Fallout - Chapter 131: The Overboss (Patreon)

The passage behind the gift shop was much narrower than Jace had expected.

The walls on both sides were painted in Nuka-Cola's signature red-and-blue color scheme. Two centuries of wear had stripped away large patches of paint, exposing the dull gray concrete underneath. Even so, the remaining blocks of color still stood out harshly in the dim light.

Half the fluorescent tubes overhead had shattered. The few that remained gave off a sickly orange glow, faint and lifeless.

The air was thick with dust, mixed with a faint, cloying sweetness that made his chest feel heavy.

Jace suddenly slowed.

A tripwire stretched across the floor.

An almost invisible filament ran from a small hook on the left wall to three frag grenades suspended from the ceiling, their pull rings caught in spring-loaded mechanisms above.

The moment someone touched the wire, the springs would release and yank out the grenade pins.

In a passage this narrow and enclosed, there would be nowhere to dodge.

Jace gave it a glance and calmly stepped over it.

The second tripwire was connected to a flamer built into the wall.

A rusted metal nozzle protruded through a gap in the concrete like a venomous snake poised to strike. The pressure gauge still showed plenty of residual pressure, enough to unleash a five-meter cone of flame.

Jace looked up.

Someone had built a crude wooden platform overhead from scrap lumber and construction materials.

He took two steps back.

The leg motors of his Type 92 Powered Suit gave a low hum.

Then he sprang upward, moving like a weightless black shadow as he cleanly vaulted onto the platform.

After another ten meters, he stopped.

The body of a young woman lay curled up in one corner.

She wore an ordinary deerskin shirt and worn jeans, both torn in several places.

What stood out most was her skin.

It was smooth, clean, and evenly colored, without the cracking, dullness, or radiation marks common among people who lived in the wasteland.

One look was enough to tell that she had spent most of her life inside a sealed, radiation-shielded facility and had never been exposed to the wasteland.

She had died deep inside the trap zone, which meant she had made it all the way here from the entrance.

She had probably fallen into a deep pit, used the last of her strength to climb back onto the platform, and finally collapsed from exhaustion.

Jace crouched beside her.

Under one of her hands was a neatly folded note.

He carefully pulled it free.

Dear Mom and Dad,

By now, you've probably realized that I'm gone, and that I'm never coming back.

Yes, you've kept me hidden away in that bunker my entire life and protected me from everything, but I've had enough. I'm going to see the outside world whether you like it or not.

I'm planning to go to Diamond City. Hopefully I can find a job there and make a home for myself.

You think I can't survive without you?

I can.

I'm not that silly little girl who sleeps hugging a teddy bear anymore. I'm an adult now. I can take care of myself.

Don't come looking for me unless you're coming to visit.

I'm never going back.

I'm only writing this so you'll know I'm doing fine.

I still love you.

Ophelia

After finishing the letter, Jace looked at the girl's face again.

"I don't even know what to say to you."

How many people in the wasteland dreamed of having a bunker that could keep out radiation, mutated creatures, and raiders?

Ophelia's parents had given her the kind of safety everyone else could only dream of.

Yet she had grown tired of being protected.

She hadn't known what the outside world was really like.

All she'd known was that her parents wouldn't let her leave.

And so she died.

Jace carefully folded the letter and slipped it into the sealed pouch at his waist.

He gave Ophelia one last look.

In the dim light, her body seemed very small.

Just a quiet, curled-up shadow.

Then Jace jumped from the upper platform back down to the first floor.

Ahead was a junction.

Three identical red wooden doors stood side by side.

He punched small holes through the panels to inspect what lay beyond.

Opening the door on the right would trigger a falling frag grenade trap.

Behind the middle door hung a clattering toy monkey, surrounded by rows of human heads mounted on spears.

Only the door on the left led safely downward.

Jace took the stairs.

At the bottom, the passage ended in a room packed with orange radioactive waste barrels.

Radiation warning symbols covered the area, glaring brightly through the gloom.

Even without his Powered Suit, the radiation wouldn't have posed much of a threat to him.

He crossed the room quickly and entered the central passage network of Nuka-World.

At the entrance stood a pre-War military terminal.

A label had been stuck to its casing.

"Only basic encryption. Use it if you don't want to die."

Jace glanced at the screen, then toward the observation window beside it.

The adjoining room was visible through the glass.

It was a sealed chamber less than twenty square meters across.

A toy monkey sat in the center.

Six dormant sentry turrets lined the walls, every barrel aimed toward the middle of the room.

If all six opened fire at once, there would be no chance of escaping in such a confined space.

The trap was simple.

Opening the door would trigger the mechanism linked to the toy monkey. The copper contacts would close the circuit, waking all six sentry turrets and causing them to fire immediately.

Once Jace understood the setup, he stepped back slightly and raised his Magnum pistol.

He adjusted his aim.

Bang!

An enhanced armor-piercing round punched through the bulletproof glass and blew the monkey's head apart.

The sentry turrets' indicator lights flickered once.

Then went dark again.

They never activated.

Jace holstered the pistol and continued into a long, narrow corridor.

It stretched nearly fifty meters.

