In his dreams, there are legs, arms, glasses, and a face that feels comfortingly familiar against his quaking fingertips, but no voice. Never a voice. Words fail him in conversations with colleagues, at press conferences, and at board meetings, instilling in him an embarrassment so great it tears the veil of sleep from what remains of his withering visual cortex.
He doesn’t forget them any more, those dreams. Not like he used to, not since the friend-lobotomite made him remember, made him yearn for a time he only ever gets to experience in flashes during restless nights, such as tonight, when the Dome is too silent and his thoughts too loud. He can’t even focus on the jukebox in front of him, its lights flickering on and off in tune with Ella Fitzgerald’s Manhattan—one of many records given to him by the selfless Courier.
“8?” Uncharacteristically apologetic, 0 peeks into his room, thrusting his eye monitors forward in a faceless expression of franticness. “I, uh… I need you to come take a look at something. The security systems are… well…” The other Tank turns, glancing nervously behind him before returning his attention to his colleague.
“Just help me out here, okay? I need to know if what I’m seeing is real, or if my ocu-vis-receptors are on the fritz again.”
Alarmed, 8 abandons his nostalgic daydreams and follows 0 out into the Dome’s main chamber, unsure of what, if anything, he is about to witness.
Nathan had learned the names of the major pre-War research facilities when the Enclave was still strong. Livermore, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Big Mountain, and others. They were the proverbial lost cities of gold to the scientists in Research and Development, all assumed destroyed by the bombs. So, years later, with the Enclave gone and the Institute his new home, when Nathan found out that Big Mountain was intact and its data and experimental prototypes ripe for the picking (if one can survive the crater) and its head scientists still alive (after a fashion), he knew he had to make the attempt to reclaim that old world knowledge.
It wasn’t an easy mission. He still had old government codes and was able to program an access badge that should trick any automated security that he was a high ranking military officer with the appropriate security clearance to be in the facility and access all the buildings. It wouldn’t help against what other threats might be there, but it was a start. For the rest, he had his Enclave scout armor, a few stealth boys, and an experimental high energy rifle.
Cracking into pre-War government and military labs was his specialty back when he was a soldier. This was bigger than anything he’d attempted before, but he was ready. Target one was The Sink. Hopefully it would have a functioning central mainframe with data from all the experiments so he wouldn’t have to go building to building. That, too, was where the surviving scientists were likely to be.
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