He raised his arm, clenched his fist, then opened it again.
The hydraulic system gave a faint hiss, responding so quickly it felt like part of his own body.
He turned and looked toward the edge of the roof.
Below was the main entrance to the Museum of Freedom.
The rusted-out cars were still sitting crooked along the roadside, and the doors he had seen during the day, the ones that could be entered, were now only dark, hollow outlines.
Jace walked to the edge and glanced down.
Jumping down in this suit should be fine.
That was how it worked in the game.
Put on the power armor, jump straight off the roof, land with a boom, then start clearing the area.
He took a step back, ready to jump.
“Wait.”
Codsworth’s voice came from behind him, sharper than usual.
Jace stopped and turned around.
Codsworth was floating in midair, all three of his “eyes” fixed on him.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Jump down.”
“Jump down?” Codsworth repeated, and there was something in his tone Jace had never heard before.
Disbelief.
“You are wearing half a metric ton of metal and planning to jump from twelve meters up.
What do you think will happen?”
Jace paused.
What would happen in the game?
He would land, the screen would shake a little, he would not lose a single point of Health, and then he would get up and keep fighting.
But that was a game.
“…What would happen?”
Codsworth was silent for a second.
“Your knees would shatter.
This armor can absorb part of the impact, but that is not what it is meant for.
power armor fall cushioning is not invincible.
Once you drop more than ten meters, the hydraulic system bottoms out, and the metal frame takes the impact directly.
“At best, the leg frame bends.
At worst, both you and the armor are ruined together.”
Jace looked down at the huge metal feet beneath him.
Then he looked at the ground again.
“…Then how do I get down?”
Codsworth floated back into the building.
“The way we came.
Slowly.
Make sure every step is solid.”
Jace stood where he was for two seconds, staring down at his massive metal feet.
“…Fine.”
He turned and followed Codsworth back.
The iron door leading to the roof was still open.
He squeezed through sideways, and the fluorescent lights in the corridor still glowed a ghastly white.
Walking indoors in this thing was much louder than outside.
Every step made the floorboards thud, and dust sifted down from the walls.
Codsworth floated ahead of him, his three “eyes” glancing back now and then, as if checking whether Jace had stomped through the floor.
They returned to the room piled with bottles.
The two bodies still lay where they had fallen.
The blood had already congealed, spreading into two dark, murky pools on the floor.
The smell of alcohol mixed with blood in the air, even worse than before.
Jace stood in the doorway and glanced at the camp bed.
Several things lay scattered on the floor beside it.
Empty bottles, a few moldy rations, and a filthy backpack.
He walked over and crouched down.
The metal joints hissed with hydraulic pressure.
He opened the backpack.
The top was stuffed with junk.
Rags, scrap paper, several used syringes.
He pushed it all aside, and his hand touched something hard.
He pulled it out.
A gun.
A hunting rifle.
But it was different from the one in his own backpack.
This one had a longer barrel than a regular hunting rifle, with a scope mounted on the slender metal tube.
A sniper scope.
The lens was coated in dust, but it was still clear enough when held toward the light.
The stock was not an ordinary wooden stock either.
It was a tactical stock with a grip, the kind used by marksmen.
The receiver was larger than usual as well, and the metal surface bore signs of careful hand polishing.
Jace turned the gun over and examined the side of the receiver.
Someone had modified it.
Professionally.
A powerful receiver, long barrel, sniper scope, marksman’s stock.
This thing was no ordinary hunting rifle anymore.
It was a sniper rifle.
With the terrain here, no wonder two people had dared to hold this place.
He weighed it in his hands.
Heavier than his own rifle, but very well balanced.
“Nice piece,” Codsworth said, floating over beside him.
Jace said nothing.
He looked at the corpse on the bed.
The one with the scarred face, the one drinking on the balcony during the day and dead in his own bed at night.
Maybe he had modified it himself.
Maybe he had taken it from somewhere else.
It did not matter anymore.
Jace set the rifle aside and kept searching the backpack.
There were a few more things at the bottom: a small box of .308 rounds, a little over ten of them, and a multi-tool knife.
The blade was rusty, but still usable.
He stuffed them straight into the backpack on the bed to take with him.
Then he stood and looked around the room.
A broken sofa, a camp bed, empty bottles, two corpses.
Life in the Wasteland.
Going downstairs in this power armor was much harder than coming up had been.
Every step had to land in the right place.
The feet were too large and could easily catch on the edge of a stair.
He turned sideways, braced one hand against the wall, and slowly moved down one step at a time.
Down to the first floor.
The basement entrance from the game should be below here.
There was another door down there.
The paint had long since peeled away, exposing rusted sheet metal.
The door was closed, with an electronic lock mounted on it.
An old security door that needed to be unlocked through a terminal.
A terminal was set into the wall beside the door.
