2 Vault 108

This place wasn't a SCIF. It WAS underground and built very similar to Site R or similar governmental sites, but it wasn't that either. It was a Vault, of course.

This meant she was in the Fallout universe—a death world like she had feared. But as post-apocalyptic dystopian death worlds went, this wasn't anywhere near the worst of the lot.

She'd rather spend a lifetime in the wastelands than spend a week in the lower levels of a Hive World in the Warhammer 40K universe, for example. At least here, she would see the person killing her, and a futari Goddess wouldn't eat her soul. And she wouldn't be sacrificed to keep what amounted to Emperor Verizon running.

She crouched down, retaking stock of her more immediately important present surroundings. She had played Fallout 3 several times, although she had not apparently played either New Vegas or Fallout 4. That seemed a little out of character as she grew up playing Fallout 1 and 2. But, she would have immediately recognised the Gary clone if she hadn't been so surprised by the murder attempt. Vault 108 had scared the crap out of her, despite being somewhat of a throw-away location in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3.

She remembered it was one of the few locations that did not have a single working computer terminal that players could use to discover backstory; it was populated by dozens of copies of a single NPC whose only dialogue was various intonations of the name "Gary" as they attacked you. It was a simple and low-effort "dungeon" design, but it still managed the startle her the first time she explored it.

She winced as she grabbed the tire iron with her good, albeit bleeding hand. Thankfully, she was immune to tetanus. If she recalled correctly, perhaps thirty clones were in the game, and they were usually armed with tire irons or knives, but a couple had 10mm pistols. She wasn't at the beginning of the vault, either. None of the first rooms had broken chemistry sets or lab equipment, so she couldn't rush out the entrance to be safe.

Especially since, if she recalled, occasionally a super mutant, giant scorpions, or even a death claw was sometimes in front of the Vault 108 entrance. Hopefully, that was just a game fast travel mechanic and not indicative of what she might expect outside. A super mutant or a death claw would be the end of her right away. She might be able to outrun the scorpion.

She glanced around the room for valuable supplies, there was a medkit and a few lockers that she would open shortly, but something about the dead Gary caused her to pay more attention to it.

He had a PipBoy on his arm! That seemed awfully convenient. Her memories stirred some more; as far as she knew, the only Gary clone that had a PipBoy was the one that was kidnapped, interrogated and dismembered by one faction of the Brotherhood of Steel in one of the DLCs. So, either Fallout 3 never bothered to animate PipBoys on the Gary clones, or she was placed here sometime before the events of Fallout 3 started.

She hadn't heard any footsteps, so she felt a little safer standing up and going to the medkit to look for loot, although that first Gary HAD been quiet on his feet like a little cat and had snuck up on her.

She found a single StimPak, some gauze and no doubt an expired bottle of saline. Her first instincts were to use the StimPak immediately to fix her broken arm, but all her medical knowledge started screaming for her to stop.

Her second set of memories WAS incredibly curious about these StimPaks, as, in the game, they had the capability to heal almost any wound, to the point where they could grow back an eye that had been shot out. But, unfortunately, the fact that it was so miraculous meant that there were only a few ways such medicine could function, absent some kind of magic generating new mass ex nihilo.

She thought the clue was in the name. Stim was quite close to and was a homonym for the word stem. So she figured that the most likely scenario was that this medicine contained vast quantities of generic, genome-unspecific undifferentiated stem cells, along with some mechanism for directing them to heal the host they were injected in. Chemical or protein signalers? Proteins, probably.

She was very interested in how that worked but was quite worried about the interactions between her genome, specifically the error correction modification, and these stem cells. She wasn't sure how you would create a genome-unspecific batch of stem cells, but it probably wasn't as universal as their marketing claimed.

Her memories were pretty sure StimPaks worked on Super Mutants and ghouls, even. Still, her second memories were confident that her genome was likely more divergent from baseline than a Super Mutant, even if it only had that one modification. It was actually relatively easy to turn a person into a monster with relatively few changes to their genome.

