You have a wrinkle in your brain, and you’re losing time. You walked from Primm to Vegas, but you don’t remember it. You stood in a lobby for an hour, but it passed in a blur. Your only dreams are of a timer, ticking down, down, down.
There is a madman living on the outskirts of Novac. The townspeople avoid him, but you should stop and listen. He will tell you of the rockets and the Nightkin. He knows where she went and who sold her. Like Cassandra of Troy, he only tells the truth - but no one else will ever believe him.
Vault 22 is full of monsters. They leap at you, snarling from the fetid greenery, but you notice some are smaller than the others. Look more closely, and you can make out the remnants of clothing. Scraps of pink rag that were once a small dress. A child’s tennis shoe.
“Well, back to the tomb,” he says, and he means it as a joke, but it starts to keep you up at night. There are many tombs in the Mojave - bunkers full of corpses, dead minds trapped in vats, skeletons in shacks that no one enters. You picture your face, glowing pale in a Securitron, patrolling your tomb.
Deep underground, a war is raging. Men in jumpsuits are hoarding guns, launching grenades, desperate in their fight for food. The door is locked. Outside the Vault, the sun rises, illuminating miles of verdant farmland. The door is locked.
A woman died in Novac, and no one seemed to notice. You make a pilgrimage to the bridge where her body rots in the sun. You wonder why no one mourned her. You wonder if they will mourn you.
You can feel the bullet tear through your lung, and your vision dims as you die. When you awaken, you are miles away. You ask your companion where the raiders went, how you survived, but according to him, the last three days never happened.
You have a wrinkle in your brain, and you’re losing time.
2087
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