Chapter Text
“...and then you took out the Sentinel in one giant fiery explosion of death and blood and gore!” Gaige made a vaguely-sounding explosion noise and rattled the table in front of her with her knees for an added special effect. Behind her Death Trap echoed the noise as best as it could, given that it didn't have a mouth and only seemed to be able to purr or beep.
“Sure,” Athena said, amused. As farfetched as their retelling of her story was, she had to admit that it was nice hearing someone else telling it for once. Three times had definitely been her limit.
“Cool story, bro,” Axton told her, grinning like a giddy little kid as he leaned back in his seat. “Sounds like one hell of a ride. Glad I wasn't a part of it, though.”
If only she had been so lucky. She had enjoyed the combat and the loot, of course, but the end results hadn't sat well with her at all - hence her telling Jack to stuff it, keep his money, and never contact her again. That day should have been a good one, she mused. But things were never simple.
There came a knock on the threshold, drawing Athena back to the present. Mordecai was standing there with a bottle of rakk ale dangling from his gloved hand.
“Yo, kids,” he slurred, nodding at Axton and Gaige. “Lilith’s back from Overlook and wants an explanation for the prisoner you brought in.”
Both Gaige and Axton reacted with equal amounts of eye-rolling and quiet groaning before they got up and began to follow after the sniper. They dragged their feet like two kids on their way to the principal’s office.
“Prisoner?” Athena echoed as she too stood up and began to follow them out the door. With nothing else to do around town, she figured it wouldn’t hurt if she tagged along.
“Yeah, Lilith sent us to pick up the Sheriff of Lynchwood yesterday,” Gaige explained as they made their way upstairs. “We tried to convince her to come with us, but she was definitely not down for that.”
Athena frowned. She knew Lilith was in the process of trying to gather all of the vault hunters she could find to help fight in this supposed "war" that was looming on the horizon. Wilhelm was dead, Claptrap as worthless as ever. The only female vault hunter Athena knew of off the top of her head was Nisha.
“This sheriff...you mean Nisha?” she hazzard a guess. The woman did radiate that western vibe. After what happened on Elpis, though, it was hard to believe that Lilith was desperate enough to ask her for help. Nisha was just as bad as Jack had been.
“Yeah,” Axton said. “She wasn't about to come with us alive, though, so we didn't really have any choice but to kill her.” He sent Athena a mildly apologetic look. “Kill or be killed – that kinda situation. I'd say I was sorry, but she was bein' a pain in the ass and talkin' about how she killed Brick's dog in front of him. That ain't cool.”
Gaige made a disgruntled noise. “She deserved it. Who kills puppies?”
“Mean people,” Axton mumbled.
“Mean people,” Gaige agreed solemnly.
Athena made no move to correct the duo. Nisha had been her comrade and saved her ass as many times as Athena had hers, but they had parted ways rather nastily.
“So who's being interrogated if it's not her?” she asked them as they stepped inside the meeting room.
Brick, Mordecai, and Lilith were already there and looking more irritated that they usually did. The cause of their aggravation was currently slouched in a chair in the middle of the room behind them.
Athena stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the man's face. Or, rather, the familiar mask he was currently wearing over his face. It wasn't strictly unusual to see a Handsome Jack mask out in the wild - at this point, Athena didn't doubt that you could buy one for Bloody Harvest. But she couldn't shake the sudden pit that had opened up in her stomach at the sight.
Lilith turned and glowered at Axton and Gaige. “Does this look like Nisha to you?” she demanded, gesturing to the man in the chair.
“Calm down, Lilith,” Axton said, holding his hands up in mock-surrender. “Nisha decided she'd rather wind up full of bullet holes than come with us alive. There was nothing we could do.”
“All right,” the siren said thinly, “but then who's this? And don't tell me a Handsome Jack body double. That much is obvious. Why didn't you off him instead of drag him all the way back here?”
"It ain't obvious? He clearly ain't a normal dude."
Athena grew closer and saw what the commando was getting at. The guy's hands were stained purple - strikingly similar to the Dahl soldiers on Elpis that had been abandoned and exposed to Eridium.
"We wounded the Sheriff," Gaige explained, "and she called him out as backup. Ax shot him in the face, blew a hole through the top of his skull..." She trailed off and gestured to the man. "As you can see, he recovered quite nicely."
