NPC to 'kidnap' attacked by enemies in a mission

In the mission Retrieve 'Food' for the ghouls from Hatchet in Underground Imperial, the objection is to kidnap 3 programmers. I entered the mission and there was a door right near the entrance. I opened the door to find about 5 or 6 clockwork enemies. First they started attacking me but after I defeated a few, some around the corner came to attack but started attacking the first Clockwork Programmer NPC I needed to 'kidnap'. 1 clockwork from the group that held him captive took off running and the NPC would not leave, of course, until I defeated the specific group.

So he was being attacked and almost died, which would have made me restart the mission, until that last clockwork came back and I defeated it (Strangely he didn't show his dialogue above his head and take off running until all the clockwork there were defeated). Thankfully I had an AOE heal, Twilight Grasp, on my character and kept him alive. His health bar was at less than 25% at 1 point.

And when I say attacked him I mean ATTACKED him. The daggum clockwork around the corner completely ignored me and starting shooting at him like crazy.

I took a screenshot afterward and you can see the NPC's health is a little low. Thankfully the other 2 NPCs to kidnap didn't get attacked in the mission.

Thinking about it, I remember some months back there was another praetorian mission that had the exact same situation. Although in that case the NPC to kidnap or rescue was killed by enemies and I had to restart the mission. They killed it when I was close enough to see them but not close enough to draw aggro, so I had no chance even if I could heal the NPC to even save it. I also recall something, some months back if I am remembering right, the devs fixed this exact bug in a praetorian mission and I think it might have been that same mission I am referring to in this post. Don't remember which mission it was though.