Chapter Text
"Hey! Rhys! Buddy!"
Red, red, red. Their entire bodies lit up in that color, as though the blood effusing from his once-bare joint had dyed their skin, their uniforms, the whites of their eyes all one color. Distress was evident in the contorted musculature in Vaughn's face, lips moving, and where words should've been only the mechanical hum of machines rested. Rhys could only gape, his flesh-and-blood hand thrashing in every which way. All coherent perceptions were blotted out with the white of unfettered agony. Oh, god, the red. He could imagine the severed artery responsible for the mess, likely where the new Hyperion apparatus met his skin. A hand pressed just shy of his pectorals was meant to stabilize Rhys, who was not aware how far his back bowed away from the invariable sheets of the hospital bed or how loud his shivery howl had grown. His mouth felt caked and dripping, with slow tendril strands of his own blood and freeflowing saliva intermingling on the slope of his chin. It choked him sometimes, made him sputter between the raspy cries. They soon died in his throat, and he made a guttural drowned noise like his strength had been completely sapped from him and he did not have enough to cry anymore. The smell of blood was cloying. Choking.
But the fact remained that Rhys was tired of being a part of a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece left behind by Handsome Jack. Though he strained every ligament in his being, as if that stress would somehow shield him of some pain, he still mutely reassured himself that this would not be in vain! Well, he would later. At the moment, any comprehensible thought was lost in his fit. Soon, though, he would feel that now his fate was sealed: he would not die Hyperion's code monkey. Before his augmentation, he had kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of that boring life of a Hyperion desk jockey, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. Climbing to the top of the corporate food chain seemed to be a pipe dream. Every morning when he awoke he thought "today would be the day"; he listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing came of his methodicalness; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, he longed for tomorrow. Now, with this new augment, he did not know toward what shore it would bear him or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with fragmented floorboards or filled to the gunwhales with power. Those expectations would be invigorating later. When he was lucid. But right now, the thought only crossed his mind for an infinitesimal moment before slipping into the fire every other thought and reassurance had. His lashing grew sluggish, but his breath came out in disordered huffs.
A female, who was 42 and, the ECHOeye chirped idly, whose blood type was O, attempted to subdue his thrashing form adjacent to Vaughn. Or where Vaughn had been. Maybe they sent him out? He wasn't there. A lapse in his cognition of time. Rhys felt his teeth clack together sickeningly and sparks overwhelmed a passing fear of chipped teeth. He asked himself over and over why he was still conscious until processing words became nigh impossible. Inwardly, there was nothing but the beehives of his nerves and the understanding of the color red. He screamed abruptly. The Hyperion arm, once stationary at his side, had begun to respond to his random commands. It functioned. Which took the team of doctors who had began accumulating at his side by surprise. With every motion the metal appendage, pain flared from the junction where metal met skin. Hands descended upon it, and he felt every cell against the hardware. Their combined force only slowed its activity. It felt as if it would snap off his joint, like he were one of those ball-jointed dolls young children like.
If he was truly making the words he intended to with his quibbling mouth, he would have been saying, nay, shouting 'stop' like a mantra. The red was so thick and opaque now, his eyes shot open as wide as they'd go, trying to take in as much light as they possibly could. Finding nothing but that color. Blindly, he was crying. And that wasn't really a great idea with a festering wound in the space where his old eye once was. Every pull and push of flesh that made the flesh around his eye become taut sent explosions of head-splitting pressure, and his mouth struggled to grasp around consonants and syllables that slipped through his clenched teeth and open twisting mouth. His heart was an agitated caged beast against his sternum, kicking and palpitating and he was sure the doctor knew because over her steel-tempered face concern was cast. The pain burnt out everything else, gnawing at the lining of his stomach, knotting in his chest, coaxing sheets of salty sweat that stung his fresh wounds and beating hotly in his eye in time with his pulse. He grasped for empty spaces.
The red slough encased everything. He swore it stuck to his hair, leached into his clothes. His stomach was seizing, rippling, the back of his throat contracting in swallow after swallow, but nothing came of it other than a heightened ache. Like the new seams from his Hyperion tech were going to split his skull apart with the tension. His vision was swimming. Bogged by red. It had to stop, it had to stop, and he wanted to ball himself into a fetal position until it passed but he could not move either arm now. He began jerking, over and over, breath hitching in his throat with each seize of his chest. The doctor's face was now simply a black dot, mottled with that fucking color. He cried. Seized. And cried. He could not control the shapes his mouth made. His eye was glowing but it burnt a hole in his head. He could not stop himself from analyzing whatever his eye flitted to, even as he lost control of his limbs and his breathing became sporadic. An endless flow of information. Potted plant, a gift from Yvette, given at approximately 2:38pm, known as a succulent in botany, thickened and fleshy to retain water in hot conditions. Blank, white panelling on the hospital walls, up to code, painted in a color called 'baby powder'. In the room next to his, a woman named Ewa in critical care's favorite color was yellow. The surgeon was 38 and had no criminal record. The doctor's maiden name was Hensley and her family had a history of heart disease. Rhys' body clenched, abdomen surging forward. Information spilt from every facet, and he could not quell his mind.
The doctor said something that sounds like 'sedative', and exactly six new cords are attached to his bare chest. His ears rung. An erratic heartbeat and the whirring machines. The doctor was saying something to him, smiling like they always do but her brow overhung that feigned twist on her lips and he knew there was something wrong. He wanted to tell her to tear this necrotic eye from its socket and take back the tech, because he was sure it was killing him.
And then it stopped. Rather anticlimactic.
There was nothing. Not even the soft hiss of the respirator. He did not dream, only the frigid void of drug-induced sleep caressed him. But in the wake of what he would later call a fever dream (more to reassure himself than it actually being the truth), he would welcome it.
He had to get his bearings when he woke up.
The unsettling atmosphere was punctuated by the cold and scaly quality of Vaughn's silence. He hadn't noticed Rhys's eyes had dwindled open until his ECHOeye lit up palpably and began to rove away from its stagnant state. Vaughn's gaze arrested him,
with interjected finger. Curiosity and worry coalesced together on his face.
"Holy shit."
That's Vaughn's first words to him. A gravelly sound akin to laughing came from Rhys, who still had a tube in his mouth and who still had a obscenely swollen eye. He could have died! And all Vaughn could manage was that. His best buddy looked concerned at the sound of his laugh, and who could blame him? It resembled the sound a dying skag makes, and it ricocheted in his chest and cracked his voice. Like he had decades of phlegm stuck in his throat. And then, even worse, Rhys tried to speak.
"Bruh--!"
His voice was quivering, straining, grating against his throat. He attempted to clear his throat but he could not swallow his own saliva very well! Hence the tube! God, he would not regard this memory fondly. His throat closed around the syllables but he still barked them out, several steps beyond simply scratchy or gruff.
"Vuh--ah--"
Vaughn looked startled.
"Heyheyhey bro, you don't have to talk. In fact, it's advisable that you don't. Could get brain damage or something."
Vaughn shook his head, frowning momentarily. But it was passing. His eyes scoured the state-of-the-art robotic limb, smirking all the while.
"How's that new Hyperion tech? Looks sweet. Especially that eye; you look like a badass."
Rhys' arm became animated at the elbow, showing off his sweet new advancement. But then it tugged against the sinews of his shoulder. He winced at the splintering pain, and let his arm fall lax.
"You're like a... cyborg now, Rhys! It's gonna be hell going through metal detectors, though."