Fallout 4: Rebirth At Vault 81

If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead, be sure to check out my Patreon!!!

Go to https://www.patreon.com/Tang12

___________________________

He dropped the notebook onto the table and looked at the others, one by one. "Then let's make sure they learn," he said, voice like iron. "I'm not for sale. And I'm nobody's goddamn asset." The wind howled outside, but inside the Republic's capital, a storm was already brewing—one that wouldn't pass quietly.

The Commonwealth never truly slept. It simply changed faces when the sun dipped beneath the cracked and poisonous horizon. In the darkness, the Wasteland shed its skin — honest traders packed away their stalls, torchlights went out in settlement courtyards, and children were called in from rusted porches. And somewhere in that silence, the underworld took its place.

Out in the shadows beyond the Freemasons Republic's glistening torchlight — in the ash-covered districts of old Medford, the sewer hatches of Southie, and the chemically-stained backrooms of Malden — the scavvers, raiders, smugglers, and half-mad fortune chasers were already talking.

"Five thousand caps."

That was the magic number. Spoken like a whisper through crumbling concrete alleys, shared over lukewarm rotgut in broken bar counters, and passed through couriers who didn't give a damn about flags or causes. Caps talked louder than ideologies in these places. And this time, they were talking about a man named Sico.

Not the President. Not the war hero. Not the builder of Sanctuary's gleaming towers.

Just Sico. The guy who someone tried — and failed — to put in the ground or sell to the highest bidder.

And now that same man was offering 5,000 to anyone who brought him a name.

Then in an underground fight club lit by flickering industrial lamps and the buzz of poorly-rigged neon, a raider named Snitch leaned against a wall coated in cigarette tar and dried blood, ears perked as two heavily inked bruisers argued near the ring.

"You hear that broadcast last night?" one of them growled, wrapping his knuckles in tape, stained dark with someone else's blood.

"The one from that Freemason prick?" the other said, lighting a filthy stub of Jet-laced tobacco. "He sounded pissed."

Snitch grinned with broken teeth, sliding over with a twitch in his eye. "Word on the wire says he's shellin' out caps. Not just any job — five. thousand. Whole Commonwealth's gonna be sniffin' like mutts."

"You really think someone's gonna rat on a hit like that?" the bruiser scoffed.

"Depends who was behind it," Snitch murmured, glancing around. "I know this wasn't no Red Tourette gig. She's been layin' low since Quincy were taken back by Minutemen who now became the Freemasons Republic. And Sinjin? He's dead — I saw his skull mounted outside Goodneighbor."

"Then who?"

Snitch leaned in, voice hushed. "Could be a ghost op. A contractor outfit with ties to Brotherhood gear but not Brotherhood itself. I heard talk of a rogue Knight out near University Point. Name's Talbot, ex-Intel division, got booted after some black-market recon scandal. Maybe he didn't get out — maybe he just went private."

The bruisers exchanged looks. The caps were tempting, but messing with ex-Brotherhood… that was poison, slow and brutal.

Still, the name was something. A clue.

And in the Wasteland, clues got bought.

Meanwhile, across the broken avenues of the eastern district, Hancock's city was buzzing. The Third Rail's jazz was quieter tonight, drowned by murmurs. Smoky shadows huddled near the old bar, passing along theories with their drinks.

"Whole damn bar's talking about it," said Daisy, the Ghoul merchant, as she slid a bottle of liquor onto the counter. "He survived two hits — missile and a sniper. That don't happen by accident."

A slouched man in patched leather armor took a pull from his bottle. "I heard the sniper had a Brotherhood laser recon scope. That ain't standard wastelander gear. Sico said it on the broadcast — Brotherhood tech with off-freq relay signals. That means someone's buying or salvaging high-end crap."

"Could be a defector," Fahrenheit, Hancock second in command who take the reins while Hancock at Sanctuary offered from her perch. "Or maybe a Brotherhood trader selling out of Fort Hagen. There's a few old bunkers out there, still rigged with comms."

Daisy raised an eyebrow. "You think it's a Brotherhood job?"

Fahrenheit's grin faded. "I think someone wants to send a message. But they missed, and now the message is ours to send."

Around them, the bar nodded. Goodneighbor had its issues with the Freemasons Republic — too structured, too clean, too "civil." But assassination? Kidnapping? That reeked of the Old World. And people around here had a real hate for the Old World.

