Though the expertly fine-tuned result of a lot of research and prototyping, there were still little things that set Rhys apart from the average human. His skin looked colder, muscles in his face less accustomed to human emotion. But never had he looked this pale, this still, not since Jack had first seen his unactivated body hanging in stasis in R&D.

He took in the grievous wounds littered over Rhys’ body, each worse than the last. Cuts and scratches around his port and left eye told Jack they’d tried to get into his brain, rip out those delicate Hyperion processors. A thin scalpel glimmered like a bloodied clue on the ground besides Rhys’ head. Even more tools sit scattered atop the table. Jack can only guess at their use and where they’d cut into his android’s body like the god-damn butchers they were, with none of the finesse and care Jack used whenever Rhys needed repairs or updates.

Bastards. Jack’s teeth ground together. They’d harvested his Rhys for parts then left him here to die.

I got a random urge to write robot gore, so some android!Rhys fic was born. Hope you guys like it 🙂

Jack didn’t think he’d get attached to the android this quickly.

Of course the development team that’d helped him bring Rhys to reality had warned him it might happen, especially if he meant to spend long stretches of time with the android at his side. Which Jack did, considering Rhys was instrumental in his plans for Pandora, but he figured he could keep his wits about him and not forget the android was just that—an android. Didn’t matter how realistic he looked or acted.

Still, he preferred Rhys at his side, if only to keep him company. His impassive demeanor and occasional snark, learned from downloaded updates and observations of other employees, always had Jack in stitches. And he wasn’t too bad to look at either, designed with Jack’s taste in pretty boys in mind.

Too bad going down to Pandora solo played an important part of the android’s mission. Until Hyperion wrested complete control away from the shambles of mercenaries and bandits and conflicting companies, Rhys couldn’t yet rest safe and secure within Helios.

So Jack was feeling a little bit lonely in his office with Rhys’ usual spot empty. And maybe just kind of uneasy.

Rhys had gone on the Pandora mission two days ago. Typical sweep of bandit activity in areas steadily coming under Hyperion control. His programming instructed him to report to Jack three times a day—morning, noon, and night.

Rhys had missed this morning’s check-in.

Jack tapped his fingers on the monitor in his desk, trying to distract himself with a colorful bubble-popping game as the deadline for Rhys’ afternoon update inched closer. He doesn’t need to waste his energy worrying about an android designed to succeed.

His fingers missed a yellow bubble and instead popped a blue one, causing the entire stack to fall and mess up his score. Growling, he slammed his fist against it and glared at his still-silent ECHO. The clock on the display clicked on, each passing second winding the worry Jack definitely didn’t have.

Skipping two check-ins was really unlike Rhys. Anything abnormal was unlike Rhys, considering both his loyalty and programming kept him on target with any of Jack’s orders.

Jack drummed his lips with his other hand, frustration puffing between his lips. He waited another minute, watching the throbbing GAME OVER screen on his desk, before grabbing his ECHO and swiped open Rhys’ communication channel.

“HP-6969, this is Big Daddy. Requesting mission briefing and status update.”

Jack waited for Rhys’ usual prompt response, but only silence greeted his ears. He counted to twenty, before trying again.

“HP-6969, respond. Status Update.”

Jack thought he heard something just as he finished speaking, like a huff of a static. He tried straining his hear to listen for any more, nerves now sitting on edge, but he couldn’t make out much more.  

“Rhys.” Jack hissed into his ECHO. “Pick up.”

Nothing.

His fingers clenched tightly around the device, before switching connections and getting in contact with the head of his militia.

---

Jack amassed a small squad in no time, rumbling planet-side with his men until the transport zeroed in on the spot they’d traced Rhys’ tracker to. Jack could see the encampment from the sky—small, not one of the more impressive ones he’s seen in all his years of killing bandits. Rhys should’ve been able to wipe a place like this off the map.

Jack’s stomach sunk into his hips as the transport’s thrusters powered on, slowing their descent until the entire hull shudders with the impact of the landing. He was on his feet as soon as the transport ceased vibrating, muscling towards the entrance of the transport and letting only a few armed guards out to clear the immediate perimeter before he stalked out into the open air.

Even the deserts of Pandora grew horribly frigid at night, not that Jack could feel much of the cold with his blood and rage pumping so furiously in his veins. The soles of his shoes stamped so hard against the ground it sent shocks of pain up to his knees. Rhys always bitched at him about fitness and keeping healthy as he aged, especially if he wanted to see his rule of Pandora come to fruition. Jack had quipped back more than once that if Rhys didn’t keep his lips closed, he’d deactivate him.

Jokes like that seemed a lot less funny now.

The red light of the tracker still blinked on his ECHO. Rhys hadn’t moved and the dot hadn’t disappeared. He already knew Rhys must be injured or otherwise compromised, but as he raced forward behind the line of guards, he hoped he could hang on for a little bit longer.

