Jacob Carter's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Jacob spread seventeen caravan logs across his workbench at the Trade Post and cross-referenced each coordinate against his vault entrance readings. The patterns matched. Every radiation spike he'd measured pointed to the same hundred-meter radius. He marked the exact center point on his map with red ink, then checked it twice more. Vault 116 sat directly beneath that spot, and now he had proof three different sources confirmed it. His tail flicked once as he filed the logs into his documentation folder. The entrance was real. The G.E.C.K. was within reach. He just needed to figure out how to get inside without ending up arranged against a wall in groups of seven. He carried a silvery-green agave plant outside and set it near the entrance. The sharp spines and sand-dusted leaves looked right for the desert. Wasteland scouts passed through here twice a week, and they'd need to know he meant business. The plant made the place look less like a hiding spot and more like an actual operation. Jacob stepped back and examined it. Good enough. Past the entrance, he started stacking stone rings into a tower. Each ring marked something—the first vault he'd searched, the fractals he'd decoded, the caravan logs that confirmed the coordinates. He carved dates into the stone with his knife. Seventeen discoveries, seventeen rings. The tower grew taller as he worked. By the time he placed the last ring, the structure stood higher than his head. Anyone who walked past would see it. Proof that he was getting closer. Inside his workspace, he cleared shelves and arranged his journals against the wall. Every measurement, every radiation reading, every coordinate that led to Vault 116. He stacked them in order—Cedar Falls, the three empty vaults, the fractal patterns, the water samples, the caravan logs. The evidence filled three shelves. He stood back and looked at it all. The breakthrough was real. The coordinates were confirmed. The G.E.C.K. was directly beneath Broken Hills, and he had the data to prove it. Now he just needed to plan the entry without getting killed by whatever lived down there.