Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Thawing
Cold.
That was the first thing Jace Tan felt when he regained consciousness. Not ordinary cold, but a chill that sank into his bones and blood. It was as if his whole body had been submerged in liquid nitrogen, every cell screaming in protest. The cold did not come from the surface of his skin. It seeped outward from inside him, as though his bones had frozen into pillars of ice.
He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were as heavy as lead. A mechanical hum buzzed in his ears, mixed with the gurgle of flowing liquid. He wanted to move, but his body would not obey. His limbs felt locked in place, stiff and heavy, as if they no longer belonged to him.
Fragments of memory flashed through his mind. The blinding headlights of a Dayun truck, the thunder of steel coils rolling loose, the terrified screams of passersby, and then... darkness.
How long had that darkness lasted? Seconds? Days? Years?
“I’m... still alive?” The thought startled even him.
As the last of the cryogenic fluid drained from the chamber, the hatch let out a hiss of depressurization, then slowly opened upward. Icy mist spilled out, freezing into frost across Jace’s face. He struggled to sit up, only to be seized by a violent coughing fit that nearly choked him. It felt as if his lungs had been filled with broken glass, every breath stabbing with pain.
He looked down at his hands.
These were not his hands.
Or rather, not completely. The fingers were thicker, the knuckles more pronounced, and his palms were covered in heavy calluses. He turned his wrist over. A strange scar marked the skin there, like something had once pierced straight through it. He touched his face. The shape of his features was unfamiliar: higher cheekbones, a squarer jaw. His skin had an unnatural toughness to it, not quite like the skin of a living person.
“Where... am I?” he muttered. His voice was hoarse and unfamiliar, like someone else was speaking.
Jace staggered out of the sleep pod, his bare feet touching the cold metal floor. A strange steadiness, like finally standing on solid ground, mixed with the weakness of someone who had been bedridden for far too long, surged up from the soles of his feet and left him dazed. He looked around. It was a laboratory, not very large. Three other sleep pods stood nearby, their hatches sealed shut, with faint human silhouettes visible inside.
The laboratory walls were cold metal, covered in pipes and wires that crawled across the space like blood vessels. A grid of lights covered the ceiling, but only a few emergency lamps were still working, giving off a dim green glow that stained everything a sickly color. The air smelled of disinfectant and metal, along with a faint, lingering stench of rot, as if something had been decaying here for a very long time.
Confusion.
Deep, overwhelming confusion.
Jace remembered who he was, or rather, who he had been. Just an ordinary gaming geek, twenty-six years old, single, renting a room in an urban village. His biggest hobby was playing games. That day, he had just bought a late-night snack and was crossing the street when he ran into a driver hauling steel coils in an ordinary flatbed truck. There was a saying among truckers, wasn’t there? Don’t haul pipes if you’re broke, don’t haul green-channel cargo if your life depends on it, and don’t haul steel coils unless you’ve got a death wish. He had even thought of that at the time.
He just never expected the random passerby who died would be him.
But what was this place?
He looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue-and-yellow jumpsuit.
A Vault suit.
His heartbeat began to quicken.
He walked toward the nearest control console. It looked ancient, like a piece of technology from the last century, with a bulky CRT monitor, rows of physical buttons, and rust along the edges. The screen was dark. He reached out and pressed a few buttons, but nothing happened. He tried several different combinations, his fingers trembling over the keyboard. Not from the cold, but from fear.
On the third press of the power button, the screen finally flickered several times, let out a buzzing electrical hum, then slowly lit up. Dark green text appeared line by line against the black background:
Vault-Tec Corporation
Experimental Monitoring System
Please enter access authorization
Vault-Tec?
Jace’s heart lurched so hard it nearly jumped into his throat. As a veteran player of the Fallout series, he knew that name far too well. Vault-Tec Corporation, one of the largest companies in pre-War America, the builder of nuclear fallout shelters across the entire United States. That logo, the blue-and-yellow gear, he had seen it thousands of times: on game startup screens, on Vault doors, on the back of every Pip-Boy.
But that familiarity brought no comfort. Instead, a bone-deep chill crawled up his spine.
Because he knew even better the truth hidden behind those cheerful propaganda posters. The so-called Vaults were, for the most part, never meant to save people at all. They were underground hells built for all kinds of inhuman sociological experiments. Under the banner of “protecting the American people,” Vault-Tec had locked ordinary people beneath the earth and observed how they reacted under extreme conditions.
What if... what if he had crossed over into a Vault designed specifically to treat people like lab rats?
Memories from the games surged up like a tide: Vault 12, where all residents were forcibly exposed to radiation and eventually became rotting Ghouls; Vault 68, which contained only one woman and more than a thousand men; Vault 69, the exact opposite, with one man and over a thousand women; Vault 106, where neurotoxic gas drove everyone into insane hallucinations and made them slaughter one another; and...
He didn’t dare think any further.
