Nick Valentine — POV
Diamond City went into an uproar the moment the truth hit the streets.
Mayor McDonough—synth. And not just exposed. Drop Dead. as his corpse lynched by mobs at podium where Mcdonough usually send his speech. How irony.
That kind of revelation doesn't just knock over a house of cards—it sets the whole table on fire.
The elite started screaming about conspiracies and "outside agitators." The regular folks? Fear, anger, old grudges bubbling up fast. Diamond City Security didn't have the manpower or the spine to handle that kind of split, not when half the city didn't trust the other half anymore.
Lucky for everyone, someone decisive stepped in.
Iron Slone. Newly appointed Guard Commissioner. Former street enforcer, hard eyes, harder spine. First thing he did was buy two police-model power armor frames off Division mercs—painted in blue and white, "BOSTON POLICE" stenciled across the chest like it was good old 2077 again. Then he swallowed his pride and called the Minutemen.
Smart move.
With Minutemen patrols backing Diamond City Security and those power-armored cops stomping down the market, the riots cooled before they turned into massacres. Folks still yelled, still glared—but nobody pulled a trigger.
And hey—small miracles—I didn't get tossed out of the city for once. Ha.
Slone paid me a fair thousand caps for helping untangle the mess, no haggling. Professional courtesy, maybe. Or maybe he just knew better than to stiff a detective in a town already drowning in secrets.
Either way, once the dust settled, I pointed my feet toward the Castle.
The road through Boston was… quiet.
No raiders popping out of alleys. No Gunner checkpoints shaking me down. Just patrols—Minutemen in tricorns, Brotherhood knights stomping past like walking tanks, the occasional Doll unit moving crates or escorting caravans with unsettling precision.
Merchants were back on the road. Brahmin didn't flinch at every shadow.
"Well," I muttered to myself, "either things are finally getting better… or this is the calm before the kind of storm that ruins lives."
The Castle gates loomed ahead, open and busy.
Inside, it was controlled chaos. Minutemen everywhere—checking rifles, stacking ammo crates, running cables. Dolls moved among them like logistics incarnate, lifting boxes that would've crushed a normal man, slotting gear into place with machine-perfect efficiency.
I threaded my way through, hands in my coat pockets, careful not to get in anyone's way.
That's when I saw her.
Dark blue uniform. Old-school. NYPD.
For a second, I thought my memory banks had glitched.
Sarah stood near the command table, one-armed now, left side gone clean at the shoulder. An eyepatch covered one eye, the other sharp as ever. The jacket fit her like it belonged there—like she'd worn it long before the world ended.
I stopped walking without meaning to.
"Now that's a nostalgic sight," I said, finally finding my voice. "So you're from New York, huh? Could've fooled me—with the ASEAN look and all."
She smirked, the corner of her mouth ticking up. "Ha. And here I thought I was blending in. So, Nick—what brings you to my very busy castle?"
I shrugged. "I'd say I'm here to buy you a drink, but you look like you're running a war. Diamond City's new guard commissioner sent me. Payment delivery."
She blinked, then nodded. "Iron Slone. Didn't expect you. Thanks."
Then her expression shifted—just a little.
"Oh," she added, reaching into a crate beside her, "I've got something for you too."
I froze. "You don't have—"
She placed them in my hands before I could finish.
Nine holotapes.
My breath hitched.
I didn't need to read the labels.
Eddie Winter.
My fingers tightened around the plastic, old ghosts stirring in circuits that never quite forget.
"Thought that pre-War mobster might have some ties to you," Sarah said quietly.
For once, I didn't have a smart remark ready.
"Yeah," I said after a moment, voice low. "My existence… it's built on the original Nick's memories. His mistakes. His regrets. His losses."
I looked down at the tapes, feeling heavier than I should've.
"Guess it's time I finished that story."
I met her eye again.
"Thank you, Sarah."
Sarah's voice cut through the command room with that familiar, no-nonsense edge.
"I already know where Winter holed up," she said, tapping the holotapes once with a finger. "Andrew Station. The surface camp was raider-occupied, but the Minutemen cleared that out yesterday. The subway tunnels beneath it, though…" She shook her head. "Preston won't send people down there. Too tight, too dark, too many angles to die from."
Nick exhaled slowly. "I can handle it solo."
Sarah turned on him immediately. "Nonsense." Her tone left no room for debate. "Raiders, gangs, ghouls—every scumbag down there has to be dealt with sooner or later. You don't do this alone."
She raised her voice without looking away.
"MacCready!"
A groan came from the couch near the far wall. A cap shifted. Then a head popped up.
"Woah—what?" MacCready yawned, rubbing his eyes. "Is it morning already? Or is this one of those 'surprise firefight' wake-ups?"
Sarah crossed her remaining arm. "Door-knocking operation. Subterranean. Personal closure involved."
MacCready sat up a little straighter. "Ah. The serious kind."
