The next morning I woke up feeling like the ass end of a mutant mole rat, but I doubted a splitting headache and a growing sense of regret was going to get me out of this. It had been a long night, longer still with Hancock's "friendly" neighborhood watch patrolling by my door every ten minutes. I had hoped to be long gone by now, maybe somewhere to the southwest where the Brotherhood didn't yet have a hold. I had always thought Shady Sands had a nice ring to it, or maybe down to New Vegas, or Reno, or even Mexico for that matter. Hell, I've heard the miasma in the dead city of Los was just beautiful this time of year.

A knock pounded on the door and a graveled voice called out a five minute warning. After that, they'd be kicking down the door to "spray the place for vermin", and somehow, I didn't think he was talking about the radroaches.

I grabbed my things and slipped on my old bomber jacket, the one I got as a recruit when I first enrolled in the Lancer program. As I loaded up for the journey, I couldn't help but catch a glimpse of myself in the cracked mirror. My hair had grown long and unruly since my military days, and my brown eyes stared back at me bloodshot and broken. To top it all off, I was covered in a layer of filth that was all the rage with the raiders these days. Basically, I looked like shit.

That's what three months of hell looks like, alright. After The Prydwen fell, I was wounded and in need of shelter from my former Brothers, and fast. I had asked Diamond City of course, but as soon as they had learned who were after me, they kicked me to the curb faster than a bloatfly can spit. Vault 81 actually laughed in my face when I had asked them, and there wasn't much for settlements around these parts ever since the Minutemen fell at Quincy. So that left only one place to go. Problem was, Goodneighbor was what Hancock called a "free market" society, by which he meant the market was free to price gouge me into oblivion. Then again, I guess all those late nights at the Third Rail probably hadn't helped much either.

I quickly tucked my holotags under my shirt before heading out the door and down to the hotel lobby where Fahrenheit and her Watchmen were waiting for me. When I asked where Hancock was, all I got was a typically snarky response followed by the excuse that Hancock was far too busy with his mayoral duties to the townspeople to do anything today, which was code for "he was sleeping off a hangover". It was just like Hancock, let me do all the work so he can swoop in last minute to steal all the gold and glory.

There wasn't much point in arguing it now, so I left it at that and we walked out of the gates in silence.

*************

It wasn't a long journey to the vault, but it was a deadly one if you didn't know the way. The city was a labyrinth of back alleys and collapsed ruins, crawling with raider gangs, wild dogs, and damn near every other abomination the Wasteland had to offer. One wrong turn in downtown Boston and you just might end up on the menu at the local Joe Spuckies, now catering exclusively to Super Mutants. More than once, we were forced to the rooftops to avoid being seen, but once we crossed over the bridge and into the Cambridge area, the roads opened up and we could finally move freely again.

The sun was high in the sky by the time we reached the mine. An open pit spread wide before us, the bottom littered with rusted excavation equipment and barrels of nuclear waste. I led the party around the edge and towards a dense patch of brambles underneath a circle of dead trees. I cut away a swath with my machete to reveal a large shaft reaching deep into the earth and a couple of Watchmen hooked up the harnesses to the sturdiest looking tree, while the rest of us cleared away the brush. Looking down, the shaft stretched on forever. It was impossible to tell how far down it really went.

"Ladies first," I said with a smile and Fahrenheit sneered in return.

"Just like a coward," she said as she shoved a harness and a flashlight into my hands, "We may be ghouls and junkies and assholes, but we know a thing or two about loyalty, something a traitor like you would never understand. Now get moving."

When it comes to women, I've learned there are two things you should never do. First, never, under any circumstances, sleep with a reporter unless you want every detail of your life broadcast to the entire world. The other? ...Don't piss off the bitch with the nuke launcher. I lowered myself over the edge and began the slow descent down into the cold, black earth. It wasn't long before the darkness swallowed me whole, and the constant gunfire that saturated the world above faded into deafening silence. At last, my feet touched the ground and I switched on my flashlight.

A tunnel stretched out before me, pipes and wires lined the ceiling and I could hear the occasional trickle of water in the distance. Fahrenheit and the others followed soon after and we moved together in tight formation, there was no telling what could be hiding down here after all those years.

The path became steeper and more twisted the deeper we went. We saw dozens of passages veering off the main corridor and I had to wonder why anyone would stick a vault down here. As we came to a fork in the road, we saw a sign still clinging to the wall. Large faded letters read: Sand & Gravel Co. Hidden underneath like it was an unwanted afterthought: a subsidiary of Dunwich Borers, LLC.

