If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead, be sure to check out my Patreon!!!
Go to https://www.patreon.com/Tang12
___________________________
The men set to work. Some dragged scrap and debris into makeshift barricades. Others cleared the courtyard of corpses, muttering names under their breath as they worked. Medics stabilized the worst of the wounded, their hands red and trembling but relentless. Engineers began marking walls, pointing at defensible positions, already thinking of how to turn ruins into redoubts.
The courtyard was alive with the ragged rhythm of survival. Men shuffled debris into barricades, dragging twisted rebar and shattered stone into rough choke points. Others moved with slower, quieter hands, lifting the bodies of their friends onto stretchers, covering them with whatever cloth could be found, whispering prayers or curses under their breath. The air was thick, but not just with smoke—it was thick with the weight of what had been done and what still had to come.
Sico stood in the middle of it all, a fixed point amid chaos. His armor creaked when he rolled his shoulders, the dents catching the firelight, his face smeared with grit and dried blood. He lifted the radio from the tripod again, static popping against the night.
He tuned the dials, his jaw tight. "Sarah, this is Sico. Come in, over."
The radio hissed, cracked, then steadied. Her voice came through, clipped with tension, but clear. "Sico? I read you. I've been waiting on your signal all night. Status?"
"Costly," Sico answered, his voice low but firm. "But it's ours. C.I.T. Ruins are secured. Enemy leader's dead. They won't be regrouping any time soon."
There was a pause. When Sarah spoke again, her voice carried both relief and steel. "Then you did it. You actually did it. I'll admit, Sico, I was half-expecting to hear a death knell."
MacCready, leaning nearby with his arms crossed, muttered just loud enough, "We almost gave you one."
Sico ignored him. "Listen closely, Sarah. This ground isn't just another ruin. It's going to be one of our pillars. Like Sanctuary. Like the Castle. Like the Plaza. If the Republic is going to thrive, we need more bastions—more strongholds. We turn this wreck into a fortress, we show everyone, mutant and man alike, that the Freemasons aren't temporary. We're permanent. We're not going anywhere."
The radio crackled softly before Sarah answered. "Then tell me what you need."
Sico's eyes swept across the yard. Medics crouched over stretchers, their hands soaked crimson, voices hoarse from shouting for bandages they no longer had. The wounded groaned, some silent except for the rattling of their breath. Nearby, Robert had taken a place on a low stone, his eyes locked on the flames as if watching something only he could see. MacCready smoked again, a nervous habit keeping his hands busy when words failed. The men moved like ghosts—bodies running on discipline when the soul inside was almost spent.
Sico pressed the transmit key. "First priority: Sturges and his engineering team. I want them here by dawn with a convoy of materials—steel, concrete, circuitry, generators, the works. If it can reinforce walls or build bunkers, it comes with them."
"Copy," Sarah said. He could hear her scribbling, the faint scratch of pencil on paper. "Sturges will raise hell about being dragged out at this hour, but I'll have him on the move."
"Second," Sico continued. His voice hardened. "Medical. We've got dozens wounded, and too many critical. I want at least three doctors here within twenty-four hours. And a convoy of medical supplies. Blood packs, antibiotics, stims, surgical gear—whatever you can spare."
"Understood," Sarah replied quickly. "I'll pull the best from Sanctuary and Plaza and send them with the first run. What else?"
Sico looked out over his men again. The survivors moved in silence, shoulders hunched, eyes heavy, some limping as they still tried to haul sandbags or lift barricades. Their armor was cracked, their weapons blackened from overuse. They were soldiers, but they were human first.
"Troops," Sico said finally. "Send fifty more. Veterans, if you can. Men who can hold the line while the rest recover. We need bodies to garrison this place, keep it secure while we fortify."
Sarah's voice came back, steady as steel. "Fifty additional, Sturges with engineering supplies, and medical convoys with doctors. Consider it done. First trucks roll at dawn. You'd better hold until then."
Sico's mouth tightened into what might have been a faint, bitter smile. "We'll hold."
He let go of the transmit key. The radio hissed back into static.
Robert spoke first, his voice low but firm. "You're putting a lot on her shoulders. Pulling doctors, troops, engineers—it'll stretch us thin."
