They walked into the museum, and dust flew up around each footstep. Gunfire still filled the air, but it sounded distant, musty along with every other object in the main room. The museum had an open floor plan, each floor visible from where they stood, and a makeshift walkway connecting the opposite sides of the second floor.
A raider or two stood on top of the walkway, shooting towards the doors on the third floor that must have led to the endangered settlers.
"We have to help them," Annalee turned to Jason, her eyes determined.
"We're just going to end up like.... Mr. Cofran..." he said, shifting his stance.
Luckily none of the raiders above had noticed them enter the building.
Annalee started walking away to the wall and entered the side room without answering him. He silently cursed and followed her.
They passed through a revolutionary war room, mannequins in replica uniforms surrounding the room, holding props against the setting of an 18th century Boston.
A pre-recorded voice guide spoke up and Annalee squeaked, surprised by the voice.
"Shhh!" Jason grabbed her arm and held his finger to his lips.
"Hey, did you hear something? Something set off the exhibit..." A gruff voice came from the room ahead.
"Then check it out dumb-ass."
"No need to be a jerk, I'm just curious, geez," the man's voice sounded closer and Jason swiveled around, looking for a hiding place.
He jumped behind one of the wooden crates, but Annalee was still standing out in the open.
"Anna!" He whispered furiously, but she didn't hear him.
She took a deep breath and cocked the pistol in her hand, watching the shadow of the man get closer in the hallway.
Shattering the silence, her pistol shot the man as he turned around the corner, foolish enough not to take cover before he walked out of the hallway.
"Hey!" The other man ran towards the sound and Annalee finally got out of the entrance and stood to the side of the door, her hands shaking.
She had just murdered someone. She felt the blood rush to her head as she thought of the life she just took with the pull of a trigger. It hadn't bothered her out in the street but waiting in ambush for someone seemed to cause her to break down.
Which wasn't the best option for her right then because the other raider was walking down the hallway, crouching low as he approached the room they were in.
Her chest heaved as she tried to quiet her breathing and the man finally got to the end of the hallway. He slowly looked around the corner and pulled his gun at Annalee, about to shoot up at her until his head exploded, Jason firing at him from behind the wooden crate.
Annalee looked at him still out of breath from her moment of panic.
"Thanks."
"No need. You're lucky I didn't accidentally shoot you as well," he hopped over the crates and they started down the hallway again, stepping over the bodies of the men they had killed.
Jason noticed a shotgun on the corpse of the first man who had tried investigating, and he picked it up along with a half-empty box of shells. Who knew if it would come in handy later.
They kept walking and another room had two raiders in it.
Before he could stop him, the dog ran into the room snarling and bit into the leg of a metal-armored woman.
"Hey!-" She cried out and tried kicking the dog, but Jason and Annalee quickly took care of the two.
It soon became a routine of picking the corpses for ammo after they shot someone. A few of the bodies had small pouches of Nuka-Cola caps in their clothes, but they both brushed past them, seeing no value in them.
They walked up a flight of stairs and made their way across, trying to shoot at the raiders who had taken up their posts on the walkway on the second floor. Jason was able to hit one by accident in the foot and he fell off, landing on his neck. Annalee was having trouble targeting the other man, who started to shoot back at her, causing the wood near her cover to splinter and spit out dust and smaller particles. She finally hit him square in the chest and he fell onto the walkway, face down.
She waited until she could tell he was no longer moving and they both quickly crossed the stairway and made their way towards the third floor, where the settlers were holed up.
They stopped, hearing more voices behind doors that would lead them to the settlers, and this time, Jason held onto the dog by his side.
"Open up! You can't stay in there forever!" A man banged on a door and growled.
"Hey, why don't we just leave? Someone has started to shoot up the place-"
"You are a fucking coward, you know that? Scared of some lone wastelander? Get a grip man and take 'em out already."
A man hastily entered the room, grumbling to himself and turned to them, spotting them at the top of the stairs. He reached for his gun, but he was too late, as Jason emptied out his magazine into the man's body, not caring anymore to try and aim.
