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They’ve been trapped for less than fifteen minutes and Handsome Jack has already suggested that they have sex twice.
“I’m just saying, Atlas, it’ll take the loader bots a while to clear that corridor. We’ve got nothing else to do except each other.” Jack leers and Rhys glares at him as best he can in the dim emergency lighting.
“There are dead bodies in here,” he snaps.
Jack looks around, taking in the destruction again: collapsed hallway blocking the exit, glass from shattered displays littering the floor, and the lifeless bodies of the hapless technicians who had been standing too close to the blast.
It was pure luck that Rhys and Jack hadn’t been caught in it. The demonstration had gotten off to a rocky start: the very first in the new shield line Rhys was here to see - and potentially license for production - had failed to engage, and as the techs clustered around it, nervously checking settings and adjusting calibrations, Jack had drawn Rhys over to the window, to show him the view of Pandora.
“Your facility is right down there,” he had said, poking a finger at the glass. “I mapped the coordinates myself.” Rhy had looked at Jack’s profile, thought about moon shots, and wondered if that was a threat.
Rhys has mixed feelings about the Hyperion CEO. Handsome Jack has a reputation - mostly bloody - that precedes him, but nothing Rhys had heard, even the hyperbole of rumor, had prepared him for the magnetism of Jack’s personality.
The first thing Jack had done when they met was sweep his gaze over Rhys from head to toe. Once Rhys would have flushed under that kind of frank appraisal, but he doesn’t let his body betray him in that way anymore and instead he had returned the favor, taking in Jack’s awful shoes and layered ensemble with a raised eyebrow.
Somehow, despite the questionable wardrobe choices, he hadn’t expected that a man who called himself Handsome Jack would actually be handsome , and he had met Jack’s mismatched eyes with a faint sinking feeling.
The second thing Jack had done was grin widely and hit on him so shamelessly that even Jack’s underlings - who were presumably used to this - had looked faintly scandalized.
The fact that the third thing Jack had done in front of him was execute a straggler to the meeting reminded Rhys that no matter how handsome, Jack was not to be taken lightly.
That’s fine. Neither is Rhys.
His answer - Atlas is not afraid of you, Hyperion - had been cut off by a concussive blast from the other side of the room. The technicians has been killed instantly, but Rhys and Jack had been far enough away to have suffered only minor cuts and bruises.
Jack shrugs. “We can turn them around if that kind of thing bothers you, pumpkin,” he says, nudging one body with his foot. He looks back at Rhys and Rhys regrets ever agreeing to this demonstration. “Also, I notice that wasn’t a no .”
“It was most definitely a no, ” Rhys says, folding his arms and resolutely ignoring the traitorous part of him that wants to say yes , dead bodies and all. “I didn’t realize this place was such a deathtrap.”
Now it’s Jack’s turn to scowl at him. “Helios is perfect in every way. I built it. That asshole who overloaded the shield is lucky the explosion took his head off, or I would have, for damaging my space station.”
Rhys snorts. “If this is an example of ‘superior Hyperion engineering,’ I’m unimpressed. There’s no way Atlas is signing off on a deal for technology this unstable.”
“It is perfectly stable,” Jack shoots back, but when Rhys raises an eyebrow at him he deflates a little. “At least, it was . It really shouldn’t have done that,” he adds, almost to himself.
Rhys watches as Jack turns to the remains of the technician still clutching the shell of the shield in his hand. Jack crouches, poking at the charred exterior, then starts to pry it out of the blackened fingers for closer inspection. Bits of burned flesh come away stuck to the casing, and Rhys turns away.
He moves around Jack toward the pile of rubble blocking the exit. The blast had taken out the shelving units near the door, and twisted heaps of metal shelving and raw materials block the exit - and, more importantly, the control panel. The blast appears to have knocked out the nearest repeater, so their connection to the ECHO-net is down - which means they can’t call for help - but the local networks should still be active. Rhys powers his ECHO-eye on to see if he can catch a signal from the door panel, but the eye needs a line-of-sight connection to interface with new technologies, and Rhys can’t shift the rubble enough to get to it.
