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Holdren turned back to the terminal, fingers already moving across the keys. On the map, several of the blinking points began to pulse differently, their flight patterns recalibrating in real time. Somewhere far above the Commonwealth, wings beat against cold air as black silhouettes changed course, their new paths tracing invisible lines toward Brotherhood territory.
The last of the blinking corvid markers settled into their new patterns, and with that quiet shift of pixels on the screen, the deal was sealed — at least for now. Sico stepped back from Holdren's terminal, his boots making the faintest scrape against the sterile floor. He didn't look back at the gorilla, though he could feel its watchful eyes follow him as he moved toward the door. Nora lingered just a second longer, as if tempted to say something else, but she let it go. Whatever unspoken things were hanging in the air would keep for another day.
Once the door hissed shut behind them, the hum of BioScience faded into the lower, deeper background thrum of the Institute's main corridors. The white-paneled walls reflected the clean, almost clinical light overhead, but there was still that ever-present undertone of recycled air and machinery — a subtle reminder that this entire place was a sealed world under the earth.
Sico walked with the same deliberate pace he always had after a tense conversation: not hurried, not slow, but with that faint stiffness that said his mind was already moving three steps ahead. Nora matched him stride for stride, hands clasped loosely behind her back. She studied him out of the corner of her eye.
"You handled that better than I thought you would," she said after a moment.
Sico didn't glance at her. "I handled it the only way I could. Clayton's not the kind of guy you win over with charm."
"That's one way to put it," she murmured. "Still… you got him to agree."
"Got him to agree for now," Sico corrected. "That's not the same thing as trust."
They turned down a side corridor, the sound of their boots echoing softly. Nora decided not to push him further on Holdren — for now — and shifted the subject toward their next stop.
"Allie Filmore should be in Facilities this time of day," she said. "If we're lucky, she's in a good mood."
Sico gave her a dry look. "Do people down here even have moods? I thought the Institute trained that out of them."
Nora smirked faintly. "You'd be surprised."
Facilities was a good seven-minute walk from BioScience if you didn't dawdle, and neither of them did. Along the way, they passed a pair of coursers moving in the opposite direction — all black armor and mirrored visors, silent but radiating that faint aura of coiled violence that never quite went away. One gave the smallest nod in acknowledgment; Sico returned it, though his expression didn't shift.
The corridors widened as they approached the central hub for Facilities. The space opened up into a two-story chamber, its far wall dominated by a vast holographic display of the Institute's internal schematics. Tiny sections glowed in different colors, denoting active maintenance, energy consumption levels, or — in a few orange-highlighted areas — ongoing construction.
Allie Filmore was exactly where Nora had guessed she'd be: standing in front of the main console, one hand resting on the rail, the other holding a clipboard that looked almost out of place in this sea of advanced tech. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat twist, and she wore that precise, composed expression of someone who had a hundred things on her mind but refused to let any of them show.
She looked up as they approached, her eyes moving from Nora to Sico and back again. "Nora. Sico. I wasn't expecting you."
"Just came from BioScience," Sico said, his voice carrying none of the tension from the earlier meeting. "Figured we'd check in on how the place is holding together."
"That's… broad," Allie said with a faint arch of one brow. "Do you have something specific in mind?"
Nora stepped forward slightly, resting her forearms on the rail beside Allie. "Actually, yes. I wanted to ask how the facility's doing overall — any issues with power distribution, environmental systems, anything like that."
Allie's eyes flicked back to the holographic display. "Power levels are stable. The fusion reactors are running within optimal parameters. We've had some minor fluctuations in the hydroponics section due to humidity control, but nothing that affects food output."
"That's good to hear," Nora said. "And… the expansion? How's it going?"
For the first time, Allie's expression shifted — not dramatically, but enough that Nora noticed. Her shoulders straightened slightly, and she tapped a section of the holographic map, zooming in on a cluster of orange-highlighted areas along the lower eastern sector.
"The expansion is… progressing," she said carefully. "We've completed structural reinforcement in two of the planned sectors. Excavation is underway for the third, but we've run into some delays."
"What kind of delays?" Sico asked, folding his arms.
"Geological instability," Allie replied. "There's an unexpected fault line running through part of the excavation zone. Nothing catastrophic, but it requires additional support struts and recalculations on weight distribution. That, and we've had to divert some manpower to urgent maintenance elsewhere."
Nora tilted her head. "Urgent maintenance?"
Allie hesitated, then brought up another section of the schematic — a smaller zone blinking with a yellow caution marker. "One of our coolant conduits in the southern power distribution hub showed signs of stress fracturing. We had to reroute flow temporarily and pull a team to replace the segment before it could fail."
Sico studied the blinking section, his jaw tightening slightly. "How close was it to failing?"