Just until Jack got there. The hero always arrived just in time, after all. Even when things looked hopeless.

The bandits that appeared at the partially barricaded entrance of the compound vanished a moment later—either ducking back down or collapsing after a bullet slammed into their skulls. Jack saw blood splatter in the air, color dark black and glistening in the light of Elpis. One of his soldiers fell into a crouch, shouldering a sleek rocket launcher and aiming right for the flimsy barricade. Flames quickly lit up the dark Pandoran sky as the entrance to the encampment exploded with the impact.

Jack races after his men as they stamp through the smoldering wreck of the barricade, throwing aside metal scraps and burnt hunks of wood to clear a path for the CEO as their contingent pressed forward.

Most of the encampment is indoors, a tangle of hallways half tunneled into the ground. His soldiers cut through the bandits easier, splattering them against the walls and dropping them to the floor as they fan out through the bowels of the outpost. Jack followed the men branching off to the left, towards the blip on his tracker.

This close to Rhys’ position Jack could finally access the program on his ECHO that tapped into his android’s vitals, though a split second later he wished he couldn’t, because the numbers that flashed back to him were dire. Rage had already nearly made Jack to his stomach, and now it threatens to boil over. He swallows an unpleasant taste in the back of his throat down, eyes roving over the display, struggling to focus and calculate how much time Rhys had left as shots and shouts ring out all around him.

He finally shoved the ECHO back into his pocket once his men have cleared out the hallway leading to Rhys’ location. The rusty metal door in front of them sat riddled with bullet holes and nearly hanging off its hinges, and it jarred off its frame with only a couple heavy kicks from one of his guards as soon as Jack gave the word. The first line of soldiers flooded into the room to secure it, but no weapons fired as Jack stepped forward through the broken door and shouldered through two of his men to scan the room himself.

The first thing he saw was the blood.

It dripped from a huge pool in the middle of what looked like the planet’s filthiest operating table onto the floor. Jack felt himself grow numb and hot at the same time when he followed the drops of faintly glowing, purple fluid down to the body lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. This far away, with such a lack of decent lighting apart from the dingy ceiling panels, he couldn’t make out a face but he knew. Nothing else had that color blood.

The bandits had stripped Rhys of the tactical vest and holsters he wore on missions and ripped at the black and yellow bodysuit underneath, leaving width swaths of skin exposed and yawning with open wounds. Little of the familiar white and blue of Rhys’ bare, tattooed body was visible thanks to the blood streaked over his flesh and soaked into his clothes. The bright purple looked unsettling, almost like paint splattered all over like this was some kind of prank. Like Rhys would just sit up with a playful smile on his face and laugh all tinny at the misdirect.

Jack desperately wished that was the case.

He dashed over to the android’s side, knees smearing through the pool of blood as he came to rest on the gritty, nasty floor. Rhys did not sit up, nor smile and laugh, nor move at all. He laid completely still, limbs tossed about his body as if he’d been shoved off the table and onto the floor in haste.

Jack could see Rhys’ face now as he leaned over him, and his mind couldn’t figure out whether that was a good or bad thing.

Though the expertly fine-tuned result of a lot of research and prototyping, there were still little things that set Rhys apart from the average human. His skin looked colder, muscles in his face less accustomed to human emotion. But never had he looked this pale, this still, not since Jack had first seen his unactivated body hanging in stasis in R&D.

He took in the grievous wounds littered over Rhys’ body, each worse than the last. Cuts and scratches around his port and left eye told Jack they’d tried to get into his brain, rip out those delicate Hyperion processors. A thin scalpel glimmered like a bloodied clue on the ground besides Rhys’ head. Even more tools sit scattered atop the table. Jack can only guess at their use and where they’d cut into his android’s body like the god-damn butchers they were, with none of the finesse and care Jack used whenever Rhys needed repairs or updates.

Bastards. Jack’s teeth ground together. They’d harvested his Rhys for parts then left him here to die.

Not all the injuries looked as deliberate—some screamed out sadism, rage against something Hyperion-made. Rhys’ belly was cut, silvery tubes slicked with purple spilling out over the gash splitting him from hip to hip. His knees were bound together with ratty, bloodstained rope, and one of his feet had been chopped off mid-shin, the end ragged as if the blade used had been chipped and dull. The artificial flesh curled away from every wound like slashed bits of paper, revealing tattered strands of silvery biomuscle tissue beneath.

Jack slipped his hand underneath Rhys’ skull, trying to lift his head up off the floor, only to hiss when his fingers found a wide tear in the synthetic scalp. He could feel the cracks in the metal plating of Rhys’ skull, gooey wires tangible and leaking blood all over his fingers.

