Fallout: Vault 69

Chapter 1 - New Beginnings

Mable Turner sat stone faced as the four other women sitting at the large table absorbed what she had just told them. They had been lied to. No matter how she looked at it, there was no other possible explanation.

In the wake of having their lives torn out from under them via nuclear Armageddon, what they found waiting for them in the so called 'safety' of their local Vault was a farce by any other name. At first glance it would have seemed wonderful, stocked with food, plenty of clean water with an advance filtration system, and more than enough room for their two thousand residents. It wasn't until everything had settled down and some semblance of calm had been established that the first Overseer of Vault sixty nine discovered the treachery of the Vault-Tec Corporation.

Due to 'faulty' radiation shielding half of their population was now dead. Of the remaining one thousand residents, nine hundred and ninety nine were female.

To say this was simply a mistake, an oversight by the ones in charge of registry distribution was too impossible to believe. More so, the entire Vault had been devoid of any Vault-Tec employees, and no explanation had been given for their current predicament in her Overseer handbook or any of the notes she had found in the small safe of her office. Were it not for the detailed instruction manuals as well as the helpful assortment of Mr. Handy robots seemingly left behind they wouldn't have been able to produce their own food or repair anything that might have broken. Everything had been planned down to the last detail; everything was exactly as someone had wanted, and now they were left to deal with it.

"You're sure?" Janice Wong asked with a pensive expression. The daughter of Chinese immigrants who fled when it became obvious war was on the horizon, it was only a month ago she had received a Vault entrance voucher from the Vault-Tec Corporation along with the information over why she had been chosen. It had made sense at the time; the world was embroiled in a large scale war, with the ever looming threat of nuclear weapons detonating. She hadn't given much thought to the line about 'maintaining ethnical diversity' but now, she was starting to wonder.

A woman of forty five and a highly gifted surgeon, she had been selected as the chief of medicine should they ever have to enter the Vault. She also happened to be the only one out of their entire population with any medical training. This revelation of course only made her anxious expression that much more worrisome to the others sitting at the table.

Coupled with Mrs. Turner's earlier remarks, a sneaking part of her mind couldn't help but wonder if she had been selected purely to make it look legit, having someone with an advance medical degree and training as part of the selected pool of candidates.

Mable nodded, her expression turning grim. "Once the male dormitories were sealed off for good, we ran the registry ten times just to be certain," she revealed. "I even ordered two door to door resident checks in case there was an error, but all it confirmed was what the registry was already telling us."

"One man?" Carla Robins asked, incredulously. A tall blonde woman in her late thirties, according to her papers she had been selected due to her distinguished military service and was to be in charge of the Vault's security forces...neither of which currently existed as aside from herself, not ONE of their residents possessed any military or police training. "That's... how, no, why would they do this?" Judging by the expressions on the other women's faces, they seemed to be wondering the very same thing.

"Man?" Susan Buhari scoffed. "He is barely sixteen, a boy if I've ever seen one." Her dark African skin set her apart from the rest of the table. A microbiologist who specialized in agriculture, she had at first been thrilled when she received her voucher and papers. Slightly annoyed at the 'ethnical diversity' clause that had been part of it, nonetheless it had been an honor and privilege to be recognized for her accomplishments. According to the registry she was to be in charge of their hydroponics department...of which consisted of she, herself and only her. Her words sent another wave of disquieted murmurs around the table until finally, Mabel was forced to step in.