"Move - Move - Move!"
Her voice filled the room like a foghorn, but it had to over the sound of biotics ripping through the air. The marines in front of her dashed in single-file through an open doorway, four operatives, armed to the gills. Despite his heavy armor the soldier in front of her went flying as soon as he stepped through the door, a ripple of energy following him through the air.
Well, so much for that idea. Looks like the biotic knew the Alliance was coming.
She stopped before the door, shoulder planted against the wall, as she pulled a flash grenade off her belt. With a brief duck into the room, she lobbed the blinding explosive in. Though threw her arm over her eyes to block the artificial flare, the edges of her vision still doubled up for half a second. She caught just the vague outline of their target bolting through another door as she spun into the room.
Huh. He seemed to know she would lead with a measure to subdue rather than injure him. He knew to turn his back on the grenade, and even used the moment of blindness to make his exit. This was a biotic who had bumped into the Alliance before.
Well, maybe he had, but he hadn't run into Commander Goddamn Shepard yet. She hadn't met a hazer yet that she couldn't bring down, and she wasn't gonna start today.
Her footsteps were fast and heavy as she gave chase, but as she dashed through the next door the hair raising crackle of biotics sounded to her left. She dove without looking where, and instincts spared her. Behind her, the archway of the door came crashing down. The floor beneath her shook as the ceiling caved in, dust exploding outward from the collapse. There was no telling whether the marines behind her had time to duck backward.
See, before she was just determined. Now she was angry.
She had pushed up to her feet before the rubble was even done falling, but the dust wasn't enough to give her cover. Another shout rang out and before she knew it she was flying across the room, not quite sure which way was up. Her breath stuttered and stopped when she hit the wall across the room, her lungs locked in stunned confusion at the force of the collision, but a moment later she was falling and her breath sucked in sharply.
She tumbled into the open hole of a stairwell, her weapons scattering. Silence reigned in the small industrial warehouse, dust still settling from the demolished doorway, electronics buzzing from the downed artwork. The biotic's rapid breathing filled the void. He took a crunching step toward the open stairwell.
She vaulted back over the stair railing like an Olympic athlete. He stumbled backward in surprise, his skin lighting up with the blue haze from which the biotics got their derisive nickname. He moved to aim some kind of field her way but she knocked the hand out of the way, breaking the mnemonics. The biotic energy fizzled around his hand, unused, but she wasn't finished.
She jerked him by the wrist toward her and pumped her knee into his gut once – twice – three times - the muscles and bones giving more and more each time beneath the force of her armored knee. The third time, though, he caught her fast with a hand beneath her knee and he practically roared as he barrelled his shoulder into her. She was spun off balance as he threw her into the wall again, physically this time, never letting go of the vice like grip on her knee that gave him the only leg up… so to speak. Her helmet clacked sharply off the cement wall.
"If you wanted to get close to me, all you had to do was ask," he quipped as she caught her breath.
Oh, good. She had a Prince Charming on her hands.
She threw her head forward into a headbutt, helmet to skull, but he ducked to the side. He pressed his weight and height advantage, using the grip on her leg to swing her powerfully toward the ground. But she was quick. The instant she had the leverage of being on the ground she scissored his legs and rolled, forcibly bending the joint of his knee and toppling that height advantage in one blow. He hit the ground with a heavy thud.
His eyes glowed blue again as he charged for a final push, but she scrambled to get a hold of him, straddled his waist, and bent his near arm into an unnatural angle. A grunt of pain whooshed out of his throat and she lifted her chin smugly.
"Please?" she said in her smoky husk.
A mechanical whir purred softly in her ear and she froze. The bite of pressure in her neck confirmed her suspicions as the pistol extended into its fully armed position. While she was busy securing his near arm, he had been pulling her pistol to him - and he had just flicked off the safety.
"Careful what you wish for," he said.
Her fingers couldn't straighten fast enough to release her submission hold on his wrist and she lifted her hands to either side of her body, chest heaving between. The situation was a little tighter now that the biotic had all the power, but her tongue was as loose as ever.
"Go ahead, hazer. Pull the trigger. Prove them right."
The pistol pushed further up into the soft suit beneath her helmet, pressing against her windpipe so that for a brief moment, her breath wheezed. She swallowed hard against the gun.
"If you force someone to defend themselves, does that make them guilty, or you?" Cold anger reverberated in his tone.
"You were invited to come in peacefully," she argued, buying time. "All we want to do is talk."
He laughed, a breathy, mirthless sound that made her aware of the fact that she was still straddling his waist: his abdomen hardened and released with the laugh. Her gaze turned downward to look into his features, which were just wild enough to make a chill run down her spine.
"Yeah, I know what you marines call it. 'Catch and release,' right? Bring us in, screw with our implants, then inject us with something to make us forget. You know how many biotics I've seen who can't even remember their own names? Childhoods missing? Whole limbs gone numb? And those are the ones who get 'released' in the first place."
The pistol twisted into the heavy fabric of her armor's under suit and she lifted her chin even higher, uncomfortably stretched.
"You don't know any of that until you give us a chance," she pointed out, though at this angle, it was difficult to speak.
His chuckle was embittered, completely devoid of any sort of mirth at all. "Been there, done that," he replied coolly.
She tensed, wide eyes jumping to look down the length of her nose. He couldn't be. And yet, as she met his whiskey-colored gaze, with its subdued anger and careful collection, she realized he couldn't be anything else.
"You're the Kicker," she summarized, awed.