"Close enough that I didn't sleep well until it was fixed," Allie admitted, her voice flat but with the faintest edge beneath. "A failure there would have cut power to half the Institute for several hours. Inconvenient at best, dangerous at worst."
Nora's brows knit slightly. "That's… not exactly comforting."
"That's why it's fixed," Allie said simply. "And it's also why expansion is going slower than projected. I won't divert resources from critical systems unless I'm absolutely sure it won't compromise them."
Sico nodded once, a flicker of respect in his expression. "Practical. I like that."
"Practicality is what keeps this place running," Allie replied. "Ambition is fine, but not if it gets people killed."
Nora glanced at Sico, then back to Allie. "How far along are we before the new sectors are functional?"
"If all goes well — which is an assumption I hesitate to make these days — four months," Allie said. "That's with the current crew allocation. If we get more hands on it, maybe three. But I don't expect to see that happen unless priorities shift."
"And if they do?" Sico asked.
"Then other projects get delayed," Allie said simply. "It's all a balance."
They stood there for a moment, the hum of the holographic display filling the silence. Sico's eyes tracked the orange-highlighted zones, imagining them as more than glowing patches on a map — imagining the dust, the echoing clang of tools, the voices of the crews down there working under miles of rock. Expansion wasn't just about space; it was about resilience. It was about having somewhere to move if — when — things on the surface got ugly.
Nora broke the silence first. "Is there anything you need that you're not getting right now? Materials, equipment, extra people?"
Allie's gaze lingered on the display for a moment longer before she answered. "Always. But I know better than to hand out wish lists. If I had to pick one thing… more reliable surface transport for materials. Some of what we need is still coming from topside, and any delay in delivery slows everything down."
Sico made a thoughtful sound. "I might be able to help with that. Not promising, but I'll see what I can do."
Allie looked at him with mild skepticism. "And how exactly would you do that?"
"I've got people," Sico said simply. "Not Institute people. But they know how to move cargo without drawing attention."
Allie considered him for a moment, then nodded slightly. "If you can make that happen, I won't complain."
The conversation drifted after that, but it never lost that undercurrent of practicality — the sense that every decision here was a trade-off, every choice a balancing act between safety and progress. As they finally stepped away from the console, Sico cast one last look at the glowing map.
Sico's eyes lingered on the schematic for a moment longer before he stepped back from the glowing display. The orange-highlighted zones faded in his periphery, replaced in his mind by other maps — patrol grids, supply routes, and now the flight paths Holdren had just agreed to adjust. It was all threads in a web he was trying to spin tighter before the wind picked up.
"Allie," he said, giving her a short nod, "keep me in the loop if anything changes. I don't care if it's geological or mechanical — I want to hear it before it becomes a problem."
She arched one brow but didn't challenge him. "If it affects our operational capacity, you'll know."
"Good." He turned toward Nora. "Alright. We're done here."
They left Facilities with the same unhurried pace they'd come in with, though now the conversation shifted back into that quiet tactical mode Sico seemed to slip into whenever his mind was weighing more than one front at a time.
About halfway down the corridor toward the next lift junction, Sico slowed and glanced sideways at Nora.
"You ever going to show me the SRB?" he asked.
Nora blinked. "The SRB?"
"Yeah," Sico said. "You've been walking me past that wing for all day now without so much as a peek inside. If I'm supposed to take the Institute seriously as a player in this game, I need to see the part of the board that's actually watching the rest of the pieces."
Her lips curved into a faint, knowing smirk. "You just want to see our toys."
"Call it professional curiosity," he replied. "Besides, if you've got a division whose entire job is keeping tabs on everyone, I want to know how good they really are. And I want to know what they've got on me."
That last line earned him a look — not quite amused, not quite warning. But after a beat, she nodded. "Alright. You want the SRB, I'll give you the tour. Just… remember they're not as charming as I am."
"That's a low bar," Sico deadpanned.
She led him deeper into the Institute, down corridors that thinned out in foot traffic the farther they went. The lighting here seemed a fraction dimmer, or maybe it was just the effect of the more enclosed architecture — less glass, more solid white walls that seemed to curve subtly inward, giving the place a sense of being sealed tight.
The SRB — Synth Retention Bureau — wasn't marked with some flashy sign or door panel. The entrance was just another sealed hatch with a numeric ID, flanked by a pair of coursers in their matte black armor. They didn't move as Nora approached, but their visors tracked her, and then Sico, as she keyed in a clearance code. The hatch slid open with a hiss of pressure equalization.
Inside, the air was cooler, sharper — filtered a little differently than the rest of the Institute, as if they wanted every molecule in here scrubbed down to keep the environment pure.
The first chamber they stepped into was less a lobby and more a control hub. Holographic screens floated in vertical columns, each displaying feeds from across the Commonwealth: busy markets, rusted overpasses, dim interiors of raider strongholds, even the occasional wide sweep of open land where only a single figure trudged through the snow.
