A Mailman’s Guide to Hitchhiking Across the Trans-Siberian Railway: FNV X METRO (2024)

#1 - Remember to meet the locals!

The Russian Wasteland is not a safe place to travel alone, so make a few friends while you're there who know the area! A good guide could mean the difference between reaching sanctuary or ending up in some ne'er-do-well's stewpot or a mutant's gullet!

It had been two years since the second battle of Hoover dam, and the man once known as Courier 6 was happy enjoying his retirement.

From courier to merc, arms dealer to pimp, diplomat to explorer, and everything in between, he's done it all. He walked across the ruins of the American West, from the irradiated shores of Los Angeles to ranches of Big Circle to the valleys of Utah, pulled off the grandest heist the world has seen in centuries, dueled tribal warlords, survived lobotomization by deranged Old World scientists, braved the bloody Divide. He broke bread with messianic ghouls, mugged aliens for their tech, fought a flaming bear ghost while high, and killed every manner of man and creature and machine born and built under the sun.

And when war reached its twilight over the Mojave, it was Vickers, with the aid of his own ragtag gang of misfits and rejects, who tipped the scales and shifted the fate of the West forevermore. For when the dust over Hoover Dam settled, it was the ascendant New California Republic that triumphed. Months spent scouting outposts and forts, breaking up spy rings, and assassinating high profile targets proved its worth as the late Caesar's shattered legions finally fled the Mojave with Republic troops nipping at their bloodied heels.

NCR had its day with its pomp and ceremonies and parades. The Imperium was caught on the back foot once more, its armies fleeing across the Colorado River. Their provincial capital in Dry Wells was put to siege for 9 days before a miraculous blast of light sundered its gates, giving the Republic the edge it needed to storm its walls and take the fortress-city.

With their position in the desert undisputed, Kimball declared the construction of more forts along the Colorado while in secret, Rangers were sent across the river to disrupt the Imperium's infrastructure. Ambush caravans, liberate slave camps, use the raided supplies and weapons to train up guerrillas, and raise havoc across Imperial provinces. Rinse and repeat.

Makes him kinda wish he took up that field commission Moore and Crocker offered, if only to join in on the fun.

…Nah. They'd probably send him to some ass-end mountain range on some mad molerat chase, knowing the competency of the standing regime.

Besides, even with the war over, he was more than ready to f*ck off and enjoy his damn retirement.

Now, given his (in)famous reputation among the various denizens and degenerates of the American West, moving about in public was a bit of a hassle. Disgruntled politicians and Brahmin Barons fearing his rising influence in the territories, ravaged raider tribes seeking his head, bounty hunters hoping to cash in a sizable score, or just assassins sent by the various factions he's pissed off over the years; ex-Rangers turned mercs, Imperium hit squads, Brotherhood Questors…people who wouldn't be above going after those close to him if it meant getting a shot at the man himself.

So, as to save everyone's time, he decided to take the simpler approach and fake his own death.

Now, most people would find it difficult to pull off a truly convincing stunt like that. But most people didn't have the full scientific might of the Think Tank behind them. Pulling a body double was the easy part. With the facilities at Big Mountain, flash cloning a mannequin was a piece of cake as well as outfitting it with all of Vickers' usual equipment from its foundries.

The harder part was setting the stage, but even then, it wasn't that much work. All he had to do was let it slip through Contreras that he was planning an expedition North past the Divide into Montana to hunt down some of their rumored intelligent albino deathclaws. Nice folk once you got past the teeth and smell of dried blood. They were kind enough to go along with his plan in exchange for some Old World disco records and a few gallons of zapplesauce. From there, it was just a matter of having some of the pups gnaw at the mannequin a bit before tossing it into one of their abandoned nesting grounds. After that, he had some cosmetic surgery and a haircut done courtesy of the Sink Auto-Doc to set the finishing touches.

Two weeks later, a group of "prospectors" happened to "stumble across" the body. NCR had a whole funeral with military honors. Hsu, Moore, hell, even Kimball even showed up and gave a speech and a whole spiel of Vickers being a "beacon of courage" and a "stalwart defender of democracy". Real patriotic sh*t. His companions, those who still remained, showed up to pay their respects before going their separate ways.

Craig and Rose returned to California to restart Cassidy Caravans. Last he heard of them, they were helping Hanlon run for Governor in Redding. He made sure to send a few sizable donations their way. ED-E had also tagged along with them once the Followers extracted the data they wanted from his logs and upgraded his systems. His counterpart in the Divide used the telemetry data copied over to build more Eyebots for Vickers' little side project down in Hopeville.

Lily decided to establish an orphanage in Westside, much to the initial trepidation of its inhabitants. To everyone's surprise however, the former commando took to the job like a fish to water, and the kids adored her as much as she did them. Arcade had set up his own clinic nearby and made sure Lily took her medicines so as to not go on a schizophrenic rampage. Slavers got wise and left the place well alone after he sent the first few heads back scalped and clipped.

He made sure to visit Raul every once in a while. Kept his shack tidy and the gravestone clean. They weren't able to recover the body, so Vickers could only hope that the gesture and an albeit empty grave would be enough for him. Wherever he was.

Veronica left . Never had the heart to tell the others the truth about what happened in that bunker. Cass and Boone offered to take her back to Cali, but she wasn't ready to "face old ghosts just yet". Eyebots spotted her heading North with Happy Trails. Sent word ahead to Joshua and Daniel to look after her. He wished them the best in succeeding where he had failed.

And finally, Rex. Ex legion war hound and loyal follower ever since Vickers picked him up in Freeside. Sired a litter of pups with that other cyber dog Vickers encountered in the Big Empty. The King had some reservations at first, but he was placated enough when presented with two of Rex's pups. Rex still visits the kids on Tuesdays and Vickers gets free drinks courtesy of the gangster, so it all worked out.

As for himself? Vickers kept busy with fulfilling his promise to the Thinktank to bring in bits and pieces of the outside world. With NCR consolidating its presence on the frontier and Yes Man keeping tabs on everything in his absence, most of the retired mailman's time nowadays was also spent clearing out old facilities for research and scrap.

It wasn't all work, however. Vickers broke up the monotony with the occasional round of golf and co*cktails with the brains. Surprisingly, Klein, despite being the massive blowhard he was, had a mean drive hand and a keener eye for bets. The number of times he scalped the others for how many different ways they could brain a lobotomite with a well-placed ricochet at 800 yards was frankly beyond him.

Today, however, he found himself doing some hands-on field work.

The sun hung in the middle of the sky. Rays shining upon an emptied mountain and the ruins of an industrial carcass. The dome had been cleared, the surface at least, of roving bands of lobotomites and rogue robots months ago with the aid of Mobius' scorpion automata, leaving behind a silent, barren ruin. Since then, Vickers had been busy shutting down old labs for salvage efforts and putting down the more violent experiments discovered in them.

Rogue AIs, FEV monstrosities, and some equally bizarre and horrifying mad science projects that would make lesser men either cry or drink themselves to sleep should they ever see the light of day. All of them shut down, cataloged, and properly disposed of with the aid of finer work from the Brains when they weren't otherwise bickering over some banal sh*t that happened decades ago.

Truly, if it weren't for Mobius being the solid rock in that sea of aneurysm-inducing bullsh*ttery, Vickers' would've probably shot them all by now, standing agreement be damned.

Speaking of Mobius, the old coot still reclused himself in that ridiculous Forbidden Zone of his. He and Klein were the only ones so far on speaking terms, but Vickers was hopeful that the others would come around eventually. They were still pretty sore when the truth came out that Mobius was responsible for the memory wipes and mnemonic imprisonment these past two centuries. Still, baby steps were better than nothing. He'd take it.

Vickers was brought out of his thoughts as the cyberdog at his side let out a bark. Vickers grinned down at his canine friend and rubbed him behind the ears, earning a happy pant from the cyberhound. Rex's chassis had been recently refurbished by the Brains (Borous specifically, who took to the task with particular gusto) at Vickers' request and his brain remained suspended in its tank with a healthy blue glow. It was the reason why he was out with Vickers today, as they both were curious about the various upgrades the mad scientist had fit in.

