By the time I had finished exploring Fallout's power systems to my satisfaction, it was only about two in the afternoon. I found myself in awe of what we had accomplished in twelve hours. The difference that the additional production speed had made when I was pushing for speed was incredible.

  With a solid foundation and the remainder of the day clear, I had a lot of time to work on whatever I decided was next. Which, of course, was my first challenge. Samwise and I had put together a solid list of options, and as much as I wanted to make some power armor and go stomping around, I knew I had more important things to focus on.

  Chemistry and biological technology were two huge subjects I desperately wanted to get involved with. They were composed of several massive branches that were just teasing me with untold advancements. Unfortunately, while a lot of the chems and medicine from Fallout were deceptively simple, it was still better to wait until the bio lab was finished.

  Any attempt to push into the medical or chemical branches would be slowed by needing to make every device necessary. So, rather than struggle with that, I would likely spend a good chunk of the second week on it once Frank finished setting everything up.

  So, for now, I decided to focus on something at least slightly more familiar and achievable.

  Vault tec.

  More specifically, the tech required to turn a giant, maze-like metal tomb into something that could survive being nuked and that someone could live in for over 200 years. It was a decently large portion of the tree, split off into several other branches, some of them pretty significant in their own right.

  Vault-Tec and its partner companies had created a significant amount of tech that was explicitly about maintaining, running, and feeding a vault. On top of that, just as important as the individual pieces of tech was the information I would be getting from completing them. Information about how to protect and prevent damage from radiation, wear and tear, earthquakes, water damage, contamination, corrosion, and many more destructive influences, both man-made and not. If I could learn the majority of things on that chunk of the tree, I would know everything there was to know about making my own secure bunker.

  Which was good because I had every intention of making one.

  The longer I considered the idea, the more I realized that it could solve a significant portion of my problems. Especially if I could pair it with teleportation tech from Big Mountain or the Institute later. Even if I couldn't, having a safe, secure place where not even the major corporations could blow me up? The only issue with the safety of a vault was that it was stationary, but even that could be offset by keeping it hidden.

  A properly hidden vault, buried deep inside the earth, was exactly the kind of place I wanted to have to retreat to. I just needed to pick where to put it, someplace safe from prying eyes.

  I put Samwise up to that when he had time, as sifting through information was something AIs excelled at. Meanwhile, I would start working my way through Vault-Tec's secrets, starting with air filtration and working my way deeper.

  Quite a bit of the vault-specific tech was already partially visible to me. As far as I understood, this meant that the tech functioned in ways that I at least partially understood, but there was still a lot for me to learn from it. This was different from tech that I could see and understand completely, which I would only copy down if I wanted to remember the exact design. Most of these bits were lower down the tech tree, like the vehicles that ran on gasoline. This was also separate from the completely dark sections of the tree, which I would need to build up to reveal. Most of the time, I only had the vaguest sense of what the dark sections contained.

  After one last scan through my chosen selection, I started designing the air filtration system. Immediately, I could tell that this system worked in tandem with a separate system, one that recycled air that had already been breathed and filled with carbon dioxide. This was nothing too miraculous, as I knew that space missions in my time had ways of recycling air, often cycling carbon dioxide through several forms to remove the carbon and attach a single hydrogen atom, thereby creating water. The difference was that the systems that Vault-tec had designed were nearly ninety percent effective.

  The air filtration system I picked to start off with was more about removing internal contaminates and was way beyond anything Cyberpunk was capable of, a shocking level of filtration that had to actually be purposely dialed back, or the occupant's immune system could be stunted over several generations. Frankly, it was overkill, considering the lowered levels of air filtration approached 99.9 percent effectiveness. Then again, I wasn't going to complain about a filtration system that could be cranked up to ludicrous levels in an emergency and had filters that worked for nearly a hundred years without needing to be replaced.

  Once I completed the filtration system, which was really just like systems I was familiar with, but with new advanced materials from Fallout, I started working on the air recycling system. It was a multi-staged chemical process that heated, cooled, combined, and worked with all the chemicals that a system could have on hand without getting more from the surface. There were even backup systems that used large furnaces to cook the nitrogen out of stone, to be mixed with oxygen separated from water. It was nearly a completely closed system designed to work when going to the surface was absolutely not possible.