Sico looked at him, his face shadowed by firelight. "I know. But it's the only way. If we don't pour the concrete now, the foundation crumbles later. We can't win this war scattered and spread. We win it by building stones that don't break."
MacCready took a long drag on his cigarette, then exhaled hard. "You talk about stones, bastions, foundations… but all I see is blood on the dirt. You think men will really look at this graveyard and see hope?"
Robert turned his head toward him, eyes sharp. "They will. If we make it so."
MacCready gave a short, humorless laugh. "Big if."
But he didn't argue further. He just leaned back against the wall and smoked in silence.
Around them, the work continued. Men dragged debris into place, every scrape of rubble sounding louder against the night. Medics carried stretchers into what had once been lecture halls, now makeshift infirmaries. Engineers—those still standing—began sketching rough outlines with chalk on walls and pavement, muttering about load-bearing beams and salvageable structures.
The dawn came gray, thin, and cold. A mist had settled over the courtyard, softening the jagged outlines of the ruins, dulling the scorch marks on the broken stone, and turning the smoldering fires into faint threads of smoke curling upward. The ruins seemed almost to hold their breath, as if the land itself knew something had shifted during the night — that it belonged to new masters now.
Sico hadn't slept. He rarely did after a fight, and never after one like this. He had spent the night walking the perimeter with a lantern in hand, speaking in quiet tones to the men who still stood guard, kneeling beside the wounded to clasp hands, sharing a silence with Robert, even nodding once at MacCready when their eyes met across the yard. He was more than tired — his bones ached, his armor was stiff with grime, his throat burned from smoke and shouting — but he carried it like he always did: on his feet, shoulders square, voice steady.
The first sound of the convoy reached them before the sun fully broke the horizon. It was faint at first, a low growl that might have been wind through the ruins. But it grew louder, resolving into the heavy clatter of wheels on cracked asphalt, the steady drone of engines, the rhythmic jangle of supplies rattling in crates. Men lifted their heads, exhaustion briefly replaced with hope.
Sico stood at the edge of the courtyard, his shadow stretched long in the dawn light, and watched the trucks roll in. There were six of them — three flatbeds stacked with crates and materials, two troop carriers, and one medical truck with a red cross freshly painted on its side. Dust plumed up behind them, catching the rising sun in a pale halo. For a moment, the ruins looked alive again, not with ghosts but with purpose.
When the first truck braked to a halt, the doors banged open, and out climbed Sturges. He looked exactly as Sico had imagined he would: hair sticking in every direction from too few hours of sleep, tool belt hanging heavy at his waist, shirt already streaked with oil despite the early hour. He hopped down from the cab and stretched his back with a groan.
"Well, hell," Sturges said, looking around at the shattered spires and broken halls of the old C.I.T. "You weren't kidding, Commander. This place is a fixer-upper if I ever saw one. Big bones, though. Strong bones." He slapped a chunk of cracked concrete as if testing a horse's flank. "Yeah, we can work with this."
Sico approached him directly, his boots crunching over gravel. His voice came low and direct, carrying the weight of command without pomp.
"Sturges. I need a plan."
The engineer raised his brows, half-amused, half-tired. "Plan, huh? You mean besides not letting the whole thing fall on our heads?"
"Exactly," Sico said, not flinching at the joke. "We're not just patching walls. This isn't a shelter anymore — it's a fortress. A stronghold. I want bastions, bunkers, firing positions, supply depots, living quarters. Turn this ruin into something that can withstand a siege."
Sturges pursed his lips and gave a slow whistle. "Well, you don't aim small, do you? Alright. Gimme some time to walk the place, get the boys sketching out layouts. We'll need to brace a lot before we start building, otherwise we'll lose half the team to cave-ins. But…" He looked around again, eyes narrowing as he assessed. "Yeah. I can do it. We can do it. This place'll stand."
"Good," Sico said. He clasped the man's shoulder once, firm. "Start now."
Sturges grinned faintly, already pulling a battered notebook from his pocket. He began barking at his team to unload their tools and spread out.
Sico didn't linger. He turned and crossed quickly toward the medical truck, where the rear doors had just swung open. Out stepped two women and a man, all in worn coats patched with the insignia of the Republic. Their faces were pinched with fatigue, but their eyes sharpened the moment they saw the stretchers being carried past.
