Chapter Text
...picking up exactly where The Unforgotten ended...
The steam rising from Takahashi’s noodle bowls was thick enough to cut with a combat knife, carrying the heavy, comforting scent of salt and rendered fat into the damp Diamond City air.
Jennifer sat on the edge of the metal stool, her fingers curled around the warm ceramic of her bowl. Across from her, Nick sat with his fedora tilted slightly forward, shadowing the hollows of his exposed mechanical jaw. He wasn’t eating—he never did—but he sat with her all the same, a quiet, solid presence against the backdrop of the market's ambient hum.
"So," Nick said, his vocal modulator giving the word that familiar, gravelly scratch. He leaned back slightly, resting a synthetic hand on the scarred surface of the counter. "Who’s the next village idiot that needs to be remembered before he does something so stupid it ensures he’s forgotten?"
Jennifer let out a sharp, genuine laugh, the tension in her shoulders dipping for the first time in weeks. She stared down at the dark broth, swirling her noodles with a plastic utensil before her expression softened into something more contemplative.
"Actually," she said quietly, her voice dropping below the clatter of the market. "I still have that story about Vault 111. The family. The kidnapped infant."
Nick tilted his head, the yellow optics behind his brow flashing with a sudden, sharp focus. "The case from the frozen tomb. I thought you said the trail went ice-cold."
"It did. For everyone else," Jennifer said, looking up to meet his gaze. "Look, that woman I found dead in the reactor room with those two malfunctioning nuclear reactors zapping lightning everywhere? It was fresh, Nick. I mean, sure, she was stiff, but she hadn't decayed at all."
He took a drag off a freshly lit cigarette as she gobbled a few spoonfuls of noodles. "You know, that vault was hermetically sealed. It might've preserved her."
Jennifer shook her head. "No, it's not like that, Nick. The vault isn't pristine. I've seen pristine ones and wrecked ones and this one, it's not in shambles but it's not perfect, either. There's rust everywhere. Peeling paint. And a few skeletons from pre-war, wearing Vault-Tec lab coats but they're dirty."
"Huh. So the seal wasn't perfect on that one. The cryogenics must've been the only thing that kept her alive. Were she and her husband and their baby the only ones in the vault?"
She finished chewing and swallowing, scooping more noodles onto her spoon as she spoke. "No. And I know who the people were."
"You do?"
She nodded. "The terminal in the cryo room, there were two rooms, each with its own terminal. It listed the residents by name but oddly for Nate, Nora and Shaun there wasn't any surname."
"But for the others there was."
"Yes. and you can still see the surnames on several of the mailboxes in Sanctuary Hills."
"Of course. That vault was built for that neighborhood."
"Must been full of some pretty special people."
"Well, if it was a cryo experiment as you say, they would've been more interested in as big a variety of sampling pool than they would've in granting it as an actual favor."
"I've seen some of the experiments in the vaults I've been to," she nodded, face twisting. "You're not kidding."
Nick sighed. "So where's that leave us?"
"Well, I may not know when that kidnapping happened or when those people in that vault died, but...well, the whole thing's just wrong. It's been sitting in the back of my mind like a splinter, and I want to follow it to its conclusion. Not because I'm looking to play mother, but because someone needs to account for what happened down there."
Nick stared at her for a long beat, the low, mechanical whir of his internal processors the only sound between them. A faint, admiring tug pulled at the synthetic skin of his mouth. "A detective after my own heart. Alright, sweetheart. You want to crack a cold case, we do it right. But the market isn't the place to dissect a crime scene."
He stood, adjusting the lapels of his faded trench coat. "You finish up. We’ll head back to the agency. You mentioned a piece of evidence before, something you picked up out of the control room."
"The holotape," Jennifer confirmed, taking one last, quick bite before sliding off the stool. "I've got the whole scene recorded on it. The audio from the cryogenic monitoring system."
Nick’s eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "A holotape. If there's a voice on there, there's a footprint. Let's get out of the noise."
The office was uncharacteristically quiet when the door clicked shut behind them. The front desk was empty, the green-shaded lamp casting long, lonely shadows across the filing cabinets.
Nick walked in first, his eyes instinctively scanning the room. "Ellie? You here?"
Silence answered. He walked over to the desk, his metallic fingers picking up a small, folded scrap of paper resting on the corner of the typewriter. He skimmed it, a dry, amused huff escaping his throat.
"Looks like we're on our own," Nick said, tossing the note back down. "Ellie went off to meet Travis for breakfast. The kid's probably vibrating into his coffee trying to talk to her." He paused, a brief, distant smirk crossing his face. "Better him than MacCready, I suppose. God knows what kind of bad habits a mercenary would teach her."
He pulled out the heavy wooden chair behind the desk, gesturing toward the client seat across from him. "Alright, Jennifer. Let's hear it. Set the tape."
She pulled the heavy brass-rimmed holotape from her pack. It felt cold against her palm, a dead weight from a dead world. She slid it into the terminal playback slot on Nick's desk. The machine clicked, whined with the high-pitched squeal of a two-century-old drive spinning up, and then the static cut through the room.
The audio was clear, brutal, and immediate. The heavy, pressurized hiss of a cryo-pod opening. The panicked, breathless voice of a spouse refusing to let go of a child.
Then came the second voice. It was low. Calm. Cold in a way that had nothing to do with the liquid nitrogen in the walls. “Go ahead. Open it.”
A struggle. A sharp, echoing gunshot that made Jennifer flinch despite how many times she’d imagined it. The heavy thud of a body falling against the back of the pod.
“At least we still have the backup,” the voice said, entirely unaffected by the murder it had just committed.
Nick sat entirely still, his hand hovering over the desk. As the tape wound down to static, his optics didn't leave the terminal speaker. "Play it again," he commanded softly, palm resting gently on its worn surface.
Jennifer hit the reset. The audio played a second time. Then a third.
By the fourth playback, Nick’s hand had clenched into a tight, mechanical fist. "I know that voice," he said, his tone dropping into a dangerous, gravelly register.
Jennifer leaned forward, her heart skipping. "You do?"
"I'd recognize that smug, self-satisfied drawl anywhere in the Commonwealth," Nick spat, standing up and pacing the small space behind his desk. "Conrad Kellogg. He's an enforcer. A mercenary the Institute uses when they want a problem removed permanently, but don't want to waste a synth to do it. He lived right here in Diamond City for a spell. Up in the West Stands. Had a kid with him, too, a boy, maybe ten years old."
Jennifer frowned, her brow furrowing. "A ten-year-old? But the tape... the kidnapping happened when the baby was an infant."
"That’s the puzzle piece that doesn't fit," Nick muttered, grabbing his hat. "But if Kellogg’s the man on that tape, his old house is the place to start. The Mayor’s had it locked up tighter than a vault since the guy vanished, but a rusty old lock never stopped a good detective. Come on."