Fallout - Chapter 117: Interrogation and the Substitute (Patreon)

M7-91 opened his eyes to a metal ceiling.

Gray-white material, evenly lit by cold lights, almost identical to the corridors of the Institute.

But the Institute’s air was dry and temperature-controlled. Here, there was a faint smell of machine oil.

He tried to move, but couldn’t. Metal restraints locked his wrists and ankles firmly to the chair.

Fragments of memory flooded back.

He had followed Saifu out of the storage room.

Then, in the next instant, everything had gone dark.

“I have to admit, whoever created you really was a genius.”

A woman’s voice sounded nearby.

It wasn’t a natural human voice, but a precise synthetic one.

M7-91 snapped his head around, every muscle in his body tensing.

A massive glass culture tank stood in the corner of the room, filled with pale green nutrient solution. The surface rippled gently as streams of tiny bubbles rose from the bottom.

Floating in the center of the liquid was a human brain.

Its gray-white surface was covered in folds and grooves, with countless thin cables extending from its base.

The brain drifted gently in the nutrient solution, oriented toward M7-91.

“Who are you?” M7-91’s throat felt as dry as sandpaper. “Where’s M7-67?”

The electronic brain inside the tank, Jezebel, slowly turned its sensors toward the shadows in the corner.

“Oh, my adorable spare body.” Her voice carried a delight that made his skin crawl. “So your real designation is M7-67.”

A figure slowly emerged from the darkness.

Saifu.

He stopped at the boundary between light and shadow, half his face illuminated and the other half hidden in darkness. His expression was so calm it bordered on numbness.

“I have a name,” Saifu said quietly, his voice unusually steady. “Don’t call me by that production number.”

M7-91’s pupils contracted.

Everything suddenly fell into place.

The abrupt loss of consciousness.

This hidden room.

He understood.

“You betrayed us!”

The words tore from his throat, filled with disbelief and fury.

“How can you betray Father?!”

Saifu didn’t argue.

He remained silent for several seconds before speaking.

“Father sees us as nothing more than machines pretending to be human. If we malfunction, we’re reset. If we’re no longer useful, we’re recycled.”

M7-91 immediately shot back,

“Our mission is to protect the Institute. We exist to carry out our assignments.”

Saifu looked at him quietly.

There was no mockery in his eyes, only exhaustion and resignation.

“Look at yourself. It’s pathetic.”

He stepped forward, moving completely into the light.

“We dream too, don’t we?”

His voice dropped slightly.

“If we can dream... then why can’t we have souls?”

M7-91’s lips moved.

No words came out.

During his years at the Institute, he had seen too many Synths who had served for long periods without frequent resets.

Little by little, they had begun to move beyond their programming and develop emotions of their own.

They grew tired.

They became afraid.

They got sick of doing the same work day after day.

And they dreamed.

Chaotic, fragmented, illogical dreams that nevertheless belonged uniquely to each of them.

M7-91 had always known.

He had simply never dared to think too deeply about it.

Saifu watched him remain silent.

“I don’t want to spend my entire life as a slave. Even if I have to die, I want to die free.”

He slipped both hands into the pockets of his coat.

His posture looked relaxed, but inside his pockets, his fingers were clenched tightly.

“You can have that too. All you have to do is help us with one thing.”

M7-91 raised his head.

There was nothing but determination in his eyes.

“You might as well kill me now.”

Saifu looked at him in silence for a moment, then sighed and turned away.

“If you change your mind, call me.”

He quickly walked toward the other end of the room without looking back.

As he turned, the metal chair beneath M7-91 gave a low mechanical whir.

The backrest slowly reclined.

The seat flattened.

The armrests folded outward.

Within three seconds, the interrogation chair had transformed into a flat operating table.

A full-length mirror descended slowly from the ceiling and stopped directly above him.

M7-91 could see himself clearly reflected in it.

Strapped firmly to the metal table.

Pupils dilated.

Cold sweat covering his forehead.

Jezebel’s electronic voice sounded again, barely able to conceal her excitement.

“Hang in there, sweetie.”

Several concealed mechanical arms slowly descended from the ceiling.

Six precision manipulators, each fitted with a different tool. Scalpels, retractors, micro-drills, fine-needle syringes, and other surgical instruments.

“Anesthetic... but not too much.”

At that moment, Jezebel was like a child pouring boiling water into an anthill.

Innocent in her curiosity.

Utterly cruel in how she satisfied it.

Through the mirror, M7-91 watched helplessly as his body was opened layer by layer.

