584. Institute Attack PT.2
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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.
The air stung like fire.
Sanctuary's skyline was no longer a horizon but a living, burning wall of smoke and flame. The trees that once dotted the north slope had long since been torched, their skeletons glowing red against the dying light of dusk. The northern gate—once a proud arch of steel and scavenged plating—was now a scarred and smoking wreck of makeshift battlements. Its defenders clung to the parapets like wasps on a hive, bracing against the storm that refused to end.
And into that storm came Sico.
Two hundred soldiers followed at his back, their boots pounding the dirt in a rolling thunder, rifles clutched close, eyes flicking from the smoke clouds to the bodies that already littered the field. They emerged from the lower ridge path near the southern munitions corridor, flanking across the central avenue that cut straight through Sanctuary like a heartbeat. Civilians peeked out from hidden shelters—faces smudged with soot, hope flickering behind exhaustion.
Sico raised a hand as he approached the frontline perimeter, slowing the march into staggered columns.
Preston spotted them from atop the wrecked northwest watchtower—the platform now held together by rope and scavenged steel. His arm shot up in greeting.
"They're here!" he shouted to the line. "Reinforcements coming in from the south!"
A cheer rose from the beleaguered ranks—brief, brittle, but fierce.
The wall was barely standing.
Only one functional mounted gun remained after the two .50-cal nests had been destroyed. The synths had learned to target them with surgical precision—one EMP burst, one concussive strike, then swarm the gap. The courtyard below the wall had turned into a meat grinder of bodies and smoke, scorched steel and bones.
Coursers darted between cover, leading their synthetic units like pack wolves. Their coats were darker now—armored, heavier, faces masked behind adaptive visors. One of them—taller than the rest, with a glowing white stripe burned down the left side of his faceplate—stood at the center of the charge, directing volleys of plasma fire from a command relay on his wrist.
Sico saw him.
And the courser saw him back.
The glow of its visor flickered. A targeting uplink blinked to life, scanning Sico from head to boot in a second.
"Contact confirmed," the courser said in a modulated voice, audible across both lines. "Primary threat: Sico. Objective updated. Engage and eliminate."
The entire synth wave turned.
Their formation adjusted like a tide sensing a new current. Coursers gave sharp hand signals. Several Gen-3 synths reoriented their positions, heavier models dragging energy cannons into place on the flanks.
They weren't just attacking the wall now.
They were coming for him.
Sico felt it in his gut. He didn't hesitate.
He turned to the soldier nearest him—a broad-shouldered recruit named Tannen who'd once been a farmer before the Freemasons took him in.
"Form fireteam groups by ten. Push left and support the northeast barricade. I want suppressing fire laid down every five seconds. Use the damn rhythm we drilled."
Tannen nodded sharply. "Yes, sir!"
Sico grabbed the next. "You—get that machine gun rigged to the collapsed tower base. Dig in deep. We're anchoring the flank there."
"On it!"
He didn't need to shout. He didn't need to bark. The recruits moved with the discipline of veterans—driven not by fear, but by belief. Belief in the man who ran into fire first and stood when others flinched.
Sico moved like lightning toward the parapet, his rifle slung and sidearm out. He found Preston hunkered down beside the mounted plasma repeater, sweat dripping from his face, armor scorched along one side.
"You look like hell," Preston muttered as he handed him a fresh thermal mag.
"Missed you too," Sico said, jamming the mag into place. "Status?"
Preston gestured toward the lower trench line. "They're pushing us hard. Lost Keller and Jones on the last pass. MacCready's holding the mid-slope, but his Power Armor boys are down to two suits. One took a fusion core hit and exploded."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
Sico leaned up against the shattered ledge, scanning the field. The synths had pushed within eighty meters. No-man's land was now a kill box filled with broken bodies. Smoke grenades bloomed in clusters—green, red, even yellow. The coursers were trying to blind the defenders before the next push.
"Any word from Sarah?" Preston asked quietly.
"She's still holding the prison. Robert reinforced her with twenty more Commandos. But she's been dark for the last ten minutes."
Preston's mouth set in a tight line. "They're coming at us from both ends."
Sico nodded. "But we stop them here. Now."
He lifted the comm on his wrist, clicked over to the full battle frequency.
