Chapter Text
All that is and all that ever will be exists in an endless cycle. A never-ending story.
Men are born and men die. Ideas are formed, lost to the winds, and rediscovered. A universe will end, the keystone reduced to ashen fragments, and a new universe will take its place. This is the reality which we have been given.
There exists a single exception to the rule – war. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage.
In the year 2077, the endless cycle was set to begin anew. Ushered in by otherworldly gates, the heavens themselves descended upon the Earth – only to find a battered, broken husk. For after millennia of armed conflicts, the destructive nature of man could sustain itself no longer, and the world was plunged into an abyss of nuclear fire and radiation. Against all odds, against the very nature of reality itself, it was not the end of the world. Instead, the apocalypse proved to be an unforeseen new step in the cycle, and a prologue to another blood-stained chapter of human history. Man had succeeded in destroying the world – but war? War never changes.
In the early days, thousands were spared the horrors of the holocaust by taking refuge in enormous underground shelters, known as Vaults. But when they emerged, they had only the hell of the wastes to greet them - all except those in Vault 413. For on the fateful day, when fire rained from the sky, the giant steel door of Vault 413 slid closed… and never reopened. It was here that John Egbert was born. It is here he will die because, in Vault 413, no one ever enters and no one ever leaves.
Prologue: God's Forge In Frost
His first memory exists only as a blurred fragment, lost in the echoing chasms of his weary subconscious. Only if he strains his mind to its limit does the memory resurface, and even then it is unstable. But somehow, deep down, he knows that if he forgets everything else, this memory will remain. There’s something about it, something about the words his father spoke that feels significant. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know when he’s going to need it. But John Egbert knows that above all else, this memory is the key to his future.
He recalls sitting in a cage in his bedroom, the first of far too many barriers meant to keep his curiosity at bay, to keep him safe. His father leaves the room for a moment, and forgets to lock the gate behind him. Ever curious, he waddles forward, still uncertain on his feet, and he pushes the gate away, stumbling out into the vast expanse of his room. Making his way over to the toy box, he reaches in and pulls out his favourite toy – it’s a faded and torn little rabbit, covered in dirt and grime, and perhaps something more symbolic, but he’s much too young to understand. All he knows now is that this little bunny is the best friend his little toddler mind could ever ask for.
His father re-enters the room, and doesn’t seem so surprised at the sight, leaning down to pick his son up and coddle him.
“Precocious little scamp, breaking out like that. I’m so proud of you.” He pauses for a moment. “But don’t be too eager. It’s a dangerous world out there. You’re safer here in the vault with me.”
His father gives a melancholic sigh, and the boy is carried over to view his father’s favourite possession – a scrap of paper, torn from the pages of some old, pre-cataclysmic book, and framed by a simple yet beautiful silver trim. He regards the passage fondly, and speaks in a poetic voice.
“I slept, and saw God’s forge in frost. Its hearth was quelled, and as it cooled so swooned the verdancy it kept above. In slumber it grew a thick winter skin, white as bedsheets. In their folds the waker dreamt, her breath as steam, her touch as hot as iron, forgotten in the fire.”
The passage has a haunting, ethereal tone to it, and from this first reading it is burned into the young Egbert’s subconscious.
“That was your mother’s favourite quote. It meant so much to her…to the both of us.” His father’s voice breaks, and a pained look momentarily darkens his expression. ”She was such a wonderful woman…I miss her, so much.” He heaves another sigh. “So very much.”
There is a moment of silence as his father looks off into nothing, lost in thought. Eventually, he seems to accept something, and his mood lightens back up.
“But that’s enough about that for now.”
The boy is set back down, and his father leads him towards the door with his warm smile.
“C’mon son. Let’s go see what your friend Jade is up to.”
With that, he follows his father out into the hallway, and the memory fades back into a muddled blur.
Chapter One: The Steel Honeycomb
“Happy birthday!”
Bright lights flash as a chorus of voices scream out in unison, and John stumbles back, surprised.
“Careful with the lights, Stan – you’ll blind the poor kid!”
When John re-opens his eyes, he’s standing in the lounge, surrounded by the other vault-dwellers. A cheerful “Happy 13th Birthday” sign is hung on a wall, confetti litters the floor, and multi-colored lengths of tissue paper are strewn out all across the room. In the background lies a pile of gigantic birthday cakes – courtesy of Dad and batty old Ms. Crocker no doubt – and a few assorted presents as well. His father is standing before him, beaming.
“You made it to thirteen, son. I’m so proud of you.” He leans in for a hug.
