Chapter 8: Vault 9X
The hum grew louder as Adam Rook stepped closer to the sealed blast door, each footstep echoing hollow in the dim, empty corridor. The sound was subtle—deep, rhythmic, like a mechanical heartbeat muffled behind layers of steel and decades of dust. In the red glare of his HUD, his augmented gauntlet chimed softly, the display flaring as it completed a bio-scan of whatever lay behind the iron barrier.
Vitals detected. Faint. Unstable. Location: Containment Chamber A-9.
Adam's chest tightened. Not a reactor. Not a trap. The readings meant someone—or something—was still alive inside this rusting tomb.
Behind him, Nia's voice cut the silence, tense. "You sure about this? That door was sealed for a reason."
Adam didn't look back. Memories of failed vault experiments and desperate containment protocols ran through his mind. If the scanners said life, curiosity — and hope — warred against caution. "If they're alive," he said quietly, voice firm in the cold air, "they might know what this place was built for. Or how to fix it." He exhaled slowly, steadying himself.
Nia rested a hand on his shoulder lightly, as much for reassurance as warning. "You said it yourself. The vault's nearly dead. Power's bleeding out. What if opening this thing kills the last bit holding it together?"
Adam met her gaze over his shoulder. The red HUD glow illuminated the determination in his eyes. "I won't let that happen," he promised.
She nodded, uncertainty still flickering in her dark eyes, but stepped back to give him room. Adam knelt beside the corroded control panel inset in the wall, fingers steady. He retrieved a salvaged reactor coil from his satchel — the same one he'd used to open the door — and patched it into the overridden power socket. Beneath cracked insulation, wires glowed with faint life. With a deep breath, he fed a timed electrical pulse from the gauntlet into the ancient interface.
"Pulse engaged," the gauntlet's soft voice announced in his mind. Hydraulic whines and groans rose up like distant thunder. Rusted metal screeched as the blast door protested decades of neglect. Adam braced himself on the cold floor. The door shuddered and slowly cracked open a few inches, a sliver of stale, fetid air pouring through like a sigh from the past.
Nia winced at the acrid smell that rushed out. "It's working," she murmured. "But there's almost no power left."
The crack widened just enough for Adam to squeeze through, his bootfalls resonant on the cold ferrocrete floor beyond. The corridor ended in a chamber filled with rows of stasis pods, most empty and dead. Only one glowed with a dim, flickering light.
"It's her," Adam said, pointing. The pod's cryo-steam hissed softly. Inside, a woman lay suspended in a dormant silver coffin, neural cables coiled gently around the temples of her pale, youthfully serene face. Adam pressed himself flat against the wall and began the thaw cycle, fingers dancing over the pod's controls. The hiss intensified as warm antifreeze flooded in, dissipating ice from the glass.
"She's... alive?" Nia asked from behind, stepping into the chamber. Dust motes drifted in the pale blue light, waltzing through the stale air.
Adam checked the readouts. "Barely," he replied. "Vitals are weak but steady. Brain activity is low, but her cells are intact. Cryo-preservation did its job." He traced a name tag on the pod's edge, but the label was blank and the logs were encrypted or wiped: no name, no records.
The bubbling cooling fluid washed over the pod's surface. Steam cascaded down and pooled on the floor. The woman's eyelids fluttered as consciousness returned. She coughed into the mist — a surprised, childlike sound — then her body went limp.
"Nia, catch her!" Adam lunged forward as the woman slid halfway out of the pod. Soft arms ended up cradling the woman's frail body just before she collapsed fully. Together Adam and Nia managed to ease her onto the floor, where she lay shivering but silent and stable for the moment.
Nia knelt beside Adam, whispering, "Why would they leave her here?" Fear and wonder mingled in her voice.
Adam shook his head. "Because something went wrong," he muttered. "And when it did, they sealed her in and cut the power. All to lock it away." A shudder ran through him, and he wondered what horrors had compelled them to entomb her. Guilt for disturbing this scene flickered in his chest, but the woman's faint pulse gave him hope that they might yet save her.
He checked her vitals carefully. Unconscious, but alive. A log of internal damage — none major, thanks to preservation. The low power was already waning; the suit's hum was about to fade if he didn't act soon.