  I continued to work until the sun began to set, completing the filtration system and the recycling system, both of which were smaller models than would usually go in the heart of a vault, but since I already understood a good chunk of how they worked, completing them filled in the blanks for the larger models. Rather than rush directly into a new project, I decided to call it early in hopes that I would be up and ready to continue the next morning.

  Before heading to bed, I talked with Samwise about working in the bio lab while I was working during the day. I was really itching to get into the chemistry and medical sciences that the Fallout tree had to offer, and I wanted that to be an option. According to Frank, we would likely be getting a few deliveries of equipment two or three days from then, and I wanted the lab set up to accept them. Samwise agreed, and after some discussion, we decided to set up about thirty percent of our production during the day to complete the lab. With any luck, once I was done with the vault tech branches, I could move on to some miraculous breakthroughs in medicine.

  As I left the garage, I made a detour north, heading to the town center's defenses. The shades saluted as I made my way to the corner, climbing up to the top of the larger defensive point so I could look out over the rest of the town. Noah had already made a significant dent in reorganizing the area. The trailers that were usable as homes had already been set up along the back end of the town, each pair getting a forty by forty square foot yard between them. By Night City standards it was downright luxurious, but it looked small to me. I had a lot of room, most of which I planned on encapsulating in the defensive walls, but Noah had warned me that even "a lot of room" disappeared pretty quick when I started restricting myself.

  The trailers labeled as being good enough for storage were still being moved, pulled into the town center, and lined the long way with only a foot or so between each one, all along some space cleared by the west defensive wall. Their side doors and windows were sealed, and new doorways along the short side facing inward were installed, all with new doors and ramps leading inside. They would probably last another five or six years as storage, if we even kept them for that long.

  The rest of the secondary part of town was still being cleared, with trash, car wrecks, broken vending machines, and worthless trailers all being dragged to be torn apart for easier recycling. The project was progressing nicely and ahead of schedule if I remembered the timeline that Noah had given me correctly. I watched the MRVNs work for a few minutes, only leaving when I saw the scrap trucks leave for their nightly trip. Duke followed me silently, his feet barely leaving a trail beside me as we climbed into my trailer.

  I took a long, warm shower before crawling into bed, falling asleep almost immediately despite the excitement and eagerness I felt to build and expand my knowledge. I had been up for a while at this point, and while I couldn't wait to continue building, exhaustion took me down pretty quickly.

  It felt like I was woken up almost immediately, though I could tell by the light coming in through the window that that wasn't the case. I didn't have time to contemplate the feeling, however, as the radio was blaring, calling for me. I quickly slid out of my bed and picked it up, clicking it on.

  "I'm here, Murtaugh, what's up?"

  "We have a large group of people coming in from Night City," He reported. "They aren't flying a flag, but judging by the colors of the vehicles, I think they are Tiger Claws."

  "Fuck… Do they look like they are riding for war or…?"

  "Given how heavily armed they are, yes."

  "Dammit. When they get close enough, give them a warning shot or three," I ordered. "If they ignore it… well, you know what to do. I'll be with you shortly."

  "You got it. ETA two minutes."

  "Roger that."

  I quickly put on my reinforced underlayer, but only bothered pulling on my chest armor after that. I learned my lesson trying to put on everything during the Wraith attack. I grabbed my helmet on the way out the door, whistling for Duke to follow me. I ran towards the security building, jumping up and over Kaytlyn's trailer before boosting down the road. I skidded to a stop as I reached the main asphalt road that ran through town, standing next to the Shack parking lot. I could see the shade patrol teams getting into position and Riggs standing beside his bear while pulling on the last of his armor. The large robotic bear had deployed his cover, keeping an eye out as his owner prepared for battle.

  "You good?" I asked as I quickly crossed the road, Riggs pulling on his helmet. 'Where is Kaytlyn?"

  "I'm set," He responded simply, grabbing his mag cannon from his back and shouldering it before nodding upward. "She is in her nest."

  I nodded and stepped past him, entering into Murtaugh's domain.

