Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

The race was on, but Sarah refused to walk in blind. Before anyone touched the vault door, she needed to know who was already inside. She took Corporal Desior, a grey tabby breach specialist Brad had pulled off another job for this mission. They climbed to a hill above the ruined Vault-Tec garage. Its double doors hung wrecked, punched through with jagged holes. Sarah crouched low and studied the wound in the metal. Desior was quiet and precise. He raised his night vision monocular and swept the entrance. "Movement," he whispered. "Four, maybe five. Armed." He passed her the scope. Sarah looked. The figures below wore mismatched armor, spiked and scavenged. One dragged a crate toward the doors. "Raiders," Desior said. "Not a research crew. They came to strip it." Sarah's stomach tightened. Raiders in the vault meant the G.E.C.K. wasn't just a race anymore. It was a fight. She unpacked the long-range thermal camera and set it on its tripod. The lens hummed and locked onto the doorway. Heat blooms marked each body in orange. She started recording, counting, mapping their patrol. "Five confirmed," she murmured. "Two stay at the door. Three go in and out." She logged the timing between trips. Data was her weapon. If she knew their pattern, the team could time a breach. Then she pulled her radio, the compact shortwave unit with its worn dial, and keyed the frequency for the garage base. "Sinclair, come back." Static, then Zelda's flat voice answered instead. "Sinclair's on the roof antenna. What did you find?" Sarah remembered Zelda's warning from the command office. Zelda had spent every favor she owned on the field hospital. She had no cushion left if this went wrong. Sarah chose her words with care. "Not researchers. Raiders. Five of them, working the entrance." The radio went silent a beat. "Raiders don't decrypt door logs," Zelda said. "Someone hired them, or someone let them in. Either way they'll gut the medical labs for scrap and sell what they don't understand." "I've got them on thermal," Sarah said. "I can build their patrol pattern. Send the backup team. We hit them on a gap." "Funny what survives when no one knows what they're looking at," Zelda said. "They could smash the G.E.C.K. thinking it's junk." A pause. "Backup's coming. Sergeant's group is closest. Hold your hill and keep filming. Don't let them see that lens shine." Desior tapped Sarah's shoulder. Below, one raider stopped and stared up the slope. Sarah killed the camera's glow and pressed flat. The raider watched, then turned back inside. "Close," Desior breathed. Sarah exhaled. She had her answer, and it was worse than a rival crew. The vault held a machine that could heal the valley, and the people inside would tear it apart for parts. The survey was done. Now she had to beat them to sublevel three.