Chapter 1: Assassin
Author's Note: Time to get to work on this story. The beginning is set in the middle of the two years that Shepard was dead with a slight flashback/dream near the end. This story is mostly about revenge and what happens when you go too far to find out how far you can revive a dead person. And what happens when you fuck with the wrong person.
"Assassinations are easy; it's the escape that's a bitch." –unknown
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"Hey wake up," someone yelled. "Wake the fuck up, you is in my spot."
The body behind the voice kicked Storm in the side of the leg. He leapt up immediately, hands in a defensive position. The homeless man jumped at the sudden motion.
"Hey man I was only kidding," the homeless man held his hands up in surrender and backed away. "If you want to sleep there go ahead."
Storm scanned the area for any visible threats, when none appeared he lowered his defense. He brushed past the man without saying a word, leaving the man and his questioning eyes. He turned down an alley between a group of apartments. The alleys of Omega were great for sneaking around.
He approached a staircase and jumped up it two steps at a time. As he approached the top he slowed and dropped to a crouch. He slowly snuck up the last few steps and onto the roof. He adjusted the hood of his tactical cloak and waited. Less then five minutes later his com beeped. He reached up and opened the channel.
"Take out the target," the deep human voice said. Its tone one of total authority.
Storm bowed his head out of habit, "as you command Lord Zeus."
And then the channel was dead, cut by the other end. Storm reached into his tactical cloak and pulled out his sniper rifle. He trained it on one of the guards on the catwalk ahead of him. He began to squeeze the trigger.
He stopped. 'I don't need a gunfight in this place,' he thought as he lowered his rifle and looked for any way to reach his target across the way.
His eyes fell upon three steel pipes that ran beside both buildings.
'That'll have to do,' he thought as he returned his rifle to its slot on his back.
He tapped a command into his Omni-tool and disappeared with a pop and a hiss.
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Another scream reverberated from the door to the suite and down the hall. Several male humans stood guard in front of the door. One cast a fearful glance down the hall towards the shadows, while another typed away on his Omni-tool. The others simply stood there, eyes scanning everywhere for anything that might ruin their bosses 'good time'. As the screams died down, one of them finally spoke up.
"Van goes through hookers like I go through my paycheck," he said. "I mean he only buys booze and hookers. I don't get how he made it so far up the Blood Pack chain of command."
The closest, much older Blood Pack guard continued to work on his Omni-tool.
"Hey Talos, are you ignoring me?" the first asked, anger quickly building from no reply. He raised his voice an octave. "Hey!"
Talos typed in the last part of a command into his Omni-tool, before looking at the other guard.
"Yeah, Bark I heard you," Talos answered. "And you're right about Van; he does go through hookers like nobodies business."
Bark muttered some incoherent curses under his breath. Talos ignored the younger mercenary's curses and returned to typing on his Omni-tool. An eerie silence befell them. Several minutes passed, before Bark spoke up again.
"Did you hear the latest report about the ghost?" he inquired.
Talos chuckled at the younger merc's bringing up a myth.
"Do you actually believe that stuff?" he asked back.
Bark nodded. "Don't you?"
Talos released a massive sigh, mentally preparing for the conversation that they had had several times before; since it happened at least twice a week.
"No," he answered. "I don't believe that this Storm guy is real."
Bark stared at Talos, open mouthed for several seconds.
"How can you say that?" Bark finally said. "Fourteen assassinations in the past six months, nine during huge thunderstorms; he is real."
Talos shook his head. He still wasn't convinced.
"How about the attacks themselves," Bark continued. "Entire squads destroyed no survivors; in any of the attacks. The only thing to prove he exists is two seconds of footage from a security camera; which he destroyed a fucking second later."
Talos shook his head again. "One man couldn't take out all those men," he said. "It was probably a tight knit mercenary group or something like that."
This time Bark shook his head. "It can't be more than one person," he countered Talos' claim. "Or they would've been seen by cameras or people. And how could any group of people sleep at night after cutting someone up like that?"
A shiver shot up Talos' spine. He had seen some of the pictures of what happened to the target of the assassinations. The target was always dismembered. Talos assumed it was done painfully, since blood usually covered everything. The only way anyone investigating the crime could identify the person was by retinal or DNA scans.
"I don't," Talos began, when the door to the master suite opened.
Van stepped out into the middle of the gaggle of guards. In his hand was the neck of a struggling asari stripper.
"I'm done with this one," the human said as he tossed her out in the middle of the guards like she was trash. "Get rid of her."
And with that he walked back into his room, leaving the terrified asari in the middle of seven ruthless psychopaths.
"Dibs," Talos proclaimed. Several of the men shouted yelled protest, whilst a few visibly showed disgust at the others. "You all know the fucking rules. And I won."
