As she stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow, the girl spied an anomaly amongst the normal swath of scientists that were observing her training. Another girl, several years older than her, was standing near the back of the group with an inscrutable expression on her face as she watched the girl run laps around the room. The girl dragged in a couple more breaths as she walked around, cooling off and scratching the back of her neck. Her short, wavy hair was completely saturated with sweat and she unselfconsciously stripped her shirt off to dry herself off, watching from the corner of her eye as the scientists made notes on their notepads and left the viewing room.
The girl, though, stayed behind, watching the girl watch her, and clenched her hands together in front of her. The older girl scrutinized her for a long moment, then took slow, halting steps until they were face to face. She looked over her shoulder at the closed door and then returned her gaze to the girl, slowly extending her palm. She laid it flat against the glass and locked eyes with the girl. The girl stared at her palm and the smooth, unblemished skin offered to her, and rubbed her fingers together. She felt the hard calluses already forming on the pads of her fingers, rolled her shoulders to dispel the ache from doing chin ups, and took the last step toward the glass. She set her palm against the glass, opposite the older girl's, and offered a vague smile as her fingers pressed lightly into the cool glass. The older girl returned it faintly and tucked her long, black hair behind her ear, then leaned in and blew on the glass, then wrote in the fogged area and met brown and blue eyes.
Hi
The girl, just beginning to show signs of adolescence – although she had no concrete way of determining her age, only that she was changing – walked ahead of her handler silently, little hands balled into tight fists by her hips. She turned left at the end of the corridor and stopped for Franks in front of the door that led into the training area, then stopped on the edge of the room when it was open. Her heterochromatic eyes blinked and her jaw gaped loosely at the scene in front of her.
A different girl, younger looking and bald, was fighting furiously with who appeared to be her handler, biting and scratching at his hands and face and crawling over his body with all the dexterity of a spider. The man yelped as she raked her nails across his cheek and grabbed her head in his hands, throwing her over his shoulder so she landed heavily on the mat at his feet.
"Get off me, you little bitch!" She screamed at him furiously and he kicked her in the side before stalking away.
Franks shoved her forward and retreated from the room before she could recover, leaving the girl tripping over her feet toward the skinny, unfamiliar face still laying on the mat. "Hey, are you – who're you, are you alright?"
The girl didn't answer, but she looked up and smiled around bloody teeth manically. "I gonna hurt you," she said, and picked herself off the floor with a grunt to throw herself at the girl. Her knuckles landed hard just beneath the older girl's nose and split her lip, then they were rolling on the ground and trading punches. Their handlers reappeared in time to pull them apart, flailing and swinging wildly, and Franks shook her roughly.
"Get yer head outta yer arse, girl!"
"She started it," she cried defensively.
"I dannae care, I'm gon'tae finish it if ye don' shut it!" He shook her again and the girl squirmed as the other handler cuffed the bald girl upside the head.
"Let go, asshole!"
"I'll let you go when you stop being such a contrary little bitch!" The other handler grabbed the girl by her ear and twisted it sharply, smiling darkly as she yelped and her hand curled around his wrist. "Got your attention now, don't I?"
"Now, now, there's no need for violence." All four turned to see a rather small man walk into the room, white coat marking him as a scientist of some sort and a genial smile on his face. His eyes, though, were hard and calculating as they flashed over to the girls and their bloody faces. "Although it appears a little late to say so," he continued softly.
The girls' handlers snapped to attention and kept hard hands on them. "Theodore Tidus," Franks said smartly, "we didnae think-"
"It doesn't matter," he said, waving off her handler, "we have work to do, and this is a…promising start. So!" He clapped his hands together and the girls jumped. "You are both here to begin training-"
"That's all we do, jerk," the bald girl said venomously.
Tidus nodded at their handlers and the girls suddenly found themselves face down on the ground, heavy knees pressed painfully against their backs.
"Stay still, you little runt." The bald girl's handler pressed his hand between her shoulder blades and pulled something out of his pocket, then snapped it around her neck and jumped back with a smug expression on his face. The girl jerked to her feet and charged blindly at him, only to drop a few feet away and scream. She writhed on the ground, eyes bulging and hands scrabbling at her neck while the girl stared in horror as her face grew red and her body began to spasm.
