Disclaimer: Mass Effect and Mass Effect character names belong to BioWare, Microsoft Game Studios and Electronic Arts, unless stated an OC which in case belong to the author, Quarter 'till Class. No copyright infringement is intended. Plagiarism is theft so is prohibited. Do not copy or create a reproduction of this work in any language without express written authorization of the author, Quarter 'till Class. Thank you...Please enjoy.
Mordin Solus x Oc
A/N: Takes place before the final mission during the second game. (Pretending that the third never actually took place.)
I haven't slept much. The very idea of stopping makes me nauseous, though I doubt I would have much to purge.
I can hear the intense blasts of firearms towards the front that echoed down the corridors. I'm listening attentively as every being I have come to befriend wails in brief agony through the lab before I assume they're dead. The choking gurgle of drowning in one's blood is a sound I will never rid from my mind. It's ghastly, and I feel sick all over again.
Kaer pauses every so often to cover his mouth with the crook of his arm and gag on the liquid crawling up his throat. His wound is drenched in medi-gel, wrapped tight with the torn hem of my top and secured by a piss-poor knot. More blood seeps into his tourniquet and drips thick on the datapads, staining my clothing green and smearing over the consoles in shaken, desperate haste. I've never seen him tremble so dramatically; his fingertips struggle to steady themselves on the monitor.
Salver lay dead in the corner, decaying. He stunk of burnt flesh and death.
Dr. Kaer rests with heavy weight on my shoulder. He can barely stand without my assistance, and I feel like I've failed miserably as a scientific aide. Just watching his eyes, large even for a salarian, makes my stomach crimp in on itself like an illness. He stands back, wobbly with myself as his human crutch, and examines the data portrayed on the screen with a grim expression. I feel twice as sick now...twice as pained.
He's heavy. I'm relatively small and his height is anything but accommodating.
A noise detracts our attention. His head turns abruptly to the front while I exhale deep, even breaths into his side with mortified exasperation.
The hasty knocking on the doorway is but an emotional blight against our current objective. The lone entrance is sealed heavily by Kaer's command.
The knocking changes into angered slamming, enraged, hopeless fists against the metal with a panicked rhythm set in their knuckles. The yelling is inaudible, my left ear drum had been popped nearly a day ago when we'd sealed off the lab's third wing. The krogan pushed us back to this last room...trapped us and any other survivors in separate decks to maintain frailty with pathetic numbers.
I applaud their initiative, nonetheless.
More blood tickles out of my ear at the sounds, caking over the dried grime that'd browned over the hours of inertia.
The ringing has turned into a throbbing pain. My stomach feels like it's eating into itself and my bones ache in the literal sense. Like a pulsating pain that rivets throughout my body, pinching my muscles and rendering me immobile.
"Please!" It's a muffled scream of pleading that rings like a high-pitched echo through the hollow of my left canal. A loud grunt erupts from down the hall, ammo rings through the air and taps at the door. "I know you're in there, Tula!"
"Gota." I can hear myself mutter her name, like a screeched undertone despite how it may have actually sounded.
Kaer looks to me with a scolding eye, lidded and coated by the seeping dribbles of the wound on his forehead. The salarian's hand, dyed a crusted green that flaked off with his movements, grips my shoulder firm. I step away, wobbly due to the weakness in my knees. I'm suddenly terrified of the decision I have to make. It becomes morbidly apparent that actual lives have been placed within my temporary care, struggling against my grasp on consequentialism. I have a choice, bestowed upon me in less than a brief instance. I may open that door, without physical interruption from Kaer (who can barely limp), or I may plant my feet and withhold our meager operation, which stands dire despite its questionable success rate.
"Don't risk it." He says it so seriously at such a quick pace. I'm either calmed or disturbed in seeing his expectations of everyone's untimely murder. Perhaps both. "The download isn't complete, Tula."
"Tula!" It's a shriek of panic. I can visualize Gota slamming her slender blue arms over and over again on the outside. I can imagine the tears streaking the eloquent marks of lavender that decorate her face, lips curled to express horror. Weapon fire continues and grows with every passing second, the hectic cries of the group outside grow either dangerously frantic or low with the realization of death. "Our shields! Tula our fucking shields! They won't hold!"
"Tula, don't do this. It will all be for nothing." Kaer grips my arm harshly, expression pleading past the agony as he holds his wound with a tense hand. There's desperation in his voice, a tone I've never heard fret past his lips before. He tightens his extended grip as I clench and unclench my sore fists.
Those doors are so slow to close. I think to myself. They've always been slow.
"Tula!" I don't know what to do.
"Tula!" I feel queasy.
"Tula!" I can't breath.
The ripple of biotics is apparent in sound. Screaming ensues and within moments the silence I have instilled is a horrid, painful lack of noise that would plague my memories until I pass. I haven't moved...I'm terrified in doing so. Horrified. Kaer turns his face away from looking at me, his eyes are glossed with the obvious sting of fear. His grip loosens significantly, as though all the strength he possessed was filtered into that one action of panic.
