7 – Love and Hate

The atmosphere in the Sanctuary briefing room was thick as custard. Maya and Gaige were seated on one side of the table bearing the war map; Maya was still slightly pale, having thrown up violently after fast travelling back to the city. Zer0 was standing stoically in the corner behind them, his arms folded in front of him in what anyone who knew him could tell you was a deliberate stance taken to allow fast access to his weapons in the event of a fight. Mordecai was seated on the other side of the table, reading and rereading the scribbled note Lilith had thrust into his hands wordlessly before striding off towards Zed's clinic. The silence was punctuated only by the monotonous buzz of electricity and the tapping of Mordecai's fingers.

"So," said Mordecai after reading Lilith's note five times, "let me see if I've got this right. When Lil got out to the Preserve, she found you ladies and Krieg out cold, and Zer0 working with Jeff Blake of all people to wake you up and keep Krieg alive. Her understanding, based on what Blake told her — or what she bothered to listen to, if I know her at all — was that Krieg had been poisoned by… who, exactly?"

"One of Hyperion's vice presidents, apparently," replied Zer0. "Name of Elizabeth."

"Oh, I know her," said Mordecai. "Met her at one of the negotiations. Looked like she was only there cause Blake said she had to be. Bit of a bitch. Sadistic. Basically Jack but more subtle."

"She didn't seem to think much of Jack," replied Maya.

"Well, no-one likes seeing their own traits in others, do they?" observed Mordecai darkly. "Especially not when 'others' includes Handsome Jack. Now… Maya, I sent you out on a job that shouldn't have posed any real difficulty to someone of your talents, and now Krieg's half dead, you and Gaige've been knocked about something awful and from the sounds of it, we came within inches of another war with Hyperion! What the hell happened, amigo?"

Before Maya could even begin to explain, the door opened and Lilith entered. The room seemed to tense instantly — Lilith's mouth was set in a hard line, there was a very faint orange glow lingering in her eyes and her hands were trembling slightly. Mordecai was a tough and grizzled man, but his patience was almost limitless and he was surprisingly good at perceiving emotions and understanding delicate situations. Lilith had none of these skills, and was therefore a much, much worse person to have to explain oneself to.

Lilith sat down next to Mordecai and glared at Maya; Maya was too tired to glare back, which almost seemed to disappoint Lilith.

"Explain," she said harshly.

Maya explained, as best she could. She told Lilith and Mordecai about the message from Dr Samuels, the research into who she was, being attacked by Elizabeth for reasons that seemed increasingly unrelated to what was initially going on (though Maya doubted Lilith would see it like that). Zer0 filled in several gaps in places where Maya's memories were interrupted by periods of unconsciousness. At several points, Lilith had made like she wanted to interrupt, but had been stopped by Mordecai.

Eventually, Maya had talked herself into silence. Lilith seemed to take several seconds to digest everything she had said before speaking.

"Follow-up question. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"What?"

Lilith stood up and started to pace. "You decided to try and steal sensitive information from Hyperion, information which any idiot could have told you they would have wanted kept quiet. I'm still sceptical enough about this ceasefire with them, and you had to go stirring up trouble?"

Maya's hand tensed on the edge of the table — her irritation with Lilith was growing, as she knew it was bound to. "I told you that already. I was looking for information that could help Krieg."

"We have one of the best Eridian researchers in the galaxy working for us! Does that count for nothing?"

"Not if all she can do for me is make breakfast," replied Maya tersely. The table was growing hot under her palm, and a faint wisp of smoke was starting to rise from her clenched hand.

Lilith brought her fist down onto the table. "For god's sake, Maya, we're barely holding the fucking city together by way of a fragile peace treaty with those bastards on the space station. I can't have you endangering all of us with some selfish quest to —"

"Selfish quest?" snapped Maya, leaping to her feet. Her patience was not nearly as extensive as Mordecai's even on the best of days, and this was far from the best of days. "Trying to cure a condition affecting who knows how many people on this shithole planet isn't a 'selfish quest'! You want to know what is? Opening some mythical vault that's supposed to contain endless riches and treasure and accidentally creating a fucking dictator!"

Lilith had stopped pacing and drawn herself up to her full height. This could have been an intimidating move, had Maya not been three inches taller than her.

"You —"

"You," interrupted Maya, storming on relentlessly, "came here looking for power and money, like all the idiots before you! I came looking for the Vault of the Warrior, sure, but I was looking for information about the history of sirens as well! Zer0 came here looking for bigger things to kill! Gaige was on the run from the law! And Krieg, Krieg had no goddamn choice, did he? We had other reasons for coming here, and we wound up cleaning up your mess! And now I'm trying to keep cleaning it up, cleaning up after Handsome fucking Jack, and on the back of all this we might finally have some way to actually do some good here, far more good than we've managed up to now, and you have the nerve to stand there and call me selfish?"

