Elsewhere
INSTITUTE // SRB-3 "EYES ON SURFACE"
LIVE SURVEILLANCE WATCH
SUBJECT: Vault 159
COMMON FIELD TAG: "Vault Girl"
LOCATION THREAD: ArcJet Systems / Boston Mayoral Shelter
Mark was halfway through a stale ration bar when ArcJet lit up on the board. Julie looked up first. She had her boots propped on the underside of the console and a mug in both hands. Somehow, she always managed to look half bored and fully awake at the same time. "That's odd," she said.
Mark stared at the yellow icon for a second, then set his ration bar down on its wrapper. Mark pulled the feed cluster open. The first feed was mostly static. The second gave them a broken hallway with a canted angle, the picture grey-green and grainy. The third opened on the Protectron storage room. Mark leaned forward as a girl in a vault suit sat at the terminal.
Julie's boots hit the floor. "Oh, you are kidding." Mark did not answer right away. He zoomed the feed, sharpened the image as much as the old line allowed, and watched the subject's shoulders move as she typed. Red hair. Small frame. Lab coat over the vault suit. Laser musket close enough to grab. The same one from the shelter. Julie gave a low whistle. "She made it to ArcJet."
The girl did not behave like someone stumbling into an old pre-War building and praying for a good find. She had come through the office window, crossed the hall, and gone straight to the room with the dormant robots, after they checked the replay. No wandering through the lobby. Mark dragged the earlier feed back a minute, then another. The subject had entered the room, looked at the five pods, and gone right to the terminal.
Julie folded her arms. "Okay. That is strange." Mark keyed his mic. "Hale." A second passed before the remote channel clicked open. Hale sounded like he had been expecting bad news and was irritated that this only might qualify. "What?"
"ArcJet passive line triggered. We have the shelter subject on an interior feed." There was silence for a while, then Hale said, "The vault girl there?"
"Yes." Julie leaned toward the mic. "And she went directly to the Protectron room." That got Hale quiet for longer. On the screen, the subject's fingers moved over the keyboard. Mark could not see the terminal output from this angle, but he could read enough from her body language. Slow first. Then faster. Then a pause. Then her face tilted closer to the screen. Julie said, "She's hacking it."
"She has some terminal familiarity," Mark said. "She has more than some,"Julie added. Mark's hand moved over the controls, clipping the feed into a saved buffer. Then the pods hissed open. Five Protectrons stepped out one by one. Julie leaned back in her chair. "Well. That explains why she came here."
"It does not explain how she knew, and given the distance, she shouldn't have come here first," Hale said through the speaker. Mark watched the subject stand. She was not afraid of the machines. Excited, maybe, relieved perhaps. The nearest Protectron rotated toward her. The audio was poor, full of static and old hum, but they caught pieces. "...follow me…"
Then one of the robots answered. "AFFIRMATIVE." Julie's eyebrows rose. "She registered herself that quickly."
"Appears so," Mark said. On screen, two of the Protectrons moved toward the blocked path and began to clear it out. The others waited in a loose line. Mark opened a new incident note.
ArcJet passive signal activated by local terminal access. Subject entered Protectron storage room and initiated robot activation. Five units removed from standby. Subject appears to have altered authorization settings successfully.
He stopped there, fingers hovering, and Julie noticed before He typed again.
The subject demonstrated apparent prior knowledge of building layout. The movement pattern indicates a direct route to the robot storage with minimal exploratory behavior. Source of knowledge unknown.
Hale said, "Possibilities?" Mark did not like making assumptions. "I honestly don't know, perhaps she was given information before coming here?" Julie added in. "Old map. Pre-War access record. Someone told her, or just dumb luck." The subject did not strip the room. That was the next odd thing. A surface scavenger with sense would loot everything not bolted down. She had a building full of old corporate salvage around her, and she took only the robots.
Julie tapped the edge of her mug with one fingernail. "She's either smart or stupid." On screen, the subject climbed back through the office window into the lobby. The five Protectrons followed once the path was cleared, heavy patience of old machines. The whole thing looked absurd. Julie snorted. "Surface gets weirder every time I look at it."
Mark switched feeds as they reached the front door. The outside coverage at ArcJet was worse than the shelter's. "Send a bird," Julie said. Hale answered before Mark could. "We have two in range."
"Fine," Hale said. "One avian unit. Passive follow." Julie made a small victory gesture with two fingers. Mark pretended not to see it. The crow feed came alive three minutes later. It perched first on a broken metal strut near the ArcJet lot, head twitching with tiny mechanical corrections that looked natural. The subject noticed it. She looked right at it for a moment. The subject moved around the building toward the rear. Her robots followed in a loud line, stepping through weeds and cracked pavement with no attempt at subtlety. Mark switched between the crow feed and a distant exterior cam until the crow had the better angle.
