Chapter 15 part 2: The Will of the Wasteland

Jack sent me out above to the destroyed courtyard to clean out some rubble that was blocking the entry way for prime. Something told me to do it, simply because I know he just wanted me out for a few minutes. I tossed a few blocks of C-4 here and there and just sat up above for a minute. I thought about everything I reclaimed in way of memories when that damn creature said those faithful words. While the knowledge I had was invaluable, I still wish I had been allowed to remain oblivious. Before the war, I had a family, a wife and daughter. I had saved up for years to get them into a vault in the area. And then after the bombs dropped, Poseidon contacted us and told us we were to observe the vaults' progress in the immediate area. My family was in vault 87. They were some of the last to be exposed to FEV and turned into the first generation of east coast super mutants. Now I wondered if I killed my family, my baby girl, my loving wife casually in combat. Hell, my little girl could have been the behemoth Steven and I fought to the southwest of Jury Street Metro over a little teddy bear trophy in a cage we had been challenged to retrieve. I sighed loudly and scrambled back down under the floor and gave a walked over to Jack.

"Jack, explosives are ready when you are."

He seemed to have cooled down a bit, "Thanks Charon, should we get a radio confirmation from the elder before we warm up the robot?"

"Probably, and we need to inform him of Casdin as well."

"Already done. I contacted him of that matter almost minutes after I got you hooked up to a machine to watch your vitals. He has Casdin stationed at Stockholm's old post and has ordered him to stay put until ordered otherwise. Soldiers that see him away from his post are ordered to shoot on site and all I.D. Scanners are set to send silent alarms to the elder directly. Most importantly, your ace in the hole turrets, I hacked them using a frequency module you had on you. Using the same tech we have at the I.D. Scanners, they are ordered to turn him into mincemeat if they catch his pass-card on their chassis. Whatever he has planned he better not be planning on going into the base head on to do it."

"Nicely done." I ran over to the radio and adjusted the frequency. "Charon to Lyons, can you hear me?"

"Your coming through loud and clear Charon. I'm assuming you want a green light for the iron giant."

"Yes sir! Do we have a go?"

"You have a green light, reports are coming in that vertibirds are beginning to build up at the ridge just north of Megaton. It appears they're building up for a shock and awe campaign. Activate Prime and enjoy the irony."

"That I can do. Charon out." I ran back to Jack and told him the news. He smiled and handed me the detonator for the explosives. I slammed down the trigger and and felt rubble fly away from the bay opening and watched dust pour in from the freshly made gaps. As the dust settled a little bit Jack started the robot up and we heard sirens I haven't heard in a long time. They were vault sirens, similar to the ones going off when we were chased out from vault 101 after killing the overseer. I remember that night well, we had received a radio signal from the vault asking us to offer assistance and return to the vault. When we got inside, we found a few dead officers and no weapons. Rebellion had been ignited in Steven's escape to the wasteland in search of James. His best friend Amata was leading the rebellion, and her father was the overseer who refused them their freedom. She asked us to help her, she sent the message. We were obligated to help her, and at the time we were still the 10 black chips so we had the firepower to kill everyone against them, not JUST the overseer. She asked us to deal with him peacefully, but he was hostile to us first, so instead, we killed him. Upon return, she was livid. She scrounged up both sides of the vault and chased us out under heavier firepower than we expected. Steven took a magnum round to the arm, permanently crippling him. Jericho was nearly killed under 10mm fire, Paladin Cross's armor was nearly unrepairable; all because Steven had given us the order to fall back and under no circumstances kill anyone if we didn't have to. I guess his resolve weathered down over the years with that bullet in his arm though. Years later, using a helluva lot of gear scavenged from the Mojave, we opened that door and razed the placed to the ground. It was nicknamed by NCR troops the 'Bitter Springs of the East'. But the thing was, we didn't have a misdirection. Me, Boone, and Steven along with 20 Paladins marched in there with the full intent of killing every single resident in there; men, women, children if we had to. However, after we had picked the vault clean, he ordered us out. We went outside the door, and he closed himself in with just an old knife. We waited out in that antechamber for hours, maybe even a solid day. We heard the vault door opening after a long silence and when it opened he fell from being leaned against it like a rag doll covered in blood. We picked him up and saw it wasn't his blood. He didn't have the knife anymore, all he had was a book, and all he was saying was Biblical verses. Some of the Paladins suggested going in there and seeing what had happened, but I decided no. I didn't know everything of his past but, I did know he had a emotional attachment to group of cannibals living in Meresti metro station and he used to be a bit off his rocker when we first met. Him covered in blood might mean a lot of things that would question his leadership and sanity. We took him back to megaton, cleaned him up and he told us to wait for the flesh to burn itself out so there wouldn't be the stench when we started digging. He didn't say anything else for days other than bible verses. Me and a small recon group entered the vault a day or two later and we didn't even make it a quarter of the way in the vault, the place was splattered with blood and while we could not see any human remains, the stench engulfed us. It smelled of Brahmin crap covering week old bodies toasted by a flamer. My team who had power armor helmets on could smell it distinctly. When we ran back out we vomited in the antechamber we had been in when it happened, the smell was just THAT bad. We didn't even make it outside. A few weeks passed and with the Enclave breathing down our necks preparing to take megaton, we needed to get our new city up and running. According to informants, we had 1 week. Steven had recovered, and organized a team to go in to the vault to open up a large portion of the vault with explosives so we could begin work. I wasn't part of the original team simply because I didn't have the stomach for it. After being in there once with that terrible odor I had had my fill. Afterwards, everything went better than expected, the Enclave didn't make a move for many weeks. That in itself was a godsend, but the it really helped us carve all the amenities into the base; water, electricity, a solid defense system. After everything was done, I asked the soldiers who went with him in the initial rigging what was in the vault. They told me that he sent them around their thumbs to get to his elbow. They were not allowed to enter the overseer's office or the atrium at all. One slipped into a corridor adjacent to the atrium and it and the walls were soaked in red, found a old tooth, and told us it still smelled of corpses. All of a sudden I heard a faint yelling that snapped me out of my trip down memory lane, like a fisherman pulling in the line slowly bothering the fish; it was Jack yelling for me to jump onto the platform before it rose out of the lab ruins and trapped me down below. I leapt for the rising platform and missed by a hair. At this point I wasn't going to be able to leap on, so rather I began climbing one of the four iron girders that encased Prime and the rising platform. I climbed as fast as I could and scrambled on to the platform as it finished rising to the higher level. I took a breath for air and then I saw them. Enclave troops had surrounded the platform. The commander in his shiny Hellfire Armor and Heavy Incinerator, approached us and said,

