Chapter 7: I Want YOU!
I was officially, unequivocally, living in hell.
When I had first realized that my life had been converted into a real-world iteration of Fallout, I had foolishly assumed that my video game meta-knowledge would be a golden ticket. I had spent twelve levels optimizing my brain, hoarding medical perks, and coasting on the climate-controlled comfort of Vault 33.
But out here? On the cracked, blistering asphalt of what used to be Interstate 5? The reality of my choices was hitting me like a super mutant’s sledgehammer. I had left myself with an Agility stat of one.
One.
In the games, low Agility just meant you had fewer Action Points for VATS and took a little longer to reload. In real life, an Agility score of one was a debilitating physical comedy routine.
My boots felt like they had been forged from solid lead and filled with wet cement. Every step required a conscious, agonizing effort of physics. The wind howling across the southern California wasteland kicked up a brutal sandstorm, stinging my skin and layering a fine, gritty coat of irradiated dust over my Pip-Boy screen.
I staggered forward, my foot catching on a perfectly flat, entirely unremarkable seam in the ancient highway asphalt. My arms flailed wildly in the air as I fought a desperate, losing battle against gravity, ultimately crashing down hard on my hands and knees.
Clack.
Fuck my life.
A sharp, digital chime echoed directly into my auditory cortex, accompanied by a flashing red icon in the bottom-right corner of my vision.
[DEHYDRATION: Perception -1].
“Ugh…” I let out a ragged groan, pushing myself up into a sitting position on the searing highway surface. My mouth felt like it had been lined with cotton and sand. I unclipped a scuffed plastic canteen from my belt, staring at the murky, brownish water sloshing around inside it.
It was unpurified wasteland garbage.
Drinking it meant absorbing a steady, unavoidable dose of radiation, all because I had completely refused to invest in the Lead Belly perk during my last few level-ups. And will continue not investing in it.
I had only one unspent perk point sitting in my system right now. And while I had seriously considered throwing it into perks like Lead Belly, or even some of my attributes like Agility, I was content with hoarding that point for something better. I don’t get any refunds here, so it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it, and not have it.
I just had to endure for a few more levels.
I popped the cap and chugged the lukewarm, metallic-tasting water, watching the little geiger-counter meter on my HUD tick upward as the rads pooled in my system. It was miserable. I was miserable.
Why did it have to be like this? Even Skyrim had the basic decency to provide the player with horses and carriages to bypass the tedious, soul-crushing travel of Survival Mode. But Fallout’s Survival Mode apparently expected you to hike across a nuclear desert on foot for the rest of your miserable days.
And for what?
There were rusted, hollowed-out cars and buses stretching down the highway as far as the eye could see. Millions of them. You were really going to tell me that in the two hundred years since the bombs dropped, not a single talented mechanic had managed to stumble out of a Vault, or get themselves safely ghoulified, and fix up a single combustion engine?
Not one guy could grease an axle and build a basic tractor? It was an artificial bottleneck, a mandatory mechanical middle finger to anyone who didn’t want to spend their life walking through radioactive sand.
“Oh, look! I think the storm is clearing up ahead!”
I looked up, squinting through the haze at Lucy MacLean. It was genuinely infuriating how pristine she looked. While I was actively decaying on the pavement, she was marching right beside me with a straight, terrifyingly cheerful posture.
She had packed for this little excursion with absolute preparation in mind, her Vault jumpsuit pristine, her hair neatly bound, completely unfazed by the howling wind and the grit. She looked like she was on a brisk autumn nature hike, not traversing a hellscape.
She paused, looking down at me with those massive, fiercely innocent eyes, dropping yet another one of her aggressively polite hints. “You know, Kenny, if your boots are giving you this much trouble, we could always head back to the access tunnel.”
“Hmm.” I acknowledged, noncommittally.
“I’m sure if we explain the structural topography to the council, my dad could help us authorize a proper, multi-departmental logistical team.” Lucy offered. convincingly. “With the right equipment, we could map this entire sector without all the... tumbling.”
“We can’t go back, Luce,” I wiped a layer of sweat and dust from my forehead, scrambling for a reasonable objection. “I told you. The seismic activity near the primary airlock doors is completely unstable. If we cycle the pressure valves again before the maintenance team finishes the structural welds, we risk a catastrophic decompression event. We just have to keep moving south.”
It was a total fabrication, a string of technical buzzwords I had thrown together using my Intelligence score to keep her from turning around. My throat tightened as I looked at her earnest, hopeful face.
I hated lying to her.
I hated it with a passion, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth about Overseer Hank yet. How could I look at someone that aggressively positive, someone who still believed the world was governed by the Golden Rule and neighborly kindness, and tell her that her father was a pre-war corporate middle-manager who had helped facilitate the end of the world?
I couldn’t break her heart like that. Not out here. Not when we were barely surviving the walk.
Lucy stopped walking entirely, her cheerful demeanor dropping into something quiet, observant, and deeply intense. She crossed her arms, tilting her head as she watched me struggle back to my feet. “I know you’re not out here on an official mission, Kenny.”
My heart did a sudden, violent flip against my ribs. I froze, my hand hovering over my canteen strap. “What?”
“My dad told me,” she said, her voice dropping to a soft, troubled whisper that cut right through the whistling wind. “He said you broke into the secure storage lockers. He said you stole from the Vault and ran away. He told me you were a fugitive... Is that true?”
Lie, lie, lie, my brain screamed at me in a blind panic. Tell her it was a misunderstanding. Tell her Hank was mistaken. Protect your secrets, protect her feelings, just click the speech check option and lie!
“Yes.” I breathed out, the word escaping my lips before my logical brain could stop it. I closed my eyes, cursing myself internally. I couldn’t do it.
When it came down to the wire, looking directly into those sincere, trusting eyes, I just couldn’t lie to her.
“Nothing critically important like our water filters.” I promised. “No one is going to die or starve because of what I did. But... yeah. I took a few stimpaks, some preserved rations, a 10mm pistol from the armory locker, and... I left.”
Lucy took a step closer, the crunch of her boots on the gravel sounding incredibly loud in the sudden lull of the storm. “Why?”
“I can’t tell you.” I said, looking away from her, fixing my gaze on the dark, empty space that dominated my Pip-Boy’s local map.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” She pressed, her voice rising slightly, tinged with a genuine, heartbreaking confusion. “Kenny, we’ve known each other since… forever. We practically grew up in the same engineering bays. If you were unhappy, or if something was wrong, you could have talked to me. Why would you just turn your back on the entire community?”