Indeed, the only strange markings on the man's face was a purple swirl that drifted up from behind the mask and disappeared up into his hairline. Athena wanted to remove the mask, but a part of her was afraid of what she might find.
"Has he been like this the whole time?" she found herself asking. The man hadn’t moved an inch since she walked into the room. Not even a blink, though that may have just been the mask.
"Since Nisha died," Gaige replied, shrugging. "The second she conked out, he just stopped moving. It’s the only reason why we were able to drag him back here.”
Axton hummed in agreement. “My guess? That collar's got somethin' to do with it."
The gladiator turned her gaze onto the strange contraption clinging to the man's throat. Through the small transparent windows in the tubes, she could see a small amount of purple liquid - Eridium. It was nothing like she had ever seen, and the sight of it worried her. In her experience, humans and raw Eridium did not mix.
"Sorta looks like the thing Jack slapped on Lilith to get her to obey him," Mordecai pointed out, peering at the collar.
"That’s what I thought, too,” Gaige agreed. “Only a much older model and clearly a lot more dangerous, judging by how awful the skin around it looks. Gross."
"Let me see it," Lilith said, pushing the younger girl aside. She gently tugged the collar downwards, exposing as much skin as possible. The flesh around the ring was inflamed and glowing the brightest of all the infected portions of the man's body. Just looking at it made Athena's eyes hurt and her stomach churn.
"Goddamn," Lilith muttered. "Looks like the thing is literally attached to his flesh with needles."
She moved behind the man and gingerly tilted his head down so that she could better see the back of his neck. As she did so, the others tensed up and pointed their guns at the man just in case he decided to snap out of his coma.
"It's connected to his spine," Lilith confirmed, stepping away. Her face was twisted with irritation. "Man, at least with my collar, it had been the constant stream of excruciating pain that had kept me relatively obedient, not like, literal mind control."
"Can we remove it?" Athena asked.
"I don't know. We can try, but there's no guarantee he won't die from it." She shrugged. "We won't be getting any information out of him if he bites it, but we sure as hell aren't going to with him in this state. I say we give it a go."
"Has anyone tried giving him an order?" Mordecai asked suddenly. "Shouldn't we try that before potentially killing him?"
"He obeyed the Sheriff of Lynchwood down to the littlest detail, but wouldn't listen to Gaige or me," Axton reported. "I'm assuming he can only answer to her or Handsome Jack."
"Well, neither of them are alive anymore," Brick gritted out. "So I vote we rip the thing off him."
"That would definitely kill him," Mordecai said, shaking his head. He looked at the man and asked, "Hey amigo, tell us who you answer to."
To their surprise, the man replied in Handsome Jack's voice. "I answer only to Handsome Jack, the coolest and most handsome CEO of Hyperion and ruler of Pandora," he said methodically, like he was reading lines off a cue card, "and Nisha, the Sheriff of Lynchwood, the hottest and most lethal bandit killer this side of the galaxy."
After a beat in which they all just stared at the man, Gaige made a gagging noise while the other half of the room looked thoroughly unimpressed.
"Okay," Mordecai drawled, "next question: are we sure this guy isn't a robot that just looks like Jack?"
Athena snorted. "Jack wouldn't spend money on something like that when he could easily just enlist some fool to play the part," she said.
"Well, if this guy has any answers for us, we're not going to be getting them so long as he's got that thing around his neck," Lilith pointed out. "Let's get to work."
Any attempts at breaking the glass containing the Eridium were met with failure, mostly because downright shooting it or hacking away at it with blades was deemed too dangerous, even by their semi-professional hands. They found a hinge on the right side of the device, but it took them a while to find the crease on the left that would theoretically allow them to crack the thing open. Lilith and Athena broke their nails trying to pry it open, and Axton nearly stabbed the man in the neck trying to jimmy the thing open with his pocket knife.
"Shouldn't we call Dr. Zed?" Gaige asked worriedly after some time had passed.
"If I wasn't afraid he'd try to take the dude’s head off in the midst of trying to remove this thing, he'd already be here," Lilith said through her teeth. "If he starts going into cardiac arrest, I'll consider calling him. For now – oh, got it!"
The device hissed as it was split open and proceeded to dribble Eridium all over the man and the floor as it drained out of the needles. The man took a shuddering breath as the device was completely pulled from him. At once his body slumped in the chair, as if the Eridium was the only thing keeping him up.
"Thank you," he whimpered, slowly hunching over. “Oh, god, thank you...”
