Mordecai began to rummage through Erin's desk as the others settled down for the night. He wasn't sure about what he was looking for, but he thought he may as well get to know as much as he could about the person he was going to kill.
No. He wasn't going to give up on this. He didn't trust that little rat. It didn't matter if she did or didn't know where the Vault is, he couldn't trust a single thing that came out of her mouth. He doubted the others trusted her very much, but they were interested enough in what she may know to keep her around.
Roland's reasoning seemed sound, 'If she is a vault hunter, I'd rather have her as an ally than have her as a rival. It looks like she put you through a lot. If she really had the intention on killing you, you wouldn't be standing right now.'
Mordecai ground his teeth at the thought. He didn't want to know how true that statement could be. An unarmed girl had bested him this time. He glanced at Bloodwing who was perched on top of the light fixture above the desk. Mordecai was relieved that his bird wasn't hurt back when he flew into that piece of scrap metal.
'You lost today because of your incompetence.' Was what she said, and worst of all she was probably right. She simply used the tools at her disposal to beat him, and the realization was a bitter pill to swallow. But he could learn from his mistakes, he'll remember how she fights.
Erin's reflexes were excellent. She was fast on her feet and knew how to move her small body in such a way that made it difficult to hit her. But it wasn't as though her movements were inhuman, she wasn't anything like a siren after all. If he were to compare Lilith and Erin's fighting abilities, he'd say Lilith could kick Erin's ass into oblivion, and then some.
Mordecai glanced over at Lilith on the couch. She was resting her head against the armrest as she slept, a half-torn cushion was in her arms covering her chest. He also noticed how she was leaning away from Roland, who was sleeping with his arms crossed, feet firmly planted on the ground, but his head tilted to the side. Mordecai did not envy the man for the pain he'll be in when he wakes up.
The hunter turned his attention back to the desk, and opened a drawer in her desk and grinned as he took out an old journal.
"Hello there… I'll just take a gander here…" he murmured as he turned on the lamp on her desk.
He didn't question the ethics of looking at the deep personal thoughts of a young woman, after all, information was the most precious thing in the universe. He was certain she'd understand.
The journal was full of indecipherable scribbles. The handwriting was so atrocious it almost looked like another language. He flipped though it until he came across something that he could actually read, finding what looked like the beginnings of a scientific paper.
"An organism is a multi-faceted, biological, construct formed by nature. Simultaneously destructive and creative, it takes – greedily – from pre-existing entities. Even plants require organic material, such as a rotting corpse – or soon to be corpse- to thrive. Machines are quite similar, only being designed by a bipedal organism such as you and me. They too, require resources from pre-existing entities, often in the form of fuel, to perpetuate its burdened existence…"
The paper continued, examining the potential of artificial intelligence, the advent of a programed personality, and the possibility of scanning a person's memories and placing those memories in another body. It discussed methods of cloning, brain transplants – or rather body transplants as the writer puts it, and even discussed the idea of transforming human beings into robots. The main idea being that there was little difference between humans and machines, and questioning what it meant to be alive.
It felt like peeking into the mind of a mad scientist and had to stop reading.
He flipped through the journal and saw a few figures in it, which looked vaguely like weapon ideas, but they were too abstract he didn't understand what they could be used for.
He had found a compartment in the journal, and he thought he was getting somewhere. He found a single cigarette inside, the date, "7/23/2851" scribbled on it.
He had heard of people doing this sort of thing to quit smoking. They write the date on their last cigarette and see how long they can go without smoking it. The owner of this cigarette hadn't smoked for 17 years, assuming they kept with it.
He couldn't imagine someone so young to have such a smoking problem that they needed to quit, but Mordecai was fairly certain the legal smoking age on Pandora was somewhere below five years old. He'd seen a number of completely wasted (what he assumed to be) ten-year olds drunkenly stumbling after their parents when everyone began fleeing Fyrestone. Hell, when he was 12 he had his first cigarette after sneaking them from his second oldest sister. It pissed the hell out the folks, not that it stopped him from smoking them every so often.
He looked at the old ass cigarette and rolled it in his fingers. It looked like the higher quality shit that was difficult to get a hold of, and it may even still be good. His last smoke was some time ago. Shortly after killing Sledge he'd run out of cigarettes' and hadn't had the chance to re-stock. He considered putting it in his mouth and lighting it. Then he considered the possibility of Erin looking for it and opted not to. He put the cigarette back inside the compartment. Maybe he'd be able to get ahold of some good ones from Dr. Zed.
