My head jerks up to the escape passageway when I hear movement. Watching where I walked so I wouldn't disturb any of the debris, silently made my way back to the hatch and looked up. Somebody was definitely following me. Stepping back toward a wall, I drew my pistol and readied it. I crooked a finger at Jack and he leaned down. "What kind of information is hidden in the Hyperion mainframe that would involve me being hunted for it?" I murmured, keeping my voice to a mere whisper.
"Me, I suppose. Vasquez had Rhys hunted because of me. They think I know some secret information." He replied.
"Do you?"
"No. Any information I had hidden would be in my computer back in my office. Kept under some heavy-duty firewalls and other security measures I designed myself."
I looked back up the passage and at the descending form. "I had found something I couldn't reach by just simply hacking and was about to do a data dive when I woke you up. So I'll have to go back up there since it's not accessible from any other terminal."
"You won't be able to get through it yourself. Rhys needed my help just to hack into my computer." He smirked.
"Yet I managed to get into it easily."
"You said Rhys designed your arm. It's probable that he threw in his hacking upgrade I gave him while he was at it."
I shook my head with a smile. "I'm going to make you eat those words when we get back up there."
He smiled back. "You're fun."
The form dropped down, revealing it to be a male in his thirties with black hair and a trim build.
"No way." I glance at Jack out of the corner of my eye to see his mouth hanging open.
"I find it hard to believe you know this guy concerning how long it's been since you died, and Helios crashed." I murmur without moving my lips.
"I don't know him, per say, I knew his father. Kid's the spitting image of him." He replied. "That's Vasquez's kid. I didn't know he had kids."
"Crap." Vasquez had been the name of the guy who had tried to kill Rhys. Genius child of a former Hyperion employee comes face to face with the child of a former Hyperion boss. Both former Hyperion employees had bad blood with the other and it looked like that had carried onto the next generation. While I wasn't Rhys' kid, I did have Jack linked to me and I was being targeted for Jack.
"This isn't good." Jack frowned. I did the only thing I could think of on the fly. I shot at him, making him dive for cover and ran like hell.
"We got to get out of here." I brought up my hand and spoke into my wrist, which housed the communication device to Kiki's collar. "Meet us at the Hub, Kiki. We got trouble." She barks in reply. I duck and dart around a corner as a rocket blasts a hole through that very corner, missing me by inches. For the first time in years, I felt fear fill me.
"You know where the Hub is?"
"Rhys showed me on an old map of Helios when I first told him I was making plans to explore this place. He figured it would be a good starting point and place to meet up if me and Kiki got separated. It's central enough." I told him.
"Good idea."
Only problem was, since I didn't thoroughly explore this place before encountering Jack's office, I got lost.
"You're lost, aren't you?" Jack asks as I took a wrong turn too many.
It was a few more wrong turns before I was admitting it. "Yeah." I looked at him where he was hovering beside me, smug. "I know you know the way, can you lead me?"
"What's the magic word?" He sang, too amused by this.
"Please." I asked sweetly.
A hologram finger touches my chin, a spark zapping my skin and leaving a pleasant feeling behind. "You know, if I was human, I'd be making you do something else." The look in his eyes was pure mischief.
"I'm not going to get down on my knees and beg. I have my pride." I told him.
"You'd be on your knees, cupcake, but you wouldn't be begging. You wouldn't need to be kneeling if you were begging." The look on his face turns wolfish. I got the full implication. Even for a hologram, Jack was a flirt. And I didn't give a damn if he was a hologram, I'd flirt right back with him.
I now found a purpose and it meant spending long months in my private workshop. I would build Jack a new body and bring him back. Then, doing a data dive into Jack's computer, find all the information I could to rebuild Hyperion.
"What would you say if I said I'd be willing to give a shot at building you a body?" I asked instead of returning the flirt.
He blinked. "You'd do that? Why?"
"You deserve a blank slate, a chance to do things over and make things right." I told him.
"What's the catch?" He turned suspicious.
"You help me rebuild Hyperion and let me lead it with you by my side. We lead it as partners."
I had caught him off guard again. "You want to rebuild Hyperion?"
"It was one of the leading companies in its day and deserves to be rebuilt into something great once again. Rhys knows I have what it takes to lead a company. I'm going to follow in his footsteps and rebuild a fallen company from the ground up. You took down Atlas and he rebuilt it, taking down Hyperion in the process. I want to take Hyperion and rebuild it."
"What about Rhys? What's he going to think?" He asked. "Or for that matter, your dad?"
"I won't tell them you're linked to me. Not yet anyway. They'd both freak out. After what happened, they'd fear for my life and would find a way to separate us. You need me to be whole again and I need you to help me rebuild Hyperion." I told him. "It's going to be a long process to just start rebuilding Hyperion. We have to find a good enough location and then start planning and everything." I paused, tapping my lips as I thought. "I suppose your old Pandora base of Opportunity could do. We'd have to check it out."
"The factory there may be a little dusty on the inside, but I think everything is operational." He replied.
"We get out of here and we'll head over there." I told him.
"You really mean what you said about building me a body and rebuilding Hyperion?"
"I do, Jack. One thing you'll learn about me is that once I give my word, I never go back on it." I told him. "And I give you my word that I will do my damnest to build you a body and rebuild Hyperion."
"I'll hold you to that."
I nodded. "I expect no less, Jack."
He rubbed his hands together in eagerness. "This is going to be good! Let's get to work." His hologram form took off down the hallway and I trotted to keep up.