CHAPTER 7
Morning came with the groan of rusted bulkheads and the distant murmur of zealots chanting. I gave the Pip-Boy a final once-over. By scrapping what I could from a slagged terminal I found within a locker in my 'room'. I've repaired it to some level of functionality.
My repairs turning the already bulging device into a Frankenstein looking machine. Its guts now spilling out in a grotesque parody of functionality. Scavenged terminal parts jutted from its casing like broken ribs, and exposed wires snaked around its frame like veins. Ugly? Absolutely. But it worked—or at least, it would long enough to brute-force the Vault's systems.
I tucked the abomination into my pack. No chance in hell I'd strap that to my wrist unless I absolutely have to.
The poncho Finch had gifted me was hideous—painted with crude Atom symbols and reeking of mildew—but it kept the creeping damp at bay and hid my implants. I shrugged it on and stepped into the bunker's labyrinthine halls, offering nods and beatific smiles to the acolytes I passed and encouraging them to spread the word of my revelations to those who were not present, and hopefully… eventually reach those within the Nucleus. Memories plucked from passing minds overnight had given me a rough map of Far Harbor's layout (With a buffer and proper precautions of course).
The northern gate was a jagged maw of repurposed ship hulls, its guards eyeing me with a mix of suspicion. Elias stood apart from them, his posture taut as a tripwire.
We checked our supplies in silence—Rad-X, stims (my Chinese knockoffs more effective than the locals' rancid chems), and ammunition. The guards waved us through, though their stares lingered on our backs as we were swallowed by the fog.
Three miles in, the trees twisted into skeletal hands clawing at the sky. The air thickened, each breath tasting of salt and decay. Elias moved like a ghost ahead of me, his rifle scanning the mist as we reach the home stretch.
I let the silence stretch—then shattered it.
"You're a Synth aren't you?"
His fingers spasmed toward his trigger. A twitch, quickly stifled.
I chuckle "Ah… Self aware too, how quaint." My smile didn't reach my eyes. "Worry not, I'm not some primitive spiritualist or wasteland barbarian, who'd who'd gut you over having a bit of circuitry in you. Though I didn't expect to run into one of you so soon."
His grip eased, but his gaze stayed sharp as a scalpel. "What gave me away?"
"Your skin." I tapped my cheek. "No rad-scars. No lesions. And your mind…" I let my Projektor flare faintly. "Too ordered and resilient for a zealot."
His jaw clenched. "And you?" He nodded at my forehead. "What's your excuse?"
"A scholar's tools." Stepping around a moss caked skull. "Speaking of—why infiltrate a cult of irradiated lunatics?" My smile sharpened. "Using their information networks to monitor that synth enclave in Acadia, perhaps?"
His pupils contracted to pinpricks. The sudden spike in his pulse was almost audible.
A less controlled chuckle escapes my mouth. "Ah! Hypothesis confirmed." I tapped my temple. "The institute is aware of them then. Clever, really—why waste resources reclaiming defective assets when the island's populace, fauna or otherwise, will inevitably decommission them?" The fog between us thickened momentarily, as if the island itself was listening. "Let the locals butcher your runaway toys, then sweep in to collect the data from their cooling corpses and abandoned hidey-holes. Refine the next generation. Repeat." I spread my hands. "I'd be shocked if the Institute didn't have eyes and ears from here to the irradiated Keys of Florida…." My voice dropped. "Assuming that name still means anything."
The sound of rustling in the trees interrupts our conversation.
Elias grips his lever action aiming into the greenery "We speak of this later."
The Type 79 snapped up in perfect unison with Elias's rifle, its weight settling comfortably against my shoulder. "Oh, we will," I murmured, watching the treeline through its iron sights. "And do be thorough when documenting this little chat for your handlers" The safety clicked off. "Unless this conversation is being recorded already.."
A feral grin split my face, too wide, too sharp - the expression of someone who'd spent too long conversing only with cultists and corpses. My Projektor nodes pulsed faintly in time with my quickening pulse. "Regardless, I must confess... I've been starved for proper intellectual discourse lately." The admission came out almost wistful. "Contact with CIT alumni - even secondhand through their creations - might prove... enlightening."
The trees ahead shuddered again. Something wet dripped from the branches, sizzling faintly where it struck the irradiated soil.
Elias's grip tightened on his rifle. "You talk too much for someone who might get killed," he muttered, his Institute-perfect diction slipping in just enough to reveal the synth beneath.
I couldn't help but laugh - a sound that sent a pair of crows flying from their perches. "Oh Elias," I crooned, tracking movement in the fog, "you have no idea how true that is."
The shrubbery erupted. Five ghouls burst through the thorny undergrowth, their irradiated flesh sloughing off in wet ribbons as they charged. My Type 79 barked three times - controlled bursts that sent 7.62mm rounds punching through decayed skulls. One-two-three, they dropped like marionettes with their strings cut.