"One move and you're firewood. Now you'll help us get the robot back online and you'll return to_ Did you hear that?" We heard it. It was a massive crunching and buckling sound. I had heard the sound once before; we were in the Pitt, and the building we were scavenging through began to cave in. I was in the basement and could hear the actual foundation begin to buckle under pressure. It was a trap set by someone and it separated us from Boone. The floor around us caved in, we had compromised the Citadel's architecture by accident. The floor split apart and swallowed up soldiers whole. A few seconds later, one of the walls collapsed due to no support.

We started up liberty prime, and when that iron leg lifted itself back up, the memories of that night hit me like a brick wall. Cold crisp winter air, gunfire roaring on both sides, dead bodies piling up every where you look, and here was this match made in heaven; a man, woman, and robot larger than most of the buildings around here, who simply wouldn't have any of it. Here were these three soldiers who would have marched off the end of the earth if it meant they were closer to Project Purity. The man for vengeance of his father, the woman for approval from her's, and the robot was there just to blow shit up and fight "communism". I struggled to keep up with them and when we made it to the purifier, I collapsed in the doorway leading to the purifier. Sarah and Steven gave me a few stimpaks and a little med-x to stave off the pain for awhile. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the view I had from the doorway as I got to see a vertibird or two get blown out of the sky, and I got to see the purifier start up. Now that was a beautiful sight. A paladin ran to me afterwards and dragged me to the rotunda. I saw my close friend lying unconscious in the rotunda from radiation sickness and Sarah lying of to the side. I quickly regained all my strength, got my ax, and struck the door. The window shattered like the stillness of water that had a grenade thrown in it, and I quickly pulled him to safety. I spent the next two weeks without sleep, without food, I simply got out of my house every morning went to Moriarty's and soaked my head in his still the whole day, every day. I was nearly in tears when they told me he had woken up.

Suddenly, I found myself being shot at by some raiders. I ducked for cover and we had the robot open fire, poor idiots didn't stand a chance. A few were firing good quality service rifles at the robot but even with good quality equipment they were doing squat. The robot turned to face them and then I guess the last thing they ever saw was a bright blue light. The robot started marching on it's way again after that and didn't stop until it was time to cross the river. A vertibird started taking potshots at the robot with it's own lasers from across the river. And then I heard it's infamous battle cry, and I am positive that it echoed throughout the wasteland that fateful morning.

