Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.
A/N: Wow, what a response. Thanks for the support so far, and I hope you continue to enjoy.
Two
All experiments in effect continue to show promise, though they require extensive testing and precautions prior to implementation. Subject Zero's adaptability, combined with refinement of the prototypes after initial trials, has resulted in multiple successes so far.
Controlled trials with the other subjects have also proven effective; in addition to providing operant conditioning for an aggressive mindset, they have given us a source of field test data for Subject Zero's adjustment to our procedures.
Tomorrow at 0700, we will implant the experimental amp; Subject Zero is expected to be lucid and test-ready within two standard hours of the procedure.
Normally it would be easy enough to defuse the moment with a joke about inflight reading, but as Jack clicked off the datapad and set it down on the seat next to her, she couldn't quite muster up the pretense. Rage bubbled up in her chest, mingling with a vague nausea at her recollections of the Pragia facility, the constant forced 'training', the surgeries...
...like the amp. Jack reached back and ran a fingertip over the scar on her neck; it, along with the surge of power that shot from her hands every time she used her biotics, was the sole memento of that procedure. Over half her more prominent scars weren't from fights, as people often assumed, but remnants from the numerous surgical procedures she'd undergone as a child: needles inserted, amps connected, fibers strengthened. She muttered a curse to herself, but it was swallowed up in the roar of the shuttle's engines. At least the ride couldn't last much longer; they'd been flying for almost thirty minutes since breaking atmo and it wouldn't be much longer before the team was at the landing zone and could get this over with.
"All right, let's go over the plan again." Ah, there it was, the world's most unwelcome intrusion this side of Kelly Chambers. Shepard had a persistent habit of rehashing the plan before they touched down, citing a need to be prepared; this was all well and good, but in the month Jack had spent on the Normandy strike team she had not once seen one of the commander's plans survive contact with the enemy. Well, more power to him for at least sticking to his guns.
"All we have from intelligence reports is that the Blue Suns have forcibly taken over Zorya's largest mineral refinery," Shepard said, examining the mission briefing on the datapad. "They've got the workers hostage, and they aren't making demands, so we can probably assume they're using anybody still there as forced labor."
Zaeed Messani, who was in the seat next to him, spat out of the shuttle's bay door. "Blue Suns," he growled. "Used to mean something before they turned into goddamned thugs for hire. Probably just looking to make a few quick credits and then torch the place."
It seemed likely that most of the team would be fighting each other in the absence of the Collectors as a mutual enemy, but Zaeed...well, Zaeed was okay, Jack had decided. He was pragmatic, had his head screwed on right when it came to dealing with problems, and most importantly, wouldn't be stabbing them in the back before he got his money. Plus he was old enough to be her father, meaning there weren't many tricks he hadn't seen and he always had a story to pass the time. Apparently, it'd been his idea to go to Zorya and do this particular mission, which meant he was probably getting paid extra for it. Ah well, she was grateful for the action nonetheless.
"Our first priority," Shepard announced, slamming a fist into his palm for emphasis, "is the safety of the hostages. After securing the area, we'll escort them out to the landing zone for pickup."
Jack raised a hand, waving it like an impertinent child in grade school. "Uh, dunno if you noticed this, Shepard, but this isn't exactly the kind of group you bring if you're looking to deal with a hostage situation." She, at least, didn't believe in the concept of 'overkill'. (Or 'collateral damage'.)
Her words drew a bemused snort from Zaeed. "'struth," he agreed, and cocked his assault rifle for emphasis.
To his credit, the commander had gotten used to her occasional jab, and was a big enough boy to not get his feelings hurt. "That's why you two are going to be dealing with the Suns," he clarified. "I've got a little experience dealing with situations that require some precision--" ...well, that was modest of him... "--and Thane's coming along to back me up with hostage extraction."
Ah yes, the elephant in the room. In the week since they'd picked up Krios, Jack had done her best to live up to her end of the 'deal' and stay away from him. That hadn't been hard, since she stayed away from everyone, but the next thing she knew he was coming along on the Zorya job, and what's more, he was in the seat next to her on the shuttle. Go figure.
"Understood, Commander." Even while leaning back in the chair, he looked poised, ready to spring at any given moment. "What kind of resistance are we anticipating?"
"If I know Vido," Zaeed answered, "he'll have a fully kitted-out division holed up there, just in case somebody comes to punch holes in his sorry arse. Maybe even a mech, if he's really feeling scared." He chortled, a bloodthirsty gleam in his good eye. "Not that it'll save him."
"We're not here to deal with vendettas," warned Shepard, holding a finger up. "Stick to the plan, people. Everything will go fine as long as nobody goes off the rails and jeopardizes the mission."
