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Downstairs in the old archive room, Piper drafted decoy reports, front-page "exclusives" that fed the illusion of bitter fractures between Sico and Nora—power struggles, supply hoarding accusations, ideological threats. Each article was carefully calibrated to paint just enough tension to scare the public and lull the Institute and Brotherhood into underestimating them.
The sun hadn't yet cracked the sky when Sico reached for the transmitter.
The Castle's signal came in strong, cutting through the morning static with crisp authority. Even without the Brotherhood's signal repeaters interfering, it felt strange—contacting Ronnie like this again. She wasn't just a Minutemen legend now. She was the last true sentinel of the Commonwealth's old guard, the only one left who remembered what it meant to build walls not to divide, but to protect.
"Ronnie, it's Sico," he said, fingers tightening on the mic.
There was a pause, the faint sound of a chair scraping, a cigarette being flicked away. Then the voice came through. Solid. A little raspy. But unmistakably hers.
"About damn time, President."
The old nickname made him smile despite himself. She still called him that—half out of tradition, half to keep him honest.
"I need eyes on the Brotherhood's Vertibird pads," Sico said, no room for pleasantries. "Any hint of a troop surge, any mobilization around Boston Airport or Fort Strong, you let me know immediately. Castle's the closest we've got with the right elevation. That's our front line for early warning."
"Already watching," Ronnie replied without hesitation. "Got two snipers in the lighthouse, three in the water tower. We've been rotating watch shifts ever since Preston gave me the rough sketch of this plan you're cooking."
There was a beat of silence on her end. Then her voice returned—quieter this time.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Sico. I really do. I've been watching this damned Commonwealth get torn up for years now. People scared to plant gardens because some faction might declare their patch of dirt a strategic asset. Raiders, synth paranoia, Brotherhood patrols demanding 'security taxes'—hell, I'm tired. Everyone is."
Sico leaned back slightly, the words settling like dust in his chest. He glanced across the command chamber. Preston was coordinating with Sarah and Albert on the deployment matrix, while Nora's silhouette remained still inside the relay chamber, head down, a tangle of wires glowing softly behind her.
"I know," he said. "That's why this has to work. I don't care who claims the victory banner—if we don't break this cycle now, we lose everything. This isn't just another skirmish. This is the real war."
Ronnie grunted on the other end. "You call it war. I call it purging the rot. Just make sure when the smoke clears, it's the people who benefit. Not another flag."
Then came the click. Not quite a goodbye. More of an acknowledgment. A soldier's nod over radio waves.
Sico set the mic down and stood in the dim early light of the command floor, the echoes of the call still humming through his thoughts.
He didn't know it yet—but Ronnie had already sent word down the coast. Dozens of small-time Minutemen outposts had picked up the frequency and gone dark, silent, ghostlike. Watching. Waiting. Acting like the old guard again.
For the first time in years, the Castle wasn't just a relic.
It was a fulcrum.
By midday, the Sanctuary hub were buzzed.
Sarah strode through the lower hallways like a commander on the edge of a battlefield. Her voice was crisp as she gave out final adjustments to squad leaders—team composition, movement paths, strike targets if the mission deviated. Robert followed a few steps behind, inputting alterations to the battle maps, while MacCready tested radio encryption on the spare headsets.
Albert had taken over the west workshop. He was fine-tuning fusion cores with a group of engineer, and now are assembling specialized versions with silencer-modded servos and radiation-dampened exhausts.
"Keep it quiet, keep it light," Albert muttered, tapping a wrench against a T-60 breastplate. "We're not stomping through walls. We're ghosts."
He caught sight of Sico standing at the edge of the doorway, arms crossed.
"You sure you still want in on this one?" Albert asked. "Last chance to delegate, boss. Might be the first and only time I say it's a bad idea for you to be on the front lines."
Sico didn't answer immediately. His eyes scanned the rows of glimmering armor, the plasma rifles laid out like bones on operating tables. Then he looked back at Albert and said quietly, "If it fails, I need to be there to pull the plug."
Albert gave a reluctant nod. "Just don't die like a hero. That's cliché as hell."
