The Sole Survivor
A few short minutes ago there had been fifty marines here. Here being Akuze, a planet that had recently been colonized, and even more recently gone silent. No word from the pioneers for weeks now. That's why the marines had come, to investigate this strange lack of communication, but the settlement was empty, and in poor shape besides. They didn't have a clue as to what had gone on here. Not until night fell. Not until nightmares come to the waking world made their grand entrance.
Bursting from the ground without warning and with the force of an explosion, they let out a piercing shriek. They were huge worm-like beasts with forelimbs resembling scythes around a gaping maw and a bright blue tongue lolling out of it. They tore into the marines like a meat grinder, gnashing and spewing some sort of acid. In mere minutes, the marines died screaming in a ghoulish, violent bloodbath. Now a lone figure remained. Somehow there had been a survivor from this massacre. That lone figure was Jayna Shepard. As she lay there with only her thoughts to keep her company, she wondered what those things had been and where they had come from.
Suddenly her mind focused, a moment of clarity. She could allow her memories to haunt her later, but for now her time was precious. She had to survive. At the present there was a bit of rubble on top of her from when one of the creatures smashed into the building she was attempting to retreat to. It had lacerated her knee but had also probably saved her life, hiding her from the monsters. Monsters? Yes, that was what they were. She crawled out from under twisted metal and surveyed the scene. Her eyes briefly lingered on the remains of her fellow marines, brave souls one and all. She would mourn later. She caught sight of a tower not far away, near the edge of the settlement. It looked like a communications tower and it didn't seem to be too badly damaged. There was a good chance she could get it working again.
Well, she thought, at least I know my next step. With pained effort she stood and began to hobble toward her goal. It seemed to take days to reach the tower but she knew it had barely been minutes. After all, the tower hadn't been far. Once inside she stopped to take inventory of herself, sitting on the floor. She was covered in a variety of cuts, scrapes, and what would soon be bruises. That wasn't a problem. Her knee on the other hand was worse than she had at first thought. The cut was deep and she might even have fractured it. Staring at the wound her mind was suddenly filled with the faces of her fellow soldiers, her friends, and she was pained at their loss. So many people she respected and cared for, all dead. Couldn't I have done SOMETHING, she screamed in her mind. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. No…no there was nothing you could do, she told herself. You need to let this go. She pushed all that aside in her mind and went back to survival mode. She had a single pack of medi-gel and, although it couldn't fix her knee, it could stop the bleeding enough that she wouldn't pass out.
Standing once more she looked around the room she was in. Mostly metal construction, sterile, but somebody had put a few indoor plants around to make it homey. Most of the lighting was off. A few lights flickered. Main power was obviously down and the secondary power was apparently damaged. Probably those worm-things were to blame. Elevators were going to be a no-go.
"Stairs it is" she said aloud, breaking the current silence.
She took a step forward and winced as pain surged through her leg. She had wasted too much time and her shock had worn off, letting the pain hit her with full force. The medi-gel may have brought the bleeding to a near halt but its mild anesthetic was no match for the pain caused by deep tissue injuries like the one she was dealing with. There was no mistaking that she needed professional medical attention, but she would never get any if she stopped now.
"Come on, Jayna. You can do this." She spoke aloud once more as if the sound of a voice, even her own, would somehow lend her strength.
She limped her way to the stairs. Taking a deep breath she gripped the railing tightly and pulled herself onto that first step. It was agony. Another step. Still more pain. She set her jaw and continued on. There were landings as she made her way up and at each of them there were large windows. Each time she was tempted to look, to see if she could see the field of death she had left behind, but she never did. There was no time for that now. She had to survive.
Reaching another landing, a strange but familiar sound crept into the near silent stairwell. She stopped, for only a moment, to listen. Rustling. She felt her heart beat faster, her senses grow stronger, her muscles tense. A part of her felt foolish for not even considering the possibility she wasn't alone. Slowly, she took a few steps forward, closer to the sound, closer to the threat, concentrating on the sound. She could now make out a very subtle whistling noise. Wind? Gripping the next set of railing, and readying herself for another bout of torture, Shepard began climbing the stairs again. If she kept focused on her goal, she would make it through this.
Climbing the flight of stairs still further, the sound became louder, clearer. Arriving at another landing, she turned to continue upward, only to discover the source of the dissonance: metal mangled with glass and stone, bursting from where the large windows should have been, blocking passage across the next landing. Shepard's heart sank. If she couldn't get up to the next floor, she couldn't get into the main com room. And if she couldn't get into the comm room, she couldn't send out a distress call. And if she couldn't send out a distress call…
She chose to not think about that. She wouldn't accept failure. Steadying herself as best she could, she reached out one hand. Her biotic abilities had gotten her out of plenty of tough situations before, and she trusted them to get her out of this one. The warm energy pulsed through her, traveling down through her forearm until it surrounded her hand in a radiant blue glow. Releasing, she watched as it traveled through the air straight to her target. The biotic energy encircled the rubble, giving the stairwell an eerie luminescence, and lifted the debris from the floor. The broken window being the only out-of-the-way place for the rubble to go, she motioned her arm towards it, her target following. Quickly returning to its natural hue, her former roadblock dropped with a crash to the ground below.
