Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Sarah Burks spread the medical files across the command office table and made her case before anyone could talk her out of it. She was a Reilly's Ranger, sent to Calico Flats to build a trade post and, if the rumors held, a medical facility stocked from Vault 141. The rumors named a prize: a G.E.C.K. buried inside. She tapped the top folder. "If it's real, we can turn this whole valley into something that lasts. But I need to know what else is down there first." Zelda Verada stood across from her, medic's bag still on her waist belt, red beret pushed back. She had already spent every favor she owned securing a field hospital near the vault. She read the files the way she read a wound. "You're not asking me if I want a G.E.C.K.," she said flatly. "You're asking me what it might cost. Say it plain." "Sublevel three," Sarah said. "The construction manifests list experimental biological preservation. That's not first aid. That's the kind of research that goes wrong quietly." Zelda didn't flinch. "I've patched people the wasteland tried to erase. I know what wrong looks like." She set the folder down. "If there's a machine down there that grows clean water and soil, I want it. But I won't build a hospital on top of something that eats the people it's meant to save. Prove which one it is." The door opened. Sinclair Feldman came in shaking dust from his radio backpack, a recon officer from Red Hills Traders who mapped ruins for a living. He and his team were allied with the Rangers on this vault. He'd been quiet since arriving, but now he pulled a folded sheaf of his own from his jacket. "Heard my name and the word cost," he said. "Both usually find me." He dropped his pages beside Sarah's files. "Vault 141 intel. I've been sitting on it because I wasn't sure this alliance would hold. It's holding. So here." Sarah scanned his notes fast. Decrypted door logs. A camp layout drawn in his careful cartographer's hand. "Someone breached the door before we got here," she said. "An unknown party. Set up inside." Sinclair's voice went short and hard. "They knew what they wanted. My decrypts point them at the medical labs. Same floor your manifest calls preservation." Zelda looked between the two stacks of paper. "So we're not the only ones who read the rumor." "No," Sinclair said. "And a G.E.C.K.'s a lousy thing to fight over in the dark." Sarah pulled the G.E.C.K. manual from her pouch and laid it on top, faded blue and yellow, her own notes crowding the margins. The three intel sources now agreed on one floor and one danger. "Then we don't wait a week," she said. "We go for sublevel three. Before they clear it out." Zelda snapped her bag shut. "I'll ready the hospital." The plan was set. Someone was already inside, and now it was a race.