Vaughn squinted into the glow of his ECHOcomm. It was 4:03 AM. Yvette was calling, and he was trying to decide whether or not to answer.

The last few times she'd called, she hadn't actually needed him. She just couldn't be bothered to deal with run-of-the-mill dumb bandit antics where no one was too seriously injured. Like firemelon dodgeball, or cesium cacti eating contests. Vaughn wasn't that much better at curbing the impulses of his subordinates, he just had more patience for shenanigans.

But this was the first time Yvette had called this early, and it struck Vaughn that if it wasn't important, she probably would have gone back to bed rather than contact him. He clicked to accept the call. "Is there a problem?"

"Yeah." She sounded groggy. "There's about…Ten Vault hunters camped out on the edge of Helios. Seems like they're looking for a fight."

"With us?"

"Can't say. But after what happened in Lynchwood?"

"...The thing with Zer0?"

"The fallout of that. Yesterday morning there was some huge fight about it. Some of the Raiders bombed the train in retaliation, there was apparently a shootout. I didn't get the details beyond that."

"Oh. I'm not seeing what that has to do with us? We didn't kill Zer0."

"We're ex-Hyperion too. You think the Crimson Raiders see the difference between us and Lynchwood?"

"Maybe?" He hadn't considered that. "But Fiona's basically a Raider? If they were planning to attack us, she'd let me know."

"That's assuming a lot. We're not even sure they're behaving cohesively. Zer0 was a major Pandoran hero. You remember how Helios got after Jack died? I wouldn't be surprised if it's around that level, except they're all trained killers."

"Yeah, okay. I see what you mean."

"Even if they're not going after us, I can't guarantee I can keep everyone from doing something stupid. I've tried calming them down, but, you know."

"Right." Some of the CoH took their lack of discipline as a point of pride, a way to distance themselves from their days as part of Hyperion. "I'll call up Fiona and see if I can figure out what's going on. Or, Rhys has been working with Vault hunters? He may be able to do something."

"Rhys has a habit of saying the worst possible thing."

"Only sometimes. And, they owe him for taking down Helios, right? If not that, he still has access to a bunch of Atlas resources he could leverage."

"Right." She didn't seem convinced. "So, in the meantime…"

"Tell everyone to stay in camp. Anyone who starts a fight with the Vault hunters is…" He hesitated. He'd never needed to institute any punishments before. Even he wasn't too big on the whole discipline thing–it ran counter to the whole bandit philosophy. "They're out of the clan?"

"And if the Vault hunters attack?"

"Uh, try not to die? Retreat? I really wish I could say something that would help, but I'll sort this out as fast as I can. Just keep an eye on things."

"Great. Thanks." She hung up with a huff.

He wasted no time in calling Fiona. The default answering machine message played after a few rings, "The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again or leave a message after the beep."
He hung up and called again, listening to it ring as he stepped into the hall and towards Rhys's suite. With any luck she was just asleep, and enough ringing would wake her.
"The person you are trying to reach–" He hung up a second time, sending a text this time.

Vaughn
Today 4:07 AM
this is an actual emergency, please call me back.
CoH lives on the line

"Hey Rhys?" he called out into his friend's suite, lowering his ECHOcomm. He'd give it a few minutes before trying Fiona again. "Got what might be a problem here." The workstation at Rhys's desk was powered down, and the door to his bedroom was wise open, with the lights on. Finding it deserted was unsurprising. Most likely, Rhys was messing around in that conference-room-turned-workshop of his.

The elevator was already on the way up when Vaughn approached it. Faintly, he could make out two voices inside–one of them Rhys's.

The door slid open. Vaughn couldn't comprehend what he was looking at for those first few seconds. By the time he identified Zer0, they'd already drawn their sword.

"What the hell?" He dropped the ECHOcomm as his thoughts hit a disordered overdrive.
Zer0 killed Harding.
Harding was a former Hyperion.
Vault hunters outside Helios.
The CoH were former Hyperions.
Spots of fresh blood stained Zer0's shirt.
Zer0 held their sword as they stood next to Rhys.
Rhys.
Ex-Hyperion.
Vaughn's gun was in his hand, pointed at Zer0 before he could even turn those thoughts into a coherent conclusion. "Get away from him!"

Zer0's blade was at Vaughn's throat in an instant. "Drop it," they commanded in their unsettling, monotone voice.

Vaughn felt himself flinch, but he kept his gun pointed at the center of their visor.
It almost looked like Zer0 was the one trembling, but that had to be his own panic screwing with his vision, somehow. He was half sure that he was already dead.

"You have seen me work," they said when he didn't budge. "You know my skills exceed yours. / Do you need more proof?"

"Wait!" Rhys stepped in beside Zer0. "Wait wait wait. Don't—don't…" He tried to push Zer0's sword arm down, almost gently, with none of the force or urgency the situation called for. Naturally, he found no success. "Just calm down. Both of you."

