Rated M for explicit language
Overlook, The Highlands
Pandora
The barkeep at the Holy Spirits called it rakk ale. Maya would have poured it in the gas tank of her outrunner.
She supposed it did its job, regardless of the taste. The amber liquid burned her throat when she swallowed; she felt every drop sink into the pit of her stomach, churning her insides. The drink dulled her thoughts to an incessant buzz at the base of her skull. She drowned her memories, and for a time, the pain went away.
Late at night, dangerously close to the Overlook curfew, the bar was mostly empty. Maya sat alone at the counter, a Vladof pistol at her belt and a Maliwan rifle slung across her back. The barkeep refilled the Siren's glass. He looked at her with open contempt, his face twisted in a scowl, but a Vault Hunter's money was as good as anyone else's, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
The Holy Spirits was a place where people went to forget, and to be forgotten. The hazy, stale air smelled spicy, like liquor and nicotine and sweat. Smoke hung above Maya's head, turning her blue hair silver. Outside, the sun was setting. The windows of the bar glinted crimson. Maya thought the red stains on the horizon looked too much like blood.
Maya downed her drink. Amber warmth diffused through her blood. The dull ache thrumming behind her eyeballs wasn't entirely unpleasant.
When the barkeep refilled her glass again, Maya peered through the fog in her head and tried to remember what had landed her in the seedy bar in the first place. She chalked the fugue up to the cheap liquor and the fact that the little errands Roland seemed to delight in heaping on her shoulders were beginning to blur together in a reel of blood and bullets and bandit guts splattered over the fender of her outrunner. The latest job had something to do with Ellie out in the Dust… a turf war or some such nonsense, something so indelibly insignificant that it seemed almost an insult to shelve a confrontation with Handsome Jack to sort it all out. Maya couldn't be bothered to keep track of the details. She remembered killing a young man in the tunnels under the Holy Spirits, pocketing an assload of cash, and returning to the bar to buy everyone a round of drinks.
The problem was, the people of Overlook were too sick and too terrified to leave their homes, much less haunt a place like the Holy Spirits. So Maya drank her generosity on her own.
Several hours and more than several shots of the rat poison that passed for rakk ale later, Maya had had to peel her cheek off the countertop. She rubbed feeling back into her face wondered just where and when it had all gone so horribly wrong.
That's easy, Maya thought, slamming back another shot, I got on that fucking train.
The sun set. The stars came out, glinting like slivers of broken glass, and Helios loomed over the sky with all the dark foreboding of a hurricane. Maya drew her caustic pistol, took careful aim at the space station hovering at the Lagrange point between Pandora and Elpis, and shot at it. The window of the bar shattered, but Helios stayed fixed above the planet. Maya just grunted and stuck her nose into the empty glass, reading her future in the refuse swirling in the alcohol.
Someone snapped his fingers at her.
Physicists have long known that sound waves travel a hell of a lot slower than light waves. It was one of those tacit truths about the universe people knew better than to debate. The conclusion was only partially correct. Frankly, Maya didn't think physicists drank themselves into a stupor on a semi regular basis, so they wouldn't have any means of knowing –– empirically or otherwise –– the effect of alcohol on one's grasp of established physical laws.
The sound of the snap echoed in her ears like a gunshot, but as Maya lifted her head from the dregs of her glass, searching through the brume of her inebriation, it took a while to locate the source of the sound. Light, sight, color… the pigments of the world inched towards her at the speed of a glacier.
"Hey! Yeah, I'm talking to yea." He snapped again. The barkeep, an unpleasant man with an accent Maya didn't recognize, glared daggers at her. "I'm cutting yea off, Vault Hunter."
"The fuck you mean?" The slurred words seemed to come from far away. Maya wanted to tell them to shut up. Her mouth tasted like ash and alcohol. Her voice rasped like sandpaper.
The barkeep swept up her glass and pointed at the door. "Get your glowey arse out of me bar. You break curfew on me watch, I'll toss yea into the grinder meself!"
Maya sneered. "After a couple of those drinks I'd welcome it."
"Get out! Freaky bitch…"
"Fuck you."
Maya stumbled outside. She spied her outrunner at the edge of Overlook. The town was completely dark, the windows shuttered, cast-iron bars drawn across the doors. Every now and again, Maya heard a Hyperion announcement echo over the broadcast system –– no doubt waking everyone up, the Siren thought blearily.
