Vault 120… that cut-content Vault?
The thought burst into his mind without warning, like a bucket of cold water dumped straight down the back of his neck.
It wasn’t a chill that slowly seeped in.
It hit all at once, exploding from the top of his spine and racing down through the gaps in his bones.
His eyes snapped open, and he sat bolt upright.
The alcohol was gone.
Jace sat on the sofa, staring at the table in front of him, now cleared clean.
The wooden surface gave off a dark sheen under the light, with a few rings of spilled liquor still not fully wiped away.
His eyes rested on those stains, but he wasn’t really seeing them.
His fingertips dug into the frayed fabric along the edge of the sofa.
His knuckles had gone white.
He did not move.
His mind began turning over those things.
Settings officially sealed away, buried in abandoned code, never meant to appear in this world at all.
Vault 120.
Because of the rushed development schedule, the entire storyline for this Vault had been cut from the game.
He remembered seeing the datamined files on the forums back then.
The models were still sitting on the seafloor, the quest text had been reduced to fragments, and all the voice files were blank.
Players complained for a while, then eventually forgot about it.
But the models were still there.
Its location… offshore to the northeast of Nordhagen Beach.
On the floor of the Commonwealth’s Atlantic Ocean, roughly a dozen kilometers from the coastline, at a depth of around seventy meters.
A Vault hidden in the deep sea.
The design was said to have been inspired by BioShock.
Dark, retro styling, massive round portholes, rusted metal corridors, flickering lights.
The accompanying quest was called 20 Leagues Under the Sea.
Players had to enter through Captain Zao’s nuclear submarine and explore that forgotten place amid deep-sea terror and suffocating claustrophobia.
The Overseer was a giant squid modified with machinery.
It had self-awareness and could speak.
The residents were scholars who had devoted themselves to protecting marine life before the War.
The people from the Nahant Oceanographic Society.
They thought the Vault was their final Ark, only to discover that they had become caged birds at the bottom of the sea.
In the original concept, the only way in was through Captain Zao’s nuclear submarine.
Jace thought for a moment, then shook his head.
That Vault itself did not matter much.
A group of oceanographers and a modified squid sounded intimidating, but there was probably nothing good inside.
What kind of stockpile could a pre-War marine conservation group have?
At most, a few sets of experimental diving gear, a suit of power armor designed for underwater combat, and maybe some genetic samples from endangered species.
It was not worth a special trip.
When the time came, he could just have Captain Zao steer the submarine around it.
But.
If this cut-content Vault existed, that meant other deleted settings might exist too.
Especially that one.
Jace’s breathing stopped for a beat.
The Maypole.
Also known as the Dancing Demon Maypole.
Strange legends about some enormous, terrifying creature had spread across the entire Commonwealth.
Some claimed they had once glimpsed the towering silhouette of a dreadful giant beast amid the raging storms of the Glowing Sea.
Most people treated those stories as warnings told by the older generation to scare reckless youngsters away from the Glowing Sea.
But in the Wasteland, legends had a way of becoming real.
About a year ago, in the dead of winter, an unprecedentedly massive feral ghoul appeared in the world.
Her former name was Dawn.
This monster was born in the depths of the Glowing Sea, from the strange machine that had lain buried in dust for a century inside the Whately Research Facility.
She wandered the Glowing Sea day and night, madly devouring every source of radiation she could find, even consuming weaker members of her own kind to keep growing stronger.
Whether they were drawn by the intense radiation pouring from her body, or driven by some stranger force, every feral ghoul in the Glowing Sea was uncontrollably drawn toward her huge, glowing corpse.
Their rotting bodies were gradually devoured and assimilated, then transformed and fused into new mutated beings, far more savage and powerful than before.
Even now, great numbers of Ghouls still lingered around her body and refused to scatter.
Because the sight of those Ghouls circling around her looked eerily like an old European folk tradition passed down from the Old World.
The Maypole.
The pole, the people, the ribbons twining around it.
Only here, the pole was a ninety-meter-tall monster, and the ribbons were countless mutated feral ghouls, circling, spinning, and spiraling around her in a frenzy.
And so, that chilling shadow came to be known among the people of the Wasteland as the Maypole.
Travelers who dared set foot along the southern shores of the Glowing Sea, and caravans lucky enough to survive, all passed on the same legend: beneath the Glowing Sea lay a black shadow of unimaginable size.
Most of the time, it crouched or lay still without moving.
But countless beast-like mutated feral ghouls circled and writhed around that shadow day and night, restless and frenzied.
Jace clenched his molars, dragging every forgotten detail of that setting out of his memory.
