Chapter Text
Rhys felt a surge of pride as he stood at Fiona’s side before the glowing, open Vault chest. He resisted the urge to fall to his knees with an overwhelming weight of triumph crashing over his shoulders.
Instead, he glanced over and beamed brilliantly at Fiona, who was reaching forwards into the chest. He watched the small smile tug at the corners of her mouth while she gingerly lifted the right-hand pulsing tablet from the Vault chest. Rhys held the alternate piece in his own metal hand, the purple etchings faintly bathing him in a lilac glow.
“What do you think this does?” Fiona asked with mild curiosity, her hand clutching the tablet pausing in midair. Rhys shrugged, his own metal fingers curling around the edge of his tablet piece.
“My guess is the Vault of the Traveler has something to do with traveling...maybe some cool eridian teleportation tech of some kind,” he answered insightfully. Fiona exhaled a short amused huff, a lock of hair fluttering slightly at her puff of breath. She flicked her hat.
“I figured that much, thanks. Well...are we gonna to do this?”
Rhys nodded, casting her a light grin.
“Ready when you are.”
He slowly lifted the heavy piece as Fiona mirrored his actions before sliding the tablets together, each side of the metal fitting snugly as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.
For a moment, nothing happened and the world was rightly still. Both Rhys and Fiona remained silent and frozen, the Vault key pulsing brightly in each of their palms. The swimming indigo lights of the Vault doused their silhouettes perched at the top of the crumbling set of stairs.
Rhys cast a disconcerted look towards Fiona. She met his gaze with equal apprehension. He opened his mouth to speak.
“W–”
But his surprised query was drowned out by a deafening roar of unexpected wind rushing in his ears. The tablet slipped from his grasp and escaped Fiona’s fingers, clattering onto the flagstones beneath their feet.
Rhys was suddenly swept off his shoes by a peculiar force of wind and hit the crumbling purple stones below him with a dull thud as billowing ribbons of deep blue washed over his senses. He struggled back upright to his feet, furiously fighting the force of the winds that had unexpectedly whipped up through the atmosphere.
The wind ripped through his hair, sending strands to obscure his blue vision as he raised a hand and attempted to squint through the chaos.
He spotted Fiona on the other side of the platform, struggling forwards against the wind relentlessly shoving her back.
“Rhys!” her voice came muffled as the tunnels of wind whirled around her. Rhys struggled, feeling the violent gusts begin to shove him backwards. He planted his feet firmly to the stones with no avail as his heels began to slowly inch backwards across the weathered surface of the ground. Panic clawed at his mind, quickly turning to desperation as he watched Fiona teeter backwards, booted heels slipping over the edge of the crumbling landing.
“Fi! Grab my hand!” he cried, flinging out his metal arm and furiously fighting against the vicious winds.
“I–I can’t reach–” Fiona made a desperate grab for his outstretched wrist but missed his hand as a sudden violent gust blasted between them, shoving them apart and sending them flying towards the opposite sides of the landing. Rhys staggered backwards, attempting to regain balance but his back foot met air as he stumbled back.
“Rhys!”
Rhys’s vision churned in a dizzying whirl as a second wave of wind knocked into him, mercilessly tossing him from the Vault platform. His silver fingers remained outstretched in a desperate reach to grasp the edge of the platform but to no avail.
He let loose a strangled yell as hues of purple and blue spiraled across his sight. He freely fell twisting through the air, tumbling into whatever depths lay below the crumbling Vault platform which was quickly shrinking with every passing second now far above him as he descended to the depths.
There was a brilliant, blinding flash of blue lights before he crashed into blinding darkness.
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When Rhys regained some semblance of consciousness, he let out a pained groan, sensing an uncomfortably hard ground pressing against his aching back. The back of his head rested against a hot, rocky surface. Gathering the strength, he peeled open a single eye, strangely warm light flooding his vision. With a confused grunt, he cracked open a second eye in order to observe the sky stretching far above him.
The sky. The sky was above him, not the brilliant blue hues of the Vault of the Traveler.
What the hell?
On top of that, the sky was a hazy orange.
As Rhys’s sight kicked into gear, his sense of smell and hearing slowly followed suit, a faint ringing, pulsing in his ears. A tangy stinging scent of ashes wafted through his nose and he groaned, peeling his back up from the ground and gingerly collecting his legs under him as he struggled to his feet.
In a second his vision rightened, blurry tinges of sight focusing in. His limbs ached as he gazed in a whirl of confusion and fear at the views before him. The hot, red-orange hues of his new surroundings starkly contrasted the former cool, calm blues of the Vault.
