This is the first time I've put any writing up online, so reviews will help me get my bearings and will be greatly appreciated! All chapters beta'd by ArticulateZ!

The building was busy with activity; everyone rushed around under the buzzing fluorescents, organizing the country's defense for when the bombs inevitably fell. There was still a little time yet—six months was the estimation—though it might be sooner or later. The Vaults were filled preemptively, other bomb shelters—mostly the subways—were organized smoothly. But there was still a lot to be done before they'd be ready. If they were ever ready.

In a closed room in the back, two men talked. They wore neither the heavy power armor nor the grey-green civvies of the Enclave at the moment but there was still an air of militarism about the room. The red-haired man sitting down with his arms crossed solemnly would have towered over his commander had he been standing. He was in his late thirties, muscular, and listening to orders, his face purposefully blank.

"You're only posing as his body guard; he's already received threats," his commander was explaining. "At some point the two of you will be alone and our assassin will attack, you'll make sure both of them are killed, preferably with some noticeable damage to your own person to throw off suspicion. When they release you, you'll report back to me."

Ever the usher into the underworld, Charon brooded. They'd certainly renamed him according to his intended purpose. Men and women, Chinese informants, unfortunate witnesses, powerful foreigners, and even his country's own leaders – they all died the same when the order was given. A long time ago he'd begun to see only people's weaknesses and the best way to dispose of them at a moment's notice, since he could be made to turn his gun on anyone at any time. Still, he scowled distastefully. "Isn't the government unstable enough as it is?"

His commander glared at him sternly, not allowing for dissent. He wasn't really his commander, since Charon wasn't technically part of the military. Rather, he was his employer. But he was a commander, and he was Charon's. "I'm not changing my mind. We need someone else in his place before the bombs drop. You will do this."

He would, yes. The piece of paper the commander kept on his person – with Charon's ten-year-old self's signature and thumbprint under the writing – ensured that he would, but not willingly. "If I must."

The commander nodded and went on to explain how the assignment would work, his voice trailing off a moment later when the ground shook beneath them.

A hush fell, and the walls and darkness followed. Something struck Charon hard. He didn't know how long it'd been when he realized he was on the floor, pinned down by debris. Most of the building was still standing, for now, but it might not be for long. He freed himself. The very air burned. Something must've been broken but as long as he could move, his injuries could wait.

"Sir?" Charon called out and pushed through the debris near him in search of the commander, digging frantically.

When he found him, it was immediately obvious that it was too late to be of any help. He'd been crushed; there was no sign of life. Charon knelt there, bleeding in the midst of the destruction with the radiation seeping into him out of the air and the dust, lost for the first time since he was a kid. He'd never had an employer die while still holding his contract; it left him with a deep and painful sense of shaming failure and, strangely, loss. He hadn't even liked the commander. Without direction, he didn't know what he was supposed to do. The deafening silence began to fade. Keening screams started to go up in the distance from other survivors.

It occurred to Charon that, with no one around to take the contract, he could take it himself; he could get a hold of his own contract and finally be the one to direct his actions. And he'd do just that. He'd imagined this chance for years and now it was upon him. Tentatively, he went through the commander's clothes until he found the paper, bloody now. As soon as he got the contract in his hands, an awful dread filled him and compelled him to get rid of it, to push it back into someone else's grasp despite how he longed to possess it for himself.

He swallowed hard, scowling and staring from the paper to the commander with furious frustration. Those bastards had him trapped. He should have guessed they wouldn't risk such a big investment running off as master of his own will. Angrily, he tried to tear the paper to bits in his hands but found he couldn't bring himself to do it and, defeated, resolved to stow it securely in a pocket and hand it over to the first Enclave officer he found and dragged himself carefully out of the unsteady building, stopping to help people out if he found them alive.

Outside was a disaster. Most of the buildings had been flattened and as he walked slowly down the street, everywhere around him there were fires and corpses. He hadn't heard the sirens inside, but hadn't they? He eventually found a group of survivors huddled together in the subway eventually. They'd been joined by the Enclave and those unfortunate few who'd survived the blast above ground. He handed his contract over to a bewildered officer and was put to work relieving the civilians almost as soon as his wounds were seen to. It wasn't part of his contract but he did it anyway, without complaint.