Fifteen minutes later, the mission had been thoroughly jeopardized.
Vido Santiago had an entire platoon of mercs, wielding the kind of armaments you expected to see from the Alliance navy. He'd locked the hostages in the back of the refinery (to Shepard's dismay) and bolted as fast as his now-gimped legs would take him, heading for his gunship (to Zaeed's dismay). The two were now engaged in an intense argument about the nature of the mission and the chain of command, right there in the middle of the pumping station.
Oh, and the refinery was on fucking fire, courtesy of Zaeed's 'improvisation'.
"I told you to stick to the plan!" Shepard roared, looking about two stops short of punching the merc. "We could've laid down suppressing fire; there was no need for you to do that! Now you've endangered the hostages as well!"
Zaeed didn't back down, growling right back in the commander's face. "I don't give a good goddamn about those workers," he snarled. "I've chased that bastard for twenty years, and if he gets away now I'm blaming you. So if you want to stand here and shoot the breeze while he limps off into the sunset---"
Gunshots rang out, and the team dropped into cover. Jack, who had stayed out of the argument (for once) was over by the door, hiding behind a power conduit, and as she turned around, she discovered Thane had taken refuge beside her. "Hostiles, two at twelve o'clock and one on the railing," he advised, all business. Jack decided not to complain about taking the drell's orders (there were other, more heavily armed threats at the moment) and leaned out to fill a heavy weapons trooper's chestplate with 00 buckshot. Unfortunately, she was far enough away that the spread only staggered the Blue Sun, and he was more than conscious enough to pull the trigger and fire a rocket at her position.
Well, no problem there. Jack reached out with a biotic wave, snagged the rocket out of the air, and directed it into the side of the rigging. Hell, it was already on fire, what could another explosion matter?
"Jack!" the commander called, his voice clear even over the flames and gunfire. "Get up front; you're heading with Zaeed. Take out Santiago and rendezvous with us at the LZ; Thane and I are heading to---"
The rest of his words were drowned out in a shriek of metal and a deafening crash, as the entire rig that Jack had crashed the rocket into tipped over and collapsed to the floor in the midst of the room. Dust and smoke clouded her vision, and she ducked behind the conduit just as Krios stood up and squeezed off a single shot from his sniper rifle. The unmistakable sound of a batarian yelping, followed by the impact of a body on the floor, echoed over the crackling fire.
"How'd you hit the son of a bitch?" she asked, blinking. "I can't see more than ten feet in here."
"Neither can I," the drell answered, changing the heatsink on his gun. "I memorized where he was standing and adjusted for a heart shot."
Before Jack could comment, the radio crackled with static. "Shepard here, do you copy?"
"Copy, Commander," Krios responded. "We're all right, but it looks like the wreckage has cut us off." He was correct: the floor was now piled high with collapsed infrastructure, and the way those fires were going, there was no way they'd be getting over it. Jack felt her cheeks burn slightly. What a dumbass move; should've sent the rocket back at the heavy.
"All right, change of plans," Shepard's disembodied voice ordered. "Zaeed and I will chase Vido. Thane, take Jack and extract the hostages. See if you can activate the sprinkler system while you're at it. We'll meet you at the LZ."
Without a word, Krios hopped over the conduit and raced up the stairs next to their position. Jack followed, cursing her luck all the way. "See, this is where it starts," she muttered. "First they've got me rescuing hostages and then the next thing you know, they'll have me leading negotiations and cutting ribbons on fuckin' shopping malls---"
"Contact!" the drell rasped, breaking her out of her reverie. Sure enough, they'd rounded the corner right into a pair of Blue Suns, who had likely been fleeing the destruction. Neither had the time to so much as raise their weapons; Krios planted a kick in the human's midsection and dropped him, gurgling, with a lightning-fast pistol shot to the throat. Jack, not feeling nearly as hands-on, simply grabbed the turian with her biotics and rammed him into the wall. He slumped to the ground, assault rifle clattering to one side, and raised his arms in supplication (probably about to drum out one of those tired pleas, like "No, please" or "I can pay you") just in time to catch a shotgun blast to the face that painted the wall behind him a deep shade of blue and gray.
She turned to a control console as Krios knelt behind her, his head bowed in a silent prayer for the freshly dead. "Found the fire system. Turning it on now." One confirmation later, and sprinklers erupted from the facility's ceilings, showering the wreckage in thick foam and dousing the flames. "I turned the power off as well," she added into the radio, "so the fires should be out soon."
"Copy. Good job, you two." Shepard sounded pleased, if a bit strained; they were obviously taking heavy fire on his end of the refinery. "Get those hostages and we're good to go."
