Fallout 4: AR

2. Boston?

The first thing I noticed was the sensation of an all-over ache, a soreness that prodded me out of the black void. I was on my back, limbs sprawled awkwardly across an uncomfortably hard uneven surface. Everything hurt, my muscles twitching in response, my skin sensitive to the lightest sensation. The next thing was the stench. My nose was assaulted with odors, none of them pleasant. Garbage and rotting matter was overlaid with a miasma of stale urine and an odd pervasive metallic scent to the air, wafting occasional hints of scorched rock. With a groan of effort, I pried open one eye. The sight of a bloody and very dead hairless dog not three feet from my head caused me to scramble awake, and to hell with my soreness. Random bits of trash and concrete caught under my limbs as I scooted backwards until my shoulders ran into a brick wall. Stacked brick masonry on three sides, opening out to a crumbled street on the fourth...an alley? A large trash bin blocked most of the view. My glasses were covered in dust, and I took a second to wipe them clean, not believing what I was seeing.

Looking up, the shadowed brick alley towered over me. A slice of sky glowed several stories above my head, the light wan and thin. Random pieces of twisted fire escape scaffolding poked out from the walls above me, useless claws of broken steel silhouetted against the pale blue. It was a bit chilly for my state of dress; oversized T-shirt, jeans, and old leather Army boots. I hugged my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms as tightly as I could. The ground was covered in trash; pulverized bricks, pieces of cloth and paper, twisted nubs of metal, dead dog, all scattered about like a hellish snowfall. It had even piled up in the corners, creating drifts of noxious junk and filth. A light breeze sighed through the alley, bringing with it a hint of warmth and the faint sound of random popping echoing from the walls. The noise was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. My senses were overwhelmed with data.

Where. The. HELL. Am I? Reaching out, I felt the bricks on either side. They seemed awfully solid, coarse and scratchy beneath my fingertips. The Pip-Boy on my wrist clinked metallically against the stone. The Pip-Boy! Fallout! Post-war... Boston? This must be the expanded VR system from the letter! If this is VR, it's better than anything I've ever heard or dreamed of. I snatched the device to my chest to examine it closely, bracing my back against the impossibly solid brick wall.

The Pip-Boy screen was glowing greenly, but not with the overwhelming brightness it showed before I blacked out. A cartoonish portrait of a person standing with arms and legs extended was centered on the screen. Each limb, head, and torso had an arrow pointing to a green bar graphic next to it, with a longer bar at the bottom left. In the top left corner, a pinwheel animation whirled slightly with the word "Dazed" next to it. "No shit, Sherlock," I retorted. The screen was pulsing, a distracting flash that started to annoy me. Irritated, I poked at the pinwheel. The pulsing stopped and the graphic disappeared with a melodic triple chime.

That's when I heard the footsteps crunching along the street outside the alley. A rough male voice queried, "Huh? What the fuck was that?"

I froze. That voice did not sound friendly. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, at least for the moment, I scrunched over to hide behind the trash bin as quietly as I could, but the sounds of my movement must have reached the street. The footsteps had paused, but started coming closer.

A different voice spoke, female this time, "Hey, I think someone's out there."

The original voice called out, taunting, "Come on out... I'll make it nice and quick... You can trust me..." followed by a nasty laugh and a metallic click.

Peering behind the trash bin, I saw three shadows move past my line of sight in the mouth of the alley. One appeared to be carrying a club or bat, wrapped in spikes, the farthest figure had something lumpy wrapped around their right fist, and the middle form... is that a rifle? Suddenly the popping sounds I heard earlier made sense. It was the same sound I remembered from Basic Training many years ago; the sound of gunfire.