The walk back felt different with metal feet behind me. Five Protectrons clunking through the woods made enough noise to likely tell anyone nearby that I was walking through this area, and every time one of them stepped on a branch, it snapped loud enough to make my shoulders twitch. The trees thinned and thickened in patches as I picked my way along the forest route. I kept ArcJet behind me and home somewhere ahead and a little south in my head, even if the trees made everything look the same.
I crouched near a footprint and held the laser musket across my knees while I looked. The print had four thick toes and a heavy heel. Not fresh-fresh, but not old either. "Aye," I muttered under my breath. One of the Protectrons stopped behind me. "STATEMENT UNCLEAR."
"I wasn't talking to you." I stood back up and kept moving, but slower now. My eyes stopped drifting and started to look around. A few more minutes and I found another track. I felt my mouth pull thin. That increased my worry from earlier. Were there more super mutants around? The route home would've been cleaner if I kept going straight, but Fort Hagen way pulled at the edge of my thoughts. There was a filling station there, a red rocker gas station. It could count as a small chance of scavenging. Maybe useful parts, food, and maybe something I could use right now. I mean, even if it had taken me a few hours to get to Arcjet and head back, but if I was already this close...
I looked at the biggest print again, then at the five robots behind me. My grip shifted on the musket. "Right," I said quietly. "Let's raise the alert to max, K."
"AFFIRMATIVE." I snorted despite myself and kept walking. The forest began to give way to broken pavement and old suburban sprawl. I spotted where something large had pushed through the brush instead of around it. Branches snapped at shoulder height for a human. Bushes trampled flat. I didn't like how recent some of it looked. The closer I got toward Fort Hagen's side of things, the more my thoughts kept circling around Kellogg.
Maybe not right there right now, hopefully, but still close enough that if I stayed put too long and got unlucky, I could wake up one morning and find out my "good first home" happened to be a walk in the park for him before I got a bullet in the head. I didn't know if he had any reason to care about me, and at the end of the day, it didnt matter. He was a threat I just couldn't handle at the moment. So moving closer into the city might be a better Idea. Just so I can trade and visit a few places where I know I could get help. I really did need to get myself to that vault and find smart, pretty Miss Nanny.
The Boston Mayoral Shelter was still good, better than good; it had working systems, storage, a real bed, and one way in. For a first home? It was a gift. But for a forever home? My eyes slid through the trees toward where Fort Hagen sat somewhere past the brush. Maybe not. Maybe soon I would need something farther from that whole area. But I'd need to leave something behind in case Rose or anyone else I know came looking for me.
A low sound rolled through the woods, and I froze. Not close enough, but just close enough to set every nerve on edge. Voices. I lifted one hand, and the bots stopped. I eased toward a stretch of fallen concrete and crouched behind it, then peeked through a gap in the brush.
At first, I saw nothing, then movement. Three shapes moved between the trees ahead and to my left. One carried what looked like a stop sign welded onto a pole. Another had some chunk of metal pipe over one shoulder. The third dragged a sack that left a faint red line through the dead leaves behind it.
I swallowed hard and stayed very still. Beside me, one of the Protectrons let out a faint servo whine as it adjusted its balance. My heart kicked against my ribs so hard it hurt. The sniffing mutant turned a little. Another one barked something at him and pointed deeper west. The one sniffing grunted, spat, and kept moving. Holy hell, maybe luck was on my side right now for once.
Even after that, I stayed crouched, I waited one minute, then I slowly stood and wiped my palm on my pants. It had gone sweaty around the stock of the musket. "No hero shit," I whispered to myself. Sometimes, avoiding a fight was better. I kept walking once I knew the mutants had gone off another way, but my pace changed. I gave the brush where they'd vanished a wider curve and finally hit the edge of a road broken up by weeds and old world rot.
The Fort Hagen Filling Station came into view a little after that. Concrete was stained dark in patches with windows broken. The old sign leaned at an angle. I stopped short of the lot and looked around before stepping out. The power armor repair station sat there, that did bring up a question: how likely was I to find power armor? Cause while the game was well a game, this was real life. I think the main ones on land would have been taken. I stared at it for a second. Secondly, given my height, would I even be able to use it? Or would it just be sitting at home?