In the distance, stalkers screamed. If Maya concentrated, she could see the base of the cliff vibrate as threshers plowed through the dirt. Although, it could just as well have been her vision swimming from the alcohol. She couldn't tell the difference anymore. The whole of Pandora was one collective fever dream anyway, one she couldn't seem to wake from.
Maya briefly considered returning to Sanctuary, perhaps seek a tithe at Moxxi's place. But the thought of Roland's disappointed frown and Lilith's chastisement kept her on the porch of the Holy Spirits, peering into the dark, nursing her throbbing temples as a bitch of a hangover reared its ugly head.
Lilith.
Maya also considered storming back into the bar, holding the Zaford bastard at gunpoint, and emptying the tap.
Then she remembered that she had blown up the Zaford distillery earlier that day. Just another one of Roland's fucking errands coming back to bite her in the ass.
Maya slammed her hands against the railing. Her tattoos flashed magnesium white before quickly sputtering out. The wood plank left splinters in her palms. She thought taking out some of her anger on the local scenery would make her feel better. It didn't.
She had come to Pandora seeking knowledge. The Vault Hunting business was just a job, something to pay for the booze and the bullets. She placed no stock in fortune and glory like Axton. She wasn't hellbent on revenge like Salvador. And even if she knew –– or understood –– Zer0's motivations, Maya doubted she could empathize with them.
According to the compendiums of the late Brother Sophis, only six Sirens could exist in the universe at any given time, and two of them had been spotted on the sandy shithole of Pandora: Commandant Steele, the leader of the Crimson Lance, and Lilith, a Vault Hunter, a mercenary. Maya had hoped in light of the Commandant's death at the hands –– rather, tentacles –– of the Destroyer, Lilith would be able and willing to help Maya piece together the mysteries behind their shared Siren heritage. Together, perhaps they would find some answers.
Maya snorted. Lilith was an Eridium addict, a philanderer, and a covetous bitch. The red-haired Siren couldn't care shit-all about possible links between Eridium, Sirens, and the Vaults. So long as her phasewalking powers enabled her to grind bandits into paste and bed Roland on the nightly, Lilith was perfectly content to glory in her ignorance.
Coming to Pandora had been a waste of time, Maya realized. She took her pistol out of its holster, passing it from hand to hand. A drop of lime-green acid spattered on the deck, sizzling as it ate through the wood.
Maya wondered which would be the more painful way to die: a rapid-fire Vladof bullet entering the sternum at an awkward angle, or the ensuing acid melting the lungs, until the organs ran slippery across bleached ribs.
"You aren't thinking of offing yourself, are ya, Pumpkin?"
Maya dropped her pistol as though it had burnt her. She heard a smarmy laugh on her ECHO.
"I had to ask." Handsome Jack clearly found something terribly amusing, but Maya had missed the punch line. "I've never seen anyone look so goddamn miserable in my entire life... and that includes those suckers in New Haven."
"I can think of someone," snarled Maya. "You… as I turn your skull inside out."
"You're awfully optimistic."
"No. I'm just really fucking pissed off."
"Language, honey. You kiss the Commando with that mouth?"
"You fuck your secretary with that face?"
"Yes. Yes I do." Maya could hear his shit-eating grin and she fought the urge to throw the ECHO to the threshers. "And she loved every minute of it. Until she started running her mouth to the whole goddamn station and I put her out an airlock and told her to walk home. Shoulda seen the look on her face! It was hilarious! Her eyes were bugging like little ping pong balls. Goes to show you should never let pleasure interfere with business, baby. Compartmentalization. Another thing you Vault Hunters suck at."
"What the hell do you want, asshole?"
"Well, being as my secretary is probably a charred grease spot on the surface of Elpis by now, there's a vacancy. Wondered if you'd be interested."
Maya wasn't sure she had heard correctly. Light and color seemed to smear together, like oil in rainwater. Like she was still drunk off her ass in the Holy Spirits. Her voice sounded plummy in her ears: "Are you wasted or am I?"
"It's most assuredly you. And you Bandits are no more fun drunk than sober."
"Then why ask such a dumbass question."
"I've got something you want."
"I doubt it."
"Something your little pal Lilith won't give you."
He must have had the huge lens of Helios fixed on her, because Handsome Jack gave a throaty chuckle when she froze midstride to her outrunner.
"That slowed you down some."
She wrenched the ECHO from her belt. She imagined Handsome Jack's dichromatic leer trapped within the radio relay and she wanted to blast it to hell, phaselock it, just as she'd done to every other Pandoran lowlife who'd dared cross her path. The rage dripped through her veins like iron ore, burning her chest as much as the rakk ale.
