A few of Rhys's new bandit companions had taken it upon themselves to haul out the corpses and body parts that littered the place. Rhys would have offered to help, but corpses were pretty gross and he had claimed himself a nice warm spot by the furnace.

He wasn't the only one not participating, that first one he'd met–who he'd started mentally referring to with the inventive nickname of "Helmet Asshole"–ignored the corpses in favor of rifling through cabinets, boxes, and shelves, occasionally pocketing ammo or whatever else they found. The big, masked bandit sat beside the fire, holding his hands nearly inside the flames. And the Claptrap rolled around, complaining about his missing eye and bumping into things.

As the others finally settled in for the night, Rhys found it impossible to fall asleep, lying there on the hard metal floor. Nearby, the fire crackled, the Claptrap whirred, one of the bandits snored, and the big one murmured to himself. Sighing, he rolled onto his back and opened a map on his ECHOeye interface. There had to be a way back to Helios–some Hyperion outpost or something.

Or, nothing.

There was nothing.

Nothing in any direction, for miles.

Just ice and a few abandoned villages, some marked "Bandit Infested". Silently, Rhys apologized to Handsome Jack for ever doubting his propaganda.

It seemed his only choice was to stick with this pack of bandits who, for now, had decided against killing him. He could figure things out as he went. Every trial was an opportunity in disguise, wasn't it? Wasn't that how that motivational poster went? The one with Handsome Jack, standing on the corpse of the Destroyer.

This was the planet that made Jack the man he was, after all. He could prove himself here. If these bandits were important enough that Jack wanted them dead, this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Rhys sat up, confirming everyone was asleep before activating his ECHOeye and scanning the soldier, sleeping a few feet away. Axton. Ex-Dahl commando, dishonorable discharge. War criminal. Five billion reward.
Surely Jack would pay a percentage of that for his location. Maybe, Rhys would find a chance to covertly ECHO into Hyperion without alerting the bandits. Jack himself would send down soldiers and a ride back home. If Rhys survived, he'd live a long life as the second richest man on Helios.

Next, he scanned the short one–Salvador–who slept propped up against a wall, snoring. Salvador was a Pandoran native with a long list of crimes, cannibalism among them. A 720 billion bounty. If Rhys were a stronger man, this room would practically be an Eridium mine. But there was no fooling himself, he stood no chance in a fight. No, he'd just scan them, one by one. His ECHOeye history would serve to prove to Hyperion that he was in close proximity to them.

Next, Helmet Asshole. He'd seen them situate themself further from the others, on a couch against the wall, or…Wait, where'd they go? He looked around the room.

Gone.

Had they moved on alone? Fine by him, that was one less bandit.

Rhys sat up enough to see the teenager. It was hard to feel good about the prospect of selling out a kid, but sacrifices had to be made.

Gaige. A high school senior right out of Eden-5, tech-wiz, and total nerd, built a killer robot that murdered another student.

Too bad, she could have made something of herself in Hyperion. Her bounty was 820 billion, leaving Rhys to wonder how they came up with these numbers. If he could take any of these bandits in a fight, it was the teenager. Her crappy, bargain bin cybernetic arm looked homemade.

Then there was the big guy, still murmuring to himself. He tossed and turned as he slept, the other sleepers had given him a wide berth.

Krieg. "Property of Hyperion". That gave Rhys pause. He'd heard the rumors, bandits and incompetent employees alike dragged off to laboratories on Pandora for unethical experiments. The guy looked like the product of that sort of thing. It was hard not to pity him, but listening to the murmurings of "No…flayed her shining jugular…wear your face as a hat…ribcage tied into knots…" Okay, right, whatever he was, probably best off with Hyperion now. A hundred billion.

Maya. She seemed human, almost normal, despite threatening him. She'd stood up for him and helped him out. Even so–

"What are you doing?" Helmet Asshole materialized out of previously empty space, looming over him. In a swift motion, they crouched, their eponymous helmet a foot away from his face.

Rhys shut off the ECHOeye. "Nothing, I–"

They grabbed his chin, forcibly turning his head to face them as they leaned closer. "An ECHOeye. No surprise. / You were scanning them."

He glanced sideways. Everyone was still sleeping, Helmet Asshole had been keeping their voice down. "And what the hell were you doing?" he hissed.

"Doesn't concern you. / You're the Hyperion stooge. / Will you sell us out?"

Rhys hesitated. "Look, I-I'm just trying to get my bearings here. They pointed guns at me. I needed to find out who I'm dealing with."

They considered for a moment, releasing his face. It ached where they'd held him. "Understandable. / Was there anything of note? / I would like to know."