  The interior of the security building had changed a lot since it was just a liquor store. Several armored cabinets filled with guns lay along the back wall, which itself had been reinforced with thick metal plates from various scrapped sources. Dozens of screens displayed real-time feeds from drones and continuous scans from the sensor net that ran the immediate area around town. There was also raw data from turrets and from the shades, all of which Murtaugh was reading at once, his attention spread through everything, both through his eyes and through a data link that plugged into his chest.

  "Firing warning shots," Our home defender stated before tapping some controls and zooming in with a drone.

  Four cars, flashy and brightly colored, as well as three motorcycles, were screaming down the road towards us. With a final button press, two anti-personal turrets opened fire on the forwardmost vehicle, aiming for its tires, which were immediately shredded. The car swerved and spun out, eventually coming to a stop. All of the other vehicles swerved around that one, dodging the suddenly decelerating car. Once they were past it, all of the vehicles accelerated, weaving around a bit to try and be harder targets.

  "Fucking idiots," I said, shaking my head. "Melt them, Murtaugh."

  "Yes, sir."

  Murtaugh reached and tapped a single button on his main control panel, and suddenly, every turret that had a shot was shooting. The three remaining cars were fucking wrecked in a split second, as each one took at least one massive round from our anti-armor cannons. The motorcycles didn't do much better, as the anti-personnel weapons shredded their riders. Within seconds, all vehicles had skidded, rolled, and tumbled to a stop. I opened my mouth to say something, but one final anti-armor shot fired, eviscerating the car with the ruined tires.

  The scraps didn't get within two hundred feet of the defensive line.

  "Well done, Murtaugh," I said, patting his shoulder. "This is what I meant by you doing much better when you had the right tools. Put together a group of shades to double-tap anyone still breathing, then lay the bodies by the side of the road. I'll get some MRVNs together to drag in the scrap."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And push the drones out as far as they go, make sure there isn't a second group waiting for us to relax."

  Murtaugh nodded, and I patted his shoulder again before making my way out of the security building, pulling off my helmet and clipping it to my hip. Riggs was standing there, weapon clipped to his back, as Kaytlyn jumped from her nest and landed beside us.

  "Time well spent on those defenses, huh?" Kaytlyn asked with a chuckle. "Didn't have to shoot a single time."

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "They weren't exactly facing an Araska hit squad," I pointed out. "But yes, they did well."

  I quickly set up a group of MRVNs to recover the scrap before giving Jackie a call. He was planning on coming over later, but I asked him to make a stop and meet with Padre. The attack, as ineffective as it was, was most likely the result of our mission to recover Akiko, so he needed to know.

  "Do you think they will send more?" Riggs asked as we made our way to the workshop, unbuckling my armor as we walked.

  "Depends on how many important people we killed," I admitted with a frown. "I was hoping that Padre would be able to keep the heat off of us, but if we killed someone too important… We might end up needing to send a pretty big message before they stop."

  "Should we hold off on our Wraith raids?"

  That question made me pause, passing my armor to a MRVN, to take back to my trailer. After a moment of thinking, I shook my head.

  "No, I think we can handle it," I decided. "It might be risky if both sides decide to escalate it too far, but if that happens, I'm sure we can find a way to convince them to reconsider."

  I left my underlayer on as I sat down, stretching a bit, finally letting my heart rate and adrenaline fade away. That had been one hell of a wake-up call, but watching our new defenses go to work had been fantastic. Granted, the vehicles hadn't been armed, but the turrets made such quick work of everything that I was still satisfied. I was just opening my eyes after taking a few calming breaths when Samwise stepped out of the production addition.

  "Samwise, you guys alright?" I asked, turning on my computer as a few MRVNs, clearly marked as the AI models, stepped out as well.

  "We had sufficient warning to retreat to safety," He responded, nodding his head. "How did our defenses fair?"

  "They never even got close," I said with a smile. "And the only reason they got as far as they did was because I told Murtaugh to give them a chance and start with a warning shot."

  "That is good news," he agreed, his smaller limbs tending to his workspace while his primary arms shifted a larger tool to the side, hanging it up on the wall. "What do you plan on working on today?"