By dawn, Diamond City was alive with the buzz. Not the usual chatter of crop prices or power shortages — but raw, political outrage.

"I don't care what you think of Sico's Republic," yelled a grizzled vendor, arms waving wildly as he stood atop a milk crate near the noodle stand. "Someone tried to take out a leader, and I'll be damned if that doesn't mean something! What if next time it's Mayor Danny? Or me? Or you?!"

Some scoffed. Others nodded. More than a few had already visited Diamond City Radio, where the Sico broadcast now looped every half hour — as promised.

Travis had never seen his little studio this crowded. Settlers. Caravan guards. Even some traders from as far off as the Glowing Sea outskirts were pressing in, eager to hear the raw, unfiltered transmission again. No politics. No spin. Just rage and warning.

And not everyone was listening for the reward.

Some were listening because they'd lost something to this Wasteland — a brother in a raider hit, a daughter vanished from a caravan, a friend who left on patrol and never came back.

Now their President, the one man who'd built the Freemasons Republic out of ash and shattered bones, had nearly been taken too.

And that was one attack too many.

While the underworld hunted rumors for profit, the heart of the Republic burned with purpose.

In a small workshop on the east end of Sanctuary, a boy no older than sixteen flipped through scattered pages of Brotherhood transmission logs — stolen years ago by his father from an outpost raid. He'd never had reason to decode them. Until now.

Now, the name "asset" haunted his mind.

Now, he scoured each page for relay signals, sniper frequencies, deployment timestamps.

In the radio maintenance room, a group of retired Minutemen cleaned their rifles for the first time in months. One of them, a hunched woman with gray hair and a voice like rusted tin, muttered, "They thought they could steal our soul, right outta the truck."

Another nodded. "But we ain't no caravan. We're a damn Republic."

Outside the town hall, children practiced slingshot drills. Not because anyone told them to. Because they'd seen the look in their parents' eyes. The anger. The fear. And the fire behind it.

The steel leviathan known as the Prydwen groaned as the high-altitude winds pressed against its reinforced hull. From the Commonwealth below, it looked like a hanging blade — ominous, unyielding, and draped in clouds. But inside the Brotherhood of Steel's flagship, the air was heavier than the pressure outside. Not with altitude, but with tension.

In the command chamber just aft of the bridge, Elder Arthur Maxson stood rigid at the head of the long war table. The room buzzed faintly with the hum of holoterminals and the occasional flicker of static from a wall-mounted relay screen. Flanked by his most trusted officers — Paladin Danse, Knight-Captain Kells, Proctor Ingram, Doctor Madison Li, and Proctor Quinlan — the room felt less like a war council and more like the waiting room of an approaching storm.

Maxson's jaw was tight, his fingers curled into the edge of the steel desk, knuckles pale.

"Twice," he said at last, his voice low, controlled. "They failed. And now he's broadcasting our weapons specs like we're a caravan of half-drunk Gunners."

Paladin Danse, arms folded across his broad chest, stood closest to Maxson, the lines in his forehead deeper than usual. "With all due respect, Elder, there's no confirmation that the Brotherhood authorized those attacks. But it's undeniable — the sniper used Brotherhood tech. I reviewed the footage myself."

"He's not wrong," Proctor Ingram interjected, the mechanical hiss of her exoskeletal legs quiet beneath her coat. "That scope was a Mk. VII Recon laser optic. Calibrated for long-range pulse feedback. That gear's locked behind Level Four clearance."

"And yet someone used it to try and assassinate the leader of the Freemasons Republic," Quinlan added grimly, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Which means either we've got a defector… or someone has access to our restricted salvage channels."

Kells narrowed his eyes, his voice clipped and cold. "Or someone inside our ranks is dealing under the table."

"No one in this Brotherhood would be so bold," Maxson snapped.

Silence. It lingered like smoke, bitter and slow to fade.

Then Doctor Madison Li, always the one to find the fault lines others refused to acknowledge, leaned forward, her voice firm. "Arthur, the Prydwen itself was built from recycled tech. Every system on this ship has a history. Scopes go missing, components are traded, sometimes even before they're inventoried. Are we absolutely certain our stockpiles haven't been compromised?"

Maxson's gaze sharpened toward her. "Doctor Li, this is not the time to question our internal systems."

"No," she countered evenly, "this is exactly the time."