Behind ArcJet, the subject stopped. Julie leaned closer. "What did she see?" The answer came a second later. A mine went off, and the explosion kicked dirt and grey dust into the air. The subject had fired from a careful distance. Then another mine exploded. Then a third.
"She spotted those fast," Julie said. "She is cautious." The subject moved in slowly after the blasts. She reached the old machine housing, opened the panel, and removed something cylindrical from inside. "Fusion core," Mark said.
Julie's mouth twitched. "So that's why ArcJet." Mark watched the subject hold the core for just a moment before tucking it away under her coat or into a pocket. The camera angle was not clean enough to tell more. She checked the shed nearby, took a few small things, then gathered the robots again.
She looked once toward the crow. This time, she said something. The audio from the crow caught it faintly. "Off with ya." Julie laughed once under her breath. "She's got manners."
"She is suspicious," Mark said. "Everyone on the surface is suspicious." Hale cut in. "Do we have enough?" Mark looked at the feed. The subject had turned away from ArcJet and started back toward the woods. "We know she activated and removed five ArcJet Protectrons. She recovered a fusion core from the rear service unit. She detected mines without injury. She did not investigate Upper or lower ArcJet." Julie added, "And she knew exactly where the robot room was."
Hale was quiet, then said, "Keep the bird on her until she returns to the shelter." Mark glanced at Julie. Julie smiled without warmth. "Now he's interested."
"I heard that," Hale said. The crow kept its distance as the subject moved through the wooded route. They lost her twice under tree cover and reacquired her by the sound of the robots before the bird got eyes again. The Protectrons made subtle tracking unnecessary. Branches snapped. Metal feet struck stone. Every few minutes, the subject stopped to look at the ground. Mark saw her crouch near something.
"Tracks," Julie said.
"Likely."
"Mutant?"
"Maybe."
The subject changed course after that. Wider curve. Slower pace, then she stopped behind cover. The crow settled high in a bare tree, looking through branches as three large shapes moved between the trunks farther off. Super mutants and Julie stopped smiling. The subject had gone still enough to disappear if not for the lab coat. Her robots remained behind her, motionless except for minor servo adjustments. One of the mutants turned its head, sniffing.
The mutant looked away as the group moved on. The subject waited longer than Mark expected before she moved again. At the Fort Hagen filling station, she scavenged with more normal behavior. Office, shelves, a locked toolbox, pumps, and a nearby ruin. Nothing about it triggered the same feeling as ArcJet. This was ordinary scavenging, useful items, small victories. A dead Minuteman, she did not fully strip. Julie caught that. "She left the body alone?"
"Mostly," Mark said. "She took weapons and ammunition." The subject finished loading the robots with heavier scrap and turned back toward the shelter. By then, the light outside had shifted. The crow followed at a distance until the shelter entrance came into view.
The outside feed picked her up first. She stopped the robots before the entrance and went inside alone. Julie pulled up the internal shelter feed. Claptrap rolled into view almost immediately, weapon arm angled forward. The audio came through cleaner here. "UNIDENTIFIED MOVEMENT DETECTED. STATE DESIGNATION OR FACE DEFENSIVE RESPONSE."
The subject answered."It's me." Mark watched her talk with her robot before she went to the terminal. One by one, the new robots were added to the shelter's recognition loop. Julie leaned back. "She knows enough not to walk five unidentified machines into her own turret line."
The new Protectrons entered, and the shelter got crowded. The subject assigned two upstairs near the entrance bt the metal gate with the turret. The others were taken down by elevator in slow, irritating trips that Mark had to admit looked exhausting. By the third trip, Julie was openly laughing. "She looks like she is going to murder that elevator."
"She cannot," Mark said. Once all the machines were inside, the subject started using them.
That changed the shelter. The two modified units began pulling apart blocked security gates and old metal fixtures. They sorted salvage into piles. Steel. Wire. panels. Bent trash. Things a normal scavenger might ignore.
Mark clipped more footage.
Subject has expanded robotic labor capacity. Newly acquired units assigned to security and interior salvage/deconstruction. The subject distinguishes between standard defensive units and labor-capable units.
The subject ate, changed the fusion core, and checked the wall. The gym feed showed her stopping in front of it, then she stepped closer. Touched near the cracks, and dust came away under her fingers. Mark zoomed. Julie's joking mood thinned. "Those weren't there before."
Mark enhanced the frame and saved it. Two cracks in the concrete. The subject stared at them. Hale's voice returned, quieter now. "Cause?"
"Unknown," Mark said. Julie crossed her arms. "She has been waiting for that wall to fail since she arrived."
"Or she noticed stress signs before we did." The subject left the gym and closed the door. Later, after the laundry and the food and the last checks, she went to bed. The robots kept working. The night shift took over at 2300. Mark hated handing active weirdness to night shift because night shift had a talent for missing things.