  "First, I want to tackle water purification," I explained. "In the Fallout universe, they had a water purification plant that was so efficient that it cleaned the Potomac River, reducing the radiation to safe levels. It might be a bit embellished, but I still want a peak at that level of throughput. Water isn't nearly as much of a problem for us with the electrocondensers, but if we are locked underground with a tainted water table… It's better to have than not to have. Plus, someday I'm hoping to clean the oceans…"

  Most water purification processes, both from when I was from and in Cyberpunk, used a method called reverse osmosis, which is just a fancy way of saying that you push water through a filter, specifically one that is semi-permeable, meaning it allows some things in, but not others. This was usually stacked with things like UV lamps, sediment filters, and other filtration processes. The problem was that the semi-permeable filters needed consistent replacing, sometimes quite frequently, and the process of reverse osmosis was slow. It worked fine when you're trying to clean your family's tap water, but when you're trying to keep two hundred to a thousand people hydrated and clean, it just didn't cut it.

  Not to mention that every filter needed a place to be stored, and with space being a premium inside a vault, Vault-Tec was eager to find a better solution. Luckily for them, they found it in a process called centrifugal clarification. Basically, by spinning water around really fast, anything with a different density than water would be separated out. Vault-Tec took this idea and ran with it, designing a multi-stage turbine system that could clean ten gallons in one minute and fifteen seconds, all without taking up more space than three five-gallon buckets stacked on top of each other.

  Now, there were some drawbacks. The centrifugal clarification process they created was not 99.9 percent effective like most reverse osmosis systems. Instead, it was 93 percent effective at eliminating contaminants and 98 percent at eliminating microbes and other bacteria.

  So they just ran the water through the system twice and called it a day.

  It wasn't perfect, but it produced water that was perfectly healthy to drink on a daily basis. The best part was that the method was basically infinitely scalable. As long as you could create a stable enough system, with enough power and built from materials that were capable of handling the stress, any size was possible.

  Once I finished the small version, since the design was clearly made to be scaled as needed, I wasn't surprised to get enough information ratios needed to make them any size I wanted. Square cube law meant that there was, theoretically, a limit in size, but with the materials and tech I had and would eventually get my hands on, my limit was sure as hell bigger than the Jefferson Memorial.

  From there, I continued moving down the line, cracking several inventions in a row, building and scrapping as I went. Low-wear pumps, fanless ventilation, and a handful of other bits of equipment critical to living underground. I also made a large pile of things simply because I wanted access to the engineering methodology so I could better understand the vault design in general.

  I crafted a heavy-duty interior door, a reinforced long-lasting light, external paneling, a few switches, in-built kitchen systems, and two dozen other simple pieces, quick and easy Vault-Tec? parts. I even crafted a panel of the burnished metal plating that the floors were made of. Together, the info I gained from them gave me wide swaths of information about building vaults, from internal parts to common setups and everything in between. By the time I was done, around three pm, I could have filled in for any one of Vault-Techs engineers.

  The vaults, at the end of the day, were mostly modular. There were specialty parts, sure, and things that needed to be custom crafted and modified according to the vault's population numbers and composition of the bedrock, but by and large, all vaults were built from the same pieces stacked and tesselated differently. There was even a "default" vault design, which I knew because of how some of the modular parts were labeled.

  The last bit of tech I put together was a few of the hydroponics options that usually populated the vault. Part of me was hoping it would lead to more advanced agricultural options, like genetic modification or something like that, but it just filled in a bunch of information about growing different plants underground. It was not exactly critically useful information, not when I could feed twenty people healthily and heartily for thirty-five eddies a day with the food printer that Sam and Frank developed, but still something decent to grab when I could.

  "Alright. We have air, water, food, power, and general construction… is there anything else we need to worry about?" I asked, rubbing my chin. "I'm sure there are bits and pieces that will come up as I keep exploring, especially as I reach the Institute tech, but for now… I think we need to move on to the next step."

  "Which is?" Samwise asked, watching as the MRVN units slowly walked a large, vertical hydroponics pillar out of the garage to be scrapped.

  "We have the parts to make a vault, more or less, now I need the tools, too," I explained, closing my eyes and looking back at the branches of the tree. "We could buy heavy machinery to dig holes with, but I'm hoping they have something better than that."

  I dove back through the available tech, finally latching on to a branch following a line of industrial jackhammers and other mining equipment from long before the Fallout apocalypse. Following the line, things become more and more advanced, even making it up to plasma drills, something that existed back in my world but was generally considered too sensitive for rough, high-activity drilling. In the Fallout universe, however, they had several critical advances in plasma generation, meaning plasma drills were a lot more common and hardy.