Currently, he was unsteadily swaying on his feet at one end of a rocky circular basin with high stone walls enclosing the place. A hazy curtain of smoke draped across the edges of the valley and clouded the orange sky. The massive presence of Elpis loomed near the horizon, hiding behind a particularly opaque patch of smoke filling the air.
Rhys’s attention snapped down to the path before him. At the moment he stood on a brown rocky strip of land, uneven stones stretching before him and extending into a shallow lake of hot, bubbling lava. The path led into the lava a short ways before widening and forming a stony circular peninsula of massive circumference rising from the magma. Rhys squinted across the way in an attempt to make out the jagged shapes located on the end of the peninsula. If he didn’t know better, he’d say there was a control panel out there.
The circular spanse of land was watched over by four statues of unnaturally disfigured human-esque creatures. Small splashes of lava poured from their eyes.
Where the hell? What is this place?
A massive, shattered Vault symbol arched over the peninsula.
Rhys spun around to glance behind him. To his relieving surprise, there was a roughly slapped together Fast-Travel station. The metal was old and rusted and some panels hung loose in a jumbled mess. However, a faint, pulsing glow weakly shone through the light affixed to the nose of the device. Even if the station was in slight disrepair, the hunk of junk would still function. Especially with Rhys around since he had a flashy cybernetic arm that came with capabilities and skills he needed in order to fix a crappy Fast-Travel station.
In short, Rhys had a means of escape from...whatever place this was and he was in no immediate danger. He spun back around and glanced down at himself, patting his black overcoat and noting the golden buttons fixed to his vest were still intact. He smoothed out his clothes with a concerned once over.
Yeah, he seemed to be fine apart from a few slight bruises and aches to the body. However at the moment he didn't care about himself, he was more interested in his current location. Seriously, where the hell was he?
Rhys spun in a slow circle, giving his bright surroundings a second careful observation.
So he’d entered the Vault of the Traveler and that Vault spat him out here…wherever “here” was.
His eyes strayed to the massive Vault symbol hovering over the circular peninsula in the middle of the lava lake and suddenly, pieces fell into place.
The Traveler had teleported him to “here,” another Vault on Pandora. Yet to the best of Rhys’s knowledge, the only other Vault known on Pandora was the Vault of the Warrior….the very same Vault Handsome Jack had perished in.
Coincidence was running wild today wasn’t it?
Rhys hadn’t the faintest of a clue why he was sent to the Vault of the Warrior but at least he knew where he was.
Straightening his shoulders, he took a step forwards, stones heavy under the soles of his boots as he began on the path stretching before him, leading to the peninsula floating in the middle of the lava-lake. Heat rolled off the bubbling lava and Rhys remained wary, cautiously moving across the narrow strip of land and sticking loyally in the center.
As he reached the edge of the circular peninsula, his foot stepped off the uneven stones and onto the slightly more elevated circumference of rocky ground. Rhys paused at the edge, surveying his surroundings.
Ruins of a dilapidated control panel sat off to his right but...not much else. To Rhys’s surprise, he felt a twang of disappointment at the lack of importance here. It was just some old ruins. He shoved his hands into his pockets, ruffling the black fabric of his coat as his gaze suddenly grew glowering. Frustration bubbled in his gut.
The stupid Traveler hadn’t even bothered to fulfill it’s promise to him of riches or powerful technology. Seriously, why was he even here? Why was he in the desolate ruins of some friggin’ dead Vault? There was nothing here, not riches or alien technology. Stupid, friggin’ Traveler.
In order to contain his irritation, Rhys glanced down at his feet, hoping to spot a good, sizable chunk of pebble he could wind up and kick across into the mass of bubbling lava for good measure– WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT.
Rhys’s heart leapt up his throat in a jolt of surprise as his eyes fell upon the tanned flesh of an arm lying limp at his feet, fingers dead and curling over a palm. Rhys’s attention immediately jerked to the rest of the person, lying face down and splayed across the uneven flagstone.
He took a tentative step backwards, observing the gravely still body of the stranger, soaked in dark crimson (blood?) stains, spotting the tattered, worn fabric of a dark blue-ish (maybe? it was hard to tell under the layer of blood) coat stretching over the (man?)’s broad shoulders.
For some odd reason, the simple curvature of the man’s limp stature sprawled on the stones struck a strangely familiar chord with Rhys.
“Uh...hello?” Rhys started cautiously, staring daggers at the unmoving man sprawled face down in the middle of the Vault. The response from the corpse on the ground was dead silence.
