The Human Condition - Fallout 4 | OC x Danse |

19. some rain must fall...

└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘

The Institute

- - -

No. No way.

Father simply stared at me as I gawked, shaking my head. "That's... No. You're lying. How would that even be possible!?"

There was no way in hell. This man was decades older than me judging by his wrinkles alone — and the head of the Institute? My son was captured by the Institute. Ten years ago, according to Kellogg's memory. He must think I'm stupid.

I got ready to retort again, but Father calmly spoke over me, lowering his hands. "I know this is a lot to take in, but just listen to me."

I shut my mouth, nodding once. At this point, whatever bull crap explanation he's got, I wanna hear it.

"In the Vault, you had no concept of the passage of time. You were released from your pod, and went searching for the son... you'd lost." He hesitated on the last words. "But then you learned that your son was no longer an infant, but a ten year old boy. You believed that ten years had passed."

I began to understand what he was getting at. No...

"...Is it really so hard to accept that it was not ten, but sixty years?" Father finally dropped the time span, making my head rattle. "That is the reality. And here I am... raised by the Institute, and now its leader."

I closed my eyes briefly, remembering the way I'd slipped in and out of cryostasis, watching helplessly as Kellogg murdered my husband and took my child. Sixty years had passed since I had seen that and woken up...?

Oh God...

My breath hitched as I spoke through a tightened throat. "But... why? Why take a child?" I attempted to meet his eyes, still not fully believing it all. "Why take you?"

"Ah, now that's the question, isn't it? Why me?" Father held up a finger, emphasizing his words. He seemed enthused by the idea that I was asking all the right questions — meanwhile, my world was crumbling beneath me.

"At that time, the year 2227, the Institute had made great strides in synth production. But it was never enough. Scientific curiosity, the goal of perfection, drove them ever onward. What they wanted was... the perfect machine. So they followed the best example thus far — the human being. Walking, talking, fully articulate... capable of anything."

"Human synths?" I scoffed in a raspy, weakened voice. "Really?"

"Human-like synths. A great distinction," Father enforced. "The Institute endeavored to create synthetic organics. The most logical starting point, of course, was human DNA. Plenty of that was available, of course, but it had all become corrupted. In this... wasteland... radiation affected everyone." His voice had taken on an air of disgust when referring to the Commonwealth. "Even in their attempts to shield themselves from the world above, members of the Institute had been exposed. Another source was necessary."

Ah. So they needed a healthy pre-war baby... My stomach churned.

"But then the Institute found me, after discovering records from Vault 111. An infant, frozen in time, protected from the radiation-induced mutations that had crept into every other human cell in the Commonwealth..." His eyes seemed to glow with pride as he recounted the tale. "I was exactly what they needed. And so it was my DNA that became the basis of the synthetic organics used to create every human-like synth you see today."