The blue flash dissipated, leaving Case and his team standing at the threshold of the Hopeville Missile Silo.
Beyond him, the old world.
The Divide.
But the nightmare landscape from the game—the fractured earth and gravity-defying ruins—was nowhere to be found. Instead, the Divide lay before them as a haunting, yet structurally intact, graveyard of the Old World.
"Hopeville and Ashton," Kelly whispered, her voice modulated by the APA's external speakers. "Two pre-war cities. They're... still standing."
The sight was jarring. The highways weren't jagged slabs of concrete floating over an abyss; they were still connected, stretching like gray ribbons toward the horizon. The massive utility pipes that fed the silos remained bolted to the earth. There were no bottomless canyons or "High Roads" suspended by prayer and rebar.
Case knelt, resting the heavy barrel of the XM107 on a rusted railing to steady his view. He dialed the magnification to 14x and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He saw movement.
Down in the Hopeville barracks, he saw people. They weren't the flayed, radiation-maddened Marked Men he had expected. They looked like survivors from dune, their heads wrapped in thick shemaghs and dust-goggles, moving between stalls in a makeshift market square. It was a bleak, struggling community, but it was a community.
Then, the realization hit him like a physical blow. In the timeline he knew, the Divide was a canyon because the Courier had accidentally detonated the underground nuclear silos. Those massive cliffs, the crumbling municipal buildings perched on the edge of nothing—they were all man-made scars from a subterranean atomic firestorm that hadn't happened yet. Here, the ground was flat. The "Third Municipal Building" wasn't a vertical tomb; it was just a skyscraper in a quiet, dusty city.
Case stood frozen, the heavy weight of the XM107 suddenly feeling like a lead weight. The horror of the "real" timeline—the one where the Courier unknowingly brought the detonator—washed over him. He realized that every jagged cliff and flayed corpse he remembered from the game was a direct result of one man's delivery. Here, the tragedy was still in the future.
"Case?" Milla's voice whispered through his headset, breaking his trance. She had already activated her cloak, her form nothing more than a distortion in the dusty air.
Kelly adjusted the grip on her Gauss Gatling, the massive weapon's magnets humming a low, expectant tune. "For a city that's been swallowing dust storms for decades, they're in surprisingly good shape. I expected a crater, not a suburb."
The former Brotherhood knight scanned the lower barracks with her Gatling Laser, the red targeting reticle in her HUD dancing over the figures below. "They are well-armed, but disorganized. If they spot us, they might think we're an Enclave remnant or a Brotherhood strike team."
Case looked at the road ahead. It was wide, paved, and led straight into the heart of the community. The infrastructure was intact—the power lines hummed with a faint, ghostly current, and the buildings still had glass in their windows.
Case finally understood the tragedy of Ulysses. It wasn't just the physical destruction that had broken the man; it was the death of an idea.
In a world of warring factions and decaying ruins, these people had actually begun to thrive, creating something that wasn't beholden to the NCR's bureaucracy or the Legion's cruelty. And in another life, one courier with a single package had accidentally snuffed it out, turning a burgeoning nation into a graveyard of flayed men with a bang.
Not because of a faction war.
Not because of regular reasons.
But because of a single package.
That destroyed… everything.
"How could people survive this long in this place?" Lilly asked, her voice hushed with genuine wonder as she scanned the structural integrity of the surrounding halls.
Case didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the looming bulkhead of the primary facility. "Let's get to the silo," he commanded, adjusting the strap of the XM107.
"Say what? We're just walking into a live launch facility?"
"I stand corrected," Case clarified, his tone brookng no argument. "We are going inside the silo."
He led the way to the massive primary blast doors. With a pressurized groan that echoed through the hollow canyons, the doors parted, revealing a dimly lit hallway that spiraled down toward the heart of the facility. Kelly and Lilly took point, their Power Armor lights cutting through the thick, stale air of the interior. Case and Milla followed closely behind, their boots clicking softly on the pristine metallic grating.
