Chapter 11 "I thought that was a conspiracy theory?"

Burton hurried from the lab, running late to host his coding club. He pushed the button for the door and almost entered before it fully retracted "Sorry I'm…" Burton spoke to an empty room. "Late."

He clicked on a row of terminals as he passed and sat at his desk, waiting for someone to arrive. No one did, for the first time in eight years.

As he sat he began to think. Not of the usual next generation fabrics or splicing plant genes, but of changes. This one change made him think of another, and another, until he understood how much had changed.

Most of the staff, him included, had welcomed the down time that came from the now self sufficient children. All of them, thanks to eidetic recall function, were now educated to a higher standard than their teachers. It seemed increasingly irrelevant to teach them more. Instead practical knowledge and experience became the children's focus. Meaning more time in the sub level.

While Burton would tend the subterranean garden daily. Whether he needed to or not. He rarely went beyond it. This time he decided he would.

The lift opened into the empty corridor. Burton passed the unassuming pressurised door to the garden, and headed to the training room. The sound of gunfire seeped through the glass windows to the range. He peered through to see two teams of five competing to hit the same hinged metal targets. Bursts of fire would flip rows of metal targets over, revealing the one side painted red. Only for another burst that flipped them blue.

Others were at the benches, working on more weapons. He smiled and waved off the children as they stood to attention. He watched them work, seeing them gesture at nothing, as they used augmented reality projections for their designs.

Laughter and bragging came from ten of the children as they poured in from another room. They wore safety goggles and black tactical vests, holsters and webbing. All covered in blue and red splotches. Impacts from the wax bullets used for training exercises in the kill house next door. They stood to attention along the wall to let Burton pass. He saw how tall they'd gotten, all in peak physical condition. Not really children any more, he thought.

In the next room he found Shaw, jacked into the vr sim. A team of five in the adjacent chairs. Burton let out a heavy sigh and lay back into an empty chair. The conductive gel padding heated and softened. Burton watched the visor close over his face and braced for the disorientation. It never came.

Instead Burton found himself strolling through an alpine glade, green grass underfoot. A crystal clear stream meandering by the cobbled path. Mountains on the horizon and blue skies overhead. The children have been busy, he thought to himself, seeing his lessons had been useful.

The children had decided to focus on building a virtual world. One based on a comic book. A world of mages and thieves, dungeons and draugar. A simpler world than they had known, and far more beautiful than the one that awaited them.

The more he walked, the more churlish and petty he felt. As the path climbed, he saw three children on the edge of a forest. He recognised the stout and broad, green leafed trees as copies of ones from the garden. Around the children were several structures. Simple log cabins, scaffolding and sections of bridges made from logs lashed together. He watched them work from a distance, saw how well they worked together.

He continued upwards along the path, taking in the scenic view. Soon the path led into a valley, rolling hills with rocky outcrops. And at the bottom Shaw sat at a table in the shadow of a larger wooden building. "I don't think you're supposed to be here." Shaw smiled and pushed a rough hewn wooden chair out for him to sit.

"Really, why's that?" Burton bristled at the suggestion.

"They wanted to finish it before showing you." Shaw looked out across the valley through a pair of highly anachronistic binoculars. "It is something, isn't it." He turned and smiled at Burton.

"It is that. Very impressive." Burton gazed up at a blue sky, the thing he missed most in his garden. "Exactly how much processing power is this using right now?" Burton had vastly underestimated the potential of what he saw as little more than toys.

"I'm assured that it doesn't affect core operations." Shaw said. "Something about splicing the feed from the chairs through the pipboys."

Suddenly the peace shattered as something zipped between him and Shaw. It pinged off the hanging cast iron skillet behind them. It took Burton a moment to gather his composure. As he did Shaw stood, peering through binoculars.

"What the fuck was that?!" Burton half yelled before a series of muffled plunks sounded from behind him.

"That was incoming." Shaw paused as the mortars hit a patch of green in the distance, turning it to a plume of brown dirt. "And that was outgoing."

"Did you just fire on the children?!" Burton's misplaced fear and panic overtook his reason.

"Relax Burton, it's all pretend. Not like when I was on the other side of this exercise. They get hit and start over." Shaw looked through the binoculars. "Besides, they were nowhere near that blast." The metal pinged again. "See. Cocky sons of bitches." Shaw's mouth twisted into a grin Burton found unsettling. The muffled plunks sounded again. Burton shut eyes and pressed his fist against his palm three times, triggering the emergency exit.

