Chapter Text
HYDROGEN
Simon Riley couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d only ever seen cryotanks in schematics or rusted away to almost nothing elsewhere in his many travels. To find one intact – and still running! – that was some sort of bloody damn miracle.
“Cap…” He called out, trying to find his voice. Then, adding more force behind it, he called again, “Captain!”
“What is it?” His commander’s voice called back from further up the stairwell.
“Better come see this, sir.”
Simon waited, unable to take his eyes away from the frosted glass. He couldn’t see if anyone was inside, but he wondered what that would be like if there was. Other than Kate Laswell and her wife, Mara, it had just been the four of them for as long as he could remember. Anyone who wasn’t a raider was a ghoul, and anyone who wasn’t a ghoul was dead. Normal people just weren’t a thing in the Channels. Not anymore.
But, this wasn’t the Channels, the lieutenant reminded himself. His team had come all the way to The Hague in search of a ping. Laswell had sent them a long-range com from her vessel, anchored in some unknown spot in the North Atlantic, or far away in Reykjavik near Mara’s homeland, perhaps. She told them to investigate, thinking it might lead them closer to Vault-Tec’s legacy stronghold, but they’d lost the lead somewhere in this building. Ironically, this round tower used to be the OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, but now it was a victim of its own crusade.
The light on the cryotank blinked, taunting Simon to press it. Defrost. Meet the new human. Welcome them back to Earth; what was left of it, anyway.
Maybe he should let them sleep, he thought. Who would want to wake to this lonely hell? At first, most people had thought they would bounce back. Much like the old World War II motto of keeping calm and carrying on, many had assumed that things would just go back to normal after a bit of fuss. But, when they and their neighbors began to slough away from the invisible fire of radiation around them, eating food that had become poison, sleeping in the cool night air, letting the enemy in through an open, breezy window… well, nothing had been normal after that.
Simon himself had been inside of a cryotank before. He and his captain, John Price, and his sergeants, Kyle Garrick and Johnny MacTavish, had gone under at Laswell’s orders, spared from some of the most brutal fighting. She said she “would need them in the future”. So, she kept them hidden, moving them on her stealthy ship, transporting them around the broken world before landing on a final destination: the Isle of Jethou.
They were hours from Jethou at this point. And there was plenty to accomplish before Simon could feel at peace in his own bed again.
He felt his captain’s presence behind him and heard the footfalls of the other men on his heels. They were standing around him, all staring at rapt attention at the blinking blue button.
“Holy Christ,” Garrick muttered, breaking the silence.
No one said anything else. They just stared. But, they were all thinking the same thing. Do they open it? Who would be waiting for them inside? They had plenty of provisions if it was a friendly, and if it was an enemy, they had plenty of bullets. Either way – a problem would be solved. But still, it had been years since they had seen another living person other than the four of themselves. It had been since last Christmas that Kate and Mara had come to the island. So, this was a momentous occasion indeed.
“Cap’n,” Johnny said, taking a step forward, “Are we gonnae open it?”
Johnny sounded like a kid begging for a puppy. But, Simon had the same lingering question: can we keep it?
If it was empty, he thought his heart would break. No, no… it was occupied. He had to believe that much. Please, gods, let it be occupied.
Price took a step forward and locked eyes with each of his men. They readied their pistols and nodded to him. Then, he depressed the button. It stuck a bit, giving at first and then popping the rest of the way down. The machine whirred, powering up, and there was a hissing noise as the hydraulics fed in the warming fluids through the metal container.
Slowly, the window’s glass began to melt, chips of ice sliding away from the screen. The men looked on impatiently, four pairs of eyes begging for a glimpse into the frozen tomb. Finally, a large shard of ice fell to the bottom of the glass to reveal… you.
Simon studied your face in shock. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A feminine brow, full lips, soft cheeks, a gold ring in your nose; a sleeping beauty in a modern, Rubenesque package. You were so delicate and clean in there, so untouched by the ravages of the outside world. He wanted to feel the buttery smoothness of your skin. How gentle would your curves feel against his palm?