“Hello?” Rhys started again, this time cautiously edging the toe of his boot into the man’s side, prodding his upper arm.
It was at this moment, Rhys was struck with the brilliant realization that the man lying face down before him was in fact, not breathing. Like...at all.
“Oh gross,” Rhys groaned, stepping backward and dragging his toe against the stones of the ground as if to clean the presence of the corpse from his boot. He glared at the body with a stab of curiosity.
Why was this random dead guy here?
Who was this random dead guy?
And why the fuck did the Traveler bring Rhys to this random dead guy?
Rhys heaved a dramatic sigh and squatted to his heels, eyes narrowed in baleful irritation at the limp body before him. He wanted answers. Unfortunately, if he wanted answers he’d have to do some dirty work. He glared upwards at the crumbling Vault symbol arching over his head.
“You’re gonna make me touch a dead body? Seriously?” he complained to the symbol. The Vault did not reply.
Rhys groaned in disgust.
Well...he could always just head back across the narrow peninsula to that Fast-Travel station and leave the Vault all together...there was nothing stopping him. Well–Actually there was one thing stopping him and it was his intense curiosity.
And his curiosity was much stronger than his disgust. Besides, this particular body didn’t seem avidly gross...there was a lack of smell and a peculiar absence of beetles and bugs foraging on this guy’s dead fleshy arm.
“Alright, let’s see who you are, mystery dead guy, since apparently, the Traveler wanted me to find you,” Rhys muttered, reaching out a metal hand across the corpses back to seize its opposite shoulder. With his fingers grasping the rough fabric cladding the man’s shoulder and a slight grunt, Rhys pulled a forceful heave, struggling at the corpse's surprising weight as he slowly rolled the man over onto his back.
A loose, fearful cry of surprise fell from Rhys’s mouth and he immediately leaped to his feet, scrambling backward and raising his metal arm in an instinctive means of defense as a burst of adrenaline pumped through his veins.
The painstakingly familiar head attached to the shoulders of the man flopped to the side, wisps from the mess of dark brown hair atop his head straying into his limply lidded, dull eyes. High cheekbones...metal graftings fixed under the chin and near the temples…
Rhys’s breath caught in his throat as he stared wide-eyed at the perfectly preserved body of Handsome Jack. He blinked furiously, staring at the corpse in awestruck paralyzation.
How?
Why?
There were two key details about the body before that stuck out in Rhys’s observation the most.
One: he was maskless. Rhys could hardly fathom this fact. Even the AI version of Jack that’d ridden shotgun in his mind months ago had adorned a flawlessly constructed digital mask for all his AI glory. Huh...well now the mystery of the mask was revealed. The mask had been a concealer for a jagged blue gash stretching across Jack’s face, marring the bridge of his nose and the flush of either cheek.
Notably, the scar branding Jack’s face was identical to the Vault symbol arching overhead.
Two: There was a clean, cylindrical bullet hole neatly drilled into the dead center of Jack’s forehead. Splotches of long-dried blood clung to the edges of his oddly neat wound. Rhys’s throat constricted and he tore his gaze away from the limp, grave features of Jack’s resting expression.
So the Traveler had brought him to Jack. Well this was certainly a humerous, cruel twist of fate, eh? Rhys bit back a hollow chuckle. He rubbed a hand over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing an exhale.
Jack...oh dear Jack, Jack Jack.
Handsome Jack was a special case.
For the past six months, Rhys fought to erase any traces of the goddamn AI from his thoughts. Truly. Yet he’d been challenged with the never ending barriers of conflicted emotions and unfinished business. Unanswered questions and endless situational, “but what if?”s.
The Handsome Jack AI’s ultimate demise had been quick and unexpected
Just like his betrayal.
Rhys had genuinely looked up to Jack as an idol in admiration. Then Jack got shoved into Rhys’s body as an unwilling head-mate. That had been a less than desirable ordeal. But then after that, Rhys grew stupid enough to believe the two of them had become friends…and he’d really...truly believed that.
Until Jack declared him a backstabber and also tried to force him into a slow painful fate worse than death of course.
Rhys’s emotions conflicted with one another as he squinted dully at Jack’s corpse. A small part of him yearned and faithfully remembered the brief flash of a timeframe where the both of them had genuinely seemed close and on a firm level of friendship.
So much for friendship, eh? Rhys thought bitterly, glaring at Jack’s cold body stretched out across the rough flagstones.
