The lantern under the tarp threw a warm coin of light over my knees. I cracked open the book I'd pulled earlier from the office box: Nikola Tesla and You. It had diagrams I could understand, and unlike in the game, it didnt vanish after reading it. Bootsteps scuffed as they drew closer. It was the twins who slid into my light. I hadn't really gotten to talk to them yet, but they had the same smirks, same tired leather jackets, same everything except one had a braid and the other didnt. Twenty-something, if I had to guess.
"You reading?" the braided one asked, leaning a hip to the crate. "That's cute, not many people can do that."
"Put the book down a second," the other said, grin growing slightly bigger. "Let us see your pistol."
My hand stalled on the page. I looked past them to Rose at the front. She clocked the scene, weighed it in that quick way she had, then tipped her chin. Oh, come on, you must have heard me tell him no.. "Let 'em look," she called. They give it back, or I take fingers. It's the only way to stop these two from asking you daily."
"Copy," the twins chorused, not even pretending to be scared.
I slid the book under my thigh and made the little show of fishing in the pack again. "Pretty," The Braid said, frank. "What's it called?"
"Ch—charge pistol," I said, a little nervous I wouldn't get it back. "Takes cells on the side. S—same as your standard laser kit."
They both leaned in at once. Off-Braid stuck out a finger, stopped before she touched. "Side feed?" I nudged the latch with my thumb. The panel clicked open, and the fusion cell gleamed in the pocket. I popped it, checked the contact, slid it back with that snug little click. The twins shared a look.
"That's pretty cool, I've never seen anything like it," The braid said, "Oh right, I don't think we have introduced ourselves, Im Mara, and that's my sister Lena. And your vault mouse, right?" she snickered. While I nodded. "Cool if we take a couple of shots with it?"
"Uh.. yeah.. I guess.. but you are going to owe me a charge cell." I said while they turned to Rose. Rose had already read our minds. "If you're flinging light," she said, voice even, "you do it into that big ugly wall. No glass. No cars. No sky. One shot each. Then you hand it back to her."
Carson drifted close enough to be the quiet kind of chaperone. Karma didn't even pretend not to watch. Levi hovered behind the twins. Lena, the one without the braid, made a little gimme gesture. I passed the pistol grip-first. She weighed it, surprised when it wasn't heavy. "Huh," she said. "Thought it'd be heavier."
"R—right, she's built differently," I said.
"That so?" Braid took a half-step toward the solid wall that had rebar sticking out. She took a stance and squeezed. The blue snapped out, and it hit the wall, and the concrete popped a little, spitting chalk dust. A palm-sized crater sat there, edges melted to a ceramic sheen. A spiderline of crack ran out and then thought better of it.
Both twins swore at the same time. "Shit."
Levi yelped. "That's not red."
"No," I said, deadpan.
"Or green."
"No."
"So… why blue?"
I scratched my cheek. "Okay, so, blue means it's a shorter wavelength than red. Shorter wavelength = more energy per photon. Same cell, same total juice, but every little packet of light is hitting harder. Then there's beam quality; most red laser light is a sloppy beam that blooms in the air. This one's optics keep the beam tighter, low divergence, good collimation, so the power density at the target goes way up. Think 'all the heat in a pin-tip' instead of 'warm flashlight.'"
They blinked. I didn't stop. "Also, the driver isn't dribbling power; it's gating it, tiny micro-bursts into a capacitor bank and dumping them in neat packets. That's why the concrete was ceramicized instead of just blackened. Overall, it's just less waste."
Three faces with the same expression. Levi's mouth was open. "English," Lena begged. "Please."
"Right." I blew out a breath and chuckled. "Red laser = hot spoon. Big, messy heat. Blue laser like this = hot needle. You're poking all that heat into a much smaller spot, faster and hotter. It's why the color changed from red to blue."
Mara pointed at the scar in the wall. "So that's why it made that sound."
"Yeah. Needle, not spoon." I tapped the side panel. "The color is from the laser module and optics, what frequency it makes, and how clean it keeps the beam. The better the optics and driver, the Faster and hotter it is."
They blinked at me like I'd told them a bedtime story in a language only I spoke. Lena grinned first. "I understood… six words." And Mara snorted before laughing.
"Enough," I said, slightly annoyed. Carson crouched by the impact, ran a gloved knuckle around the lip. "That packs a hell of a punch." He tilted his head.