He’s about to cycle the eye off when he glances up and catches a reading far above him. The ceiling near the door had collapsed, exposing the hallway in the floor above, but it looks like the power is still live up there. He can just about make out a sealed-off door and, more importantly, a keypad.
He’s scanning the debris for a safe way up when Jack clamps a hand down on his shoulder. “Look at this,” Jack says, shoving the blackened casing of the exploded shield into his face.
Rhys takes it delicately and turns it over in his hands. He sees right away what Jack was talking about, and the implications settle heavily in his chest.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t in the original design,” he says, handing it back, and Jack claps him on the back.
“Got it in one. We like our merchandise to last more than one use; you want something that explodes on reload, you’re going to have to talk to Torgue.” He traces his fingers over the fused circuitry exposed by the broken casing, and even through the damage the deliberately crossed circuits are clearly visible. “Someone did this after the final sign-off. Which means,” and here Jack lifts his eyes to Rhys’, “someone’s gunning for you, Atlas.”
“Or you,” Rhys shoots back, but Jack waves away that possibility.
“Nah, I’ve been in and out of here all week. Plenty of opportunity to activate a shield-turned-bomb then. More plausible to have it blow during testing, too,” he says thoughtfully, as if he’s discussing a travel itinerary and not an assassination attempt. “No, they waited until you were here. Or at least,” he says with a dry chuckle, “until you were here too . Maybe it was two-for-the price of one, eh?” He elbows Rhys in the side which Rhys finds less than amusing.
“You’re taking this all very cavalierly,” he says dryly.
Jack laughs again, but now Rhys can hear the undercurrent of anger in it. “Oh believe me, Atlas, I am pissed . My newest prototype is a hollowed-out chunk of carbon, and someone on this station thinks they’re smarter or at least luckier than me. Someone’s going to pay for this, you can count on that.” He splays a hand over his chest. “However, for you I am maintaining my charming exterior.”
Rhys rolls his eyes, but despite himself he can feel the corner of his mouth curving up. “You have no charming exterior.”
“Of course I do, you’re totally charmed,” and Rhys is never admitting even under pain of death that Jack might be right. Jack tucks the exploded shield casing into a pocket, then drapes his arm over Rhys’ shoulders. “Now, what were you looking at up there?” The gesture is way too familiar and Rhys clamps down on the shiver it provokes and sidesteps, shrugging Jack’s arm off.
“Power’s still active up there,” Rhys says, pointing. “If we could get up to that floor we could get out.”
“Hmm.” Jack folds his arms and adopts an overly thoughtful tone. Rhys is instantly suspicious. “We could do that. Or...”
“Or what,” Rhys says flatly.
“Or there’s always that ‘each other,’ option,” Jack says, winking exaggeratedly. “Look, the door system’s been damaged, I can see it from here.” Rhys squints, and sure enough, the the keypad is flashing a SYSTEMS DISABLED error. “Even I can’t open it from this side - although you do have those fancy cybernetics, so who knows.” Jack grins at him. “ I’m serious, the loader bots have probably already been deployed. What’s your rush?”
It’s at that moment that the klaxons start sounding, and Rhys would be tempted to laugh at the look on Jack’s face if it weren’t for the warning being blared out through the emergency speakers:
“ Warning. Due to poor performance, this sector will be vented into space in five minutes. Please enjoy your last moments of breathing oxygen. Hyperion thanks you for your mediocrity.”
Rhys and Jack are left staring at each other as the pleasant voice cycles and repeats.
“You vent your employees into space ?” Rhys has to yell to be heard over the klaxons. “I thought that was just a rumor !”
Jack frowns at him. “Well, what do you do with underperforming sectors?” he yells back. “And don’t lie to me, Atlas, I’ve seen your retention numbers. No one’s that good.”
Rhys chooses not to answer that. “We can discuss employee performance when we’re not about to be sucked into the vacuum , come on.” He turns to scramble his way up the pile of debris and hears Jack follow closely behind him. He heaves himself up on to the gutted upper floor hallway, and makes for the keypad, cycling his ECHO-eye on.