"Thank you...Tula." He says it solemnly. But there's this look of prejudice behind the forced appreciation and mock relief. A look of judgement at my lack of action. I feel as though a part of him had wanted me to disobey and open the doors, save Gota and Willhelm and Franz and anyone else. The other half knew and understood the risks. The other half looks to me with grateful praise.
Beyond Kaer I hear krogan and their toneless mutters, the responsive chirp of vorcha causes me even more distress than before. Vorcha would toy with their rotting flesh without remorse and I was the reason. Vorcha would gnaw on the skin and the faces of my friends as torture...because of data. Because the cure can't be given to the Blood Pack. Because the genophage was all a sick, twisted mistake we've been attempting to fix. Let them declare war...let them dry out their resources and let them shrivel into the oblivion that the drell and the quarians have both faced and conquered. This wasn't worth it. It just wasn't worth it.
And how many other facilities, researching the cure with good intentions, have faced a fate such as ours? How many people have been murdered over data? Over questionable information that may or may not be liable? How many humans, salarians, asari and the like have been slaughtered, beaten, shot, tortured and broken? Just like us? Forced into a dirty corner, struck with grief at the sounds of destruction and slaughter?
My heart is sinking into my abdomen at a slow, unnatural pace. I feel like I swallowed down the wrong tube. It hurts to breath.
And I look back to Kaer to find him laying dead, sprawled across the consoles with one lone hand still pressed firm against his oozing wound. Green is everywhere...splattered on every screen, datapad, communications console...
His eyes bore into my conscience like a deity expecting a plea of innocence. He looks at my face, almost appalled.
I need to throw up again. I need to do something.
I close his eyes out of grief.
It's not long before a piercing ring alerts me that the download is complete. The data's been erased from every drive, deck, greybox, monitor, tower...it only exists in the small flash card that I've stuffed into my blood-soaked pocket. Kaer would have killed me for that. I knew better.
I feel like I no longer have purpose despite it.
My stomach growls.
It has been a rounded fifty-four hours since the Blood Pack intercepted and sabotaged communications, then invaded the facility. Forty-nine since Amaus Kaer, Salver Romous and I sealed the room and began the system-wide data erase. Forty-five since Salver attempted to stop us as well as shot Dr. Kaer. The traitor has been laying limp in the corner, dead, for generally the same amount of time.
It stinks in here already.
I'm hungry.
Dr. Kaer has been deceased for the last twenty six hours. I've been unconscious for most of that wasted time. It's lucky that I can't recall the nightmares I surely thought up...or else I wouldn't find the mental capability to open the doors and roam.
When I was last awake I could still hear vorcha screeching to each other down the halls. Like monsters indulging in twisted humor found comical by culture. That's what they were, anyway. I was never fond of their insufferably, despicable species. Living like leeches and snarling at mostly everything.
For the last hour I've heard nothing. I haven't spoken to myself, I haven't eaten or stood. I was once tempted to give some sort of religious-based blessing to Dr. Kaer...but knowing his once evident dislike for human culture I decided against it. The last thing I wanted to do was upset the dead leftovers of my previously living mentor. He'd return just to slap me upside the head.
I sat and watched him instead. Cynically, no less.
By this time I've successfully found the courage to leave. Bodies slump forward from leaning on the doors, sliding to the side in a painfully slow manner. Gota lay in a messy, blood-soaked heap; the asari's head was cratered, burnt and rugged from a shot to the face. Franz is missing limbs, and Willhelm is a shriveled corpse shot endlessly further down the hall. The others that I'd known were not present, but three I couldn't name were hardly recognizable aside from their seemingly untouched identification badges.
Anything worth money was taken.
I threw up saliva and acidic bile after a few elongated moments of examination. My closest associates were gruesomely murdered and it was entirely due to my decision as a scientist. My other friends are likely dead as well, though not in immediate view.
I hear the light echoes of chirping, the clicking of an untranslated language foreign without my earpiece.
Vorcha bicker down the westward corridor. The quick pace of their naturally skittish stride is a noise I recognize after hours of listening beside Kaer's corpse. They'd ventured up and down the halls, snarling and thrashing at each other violently. Krogan were few as of late. (I found that odd.)
I'm frozen, still as stone out of incomprehensible fear and the sluggishness of my brain. My eyes hurt against the flickering lights, reaching so far that they round the darkened corners sprayed with blood. I see trails as I listen to their hasty approach...of where bodies had once been idle and bleeding only to be dragged away. I can imagine no purpose for someone half or fully dead. The reason for the multiple smears of fluid escapes me.
The clink of thermal clips.
I assume my animalistic need for survival veered control of my body. Outrunning Blood Pack trained vorcha would be blatantly unwise if not entirely redundant. Instead I lift the corpses of my colleagues, sliding beneath them hurriedly as though I were deceased. My breath hitches at the stench, a gag tightening in the back of my throat. I feel nauseous towards the reek of decay.
Their footing was initially swift, clawing down the hall. The one closest pauses and slows, undoubtedly sniffing at the air. I being to doubt my actions; I hadn't considered whether or not they could smell fear. It was likely.
I'm very lucky (despite how often Kaer had disregarded the existence of karma or fluke prosperity).