"Extremely difficult to be calm right now, Rhys." Vaughn didn't take his eyes off Zer0. How the hell was Rhys not freaking out too?

"I will acquiesce, / If he lowers his gun, first. / I cannot trust him."

Vaughn scoffed. "You don't trust me?!"

"Yeah, uh, Zer0, you did have your sword out first," Rhys put in.

"He is a bandit. / Foolish, unpredictable, / And accident-prone."

"Okay, first of all, completely uncalled for. Secondly, you're a literal assassin. Like, a-an actual serial killer? And yeah, I have seen you fight, you're whole thing is tricking people!"

Rhys groaned. "Vaughn, look, I swear, they're not going to kill you," he said. "I can explain everything, but whatever you think is happening here, definitely is not happening. Zer0's a friend."

It was difficult to believe. Vaughn couldn't help but suspect that Rhys's infatuation with Zer0 might have diminished his already underactive self-preservation instinct. Still, Rhys wasn't blind to immediate danger, and now that Vaughn was getting a good look at Zer0, the blood seemed to be their own.

"Fine," he said, finally. "But if they stab me, I'm gonna be really mad, Rhys."

Zer0 didn't move when he lowered his gun, nor when he deconstructed it into his digi-holster and held up both hands in surrender. They simply stood there, with their sword hovering less than an inch from his neck.

"Okay, seriously? What do you want from me? I don't have time for this!"

"Zer0, you can uh, you can put down the—" Rhys's hand went straight through their arm when he tried to touch them. "Zer0?!"

"Shit." Vaughn drew his gun again as he swung around, expecting to find their glowing blue blade crashing down on him.

Nothing.
Just empty hallway.

Then Zer0 materialized twenty feet away, facing the opposite direction. They were partially hunched over, supporting themself against the wall as they took slow steps.
It was now exceedingly clear that Vaughn hadn't been imagining their trembling.

"What's—" Vaughn started, but Rhys was already hurrying towards Zer0, calling their name in alarm.

They collapsed suddenly, their head hitting the wall with a hard thunk. "Dammit." they hissed, making no move to rise again.

Passing out on the floor while retreating from a bandit would fall high on the list of Zer0's most shameful moments. Especially with Rhys watching. And minutes after they'd insisted they didn't need his help.

They wouldn't have snuck off if they'd known Vaughn would so easily see reason. They'd expected him to resist until Zer0 ended up collapsing in front of him, and most bandits were jumpy enough to shoot a suddenly falling foe. Perhaps they should have given Vaughn more credit. Maybe Hyperion churned out slightly more rational bandits than the other corporations that abandoned employees on Pandora.

An cluster of unfamiliar error messages floated in a field of black.
-CLOAK ABORTED
-ERROR #314539C
-WARNING: Incompatible power source
-ERROR: #229035F
It was the fifth time they'd seen those particular errors since Rhys had noticed the blood. They'd need to look those up when their head cleared up enough.

"You okay?" they heard, and realized they were still on the floor.

They opened their eyes to monochrome shades of blue. Above them stood a humanoid shape, turning into a jagged stack of rectangles as it bent down to offer them a hand. Decepti0n's visual input hadn't shut down when their cloak did, and it was malfunctioning, badly. As they stared up at the figure, they got glimpses of recognizable features—only for a second, before the rectangles broke apart again. A metal hand, unmatched eyes, the tattoo on his neck

"I'm fine." B0re had put a broken red hexagon around where Rhys's head should be. The red text to its side was unreadable, but it looked like the one that said "-SHOOT". Decepti0n's glitching sensor was mutilating him into chunks of pixels.
They looked away as they pushed themself off the ground.

"You might want to sit down," Rhys said.

"Can't."

They stumbled as they rose, only to feel Rhys grab their arm, slinging it over his shoulder.
"Sorry, but you're going to fall again otherwise."

They didn't resist—they could barely see where they were going.

"I'll uh, I'll explain everything but, this—I gotta—this is kind of an emergency, I think?" Rhys said over his shoulder.

"Yeah, I got that much," Vaughn replied from somewhere behind them. His voice had lost any remnants of hostility, replacing it with confusion.

For a second, Zer0 saw what their own back, their hologram spasmodically rippling a few feet ahead.

"Um, Zer0? Was that on purpose?"

Ignoring Rhys's question, they tried activating and deactivating Decepti0n, hoping that would be enough to fix whatever was malfunctioning. It made no difference, so they repeated the attempt a couple more times.

"You still with me?" Rhys had stopped walking now.

"Yes."

"Okay, you wanna um—you wanna sit down here? I'll get the Health-nows for you."

Parts of the image aligned long enough for them to recognize the den in their suite. He'd led them to the couch. Part of them wanted to protest, but taking a seat and letting Rhys handle things would be more dignified than injuring themself worse in their blindness.