"Stop, you're hurtin' her! What're you doin'?!"
"Teaching her some…restraint." Tidus pulled a small remote from his pocket and let go of the button his thumb had depressed, and the other girl abruptly stopped shrieking. In fact, she stopped moving at all, and the only reason the girl knew she wasn't dead was because of her rough breaths, rasping and sucking in great mouthfuls of air as her hands covered her neck protectively. "Now then, if you would, Franks?"
The girl laid perfectly still as he fastened something around her wrists and, when he got off her, slowly sat up and studied them. Innocuous enough, the thin bracelets glowed subtly under the bright metal and she shuddered as she looked at the one around the other girl's neck. Her skin was a vicious red and, as she painfully sat up and glared at the room at large, the collar shifted and revealed a thin burn mark beneath the metal. She felt another chill run down her back as Tidus began circling them with a dark smile on his face.
"You two are part of a magnificent experiment that will cause a massive paradigm shift in humanity's place in the galactic community. You see," he said conversationally, crouching in front of the bald girl and taking her chin in his hand, "humans are unable to be biotics – naturally, anyway. We don't have whatever little bit of DNA other species in the universe do that enable them to access that ability, and that gives them a great advantage over us, one that we can't allow to be sustained. So, Cerberus took it upon themselves to develop a program that would create the first human biotics, and use them to cement our place in this new age."
The bald girl tore her chin from his hands and scurried backward out of his reach, eyes bloodshot from the shocks to her system and still defiant. "Why do you care?"
"Me? I just want to see humans at their rightful place at the top of the ladder, so I took over this project." She sneered at him and he lazily waved around the remote. "This little device here? Every time you disobey us, lash out, refuse to cooperate in any way, it can send out pulses of one hundred miliamperes of electricity through your body. That's enough to stop your heart if sustained long enough, girl."
He lackadaisically tossed it behind him and the other girl's eyes rounded. "I don't actually need that though. I can access your collar anytime I want with this." He flashed his omni tool at her. "So can your handler, and any other people who will be in here with you. Got it?" She nodded mutely and he patted her head before standing up. "Okay, so. These are also for you both." Metal clinked as he pulled out two dogtags on chains and handed them to the girls. "They have your IDs and names on them."
The girl excitedly looked at hers and her eyebrows twisted in confusion. "Shepard? But I thought…"
"T'will be yer name 'til the day ye die, girl, so get used tae it," Franks said behind her, and she let the tag go so it settled against her shirt.
She kept her head down as Tidus explained how she and the other girl – Nought, she heard in a quiet murmur from her – would train together from now on. "But your training will no longer only include the endurance training or basic schooling you've been given. You're both able to begin the next level of activity, so we'll start that immediately." He ushered them over to the far wall and made them stand against it, both girls warily eyeing their handlers and Tidus as he paced in front of them. "You both are part of a ground breaking experiment called Project Olympus, two of over two dozen possible participants. When you were infants, you had biotic implants surgically wired to your nervous systems. Today, we activate them."
He smiled coldly and nodded at their handlers. Both girls were grabbed by their arms and yanked away from each other. "Since you showed some natural proclivity toward protectiveness, Shepard, you will be the focus of this first activation. If you would?" Nought's handler smiled darkly and stepped back from the girl, opening his omni tool at the same time and keying in a command. The little girl dropped to her knees and screamed as she clawed at her throat.
"Stop, stop it, you're hurtin' her!"
"That's the point, child. Are you angry?" Tidus circled Shepard with an appraising eye as she struggled against Franks. "Are you afraid?"
"Of course I'm bloody afraid, you're goin' ta kill her! Stop it!"
"Make him." Tidus stopped in front of Shepard and grabbed her jaw. "Make him stop hurting her. Throw him away from her; get him to stop using his omni tool." Behind him, Nought made animal-like sounds and curled into a ball, shivering with each pulse of electricity. "You'd better hurry though, or she will die."
Shepard strained with all her strength against Franks' grip, but he just yanked her back harder against him and cuffed her head. "C'mon, girl! Do it, don' be such a bloody baby!"
