The road had thinned and cracked, weeds pushing up through the middle. We spent more time on the old highway than near any real ruin, rolling through long stretches where the forest had taken back everything near it.
The first morning, I climbed up onto the wagon roof once we cleared the farm's fences and stayed there as much as Rose would let me. The boards flexed under me, warm with sun, creaking in time with the wheels. Besides it helped I wasnt all that heavy. From up there, you could see forever.
Trees flanked the highway, thick and half-sick, some with leaves the wrong color, some with bark that peeled. Old world billboards leaned at angles, their paint long gone. Here and there, a green sign still clung on overhead, letters faded but legible if you squinted.
ONE read:
Commonwealth – 45 MI (yes could be very wrong, im to lazy to Google it.)
some letters shot out, some eaten by rust.
So this is where it all begins, I thought, palms flat on the wagon roof. My heart hammered like it wanted out of my ribs and down the road ahead of us.
The Commonwealth wasn't a dot on a Pip-Boy for me. It was were major events that would shape the wastleland future.
"Vaultie!" Trig shouted up once. "You fall asleep up there, I'm not scraping you off the road!"
"I'll haunt you!" I called back.
"Too late," he said. "Karma's already hauntin' me." He snorted before he let out a small sound of pain.
"Shut up," Karma said, sounding a little annoyed somewhere under the wagon, and her SMG clicked into a fresh mag.
Around midday, we saw them. "Radstags," Carson called from his perch on the wagon's front rail. "Herd. Left side."
I scrambled turned to looked. They were… wrong and beautiful at the same time.
Tall, deer with two heads and too many sharp bits, moving through the trees at a lazy trot. Their hides were patchy, some ribs showing on some. Both heads moved in different directions, scanning for threat. They didn't bolt at the sound of the wagon. Just watched us go like we were the ugly ones.
"Creepy," Levi muttered below me.
"Cool," I said, because they were. "They used to spook me on a screen."
"On a what?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said. "They look better in person."
One of the radstags lifted both heads high, nostrils flaring. For a second all the animals in the herd moved together, a ripple of muscle and bone, then they turned as one and vanished into the trees.
Rose slapped the side of the wagon once and the Brahmin picked up their pace. "If they're movin' that deliberate, they're either avoidin' something or goin' to it. Either way, we shouldnt slow down."
A few hours later. We heard them before we saw them, this high, buzzing whine. The wagon slowed.
"Eyes up," Karma said. "Bloatflies."
"Gross," I muttered, already pulling my charge pistol from its holster. They drifted out of the ditch on the right, fat and slowish, i honestly expected them to be faster. Like someone had taken a housefly, fed it corpses for a hundred years, and then stapled bits of meat and bone to the outside for decoration. Bulbous back ends, wings that didn't look big enough to lift them but somehow did.
"Ugh," Lena said. "I hate these things."
"Three o'clock, close," Carson called, muzzle already tracking.
One of the flies hummed in low, attracted by sweat and motion or just the sound of living things. It angled toward the wagon.
"Hostile detected," Claptrap said, voice flat.
"Don't let it get too close," I said, more to myself than anyone.
Bloatflies in the game had been annoying. Bloatflies that could actually hit you were a different sort of problem. In my memory, something ugly stirred, a clip of video, a slow-motion shot of one of them curling its abdomen and—
The fly's body flexed midair and it fired something wet and horrible from its back end.
"Are you—" I started, mind blanking with disgust, and then I saw what it had shot: a small, wriggling grub that sizzled when it hit the road, twitching.
"MAGGOT! I fucking hate these things." Mara yelled.
Carson took the first shot, The nearest fly popped in the air, spraying greenish muck and twitching bits; the maggot on the ground spasmed in its own little death.
Karma stitched the second one with a short SMG burst, her face flat with professional loathing. Claptrap's laser raked across a third, searing a line through its thorax. The smell hit a second later, burnt meat and something chemical.
I fired at the last one as it swung in toward the Brahmin, sight wobbling. Blue leapt, and hitting it.The fly jerked sideways midflight, body twisting, and slammed into the guardrail with a wet thud. Its abdomen flexed once more on reflex, firing another larvae bullet that splatted harmlessly onto the side of the highway barrier.