He looked back though the journal, glancing at the dates. From what he could tell the Journal was around 18 years old, it's final entry about eight years ago. It could belong to someone else. An older relative? He did remember she mentioned having a teacher when she was young. Did it belong to them? Where were they now? Dead maybe. This was Pandora after all.
He tossed the journal back into the drawer, deciding not to dwell on it. But it felt like some kind of progress. He looked around the room.
The room rather large and seemed to function like a studio apartment. It even had its own bathroom with a toilet and shower (something Lilith had wasted no time in using). All Erin really needed was a mini fridge and a microwave and she wouldn't have to go upstairs at all. It was highly reminiscent with the upstairs. With the flickering florescent lights, cold concrete floor, and the consistent hum of a fan, it felt like a prison. However, he would have liked having his own space like this when he was younger, the privacy it would have provided would have been a godsend when he was a teenager.
His family used always scare off his girlfriends or embarrass the crap out of him when his older sisters fussed at him. His house was crowded, and there was always a line for the bathroom. The house was suffocating, almost bursting with human bodies. His only respite from all the chaos was the wood surrounding his family home.
Erin seemed to keep the room very tidy, with the exception of her desk where he saw scattered pieces of various electronic devices, screws, and pages of notes he couldn't read. Yet, as he continued to look around the room began to feel more like a place of work than a personal bedroom. The metal bookshelf lining the wall next to the couch was full of technical writings and informational materials. He was surprised to even find a few textbooks in the mix. It looked like she was interested in a variety of subjects, but primarily chemistry, biology, and electric engineering.
He glanced through one of the biology texts, titled "Pandora's Natural Order", remembering her refer to Bloodwing as something called a "Deatheater". Mordecai would love to learn more about Bloodwing's species, it'll be helpful in training him and give him a heads up if he gets sick with a common disease. After flipping through the book he shut it, disappointed. Nothing on any 'Deatheaters' though he did find some interesting facts about skags and rakk that she has scribbled in the margins.
Mordecai went back to the desk with the text and picked up the journal again, flipping to the parts that he could read. The handwriting was somewhat similar, but hers was much more legible. She had a larger gesture, and the letters were less connected, while the journal seemed to run all the letters together ending in little more than a squiggly line. The print was small too, so small he had to squint to see it.
He worked on finding similar and familiar letters for the more difficult parts but gave up. As it turned out some of those pages really were in another language.
Mordecai went into the bathroom, did some business, then washed his hands and face. God he almost forgot what water and soap felt like. After drying off, he glanced in the medicine cabinet. He found some feminine supplies, a toothbrush, and some container containing a vaguely minty smelling powder. How the hell did she get ahold of powdered toothpaste in this place?
Pausing before shutting the container, he cupped his hand over his mouth and exhaled. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. His breath really did stink. Mordecai scooped out some of the powder with his finger and rubbed it against his teeth after wetting his mouth with the water from the sink. He checked his breath again when he was finished and shut the medicine cabinet. Buzzard breath no more. He found some plumming supplies under the sink. He didn't really know what he was expecting.
Leaving the bathroom, he looked around the room again. He looked at her bed. A small twin mattress, light colored sheets. The frame seemed like trundle bed from the large drawer under it.
He quietly stepped around Brick, who had decided to sleep on the floor instead of disturbing the bed. If it were him, he'd just take the bed. Better than the floor.
Mordecai pulled on the drawer and found another that he was right, another mattress. But it was old and worn when compared to the top mattress.
"I wonder…" He lifted the mattress to find a thin stack of maps, covered in notes and indecipherable scribbles.
"Now we're getting somewhere…" if there were any notes on where the Vault is, they could just ditch her on some rock in the desert. He reached down to pick up a map, and noticed the bottom of a Hyperion wanted poster. He saw the name "Ryder" and a lot of zeros. He began to lift the map, but stopped when he heard the front door open and close. He quickly put the mattress back and shoved it closed. He hopped up onto her bed, and laid still, willing his muscles to relax.
The footsteps coming down the steps were soft and careful, and he was aware that it was Erin doing her best not to disturb her sleeping guests. He also heard the soft scrabble of claws on metal and concrete, likely the skag he'd seen earlier following her.
Mordecai watched as she walked into the center of the room, the skag at her heels, doing a growl and a sneeze. The small beast sniffed the air, looking around at the strangers in the room then growled when it spotted the hunter. Erin snapped her fingers twice, capturing it's attention and the skag began circling around her, wagging its stump of a tail so hard it's entire body was shaking. Erin murmured something he couldn't hear, and went to a chest, opened it by kicking the lid off then bent down to pick up a giant pillow. She tossed it on the ground next to the chest and the Skag hopped on it, circling a few times before finally laying down.
