OPEN Ghosts in the Engineering

littlekreen

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ALWAYS THE WINDOW SHOPPER, NEVER THE PRODUCT.
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EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

Deep in the lowest levels of Vault 120 lie a darkened labyrinth of tiny, twisty tunnels that such a gigantic vault required. These first shafts were drilled straight down into limestone so construction could expand. Later the rough-hewn carbonate stone turned to concrete and steel though some of the shaft's original igneous walls were left once passing down into the bedrock that formed the Florida platform. A sump serving as a reserve source of water that inevitably leaks in through the porous upper layers and as an emergency source to cool the reactor. Eight hundred people in a design for luxury that needed power, air circulation, sewage, and most important, electricity. The reactor had multiple fail-safes and redundancies that vastly expanded the tangled web of access and maintenance tunnels far below where creatures would dig. Occasionally maintenance workers would have to come, servicing this or that, though bathing in the faintly musty and clammy cold air with the massive shaft's old heavy steel and support for a cargo elevator used in surface construction long since removed and filled in. It was an infinitely sturdy place given the now superfluous reinforcement though vault dwellers were used to more compact spaces and brighter lighting. The ever-so-faint creaks and echoing thumps of pumps against the stone from deep in the void below gave even the engineers that regularly go there the heebie-jeebies. As if something in the dark was watching them. Surface cities once had their ghost stories; even the vaults had theirs. Houses long abandoned are rumored to harbor horrible demons. Sewer grates with monsters behind.

A crisp beam of light punctuating the stillness sways from the far wall to race downward as a man in a hard hat with his reflective vault maintenance suit looks over the edge and then so far down. A snack in his hand baiting a growl as starvation tries to overpower the white knuckles of his grip on the causeway railing. His helmet light not penetrating the least at such depths as there were no lights in the far wall, let alone the deeper parts of the sump just where the vault tunnels intersected. That void that went on in faintly glistening eternity. A monster with gleaming wet eyes looked toward him with a toothy maw and a smile.

"ARGLEBARGL!", screamed one of his workmates and punctuated his fear with a girlish scream that dropped a snack cake to thump against the grate and then careen into the hungry dark instead.

His partner started dying of laughter as the man had to catch his breath. As the mixture of emotions of anger finally gave his stomach a momentary grip in looking at his snack falling down and down, "You bastard! It's creepy in here aright! I heard stories!"

Forlornly looking at the snack cake dropping past the last railing before it slipped into the infinite dark just for fear that smashed his mind into the guardrail for attention. The snack cake bounced off of mid-air just above an empty causeway, stopped, headed sideways into the light, and darted down the causeway out of view. The laughter stopped as they heard loud bombast from below in a cheerful proclamation, "ARIAL INCURSION BY THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. GLORY IS THE REWARD OF VALOR."

Both men stared into the void as the snack cake escaped mid-air down causeway lights toward the reactor area, and wide-eyed, the other said, "Okay, Fuck me. I thought the little patriot was all bullshit."

"Hic sunt dracones, asshole."
Said the hungry man.
 
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EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

The water went up sometimes and down sometimes, and Anchorage thought it meant REACTOR was breathing. When the ceiling emergency light in the outside was highest, the water was too. It pushed more water into the deeper places of Vault America when there was more on top. That meant the small catwalk he was walking on was slightly underwater now; though the lights still work, he worried his home might get flooded. Then the America pack gave him Glory from the high places, and now he was less worried. He acknowledged the glory food for his good works.

Though the REACTOR heart of vault America was sick and cold lately. Sometimes, he could hear the painful screeching in the walls, though things often screamed and died instead in bursts of light. Communist Infiltrators? Sabotage? He thought REACTOR sounded in pain but didn't know how to stop it. There were no rocks here to heal his pack America just the communist meat drones that the America pack kept in line. So he continued tapping along on the partly submerged catwalk as the America pack put lights on him while he returned to a small rusty metal box shoved in a cubby hole in the far wall.

