583. Institute Attack PT.1

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But even as the Freemasons held their line, Sico knew this was only the beginning. The Institute was finished playing games, they were coming for Talbot. And Sico was going to make damn sure they regretted it.

Sico tapped his comm. "Preston, hold the gate. Don't let a single synth through. Burn the damn fields if you have to."

"Understood," came Preston's hard reply. "We're locking this place down."

Sico turned again, scanning the battlements. Sanctuary's defenses had been upgraded over the past one months—thanks to Freemason engineers and Brotherhood scrap—but nothing was foolproof. The gate was their bottleneck. If it broke, everything broke.

Below, soldiers were already moving.

Mortar crews scrambled to load shells. Turret rigs rotated toward the approaching synths, locking on with shrill beeps. The heavy gates groaned as the final locks clamped shut.

And from within the city, the echoing footfalls of metal giants pounded closer.

MacCready arrived with the Power Armor team.

Their entrance wasn't subtle. The lead suit—painted black with red Freemasons insignia—fired a Tesla burst into the oncoming line of synths, scattering two into burning fragments. Behind him, three more suits marched in formation, weapons drawn.

"Brought the cavalry," MacCready called out, his voice modulated by the armor. "Guess the Brotherhood weren't the only ones flying today."

Sico allowed himself a thin smile. "Let's make them wish they stayed underground."

The battle erupted.

Green and red fire lanced across the battlefield. Explosions rocked the northern walls. Turrets fired until their barrels glowed white-hot. Synths hit the fences in waves, some crawling over the corpses of their own comrades, others cut down mid-sprint.

The coursers began to move. Three split left. Two moved right. The others pushed toward the main gate with terrifying speed.

Preston and Sico took the front barricade together, rifles snapping with sharp, practiced bursts. Every round felt personal.

MacCready's team stood just behind them, blocking holes in the defenses with searing waves of electricity and shrapnel. One synth managed to get close, ducking under a turret—but was torn apart by the hydraulic punch of a power fist.

But amid the smoke and chaos, they missed something.

A second team of synths—smaller, cloaked—was already circling south.

Their objective wasn't the gate.

It was the prison.

Behind the front lines, Sarah ran like hell.

The moment the alarm tripped at the prison perimeter, she knew. The Institute wasn't stupid. If they couldn't win the siege, they'd strike where the Republic was most vulnerable.

Talbot.

She reached the outer corridor just as the wall detonated.

The blast blew through sandbags and steel, shredding the old school gymnasium like paper. Dust and fire poured inward, and from the smoke emerged the second wave—twenty synths, at least. More coursers. All focused, all deadly.

"COMMANDOS!" Sarah shouted, drawing her shotgun. "Form up! PROTECT THE PRISONER!"

Her squad responded instantly.

They took position in a double line across the main hallway. The breach was narrow. That was the only advantage. A chokepoint. They could hold—if they didn't blink.

The first synth leapt through the smoke. Sarah didn't wait. One blast from her scattergun shredded it into flaming debris.

Then the second. The third.

The hallway filled with noise—rifle bursts, shouted orders, the crunch of combat boots on cracked tile. One of the Commandos went down to a plasma bolt. Another was dragged clear before the line collapsed.

But the coursers were pushing harder now.

One of them reached Sarah's side and swung with an energy blade. She ducked, rolled, fired upward—blowing his shoulder clean off. As he staggered, she slammed him into the wall with the butt of her weapon and drove a sidearm round through his implant.

Still they kept coming.

From behind the sealed cell door, Talbot watched in eerie calm. Not smiling. Not panicked. Just watching.

Another explosion rocked the east side. Sarah's earpiece sparked to life.

"SARAH! It's Sico—I'm en route! Sitrep!"

"Breach in Block B! Four coursers down, two squads of synths! We're still up, but they want in bad."

"I'm bringing backup," he said. "Hold. That. Line."

Sico tore through the back alleys of Sanctuary, rifle slung, hand on his pistol. As he rounded the edge of the hydroponics lab, two synths spotted him and raised their rifles.

He didn't stop moving.

He dropped the first with a center-mass shot, then slid behind a half-buried tractor and fired twice more—both rounds hitting home.

He reached the prison just as the last of Sarah's outer barricades gave way.

The courtyard was a warzone—Commandos in close combat, coursers dueling with vibroblades and energy fists. Sarah was bleeding from a cut above her eye, but still standing, teeth bared in defiance.

Sico didn't call out.

He joined the fight.

One courser turned toward him—too slow. Sico's revolver cracked three times. The synth dropped.

He reached Sarah's side. "Still breathing?"

"Barely," she muttered.

"You're beautiful."

"Shut up and shoot."

