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The first stretch of road passed in quiet resolve. The further they drove, the more the world around them began to wither. Trees gave way to blackened husks. Grass faded to ash. The sky darkened to a sickly yellow-green haze, the wind picking up with a low, endless howl.
By the time the truck reached the outskirts of the Glowing Sea, the radiation meters were already clicking at a steady, unnerving pace. Robert slowed the vehicle, eyes narrowed through the windshield's reinforced glass.
"Here we go."
Sico checked the navigation grid. "We're near the old satellite relay station. Virgil's cave should be another five miles southeast, through the badlands."
Robert grunted. "Through the worst of it, you mean."
Sico leaned forward, steadying himself against the dashboard as the truck rumbled to a stop on the cracked and scorched earth just before the true edge of the Glowing Sea. Outside, the horizon had vanished—swallowed by a swirling yellow haze. Shadows shifted in the toxic wind. Every breath beyond the steel walls of the vehicle would mean a slow, painful death without protection.
He reached over and tapped Robert on the shoulder. "We change here."
Robert gave a short nod, then turned off the ignition. The engine hissed and clicked as it cooled, a faint metallic groan rising beneath it—as if the truck itself was protesting the destination.
Sico opened the door to the armored bay and climbed in, where the five Commandos were already checking their weapons and gear. Their expressions were tight, serious. Even hardened fighters knew better than to joke when standing on the edge of hell.
"We suit up now," Sico said, his voice cutting through the muted light of the bay. "Once we're inside the Sea, the truck's filters will only buy us so much time. If anything goes wrong and we have to travel on foot, hazmat's the only thing keeping you alive."
He unlatched the storage panel near the rear of the bay and pulled out one of the suits—amber-tinted visor, reinforced polymer layers, and triple-sealed joints. Each suit was folded with clinical precision. Sico tossed them out one by one.
"Take it slow. Check every seal. No shortcuts."
Robert joined them, grabbing his own suit and kneeling to start changing. One by one, the Commandos followed. In silence, they stripped out of their outer armor and into the suits with practiced efficiency, but none of it felt routine. There was always a different energy when prepping for a trip into the Sea—like suiting up for a descent into a place the world had tried to forget.
Sico sat on the edge of the storage bench, tugging on the hazmat boots first. They clamped into place with a quiet hiss, locking airtight. Then the gloves. Then the inner liner, slick and uncomfortably warm against his skin. Sweat was already beginning to form along his back and under his arms.
He zipped the suit fully up, snapped the filtration mask over his face, and tapped the power module on the chest piece. A soft hum kicked on. The world dulled as the filters activated and the helmet sealed.
"Green lights," he said into the comm. "Sound off."
Each of the Commandos responded in turn. Clean systems. Clear filters. No breaches.
Sico turned toward Robert, who was checking the seals on one of the other suits. "You good?"
Robert gave a thumbs-up, the outer layer of his suit rustling as he moved. "Yeah. Feels like we're walking inside a coffin, but I'm good."
Sico gave a dry chuckle. "Let's just make sure it doesn't become one."
He moved back to the front of the truck, opened the cab's door, and climbed in—moving slowly and deliberately now, the suit limiting his range and field of vision.
He looked out the windshield.
The Glowing Sea lay ahead like a cancer in the earth. What once might've been hills, forests, lakes—now reduced to jagged, skeletal terrain, all blanketed in an ever-present storm of decay and radiation. Lightning crackled in the far distance, crawling across a low-hanging sky as if warning them not to come any closer.
Robert climbed into the driver's seat, locking the cabin. "Here we go."
The truck shuddered to life again, and they began moving forward—this time slower, tires crunching through a mix of ash, glass, and old bone. The world dimmed with every mile. The Geiger counters clicked faster. Occasionally, distant shapes moved through the fog—maybe feral ghouls, maybe worse. But nothing approached the armored vehicle. Not yet.
Sico kept his eyes on the navigation screen, adjusted for radiation distortion. "We're still tracking toward the cave. About four miles to go. Once we get close, we go on foot. The terrain's too unstable for the truck."
Behind them, one of the Commandos—Callahan—spoke over the comms. "You think he's still there? Virgil?"
Sico didn't answer right away.
"He's still there," he said finally. "He hasn't got anywhere else to go."
The storm intensified. Dust and ash beat against the windows like sandpaper. Every so often, the truck would lurch—one of the wheels catching on some buried debris or brittle landscape fragment.
"We're passing that old relay tower," Robert noted, pointing to a half-collapsed structure just barely visible through the fog. "That's our last hard landmark."
