FO4 | Book 1: Bombs on Monday Morning ✔️

Ch 11: To Kill a Killer

As I entered Diamond City, Nat was calling from her soap box as usual. This time, she pointed at me directly with her newspaper when I got close.

"Hey, lady!" she called.

"What's up, Nat?"

"That interview you did with Piper was a hit!" She went to the side of the building and pulled a newspaper out of a box. Then she walked over and handed it to me. "Here's your free copy."

"Oh, thanks." I was curious about it myself. I sat down on a nearby bench and started reading.

"PUBLICK OCCURRENCES

"View from the Vault, by Piper Wright

"Whenever I take a walk through Diamond City, there are so many things people tell me to be grateful for. Purified water, working lights, electricity, security. True, what we have would have been unthinkable even a few decades ago. But it's easy to forget that, even after all the progress we have made, we are still living in the shadow of the world that was. A world before the threat of radiation. Before the Super Mutant and the Feral Ghoul and the Synth.

"So, as fortune has it, I crossed paths with Gwen. Vault Dweller. A person who is experiencing the Commonwealth for the first time. What would her fresh set of eyes say about how far we've come? Is Diamond City the 'Great Green Jewel' we always claimed it to be?

"Before we begin to answer that question, we have to know who Gwen is. Where she comes from. To my surprise, she did not have much to say about her life in the Vault at all. Because she spent all that time staring at a piece of frozen glass. Every day. For over two centuries. That's right, Gwen isn't just a Vault Dweller, she's an Original Vault Dweller. She spent her entire time on the inside cryogenically suspended.

"So what does Gwen have to say about seeing Diamond City for the first time? 'Can you even compare the two? The world out here? It's not even close to the one I left.'

"While we like to think of our city as a shining jewel, it's worth remembering that not everyone comes here by choice. Sometimes people are forced from the comforts of their homes, and as the largest settlement in the Commonwealth, this is where they end up. Most are just looking for refuge, but sometimes they come here desperately looking for something. Or someone.

"You see, Gwen has a son. Shaun. And even though they were in the relative safety of the Vault, someone broke in, and took Shaun from his parent, and that parent is now risking everything, wandering through this strange and unfriendly world of ours — in order to save Shaun from his kidnappers.

"We all know the rumors and whispers that surround every missing person in Diamond City. The guilty looks we pass to mourning family members as we 'thank the Wall that, this time, it wasn't us.' You can end up dead in the Commonwealth for a million reasons. Why spend our time worrying about kidnappings?

"It's easy for us to be cynical about the missing. We have spent so long knowing the Institute is out there, but knowing so little about them. They are not the only ones responsible for kidnappings, but the fact that they sometimes are, and the fact that we have been so powerless to stop them when they do, causes us to treat all victims of kidnappings as if they were a lost cause.

"But the people left behind, those loved ones, friends, and neighbors, who may never see the faces of those taken from them again, they do not have the luxury of being able to just look away. They have to carry that loss with them, even if everyone tells them to move on and forget.

"I asked Gwen to make a statement to Diamond City. To give us an outsider's perspective on what it means to lose a loved one, and how she feels. Maybe, in some way, it's how we all should feel. Maybe we've forgotten what the right, human response to these tragedies are.