Raven Rock
Nov. 11th, 2010 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skySpend nineteen years of your life in a Vault and you develop a good sense of direction for navigating underground, but even Ellen had to admit that without the Enclave guard at her elbow she'd have been lost by now. The uniformed man didn't talk as they wended their way through endless corridors, except to say 'Don't touch that' or 'Turn here', or other things of that nature. It was probably just as well. Ellen didn't know what to say to a man in the Enclave's service, or what one of them might say to her.
Once, early on, they passed through an area of cramped metal corridors and closed steel doors with no windows, only numbers. She almost asked how big their prison facilities were, but a tiny lit screen next to one of the doors caught her eye: Vargas, Nathaniel. She winced, remembering the old man in Megaton who'd sung the Enclave's praises so long ago, and wondered if it was him. If the Enclave had taken Megaton. If-
There was a point when the guard walked her through room after room of scientific equipment. There were robots disassembled there, and suits of power armor. In one room there were orange-lit tubes that ran from floor to ceiling, like something out of Vault 108, only empty. In another room there were the same tubes, but they held unconscious figures- here a Deathclaw, here a faintly glowing ghoul, here one of the monstrous mutants of Vault 87. A third room held what looked like disembodied brains in half-domes of biogel. Ellen looked away quickly, silently praying that they were just renovating old Robobrain bodies for them rather than adapting newly captured brains to a life of robotic service.
Up a flight of stairs and down another corridor, and they passed through a room full of huge metal boxes. The smell was so pungent that Ellen had to ask what they were. Her guard merely glanced at one and said, "Deathclaws." She fell silent after that.
There was the closed door labeled VERTIBIRD HANGAR.
There was the closed door labeled OFFICERS' QUARTERS.
There was the closed door labeled CLEARANCE REQUIRED; it smelled of ozone, and the guard hurried past it quickly.
And there were other doors, so many of them, the armory and the mess hall and the storerooms and door after door after door of barracks... she lost count. It was as if someone had taken every Vault she'd ever seen and conglomerated them all together, and filled it with people, and then said, "No... make it bigger." Its dark metal and cold blue light construction seemed to press down on her as they moved through its vastness. She wanted very, very much to turn and run- to where, she didn't know, but... to somewhere. Anywhere other than here.
And then the guard stopped in front of a door that looked like any other door. "This is where you and I part ways," he said with a sour look as he moved to unlock the door. "You're the one who's been invited to see the President, not me."
"What- this is his-"
"Just go in and take the stairs," said the guard. "That's all I'm authorized to know."
He glared at Ellen until she stepped through the door, and then he slammed it shut behind her. The echo rang in her ears.
The room beyond the door was mostly dark, lit by bank after bank of computer indicator lights that lined the walls. A tactical display of the sort one saw in war movies took up much of the floor, showing Enclave forces throughout the Wasteland in orange. Other forces were marked, too, the mutants in green (if the markings around the Vault 87 area were anything to go by), the Brotherhood in yellow. From the look of things they counted Outcasts and Lyons' forces as one group. Ellen eyed the display a moment longer, then turned; the only way out of the room now, it seemed, was the palely-lit spiral staircase that wound upwards, circling more computer hardware. She tugged uncomfortably at the blue-and-orange prisoner jumpsuit that'd been waiting in the locker and swallowed.
The climb seemed to go on forever. By the time she reached the top Ellen had had to stop twice to catch her breath, and to avoid being violently sick. There was a complex assemblage of wires and vents here, all feeding into a massive central box that resembled nothing so much as the old Vault 101 mainframe's central unit. A maintenance walkway ran around it, with a smaller walkway branch running across that nightmarish downward darkness to an unremarkable door. That, Ellen supposed, must be the actual entrance to Eden's office. One hand on the mainframe- she didn't trust the walkway railing- she started around towards it.
"Ah-ah-ah," said the voice of John Henry Eden. "Over here. Towards the console."
Slowly, as if the platform beneath her were about to give way, Ellen turned. The mainframe's central monitor- there were several, but this one was easily half Ellen's height- showed only a single line of blue-white across the center of the screen's blackness. It pulsated in time with the words as Eden's voice said, "Ah, face to face at last. It's high time we met." There was something like a chuckle to the words as Eden continued, "I'm quite pleased you were able to make it. Your trip here was not what I intended, but I think it served as an adequate test of your abilites."
Ellen closed her eyes for a long moment, pushing images of the Wizard of Oz and his curtain out of her mind. When she opened her eyes nothing had changed, so she only said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President."
