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When they finally straightened from the table, both of them had that same look — the one commanders wore when they'd drawn a battle plan not just to win, but to survive.
Sico's gaze lingered on the holotable a few seconds longer. Red markers still pulsed faintly against the dark map, little beats of light that almost looked alive — almost felt like they were keeping time with the plan they'd just locked in.
Then he stepped back, flexing his hands once as if shaking off the tension.
"That's settled," he said, tone quieter now but still firm. "I'm heading back to Sanctuary."
Nora looked up from the terminal she'd been keying adjustments into. "Already?"
"Already," he said. "The Freemasons have their own fires to put out, and I've been out of the loop long enough. But…" — he tilted his head toward her — "…don't forget to run the full rundown to the fifty soldiers staying here."
She arched a brow. "You sure?"
"Yes really sure," Sico confirmed. "They're not here to play tourists. They're your security detail now — here to keep the Institute's front door locked tight while you're playing this game with the Brotherhood."
A faint smirk tugged at her lips. "Fifty Freemasons inside my house. Some people would call that an occupation."
"Some people would call it insurance," he said, meeting her eyes evenly. "They'll follow your lead while I'm gone, but they'll answer to me if something goes sideways. I don't want any surprises when I come back."
Nora leaned back against the table, arms crossed loosely. "You're trusting me with your people?"
"I'm trusting you to make sure they're not wasted," Sico replied. "You've got synth strike teams, coursers, your own security. My soldiers are just one more layer between you and anyone stupid enough to try knocking."
She studied him for a moment, as if weighing whether to read between the lines. But whatever she saw there, it was enough — she gave a small nod. "I'll make sure they get the full brief. Chain of command, rules of engagement, and that whole rotation protocol you're so in love with."
"Good," Sico said. "And make sure they know the chain of communication. No wandering into your labs, no poking at anything with glowing wires, and no playing politics with your scientists. They're here to keep watch, not make friends."
Nora gave a dry little laugh. "That last part might be the hardest for them."
"Yeah, well," he said, letting a ghost of a grin slip through, "they'll live."
Nora pushed off the table and gestured toward the far end of the command center.
"Come on, then. If you're leaving now, we'll take you to the relay chamber."
They walked together through the Institute's spotless corridors — white walls curving gently, soft lighting reflecting off polished floors. The constant hum of the place was a strange comfort, a steady reminder that down here, the world's chaos felt distant… even if it never really was.
Every so often, a passing synth or technician would glance at them. Sico caught some of those looks — cautious, curious, maybe a little unsettled at the sight of him walking side-by-side with their Director. He didn't return them. His focus stayed on the path ahead, boots clicking steadily against the smooth flooring.
"You know," Nora said after a beat, "most people don't get this kind of send-off from here. Usually it's more like… 'Thanks for visiting, now leave before we change our minds.'"
Sico gave a short laugh. "Guess I'm not most people."
"Guess not," she agreed.
They passed through another set of doors, the corridor widening into the familiar antechamber before the teleportation room. Two Gen-2 synth guards stood at attention outside, their blank faces following the pair's approach without a word. The heavy doors behind them slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the chamber beyond.
Inside, the relay platform gleamed — a circular pad inlaid with precise geometric patterns, cables and conduits feeding into its base from all sides. Above it, the emitter array hung like the ribs of some great metallic beast, poised to tear the air apart and remake it somewhere else entirely.
Sico paused just inside, eyes flicking over the equipment. He'd used the relay before, but it still struck him as… unnatural. Instant travel wasn't something the human mind adjusted to easily, no matter how many times you stepped onto the pad.
"You sure this thing's pointed at Sanctuary?" he asked, half-joking.
Nora smirked faintly. "Unless you want to end up in the middle of the Glowing Sea, yeah — I'm sure. We've got your coordinates locked from last time."
Sico stepped forward onto the pad, boots ringing faintly against the metal. "Good. Last thing I need is to teleport into some Deathclaw nest."
"Wouldn't be the first time you've walked into trouble," she said.
He shot her a look over his shoulder. "Difference is, I usually choose the trouble."
Nora came up to the console at the side of the chamber, her fingers dancing over the controls with practiced ease. The soft hum of the machinery deepened, and a faint vibration ran through the floor as the emitter array came alive.
"Your soldiers will be fully briefed before the day's over," she said without looking up from the console. "And I'll make sure they've got access to the same intel feeds as my security teams. No one's going to be left in the dark."
"That's all I ask," Sico replied.
A shimmer of light began to form in the air around him, faint at first, then growing brighter — threads of energy weaving themselves into a lattice. The smell of ozone crept into the air.
Nora finally looked up, meeting his gaze through the glow. "You'll keep me updated from your end?"
"If I didn't," he said, "you'd send a courser to drag me back here anyway."
Her smirk returned, sharper now. "Damn right."
The lattice tightened, light flaring. The hum rose to a deep, thrumming pitch that seemed to pulse in Sico's bones. He gave her one last nod.
"See you soon, President."
"Safe travels, President."
And then the light swallowed him.
