Chapter 1: In Which Shepard Wakes Up
"Commander! Commander wake up!"
Shepard came groggily to, running a hand over the side of her face, fingers inching along the deep tracks of a near-open flesh wound.
"Commander, your scars aren't fully healed yet, but you have to get up, now!"
Her entire world was white-hot: too bright; too loud; painful. She grasped her side as she slid off the metal medical table and stumbled clumsily across the floor to a locker as instructed by the harpy over loudspeaker.
"Grab the pistol and armour from the locker. We don't have time, hurry!"
"Shut up! It's not like I'm playing board games here...oh come on, this thing doesn't even have a clip!" Shepard yelled at the omnipresent voice, forcing herself into a perfectly recreated set of her old armour at record speed.
"Ugh. Stop whining. Somebody's hacked the mechs, they're trying to kill you."
"What? Why? I just woke up, I don't even know what's going on." She skirted into the corridor warily, grabbing a thermal clip from the floor and then heading into cover in the next logical room.
"I don't have time to explain it to you."
"Couldn't you explain it to me right now on the go, instead of saying that?"
"No. Also, mechs are heading in your direction, stay out of cover until you've taken them out."
"Yeah, I'm aware of how this works." She leaned out of cover and fired the contents of her pistol into the oncoming mechs, mostly missing. Fortunately the explosions from damaged hardware finished themselves off. "Couldn't you explain it now, while I'm not actually moving anywhere?"
"Still no. Head to the next room."
Shepard moved up the stairs and onto a balcony in the next area. On the floor there was a grenade launcher next to some poor, dead bastard. "Won't be needing this piece of crap now!" She tossed her pistol over the side and grabbed the launcher, taking up residence behind the rail.
"Shepard, was that really necessary? Couldn't you have carried both?"
"Sod it." Leaning out of cover, she fired a grenade into an oncoming squad of mechs and then took the elevator down onto the walkway.
"You have biotics, you know. Just in case you forgot..."
"I'm well aware that I do." Shepard replied, tossing the grenade launcher to slide along the ground under a jet of fire as she sprinted through it herself.
"Then I assume you're aware that it's not necessary to cause the biggest amount of explosions wherever you go?
"What's the deal? It's only a little fire." She grabbed the launcher again and side-stepped into a corridor just in time to see an YMIR mech closing in on one helpless guy.
"We couldn't get insurance, Commander! Not with you on the base!"
"What the hell is going on here?" Shepard ran forward, placing her hands on the glass which separated them, looking around for a way in. The stranger screamed her name and banged on the window as the mech started firing an entire heavy round into him.
"Fuck!"
"Shepard, we don't have time for this. I can't keep the mechs stalled for long!"
"Considering they're out here killing everybody that doesn't seem like unexpected news! Can't you do something?"
"What do you think I'm doing right now?"
"Giving me useless instructions! I'm Commander-Fucking-Shepard, you really think I need you to hold my hand through this basic stuff while everyone else gets gunned down? Go and be useful somewhere else!"
"Fine." There was a pause before the voice spoke again. "They said you were a big jerk...you didn't need to shout at me. I can't believe we brought you back from the dead for this."
"Wait, what?" Shepard stopped in her tracks, looking up at the ceiling questioningly. "Hey, seriously. What was that?"
But there was only silence.
"HEY! Who said I was a big jerk?"
Moments later Shepard turned the corner and found herself in what looked like a poorly-designed waiting room. She shuffled over to a guy caught in a fire fight with yet more mechs, crouched down into position and didn't bother helping him.
"Shepard? What the hell?"
"What? I'm tired. Just how many mechs does this station have anyway?"
"That's not what I...never mind. Things must be worse than I thought if Miranda's got you running around."
"Miranda? Irritating accent? All-pervading voice?"
"That's her...though I wouldn't have put it that way myself. I'm Jacob, Jacob Taylor."
"Boring. Who is she anyway?"
"She's the director of the Lazarus Project."
"What's that?"
Jacob stopped, turning to her. "You mean you didn't listen to any of the datapads?"
Shepard was incredulous. "What? Why would I? I've been getting shot at. Why the hell would I stop to read datapads?"
He sighed. "What do you remember last?"
Shepard thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Hmm, nothing right now. I have a block."
Jacob reloaded his pistol. "Well, after the Normandy was destroyed, we recovered you. For the past two years you've been on this station, getting pieced together again. They called it The Lazarus Project."
"What, like the bible?"
"Yeah. Just like that, 'cause we raised you from the dead."
"You what? Wait, what- no, never mind. I don't even want to know about that right now." She searched for a way to change the topic. "The Lazarus Project...why not the Jesus Project?"
"Did you seriously just ask that?"
"More people can relate to Jesus."
"More people would be willing to put you back into a body bag if we went around calling you Jesus."