When he reached out to you, his fingertips touched the cold glass, and he heard Johnny sigh behind him,
“A wee lass? No… it cannae be.”
“Turn it back on,” Kyle demanded, trying to push past his captain’s strong arm, panicked, “Turn it the fuck on!”
“Sergeant,” Simon corrected him, but Garrick was beyond following orders.
“You can’t wake her up,” he pushed the button, reaching around Price, breaking through. Then, he pushed it again, ten times in quick bursts, slamming it down, trying to get the machine to comply, “Everything in this bloody world is fuckin’ broken, or it will try to kill her the moment she steps out into it. Turn it back on, goddamnit.”
“Garrick,” Price’s voice was deep but low as if he was trying to whisper, “Tha’s enough. She’s awake.”
Kyle stopped assaulting the cryotank and watched as the door cracked open, swinging outward like the lid of a casket, uncovering you in a cloud of nitrous and smoke.
You stirred, but you didn’t open your eyes. You couldn’t. Everything felt so heavy, like you were buried under a ton of freezing, wet sand. You were cold, and you felt your bones before you noticed any other sensation. Your joints felt like they were on fire, and the pain of moving them was burning you alive.
You tried to scream, but no noise came out. It was just air, weak and hushed, and suddenly, there were hands all around you, and you screamed more, this time involuntarily, terrified of whatever was happening to you.
Whispers… men’s voices. Were you in a hospital? You couldn’t remember anything. It would be so much better to just go back to sleep.
Then, you remembered everything. The bright, white glow of the bombs as they tore through the city, the sting of the cryotank filling with chemicals and turning you into a living corpse, listening to people’s panicked screams as they tried to climb into tanks all around you…
You gasped in a huge breath of air, and it filled your lungs in a rough, staggering shudder.
“Tha’s it,” you heard a voice say, “C’mon, it’s alright. Breathe.”
He had a strong British accent, but luckily, it was still English. Your Dutch was terrible.
“Help.” It was the only thing you thought to say.
You thought, for a fleeting moment, if these men were evil, it wouldn’t matter what you said to them. They’d probably kill you or worse, and you’d be back in the blackness for good this time. But, if they were good, or even if they were on the fence about their goodness, maybe your plea would sway them.
“Give ‘er here. Let’s go back to the ship,” another voice in another accent commanded.
Then, you felt two strong arms tighten as the stranger scooped you up from your icy bed and pressed you into his chest. The metal and plastic of whatever gear he was wearing cut into your skin. You tried to open your eyes again, gasping in breaths.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he tried to soothe you, noticing your distress, “It’s alright, now.”
Blackness surrounded you, but it was not the same infinite, inky depth you had been pulled from. This one was troubling and jagged in its formation. Light would peek through in flashes. A concrete street strewn with broken glass. Burned bits of paper fluttering on the dry grass. The murky water around a dock’s bollard. The endless, grey sea meeting an endless, grey sky. A man’s squinting, concerned gaze. A fist clutching a gun.
It was all a blur. None of these flashes fit together. You begged for either clarity or unconsciousness, struggling to keep your sanity in this teetering limbo.
“Here, lay her here,” someone offered.
You felt yourself being lowered, laid, and then covered by a woolen blanket as they lay you on a cot. You felt yourself swaying, rocking back and forth to the motion of the water. You were on a boat of some kind.
“Riley,” a gruff voice barked, “Get that engine started.”
“Aye, sir,” was the response.
“Is she alive?” Someone near your face asked. You wondered it with them.
“Barely. Shallow breaths. That pod wasn’t meant to hold her for so bloody long.”
The sound of the waves lapping gently on the side of the hull soothed you, but you couldn’t slip back into a restful slumber. You were waking up more and more as time passed. You could smell the salt air, and you felt the chill of your body as you tried to warm yourself beneath the cover. Then, you heard a fusion core whir to life, and you were moving, gliding through the water, heading out to sea.
“Help… me…” You tried again. There was a part of you that was concerned that those were the only words you were still able to pull from your mind, but they would have to do for now. You were coming up empty otherwise.