Sarah ducked beneath a flying shard of synth plating, her sidearm rising as another courser charged through the smoke-filled corridor. She fired three times—two hits, one miss—the shots echoing off the stone walls like a battle cry. The synth staggered but kept coming, its blade humming with deadly voltage.

Before it could strike, Sico stepped into its path and jammed his revolver under its chin.

"Don't even think about it."

He fired point-blank.

The courser collapsed, limbs jerking before going still.

Sico exhaled, sliding beside Sarah as they took cover behind a shattered bulkhead door. Blood streaked the side of her temple, a ragged line running through soot and sweat. Her knuckles were bruised, cracked open from melee. But her eyes—her eyes were bright with fire.

"How's the frontline?" she asked, voice hoarse, reloading her sidearm with practiced motion.

"Preston and MacCready are holding it," Sico replied, checking his own ammo count. "Barely. The synths haven't broken through, but it's wave after wave. Mac brought the Power Armor boys in—thank God. They're chewing through the bastards."

He leaned around the corner, fired two shots down the hallway, and pulled back just as green plasma singed the stone behind him.

"And the civilians?" Sarah asked, already knowing the answer was going to weigh on both of them.

"Albert and Hancock are handling it," Sico said. "Got everyone in the southern tunnels. Hancock's managing evac routes. Albert's got two squads watching the exits. If the Institute circles around, they'll be ready."

Sarah muttered a half-laugh, half-growl. "Albert's always hated enclosed spaces. Figures he'd draw tunnel duty."

Sico gave her a sideways glance, smirking through the soot on his face. "I promised him whiskey if he made it out."

"He'll want the whole bottle."

"He'll get two."

Another blast shook the walls. The overhead lights flickered, and a voice shouted from deeper inside the prison—one of the Commandos still holding the line by Talbot's sealed corridor.

"Movement! We've got more incoming from the breach!"

Sarah pushed up from cover, eyes fierce again. "If they think they're getting to Talbot, they'll have to step over my body."

"Not gonna happen," Sico said, grabbing her wrist and hauling her to her feet. "I already did that once, remember?"

She smirked grimly. "Yeah. You were late that time too."

Sico's radio crackled—Preston's voice, distorted by static but still clear.

"Sico! The gate's holding for now. Power Armor squad's rotating shifts. Synths are thinning out—but we spotted another drop pod to the east. Could be a flanking unit!"

Sico swore. "Get eyes on it. I've got my hands full at the prison."

"Copy that. And Sico—watch your back. One of the synths called you by name."

Sico's eyes narrowed.

They were no longer just after Talbot.

He raised his head, scanning the ruined interior of the prison. Commandos were reinforcing the hallway with overturned tables, riot shields, even sandbags from a demolished storeroom. Synth bodies littered the floor, some still sparking.

But the fight wasn't over.

Far from it.

"They're coming for both of us," Sico muttered.

Sarah didn't flinch. "Then let's give them hell."

They moved as one.

Sico barked into the squad net: "We hold the next line right here! No retreat! If they breach this door, they get Talbot!"

He glanced toward the reinforced cell door at the end of the hallway—thick steel, biometric locks, defense turrets built into the frame. Talbot was inside, likely still watching through the slot in silence, the same calm face waiting for a turn that would never come.

"We've got five Commandos up," Sarah said. "Two are wounded but still in the fight."

"Good," Sico replied. "Put two on either flank. I'll take the center. You stay here—coordinate. They come through this hallway, they die here."

Sarah nodded once, without argument. There was no ego between them in combat. Only trust.

Sico stepped forward and took position behind an overturned metal cabinet. The corridor beyond was a haze of smoke and flashing light, the sharp smell of scorched circuitry thick in the air.

Then—

Movement.

Synths, three this time, sprinting low and fast. These were advanced—Gen-3 infiltration models, better armor, smarter tactics.

But not smart enough.

Sico squeezed the trigger—two shots, two synths down. The third dove behind a support beam and fired a burst that clipped the cabinet, sending sparks flying.

The Commandos responded in kind, lighting the corridor in a rain of laser fire.

Sarah leaned out and picked off the last synth with a clean shot to the core. It slumped forward, sizzling.

For a moment—just a moment—silence returned.

Then the next wave stepped into the breach.

Four coursers.

This time, they moved together—a pack.

Sico felt the hairs on his neck stand up.

"They're coordinating," Sarah said. "That's not a random push."

"No," Sico replied, raising his rifle. "That's an execution squad."

The coursers charged.

What followed was a storm.

Blades against guns. Plasma blasts that cracked stone. Explosions that shook the walls so hard they cracked. One of the Commandos was gutted in seconds. Another lost his arm in the blast from a pulse grenade but still kept firing with the other.