By the time Burton's vision cleared, he saw the familiar steel floor. He'd half collapsed getting out of the chair. Hunched over and breathing heavily, he didn't notice Shaw had left the sim. "Drink this, it'll help." He shook a water can, a ripped sachet in his teeth. "Electrolytes."

"Thanks." Burton gulped down the off tasting water.

"The nausea will pass, the headache not so much." Shaw tried to divert the conversation. "Feels like altitude sickness, it's fucking weird."

"I didn't think it'd be so…" Burton struggled to find the right word through the onset of a pounding headache.

"Real." Shaw put it plainly. "Good thing you didn't see the dragons."

"They made dragons?" Burton asked, bemused and impressed in equal measure.

"Breathes fire and everything. Of course last time I saw one it was flying backwards." Shaw laughed, getting to his feet and offering Burton a hand up. "You don't need to worry about the children, Burton. They're exceptional." Shaw could tell he missed the mark. "I'd like you to see something. It won't take long."

"Alright." Burton wanted to be convinced, or at the very least distracted.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Delta and Instructor Quinn, report to kilo hotel." Shaw spoke into his pipboy, then led Burton to the observation deck of the kill house.

Through thick glass Burton watched Instructor Quinn check his gear. "You know Quinn was Navy j-soc right?" Shaw asked. Everything about Quinn said military. Close cropped hair, polished boots, firm posture. "He did six years at the sharp end till he fell out of a 'bird and broke his spine. Even now I'd say he's a top tier operator." Shaw pressed a button on his pipboy and a door below them slid open.

In perfect unison, five Assaultrons marched in carrying carbines. They stopped and turned as one. Quinn handed them each a magazine and they locked and loaded. Quinn gave a thumbs up, Shaw nodded and they entered the maze of rooms below.

Burton stood at the glass, watching Shaw issue pistols to the five children. Carrying only a knife himself. Burton saw the faces of the children, trying to be serious but excited to show him what they could do.

They moved as one into the maze of recreated rooms. Sleek and smooth, effortlessly working as one. Two of the bots opened fire as Shaw entered the next room. He rolled into cover behind a desk as two of the children came in firing. A bullet ricocheted from the bots, skipping off the thick glass. Live rounds, he realised.

More fire came as the children burst through rooms, all of it missing. Burton saw Quinn break from cover, catching Shaw from behind. In less than a second Shaw had spun behind Quinn. He turned, only to find the gun ripped from his hands. A teenage girl took him down, ready to break his arm. He banged the floor in submission.

"Clear!" Shaw yelled, helping Quinn up. The children assembled by him. Burton saw something between them. Not just communication, or coordination, something deeper. More primal, almost animalistic. Shaw had become the Alpha.

Six months passed since Burton had watched the children in the kill house. He hadn't been back since. He'd spent the day exercising, as he did twice a week. Burton had begun to see a chance to find Clara, and his child. Even if he had to walk across a wasteland to do it.

In the last few months readings from the outside started to become consistent. Enough that Burton could extrapolate a date from the data. In a little less than two years he could go outside, in protective gear at least.

He'd told Shaw, and they decided to keep it between them. Still, it gave both men a renewed focus. Burton on his family, and Shaw on his fist generation of soldiers.

"There you are." Shaw entered the gym, looking for him rather than summoning him. "I found something." Shaw's tone stopped Burton walking and he stepped off the treadmill. Shaw held out his arm and static hissed from the pipboy.

"What am—" Burton stopped as hints of a voice surfaced from the static.

"Elev...ve...een...ei…" The recording stopped.

"It's a number station." Shaw looked elated. Burton wasn't sure and said nothing. "Old school spycraft. Coded global radio broadcasts for operators in the field."

"I thought that was a conspiracy theory?" Burton asked, keeping his tone neutral.

"That's what we want you to think." Shaw winked and smiled, deeply amused. "Can we clean it up?"

Back in the lab Burton twisted dials and watched oscilloscopes. "Wait, go back." Shaw had his eyes shut, a speaker held to his enhanced ear. "Try it now."

"Eleven. Five….rteen. Eight."

"Could be thirteen, fourteen." Burton felt ready to give up and stepped away to smoke. "So what does it mean?" Burton readied his objections.

"Well, it's just a fragment." Shaw stepped away, hopping onto the table and lighting a cigarette. "If we can it clean up, and if we can grab the rest, and if it's one of ours the cipher will be on file." Shaw took a deep drag and exhaled slowly, savouring the moment.

