touched something solid, I pulled it up to discover a book.
The cover was tattered with rips and scratches all over, much of the remaining patches of the outermost layer were upturned and barely clinging on. There was some small trace of what was once shown on the cover, but it was too faded, too worn to tell. Flipping it open I could tell that the pages, once white, were now a yellow-brown color and the defined edges felt soft to the touch and little nicks and scratches messed with the natural shape.
Opening to a random spot revealed the text that once belonged to whatever was once printed, but overlapping that was text written in by hand, splatterings of writing across nearly every surface of the pages as if each and every page were valuable and not a single spot could be wasted. It looked cramped as the writing was shoved and squeezed to make the absolute most out of each and every space, meanwhile the handwriting itself was sloppy and inelegant. Almost as if whomever wrote this had too much to write and too little time in which to record their thoughts.
Not everything was salvageable within the text, there were several points of smearing, intelligible writing, or aging. With nothing else to do, I began to shift through the contents starting with the first page. The text told a story, spoken in the form of a meticulous diary, and from the fractured segments of the tale that I could understand I found something far more grim than I ever wanted to imagine.
This factory was a subsidiary of Con Corp. and was in charge of tool production. It wasn't always that way, but after Con Corp. took over there was a massive reconstruction project of the factory floor. The shell remained the same but the guts were rearranged. Apparently, a secret area was dug out below.
The writer of this diary was one of a few who were asked to stay for additional work, but once the other workers left the ones left behind were wrangled up and forced into the basement. They were confined within these cells and lived out the rest of their days here.
That was all I could infer. Well, with the removal of some details that I was (and still am) honestly too uncomfortable to mention. The person that authored this diary speculated that the only people captured were those that had nobody to look for them.
Disgusting.
I shut the book and placed it back where I found it. I let myself fall to my back and stared up at the ceiling. A detail on the pages that I didn't initially understand made sense to me after I finished my reading: the smears and smudges on the pages, particularly the latter portion, were where tears had fallen.
My eyes felt heavy, but the thing that weighed on me more was the knot I felt turning in my gut, as if my insides were being squeezed and twisted. It didn't hurt though, but it was deeply unsettling. I hated it.
A quick death to the super mutants might be a far better fate than the torture these people locked within the basement were met with at the hands of sadists. Not that they had that option.
I struck the floor with a fist, the pain didn't even register as all I felt was numbness once again. I was tired. With a quick check of the chronometer on my Pip-Boy, I found that only three hours had passed since I left my friends and Travis.
What are they doing right now? Are they safe?
Did I have the right to wonder about that? Perhaps I was being selfish. I'd already caused harm to Kyle, I've left him out when I went to combat several times. And when we split up earlier I didn't even look back when I chose to go with Anton.
Why did I do that? Because he was going alone? Because he has been acting suspicious lately? How much do I even know about him? How much of what he's shown until now been a facade?
I knew from the way he moved past the super mutants that he wasn't as helpless as he made himself seem at the start. But deep down I was afraid. Afraid of what he might reveal if I confronted him. Afraid he'd turn on me. Afraid that everything has been a lie. Maybe he's been using me from the start – or maybe he's had no choice but to go along with us. Whatever the reason may be, I was afraid to listen to my own thoughts. So I pushed them away.
When things calm down it might be worthwhile to hold a conversation with him. He could have a reason for why he hid his skills from us this whole time. We couldn't be trusted. He didn't know us. He had to have a reason.
Right...?
All of the thinking, the emotions behind them rapidly wore out my mental strength. I was exhausted and my eyes fluttered closed.
What is Addison doing now? Has she left with Blake already? Will she be safe wherever she's going? Will I ever see her again?
A darkness began to swirl within my mind, engulfing and swallowing my thoughts as if a timer to my consciousness swirling away into sleep had been set off. My thoughts started to jumble and mix together as different emotions and ideas flashed across my mind, soon blending into a cacophony of noise; until it was suddenly silenced and only one thought, one emotion remained. Directed toward someone or something, or perhaps no one at all.
I'm sorry...
-Transmission in Progress-
Author's Note: The next month should hopefully be out early-ish next month at the latest.