“It’s complicated, Lucy.” I muttered, shifting my weight uneasily, my Agility 1 making me sway slightly on the uneven ground.
She went entirely silent for a long moment, her eyes searching my face, trying to piece together a puzzle that didn’t have all its parts. A sudden, terrible realization seemed to dawn on her features, and her cheeks flushed a faint, embarrassed pink. “Is it... is it because of me? Is it because of the matching cycle? Because you don’t want to marry me in a few years?”
I blinked, completely caught off guard by the sheer, left-field direction of her Vault-bred logic. “No! God, no, Luce, that’s not what this is about at all.”
Though, admittedly, the whole concept of the Vault matching system was a bizarre hurdle for me. Biologically, I was a young guy, but mentally, with the accumulated weight of my past-life memories, I felt closer to forty.
The idea of being forced into a state-sanctioned marriage with a twenty-year-old felt incredibly surreal, but honestly, my existential dread regarding the Vault-Tec social engineering programs had absolutely nothing to do with her as a person. She was incredible.
Too good for this world.
… Literally.
“I just... I couldn’t stay there anymore, Lucy.” I said, my voice softening as I reached out, gently placing a hand on her shoulder to steady myself as much as to comfort her. “There are things out here... things that need fixing, things that need to be understood. The world is much bigger, and much more broken, than what they teach us in the classroom levels. I didn’t leave to hurt anyone. I left because I had to see what was actually left of the world.”
Lucy stared at my hand on her shoulder, the tension slowly draining from her posture.
She let out a long, slow breath, her natural, unyielding optimism fighting its way back to the surface like a flower punching through concrete. “Well... if you’re out here to fix things, then it’s a good thing I came along. The Reclamation isn’t a one-person job, Kenny. It takes a community. And since we’re already out here, we might as well start by finding a proper paved road that doesn’t make you fall over every five minutes.”
I couldn’t help but let out a dry, breathy laugh, adjusting my heavy pack as we fell back into a marching rhythm. The sandstorm began to die down, revealing the endless, bleak expanse of the California desert stretching out toward a jagged line of distant, rusted mountains.
We kept talking as we walked, our voices carrying over the empty highway,
Lucy detailing her idealized vision of a cooperative surface society while I quietly checked my near map, praying that whatever settlement lay over the horizon had a working bed, a water purifier, and absolutely no stairs.
…
The jagged horizon of shattered skyscrapers finally gave way to a massive perimeter wall that looked like a monument to human resilience. Stacked three layers high, rusted shipping containers formed a formidable steel barrier, topped with thick coils of lethal razor wire that gleamed aggressively under the harsh desert sun.
Lucy stopped at the crest of the gravel ridge, her breath catching in her throat as a wave of absolute, unadulterated joy washed over her. She gripped the straps of her pack, her face breaking into a radiant smile. “Oh, Kenny, look. Look at that!”
Kenny slowly shuffled up beside her, his chest heaving as he leaned heavily on his knees, his entire posture screaming baseline physical exhaustion. “Please tell me it’s an oasis with a very large, very soft mattress.”
“It’s better than an oasis, it’s a community!” Lucy gestured toward the imposing steel gates, her eyes wide with a profound, earnest reverence. “Look at the uniformity. Look at those beautifully organized guard rotations. They have matching uniforms, Kenny! Real, structured order. I knew we’d find good neighbors out here if we just kept walking.”
A massive, faded canvas banner hung from a rusted crane near the primary checkpoint, its bold white lettering proudly proclaiming: A Safe Future Under the Steel. It was the most beautiful thing Lucy had ever seen on the surface. It was absolute proof that the baseline principles of civilization hadn’t been entirely wiped out by the old war. People were coming together, standing guard, and building a structured society to shield each other from the chaos.
“Yeah, they look real neighborly.” Kenny muttered, his voice dripping with that familiar, dry cynicism as he adjusted his aviators. “Especially the guy holding a weapon that could vaporize a small village. That’s a very welcoming touch.”
“Well, all new relationships have an initial boundary phase!” Lucy reprimanded him with a gentle, completely serious nudge to his arm. “They have to protect themselves from those awful creatures we saw. If we approach them with absolute transparency and a willingness to contribute, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to welcome us into the neighborhood. We should introduce ourselves!”
“Hang on, Luce, let’s look at our options here.” Kenny grabbed her sleeve, his fingers tightening as his gaze drifted completely away from the heavily armored guards.
“Options?” Lucy turned her wide, hopeful brown eyes back to him, her voice brimming with earnest enthusiasm. “Kenny, we are looking civilization in the eye. This is exactly what the Reclamation is supposed to be about! We can offer them our engineering skills, help them with their irrigation, and maybe they can give us a proper map of the southern sectors. It’s a perfect, mutually beneficial trade of community resources!”
A massive, twin-engine Vertibird roared directly over the gravel ridge, its heavy rotors churning the desert air into a deafening, rhythmic tempest before it began descending toward the distant tarmac. Lucy had to squint against the sudden gust of dust, but as she shielded her eyes, she noticed Kenny hadn’t blinked. He was staring straight up at the flying machine with a bizarrely intense, almost hypnotic focus.
“What are you looking at, Kenny?” Lucy asked, tilting her head to follow his gaze.
“Hmm?” Kenny snapped his head back toward her, his aviators slipping slightly down his nose as he offered a quick, totally innocent shrug. “Oh. Nothing.”
“Is it the Vertibird?” Lucy smiled, watching the massive aircraft touch down gracefully in the distance. “I saw it, too. Sure would have been helpful earlier, right? No tumbling!”
“Yeah.” Kenny agreed, his tone shifting into a weirdly urgent register as his eyes darted back to the airfield gates. “Yeah, it definitely would have. So... you said you wanted to join up, right? That sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it. Right now.”
Lucy beamed, her heart swelling with pride as they began their descent toward the iron gate. She knew Kenny had a good heart under all that defensive sarcasm. He just needed to see that the surface wasn’t entirely full of monsters.
Two towering figures clad in tattered, salt-crusted T-60 Power Armor stood directly at the intake threshold, their heavy miniguns resting against their armored hips like extensions of their own iron bodies. They didn’t move as the two Vault dwellers approached, their dark visor slats tracking them with a cold, unblinking military precision that would have terrified a normal wastelander.