Had he opened his eyes in the Wasteland only to find himself already cast as a “test subject,” doomed to die on an operating table?
The thought made him dizzy, and he had to brace himself against the console to stay upright. The screen flickered, and new text appeared:
Access Level: Guest Mode
Welcome to Vault 111
Current Date: October 23, 2287
External Status: Radiation Levels Safe
Vault 111. The year 2287.
Jace stared at the screen, his mind going blank.
- The Great War had broken out in 2077. Which meant it was now...
210 years later.
He leaned against the console and took several deep breaths, then several more. This was not a prank. Not a game prop. Not someone’s cosplay setup. The console was too real. The worn buttons still showed traces of use, yellow burn marks stained the edges of the aged screen, and the operating system responded with genuine lag.
And the date... 2287.
He really was in the world of Fallout.
He had really crossed over.
But why? How? That flatbed truck... had it not been an accident? Or was there some other reason? Was this some joke played by a higher being? Or a hallucination in the last moments before death?
Jace forced himself to calm down. Fear would not solve anything. Panic would only get him killed faster. That was the first rule of survival he had learned from the games.
He turned back to the screen and began checking the system logs. As a veteran player, he knew what to look for.
Resident Status Report:
Nora Conard: Deceased
Nate Conard: In cryosleep (vital signs stable)
Test Subject 73: Awake
Nora was dead. Shaun had been taken. Nate was still alive, frozen in cryosleep.
The timeline was clear now. The Institute had come here decades ago. To obtain pure human DNA untouched by radiation, they had sent the mercenary Kellogg. Kellogg had killed Nora when she fought back, taken the infant, and left Nate behind. Maybe he had seen no need to kill him. Maybe he had wanted to keep him as a backup test subject. Or maybe... it had simply been cruelty.
And as for Jace himself, Test Subject 73.
His fingers trembled over the console as he found his own experimental record and opened it:
Test Subject 73: Member of Chinese Special Forces (Prisoner of War)
Source: Prisoner of war captured from the front lines of the 2077 Sino-American War
Experiment Type 1: High-Intensity Radiation Simulation Drug Test
Objective: Attempt to create artificial Radiation Resistance for battlefield soldiers
Result: Drug failed to successfully simulate radiation effects. Test subject did not acquire expected Radiation Resistance
Side Effects: Abnormal cellular regeneration rate. Significantly reduced metabolic rate
Notes: Subject 1 modification failed. Repurposed as waste material for long-term tolerance testing of new cryogenic hibernation technology
Each line made his stomach sink.
Member of Chinese Special Forces. Prisoner of war. 2077. The Sino-American War.
In Fallout’s backstory, the United States and China had fought a long war before ending in a deadlock in Alaska. So the original owner of this body had been a soldier on that battlefield. Captured, shipped to the American mainland, sent into a Vault, and then used as a test subject.
High-intensity radiation simulation drug testing. Most likely an attempt to create controllable, lucid Ghouls. Jace thought of his skin’s unnatural toughness and pale color. Then he thought about how this body had slept for so long that it should have been starving, yet he felt no hunger at all.
“Abnormal cellular regeneration rate. Significantly reduced metabolic rate.”
Ghoul.
Classic Ghoul traits.
The rotting, deranged humanoid monsters that wandered the Wasteland. But not all Ghouls were monsters. Some retained their sanity. Their bodies had simply changed. They did not need to eat much, they were immune to radiation, and they recovered from injuries faster than ordinary people.
Jace raised his hand and looked at his pale palm. The veins beneath the skin were clearly visible, but the skin itself... he pinched it hard, then let go. It bounced back normally.
He did not know whether to feel lucky or terrified.
He kept reading and found another crucial piece of information in the logs:
Technical File: Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV Prototype
Source: Vault 76 Technology Sharing Program
Location: Deep Tech Storage Room B-12
Notes: Early test model from Vault 76, containing unreleased features. This device is the result of cross-Vault technological collaboration and has not been officially deployed.
Vault 76!
Jace’s eyes lit up. As a veteran Fallout player, he knew exactly what Vault 76 meant. That was no ordinary Vault. That was where the gods went to war.
Vault 76 opened in 2102, 185 years before Vault 111. The Vault Dwellers who came out of it wore power armor, wielded legendary weapons, could take on Deathclaws one-on-one, and could bathe in radstorms. They were “America’s best and brightest,” the elite originally tasked with rebuilding the nation.
The Vault 76 kids were all superhuman. Vault 76 itself was practically a Fallout myth, and its technology was far beyond that of other Vaults. Their Pip-Boys definitely had to be something special.
If this prototype really came from Vault 76, its value was impossible to measure. Special functions? Unknown risks? In the Wasteland, risk often meant opportunity. No risk, no reward. Without an edge, survival would be hard.
Jace closed the technical file and stood in front of the console for a long time.
