Preston stared at him in silence for a long time.
The campfire crackled between them, sending sparks up into the sky.
Firelight flickered across Preston’s face, catching the lines in it and the swelling that still had not gone down.
“…How do you know all that?”
His voice was quiet, but every word landed hard.
“Vault 75, Vault 95, Vault 88.
Where they are, what’s inside them, what happened there.
How do you know?”
Jace said nothing.
“And Vault 111,” Preston continued.
“You said you were frozen in there for two hundred years.
Then you shouldn’t know anything.
You just woke up, so how do you know about the other Vaults?”
He looked at Jace, his expression complicated.
It was not suspicion, not caution, but more like…
confusion.
“And Lexington.
How did you know there were Ghouls in that supermarket?
How did you know we were hiding inside?”
Jace still said nothing.
“When you came in,” Preston said, “you had your gun ready.
You charged in and fought your way through like…
like you knew we were there.”
Jace lowered his head and looked at his hands.
Those hands had crushed Ghoul skulls inside power armor.
They had torn vertebrae out one by one.
Now they rested open on his knees, and in the firelight, the skin looked no different from any normal person’s.
How was he supposed to answer?
Say, “I played the game”?
Say, “I know this is a fictional world, but I crossed over into it”?
Say, “You were all NPCs, but I see you as people now”?
He raised his head and looked at Preston.
Preston was looking at him too.
On that exhausted face, there was no hostility and no anger.
Only…
waiting.
He was waiting for an answer.
Jace thought for a moment, then turned to look at Mama Murphy.
Preston followed his gaze.
Mama Murphy was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, still muttering under her breath.
Preston turned back and looked at Jace.
Jace pulled his hand away from the campfire and stretched it into the moonlight.
“I was a pre-War prisoner.
A dedicated test subject.”
Preston stared at his hands without speaking.
“I was sent to more than one Vault,” Jace continued, his voice calm.
“The Vaults ran a lot of human experiments.”
“For example, drug-induced acquired radiation adaptation.”
His hands looked pale under the moonlight.
The veins beneath his skin were clearly visible, like a blue-gray web.
“Also known as ghoulification.”
Preston’s eyelid twitched.
Jace lifted his chin toward Mama Murphy.
“People like her, people with psychic gifts, existed before the war too.”
Preston glanced at Mama Murphy again.
She leaned against the wall, murmuring to herself, completely unaware that anyone was watching her.
“You mean…” Preston said, his voice hoarse, “you can see things too?
Like her?”
Jace shook his head.
“Not the same.
She was born with it.
I was made.
I’m not on her level.”
“Born with it?”
Jace nodded.
“Some people are born with that ability.
No experiments, no injections.
They have it from birth.”
He looked at Mama Murphy, firelight flickering across her face, and remembered all the old discussions from his previous life about Mama Murphy’s Sight.
“This kind of psychic foresight doesn’t usually have many side effects, and it tends to have one trait.
It grows stronger with age.”
Preston frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when she was young, she may have only seen vague glimpses once in a while, like old prophets.
The older she got, the clearer it should have become.”
“But it’s a psychic ability.
The more you reject it, the more you deliberately avoid using it, the more you try to throw it away, the more it slowly weakens,” Jace explained.
“Like a muscle.
If you don’t use it for a long time, it atrophies.”
Preston understood.
“So at Quincy, the life-or-death crisis forced her Sight awake and warned her to leave right away.
But she couldn’t let go of Quincy…
and because her Sight had already weakened so much, the only way she could force another vision was by using chems?”
“That’s probably what happened.”
Jace looked at Mama Murphy and said quietly, “The way she is now isn’t because of the Sight.
It’s because she’s taken too many chems.”
He thought for a moment.
“If she stops taking them and rests properly, she should recover.”
Preston looked at the old woman for a long time.
“I’ll talk to her later.”
Jace looked up.
“Will she listen?”
Preston was silent for a second.
“I don’t know.
But I have to try.”
“By the way, those things you said about the Sight.
That it gets stronger the more it’s used, and weaker if it isn’t.
Where did you learn that?”
Jace remained silent and did not answer.
Preston waited a few seconds before it suddenly clicked.
He lowered his voice.
“Sorry.”
Jace drew his hand back and held it near the fire again.
Away from the moonlight, his hands looked just like anyone else’s.
“The experiment on me didn’t succeed,” he said softly.
“Or rather…
it didn’t fully succeed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure.