Elias's lever-action fired twice beside me, its deeper bark echoing off the trees. The remaining two ghouls collapsed mid-lunge, their spines severed at the neck.
"Clear," Elias muttered after a tense moment, his rifle still tracking the mist-shrouded treeline. When no more horrors came shambling forth, he jerked his chin toward a fork in the road. "We're here." The left path wound up a crumbling hillside, its cracked asphalt disappearing into the fog.
As we ascended, the air grew thicker, each breath tasting of copper and decay. I kept my SMG at low ready, eyes scanning the shifting grey. "Those rumors you mentioned earlier," I asked flatly, "are they substantiated? Or just primitive superstition?"
Elias's boots crunched on broken pavement. "Saw it myself last month." His voice had gone tight. "Group of ferals just... stopped. Started whispering to the fog." He adjusted his grip on the rifle. "Then something whispered back."
"Hm.." My voice just below a whisper. ""Let me posit a theory— the Institute recognizes these phenomena enough to document them, while officially maintaining they don't exist." My boot crushed a brittle branch with a snap that echoed too loudly. "Like an atheist emperor who arms his troops in gold and wards, all while insisting the monsters they fight are mere superstition."
Elias's shoulders tensed beneath his weather-stained coat. "You talk like someone who's seen the files."
I smiled at the hotel's looming silhouette ahead. "I talk like someone who's seen and worked with things like this before… In another life." The Projektor nodes above my brow throbbed faintly as we passed a cluster of kneeling ghouls - their mummified faces frozen in worship, wisps of fog curling from their open mouths.
With methodical precision, I approached each one and drove my bayonet - a "gift" from the zealots - through their skulls. Elias followed my lead, his movements efficient and emotionless. As the last ghoul collapsed, I felt the oppressive presence in the air lessen slightly, like a weight I hadn't fully noticed until it was partially lifted.
Ahead, the outline of the Cliff's Edge Hotel materialized from the mist - its art deco facade now a crumbling monument to pre-war excess. The front doors hung crooked on their hinges, swaying slightly in the toxic breeze.
The lobby's rotting carpet muffled our footsteps as we picked through the debris. My Projektor pulsed like a Geiger counter tuned to something far stranger than radiation - the presence hung heavy in the air, thick as the mold creeping up the walls.
"Basement's crawling with robots," I murmured, tilting my head toward the service elevator. "But our problem's up there." My finger pointed upward, tracing the water-stained ceiling to where the psychic pressure gathered like storm clouds on the penthouse floor.
Elias's eyes narrowed. "You're sure?"
The Projektor flared in response, casting crimson shadows across the peeling wallpaper. I didn't bother answering.
We took the stairs—the elevators were death traps; ignoring the floors frozen in grotesque displays of pre-war decadence. A banquet hall with skeletons still seated at their tables, grinning skulls flat on empty plates. A conservatory where vines grew from within a grand piano. The air grew thicker with each step, until breathing felt like sucking air through a filter.
The penthouse door was locked. Solid pre-war security plating - the kind meant to withstand riots. I placed my palm against the cold metal and let my mind scream.
The explosion of telekinetic force sent the door flying off its hinges in a shower of sparks. Elias barely stifled his curse as the steel slab embedded itself in the opposite wall.
Without waiting for the debris to settle I was already stepping through the wreckage. The penthouse suite was a tomb of melted wax and madness. Dozens of drooping candles formed a grotesque shrine, their wax frozen in gravity-defying tendrils. At the center sat the source - a small, squid-headed humanoid fetish carved from what looked like irradiated whale bone. It pulsed with wrongness, its surface glistening as if freshly birthed.
No hesitation. My mind screamed as I seized the abomination with TK and twisted. The thing resisted for one impossible second - then shattered like glass, its fragments dissolving into acrid smoke before they hit the floor.
The pressure lifted instantly. Elias gasped like a drowning man breaking surface. "What the fuck was-"
"Gone now." I snorted sharply, covering one nostril to expel a clot of blood before wiping my face with a scrap of curtain. The Projektor's nodes burned like brands against my forehead. "Let's move. The vault awaits."
The descent into the hotel's underbelly left fresh droplets spattering the metal stairs. Each step sent jagged lightning through my neural implants - destroying that fetish through brute-force telekinesis had consequences, even with my psi-shields engaged.
Elias moved with synth-perfect silence behind me. "You're hemorrhaging through your nasal mucosa," he observed, his voice clinically detached. "Subarachnoid bleeding likely."
"I'm aware." A fresh trickle of blood traced my jawline before the coagulants in my enhanced circulatory system kicked in. Most of the Nation's gene-mods included platelet accelerators and vascular constrictors - battlefield adaptations that turned seeping wounds into sealed scars within an hour or a half— give or take. "Exerting my talents so... emphatically was necessary, even with mental shielding." I dabbed at the slowing flow with my sleeve. "The tradeoff is acceptable."