But Lucy wasn’t a normal wastelander. She marched right past the massive armored legs, her posture perfectly straight, her expression carrying the absolute, unyielding earnestness of a small-town council member presenting a freshly baked welcome pie.
Behind a small, splintered wooden podium just inside the gate sat the intake Scribe. He looked entirely dead inside, his face pale and hollowed out from a lifetime of processing filthy, desperate desert drifters. He didn’t look up from his stained logbook as Lucy halted directly in front of him, her smile practically radiating light into the gloomy shadows of the shipping container wall.
“Good day to you, sir!” Lucy announced, her clear, musical voice ringing out over the ambient hum of the base. She unzipped her side pocket, pulling out a neatly folded, hand-drawn paper document. “My name is Lucy MacLean, and this is Kenneth Conroy. We are recent arrivals from a nearby municipal collective, and we would be absolutely delighted to volunteer for your local integration program!”
Don’t ask her how she did it in the three minutes she’s been there.
… okay, she made it months ago, on the off-chance they would be able to settle the Wasteland in her lifetime. Sue her. She likes to be prepared. Except you can’t sue her because all the lawyers are dead.
Ha!
Checkmate.
“I’ve taken the liberty of drafting a preliminary barracks chores syllabus for the upcoming week.” She admitted, bashfully presenting the documents. “It features a fully optimized rotation for laundry triage, latrine sanitation, and common-area maintenance. We believe a structured foundation is key to a happy family layout!”
The Scribe slowly stopped writing.
His pen hovered over the page for three long, agonizing seconds before he finally tilted his head up, his bloodshot eyes staring at Lucy’s clean, smiling, entirely unblemished face. He looked at the neatly folded chore list, then at her pristine blue jumpsuit, and then back to her eyes with an expression of such absolute, profound bewilderment that he looked like he was staring at a patient who had just escaped a high-security psychiatric ward.
“What the hell are you talking about, girl?” The Scribe rasped, his voice sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping across concrete. “What is this garbage?”
Lucy’s smile wavered for a fraction of a second, her mind frantically trying to adapt to the complete lack of basic neighborly courtesy. Surely he was just exhausted from a long shift. “Oh, it’s a co-operative infrastructure proposal! We want to pitch in and join your community. We’re highly trained in environmental mechanics and soil management, and we’re more than happy to help under your leadership parameters!”
The Scribe let out a low, disdainful snort, slamming his logbook shut with a heavy thud. “We don’t have ‘proposals’ here, Vaulty. This isn’t a social club. This is the Brotherhood of Steel. You either sign the intake register as a baseline Aspirant to serve the Order, or you take your pretty little paper and go feed the mutant hounds outside the trench.”
“Sir, if I can step in for a second.” Kenny immediately slid into the gap, shoving his hands into his utility pockets and offering the Scribe a casual, entirely disarming grin that seemed to practically project a wave of smooth, confident authority.
How does he do that? Sometimes, she swear Kenny can be so… charming.
He leaned against the edge of the wooden podium, entirely unbothered by the man’s hostility. “My associate here has a lot of big ideas about civic pride, but what she’s trying to say is that we’re technically proficient assets. We can strip down an intermediate filtration system blindfolded, we know pre-war circuitry inside and out, and we’re looking to enlist. We want to serve the Order. Full parameters, no special treatment required.”
The Scribe eyed Kenny, his gaze lingering on the dry, calculated focus behind the boy’s aviator glasses. It was a language he actually understood—utility, technical compliance, and a complete lack of flowery sentiment. He reached under his desk, pulling out two heavy, violently rough, incredibly coarse bundles of tattered brown fabric and slapping them onto the podium with a dull slap.
“Aspirant status initialized.” The Scribe growled, dipping his pen back into the inkwell. “Strip down, hand over your personal property to the quartermaster locker, and put on the burlap. You’re in Squad Four. If you survive the first morning run with Knight Titus, maybe we’ll see if you actually know how a screwdriver works. Move.”
“Thank you so much for your guidance! We won’t disappoint the Brotherhood!” Lucy said, her aggressive optimism instantly returning as she gathered up the scratchy, heavy initiate jumpsuit.
Apparently, fashion was the first casualty of the new world order.
…
A sharp, metallic clanging echoed through the concrete cavern of the barracks, shattering my consciousness like a brick through a window. I flinched, my eyes snapping open as a blinding beam of morning sunlight sliced through a high, barred window, striking me directly across the face.
In the upper left corner of my vision, a crisp line of green text flashed against the dark backdrop of my lingering sleep.
[You feel well rested.]
“Bullshit,” I muttered, my voice sounding like gravel grinding in a blender.
Every single vertebrae in my spine felt like it had been individually spot-welded together during the night. The primitive metal bunk beneath me possessed a thin, military-grade mattress that offered all the structural compliance of a concrete slab.
I rolled onto my side, attempting a basic inventory of my limbs, but my miserable Agility stat made the simple rotation feel like trying to turn a battleship in a bathtub.
“Good morning, Kenny!” Lucy’s voice burst into my ears, practically radiating rainbows and sunshine from the bunk across the narrow aisle.
Before my slow-moving brain could formulate a defensive response, she was already on her feet. Her burlap initiate jumpsuit looked remarkably neat, entirely defying the physical properties of the scratchy, potato-sack material. She grabbed my arm with a firm, unyielding grip and hauled me upward into a sitting position, completely disregarding my low-stat inertia.
“Up we get! The early bird catches the rad-worm!” Lucy cheered, leaning in to give my shoulders a vigorous, highly insistent massage that sent a painful cascade of pops down my neck. “We have our first official squad layout meeting in exactly ten minutes, and I’ve already structured a wonderful baseline itinerary for our morning synchronization.”
“Lucy, please, my bones are currently held together by spite and rebellious muscle tissue,” I groaned, reaching up to rub the crust from my eyes.
The ambient environment of the barracks was already erupting into a localized disaster zone. The room smelled heavily of cold grease, ancient canvas, and the distinct, suffocating aroma of teenage sweat and absolute existential desperation. It was like a high school locker room inside a pre-war bomb shelter.
“Hey! Look at this! Seriously, someone look at this!” A lanky initiate with a pale, nervous face shouted from three bunks down, aggressively thrusting his bare foot into the air. “I think it’s a rad-fungus. It’s taking over my big toe! It feels like it’s pulsing!”