A few tense seconds passed before Danse cleared his throat. "Let's assume the worst. Someone — either Brotherhood or ex-Brotherhood — is involved. The question becomes: why target Sico? The missile strike failed, the sniper strike failed. Now he's sending his own message."

Quinlan nodded solemnly. "A message received by half the Commonwealth by now. Five thousand caps to name the one who tried to kill him. The settlements are awake, the underworld is awake, and unfortunately, many now associate us with the attempt — whether we sanctioned it or not."

Maxson turned slowly toward the holographic map flickering beside the table. The Prydwen's position was marked in red over the Boston Airport, but below it, pulses of green indicated broadcast towers the Freemasons Republic had recently claimed or fortified. Sanctuary. The Castle. Starlight. Finch Farm. Even Graygarden was under Republic control now.

He exhaled through his nose. "He's consolidating influence. This isn't just retaliation. This is political warfare."

Proctor Ingram walked over to the wall terminal, typing a series of commands. A security feed flickered into life — a captured broadcast loop of Sico's voice, raw with anger, daring the Commonwealth to rise and uncover his would-be killers.

"You can hear it in his voice," she said. "He's not bluffing. He's turning this whole incident into a unifier."

"We underestimated him," Danse muttered, more to himself than the others.

Maxson scowled. "We've underestimated him from the beginning. First with Sanctuary. Then with the Castle. Then the Quincy Corridor. Every time, he turns chaos into unity. He weaponizes survival into legitimacy."

"And he does it without using our tactics," Quinlan added. "No forced conscription. No tech hoarding. Just community infrastructure and charisma. The man's practically rewriting the post-war rulebook."

"He's dangerous," Kells growled. "Not just politically. Militarily. If he starts arming settlements with energy weapons like the Castle, Sanctuary, and Minutemen Plaza half of garrison… we're talking about a civilian population capable of repelling full strike teams."

"Then we cut the head off the movement," Maxson said flatly.

Danse turned sharply. "Elder—"

But Maxson raised a hand. "I'm not suggesting we try again. I'm saying we contain him. We find the leak in our ranks first. If someone did act without orders, I want them in irons. But if this was external — a contractor with access to Brotherhood tech — we hunt them down."

"And if Sico finds them first?" Li asked.

Maxson's expression hardened. "Then we prepare for war."

The room was quiet again. Except this time, there was a pulse in the air. Not uncertainty, but inevitability.

Danse broke the silence, his voice softer now. "If we move against him publicly, the settlements will turn. Even those who still fear us. He's built something real out there. If we start cracking down without cause… we'll be no better than the Enclave."

"Paladin," Kells barked. "Mind your tongue."

But Maxson didn't scold Danse. Instead, he turned his back to the war table, facing the observation window. The morning sun had just begun to rise, a smog-hazed gold bleeding across the horizon. Somewhere down there, Sico was walking again — breathing, fighting, rallying.

"I remember when we first heard about him," Maxson said quietly. "A stranger with tech we didn't recognize. Came from Vault 81. Then rebuild Sanctuary from wreckage. We called him a curiosity."

Li folded her arms. "Then a rival. Then a threat."

"Now," Maxson said, "he might be something else."

Bang.

The silence shattered as the steel doors swung open.

A Knight saluted from the threshold, his helmet under one arm, sweat streaked across his brow. "Elder! Transmission from Fort Strong. A scav team recovered a Brotherhood beacon. Repeating SOS. It was attached to a recon rifle with a scorched scope. Serial tag reads… B-457-A3."

Ingram paled. "That's ours. That's an off-books prototype I designed for the Black Cell program. Supposed to be mothballed."

Maxson's fists tightened. "Then someone reopened the case."

Li moved quickly toward the holoterminal, hands flying across keys. Quinlan helped, both of them cross-referencing logs and deployment rosters. Within moments, a name lit up on the screen.

TALBOT, GRAYSON.

Former Intel Recon Operative. Suspended for unauthorized asset extraction. Declared MIA.

A file flickered open — a black-and-white image of a sharp-faced man with cybernetic implants across his jaw and temple. Eyes like scorched ice. Burn scar down the left cheek.

Danse inhaled sharply. "I remember him. He vanished during a recon sweep of the Glowing Sea. Took experimental kit with him. We assumed he died out there."

Quinlan shook his head. "He didn't die. He went freelance."

Maxson stared at the screen.

"Sico was right," he muttered. "It was Brotherhood tech. Not by our hand — but by someone who knew how to use it. Someone we failed to stop."