Something jabbed Athena between her ribs as realization slowly began to dawn on her. The man had scarcely said two words, yet that and his body language were enough to jostle something in her memory.
The man’s shaking hands came up to paw at the Handsome Jack mask stapled to his face. The shaking grew worse as he managed to get his nails underneath the strange material.
“Whoa, hold up, bro,” Axton blurted, moving to stop him. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that - "
The man tore the mask off, bolts and all, and hurled it to the ground at his feet with an anguished yell. Athena and the others gaped at his exposed face, at the jagged, familiar brand skating up and down his sallow cheekbones. The whites of his eyes, even the blind one, were stained a bright purple, to the point where they were basically glowing. Most startlingly, at least for Athena, was the fact that the area where the bolts had been embedded in his skull were healing rapidly, leaving no sign that there had ever been anything there.
“Timothy,” Athena gasped, too stunned to say anything else as her suspicions were confirmed.
The same could not be said for the room’s other occupants, who immediately slipped into defensive mode upon seeing Jack’s face beneath the mask. Gaige squealed as Axton drew his pistol. Mordecai fumbled for his blade as Brick cracked his knuckles and took several steps forward.
"Stop, stop! That's not who you think it is!" Athena exclaimed, moving to stand between Timothy and the others. "He's just a body double. The first one Jack made - a literal body double."
“Your point?” Brick snapped.
Lilith raised her hand, signaling everyone to stand down. "The one who assisted you in finding the Vault on Elpis, right?"
Athena nodded. "If there's one person who didn't deserve any of the garbage that came from working for Jack, it's him."
With a violent jerk, Timothy vomited what looked like small portions of liquid Eridium into his lap. The puncture areas around his neck were oozing the stuff too, like his body was trying vehemently to reject it in any way possible. Even the tears streaming down his cheeks were glistening with the mineral.
"Timothy," Athena said, trying to catch the kid's gaze. She was hesitant to touch him. "Timothy, are you all right?"
"'Thena?" Timothy groaned, his head lolling with pain. “It hurts.”
"I'm here. What hurts?"
"Everything," he answered through gritted teeth. He was becoming more and more tense with each passing second. "My skin's burning - "
"Move over," Lilith ordered, pushing Athena aside. "Maybe I can absorb some of the Eridium from him."
She placed her hands around Timothy's oozing neck, only to recoil violently when the kid let out a pained scream and arched away from her grasp. His eyes flashed purple as he thrashed in his seat.
Lilith whirled on the others, wide-eyed and speechless. They could only shrug helplessly in response, Athena included. She knew next to nothing about the mineral, other than what it could do to someone if they were exposed to it for an extended period of time. Abruptly she remembered the Lost Legion - the mutated soldiers they had to fight through in order to get to the Vault - and felt her blood turn to ice. His tinted skin, glowing eyes - it all made sense now.
“Jack wanted to turn him into a drone,” she blurted, eyes widening with a mixture of disgust and terror. “Just like the Lost Legion soldiers.”
“Those freaky infected dudes you mentioned?” Axton asked, arching a brow in surprise. “Why the hell would Jack want to do that?”
“They were powerful. I mean, half of them could sprout wings and fly if they ascended. They were...” Athena trailed off for a second as a quick shudder jolted through her spine. “They were also determined. They were given a cause and they stuck with it to the end - no questions asked.”
The commando folded his arms across his broad chest. “Okay, so Jack got the obedient part down, but this kid sure as hell wasn't flappin' any wings around Lynchwood,” he said, frowning. “Shit, the more he came at us, the more sluggish he got - like he was losing energy with each bullet we put in him or somethin’.”
“And we put a lot of bullets in him,” Gaige added.
“Maybe the process didn't work out quite as Jack planned?” Mordecai offered. “How did the soldiers mutate again?”
“They were exposed to the mineral for a long time,” Athena replied. “I'm sure Jack knew more about it and built that damn collar trying to replicate the process.”
Still, even if he did have explicit knowledge on the subject, mass-producing a robot army and experimenting on people with slag, a man made element, was a far cry from purposefully manipulating someone's body and blood into something remotely similar to the creatures roaming around Eleseer. There were bound to be issues, especially if Timothy was the first test subject.
“We should ask that alien thing the next time it shows up,” Mordecai suggested to Lilith. “Y'know, if it comes back.”