He looked at them, doubting he'd heard right. "I mean, they're all dangerous wanted murderers? I-I don't know what you're looking for. No entries saying 'they'll kill you in your sleep' but…"

"Nothing useful?"

"Depends on your definition of useful."

They sighed and projected something blindingly bright in his face, Rhys turned away from the glare.

"It's of no matter," they said, standing. "I will warn you. Sell me out, / And I'll have your head."

"Right. I will definitely not do that." Red light was still dancing in his vision.

They stood and returned to their couch, lying down with their legs hanging over the end. There'd be no way of knowing when they fell asleep. No more scanning, then. He lay back, closing his eyes.

"Wake up, my loyal minions! You have a bullymong to kill and a fearless leader to avenge!" It was still dim when the Claptrap began zipping around again, running into anyone too slow to get out of the way, occasionally letting out an "oof" or "ow." The others woke with groggy protests and threats. "Knuckle-Dragger won't know what hit him! It'll be bullets and lots of them! Presumably! I guess it could also be swords, or fists, or a hatchet, or a really big stick, or…"

Rhys was sore, hungry, and tired. Never had he wanted to murder anything so bad as he wanted to murder that stupid loud robot. He half-expected one of the bandits to do him a favor in that regard, impulsive as bandits were known to be, but none of them stepped up to the task.

They were soon all out the door, and onto the bright, icy tundra. Helmet Asshole quickly got ahead of them, as did the blinded Claptrap. Sometimes, someone would warn it before it fell off a ledge or ran into something, but more often, they just let it happen.

Before long Krieg was rushing after the robot, kicking up snow and laughing with his buzzaxe raised high, never bringing it down to smash the thing's head in.

"Wait! I found your larynx putrefying on the rocks! Why aren't you suffocating?!"

His movements were as erratic. Every once in a while he'd stop suddenly, twitching or smacking himself, sometimes delivering an intense one-eyed stare to one of the others. Rhys was on the receiving end of most of those.

"Hey, uh, aren't guys like him kind of murder-happy and extremely unpredictable?" Rhys asked Maya, keeping his voice low after the third murderous-looking glare in the past half hour.

"Like your boss?"

"I…I guess. Former boss, for the record." Rhys ignored the urge to defend Jack's decisions regarding murder. "But I mean, is it safe having him around?"

"I think everyone's wondering the same thing about you."

"I'm not waving around a buzzaxe and yelling about larynxes."

"Fair, but Krieg seems to be pretty in control of everything but his mouth. More or less."

"He keeps looking at me like he wants to rip out my spine."

Maya shrugged. "From what I can gauge, Hyperion did that to him. Can you blame him? He helped me out earlier, and he was the first one to decide not to kill you. Perhaps you should be more open-minded?"

"No, I think maybe you're being too open-minded," Axton cut in from behind, stepping in beside Rhys. "That guy's been filled chock full of eridium. People like that? Ticking time bombs. He's second place on the list of guys who'll probably kill us in our sleep. You're third, by the way, Reeze." He grinned as he said it.

"It's Rhys, and uh…" He gave a choked chuckle, trying to figure out if the guy was joking or not. "I'm not planning to? Uh, who's first? On that list."

"That would be Zer0." He gestured to Helmet Asshole, walking alone, far out of earshot. They seemed to glide across the snow while the rest trudged through it. "If I were Jack, I would have hired them to finish us off. Creepy bastard."

Rhys watched them. They were near the Claptrap. The robot was chattering at them, giving the others a blessed break from its voice.
"I mean, to be fair, they had ample opportunity to kill me after the train crashed." He said it half to reassure himself.

Axton laughed. "Huh, wonder why not, Hyperion."

"Hey, if Jack meant for me to play double agent, he wouldn't have tried to blow me up."

"Yeah, I don't get that. Why not kill you normally?" It was the first time Gaige had bothered acknowledging Rhys since their first encounter–until now she'd just been giving him quick, suspicious looks. "You don't look hard to kill."

"Make it look like an accident, I guess? He didn't want to martyr me. My whole division might have rebelled." It was a good question, now that he considered it. Maybe Vasquez's traditional airlock method would get him in trouble unless he tore out all of Rhys's cybernetics. Vasquez wasn't patient enough for those surgical procedures. "I was speaking out against what Jack's been doing here, on Pandora. And subtly influencing things, y'know? Di-diverting shipments, sabotaging production, stuff like that." That sounded pretty good.

"Wow, that's almost respectable. I mean, not as much as you know, not working for Hyperion in the first place, but good on you, I guess?" Gaige said.

