M.A. Kleen

The following story is the second installment in a limited series set in the Commonwealth wasteland world of Fallout 4. Read Part 1.

---

They moved when the radstorm softened, when the wind eased and no longer burned like sandpaper.

Earlier that day, Rook, a young woman weathered beyond her years, ventured into the Glowing Sea, a vast, irradiated region hostile to most forms of life. It was filled with rumors of preserved pre-war tech, caches of RadAway, and other buried secrets.

She was desperate to find something, anything, to help her settlement survive.

What she found was a corpse, gripping a map with handwritten directions pointing to an area simply labeled “LANTERN.” Before she could reach it, a radstorm swept in, forcing her to take shelter in a derelict bus. There, she encountered a super mutant named Graft. So far, he hadn’t shown much hostility.

More importantly, he knew things—things about the strange map. Together, they were determined to discover where it led.

Graft went first, his enormous, green feet sinking into the ash as he lept from the bus. Rook followed, keeping one hand on the rusted frame as she climbed out, the other on her pistol.

“No waste bullets,” Graft said without looking back.

“Didn’t ask for your advice,” Rook answered.

He snorted. “Shot me. Bullet wasted.”

“Made me feel better.”

Graft paused long enough to glance at her. “That is stupid reason.”

Rook squinted into the haze, her breath heavy behind the improvised resperator hidden by a thin scarf. “The wasteland runs on stupidity.”

Graft led her along the map line, stopping at landmarks that meant nothing to her and apparently everything to him. A twisted chunk of rebar that looked like a hook. A cracked slab of asphalt shaped like a fish. A collapsed wall where someone had painted a faded blue stripe.

“Here,” Graft said, tapping the ground with a thick finger. “Old path under ash.”

Rook stared. “You can see that?”

Graft huffed. “I can smell it. Asphalt smell different from dirt. Also… memory.”

That word again–memory, like a splinter he couldn’t pull out.

They reached the “broken tooth” near midday.

It was a radio tower once, long ago. Now it was a jagged skeletal stump of metal jutting from the ground at an angle, snapped off halfway up like a molar broken at the root. The ash around it had hardened into glassy sheets. Wind sang through the torn metal with a thin, warbling whistle.

Rook approached carefully, boots crunching. The map had a mark here: a tiny tooth symbol, and the note TURN WEST. COUNT THREE SINKHOLES.

Rook leaned close to the map as Graft held it up. “You trust this?”

Graft’s big thumb smudged over a section of ink. “I trust some of it. Not all.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. Then he pointed at a line that looked slightly thicker, slightly darker, like someone had gone over it.

“Here,” he said. “This part… newer.”

Rook frowned. “It’s all new.”

“No,” he insisted, and his eyes narrowed. “Some new. Some… newer. Different hand.”

Rook felt a chill that had nothing to do with the poisoned wind. “Someone changed it?”

Graft nodded.

“Why?”

The super mutant’s jaw clenched. “To lead wrong people. Or to kill right people.”

“Comforting,” Rook muttered.

They walked. The first sinkhole was easy: a round depression filled with black water that shimmered faintly. The Geiger clicked fast near it, and Rook kept her distance. The second sinkhole was worse. It was a jagged split in the earth with warm air rising from it, smelling like wet copper.

The third wasn’t on the ground at all. It was a hole in a house.

A half-buried pre-war home, its roof collapsed, one wall still standing like a stubborn relic. The foundation had caved inward, creating a sinkhole inside the living room. Sunlight fell into it at an angle, revealing a drop into darkness.

Rook peered over the edge and saw old furniture wedged at odd angles, a couch half swallowed, a child’s plastic toy truck caught on a beam.

A human hand protruded from the dirt near the edge, pale and swollen, fingers curled like it was still trying to claw out.

Rook’s stomach turned.

Graft crouched, sniffed. “Fresh-ish.”

“Define ‘fresh.’”

Graft shrugged. “Not skeleton.”

Rook swallowed bile. “So someone fell in.”