Yet there had been the presence of a genuine note of friendship in their relationship. Or perhaps that had been a sliver of trust? Rhys held a firm belief there was at one point–no matter how brief that point was–a genuine bond of companionship.
Perhaps Jack wasn’t completely out of his mind when he went batshit crazy and interpreted Rhys’s act of refusal as a cold act of heartless betrayal.
In no way was Rhys justifying Jack’s actions of trying to fucking kill him, lets get that clear. However, Rhys recognized Jack’s line of reasoning and the delusioned pattern of his thinking.
Years of being betrayed by anyone Jack ever considered a friend or close companion clearly shoved a heavy influence into his rational and reasoning. Jack had taken Rhys’s act of refusal to die for him as an act of personal backstabbing betrayal, instead of a very normal, valid refusal to getting your body dismembered and an endoskeleton shoved inside.
Rhys heaved a tired sigh. Jack had a genuine reason for lashing out at Rhys, no matter how wrong or un-morally justified his excuse was. So…perhaps if the two of them simply had more time...more time to speak and work things out…Maybe if Jack was granted a second chance at living, he’d open his eyes to his fucked up decisions and seize the opportunity to change or perhaps even amend things.
In the moment, staring down at Jack’s lifeless shell of a body, Rhys’s mind churned. Maybe...just maybe...perhaps if there was some outlandish way to bring Jack back...if there was a reluctant possibility of giving him a second chance...maybe he could explain himself. Or perhaps if Rhys brought him back the simple act alone would be enough to satisfy Jack and make him forget about Rhys’s “betrayal”.
Why do I want his forgiveness so badly? There’s no point in bending over backwards for the guy’s forgiveness–the same guy who tried to kill you multiple times . Rhys, you didn’t betray him, he betrayed you. You owe him nothing, you don’t have to bring him back. Unless...this whole thing isn’t really about so-called “second chances”.
Suddenly, the dangerous longing for what life was like before the whole endoskeleton ordeal rose to light in Rhys’s mind. Hey–I mean, the two of them were gonna rule Hyperion. Hyperion! The strongest company in this corner of the galaxy. Er– was the strongest company in this corner of the galaxy.
Hyperion had fallen for good following AI Jack’s death.
Rhys’s questioning gaze pierced Jack’s lifeless form for a moment longer before Rhys wiped his brow and arrived at a decision.
I can’t believe I’m gonna do this.
Rhys swept around Jack, stepping behind his head and stooping. With a grunt he slid his arms under Jack’s armpits, rough coat fabric scraping his hands. God, why was his corpse such a friggin’ deadweight? With a forceful heave, Rhys lifted Jack’s shoulders from the ground, his head falling limply to his chest. Rhys strained and began to drag Jack’s body with much difficulty across the rough stones. He worked backwards, headed for the ruined control panel.
“You make everything so difficult, even when you're dead, you know that?” Rhys balefully hissed through his teeth, fingers digging further into the fabric of his coat. Dead Jack replied with silence. Rhys struggled to drag his body the final feet before carefully propping him upright against the ruined metal of the control panel.
His head limply lolled to the side and Rhys resisted the urge to snort in amusement as he stepped back, admiring his handiwork and placing his hands on his hips.
If only you could see yourself now, Jack.
Rhys studied Jack’s rag-doll form for a moment longer before turning his attention to one of the inner breast pockets of his own black overcoat. With a metal hand, Rhys reached in, fingers curling around a small circular object.
With ginger fingers, he drew out the old, faintly pulsing ECHOeye. He pinched the device between his forefinger and thumb, squinting as he held the tiny circle up to the light. A frown etched his face as he studied the thing that haunted him so endlessly.
The gears of his mind were hard at work scheming up some outlandish plan to revive Jack with such limited resources. Rhys figured this shouldn't be too difficult. After all, he had the two main ingredients on hand: A body, and AI Jack’s consciousness in the ECHOeye. All he had to do was transfer the ECHOeye to Jack’s hollow shell of a body…
How would I even do this? Rhys thought hopelessly, dropping down into a squat on his knees beside Jack, peering back and forth between the eye and Jack’s lifeless face, hoping to spark some sort of mad scientist-genius idea.
Hmm...Well…the short wire dangling off the ECHOeye was live and served as the plug to the ECHOeye. In short, the wire was a portal capable of transferring Holo-Jack to another database.
And technically, the human brain was a database. Since a database was classified as a mountain of stored information, there was no difference between the database of a brain and a database of technological origins. Well, except that one was fleshy and the other was metal.