"DEMOCRACY IS TRUTH! COMMUNISM IS DEATH!" And with that, his lasers turned white, and turned that heavily armored vertibird into a giant piece of scrap. I could see in Jack's eyes that between his modification working perfectly and that battle cry, he was ready to give them a fight worth putting down in the books. With virtually no other obstacles other than the occasion wild animal, we arrived outside the Enclave camp quickly.

We got the jump on them. We opened fire while we were still in Springvale, and their weaponry simply wasn't adapted for that long range combat. Once Liberty Prime continued marching forward, the bombarded us with everything they had; RPGs, Fat Mans, light machine guns, Gatling lasers, anything they had. Liberty Prime's white laser cut through them like butter though. When we finished we moved into the camp. All the tents were on fire or destroyed entirely, except one. We figured it was the radio tent, so we entered it hoping to stave off reinforcements. Instead I saw the scariest thing I could have seen in that tent. I saw his bleached vault suit, the color was drained from it in our struggle when I ran him into that canister of gases. I saw his old modified scythe glowing from it's plasma lined blade that had been used to suppress so many mutants. And then, I saw him, the man I worked under for years before the war. Here in this tent sat a 200 year old psychopath with the same pitch white hair he always had, having never aged a day, maybe even a minute.

"Well, well, this is quite a surprising turn of events. I never though I would get to see that huge piece of scrap run. Let alone run properly. So here we are again Charon, two hundred years after you flee my facility. How are the wife and child? Oh that's right... I almost forgot...the company we worked for turned them into SUPER MUTANTS!" He cackled like he had told an excellent joke. "And the best part? You helped make the virus that turned them into those abominations! HAHAHA! How's THAT for poetic justice." It was all I could do to not engage him in combat.

"Well if it isn't director Robert Lee...One of the sickest bastards to walk among the living, and unlike most of the living, you're determined not to die."

His chuckle smile turned into a snarl as if he really realized who he was really dealing with. He tightened his grip on that rusted scythe of his and I prepared for him to make a move. Instead he just stood up for a minute, and out of nowhere started slashing like a madman. His combat style hadn't changed; fast, sweeping, movements designed to snag you and toss you around. I knew how he would attack and I dodged accordingly, and countered with a swift kick to the back followed by a clockwise spin to dropkick him in the stomach. He was knocked back onto the floor. He grabbed his scythe and pressed a button on his staff and it turned into a stun baton, with a bright blue bolt of lightning encasing the entire thing.

I expected him to charge at me instead before he could, several cans dropped in from a hole in the tent. He picked one up and chuckled a little bit. I grabbed one of the cans myself, it was a flash-bang grenade. I tossed it away from myself and ducked for cover right as they exploded.

As my eyes began to readjust, I saw a figure fighting hand to hand with the Director. All I saw was a a blue figure and brown hair. My eyes finally fully adjusted and I saw Steven fighting back the director with his bare fists. I inched out from behind cover so I could see everything. I got out from behind cover right as Steven did a uppercut, cross, and then a solid punch right into Lee's ribs. He took the opportunity of knocking down Lee to knock him out and in a second he had him in the sleeper hold I had taught him when we younger.

Suddenly, Lee melted into a puddle and rematerialized outside his grip. He grabbed Steven by the throat and lifted him. What he failed to realize was that Steven was slipping on his ballistic fist in-between random staged flailing, and when he got it on he did something we know as the one inch punch and that was a sight to see. He hit him right in the stomach and sent him flying out of the tent. Steven ran over to me pumped a few stimpaks into my arm asked me,

"Why the hell didn't you ever tell me you knew this nutcase?"

"Because for 185 years, I didn't remember that I did. I was traumatized by what's down there, and I wiped my mind to forget everything. He reincarnated Gallows and got the device's disengage code. He's a sick son-of-a-bitch and he's a bigger threat than anything we ever faced."

"Don't worry, even if the ballistic fist to the chest didn't kill him, Prime will kill him. I saw that new white laser of his, very nice work."

"Then go over there and thank your son for what he did. He's a very bright child, and damn good with a weapon. I've been able to see this kid's talents, and there is absolutely nothing I could teach him. Whoever gave him that ranger combat armor trained him to the equivalent of a veteran ranger out west." He stood up for a minute and walked over to Jack. He leaned down to the poor boy, knocked unconscious by the grenades.