The siren rolled her eyes. “Oh, I'm sure it will,” she groused, apparently still bitter about not getting to execute Athena thanks to that guardian. “In the meantime, Mr. Comatose here needs to have the rest of the Eridium flushed from his system.”
"And how do we do that?" Athena asked. Something told her she wasn't going to like what Lilith had to say, and a moment later her fears were justified.
"Throw him in a cell downstairs and wait for it to leave his body naturally. If he’s losing strength like you said, it shouldn’t take too long."
"Seriously?" Axton mumbled. "We're gonna make him go cold turkey? Won't that kill him like it killed that poor kid Angel?"
Lilith shrugged. "I dunno. Angel was a siren. This guy's just human, right?"
“Is he?” Mordecai asked warily. “I mean, from what you told us of the Lost Legion, they were hardly human anymore. No offense, but your friend here looks like shit.”
He wasn't wrong. Timothy had fallen still over the course of their frantic conversation, but his chest was still rising and falling with alarming frequency. The skin on his clenched hands was frothing with Eridium energy – so much of it that it was beginning to melt the arms of the chair.
“Timothy?” Athena asked quietly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
Suddenly the double was up and racing for the door faster than anyone anticipated. Lilith erupted into her own blast of orange as she phased, and literally a split second later she tackled Timothy to the ground just inches from the door. He didn't take lightly to that and bent his back like a bow. With a jerk, he sent the siren flying backwards with a ripple of purple energy that made the entire building shudder and groan. Lilith slammed into Gaige, and both women crumpled into a furious, shrieking heap.
“Grab him, Brick!” Lilith yelled.
The berserker was already halfway there. He snagged the guy by the back of his tattered coat and drew him into a headlock. The look on Timothy's face was horrifying; he didn't look enraged or spastic, just blank. His eyes were wide and frothing with so much Eridium that it was dripping down his cheeks. It was leaking from the corners of his mouth as well, no doubt from the substantial pressure on his throat thanks to Brick's insane grip.
Athena blinked, and suddenly Timothy was halfway across the room, a few feet from Mordecai, who let out a surprised yell and stumbled backwards. Brick let out a similar noise when he realized he had nothing in his grasp anymore and whirled around to face the Eridium-charged man.
Mordecai lashed out with his blade, catching Timothy across the chest, but the wound healed almost the same instance that it formed, leaving behind no evidence of the attack other than the gash in his shirt. Timothy dodged away from him, almost rushing into Axton, but the commando grabbed him and hurled him over his shoulder, crashing him through a console that sparked and buzzed with complaint over the abuse. Timothy was up almost immediately, his white eyes streaming with power alongside his tears.
Ice settled in Athena's gut, sharp and heavy. He wasn't trying to hurt them, she realized. He was trying to get them to see.
She moved towards him just as Gaige distracted Timothy with a hammer to the back of his head. As he turned to face the seething teenager, Athena plunged her sword through his back. It sliced through his lung, broke through his ribs, and slid out of his chest with a shower of blood and visceral. Timothy made the worst noise Athena had ever heard him make, jerked twice, then fell limp, his head lolling against his neck as he gaped down at the weapon. His hands came up to paw at the steel, but the blade remained firmly lodged through his torso until Athena put a hand on his shoulder and jerked it out of him.
Timothy stumbled but didn't fall, and the whole room watched, mute, as the wound knitted itself back together in a span of five seconds.
With gritted teeth, Athena stabbed him again, then again. Each time she ran him through, he made an awful, sad noise, and each time she withdrew her blade, his wound healed up. It was around the fifth strike that her theory was proven to be true: with each stab, it took him longer and longer to heal. He was running out of power.
She aimed her last attack for the base of his spine, hoping that it would be enough to disable him for the time being. Slashing through his spinal cord gave him no choice but to collapse face-first onto the floor.
He didn’t try to get up, but the others tackled him anyway. Brick put his massive hands on Timothy's shoulders, keeping him pinned down, while Axton sat on the kid's legs and proceeded to cuff his hands behind his back. By the time they were done, Timothy's spine had healed, but he made no move to attack them again. The glow on his skin and in his eyes was noticeably dimmer now, and he was no longer dripping Eridium from his orifices. Athena didn't know if she should be relieved or worried about that.
Lilith heaved an annoyed sigh and brushed her hands off on her pants. "Take him downstairs to the holding cells," she said. "This is gonna take a while."