Nate was leading Piper ten steps ahead of her the moment the elevator doors parted upwards. He shot towards the control panel to get the vault door to open, while she nervously looked up the elevator shaft, trying to see the top.

When Piper stepped off the platform, the vault door was already opening. The grinding noise of the arm opening the door echoed loudly in the underground chamber, making her ears ring. Pulling it open and walked across the floor and up the steps to the walkway. Meathead was hot on Nate's heels, and panting heavily.

"Is it anything like Vault 81?" Piper asked, her voice was a little hopeful as the inside of Vault 111 came as imagination.

"Same design, different layout," Nate said, the vault door was pulled back, like a giant stone being rolled away from a tomb. Nate walked forward quickly and he stopped at the table where vault suits were distributed and tore off the lid to a box.

"Would you like a vault suit?" Nate asked, holding one out for her, and letting it unfurl in his hands.

Piper smiled, looking at the suit, then down at her own clothes. The rank smell of dried sweat came abundantly sharper. The droplets of dried blood from where they were beaten and left to sit in their misery for an hour after first meeting Red were still plenty visible, and clotting the cloth. Her red jacket, she hasn't washed in weeks, and she looked at the crisp, blue and yellow vault suit with the yellow 111 on the back and above the right breast and nodded.

"Heck yea." She said, taking it from Nate.

"If you'll follow me, there's a shower and place for you to change over this way," Nate said, Piper's chest felt warm, even in the darkness of the dimmed vault interior. She held the vault suit to her chest, seeing if the length would match her body.

Wading through thick spider webs, Nate knocked them away as he showed Piper the Overseer's room, and into the bathroom.

"Go ahead, you first, take your time. I'll take one after you're done." Piper looked at the faucet tap and froze.

"How do I work it?" She asked.

"Spin the faucet all the way over to the left so that the bottom is pointing towards the red dot, and then ease it back towards the blue to make it cooler." Nate leaned into the shower, turning the faucet all the way to hot, and then back a few degrees.

The shower head spat up grey water for a moment, then it turned clear. It was cold at first, warming up into a nice steam, and then back down.

"Hot water." Nate said, turning the faucet back towards the red dot, "Cold water," he said, turning it to the blue. "Have at it. Oh, here's some soap and a rag to wash."

Nate offered a bar of soap wrapped inside of a white towel cloth to Piper and she took it. Leaving her alone, Nate and Meathead went to the office, and let Piper be alone for a few minutes.

\111/

Meathead took a place in front of Nate, he was sitting in the Overseer's chair, resting his chin in one hand, propped up with the elbow and his right leg over his left.

"<How should we introduce her to me?>" Meathead asked.

" Walk in like you're best friends after I explain a few things to her, I'll signal for you to come in."

<She's relaxed right now, at peace in the shower.>" Meathead didn't even need to turn his head towards the bathroom to know what Piper was feeling.

"<A little hot water can really change a person's mood. Wow.>" Meathead's ears perked up, and he shook like a dog warming himself up. "<Joyful, relief, a sense of safety. How long do you plan on being here? Hmm...touch of horny, amazing what four walls, a roof, and a hot shower do for people around here.>"

"Great. Meathead, T. M. I., now you're just being weird." Nate said, but sitting up straighter.

"Hey, the walls in your house were thin, and I could hear you and Nora going at it like grunting rabbits, there is nothing that is too personal when it comes to me."

Nate admitted defeat. "I plan on being here two days. Check the logs, unplug the dead pods, check the liquid nitrogen levels, move the bodies, crack open the first generator and see then what needs to be done. If I can fix it, I will, if it's out of my league. Eventually I'm going to recruit or pay off one or both of the twins from Vault 81 to come up here for however long it would take for them to fix it. As for you, did you find anything while we were dealing with Red?"

Nate tilted his head over towards the bathroom, listening to the water splashing down in the shower.

"...Is she?"

Meathead shook his head. "<Nah, she's just standing there in the hot water.>" He said, smiling, "<But she sure is thinking about it. She wants to, but right now loving the soak.>" Without giving much pause, he launched right into Nate's question.

"<Yes. I've been meaning to tell you. There's a small group in the Cambridge Police Station, the Brotherhood of Steel. They're a scouting party for their main chapter. They traced frequencies that I've felt in the air, short bursts of highly volatile energy that dissipates very quickly. He wrangled me into helping them check out ArcJet Systems for a Deep Range Transmitter, they're trying to get in touch with their main group. Reinforcements are on their way the minute they get the device installed. Their de-facto leader, I believe, Paladin Danse, wants to eliminate the Institute and all synths, but he doesn't know he's a synth himself."

Nate was nodding his head through all of Meathead's explanation but was caught off guard by the last sentence. "He doesn't know he's a synth?"

"<Very much so. Otherwise, I probably would've told him, but I doubt I could've gotten him to believe me. He's military smart, like you, but not so much in tactics. So far, they've responded to every threat they came across while I was with them with overwhelming force.>"

Nate's eyes lifted up, "Overwhelming force only works if the enemy isn't dug in like damn Vietcong with underwater rat tunnels, and there are centralized units of force. If the enemy can keep a constant supply line and spread itself out without fear of detection, the Brotherhood could be fucking themselves over for the next decade."

"<Well, for them it's worked so far.>"

"Can we trust them?"

"<I believe we can, they tried recruiting me after I was done scouting with them,>"

"And this was you, disguised as me?" Nate asked, Meathead nodded yes.

<Yes. We checked out the inside of ArcJet Systems, but the only reason he wants you is because he thinks you can handle your weapon well, and he's running out of people. ArcJet was filled with synths stripping insides, trying to dismantle the entire place for parts. Danse is expecting you in Cambridge when you have the time.">

A laser rifle landed on the desk in front of them with a loud thud, it was the Righteous Authority laser rifle that Paladin Danse modified. "<Here, a littler parting gift.>"

"What did you learn about the synths while fighting them?"

"<I felt the short bursts of energy they were describing after we finished fighting the first wave, little pops, and then a whole lot of silence. I think I figured out how synths are getting around without anyone knowing where they're coming from.>"

"And just how are they getting around?"