Danse stepped forward. "Then we have a chance to clean this up before it gets worse. Let me lead a covert team. We track Talbot. Cut him off before Sico finds him first."

Li glanced up from the terminal. "If Talbot talks, and the Republic gets a recording, we lose every shred of moral high ground."

"No," Maxson said. "We don't just lose ground. We lose the future."

He turned, locking eyes with each of his officers.

"We find Talbot. We silence him. We scrub every trace of this gear from the Commonwealth. And if Sico still comes for us after that… then we face him on open ground."

Kells gave a nod. "I'll prep the intercept team. We'll start at University Point. That was Talbot's last known shadowing zone."

"Ingram, Li — scrub the tech. I want serials erased and bunkers re-locked. Quinlan, vet every Knight and Scribe with access to Black Cell gear. If someone else is dirty, I want names."

Maxson walked back to the table. For a moment, his fingers hovered over the intercom switch.

Then he pressed it.

"All hands," his voice boomed across the Prydwen, "this is Elder Maxson. We have confirmed a security breach involving Brotherhood reconnaissance technology. All deployment orders are suspended until further notice. Security protocols to Level Six. Eyes open. Loyalties tested. The Brotherhood endures."

He cut the channel.

Then, more quietly: "But only if we act fast."

Outside, the Prydwen began to shift — engines warming, decks stirring as its soldiers moved like gears in an ancient war machine.

Beneath the scorched surface of the Commonwealth, past the surface wars and the righteous rhetoric of steel, the Institute thrummed with sterile perfection. Smooth metallic walls curved with surgical precision. The floors gleamed with a polish that spoke more to discipline than decor. The air was dry, cold, exact. It was a place of pure control — where even rebellion was simulated before it occurred.

Inside the Council Hall, lit in cool, bluish-white, Father — Shaun — stood beside Justin Ayo and Nora. The three faced a transparent wall that overlooked the bio-engineering labs below. Rows of Gen-3 synths stood motionless in their charging alcoves, like mannequins with secrets.

But all eyes were fixed on the lone man standing opposite them at the command terminal — tall, armored in pieces of salvaged Brotherhood power frame, but with the unmistakable glint of Institute tech grafted into his skull and spine. The man known once in the Brotherhood's corners as Grayson Talbot.

He was lean, gaunt, but there was a wired tension to him, like a creature engineered for violence. His left eye flickered with an artificial blue iris — feeding live data into a neural HUD that only he could see. His voice, when it came, was dry and clinical.

"They were ready. Too ready."

Shaun said nothing, only folded his arms behind his back. Ayo, however, scowled.

"You were given precise coordinates. Sico's return route was cross-verified through satellite tracking and compromised Minutemen relays. You had an entire raider division ready to engage. What went wrong?"

Talbot's jaw tensed. "We underestimated him. Again."

He tapped a few commands into the Institute interface with ease — his synth implants synching with the system seamlessly. A holoprojection shimmered to life in front of them — showing a grainy visual reconstruction of the failed engagement: a Humvee spiraling from a roadside explosion, the scorched crater blooming into frame. Then the gunfight that followed — Raiders swarming in a semi-circle formation, pressing through the brush with heavy fire. And at the center…

Sico.

Wounded. Disoriented. Bleeding — but moving like a ghost in the woods. His assault rifle lit the trees in staccato flashes, his voice barking orders through the comms even as bullets tore bark from trunks.

Then the moment.

Talbot rewound the footage.

A blur — Corporal Jack. The soldier throwing himself into the line of fire as the sniper scope flashed across the treeline. A half-second later: the explosion of red mist.

"The sniper was clean," Talbot growled. "Distance, elevation, trajectory. But Sico wasn't standing still. That soldier… he wasn't supposed to be there."

Nora looked down.

She knew Jack. Not well, but enough to know he was loyal. And now dead. For her. For Sico. Her fingers twitched at her sides, but she said nothing. She couldn't.

Inside her, though, a wave of nausea rolled beneath her ribs. She was caught in a vice — surrounded by people who trusted her here, who believed she was one of them. But every moment they planned Sico's death, she felt her pulse tighten in her throat.

Father stepped closer to the image. His face, as ever, was unreadable — eyes clear, distant. Yet under the surface there was something colder than usual. Not rage. Not disappointment.

Calculation.

