Fallout 4: Rebirth At Vault 81

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Because if Talbot really was a one-man war machine… Sico had to become something else. Not as a machine , but as a shield or a wall. Become the last line between the Freemasons Republic and the long, cold hand reaching out from beneath the Institute.

The morning haze clung low over Sanctuary's rooftops, casting everything in a faint, silvery veil that refused to burn off even as the sun tried to force its way through. The fortified walls loomed quiet, the guards up top pacing in their slow, deliberate rhythms. A Vertibird had taken off at dawn, its roar now long faded into the east, and Sico stood in the upper command room alone, staring down at the cracked leather surface of the radio console.

The air inside was still. Heavy.

He hadn't slept much. Maybe two hours, on and off. The cot in the corner of the room still held the imprint of his armor plate, but the blankets were untouched.

His side throbbed — not with fresh pain, but that low, hollow ache that came with damage done and not fully healed. The medics said he should still be in a recovery room, but recovery wasn't a luxury he could afford. Not now. Not when someone from inside the Republic had tried to serve him up to the Institute on a silver plate.

His hand hovered over the comm switch again, as it had a dozen times since sunrise, but before he could press it, the room answered for him.

"Skrrkk—static—President, you there?"

It was Ronnie Shaw's voice — dry, seasoned, lined with grit and age and fight, and right now, every syllable was ironclad with urgency.

Sico snapped upright and pressed the receiver. "Copy that, Ronnie. I'm here. How is it?"

There was a pause. A short inhale on her end. And then—

"Well I'll be damned," she said. "I've found the one. The son of a bitch who leaked your return schedule."

Sico didn't say a word at first. His entire body tensed as if bracing for the name. He didn't even blink. He could hear the whine of the old vacuum tubes heating in the radio casing.

Ronnie continued, "Turns out it was one of the radio techs here. Comms specialist. Name's Briggs. He's been working our relay post for years — long enough no one even questions him when he swaps transmission times or slides in a late-night request."

Sico's mouth felt dry. "Briggs? Harold Briggs? The guy with the limp and the cowboy belt buckle?"

"That's the one. Always whistling when he's on shift. Quiet type. Been playing the long game. Said he was offered ten thousand caps to pass along your travel info — timing, route, escort details. The whole damn manifest."

Sico's knuckles turned white on the edge of the console.

Ronnie's voice hardened. "He confessed after we cross-checked the logs. Tried to cover his trail, but we cornered him with the packet traces. Then he started talking. Claimed he didn't know it was the Institute asking. Said he thought it was a caravan boss from the Quincy run. Liar. Caps were transferred from a dummy account in Diamond City."

Sico gritted his teeth. "You got him in custody?"

"Already detained. He's in a holding cell below the Castle's comms tower. I've got a guard on him every hour. No visitors. No radios. He'll be transported to Sanctuary this afternoon by convoy. I figured you'd want him tried on your soil."

Sico nodded slowly, though Ronnie couldn't see it. "Damn right I do."

He leaned against the console, the weight of the morning settling on him like a slab of old concrete. Not just because it was Briggs — a man he'd shared drinks with, once helped fix a busted shoulder antenna during a rainstorm — but because it proved the point he'd feared all along.

The leak wasn't theoretical anymore. It wasn't paranoia.

It had a name. A face. A history.

And now… it had a reckoning coming.

"What about the others?" he asked, forcing the words through his teeth. "Anyone else involved?"

"Not that we can tell yet," Ronnie said. "He claims he worked alone, but I've got our best techs sweeping every inch of the broadcast system. If anyone else so much as typed a message that didn't log properly, we'll find it."

Sico breathed in, slow. "Good work, Ronnie."

"You'll want to see this through yourself," she said. "I've seen your eyes when someone crosses the line. Just… don't let it rot you from the inside, son. That's what they want."

He didn't answer that. Didn't know how.

She cut the channel after a beat. Static returned — brief, soft — then silence.

Sico stood there for a long time, alone in the dim radio room. Outside, the sky had started to clear. The clouds peeled back like old bandages, and beams of weak sunlight crept between the towers of Sanctuary's rebuilt skyline.

Briggs.

Ten thousand caps.

How long had it taken him to decide? A night? A week? Had he debated it? Had he hesitated?

Or had it been easy?

He left the radio room in silence, limping slightly as he made his way down the iron stairwell toward the lower command wing. A pair of guards saluted him as he passed — young, faces drawn from long shifts — and he gave them a nod but no words.

Preston was already waiting in the debrief chamber when he arrived. A second map had been pinned over the wall beside the usual logistics chart — this one showing radio towers, transmission logs, and suspected Institute dead zones. Sarah stood near the back, arms folded, her expression tight.

