There was something strange going on with John. It was hard for Tassiter to put a name to what was bothering him, but ever since he had arrived on Helios Station the man had seemed… off. After their last conversation, he had shown up expecting nothing less than open hostility. Instead, he found that John was surprisingly amicable. Sure he was still a sarcastic and insufferable degenerate, but his cutting remarks lacked any real threat. On the contrary, he had been remarkably cooperative.

True to his word, John had in fact led him on a tour through the station that very afternoon. He had promised complete transparency, and Tassiter found no doors locked to him... all except for one. As an act of hospitality, he had dismissed his bodyguard during the tour. Of course this just meant that his companion was now free to go and look for anything that John may not had been so inclined to show him – John's quarters in particular. However, the biometric scanner on the door had proved far more efficient at its job than Tassiter would have liked and his bodyguard returned empty-handed. With forced entry out of the question, this meant that he would not be gaining access to John's personal space anytime soon.

"He must be hiding something," he ruminated at the emptiness of his temporary office. Curling his lip at the insultingly mediocre view his office offered, Tassiter turned away from the window. Of course the rest of the room was hardly any more awe inspiring. Less than a fifth of the size of John's office, it was a less than worthy space for the president of the company to be occupying.

The only thing that stood out from the blank metal of the walls that surrounded him was the form of his bodyguard standing statue-like in the corner of the room. On more than one occasion, Tassiter had found it unnerving to stare too long into the reflective gaze of his servant's faceplate. He could never be sure where his companion was looking and the unflinching form could hold a certain menace to it if Tassiter watched for long enough. Likewise, though he continually voiced his thoughts out loud, he never bothered to ask the bodyguard's opinion. He never spoke. Though a couple of unoccupied chairs sat at the front of his desk, Tassiter never bothered to offer the silent monolith a seat. He never moved... unless Tassiter told him to. Absolute loyalty was a rarity in life, and so Tassiter prized him above all others in this regard.

"But how do I figure out what he's hiding?" Tassiter wondered aloud. He could think of no reason for John's sudden interest in cooperation. Could he have known about my visit beforehand? Tassiter had been careful to let no one know of his unscheduled visit except for The Board. Had one of them given him a warning? Maxim certainly might have considering the amount of money that Pandora's eridium mining operations were generating. The director had given John nearly limitless resources to build this station – against Tassiter's better judgment.

It wasn't that Tassiter didn't recognize John's capabilities; far from it actually. The man's meteoric rise from the dregs of software programming to the head of Hyperion's R&D division in only the span of a decade was proof enough of his talent. The problem lay in John's ego. His designs. His plans. His vision. Everything had to go 'Jack's way.' And when his plans failed, he became a liability. John may have liked to take the credit for his successes, but he never attained them by himself. Even John's one true victory on Pandora was a questionable one. Tassiter had been on the verge of firing the man for the misuse of company resources when John's discovery of eridium conveniently made him invaluable to The Board.

Tassiter knew he couldn't have done it alone, but he had never been able to find evidence of John's mysterious benefactor. Just like Pandora before, Tassiter can find no proof of wrongdoing in all of the station's official reports. Of course, those were also the same reports that failed to mention the addition of a giant space laser. John may have given him access to the station, but any reports he found were clearly selective. He needed to find something that hadn't been cherry-picked to send to The Board. The problem was that the level of secrecy John practiced would make that virtually impossible. Tassiter needed to dig up some kind information that John wouldn't have cared to change.

"What detail could have slipped his notice…?" He mused. John displayed an almost anal-retentive level of attention to detail in everything he did. Everything was meticulously planned out – except for the cost. Tassiter was certain that the man had never run a cost projection analysis in his life. With The Board now catering to his every whim, it wasn't like he had to.

"That's it!" Tassiter slapped his hand on the desk as he jumped out of his seat. He smirked at his bodyguard in his moment of cleverness, but failed to receive even a nod of acknowledgment. No matter.

"John never cared about the cost of anything and The Board never cared to question him. Why bother to hide the figures if no one is looking at them?" He leaned over the cheap desk and snapped his fingers to signal his bodyguard. "Nigel, we have a visit to make."

