A month has passed since Mayor McDonough was discovered

to be a synth working with the Institute - much to the shock

of all the residents of Diamond City but one intelligent reporter.

Piper picked up her half empty Nukacola bottle and pounded back the rest of the old world drink. Wiping sticky liquid off her lips with the back of her hand, she deleted the 'but' and everything after. Saying 'I told you so' while fun, could only get more doors slammed in her face, and she already had so many.

Despite the more than ample time, the council has yet to move

on selecting an interim mayor or even calling for the beginning

of an election. Why are they trying to impede the will of the city?

Could more of the council be in league with the now defunct Institute?

Defunct - that was a fancy way of saying blown to smithereens. Everyone heard the explosion, billowing smoke visible from the crater throughout the Commonwealth. Piper wished she'd been there next to her when she pushed the button. She was less than forthcoming about what all happened in the Institute, refusing to give an official statement. Then she went and threw herself over the Railroad, burying them behind even more secrets. Sure, sure, escaped synths were in danger but what about the truth? Why didn't anyone care about that anymore?

A fist pounded at the door, and Piper scooted her chair away. "Nat!" she shouted through the tiny office.

"What?!" her sister screamed back.

"There's someone at the door. Go answer it."

Nat threw down a stack of old papers, the pile smashing against the broken floorboards, and folded her arms. "Sorry, didn't realize you busted both your legs and couldn't move. Of course, I'll be the one answering the door seeing as how you're laying there on your death bed."

"Don't be such a smart ass," Piper chided, turning back to her article. She needed to get it out the door before the morning, but her muse wouldn't take. Even staring at the blank black screen wasn't helping, the flashing green bar digging deeper into her eyes. Her fingers ran under the desk, searching for a new distraction when they bumped into something crossing underneath the wood. It stuck up off the drawer hinge, pointing towards the wall. Piper mused to herself, "What's the angle here?"

"Hey!" Nat shouted from the door, her voice echoing even above the pounding rain. "It's some guy. And he's here for you!"

"Well, not here for her exactly, I..."

"Are you gonna get your butt up or do I have to do everything around here?" Nat continued.

Piper clicked out of her article, barely past a paragraph, and rose from her desk. "Yeah, you're so abused," she rolled her eyes as Nat scampered away from the door. But her sister didn't vanish up the stairs, she clung around the corner to watch grubby fingers grubbing up the already grubby walls. Piper needed a break, but the truth waited for no one.

The visitor stood stock still in the doorway despite more rain drenching his already waterlogged skin. "You can come in, you know. Get out of the rain, anyway," Piper said, waving him in deeper.

He bobbed his head, dripping water across the stoop, and entered. "After the day I've had I...presuming seemed unwise."

"So, you were looking for me? Is the council finally gonna see me? Or are you with the Railroad? That faction of Brotherhood sniffing around the edge of the Commonwealth? Oh, did you get my request to interview a member of the Gunners for my 'Death in the Commons' series?"

"I..." the kid blinked through every one of her questions, then reached into his bag. He held a thin scrap of a box, barely bigger than a folder. "This is yours."

"Mine?"

"I don't know who it's from, but she thought you would. Please open it without killing, trying to kill, eating, or attempting to eat me. Thank you." After finishing his diatribe the kid exhaled, his cheeks sucking in from the effort.

Piper eyed him up, her hand on the package, "Are ya finished?"

"I hope so," the kid said, releasing his grip.

She slit the box open and yanked out a handful of papers. "What's the big idea? This is 'A View From the Vault," Piper said, shaking them in his face, "I've got another two dozen in back, I don't need anymore." She attempted to return them, twisting the stack around to slip into the box when handwriting on the back of the paper caught her eye. While the kid and Nat looked on, Piper dug into it, reading each line, pausing, then having to go back to make certain it was all real.

"Oh...oh, Blue," she sighed while turning over the last of the pages. "Nat! Stop the presses!"

"I hadn't even started 'em yet," Nat pointed out.

"We're staying up all night to run this!" Piper shouted, "Quick, get to the terminal and type this out."