"This is Commander Sico to all Freemason units. Frontline reinforcement active. I repeat—active. You've got 200 new blades with you now. We hold this wall. We hold this street. No more ground. No more fear. Not one step back."
Across the line, radios clicked and buzzed.
And then the battle began again.
The synths surged forward—plasma bolts hissing through the air like rain on fire. One of the coursers leapt a barricade, energy blade crackling as he lunged for a soldier near the north gate. The man barely ducked, and Sico's rifle barked twice—one hit in the neck, the other to the power cell.
The courser's head snapped back—and then the whole thing detonated, its corpse engulfed in white-blue flame.
To Sico's right, MacCready barreled forward in the last black-and-red T-60, armor singed, helmet cracked but still standing. He carried a laser minigun now, the rotating barrels glowing red-hot as he cut a path through four Gen-2 synths trying to flank the wall.
"Sico!" MacCready's modulated voice rang out. "Glad to see you brought the party!"
Sico grinned through gritted teeth. "Glad to see you're still walking, you stubborn bastard."
The two converged by the midline as the synths pressed the front harder.
Bodies fell. Energy cracked. Mortars fired from inside Sanctuary proper—hidden teams on rooftops launching shells over the wall to land just behind the advancing coursers.
Preston's voice rang out again: "They're targeting the repeater! Redirect fire—redirect fire!"
Too late.
One of the coursers hurled an EMP grenade into the tower.
Sico saw it in slow motion.
It bounced once—then exploded.
The repeater shorted with a scream of energy, Preston was thrown backward, and the top of the tower shuddered.
Sico dove just in time, dragging Preston out as the upper platform collapsed behind them.
"Sico," Preston grunted, bleeding from his temple. "They're going for the gate—right now."
Sico looked past the dust.
And saw them.
The lead courser—still with that glowing white stripe—was charging, flanked by four heavies.
They reached the outer breach.
"NOW!" Sico roared.
From behind the last sandbag wall, two dozen of his reinforcements opened fire in unison—laser, bullet, grenade. One launched a Molotov that lit the sky in red. Another soldier threw a harpoon right into the gut of one synth, pinning it to the barricade like an insect.
Sico moved with them.
Sidearm out, teeth clenched, he ran into the center of the defense, yelling, "KEEP SHOOTING!"
The coursers breached the trench.
The hand-to-hand began.
Blades clashed with rifle stocks. Plasma bursts lit up armor. One courser knocked a soldier off his feet—and Sico was there, slamming his knife into the back of the synth's head, dragging it down.
The fire at the gate hadn't yet dimmed when the prison wall groaned under pressure.
South of the main battlefield, where the smoke rose lower but no less deadly, the fight for the Freemasons' soul was reaching its own crescendo.
Sarah ducked just as a plasma bolt shattered the wall panel behind her, sending a spray of hot shrapnel across her armor. She winced, ignoring the sharp sting biting into her ribs. "Status?" she barked into the wrist comm, ducking behind a battered supply crate that had become her command post.
"Three down, two critical, holding east stairwell," came the reply—Albert's voice, winded but full of grit. "They're pushing harder. Bastards are trying to split us."
"Let them try," Sarah muttered. "I'll hold the core. You hold the edge. Talbot doesn't leave this compound breathing air."
She could barely hear her own voice above the chaos—Commando rifles barked in staccato rhythm, grenades thumped against walls, and the deeper bass of coursers striking with shock blades echoed through the crumbling halls. Every corridor in the prison had become a battlefield. Every door a breach point. Every inch of floor was paid for in blood.
But Sarah held.
And Albert?
Albert bled for it.
He stood at the broken entrance to the gymnasium, energy blade in one hand, a short-barrel scattergun in the other. Around him, Commandos moved in concert, plugging holes with sandbags, reinforcing exposed corners with flipped tables and debris. A trio of synths charged the central breach—and Albert let them get close.
Too close.
He waited until he could see the glow of their artificial eyes, then spun low and let the scattergun roar, catching one in the throat and another across the knees. The last tried to leap—but Albert's blade carved it out of the air in two precise strokes, leaving sparks and smoking limbs in its wake.
"Gymnasium clear—again!" he roared, and the men around him cheered.