Frag grenades hung densely across the ceiling, with more and more packed together the farther he went.

If he accidentally triggered even one, the resulting chain reaction would leave no fragment larger than three centimeters.

Even Jace took a full three minutes to make his way safely through the killing field.

But the real trap waited at the end.

A small maintenance room.

The moment Jace entered, the door slammed shut behind him and locked tight.

Then came the sound of gas leaking into the room.

Readings flashed across the gas detector built into his Type 92 Powered Suit.

Carbon monoxide.

Methane.

Several unidentified organic compounds.

The concentrations were rising rapidly.

Inside a sealed room like this, even the slightest spark could ignite the entire space.

He had to get out immediately.

"Poison gas trap? Classic."

Jace quickly surveyed the room.

A terminal glowed on one wall.

Beside it stood a security door secured by an electromagnetic lock, its indicator light glowing red.

At the same time, twenty or thirty Radroaches began pouring from cracks in the corner, swarming toward him.

Jace immediately understood the intended solution.

Normally, someone would have to endure the Radroaches without firing a weapon while using the terminal to unlock the door.

Jace had no intention of playing along.

He reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out a fist-sized metal device.

He called it a thermal-melt bomb.

At its core was a short-circuited fusion core deliberately forced into overload. Once activated, the fusion core would melt down within seconds, releasing all of its stored energy at once as heat.

He didn't bother trying to breach the hardened alloy security door.

Instead, he attached the device firmly to the ordinary concrete wall beside it.

The door might have been made from some kind of advanced superalloy.

The wall wasn't.

Jace activated the device and quickly moved into a recessed corner of the room.

Three.

Two.

One.

BZZZ!!

The fusion core overloaded instantly.

Superheated plasma erupted outward.

The concrete rapidly cracked, disintegrated, and melted while the reinforcing steel inside was severed almost immediately by the heat.

BOOM!!!

The accumulated gas ignited.

The entire room shook violently as the explosion blasted through the opening in the wall.

Jace's recessed position shielded him from the direct shockwave.

Only a rolling wall of heat washed over him.

When the dust settled, the security door and the entire section of wall surrounding it were gone.

In their place was a huge opening glowing red-hot around the edges.

Jace stepped out of cover.

Charred Radroach remains littered the floor, some thrown across the room by the blast.

He followed the maintenance passage until it opened into a shack crawling with giant ants.

There were hundreds of them.

Jace strode straight through.

His boots crushed ants underfoot with a rapid series of crisp cracks.

A few managed to climb onto his boots, but their jaws couldn't even scratch the armor of his Type 92 Powered Suit.

They posed no real threat.

Jace looked directly at the surveillance camera watching him.

"That's it? You're out of ideas?"

He crossed the shack, followed the arrows still visible on the floor, and descended a short flight of concrete steps.

At the bottom was the final open-air passage, fenced in with wire.

The exterior wall of the shack ran along one side, rusted metal railings along the other.

Several makeshift platforms of sheet metal and wooden planks stood about three meters overhead.

Four raiders waited there with weapons ready, staring down at the passage and waiting to ambush whoever came through.

At the far end stood a massive metal door.

Across it, painted in glaring red letters, were the words:

COLA-CARS ARENA

Suddenly, the overhead speakers crackled to life.

RedEye sounded even more excited and unhinged than before.

"The final stretch! Everybody in the stands, listen up! Our challenger made it all the way to the last stage! Let's see if he's got what it takes to make it into the arena alive!"

Jace drew both pistols and stepped into the passage.

The raiders above thought their elevated position gave them the advantage.

One of them was about to start talking.

He never got the chance.

Four rapid gunshots rang out.

All four raiders dropped.

Blood splattered across the dusty ground, spreading into dark-red pools.

Jace looked at the four headless bodies.

"That slow? What's the difference between those guns and toys?"

Then he remembered the toy air gun he'd made for Donny.

The kid was actually a pretty good shot.

"And you're not even good with your toys."

The broadcast went completely silent.

Then RedEye returned, all his earlier arrogance suddenly gone.

"Uh... looks like... our boys at the gate had a little trouble..."

A pause.

"So... I guess we'll just let the challenger through?"

More than a dozen other raiders were waiting nearby.

They stared at the smoke still curling from the barrels of Jace's pistols.

Not one volunteered to replace the dead men.

Seeing there were no more targets, Jace smoothly returned both pistols to the quick-draw holsters at his waist.

He didn't spare the cowards another glance.

He walked directly to the massive metal door at the end of the passage and pushed it open.

Beyond it was the entrance to the stands.

Concrete steps descended in tiers toward a huge oval arena.

The fighting floor measured roughly fifty meters by thirty.

Tall metal stands surrounded it on all sides.

More than a hundred raiders were packed into the seats, drinking, shouting, shoving each other around, and making enough noise to fill the entire arena.

The air reeked of sweat, alcohol, blood, and decay.

Jace's gaze swept quickly across the arena through the bulletproof glass.

Then it stopped on one figure.

Nuka-World's Overboss.

The king of the arena.

Colter.

Gage was currently maintaining Colter's customized electromagnetic shield power armor.