"Go ta hell, Franks!" Shepard felt him cuff her again and pulled out of habit, but her attention was riveted on the little girl screaming hoarsely on the ground in front of her, blood just beginning to run from her nose and the skin of her throat red and blistering. "Please, please, jus' stop!"
Nought's handler grinned toothily, Nought wailed, and Shepard saw red. She screamed over the girl's anguished sobs and felt pressure building behind her eyes as heat spread down her spine and through her arms.
"Let her go!"
She barely registered the faint blue glow around her clenched hands as she thrust them toward Nought's handler. The heat grew almost unbearable, but Shepard kept pushing it through her body and watched with satisfaction as the man behind Nought was propelled backwards and slammed hard against the wall. He stumbled to his feet and brought up his arm to activate his omni tool again and Shepard hit him with another blast of energy, sending him into the wall again. She heard the sick thud of his skull smacking the wall but didn't register anything other than Nought's hoarse, barely-there inhalations as she intently watched the faint rise and fall of her chest.
"Good…good, girl. Now for young Nought."
Nought caught Shepard's elbow as she was reloading the pistol in her hands and tapped the plugs in her ears. "Don't look now, Shepard, but the princess just showed up."
She jerked her head back toward the door at the back of the range and Shepard flicked her eyes over the younger girl's shoulder. She watched the young woman – Miranda, her mind supplied with a hint of bitterness, and what did she do to deserve a first name? – grab some plugs from the bin by the door and set them around her neck. The holstered pistol strapped to her thigh glinted dully in the artificial light of the range as she walked toward them with a coy smile just tipping the edge of her lips up.
"Shepard, Nought," she greeted, dipping her head at them.
Shepard straightened and nodded back, watching from the corner of her eye as Nought's lip curled back in a sneer. The younger girl casually flipped Miranda off as she walked into the booth separating the targets from the rest of the room, just able to sight down the range over the bar. She fired off three rounds in quick succession and Shepard's keen sight watched holes appear in the center mass of the cutout downrange.
Miranda pursed her lips at Nought's back and grabbed her shoulder when she lowered the pistol, yanking her around with narrowed eyes. "What's your problem?"
"My problem, princess, is your damned ability to come and go as you please." Nought, for all her diminutive stature, especially when measured against Miranda's lanky and svelte frame, still managed to look dangerous as she bowed her shoulders and snarled. She jabbed her finger against Miranda's chest as Shepard looked on with blue and brown eyes attentively watching her body language. "You waltz in and out of here every day without a care in the world-"
"Now, that's not true, I have to go through the same tests you do," Miranda interrupted.
"I wouldn't care if I watched them cut you open myself; you have no idea what we've gone through." Nought whispered with a dangerous glint in her eyes.
When Miranda scoffed and rolled her eyes, the younger girl grabbed her by the throat and yanked her down until they were eye level. She tugged away the collar of the compression shirt she and Shepard both wore, baring the collar around her neck. Slipping her thumb beneath the metal, she pulled it up so Miranda could see the scarring that circled her neck. The skin directly beneath the collar was burned a dark red by the electricity and dissipated in spidery patterns that faded into the pallor of her skin tone. Miranda gaped at the scars as Nought pushed her roughly away and yanked her shirt back up over the collar.
"So don't come crying to me when you have to get a needle in your arm every week." She advanced on Miranda and pushed her again as Shepard followed silently. "Yeah, you got the same implants we did, but you haven't had the conditioning we have, you haven't bled like we have, fought just to do it again another day, bled to fight to bleed to-"
Shepard took Nought's arm and pulled her back from Miranda, twisting so the younger girl was suddenly folded into her arms. She grunted when small fists smacked her ribs but held tighter, dropping her chin atop the head covered in fuzz and humming tunelessly. Nought hit her several more times, hiccupping and eventually tangling her fingers in the hem of Shepard's shirt as a sob ripped out of her throat and she buried her face in her chest. Sheppard rubbed her back, feeling the knobs of her spine under her shirt as her heterochromatic eyes met Miranda's shocked gaze. Go, she mouthed, nodding at the door. Miranda chewed her lip and turned on her heel, slipping quietly out the door as Shepard bent back over Nought and whispered in her ear, kneading the back of her neck soothingly.