The Kicker was the only hazer to have been captured and escape, a legend among the Biotic Enforcement and Apprehension Teams. Rumor had it he and another biotic had come in peacefully but the girl, his girl, had come out of the 'procedure' changed somehow. After seeing what had been done to her the Kicker had let off a biotic flare so strong he had razed an entire laboratory, killing the head doctor and injuring four others. He went on to start a movement to warn biotics what was coming, turning the peaceful neutralization of biotic citizens into a secret war.
That's how he got the nickname. He had kicked off the whole damn thing.
"My reputation precedes me," he said, his head tilting smugly. "And so does yours." His eyes flicked up to the scar in her right eyebrow that had never healed properly, the result of a biotic lash so strong it had split open her head. Rumor had it she still got the biotic in the end, despite only being able to see out of the one eye by the end of their fight.
"You're the Butcher. Brought in more biotics than anyone, haven't you?" He tapped the pistol against the hard exoskeleton of her helmet to force her to turn her head. She reluctantly did as ordered, though the softer bodysuit beneath her armor showed the twitch of tendons as she clenched her jaw. On the side of her helmet were tally marks that counted off each and every biotic she had apprehended – or neutralized.
"Thirty-two," he counted aloud. She could feel the tension in his body as he pushed the pistol under her chin in hard fury, forcing her entire body to arc up into the press. "How many of those never walked away?"
A broken breath gasped out as she struggled to speak with the gun in her neck. "A hell of a lot more than would have if you didn't go around riling everybody up!"
"People deserve to know!"
"People are getting killed!" she snapped. She glanced down again and met the angry brown gaze with her gray. She let out a dry, rough laugh hindered by the pressure of the pistol. "At least every kill I've made has been a decision, not some emotional outburst from a power I can't control."
He twitched, a full body jerk that left the pistol a centimeter from her skin for half a second. It was all she needed. She moved her head out of the way of the pistol and twisted his wrist away from her. The gun went off, scoring the ceiling above.
With a blast of orange light her omnitool lit up, and his eyes widened until the whites were fully visible. Electricity arced off her omnitool and then buzzed around the base of his skull, where his amp port was located. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head as his body convulsed, jerking uncontrollably as the electric surge pulsed through the implant and straight into his brain. He fell still, breath shallow and uneven, and she sighed with relief. She lifted her hand to her ear to speak into her omnitool as she swung her leg off of him.
"Target subdued," she said wearily. "Tell HQ we have Biotic Enemy Number One."
The clock on the wall clicked heavily, and to her it seemed like every tick and tock made her eyelids fall lower. The Alliance was pulling out all the stops for keeping the Kicker in custody this time. They wanted their best on the job, and that meant her, regardless of how badly she needed a nap.
This was definitely one of those moments she wasn't half so proud of being Commander Goddamn Shepard.
In an unconscious bid to wake herself up she gave in to a threatening yawn. She didn't even bother to cover her mouth as she let lungs fill with the filtered air of the complex. She let the last of it exhale through her nose, her shoulders falling lightly. What she wouldn't give for a nice comfy bed right about now.
"You look exhausted."
The arrogant voice from inside the cell she was guarding made the relaxation she had won herself instantly snap back into tension.
"Thanks," she replied dryly without turning to look at the biotic. She didn't want to see him stretched out on his bunk as comfy as he pleased. What kind of bitter joke was that?
"How's your head?" she said, combating his smugness by mirroring it. That neural shock program left a nasty headache, from what she heard.
"Nothing I'm not used to," he only said.
"I guess what doesn't kill you makes you more of an ass."
To her surprise, he let out an amused whuffle. "Maybe so."
She sighed as she let her knees bend from the exhaustion of standing in one position for too long. She bounced into the squat, stretching her muscles, forcing her knees to bend a hair too far as if that would somehow undo the hours of stiffness she was working toward.
"You should really think about hiring more guards," he said as he lounged in his bed.
"We have," she responded as she pulled her arm across her. "You dropped a ceiling on them."
He gave another amused breath. "Well, that was rude. Wouldn't think that would do much damage, though, with those hardsuits you wear."
"Not much. They're guarding the infirmary."
They fell into silence, she rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck, he staring at the ceiling. She hadn't had a shift this long since ICT, and she was starting to feel the difference between a twenty hour shift at twenty-two years old and that same shift at twenty-eight. What she wouldn't give for -
"Can I get something to drink?" he interrupted. "I've been in here for hours and haven't had anything. Pretty sure that counts as some kind of torture."
"Take it up with your jailers, not your guard," she replied wearily.
"You know, it's funny," he responded to that. "Alliance command never does come down for a chat."
She snickered. She had to give him that one. They never came down when their soldiers had complaints, either. They showed up for speeches and slow decisions. Otherwise, they might as well have been AIs.
She suddenly stood. If they were both going to suffer this torture for a bunch of far off decision makers without faces, they might as well have what comfort they could, right?
"How about a coffee?" she asked as she made way for the door to the line of cells.
"Coffee... would be great," he responded, sounding surprised. She nodded acknowledgment.
She propped the door to the cell block open and moved just down the hall to the guard's break room, a few feet between the doors at best. Propping that door open, too, she moved to the brewers within, sending up a silent prayer of thanks to the coffee gods that they were both full. She realized once she was in that she had forgotten to ask him whether he took decaf, so he was getting the high octane stuff. What the hell was the point of coffee without caffeine anyway? Little like a martini without alcohol. She finished her own cup of coffee and made her way back through the hallways with his.
"Hope you like caffeine 'cause that's what I…"
The cell was empty. The biotic was gone. There was a splash, the sound of an abandoned paper cup bouncing across the floor, and a moment later, the wailing of sirens.