Mostly, they would die of it, but their genome wouldn't be that different if they survived. However, creating an entirely novel organelle in every cell designed to work with existing biology but be radically different (BETTER! -- half of her insisted) would cause a person's genome to diverge radically, even if they seemed like an average human on the exterior.

If that was the case and the StimPak used some universal undifferentiated stem cells, the worst case would be a painful death as the mass of stem cells differentiated randomly in her bloodstream, assuming her medichines didn't destroy them. Followed by perhaps growing tumours at the site of healing, followed by the best case where her medichines would kill them as soon as they entered the body, in which case nothing good nor bad would happen, but she wouldn't be healed either. She would have to slowly inspect, investigate and research the exact method of action before using a StimPak, barring some emergency where she would absolutely die if she did not use one.

Sighing, she stuffed the StimPak into one of the pockets of her messenger bag. Why was this bag so full, anyway? She opened the flaps to find almost an entire case of a dozen MREs stuffed into the pockets.

They weren't future MREs, either. These were familiar to her from her time in the Army. As she glanced at the Meal, Self-Heating, Fish Cakes, she was sure someone was fucking with her. They didn't even make this flavour anymore. Everybody hated it. She, especially, hated it. She was convinced that every single MRE was this flavour, too.

She closed her eyes briefly. You know what? She wasn't going to fall into the trope of every Self-Insert character she had ever read about who cursed or swore eternal vengeance on Mr ROB. She always felt that was trite. Plus, half of her believed that she had already died while the other half was still sure neither of them had been alive at all before today, so there was consensus about showing a little gratitude.

She mumbled quietly, "You know what? Thank you, Mr ROB, for these Meals, Self-Heating, Fish Cakes. I really appreciate it." She did, too, as she wasn't expecting any provisions to come along with her (those cost extra points.) But, it would keep her fed for a week or so and keep her from having to eat any Gary's if she couldn't find any food down here.

Neither halves of her were too keen on cannibalism, but second set probably wouldn't have minded if we could convert the body into Soylent Greens or similar fictional foodstuffs. Still, she wasn't going to roast a femur on the barbie like some kind of neo-barb.

It was awkward using the bottle of expired saline to wash her palm, making sure the cut was free of any dirt or particulates before wrapping it in the surprisingly clean gauze, but she managed well enough if she moved slowly and used the crooks of her arms.

After seeing to the open wound, she sat down on the steel desk next to Gary's body and carefully took a look at her left arm. It ranged from quite painful when she did not touch it to excruciatingly painful when something did. She had to unzip her bodysuit to carefully pull her arm out, although it used a future mechanism that kind of felt like shark scales rather than a metal zipper.

Wincing as she pulled the arm out of her sleeve, she palpated it gently with the fingers of her other hard. The fracture seemed clean, was only of the ulna and was minimally displaced. She barely needed to realign the bones to set. It was a textbook case of a defensive wound fracture on the ulna.

Usually, she would recommend someone with this type of fracture not shove it back into a long sleeve, but she couldn't see another choice. She certainly wasn't going to walk around with the left side of her chest and bra exposed just to save a bit of pain. She would just have to ensure that she did not displace the fracture when putting her arm back through the sleeve.

After getting her left side back into the bodysuit, she pulled out the diagnostic scanner and awkwardly booted it up one-handed. The computer had several modes of operation, but the most mobile was operating it like a tablet. She scanned her left arm briefly and quickly glanced at the images. It was just as her intuition told her, and seeing the mass of medichines surrounding the fracture reassured her that her implant was operating correctly. The nanomachines looked like they were trying to align the bone themselves slowly, but it would have taken some time.

