Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Once upon a time, in the year 2077, there was a couple who had a baby son named Shaun who they loved very much, but something terrible happened. Their world ended, and they were forced to take shelter in a vault deep underground, where they were put into an enchanted sleep in chambers of ice…

Sorry, wrong story.

They were put into a cryogenic state of suspended animation by people who were, sad to say, not very nice. They might have slept there until the cryogenic suspension failed, except that they were woken up by people who were even less nice than the people who had put them to sleep. Those people stole the baby and killed the parent who was holding him while the other parent watched.

Then the head killer of those people turned to look at the surviving parent, and, contrary to orders, obeyed his instincts and killed that one too.

Yes, you read that right. Both parents died.

This sent a terrible shockwave through the space-time continuum, because in all the other versions of this story, one of the parents survived and set out on a mission to get their baby back. Along the way, they did some amazing things, made new friends, and changed their world forever. Whether they changed it for the better or made it worse is a matter of opinion. The point is, they changed the world.

And they did find their son, although it didn't turn out the way they imagined. They also realized that although they mourned the spouse they lost, the companion who fought by their side and shared their sorrow and joy had slowly become more than just a friend, and there was still a chance at happiness.

Okay, sometimes they discovered it took more than one companion to properly console them, but that's their business.

The point is, the death of the second parent left a vacuum in the world, in the lives they would have affected. And as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. At that point, narrative causality stepped in, and found someone who was, well, close enough.

This is that story. The story of that someone.

Raina was carefully hand pollinating the cacao bushes with a slender paintbrush made out of her own hair when she heard her sister Victoria yelp, a crash of falling scaffolding, and then a wet thud like a melon dropped on concrete. "Vicky?" she called, and when there was no answer, she dropped the brush and dashed to the other end of the EnviroVault (Tropical Clime). "Vicky!"

Their last remaining Mr. Handy, Jonny-say-Quoi was already there, pulling away parts of the collapsed walkway. "Miss Victoria? Are you all right? Miss Victoria—. Miss Raina—oh, Miss Raina, I am so sorry."

Raina looked, and a burning bitterness rose in her throat, choking her, because her sister's head had hit the corner of a planter, shattering her skull. "No. No, Vicky. You can't. You can't do this. You can't leave me alone. You can't." How could her sister go from being a thinking, living person one moment to a rapidly cooling sack of meat the next? It was not possible. It was not comprehensible. But it was true.

All the while, all around them, the agribots continued their work, tending to the plants, their dull and dim AI packages rendering them incapable of understanding or caring.

"Vicky…" Raina had seen death before. She killed chickens and rabbits on a regular basis, then cleaned and cooked them. However, she had never seen a person die before. It was like watching her own death, for so many reasons. Reaching out, she brushed the hair away from Vicky's face, recoiling as her fingers touched the mushy spot where her sister's head was caved in. Abruptly, she turned and vomited on the walkway. "Don't leave me. Don't," she choked out through her tears.

At the end of the day cycle, she and Jonny-say-Quoi buried Vicky in EnviroVault (Temperate Clime), in the bed they used for purely ornamental plants, among their foremother and sisters—Caroline, Regina, Isabella, Noor, Melisande, Catherine, Maria Theresa and the very first of them all, Theodosia.

"What was she like?" Raina asked Jonny-say-Quoi. (His name was a play on the French phrase 'Je ne se quoi', something which cannot be adequately or fully defined.) "Theodosia, not Vicky. I mean, I know we're all her, genetically speaking, but she was the only one who lived before the bomb, and being clones of her doesn't make us carbon copies. Vicky and I weren't the same in everything—nor were we that much like Joanna." She and her sisters all had names which were either the names of queens or names which meant 'Queen'. Joanna had been the sister before Vicky, and before her had been Maria Theresa. She could remember Jo, although she had been a child back then, but Maria Theresa was no more than a name to her.

"Hmm." The robot paused not so much for thought as for emphasis. "Sorrowful. She channeled her sadness into her work."

"Our work. All of ours," Raina looked around. "Except—I'm the last." The words rang bleakly in her head, though the vegetation absorbed the sound.

Doctor Theodosia Queen, the one and only survivor of their vault, was the keeper of the Concord Seed Repository, a massive collection of seeds from around the world, a bank far more valuable than any full of gold or jewels after the bombs fell.

For more than two hundred years, she and her cloned daughters had cared for the plants in the sprawling underground greenhouses, germinating seeds from the storage units, raising the plants, collecting their seeds, and then returning the new crop to storage, ensuring that the collection remained viable. After all, someday the radiation would die down enough for the world to be replanted. Then there would again be roses and chocolate, cherries and kohlrabi, maple trees and bananas, all that was beautiful, useful and nutritious. Of course there would also be nicotine, cocaine, and opium when that time came, but even Eden had its serpent.

In the meantime, besides preserving the flora of the world before the bombs, there was work to be done. People needed to eat, and in the experimental EnviroVault, the Queen women had developed razorgrain and mutfruit, super ginko trees and Sleeping Beauty roses, plants which would flourish in irradiated soil and provide for the hungry survivors. Raina's eyes went to the plaque on the plinth, the one with the names of the sisters who were not buried there. Margaret. Elizabeth. Juliana. Constancia. Matilda. Ulrike. Joanna.