Upstairs, in the central tower that once served as Sanctuary's old clock workshop, Piper leaned over a printing press salvaged from a ruined settlement near Medford. She was muttering under her breath, scribbling corrections onto the front page of a handbill.
"Sico accuses Nora of secret Institute ties. Demands order to ask her. As Sico afraid Nora was Institute spy."
Across the room, Cait read another draft aloud in her thick brogue, raising an eyebrow. "'Mutiny in the making?' That's a bit much, innit?"
"That's the point," Piper said. "The more absurd it sounds, the more they'll think it's just more noise. Disinformation is the only way to make the truth invisible."
Cait tossed the paper aside and leaned against the windowsill, arms crossed. "Y'know, it's strange. I used to think you were a real pain in the ass. Always with your pen and your questions. But now? You might be the meanest bastard in the whole lot of us."
Piper offered her a crooked smile. "Flattery gets you nothing."
Then, as Piper broadcast what she'd made, the ripple spread.
Not like a wave crashing in—more like oil in water. Slowly bleeding into every quiet corner of the Commonwealth where people now lived under the Freemasons Republic banner. The radios were old, patched together from scavenged circuit boards and bits of pre-War plastic. But the signal was clear. Strong. Sharp. Every third frequency, every rest channel between encoded Minutemen dispatches, carried her voice.
"Reports suggest internal tensions within the Freemasons Congress may not be entirely resolved. Sources claim Sico has privately demanded further accountability from Nora, citing undisclosed Institute ties. Both deny the allegations. Congress remains silent. But in Sanctuary, silence can speak louder than gunfire."
A pause.
Then music. An old track—Johnny Mercer, maybe. Something playful. Almost taunting.
Piper was good.
Too good.
But that was the point.
In Outpost Grindle, a farming coop just south of the old Cambridge ruins, a woman named Reesa turned the dial of her radio a little louder. She didn't say anything. Just wiped her hands on her jeans, glanced at the others sitting around the mess table. All of them heard the broadcast. All of them understood what Piper was really doing—not exposing truth, but shrouding it. Burying the raw divide between Sico and Nora beneath layers of twisted meaning. Obscuring it, so it could never be weaponized by outside forces.
But the people felt it anyway. Even without direct words. Even if they didn't speak politics.
They felt it.
That something was still cracked at the core.
That the difference between Sico and Nora wasn't just about methods—it was ideology.
The early afternoon sun bled through thin clouds over the Quincy Barricades, where a pair of Growlers rumbled down the main thoroughfare, the sidecar-mounted LMGs covered with canvas wraps to ease civilian nerves. One of the soldiers, a young man barely twenty, waved to a group of children kicking a can between the skeletons of old vehicles.
"Eyes up," his driver muttered.
"I know," the gunner replied, still smiling.
It was easy to mistake peace for safety now. But every patrol knew better. The Brotherhood wasn't gone. The Institute wasn't silent. And the raiders? They were like weeds in cracked pavement—rooted deep, waiting for the lull.
But patrols like this were different now.
The Growlers, Sico's project that were build by Mel from a month ago, were changing the tempo of how the Freemasons operated. No longer were Minutemen marching in columns, pushing supply carts on foot, or using Truck and Humvee. These sleek, jury-rigged motorcycles with sidecars had changed the rhythm of the war. Fast, efficient, fuel-friendly. The gunners could move through tight streets, rotate fire if ambushed, and reach remote settlements in half the time.
In a week after it's release, the Freemasons had done what the old Minutemen had never managed: true presence.
Consistent. Predictable. Visible.
And that was why, even with Piper's broadcast sowing doubt in carefully measured doses, most of the Commonwealth—at least the parts living under Freemason protection—still stood with Sico.
Not because they didn't love Nora. Many did. She had bled for the cause. She had walked through fire after the loss of Shaun and still given herself to rebuilding.
But the things Sico had built? The lives he had altered?
They were impossible to ignore.
In Lexington, once the edge of raider chaos, now a humming repair depot and water filtration site, two workers stopped their welding as the radio crackled out Piper's voice again.