At once, the figure stepped away from his resting place against the wall and silently presented himself to Tassiter. With a new lead to pursue, Tassiter spared one last glance around the shithole of an office he occupied. If his assumptions were correct, he wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of this slum much longer.

Timothy was exhausted. Not in the physical sense, he slept as much as ever, but rather in a mental one. The combination of Tassiter's constant hounding, playing daddy to Angel, and Jack's usual work schedule was beginning to wear him down. Lately it seemed that the only break he got was when he was sleeping – and even that didn't help when visions of Jack started invading his dreams.

Dragging himself back to the apartment after day three of 'The Tassiter Occupation,' Timothy fell forward onto one of the designer leather couches in the living room. Sprawling his limbs out as far as they could go, his hand made contact with a foot he certainly hoped wasn't his.

"Tired?" Angel's voice said from somewhere above him.

No shit. "You could say that, Pumpkin," came his muffled reply.

"Bad day?"

"That obvious, huh?"

"The mask doesn't hide the redness in your eyes," she deadpanned and Timothy heard the distinctive scrape of paper at the turn of a page.

Ouch, you know it's bad when your shut-in adopted daughter starts reminding you how unkempt you look. "So what you're saying is: I look like shit."

"Language."

Shit. "Yep, my bad. Tired. Sleep. Bed. Go now."

He felt Angel shift in her seat as she set her book aside. "Why are you so tired?"

"'Cause Tassiter's up my assss," Timothy groaned as he flipped himself over and spared her a groggy look.

"Dad."

"M'sorry. That guy and his creepy bodyguard won't leave me alone. He's constantly bursting into my office complaining about every single thing while the other guy just sits in the corner with his helmet on like some modern art deco piece." Timothy's hands came up to massage his face through the material of the mask.

"A man in a helmet?"

"Yeah. Really big; dresses in a fancy suit; puts off a 'I'm-gonna-strangle-you-in-your-sleep' kinda vibe. Trust me, you'd know him if you saw him. The guy definitely stands out."

"Oh, I've seen him."

Suddenly, Timothy was feeling much more awake than he had moments before. "Wait, where did you see him?"

"He was outside the apartment a few days ago."

"And what was he doing out there?"

"He was trying to hack into the scanner, but I managed to stop him."

"And you managed that how?"

"I'm better," she said simply.

Timothy drew himself up with a tired sigh. "Why didn't you mention this like – oh, I dunno – a few days ago?"

Angel shrugged. "You looked like you were under a lot of stress and it wasn't that big of an issue. I did take care of it."

Well damn. Guess daddy's little angel isn't as innocent as she looks. "Just for future reference, let daddy know when some creepy guy tries to break into our place."

Angel twisted her hands in her lap. "Sorry, Dad."

Timothy winced. He could not figure out why this girl took any hint of reproach as failure. It was enough to make him wonder what kind of disciplinarian Handsome Jack had been to instill this kind of reaction in her. "No, no. You did good. It's just that daddy can't do anything if he doesn't know what's going on."

"Okay, I'll say something next time."

"Hopefully, there won't be a next time."

"There's always a next time," Angel mumbled, picking up her discarded book once more.

Well isn't that delightfully pessimistic. Timothy painstakingly left the comfort of the plush leather couch. The time for relaxation was over. If Tassiter was trying to find Jack's secrets, then he was going to need a safer place to keep them.

"Okay, Sweetie, daddy needs to go work in the office for a bit. Tell you what, how 'bout I have the chef fix us something nice for dinner since you were awesome and kept our rooms safe. Name anything and you got it."

Angel considered him for a moment over the top of her page. "Hmmm… anything?"

"Anything."

"Macaroni and cheese," she said without hesitation.

...What? "Really? Any-anything you want, and you want macaroni and cheese?"

"Yep, and not the cheap stuff either,"Angel smiled up at him mischievously.

"Of course not. We wouldn't want any… cheap macaroni and cheese, would we?"

Angel nodded absently, once again absorbed in her book, "No, no we wouldn't."

Tassiter slipped off his spectacles with a frustrated sigh. The desk before him was littered with stacks of papers and datapads. Cost analysis forms, requisition papers, and even tax documents lay scattered about the room. Figures dating from as far back as when Helios Station was no more than a concept stared back at him through countless stacks and charts. Crates stacked chin-high surrounded his desk with still more untouched forms he had yet to go through. And yet, after two days of searching, there was nothing.

