One-shot story inspired by the Mass Effect spinoff game, "Mass Effect: Infiltrator." Takes place after the events of "The Monster They Sent."

Facing the Dinosaur

It was about 2:15 am, and Randall Ezno sat locked in a room in the cargo hold of the SSV Normandy, and wrote into a journal. It helped keep him sane while he sat there, alone with his thoughts. He hoped that it would help him sleep. He rubbed the stubble on his face, and gently touched an angry bruise on his forehead. He also felt stitches from a mighty scar across his cheek. Both had been left by a krogan named Wrex who was serving on the Normandy crew.

I think I'll be dead in the next few days, he wrote. That krogan Wrex is going to kill me. I hope he does it quick. I doubt he will, though.

Randall had defected from Cerberus only days before, with as many Cerberus secrets as he could get his hands on. He'd served as an infiltrator, a soldier. Need somebody killed, or captured? Want me to use a rifle? An omniblade? Biotic attacks? Need to destroy something? He was your man. Then it all changed. His girlfriend Inali Renata had been arrested by Cerberus, and he found out that she was being subjected to terrible experiments. He fought his way into the Cerberus labs where she was being held, and found out that it was a haunted house brought to life. It was a chamber of horrors where the limits of science met the twisted minds of madmen. It was a place where Randall saw some prisoners beg for death, and where he saw other prisoners repay their captors with mad, gruesome fury.

God forgive me, he wrote. I can't stop seeing the faces of those prisoners. Awake or asleep, I'll always see them. Asari. Turians. Krogans. Some of those prisoners were there, because I put them there. And until days ago, I didn't fucking know, I didn't fucking care to know, what Cerberus did to anybody that I captured. Soldier, my ass. Protecting humanity, my ass. If there's a hell, I deserve to be sent to the worst part of it.

And then he finally found Inali. She'd been plugged in by Cerberus, wired up, and they had turned her into a mindless killing machine. A grand experiment by the Director of the laboratory, and then unleashed on Randall. He had survived, and made his rendezvous with the nearest Alliance ship, the Normandy. He thought of Inali – or, however much of Inali remained - lying unconscious in a medically-induced coma in the Normandy's medical bay.

Randall tensed up as he began to write again. Inali…look what they've done to you. I was too late, too damned late. Why God, why didn't I reach you in time…will you ever come out of that coma? Should I have let you die, finished you off, taken away your pain? I'm such a selfish bastard. I just couldn't bear to do it, I had to try, I had to take the chance that, somehow maybe the Alliance might….

Save her? Was that what he wanted to write? After everything that had happened, did he really believe that was remotely possible?

You deserve to live, Inali. I don't.

Randall put the journal down, and tried to settle down on his cot. He thought about the moment that the krogan Wrex attacked him, a couple of hours after coming aboard the Normandy. He'd just been interrogated by the Normandy's Commander Shepard and a few others, and Randall had admitted what he did for Cerberus. He also told them about the experiments that he discovered Cerberus was doing. From the icy stares that he saw, he thought for sure that some of the crew were going to gang up on him and throw him out an airlock. But when he told them about what they'd done to krogans...that was when Wrex had attacked him.

"Dog shit! That's who you are! Coward, murdering scum!" Wrex had called him. "No honor, you're not even worth killing. We should have left you to rot with Cerberus!" He thought the krogan was going to bite him in half, but instead Wrex had pummeled him mercilessly. After being treated for his injuries, he was moved the brig to keep him away from the rest of the crew.

Sleep brought only a nightmare, one that he remembered having too many times as a child. He was a boy again, little Randy Ezno, in the woods near his home, hiding terrified behind a tree. A dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, stood nearby. And then, in that uncanny way that all nightmares have, the dinosaur turned toward him. He tried to run, but couldn't. The dinosaur's gaze matched his, as it marched closer, closer, and opened its mouth and showed its jaws before they descended on him...

...

Randall was shaken from his nightmare by the sound of an explosion, followed by the sound of alarms. He awoke, his eyes wide, as the lights in the room flickered on and off, and then felt the floor began to lurch to his right. He noticed that the door to his room was ajar.

He ran over to the door, and with all of his strength, slid it further open. Power failure? he wondered. Are we under attack? He looked around for whoever was guarding him, and saw someone unconscious on the floor. He heard another explosion to his left. Then he heard a voice on the Normandy's public address system, from a woman who was shockingly calm: "Fire on the Engineering deck."

Stop thinking, just help them, he thought. He quickly looked at the unconscious crewman. Just a concussion, he thought. All right. Those explosions were to the left, wherever that goes. I might as well die trying to help. Then he sprinted toward the sound of the commotion, and saw signs for the Engineering deck.

The deck of the Normandy lurched again as Randall reached the Engineering deck. He put his hands on the wall to steady himself as the deck shifted under his feet. Alarm lights and sounds were everywhere. The room lights flickered on an off, and there was a thick gas everywhere.

Randall saw a quarian, she was helping a woman with short dark hair. "I've got Gabby!" said the quarian. The woman named Gabby was coughing, and seemed to have an injured leg. He thought he heard her say the words "ruptured fuel cell," and then he was sure that he heard her say, "They've got to vent the room. The door, they'll be closing the door!"

Randall then saw a man with a scarred face emerge from the gas, dragging a man with short red hair and a goatee. The man with the scarred face spoke with an accent. "Wrex is still in there! There's no time, we've still got to get Wrex!" he said.

"I'm on it!" yelled Randall, running headlong into the gas.

