Hiding In The Green: A Fallout 4 Story

Plots and Plans

The eleven o'clock chime sounded, and Father sighed. Reaching for his pillbox, he tipped out the mid-morning dosage into his hand and regarded the medication, the half a dozen capsules and tablets which, while more than just sugar pills and placebos, were not much more. All they were doing was keeping him from dying quite so quickly. He poured himself a glass of chilled water and swallowed the pills one by one.

How ironic, that he, who had never been exposed to radiation, who had been shielded and protected from carcinogens all his life, should wind up getting cancer anyway. A genetic flaw, a legacy from one or both of the parents he had never known.

Thinking of his parents inevitably reminded him of Kellogg, their murderer. Sending him and X6-88 out to find the survivor from Vault 111 had seemed like a good idea at the time, but so much had gone wrong. He had reports...well, calling them reports was giving them too much credit. Rumor, gossip, third hand accounts, was what they were. Some said the trader, 'Ashcan Carla' was dead, others that she was alive and well. Kellogg had strangled her half to death in front of witnesses; he had stabbed her while rascally drunk, he had sexually assaulted her. X6-88 had tried to stop him, and Kellogg had stabbed him too, or hit him in the head with a shovel, or poisoned him. X6-88 had also been drunk, and had helped Kellogg kill her. X6 was dead, or dying, or brain damaged and unfit to do anything but haul water and chop wood. At least one of those had to be true, because the Courser's chip was offline.

The only thing all the reports agreed on was that Kellogg was now dead. He was dead, and Father was no closer to finding his successor than he was before he had sent Kellogg and X6-88 out there.

Ordinarily, he would have assigned Kellogg the job of finding out what happened, but irony was at work once more. With Kellogg dead, there was no one he could recall within the Institute who had the stomach for working outside and the ability to follow the leads back to the truth. Synths were capable of many things, but they were constructed to be unimaginative, biddable, obedient, and only just smart enough to do the work they were assigned. Investigative work required imagination, analytical thought, the ability to work independently, and a certain savvy that couldn't be programmed in. Or could it?

He toggled the intercom. "I want to see all the department heads and their first tier staff, in fifteen minutes."

Very shortly, he had Justin Ayo, Clayton Holdren, Madison Li, Allie Fillmore, and Alan Binet around a conference table, while their junior counterparts arrayed in seats behind them. "What I need is someone to act as a field agent," Father told them, "someone with a very specific skill set." He explained what he was looking for, but not why. They did not need to know.

Yet they asked anyway, or more precisely, Justin Ayo did. "Father, sir-isn't this the sort of task you give to Kellogg?"

"Kellogg is dead," he replied. "The Courser who accompanied him is either dead or incapacitated. His chip is no longer functioning."

"Dead?!" A shockwave of murmurs spread throughout the room.

"I am not asking any of you to undertake this. You have put your intellectual gifts to greater, more rarefied uses, and I would not ask you to risk your lives or your health. This task requires a blunter, sturdier instrument, yet also more intelligent and independent than our synths. Paradoxical, I know, but the first department who comes up with a successful solution will have their departmental budget increased by ten percent. Come up with it today, and it will be twelve and a half percent. The departments lacking in initiative will have their budgets cut by five percent. You are dismissed." Even meetings as short as this one tired him out, and he would have to lay down for a few hours afterward. Death was catching up to him step by step.