Ahead stretched a dim hallway, lit only by cold fluorescents. The light reflected onto the polished linoleum floor, a bright pathway that seemed to beckon Zer0 onwards.
The lights flickered out behind them as they walked.
It wasn't supposed to be this dark. It hadn't been that dark. Zer0 knew that, even if they had no idea where they were.
This place was familiar, but no more than that. There were only the fluorescents, the linoleum, and the raw concrete walls.
They kept walking.
The monotony was first broken with a simple Atlas logo, painted on the wall in bold red letters. Rhys's facility?
No, that couldn't be right. This place was bleak and utilitarian, with none of the extravagance of the one at Old Haven. Still, they'd been here before, and they were strangely at ease.
An alarm began to sound, accompanied by strobe lights flashing at regular points down the hallway.
They kept walking.
Even through the blare of the alarm, they could hear a voice, crying out in pain and fear.
They turned to follow it at the first branch in their path.
"No! Don't come any closer, I-I'll do anything you want!" A thin, rough voice. "I'll give you anything you want! I-I-I'm sorry! Please!"
Zer0 knew that voice. They hadn't heard it in years, but they'd killed this man, hadn't they?
Oh, they must be killing him now.
They turned a second corner.
Before them lay a dozen corpses, strewn around the hall. Scientists, accompanied by a trio of Crimson Lance soldiers. They must have been evacuating when they'd been attacked.
Zer0 recognized their own work, though they hadn't been nearly as subtle back then. That, or their client requested such extremity, it was hard to keep track after so many jobs.
The nearest bodies were the soldiers, a single stab wound in each of their backs. Further on, things became muddled. A mess of blood, viscera, and dismembered limbs. Too many non-fatal wounds. Zer0 didn't doubt this was their work as well, but it was sloppy, at best. A result of hurried desperation.
The last body was an Atlas assassin, split in two with a diagonal cut from collar to hip. Both of her swords were bloodied- she may have presented them with an actual challenge. Old Atlas had trained their assassins well.
"Please!" the doomed man begged, louder this time. Zer0 found that they still remembered his face. He was older, but not yet old. Perhaps in his early sixties, with a square-set jaw, thin lips, and a receding hairline. His half-rimmed glasses gave a kindly aspect to his face, when it wasn't distorted in fear.
They had decapitated him. A simple, clean kill.
He was sobbing, now.
This past Zer0 was taking too long.
"You won't get a fight," they called out to themself, irritated.
Light shone under a door nearly a hundred feet down the hall, to the left.
Inside, the man's voice wavered through terrified rage. "You'll never leave here alive! They'll take you down!"
Zer0 almost laughed. Their old jobs had been so predictable. It would start with pleas and bribes, and when that didn't work it would be anger and hackneyed threats, always undermined by fear.
He still wouldn't fight back, they hardly ever did.
As they neared, the man began to scream- agonized screaming that went on for too long. Why weren't they finishing him off already? They'd won the moment he was cornered in that room.
A heavy thump.
Silence.
The door swung open and the other Zer0 stepped into the hallway.
Their helmet was still new, unmarred by thousands of battles. Their blood-spattered armor too- only, it had recently gained a few gashes, courtesy of that other assassin.
This would have been before they'd started going by Zer0, when they were simply another nameless assassin-for-hire.
This nameless assassin seemed to regard their counterpart, projecting a "0" from their helm.
"It is done, he's dead. I have no desire to kill you too," they said. They weren't even using haikus at this point. "If you wish to live, I'd advise that you leave this place. Now." They were addressing someone behind Zer0.
A third figure, cloaked in shadow. It was a small, slender creature- humanoid, but like Zer0, far too thin to be human. It backed away, trembling, and fled, stumbling over its own feet.
Their former self watched, motionless, as the figure vanished into the dark hallway. Then, they too turned to leave.
Something was off about them, Zer0 realized with a deep unease. They carried themself wrong, every movement felt empty. Almost as if there was nothing behind that visor. The thought seemed ridiculous, but they couldn't rid themself of it.
The assassin faded into the shadows.
Darkness had closed in on all sides now, the only light that remained was what shone from beneath the door. Zer0 grasped the handle, reluctant to turn it.
There was something behind that door, something other than the dismembered body they'd left behind. They'd spared something else in there, something they shouldn't have.
They began to turn the handle.
"You've become careless, assassin," a distorted voice said behind them.