"Disgusting," I said, nose wrinkling.
"Welcome to the Commonwealth's front yard," Karma said, kicking the dead thing off the road as we rolled past. "You should see the spiders around those parts."
"I'd rather not," Levi said faintly.
Rose checked the Brahmin over once, then flicked the reins. "Alright. Flies are free protein if you can stand it. We can't. Keep moving."
The rest of that day passed without anything worse than a couple of distant boom sounds that might've been old gas tanks giving up or someone else having a bad time. The forest thickened, trees leaning inward, branches making a tunnel of green and dead brown. We stayed on the open ribbon of highway like it was a lifeline.
That night, we camped under a overpath. Without night watch, I didn't know what to do with myself after dark.
I'd gotten used to walking the perimeter, listening to the night life. Now Karma and Trig took turns on the outer ring while I sat by the cookfire with Levi, the twins.
We ate something that was mostly beans and some kind of salted meat that had given up on tenderness entirely. It was still better than ration bars.
"What's Pike's Crossing like?" I asked at one point, poking the edge of my bowl with my spoon.
"Small," Rose said from across the fire. "Last time I swung through, they had maybe twenty heads. Makeshift barricades, couple of decent shooters, one doc who knows how to keep limbs on people most of the time."
"Friendly?" Levi asked.
"Friendly to caps," she said. "Suspicious of strangers without 'em. But they don't shoot traders unless you give 'em reason."
"Good enough," Lena said.
I leaned back on my hands, staring up at the slice of stars framed by crushed concrete. Somewhere up there was the version of the world I came from. Somewhere in between was the goddess placed me here with my wishes and fixed my broken body.
"You feel it?" Mara said later, lying half-down on her bedroll, watching the same sky.
"Feel what?" I asked.
"That line," she said. "Where things change. We're not there yet. But it's close. You can smell it."
I took a breath. The air smelled like dust and distant pine smoke and the faint tang of something metallic.
"Aye," I said. "I feel it."
The second day, the trees started thinning again.
The highway rose in a long, slow incline. From the top, I could see more of WESTON than any loading screen had ever shown me just a suggestion of low buildings far off, a smear of shapes that might be cars or might be barricades. No skyscrapers, no big landmarks, just a cluster where people had decided to live.
I stretched out on the wagon roof, hands behind my head, letting the roll of the wheels slide through my spine.
"Two days," Rose had said back at the farm. She was right. She usually was, about distance if nothing else.
At one point, the wind shifted and I got a noseful of swamp. We passed a patch where the highway dipped and water had filled the hollow, algae slicking the surface in a sickly sheen. Something big moved under it, sending ripples out in a slow circle. We didn't stop and thankfully we were far away enough not to agro it.
"Keep to the dry," Karma muttered. "Last thing we need is a mirelurk attacking us."
Claptrap walked his steady pace along the left flank of the wagon, backpack clacking faintly with each step. Every so often I dropped down to check his straps, more for my nerves than because he needed it.
By high noon, my head had that tight, buzzy feeling it got when a research project was close to done.
We rounded a long curve in the highway and there it was. The settlement was built where the road met an old exit ramp, the sign above it hanging by one chain, green metal twisted, only a few letters left.
PI_ E'S CRO_SI_G
Good enough.
They'd thrown up walls where there hadn't been any: old truck trailers side by side, sheet metal slapped over gaps, wrecked cars filled with dirt and turned into planters, barbed wire strung in ugly loops along the top. A couple of watchtowers rose up behind it all, made from bolted scaffolding.
There were maybe two dozen people visible from the road. Some on the towers, some on the ground. One at the front gate—a chain-link arch reinforced with wooden beams and bits of armor plating. I saw guns. Decent ones. No uniforms, just a collection of patched jackets and hardened faces.
What I didn't see was anything I recognized.
This place had never existed on any screen I'd stared at.
My stomach did a slow, weird flip.
Of course there'd be more, I thought, fingers curling on the edge of the wagon roof. Two hundred years of history. Of course the game didn't show everything. It never could.
But knowing that and seeing it weren't the same.
This was proof, right there in rust and gun barrels and tired people's eyes, that whatever script I thought I knew, it was only ever going to be partial.
