At The Precipice Of Something New

Something Switching

The Commonwealth
March the 7th, 2289
16:13

Run.

It was the only word she heard spoken to her when chaos erupted.

Run.

Feeling as though her lungs might burst out of her chest and her body collapse into the ground, seventeen year old Jacqueline Rose Spencer ran, fast as she could, after her mentor, who had grabbed her by the arm and told her to run with her towards a man in mechanic's overalls, a hefty toolbelt around his waist, and welding goggles draped around his neck. He might as well have, so far as the seventeen year old was concerned, come out of nowhere less than a minute after heavy gunfire began ringing out on the tarmac drew the Brotherhood soldiers escorting them throughout the facility away. The closer they got to him, where he was waiting halfway behind the door leading into one of the four former passenger terminals with a gun at the ready, the harder she ran, looking frantically around to make sure they were not being followed and to make sure she had not lost sight of her mentor. She grabbed onto her wrist the second they reached the man at the door. He spoke quickly with her mentor in hushed tones before waving at the both of them to go with him. Jacqueline tightened her hand around her mentor's, only letting go when, with a pointed but worried look, Dr. Madison Li gently pried her hand off from around her wrist. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, Jacqueline kept running. Each breath felt worse than the last. She kept running. The sounds of shouting, gunfire, and almost painfully loud music cloyed at her senses, fear rising in her every time the noise seemed to be getting ever closer to them.

She kept running.

Had there not been urgent necessity driving them to get as far away from where they were as possible, Jacqueline realised, the longer they ran through the remains of the pre-War passenger terminal, there was so much history left behind to explore, even if marred and damaged by over two centuries of destruction and decay. It was only when, nearly to another set of doors leading out of the terminal and onto an overgrown road, she looked up and saw a large American flag, still mostly intact, hanging down from the terminal entrance, just in front of a sign reading Terminal A, she paused. Hearing her footsteps falter behind them, Dr. Madison Li and Sturges Presley turned back to help her, seeing the teenager shaking badly and struggling still to catch her breath. Terrified and expecting to see Brotherhood soldiers waiting for them the second they stepped through the doors, Jacqueline let out a gasp of relief to find none, realising they had made it well past where the Brotherhood's largest and primary operations were being run behind the old passenger terminals, roads, and parking garages. She kept running, only slowing her pace when she could no longer sustain it and, startled, when they turned onto another road with a sign on it with an arrow and the words To Route 1A at which another man was waiting, one, too, whom her mentor seemed to recognise.

"Best route out of here goes through the old community park on Bremen Street, and, to make sure they don't follow us, down to Trenton Street and then north past the East Boston Police Department onto Chelsea Street. We can snake our way down to University Point, passing through Bunker Hill, from there," He said, politely tipping his hat at Jacqueline. "Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen. We can talk more once you and Dr. Li are safely out of here. Just stick with her, me, and Sturges, and we'll be out soon enough."

Shakily nodding, Jacqueline began running again, focusing on her mentor and the two men. Pace after pace and pace and pace again. The industrial, cold façade of the former airport slowly became all the more distant around them. She barely stopped herself from screaming when she saw a vertibird fly overhead, only to start crying in slight relief when it did not seem to notice them. A hand suddenly grabbed hers and she almost screamed again only to feel silly about it when she realised the hand taking hers and tugging her along was her mentor's. Crossing onto an old interstate highway, the four of them began weaving in and out of wrecked and rusted out cars, trucks, and tractor trailers. When she took a panicked look back upon hearing footsteps running towards them, Jacqueline briefly paused, confused to see a woman in a black leather jacket with a large weapon in her hands and a rather large gun and ammunition case strapped to her back. She began to run with them, hurriedly saying something to the man called Preston, and stayed behind them a couple of metres, weapons at the ready, seemingly attempting to ensure they were not being chased. The clamour of the gunfire, shouts, and music which, it occurred to her, were from a mismatch of musical stage shows, grew farther and farther away. Passing onto a strip of green earth, trees, and shrubbery lined with streetlamps and paths, an interstate highway overpass visible in the distance, things began to feel a little better. The noise was abating. Their paces were slowing. Breathing was becoming a little easier with the lightening of their paces.