Chapter 19

Angel

This was her home.

But it was only temporary. That promise had been hammered home to her so many times. This was Angel's home, the huge machine with its invisible pathways high above, a garden of stars that Angel could walk through and look down at people below. But it was not forever. Just until it was safe for her to go down and join them.

She knew her father was coming to visit her today. She had watched him travel down from Helios to Pandora, though he did not arrive straight to the bunker that hosted Angel's home. No, like every visit he made to Pandora, Jack swung by an old Dahl outpost first, disappearing into a mineshaft out of her sight for a few hours.

He would be talking about the ancient mural again today that, Angel knew.

"Hey Angel! How's my little Starburst doing today?" Jack's voice called through the vast dome of a room. He was wearing his usual Hyperion-yellow jumper, though he had layered a long white shirt over the top, perhaps to protect the beloved vintage jumper from the mine's dust and dirt. Angel hopped down from her chair, watching as Jack passed the bio-metric scanner that denied entry to anyone else. Angel had often watched the engineers working on the bunker and the Control Core, wondering if they knew she was inside. Of course, she knew deep down they didn't. No one knew she was here. Only her father.

It was for the best, she had been told. For a few months, she had believed it. Anything to soothe the guilt…

"Hi Dad," Angel greeted him, watching as he sat himself down on the floor near the forcefield surrounding her 'room', resting his back against the translucent purple wall. Stubble was shadowing his chin, blurring where he usually sported a soul patch under his lip. Dark circles bruised under his eyes, and it didn't take Angel long to clock that her father was in the midst of a bad week. They made up the majority of his time ever since Angel's mother had died.

Jack shrugged off a backpack and began pulling out DigiPads and ECHO-devices, papers and pens. He would be working tonight then.

"How was the Dahl outpost?" she asked, trying to smile for him.

Jack glanced over his shoulder at Angel, a light frown pulling his tired features.

"Same as always," he said, before adding: "but why're you following me around the planet?"

"I…was curious," Angel said, sitting down on the floor as close as she could to where Jack was sitting. For a while, her father didn't move. He sat there, a DigiPad propped up in his lap, a hand hovering just above its surface. Angel could see his eyes were glossy with lack of sleep, and maybe something else.

Taking a deep breath, she dared to ask:

"Dad…are you…still drinking a glass of water every morning?"

Angel wasn't stupid. It hadn't taken long for her to realise this morning ritual was not merely a quirk of Jack's, but a requirement. At tweflve years old, she was old enough to know pills when she saw them, though she had no idea why her father needed them. That she was not yet confident enough to ask him about.

"Wh-what?" Jack stammered, blinking out of his reverie. He glanced at Angel, appearing insulted. "Yeah. Yeah, of course I am, sweetie. Don't worry about that."

Angel frowned, chewing on her bottom lip as she worried all the same. She had hoped, after some time has passed, her father would start to take better care of himself in her mother's absence. But, knowing Jack, he would not discuss the matter further if she pressed onwards. Instead, Angel opted to try and cheer him up. Work always distracted him, so she peered over his shoulder to see whatever was displayed on his neglected DigiPad.

"Are you working on the portable Core?" she asked, hope bringing a lilt of excitement to her tone and a small smile to her face.

"…Yeah, thought a change of scenery might help," Jack replied, moving back to life like a rusty robot, arms slow and uncoordinated. He brought up a few screens to display the blueprints of the design he had been working on. In the last year, Angel had even started to help out with this project, what with her keen understanding of how the Control Core Angel worked from the inside out. "I got an office upgrade, but apparently that means more idiots get to frickin' show up unannounced to ask more dumb questions. Seriously, I don't know how half these idiots got a job here."

"Was that part of the promotion?" Angel asked, shifting to look at the DigiPad screen Jack had left lying on the floor. The designs didn't look like they had changed much from the last time she saw them. Her heart dropped a little, wondering if her father had maybe been losing interest in the project. After all, he seemed to be working on a thousand different things for Hyperion, many of which she suspected were just to distract himself every waking hour of the day.

