Burch Borderlands: Debt or Alive

The Official Prequel Novel
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80336-363-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

THE CONTINUING STORY OF TALES FROM THE BORDERLANDS® BY GEARBOX AND 2K GAMES Discover what awaited the thieving sister duo, Fiona and Sasha, after they opened the Vault of the Traveler in this new Borderlands® adventure. Dive into a new adventure with Fiona and Sasha, in this sequel to the critically acclaimed game Tales from the Borderlands®. Fiona and Sasha have struck gold. Better than gold: a limited-edition Typhon DeLeon Vaultander? doll. This molded lump of plastic is worth more than some planets. All they've got to do is find a nerd with deep pockets and they'll be set for life. And they know just the nerd. Enter Eden-5, home to an equally bloodthirsty mix of billionaires and bandits. To survive long enough to offload the loot, Fiona and Sasha will have to use every trick in the book (plus other tricks not found in books). We're talking hijinks, lowjinks, every jinks. But just as the deal's about to go down, a certain Mechromancer crashes the party, looking to murder the collector. This is not the cushy retirement Fiona was promised.

Anthony is an actor and writer who is known for Tales from the Borderlands: A Telltale Games Series and Borderlands 2. He has also written the shows Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? and Anime Crimes Division and comic books (Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack and Rocko's Modern Afterlife) for BOOM! Studios. He is part of the hit podcast Dungeons and Daddies and tweets @anthony_burch

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burch, Anthony

Leseproben

2
FIONA

I was standing in a Vault.

Hot damn.

Not even an hour ago, I was mourning my sister. Now, I stood within an alien cache of riches and power—typically, the kind of thing opened only by entire armies or superhuman killing machines we call “Vault Hunters” because that nickname rolls off the tongue better than “Gun-Hungry Mass Murderers Who Sometimes, Even If Only By Accident, Do Heroic Things.”

But there was no army here. No Vault Hunters.4 Just me and Rhys.

Me, the Pandoran con artist with a sharp hat and an even sharper sister.

Him, the corporate stooge who wanted to climb the corporate ladder and ended up blowing the ladder to smithereens.

And now we were standing in a Vault.

Hot damn.

Our voices echoed through the cavernous chamber of the Eridians, veins of purple energy running through cold alien rocks. We stood before a stone chest that glowed violet and hummed with otherworldly energy.

The end of our journey.

Our reward.

Sasha and the others were outside, filling their pockets with cash and weaponry. Hunting big-ass Vault monsters can be good business if you’ve got a good team. As teams go, we were better than most. But we hadn’t gotten here without losing people. People more valuable than—

“Would you like to do the honors?” Rhys asked, cutting off my thoughts. Rhys and I hadn’t always gotten along. Partially because he’d screwed me over on more than one occasion, but mostly because he was a big dumb idiot.

If there was one thing this planet-crossing, gun-shooting, sister-almost-dying adventure had taught me, though, it was this: Judge slowly.

“It’s the last one,” I said, thinking of the half-dozen Vault clues we’d followed and several dozen corpses we’d created to get to this very moment. “It’s only right we both open it. It’s the best part.”

Rhys nodded, an exhausted smile threatening to appear on his lips. “Was kinda hoping you’d say that.”

The alien treasure chest sat before us. Mysterious. Inscrutable.

Most stories of Vault treasure-hunting don’t end particularly well. Best-case scenario, you get a handful of guns. Worst case, nobody ever sees you again.5 But we hadn’t come this far just to leave our quarry unopened.

Rhys and I put our hands on the warm lid of the chest. We pushed.

The chest slid open with an ethereal hiss, unfolding and retracting along the veins of Eridian magic etched into its surface. A bright purple light shot from the innards of the box, completely overwhelming my senses. I could hear the light. I could taste it.

Everything went white.

Ah, I thought. So it’s a bomb. An alien bomb just exploded and killed us all. If this is the afterlife, I’ll be sure to apologize to Sasha at my earliest convenience.

Then I heard a sound that convinced me I couldn’t possibly be in heaven: Rhys’s voice.

“Uh, the Atlas Corporation, I guess?” he said, pulling out a legalese-riddled piece of paper. “I got the rights, but they’re not, uh, signed. Or legal in any way. And I’m still poor.”

My vision cleared. I stood within an infinitely large, infinitely purple void. A pinprick in the distance gesticulated much like Rhys would. As the pinprick spoke, I could hear its voice as if Rhys were right next to me.

“I mean, I just want to build something of my own, you know? Blaze my own trail. Stop following false idols. Maybe restarting Atlas could help me do that? Unless… Oh god, unless that’s a trick question. Like, if seeking power is bad and you’re gonna, like, turn me into a big monster, like an ironic twist thing. In that case, I wish for, uhhhhhh—”

Rhys cut himself off, as if interrupted.

“Oh! No ironic twist? That’s great. Super. Glad to hear it. So, uh, yeah, I guess the ownership of the Atlas Corporation and all its trademarks and—”

Pop. A chest appeared at Rhys’s feet.

“Oh! So, these are the documents? That’s gr—”

He disappeared.

For a horrible moment, I thought that was it. Rhys was off, free to rebuild gun corporations and hit on my sister while I languished in this royal-colored void for the rest of eternity. Stuck in one spot. Alone. For ever.