The duo leave, somehow impatient, and I wait idle beneath the debilitated remains of Gota and my previous acquaintances. I wait until there's an eerie silence, then sit up and inhale. I glance at my uniform, stained green and red and dotted with blue. My bare feet look as though I'd soaked them green with salarian blood, dirtied and bruised despite my inactivity. I suppose Salver had done more damage than I'd initially speculated.
I heave my asari dissimulation to the side, again breathing heavily and jumping to my feet. I'm panicked, stunned at the dampness on my front and arms. I leave before the mercenaries return, hasty in my retreat. I'm more upset to leave Kaer to rot.
I wasn't sure where to go from a place standing between mutilated bodies, but I did walk. I imagine the exit or loading bay. The kitchen.
I'm still hungry.
When the noises down the hall caught my attention, I'd been wolfing salarian-type dried fruits with the idea that tomorrow wasn't an option. I would have bad cramps eating their food...severe, stomach-ripping cramps that would possibly instigate internal damage.
But the noises were caused by organics; curious and rather brutish ones at that. I was terrified again. Only six hours after wandering the base and I already feared for my unavoidable demise (a second time, no less). Krogan, probably. Set on murdering anything with a pulse; more of the Blood Pack.
More corpses to look at and vomit over.
I sat on the kitchen island, watching past the glass doors as shadows danced up the walls. They were each of a slender build when in comparison to armored krogan. I was a bit relieved.
Even more so when a human rounded the corner with a gun pointed at my chest. A drell trailed in after, handsome, really...and the uncannily familiar face of Professor Solus came third. A salarian I trusted with my life was perfect to pass this burden to. It was destined.
I remember popping another fruit on the dry surface of my tongue, feeling the weight of my entire body begin to sag. I couldn't taste it. The adrenaline of fear, shock and guilt was finally winding down into an unfocused lethargy. I could only imagine how a human girl sitting in the kitchen, eating in the company of decayed corpses appeared. Unstable, perhaps?
"Professor Solus." I had lost my voice in the daily struggle of survival. It was a coarse rasp with gravel-like undertones that I hadn't expected. It sounded weak and humiliating. Nonetheless I could speak. I could still give them the data.
"Abrave? Where is Kaer?" He already knows what is of Kaer, yet he asks to ensure his assumptions. Mordin is quick to approach, the signs of concern on his face as he recognizes me past oily hair and a dirty, blood-stained face. My last name sounds so foreign when he speaks. It's been a human year or so since I've seen Solus in person. I freely laugh at the new scar that cut horizontal across his left cheek.
I'm sure he labeled me ill with such a display.
"Dead. The data...Kaer wanted you to have it." I lie through my teeth. A needle-like sting coils in my stomach as the fruits begin to digest. My hand instinctively covers my mouth in a panic. I feel violently nauseous again. I taste acid as it crawls up my esophagus and stings the very back of my tongue.
"Visual signs of depression, lack of nourishment and socialization. Voice has not been used recently, judging from lack of damage around throat. No other survivors."
"Yes." I tell him blatantly. " The Blood Pack."
"Figured that out on the way in." That woman...she seems so familiar. Though I doubt I've ever met her. But her eyes beyond that distinct armor tell me that I know of her well. Well enough to recall familiar eyes when in a state of trauma.
"Shepard?" Ah. My question is quick to be answered...I stand in the light of an over-glorified celebrity. I sit before a people-made hero with a winning complexion. As I scrutinize her Mordin places his hand over my shoulder as if to comfort me. It's not working.
"You trust her, Mordin?" She asks, gun gesturing in my direction briefly. I like her armor.
"Entirely." I'm flattered despite our relationship. I want to go home.
"Well then, we need to get her on board. Maybe she can explain what happened here." She snaps her fingers in font of my face, as though testing my attention, but I feel the need to ignore the action entirely. I doubt that helped their synopsis. "It looks like they were searching for something specific."
"With a survivor to tell I doubt they found whatever it is they were looking for." The drell finds his sanded voice, eager to help in stabilizing my balance and posture. I'm uncertain of him, initially. I don't know many drell. I am very vague of mind when recalling what I've read from their culture. Are they violent? Generous? Unpredictable?
"Unlikely, but still possible." Mordin speaks again, always willing to in any situation. I find myself relieved that he's beside me...I doubt I'd want anyone else in such a condition.
"Get her on board." Someone says. I assume it'd been Shepard barking orders, as is appropriate.
The Drell shoulders me effortlessly, taking on most of my weight as I limp on aching toes. Mordin assists, and momentarily I feel as secure as possible. Capable of succumbing to my exhaustion.
"I'm hungry."
That's the last thing I gripe before drifting off into unconsciousness.
I felt that there weren't enough Mordin appreciation fics hanging around FF. Someone also requested an Mass Effect Oc fic. I figured that it couldn't hurt, plus I really enjoyed the first and second game. The third was good until the excessive and unpreventable death, as well as the very disappointing endings.
Anyway, here it is. I can change the pairing and genre according to what's recommended as well as reviews. So please, share what you'd like! This story is based on an oc and whatever the majority asks for!