Fallout - Chapter 118: Playing with Fire (Patreon)

The morning sunlight was pale and gentle, spilling across the cold metal entrance of Vault 111.

Nate walked slowly out of the Vault, the cool morning air washing over him.

He had come specifically to see Nora today.

Deep inside the Vault, a thin layer of white frost clung to the walls of her cryogenic pod.

Through the frost, he could see Nora’s peaceful face. Her eyes were gently closed, her lips lightly pressed together, as though she were merely sleeping.

She was still exactly as he remembered her at her most vibrant and gentle.

Still just as beautiful.

Some time ago, the General had told him they had found a doctor who was confident they could wake Nora and treat her. He had asked Nate whether he wanted to bring her out of cryogenic stasis immediately.

The moment Nate heard the news, his heart nearly skipped a beat.

The possibility of getting back what he had lost struck him like a beam of light through the chest.

He almost said yes.

But after thinking about it for a long time, he ultimately shook his head and refused.

He wanted it more than anything.

But he was afraid.

The Institute was still hidden beneath the Commonwealth, and those people specialized in abductions and exploiting vulnerabilities from the shadows. The moment word of Nora’s awakening got out, the Institute would undoubtedly target her.

Nate had seen too many people have their weaknesses seized and then crushed piece by piece.

He had finally been given a chance to save her.

He couldn’t risk losing her again when he was so close to having everything back.

So he would rather let Nora keep sleeping.

Let her remain safe inside the cryogenic pod, protected from every danger, conspiracy, and conflict.

Let her wait peacefully until he had settled everything.

Nate took a deep breath.

The morning air smelled of earth and dew, cold and fresh.

He started down the hill, his steps noticeably lighter than before.

Life was finally beginning to feel hopeful again.

Once everything stabilized, once he dealt with the Institute, he would come straight back and wake Nora.

He would show her that even though the world had changed, they could still build a new life together.

He crossed the slope and entered the small grove that had endured two hundred years of wind and rain.

Two crows perched motionless in the branches above, watching him.

Nate glanced up without the slightest concern.

One of the Institute’s old tricks.

Synthetic crows used as surveillance devices.

He was in an unusually good mood today and couldn’t be bothered with the little spies, so he simply kept walking.

A breeze swept across the ground, scattering fallen leaves.

Nate stopped instantly.

He stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on a clearing ahead.

It looked empty.

Only a few fallen leaves lay over the dirt.

After two seconds of silence, Nate spoke.

“Come out.”

Nothing happened.

Then he added,

“Don’t make me come get you. You won’t like what happens next.”

The next instant, the air over the clearing suddenly warped and rippled.

A black-clad figure slowly emerged from the distortion.

An Institute Courser.

The Courser sounded genuinely surprised.

“How did you find me?”

Nate looked relaxed, his voice casual enough to sound like idle conversation.

“The leaves under your feet.”

He nodded downward.

“When the wind blew, they didn’t move.”

The Courser instinctively looked down.

Sure enough, the leaves trapped beneath his boots remained pressed motionless against the dirt.

Optical camouflage worked poorly in windy conditions.

A stealth suit could perform almost flawlessly inside a controlled environment with stable temperature and humidity.

Outdoors was another matter.

Air currents distorted the refractive surface of the camouflage field, while anything carried by the wind, fallen leaves, dust, rain, snow, could easily expose whoever was hiding inside it.

Nate had spent years in Alaska fighting Chinese stealth special forces.

A few leaves in the wind were nothing.

Even in a blizzard, he could pinpoint a cloaked enemy by the subtle patterns the falling snow made around them.

Compared to the Chinese stealth troops he had faced back then, these Coursers raised in controlled environments were amateurish.

The Courser lifted his foot.

The trapped leaves immediately caught the wind and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Nate remained where he was, quickly scanning the surrounding area while listening carefully.

No other distortions in the air.

No second set of breathing.

No ambush.

Just one Courser.

Nate relaxed slightly, though irritation soon followed.

He was in a good mood today.

He really didn’t feel like killing anyone.

But if this Courser refused to take the hint, Nate wouldn’t mind adding something new to the compost pile at Sanctuary Hills.

Meanwhile, the Courser had already locked onto Nate.

His mind rapidly calculated the optimal firing angle while the targeting reticle of his implanted tactical system flickered across Nate’s body, ready to initiate an attack at any moment.

Another gust swept through the trees.

Leaves whirled through the air once more.

And the instant the wind died down, Nate vanished from the Courser’s sight.

The Courser tensed and spun around.

Trees.

Ruins.

Hillside.

Nothing.

The man who had been standing directly in front of him a moment earlier seemed to have dissolved into the wind without leaving a trace.

The Courser’s breathing quickened.

Nothing in his training manual or tactical protocols covered this situation.

...