Dunwich? I thought. There was something familiar about that name, and though I couldn't quite place it, I knew I had heard it before. Not that it mattered I supposed, the Old World was dead and gone, and it was corporations like Dunwich and Vault-Tec that did it in. They were all the same to me, nothing but greedy power-hungry monsters that were no better than the abominations they created and unleashed on us all. We passed by a few moldy skeletons huddled in the corner and I smiled. At least those bastards got theirs in the end.

We continued slowly through the debris when I spotted an alcove tucked off to the side, with a narrow tunnel leading deeper into the mine. I took out the map and saw we were on the right track. Though the vault was hidden down deep, it wasn't too far off, and it looked like everything had remained structurally intact. We turned the corner when I heard a tell-tale whirr, followed by a click click click.

"Turret!" I called out.

We ducked behind a large slab of rock just as a barrage of bullets rained down on where we had just been standing, but after a few short rounds, the chamber clicked empty and powered down. We all looked at each other, confused. Fahrenheit and the others hung back as I moved around our cover and sure enough, the turret just sat there, completely spent.

"Ha! What'd I tell you?" I said, "Piece of cake."

"Keep your voice down!" Fahrenheit whispered.

"Why? It's like I told you, no one's been down here for ages. Look at this," I walked over to a heap of bodies and pointed to the shell casings that littered the ground next to them. "Looks like security had their hands full, but we got nothing to worry about now. Between the cave in and the turrets, there ain't nothing left alive down here."

"I don't know, something doesn't feel right. Maybe we should turn around and come back with reinforcements."

"I'm telling you, there's nothing to worry about. If anything survived the bombs, it was taken care of long ago. It's just you, me, and a whole lot of dead stiffs, and I don't hear them complaining." I gave the nearest corpse a kick and felt my foot strike something hard.

"What the...?"

I jumped back as something moved beneath the debris, and we all watched, horrified, as the corpse rose up from the dead. Bare bones glinted in the dim light and cold, empty eyes stared out from beneath torn flesh. Its movements hitched unnaturally, jerking with every step as it reached out a skeletal hand and lurched towards me.

I unloaded several shots, but to my horror, the bullets ricocheted off into wild directions with one metallic clink after another. The creature just kept coming.

And that's when I realized...

"SYNTH!" I yelled, "They're all synths!"

I was backpedaling so fast, I was falling. I emptied my clip before landing with a thud on my back, but I didn't wait around to see if the shots had found their mark. I scrambled to my feet and tore after Fahrenheit and the others as they raced back through the mines. I could hear more of the creatures rising up around me, metal limbs scraping against the rock, a soft mechanical hum filling the air, and an empty monotone voice announcing "Target acquired".

I ducked down just as the laser blasted past my head, and I rolled behind an old excavator. I hastily reloaded my gun and returned fire as the synth advanced, matching me shot for shot, and for the first time, I could see the creature clearly. What had looked like bones and flesh in the darkness, was really steel, circuits, and plastic. Rusted servos and grinding gears twisted inside a skeletal chassis and its face grinned like a demented dime-store mannequin come to life.

The synth was on top of me before I knew it. I whipped out my machete and slashed wildly until I landed a heavy blow to its neck. I must have hit something important because a thick, viscous oil burst forth and the creature let out a metallic scream. It staggered forward before crumpling to the ground in a heap.

I held out my flashlight and spun on my heels. There was no sign of Fahrenheit or the others, but all around me, more cold plastic faces were emerging from the dark. I ducked through the nearest passage and ran like hell.

Left, then right, then left again. The tunnels twisted and turned until I had lost all sense of direction, but I didn't dare slow down. The synths' ranks had swelled behind me, even now, more were trickling out of the alcoves and recesses, converging together in an oncoming flood. I heard the sound of gunfire and panicked yelling echo in the distance and I chased after it.

At last, the junction came into view, and I saw Fahrenheit and her crew fighting off a dozen or more synths, but they were no match for the torrent of flame from Fahrenheit's flamethrower. The plastic cooked clean off of their metal frames, reducing them to piles of molten circuits.

That wouldn't help much against the army behind me, however, so I called out to them, told them to run, but when Fahrenheit looked up and saw what was coming, her eyes locked with mine and I knew.

She was going to cut me loose.

She gave the order to retreat and threw her flamethrower to the ground. She grabbed the Fatman off of her back and began to load the most devastating infantry weapon devised for the modern battlefield.

"Shit, shit, shit!" I threw myself down the nearest passage just as the mini nuke fired past my head. A nuclear explosion ripped through the tunnel behind me and the shockwave sent me flying across an open cavern and slamming into the hard-packed ground with all the force of a high-speed train.

************

The cavern shook violently around me as the nearby tunnels collapsed one after another, filled with the smell of smoke and flame and burning plastic. I laid there for a moment, barely able to process what just happened, barely able to breathe.