There was even an option on the tablet to begin a wireless interrogation of the detected medical implant, but that would have to wait as she heard footsteps coming down the hall. She shoved the tablet back in the messenger bag and tossed it out of the way on the desk. Glancing around, she found a couple of filing cabinets that she could crouch and hide behind on the other end of the room from the dead Gary. She would have liked to hide behind the door, but like all vaults, these doors open sideways into the wall like Star Trek. Gripping her tire iron in her good hand, she waited to see if this new Gary would investigate or walk past this room.

She heard the footsteps slow, then a curious tone, "Gary?" Crap, she couldn't be lucky, of course. The footsteps quickened and came inside the room, then paused. A mournful, quiet tone, "Aw... Garyy."

Fuck! Were these clones actually sapient and had a complex social structure based entirely on the name Gary?! She peeked around the filing cabinet briefly to see the new Gary starting to crouch down at the ground to investigate dead Gary.

Feeling like she would not get a better shot at this she started sneaking up on him. She wasn't entirely sure what her boots were made of, but they were quiet when she put effort into it. Wait, did that mean she was already speccing Stealth on her build? She almost gave herself away by snorting. She quieted her mind; there was no need to think, especially much, about the feelings or social dynamics of a group of homicidal clones. Nor should she consider this a game that had stat points to spend. She doubted very much she would be able to access the SPECIAL system from the PipBoy on that dead Gary's arm, for example.

As she neared the crouched Gary, who was about to stand back up, she did two things. First, she winded up for a swing and at the same time placed a foot behind one of his feet to trip him up if moved anywhere except directly forwards -- and dead Gary would trip him up in that case.

She timed her swing pretty well, it reached a downward arc and thunked the Gary on the top of the head when he was still slightly crouched. He groaned and let out a startled, "'ary!"

He tried to back up and turn around simultaneously, one hand reaching down to unsheathe a knife that was in a belt on his waist but managed to trip himself up on her foot and fall backwards, landing splayed out on his back in front of her feet.

She had hoped the first blow had been a KO, but honestly, she had no idea how to hit someone in the head to knock them out. Of course, she wasn't Mike Tyson, but you'd think hitting someone on the head with a thick pipe would be enough!

Before the Gary could orient himself on his situation, she pulled her foot back like Messi taking a set-piece shot on an unprepared goalie and landing the most vigorous kick she could unleash directly on the slightly woozy Gary's head.

A sick crack told her that this Gary wouldn't get up again. She hoped she wasn't desensitising herself to murder too much, but her second set of memories was adamant that just because these things looked like a person doesn't make them people. Her recollections included people who had downloaded their egos into giant space whales and floated in the atmosphere of Saturn. She emphasised that it didn't matter WHAT a person looked like; all that mattered was their sapience or lack thereof.

She waited a moment just in case this new dead Gary had one last lurch ability like a horror movie monster before reaching down and relieving him of his knife, belt, and sheath. She also found two packages of uneaten and unopened Fancy Lad cakes. She eyed them sceptically, as while the lore of the game made it plain the Resource Wars had driven incredible advances in any number of technologies but especially the preservation of food and technology was two hundred years still OK to eat what amounted to a box of Little Debbies?

She'd try one later. She used the knife to cut off parts of this new Gary's vault suit and used them to fahsion an impromptu sling for her left arm, then relieved the first Gary of his PipBoy.

She tried turning it on and heard the electronics start to hum but nothing was displayed on the screen. She was reasonably certain this PipBoy wouldn't grant her the tremendous cosmic power of being able to assign stat points to herself or a hammerspace like it did in the actual game, but she was pretty curious about the computing technology in this world, so she powered it down, and for lack of a better place to put it, she placed it carefully on her left arm. It made a somewhat functional and comfortable brace for her fractured ulna.

She retrieved her bag and decided it wasn't a great idea to stay here anymore. She could be swarmed, potentially. She did need to find a defensible position to fort up. She needed to study the StimPaks, try to fix the PipBoy and most of all, wait until her arm was healed.