They removed their arm from his shoulder and sat, looking up at the red hexagon that hopefully still denoted his face.

"Stay here, I'll get the insta-healths. You left those in the kitchen, right?"

They nodded, then regretted the motion as everything turned into streaks of pixels. "Okay, please, just, don't be invisible when I'm back, if you can help it."

As Rhys moved across their vision, he left behind a jumbled ghost image. It slowly disappeared, pixel by pixel. This was starting to give them a headache.

"I'll explain, but, I need to do this," they heard him say to Vaughn. It seemed kind of rude of Vaughn to still be there, but there was little they could do.

"Yeah, I'm really curious about what exactly is happening here, but, more urgently, there's maybe a problem over at Helios, so–" Vaughn lowered his voice as he followed Rhys, and Zer0 couldn't hear the rest of the sentence.

Nausea was setting in. Every slight movement of their head left some fragments of the room frozen in place, while others flickered and shifted constantly. They closed their eyes, pulled their legs up to their chest.

Vaughn was still saying something to Rhys in the kitchen. He sounded stressed out, Zer0 caught something about "Vault hunters", their name, and "Lynchwood." It must have been related to their "murder" of Harding. Did Vaughn really believe that? Was he still trying to warn Rhys away from them?

Rhys, at least, didn't seem worried about what Zer0 overheard. "I don't think it's anything to worry about. I can ECHO them, but just hold on—Zer0 needs this."
A moment later, he was back at their side.
"Are you—are you going to be able to do this, or?" He was offering the Anshin box. When they reached for it, their hand found empty space—the image was more misaligned than they'd thought.
They got a glimpse of Rhys's eyes under a furrowed brow. "No offense, but do you even have the coordination for this? I can do it if you need help." He kept his voice low. Was he trying to help them save face in front of Vaughn? A little late for that, but they still found themself grateful.

"It's not difficult," they said. At worst, they'd screw up and damage some nerves, the Health-now would fix that instantly. They grabbed for it again.

"Uh, nowhere near it, Zer0."

They felt Rhys take their hand, putting the syringe in it.

"Thanks."

"Yeah, don't hurt yourself."

They jammed the needle into their thigh. The product went to work right away, starting with the usual unpleasant sensation of it rushing through their veins.

"So, is it working?"

They brought a hand to the chest wound, lingered there as they felt their flesh writhe back together under the fabric. "Yes."

"Good. Good!" There was a forced enthusiasm in his words.

"Is there something wrong?" they asked.

"Did you maybe...Break something? In your helmet? Or um, some implant? The thing you said earlier about them being compromised…?"

They closed their eyes for a few seconds before making another attempt to look at him. This time, opening their eyes left a dark tinge over everything, save for Rhys's shattered, jittery silhouette. Decepti0n's target highlighting was too bright, now, and he seemed to glow.

"I'm fine," they said, knowing Rhys wouldn't believe them. There was no explaining the last few minutes away. "You may leave. / Vaughn still needs your attention. / I will be okay."

"Are you s—"

"I want you to go." He was forcing them to be rude, again. They only wanted to grope their way to the bathroom, rip their helmet off, and vomit up the contents of their stomach. An event they'd prefer to be witness-free.

"Fine. But I'm going to come back and check on you? Just—just in case, because um, yeah."

Zer0's eyesight took a few hours to return. Shortly after retching up a concerning amount of unnatural purple bile into the toilet, Decepti0n's visual overlay began to flicker on and off, still glitched and completely outside of their control. But gradually the intervals between flickers grew longer, and Zer0 found cocking their head at the perfect angle seemed to reduce the frequency.

It must have been the slag. An overload, or some weird interference? They didn't understand eridium, much less this achlys variation, but it seemed like the sort of thing eridium would do. Anyway, slag was a more comforting prospect than something being outright broken. It was a problem regardless, should they need to use Decepti0n and have it malfunction again. For the time being they were better off relying on more traditional methods of trickery. That didn't leave them many options for avoiding Rhys, though. If they tried to sneak off to another part of the facility, they'd probably end up unconscious on the floor again.

They didn't really want to be here when he checked in on them. Between the range, the bleeding, and the Vaughn incident, they'd done quite a few things that most people, people like Rhys, would want to address. Zer0 did not look forward to that, but what choice did they have?

They took one of the books he'd left them–a Pandoran travelogue made to extol the virtues of Atlas rule–and sat back on the couch, waiting.

It was well past noon when Rhys finally knocked at their door. They pushed down a twinge of relief—the book was unbearably dull.

"Come in."

They made a point of sitting up perfectly straight as he walked in. It was the only way they could think of to convey a sense of health. "My symptoms are gone. / There's no reason to worry. / Are you satisfied?"

