When Shepard opens her eyes, it takes a full minute to adjust to the blackness around her. The first thing she does is cough, for a long time, each cough making her entire body (the parts she can still feel, anyway) convulse. She presses her hand to her ear and tries to contact the Normandy, "this is Commander Shepard... do you copy?" she can't even hear static. She tries four more times before removing the earpiece and examining it: completely fried. She looks up hopelessly at the broken metal and rubble, and wonders distantly how she came to be underneath so many broken pieces of the Citadel. Hopefully she's not near any bodies- she's fully aware that her body is covered in open wounds and burns. She decides to figure out her injuries before coming up with a Plan B for getting rescued.
She thinks a few ribs are broken, her face and right arm are covered in burns of varying degrees, but her most pressing injury is in her abdomen.
What the Hell happened there?
Her memories are blocked. The wound feels like it had healed, but was wet with blood. It probably reopened while I was coughing. How much blood had she lost already?
She feels for her pistol- still there. She jams the heat sink, and shoots randomly away from herself until the little warning sign starts to flash. She pops the now-burning sink out from the pistol and presses it to her exposed flesh with her bare hand. She starts screaming, and holds it there almost three minutes before throwing it away and then blacking out.
She wakes up ragged. If I'm going to die here… she resolves not to finish that thought.
Com, I need a com. She starts to reach for her earpiece and then remembers it's busted. How much power is left on the Citadel? Can she access the extranet with her omni-tool?
When she activates it, the bright orange light makes her wince. It's drawing power from her suit, but won't last long. She can't get a signal anyway, though, and turns it off.
She stays down, listening to her own heartbeat and ragged breathing as the silence and the darkness begin to smother her. Her heart beats faster.
Then, she starts to hear something. It takes her a long time to identify it, and it cuts in and out sporadically. Club music? Her mind races. If she can hear music somewhere, as long as it's not running off an individual power source, then the Citadel could still have power. If she can get her com to send out even the faintest signal, she can boost it with the Citadel. I'm close enough to Earth… unless the Catalyst moved when it blew up… but someone should pick up my signal.
She activates her omni, which provides enough light for her to have a look at her com. She scans it and sees that a wire has burned right through the middle. She finds tweezers in her bomb kit, strips the rubber off the wire and reattaches the two ends. When she listens to the com, the static feedback tells her that a signal is being broadcast.
Now to tap into the Citadel… She looks around. She might be on part of the Presidium. She takes a deep breath and rolls onto her stomach, then drags herself in the direction with the most open space. There's some kind of walkway about two feet above her head, so she doesn't try to crawl.
She finds what could be a desk. She feels around for a terminal or anythingthat connects to the extranet or the Citadel's main power, and her hand touches the smooth cool glass of a handprint scanner. Two blue feet fizzle into view above the desk. Shepard starts laughing.
"Welcome to the Citad- Embassies, Comman- -e-ard. I am Avina. –be your guide."
"Avina," Shepard's voice sounds almost as crackly as the glitching VI's. "I need you to broadcast an SOS as far as you can."
"SPECTRE -us recognised. Please con- -dcasting device." Using the glowing blue light of the hologram, Shepard manages to hook up her com to Avina's hardware.
Above them comes a long, low, mechanical noise of shifting metal. Shepard looks up, but decides the possibility of getting a signal out is greater than the treat of falling debris.
"Avina, record this message: this is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy SR2requesting evac from near the embassies on the Citadel. Repeat: this is an SOS, Commander Shepard requesting evac."
Avina plays back the recording, with various audio skips, and Shepard confirms it's what she wants before coughing again. The low noise is louder this time. Avina agrees to broadcast the signal once every three minutes for as long as she can. Shepard rolls onto her back again.
A large, metal structure accompanied by a deafening crash comes down on Shepard. She hears it before she sees it, and throws a barrier over herself and the Avina terminal. The strength it takes to maintain is incredible, and not just because she's supporting the weight of half the embassy floor. She realises she must be concussed or worse from the instant migraine she gets as soon as she throws up the barrier. Her hands start to shake, she knows she can't hold it much longer. She feels her amp fritz out and scampers backwards as fast as she can- but not fast enough.
Part of a ceiling comes down on top of both her legs below the knee. She screams, it's the most intense pain of her life. When she stops seeing spots she sits up to examine the damage. It's even darker than before, so she feels down her legs towards the knees. Her shins are splintered and seem to be completely flattened under the weight of the ceiling, and touching either of them hurts like Hell. She takes a deep breath, and tries to pull out her right leg. The pain is just as bad as before, and it feels like she causes the ceiling to settle on top of her legs. She hits her head on something hard and sharp, sees spots, feels the hot, metallic taste of blood in her mouth. I'm not getting out of this one.
"Avina…" she can't see a damned thing. "_RE status –cognised. How may I assist you, -mmander?"
