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You don’t make it to the Vault in time. You stop in your tracks, skidding across dust, blood running cold as a heartless laugh crackles over the ECHOcomm.
“O-ho-ho, daddy’s back, kiddos. And he’s got a special guest.”
You hear the distant roar, echoing faintly through the static. The Warrior. Jack’s gleeful voice confirms it a moment later, announcing, “Say hi to the bandits, Warrior. You’ll be killin’ ’em soon enough.”
The other soldiers have stopped, too, all of their vehicles angled towards you for instructions. They shouldn’t trust you to be your leader; you were never made for that. Instead, your gaze shifts to Lilith and Roland, sat in the driver and gunner seats of the bandit technical beside you. You wonder if the dread on their faces mirror your own.
Making a decision quickly, you start driving again, and the engines of vehicles behind you growl as they follow, moving faster than before. Jack can’t win. Not now. You’ve come too far, done too much, killed too many to give up now. “The Warrior is just another monster to kill,” Roland yells over the rumbling engines. “We got this.”
Lilith yells back, “We really don’t got this.”
You decide not to believe her. You can do it; there’s no other choice. If you fail, Pandora is as good as gone.
Another sound echoes through the static of your communicator, this one higher. Sharper. A wail of anguish, and you know exactly who it belongs to. You’ve heard her voice so many times before.
Apparently, Jack recognises it too, and his tone changes. You hear something else in his voice as he says, “Angel?” It sounds like fear. “Angel!”
“The eridium, it’s –”
“No, no, baby. Come on. You’re okay, you’re fine, don’t –”
It’s evident that this conversation wasn’t meant to be broadcasted, in the hitch of his breath, the unmasked concern in his harsh tone. Static fills the silence, and you know the entire ECHOnet is waiting on baited breath.
Eventually, the silence is filled with a hissed, “Don’t touch me!” You don’t mean to be relieved to hear she’s still alive, but you can’t help it. She wasn’t your enemy. She is your friend.
There’s a long silence. You’re still travelling. The static is loud from your ECHOcomm but you can’t decipher any words. Then, finally, something breaks through.
“No, this doesn't make any sense.” It’s Jack. “I am your master - you follow my orders, you hear me? I opened your Vault, I control you; that's how this works.” There’s more silence, and you don’t understand. He must be talking to the Warrior again – it crosses your mind that these words are meant for Angel too, but the word Vault pierces through your mind.
“I don't understand.” Angel sounds as confused as you feel.
“Angel, you get the hell away from there. Angel!”
“Jack, the Warrior, it's –” She sounds afraid, now.
“Listen to me. You unhook that injector, you're dead, okay, sweetheart?” There’s a long silence, filled in by static. “...Angel, didn't you hear me? You're gonna die! Angel!” You’re driving faster now, wind tearing at the sides of your car, and you pray the cars will hold out against the treacherous terrain long enough to get you where you need to be. “Get away from her, you –”
“I'm sorry, Jack.”
“No, the Warrior is mine.”
“When are you going to figure it out?” Angel’s voice is somewhat muffled compared to Jack’s, but you can hear her well enough now. Glancing over to Lilith and Roland, you see they’re as enraptured by the conversation as you are. “You can't own a person, and you sure as hell can't own a Vault Monster.”
“Angel, baby, no –”
“Goodbye, Dad.”
“Warrior!”
The line goes dead, leaving you with Jack’s eerie screech ringing in your ears. You keep driving.
In the pit of a volcano, a thin, frail girl has collapsed, her translucent skin contrasting with darkness of the rocky ground below her. Her veins are a rich purple. The tattoos flowing down her arm, torso, and leg are glowing faintly. Beneath her eyelids, her irises are stained purple, too, but her face is obscured by a mass of charcoal hair and her eyelids are closed. At her feet, an ancient and powerful creature sits patiently. It is awaiting further instruction. Despite towering over her, it recognises her as its superior.