According to the lore, this thing was the daughter of a priestess of the Church of the Children of Atom at the radiation crater in the Glowing Sea.
Her name was Isolde, or something like that.
He could not quite remember.
Dawn had been taken by a heretical branch within the cult.
Those people were not satisfied with merely worshipping Atom.
They wanted to be more active.
They wanted to create a miracle with their own hands.
They dragged Dawn into the Whately Facility, altered her with the FEV virus, and turned her into a monster.
A walking, breathing source of radiation more than ninety meters tall.
More than ninety meters tall.
She carried her own radiation storm with her.
Wherever she was, the sky was always a sickly yellow-green.
She could walk, bend down, throw things, and summon feral ghouls.
Her weight started at over eight thousand metric tons.
What did eight thousand metric tons mean?
The displacement of a destroyer.
A destroyer that could walk on land.
Something that belonged on the set of Pacific Rim.
A chill ran down his back.
If the Maypole ever left the Glowing Sea and entered the city…
Jace sat on the sofa, staring at the table in front of him without moving.
Cold sweat seeped from the back of his neck, layer after layer, trickling down his spine.
Only after a long while did he slowly let out a breath.
The lights in the inn were still warm yellow.
From the counter came the low voices of Vadim and Yefim, muffled and distant, as if something stood between them.
The drunks were still in their original places.
One had passed out completely, his snores rising and falling.
Another was still mumbling something, slurred and indistinct.
Everything was exactly the same as it had been five minutes ago.
And yet completely different.
Jace lowered his head and looked at his hands.
His knuckles were still white from gripping too hard.
He slowly loosened his hold.
Several deep marks had been pressed into his palms by the fabric on the sofa’s edge.
He turned his hands over and watched those marks fade little by little.
As the blood flowed back in, they itched faintly and tingled with numbness.
Ninety meters.
Eight thousand metric tons.
He closed his eyes and pushed the matter out of his mind.
Not forgotten.
Put away.
Set in a special corner of his mind, like a tool he had no use for yet, to be taken out when the time came.
Now was not the time.
Right now, he was sitting in a hotel in Diamond City.
Outside were safe walls.
Tomorrow, he had to rent a Brahmin, pick up the goods from Arturo, and bring the tools and supplies back to Sanctuary Hills.
Those were the things that mattered now.
The Maypole was for later.
He opened his eyes and let out a long breath.
This one was longer and deeper than the last, as though he meant to force every last trace of that chill out of his chest.
His thoughts began to organize themselves.
The Glowing Sea.
Mother Isolde.
The priestess of the Church of the Children of Atom.
She was Dawn’s mother.
If anyone in this Wasteland understood that… that thing, it was her.
For example, where Dawn was now.
Whether she was in the center of the Glowing Sea, or closer to the edge.
Which direction she had been moving recently.
North, toward Diamond City, or west, toward Quincy.
Whether she might leave the Glowing Sea, or whether she would remain there until one day.
Only Isolde could give him that information.
Jace slowly nodded.
Then he would go.
But not now.
He calculated the timing.
The Brotherhood of Steel had not arrived yet.
According to the “plot” as he knew it, that airship would not be coming from Washington for some time.
The Brotherhood of Steel’s Eastern Expeditionary Force, the Prydwen, carrying hundreds of fully armed Knights and Paladins.
That Paladin named Danse would not establish an outpost at the Cambridge Police Station for a while yet.
It would still be some time before the Brotherhood’s army descended on the Commonwealth in overwhelming force.
Before then, the Maypole, or rather, Dawn, probably would not make any major moves.
In the lore, she had always stayed in the Glowing Sea.
Devouring radiation, consuming her own kind, surrounded by Ghouls.
She had never left.
Or rather, she had not left yet.
Those two words, “not yet,” made the back of Jace’s neck prickle with cold again.
But he pushed it down.
Deep down.
That meant he had time.
Not unlimited time, but at least some time.
He could settle Sanctuary Hills first, haul the supplies back, build the walls, and plant what needed to be planted.
He could let those people get their footing first, so they would not have to worry about what they were going to eat tomorrow.
Then, sometime before the Brotherhood of Steel arrived, he would find time to make a trip to the Glowing Sea.
Only to ask about the situation.
Nothing else.
Bring gifts.
Speak politely.
Find out Dawn’s current state, her movement patterns, and whether anything had changed.
Find out where those heretical branches had gone.
If they were still around, they were another hidden danger.
Then.
Then wait for the Brotherhood of Steel to arrive.
If the sky fell, let the taller people hold it up.
That was not cowardice.
It was practicality.
Jace had seen the Brotherhood of Steel’s equipment list in his original world.