"Spread a little," I told the bots quietly. "Watch the road and the tree line. If anything shows up, you shoot."
"HOSTILE TARGETING PARAMETERS ACCEPTED."
"Good." I sighed as I moved in. The first thing I checked was the little station office. It was always a bit odd to me that these places never had working doors. Inside smelled like old dust, motor oil, and dead air. The kind of smell that sat in the back of the throat. My eyes adjusted to the low-light room. Counter up front. Shelves behind it, mostly empty. A cigarette rack long picked over, except for one bent pack still hanging from the wire. The cash register was half open. I found a handful of bottle caps and three pre-war dollars folded together, so I slipped both into my pocket.
Behind the counter, I found a metal tray with a couple of rust-specked tools. Most of the tools there I already had back home, so I left them alone. A lower cabinet had cleaning rags stiff with age, one unopened tin of axle grease, and two plastic bottles of coolant. One bottle was still intact. I took the intact one and moved to the next shelf over; my hand brushed something rectangular and heavy. Wonderglue, I smiled. "Now we're talking."
That went into the bag, too. The back room door hung half off one hinge. I nudged it open with the musket barrel and stepped through. Small maintenance room. The tool board on the wall with most of the good pieces were long gone, plus the doors that led back outside. This was where the power armor station was.
I set the musket down, pulled a bobby pin from the little stash in my coat, and went to work on the locked toolbox. The pin flexed once, then held. A second later, the lock gave with a quiet click. "Aye." Inside the box I found better luck than I expected. Pliers. Adjustable wrench. Ball-peen hammer. A box of assorted screws. Two loose fuses wrapped in paper. One battered but usable tape. Under the tray sat a sealed packet of replacement spark plugs and a tiny glass bottle labeled industrial solvent.
Not immediately useful by itself, maybe. Still, the sort of thing future me might kick present me for leaving behind so into the bag it went. While I kept digging, at the bottom corner, half hidden under old rags, my fingers touched plastic. I pulled out a battered flashlight. I thumbed the switch once. Nothing. I unscrewed the base and found the battery tray corroded to hell. The bench had junk under it. Most of it is too far gone to be useful, unless I figured out smelting. Then I saw a metal lunchbox shoved into the shadows near the wall. I dragged it out and opened it. Inside sat a pair of work gloves, dried hard with age but not torn, a folded rag, and a little white plastic case with a cracked red cross on top. My brows lifted. I opened that first. Bandages that had gone yellow around the edges. One tiny pair of scissors. One sealed packet that turned out to be antiseptic wipes. And a stimpak, still in the plastic cover.
My fingers closed around it carefully. "Nice." That one got tucked into an inside pocket instead of the bag. I sat back on my heels and looked around again. Just the kind of place people had picked over in pieces over the years, they did miss the tucked-away things or just ignored the locked ones. I did ignore the armor workbench as by itself it wasn't really useful; that was also the case for the weapons workbench outside. Leave the rest until another desperate idiot comes by, this worked for me. Outside, I heard one of the Protectrons shift and then fire a short burst. I snatched up the musket and was through the doorway in a second. The bot nearest the pump had smoke drifting from its laser emitter.
"HOSTILE ENGAGEMENT. TARGET NEUTRALIZED." I followed its aim and found the target. Mongrel dog. It lay by a broken pump, twitching once before going still. I breathed out and lowered the musket. "Well done, lad." The smell of scorched fur reached me a second later, and that was less fair. I stepped around the body and checked the lot more carefully. One pump had its access panel hanging loose. Another had been ripped open. I crouched by the nearest one and peered inside. After a little tugging and swearing, I managed to pull loose a coil of copper wire and a chunk of intact metal piping.
Heavy, but worth it. One of the bots helped when I pointed. "Lift this, please."
