An: This is more or less a short one-shot that I tried to write in an attempt to get my muse back. My mind is driven on Mass Effect, but no matter what I try, I can never write something that I absolutely adore. Granted, I do not adore this. It's horrendous, but it's the only thing I've written in months, and who knows...maybe it'll develop into a full fledged story one day.
Until that day, excuse my lack of writing talent.
The pain was excruciating. Even after years of training, she knew she wasn't ready to handle situations that called forth such biotic output. Every inch of her body hurt, and tears refused to stop steaming down her reddened face. She was screaming and pleading for it to stop, but even that didn't slow the barrage of men that flooded into the training arena.
She yelled and she growled, trying to use her voice to add force behind her punches, and everything she saw was wrapped in blue. Every soldier crumpled to the floor, and their onslaught of gunfire failed to break through her biotic barriers. She was powerful...extremely powerful, but with every wave of soldiers, she could feel her heart skipping, and swore that she would drop dead in minutes.
Weak, and unable to carry on, she fell to her knees and looked over her shoulder. Her blurry gaze barely recognized the secluded room elevated above the training grounds, and she couldn't see the faces of the concerned researchers and the one stoic face that showed no emotion towards her. This stoic man she knew as her father, but his insistence to push her until her heart comes seconds from collapsing told her that he doesn't really care. A soft sob left her young lips and she wavered from her knelt position. She could feel unconsciousness coming, and she knew this time she wouldn't wake up.
"Dr. Lawson," his chief biotic researcher stated, stepping forward towards the glass that separated the creator and the creation. "You are going overboard with these training sessions. She is outputting more force than the average force produced by the prototype L3 biotic amps. Her eezo nodes are stretched to capacity and will explode if you continue this much longer."
"Her eezo nodes were stretched to capacity three waves ago, were they not Dr. Thompson?" the stoic man replied, looking towards the frantic woman. "If her nodes were in dangerous levels she would be dead by now, but she's still going strong. I know what she can and cannot handle...I created her."
"Yes, but you're going to kill her if you don't lower the intensity of her training," Thompson replied, strands of her auburn hair falling from her pinned back up-do. "Good God Lawson...she's only 16."
"She's old enough to know that her powers will be needed in this world," Dr. Lawson explained; clasping his hands behind his back in contemplation. "Cerberus needs a figure to follow...a face for the organization. The perfect example of humanity for them to model themselves and the future of our race after. A beautiful woman, with a sharp mind and even sharper skills. I'm attempting to create that, but you bloody scientists won't leave your pathetic sympathetic notions behind. If she dies then I know I have failed with her, and I go back the lab. Simple as that."
Without waiting for the horrified doctor to speak once more, Dr. Lawson turned his gaze towards the training controller and gave him a single nod before stepping up and pressing a button that would project his voice over the comm systems below. "Again."
A sob left her lips once more as she forced herself to stand on unsteady feet. Her hands hung limp by her side, and a faint flame of blue licked around her body as her tears dripped from her face onto the black mats below. The scientists always consoled her, and told her the training would get easier, but she had been working with her biotics since she was 13 and these sessions continued to rise into levels aptly described as pure, inhumane torture.
At first her training was easy. She would sit one on one with an asari and she would learn the meditations and the ability to manipulate the fields around her. Portrayed as a miracle child, she was on to moving weights and blasting over heavily-weighted dummies with her biotics in weeks, and such improvement seemed to spark her father's interest into what she could survive.
He would test everything. Her ability to throw objects, her ability to knock them over, even her barriers. One painful session was an entire hour of holding up a barrier as gunfire was replaced with heavy cannon fire that threatened to tear apart the facility they worked in. And even then that wasn't enough. She was forced to run through a field laced with mines, and her only chance of surviving would be keeping her barrier strong and unwavering as blast upon blast threatened to upset her concentration and send her into oblivion.
She couldn't handle much more of this, and she knew that all too well, but as multiple armored gunmen flooded the room, she had no choice but to fight back. She erected her barriers, and held them until fire ceased and she was able to expel biotic energy at a force that could liquify the human brain if they stood too close. Men fell around her and she could taste blood on her tongue. Heat dripped from her ear and her vision faded to black, but still she kept fighting. She flung men across the gym and sent them flying into the metal walls around her. She heard crunching and crying and couldn't tell if it was the men she was hurting, or her body completely falling apart. Either way she released one last strong wave of energy and heard the familiar "Complete," that marked the end of the wave.
She fell to her knees and leaned forward until her forehead was rested against the mat below. She could feel blood dripping from her ears and felt as drops of the metallic liquid fell from between her lips. She was dying, and knew that she only had minutes to hang on.
"Your training is complete for today, Miranda," her father stated from his perch. "We will reconvene here tomorrow at 0800 hours. You are dismissed."
"Fuck you," she cried softly, before she felt a cool hand on her back and new instantly that it was one of the many concerned doctors that were hired to make sure her strenuous trainings didn't kill her. She felt them pick her up and carry her off, but try as she might, she couldn't fight them – couldn't ask them to leave her to die. She tried to speak, but nothing came, and soon she was passed out and resting in the medical bay with her usual IV cocktail of vitamins and minerals. The doctors knew all she needed was rest, and a steady intake of calories, but the silent-working team knew that much more of this would surely kill the young girl.
"Will you stop at nothing?" Thompson asked, her voice cracking slightly as the researchers behind her remained silent in horror. "What does the death of that young girl prove to humanity?"
"That we can reach perfection," Dr. Lawson replied, turning on his heel and looking at Thompson with an apathetic stare. "We strive for perfection in every aspect of life doctor, but do we ever achieve? No. That is simply human nature, but with the boost of our technology and our current standing with the council races, we need a representative that humanity is a superior race...and one to be feared. You all might see this as torture, but this is nothing more than science. She is a project...a creation. Not a child."
Barely able to breathe, Thompson and her fellow scientists failed to respond. They were in shock, and could barely believe that a single man can portray such an evil monster. "Well, considering that none of you have any other input regarding the situation, you are all dismissed to your stations. Those of you who are working on the prototype biotic amps, I want your statistics sent to my private terminal by the end of the day. Those of you in the lab with myself, continue mapping Miranda's DNA and compare it to the strands extracted from my latest experiment. I want to know if I'll get any different results with this newest creation."
"Yes, doctor," the scientists muttered, watching as he excused himself from the room and more than likely went to check on his 'creation' barely hanging on to the last thread of her life in the east wing.