OPENING THE CAGE
CHAPTER 2:
REUNION IN FYRESTONE
In a flare of cyan light, the quiet of Fyrestone in the morning was disturbed when the Fast-Travel Station activated, and two girls in their late teens appeared. Elizabeth shook her head, blinking. "That was a novel experience," she said.
"I don't think I've ever used Fast-Travel before either," Angel said quietly.
"Well, that's interesting," came a voice from not far away, from within a building right next to the Fast-Travel Station. They whirled to face a grizzled man, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, dressed in a surgeon's smock and with a surgical mask over his face. He was tapping a buzz-axe against the palm of his hand as he approached them, a scowl on what could be seen of his face. "You two have ten seconds to explain what the hell you're doing here."
"It's a long story. We're fugitives," Angel said. "I just escaped from a Hyperion facility in Thousand Cuts. Elizabeth here helped me."
"Thousand Cuts? I didn't think the Fast-Travel Station here could go there," the man said suspiciously.
"Not normally, no. And it won't again for a little while."
The man peered at Angel, before he noted her markings. "You're a Siren, aren't you?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Yes." Angel peered at the man. "Wait…are you Dr Zed?"
"Well, I sure as hell ain't my brothers," Dr Zed said.
DOCTOR ZED
Licence to Maim
"Brothers?" Angel asked, bemused. "I thought you only had one: Ned, who works for Jakobs."
"We don't talk about Ted(1)," Zed said. Suddenly, there was a roar of engines in the distance, and his eyes widened. "Shit! Nine-Toes must be sending his next raid! Get inside! And no funny business! Or I'll show you why I lost my medical licence!"
"So, what's your story?" Lilith asked, peering at the man sitting next to her on the bus.
"It's a long one," Booker said. "And I don't think you'd believe me."
"Well, those guns you're wielding…given the wood, I'd normally say that they're a Jakobs'. Except they would also have the Jakobs' logo. And they don't look like Jakobs' style anyway. Hell, they look like they belong in an antique shop. Early 20th century, maybe late 19th," Lilith said, frowning. "Ditto your clothes. And you haven't been on Pandora that long. Your clothes aren't dusty enough. Got a lot of blood on them, though. And relatively fresh blood, at that. You've been in a gunfight not long ago, I'd bet."
Booker cursed her perceptiveness. He had stumbled across the bus-stop where these four were waiting, a few minutes after falling through the Tear Elizabeth created. With Elizabeth nowhere in sight (and she seemed to go through another Tear anyway), he decided that his best chance for survival, at least until he could find a way to track down Elizabeth. Always assuming that she had ended up anywhere near here. What little he had seen of her destination through her Tear (before his momentum sent him through the Tear she had opened in front of him) showed the interior of a building, albeit no building he had ever seen. Even the interior of Monument Island, with all its technological paraphernalia, had nothing on what he glimpsed.
Wherever she was, it was doubtlessly nowhere near this place.
He had refrained from asking questions about this place. He knew that, wherever he was, it was a long way away from Columbia. And given what he had seen, he wasn't sure when he was. Especially when that bus, like no other he had ever seen, pulled up. He was accepted as a Vault Hunter by the fat man driving the bus, Marcus, but the others clearly didn't think so, though they had done the courtesy of giving him their names. But he hadn't seen clothing like theirs before, and he was beginning to think that, like Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee or HG Wells' protagonist(2), he was either in a delirium, or else in another time.
Given what else he had seen, like a city in the clouds, gigantic bird-like automatons, the Vigors, and Elizabeth's abilities, time travel was surprisingly easy to accept. Of course, whether these others would was another matter.
Eventually, he said, "I'm a private detective. I was hired to free a girl from prison and bring her back to New York."
"New York? On Old Earth?" Roland asked, his keen eyes piercing into Booker's own.
"Yes. She was imprisoned by a religious fanatic by the name of Comstock. I didn't know it, but the girl had…abilities. Long story short, though I freed her from prison, I lied to her about where I was taking her. She reacted badly, and we ended up…where is this place, anyway?"