"Mmm…Tassiter's pissed, but whatever. Someone on the board must agree with me about this armpit of a planet," Jack mused, drumming a pen against his bottom lip. Despite the technological advances of Hyperion, Angel knew her father sometimes preferred to write pen-on-paper. But from the looks of his sketches, it was nothing to do with the portable core idea they had had. "There's something here, Angel. And it's gonna help me. I know it. I've always known it."

Angel glanced away. She hated talking to her father about the Vault, though he assured her that if he was right, if there was a link between Eridium, the Vault, and Sirens, then opening it would help him find a way for her to control her powers.

Just a little longer, Angel thought bitterly to herself. Always a little longer.

"So, here's my thoughts — that mural, kinda looks like this, right?" Jack lifted up his sketch for Angel to see properly. She had seen it a hundred times before in various artistic renderings from Jack, but she nodded along anyway. "I always thought it was a thing of the past, y'know, ancient wall painting for an old race long gone? But…then that doesn't make sense, does it. 'Cause where's this bit?" He rapped a pen against the right-most part of the picture, where Jack had crudely drawn some flowers, a sunshine, and smiley-faced stick-people. "If these Sirens sealed up the Vault on Pandora…where's the paradise?"

"Maybe…something else happened?" Angel offered. Jack shook his head.

"There'd be evidence of it ever existing beyond just a wall-carving. Nah…see, I think this might not be the past, Angel. What if it's the future? What if these guys—" he tapped the middle of the picture, where six stick-figures with wings held their line-arms out towards a Vault symbol, "— aren't sealing the Vault. They're opening it."

"Opening the Vault…with a big tentacle monster in it…is the key to paradise?" Angel mused aloud, raising an eyebrow. That did not seem very logical to her.

"Eh, maybe the tentacle-monster thing is an allegory. For like, a huge power. It's big and scary, so normal people shouldn't open it," Jack hypothesised. Then, he yawned, setting the drawing to the side. He stretched, closing his eyes and letting his head rest back on the forcefield. The purple light gathered around the back of his head as he did so. "But if the Sirens open it, maybe they can…I dunno…channel it? And use it to create paradise. A nice place for us all. Get rid of all the filthy bandits on this planet and leave a nice place for us, Angel."

Angel tilted her head to look at the discarded drawing.

"But there are six Sirens, Dad," she commented. "Are there five more out on Pandora?"

"Nah…nah, they're all over the universe. And they might not all be active. It would take a miracle to get 'em all together on a single planet at the same time," Jack complained, opening his eyes again and staring at the ceiling. "That's why Pandora needs me. That's why it chose me, showed me all this. And it needs you too, kiddo. We gotta open that Vault, Angel. We gotta be heroes for everyone on this planet."

"A-and it'll help figure out the portable core, right?" Angel added, trying to ignore the little voice in her head telling her she was stupid for clinging to that hope.

Jack paused. He picked up one of the DigiPad screen, flicking through it idly.

"Yeah, of course, darling," he said, as though this were a given. "Yeah. The Vault'll tell us everything. Hey, if it can tell us how to make paradise with its power, it can tell us how to free my little Angel and show her how to control her powers, right? How else are you gonna be a hero with me, huh?"

"R-right!" Angel nodded. She wished she had her father's dedication and sheer belief in the Vault and all its riches. Some days, he spoke about it as though it would solve all their problems, all their sorrow, as though opening the Vault would somehow send them back to their small apartment on Helios with her mother.

Those days were paradise to Angel. Maybe that was why she found it so hard to believe in the Vault's promises.

In Jack's promises.

Her father had left before the sun could set on Pandora. Angel wasn't sure what progress they had really made on the portable core concept. But she assumed she just wasn't old enough to grasp the same level of engineering as her father. Sure, she had spent the last four years learning everything she could through the Hyperion network. She watched wildlife on all sorts of planets, saw inventions sparking up across the galaxy. But Jack was her father, and her father would always look out for her. If he said he would find a way to save her, then he would.