A moment later, he limped toward the corridor connecting to Block A, his arm hanging limp from a glancing plasma shot. Sarah met him halfway, rifle slung, and handed him a stim.
"You look like hell," she said.
"You say that like it's new."
They shared a quick glance. Behind them, the hall shook again—an explosion, muffled but close. Talbot's sector.
They didn't wait for orders.
By the time they reached the corridor to the secure cell, the ceiling tiles had collapsed, and a courser stood in the smoke, just meters from the sealed door. Its head snapped toward them, eyes glowing like coals.
Sarah didn't hesitate.
She ducked left while Albert moved right, and in that trained, practiced way they'd built through blood and repetition, they flanked as one. Sarah's sidearm lit the courser's chest with three precise bursts. Albert's blade took the leg clean off a beat later. The synth didn't get a scream off before he jammed his boot into its chest and fired point-blank into its core.
Then silence.
Smoke drifted toward the ruined ceiling.
Sarah looked up at the cell.
Still sealed.
Still green.
Talbot stood behind the reinforced glass, expression unreadable. Not smug. Not scared. Just… watching. Always watching.
"I don't trust him," Albert muttered, spitting blood.
"You're not supposed to," Sarah replied.
Then her comm crackled to life—Sico's voice, low, worn, but steady.
"Status. Prison."
Sarah keyed her mic without breaking stride. "Still ours."
A pause.
Then his voice, full of iron: "Hold it."
She didn't say "yes." She didn't say "copy." She didn't need to. She simply turned toward the hall and began reloading again.
Back at the northern gate, the battle had become a roar of chaos so thick it swallowed even memory. Smoke choked the air in pulsing clouds. Sparks flew like fireflies from ruptured power cores. Screams of wounded soldiers, distorted by helmet comms and ringing eardrums, mixed with the mechanical howls of synths detonating mid-charge.
Sico ducked beneath the swinging arc of a courser's plasma blade, feeling the heat of it sear past his face. He rolled hard to the side, raised his revolver, and pulled the trigger twice—once into its chest, once through the processor socket just behind its right eye.
The courser collapsed like a puppet cut from its strings.
He was drenched in sweat, his armor scorched, his ribs bruised from three close encounters. Preston was only a few meters away, braced behind a buckling barricade with a squad of defenders pouring suppressing fire down the ridge. MacCready, in the only remaining Power Armor suit, had taken up position at the base of the trench and was laying down waves of cover fire with a belt-fed energy repeater hooked directly into his armor's chest core.
But it wasn't enough.
Not anymore.
The Institute's attack had grown more surgical with each wave. Their synths moved with almost predatory intelligence now—ducking cover, flanking hard, targeting medics first. The coursers had become the spearhead, not just shock troops but battlefield tacticians embedded in the middle of each unit. And now they were pushing into the trenches themselves, dragging the fight into the blood and dirt.
A heavy plasma burst exploded to Sico's left, turning a young soldier into a mess of sizzling armor and smoke.
Another cry from the eastern ridge—"We're flanked! Left ridge—They're climbing the scaffolding!"
Sico spun. The Institute had sent a second coursing unit behind the trench, slipping through the ruins of a collapsed food depot. The Freemasons there were overwhelmed, outnumbered five to one.
His gut tightened.
They were about to be surrounded.
And then—through the ash, the fire, and the tearing noise of war—came a new sound.
Boots.
Lots of them.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
And shouting—not mechanical. Not synthesized.
Voices.
"Hold your fire!"
"Freemason banner up front!"
Preston's head jerked up first. Then Sico.
From the southern ridge—barely visible through the swirling smoke—came a line of movement. Dozens of shadows began to take shape, cresting the hill with weapons drawn. Flags hoisted. Makeshift armor glinting in the last light of the setting sun.
A force.
An army.
Reinforcements.
"Sweet fucking hell," MacCready muttered. "That's…"
Sico's voice caught in his throat.
Settlers. Militia. Even old Minutemen banners. All converging. All flying Freemason colors—patchwork reds stitched onto old uniforms, some nothing more than a stripe on the sleeve.
And at the front—a familiar figure.
Ana Delcroix, war-leader of the South Lynnstone garrison, rifle slung and steel helmet blackened with soot. Behind her, three lines of hardened defenders, the same people who once fled across the Commonwealth looking for something that wasn't a cage.