“No,” Graft said, voice flat. He pointed at boot prints in the ash. There were multiple sets, heavy and deliberate, leading to the hole. And drag marks, like they were pulling something.

Rook’s eyes narrowed. “He was thrown in.”

Graft grunted. “Yes.”

Rook looked around. The ash plain was wide and empty, but she felt watched.

A weird sound like clattering metal broke the silence. Then a cheerful voice crackled through a speaker somewhere nearby: “Hellooo valued citizens! This is your friendly neighborhood service unit, reminding you to remain calm during routine containment—”

The voice stuttered, warped by static. “—routine con—con—contain—”

It cut off with a squeal.

Rook froze. “What the hell was that?”

Graft’s face tightened. “Singing machine. Not singing now. Talking.”

Rook glanced back at the map note: IF YOU HEAR SINGING, YOU’RE TOO CLOSE.

“Is it close?” she whispered.

Graft stared at the half-buried house. “Closer.”

They found shelter that night in a maintenance tunnel, an old service conduit running under the ash, exposed by a fissure. It smelled like mold and rust, but the Geiger quieted down inside, clicking slow and tolerable.

Rook sat with her back against the cold concrete and took inventory like a ritual: two RadAway, one Rad-X, half a canteen, a pouch of jerky that tasted like smoke and old salt, thirty-two rounds of .38, one flare.

Graft sat opposite her, huge in the cramped space, knees drawn up awkwardly. He had a bag of something that looked like old military rations, and he chewed them with grim patience.

Rook watched him. “So,” she said, keeping her voice casual because casual was safer than scared, “why are you out here?” 

She stared without meaning to. She had never seen a mutant up close before. Not a living one, anyway. The deep lines in his face, once conveying adrenaline-fueled rage, made him look old, weary. Even elderly.

Graft’s eyes flicked to hers. “Why you out here?”

“I asked first.”

He snorted. “Human rule. Stupid.”

Rook’s mouth twitched despite herself. “It’s tradition.”

Graft chewed, thought, then said, “I live here.”

“In the Glowing Sea?” Rook stared. “Why?”

Graft’s gaze drifted to the tunnel ceiling. “Quiet. No people screaming at me. No Brotherhood flying metal birds.”

“Still plenty of screaming,” Rook muttered, listening to the wind above them.

Graft’s jaw tightened. “Not that kind.”

Rook hesitated, then pulled the map out of his harness while he watched, not stopping her. The plastic felt colder than it should. “You said you knew ‘Broken Tooth,’” she said. “What is LANTERN?”

Graft’s hands flexed. The tunnel seemed to shrink around his silence. “It was place,” he said finally. “Before.”

“Before what?” Rook pressed.

Graft’s lips pulled back, not in a smile, and his eyes darkened. “Before I was… this.”

“You were human.” Rook examined the map carefully with a penlight, and its red lens caught something she hadn’t noticed before. Under ‘LANTERN’ was scrawled the word ‘CLEANSPRING.’ It was nearly invisible, like someone tried to erase it. Rook felt her heartbeat in her throat.

She opened her mouth to ask more, but the tunnel lights flickered on. They were not bright overhead lights but weak yellow strips glowing to life along the wall, one by one, like the tunnel was waking up.

She shot to her feet, pistol up.

Graft stood too fast, head nearly hitting the ceiling. He stared at the lights with a mix of anger and dread.

A speaker crackled overhead, and a thin, cheerful melody began—warped, tinny, singing.

Rook’s stomach dropped.

Graft’s voice went low. “We are too close.”

The song grew louder, and beneath it a mechanical voice tried to talk through the music: “—welcome back, authorized personnel. Custodial protocols are now in effect—”

Somewhere deeper in the tunnel, a door clanked. Then another. A heavy, slow rhythm, like something large was unlocking itself.

Rook’s Geiger began to chatter again.

Graft grabbed her by the sleeve, not hard, but urgent, and pulled her toward the darkness ahead. “We go,” he said.

“Where?”

The mutant’s eyes reflected the weak yellow light, and for the first time, showed fear. “To LANTERN,” he said. “Before it comes to us.”

And the singing followed them into the dark.