“Nobody cares about your toe, Thaddeus,” a lanky initiate with narrow, highly suspicious eyes snapped back from the opposite side of the room.
They were sitting on the edge of their mattress (I can’t tell the gender), watching the entire room with a calculated, predatory intensity, as if they were trying to mathematically determine which one of us was going to suffer a complete psychological breakdown first.
My guess would be the quiet one. It’s always the quiet one.
“If you can’t walk on the morning run, Knight Titus is just going to leave you for the radscorpions anyway.” They informed toe-guy, coldly.
“It’s a medical emergency!” Thaddeus protested, his voice rising into a panicked squeak. He tried to stand, instantly flinching and letting out a sharp gasp as his weight hit the floor. He put on a fiercely tough, terribly unconvincing grimace, squaring his shoulders. “I mean… it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s just a baseline flesh wound. I can march through the pain. A true warrior ignores the flesh.”
He took two brave steps forward, immediately ruining the performance by limping heavily and grabbing the edge of a locker for structural support.
“Oh, that looks incredibly uncomfortable!” Lucy immediately abandoned my shoulders, her camp-counselor instincts instantly triggering at full capacity. She marched straight over to Thaddeus’s bunk, her expression brimming with the absolute earnestness of a town council member delivering a plate of neighborly welcome cookies.
Great.
Now I want cookies.
“Thaddeus, is it?” Lucy fussed over him. “Don’t you worry. A community is only as strong as its foundation, and that includes your toe! We just need to implement a proper squad accountability check.”
Thaddeus blinked at her, completely caught off guard by the sudden influx of aggressive Vault positivity. “A what?”
“An accountability check!” Lucy repeated, pulling a small piece of charcoal and a scrap of paper from her pocket. “I’ve already started drafting a bunk-bed chores rotation. If we restructure the laundry triage and let you handle the seated technical maintenance today, we can keep your weight off that foot while still maintaining a happy family layout! Everyone pitches in, everyone feels supported.”
The suspicious initiate let out a loud, mocking snort from their bunk. “A chores rotation? What sector did you crawl out of? This the Brotherhood of Steel. Not a… family thing.” They sounded confused by their own metaphor.
Probably don’t have a reference for something more positive. To be fair, I doubt there are a lot of Summer Camps in teh Wasteland.
Across the room, another initiate was completely ignoring the conversation.
He was a broad-shouldered guy with a intensely vacant stare, sitting perfectly still on his footlocker. He was holding a stiff brush, polishing the toe of his heavy leather combat boot with an intensity that looked almost religious. He didn't look up, didn't blink, completely consumed by a tiny, invisible smudge on the leather as if the secret to the entire universe was hidden within the shoe polish.
“Hey, buddy,” I called out to the boot-polisher, swinging my leaden legs over the edge of my bunk. “You know if you polish that any harder, you’re going to phase right through the atomic structure of the leather, right?”
The guy finally stopped brushing, slowly tilting his head up. He stared at me with wide, unblinking eyes. “The Knight said a clean boot reflects a clean soul. If there is a smudge, the armor won’t accept you.”
“Right. Good talk.” I muttered, recognizing the exact flavor of military brainwashing when I saw it. I turned back toward Lucy, who was currently trying to force a highly detailed latrine sanitation schedule into Thaddeus’s reluctant hands. I leaned in close, whispering over the ambient noise of the room. “Lucy, I love the enthusiasm, but I think our new roommates might be a little low on the cooperative social scale. The vibe in here is heavily leaning toward a Lord of the Flies scenario.”
Lucy gave me a sharp, well-intentioned nudge to my ribs that nearly sent me sliding off the bunk. “Don’t be cynical, Kenny! They’re just adjusting to the environment. Once they see how much more efficient a structured foundation is, they’ll completely understand the value of the Golden Rule. Now, help me find a proper place to post the laundry rotation!”
I looked around at the grim, sweat-stained faces of Squad Four, then down at the scratchy burlap uniform in my hands, and sighed. If we were going to find a way onto that Vertibird, I was going to have to survive a lot more than just a chores dispute.
…
The barracks noise was intensely replaced by the oppressive, chemically sterilized scent of a makeshift medical tent. We were lined up on cold, uneven concrete, shuffling forward in our burlap sacks toward a Scribe who looked like he hadn’t slept since before the Great War. This was the initial baseline screening—measuring the raw physical potential of Squad Four.
I was screwed.
“Conroy, Kenneth.” The Scribe muttered, not even looking up as he ticked a box on his clipboard. “Step up to the gauge.”
He gestured vaguely toward a hulking monstrosity of pre-war steel that looked like a hybrid between a torture device and an industrial scale. It had two heavy brass handles sticking out, connected to a massive dial calibrated in units I’m sure were scientifically sound but meant nothing to me.
I gripped the handles.
Okay, Strength 4. Not totally pathetic. I’m stronger than a radroach, probably. I took a deep breath, braced my leaden feet against the concrete, and pulled. I pulled with every ounce of physical willpower I possessed, my teeth clenched, my muscles screaming in immediate protest.
The thick red needle on the dial moved. I watched it intently. It lurched clockwise with a sickening, grinding sound... and stopped dead at a number that looked offensively low.
“Strength baseline...” The Scribe paused, squinting at the dial, then back at his clipboard, his expression shifting from bored to actively confused. He tapped the gauge, as if expecting it to be broken. “Below optimal parameters. Marginal compliance.”
The words marginal compliance stung, mostly because they were accurate. I stepped down, massaging my aching shoulders.
Next up was Agility.
The Scribe didn’t even have to say anything; he just pointed to a twenty-foot-high, sagging cargo net hanging in the back of the tent. It looked less like a training tool and more like something designed to catch low-flying birds. The instructions were simple: climb up, touch the rafter, climb down.
Climbing. With Agility 1.
I might as well try to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded using only my elbows.
I approached the net with extreme prejudice. It swayed gently in the breeze coming through the tent flap, mocking me. I took another breath, mentally selecting the nonexistent ‘Action Points’ menu, and reached up, grabbing a thick rope strand. I lifted my right foot, carefully aiming it at the lowest loop... and completely, disastrously, missed the pocket entirely.
My foot punched right past the loop, hooking the bottom rope of the net. As I instinctively pulled back, my clumsy center of gravity betrayed me. I didn’t fall down; I fell sideways, the loose netting wrapping around my ankle like a tactical trap. In a frantic, uncoordinated attempt to recover, I tried to push off with my other foot, which only served to entangle that leg.