Someone on the nearest tower lifted a hand, shading their eyes, then waved once in a circle.
"Friendly," Carson called. "Or at least not shootin'."
"Good enough," Rose said. The wagon slowed. I slid down the side, boots hitting the road, and walked the last stretch beside Claptrap. My heart had picked up again, same rhythm as the wheels, fast, steady, a little too loud in my ears.
The closer we got, the more details shook themselves into shape. Tarps slung between poles inside the walls, smoke rising from at least one cookfire, a makeshift antenna tower jutting up with a tangle of wire running down it. A kid on the inside of the fence staring out. A Brahmin pen dug against the far trailer where three of the two-headed beasts chewed at something unidentifiable hanging from a hook.
We rolled to a stop about ten meters out from the gate. A woman stepped forward from behind the chain-link, mid-thirties, maybe, with her hair buzzed short and a shotgun that looked like it had seen three owners already.
"State your business," she said. Voice not hostile, just tired.
"Trade," Rose said, standing up on the wagon step so she could be seen. "Passing through. Name's Rose Keller. Caravan out of New York. Been here before."
The woman squinted, then nodded once. "I remember you. You brought us seeds and painkillers."
"Got more seeds," Rose said. "Less painkillers. And some scrap you'll like if you've got caps or food worth the haul."
The woman looked us over, eyes lingering on Claptrap, on the twins, on Levi, on the guns. She took her time.
While she weighed it, the noise in the back of my head hit a sharp, clean peak, like a bell being struck.
I checked my Pip-Boy.
> Research complete: Junk Turrets.
Low-caliber automated defenses unlocked.
I clicked on a new project: Electricity.
Turrets. Crude ones, sure. Junk-fed, but some defensewas better then no defense.
Electricity next, then. Had to be. Turrets didn't shoot without juice. The Mayoral Shelter, if it was where I thought it was, might still have a grid I could hijack. If not, I'd build one.
Later, I told myself. First step: get through the gate. Don't get shot. Don't throw up.
The woman at the gate finally huffed out a breath, like she'd decided.
"You can come in," she said. "Guns stay holstered unless something worse than you shows up. You pay for what you take. You break something, you fix it or you work it off. And if any of your people start trouble, they leave with fewer teeth than they came in with."
"Fair terms," Rose said. "We'll behave. Mostly."
"Mostly's how people die," the woman said dryly, but there was a ghost of a smile. She waved to someone inside. "Open 'er."
Chains rattled. The gate slid aside with a scrape of metal on concrete. We started forward.
For half a second, as the wagon rolled under the arch and into Pike's Crossing, my brain did something stupid, it imagined big block letters fading in at the top of my vision, stark white against the settlement's rust and tarp:
> BETWEEN REALMS: A NEW DAWN
EPISODE ONE — WELCOME TO THE COMMONWEALTH. I snorted to myself, shook it off, and stepped fully inside.
No title screens. No respawns. Just me, my robot, a charged pistol, some half-remembered maps, and a research queue that refused to stop ticking forward.
So this is where it all begins, I thought again.
And this time, it felt true.They didn't even pretend not to stare. We'd only been in Pike's Crossing maybe twenty minutes and half the settlement already had an eye on us. People leaned on posts, on walls, on each other. No fake "oh, I'm just busy over here." Just open watching. Counting guns, counting heads.
Rose haggled with the gate woman near the wagon, low voices and short gestures. Karma and Trig checked straps again, like the wagon might suddenly fall apart inside the walls. The twins had already drifted toward a stall where someone was selling smoked meat on sticks. Levi stood a little off to the side, trying to look like he belonged and mostly looking like he wanted to disappear.
I stayed near Claptrap, one hand on his backpack strap like he might wander off without me. My chest felt tight. Not bad tight. Just… big. Full.
This was it. I was in the Commonwealth.
The name felt heavier now that I could smell the dust from its roads.
"Vaultmouse," Rose called. "Walk with me."
Heads turned to watch as I stepped away from the wagon and joined her a few paces off.
We stopped near a stack of tires turned into a planter. Somebody'd coaxed tato's out of them. That alone made me respect the place a little.
"You sure about this?" she asked.