In the days that followed, things got even worse. More people died in the rains that came and his contract changed hands frequently among the officers. The survivors became restless as the situation became bleaker and soon his orders pertained to his contract yet again. It wasn't long after that that he learned his contract didn't bind him solely to the Enclave. Charon lay on the cement of one of the tunnels with a hole in his leg and the ragged man's gun in his face, watching as the stranger's eyes roamed over the frayed piece of paper he'd found on the officer and sneered. Charon masked his panic and confusion as the need to protect and obey shifted from the old employer to the new.

"That's interesting, isn't it, you poor fucker," the ragged man said, folding the paper and lowering his gun cautiously after glimpsing the writing on Charon's dog tags. "Finish this son of a bitch off for me." He kicked the bleeding officer. Charon couldn't hesitate. He tossed the dog tags away shortly after that. From then on, his employers were replaced frequently, either dying in spite of his best efforts or selling the protection of an ex-soldier for food or water. And people paid for protection. In the chaos that ruled after the bombs, it was amazing anyone survived.

He first noticed the change when his skin grew dry and flakey and even with the painful sores that formed he remained unconvinced that anything drastic was happening. But the rot spread over his flesh in a matter of months, making most of his hair fall out, destroying his voice, and, finally, making his nose and ears melt off gradually. His employer eventually followed, her decay taking closer to a year. She cried when her hair fell out and as the skin fell off, believing she was going to die and berating him for it even though he had nothing to do with the radiation. But it didn't kill either of them. That employer died of an attack by an animal – grotesque, huge, and unidentifiable. And when people came streaming back out of the Vaults, Charon found he was no older at sixty than he had been at forty.

Nor at a hundred or a hundred and forty – when he finally did realize that much time had passed. The Wasteland settled into a state of perpetual decay, much like the ghouls who had been born along with it. Settlements cropped up but remained always on the brink of collapse. With the land dead, there was no way to move forward and little changed as time wore on, days dragged and blended until he honestly had trouble differentiating between two months and two years. The time was a blur. Early on, he'd acquired a combat shotgun. It was standard fare and banged up, but he got it working and it occupied his time when he wasn't fighting. He tinkered with it until it suited his needs and his style; it was something he formed of himself. Sure, it was turned toward his employers' purposes, but it was solely his and defined his survival and, often, that of his employers.

Despite the initial surprise at the savagery that seized the survivors, he didn't mind the constant fighting. His employers were scared and, truthfully, so was he; people weren't supposed to be this way, that's why they had to make people like him. But he didn't let on. Violence was what he'd been conditioned for, after all, and he never felt quite right outside of combat or without a gun in reach. And when his employers weren't bastards he felt alright following orders, bending the whole of his will toward the defense of another person. It put him at peace, even with every sense strained in search for signs of danger.

In his unnaturally long years, he tasted nearly every role for a fighting man in the new America – with long stints guarding caravans and bars and backing up various gangs that eventually landed him in the newly realized Paradise Falls, waiting to be sold until they discovered his contract and, with carefully constructed orders, put him to work as a slaver. As a mere instrument with little control over the actions that mattered, he figured he shouldn't feel guilt or anger over his deeds, but what he did for the slavers disturbed him as much as what he'd done for the Enclave before the war.

Eventually someone coughed up enough caps to convince the slavers to part with him and he was thrown back into the Wastes. That employer turned on him one day, firing at him after a disagreement, and Charon found himself released from the contract in favor of self-defense. Despite his warnings and the fact that the stipulation was clearly stated in his contract, his employer looked shocked when Charon shot him. And in Underworld, no less. But worrying about the consequences of that could wait until he retrieved his contract. It didn't even disappoint him anymore when the dread at holding his own life in his hands came over him, but here was a chance to make sure his next employer was better than the last.

"What is going on in here?" That slimy opportunist from the Ninth Circle came through the door, gun drawn, to investigate the gunfire. His patrons cowered at the bar behind him. He looked over the body and Charon critically before swiping the paper out of his shocked hands and Charon cursed himself as he skimmed the faded writing and a sly grin spread across the mottled green mug. Goddamn, if he'd just gotten out of that room fast enough and found Winthrop, he might have worked out something agreeable. Not so with Ahzrukhal. He set his greedy eyes on his newest asset like a vulture and tucked the contract into the breast pocket of his suit. Charon scowled back at him, meeting his eyes reproachfully. The bartender shooed his customers out, snapping at all of them that the Ninth Circle was closing early, and locked the doors before turning back to Charon and pulling out the contract to give it a closer look. He waved at one of the stools, saying, "Take a seat, Charon; it seems we have a lot to talk about."