Within ten seconds, I had somehow managed to perform a complete, involuntary 180-degree flip. I was now hanging upside down, three feet off the concrete, suspended by my tangled legs like a fly in a spider’s web. The burlap jumpsuit had ridden up, leaving my knees entirely exposed, adding a final layer of pathetic detail to the performance.
I swung gently back and forth, staring at the concrete. Despair didn’t even begin to cover the crushing weight of regret pressing down on me.
Why hadn’t I invested in the Agility stat? Why? What kind of moron min-maxes Charisma and Intelligence in Survival Mode? I was Level 12! I had an unspent perk point right now! I was actively punishing myself! I deserved to hang here. I deserved to be left for the mutant hounds.
“Aspirant... Conroy?” The Scribe looked up, blinking. His mouth actually dropped open. He lowered his clipboard, staring at me with a look of pure, unadulterated clinical bewilderment. He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling a long, slow breath. “How did you even... What is happening?”
I cleared my throat, trying to sound dignified. “This is... advanced tactical suspension training. Sir.”
I heard a sudden, violent inhale of air next to me, followed by the rapid-fire crunch of burlap against rope. Lucy moved through my inverted field of vision like a streak of lightning. She didn’t climb the net; she crushed it. She moved with a perfect, liquid athletic form that made me want to weep, scaling the entire vertical distance in about four seamless motions.
She didn’t even use her hands to balance; she just sprinted up the shifting ropes.
She touched the rafter and descended just as quickly, landing beside the Scribe with a soft, perfectly controlled thud, her posture immediately immaculate, her expression a beacon of unrelenting, wholesome support.
“Great form, Kenny! Way to visualize the objective!” Lucy cheered, completely ignoring my current predicament as she flashed me a radiant, double-thumbs-up.
She was so nice.
Right now? I despised that.
Lucy turned to the Scribe, her bright-eyed disposition firing at full capacity. “And don’t you worry about the suspension phase, sir! I read a study in the Vault biology manuals about this. We believe that negative reinforcement actively compromises the neuro-muscular pathways and muscle memory development! A supportive environment is key to a strong mind, and even stronger body! We’re highly trainable techs, sir!”
The Scribe stared at her. He stared at her wide, sincere, absolutely serious face, then looked up at my inverted, gently swinging body. He slowly picked up his pen, scratched out whatever baseline rating he was about to write for me, and simply wrote N/A. Or maybe it was A\N? I was upside down, how should I know?
The Scribe then turned and walked out of the tent, presumably to find some industrial-grade psychiatric support.
“Please help me.” I muttered from the net. “I am not Batman.”
That was the hardest thing I have ever said in my entire life.
…
The blistering afternoon sun beat down on the main airfield tarmac, turning the cracked asphalt beneath my palms into a literal frying pan. We had been at this for hours. A towering Senior Knight in full, dust-encrusted T-60 Power Armor stood over us, his voice amplified by his helmet’s external speakers into a deafening, metallic roar as he screamed a ceaseless stream of creative insults. My hands were raw from hauling rusted, lead-weighted ammunition crates across the runway, and now we were face-down in the grit, pushing our body weight against the searing ground.
“Ninety-nine,” I gasped, my voice barely a whisper against the shimmering heat waves radiating off the deck.
Every muscle in my arms was trembling, a violent chemical protest courtesy of my pathetic Strength 4. The heavy burlap of the initiate jumpsuit was soaked in sweat, chafing miserably against my neck. I forced my elbows to bend, dropping my chest toward the blistering asphalt before shoving upward with a ragged, pathetic groan that felt like it was tearing my pectorals right off the bone.
“One hundred.” I breathed out, collapsing flat on my stomach, entirely indifferent to the fact that the runway was currently cooking my face.
I blinked through the sweat stinging my eyes, waiting for the sweet, definitive chime of progress. I had just survived a grueling, military-grade physical conditioning circuit on a nuclear wasteland airfield. Surely, the universe owed me a fractional increase. A single decimal point toward a permanent attribute point. Anything.
A tiny, crisp box of green text blinked into existence in the upper left corner of my vision.
[Strength +1 (Expires in 1 Hour)]
I stared at the blinking text, my heart sinking faster than aVertibird with a blown engine. “You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered into the dirt.
It was a trap. A complete, total, mechanical scam. The realization hit me with the crushing weight of a fully loaded fat man launcher. Traditional exercise—sweating, straining, tearing muscle fibers until you puked—didn’t actually grant real, permanent experience points in this twisted Gamer System. It didn’t rewrite the core code of my character build. It was just a temporary status buff. A fleeting, post-workout modifier that was going to completely evaporate the second I sat down for lunch. I couldn’t sweat my way into a better build. If I wanted to permanently fix my abysmal stats, I needed an actual, undeniable level-up, and doing push-ups on hot asphalt wasn’t going to give me a single point of XP.
Right next to me, Maximus was apparently operating under a completely different set of biological rules. He was practically glowing with a terrifying, fanatical devotion, his broad shoulders moving in a rhythmic, unyielding cadence as he pumped out his own set of push-ups without a single sign of slowing down.
“The iron... purifies the blood,” Maximus panted, his wide, vacant eyes fixed on the pavement as if he were staring directly into the eyes of the Founder himself. “The strain makes us worthy. The iron burns away the weakness of the flesh.”
“Actually, buddy, too much iron in your blood is called hemochromatosis, and it causes severe organ failure,” I called out, tilting my head sideways to glare at him through the heat haze. “And also, we’re the Brotherhood of Steel, not the Brotherhood of Iron. If you’re going to be zealot, at least get the scripture right.”
Maximus didn’t stop, though his rhythm hitched for a fraction of a second, his brow furrowing as he tried to process the medical diagnosis while maintaining his alignment.
“Kenny! Please!” Lucy scolded from my left, her voice carrying a sharp, disappointed edge despite the fact that she was currently executing perfect, textbook push-ups with the effortless grace of a pre-war Olympic gymnast.
She didn’t even look tired. So unfair.
Her hair was still neatly bound, completely defying the laws of thermodynamic exhaustion. “A happy family requires absolute squad solidarity! We need to lift each other up during our daily synchronization, not tear down our brothers with technical semantics!”
