FILE 7:

THE SNYDER FILES FACSIMILES: THOUGHTS ON THE EMPLOYEES OF HYPERION

NAME: John 'Handsome Jack' Clarke

AGE: I'm not sure, but 40s or 50s, probably.

NOTES: The man who became the most hated figure on Pandora started out as an honorary uncle for me. You know, the sort who was cheerful and told off-colour jokes. A guy who was fun to be around. He was just a programmer, although despite Tassiter's demeaning him, he did grow in responsibility long before the Elpis saga.

And yet, something must've been there, something (greed? Avarice?) that drove him to imprison Angel and make her effectively the lynchpin for Hyperion's computer network. Something that drove him to murder, by proxy, his own wife (the first one, anyway). Handsome Jack was born long before Lilith punched the Vault logo onto his face.

My dealings with the man were fairly good before then, though. True, he struck me down when I found Angel was missing, and told me never to talk to him about her again, but at the time, I thought he was grieving for her death, as well as that of his wife. And it was he who guided me into working for Hyperion, even as I completed my education. Given how he treated me later, I wonder, what he really wanted from me?

Anyway, Jack was dissatisfied with his station. He wanted to make his way to the top. And he heard the rumours of a Vault on Pandora, which he began investigating, using his spare time and contacts on Pandora. He managed to somehow confirm that not only was the Vault real, but what it contained: the Destroyer, as well as a cache of Eridium, something Tannis never managed to do. And given that the Vault was apparently due to open, he had Angel manipulate the original Vault Hunters to help him open it, as well as stymie Atlas.

I knew nothing of this, of course. I heard of the Vault incident, about the four Vault Hunters who became infamous, of the fall of Atlas…but I was busy at university. My parents were on Elpis during that whole saga, too.

Even though the Destroyer was vanquished, and Hyperion got its hands on the Eridium within the Vault, Jack's position only rose relatively slowly. What he did during the Claptrap Revolution, I have no idea. I know something about what happened with Elpis and Helios, thanks to Tim, Lilith, and Roland. While Jack did some reprehensible things during that saga, I think the catalyst that made Jack fall hardest was Lilith punching him with a Phasewalk attack, while he was bonded to an Eridian artifact. He got scarred physically and mentally, his psychoses that may have always been there now at full throttle. I certainly know that he got worse after he began wearing the mask and started calling himself 'Handsome Jack'.

To give you an idea of how psychotic he was, the reason I even met the second lot of Vault Hunters in the first place was that he somehow found an ECHO message I had received from Angel. At the time, I had thought that Angel was dead, or perhaps in a coma. When Jack found out, he deliberately sent me to die. Did he do it to kill me, or to hurt Angel for her defiance? Knowing Jack, it was probably both. The twisted bastard claimed to love his child, but truth be told, what he felt was an extreme possessiveness, a need for Angel to be under his control.

I'm not sure I want to go over every little detail of what happened. He interrupted my first wedding to Angel, he murdered Krieg and Steve, he had Angel dancing to his tune like a cruel puppeteer. And he had the gall to believe that he was the hero.

I'm glad he's dead. The universe is a much better place for it.

NAME: Angel Clarke

AGE: 24

NOTES: When I was six years old, I was taken to a special clinic on Elpis where I was diagnosed as having the Sci-Zone. There, I met a girl my age with what I thought were blue tattoos. She was a Siren, her name was Angel, and no truer appellation was ever given to a girl.

We had a friendship that continued for two years, until unbeknownst to me, Jack locked her away in Control Core Angel. He never said anything about her, and forbade me to ask about her. At the time, I thought she had died, and he was grieving, especially as his wife died in an accident involving a Loader.

I still had this vague, possibly vain hope that she was alive. I think Jack's behaviour, at times, made me realise that he wasn't a man in mourning. Perhaps she had just gone away, or else was comatose. It was one of the reasons I refused Moxxi's advances when she was Jack's second wife.

Angel did some of her work for Jack willingly or reluctantly, but most of the time, she was forced to by a special collar that induced extreme nociception until she complied. That's a fancy term for saying that it caused her a lot of pain until she did what Jack told her to. I wouldn't be surprised if Jack used one on Nisha in the bedroom: she was something of a sadomasochist.

Through Angel hacking into their ECHO devices, she helped direct them (on Jack's orders) along the task of opening the Vault of the Destroyer. She was hampered for a time when Commandant Steele shut down the ECHO network on Pandora (she could transmit to them, but couldn't tell where they were), and told me that she was actually overjoyed when they brought it back up, and she could tell they were safe.

But they refused to listen to her after that whole thing with the Destroyer. And after she helped (unwillingly, unbeknownst to the first Vault Hunters) with the destruction of New Haven, they considered her to be one of Jack's pet monsters, along with Wilhelm and Nisha. They also thought that she was an AI.