"You can't stand there and blame us for creating Jack," snapped Lilith. "What do you think we were like when we first came here? 'Oh, we might wind up letting some maniac dickhead take over the planet and pretty much impose martial law, but it's fine cause we'll be rich?' Sure, we might have had selfish motivations — I know Mordecai did —"

"Leave me outta this, Lil —"

"— but we didn't forsake the planet for them! Angel fooled us just as well as she did you, and you know it!"

Maya's communicator chimed. She ignored it.

"All I'm trying to do is help someone I care about, and perhaps help others in the process! In the long run, it'll improve the planet and strengthen our relationship with Hyperion, and I need hardly remind you how important it is to keep Blake onside, miss it's-a-miracle-I-didn't-phase-us-into-a-mountain. Is that too 'selfish' a goal for you?"

There was a sharp swish and clatter as Zer0 brought his sword down flat onto the table, cutting off the heated conversation between the two sirens.

"Enough," said the assassin, and there was a note of forcefulness in his voice that Maya had never heard before. "If you carry on like this, one of you is going to end up attacking the other. Sit down, both of you."

Both women lowered themselves slowly into their seats. The anger that had fuelled Maya was beginning to subside, and she was feeling tired again.

"Maya," said Zer0, "you must understand the point that Lilith is making. Provoking Hyperion was a dangerous move. We are fortunate, in the end, that Blake had worked out what was going on and was able to defuse the situation. Had he bought McHale's story, the situation could have soured fast."

"I do realise that. But —"

"Lilith," interrupted Zer0 a little loudly, clearly unwilling to see the argument between the sirens spark again, "you must understand that Maya's goal here was to assist Krieg and others on the planet living with the aftereffects of Jack's inhuman experiments. You must also understand that the attack on Maya and Krieg was apparently unrelated to our research and would likely have happened regardless. Much of the fallout here is merely a result of unfortunate timing."

"You really believe that this woman wasn't retaliating against you?" asked Lilith, sounding sceptical.

"I buy that, actually," interjected Mordecai. "Like I said earlier, I met her once, during the negotiations. Hated everything about us, and especially seemed to dislike the fact that we had Krieg working for us."

Lilith made a non-committal noise and shrugged very slightly.

"Now, Blake has offered to assist us," continued Zer0, "or rather, for us and Hyperion to mutually assist each other, and work on this cure together. I suggest —"

"What?" Lilith was on her feet again, but for all the difference it made opposite Zer0's towering frame she might as well have stayed seated. "I barely trust Hyperion enough to stop shooting at them, and now you want to collaborate?"

"I thought you wanted to keep Hyperion placid?" said Maya acidly. "Or does that stop at the idea of actually working on something positive?"

"Don't you —"

"Quiet," said Zer0 firmly, stifling Lilith's reply. "Lilith, you cannot deny that as brilliant as Dr Tannis is, she has no hope of devising a cure for slag poisoning on her own. We simply do not have the resources here, and there is little to salvage from the Preserve. If Hyperion are working on it, they will get there eventually, with or without us. Maya is correct; this is a chance not just to undo some of what Jack did to this planet, but also to cement our relationship with them."

"If they're gonna get there one way or another, why would we want to help them?"

"Are you kidding?" said Mordecai. "Blake doesn't like us; he works with us because it's easier than the alternative. If we refuse, he won't hesitate to spin Hyperion as the good guys, and us as bloodthirsty desperadoes. If we agree to help them, then we're the good guys too."

"Why should I give a shit what —"

"Because," interrupted Mordecai, "apart from their military capacity, Hyperion have a huge amount of influence with the galactic federal government. They can do much worse to us than just shooting down the city, trust me."

"Plus, if we refuse," added Zer0, "they may not even give us access to the cure for Krieg's use."

Lilith sighed. "All right, fine. Run it past Tannis first, obviously, but if she's in I won't stop you. But if this goes pear-shaped and we wind up on the back foot because you talked me into trusting Hyperion again, I will personally boil your brain out of your skull."

"Yes, I don't suppose that's a task you can delegate."


Outside the briefing room, Maya felt considerably more relaxed. Considering the argument over the initial ceasefire with Hyperion, months ago, had stretched on into the night, that could have turned out much worse — though, she thought regretfully, it had very nearly escalated to a dangerous extent, and considering how angry she had been, it probably would have done but for Zer0's intervention.

"Thanks," she said to the assassin. Zer0 nodded.

"I expected Lilith to take more convincing."

"I meant for stopping us from killing each other."

"So did I."

Maya elected not to respond to this, and instead pulled out her communicator. Her ECHOmail notifications were blinking; she opened the message that had presumably come through in the briefing room.

