A/N: Just wanted to let y'all know this is directly linked with my other story, Parallel. I guess you could read it without reading Parallel, but I don't think it would make much sense without it? Up to you!
Anyway, I just needed a break from Shepard and Ashley shooting at stuff, and wanted to give a little insight into what she goes through while she's imprisoned by Cerberus. At some point, she mentions to Shepard that Cerberus rubbed his death in her face, kinda like how they planned to rub her being Cerberus' slave in his face, etc. This is...well, Cerberus' way of revealing Shepard's death. Maybe I'll do another some other time that goes more in depth about Cerberus' research, but for now, here's a quick one shot about their crap. Thanks for reading!
The door was unlocked.
Ashley stared at it, unblinking, as she tried to understand why in God's name it was left open for her. Once, just once, it had been left unlocked, foolishly forgotten by one of the doctors, and she'd managed to kill ten of Cerberus' men before they subdued her. If there was one thing she understood since waking up in this facility, it was that Cerberus didn't make the same mistake twice.
So why the hell was it open?
To say she was suspicious didn't exactly cover it. Ashley had spent all of her time lately wondering how she even got here in the first place, and she doubted the guards would just let her walk off the base. That was assuming they were even on a planet, but Ashley assumed they were. She didn't remember any gravity generators when she'd gotten free, and she didn't see any ventilation systems common for space stations. Wherever she was, it had its own gravity and its own oxygen. Maybe a colony world?
She pushed the thoughts from her mind. That didn't matter right now. If Cerberus had been dumb enough to give her another opportunity to escape, she needed to worry about getting out of the facility before worrying about where she was.
Cautiously, Ashley slid her legs over the side of her bed, slotted into the wall as it was, and dropped to the floor. The tiles were like ice, and for the first time in a long time, she actually wished she had shoes. Usually she didn't care; what was she supposed to do in an empty cell anyway? Push-ups? Completely redundant. The vids they showed proved she could snap a man's neck without any effort, break a bone without batting an eyelash. All she could do in that cell was sleep and stare at the walls, waiting for someone to get her for whatever they wanted.
Sleep and blackout, Ashley thought miserably. When was the last time she'd gone a day without forgetting any of it? If it wasn't for the clock in the corner, she wouldn't even know about the blackouts. Cerberus knew, and Ashley was damn sure they were behind it, so the clock was there to make sure she knew about them too. How the hell else would she go from some stupid marine to...whatever had been on those vids?
Thinking about it made her shudder. Ashley didn't want to know what they were doing to her. She would be perfectly content never knowing what went on during those blackouts. "Content" wasn't the word she was looking for; satisfied, maybe. Fine, even better. She wasn't content with anything anymore. Her waking hours were filled with demands about the Alliance and her time on the SSV Normandy, and when she slept, she dreamt of blood and screaming and more pain than she was capable of imagining.
Part of her suspected her nightmares had something to do with those blackouts, but regardless, she still didn't want to know. Ashley would be fine with being kept in the dark on that.
She stretched a hand out towards the door, slightly ajar and hanging off its hinges, pulling it inside. It creaked and she flinched, jerking her hand back reflexively to see if anyone came running. When nothing happened for several minutes, Ashley risked opening it again. The clock in the hallway was digital instead of analog; it showed a different time than the one in her cell did. Five in the morning according to her cell, not even midnight in the hallway.
Then an idea hit her. What if they left the door open on purpose?
If that was the case, Ashley figured she'd better go back into her cell without further thought. But then again, if they hadn't, she could be passing up an opportunity to escape whatever hell she'd found herself in. Why couldn't they have just left her dead on Virmire?
Even if she couldn't remember most of anything that happened, Ashley knew she'd rather be anywhere else in the galaxy than here. Hell, slap her on Palaven and she'd be happy. Slap her in the middle of the Citadel naked and she would be happy. Anything was better than being Cerberus' prisoner. She would give anything to listen to Garrus grumble about calibrating the Mako over listening to that damn clock tick all the time.
