Fallout Shelter Fourteen

Fallout Shelter Fourteen
Chapter 1 - Enter Fourteen

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Sometime in 2277

“Count to one hundred and then go.”

“Got it! One, two, three, four, five...”

Everypony scurred off to find a place to hide on level 3 of our Vault. The Overseer didn’t always appreciate where we went to hide, but they had never told us that we couldn’t play. I myself ran down corridor C outside of the Hub. At least this time I wasn’t picked as the finder, like I normally was.

Down a set of stairs I found myself on the first floor of the Hub of this level. I could see a few others trying to find places to hide.

The rule was we couldn’t leave the level we were on. So after years of playing, everypony used the same hiding spots. The only thing that kept the seeker from always winning was you had to tag the hiders. And because there was the occasional unicorn or pegasus pony, the tip of the horn, or a brush with feathers didn’t count.

I went down the corridor and took a right. I ran into the restricted sign that was placed in the middle of the hallway. I looked around, nopony was around to stop me. So I didn’t see the harm in trotting past. Besides, I can’t have been the only pony in the years that I’d lived here to go past it.

Down the restricted hallway I went, why it was restricted I didn’t know until I came to a sign that said Structurally Unstable Area. I thought that the place was made of metal, how was it not stable?

The hallway took a right and I kept a slow pace until I had heard.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

I picked up the pace, the hallway took a right down some stairs. I followed them, I kept going, they went down three full flights before coming to a door with a sign on it.

Collapsed Area, Do NOT ENTER.

Well darn. Anyways, I did have a pretty fresh hiding spot. At least I had never used it before. I couldn’t say the same about everypony else though. I did feel like I was cheating. But technically by rules, I hadn’t left level 3. I was on the fence.

And I sat there, and I waited.

And I waited.

And waited.

It must have been at least half an hour before I got bored. Scratch that, I was bored twenty minutes ago. At least the hiding spot was good, right?

I was about to go back up when I heard the clat clat clat of somepony coming down the stairs.

I was so busted.

There was no where to go. My impending doom was upon me. That was until I heard the vents come on.

The vent down here was abnormally large, industrial sized like the ones on level 4, which I had only seen a few times. The fortunate thing was is that they didn’t lock, as they had to be cleaned on occasion as this was part of the Vault’s central vacuum system. I opened the hatch.

I crawled in backwards because I needed to see what was going on, and so I could pull the grate shut. The lower level light helped hide me, and having a black coat helped too. The only real problem would be my mane. A very true metallic silver that reflected light quite well. The clat clop clat clump got louder while I waited. (It looked like I had the hair of an elderly pony, something I had been teased for on more than one occasion.)

The pony who came down the stairs wasn’t any of the ones I had been playing with, it had been a security guard fully dressed with the helmet, the baton stick and the body armour that covered the vast upper portion of their torso.

The guard, I couldn’t tell if it was a stallion or a mare, was at the bottom of the stairs. They waited a few moments and then turned around and went back up.

Well that was weird. But more importantly I had been able to fit in the vent, I guess being tiny for my age wasn’t so bad afterall.

I opened the hatch again and crawled out, I was covered in dust. I shook really hard to get it out before I went back up the stairs, slower than I normally would have incase that guard took their sweet time going back up as well.

When I got back to the top I had made it to the Hub where somepony shouted.

“Hey! There she is!!”

I felt somepony touch my sides, I turned around.

“Gotcha.” they said, it was the seeker.

“Where’d you hide? We’ve been looking for you for ages.”

“Well that would take the fun out of it then, wouldn’t it?” I said.

“Oh come on! Tell us... please??”

“It’s a secret.” I quipped.

The crowd groaned. I laughed a bit inside.

***

I used that spot for months, and I had almost given it away a few times...

“I’m sticking with you Silver.” Shade said, “I’m tired of getting caught first.”

“No, go away. And it’s Dakota. Call me Dakota”

That didn’t dissuade him.

