Chapter 4 - 4

Words : 1546 Updated : Sep 10th, 2025

Adam resisted the urge to scream and instead immediately hid himself by dropping down below the window. Whatever that thing was it had crept up so close to this house without so much as making a sound. He was lucky it roared at all, had it not and just entered the building he might have died without even knowing it was here… Luckily for the moment, when he last looked at the creature a second ago it didn't seem to be coming into the house, but it was stalking nearby. Why was it here anyway though? He walked for a while before chancing on this house and didn't see anything like it around. What could have possibly drawn it to… He then paused his thoughts and looked down at his holstered gun. The gunfire. He hadn't even considered the noise that firing a number of rounds to kill the bug downstairs would make, it must have been within earshot and then came running to the general direction of the sounds. Adam slowly sat up, stealing a peak out the window to look at the creature, just barely poking his head up so he was still hiding. It was still standing there, where it was, a moment ago, sniffing the air and looking around menacingly. It didn't seem to have any indication of leaving, which was good insofar as he was safe inside for now. But it was bad because that meant he was trapped. Out of curiosity he brought up the Pip-Boy allowing it to just poke a bit over the window and once more tried the VATS thing. To his surprise it took a picture of the scene from a small camera attached to itself, and it displayed a breakdown of the creature's assumed health, the health of individual sections, and, most importantly, a percentage chance to hit. How it calculated such a thing was beyond him. He was a halfway decent shot and at this distance he was confident he could land 8 or 9 of 12 shots on the creature, though he was uncertain if he would kill it even with a full magazine, which is why he hadn't. But despite Adam's belief in his own skill, the Pipboy showed low chances for hits. Maybe it needed calibration, or perhaps it needed to see his skill in action, after all the only data it had collected so far was seeing him shoot a giant bug. The curiosity sated over VATS he needed to come up with a plan. It didn't seem like the creature had any intention of leaving, which meant he needed a way to kill it, or to distract it long enough for him to get away. The question was how? As he thought this his eyes drifted over to the deactivated Mr. Handy sitting on the ground a few feet away from him. That was it! He quickly, but quietly, walked over to the computer at the desk and sat down, booting it up. Once more there was a password screen, but the same trick used in the Overseer's office to bypass it worked here, it was even easier, only 4 characters. Get stronger passwords people! After getting in he was met with a few options. [Personal Finance Documentation][Wife's ultimatum][Daughter's A+ Essay Paper][Open Safe][Connect to Mr.Handy] There were even more tabs than in the Overseer's office. However he was only interested in the last two. As much as he might enjoy snooping into the personal life of someone he has never met, he had a deadline in the shape of a giant monster outside who could, at any moment, walk into this house and up the stairs. However he couldn't help but pause when he noticed the [Open Safe] Option. There was a safe? He looked around for a moment and saw none, maybe it was a misread connection? Or maybe it was hidden somewhere? Regardless it was not important, time spent looking for and looting the safe, likely which was full of, at best, money, was not helpful right now. The Mr. Handy was. Tabbing over to the Mr. Handy on the computer, he was met with the diagnostic screen of the Mr. Handy. This was not his first time reprogramming a robot, in fact he even factory reset and reprogrammed a Protectron for Second Life before he woke up in this strange world. Yes it happened to be the same protectron that tried to kill him but it was an accident, he forgot to include himself with a friendly tag, it was an easy mistake to make. Regardless, Mr. Handy, despite being designed by General Atomics, not RobCo, had an OS that was still nearly identical, or identical enough to work with anyway. There was one problem. This Mr.Handy had been hard reset, purged of every file. Even the base model programming was inaccessible. Whatever the guy who owned this computer was doing before he clearly didn't want a trace of General Atomics programming in it. If Adam had all the time in the world, he could certainly reprogram the Mr.Handy from the ground up, giving it new subroutines, even settings, modes, target acquisition, hell he could make it dance on command if he wanted to, but time was not on his side. So he was left with the only option which was to give it very basic commands for it to follow. The question was what? The first thought was to have it charge out there and fight the monster, use the time to escape. But he realized that the self preservation and combat subroutines were also gone, so it wouldn't know how to fight, it would likely just ram its head into the creature and then die. His second thought was to simply overheat its internals and explode all its liquid fuel in one fiery explosion right on top of the monster. But this wouldnt work either, not only would this take a while to set up and not kill himself immediately, but the timing would be critical, it would need to explode at a precise moment, a moment he couldn't account for. In addition, even if he was to get all the variables to line up, there's no telling if the creature would die. And then he would have a very angry, on fire, monster with nothing else to do but kill him. His third and final idea. And the one he settled on was simple. Have the Mr. Handy run past the monster and keep heading east. Not stopping for anything. In theory, assuming the creature chased after it, both would disappear into the distance and give him a perfect opening to run. This was his best play so he got to work. It was a tense 10 minutes that followed, never in his life did Adam work so hard and fast on a robot reprogramming. It was life or death after all. But, after the ten minutes was up the Mr. Handy sprang to life, spewing its fuel from below as it hovered in place for a few seconds. Adam sighed a deep breath of relief and then executed the program. The Mr. Handy began letting off a loud screeching sound as it began to fly out the room, down the stairs and through the hole in the wall. All Adam could do now was pray it would work. He didn't have to wait long. As he peaked out the window again at the creature he saw its attention immediately peaked by the Mr. Handy. It roared out loudly before it began moving, far faster than Adam would have guessed, in the direction the Mr. Handy was moving, chasing after it like a dog chasing a ball. It had worked, all he could do now was sit tight for another minute or so and then make a run for it himself. And so he waited, hearing the sound of the Mr. Handy getting further and further away by the second. Until he finally decided it was time to book. And run he did. He barrelled down the stairs with all his might, heading, specifically, in the opposite direction of the creature, following the cracked streets to hopefully find somewhere else that was at least a small bit safe. He ran for about 20 minutes before he came to a stop, catching his breath as he leaned against the side of a stone brick ruin. However he was not given a moment to rest as he began to see figures in the distance. There was a glare from the sun at the angle he was looking so he couldn't truly make out the shapes. Was it a human? God he hoped so. He decided to gamble. He was exhausted, out of breath, and terrified, he really needed a win right now. So he approached the figures a bit and then stopped, waving broadly at them as he shouted over to them. "Hey! Um! Excuse me! Can I approach?" he yelled out to them. There was a pause before he heard back. "Sure can, stranger! Come on o'er!"

Chapter 4 - 4

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