As for Vickers, he was more inconspicuous. Drab duster over a sturdy set of riot gear that had served him well over the years, with the only noticeable modification being the snarling maw of some old world beast painted broadly across the front of his helmet. A small rucksack and camelbak hugged his frame while a length of rope was tied to its side.

A set of four pistols hung across his chest and a sheathed machete hung by his hip. A large caliber lever action carbine slung across his back. In his hands he carried an extensively modified pump-action shotgun.

A soft melody filled the air around him as the Pip-boy around his wrist, another old world relic that has saved him more times he could count, pinged him with a GPS notification. Vickers and Rex stopped before the wreckage of a building unlike the many surrounding them in that crater.

They had arrived.

To the untrained eye, the wreckage looked like an abandoned weather station. Nothing of note besides peeling metal sheets and exposed rebar covered by a half-collapsed roof. Yet, as Vickers looked inside, he could see parts of an elevator door, albeit blocked by some loose rubble. Walking to the side of what used to be a doorway, he lifted a rusting sign and wiped off the dirt from the letters upon it.

Q-39​

Dropping the sign, he turned on the radio integrated with his helmet's systems.

"I'm at Q-39. Rubble is blocking the entrance, but I can see an elevator in the back."

The other side of the radio buzzed to life. "Ah, yes. Q-39…that was the temporal physics testing labs I believe." Dr. Zero hummed as another voice joined in. "You'd be correct, Dr. Zero." It was Borous this time. "This would indeed be the Q-39 Temporal Physics Testing Labs. The labs used for testing…Temporal Physics."

Vickers rolled his eyes as he hefted a collapsed support beam off the elevator entrance. "Does this place have any schematics? Floor plans?" He asked.

Dr. Dala was the next to speak. "Unfortunately not, my cuddly little teddy bear. Like most of the other labs, Q-39 was damaged during the Big Static…according to our logs, it was not deemed critical to future avenues of research, nor within our interests to maintain the building beyond the bare minimum."

Vickers snorted as he hefted another piece of collapsed rebar and shoved it aside. Another forgotten derelict lab, then. The elevator was mostly clear now. He stood back up and pressed the communicator button. "So what am I working with? Does this place still even have power?" He asked, waving Rex over once the elevator door was adequately cleared.

A burst of static crackled over the frequency with a somewhat informative tone. He waited a moment then heard Dala speak, "Yes, Dr. 8, I was just getting to that…the building still has power, but our records show contradicting circuit layouts. Possibly maintenance bots rerouting power from breaker box to breaker box over the years…"

"IN ANY CASE-" Klein's voice blared over the radio. Vickers snarled as his hand flew off the communicator button. f*cking prick! A warning would've been nice—better yet, turn down your damn volume knobs! He lowered the volume dial of his radio to the bare minimum then pressed the communicator. "-so be careful when going through any doors down there."

"Once this is done, you and I are going to have a chat about your speakers, Klein." Vickers grumbled into the radio. "But sure, watch out for doors. What exactly am I working for again?" He asked while climbing into the elevator shaft to check out the cables for damage

Here's hoping it wasn't another biomechanical horror. That horde of mutated cyber rats last week was a f*cking pain to clear out even with the flamers. The smell took days to wash out of his gear.

Seriously, who the f*ck thought it was a good idea to give the little sh*ts acid spit and lasers!?

"Excuse me, but I would've if some colleagues stopped locking my volume settings a-" Dr. Klein's voice cut out as Dr. Zero's came on. "In any case, you should be searching for any research data regarding temporal anomalies. I know, surprising given the name of the lab. Telemetry from our geological scans show some exotic energy readings deep below. We cross referenced the acquisition logs that survived up til' now and they mentioned something about a test subject acquired from some radiation hotspot in the old Russian Federation called…Cherry Boil?"

Another Burst of static.

"Chernobyl. Thanks 8. Our best guess? That test subject has either reactivated or whatever containing it is starting to break down. Feel free to pick whatever makes you feel better."

"Thanks," Vickers replied drolly as he hopped down from the trapdoor onto the elevator's floor, satisfied with the knowledge that there was a minimal chance of the cables snapping thus sending him and Rex plummeting to a quick and nasty stop. "Any idea about what happened to the scientists working here?"

Dr. Darla's voice came up on the frequency. "Unknown, unfortunately. When the bombs fell, not all of us were able to keep our minds like we have." Vickers sagely kept his mouth shut and let her continue. "Some then decided to…self-terminate, unable to cope with the realization that our efforts to end the Great War through innovation had failed. Others went mad with grief or delusions of grandeur."

"Those who attempted to go out usually wanted to fix the world in their own image." Zero chimed in. "Most were never seen again, and those who returned as wannabe warlords were…dealt with."

Buzzing static sounded over the radio again as Dr. 8 chimed in.

"Yes, and then there were those who just simply disappeared. Wasn't surprising, really. Lots of initial confusion during the first few days. Colleagues going mad and turning on each other in a maddened frenzy. Mix in our academic eccentricities and penchant towards dangerous military prototypes…"

"Pure chaos, yes." Dr. Klein said. "You'd think a lot more of us from back then would've been more civil. Perhaps if cooler minds prevailed, it wouldn't just be us here today."

Probably best if those on the other side of Vickers' radio were anything to go by…

"Bah. A bunch of SUBVERSIVES and COMMIE SPIES, seeking to take advantage of our moment of weakness and make off in the middle of the night with our hard-learned AMERICAN SCIENCE! They never believed me in Richardson High, but I was right!"

Vickers and the others chose to ignore Borous as Dala gracefully interjected before he could go on one of his Red Menace rants. "The human mind is a complex system, Dr. Klein. Despite all our attempts of iron-clad rationale, logic is not always victorious over organic hormones and their tendencies to distract with their thick, musky, emotion-inducing serums…"

Another burst of static in the background. This time it sounded quite snide.

"Dr. 8, you retract that statement immediately! I shall have you know that my interest in physioformography is-"

"Completely academic. Yes, Dala, we understand." Dr. Klein drawled out. "Lady and Gentleman, we can discuss our colleague's alleged proclivities during office hours-"

"During!?" Came Dala's scandalized objection.

"-on a later date. Right now, our penis-footed associate is growing quite impatient. To answer your question, Mr. Vickers, we don't know what happened to the researchers. For all we know, their bodies are still probably down there. Now, onto the task at hand: we need you to go retrieve the research data and relay the status of the test subject. Shut it down if you believe that it could break containment and reach the surface. Temporal anomalies have a tendency to be…"

"Mind-twisting?"

"Reality-breaking?"

"Seditious against the laws of Space-Time?"

Vickers heard a cautious burst of static. What was that about gastrointestinal inversion? The f*ck?

"Unpredictable." Dr. Klein left it at that.

"Wonderful. So, just another day at the office I suppose." Vickers remarked dryly as he and Rex entered the elevator. With a push of a button, they began their descent. Thank Jesus that there wasn't any elevator music.

"Indeed," drawled Klein. "In any case, we will be monitoring your progress the whole way the best we can. Confusing as these schematics are, your Pip-boy will act as a telemetry beacon to keep in contact with you and map out the lab. Be glad it's just one floor. I for one do not wish to spend the entire day on this drivel."

Yeah, and who's the one actually walking about and doing all this spelunking sh*t? All this wouldn't be necessary if you dipsh*ts kept track of all your sh*t over the years instead of burying it in the dirt.

Eventually, the descent ended with a cheerful ding as the elevator doors opened to reveal a dusty hallway. Rex took point and prowled out into the hall cautiously sniffing the air. Vickers advanced behind with his shotgun raised to his shoulder ready to blast a hole in anything that moved. He turned on the white lamp mounted under the barrel and shifted the muzzle across the hall.

Other than some power cables running across the ceiling and blue lines painted on the upper corner of the halls, there was nothing of note. Other than the dust, everything seemed to be frozen in time.

"I reached the labs. Nothing besides dust and sealed rooms." Vickers reported into the radio, still keeping his carbine pointed ahead. "Any luck with the lights?"

"Yes, yes. We're getting some readings now…odd. It seems like the facility's electrical grid has been altered." Dr. Zero said. "Power is trickling down…but it seems like it's welling up at some of the substations down there…Look around the elevator for an electrical closet. Ought to be a breaker box to jumpstart the lights."