He found the surveillance feed for Nate’s cryopod. The screen switched to the chamber. A black-haired man lay inside, his body still carrying a certain anger even in sleep. His wife was dead. His son had been taken from him.
He still did not know that, in the fate he was supposed to have, he would become the protagonist. He would become the Sole Survivor, cross the Commonwealth wasteland in search of his son, get dragged into the conflicts between the Institute, the Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad, and the Minutemen, and decide the fate of the entire Commonwealth.
But now?
Jace had woken up early.
He knew many things. He knew the truth about the Institute. He knew the location of The Railroad’s secret base. He knew when the Brotherhood of Steel would descend from the sky in their airship. He knew every corner of Diamond City. He knew which quests were worth doing and which traps to avoid.
He could change a lot of things.
Or... make everything worse.
He did not know what to do.
In the game, he had clear objectives, clear moral choices, and the chance to try again. Die once, reload a save. Make the wrong choice, reload again. But here, there was none of that. Only one chance. Only one life.
Jace took a deep breath and turned toward the laboratory door. It was an airlock door, with a red handwheel beside it. He grabbed the wheel and turned it with all his strength. The grinding of the gears sounded especially harsh in the quiet laboratory.
The door opened.
Outside was a corridor, darker and colder than the lab. Emergency lights gave off a faint green glow, one every few meters. Some had already gone out, while others flickered. The pipes along the walls were stained with rust, and the occasional drip of water echoed through the empty space. The air smelled of dust and metal, along with a damp, musty odor.
Jace took his first step out. His bare foot touched the metal floor, and the cold bit deep.
He did not know where he was going, or what he was supposed to do. He simply walked, step by step, through this unfamiliar place in this unfamiliar body.
He did not know what Vault 76’s Pip-Boy would bring him. He did not know what was waiting at the end of the corridor. He did not know what this world would become when Nate woke up.
But he knew one thing.
This confusion could not last forever.
The Wasteland was waiting. Danger was waiting.
And he, a player from another world, a transmigrator occupying the body of Test Subject 73, a half-Ghoul with none of the original owner’s memories, had to find his own path.
At the far end of the corridor, deeper in the darkness, something was waiting for him.
Jace clenched his fists and kept walking.
...
Chapter 2: Pip-Boy
Jace walked through the dim corridor, his footsteps echoing through the empty space. The green glow of the emergency lights cast strange shadows across the floor, and the pipes along the walls occasionally dripped water.
The first room was a storage room. The door was half open, so Jace pushed it wider and stepped inside. Boxes were piled throughout the room, most of them rotted through, their contents scattered across the floor. He searched around and found a few useful things, along with a rusty baton.
The metal baton felt reassuring in his hand. Jace gave it a few test swings, getting used to the weight. It was not an ideal weapon, but it was better than fighting bare-handed.
He kept moving. The next room was a dormitory. Several bunk beds stood against the wall, with skeletons lying on them. Vault Dwellers in Vault suits, reduced to bones by the long passage of time. Jace forced himself not to look at them and focused on searching.
Under one of the beds, he found a leather holster and a backpack. The backpack was made of canvas, worn but still usable. He packed away the things he had found.
In a nightstand, he made an important discovery: a 10mm pistol and two magazines. The gun had been kept in decent condition. There was some rust, but the mechanism looked intact. Jace checked it over. The magazines were full, fifteen rounds each. He pulled the slide back experimentally, and it moved smoothly.
“Thank you,” he whispered, though he did not know who he was thanking.
Having a gun changed everything. Jace slid the pistol into the holster at his waist and continued exploring.
The next room was the medical room. The door was locked, but Jace pried it open with a wrench. A strong medicinal smell filled the room, mixed with rot. The shelves were packed with all kinds of drugs, most of them expired, their labels faded and their liquids long evaporated.
But Jace found something useful: a box of Stimpaks. There had been ten in the box, and seven were still intact. He knew how valuable Stimpaks were in the Wasteland. They could stop bleeding fast, dull pain, and even treat radiation sickness.
He also found a few doses of RadAway. As a Fallout player, he knew exactly how dangerous radiation could be. His half-Ghoul body had Radiation Resistance, but he was not truly immune to radiation. RadAway would always be useful.
The biggest surprise was in the doctor’s desk drawer, where he found a set of leather armor. It was worn, but with some basic repairs, it could still be used. The set included chest armor, arm guards, and leg guards, enough to provide basic protection.
Jace put on the leather armor and felt much better. A Vault suit was far too thin. In the Wasteland, wearing only that was almost the same as running around naked. The leather armor would not stop bullets, but it could at least protect him from some claws, bites, and blunt attacks.
Once he was properly equipped, Jace decided to go to the Overseer’s office. He wanted more information, especially about Nate’s condition.
The Overseer’s office was in the center of the Vault. The door was automatic, slowly opening when it detected someone approaching. Inside was a huge observation window, with more sleep pods visible beyond it. A person sat in front of the control console. Or rather, someone who had once been a person. The Overseer’s body had already become a skeleton, still seated in the chair.