From her fall, there is a small gash at the girl’s temple, and she bleeds out steadily. Her blood, too, is purple, as it trickles over the rocks.
The girl’s father lies a small distance away. His blood is red. And everywhere.
His mask is dislodged, and you pick it up, wondering if it would be a good trophy. Lilith is bent over the sleeping girl, and you doubt now is a good time to ask her, but you don’t put the mask down. Jack’s eyes are lifeless, staring ahead – one coloured, one white. The Vault symbol cuts through it, and a wry smirk twists at your lips at the knowledge that he was half-blind this entire time. Your gaze traces over his scar, and you decide you’ve seen worse.
“Is she alive?”
Roland’s voice cuts through the silence. A rakk screeches from up ahead in response.
“Yeah,” says Lilith, and then after a moment, “I think so.” Her attention keeps flickering back to the Warrior, somewhat nervous, but it seems content to have her there.
“Wow. Three sirens in one room – pretty sure the universe is about to implode or somethin’. Oh, and by the way, siren? Nobody told me Angel was a siren.”
“Yeah, well, it took killing Wilhelm and destroying Sanctuary’s shields to find out she was even a person.” Lilith is monotonous, and you’re not sure if she’s still angry at Angel or not. You stay quiet.
You don’t know what Lilith is doing to Angel, but suddenly she’s awake, sitting up weakly and pushing her mane of hair out of her eyes. You walk over, and so does Roland, too curious to stay away. The Warrior seems to shift at Roland’s presence.
Bright purple eyes stare up at you, then around at the volcano. “Did I pass out?” she asks, uncertain, and her voice is different to how it sounded over the ECHOcomm, different to when she contacted you with her phaseshift. It’s more human. “That is… so cliché.”
Immediately, she’s moving to stand, but sways heavily when her body is righted.
Roland catches her quickly, lowering her down again. The Warrior growls.
“Slow down, tiger,” Lilith drawls, crouching in front of her. “You had a weird time of it, by the sound of things. And, sorry, but we only got a few details.” When Angel just stares at her blankly, Lilith sighs. “I wanna know what happened here.”
“Oh.” There’s a moment of silence. Her violet-tinted gaze flickers over to Jack, but returns to looking at Lilith quickly. You’re still holding Jack’s mask. “What did you – hear?”
“A whole lotta yelling,” Roland replies, unhelpful. “And – I think there was – actually, yeah, we really don’t know what happened.”
Lilith glances up at Roland exasperatedly. “Jack shouted, all –” You realise she’s going to do an impression a moment too late, and wince. “—Warrioooooooor!” Her voice morphs mockingly into something more heavily accented, higher-pitched, and you can’t help but allow a smirk to tug at your lips. Roland huffs a laugh. “But, after that, the connection cut out.”
Angel looks down at her lap, hair falling in front of her face to obscure her expression. “That would be when the ECHOcomm got destroyed.” She raises a hand to her temple, pressing against the wound and frowning.
“Destroyed?”
“The Warrior killed him.”
Your gaze lifts to the magnificent creature at the same time as Lilith and Roland do the same, the latter even reaching for his gun in the movement. Angel puts a hand on his arm. “Wait – it won’t harm us. You’re safe.”
“Why should we trust you?” asks Lilith warily, but the question is lingering in your mind, too.
“Because I –”
Angel cuts off, pressing the purple blood from her temple between her fingers, and her eyes cast over the cavernous terrain again. It’s hot in here, and you become aware of that all-too suddenly; your clothes cling to your skin, sweat gripping them tightly. You’re impossibly pale, but this heat would seemingly be enough to bring a flush to even your cheeks. Lava is creeping up the edges of the rock platform you’re standing on, but when you look to the sky, the stars still outline the intruding body of Helios. It seems too impassive. You wonder when they’ll find out about Jack’s death. A part of you still can’t believe it yourself.
“I think I control the Warrior, and I think I made it kill Jack.”