"Pandora," Lilith said, frowning. "How could you not know?"
"Yeah, well, she opened up a hole in space. I don't know where I ended up. That's how I met you guys."
"I call bullshit," Brick said. "How can a girl open up a hole in space?"
"Quiet," Lilith said. She then turned back to Booker. "The girl, did she have these?" She indicated the blue markings on her body.
"I don't know," Booker said. "She had enough clothing on, I couldn't see them if she did. Why?"
"You tellin' me that you don't know about Sirens?" Mordecai asked.
"Well, I know about the ones from Greek myth," Booker said.
Mordecai whistled. "Man, you're out of touch. Sirens, women with weird powers and blue tattoos? Those ones?"
"I sort of kept to myself," Booker said. "I have a drinking problem."
"Again, I call bullshit," Brick remarked.
"You can call bullshit all you want," Booker said coolly. "I'm not here to look for the Vault, whatever the hell that is. I'm here to find her, assuming she's still on this planet. I'm only sticking with you guys because there's safety in numbers."
Mordecai frowned. "Don't you know about the Vault?"
"Like I said, I sort of kept to myself."
"It's only one of the biggest rumours around," Mordecai said, rolling his eyes behind his goggles.
It was then that Roland spoke up, turning in his seat and looking at Booker. "Some time ago, the Atlas Corporation discovered a vast cache of alien weaponry and technology on the planet Promethea. It's a shithole of a planet, and I know because I did two tours on it with the Crimson Lance before I went AWOL."
"Shot your superior officer is what I heard," Lilith said with a smirk. "Anyway, the point is, that was the first Vault to be found. Supposedly, it was a cache of tech left behind by the Eridians, an ancient race of aliens. So when rumours of another Vault start circulating, people get excited."
"Like a gold rush," Booker murmured.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Lilith said. "Weapons, money, fame…besides, Pandora needs mercenaries like us. It's frankly a shithole of a planet. Not as much as Promethea, but, well, it's a hard frontier, like the Old West back on Earth. Hell, you wouldn't look out of place there."
Booker had to wonder whether Lilith was just remarking on his clothes, or trying to fish for information. She was clearly the smartest one there. He merely grunted.
Lilith then looked over to the bus driver. "Hey, Marcus, do you have a spare ECHO device?"
"Sure, if the price if right."
Booker fumbled around in his pockets, and then walked carefully up the aisle of the bus, and handed Marcus a silver eagle dollar. Marcus looked briefly at the coin in the one hand, before he bit it. "Real silver," he muttered(3). He spared Booker an incredulous glance, before returning his gaze to the road ahead. "How many of those do you have?"
"A few hundred."
"Give me a hundred, and the ECHO device is all yours."
Booker was sure that he was getting ripped off, but he handed over the coins regardless. He then strapped on the device. Lilith helped him switch it on, and he got the feeling she suspected the truth, or at least part of it. He didn't know whether to be disturbed or relieved. He found it surprisingly easy to understand how to use. He could call up a map, as well as something not unlike a telephone system.
Suddenly, it beeped, and at first, Booker wondered if he had done something wrong, only for the others to get the same noise. "Emergency broadcast signal," Roland said.
Lilith frowned as she looked at the data. "But it's been specifically targeted to us."
"That's right," came the voice of a young woman. Booker, for a moment, thought it might have been Elizabeth, an impression reinforced when the image of a blue-eyed and dark-haired girl in her late teens appeared. But he soon realised that this girl was far too thin, and her hair was asymmetrical, with metal implants in the temple exposed by the shorter hair, and the longer hair apparently blowing in some wind. And the voice was different, with a weary edge even Elizabeth didn't have. "I'm sorry for hijacking your ECHO devices, but we're running out of time. You're nearly at Fyrestone, which is being attacked by bandits. We need your help, Vault Hunters. In exchange, I have vital information about the Vault."
"I'll drop you guys off when we get to the Fyrestone stop," Marcus said. "We're coming up to it now."
"Wait, who are you?" Lilith asked. "How do you know we're Vault Hunters?"
