4. A Mother's Worry
Something was wrong, Alison knew now. Lauren had left for her run over an hour ago and should have been back by now. Alison paced back and forth between the kitchen and living area of the house and debated calling Lauren to check up on her. On the one hand, Lauren would go absolutely ballistic at her for checking up on her, what did she think she was, like ten years old? On the other hand, Alison's over-active imagination was showing her all kinds of unpleasant things at the moment - her little girl lying dead in the gutter, the victim of a hit and run. Her daughter in the emergency room of the local hospital, the victim of a random street attack. Her daughter...
"Oh, the hell with this!" Alison said, abruptly ceasing her pacing. She turned and headed to the phone on the wall. It began to ring just as she laid her right hand on it.
Alison snatched the phone up. "Where the hell are you? I've been going out of my mind with worry!"
"Well, that is a shame, isn't it?," the cultured sounding voice that very definitely wasn't Lauren's replied.
"Who is this?" Alison demanded, a grim feeling settling over her like a burdensome cloak.
"Names aren't important but if you absolutely need such, you may refer to me as One." the voice answered.
"What do you want?"
"Tsk tsk, I do hope you've instilled better manners in young Lauren here. Though considering the shape she left my people in, I rather doubt it."
Shepard's vision seemed to waver as the impact of the man's words hit her. Things seemed warp as though viewed through a fish-eye lens and her legs were suddenly unable to support her weight. Alison's knees buckled, spilling her to the tiled floor. For several seconds, she felt unable to even breathe, let alone speak.
"Ms Shepard? Are you still there? Oh, I rather hope you haven't fainted or something equally inconvenient. Time is of the essence here."
With an effort, Alison said slowly and deliberately, "If you so much as harm a hair on her head-"
"Spare me your empty threats. You and I both know you won't do anything to endanger your daughter's life so let's skip the melodrama, shall we?"
Alison slumped back against the wall and stared mutely at the holograph of herself and her daughter taken just last year.
"That's better," the voice of One said, "I'm sure you understand how this all works. We have your daughter - don't worry she's unharmed - and you have money. I propose a simple exchange: money for daughter."
"Put her on," Shepard said, looking into the eyes of the girl in the picture, tears flowing unnoticed down her face. "I need to know she's OK. Please."
There was a brief pause then her voice sounded in Alison's ear. Shepard sobbed in relief. "Mum? I'm OK, really."
Wiping tears from her eyes, Shepard said, "Baby, I'll do everything I can to bring you home. I promise."
Then One was back on the phone. "There. You see? She's the picture of health. I wish I could say the same for Three and Four but-"
"They deserved whatever they got," Shepard replied as she pulled herself up.
"Interrupt me again, and you will have cause to regret it. Now, to business. I will give you twenty-four hours to assemble five million credits. And don't even try to tell me you don't have the money. I will contact you again with the account details you will require to transfer the funds. Oh and it should go without saying that any attempt to contact the police, C-Sec or any of your old military allies would be extremely unwise."
Before she could reply, Shepard found herself listening to the hum of a disconnected line.
Being tasered wasn't as bad as Lauren had imagined it would be. It was actually worse. She might have screamed as the barbs pierced her skin and her muscles seized up. She couldn't really remember. She remembered being dragged into the van with her wrists and ankles cuffed together so she was kind of hunched over herself. Her abductors hadn't gagged her. Not immediately anyway.
As she recovered from the effects of the taser, her mouth, always quick to get her into trouble began its work in earnest.
"You know, you guys are making a really big mistake. I mean, do you have any idea what my mother will do to you when she finds me? And she will find me. She will frack you up. She will frack you the frack up."
None of her abductors replied. The driver, the one who'd tasered her simply drove the van at the legal speed limit. Lauren had no idea where they were going; the van had no side windows and the cargo area was curtained off from the cab so she couldn't see out the windscreen.
The other two simply glowered at her from their places in the rear of the van. One of them was nursing a broken nose and his eyes were heavily bruised. Awesome. The second looked like he was about to puke. Served him right.
"What? Aren't you guys going to tell me to shut up? Or did being beat up by a teenage girl scare you speechless?"
From the front of the van, the driver said, "Three, gag her."
"Three? Oh my God! I get the whole using code names to conceal your identities thing but come on! Oooh, look at me, I'm Number Threeee! And did it every occur to you idiots that I can see your faces?"
"Better hope we don't decide to kill you then," the driver replied.
Uncharacteristically, Lauren's mouth had no reply and she made no effort to resist as the man called Three - the one with the nose - tore a strip of duct tape from a roll and stuck it over her mouth.