Well, not entirely nothing. There were several cases of fraud; misappropriation of company resources; and tax evasion, but nothing inappropriate coming from a man of John's position within the company. His management of project funds was atrocious and every project he worked on was so over-budget that even the word budget would no longer apply, but it all seemed entirely mundane. Of course, with Pandora's eridium mining operations generating more money in a day than Helios Station used in a month, The Board cared little enough about the man's expenses.

"Seriously – an exploding robot design? How obtuse can one man be," Tassiter snorted at the patent before crumpling it in his fist. Looking through John's project budgets was getting him nowhere, so he decided to try a different avenue. Removing a disk from its protective sleeve, he inserted it into his computer and booted it up. Unlike the chaos that was John's project management, the station's expenses had been meticulously cataloged by its' accountants.

Looking at the expense accounts, Tassiter was less than pleased to note that all of them were so far into the red he had to scroll over an extra page just to see where they ended. Well, he supposed it was to be expected when you had to replace two-thirds of your work force in only a couple months. Between Dahl's violent occupation and the plague that had run rampant through the station, being a worker on Helios had proven to be quite hazardous to one's health.

Tassiter still felt a spot of pride about his solution to their diseased worker problem. After all, it was far cheaper to pay out death benefits than medical expenses. However, looking at the medical expenses, he was surprised to find that they were still significantly higher than they should have been. His curiosity piqued, Tassiter closed the program and exchanged it for the disk containing the station's medical expense reports.

With the cataloged expense reports in front of him, it became very obvious who the person behind those extra costs was. Tassiter had certainly heard about the amusing incident involving John's face. His only regret was not having been there in person to see it. That being said, the tacky likeness he now wore couldn't have possibly cost this much to attach. With the numbers on the sheets, John could have carved himself a new face from pure eridium. In fact, as he looked closer at the figures, Tassiter realized that the mask had nothing to do with the numbers at all. Almost all of the expense costs were well over six months old.

Tassiter was suddenly very curious about why John was consistently visiting a doctor six months ago. Since it would be a cold day in hell before he would ever ask John himself, that left only one other option. Opening up the account for a specific operation, he found what he was looking for easily enough. Dr. Henry P. Autohn. All the accounts payed out to him, but no contact information was listed.

Reaching across the mess of papers on his desk, Tassiter punched in the extension for John's office on his intercom. On the third buzz, the feminine voice of John's secretary answered. "Thank you for calling Jack's office, this is –"

"I don't care who you are," Tassiter hissed impatiently. "What I want is information. I need the contact information for a Dr. Henry P. Autohn faxed to my office immediately."

There was a moment's pause as the secretary searched through her database. "I'm afraid we don't have an employee listed under that name."

Tassiter felt his impatience mounting, "Then look again more carefully. You are looking for a Henry, P. for Philip, Autohn. He could be listed under the middle name."

The tap of a keyboard followed for several seconds before the woman spoke again, "I'm sorry, Sir, but there is no employee file on record for either a Henry, or Philip Autohn."

"And you're sure you're searching the entire company database, not just the employees on the station?" Tassiter tried to hide the exasperation in his voice.

"I'm sure, Sir."

"Well your helpfulness has been duly noted," he sneered as he hung up the call. Instead of allowing his frustrations to overwhelm him, this new development fueled his determination. Whatever John was hiding, it must have been something of great importance to hire someone from outside of the company. But where to start looking?

"Nigel," Tassiter snapped. He knew without having to look that his servant was at his side immediately. "I need you find this man by any means necessary," he wrote the doctor's name on the back of a business card. "I need to know who he is; what he does; and what he did for Handsome Jack, and I need to know now."

Nigel wordlessly accepted the offered card and slipped it into a breast pocket. He was nearly at the door before Tassiter called out to his retreating back, "And Nigel... don't fail me." His servant continued on without bothering to acknowledge the statement. Of course, that went without saying. He never failed.