“Hey, love,” the gruff voice was back, not much more than a whisper. A rough hand wiped the hair away from your face, “Hey, c’mon. Come back to us.”
“C’mon, bonnie. Open your eyes,” the deep, craggy Scottish accent was nearby as well.
Then, when you finally felt the weight lift from your lids, you followed his command, opening them and looking around your new, floating world. Four large men stood by your bedside.
The closest was also the largest. He wore a full beard that matched his hair, both thick and dark brown, his facial hair shadowing his prominent jawline. He had full cheeks and a straight mouth which held his serious expression, and there was a proud nose situated between two of the brightest blue eyes you had ever seen. One of his eyes had a long, straight scar cutting across it, evidence of a terrible wound long since healed over. He was staring right at you, fierce and full of worry.
Next to him, a man with a buzzcut and a series of tiny, jagged scars on the side of his head was looking at you just as intensely with blue eyes that held a different sort of depth to them. He had a full mouth, and he was smiling down at you, seemingly more excited than worried as he studied your face. His fingers fidgeted with the hemmed pocket of his gear vest, his thumbnail digging into the seam as if to pry it apart.
Directly behind him, a handsome, clean-shaven man studied you with curiosity, wearing all of his emotions right on his face like a billboard. His big, brown eyes were keen and searching you for answers, trying to assess you for any information he could. He wore his hair in locs on the crown of his head but the sides were shaved in a clean undercut. He’d tied the locs back and out of his face, and you could see his bright expression. His skin was smooth, and he lacked the scars of the other men, but there was a nasty burn mark on his shoulder and down his arm.
To his left, there was a tall, blond man dressed in all black, heavily armored and carrying more gear than any of the rest. He was tattooed on every bit of skin you could see, except for his face, and many of them looked old, faded to their base green hues, their details becoming lost over the years. He wore a flat, unreadable expression, but there was a kindness in his brown eyes that encouraged you to look past his rough outer shell.
They watched you come to your senses as you tried to sit up in the bed. The bearded man helped you steady yourself, and he asked,
“You with us, love?”
“Wh… What happened?” You asked, fully unprepared for the answer. You knew it was bad. If you were waking up from a cryo-sleep, nothing could be good about that.
“What year is it?” The man with the locs asked quietly, sitting by your feet and peering down at you, his mind working overtime as he waited for your answer.
You looked around, checking their faces for something grounding. What sort of question was that? Cryotanks were only suitable for a few days of use. The government had shut down all research into stasis longevity. It couldn’t have been years…
“It’s 2287.” You sat up a little more, trying to find your strength, speaking with as much conviction as you could muster.
It was silent. Only the high-pitched hum of the engine and the predictable splash of the sea filled the void. The men shared a look, and you could immediately tell that you had failed your test. It was most certainly not 2287. You felt white hot fear well up inside of your belly as you waited for them to spear you with the truth.
“No it isn’t,” the tall blond reported, scoffing a bit in disbelief at just how wrong you were. “It’s 2557, and you shouldn’t be alive.”
Your reaction to Simon’s news had been violent and immediate. You had nothing to throw up, but your stomach didn’t care. After you wiped the bile from your chin, you remained bent over the side of the ship, watching your sick disappear quickly into the salty loam.
2557. Two hundred and seventy years had passed without you in them.
It was almost too much to bear. Your heart had cycled cruelly through all the stages of grief at an alarming rate. Denial of the truth, anger at yourself for crawling into that tank in the first place, sorrow for the loss of everything — and everyone — you had ever known, and then… a cold, painful acceptance. Between each ragged breath, you felt them all again, your feelings raging inside of you like a kaleidoscope of hurt until finally settling on a dark, unyielding hatred at Vault-Tec Incorporated.
Their greed had ended the world.
You put your hands on the side of the hull and raised your body back up. Johnny was there beside you, holding back your hair as well as he could, patting you on the back in patient, comforting taps.
“There’s a good lass. C’mon, bit of water, yeah? Here,” he held you steady and offered you a canteen.
You took a sip and tasted the clean water, waiting for the hint of bitterness that decontaminated drinks always had, but there was none to be found. This was fresh water, clear and empty of any synthetics. How?