Vickers turned to his right and as Zero said, there was a door in the wall. Walking over, he manually opened the lock and went inside. It was a utility closet with shelves on each side of the interior filled with mechanics tools and other salvageable scrap that he could turn around for a decent bag of caps with the right buyers when this was all said and done.

At the end of the room was a breaker box which Vickers opened to see rows of circuit switches, next to all of them were little red lights indicating their inactive status.

After prying off the outer panel to examine the wear and tear on the inner circuitry, Vickers carefully dusted off the wires and flipped the switches one at a time. A few gave off a bit of sparks, but that was preferable to having the entire thing go up in flames right in his face, helmet or not.

The lights above flickered to life, first to a dim yellow, then to a brighter, stark white. Poking his head out of the closet showed similar happenings in the main hall, as fluorescent lights illuminated the whole corridor with various archways to different annexes of the lab.

He walked out of the closet, scratching Rex's head as he did, and reactivated his comms. "Lights are on. Seeing no visible damage to the place and some blue markings on the walls. Likely guides. Any idea of where the testing labs are yet?"

Dr. Dala spoke, "The data files seem to have been corrupted, my sweet…though it should not be too difficult to find. Just follow the lines and you'll eventually find the main test chambers."

"Any news on those exotic energy readings you've told me about?" He asked as he began to walk down the corridor as per Dala's advice. A bit further ahead, Rex sneezed as their steps uplifted some of the dust off the floor.

"Nay, whatever was giving off those readings have been dormant so far." Remarked Borous. "Be on your penis-toes, Mr. Vickers. This reeks of a COMMIE PLOT with their UNAMERICAN INFILTRATORS and UNAMERICAN AMBUSHES."

"Alright! Alright! Just stop yelling into the mic, Gaddamnit!" Vickers retorted. "It ain't an ambush, Borous. Place has too much dust to be lived in. No sentrybots or maintenance droids even with the power coming online."

A cautionary burst of static.

"Yes, I'll still be careful, 8." Vickers rolled his eyes under his helmet. "No, I didn't forget about the rats." He really didn't want to talk about those right now.

"Oh, yes. The rats." Dr. Borous reminisced. "A rather ingenious avenue of research. Perfect little rodent agents for counterintelligence and infiltration. Quite adorable creatures with their monomolecular teeth and ocular laser implants."

"And acid breath." Vickers grumbled as he opened another room and swept his scattergun across more dusty equipment and rotted files. His eyes stopped on one of the terminals that had its power on. Next to it sat a grimy coffee mug and a plate that might've once held a sandwich centuries past, but now looked more like a brick of mold covered by a film of dust.

Approaching the terminal and slinging his shotgun over his shoulder, Vickers spoke into his Pip-boy. "Got a terminal here. Still has some juice. A virus scan if you please, Dr. Zero?"

"With pleasure." Zero said as he force-transmitted a barrage of antiviruses through Vickers' Pip-boy.

The terminal hummed to life as its screen generated a large slashed zero indicating the completion of the scan. Vickers promptly accessed the terminal and then detached a cord from his Pip-boy, plugging it into the interface on the terminal's side. Then he waited as the thinktank did its work trawling through any data that they could find.

Thankfully, the pre-war scientists worked fast. It only took a minute until Dr. Klein's voice was heard over the radio. "It's as we hypothesized. This facility is in fact housing a dormant temporal anomaly. Experimental logs and research notes say that these people were trying to meddle with hypotheticals involving matter-energy transition across decoheric ruptures."

"English, if you would?" Vickers snarked.

A burst of static.

"Teleportation. Got it." Vickers returned the cord to his Pip-boy and got up. "So like the transportalponder, then." He deduced as he walked out of the room with Rex close behind.

"Ah, not exactly." Zero said. "The TPP works on two fundamental systems: the transponder beacon and the receiver plates. To sum it up, the beacon coalesces the body's constituent atoms into a transmutable engram to be transmitted to our satellites which in turn bounce them back to earth at any given location. Meanwhile, the receiver plates "catch" the engram so to speak and use it to decompress and restructure your atoms. It's like tossing a baseball against a wall and catching it a mitt…of course, if the beacon or the receiver plates are even microscopically flawed, the engram will either spontaneously disintegrate in the upper atmosphere or shatter upon reentry. Your atoms would be scattered beyond any chance of recovery."

"…Huh." Vickers felt like he should've been more concerned, considering how often he used the damn thing, but he was on a job, so those questions could wait until he and Zero had a long chat once he got back. Still, he had to ask. "And how do these…decoheric ruptures work?"

"Oh, they don't." Zero quipped back. "At least, not for organic material. From what we could recover from these notes, inorganic transferral worked phenomenally, but every previous attempt to push any sort of organic matter into what they refer as "the anomaly"-"

"Terrible naming sense."

"Very unoriginal."

"Dreadfully bland."

Unimpressed beeping.

Vickers felt his eye twitch.

"-had resulted in catastrophic failures. They theorized that contact with the anomaly would allow 3-dimensional matter to repeatedly fold itself into extra dimensional geometries capable of traversing higher dimensions of space-time. It's all quite outlandish, even by our standards. Luckily the researchers were not completely incompetent and kept the thing contained, though they had to fiddle with the room's wiring quite a bit since it kept on frying the electronics. Just be careful whenever you press any buttons in there."

…Vickers really hated to ask, but he had to. "And what would happen if it were to break containment?"

"Let us put it this way: get the hell out of dodge if it does. Dr. Klein is already recalibrating the field guns to level the place the moment you clear the elevator if this all goes to heck in an egg carton."

…This was going to be worse than the rats. Vickers sighed tiredly. Rex meanwhile barked happily without a care in the world.

Finally, the pair reached a large door at the end of the hall. Having Rex stand back, Vickers checked his guns one last time before going over to the door. Opening with a metallic screech, it revealed a vast, dark chamber filled with terminal databanks with what looked like a large, central dias deeper inside. Vickers flicked the white lamp on his shotgun back on and swept it across the room.

It stopped on a trio of emaciated corpses dressed in what disturbingly looked like Y-17 trauma harnesses. Each one had a backpack filled to the brim with supplies. Though, Vickers was immediately drawn to the Pip-boys each cadaver had on their left arm.

3000 Mk IVs. New iterations of his own 3000A. He always wanted to get his hands on one, but RobCo distributed its only shipments on the East coast. The schematics themselves were lost when House attempted to blow the Lucky 38's underground reactors in his death throes, all but wiping out the tower's databases in the process before Yes Man put a stop to it.

Cautiously, Vickers quietly picked up a coffee mug from a nearby desk and tossed it at the head of one of the bodies. He relaxed when it failed to elicit any response other than knocking the dried out skull to the ground.

Vickers reached up and pressed his comms button. "In the main lab. Think I found your colleagues. Three of 'em. Looked like they were preparing to leave somewhere given that they're all loaded with supplies."

Dr. Klein was the first to respond. "I see…can you confirm the nature of their deaths?"

"Roger." Vickers moved deeper into the chamber towards the corpses. Meanwhile, Rex got up and began exploring the room, staying within sight of his human, of course. He went up to the bodies and began to examine them, reporting as he did so.

"Scorch marks across their chests and upper limbs. Char marks on some of the bones where there would've been exposed skin." He turned the bodies over and shucked off the backpacks. "No rear entry wounds. Bodies are lying towards the entrance, so an ambush from the doorway is unlikely."

Which means they were attacked by something from inside the chamber.

And it was still here with him and Rex.

Vickers stood back up and raised his shotgun, sweeping it in a scan across the room as he backed towards the doorway. Rex wasn't by his side. "Rex. C'mere boy." Vickers called out. "Rex!"

Rex barked from somewhere deeper inside the chamber.

A hand went up to his comms. "Where are the goddamn lights in this place?"

"By the door and to the right." Said Zero. "Can't miss it."

Following the instructions, Vickers turned around and spotted a wall panel with a small switch on it. He went over, passing by a large lever switch, and stood before the panel. Some sort of red tape with ineligible script scrawled over was peeling off and covering the buttons, so Vickers ripped it off without much thought. He then proceeded to punch the switch with a finger.

