The Overseer's Medicine (Fallout 4)

Miranda glared at me.

"You really think the people outside are so damn generous?"

I exhaled, masking a groan.

"Yes, Miranda. Not all of them, but some for sure."

"Like that trader who charged us forty caps for a stimpak? The one who sold us fungus-infested bloatfly meat? The raiders who beat up the guards to within an inch of their lives before running off with all our combat rifles?"

"No, like the one who gave Dr. Penske bags of fertiliser for free. And the one who brought the kids a bag full of toys. And that one guy from Diamond City who drew up plans for shoring up the wall breach we had in the reactor room, in exchange for one of Maria's homemade pies. Want me to go on?"

"No, there's no need. The way you chose to conveniently forget all the others who lied, cheated and stole from us, it's obvious you're driven more by your agenda than your brain." She sighed. "You're a hard worker, Neil. But I wish you weren't so damn naïve."

With that, she brushed past me, heading for the elevator down to the vault proper. We had had so many arguments on this subject that nowadays just being around Miranda brought on one of my frequent migraines. I could feel the beginnings of one even now, its tendrils creeping up my temples. I turned back to the vault schematics I was poring over before Miranda had come by, but I could no longer concentrate on them. I rubbed my eyes and sighed. I needed some tea.

Grabbing my mug, I headed for the elevator. Scott, the security head, gave me a compassionate glance as I walked past him. Scott was a powerful, assertive man who commanded the respect of his security team. That last raider attack notwithstanding, he had managed to keep Vault 81's dwellers unmolested throughout the past decade, ever since the Overseer had opened it up to the Commonwealth. He could be fiery and hot-headed in his dealings with the outsiders, but like everyone else he gave Miranda a wide berth.

I got in the elevator and pushed the button to go down to the residential area. The ride was silent, but the light flickered and hissed, interrupting my internal monologue. It got on my nerves. I needed to replace that light soon, I told myself. I had been getting more sensitive these past few months, for some reason. The migraines which had plagued me since puberty, were becoming more frequent. I couldn't fathom why. For a vault dweller, I was in reasonable shape. At 27, I had spent the entirety of my life within its walls. Had all my shots, exercised daily, ate the vault-grown fruits and veggies - which, despite Dr. Penske's best efforts, tasted of nothing. Dr. Forsythe, the resident clinician and researcher, had told me to take it easy. Keep away from the reactor room. Maybe it was the nuclear fallout leaking in from all the wall breaches we'd had over the years, he had muttered.

I was still a teenager when I saw my first outsider. She was a trader. Tanned, liver spotted skin peeked out from under her numerous leather coverings. Coverings which themselves were cracked and, in some places, bloodied. Contrasted with hers, my pale, smooth skin looked lifeless. Sure, I had my fair share of bumps and bruises over the years but the Vault-tec stimpaks - and whatever else Dr. Forsythe mixed in them - usually made all the scars and blemishes disappear. Later in my life, I had seen more outsiders, especially these past couple of years when I had been posted on the upper level to work on the crumbling infrastructure over there. Some of them had looked better than the first one, some of them considerably worse. I didn't talk to them much, per Scott's orders -- and Miranda's righteous indignation. But whenever I managed to lock eyes with one of them, I could see the pain. And they could see it in mine. We might not share physical afflictions, but we did the psychological ones.

The elevator doors opened and I stepped out into the atrium. I made a beeline for Maria's diner. Austin and Erin, two of the vault's youngest, bounded around a corner and ran past me. Probably off to investigate whatever new ventilation shaft or hole in the wall they had stumbled across this time. Being vault kids was hard. The near-sterile atmosphere, white fluorescent lights, boring food, growing up seeing the same people all the time... it was incessantly boring. The school teacher Katy empathised with them and did her best to keep them occupied with homework and virtual field trips -- through holotape recordings of cities and zoos before the bombs fell - but privately she was frustrated. There's only so much the kids can learn about the world being locked away from it.

I slid in one of the diner's bench seats and ordered a tea from Maria. It was just muttfruit leaves steeped in water overnight, popped in one of the reactor's steam vents to heat it up before serving. Maria did what she could with the limited power and water allocations she had. I sat with my face in my hands for I don't know how long. I definitely had a migraine coming on. I felt that familiar throb in my temples, which would soon give way to a mind-numbing ache. It wasn't because of my argument with Miranda earlier, no. It was that damned door which I had been obsessing over for the past two weeks.

