Chapter 68: Chapter 65

Fucking rad worshippers. I was enjoying a rare afternoon off with the girls, balls deep in Piper while Curie and Cait were catching their cum-stained breaths when Eva chimed in through the room’s speakers.

“Urgent. Intruders detected. Relaying information to your Pip-Boy now, Sev.”

I gave Piper the last orgasm for this session, tweaking her sensitivity and intensity and thrusting one last time before pulling out of her and leaving her to quiver and moan on the bed.

Grumpily, I reached for my Pip-Boy somewhere on the floor and flicked it on. The patrols had just dealt with a sizeable mob of crazy rad lunatics. How did I know they were rad-melted loons?

Fuckers were shooting at my robots with rad-based weapons. Thank fuck my macros included radiation resistance.

I turned to my three sweating, cum-leaking girls on the bed and resetted their exhaustion and fatigue stats.

“Sorry girls, but can you three ask around and see if anyone got anything worthwhile on the Children of Atom? Get Gwen and the others to help. We just got a whole bunch of them trying to shoot at the patrols.”

With concerned frowns on their faces, Piper, Cait and Curie gave me a nod before they rushed out of my room. After washing up and dressing, of course.

I brought my attention up in the air to Eva. “Prep the Institute’s cells for heavy rad contamination. These guys like throwing the stuff around like it’s confetti, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they’re drenched in it.”

“Understood, Sev. I will have these prisoners contained in a separate section.”

“Cool. If they put up too much of a fight, incap them so that they don’t. Oh, don’t run them through the arches yet, not sure if they’ll end up as part of the experimental stock.”

“Acknowledged, Sev.” I left Eva to take charge of the robot network to organize the prisoner processing. My Eversors and Centurions were good, all of the intruders were rounded up and accounted for, and there were no deaths recorded, not even critical injuries or missing limbs.

For their sake, it was a good thing they were caught at the edges of our border. Rad resistant or not, I highly doubt they’d fare well if they got in range of the Obelisks or the newly installed pop-up turrets.

I made my way to the Institute, taking a casual pace as I pondered what I would be dealing with. I knew from the game what to look forward to, of course.

Deluded worshippers of radiation, seeing its effects as a source of creation by their god Atom. They only see Atom’s blessing specifically in nuclear fission though, not fusion. And the whole rad-loving thing makes them a threat to any proper and sane person, as well as a clean and healthy environment.

I rather deal with the Children of the Corn.

A message came in from Eva, the prisoners were enroute to the Institute, they’d have to take the long flight by Sentinels over to the CIT’s physical exit, seeing how I’m not stupid enough to risk contaminating anything or anyone in Station and R&R 81. The specialised cells would be ready for them once they arrived.

I just took the train from Caladan to Ix, then used the teleporter to send me over to the Institute.

Hm…maybe I should rename it Salusa to go along with the theme?

Ah, digressing. I waited at the entrance of the Institute’s newly built ‘manual’ exit. It was a labyrinth of long and convoluted tunnels that connected the surface to the Institute, designed to be navigable only by flight, ie. Sentinels. If anyone’s stupid enough to try climbing up and down and sideways through the maze, I’d be very impressed.

Well, I’d be impressed if they made it past the first gap on either end. The last raiders used to test the maze’s impenetrability consistently failed to survive crawling, climbing or even leaping across the weird angles. It was a false trail though, you were supposed to fall down into the gap and then go up the hidden tunnel about halfway down to move on.

Anyway, I patiently waited for the prisoners to arrive, spending the forty or so minutes on my Pip-Boy and communicating with Eva to sort through the other reports. The heavy doors slid open to receive the flight of Sentinels with their cargo, a total of fourteen bedraggled men and women. They were clearly Atom followers, judging from the familiar trinkets on them.

These Children of Atom looked far worse than their game counterparts, the rags in more than just shades of dirty browns. Scrap metal and wires were bent and shaped to form icons that wrapped around their robes, often looping through equally scrap-made trinkets. Checking the console confirmed that they had high levels of rads on them, yet none bore any signs of radiation poisoning.

I noted from the pained struggles that the capture protocols were carried out cleanly, all the prisoners’ ankles, knees, shoulders and elbows were dislocated. An easy fix without the arches that also didn’t cause much long term damage, yet was painful and debilitating enough to significantly lower the chances of escaping.

The prisoners gave me hateful looks once they noticed me. “Atom damn you! Perish in entropic unity!” one elderly man yelled through his pain. No idea what he’s saying, but the anger in his voice carried the message across rather well.

I remained silent as the main elevator opened and the Sentinels zipped down along with the prisoners. Left alone again, I spoke to the room around me.

“What’s your assessment?”

“They are highly aggressive people, yet their behaviour does are clearly divergent from the raiders encountered so far. You have mentioned that they belong to an organization of some sort, more data needs to be gathered on them to establish a more accurate assessment.”