Zer0 swung around, reaching for their sword, only to come up empty.
A gloved hand clamped onto their neck, slamming them against the door.
A blade rushed at them.
"No!" Zer0 was already jumping to their feet when they woke, grabbing for their sword again. This time their arm was stopped short with a dull crunch, followed by a crash and a cry of "Augh! Shit!"
They went lightheaded, their legs shaking under them as they finally drew their sword. They could barely see. Their peripheral vision was gone, everything else obscured with a filter of murky white.
Then their vision cleared, and they remembered where they were. Rhys. Their arm.
"You fixed it…" They held the arm out in front of them, testing its movement. "Perfect." Even with their heart still pounding, the realization overshadowed the last fragments of the dream. They projected a ":D".
Oh right, Rhys. He was what stopped their arm, they'd smacked him in the face with the near-equivalent of a metal truncheon.
He was on the floor, grasping his nose, stunned. "Owww...Why'd you..? ...Shit…"
"Crap! I'm sorry, Rhys. / I did not intend for that." They deconstructed their blade, realizing it was making a contradictory statement. "...Your nose is bleeding."
"Really? Ugh." He put a hand to his upper lip, confirming the truth in that. "I...It's...fine." He cursed under his breath, cringing. "...Are you okay?"
"Yes." They projected a ":\". Judging by the sound it made when they'd hit him, his nose was undoubtedly broken. What was he doing worrying about them? They bent down, offering their hand. Rhys took it, rising unsteadily.
Once on his feet, he pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes tearing up.
"Ouch… Thanks," he said, as if it hadn't been Zer0 who'd knocked him over in the first place. "Are you sure you're okay? Because you just-"
"Yes." Bad as it was, Rhys's injury was a convenient distraction. It would be easy to brush off questions regarding their own well-being if Rhys had the more pertinent problem. Explaining that they'd woken in a total panic, because of a fever dream about some half-remembered murder, wasn't ideal.
They retrieved a tissue box from across the room.
"Here. For the blood."
Rhys thanked them again and pulled out a handful of tissues, pressing them to his nose.
Zer0 turned to right his fallen chair.
"I uh, had almost finished. With your arm," Rhys said.
"To your misfortune. / My arm can wait for right now. / Your nose looks quite bad."
"Does it?" Rhys had all the composure of someone who was entirely used to being hit in the face, full force. He touched his nose and winced.
"Yes. Sit, lean forward." They gestured to his chair, hesitant to break the news: "I think it's broken…Mildly. / Stay. I will get ice."
"Yeah. I mean, I guess that's about what I'd expect a broken nose to feel like. I can grab some ice, you're still hur-"
"No," they interrupted. "You need to sit. / Your injury takes priority. " They stopped halfway out the door. "Where do you keep ice?"
"There should be some in the freezer in my room."
Zer0 nodded, starting out again before remembering another thing. They poked their head back in. "Oh, it's possible / That you have a concussion / Or worse. Stay awake."
They heard an unexpectedly calm "Gotcha." as they left.
Rhys's suite was slightly smaller than the one he'd given Zer0, but it was laid out and decorated much the same. It lacked personal touches, aside from a drooping potted plant and a dented Hyperion cleaning bot buzzing in circles on the floor. The bot sported a name tag that read "HELLO, MY NAME IS", and handwritten, "Trash". Presumably, he'd dug it out from Helios's wreckage. True to its name, anyone else would have thrown it away.
Zer0 stepped over it on the way to the kitchen, idly wondering if this was one of the robots they'd overheard him mentioning to Vaughn. "Kind of like dogs," he'd called them. Vaughn had been worried for him, and now that they thought about it, that was entirely fair- Tannis probably started out with odd attachments towards shitty electronics too. Being isolated on Pandora did weird things to people...
They paused for a moment on their way out, eyeing Rhys's desk. He must have been accessing old Atlas databases when they'd surprised him the night before. Somewhere there'd be a record of that facility they'd been in, maybe even information on the people they'd slain. More importantly, they could figure out what had been in that room, if that dread hadn't merely been a construct of their dream.
It was hard to believe their brain had been tampered with, and that was the obvious answer for why they couldn't remember. It was possible, though- one of the downsides to cybernetic implants was that they made for a gateway for doing just that. All it took was a clever virus and ineffective security, and there were all sorts of ways to mess with a cyborg's perception.