"<Teleportation. The thing about magic and science is that magic is just unexplained science. When an object teleports, its entire structure moves very rapidly, like the short energy wave build up, and then the molecules essentially trade places with its quantum displaced counterpart for a few moments, and then it all disperses as the Brotherhood say.>"

"And I know you can teleport, how's you teleporting different from an Institute teleport?"

"<Residual energy.>" Meathead said, raising a paw to his forehead, where a black horn would've been. "<Horns are like...cans of spray paint. While you're using magic, there's a little bit of spray that is errant, unintentional, but for teleporting, imagine spray painting a moving train, you stay in the same place, everything else moves around you. But, when you're finished, you take your finger off the nozzle, there's a split-second from when you take the pressure off, to when the spray actually stops. That little split-second is residual magic. It's unavoidable for organic magic casting creatures. The more practiced a pony is, the less residual, the more control there is, but if the Institute is using a machine to accomplish the same thing, it's like they're gone in a puff of smoke.>"

"Did you feel anything like this when we were near Fort Hagen?"

"<A little, but I didn't piece it together until after speaking with Paladin Danse.>"

"What else did you hear from the Brotherhood?"

"<There's more super mutants out there, but the ones here in Boston are less intelligent than the ones in D.C.>"

"What's that suppose to mean? Did they say why?"

Meathead 'Mmm-hmmed', nodding his head gravely while biting his teeth together. "<The Institute is making them too.>

Nate cut Meathead off, "What?! The Insta...fuck? They're making those fuckers too?" Meathead nodded.

"<They use the people they've snatched, make synth clones, then expose the human candidate to a Forced Evolutionary Virus strain they have, and then release them.>

Nate's voice rose and nearly cracked, "What the fuck!? Synth clones...Releasing them? Re-releasing them?" Nate asked, his brow pinched, "Say that again...The Institutes makes synths...and makes super mutants out of the humans?"

Meathead nodded, swallowing.

"Fuck those mother fuckers, we killed how many damn mutants? Fuck! Those were humans at one point, Meathead! Fucking damnit!" The four mutants outside of the Galleria came to mind, along with the dozen mutants at Faneuil Hall, and however many more mutants at the toy factory all weighed down on Nate's mind.

"<Piper's getting out of the shower.>" They head the water shut off a moment later, and they waited for Piper to come out. She was panting, from not having felt warm water caress her in an unending torrent like that in a way she hasn't felt in a very long time. She couldn't place the last time she was standing under warm water that wasn't radioactive grey water, or from a broken sewer drainage pipe that was leaking down onto her. Her skin felt clean, her pores felt open and she didn't feel grimy as she was going in. She realized she could smell better, she took one step towards her clothes and was suddenly disgusted at how sour they reeked.

Dawning the white t-shirt, panties, and blue vault suit, she tugged her feet into the boots and laced up the straps, pulling the zipper all the way from her waist up to her neck. It was elastic around the neck and wasn't choking her, but she felt comfy and secure in the new clothes Nate gave her.

Sighing in relief, she shook out the knots in her hair which hung down past her shoulders when it was wet.

Exiting the bathroom, Nate was sitting in the Overseer's office chair, petting Meathead. "Sorry I took so long,"

"No worries. Have a seat, I'll be five minutes." Nate said quickly, his face was red, and heart still racing from Meathead's revelations about the Institute.

While Nate showered, Piper sat in the Overseer's chair, leaning her head back, and spinning around in the chair. She glanced at the computer monitor, then the skeleton on the ground. Meathead rested his chin on her leg, looking up at her with big eyes.

"I don't have any treats for you."

Meathead stuck out his lip, licking them. Piper scratched his head and down his neck and he started panting. "Is this what you want?"

Scratching his neck and belly, Meathead laid down on the ground, one paw up towards Piper, signaling to her not to stop.

Nate was back out when Piper started teasing Meathead with a femur bone, but he wasn't interested.

"Okay," Nate said, water still dripping from his hair with his vault suit back on. "Let me show you around."

\111/

Feeling fresh, Nate showed Piper the dorm rooms, the generator he intended taking apart, and the cafeteria, and then they came to a particular hallway where Nate grew a lot more quiet, his presence taking up the whole hallway as he showed Piper the last section of the vault. She could tell he was nervous, yet when he opened the lift door, he guided her through.

"So where's your Changeling, friend?" Piper asked.

"Hiding, he doesn't care to show himself, but he'll poke his head out soon enough. These are the pods," Nate explained. She could see to her right through a window into a large room, four rows of cryogenic pods. Her ears lowered, and she stood up straighter, leaning in.

"Are all those?" She asked.

If she meant to finish her sentence with 'dwellers', 'people', 'pods', 'dead', or any combination of the four words, Nate simply answered, "Yes."

"And your wife?"

"She's the next room over."

Nate leads her down the hall, back into the room where Nora was. He was inhaling and sighing, mind getting wrapped up in all sorts of different paths he should take.

"You don't need to show me."

"I want to see her," Nate said, opening the door to the cryopod room. Inside were one dozen pods, labeled C1-C12. And there at the end was an open pod, directly across from Nora's unopened pod.

"Come here, Piper," Nate said, stepping into the room. She took a step into the room, noting how chilly it was. Instead of going straight to the pod at the end of the row, Nate went to a computer at the first pod and checked the files. Then going into the command prompt, he checked the time-stamped logs on everything. He frowned. His typing was firmer, he was slamming the keys with the tips of his fingers, more disgruntled the more he learned with only a few lines of text.

"October 23rd, 2278 7:00 A.M. Remote Access Authorization Accepted. Source. Fucking Cambridge." Nate read out loud. "Everything I know tells me the Institute is in Cambridge."

"The Institute let you out?! Why?!"

"Because. I think it was my son. At this day and age...he's in his sixties. That's a long fucking time for someone to move up in the world, I don't know if he's at the top. Or if he has just enough leeway to do this, but I think he did it. I don't know why, or how, but here...look at the log...2218...Sixty years ago. Nora's Pod opened. 2218 June 19th Opened and closed locally from this computer.... All other pods were deactivated last year."