So, if Rhys was able to position the lense of the glowing blue ECHOeye onto the surface of one of Jack’s eyes and was able to wriggle the wire around and behind said eye to touch his brain…
Oh my god this is disgusting. Rhys coughed, suddenly feeling queasy. Maybe he shouldn’t do this…maybe this was a bad idea…
No need to pussy out just from a bit of dead body. This can’t be worse than the face pizza incident.
Rhys sighed heavily, now staring at Jack’s corpse with grotesque apprehension. He leaned forwards and tentatively cupped Jack’s chin, forcing his face upright with the tips of his metal fingers. Then he reached up towards Jack’s right eye–the one with the Vault symbol carved through it–and gingerly prodded his clammy eyelid with twitchy fingers.
This whole situation set Rhys on edge and his mind half expected Jack to spring upright to life out of nowhere and try to kill him.
Just calm down, you’re fine, Jack’s dead. Well, right now he is, at least.
With a deep, steadying breath, Rhys swallowed back down the dreaded lump forming in his throat and braced himself against the horrible grossness of it all. As he carefully pried open the limp eyelid of Jack’s right eye, the tip of his metal fingers brushed the surface of his eye itself. The odd, cold solidness of the eye’s surface and the lack of iris or pupil present led Rhys to the conclusion in place of his Jack’s left eye was actually an opaque white marble.
Huh, well that might make things easier, especially since the marble didn’t have the delicate grotesque squishiness of a real eye.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Rhys muttered, narrowing his focus on the precise movements of his hand as he delicately slid the iris of the ECHOeye smoothly onto the slippery surface of the marble eye.
Setting the ECHOeye in place was the easiest part of the plan. Now came the next, more difficult step since it involved both Rhys’s mental stability and the stability of his hands.
Gingerly, Rhys pinched the ECHOeye’s live wire between his flesh fingers and sucked in a shaky breath, wincing as he threaded the tiny wire beneath Jack’s eyelid, along towards the back internal side of the marble eye. He grimaced, slightly wriggling the wire farther and farther in until….
“Ow!” Rhys jerked his flesh hand back as a quick jolt of electricity crackled up through the wire, illuminating the ECHOeye’s iris and stinging his fingertips. He shuffled backwards, cradling his stinging hand and eyeing Jack’s lifeless form with cautionary wariness. The ECHOeye resting on his eye illuminated a bright sparking blue between his drooping eyelids and Rhys felt a thrill of excitement and fear.
Had his plan worked? The ECHOeye seemed to be reacting positively judging its newfound brilliant light–Woah shit!
Rhys watched with an almost disbelieving expression as the electric blue glowing ECHOeye suddenly flickered to a vibrant green hue.
That’s new.
Rhys’s heart raced, suddenly jackhammering against his ribs in unexpected excitement. So...had the ECHOeye worked? Did the color change mean anything significant? Was the AI connected to whatever brain was in that body?
Rhys took a cautious shuffle forwards, peering intently at Jack’s limp expression. Nothing else had occurred after the implant besides the brilliant green color shift of the ECHOeye. Jack remained wholly still. He almost seemed to be in a peaceful slumber except for the lack of a healthy rise and fall of his chest.
He was still dead.
“Fuck!” Rhys exclaimed, heart sinking as he threw up his hands and glared stubbornly at Jack’s resting expression. He pinched the bridge of his nose as a wave of irritation crashed over his head.
Of course jamming the ECHOeye into Jack’s body wouldn’t work! God, what was Rhys thinking? He wasn’t a neurological surgeon, hell, he wasn’t even a cybernetic researcher! He had no idea how the implants functioned down to the atom! Heck, he didn’t even have any proof jamming the ECHOeye into Jack’s socket would even do anything.
“Hello? Jack?” Rhys stooped and waved an arm in front of Jack’s limp, unmoving expression for good measure. Of course there came no reaction. Rhys heaved a vicious, frustrated sigh and straightened up, throwing his hands to the air in exasperation. He’d been so optimistically sure this would work too…
“Oh come on! ” He exclaimed furiously, digging his heels into the ground and placing his hands on his hips. He glared heatedly at Jack’s corpse before exhaling an aggressive sigh.
“‘Course that’s not gonna work–what on earth was I thinking? ” Rhys berated himself, rubbing a furious metal hand into his temple as he tried to mask his feeling of gut wrenching disappointment with self deprecation.
“I am so stupid, ” he cursed, rubbing his temple furiously with a set of cybernetic fingers.
And then through the heated haze of Rhys’s frustration, the flutter of movement snared his attention.