"Aye," I said. I didn't trust my voice for more yet.
She watched my face for a few long seconds. Rose could be loud when she wanted, but right now her voice was quiet.
"This is as far as I go," she said. "You understand that?"
"Into the Commonwealth?" I asked, even though I knew.
She nodded. "We turn around after we trade here. Swing wide. Back toward places where the worst thing on the road's a raider with a bad attitude and not a walking herd of tank with a board or worse."
"Super mutants," I said.
"Yeah," she said. "Too many of them past this point. Packs. Strongholds. Not just strays." She glanced toward the open strip of road visible through the gate. "Caravan's no good against that. We're built for moving goods."
"I know," I said.
She gave me a look at that. "Yeah. That's the other thing." She shifted her weight, thumb hooked in her belt. "You keep saying 'I know.' About things you shouldn't."
I swallowed. "Like what?"
"Like the names of bunkers nobody's heard of," she said. "Like where they are on a map you never saw. Like what a 'Fort Hagen' is when most people around here just call it 'that old base with too many bones.'" Her eyes didn't leave my face. "You talk about this place like you have seen them already."
I tried not to flinch. "I listen," I said. "Radio. People who've passed through. Jun— June's family. They talk more than they think they do."
"We both know thats bullshit," she said. "But it's more than that, and you know it."
She wasn't accusing me. Just… putting it on the table between us.
"I can't explain it," I said finally. Small. Honest. "Not in a way that makes sense. But I know I'm supposed to be here. Not just on the road. Here."
"That your gut talkin'?" she asked.
"Aye," I said. "Call it that."
She blew out a slow breath through her nose. "Your gut's either the smartest thing I've met in years or you're insane."
"Could be both," I said.
She huffed a laugh, quick and unwilling. Then the humor went, and the weight came back.
"You heard any radio chatter about Diamond City?" she asked.
Bits and pieces swam up in my brain. Voice lines. Quest hooks. News blurbs from my old world. I nodded. "Some. Big settlement. Baseball stadium. Lots of people."
"Lots of people who don't sleep well," she said. "Stories, Vaultmouse. Reports on the wire. Trader comes through says his brother swears a man he knew all his life suddenly wasn't him no more. Same face. Same voice. Different actions. Starts talkin' strange. Starts behaving differently"
Her voice didn't rise but there was a set to her mouth, like the word tasted bad.
"People say there's something here in the Commonwealth," she said. "Something that makes these… things. Replaces people. Sends them back to their lives like puppets. Maybe it ain't true. Maybe it's drunks and grief. But I've heard enough to know one thing."
"What?" I asked, though I already knew the answer from a loading screen.
"I don't like a battlefield where I can't tell who's on whose side," she said simply. "You can brace for raiders. For mutants. For beasts. You can't brace for people you thought were your friends but arent."
"The Institute," I thought, but I didn't say it out loud.
"You walk further in from here, you're walkin' toward that mess," Rose said. "Raider gangs with heavy guns. Mutant nests. Maybe these synth things. Maybe just people scared enough to shoot first and search your pockets after."
"I know," I said again, and this time the word felt heavier. "I do. I know enough to be afraid. I'm not… going in blind, Rose."
She studied me a long moment, jaw clenched, then relaxed it a little.
"I'm not trying to scare you out of it," she said. "I'm just makin' damn sure you understand that once we roll out of here—" She jerked her chin toward the wagon. "No one is circling back to save you. This is your cliff. You jump, you land it or you don't. That's on you."
My hands had started to shake a little. I noticed it and tucked them under my arms.
"For me," I said, "the story's always been here. The Commonwealth. Even before I knew it existed, I was…" I searched for the words. "Watching it. On a screen. In my old vault. Didn't matter. It was always this broken patch of map." I met her eyes. "If I don't do this, I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what would've happened if I had."
She held my gaze, then nodded once. Slow. "Alright," she said. "Then I only got one more thing to give you."
She turned and walked back to the wagon without another word. For a second my stomach dropped, I thought she was going to tell me to get my stuff off, that the conversation was over. Instead she climbed up, reached into the side trunk, and pulled something long and wrapped in canvas.
When she came back, I recognized the shape before she peeled the cloth away.