"Wait...All other pods were deactivated last year?" Nate said to himself for Piper to hear. "That doesn't make any fucking sense at all..." Rubbing the side of his face, he looked at the green lines of text before him.

His eyes rolled through the computer jargon, all the pods were deactivated, not failed like he originally presumed.

"You're timeline...so...your son is...sixty years old?"

Nate sighed depressingly. "Yep. My sixty-year-old son let his thirty-five year-old dad out, but let the others die off. That's..."

"Slaughter," Piper said.

Nate nodded. "Why wouldn't he chose to let people out?"

"Maybe because he knew about the experiment and wanted to make sure you and your wife got out?" Nate shook his head.

"He could've just left us to freeze, but he didn't. He shut all of them down, but ours, then he made sure out of everything I could see leaving the Vault, a handgun, and some ammo, but all the beds were stripped. No food in here either, so he essentially forced us out...it's an experiment to see what I could do."

"Are you sure about that?" Piper asked. "He could've just wanted to meet you, finally."

"Then why not send synths for me, instead of at me? Why not come directly to me? Nonononono...this isn't a happy reunion he's after...he wants to see what makes me tick."

"How can you be so sure about that?" Piper asked.

"Because of what Kellogg told me. There's been a long thin line of truth he was feeding me, but he wanted to keep some parts of Shaun's involvement with the Institute out so much, that he was willing to die for it. I found out before he died, however, when I took him onto the ledge at Mass Fusion and dangled him over the side.

"So what's it got to do with all this?"

"Shaun is with the higher-ups. Kellogg said that. Remember that? Shaun is with the higher-ups. He's the one who told Kellogg to go face me, so I could get revenge on him."

"Why would Kellogg listen to your son?" Piper inquired.

"Because Kellogg was over a hundred years old. He was ready to die. If he did manage to kill me, he was going to go after a scientist that escaped the Institute next. The scientist fled to the Glowing Sea. For Kellogg, it was just finishing another job."

"The Glowing Sea? But...nothing sane can live there. Why would the person go there?"

"Radiation, Piper. It messes with electronics." Piper got a knowing look in her eye.

"So that must mean they can't track him in there. The radiation must cast some kind of shield the Institute can't send synths into without losing them." She said.

"There's still something else I want to show you," Nate said, standing up away from the computer.

Walking down the stretch of pods, felt to Nate like walking the long mile. He didn't look at all the other faces in their frozen state.

"You're thirty-five?" She asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"You look good for thirty-five. Not many people know how old they are, or they forget to count." Nate stopped in front of Nora's pod.

Piper hesitated for a moment, shaking and swallowing, she turned and looked into the glass to see the sleeping beauty.

"Wow..." Piper said. "She's pretty. If you need a moment alone with her, I understand." Nate lightly shook his head.

"I wanted to show you Nora, but there's more."

"What is it?"

"What if I told you there was something out there that could detect a human from a synth?"

Her eyes widened. "You have something like that? What is it? Is it here? Did Vault-Tec. make it?"

"Turn around."

Piper bit down on her teeth, her muscles tensed up as a wave of fear shook her. Thoughts raced through her mind, one after the other, but the most prevalent one was that something followed Nate and her down here, and now it was directly behind her. She could tell by the way Nate's head was tilted, looking past her towards the synth detector past her.

\111/

"Piper, I want you to meet my friend, Meathead." Nate looked back towards the observation window, and nodded, not even able to see Meathead, but in his chest, he felt that Piper was ready, and now was the time to introduce him to her.

The imposing four and a half foot tall Changeling came in through the hydraulic lift door, making Piper's nerves stand up on edge. He walked in, his black shell reflecting the soft blue LED lights on the ceiling.

"Wwwhat?" She stammered. Meathead needed to cross the room to greet them, and for that it was all planned exactly like Nate intended. "That's a changeling?!"

The short walk felt long, it gave Piper plenty of time to see the changeling walk up to her, and for her to look at Meathead all she wanted. By the time he would actually be at conversing distance, her fears subverted, and by the end of it, she was looking down at the Changeling.

"This is Meathead. Piper, Meathead. Meathead, Piper." Piper overcame her initial fear but was still heavily skeptical of what would happen next. Meathead raised one hoof, offering to shake her hand when she took a step closer towards Nate.

"What?" She couldn't believe the words out of Nate's mouth, calling this thing Meathead.

"What are you?"

"Meathead, do the thing."

"<I'm a Changeling.>" Meathead said, she balked. Taking a few steps back, Meathead was surrounded with green fire again and then transformed back into a German Shepard.

"<I was living with Nate, disguised as his dog before the bombs fell.>"

"What are you, though?" Piper asked.

"<I'm anyone you want me to be or anyone I need to be.>" Shifting into a clone of Nate, she blinked twice and looked at the real one.

Her chest tightened, Piper almost forgot how to breathe as the air caught in her chest and didn't want to move. It took two pounding heartbeats, and a moment of intense hysteria, for her breath to come back.

"You can change?" It took her a while to make the connection, but then she stared stupefied at the two of them. "And your not synths?" Piper may have been speaking, but her body was twitching, involuntarily as she tried to understand what was going on. Her knees tensed and and relaxed, her elbows kept moving out away from her body.

Piper stood like a person who only finished crying her heart out, and was coming back to reality.

"Nope," "<Nope.>" Came their reply.

"I'll let Meathead explain." Nate offered.

"<I can detect synths from humans, Piper. I sense emotion in the air, like magic. Every living thing in this world bears some sort of emotion, happiness, sadness, boredom, relief, anger, grief, sorrow, joy, fear, disgust, or love, I can see and feel all of it. The more pleasant the emotion, it charges me up>."

"So you follow him around like a moth to a flame? And you're okay with this?" Piper asked Meathead, then Nate.

"I'm more okay with it now than I was a week ago. Meathead says he can tell a synth from a human, and in today's age, that might be important in the near future." Nate argued. He reflected on what he said for a moment, he only decided to incorporate that into a reason for keeping Meathead after learning about the synths and the Institute. But before that, Meathead was a companion who he didn't want to see leave.