Maya — I suggest a meeting between yourself, Dr Tannis and our R&D director, if you are agreeable. Contact Jasper to arrange. — Blake

Maya passed her communicator to Zer0, who glanced over the message briefly.

"A fair suggestion. You should contact them promptly; no cause for delay."

"In the morning," replied Maya, "I'm exhausted. I'm going over to Zed's to check on Krieg, then I'm going to bed."

"I might also get some rest," replied Zer0. "It has been an odd day."

"So strange that even you need sleep, huh?"

"I suppose so." Zer0 paused; Maya felt his gaze piercing her from below his helmet, and she shivered very slightly. They were close friends, but that didn't stop Zer0 from being a naturally intimidating person, especially when he seemed to be staring into you like this.

"This isn't your fault," said the assassin after a few seconds, and there was a distinct note of soothing sympathy in his voice that she had never heard before. "You didn't bring this on him. Don't beat yourself up."

"Yeah, I… yeah." Maya took a deep breath, steadying herself. "I know."

"Will you be okay?" It was the way the question was worded that told Maya just how well he knew her. He knew she was okay now… the question was whether she'd stay that way.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I just… need to sleep."

"Alright."

"Thank you, Zer0."

The assassin grasped her shoulder briefly, then strode off in the direction of the sleeping quarters, leaving Maya in the cool evening air of the Sanctuary central square, alone with her thoughts.


"I take it I can trust you to keep her detained?"

"Of course, sir. Easier to do here than back at HQ, I suppose."

"That was my logic, yes. And no need to bother with transport."

Blake and Jasper stood in the Launching Station, awaiting the valet that was bringing Blake's ship around. A few commuters, travellers and tourists milled around nearby, but none of them approached. One of Blake's favourite things about himself was the fact that he was fairly nondescript; other than an unusually angular face, there was very little about him that was recognisable, and it allowed him to go about his business in public without being harassed by either admirers or hecklers — something which Handsome Jack, for better or worse, had been unable to do.

Blake was not a man who cared what other people said about him, generally. It was always advisable to make sure your employees were happy with your leadership, especially at a company like Hyperion — he'd worked there for most of his adult life, and had seen many leaders fall because they didn't treat those beneath them properly. But outside the company, people could like him, dislike him, maintain indifference… he didn't care. Mostly.

There wasn't much that Blake could say that he hated — really, truly hated. He had his share of likes and dislikes, the same as anyone else. But if there was one thing that he hated with every fibre of his being, it was whenever someone referred to him as 'Handsome Jack's successor'. Blake had been as clear as he could be that he wanted nothing to do with the legacy of his predecessor, to the point where since becoming acting president over a year ago he had never spoken Jack's name aloud (referring to him as 'my predecessor' and occasionally as 'President Tassiter's successor'). And yet, there were still some out there who saw him as nothing more than Jack's second-in-command who had taken over after Jack's death. It made him sound like some sort of evil protégé.

"What exactly are you planning to do about her, sir?"

"Follow the process. That's why the process is there. I'll speak to Bill and order an investigation as soon as I get back. We'll let it run its course, and then I'll act. Elizabeth is cunning and ruthless, as I'm sure you've worked out, and if I give her any indication at all that she's being treated unfairly in all this, she'll be all over us like a bad rash. She'll be fired, make no mistake… but I want to make damn sure she can't make the door hit me in the backside on her way out."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime, she'll stay here. I'll have Catherine fill in as VP. And then, with any luck, we can move on from this without causing a media maelstrom."


Maya trailed her fingers gently across Krieg's chest, feeling just how shallow his breathing was. Zed had told her that Krieg would "probably live", but Zed said that about all his patients, including those who came in with head colds. He hadn't been able to identify the poison Elizabeth had used — probably a Hyperion corporate secret, thought Maya bitterly — meaning that they were having to rely mainly on the antitoxin hypos to treat him, and while they seemed to be doing enough to keep him alive, alongside what Lilith had been able to do, the psycho was still a long way off recovery.

"Slow-actin' poisons are nasty stuff," Zed had said when she asked. "Aside from bein' somewhat more discrete than the faster ones, they're hard to treat because they're persistent. Just gotta keep needlin' and hope for the best, really."

It's your fault, whispered the part of her subconscious mind that she'd worked so hard to suppress. Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone?

How could I do that in good conscience? Besides, Elizabeth was coming after us one way or another. And now I might have a chance to cure him… like I set out to do in the first place.

If he lives.

Maya shook her head, screwing her eyes closed. Self-doubt was something that the Order of the Impending Storm had, deliberately or not, cultivated within her, and she often struggled with it in moments like this. Not in the heat of the moment… it never even crossed her mind when she fought others, alongside others. But before and after, she fought herself, alone.

"I'm sorry, Krieg," she murmured. "We're going to fix this. I promise."