"Mark it," Sico said. "If things go south, that's our fallback."
They drove another mile before the terrain grew too jagged for the vehicle. The radiation was spiking hard now—alarms blinking red but staying just within the hazmat suit thresholds.
Robert eased the truck to a stop, and they waited a beat.
"This is it," Sico said, voice firm. "Everyone check your suit seals again. From this point on, we're walking."
They opened the rear hatch slowly, and a wave of heat and static slammed into them. The wind was worse now—angrier, more chaotic. Dust swirled in pockets of glowing embers, and the ground cracked beneath their boots.
But they stepped out anyway.
Seven figures in hazmat suits, walking like ghosts across a ruined land. The fog swallowed them almost immediately, but the group stayed close, shoulder to shoulder. Every ten steps, one of the Commandos dropped a glowing beacon behind them—each one blinking faintly in the radioactive gloom.
Sico walked at the front, compass in one hand, rifle slung low. The terrain dipped into a sunken basin, the rocks more jagged here, sharp like fossilized teeth. The wind howled like some long-dead god still screaming.
"Eyes sharp," Robert muttered over the comms. "I don't like this."
No one did.
They passed a field of scorched bones—human, mutated, indistinguishable. A few half-buried terminals stuck up like dead trees. Sico didn't stop. He knew better.
"Three hundred meters out," he said after checking the coordinates. "We'll hit the cave entrance from the west."
The next hill crested slowly, and then—it was there.
Tucked beneath a black cliff face, half-obscured by mist and rubble, the cave gaped like an open wound. It was exactly how Sico remembered it from the old reports. Reinforced with scrap metal and rusted doors, power conduits trailing into the rocks.
He raised a hand.
"Form up," he said quietly.
The Commandos moved into position. Two covered the rear. One moved to scout the side. Robert stayed close, his weapon drawn.
Sico moved forward alone, slowly, deliberately.
He stopped just outside the entrance and called out through his external mic.
"Virgil!" he shouted. "It's me—Sico. From the Minutemen."
No response.
Only the wind.
He stepped closer. "We have the serum. The one you designed. Nora got it out. You said you wanted a cure—we've brought it to you."
Silence.
And then… a sound.
Heavy movement inside. A faint rumble. A breath.
And then—his voice. Ragged. Deep. Unmistakable.
"You came," Virgil said, emerging slowly from the shadows of the cave. "After all this time."
The others raised their weapons instinctively, but Sico raised a hand to stop them.
Virgil's massive form stepped into view—still mutated, still bearing the hulked frame of a super mutant, but wrapped now in a tarp-like cloak. His eyes, despite everything, still gleamed with intelligence.
"I didn't expect you to come yourself," Virgil said, his voice rumbling like shifting stone.
"I said I would," Sico replied, unsealing a compartment on his chest rig and pulling out the small locked container. He stepped forward, opened it, and revealed the vial inside.
Virgil stared at it.
For a moment, he didn't move. Then he exhaled.
"That's it," he murmured. "I never thought I'd see it again."
"You can take it now," Sico said. "Or we can set up camp nearby while you prepare. Up to you. But we didn't come all this way for nothing. And we didn't come just to drop it off."
Virgil looked up.
"What else?"
Sico met his gaze through the visor.
"I want you to come with us. To Sanctuary. To the Minutemen."
Virgil's face twisted—not in anger, but disbelief. "You want me to live among them? Like… like this?"
Sico's breath misted inside the helmet, fogging the edges of his visor. The weight of the radiation, the long trek through the Sea, the tension in his team—all of it pressed down on him. But Virgil's words added a new weight, one heavier than the others. He looked up at the hulking figure and stepped a little closer, the vial still resting in his gloved palm.
"We don't expect you to come like this," Sico said, his voice steady but gentle through the comms. "We know you're not ready. We'll wait—for you to change back. To become who you were. We can help with that. We want to. But not here. Not in this hellhole."
He glanced back at the Commandos, standing in a loose formation just beyond the cave's edge. Their posture was disciplined, but they were baking in those suits. The radiation levels here weren't sustainable for long—even with the truck's shielding, even with the best hazmat tech they had.
"This place—it's not safe for my people," Sico continued. "We've already pushed our time limit. Our suits won't hold forever. You know how this place works. We can't camp out here while you transform, not without risking lives."
Virgil turned his gaze outward, past Sico, to the distant fog that hid the horizon. His massive chest rose and fell with a slow, labored breath. The cloak he wore shifted in the wind, and for a moment, he looked less like a monster and more like a lost relic—forgotten, but not forsaken.