Angel trusted him.

What other choice did she have, trapped in these digital walls?

Then again, those four walls were as wide or narrow as Angel wanted. They could be as vacant or colourful as she wished. One though and technology would run to her side, providing a virtual reality for her to play with.

To begin with, this was endless fun. How strange that playing god would be so dull after so short a time.

Angel sat herself back down in her chair, closing her eyes and letting her Siren ability surge through the Control Core's circuits. An endless maze of puzzles, ever-changing, ever-adapting, kept her energy in check. It allowed her enough mental space to focus without her ability overwhelming her, and in turn, allowed Angel to step into the digital world she had spent so long building.

Yes, she would stay put. Yes, she would help her father save the planet. It was the least she could do, she told herself. After all...their lives had been ruined because of her, hadn't they?

But that didn't mean she was immune to being lonely. When the doors shut and Angel was left within the core again, the numbing loneliness returned to keep her company.

It had not been long before Angel has decided that she needed more.

The walls around her shivered, lights activating and sketching out the world within Angel's mind. A living room, one couch, one armchair, brown leather. One rug, old as hell, frayed, a wooden coffee table on top of it. One ECHO-net screen fixed to the wall, off. She didn't fancy watching TV tonight.

The kitchen behind the living room. A counter, sink, pale white. The hall stretching across between the two rooms, leading down to a black void. Angel had never bothered to construct digital replicas of her bedroom or the bathroom. There was no point.

Opening her eyes, Angel got to her feet, her chair standing where the front door would be. She took a step forward, and the scene began — her father was sitting on the sofa, snoozing after another day at work. Tired, but happy. Clean-shaven, less gaunt, the way she remembered him. Angel cleared her throat, and on cue, the digital replica of her father woke up.

He smiled to see her. She missed that.

"Hey, Angel! Where've you been?" Jack asked, shifting to sit up. Angel quickly created a story to answer him.

"I was out with Mom," she said, and a digital copy of Megan flickered to life next to Angel. Her dark hair was braided down her back, and of course, she was smiling too. Megan held up a bag, rustling it a little.

"It felt like a 'screw dishes' kinda night," her mother said, heading past Angel to sit on the sofa next to Jack. Jack planted a kiss on Megan's cheek, then scooted across to make room between them.

"C'mon then, you can be the rose between two thorns." Jack patted the seat next to him. Angel headed over, sitting down on the sofa and being careful not to brush her arm through the holograms and ruin the illusion.

Her mother began to unpack the food, setting out tin trays across the table in front of them. Angel watched while she wrestled with the other reason she had returned to her digital dream tonight.

"Dad...you know how you're gonna help Pandora?"

"We, sweetheart, we are gonna help Pandora."

"Y-yeah...getting rid of the bad people..."

"Ah-huh."

"...Am...am I...am I a bad person? I...I made a mistake, Dad. I didn't mean to, it was an accident but...someone got hurt. And I can't fix it," Angel's eyes darted to her mother's digital ghost. "Not really, anyway..."

"Woah, okay, ah, not sure what's brought this on but if you've deleted my vintage Taylor Swift mixtape collections, then I am very disappointed but forgive you, Angel," Jack smirked, then went to nudge her with his elbow. It phased through Angel'a arm. Neither of them addressed that. "No but seriously, we all make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you a bad person, Starburst."

"Then...what does?"

Jack paused. Angel liked to think it was because he was thinking of an answer for her, something to soothe her soul.

But she knew he was just a program, waiting for her input.

"...Hurting people and not thinking it's a mistake," he said, his voice sounding too flat to be natural. Angel made a mental note to work on that. "Hurting people and thinking it's okay."

Angel looked down at her feet.

It never helped.

No matter how many times she played through this scene, it never helped.