Steel Waste

Veronica wasn't the only one struggling with Christine leaving, Darian and Susan Royce were also feeling the aftereffects. They didn't get it as bad as Veronica due to the rumours of them being lovers, but as they were Christine's parents, many considered them responsible for Christine's "wrong" lifestyle.

Zachary and Verna tried their best to comfort them, by their daughters disappearance had clearly taken a toll on them. Afton didn't see them much anymore, but when he did he would always notice their previous happy attitudes had changed into more subdued ones.​​

His training continued, learning as much as possible and spending a great amount of time within the firing range in preparing for the looming conflict. He followed through on his promise and occasionally trained Miles and Melissa, the two were improving steadily, but not at the rate either would like.

One day everyone in the facility was alerted that the Elder would be giving a speech through the intercom system to let them know of the situation, and how they'd succeed regardless of the odds. It was obvious this was only to maintain morale as people was starting to get very tense and anxious from having the NCR constantly at their doorstep.

Afton saw this as an opportunity however, this'd mean that the Elder would be restrained to the intercom room for some time, potentially allowing him to find out what the fuck they were even doing here for.

He made his way to the underground half an hour before the speech was to be given, it was mostly empty aside from a few Scribes milling about to accomplish basic tasks. It was relatively easy to sneak by them as well, they weren't paying much attention to their surroundings and instead focussing on their work, that primarily being to repair the facility.

The other defences here were the turrets and robots, but as he was already a registered member of the Brotherhood, they didn't bother him at all.

He quickly made his way through, trying to get to the large room that the Elder had only allowed Veronica inside. The reason for this? Probably because it held the answers to what Elijah was looking for.

Eventually he reached the heavy metal door, pressing a button on it which causes it to loudly slide open, revealing a large room with many computer mainframes visible. It looked relatively well maintained, apart from the few damaged bits here and there... It seemed that Veronica was tasked with repairing the place alone, as the Elder seemed to only trust her.

He walked over to the mainframe and bent down to access the terminal attached to it, it wasn't locked surprisingly, and he was presented with three options to proceed... Power grid options, details about somesort of initial trials, and... ARCHIMEDES Testing...

He attempted to access the latter option, but found it was password protected... He'd learned much since last he attempted to access a locked computer, but was nowhere near competent enough to hack something like this. Shaking his head, he checked the others and found that the facility was running at 98% efficiency, all power was being being kept within however and not being distributed anywhere else.

Afton backed away from the terminal a little discouraged, the only thing he'd found of interest is this "Archimedes" thing, if he had to guess it was probably the weapon Elijah wanted to utilise...

He stepped onto the metal walk way and got to the second floor, immediately noticing the large holographic map set in the middle of the room... He wasn't sure what it was for, or even where it was meant to be displaying, so he ignored it for now.

There were a few robots held in stasis at the side, but they weren't really anything important... Instead he turned to the lone terminal sat up there... Judging by the papers scattered everywhere, he assumed this was where Elder Elijah worked. And that'd mean this was his terminal.

He tried to access it but found that it was locked... Damn, how was he going to find something out now?... He glanced around the room but found nothing else of notice, eventually slumping into the chair sat in-front of the terminal. Had he come here for nothing?

...

As he was thinking of ways to crack the terminal open, he noticed something yellow poking out from under the terminal... He tried to pull it out but found he actually needed to lift the terminal to retrieve it.

Once he got a better look at it, he realised what it was... It was a sticky note, with a password on it...

Afton can't stop himself from facepalming, he'd thought the wise Elder and genius Elijah wouldn't do something so stupid as to write down your password... That was something only simpletons and old people did, though, the Elder did match the latter discription.

Quickly he accessed the terminal and entered the password, "Power-Of-Knowledge".

[Accepted!]

A number of entries appeared on the screen, but he immediately selected the one speaking about ARCHIMEDES...

AN ORBITAL WEAPON!?!? He mentally screamed, his eyed threatening to bulge out of his skull. The world had already been destroyed by a nuclear Armageddon, and yet this man wanted to utilise an FUCKING orbital laser to destroy his enemies.

Wow. Everything made a lot more sense now... The reason the Elder refused to go to Hoover Dam, the reason they were stuck in this facility, the reason he refused to tell anyone what the purpose of them being here was... If someone from the Brotherhood got captured and spilled the beans about what was here, the NCR would likely abandon the Dam and send their entire army to reclaim the place.

Shit... Afton didn't know what to do with this information, it was incredibly dangerous, and if it spread everyone in the Mojave... Now, everyone in America would converge on the facility to take it for themselves.