"I understand," Virgil said quietly. "I do. But if you bring me outside the Glowing Sea… if I leave this place… the Institute will know."
Sico's brows knit together. "You're sure?"
Virgil nodded slowly. "They'll detect the movement. The Sea masks my signal. My mutations, my condition—it confuses their sensors, clouds their tracking systems. But once I step beyond it… they'll find me. It won't take them long. I was one of them, remember. I know how they operate. They'll consider me a loose end."
Sico mulled over that for a moment, heart pounding beneath the layers of his suit. The Institute. Of course they'd come. Of course they'd want him silenced. The serum alone was reason enough. But Virgil wasn't just a defector—he was a witness. Proof of what they'd done, what they were capable of.
"If we move you, we paint a target on your back," Sico said. "And maybe on ours too."
Virgil didn't answer. He didn't need to. The silence said everything.
Sico looked down at the vial, the faint blue-green shimmer of the serum glowing in the gloom. The culmination of Virgil's desperation. Nora's risk. And now… his burden.
"But," Sico said finally, "you can't stay here. You can't survive out here forever—not as a man, not as a mutant. And I can't leave this serum behind and hope for the best. That's not who we are. That's not how I lead."
Virgil's eyes narrowed slightly. "Then what do you suggest?"
Sico exhaled. "We get you somewhere near the edge. Somewhere still masked, still protected—but close enough that we can reach you again, faster. Somewhere that's not buried deep in this death zone. We'll find a cave, a bunker, whatever we can clear. We'll make sure you've got food, power, meds—everything you need."
He paused, then added, "You take the serum there. Heal. Change. And once you're human again… we get you out. Quietly. Carefully. But not before."
Virgil considered that. The wind howled again, whipping ash and grit across the mouth of the cave. A glowing gust spun past the group, like some radioactive specter watching them from the beyond.
"You'd do that?" he asked after a long beat. "Risk all that for me?"
"We wouldn't be here if we weren't willing to," Sico said. "We came with seven people, a truck, hazmat gear, weapons—all of it for one man. That's how serious we are. The Minutemen don't leave people behind, Virgil. Not even in places like this."
The silence that followed was thick with something old—hope, maybe. Virgil's gaze dropped to the vial, then back to Sico. Something in him softened.
"All right," he said finally. "There's a spot I know. Half a mile east of here. A sinkhole, hidden under a collapsed highway overpass. There used to be an underground rest stop—old world architecture. Pre-War concrete. It's sealed tight. Stable. I used it for supply runs when I had to move around the Sea."
Sico nodded. "We'll take you there. Get you set up."
Virgil's hand twitched—almost reflexively, almost like he wanted to reach for the serum. But he didn't yet. Instead, he stepped forward, slower now, and extended his massive arm.
"I'll need help carrying some of my equipment," he said.
Sico gave a quick gesture to the others. "Callahan, Briggs—inside with me. Robert, you're on overwatch. Everyone else, prep for relocation."
The group moved without question, even if their eyes lingered a second longer on Virgil. The mutant turned and led Sico and the others deeper into the cave. It wasn't large, but it was cluttered with makeshift gear—rad-meters, beakers, stripped Institute consoles, even a few hydroponic racks. All covered in a thin sheen of dust and radiation.
They gathered what they could, loading gear into hard-shell packs and slinging them over their backs, with Virgil moved slower than the others.
By the time they stepped out again, the fog had thickened, and the world had grown darker. The storm was rolling in.
The journey to the overpass was hard—uneven terrain, low visibility, and the present sound of their Geiger counters. But kept the team close, moving in a tight formation, beacons dropped every twenty paces.
Eventually, they found it.
The wreckage of an old highway, twisted and collapsed, formed a jagged crown around a sinkhole. Beneath the rubble, a narrow service tunnel descended into blackness. Just like Virgil had described.
They cleared it, tested it for stability, then sealed the opening behind them with scrap and reinforced sheet metal. Virgil's new shelter. His cocoon.
The super mutant stood in the center of the chamber, looking more human than he had when they found him.
"I'll start the treatment tonight," he said quietly.
Sico nodded. "We'll check on you as soon as we can. Stay safe, Virgil."
Virgil turned toward him, eyes glinting faintly in the dim light. "Thank you, Sico. You didn't have to come. But you did. That means something."
Sico didn't smile—his helmet wouldn't allow it. But the warmth in his voice broke through.
"Just keep your promise," he said. "Come back to us."
Then the Minutemen turned, one by one, and slipped back into the storm.
Behind them, the mouth of the sinkhole sealed again—hiding a man who had once been a monster… and who might soon be something else entirely.
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• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-