Shepard stood rigidly against the wall next to Nought, staring distrustfully at an older boy with brown eyes who was staring unabashedly back at her with a glint in his eyes. He offered a cocky grin and she scoffed, baring her teeth in dark parody of a smile. Before words could be spoken, the door opened and Tidus walked in, looking at a document on his datapad. He briefly looked at them as he walked toward the cabinets on the far wall and rummaged through them for a moment.
"You three are very lucky today…very lucky indeed," he murmured, distracted as he pulled a bottle from within the cabinet. "You have been chosen to be part of the elite within Cerberus' biotic forces; selected to enter Project Phoenix and be trained with specialized biotics. You should feel honored; few have made it as far as you." He pulled a syringe out of his pocket and drew liquid into it, flicking the glass to dispel any bubbles.
Shepard tensed when she saw the liquid in the syringe but didn't otherwise react, staring over the doctor's shoulder stoically as he approached her. "Shepard, your arm." She hesitated and he lifted the arm with his omni tool threateningly. She jerked her arm up immediately, offering the delicate skin of her inner elbow as she warily eyed his wrist. He took her arm and stuck the needle in, dispensing the liquid quickly and drawing up another dose in a different syringe. Shepard felt her world tilt sickeningly and leaned against the wall, listening as though from a long distance as Nought screamed and then yelped in pain. She groggily turned her head to find the younger girl lying limply on the floor, Tidus standing impassively over her with a finger on his omni tool. She tried to take a step and fell to her knees next to Nought, reaching out with shaking fingers to drag the pads across the back of her hand.
"Now, now, no need for dramatics. Just a little prick, Nought." Tidus cut off the surge of electricity and took Nought's arm while she trembled on the floor, pushing the liquid into her arm and moving over to the boy who offered his arm freely with a smirk. Shepard twisted her fingers with Nought's briefly, squeezing hard before she scrambled back to the wall and pushed herself to her feet. She took a few staggered steps and dropped to her knees again, dry heaving as the drug worked through her system quickly. She watched as shoes appeared in her swimming vision and heard Tidus' voice above her.
"Relax, Shepard, this won't take long…"
When she awoke, her mouth felt fuzzy and her arms ached. She looked around, finding herself lying on a hard bed in the med bay with her arms and legs strapped to the edges – something she was very familiar with. What made her feel nervous were the bandages around her wrists and forearms, beneath the cuffs on her arms. She cautiously flexed her fingers and looked around, silently relieved to find Nought in the bed next to her, snoring quietly and twitching in her sleep. Gauze was wrapped around her wrists and she was similarly shackled to the bed frame, a pink stain on the bandage near her palm. Shepard felt dread pool in her stomach when she saw the boy in the bed across the corridor, flexing his fingers and examining his bandaged wrist with interest as Tidus spoke quietly to him.
"Please, please! Don't do this!"
The agonized scream from within the 'classroom' made the Cerberus soldiers standing guard shift uncomfortably. They briefly met each other's eyes before resuming their positions and palmed their weapons nervously. Within the room, Nought stood menacingly in front of a terrified salarian, idly twirling a small knife that was dripping green blood onto the floor. The salarian was tied to the chair in the room, eyes darting wildly around as he bled heavily from his mouth and left eyes, where a long, deep wound was etched into the side of his face. He jerked back in the chair when Nought took a step toward him and whimpered fearfully, chancing a glance when no blow came.
Nought's arm was arrested in Shepard's iron grip, the older girl's heterochromatic gaze locked on the salarian's terrified face. "No more," she murmured, taking the knife from Nought's grip.
Behind them, Tidus stopped Alenko from moving with a hand on his shoulder; even though the young man scowled and shrugged off his hand, he remained in place behind the table filled with 'tools' to use, fingers flexing restlessly on the edge.
Shepard pulled Nought away from the salarian and replaced her, calmly meeting his gaze with her own. "Please, have mercy, young one. I have not…" Shepard stepped up to him and studied the bloody knife in her hand, handle slick with his blood and glinting dully in the light. Her eyes flicked up to meet his briefly before she shoved the blade deep into his ear canal, leaving the weapon in place as his eyes widened and rolled up immediately. She turned impassively from the limp body and walked over to Tidus, standing firmly at attention and meeting his eyes unflinchingly.
