Some of the trees that surrounded the old Robco plant looked rather beautiful. Those that had leaves shone a vibrant green that almost seemed to glow in the morning sun. Drew felt that he could stand there and stare at them for hours. A lot of places out there didn’t have real living flora anymore, at least not in abundance, so it was nice that up here there was a substantial amount of greenery that was growing and thriving.

Still, the beauty was sporadic, trapped between the dead decaying flora that surrounded it. Despite this, it was still a lot more pleasant to look at than most places. It was one of the reasons why Drew felt so at home here in what had once been eastern Washington. It gave him hope for the future even if he wouldn’t be around to see it.

In truth, the trees, and the view were only a distraction from what was really on his mind.

He hadn’t slept much since the encounter. He hadn’t been able to get the Greenclaws out of his head. Every detail of every event as it unfolded kept replaying over and over again. Of how he had observed the place from afar, of how he had headed inside, and how he had been caught.

The smaller one with the lime-green skin had not liked him at all, that much was clear. If it had been on its own, he genuinely believed that he would be dead now. Looking back, he wondered if the smaller one had reacted the way it did because it saw him as a threat? The other one had clearly taken a bit of a liking to him, but what did it mean? Could he approach them now without fear of death or had it shown mercy and let him go with the understanding that he wouldn’t come back?

Drew thought back to his previous encounters. The smaller one was perhaps roughly the right size to be the one that he had seen at the Robco plant the other day, but its reaction had been entirely different. There, it had jumped up on the eave and gawked at him through the glass. At the Mega Stop, on the other hand, it had wanted to tear him apart.

He had this terrible feeling that there were a lot of these creatures. Sarah had already alluded to there being three, one of them being absolutely massive. If the biggest had the same temperament as the smallest then they were all in trouble, and considering a descriptor Sarah had used was ‘building sized’, it was horrifying to even think about.

He honestly wasn’t certain that he could believe that one of them could be that big. He had seen big creatures before, such as a Mirelurk Queen, but from what he knew, they spent most of their time in the water and not stomping around on land.

The question was, could he communicate with them? It was the question that kept ringing through his head. It was a potentially suicidal thought, but there was something about them that intrigued him, the larger one in particular.

Slowly, he shook his head in disgust. He couldn’t believe he was thinking it, but he wanted to see it – no her – again. He wanted to talk to her, try and get to know her. That was if she could even speak. But he was certain he had heard her say “no” when the smaller one had raised its claw to strike him.

It freaked him out, yet the curious part of him needed to know more. He had to understand them, know their motivations, and most of all he wanted to know where they had come from.

He didn’t know if the Greenclaws frequented the Mega Stop but considering how empty it was and the claw marks he had seen on the shelves, they had been there a lot. Now that he had opened the door to the warehouse, they had a whole new set of supplies to abscond with. Not that they couldn’t have gotten in there without him. From their size, he doubted the door or the walls would have been able to stand up to them for long if they wanted to knock them down.

The worst part was that he didn’t feel like he could tell the others, not even Jack or Amy. It had already been two days since the encounter and he felt the time to tell them had already long since passed. As far as they knew, the Greenclaws were nothing but monsters that wanted to kill everything in their path.

Yesterday, they had fixed up another turret, but Drew now felt conflicted. The Greenclaws were definitely not deathclaws. They had shown him mercy and allowed him to flee. They had done the same with Sarah, which told him that they weren’t inherently dangerous to the settlements, though they were still very potentially dangerous to scavengers.

They also clearly understood English. He had asked for his laser rifle back and they had retrieved it without question.

Honestly, he would have preferred it if they had been regular deathclaws. At least he wouldn’t have felt conflicted about the prospect of killing them. As it was, he was having serious second thoughts. It was why he felt like he needed to go back. He had to reach out to them and form a dialogue if possible. He couldn’t destroy them if they didn’t pose an actual threat, especially if they were sentient.

Drew turned away from the window. He needed a distraction, something that would make him think about literally anything else.