"We need to get her to the infirmary," he said, rising. The med-kit he'd salvaged clanged at his hip. "Check for shock. Electrolytes, maybe a painkiller." He scooped the woman into an improvised blanket and nodded to Nia. "Carry her. I'll handle the pod."
Nia lifted the bundle without complaint. Together they backed out of the chamber, the door sliding shut behind them with a hiss. The corridors were quiet again. Adam's HUD blinked red — his gauntlet's power reserve had dropped significantly. A twinge of worry crossed his mind: he was risking everything to reopen the vault; was it wise to risk more to save this unknown woman?
But Nia gave him a small, encouraging smile as they set out toward the infirmary. "We'll figure it out," she said softly. They would figure it out. Adam forced himself to relax his shoulders. They had to believe there was reason in what he was doing.
Hours later, the woman lay on a narrow medical cot in the vault's small infirmary. Her warm blanket was soaked through with condensation, but her breathing was steady. Several old-style electrolyte boosters — just enough to hydrate her tired body — were hooked to her arm, drip by drip. Nia hovered in the low light, rubbing the woman's cold feet and humming a softly improvised tune, like a mother soothing an unsettled child.
Adam, however, sat hunched beside the vault's main console, eyes half-closed in exhaustion but mind racing. The console's readouts flickered erratically, warning icons blinking red. On the cramped display, the internals of the vault's systems scrolled in cryptic lines. He tapped them with a gauntlet-clad finger, bringing up diagnostics.
Gauntlet core charge: 12%. Arc functions disabled. Sensors limited.
He closed his eyes briefly and grimaced. The drain on his integrated suit arm had been worse than he expected. The pulse to open the door, the heavy lifting, the short sprints down corridors... his reactor implant had just enough juice for bursts. Endurance, though — it wasn't unlimited. And now, with these deep drains, his systems were close to shutting down.
If only he had nanites — microscopic repair machines to heal stress fractures in his conduits and reroute power. They'd have been incredible now: self-healing metal, adaptable circuits, even tiny smart sensors. But the outside world, ravaged by war and neglect, hadn't produced the high-tech fabrication arrays needed to make them.
Maybe, he thought bitterly, it would never.
"Nia," he said without looking up. "How long do we have before this power dies completely?"
She sighed, closing the woman's eyes gently to let her rest. Nia stood back and joined him at the console, brushing back a stray wisp of hair. "I don't know," she admitted. "We opened the vault and this place is already collapsing. The main reactor's dead, right?"
Adam tapped another diagnostic window. "The fusion core's breached. There's no coming back for it. We've been running on emergency power and auxiliary capacitors this whole time. Once that's drained... it's just my gauntlet holding open some subsystems." He held up his arm as proof — the gauntlet's glow waning to a dull ember. "Maybe a couple of days at best. Maybe even less if we keep spiking this hard."
"For how long?" Nia echoed, her voice small.
"A couple of days. Maybe three, if everything works perfectly." The reality felt heavy on his chest. "After that... we're lights out."
Her eyebrows knit in concern. "So what do we do now?" Her gaze drifted to the inert vault doors, to the static fields beyond that they could not so easily open again.
Adam didn't answer at first. He stood and strode from the infirmary, the faint echo of his voice trailing, "I have an idea, but it's risky."
They crossed the dark, damp corridor to the east wing. Adam's HUD map showed the layout he'd quickly memorized earlier: storage rooms, hydroponics chambers, a fabrication bay or two. Most doors remained locked behind dead comms. In Corridor C, one door resisted all his attempts — the panel's lock was ancient, power insufficient. Adam pressed a button on his gauntlet, and with a crackle of final power, he forced the magnetic seal open.
The panel flashed red and died. The door creaked open.
Inside, the lights were long out and the air stale. The storage room was choked with dust, and crates lay haphazardly overturned. Adam's lamp mounted on his gauntlet cast its beam over stacks of folded panels leaning against the wall. His breath caught. Unmistakable even in the gloom: solar arrays.
Rows of lightweight, warped panels lined the walls. Each was stamped Thin-Film Silicon, bonded to a carbon-poly base. These could harvest sunlight — if only they could stand upright in the open. Not nearly enough to run the vault's giant systems, but potentially enough to keep minimal life support and lights on.