Sico found himself locked in brutal melee with one of the coursers, their bodies slamming into the wall. The synth grabbed his throat, lifting him off the ground. Sico slammed the butt of his rifle into the synth's head, again, again—until it cracked. Then he pulled his knife and drove it into the power core.

It screamed—a high-pitched electronic wail—then went limp.

Sarah was battling her own enemy, shotgun discarded, now using a sidearm and raw fury. She ducked beneath a blade swipe and fired into the courser's chest three times, then kicked it backward into the hallway, where a Commando finished the job.

When the last of them fell, the corridor was a ruin. Smoke hung low, and bodies—both synthetic and human—were scattered across broken concrete.

But the prison still stood.

And Talbot remained locked away.

Sico leaned against the wall, panting, bleeding from a cut over his ribs.

Sarah collapsed beside him, resting her head on the wall.

"We alive?" she asked.

"For now."

She coughed out a breath. "We need to patch up. Re-arm."

"I know," Sico said. "But not yet."

He stood again, shaky but focused.

"They're not done. And neither are we."

Far above, in the Institute, Shaun was watching.

His expression unreadable, eyes locked on a flickering holoscreen showing combat footage from a courser's destroyed eye.

High above the Commonwealth, the sterile white chamber buzzed with the cold breath of the Institute's systems. Glass and light surrounded Shaun like a throne room of circuitry, glowing panels reflecting off his pale skin. He stood still, arms clasped behind his back, as the last moments of the courser's perspective fed into the central holotable—until the visual cut to static, burned out by its own destruction.

"Four coursers," Shaun muttered, his voice barely a whisper. "Fortified chokepoints. Advanced field response. He's improvising."

The screen blinked and collapsed into darkness.

"Talbot remains in their custody. Again," he said.

Behind him, Justin Ayo stood with a data tablet in one hand, tight-lipped and impatient. "The infiltration teams never made it to the inner perimeter," he said stiffly. "And the first strike was only meant to gauge their response. Not engage a full-scale counteroffensive."

Shaun turned slowly.

His expression was controlled, but his voice carried a crackling tension.

"I did not authorize a 'gauge.' I gave an order."

Ayo stiffened further. "Understood."

"Then understand this," Shaun said. "He's a threat. Not just to our Institute, but to every foundation we've laid underground for the past century. He's becoming a symbol. I will not allow another Maxson or Lee to rise outside our walls."

He stepped forward, eyes hard.

"Send another wave. Full deployment. Thirty synths. Fifteen coursers. This time, I want them surrounding Sanctuary from every vector—north, west, and through the riverbed trail. Break them. Kill anyone who protects Talbot. Bring me his body if you have to."

Ayo hesitated only a breath, then nodded.

"Yes, Director."

Shaun turned back to the glass, looking down into the Commonwealth as if it were a board of chess pieces—one move away from checkmate.

⸻

Meanwhile, back in Sanctuary, the air still burned with ozone.

Sico stood just outside the prison, dragging a fresh clip into his rifle. His arm was bloodied, wrapped in a torn sleeve, and his lungs felt raw from the smoke, but his eyes were alive. Focused. Alive.

He pulled his communicator and keyed in a private frequency.

"Robert. I need you."

There was a brief burst of static, then a voice answered, low and solid. "At your back, sir. Where?"

"Prison perimeter. Institute breached the north corridor already. We held, but barely. Courser unit was heavy. We lost two Commandos. Talbot's still locked down, but I need every blade we've got on this side of the compound."

"Copy that. I'm pulling First and Second Response teams off civic defense and rerouting them now. Give us fifteen minutes—we'll hit the west access wall and move in from behind the hydroponics yard."

"Make it ten," Sico said, eyes scanning the rooftop lines.

"Understood."

The line cut.

Sico switched frequencies.

"Preston—what's your status?"

There was a crackle, then the sound of gunfire in the background.

Preston's voice came in low and tight.

"We're still up—but it's getting worse."

"How bad?"

"Two watchtowers down," he said grimly. "Northwest and east. Both hit by sustained fire—plasma bursts, I think. Exploded from inside out. We lost the gunners."

Sico clenched his jaw. "Those towers were anchoring the suppressors."

"I know. Each had a .50-cal nest locking down the synths in the midline. Now they're punching deeper. We've improvised with laser arcs, but it's not the same. We're stretched."

"Can you hold?"

"For now. But if another wave hits before we rotate, we'll be fighting in the streets."

Sico closed his eyes for half a second. His fingers dug into the comm.

"Reinforcements are coming. Robert's pulling the reserve Commandos to the prison side, but I'll get him to split a unit—reinforce the wall gap with suppressors. Pull Bravo squad off reserve and reassign them to the northwest breach. We can't lose that gate."

"You got it."