You didn’t ask. You couldn’t stand any more truths today. You’d learned the year, and you’d learned their names, and you had cried when you couldn’t remember your own. Simon noticed a cloudy ID card clipped to your belt, but the ink was too faded to make out any of the words. You’d flung it overboard in a fit of rage, a rotten scream rattling in your throat, fading to a hoarse whisper due to your weakness.
It was hard to stand, and it was even harder to walk. You were suffering in every way that you thought you could, and the kindness of the men who had saved you was a blessing you took for granted. It wasn’t until you noticed John and Kyle having a hushed but heated discussion, cutting their eyes at you between their words, that you even considered that you might actually be in danger. They’d been polite thus far, but four men armed to the teeth and obviously well-fed in the middle of a global apocalypse made your survival instincts sound the alarm in your head.
But, where could you run? You were a prisoner and that was the best you could do. So, you lay against the steel wall of your bunk, wrapped the blanket around your body, and tried your best to return to the ethereal nothingness from whence you came.
Sleep never came to claim you. It had had its fill of you, for now, apparently. You spent the rest of the boat ride listening to the waves and trying to remember… well, anything. You were getting flashes of memories, but they were all disjointed. Unorganized. It was as if your brain was trying to piece itself back together like a gooey, over complicated jigsaw puzzle.
You were in a large government building. All limestone and brass fittings. You were among a whole crowd of people in suits, hurrying downstairs. The memory faded fast. Suddenly, you were playing with a doll, and she had been dressed in a little blue gown, adorned with golden stars and beads. Another child was playing with you. A sister? She was older than you, but then she, too, was gone. Your mind scrambled to find another and then, you were in an apartment by yourself, baking something in your oven, using a rolled up rag as a makeshift mitt and earning a nasty burn on your wrist.
You checked for a scar, and there it was. You wondered if there were any others. A cut that you might never remember.
A pale golden sunset melted into the sky as your boat reached its destination. You heard the engine spool down, and you turned toward the bow to see your landing site. A small island filled the horizon, stacked with a single, large hill and a white, sandy shore. The boat puttered into a hidden dock, masked by vines and painted fabric strips hanging from wooden rafters, making the hollow slip impossible to see from even a close distance.
As you traveled beneath the hide, you were bathed in a green darkness, shrouded in the covered dock. Simon cut the engine, and you came to a stop. You sat up, watching the men busy themselves with packing up their gear. Once they settled, bags and guns slung around their shoulders, John came over to you and, without so much as a word, picked you up in his arms and carried you ashore.
You wanted to protest. You wanted to somehow be brave in the face of what was happening to you, but you didn’t have the will. You closed your eyes and tried your best to take deep, shuddering breaths. Time passed with each one, and you felt the beckoning call of exhaustion return to you full-force.
“She asleep, Cap?” Simon asked, walking next to you and John.
“Aye,” your captor answered, speaking low as not to wake you in your almost-slumber, “You would be, too, if you were shut in a bloody icebox and left for fuckin’ dead.”
“What’re we gonnae do with her?” Johnny asked, his accent coming through in his whispers.
You listened for a while longer, keeping your eyes closed, playing possum in his arms, but all you could hear was the sound of gravel, and then sand, beneath John’s boots as he marched on, carrying you like you were a sleeping child too exhausted from a day of play. You felt him sigh, but you didn’t hear it. He was keeping his thoughts from his men. But, he finally responded,
“We’ll keep her safe, for now. Find out who she is,” he paused, “And why the hell she was carrying a diplomatic key card.”
“Does that mean th–” Simon started to ask, but you suspected that a quick look from John stopped the words from coming out.
“Don’t know what it means. We’ll send a bird out to Katie. See what she can tell us.”
The conversation subsided, the men’s voices pulling away from you like the tide. You let the rhythm of John’s steps lull you into something that felt like rest, something close to peace, and you slipped into a familiar darkness once more. Your last conscious moment, and the sound that carried you into a quiet somnolence, was that of heavy boots on soft, soft grass.