A heavy silence lingers in the air between the four of you, before Roland speaks up. “We can get you healed up,” he says solemnly, “but after that, you’re explaining everything.”
“As a siren, my powers didn’t manifest until I was nine. I lived with my mom, and my dad, in a settlement near the sea. It was buried by moonshots about two years back. But we were – happy, I suppose. There were all kinds of creatures to watch out for, but we had a system. Together, with our neighbors, we stayed alive. And safe. No bandits.
“Then Jack got a job at Hyperion. He had to move away, but insisted we stuck around by the sea – it was safer. If we moved with him, it would be dangerous. So we stayed, and he visited whenever he could. It sucked, but we were fine.
“When my powers manifested – I still don’t know what happened, but it was a normal day, and I was out on the boat with my mom. Everything was normal, until – there was this huge pain, and I felt like I was on fire. The next thing I remember, the boat’s destroyed, I’m in the water, and I can’t find my mom. She… she washed up on the shore a little while later. What was left of her, at least.
“I hadn’t just killed her, I’d destroyed her. When Jack found out… he took me to a disused Hyperion base, away from our home by the sea, and – I’ve been there ever since. Hiring construction, and then stealing money from the Hyperion offices, he modeled it into the Control Core Angel that you tried to get into. He was terrified; he didn’t know anything about sirens. Why would he? All he knew was what I’d done to my mom.
“Things calmed down, after that. I was able to explore my powers in the Control Core Angel, and he was researching the Vaults… and then he found the Vault of the Destroyer. He didn’t tell me much, just instructed me to introduce myself to some Vault Hunters. Jack eventually told me why he wanted the Vault opened, and I… I couldn’t stop him. So I kept guiding the Vault Hunters, until the Destroyer was released. I was sixteen.
“Jack had gotten what he wanted, and so I was left alone for a while. It was lonely, but I still talked to Jack, and helped him through taking over Hyperion. When he became CEO, security around me increased exponentially, as well as… the tests of my strength. Jack considered me a weapon, I suppose, and he wanted to know what I could be used for.
“As Lilith will know, eridium turned out to be successful – not only in strengthening my powers, but also to charge a key that would otherwise take another 200 years to be ready. It was addictive. Soon enough, I depended on it to survive, and I was hooked up to three permanent injectors within the Control Core Angel.
“Jack had another task for me. To introduce myself to another group of Vault Hunters. But this time was different – his plan wasn’t to have them open the Vault, it was to trick them into exposing Sanctuary so he could destroy it. And I went along with it, because I didn’t have any other choice.
“Only, you survived the Sanctuary attack. Jack was pissed. But I knew I had to help you. You’d come so far, and it was only when you killed Wilhelm that I realised you had an actual chance to stop Jack. So I instructed you on how to get to me – because if you were going to stop him, you’d have had to kill me and take the key first – but Jack got there before you could. I wasn’t careful enough. He took me to the volcano and continued to charge the key with me plugged into the injectors he’d set up beforehand. I wanted you to get there before it was too late, but Jack opened the Vault.
“And then… the Warrior didn’t listen to him. After all the research he’d done, after how certain he was on how this would work, the Warrior didn’t pay attention to him. It was focusing on me. I think it must’ve been the connection between sirens and Vaults, or maybe the eridium, but… it seems to be obeying me.
“The Warrior killed Jack. I didn’t order it too, but it was like it read my mind. It looked right at me, and then it turned around, and just… I think that’s when I passed out. And the next thing I remember is Lilith reviving me.”
You placed the mask in your inventory when Angel began recounting her story, but you wonder if it’s hers to keep once you learn all there is to know about her background with Jack. Nobody is sure what to do. Roland suggests leaving the volcano, but Angel looks back to the Warrior with fear in her eyes, doubtful that she could leave it here. The Vault is still open, and Lilith wants it to go back, but Angel shakes her head. “I can’t leave it in there,” she says, and you wonder how someone as cruel as Handsome Jack could father someone as caring as Angel.