Jace walked around the corpse and stepped up to the console. He activated the terminal, and the screen lit up, showing the Vault’s status.
Vault 111 Status Report
Total Residents: 1 survivor
Cryogenic System: 99% failure rate
External Environment: Radiation levels safe
Last External Access: 2227 (unauthorized entry)
Unauthorized entry sixty years ago.
The Institute. It looked like the Institute had not had Vault-Tec authorization after all. Back then, they must have used some other method to open the Vault door.
Jace pulled up the surveillance feed for Nate’s cryopod. According to the terminal, Nate was still asleep, his vital signs stable. Most of the cryogenic system had failed, but his pod was still running. Whether that was luck or misfortune, Jace could not say.
He exited the cryopod management interface and began looking through other information, especially the detailed files on the Pip-Boy prototype from Vault 76.
The console contained a full technical archive. Jace found the complete record for that Pip-Boy prototype:
Item: Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV Prototype (Vault 76 Version)
Serial Number: 76-VT-001
Date of Manufacture: 2075
Special Features:
- Enhanced Holographic Map (real-time updates)
- Advanced Bio-Scan (identifies mutated creatures)
- Experimental Combat Assistance System
- Vault 76-exclusive data interface
- Unknown function (requires Overseer permissions to activate)
Warning: This device is an experimental model and may contain unstable features. Vault 76 technology classification is “Top Secret.” Use at your own risk.
Location: Deep Tech Storage Room B-12
Enhanced map. Bio-Scan. Combat assistance system. In the Wasteland, those features would be priceless. Especially for a newcomer like Jace. He had a player’s knowledge, but no real Wasteland experience.
But what about the risks? “Unstable features,” “use at your own risk.” Nothing from Vault 76 was ever simple.
Jace thought it over. He knew the story of Vault 76. In Fallout 76, its residents were among the first to leave their Vault, thrown into the rawest and most dangerous version of the Wasteland. Their technology had been developed for survival. Practical, but maybe a little extreme.
And what had happened to the residents of Vault 76 afterward? The game had never made that entirely clear. Some became legends. Some disappeared. Some might have become something else altogether.
Did this Pip-Boy prototype have hidden problems? Could it affect the user? Could it... change him?
Jace did not know. But he did know one thing: in the Wasteland, there was no reward without risk. Without an edge, survival would be hard.
He removed the Pip-Boy from the Overseer’s wrist, then made up his mind to go below and retrieve the prototype.
Jace left the Overseer’s office and headed for the third basement level. He knew the way. He had seen the Vault’s floor plan on the console. The deep-level tech storage room was at the lowest level of the Vault, beyond several security doors.
The first door stood at the bottom of the stairs. It was a heavy metal door marked with a radiation warning symbol. There was an open button on the control panel beside it, and Jace pressed it.
The lock clicked, and the door slowly opened. Beyond it was another staircase leading down, darker and colder than before. There were fewer emergency lights here, and some had already gone out, while others flickered unsteadily.
Jace tightened his grip on the pistol and slowly descended. The staircase was long, turning three times before finally reaching the bottom. There, another corridor stretched ahead, narrower than the one above, with a lower ceiling. The air smelled of mildew, mixed with the sharp ozone stink of a leaking generator.
Something moved in the darkness at the far end of the corridor.
Jace stopped and gripped the pistol tighter. The green emergency lighting was too dim to reach very far. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the blurry shapes.
Radroaches.
Jace’s breath caught. As a Fallout player, he had seen these creatures countless times. In the game, they were bottom-tier trash mobs. Step on them, hit them with a baton, kill them without wasting a bullet. But that was the game. That was something on a screen.
Now they were three meters away.
Each one was as large as a cat. Their brown-black shells gleamed with an oily shine under the green light, their antennae twitching, their six legs covered in fine bristles. They seemed to notice him too, stopping in place and turning their heads toward him. He could not see their eyes, but he knew they were looking at him.
“Fuck.”
Jace raised the gun with both hands and aimed.
The first Radroach moved, far faster than he had expected. Its six legs worked in perfect rhythm, its body low to the ground as it rushed straight at him.
Jace pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The bullet skimmed past the Radroach’s left side and struck the wall, spraying chips of concrete. The Radroach was not hit. If anything, the gunshot seemed to spur it on, and it moved even faster.
Second shot.
Bang.
Another miss. The bullet flew over the Radroach’s head and hit the second one behind it. But it only grazed the creature. A thin spray of fluid burst from one of its legs. It paused for a moment, then kept coming.
Three of them. All three were moving. All three were charging at him.
Jace’s finger stayed on the trigger, but he knew he could not keep shooting. They were too fast. Too close.
He lowered the gun and drew the baton from his waist.
