Jon Harrison's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Jon turned the notebook over in his hands, checking the inside cover for markings. The handwriting matched the entries—tight, slanted strokes he'd seen before. His chest tightened. He knew this writing. Not from Sierra, not from the hospital. From before. He flipped to the back pages where a photograph had been tucked into the binding. The image showed two figures outside a pre-war office building, both in civilian clothes. Jon recognized himself immediately—younger, cleaner, using a different name. On the back, faded ink read: "J. Kellerman, 2277. If you're reading this, you know what I found." The investigator hadn't just stumbled onto Project Cerberus. They'd been tracking Jon specifically, using his old identity from before he'd reinvented himself in the wasteland. Jon followed the notebook's final coordinates to a collapsed tent fifty yards behind the hospital. Investigation equipment lay scattered in the dirt—a radiation counter, mapping tools, a broken Pip-Boy. The tent's interior had been torn open from the outside, claw marks shredding the canvas. Dried blood stained the fabric, but no body remained. Whatever came out of Sierra hadn't discriminated between random scavengers and people who knew too much. The investigator had gotten close enough to the truth to die for it. Jon pocketed the photograph and returned to the hospital's second floor. He pulled out his field notebook and wrote three names in the margin: Kellerman's real identity, the connection that linked them, and the reason someone would've sent an investigator after him specifically. Then he crossed out all three. The server room files weren't just about Project Cerberus anymore—they might contain records of who Jon had been before the wasteland, and who wanted those records badly enough to hire someone using his old name as bait. He had four hours to reach the depot, copy the files, and disappear before the Rangers arrived. The dead investigator had proven one thing: Jon's past was hunting him with the same precision he'd used to hunt everyone else's secrets.