At the same time, inside the Institute.

Justin stood before a monitoring terminal, watching everything unfold through the live feed transmitted by the synthetic crows.

He had seen exactly what Nate did.

As the wind swept through, Nate shifted one step sideways, entered the Courser’s blind spot, and circled around behind him.

The movement was textbook.

No.

Cleaner than textbook.

No wasted motion.

No footsteps.

Not even the leaves beneath his boots had been disturbed.

Every step landed precisely where the Courser couldn’t see him.

Justin immediately activated the communicator.

“Behind you! He’s behind you!”

The Courser spun around instantly.

There was nothing there.

“No. Where is he?”

Confusion and panic filled his voice.

Justin stared at the monitor, nearly grinding his teeth to pieces.

Through the crow’s camera, Nate was clearly visible less than two meters behind the Courser.

Justin could even make out the folds in Nate’s clothing.

Yet the Courser couldn’t see him at all.

A dull impact sounded through the woods.

Nate drove a precise kick into the back of the Courser’s knee.

The force instantly destroyed his balance, sending him crashing heavily onto one knee.

Before the Courser could rise, a cold gun barrel pressed firmly against the back of his head.

“I’m right here.”

Nate’s voice came from behind him, calm and relaxed.

This had been far too easy.

The Courser froze completely.

His mind raced, but he couldn’t find a single viable way out.

Nate kept the weapon pressed against his head.

“You came alone?”

The Courser said nothing.

Slowly, he raised one hand and pulled a photograph and a miniature communicator from inside his coat.

Nate kept the gun firmly against the back of his head while taking them with his free hand.

Then he looked at the photograph.

For half a second, he stopped breathing.

Nora sat on a soft sofa in the picture, smiling warmly toward the camera.

She looked healthy.

Warm light softened the contours of her face, making her appear calm and peaceful.

Beside her sat a child around ten years old.

The boy looked like Shaun.

Nate’s pupils contracted.

Impossible.

He had just left Vault 111.

He had personally inspected Nora’s cryogenic pod.

The seals were intact.

The cryogenic fluid was circulating properly.

The life-support system was stable.

His Nora was still inside, sleeping peacefully.

And Nate knew perfectly well that Shaun was now sixty years old, the Father who ruled the Institute.

How could he possibly appear as a child in this photograph?

The timing was wrong.

The logic was wrong.

None of it made sense.

Nate stared at Nora’s face.

It was too accurate.

Her features.

Her smile.

The curve of her eyes when she smiled.

Even the tiny habits in her expressions were identical to the Nora engraved into his memory.

But Nate still noticed something wrong.

Wasn’t this Nora too slender?

His Nora had given birth to Shaun.

Her figure had become fuller afterward.

But the Nora in this picture had prominent collarbones and slender arms, looking almost like a flower that had yet to fully bloom.

This wasn’t Nora.

It was a younger version of her.

A Nora who had never become a mother.

A Synth.

Whatever hope had begun to stir inside Nate vanished beneath an icy chill.

He rubbed the photograph between his fingers.

Then, with his other hand, he shot the Courser in the leg.

The suppressor reduced the gunshot to a muted pop.

The Courser jerked violently as pain tore through him, but he clenched his teeth and made no sound.

“What are you trying to do?”

Nate’s voice had gone completely cold.

There was no uncontrolled rage.

No blustering threats.

Only coldness.

And that calm was far more frightening than fury.

It was the pressure before a storm broke.

He was ready to kill.

The Courser took several ragged breaths and pointed toward the miniature communicator.

“Put on the communicator.”

Nate gave it a cold glance before raising it to his ear.

A voice immediately came through.

Polite.

Gentle.

Carefully probing.

Justin.

“Mr. Nate, could we ask you for a favor?”

There was none of Justin’s usual arrogance now.

If anything, he sounded even more respectful than when speaking to Shaun in his office.

He no longer questioned Father’s decision at all.

What Nate had just done couldn’t simply be described as being dangerous.

Coursers were the Institute’s finest tactical operatives.

Yet against this veteran, the Courser had looked like a recruit fresh out of basic training.

Justin was beginning to suspect that even an entire squad might not be enough to bring Nate back.

He understood the situation perfectly now.

He wasn’t negotiating with an ordinary man.

He was facing a predator that had voluntarily entered a cage.

And the cage could break at any moment.

Nate answered without hesitation.

“No.”

“Don’t refuse so quickly. You saw the photograph, didn’t you?”

Nate’s fingers tightened around his pistol.

“You think you can buy me with two Synth replicas? You’re more naive than I thought.”

“They aren’t replicas. Or at least, not entirely.”

Justin’s voice remained slow and even, like a card player calmly laying down a winning hand one card at a time.

Only Justin knew that the hand holding his own cards was sweating.

