บท 47: Vol. ll Chapter 1 Rosie (Part 2 of 2)
The older man before her wore the same blue vault-suit as her, but he looked healthier. His skin flushed, his blonde hair thick and glossy. His waistline not the one of a man who lived on protein bars. The opposite of her pallid face and brittle hair.
She wanted to punch him then and there, knowing he'd have to take it, then still have to deal with her. Rosie held back her anger, confident in how to play this. Plus John already had a six hour head start.
"Do you know why you are here?" He asked. Rosie heard the same tone she'd heard for years, arrogance, entirely unearned.
"I walked out on my shift, I'm sorry." Rosie played her part, the dutiful resident, the proud worker. It made the bile rise in her throat.
"Six hours ago the door that keeps us safe opened, and stayed open." He sounded worried, she had to mask her delight. "The code used to open it was written on that pipboy…by you." Took you long enough, she thought, morons.
"He lied to me, I'm sorry. He told me that it was to open the stockroom. We just wanted to spend some time together on our own." She couldn't believe this moron bought that, but he seemed to. Clearly he knew nothing about coding.
"You mean Blake, he abandoned his duty, putting everyone at risk." Rosie saw this idiot really believed John had a duty to break rocks twelve hours a day while he sat on comfy seats eating fucking apples.
"Please, if I can access the terminal I can close the door." She covered her face and pretended to cry, it was that or start punching. The blonde man turned and beckoned her to follow him. Thinking those beneath him shared his attitude. Rosie bit her lip to keep from smiling.
Flanked by Vault Sec thugs, the well fed man led Rosie to the Vault door. Leaving the terrified guards in the immense stockroom, too afraid to even get close to the outside. Rosie tried her best to mask her true feelings. Her excitement at cracking the code locked door. Her contempt for these wilfully ignorant morons, too cowardly to even consider reality. And her deep worry for John, six hours ahead of her, out in the world.
It took minutes to reach the front freight elevator. Far quicker than the first time she reached the door, and without climbing through vents or long ladders. She saw fear rising in the well fed man as the elevator climbed, then it stopped and the doors slid open.
The dead appendage of the Vault looked completely different to how she remembered. Once dark, dominated by a vast black circle, now filled with warm, real sunlight. The door wide open.
Rosie played her part well. Scrolling through irrelevant system diagnostics on her pipboy. Pretending to be afraid of the world she planned on running into as soon as possible. Acting as if her partner betrayed her. Which came easier than she thought, maybe she did have mixed feelings about John's choice.
Rosie walked right up to the vast door she'd opened, remotely at least. Free to smile broadly as the well fed man stayed back. Literally shaking in his boots that actually fit his feet, unlike hers.
"Ok, I know what the problem is, and I know how to close it." She could close the door with a few clicks, but that wouldn't help get the truth to those below.
"What do you need?" The well fed man looked relieved, eager to go back to his comfortable life.
"I need a sharp knife, a crowbar, and every speaker in the Vault connected to a pipboy." Rosie made her play. His face dropped. She knew it would be a tough nut to loosen, granting the kind of access usually reserved for the Overseer.
"When that bastard opened the door it broke the rock outside. Little bits of which have fallen into the mechanism, jamming it up. We can shake it loose if we get some low frequency noise into the structure." Rosie had done something similar with a jammed door frame during her Ms Fix It training.
The creative thinking saved a full rebuild, and earned her a week on shit detail for unauthorised use of Vault equipment. Along with another three weeks for throwing a hammer at that jobsworth Waters. The only thing that made her month in organic recyc bearable was John, who got himself sent there by walking off shift. She loved him for that. He never wanted to break the rules, he did it for her.
The well fed man paced back and forth inside the security booth, weighing his options. Rosie gave him a little push in her direction.
"We could get a team of rock breakers up here with hammers, ten or so should do it." She knew that would be a terrifying thought to people who didn't even put the door on the map.
"I'll have the equipment sent up, you'll have your access." He typed something on his clunky, drab pipboy then sat down.