“stop it dad, you’re embarrassing me!”
“Sorry, son. I’ll let you enjoy your birthday in peace.” He stands up and starts wandering over to the intercom. “Come see me once you’re done with everyone else. I’ve got a surprise for you. I think you’ll really love it.”
John turns around and finds himself staring into a pair of shining, emerald-green eyes, framed by long, thick black hair. Jade gives him a buck-toothed grin and holds out a clumsily-wrapped package.
“happy birthday john!! youll never guess what i got for you!”
“is it a cake? i’ve been getting a lot of cakes.” John snickers and takes the present, quickly ripping the paper to shreds. He sees the title of the comic first, and then an image he knows too well, having spent nights poring over it on the internet, wishing that he could hold it in person – her present is what could only be considered the holy grail of comic books for any budding collector.
“bard quest, issue 10…they only made 25 of these! how did you—“
“i found it in a box in the storage room!! pretty cool huh? :D”
John doesn’t reply, choosing instead to lunge forward, throwing his arms around the startled girl and hugging her close. For a moment she is still, and then she smiles and returns the embrace. He can hear a few jests and assorted snickers coming from the other kids; he pays them no mind. This is, without a doubt, the best birthday present he has ever received, and no amount of teasing or torment is going to change that.
Heavy footsteps sound from beside him, and then a loud, commanding voice rings out, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to let go of my daughter.”
The Overseer’s voice snaps John back to reality and he quickly obliges, releasing the girl and turning to look at the old man before him. His jacket, emblazoned with the symbol 413, is immaculately pressed and somehow it seems different than the other suits, as if he has imbued it with some of his power. His hair is white and bushy, though it has begun to recede, and he sports a thick and curly moustache, as black as his hair once was, and seemingly resistant to the effects of aging. No-one has ever seen his eyes behind a huge pair of reflective white glasses, and he always wears a ridiculous safari hat, but he manages to project an imposing aura nonetheless. John can’t help but to feel that this aura is funnelled towards him more often than any of the other vault dwellers.
“I’m sure you want to have fun, but now that you’re thirteen it’s time for you to start assuming some responsibilities around here.” The Overseer hands him a worn down electronic bracelet. “This is a SBURB-Boy 3000 Captchalogue Deck. This is a very important item for any and all vault dwellers.” He gives John a stern look, and a hint of malice momentarily flickers from behind the tinted lenses. “Don’t lose it.”
“y-yes sir!” John nods and is released, and the Overseer strides out of the room with a harrumph. He looks down at the SBURB-Boy; the screen is covered with scratches and the metal surface has rusted over, but the device itself seems to be working perfectly. He taps over to the inventory section and finds, much to his chagrin, that the entire weight limit has already been filled. With birthday cakes.
John shrugs, straps the SBURB-Boy to his wrist, and sets it to sleep mode. Looking up, he notices that Ms. Crocker is waving him over, holding a box out to him. He quickly dashes over to her.
“oh cool, a present? …it’s not another cake, is it? please tell me its’s not a cake.”
The old lady chuckles and opens the box to reveal a cache of Fruit Gushers in every flavour imaginable, from Wild Cherry Apeshit Apocalypse to Cool Fructose Monsoon, even including the limited edition Nuka-Cola Quantum Overdose flavour. His jaw drops and his mouth waters up in anticipation for his quickly approaching neural overload.
In addition to the candy windfall, John opens up his other presents to find a white undershirt adorned with a strange neon-green ghost, a baseball bat, a pair of fake arms, a Little Monsters poster, another cake (where do they get them all from?) and a copy of Problem Sleuth: Book One. Finally, the presents have all been unwrapped. He heaps about dozen of his captchalogued cakes onto the ever-expanding cake pile to make room for his new loot and thanks his guests, grinning the entire time.
John is about to head back to his father when he is confronted by his least favourite vault-dweller: Butch DeLoria. The kid has greased-up, slicked back hair, and a scowl seems permanently affixed to his face. Put lightly, he is unpleasant – put less lightly, he is a douchebag of the highest caliber. He smoothly steps into John’s path and crosses his arms.
“Nothin’ but the same old cakes here. They’re boooring, and I don’t wanna eat any more! But that old fart over there,” he gestures to Ms. Crocker and his scowl intensifies, “gave you some Fruit Gushers. I’m taking them!”
John gives him a blank look. “uh, dude, these are mine. you can’t have them.”
“That’s not how I work, nerd!” Butch cracks his knuckles menacingly. “I’m hungry. I want your food. Give it!”