There wasn't time to dig through files, not without Rhys wondering what was taking so long. Simply asking for help would be easier, but what were they supposed to say? "I killed some Atlas, / Brutally, some years ago. / Can you find out more?"
It had simply been a dream, triggered by fever, slag, and this facility. There'd been hundreds of other jobs they'd forgotten the details on, it wasn't necessarily significant.
Zer0 turned their back to the monitors. If it was important, it would come to them.
Rhys was still in the same place when they returned. They grabbed the first aid kit by the door on their way in.
"Keep pressure on it / For about two more minutes / The bleeding should stop," they said.
"Oh, good."
Zer0 sat down next to him, beginning to dig through the kit. It had probably been there for the entire lifetime of the facility, anything that could expire, had expired. The only cold compress sprung a leak long ago, and the dried fluid covered half the supplies in white flakes. There was a bottle of "Dr. Zed's Bullet Salve"- a product that even Zed was responsible enough to have discontinued.
A pair of insta-healths briefly gave them hope- if they injected one after setting Rhys's nose, it would be like it had never been broken. But the red liquid had gone four shades darker over the years. It wasn't worth the risk.
"You should restock these," they advised as they rummaged. "How have you survived this long?/ So few precautions..."
Rhys let out a short laugh through the curtain of tissues. "Not gonna lie, it's mostly been luck?"
"Undependable. / But you've been weirdly lucky, / I will give you that."
The only item of any particular use to them was a bottle of aspirin. It had also expired, but it probably wasn't toxic. Otherwise, setting Rhys's nose really only required their hands, it was unlikely they'd need to splint it or pack it- a lucky break, they weren't entirely sure how that worked and it didn't seem particularly pleasant for either party.
...What else was there? Zer0 was far less interested in healing injuries than in making them, but they'd learned a little over the years. Only, they didn't always have the most reliable teachers. Once Salvador recounted punching a man hard enough to drive his nasal bones into his brain, killing him instantly. After studying a few human skulls, Zer0 wasn't sure they'd believed that. It was more likely that, assisted by his brass knuckles, Salvator simply punched the guy so hard that he'd crushed the skull.
Neither nasal bone-related death nor a crushed skull were concerns here, but still, they'd hit Rhys in the head. Hard.
"Does your head hurt, Rhys? / Your vision, blurred? Dizziness? / Do you feel alright?"
"I-I think it's just the nose. I have a pretty hard head."
They nodded. "Good."
A hard head wouldn't be much help against his brain ricocheting inside his skull, but it seemed like his nose absorbed the worst of the impact.
"If something changes / Tell me. I'd prefer your brain / To go undamaged."
"Right." He laughed again. "And thanks. Not to brag, though, but at this point, I'm kind of a pro at not getting brain damage."
Zer0 didn't know what to make of that. They projected a "?".
"Sorry, that was uh- I…Dumb joke...You know, Pandora stuff - a lot of head trauma." Rhys pulled the clump of tissues away from his nose, cringing at how much blood had soaked into them. The bleeding had stopped, at least.
"I do not know." They tapped their helmet and projected ":)" before turning to retrieve a small package from the first aid kit.
"Oh, yeah, I guess not, huh? Hey, what- what are you doing?"
"Antiseptic wipe." They said, ripping the pack open. "Relax, it's to clean the blood / For a better look."
Rhys put a hand up to stop them when they leaned forward to swab at his nose.
"I can do it."
"Right. Of course." They handed him the wipe, suddenly feeling foolish.
It was funny, less than a day ago their positions had been swapped.
Okay, maybe not funny so much as weird, considering that Zer0 had been pretty much half-dead yesterday. Rhys was obviously the healthier of the two, and he still needed to finish their arm, so Zer0 probably shouldn't have been the one tending to him.
After all, Rhys had gotten hit in the face more than enough times to be intimately familiar with the procedure for nursing nosebleeds. He hadn't straight up broken his nose before, a fact that might qualify as a miracle after both working with Vasquez and journeying across Pandora. Still, his ECHOeye could generally provide whatever basic first aid information he needed for this kind of thing. It didn't seem so difficult.
But Zer0 seemed insistent and Rhys was shocked into cooperation- only partially due to the pain. Mostly, it was the fact that the assassin Vault hunter who'd infamously killed thousands of his former coworkers (and even more bandits) was fussing over him. They seemed about as far as you could get from the archetypal caretaker.
He put the now-red wipe aside.
"Am I, um, good?" He asked, resisting the impulse to check his reflection in their helm.