When Mark came back the next morning, Enzo was sitting at the console with his chin in his hand, looking like he had aged three years and learned nothing. Julie arrived behind Mark with coffee and a suspiciously cheerful expression. "What did we miss?" she asked.
Enzo pointed at the screen. "Metal scraping. For hours." Mark looked at the feeds.
The security doors were gone.
Piles of sorted salvage sat in the living area. The labor units stood near the old children's room, waiting. Tara, the other night observer, did not look up from her secondary console. "Subject slept. Robots worked. One unit repeated 'work order continuing' every twenty-six minutes until Enzo muted the feed."
Julie sipped her coffee. "So nothing happened." Tara finally looked over. "Depends on what you mean by nothing. The robots finished the gate removal and cleared two rooms. No hostile contact. No new visitors. The girl slept through most of the noise, somehow." Mark looked at the timestamped clips. "Any wall movement?"
"Not that we saw," Tara said. "Shame," Julie said. Enzo gave her a sideways look. Mark sat down and pulled the live feeds forward. The subject woke not long after. She moved through the shelter with that same half-tired urgency she always seemed to carry. Checked the robots. Checked the cleared rooms. Found weapons and supplies. From the Institute feed, they saw only pieces: her crouched near shelves, laying guns out in a careful line, moving ammunition, directing a robot to carry a crate.
Then she found the fusion cores. Julie laughed so hard she had to set her mug down.
The subject stood over the open crate, absolutely still. Even without clean audio, the emotion was obvious. Outrage. Disbelief. "She went to ArcJet for one of those," Julie said.
Mark's mouth twitched despite himself. "Yes."
"And there were three in her house." Hale came online halfway through Julie's sentence. "Status." Mark gave the short version. "No hostile activity overnight. Subject recovered additional supplies from previously blocked rooms. Three fusion cores were located inside the shelter storage. Robots completed deconstruction work."
Hale paused. "Three?"
"Yes." Julie leaned toward the mic. "After the ArcJet trip." Hale ignored that. "Did she know they were there?"
"No," Mark said. "Reaction suggests surprise." The subject moved to the old children's room. The robots began assembling something under her direction. At first, it looked crude, a metal frame with a flat surface, then a chair. Filing cabinets were dragged beside it.
Julie squinted. "Is that a desk?"
"Workstation, maybe?," Mark said. The subject sat at it after breakfast, and then she did almost nothing. She sat at the workstation with her arms on the metal surface, staring ahead. Sometimes she touched the Pip-Boy. Sometimes she wrote in a notebook. Sometimes her lips moved slightly, like she was talking to herself. Just the subject, the bench, two empty filing cabinets, and a focus that made the feed uncomfortable to watch. Julie lasted six minutes before saying, "What is she doing?"
"Thinking?" Mark zoomed in. "Or maybe she is planning."
"Or she may be insane." Julie rested her chin in her hand. "Maybe this is a surface religious thing. Pray to the metal table."
Mark glanced at her. "What?" she said. "You have a better theory?" The subject stayed at the bench for nearly an hour. Then she moved. She snapped upright so hard the chair scraped backward. Her hand went to the laser musket. Julie straightened. "What happened?"
Mark switched feeds around the inside of the shelter's second layer, but couldn't see anything that would cause her to get up at first.
Then the upstairs audio caught laser fire. A second later, the entrance feed shook with the impact of a heavy round striking concrete. Julie's voice dropped. "Contact." Mark pulled the entrance camera near the elevator. Two Protectrons were firing up the tunnel. One already had damage across its torso. The other stood half a step behind, laser emitter flashing red-white with each shot. The turret's angle was bad, mostly useless.
Hale's voice sharpened. "Where did it come from?"
"Surface approach," Mark said. "Single contact." Julie was already dragging back exterior frames. "He came from the tree line west of the entrance. No group visible." The subject reached the upper hall. Mark watched her crouch near cover with the musket up. She looked scared. The mutant fired again, with one Protectron rocked backward, but did not fall. Julie whispered, "If she had been alone…"
"She would be dead," Mark said. The subject fired and missed with the concrete burst near the mutant's cover. The mutant shouted something. The subject ducked as bullets chewed the wall above her. The two Protectrons kept firing. The Protectrons struck him almost at the same time, lasers burning into his armor and shoulder.
Julie's hands were tight around her mug. "Come on, rust buckets." The mutant pushed forward. A Protectron hit him in the thigh, and it stumbled. The subject fired center mass. The beam struck hard enough to make the mutant's armor smoke. Then both Protectrons fired again. For a few seconds, the whole observation room was silent except for the hum of consoles.
Then Julie exhaled. "Well." Mark saved the entire combat clip. Hale said, "Damage?"
