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I plopped my spoon back into the pile of nutritional goop on my lunch tray. My head pounded as Amata went on about the dance next week. It wasn’t her fault my head hurt, but it definitely made it hard to focus on the conversation.
“It’s ridiculous. We see each other every single day, all day long. We can't get one break?"
“I think they’re trying to get us ready to start… dating.” I shuddered at the thought. Our pickings were slim. “Think about the math. We should all be married with children within the next few years. They probably want to get us started as soon as possible." Not that I could have children; as if I wanted them anyway. But no one knew that except my dad, me, and Amata. It was no one else’s business.
“I can’t imagine my dad going on nervous dates with my mom at this age.”
I snorted. “Me either. He’s such a boring, angry dude, I can’t imagine what a young Overseer must have been like.”
“What about your parents?” She asked, a little hesitantly. I was perfectly fine growing up without a mother, but to Amata, it was still rough territory.
“According to my dad, my parents loved each other very much. I’m sure it wasn’t so hard for them. Maybe it was a love at first sight kind of thing."
Amata smiled. "Maybe. That's so nice. We could only be so lucky," she said, rolling her eyes. Butch, across the room, threw food at his friends, and spoke with his mouth full, and shouted and laughed boisterously. Most of those things weren't so bad on their own. But he was... abrasive. I couldn't picture either Amata or I spending the rest of our lives with Butch.
I looked to his other friends as I shoved a cracker with goop into my mouth. Or any of them, really. None of them are really awful on their own. It's when they're together that dying alone and unloved seems... preferable.
Freddie's not so bad. He's the anxious type... but he's working on it. If you get him alone, he's thoughtful, and asks questions. Paul is a nice boy on his own, too, and he's handsome, I think. But both of their fathers are Vault security. That really would put a damper on my secret criminal activities around the Vault. Imagine being caught picking the pocket of your Overseer by your own father-in-law. Embarrassing.
Wally is huge and not very smart, but those aren't bad things. The way he uses his size to bully people, that's the problem. He's the muscle of the Tunnel Snakes, and everybody knows it. He makes no decisions for himself. The boys say punch, he says how hard.
Butch... he's all bark, zero bite, minus running the Tunnel Snakes. He's pretty, I guess, and he's great at being a barber as designated for him by the GOAT, but...
Could I really love any of them, if they were on their own, separated from their boys? Would I be happy? Forever? And without children to appease the Overseer?
My head pounded. It clouded my vision; I couldn't sit here entertaining this anymore. "I gotta go see my dad. My head's killing me."
"Okay. Feel better!" Amata quietly went back to her lunch, keeping her eyes to herself. I hated leaving her alone at lunch. I stood up, took care of my lunch tray, and headed down to the clinic, where I knew my dad would be. He almost never went anywhere else.
"Hey, dad?" I rounded the corner into his office.
"Yes, my darling! How was lunch?"
"Fine," I said cheerfully. As always. Every day it's the same three goops, some crackers, some juice, some water. "I have a pounding headache, and it’s bad. Could you give me something?"
He stood from his desk and flashed a light in my eyes. I should have seen it coming, but I still flinched away. "Follow," he said, and moved the light back and forth. My eyes followed. It made me a little dizzy. "Just a headache. Take two of these," he pulled a bottle of pills out of his desk - must have been his personal-use headache meds, "Lie down in a dark room, and just relax. I think you've overworked yourself lately. I'll let them know you won't be coming back to work this afternoon, under doctor's orders."
"Thanks, dad." I grasped the pills, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and left for my room.
"Honey?" He called to me as I exited the clinic. I turned back to him. "I love you. I hope you feel better."
"Thanks," I said with a smile. “I love you too.”
I got to my room, popped two pills, and washed them down with some water. I kicked off my boots, climbed into my bed, turned all the lights off, and fell asleep almost immediately.
I was suddenly awoken by thin fingers gripping into my shoulders. "Wake up! Please, Amelie!"
Amata? My eyes wrenched open and I sat up quickly, almost headbutting her. "What's wrong?"
"It's your dad. He's gone."
"Wh - Dead?" I whisper. My heart crumbles into a million pieces in a second.
"No! No, he left. The Vault. He left the Vault. I'm sorry, so many things are happening at once, I can't think straight. Your dad left the Vault and now everything is a nightmare. Vault security is coming to get you because they think you know what he was up to.”
"Oh my god." I shook my head, hard, trying to let the information sort itself out in there. I swung my legs off the bed and plunked my feet into my boots. "What do I do?"