Krios coughed behind her, just a bit more violently than was normal. It gave her enough pause to turn to him. "Problems with the smoke?"
"Er...a bit," he confessed, looking almost embarrassed, "but nothing major. Let's get those workers out and head to the rendezvous point." Without even a pause, he turned and vaulted the staircase's railing, rushing down towards the back of the refinery, where the hostages would presumably be kept. Jack followed close behind, keeping an eye on their six for any reinforcements from the Blue Suns.
As they reached the halfway point on the fire escape, the drell surprised her by speaking up. "You're doing very well," he said, his breathing beginning to ease up with the return of fresh oxygen into the air. "I imagine you'd rather have stayed with the original plan, but for what it's worth, you're adapting nicely to the role."
"I don't need your praise, Krios," she growled. "I'm not some little kid that has to be complimented every time they can wipe their own ass." There was a brief pause when they reached the bottom of the stairs; after checking the hall for hostiles, the two headed for the locked door in front of them, and Jack continued, "I'm not doing this for anybody's approval, I do it because I was made for it."
"'Made', you said," Thane mused, brute-forcing the lock with his omni-tool. "An interesting choice of words."
There was no more time for conversation, to Jack's great relief, because the door slid open and they were faced with a cluster of terrified refinery workers. All of them were talking at once, frantically begging for help and asking if she'd come to save them and decrying the Blue Suns for what they'd done and oh god the things they'd been put through for the last week and---
BANG. The room went silent, and Jack lowered her shotgun, resting its stock on her shoulder. "Settle down, or the next one isn't going in the ceiling," she stated flatly.
"Not quite the way I would've handled the situation, but it works," Krios agreed. He raised his voice, addressing the cowed workers. "We've come to rescue you. Transportation is waiting outside, and we need you to follow us in an orderly fashion to the shuttle. Although the fires are out, there are still mercenaries in the area, so stay behind us and try to---"
At this point, the wall exploded, which was definitely not part of the plan.
The hostages, bless them, hit the ground out of sheer reflex, which saved them from the curtain of gatling rounds that swept over the room seconds later. Jack's shields took a couple of the shots, allowing her to duck behind a computer terminal next to Krios, who was still cool as a cucumber and loading a disruptor magazine into his rifle. "The hell was that?" she shouted over the barrage of gunfire.
"Heavy mech, most likely," he answered, turning to peer through a gap in the cover with his scope. A moment later, the assassin ducked back into cover, bullets crashing into the terminal's side. "Definitely a heavy mech. I don't have any explosive ordnance...suggestions?"
Jack popped her head up and scanned the area for the half-second she could afford to take; a rocket flew overhead as she threw herself back down. "Lots of consoles around here," she mused. "Could try blowing one up, seeing if we could take down the shields."
Krios shook his head. "We can't," he said. "The hostages would be injured or killed. They can't move out of cover as it is, and there'd be no way to get them out of the blast."
She stared, mouth slightly agape. "Fuck them. It's our necks on the line here, Krios."
"That," he answered, taking another opportunity to scan the room, "is not an excuse to justify endangering the innocent."
"You got a better idea?"
"I have something," the drell admitted. "The sprinklers are still on; perhaps if we could lure the mech into them, the foam would short out its shield generator and make it vulnerable." He peered out again; the YMIR had finished tearing its way through the wall and was stomping towards the hostages. A ceiling-mounted sprayer was about fifteen feet behind it, dousing the ground with emergency foam. "It would require...significant force, though, and we don't have much time before that mech flanks the workers."
It could be said at this point that Jack was undergoing a slight crisis. The plan was ridiculous, and more than likely to get both of them killed, all for the sake of some working stiffs who sure as hell weren't contributing to their mission. But it was better than anything she could come up with, and she could take an YMIR if she caught it off guard...hell, she'd crushed three of them at Purgatory.
Squeezing her eyes shut, and knowing she was going to regret this, Jack finally spoke up. "All right. I can do it."
"Are you sure?" Krios asked. His mouth quirked slightly; either amusement or concern, she couldn't tell.
"Yeah. Take a shot or two and keep that thing distracted; I'll move in close and push it into the sprinklers."
"Very well." A fresh heatsink clicked into the rifle, humming eagerly. "I'll finish it off once you drop the shields. We will need to move as one..."
Of all the people to form a well-oiled machine with. If there was a god (and Jack knew there was not, because the first twelve years of her life had shown otherwise), he had to be laughing at this. Gritting her teeth, Jack holstered the shotgun and leaned against the edge of the terminal, poised and ready. "Just for the record," she muttered over her shoulder, "your plan sucks."
His voice, resonant behind her, broke into a chuckle despite itself. "I'll take that under advisement." A pause then, what felt like an eternity of anticipation, and....