Rosie's keen mind worked out who the well fed man must be. He didn't vcall anyone, he didn't send a vmail and wait for a response, he made the decision himself. There was only one person with that kind authority. The Overseer. The man at the very top, the man responsible for the life she and John were forced into, and they were alone. With weapons being delivered to her.
Rosie broke out more pretend crying that actually became real as she thought of John put there in the unknown, by himself. Further away from her than he'd ever been. It made the Overseer uncomfortable and he gave her a moment alone in the security booth. Just enough time to check her jet black pipboy, seeing her code had seeped into the doors on every floor. And to think about the chance to exact revenge on the man she hated.
The elevator arrived with the tools dumped in the centre. No one brave enough, or allowed, to come and see the open door.
Rosie set about stripping wire from a fuse box. The Overseer had more sense than to give her the knife. Which meant he began cutting away the sheathing to get the copper core she needed. It took him a long time, which made her angrier. What they did on level six was undoubtedly useless but whatever they did on level one didn't even teach them practical skills.
Rosie wrapped the crowbar in the copper, connected it to the stripped down fuse panel, turning it into an electromagnet. Even that seemed to surprise him. More so when it generated a low frequency hum as he passed an open communication channel near it.
"You're sure this won't broadcast anything else?" He asked. Rosie nodded, marginally impressed he asked.
"Your mic won't pick up anything that low frequency." She didn't lie, she just didn't mention her mic would be patched in.
Working the pipboy blindly behind her back Rosie triggered the full lockdown. Every door locked tight, every pipboy set to receive only. Then she began to ask questions of the man who controlled all their lives.
"It's working, we'll have the door closed soon." She saw the relief on the older man's full face. "It's lucky there's not more radiation, hardly any in fact." Rosie knew the thousands below her feet would be listening, conditioned to do little else. Everyone would be stuck where they were, locked in, no way for Vault Sec to shut this down.
"It's not like this everywhere." He replied. But it's like this here, she wanted to scream at him.
"But we could at least try and explore, maybe there are people out there." She tried to sound passive, meek, but her anger built.
"Rosie, you're a smart girl. I don't know why the hell you're on level six with the grunts, but these people aren't ready to go outside. They need structure, a purpose, a future to believe in." The arrogance of the Overseer just proved to be his undoing. Everyone heard that, she'd forced them to. Like the well fed, lazy, ignorant man had forced her to listen for years. Only they heard the truth for the first time, and she wasn't finished yet.
"But what about the air vents, the fan blades, they're failing and there are no spares." The last of Rosie's good resident routine began to run out, her burning anger showing through.
"Trust in the Overseer Ro—." She snapped. Snatching the foot long crowbar bar from the panel and striking the arrogant, cruel liar across the face. Knocking him onto the floor with a crunching crack. His nose broken, blood pooling at the back of his head, soaking his healthy blond hair and turning it redder than hers.
Rosie's temper had gotten the best of her again. It was one thing to be lied to all day every day by anonymous broadcasts. Having the person in charge lie right to her face proved too much. Now the Overseer lay bleeding at her feet, quite possibly dead.
She didn't have time to panic. The sound of the people cutting through the door to the secret escape tunnel with acetylene torches meant she had to move.
Rosie hacked the Overseer's pipboy. Finally able to fully access it with a direct connection to the four pin connector. The security wasn't any better on the device, despite it being indirectly connected to the main network. It took mere seconds to breach it, rip the authorisations and crash the OS.
The question became who to send it to. Rosie didn't have anything close to friends beyond Dutch, who wouldn't cope with the pressure, and John, he'd know what to do. So she transferred the authority over every system in the Vault to his friend Rick. Not knowing and not really caring, but trusting John to be a better judge of character than her.
Rosie grabbed the retractable knife and the blood stained crowbar and bolted for the open door. Turning to connect to the outer terminal, seeing John hadn't from the dust on the screen. She set the main door to close just as Vault Sec breached the room. Shouting at her to stop as she ran out into the sunlight. Free from their orders. Free from the lies. Free to be something other than a repair shop worker.