"So… the missile didn't kill him. The sniper didn't kill him. The ambush failed," he said. "That makes twice we've misjudged him. And what's worse…"

Talbot turned off the projection, but the implication hung in the air like a guillotine.

"…he's turned it into a rallying cry."

Justin Ayo stepped forward. "The Commonwealth is full of fools who need someone to believe in. Give them a target, and they forget who's really in control. But if that belief spreads… if more settlements take his side…"

"Then we'll have more than ideological rot," Shaun finished. "We'll have open rebellion. Even now, many of the synths who fled over the last two years found sanctuary under the Freemasons Republic. And if his influence spreads to Diamond City, or worse — the Cambridge Circuit — we'll lose the outer edge of our supply buffer."

Talbot cracked his neck, the cybernetics at his jaw twitching with the motion. "I can still fix this. I need better equipment. No raiders this time. No distractions. Just me and a kill zone."

"No," Shaun said sharply. "We won't be trying again. Not like that."

Talbot flinched. "Sir—?"

"You've already made contact," Shaun said, stepping back toward his chair. "He now knows there is someone hunting him. And if you strike again, he'll connect the tech to the Institute. The Brotherhood already suspects him of propaganda. The last thing we want is for them to realize someone else has a stake in this war."

Justin nodded. "The moment he knows we're involved, he becomes a martyr. Then every farmer with a laser musket will start blaming the Institute for every dust storm and radroach."

Talbot frowned, his mechanical eye twitching again. "Then what's the alternative? We let him continue consolidating power?"

Father glanced briefly at Nora. Just for a moment. A flicker in his gaze. Testing her, like always.

"We wait. Observe. And when the time comes… we dismantle him not with bullets. But with truth."

Ayo blinked. "You mean a smear?"

Shaun smiled faintly. "He's built his image on trust. On unity. On being the man who brings order without tyranny. All we need to do is break that illusion."

A pause.

"Do you believe he has secrets, Mr. Talbot?"

Talbot shrugged. "Everyone does. But Sico? He's clean. Too clean."

"Exactly," Shaun said. "Which makes it a lie."

Nora felt the blood drain from her face.

Not just because of what they were saying. But because… she knew they were right. The Institute didn't waste energy on smears unless they had something. Or someone willing to invent it.

She remained still as a statue. Even when Shaun turned to her next.

"And you, Mother," he said, smiling that strangely warm smile he reserved only for her. "You've been… close to him. What's your read?"

The moment was a trap. She knew it. The way he phrased it. The weight behind the question.

But she had played this game long enough to know how to deflect.

"He's intelligent," she said carefully. "Knows how to inspire people. But he doesn't trust easily. He guards his inner circle like a vault door. That makes him vulnerable to misinformation."

Shaun nodded. "Excellent."

Talbot paced back toward the central monitor. "I'll need access to Sublevel D's archives. If we're going to frame him, we need a paper trail. The kind the public won't question."

"You'll get it," Ayo confirmed. "But you're to remain under blackout. No transmissions. No new movement in the field. You're compromised, Grayson."

The way he said the name — as if it didn't belong to him anymore — made something ripple beneath the synth's skin.

"I was built to be in the field."

"You were built to serve the Institute," Ayo corrected.

Shaun raised a hand. "Enough. Talbot will return to Level Nine for now. Adjustments and debriefing. Justin, handle the tech audit."

Talbot hesitated — then nodded, slowly. He stepped back into the lift at the rear of the room, its doors hissing closed.

Once he was gone, the hum of the room softened.

Then Father turned to Nora. "He worries me."

She looked at him, masking everything. "Why?"

"He's efficient," Shaun said. "But driven. Vengeful. That makes him unpredictable. And we cannot afford loose ends."

"He believes in the mission," Ayo said.

Shaun nodded, but his voice was quiet now. "Yes. But whose mission?"

Nora stood very still.

If Shaun suspected something about her… if even an ounce of that suspicion was aimed at her…

"Father," she said calmly, "If I may — Sico may be stronger than we expected, but he's still a man. Not invincible. He bleeds. He doubts. That makes him beatable."

Shaun studied her for a moment.

And then, to her relief, he smiled again.

"You always were good at reading people, Nora."

She smiled back.

But inside, her chest was a steel cage rattling with secrets.

Sico was alive. Wounded, yes. But not broken. She couldn't tell him what happened, not now — not with Shaun watching her every breath. But she would find a way. Somehow.

________________________________________________

• 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:-