"ACKNOWLEDGED." The pipe went into the pile by the office door for the trip home. No point stuffing everything into one bag and crippling myself halfway there. I checked the power armor station next. The metal frame was still there, bolted down. Armatures, clamps. I ran my fingers along the side. But lower down, near the tool hooks, two pieces had been missed. A fusion wrench attachment. And a bottle of hydraulic fluid was tucked behind the back support. I set it carefully with the rest. Past the filling station sat the sort of nearby buildings I couldn't ignore once I'd noticed them, because what I had here so far wasn't enough. A ruined little building was nearby, a house with half its roof gone, a detached garage listing to one side, and farther off what looked like a maintenance shack or storage building half swallowed by weeds.
I looked at the sky. Still enough daylight. I made a face at myself. "One quick look." I took two of the bots with me toward the house and left the others covering the station. I made my way into the broken house and noticed a fridge with its door missing. Inside, I found two dirty waters as well as some Salisbury steaks. "Score!" I smiled and stored them in my backpack. As I was doing that, my eye drifted to the side, and I noticed a dead minuteman. Near him was another laser musket and two fragmines. His body was fresh, too. I stared at him and felt my stomach twist. To his left, there were 8 power cells. I gathered what I could while muttering, "Sorry...."
I had thought about checking his pockets, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I turned away quickly after grabbing the weapon and ammo. "Sorry," I muttered automatically again, then moved on. The place had already been torn apart by time and probably looters. There were a bunch of desks with computers around, almost all of them broken. Whatever this place had been before the bombs didnt matter anymore. Most of the screens were cracked, their backs ripped open, or their guts missing. I still checked them, just in case. The first desk had a dead terminal, a busted keyboard, and a drawer full of useless paper that turned to dust in my fingers when I touched it. The second had a coffee mug fused to the wood by old grime, a bent desk lamp, and a box of pencils. I took the lamp and the pencils. The third desk was better.
One drawer stuck halfway out. I crouched and tugged it open the rest of the way. Inside was a pack of cigarettes, a clipboard, and a little cardboard box with three bobby pins still inside. I slid the bobby pins into my coat and took the clipboard too. The cigs stayed where they were as the box was empty. Near the back wall sat one of the old computers on the floor, tipped over on its side. Most of its casing had been dented in, but when I nudged it with my boot, I heard something rattle inside. I set the musket against the desk, knelt, and pried the side panel loose with my knife.
Dust puffed out into my face. "Lovely." I waved it away and looked inside. Most of the inner parts had either been torn out or rotted into junk, but the wiring was still there, and one small board near the bottom hadn't been touched. I pulled it free slowly, checked both sides, then smiled. That went into the bag. I glanced back toward the dead Minuteman and had to look away again. Behind me, one of the Protectrons shifted in the room.
"Perimeter?" I asked. "NO NEW HOSTILE'S DETECTED." It replied. And I let out a deep sigh. "Good." The dead Minuteman kept pulling at the edge of my thoughts. He didn't look picked clean. That meant whoever killed him either got interrupted, didn't care, or thought coming back later, which meant I had to move fast.
I gave the room one last sweep and grabbed the only other thing that looked worth the trouble, a small box of fuses tucked behind an overturned monitor, then straightened up and slung the bag back over my shoulder. "That's enough," I muttered. "We're leaving." One of the Protectrons turned toward me at once. "ACKNOWLEDGED." I headed back outside, and the dead Minuteman stayed right where he was. This place was too close to Fort Hagen. That was more than enough to sour the whole stop.
The others were waiting where I'd left them. One still stood near the mongrel dog it had killed, smoke smell hanging around the pump. Another had the pipe and heavier scrap stacked near the office door. I took a second to divide up the load so I wasn't the only idiot carrying. The desk fan got handed off. The pipe got lifted. The bigger bits of scrap went to the bots while I kept the smaller, better things in the bag where I could keep an eye on them. Then I took one last look around the station lot.
"Right," I said. "Home." The walk back felt longer now. Maybe it was the weight. Maybe it was just the kind of tired that came after spending most of the day wound tight and waiting for something to show itself. I kept my eyes on the path and the building line both. The sky had shifted by the time the Boston Mayoral Shelter finally came into view. The concrete structure and the construction equipment outside looked the same thankfully. Home. I lifted a hand and stopped the group before the entrance. "Hold there." The bots stopped at once.