The last raider was harder to beat. Before they had known it, the man had thrown a fragmentation grenade their way, curving his throw so it would enter the open doorway.
Annalee watched as it rolled onto the floor and they both went wide-eyed and dove away as it exploded, the wooden floor beneath it shattering everywhere.
She cried out as a wood splinter pierced her thigh and Jason heard his dog whine out as smaller pieces embedded into his coat of fur.
The man rushed in after taking them by surprise and Annalee didn't have any time to run as she struggled to stand up from the floor.
"Got you, bitch!"
The man shot at her and she struggled to get away, a bullet barely missing her head. She cried out and Jason stood, whipping out the shotgun and blasting it into the man's face. The shells exploded in his flesh and tore it apart at such a close range, dropping him the floor. The shotgun ripped from his hands at the recoil and clammered off to the side, firing again at the floor's impact.
Annalee held her arms up to her face, but luckily it had been facing the other way when it had accidentally misfired.
"Jason!"
"Annalee, are you ok! I am so sorry!" He ran to her and helped her up until he noticed her leg was bleeding.
"Hey, you're hurt," he stopped and leaned down as she stood on her other leg.
"It's fine, it's just a little splinter, that's all. I'll bind it later, let's just go check on those settlers."
She started walking towards the door, leaving him behind to check on the German Shepherd. Who knew that dog would be such a fighter?
She knocked on the door with her fist.
"Hello? You called for help. Well, we did!"
A woman with an Asian accent spoke up.
"How do we know you aren't one of those raiders come to kill us?"
"Marcy," a man spoke up, his voice smooth and low, "I'm pretty sure it's those vault dwellers who arrived in town. Open the door will you?"
"Fine, but it's your fault if we're killed," she scoffed.
The door opened and the group of three entered what seemed to be a dusty, pre-war office.
Marcy walked away from the door, not even acknowledging the newcomers as she went to lean against a wall, folding her arms as she did.
One weary-looking man sat on the floor, huddled to himself as if he were extremely cold, and another stood at a working terminal, trying to hack into it.
An old woman sat on the couch, wearing a light blue headwrap and necklaces of beads. She smiled, her wrinkled mouth closed and her bloodshot blue eyes watching Annalee's every move.
The man with the smooth voice walked up to them and shook their hands, his smile a bright contrast to his dark skin. He wore a brown weathered hat that folded up on one side and a long tan coat with layers underneath. He held a long rifle in his arm and stood it next to his feet.
"So you're the ones who saved our lives. I can't thank you enough. And you're vault dwellers too!"
"You know who we are? How?" Jason asked.
"Well, those are vault suits, right?" The man questioned, still smiling.
"I guess so, but that means there are other people from vaults out here right? Others survived?"
"I don't know where you're from. But a whole lot of people survived the Great War other than just raiders, vault dwellers and us. Man, you guys are really straight out of a vault aren't you. What are your names?"
"I'm Annalee and this is Jason."
"I see you've found Dogmeat as well..." the old woman finally spoke, beckoning towards the German Shepherd, who promptly walked over and let her pet him and take out the small pieces of wood that had pinched into his fur.
"Dogmeat? Was this your dog?" Jason asked, turning to her. He didn't want to let the dog go.
"No, I just know he's a special dog, and will stay loyal to you, won't you boy?" She laughed and pet Dogmeat who leaned against her legs.
"Who are you all? How did you become stuck here?" Annalee turned the man with the laser rifle, as he was clearly the leader.
"My name is Preston Garvey, a Minuteman and at your service," he lifted his hat at her and smiled, "And these are my friends-"
Marcy scoffed.
"-My friends. That's Jun and Marcy Long, well, you've already spoken to Marcy."
"And that's Mama Murphy, and then Sturges, who's trying to get into that Terminal-"
"And failing miserably," Sturges finally looked up from the screen and turned towards them, leaning against the desk. He spoke in a thick southern accent and his black hair was greased back pompadour style.
"Why?" Jason asked.
"Well, there's a vertibird up there on the roof with a nice cherry power armor. We've located a fusion core in the basement, but its locked behind a security cage. There'll probably be more raiders soon so we need that suit to get out of here. 'Looks like you two have already gone through a lot just clearin out this here museum."