Nat sighed another "Fine" as she stomped towards the desk and collapsed in the chair. "Well..."

Piper cleared her throat and read what felt like the last confession of her friend.

"An Interview With The Woman Who Destroyed The Institute

Many of you know me, perhaps not by name, or by face. You may not even recognize me at a glance, but I have touched more lives than I thought possible. For the past year I've been a customer, a voice, a shoulder, a rescuer, a fixer, a healer, a hero, and a killer. I began as a stranger in the Commonwealth, and yet it was my home in more ways than I could properly explain. This was not the world I was promised, the pain I expected to endure, but life has a way of not following plans.

The Institute took everything from me; they killed my husband, they yanked my son out of his lifeless arms. I lost my family because of them. It is a good enough reason to want to destroy them. A reason so many other people share across the Commonwealth, and perhaps beyond. They thought the surface world was beyond redemption, that there was no compassion, no kindness left. No hope. But they were wrong.

When I set out on my journey to try and save my child, I was adrift and alone. Everyone I'd ever known was dead, the world torn apart and built into something obscene. This unknown terrified me. But others who heard my plight gave of themselves to help me, to save me. Humans, synths, ghouls, super mutants - all walks of life, all willing to risk their own lives for my sake. There was tenacity in the reporter who shared my story. Compassion in the synth that chased down a deadly mercenary to find my boy. Courage in the brother who risked his position for my sake. Sacrifice in the ghoul willing to step back from his duties and travel at my side. Resilience in the fighter that put aside all she knew to travel with a stranger. Trust from the mercenary who had no reason to give it. Bravery in the last Minuteman, unwilling to go gently into the void. An unexpected kindness in a most surprising and large place. Intelligence from a woman who most would declare obsolete. Humility wrapped in a lie by a man with an ever changing face. And throughout it all, from every voice crying for the truth, every foot canvassing the Commonwealth beside me, and every arm beating back the night with me was hope.

The Institute took my family and changed the course of my life, but in a cold turn of events the Institute was also my family. When I look out across the hole where the CIT ruins once stood my heart leadens, my veins weaken. In the end it was my choice, one not many people get in this cruel world. If faced with it again I would do the same, but that certainty does not change the loss or blame I will forever bear.

I've altered the future of the Commonwealth, set it free to follow it's own path, but in doing so I made myself a target: from remnants of the Institute and the Brotherhood. Them and others who crossed my path and did not win want not just my head, but those closest to me. I will not let them risk their lives for my sake. For this reason I have decided it is time I depart. But know this Commonwealth - my home for longer than any of you could imagine - I do not leave you alone. You are still surrounded by compassion, kindness, sacrifice, tenacity, courage, resilience, trust, bravery, intelligence, and humility. The people who remain, the people gifted with a new lot in life, these are your brothers, your sisters - they are your hope. Together, I know you can build this land into something great; perhaps even better than what I knew over two hundred years ago.

Yours in good health

The No Longer Sole Survivor"

Piper didn't know how she managed to keep her voice steady reading aloud Blue pouring her heart out, but she heard a sniffle beside her and turned to watch the delivery kid break down. His whole face crumpled inward as salty tears streaked through the rain.

"I. Had. No. Idea. That's. Who. That. Was," he huffed against every word, struggling to breathe.

"Hey, hey, kid, you okay in there?"

"All this, from bullets and maniacs living in shacks and raiders and yao guai! I thought it was worthless. Stupid. But..."

Piper draped a hand around the kid's shoulders, pulling him into a half hug, "Shh...shh...it's okay. Blue does that to people. Hell if I know how, but you come away feeling broken into a million pieces and rebuilt into something better."

"I..." the courier paused, then mentally ticked back over all those trials he mentioned earlier, his lips mouthing the list. He shook his head, unable to believe the things he accomplished in himself. "Did she, did she really do all of that?"

Piper snorted, "That and so much more. Speaking of...Nat? Did you get all that?"

"Yeah, yeah, sending it to the press now," her sister intoned, her soul stone the way only a teenager could be. She jabbed at a key with her finger and the printing press croaked to life.

