Tom looked at the camera footage that he had 'borrowed' from the mainframe of the facility. Docter Eva had just murdered two security guards right there. Shame she didn't realize that someone else was watching her. He was in a side room that handled the servers of the mars archives, giving himself access had never been easier. He switched the camera feed when Eva shot the camera, the camera he switched to was looking at the area outside his door..
He watched as a scientist ran down the hallway, rushing past his door and attempting to gain access to the room with the turret, but he fumbled with his key card and got shot before he could pick it up, Tom cringed.
It's a necessary casualty he reminded himself, the ruthless calculus of war was a bit more ruthless then he wanted to believe.
"Confirmed kill, move onto primary objective." A centurion said before popping the heat sink on his Mattock.
"Sir yes sir!" He wanted to go out there and kill them all, but he restrained himself, the time would come after all.
"Sir, we have several hostiles engaging our operatives through that door to the right, ID has confirmed that Shepard is among them, orders?"
"Secure the auto turret as confirmed in the building's schematics, we'll stop Shepard from there."
"Sir yes sir!" The Cerberus troops took the key card and opened the door, predictably entering the control room where the automated gun was controlled from.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Shepard, they have a heavy auto turret ahead of us, that thing'll tear your shields down in an instant!" Liara yelled, before immediately rolling into cover.
"Sprint from cover to cover as fast as you can, we'll bypass that thing eventually!" Shepard shouted before sprinting right to the next area that provided enough cover to shield him from the turret, the thing had halved his shields in just the several seconds he was out of cover.
"Shepard, there's no cover at the end of the hallway, what are we supposed to do?!" Kaiden shouted.
"We'll deal with that when we get there I-" Shepard was cut off by a commotion in the control room, they couldn't take a peek because they'd have their heads taken off in an instant, but it sounded like several people were screaming in there, in particular were the screams of Cerberus troops.
"What's going on in there?" Shepard doubted that Liara or himself would have the answer to that, unless he found out for himself.
"Looks someone else also wants them dead." Kaiden observed.
"Let's take advantage of this, keep moving from cover to cover, let's see what's going on." Shepard ordered.
After moving from cover a bit everyone realized that the gun was offline, so they all just booked it until they were out of the sight line of the gun.
There were several gunshots heard as someone was executed, the smoke was still clearing up so no one could see what was happening, nor who was winning, but at this point the Cerberus troops were proably all dead, judging by the screams from earlier.
"Wait for the smoke to clear, we have no idea who's winning." Shepard pulled out his shotgun, ready to go guns blazing.
"Who do you think won?" Liara asked.
"I have no clue, we'll find out soon." Kaiden said.
"Cerberus is dead, you can come in, Commander Shepard." The voice sounded synthesized.
"Why the hell should I trust you? Sure you did take care of the guards, but that doesn't mean I'm already your friend."
"Because I'm already your friend, let me take off my helmet." The man took off his helmet. "Do you recognize my voice now? You better not have developed amnesia because I didn't fight along side you on the suicide mission just so that you could forget me."
Shepard was struck dumb. "Tom? Why the hell are you here?"
"I got bored, plus Liara here was doing interesting research, and since I was free to work I decide to be 'hired' as a security guard, but not really. The network here was easy enough to hack into, since around 2 months to ensure that no one would be suspicious of my presence, I can hack anything with enough time."
"That's it? You seem to be here for some other reasons as well."
"Well, I guess the odds were in my favor of meeting up with you, let's get going now though, there some Cerberus goons we need to kill."
"I don't know you, were you actually one of the security guards working here? How did you manage to get past our top of the line cyber security?"
"Liara, like I said earlier I can crack any security system, and you were too into your research to really notice me, and plus I was never patrolling your section anyway, let's just get to archives."
"He's right Liara, can you get us over there?"
Liara ran over to the console and and tapped on a couple buttons.
"No, it's on a separate network, we're completely locked out."
"Amateurs, I'm pretty sure Tali could get past this." Tom said before pushing her aside and entering several console commands, which forced the tram to come back to the docking point.
"How did you do that?"
"Hey, I snuck a virus on there beforehand, this stuff is easy for me."
"Should we be expecting anyone?" Shepard asked.
"I've seen the cams on the tram, no one is there, we can go on through."
