ANOMALY RECORD TERMINAL
FIELD REPORT // FI-108
REPORT CLASS // ANOMALY RECORD
RECORD
//
REC-002
TYPE
//
Anomaly Record
CLASS
//
UNCLASSIFIED ANOMALY
WHERE
//
Forest
ANOMALY RECORD DATA:
The smell hit first.
Not rot—Fallout had taught everyone the difference years ago. This was older. Damp concrete, rusted pipes, and the stale sweetness of mold growing somewhere beneath the floor.
Detective Mara Vance crouched beside the collapsed restroom tiles, flashlight tracing the sinkhole. Three blue teddy bears stared back at her from the edge like silent witnesses. Each wore a tiny military cap stitched with the faded insignia of the pre-war Vault-Tec daycare program.
“Creepy,” muttered Briggs behind her, hand hovering near his holstered pipe revolver.
Mara ignored him. The placement was deliberate.
One bear pointed toward the broken bars in the wall. Another faced the toilet paper dispenser. The third sat half-sunken into the dirt below, directly above the skull.
She climbed down carefully.
The skeleton wasn’t random debris. The wrist bones were still chained to a snapped utility ladder buried beneath the rubble. Nearby sat a rusted lunchbox containing a holotape wrapped in children’s drawings.
Mara wiped grime from the tape label.
MR. TIBBS PLAYTIME SONGS — PROPERTY OF SUNRISE MEADOWS SHELTER
Her stomach tightened. Sunrise Meadows had been one of Appalachia’s emergency child shelters before the bombs. It officially reported zero survivors.
Briggs looked over the edge. “You think someone hid down there?”
“No,” Mara said quietly, clicking the holotape into her Pip-Boy.
Static crackled. Then children laughing.
A woman’s voice followed, trembling.
“If anyone finds this… the overseer locked the maintenance staff below after the food riots started. The children kept leaving these bears near the vents so we’d know they were alive upstairs…”
The tape distorted. Metal banging echoed in the recording.
Then screaming.
Mara slowly turned her light toward the broken bars. Behind them stretched a narrow service tunnel disappearing into darkness. Tiny blue paw prints, painted decades ago, still marked the concrete every few feet.
Not decoration.
A trail.
And somewhere deep in the tunnel, something metallic scraped against stone.
SUBMISSION DETAILS
ACCESS PLATFORM: PLAYSTATION
SIGNAL ORIGIN: VAULT-TEC BROADCAST NETWORK
LOCATION DETAIL: Bathroom… Earl’s Mine
ANOMALY DESIGNATION: BGD: Quantum Trio
ARCHIVE CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED ANOMALY