Chapter 634: 587. Slowly Getting Back To Their Feet
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Albert passed behind the welders, checking schematics. MacCready sat sharpening a blade, whistling. Sarah looked up from a clipboard and caught Sico's eye from across the yard. She smiled—not wide, but real. And above it all, the Freemason flag snapped in the breeze.
The sound of sledgehammers striking steel rang out like a funeral drum.
It was mid-morning by the time the old section of the Sanctuary wall—what was left of it—faced its final judgment. The jagged remnants of the northern flank stood like broken teeth against the pale sky, twisted and blackened from plasma burns. Scorch marks streaked across the rusted sheet metal that once held firm against raiders, gunners, and even super mutants in years past. But not this time.
This time, it had buckled.
Sturges stood in front of the central gate column, arms akimbo, a red handkerchief tied around his neck to block the dust. He held no reverence in his expression, but there was a patience there. A weight. Like a man watching an old friend drift off to sleep for the last time.
Sico stood a few paces behind him, silent.
"Alright," Sturges said at last. "Bring it down."
Two men moved forward with cutting torches, flames licking the metal joints that still clung together like stubborn vines. Sparks danced through the air. Others grabbed sledgehammers and pry bars, circling the column. One of the old wall plates groaned, flexed… then peeled away with a shriek of torn bolts and rusted screws.
Sico didn't flinch. But his jaw tightened.
"It took us six weeks to build that corner," he murmured.
Sturges didn't look back. "And five minutes to watch it fall."
A loud crash silenced the nearby workers for a heartbeat—the first slab of the old wall crashing down into the dirt, kicking up dust and the scent of burnt metal.
Preston came up alongside them, his expression quiet. "Feels like saying goodbye."
"We are," Sico replied.
Sturges finally turned to face them. "If it makes you feel better, I cursed the whole time we were building this bastard the first go around. Used junky hinges. Patchwork steel. I mean, it held—but it wasn't meant to last forever."
"It was never supposed to be forever," Sico said. "Just long enough."
Another section collapsed behind them—this time from the western tower's shell. It didn't fall clean. One of the corner supports resisted until the last second, then snapped with a wrenching groan that echoed down the street like a war cry.
More people gathered to watch. Civilians, soldiers, children—even some of the medics on their break. None of them spoke. There was something sacred about it. The tearing down. The end of something that had once meant safety. The bones of their survival being laid bare.
Sarah arrived quietly, arms folded across her chest, eyes scanning the broken skyline.
"I remember the day we raised that watchtower," she said softly. "It was windy as hell. We didn't have a pulley system yet. Had to lift the upper frame by hand with nothing but ropes and pure stubbornness."
Robert, beside her, added, "I broke two ribs falling off that damn platform."
A flicker of humor passed between them, just long enough to take the edge off the weight hanging in the air.
Sico looked over his shoulder as more of the wall began to fall. The torches hissed, the hammers pounded, the drills screamed—and slowly, piece by piece, the old Sanctuary came down.
But it wasn't destruction for destruction's sake.
Every plate removed was set aside for salvage.
Every support beam was tagged—"melt," "reuse," or "scrap."
This wasn't a grave.
This was a harvest.
The air grew hazier as the morning sun climbed. Dust hung thick, coating eyebrows, coats, lips. People tied scarves and bandanas around their faces. Some wore goggles. Others worked with bare eyes, blinking through the grit.
Sico climbed a section of newly laid scaffolding for a better view.
From here, he could see the true scope of it.
The entire north and northwest sections were gone now—reduced to rubble piles and salvage bins. Only the southern wall remained untouched for the moment, and even that bore the pockmarks of battle. The gate arch had been completely removed. The old iron support rods now lay side by side on a tarp, awaiting melting.
He turned as Sturges climbed up beside him, brushing dust from his sleeves.
"She's comin' apart faster than I thought," he said. "Reckon by dusk we'll be ready to start on the foundation."
"You ever build a wall this big before?" Sico asked.
Sturges smiled faintly. "Not since Quincy. And that one didn't last either."
They stood quietly for a moment.
"Still hurts to see it fall," Sturges admitted. "But I guess that's the deal, ain't it? Old stuff breaks. New stuff's gotta take its place."
