Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Brad had his breach crew, but the raiders reached the vault first. By dawn they had crawled through the broken doors of the old Vault-Tec garage. Five of them, maybe more, scavenging for scrap and pushing toward the labs below. Brad crouched behind a heap of rubble and watched the entrance. The blast-scarred doors hung crooked. Jagged holes gaped where the metal had been punched through. If he wanted this vault mapped for the trading post, he had to take that door back today. Sarah dropped beside him, rifle low, her tail flicking. She was his teammate, the analyst who broke security systems and never trusted a plan she hadn't counted twice. She peered through her scope at the guard by the door. "One sentry, left of the frame," she whispered. "He's tired. Been up all night. Give me the word and I put him down before he blinks. Then Logan's people flood the gap. Christ, this is thin, though. Where do I even start?" "You start with the door," Brad said. He keyed the radio Donovan had built. Static hissed, then cleared. Donovan's voice came flat from the garage roof. "Signal's clean. I've got eyes on three inside, moving slow. Rest are deeper. You're go when you're go." Brad checked the raiders one more time. The guard leaned on his rifle. Two others crouched over a pile of stripped wire. Brad thumbed the mic. "Go." Sarah exhaled and squeezed. The shot cracked. The guard folded against the frame and slid down. Before the sound finished bouncing off the walls, Logan's team broke from cover. They rushed the holes in the doors and poured inside. Rifles barked in short bursts. A raider shouted, then went quiet. Brad watched a grenade bundle arc through a shattered pane and burst in a flash of dust and fire. Screams cut off. In under a minute the garage went silent. Brad moved up with Sarah on his heels. Inside, Logan's people stood over the fallen raiders, weapons still raised. The floor was littered with looted crates and torn cable. The vault entrance itself stood open behind them, dark and cold. They had it. The garage was theirs. Sarah crouched by a dead raider and tugged a folded page from his jacket. She smoothed it flat and went still. "Brad." Her voice dropped the swagger. "This is a schematic. Sublevel three. The medical labs." She tapped a mark near the bottom. "They circled the G.E.C.K. And there's a hand here, a note. Someone told them where to dig. These weren't just scavengers." Brad took the page. Someone had guided the raiders straight to the prize. The garage was secure, but the vault was already compromised from the inside. He had won the door and found a worse door behind it.