"Doctors," Sico said as he reached them, his tone clipped with urgency. "They're inside the old halls. We've stabilized who we could, but we're out of supplies. You'll find critical cases in the west wing — head wounds, gut wounds, burns. Others are spread across the courtyard. Move fast."
The older woman among them, her gray hair pulled back tight, gave a brisk nod. "Then stop wasting my time talking." She motioned to her companions, and the three of them were already moving before Sico could reply, hauling their kits toward the wounded.
Sico allowed himself a brief exhale. Then he turned again, this time to the troop carriers. The rear doors clanged open, and fifty soldiers spilled out, boots thudding, rifles slung across their backs. They were veterans, just as he had asked — their armor bore scratches and dents from fights past, their eyes were alert, their movements crisp. They snapped into rough formation without needing a command.
Sico stepped in front of them, the morning sun catching the jagged scar across his cheek. His voice carried across the courtyard, loud enough to be heard even over the groaning engines.
"Unload the trucks. Every crate, every bar of steel, every box of ammo — get it off the wheels and into the yard. Stack it, sort it, guard it. Supplies are lifeblood. Lose them, and we bleed to death before the enemy even fires a shot."
"Yes, Commander!" the sergeant barked back, and the men surged into motion. They worked in practiced rhythm, forming chains to pass crates down, slamming boots against asphalt as they moved.
The yard had come alive with motion. The rattle of crates, the grunts of soldiers lifting and hauling, the clatter of tools being unloaded from Sturges' team — it was a symphony of purpose, raw and unpolished but steady. For the first time since the night's battle, there was rhythm here. Not the rhythm of gunfire and screaming, but of rebuilding, of men and women forcing shape out of ruin.
Sico let his eyes sweep the scene once, noting how quickly the tide had turned. Hours ago, this courtyard had been a grave. Now it was an artery, pumping new blood into a heart that refused to stop beating. But he knew rhythm could falter. He knew momentum could collapse if one piece gave out. And right now, the piece most likely to fail wasn't steel or supply lines. It was flesh. It was the wounded.
His boots carried him toward the west wing, where the doctors had set up their makeshift infirmary. The old lecture hall there had been half-collapsed, its roof caved in on one side, but the other had held, giving enough cover to keep out the morning chill. Inside, lanterns hung from hooks and beams, their light dancing across cracked blackboards and broken desks shoved into corners. The air smelled of iodine and iron, sharp and metallic, overlaid with the earthy musk of sweat and smoke.
The sound hit him before the sight did — the low groans, the ragged coughs, the muttered prayers of the wounded. A few cried out sharply as bandages were tightened or wounds probed; others were silent, staring blankly at the ceiling as if the battle had taken everything from them but the shell.
The three doctors had split themselves among the stretchers. The older woman — the one who had cut him off earlier — knelt beside a young man whose arm had been torn nearly to the bone. She worked with the precision of habit, her hands steady even as the soldier thrashed, two comrades holding him down. The younger woman moved quickly from cot to cot, checking pulses, adjusting drips, pressing her ear to chests and murmuring encouragement even when her face betrayed little hope. The man had rolled his sleeves high and was deep in a gut wound, his hands red to the wrists as he worked with quiet intensity.
Sico paused at the edge of the hall. For a moment, he let the scene wash over him. He had seen worse — much worse — but every time it pressed at the same place inside him. Command demanded distance. Humanity demanded the opposite. He stepped forward.
The older doctor looked up briefly as his shadow fell across her. Sweat streaked down the side of her face, but her eyes were sharp as knives.
"You're the one in charge," she said flatly, her hands never stopping.
"I am," Sico confirmed. His voice was low, respectful, but still carried the steel of command. "What's our situation?"
The doctor tied off the bandage with a tug that made her patient grunt. Only then did she answer fully.
"Bad," she said without preamble. "Half your wounded should already be dead. A third of them might still die before the week's out. Infection, blood loss, shock — take your pick. We're short on proper facilities, short on equipment, short on medicine. I'll save who I can, but don't expect miracles."
Sico's jaw tightened. He forced his voice to remain level. "Numbers."