She continued, measured and deliberate. "Eddie Winter turned ghoul before the bombs fell. Means he's had two centuries to dig in, set traps, make friends with worse things than raiders. You'll escort Nick to the target."
Nick raised a brow. "Escort?"
Sarah didn't blink. "Supervision," she corrected. "Protection. And restraint."
MacCready smirked. "For which one of us?"
Sarah finally allowed herself the faintest smile. "Yes."
She went on, voice colder now. "DEFY team will accompany you. They handle tunnel security. No collateral, no theatrics. This is Nick's mission. You keep him alive and make sure nothing interferes."
MacCready swung his legs off the couch and grabbed his rifle. "Great. I was getting bored anyway."
Nick glanced between them, then down at the holotapes again. Eddie Winter. The last loose end of a life that wasn't fully his.
"…Appreciate it," he said quietly.
Sarah met his gaze. "This isn't charity, Nick. This is closure. Finish it properly."
MacCready clapped Nick on the shoulder as they headed for the door. "Don't worry, Valentine. We'll knock politely. If they don't answer…"
He chambered a round with a familiar click.
"…we knock harder."
Andrew Station, Sublevels
The air down there tasted like rust, mold, and old regrets.
Every subway tunnel in Boston had its own personality. This one felt like a throat—narrow, damp, and waiting to swallow you if you slipped. My flashlight beam cut through drifting dust as we moved single-file along the cracked platform edge, the rails half-submerged in stagnant water that reflected our shapes like warped ghosts.
DEFY moved first.
They didn't creep the way humans did. No hesitation, no nervous shuffling. Just quiet, deliberate steps—AN-94 at point, posture loose but lethal, optics scanning angles I wouldn't have thought to check. AK-12 followed, rifle up, humming softly like she was walking into a rehearsal instead of a kill zone. AK-15 brought up the rear, massive frame blocking the tunnel behind us like a closing door.
MacCready stayed close to me, rifle tucked in tight.
"Gotta say, Nick," he muttered, "I've been in some ugly holes. This one's competing for worst date location."
"Eddie always did have a sense of humor," I replied. "Liked places where people didn't come looking."
AN-94 raised a fist.
We froze.
Up ahead, the tunnel widened into a maintenance junction—old service doors hanging crooked, graffiti layered over graffiti, and the unmistakable glow of cooking fires. Raider voices echoed, careless and loud.
"…told you, boss ain't dead. Ghoul like that? Bastard's immortal."
"Yeah, well, he ain't immortal if the turrets chew him up."
That settled it. Eddie was home.
AN-94 signed two fingers left, one right.
AK-12 tilted her head. "Door-knocking, then?"
AN-94 didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
The first shot came from her rifle—suppressed, sharp. A raider at the fire jerked once and folded, skull caving like wet cardboard. The second died before his body hit the floor, AK-12 stitching a neat line across his chest.
Then hell broke loose.
"CONTACT—!"
Gunfire exploded down the tunnel. Raiders poured out of side rooms, pipe rifles barking, muzzle flashes strobing the darkness. DEFY advanced into the fire, not away from it—AK-15 shouldering through a hail of rounds like they were insults instead of bullets, her return fire punching bodies off their feet.
I ducked behind a pillar, revolver up. Old instincts kicked in—aim, breathe, fire. A raider lunged around the corner, eyes wide behind a scrap-metal mask. I put two rounds through his chest. He dropped, surprised more than angry.
MacCready laughed once, sharp and humorless. "Missed me!" He leaned out and took a raider clean off his feet with a well-placed shot. "Nick, you sure this guy didn't expect company?"
"Oh, he expected it," I said, reloading. "Just not this kind."
AK-12 slid across the floor, coming up on one knee, her rifle spitting controlled bursts. "They're flanking through the maintenance crawl!"
Before I could react, AK-15 moved—physically blocking the passage, bracing herself in the narrow space. Raiders fired point-blank. The bullets sparked and flattened against her armor.
Her reply was brutal.
The corridor filled with thunder as she fired, the recoil shaking the tunnel. When the smoke cleared, nothing on the other side was moving.
I felt something twist in my chest then. Not fear. Not awe.
Relief.
Because for the first time in a long while, I wasn't the toughest thing in the room—and that meant I could focus on why I was here.
We pushed deeper, past bodies and spent casings, until we reached the reinforced door at the end of the line. Eddie's bunker. Steel-plated, wired with traps I recognized from police files that were older than my face.
AN-94 glanced back at me. "This is your threshold."
I stepped forward, hand resting on the cold metal.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "It is."
<3rd POV>
Nick had pieced together all ten Eddie Winter holotapes, sifting through the digital ghosts until he cracked the ghoul's favorite passcode for his private bunker. True to Sarah's instructions, MacCready and Team Defy held the perimeter, guns trained on the wasteland shadows to keep any raiders from crashing Nick's personal reckoning.