“Well fine.” I said, “But... you’ll have to keep up.”

I took off at a gallop, giving it everything I had. I left the lounge and entered the second floor of the Hub.I didn’t even bother using the stairs I went right up over the railing and down two meters. It wasn’t that far down.

When I hit the ground, one of the guards who was on the second floor yelled at me.

“Hey! Silver don’t do that.” He said my actual name, the only time my parents called me that was if I was in trouble.

It was Officer Olivetree, he was alright.

“Sorry!” I said asI ran off down the hallway that lead to the restricted sign.

After that I stopped playing Hide and Seek. I didn’t want to give away the little secret space that was mine.

I explored the vent a bit this time going in head first, I found it forked off maybe five feet in, it went left and right. The path that went left dropped off lower into the vent system. The path that went right went to another grate. It was pitch black beyond it, but that was expected right? The whole area had collapsed. That’s what I thought until I pushed the grate down and crawled out of it. I couldn’t see anything but this wasn’t a collapsed area that was for sure.

My enthusiasm dropped off quickly as it was getting late and I would have to leave soon. But I swore to come back but this time with a flashlight so I could see what was up. I crawled back out, then realizing I would have to find a way of closing the grate that I entered through because I couldn’t if I went through head first. My magic didn’t work. No pony’s did.

It was just something we had all heard about in Pony Tales and stories.

***

The following day I came back, this time with a roll of string and a flashlight powered by MF cells. Magic Fusion I think is what my dad told me. He wasn’t sure why I wanted it either, but I had asked for weirder stuff in the past. (Onions and Scissors)

I attached the string to the top side of the vent because it fell forward on it’s hinges, hitting the ground, instead of opening upwards. I crawled through, yanking the string hard and pulling the grate back up, I heard it chink as the clips caught it and held it in place.

When I got through to the other end, I flicked on the flashlight and picked up the end in my mouth.

I was rewarded with shelves.

Lots of them.

And they just seemed to go on and on.

Shelves full of books. This was a library. A few feet to my right I found a door, it was powered down and locked from the outside. This must have been the door at the bottom of the staircase.

Unlike my filly and colt counterparts, I actually liked reading. And I had since extinguished all the book in our library upstairs a year ago. So much stuff, where to start? I started by simply looking around.

I trotted around, it was odd that we didn’t have access to this. Like the hiding spot, this was on level 3, technically.

I think I was about half way around, and that took me a good 10 minutes to skirt the outside of the walls when I found there was a light on the floor in the middle of one of the double wide aisles, this must have lead straight back to the door.

The light was a circle on the floor. I looked up, a few stories above the floor there was a single circular window. There was only one place that I had seen circular windows before in the Vault. The only window that was round was the one that allowed you to see into the Overseer’s office from the mane hub on level 3.

The Overseer knew this was here. And she knew quite well. She saw it every time she went into her office.

I realized I was pointing my flashlight back at her window and I saw movement in the office. Snapping to action, I shut off the flashlight and froze. The only giveaway I was here would be my reflective metallic silver mane.

I saw a figure appear at the window, before I saw a blue glow and the blinds drop. I sighed in relief.

Wait. Blue glow?

Our Overseer was a Unicorn, why could she use her horn while no other unicorn, including myself, could!? I had tried to concentrate before to summon a spark or something, anything to be able to use it. The harder I tried the more I felt tired. Well, to be honest this was the only time I had ever seen her use magic. Maybe it was only in her office. That didn’t explain why nopony but her knew about the library. Or that she could use magic... somehow?

I continued on, the light now gone from the floor. I found a bunch of desks with terminals that were powered down.

After pushing the red button to turn on the power accomplished nothing I decided to get a book instead. They were in alphabetical order by author’s last name. So that didn’t help me find anything I particularly wanted to read. I supposed one of the terminals might have been able to tell me books by genre if they had been working. I left and decided to come back another day. When I had more time to actually sit down and read something.