“Holy crap,” said Jack, sounding more awed and more intrigued than Rhys had yet heard him. “She’s a siren.”
In the Atlas biodome, Sasha accidentally opens up, and Rhys ends up with yet another secret to keep.
~2.5k, Rhys/Sasha with a bit of AI Jack. Canon divergent AU.
Rhys was having a very strange week.
Just as he began to acclimatize to one insane situation, a new, more ridiculous one presented itself. Roughly, he thought the pattern seemed to be this:
- Something ridiculous would happen. (For example, turning up for a promotion to discover his boss had been murdered.)
- Rhys would take measures to adjust to the new reality. (For example, embezzling ten million dollars in order to steal the murderer’s crucial vault key deal out from under him.)
- Something even more ridiculous would happen, rendering previous adjustment moot. (For example, the vault key being a fake all along, and the ten million dollars self-destructing.)
Eventually, it ought to stop surprising him. He thought he was getting better at it. When they wound up in an old Atlas base in the middle of nowhere, he took it in stride. Hacking their systems to shut off their turrets? No biggie. He even managed to put a flower in Sasha’s hair without stammering too badly or getting suplexed into the dirt.
So getting attacked by angry flying jellyfish wasn’t much of a shock (at least, apart from the literal sting of their tentacles). Nor was the way he somehow managed to topple over the railing of the platform, the fifteen-foot drop to the ground below, or even the genuine concern on Sasha’s face when she saw it happen.
No, the real surprise was the way he only fell a foot before he stopped, suspended in mid-air by a force he couldn’t feel or explain.