"Go!"
She could see his form out of the corner of her eye as she dove forward and rolled; a black and green blur leaping up onto the terminal, bringing the sights to bear impossibly fast, and bang, a round bounced off the shields at the back of the mech's head. The metal hulk staggered slightly from the impact, whirling around and hoisting its gatling gun, but Jack was already on the move. Darting between two extranet nodes, she dropped low and slid under the onslaught of gatling rounds that ripped through the air, already charging her biotics up.
Bang. Another shot; this one actually hit the kinetic barrier with enough force to knock the mech's aim off a little. Its rapid fire arced upwards momentarily, and Jack saw the opportunity. She vaulted the node next to her, leaping through the air like a round from an M-290, and in the half-second before her biotically enhanced shoulder charge nailed the mech square in the chestplate, settled for the only battle cry she knew: "FUCK YOU!"
The impact was prodigious.
All around her, the world exploded into white, and after a brief spike of sharp, warm pain, everything faded into a comfortable numbness. She was vaguely aware of her body hitting the ground, of a brief shortness of breath, and her vision cleared just enough to make out the YMIR mech, distant, as though it were in a tunnel. A muffled bang cued its head flying clean off its shoulders, smashing against the metal floor; the body, meanwhile, stumbled backwards awkwardly and tumbled head over heels out of a window, crashing to the ground several stories below.
Watching the mushroom cloud blossom outside the window in a reddish-orange haze, Jack decided it was the prettiest thing she'd seen in a long time, and then promptly lost consciousness.
"...ink she's waking up, Commander."
"Jack? Jack, can you hear me? Are you all right?"
The light was way brighter than light had any right to be, and she could feel a distinct throbbing behind her eyes. Upholstery pressed against her back, and a cold breeze was playing havoc with her skin. Jack tried to process her situation, but the last few minutes had been hazy...there was a heavy mech, and she tackled it, and...yeah, that was about it.
"...Shit," she grumbled, raising a hand to rub at her eyes.
"Well, she's clearly not brain-damaged, heh." That was Zaeed's voice. Did that mean the rest of the team was here?
Everything came into focus after a few seconds. She was definitely in the shuttle, lying on her back in one of the seats. Two pairs of eyes stared down at her, one deep brown (that would be the commander) and one almost black, with green slit-pupils.
"How do you feel?" Krios asked, his brow-ridges twitching slightly. It took a moment to realize that he and Shepard were close, much closer than she preferred to let people get.
After a moment, Jack sat up, waving the two of them off. "Ugh...'mfine," she mumbled, kneading at her temples with both hands. "Just took a few hits, nothing big."
Shepard's voice was tinged with a hint of pride. "We have a transport evacuating the hostages right now; Thane carried you out with them after the mech blew up. Great work down there, you two." He turned, apparently satisfied that she was all right, and headed back to the other side of the cabin to chat with Zaeed.
The drell sat down beside her, studying Jack with apparent interest. "You should have the doctor examine you when we return to the ship," he finally said. "You could have damaged your shoulder from hitting the heavy mech."
"It's all right." Her tone was a little more dismissive than she intended. "I'd know if it was broken...been through that enough times. And I can move it, so it's fine."
"Very well. I hadn't expected you to...do that. It was my assumption that you'd hit it with a warp or something similar, like most biotics."
"I'm not 'most biotics' material, Krios," Jack retorted with a half-grin. "I'm a little more hands-on."
"So I see," he agreed, amusement playing in his expression. "Well. Regardless of the methods, you performed just as instructed, and we took down the mech cleanly. Well done."
"Yeah...yeah, thanks. You did well too." She waved a hand in a meaningless little gesture. "Nice headshot."
The drell cocked his head slightly, lips parted in what Jack swore was an attempt to conceal a smirk. "Odd, I thought you didn't need my praise."
"I don't," she stated, and folded her arms to emphasize the point. "Look, don't go dragging this out, all right? I'm not good with the playing-nice shit. But thanks. And thanks for bringing me back here." Gratitude was a bitter pill to swallow; it meant she owed someone, and usually they took the opportunity to rub it in.
"You're welcome," he said, and then leaned back to look out the window.
They passed the next ten minutes in silence, save for the thrum of the shuttle's engines and the quiet debriefing going on across the cabin. Finally, after what felt like forever:
"Hey, Krios?"
"Yes?"
"You're all right."
"Thank you, Jack."
"....Don't go spreading this around."
"Your secret's safe with me."
"Good."
As the shuttle roared up through the atmosphere, heading towards the Normandy's docking bay, Jack decided that despite—or perhaps because of—nothing at all going to plan, she was pretty damn satisfied with this particular mission.
They'd have to do this again sometime.