Thanks to my beta, M4GIC OR4NGEZ!
Chapter 7
When she woke, she was pissed. Instead of logically assessing the situation, she reacted. She tore the cords and tubes away from her arms, wrenched herself out of the bed and pushed a nearby cart of medical supplies to the wall. Alarms were wailing around her, but she didn't care. Her friends…they did this to her, brought her here under sedation. Just like her captors.
She tried the controls for the door and screamed when she found them locked. They had tricked her! The dark energy in the room began to gather in her core, and she manipulated it into a ball of blue fire. Ready to let loose, she was shocked when the door flew open and Doctor Chakwas urgently strode into the room. Before she could stop herself, her fist met Chakwas' jaw, and the doctor staggered.
"Shepard! Stop this!" She backed away, raising her hands in a gesture of peace.
"Where am I?" she demanded, azure flames licking her hands.
"Calm down, Jane." The doctor's soothing voice gave her pause, and she let her arms go limp. "You're in a safe place, our home base just outside of Norfolk, Virginia."
A response, a location. She hadn't expected that. "What did you do to me?"
"Intravenous fluid and nutrients. Jane, I'm trying to help you." She took a few cautious steps towards Shepard.
"I'm not right. Something is wrong with me." She felt that same overbearing heat and shivering she suffered on the shuttle.
"You're going through withdrawal." A few more steps, and she rested her hands on Shepard's shoulders.
"Withdrawal?" Shepard raised her head, her eyes bleary.
"I ran some tests when they brought you in. You were given steady and very high doses of depressants, anti-psychotics, not to mention the near-constant sedation. I also detected some brain cell degeneration that signified exposure to carbon monoxide."
"They were drugging me and poisoning me?"
"Jumping to conclusions is not like you, Jane."
"Neither is punching you in the jaw," she murmured, flexing her fingers. She began pacing back and forth, trying to dispel the nervous energy that threatened to engulf her.
"That brings me to something else: the unnatural atrophy of your muscles. They were trying to render you physically weak."
"Now who is jumping to conclusions?" she muttered.
"Based on video footage provided to us by Miss Goto, I think I understand why," Chakwas continued, rubbing her jaw with a shadow of a smile on her face.
"So, you had them sedate me?"
"Yes, to…ease the transition. It was a two-hour ride."
"Isn't there some kind of drug you can give me now?"
"It's better to do this the old-fashioned way." Chakwas took her arm and led her back over to the bed. "Though the initial purge should help, you are still in for a rough night, my dear."
Shepard felt like she had been in a state of near-asphyxiation all night long. Sheer exhaustion had finally bludgeoned her into a fitful sleep and she woke to Chakwas and Kasumi whispering together in her room, though not quietly enough. She could hear them very clearly, and they hadn't noticed her altered state of consciousness.
"You didn't tell her?" Kasumi's voice asked.
"I couldn't. Not now. She needs to concentrate on recovering."
"She needs the truth. You're her friend. You've known her longer than the rest of us."
"As her friend, I would agree with you, but as her physician I say the truth can wait another twenty-four hours. Besides, they are still working to decipher the code." The doctor's voice became more strained, and there was a slight pause of silence before Kasumi spoke again.
"Is Massani still trying to locate Allen Xirri?"
"He went to investigate Xirri's hometown, to see if he could find any leads."
"Seems like the man doesn't want to be found."
"Let us hope he changes his mind. Without him, our endeavors will be…less than fruitful."
"Did someone say fruit?" Shepard groaned, thinking it best to announce her presence at this point. "Because I'm starving."
"Morning, sunshine." Kasumi was by her side in a few swift strides, a relieved grin gracing her lips. "Or should I say evening?"
"Evening? How long was I out?"
"Almost forty-eight hours, if you count the ride back from DC."
"How do you feel, Jane?" the doctor inquired while helping her sit up in the bed.
"Like I just cleared N7 level survival training. Nostalgic, really."
"Oh," Kasumi sighed, "that sounds fascinating."
"Yeah, maybe someday I'll tell you about it." Subsisting on nothing but stims and insects in the Amazon for three weeks, no sleep, only a KA-BAR and one round of ammo in my M6 to call my friends. And that seemed like a walk in the Presidium compared to the Reaper War.
What she remembered of it, anyway. Back in her cell, or rather, her collection of rooms she had come to refer to as her cell, she tried not to think too much about what might have happened. Despite the nightmares portraying her friends in various forms of danger, she realized part of her was afraid to know the truth. She had survived, somehow, and the Reaper War had ended. How it all came about was a complete mystery to her.
She wondered if it was better that way.
"Shepard." Chakwas rested a comforting hand on the former marine's arm. "Jane. I'm sure you have questions."
Questions? There were thousands prowling through her mind right now, but many of them she didn't want to acknowledge. Fear kept those questions ensconced; fear of what might be revealed. Sooner or later, though, she would have to find out what happened to her, how the war ended, and her greatest worry, why no one would even mention the names of her friends. She had a feeling her apprehension and Chakwas' reluctance went hand in hand on that one.
Determined, however, to learn somewhat of her situation since her former hosts had left her in the dark, she began with something innocuous. "How long has it been?"
"It has been exactly ten months, thirteen days since the Reapers were destroyed." The doctor had obviously been prepared for that one with so specific an answer.
"Destroyed?" Shepard shot up and gripped the bedrail. Her knuckles flashed white and the medical metronome picked up speed. "So the Crucible worked?"
A choice, a pistol in my hand, a fiery explosion, the blast of hot wind blowing me back…
She cast the memory away, not ready to deal with it right now. It was difficult to believe that it had been almost a year ago. The Alliance had done their best work keeping her in the dark and she surmised she had only been aware of less than half of that. Days were strung together like beads on a prayer chain, hopelessly repeating itself in a mantra of unyielding confusion. It reminded her too much of when she had died and been resurrected by Cerberus, coming back to the universe being a completely different place than she remembered. No one would understand that it felt like hours to her, that she had simply fallen asleep and woke to find the balance of the universe shifted and her friends scattered amongst the remnants.
"It worked, but there were…consequences. When the Crucible fired, it called on the energy within the Charon Relay. The relay was damaged." Her gaze shot up at Chakwas' answer, shock evident in her face. "What exactly happened on the Citadel?"
Shepard rubbed her eyes, ran her hands through her hair, and finally looked back at the doctor. "I was hoping you could tell me."
"You don't remember anything?"
There were bodies, thousands of bodies, twisted and contorted into hapless mounds of rigid flesh. There was that damnable ghost of a little boy telling her things she didn't want to hear. There was an echo of a buzzing voice chipping at her resolve, feeding her doubt.
"Everything is…hazy," she replied, which was a dire understatement. It felt like blurred words on a page in front of her, and the more she squinted, concentrated, the worse her vision became. There were dozens of blank spots, and the few letters she could make out seemed to contradict each other.
"No worries, Shep," Kasumi tried to reassure her.
"Rest now, Jane. You're in a safe place. I'll have some food sent up shortly." The doctor switched off the lights on her way out the door, and Kasumi gave her friend's hand one final squeeze before following. She waited for the familiar voice to greet her, but the only sound in the room was the chirping of the monitors beside her. Shepard didn't trust them, either.