To Case's surprise, the interior was immaculate. There were no scorched walls, no rusted-out security bots, and no piles of skeletal remains. It was a time capsule of Pre-War military paranoia. However, the atmosphere was anything but peaceful. A low-frequency siren blared rhythmically, a crimson light bathing the corridors in a sickly, repetitive glow. The facility was still locked in a high-alert Defcon state.
They reached the main control console. Kelly approached the terminal, but she stopped short, her gauntlet hovering over a strange array of switches. Instead of the standard green-glow of a RobCo terminal, she was met with a complex interface featuring a small, radar-dish-like device mounted directly onto the console.
"Never saw this kind of contraption before," Kelly admitted, leaning in to inspect the dish. "There's no keyboard, no standard port. Do you know how to interface with this thing, Case? It looks like it's waiting for a signal, not a password."
Case looked at the flickering lights of the console. He knew that in another life, a simple eyebot had been the key to everything here. "Let's explore the place. The answer isn't going to be at this desk."
He turned and headed down the hallway to the right, leading the team into the auxiliary repair bay. The room smelled of ozone and ancient grease. In the center of the bay sat a specialized repair bench equipped with a heavy-duty arc welder and, more importantly, a sleek, tubular pod.
Case didn't waste a second. He walked straight to the pod's dedicated terminal and bypassed the secondary security locks. With a hiss of pneumatic pressure, the pod cycled open.
"Activating the eyebot," Case muttered.
A familiar series of chimes and beeps echoed through the repair bay as a small, silver-plated eyebot drifted out of the pod. Its sensors whirred, recalibrating to the presence of the newcomers.
"Ralphie, fly far, fly fast!" ED-E played the recording.
"Strange robot," Milla commented.
"That's our ticket way out of here," Case said. "ED-E, can you help me?"
ED-E just gave a confirmatory beep.
The team walked out of the maintenance hallway, and into the central console. ED-E zapped the central console on the central room, and a large lever came out, with a single flip of the level, the defcon mode stopped.
Case didn't waste a second. He walked straight to the pod's dedicated terminal and bypassed the secondary security locks. With a hiss of pneumatic pressure, the pod cycled open.
"Activating the eyebot," Case muttered.
Suddenly, a crackling, pre-war recording burst from its internal speakers, the voice of a young boy filled with hope: "Ralphie, fly far, fly fast!"
"Strange robot," Milla commented, her cloaked form momentarily flickering as she tilted her head in curiosity.
"That's our ticket out of here," Case said, his voice reflecting a mix of nostalgia and relief. He looked directly into the bot's optical sensor. "ED-E, can you help me?"
ED-E gave a sharp, melodic confirmatory beep, its chassis bobbing in the air as it fell into rank beside Case.
The team moved back through the maintenance hallway and into the heart of the facility. The central console still pulsed with angry red warnings, the "radar-dish" interface humming as it searched for a compatible signal. ED-E didn't hesitate; it drifted toward the console and emitted a focused arc of blue electricity into the receiver.
The machine responded instantly. The high-pitched siren died mid-wail, replaced by the low, steady thrum of standard cooling fans. A heavy mechanical lock disengaged with a thud, and a large, red-handled lever rose slowly from the center of the desk. Case stepped forward and, with a single firm motion, flipped the level down.
The crimson emergency lights flickered and died, replaced by a warm, amber glow. The DEFCON status monitors on the wall shifted from a terrifying "1" to a dormant, stable state. The slit in front of the console opened, revealing the Titan II missile of the Divide.
"Think we can launch a missile from here?" Milla asked, looking at the window.
"Hell no, we're not going to repeat the apocalypse again, Milla," Case replied. He then pointed at the roof of the silo. "Besides, the silo is broken to bits, no way we could launch without blowing this place up."
"What now, Case?" Kelly asked.
"Let's explore the place first, we need to find the central console, we might be able to take over the whole silo for ourselves," Case commanded.
"You're the boss, Case, lead the way," Lily added.