Sico nodded. "It's like bones. Sometimes they have to be re-broken to heal right."
Down below, a pair of children were helping stack small pieces of scrap into baskets. They worked in pairs, silent, methodical, like they understood this was a duty. A ritual, almost.
"You've got a lot of them watching," Sturges said.
"I know."
"Make it count, then."
Sico looked over the edge once more and breathed deep.
And when he exhaled, something left him.
Something old.
Something heavy.
By midafternoon, the last of the old wall fell.
The crew gathered near the former gate, breathing hard, tools slung over shoulders. Sico stepped down to meet them. His boots crunched on the last shards of collapsed concrete.
"You've done well," he said. "All of you. Go get food. Rest for an hour. Then we lay the foundation."
They didn't cheer.
But they stood taller.
As the workers moved off to the kitchen tent, Sturges motioned toward a cart being wheeled in from the eastern hill.
"See that?" he said. "That's Ridgeway salvage."
The cart rumbled closer, carried by a pair of oxen and driven by MacCready and a settler in a battered helmet. The scrap inside gleamed in the sunlight—thick Brotherhood-grade plating, bundled copper, a box of intact hydraulics.
Sico whistled low. "You weren't kidding."
Sturges grinned. "They shot it down. Now we make it ours."
The cart came to a halt.
MacCready hopped down, dusting himself off. "That vertibird wasn't easy to strip. Couple of auto-turrets were still active. Had to knock one offline with a damn wrench."
"You're lucky you didn't lose your head," Sarah muttered, walking past with a crate of tools.
MacCready grinned. "Luck's just stubbornness with better PR."
With the materials in hand, the real work began.
Sturges called out new orders: dig lines for the support braces, measure for the new gate span, and drive foundation rods ten feet into the earth. Sico grabbed a shovel and helped clear rubble from the old gate trench. Preston organized water delivery. Albert mapped the turret feed relays with two of his engineers.
Even the children helped again—hauling ropes, handing tools, offering water.
As the sun edged westward and shadows grew long across the dirt-scarred streets of Sanctuary, the sound of construction took on a new rhythm. It wasn't the harsh, tearing scrape of demolition anymore. Now it was the steadier cadence of rebirth—sledgehammers driving foundation rods deep into soil, measured calls for timber lengths, the groan of scaffolding rising like ribs to frame a future.
The old wall was gone.
But something new was growing in its place.
Sico stood for a moment at the edge of it all, one boot perched atop a splintered slab of wood, sweat trailing down the back of his neck beneath the collar of his field coat. His gloves were filthy, caked in dust and rust and something older still. He watched Sturges pacing along a chalked perimeter line, arms waving as he directed a group of tired but focused workers digging in the new foundation beams.
A quiet satisfaction pulsed at the base of Sico's chest. But it was tempered. Fragile.
Because while the wall could be rebuilt with muscle and tools and time… people weren't so easily restored.
He handed his shovel to a young boy who looked up at him with wide, dirt-smudged eyes and a solemn nod, then turned and made his way toward the infirmary tents.
The hospital wasn't a building. Not yet. The old med-bay had taken a direct hit in the first wave of synth fire, its eastern wall blown out, support struts warped. They'd thrown together triage shelters within the hour—canvas tents over wooden frames, shaded by tarps and strung with repurposed LED cords that flickered between yellow and white as the generators hiccupped. The smell hit first: antiseptic, sweat, and that metallic tang of blood that even the cleanest bandage couldn't mask.
Sico paused at the edge of the nearest tent, taking it in.
Cots lined both sides of the open space, arranged with military precision but filled with the chaotic entropy of the wounded—bandaged limbs, groggy eyes, whispered pain. Some were asleep. Others stared at the ceiling like they were watching a world they no longer trusted.
In the center of it all moved Curie.
She was a blur of motion, gliding between patients like a current in a river—checking pulses, adjusting IVs, murmuring gentle encouragements in that soft, lilting voice that still carried the faint cadence of her pre-war roots. Her white coat was streaked with smudges now, sleeves rolled to her elbows, but her eyes were sharp and alive.
Sico stepped inside. His boots made little sound on the tarp-covered floor.
Curie spotted him between rows and approached without missing a beat.