"You hear?" Preston asked, voice low.

Sico nodded. "Ronnie found the leak. It was Briggs. Sold my route for caps."

"Jesus…" Preston exhaled. "Briggs? You sure?"

"She is. He confessed. Transport's coming this afternoon. I want the courtroom set and the council assembled. This won't be a hidden trial. Everyone will see this."

Preston nodded. "Public?"

"Public," Sico repeated.

Sarah didn't speak for a moment. Then: "You think he's a synth?"

Sico turned toward her. "Not sure. But we'll scan him. Test him. I want the synth scanner workup the moment he arrives then check his DNA, bone scan, voice analysis. If the Institute replaced the real Briggs months ago, we need to know before we get played twice."

She gave a small nod. "Already prepping the med wing."

He looked between them both now — the only two people he trusted without a crack of doubt. The only two who had followed him through every storm since the Freemasons Republic had been carved out of the wasteland.

"We're going to do this right," he said. "Not just for justice. For deterrence. Every spy, every sympathizer hiding in our ranks needs to understand — the cost of betrayal is real."

He turned to the comm console and keyed a quick, secure message to the outer gates. "Notify me the second that convoy's within visual range."

Then he walked out into the light.

By midday, the central square of Sanctuary had been cleared.

A platform had been erected in the old civic plaza — the same place where announcements had been made, war medals pinned, and fallen heroes remembered. Now it would serve another purpose.

By 14:00 PM, the people of Sanctuary had gathered. Not by command — by word of mouth. Word spread quickly in a world where everyone remembered what it meant to lose leaders to bombs and bullets and whispered betrayals.

Children sat on the edges of the platform. Elderly settlers leaned against handrails. Soldiers stood at parade rest, armor gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun.

The grinding of tires over Sanctuary's packed roads stirred a tension through the square as the convoy finally rolled into view. Two armored Humvees led the way, flanking a matte-black cargo truck in the center — all three bearing the blue-and-gold insignia of the Freemasons Republic, their paint chipped and dust-caked from the long journey west from the Castle.

The convoy slowed to a stop just shy of the square's edge, engines idling, heat shimmering from their hoods. Doors clanked open.

From the truck's rear bay, a figure emerged, hunched slightly, hands bound in front with regulation steel cuffs. Two Castle guards flanked him in full armor, their visors down, rifles slung but readied with a practiced ease. Their boots struck the pavement with deliberate thuds as they led their prisoner forward — toward the platform, toward Sico.

Harold Briggs looked older than Sico remembered. His limp was more pronounced, his once ruddy face gaunt and waxy in the sunlight. His eyes — the same eyes that used to twinkle with dry jokes over radio hiss and late-night coffee — were hollow now. Not afraid, not pleading.

Just… empty.

A man who knew the rope had already been tied.

The crowd fell into a hush so complete even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Only the faint creak of the gallows beam — unused, repurposed from old pre-War courthouse scaffolding — whispered above them.

Sico stood at the center of the raised wooden platform, back straight, long duster caught lightly in the afternoon breeze. Preston stood to his left. Sarah to his right. The Freemasons Council sat in solemn quiet behind them, each wearing their red sashes of office, each with a data-slate in their lap.

And then there was Briggs.

The Castle guards brought him to the platform's edge and nudged him forward. He stepped up under his own power — stiffly, like his bones had forgotten movement — and stood across from the President he had betrayed.

Sico let the silence hold a beat longer.

Then he spoke.

His voice was low, clear, and cold as steel drawn across granite. "You sold the coordinates of my return route to unknown buyers. That action led to an ambush. It cost Corporal Jack his life. It nearly cost me mine."

The words carried without need of amplification. They were louder for their restraint. The crowd, even the smallest children, didn't make a sound.

"For what?" Sico asked.

Briggs didn't answer. His lips pressed together, cracked and pale. He looked down at the wood under his boots.

Sico took a slow step forward. "Ten thousand caps. That's what my life — and the life of a soldier — was worth to you."

That finally broke Briggs' stillness. His voice came rasping, brittle. "I needed the money… for my family. My youngest is sick. The doctors in Quincy said she needed treatments we couldn't afford."

Sico's face didn't move. Not an inch. "Then why didn't you come to me?"

Briggs blinked.

Sico's tone hardened. "If you needed help, you could've filed for assistance with the Treasury. You could've requested emergency family aid from the Republic Fund. Hell, you could've walked into my office and asked for a damn loan. I've signed over dozens for less."

Briggs flinched, just barely. The crowd stirred — the sound of judgment forming not in jeers or cries, but in their stillness. In the way they looked at him now: not with anger, but betrayal.

