Mass Effin' Epinephrine Effect
Cara felt the blast sundering the ship. With a final squeal of tortured metal, the combined stress of Joker's maneuvers on the compromised airframe literally tore it in two. The concussion ripped her hands from the bulkhead and sucked her out among the burning debris of the rapidly dying ship.
Staccato detonations from severed pieces of the ship buffeted her, Cara was at their mercy. A final set of explosions blossomed along the the main fuselage, splitting the Normandy's superstructure open like a flower. This funeral pyre of hot burning gases propelled Cara through space on what she knew was a lethal trajectory.
Twisting and spinning in several directions at once, Cara had no control over her motion and orientation, she lost completely her sense of position relative to the Normandy's flaming wreck. Pitching wildly, it was impossible to tell how far she'd flown, and without a thruster pack there was no way she could hope to stabilize her flight, to say nothing of her prospects of rescue.
All of these thoughts passed through Cara's mind as an irritating buzz. Fighting to control her breathing, she took stock of what she had left.
She knew the Normandy had been attacked by some undetermined adversary, one which possessed sufficient technology to detect a stealth ship even as stone cold as the SR1. She stayed behind to help evacuate the crew, her crew. Joker got stubborn and refused to leave the helm, so Cara pulled him out herself not two seconds too soon. The enemy took one last stab at the ailing ship, gutting her from stem to stern just as she sent Joker's pod off the rails. And now Cara was adrift in space.
Taking a breath that came up short from a sudden shock of pain, Cara realized that several of her ribs were broken. Breathing felt like getting punched in the gut with a spiked gauntlet. Her left arm wouldn't work properly either. Cara tasted blood in her mouth and a trickle oozing into her eyes from a laceration at her hairline. And judging by how her ragged breath sounded to her, she guessed both her eardrums had ruptured as well.
She also felt the telltale hiss of air escaping her hardsuit and the inexorable chill of deep space creeping over her. Driven by an instinctive sense of panic, Cara frantically tried to find and stop the leaks with her fingers—a futile pursuit if ever there was one. In spite of her inevitable failure, she struggled to hang on to every scrap of air she could.
Cara fought the irresistible escaping gas as hard as she knew how, until there was little air left in her lungs or anywhere else. Somewhere out in front of her was a star, a billion billion stars, but she could see nothing but black. She gasped down the last of the frightfully thin air and tried to spot the local star, twisting her head around in search of the elusive thermonuclear giant to distract herself from the knowledge that this was the last oxygen she was going get.
Her body was screaming for more air, the breath in her lungs soured and poisonous. She let go of the spent breath and tried still to find the star, still fighting the unavoidable end, never allowing herself the despairing thought "I am going to die."
Suddenly she saw the star flash in her vision, a blue-white light filling the universe for one glorious second, and she felt and unexpected pressure on her chest. Reflexively, she inhaled-
-and filled her lungs with seawater.
Instantly choking, Cara rode an adrenaline burst back to full awareness. Murky water surrounded her on all sides; she clawed at it, searching for the way up toward the surface, which she finally located as a glimmering ray of sunlight filtering down through the depths.
Fueled by the heady rush of adrenaline, Cara swam desperately for the surface, her lungs howling at the foreign invasion of the seawater. She burned for air, pumping her arms and legs in a mad bid for the surface. Cara reached for it like a condemned sinner, which in a way she supposed she was.
One more breath, she told herself. One more breath.
Cara's head broke the surface. An attempt at breath only caused her to choke again on the water still in her throat and lungs, and she floundered on the surface for several minutes, hacking fluid from her throat and managing short gasps of air between the violent coughs. When her air passages were sufficiently cleared she started taking full breaths, drawing in long gulps of fresh, glorious air.
She rested a moment, treading water and breathing deeply. The sun above burned hot and bright, the temperate water rolled with gentle swells. The pain and terror of only a few short minutes ago were already seeming like a far-off distant memory.
"Skipper!"
Cara heard a voice, looked around and saw something splash in the water beside her. It was a lifeline.
"Hey, skipper! Grab on!" She recognized the voice and located its source. It was Chief Ashley Williams standing on the sundeck of a leisure craft wearing a dark blue bathing suit with her hair down. She had tossed her the line. "Grab it, skipper, come on!"
Eagerly, Cara took hold of the line, then watched in near disbelief as a tattooed turian she recognized as the one and only Nihlus Kryik took the other end of the line in hand and swiftly pulled her aboard. When she was standing on the deck, it took her only a moment to realize he was shirtless, wearing what passed for turian swimwear. At the same time she realized she wasn't wearing her hardsuit, but instead was attired in a dark maroon bikini top and spandex shorts, her wet mass of blond hair sticking to her shoulders.
Cara and Nihlus eyed each other in their swimwear and, each judging the other to be suitably fit for their kind, they exchanged wordless nods of mutual respect.