"Let me have a turn," Mara said, already lifting the pistol again.
"One," Rose said from the bench, not turning. "Then you give it back."
Mara lined up higher on the same wall, angled away from the first scar, and popped off a shot. The crack echoed and then died. Just the Brahmin huffing and the little hiss of cooling rock.
"Okay," Mara breathed, passing it to me with both hands like it was a hot plate. "Not Brotherhood issue." Though she sounded a bit disappointed for some reason. Levi was still staring at the hole. "Would it—uh—could it blow through a wall?"
"Depends on the wall," I said. "Drywall? Aye, Most things could easily. Cinder this thick, hell even heavy armor?" I flattened my palm on the slab. "You'll crack it maybe if you're lucky. This wall here is old and has seen better days. But to bust through, say something new, that would take you loading cells for an hour, maybe, im not fully sure."
I took the pistol back and felt my pulse come down that small notch it does when the right thing is in the right hand. Levi leaned in, curious as a dog. "So it's called a… charge pistol."
"Aye." The burr thickened because he was too close and was invading my personal space. I took a step sideways. He didnt seem to catch, or maybe he didnt care that I wanted space. "Dunnae—dunnae crowd me, Levi."
He flinched back, palms up, not offended. "Sorry. Sorry. Just—" He touched the back of his neck and realized how that sounded. "I'll shut up now."
"Please," I said, too quick, then mumbled, "Ta."
The twins lingered, brains clicking. "power's cells," Lena said. " Handy."
"Does she jam?" Mara asked. I shook my head. "She sulks if you crack the contacts. But she's fine if you treat her like a proper lady, with care."
"Everything breaks if you treat it like shite," Rose said, flipping a page in her ledger with a dirty thumb. "You two done poking holes in my backstop?"
"We're done," they said, in perfect unison, and it was impossible not to smile at least a little. They drifted off, sharing the same walking style. Carson stayed long enough to clap the slab with his palm, satisfied it wasn't about to give. Karma tossed me a look? I gave her the world's smallest nod. She went back to her sleeping spot.
Levi hung back, fidgeting with his pencil. "So your—your mum's, huh?"
It landed sharply in my chest. I kept my eyes on the pistol, slid the side panel open and shut as if it needed doing. "Aye."
He didn't press. The wince in his face said he wanted to. The better part of him kept it down. Points for that, it seems he could learn after all.
I put the pistol away. The lantern under the tarp buzzed. The last scrim of daylight bled out of the sky. The page of Nikola Tesla and You peeking from under my thigh begged for one more paragraph—coils and little arrows and words like dielectric lens. Rose came by and dropped of a bowl of food for me. I eat it slowly and wish there were spices added to whatever this meat was. It was probably best I didnt know.
I slid the book back up and read while the camp reshaped itself for the night, As i clicked on Vault Tec Basic next for my research. Since i already finished the last one. Levi crouched, elbows on his knees so he wasn't looming. "So if you were going to… I dunno… improve it—"
"The pistol?"
"Yeah."
"Wouldn't," I said. "Not until I have the spares to ruin it if or when I mess up."
He snorted. "That's fair."
Wind moved through the weeds in a long, low sigh. Somewhere down the blacktop, a sign creaked like a lazy door. It was almost cozy, if you stared at it sideways. "Vaultie," Rose said, not loud, not soft, that command voice that just sits in your bones. "Eat. Thirty minutes. And Levi go get some rest."
"Mm," I said, nose in the book, because Tesla was explaining how to not kill yourself with resonance and I could feel something in the diagram lining up with a broken fan in my head.
"Now," she said, and there was a laugh in it.
I marked my place with a clothespin, tucked the book into the crate corner, and focused on eating the thin stew with something that might've once been corn and something that definitely was not meat. I ate while sitting on my heels.
The twins kept glancing at the slab every time they passed it. Carson muttered to himself over a map. Karma hummed tunelessly while she checked the same knot three times because the last thing you want is a tarp flapping at 3 a.m. Rose pretended to write in her ledger and absolutely watched all of us without moving her eyes or at least that's what it felt like.
Levi, the idiot, grinned at me again. "After watch," he said, dropping his voice, "you'll… tell me more about your… lifter?"
"Nae," I said, and the sound tucked itself round and soft without asking. "Maybe."
He brightened anyway. "I'll take maybe."