I heard him say to his son, "Congratulations son, you've officially over-shadowed the work of your old man. You brought back to life a symbol of everything we stand for around here, and you more than trashed the Enclave's intimidation value around here." I picked myself back up and then we heard a gigantic crash that shook the entire ridge. We looked at one another and ran outside. We saw the director had toppled Liberty Prime and was ripping into his machinery. We had to stop him but I didn't have any weaponry on hand other than my combat shotgun, the mysterious stranger's revolver, and the damn vial Gallows gave me. While the revolver and shotgun were effective weapons, they weren't going to be an smart tactical choice against him. I contemplated what could be in there for a minute and decided to risk it. I didn't know if it were poison or what, but I took a leap of faith in his insanity. He always did like a challenge and he wouldn't just kill me off. I jammed the vial's contents into my arm and things changed.

My muscles stiffened and my body turned into one of the demonic creatures we had encountered before, but rather, I remained in control. I thought about a weapon that would be useful against my opponent, and seconds later, my body had formed it. My blood ran cold and my skin turned black. I lost control of my functions, I could tell my body what to do and it would complete the overall task anyway it saw fit. It felt like I was a miniature version of myself inside this new body. I gave it the directive to kill Lee and I got a front seat show to the battle. And suddenly when he struck, I was thrust back into the driver seat. I materialized a longsword to counter his attacks with the scythe, and in seconds my body used the sword like I had been taught how to use one as a child. We fought like I imagine old people before the war used to fight. No guns, no explosions, just two men fighting it out with sharp objects.

I taunted him as we fought our timeless battle, "So Lee, how long has it been? Tell me, how important was I to your little plan?"

He scowled, "You were to be merely a pawn in the plan, and it's been two hundred years you slimy son-of-a-bitch!" the arm of the vault suit shredded to pieces as his arm turned into that of a deathclaw. He leapt at me, but I dodged out of the way. He appeared as if he had exhausted his power. I approached him slowly, and then I heard him chuckling and then a creature appeared behind me; one of his measly mutants armed with a combat knife. I looked at Lee who stood up triumphantly, gripped the knife at my throat and said to the mutant wielding it,

"Sorry about this doc." With that, a series of materialized metal spines coming out of my back like a porcupine tearing the creature to pieces. I regenerated my longsword and continued my duel with him. "So tell me, how did you escape? I cut the cables to the elevator and rigged it with explosives beforehand to cave in the shaft when it impacted. I even jumped down the shaft to make sure it was stable."

"The cybernetics lab had enough explosives to level the entire wasteland. I thought you would have remembered after what I did to the Pentagon, Arlington Library, and the Jefferson Memorial. You think I couldn't move a bit of debris out of my way?" I had gotten him to say the charged comment that Steven would race across a minefield, I knew he had done it once I got my memories back. I held Lee off for a minute and Steven ran up to him, leaping over my head with a nine-iron. He slammed it over Lee's head and said

"Laughter isn't the best medicine. Revenge is." He hit him again as he started to pick himself up and continued this for awhile until Lee grabbed the golf club with the deathclaw arm. He clenched his grip on the driver and broke it in half. He suddenly took an unexpected slash at my arm and the wound ran deep. Steven scrambled off, probably to call more reinforcements. My blood spilled all over Liberty Prime, the ground, everywhere. I fell to the ground and healed myself. I thought how much help a few extra soldiers would be to me at this moment, and suddenly I heard gears turning. Lee was deafened by his suspected victory but I could see it happening behind him; Liberty Prime was picking himself back up. The damages done to him were sealing up like my wound was; black threads like stitches pulled pieces of metal back together. This virus could do anything it needed to survive and would do anything it needed to. Lee changed his scythe into a spear and prepared to impale me when he saw the shadow, and even though he saw the shadow, he was too late. Liberty Prime slammed his fist down on the Director. He picked his fist back up and the Director picked himself up. He was stumbling around, all bloodied up. I think had I poked him he would have fallen over dead. But he just searched his pockets for something. He pulled out a syringe and stuck it in his thigh, took in a deep breath and said,

"This is merely the beginning of the hell I will wreak on this wasteland. What you have witnessed here is my strength at a quarter power. Next time, you won't be so lucky. Count your days, as one day, the Enclave, they will march over this country undefeated. And if I have to, I'll personally cut the throat of anyone who dares object. Consider this your first and final warning." With that he evaporated into the air, as if he never existed. Steven ran up to me and said

"Look, I just got in touch with Lyons, we've got a possibly serious problem. Nadine's burned boat just arrived at dock with a man navigating it. Guy claims to know us. The Enclave aren't going to make another move for now. We need to investigate the boat or we might regret it."