Jack winced as it burned his skin. Eridium-treated fluid flowed through Rhys’ veins, fueling his life systems and bandit-killing powers, and wasn’t mean to make contact with human flesh. Still, he cupped the back of Rhys’ skull and lifted his head, needing him to react.

“Kiddo. Hey.” Jack took a moment to breath before he spoke up, trying to keep his voice steady. Rhys always responded well to firmer commands. “Really gonna need you to wake up here.”

Blood spilled out of Rhys’ frozen lips as Jack lifted his head and shook him, purple drooling onto his chest. A weak cough—like metal scraping rough against a speaker—followed. Jack’s heart thumped loud in his ears, louder than the heavy footsteps and shouts of his men as they cleared out the rest of the hallways, yet not enough to drown out the faint sound of Rhys struggling to speak.

“Sir…” Rhys managed, his throat twitching unnaturally with the effort. Jack wondered if they’d damaged his vocalizer. His neck looked bruised, the flesh twisted and marked like kneaded clay.

Had Rhys tried shouting out? Maybe started contacting Jack? He recalled the little, static huff he’d heard through the ECHO back on Helios. Had the bandits used their filthy hands to put a stop to any cry for help his android could muster?

Rhys coughed again, his eyebrows twitching up as he looked up at Jack. His expression stayed too impassive for someone who’d been mangled so badly, too focused on the comparably uninjured Jack. He cradled Rhys’ head closer, a human instinct to bring him comfort that the android probably wouldn’t understand.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack someday, sugar…aren’t you programmed to protect me? Make sure I stay healthy enough to conquer this hellhole? You’re kinda doing a shit job,” Jack tried to tease, though the joke sunk like a rock in his stomach at the response he got.  

“Oh…” Rhys’ eyelids shuddered, movement glitched. “I a-apologize.”  

“Don’t…it’s fine, kiddo. Don’t be sorry.” Jack swallowed tightly as he tried to shift Rhys onto his lap, wanting the assurance of the android’s weight against him. “Can you tell me what they did to you, pumpkin? Gimme a status update.”

“F-Fluid loss…thirty-percent…” Rhys struggled to relate even as more blood drooled from the corners of his lips. “Cerebral casing breeched…thoracic cavity compromised…stress levels…s-seventy-three percent…”

“Not great then, huh?” Jack turned his head over his shoulders, shouting to the men that’d stayed to guard the room as he hunched over his android. “Get me medical repairs! And quick!”

When Jack turned back around he scanned over hole opened up right beneath Rhys’ sternum, like someone had tried to punch right through the android’s body. The worst of Rhys’ wounds glistened with blood, ruined flesh pumping and twitching slightly as more fluid leaked down into his tattered clothes.

“They try to take your core, sugar?”

“Don’t ‘member…” Rhys’ voice slowed, crackling slightly at the edges. His vocalizer was failing.  

Jack hushed the android before he brushed aside the ripped synthetic skin around the chest wound, trying to get a proper look inside even as the blood stung against his skin. He tried to keep steady but a wince still whispered past his lips. Rhys, even with his sensors badly damaged, noticed, his mangled fingers lifting to push away Jack’s hand. He could see the little muscles in his hand beneath the torn flesh, struggling with waning strength.

“Sir….should not b-be touching me…my fluids will…”

“Don’t lecture me, pumpkin. I know what your fluids do.” Jack gripped Rhys’ wrist and pressed it back against his chest, above the wound. “I frikkin’ made you, remember? And I’m not about to let some damn braindead bandits take you away from me.”

He’d been with Rhys since the beginning, since he was just a fledgling idea. Jack had brought him though months of rewriting code and testing parts, through prototype after prototype. Endless blood, sweat and tears sunk into the project until Rhys emerged, fully formed and perfect. Jack still remembered the moment he’d activated the android. He’d seen the fingers of Rhys’ right hand twitch first and grabbed them in excitement, watching with bated breath as the movement quivered up his arm and through the rest of his body until finally, his eyes opened—not for the first time, no, considering how many tests they’d run on Rhys’ facial muscles—alight with curiosity as he really saw.

Jack had been the first thing the android had ever seen. And as he coughed and struggled to stay online in the man’s arms, he worried it might be the last.

“Rhys. Repairs are on there way, so don’t you leave me. That’s an order.”

The android’s body twitched, synthetic muscles escaping control of his floundering nerves. Loops of slick tubes slid further out of the hole in his stomach, and above the wound in his chest continued to trickle blood. Jack hoped the blow had just nicked some ancillary vessels and not the pump embedded deep beneath his sternum. His grip tightened on his android.

“I…I don’t understand…why…” Rhys breathed, his head lolling against Jack’s chest. The CEO cradled him now like a child, uncaring of the blood stinging his skin and soaking into his clothes. His lips pulled in an angry snarl at the plaintive confusion in the android’s flagging voice.  