In hindsight, he really should've read what was on that tape.

Immediately as he pressed the button, alarms blared out and the doors slammed shut. The room was bathed in pulsing red klaxons and machinery began to hum back online. Then he heard Rex begin to bark like mad hell.

Vickers whipped around, shotgun ready, and narrowed his eyes as he saw the cyber dog standing before the central dias, hackles raised and snarling at a crown-shaped tuning fork the size of a small car. Cables from all corners of the room snaked across the floor attaching to the device like roots to a stem, strands of electricity coming off with stark white sparks.

Vickers sprinted over to the door and attempted to open the locks to no avail, and bashing the mechanisms did nothing but rattle the metal.

"Klein? What the f*ck is going on?" He growled into the radio. Static roiled over the frequency, breaking up the transmission.

"-dings are increa…exponentially…Dala can't op…oor!"

"Klein!" Vickers barked into the mic. He was beginning to taste ozone through his helmet's filters.

"-shut down…facility! Loo…switch!"

Vickers smashed the switch from before into the wall. A soft blue glow filled the room as the taste of ozone strengthened. Vickers looked back.

Something inside the crown upon the central dias began to take form. First as a floating by cluster of sparks, then coalescing into a cyan sphere crackling with electricity.

Then things around the dias began to float up.

Rex let out a startled yip as he too was lifted off the floor by some unseen energy. Vickers sneered and raced over to the larger lever that he passed earlier, dimly noticing that his steps felt subtly lighter than when he first entered the lab.

With a firm grip, he pressed the lever clutch and yanked it back, the metal shrieking as he did so under two centuries worth of rust and dust.

The lights to the chamber flickered on.

"f*ck's sake." Vickers growled under his breath as the now illuminated chamber began to vibrate. "This is worse than the rats!"

Rex's barking drew his attention back to the dias. The cyberdog, along with other small objects, was beginning to drift towards the now pulsating sphere held between the crown-shaped prongs.

"Ah sh*t!" Vickers cursed as he dove for a nearby console, grabbing a loose floating length of cable as he did so.

His trajectory was askew thanks to the rapidly weakening of gravity in the room, causing him to slam into the metal panels with a wheeze. He quickly crawled up and peered over at Rex, who was now floating closer towards the sphere.

Vickers grabbed one end of the cable in his hand and tossed it across the chamber, whistling at Rex as he did so to catch the cyberdog's attention. Rex, seeing the incoming lifeline, snatched it in his jaws and bit down for dear life.

Up to now, the gravitonic pull was only enough to draw in loose cups and unsecured lab equipment. That changed when the anomaly gave out a purple, headache-inducing pulse that rebounded across the chamber. The slight pull turned into a wrestling with a bighorner, yanking the cable in Vickers' grip taut with an audible snap.

Vickers let out a surprised grunt at the unexpectedly strong force straining his cybernetic body. Rex began to whine as the vortex behind him grew.

"Rex!" Vickers shouted as he started to pull his dog to him one painstaking arm length at a time. "Hold on, buddy! I got you!"

Rex whined as his metallic ass-end flapped in the proverbial wind.

There was another purple pulse of energy, and Vickers grit his teeth as the taste of copper exploded across his tongue. Electricity began to arc across the cables and the anomaly in nauseating spectrums as the gravitonic pull rapidly grew.

Around the lab, derelict machinery began to creak, then shriek as they were torn from the ground or from desks toward the purple swirling vortex of insanity-inducing light.

By now, Rex was little more than two meters away. The cyberdog was panting through its ironclad bite on the end of the cable as Vickers slowly pulled him to safety.

One meter…

Roaring currents. Flashing arcs of lightning. Radio static? Through the din of chaos in the chamber, Vickers could've sworn he heard ballerina music like the stuff Dala kept in her personal holotapes. Of course, he threw it out of his mind for more pressing matters, such as surviving the next few minutes.

Just a bit…more…

Snap!​

f*ck!

Vickers' stumbled against the console as the electric cable in his hands tore free. Dazed, he looked up just in time to see Rex disappear into the vortex, his end of the cable still held in his mouth.

His guts froze. Everything went into hyperfocus. Adrenaline filled his veins, pumping through his body with his mechanical heart. A hand went up to his comms.

"Klein! I swear to God Almighty, if you don't get your sh*t together, I'll junk all your frames and use the hulls as flower pots!"

Regardless if they heard him or not, Vickers continued to the next part of his crack-pot plan. He activated the emergency beacon linked to his Pip-boy and the transportalponder and shifted his footing on the console to face the center of the chamber.

"Sweet Jesus…"

By now, the vortex had grown nearly four times in size from when it appeared. The cables leading to the central platform seemed to be pumping vast amounts of electricity into the mechanism given by the arcs racing about like mutated fireflies across the metal surface. A deep, violet void seemed to draw in the very light of the room along with every bit of loose scrap not bolted down.

Those scientists were planning an evacuation. The trauma suits, the supplies…if they believed that this could take them somewhere, then there was a chance that Rex made it through. That, or he was dead, and Vickers was making a damn fool decision to follow his faithful hound to an early grave…

f*ck it.

Switching comms, he activated a switch on his Pip-boy to send a transmission to a specific contact in his catalog. Then, he gripped the sides of the console he was braced against and peered into the swirling, screaming vortex ahead of him.

"Hold on, buddy! I'm coming for ya!"

He leapt off the console. Ringing filled his ears as the taste of ozone and copper filled his mouth. His body, from his sling to his adamantium-coated bones, went numb and hot and cold all at the same time.

Vickers made impact with the vortex, and it swallowed him up like a great beast of yore.

Consoles short circuited as the lights gave out a shower of sparks before flickering out, heaving the entire chamber into darkness.

Upon the central dias, the anomaly sputtered. Once. Twice. Upon the third, it finally fell silent, completing the darkness with deathly silence.

Across the crater, within a forgotten laboratory, a lone scientist was going about his day conducting a series of daily experiments, when an alert pinged across his cranial casing. He paused, squinting at and rereading the sender's name, and abandoned his current project as he made his way to the main chamber of the lab.

There, he looked up at the main display screen and accepted a prompt to an incoming connection inquiry.

The screen flickered to life and revealed five floating brains with monitors laced with an odd mix of barely concealed anxiety and contempt. Odd, usually it was merely contempt.

Still, the old brain put on a smile and greeted his tepid fellow scientists. "Ah, Klein. To what do I owe the pleasure for your call? It seems like you brought the rest of our colleagues as well."

Klein floated rather rigidly in the middle of his gaggle of just as uncomfortable followers. Hmph. They both agreed to conduct reconciliations months from now, once repairs to the crater and research reclamation efforts were concluded with the aid of their human associate.

Given the rest of their fellows' trepidation and the telling twitch Klein had when he usually won an argument, their levels of apprehension were beyond their margins of error. They were way ahead of schedule!

"Good afternoon, Mobius." Klein returned his greeting in a neutral tone. His friend's volume knobs were dialed down to conversational levels.

Contrary to what Vickers may think, The good doctor was well in control of his systems. Other than the backdoor Mobius left for emergencies, as he did with all the other brains, there wasn't such a flaw as a "faulty volume dial". They haven't used dials in the GUI since 2150!

He merely talked that way to help cow the others into submission. A paper lion with the loudest roar, so to speak. It's what helped him maintain control over the others all those years, despite being a mere logistics supervisor surrounded by bona fide professors and doctors all with decades of experience even before joining Big Mountain.

Nowadays, he only talked that way if it were just the two of them, given that Mobius had no intent nor desire to "assume total control" of the Thinktank and its sciences. His own experiments were more than enough, thank you very much!

No, Klein was here with the others because there was something important to be discussed.

Ah wait. He was distracted. And given the way Klein and the others were looking at him, he had missed an entire conversation.

"Ah, my apologies. I've seemed to have drifted off there. Many experiments are in progress here, I hope you can understand." He said as one of his eye monitors shifted up and down.

The other brains sneered through the screen.

"Bah! I told you this was a waste of time!" Zero called out from Klein's side. "This old fool's processors are filled with as many holes as a hollow earth theory!"