"Liar," she spat. "You don't know jack shit."
"Heh. That's cute." She heard the crease of leather as Handsome Jack lounged in his chair. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. "I know a lot of things, Bandit. I know that Sirens thrive on Eridium ore, so there ought to be a connection between Sirens, the Vaults, and the Eridians, right? I know this connection is not between Eridium and each individual Siren, since your... convalescence on Athenas means you don't have any previous connection to Eridium.
"I know that when some pals of mine were looking for a Vault on Elpis, Lilith followed them into the chamber, but the Eridian Guardians made no effort to stop her from reaching the Vault, almost like they wanted her to get there.
"I know that you're desperate for answers. I know you'd tear this slag heap of a planet a new asshole before you'd ever give up on your goal. We're a lot alike in that respect, kiddo."
"We're alike in one respect, and one respect alone, Jack," said Maya softly, dangerously: "when you look at yourself in the mirror, and when I see that mask on my ECHO, we both know what true hatred feels like."
For one long, agonizing minute, Maya expected a moonshot to wipe her –– and the rest of Overlook –– off the face of the map. She waited. The ECHO stayed quiet. Helios stayed dark.
A burst of static made the Siren jump.
"I kinda like you, Maya."
Something about the way he said it made her flesh crawl. She grasped the ECHO in one fist, trying to keep her hand from shaking. She stood her ground against a person that wasn't there, stared at the mismatched eyes on the screen, barricaded herself against a kind of fear she had never felt in her 27 years of life.
"You know what every hero has, Siren? A tiny smidgeon of self doubt. Self hatred." His voice got lower; she tried to hedge out the conspiratorial whisper amidst the static. "I even loathe myself a little. I loathe the fact that every time I had those little soirées with that bimbo, I always wished her hair was just a little… more… blue." He clucked his tongue, almost in chastisement. "And heroes don't go lusting after the villains."
"You're no hero."
He ignored her. "You say you hate my face, but what about your face, Sweetheart? Didn't you hate that pathetic little nobody staring back at you from the bottom of that glass? Don't you hate knowing that you're nothing more than a bird with her wings clipped, suddenly tossed into a storm you've no hope of navigating? You ever hate the fact that you're completely, totally alone?"
"No," she lied. "I hate you."
"But let's face it, Pumpkin: Lilith and her boy scouts don't have what you're looking for. I do."
She sucked in a breath. Her chest hurt. "You're saying I should abandon Sanctuary… my friends––"
"Friends? That's freakin' hilarious. The Gunserker look's like he'd sooner eat you than pull your ass out of a fight."
"––and you'd tell me all you know about Sirens." Maya peered up at Helios. "What's in it for you, then?"
"I have a vested interest in chicks like you." He meant Sirens, Maya realized. Something having to do with the Vault… "Having you around would make my life a helluva lot easier. And... it'd be good for my constitution."
Maya's mouth went dry. Before, she thought he had been trying to unnerve her. But there was no flippancy in Handsome Jack's words anymore. She masked her fear and revulsion with spite; her heart was beating so hard, her voice had a hard time staying steady: "Getting a little chilly up there, Jack? Jerking off to Lilith not turning the trick for you anymore?"
"You kidding? I've got digistruct tech for that.
"Truth is, having a Siren on my side wouldn't be such a bad thing for my long-term interests…" The grin was back, pulling at the corners of that mask like taffy. "And getting to fuck her on the odd occasion doesn't hurt, either."
"You're a bastard."
"Guilty as charged."
"And you can go to hell!"
Maya reholstered her pistol. She felt as though she had been doused with ice water. The stars looked sharp, spiraling into hard focus. The fog in her mind evaporated. She made a beeline for her outrunner, silhouetted against the looming shadows of Overlook.
It occurred to her that there was a Hyperion supply base for the outwash dam just over the rise in the Highlands. The supply base probably had shield generators, canons, supply beacons, a veritable armory… It also occurred to her that if the sleepy little town on the cliff had a defense against Handsome Jack, they would soon be well enough to leave their homes and actually drink the round the occasional magnanimous Vault Hunter bought for them.
Drinking alone fucking sucked.
"You running off to Roland, Vault Hunter?" sneered Handsome Jack. "You gonna turn down this one chance to get your answers?"
"Yeah." Maya grinned. Her teeth glinted in the darkness. "I'm buying the Crimson Raiders a round of drinks.
"And then I'm coming to kill you."