After rubbing his eyes, he moved around the desk and left the office, making his way downstairs.

First, he checked the nurse’s office only to find it empty, so he decided to go to the cafeteria. There, he found everyone sitting at one of the many tables. Even Suzy was there, hovering next to Sarah.

The doctor smiled and waved to him. “Hey, there.”

Drew waved back. “Morning.”

“Good morning,” Amy said.

“You’re up late,” Jack added.

“Just been staring out into the wilds,” he said, sitting down at their table.

He wondered if he should tell them about the encounter and how it was affecting him? He quickly pushed the thought out of his mind. He had come here because he wanted to get away from thinking about the Greenclaws. Instead, he put his focus on Sarah, deciding that he wanted to know more about her.

“So, you’re from a vault?” he began.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why’d you leave?”

“Because the vault failed.”

“How?”

She tapped her fingers against the tabletop. It was obvious that it was an uncomfortable subject.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Drew said.

Sarah shook her head. “I… They… There were experiments.”

Drew knew about Vault-Tec and their experimentation. Back when he had still been alive, his father had told him all about it and it sounded barbaric. Why they would do the things they did, Drew couldn’t possibly understand. They were supposed to save humanity, not torture them.

“It was horrible,” Sarah continued as she started to fiddle with her fingers.

“What happened?” Amy asked.

“Was your overseer part of it?” Jack added. “I heard they liked to join in.”

Sarah shook her head. “Our overseer didn’t want anything to do with it. We had no choice, though.”

“Your overseer couldn’t stop it?” Drew asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because the vault was built in such a way that it would stop functioning if we stopped.”

“What was the experiment?” Drew asked.

“It was to do with pressure. To see how we all acted, reacted, and whether we could survive under huge amounts of it.”

“What kind of pressure?” Jack asked.

“Emotional pressure, fatigue, stress, that kind of thing. Random things within the vault would stop working. Sometimes, it was only one or two things, other times entire sections of the vault would shut down. It was programmed into the computers and the components were manufactured in a way so that they would break after a certain amount of use. We were constantly on edge and it had been that way since the doors first shut. Well, not quite. Apparently, the first twenty years went well. After that is when it all started to go haywire.”

Drew wished he could say he was surprised. “That sounds like them from what my dad told me.”

“It was all I ever knew since I was a kid,” Sarah continued. “My parents and grandparents, the same thing. Apparently, it was steadily getting worse, probably so we didn’t get accustomed to it.”

“I suppose you got fed up and left?” Amy said.

“No. That wasn’t what forced us to leave. We couldn’t leave, anyway. The door was sealed and no one knew how to get it open.”

Drew was surprised by that response. “What happened?”

“Well, we managed to reprogram the computer to stop it. It took a long time to figure out how it worked, generations in fact. None of us were computer experts or anything, no one in our vault ever was. Our ancestors were probably selected that way.”

“And what about the faulty components?” Drew asked.

“They were still faulty, but fixing the computer system took a lot of pressure off. Enough so that we could start designing our own replacement components.”

“If you fixed it, how did the vault fail?” Jack asked.

“There was a fail-safe, though it didn’t kick in for months. The computer started shutting down section after section. We couldn’t fix things fast enough. We tried to shut down the whole computer system to stop it as a last resort but that shut down the whole vault. We thought we were gonna die and most of us did. We were trapped, unable to breathe. But we managed to get the door open and what was left of us managed to escape.”

Amy covered her mouth. “That sounds horrible.”

“It was. I’m the only one left. That I know of, at least. We got separated by a group of raiders that attacked us. I don’t know if any of them were able to find each other again, but I never did. I just kept searching, hoping I’d find some of them.”

“Well, you’re safe here,” Drew offered.

“Thanks. But I feel I should tell you something. I was only training to be a doctor back in the vault. I never qualified. Never got the chance.”

Drew reached out and patted the back of her hand. “Don’t worry, you don’t need a qualification to stay. As long as you know what you’re doing.”