"What kind of damage could a boat do to the base?" I scoffed at the mere boat.

"It could do anything from poison the water, to release the strain of mutant virus that makes his little servants, hell the boat could be carrying a nuke for all we know! We need to check it out. Besides if it's Tobar running that boat, I want the pleasure of shoving a punga fruit down his throat."

"Ok I understand." Suddenly I felt my body relaxed, my skin returned to its normal color, and liberty prime returned to his normal metallic state, except the damage Lee had done and the damage Casdin had done to him in the lab had been repaired. The old robot looked as good as new. We accessed an emergency terminal on Prime's leg used to change directives in the field; changing his orders to hold Enclave reinforcements off from coming in. Afterwards we ran up to a higher point on the hills and entered through a old storm door built into the side of the ridge. I could tell that reopening this door prompted a lot of memories in Steven, but he had grown used to repressing things, even though he did it poorly.

He ran ahead to the console at the end of the stone chamber, and picked up a a detonator left on top of the console. He took a few steps back and clicked the detonator. The rubble all around it collapsed apart and he brushed off the big 101 on the door. He clenched his arm tightly as he pushed forward the lever to open the door. We heard the sirens, but now was not the time to bring up memories.

While we were waiting for the door to open up fully, Steven lit a cigarette, I said to him, "Damn. We haven't seen one another in a long time have we? I forgot you smoked."

"Bad habit Jericho had. It kinda stuck on me. I had given it up in prison, but the memories out here were just a little much, so I relapsed. It hasn't changed Charon, it's exactly how I left it. Other than Jack but he's basically just me when I was younger."

"Wait a second where's Jack?"

"Ran off when we were dealing with that maniac. Left a note saying he was heading into the city." Steven was annoyed by his son's rash decision, but he respected Jack for it. The door was finally fully open so we ran inside. We ran through the corridors as fast as we could, trying to get to Lyons before god knows what else did. And then, we were stopped by a shadowy wisp of a female. She blew us a kiss and then everything went purple and dark, big contrast from the bright gray of the vault. We looked around and saw our old friends sitting around and a younger version of ourselves sitting around the shadowy wisp. She slowly took form, and it was Amata. Steven looked to the point of tears and then lost it. He swiped the magnum from my holster and I saw him shoot our allies and Amata without remorse. They all disappeared, except her. She sat there and the bullet magically floated out of her heart and the other bullet out of his arm. The bullets formed a circle and then around that circle the vault collapsed around us we came to another image. We were at the purifier, and Steven's father, James, was inside the rotunda with Autumn. We watched James kill himself for the cause and Steven really started losing it, all the while the wisp still stood by us.

She whispered in his ear, "This is isn't the Steven I know, the Steven I know was a soldier; he would have ran in there, Fat Man armed and turned that fool into a pile of gore."

He whispered back, "Like I did to you Amata?" And then it clicked what happened in that vault. We never found Amata and attacked, but he clearly did find her, and did more than just attack. We were thrust forward to when he sealed that door, I watched him scour the vault for her, and when he found her, my god. He wouldn't stop. He just kept stabbing and punching. He cut her up into tiny little pieces and ate some of them. It was just so sickening. And then, he took the corpses, piled them up in the atrium, and just chopped every single one up. One after the other, there was no way to convince him to do anything else.

I suddenly realized what was going on. The gases from Vault 106 had been released into the airways of the real vault and we were being dragged down a road of our memories. I remembered how we escaped when we were trapped the first time, and it was going to be just as painful as before. I took the shotgun and the wisp ran to me, screaming,

"Why must you always insist on leaving?" I aimed the shotgun at Steven and fired. He disappeared as if he never was there, and now there was me. I aimed the gun at myself when I found myself back in the clean entrance hallway to the Bethesda Biological Research Facility. I looked at myself to find myself a normal human again. I hesitated on the trigger said a prayer and then spoke to the wisp.

"Goodbye my creation, but the real world is my home. All I have here are memories, I can't make anything for myself here." Suddenly the wisp took form of my wife and daughter, beckoning me to their side. I struggled to pull the trigger, and then he appeared in the hallway. He cut them down and I pulled the trigger. As I fell to the floor, I saw him walk up to my fading body, laughing and the last words I heard from him were,

"You aren't even safe here, so don't even bother." His cackling laugh thrust me back into the vault corridor.