Ashley stepped into the hallway and frowned. The floor tiles were warmer. She had to be going crazy. Maybe she wasn't dead at all and Virmire was just a horrible dream. Maybe this was her afterlife, an eternal hell for being so untrusting of the Normandy's alien crew members. But then, she'd gotten over it, hadn't she? Tali was like a little sister. Garrus was an annoying brother. Wrex was the angry uncle. Liara was just...Liara, but she didn't hate the asari. Well, not because she wasn't human, anyway. Ashley had her own reasons for that, not that she could recall them.
Left had taken her into a barracks of sorts if she remembered correctly. That was definitely not the direction she wanted to go; they'd taken away her boots after she kicked in a man's temple in there. As far as she knew, they'd take away her clothes next, and they were hardly even clothes to begin with. Running shorts, a tank top. Always clean, even if she could faintly smell blood on them. Just another reason for her to be glad for her memory lapses.
So...right. Ashley pressed herself against the far wall and started down the hallway, flinching at the overly loud tick of the clock behind her. How she could hear that over the sound of her heartbeat was a miracle. Even her footsteps seemed uncharacteristically obnoxious.
Whatever the hell was going on, Ashley didn't like it. Weird shit with her, weird shit with the facility. It had been crowded the other time she got out. She'd barely been capable of getting back out of the barracks without stepping on scientists or doctors. Most of them had scrambled to get away from her. Had Cerberus cut staffing since she escaped last? Ashley doubted it. Probably got rid of the dumbass who'd left her door open, but cut down the staff entirely? No, it didn't make sense. Not unless people had been plotting to break her out, and that was even more unlikely than staff cuts.
The right hallway eventually ended in a metal door similar to the one on her cell. This area seemed pretty devoid of much of anything, probably due to them housing her. It would explain why the only other thing nearby was a guard outpost, and that definitely wasn't a direction she wanted to go. She'd go if she had shoes, kick some more of them to shit, but she was barefoot.
Ashley tried the door. Locked. She sighed and turned to the nearby keypad. It was too much to hope that they'd have left this door open too, but even then, Ashley punched in the four digit code to open it anyway. The fact that she knew it at all made her stomach churn. So...she freely roamed the facility when she wasn't in her cell? She didn't like those implications. It meant Cerberus was using her, and it meant she was trusted enough to have access codes. Not a good sign.
The light turned from red to green, and the lock clicked before the door swung in towards her. It opened up to another hallway–unsurprisingly–but this one looked...different. It was definitely used more often. There were labs and terminals on the walls for extranet access. But like the last, it was also deserted. If she didn't think they'd have taken their weapons, Ashley might've gone back to the barracks to look for a gun.
This was too deliberate. What the fuck did they want from her?
Ashley stood up straight once she reached that conclusion. They'd kept her alive this long, and even went to the trouble of bringing her irradiated corpse back from the dead. Cerberus wasn't going to waste all their money just for a shot to kill her now. If they wanted her dead, there were much simpler, less elaborate ways to do it. They wanted her to find something, or see something, and they didn't seem to care what else she saw on her way to it; the labs were open.
Allowing her curiosity to get the better of her, Ashley entered the first on her left. It looked promising, though she wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the container labelled "blood samples" that caught her attention, or the active laptop sitting out on the countertop. Whatever it was, Ashley went inside. She took a look at the computer, but decided that would be pushing her luck. The extranet terminals would be locked out, so why leave that out for her to find?
Nope, she went to the small refrigerator with the label and opened it, reaching inside to pull out one of the trays. It was labelled too, this time with something obviously meant to be hers. "Williams, A. Blood sample 81-B."
I don't want to look at this.
So naturally, she looked.
Ashley pulled one of the vials from the pop tray and held it up, eyes widening. She was a human being. Human blood was red, so why the hell was the stuff labelled as hers this weird bluish-gray color? It almost looked purple if she turned it over in her hand, but that couldn't be right. Her blood was red, end of story. Anything different and she doubted the Alliance would've accepted her, let alone that she would have survived long enough to even hit eighteen. And besides, she'd seen her own blood before. It was red, exactly like it was supposed to be.