The bunker door hissed open like a guilty confession. Inside, it was a time capsule—pristine as a pre-war bedroom, with a gleaming kitchenette and a functional radio crooning some faded jazz standard. Good old days, bottled and buried.
And there he was: Eddie Winter in the flesh. Well, what was left of it—a raddled ghoul, leathery and unkillable, defying the odds that had iced every other schmuck from the old world.
Eddie squinted from his armchair, a half-smoked cigar clamped in his jagged teeth. "Who the hell are you, and how'd you get in here? Wait... the holotapes. Ha! Somebody actually cracked the code. That's rich."
He leaned forward, eyes gleaming with wasteland cunning. "I don't know why you'd go to all that trouble, pal. This room ain't no treasure vault—just me, an old ghoul kicking around. Take your shiny ass somewhere else."
Nick's trench coat whispered as he drew his .44 from the chest holster, the revolver's weight a cold comfort in his synthetic grip. "I'm not going anywhere till I get what I came for."
Eddie chuckled, low and gravelly. "Yeah? What's that? And who are you, anyway? Surface world gone all robot uprising now?"
"It's Nick Valentine."
Eddie threw his head back, laughing like a hyena in heat. "Hahaha! That's a laugh, tin-man. Sorry, pal—you ain't Valentine. You're just some walking scrapheap with a face."
"You killed my fiancée. Jennifer Lance."
Eddie's mirth faded to a smirk. "Your fiancée? You mean Valentine's fiancée. Shame what happened to her, sure. But why the hell do you care about a broad whacked over two centuries ago? You barge into my home, playing hard-boiled gumshoe? Christ, look at you—you ain't even alive."
Nick leveled the .44, the barrel's eye staring Eddie down. "Then I guess I'm in good company."
The room went tomb-silent, save for the radio's mournful sax. Eddie's cigar dropped to the carpet, embers winking out like dying stars. He didn't flinch—ghouls never do. Instead, he uncoiled from the chair like a rattler, his pre-war pistol whipping out from under a cushion faster than a cheater's alibi.
The first shot cracked the air, Eddie's bullet gouging Nick's shoulder plating, sparks flying like bad luck. Nick fired back, his .44 booming—a thunderclap in the bunker. The round clipped Eddie's ear, peeling away a flap of irradiated flesh that sloughed to the floor with a wet smack.
"You shoot like a Clanker with a grudge!" Eddie snarled, diving behind the kitchen counter. Bullets chewed the cabinets, splintering Formica into confetti. Nick rolled left, trench coat flapping, as another shot whined past his fedora.
"Grudge? This ain't business, Winter. This is personal." Nick pumped two rounds into the counter—boom-boom—smelling cordite and regret. Eddie grunted, blood (or whatever ghouls called it) oozing from a thigh hit. But the bastard was up, feral eyes locking on Nick over the Formica tombstone.
Eddie lunged, pistol forgotten in a berserker rush—ghoul strength turning him into a freight train of claws and teeth. He slammed into Nick, synthetic frame meeting undead fury. They crashed through the kitchenette table, dishes shattering like broken promises. Eddie's fingers raked Nick's faceplate, gouging sparks and broken ceremic like skin. "I'll rip that pretty mug off, robie!"
Nick's arm blurred—his servos whining—as he drove an uppercut into Eddie's jaw. Bone cracked, but the ghoul just laughed, spittle flecking Nick's coat. They grappled, rolling across the pre-war rug, Eddie's knee pinning Nick's gun arm. Claws tore at the trench coat, exposing whirring gears beneath.
"You're a glitch in the matrix, Valentine!" Eddie hissed, teeth snapping inches from Nick's optic. "A dead man's echo chasing ghost!"
Nick's free hand found Eddie's wrist, twisting with machine precision—snap. The ghoul howled, pistol clattering free. But Eddie was relentless, headbutting Nick's chassis, denting metal. Pain simulators flared in Nick's circuits—ghost pain from a human soul long gone.
Enough. Nick bucked, flipping the ghoul onto his back. He straddled Eddie's chest, .44 pressed cold against the ghoul's forehead like a judge's gavel. Eddie's good eye widened, the fight draining out as the barrel kissed his skull.
"Jennifer... she screamed your name when you put the bullet in her," Nick growled, voice gravel over steel. "Screamed it till the end. You hear that in your dreams, Winter? Or do ghouls dream at all?"
Eddie's laugh bubbled up, bloody and defiant. "Dreams? Boy, I am the FUCKING nightmare. Pull it, tin-can. Make it quick."
Nick's finger tightened. The .44 spoke one final judgment—boom. Eddie's head jerked back, a crater blooming where his face used to be. Gray matter painted the wall like abstract art. The ghoul twitched once, then stilled—finally, truly dead.
Nick holstered the revolver, standing amid the wreckage. The radio crooned on: "It had to be you..." He straightened his fedora, trench coat hanging in tatters.
"Case closed."
he holstered the gun, turned off the radio, and walked out—leaving Eddie Winter alone in his perfect little tomb.