The first one had already reached his feet, its antennae almost brushing his boot. Jace swung the baton and brought it down with all his strength.
Thud.
Metal struck shell with a dull, sickening crunch. Half of the Radroach’s body flattened under the blow, fluid splattering out as its six legs kept twitching. But it was still alive.
Still moving.
Jace struck it again. A third time, then a fourth.
Until it stopped moving.
The second one had circled around to his side and was crawling toward his calf. Jace turned, stomped down, and kicked it away. The Radroach rolled twice, then got back up.
The third one was closing in too. Two of them, one on his left, one on his right.
Jace took a step back until his back hit the corridor wall. He could not retreat any farther.
He tightened his grip on the baton and fixed his eyes on the one to his left. It was closer, and more badly injured. Take that one first.
Another swing. This time, the baton smashed into its head. Its shell cracked, and fluid burst out. The Radroach convulsed violently, then went limp.
One left.
That Radroach seemed to realize something. It froze in place, antennae twitching. Jace stared at it for one second. Maybe half a second.
Then he rushed forward.
One swing. Two. Three.
Until it stopped moving completely.
The corridor fell silent. Only Jace’s heavy breathing remained, along with the faint drip of fluid falling from the baton to the floor.
He leaned against the wall and looked down at the three Radroach corpses. His hands were shaking. He almost could not keep hold of the baton.
In the game, he had killed thousands of Radroaches. With bullets, with bats, with his fists, even by blowing them up with a Fat Man. It had never bothered him.
But now, he looked down at the fluid splattered across his hands. Thick, faintly warm, carrying a sharp, fishy stink. His stomach churned.
This was not a game.
He took several deep breaths and forced himself to calm down. Then he crouched and wiped the baton against one of the Radroach corpses. It did not come clean, but at least it was not as slippery anymore.
He stood and kept walking.
But his fingers stayed clenched around the baton. He did not let go again.
There were several rooms on both sides of the corridor, all with their doors closed. Jace did not bother exploring them and headed straight for Room B-12 at the end of the hall.
The door to Room B-12 was so heavy it looked like a cold metal fortress. From a distance, it was almost exactly like the door to a bank vault, radiating a grim, intimidating weight.
Beside the door was a very familiar port, just like the one outside a Vault door, designed for a Pip-Boy data cable. Jace’s eyes were drawn to it at once, and his heart began to beat faster.
He took a deep breath and slowly pulled out the Overseer’s Pip-Boy data cable. His hand was trembling slightly. The loose end of the cable swayed in the dim light. Jace lined it up with the port and inserted it cleanly. There was a faint, crisp click, like the first turn of some hidden gear.
The Pip-Boy screen lit up at once with a soft blue glow, standing out sharply in the darkness. A low mechanical rumble followed from inside the door, like some enormous beast waking from sleep. The heavy door slowly slid apart to both sides, grinding dully and stirring up a thin cloud of dust. Jace narrowed his eyes and waited for whatever lay beyond to reveal itself.
The sight inside left him stunned.
This was no ordinary storage room. It was a complete technical laboratory. Small, but fully equipped. The workbenches were covered with instruments: oscilloscopes, signal generators, data loggers. Circuit diagrams and technical manuals hung on the walls, yellowed with age.
In the center of the room stood a special workbench. On top of it sat a metal case marked with the Vault 76 logo. The case was open, and inside was the Pip-Boy prototype.
Jace walked over and bent down to study it carefully. This Pip-Boy was far more refined than he had expected. No, more than that. It gave off a completely different impression from the standard models.
Its casing was made of dark gray military-grade alloy, the surface carefully matte-finished to prevent both slipping and glare. The whole design was sleek and compact, with clean, sharp lines, as if it had been built for maximum portability. He reached out and picked it up, then found, to his surprise, that it was much lighter than he had imagined. It did not feel like a heavy industrial product. It felt more like a precision-made personal tool.
The screen was a monochrome LCD. Though it was off, he could still faintly see that familiar amber sheen, the classic color of old Pip-Boys. But this one was thinner than the standard models, with a narrower frame, and its overall shape fit the curve of the wrist far better than the bulky standard-issue Vault models.
The most distinctive part was its power system. Jace turned it over and saw the iconic nuclear battery compartment cover. Not a charging dock. Not an external power source. An integrated microfusion cell. That meant it did not need charging, and it did not need batteries replaced. As long as it was not damaged, it could run for decades. Maybe even longer.
“Something from Vault 76...” Jace murmured, his fingers brushing over the inconspicuous six-pin port on the casing. “No wonder that place was full of monsters.”
Jace looked at the device in his hand and hesitated for a few final seconds. Putting it on meant accepting all of this. Accepting this Fallout world, accepting this half-Ghoul body, accepting this... fate.
He took a deep breath and fastened the Pip-Boy onto his left wrist. The device tightened automatically, fitting itself around his wrist. Not too loose, not too tight. Perfect.