“Why? Because they’re insane, pumpkin, because they see something perfect and mine and they wanna break it—!“ Jack started to spit, only for Rhys to shake his head.

“N-Not them…you…” Rhys’ throat worked as more blood bubbled in his mouth. “I’m not…sir…I’m only…m-machine…”

“What?” Jack’s voice grew high, disbelieving.

“So don’t…don’t be so distraught…” Rhys continued as his eyelids fell to half mast, perception slowly fading from his irises. “Just a machine…weapon…don’t…”

Just as Rhys’ eyes slipped closed the repair medic ran through the busted door behind them. Jack numbly relinquished his hold on the android, Rhys last words circling in his head as the medic slit away the remaining fabric of his bodysuit and pulled it apart to get at the emergency port on his thigh. Jack managed to hobble away, leaving space as the emergency gurney and several more repairmen pushed past the empty doorframe. They loaded Rhys up as soon as the tube of bright purple fluid connected into the thigh port, pumping fluid into the android’s limp body as they pushed him through the hallways and back out through the desert night towards the waiting transport.

Jack left a small portion of his guard behind with orders to raze the entire encampment to the ground, before following the repairmen up the gangplank.

---

Systems Online. Resuming Prime Directive. Reboot in 005 seconds.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1..

Rhys slowly blinked away the status notification, dim sight slowly coming back into focus. His tactile sensors came back online slowly. The first thing he felt was something soft underneath his body, followed by a pressure on his right hand. Not an unpleasant nor alarming feeling—in fact, it called back a memory embedded deep in his subsystems.

“Jack?” He turned his head to look down his arm and sure enough, those familiar broad hands, decorated with a single silver ring, held tight around Rhys’ own. Jack had laced their fingers together, the palm of his second hand resting atop their joined hold. As soon as Rhys spoke—voice still scratchy and low, recovering—Jack jolted, knee accidentally knocking into the bed the android lay upon.

“Rhys? Rhysie, you with me?” Jack scraped his chair closer, lifting their joined hands almost to his chest. Rhys blinked carefully, testing the responsivity of the biomuscles in his face.  

“I think…yes.” He managed a small nod, though his head felt heavy. Everything did. A full systems reboot wasn’t an instant fix, it would take a little bit of time before he returned to one-hundred percent effectiveness.

His eyes roved over Jack, noting oddities. He’d shed most of his layers, leaving only his pants and yellow sweater. The bags under his eyes hung heavier than usual, almost resembling bruising. Most concerning of all were the bandages up his arms. Rhys squeezed Jack’s hand, feeling similar wrappings around the CEO’s fingers.

“I…I told you not to touch me while I was bleeding…” Rhys frowned, remembering the hiss of his fluid against Jack’s skin. His master had harmed himself so senselessly, it was—

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Jack’s face was suddenly a lot closer than it’d been a moment ago, his grip on Rhys’ hand a lot tighter, clinging as if afraid he might fall apart. “You think I care about a couple burns, pumpkin? I’ve had much worse.”

“I—“ Rhys started, only for Jack to smother any argument with his lips. The android’s eyes remained open, his eyebrows pinched up in confusion. He understood Jack was kissing him—but why?

Rhys got no answer when Jack finally parted their lips. The hand not entwined with Rhys’ reached up to pet his hair back. Though confused, the android felt calm, safe as Jack touched him.

“You’re not just a machine, you hear?”

Rhys blinked.

“But I am—“

“Nuh uh! I don’t wanna hear it!” Jack shook his head, hand sliding down to cup Rhys’ face. “You’re more valuable to me than any other human on this station. In the whole galaxy. I don’t care about technicalities, and neither should you.”

“I see…” Rhys replied, though he didn’t completely understand. But if Jack wanted him to, then he’d certainly try.

“Good. ‘Cause I don’t want you thinking you’re disposable. Do you even know how long it took me to get you perfect?”

“There exist other clones, sir, I’ve seen them, even if something happened to me you wouldn’t—“

“Kiddo, you know I don’t mean just programming and hardware.” Jack lightly patted Rhys’ cheek, eyes oddly fond. Rhys wasn’t sure he’d ever seen this kind of expression on his creator before, but perhaps he hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe he should, from now on, because something feels changed between them. Perhaps Jack had updated his subsystems before the reboot.

Whatever it was, Rhys found himself enjoying it. The endearments Jack loved to use rung with a little more fondness than before, though perhaps Rhys had just been unable to perceive it properly.

He squeezed Jack’s hand, smiling at the little thrilled feeling that ran up inside of him when Jack squeezed back. The feeling of being wanted, valued.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

The memories were sketchy, but Rhys could recall the way Jack held him deep in that compound, refused to leave his side until he was repaired. Rhys lifted his other arm until his fingers brushed lightly against Jack’s face.

“Thank you for coming for me.”