Sinclair Feldman's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The raiders were handled for now. Vault 141 lay quiet, but the deep route needed power. Logan's team had cleared level two after a hard fight with ghouls and a mutated deer creature. The control room panel was intact. Sinclair carried his security hack tool down the stairs. If he could power the lower levels, the vault's tech was finally within reach. The control room door had a prewar lock, dead to any crowbar. Sinclair set his tool against the panel and worked the code. Logan crouched behind him, watching a small energy meter he'd wired to the corridor line. The screen glowed, numbers ticking. "Clean," Logan said. "No EMC security on the door. Nobody's tripped a wire down here in two hundred years." He tapped the meter. "Comforting, if you don't think about why." Sinclair kept his eyes on the tool. "You always find the dark side of good news." "Habit. Keeps my remaining fingers." Logan held up his hand, short two joints. He didn't slow down. "Line's holding. You're clear." The lock clicked. Sinclair pushed the door and stepped into the control room. Dust hung in the air. A rugged olive control desk filled the far wall, its screen split into five power levels. On the desk lay a battered logbook, its cover cracked and taped. Sinclair opened it. The pages named a man, Dr. Fritz Langermen. Notes crawled across them in a tight, panicked hand. DNA and mutation leakage, levels four and five. Mutated ghouls. A security robot. A battle on level three. Sinclair read the last entries twice. "He knew it got out," he said. "The mutation. It spread down, not up." Logan leaned in the doorway. "So the deer wasn't the worst thing." He nodded at the screen. "Power the panel and we'll meet whatever else he wrote about." Sinclair set the logbook down and studied the desk. The grid showed level two dark, level three sealed under lockdown. He weighed it. He needed level two lit to move his team and gear. But the logbook told him level three held something worse than a deer. He would not open that door yet. He worked the panel. He powered level two. Lights flickered on down the corridor, one by one, humming to life. Then he set the lockdown on level three, holding the seal shut. The grid confirmed both. Green for two. Red for three. "Done," Sinclair said. "Level two's ours. Three stays locked until we're ready." Logan studied the red bar. "Ready for a robot that fought ghouls and won." He almost smiled. "Can't wait." Sinclair pocketed the logbook. The vault's tech was one sealed door away now, powered and waiting. But Langermen's last notes had changed the map. Behind that red seal sat the security robot, and whatever mutation had driven a scientist to write in a shaking hand. Sinclair had lit the path forward and named the wall he'd have to break next.