<You were right about McDonough, Piper. He's a synth. He doesn't have any emotion coming from him at all. He's a box of walking, talking gears, and bio-engineered parts.>"

Piper didn't reply right away, she thought about her response, but latched onto the fact she was right. Her jaw tightened, ass she grit to herself. "I knew...it"

"How does that work? You've..." She swallowed, thinking back, "You've been disguised as his dog, the WHOLE time?"

"<Yes.>"

She blinked rapidly, "Why?" She asked incredulously. "Why would you do that?"

Meathead was about to reply when Nate held up a finger, "Because, he meant to fool everyone. And it worked. He got in, undetected and did exactly what changelings do. They disguised themselves as something that would be a target for good emotion, and then got out."

"<I don't know if McDonnough knows if he's a synth, or if he's working for the Institute, but until either of us do, there's nothing we can do about it. My word doesn't go too far without a bit of good faith and a lot of trusts, both of those are in desperate need around here. You and Nate are the only ones I've entrusted with revealing my true self to, and my word goes as far as yours.>"

"That's why you brought me all the way here to the Vault, to tell me?" Piper asked Meathead nodded.

"<We know the Institute is always watching, we don't know how, but we know that they're gathering information somehow. We also know that the Vault is one of the few places that isn't bugged on the inside.>"

"Well, next time you need to tell me something in private, let me know, I know a few places between here and Diamond City we can drop a secret and no one will overhear," Piper said, rolling her eyes around the vault.

"<Have you ever wondered what happens to the victims of the Institute? The ones they kidnap?>"

"Meathead, I don't think we should overwhelm her more than she already is."

"Why? What's going on that I don't know?" Piper said sternly, her voice a bit more demanding than questioning.

"It's easier to think the people kidnapped by the Institute are killed, that they've been spared from misery, but it's worse. Tell her what you learned from Paladin Danse while we were at Beantown Brewery." Nate told Meathead.

"<You said it yourself, Piper, you're living inside of Diamond City, you're right in the epicenter of all this madness going on, that it's hard to see the big picture...so big, that you'd need to be standing in Washington D.C. to figure all this out. There's a difference between the super mutants from the ones here and the ones in Washington D.C."

"What's this got to do with the Institute?"

"<All the evidence points to a bigger picture. At the top is the Forced Evolutionary Virus.>"

"What's that?"

"<Allow me to explain. The super mutants in Washington D.C. lost their fight and are studied by the Brotherhood scientists.>" Meathead changed his voice around, one reflecting Paladin Danse, to show Piper another side of the changelings.

"<They discovered the D.C. mutants were exposed to a Forced Evolutionary Virus, the reason why mutants exist. But there are differences in the F.E.V. from the ones in the Commonwealth, and the ones in D.C. They've been able to tell the different genetic variances between the ones from D.C. and Boston because the mutants in Boston do not have the same access to the FEV.>

"How does the Brotherhood know that?"

"<The Brotherhood knows this because it's the same strain, only the strain in Boston isn't as developed along in it's lifespan as it has for the same virus in Washington D.C. The Boston strain hasn't been exposed to the subjects in the same way. The method of delivery is different.>"

"Why's that make a difference? What's different?" Piper asked, this was all news to her and she wrote shorthand notes down as fast as she could.

"<The mutants in D.C. dunk their victims in tanks of FEV, reusing the same batch over and over again like a bloody baptismal. The virus solution is dissolved over all the genetic material getting thrown at it, which included evolving into an airborne virus at infantismal percentages, the mutagen for the virus stored up in people's bodies over generations. While as the ones here in Boston are exposed through injection and airborne methods. It means they've got a petri-dish with the original, uncontaminated FEV, and are using a sterilized methods of extracting a little bit of the virus at a time. While the D.C. virus is getting weakened down over time, that's how the mutants in D.C. were able to become smarter over time, because the virus causes mental capacities to decrease. The Brotherhood knows the Institute is taking the Virus from the source because they compared a D.C. against a Commonwealth mutant, the Boston virus is stronger, they discerned that the Commonwealth mutant is stupider, more violent, and less organized than D.C.>"

"Good God." Nate said, hearing it again didn't make any less of an impact.

"So it's gonna get worse!?" Piper shouted, "Intelligent mutants?! NO! No! No!" She vehemently shook her head, wiping off her eyes and shaking.

Nate and Piper both soaked up this information, adding another page in the chapter marked 'Super Mutants' in their heads.

"I don't think that's what Meathead is saying, Piper. Even yesterday, we've seen them group up, they have a pecking order, it's something that happens no matter what we do."

"<From the radically different intelligence, the structure of super mutant packs, along with their overall rate of mutation, the ones in D.C. are exposed to long dosages of the FEV over a long single time. The ones here in Boston are exposed a single time, in a very short period. One dose of a small bit of FEV. Paladin Danse can explain this to you as well, but the super mutants in D.C. are organized, they kidnap, they take their victims back to their lair and expose the victims, turning them into super mutants, their goal was to create a super mutant army. That's not the case with the Boston super mutants who's only goal is to kill.>"

Piper was following along for the most part, but the twisted part of her brain caught up with her mouth first. "No." She caught on, as quick as Nate and Meathead both had. She was shaking her head. "No way."

"<The Institute captures people, creates a synth clone, and exposes the victim to the FEV, and then releases both of them back onto the surface.>"

Piper swallowed, gagging, she burped and coughed. Her head was burning up with the revelation, and she felt sick, hot, cold, hungry for some reason, and tingly all over.

"All...NO! No way! That can't be true!"

"It's terrible, Piper. The Institute is abducting people, creating a synth army, and then letting the mutants wander off, all so they can observe it. It's a massive social experiment for them. The Institute can never be trusted. They're guiding how civilization forms. Think about it, who do you know was replaced by a synth?"

"Nick. But that doesn't mean there's a super mutant version of him running around, does it?"