Nina hissed in pain against the brightness of the operating lamps piercing her eyes. The invading light only served to inform her of the dull throb in the back of her head. Trying to look at her surroundings caused her hair to pull against her scalp from where it had become matted with dried blood. She tried to reach up and access the damage, but quickly discovered that her entire upper body had been bound to the chair.

A rustling sound brought her attention back to the surrounding room as a large figure emerged from the shadows of the back corner. Stepping into the light of the lamps, the hulking man removed a small metal disk from the confines of his overcoat and placed it on the operating tray in front of her. After several seconds, the device began to emit a blue light and the head of a man materialized in the air above it.

The head wasted no time, "Hello Miss… Nina I believe you're called? I see you've met my associate already. Now I'm sure you're wondering what's going on here, correct? Well, we're here so that the two of us can have a little chat. Is that understood?"

Nina nodded her head slowly, "Da."

The head gave an acidic smile, "Wonderful. Well to be a bit more clear: I'm not really interested in talking to Nurse Nina."

"But you tie me up," she croaked past the swell in her throat.

"To be more specific: I'm far more interested in talking to Inna Veleskovy."

Nina immediately stiffened in her seat. "What you want from Inna Veleskovy."

"Just want to talk."

"Then talk," she spat.

"Eight months ago, you were working under a Dr. Henry Autohn, correct?

"Da."

"Then I'm sure you're also well aware that the good doctor is no longer with us. What I'm curious about is why a doctor specializing in facial reconstruction met such an untimely demise."

Nina's eyes flicked from the imposing figure and back to the holographic projector, "Inna not know why Doctor was killed."

"Well I don't recall mentioning that he was killed," said the man.

Nina snorted, "Bullshit. You know what happened to Doctor if you find me."

"The matter of his death is of no consequence to me, what I'm interested in is the reason for it. I doubt someone just changes their identity and chooses to hide out in this-" the narrow eyes of the man scanned the view of her operating room "-local for the atmosphere. After all, I'm sure a back alley would suffice."

"If Inna tell what you want, how does she know that she safe?"

A hand came into view on the display as the man snapped his fingers. At once, the silent spectator approached her and settled his heavy hands loosely onto her shoulders. "I believe your concerns would be better focused on the imminent future if I were you."

Nina nearly tripped over her own words in her haste to respond. "W-we do surgery."

"That much is obvious. What kind of surgery?"

"Rich-Man contact us. He say he want to make other man look like him. We do many surgery to make Squeaky-Voice-Man to look and sound like Rich-Man."

"I see," the man replied slowly. "And what would the name of this 'Rich-Man' be?"

"Rich-Man called himself Jack; sent many pictures to use - very handsome man."

There was a moment's pause as the man considered her words. "So you're telling me that this... Jack had someone else made to look exactly like him?"

"Da, paid good money for Doctor to keep secret," Nina shifted uncomfortably against the bonds. "Then Doctor is dead two weeks later. That is when I run away and become Nurse Nina."

The man removed his spectacles and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I see… thank you for your cooperation, Miss Veleskovy. I believe our conversation has come to an end."

Nina allowed herself a glimmer of hope at his words. "Inna done now?"

The man ignored her. "Nigel, see to it that Miss Veleskovy is taken care of. I have other business to attend to."

Nina watched the face melt away as the blue light from the device faded. Suddenly she felt a hand move to the base of her skull. Pain erupted from her neck as the massive appendage constricted. She tried to cry out, but the only sound that met her ears was the crack of her bones as they gave way under the pressure. Then Nina knew no more.

A/N: Yeaaah, so there's that… LittlePorcelainDoll and Orieon here with a public service announcement to our readers: people are going to die in this story. We get that you love these characters. We do too. That being said, it isn't always sunshine and rainbows, particularly not on Pandora. People play for keeps in this story; that usually means that someone's going to die. We hope you won't hate us too much and stick it out to the end anyways.

Topic number two: - and it's almost as much of a hot topic as the first one – we made an OC. We don't particularly care for OC's much, but in this case, we have really limited options because of the timeline our story takes place in. With most of the antagonists from the previous games dead and the only major antagonist from BL2 dead, we're going to have to get creative for our protagonists to have someone to fight against. Of course, they won't be here to replace any of the canon characters or show them up in any way so you can rest easy on that part.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews and support so far!