How sweet the smell of a new cigarette was, that fresh hint of paper and tobacco filling the air on the first light. Mordecai had always savoured the smell and wondered why no company had even tried to incorporate it throughout the entirety of the cigarette. That one fleeting moment, gone in a split second, never to be recaptured until the lighting of the next cancer stick.
A brief glimpse of what things could have been. Like the life he now held in his hands.
He'd considered what Roland would think about the whole thing. Daydreamed the stiff words he would utter in chastisement of his actions. Probably punish him with another stupid mission out into the Tundra just because. But Roland was dead and there was no one to keep him restrained from such actions he'd had no problems taking before he came to Pandora. So many planets, so many robbed or dead left in his wake. As he'd promised, he was going to take everything this damned galaxy owed him. Including from the very man who'd taken his bird.
What a smug asshole, he thought as he licked the stain of the filter from his lip and spat it onto the man's stupid-ass sneakers. Thankfully, Jack was unconscious. His face: bloodied and swollen. His hair: half-shaved off in a hurried mess. His limbs were restrained behind his back but the sniper was sure that one of his shoulders was dislocated or broken from that ugly purple that bloomed across his skin.
But the sniper currently wanted him awake, despite the risk of hearing him run off at the mouth again. A small price to pay to watch the pain and agony written all over his face.
"Hey, fucker. Time to wake up." He pressed his barely-lit cigarette to the man's face, right near that stupid Vault symbol that had been burned into it. It left behind a pencil-sized burn mark on his cheek and jolted Jack awake from his state of unconsciousness. The sudden waking left him dizzy and he struggled to stay upright in the small space he found himself in. A hand to his bruised shoulder helped, in both preventing his fall and inspiring more pain to keep him awake.
Mordecai had seen it fit to steal one of those Hyperion cargo trucks and use it as a makeshift prison for the head of Hyperion. It was Jack's property and hard to trace by usual means. The perfect place to torture him while staying on the move, always hiding in the shadows of tall cliffs to keep from being found. The plan had worked for the past two months but the sniper was sure that the other Raiders would catch up to him eventually. He needed to get the job done before then.
"I'd offer you a drink, but I ain't one for sharing." Mordecai undid the stopper of his bottle and took a healthy swig. The sun had moved some since they'd parked here hours ago and they were starting to roast from the rising temperatures of the interior. Temperatures Mordecai was used to coming from Artemis. Not so much for the CEO who'd spent most of his adult life on that space station with recycled air, temperature control, and almost anything he wanted at his fingertips.
Almost. He would never have this planet.
Jack raised his head just enough to regard Mordecai under hooded lids. That milky-white eye stared up at him, the cocky, bright lustre completely gone. He was staring into the eyes of a dead man who still clung to the hopes that he could get out of this. But Mordecai sought to trample those aspirations into grease and gristle until nothing remained. Until he was nothing more than a shell to be blown away in the wind and forgotten by everyone. Forgotten despite the curse he'd leave on this planet. Perhaps in centuries, no one would remember any of this. Or it would all be twisted into some tall tale where the facts really didn't matter anymore. Where none of them did. And that was fine with him. For someone with the size of Jack's ego, however...
"How long're you gonna keep this up, shit-for-brains?" Jack asked huskily from cracked lips. Dried blood caked the creases, mirroring the dark jagged lines that crossed his face under that Vault symbol. Lilith's mark, before she'd got the hell out of that place and left Jack to his fate. A fate that had, unfortunately, turned him mad and made things worse for Pandora.
"Why you care all of a sudden? Not likin' when the shoe's on the other foot?" He edged up his goggles and stared back with pale eyes of his own, his lips pursed around the bottle for another drink. He watched Jack lick his own desperate for something to quench his thirst. Which would be continuously denied until he was just on the edge of death. Then Mordecai would be his saviour, provide him with enough to undo all the damage, and it would start all over again.
That would be tomorrow.
"Oh, I dunno, this is just getting pretty fucking boring and I'd like it to be over with."
