After the discussions with Jacob and Tim, I walked calmly back to my office and entered. But what looked like a calm and collected man on the outside was actually a very confused and chaotic man on the inside. My mind was raging trying to figure out who it could be that was sending these E-mails and every single time I kept coming to the same answer over and over again.

Jacob, my shining second in command. There was no other posibility than him. It could only be him, but, how could I expose him? How could I press this fact that I knew without disgracing him infront of everyone. And even so, what were the nature of the E-mails? Were they simple contracts for defenses for the Vaults? If so, that was fine but I might want to know as it would be a change from the original plan. But with the number of E-mails, I couldn't be that simple.

Nothing was simple anymore.

Days waiting turned into weeks and eventually months as Tim, and as he later said one of his subordinates, watched the number of E-mails and eventually, he came to see me one day.

Like the first time he saw me, I was lounging at my desk after a successful business transaction with our Vaults' power-plant contractors. He walked in with almost the same expression as the first time but this time it was more serious. I immediatly saw this fact and canceled all my appointments for the next hour and had my calls held.

'Phil, we got another problem. The number of E-mails to this General guy and the contact here have picked up. It's atleast 50 a day now; almost double. It can only be one guy now.' He told me. He had a slightly pained expression to him as he knew how much Jacob meant to me. He was my Number 2 and, eventually, he was going to be the CEO of Vault-Tec whenever I decided to retire (if ever).

'Tim, what can we do?' I asked simply. Tim sat there and stared right into my eyes. This was one of the reasons that I hired him in the first place.

'Only thing we can do, let the light shine on it.' He replied. He made sure to put emphasis on the 'we' part to make me 100% sure that he wouldn't let me do this alone.

I nodded a few times, then stood up and fixed my suit and tie that I was wearing.

'Then Tim, let's pay a visit to the Research department.' I said to him. He stood up from the chair that he had been sitting in and did the same with his shirt and tie (it was slightly stuffy in the Technology department with all the electronics working 24 hours a day so he rarely every wore a suit), nodded back at me, opened the door and motioned for me to lead the way. Together we strode though the halls of the office, heads turned in quiet interest, towards R&D with a clear goal in mind. We were going to find the truth no matter what.

We just didn't know how much it was going to cost us. And, unfortunatly, we found out almost the hard way.

Author guidance for This story

This is a Fan-Fiction story built off of the Fallout video-game series made by Bethesda Studios. This is not endorsed by Bethesda and is no way official cannon.

As such, if questions arise as to certain things within the Fallout realm by anyone, I will attempt to update this Guidance with the answers.

*In the chapter: 'At the Beginning of the End' and on from there, all italicised text is Dir. Collins telling his story. Any talking or actions from the Rangers and Paladins is going to be in regular text. This will help so I don't have to format every single paragraph for all the chapters.*

The Enclave is the designation for the American government after the Great War. As most of this is before the Great War, the Enclave is actually the official US government. I will note here if this changes but for all of Phil's story, the 'Enclave' is the actual government/military
(Thanks @FirestormInfinity)

updated Oct 28 '11 by Spockeh