He hears Jack grunt as the man pulls himself up into the blown-out hallway. “No, don’t worry about it,” Jack says as Rhys kicks aside the debris near the door and gets to work. “I’m fine here, didn’t need a hand up.”
“I knew you could make it,” Rhys says, frowning as the door throws up another ERROR - SYSTEM LOCKOUT flag at him. “Quiet and let me work.”
“Someone must be really out to get you. Or me,” Jack corrects himself, looming over Rhys’ shoulder. “The sector-vent controls are only accessible from my office, and that place is not easy to get into. The encoding string is 32 characters, not 16,” he points out helpfully two seconds after Rhys realizes this fact. “I’m kinda pissed we’re not going to get that ‘trapped together’ bang in,” Jack continues, “but you win some, you lose some, I guess.”
“Stop talking or I will gag you,” Rhys threatens, for all the good it will do. The characters on the display start scrolling, slowly locking into place one by one as he breaks the algorithm.
Jack sniffs. “As if you could.” Then he brightens. “Unless that’s something you’re into? We could talk terms, set some ground rules. My safeword is ‘purple.’ ”
“Shut up,” Rhys suggests. “Do it for me,” he says as Jack opens his mouth again. “Let me concentrate, or we’ll both die in here and you’ll never get a chance at this ass.”
Rhys knows it’s a mistake as soon as it leaves his mouth. “So you’re saying I do have a chance at that ass,” Jack says, and Rhys can hear the glee in it.
“Shut it. Ha-” Rhys pumps a fist as the characters on the display stop scrolling and line up, all blinking a friendly green. “So much for superior Hyperion engineering.”
Rhys turns to Jack but before he can gloat further he hears a large grinding sound from the room below them, and there’s a boom as the air rushes out in a buffeting wind. Pieces of debris large and small are caught up in the whirlwind, and as the door slides open behind Rhys an exposed piece of piping peels away from the ceiling and catches Jack clean across the forehead.
Jack goes down like his strings have been cut.
And for a split second Rhys thinks about just leaving him.
It would make a lot of things easier. Without a leader Hyperion would be in disarray, and Atlas is in a prime position to take advantage of that. It would be painless for Jack, which is probably more than can be said about the death Jack’s doled out in his lifetime. It would be so easy, to step backwards through the door and cycle it shut, to say that Jack had gotten caught up when the room had vented. That there was nothing Rhys could have done.
It wouldn’t be the first blood on Rhys’ hands, and he doubts it would be the last.
It would uncomplicate Rhys’ life to not have Handsome Jack in it. It would also be a lot more boring.
Rhys’ hand closes around Jack’s leg before he realizes that’s what he’s decided to do. He drags Jack through the door, straining against the outrushing air, and slams the keypad to close the door when they’re on the other side. He collapses back against the wall, sucking in air, and glances down at Jack’s still form.
“You had better be worth it,” he says, and that’s when he notices that Jack’s not breathing.
“Oh no you don’t .” Rhys drops to his knees next to Jack’s body. A quick ECHO-scan shows a pulse, weak but steady, and when Rhys rests a hand on Jack’s chest he can feel faint movement. Jack’s bleeding from the gash in his forehead, but Rhys knows that head wounds often look worse than they are, and when he presses his pocket square to Jack’s head the bleeding slows.
“Just hang on, you stubborn son of a bitch” Rhys whispers fiercely, as if to speak too loudly will chase Jack away. He can’t say the next part out loud - for me - but he can hear it echoing in the room anyway.
After a few long minutes Jack coughs and stirs under Rhys’ hands, and when he opens his eyes to see Rhys leaning over him he smiles crookedly.
“When I said I wanted your hands on me this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he says, voice rough and scratchy but alive. The relief spreading through Rhys’ chest is larger and warmer than he expected, and he scowls to cover it, dropping his hands as Jack sits up.