“I do and thank you,” she said smiling. “Well, Suzy and I better get back to it. We’re setting up a database, though we are missing a lot of data.”

“What do you need?” Drew asked.

She looked at Suzy. “You wanna tell him?”

“Oui,” the Nanny robot said, nodding her front eye. “We need ze data from ze ’ospital up in Christina Lake.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “If you have a few blank holotapes, then you can probably copy a good chunk of it over.”

“That is a good idea, right Drew?” Amy said. “Though we might not have to go up north. The data might be in the Colville hospital.”

“There might,” Sarah agreed. “Will they give them to us?”

Drew, unfortunately, knew the doctor there. “I doubt it. Not for cheap at least. Good doctor, but a stingy bastard.”

Jack spoke up. “Then the hospital up north is our best bet. There’s plenty of more supplies we could grab while we’re there. Stuff we could keep and even more stuff we could sell.”

“It’s a long walk without Leanne and her truck,” Amy pointed out.

“It is,” Drew agreed. “But Jack’s right. We can beat two birds with one boulder.”

“Stone,” Sarah corrected. “One stone.”

“Whatever the saying is, I’ll do it. Given I can get enough holotapes together.”

“There’s a load in some boxes in the basement,” Jack told him. “They’ve never been written on, so they’re clean.”

Amy added her thoughts. “We could also probably find the server room and just pull the drives. It would be quicker than trying to download the whole thing.”

“That could work,” Drew said, nodding. “Though, old computer drives can be unpredictable when you try and move them. We might end up losing all the data. Robot memory cores might be a better idea. They can hold a lot more data than a holotape and are only slightly bigger. The transfer rate is a helluva lot slower, though. Still, we find the main server room in the hospital, copy the databanks and get out, hopefully with some extra supplies. Dangerous, but worth it.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said with genuine gratitude. “The data will be a huge help.”

“Oui,” Suzy added. “Zhank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Drew said in return with a smile and a nod. “We’ll gather what we’ll need and Jack, Amy, and I will head off tomorrow.”

“All of you?” Sarah asked, suddenly looking concerned. “Will Suzy and I be here alone?”

“We’ll work out the details later. I’ll see if I can fix up another Gutsy and leave it here as security.”

Suzy rose a pincer hand. “Can I go with you?”

Drew frowned. “Why?”

“Because I know where ze server room is and can also get past ze security.”

Drew nodded with a smile. “If you want to come with us, you can. Amy, you can stay here with Sarah.”

“Sure. I didn’t want to go anyway.”

Drew had a feeling she was going to say that. “Then it’s settled. Jack, Suzy, and I head up there with two Gutsies, grab the data and some supplies and come back.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jack said.

“Oui.”

Drew stood up. “I’m going to grab something to eat from the kitchen, find some robot memory cores then fix up a few more of those Gutsies stored in that back room.

“We’ll help,” Amy said.

“Thanks,” Drew said as he made his way into the kitchen.

Today was going to be another busy day, as would tomorrow. But in the end, it would all be worth it.

Deep down, though, Drew couldn’t help but wonder if he would have another encounter with the Greenclaws? He both welcomed and dreaded the thought. His only hope was that if he did, it went even better than the first encounter, though he knew what hope did. It gave false expectations, ones that were easily dashed.

If they managed to get into the hospital, get what they needed and get home alive then it would have been a good day. If not? Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

The rest of the day went quickly. They managed to get two more Gutsies up and running before they all retired for the night, but not before Drew had gathered a small cache of robot memory cores that were found in some boxes in a storage closet.

Thankfully, either due to exhaustion or because he’d been distracted all day, Drew quickly fell asleep, awaking the next morning feeling surprisingly refreshed.

After having some breakfast and grabbing some supplies, Jack, Drew, Suzy, and two of the Gutsies headed out and began their long journey north.

It looked like it was going to be a rather nice, if slightly chilly, day. Drew just hoped it stayed that way.