"Keep… keep broadcasting on as many frequencies as you can. Keep broadcasting until the entire Citadel's out of power."
The music has stopped, she has no idea how long she's been here, or how much longer she can last. She eats some kind of protein bar she finds in one of the survival pockets of what's remaining of her armor. She starts convulsing and throws up on the floor next to her. She falls asleep and wakes up so many times, all the time in the darkness becomes a blur.
A quarian vessel, the Moreh, is doing cleanup on the remains of Reapers, frigates, and pieces of the Crucible that are now derelict and orbiting the Earth and Luna, along with a couple hundred other Allied ships. One woman is sifting through communication channels, to see if there are additional vessels that could still be broadcasting, but not showing up on any other scans.
She picks up the tail end of a nearby broadcast, "-ing evac." She plays it back for her CO, they decide it's a damaged signal playing automatically from Earth, probably a dead Alliance platoon. They decide to trace the signal and send the coordinates to the Alliance.
A distant, fading blue light wakes the Commander. It follows a strange line pattern, and it's moving strangely. It's crawling through the rubble. It's coming for me. She reaches for her pistol, and feels around but can't find ammo. She'd thrown away her last heat sink anyway. The thing comes closer, she activates her omni-blade but the power dies almost immediately.
"Damn," she coughs, the thing moves faster. She can hear it now, a kind of snarling, growling noise. She squints. The shape is crawling, she can make out two circular circles of blue light coming towards her, brighter than the rest of it. Husk! She feels around the floor in a panic, and grips a large piece of broken glass with her good hand (her right one), and shakes. She's always hated husks. She prefers going one-on-one with brutes while her squadmates pick away the cannon fodder. It's the hands she can't stand… they're still so human.
It crawls toward her, but she's ready. It lowers its head and reaches down to scrape up the congealed blood from her legs into its mouth. She starts stabbing its head with ad much force as she can summon, trying to get through the skull. As soon it realises she isn't dead it starts attacking her. It's going for her arms and face, not her torso, which proves to be its downfall. Using both hands she stabs its head until it finally goes still. She can still hear its screams as she pushes it off of her body. Both her hands are covered in deep cuts, and the burns on her left hand make it worse. She winces and tries to steady her breathing. I'm going to die here.
It's 04:00 hours in Vancouver. Admiral Hackett's com terminal starts buzzing on the other side of his temporary living quarters. He bolts upright and makes for the terminal, "Hackett here." He knows it's important, Hell it's 4 am. If it's not then whoever's on the other line is due for a severe demotion. A familiar English voice spoke through the terminal,
"Admiral I think you'd better get down to the com hub,"
Hackett on his shoes and switches to portable communications, "on my way, Major Llongo, brief me on the way."
"Sir we… we think we've found Shepard."
In the communications hub Admiral Hackett listens to a spliced recording of the faded transmission. "The signal's stop broadcasting, Admiral, and we're unable to establish contact." He stands with one hand in front of his mouth, the other holding his elbow, thinking. "When was the last broadcast?" "13 hours ago, sir."
Played on a loop for God knows how long, and now it's long since stopped. Could she be alive? "Do we have a lock on the signal? Where's it coming from?" "We have it down to a 50 metre radius, sir, but the entire thing's collapsed in on itself. The signal could be coming from anywhere in that rubble."
He paces. Dead or alive, by God we owe her this. "Send a message to all Allied recovery ships not engaged in active salvage. Send the SSV Theresa and have whoever finds her alert them to their exact coordinates. Get Miranda Lawson and Dr. Karin Chakwas on that ship, ASAP. Somebody get Major Kaidan Alenko and Lieutenant James Vega on the damn line!"
It takes 40 minutes to get the SSV Theresa ready to go, and in that time no Allied forces have found Shepard. The atmosphere on the hospital ship is tense. They're circling the Citadel waiting for one of the three dispatched teams to locate Commander Shepard.
"What the Hell are we standin around for? We could be down there looking for her right now."
Kaidan stares out a window.
"They want you to carry her to our ship once they find her. Admiral Hackett wants members of the Alliance to be the ones to bring her home." Miranda walks over to where the two Normandy crew members are standing.
"We can do that faster if we actually find her."
"He's got a point," Miranda says, directed at Kaidan, "I could go with him and look for her. If we find her first I can administer medical help if… if needed. You'd still be here in case another team finds her, and Karin will still be here if you bring Shepard back."
He turns, slowly, and looks at them. They're right, he realises. "Suit up. I'll find out where the teams haven't hit and brief Hackett."
James and Miranda head to the armory, where she grabs a submachine gun and a pistol, and he starts loading up with heavy armor. "Thanks for that. I don't think he would've listened to me."
"You were right, I just made Major Alenko see that." She looks at James, "come on, let's go."
They wait in the airlock before getting clearance to exit. They jump from about two metres off the ground so the ramp doesn't have to deploy, and so the ship can get back in the air as soon as possible.