"Indeed," Borous, galvanized by his colleague's outburst, said, "Dr. Klein, must we really include this miscreant? No matter what the fleshbag says, he still seems too doddering to be of any aid, much less willing to give it out without any treasonous intent."

If Mobius still had eyes, they'd roll enough to fall out of their sockets. After all, if he truly wanted them dead, he would've swarmed that ridiculous club room of theirs with his robots decades ago. Besides, he wasn't the one who made the decision to keep the kill switches in their frames active. No, that honor lay with the "fleshbag" in question.

As much as Mobius despised how the circ*mstances necessitated such…controls, he also knew the consequences should even one of the ThinkTank's members breach the crater.

"Enough. From both of you." Klein reprimanded his colleagues. "As…abstract this avenue is, the situation demands adaptation. His help will be critical."

The two, while looking contrite, backed down. Curiously enough, the other two remained silent, albeit with disapproval eminent on their monitors.

Oh hoho? This was interesting…to think there'd be cowed without so much a fuss. They must've been feeling desperate for whatever this was about.

Klein then turned back to Mobius. "I shall repeat myself then. I would advise you to listen this time, old friend. Time is of the essence."

"Go on." Mobius acquiesced, curiosity now rippling through his biogel.

A few minutes later, Mobius cut the call and went to the main lab. Thoughts and theories racing through his brain. He stopped before the main console in the room and peered up at the intercepted transmission flickering across the monitor.

"Interesting…"

"Yes…very interesting indeed…" Dr. Mobius mused to himself. Possibilities and hypotheses raced through his circuits at light speed at the implications of this ordeal.

Jan19.2100
23 years after the Great War
Volga River Basin, Russia​

"Come out you little bitch! I promise me and my friends will kill you quickly!" A coarse, crude voice called out as a solitary man did his best to quickly hobble down a train track in an abandoned train yard.

The man, dressed in thick winter clothes and a jacket modified with extra cargo pockets, wheezed as he switched around the corner of a rusted train car. He took a second to catch his breath, quieting himself as he did so, and groaned as he brushed a hand across his lower left thigh to find his fingers covered in his own blood. In his right hand, he clutched a well-worn revolver splattered with flecks of more of his blood.

He reigned in his gasps into more manageable breaths in hopes that maybe his pursuers would let up their hunt. Pawing through his vest revealed an empty case of stims. sh*t. He used the last of them when escaping from these bastards. Hopefully, they wouldn't see the trail of blo—

"Saul! I see blood! The f*cker's close by!"

Unfortunately for Krest, mechanic turned adventurer extraordinaire, Lady Luck seemed to get her kicks for the day by pissing on him from on high.

Honestly, it seems like this entire month has been going down the sh*tter. First he arrives at this Godforsaken basin and immediately gets his rail car along with all of the trading goods he's brought confiscated by those bridge fanatics. Then those same bastards try to pressgang him into fighting off "electrical demons". When he refused, those f*ckers ran him out into the wilds! He had spent the past few weeks setting up safe houses and planning his next move all while evading mutants, bandits, and radioactive storms.

Weeks of scavenging, foraging, and stealing supplies just to survive. That is, until he strayed too much into the heart of a bandit encampment and was caught nicking some of their supplies. Krest was able to kill two of them and flee into the nearby train yard, but not before catching a bullet in his leg.

Now, it seemed like his luck had finally run out. Trapped between two boxcars and a whole mess of bandits on his ass. Maybe he could hide, but without treating his wound, he'd bleed out within the hour. sh*t!

There was no way this could be even more fu—

Then the air in front of him warped into horrifying shapes and ozone began to blast his senses. Terror filled Krest's brain as he immediately leaped out of the way of an electrical demon that formed right in front of him, bullet holes in his leg be damned.

Crash!​

Krest didn't even have a chance to scream before
a veritable heap of trash was shat out of thin air in front of him. Screams of panic sounded out from the bandits as trash fell from the sky while Krest gaped in utter befuddlement. He also noted that his nose was bleeding profusely and his head felt like he slammed three whole bottles of shroom vodka.

Oh, and he was on his ass, shaking like a dog due to the shock of having an anomaly form right in front of his face.

"Urgh…"

Krest shakily raised his revolver as an arm pushed away a piece of metal paneling to reveal a…man?

Krest blinked through the staticky haze in his eyes and looked again as a man wearing a long brown trench coat and a military style helmet crawled out of the pile of rubble. A sickly green light surrounded its left arm. His eyes widened in recognition of the metal contraption with a glowing screen wrapped around the stranger's left forearm. A Pip-boy! Just like the ones he's read about from magazines before the war!

The man, if Krest could even call it such, stumbled up to his knees as its shoulder heaved in deep, rasping breaths through its gasmask. Krest was unsure what to do, so he remained silent with his gun carefully aimed at the stranger's head.

The thing's helmet swiveled around as it drunkenly pawed the dirt as if looking for something on the ground, before landing on Krest.

The Russian froze at the pale red glow emanating from the skullish metal mask. He could feel a gaze behind those lenses focus on Krest's pistol and narrow. Krest swallowed as he finally noticed just how many guns were on the stranger. Two pairs of pistols on his chest and another at his sides, along with a large rifle slung across his back and a machete hanging at his waist. The bullets strapped across his torso looked large enough to stop a mutant dead in its tracks.

"Saul, stop rooting through the trash! Let's find that piece of sh*t first and loot this place later!"

The stranger's head whipped in the direction of the bandit's voice before turning to Krest. Thoughts were racing across his head as he hatched a hair brained scheme. This guy obviously wasn't from around here, so he definitely wasn't with the bandits. If it were just him and his bum leg, all he could expect would be a swift death. f*ck being taken alive by these bastards, he'd rather go down fighting. Now, with this stranger, he had a decent chance.

Slowly, Krest deco*cked the hammer on his pistol and pointed the barrel upwards. He put a gloved finger to his lips then pointed to his side down the train tracks where the bandits were quickly closing in. Finally, he pointed back at the stranger. More specifically, the set of pistols strapped across his torso.

All the while, the stranger's helmeted gaze stared back, before nodding in understanding. He immediately got up from his knees and pulled out a pair of revolvers before striding over to Krest's side.

Krest grinned and pointed to his right before dragging himself over to the left side of the boxcar they were hiding behind. Weapons primed, both of them waited as the sounds of scraping gravel drew nearer.

Krest's new ally was the first to fire. As three sets of footsteps came close, he whipped around the concealment of the derelict train car and immediately took three bandits by surprise. Unable to lift their ramshackle firearms in time, all three died with three precise shots to the upper torso.

Shouting was heard on Krest's side, so he peaked around the corner to see two men approaching with guns raised. They were too late to notice Krest in time, costing one of the bandits their lives as Krest's bullet found purchase underneath his chin. Blood and offal burst out of the base of his skull and into the face of the second bandit, blinding him with a cry of surprise.

Then, his knee exploded in a shower of blood and bone as the stranger shot it out from beneath the train car. Krest quickly adjusted his aim and finished the bandit off with a rather messy shot to the neck.

The Russian returned to his cover and let out a breath. As far as fights go, this could've definitely turned out worse.

Click.​

Ah blyat.

The stranger growled something out with a staticky rasp through his helmet as he pointed a still smoking pistol at Krest's head. Krest tossed his pistol away and slowly raised his hands above his head before looking up at the stranger's frankly disturbingly foreign gasmask. He gave a charming smile to cover up his nervousness.

"I must say, friend, you have a mean trigger finger there! Saved my life yeah? Unfortunately, there's more of these f*ckers, so we'd better get the f*ck out of here!" Krest kept on smiling through the pain, mind racing for a way to convince this guy to not leave him for dead. Damnit, he could start to feel his leg go numb!

The stranger snarled something out and pressed his pistol closer towards Krest's head.

Krest, obviously, did not appreciate that.

"Woah woah woah," he nervously chuckled as his heart seemed to beat out of his chest, "Come on, man! You want my stuff? Guns? I can get guns! Help me out and I'll give you what you want! I'm bleeding out here!" He gestured towards the red stains coating his pants leg.

His smile faltered as the stranger snarled something out again…wait…was that English? Krest's mind raced as he tried to remember half-forgotten college lessons and Western flicks he watched in his youth.