The laser musket.
We'd pulled it off one of the super mutants that hit us back before June's farm. It had been sitting in Rose's stores ever since.
She held it out grip-first.
"I want you to have it," she said.
I blinked. "What? No. That's… that's worth caps. You could sell that."
"We could," she said. "We're not going to. Gun does us no good sittin' under a tarp. You're goin' into places where hard long rane is your friend. That pistol of yours is a good but has a higher chance to get you killed.."
She turned it slightly, hand running along the frame, fingers careful on the homemade coils. "Two cranks, decent shot," she said. "Three if you've got time. Don't dry fire it. Don't point it at anything you're not willing to kill. Don't sell it unless you're starvin' and then you better get a damn good price."
My throat closed up around some emotion I didn't have a label for. "Rose, I… I can't just take—"
"You already have," she said, pushing it gently into my hands. "We pulled it off a corpse. Consider this your cut of that fight. Plus your pay for not dying on me when you were still learning which end of a Brahamin is which."
"I knew that," I muttered. "Mostly."
She snorted, then reached up and ran her hand through my hair, fingers rough but careful around the spot where the bullet had parted it days ago.
"You keep your head down," she said. "I don't want to hear some trader in three months talk about a little redhead genius who tried to argue with a Deathclaw."
"I'd win the argument," I said, automatic.
"You'd lose the rest," she said. "Don't."
Her hand lingered a second longer in my hair, then dropped. Behind us, the others had noticed we were in serious-talk mode. They drifted closer without really forming a circle.
Lena came up first, Mara right on her heels, like they'd planned it.
"So this is it, huh?" Lena said.
"Don't sound so happy about it," I said.
"We're not," Mara said, and then they both stepped in and hugged me.
One on each side, arms around my shoulders and back, warm and solid and smelling like sweat and metal and too much road. I let myself sink into it for a second longer than I probably should have. If there'd been a bed under us instead of hard-packed dirt, I would have happily stayed there another hour. Maybe more.
"Try not to die," Lena muttered into my ear.
"Or if you do," Mara added, "do it in a way we get a good story out of."
"I'll do my best," I said, voice muffled against Lena's shoulder.
They pulled back just enough for Mara to flick my lab coat. "You keep this thing. It makes you look too smart to shoot. Might save you once."
"No promises," I said. "But I like the pockets too much to lose it."
Levi was next. He hovered a little, clearly unsure if he was allowed to hug me after the twins had already claimed the good spot.
"We're… uh," he started. Then stopped. Then stuck his hand out like he was meeting me for the first time. "Good luck," he said. "Out there. And, you know. In general."
I looked at his hand, then at his face. He'd shaved that morning; I could see one nick he'd missed under his jawline.
I took his hand. "Thanks," I said. "For… not dying on me, I guess."
He gave a startled laugh. "I tried," he said. "Both not dying and… helping."
"You did," I said. "Keep helping. June'll kill you if you slack off. Then Rose will kill you again."
"Comforting," he said. He squeezed my hand once more and let go. "And, uh… If you ever come back this way and you're not, like, famous or dead, look for us."
"I will," I said. "If you're not buried under a heap of ledger paper."
"Rude," he said weakly.
Trig clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to jolt me a step. "You got guts, kid," he said. "I respect that. Guts and a weird robot. You'll fit right in."
"That's not encouraging," I said.
"It wasn't meant to be," he grinned. "Here." He dug in one of his pockets and dropped a small metal disk into my palm. "Lucky bullet. Found it under a body once. Been keepin' me from gettin' shot someplace important for years."
"Is that how luck works?" I asked, turning it over.
"Sure," he said. "Until it doesn't. Then it's your problem."
"Thanks," I said, and meant it.
Karma didn't hug. She stepped up, looked me over, then just nodded once. "Big girl pants still on?" she asked.
I flicked the leg of my vault suit. "Zipper's up."
"Good," she said. "Don't freeze up when it gets loud. Don't ignore your fear. It's a tool, not a leash." She hesitated, then added, "If you get the chance to leave this mess and you want to, take it. You don't owe the Commonwealth your life just because you walked into it."
"I think I owe myself the chance to see what I can do here," I said. "But I'll… keep that in mind."