At first, it had been a distraction. Just a regular sliding door, it was situated right next to where I worked on the upper floor. Rather, had been working for the past two months, in my latest posting. I needed to figure out the best way to brace the rock wall near the vault entrance. The guards who worked the entrance had noticed the deep cracks forming in the wall, and feared the whole thing would just come crashing down on them one day. So I had been pulled from my previous post at the residence rooms to investigate the severity of the issue. The work was simple enough, but it took time running tests, conducting structural analyses, drawing up the plans, gathering material and recruiting personnel for bracing. Routine gig. However, two weeks ago all activity on that project had stopped as I was stuck waiting for bags of cement which a trader had been asked to procure. One day, bored out of my mind, I had noticed the door. And the fact that it wouldn't open.

I'm no electronics expert but I've managed to fix a few circuits before. A laser turret. Old terminals in the schoolroom. Some medical equipment Dr. Forsythe needed. But this one was plain stubborn. I had tried to hack into the programming from whatever circuitry I could find on my side of the door. I eventually realised there was a terminal on the other side keeping it locked shut. The door was simply inaccessible from this side. I tried brute-forcing, using the Overseer's override, even took a wrench to the door in a moment of frustration, but it wouldn't budge.

I wondered what was on the other side. Putting my ear to the metal, I could sometimes hear water dripping. I could discern hum of machinery, but that could've been from anywhere in the vault. Who was to say this door didn't lead outside? Maybe it was a secret passageway. If not to the Commonwealth, then perhaps another vault. I needed to know. I felt like one of the kids, having found a portal to a hidden world, but I didn't know the magic words to open it. There were nights I dreamt about what might lie beyond that pneumatic-actuated two-inch thick slab of metal. The anticipation was overwhelming.

My mug slid across the table, tea gently sloshing up to the brim. It wasn't the careful hands of Maria who had deposited my order so unceremoniously on the table.

"Expecting company?"

It was the Overseer.

I shook my head. She slid on the bench across the table.

"What a shit-show today is turning out to be." She began. I didn't reply. "And from the looks of it, I'm not the only one going through it."

She placed a hand over mine.

"Hey, you okay?"

"I'll be alright."

"Another migraine coming on?"

I looked at her. She was obviously stressed, but right now her expression was one of concern.

"Yeah." I croaked. I took a sip of the tea. "You can tell?"

"You look pale. More than usual."

The usual. I knew I was pale. Gaunt. Lanky. As good as someone can look having spent almost three decades buried underground.

"So pale you can see the migraine creeping across my forehead..." I joked. It fell flat.

"Hey" the Overseer's voice dropped low. "I've got medicine in my office. Come by in the evening when you're done with work." Her gaze bored into me. Her blue eyes could be cold and businesslike just as soon as they could be warm and sympathetic. Right now I was in too much pain to figure what they looked like. I nodded. She patted my hand.

"Okay, now do you wanna hear about what i found crawling in the air ducts above my office today?"

"Is this another maintenance request?"

She laughed, this time.

The afternoon hours rolled by. The tea had helped to an extent. The tendrils of pain had pulled back for a bit while I calibrated some construction equipment and later, peered at the source code of the locked door. But by the end of my shift I was no closer to understanding the two hundred-year old programming syntax, and the grey clouds of migraine had rolled across my forehead again. It was no good. I put away the schematics, manuals and my notes for the next day, and headed back down into the vault. The atrium was empty. The Combeses had closed shop and left. Maria and her husband were prepping evening meal service when I passed the diner. I took the stairs up to the Overseer's office. The guard who usually sat outside the door had been dismissed for the day. I rapped four times on the door.

"Come in."

I'd been up to the office plenty of times. If she wasn't out and about, one would usually find the Overseer working away on her terminal at her desk, responding to whatever inventory request or report came her way. The couches to one end of the room would be for official in-person meetings. If it was with heads of staff, she'd usually offer them bottles of ale. She'd nurse a glass of wine herself, two hundred-year old vintage. She'd let me have a sip once. I had turned away from her, pretending to look out the window behind her desk at the shops below. It had taken every ounce of willpower to not let the disgust show in my face. But the Overseer was perceptive. I'd never been offered the wine since.