"Ideological fractures remain, but the Congress assures us that unity holds. Still, eyes on Sanctuary. What's happening behind closed doors may shape what happens in the streets."
The older one, Juno, spat. "Let 'em fight it out. Long as the food still gets here on time."
The younger man, wearing a patched Freemasons utility jacket, looked uneasy. "But… what if it doesn't? What if they really break apart?"
Juno shook his head. "Kid. I've lived through twenty versions of the Commonwealth. Gunners. Brotherhood. Hell, even tried bein' a damn raider once. Nothing works. Not really. But you know what's been different since Sico took over?"
The younger man didn't answer.
"Order. I sleep at night now. My wife doesn't carry a shotgun to the outhouse. My kid's got paper to draw on. Don't care if Sico and Nora scream themselves hoarse. If he keeps sending Growlers down this way every week, I'll put his damn statue in the square myself."
Meanwhile, in Sanctuary, the hub was a furnace of motion.
Down in the relay chamber, Nora hunched over a terminal, her fingers a blur across the keyboard. Long cables fed into an exposed synth brain wired into the wall. Its optic sensors blinked every few seconds, as if dreaming.
Nora didn't sleep anymore. Not really. She'd taken a single two-hour break in the past thirty hours. Even that had been restless—filled with images of the Institute, of her son, of old lies being repurposed as future strategy.
She felt them watching her. Not the guards. Not even Sico.
But the others. Congress members. Engineers. Even the occasional passerby in the halls.
They didn't say it.
But she knew what they were thinking.
Was she still loyal?
Or had she gone soft? Compromised? Too willing to see the human side of the Institute's synthetic horrors?
The click of boots behind her broke her trance.
Sarah.
"System's almost ready," Nora said without turning. "Another four hours, I'll have full phantom access into the Institute's teleportation web. We'll be invisible to their sensors for six minutes."
"Plenty of time," Sarah replied. She stepped closer. "Heard Piper's latest piece?"
"I helped write it."
"You okay with that?"
Nora turned now. Her eyes were bloodshot, but resolute.
"I'm not here to win a popularity contest. I'm here to end a war. If that means I'm the villain in Piper's headlines for a few weeks, so be it."
Sarah nodded. "Just checking. We'll need your relay locked in by nightfall, if we want to plan for tomorrow action."
Then the scene turn to the sky of Boston airports, were a wind cut sharp across the deck of the Prydwen, whistling between steel girders and flapping tarps, but Elder Arthur Maxson didn't flinch. He never did. Not in the cold. Not in the face of war. And certainly not at the shifting tides of the Commonwealth below.
Inside his quarters—spartan but commandingly organized—an old data projector hummed faintly, casting the flickering image of Piper Wright's disinformation broadcast onto the wall. The screen wasn't ideal, but it didn't need to be. Maxson had watched it three times already. His arms crossed over the lion pelt draped across his chestplate, his jaw tight as granite.
Paladin Danse stood to his right, silent but thoughtful, eyes following the newsfeed as it scrolled. And opposite him, Lancer Captain Kells finished pouring himself a cup of dark, scorched coffee from a tin thermos.
"You see what I see?" Maxson asked without turning.
Danse nodded once. "They're splintering. The broadcast's tone—it's defensive. Controlled chaos. Like they're trying to get ahead of the narrative before someone else does."
Kells scoffed. "'Someone else' meaning us, presumably."
Maxson turned now, facing both of them. His expression was hard, but not gleeful. Victory wasn't to be taken lightly—not when it came draped in uncertainty.
"This is the moment," he said. "They've been consolidating too long. Sico's rebranding of the Minutemen into the Freemasons Republic was bolder than I anticipated. But ideological fractures always surface under pressure."
Danse remained stone-faced, but Kells furrowed his brow. "They've held together longer than any militia since the NCR's collapse in the West. If the Freemasons fall apart now, it's going to destabilize the entire northeastern grid. That's not just an opportunity—it's a vacuum."
Maxson stepped closer to the projector, watching as the loop played again. Piper's voice, cleverly neutral, echoed through the room.
