Case stepped out of the elevator and onto the main plaza, a broad grin cutting through the dust on his face. The air was thick with the smell of scorched oil and ozone, the aftermath of a mechanical massacre.
The Rangers had been busy. The mountain of twisted metal surrounding the armored vehicles was a sight to behold—piles of Sentry Bot chassis, shattered Protectron limbs, and the smoking remains of Mr. Gutsy units were stacked like scrap-metal cordwood.
In another life, a lone wanderer would have struggled to dent a single Sentry Bot without an Anti-Materiel rifle or a Fat Man. But the math of the wasteland changed when you brought heavy armor to a fight. A 105mm sabot round didn't care about "high-tech alloys" or "advanced shielding"; it simply turned the Think Tank's security budget into shrapnel.
He saw three of his men sitting against the tread of a Patton tank. They were wounded, but the mood was calm; they were already being treated with slow-drip Stimpaks through IV lines, the pale green fluid glowing in the dim light of the crater.
Jacob walked over, wiping grease from his forehead with a rag. He looked at the smoking wreckage and then at Case. "Tough bastards, those bots. But they don't like HEAT rounds much. We've got the perimeter solid, Case. The boys are calling this place 'The Scrapyard' already."
"It's more than a scrapyard now, Jacob," Case said, holding up the Personality Chips. "It's home. I've got the keys to the Sink's brain. Once I plug these in, this place starts taking care of us."
"Ooh, so we don't need to sleep on the ground today, kiddo?" Jacob asked, his voice gravelly with relief as he leaned against the warm hull of the lead Patton tank.
"We have a lot of homework to do, Jacob. This whole place is infested with all the nightmares that the Mojave has—minus the Deathclaws. It's mostly robots, but we've got things like Cazadores and Nightstalkers that were invented here. We're in the belly of the beast."
Jacob spat to the side, checking the action on his service rifle. "Point the way, Case. We'll follow along."
Case turned and pointed his finger toward a shimmering dome in the distance, nestled near a massive antennae array. Higgs Village. It was a pre-war suburban cul-de-sac preserved in a bubble of madness.
"There," Case commanded. "Higgs Village. It was where the Think Tank lived back when they had skin and hair. There are six homes. It's not enough for all thirty of us to have their own master bedroom, but it's a hell of a lot better than sleeping in the dirt. We'll use the houses as barracks and the Sink as our Command Center and Armory."
The convoy moved with practiced, lethal precision. The lead Patton tank's engine emitted a low-frequency rumble that shook the very foundation of the road, its massive 105mm barrel scanning the horizon like a predator's snout. Behind it, the APCs and trucks followed in a tight formation, flanked by the remaining armor. It was a steel snake winding through a garden of neon and chrome.
Case walked alongside the lead tank, his boots crunching on the pristine, pre-war asphalt. Above him, Jacob sat perched on the tank's turret in his dark Elite Riot Gear, the red glow of his helmet's optics sweeping the rooftops.
Milla followed close at Case's heel, her hands gripped tightly around her suppressed assault carbine. She had a pulse grenade hooked to her belt—a gift from the Ranger armory—but her eyes weren't on the sights of her weapon. She was staring at the skyline of Big MT in sheer awe.
"It's... it's not real," Milla whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the tank treads. "The dome, the towers, Case. They look like they're reaching for the stars, not just the ceiling of this crater. And the robots... there are thousands of them. How did people build this while the rest of the world was just trying to survive?"
"They didn't build it while the world was surviving," Case replied, looking up at a massive cooling pylon that crackled with blue electricity. "They built it two centuries ago, when United States is still a thing."
"Never heard of this place, kid, truth be told," Jacob said, his head tilting as he scanned the horizon through his glowing red visor. "Where did you get all of this info? It's like you've got a map of the place burned into your retinas."
"It's… hard to explain," Case said, his gaze lingering on the distant, flickering lights of the Forbidden Zone. He couldn't exactly tell them he'd lived this through a screen in another life.
"Fine by me," Jacob grunted, shifting his rifle. "Long as the info doesn't get us killed, I don't care if a ghost whispered it to you."
"So… what is exactly available in this place, Case?" Milla asked, stepping over a spent shell casing from the earlier skirmish. Her eyes were wide, trying to take in the sheer scale of the infrastructure. "I mean, not going to lie, it's cool and all, but what kind of facilities can we actually exploit? We need more than just a place to hide."
"Everything we've ever lacked," Case began, ticking them off on his fingers.
He paced forward, his boots ringing against the metal walkway. "This place is a god-machine. We have factories that can forge a new civilization from scrap, Auto-Docs that can cheat death, and an army of robots that don't sleep, don't eat, and don't miss. We're going to be here a long time, and when we finally step back out, the world won't even recognize the power we're bringing with us."
They would spend a long time here.
As they opened and passed through the massive blast doors of the Higgs Village hangar, the Rangers fell into a stunned silence. Six houses sat in a perfect, surreal circle. The white picket fences were untarnished, the fountain in the center bubbled with crystal-clear water, and the air was crisp—filtered to a level of purity that felt like a drug to lungs accustomed to wasteland grit.
The grass was a lush, impossible green, perfectly manicured by silent machines. It was a pre-war dream preserved in a vacuum.