Truth sat cross-legged on her bed with the big book spread across her lap, idly turning the old, glossy pages and taking her time studying the pictures after she'd finished reading the text on each page. She twirled her hair as she read, eventually managing to pull it out of its messy bun to fall in an orange cascade around her face.

"Truth?" her father's voice called to her from outside the room. She'd thought he was still at the clinic.

"In here."

She glanced up to smile at him when he came in, reaching up to adjust her glasses. "Oh, so you are." Her dad sat on the bed with her and peered at what she was reading: an anatomy textbook she'd snuck out of his room. Truth blushed, caught, but he didn't say anything. "Shouldn't you be in the kitchen with Amata today?"

"I get to go early if I bring in radroach meat," she answered simply, then glanced sideways at him guiltily. "…Um, but that's a secret. Everyone thinks it's ham."

"I won't tell," James laughed and assured her, patting her back. "So Amata's doing all that work herself?"

"No, she only had to stay a little longer," Truth told him. Then he wanted to know why she was holed up in here reading one of his textbooks instead of off with Amata or the other kids. "They're getting mean; even Wally's joined up with Butch. I just wanted to be alone, and I like the pictures. I wanna be a doctor like you, so I have to start studying anyway."

"You want to be a doctor?" James smiled. Truth nodded and turned the page, revealing an illustration of human musculature. It was beautiful, she thought; the human body was fascinating once you got under the skin to how it worked. And it was just interesting to look at, to see the structures underneath the skin that, really, defined a person, that gave her and her dad broad cheekbones but made her face more square and her chin more pointed. Bones and muscle were things she wouldn't mind working with the rest of her life. She didn't always get along with people but she wouldn't mind fixing them up. She already spent time with her dad in the clinic, when he would let her. Whenever someone came in he made her leave, and he never let her watch surgery no matter how much she begged and reminded him that they'd be asleep anyway. "Looks like you really are my daughter," he joked and hugged her with one arm. "Don't stress out and study too hard though. If the G.O.A.T. tells you to go be the Vault's new physician, there'll be time to learn everything then."

So she didn't stress about it, but she also didn't stop studying. Two years later she stood anxiously over Mr. Brotch's desk, her heart beating a mile a minute and blood still dribbling out her nose. Butch was whooping and talking excitedly about his future as, not a hairdresser, but a barber. He seemed to have forgotten his fat lip. The fight was long behind for now, the future loomed ahead.

"…Vault loyalty inspector?" Mr. Brotch was saying. He sounded as surprised to hear the words leaving his mouth as she was. "I thought that had been phased out decades ago."

Truth blanched. Loyalty inspector? Meaning working closely with that asshole who ran the Vault to spy on her neighbors to meet his paranoia-filled needs. He hated her; it was obvious even if the reason wasn't. Working for him would be awful. And it wouldn't let her work with her dad or, lamentably, Jonas. The G.O.A.T. had to be wrong, somehow. She felt her future slipping quickly away. "That can't be right."

Mr. Botch pointed out that the results of the test didn't actually matter and offered to change hers. She didn't answer him immediately, though she felt she should've. Loyalty inspector was all wrong, after all. If there was one disloyal person in the Vault, it was Truth. She'd have been willing to lead a revolt against the Overseer by now except it was hard to lead a group of zero. That, and there was no one better to step into the role of Overseer. Of course, as loyalty inspector, she would know if anything seditious was going on, and she could collaborate with the transgressors right under the Overseer's nose. She could stir up changes that needed to happen from behind the scenes! Or, if that didn't happen, she could maneuver from there to become Overseer after him. She wasn't power-hungry but… no one else seemed to see what was wrong with the Vault, with his leadership. She did though, and she'd do something about it. She'd do away with loyalty inspectors, first of all. But for now…

"I think I'll stick with the test results, Mr. Brotch. Thanks though." That was it; she gave up her dream of being a doctor and forced a smile. "The G.O.A.T. must know something I don't." Her teacher looked bemused as she wiped blood off her lip and left. She would hate it but it was for the best and, ultimately, the Vault would thank her.

A pistol and a baseball bat.