The slight distortion above splashing water sprouted slit eyes in space as he looked to see in his box. Rock tubes and things from his small rock tunnel to the topside to get new rock organs for REACTOR. He didn't know what a lot of it was, but they were things that looked like ones in the walls. Sometimes he hunted metal organs from dead rock things nearby vault America's territory. REACTOR was always hungry now.

He looked over to the deep water where a submerged door cracked open left to the vault, back to the box, then to Glory in his other hand. He couldn't get the Glory wet; it wasn't tasty when full of bad deep water. Anchorage put his Glory reward into the box as the America pack kept watch from above with its ceiling lights. He couldn't hide the box like he could hide from Communists. There weren't many communist meat drones just above the deep waters to hide from, so it was safe to carry things. Anchorage started climbing the stairs with his box of rock organs to peer straight up at the lights flailing as a door opened and closed. Then the noise was gone. Hiding Communists?

Anchorage just called up in case it was more communist meat drones, "WE WILL NOT FEAR THE RED MENACE."

Movement and noise were all gone, so the invisible distortion of deathclaw carried the rusty steel object down the corridor labeled with the name REACTOR. There was a room that looked like a rock workshop he left rock organs things in. Sometimes it seemed to stop the pain coming from the walls after. It made vault America stop hurting so pack America would be happy with him. The communist meat drones that pack America controlled he tolerated but avoided as one of pack America should. Still, he trusted pack America as long as they were the right smell for vault America.

As he emerged from a vent on one of the walls to pass broken doors, two angular slits of darkness flare in midair under the reflective eye slits of the deathclaw-shaped distortion. Anchorage sniffed the air though it was hard to tell if there were communist meat drones when everything in the rock workshop smelled like deep water today to him.
 
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Sometimes it was hard for Spark to breathe.

When it was hard to breathe, Spark usually did a couple things to help her ease the tightness in her chest. Most of the time she'd tear things down to their bare essentials— gears and springs and washers and coils —and then she'd put them back together. Try to, at least. She used to be really bad at it, back when she couldn't figure out how to get things together just right so it'd function like before. Or even turn on. Her ma' would yell at her for ruining the food processor and her dad would holler at her for breaking his Mr. Handy model. But they didn't understand when she couldn't breathe, she had to do something.

Lately, she's taken to exploring.

It gets her away from the loud voices. It used to only be the shouts, the angry cries, the worried accusations. But lately even a loud and happy greeting between friends could steal her breath away. I'm just lookin' for it, Spark would say to herself, the longer she tried to find her way out of the twisting tunnels and makeshift maintenance shafts, Just tryna find my stolen breath.

It was easier to think it was a game. Even if she was fourteen now. It made it less scary somehow.

Like when Spark's foot slipped through a rusty piece of sheet metal and she found a new set of tunnels. The farther she went though, the weirder it started to smell, until she realized the lower end was half submerged with water.

Aghk! Why does it smell weird?

She walked through a set of doors hanging off their hinges and hesitated, the dim light unsteady, making it hard for her to see. It was the first time she was really and truly scared. Two days past curfew didn't instill as much fear as the far off sounds of sloshing water did. Had someone come looking for her? Or was there a monster down here that actually stole people's breaths?

"He-hello?" It was barely above a whisper, full of girlish fright. Spark stomped her foot, not wanting to sound afraid and got splashed with water that covered half her torso. "HELLO?!" Spark cringed, realizing that she sounded like Mr. Berko from across the hall whenever he was angry at his wife.

"Hello?" Spark called out questioningly, "Is anyone... in here? I'm lost. I came looking for something that was stolen from me b-but I can't find my way back home."
 
