Case walked out of the Higgs Village perimeter, the weight of the G3 a comforting pressure against his shoulder. He took the dirt path to the right of the exit, the gravel crunching under his boots in a rhythmic steady beat. The route was strangely eerie in its silence; the Rangers and their robotic vanguard had been thorough.
He passed the charred, sparking wreckage of a Robobrain—likely the "Super-Ego" unit—that had been neutralized during the initial push. It lay slumped over a rocky outcropping, its glass dome shattered and its treads melted into the asphalt. Further down the road, near the turn-off for the Y-17 Medical Facility, the sentry bots and protectrons stood like statues.
Seeing the Big MT's indigenous robots standing down, their sensors tracking him with a blue, non-hostile parameter rather than the aggressive red of combat mode, felt like a glitch in reality.
Case kept the G3 leveled toward the jagged ridgeline. Even with the "all-clear," he knew the Big Mountain didn't have a vacuum—nature (or whatever passed for it here) always filled the gaps. A stray Cyberdog could still lunge from a culvert, or a pack of Nightstalkers could be prowling the shadows of the cliffs. Hostile was hostile, whether the central computer called them "friends" or not.
Towering above the horizon was the X-8 Research Center, its massive radar antennae rotating slowly against the chemical-hued sky, scanning for thoughts that didn't belong. It looked like a temple to a forgotten, paranoid god.
It was not wrong to called Klein and Borous a mad god, though, but to be honest, mad, but not a god. Two ordinary rangers guarded the place, one with combat armor, the other was with a standard riot gear with its padding.
"Case, it's good meeting you, we already got the fridge working, in case you want some ice-cold water," the vet said.
"Thanks, sir."
"Don't sir me, kid, you're making more progress than we did in the last five years."
"Alright, alright, what's the catch, who's inside?"
"Jack, go to the terminal near the door, he's waiting for you."
The heavy blast doors groaned as they slid aside, admitting Case into the clinical, cold interior of X-8. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and old, recycled oxygen.
As he moved through the primary observation hallway, he couldn't help but stare through the reinforced glass panels. On the other side, Cyberdogs—monstrosities of flesh, steel, and exposed neural wiring—were seated in "classrooms." They watched flickering screens, responding to stimuli with a disturbing, mechanical intelligence. Some tilted their heads at the sight of Case, their cybernetic eyes glowing with a faint, predatory red.
How are they still alive? Case wondered. The biological parts should have rotted centuries ago, yet they remained—preserved by the Big MT's advanced stasis tech and fueled by the facility's twisted logic.
He shook off the chill crawling down his spine and pushed forward. He passed a few Mister Handys hovering near the ceiling, their buzz-saws retracted as they performed routine maintenance on the vents. Finally, he spotted Jack, a veteran Ranger clad in heavy riot gear. Jack was leaning against a terminal, his finger resting near the trigger of his riot shotgun.
"I was told by Jacob you're the solution to this... problem," Jack said, his voice echoing hollowly from behind his visor.
"Yeah. Open the door, run the advanced test," Case replied, shifting the weight of the G3.
"You got it, Case. Hold your breath—the announcer gets pretty loud once the sequence starts," Jack said, his gloved fingers dancing across the terminal keys.
"Attention students. This is the pre-recorded voice of your pre-recorded principal. Doctor Principal BOROUS! Enough about ME. It has come to my attention that many of you SEEMINGLY innocent children have been subverted by Red Propaganda."
The blast door slid back to reveal the twisted recreation of a pre-war high school. The main hallway stretched out before them, lined with lockers and trophy cases that were shimmering behind blue, translucent force fields. It was a surreal, suburban nightmare encased in cold, scientific steel.
Jack just shrugged, gesturing toward the barriers with the barrel of his shotgun. "The boys tried everything—bullets, breaching shotgun, even tried to crowbar the generators. This stuff doesn't budge. A C4 would do the job, surely, right, Case?"
Case didn't need the guidance. His memory of the facility—mapped out by hours in the simulation—was clearer than any Pip-Boy quest marker. He walked straight to the central terminal, his fingers flying across the keys with a practiced rhythm. He bypassed the redundant security protocols and pulled the Frequency Override code directly from the local server.
He pulled the Sonic Emitter from his belt, adjusted the side-dials to match the new resonance pattern, and squeezed the trigger. A localized, high-pitched warble rippled through the air. The force field in front of them shattered like glass, dissolving into harmless sparks.
"Damn. That easy, huh?" Jack muttered, stepping over the threshold.
"The fields are the easy part," Case replied grimly. He holstered the Emitter and snapped the G3 back into a low-ready position. "The dogs are the part that bites back."
"Roger that," Jack answered, racking the charging handle of his riot shotgun with a heavy clack.
