Angel hung suspended in her prison of light, watching the images flash all around her with a sense of satisfaction. She'd done exactly as Jack had asked – traced the virus, found its source. And, predictably, he had retaliated. Now, the results of that were displayed all around her as numbers and data and images, flitting past her almost too fast to be understood. She was used to this, however, from years and years of practice. She could process the information and know what it was and what it meant.

And what it meant made her very happy indeed.

The committee on data standards and security was meeting in less than twenty-four hours and Hyperion would not have a strong enough case to oppose the measures Tediore wanted to introduce. The new protocols would be passed unanimously and some people would be much richer for it due to the bribes the opposing weapons manufacturer had paid out. Hyperion had underbid for those votes, due to some conveniently bad intelligence. Jack had been furious, of course. He had yelled at her, then fallen into that quiet way he got when he remembered her mother and what had happened. When he looked at her as if she were no longer human. Perhaps she wasn't. Angel had found that question tiresome and no longer cared. All that mattered was the end-game, and it seemed to be progressing nicely.

He pinned his blame on the Pandorans, of course, but his ire at them was nothing new. Little change there. But he had also pinned the blame for the virus where it belonged – as Angel had traced the source just like an obedient daughter should – and put it at Tediore's doorsteps. Now, before her, flitted the first casualty reports of Hyperion's strike against Tediore. Just a few 'accidental' incidents, of course. Nothing that couldn't be explained with misinformation and excuses. The message was clear enough though. Hyperion did not want Tediore interfering with Pandora – or anything else – again. A few destroyed factories with the employees massacred was a polite way of getting the message across. Of course, Tediore wouldn't stand for that. The proper looking official that had contacted Hyperion a few hours earlier had made that quite clear. So very proper. Very... neat. Refined. And utterly cold, his words carefully picked – such civil words carrying a message of destruction and bloodshed. Safeguards, he had said. Tediore would take measures to protect their property and if there was collateral damage, well, that was the price of business. And oh, business would be bloody indeed. Tediore had already increased the number of shipments towards Pandora and she would be sure to report that fact to Jack and let him take the insult as it was intended. Things would only escalate from there.

And while the war ramped up between Tediore and Hyperion and both forces suffered the 'collateral damage' of 'security measures', it would give Pandora the reprieve she needed. Perhaps it would be enough. Angel could only hope that it was.

This was her end-game to play.

The dust swirled around the banners and for a long time, Tasha just stood there and watched them. Her insignia flying over the walls, half-built, out of the remains of the old base. Her home now. Her people. Somehow, it felt right. She'd been running for so long, she realized, and now – now all that was gone. She had something terrible inside her, a curse her mother had passed along and that her surrogate father and all those brothers of hers had fostered. Blood and violence and fire. This was her birthright. She inhaled, tasted a metallic tang from the oil that puddled nearby from the half-dismantled constructor. She'd built gravestones out of its hull, used a blowtorch to etch the name of her mother on it.

It wouldn't be easy, she knew. She was so small and there was still so much fear inside her. There was that madness, locked away in the back of her head, but she thought, perhaps, that she could learn to control it. Release it only when it needed to take hold. She thought this was what Mordecai did with his own sort of madness, that cavalier hate and anger, that spark that would never bend and never break. Keep it there, locked away, until a moment when it had to be turned loose upon the world. Her thin fingers caressed the hilt of her knives. Yes. This is what she would do, and maybe, she would be able to retain something of herself despite it all.

She turned and whistled. Bunny came scrambling up from where he lay a short distance away, loping over and crouching low so she could swing herself up onto his back. She settled herself, holding fast to his collar, and then turned to face the assembled bandit gang. There was paint on their faces – soot and grease – and those with masks had tied black armbands around their upper arms. Before them in the space between Tasha and the rest of the gang, was a body. A Hyperion body, to be precise. She had cut open his chest and torn out his heart with her own hands. The blood stained her bandages all the way up to her elbows. It was a more fitting tribute to leave on her mother's grave than flowers.

"Carrion Birds!" she cried, "Hyperion slaughtered our brothers. They see these losses as the simple cost of operating on Pandora – the collateral damage of a hostile world. Well, it's time to push these acceptable losses to a level they aren't prepared for. Remember – this is not a pitched battle. We hit them, we keep their attention focused on the firefight, and I sabotage their grid and we get out before the entire complex goes sky-high."

She paused.

"Then, we kill anyone that tries to escape the inferno. Those fuckers will burn. Move out!"

And as a whole, the gang scattered for their vehicles. She may be a bandit leader now, but she intended to make Mordecai proud. He'd tried to shield her, she knew, but the time for that was past. She'd write her name in Pandora's bloody history, one way or another.

Maya woke sometime in the night, late, when everything in Sanctuary seemed to be shut down and even the people straggling home from Moxxi's bar were quiet. She wasn't certain what woke her, but her fingers clutched instinctively for a weapon, then fell still as she realized the room she bunked in was silent and seemingly empty. She exhaled, slowly, and tried to think what had brought her to awareness. A dream, perhaps? No. Something else. Something half-remembered, in that moment between waking and sleep. A touch. Fingers, thin and light, along the side of her face. And then a pressure, against her cheek, near the line of her jaw. Lips. A soft kiss, so light and gentle and cold, and then it was gone and she was awake, laying here in this silent and empty room.

It could have been a dream. A wistful dream, something she wanted so badly in that darkness of her mind she could not acknowledge that it imprinted a phantom memory upon her. A wild imagining, a false reality.

Maya squeezed her eyes shut tight and burrowed into her pillow. No. It had to be real. That was what she would choose to believe, if only because that darkness inside her gave her no other choice, clawing at her, demanding that something give. This would have to be enough. But...

"Someday," she whispered into the emptiness, hoping, somehow, that there was someone listening.

Author's Note: That last bit exists only because of reader feedback. I am not one for romance and the entire MayaXZero stuff is only because people were asking for it. Well done, everyone. You changed my mind. It's not hard to do, I'm very suggestible.

Now, some last-minute things. If you enjoyed this story, I ask that you look me up on deviantArt and fictionpress. My username is fainting-goat on both websites. The reason I say this is because I won't be writing fanfiction for a little while - I've got some personal projects with my own worlds I've been growing obsessed with. Check them out. I promise they'll be as good as this fanfic and one of them falls into the sci-fi category. Seriously, go check out my original stuff. I work on it a lot harder than my fanfiction.

And thanks for reading. Been a fun ride.