The screen was dull and dusty, and the keyboard was covered in grime, but the power light in the upper-right corner was still on.
Green, very faint, but definitely lit.
Jace walked over and stood before the terminal.
He raised his hand, one huge metal finger hovering over the keyboard.
He knew how to hack terminals.
Advanced hacking perk.
The commands, algorithms, and logic for checking vulnerabilities sat calmly in his mind, as if he had practiced them hundreds of times.
But he had never actually used it before.
He took a deep breath and lowered his finger onto the keyboard.
The metal key pressed down with a crisp click.
The screen lit up, and a line of text appeared:
Terminal Locked
Please enter password
3 attempts allowed
Jace stared at the screen.
Something in his mind began to move.
This terminal’s encryption level was very low, just the most basic pre-War civilian lock, and well within his current ability.
The hacking knowledge that had been forced into his mind surfaced on its own.
He only had to follow it.
Before long, the screen refreshed:
Access Authorized
Welcome, Administrator
A crisp click sounded from behind the iron door.
A rusty generator stood in the middle of the room, with several metal barrels leaning nearby.
On the side of the generator was a slot.
A fusion core was plugged into it.
It looked exactly like the one from Red Rocket.
A slender cylinder with a cold metal shell, gleaming under the light.
Jace walked over and grasped the core.
He pulled it out.
Click.
The core came free from the slot.
At that exact moment,
the light overhead went out.
The whole basement sank into complete darkness.
Only the HUD inside Jace’s helmet remained lit, green numbers and lines outlining the room in the dark.
He paused, then looked up at the ceiling.
The light that had been on a moment ago was completely dead.
“…This building has been running on that core all this time,” Codsworth said from the darkness.
“Now it can finally turn off the lights and rest.”
Jace returned to the iron-barred gate.
Rusty iron bars.
A big lock hanging from the gate.
Exactly like in the game.
He remembered the game’s setup.
This door had to be picked with a bobby pin, or opened with a key taken from a Raider.
A troublesome job.
But now?
Jace looked down at himself.
Half a metric ton of metal.
Hydraulic joints.
The floor he had just cracked underfoot.
He raised his foot.
Then kicked the door.
CLANG!
The iron door flew clean out of its frame, smashed into the wall across the corridor, bounced back, rolled twice across the floor, and stopped moving.
Broken bricks from the doorframe scattered across the ground.
The dust had not even settled.
Jace lowered his foot and walked straight out.
He stood in the plaza in front of the Museum of Freedom’s main entrance.
He checked the time displayed on the HUD interface after the power armor connected to the Pip-Boy.
9:30 p.m.
Still plenty of time.
He lowered his head and felt along the left side of the helmet.
There was a switch there, the one used for the flashlight in the game.
Click.
A bright white beam shot from his helmet, cutting through the darkness and landing on the opposite wall.
A searchlight.
Standard power armor equipment.
Jace paused.
This thing was much brighter than the Pip-Boy’s light, bright enough to make him narrow his eyes.
“What are we doing now?” Codsworth asked, floating over.
“Looting.
While it’s still dark, we take everything in town worth taking.
If other Raiders show up during the day and see me wearing this power armor, they’ll be a huge pain.”
He turned and walked toward the street facing the museum.
The door he had seen during the day was ajar, with pitch-black darkness showing through the crack.
There was no telling how deep it went.
Out of the hundreds of houses in town, this was the only door still worth entering.
Jace walked up to it and raised his foot.
CLANG!
The door panel flew out of its frame and crashed onto the floor inside, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Jace stepped in.
It was a bar.
The Concord Speakeasy.
The place was very dark.
The searchlight swept across it, revealing the bar counter, high stools, and yellowed liquor ads on the walls.
Empty bottles were scattered across the floor, the same cheap beer brands as the ones in the Raiders’ room.
He walked farther in.
The light swept across a table.
Several glasses sat on it, the liquid inside long dried up, leaving only rings of brown stains.
The Raiders had probably come here to drink.
The beam moved on.
Then he saw them.
Mannequins.
Several mannequins, dressed and posed, standing in different corners of the bar.
Some sat by the counter, some leaned against the wall, and some gathered around a table as if drinking and chatting.
Jace stopped for a moment.
The underground bar in the game had these mannequins.
But he remembered what that note had said.
The owner, Jack Pinkman, had moved mannequins in from the fashion shop across the street and treated them like living people.
In the end, he went mad, killed his wife, and died too.
He kept moving.
Second floor.
The stairs were narrow, and climbing them in power armor was difficult.
He turned sideways and inched upward one step at a time.
The second-floor corridor.
First room on the left.
The door was open.
Jace shone the searchlight inside.
A bed.
A corpse lay on it, nothing left but bones, dressed in a yellowed shirt.