When I entered, I didn't find her at her desk, nor on the couches. The door to her personal quarters, situated right next to her office, was open. A rhythmic whirring came from within.

"Who is it?" came the Overseer's voice. She sounded out of breath.

"It's me, Neil"

"I'm home. You can come in."

I walked through the doorway to her residence. For being the most lavish residence in the vault, it was furnished rather sparsely. A bed, a dresser, a diwan, a coffee table and a lockbox made up the contents of her office. A couple of paintings hung on the faux wood walls. I walked in on the Overseer running on a treadmill, which I'd never seen at her place before.

"I can wait outside."

"No, no... take a seat. Grab a drink from... the lockbox if you want." She replied between pants.

"If you insist."

Amongst other things, the lockbox had an assortment of drinks and snacks. I dug out a bottle of Gwinett from between the sweet rolls and Bourbon and settled on the diwan.

"I've just got... two more minutes left."

"Take your time."

The Overseer had ditched her vault jumpsuit -- which she somehow made seem more formal and symbolic of her status than every other vault dweller wearing the same garment -- for a pink cropped tank and black lycra workout shorts. A jumper was knotted by the sleeves around her waist. Her hair was tied in a ponytail instead of the bun she usually wore it in. I watched as she pounded away on the synthetic surface. Her skin was flushed a warm pink, glistening under the white fluorescents in a sheen of sweat. Her midriff was bare, and beads of sweat trickled down her back. She'd seemingly been going for a while. I took a sip of the ale and watched her ponytail swing from side to side. For someone in her late thirties, she wasn't slowing down on the 'mill, even towards the end of her workout.

The treadmill beeped and came to a halt. The Overseer rested for a few moments, holding herself up by the arm rails, and got off the machine. She wiped the sweat off her face with a towel and sipped from a bottle.

"Scoot over." She commanded me as she walked over to the diwan. I slid to one end and she settled on the other. She put the towel over her face and took a couple of deep breaths. Her belly swelled and contracted with each breath, until eventually she could respire normally again.

"That wasn't here the last time." I offered.

"No. Overseer Baht had it sent downstairs to the medical bay. He never saw any use for it. He didn't go easy on the chems either. I decided I wasn't gonna end up like him." She removed the towel from her face and looked at me.

"Did you know he was the same age as me when he suffered his first stroke?"

I told her I didn't.

"No... you were too young. I was shadowing him back then, for just about a year or so. Followed him to all the staff meetings, all the residential forums. I was there when he negotiated with the first traders from the Commonwealth." She sighed, a slight smile creeping across her face. "I guess, short of seeing him piss, shower or shit, I was there the whole time, right next to him."

"What was he like?"

"Hot-headed. He fought in the War, in the mainland. Climbed through the ranks, got noticed by a Vault-tec exec who saw him for the master tactician he was. The exec put in a request with the military, and they dragged him, kicking and screaming, out of China and into Boston. It was just as well... the Vault kept him alive far longer than the war would've. He needed it too. He'd seen and done things... in the war, I mean. Community service -- his phrase for overseeing the vault - did him good. But his past tended to catch up with him at times."

I took another sip and nursed the bottle in my hand. She continued.

"I was with him right till the day he died."

"Was it..."

"Here? No, thank fuck." The Overseer didn't swear often, especially not with others around. But she knew she could let her hair down around me. "No, it was in the reactor room. I was supposed to be with him that afternoon, but just the day before the had schoolteacher asked me to present a talk to her class about... I don't even remember what it was about." She sighed.

"All I remember is someone out in the hallway yelling that the Overseer was dying. I froze. In front of the whole class. I wanted to run to his side but my limbs wouldn't move. I was shaking. When I finally got to the med bay... he had a white sheet draped over him."

I knew how much she had looked up to her predecessor. But she'd never told me about Baht's death before.

"Shit, Gwen... I'm sorry you had to see that." I said, placing a hand on her knee. She nodded and placed her hand on top of mine.

"Thanks. It was hard. I didn't even get a chance to process it then."

"Why not?"

Gwen turned to me.