"You didn't come to your people," Sico said. "You didn't come to me. You went to strangers in the dark. To someone offering ten thousand caps from a dummy account traced back to Diamond City. You sold not just your honor, Briggs. You sold us. You sold everything."

Briggs' shoulders sagged. His hands, cuffed, twisted against each other as if some part of him still sought to hide.

Sarah stepped forward, whisper to Sico. "We've scanned him. He's not a synth. Biometrics confirm DNA that he's a human."

Preston added, "And the comms logs from the Castle match the transfer. Packet trace, encrypted file drops. The signature was yours."

"I didn't know it will be kidnapping attempt," Briggs muttered.

"You should have," Sico thundered. "You think the they will send a calling card? 'Hi, we're here to kill your leaders and kidnap your children, but here's our return address'?"

A few murmurs rippled in the crowd now, anger slowly surfacing from beneath the quiet.

"They bought your silence, Briggs," Sico said. "But they didn't pay enough to buy mine."

The Congress shifted behind him. CongressmanJanus leaned in and murmured into the ear of a younger scribe, who quickly began scribbling down proceedings — this was all being recorded, archived for the Republic's records. History was being written in real time.

Sico took another step closer. "What if that bullet had killed me? What if that sniper had taken my head clean off and left Sarah or Preston to bury what was left of me in the mud off Route 3? You think ten thousand caps would've been enough to raise my replacement?"

Briggs' lip trembled, but he said nothing. His eyes stayed locked on the wooden grain beneath them.

Sico's voice didn't shake. "What if you had been ambushed? If you had died in that sand, would we have sold you out for a payday? Would any of us have put a price tag on your neck? No. We would've died pulling your corpse back home."

The platform was still.

Then Sico stepped back and turned to face the people — the crowd now numbering nearly four hundred strong, stretching all the way to the town's central fountain and beyond. The guards along the rooftops watched from above, but they, too, were still.

"We can't build a new world," Sico said, voice rising now, fierce, alive, burning, "if we let old-world betrayal rot us from within. We survived the bombs, the raiders, the Commonwealth chaos. We rebuilt. We grew. But no society survives betrayal."

His eyes scanned the gathered crowd. "This Republic is more than laws. It's trust. We entrust each other with our lives. Our children. Our homes. Our safety. That trust is sacred."

He turned back to Briggs. "And you broke it."

At last, Briggs spoke — not to plead, not to beg — but to whisper, low, nearly lost beneath the wind: "I didn't think it would go that far…"

Sico's answer was iron. "It always goes that far."

He stepped back and nodded to the Congress.

Congressman Janus stood. "By authority of the Freemasons Republic Charter, Section IV, Subsection D, Harold Briggs has been found guilty of high treason, conspiracy with hostile forces, and gross endangerment of the President and military personnel. He is hereby sentenced to execution by firing squad at dawn tomorrow."

Gasps rippled from a few corners of the crowd — not shock at the verdict, but the weight of finality. Others bowed their heads. Some muttered prayers.

Briggs didn't resist as he was led back down the platform stairs and toward the old courthouse, where a converted cell would hold him for one last night.

The crowd slowly dispersed. Families returned to their homes. Soldiers returned to patrol. The sun moved west.

Sico remained on the platform long after the last voice had faded.

Sarah came up beside him. "You did the right thing."

He didn't answer.

"Justice matters," Preston added quietly. "Even when it hurts."

Finally, Sico nodded. "Yeah."

The last streaks of gold had long since slipped behind Sanctuary's eastern ridge by the time Sico finally descended from the platform. The square had emptied, but its silence lingered like smoke — not mournful, not even heavy. Just taut. Wound tight around the gravity of what had just happened.

Sico's boots hit the dirt beside the wooden stairs with a crunch. Preston and Sarah walked with him in quiet, shadowed by the dusk.

He didn't speak until they neared the rear of the square, where the convoy still idled under low lantern light, the black truck sealed shut now, its grim duty done.

"Preston," Sico said, stopping beside him.

Preston looked up, alert but subdued. "Yeah?"

"Find Briggs' family. Quietly. His wife, his kids — the youngest one's sick, right?"

"Yeah," Preston nodded slowly. "His daughter. I'll need to confirm the details, but she's in Quincy General. Some kind of post-radiation marrow disorder. Rare, expensive to treat."

Sico drew a sharp breath through his nose. "Give them the ten thousand caps he took for selling my route."

Preston blinked. "What?"

"Don't argue," Sico said, voice flat. "Give it to them. Tell 'em it came from a donor if you have to. Tell 'em whatever you want. But give it to them. The kid's innocent in this. So is the wife."

Preston hesitated, then gave a slow nod. "And if they ask why?"

Sico turned to face him. "Tell them… their father made a mistake. But he was still a father."