She gave a short, approving grunt. "Then I wish you the best," she said. "You've earned that much."
"Thank you," I said.
The last two from our little group came forward, Carson, rifle still slung, and Eli, our quiet older woman who knew more about Brahmin than people.
Carson offered me a two-finger salute. "You shoot straighter than most folks twice your age," he said. "Keep your scope clean and your barrel cooler than your head."
"I don't have a scope," I said, hefting the musket.
"You will," he said, like it was a fact and not a wish.
Eli just nodded once. "If you ever need a wagon and you see me on the road, you yell," he said. "Don't try and be clever. Just yell. I'll remember your face."
"Hard to forget," I said. "Freckles. Irish. Pretty. Robot."
"That too," he said, and gave Claptrap a little pat on the arm. Claptrap whirred politely in response.
They all stood there for a second, a little half-circle of people who'd been my world for the a while and was about to change. Around us, the settlement kept moving, people carrying crates, kids peeking from behind fence posts, the gate guard leaning on her shotgun and watching with open curiosity. No one pretending this wasn't a scene worth seeing.
"I'm not… leaving leaving yet," I said, before any of them could drift off. "Not out the gate. I'm going to stay here a bit. Talk to people. Figure out what's actually around before I pick a direction."
Rose lifted her chin, approving. "Good," she said. "You know more than you should, but it's still not enough. Ask 'em about raider camps. Mutant places. Places they don't go. Listen more than you talk."
"I can do that," I said.
"And sleep under a roof," Lena added. "At least try not to get sick"
"I wasn't planning to sprint out into the dark," I said. "I'm dumb sometimes, not that dumb."
"Debatable," Mara said, but she was smiling.
Rose squeezed my shoulder once more. "We'll be here a few hours," she said. "Maybe overnight, depending on how the trade goes. Don't wander so far we can't find you if half the place goes crazy and decides to burn us out."
"I'll stay inside the walls," I said. "Mostly."
"Mostly," she muttered. "Go on. Learn your new home. We'll be at the wagon or the bartering tables if you need us."
That was it. No big speech. No dramatic turn away. Just… a moment, and then they started to peel off. Rose back to the gate woman to talk numbers. Trig and Eli toward the Brahmin. Carson to a tower ladder someone had waved him to—archers respected other archers, I guessed. Karma wandered off to find whoever passed as a guard captain here.
The twins and Levi lingered a second longer.
"We're not sayin' bye-bye forever," Lena said. "Just 'bye for now, please don't die pathetic.'"
"I'll aim for dramatic," I said.
"Good girl," Mara said, and they turned to help unload a crate of seed for some farmer who'd already started hovering.
Levi hesitated. "Hey," he said.
"Hey," I echoed.
His hands shoved deep in his pockets. "I'm… glad I met you," he blurted. "Even if you're weird. In the good way. Mostly."
"Thanks," I said. "You're weird in the… scared way. But you do alright."
He laughed once. "I'll take it." He shifted his weight, then added, "Stay safe, okay? Morgan."
"Aye," I said, softer. "You too, Levi."
He gave me a quick, awkward nod, like if he stayed longer he'd say something stupid, and jogged off to catch up with Rose.
I turned in place, taking in Pike's Crossing with new eyes.
Up close, the place was a patchwork of work and fear. Walls built from whatever fit. A central space where a cooking fire smoked. A jury-rigged pump where two people argued over whose turn it was. A board nailed to a post with rules painted in shaky hand:
NO STEALING
NO FIGHTS INSIDE
NO GHOUL HUNTING
PAY YOUR TAB
Under that, in different paint:
NO SYNTHS
I took a breath. One thing at a time. I stepped away from the wagon and toward the nearest knot of locals, two women gutting something that might've been a big molerat, a kid watching, an older man fixing a cracked bit of armor by the fire.
"Excuse me," I said, heart beating stupid fast again. "Name's Morgan. Just got in with the caravan. I was hoping to ask a few questions. About… what's out there."
They looked up at me openly, weighing my clothes, my guns, the robot at my back.
"Out where?" one of the women asked.
"Further east," I said. "Toward… the city. Forts. Bunkers. Places smart people don't go unless they're forced."