Then he pressed the button on the side of the Pip-Boy.
The screen lit up.
Biometric scan in progress...
Radiation-mutant traits detected
Adapting prototype biometric system...
Adaptation complete
User confirmed
Welcome to the Vault 76-standard Pip-Boy
The main interface appeared. It looked similar to the one in the game, but not quite the same. There were more options, the layout was more complex, and it carried a faint precision that felt closer to laboratory equipment. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, inventory, map, quest log, radio, and a special icon: a gear emblem marked 76.
Jace tapped the icon.
Vault 76 Pip-Boy exclusive function modules:
- Enhanced Holographic Map (activated)
Supports 3D projection
- Advanced Bio-Scan (calibration required)
Can detect vital signs, radiation levels, and potential threats
- Experimental Combat Assistance System (testing required)
Developed by Vault 76 Tactical Division. Requires field calibration
- Vault Data Interface (no connection)
Can connect to any Vault-Tec terminal
- Camera Function (activated)
Uses the holographic projection module for instant image recording
- Unknown Function (locked)
Requires connection to a Vault Workshop
He opened the map first. The holographic projection module produced a hologram showing the full layout of Vault 111. It was not just a floor plan. It was a three-dimensional model, zoomable and rotatable through the Pip-Boy’s knobs, with every room and every pipe clearly visible. There were also dynamic markers on the map. His own position was a pulsing green dot, the exit was a steady blue marker, and several flashing red markers showed other life forms automatically flagged by the system.
Even if these were only the Pip-Boy’s basic game functions, they were already incredibly powerful. After all, in the real world, a Pip-Boy could not be used to assign perk points. Jace looked at the device on his wrist and felt different. With the Pip-Boy, he was no longer completely in the dark. He had information. He had tools. He had possibilities.
He also found several technical manuals about the maintenance and use of Vault 76 equipment. He could not understand all of them, but they would be useful to keep.
Finally, he checked his gear:
- 10mm pistol (two magazines, 30 rounds)
- Baton (melee weapon)
- Leather armor (basic protection)
- Stimpaks (7)
- RadAway (5)
- Water (enough for a few days)
- Pip-Boy prototype (most important piece of gear)
He was ready.
Or at least, as ready as he could be.
Jace left the technical storage room and returned to the Overseer’s office. He took one last look at Nate’s cryopod. The American soldier was still asleep, unaware of how the outside world had changed, unaware of his wife’s death, unaware of his son’s fate.
“We’ll meet again,” he said quietly, as if speaking to himself.
He did not know whether that was a promise or a comfort. But he knew he could not, and did not want to, stay in the Vault forever. The Wasteland was waiting. This broken, scarred world was waiting.
When Nate woke up, he would find that someone else had already gotten a head start in this world.
Jace walked toward the exit. Beyond the heavy airlock door was the elevator leading upward. At the end of that elevator was the Wasteland. He pressed the open button, and the door slowly lifted with a heavy metallic scrape.
Jace took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The Wasteland was waiting.
And he, a player from another world, a half-Ghoul, a survivor wearing a Vault 76 artifact, was ready.
...
Chapter 3: Sanctuary Hills
He stood on the old elevator, facing a rusted metal gate. To his left was an equally rusted control box with a single red button. The button was so faded it was almost impossible to tell it was made of engineering plastic. It looked more like a stone daubed with cheap red paint.
He pressed the red button.
The machine let out a hoarse rumble, and the entire platform gave a violent shudder before slowly rising. The sound of chains and gears grinding together echoed through the shaft, like the low growl of some ancient creature.
Jace gripped the cold metal railing and watched the opening above grow wider and wider. A circular exit, aimed straight at the grayish-white sky.
The elevator jolted, then stopped.
The cover over the circular exit slid open to both sides, and dazzling sunlight poured down.
Jace blinked.
Wind.
That was the first thing he felt.
Not the recycled, filtered air of a laboratory, but real wind. It carried the scent of soil, the smell of withered grass, and something he couldn’t quite describe. A sense of VATS open space.
His skin could feel the air moving across it. This body, which had not been outside for two hundred years, seemed to have an instinctive closeness to something so natural.
He stood on the lift platform at the entrance of Vault 111 and looked around.
Good. No crows.
It seemed the Institute had not started monitoring Vault 111 yet. Then again, he honestly had no idea how to tell a synth crow from an ordinary crow.
He took a few steps forward, then stopped.
At the foot of the hill lay Sanctuary Hills.
Jace had seen this view countless times. In the game, in guides, in screenshots posted by the player community. The low wooden houses, the iconic red gas station, the little bridge over the river.
He could draw the whole scene with his eyes closed.
But seeing it in person was something else entirely.
Sanctuary Hills in the game was pixels, textures, and scenery rendered by a lighting engine.
What lay before him now was a ruin.