"Don't push it."
"Mm—right."
He wiped his cheek with his sleeve, finally noticing the broth. "Right," I said to nobody, and stood to get ready for the watch.
The next few nights slipped by like one long watch with naps in the middle. Same routine: two hours before sunset to stretch the legs and poke through whatever was falling down nearby, stew in a dented bowl, then the quiet. I stopped jumping at every creak. The night got… normal. I was honestly getting used to them all.
Nothing came hunting us. No raiders with bright ideas. Just wind through weeds and the occasional radio drifting in and out with farming reports or a man talking about roads with raiders. Stations changed every day, songs that cut off mid-chorus when the signal was lost.
Cause of Basic Robotics I now knew how to repair or build simple frames, motors, and the vat's I would need to make my other robots. Then the Vault-Tec thing hit me pretty hard with another headache. The information about how to build computers or how to build basic vault walls and gates. Even how to build a food processor so I wouldn't get food poisoning. It kept me up a bit later than I should've been. Good thing I was up anyway.
Blowback rolled in after that, a chain of "how" that started with black powder and ended with junk weapons. I wasn't about to start hand-making muskets, but things unlock in order; sometimes you start with the ugly one. I set Smithing turning after—iron, heat, I could make blades, metal armor, and tools. But knowing and actually knowing how to make it are two different things; those were skills I needed to train, or make a robot that could do it for me.
During the day, we looted land were lucky enough to find canned Food. deserved. A storeroom in a pharmacy with two boxes of sealed rations bars. A vending machine that still had life in it. I found Nuka-Colas, four brown, two Cherry, and one Quantum so blue it almost lit the room by itself. A part of me wanted to drink it, but then again, I knew better, since I knew what it was made of; it was best I never drink that, even if my perk would probably protect me against it. Best not to test things just yet. I hugged it to my chest like a kid and sat with it for a while.
Rose did the math with her eyes and held out a palm. "Trade," she said, like she was offering me a coat in winter. "10 charge cells for the Quantum, and I'll throw in 3 bottled waters."
I grumbled and made a face, but then took the cells and bottled water. She cracked the Quantum and took a slow pull like it was church. Her shoulders loosened. She made a sound I never want to hear again.
I looked over my clothes. I could use something else besides; we haven't really stopped to shower or even clean. So I traded with Karma for some of her used clothes. Two decent shirts and a pair of dark pants that fit after I knotted the waist with a wire.
Then there was the lab coat. Found it in a clinic on a dead body, a member of the Children of the Apocalypse, judging from the patch still stitched on the breast. I sat with him for a minute. Took the coat because he wouldn't need it anymore; besides, it gave me a plus 1 to my intelligence, putting me at 11 total. And it even increased the speed at which I was researching by 2 percent, which isn't much but still an improvement.
The group looked at my new style once I came out. A few nods, the luckiest find came under a rusted maintenance hatch behind a service station, half-buried in dust, a Fusion core. Indicator silver is still glowing, and it showed to be around twelve percent battery life. I could use this to power something. I slipped it into the pack.
Levi kept doing what Levi does, floating nearby, making himself useful sometimes. He's learning when to shut up; I'll give him that. He carried a box without being asked and didn't open his mouth the entire walk back from the pharmacy, which for him might be a medal-earning event.
Night watch settled in my bones. I could do the loop half-asleep now: check around the camp, check the wagon hitch, make sure Claptrap's hadn't found anything. Radio would drift up in the quiet, some farmhand talking about a rad deer herd somewhere nearby, a woman reading lost-and-found from a town I'll never see, a song about corn.
The week went by pretty fast, because nothing tried to kill us, thankfully. which is a good week in my book. The Chemfuel research was almost there by the last night, one more watch, maybe two, and I'd be able to make fuel. Not sure what good it would be, but I had to learn it to get to the other stuff I wanted. Small haul from those days, before we rolled on:
Food & drink: two boxes of ration bars, four regular Nukas, two Cherry (one gone), one Quantum (traded), a handful of sealed snack packs that tasted like cardboard and sugar.
Ammo & power: mixed handfuls of .38 and .45, a strip of 10mm, charge cells from Rose's trade, and that fusion core (12%).
Clothes & kit: two shirts, dark pants, decent boots, a Children of the Apocalypse lab coat (fits, patched), a spare belt, and a battered cap, which I was using.