"Reports suggest internal tensions within the Freemasons Congress may not be entirely resolved…"
"I don't want a vacuum," Maxson said, voice low. "I want submission."
Kells raised an eyebrow.
Maxson turned toward the command table beside the wall, where a map of the Commonwealth lay layered with Brotherhood recon notes, electromagnetic sweep zones, and Freemason troop movements. Bright markers indicated areas where the Growlers had replaced foot patrols—an infuriatingly effective upgrade. Dozens of smaller settlements once too remote to protect now thrived under those patrols.
Danse leaned forward slightly. "They've changed the game. Sico's Growlers make up for what the Minutemen always lacked—agility. Real patrol reach. If they weren't splitting from the inside…"
"They'd become a nation," Kells finished grimly.
Maxson let the silence hold for a long moment.
Then he spoke, carefully.
"This is why timing is critical. Once they hit the Institute, they'll either come out weakened—or victorious and united. I don't intend to wait and find out which. Madison Li informed me this morning that Liberty Prime will be fully operational within the week."
Danse's eyes widened slightly. "That soon?"
"She completed the recalibration of the targeting systems yesterday," Maxson confirmed. "We've rerouted power from the Boston fusion subgrid to Prime's core. Initial field tests will begin tomorrow."
Kells exhaled slowly. "Then we're talking about deployment within ten days."
"Five," Maxson corrected. "I want to march Liberty Prime past the ruins of C.I.T."
He pointed to the red zone marked "Sanctuary" on the map.
"If they survive the civil war, they'll be bleeding resources. Exhausted. Half their officers deployed. And every settler under their protection will be waiting to see which banner comes next."
Danse remained quiet. It wasn't hesitation. It was consideration.
"And what if Nora's side wins the internal war?" he asked.
Maxson raised his eyebrows. "Then it gets easier. Nora's weakness is idealism. She's always trying to build something with both hands tied behind her back. She wants peace. Reconciliation. A world of peace." He stepped closer to the table, voice low but bristling. "She will be the one who softened the Freemasons Republic stance. If she gains control, we wait six months and the entire Freemason structure collapses under her diplomacy."
He let that hang in the air before continuing.
"But if Sico consolidates power…"
Danse finished the thought: "Then we've got a war."
Maxson nodded.
"Sico doesn't compromise. He transforms. He weaponized the Minutemen, stripped them of their history, and turned them into something frighteningly efficient. He commands loyalty through results. Fear through resolve. If he survives the civil war and comes out as the dominant voice in the Republic, we'll need to mobilize immediately. Otherwise—"
"He'll start looking west," Kells muttered.
They all knew it. The Freemasons' slow expansion was no longer limited to defense. Sico had been sending survey teams toward their territory. If Liberty Prime wasn't ready in time, and the Freemasons didn't collapse from within, the Brotherhood would lose the strategic initiative.
"And what about the Institute?" Danse asked, his tone quieter now. There was always a shadow in his voice when the Institute came up.
Maxson stepped back from the map and sat in the steel-framed chair beside the projector. "We will let them bleed each other. That's the beauty of it. The more cautious they are, the more they'll trip. Meanwhile, we hold our ground, finish Liberty Prime, and when the time comes…"
He stood again.
"We bury them both."
Maxson's hand dropped to the edge of the command table with finality, the heavy leather glove creasing against the rusted steel as he leaned forward. The map of the Commonwealth below him bore the weight of war. Ink stains marked Freemason patrol paths. Burned coffee rings circled contested zones like bloodied borders. Pins of red and white crowded the section around the C.I.T. ruins like a cluster of arteries converging on a dying heart.
He stared at it all for a beat longer.
Then he looked up—straight into Paladin Danse's eyes.
"I want strikes. Effective. Unrelenting."
Danse didn't flinch, but his brow drew together slightly.
"Against the Institute?"
Maxson gave the smallest nod.
"We've waited long enough. Sico's already begun transmitting target data—synth drop sites, relay flickers, suspected Institute staging points, even a few surgical strike patterns we've verified with our own recon team and has already strike a few of them. I want you to act on them. Immediately."