"It's a very long story, Lilith," the young woman said. "I'd rather not say over an unsecured line. There's three of us, four if you count a Claptrap unit. Get rid of those bandits, and you'll have the answers you seek." Her image faded from the ECHO devices, just as Marcus slowed the bus to a stop.
"End of the line," he said, looking at them. "If you want to get off here, do so. Hey, if you manage to kill enough bandits, I'll re-open my franchise here. They're bad for business."
Booker didn't say anything, merely getting off the bus with the others. A shame that wasn't Elizabeth. But then again, he doubted that Elizabeth would be glad to see him…
Zed scratched his head. The three of them, plus Fyrestone's resident Claptrap unit, were hiding out in his clinic. The robot was cowering in a corner, while the three humans squatted between some shelves, out of sight from the windows. "So…what you're saying is, that you're the daughter of some Hyperion programmer and low-level surveillance supervisor, who's kept you imprisoned as his personal top hacker and system administrator?"
"That about sums it up," Angel said. "My Siren powers, my Phase-shift, gives me the ability to manipulate virtually any electronic system. The only reasons why Dad could keep me prisoner were that he was an excellent programmer, and knew how to stop me from hacking my security systems, and he used a control collar." She touched her neck unconsciously. "If it weren't for Elizabeth, I'd have been stuck there(4)."
"Well, that's what we in the medical profession like to call FUBAR," Zed remarked after a moment's contemplation, with considerable understatement.
"Foo-bah?" Elizabeth asked, her eyebrows knotting.
"Fucked Up Beyond All Repair," Zed explained. "Have you lived a sheltered life, Miss?"
"You could say that," Elizabeth said. "Like Angel, I know what it's like to grow up in a cage with strange powers."
Zed blinked. "Wait, are you a Siren too?"
"I don't have those markings, if that's what you mean," Elizabeth said. After a moment's contemplation, she decided to tell the truth. "I can open Tears in space, to other worlds and times. Other universes, you would say."
Zed's eyebrows met his hairline. "Y'know something? You're either crazy, or telling the truth. That'd have to be a pretty unbelievable lie, anyway. Do you come from another time?"
"The year 1912. I know I must be centuries into the future…though I've never made it this far before. I don't know how to get back. Then again, I'm not sure I want to. Does the name Columbia mean anything to you? Or Zachary Hale Comstock?"
"Columbia? I've heard of the South American country on Old Earth, and then there's that colony a few systems away…but I'm guessing you don't mean either. As for Comstock, never heard of him."
"Then we must be in another timeline entirely," Elizabeth said. "Columbia was a flying city."
"In 1912?" Zed asked. "God, must've been one hell of a timeline. But you don't want to go back, do you?"
"Columbia looked nice, but there was a lot of rot underneath. There was a man, trying to get me out of there. A detective, called Booker. He claimed he was going to take me to Paris, like I wanted. But he was actually going to take me to New York, so I fled from him. I tried to open up a Tear so far from him, he couldn't follow, and I tried to use a Tear to send him far from Columbia. I don't know where he is." Elizabeth pursed her lips. "For all his deceit and brutality, he at least tried to care, I think."
Angel frowned, before going over to the ECHO device she had used to call the Vault Hunters for help. She murmured, "Phase-shift activated." Her eyes briefly glowed, before the small screen of the device lit up. "When my father was planning to manipulate the Vault Hunters, he only thought that a specific group of four would be best. Dr Lilith Cashlin, Roland, Mordecai, and Brick. But a fifth member is with them. His was amongst the small group of active ECHO devices that I accessed." She showed Elizabeth a screenshot. "Is this Booker?"
Elizabeth scowled, before nodding. "Let me guess, he's on his way with the Vault Hunters?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth sighed. "No, don't be. We needed help. I don't know how to use a gun. I'm not sure I want to learn. And…"
Her sentence was cut off by gunshots, and then, a bandit yelled, "Get them!"
"Time to pound some meat puppies!" howled a Psycho(5).
"Shoot them all!" another bandit snarled.