"There could be, we saved a person, Amelia Stockton from a group at Covenant after they assumed she was a synth. They were right, but after we freed her, we talked about what happened to the original? Where's the real Amelia Stockton? We hoped and prayed that she was alive, or if dead, that she suffered a less harrowing experience than turning into a super mutant. Now we know that there is a super mutant out there, with all of Amelia Stockton's memories and personality, trapped behind a virus that's made every super mutant. Haven't you ever wondered where super mutants come from? They're created by a virus! They're created by the Institute!"

Piper was more terrified and angered by the Institute than ever before. Before coming down into Vault 111, she blissfully thought that people abducted by the Institute at worst prisoners that they did experiments on, and at the best, killed off. She was able to live with the grief that if she were ever abducted by the Institute, she would most likely die. That a synth clone would take her place and live out the rest of her life as synth-Piper, until she was exposed, then she would die. But, her mind never took her to the possibility that if she were abducted, she would become a super mutant, and the thought made her legs nearly give out.

Nate, and his changeling clone were both telling her down here in this crypt filled with dead bodies that the prisoners don't get to die, they get to live a worse fate than death, as a Super Mutant.

\111/

"How are you going to make them pay for this? They..." Piper waved a hand towards Nora's pod. "They kidnapped your son! They shot your wife! They abducted a bunch of people from all around the Commonwealth and turned them into super mutants! I can't tell you how many I've killed over the years, but it's a lot! I don't want to be thinking about that when all I think about now is that they used to be HUMAN! That was my one fear, being abducted by the Institute! Everyone knows it happens, and at any time, but no! No, we don't just get taken in the middle of the night without anyone realizing it because of magic and teleportation! No! We don't just get replaced by a copycat with all our memories leading up to that point! NO! We turn into fucking GODDAMN super mutants! FUCK!" Piper spat, going over to the rolling chair by the computer monitor, she sat down and let her head sink.

Nate and Meathead let her think for a moment, but Nate suddenly grinned and walked to sit cross-legged beside her on the floor.

"You know, I don't really like telling people what I think, or what I know because it's usually nothing important, but. I think the whole synth-situation is fucking stupid. Both sides. Full of bullshit."

Piper's head was in her lap, with her hands clasped in a prayer position over the crown of her head. Drawing a deep breath, she undid her hands and cleaned up.

"Nate? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The racism, the will-they, wont-they mentality. It's absolutely fucking bullshit. Both sides are thinking, will they? Won't they? Everyone is waiting for the other side to make a move, but I look at this from two hundred years ago, and I'm bored to death about listening to two groups of people talk about the exact same fucking issues about rights two hundred and fuck all years ago. I'm tired of counting, that's why I look at Meathead. Look at that ugly mug."

"<Hey!>" He shouted in disapproval, Nate smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Still love you, Meathead. Blame evolution, not me, but yeah, I thought Changelings were one ugly motherfuckers when I saw them. Didn't know if I could trust him either, but you know what? I think about the time I was burning ants with a magnifying glass. No one cares about the rights of an ant. No one wants to imagine the perspective of an ant because we've been treating something so insignificant, so terribly for our entire lives. The same goes for our enemies."

"Ants?" Piper asked, lost on Nate's line on thinking.

"We treat ants so terribly, that if we were to see just a single ant from fifty feet away, we would cross the fifty feet to crush one single ant. No mercy. Look...look behind you right now. There's a spider in the room, it's by the observation window, I can barely see it's spiderweb. That's the only insect here, but I know some people who can't leave tiny things be...In fact, I knew too many people like that. They can't leave the tiny stuff alone, it's so offensive to them that the tiniest detail is out of place, that they would stand up, cross the room, and crush the spider. It's the one insect in this massive room."

Piper turned to look over her shoulder, and saw the white wisp of a spider web clinging to the observation window, but not the spider.

"Now imagine that from an ant's perspective. Something that is one thousand times their size coming from beyond the horizon, faster than they can ever hope to move, and their life suddenly ended by a thumb, or a shoe, or a napkin if one is handy. No one ever imagines the perspective of an ant, constant warfare with every other insect out there. The bees, the potato bugs, slugs, termites, spiders, but then there are birds too. There's so much that wants to kill an ant, why treat them any differently? Why should we care if an ant has a bad day, or care if it eats? Should we care if something on the bottom of the food chain eats, Piper?"

Finally hearing a call to action, Piper drew in a breath. "It's been all about survival up there, Blue. I can't even begin to tell you."

Nate shook his head. "You're the one source of news around here, and in thirty years, your newspaper articles are going to be analyzed and stored on microfilm by researchers trying to piece together how everyone survived in a time like this."

"Now it's with the synths, and all I can think of is laughing at the whole fucking thing. It's what my grandpa did, and now I know why he was laughing. He was laughing at us, the next generation was making the exact same mistakes as his generation did...and that's comedy, you know? I know my father came to me plenty of times telling me how the government and the right and the left extremists should all shut up and do something about it, but my father's generation is the one who annexed Canada, and like the spider on the other side of the room, they haven't done a fucking thing wrong."

"Are you saying my news is preachy?"

"We're all preachy, but Meathead's got jack-p-diddle. My plan is to take on the synths, the Institute, McDonough, the Glowing Sea, the Brotherhood, and then if I get a moment to breathe, I'll show you the pony we saved from the Atomatoys factory."

"When did you come up with a plan?"

"From the time you were in the shower, Meathead and I were talking, to now."

"Doesn't sound like you've given it much thought. Let's hear it."

"The people need something to rally behind, a symbol, a logo, a flag."

"Okay..." She said, waiting for Nate to continue.

"I'd use old Glory, but, I don't think people would even know what it means if I started waving it. It needs to be something people can identify, and recreate off the top of their head after seeing it only once."

"Like Nuka-Cola," Piper said.

Nate and Meathead both swallowed, their mouths watering and thirst growing by the second.

"Yeah. Like that. Everything this group does, just like the NAACP, and...shit that's the only one I can remember from high school. I guess that's what I get for being white in America. Anyway, everything the NAACP do...or did... is for the advancement of colored people. Looking at Diamond City and the synths, it's not hard to see what the first thing that can be done to improve relationships."

"How? People are still going to be afraid of the Institute flipping the kill switch and making synths go ballistic on them."