Erin crouched down and pat it on the head, then rummaged around in her pockets and fed the skag something. A treat maybe? After the skag was finished with the treat and rested it's head on the pillow, she stood to look around the room. When she looked to the bathroom she made a face and entered it.
She groaned, "Oh gross… this is why I hate men."
Mordecai couldn't suppress his smirk when she said it. After a while, she left the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind her. She stood again in the middle of the room, looking around, sighing. She looked at her desk. He suddenly realized he didn't put the journal or text book away.
"Oh great… which one of those..." She muttered as she walked over to the desk. As if on signal Bloodwing hopped down from the lamp and landed on top of her desk, puffing up his feathers to seem larger than he was.
The action made Erin step back. Even the Skag was surprised enough to jump off of his bed and start growling.
Erin made a gesture and pointed back to the giant pillow, a command for the skag to go back to bed.
She looked back at her desk, "Oh geez… uh… hi? Um… Please move?"
Bloodwing sat down on top of her desk and stared at her. Mordecai tried not to laugh or smile as the girl huffed a sigh and put her hands on her hips.
Erin's gaze turned to Mordecai and he willed his face muscles to relax as she walked up to him.
She crouched in front of the bed to be at eye-level with him, "get up. I know you're awake."
He didn't respond, just remained still.
Erin pinched his nose, hard. "Up. Now."
Mordecai sat up, "alright alright. I'm up. What?"
She let go and jerked her head at the desk where Bloodwing was sitting, "I don't want your bird making a nest on my workspace. I need it to fix your Echo."
He looked at her, cocked his head, "you're fixing my Echo?"
"Consider it a peace treaty. A proposal to bury the hatchet… In the ground and not my head? I'd prefer you not to go through my things without permission."
"And what? We'll be friends?"
Erin scoffed at the statement. "Yeah right, I'd sooner drive a nail through my femur than be all buddy-buddy with- wait," she leaned closer to him, getting in his face and sniffing.
She hissed, "did you use my toothpaste?! What the hell? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get ahold of that stuff?"
"Why do you think I used it?"
"You're a fucking asshole."
"Feeling's mutual." He laid back down and turned his back to her.
Erin grabbed his arm and rolled him onto his back.
She sighed, "Look, we don't have to like eachother. Hell, I don't want you to like me. But the fact is that it's better for both of us if we can figure out how to co-exist peacefully. At least temporarily."
"For you, you mean." He pointed out, "if it weren't for that trick you pulled earlier you would have been dead."
Erin glared at him, "alright, fine. But you have to agree it's less trouble for us to be allies instead of enemies. I don't want to have to fight you anymore. It's too much of a hassle, and it does nothing but waste time."
He narrowed his eyes at her and set his jaw. She didn't want to fight him anymore? He hated how inconsistent she was. He pointed his gun at her.
"Are you serious?" he snarled, "you almost killed me. Twice."
"Once. And if I remember correctly I saved your life too. I wasn't trying to kill you the second time we fought."
Mordecai stiffened recalling that she did pick him up in Mad Mel's arena. He lowered his pistol.
"Then what was the second time?"
Erin thought for a second, "I was pissed."
"You were pissed so you challenged me to a duel then set me up to get bitten by a paralysis causing bug that made me too weak to fight back? Little girl, if you were just pissed-"
She groaned and covered her face. "Look, I'm sorry I attacked you when we first met, and I'm sorry that I set you up. I just want to work with you and the others and find the vault, so can we just agree not to kill eachother? Please?" She sounded exhausted.
"No," he replied, and grabbed her wrist and squeezed it, "I'm making you a new deal. If you can't prove your usefulness to us tomorrow, you're dead, and the moment you slow us down or betray us I put a bullet in your head. Got that?"
He saw a brief flash of fear in her eyes, which pleased him, but it was quickly replaced with a focused determination.
"Fine. If that it takes for you to quit threatening me for a while, it's a fucking deal. Now are you going to give me your Echo or not?"
Mordecai did a soft whistle to summon Bloodwing as he held it out to her, and she snatched it out of his hand. He watched as she marched to her desk and begin rummaging through the open drawer to grab out some tools.
Bloodwing perched on the stairs handrailing near the bed as he rolled onto his stomach. Erin pulled something over her eyes, set out five other broken Echos and began dismantling them.
He rested his head on his arms and watched her work.
"How stubborn."