The words hung in her mind, repeating furiously, hopelessly as she stared out at the Wasteland. Her vision was still mostly obscured by spots and the harsh, natural light hurt her eyes and made them water. But from what she could see of the Wasteland, it was huge. The ground just went on until it met the sky and kept going. It never stopped. Her father could be anywhere out here. The Vault was sealed shut behind her. And all she had was a pistol, a baseball bat, two stimpaks she'd stolen from the Clinic on her way out, and thirty-seven bullets. And the bent but wearable glasses in her pocket and the clothes on her back, those counted for something she supposed. She could already feel her pale, uncovered skin burning in the light.

Overwhelmed by the events of the last few hours and the situation she found herself in suddenly – abandoned by her father, run out of the Vault in a bloody chase, and utterly alone and confused – she sat down on a rock and dropped her head into her arms to cry. She'd been right about the Overseer; he was just as crazed and paranoid as she always thought. Enough to kill Jonas in cold blood and enough to come after her, too.

That at least made sense. She should have seen this coming; it was her job and James was her father. Of course he'd think she'd been in on it. But she hadn't been in on it and she hadn't seen it coming, otherwise she would have been gone with her dad and avoided the whole mess altogether. It hurt that such an important project had been kept from her; he had to have known she would have loved to help.

It occurred to her after some time that she didn't have any water and crying would only dehydrate her faster. She sniffed and forced herself to stop, wiping her running nose on the sleeve of Butch's jacket and brushing away tears. He was pathetic, he hadn't deserved that jacket. Off in the distance, down the incline of stone, structures rose out of the ground that didn't match the flat monotony of the land around them. Buildings? she wondered. She'd read about them: structures like the Vault but above ground. That meant people, and they might've seen her dad. She could hope. She started down the incline, slipping and scrabbling on rocks she had to climb over and reaching the broken asphalt road below with a few new scrapes.

Aside from one very scared and unhealthy looking woman, the cluster of buildings was devoid of people or of anything; there weren't even animals or radroaches wandering among the collapsed structures. She picked through the rubble as she went, looking for useful things and finding very little except empty bottles, empty cans, warped metal, and broken wood. She did find a few bottle caps in an old trashcan and pocketed them, grateful that she'd run into the woman, else she would have had no idea that these pieces of garbage passed as currency out here.

The sun beat down on her as she made her way in the direction the woman had told her to go to find the nearest settlement. Her dad would probably have had to go there, there was nothing else around and nowhere to get food or water. Of course, he'd probably left the Vault prepared. Truth resisted the urge to wet her lips with her tongue and wiped the sweat from her brow. She was already parched and had half a mind to return to the woman's house and beg for water. On her first visit, she'd been shooed out almost as soon as she'd arrived.

She stopped as the road diverged and consulted the map on her Pip-boy – a feature she'd never seen the purpose of because the Vault was small and she knew every corner of it by her tenth birthday. She couldn't make any sense of the chart. Looking around, she spotted a group of five people down one road, all dressed in bits of metal and mish-mashed fabric. She watched them carefully and considered whether to risk approaching them for help. Before she had a moment to decide, they spotted her and suddenly the whole group was running at her, screaming, weapons raised. Truth fumbled for the pistol and fired a few shots, the kickback jolting her arms back into her shoulders violently.

One fell on the ground, clutching her leg and howling. Another stumbled and kept running. They got closer and Truth turned and ran, panic sending her in the opposite direction. She heard shots fire but felt nothing. There was cursing and footsteps right behind her and one of them grabbed her jacket and flung her, screaming, to the ground. He held her there by the front of her jumpsuit as she kicked at him and called for help she knew didn't exist. His arm raised, his hand griping a filthy tire iron, and in a moment of desperation she brought the pistol up to his chin before he could smash her head in. She shut her mouth tight and pulled the trigger, watched his body jerk and collapse on top of her as she tried to scramble to her feet.

The three still standing bore down on her and she fired at them as she backed away, aiming clumsily with the heavy handgun. All of her practice had been on a toy shotgun, but they weren't giving her time to adjust. A few of her shots did hit and two of her attackers hit the ground. Only one didn't get up again. Another closed in and got close enough to bash Truth in the head with a length of pipe. She stumbled, her vision blurring against the impact and dull, sickening pain filling her skull. This was nothing like her fights with the Tunnel Snakes, where they'd back off once there were enough bloody noses and black eyes to go around. That was… that was kid stuff. These strangers meant to kill her. She beat back against the onslaught, failing to deflect the blows that bruised her skin and bones.