"Efficient. You could have taken your time, as young Nought was doing. More time to practice on salarians, although his begging was getting rather old." Tidus made a mark on his omni tool and sighed. "Alright. That's all for today, you may wash up and return to the common room." He preceded them and walked down the hallway, leaving the trio to make their way in the other direction.
Shepard and Nought lingered behind Alenko, who stalked off irately, and she caught Nought's hand to slow her even more. "What were you doing," she hissed.
Nought scowled mulishly and Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Just doin' what asshole wanted," she muttered.
"That does not mean you had to torture that creature."
Nought snorted and threw Shepard a coy look. "Like what you did to that asari the other day was any better?"
Shepard paused, swallowing harshly as she recalled the vivid purple blood that sprayed across the wall and her face when she slit the young maiden's throat, the terrified, gurgling whimper that left her torn throat as she thrashed and died slowly. "…that was necessary. Tidus was getting…" Her voice was low and hoarse with suppressed emotion, fingers curling tightly into her palms.
Nought's eyes flashed all too quickly with sympathy before it was replaced with her now-normal expression of barely-held-in-check rage. "Keep telling yourself that, Shepard." The young girl squeezed Shepard's hand and trotted down the hallway, leaving the young woman to stare at her hand and the green blood that was congealing on her skin.
Shepard grunted as she severed the training dummy with her biotic whips, watching it fall to pieces in front of her. To the side, Nought shredded another and leapt at one close by, a manic laugh falling from her lips as her pale skin was lit with a blue glow from her biotics. Shepard flicked her wrist and the tip of her whip cracked across a dummy Nought was demolishing, severing its faceless head smoothly.
Nought turned to her with a glare and snarled, "That was mine, Shepard!"
"Maybe I thought it was time to stop torturing the poor, defenseless dummy."
Nought smirked and strutted over to her with the ends of her whips dragging behind her. The overhead lights illuminated the dark hair just beginning to fill in across her scalp. "You should tell that to Robocop over there, he keeps ruining my dummies." She jerked her toward Alenko, who was steady working his way through a group of dummies with an intent expression on his face.
Shepard snorted as he cracked his whips across the torso of a dummy and growled when it didn't fall to pieces. "It helps when you step in closer," she called out. Alenko's eyes cut over to her as he scowled and put his fist through the dummy's head. Shepard twisted her wrist and a whip appeared, crackling with suppressed energy. "Make sure you're close enough to do the most damage, or all that energy you're putting into your attacks will be pointless."
"I don't want to get close to them, Shepard, the entire point of the damn whips is so we don't have to." Alenko took a step closer, towering over Shepard's smaller frame threateningly. "If I can kill someone from five feet away, I will, because that lessens the danger to me."
Shepard smiled toothily, eyes glinting dangerously as she stepped up so her boots toed against his. "And what if you can't keep away?" Her arm shot out and a dummy was torn apart by the whip, hard pieces shattering and flying across the floor. "What if someone gets inside your guard, Alenko?"
She let the power fade from her wrist and suddenly thrust her hand out, grabbing Alenko's collar. She yanked him down and headbutted him, groaning in pain at the impact and watching as he reeled and blood gushed down his face. He pressed a hand over his nose and rushed at her, tripping when she sidestepped him and stuck her foot out. As he stumbled to his knees, Shepard pressed her foot into his back and shoved him onto all fours. "What will you do when someone gets the upper hand?"
Alenko pushed against her foot, muscles bunching beneath his shirt as he got to his feet and threw a shockwave at her feet. Shepard yelped as her feet went out from under her and she landed hard on her back. Alenko threw himself on top of her, legs pinning her hips against the floor as his blood dripped onto her neck and chest and a bloody smile lit his face. "What will you do, Shepard?" Shepard's head snapped to the side as his fist slammed against her cheek and she grabbed his wrists, grappling with him.