Jace immediately noticed one important detail.

A thick insulated cable trailed from the back of Colter's power armor.

It looked exactly like the cables attached to the bumper cars around the arena.

A thought crossed Jace's mind.

They put an electromagnetic shield on a bumper car?

Just how much classified military hardware had the U.S. military stuffed into amusement park attractions?

Did this place seriously not kill people before the War?

Colter noticed Jace entering.

His deep, booming voice echoed through the arena, amplifying his arrogance and contempt.

"Hah. The next dead man finally showed up."

Colter looked Jace up and down, taking in the black Type 92 Powered Suit.

A mocking grin spread across his face.

"Doesn't look like much. All dressed up in fancy gear. What, you think you're some kind of vigilante?"

He laughed.

"Pathetic."

Colter carried himself like a man who already controlled the outcome.

"Here's how this works. You go down there, get yourself ready, and put on a good show for everyone."

His grin widened.

"The kind where I decorate the arena wall with your brains."

After delivering his threat, he turned his attention aside.

"All right, Gage. Let him in."

Then Colter looked back at Jace.

"I've got a feeling I'm really going to enjoy this."

Jace descended the steps and entered the arena's waiting area.

It was a cramped, enclosed room covered in crude graffiti and raider gang markings.

Through the glass, he could clearly see the entire arena.

Before he had much time to examine it, Gage's lowered voice suddenly came through the communicator.

He sounded hurried and cautious.

"Listen. If you made it this far, you've clearly got some skill. But this fight's rigged. You understand?"

Jace answered calmly.

"I know. That power cable is pretty hard to miss."

Silence.

Apparently Gage hadn't expected him to notice so quickly.

"Good. I've got something here that'll help you. It's..."

Before he could finish, Jace had already pulled out a thermal-melt bomb.

He had no intention of cooperating.

Three.

Two.

One.

BZZZ!!

A burst of tremendous heat erupted.

The iron door softened and collapsed like butter.

The frame and surrounding wall cracked and melted with it, sending molten metal and broken glass spraying in every direction.

Heat and smoke rolled into the arena.

Jace stepped through the wreckage.

His boots came down on metal that hadn't fully solidified yet, producing a sharp sizzling sound.

The arena's bright lights fell across him.

Dust and fragments of metal covered his black armor.

Two dark-red lights burned through the smoke from his mask like waiting signals of death.

The entire arena fell silent.

The hundreds of raiders who had been drinking, shouting, and jeering moments earlier stopped at once.

Every eye locked onto the black figure walking out of the wreckage.

Jace stopped in the center of the arena.

His voice echoed through the silence.

"Let me introduce myself."

"I'm the General of the Minutemen."

He paused.

"And I'm here to apply for the position of Overboss of Nuka-World."

Somewhere in the stands, a raider dropped his bottle.

It shattered against the floor.

Nobody looked at it.

The same thought passed through more than a hundred minds at once.

Is this guy serious?

Colter took a moment longer to react.

When he finally spoke, confusion was obvious in his voice.

"Apply for Overboss? What the hell are you talking about?"

Jace sounded genuinely surprised.

"You don't know?"

"The whole Commonwealth's heard about it."

He raised one hand and pointed toward Gage in the stands.

"Gage put the word out a long time ago. Whoever kills you in this arena gets your position."

Then he gestured casually toward the white five-pointed star on his left shoulder.

"Apparently you don't even have to be a raider."

Whispers spread across the stands.

Raiders exchanged looks.

Surprise.

Suspicion.

Anticipation.

It sounded insane.

But Gage wasn't denying it.

Could it actually be true?

Colter narrowed his eyes.

"You're trying to turn us against each other?"

Jace sounded puzzled.

"What?"

"You think I'm the General of the Minutemen, fought my way through this entire station alone, and came all the way here just to lie to you?"

Colter thought about it.

That was actually pretty convincing.

His gaze slowly shifted toward Gage.

The cold in his eyes intensified.

"Gage."

"This was you."

Gage's mouth twitched.

His expression shifted repeatedly, but he didn't dare answer.

Jace looked back at Colter.

"I figured you at least knew some of it."

He shook his head slightly.

"I didn't expect you to be completely in the dark."

"That's actually a little surprising."

Colter's voice turned vicious.

"Then I'll kill you first."

"And after that, I'll crush that backstabbing piece of garbage with my own hands!"

"What a coincidence."

Jace raised his head slightly.

His voice carried absolute confidence.

"That's exactly what I was thinking."

The stands went silent for two seconds.

Then someone, somewhere, failed to hold it in.

A laugh escaped.

The laughter spread like an infection.

Soon low chuckles were coming from all around the arena.

Several raiders in the front rows even turned to glance at Gage with obvious amusement before looking back toward the arena, eager to watch what happened next.

Colter's electromagnetic shield activated.

Energy lines across his power armor lit up as powerful electrical currents surged over the suit.

"Hahaha! Now this is interesting."

"I'm starting to like you."

Colter spread his arms slightly.

"In just about every way, you're a worthy opponent."

"I'll make sure your head gets a place of honor in my collection."

Jace looked up at him.

"Then come find out."