“no, i’m not going to.” John tries to step aside and keep moving, but Butch pushes him back.
“Give them here, or I’m not gonna let you through!”
John pauses for a moment, steeling himself, and then he breaks into a run and tries to shove Butch aside. The bully stops him cold and punches him in the gut, sending him reeling backwards – he crashes into a table and its former occupants scurry away quickly.
When he looks up, Officer Gomez has already restrained Butch, and is giving him a stern lecture about violence. John slips past the two, brushes off Jade’s worried look with a “don’t worry about me, everything’s fine.” and stops in front of his stern-faced father.
“That Butch boy was trying to start trouble, wasn’t he son?”
“uh, yeah dad but everything’s fine, i guess. he didn’t really hurt me.”
“You handled him like a real trooper. I’m proud of you, son - just try to stay clear of jerks like him from now on. He’s going to grow up to be nothing but trouble…I don’t know why the Overseer hasn’t talked to him about it yet…” He pauses and a troubled look flits across his face. “In any case, we have more uplifting matters to focus on. Wait here for a moment.”
Dad makes his way over to the intercom and speaks into the receiver.
“I think the birthday boy is just about ready. Go grab it…ok. I’ll head down right away.” He turns back to John and smiles. “Other than the bully, how was the party, son?”
John returns the smile and shows off the inventory list on his SBURB-Boy. “i got all sorts of cool stuff! it’s almost like it’s my birthday, and christmas, or something!”
“I’m glad to hear it…but there’s something else you should see. Meet me down in the reactor room. Jonas and I have a surprise prepared for you there…and no, it’s not another cake.”
His father exits the room and John follows closely behind, but he stops for a moment; the Overseer’s voice is echoing down from an upper hallway, and there is an edge to his voice that John has never heard before. He can only make out part of the conversation: “…can’t be trusted, the both of them. They don’t belong here, they belong...when he leaves…complications for all of us, what am I supposed to tell the others…unhealthy influence on the girl, what if she realizes that she comes from the…”
The voices seem to be getting more and more faint, and the buzzing and clinking of the gears and pipes lining the walls of the vault are not helping matters. Who is he talking to? What is he talking about? John fails to resist the urge to snoop, creeping up a nearby staircase and flattening himself against the wall, craning his neck to peer around the corner. He finds himself staring straight into the chest of one of the security guards, and he jumps back immediately, nearly toppling over and tumbling down the stairs. The guard scowls.
“Didn’t anybody ever warn you about stairs, kid? Be more careful, will ya?”
John stammers an apology and hurries down to the reactor room, bemoaning his astounding failure to be stealthy. The walls are danker here, condensed moisture dripping through rusty cracks – the reactor is buried deep within the steel honeycomb of the vault. When he finally turns the last corner and arrives at the entrance, he is greeted by yet another stern face; that of his father’s lab assistant, Jonas. He looks down at John and crosses his arms, shaking his head and making a clicking noise with his tongue.
“The reactor room is no place for thirteen year olds, young man.”
“uh, my dad said i could come down here.”
Jonas grins and gives John a light shove. “Come on, you’re thirteen now. You don’t have to take crap from jokers like me anymore! Now come on, your dad and I built you an awesome present.” He strides over to the door for the reactor storage space and taps a few buttons on the keypad. The door slides open with a woosh and he ushers John inside.
John finds his father waiting on the other side of the door, holding some sort of metallic object behind his back.
“We wanted to get you a BB Gun for your thirteenth birthday. It’s every little boy’s dream, right? But the overseer took the last one we had in storage, so we had to get a bit more creative.”
John’s father winks and hands him a miniaturized sledgehammer – the weight has been balanced to suit his strength, and a primitive spring system has been installed, allowing the hammer to easily absorb shocks and rebound for extra force.
“whoa! this is really cool, how does it work?”
As if on cue, an irradiated imp scurries in from a crack in one of the walls, dashing forwards and poking at John’s feet. The boy looks down at the imp, and then at the hammer in his hand.
“Go ahead, son.”
He grins and raises the hammer above his head, bringing it crashing down onto the hapless imp. The imp is practically vaporized by the blow, sending the hammer crashing into the ground and rebounding back upwards; the force rips the hammer out of John’s hands and it bops Jonas on the head, eliciting an annoyed yelp. The recoil sends John reeling backwards with a grunt and he looks up to see a small smattering of grist where the imp used to be.
“Good job. I’m proud of you, John.”
Jonas staggers to his feet and pulls out a camera.
“How about a picture of the birthday boy, hm?”
He clicks the button, the camera flashes, and everything goes white.