"Then it sounds like the National Guard needs to come in and forcibly uphold some integration. I'll prove McDonough is a synth and get people to allow synths into Diamond City on the exact same day."

"How?

"Well, I was going to shoot him, and then start carving away until I found the synth component. I know he's a synth, but up until I rip that damn piece out of his skull, I wont have any evidence. And that's the kicker. Even if he acts like a synth, and sits down on the same barstool as a synth seventy years ago did, and eats ramen, chewing methodically, everything you observed about McDonough still doesn't prove he's a synth. Until I have enough muscle to take over Diamond City and French Revolution my way through the Institute, it's all back burner."

Piper opened her mouth a bit, waiting to speak with something to say. "I know some people you might want to meet. What do you mean by the French Revolution?"

Nate held his thumb to his throat and slid it across from end to end.

"It doesn't matter, because the first thing I think everyone needs, but doesn't realize it, is water."

"Water?"

"I'm going to drown this wasteland in fresh, clean, water, and wash away all the bad karma that's built back up over the centuries."

"Why water?"

"Water is the building block for all life. Not even ants can exist without it. If they can't exist, then neither can anything standing on top of them. But, the larger your foundation, the more you can build, the more you can expand and grow."

"How are you going to get the water?"

"I know how to build and maintain water purifiers," Nate said, pointing one finger at his brain. "Anything and everything, I'll make it work, somehow. It may not be pretty, and it may look stupid, but if it works, it's not stupid and I don't care what it looks like."

"<Isn't that how you were going to describe Changelings originally? May not look pretty, but we work?>" Meathead teased.

"That's how my grandfather described a few cultures north and south of here." Breaking conversation with Meathead, he welcomed Piper to speak up. "Sorry Piper didn't mean to leave you quiet for so long, we're just trying to be funny. The plan, right. The plan is to restore the vault reactor and remove the dead bodies. I'm not asking for your help, because after tomorrow, I want you to go back to Diamond City so you can write your articles."

"Meathead will be traveling with you, I'm sending him to look for supplies so we can make a trip to the Glowing Sea. While you're going back, check in at Cambridge Police Station if it's safe."

"Watch Meathead and Danse talk. Listen and see if there's anything else you can learn from them, or if there's anything they're willing to divulge. I want to trust these guys from what I hear, but I don't know what to make of them yet."

"They're pretty gun-ho, work together and crush the opposition with overwhelming force. They don't like to say please that often either." Piper commented.

"After I'm finished here, I'll make my own way down and rendezvous with Meathead in Diamond City. From there, we keep gathering supplies, or if Meathead finds everything, we go on to the Glowing Sea."

"Do you plan on me coming?"

"No. I wasn't going to ask you to come because I knew it was dangerous."

"Thank you. I didn't want to say 'no', either, but it's scary. I've never heard anything good happening down there. I know there used to be a caravan that used to run along the edge...some guy with a Geiger counter put tags all along the edge, and stay to the outside of it, but that was decades ago. Every time it rains or blows, there's a new smog of radioactive dust that gets blown across the Commonwealth. The caravans stopped running from Providence because the route got so bad, raiders, mutants, radiation, the only ways from there to Boston were too well known."

"How many ways are there south?" Nate asked.

"There was four straight paths that I know of that went south, one that went along the high way, then there was the backroad interstate and then another county road that was part of the Glowing Sea route. The third route, you would need to go all the way west to Nuka-World, then go south before you got there to go around the entire Glowing Sea. Otherwise you'd be cooking in your skin. The last route went along the coast, but, it's just a crap shoot along the water's edge. Lot's of creatures all looking to kill you."

"<The Brotherhood said they followed the train tracks North from Providence.>"

"Did you find out where their main group is?"

"<I'll find out when I meet him again.>"

"You ever go to Providence?" Nate asked Piper, shook her head.

"Did you?"

"Hundreds. Usually for a friend's dinner, or sometimes for a movie. Shopping was a big reason why we would go down there. The drive was only about two hours, three on a busy traffic day. God, one time it took seven hours to get from Franklin to Concord. The highways were backed up because there was an accident on the road that blocked three lanes, so by the time we actually got to the spot where it happened, they already cleaned everything up, but the congestion was so bad, that no one could go anywhere or do anything except sit and wait in traffic."

Piper shook her head, lost on Nate's references again. "Sorry, I just can't imagine that many cars all moving, and then suddenly stopped...It'd have to be like it is out there right now...except they would still be painted...and the people in them would be living." Swallowing, Piper felt tense about the suffering the people in the past endured.

"Is it all right if I go lay down? I need to organize all my thoughts."

"Go ahead. Meathead and I are going to start on the first project of getting all the bodies out of here. With the pods unplugged, it will put less strain on the reactor because of less power being drawn."

"You sound unsure of yourself, Nate."

"That's because the tech is two hundred years old, and if I accidentally shut down both reactors because of one of my fuck-ups, then Nora will die."

Piper steeled her teeth, looking right, up a bit into the porthole of Nora's pod. "Gotcha. I'll leave you to it. Unless you need a hand?"

"Nah, it's fine, unless you truly want to help."

Passing through the doors and down the hallway, Meathead changed back into a German Shepard as Piper walked past the viewing windows.

\111/

"<Too much?>"

"Probably a little."

"<She'll get over it. What now?>"

"Well. As the old story goes, they moved the grave, but didn't move the bodies." Nate said, going up to the closest pod after Nora's. "Time to clear these out and get rid of the ghosts." Nate leaned down, coming to the backside of the pod and grabbing at the first hose. Unscrewing it, there was a small hiss of cold nitrogen gas as he pulled the plug on the pod, forcing it to open. The pressure equalized and inside the pod was a dead dweller, one of Nate's old neighbors.

"Meathead, would you mind pulling the plugs on all the other ones? I want to get them out of here, and give them a proper send off. Keep ours plugged in, we might need them later."

\111/

One by one, Nate took the bodies and carried them to a cart, where they were loaded up, and taken down the hallway, back to the foyer, and then onto the elevator platform. Going back and forth, four bodies at a time, it took twenty-five trips and over three hours to get all of them depressurized and loaded onto the platform. They were literally only skin and bones, but Nate made sure to handle each one with dignity. Piper came back an hour into it, watching as they pulled the plugs on the pods, and loaded the bodies up.