"Alright, with that aside, are you coming with us Tom?"
"Hell yes! The last couple months were pretty dull, and trouble seems to follow you everywhere, I'm right behind you."
Shepard grinned, THIS was the Fisher he knew.
...
"Those stupids over there have decided to come with a tram to kill us, but this also allows to to board theirs and go all the way to the other entrance without anymore explosives."
"How many of these guys have you killed again, Tom?"
"The ones you saw me stab, we got incoming!"
Tom ducked as a rain of gunfire erupted over his head, after they ran out of ammo he popped out of cover and nailed one of them with his Widow sniper. Then Liara used a singularity, which was then followed by a reave from Kaiden which resulted in a biotic detonation.
"Good going, keep moving." Shepard and co. hopped from the broken tram to the fixed tram, which Tom activated.
"That was pretty neat, I wish I had biotics." Tom said.
"It's a blessing/curse for me, those migraines really are a killer sometimes."
"Are you an L2?"
"Yeah, it's worth the pain, said biotics have saved me several times in multiple gunfights."
"Cut the chatter! We got hostiles ahead."
Shepard quickly jumped out of the tram, shot two Cerberus troops in two perfect head shots, before hopping into cover
What a showoff. Tom thought, mentally smirking. Someone was putting points in the adrenaline ability.
"Ugh, I hate these guys!" Kaiden shouted as he tried to shoot a Guardian, the effort proving futile because of his shield.
"What are you talking about?" Shepard asked before throwing a grenade right behind the guy, blowing him up.
"You're lucky cause you have grenades."
Tom wasn't listening to their banter though as he had just pulled off the perfect head shot on a centurion.
He was about to celebrate, but a quarter of his shields got decimated by a guardian who had flanked him.
"On you're left!" Shepard shouted.
Tom mentally sighed when he saw the giant shield the guardian was behind, but the he ran up to the guy and shouted at him.
"I will shove this sniper down you're throat!" Before shoving the barrel of his widow down the 'mail slot' in the guardian's shield and blowing his head off.
"Gee, I didn't know you were such a crank shot, Fisher." Shepard teased.
"Hey, the closer they are, the less amount of effort I have to put in aiming my gun."
"Alright, I think they're all dead, let's grab the data on the prothean schematics and get the hell out of here." Shepard said before holstering his gun.
Shepard and co. entered the archives, which seemed pretty calm, a sharp contrast to the combat they had experienced in the past 20 minutes.
"Kaiden, Tom, sweep the room, Liara, on me."
Tom cut Dr. Eva's download and then quickly replaced it with junk data, shame she didn't know it.
"What are doing? Get moving." Kaiden said in a hurried tone.
"I'm right behind you, lead on."
"Shepard." Shepard turned around as soon as he heard that tone.
"What the hell are you doing here, you Illusive bastard?"
"I'm taking the schematics of the weapon that would assure humanity's ultimate domination over the reapers, and the rest of the galaxy." Like hell he was Shepard thought.
"No chance in hell, asshole, shooting civilians is not acceptable, when is killing HUMAN civilians acceptable?"
"It's their sacrifice that lets us win the war, I'm assuring our rise to the peak of galactic society."
"That's stupid, why are you doing it NOW?! The reapers are tearing us apart, and all you're concerned about his making sure humans are on the top of society, your ideals sicken me, Liara, start the upload."
"Don't get in my way Shepard, you've already seen what I could do, you're in no position to take me down, let alone make empty threats."
"Upload has started Shepard, we should be done in about sixty seconds."
Meanwhile
"Step away from the console." Kaiden said.
"No." Eva instantly turned around and threw him down, making him fumble for his gun. Tom instantly activated both of his Omni-blades and charged at her. He got in a total of one stab before he was incapacitated, and help by his neck in a bone crushing grip. He still had to work on his technique.
Shepard arrived on scene on that moment. "Put him down."
Eva ignored him. "Orders?" She asked to the Illusive man.
"Dispose of him."
But the order had come too late, as Shepard was already in the progress of smashing in Eve's stupid face. Tom only got minor lacerations on his neck from the vice grip that he was given earlier, nothing as serious as in the original games.
"Thanks for the assist, I thought I was done for." Tom said before kicking the deactivated android.