Preston nodded again, slower this time. "Alright. And the extra five?"

Sico exhaled, looking out over the distant rooftops. "Take another five thousand from the Treasury. Quiet payment. That girl's gonna need more than one treatment, and they sure as hell won't have enough to keep up. Consider it a presidential directive."

Sarah stood quiet, watching him, expression unreadable in the dim light. Finally, she reached out and squeezed his shoulder — firm, not gentle.

"You're still you," she said.

Sico didn't answer. He just looked out toward the courthouse, where a single gas lamp flickered in a barred window, casting the faint silhouette of a man sitting still on his cot. Waiting.

⸻

Dawn.

The sun rose reluctantly behind low gray clouds, casting a soft, muted light over Sanctuary's eastern fields. Dew clung to the grass, sparkling briefly in the chill. The old pre-War firing range, once used for militia drills and scavenger rifle training, now bore the weight of something far heavier.

A short wooden fence marked the outer perimeter, with two lines of guards checking each spectator. It wasn't a public spectacle by decree — no one had been summoned — but word had traveled, as word always did, and by the time Sico arrived, over a hundred residents stood in quiet clusters beyond the rope line, bundled in coats and scarves, breath clouding in the morning air.

Children clung to mothers. Soldiers stood stiffly, their uniforms brushed and weapons holstered. There was no jeering, no cheering, no anger. Just cold wind and waiting eyes.

Briggs was already there — bound at the wrists, his legs chained but steady. He had refused the blindfold. A Castle guard stood on each side, and his back was straight despite the fatigue in his face. The hollowness from the day before hadn't vanished, but there was a strange clarity now, as if he had passed through the storm and emerged in its eye.

The firing squad — five soldiers in regulation gear, rifles shouldered — stood thirty paces away in a clean line. None of them knew which rifle would carry the live round. One had it. Four didn't.

Sico stepped up to the small raised podium, flanked by Sarah and Preston. A field recorder sat at the front edge, its tiny red light blinking — for the archives, like all high-level executions under Republic law.

He looked out across the crowd. Then back at Briggs.

"We are here not because we want to be," Sico said, voice low but clear. "We're here because this Republic is built on something more important than any one man. More than any one mistake."

The wind stirred, carrying his words across the field.

"Harold Briggs betrayed us. He handed over coordinates that led to an ambush, to a soldier's death, to a near collapse in our chain of command. He violated trust, honor, and duty. For that, he was tried. And for that, he was found guilty."

Briggs stared ahead, unmoving.

"But before you judge him, know this," Sico said, turning briefly toward the watching crowd. "He was not always this man. Once, he was a father. A radio tech who served through two winters at the Castle without complaint. A man who stayed up nights teaching new recruits how to read encrypted comms. A man who saved a patrol when he cracked a false Brotherhood distress beacon in time. We remember that, too."

He turned back. "Harold Briggs was once one of us. And he paid for his betrayal not with coins, but with his own peace."

A pause. The breeze quieted.

"Any last words?" Sico asked.

Briggs finally looked up. His voice didn't shake.

"I loved my family. I failed my oath. I accept what's coming. But if anyone hears this years from now… please remember both."

Then he nodded to the firing squad. "I'm ready."

Sico stepped back, the final authority given.

The sergeant in charge of the squad raised her arm.

"Ready!"

The soldiers raised their rifles in perfect sync.

"Aim!"

Briggs didn't move.

"Fire!"

Five shots cracked like lightning in the cold air.

Briggs fell without a sound.

The guards stepped forward, checked the body. One nodded to Sico. It was done.

The firing squad remained still as statues until the sergeant barked, "Dismissed." They turned, rifles low, and marched out in formation, their footsteps fading behind the crowd.

Preston stood rigid, jaw tight. Sarah bowed her head briefly. Sico just watched the spot where Briggs had stood — not with triumph, not even sadness. Just the deep, bitter silence that came with being the one left to carry what others could not.

He stepped forward, knelt beside the body. For a moment, it looked like he might say a prayer — but instead, he reached down, closed Briggs' eyes with two fingers, and murmured something too low for the recorder.

Then he rose.

"Get him buried with the others," he told the guards. "No unmarked graves."

One of them looked surprised. "Sir… the gallows sentence—"

"I said with the others," Sico repeated. "He served. He fell. He's still one of ours. We don't erase our dead."

The guard nodded slowly, then signaled for a stretcher.

The crowd began to drift away in silence, some holding each other's hands, others walking alone. No one spoke above a whisper.

Later, Preston would deliver the ten thousand caps and an untraceable envelope containing another five to Briggs' wife, who broke down at the threshold of her home and thanked him without ever asking where it came from. She didn't need to. Some truths aren't told in words.

________________________________________________

• 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:-