"You have to go. You have to leave and go after him. I think they're gonna kill you if they find you." I looked up at her and her eyes were filled with tears, though her voice was strong.
"Oh, Amata." She near-tackled me, and hugged me tightly. I suddenly realized this would be our last hug... ever. I had to leave now and I probably would never be able to come back. I hugged her back, even tighter. I heard her squeak as the air was squeezed out of her. "I love you. I love you so much. You're my best friend and I never ever want you to forget that you are so loved." Now I was crying.
"I love you too." We held each other for a too-brief moment before she pulled away. "But you have to go. I think I can buy you some time. There's a secret tunnel out of my dad's office that leads right to the Vault entrance. Here," she slides a piece of paper into my hand, "there's all the codes and directions you might need."
"Thank you," I said, and hoped my eyes would give away how much I meant it.
"Now go! You have to go." I had to go. I had to leave! I had to leave the Vault! Probably forever. That felt like too much right now. Let's back up to, my dad is out there somewhere, and I'm gonna be killed if I don't leave too. I don't even know what's really out there. They tell us in school that it's nothing, just a wasteland. But my dad wouldn't leave for no reason...
I quickly shuffled anything I saw into my old school knapsack. It was a beat up canvas material, but it would have to do. Stimpaks, that bottle of pills from earlier, some of my books, some BBs, my BB gun… my baseball bat, I'll hold on to, just in case I run into anyone I have to knock out. And, by god, some Vault jumpsuits, but especially underpants. If there were people out there in the world, there were probably clothes, and I'd probably be able to find more. But there might not be underpants.
I rushed to my dad's office and piled the backpack with as many of his supplies as seemed reasonable for one or two people. Then I took his picture of him and my mother. I knew he would also want my mother’s 21:6 picture, so I went to yank it off the wall, but the painting became a doorway for a safe instead of coming down. On a guess, I typed in '2-1-6', and the safe opened. What looked like thousands of soda bottlecaps poured out - I dumped them all into my backpack. Whatever they were, they were clearly important to my dad. He also, desperately, needed to come up with a better password.
On the bright side, my headache was gone.
Further down in the quarters, I could hear Butch shouting. What else was new? Today was a special kind of day, though. I focused on the sound as I sneaked, and I realized he was shouting for help. I broke out of my crouch and ran to him - when Butch DeLoria needs help, something is really, really wrong.
"My mom! Please! Somebody help my mom!" I rounded the corner and almost slammed into him.
"Butch! What's wrong?"
"Radroaches have my mom! Please!"
I rush into the quarters of Ellen and Butch DeLoria, realizing I don't have a ton of time to deal with this. Two huge radroaches had Ellen pinned, and they bit and scratched her all to hell.
"HEY!" I shouted to get their attention before beaning each of the roaches with my bat. Then I beat them until I was sure they were dead. "Are you okay, Ellen?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said in quite a grouchy tone. "Now I really do need that drink." She sat on her bed and cracked open a clear bottle of spirits.
"You can head down to the clinic to patch yourself up when you're ready, I guess," I said, and then I left. Butch was so excited, he hugged me so tightly he almost lifted me off the ground.
"I owe you my life, Ame!"
"It's all good, Butch. I have to go."
"Yeah, what the fuck is going on right now? Another radroach infestation? Everything is crazy."
"My dad left the Vault." Butch's eyes got wide. "I know. I have no clue what's happening. Amata can tell you more. But I'm going too, I guess. I don't have a choice, Vault security is going to kill me if they find me and I can’t leave my dad out in the world alone. I gotta go." I gripped him by the shoulders. “Butch. I need you to be good to Amata. Please. She is strong and she will be okay on her own, but you need to be better to her and treat her right. Please.” He nodded. His eyes were huge - I think he even meant it.
I turned and rushed down the hall - I didn't hear voices or footsteps, so I was confident I could get away with trying to run quietly.
"Ame!" I turned, but kept walking backwards, to try to keep my pace. Butch hesitated. He hadn't been sure what he wanted to say to me before he called for me. What do you even say when you're pretty sure you're never gonna see somebody again? He settled on "Be safe." I nodded, and the action felt heavy. I slithered down another hall.
Jonas, my dear friend, and my dad's faithful assistant in all things medicine... he was dead now, just inside his lab. I checked his pockets, which felt... fucking terrible. But if Jonas might have known anything about where my dad went... I had to find out. He had a holotape, a bunch of papers, and some pencils and pens. The holotape had my name scrawled on it - really, it had 'Ame' scribed, but, obviously that's for me. I plop the holotape into my pip boy and listen to the message as I hold the hand of the corpse of Jonas.