She returned the vial to its socket and put the tray back in the fridge. Rubbed her hands together. She felt...weird. Bad weird. Ashley slammed the fridge shut, then started back for the hallway. The laptop caught her eye again, and despite everything telling her not to, Ashley went over to it. It belonged to some scientist, obviously, but he had his name taped to the side of it. "Yancey, D."
Clicking on anything was a bad idea. Don't do it.
Ashley did it anyway.
The extranet had been opened to a tab already, so that was the first thing she saw. It was an Alliance webpage, a casualty list. Why would a scientist have that open?
Because it was meant for her.
Ashley scrolled, gulped. This wasn't on the Alliance's extranet address. This would be on their database. Someone hacked it and put it here for her to see. She still didn't get why, so she kept scrolling. Eventually she wasn't even reading the names; she was just mindlessly clicking as the bad feeling welled up in her gut. Not nausea. Anxiety. Ashley hated being anxious.
Then she saw it. The ship name, ID, designation, clearly marked with the Council's insignia to mark it belonged to a Spectre. The Normandy. It was gone. The one statement report said it was shot down over Alchera, but that was all the known information on the loss of the frigate. All the info that the Council decided to share with the Alliance, anyway.
Ashley searched the list. Alenko's name wasn't on the list of reported casualties, and she let out a sigh of relief. But even as she scanned the list for Shepard's name, she knew she'd find it. As much as she hoped, she knew. Cerberus wouldn't send her on a goose chase just to see that the Normandy was gone. They'd want it to matter, and seeing Shepard's name there...it mattered.
Her eyes locked on the name. "Shepard, Kyler A." Ashley felt something in her chest give as she lowered her forehead onto the cold lab table. It was wrong. She was supposed to be dead, not him. How was that fair?
It wasn't. Life wasn't fair. Shepard was a hero, and he ended up dead. She was just Ashley, and she was alive. Boring, stupid, useless. All Ashley could do was point a gun and shoot. Shepard could lead people. He saved lives, saved entire colonies. Dammit, he was the first human Spectre, and he was dead. Why the hell was she alive instead of him?
She felt her throat tighten, but instead of fighting it, Ashley let out one weak, choked sob before attempting to pull herself together. What was the point of this? To break her? If that was it, she had some good news for the idiots running the show. They'd succeeded. She didn't want to believe it, but it was the Alliance's database. Shepard was gone, and she wasn't.
It's not right.
What the hell did it matter to her anyway? It wasn't like he'd known she was alive. It wasn't like he'd have come to get her out of this mess, and it wasn't like she'd have been able to get out on her own. Ashley was stuck in this hellhole for the foreseeable future, but now... Now it felt final. The urge she had had only a few minutes before, the one to get free, it was gone. There wasn't any point to it anymore. Breaking out and going home would just get her family killed, and the Alliance wouldn't take her back.
No, Ashley was alone, and that was the end of it.
When she died, she didn't really have the chance to regret anything. It hadn't been quick, no, but a nice long soak in her irradiated body while her mind spun for thoughts to grasp on. The pain had pretty much killed her ability to think straight, and while she had told Shepard she didn't regret a thing, Ashley was starting to think she had. She regretted keeping her feelings to herself, hidden behind that careful mask of confidence and sarcasm, and regretted not just telling him over the comm right then and there. Right when he'd made the decision to go back for Kaidan and the salarians. It wouldn't have been hard; besides, it wasn't like Ashley anticipated being brought back to life. And it still wouldn't matter, because Shepard was dead.
Ashley wished she were still dead. Being dead was simple. It wasn't even that Shepard's death made her want to die, but it made her realize just how shitty her situation was. Cerberus was going to shove it down her throat. How they'd manage it was a mystery, but they would.
If there was one thing she could count on, it was that Cerberus would always find a way to make you cringe. And every time they tried, they succeeded. Ashley didn't want to know how this was going to be used against her. If she was lucky, they wouldn't bother her with it while she was...her. But they would, and there was no doubt about it.
Not only would she have to live with it, knowing a man who deserved to be alive was dead while she was still breathing, but she'd have to live with every agonizing second Cerberus reminded her of it.
If Ashley felt anything when they came to drag her back to her cell, it was guilt.