Searching the lockers she found a VaultTec riot helmet which she placed firmly on her head, strapping it in place. Her second set of memories was highly pleased. However, she would have preferred to incorporate the armour into her skull itself through various organometallic constructs. Still, she would take what she could get to protect their very vulnerable and squishy squishy brain.

She started sneaking out the door and down the corridor and stopped herself halfway through. She had been crouching to walk; had she really played that many Bethesda games? She was pretty sure in reality, you didn't HAVE to crouch to sneak around. Pausing for a moment, she whispered out testingly, "Fus. Ro. Dah." Nothing happened. Wait, that was definitely not the same game. Whatever, she changed from a ridiculous crouching gait to one that was more skulking.

One corridor over she paused when she saw a sign over a door. It was a backlit sign that was still operating proclaiming "Female dormitory." Her memories of Fallout 3 weren't perfect, but they were pretty good. She recalled that there were various areas of Vault 108 that were just blocked off -- likely by the level designers to save time yet give the impression the Vault was bigger than the actual explorable area.

She opened the door and sure enough it was blocked by a steel desk and several metal filing cabinets. She looked at it oddly, because it wouldn't take that much effort even from her side of the barricade to get through.

Perhaps these Gary clones didn't have much in the way of higher order problem solving or thinking skills? It would certainly make her feel better about killing them.

She braced her left foot and lifted her right almost up to her head, as a ballet dancer could, then placed her right foot on the filing cabinet that looked the most precarious and shoved hard. It tipped over with a loud crash, offering a gap that would be small enough for a flexible woman to crawl through.

In the next corridor over she heard a startled, "Ga-gary??"

Swearing, she eyed the hole before making a decision. She threw her messenger bag through the hole but didn't try to follow it. Instead, she unsheathed her knife and began running towards the noise she heard in the next corridor.

She learned a lot of wisdom from her grandpa of her previous life. One saying he told her came to her head now. Her grandpa flew P-47s in the second World War and also taught her how to fly his little Cessna when she was a teenager. He once told her his philosophy about who should land first at an airport when two aircraft were about to get there at the same time, "Look, I don't care who wins first or second place, I just don't want a tie." He meant, of course, that he didn't want a mid-air collision.

She, however, did. There was a lot of energy released when things collided. She gauged the relative distance of the footsteps she heard in the next corridor and increased her pace from a run to a flat sprint and extended her knife in a very unsafe, running with scissors pose.

Almost at the door that was already sliding open, she leapt, extending her knife in front of her. This would be very embarrassing and possibly fatal if she misjudged the timing, but thankfully, she ran knife-first into a Gary that was turning the corner. As her knife slammed into his stomach, she heard a thunderous bang and felt some pain on her right side, which she ignored so she could better swing the knife up under the ribs and twist it sideways to better destroy either the heart or the aorta which should cause more or less instant death.

The fact that he didn't move any more must mean that she had succeeded. However, her knife was kind of stuck in him and difficult to pull out, so she just discarded it for the moment, grabbing the pistol from his hands and popping to her feet. She glanced down at the action, seeing no obvious malfunction or failure to feed situation which was good since it would be quite a feat to troubleshoot a malfunctioning firearm with only one hand to hold it and work the slide, too.

She aimed the pistol down the corridor this new dead Gary came from, then swung around to aim it around the corridor she had come running. She stilled, tilting her head to listen for any shouts or footsteps, but she could still hear ringing in her ears, so he figured her hearing was briefly unreliable. A pistol being fired in an enclosed area with metal walls and no hearing pro was really intense. At least she would likely suffer no permenant hearing loss. She already had ideas to incorporate electronic baffles using active noise reduction in a helmet, but that might have to wait until she discovered some sort of powered armour. Amusingly enough, the ideas for ANR actually mostly came from her first set of memories; she had worked as a product engineer on similar consumer-grade products.