The older man snorted. "Then you're either not smart or already forced," he said. "Which is it?"
"Workin' that out," I said. "But I'd rather be stupid with good information than stupid and blind."
That got a chuckle.
They made room on the log. I sat, Claptrap standing just behind me like a silent, boxy shadow.
I listened as they started to talk—about a raider gang that ambushed travelers down by a collapsed overpass, about a place they called "Glow Pit" that no one walked near at night, about the way storms rolled in hotter. About a rumor that Diamond City's mayor being racist against ghouls.
Places. Names. Threats.
Stuff the game never told me. The Commonwealth wasn't just what I'd watched. That much was clear.
For now, I stayed. I listened. I let Pike's Crossing teach me what it could.
The road and everything waiting on it, could have me later. I found a quiet spot on a dead tire near the inner wall and let myself sit down before my knees made the choice for me.
The noise of Pike's Crossing rolled around me, voices, clank of metal, someone arguing about the price of clean water but it all blurred into background. I was still chewing on what I'd heard.
A raider ambush three miles south.
A nest of "big green bastards" someone swore had moved into an old brewery.
And the Glowing Sea.
"Whole place is cursed," the old man by the fire had said. "RAD storms that will kill you fast. Rivers that glow. My cousin's cousin said he saw a ghoul out there three hundred feet tall, walkin' through the haze like a god."
Three hundred feet was stupid. Even for Fallout. But the way they'd said it, half joking, half scared, stuck.
If even a tenth of that was true, it was still bad.
I let my elbows rest on my knees, hands hanging. Claptrap stood just off my right shoulder like a very patient lamppost, optic slowly tracking people as they passed.
That's when my Pip-Boy flashed.
A little blink at the edge of my eye, then the soft buzz on my wrist. I glanced down, half expecting some warning about rads or a loose cable.
Instead:
LEVEL UP – 3
"Oh," I murmured. "Right. That's a thing."
I tapped the dial. The screen shifted from the normal status display to the progression page and for a second I just stared.
"Make up your mind," I muttered.
The old layout—the one that looked more like New Vegas, neat little perk list—was gone. In its place was a big chart, a familiar mess of bubbles laid out in rows and columns. STR to LCK along the top. Perks stacked under each.
Fallout 4's perk chart.
With a Vault Girl waving at me from the bottom corner. Ponytail. Hands on hips. Looking Smug.
"Of course you'd change your mind after I got used to the other one," I grumbled under my breath.
A little message box sat at the top:
> PROGRESSION MODEL SELECTED: FO4 STYLE
1 POINT AVAILABLE
"Great," I said. "One point and too many places to put it." I thought about all the perks I could pick or if I wanted to increase my basic stats.
I flicked through the SPECIAL line, almost on autopilot. The numbers stared back at me:
STR: 1
PER: 8
END: 2
CHA: 7
INT: 10
AGI: 6
LCK: 4
Intelligence showed a tiny (MAX) tag next to the ten. When I tried to move the point over it anyway, the Pip-Boy gave an annoyed little error chirp.
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Can't fix smart with more smart. Got it."
If I was honest, the part of me that had spent years stuck in a bed wanted to dump everything into Agility and never be tired again. The part that had nearly died from a cough that never really went away wanted Endurance.
I thought about the walk here. The weight of the musket. The way my lungs still burned if I pushed too hard. The fact that the Commonwealth didn't care how clever I was if a stray round punched through my ribs.
"Big girl pants," Karma had said before, "Fine," I agreed. "Big girl hearts and lungs, too."
I nudged the point over to Endurance and confirmed.
The number blinked:
END: 2 → 3
Nothing exploded. No choir sang. But there was a moment—a tiny shift inside my chest, like my breathing found a slightly deeper gear. I took a slow inhale and it… felt like i could breath deeper. Hard to tell if that was real or just my brain being dramatic, but it felt like something.
"Okay," I said quietly. "Less squishy by one."
The Pip-Boy wasn't done.
Another notification slid up from the bottom of the screen, different color, like it wanted me paying attention.
> PERK EVOLUTION: STARBORN TOUCHED → STARBORN IMMUNITY
My stomach did a flip.
I tapped it open.