"Hallo?" He asked in a heavy accent. "American friend…how are you?"

It was sh*t, but given that most of his current "research" was old engineering and Playboy magazines, it was the best he could do.

The gun remained in his face, but the stranger looked willing to hear him out. "Where the hell am I, and where's my dog?" He growled.

Confused but desperate to get out of this alive, Krest soldiered on. "Haha…no dog, American. No dog here. Only you…ah…bad men here. Not safe. Bad place."

"Still haven't told me where I am, friend. What language was that you were speaking just now?"

"R-Russian. You are in Russia…Volga River. Please…I need…medicine…leg shot. This place…not safe."

Krest looked up at the stranger's mask as he stood there silent. He held his breath as shouting rose up in the distance. Bandits from the camp Krest had escaped from.

"…sh*t." The stranger sagged as he deco*cked his pistol and returned it to its holster. Krest let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and smiled at his benefactor. "Can you walk?" He asked as he pointed at Krest's leg.

The Russian grimaced with a tentative nod. "Little. Hurts much."

The stranger seemed to contemplate something before reaching into a pouch at his side before pulling out an auto injector. "Stimpak. Know how to use one?"

It looked like the stims Krest was familiar with, just with more metal bits. He nodded and took the stimpak from the stranger's hand and immediately jabbed it into his thigh above the bullet wound. Standing up and putting some weight on his leg still hurt, but he wasn't moving with a limp anymore. He nodded at the American with a grin.

"Follow me." He told him. "I show you to safe place. Rest there."

The American nodded and began to follow Krest, but stopped as he noticed something on the ground half buried in the pile of trash that came through the portal. Bending down, Krest watched as he shoved a section of rebar off of what looked like a large square shaped backpack. The American yanked it out of the rubble and removed the rifle and smaller bag off his back and onto his chest. Then he shifted the larger ruck onto his back. Rifle in hand, he looked to Krest and nodded.

"Lead the way."

And so, they hauled ass, leaving behind a band of very pissed off bandits.

Luckily for them, the bandits at the train yard were more interested in looting the scrap that fell from the sky than chasing two random dudes across mutant infested ruins. And the few stray packs they came across were quickly dispatched by the American with his pistols.

Eventually, the duo made their way to an abandoned river dock warehouse with an abandoned cargo crane looming above it. The base of the structure was surrounded by sharpened stakes and sharp pieces of rubble while the mid sections were reinforced with sheet metal and barbed wire to deter any climbers. A small generator in the back still gave out enough power to lift and lower the jib to act as a drawbridge of sorts to the roof of the nearby warehouse.

It took some time disarming and bypassing the traps Krest set up for stray mutants and the occasional bandit, but they finally reached the safety of the crane's control room. As the crane's arm drew itself up from the roof of the warehouse, Krest quickly made his way to a stove in the corner. Soon enough, the warm red glow diffused across the makeshift shelter as it drove away the lingering cold.

The control room itself was modest, but contained all of the basics. A single room with a bunk bed against the wall opposite of the stove, a small hallway that led to a small toilet (a dining chair with a circle cutout and a trapdoor for waste to fall through the floor) and a door leading to the crane's observation deck. Crates and barrels of food were stacked in another corner of the room while a workbench with a lamp sitting on top of its surface sat against the wall next to a window.

Vickers walked over to the workbench and dumped his bags as the Russian he saved went about the place lighting lamps. After sitting down, he took off his helmet and set it aside.

Vickers paid the Russian no mind as he brought up his Pip-boy. Error messages immediately popped up as he switched to his maps.

//ERROR//
//USER IS OUT OF RANGE OF REGIONAL BOUNDARIES//
//PLEASE RELOCATE OR RECALIBRATE GPS//
//RECALIBRATE GPS?//
//[YES]/[NO]//
//[YES]//
//RECALIBRATING GPS…//
//…//
//RECALIBRATION COMPLETE//
//ERROR//
//CHRONOMETRY DATA OUT OF SYNC//
//AUTOSYNCING//
//…//
//CHRONOMETRY SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE//​

The error messages disappeared as the Pip-boy's screen booted up again to show a regional map. Thank God for the clearance codes Zero helped him nick off of House's databases for RobCo's satellite network. Navigating his way back stateside would've been annoying without it.

Now, all he had to do was follow Rex's GPS transponder and contact the Think Tank to beam them back to Big Mou—

What the f*ck?

Vickers rubbed his eyes and looked again at the top right corner of the screen. More specifically, the date.

Jan19.2100​

"Hey, Ruski!" Vickers called out.

"Ya?" The man looked back from his place at the stove where some sort of stew was boiling in a cast iron pot.

"My memory isn't as sharp as it usually is from that crash. How long ago did the bombs drop?"

"20 years…23? Maybe? No one really keeps track now. Why?"

"…Just curious."

Ah sh*t.

"Eh, head no good Yankee?" The Russian asked as he returned to Vickers with two bowls of steaming potato stew in his hand. "Here, food help fix, yes?" With that, he offered one of the bowls to Vickers.

Vickers quietly accepted the offering as the Russian sat on the bottom bunk across from him. Speaking of which, Vickers really needed to get his name. Just calling him The Russian was starting to get a bit old.

"What's your name, friend?" Vickers asked.

The man raised a brow before giving a grin. With a small bow and a flourish, he introduced himself. "Krest Petranovich, explorer and merchant. Nice to meet you."

"Vickers. Nice to meet you." Vickers simply responded.

As they ate their meal, the two men began to converse.

"So," Krest started, "how did a yankee such as you find way to Russia?"

Vickers shrugged. It's not like he had any reason to lie… "Accident. Scientists sent me to clear out an old lab. Portal sucked me and my dog in and next thing I know I'm here."

"Hmm…is that why you ask about dog? Back at train yard, yes?" Krest asked.

"Yeah." Vickers replied with a nod. "Rex is a good friend. I'm not going back without him. And what about you? Where'd you learn to speak English?"

Krest laughed and leaned back in his bed, half eaten bowl of stew in his hand. "I was learning to be…ah…engineer, yes. Learned in school. Then bombs drop." He raised his hands in a mimicked explosion. "Was away from city, so I lived. Had some books and ah…magazines? Yes. Gone now, but I still remember enough."

Krest jutted a chin towards Vickers' arm. "That is a Pip-boy, yes? American made. By Rob-Co."

Vickers' brows lifted in small surprise. Huh, guess that old bastard's name popped up everywhere. "…yes, yes it is. To be honest, I wasn't sure I'd meet anyone this side of the ocean who'd know what this is."

"Haha. You Yankees and your egos. We Russians know of RobCo…American goods very popular before war. Made good money on side fixing broken electronics for black market." Krest boasted as he gestured at Vickers' Pip-boy. "Still some around now. Very rare. Very prized."

"Really now?" Vickers drolly replied. Well, they'd have to kill him for it. Literally, as the thing was biometrically sealed to his arm. "Back home, they were more common. Still rare, but I know some communities where these things were given to everyone."

Like the derelict Vaults scattered around the Mojave. At least, before Vickers and his crew came along and looted their storerooms. Thousands of units in mint condition and just as many that could be broken down for spare parts. They agreed to split the bounty down the middle—half for OSI and half for the Followers. He received protests from both groups (though NCR was more vocal) but those subsided after he threatened to dump them all in Lake Mead and have them go fish them out.

The conversation petered out after that as Vickers excused himself out to the observation deck. There, he stood at the railing and gazed over the wide expanse of what Krest called the "Volga".

It was beautiful in its own way. The sun had been setting at this point and cast deep hues of oranges, reds, and yellows over the icy waters and snow-covered shores. Strange crustacean mutants shrieked and swam in the waters while packs of four-legged beasts prowled across the industrial and urban ruins further away from the river. It reminded him a lot of Montana, with its mutated fauna and its untamed wilderness choking up the ruins of whatever town this used to be before the bombs devastated it.

A roar sounded in the distance and Vickers looked West. There, over the horizon, a winged beast flew in the air before diving out of sight. Oddly enough, Vickers was reminded of the deathclaws back home. Then he shuddered at the thought of them being able to fly.

…Note to self: make sure Borous never gets his hands on another deathclaw. The poodle-sized one back at Higg's village was enough of a hassle trying to potty train. Hopefully, it wouldn't starve before the brains read the note he left them detailing its care.