A few feet away, Dane stopped entirely, resting on one elbow while sitting on the edge of their mattress during the previous hour had apparently given them plenty of time to study the group. Now, they were staring at me with narrow, highly calculated eyes, their mouth set in a thin, dangerous line. Dane didn’t say a word, but they slowly reached down, adjusting the strap on their boot while keeping their predatory focus locked entirely on my face, clearly filing my blatant lack of respect for the chain of command away for later use.
I let out a long, defeated sigh, letting my forehead drop back onto the searing tarmac. My temporary Strength buff was already ticking down, forty-five minutes left on a clock that didn’t matter, and I was still stuck in Squad Four with a fanatical boot-polisher, a suspicious auditor, and the world’s most aggressive camp counselor. If I didn’t find a way to earn some actual quest experience soon, this status buff was going to be the death of me.
…
After precisely one day under the iron thumb of the Brotherhood of Steel, I was prepared to make my final, official, data-driven assessment: Fuck the Brotherhood of Steel.
I had never liked them morally anyway. They were anti-ghoul, anti-synth, anti-robot, and the sheer hypocrisy of their tech-hoarding ideology while deploying a nuclear-hurling giant like Liberty Prime was frankly hilarious.
If the goddamn Railroad—a bunch of underground tech-romantics with a localized cell structure—could completely dismantle them in Fallout 4, then as a global military power, the Brotherhood was comparative to a guy who lifts a lot of weights and aggressively puffs his chest to compensate for having a tiny penis.
They were an oversized, steel-plated paper tiger.
Lucy and I didn’t need their organization, their fanatical hierarchy, or their scratchy burlap undergarments. We just needed their stuff. And according to their own doctrine, having pre-war tech was dangerous for the average person anyway, so really, I was doing them a civic favor.
I would just rob them blind and hit the road.
Was it nice? No. Was it nice in comparison to getting left for the radscorpions by Knight Titus? Absolutely. Good was a real blurred line out here in the Wasteland, and sometimes, you just had to confidently choose the lesser of two evils.
The midnight air was biting and sharp as I slipped out of the barracks, sticking close to the corrugated steel perimeter of Hangar Bay Three. My objective was pure tactical reconnaissance. I needed to inspect the Vertibird parked on the tarmac, count the local guard rotations, and figure out exactly what kind of security locks were holding the main hangar doors shut.
With my Intelligence score, mapping out the facility’s structural layout based on typical pre-war military blueprints should have been a breeze.
The problem, however, was my Perception. At a baseline score of four, my sensory awareness was practically operating through a thick layer of irradiated cheesecloth.
I crept forward, completely, blind to anything happening in front of me, to the side of me, or behind me. And a stealth mission isn’t a great time to break out a bright green glowing pip-boy flashlight, so this would have to go on for a while. Let’s hope my sense of direction is better than my spatial awareness.
But I doubt it—found something!
My focus was locked entirely on the heavy iron padlock securing a nearby maintenance crate. “That’s what I’m talking about!” I whisper cheered, which in hindsight, was a very bad thing to do on a stealth mission.
Still, I brought my Bobby Pin over, and thank fuck it was only an advanced lock.
I’ve only ever bothered to invest one point into the Lockpicking Perk, so that was a big relief. Now I just need to get it open.
Click! Nope! Not that angle. Click. Not that one, either. Cliick. Closer… Click.
[+0015 XP]
“I’m in.” … I always wanted to say that.
Let’s see… some fragmentation grenades… ammunition for types of guns I don’t have… bottle caps. Huh. Forgot that was the currency somehow. It feels like that would be pretty easy to extort, right? There’s got to be tons of untouched bottle manufacturing plants, right?
I was still prepared to swipe all of it and leave, when suddenly, a faint, metallic scraping sound echoed through the quiet night.
I froze, my hand hovering over my Pip-Boy, as I went into V.A.T.S mode.
I snapped my head around, my eyes scanning the dark tarmac, but there was absolutely nothing there. Just empty shipping containers and the distant hum of a generator. Knowing all the classic horror tropes, though, I wasn't about to just brush it off and keep walking.
I decided to try and trick whatever stealthy entity was stalking me, by pretending I was completely oblivious before rapidly spinning around to catch them red-handed. Foolproof.
“Oh, guess it must have been my imagination.” I said, loudly addressing the empty desert wind while taking a deliberate, exaggerated step forward. “I guess I’ll just go back to—aha!”
I whipped around, pointing a finger into the darkness.
Nope. Nobody was there. Just a rusted oil drum and a pile of gravel.
“Must be hearing things.” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck and letting out a forced, casual chuckle for the benefit of the shadows. “Well, no harm, no—got you!”
I spun back in the opposite direction, lunging toward a stack of wooden crates.
And no one was there. Great.
“Goddamn it…” I sighed.
I stood alone under the starry Wasteland sky, feeling like a complete lunatic.
Maybe I should have invested a few more points into my Luck stat during my last level-up, because right now, my ears were playing tricks on me, my eyes were lying to me, and I was playing a high-stakes game of peek-a-boo with a localized draft of wind.
I gave the empty tarmac one last, highly suspicious glare before turning back toward the hangar, desperately hoping my lockpicking skills remained sharper than my senses. You know I’ve never broken one Bobby Pin?
True story!
…
The night was supposed to be a testing ground for a future Knight, a silent vigil to prove his devotion to the order. Instead, it was turning into a complete test of his patience. Maximus crept through the shadows bordering Hangar Bay Three, his boots pressing into the dirt with a deliberate, calculated caution that he hoped mirrored the holy training manuals.
His eyes were locked entirely on Kenny.
The weird Vault boy was moving along the perimeter with a clumsy, entirely un-military posture that practically screamed saboteur. He had been acting strange all day, disrespecting the holy metallurgy of the armor, making weird remarks about hemochromatosis, and now he was sneaking out past curfew.
A true aspirant of the Brotherhood of Steel had a duty to investigate. If he caught a spy, Knight Titus would notice. The power armor would finally be his.
Maximus quickened his pace, sticking close to a rusted tractor trailer before making a tactical dive toward a large stack of wooden ammunition crates. He dropped his weight into a low, defensive crouch, preparing to peek around the corner—only to violently collide with something distinctly solid, fleshy, and highly unyielding.
“Oof!” Maximus gasped, his elbow planting directly into a patch of rough burlap.
“Get off me, you giant idiot,” Dane hissed, their voice a fierce, venomous whisper in the dark.
