Chapter Text
“So you either can’t or won’t, tell me how long exactly this child has been missing. The only child in your vault. You have no idea if they might have been kidnapped, or if they made contact with anyone outside of the vault. And you want me to base my search for them on a handful of drawings and journal entries with the promise of payment but only a tenth of the caps upfront?”
Frustrating though these circumstances are, you already know you’re going to end up taking this case. You’ve got orders. They don’t know you already have the upper hand in information. That doesn’t mean you won’t sit here and make this dressed down Vault-Tec bureaucrat shake in his standard-issue boots a bit. Vault 100 was being less than forthcoming about the issue facing them. A child had gone missing on their watch. If you could get answers through intimidation instead of reconnaissance, then all the better. The lab tech- Ernie, if the stitched on name tag was to be believed- shifted his clipboard to clasp his hands together, poorly smoothing down his harried expression.
“We’ve been assured by our contacts outside of the Vault that your agents are some of the best trackers in the Corvega area-”
“Yes, but even the best trackers need something to work with when they’ve got no history with the client in question, no leads on what direction they may have gone, and no solid motive.”
Ernie shuffles his feet a bit and looks through the papers tucked on his clipboard. It slowly becomes obvious that pushing this line of inquiry much more will lead to them either shutting you down or shutting you out. A disinterested sigh, not entirely feigned, escapes you as he reaches the bottom of his stack of redacted documents, prior frustration waning, “Listen, the most important thing you can give me is more of a timeline. I can’t run off after this kid unless I know how far they might have gotten.”
It was for the best not to spook them altogether. If you could tease out any extra details, all the better, but you’d rather not risk running this as a free agent. It meant they’d hire competition, and you were here explicitly to postpone that outcome. His expression smooths by a fraction almost immediately, “Of course. We don’t expect you to work miracles, the Overseer has put together a dossier for Frisk. It isn’t available until we’ve had someone commit to taking on the case, however. I’m sure you understand.”
The saccharine-sweet practiced bureaucracy edges its way back in as he speaks, comfort easing his features into geniality again. You feel compelled to offer a small tug of your lips upward, a nod toward selling him on the idea that his mannerisms were working, “And so you’ve called in the best to ensure that the job gets done.”
The smug hunter is always an easy act to lean into, it’s what people have come to expect in a wasteland of bounty hunters and the slave trade. Nevermind that the asking price behind your particular brand of hunting started at nearly double the going rate. You don’t often encounter people who can appreciate why you cost so much to hire on, and especially wouldn’t among these sallow, frail dwellers out of Vault 100. They were locked into their superior, safe way of life and gave you the distinct impression that they felt you should consider yourself lucky for even having seen this much of it. Cocky blowhards.
Ernie has eased up enough to stroke your ego, knowing his role in the game once again thanks to your front of bravado. “Precisely. You and your guild are the first we’ve offered this contract to, you know.”
The bold lie makes your arms tense up, but you don’t make any action out of the motion. Your pride has already risen into this matter too much and you don’t want to risk making a scene based on knowledge he doesn’t know you have. But the assumption of your ignorance rubs you the wrong way. You’re a Venerie for fuck’s sake. Most people would know not to dick around with someone in your position. You have to make your peace with the conclusion that its vault-dweller ignorance wrapped up in the effort of flattery.
“Of course. You knew you wouldn’t have to ask anyone else if you came to us first. The Venerie always deliver.”
The smile he flashes again at your alluded agreement to the case is all smarm, peppered with some genuine relief. Whether that’s at his belief that the lie went unnoticed or the idea that their quest to find someone to undertake this nightmare of a missing person case is unclear. What is clear is that his ‘morning coffee’ attitude is back to stay, “So I should arrange for you to meet with Overseer Sentas for a full debriefing?”
The annoyance flairs back up enough to threaten your mask of bravado, but you tamp it down to sell your quick, “Absolutely,” with enough derisive bluster to satisfy the situation. It’s not like they knew you didn’t have a choice.