"Damn… and I thought Earth was bad." They look around, using flashlights attached to their shoulders to see. Rubble, bodies, and entire buildings simply lie around. "How the Hell does Shepard know she's near the embassies? It's all in pieces."
"She must have seen a… a landmark or something." Miranda looks around in horror. She'd always loved the Citadel, it represented the best the galaxy could achieve. To see it like this… with so many dead…
"Hey, are you alright?" James' question brings her back into focus. She knows deep down he's genuinely concerned, but she can't help but feel like her authority is being questioned when people ask her personal questions. "Yes. Let's get moving."
They move through rubble, her biotics speeding up the process greatly, while keeping in contact with Kaidan and the other teams. Finally James steps on a sign that once lit up to say, "HUMAN AMBASSADOR DONNEL UDINA." "Hey Miranda! Come look at this!"
"She must be somewhere nearby. We should call this in." They do, and the other teams (four now) are dispatched to near their location, ETA about 20 minutes as they make their ways through rubble and buildings to get to the embassy floor.
They search the rubble around them, Miranda finds a fragment of Shepard's red armor, burned black and sticky with blood, "fuck," says James quietly. Miranda swallows hard but says nothing. They keep searching.
Shepard awakes to another distant light. I'll be damned if I let another husk come after me. Why wouldn't they just die in peace?
"Hey Shepard! Lola! Do you hear me?"
Miranda lifts a beam of the way so they can continue on the walkway. They see Shepard at the same time, sitting up in a pool of her own blood, pinned under a chunk of what looks like a wall. She's squinting in the light of their flashlights, tense. James runs to her side.
"Shepard! Dios mio, hey we're here okay? We're- ah!" she blindly swipes at him with a piece of glass in her bloody hand.
"Leave me alone!" He dodges the swing easily and turns to Miranda, "what the Hell?"
"She's probably in shock. Call this in, get the Theresa here now, and for God's sake back away from her before she takes out an eye."
James backs up and calls the ship as Miranda approaches Shepard, turning off her light as she does so. "Shepard, listen to me. Listen!" as she takes another swipe, "I need you to drop the glass." Shepard stares blankly, is it… is it talking to me? How can that be? She opens her hand but the glass doesn't drop. Miranda takes it gently and see it's completely embedded in the skin, "Shepard I can't take it out but I need you to promise me you won't attack again." Shepard looks stunned, but stops attacking.
"It's me, it's Miranda Lawson. Do you recognise me? I'm your friend, Shepard." "I… I think so." She blinks and thinks hard. Miranda… "Miranda!" "We're going to get you out of here, Shepard." "You'd damn well better…"
Miranda applies medigel to the burns on her face and arms, to the wound on her torso, to the obvious damage to the head and to her burned hand. She decides not to apply the gel to the hand gripping the glass, she doesn't want the flesh to heal over it. At this point James is crouching anxiously by her side.
"Vega, help me with this." With his strength and her biotics, they attempt to tackle the ceiling crushing Shepard's legs.
"Anderson I… Anderson…" The medigel and anaesthetics kick in, combining to make her sleepy and nonsensical. James shoots back a worried glance before crouching down to lift the ceiling. They manage to get it up and off of her legs as she winces in pain.
"Looks like… looks like Hell." Vega starts to laugh until he gets a look at her legs with the light. It really does look like Hell. Beneath the knees her legs are completely flattened, the bone sticking out in several places. Miranda can even make out various neural implants that she had personally installed, and everything is covered in dried and congealed blood. Miranda peels away the armor on Shepard's thighs, and with her light on right away she can see that Shepard has blood poisoning.
"James." She takes him aside, "she's already lost the legs. I need to remove them if we're going to transport her safely. Ultimately it should cause her less pain during the process."
"This is such a damn mess… what do you need me to do?"
"Stay with her, hold her hand, give her something to bite on if she needs it. I don't have enough anaesthetic to render her unconscious or stop the pain completely." He nods and goes to her side.
"Hey, Lola. How ya doin?"
She gives a wry smile. "Vega… you got your ass out of there alive." He smiles back and holds her left hand. He and Miranda look at each other and nod. "Shepard…" "I know, Miranda. Let's just get this over with." Miranda takes out her field kit and gets to work.
Shepard closes her eyes and grips Vega's hand so hard he thinks she might fracture it. She clenches her teeth.
As they finish the procedure, Kaidan and several other crew members of the Theresa arrive, with him and a few others moving rubble aside with biotics, "oh my God, Shepard!"
"Hey." His eyes start to water as he makes it to his friend's side. She finally releases Vega's hand. "They've got the whole damned Alliance out here…" Kaidan smiles and says, "You're definitely worth it, Shepard."
Carefully, the team gets her on a stretcher. As they walk back with her, fading out of consciousness, Miranda takes her hand again, "by the way Shepard… we won."