"I was appointed as the new Overseer right the day after he died. It was automated. He had programmed his terminal -- the same one that's in the office -- to transfer authority to me in the event of his death." She paused, turning her gaze to the floor.

"I would never have made it if Vault-tec was still around. They would've said I was too young for the job. Inexperienced. Idealistic. But I guess..."

"... Baht saw something in you that was more important."

Her eyes turned to mine. Piercing. Questioning.

"He saw how much you cared. About the vault. About the people. You wanted them to do more than just survive. You wanted them to thrive."

Gwen's gaze didn't flinch. She kept searching my face for the longest time. Trying to figure if I was being insincere, pandering. Sweet-talking. But I wasn't. Eventually her expression relaxed. She intertwined her fingers with mine and squeezed my hand.

"Thanks. I guess I needed to hear that today."

I smiled at her and rubbed her knee. She looked at my hand, lost in thought. A couple moments later she rose.

"I need a shower." She announced. "And so do you. Come on." She pulled me up. I placed the half-empty Gwinett on the coffee table and let her lead me to the bathroom.

"Shut the door, would you?" Gwen asked, untying the sleeves of her jumper. I did as told, and by the time I turned around, her shorts were already on the floor, along with the jumper. She was wearing brief panties underneath. The back panels lay bunched up above the twin moons of her ass, the navy-blue fabric damp with sweat. She reached in the shower stall and turned the knobs, holding a hand under the running water till she was happy with the temperature. She turned around and hooked her fingers in the hem of her tank, pulling it up and over her head. She saw me staring and threw the sweaty tank at me.

"Are you planning on bringing that jumpsuit in the shower with you?"

I smirked and took the offending garments off. Gwen had meanwhile entered the stall, its sides already steamed up. Her panties came flying out from the crack of the door, and she held out a hand, gesturing me with a curled finger to get in. I stepped into the stall - the warm spray engulfing one leg, then the other, followed by my torso. I pulled the stall door shut and felt Gwen's arms wrapping around my waist from behind. She pulled me into her in an embrace. The side of her face pressed into the back of my shoulder. Her heavy breasts pressed into my back. I felt her breaths, slow and full. On many a night, they had soothed me. Listening to them, feeling her exhales breeze over my hair and the back of my neck. Having her belly rise and fall against the small of my back as she spooned me, usually with an arm draped around my torso. It was part of her medicine.

I felt Gwen sigh. A long exhale which turned into a moan.

"Mmm... where are you?" she asked in a voice so low I could barely hear her over the sound of the shower.

"Right here."

"Good." She let me go and turned me gently by my arm to face her. She reached up and wrapped her arms behind my neck, pulling her face right up to mine. Her gaze locked with mine. There was a hunger in her eyes, but also concern.

"Sorry to unload on you like that before."

"Don't be."

"You're not well. I shouldn't have burdened you with... all that."

"Did it help?"

Instead of replying, she pressed her lips to mine. My hands rose from my sides to grab her hips. Gwen breathed in sharply and arched her back. We stayed locked in the kiss, savouring each other's mouths under the shower. When we separated, I moved a hand up to the back of her neck. Rivulets of water ran down the sides of her face, dripping down from her chin. I stared into her eyes, and for a precious few moments the insidious pain behind my temples didn't matter. I tilted her head back and met her for another, more passionate kiss. We groaned in each other's mouths as our lips parted and our tongues clashed. Gwen's hands unlaced behind my neck. One cupped my cheek, while the other slithered down my torso to grab my stiff cock which had been pressing insistently against her belly. Her fingers wrapped around the shaft and she slowly pumped me, invigorating my cock further.

After a while Gwen pulled away, still stroking my cock. Her red eye-shadow had begun running down the sides of her face. With her free hand she grabbed one of mine, and placed it on a heavy, rounded breast. I pinched and tweaked the hard nipple between my fingers. Gwen exhaled and her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Mmmm... that feels so good" she whispered. Her hand, leaving mine to work on her tits, slid down her body to her mound, her fiery pubes matted with water and her own wetness. She stroked my length as she began rubbing her pussy. She stepped back and leaned against the wall. Gwen gently slapped her mound a couple of times, getting more blood flowing under the skin as she tended me to a full erection. Still playing with her breast, I leaned in and kissed the side of her neck, running my tongue on the skin the way she had taught me.