And now they were here to fight for it.
"For Sanctuary!" Ana's voice cracked like a whip through the battlefield.
A storm of gunfire followed.
The flank of synths climbing the scaffolding was torn apart first—cut down in overlapping arcs of fire from coordinated militiamen using laser rifles mounted on crates and rooftops. The coursers trying to breach the food depot turned just in time to be swallowed by a line of grenades that blew them end over end into the dirt.
Sico didn't hesitate.
"Push forward!" he screamed into his mic. "All units—advance with the reinforcements! Break their middle!"
The wall came alive.
Freemason soldiers who had spent hours defending a crumbling trench line now surged forward, rallied by the thunder of new boots hitting the field. Preston led his squad up the central lane, reclaiming two meters of ground in seconds. MacCready barreled through the left flank with the reinforcements in tow, smashing synths into slag under the weight of sheer momentum.
Sico jumped the barricade and rejoined the frontline, side by side with Ana, both of them shoulder to shoulder as they pressed forward.
"I didn't think you'd come," he said, reloading mid-run.
Ana barked a grim laugh. "You taught us better than that."
A courser tried to intercept—Ana dropped him with a burst to the gut, and Sico finished it with a knee to the face and a knife through the eye socket.
"I owe you one," he said.
"You owe me whiskey," she replied.
They kept moving.
The Institute line cracked.
Hard.
The synths faltered first, disoriented by the sudden collapse of their flanking units. Their AI systems were fast, but not fast enough to reprogram for a collapse in pressure and momentum. The coursers attempted to regroup—but were met by mortar shells launched from new positions hastily set up behind the reinforcements.
And just like that… the tide turned.
Within fifteen minutes, the outer trench was reclaimed.
Within thirty, the wall itself was no longer under direct fire.
The battlefield began to quiet—not to peace, not to calm—but to exhaustion.
Charred synth parts smoked in piles. The sky turned a deeper shade of ash. And the defenders, bloodied and breathless, leaned into one another not with celebration, but with sheer survival.
Sico stood atop the remnants of the forward barricade and scanned the field. Dozens of bodies. Both sides. Smoke trailing like ribbons toward the stars.
But the gate still stood.
And Sanctuary still breathed.
He lowered his rifle slowly and turned toward Ana.
"You just saved the Republic."
She smiled thinly. "No. We just bought it a little more time."
Sico looked down at the blood on his hands. Not his own.
She was right.
This wasn't the end.
The battle at Sanctuary was over, but its echoes lingered like the aftershocks of an earthquake, tremors still rippling through the sterile halls of the Institute's command center.
Inside the Operations Hub, the glass floor cast pale blue reflections onto Shaun's features, giving his already pale complexion the hue of moonlight. The air was tense, too quiet. The walls still hummed with energy, but the command holotables—moments ago alive with data, battle feeds, biosign readings—were now dark. The only thing alive in the room was the sting of failure.
Shaun stood motionless at the head of the table, staring into the blank space where Talbot's retrieval operation had once played out. There was no movement, no flicker of life. The last image—Sico standing at the scorched barricade, framed in firelight, defiant even in exhaustion—had been seared into Shaun's mind.
Failure.
A quiet, clinical voice broke the stillness. "Sir," Justin Ayo said, stepping carefully into the chamber, datapad in hand. "Final telemetry reports are in. Sixty-four percent of deployed synths destroyed. Fourteen coursers presumed KIA. Six have returned, three in critical condition. All surviving assets are en route to containment and recovery bays."
Shaun didn't respond.
Ayo shifted his stance slightly. "Talbot remains in Freemason custody. All vectors to Sanctuary have been severed."
Still no response.
Then, without turning, Shaun spoke. "Order a full retreat."
Ayo blinked. "Sir?"
Shaun slowly pivoted his head, just enough for Ayo to see the sharp gleam in his eye. "I said retreat, Justin. Issue the recall code. Every surviving synth, every courser still functional. Get them home. Now."
Ayo didn't argue. "Understood."
He stepped to the nearest control console, fingers tapping in rapid succession. The command lines blinked to life, scrolling across the main hub feed:
CODE: WHITE SIGNAL
PRIORITY RECALL — LIVE UNITS
DESIGNATION: SANC OPS FAILURE
EXECUTE VECTOR RETREAT
A moment later, the encrypted transmission was cast out like a final, bitter breath.