The white glare of the Institute's relay chamber dissolved into the warm, gold-lit shadows of Sico's office in the Freemasons' headquarters. The shift was always jarring — one moment that sterile, hum-filled brightness, and the next the familiar scent of polished wood, faint tobacco in the air, and the quiet tick of the old grandfather clock that stood near the corner.
The faint static crackle from the teleport faded from his skin, leaving behind the grounded weight of home. He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders once to shake off the faint phantom hum still ringing in his bones.
The office was just as he'd left it — desk neatly ordered except for one uneven stack of dispatch reports, the heavy drapes half-drawn to let in filtered daylight, and the coat stand by the door still holding the long brown overcoat he hadn't worn since last winter.
But there wasn't time to settle back into the chair and start digging through paperwork. The Institute's command center was humming along under Nora's watch, but the Commonwealth outside was far from quiet. He needed intel — the kind that came with more context than a dry report could give. And that meant talking to Piper.
Piper Wright didn't just run her newspaper; she was a living, breathing barometer for the pulse of the Commonwealth. If anyone knew the latest whispers, sightings, and half-buried truths, it was her.
He grabbed his coat anyway — not because it was cold, but because moving through HQ in plainclothes instead of full combat gear meant fewer questions from everyone he passed.
The headquarters' corridors were a mix of old-world architecture and rebuilt sections — brick and wood paneling from before the war blending with the cleaner, reinforced steel of recent months. He passed a few Freemasons along the way, some pausing to give a nod, others too wrapped in their own tasks to notice. The low murmur of voices, the occasional clang of tools from the engineering bay below — it was a comforting background, a steady heartbeat of their operations.
Piper's office was tucked near the east wing, not far from the comms center. It wasn't large, but it was rarely quiet. She had a knack for making even the smallest space feel like the center of the Commonwealth's gossip network.
When Sico reached the doorway, the sight inside made him pause for a heartbeat.
Piper was at her desk, elbows resting on the scarred surface, head slightly bent over something she'd been waiting on. Not reading exactly — more like keeping an eye on a blank stretch of paper and a still pen, the way you did when you were waiting for someone to walk in and start talking.
When she looked up and saw him, her face shifted in an instant — a quick lift of her brows, a spark of recognition, and then that crooked smile of hers.
"Well, well," she said, leaning back in her chair with a mock-solemn nod. "What made me get the honor of the President himself visiting me?"
Sico stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him. "Thought I'd check in. See what the latest news is in the Commonwealth."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but the smile didn't fade. "Latest news, huh? That's your way of saying, 'Piper, give me the good stuff you're not putting in print,' isn't it?"
He didn't deny it — just gave a small shrug that said she'd nailed it.
Piper swiveled her chair a little, grabbing a folded sheet from the edge of her desk. "Well, if you want the front-page headline… the Brotherhood and the Institute are going at it harder than ever. Skirmishes are popping up almost daily now." She unfolded the sheet, scanning it as if double-checking her own memory before she went on.
"Just like we planned," she added, glancing at him over the edge of the paper. "You take control of the Institute through Nora, and suddenly they've got a whole new playbook. No more hiding deep underground — now they're dropping synth teams on Brotherhood patrols in the middle of the night, hitting outposts that thought they were safe. It's… well, it's beautiful in a chaotic, Commonwealth kind of way."
Sico leaned against the wall beside her desk, arms loosely crossed. "And the Brotherhood?"
"They're starting to stretch thin," she said, her tone losing the playful edge for something more serious. "They can't be everywhere at once, not when the battlefield's everywhere. The Institute's teleporters mean no one knows where the next hit's coming from. Convoys that used to roll without worry? Now they're losing two or three a week. Smaller forward camps are going dark before they can even send a distress call."
She set the sheet back down and laced her fingers together. "The thing is, they're not used to fighting this way. The Brotherhood likes big moves — airships, armor columns, show of force. The Institute's forcing them to fight like guerrillas, and it's making them sloppy."
Sico's eyes flickered with a trace of satisfaction, though his voice stayed even. "Good. That's the point. Keep them reacting, keep them off balance."
"Yeah," Piper said slowly, "but there's something else you should know. When people start seeing big armored soldiers lose to squads that vanish into thin air, they start talking. Word's getting around that the Brotherhood's not invincible. That's… good for morale in some places, but it's also making folks nervous. A lot of settlements are wondering if they're next on someone's hit list — and they don't always care whether it's the Brotherhood or the Institute doing the hitting."
Sico let Piper's words hang in the air for a moment. The newsroom — if you could call it that — had gone still except for the faint scratch of some settler's boots passing down the hall outside. Dust motes drifted lazily through the thin beam of sunlight cutting across her desk, catching on the edges of the scattered papers and battered mugs that seemed to multiply in here whenever his back was turned.
He studied her face. She was still leaning forward a little, elbows braced on the desk, expression somewhere between wary and amused — that Piper brand of "I'm telling you what you need to know, but I'm already writing the headline in my head."