“Huh,” Jack says as he looks around. “I guess we beat the odds after all.” He looks at the closed door standing between them and the vacuum and back at Rhys. He opens his mouth, but whatever Jack was about to say is cut off by the screech of metal on metal, and they both look up to see the door at the other end of the room being forced open by a garish yellow loader bot.
“See?” Jack says, clapping Rhys on the shoulder and using him as a crutch to stand up. Jack’s hand stays on Rhys’ shoulder a bit longer than is probably necessary, but he lets go just as Rhys is about to shrug him off. “Told you the bots would be here. About time, you guys,” he says to the emergency personnel pouring into the room. Jack’s eyes fall on an armored guard and he snaps his fingers, whistling. “You! Lieutenant or whatever - gather up your boys and let’s get going - we’ve got a date with my office. You coming?” he asks over his shoulder as Rhys slowly gets up.
“Won’t whoever it was be long gone by now?” Rhys says. He certainly wouldn’t have stuck around in the same position.
“Nah. My office doors are keyed to my biometrics. Means only I can lock ‘em, and if something happens to me - like, say, a ventilation pipe to the face - they go into automatic lockdown.” Jack grins toothily. “Want to go see what sort of rat we’ve caught?”
Rhys matches Jack grin for grin. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
The confrontation doesn’t go as Rhys expected.
Jack keys open the doors to his office, with Rhys by his side and a contingent of armed guards - Atlas and Hyperion - at his back. There is indeed someone trapped inside; somewhat to Rhys’ surprise, the man frantically pushing buttons at Jack’s desk is small and mousy looking - not at all the vision of a criminal mastermind. As the guards pour into the room he backs away from the desk, arms raised and trembling.
(Of course, Rhys thinks as his gaze sweeps over the room. Of course Jack is the kind to have statues of himself in his own office.)
Jack looks at Rhys. “One of yours?” Rhys shakes his head and Jack sighs. “Damn. Probably one of mine then.” Rhys isn’t sure what it says about Jack that his first thought is not paid assassin but disgruntled employee - but then, Jack has been at this longer than he has.
“You, buddy, have put a serious crimp in my day,” Jack says climbing the steps up to his desk. “I’m down an expensive prototype, there’s a hole in my space station, and it’s going to take me forever to live this down with Atlas here. I was going to just kill you here, but you know, you came closer to offing me than anyone has in a long time. So as a reward for your dumb luck,” he says, coming to a stop in front of his desk and folding his arms, “I am going to let you choose.”
“Ch-choose what?” The man stutters, eyeing the guards’ guns nervously. A rookie mistake, Rhys thinks - the guards are holding the guns, but Jack is the real danger in the room right now.
Well. One of them.
“Audience participation, well done.” Jack points a thumb at Rhys. “Him or me - you get to choose who takes you into custody.” Rhys looks at Jack in surprise as the would-be assassin trips over himself to say “HIM! Him, I choose him.” Jack grins back at Rhys and winks.
“Don’t say I never gave you anything, Atlas,” Jack says as the Atlas guards move forward to cuff the sweating man. “Let me know how that works out for you,” he calls out as the man is led away. “Like I said,” he says, turning back to Rhys with a glint in his eye. “I’ve seen your retention numbers. You’ll let me know what you find out, right?”
As Rhys feels his lips curving upward, he wonders for the first time just what it is that Handsome Jack has heard about him .
“You know,” Jack says thoughtfully as the last of the guards file out the room. “I distinctly remember being on the other side of that door when I hit that pipe with my face.”
Rhys folds his hands behind his back and waits.
“Hmmm.” Jack puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “I guess I owe you one, Atlas.”
“I guess you do,” Rhys says lightly. For a moment he thinks about stepping forward and closing the distance between them, but -
But that’s going to have to wait. Give Jack an inch and he’ll take a mile, and Rhys is going to enjoy the high ground while he has it. This is the opposite of uncomplicated, but Rhys can handle it.
“You should probably get checked out by medical, Hyperion,” Rhys says as he turns and heads down the stairs. He can feel Jack’s gaze boring into his back, and as he walks away Rhys smiles when he says, “You’re going to need a clear head when we talk terms.”