Then they pulled the Overseer's skeleton along with the three others in the office and loaded those up too. They dragged them all to the elevator shaft and Piper asked, "What are you going to do with them all?"

"Bury them. It won't be a proper funeral, but they'll get more from me than what any other person is willing to do in this day an age."

\111/

Meathead, Piper, and Nate all rose to the surface, and they were moving bodies as Meathead dug the first hole, when Meathead barked.

"<Stop.>"

Nate and Piper both looked to Meathead, "What?"

"<Go...Keep moving...Keep acting as if nothing happened. Nate. Get your shotgun.>"

"What is it?" Piper asked, moving cautiously. "Is someone coming?"

Meathead whined, he put came close to Nate and whined again, looking off into the distance towards clusters of trees.

"What is it, Meathead?" Nate whispered, trying to hear for any danger.

Meathead put his paws on Nate's chest, putting his mouth next to Nate's ear.

"<Nate, go slow. See the tree, at your 1:00 position, there with three birds in it?>" Nate slowly let his eyes follow towards the tree, there were three ravens staring at them, turning their heads, this way and that.

"Yeah," Nate said, looking up at the sky and drawing his shotgun off his back.

"<I only see two.>"

Nate sniffed. "Gotcha."

"What'd he say?" Piper asked.

Nate covered his mouth, but spoke loudly." Three birds in a tree and one of them is a fake." Nate said, calmly pulling the bolt back on his shotgun and flicking the safety off.

"Three birds?" Piper asked, looking up towards the tree. One jerked its head towards her, and the other two followed.

Nate swung around on his heel, using VATS to line up twelve rounds of fire at the three birds. Firing the semi-automatic shotgun twelve times, the tree was peppered with buckshot and then all three birds fell dead, blown off the limbs and falling onto the ground at the base of the tree.

Piper uncovered her ears, and looked thirty feet away to the tree, "What was that about?"

"Come here, and we'll show you. Which one, Meathead?"

Meathead swiftly went to the birds on the ground, picking one up between his jaws, and then presenting it down to Nate and Piper.

"<This one.>"

Nate nodded, reaching for his hunting knife, he flicked it open and carved the raven open. Piper burped and turned away from the dead raven, but Nate called her over again. "Look here. In the head."

Piper's eyes watered, but she came back and squatted down, looking at the distinctly not bone or organ intrusion in the raven's body.

"No fucking way?" Piper asked, pointing to the metal chips and small grey box coated red in blood.

"That's a transceiver, it sends and relays signals, Piper. And these..." Nate pried open the skull of the raven, going after its eyes. "Are cameras." Piper rubbed the side of her face, making sure she wasn't dreaming this.

"They're cameras, Piper. The Institute is using birds to spy on us."

A shudder went through Piper, and her knees felt weak. She wasn't sure she could go on, how much more would the Institute make her fear the world? She couldn't sleep at night knowing the synths could come for her at any time, she didn't want to see the faces of the Institute's victims on the faces of super mutants, she didn't want to give in without a fight, but now they can teleport her off with the snap of their fingers, and replace her. Now, she needs to be afraid of the birds as well.

"No...I've gotta get back to Diamond City and tell people this." She said. "The people have to know about this."

"<What are they going to do? Kill all the birds?>"

"We may have to." Meathead looked up at Nate.

Nate looked down at Meathead. "Wouldn't be the first time the U.S. issued a warrant out for the overpopulation of a bird, and since the Institute is using them to spy on people, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if people gunned down birds by the truckload because they're terrified that a bird or a cow or a dog is a spy in disguise too."

"This is crazy, but it just proves the Institute is spying on us. All the time. We've never known about this before, but here they are. They're spying on us using birds." Piper said, her eyes were tearing up, but she didn't know why.

"That's something people can wrap their heads around." Nate offered.

"I'm going to have a lot to write about when I get back to Diamond City. How did you know?"

"Meathead told me."

"<I can detect living things, Piper. I just happened to glance up and see three birds, but I only felt two. I figured showing you what I can do is easier than telling.>"

Piper rubbed her eyes. "Oh my God. This blows my mind. Can I take that bird?" Piper asked.

"It's all yours, it's evidence. Take a picture, put it in your newspaper. Let the whole world know."

"Thank you. Do you have a jar, or a rag or anything?"

"I've got mason jars with lids down in my house. Go ask Codsworth for one, he'll get it for you."

"Okay." Piper left the top of the hill and sprinted down to Sanctuary Hills, feeling free of the death clinging to Vault 111. She resolved, she didn't want to spend too much more time there, and she didn't feel like going back down again, at least, not until the bodies were dealt with.

She made it out of their sight before collapsing to the ground and weeping, she let out an angry frustrated scream at the world, demanding it to stop terrifying her.

\111/

Meathead dug the holes in thirty minutes, digging out copious sections of dirt and rock, letting it pile up in ten rows at the foot of each grave was a pile. As Nate carried a body to each hole and set them in, Meathead took branches with his magic and a bit of string, tying crosses together.

Piper returned with the jar and saw the procession being carried out as Nate and Meathead continued working. She silently observed Nate and Meathead working together, looking at them in a new light.

"Mr. Irchovich and his wife were Jewish," Nate said, after getting to the thirtieth body. It was a small detail that seemed so distant right now, but Nate remembered the evening he and Nora introduced themselves to the Irchovich's, sharing a bottle of wine, and getting to know them. Same with the Thompsons, and the Kenner's, and all the other neighbors they got to know. Meathead nodded and made two stars of David for them, and put them atop a long branch. Shoving it down into the hole above their grave, Nate laid the bodies down in and crosses for the rest of them.

Piper picked up the Institute's raven and put it inside her bag. Calling out to Nate and Meathead, she asked. "Anything I can do to help?"

Meathead came up to her, "There's a shovel over there if you want to start filling in the holes. It doesn't need to be perfect.>" She was still a bit nervous, looking at Meathead with apprehension but she took the shovel and scooped dirt back down into the holes with bodies in them. Patting the dirt down flat with the back of the spade, it was a flat mound of dirt with a marker on top. Swallowing, she moved onto the next one.