Chief Williams appeared beside Nihlus in short order and she gave Cara a friendly hug. "It's good to have you back, Shepard."
"I thought you were dead, Ashley. We all did."
Williams nodded. "I know. Funny thing about this place."
She was dead, of course, and so was Nihlus—long dead. And so too was Cara, if she had to guess.
":Nihlus, it's a pleasure to see you again," she told the dead turian Spectre.
"Likewise, Commander." He bowed politely. "And I understand congratulations are in order. Chief Williams informed me that you were formally inducted as the first human Spectre. This is a tremendous accomplishment for both you and your species."
"Mm-hmm. The two of you are looking good for dead," Cara remarked drily.
"Right back at you, Commander," Williams said with a toss of her hair.
Cara squinted at her. "I am dead, right?"
"Right on. Or close enough to it that the differences don't really matter," she replied.
"Then what exactly is this place? Heaven?" Cara had never been a religious person, and she hated zealots, but she recognized that a belief in the eternal could be a source of tremendous inner strength, especially for a rational, pragmatic person like the Chief. Cara admired her quiet, often unstated but perpetually binding spirituality. Cara thought it gave her a perspective on things that too many people, including Cara herself, lacked.
Williams shrugged. "I'm not sure how to answer that. Your time's not up yet, skipper, and the books haven't been opened. This is just a way-station for you. I think Nihlus explains it better.
"Every religion in existence shares with all the others some bare essence, a grain of what you would say is truth," Nihlus tried to explain. "It is best described as a collective subconscious state that all sentient beings share. Some call it the realm of the soul. This is not inaccurate, nor is it wrong to think of it as simply a dream-state deeper than a physical mind is capable of reaching."
Cara blinked at him. "Never mind. Forget I asked."
"Care to share a drink or two?" Williams offered.
"You know it."
Williams got her a tequila on the rocks, which Cara sipped gratefully. Everything—the sudden attack, the death of the Normandy, struggling for her life in the emptiness of space, fighting for breath in the ocean below only minutes ago—washed away in the cool burn of the alcohol. It was rapturous. A smile spread across her face.
"Ashley, I could kiss you."
"Uh, okay, Commander," the Chief chuckled.
Cara laughed. "Relax, Chief, not like that. I'm just really glad to have you here right now."
"I know! Like, we aren't allowed to be friends without wanting to get each other into bed?" Williams rolled her eyes. "Geez!"
"I could kiss Nihlus instead," Cara suggested.
Ashley grinned. "Yes, that you could do!"
Before the bewildered turian had a chance to react, Cara grabbed him by his collar and gave him a good smooch. As she had long suspected, this was rather like kissing pumice, but she didn't care.
"Hang on, who's doing all of this kissing?" asked a voice from belowdecks. Cara turned to look.
He was wearing flipflops, loose shorts, and an unbuttoned, gaudily colored shirt. Cara recognized the sandy blond hair, the green eyes, and the ticklishly ethnic face, but it wasn't until he spoke again that she was able to place it. "Cara?" he asked disbelievingly.
Cara's eyes widened. She knew who he was. "Eric?"
His face lit up, he slapped his leg in delight. "Cara Bethany Shepard, is that you?"
She laughed, he laughed, and the two of them hugged. Cara was about ten centimeters taller than him.
"Good, do you know who he is?" Nihlus asked irritably.
"Eric McLeish," Cara said, holding him by the shoulders with one arm while she explained. "We used to be married, back on Earth when I was sixteen. He was about to ship out on some Alliance cruiser when I met him. I needed to get off the street, and we were both drunk enough at the time to agree to it, so we tied the knot."
Eric wriggled away from her encompassing arm and cheerfully socked her on the shoulder. "You told me you were seventeen!"
"Are you surprised I lied?"
He scowled. "Knowing you, no, I'm not."
"Anyway," she went on, "he had a flat and I didn't, plus he'd get some kind of benefits from the Alliance if he had a spouse, so we got married at the courthouse. And then about a week later he shipped off and I got to live on his paycheck. Of course, a few months later some turian blew him up on the frontier, and then I ended up joining the Alliance myself."
Eric winced at the mention of his death. "You know, I thought about you, Cara. About what it would've been like if we—you know, if we had been right for each other. Did you ever think about it?"
In truth, Cara knew it couldn't ever have advanced beyond a simple friendship, she'd never deluded herself about that. They never even slept together; it was more like a business contract than anything else. It wasn't until the academy and well after Eric died that she got into a serious romantic relationship, and that couldn't ever have worked out either. But still...
Cara nodded. "I had a lot of time to think about things while I was locked up in an Alliance prison. Yeah, sometimes I'd think back and wonder." She took another sip of her tequila.
"Since we're all here now, we should get underway. The commander's here for a visit and there's some things she ought to see while she's here." Williams handed Eric a frosted glass and the two of them went to the fore, a moment later Cara felt the impeller drive hum to life.