It was a moment before she realized, again, that she was holding a gun and shot the woman. The beating stopped and she fell and Truth waited until the last of them was nearly on her before firing again. He, too, fell away and she stood in the midst of them, all either dead or dying, with her jumpsuit spattered with blood. So this was life outside the Vault: kill or be killed. With a churn of her stomach, Truth found she was adapting, even if she was shaking violently in the aftermath. Her head throbbed and she touched the place she'd been hit. Her hand came away with blood. It didn't seem awful, though. She was still conscious at any rate, she told herself.

The pistol went away and she picked up the bat she'd dropped when she ran. On a dismayed thought, she pulled her glasses from her pocket. They'd been smashed when she fell and were definitely useless now. Not that she had any great, immediate need for them; reading her Pip-boy by holding her arm as far from her as possible was a habit by now. Still, it was a disappointing loss on top of everything else that had been taken from her that day. Unwilling to simply toss them away, Truth returned the broken lenses to her pocket and started to walk away from the scene of the fight, only moments later realizing that her attackers might have had things she could use.

She trotted back and rifled through their clothes, throwing everything, even the awful looking syringes and pieces of clothes that didn't look too dirty, into one of their bags and slinging it over her shoulder. She could sell what she didn't need and she could use the money. One of them had a grimy, half-filled bottle of water and she stared at it for a few minutes before wiping the neck off on her jacket and taking a drink. The silty, dirt-flavored water hit her tongue and she sputtered, pursing her lips tight to keep from spitting it out. This was the only water she had after all. Forcing herself to swallow, she shuddered and tried not to throw up. There was a scuffling near her as she recapped the bottle.

Truth looked around fearfully and dropped the bottle, yelping as one of her fallen attackers threw themselves at her. Without thinking, Truth swung the bat in her hand and it connected hard with the woman's side. She doubled over but didn't fall or back down. Her leg was wounded and bleeding and Truth realized it was the first woman she'd shot. Because she hadn't gotten back up, Truth had assumed she was no longer a threat. So much for that. The woman lunged at her again, her eyes wild, screaming crude profanities and threats. Truth swung again, like she was trying for that home run she never got, and watched in fascinated horror as the bat caught the Wasteland woman's neck and she crumpled into the wood and was thrown and toppled a few feet away. She stood over the woman on the ground, bat raised over her head ready to swing if the woman tried another attack. Her heart was pounding again and she panted. But there was no movement. A closer look revealed that her neck and shoulder were twisted and crushed under the blood. Truth lowered her bat and noticed some of the blood smeared there. It was self-defense, she told herself. Reflex and self-defense. Not a day ago the worst thing she'd ever done was shoot Wally Mack in the leg with her BB gun. On accident, of course.

Shakily, she knelt down and tried to wipe the blood off her bat on the dead woman's clothes but it only smeared further. With an exasperated sigh, she picked up the water she'd dropped and passed it into her new bag, pausing when her Pip-boy ticked suddenly as the water neared it. Perplexed, she investigated the noise and found a radiation reading had appeared. She passed the bottle by her wrist again and watched the Geiger counter spit a warning back at her. "Well… shoot," she cursed and shoved the water into storage anyway. She could deal with radiation poisoning later as long as she kept herself hydrated now.

After taking all of what might be useful off the bodies, this time keeping an eye on the area around her so she wouldn't be surprised a second time, she consulted her Pip-boy again and managed to figure out the map well enough to follow a dirt path away from the cluster of collapsed buildings until the high metal walls of Megaton loomed over her, still radiating heat in the dying light. The sunset had startled her, as the light never faded in the Vault and now she suddenly found herself almost in the dark. At least she'd found the settlement before she could no longer see. A robot admitted her through the gates and inside Megaton climbed the sloping floor of the city on stilts with rickety metal buildings stacked on top of one another. The precarious architecture didn't seem to bother the people milling about, all covered in grime to some great degree and coarsely dressed. The gate closed behind her, shutting out the Wasteland and making her feel a little more secure than she had since the Vault sealed shut after her. At least she was surrounded by walls now, rather than faced with endless land in every direction.

She touched her bruised head again. It throbbed painfully, making it difficult to take in the confusing sight of Megaton, but the blood had started to dry. Truth didn't think she had a concussion, not a serious one anyway, though she was exhausted and would have liked nothing more than to collapse there by the gate and fall asleep. But she couldn't, not yet anyway. Now that she was safe she could look for somebody here to help patch her up. After that she could start asking around town for her dad.