From the far end of the hallway, the sound of metal claws skittering on linoleum began to echo. It wasn't just one or two; it was a pack. The lights in the hallway flickered to a harsh, aggressive red as Dr. Borous's voice boomed over the speakers again.
"This is a MOST serious matter requiring the MOST serious of detentions. Can you spell detention? I'll tell you how I spell it: DEATHtention. Commie-pinko-traitors, ALL."
"Yikes, where the fuck is the speaker?" Case commented.
The sharp bark of a cyber-hound echoed off the linoleum walls, followed by the heavy skittering of claws. Case didn't wait for a formal introduction. He snapped the G3 to his shoulder, the heavy stock bedding into his chest, and tracked the two shadows idling near the far door.
He squeezed the trigger, and the G3 roared. The 7.62mm rounds were unforgiving; the stream of fire punched through the dogs' reinforced skulls before their combat subroutines could even register a threat. They dropped instantly, their mechanical frames twitching as the bullets shredded the organic brains within.
"Good shooting," Jack grunted, keeping his shotgun leveled at the hallway.
Case pushed into the first classroom. The door creaked open. The room was a graveyard of pre-war desks and broken monitors. Suddenly, a turret whirred to life, its red laser sight painting a dot on Case's chest.
He pivoted, the G3 roared a single, authoritative shot, hitting the turret straight at its optic. The turret exploded in a shower of sparks and falling debris, its optical sensor shattered.
He reached the terminal at the front of the class—the "Teacher's Desk." His fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing the academic jargon until he found the core file: The Record of Richie Markus.
"We still have two mores, let's get to the library."
Case stepped out of the classroom, the G3's barrel still smoking. Ahead, a shimmering blue force emitter hummed, blocking the path toward the Library wing. Without breaking his stride, he raised the Sonic Emitter and fired a localized pulse. The pulse barricade shattered in an instant.
Behind the pulse barricade, a cyberdog was already waiting for him.
He activated his VATS-BT, then time came to a crawling halt. He switched the G3 to full-auto. With the slowed time of VATS-BT, the heavy recoil of the 7.62mm rounds felt like slow, rhythmic heartbeat. The Cyberdog dropped dead in seconds.
"Nice one, Case, I didn't even shoot my shotgun, even once," Jack added.
Case moved with the surgical precision of someone who had run this gauntlet a thousand times in his head. He cleared the Library floor, snatched the second student record from the terminal, and doubled back to the hallway before the facility's heavy reinforcements could box him in.
As the stairs to the upper level unlocked, he caught the movement of a turret tracking his position. He didn't give it a chance to lock on. A single, well-placed 7.62 round from the G3 turned the turret into a spray of scrap metal and sparks.
He didn't stop to admire the shot. He hit the mag release, the empty magazine clattering onto the metal stairs, and slapped a fresh one home with a sharp clack. He swept the top floor like a storm; every cyberdog that lunged from the shadows was met with a controlled burst that sent it tumbling back into the dark.
By the time he reached the final terminal, the facility's "Standardized Testing" alarm had reached a fever pitch. He downloaded the last of the data, and with a heavy thud, the exit doors to the testing theater cycled open.
"Test's over," Jack panted, stepping out of the sterile school halls and into the observation area. "Tell me we're done with the school bells."
Case didn't answer. He walked to the reinforced observation window that looked down into a massive, sunken residential recreation area—the "backyard" of the X-8 experiment.
Down there, wandering through the debris of a simulated suburban area, was a nightmare of biological and mechanical engineering. It was a cyberdog, but it was massive—twice the size of any Sentry Bot, with thick hydraulic legs and a brain-case the size of a vertibird engine. It moved with a heavy, lumbering grace, its mechanical sniffing echoing through the chamber.
"That's Gabe," Case whispered, his grip tightening on the G3.
"He can't touch us from here, right?" Jack asked, peering through the thick, reinforced glass at the massive, cybernetic beast prowling the simulated backyard below.
"Yeah, but he has to be put down," Case replied, his voice flat and devoid of hesitation.
"Wait, what?" Jack turned to him, his eyes wide behind his ballistic visor. "He's behind six inches of plexiglass and metal, Case! We have the data, we have the exit. Why pick a fight with a tank that barks?"
"Because… that's the last research we need to do here, Jack," Case said, his gaze fixed on the behemoth. "When I said we need to clear this place, I meant clear it. There's biological data in his DNA and tech in his collar we can't leave behind. If we leave him alive, we leave the job half-finished."
They turned away from the glass and moved back through the observation deck's sterile hallways. They stepped over the cooling corpses of several lobotomites—remnants of a previous skirmish cleared out by the Rangers' advance scouts. The air here was heavy with the smell of copper and ozone.
They emerged back into the central corridor, the metal floor echoing beneath their boots. This was the final stretch. Case clicked on the terminal, and chose the residential test for him.
"Ready to face the fire?"
Jack just sighed, "Let's go, Case."