The Scrapyard didn't smell like death anymore. It smelled like opportunity.
Julian slowed his hover-bike as he crested the final dune of the Rust Waste. Below him lay the sprawling shantytown where he had been born, raised, and where he had first learned to hold a wrench.
For decades, this place had been the Empire's trash can. A mountain range of discarded metal, toxic sludge, and broken dreams.
Now, under the clear blue sky, it looked different.
Smoke rose from chimneys—not the black smoke of tire fires, but the white steam of filtered generators. Wind turbines, built from scavenged helicopter blades, spun lazily on the ridges. And the massive piles of junk were being... sorted.
"Organized chaos," Julian muttered, adjusting his goggles.
He descended into the main thoroughfare.
The people here didn't look like the refugees in the Capital. They wore grease-stained coveralls and modified welding masks. They carried tools like weapons.
They stopped their work as Julian rode past. They stared at the black iron arm resting on his handlebar.
"Is that him?" a scavenger whispered.
"The Breaker," another nodded. "He came back."
Julian kept his eyes forward. He didn't want a parade. He just wanted a roof.
The Old Garage
He pulled up to a familiar structure on the edge of Sector 0.
VANE & SONS REPAIR.
The sign was faded, riddled with bullet holes from the gang wars of ten years ago. The rolling metal door was dented. The windows were boarded up with license plates.
It was exactly how he left it.
Julian killed the engine. The silence of the desert washed over him, punctuated only by the distant clang-clang of a hammer.
He walked to the door. He reached for the handle with his flesh hand, then stopped. He used his Anchor Arm.
He didn't pull. He just touched the metal.
Open.
He manipulated the gravity of the door. The heavy steel sheet slid upward with a groan, weightless for a second before slamming into the catch at the top.
The inside was dark. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light coming through the bullet holes.
Julian walked in. He smelled old oil, ozone, and memory.
There was the workbench where Marcus had designed his first drone.
There was the chair where his father used to sit and smoke while reading schematics.
There was the stain on the floor where Julian had spilled hydraulic fluid the day he got his first nanite arm.
"Home sweet hellhole," Julian whispered.
The Squatter
CLANK.
A sound came from the back room.
Julian froze. He stepped silently over a pile of gears. His Anchor Arm hummed low, dampening the sound of his footsteps.
He rounded the corner.
A kid was hunching over a workbench. Maybe twelve years old. Wild hair, wearing a vest made of seatbelts.
The kid was trying to fix a Sanitation Droid—one of the old Imperial models. The droid was sparking, its motivator unit whining.
"You're crossing the polarity," Julian said.
The kid jumped, dropping his soldering iron. He spun around, grabbing a heavy pipe from the table.
"Get out!" the kid yelled, voice cracking. "This is my shop! I claimed it!"
Julian raised his hands. Or, he tried to. His left arm was slow, heavy.
"Easy," Julian said. "I'm not the police."
"You're a drifter," the kid spat, eyeing the dusty coat. "We don't like drifters. Go scavenge your own sector."
Julian looked at the droid.
"The motivator is from a newer model," Julian pointed. "The voltage is too high for that chassis. You're going to blow the capacitor."
The kid looked at the droid, then back at Julian.
"It's all I have," the kid muttered. "Found it in the dunes. If I fix it, I can sell it to the water farmers."
Julian walked past the kid. He ignored the pipe.
He picked up a coil of copper wire from the floor.
"You need a resistor," Julian said. "To step down the current."
He handed the wire to the kid.
"Twist it. Six loops. That creates enough resistance to match the voltage."
The kid hesitated. Then, slowly, he lowered the pipe. He took the wire. He twisted it. He jammed it into the droid's chest panel.
BEEP-BOOP.
The droid's eye lit up blue. The whining stopped. It chirped happily.
The kid's jaw dropped.
"How did you know that?"
"I built that droid," Julian said. "Or, at least, I fixed the prototype."
He leaned against the wall.
"I'm Julian."
The kid's eyes went wide. He looked at the black iron arm. The coat. The face.
"Julian... Vane?"
"In the flesh," Julian tapped his chest. "Mostly."
The Burden of Delicate Things
"I'm Rivet," the kid said, wiping grease on his pants. "I... I've been sleeping here. Since the storms."
"It's fine," Julian said. "The rent is cheap."
He looked at the workbench. It was messy. Tools scattered everywhere.
"Can you hand me that screwdriver?" Julian asked, pointing to a small precision driver.
Rivet handed it to him.
Julian took it with his left hand.
CRACK.
The handle of the screwdriver shattered instantly.
Julian sighed, dropping the pieces.
"Damn it."
"Your arm," Rivet stared. "It's the Anchor, right? The story says you held the world."
"The story leaves out the part where I can't hold a spoon without crushing it," Julian rubbed his wrist. "It has a default setting of 'Planetary Mass'. I have to focus just to keep it from pulling the nails out of the walls."
"Can't you turn it off?"
"No," Julian said. "It's not a machine. It's a rock. A very heavy rock."
He looked at his hand.
"I can stop an earthquake," Julian said softly. "But I can't fix a watch. I can't hold a soldering iron."
He looked at Rivet.
"I came back here to work. To fix things. But I think I'm too heavy for this job now."
The New Project
Rivet picked up the broken screwdriver. He looked at it, then at Julian.
"My dad was a miner," Rivet said. "He lost his legs in a cave-in. He built himself a cart to get around. He said, 'If you can't walk, you roll.'"
Rivet grabbed a piece of chalk. He drew a diagram on the workbench.
"If your arm is too heavy," Rivet said. "You don't need to make it lighter. You need better tools."
He drew a handle. But it wasn't plastic. It was reinforced steel.
"We build tools that can handle the grip," Rivet said. "Titan-Grade tools. Wrenches made of rebar. Hammers made of engine blocks."
Julian looked at the drawing.
He smiled.
"You got any rebar?" Julian asked.
"Out back," Rivet grinned. "Tons of it."
The Scrapyard Renaissance
They spent the afternoon working.
Julian didn't do the fine work. He did the heavy lifting. He used his gravity well to move engine blocks, to tear down rusted walls, to straighten bent girders.
Rivet did the wiring. The soldering. The fine-tuning.
By sunset, the shop was transformed. The boards were off the windows. The generator was humming.
And on the workbench sat a new set of tools. Massive, ugly, industrial tools forged from scrap metal, designed to withstand the grip of the Anchor.
Julian picked up a massive wrench—basically a solid bar of iron with a jaw welded to it.
He gripped it. The metal groaned but didn't break.
"It works," Julian said.
He walked to the door.
The sun was setting over the Scrapyard. The lights of the town were flickering on.
"You staying?" Rivet asked, tinkering with the droid.
"Yeah," Julian said. "I think I am."
He looked at the sign above the door: VANE & SONS.
He picked up a paint can.
He painted over the "& SONS".
He wrote in clumsy, bold letters:
VANE & RIVET.
"Partner," Julian called out.
Rivet ran to the door. He saw the sign. He beamed.
"We open at dawn," Julian said. "And Rivet?"
"Yeah?"
"No discounts for Warlords."
The Night Shift
That night, Julian sat on the roof of the shop.
The desert was cool. The stars were bright.
He took out the Black Iron Mask—the gift from the Silent King.
He set it on the roof beside him.
"You keep the basement," Julian whispered to the mask. "I'll keep the garage."
His arm hummed. A low, contented vibration.
For the first time since he left the Spire, the weight didn't feel like a burden. It felt like an anchor.
And an anchor was exactly what you needed when you were finally home.