It was around that time that Jack got a hold of the Vault Key. Jack had found out that the Key needed to be charged with Eridium in order to work. Normally, it would take two centuries with background Eridium, but Jack found that the time could be cut down to a couple of years by using Angel as a catalyst, as a living transformer. You know how transformers increase or decrease voltage in an electrical system? A Siren with her blood flooded with Eridium effectively concentrates the Eridium. It is a painful process, Angel assures me, and it means that the Siren who undergoes this process for long enough ends up having her biological processes entirely turned over to using energy from Eridium.

The upshot is that, instead of needing food or oxygen, the Siren only needs the latent power of Eridium. Unfortunately, they also need a near-constant supply, lest they die within seconds of the feeds being removed. Angel knew this, and so, began sowing the seeds for her own demise.

She hadn't intended for me to get caught up with the Vault Hunters. But what she had intended was to die, and so, she sent me a final ECHO message:

Ricky,

It's me, Angel. It's been a long time, hasn't it? Listen, I won't be able to say much. I'm sorry I haven't talked to you, but I've been in a bad way for a long time. And Dad won't like me talking to you. Don't say anything to anyone about me. It could end badly. And delete this message ASAP. But know this, Ricky: I treasured the times we spent together. I know how hard it has been, how you've pined for me. Stay strong. I believe in you.

Angel

Jack found the message, as I left it on my ECHO device for longer than Angel would have liked. And, well, I was thrown into that series of near-death experiences and such that you could call an adventure. Loosely.

Angel was planning on using the Vault Hunters, old and new, to kill her and bring down her father, once she was able to break free of his control. Had it not been for my presence, along with so many other factors (Tannis' device, Lilith figuring out from my slip-ups that Angel was a Siren, Zed's auto-injector), she may have died, committing suicide-by-proxy. As it is, well, she's alive. She thought I had gone so far as to cage her like her father, but I never wanted that.

The worst I did was give her a leash: a portable auto-injector (that Dr Zed modified) that continually injects the minimum amount of Eridium needed to keep her alive and comfortable. And even now, that's not needed. After the whole Oasis fiasco, Zed, Tannis, and myself managed to come up with a means of Angel's body continually creating the Eridium it needed. It was surprisingly easy, though the operation on Angel was somewhat painful. She's had to go through so much.

She's pretty awesome, though. Besides having pain tolerance many would envy, she has control over electricity at the subatomic level. With subtle, instinctive control, she can effectively hack computer systems and electronics, what she calls 'Phase-shift'. With less finesse and more power, however, she can shoot thunderbolts and lightning, like Zeus if he was a young woman and sexy.

For a time, during the Oasis fiasco, I wondered whether I truly loved her, or whether it was just a childish infatuation that had merely turned into possessiveness. Nisha also brought up one of my worst fears: that somehow, in the Sci-Zone, I'd vivisect Angel. Thankfully, that particular fear hasn't come to pass, but even so, I wonder how long my happiness with Angel will last?

(Angel's handwriting)

Ricky, you proved me wrong. I thought it would last until the day I thought I would die. You tore open that cage and set me free. Out of every person in the universe, you gave me the greatest gift of all: my freedom. I once said to the first Vault Hunters as they fought the Destroyer that I could see up and down the timeline. That wasn't strictly speaking true, though I did do probability analysis(1). But despite my seeing so many outcomes, I never saw what you did.

By the way, there's something you failed to mention. One of the little things I've enjoyed since being free from Dad is swearing. He used to punish me for that. It's a little thing, and I don't want to curse that often, but even so…fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! :)

(Snyder's handwriting)

LOL, as they say in the vernacular. I don't mind you peeking in here. Wish Zer0 wouldn't.

NAME: Wilhelm

AGE: I think he was in his 50s during the Elpis fiasco.

NOTES: You know that old fictional cliché of cybernetics eating your soul? Having known three cyborgs (four, if you count a few implants Angel has), I can say that it's mostly bollocks. I think it depends on why you get the cybernetics. Gaige got her new arm partly so that she could summon Deathtrap more easily, though it's scary how a teenaged girl would rather do that than go to hospital after gashing her arm deeply. Sir Hammerlock got his after being mauled by Pandoran wildlife, and he does look distinguished despite them.

But Wilhelm? Well, you know that quote by Dr Samuel Johnson? He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man, or something like that. Oh, it started out as a means to cure a case of Bone Waste he had, but he began to have an addiction to cybernetics, simply because he thought the quality of humanity was weak.

He worked for quite a time as an Enforcer, a term given to an elite kind of mercenary. He was hired by Jack as a Vault Hunter shortly before Dahl's Lost Legion attacked. In the aftermath of that whole Elpis thing, Wilhelm was hired by Jack full-time as his personal enforcer. Wilhelm was one of the main forces of the New Haven massacre, and was rightly feared by the first Vault Hunters.

