Third Visit to the Bay

DATE: 8.7.2224 
LOCATION: Vault 288 Medical Center
ENTRY: Third Visit to the Bay

Time has begun to settle like dust in the corners of my mind. It is 7:20 in the morning, though morning here feels different. more sterile, less forgiving. The initial fog is lifting. Confusion still clings to me, but it no longer commands me. I'm beginning to grasp the shape of this world in fragments.

This is my third visit to the Medical Bay since awakening. Each time, I'm checked, scanned, questioned, then moved. After each visit, they transport me to a small room nearby. It's more than a holding space. Almost like an apartment.

One bed.

One desk.

A chair that leans but holds.

The walls are plain steel, with old posters peeling near the vents. A soft hum runs through the air—machines or life-support systems. I can't tell yet.

It's quiet.

Sterile.

But cleaner than I would expect from a place that has been sealed away since before Hurricane Kendra.

I keep thinking about that.

148 years.

The Vault was here before I went under. And it's still here now.

The Overseer, Lillie Jacinto, finally introduces herself properly.

She addresses me as Mr. Marcel and welcomes me again to Vault 288, a place built to shelter its people from the Wasteland.

I pause.

Confused.

“I came here for a hurricane,” I tell her.

She blinks at me.

Not because she doesn't understand the words.

Because she doesn't understand the experience.

She shakes her head slightly.

“I have never left the Vault,” she explains. “I have never felt a hurricane. Seen the wind or rain. Seen the sky break. I know of them only through the Vault's transmissions, weather signals, historical records, and your dossier.”

She pauses.

“Hurricane Kendra hit in August of 2076. It is a long time ago. It is the year 2224 now. There was a war after that.”

A war.

She says it almost like an afterthought.

Like she's telling me there was a storm.

I don't know what to do with that yet.

“History says… records you can look up. That's all I can offer.”

I ask her about my family.

That question comes out before I can prepare for the answer.

I'm hoping for something.

Names.

Connections.

Some trace of my life before the Vault.

She looks me in the eye.

Steady.

Firm.

“There are no other Marcels in our records,” she says. “Not that I can find.”

Not that I can find.

I don't know whether that's supposed to comfort me.

It doesn't.

The hint of BBQ I smelled earlier is still thick with memory.

It floats faintly through the air, like it doesn't belong here.

I don't know if it's a memory or something more.

A whisper from aboveground, maybe.

Or a test.

Either way, it stirred something.

Hunger, yes.

But also hope.

NOTE:
I may be imagining the smell. I'm not ready to decide that yet.
The world outside Vault 288 remains a mystery. But this room, this Vault, this morning... I am beginning to adjust.

I carry the Pip-Boy now like a compass. I listen for familiar songs in unfamiliar air. The road is unclear. The past still echoes. But I am awake.

I remain.

— Big Chief Mike Marcel