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EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

The quickest path to his nest was through tunnels entirely underwater since the communist drones didn't like to swim in the deep water. However with his special box he didn't want it to get wet and had to take the long way. Sometimes the tunnels were high, sometimes they were low but even the low times were up to his shoulders. So the hemlock-colored figure sloshed through scummy off-brown water just slightly above his head but still walk. The metal container held above the water in both hands as a functional third eyelid made his eyes milky beneath murky fluid. He knew the tunnels well enough and didn't need to see where he was going if raising his nose to breathe every so often and look about as he went down the tunnel.

Then as the water was low enough to reveal his head he'd heard a shout he never did down in the deep water tunnels. It sounded small. Weak? A communist infiltrator? He was tired and hungry from all the hiding today but communists were a temporary setback on the road to Glory. Half-submerged as the deathclaw gained a patchy translucency then faded entirely as its torso made for a hole in the water. The slosh came quicker as she made noise, stopped when she was silent, then sloshed along as a small lunchbox hovered in space above the displaced water void. As he heard the splash of her foot in the water the two reflecting slit eyes gleam out of thin air to stare down the hallway at recognition of the aggressive gesture. He looked and thought the drone wasn't very large. Was it even a communist drone? Communism was a lie so he still kept his distance fearful it was a trap.

The hollow toothy gap of his mouth showed as well when he called back at the figure in her own voice, "HELLO? DETECTED ON AMERICAN SOIL. EMBRACE DEMOCRACY, OR YOU WILL BE ERADICATED."
 
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Spark stared at the lunchbox for a long while, trying to place what it was, what it was doing down here, and then too late, why it was floating above the water. She tilted her head, taking a few instinctual steps backward, fear thump, thump, thumping up its way up her throat. She didn't quite understand her body's reaction, not until she noticed the displacement in the water. Spark couldn't quite grasp what was happening, not really, but when something came at you submerged in the water, she thought it best to get out.

She took a few shuffling steps backwards, trying to make sense of what was happening when she heard her voice. When she hadn't said anything, hadn't even opened her mouth. For a split second, the hair on the back of Spark's neck rose and she froze. Glued to the spot, foot halfway through the threshold.

So there is a monster down here. That steals breaths and voices!

Spark let out a quip of a screech, confused and startled and terrified all at once. Tears welled in her eyes when she noticed the disembodied set of teeth drawing near and turned tail and attempted to run.

"I don't want to be eradicated! I want to go home! Back to the Vault Proper!" She cried, flustered, her gangly legs tripping on something unseen beneath the water.
 
EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

The death claw sloshed closer slowly as she backed up as instinct was never terribly far from the deathclaw and the impulse to chase prey was one particularly strong. The sharp noise of panic and that sense of fear raising the rapid thumpthump in his ears. Though light of sapience shaped and moderated his reaction to that instinct with the two slit eyes locked onto hers in curiosity rather than anger or hunger. Freedom had taught so he had learned not to hunt things he shouldn't plus there were things he should not eat but freedom was always worth fighting for. As she mentioned the vault the reflected slits in space tilt and pivot with his head as well as nostrils flaring taking a sniff since he was above the water line. The faint smell of the above with her sudden movement among the constant muck and water of the tunnels as instinct decided she was not communist. The smell of Vault America?

As she turned to run instinct detonated him to action but Democracy was what told him what he should do. Powerful legs blew him forward in gush of water as the patchy hemlock color faded back into view reaching with his free hand to grab at her clothes to keep her from going underwater.

"Vault Here? AMERICA. DEFENDING LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.", the ambush predator did love the joy of pursuit and it was the American way.

She was taller than he was but even one hand of the deathclaw sporting a thumb rather unusual to the creatures was likely stronger as he tried to grab and hoist to keep her from falling into the deep water. There was communism and chairman cheng in it in places.

The closed vault-tec lunchbox swung back and forth in his other hand with soft clatters inside as he huffed intent to try and smell her more closely as 'higher' thought pierced the conflagration that was deathclaw instinct to verbalize his thought process, "HONORING THE FALLEN IS THE DUTY OF EVERY AMERICA."
 