Speaking of which…

Vickers reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out the transportalponder. The beacon glowed a sharp red showcasing an error. Hooking it up to his Pip-boy showed a more detailed report.

//ERROR//
//CONNECTION BROKEN//
//THE RECEIVER YOU ARE LOOKING FOR DOES NOT EXIST//
//PLEASE TRY A DIFFERENT RECEIVER LOCATION//​

Bullocks.

Vickers returned the beacon to its place in his coat and looked up with a sigh as he leaned forward on the railing. It made sense. If he was truly thrown back this far into the past, the technology for the transportalponder wouldn't have been invented yet. Worse still, he wouldn't have the proper telemetry codes to contact anyone at Big Mountain since all of his didn't even exist yet.

Damn. Looks like it's the old fashioned way, then. Rucking his way back Stateside would mean supplies however, and guides and maps. His only fortune was that the local he was with knew English, so hopefully he could get a start from there.

Luckily, he still had access to House's satellite network. And given that the old man was still in a coma and would stay that way for another 38 years, he essentially had free reign over its functions with the codes Yes Man spliced from the Lucky 38's databases.

Still…184 years…there were still humans who lived before the Great War. The Republic wouldn't be formed in another 90 years and the Enclave were still hiding in exile in that oil rig of theirs somewhere in the Pacific…

Plans and schemes darted through Vickers mind at the possibilities laid out by this. If he was truly stranded in the past, the least he could do was make the most of it. But those were thoughts for later.

Right now, all he had to do was find Rex. From there, all he had to do was cross an entire foreign continent likely infested with slavers, bandits, and mutants to find passage across an ocean filled with worse things. All that to reach a civilization that didn't even exist yet and pave the way for friends yet even born and those of untold millions across the dried out carcass of America.

An impossible task. Foolhardy. Insane.

Vickers gave a rictus grin.

The hell it was.

Getting shot in the head couldn't kill him. The Mojave couldn't kill him. The Madre, Utah, Big Mountain, the f*cking Divide couldn't kill him. So come hell or high water, he would see the shores of California again even if it meant swimming there his own damn self.

Foolhardy? Yes. Insane? Of course. Impossible?

Well, he could stop trying once he was dead.

100 km from Moscow
Russian wilderness​

The air was cleaner here than the metro. Pure. Without the stench of thousands trapped underground in the filth and dust like rats. It was infused with the scent of pines and moss while the wind whispered above in the snow-covered branches of the forest. Meanwhile, birds sang as they flew by, and the sun brought the young Polis Ranger a warmth that could not be beaten back by the winter cold.

Artyom's musings were cut as he noticed the crunching footsteps of his friend, Sam, as the American turned Colonel Miller's most trusted bodyguard approached from Artyom's rear.

"Find anything, Artyom?" He asked.

Artyom shook his head as he turned to meet his comrade. The American, like him, was dressed in a drab, dark coat that blended in with the trees, perfect for stalking through these woods. Slung over his shoulder was a Tikhar rifle, a robust companion for any ranger experienced in the arts of stealth.

Sam hummed then grinned as he lifted up a string of hares he had shot with his Tikhar. "Looks like I had better luck than you then, my friend! Come, let's head back. It's getting dark and I'm itching to get some dinner started."

Artyom grinned in return and slung his own Kalash over his shoulder. Together, the Rangers began their trek back to their forward camp where the third member of their party, Alyosha, was waiting.

It had been a week since they, along with a handful of Rangers including the Colonel and his daughter (and Artyom's wife) escaped Moscow upon a steam locomotive they liberated from a Hanza outpost. A week since the lies that kept the entire Metro chained to Moscow were exposed. A week since Artyom's dreams of a world outside the Metro were vindicated.

It pained his heart to flee like they did, no matter how necessary it may have been. The friends and comrades in the Order that now were left leaderless and no doubt being fed lies of their disappearance and "betrayal" even as they spoke. Now, the only hope they had left lay in their journey to the Civil Defense bunker located deep in the depths of Yamantau where they could regroup with the remains of their country's government and gather up an expedition to retake Moscow.

However, that day was many weeks away. Now, the newly christianed Aurora and her crew found themselves in the depths of a forest trying to salvage fuel and water for the journey ahead. Luckily, fate was kind enough to lead them to a railway outpost nearly fully intact, given that it was located deep within the Russian wilderness and its poor caretakers long since starved to death in the administration building.

With coal and water for the engine's furnace and boilers, all they had to worry about was food. And again, fate would have it that the surrounding woods were rife with four legged, furry animals that Sam called "elk". Artyom, Sam, and Alyosha were thus sent out to hunt for provisions. Alyosha and himself, as they were foremost the best scouts of the group, and Sam for his experience hunting what he called "big game" in America with his father before the war.

They had followed a trail of a herd of these elk and were camped half a day's march from the railway station. Despite the Colonel's warnings of occupational forces, the team had not seen even a hint of human presence in these woods. Only trees and snow-covered dirt. Artyom didn't mind though. These past two days had left him a lot to think about in regards to this brave new world he and his friends now found themselves in.

Eventually, the pair reached the outer perimeter of their camp. However, things took a turn when Sam suddenly stopped ahead of Artyom and raised a closed fist. Artyom immediately stopped and dropped to his knee, rifle brought to bear as he scanned their surroundings. Was it the enemy? Had occupational soldiers found their camp?

"Artyom, do you hear that?" Sam asked as he looked ahead towards their camp.

Artyom paused to listen…there.

Barking. Search dogs? But no gunfire. That meant either Alyosha had escaped or…

Sam must've reached the same conclusions as he did, because he stood back up and cut loose the stringed up rabbits at his hip. The American looked back at Artyom as he unslung his secondary long arm, a rugged AK-74U with a silencer screwed on.

"Take the right flank. Don't fire until you have eyes on Alyosha. If he's captured, I'll draw their fire and send up a flare while you get him. If he's dead…well, we make these bastards pay and book it back to the station."

Artyom nodded in agreement and began moving into position.

He crawled low to the ground, leaving as little of himself exposed as he moved through the brush and foliage of the forest, until he began to hear barking. Gradually, the noise became louder, and artyom noticed something odd. It didn't sound like any dog he's encountered in the past. Somehow, it sounded…metallic? No. Like static. Yes, like a radio buzzing on an empty frequency.

Things became odder as he heard laughter. Familiar laughter. By then, Artyom was at the edge of the forest clearing where they had made camp last night. Behind a snow-laden bush, the Ranger furrowed his brow as he heard Alyosha laughing among the staticky barking of some dog.

Cautiously, he used the barrel of his Kalash to move aside some of the leaves of the brush he was concealed behind. A glimpse of Alyosha throwing a stick followed by a glowing blue orb left him unsure of what to do. Obviously, his friend wasn't in any danger, nor was there anyone else in the camp.

Cautiously, Artyom lifted himself from the snow and peered over the bushes with his Kalash ready to gun down any surprises.

His first impressions were validated by an empty camp save for a smiling Alyosha standing by their campfire. A trio of hares were roasting over the coals while a butchered elk hung from a nearby post.

Alyosha tensed at Artyom's sudden appearance, but immediately smiled in recognition. A better view of the man revealed him to be unharmed, albeit his left hand holding the carcass of a skinned rabbit. Waving over to him, he called out in greeting. "Ah, Artyom! You're just in time! Come! Let me introduce this new friend I found!"

As he did, a furry, metallic shape bounded out of the woods with a stick in its mouth. It was a dog, or at least, Artyom thought it was a dog, given by the general shape. It sure didn't look like any dog he's seen before. Metal legs, brain in a jar, metal jaw that looked strong enough to chew through steel, brain in a jar, half of its body encased in articulated steel.

Did he mention the brain in a jar?

Artyom stood there dumbly for a moment before regaining his bearings. He watched as the…dog…stopped at Alyosha's side and dropped the stick in its mouth at his feet. The hardened Ranger cooed, cooed, as he scratched the thing behind the ears before tossing a chunk of bloody rabbit meat in the air for the canine to snap out of the air with a metallic clack.