The others turned away, most muttering curses under their breath. Talos eyed up the prize, a beautiful asari girl that was ready to go, and terrified.
He cracked his knuckles, a glint in his eyes that told the asari she was about to feel a lot of pain. She braced for the worst, when something silently dropped behind the man that was intent on raping her. Her eyes widened when a figure appeared behind him. The figure reached for the mercenaries head.
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Storm placed his right hand on the mercs chin, and simultaneously put his left on the mans forehead. With a jerk he snapped the mans neck. The body fell limply to the ground in front of the asari. He quickly activated his cloak and disappeared as the other guards turned to see what the commotion was about.
"What the hell happened?" one of them exclaimed as he ran to turn the dead man over.
Storm silently slipped between two of them and behind another. He waited till all their attention was on the corpse before he acted. He wrapped an arm around the neck of the person in front of him, and covering his mouth to prevent the scream that followed from escaping. He quickly dragged the man behind a pillar, tightening his choke hold until the man stopped struggling and passed out. He held the hold for a second later and then flipped the body over the railing.
'Look out below,' he thought as he stepped out from behind the pillar.
The other guards hadn't even noticed that one was missing, as they were all too interested in the corpse of the first victim. He snuck up behind two that were the closest to him, drawing his two Bolo knives. His cloak beeped, indicating that its batteries were spent and needed to recharge. But he wouldn't need it.
The assassin materialized behind the two unsuspecting victims, blades poised for a death strike. Like lightning he drove the blades forward, burying them into the men's spines. As the life left their bodies and they began to drop he ripped the blades free and moved between them to the next person. The helmeted guard in front of him began to turn to see what the new commotion was about.
Storm stabbed him through the armors vulnerable side, cutting straight through ribs and the heart. The guard to his left was farther away, just outside of stabbing distance. So he did the next best thing. He flipped the knife in his left hand so he held the tip and hurled it at the guard. The guard had turned just in time to catch the knife in his right eye.
The final guard, the one that was going to rape the stripper was the only one left, now held the girl hostage.
"What the hell are you?" Talos asked. Sweat ran down his forehead as he trained his pistol on Storm.
"I'm your," Storm began. He grabbed the pistol off the guard with a knife in his ribs belt and shot Talos in his knee. The man loosened his grip and the asari quickly escaped, crawling into the nook of a pillar. Storm casually walked over to the bleeding man. "I'm your worst nightmare, the thing you refuse to believe in."
Talos' eyes widened in realization as Storm shot him in the head. He turned to look at the terrified woman. "Stay here."
Words failed her, so she simply nodded in understanding. He ripped the knife from the man's ribs and flicked away the blood and gunk. He opened the door and stepped through the door and into the apartment. The ring leader, Van sat in a plush leather chair smoking a cigar. Upon seeing an intruder he bolted up from the chair.
"Who the hell are," he began. Storm shot him in the knee… twice. The man dropped to the floor, clutching his wounded leg and screaming loudly. "What the fuck is wrong with you!"
Storm tossed the pistol away and walked over to the man. He stepped on an injured knee, eliciting more screams from the man. When the screaming died down he stepped off the knee and bent down to retrieve the cigar from where it had fallen to the ground. He picked it up and flipped it between his fingers. Then he swiftly jammed it into the hole that the pistol had created in Van's knee. He screamed louder.
"Shut up," Storm ordered as he brought his knife up to the mans throat. The screaming subsequently stopped. "I'm here to deliver a message to your boss Garm. And you're going to deliver it, nod if you understand."
Van nodded.
"Good," Storm dropped the cigar and reached for a hand. He brought it up to the blades edge. "Now this is going to hurt."
He cut off two fingers. The screaming returned, louder and more pain stricken than ever. Storm waited patiently for the man to stop. When he finally did Storm spoke again.
"The only thing is," he lopped off another finger and then covered the mans mouth so he could finish. "You aren't going to deliver this message with words."
Van's eyes widened and his screams turned into begging.
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The asari huddled closer to the pillar as a cold breeze blew across her body. The tears on her face dried, leaving salty trails down her face. She had stayed there, too mortified to move as Van's screams filled her ears. She wasn't sorry for the man that had just kidnapped and raped her, or for the men that were now dead around her. Her emotions were too shot to feel anything, other than fear. She dared not move, lest the man that saved her decide to kill her as brutally as he had the guards around her.
Suddenly the door to the suite opened and the assassin stepped back onto the catwalk. She looked up to see him illuminated in a shaft of light created by the open door. A strong breeze blew across the walkway, blowing his cloak aside and exposing his body. Her eyes went wide with shock as she looked him from toe to head.