"Hey, I had to make a living somehow, and I'm not exactly Dahl-soldier material."

"You shoulda killed someone," Salvador caught him by surprise from below his field of vision. The man was a little over five feet tall and nearly as wide–all of it muscle. Something about him was more intimidating than even Krieg. "I woulda killed someone. Preferably Jack."

"I uh, yeah, I guess I should have… To be fair, I didn't get a chan–"

He was interrupted by the Claptrap's shrill cry. Up ahead, the bot was in its panic mode, its limbs retracted as it shuddered in simulated terror. A bullymong, near the same size as Salvador, was charging toward it. At least a dozen more were climbing out of burrows in the nearby ice wall.

The bandits had drawn their weapons before Rhys processed what was happening. Backing away, he glimpsed Zer0, appearing in the first bullymong's path. Salvador wielded a pair of guns, laughing and firing both with little regard for Krieg, who ran straight through the line of fire without slowing.

"Ah! The meat delivery is here!" Krieg shouted, swinging his buzzaxe into the nearest foe.

Rhys didn't see where Gaige or Axton had gone to, nor did he know how everyone got so far from him so fast, but he found himself alone in the open.

One of the bullymongs, repelled by Salvador's gunfire, chose him as an easier target. Remembering the stun rod, he yanked it from his belt, barely managing to activate it before the creature reached jabbed at it, unleashing a jolt of electricity into its shoulder. It let out a pained roar, but didn't let up. It began to circle him from a distance, testing for an opening. Turning, he kept the stun rod between him and the bullymong. It stepped forward, he jabbed in its direction, it backed away, then tried again. Rhys was feeling good about this, he'd just keep it up until–

Something crashed into him from behind, knocking him face-first into the snow. A second bullymong. It stood on his back, one oversized hand clamped around his arm, another pushed his head down. He turned the stun rod in his hand and jabbed backward. Empty air. The creature roared. Rhys felt its breath on his scalp, saliva dribbling into his hair.

Oh shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shitshitshitshitshit–

All at once, the weight lifted from him. He rolled over in time to see the bullymong floating above him, surrounded by a strange energy. Then Krieg drove his buzzaxe into it, spattering both himself and Rhys in hot gore. The bullymong's limp body was thrown off to the side.

Sitting up and looking around, he saw the other bullymong lying already dead in front of him, Maya standing over it. Her tattoos seemed to glow.

Elsewhere the gunfire had ceased, the fighting had finished.

He shakily got to his feet, heart still pounding.

"You gonna be alright?" Maya asked. The glow had already faded.

He gave a weak nod, forcing a smile. "Yeah, yeah, I'm great. I'm just… I'm great." He thought he might throw up, but he'd try to hold off on that for now. Nothing felt broken, at least. He wiped his face on his sleeve and brushed loose snow from his clothes. Some of it had melted into the fabric when he'd fallen, and some of that had already frozen again. Hopefully, they'd find somewhere warm soon.

"Ah! Sweet treats from the flesh pinata!" Krieg was absolutely riddled with bullet holes, but he gave Rhys the happiest look a single visible eye could muster.

"Is he gonna be okay?"

Maya looked Krieg up and down, a hand on her hip. "He doesn't seem to be dying anytime soon. How you feeling, big guy?"

"Ten thousand decapitations!"

"Sounds good to me."

"Looks like we walked right into a nest," he heard Axton say. "I'm like, ninety percent sure these are human bones…Oh yeah, that's definitely someone's skull."

There were little scattered piles of bullymong refuse, mostly bones, sometimes a bit of fur. Something shiny and yellow gleamed in a nearby pile. A halfway-decent Hyperion pistol. Exactly what Rhys needed–next time he could defend himself.

He approached, only to have Zer0 once again materialize in front of him. They bent over, picked up the gun, and turned it in their hands with a "Hmm…" Their helm projected an ellipses.

"Hey uh, can I have that? I'm feeling a little vulnerable here, with just this." He raised the deactivated stun rod.

"You know how to shoot?" they asked.

"It's Hyperion, it's made so anyone can pick it up and shoot." That was one of their advertising lines, at least. It didn't seem that hard to figure out. "It's as good a time as any to learn, right?"

They looked at him and back at the gun. "Next time, you should move faster." The pistol evaporated into particles as they deconstructed it into their storage deck. A slashed zero projected from their helmet. "If you live that long."

They turned away, leaving Rhys scrambling for an insult he couldn't find. "Oh, come on!" he shouted after them. "You didn't even want that!"