Alenko grunted when skinny arms wrapped around his neck and pulled taut, cutting off his air supply. He let go of Shepard to grip scarred forearms and pull, face steadily turning from red to purple. Shepard scrambled out from beneath him and watched Nought lock her arms around his neck and squeeze his torso with her legs. Alenko staggered to his feet and sunk his nails into her skin, and Shepard saw red when she yelped in pain. She spit out a wad of blood and rushed him, getting off another powerful hit to his face before all three of them were suddenly writhing on the ground. Shepard dimly heard someone screaming as she clawed at the cuffs on her wrists and only realized it was herself when she ran out of air. Across the floor, Nought pulled uselessly at the collar around her neck and wailed, and Alenko shuddered with each pulse that flowed through the bands around his arms.
She registered movement out of the corner of her eye and forced her twitching head to steady long enough to see Tidus standing at the door with a nonchalant expression and a finger on his omni tool. "I suppose that will be all for now?" He left his finger in place for a few more seconds and then stepped inside the training room, looking at the destruction of the dummies and the three still lying on the floor, gasping for air. "Alenko, I thought better of you," he said disapprovingly. "Shepard, what happened?"
Shepard kept her mouth stubbornly shut, slowly getting to her feet to stand at attention before the doctor. "Nothing, sir. Just a misunderstanding."
His mouth turned down in a subtle frown, eyes searching Shepard's face for a clue, but eventually he nodded and stepped aside. "Very well. Keep your secrets."
He gestured at the open door and two large soldiers walked in, dragging Miranda between them. They dumped her unceremoniously on the floor in the midst of the biotics and walked out, and Tidus gestured at her. "Young Miss Lawson here will be joining us permanently. Do make her feel welcomed." He opened a tab on his omni tool, keyed in a command and Miranda gasped, eyes snapping open as she cried out. "Ah, there she is. Time to get up, Miss Lawson. You've some catching up to do."
Tidus walked out the door, leaving Miranda groaning as she scratched at her shoulders and back madly. Shepard waited a few seconds then knelt beside her and grasped her shoulder, turning her onto her back. "Miranda?"
"Shepard," she gasped, "help me. Something…it feels like my back is on fire." She groaned and rolled onto her stomach as Shepard grabbed the hem of her shirt and lifted it up.
"What the…"
Placed closely along the length of her spine, small, round bits of circuitry glowed faintly. The skin around them was yellow with the remnants of iodine and stitches that were neatly sewn around each node. Shepard ghosted her hand over one and flinched away when it shocked her. She winced apologetically when Miranda cried out again. "It's…some sort of…electrical nodes? They're sewn into your skin," she said quietly, horrified at what had been done.
Miranda laboriously sat up and reached around to touch the nodes but Shepard caught her hand and pushed it away. "Don't. You'll make it worse. Just lay here." They sat together on the floor while Alenko slowly got to his feet and made his way back to the dummies after glaring at them hatefully. The sounds of his biotics tearing plastic apart made Miranda flinch.
Nought crawled over to them and laid her head on Shepard's shoulder, staring balefully at Miranda from behind Shepard's curtain of hair, half escaped from its ponytail. "What'd you do, princess? Miranda cocked her head in confusion. "You were free as a bird last we saw you. So, what'd you do to end up here with us?"
"I…I didn't do anything."
Nought barked out a cynical laugh. "Tell me something else, maybe it'll sound sincere. You must've done something, princess. Maybe daddy dearest finally got sick of you?" She fluttered her lashed innocently and cackled when Miranda growled angrily.
Shepard pushed her back with a stern look. "Shove off, Nought. Go work on your whips."
Nought affected a put upon expression that quickly morphed into playful suspicion. "Fine, fine. I'll be a good kid, but only for you, Shepard."
Nought moved off toward the dummies and Shepard watched her tear them apart for a couple minutes, studying her fluid motions and quick reflexes. Suddenly, Alenko's whips got a little too close for comfort. "Alenko! Get your head out of your ass!"
"Bite me, Shepard! You're just bent because I'm better than you."
Shepard scoffed and rolled her eyes, muttering, "Hardly," under her breath. Miranda watched her curiously and slowly shifted until she was sitting up. She rolled her shoulders, pleased when nothing happened and got to her feet. Shepard watched as she stretched, the material of her shirt pulling taut over her skin so the impressions of the nodes were just visible beneath it. "Are you alright?"
"Fine, Shepard. I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding." Miranda moved away from them after throwing a confident smile over her shoulder, leaving Shepard to watch her walk away with a furrow between her brows.