Nate carried body after body from the cart, one by one into their own grave, and then took the crosses Meathead made and jammed them into the ground. Meathead finished making markers around the same time Nate finished carrying the bodies, and then helped Piper shove the piles of dirt back over to cover the holes.

She was surprised at the telekinetic force Meathead displayed and was caught watching a few times as Meathead put his head down and leaned into pushing the piles of dirt and rock back into their holes.

With Meathead's help, it took them two hours to get all the bodies out of the vault, and another three to bury them all. When they were done, there were one hundred graves, and Nate left to go fetch something from his house. He brought back water for all three of them, and under his arm, was a bible. They drank the water, and then Piper asked them what he planned on doing with the book.

Nate said he was doing it to appease the hungry ghosts.

"They were restless from being tricked into hiding underground and promised they would see the surface one day. Today is that day. Now they may rest in peace."

"Why would you do that for them?"

"Because, no one expects it, but I genuinely want to do something nice for these people. They deserve it." Swallowing, Nate peeled back pages and went to his first annotated spot.

"A reading from the book of Genesis," Nate said. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first days...

His eyes skimmed down to his next placeholder.

"And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also...and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven...And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. God created all these things, and said that they were good.”

Nate paused and reflected on the creation of heaven and earth, looking over the sight of the Commonwealth and towards the Glowing Sea where so much destruction came down and did so much damage.

"So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." Nate flipped a few pages to where he held his thumb to a holding spot and continued reading. "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but unseen since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Nate looked up from his book and searched his own memories for a passage, "And God will wipe the tears from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Using his ring finger, he flipped to the back of the book, to Psalms 23.

"The lord is my Shepard. I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures; he leads me besides the still waters. He restores my soul and leads me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod, and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, and anoint my head in oil, my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever and ever."

Nate let the Bible hang by his side, "Our stories do not end with death." He said, "Amen."

Nate held his hand out toward the ground for a minute, then opened his eyes. Letting his arms drop, he set the bible on the ground and went back towards the elevator.

"I never saw someone get spiritual, only Pastor Clements at the church next door said things like that. I didn't know you had it in you. What did all the things at the beginning mean?"

"Birth, Piper. The world was created, through the big bang and billions of years of creation and cosmic forces, hundreds of millions of years of evolution, fifty thousand years of sentient thought, five thousand years of mankind expanding across the globe, and an untold amount of thought. Birth, life, death, and resurrection. We took every option to extend life just a little bit longer, so long as we didn't have to worry about death. We didn't keep the dead around, and we didn't like remembered what happened to them."

"And what about Nora?" Piper asked.

"She's not dead yet, and I'll die before I give up on her. God may have taken everything else from me, but he's given me the chance to save her. I don't care if he's God, Jewish God, Islamic God, one of the thousands of Hindu Gods, Norse God, a reflection of God, Jesus, Mother Nature, Atom, or God in drag, he's God and I'll still thank him for the opportunity."

"So do you believe in him?"

"Yes.

"I get it. I think-" Piper started off with, but she caught herself. "I think it's time you should know about the enemies of the Institute."

\111/

This one took the longest to write out of all the chapters I've written so far. Clocking in at over five months working to get this one right.

But, time to take a nice big relaxing breath, people! This chapter marks the divergence between Nate and Meathead's plot lines. They'll both be going on their own adventures for a while, "leveling up" so to speak, and making sure everything's squared away. Nate's got to find a set of power armor he can get all buffed and waxed, while Meathead will be making friends on Nate's behalf, gathering supplies for the expedition.

Until of course, they're ready to take on the monsters and dangers of the Glowing Sea!

Looking back now, I think that's what lost people from playing Fallout 4, people didn't know which way to go to Diamond City.

In Fallout 3, everyone went to Megaton, then GNR, Rivet City, and the game was strategic how they could get people to move across the map, and discover new locations and get people to want to explore the nooks and crannies of the DC wasteland. Like being told by a NPC about Canterbury Commons, or to go check out Minefield for the first time, and stumbling across Arefu. On the way, you discover a vampire cult, but after you deal with them, you walk right past Paradise Falls, and find yourself at Big Town, the Germantown HQ, then after a few days of playing, maybe, you finally to the gates around Minefield. But all that feels like it is preparing you for when you actually make it back to Megaton, and finally get around to dealing with finding your father and all that. It felt like a super-elaborate, but challenging tutorial for the main quests. The way F3 handles missions is different than the way F4 handles missions. With F3, Better writing, every settlement had a person worth talking to. Every quest or side-quest, no matter how random, still felt like it contributed to the whole over-arching story.

In F4, Preston tells you where to go to discover new settlements, there's not a whole lot of adventuring going on, nor traders to offload your loot.

In Skyrim, there was hardly a person that didn't have something to say to you. But at the very least, we made it to Whiterun.

Fallout NV, similar instance with F3. Everyone starting off on a new game, or a new playthrough, everyone knew that they shouldn't go north out of Goodsprings because of the cazadors, deathclaws, and giant radscorpions.

We all knew that we might be able to sneak past them all, and run to vegas, cutting down on our game time, but we also knew the roundabout route Obsidian made us take instead. Primm, to the Pit stop, to Nipton, Novac, the REPCONN facility, Solar plant, Boulder city, then finally to Vegas. The first few hours of gameplay for FNV isn't just 'get to vegas'. There's more lore. Again, it feels like a elaborate tutorial to get us to level up in before we get to the more difficult parts of the game.

Fallout 4's route leads us from the Vault to Concord, and stops there. It tricks people into following Preston back to Sanctuary Hills, and doing missions that help you discover more settlements. We all know that if you stay with the Minutemen, it'll be for unlocking Minutemen Missions, but it doesn't feel like it adding anything to the story of finding Shaun.

I want to thank everyone who's read my work this far, it's 10/28/18 at the time of writing,

Update: 1/29/19.
4/6/19
1/20/20

Where does the time go?
Thanks for reading.