User:SteelySniper

Number 2451 had always liked the nickname “Bolt” it could mean a lot of things, it was what held most of dysto’ together, it was the ammunition that defended its walls, it was what you did just after getting caught pinching a jerry can. It sure beat 2451 anyway, and Bolt didn’t have the luxury of parents to name him.

It was thoughts like these that always seemed to take over when Bolt sat in class. If school had seemed trivial before it was ever more so now that work had finished, soon bolt would leave and be assigned somewhere, probably some monotonous monkey-work in level two. Bolt shivered, partly at that thought, and partly because of the draught as the classroom door opened behind him. The figure which filled it was that of his teacher Mrs. Crystal, she was paler than usual, and she wore an apprehensive look on her face. She strode to the front of the class, something about the way she walked caught Bolt’s eye, and he closed the tattered old book he had been reading under the table, and slid it into his pocket. Mrs Crystal took a breath, eyed her shoes and said: “The vault council requires that I am to inform all students about the…” She took another breath, and rolled her eyes. “…’Wonders’ of the outside world.” At those words a couple of the boys around the classroom’s faces changed, Bolt’s didn’t, but inwardly, his ears pricked up. A few stray whispers came into being, drifted around the class, and were stifled suddenly as Mrs Crystal demanded “Quiet. A video has been prepared on the subject, and after your break a member of the council will be visiting.” Her voice was dry and solemn; Bolt knew well that teachers were supposed to make everything sound interesting and exciting. It made sense of course, he knew Mrs. Crystal’s views on the surface, it was where her son had gone, it hurt her deeply each year to watch her students leave for the outside world, knowing none of them would ever come back, you weren’t allowed to come back. Why though? Bolt thought as he watched through glazed eyes as Mrs Crystal fumbled with the projector and the roll of film. If the Surface was so wonderful, surely nobody would want to come back? It whiffed a little of conspiracy to Bolt, but then a lot of things did, his imagination was like that.

When Mrs. Crystal was done with the film she wordlessly hit play, then went and sat down, making a point of facing the class, rather than the screen, and deliberately sitting so that the shadow of her shoulder obscured the bottom right corner of the screen in what Bolt thought was a feeble attempt at disrespect. The video itself Bolt found unimpressive, the other boys stared wide eyed at the montage of archive footage being passed off as video of the outside. Bolt knew the archives well; he recognized footage of several western movies, clips of the Paris-Dakar off-road race, a scene from the movie “Mad Max 2” and a clip from “Ray Mears’ Bushcraft”. The Crackly footage was accompanied by crackly audio, mostly old 1990s rock music and on occasion narration by a man who sounded for all the world as though he had consumed half the marijuana supply of pre-war Amsterdam. Bolt took the time instead to glance at the others around the class. Seemingly none of the other students were quick enough to have remembered that there had been no video cameras in the Vault at zero-hour and sure-as-hell nobody had built one since. Bolt was already formulating a number of difficult questions to ask this council member afterwards. His thoughts were brought abruptly back to the classroom when he noticed Mrs. Crystal looking at him from across the room. He smiled at her, winked and nodded towards the screen knowingly, this seemed to reassure her. By this point the class was beginning to mill out into the corridor. Bolt followed them without haste.

There was little for Bolt to do down in level 3, the break was 30 minutes long, and Bolt’s mind had no plans on how to spend it, his feet however defaulted and took him to the café 3 corridors west. He had no food credits left for today, but there he could read and gather his thoughts. No sooner had he found his place in the tattered, thrice-read book when he got that feeling that comes the millisecond before something happens, it was nothing special, just his sub-conscious collecting inputs, the jingle of the bell above the door, a footstep you’ve heard before, and the blurred reflection in the salt seller, and deducting that a familiar voice was about to say “It’s Bolty!” The voice belonged to Jane, who was now sliding her curvy form into the seat opposite Bolt, beside her Stewart was also sitting down. Bolt ignored him and took the opportunity to look Jane up and down, and slid his book away into his pocket. Jane was undeniably attractive and a friend of sorts, by which I mean she liked Bolt, and teased him a little, but had there been anyone else she knew in the Café, she would have sat with them instead. Stewart was her boyfriend. He had never had a bad word to say to bolt, but there had always been a flavour of well-contained bitterness in the air between them. “Will you be going off to live on the surface then?” Jane questioned, leaning forward into Bolt’s gaze, which previously could’ve been directed at the table or her chest, she couldn’t tell, he made sure of it. Bolt leaned forward a touch, and looked into her eyes, taking the shortest of breaths as he infused his voice with a swagger of confidence he didn’t really have and said “With you here how could I ever leave?” resisting the urge to look over at Stewart for a reaction. It helped he found to rest his head on his right hand, excluding Stewart from his peripheral vision. Jane sat back, her finger was twisting in her hair, Bolt noticed. I’m good at this he reassured himself, because now the game started. It was only a game in the sense that Jane enjoyed it and it required skill on Bolt’s part. As far as he could tell Jane’s aim was to get him in trouble with Stewart, and Bolt’s was to tread the ever-thinning line between overstepping the mark of what you can say to a girl in the presence of her boyfriend, and not flattering her to her liking. And all that needs to be said about this particular session is that it went on for 15 minutes until something happened that had never happened before. Jane won. Bolt was never sure afterwards what she had asked, or what he had said, only that before the sentence could be finished he and Stewart were fighting.