At the bottom of the hill stood fourteen single-family homes. The roofs of some had already caved in by more than half, their exposed beams pointing toward the sky like ribs. Others had collapsed completely.
The small bridge was still there. Some of its planks were missing, revealing the river beneath, but the main structure remained intact.
In a timeline where the Great War had never happened, this should have been the best season for viewing fall foliage in the Commonwealth.
But years of raging radiation storms had changed everything.
The trees had mutated in order to survive. To avoid the cold winds that blew in from the Glowing Sea to the southwest from November through March, carrying massive amounts of radioactive material with them, their leaves had fallen early.
Only bare branches remained, pointing toward the sky in bleak silence.
The whole hillside was gray-brown. The trees had no life in them. The entire world looked like an old faded photograph, or as though it were covered in a layer of dust that could never be washed away. Dim, oppressive, lifeless.
Two hundred and ten years.
Jace suddenly understood what that number meant.
It was not the “two hundred years after the Great War” he had read about in the game. It was not the “October 23, 2287” displayed on the console.
This was a real, living world.
People had once lived in those wooden houses. Lights had once shone behind those windows. People had once gone to that gas station to top up their coolant, buy a bottle of Nuka-Cola, and chat with the owner for a few minutes.
He looked down the hill and said nothing for a long time.
A strange feeling welled up inside him.
It was not fear. It was not sadness. It was not even confusion.
It was just emptiness.
The world he came from, the world with food delivery, phones, games, heavy transport trucks, and steel coils, no longer existed.
It was gone in space, and it was gone in time.
Everything from that world, no matter how he looked at it, was already two hundred years in the past. The people he knew, the places he had been, the restaurants where he had eaten, all of it had turned to dust.
And he, a gaming shut-in who had been killed by a truck, was standing among these gray-white ruins in a stranger’s body, looking at a world he had only ever seen in a game.
Jace took a breath, then slowly let it out.
The wind scattered the white mist of his breath.
He looked down at the Pip-Boy on his wrist, the prototype he had taken from the storage room. The metal casing was cold, and the screen glowed, displaying the time and radiation readings.
It really was heavy. Strapped to his wrist, it made his left arm feel as if it had gained an obvious counterweight.
He flexed his wrist, trying to get used to the unfamiliar burden.
Then he saw figures on the far side of the small bridge below.
Not Ghouls. Not mutated creatures.
People.
Three of them, dressed in rough cloth and carrying guns.
Jace instinctively took a step back and hid in the shadow behind a nearby tree trunk.
He narrowed his eyes. This body’s excellent eyesight let him make out their movements clearly. Two men and one woman, standing on the bridge and saying something to each other. One of the men pointed toward the far bank, and another nodded.
Their movements were cautious and alert. They were not hurrying along.
They looked more like they were searching.
Strangers.
In this world, what did strangers mean?
Raiders? Settlers? Something else?
Jace did not know.
All he knew was that he had no real understanding of this cruel world. His knowledge of the game could tell him the layout of the Vault. It could tell him Sturges was a Synth. It could tell him where to find power armor.
But it could not tell him what he should do right now.
He watched the three figures slowly approach from the other end of the bridge and tightened his grip on the 10mm pistol in his hand.
In the game, this gun was just the starting weapon from the beginner area. Low damage, short range, something players stopped caring about the moment they got power armor.
But now that he was holding it, Jace realized how heavy it really was.
The metal slide was ice-cold. The anti-slip texture on the grip dug into his palm. On the inside of the trigger guard, a line of small text had been engraved.
“Springfield Armory, Manufactured in 2076.”
This was not a “starting weapon” from a game.
This was standard-issue equipment distributed to Vault 111 before the war, prepared for the soldiers and scientists responsible for guarding the Vault when the apocalypse came.
It might not have been used many times, but it had absolutely been designed, manufactured, and issued for the purpose of killing.
The magazine was fully loaded.
This was not the sort of hand-loaded ammunition commonly found in the Wasteland, with dented casings, powder charges measured by feel, and a constant risk of jamming or blowing up in the chamber.
This was real military ammunition, produced on a pre-War armory’s assembly line. Every round’s charge was accurate down to the milligram, the primers were perfectly sealed, and the bullets were as smooth as if they had just come out of the mold.
Two hundred years old, and good as new.
Jace lowered the muzzle and rested his thumb on the safety.
He had checked it back in the Vault. The chamber was clean, the firing mechanism worked smoothly, and when he stripped the rounds from the magazine, the brass casings still gleamed without a trace of moisture damage.
Pre-war craftsmanship.
Pre-war quality.
A pre-War tool for killing.
The wind kept blowing. The grayish-white sky did not change.
He stepped down from the small platform and onto the slope leading downhill. The soil beneath his feet was soft, overgrown with withered yellow weeds.
With every step, fine dust rose from the soles of his shoes.
The three people came over the small bridge.
Tattered clothes. Crude weapons. One of them had black stripes painted across his face.
