Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Brad marked the factory's location on his pip-boy before heading back to camp. The blueprints from the monitoring station had shown sublevel three directly beneath the old building, but they hadn't explained why power would still be running after all these years. The neon sign hit him first when he came back at dusk—a bright red glow spelling out words he couldn't read from this distance, mounted on the factory's brick face like a beacon. Brad's chest tightened. Every settlement he'd mapped had dead signage, dark tubes that hadn't lit since before the war. This one burned steady, pulling juice from somewhere below. He circled the building's perimeter until he found the conduit junction, a rusted panel half-buried in sand. Inside, copper wire gleamed where the insulation had cracked away, and when he held his pip-boy close, the radiation counter ticked higher. Not danger-high, but present. Active. Brad pulled a length of exposed wire free and examined the ends. The copper showed no oxidation where it connected to the junction, which meant current had been flowing through it recently—maybe continuously. He traced the conduit back to where it disappeared into the ground, following the line of rusted pipe until it vanished beneath the factory's foundation. The sublevel wasn't just powered. Something down there was drawing enough electricity to keep commercial signage running, and it had been doing it long enough that nobody questioned a lit sign in the middle of nowhere. He sat against the factory wall and updated his pip-boy notes, adding power consumption estimates and wire gauge measurements. The trading post would need this information eventually, but not yet. First, he needed to know what was using that power, and whether it knew people were starting to notice. Brad tucked the copper sample into his pack and stood. When Chen got back and they made the descent, he'd be looking for more than just a hidden sublevel. He'd be looking for something that had been awake and waiting while the rest of the world went dark.