I moved ahead of them and went in first. The last thing I needed was Claptrap and the Shelter system seeing five unfamiliar robots and deciding to shoot. My boots hit the shelter floor, and not two seconds later, his voice boomed from farther in. "UNIDENTIFIED MOVEMENT DETECTED. STATE DESIGNATION OR FACE DEFENSIVE RESPONSE."
"It's me." I replied before He could get trigger happy. There was a short pause. Then the heavier clunking started. He rolled into view and stopped, optic fixed on me. "USER VAULT MOUSE RETURNED."
"Aye, Claptrap Im home." His optic shifted past me toward the entrance. "ADDITIONAL MOVEMENT DETECTED." "Friendly," I said at once. He paused again, thinking it over in whatever little mechanical way he did that. "FRIEND STATUS NOT CONFIRMED."
"Then I'll confirm it. Stay put." I headed straight for the terminal and pulled up the security settings. My fingers were tired, dirty, and one knuckle still hurt from earlier, but I got the new units logged in anyway. Serial tags. Basic recognition. Friendly status. Done. Once I finished, I checked it twice just in case. "There," I muttered, then glanced back at Claptrap. "All of them are with us." He held still for a second, then said, "FRIENDLY STATUS ACCEPTED."
"Good lad." I went back to the entrance and waved the others in. The place got crowded fast. Metal feet thudded over concrete. One bot came in carrying the desk fan against its chest. Another had the pipe scrap. For a second, I just stood there and watched all of them file through, feeling bone tired and weirdly pleased at the same time. I pointed at two of the sturdier ones first. "You two stay down here near the turret. Watch the entrance. If anything comes through that isn't friendly, you shoot it."
"ACKNOWLEDGED." They moved off to take position. Good. The other four needed to go to the second flloor of the shelter, which meant the elevator and all the nonsense that came with it. One at a time. No shortcuts there unless I wanted to test how much that lift could hold and die for the answer. So I took the first one down, then went back up for the next. By the final trip, I was ready to fistfight the elevator doors or expand it. Still, once it was done, it was done.
I started by dropping off the loot. Food in the food spot. Tools in another. The laser musket from the dead Minuteman went near the wall along with the frag mines, that got placed carefully, where I wouldn't accidentally kick one in the dark and ruin my life. The stimpak stayed in an inside my pipboy.
Then I turned to the labor units. The constructtrons. Not the RimWorld ones yet, I planned to make those very soon. I wanted to test to see which one was better. As I knew the best one I couldnt make down here because there would be no way to get it out. I pointed toward the blocked sections I still hadn't been able to get through. "You three, I've got work for you. Start breaking down anything I marked and pull apart the security gates. Don't touch the walls. Don't touch anything with live wires unless I mark it first. Stack the usable scrap separate from the trash."
"WORK ORDER ACCEPTED." That got a small smile out of me despite how exhausted I was. "Good. Keep the noise down if you can." They could not, in fact, keep the noise down. I found that out almost immediately when the first metal shriek echoed down the hall. I flinched and then just sighed. "Close enough." The bots got to work right away while claptrap looked at me. "Please start a patrol like last night." He understood and started his old path. Once they were set, I finally let myself head for my room. The washing machine near the bedroom still felt almost ridiculous to me. Every time I looked at it, part of me expected it to stop being real and turn into another busted hunk of old-world junk.
I stripped out of the dirty clothes, bundled everything together, and shoved it into the machine. Dust, sweat, old air, outside stink, today's haul had gotten all over me as much as it had gone into the bag. I added what little soap I was willing to use, shut the lid, and started the cycle. The machine kicked on with a heavy churn. I stood there for a second just listening to it. Still, I stayed there another second before changing into cleaner spare clothes, the one that June had given me.
My stomach had started complaining properly by then, so I headed for the kitchen. Dinner was nothing special. I didn't have the energy for special. I opened one of the Salisbury steaks I'd found, and added some purified water on the side. Not fancy, I wish I had a way to heat up the food but I really shouldnt be picky right now. I ate standing at the counter while the shelter hummed around me. The washing machine thumped now and then in the other room. Down the hall, the constructtrons made an awful series of metallic grinding noises as they worked on the gates. I finished eating, rinsed what I used, and went to check on the work.