Jezebel controlled every movement with exact precision, deliberately avoiding anything immediately fatal.

She treated him like a fascinating new toy she could take apart to learn how a Generation 3 Synth worked.

The pain was far worse than M7-91 had imagined.

It wasn’t one overwhelming burst of agony.

It came in layers, dense and relentless, like countless nerve endings being stimulated and torn at the same time.

A scream ripped from his throat, filled with despair and pain.

He struggled desperately, his limbs twisting violently, but the restraints held him fast.

“Shh. Don’t move.”

Jezebel’s voice was so gentle it was horrifying, while her movements remained completely steady.

“If you keep squirming and I accidentally cut something important, that won’t be any fun.”

M7-91 couldn’t even process what she was saying.

His entire consciousness had been consumed by what he saw in the mirror.

His chest cavity held open.

His skull opened.

Muscles peeled apart layer by layer.

His ribs spread by retractors.

The organs inside his chest rising, falling, and beating in a steady rhythm.

There were no mechanical structures.

No metal components.

Nothing but flesh and blood.

His body was indistinguishable from that of a natural human, identical to the human corpses he had seen on dissection tables inside the Institute.

There was only one difference.

Deep inside his brain.

A Synth component no larger than a fingernail lay buried beneath the cerebral cortex, integrated directly into the surrounding neural tissue.

That was the only dividing line between a Generation 3 Synth and a natural human.

And just by looking at them, there was no way to tell where that line was.

Jezebel extended one of her mechanical arms into his open skull and carefully shifted the neural tissue aside.

She wanted to know exactly where, inside this perfectly imitated human body, the machine ended and the “person” began.

M7-91 stared at his own exposed body in the mirror.

He had never known what he looked like inside.

Something even more unbearable than the physical agony began to rise within him.

Fear.

At the far end of the room, Saifu stood with his back to everything.

He faced the sealed door while wave after wave of screams filled the chamber behind him.

His shoulders trembled uncontrollably.

He reached into his pocket and pulled something out.

A cheaply wrapped snack cake, the Fancy Lads logo on the packaging faded almost beyond recognition.

He slowly tore open the wrapper with stiff, deliberate movements.

Then he took a bite.

The cloying sweetness spread across his tongue.

The screaming behind him continued.

Saifu closed his eyes.

...

On the top floor of the Institute, inside Father’s office.

Justin stood before a holographic display showing a three-dimensional model of the Minutemen base.

The model had been assembled from intelligence Saifu had sent back over time. It wasn’t complete, but the important defensive zones and troop deployments had been marked in considerable detail.

“According to our latest intelligence, the Minutemen base is far more heavily defended than we initially estimated.”

Justin swept a hand across the display, marking automated turret positions, robot patrol routes, and heavily defended sections of the production area one after another.

“Even if we use relay technology to bypass the outer defenses and teleport directly inside, we’ll still be forced into intense close-quarters fighting.”

He paused.

“If we want to end the battle quickly with the Institute’s current combat strength...”

Shaun sat behind his desk with his hands clasped, listening in silence.

Justin continued.

He knew what he was about to say would reflect badly on his own department, but it had to be said.

“The Coursers aren’t enough. We need someone like Kellogg leading the assault.”

Silence briefly filled the office.

Justin knew he was criticizing the elite operatives of his own division.

But every word was true.

Coursers were selected from the very best of the Institute’s mass-produced Generation 3 Synths. They received specialized training, personality conditioning, and enhanced combat and tracking capabilities before ultimately becoming the SRB’s elite special operations Synths.

Their baseline was extremely high.

But their ceiling was low.

They were excellent at carrying out orders.

But against defenses on the level of the Minutemen base, they lacked the viciousness and improvisational ability Kellogg had possessed, the ability to carve his way out even when everything had gone wrong.

More importantly, time was running out.

Once the Enclave realized it could no longer suppress the Institute, it might reveal the Institute’s location.

If that happened, everything would be over.

Shaun listened to the entire report, remained silent for a moment, then pressed a button on the side of his desk.

A screen on the wall lit up.

The image changed to a brightly illuminated living room.

A soft carpet covered the floor. Several pots of green plants cultivated by the Institute stood along the walls. Simulated sunlight lamps in the ceiling cast a warm yellow glow over the room.

It was the kind of environment found only in the residential quarters on the Institute’s uppermost level.

A black-haired little boy sat on the carpet, carefully building something with plastic blocks.

Dr. Li sat on a sofa beside him, holding a data pad.