I saw much of his transformation from man into machine myself, as he was the one, after he was retained by Jack, who subdued me when I was in the Sci-Zone. We loathed each other, and I hated him even more as he basically transformed into a human Loader. And, like the first Vault Hunters, I was fucking scared of him, and with good reason.

If there were any redeeming aspects to him, it was that he had a pretty laconic sense of humour. He tended to respond to any statement he didn't like with a very blunt 'No'. His custom surveyor drones, Wolf and Saint, also had humorous voices. And there were times when he made jokes that were actually quite funny.

But he was a monster. A monster betrayed by a more cunning one. Wilhelm was poisoned by Jack, who used an anaesthetic that doesn't mesh well with cyberneural interfaces. Jack wanted us to have a fake power core. Not that it didn't stop Wilhelm from nearly killing me: only Zer0's timely intervention saved me. But the relative ease of killing him set off alarm bells in Zer0's head, as well as mine. A shame we didn't realise the significance of that until it was too late. But it wasn't a shame Wilhelm died. He deserved it. He loved death and destruction, and being a monster.

NAME: Nisha Kadam

AGE: Late 20s, early 30s.

NOTES: Not all monsters look that way, and not all monsters fix a mask to their face with surgical clamps. Some monsters have the beauty of a goddess…and the malice of a demon.

Nisha Kadam had a rough life. An abusive mother who threw stuff at her, a weak father…and yet, many people in similar situations don't grow up like Nisha. A turning point in her life was when a puppy she had was bitten by a frenzyclutch, and then bit her in a rabid rage. She then believed that love was overrated, that the things you love could either turn against you, or be turned against you.

She began life as somewhere between bounty hunter and bandit. She could have been a hero of sorts, had she not a rather unfortunate tendency to torture people and enjoy it. I know this sounds hypocritical, coming from someone who enjoyed watching Flesh-Stick die during that tea party, but I try not to make it a habit of enjoying torture. Nisha, however, according to Tim, was a sadomasochist of the highest order, deriving sexual pleasure from killing.

I met her a few times after the Elpis fiasco. She had been hired by Jack to be one of his Vault Hunters, and she intended to stay with him as his lover and lackey. Beautiful woman, utterly beautiful, but nasty. She even flirted with me, albeit in a way that made me fear for the safety of my genitals.

Jack made her the Sheriff of Lynchwood, a town that produced Eridium. She almost immediately made many a crime a capital one (she likes seeing people choke to death), and deputised a man by the name of Winger at gunpoint. She tortured Brick for hours on end, before snapping his puppy's neck. She had wanted to piss him off, and succeeded. Funnily enough, she also wanted crime to happen in Lynchwood, if only because she could do what she wanted to the perpetrators.

Jack often visited her for, well, I believe the colloquial term is a booty call. It was during one of those, when we were stranded in Oasis, that we got Tim to try and sow discord in Hyperion by pretending to be Jack, and claim that the real Jack was a treacherous body double. Nisha very nearly killed Jack until he convinced her he was the real deal. Nisha, Jack, and Nakayama then ambushed my wedding with the assistance of Scarlet, an old friend of Nisha's, though Nisha turned on her friend swiftly enough. We managed to capture Nisha, and we held her in custody until we captured Jack. I was the one who killed her. And I'm not sure what further to say on the matter.

NAME: Timothy Lawrence

AGE: 24 (I know this because I went to one of his birthdays at university)

NOTES: I can barely remember Tim's old face. While I managed to get a part-time job to pay my student fees, Tim got something a little worse.

I first met Tim as a roommate at university. We had fairly divergent degrees, me doing the sciences, and him doing acting, but we enjoyed games, along with my other university acquaintance, Dave Jones. We became fairly good friends, but we went our separate ways after we got our respective Bachelor's Degrees.

The next time I met him, he got hired by Jack to become a body double. Why a relatively low-level programmer needed a body double, few people knew, but Jack was on the verge of making his mark on Pandora. It was after the Elpis fiasco, and Tim and I met afterwards, and caught up. It seemed that Tim had gotten mixed up with the Lost Legion's invasion, and had actually fought alongside Jack's other mercenaries. He didn't tell me much at the time, though I was surprised at how he now looked like Jack, not to mention he sounded like him. I hate to say it, but looking and sounding like Jack was a vast improvement for the poor guy. And at least he doesn't act like him.

I had mentioned Tim to the others a bit before we met Wilhelm. Zer0 and Maya, thankfully, remembered when they came across him and another body double in Opportunity. Tim willingly defected to the Crimson Raiders, and was surprisingly welcomed more readily than I had been. I guess it's because, despite looking like Jack, his character was nothing like that bastard.

