Chapter Text
1. A New Place (alternately "Worst Case Scenario")
For anyone who'd been listening in the vaults were a familiar idea by now, with giant holes being dug up mysteriously throughout the more populated areas of America. They'd kept it all a secret before the particularly memorable vault-tec advertisements had been broadcast on every television and radio station.
The money they had put into this place was obvious.
Even with the knowledge that within minutes there would be people dying from radiation exposure not even 60 feet above above each of these 20 peoples heads, you could still appreciate how vault-tec had gone out of their way to provide comfort for the average American family; with metal walls and metal ceilings and even metal chairs, a real homey vibe. Not that there are actually any real families in here. There's a headcount of exactly one person under the age of eighteen and the only married couple look like they're just about ready to kick the bucket anyway. Vault 111 was provided for those who live in sanctuary hills, not a place populated by the rich but by the families that got left behind after the war; people who were too injured to work or the wives who were left without husbands.
The vault had been provided as a home while the radiation cleared from the surface, this means that for anyone who dared to think about it they are never going to back up that elevator again. Despite everything deceptive vault-tec had done over the past 10 years they still managed to find themselves military funding which is the only reason Sam has found herself here. If Nate had trusted the military then so would Nora, even after everything the military had done to him.
Once the noise of chaos from above them starts to lower the crowd begins to move forward like a hive, Sam looks back at her older sister, Nora who is obsessively pulling her frizzy blonde curls back behind her ears. Sam dangles a hand in front of Shaun's face as a silent invitation, hoping that he will take it.
"1..2 ....3" A smiley, blue clad vault-tec employee numbers each person off as they pass. Sam's foot plants firmly in front of Shaun earning her the number twelve.
As they pass through a couple of winding hallways they're are pointed onto a white line which leads them toward a well painted pair of pink lips bearing decidedly the fakest smile Sam had ever seen. "Just put this on, down the haul and to the left" she shoved a bright blue suite towards Sam and nodded in the direction of the white line. Behind her she hears Shaun sent to the right and Nora again to the left. The six year old latched back onto Sam's hand and doesn't let go.
To their left is a small maintenance closet with four distressed women already pulling vault suites up their legs from underneath their skirts. There was a time where Sam would have done the same but she's used to the lack of privacy by now. Once she is changed, as she leaves the small room Shaun's hand once again catches her own as they both enter the hall outside. There are already a few standing out there with their heads down playing with their hands or smoothing over their hair impulsively, but no one speaks.
Just over half of the new residents had regrouped back in the hall when they're ushered down the white line by a small but loud man in a lab coat; they're led to a large square room filled with 6 metal lunch tables and a couple or armoured vault-tec employees lining the entrees. "What about mum?" Shaun whispers
"She'll catch up soon, don't worry." Sam tries to comfort him but he still keeps his eyes locked behind the two of them. The same kid that Sam had come home to find playing with a huntsman like a pet now looked like he could fall apart if someone were to breath in his direction hard enough.
Sam sits down at the end of one of the tables with nothing to do but think about everything that has happened within the span of half an hour but with Shaun already looking like his eyes might pop out of his skull Sam she couldn't risk looking unstable.
Minutes of silence pass in the giant room before Nora returns, her new vault suite showing just how little she had eaten in the past months. She gives a silent hug to shaun but the worried look on her face is still there.
After ten minutes no one has been told anything. The act of obedient blue cattle stops when a few families begin to talk amongst themselves; it doesn't take long for things to escalate into one angry farther yelling at one of the security guards. "We weren't expecting you so early, we're just completing some last minute preparations." The security guard seems distressed despite the light armour he is wearing. "If you would just sit back down and wait."
Sam loses interest in their conversation and looks back towards her family to find both Nora and Shaun's eyes glued to her like she'll have something to say that will put them at ease. She doesn't. A short silence follows as Nora tries to come up with something to distract the three of them. "I bet this isn't what you'd meant when you said you wanted to start fresh." Nora's words may have meant to be a joke but the light hearted laugh that would usually follow sounds more like a grunt. "They haven't checked us for radiation yet." Sam had already begun talking before she realised how discomforting what she had to say was. "We could have carried it down."
The room had almost gone hushed again and all Sam can focus on is the clicking sound of her sister's wedding ring hitting the matching one she had been wearing around her neck all this time. Of coarse she had been thinking about Nate all this time, she still holds onto that part of her life so desperately; and yet it was Sam who came back from war and not Nate. The same week that Sam had been sent home for her injuries Nate had been killed.
The crackle of a speaker fills the air. "Residents one through twelve enter room A."
Sam stands up without a word, remembering the number she had been given upon entry. The child wrapping itself around her leg almost takes her by surprise when she tries to walk away. "I'll see you in just a little while, kid." She spoke with false certainty but enough to convince Shaun. There is no getting around this, she has to do as ordered, she has to leave them. A quick glance to Nora and then Sam begins walking, trying not to panic; or at least not show it.
The cold room is filled with twelve coffin sized 'decontamination chambers' as the vault-tec scientists called them.
One for each of us.
As she is pointed to her own chamber at the end of the room, it is clear that it's not just her that does not trust these things; but they all climb in anyway. The door seals itself automatically around her. The noise of the vault is shut out. Only her own breath is audible now.
Sam finally looks out the window of the chamber to the wide-eyed stranger oposite her. The wide eyed stranger who is in the same position that, in a matter of minutes Shaun will be in.
The crackling of the speaker comes again now in a more mechanical voice, "Cryogenic sequence begins in four..three." Sam begins to feel a cold chill run up her skin, prickling up her spine as everything seems to slow. "Two," her limbs are stiff and she can hardly even breathe in. "One," she lets out one last breath that turns white in the cold and fades, along with her vision.