The Prydwen airship, Vertibirds capable of leveling all of Quincy, large numbers of T-60 Power Armor, Gatling laser guns, and Liberty Prime.
They had the most elite armed force in the entire Wasteland.
They had a strict military organization.
They had an operational doctrine of “eliminating all threats.” They had hundreds of fanatical Paladins and Knights willing to die for the idea of “human purity.”
If the Maypole really left the Glowing Sea and headed toward the city, then in the Brotherhood of Steel’s eyes, she would be the textbook definition of a “threat.” The heretic among heretics, the monster among monsters, something that had to be eliminated.
Let them deal with it.
Jace’s job was to confirm, before they arrived, whether that threat truly existed.
If Dawn was only staying in the Glowing Sea, consuming radiation, devouring her own kind, surrounded by Ghouls, then she did not actually pose a threat.
She was simply doing her own thing in that godforsaken place no one dared to enter.
But if she was moving.
If she really was heading in a certain direction.
If that direction was the most densely populated area in the Commonwealth, Diamond City.
Then when the Brotherhood of Steel appeared in the Commonwealth, whether it was Danse, some later Knight, or even the Prydwen itself, he would hand the information over directly.
Make the location clear.
Make the scale clear.
Make it clear that she had once been a person, and that her name had been Dawn.
Then step back.
Let them be the heroes.
He leaned against the sofa and stared at the dim light on the ceiling.
Who knew how many years that bulb had been in use?
Its glass shade was covered in dust, and the light that seeped through was a murky yellow, making the whole inn look as if it had been covered in the filter of an old photograph.
That decision loosened the stone in his chest a little.
It was not gone.
He had simply found a place to set it down.
Now he had put it in a corner, knowing it was there without having to think about it all the time.
He did not have to fight that thing himself.
That was not his war.
His war right now was the few acres of land at Sanctuary Hills, the people waiting for him to return, and making sure that small group in this corner could survive.
First, he had to give them food, shelter, and a sense of safety.
Then, step by step, they could expand outward, strengthening the walls bit by bit.
The Maypole was someone else’s problem.
Unless.
He stopped that thought before it could continue.
Unless what?
Unless she really entered the city.
Unless the Brotherhood of Steel could not beat her.
Unless she stepped over the wreckage of the airship and walked toward Diamond City, one step at a time.
What then?
Where could he go then?
How far was Sanctuary Hills from Diamond City?
A day’s journey?
Two days?
What kind of noise would something weighing eight thousand metric tons make when it walked?
How fast could she move?
He closed his eyes and shoved those questions into that corner as well.
He would deal with it when the time came.
Thinking about that now was useless.
Right now, he needed to think about Brahmin, hydraulic lines, and what time to go to Arturo’s shop tomorrow.
He needed to think about whether they would run into Raiders on the way back, whether feral ghouls would rush out at them, whether rain would soak the fabric.
He needed to think about how to explain things to Preston once he got back, how to arrange this shipment, and how to get those few acres planted.
Right now, he needed to think about the living.
He opened his eyes and stood up.
The table beside the sofa had already been cleared, its wooden surface giving off a dark sheen under the light.
He reached out and pressed his hand against the tabletop, feeling its solid, unmoving texture.
Cold and hard, but reassuring.
Then he turned and walked toward the room.
The light at the end of the corridor was dim and yellow, shining over the blurred graffiti and stains on the walls.
The door to Room 2 was ajar.
Inside came Sturges’s faint snoring, rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
Codsworth hovered in the corner, in sleep mode, his optical eyes dark, his metal body completely still.
Jace pushed the door open and gently closed it behind him.
He lay down on the narrow bed, pillowed his head on his arm, and stared at the ceiling.
There were several cracks in the ceiling, stretching from the corner toward the middle like a dried-up riverbed.
Outside the window, Diamond City had gone completely quiet.
No gunfire.
No howls from feral ghouls.
No Raiders cursing.
Only the occasional footsteps of a security patrol in the distance, dull and steady, step after step, treading over metal bleachers, wooden planks, and gravel paths.
He closed his eyes.
The last image that flashed through his mind was the Glowing Sea.
A gray sky.
Corroded earth.
Somewhere out of sight, a ninety-meter-tall silhouette.
She was crouching, or lying down, or standing.
Ghouls circled around her, like moths around a flame, like ants swarming a dead giant elephant.
But she was still there.
She had not moved yet.
There was still time.
He turned over and buried his face in the pillow.
The pillow smelled stale and musty, with a faint trace of beer.
Someone had probably drunk in this bed before, spilled some, and never cleaned it properly.
But Jace did not care.
He soon fell asleep.