Twenty-four hours...five million credits....twenty-four hours....extremely unwise....
Alison's muscles shook uncontrollably as adrenaline combined with a healthy dose of shock hit her.
The two halves of her being - mother and former soldier were at war with one another. Mother Shepard wanted to sit tight, contact her finance brokers and authorise them to cash out some of her investments so she could make the payment.
Soldier Shepard, who'd faced down Reaper Possessed Saren in the Council Chambers lo those many years ago argued that agreeing to the demands of the kidnappers was foolhardy and that she should take the battle to them. And it wasn't as though Shepard didn't know exactly where her daughter was.
Fifteen years ago, mindful of the chance that somebody may one day use her child to strike at her, Shepard had instructed her doctors to implant a sub-dermal tracking device beneath the skin of baby Lauren's neck. If she was anywhere on the planet, satellites in orbit over Eden Prime would be able to pinpoint Lauren's location to within a few metres. Provided she was still alive, of course.
The locator devices were standard equipment used by many corporations to keep track of their staff and had proven invaluable in search and rescue operations if the missing person were fitted with one.
Of course the civil lib mobs tended to scream bloody murder about the idea of Big Brother keeping an eye on people but Shepard had long ago decided that what good were your civil rights if you weren't alive to enjoy them? Of course she hadn't informed Lauren of her decision to essentially microchip her like she would a pet dog or cat. Some things she just decided to keep to herself.
Mind made up, Shepard made herself compartmentalise what had happened. For the moment, she couldn't afford to act the distraught parent. She forced the mental image of Lauren into a small dark box inside her mind and shut it tight. Then, heading towards her bedroom upstairs, she brought out and dusted off that old part of her life that, even after all this time, was still quite close to the surface. It was time for Captain Shepard to come out of retirement.
In the master bedroom, Shepard pulled shut the blinds and curtains and powered up her desktop terminal. While the OS was loading, she opened the long wardrobe that took up an entire wall, shoving aside racks of clothing to reveal the safe behind. Shepard pressed the palm of her right hand to the biometric scanner. After a few seconds the door hissed open, granting access to the small armoury of gear within.
Although civilian ownership of military-grade weapons and armour was very, very illegal, Shepard's old contacts in C-Sec and the Alliance military had managed to 'lose' the odd crate of gear over the years, crates that seemed to magically wind up in her possession. Odd that.
Shepard removed the Aldrin Labs Onyx hardsuit. Hardly top of the line and the design hadn't been improved much over the standard issue suit she'd worn during the early days of her career but better than waltzing into a firefight naked.
The suit had sat unused in the back of the wardrobe since Lauren had been born - don't go there - with a constant trickle of power from the household fuel cells keeping the shield capacitors charged.
Moving quickly, Shepard stripped to her underclothes and worked herself into the hardsuit. The fit was tighter than she remembered it being. Putting such trivialities out of her mind, Shepard removed the sidearm, inserted the block of ballistic compound and racked the slide. Shepard briefly considered breaking the shotgun out of storage then decided against it. The handgun she could easily conceal beneath her ankle-length leather coat which would double as a cover for the armour but the shotgun was just too bulky.
Finally, Shepard removed the biotic amplifier from its case inside the safe, pushed a sheaf of hair away from the implant jack at the base of her skull and carefully clicked it into place. Immediately she felt the old familiar throbbing in the back of her mind, like a second heartbeat. Though a decade and a half of civilian life hadn't called for much use of her biotic abilities, Shepard had been careful to maintain the strict regimen of exercises needed to ensure her talents wouldn't dull with time.
By now the computer terminal was ready and Shepard brought up the application to track Lauren's sub-dermal implant.
"Come on, come on," Shepard muttered as the drives whirred quietly.
After several seconds, the log on dialogue box popped up and Shepard quickly entered the access code.
"OK, where are you?" she said to herself as the planetary map display zoomed in to ground level. A blinking green light representing Lauren appeared onscreen, causing Shepard's heart to speed up painfully in her chest - her child was out there somewhere.
Specifically somewhere in the middle of the main tourist strip in the capital - an odd place to stash the object of a ransom demand she though. But maybe the kidnappers were hoping to hide out in plain sight. It's the sort of trick she'd try, if she were in the business of kidnapping. Shepard removed a palm-sized computer from the desk drawer and confirmed that it too was displaying Lauren's current position. Nodding decisively to herself, she shut down the desk terminal, slipped the smaller device into her coat pocket and left the house.