The old perk icon updated—the stylized little Vault Girl that used to just stand there with stars around her now stood in a hazy glow, hand on her hip, the other held out against a wave of green radiation lines that broke around her like water.
STARBORN IMMUNITY
Text scrolled underneath:
> You've been rewritten at the smallest level by something that isn't from here.
Your body no longer cares about things that make wastelanders wither.
• Immune to all diseases
• Immune to radiation and rad poisoning
• Immune to chem addiction and withdrawals
• +25% resistance to poison
I read it twice.
"Holy sh—" I caught myself, glanced around, and finished quieter. "Holy hell."
Immune to rads.
I thought about the Glowing Sea story again. About rad storms killing people. About traders talking about rad levels like weather, about how you'd need entire suits and drugs and prayers to walk through certain patches.
I pictured myself standing in that kind of storm, Geiger counter screaming, and my body just… not caring. Like standing in the rain.
I looked at my own hands. Freckles, faint ink stain near the thumb knuckle, a little tremor still left over from nerves.
"You don't look immortal," I told them.
Disease, too. No more coughing in some backroom because someone had been sick and nobody could afford proper meds. No more fear of some bug wiping me out in the middle of nowhere. No chem hooks, either. I could still get high, but the crash and the cravings wouldn't sink claws into me.
All of that on top of a third point in Endurance.
Still not hard to kill if someone shot me in the face. But harder to wear down.
There was a little tab at the bottom of the perk description. I flicked it open out of habit.
> FURTHER NOT POSSIBLE
"Good to know," I murmured.
Claptrap shifted, servos whirring a little. I glanced up. No one was close enough to see the screen, but a couple of locals watched me watching my wrist, eyebrows raised like they thought I was just very into old tech.
I thumbed the display back to the normal status page. This wasn't something I could explain. "Oh yeah, my stats went up and the goddess who placed me here apparently paid off my medical debt forever" didn't fit casual conversation.
I leaned back a little on the tire, letting my shoulders rest against the cool rubber.
Endurance 3.
Intelligence stuck at 10.
Starborn Immunity instead of just "touched."
On the FO4 chart, a whole forest of perks waited. Toughness. Life Giver. Science! and Hacker, but that one didnt make sense as I already had the natural born hacker perk, unless it could stack? I'd worry about level 4 when I got there.
Right now, I had one more layer between me and the wasteland's slow deaths. Not much against bullets, but big against everything else.
"Three hundred feet," I muttered, thinking of the ghoul story again. "Sure, lads. Maybe it's just a big rock and too many rads."
Even if it wasn't, that was later me's problem.
I closed my eyes for a second and just… checked in with my own body. No ache in my bones that wasn't earned. No phantom hospital tastes in the back of my throat. Just the regular road-tired and the buzz of a day that hadn't killed me.
The Pip-Boy sat quiet on my wrist, screen dark again, like nothing had happened.
Ten was the max. I couldn't push Intelligence any higher, not with this thing. If I wanted to get smarter, really smarter, I'd have to do it the old-fashioned way, books, experience, maybe some stupid RimWorld brain surgery way down the line.
I could live with that.
A shadow fell across me. I opened my eyes.
One of the kids from earlier stood there, thin and dust-streaked, staring at Claptrap with big eyes.
"Is he yours?" the kid asked, nodding at the Protectron.
"Aye," I said. "He is."
"He looks funny," the kid said, serious.
"He works," I said. "That's all that matters."
The kid nodded like that was deep wisdom and wandered off again.
I watched them go, then pushed myself up off the tire. My legs felt steady. My heart was still beating too fast, but that was nerves, not weakness.
Electricity research hummed at the edge of my attention, slow and steady.
Somewhere out there was a bunker near Fort Hagen, underused and waiting. Somewhere further out was the Glowing Sea, with its storms and its stupid tall tales about giant ghouls.
Still scared. Still going anyway.
I brushed the seat of my jumpsuit, patted Claptrap's arm once, and stepped back into the flow of the settlement. There were more questions to ask. More lies to sort from truth. More pieces to collect before I went off-road for good.
The Pip-Boy sat warm on my wrist, quiet for now.
The world wouldn't stay quiet for long.