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One moment there was the sinking sensation of falling, her right foot rolling and slipping on something unseen, and then there was a sharp tug, an upwards momentum that shifted her parallel to the water. There was more shock than fear as she stared at her breath-stealing... savior? As the monster guided the way to higher ground, lifting her like her baby sister lifted her rag dolls, Spark struggled to breathe. If she breathed, wouldn't he just steal it? The thought circled around her head for a while, back and forth and up and down and after a while, when her face was nearly purple, she decided to risk it. Decided to risk her voice too.

She took a deep breath, savoring the stretch in her chest, and exhaled slowly, staring at the pale creature sniffing her. The unusual way it spoke. Surveyed her. The adorable way it walked (it reminded her of her younger siblings). "Who are you?" Spark asked after a bit of her own surveying, coming to the conclusion it had to have a brain. "Are- Are you the America everyone talks about?"
 
EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

Anchorage bent up after recognizing the scent of the upper levels on her. The outside had clear wisps of communism it could smell and she smelled more of fresh food and clothing than the stick of commmunism outside, even being down here. She was pack America and smaller like him but there were no whispers saying she was a drone. She was holding her breath so he figured she couldn't swim so he couldn't put her down. It was a short moment of an eye darting about for a moment of a being in thoughts full of grinding gears before he shifted his grip to carry with both hands and regain a center of balance. His small lunchbox plunked on top by long claws flicking it up to start sauntering off indeed in that toddling tilt-shift-thunk-sway of top-heavy children trying to carry an entire blanket and their candy too.

Inside the strangely overengineered lunchbox and its spring clasp was three stimpacks, caps, jerky looking unidentified meat wrapped in discarded paper from the vault, a fresh fancy lads snack cake, and an assortment of shiny knicknacks he'd brought back from his last outing. While he called small bits of engineering charnel as rocks he didn't actually collect stuff that he at least thought was broken or didn't do anything.

Deathclaw were superhumanly built for strength as it was but their animal intellect left them with an interest to use their arms for little but fast swiping weapons lacking any fine motor skills and to drag prey home. As one with an intellect, such as it was, plus the will and enthusiasm to sort engine blocks for fun and America, the digitigrade bent posture and arms had the more smooth muscle thickness of one in a life of hard labor though shaped as one still quite young. Still, she wasn't moving and instinct said the America wasn't safe here so he thunked off toward his nest in the warmer and dry places nearer to Reactor where he had holes in the walls to to vault proper. He sniffed at her as she changed colors to check that she was still okay but kept moving. There was a quicker way to get to the safety of his nest above. An old storage room he could get to but the causeways had collapsed and others had forgotten the other ways in as doors stopped working.

When she talked he stopped and the reptilian head with caiman eyes dilated for a second as a part of the mental conflagration was adroitly overruled by a pack instinct an intelligent mind had just given orders to. He tilted his head as he relaxed from the short jerks of movement then replied in that same staccato-sliced voice that sometimes came over vault comms that rapidly repeated her own query at her after answering it himself, "
I am Anchorage, Alaska. I am... America.
Who are you?
Protection protocols engaged! All America personnel should
Back to the
freedom compound. American casualties: unacceptable.
"

He'd chattered as he soon left the flooded portion to solid, if still moist, ground where nails clacked in picking up speed and being held it was somewhat like she was riding hovering Mr. Claws rather than a Mr. Handy. This area was particularly dark but it brightened up somewhat ahead with those yellow sodium lamps from maintenance wells. The taptaptap continued as he looked down to say, "
Obstruction detected. Proceeding to target freedom.
"

littlekreen_realistic_atompunk_underground_dirty_warehouse_with_2d73800c-308d-4a5c-bb1f-854379d1df89.png
Soon after there was a crouch and jolt where the tack-tacking stopped and it became apparent a causeway had collapsed ahead creating a small chasm of piping and metal only a scant couple of meters at best. Flying through the air carried by a jumping deathclaw to a hole a half-story up probably made it feel a bit longer. Though he wasn't used to going this way carrying a person taller than he was in front of him didn't stick the landing. Loosed to the air she fell into a dim room full of racks with a thump against a thick pile of stolen pillows and cloth items in front of the opening. A sharp trilling note as he ends up a bit short by the transfer of energy to clong his head and horns into the metal flooring beneath the blankets and shaking his head a bit dazed.​
 
