I reworked the stories protagonist. It felt wierd to use Jack as a name. So I switched it around for the next chapter, coming up. So if you want a different name write a note, please. It would be very appreciated (just like criticism, seriously).
When Briar Mason got the news, he was shocked. The N7 poster girl had died, come back to life and allied with terrorists. Then there was chatter on the Alliance servers, talking about her revival. Then she murdered an entire species of bugs, that abducted colonists, screwed over the Illusive Man and then just walked right into the headquarters of the Systems Alliance. This put Briar of because he had looked up to the woman, who had fought with him in the incident of Elysium.
A little backstory on Briar Jackson Mason: He was like many other alliance soldiers born in space. His mother had hired as a tech for the Alliance about two weeks into her pregnancy to get away from the abusive father, a gang leader on Earth. She was quickly promoted and took her child anywhere. Most of the officers and crewmen and -women liked the curious child and taught the kid how to read and write and how to do maths. A group of engineers explored history with Briar. The Marine detail did its best to make the kid strong. Each one of the muscular men and women fought with him, until he started to learn how to fight a soldier's fight. He learned combat knives and small caliber guns at a very young age. An asshole XO once wanted to force the then teenaged Briar to leave the ship, unless he was willing to pull his weight, which couldn't stop the teenager. He started helping the ship's resident doctor, organizing the cargo bay, cleaning weapons and working the ordinance manifesto.
After he turned eighteen, Briar enlisted as Marine and was for the first time in his life sent planetside for more than three days. And he wasn't surrounded by friends anymore.
The training was a bitch and a half to pass, but he met a couple nice people, who trained with him. One of them by the name of Elizabeth was the only one actively displaying animosity towards Briar. She later turned out to be the child of J's sperm donor, as he took to calling his genetic father. He had started to verbally abuse and berate his daughter and beating his wife, after his lover left earth for good. The fights had made Elizabeth very competitive for the approval by others and scared of change. Early in the training she used underhanded techniques, deliberately broke sparring rules and then claimed it to be an accident. To wake her up, the brass had her scrub the whole building clean of any dirt, twice. She was the commanding officer of the cadets after training ended and started to berate the others in her unit, whenever she could.
Then the first deployment came. There were sent to a small moon base close to Elysium as a defensive unit. When they arrived, they were deployed in the middle of the pirate attack. Shepard was on Elysium to fight. Elizabeth was the first to fall. A Batarian energy whip wrapped around the neck of the young Senior Chief and ripped the head off leaving a charred stump. The incident got Briar into her position as first in command. He redistributed his forces around a defense cannon that could take out the slavers' ships. But the ground forces remained a problem and quickly killed them all. The soldiers were then picked up in body bags. Briar made it out alive. When he was picked up, he was in a coma and declared dead by paramedic. He woke up in the cargo hold during the service for him and his unit. The officers shit themselves. Literally.
Later Briar was stuffed into the exact same hospital as Shepard, recuperating from the injuries.
He was being treated for PTSD and many bullet wounds, as well as a whip wound in his abdominal area. The surgeons were cool, even Sirta, who personally visited his bed to explain the function of medigel. The nurses treated him with a good mood and made him laugh a lot, although that hurts a lot more, than he expected. The rehab was cool. He was in the same group as Shepard, although she never showed up after the second meeting. The officers at rehab were unpleasant about his uniform, but couldn't stop him at all. His psychologist was an ass. She always asked him about his experiences and reacted way too slow to lie to him, to soothe him about his experiences. They were always the most unpleasant talks he ever had in his time of career.
He quickly took the first chance to leave. Briar was right away promoted to Lt. Commander and redeploy him with Interrogations. When he last saw Shepard, he had his mind wrapped around being Lt. Commander Mason in the black site for Batarian slavers. He wasn't publicly known, but he quickly began to break as many bones as humanly possible and to make everyone buckle under the pressure. He managed to get rid of his fears of slavers and began questioning the targets in question in a very accurate and aimed way. His main method was to find access to a person's mind through talks and then to find a way to exploit those weaknesses. His focus was talking, but he also used his limited biotics to cause pain and wouldn't shy away from old-fashioned beatings. The Alliance kept the interrogation facilities hidden from the public's eye to avoid dumb questions, asked by nosey reporters like Khalisah al-Jilani. His boss was very specific on not to talk to this specific reporter, the Briar would turn and run, when he saw that specific reporter and hovering camcorder. His untreated phobia of these floating nightmares was partly to blame for that, although he managed to hold still when marching in smaller parades. He even sat through an entire interview with Diana Allers, as the only other surviving soldier of the Elysium incident, without showing any signs of his phobia.
The hard strain the long hours of questioning took, forced Briar to exercise every day, even in the night to gain muscles and to keep his body and mind from stalling in critical moments. It turned into something habitual, that would even make the Turian drill sergeants envious.
After the destruction of the Destiny Ascension the Alliance buckled under pressure and released some data to certain ranking members of the Council species. An Asari apparently found out about the black sites and the high success rates of the interrogations, although they were never directly mentioned, there were hints of a large alliance vessel cruising about and whenever it stopped would deliver a pack of information on the hideouts of a pirate gang that had recently assaulted one of the human related active positions in Alliance space. Sometimes it would approach Council detainment vessels and hand over an inmate, that was in pristine medical condition, but psychological mess. She deducted the rest and contacted the admiral in charge about her thoughts on the matter. When she saw a chance, she blackmailed the admiral into handing over one of her interrogators to the Asari in the training facilities of Ilium in resisting torture and dealing with pain. Briar was chosen, because he was efficient at extracting information and knew how to resist pain.
Bored with his old job, he packed his bags and left for Ilium, looking for a fun and intriguing journey and experience, 10 months before the resurrection of Commander Shepard by Cerberus. And he would get it, but not in the way he asked for. He had already received a request by Cerberus to join Commander Shepard's crew, which he refused with a very unpleasant mail, containing a lot insults and jokes.