The doctor wiped her hands on a rag, smearing blood into the fabric until it was more red than white. "You've got thirty-seven injured. Fifteen critical. Of those, maybe six have a fighting chance if we get proper supplies and time. The other nine…" She hesitated, and for the first time her tone softened, if only slightly. "…you'd better prepare them and their friends. They won't last."
Her words fell like lead. Around them, the moans and rustle of movement seemed to grow louder, as though the wounded had heard and understood.
Sico let the silence hang for a moment before he answered. "And the rest?"
"Recovering," the doctor said briskly. "Some will limp for life, some might pick up a rifle again after a few months. A few could be ready sooner, if they don't push themselves too hard. But even those odds assume I get what I need." She fixed him with a stare that cut sharper than any scalpel. "You brought me here to save lives, Commander. So you'd better damn well get me what I ask for."
Sico met her gaze without flinching. He had seen eyes like hers before — eyes that had stared at death too many times to be impressed by rank or armor. He nodded once. "You'll have it."
She gave a short, approving grunt and turned back to her patient, already barking for more clean water.
Sico moved deeper into the hall, stepping carefully between stretchers. Some of the wounded stirred as he passed, recognizing the shadow of their commander. One young soldier with a bandage wrapped around his head tried to raise a hand in salute, but his arm trembled and dropped before it rose halfway. Sico knelt briefly, set his gauntleted hand over the man's, and pressed it gently back to the cot.
"Rest," Sico murmured. "That's an order."
The soldier managed a weak smile before his eyes closed again.
Another man, chest swathed in bloody cloth, whispered as Sico passed. "Did… did we hold it, sir?"
Sico stopped. He looked down at him — the pale lips, the eyes glazed with fever — and answered with no hesitation.
"We did. The ground is ours. No one takes it from us."
The soldier's breath hitched once, then steadied. His face eased, as if the words alone were medicine.
By the time Sico reached the far end of the hall, the younger male doctor was finishing with a patient. He stripped his gloves off with a snap and blew out a slow breath, his face drawn. When he saw Sico, he straightened, though his exhaustion was clear.
"You picked a fine battlefield, Commander," he said dryly. "Half of these men need an operating theater. Instead, I've got cracked floorboards, dull scalpels, and no anesthesia."
"You'll have better," Sico said evenly. "Convoys will run regular now. Supplies will come. What I need to know is — how long can you keep them alive until then?"
The doctor rubbed his brow with the back of his wrist, leaving a streak of red across his forehead. "Depends on the man. Hours for some, days for others. If infection doesn't take them, dehydration might. I'll hold the line here as best I can, but medicine is war, Commander, and right now we're outgunned."
Sico let his eyes pass over the wounded one more time. The hall was thick with their breath, their pain, their struggle to cling to the thread of life. He knew the doctor was right — this was another battlefield. And it was one they couldn't afford to lose.
"Then we'll get you reinforcements," Sico said. His tone brooked no doubt. "More doctors. More medicine. Enough to give every one of them a fighting chance."
The doctor didn't smile, but his shoulders eased, just a fraction. He gave a small nod.
Sico turned to leave the hall. At the threshold, he stopped, letting his hand rest briefly against the stone of the doorway. He spoke softly, but his words carried enough for those near to hear.
"Hold on. All of you. This place isn't just brick and steel. It's you. It's the blood you spilled and the breath you fight to keep. You are the foundation of this stronghold. And I'll be damned if I let it crumble."
Then he stepped out into the morning light once more.
The sun had risen higher by the time Sico stepped out from the shadow of the infirmary, the light hitting his face with a sharpness that almost stung after the dim lantern glow. For a moment, he stood still, letting the warmth soak across the iron weight that pressed on his chest. The courtyard was alive with the rough, industrious sound of rebuilding — wood being hammered, metal dragged across stone, voices calling orders — but beneath that was a steadiness.
He had given his promise to the wounded. Now he had to keep it.
His boots carried him across the yard and through the half-broken arch that marked the entrance to the western ruins. The C.I.T. — once a temple of knowledge and innovation — sprawled before him in shattered majesty. Towers gutted by war. Walls stripped bare by scavengers. The bones of the old world laid out like a corpse left for the vultures.
But Sico didn't see just ruins. He saw possibility.