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Spark did two things after crash landing into a pile of dusty pillows. First, she sneezed, the sound echoing and bouncing off the walls, a cloud of dust swirling around her. Secondly, she laughed, full and deep from her belly. Not entirely sure what was making her giggle incomprehensibly, Spark rolled over onto her knees and then stretched, looking around the storage room they fell into.

"Are you okay..." Spark asked after awhile, crawling slowly, bit by bit, closer towards her horned savior. She didn't know what he was, but he surely wasn't like her or anything she'd ever seen before. But by the shaking of his head and the fact that he saved her... well... "Anchorage?"

She gave him little room to answer, looking around the shelved room with wonder, her anxiety seemingly forgotten.

"I've read about a place called Anchorage, Alaska. It's in one of the books in the school library. A big book with a whole bunch of, um, oh! Maps. I wonder if its still there. If anything is still out there. Hey, by the way, why do you talk so funny?

"You're not stealing voices... right? But..." She cocked her head to the side as she thought about it. "You kinda sound like Mister Davey when he pops on the intercom. Is that what you're doing?"
 
EMBRACE DEMOCRACY
ANCHORAGE ALASKA
STR: 10 | END: 10 | LUK: 8

Anchorage got up from all fours to the loping hunched pose common to deathclaw and shook his head again to then rub the faint mark on his head. After a moment, he sniffed his hand to see if there was blood, then the slit eyes looked back up to her. His head hurt, but it was okay. He was a strong America and could prove it to a pack! This one wasn't a drone! Were they all, not drones?

He tacked over to where Spark rolled over into the dusty softness with a cloudy flumph staring as she made the strange sound he'd never heard so close before. He could tell it was a happy noise. Instinct knew it wasn't fear. He thought he liked it and made an imitation barking trill like a husky wanting to join in. Pack instinct pushed happiness out with a heavily swinging tail tip now that there was more than himself and the mousehunters in the den. The large scaly tail banged against the metal flooring as loud as the toothy grin he gave.

When she asked if he was okay, he pressed his hand to the mark on his head, undoing the sideways half-loaf he'd learned from the mousehunters. Anchorage extended his hand for sniffing and said, "I'm okay.
Anchorage will never fall to communism!
"

He rolled over further into the soft as she moved closer when a borrowed instinct pushed him onto his back to be non-threatening. Soft curved spikes along his spine prop his belly slightly arched upward to fold sharp hands over his chest, The focused stare replied to her upside down as she looked around, "I go out there. I looking for something
communists
stolen.
Target acquired for America to freedom compound. I protection
vault. I not stealing voices.
Is communist. I destroy red chinese.
"

A claw traced a faint X scar further up on his head, "
Massachusetts detected damaged Anchorage
voice.
Ability to
talk
compromised.
"

littlekreen_In_the_dark_recesses_of_an_abandoned_warehouse_a_ca_18bd096b-6e47-459d-ae77-a094f191e6c5.png
Anchorage gestured down the lane to where a tarp with a rather conspicuous arrow made a tent into a block of crates a little way down the lane. It was where he slept since it was warm and dry. He kept all his best shinies there and was somewhat excited to show them to another pack America, "Want to go Anchorage home, here? Book anything out there it's here. Maps. Anchorage on the intercom sometimes talk. I wonder if everyone
communist!
You not
communist.
Anchorage don't want vault eradicated Anchorage!"​
 
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