Five razor sharp talons on each foot, his legs were huge, knees armed with spikes that ran halfway up his calves. His chest looked like a metallic skeleton; his right arm matched the armor spiked shoulder and elbow, and five claws. The left arm by contrast was completely different; it was synthetic, almost like a geths with a staff of some sort and a knife jutting out of it. She looked up to his face and her suspicions of the man actually being a geth soared. His face was replaced by a single metallic red eyeball with a spike on each side of it, stabbing the air in front of the eye.
"You're a Geth," she gasped. Her fear grew with each second.
Storm stepped forward, towards the body that had his knife lodged in its eye. The asari noticed a detail she had overlooked; red lines flowed across his armored body, like rivers of blood to match the stains from his victims that covered him.
"Not Geth," he said aloud as he grabbed the Bolo's handle. The voice sounded human to the asari, so unlike what the recording portrayed Geth to sound like. With a tug he pulled the knife free and then placed it beside its almost identical brother. "But you could say that's the nicest thing I've been called in a long time."
He brought his synthetic hand up to his helmet and pressed a release switch. A two inch long line appeared in the center of the eye. The middle split apart on that line as he turned to look at the asari. She gasped again.
"I've been called many things," he said as he looked down upon her with his cold, cybernetic eyes. "Monster, Surgeon, Destroyer, Butcher, the list goes on."
The asari covered her mouth to prevent another gasp from leaving her. Those were the names of the most infamous assassins of the past three years.
"But my name is what my master decides to call me," he continued. "Storm."
She shook her head in confusion. "But why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me your name?"
"Because," Storm answered. He drew his own pistol and pointed it at her head. "I leave no survivors, and no witnesses."
He pulled the trigger.
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People continued with their pitiful lives as Storms hooded figure weaved through the masses. A group of Blood Pack guards were approaching from the opposite direction, led by none other than Garm himself. Storm ducked into a weapons mod store. He pulled the hood of his cloak lower as he pretended to look at the vendors stock. The goons passed by without giving him as much as a glance. However, the store owner did notice him and walked up to him.
"Can I help you find anything?" the batarian asked.
Storm looked at the list of weapon modifications. "I could use this armor piercing mod for my assault rifle," he pointed at the mod on his screen. A number next to the listing indicated that only one was left.
"Ah that is a very good choice," the batarian vendor said as he rummaged around the store in search of the product. He soon found it and placed it on the counter. "That will be seven thousand credits."
Storm gave the vendor ten thousand. The batarian nodded in understanding of the age old tactic of Omega. He took the money and gave Storm the part, and then deleted any evidence that anything had just occurred on all of his security systems.
Storm grabbed the part with his armored hand and left the store without another word. He quickly melted into the mass of people as he made his way to the docks. He walked past Afterlife, its thumping music vibrating his bones as he stepped through the door and into the docks proper. He quickly made his way to his personal docking bay.
'The Legions docking bay," he mentally corrected himself.
In its berth was a beat up freighter, and sitting on a bench by the airlock was one kid named Eric Bolde, who preached that he could outmaneuver any ship with his old bucket of bolts.
"Let's go," Storm said as he kicked the pilot's leg. "Missions done, time to head home."
The pilot stretched. "Damn I was having a great dream," he yawned. He got up and followed Storm through the airlock. "One full of booze and sexy bitches."
Storm rolled his eyes inside his helmet.
"Aren't you lucky," he said as he stopped by his weapons locker and removed his cloak. "Any problems while I was gone?"
The pilot took his seat in his chair and began powering up his baby. "Nope," he yelled down the hall to the armory. "Just the same old boring shit as usual. You?"
Storm froze for a split second, the image of the young asari flashed through his mind. He blinked to clear it away and returned to putting his weapons away, except his assault rifle.
"No," he said as he walked over to a work bench. "Everything that I had to get done got done."
The ship dusted off and left Omega's port for the relay a few minutes away. Storm quickly broke down his rifle with the usual hypnotic rhythm his body had developed ever since he could remember.
'Not that I can remember a whole lot about my past,' he thought as he inserted the new upgrade into the mass effect accelerator. 'No one I ever talk to ever seems to. Who knew memories were so hard to find.'
He quickly reassembled the rifle and test fired it at the closed hatch at the back of the small ship.
"What the hell?" Bolde yelled from the cockpit. "For fucks sake, are you shooting my ship again you son of a bitch?"
Storm placed the rifle in its locker and sealed it up tight. "Who me? Impossible."
"One of these days you're going to shoot a hole through the ship," Bolde yelled louder. "And when that happens I will punch the shit out of you till the vacuum sucks all the air from my lungs."
Storm laughed. "So you'll get maybe one punch in," he said as his back slid down the wall so that he was in a sitting position with his legs in front of him. He dropped his head down into his chest.
"I can hold my breath," Bolde continued. "So at least five or six good ones."