Somehow, Rhys survived the rest of the day's trek. The group encountered two smaller packs of bullymongs before it ended. Absurdly, the value of Rhys's life seemed to be a rung lower than the Claptrap's, but if he stayed close to the bot he was equally tactic struck him as pathetic when everyone else was more than capable of defending themselves. Worse, it gave the Claptrap the opportunity to bother him, and that stupid little bot had exceptional hearing.

"Wimping out, eh? Don't feel too bad, chum, we all gotta start somewhere! Except me, I was built with the courage of ten men! But as for you, I'm sure you'll find your courage if you don't die horribly. Which probably won't happen–or wait, what temperature do humans freeze to death at? Ah, well, nothing you can do if that happens. I guess you also have to worry about all the bullets, and the…"

Rhys fought the temptation to try his ECHOeye on the thing, see if he could mute it. Who knew what malware a defunct idiot robot had on it? At least the blindness allowed him to sneak away as soon as the danger subsided. It made him wonder why they were even bothering to hunt down the thing's eye. Was a blind Claptrap so bad? Besides the being-a-Claptrap part?

When they stopped for the night to make camp, Zer0 rejoined the group.

"I've spotted its tracks. / It has passed through recently. / We'll need to keep watch."

"You wanna give us any specific details, or do ya gotta stick to seventeen syllables?" Axton asked. "Like, you know, where's it headed, how long ago, that kind of thing?"

They gave him a look that seemed meant as a glare before sitting near the fire. "Is there food?" they more demanded than asked.

"Salvador's working on it," Gaige said.

Dinner was to be the meaty arms of a bullymong that Krieg had buzzsawed off. It didn't look edible, but both Krieg and Salvador insisted it was good. Or, in the former's case, that it "Hole punches your bloodied tongue!" said with the kind of enthusiasm that made it sound latter was cooking one of the limbs over the fire. It smelled like pork with a trace of burnt plastic. Rhys hadn't eaten for the better part of two days. He was hungry enough to risk…toxins, or whatever.

When it was cooked, though, he found himself almost equally concerned with watching Zer0 as he was with chewing the tough, strange meat. He wasn't alone in this, he realized. Everyone but Krieg and the Claptrap were snatching glances, apparently wondering if they'd see what was underneath the helmet. But Zer0 only walked away with their portion, vanishing behind a jagged chunk of ice.

"Anyone up to following them?" Axton asked.

"I suspect they're the type to kill you if you see their face," Maya gave a shrug, her attention returning to her meal.

"The curiosity is gonna kill me on its own. I mean, what if they're a robot or something, and we're wasting food?"

"They were bleeding, before," Rhys put in. "After the train blew up."

"Puncture the skinsuit! Make it pop!" Krieg was shoving bits of meat up through the bottom of his mask, also denying the others a view of his face. He was at least clearly human, mutated as he may be.

"Eh. Probably just super ugly," Salvador said through a mouth full of bullymong.

Rhys was spared from keeping watch that night. Maybe there was something to being a weak Hyperion stooge, it meant a few hours' extra rest.

It was still dark when he woke shivering. Somewhere, something howled raucously. He sat up, looking around. Thankfully, the Claptrap was in sleep-mode, and the others were asleep. Except for Zer0. They stopped pacing the camp to look at him. He gave them a slight wave. They went back to pacing without so much as a second glance. They reminded Rhys of a big cat at a zoo, waiting to be fed.

His ECHOeye told him it was 12:22 AM. Zer0 should have ended their watch and woken Maya hours ago. He hadn't seen them sleep at all.

"Are those more bullymong?" he asked when Zer0 was near again. "They sound really close."

They stopped, gave a nod. He noticed they were shivering. They were so lanky, even compared to him. How well insulated from the cold could they possibly be? He'd feel bad for them if they hadn't been such an asshole.

"Should we be worried?"

"I never worry. / If they venture near enough, / My blade will find them."

"Right..." Geez, edgelord much?

They cocked their head, thoughtfully. "Though, perhaps you should. / If you fall a second time. / You may not be saved."

"You could have let me have the gun."

"I could have."

He lay back down. "Your watch is up, you know?" Rhys had years of experience dealing with assholes, he'd learned to be professional about this sort of thing.

"Yes."

"You should probably sleep, right?"

"I need little sleep. / The others will miss something. / I will stay awake."

That seemed slightly insulting to the other's abilities, but at least Zer0 wasn't only a condescending dick to Rhys. He considered pointing out their place on Axton's "Most likely to kill us in our sleep" list, but thought better of it. Might give them ideas.