Mordecai wasn't going to grant him death that easily. That would be a mercy and he wasn't feeling at all lenient about how his life had been changed. Ruined. Turned upside down and shoved back down his throat for him to digest. No, his daughter had been a mercy killing, her suffering brought on by Jack's own hands and the madman couldn't even see it.
"I'd say sorry to disappoint but your expectations don't mean shit to me." He replaced the almost-empty bottle back into his bag and thought to light up another cigarette. Maybe even press the cherry-red cinders into his face on the other side to match the still-burning mark on his cheek. At least that way, his face would look more symmetrical.
"You should have ruined me when you had the chance, you know. Cuz all of this? I think you're playing it safe." Jack shifted to one side to get away from the scalding metal against his back. "You're not the same man you used to be or else I'd be worse off already."
Was Jack taunting him? Trying to instigate him to stick him like a pig and watch him bleed out? That would be so easy... and who knew if he'd somehow saved his DNA coding in the New-U? Mordecai couldn't take that risk... but it did give him an idea.
"You're right, I shoulda done this weeks ago." With a snarl, he pinned Jack's neck to the wall with his arm and retrieved his knife with the other. That stink of Hyperion cologne had faded weeks ago and now the CEO only smelled like a common local: like sweat, alcohol, and dried piss.
Jack didn't put up much of a fight, most likely from the lack of sustenance. But Mordecai guessed that it was also a sign of surrender, that there would be no use in delaying the inevitable.
"Now how 'bout ya be a good boy, Jackie, 'n hold still." Mordecai chewed on his lip as he pressed the blade to Jack's lips. The blood sprang quickly and curled around the sharp metal, ran down and dripped off his chin. Jack couldn't help but curl his tongue around the feel of liquid so close to his lips and hungrily lapped it up in an attempt to soothe his dry throat. Just as Mordecai wanted.
The first peek of dried dark tongue was immediately removed with just a flick of his wrist. The tip fell into Jack's lap and rolled away like the end of a lizard's tail, still twitching in disbelief that it was no longer connected. Jack's eyes went wide with pain and the blood filled his mouth to the point that he was already starting to gag on it. At this rate, he would bleed to death in seconds. Mordecai ran his tongue across the edge of his sharp canine.
A small red glow filled the small space between them as he produced a hypo and stuck the needle right into Jack's neck. The glowing red fluids disappeared and the gurgling stopped. The blood was gone, and so was the tip of Jack's tongue. That was the beautiful thing Mordecai discovered about these hypos: they could heal wounds, even the most severe, but they couldn't regrow your limbs.
"What the fuck!" Jack tried to swear, but it came out all clumsy and heavy, the syllables scrambled together in what could be described as an intoxicated mess.
"You wanna lose more?" Mordecai held up the knife that still had the CEO's blood smeared across it.
"Those hypos are a dime a dozen and I'm rollin' in a lot of cash. I'm guessin' I could probably get half-way through that face o'yours before you pass out. Or should I start from the bottom up?" He tapped the blade against Jack's sneaker and trailed it up his leg and thigh to stop just under his bony hip.
Jack's expression was a mixture of fear and anger, with a hint of disbelief. Maybe he was trying to convince himself that the Truxican didn't have the balls to go through with it. But that incredulity faded when their eyes met and he saw just how serious Mordecai was. He wasn't the same, but that old part of Mordecai's life, the need to take what he felt he deserved, had never left.
Mordecai felt Jack relax under his grip and tapped the flat of the blade against his forehead.
"Now you're learnin'. Where you wanna go next, Jackie? Any place you've been dyin' t'see?"
"... I've... heard Hayter's Folly's nice this time of year..." he spoke clumsily.
"Good idea, but I've heard Crawmerax's been gettin' kinda bitey as of late. Breedin' season 'n all that. Let's go see if he's hungry." Mordecai ran a gloved hand over Jack's short crop of hair, patted his face not-too-gently, and slid the dividing door open. He slammed it shut and the vehicle's engines started to rumble. A choking grind of metal followed as gears were shifted, and then they were off. Towards the next horrible chapter of this nightmare.