Randy Terri

Randy Terri's Arc
Chapter 4 of 11

Randy Terri's dream is discovering what lies inside the nearby Vault affecting his land.

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by @Dodger-McGee
Chapter 4 comic
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Chapter 4

Sinclair opened the journal to the first page, but Randy stayed standing. The gravel beneath his boots held small stones that had been there longer than the dispensary, longer than the farm, maybe longer than the Vault itself. He didn't move closer to read over Sinclair's shoulder. Sinclair carried a picnic table from the side of the building and set it between them in the lot. He laid out the journal first, then three rolled papers tied with string, then a tape recorder with a red button that caught the afternoon light. "My grandfather recorded himself reading sections he thought were too dangerous to leave written down," Sinclair said. He pressed play. The voice that came through was old and careful, each word measured like it cost something to say. "Sublevel three houses what Vault-Tec designated Project Iteration. A sustained consciousness transfer experiment. The subject's name was removed from all records, but the plaque outside the chamber called it the Penitent." Randy felt the word settle into him like weight. Not radiation. Not a machine. A person, or what used to be one, kept alive in a way that made the soil richer and the crops grow forty percent stronger. The tape kept playing, describing power requirements and biological sustainment protocols, but Randy was already thinking about the dead man slumped against the pillar and the photograph of numbered steel doors. Someone had been down there three weeks ago and seen what the Penitent had become. Sinclair watched him without speaking, waiting to see if Randy would walk away or step closer to the table. Randy picked up the tape recorder and rewound it to the beginning. He set his own recorder on the table next to Sinclair's and pressed the red button. "We're copying everything," Randy said. "Then we're going to the coordinates and finding out how that man got inside." Sinclair nodded once and reached for the rolled papers. When he untied the first one, Randy saw a brass plaque rubbing — elegant script on aged metal that read THE PENITENT in letters that had been pressed into the paper hard enough to leave impressions. The name wasn't just in the journal anymore. It was real, and it had been waiting under his land long enough to change everything that grew above it.

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