Danse's jaw tightened. "And if our units get stretched thin?"
"I don't care," Maxson said sharply. "We hit them anyway. Hard. Wherever they surface, we bury them in lead and fire. No hesitation."
Kells looked up from his datapad, one brow raised. "Respectfully, Elder, our outer patrol routes near Malden and Bunker Hill are already on a two-week rotation. We're thin as it is."
Maxson cut him off with a glance. "The Freemasons are stretched, too. They are on a brink of civil war as we speak. You think they'll have time to babysit the rest of the Commonwealth while Sico and Nora leading their damn faction slowly to a civil war? No. They're vulnerable."
He tapped the map again, this time to the network of locations circled in gray—most marked with the Brotherhood's encrypted icon for "synth activity confirmed."
"We've been sitting on Sico's intelligence for too long, even thought we has use little of it to ensure the truth. It's time to use all of it."
Danse's voice was low. Measured. "You still trust him?"
Maxson's smile was thin. Almost mirthless.
"I don't trust Sico," he said. "I trust his hatred. That's the difference."
He turned and walked to the window overlooking the sky deck. A distant thunder rolled in the west, not natural—it never was. Probably an old reactor venting in the ruins of Somerville.
"He gave us those coordinates for a reason," Maxson went on. "Because deep down, even if he won't admit it, he knows he can't win this war alone. Not against the Institute. Not long-term."
Kells cleared his throat again, voice cautious. "You're assuming the intel isn't a misdirect."
Maxson turned his head slightly. "If it is, we'll find out. And we'll respond. But from where I'm standing, there's no reason not to act."
Danse crossed his arms now, deep in thought.
"You're authorizing unrestricted operations?"
"I'm authorizing justice," Maxson replied coldly. "Every time a synth passes our perimeter, every time they whisper through the walls of human settlements, that's another betrayal of natural order. We don't wait anymore. We strike. Night and day."
Danse hesitated.
But it was Kells who broke the silence.
"I'll notify the long-range vertibird teams," he said. "Alpha and Bravo Wings can hit the recon zones outside Nahant and Lynn. Scribe Haylen's tech crew finished retrofitting our seismic readers—should help us detect hidden relay surges before synths fully materialize."
Maxson gave a single nod of approval. "Good. Prioritize the northern grid first. Sico's last transmission tagged a heavy relay spike just northeast of Medford. Likely a secondary node. If we hit it fast, we might disrupt their backup entry systems before they know we're coming."
Danse turned to face the projector screen again. Piper's voice was still on loop, whispering the carefully placed lies of a crumbling alliance. He studied her words as one would study a war plan.
"Do you think Sico knows how much this broadcast helps us?" Danse finally asked.
Maxson didn't answer right away.
He stepped back toward the table, brushing the map with his hand as if wiping dust off a blade.
"He's not a fool," Maxson said. "That broadcast didn't just rattle the Republic. It rattled the Institute too. You think they're not listening? You think they don't have ears in every frequency? They're paranoid, Danse. That's their greatest weakness."
He pointed to one of the synth infiltration paths traced in red.
"They see division among their enemies and assume it's real. That's when they start overreaching. That's when they make mistakes."
Kells placed his cup down, the clink sharp in the tense air. "We weaponize their fear."
"Exactly."
Maxson stepped forward again, his coat sweeping like a curtain behind him.
"And as for the Freemasons…" His voice was quieter now. Almost thoughtful. "Let them burn out their righteous fury in the world. If they failed, we claim the Commonwealth in their place. If they succeed, we wait for them to fracture under the weight of their contradictions. Either way, we win."
Danse still hadn't moved.
But then he spoke.
"You said Sico gave us those targets because he hates the Institute."
"I did."
Danse's eyes narrowed. "But what happens when he stops hating them more than he hates us?"
Maxson gave him a long, hard stare.
"That's why we bury him before that day ever comes."
The tension in the room pressed against the walls. The Brotherhood command center just beyond the hallway throbbed with distant voices, power conduits, and the rhythmic clang of Liberty Prime's final leg plate being bolted into place.
________________________________________________
• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-