On one wall, a massive Commonwealth map glowed, dotted with hundreds of tiny light markers — some green, some yellow, a few pulsing red. Each marker represented a deployed synth.
A man in a slate-gray SRB uniform glanced up from a terminal as they entered, recognized Nora, and went back to his work without comment.
"This," Nora said, sweeping her arm across the room, "is where we track and manage every deployed asset in the field. Gen 3 synths blend in better than anything we've made before — most people wouldn't know they were looking at one unless they were trained to spot the micro-tells."
Sico stepped closer to one of the floating feeds. A man in worn settler clothes was speaking to a caravan guard on a dusty roadside. He looked ordinary enough — lean from hard travel, a little sunburned, carrying a half-patched pack. But when Sico looked closer, he saw it: a faintly too-smooth movement when the man adjusted his pack strap, like muscles and joints tuned with precision rather than fatigue.
"That one?" Sico asked.
"Asset 3-1-7," Nora confirmed. "Embedded in a caravan route between Diamond City and the northern farms. He's been logging Brotherhood troop movements along the rail lines for the past month."
Sico gave a small nod. "Good cover. Caravans go places other eyes can't without raising suspicion."
She moved him along the wall of feeds, pointing out others — a young woman helping tend crops in Oberland Station, an older man sweeping floors in a Goodneighbor bar, even a "raider" posted on guard duty at a fringe outpost, blending in so well his own crew didn't suspect him.
"They all report in through encrypted bursts when they're in range of relay points," Nora said. "Between that and the corvid network Holdren manages, we've got eyes on just about every major player in the Commonwealth — when they cross our coverage zones."
Sico studied the map. "And you've got a file on me somewhere in this system."
Nora didn't confirm or deny — which was, in its own way, confirmation. "You've been… noted. But don't flatter yourself. You're just one of many."
He smirked faintly. "I'll try not to take it personally."
They moved deeper into the SRB's interior, where the hum of equipment gave way to the steady, measured footfalls of coursers. This section felt different — tighter security, less open displays, more reinforced doors and the occasional flicker of something heavy-duty in the walls.
She stopped at a wide observation window. Beyond it, a training bay sprawled out like an underground hangar. Black-armored coursers were running drills — two sparring in a flurry of precise, bone-jarring strikes; another group practicing breaching maneuvers through reinforced bulkhead mockups. Every move was economical, every hit calculated to drop an opponent in seconds.
"These," Nora said, "are the retrieval specialists. They're not just hunters — they're problem solvers. Any synth that goes rogue, any high-value target we need contained, any mission where subtlety has failed… we send a courser."
Sico watched them move, noting the discipline in their formations. "I can see why. They're cleaner than most spec-ops teams I've worked with."
"They should be," she said. "They're built for it — and trained hard enough that failure isn't something they accept."
He watched a final drill where two coursers took down a heavily armored mock opponent in under six seconds. Efficient. Brutal.
"The Freemasons have their Commandos," Nora went on, her voice lower now, "but I've seen the kind of operations you run. There are missions where brute force in the open is the last thing you want. Imagine what a few of these could do if they weren't just hunting synths."
Sico didn't answer right away. He was already picturing it — insertion teams that could pass through enemy lines without a whisper, neutralizing threats before they even realized they were compromised. Not as replacements for his Commandos, but as a parallel blade — one you never saw until it was already pressed against your throat.
Sico's gaze lingered on the coursers in the training bay, the rhythmic thud of their strikes carrying faintly through the reinforced glass. He could feel the weight of the idea forming in his head, heavy enough that it seemed to settle in his chest.
"Then we will use them," he said at last, his voice low but certain. "For top-secret ops alongside the Commandos for the Freemasons. And it's good for the Freemasons' treasury as they have a free worker."
He didn't look away from the black-armored figures below. "Besides," he added, his mouth twitching into the faintest of smirks, "we already control the Institute. Why not use the coursers as well?"
Nora's head tilted, just enough to signal interest. "You make it sound easy."
"It is easy," Sico replied, finally glancing her way. "We have the chain of command, we have their loyalty hardwired into their mission parameters, and we have you to make sure no one down here tries to get clever and reroute them. That's not just leverage — that's an advantage no other faction in the Commonwealth has."
She folded her arms loosely across her chest, the smirk she gave him half amusement, half challenge. "You're talking about weaponizing them outside of Institute protocols. That's a bigger shift than you might think."
"Bigger for them, maybe," Sico said, "but not for us. Look — your people made these things to be precision tools, right? Problem solvers, like you said. Fine. The Commonwealth's got no shortage of problems. The difference is, now we get to choose which problems they solve."
He gestured toward the bay again, where two coursers were dragging their mock opponent out of the breach zone, the "body" limp but intact enough for recycling into the next drill. "Imagine a team like that, dropped into a raider command hub before they even know we're in the area. No big gunfight, no collateral. Just… silence. The problem disappears, and everyone else wonders why the noise stopped."