She leaned on the boat's outer railing as they began to move across the water, ooking out over the calm sea. If this was dead, she could think of worse ways to spend the time.
Nihlus sidled up next to her. "Are you at peace here, Shepard?"
She deflected the question. "Hmm, are you?"
"Things are different for everyone who comes to this place," the turian responded. "It is unlikely that one of my people would create a setting such as this to occupy their spirit in the afterworld. I am intrigued by this particular human concept of a paradise, but it is a bit unfamiliar to me. Is this not what you think should constitute peace?"
"I don't really know," Cara admitted. "But is this just a dream world, or am I actually dead? Which is it?"
"You are not alive, but neither has your spirit moved on fully. This is a shared subconscious state we are inhabiting. Since it is a part of you, your mind has largely influenced your own experience here. Your companions and I are here because this realm is accessible both to you and to us."
Cara shook her head. "Straight answer, please."
Nihlus clucked his mandible-like cheeks. "You are dead, but you are not."
"Thanks."
A long moment passed, Cara thinking about what Nihlus had said. Maybe it didn't matter how dead she might or might not be. For years she'd done her duty, she'd saved who she could and avenged the ones she couldn't. She'd been the teeth of vengeance. Never once had she questioned that purpose in her life, or given thought to slowing down.
But now she could afford to take things slower, try out things that never fit into her abnormal life; like having more deep personal relationships, the kinds she'd always avoided. And she had to admit, the prospect enticed her.
"How long do you think I have here?" Cara asked Nihlus.
"I do not have the answer to that. I suppose for as long as is needed."
"Needed for what?"
"Have faith, Commander," he said brusquely. "Chief Williams would tell you much the same. There is a larger plan at work that is not always for us to know."
Cara was about to respond when she felt the impellers slow to a stop and Williams call from the front. "Hey, love-birds! There's a coral lagoon just up ahead. Anyone up for a dip?" She winked at Cara and Nihlus.
Cara called back. "Sure, I've got time!"
Air rasped painfully into her lungs, the breathing process laborious and slow but stable. Her entire body was sore from barely healed incision marks that she felt as razor-thin lines of hot pain. Delirious dreams floated in her head, writhing like things possessed while the unwelcome sensations of awareness poured in. Her heart beat like a bass drum reverberating with dull agony at each stroke, its pace quickening as she tried to hold onto her dreams. Consciousness loomed, an executioner murdering her calm and peaceful sleep.
In her dream she was with friends departed and family never known, all of them gathered with her in celebration. But that dream was collapsing, water crashing in from all sides, not touching a one of them but tearing her away into a terrible dark. Their presence slipped from her grasp, the dream vanishing from her mind as if it had never been.
She felt a profound sense of loss, and then that too was gone as other memories rushed in to take their place; memories of fire, terror, and choking death.
Yes, she remembered now—get to Joker, get him to safety, get off the ship. But she was weak and her body unresponsive.
No, that had happened mere minutes ago. She was adrift in space, fast running out of air. She was trying to find the local star in the black sky so she could fix her position. A blue-white light flashed.
She heard voices now, coming from her helmet radio?
The first voice was very faint, just barely audible to her. "...the monitor. Something's wrong."
Then a rough male voice spoke more clearly. "She's reacting to outside stimuli. Showing an aware of her surroundings. Oh my god, Miranda, I think she's waking up."
"Damn it, Wilson, she's not ready yet!" Now an irritated female voice.
Her pulse quickened as she began to realize she was not floating in space, but was in fact lying on an operating table.
"Give her the sedative!" The second voice again.
She opened her eyes, breathing fast and shallow now. At the top of her faint and blurry vision she could see a dark-haired woman in a white lab suit, and a bright large surgical lamp directly overhead. Following her first impulse, she tried to roll away from the light, but her limbs wouldn't move and the act of trying to move them induced an avalanche of pain cascading through her insides.
She was just starting to panic when a face came into her view, a concerned, dark-skinned man who added a third voice. "Commander, don't try to move just yet. Just stay calm, I've got you."
The other two voices were arguing, saying something about brain activity and respiration levels and other medical terms she couldn't penetrate, not with her head hurting as much as it did. She felt someone touch her hand reassuringly and she grabbed it as hard as she could despite the pain.
"It's alright," she heard the man say. "You're gonna get through this. I got you covered all the way, don't worry about a thing."
"Another dose, now!" The other two were still bickering out of her view, but she concentrated on that one avenue of human contact through her hand, using it as an anchor to steady her ship.
Slowly she began to calm, her racing pulse dropped and her breathing evened out.
"It's just a sedative," he assured her. "Don't worry, you'll wake up again." He gave her a comforting smile as her eyelids quickly grew heavy and sleep stole over her.
She didn't know what had happened to her, where she was, or who this man was, but she was grateful to have him there with her.
She was still gripping his hand when she lost consciousness.