Ayo straightened. "Retreat code is live. Units disengaging. Institute air retrieval drones are en route to the fallback zones. We'll have full confirmation in twenty minutes."
Shaun finally moved, pacing slowly toward the observation window. The Commonwealth stretched below them like a sleeping beast—peaceful only from this height, from the safety of illusion. His hand rested on the smooth metal rim of the glass as if the world might feel different if touched.
"They were waiting for us," he said softly.
Ayo frowned. "Sir?"
"Not just defending. Waiting. Prepared. Coordinated." Shaun turned. "Sico didn't just hold the gate. He rallied the entire frontier."
Ayo folded his arms, his voice flat. "He got lucky. If the Lynnstone garrison hadn't arrived—"
"But they did," Shaun cut him off. "And do you know what that means?"
Silence.
"It means the Freemasons are no longer just a fringe republic clinging to pre-war ideals. They're becoming a symbol. A banner. One that people are willing to die under."
Ayo didn't speak, but his jaw clenched.
Shaun continued. "Talbot was never just a prisoner. He was bait. But they didn't break from fear. They didn't fragment. They unified."
He stepped back from the window, his tone hardening.
"This wasn't a tactical failure, Ayo. It was ideological. And now the Commonwealth has proof that we can bleed."
Ayo shifted. "So… what's our next move?"
Shaun turned slowly, his eyes sharper than glass. "We wait. We adapt. We observe."
He moved to the command console, entering a sequence that brought up a 3D projection of Sanctuary. It showed the wall, the prison compound, and the surrounding territories in high-resolution wireframe. The projection marked Sico in red, moving between zones like a spark across a fuse.
"I want eyes on them. Drones, infiltration scouts, remote uplinks through compromised settlements. If there's a radio in that Republic that isn't locked down, I want it feeding us whispers."
"Already mobilizing recon," Ayo confirmed.
"Good. And Talbot… Let them think he's safe. Let them celebrate. Let them believe they've won."
Ayo tilted his head. "And when they let their guard down?"
Shaun's eyes narrowed, voice soft but venomous. "Then we strike where it hurts. Not with synths. Not with brute force."
He tapped the display where Sico's red figure moved.
"We strike with truth. With betrayal. With doubt."
Ayo raised a brow. "Psychological warfare."
"We don't just fight their bodies anymore," Shaun murmured. "We fight their faith."
He turned from the console, heading for the elevator that would take him deeper into the facility.
"Begin preparing the Phase Two operations. Clandestine. Strategic. I want someone close to Sico. Someone they trust. We break their Republic from within."
"And if that fails?" Ayo asked.
Shaun paused at the door.
"Then we wipe them off the map."
Meanwhile, in the Recovery Bay, Institute Sublevel Six
Courser Zeta-23 limped into the med-chamber, one leg dragging behind him, his armor fused at the hip from a direct fusion blast. The med-techs approached with barely disguised horror at his state—half of his helmet had been caved in, revealing the gleam of synthetic bone beneath charred polymer skin.
He dropped to one knee and handed the senior med-tech a data crystal.
"Mission… incomplete," he rasped.
From behind the containment wall, three Gen-3 synths stood in silence. Each had plasma scoring across their torsos and exposed wiring at the joints. Only one had both arms still attached.
They didn't speak.
They couldn't.
What was left of them wasn't designed for reflection.
But even in that silence, something hung in the air.
They hadn't just lost.
They had been beaten.
Not by superior firepower.
Not by better technology.
By will.
By people.
By belief.
Back in the Command Chamber
Ayo returned after transmitting the retreat logs to internal archives. Shaun stood before a new console, this one showing the Freemason insignia recently intercepted from their last radio burst—a hastily patched-together broadcast declaring their survival and the defense of Sanctuary.
Sico's voice came through, cracked but clear:
"We held. Not because of walls. Not because of weapons. But because we chose not to kneel. To all of you listening—we are not afraid. And we are not done."
The signal ended.
Shaun stared at the screen then whispered, to no one in particular. "We'll see about that."
________________________________________________
• 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:-