“On Friday, before the War, you were supposed to go to Fraternal Post 115 and give a speech to veterans.”

He paused.

“On Sunday, you were going to the park. Your wife wanted another child.”

Nate’s heart sank.

Those were plans he and Nora had discussed during their final days before the War.

He had never told anyone else.

Only Nora knew.

Only his wife.

Those memories.

Those tiny, private moments that had belonged to the two of them alone.

How did the Institute know?

A terrifying possibility entered his mind.

Unless...

That Synth really did possess Nora’s memories.

Nate’s emotions surged violently.

The Institute had found the one place he was most vulnerable, the one boundary no one was allowed to touch.

And they were trying to break him with the gentlest and cruelest weapon imaginable.

His jaw tightened.

A vein pulsed at his temple.

Anger.

Wariness.

Resentment.

And beneath all of it, a trace of hesitation he refused to acknowledge.

Justin continued speaking, his voice almost coaxing.

“What’s so terrible about it? If you help us, your family can be together again immediately.”

“You could start over with Nora.”

“You could watch that child grow up.”

“You could do everything you never had the chance to do before the War.”

Nate remained silent for a long time.

Images flashed through his mind.

Nora’s gentle smile.

Shaun’s soft little face as a baby.

Quiet evenings around the dinner table, eating and talking together.

Ordinary moments they had once assumed would continue forever.

The memories were so beautiful that Nate barely dared to dwell on them.

He was afraid that if he did, he would never be able to let go.

But beneath that overwhelming longing came something colder and clearer.

None of it was real.

No matter how authentic a Synth’s memories were, no matter how perfectly its appearance was reproduced, it still wasn’t Nora.

The real Nora was sleeping inside Vault 111.

He couldn’t let himself be dragged away by a false imitation.

When Nate remained silent, Justin’s voice stayed polite.

But now there was steel beneath the courtesy.

“You can pretend you never heard any of this.”

“But we can’t guarantee that nothing unfortunate will happen to the Nora in that photograph.”

A naked threat.

Nate slowly raised his head.

His eyes passed through the layers of branches overhead and locked onto the two crows.

He didn’t even bother taking careful aim.

Two shots.

Two muted pops.

Both crows fell from the branches and struck the ground.

Justin’s surprised voice came through the communicator.

“When did you notice them?”

“A long time ago.”

Nate lowered his gaze to the Courser still kneeling before him.

His voice became calm again.

Like a thin sheet of ice over an abyss, ready to break under the slightest pressure.

“Now get out.”

The Courser struggled upright.

His injured right leg couldn’t bear weight, forcing him to balance on the other.

He staggered badly but didn’t dare hesitate.

He immediately removed a disc-shaped device from his tactical belt and activated it.

Cold blue light flared beneath his feet, like a cluster of frozen flames suspended in midair.

The moment the light faded, the Courser vanished.

Nate was alone in the empty woods.

The breeze returned.

Several black feathers drifted through the air and settled gently among the grass.

Nate lowered his eyes to the photograph in his hand.

Nora and the Synth child smiled peacefully beneath the light.

Nora’s eyes curved warmly.

The child wore the faintest smile.

The picture looked like an ordinary family photograph taken on some quiet weekend.

But it was fake.

Nora was fake.

The child was fake.

Yet Nate’s longing, regret, and desire were all real.

He slowly turned the photograph over.

A neat line of cold printed text appeared on the back.

We can talk anytime.

Father

The moment Nate saw those words, the last trace of restraint in his eyes shattered.

Father.

Shaun.

Nate’s fingers clenched around the photograph.

His knuckles turned white.

Veins stood out across the back of his hand as cold fury spread through his entire body.

The photograph crumpled.

Folded.

Tore.

Until it became a crushed ball of paper in his fist.

He shoved it roughly into his pocket, turned, and headed back toward Sanctuary Hills.

At the foot of the hill stood the familiar house.

The home he and Nora had shared before the War.

Nate had restored it as closely as possible to how it had once looked.

The position of the sofa.

The angle of the dining table.

The framed pictures on the walls.

Every detail had been reconstructed as accurately as his memory allowed.

The only thing missing was television reception.

The set could only play recorded tapes now.

Nate stood in the empty living room, staring at everything around him.

A storm of emotions churned inside him.

He remembered all those ordinary, trivial days they had once assumed there would always be more of.

Looking back now, every second felt stolen and precious.

His gaze rose to the family portrait hanging on the wall.

Nate and Nora smiled brightly in the photograph, holding baby Shaun between them.

His eyes locked onto the infant.

His chest rose and fell heavily.

He forced down the anger and disappointment raging inside him.

A long time passed.

Then, in the silent living room, Nate finally spoke.

His voice was low and hoarse, carrying a bone-deep chill.

“Son...”

“Play with fire, and eventually you get burned.”