"What, so nobody gives a shit about Lazarus? Anyway, I heard Jesus was a prothean."
"I heard that you just took all the credit while Kaidan Alenko did all the hard work."
"What? That's not true! He wasn't even there at the end!"
"Whatever." Jacob used his biotics to throw the last mech over the railing and then began moving to the next room. "We need to get away from these mechs, fast."
"I need to get away from you guys, fast."
"Meat and tubes!" Jacob sang-song as he led her out of the room.
"...pasta?" Shepard hopefully inquired as she followed him.
"Deny. Your body was a hunk of beef jelly when they slopped you on the work bench. It was gross."
Shepard looked ill. Jacob carried on.
"It was like playing jigsaw with a can of spaghetti, and there was this one time a piece of you got caught on the button on this scientist's jacket. He was walking around for ages while you unravelled all over the corridor."
"Uhh..."
"Most of the time they were just winging it, shoving bits in wherever it would go. Man it was nasty."
"Okay, okay! I told you I didn't want to talk about it!"
The pair ascended a set of stairs and rounded a corner where Shepard leaned over a dead guy and began to hack his credit chit.
"Hey! Damn it Shepard, I'm not dead. It's me, Wilson?"
Jacob stepped forward. "Wilson! What are you doing over here? You don't have security clearance for this wing."
"I was trying to help. I came here to disable the mechs but whoever did this completely fried the system. It's no use. Get off me, Shepard!"
Shepard relented and stopped trying to hack Wilson's omnitool. "Fried the system? What does that even mean? You're not telling me that something as important as all the mechs on this station run off one panel?"
"We didn't plan for this contingency, Shepard."
"Why would you not?"
Jacob stepped between the two of them, waving his hands. "Hey, hey. We're not here to argue, we need to get Miranda and get off this station."
"I'm not going anywhere until somebody fixes my damn leg. I got shot!" Wilson groaned.
"Shepard, there should be some medigel over there. Hopefully there's enough to get him up and running again."
"What's the point? Look at him, he's not glamorous. He's clearly only a secondary character, he's probably going to die soon anyway."
Jacob helped Wilson to his feet and they stared, disbelieving, as Shepard grabbed the medigel and hoarded it in her suit without offering any to Wilson.
"You know...they said you were a big jerk, Shepard." Wilson wheezed as he continued to bleed out.
"Who said that?"
"We don't have time for this! We need to find Miranda." Jacob interjected.
"Screw Miranda. She probably started all this."
Shepard scrunched her eyebrows. "Didn't you say she spent the last two years running this project? Why would she put two years of her life into this and then get all crazy?"
"She wouldn't. This project was too important to her. If she was a traitor, then she wouldn't have bothered waking Shepard in the first place."
"Okay, fine. Maybe she's not a traitor, but she's not here now is she?" Wilson conceded. "We need to save ourselves!"
"You're just setting yourself up for a fall, aren't you?" Shepard mused.
"I'm still right, though." Another squad of mechs came through the door and before anyone else could react, Wilson overloaded the conveniently-placed explosive crates on the bridge and blew them up.
"How do you overload a box?"
"Shut up, Shepard!" Wilson leaned on Jacob's shoulder and began hobbling towards the exit, but Jacob stopped.
"Shepard, this is getting pretty tense. If I tell you who we work for, will you trust us?"
She considered this a moment. "Umm...no. Not really."
"Oh." Jacob said, and they continued on down the corridor.
There was just one more room between the team and the escape shuttles, but there was another squadron of mechs standing in their way. Shepard reached for her pistol, then realised she'd thrown it over the rails at the beginning of the tutorial.
"Shepard, you're kind of incompetent." Wilson noted, watching her crouch underneath a hail of gunfire.
"Yeah, what the hell, Shepard? Why didn't you bring the pistol that was with your armour?"
"Sod it." She leaned out of cover and fired a grenade into the doorway, causing a large explosion which almost blocked their only exit.
"What is wrong with you? You almost screwed everything up for us!" Wilson leaned against the doorway, kicking away a stray ceiling tile.
Jacob climbed over the rubble of eight shattered metal bodies and helped Wilson over. "Commander, if you fire that thing inside a building again I will shove it up your-"
"-Hey now." She interjected. "We're here."
Wilson shuffled forward and cleared the security check to give them access to the shuttle. The three were about to step inside when a woman stepped out and glared at them.
"Miranda? But you were supposed to be-" Gunfire interrupted him and before anyone could react, Wilson slumped to the floor.
"Dead?" The woman's breasts replied. It was the same tawdry-accented voice that had woke her up earlier. This must be Miranda.
"Hey," Jacob said. "You were right."
"Now aren't you glad you didn't waste the medigel?"
Miranda rolled her eyes and motioned for them to move into the shuttle with her handgun. "We'd better get going. My boss wants to speak with you."