I blinked my eyes open and saw Steven standing above me offering a hand up. We both prepared to continue walking down the corridor, and then we heard a terrifying loud animal-like scream. It came from the atrium. We ran and saw all the doors sealed, but we approached a window and suddenly one of the creatures leapt at the window. We looked further inside and saw there were 50 or more caged up in there. We accessed a nearby terminal and put the system on permanent lock-down. All the doors that were online to the network were now permanently locked, and just like that we had caged probably the biggest threat to the city or so we hoped. We got down into the lower levels, right on the border between the vault and the city and we encountered a darkened hallway covered with the same material the Director's mutants are composed of. I dropped a lead pipe to see if it reacted to noise and sure enough it reconstituted it standard form and charged us. Steven pulled out a small homemade flamer and torched the little critter. We finally made it into the city, bursting into Lyons' chambers. Lyons was glad to see me, but clearly annoyed that Steven was about to ignore him, leap over the guard rail, deal with the problem, and then disappear again under mysterious circumstances once again. Sure enough, he ignored him but rather ran down the stairwell. I quickly followed after him, apologizing to Lyons as I left the room. He just had that 'I've been through this so many times, just go.' look on his face. I had to leap over the stairwell to catch up to Steven before he went and did something rash. We ran up to the man on the boat and he walked out off the boat. He took off a bandana to show us his face and we were shocked at how much balls he had to come into our city after what he did to Steven. Here in our city stood Tobar the ferryman as if he had done the founder of it no harm. He wore his old outfit, that green coat, and that rusty key dangling around his neck; nothing had changed except these days he sported a double barrel shotgun instead of his old .44 magnum.

"Why hello gentlemen! It has been a very long time hasn't it?" He said every word with that immensely aggravating grin on his face. Steven leapt at him with a combat knife, but I held him back.

Steven was screaming at him, "Let me teach that sick little creep a lesson in etiquette! Come here Tobar, let me thank you for that little surgery! I've been waiting for you to come back!" He licked the damn blade madly.

Tobar chuckled at him, "I want the schematics for this place, in exchange the mutants aren't released and your city isn't nuked, AND you never see me again." Steven looked at him like he was joking. He smiled a real big smile, and said

"Ok Tobar, we'll do things your way. Let me go get them." He walked up to one of the turrets, opened a secret door on the base, and took out a briefcase. It had grown weathered over many years hidden away in something constantly exposed to the sea air. He tossed the briefcase at Tobar and then said angrily, "Now get out."

Tobar opened the case and took a quick glance at the schematics, and from what I saw, they looked like our original schematics. He sealed the briefcase and left without another word. I nearly went after him, but this time, Steven held me back and told me,

"Don't bother, all he just got were 50 schematics for the printing presses at Hubris comics building and plus, well just watch." I watched and right as Tobar's boat got out a good distance from the dock, a single shot rang out and the boat came to a stop. Seconds later, we were blinded by a bright light. After the blindness subsided, the boat was destroyed. I looked at Steven and he pointed to the stairwell, and there stood Boone with a new rifle made from the C-finder. Boone calmly walked down the stair as if nothing big had happened, and he told us how everything had fallen into place.

When the building in the Pitt caved in on us years ago, Boone was cut off from the rest of us via a slab of floor and when Boone tried to go around he spotted Casdin with a detonator. Of course, Casdin spotted him too and knocked him unconscious. He woke up with a couple of fiends carrying him west. Years passed and he finally made it back to the strip. There, Boone met up with an old contact for information on Casdin. Turns out, he had been a double agent for some time, all the way back to Adam's Air Force Base. Casdin rigged the missile terminal to fire the full salvo at the citadel no matter what Steven had chosen. Boone got a lift with some caravans back east. He made it back to base and went undercover. Casdin couldn't know he was on to his scheme, and the day finally came.

Jack swam back to dock with a Anti-Materiel Rifle on his back. Apparently, Jack was the first one to notice Boone and they put together Tobar's little goodbye present.

The two snipers took a bow and at that moment, a giant explosion shook the entire city and brought us all to our knees. We scaled the small rock ledge near the opening and saw what had happened. Megaton...was gone. Rubble was everywhere, pieces of metal the size of steel girders permanently embedded in the landscape. Steven tried to hold it in, but he couldn't. He collapsed to the ground, at a loss of emotions for his lost home. Jack stood in shock. Boone and I looked at one another for a minute, and he handed me a bottle of Absinthe and I handed him a Nuka-Cola Quantum, and we both opened them and downed them. We just stood there and basked in the rubble of the city of megaton.