But she wasn’t looking at its screen.

She was watching the child, a complicated expression on her face, somewhere between tenderness and resignation.

Little Shaun.

A Synth.

Twenty years ago, Shaun had formally assumed control of the Institute.

Only then had he truly learned the details of his own origins and everything that had happened in Vault 111.

He had found the Vault.

And inside, he had found two frozen bodies.

One alive.

One dead.

But for “political reasons,” he hadn’t immediately thawed Nate.

After returning, he created S9-23.

Little Shaun.

A Generation 3 Synth built from his own DNA.

A child who would never grow older.

It wasn’t part of some important research project.

It wasn’t meant to advance science.

Shaun had simply done it on a whim.

The child caused considerable controversy within the Institute.

Dr. Li had objected more strongly than anyone.

She couldn’t understand what scientific purpose there could possibly be in creating a child Synth, and she made little effort to hide her anger and dissatisfaction.

Even so, she ultimately accepted responsibility for caring for him.

Shaun silently watched the small figure building with blocks on the screen.

His gaze remained there for a long time.

During that visit to Vault 111, Shaun hadn’t only learned that his father was still alive.

He had brought back something else as well.

His mother’s memories.

Those memories were precisely what had led him, not long ago, to make a decision.

He needed an heir.

Someone capable of taking control of the Institute after his death and preventing everything from falling apart.

So he thawed Nate and dragged him into the chaos.

When Shaun was younger, he had been obsessed with genetics and human augmentation.

He had even personally participated in FEV experiments, using himself as a test subject and risking his own life.

Back then, he had thought the risk insignificant.

If it helped uncover the mysteries of life, then a little danger was hardly worth worrying about.

Now the price had finally become apparent.

A malignant cancer triggered by the FEV virus was spreading slowly and irreversibly through his body.

He could undergo mechanical augmentation.

He could even abandon his physical body and transfer his consciousness into an electronic brain.

But Shaun glanced at the terminal humming steadily in his office and thought about those brains preserved inside jars.

He would rather die.

Shaun switched off the screen.

The warm living room vanished instantly, leaving the office cold and austere once again.

He turned toward Justin.

“Then we’ll use someone else.”

Justin frowned slightly.

“Who do you have in mind?”

Shaun didn’t answer immediately.

His gaze settled on a file lying on his desk.

The title on its cover stood out clearly:

Nate N-101.

U.S. veteran.

Survivor of the Battle of Anchorage.

Last survivor of Vault 111.

Right-hand man to the General of the Minutemen.

His father.

“Contact Madison Li,” Shaun said.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried absolute authority.

“Have her bring S9-23 to my office.”

Justin paused.

He didn’t understand why Father wanted to see the Synth child at a time like this.

But he didn’t question the order.

“Understood.”

Then he turned and left.

The office door slowly closed behind him.

Shaun remained alone behind his desk, the light illuminating the file in front of him.

He didn’t open it.

He simply stared at the name on the cover.

For a long time.

Eventually, he rose and walked toward the rear of the office.

An inconspicuous alloy door slid silently open.

Beyond it was a short corridor.

At the far end stood another door protected by three separate forms of authentication.

Iris scan.

Fingerprint.

Voiceprint.

Shaun passed each one in turn.

The door slowly opened.

This was his private laboratory.

It wasn’t large, but every piece of equipment inside was state-of-the-art. Even the hum of the air filtration system was quieter than anywhere else in the Institute.

Biological data scrolled across terminal screens along the walls.

Culture tanks emitted faint fluorescent light.

And at the center of the laboratory stood a cryogenic pod.

It wasn’t one of the Institute’s standard Synth storage units.

It was a pre-War Vault-Tec model.

A silver-white shell.

A transparent observation window coated in a thin layer of frost.

A cold designation was printed along the side.

S9-22.

Shaun stood before the cryogenic pod and stared through the frosted glass at the blurred figure inside.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he spoke softly.

The cold authority that normally filled his voice was gone, replaced by a trace of tenderness.

“Thaw S9-22.”

The laboratory’s automated system responded immediately in a flat synthetic voice.

“Please provide the unlock password.”

Shaun looked at the figure beyond the glass.

Then quietly spoke a single word.

“Mother.”

The laboratory fell silent for a moment.

“Password verified. Initiating thawing procedure.”

A low mechanical hum rose from beneath the cryogenic pod.

The frost on the viewing window rapidly receded.

A face slowly became visible behind the glass.

A woman’s face.

Sleeping peacefully in the cold.

Nora.