Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 4 of 13

Sarah followed the Cats leader through the factory's loading dock entrance, Marvin close behind. The interior smelled like rust and old concrete. Her Pip-Boy's radiation counter ticked upward as they moved deeper into the building, past empty assembly stations and collapsed machinery. The assembly line stretched the length of the main floor, metal workstations flanking both sides. Sarah crouched near the center conveyor belt and swept her flashlight across the floor. Bullet casings were embedded in the concrete—hundreds of them, pressed into the surface like fossils. She picked at one with her multitool. Nine millimeter. The leader knelt beside her, studying the workstations. "They made ammunition here. Before Vault-Tec bought it out." Sarah stood and walked along the line, counting stations. Each one had mounting brackets for precision equipment, now stripped clean. At the end of the line sat a packaging machine, its conveyor belts tangled around broken cardboard boxes. She pulled a box free. Faded printing on the side read "Federal Cartridge Corporation - 500 rounds." Marvin found the blueprint tube wedged behind a support beam near the foreman's office. The paper inside was yellowed but intact—original factory schematics showing assembly diagrams for ammunition production lines, powder mixing stations, and quality control checkpoints. Sarah cross-referenced the layout against her Pip-Boy's downloaded Vault-Tec manifests. The ammunition equipment had been ripped out completely. Vault-Tec had kept the structural shell but gutted everything inside to make room for sublevel three's biological systems. The leader examined the blueprint, then looked at Sarah. "This proves the conversion. Whatever's down there, Vault-Tec didn't want anyone connecting it to a weapons factory." Sarah felt the weight of that statement. An ammunition plant converted into a vault sublevel designed for "iterative consciousness housing." The pattern was too deliberate to ignore. Sarah pulled out her analyzer and took readings along the factory floor, marking hotspots where her Pip-Boy's counter spiked. Three separate points formed a triangle around the old packaging area—each one showing the same synchronized pulse pattern she'd mapped near the vault entrances. The leader watched her work without interrupting. When she finished, Sarah turned to face them directly. "The entity isn't just alive. It's positioned itself beneath the exact spot where they manufactured killing tools for decades. That's not random." The leader's expression hardened, but they nodded. "We brief the full team tomorrow. You'll present these findings before we plan entry." Sarah had wanted proof that would cement her value to the partnership. Instead, she'd found evidence that made the vault expedition far more dangerous than any of them had anticipated.