He reached out, fingers brushing the surface of one foldable panel. Solar panel. He fingered a corner: dusty, scratched, but intact. He held up his gauntleted palm as he activated the analyzer. Readouts flickered:
Efficiency: 0% (low light)
Material: monocrystalline thin-film, silicon substrate.
Power output (theoretical): 3–4 kW per panel in full sun.
There were five panels here, all folded and stored. "Not ideal," he murmured. Turning to Nia, he almost smiled, feeling a spark of hope. "I can rig five or six of these. Not enough to bring the vault back fully online, but maybe enough to keep the lights on and these systems from shutting down. We'd need to mount them outside, though, on the roof."
Nia lifted an eyebrow at the thought. "Mount them outside?" she repeated. "You mean like, on the surface? We'd have to find a way out first."
He nodded. "Yes, up on the roof. There's a ventilation shaft I saw in the east corridor that leads outside — probably cracked open by time. I'll run them through there. Then we just wait for day. If the sun hits them... we get a trickle of power."
"And then we're broadcasting for anyone to see us," Nia pointed out. She crossed her arms. "You're talking a beacon, Adam. Anyone or anything out there will spot that from a mile off."
Adam's expression hardened. He knew she was right. Every fix came with a cost now. He swallowed. "What choice do we have? Without power, this place will shut down. That means no air recycling soon. No heating. Life support — all of it. Even the water filters will die."
Nia's tension melted into a frown of frustration. "But you could be telling me anything. You're always holding something back." She stepped closer, voice lowering. "There's more to you than just science and metal arms. You know things you're not telling me. Things... from before all this."
He felt a pang at the accusation, as if his secret past was leaking through. Adam turned away, fiddling with a panel connector. The vaulted ceiling leaked cold air through the grates. "I know enough to build this and keep us alive," he said quietly.
Nia's gaze lingered on him, hurt and curiosity warring. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now," he replied, tying a makeshift cable tie to an antenna on the wall.
Nia watched him work, lips pressed thin. His eyes remained fixed on the panels and circuitry. After a moment, she sighed and stepped back into the infirmary. "Alright," she said softly, though he barely heard. "Let's just... do what needs to be done."
He shut the door and walked towards the engineering bay, shoulders burning with tension he refused to show. The dusty moonlight through the cracked vents illuminated the patchwork he had to finish before dawn. Nia's footsteps receded behind him.
Later that night, Adam crouched by the infirmary door as Nia watched over the sleeping woman. A single bare light bulb swung gently overhead, casting shadows that danced on the walls. Outside, a distant gust howled through broken shafts, but inside it was eerily still. Even the crackling reactor coals outside whispered secrets he couldn't catch.
Finding the room momentarily empty of threats, Adam activated a small data recording node on the wall console. The screen blinked to life, showing a text log entry form. He rubbed his temples, pain throbbing where fatigue wore thin.
Log Entry: Vault 9X – Day 1 (SOL 1)
He dictated in a low, mechanical tone, the words brief and clipped:
Gauntlet efficiency down to 46%. Subdermal conduits stress-fractured, minimal redundancy. Rerouting delayed total failure by approximately 2 hours, but core charge remains below optimal baseline. Solar installation is viable; estimated output 5–7% of lost capacity under full sun. Risk: panel array will be visible from distance, no current means to shield broadcast signature. Nanite repair upgrade is necessary for long-term stability, requiring high-grade polymers, quantum logic substrates, and a containment forge. No local sources identified within Vault 9X. Outsiders unsighted.
He paused, backspacing rapidly over the word "outsiders." The draft sounded militaristic and cold; he didn't want to put fear in whoever found this log. He rewrote:
Current objective: maintain critical life support and power for Vault 9X. Prioritize stealth to avoid detection until infrastructure can be rebuilt. Secondary: protect any remaining inhabitants or records. Await rescue or gather resources. End log.
He hit save. With a weary sigh, Adam stood and walked to the small barred grate above the infirmary cot. Outside, the desert air was cold, and the stars were dim behind a thin layer of storm clouds — an unlikely night for travelers. But he could see something: in the distance on the ridge, he spotted a thin plume of dust rolling upward as a circling bird took flight. Whether it was just a vulture or something more dangerous — a search party? Raiders? — he couldn't tell. The darkness offered no answers.
For now, Vault 9X had light again, however faint. A heartbeat. And Adam Rook was alive to protect it.