"Two Protectrons engaged. One moderate damage, one light damage. Subject unharmed." The subject ordered one robot to watch the tunnel and pulled the damaged unit back. Then she checked the body. Took the weapon, ammunition, and small items.
Julie stared. "She got shot at and returned to the bad desk." The subject sat, breathing hard at first. She kept the musket nearby. Her posture looked worse now, shoulders tight, one leg bouncing under the bench. Then something on her Pip-Boy caught her attention. Mark leaned in.
"What?" Julie asked. "I cannot see." The subject stared at the screen for a long time. Too long for a normal alert. The reaction was not fear this time. She leaned back, rubbed at her face, then looked at the screen again. Julie narrowed her eyes. "Message?"
"Possibly."
"From who?" Mark did not answer because any answer would have been nonsense.
The Institute had not picked up any local signal or any spike shown on their side. Just the subject receiving something they could not see, from a source they could not track, after surviving a super mutant attack.
Hale said, "Log it as a visual-only anomaly." Mark did.
Subject reacted to an unknown Pip-Boy display event after a hostile encounter. No corresponding Institute-detected signal burst. Content unreadable. Emotional response observed.
The subject selected something on the Pip-Boy, then began writing notes. For a while, the shelter settled into a rhythm again. Then she got up to stretch. Julie groaned. "Finally. My back hurt watching her." The subject rolled her shoulders, stepped away from the bench, and walked toward the old guard section. Two labor units were inside, finishing something large.
Mark brought that feed up.
The machine took shape badly through the camera angle. It didnt look like RobCo equipment. It didnt look like Vault-Tec. It didnt look like anything Mark was aware of. Julie stopped joking.
"What is that?" Mark zoomed. "Unknown." Hale's voice came through colder. "Show me."
Mark patched the feed. The subject stepped around the machine, checking it with an expression that looked too pleased for Mark's liking. She touched one of the side supports, then looked at the labor units and gave another order.
The robots turned toward the remaining scrap piles. Julie leaned toward the screen. "They built that from shelter salvage?" The subject was smiling. Mark started a new object note.
An unidentified constructed device was observed in the former guard room. Built by subject-directed robotic labor. Materials appear sourced from interior salvage and recovered components. Design does not match known RobCo, Vault-Tec, military, or Institute surface catalogues. Function unknown.
Julie said, "It looks like a fabrication cradle." Mark glanced at her. She shrugged, but her eyes stayed fixed on the feed. "I said, looks like. Not is." The subject spoke again. The audio caught only pieces. "...subcore…"
Julie blinked. "What did she say?" Mark replayed the clip. Then the subject's voice, faint but clear enough. "...make a subcore encoder…" Hale said, "Repeat that." Mark played it again.
Julie leaned back slowly. "What the hell is a subcore?" Mark typed the word exactly as he heard.
Audio fragment: subject issued order containing phrase "subcore encoder". Meaning unknown. Secondary device construction initiated.
The labor units began moving again. Julie rubbed both hands over her face. "She went from one robot to six robots to unknown fabrication hardware in two days." Hale cut in. "Priority assessment." Mark knew what Hale wanted; he wanted a clean answer. Low, moderate, or high threat or curiosity. To ignore or escalate.
She had a small robot security force, access to fusion cores, a working underground base, unknown prior knowledge of ArcJet, and machines that did not belong to any surface technology tree Mark recognized. But she was still one young girl in a lab coat who nearly died to one super mutant. Julie spoke first. "She's not a direct threat to us."
"Yet," Hale said. Julie nodded once. "Yet. But she is becoming a technical anomaly." Mark agreed with that more than he liked. He wrote:
Updated assessment: Subject remains physically vulnerable and dependent on robotic units for survival. However, technical behavior has escalated beyond ordinary scavenger capability. Unknown knowledge source remains the primary concern. Subject's survival against super mutant contact was due chiefly to pre-positioned robotic security. Alone, survival probability would have been negligible.
Hale said, "Recommendation?" Mark looked at the feeds. The subject was back at the bench. The robots were building the second unknown device in the guard room. "Maintain passive surveillance," Mark said. "Increase archival capture on construction activity, we can recreate it and see what it is used for. Do not engage. Do not expose assets. Continue avian watch when available."
Julie looked at him. "That's the safe recommendation." Hale made a low sound that might have been an agreement. "Submit preliminary anomaly tag. Not a full escalation. I do not want Robotics or Advanced Systems crawling over this until we know whether she is building a toaster or a bomb."
Julie looked at the strange machine in the guard room. "Those are very different shapes."
"Surface engineering is to be trusted," Hale said. Mark saved another clip as the labor units bolted a panel into the second device frame. The subject did not watch them the entire time. That bothered him, too. She trusted the work order enough to leave them building something she clearly wanted.