"Sico," she said warmly, though her brow glistened with effort. "You are not bleeding, yes? That is improvement."
He managed a tired smile. "Not today, at least."
Curie gave a quick nod, then gestured for him to walk with her. They moved past a woman with a splinted leg elevated on pillows. A teenage boy nearby gritted his teeth while a nurse checked the burn on his shoulder.
Sico lowered his voice. "Are we holding? Supply-wise?"
Curie nodded, wiping her brow with the back of a latex glove. "We are. Just enough, thanks to Hancock and his team. After the fighting stopped, they cleared every pharmacy, clinic, and chem den from here to Lexington. Returned with enough stimpaks, med-X, antibiotics, gauze—very impressive work."
She reached for a clipboard and tapped it. "We are low on purified water and burn salve, but we can improvise. The worse concern now is… exhaustion."
Sico glanced around. The nurses, even the volunteers, were running on fumes. Red eyes. Twitchy hands. Bandanas soaked through and tied again. Some walked like they were afraid to stop.
"I'll talk to Preston. We'll rotate shifts tighter. No point burning out our own medics."
Curie gave him a grateful look. "Merci."
They reached the back of the tent where the worst injuries had been grouped—those with shrapnel embedded deep, limbs lost, burns that had taken more than skin. A curtain was pulled halfway across the row for privacy, but the moans that drifted through it were unmistakable.
Sico stopped just short of the curtain. "How many did we lose?"
Curie was quiet for a moment.
"Fourteen. Five during the battle. Nine… after."
He closed his eyes. Just for a second. It didn't seem like many. But it always was.
She added softly, "But forty-three are alive because of what you and the others did. Because you held that gate."
Sico looked at her then—not the medic, not the synth, but the person. She didn't say it like someone trying to comfort him. She said it like someone who had seen the ledger firsthand, who'd lived in the breath between life and death with each of those patients.
"I just wish we could've saved them all."
"You did not choose who lived or died," Curie said. "But you made it possible for the rest to keep going. That is what matters now."
A groan came from the far cot—a young girl, maybe sixteen, with half her scalp bandaged and her arm in a sling. She stirred restlessly, blinking into the dim light.
Curie turned immediately and moved to her side, checking her IV. The girl's lips moved but made no sound. Curie bent close, whispering something in French that made the girl settle.
Sico stayed for a few more minutes, checking on a few of the soldiers he recognized by name—Martin, who had taken a laser blast to the side; Gia, the scout who'd been caught in the turret crossfire. He kept his tone light when he could, and serious when it needed to be. No speeches. Just presence.
When he finally stepped out of the tent, the air hit him like a bucket of water—fresh and stinging. The sun had begun to lower now, casting golden streaks over the broken skyline of Sanctuary. The silhouette of the new wall had started to form, steel posts rising like fingers from the earth.
He exhaled.
Behind him, the wounded healed. Ahead of him, the town rebuilt.
But the war… the war wasn't over.
Not yet.
Then he didn't return straight to the construction site. Instead, he detoured through the town square—or what passed for it now: an open stretch of ground where the old flagpole still stood, half-bent and soot-streaked. Children were sitting in a loose circle nearby, being told stories by one of the older settlers, a woman named Mags who used to be a teacher before the bombs. Her voice carried softly over the wind.
Sico slowed. One of the kids—a scrawny boy with a mop of black hair—glanced up and gave a small wave. Sico returned it.
They were the reason. Always.
He found Preston near the kitchen tents, going over a logistics board with a few volunteers. When Sico told him about the fatigue in the hospital crew, Preston nodded immediately.
"We'll pull six from the reserve detail and cycle them in to relieve. Tell Curie they'll report by sundown."
"Thanks," Sico said.
"You're not thinking of sleeping anytime soon, are you?" Preston asked with a wry smile.
Sico shook his head. "Not until we pour the new gate anchors."
Preston sighed. "Then I guess I'm not either."
Back at the wall, the eastern gate trench was nearly ready. MacCready had set up a pulley system to lower the heaviest steel rods into place. Sarah was crouched near the scaffold base, driving rivets with practiced force, her jaw tight, her movements precise.
"You holding up?" Sico asked, approaching.