Piper motioned to her couch and sat next to the kid still drenched from head to toe. Yanking out a towel and tossing it to him, she smiled, "You wanna hear the whole story? It's even crazier than you could imagine."

The courier wiped at his hair with the towel and nodded. "Yeah, tell me everything."

Dogmeat launched himself out of the Vertibird and onto the scrub brush the moment the landing gear struck. She sighed, gathering up the last of her gear and followed after her hyper dog. He hadn't been happy the hours they were in the air, his whimper evident above the roar of the craft. Tossing the first bag out onto the dirt, she turned around to catch a head tipping around from the cockpit.

"That went, went a lot better than the first time. We were only upside down for a few seconds. And spun out once. Not bad."

She smiled, "You did an excellent job, Tom. Thank you."

"Yeah, sure, no problem. Right? I mean, why have one of these babies if you can't take it out for a little vacation?!"

"Yes..." She hadn't told him that lie, but the assumption made some sense given her obtuse instructions. "Are you going to tell Desdemona about this? About where I went?"

"Nah, nah, she's got enough work with all those synths wandering through the Commonwealth like lost baby brahman with no mommy to guide 'em. Good time for you to be heading out. It'll be weeks before the railroad notices." He smiled, the jerk of his always rotating head slowing.

She dipped her head down and smiled again, "Thank you, for all of this."

Grabbing up the last bag, she slotted her favorite gun across her shoulder and hopped out of the Vertibird. Gnarled trees pocked the landscape - a sight almost as familiar as the one she left in the east, but something strange moved further in the distance. A bird with three pairs of wings hopped from rock to rock, its head shaped more like a crocodile's which it bashed into the sand to gobble up whatever fled the attack.

Turning away from the sight, she held a hand into the craft and called out, "Shaun, it's safe!"

Her boy poked his head out, his eyes wide from the wonders they'd witnessed so high above the ground now right in front of them. Shaun gripped her hand, his own warm against her palm. She knew she could only live with herself if she considered him her son. But questions still hung in the air about her boy. Would he age and grow? Or would he remain 10 years old even as she limped closer to the grave she skipped past? She had no way of knowing. People here might grow suspicious, might ask questions of the old woman with a young boy tagging along but the Commonwealth knew the woman who walked out of a vault in search for her son. They painted the woman who destroyed the synth Institute and Prydwen and weren't about to let her settle down. Here, with no pip-boy she was just another mother scrounging to find a place for her son.

Smiling at him, she pulled him from the vertibird, his mismatched shoes scurrying through the scrub brush. She knew what this land was called before the war, but it hardly mattered now. Somewhere there were more factions, more fights, and more people who needed help.

"Look, Mom," Shaun cried, pointing in the distance, "Dogmeat's found something!"

"That dog's always found something," she sighed, watching her trusty companion unearth a tin of cram and a bottle of Isocola. She hadn't seen one of those in...well, it was longer than it should be. Grabbing tighter to Shaun's hand, she pulled her little family away from the vertibird. They watched it climb into the orange sky, the black paint dispersing an encroaching fog as it flew back to the Commonwealth. She trusted Tom's word, but there were people looking for her, people who wouldn't take a few well meaning lies for answers. "Come on, kiddo. We'd better find shelter before night comes. I think there's a little town up ahead."

"Do you think they're friendly?" Shaun asked, lugging up his own bag, not that he needed much. A change of clothes and bits of an old alarm clock and phone were all he packed.

"We'll have to see," she said, then whistled for Dogmeat. He unearthed his head from one of the three-winged bird's holes, his tongue lolling with a pant. Another whistle and Dogmeat ran ahead of them; one of the best forwards scouts she had.

"Mom," Shaun spoke again. "What do you think is out there?"

The last rays of the sun drifted towards the horizon painting it the most vibrant orange she'd ever seen. Two hundred years, a nuclear annihilation, and still the world could offer up a beautiful sunset. Glancing down at her son she smiled, "Let's find out."