I only know what I’m like now.
I don’t feel hungry, my wounds heal fast, and radiation doesn’t do much to me.”
He looked into the fire.
Something popped in the flames.
Sparks flew up, landed on the ground, and slowly faded.
After a long time, Preston spoke.
“Those Vaults you mentioned.
75, 95, 88.
You saw them with that artificial Sight of yours?”
“…More or less.”
Preston said nothing.
He watched the fire, staring at the dancing flames, lost in thought.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll lose control and turn into a feral Ghoul?” Jace asked.
Preston looked at him.
“You’re sitting here with us right now.
You helped us carry food.
You helped us fight Ghouls.”
“Who you are, what you went through before, none of that matters.”
He stretched his hand toward the fire.
Under the firelight, their hands looked no different.
“What matters is what you’re doing now.”
Jace stood and brushed the dust off himself.
“When are we going to Vault 88?” he asked.
Preston looked into the campfire.
“Not anytime soon.
We have too many wounded and not enough hands.
We can’t leave and go too far.
What if someone attacks while we’re gone?”
“Let’s rest first and figure out how to strengthen the defenses here.”
Jace thought about it.
“All right.
Tomorrow I’ll go out and bring back some gear from nearby.”
At first light, Jace dragged Sturges out of the house.
“What are we doing?” Sturges rubbed his eyes, still half asleep and confused.
Jace pointed to the power armor he had worn when he fought his way out of the supermarket the day before.
Codsworth had already wiped off the blood and mud.
“Help me take a look at this.”
Sturges froze for a moment.
Then his eyes slowly lit up.
“…Power Armor?” He stepped closer and stared at the gray-white metal plates.
“Pre-War?
And this complete?”
Sturges circled the suit twice, muttering as he walked.
“T-45.
Well preserved.
In better shape than the two suits I got from the Atom Cats back in Quincy.”
“Do you know how many caps this suit is worth right now?”
Jace shook his head.
Sturges held up one hand, all five fingers spread.
“Five thousand?” Jace asked.
Sturges shook his head.
“Fifty thousand.
At least fifty thousand.”
He pointed at the suit.
“T-45.
Complete.
The core still works.
The joints are just a little stiff.
Most of the circuits still have continuity.”
He reached out and touched the scratches on the chest plate, then crouched down to inspect the hydraulic tubes around the joints.
“Where did you get it?”
“The Museum of Freedom.
There was a crashed pre-War Blackbird on the roof, and I just put it on.”
Sturges stood and looked at him.
“You just put it on?”
Jace nodded.
Sturges’s expression changed.
“Just put it on?” he asked.
“No inspection?
No maintenance?
Just like that, you just climbed in?”
Jace nodded again.
Sturges stared at him in silence for three seconds.
Then he said, “Do you know how long this thing has been sitting there?”
“Two hundred years.”
“Two hundred years,” Sturges repeated.
“Two hundred years with no one touching it, two hundred years with no maintenance.”
He raised a hand and counted off on his fingers.
“The hydraulic fluid inside could’ve dried up ages ago.
The circuits could be rusted through.
The joints could be locked solid.
And especially…”
He paused and pointed at the fusion core on the back of the armor.
“Radiation leaks.”
He raised his head and looked at Jace.
“God knows what kind of problems these suits have.
Some Raiders without the means to repair and maintain power armor wouldn’t dare put it on right away even if they got their hands on a set.”
“They either leave it unused, or strip the original parts off and replace them with homemade power armor pieces.
Raider power armor.”
He looked at Jace.
“And you just put it on?”
Jace froze.
The game had never said you could not just put it on.
The game had never mentioned radiation leaks.
The game had never said hydraulic fluid could dry up, circuits could rust, or joints could seize.
In the game, power armor was just gear lying around.
Pick it up, climb in, and it worked.
But now…
He looked at Sturges, at that face that practically said, Are you out of your mind?
Sturges took a deep breath.
“How far did you run in it?”
“From here to Lexington, then back from Lexington.”
Sturges fell silent again.
He turned toward the house and shouted, “Josh!
Emma!
Come out here and help!”
The two of them ran out of the house, guns still in hand.
“What happened?”
Sturges pointed at the power armor.
“Take it apart.”
Jace paused.
“Take it apart?”
Sturges looked at him.
“Yes, take it apart.
If I don’t open it up and inspect it, how am I supposed to know whether it still works?”