Without a word, Zer0 grabbed Rhys's chin with their gloved hand, tilting his head towards where he assumed their eyes would be- more or less the same place as a human's. They released him just as suddenly.
"I'm sorry, I, uh- / ...Good news: it's not too crooked. / I could set it now."
Rhys gawked at them. Did they seriously fumble over a haiku?
"Seriously, no offense, but are you sure you're feeling alright?" he asked. First, they'd woken in what he couldn't interpret as anything but complete panic, now this?
"Yes." There was no hesitation.
"Oh, well, good." He didn't believe them, but he wasn't going to argue. They hadn't started bleeding or showing any of the other more worrying Achlys symptoms, as far as he could tell.
"Shall I set your nose?" they offered again, this time a hint of insistence entered their voice.
"I uh, I guess, if it's noticeably crooked? Then, yeah, sure. My striking good looks are a huge selling point for Atlas." He was embarrassed with himself the moment the words left his mouth. "But yeah uh… So exactly how does that work?"
"It's pushed into place." They demonstrated the motion with their hands. "Simple, it shouldn't hurt much. / Broken noses, easy."
"So you're saying you have experience?"
Zer0 took just long enough before nodding to make Rhys worry.
"Sorry, I… I'm just gonna have to ask you to elaborate."
"Common injury / For Vault hunters. I've set some. / Less practiced than most."
"Less practiced?" Rhys rose an eyebrow. Zer0 seemed like they'd know how to do this, he had no reason to doubt them, but this was a matter of his facial symmetry.
"I am not favored / For such a job. As I have... / Strange anatomy?" They shrugged. "Perhaps you've noticed / I'm not entirely human. / People speculate."
"Yeah." He chuckled awkwardly, unable to tell if that was sarcasm or if they actually thought he was that dense. "I-I mean, not that I was speculating! Because I definitely wasn't."
He was imagining, true. But there was totally a difference. Probably. He still did have to wonder if they had a nose, though.
"Anyways, erm, I guess I'm not going to be getting to a doctor anytime soon, that Zed guy was the first time I'd even heard of one on this planet, and he seemed kind of, um…"
"Not a real doctor." They projected a "LOL".
He sighed. "Of course he isn't..." Worst came to worst, there were always Quick-Change machines, he could probably figure out how to fix his face with one of those. "Okay, yeah, do it before I chicken out."
"There may be more blood / And it will be quite painful / Will that be okay?"
"Yeah. Please just do it!" He wished they weren't so goddamn considerate.
Zer0's lined their thumbs up on either side of his nose.
"Don't move," they warned, then pressed firmly and dragging down.
There was a cracking sound as the bone shifted. Rhys recoiled the moment they removed their hands. "Shit! Shit shit shit! Ouch!"
"Wait, let me see it."
When he looked back Zer0's helm was inches away from his face. They gave a soft "Hm…"
The reflection of his face was warped and dim in their helmet, broken up by the scratches that covered their visor.
"Well uh, going by my reflection, it looks straight, but it's hard to say," he said, smiling.
Red light blinded him in response and he flinched away, closing his eyes.
The "!" they'd been projecting vanished.
"Sorry!" The word broke their usual monotone, they sounded genuinely embarrassed, and Rhys felt irrationally guilty.
"It's fine," he assured. "D-don't worry about it."
Zer0 nodded, turning to close up the first aid kit. "You're right, though. / It seems I was successful. / Be careful with it." They handed him the washcloth-wrapped bag of ice, followed by a bottle of aspirin.
"Thanks, seriously," he said. "But, uh, about your arm…" All he needed to do was reattach the last few plates. It was more aesthetic than anything, but it would keep the joints from catching in their sleeves, too.
"Rhys, I broke your nose, / I would not grudge you some rest. / Use the ice on it," they urged, flashing a ":|".
He would have argued, but it did hurt like hell. He pressed the ice lightly to his nose. "Tomorrow, then?"
Zer0 nodded, rising.
"I'm to remind you / About the core. Throw it out. / Lest it starts a fire."
Zer0 disappeared after that. Rhys looked away for a moment and they were gone. Of course, they wouldn't hang around him all the time, he knew that. But they could at least say something before vanishing.
Holding the ice pack to his nose, he set Zer0's remaining arm plates off to the side, wiped up the flakes of dried power core fluid, gathered the bloody tissues, and went out to bury the core.