There is a roar, and then the walls burst open in a flash of blinding light, force ripping through the hideout.

Raiders closest to it don't even have time to scream before they are vaporised, leaving only piles of ash. The ones further back are ripped apart by the force, or slammed against walls, or fall to their knees, clutching bleeding eyes, stumps where limbs were.

Nathlee's scream is furious as she is blasted back further into the cave. Her head cracks against the wall and all she knows is black.

The Enclave’s sweep through the now-irradiated cave is quick. They collect weapons, armour, strip the Pip-boy from Nathlee's arm, and are gone, leaving bodies to rot.

Or mutate.

Nathlee wakes a day later. Her head is throbbing, and there's a strange tingle to her skin. She struggles to sit, hand cupping the back of her head. Her hair feels...matted. Sticky. Disgusting. A wash is definitely in order. She won't have herself looking anything less than perfect in front of-

Wait. Why is it so quiet? And where is her- She opens her eyes to inspect her left wrist. Her Pip-boy is no longer sitting there. Nathlee snarls. One of those...jackals, they must've taken it while she was knocked out. She'll deal with them slowly. 

She struggles to stand, pressing heavily on the cave wall to remain upright, cursing the whole way. How dare they? The Enclave had gone, Nathlee was their victorious saviour, and they turn on her and steal her belongings? She will hunt down every last one of those...creatures, and see them pay. Not the first time she's had to kill a group of raiders. Perhaps the ones that beg her she will allow to live. Maybe missing a few limbs but-

Her thoughts stop as she reaches the main cave section.

Bodies, limbs, piles of ashes, all litter the floor. No one is alive. No one is left.

Except Nathlee.

She stalks around the room, trying to contain her mounting terror. How? How did this happen? There was nothing that could've broken through the cave wall that Nathlee did not prepare for...that she hadn't chosen this specific cave system for. What could they have possibly used?

Nathlee would run through it on her terminal, but that and her entire desk have been reduced to splinters. Her armoury raided, no doubt by the Enclave, picking at the corpse of her headquarters. Her home. They no doubt took her Pip-Boy too, the bastards. Oh, she will teach them the true meaning of fear, of that she has no doubt.

While Nathlee ponders her revenge, a smell starts to become more noticeable. 

It is a familiar smell. Something she knows. Something usually associated with closing lungs and blood-

No. 

Nathlee doesn't do afraid. She gets angry. She gets cold. Mean. She's never afraid. 

But she cannot deny that the emotion that sends her fleeing to the site of the explosion, out into the dull light of day, to search for the blown apart bomb casing, was something very close to fear. 

There's quite a few casings out there, testament to the amount of tries it took to destroy the wall, but lying on top of the pile is a small green remnant. She picks it up, studying it. On the very edge is a small chip of yellow paint. She doesn't need the rest to know what it was. 

Mini-nuke.

She stumbles back inside the cave, feet brushing through piles of ash, tripping over bodies, and each time Nathlee holds in a gasp, a scream. Nukes were the Brotherhood's weapons. Nukes were closely guarded...hell, if she'd known there was a supplier out there, she would've taken them all! How did the Enclave get their hands on one? And why use it on her? Either she pissed them off more than she thought possible, or they had a stockpile they didn't mind wasting. Either way, it confirmed for Nathlee that she would track the bastards to their hole and burn them out, one by one if necessary. 

She-

Radiation. It was a nuke, and they fired it into a cave, the idiots, and hopefully a few of their own soldiers went down with them.

But that explained the smell, and the tingle on her skin. Why no one who didn't seem too injured wasn't getting back up. It didn't explain why Nathlee wasn't gasping for air, bleeding out of everything and rotting from the inside out. Who survives radiation? Who survives a blow to the back of the head, for that matter. Who-

Nathlee stopped dead in the middle of the cave. Her hands started shaking as she lifted them to eye level. They looked no different, but she knew what they could look like.

What they will look like.

She was a ghoul. She was turning into a ghoul, becoming a monster-

Becoming one of the doomed creatures. 

Tears began to form on her lashes, but before she could cry, fury bubbled up inside her.

Nathlee screams. 

Elsewhere...

A flash of blue light, and a woman in a black coat steps out into the Wasteland. She frowns, looking around, as if searching for something.

She settles on a direction and moves swiftly in it, crushing anything in her path.

In the distance is her destination, a small settlement. Nothing much more than a few ramshackle homes, farms and brahmin. Nothing suspicious about it.

Except the Courser knows what's inside the house in the middle. She's been on a long search that started back in the remains of Boston, but now is finally coming to an end. She is looking forward to returning home with the runaway. 

A few settlers hail as she approaches, hands hovering over worn-looking weapons.

The Courser doesn't stray from her path one bit. She barely even notices the weapons. 

These simple fools have nothing to fear from her, anyway. Her target is not some gullible settler, believing an ill-kept pistol will protect them from a trained, perfected Institute Courser. 

The settlers fall back from her, seemingly moving out of her way. They seemed concerned, though one person dressed as the woman does not seem like a raider attack.

The house is run down, leaning against the houses either side of it somehow, and there are hundreds of cables spilling out of it.

The Courser studies the building intently, then smirks. If the runaway was trying to hide, she was doing a terrible job. Makes the Courser's job easier, anyway.