Nora's eyes tracked the movement below, but her silence wasn't disapproval — it was calculation. "And what do you see them doing when they're not on those missions? Because coursers aren't exactly the type to sweep floors between deployments."
"That's the beauty of it," Sico said. "They don't have to. The Commandos can handle the day-to-day protection jobs, border patrols, and public-facing ops. The coursers stay invisible until they're needed. Less wear-and-tear, more psychological impact. When word spreads that the Freemasons have shadows that can walk through walls and take down a man before he can shout? That fear does half the work for us."
That made her smirk deepen, though there was still an edge to it. "Fear's a double-edged blade, Sico."
"I know," he said, leaning slightly on the railing in front of the observation window. "But if you keep it sharp and only draw it when you need it, people stop thinking about resisting and start thinking about staying in line."
He paused then, glancing sidelong at her. "Besides, if we're already pouring resources into keeping the Commonwealth from tearing itself apart, why not make use of the assets we've got?"
Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she looked back at the training floor. "You make it sound like this was always your plan."
He shrugged. "I'm a fan of efficiency. Doesn't matter if it's moving troops, running supplies, or deploying assets. If there's a piece on the board that's not being used to its full potential, I'm going to change that."
The next drill in the bay began — a simulated extraction, with one courser playing the role of a compromised operative and two others moving in to "retrieve" him while neutralizing hostile targets. The movements were fluid, practiced. Even the way they covered each other's blind spots was clinical in its precision.
"They're impressive," Sico admitted. "But tell me — how flexible are their orders? If I give them an op that isn't about synth retrieval, do they push back?"
Nora's answer came without hesitation. "They'll follow directives from cleared command channels. You, me, and the Directorate could issue them orders, provided they pass the authorization protocols. That's the real hurdle — the SRB doesn't exactly hand out clearance like candy."
Sico gave her a pointed look. "And you're going to make sure I have that clearance."
It wasn't a question, and Nora didn't take it as one. Her smirk shifted into something cooler — not unfriendly, but deliberate. "I'll see what I can do."
"That's all I'm asking," he said, straightening from the railing. "Once that's in place, we start slow. One or two small ops, low-profile targets, nothing that'll spook your people. Show them we can integrate without chaos. After that… we scale."
The two of them stepped away from the window, continuing deeper into the SRB's inner halls. The architecture here was even more sealed-off than before — narrow corridors, reinforced bulkheads, and the quiet presence of more coursers stationed at key junctions. It was the kind of place where every footstep seemed louder than it should be.
"Just so we're clear," Nora said as they walked, "if you start treating my coursers like expendable assets, this partnership ends."
"Noted," Sico said. "I don't waste tools that work."
They passed a glass-walled analysis room, where SRB techs were reviewing debrief footage from a recent operation — a grainy feed showing a courser moving through a dim, wrecked warehouse, neutralizing targets one by one with surgical precision. The techs paused, rewound, zoomed in on certain movements, logging data with the detached focus of people refining a weapon.
Sico glanced inside, then back to Nora. "They're not just fighters. They're collectors, too."
"That's part of the job," she confirmed. "Any rogue synth they retrieve is analyzed — memories, behavioral logs, movement patterns. Sometimes, the intel they bring back is worth more than the synth itself."
"That," Sico said with a faint grin, "is exactly the kind of thing the Freemasons could use."
They reached another sealed hatch — this one marked with heavier locking mechanisms than the others. Nora keyed in a different code, and the hatch slid open into a secured storage bay. Inside were racks of specialized gear — suppressed rifles, EMP charges, signal jammers, even stealth field generators that looked like they'd been stripped straight from prototype labs.
Sico stepped inside, eyes scanning the shelves like a man in a particularly dangerous candy store. "You've been holding out on me."
"These are mission-specific loadouts," Nora said. "Coursers are trained to work with minimal gear, but when a job needs more… we give them the best."
He picked up a compact rifle, weighing it in his hands. The balance was perfect, the grip molded for precise control. "You realize half of this tech would make the Brotherhood foam at the mouth."
"Which is exactly why they'll never get it," Nora replied.
Sico set the rifle back down carefully. "We'll need to move some of this topside. Not much — just enough for a courser team to operate without having to come all the way back here for resupply."
"That's doable," she said. "As long as you don't start stockpiling it in plain sight."
"Subtlety is the whole point," Sico said. "The Commandos will still be our public face. The coursers stay in the shadows."
They lingered in the storage bay for a few minutes longer, Sico asking pointed questions about certain pieces of gear, Nora explaining capabilities and limitations with the ease of someone who'd overseen their development. There was a quiet understanding forming between them — a recognition that they were, for once, thinking along the same lines.
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• 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:-