Cold.
That was the first sensation. Not the chill of a winter breeze or icy water—but a deep, suffocating freeze, the kind that seeps into the marrow and whispers of death. Between the cracks of unconsciousness, Nora Wolf stirred.
Her thoughts swam sluggishly. Her body, still caught in stasis, wouldn't move. Then—
Hisssssss. A pressurized exhale. The pod's mechanisms kicked to life.
Light stabbed at her eyes. The cryopod's glass face slid open, releasing a mist of cold vapor. Air rushed in—stale, recycled, metallic. She gasped reflexively, coughing as she tumbled forward and hit the steel floor.
Pain brought clarity.
Nora braced herself with trembling arms, her muscles barely responding. Her Vault 111 jumpsuit clung damp against her chilled skin, her heart pounding in uneven bursts. The cryo chamber was eerily silent. Only the hum of failing systems and the dripping of condensation filled the void.
Her head throbbed.
The last thing she remembered clearly was the warmth of home… Shaun cooing softly in his crib… her husband's arms around her… and then—the blinding light. The alarms. Vault-Tec personnel yelling for everyone to get inside. And then…
A gunshot.
She froze.
Not from cold this time, but memory.
Clutching a nearby terminal for balance, Nora staggered to her feet. She stumbled to the cryopod beside hers, drawn to it by instinct.
There he was.
Her husband. Frozen inside. His body preserved in deathly stillness, arms forever reaching out in a final, helpless gesture. His expression was peaceful—too peaceful. But she remembered.
The man with the gun. The struggle. The flash.The sound.
Her vision blurred.
"I'm so sorry..."
It took everything not to scream.
Her knees buckled, but she caught herself.
Now wasn't the time to mourn.
===============================================================
The Vault was mostly silent.
Many cryopods had failed. Inside some were mummified corpses, still strapped into their icy coffins. Others blinked red warnings—"LIFE SUPPORT OFFLINE." The experiment was clear now. This wasn't preservation. It was imprisonment. A long-term cryogenic study. Vault-Tec hadn't planned to save them—they planned to watch them decay.
Only she had survived.
Her footsteps echoed through rust-streaked corridors as she moved toward the exit. The air smelled of mildew and ozone. The overhead lights flickered, casting long, shifting shadows.
That's when she heard it.
A click-clack on the metal floor. Then another.
Nora froze.
From the shadows emerged something grotesque—a radroach, nearly the size of a housecat, its carapace glistening with radiation-born mutations. Its antennae twitched as it hissed and lunged.
She screamed, stumbling back, and grabbed the only weapon nearby: a rusted Vault-Tec security baton lying beside a collapsed skeleton.
The radroach hissed again and scuttled forward, its mandibles snapping.
She swung.
The baton struck it with a sickening crunch, sending ichor splattering across the wall. It twitched once and died.
Nora backed away, panting, heart pounding.
More came.
They emerged from behind crates, from wall vents, from cracks in the floor—three of them this time, all hungry, all fast.
She fought.
She struck wildly, desperately, the baton swinging with awkward, half-frozen arms. One latched onto her leg—its bite sharp and searing—until she smashed it against the wall. Another leapt and she fell, crushing it beneath her knee as she drove the baton down again and again.
Breathing hard, bruised and bleeding, she stood over the twitching corpses.
The Vault was not empty. It had changed.
Even in here, radiation had warped nature into something hostile.
She stared at her trembling hands, then down at the baton slick with gore. The fear that had seized her began to calcify into something harder. She would survive this. She had to.
===============================================================
Vault 111 was supposed to be safety. A shelter. A second chance.
Instead, it had become a tomb.
Nora moved slowly through its rusting halls, gathering what she could: a battered Vault-Tec security baton, a still-working 10mm pistol, a few stimpaks. Most terminals were fried, but the ones still functioning told her the truth: the experiment was never about preservation. They were test subjects—frozen to study long-term cryogenic effects. Vault-Tec never planned to wake them.
She was awake only because the power had finally started to fail.
Alone.
The word echoed in her skull like a gunshot.
She found a mirror in one of the dormant restrooms and stared.
She hardly recognized the face that looked back. Her black hair was flattened from stasis, her skin pale, her eyes sunken with exhaustion. But behind the hollow exterior burned a small ember of something fierce. Not anger. Not yet.
Resolve.
She patched the bleeding bite on her thigh, sterilizing it as best she could. Her hands moved mechanically now—numb, but steady.
One final terminal log stood out among the rest:
"If anyone finds this, we failed. They left us down here to rot. I can only hope someone survives. God help them if they do."
Nora didn't linger.
She activated the control panel. The massive Vault door groaned, screeched, then rolled open in a deafening roar. Blinding sunlight poured in, and she shielded her face instinctively.
The world waited.
What greeted her wasn't earth as she remembered.
The sun burned above a grey, ash-choked sky. Trees stood blackened and broken. The breeze carried the stench of decay and metal. Once-lush hills were now skeletal ridges of scorched stone and cracked pavement.
From the cliff, Nora looked down at Sanctuary Hills—or what was left of it.
Her knees nearly gave out.
The neighborhood was gutted. Her home, barely standing. The bridge cracked and overgrown. She moved slowly, boots crunching through shattered glass and sun-bleached bones.
Inside her house, the crib lay overturned. Their wedding photo, shattered. Toys covered in dust and mold.
She couldn't cry anymore.
A voice cut through the silence.
"Ma'am? Is that… really you?"
She spun, pistol raised.
A battered Mr. Handy floated toward her, rusted and sputtering. One optic lens flickered weakly.
"Codsworth?" she asked.
"Oh, thank heavens!" The robot's saw arm whirred nervously. "I thought you were dead! The neighborhood, it's been… well… rather messy. I've kept the lawn trimmed, though. Just in case you came home…"
For a moment, she just stared.
Codsworth continued babbling about dinner and chores, trying to hide the digital tremble in his voice. He was damaged, clearly, but something like relief played in his artificial tone.
Nora holstered the pistol. Her hand touched his chassis lightly.
"I'm here," she said softly. "Just… not the same me."
===============================================================
They sat on her old porch—half collapsed—while Codsworth filled in what details he could.
It had been over 200 years.
The bombs had fallen. The government had collapsed. Most people had either died or become… something else. Raiders ruled the wasteland. Radiation storms rolled across the land. The world had changed.
But Shaun—he might still be out there.
Nora clung to that.
In a world drowned in death, that tiny thread of hope was all she had left.
She stood finally, eyes scanning the horizon. Beyond the river, the ruins of Concord shimmered in the heat. Smoke rose from distance. Danger and chaos waited in every direction.
But Nora Wolf wasn't afraid.
She had lost everything once.
She wouldn't let it happen again.