And Sturges was already there, perched on a collapsed column with a rolled-up set of schematics spread across his knees. The engineer's team moved around him like ants in a hive — one of them tapping stone with a hammer to test stability, another sketching outlines of where reinforcements could go, two more marking piles of rubble to be cleared. The sound of chalk against broken brick mixed with the scrape of shovels.
When Sturges looked up, he grinned. His hands were dusty, his hair full of grit, but there was a spark in his eye that hadn't dimmed since the day Sico first dragged him into this cause.
"Well, look who decided to bless us with a visit," Sturges called, his accent carrying a twang of humor even through exhaustion. "Commander himself, dropping by the worksite. You here to tell me we're workin' too slow, or just here to nod like you approve?"
Sico didn't break stride. He came to stand over the column, his shadow falling across the paper. "Neither. I'm here for an estimate."
That got Sturges to lean back a little, narrowing his eyes. "Estimate, huh? Ain't even been a full day since we laid eyes on this wreck proper, and you're already lookin' at calendars." He chuckled low, but there was no mockery in it — just the acknowledgment of a man who knew exactly what pressure Sico carried on his back.
Sico crouched slightly, his hand bracing against the stone. "How long to turn this ruin into a stronghold?"
The words cut through the bustle like a bell toll. A few of the workers nearby slowed, their ears pricking without meaning to. Sturges scratched his jaw, then slowly rolled the schematic closed and set it aside. For once, his grin softened into something more serious.
"Two, maybe three months," he said finally. "That's if the weather holds and folks keep their backs in it. Longer if accidents happen — and accidents always happen — or if you keep tellin' me to add bells and whistles halfway through. Which, no offense, Commander, you probably will."
Sico's gaze didn't waver. He let the silence hang for a moment, weighing the words like stone in his palm. Two to three months. That was time they didn't have in surplus. The Brotherhood wouldn't sit idle for a season, and the Institute's shadow lingered even now.
But Sico also knew the truth: rushing a fortress was the same as building a coffin. Better slow and unbreakable than quick and brittle.
He straightened, the leather of his gloves creaking. "Two to three months," he repeated, voice low but carrying. "Then we make it work in two."
Sturges blinked once, then barked a laugh. "You don't mess around, do you? I give you a damn honest answer and you cut it in half like I was jokin'. Tell me, Commander — you got a way to make men work twice as fast without droppin' them dead on the ground?"
Sico's eyes slid to the workers nearby — a young woman stacking stone, sweat rolling down her temples; an older man straining against a lever as he pried debris from a collapsed stairwell. Their hands bled, their muscles trembled, but not one of them slowed.
He turned back to Sturges. "They've already shown they'll give everything. What I need from you is the plan that makes sure their everything is enough."
For a long beat, Sturges just looked at him. Then the grin returned, sharper this time, like a man staring at a challenge too wild not to take.
"Well, hell," Sturges said, pushing himself off the column with a grunt. He slapped dust from his hands and gestured at the ruins sprawling around them. "Guess I better show you what you're askin' for, then."
They walked together through the broken bones of C.I.T., Sturges talking fast, his hands carving the air as he painted visions over rubble.
"See this courtyard? Once we clear it, slap down some proper foundations, this'll be your rally point. Big enough to roll a tank through, but small enough we can wall it off easy. Speaking of walls — look at that tower stump there. Reinforce the base, rebuild it up to maybe three stories, and you've got yourself a watchtower that can see for miles. Over there? Old lecture hall's already half standing. Patch the roof, fortify the windows, and you've got a barracks."
His boots crunched over glass as he walked, unbothered. Every ruin seemed alive in his mind, every scar another chance to build.
"And don't get me started on the tunnels," Sturges continued, pointing down a cracked stairwell leading into darkness. "Half caved-in, sure, but the ones that ain't? We clear those and we got ourselves supply routes that don't show up on any Brotherhood air recon. Maybe even stash points if things go south. Won't be easy, though. Place is like a damn anthill."
Sico listened without interrupting, his eyes sweeping every corner as though weighing the words against the reality. The stronghold was already forming in his head — stone walls bristling with turrets, supply caches buried beneath, barracks echoing with disciplined boots. A bastion carved from ruin, a statement to the wasteland: this far, no farther.
________________________________________________
• 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:-