It was holding a female mannequin beside it.
The mannequin’s lower half was damaged, and its plastic face still wore a smile.
Half the corner of its mouth had split open, exposing the stuffing inside.
Jace stared at the corpse for two seconds.
Pinkman.
It should be him.
He looked away and started searching.
There was a machete in the nightstand.
The melee weapon with the highest damage in the early game.
The blade was rusty, but the edge was still there.
He picked it up, weighed it, and fixed it onto the rack on the back of the power armor.
In another drawer were two bottles of chems.
Overdrive.
Day Tripper.
Chems from the game.
They could raise attributes, but came with side effects.
He hesitated for a moment, then put them away anyway.
Whether he would use them was a question for later.
For now, he would take them.
He turned and walked out.
On the way downstairs, the light swept over the mannequins again.
They were still sitting where they had been, plastic faces smiling, as if celebrating something.
Jace did not stop.
He headed out of the bar.
Standing on the street, he glanced at the Pip-Boy.
10:05 p.m.
“Is that all?” Codsworth asked, floating over.
Jace nodded.
He walked to the first floor and was just about to push the door open when he suddenly stopped.
He remembered there was another room on the second floor.
He turned and climbed back up.
The stairs were narrow, and going up in power armor was still awkward.
He turned sideways and moved up step by step.
A wooden door, shut tight.
Locked.
Jace raised his foot.
CLANG!
The door panel flew from its frame and smashed onto the floor inside, revealing a pitch-black doorway.
He shone the searchlight in.
It was a small room.
Much smaller than the previous one, with only a camp bed, a table, and a chair.
A corpse lay on the bed.
It wore a military uniform.
Not Raider rags, but a real military uniform.
A gray-green uniform, shoulder marks still in place, boots still on its feet, and a 10mm pistol in its hand.
A combat rifle stood nearby.
The wooden stock had cracked, but the metal parts were very well maintained.
Several things were scattered around the corpse.
A military backpack, bulging full.
Several magazines neatly stacked on the table.
A helmet hooked over the bedpost.
Jace entered the room and stood in front of the corpse.
It had been dead for a long time.
The bones had come apart, and only the clothes still held their shape.
Judging by the uniform, this should have been a pre-War soldier.
Whether he had failed to evacuate in time or hidden here on his own, there was no way to know.
Jace crouched and opened the military backpack.
There were several things inside.
Two boxes of .45 rounds, factory-made military issue, the brass casings still bright.
A first-aid kit with three Stimpaks and two doses of RadAway.
A pack of compressed rations.
The packaging had long since torn open, and the contents were as hard as stone.
And a notebook.
Jace opened it.
The handwriting was messy.
Some parts had been soaked with water and blurred into smears, but a few lines were still readable:
“October 23…
sirens…
war…”
“Orders for everyone to evacuate…
but it was too late…”
“Hiding here…
waiting for news…”
“News will never come.”
There was only one sentence on the last page, written in a badly shaking hand:
“I’m sorry, Mom.
I couldn’t make it back.”
Jace closed the notebook and stood silent for a few seconds.
He put the notebook into his own backpack.
Then he stood and picked up the rifle.
A combat rifle, .45 caliber.
Heavier than a hunting rifle, but steadier.
He hung it on the back of the power armor beside the machete.
He took the magazines from the table as well.
Four in total, all fully loaded.
Jace walked out of the bar and stood in the street.
The searchlight swept over the empty road and landed on the rusted-out cars.
The night wind lifted dust and sent it spinning across the ground.
He looked toward the town entrance.
On the way here, he had not seen any water-filled crater in the road.
In the game, the Deathclaw burst out of the sewers.
The sewer entrance was at the edge of town, where a hole had been blasted open in the road and filled with water.
The Deathclaw was trapped in the pipe beside the crater, waiting for someone to put on power armor and start clearing the area before crawling out.
But right now, that hole probably had not collapsed yet.
Or rather, that Deathclaw had not been trapped yet, which made it even more dangerous.
Jace stared in that direction for a few seconds.
He could not see anything in the dark.
But he knew it was there.
It might be crouched beneath some sewer entrance right now, waiting for prey to pass.
“…Know when to stop,” he muttered.
He turned and walked toward the Museum of Freedom.
Back at the entrance, the canvas backpack was still lying in the shadows beside the wall.
Everything he had scavenged earlier was inside: mines, grenades, bullets, jewelry.
He bent down, picked up the bag, and hooked it onto the power armor.
“Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Back to Red Rocket.
I’ll drop this stuff off first, then think about the next step tomorrow.”
He strode forward, each step of the power armor landing with a heavy thud.
Codsworth floated behind him and did not ask why.
After crossing two streets and leaving town, the road lined with overgrown ornamental trees came into view.
The moonlight was faint, barely enough to make out the road’s outline.