Raiders.
The one in front suddenly stopped and signaled for the others to stay alert.
“Something’s there,” he said in a rough voice.
The other two immediately raised their guns.
Jace held his breath and hid behind the ruins of a house.
The lead Raider swept his gaze toward the ruins across the bridge, right where Jace was hiding.
“Over there.”
“Who’s there?!”
“Come out!”
Jace held his breath, crouched behind the base of the ruined wall, and did not move a muscle.
He was sure he had not made a sound. His steps had been light. He had not stepped on broken tiles or branches. He had even forced his breathing down as much as possible.
Besides, he had circled around from the hillside, and the wind direction was right. Even if he had a scent, it should not have drifted over.
Before Jace could react, a voice came from behind him.
It had a metallic quality, an old-fashioned British accent, and a cheerfulness that was honestly fucking absurd.
“Hello, guest from the Vault. Please allow me to introduce myself: Codsworth, a multi-functional household robot who has faithfully served Humans since 2077. Although the current circumstances are somewhat less than ideal, for example, these uninvited gentlemen clearly lack basic manners, I am still delighted to see you!”
Jace turned his head.
A silver robot glided out from the shadows on the other side of the gas station.
It had a cylindrical body, three nimble multi-jointed mechanical arms, and three round “eyes” staring straight at him. Its outer shell was covered in rust and bullet marks, but some parts were unnaturally clean.
Especially the circular saw. It was bright, polished, and looked almost factory-new.
Codsworth.
The only “resident” still left in Sanctuary Hills.
Jace’s game knowledge began running at full speed in his mind.
Mister Handy. Manufactured by General Atomics International. A civilian household robot, with a flamer available as optional equipment.
Its offensive power was not exactly impressive, and it was nowhere near the military version of the same type, Mister Gutsy.
But against a few low-level Raiders carrying homemade pipe weapons...
“You fucking...” the lead Raider shouted.
“Take that metal bastard apart!”
All three guns aimed at Codsworth at once.
Codsworth’s “eyes” turned slightly, its tone still cheerful.
“Esteemed guest, I recommend taking a few steps back. The next operation may produce some... rather undignified stains.”
Jace instinctively stepped back and ducked aside.
The next second, flames burst from Codsworth’s chassis, and the whole machine shot toward the Raiders like a cannonball.
One mechanical arm extended a humming circular saw. From the end of another, orange-red fire sprayed out. A flamer.
Gunshots.
Screams.
The sound of metal cutting through flesh.
Jace stood where he was, watching a one-sided slaughter.
Thirty seconds later, all three Raiders were lying on the ground.
Codsworth hovered in midair, blood still dripping from the circular saw on its mechanical arm. It turned toward him and said in that same cheerful voice,
“Guest, the trash has been cleared away. By the way, would you like to hear a joke?”
Jace opened his mouth, but for a moment, he had no idea what to say.
Two hundred and ten years.
This robot had stayed here for a full two hundred and ten years.
It had seen the bombs fall. It had watched its master leave and never return. It had watched Sanctuary Hills turn from a community into a ruin.
Alone, in this place where not even ghosts remained, it had kept watch for two centuries.
“...What joke?” Jace asked.
Codsworth’s “eyes” brightened, as if it was pleased that its guest was willing to listen.
“Do you know how to make someone wait for nothing?”
Jace froze.
Codsworth was silent for three seconds.
Then it said,
“I’ll tell you later.”
The wind passed through the ruins, carrying the smell of blood and dust.
Jace looked at the rust-covered robot and smiled faintly.
“...Did you come up with that joke yourself, or was it from before the war?”
“It existed before the war. I modified it slightly, guest,” Codsworth replied, still cheerful.
“So what was the version you just told?”
“Oh, that was my improved version.” Codsworth’s “eyes” spun. “The original requires the other person to wait before the punchline works. But I have already waited two hundred and ten years, guest. I do not wish to wait any longer.”
Jace opened his mouth, but again, he did not know what to say.
Jace recognized this robot.
Not “knew of it.”
Recognized it.
He had seen it thousands of times on a screen, heard it tell hundreds of terrible jokes, watched it wander around Sanctuary Hills handing things to the player and occasionally grumbling.
There, it had been an NPC. A program. A game character he knew so well it could not possibly be more familiar.
But now it was standing right in front of him.
The rust marks on its shell were exactly as he remembered them. Its way of speaking was exactly as he remembered. Even the rhythm of those round “eyes” turning was exactly the same.
This world was unfamiliar.
This body was unfamiliar.
This era was unfamiliar.
But Codsworth was real.
It was right here.
Just like in the game.
Just like in his memory.
Jace stared at the robot, and for some reason, he felt himself relax.
It was like walking for a long time through a completely unfamiliar city, only to suddenly spot a convenience store on the corner that he used to visit all the time.
Like getting lost and finally seeing a road sign he recognized