"I don't—I don't know?" He replied. They watched as he struggled to safely get a heavy-looking Atlas duffle bag from his shoulder to the ground. "I, uh, I brought you some of the stuff from the armory?"

He wore a proper business suit now, his hair was brushed back neatly. The last time they'd seen Rhys looking so well-groomed was when he'd found them in the Dust, but then again, they'd made a point of not seeing him too often.

"You didn't need to. / I could have gone back for that," they lied. "It is not so far."

"I was in the area anyway, and uh–" He unzipped the bag, started digging through it. "–back there with Vaughn? He wouldn't have killed you, but still, I would have felt way better if you'd had this on." He pulled a shield out and offered it to them. "Just, you know. Gun... Safety?"

"Thanks." The word came out flat, and they snatched the shield without looking at him. They were grateful, and they knew how to properly express gratitude, but this was different than a teammate offering them loot picked off of a dead soldier. They didn't want to encourage this kind of behavior.

"Next time I end up down there, I can pick up some ammo, too. The one rifle from before is loaded. I don't know about the others?" Rhys said. "Didn't think about it until I was right outside the door, to be honest."

They didn't respond, instead making a point to keep their visor angled towards the book as they watched him. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, frowning, before taking the seat across from them and opening his mouth like he was about to say something, only to close it again. Zer0 wished he looked angry. They'd prefer that to the completely unmasked concern.

"Sorry about the Vaughn thing, by the way," he started. "He got a call about Vault hunters skulking around Helios, saw you here, and kind of jumped to conclusions about the Raiders exterminating Hyperion remnants? There was the thing about you killing the administrator in Lynchwood… B-but, I can vouch for him—he had plenty of chance to stab me in the back in Hyperion, never did. Which is really saying something. He's not going to tell anyone about this."

They nodded, still not looking directly at him. Vaughn seemed to care about Rhys, he must be smart enough to realize that opening his mouth would put Rhys in harm's way. At the very least, his lack of trust towards them might keep him quiet. For all he knew, Rhys's usefulness was all that was keeping Zer0 from killing him.

"But yeah, if there's anything you need, just uh, just tell me. I'm right next door most of the time, and uh, unless I'm busy with a meeting over the ECHO or something, I can help out. Or I-I can help out anyway, if it's an emergency, so…" He didn't get up to leave.

"...Is that all?" they asked when it was clear he wasn't going anywhere. Not that they particularly wanted him gone, if they were being honest with themself. This Atlas propaganda was dull, and as much as having him around made them feel off, they weren't sure they could commit themself to another week of sneaking around. Decepti0n was malfunctioning, anyway.

Rhys hesitated. "Earlier, at the range, what would have you done if I hadn't noticed the blood?"

And here it was.

"I would have been fine. / And I'm grateful for the help, / But I'd have survived."

"You know, I don't know why I expected an actual answer." He sighed, leaning forward slightly. "I mean, I get it. You wouldn't have said anything, right? Once it got bad, you'd just disappear on me."

"Perhaps," they said.

"And that woulda been really bad, considering."

"Good thing you noticed." They closed their book, folding it in their lap. "Hypotheticals bore me. / Get to your point, Rhys."

"You're still sick, and next time you're going to act like nothing's wrong again, right?"

If he was asking, he already knew the answer.

He went on, "It's just, we don't even know everything this stuff can do to you, and I'm not sure how well these hypos work?"

A fair point, they couldn't argue against it, as much as they hated it.

"It is not in me, / To play the sad invalid. / If that's what you want."

"That's not what I'm asking you to do. Look, you're really sick, you need to rest, and you definitely shouldn't…" He paused, breaking eye contact. "You shouldn't be alone all the time—I-I know you said you prefer that, but, hell, at least keep a drone with you?"

"Drones are not ideal." The drones all hated Zer0 by now, and they couldn't say they were too fond of them either. They clenched the book in their hands as they considered. Continued avoidance of Rhys was simply unrealistic, but that didn't mean they had to hang out with him. They could keep themself detached, not lapse back into the foolishness of last night.

"I've been dishonest with you. / Solitude is dull."

"What?" He stared.

"You worry for me, / So I'll stop avoiding you. / Will that ease your mind?"

"I–I mean… Yeah, I guess? You-you've been avoiding me? Did I do something wrong, or—"

"No."

"Oh, good." He looked bewildered, and Zer0 considered telling him more, but they weren't sure how they could explain their misgivings without him doubting their sanity. They were starting to doubt it themself.

Finally, Rhys stood up. "I should–Should probably–I have a meeting, in a few minutes. B-but, uh, after that, I can check back in...If you want."

They did want that, but they wouldn't admit it. "It is up to you."

"Right. Okay." He turned fast, stumbling over the duffle bag on the floor on his way out. Zer0 got the impression that if it would have been socially appropriate to sprint out of the room, he would have.