Then the dog spotted him and growled before Alyosha calmed it down. "Nonono, Artyom is a friend! A friend!" He looked back up at Artyom. "Don't worry, Artyom! He's friendly enough once you feed him! Just don't make any sudden movements around him and you'll be fine! Oh, and take off your helmet. He seems to just hate them for some reason! Speaking of which, where's Sam?"

"Over here, Alyosha." Sam called out as he entered the clearing looking just as confused as Artyom. Then his eyes widened in recognition at the half-metal dog. "I-is that a cyberdog?"

"Haha, yes! Yes it is!" Alyosha laughed out loud as Artyom and Sam, very slowly and eyes on the dog, approached the camp. "And here I thought all of them died out with the bombs!"

Artyom had no idea what a "cyberdog" was, so he guessed it was something from before the bombs that these older men knew of.

"But where are its owners? They might be nearby!" Sam warned as he approached while cautiously looking around the clearing.

Alyosha shook his head with a grin. "Nah, that's the crazy part! There was this flash of light a while ago near the camp, spooked me like crazy! I go to check it out and I find this guy—" he gives the cyberdog a run on the head "—pinned underneath some rubble. It was tough and he didn't trust me at first, but he warmed up once I got him out and fed him some rabbit. Like a moth to a flame, eh?"

Artyom glanced over the Sam and the two shared a worried look.

"Bah, I can tell you guys don't believe me, that's fine." Alyosha continued. "I know it sounds crazy, but that's really what happened! I can show you guys the place later, but here! Look at these!"

With that, the Ranger gestured at a large rucksack near his side of the campfire already opened, its contents out on display. It seemed like there was everything from pots and packaged rations to scientific gadgets that were beyond a soldier such as Artyom. Then, he noticed the gun

It was leaning against a nearby boulder. Long and boxy with two tubes jutting out the front and a top-folding stock at the rear. Sleek black plastic and steel meshed together into an intimidating weapon of war. A sling was attached to it, dangling to the side thanks to a shoulder pad loaded with shotgun shells that looked volumes higher in quality compared to the ones he's seen back in the metro.

"Is that a SPAS-12?" Sam asked in quiet awe.

"Yep." Alyosha replied. "You can look, but no touching. This little bugger nearly tore off my hand when I tried to take it from him."

Artyom shivered as he looked back at the dog and its reinforced jaw and serrated teeth. Yeah, the further those were away from his skin, the better. Nice looking gun be damned.

"Wasn't the only thing I found. Look at this backpack." Alyosha said as he knelt down next to the opened ruck. A closer look revealed several syringes, notebooks, and and emergency supplies like flares, reflective blankets, and a radio. "I found it on a skeleton. I think it might've been the dog's owner. Poor guy must be all alone now."

"Wait…are those stimpaks? And the writing…" Sam's eyes widened in shocked realization. "That's English!"

Artyom's eyes widened at the implication. Americans? Here on Russian soil? Was the Colonel right all along about their country being under occupation? He was skeptical at first, but this…

"And that's not all," Alyosha said, "look at this." He tossed a metal canteen over to the American. "I thought it might've been a military unit emblem."

Leaning over, Artyom noted the image printed across the canteen. It was a stenciled image of Two interlocked hexagons with some letters above it.

BIG MT​

"Big Mountain…" Sam muttered out. "That…that was a research contractor for my country's military back before the war. Weapons, tech, energy…they did everything from what I've heard." He shook his head. "But this doesn't make any sense. Why would they be out here, in the Russian wilderness of all places? And the cyberdog, that's a police model, but those cybernetics ook brand new! None of this makes sense!"

"In my experience, it's better not to look the gift horse in the mouth my friend." Alyosha gave Sam a pat on the shoulder. "We can look at the crash sight tomorrow. Come, some food will do you guys some good, eh?"

Now that was an idea Artyom could get behind. Some food was in order to distract them all from robot dogs and horse gifts and crazy flashing lights.

Some time later, the trio plus one canine were sitting around a crackling campfire behind them were sturdy individual shelters dug out into the snow and covered with dirt and branches.

Alyosha was tending to the fire while Sam sat nearby sharpening his knives. Artyom meanwhile sat across from them as he cleaned his guns. The dog had decided to lay between the two older members of the group as it gnawed on a rabbit carcass. Lying next to him was that exotic shotgun, and he growled whenever someone accidentally strayed too close to it.

"Hey, Sam?" Alyosha asked.

Sam continued to look down at the throwing knife he was sharpening. "Yeah?"

"I've noticed some letters on the cyberdog's metal bits. Near the collar. What do they say?"

Sam looked up at Alyosha then at the dog. Leaning closer, he peered onto its collar and used the campfire's light to read out a word printed onto a metal panel covering the top of its neck.

"Rex."

"Rex, eh?" Alyosha leaned back and looked at the dog. "Is that your name then?" He clicked his tongue and whistled. "Rex! C'mere boy!"

Rex showed no reaction at the call as he continued to gnaw at his rabbit.

Persistent, Alyosha continued on. "C'mere boy! Rex! Remember the fun we had with the stick? And I fed you that delicious rabbit as well!"

Still no response.

Sam laughed at his friend's attempt and Artyom cracked a small smile. "Heh, that's not how you do it. Here, I'll show you how it's done. Rex! Come here boy!" He called over to the dog in English.

Again, Rex refused to look up from his meal.

Alyosha barked out in laughter. "Ha! I guess spending too much time here has made your mother tongue too rusty! Look, even a dog can't recognize it!"

"Dogs can't recognize languages anyways, smartass." Sam grouched back. "It's an American dog. It's supposed to recognize what an American sounds like."

"Then I guess you've lost that American touch, my friend!"

"I'll touch you like an American."

As the two men bantered back and forth, Artyom looked over at the dog for a moment.

"Rex."

The cyberdog's head perked up and looked straight at Artyom. Silently, it stood up, rabbit still in its mouth, and walked over to Artyom's side of the campfire. With a huff, it plopped itself down next to the young Ranger and went back to chewing its meal. Hesitantly, Artyom reached over and placed his hand on the dog's metal side. He noted the image of a dancing bull and an ace painted over the surprisingly warm metal.

"Well I'll be…" Sam muttered out.

Artyom looked back up to see the American looking at him along with Alyosha, who was grinning, impressed.

"Look at you, Artyom!" The Russian stalker said with raised hands. "I guess we can call you an animal whisperer now! Khan would be proud, eh?"

"I suppose it won't be long before we see you singing demons to sleep, huh Artyom?" Sam joined in with his own grin.

Artyom huffed and flipped them both the bird before standing up to take the first watch for the night. As he walked off, Rex decided to follow along, but not before retrieving his shotgun and trotting after him with it in his mouth, leaving the two rangers to their jokes.

A short distance away, Artyom stopped and looked up at the moon. It was full out tonight. Artyom could remember the nights he and the others spent stargazing once they fled Moscow. Idiot pointed out all the constellations he's read about in his books while Anna gushed over shooting stars skipping across the night sky. Personally, the Ranger always felt more in tune with the moon. He was told that he was named after a famous hunter, a hero that slew evil wherever it lay, defending the helpless, protecting the innocent.

Even when gone, Artyom still liked to think that she was watching over him under the guise of the moon and stars. Now, more than ever, as they fled across the ruins of their former country.

A whine brought his attention downwards. Rex had elected to sit next to Artyom, shotgun laid out on the snow. He looked up at the young Ranger with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. Its brain floated in its transparent casing while emitting a soft pulsing blue light that dimly lit up the darkness of the forest.

In all of Artyom's travels, from fighting mutants, exploring the surface, to meeting the Metro's denizens, he was confident to admit that this dog was by far one of the strangest things he's seen in his life. And if Sam were to be believed, they were common sights back in his country.

Truly, it spoke of the vastness of the outer world compared to the tunnels of Moscow.

Now, they were all cast adrift. Looking for a way home. He was sure Rex had a home. Why would he so zealously defend that shotgun if he didn't have an owner to return it to? No. To Artyom, Rex was just as lost as he and the others were.

And so, the Ranger hunkered down for the night, setting up perimeter tripwires and other traps in preparation for the long night ahead. All the while, the American cyberdog watched, keeping a vigilant eye on the forests around them.