Maximus scrambled back a fraction of an inch, his heart hammering against his ribs as he realized he had practically sat directly on top of them. Dane was pressed flat against the back of the crates, their narrow eyes flashing with absolute fury in the dim moonlight. Even in the dead of night, they were clutching a regulation Brotherhood clipboard to their chest, a pencil gripped so tightly in their hand that the wood was creaking.
“What are you doing here?” Maximus demanded, trying to keep his voice down while adjusting his uniform. “I’m on a tactical reconnaissance mission. I’m tracking the target.”
“I’m writing an official report on the target’s clear structural non-compliance, which you are currently disrupting with your fat feet,” Dane snapped back, their eyes darting over his shoulder to check if Kenny had heard the commotion. “He’s clearly planning something. Look at his posture. He’s a security risk. I’m documenting the exact timeline of his treason for the Elder.”
Maximus frowned, a defensive knot tightening in his chest. He didn’t like Dane’s tone, and he certainly didn’t want them stealing the credit for exposing a Vault saboteur. “I saw him first. I’ve been tracking his baseline parameters since the barracks. If anyone is turning him in, it’s me.”
“Oh, are we doing a midnight squad accountability check? I brought a pen!”
The cheerful, whispered exclamation dropped straight from above, shattering the tense silence like an air-dropped ration crate. Maximus flinched violently, nearly knocking his head against the wooden crates as Lucy dropped down from a low-hanging rusted ventilation pipe right next to them.
She landed with a soft, perfectly athletic thud, completely unbothered by the fact that she had just fallen six feet out of the sky in the middle of a restricted military zone. She was beaming, her eyes bright and eager as she produced a small piece of charcoal from her jumpsuit pocket, looking at them like a school teacher arriving for an early morning professional development seminar.
“Shh!” Maximus flailed his arms, his eyes going wide with panic. “Be quiet! He’s right around the corner!”
“Why are you out here?” Dane growled, their voice dropping into an incredibly low, threatening register as they stabbed their pencil toward Lucy’s face. “Are you part of his cell? Are you helping him coordinate the security breach?”
“Of course not! Kenny is just exploring our new communal foundation,” Lucy whispered back, her expression brimming with that same aggressive, unwavering optimism that had thoroughly derailed the physical screening earlier.
No sane person likes exercise.
She squeezed herself into the narrow gap between Maximus and the crates, entirely ignoring their hostile body language. “But a strong squad requires total synchronization. When I noticed Kenny slipping out, I thought, ‘Wow, what a wonderful opportunity for a spontaneous team-building exercise!’ And then I saw you two collaborating so beautifully in the shadows, and I just knew the Golden Rule was finally taking root!”
Maximus stared at her, completely flabbergasted. His brain was actively short-circuiting trying to process the concept of a team-building exercise on a covert tracking operation. “This isn’t a family meeting, MacLean. We’re tracking a potential spy. He’s trying to infiltrate the hangar.”
“He’s a thief,” Dane added, their pencil scratching a frantic, angry note onto the clipboard. “And now the three of you are technically obstructing an official investigation. If he escapes because of this circus, I’m putting all your names in the report.”
Before Lucy could offer a detailed rebuttal regarding the bureaucratic efficiency of a shared chores rotation, a loud, metallic clatter echoed from a row of industrial waste containers ten feet away. Maximus reached for his combat knife, his muscles tensing as the lid of a massive dumpster slowly creaked open.
A pale, terrified face emerged from the darkness of the bin.
Thaddeus scrambled out, his uniform covered in dust and grease, clutching a half-eaten, slightly crushed wrapper of pre-war Cram to his chest like a life preserver. He was limping heavily on his bad toe, his eyes darting frantically between the three of them before he tripped over a stray piece of scrap metal and tumbled straight into the dirt at Maximus’s feet.
“Don’t shoot!” Thaddeus wailed in a loud, panicked squeak, instantly slapping a hand over his own mouth as he realized how loud he was being. He scrambled backward until his spine hit the ammunition crates, his chest heaving. “I didn’t see anything! I swear! I just got lost looking for the latrine, and then I found the food storage, and then I heard heavy footsteps, so I hid in the trash! Please don’t tell Knight Titus! He’ll leave me for the radscorpions!”
“Quiet, you idiot!” Dane hissed, reaching down to aggressively yank Thaddeus upward by his collar until he was huddled against the wood. “Great. Now the entire garbage sector is part of the conspiracy. If anyone makes another sound, I will personally report you for treason before the sun comes up.”
Maximus completely ignored the argument, his attention drawing back toward the corner of the hangar as a strange series of loud, dramatic vocalizations drifted through the midnight air.
He leaned forward, his shoulder pressing into the rough wood as he peeked around the edge of the stack. Dane, Lucy, and a trembling Thaddeus immediately piled in right behind him, their heads stacking vertically in a ridiculous, overlapping column of mutual suspicion.
A few yards away, Kenny was standing in front of an advanced maintenance crate, entirely oblivious to the small army watching him from the shadows.
“Oh, guess it must have been my imagination,” Kenny’s voice carried clearly across the quiet tarmac, sounding bizarrely loud and completely unnatural. He took a massive, theatrical step forward, looking directly at the empty desert wind. “I guess I’ll just go back to—aha!”
Kenny suddenly whipped around, pointing a stiff finger dramatically into a completely empty patch of darkness.
Maximus blinked, a profound sense of confusion washing over his tactical instincts. He looked down at Dane. “Is... is he having a psychological breakdown? Is that part of the Vault conditioning?”
“He’s testing for thermal tracking sensors,” Dane whispered, their brow furrowing into a tight, analytical scowl as they watched Kenny spin back around. “Or he’s mocking us. Look at the angle of his arm. He’s checking the perimeter for automated defense turrets. He’s highly trained.”
“He’s just playing a game!” Lucy whispered happily, her head bobbing up and down against Maximus’s shoulder. “Kenny loves visualizing scenarios before he implements a structural solution. It’s a classic lateral thinking exercise! See? He’s very focused.”
“Must be hearing things,” Kenny muttered from the tarmac, rubbing the back of his neck with a forced, completely hollow chuckle that sounded entirely insane in the dead of night. “Well, no harm, no—got you!”
He spun back in the opposite direction, lunging aggressively toward an empty stack of wooden pallets, pointing his finger at the blank wood with absolute conviction.