She looked up, sweat beading at her temple.
"You mean besides my back screaming at me and the smell of scorched metal in my nose? Fine."
He chuckled. "That's the spirit."
"We'll have this gate operational by tomorrow night," she said. "Won't be pretty yet, but it'll hold. Better than the last one."
"I know it will."
Above them, the wind caught a loose scrap of old banner—just a shred of the pre-war flag someone had draped across a broken beam. It fluttered, then fell, landing in a puddle of rust-stained water.
Sarah looked at it for a moment. Then back at the steel being laid.
"New gate, new wall," she said. "Maybe it's time for a new flag too."
Sico didn't answer right away. He looked up at the wall taking shape—new bones rising in the shadow of old ones. Then back toward the hospital tents, and the lights flickering to life one by one.
"We'll raise one when we've earned it," he said.
The last echoes of the rivet gun still hung in the air as Sico stepped away from the scaffold.
He didn't need to stay. Not right now.
Sarah had it under control, barking orders at two welders and adjusting the tension on a vertical support beam like she was tuning a stringed instrument. Sturges was halfway down the trench again, yelling something about concrete ratios and double-checking the angles with his square.
They were in motion now—steady, deliberate motion. The kind that didn't need his hand on every lever.
So he turned.
There was still one more thing to do before dusk.
The Freedom Tower wasn't exactly a tower. Not anymore.
Now, after months of retrofitting and just barely not collapsing in a fire two winters back, it stood as the semi-functional headquarters of Sanctuary's broadcast operations.
At the base, two turrets still scanned lazily side to side, their casings painted with worn white stars. A coil of radio wiring ran down the side like an ivy vine. And from the top, a makeshift antenna arched like a crooked spine into the sky, patched together with Brotherhood scrap, pre-war aluminum poles, and more duct tape than Sico cared to admit.
He climbed the steps two at a time, passing a pair of resistance fighters hauling a crate of spare coils.
Inside, the air was cool and smelled faintly of solder and dust.
Piper was hunched over a stack of old holotapes and a cracked terminal, brow furrowed, glasses slipping slightly down her nose. Her coat—brown, worn, unmistakable—was slung over the back of her chair. A small mug of something steaming sat at her elbow, though it had long gone untouched.
The hum of the equipment was steady, but not overwhelming. Radio Freedom wasn't just Sanctuary's voice—it was the voice of the Freemasons Republic, and of resistance scattered through the ruins. Every broadcast mattered.
She looked up before he could even knock.
"Sico," she said, blinking. "Please tell me you're not here to tell me we're under attack again."
He smiled faintly. "No shooting. Not today."
Piper leaned back in her chair, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Well, that's a pleasant change."
He moved closer, resting a hand on the old comms desk. The surface was littered with hand-marked frequency maps, spare tubes, and a half-eaten piece of jerky.
"I need a broadcast," he said.
Piper raised a brow. "About the battle?"
"No. About what comes after."
That got her attention.
She sat up straighter, the humor draining from her face as she studied him.
"You want to tell people we survived."
"I want them to know we're rebuilding," Sico replied. "That Sanctuary's still here. The wall is going up. The gate's already halfway done. We're alive. We're not beaten."
"And…" Piper prompted, already sensing the full scope.
"And we need help. Materials, mostly. Steel beams, rebar, copper wiring, concrete mix. Turret parts if they have any. We'll pay—caps or trade. But we need it fast."
Piper leaned back again, tapping a finger against the side of her mug.
"Alright. I can spin that. But we should be smart about the tone. If we sound desperate, someone out there's gonna smell blood. Raiders. Slavers. Even some of the smaller gangs."
"We're not desperate," Sico said quietly. "We're determined. That's the difference."
A beat passed. Then Piper stood.
"Okay. Let's do this."
She moved to the broadcast mic—an old steel-and-fiber relic from a GNN studio they'd salvaged two years ago—and adjusted the stand to sit just below her mouth. The red light above it flickered once as the system booted up.
She flicked a switch, then glanced sideways at Sico.
"You wanna do it?"
He shook his head. "Your voice reaches farther than mine ever could."
Piper smiled—just a little, just enough—and then leaned in.
The light turned solid red.
And she spoke.