"How very open-minded of you," the computer- Eden- said, sounding pleased. "Kudos for embracing the reality of the situation, rather than railing against it. Let's get to brass tacks, shall we? There are some things I'd like to talk to you about..."
Once, early on, they passed through an area of cramped metal corridors and closed steel doors with no windows, only numbers. She almost asked how big their prison facilities were, but a tiny lit screen next to one of the doors caught her eye: Vargas, Nathaniel. She winced, remembering the old man in Megaton who'd sung the Enclave's praises so long ago, and wondered if it was him. If the Enclave had taken Megaton. If-
There was a point when the guard walked her through room after room of scientific equipment. There were robots disassembled there, and suits of power armor. In one room there were orange-lit tubes that ran from floor to ceiling, like something out of Vault 108, only empty. In another room there were the same tubes, but they held unconscious figures- here a Deathclaw, here a faintly glowing ghoul, here one of the monstrous mutants of Vault 87. A third room held what looked like disembodied brains in half-domes of biogel. Ellen looked away quickly, silently praying that they were just renovating old Robobrain bodies for them rather than adapting newly captured brains to a life of robotic service.
Up a flight of stairs and down another corridor, and they passed through a room full of huge metal boxes. The smell was so pungent that Ellen had to ask what they were. Her guard merely glanced at one and said, "Deathclaws." She fell silent after that.
There was the closed door labeled VERTIBIRD HANGAR.
There was the closed door labeled OFFICERS' QUARTERS.
There was the closed door labeled CLEARANCE REQUIRED; it smelled of ozone, and the guard hurried past it quickly.
And there were other doors, so many of them, the armory and the mess hall and the storerooms and door after door after door of barracks... she lost count. It was as if someone had taken every Vault she'd ever seen and conglomerated them all together, and filled it with people, and then said, "No... make it bigger." Its dark metal and cold blue light construction seemed to press down on her as they moved through its vastness. She wanted very, very much to turn and run- to where, she didn't know, but... to somewhere. Anywhere other than here.
And then the guard stopped in front of a door that looked like any other door. "This is where you and I part ways," he said with a sour look as he moved to unlock the door. "You're the one who's been invited to see the President, not me."
"What- this is his-"
"Just go in and take the stairs," said the guard. "That's all I'm authorized to know."
He glared at Ellen until she stepped through the door, and then he slammed it shut behind her. The echo rang in her ears.
The room beyond the door was mostly dark, lit by bank after bank of computer indicator lights that lined the walls. A tactical display of the sort one saw in war movies took up much of the floor, showing Enclave forces throughout the Wasteland in orange. Other forces were marked, too, the mutants in green (if the markings around the Vault 87 area were anything to go by), the Brotherhood in yellow. From the look of things they counted Outcasts and Lyons' forces as one group. Ellen eyed the display a moment longer, then turned; the only way out of the room now, it seemed, was the palely-lit spiral staircase that wound upwards, circling more computer hardware. She tugged uncomfortably at the blue-and-orange prisoner jumpsuit that'd been waiting in the locker and swallowed.
The climb seemed to go on forever. By the time she reached the top Ellen had had to stop twice to catch her breath, and to avoid being violently sick. There was a complex assemblage of wires and vents here, all feeding into a massive central box that resembled nothing so much as the old Vault 101 mainframe's central unit. A maintenance walkway ran around it, with a smaller walkway branch running across that nightmarish downward darkness to an unremarkable door. That, Ellen supposed, must be the actual entrance to Eden's office. One hand on the mainframe- she didn't trust the walkway railing- she started around towards it.
"Ah-ah-ah," said the voice of John Henry Eden. "Over here. Towards the console."
Slowly, as if the platform beneath her were about to give way, Ellen turned. The mainframe's central monitor- there were several, but this one was easily half Ellen's height- showed only a single line of blue-white across the center of the screen's blackness. It pulsated in time with the words as Eden's voice said, "Ah, face to face at last. It's high time we met." There was something like a chuckle to the words as Eden continued, "I'm quite pleased you were able to make it. Your trip here was not what I intended, but I think it served as an adequate test of your abilites."
Ellen closed her eyes for a long moment, pushing images of the Wizard of Oz and his curtain out of her mind. When she opened her eyes nothing had changed, so she only said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. President."
"How very open-minded of you," the computer- Eden- said, sounding pleased. "Kudos for embracing the reality of the situation, rather than railing against it. Let's get to brass tacks, shall we? There are some things I'd like to talk to you about..."