Tim not only got along best with Moxxi, whom he had met on Elpis, but Tiny Tina, of all people. I think despite her hatred of Jack, she not only recognised that Tim was a different person, but a very different person, frankly a bit of a dork. And he proved his worth in battle more than once. Not to mention giving the performance of his life when imitating Jack, and making out the real Jack was an impostor. Jack thinks himself a hero, but Tim is the hero Jack should be.

NAME: Professor Ian Nakayama(2)

AGE: In his 50s, I think.

NOTES: In the department where I worked, Nakayama was one of those who was a major Handsome Jack fanboy. He was also quite a competent scientist, though the man himself was somewhat clumsy and absent-minded. His biggest claim to fame was poisoning the CEO of Atlas not long after the fall of the Crimson Lance(3).

I fell afoul with him when I disputed one of his experimental results. He shoved me. I fell down, literally, and figuratively, into the Sci-Zone. My resulting rampage led him to transferring away from me. I all but forgot him, until a bit of musing in Oasis led me to remember him. I met him again not long after, assisting Jack and Nisha. Although Jack seemed to promise to allow Nakayama to research Angel, I personally reckon that Jack viewed him as an ultimately disposable pawn. After all, Jack suspected sabotage with the anti-respawn gun, and so gave it to Nakayama. Angel let him escape. He wasn't, to our knowledge, in the worst of Hyperion, and Blake would deal with him anyway.

Whatever he's doing now, hopefully it will be of benefit to humanity.

NAME: Doctor Heather Samuels

AGE: Late 30s.

NOTES: If there's one person who taught me most about Eridium and its effects on living beings, it was Doctor Samuels. Though not my PhD supervisor, she did supervise my Masters' Thesis, and suggested avenues for my PhD. I respected her immensely, and had dismissed as foul rumour that she had been involved with human experimentation at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, even after she disappeared.

However, I learned during an expedition to that place that those rumours were true. She did experiment on people using Eridium and Slag. I'm a little heartened to learn that she did so under the worst duress: Jack held her wife hostage, and said that Doctor Samuels would either experiment, or would never see her wife again.

Samuels disappeared during a particularly catastrophic experiment, one that involved the parents of Tiny Tina, as well as the girl herself. That being said, I later asked Angel to find any records of her death, only to find that Doctor Samuels and her spouse were listed as missing, rather than dead. Flesh-Stick had also been listed as missing, presumed dead, but I know I dealt with that bastard. Who knows? Perhaps one day I might find her.

NAME: President Jeffrey Blake

AGE: Hard to tell: could be anything from late 30s to 50s.

NOTES: Somewhat condescending, cool, calm, and collected, Blake looks vaguely like the devil. He's even grown a little demonic beard since I last saw him(4). And yet, although he's definitely a corporate scumbag, he's also one who actually honours bargains. He's therefore infinitely preferable to his predecessor, Handsome Jack.

Blake was once in charge of the department of Tourism and Mercenary Relations. Why this is is because the two departments were merged after the head of Tourism was murdered when rumours of cutbacks circulated. Blake is widely considered to have hired an assassin (he's not one for doing dirty work himself), though he denies any involvement. That being said, the original Vault Hunters considered him to be a good help during the Claptrap Rebellion, as Blake hired them to help him stop the robots. The fact that Hyperion actually caused the problem by reprogramming a Claptrap into a character assassin, only to have him foment a rebellion, is often overlooked.

Recognising that the Crimson Raiders needed to have a treaty with Hyperion once Jack was dead, Angel engaged in covert communication with Blake. Although Vice President by this point, Blake was called 'Jimmy' rather than 'Jeffrey' by Jack, deliberately. Blake needed little incentive to begin moving Hyperion away from Jack. But Jack needed to die, or else Blake couldn't follow through with his coup. After I killed Jack and Nisha, Blake negotiated with the Crimson Raiders regarding the Vaults, as well as having Angel and myself work as his representatives to the Crimson Raiders.

Blake's a slimy bugger, but better the devil you know, than the devil with a mask. And that metaphor officially carked out.

FILE 7 ANNOTATIONS:

Okay, this will be the last chapter for the 'files' section. Yes, I know I haven't done the characters at Oasis. I'll do them later. But I want to get this 'story' finished, so that I can get to posting the first chapter of Welcome to the Jungle.

1. My attempt to explain away Angel's claim to see up and down the timeline in the original Borderlands.

2. I gave Nakayama the first name of Ian, after his voice actor, Ian Sinclair.

3. I decided that this was part of the reason you don't see Atlas in later games: it's partly because of the events of The Secret Armoury of General Knoxx, and partly because I decided that the CEO dying happened shortly thereafter.

4. My attempt to explain away a continuity error: the images I saw online and in videos made it hard to tell whether Blake had facial hair in his appearance in the original Borderlands. Upon playing the relevant DLC, I realised he didn't have facial hair! I decided to make out like he had grown a small, demonic beard in the five years between the events of Borderlands and Borderlands 2.