As if to prove the point, I felt the microscopic fibrin mesh knitting ruptured capillaries behind my sinuses. Standard Gestalt modifications. The Nation hadn't survived four decades of civil war by producing fragile citizens. Every Nation citizen was engineered to recover from burns and hemorrhagic shock at rates that would make a deathclaw jealous. Though the throbbing behind my eyes suggested I'd need actual meds soon.
Elias's pupils dilated with mechanical precision, his gaze locking onto the vanishing blood trail with an intensity no organic eyes could maintain. That telltale hyperfocus - another subtle but unmistakable marker of his synthetic nature. The way his irises refocused in minute increments, like a camera lens calibrating, betrayed his Institute origins far more than any hidden component ever could.
"That's not normal human physiology."
I smirked, stepping over bunched up corroded wiring covering my next step. "And you're not 'human' in the conventional sense. Yet here we are."
The mechanical whirring from below intensified, covering whatever retort he might have made.
The basement level opened into a cavernous concrete womb, its center dominated by the massive vault door - a steel cog embedded into the wall. The raised access platform with its terminal, with scaffolding towards the door,
The welcoming committee composed of a full complement of Mr. Handys formed a semicircular kill zone, their buzzsaws humming at optimal RPM. At their center floated a Mr. Gutsy in pristine military trim, its single optic lens dilating as it tracked our approach. The flamethrower nozzle under its arm twitched. Seeing as I didn't wish to become a charred corpse or diced into pieces
I raised my hands slowly, the Projektor's glow deliberately dimmed to non-threatening levels. "Ah! Hallo!" My Rotfront accent thickened into a caricature of itself. "I am Doctor Emil Vogt, specialist in humanoid bio-android frame construction - some cybernetics on the side, ja?" my words flowed smoother than synth-blood. "Here to propose upgrade solutions for your distinguished residents." I gestured to Elias. "My assistant, Herr Turner."
Elias's side-eye could have melted steel. The Mr. Gutsy's optic whirred as it processed, its voice box crackling with pre-war disdain:
"Another kraut scientist. Christ, just what we needed." Its flamethrower arm spasmed. "Wait here while I consult the brass. Try anything funny, and my boys here will turn you into a goddamn jigsaw puzzle."
As it floated toward the vault intercom, I murmured to Elias: "And people claim pre-war America wasn't xenophobic."
The nearest Mr. Handy rotated its saws meaningfully. "Quiet in the ranks!"
I gave it my best impression of an unarmed civilian smile. Realizing my effort in repairing that wretched thing was for naught.
The Mr. Gutsy's thruster pods whined as it floated toward the vault intercom, its olive-drab chassis rotating with military precision. One of the Mr. Handys detached from the kill formation and jacked into the comm terminal with a proprietary connector arm.
A tense minute passed, filled only by the synchronized buzzing of saw blades. Then the vault door's gear mechanisms groaned to life, the massive steel iris retracting in shuddering increments.
"Alright, Kraut," the Gutsy barked, its flamethrower nozzle twitching toward us. "The brass'll see you in the theater. Try anything funny and we'll turn that fancy forehead implant into a soup can."
I bowed slightly, playing up the foreign scholar act. "But of course! We are here only for peaceful scientific interaction, ja?"
Elias muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "bullshit" in synth-nonsense, bah— as we were herded forward. The vault interior was a grotesque parody of pre-war luxury - crystal chandeliers dangling above exposed piping, moth-eaten velvet drapes framing rusted bulkheads. The air stank of preservative fluid and decaying opulence.
The "theater" turned out to be a converted monitoring station, where five robobrains floated in various states of disrepair. One still wore a rotting pearl necklace, another sported the remnants of a smoking jacket fused to its chassis. Their brain jars pulsed with sickly light as they conversed in clipped, aristocratic tones.
A Mr. Handy with a chipped champagne tray floated forward. "Ah! Our European colleague!" it declared in a voice that had probably charmed pre-war cocktail parties. "I'm Maxwell. We were just discussing a most dreadful incident..."
I blinked. The murder. Of course. My Projektor pulsed as I took in the scene - the bloodstains, the broken brain-case, the way one robobrain (Keith,if S1's memories are correct) kept drifting toward the exit.
Elias leaned close. "You realize we're walking into a locked-vault with a bunch of deranged rich people who've been brains in jars for two centuries?"
I adjusted my gloves with a smile that showed too many teeth. "Better than fighting through them." Louder, for our hosts: "Ah, a forensic investigation! My expertise in neural patterns may prove most useful..."
The robobrain in pearls — Julianna Riggs — rotated toward me with a hydraulic whine. "How... convenient." Her voice modulator crackled with static. "A specialist arrives just when we need one."
Too convenient indeed. My Projektor flared as I scanned the room, catching psychic residue of recent violence. This was going to be interesting.
A.N: Went a bit extra with the chapter today, again lmk if I'm going a bit too fast. Also I still fiend.