"What should we do with it?" Kaiden asked.
"Even though that thing was literally strangling me a second ago I think we should keep it, I might be able to get some stuff off of its data banks."
"As long as it doesn't come back to life it's fine by me, someone has to guard it though, Kaiden stay here and if this thing moves at all, shoot it, and then stick this grenade in its head, I don't want this to turn out like Sovereign did."
"Yes Commander." Kaiden said rigidly.
"Shepard, I'm having some issues here!" Liara said while frantically tapping on some buttons that controlled the prothean data banks.
Shepard rushed back to where Liara was. "What's going on?"
"Cerberus has initiated a data siphon, I can't stop it, I think Eva managed to give them an access point before Kaiden and Tom stopped her."
"Let me fix this, give me a couple of minutes." Tom said before quickly activating his Omni-tool and syncing it with the computer. "I think I'll be able to get this done with the help of a VI I had programmed over the past several months, although I'm not going to elaborate on the details any further, I got no time for explaining this."
"You're sure you'll be able to stop them?"
"I'm doing it now, but they have a huge amount of sources trying to siphon the data, they were only starting off when I stopped them, let's hope that the small amount of data they got wasn't important, but I can't get it back now."
"How long?"
"Hold that thought.." Tom said, he was in deep concentration. Pity he hadn't disabled Eve's download sooner, Cerberus had probably gotten the location of the prothean beacon on Liara's home planet now, but they didn't matter, he'd stop them later.
Several intense minutes later...
"I got it! That was a bit too close for my liking, but I think I just shut off that last source." Tom wiped a small amount of sweat from his brow. That was one of the hardest tasks of cyber prowess he had ever completed.
"What do you mean when you say 'I think' did you get them all?" Shepard asked.
"I'm chec- wait WHAT?!" Tom looked at his Omni-tool, the words 'system infiltrated' were shown, glowing red on his Omni-tool.
"Shit, this is not good, I can't let them take my own data."
"What the hell is going on now?!"
"They've found my Omni-tool, they're deleting my data! Shit, they're deleting all of my hacking programs, shit, shit, fuck me, the only thing I've got left is my VI and a small amount of console commands, which they're locking me out of faster then I can type this shit in."
"Dang it, my system can't handle this, it wasn't built to handle an intrusion like this, I can't stop them, fuck, I shouldn't have let my guard down!" Why the hell were they hacking his own Omni-tool anyway?
"Is there anything I can do?" Liara asked.
"No, you wouldn't be able to connect, they've terminated anything I have on it that can connect to any other electronic, an- yep, there goes my VI they're deleting it now, and I can only hopelessly watch my months of hard work going down the drain in mere seconds."
Tom checked the statistics of his Omni-tool, his CPU was at 50% and decreasing due to the VI not taking much up after being slowly deleted, memory was going down due to the hacker deleting any run-times he had going on, and he had no connection, which is a stat he hadn't seen go down, due to there being wifi pretty much anywhere.
But for just a second Tom swore he saw the CPU spike to over 110% before the Omni-tool forced itself into a shutdown.
"Dang it!, I think that hacker or whoever was destroying all my things on this Omni-tool just put it into a forced shutdown, I had a lot of valuable stuff on it which I won't be getting back now, but nothing that will hinder me in terms of identity or anything related to that, good thing I had fail safes in place. Liara, did you at least get the data from the prothean data banks?"
"I got it all, thanks for stopping them. I think we should leave now, there's nothing else besides a lot of dead people here." Liara said the last part of her sentence with sadness in her tone.
"At least the mission objective is complete, Normandy, we're clear for pickup!"
"Roger that Shepard."
...
"What are going to do now that you have no Omni-tool Tom? The only thing you can use without it is your cloak, where are you going to get your tech powers from again?" Shepard asked.
"I'll probably buy a new Omni-tool and start fresh, I still know how to get those things on an Omni-tool at the very least, I still angry at the fact that they destroyed EVERYTHING on my Omni-tool, that VI was very very hard to code, and I don't want to make another one after this.
"Well, I'll buy you another one Omni-tool, you DID sacrifice it to get the prothean data, so you deserve that, among other things."
"Thanks for that, I still wish I had all of my old data, but I'll stop rambling for now, we have a Galaxy to go save."