The first security gate had come loose from one side by then. One bot had it braced while another worried at the bottom bolts. Piles had already started forming nearby. Usable steel scrap in one stack. Bent trash metal in another. Bits of wire off to the side. A broken panel, I might be able to salvage later, leaned against the wall. "Keep at it," I said. "Anything useful gets sorted. Don't block the hallway."
"ACKNOWLEDGED." I nodded and kept moving. Before bed, I did one last walk through the shelter. I checked the entrance. The two bots near the turret were where I'd left them. Claptrap turned his head toward me the second I came into view back in the actually home part of the shelter.
"PERIMETER SECURE."
"Good," I said, giving Claptrap a tired nod. "Keep it that way." He rolled off to continue his patrol, and I stood there for a second in the middle of the bunker, just listening. The washing machine near my room was still going, that steady churn and thump carrying through the concrete halls. Farther off, the constructtrons were at work on the blocked sections I'd marked for them mentailly. It was interesting that they could do it I guess it was one of the perks of being a mechanitor. Metal groaned. Something heavy scraped. One of them let out a flat little acknowledgement in that dead machine voice of theirs, then went right back to tearing apart old security guard room.
My eyes drifted toward the gym hall as I made my way in, and my stomach tightened again. The wall. I moved quick after that. I got to the gym door, pushed it open, and stopped. There were two small cracks.They weren't big and If I didn't know better, I could've maybe talked myself into thinking it was nothing. Just old concrete. Just settling. Just age finally showing up. But I did know better. My eyes locked onto that part of the wall and my heart kicked hard once in my chest. Thin cracks. Fresh ones. One a little longer than the other, both spidering just enough through the concrete to make my mouth go dry.
"No," I whispered. I stepped closer my fingers brushed near one of them, and a little dust came away. "That's bad," I muttered under my breath. I looked around the gym with different eyes after that. What I could drag in here later that would help and Honestly once that wall drops I probably shopuldnt stay here, cause whats stopping something else coming in through the spot that the death claw did.
There was a generator in the gym zone, and suddenly leaving the old fusion core in place for another night felt a lot dumber than it had a minute ago. "Aye, Right. No more putting that off." I moved fast toward the generator alcove. The hum of it was steady when I got there, but I still felt tense as I knelt beside it. Seeing those cracks had shoved all the tiredness aside for a moment.
I opened the housing and reached in carefully. The old fusion core came free with a little resistance, warm in my hands from use. It had 7 percent charge left, Just not the one I wanted running the bunker tonight. I set it down beside me and grabbed the better core everything went dark and I used the pipboy light. "Come on," I muttered as I slotted it in. The core seated with a firm click.
Then I waited. The lights flashed back on, blinking a few seconds then power steady. I let out a breath through my nose and sat back a little on my heels. "Good." Everything was back on. My shoulders eased some after that, though not much. I picked up the old core and looked it over once before pocketing it. Later I could recharge it if I figured that out, or sell it, or hold onto it as backup if things got desperate enough.
Once the generator was closed back up, I stayed crouched there another second and listened. Power humming. Constructtrons working somewhere beyond the gym. The washing machine still going. And no roar from the wall. No sudden crack of concrete. I stood and looked back at the wall one more time before leaving the gym.
"I know you're there," I said quietly to the wall, which was a slightly insane thing to say, but I was tired enough not to care. Then I shut the gym door and headed back toward my room. I passed one of the constructtrons on the way back and saw th making progress on theat it was making progress. By the time I reached my room, the wash had finished. I opened it and pulled the clothes out one by one. Still damp, but clean. Or cleaner, anyway. Good enough for me. I set them where they'd dry and rubbed at the back of my neck with one hand, feeling every hour of the day stacked there.
I made my way to my room and I sat down on the edge of the bed and unlaced my boots slowly. My legs felt heavy. My shoulders ached. I lay back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. The better fusion core was in. The old one was stored. The wall had started to crack, and I knew exactly what that meant. I didn't have a way to deal with that just yet.
I rolled onto my side, pulled the blanket up, and let the sounds of the bunker fade together around me. I let sleep take me, I was just to tired to stay awake.