They were the ones who had left the Vault—and never returned. None of those who left had ever returned. From the day the bombs dropped in 2077 to that day, they had no word from the outside world, so periodically, one of the sisters went forth to find someone—anyone—else out there. They'd gone armed, with Pip-Boys on their wrists and seeds to trade and to spread out into the world, trying to find other survivors, and one by one, a year and a day after they left, their names had been engraved on the plaque.

"I'm the last," Raina repeated. "There's no growing medium left to start another clone, and we're perilously low on fusion cores. At our current rate of consumption, they'll run out in about three years, five if I scale back the plantings and shut down half the EnviroVaults. So much here is worn out or used up. Without power, there will be no more grow-lights, no environmental controls, no cold storage. I'm going to have to go out into the world. I have no choice, because everything here will die within a few years. Although my sisters failed, although they never returned, I have no choice but to follow them, because if the Seed Repository dies, then we will all have failed, and we might all of us have died in the blast, and spared ourselves two hundred years of work. Besides, what else is there to do but wait until the lights go out?"

"Miss Raina—," Jonny-say-Quoi paused. "I am forced to concur with you. What is more, as you are the only remaining Queen, my duties are not divided. I can offer you more aid than I offered your predecessors, for then I had a responsibility to protect and raise the younger family members. I can go ahead and scout, and I can accompany you in your travels. However, I must point out that other than a few syringers, there are no armaments or ammunition left."

"If syringers are all I have, then I'll wake up the deadliest plants in storage and start brewing poisons. Aconite, curare, strychnine vine, ricin, poison arrow plant, rosary peas—I'll grow puncture vines and coat the seeds with poison to make caltrops." Raina smiled wryly. "Whatever or whoever I shoot will wish I shot them with bullets instead. And then there are the machetes. I'll make do. I have to."

Raina looked down at the churned earth that covered her elder sister. "But— but—Vicky!" She had held back her tears until everything was done that had to be done, but now she could cry.

She wept until she was dry eyed and sore throated, and then lay awake the rest of the night. The silence in the vault was oddly deafening, the absence of Victoria a black hole which sucked everything else into it. All the little sounds made by the presence of another living human were gone. Midway through the night, she got up, went into the bathroom, and turned on the light, squinting at herself in the mirror until her eyes adjusted. When her face was out of focus and blurry, she could imagine it was Vicky or Jo there in front of her, except that Vicky's hair was shorter, which made it stand out in ringlets rather than fall in waves. Their skin was the color of slightly tarnished silver, their hair brown-black, their eyes a muddy green. She gathered up her hair at the nape of her neck, letting it pooch out until it looked like Vicky's halo of curls.

What could you say of a face when it was not only your face but the only human face you had ever known? She had thought Joanna and Victoria were beautiful, but perhaps everyone you loved was beautiful, even when they weren't.

Missing Vicky was like missing one of her limbs; she could feel phantom pains where her sister wasn't.

Raina turned out the light and lay back down. It was not possible to sleep, so she made plans in her head.

In the morning she told Jonny, "When my sisters left the Vault, they were trying to make contact with other survivors and reconnect with Vault-Tec. That was their first priority. I am going to do things differently. My first priority will be to get more fusion cores. The second priority is to get more nutrient solution and parts for the cloning tank and start up a couple of baby sisters. It's good I'll have you to help when it comes time for them to be born. I know nothing about infant care."

"I agree when it comes to the matter of fusion cores, Miss Raina. There is no substitute for them. However, there is an alternative method to ensuring there are always caretakers for the Repository," Jonny-say-Quoi informed her. "That is, the, ah, natural way. I know it would not be ideal, and it would involve discomfort and even risk, but it is rather easier than cloning, or so I am given to understand. The matter is of academic interest only."

"You mean sexual reproduction, like the rabbits and chickens? It seems…unreliable. The baby could turn out to be anything. Still, that is how human beings reproduced for countless thousands of years and I will keep it in mind." Raina paused. "So, since I have no idea where to look for fusion cores, cloning supplies, or a Vault-Tec Industries representative, the first thing I want you to do is go out and scout for me. Take all the readings you can, take plant, water, and soil samples, look for signs of people, and if at all possible, find a good location for a base of operations on the surface."

"On the surface, Miss Raina?"

"Yes. We have no idea how far or how near the Repository is to anywhere useful, and going back and forth every night will only draw attention to this place. The last thing I want is for the seed bank to fall into the wrong hands and end up destroyed or exploited. So—the location should be safe and secure, near a reliable source of water—clean, if possible—and with enough room for plantings, a chicken coop and a rabbit hutch."

"You mean to take the livestock with you?" the robot inquired.

"Yes. Enough of them to breed and trade with, at least. I believe that if I rearrange the planting schedules and program the agribots accordingly, I can be away from here for up to three months, but I'll have to spend two weeks catching up afterward. While you're out scouting, I'll be working on ammunition for the syringer." Work was good. Work would save her from loneliness.

"Yes, Miss Raina."

"It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Be careful."

"Yes, Miss Raina."

A/N: So I've been trying to turn Cold-Blooded into a novel, with mixed results, and now I've started playing Fallout 4. Apparently I need a break from novelization, and this is it. I should add I'm new to Fallout, and I don't know where all this is going to go as yet. I make it up as I go along. Next chapter will take Jonny-say-Quoi up to the surface, where he will meet at least one character from F4!

There really is a Concord, Massachusetts Seed Repository, BTW, although here and now it is a resource for gardeners' heirloom seeds. I always strive for accuracy.