When Roland leaves to tell the other soldiers what happened, the Warrior seems to relax. Angel points out that the three of you are sirens, and something is connecting you all to the Vaults, and subsequently the Warrior. “It trusts you, I guess,” she murmurs.
“Good,” replies Lilith. “I could use a guard dog like that if we were gonna put Sanctuary back on the ground.” Angel giggles at that, and her smile is radiant. Even Lilith seems softer for seeing it, since a moment later, she asks, “What are you gonna do now?”
By the look on Angel’s face, you can tell she hadn’t thought about it. “I could go to Helios,” she offers. “Maybe try turning it into something less… heartless.”
Lilith seems surprised by her answer. “Jack training you to be the new CEO?”
“No.” Angel’s voice is firm. “But – it’ll take time, but Hyperion will recover from Jack’s death. And then it’ll keep manufacturing weapons, and it’ll keep firing moonshots at settlements, and… it could be used for better.” She hesitates. “I don’t know how I’d – manage that, though. Taking it over.”
Lilith actually grins at her. You choose to believe it’s the glee of Jack finally being dead that’s made her so relaxed. “Don’t worry about that,” she says. “We’ll get you on top.”
They asked you to come along for the trip, and you eventually gave Angel the mask. She wasn’t happy to see it, but she thanked you nonetheless, and Lilith only said, “Make sure you bring it to Helios.” Something in her personality has changed, and you think you like it. She seems happier. More alive.
Angel instructed the Warrior to trust Roland as it trusted her, and now Sanctuary really does have a guard dog. You all went back there to lay low and recover for a few days until Roland could get hold of a rocket to get you all up to Helios, and the city was alight with celebrations. Jack is dead. You remind yourself that these people have been waiting for this day far longer than you have.
The ride up to Helios was relatively smooth, with Scooter the mechanic on board to help out. He made a joke about being in a spaceship with three sirens, but you weren’t paying attention, your concentration on the mass of empty space, and the dotted stars sprawled across the inky depths. It’s been a long time since you’ve been in outer space. You decide you haven’t missed it, but can’t deny it’s beautiful.
And now you’re standing on a raised platform in something called the Hub of Heroism, behind Angel, with Lilith at your side. Helios has been a nightmare since Jack’s death, it would seem. Especially since they don’t actually know Jack is dead.
So when Angel brandishes the mask like the trophy you thought it should be, and says in a clear and fearless voice, “Handsome Jack is dead,” she’s met with a sea of faces, all wearing the same expression of muted horror.
Her fingertips are trembling slightly, but other than that, Angel seems to be standing proudly. You can see thin purple veins running under her translucent skin. She told you she thinks opening the Vault caused something to change in her, that she is no longer reliant on eridium to survive, but has become it. You told her that sounds nasty. She laughed quietly.
Despite her shaking, Lilith has already told her what to do, and she carries on after a moment of silence. “I – killed him.”
This is when noises break out from among the crowd. Gasps, murmurs – someone starts crying. You can’t believe a company with employees this dumb survived for so long. Angel continues. “Now, all this – Hyperion, Helios, every Pandoran base and every one of you – is under my command. If you don’t like it, you know where the door is. But if you had other plans on who should take over, then…” She glances back at yourself and Lilith, and her eyes are still the bright violet they were when you first saw her up close. She doubts they’ll ever return to the icy blue they once were. “…Take it up with my assistants. That is, if you feel brave enough to go up against three sirens. It may not go well for you.”
Lilith almost looks proud of her.
Angel seems uncertain for a moment, as if she were expecting some larger reaction from the audience, but all she gets is fearful gazes. “And one last thing,” she says eventually, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Starting tomorrow, Hyperion is going to have a very different relationship with Pandora. But for tonight, you can sleep on whether to stay… or go. It’s your choice. I just hope you make the right one.”