Hold on Jonas, I need to record this first.
I don't really know how to tell you this. I hope you'll understand, but I know you might be angry. I thought about it for a long time, but in the end I decided it was best for you not to know. So many things could have gone wrong, and there's really no telling how the Overseer will react when he finds out. It's best if he can blame everything on me. Obviously, you already know that I'm gone. It was something I needed to do. You're an adult now. You're ready to be on your own. Maybe some day, things will change and we can see each other again. I can't tell you why I left or where I'm going. I don't want you to follow me. God knows life in the Vault isn't perfect, but at least you'll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going. Goodbye. I love you.
The holotape beeped its completion. Tears streamed down my face. He thought I'd be safe? What, did he think I'd be happy here without him for the rest of my life? Okay, plenty of time to be angry at him while I stalk through the Vault to the Overseer's office. For now, I closed Jonas's eyes, put his glasses back on his face, and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Thank you, Jonas. For everything you ever did for me or anyone else. I'm so sorry." I wiped my face with my sleeve. Then I picked myself up and kept myself moving. I raided any supplies or information Jonas may have had in his desk - more of these bottlecaps, some notes from my Dad to Jonas about some science thing they were working on, some bandages. I'd take it all. Fuck the Vault. They can get creative to patch themselves up.
I rounded a corner and heard Amata's voice, low and desperate, in a room down the hall. I crouched and crawled down the hall, trying to get closer to her voice. If I could see her one last time before I go...
"Dad, please. She doesn't know anything! I swear on my life! I swear on your life!"
"We can't trust her, Amata. We never could. Her or her father." The fuck?
"Why?" Amata pressed.
The Overseer threw something hard but small across the room, and whatever it was smashed into pieces and fell to the floor. "Dammit, Amata! Almost twenty years ago I opened that Vault door and I let James and that child inside against my better judgment, and look where it's gotten us."
"What? They're... from outside?"
"They needed help, shelter. We needed more people, for procreation. Open your eyes. We have one generation, maybe two, before we are going to run into inbreeding. James and Amelie... they were two fresh sources of new DNA, new people, new blood. I thought it could be a mutually beneficial situation."
I finally found the room they were in and walked right in. I had a baseball bat and some shock and anger to get me going - I wasn't afraid of whatever he had for me in that room. Both Amata and her father turned to me, surprised. Obviously. They weren't expecting me to pop up in the middle of a conversation about me. "Look, Overseer, this is all news to me. You were the one who just had the pleasure of informing me that I'm not from here, I'm from out there. I was planning on leaving peacefully so you folks can get on with your lives. I can change my mind if you'd like to continue putting up a fight." The baseball bat sat loosely on my belt loop. I didn't reach for it. I needed to make my point; that the Overseer was being irrational and dangerous, and I was calm and cool.
He stared into me for a moment, weighing his options. "Go. And never come back here."
I nodded. "Thanks. That was the plan. I just needed you to let me do it."
Amata turned to her father. "Dad, can you give us just a minute? Please?"
The Overseer sighed, but nodded. He left the room, hopefully to call off the cavalry of security he'd called to kill me.
She hugged me, tightly, and sighed "Amelie," into my shoulder.
"Maybe some day I can come back," I whisper into hers. "Maybe some day things will be different and we can at least see each other sometimes."
Amata pulled away from the hug a moment later. "Maybe," she said, her eyes tight and watery. It was probably too worrisome to plan for the future right now. The Vault didn't even have a doctor now, they'd have to get somebody trained and quickly. If my dad wasn't the doctor, it would have been Jonas, but... they killed him. "Here, take this," and she pressed a whole-ass gun into my hand.
"No, what if you need it?"
"There are more guns in this Vault, I'll find one if I need protection. I don't know where you're going or what you're going to go through... you need a real gun. Please, take this," she pulled out boxes and boxes of bullets for the gun. “It’s the last thing I can do for you, let me do it.”
I shoved the boxes into my knapsack. “Thank you. I… don’t know what I’m gonna do without you,” I said.
Amata’s eyes were so sad. “You’re gonna be just fine. You’re gonna find your dad and… live a full life. Maybe out there you can fall in love.” I patted her cheek. That was the last thing on my mind right now.
“Goodbye,” I said to my best friend.
“Bye, Amelie,” she said back.