"And Preston—if they breach, fall back to Rally Point Six. But I want every meter of ground to cost them blood and scrap."

Preston's voice hardened. "Then they're going bankrupt."

⸻

The minutes bled on like war drums.

Robert arrived with his Commandos just as another skirmish flared at the edge of the prison yard—half a dozen synths attempting to crawl over the ruins of a collapsed shed to flank the eastern wall.

He didn't wait for orders.

The Commandos moved in silent unison, rifles raised, plasma rounds sparking against synth plating before they could even get two steps onto the gravel. One exploded mid-stride, another's limbs locked and seized in place before falling.

Sico met Robert at the junction of two barricades, their boots clanking on metal sheets hastily welded into a choke point.

"Prison line is holding," Sico said quickly. "But the Institute isn't stopping. We need to prepare for another full push."

"I brought fifty more," Robert replied. "Twenty will stay here and hold the corridors. The rest—I'll break into two strike teams and rotate them between the gate and the east watch lines."

Sico nodded. "Good. Talbot hasn't moved. But we need eyes inside, just in case they try remote override."

"I've already placed a shield jammer near his cell door. If they try to ping the lock externally, it'll fry their uplink."

"Perfect."

Robert hesitated, then asked quietly: "How long do you think we can keep this up?"

Sico didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he looked out across the prison yard—blackened, burning in places. The sky above was red with firelight and smoke. And far off, just past the hills, he could hear it again.

Robert didn't blink at the sound of the engines whining in the distance—but Sico saw his jaw tighten, ever so slightly. The air between them vibrated with tension, the kind that only comes when both men knew the enemy wasn't retreating. They were regrouping. Repositioning.

Resurging.

"Robert," Sico said, stepping slightly aside, his voice low but urgent. "You've got command of the prison. Sarah's already inside locking the secondary doors and triaging the wounded. Talbot isn't moving, and I want to keep it that way."

Robert's brow furrowed, already sensing what Sico was about to say. "Where are you going?"

Sico pulled his rifle in tight against his shoulder and looked toward the northern wall—toward the smoke trails curling up from where the watchtowers used to be. The horizon beyond was shifting again. More synth silhouettes were forming. Another wave. Bigger.

He looked back at Robert.

"To the barracks," he said plainly. "We've got two hundred soldiers still in the holdout line. Mostly reserve militia, green but willing. I'm pulling them up. All of them."

"That's your last reserve," Robert said, voice even, but heavy.

"I know."

"You send them to the wall, you've got no fallback."

"We won't need one if the wall falls."

Robert gave a brief nod. No argument. Just acceptance. That was what made him invaluable.

"How long do you need?"

"Fifteen minutes," Sico said. "Have a Commando open the southern munitions corridor. I'll cycle through with whoever's left at the armory. If you get hit before we're back…"

"We won't break," Robert interrupted.

Sico allowed a breath to pass through his clenched jaw.

"Hold them here, Robert. If the Institute gets Talbot, this whole place burns. Not just Sanctuary. The Republic. Everything."

"I know."

Their hands clasped briefly, forearms tight, a soldier's bond passed without a word. Then Sico turned and took off at a dead sprint, boots pounding over gravel and busted concrete. He vaulted over debris, ducked a low-hanging wire, and veered toward the broken avenue that ran behind the infirmary—shortcut to the south barracks.

The sounds of battle still echoed across the settlement. Rifle cracks. The hiss of laser fire. But there was something else beneath it now—deeper. He could hear the heavier footsteps again. The coursers were regrouping. And from the east? A new sound.

Something bigger.

Something worse.

But he didn't stop.

He burst into the southern barracks just as the last perimeter alarm buzzed red across the interior command table. A dozen soldiers stood frozen around it—young, mostly, mid-twenties, maybe a few teens who'd lied about their age. Scavenged gear. Mismatched armor.

But their eyes lit up when they saw him.

"S-Sir?"

"Listen up," Sico barked, voice steel. "This is no longer reserve. This is frontline. We're pulling north—right now. The main gate's holding by inches, and the next wave's coming in full force. If we don't reinforce, we lose the wall."

One soldier raised his hand like they were in a classroom. "Sir—what's our number?"

Sico looked him dead in the eye.

"You're the difference between freedom and a synth-dominated future. That's your number."

They stared.

And then they moved.

Within seconds, helmets were grabbed. Clips were loaded. Rifles slammed home into harnesses. One soldier passed out stimpaks like they were candy. Another handed off frag grenades, fumbling only once.

Sico pulled his sidearm and gave it a quick once-over.

Then he slammed his fist down on the wall-mounted control panel by the blast door. "Move out!" he roared. And like a rolling tide, two hundred boots began to march.

________________________________________________

• 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:-