Chapter Text
Beverly Katz wakes him far earlier than he likes. There’re two quick taps on the door, a pause, and then another, her signature knock picked up from time she’d spent in the Wasteland, and Will’s already rolling over by the time she lets herself in. At least she knocks – Jack rarely gives him the courtesy.
“G’Morning,” he says, sleep still thick in his voice as he sits up and rubs his hands over his face. The glow of his Pip-Boy illuminates the tiny room as he checks the time – 0400 exactly. Leaning toward his bedside, he switches on the small lamp and blinks at Beverly.
Katz, 28, is Rivet City’s lead scientist and the mind behind their hydroponics program. She’s tough as nails with a wry, quick wit, and besides Jack, she’s the only other person he’d trust with his life. Without her, he wouldn’t have even given the idea of traipsing clear across the fucking Wasteland a second thought.
Which is really happening, god. Beverly looks a bit tense, so Will smiles lazily, goading her.
“You look like you’re the one who’s about to hike across the Wasteland for what might be nothing,” he says, crouching down to pull a clean shirt out of his footlocker. He tugs it over his head, glancing at the rucksack in her hands. “Did you pack my lunch for me?”
“Graham, this is serious,” Beverly says, but she’s struggling to keep a straight face. She shoves the rucksack into his arms, then sits down on the chair at his tiny desk.
“Stimpaks, Rad-Away. A bit of food, a bit of water, some ammo. It’s enough to get you there. Hopefully 100 has supplies. There should be some caravans out there, anyway.”
She falls silent, looking pensive. After a couple seconds, she adds, “Just don’t get yourself killed over this, alright?”
Will opens his mouth to crack another joke, a knee-jerk reaction to the magnitude of what he’s about to undertake, but shuts it after second thought. His life is more important to her than the research she’s been doing for years, and for a second he feels crippled with humility.
“I won’t,” he promises, slinging the rucksack over his shoulder. It’s his turn to look pensive. Jack and Beverly know about his past, about the things that happened to him and the other occupants of Vault 92, so when he tells her, “You know I don’t trust Vault-Tec scientists,” her face darkens a little.
“I know, Will. I know.”
“I want to say she sounds sincere, but they sounded sincere, too.”
The ‘they’ he’s referencing are the scientists behind the experimental program that ran in Vault 92. Before the war, great musicians were gathered in the vault in order to preserve their musical talent. It was a delayed program – the vault dwellers were encouraged to procreate for a couple generations before they began their experimentation. Some two hundred years after the first musicians were invited into the vault, Will, his peers, and their parents became unwitting participants in white-noise tests designed to turn them into aggressive super-soldiers. He’d been in one of the practice rooms the first time he’d felt it, his fingers trembling against the keys of the piano as he struggled to remember the next note of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, a piece he’d known since he was five years old.
The program backfired monumentally – those who succumbed to the experimentation ran rampant through the vault, destroying anyone they came in contact with. Some managed to escape, and at the tender age of thirteen, and having never spent a day outside of his vault, Will stepped out into the Wasteland to begin his new life.
His parents, also brilliant pianists, didn’t make it.
The exposure to the white-noise had left him jumpy and socially withdrawn, two traits that had actually served him fairly well out in the Wasteland, but don’t gain him any points in Rivet City. Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller, also scientists in the lab, can’t stand him. It doesn’t bother Will, but it seems to bother Beverly.
“It’s definitely a gamble,” she agrees, biting her lip. “That’s a Vault-Tec vault for Vault-Tec research. It could be a trap. It probably is a trap.”
“They’re cocky, though. They’d show up outright. She went through a lot of trouble to get us her message.”
There are still so many questions about the whole thing, but seeing as he’s headed to the source of the answers, he’ll just save them.
“Shall we?” he asks, heading to the door. Beverly rises behind him and follows him down the hall, where they take the stairs up to the science lab.
Jack is waiting for them, and Will really wishes one of them would look a little optimistic about this excursion.
“I’ll be back before you know it, with Miss Bloom in tow.” He tries for a smile, then adds, “Get excited about this.”