Not seeing anyone coming, she briefly shoved the pistol in her belt before liberating a second belt and holster, a spare magazine, two whole liters of water of dubious provenance and some sort of mutated fruit from this new dead Gary. She used her foot and good arm to prize the knife from his torso, cleaning it off on his vault jumpsuit. Thankfully this Gary had been something of a gentleman in that he kept almost all of his bleeding internally, so she didn't even have any Garyblood to clean off her outfit.

As she strapped the second belt and holstered the pistol, she decided she felt much better about her situation. After all, what red-blooded American wouldn't feel better in a post-apocalyptic scenario without some Big Iron on her hip?

She turned and started moving with a purpose back towards the female dormitory, awkwardly cradling the two large bottles of water in her good hand. She would need to find or manufacture a backpack, and soon.

She dumped the water and fruit on the desk before crawling up on it herself and trying to squeeze through the hole. Halfway through, she got stuck, a piece of jagged metal threatening to spill some blood if she didn't take some time to move it out of the way carefully.

Considering how she might look, half stuck with her rear in the air if someone had walked past, she let out a bit of a snicker and said, "H-help me, Step-Gary."

At least her sense of humour is still intact, she supposed. She was also glad that she hadn't decided to try to make it through the hole before that Gary had come because he would have come across her at the perfect time to tap dat ass, literally.

Making her way through, she recollected all of her belongings and spent a moment standing the filing cabinet back up to "block" the door, before reaching with her hand to operate the door closing mechanism. A small hole might prompt these Gary's to try to test it, but they didn't seem to try to easily break down the flimsy barricade so she tried to recreate it for now.

She took a moment to scan each of the water bottles, finding they had small amounts of radionuclides inside. She didn't have anything to make a filter, either. It was impossible to make actual water radioactive, but you could dissolve a solution of radioactive particulates inside water and that was what the situation was here. If she had a perfect filter, perhaps graphene-based, she could use that, or alternatively, she could create a low-tech still and distill the water, which would leave behind the solid particulates and generate fresh, clean water. Well, something to think about later. This small amount of radiation wouldn't harm her, and her medichines would work to eliminate the heavy metal toxicity swallowing small amounts of radionuclides would cause.

She drank a half-litre right away, even if it was warm and had a slight brackish taste. She felt that tasty things were going to be something she would have to live without, at least for a while.

She set most of her supplies to the side here, including almost all of the MREs in her messanger bag. She kept the bag and the scanner with her, but she felt she would be more combat capable if she wasn't carrying as much dead weight, and she could come back and reclaim all of this after an initial scouting effort.

She tried to remember any of the training she had in the Army in her past life, but she wasn't by trade combat arms and almost all Army training, especially room clearing, was predicated on having a team at your back helping you.

She was pretty sure if she had asked one of her drill sergeants the best way to clear a series of rooms in a maze-like underground structure with only a pistol and a busted arm, he would have said, "Don't."

So she would just have to wing it. She worked slowly, through each door, carefully presenting the minimum amount of her body she could as she peeked through the doorway with her pistol while wishing she had a really bright flashlight; this dim overhead lighting was something out of Resident Evil.

There were about a dozen skeletonized bodies in about eight rooms but no living Garys, the last side of the corridor was barricaded too.

She holstered her pistol and made a sigh of relief. Assuming her hypothesis that Garys wouldn't try to bust down even slightly rickety barricades if they couldn't actually see through them like they were poorly pathing bad guy in a video game, then perhaps she was, for a time, briefly safe.

She took all of her stuff to one of the rooms that seemed the cleanest. Most of the rooms provided barracks-style accommodation, but this one was both single occupancy and didn't have any dead bodies in it. The bed was even still soft, albeit the linens left something to be desired after two hundred years. She stripped the dusty linens and pillowcases, dusted off the bed and pillows and just laid down. She wasn't really sleepy at all, but she desperately wanted some downtime to think and recover.