"This is Radio Freedom, transmitting live from Sanctuary."
Her voice was calm, strong. Grounded.
"If you're hearing this, you've probably heard rumors. That the Institute hit us. That the battle was bad. That Sanctuary fell."
A pause.
"Well, I'm here to tell you: it didn't."
Her tone sharpened—not angry, but full. Filled with the kind of weight that only someone who had stood in the ashes could carry.
"We stood. We fought. And yeah, we bled. But Sanctuary's still here. We're rebuilding as we speak—wall by wall, gate by gate. The fires are out. The wounded are healing. And our people are back on their feet."
Sico watched her, silent.
She continued.
"But we won't lie to you. This hit hard. And to keep rebuilding, we need materials. Steel, copper, rebar, cement—anything that can help us finish the new defenses. If you've got extra, if you've got stores to sell, Sanctuary is buying. Caps, supplies, trade—you name it. We're not asking for charity. We're building something that'll last, and we want you to be part of it."
She leaned back slightly, lowering her voice.
"You want to help the fight? You want to be part of something bigger than just surviving one more day? Bring us what you can. And if you can't bring anything—just know we're still standing. And we're not going anywhere."
She let the last words hang.
Then reached forward and clicked off the mic.
Silence.
Sico exhaled.
"That was good."
Piper gave a small nod, her voice softer now. "It needed to be."
The two of them stood there a moment longer, listening as the broadcast cycled to the relay towers, bouncing through the Commonwealth's fractured airwaves. Somewhere, in some scorched old diner lit by a gas lamp, a scavenger was listening. Somewhere, in a rust-eaten bus turned settlement, someone would hear Sanctuary's name and know it hadn't fallen.
That mattered.
It always would.
Piper turned to Sico and, with a smirk, said, "You owe me a bottle of Dayglow Rum after that one."
"You'll have it," he replied. "Assuming MacCready didn't already drink the last one."
By the time Sico descended the steps, the wind had picked up. A storm was coming—not the kind that roared with thunder and acid rain, but the kind of dry, brittle wind that turned dust to knives and made every breath feel earned.
He pulled his collar up and walked back toward the wall.
It wasn't quiet anymore.
The clang of steel-on-steel rang out again. Preston had returned to the scaffold with a group of reinforcements. The trench was now filled with cement, a slow-setting mix that would hold the gate supports through winter. Children were handing out water. Torches hissed. Welder sparks painted brief comets against the dying light.
But now there was something else in the air.
A mood.
People moved with more energy.
Word of the broadcast had already begun to spread. You could see it in the way someone tied a fresh bandana around their head. The way a tired young man stood a little straighter when passing the wall. The way a group of traders from one of the southern routes parked their brahmin cart at the gate and unloaded three crates of scrap—just because they'd heard something on the wind.
Because someone had reminded them that Sanctuary still stood.
And that meant they could, too.
Sico stopped just outside the new gate frame. It didn't look like much yet—two tall beams with nothing between them, barely ten feet high. But it was enough.
________________________________________________
• Name: Sico
• Stats :
S: 8,44
P: 7,44
E: 8,44
C: 8,44
I: 9,44
A: 7,45
L: 7
• Skills: advance Mechanic, Science, and Shooting skills, intermediate Medical, Hand to Hand Combat, Lockpicking, Hacking, Persuasion, and Drawing Skills
• Inventory: 53.280 caps, 10mm Pistol, 1500 10mm rounds, 22 mole rats meat, 17 mole rats teeth, 1 fragmentation grenade, 6 stimpak, 1 rad x, 6 fusion core, computer blueprint, modern TV blueprint, camera recorder blueprint, 1 set of combat armor, Automatic Assault Rifle, 1.500 5.56mm rounds, power armor T51 blueprint, Electric Motorcycle blueprint, T-45 power armor, Minigun, 1.000 5mm rounds, Cryolator, 200 cryo cell, Machine Gun Turret Mk1 blueprint, electric car blueprint, Kellogg gun, Righteous Authority, Ashmaker, Furious Power Fist, Full set combat armor blueprint, M240 7.62mm machine guns blueprint, Automatic Assault Rifle blueprint, and Humvee blueprint.
• Active Quest:-