Jack’s laid his supplies out on one of the tables, and Will’s impressed, really. His weapons – a combat shotgun and a 10mm submachine gun - have been recently maintenanced and there’s a good deal of ammunition for each. As promised, Jack’s also left him some Stealth Boys, devices that will make him nearly invisible to the naked eye. He’ll more than likely need those on the way back from Vault 100.
Will starts to pack the rest of his stuff into his rucksack, then hauls it over his shoulder.
“Bev,” he says, reaching out to give her elbow a squeeze. “See you soon.”
“Yeah,” she replies, her face pinched tight. “Shoot straight, Will.”
He and Jack head out of the lab and out onto the main drag of Rivet City. The guard at the gate swings the bridge out and they walk to the end. A sharp wind’s whipping around them as he breathes in the Wasteland air… this is really happening.
“I’d say four days tops to walk there,” he starts up, because Jack’s fallen stonily silent and it’s really not helping his morale. “It’s gonna take longer to get back with her. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen days, get worried.”
“I’m not worried,” Jack tells him, looking and sounding worried. “Get going so you can get back. We’ll see you soon.”
He claps Will on the shoulder, shaking him a bit, and lets his hand linger a second before pulling away and starting back across the bridge. Will watches Jack retreat, fingers curled around the strap of his rucksack.
Here goes nothing.
*
It wasn’t like the research going on in Rivet City was particularly classified, nor had Alana Bloom, 25, first heard about it from an unlikely source – she’d merely switched on Galaxy News Radio and it’d leapt out at her.
“Broadcasting live from Galaxy News Radio, this is your host… Three Dog! Awwoooooo! Have you ever seen a tree? A real, live tree? No? I hear some scientists at the Rivet City lab are trying to change that…”
Which had, of course, piqued her interests, her interests being anything and everything science related.
Vault 100’s current scientific efforts are largely FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) mutagenics, because the Super Mutants have become somewhat of a problem in the Wasteland. That’s how their vault overseer, Frederick Chilton, 44, puts it.
‘Somewhat of a problem’ is not exactly how Alana would classify the Super Mutant issue.
‘Definitely a problem’ comes closer. A ‘large, glaring error on the part of Vault-Tec’ hits the nail right on the head.
Actually, there are a lot of things about Vault-Tec that don’t sit quite right with her. Call it her natural intuition, or her paladin-like moral compass. It might also have to do with the secrets passed down, generation to generation, through her bloodline. Alana’s great-great-great-great grandparents had both been Doctors, as well as Future-Tec scientists, a detail that’d been lost to time, save members of her bloodline. It’s knowledge she keeps safe for many reasons, the first and foremost that she trusts Frederick Chilton about as far as she can throw him.
Galaxy News filters quietly through her lab as she tests samples and scribbles notes down, mind not quite on her research as much as it’s out in the Wastes. There’s no way to know if Rivet City ever received her holotape. All she can do is wait… wait and hope that someone shows up to take her away.
Because…
“Miss Bloom.” The voice cuts through her thoughts, reprimand in the tone. She hears the tap of Chilton’s cane on the floor and turns her head, just in time to watch him switch off the radio.
“What have I told you about listening to this garbage while you work? We wouldn’t want you to get distracted, would we?”
His tone is saccharine, just this side of mocking, but Alana keeps her face even before dropping the corners of her mouth in something like an apologetic frown.
“I apologize, Doctor Chilton,” she says, skin crawling internally. He has them call him ‘Doctor,’ despite the fact that their universities had disappeared after the War, along with any ability to earn or issue a degree.
‘An asinine formality,’ their lead scientist, Bedelia du Maurier, 48, had sneered.
Alana had (so, so quietly) agreed with her.
“Sometimes,” she continues, “The quiet just gets to me. I can assure you that my work is undistracted.” She steps aside so he can lean over her notes, eyes bouncing boredly from word to word. She’s not sure he even cares about the work they do so much as he cares about his position as overseer.
“See to it that it remains that way. You’ve seemed very distracted as of late, Miss Bloom. Is there something on your mind?”
He looks at her like he can see right through her, but Alana’s poker face is learned. She shakes her head, smiling politely at him.
“No, sir. Thank you for asking, though.”
The suspicious look doesn’t cede; instead, Chilton just hums, derisive, and heads out of the lab.
Alana sits back down, glancing at her notes.
Distracted, indeed.