"Great place to live, kid," Jacob said, lifting his helmet to breathe in the cool, conditioned air. He looked at the quiet porches and then back at Case with newfound respect. "Better than I ever imagined."
Jacob's military instinct kicked in immediately. He pointed a gloved finger at the nearest house. "Vets! Clear the buildings. Every closet, every basement—I want them scrubbed for hostiles or traps. The rest of you, start unloading. This is our sovereign territory now. Let's turn this ghost town into a fortress."
The Rangers moved with the mechanical precision of a pre-war tactical unit. The power-armored troopers led the charge, their heavy servomotors whirring as they breached the pristine doorways of the Higgs Village homes. In each team, a single steel-clad giant would shoulder the door, followed immediately by three Rangers in riot gear, their carbines sweeping the dusty, sun-drenched hallways.
Case and Jacob stood by the central fountain, observing the takeover. There was no resistance—only the eerie silence of a neighborhood that had been waiting two centuries for someone to come home. Nearby, Milla and Amelia coordinated the logistics, hauling crates of ammunition, preserved rations, and bags of caps into a central stockpile. The tanks and APCs were angled outside, engines idling in a low, protective growl while sentries stood watch for any metallic movement on the horizon.
In a matter of minutes, the "Big Empty" started feeling a little less empty. The Rangers worked with a frantic, hopeful energy, turning a museum of the past into a barracks for the future. As they cleared the houses, piles of "strange loot" began to grow at Case's feet—odd, glowing devices, encrypted holodisks, and strange medical canisters that the Rangers didn't dare touch.
"House 1 is clear," a Ranger shouted from a balcony, waving a gloved hand. "Found a bunch of weird journals and a globe that glows in the dark, but it's clean!"
"House 2 is clear."
"3 is clear!"
"All accounted for commander, 4 is clear as well!"
"Five is clear!"
"SIx is also clear!"
Jacob looked at Case, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips behind his mask. "They're already picking out bedrooms, kid. It's amazing how fast a soldier can turn a combat zone into a home when there's a real roof over their head."
The Rangers moved through the houses like a professional salvage crew, stripping the interiors of anything useful. Since only Case and Jacob possessed Pip-Boys, the soldiers funneled every glowing holotape they found toward the center of the cul-de-sac.
Case sat on the edge of the fountain, the blue light of his Pip-Boy illuminating his face as he slotted the tapes one by one. Jacob stood over him, watching the data streams with a skeptical eye, but it was clear that only Case truly understood the value of the encrypted blueprints scrolling across the screen.
"Personality modules," Case muttered, tapping his chin as the blue light of the Pip-Boy reflected in his eyes. "These are personality overrides for the Sink. One is a glorified paper shredder that can turn old documents into usable components. The other... well, the other is an acoustic weapon hidden inside a music player. It vibrates at frequencies that can literally shake a robot's processors apart."
Jacob shifted his weight, the heavy plates of his Riot Gear clinking. "The place is powered up. The boys say the stoves and water are working, and we've detected no contaminants. It's clean, kid. The only thing we're concerned about is food. We saw land out there in the crater, but we don't see anywhere we can actually plant our seeds."
"The X-22 Botanical Research Building," Case replied, looking toward the distant, glowing greenery of the overgrown labs. "We'll need to scout the area soon. This place has a lot of technological wonders, and I can control most of them from the Sink, but we have to physically rediscover the access points first."
"Sink this, sink that," Jacob intervened, sounding exasperated as he looked around the pristine 1950s suburb. "Where the hell is this 'Sink' you keep talking about?"
Case pointed upward, toward the massive, central structure that dominated the crater's skyline. "See the dome? See the balcony right at the top? That's the Sink. It houses the Central Intelligence Unit. From there, I can manage the entire facility's power and security. That's where we're going to stay, Jacob. Me, you, Amelia, and… Milla."
Jacob raised an eyebrow, his red visor tilting slightly. "Why Milla? You've got a dozen other seasoned Rangers to choose from for the command staff."
Case shrugged, his mind already calculating the tactical advantages of Milla's steady hand and quick adaptation to the tech. "I don't know. I can always find a use for Milla. She sees things the veterans miss."
"Alright then," Jacob grunted, signaling to a nearby guard. "I won't protest. If the girl can handle the 'brains in jars' as well as she handles that carbine, she'll do fine."
"Thanks, Jacob."
"Just let's focus on surviving first, kid. What's next?" Jacob asked, his tone shifting into the professional cadence of a second-in-command waiting for the XO's orders.
Case smiled, a small, confident twitch of the lips. "I like that you're asking me."
He stepped toward the edge of the fountain, looking up at the glowing violet horizon of the Big Empty. The survival of the Rangers was no longer about scrounging for water in the Mojave; it was about mastering a world-ending laboratory.
"Next, we wake the house up," Case said. "Jacob, Amelia, Milla—gather your essentials. We're moving up to the Sink. I need the command staff in one place. I'm going to install the personality modules and the CIU. Once that's done, this balcony will become our eye in the sky."
He looked back at the sprawling village, where Rangers were already stringing up lights and setting up sentry posts on the porches.
"While we're getting the Sink online, I need the heavy teams to start a rotation. No one goes outside the Higgs Hangar alone. The bots out there are regrouping, alongside with the lobotomites being a pain in the arse, and Mobius is definitely watching. Tomorrow morning, we start the real work."