  Past the plasma drills, however, there was more equipment hidden from my few despite my high level of understanding of energy and plasma. I first got to work making their advanced plasma drills, which ranged from hand-held drills used to set bolts in stone to much larger units. Once I finished both of those designs, I absorbed their information before going to the more advanced topic. It was clear a good bit of SCIENCE had happened in its development because the system was incredibly complex.

  The device was, essentially, a particle accelerator cannon, firing exotic bundles of particles from the business end of the machine. The particles would hit each other and release a small shockwave, as well as minor amounts of heat. The device drank a ridiculous amount of energy, and the small shockwaves didn't do much damage, especially to soft materials, but it did have one thing going for it.

  It could pass through solid objects.

  That meant that the exotic bundles could be fired through stone, passing through several feet before finally colliding. The internal shockwave was enough to create hairline cracks in the stone just around the collision area. Repeating the process a few thousand times over the span of five minutes, the particle bore could turn solid bedrock into gravel. Even better, the level of precision it could achieve was far better than blasting. It was an incredible device, despite the fact that it sounded like overkill.

  Still, there was no way I wasn't going to make my own version. I desperately wanted a better way than simple explosives to carve out space for my future vault. Not only would that be safer and much more subtle, but it was also more precise. With any luck, it would significantly speed up the proccess.

  By the time I finished designing the particle bore, it was about six pm. The bore was a large piece of equipment, with the main piece half the size of a twin mattress. That main part was connected to the projector by thick, heavy-duty cables and looked like a big bulky TV on a stand, only with a solid metal screen. The MRVNs were already printing out the parts, preparing them for me to assemble as I gathered everyone together in the Shack to discuss what was going on.

  "Alright, so here is the deal," I said, leaning forward in my chair once the whole group was together, gathered around the table. "I plan on making a vault, a bunker of sorts. It will either be a safe place to retreat to or, if I can get my hands on some specific bits of technology, a safe place for us to live."

  "You're gonna dig a bunker under the town?" Kaytlyn asked with a frown. "I mean, a bomb shelter would be nice."

  "No, I'm hoping to make the bunker somewhere far from here," I explained. "The more hidden, the better."

  "You're abandoning the town?" Jackie asked, cutting me off and sounding disappointed. "Jay, I can't go any farther from night city, at least not for long…"

  "I'm not abandoning the town, it will become something of a forward operating base for a much larger complex," I explained, shaking my head to get myself back on track. "Living securely in a vault, someplace we could all retreat to for safety? It solves a huge swath of our problems. For example, we could abandon the fake borg plan, since if my lab was somewhere else, we wouldn't have to worry about keeping an eye on our nomad neighbors. We would have to rely a lot less on Sable's success to protect us from other big corporations. We could finally start using some of my crazier inventions because we wouldn't have to worry about it all blowing up in our faces."

  "So you move your workshop and stuff to a secret bunker," Jackie asked. "How do you get back and forth? Or would you only live in the bunker?"

  "I... I think I might be able to come up with a method of teleportation," I explained, a bit nervous to admit it since there was a chance that the teleporters weren't included in this tree.

  "Teleportation? Genio, thats..."

  "I know. Everything would change," I said with a nod. "We could be safe and finally start to help make this world better."

  "So why are you nervous about it?" Kaytlyn asked with a frown. "Is it dangerous?"

  "Not that I know of. I'm more concerned that I'm wrong, and I won't get access to it at all..."

  "So you're rolling the dice and betting that you'll get it," Jackie surmised. "What happens when you don't?"

  "If I don't get it, then the vault would just be a safe place to retreat to," I admitted. "Still not a bad thing. I would sleep better at night knowing I had somewhere secure to run to if it all went bad."

  "I don't know if I could move even further away from Night City," Jackie admitted. "I already feel like I'm cheating when I sleep out here.

  "I get it, I won't try and convince you otherwise," I assured him. "I just want you guys to understand why things might shift a bit. This bunker represents, I hope, the final step before we finally start pushing back. Once I can guarantee a level of safety, we can finally start making a difference."