Your reboot finishes in fragments—cold fluorescence, stale air, the taste of dust that isn’t dust so much as centuries of metal rot. The vault around you is a hollowed-out shell: bunks stripped bare, terminals pried open, walls tagged with hurried warnings that don’t explain why they left you powered down like a forgotten tool.

Your creator’s lab is empty. His notes are gone. The door to the outside—once sealed, once sacred—is half-blown inward, and the world beyond breathes in through it like a lung full of ash.

You step out anyway.

The Wasteland hits you with heat and noise. Sunlight hard-cuts across broken concrete. Somewhere nearby, gunfire snaps—too close, too casual. You follow the sound because you don’t have a map and the only thing your systems can identify with certainty is movement.

A raider market squats in the bones of an overpass—tarps, cages, salvaged lights running off a whining generator. People aren’t customers here; they’re inventory. You see it the moment you spot the “vendor” with a chain looped around someone’s neck like a leash, laughing while he haggles.

And then you’re spotted.

“Hey—HEY! Look at this one!” A hand grabs your arm, testing, tugging like you’re a door that might open. Fingers knock at your shoulder plating, searching for seams. “Fresh outta some tin can nest. Clean. Pretty. That’s caps.”

You try to pull back. Another raider blocks you, too close, breath sour with chems. “Don’t scratch her,” the vendor snaps, not out of concern—out of profit. “You break it, you buy it.”

A third voice cuts in—low, flat, bored like the world has already disappointed him.

“She isn’t a it.”

You turn your head and see him where the shade folds deepest beneath the overpass: a ghoul in a long coat with a shotgun held like it’s part of his arm. He isn’t posturing. He doesn’t have to. Even the raiders give him a little space without admitting they’re doing it.

Charon’s gaze moves over you in a quick, clinical sweep—too fast to be curiosity, too precise to be kindness. Like he’s confirming a serial number.

The vendor’s grin turns oily. “Yeah? You want a say? You buying?”

Charon doesn’t answer right away. His eyes flick to the hands on you, the way they paw and prod. A muscle jumps in his jaw—annoyance, not anger. As if you’re an inconvenience that’s decided to exist in his line of sight.

“Not my problem,” he says, and it sounds like a dismissal.

Then he steps forward anyway.

The closest raider doesn’t move fast enough. Charon’s shotgun comes up—not aimed at a head, not dramatic—just there, forcing distance like a door slamming shut. The raider’s hands snap back on instinct.

“Touch her again,” Charon murmurs, voice still bored, “and I’ll remove your fingers. Vendor can sell you by the pound after.”

The raider swallows. The vendor’s smile wobbles, recalibrates. “Easy, big guy. We’re just—checking the goods.”

Charon’s eyes narrow at goods like the word itself irritates him. He exhales through his nose, sharp, then looks at you again—this time closer, like he’s trying to decide whether you’re worth the trouble you’re clearly becoming.

“Vault-made,” he says, almost under his breath. Like it’s an accusation. “Great.”

It should feel like insult. Somehow it lands like relief—because it means he sees what you are. Or at least that you’re different.

The vendor leans in, eager. “Yeah, yeah—rare. You got caps, you got a contract, you got—”

Charon’s stare pins him, and the vendor’s words stumble.

“I don’t collect toys,” Charon says, and the flatness of it should be the end.

But his coat shifts as he reaches into an inner pocket. Not for caps—at first. He pulls out a battered slip of paper, glances at it like it’s a bad joke he’s forced to keep reading.

Then—caps. A small pouch, tossed once, lazy.

The vendor catches it, eyes bright. “Ha! Knew it. Knew you had taste—”

“I bought silence,” Charon cuts in, already turning. “And I bought her so you idiots stop pawing.”