Mass Effect 30 Day Challenge

Mostly drabbles and fun, series of writing exercises

Kara Shepard | Sentinel | Paragade | Spacer/Sole Survivor

Prompt One: Which Mass Effect is your favorite?

Awakening

"Wake up Commander."

Kara Shepard heard the voice, tinny and unfamiliar through an overhead comm. system. That didn't make any sense though. The last thing she remembered was a burning sensation in her lungs, the hiss of air escaping from her suit's oxygen tank, the burning wreckage of the Normandy surrounding her as she spun through the vacuum of space towards the planet below. Silence except for her desperate gasps, trying to take in oxygen. Then blackness.

Now this.

The entire room lurched to the right as an explosion boomed nearby.

She opened her eyes, wincing at the florescent lights above her, and groaned. Every inch of her body ached like she'd just gone ten rounds with a Krogan. She looked around, taking stock of her location. A medical bay, but not a familiar one. Kara sat up slowly, wincing at a pain in her jaw, and suddenly the entire room lurched again and she almost fell off the bed.

"Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now, this facility is under attack."

Wha-

Kara squinted through the giant windows on the opposite wall. Bright orange explosions and sounds of the impact of gunfire ricocheting off shields erupted against the backdrop of space.

The hell?

Kara sat up, but almost immediately slumped back down as a sharp pain stabbed into her side. Clutching at it, she groaned and swung her legs over the side of the bed, trying to keep steady despite the room's violent shakes.

The voice again. "Your scars aren't healed but I need you to get moving! This facility is under attack."

Who is that?

A female voice, but no one familiar. Not Ashley or Liara, certainly not Tali. Not a surprise – they'd all made it to the escape pods, despite the repeated insistence of the gunnery chief that she was going to stay come hell or high water. This voice was brand new, and the med bay wasn't any she'd ever seen.

Where am I?

"There's a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room," the voice called through the external comms. "Hurry!"

Kara stood up, still clutching her side as she half-stumbled across the room towards the locker against the far wall. Maybe the voice did sound somewhat familiar. A voice from a dream she remembered having, a woman with dark hair and blue eyes standing over her as she struggled to breathe while a man with a datapad furiously made adjustments, the blaring shriek of a heart rate monitor superimposed over everything.

A nightmare?

Or something else?

"You don't have time to wait around Shepard! Grab your pistol and armor from the locker."

All right, all right. Kara shook her head rapidly and walked more steadily towards the far side of the room. The locker did indeed contain a pistol and an armor set – not her old N7 armor, though it bore the same insignia along the right chest-plate. She pulled it on in record time, her mind wandering back to her early training, the middle-of-the-night drills the instructors would call. She smiled to herself but stopped as her jaw twinged again and she snapped back to the present. Facility under attack. Pistol. Right.

Armor now donned, Kara picked up the pistol – a basic M-3 Predator model – and examined it. She scowled. "This doesn't have a thermal clip." Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed a couple of times after speaking.

"It's a med bay," the female voice over the comm. admonished her. "We'll get you a clip from – Damn it!"

Kara heard a loud 'thud' from across the room and saw a heavy set of doors. "Take cover!"

Kara ran, ignoring the pain in her muscles as she moved, and crouched down behind a pile of medical supply crates just as the room was rocked by an explosion that sent pieces of the door flying. What the hell?

Peering around the corner of the crates, Kara saw that the door had been blasted open. No one emerged from the smoke, however, so she cautiously moved forward through the crater that had been left by the explosion. Her eyes caught something glinting on the floor in front of a second set of blast doors. A clip. Perfect.

She grabbed it and loaded the pistol as the woman's voice echoed overhead again. "Someone's hacking security trying to kill you!"

Someone trying to kill me? Kara gave a half-smile again, this time ignoring the pain it caused. Must be Tuesday.

The doors slid open and Kara ran through them into a hallway. The woman yelled something about taking cover but Kara didn't need the help; a tall skinny mech with a glowing red face approached from up the stairs – Loki mechs, that was what they were called – its tinny voice blaring the words 'hostiles detected' at her.

Vaulting over another stack of crates, Kara crouched behind a guardrail as two shots flew past her head. Popping up from cover, she lined up the shot and the pistol barked three times, hitting the mech square in the chest. It stumbled backwards and raised its arm to shoot again, but Kara, reacting purely by reflex, thrust her left hand forward and released a wave of biotic energy, throwing the machine back until it bounced off the wall and landed with a distressed 'bleep' on the floor.

Kara ran up the stairs and found two more thermal clips for her pistol. The overhead lights of the hallway flickered and she heard more shots being fired up ahead. She winced and rubbed her jaw again, this time noticing a pattern of unfamiliar scars across her cheek. She tried to focus on the issue at hand – mechs with guns, someone trying to kill her – but as she raced through the hallways of this strange besieged facility, the questions refused to leave her mind.

What's going on?

And where the hell am I?

Answer: Mass Effect 2