“He’s definitely crazy,” Thaddeus whimpered, taking a terrified bite of his compressed meat sandwich while keeping his eyes locked on the spectacle. “The quiet ones always blow up the barracks. I read about a guy in Sector Seven who started talking to the walls, and three days later, he ate a live bloatfly and tried to steal a Vertibird battery with his bare teeth.”
“Shut up and watch,” Maximus ordered, his frustration peaking as he watched Kenny finally abandon the dramatic martial arts routine.
The weird Vault boy sighed deeply, muttering something about god damning things or something, before pulling out a tiny piece of metal—a bobby pin—and sticking it directly into the heavy iron padlock of the maintenance corridor . He bent over the mechanism, his head tilted sideways as he began twisting the tiny wire with an intensity that looked completely ridiculous.
But apparently merited.
A sharp, distinct metallic snap echoed from the padlock, and Kenny instantly let out a quiet, victorious fist pump. “Two for two! I am on fire.”
Maximus felt his jaw tighten. The Vault boy had actually bypassed a pre-war security lock using a piece of discarded garbage. It wasn’t just weird; it was an undeniable breach of military protocol. He watched as Kenny began walking through… and doubling back for fragmentation grenades? Where did he get those?
“He’s looting the armory,” Dane whispered, their pencil practically tearing through the paper on their clipboard as they documented the theft. “This is a capital offense. The Elder will have him flayed.”
“He’s just conducting an impromptu inventory audit,” Lucy defended softly, though her signature smile twitched just a fraction as she watched her best friend pocket a handful of lethal explosives. “We always keep an open ledger in the Vault. It’s about resource allocation!”
“He’s going to get us all killed,” Thaddeus groaned, sinking lower into his burlap uniform.
Maximus didn’t say anything.
He just kept his eyes locked on Kenny, his mind racing with the absolute certainty that Squad Four was a complete disaster. If he was going to get his hands on that power armor, he was going to have to navigate a squad that consisted of a rogue Vault thief, a naive Vault Chaplin, a ruthless snitch, and a guy eating garbage in a dumpster.
He took a slow, deep breath, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Now!
No, the timing’s not right.
What about how?!
Nope.
… he’ll know when he knows.
…
I managed to lose whatever or whoever was following me (I think) and slipped through the side maintenance hatch of Hangar Bay Three, sealing it quietly behind me. The darkness inside was cavernous, dominated by the massive, sleek silhouette of Vertibird VB-02 sitting on the central pad.
To any regular Wastelander, this thing was a sacred, untouchable techno-religious monument, a relic of the Old World gods that only the chosen could touch. But to me? It was just a giant, beautifully logical puzzle waiting to be solved.
I scrambled up the landing gear housing and dropped into the pilot's seat, the smell of aged leather and hydraulic fluid instantly wrapping around me. And let me tell you, my aviators have never fit better… At night… is this why I couldn’t see anything earlier?!
Nope! Bury that thought, blame the game, not the gamer!
I hauled down the under-dash panel beneath the primary avionics array, exposing a horrifyingly complex labyrinth of thick copper wiring, humming vacuum tubes, and tightly packed pre-war circuitry.
My Intelligence 9 brain immediately went to work, translating the chaotic mess of wires into a perfectly clear schematic map in my mind. It was beautiful. Like abstract art, that someone told you actually made a shape.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my freshly looted wire cutters, and confidently sliced through the primary ignition lines, stripping the insulation back before splicing them directly into the central terminal console. I unreeled the data cable from my Pip-Boy and slammed it into the auxiliary diagnostic port.
The green monochrome screen flickered to life, scrolling through lines of archaic military code before establishing a direct hardware override link with the Vertibird’s mainframe.
“Throttle up, collective pitch neutral, bypass the fuel-to-air ratio...” I muttered to myself, smirking in the dark as I ran through the exact pre-flight manual data I had pieces together through lessons in the Vault. “Let’s bypass the secondary stabilizers, override the terminal lock... and there we go.”
A satisfying, deep, mechanical whine began to build from the roof of the hangar, a heavy bass vibration that rumbled straight through the floorboards of the cockpit. The twin turboprop engines spun to life, their massive blades slicing through the stagnant indoor air with a deafening roar. The instrument panel illuminated my face in a vibrant, triumphant green glow.
It’s alive. It’s ALIVE!
I felt like an absolute god. No more running from radscorpions. No more doing push-ups on hot asphalt until my arms turned to jelly. I had completely bypassed the entire Brotherhood progression loop in a single night.
I firmly gripped the heavy flight stick and pulled back, feeding power to the thrusters.
The Vertibird lifted off the concrete with a powerful, hydraulic surge, tilting slightly before roaring upward. We smashed right through the automated hangar roof doors, bursting out into the cool midnight air as twisted metal and safety glass rained down into the dark bay below.
I watched the entire airfield shrink beneath me, the tiny watchtowers and the sprawling tents reducing to a pathetic little playset in the desert sands. I couldn’t help but grin. It was the perfect heist.
Then, a deafening, shrieking red klaxon wailed from the center of my console, bathing the cockpit in a blood-red light.
[WARNING: TARGET LOCK DETECTED]
The green text boxes on my HUD began flashing erratically, a violent red warning box overwriting my Pip-Boy screen. I stared down at the base grid blinking on the radar, my stomach dropping into a frozen, hollow pit as the absolute disaster of my own arrogance hit me like a mini-nuke.
I had hotwired the Vertibird. I had bypassed the engine locks.
But because I had been so busy feeling like a high-Intelligence criminal mastermind, I had completely forgotten a massive, fatal variable: the automated base defense network. I hadn’t hacked the central security terminal back in the hangar to clear my transponder signature, and to the automated watchtowers, I wasn’t an initiate on a joyride.
I was an enemy aircraft.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me—” I whispered, my fingers freezing on the flight stick.
Two blinding, brilliant white streaks of missile fire erupted from the perimeter watchtowers, arcing through the night sky with terrifying, homing precision. I didn’t even have time to try an evasive maneuver with my abysmal Agility stat. The rockets slammed directly into the left engine housing with a concussive, blinding explosion that ripped the wing completely out of its socket.
The cockpit spun violently, the horizon flipping upside down as a deafening alarm screamed in my ears. The ground rushed up to meet me in a terrifying, chaotic blur of tearing metal, burning fuel, and absolute darkness.
Everything stopped.
I was dead.
...