Chapter Text
These walls whisper in code, telling her things no one’s meant to know. Sometimes the whispers crawl low, just to dangle at the edge of her ear. Will the truth be clearer on this tape? It might, she supposes. Though, really, she may not want it.
The maintenance tunnels stretch like veins through Vault 101, curling off into corners no one sees. Humming with its tangle of pipes. The air is damp, metallic, close as an embrace. Comfortable, nearly. She walks through a universe she knows by heart, yet never feels fully explored. HVAC blinkers line the walls in faint, flickering lights.
God forbid her mind catches up with her. Then they’ll only glint back like eyes.
The real panic comes creeping in from outside. From the Vault itself. The thought of a tunnel door crashing open. Fluorescent light burning at the edges of men in padded armor. Storming in one after the other. Hands grabbing. Dragging her, kicking and screaming, up to the levels above to face judgment for the crime of curiosity.
The Overseer would watch from above. Behind the glass of his all-seeing window. The Vault would gather around her in a ring of faces. And below it all, fixed on her from across the room, would be her father’s disappointment.
Staring.
She catches it then: a crescent of black ink caught beneath her nail. Her anxious fingers must’ve smudged the marker-scratched label of the holotape into a blur.
It won’t happen. She’s snuck through here a hundred times. Having this tape won’t be any different. And the Vault can’t hunt what it doesn’t know; this tape was locked away in her father’s desk. She bobs her head, muttering the reassurances under her breath.
Since when did she reach the table?
Her head swivels toward the ocean of blackness hemming her in. Empty. Nothing there. Only the skittering chatter of old machinery to keep her company.
So her arm drops onto the table and her Pip-Boy screen flares to life, blue as a little digital sky. The tape slides into place with a soft pop.
And nothing.
READING…
She worries at her lip, tugging at it with her teeth.
Is there really any point to this?
Surely there’s nothing about the clinic, or the medical work, she doesn’t already know. Not a thing the forced internship hadn’t already weighed onto her shoulders either. So why not return the tape? Why had she taken it in the first place?
Her thoughts drift back to her father’s office. Private, somehow, despite her father’s courteous insistence on leaving the door open.
Ding.
The screen burns a plain message into her eyes. Slow as regret, it reads through the data, dragging on long enough that she finds herself glancing over her shoulder.
ROBCO INDUSTRIES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM COPYRIGHT 2075
> EXTERNAL MEDIA DETECTED
> READING DISK...
> FILE FOUND: PROJECT P
> FILE DATE: 09.14.2231
> CLASSIFICATION: RESTRICTED VAULT 101 MEDICAL RESEARCH
> DECRYPTING...
LOADING...
██████░░░░
> WARNING: PARTIAL DATA CORRUPTION
> OPEN FILE? Y/N
Some sort of medical file. A case, maybe. Whatever the miserable thing is. It’s decades old, older than her father’s time. The word RESTRICTED beckons to her, curling a finger her way.
Best to know what waits for her if she’s meant to become the Vault’s next doctor.
Though the hard look in her eyes isn’t entitlement.
It’s spite.
The skittering hum of machinery fades somewhere behind her as she leans closer, drawn in despite herself. Her finger taps for more.
>Y
ACCESS GRANTED
OPENING: PROJECT P
RECOVERING CORRUPTED FILES...
FILE RECOVERY: 18%
LOADING...
████████░░
> MEDICAL ARCHIVE RESTORED
> PLAY LOG? Y/N
>Y
The image of a young woman’s face stutters onto the screen in grainy detail. Eyes shut in a way that isn’t quite peaceful.
ROUTINE WELLNESS SCREENING
> ADMINISTRATION OF P-SERIES CONTINUES
> SUBJECT AWARENESS: NOT REQUIRED
“Not… required?”
The words catch rough in her throat—the first thing she’s said all weekend.
There’s something off about the text. Something not sitting right. Makes a cold feeling creep up her spine like tiny legs. Like her body’s caught onto something her mind hasn’t yet.
>INFORMED CONSENT REQUIREMENT REMOVED BY ADMINISTRATION
BIOLOGICAL INCIDENT PHOTOS RECOVERED
>DISPLAY IMAGES? Y/N
For a moment, she’s caught there. Staring at the screen, like the words may suddenly rearrange themselves into making sense.
The administration line should bother her most, but it barely registers.
Instead, her attention is held hostage by the photographed face. Its shut eyes. Pale skin. Hair. Features. The terrible fact of a human.
There’ll be records. Findings. Photographs of things that ought to stay beneath skin. The kind of awful that only reveals itself under the burning fluorescents of her father’s clinic.
Repulsion settles heavy in her stomach at the very idea. That creeping cold pinch of dread travels further, sinks onto her shoulders, winds itself round her throat.
She flinches.
A hiss bursts sharp against her ear.
Everything turns to flailing.
Spined legs clamp around her neck and shoulders. Panic hurls her forward against the table, rolling across it in a frantic attempt to smear the bloody thing off her. The radroach thumps against her, stretching and skittering.
A groan tears out of her, thick with pure sickness, as she shoves blindly back at it in bursts, desperate not to get bitten. Her hands crash into things slick, hard, sharp.
With every bit of strength she has, she flings the thing away from her.
Her Pip-Boy light flickers across the space.
That’s when she sees it. The tape, popped loose and thrown out in the struggle. She jerks toward it—just as the radroach leaps.
So she runs.
Straight for the nearest exit, like some homing device has been lodged deep in her skull. Her shoulder crashes into the door.
There. The adjacent panel’s only an arm-span away. Her fingertips brush it before instinct tears her attention back. She whips her head around just as the roach launches into the air, scooping toward her, reaching for her face with all six awful legs.
A panicked yelp bursts from her as she kicks at its side.
Scrambling for the panel, she throws herself through the door, slamming it shut between them.
Antennae whip out beneath the door’s weight for a long, awful moment before slowly drawing back inside.
Her breaths pour heavy in the oasis of pure sheet metal. A sour, oily musk radiates off her clothes, her hands. And as the adrenaline dwindles down, as she stares at the door, her brain insists on remembering the tape she abandoned. The stupid thing that’s only left her with more questions.
VAULT 101 MEDICAL RESEARCH. The words on the tape flare in her mind like an omen.
Let the roach keep it. Whatever it was, she wants nothing to do with it.
“Young lady.”
The voice does nothing but scare her half out of her skin.
Her father’s hand lifts, maybe to comfort her, maybe to silence her. Then he catches the grimace on her face and stops. Sighs. Whatever he’d meant to do slips away as his hand falls back to his side.
“Out past curfew… right beside the door to one of your little haunts.” His eyes drift toward the ceiling. “And somehow I doubt I’m going to get the full story.”