Part 3: God of smiths and fire/the mutant and the hammer/revolver music: It had been months since Henry was buried in stone and iron. Time moved strangely in prison—days piling on like sandstorms over bones, leaving nothing but silence and dust. The letter from Kyle crawled across the wastes slower than rust itself before it reached Senator Ryson Ruth of the NCR. Ruth knew Henry well. They had bled in the same dirt for two tours. He didn’t hesitate—he sent the appeal to the courts. With his name, and the names of others who knew Henry the appeal was accepted. But nothing in the Mojave is ever clean. Henry lay on the cot, staring at cracks in the ceiling that looked like maps of forgotten wars, when a knock rattled the bars. A guard appeared, faceless in the light, carrying a stack of files. He slid them in. “Consider this a favor from Ruth.” Henry flipped them open. A name burned at him from the front page: Bobby Baklava. He’d stepped into Henry’s boots after Henry broke—rage carved him out of the ranks. But Bobby wasn’t just a replacement. He was a rot spreading through NCR territory: drugs, corpses, investigators swallowed whole. He should’ve been caged long ago, but he’d slipped the bars. Now he hid in Freeside, where the NCR’s hands were tied by gangs, thugs, and powers too tangled to cut clean. Another knock broke Henry’s thoughts. MPs at the bars. “Your lucky day. You’re out.” The vertibird that carried him away didn’t reek of mustard gas like the one that had delivered him to the CF. Its hull was clean, metal catching the light of a dying sun as it cut through the air. When it landed at Mojave Outpost, the reception split in two: cheers from green enlisted men who saw him as legend, and cold stares from officers and special forces who remembered his actions. Henry met their eyes and said nothing. He knew their anger. He deserved it. The courtroom’s shadow still clung to him like chains. But apology was for later. He had one last task to complete. Freeside rose before him, a carcass city of neon bones and teeth gnashing in poverty’s grin. Its streets were oil-slick with desperation, voices shouting over one another like feral dogs. Henry knew the files hadn’t been mercy. They were payment. A bargain. His freedom written in someone else’s blood. Nothing on the pages ordered a kill, but every word screamed it. So he would answer. He stripped himself of his usual armor and weapons, walking the streets in plain rags. To the city, he was no one—just another mutant, shuffling through the ruins. Bobby wasn’t hard to find. Like rot, he had his own stench. He sat alone in a bar, broad back hunched toward the door, a drink sweating on the table. Henry stepped in, voice steady. “Bobby Baklava.” The mutant turned, mouth curling into a reply. “Yeah, and who the fuc—” The hammer spoke first. Henry’s .44 leapt from its holster like it had been waiting all these months. Books Henry had read long ago crawled out of memory in that instant, stories older than the Mojave, older than bullets. The birth of Athena haunted him. And now he saw himself as Hephaestus—the revolver his blacksmith’s hammer, the man before him Zeus. The bullet struck, tearing, splitting, pouring. Bobby’s mind cracked open, blood spilling. But no goddess was born from that wound. Only silence. Only death. Bobby fell heavy to the ground, the thud echoing like a war drum. Henry stood over him and placed two more rounds into the skull, as if demanding a god to rise from the ruin. None came. The brain glistened, exposed, steaming in the dim barlight—yet it birthed no war, no wisdom. Only a corpse cooling in sawdust. Henry slipped back into the night, his boots whispering against Freeside’s dirt. Past the gates, he paused. The wastes stretched before him—blackened earth, the horizon scarred by forgotten bombs. “If there is a god of war,” he thought, smoke curling from his lips, “then he has already walked these roads.” The cigarette’s ember lit his face for a moment, then faded. He turned back toward the outpost, vanishing into the Mojave night.