If Bolt’s peripheral vision had not been obscured he may well have started the fight in a far more dignified way, but as it happened the blow simply struck the side of his face with enough force to push his chair past that point-of-no-return that makes your stomach tickle, and he went down with a thud. Bolt however was not new to this fighting business and was back on his feet by the time Stewart had come round the table and pushed him backwards onto another table, ruining someone’s breakfast. In times like this each limb had a mind of it’s own, his left hand for instance, had clasped around something hard and metallic and was thinking “This’ll do.” It swung forward and hurled what turned out to be an aluminium serviette holder at Stewart’s forehead. To the onlookers this surely looked quite impressive, but in reality bolt already knew it wasn’t heavy enough to hurt Stewart, but it had knocked him back for just enough time for his feet to hit the ground and his right fist to hit Stewart’s Jaw, there was a satisfying dribble of blood from Stewart’s lip and for a moment a dazed look landed on his face, but before Bolt could take advantage of this Stewart brought his right fist up hard into his stomach, winding him. Bolt was doubled over and put one foot back to steady himself, quickly pushing off it again, maintaining his low stance and charging his shoulder into Stewart’s chest. It hit hard and knocked him to the ground, subsequently tripping Bolt over. He landed on top of Stewart, his hands either side of his chest, then brought them up to catch one of Stewart’s fists, then the other, diverting them from his face and pinning them to the ground. His arms immobilised Stewart begun to thrash his legs, trying to find anything, a foothold, a chair, bolt’s shins... This was unnecessary however because at this moment a burly chef took hold of Bolt by the collar of his leather jacket, and lifted him almost clean off the ground, but some pressure did remain on the tips of his toes. Stewart got up and paused for a second, then rapidly moved to strike Bolt. The chef, who by his height and the thickness of his fingers Bolt had deduced to be a man he knew as John although most simply called him Dogmeat, dropped Bolt who lost his footing and fell forward, he heard a scuffle above him and by the time he got up he saw Dogmeat almost throwing Stewart out of the café door. He shut the door and turned towards Bolt who begun to say “It was-“ “Yes I know.” Interrupted Dogmeat and walked back behind the counter. Bolt was startled but his face showed no more than a minute widening of the eyes, eyes which, deciding they were no longer needed, returned to where they felt best, Jane’s body. The body in question was now sidling towards bolt, and as the eyes climbed up it they noticed that, although she was not smiling, something about her looked as though she wanted to. “I’m sorry about that.” She said, pressing her ever warm body against bolt and hugging him, which happened a lot. “No matter.” Bolt responded and winked in the way he knew she liked, and then winced as the pain reminded him that was his newly blackened eye. This time she did smile, and kissed him on the cheek, which didn’t happen a lot at all. She slid herself away from his arms and flicked her eyes casually towards the door “I have to-“ She begun “I know, go on.” Bolt sighed. The one hand still resting on her hip fell away and his eyes did what they did best as she walked towards the door. She almost caught them at it as she turned to look at him before opening the door, her hair flicked around like a pre-war shampoo advert. Bolt could see through the barred and wired window that Stewart had not waited. No doubt Jane had also noticed. Stewart was not a bad man, but he had too much pride to stand around watching Bolt and Jane say their goodbyes. Bolt looked around at Dogmeat, who was drying a glass, doing his best to look like a bartender Bolt thought. He grinned at Bolt and nodded at the door which clicked as it closed shut. Dogmeat didn’t speak much, but you always knew what he meant, Bolt respected that. He looked at his shoes, shook his head and said “Not a chance.” He sat down, gave it 5 minutes then left.

His first stop was one of the public bathrooms, which were much cleaner and tidier than you might expect down in level 3. Bolt did what he could to clean the protein-rich slurry off the back of his leather jacket, and mopped up his face a little, the bruise was beginning to show already. That was ok, it would help him catch this council member off guard. He looked up at the clock, class would restart in two minutes, it was doable.

As Bolt swung around the doorpost of the class at a fast walk it was around three-quarters full but Mrs Crystal had not yet arrived and there was the constant collective buzz of idle conversation. Stewart and Jane were sat in the far corner of the class, neither of them saw Bolt enter. He sat in his usual place, slumped back on his chair and waited. Soon Bolt’s ears detected the regular clicks of Mrs. Crystal’s shoes making their way down the hall. He looked around casually, trying to hide his eagerness, he didn’t do too well. Mrs Crystal stepped inside the door and stood to one side. Behind her entered the council member, and before the image had reached the conscious part of Bolt’s mind it was clear that he was one of the few who had gone to the surface, and been allowed to come back. There were certain exceptions to the rule; usually it went that once you went up in the elevator from level two to level one you never set foot on it again, but there had to be an engineer present to operate and maintain the elevator and that meant going both ways, also the surface needed to communicate with levels two and three, sometimes with highly important messages which had to be delivered personally. This man however fit neither of these situations. He wore a kind of rough, part improvised combat armor and, while he was unarmed, there was a knife sheath and some kind of holster attached to his belt. He was a tall man and he walked to the front of the class with prowess, his face looked dry and wearied beyond his age. It wasn’t radiation, Bolt could tell that much, it was something far more complex that changed this man. Perhaps the weight of leadership on his shoulders, mused Bolt, or judging by his dented and repaired armor, the horrors of war. His intrigue was rising with every moment that seemed to crawl past.

Mrs Crystal cleared her throat: “This is Miles Brand, and he is here to provide a brief explanation of the surface- “