Vault 100 situated itself on the Southern highway leading out of the Grand Rapids area, fortunately situated amongst a swath of wildlife that had been a pre-War nature preserve between the aforementioned city and a now whimsically named ghost town, known pre-War as Kalamazoo. The Vault was one of the last spots on the civilized map before bearing northward into the Great Lake-marshes, depending on who and when you asked. Grand Rapids, the only northern competition that was structurally sound, faced the plight of any urban area in a contested fallout zone, a constant barrage of factions vying for leadership. Most of these were small raider gangs, with the occasional cult or would-be-beneficiary group. Few of them lasted out a month.
Most people with any sense just stayed south of the I-94, where there was enough blanket protection from the sprawl of New Corvega that they didn’t have to worry overmuch. Thankfully for Vault 100, there was less uncertainty surrounding the Northern wasteland in years past. They’d emerged from their century underground to establish themselves as a trading outpost despite their bizarre tendencies, and thrived from their perfect location between Detroit, Chicago, and New Corvega. The fact that Grand Rapids was a pinnacle of wasteland life didn’t matter as much if there was somewhere “civil” to hole away a few miles south.
The fact of the matter was that Vault 100 never really joined in wasteland life, they had a directive that led them to stay apart. Theirs was a culture that could only be afforded by Vault-Tec, full of arranged marriages and precise breeding, scheduled to maintain population control. They occasionally dipped into the wastes to replenish where scheduled efficiency had given way to biological imperfections, but their waiting list was decades-long by now.
So you had been called in, explicitly out of the Vault’s desire to hire on someone who wouldn’t wheedle for a position in their carefully choreographed hierarchy. How lucky for everyone involved that the practice was an alienating concept at best for you, and downright unnerving if you stopped to think on it too long.
It also was the reason this particular case of theirs was so downright peculiar. Centennials, as they monikered themselves in the wastes, adhered religiously to their strict birthing regimen and breeding program which was outlined by the Vault AI. They had children in waves, each family aiming to have two children five or ten years apart precisely. There weren’t resources for kids in lean years, however, and so Vault 100 didn’t have a single soul below the age of fourteen. Except for Frisk.
Much as you could have expected, the dossier on the small fry leaves a lot to be desired, and Overseer Sentas isn’t any more forthcoming. Given the grainy Vault-Tec photo that was taken for their ID passcard sometime within the last year, you would’ve placed the kid somewhere around eight. So you knew now they looked a little older than they actually were, but not by much. The nondescript mussed-bob haircut and less than enthused facial expression contributes leagues towards an idea of their personality though, which you had no real prior context for.
Everything else on them was more or less redacted, including their family information and living quarters in the vault. You expected as much, but it was interesting to see where you could fill in the holes.
“Frisk came about due to… special circumstances. Their family is no longer housed within the vault, but we didn’t see fit to banish a babe that hadn’t any control in the circumstance of its birth. The mother asked us to keep it, and so we have.” Overseer Sentas has a clipped, harsh mannerism about her way of speaking on Frisk that leaves you bristling on their behalf.
You suppose it's a cultural difference, but you can’t help the twitch in your pinky every time she refers to the kid as ‘it’ in that magnanimous way. The whole conversation leaves you with more questions about Vault 100 than you’ve had answers, and they certainly hadn't shied away from outright lying. You aren’t sure how much they’re holding out on you, but you’ve been in this kind of work long enough to know that no one in this situation has the best of intentions for Frisk. While you were included on that list, you had to wonder where your intentions for the kid ranked next to those of the Overseer or the Vault.
Three hours after being buzzed in and whisked underground you emerge from Vault 100 bleary-eyed and desperately thankful for the marshy, overcast wasteland air. It wasn’t what you’d call fresh, but at least it wasn’t canned. Stretching out the clinical chill that was only achieved through underground insulation and functioning Vault-grade air conditioning, you readjusted to the open road wariness of the wasteland. You had a kid to find. But first, there were a few calls to make.