"Lot of ifs." Burton shifted in his chair, trying not to look uncomfortable.

"Spit it out Burton." Shaw's talent for reading people had grown since the integration with the device.

"It could be automated." He started with the most obvious answer.

"Thought of that. If it is, the orders will be old." Shaw answered.

"We don't know if the broadcast source is secure. Could be a bunch of civilians trying to turn the lights on and they flipped the wrong switch." Burton tried to keep his voice calm.

"True, but at least that'd mean people were out there. Plus these stations are generally isolated and secure." Shaw knew about spycraft in a way he didn't.

"We don't know who's broadcasting." Burton paused, letting his point hang in the air like smoke. "Do you really think anything like a chain of command made it?" The sheer odds against left Burton highly sceptical, at best.

"You're probably right." Shaw looked disappointed in himself for getting carried away. "Still, if half the things I heard about before the bombs fell were true, I wouldn't rule it out." Shaw hopped down, forcing a smile. "There's something else I wanted to...suggest." Shaw seemed hesitant, which meant Burton wouldn't like the suggestion. From the small of his back, Shaw produced a pistol.

"What you've been doing lately, getting match fit, focusing on a future." Shaw waited for Burton to make eye contact. "I don't want you out there until you can handle yourself." Shaw held out the pistol and Burton took it.

"It's a forty five so it'll kick, but it'll stop what you hit." Shaw helped Burton fix his stance, showed him how to reload. "Pulled it from the armoury myself. Flared the magwell, threaded the barrel for a suppressor, tuned the action." Shaw handed him a rolled up cloth. "Keep it clean and it'll keep you safe."

"Thank you Andrew." Burton could tell from the custom pistol that his friend had put thought and effort into its construction.

"Yeah, don't thank me yet, you've got to shoot it." Shaw knew how Burton felt about guns.

Burton spent the next day on a closed firing range. Shaw insisted on keeping it closed to everyone after Burton's first few shots. It wouldn't do for the children to lose respect for him, apparently. He'd never liked guns. The only time he ever came in contact with weapons would be at those corporate hunting weekends Blake Technical used to host. He'd bribe the gamekeeper for a prize carcass and spend his time working.

"Better. Don't pull, squeeze." Shaw spoke through the range intercom. Burton didn't feel the least bit patronised despite knowing how basic this was for him. "Good, come on out." Outside the range Shaw dismissed one of the children and turned to Burton. "Epsilon is ready when you are." Shaw had his hostage rescue team geared up and waiting. Burton had dreaded this since Shaw suggested it. Still he saw the wisdom in it. For Clara, he thought.

A few minutes later, Burton sat in a room from the world he remembered. The fake office had desks, plastic seats, even a water cooler. Handcuffs secured his wrists to the desk in the corner while his robotic captors paced back forth.

The monotonous clacking of metal on metal suddenly vanished as what seemed like a thunderbolt struck inside the room. The next thing he knew, Burton felt like the ground had disappeared from beneath his feet. He seemed to bounce from wall to wall before slapping against a crash mat. "Epsilon Actual, package secure." He heard a girl's voice and Shaw helped him up.

"Outstanding Epsilon." Shaw addressed the five person asset extraction team. He glanced at Burton, still dazed. "And I'm sure the good professor will agree, when he remembers which way is up." Shaw clapped him on the back and Burton nearly vomited.

"Very impressive children, thank you." Burton managed to say.

"Alright, run it again with Instructor Quinn." Shaw dismissed them and helped Burton up to the couch in the observation room.

"Now imagine that happening for the first time in the field." Shaw brought him a coffee with too much sugar and a cigarette.

"What did happen, exactly?" Burton still felt unsure, but glad it had just been an exercise.

"We can review the footage, or it can wait." Shaw tried to hide his grin, so Burton agreed.

He watched the bank of monitors, saw the children move swift and silent through the rooms. Robots, programmed to behave as humans, shut down as knives were ran across their necks. Then he saw himself. A flash grenade went off, washing out the screen. Shaw slowed the playback to a quarter of real time.

One of the children, still moving quickly, snapped the chain on the cuffs bare handed. Then all but threw Burton to her teammate. Again he was passed from one to another, moving a few feet, then getting hurled through open space.

"They're good aren't they." Burton had to admit it. He hadn't considered how many lives the children could save.

"Better than good. I spent my career with the absolute best in the world. None of them would stand a chance." Shaw took great pride in his soldiers. Burton began to share in it for the first time since the vast Vault door closed nearly eight years ago.