The light forced Rosie's eyes shut, sending her blindly stumbling into the new, old world. She heard the vast door screech as metal scraped against. Finally closing fully with a deep clunk, silencing shouts of concern for the man she may have killed.
Rosie stopped, feeling the sunlight on her ashen face. The wind blowing through her shoulder length, brittle, red hair. All for the first time. Then she forced her eyes open, seeing a sheer drop mere inches from her feet.
For a moment she feared John had fallen. The scree looked fresh, no doubt triggered by the weight of the door rolling open. A quick scan showed John to be out of range. A good sign, that gave her confidence. Although it didn't help her get further than a few feet past the door that held them both back all their lives.
Rosie took a few minutes to adjust to her new reality. Trying not to be angered further by the breathable air. Feeling little for the man she may have just killed. If the Overseer had been honest neither of them would have been in that security booth. With her eyes adjusting to the warm light she looked out from the cave high above the new, old world.
Below her lay great swathes of blood red leaves sprouting from living trees. Row after neat row of houses, all in varying states of decay. Larger buildings beyond them. Rosie's sharp mind deduced they must be some kind of manufacturing facilities. And there, on the horizon, the slightest trace of something tall. The only thing possibly high enough to broadcast a signal from. Rosie knew John would have made straight for it, heading west.
For someone who'd never been this far away from another person, the idea of finding a single man in all this space seemed an impossible task. Although opening the Vault door seemed equally unachievable once. Now she stood beyond it, with no reason to ever go back. She took comfort in the jet black device on her arm. The very thing that helped her do the impossible before, and would again.
Rosie had never felt so lucky to have the sleek device. Instead of the clunky, oversized, low powered versions everyone but her John and Dutch had. She'd always thought John's father had something to do with her getting one. Not the woman who called herself her mother. The only thing she ever cared about was huffing solvent. John's father felt like her only parent, she missed him as much as John did. Now she missed them both.
Not wanting to linger on the past, Rosie set the mapping pulses to automatic. Set a subroutine to scan for John's jet black pipboy, out here in the world, then set to solving the more immediate problem. Getting down to ground level.
With the only path away from the Vault she hated impassable, Rosie decided to climb the rock face up and over. She'd kept up with her childhood gymnastics, practising any time she could. That in conjunction with the generally lifting and carrying of a Ms Fix It, not to mention the strength in her grip, made her believe she could make the twenty foot climb. But not in the steel toe cap boots that were at least a size too big, as always.
Rosie's quick thinking found a solution and she set about cutting away the hard wearing rubber sole. Trimming it down to actually fit her feet, then securing it tightly with the laces. Knotted and pulled through slits in the sole, wrapped and pulled taught. Somewhat surprisingly, it felt quite comfortable, and ideal for picking out footholds in the craggy rock face above.
With the crowbar for extra grip, Rosie started to climb. Methodically finding each hand and foot hold. Testing the strength of the rock before shifting her weight further up the light grey surface. Focusing on her breathing to stay calm.
After what felt like hours, but could only have been minutes, Rosie threw the crowbar over the edge and hauled herself up after. Instantly rolling onto her back and staring into the surreal endless blue above. Trying to make sense of something that went on forever. She had to close her eyes to keep from throwing up.
A few minutes of deep breathing eased the burning in her muscles. Rosie staggered to her feet, staring out, rewarded with a stunning view that brought tears to eyes that only ever saw dull steel.
The warm light glinting off the tarnished metal structures. Shimmering, winding, curves that could only be water. An even better view of the tall broadcast tower. All hemmed in by rolling hills, topped with burnt white sticks that were once trees, and that was just the west.
As Rosie turned she saw more of the houses. Taller red brick buildings. A large rectangular structure that looked more ornate than everything around it, dominating the surrounding area. Connecting it all running along the centre lay a wide, straight, black line. Running east to west, intersecting with other lines crossing it, dotted with metal squares.
To the east behind her, a way down, leading into a patchwork of concrete squares of collapsed ruins. She wanted to stay here for hours, just staring out over the world denied her. But John already had a head start, and she wanted to see him more.
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