"Going to sleep now," Storm used his polite way of saying shut the hell up.
He closed his eyes and sleep quickly overtook him. He mostly dreamt of the same thing he always did; screaming people being eradicated, sinister voices whispering words of destruction, and the same monster reaching out to grab hold of him with its sleek purple hand. Then something new appeared.
He was chained to a table. Two black masked lab coats surrounded him, one holding a metal case and the other a bone saw.
"Let us begin phase one," the one with the container said.
The other complied by revving up the saw. He slowly brought down onto Storms left arm. He tried to scream as the saw dug deeper and deeper, spraying the strangers mask and coat with blood and gore. Only nothing came out when he tried. He attempted to move his other arm, but it felt as if it were encased in cement.
Then the saw reached the nerves connecting his arm to his body, and the pain skyrocketed. Tears began to stream down his face as he grinded his teeth. Finally he passed out from all the pain coursing through his nerves and muscles.
He awoke stuck in the same room, still chained to the table. Well his right arm anyways. When he looked to see what had become of his left arm he saw it wasn't there. He tried to scream again, and this time he did…loudly and for a long time. The two lab coats walked back into his view.
"Ah the subject is awake," the same voice from before said. "Good. Now we can begin phase three of the test. Attach it."
The other doctor nodded and turned to grab something off of a table.
"What the fuck do you want?" Storm screamed with venom in his voice as his anger grew. "What the fuck are you doing to me!"
The other man turned around, in his hands a synthetic arm.
"This may sting a little," the voice said. Storm turned to glare at him, only to stare right into a camera lens.
Knives of pain shot up his entire left side, causing him to scream louder than he thought possible. He looked to see what the cause was, and immediately wished he hadn't. The synthetic muscle on the end of the shoulder joint was digging into his chest. It dug deeper and deeper, connecting with his muscle fibers and nerves. He screamed until his throat dried and his voice cracked, then he grit his teeth for a few seconds, and then went right back to screaming.
The two doctors watched the entire time, recording it all on camera and occasionally typing a few notes into their data pads; until finally the pain dimmed and Storm finally stopped screaming. He relaxed, letting his head smack into the table he was on with a thud. And then the doctors were by his side again, poking and prodding his body and locking his new arm in another restraint.
"Connection seems fine," the voice said. "No bleeding or loose ends seems to have occurred. Subject is alive and stable; pulse is high from the procedure."
Storm's breath was shaky at best, from both pain and anger in equal parts.
"Move your index finger please," the voice told him.
His eyes darted from the ceiling to the man with the recorder. He burned holes through the man with his hatred.
"Move my fingers!" he screamed. He jerked at his restraints. Both arms moved, straining the cuffs that held him down. "I'll move my fingers around your neck!"
The other lab coat grabbed hold of his good arm and stuck a syringe in him. A slight wave of dreariness washed over him as he fought to break the restraints. The dizzy spell from the drugs quickly evaporated.
"And you," he screamed whilst looking at the other doctor. He pulled on the restraints again and felt them start to give. "I'm going to kill you!"
He broke the restraints and lunged at the coat with the empty syringe. He ripped it from the man's hand and reared it back with his synthetic arm. He slammed it into the screaming mans eye.
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Storm sat up with a jolt. He looked around; he was back aboard the freighter. He leaned back against the bulkhead and breathed a sigh of relief.
'That wasn't a normal nightmare,' he thought as he brought his synthetic hand up in front of his face. He opened and closed it slowly, waiting for his pounding heart to slow down.
"Get ready to depart from the S.S Beautiful," Bolde yelled from the cockpit; interrupting Storms little reverie. "Because we're home."
With a sigh Storm stood up and walked to his weapons locker. He opened it and holstered each weapon, finishing by putting his cloak back on and pulling the hood over his face. He went and stood in front of the rear hatch.
"We'll be hitting the pad in thirty seconds Storm," Bolde hollered between communiqués with the base. "Hold tight man."
'Am I a ship lost in a chaotic storm,' he asked himself. 'Or am I the chaotic storm churning up what is better left calm and peaceful?"
The ship slowed and set down on a landing pad.
"You are a cleansing tempest," the voice in the back of his head said. "The Arbiter of Salvation."
Storm pulled his hood lower and stepped off, the questions he had far outnumbering the answers.
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Author's Note: What do you think so far? A lot of information in this chapter with a lot of things that will be explained later; but what I can safely tell you without spoiling anything is that Storm is an Assassin for a mercenary group called the Black Legion and that their leader, Zeus has ulterior motives that will be explained way the hell down the storyline. Next chapter will show what kind of crap happens in Storms life outside of killing targets, followed by killing a target. As always review, subscribe, favorite, etc.
And Embrace Chaos!