I do not hold the rights to Mass Effect. This story has been edited and uploaded again.
Her shields were gone. Bullets winged past her, into her armour, by the grace of nothing somehow missing her most vulnerable areas. Her eyes felt like they were burning, her blood pounding, and in this moment, everything became crystal clear. The voice of David screaming at tones that scorched her eardrums, her breath ragged in her ears, her arms weighed down with the immense weight of her sniper rifle. And more, so much more. The lcd readout of her visor telling her how quickly the Normandy was going under the VI's control, and much worse, the geth getting closer, gaining confidence as she ignored them, them and the danger they provoked.
Faces flashed in front of her. Names, people, hanging unseen in space above her as the rogue VI corrupted their home. Miranda, Jack, Tali, Samara, Jacob, Kelly, Kasumi, Joker, Legion, Thane, Gabby, Kenneth, Chakwas, Grunt, Zaeed, Mordin...
Garrus.
Garrus
Garrus, trapped in another room behind her. Garrus, left behind again. Garrus, who would blame himself for being unable to save her.
Garrus, who had become more to her than she could have ever imagined.
I'm sorry. She finally located it, the port to the VI hanging in the web of cables and flashing information above her. She raised the rifle, finding it through her scope, finger tense on the trigger. A shot whizzed past her, and she felt the skin along her cheek break and bleed. I'm so sorry, Garrus.
In her mind and in her heart the Normandy hung, helpless and dying, taking the people she had come to love with it. This moment in time stilled, her heart suddenly clear to her, the beats slow and resonating as she took these final breaths. It had happened before, clear as the day she had died, the life and the people of the Normandy in her hands. She took it, relived, knew that moment and this one. The choice that she had made. She took it and, as before, she chose again.
The rifle fired. She pulled back, yanking on the reload as the portal to David cleared. Shots fired around her and this time they struck. She hissed in pain as bullets entered into her side, passing through her armour and the non-existent shielding. Hissed again as she raised the rifle back into position, aligned her sighting, muttering a prayer as she took a final shot.
A howl, a scream, a blur of green and fire. Shepard lost her grip and her rifle fell clanging to the floor as she grabbed at her eyes, the cybernetics in them running on over drive.
And then there was silence.
Her eyes cleared.
"Oh God."
The words slipped past her lips, her body going rigid in shock as she instinctively took a step back. The full magnitude of the horror she was seeing hit her and in that moment it was all she could do to fight the bile that tried to force itself up her throat. Her eyes seemed to tear and she reached out, forward, towards him in a futile gesture of help. Her hand dropped back to her side.
"Oh my god."
A crackle resounded in her ear as her comm-link was restored.
"SHEPARD!" Garrus' voice bellowed to her through her visor, the anger and fear in it flanging out his tone to even deeper degrees. "Shepard, answer me!"
"I'm here, Garrus." Even to herself her voice sounded wrong. "I'm fine."
"We're trapped." Came his low growl of a reply and in it she could hear that he didn't believe her. "The damned door sealed itself on us."
"Now that the rogue VI has been shutdown I should be able to aid Officer Vakarian," came the cool controlled voice of EDI.
"Do it." Shepard managed to say.
"Shepard..." Garrus was speaking quieter now, in a tone that told her he was speaking only to her.
"I'm fine Garrus." She interrupted. "Really, I just." She shut her eyes, shuddering as they rested on the form being held by metal, and pain, in front of her. "Just come find me when EDI gets you free. I'm... I'm going to need your help."
"Commander," and now it was EDI's voice that came through the link. "I have established full control of the facility. The Rogue VI program is still stored in the lower databases. What do you want me to do with the information?"
Shepard turned and allowed herself for the first time to fully look upon the monstrosity before her. David hung in space, his naked form held up by metal spars that pierced his flesh, over and over. His eyes were held open, ridged with needles that pierced above and below his lids, into his cerebal cortex. His mouth gaped, wide and yawning, forced that way by the thick metal tubing that had been shoved down his throat. As she looked upon him his eyes flickered in his face and she could not miss the tears that streamed endlessly from them.
"Destroy it" she ordered.