"Keep me updated about it," he said finally, his voice low but steady. "If the mood in the settlements starts to shift… I want to know before it turns into a panic. And if you catch wind of the Brotherhood making any sudden moves — not just the fighting, but anything unusual — I want that on my desk before you run it in print."
Her lips curved into a smirk, but there was no mockery in it this time. "You got it, boss. I'll keep my ear to the ground. And if it's bad news… well, I'll try to dress it up pretty before handing it over."
Sico straightened from the wall, the leather of his coat creaking softly as he shifted. "Don't dress it up. I'd rather have ugly truth than pretty lies."
"Yeah," she said with a small nod, her tone softening. "I know."
He gave her one last look — the kind that said we're both in this deeper than we admit aloud — then turned toward the door. His hand lingered on the knob for just a second before he pulled it open. The hallway's cooler air met him like a sigh, and he stepped out, letting the door close quietly behind him.
The walk through the Freemasons' headquarters back toward the main gate was steady, unhurried. He passed familiar faces — some stopping to nod, some murmuring quick greetings, others too wrapped in their work to notice him at all. Out in the courtyard, the light had shifted; the day was easing into that late-afternoon gold that made even the cracked stone and patched metal of the Commonwealth look almost warm.
He didn't head for the armory or the war room. Not this time. Instead, his boots found the road leading toward Jennie's farm. It had been too long since he'd checked in personally, and he wanted more than just a line in a report about crop yields and livestock health.
Jennie's place wasn't far — a few minutes' walk past the outer watchtowers, through the stretch of land they'd cleared for small gardens and workshops, and down a dirt path that always seemed to smell faintly of tilled earth and brahmin musk.
The farm came into view as he rounded the bend: low wooden fences enclosing patches of green, rows of hardy crops pushing up through the soil, and the familiar shapes of brahmin grazing lazily. The double-headed creatures lifted their twin sets of eyes at his approach, chewing in slow, suspicious rhythm before deciding he wasn't a threat and going back to their business.
Near the chicken coop — a squat, patched-together structure of scavenged wood and sheet metal — Jennie herself was working. She had her sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back under a faded cap, and was scattering feed from a dented bucket with an easy rhythm born from years of habit. Chickens clucked and scratched at the dirt around her boots, darting in and out of the sunlight.
She looked up when she heard him, squinting against the light before breaking into a grin. "Well, if it isn't the big man himself. Didn't expect you out here without half a squad in tow."
Sico let out the faintest of chuckles. "Figured I'd give the guards a break. Besides, I wanted to see for myself how the farm's doing — and check on the brahmin. And the chickens."
Jennie snorted, setting the bucket down on the fence post. "The brahmin are fine. The chickens are… well, they're chickens. Still pecking at everything that moves and half the things that don't."
He stepped closer, leaning on the fence rail. "Any trouble lately? Raiders, wildlife, anything unusual?"
She shook her head, wiping her hands on her trousers. "Not since that last patrol you sent through. Guess word's gotten around that this place isn't worth the trouble. Only thing I've been fighting lately is a stubborn patch of soil on the east side that just doesn't want to grow much."
Sico glanced past her toward the rows of crops. "Might be worth getting one of the Institute's agri-tech people to take a look. They've got soil sensors that can figure out nutrient problems in minutes."
Jennie gave him a wry look. "You're telling me the same folks who make synth assassins also make gardening tools?"
"They make a lot of things," he replied evenly. "Some of it's worth using."
She considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "Fine. You send your science folks, I'll let 'em poke around. As long as they don't spook the chickens."
The corner of his mouth tugged upward. "I'll tell them to watch their step."
For a moment, the two of them stood in companionable silence, listening to the lowing of the brahmin and the soft clucking from the coop. A breeze stirred the air, carrying with it the smell of fresh hay and distant woodsmoke. It was a small, quiet corner of the Commonwealth — one of the few that still felt almost normal.
Sico finally spoke again, his voice quieter now. "Jennie… things out there are shifting. The Brotherhood's being pushed back, but it's making settlements nervous. If you hear anything — even rumors — about trouble headed this way, I want you to send word immediately."
She gave him a steady nod. "You'll be the first to know. And don't worry — this farm might not look like much, but we'll hold our own if we have to."
He believed her. Jennie wasn't the type to panic, and her people knew how to handle themselves. Still, as he watched the brahmin sway their massive heads and the chickens dart under the fence, he couldn't shake the weight of knowing that even the most peaceful places could turn into battlegrounds overnight.
"Good," he said simply, pushing back from the fence. "I'll check in again soon."
Jennie picked up her bucket again, shaking it lightly so the remaining feed rattled inside. "You do that. And next time, maybe bring me something from HQ that isn't another report. Like coffee. Real coffee."
He smirked. "I'll see what I can do."
And with that, he turned back toward the path, boots crunching on the packed dirt as the sounds of the farm faded behind him. The sun was dipping lower now, painting the fields in deeper gold, and somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear the faint thump of gunfire — far enough away not to be immediate, but close enough to remind him that peace in the Commonwealth was always temporary.
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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:-