A/N: Early chapter this week since I'm heading to North Carolina early tomorrow morning. Thanks again to all my readers and supporters!
It was almost a relief, finally admitting her greatest secret. Doing so meant a slow and painful death the moment the Alliance found out, but her choices now were growing more and more limited. In spite of everything, she was growing to trust Victus, and if he wanted to save her then she would be mad to deny him the opportunity.
She spoke for so long and her voice grew so hoarse that halfway through Victus had to leave to retrieve more water for her. She couldn't see it, but his eyes never left her as she spoke, and he absorbed every word she uttered like a sponge.
"I'm part of an elite black ops Alliance group. Only twenty of us were chosen for training, and we're the goddamn best that humanity has to offer.
"It all began before they even discovered the Prothean data caches on Mars. I was part of the United States Central Intelligence Agency - known as the CIA - as a field agent and operative. I would complete missions around the world for the American leaders, and regardless of what the job was, I fucking got it done. Every move I made was heavily classified and confidential, and as a result my work was my goddamn life. But I was one of the top five field agents in all of the fucking US, so it didn't matter. I would hunt for terrorists, bust worldwide drug rings, assassinate mafia bosses; you name the crime, and I had done justice on a global scale. I was an unsung hero, but frequently saving the world had a lot of benefits: the pay was outlandish, I commanded more respect than some of my superiors, and I got laid more often than Hugh Hefner." She began to laugh, but it shortly lead to a bout of painful coughing and she had to lean away to spit out blood. "It also meant when the Alliance was formed and began recruitment, I was at the top of their list.
"It was hard to leave the CIA, but it was worth it to continue my work on a galactic scale. I was personally chosen by General Jon Grissom for a very hush-hush branch of operations known as the Alliance Restricted Special Operations, or the ARSO. When I agreed to join, they completely expunged any records of my existence: my work history, my achievements, my education, even my name. Before you ask, yes, my birth name isn't Sadie, it's a name I chose when I joined the Alliance. And no, I'm not telling you what my birth name is, so don't even fucking think of asking.
"To say that training was rigorous would be an understatement. We were taught to fight under any circumstances, using any weaponry. They once dropped us in the Arctic Circle with nothing but a combat knife and we were forced to kill and eat polar bears and seals to survive. Another time, they dropped us in the middle of the desert with no water and no food; I remember that I was even more dehydrated that week than I am now. When we weren't on survival missions we were training, sixteen hours a day every day until we were the strongest, the fastest, the most accurate, the most proficient with every single weapon put in front of us. I can take out an enemy as easily with a kitchen knife as I can with a crossbow. We are highly refined weapons, built not to feel empathy or compassion but to kill and survive at all costs. We lost half of our recruits in the process, but those who survived - including myself - will never be rivaled in combat.
"When your fucking lovely people attacked us unprovoked over Relay 314, they unleashed us to complete the most critical, most sensitive missions. My mission was to retrieve the information on this ship and broadcast it to the Alliance. I was successful, until I was caught.
"Before they sent us out, they told us that we had no limitations as long as the job got done. Kill whoever needed to die, and destroy whatever got in your way. But there was one rule that they hammered into us from day one: if you're caught, you scrub."
"Scrub?"
"Suicide. When we were far enough into our training that it was obvious we were bound for success, we had a small procedure to remove one of our teeth and replace it with a false tooth filled with cyanide. The information housed in our minds - the existence of the ARSO, the secrets of our training, countless Alliance secrets - was too valuable to risk giving it away to some terrorist motherfucker. So we agreed that if we get caught, we scrub. If we don't scrub, we're in for a hell of a painful death. But when that asshole jumped on me and dug his knee onto my back, I couldn't do it."
"Why not?"
"This galaxy we're in is pretty fucking full of terrible shit sometimes. The fact that the ARSO even has to exist, and the fact that I'm being slowly tortured to death by your people, is evidence of that. But I have no fucking idea what's on the other side, and you know what? When I felt his knee dig into my back and I knew that I was backed into a corner, I had no desire to find out. You know, your buddy Silvus may be a cocksucker, but he's a smart cocksucker: after I was first knocked out, when I woke up, my fucking cyanide tooth was gone. No more scrubbing for me, even if I wanted to, and they took away all my clothes and possessions so I couldn't hang myself.
"So you say that you want to know why you can't call the Alliance? That's why. Silvus says that if I talk, he'll spare me, but he's talking out of his fucking ass. I don't have a chance. If I have any hope of surviving, it's in escape, but even then... I'll have to hide, probably somewhere on Earth, and change my identity and my job and fabricate my entire life. Even then, if the Alliance ever found me, I'd be more fucked than a cheap hooker on Valentine's Day."
Victus was silent for what felt like an eternity as his mind reeled, contemplating the new insight into this woman previously shrouded in mystery.
Were he a more logical man, he would have thanked her for the artful recollection of the ARSO, promise her that he would not call the Alliance and that her secret was safe with him, and return to his post to guard her until she suffered a slow and agonizing death at the hands of his Ship Master.
However, Victus was not a logical man.
"Soldiers have to do their duty," he muttered before standing and promptly exiting the cell, slamming the door behind him.
Fear relentlessly gripped Sadie the moment she heard Victus shut the door.
She had been such a fool to place her trust in a turian. Clearly, he was going straight to his captain to regurgitate every word that she had just told him. The lives of her fellow ARSO agents would be at stake, as well as those of her superiors.
This is why she preferred solidarity: trust only lead to trouble.
After a day, no one had come back into her cell, Victus or otherwise, and she had received no further rations.
So when she heard the door swing open and promptly close, she expected the worst.
"It's me," Victus hissed. "Can you walk?"
Walk? Why did he need her to walk? Was he taking her back to the torture chamber? Were they going to a new room entirely?
"I doubt it," she admitted.
"Can you crawl?"
Although the request was confusing, she obeyed and pulled herself onto her hands and knees. Her ankle protested, but she found that if she put most of her weight on her intact leg she could slowly move herself. "Sort of."
"Good enough, I'll just have to carry you to the vent then." She heard something rustling around before the object was dropped in front of her. "You'll have to carry the rucksack; it will look suspicious if I'm carrying it."
"Victus - Adrien - what the fuck is going on?"
"We're getting you out of here."