Shepard paused: if those burrowing worm beasts were still anywhere nearby, they certainly would have heard that, and more than likely would come to investigate. When she was assured, at least for the moment, that nothing was coming for her, Shepard carried on, finally reaching her destination. She neared the door to the main comm room. Soon she would record her message, and the Alliance Navy would send a ship to rescue her from this unspeakable nightmare. She pressed the door control to open it, but it didn't respond. Locked. Sighing as if she should have expected this, she activated her omni-tool. The orange holographic display appeared over her right forearm, illuminating the dark hallway around her. The hacking ordinarily didn't take very long, but in her frustration the time seemed to pass infinitely. Minutes went by as the program attempted to bypass the security network. The coding was obviously very advanced if her military-issued device was having difficulty. Shepard watched the interface, expecting it to be decrypting the program. Instead, she noticed it was no longer making any progress at all. The orange glow of the omni-tool began to flash a brilliant red as the decryption program shut down.
"Grragh!" She slammed a now clenched fist against the unmoving door. Biotic energy surrounded her arm again, and she hurled numerous attacks at the door in fury. The door remained unrelenting, and her rage subsided. Turning her back to it, she slid down until she sat on the cold floor. She had come so far, or so it felt, only to be locked out of the one place she needed to be. Her head hung in despair. Tears welled in her eyes as fear washed over her, the fear that she was going to die here, injured, alone, and far from home.
"Pull yourself together, Jayna. You're stronger than this." She scolded. "Just think…"
She activated her omni-tool once more, this time accessing the schematic of the building. There had to be another way into the room, no matter how unconventional. Air ducts; she wouldn't rule them out just yet, but she knew that climbing into one would be challenging in her current condition. She looked closer, hoping that another option would present itself. The comm room itself, as to be expected, had a very simple layout; a small square-like room with stairwell and elevator access.
Elevator shaft.
Though the elevators weren't presently operational, they weren't locked either. The thought of climbing through the elevator shaft was daunting, but more easily accessible than the air ducts. Picking herself up from the floor, Shepard made her way back down the stairs one floor. She now had a clear image of the building in her mind, and approached the door of the room directly below the main comm room.
"Please don't be locked…"
She pressed the door control, expecting the same response as the previous one, but to her surprise the door opened.
"Yes!" she proclaimed and hobbled into the room. She was running on pure adrenaline now, causing her to walk at a greater pace than before. The elevator wasn't far from the stairwell door. Once she was close enough, she interfaced her omni-tool with the shaft door control. It opened easily.
Stepping to the edge, she looked down the shaft. It continued two more levels beyond this one. Although it wasn't very far, a fall would render her body useless to her. On all four walls of the shaft ran thick pipes and cables. Directly to her right, on the same wall as the open door, was a maintenance ladder. Without the use of one of her legs, climbing up one floor would take an incredible amount of strength, and she was in short supply of that. But she was so close now that giving up would be absurd.
She took a deep breath.
Grabbing one rung of the ladder with both hands, she stepped off the edge of the shaft, both legs dangling for a moment before her good leg found its footing. Dragging the dead weight of her injured leg behind her, she climbed the ladder, one rung at a time, breathing heavily and keeping her eyes on her goal.
Finally she reached the next level, with the shaft door closed in front of her. A biotic attack would be able to blast the door open from this close proximity. Locking her good leg in place on the ladder for support, she took her aim at the door, letting the power build up inside of her.
"Please work."
She released the biotic throw, and with destructive force it blasted through the metal door, hurling it into the room. Shifting her weight to her good leg once more, she forced herself up and around the newly busted hole, her wounds now howling in a cruel symphony of pain, only encouraging her need to collapse. As she lay on the cold floor, triumphant but battered, her breath echoed even after she fell silent, and once again she was forced to face the truth that she was indeed alone.
Compelling herself to stand, she walked to the comm control panel in the center of the room. Thankfully, the emergency power left the unit fully operational. She powered up the system.
A strange symbol she had never seen before was presented on the screen. It was very simple, hardly something worth noting, and yet it had her attention. It was a yellow elongated hexagon with a border on either side. Before Shepard had time to really evaluate the symbol the system had completely started up. Time to record her message.
Shepard's actions play back on a large monitor, overcast by a thick cloud of smoke in a dimly lit room. A man sits with his legs crossed; his glowing blue eyes remain the only feature not shadowed. He watches, captivated by the scene before him. The ice in his glass clinks together in a golden-brown liquor as he swirls it in one hand, a cigarette aglow in the other. He brings a cigarette to his lips and inhales slowly. Another figure, a woman, stands nearby, more interested in the man's reactions to the footage than the event itself. The man exhales a puff of smoke.
"Keep an eye on her." The man says to the woman, "She shows promise."