“Yeah, Children of the Atom or something. A cult that worships radiation.”

You are reading story Uncommon Wealth at novel35.com

“I see. Still, I do not know what initiated their hostilities.”

I sighed in agreement. “Got that right. I don’t recall ever seeing any of them.” But then again, they’re generally hostile in game, so...maybe they’re just kooky fucks? “Use gentler interrogation methods for now, but keep them incapacitated just in case they try to pull something off.”

“Understood Sev. … The instructions have been relayed to the staff.”

I walked back to Station 81’s…station and took the train to Caladan. There were no new pings throughout the journey back and Eva only had the usual mundane stuff to update, so there wasn’t anything else to worry about just yet. Well, I say that…

“Eva, are you seeing this?”

The lights in the train car became dim, and a sort of haze closed in. The hum of the train quickly became muted, and only then did I notice that everything was frozen still. I brought up the console and for once the thing was of no help at all, the stats and values showing nothing out of the ordinary.

A whispering voice manifested close to me, filled with the clicks of geiger counters and hiss of melting metal.

“Interloper.”

I stared at the shadowy figure coalescing in front of me and frowned. This is not the best time to find out how the console works against mystical shit.

“Interloper.”

I blinked as the figure in frozen time didn’t get any more detailed. It was going to be one of those featureless forms, huh?

It raised a misty hand to point at me menacingly. “Defiler. Begone.”

And then the console showed myself getting a massive spike of rads. It didn’t do anything due to my modifications, but it’s a guess that any normal person taking 2350 points of radiation damage all of the sudden would be dead on the spot.

I didn’t, and that seemed to piss off the mysterious being. The body language and aura that I got from it changed from confident and intimidating to surprise and annoyance. It gave me a frustrated hiss before suddenly vanishing. The dimming shadows and the haze melted away, and the ambient noise returned to normal. Time unfroze, and Eva suddenly chimed in.

“Sev, I am reading a massive spike in radiation on your body.”

A quick console tweak brought me back to normal, and I found myself stomping to my office with an annoyance I’ve never felt ever since I’ve been in this world. Piper, Cait, Curie and Gwen were waiting for me, and I noted their surprise as I entered. I locked the door before heading to my desk and dropping in my seat with a huff.

“Right. First off, fuck the rad cultists,” I announced, unable to keep the irritation off my voice. I quickly explained what I experienced enroute, and then leaned back in my seat and sighed aloud. Why was I so pissed? That figure wasn’t any different from hostile raiders or super mutants I’ve met. It clearly failed to do shit all to me as well.

Gwen was the first to voice her thoughts. “So, there’s an entity that’s able to just appear out of thin air and blast people with rads? That would be problematic for our security...”

“Yeah, no shit,” Cait replied. “Good thing whatever it was didn’t know about Sev being Sev. All it’s done is piss us off now.” My cute redhead seemed to be infected by my annoyance.

Curie nodded rather thoughtfully. “It does seem curious that an attempt only be made now, instead of during more opportune times. Even if Sev was susceptible to such a lethal dose, it would not have been instant and the train would have arrived quickly enough for me to bring him to the healing arches to reverse the effects. Clearly this new enemy is highly ignorant of us.”

“So we have another piece of scum to scrub off our list,” Piper said, just as pissed as Cait. “Of course it had to happen when we’re starting to relax a bit…”

The intel meeting about the Children of Atom moved quickly after that, and we learned about basically just how hostile these cultists were to the common wastelander. According to anecdotes and the rare first-hand testimony, the Commonwealth’s Children of the Atom followers were highly aggressive and were more than happy to douse innocent passerbys with rads to either kill or force a conversion to the faith. It was bad enough that they were considered as shoot-on-sight by even the Minutemen, who sometimes took the time to negotiate with raiders.

I guess we got more experiment stock to work with then, though a new and worrying tech tree just opened up. I forgot that bullshit like magic was a thing in the game, so it would make sense I guess to have to deal with it in this reality. But still, what the flying fuck, man.

“Was that the Atom then?” I wondered aloud. I looked to see the other people in the room staring at me.

After a second, Cait shrugged. “It would make some sense, you were there to see them brought in. And honestly, it’d make as much sense as everything you’ve done so far.”

I groaned at the implications of the existence of an actual and hostile radiation god, but Cait and Piper were nodding. “Must be a real shit god then,” Cait snarked. “To go after Sev and fail?” She and Piper shared a look, but Curie was the one that voiced their thoughts.

“Does that make you a god then Sev?”

“Don’t start that, please.”

You can find story with these keywords: Uncommon Wealth, Read Uncommon Wealth, Uncommon Wealth novel, Uncommon Wealth book, Uncommon Wealth story, Uncommon Wealth full, Uncommon Wealth Latest Chapter