Kira Dallas's Arc

Chapter 7 of 13

At first light Kira led her team into the living quarters of level three. The air hit her first. Rot, old and thick, like meat left in a sealed box. She breathed through her mouth and raised her rifle. Behind her came Logan, the Atomic Cats salvager who knew these machines by what they lacked. Conner and Russel followed, the two Rangers in Swedish fatigues, rifles up, berets dark in the beam of her light. "Slow," Kira said. "Room by room. Nobody rushes." They moved past bunks and overturned lockers. Kira found a bundle of letters tied with twine, stamped with the Vault 141 seal. She slid them into her backpack without stopping. Russel crouched by a heap of worn books, music discs, and small tools. "Somebody lived here," she whispered. Logan glanced at the pile. "Somebody died here too," he said. He didn't slow down. The smell sharpened. Then the wall ahead of them moved. Five ghouls lunged from a dark doorway, skin glowing sick green, eyes like two white coals. One sprayed a scream that filled the room. Kira fired twice, dropping the first. "Hold the line!" she shouted. Conner and Russel laid down fire in short bursts. Logan put his back to the wall and shot past Kira's shoulder. The ghouls came fast and stupid, but there were more than five. A second wave pushed through the doorway. Kira counted them as they fell, the way she counted everything. Six now, then the first five. Eleven bodies. A claw raked Conner's arm and he grunted. Russel shot the ghoul off him. Kira stepped forward and dropped the last one two feet from her boots. The room went quiet except for breathing. "Clear," Logan said. He lowered his rifle. "That's all of them. Count matches Zelda's reading." Kira pulled a stimpak from her pack and pressed it to Conner's torn arm. He winced but nodded thanks. She checked Russel, then Logan. No other wounds. The team had held. They salvaged what mattered. Russel bagged the books and tools. Kira gathered the letters again and opened the bundle by her light. Family notes. Junk mail. Then a page that stopped her claw. The dates were wrong. Centuries wrong. The war had not happened when everyone said. She read it twice to be sure. Logan looked over her shoulder. "That's the kind of thing my old trainer chased," he said quietly. "Logistics. Old records. Somebody would pay for that." Kira folded the page and sealed it in her pack. The living quarters were clear. One room done, two to go. But the letters changed the shape of the job. If the dates held, the whole supply history of this vault could be wrong, and so could every manifest she cross-referenced. She stood and faced the sealed door to engineering. "We log this, then we move," she said. "Engineering next."