That bitch. That vindictive, double-crossing bitch. She could have waited, just a few more feet and I would have been clear and I could have made it out with them. Hell, she probably enjoyed it too.

Shattered fragments of debris rained down on me and I choked on ash and smoke as it began to fill the room. I got to my feet, clutching my aching sides and saw that the tunnel I'd come from was caved in, with no sign of the synths or the others. There was no going back now. I found the nearest corridor and ran.

I raced over bridges, down spiraling catwalks, and through endless, endless tunnels. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I had to get there quick. It was a race against time as the tremors intensified and the whole mine threatened to come down on top of me, that was, if the synths didn't get me first.

It just didn't make any sense... What were synths doing down here in the first place? No one could have known about it, no one besides Maxson and his closest comrades anyway, and they had all taken that one-way ticket to the bottom of the bay. Besides, what could the Institute possibly want with some old vault anyway? They were the most advanced civilization in the new world, the most secretive too, but Vault-Tec? It was a relic in comparison. And those synths... they were only Gen 1 and 2. They were nothing compared to the newest models, the ones that could actually pass for human.

I guess it didn't really matter in the end. They were here now and it looked like they had been for a long time. How the hell I was getting out of here, now that was the question.

The map! I thought. If I couldn't go back, then that left only one way out. The notes in the margins had spoken of an escape tunnel leading out through the vault, and at this point it was my only hope. As I unrolled the map, I could have kissed the ghoul that gave it to me. Of all the places to end up, I was maybe half a mile away from the vault, just a few twists and turns ahead and I'd be home free.

There was no time to waste. I rolled the map back up and tore off through the tunnels, my heart pounding in my chest and my body on fire. As I whipped around the last corner, I slammed into something hard and crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. It didn't take me long to figure out what I had hit, and even less time to jump to my feet and bury two bullets into it's skull.

It exploded in a shower of sparks and circuitry, but a few of the synth's friends were already coming at me. I blasted the first away with a clean shot to the head and slashed at the other with my machete, but it dodged with a deftness the others no longer had. He punched me hard in the stomach and the next thing I knew, I was pinned to the wall as the creature tried to wrestle the gun from my hand. I rammed my head into his and sent him staggering backward before driving my blade into his heart, his blood-oil erupting all over the cavern floor.

I took off down the hallway, but any chance of getting out clean had been shot. I'm sure half the mine had heard all that, and no sooner had the thought crossed my mind than should a dozen more synths appear out of the shadows. I raced through a set of heavy double doors and barricaded them behind me, but it wouldn't hold for long.

I looked around and found myself standing at the bottom of a pit. Walkways lined the walls, intertwining into a vast network above me. And there! Three stories high and half hidden under 200 years of dust was that unmistakable yellow and blue, the words "Vault-Tec" shining like a beacon under the lamplight, and I knew I had made it.

I raced up the nearest ramp and prayed the rusted metal would hold as another tremor shook the pit around me. At long last, I reached the vault and switched on the computer terminal next to it. It whirred to life and bright green text flashed across the ancient monitor and I typed in the bypass command, expecting to see the usual code fill the screen. Instead, four short lines appeared.

I am the beginning of the end

the end of every place

I am the beginning of eternity

and the end of time and space

What the hell is this? I thought.

I typed in the command again and again, but nothing happened. I began to panic, I'd never seen anything like this... none of the usual overrides were working and I was running out of time. I looked over the words and could tell it was a riddle, but what could do all that? The beginning of the end? Sure sounded like the nukes to me, but it didn't fit the rest of the clues. The beginning of eternity and the end of time and space? Dammit, the notes hadn't said anything about no riddle! I took out the map and scoured it for clues, even as I could hear the door below strain under the weight of the growing horde, threatening to break loose any second. There had to be something, anything! Why would someone go to all the trouble of drawing this out just to leave me stranded outside the front door?

But there was nothing. Nothing in the notes, nothing near the vault, nothing but a lonely 'X' mocking me on the map...

Wait a minute...

I looked at the screen again, but it couldn't really be that simple, could it? I didn't have anything left to lose as I typed in my answer and pressed enter, just as the barricade below blasted open and the horde flooded into the pit.

Lasers fired off in all directions and I returned in kind. The walkways threatened to collapse under the weight as an army stormed after me, drawing ever closer as the computer struggled to analyze my answer. I heard a chime overhead and the locks disengaged, there was a low hiss as the vault depressurized and unseen gears cranked open. The massive steel door sunk back into the wall amidst a billow of steam and rolled off to one side. The synths were rounding the last corner as I reset the security protocols and the door began to reverse. I fired into the oncoming horde and jumped over the threshold just as the heavy door closed shut behind me.