Gunshots rang out for a number of seconds, before silence fell again. Then, a fist rapped on the door. "Hey, is anyone in there?" a woman's voice asked.
"That's Lilith's voice," Angel said, before calling out, "Is it safe yet, Lilith?"
"The bandits are all dead," came the deep voice of Roland. "Are you the one who sent the distress signal?"
"Yes. Just a moment," Angel said, going over to the door. Before she did so, she murmured, "Phase-shift activated." She then looked at the others. "It's them, the ECHO signatures are the same, and they're transmitting life-signs."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Claptrap, who, up until now, remained silent (save for frightened babbling), was now up and trundling towards the door. The rhomboid, yellow robot then opened it. "Greetings, travellers! This Claptrap unit offers thanks for seeing off those bandits. Wow, that's a lot of bodies!"
Indeed, there were. Elizabeth grimaced at seeing the various corpses strewn around the ground. Her one consolation was that, unlike the military and police that Booker had killed, or Slate's fanatical followers, these men were most definitely criminals, intent on theft if not murder or rape.
She looked at her saviours. Booker, she barely glanced at, though she didn't fail to notice a look that mixed surprise and relief. He was actually relieved to find her alive and well.
She noted the red-haired woman with similar markings to Angel, the one who must be Lilith. There was the dark-skinned man. The thin man with the beard and the hood, and a bird-like creature perched on his shoulder. And the big, muscled hulk.
Lilith stepped forward, peering at Angel. "So, our mystery caller is a Siren. I wondered if I'd ever meet another one. You have a name?"
"Angel Clarke. This girl is Elizabeth, though one of your party already knows her. And this guy is Dr Zed."
"And I am a CL4P-TP steward robot," Claptrap said. "But you can call me Claptrap!"
CLAPTRAP
Annoying Little Rhombus, Isn't He?
"You said you had some info about the Vault. Vital information, you said," Roland said. "Well?"
"Inside," Angel said. "You never know if the bandits might get bold again."
As the Vault Hunters filed inside, Booker caught Elizabeth's eyes. "Save your breath, Mr DeWitt," Elizabeth said with a scowl. "We'll talk later."
Booker nodded. "Well, getting to New York or Paris IS a moot point by now, don't you think?"
"I guess. I don't know whether we can go back. So we'd better get used to it, shouldn't we?"
"I'm already used to this sort of thing," Booker said. "It's you I'm worried about."
Elizabeth bit back the retort that formed on her lips. He was right, after all. He had said he was in the Pinkertons, that he had fought at Wounded Knee with the army. He had been in this sort of situation before.
But that didn't mean she would fail the trials Pandora would throw in her path. Especially given what Angel had told her, about the Vault, and her father…
CHAPTER 2 ANNOTATIONS:
And another chapter down. I hope you guys are enjoying this. I've already got some follows.
Like with Hooked on a Feeling, I'm putting Angel's age in the original Borderlands as 19, the same age as her live-action actress was at the time of the release of Borderlands. It's rather appropriate, considering that Elizabeth is the same age, or about that, at the time of BioShock Infinite.
Quick review-answering. Sorry, Darkstar248, but Krieg won't make an appearance. As for his Action Skill, I haven't decided on one. Booker using Vigors makes him badass enough already. I agree about Elizabeth's Action Skill.
mattman65: I have no plans for any such thing. Nor do I want to. Pulling together so many characters is just asking for trouble.
1. I'm assuming here that Zed and Ned are two different characters. It's a big, but not unreasonable assumption, given that TK Baha mentions that there are three brothers in the first Headhunter DLC of Borderlands 2.
2. Both were time-travelling fictional protagonists prior to 1912, and Booker could conceivably have read these books.
3. I'd imagine that Columbia, unlike most of the world, would have minted its coinage in precious metals. I've made an assumption here, but not that big a one.
4. I reckon Angel wasn't given the Eridium injectors until after Jack got a hold of the Vault Key, so by the time of Borderlands, while imprisoned, she wasn't actually in danger of dying if she was freed.
5. Okay, there weren't actually any Psychos when you first arrive in Fyrestone, but I put them in anyway.