Then something worse happened.

“Hellooooooooooo, traveler,” said a voice that sounded like someone had inhaled a lungful of helium and then gargled rusty nails.

I turned and, to my endless disappointment, saw a CL4P-TP robot wheeling toward me. A steward-class automaton whose designers confused “friendly” with “deeply annoying” when programming its personality.

“Be not afraid,” it said. “I am not a Claptrap. This is merely a form I have chosen to make you more comfortable.”

“If you want to make me comfortable, be literally anything else,” I said.

The Claptrap narrowed its eye. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Go for it.”

“Fine. Then I will speak to you with the First Voice. Prepare thyself.”

The Claptrap disappeared in a blink.

HOW ABOUT THIS? a voice asked from around me and inside me. HOW DOES THIS FEEL?

Every syllable punched me in the heart with a spiked iron gauntlet. My bones vibrated in fresh agony with every word. My nerve endings burned with infernal pain. My skin felt as if it would melt off my skeleton. Worse than that, I gained a true sense of my place in the universe. I was small. I was mortal. In a hundred years, no one would remember my name. My life—indeed, all lives—boiled down to a series of alternating joys and tragedies culminating in absolute oblivion. The only variable of note was whether my loved ones would die before me or I before them. Life was nothing more than the space between the parentheses of nonexistence. I was, and would forever remain, utterly meaningless.

“Yeah, this is better than the Claptrap,” I said.

COOL, the voice said. SO, WHAT DO YOU WANT?

“What do I…? It’s that simple?”

YES. ONE WISH.

“Oh, okay. I’d heard Vaults were a little more complicated than that.”

ALL VAULTS ARE DIFFERENT. EXCEPT THE ONES THAT ARE NOT.

“Great. And who am I talking to, exactly?”

THE VOICE OF THE SERAPHIM, SPEAKING TO YOU IN A LANGUAGE AND STYLE YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.

“And you’re, what? An Eridian? One of the aliens that built these Vaults?”

NO. I’M LIKE… YOU KNOW THE GUARDIANS? THOSE CONSTRUCT-ROBOT THINGS YOU FOUGHT ON THE WAY IN HERE?

“Yeah.”

I’M LIKE ONE OF THOSE, BUT BETTER. ALSO, WHAT ARE WE…? WHY DO YOU CARE? YOU’VE GOT A FREE WISH AND YOU’RE DRILLING FOR LORE? FOCUS UP. GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER.

What did I want? An hour ago, I’d wanted only one thing: for my sister to be alive again.

Then I’d gotten my wish. At that moment, everything else felt small, irrelevant. Minutes ago, my sister was dead. Now she was alive again. The relief I’d felt when she’d opened her eyes… That was, in its own way, the biggest reward I could ever receive.

I mean, sort of. I still wanted money.

I sighed. “Man, I wish Sasha were here. She’d know what to ask for.”

IT IS DONE.

A gust of wind nearly blew my hat from my head as my sister popped into the empty space next to me. Her skagtooth earrings rattled in her ears, and her hairband had come loose in the teleport. Less than an hour since she’d died, and now she was being blipped from one place to another without her consent. She yelped in shock, then shrugged and pulled her hair back into a bun. I was surprised she didn’t look more rattled, but that was Sasha all over—she’d learned to live with sudden, unpleasant change. Tragedies that would have reduced others to a gibbering, sobbing mess often elicited little more than a shrug from my little sister.

“Wuh,” Sasha said as she appeared into existence next to me. “Where are…? What’s…?”

YOUR WISH IS GRANTED. FAREWELL.

“Ah,” Sasha said, snapping her fingers. “Vault. Wish-granting thing. Got it.”

The purple void around Sasha and me began to fade away. Beyond it, I could see the Pandoran desert from whence we’d come.

“What? No! That wasn’t my wish! Come on!”

YOU SAID, “I WISH.”

“It’s a figure of speech!”

YOU ARE A FIGURE OF SPEECH.

“Shut up. You haven’t been waiting thousands of years just to grant a stupid technicality wish, have you?”

NO. I AM MESSING WITH YOU.

The void resolidified around us.

“Ugh. Dick.”

Sasha put her hand on my shoulder. Her knees wobbled. “Fiona… the voice… it hurts.”

OH, RIGHT, SORRY.

A Claptrap poofed into view in front of us.

“Hellooooooooooo, traveler! This is my alternate means of communication! I am just as capable—”

“Never mind,” Sasha said, waving her hand. “Go back.”

FINE. NOW, IF YOU COULD QUICKLY DECIDE ON A WISH, I WOULD APPRECIATE IT.

Sasha pulled me into an embrace. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just need to choose a perfect wish.”

Sasha blinked. “Infinite guns? Is that allowed? Can we…” She turned away from me to address the void. “Can we wish for infinite stuff?”

PROBABLY NOT.

Sasha snapped her fingers in frustration. “Ah. Well. Maybe just, like, a million guns, then? That’d give us a heck of a leg-up on the new Vault Hunter career, right?”

I shook my head. “No. Let’s ask for money.”

Sasha frowned. “What’s going on? I thought you were beginning to like Vault hunting.”

She was right, of course. Our quest to find the Vault of...