Jace nodded and began turning the release wheel on the back of the power armor.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Sturges leaned in and stared into the opened armor plates.
Then his expression changed.
“This…”
Jace walked over and followed his gaze inside.
On the inner side of the armor’s back, near the spine, was a palm-sized panel.
It was made of different material from the rest.
Not metal, but a gray-white composite covered in fine cracks.
Around the edge of the panel was a ring of blackened, yellowed sealant, but the sealant had long since dried and split.
Large flakes had peeled away, exposing gaps underneath.
Sturges reached in and removed the panel.
Crack.
A small fragment fell off and landed on the ground.
Sturges stared at the fragment in silence for a few seconds.
Then he raised his head and looked at Jace.
“Do you know what this is?”
Jace shook his head.
“A radiation shield.
One of the most important parts of power armor.
Without it, radiation from the fusion core can go straight through your back.
Spine, lungs, kidneys.
All of it exposed.”
He glanced inside the armor again.
“This thing broke a long time ago.
The sealing strips are all cracked, and the shield itself is shattered.
Radiation can get right in through here.”
“If an ordinary person wore this, they’d be dead in half a day.”
Jace said nothing.
A cold wind blew in from the river, but Jace did not feel cold.
Sturges looked at him with a strange expression.
Not suspicion.
Not fear.
More like…
confusion.
“How long did you wear it?”
Jace thought for a moment.
“From the time I left here, ran all the way to Lexington, then ran back.”
“About a day and a night.”
Sturges was silent for a few seconds.
Then he said, “You…
didn’t feel anything?”
Preston walked over and shook his head at Sturges, signaling him not to keep asking.
Sturges glanced again at the shattered panel, then looked back at Jace.
His gaze lingered on Jace’s face for a long time.
In the end, he lowered his head and continued inspecting the rest of the armor.
“The hydraulic system is all right,” he said, his voice lower than before.
“The circuits still work too.
The joints are a little stiff.
Some oil should fix that.”
He stood and brushed the dust from his hands.
“But this shield…” He did not finish.
Jace knew what he wanted to say.
The radiation shield was broken.
And this was a T-45, which already had poor radiation protection to begin with.
An ordinary person would probably die in less than half a day wearing it.
But Jace had worn it for two days.
And nothing had happened.
Sturges did not ask anything else.
He only turned the broken shield over, took another look at it, then threw it to the ground.
“This thing can’t be fixed.
We need to find a replacement.”
Sturges turned and walked toward the house.
After a few steps, he stopped.
He did not turn around.
“About that shield…
I won’t tell anyone.”
“Not that I understand it anyway,” his voice drifted back from ahead.
“Maybe it’s just…
a different model.”
Then he disappeared behind the door.
Jace stood where he was.
A scene suddenly flashed through his mind.
The power armor on the roof of the Museum of Freedom.
In the game’s story, before Preston arrived, the Raiders were already guarding the building below, but no one went up and put that suit on.
In the game, Jace had never thought about why.
Raiders were “monsters,” and that set of power armor had been prepared for the player.
It made perfect sense.
But now…
He understood.
“No wonder,” he murmured.
Codsworth floated over and settled beside him.
“Sir?
What is it?”
Jace did not turn around.
“Codsworth, do you remember that set of power armor on top of the Museum of Freedom?”
Codsworth’s “eyes” shifted.
“The one on the roof, sir?
With Raiders guarding the building below.”
Jace nodded.
“I could never figure out why the Raiders didn’t wear it themselves.
They just left it there, posted two people to guard it, and waited for someone else to come take it?”
He paused.
“Now I get it.”
“They didn’t dare wear it.
Radiation leak.”
He remembered Sturges’s face when he pointed at the shattered radiation shield.
“A normal person would be dead in half a day.”
Codsworth said nothing.
Jace continued.
“The Raiders didn’t dare wear it, but they couldn’t bear to throw it away either.
So they posted two people to guard it and waited…
waited for what?”
He thought for a moment.
“For the day they could repair it?”
“For some death-seeking idiot to put it on, then loot the corpse when he died?”
“Sir, when you planned to retrieve that suit, did you think about any of this?”
Jace froze.
Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said, his voice a little hoarse.
“I thought…
you just put it on.”
The morning sun rose from the east, washing all of Sanctuary Hills in a hazy gray-gold light.
He lowered his head and looked at his hands.
In the sunrise, they looked just like anyone else’s.