Scarred Face Man and the quarian both turned her heads in surprise as Randall spoke and ran past them. Randall heard the quarian ask, "Was that the -?" before her voice was lost in the noise of fire alarms and escaping gas.

Randall held his breath. He began to feel a tingling sensation all over his skin, and his eyes began to burn. He didn't know what type of gas was surrounding him, and didn't want to know. If they need to vent this gas into space, that tells you plenty, he thought. He saw the krogan laying unconscious near a pair of blown fuel cells. The fuel cells. Right. That's what I heard, he thought. He ran over to the krogan, and began to focus on him. He began to feel a rush of energy as he harnessed his biotic implants.

Randall thought, My biotics aren't strong enough to lift you, big fella, but they just might make you light enough... Then he gritted his teeth, and began to push the krogan. He took a quick breath, then felt a searing pain in his lungs. He felt a bead of sweat run down his face. He had to close his eyes and push blindly forward. Drive your legs, Ezno. Drive. Push. PUSH!

He began to hear the voices of the quarian and Scarred Face Man, and pushed forward in their direction. He was forced to take another breath, and the pain escalated and felt like daggers inside his chest. He also felt a stinging pain all over his skin. Push harder. Run, just run! The gas was too thick to see through. The swelling in his eyes was getting worse. Damn it, where is that exit -

Finally, he banged his knee and midsection against the closing emergency bulkhead door, and clumsily fumbled and pushed Wrex past it. Randall fell alongside Wrex, and felt the relief of the cool breathable air against his skin. He could feel that someone was there, and heard voices, but understood none of it. His eyes were swelling so badly that he couldn't see anything, and he gasped hard against the pain. He couldn't speak. He began to flail in pain, and felt people restraining him. Inside his mind, he screamed, My chest, my face, it's all burning, that burning…make it stop make it stop son of a bitch please God make it stop, and passed out.

...

The next thing that Randall heard was the sound of beeping medical equipment. He could feel medical gauze on his face. Then he heard a woman's calming voice.

"Don't talk. Lie still," she said. "Let me get that. The swelling should be down by now."

Randall felt her removing the pack from his face. He saw a thin woman with graying short hair. She was the ship's doctor, she'd examined him when he first boarded the Normandy. He never got her name, though. His eyes squinted against the light, but then felt relief as his eyes adjusted. Nothing else wrong with those, thank God. He tried to move his arms and legs, and could feel that he was in restraints.

Medical restraints? he wondered. Or maybe they don't trust me. Probably both.

The doctor said, "You're going to be all right. That gas did a number on your throat and lungs, but we're treating that. Try to keep your talking to a minimum for the next day or two." She handed him a note pad. "If you want to communicate, you can use this."

Randall slowly looked around the room. He saw an intensive care chamber to his right, which was surrounded by a curtain. Inali, he thought sadly.

To his left, the three nearest beds were occupied by the two engineers that he saw being rescued, and Wrex. The engineers were asleep. Wrex was talking to Commander Shepard, the quarian, and Scarred Face Man, who all stood near Wrex's bed. Randall was sure that he overheard Shepard say, "...we're lucky to escape. Cerberus really wants this guy Ezno dead..."

Randall wrote down, Will they all be ok? and handed the notepad back to the doctor. She glanced at the notepad, and gave him a smile. "Yes, they will."

They were interrupted by the booming voice of the krogan. "Is he finally awake?"

Through glazed eyes, Randall looked in Wrex's direction. Then he wrote, Glad you're ok, and handed it to the doctor. She handed took the notepad, and handed it to Wrex.

Wrex read Randall's message, and then showed it to Shepard. Shepard nodded with satisfaction. Wrex looked at Randall and flatly said, "Scum."

Shepard walked over to Randall's side. Quietly, he said, "Ezno, I'm glad you were down there. Wrex will never admit it, but he'd be dead if you weren't down there. But when you're well enough, you'll go back into that holding cell, because the Alliance still doesn't know what they want us to do with you." He glanced over at Wrex. "I don't think that Wrex wants to kill you anymore, but he's no friend of yours. I'm taking no chances. I'll still keep a guard on your door."

Randall wearily gave Shepard thumbs-up, and went back to sleep.

...

Randall's dinosaur nightmare returned again. But somehow, things felt different.

He was a little boy again, just like before. Little Randy Ezno, hiding in the woods. The ground shook, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex appeared. It turned its gaze toward him. But this time, little Randy decided that he would not hide. No. Whatever was coming, however bad it would be, he would face it. Despite the terror rising inside him, like the terror that only a little boy could feel, he stepped around the tree, and defiantly faced the beast. He saw it hesitate, as though it was the first time that it had ever seen its prey walk toward it.

Suddenly, he heard the booming sound of an M-300 Claymore assault shotgun. The rounds exploded against the midsection of the dinosaur, which leaped back and roared its anger.

Little Randy looked and saw a krogan moving into view, and it was armed to the teeth.

The krogan moved forward against the dinosaur and defended the boy. It switched to an assault rifle, spraying full automatic fire at the beast.

...

Randall opened his eyes from the dream, and saw that the lights were off in the medical bay. Nighttime, he realized.

He thought about the dream, and breathed slowly, trying to relax against the pain in his lungs. Maybe that'll be one less nightmare that I'll have, he thought. Then he looked to his right, at the intensive care chamber. He couldn't see Inali, but he knew she was there.

Sleep tight Inali, he thought. I miss you. Then he returned to sleep.