Donovan O'Niel's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The raiders still trusted Donovan's false radio line, but the deception couldn't last. So Donovan turned his people to the ground itself. He ordered daily sweeps of the base perimeter, looking for the bandits who might trace the lies back to him. On the second morning, Sergeant Greymire came in with two finds tucked under her arm. Greymire ran fast tactical response for Donovan, and he trusted her read of a fight more than his own. She dropped a worn green flip-top notebook on the crate between them. Her tail flicked once. "Found this in a wrecked building north of the fence," she said. "Bandit rest stop. Empty now." She flipped it open to a hand-drawn map. "They mapped our fence. And look here. They wrote down automated defenses. They know the Command Office bites back." Donovan studied the rough handwriting. Grim little plans for stripping valuables. A crude sketch of the perimeter he thought was secret. His ears went flat. The raiders weren't just chasing his false salvage anymore. They were casing his real ground. That afternoon, clearing the garage lower level, Donovan found the second thing. A worn PC data disc, half buried under rusted shelving. He rubbed the grime off the label. Dr. Zahaas. Vault 141. Human medical experiments. F.E.V. injection tests. Failed trials, page after page, preserved in dense record. His breath caught. This was research from the vault the whole team had bled to open. He carried both finds to the rooftop base station and keyed his radio. He raised Zelda Verada, the Red Hills medic who'd approved his garage base and gambled every favor she had on the field hospital. He told her about the notebook first. The mapped fence. The note about automated defenses. "So they know the ground and the guns," Zelda said, flat over the static. "That's not scouting. That's a shopping list." "There's more." Donovan read the disc label to her. Zahaas. F.E.V. tests. Human trials. The line went quiet a moment. "Read me that label again," she said. He did. When he finished, her voice came back sharper, longer, the way it did when medical tech was on the table. "That matches the sample files we pulled. Same doctor, same program. That disc is the missing lab log. If it holds the injection protocols, I can finally tell which of my samples are safe to touch and which will kill whoever thaws them." A dry breath. "Funny what survives when no one knows what they're looking at." "It's yours," Donovan said. "I'll run it to the hospital myself." "Bring it," she said. "And Donovan, you took out the main Raider base but there are still bandit strays about. Those bandits know nothing about the Vault other than it’s a place with loot.” Donovan set the disc beside the notebook. As Donovan watched Brad organize daily patrols, he realized this camp is turning into a real base.