"Tell me about it," Annalee groaned, reminding her of the scratch in her thigh and the small amount of blood that had grown.
"H-hey, looks like you need to, uh, bind that w-wound," Jun Long finally spoke up and pointed at her leg.
"Does anyone know how to?"
"I c-can help," Jun whispered and pulled out bandages from a sack behind him.
"At least you can do something useful," Marcy sneered, "Too bad you couldn't save the people who matter."
He winced at her words as if they had pierced his heart, but he started making a binding around Annalee's thigh.
"There," he whispered and went back to his seat on the floor, back into his closed position.
"Sturges, I bet I could take a look at that terminal for you," She turned towards him, not wanting to get involved in whatever uncomfortable pasts the Longs had.
"Really? That'd be great if you managed to crack it. Save us a lot of time instead of us having to pick the museum clean lookin' for a key card or password or somethin'," he smiled and took a step back from the desk, allowing her to walk forward and start typing away trying to decode the password.
"So, uh, Annalee?" Jason stepped up to her side as she started to work on hacking in.
"I don't know what you were working as before all this happened? Were you just at home with your son?-"
"No, I had a job as a mechanical engineer. We used a lot of these terminals in the old company I worked for."
"Mechanical what-now? Company?" Preston inquired, "I didn't know companies were still around. Where are you from? Was it from the vault?"
Annalee looked up at Jason and stared into his eyes, both of them deciding to tell the settlers about their situation.
"You tell them, I need to work on this," Annalee said and turned back to the screen.
Jason rubbed the back of his neck as he started to explain.
"The thing is, we were frozen in the vault. We didn't know we would be. The bombs had just fallen and we were taken into the vault. We just recently woke up."
"Wait," Preston froze at a loss for words, "you mean....?"
"Yep," Annalee spoke up as the screen logged in and she opened the security door remotely, "We are around 200 years old."
"Woah, you got it!" Sturges exclaimed, looking at the screen.
"You're excited about that, but not that they are living relics?" Marcy complained.
"No, that's incredible too. I'm just excited I'm not the only handyman around here," he chuckled and slapped Annalee on the back.
"Ok, we'll have to talk and let you two have the ability to catch up with the world later. For now, we have to focus on getting out of here," Preston turned to the group.
"Where are you planning on going after this?" Jason placed his hands on his hips.
"Mama Murphy had one of her so-called 'visions", Marcy stated, her tone cold, "I think she is just a junkie leading us straight to our deaths."
Mama Murphy smiled sadly and shook her head.
"The Sight leads me, Marcy," she looked up towards the woman, "Whether I'm crazy or not, the place called Sanctuary is where we need to be. It will become our new home, just as it had been for Annalee here, and maybe even Jason, if things could have turned out differently," Mama Murphy turned to them and reached for Annalee's hand.
Annalee let her take it, feeling her wrinkled skin against her own.
"You have a long, painful journey ahead of you sweet Annalee. You need to keep your friends close to you."
"What do you know Mama?"
"Nothing," Marcy laughed, "she's a chem addict. Don't listen to her."
Annalee glared at Marcy, the woman's caustic attitude starting to get on her nerves.
"I know you are looking for someone. A child. You won't find him here or in Sanctuary dear. You need to go to Diamond City and find the man who is lost."
"The man... who is lost? How will that help me?"
"I don't know everything dear, but I do have one warning. Something evil is coming, dear, and it's not to be trifled with lightly."
Mama Murphy let go of her hand and continued to stare into her eyes, sending a last warning for the blue-haired vault dweller. Annalee felt shivers run down her back and stay there.
"Let's go," Jason spoke up, breaking her out of her trance.
"Alright," she turned to walk out of the room towards the fusion core downstairs, turning once more to the weary group of settlers.
"I'll keep an eye from the balcony when you go onto the roof, in case more raiders to turn up," Preston picked up his rifle, his smile replaced with a seriousness that did little to settle her nerves.
ns 15.158.61.5da2
