Warning- There is both graphic violence and sexual material in this chapter.

The Year 2177

Pragia

Boom!

Jack was awake on on her feet before the second muffled explosion sounded. "What the fuck?" she said to herself as she looked around at her dark cell and found nothing out of the ordinary.

Boom!

There it was again. This time she felt the ground tremble beneath her. She couldn't tell if she was imagining this or not, she'd been plagued by visions of her imagination since she was a little girl but something about this felt different.

Boom!

No this was real. Jack could feel it in her gut. She turned around and ran up to her window to look outside. Below her a group of kids ran together in one direction with biotics flaring. The young girl narrowed her eyes and before she had time to analyze the scene a fourth explosion sounded but this time the lights in the facility all went dark.

Jack couldn't hear anything but the sound of herself breathing as she stood still in total darkness. Then suddenly she heard a faint popping in the distance before her cell was bathed in red light. The emergency power had kicked in and Jack's heart nearly burst through her chest.

Her cell door, the same door she'd spent almost her entire life staring at, was open. The brief power failure had given her the opportunity she'd been dreaming of for as long as she could remember and she had no intentions of wasting it.

Jack sprang for the open door. Her body surged with biotics as she ran out into the hallways outside her door. She tightened her fists when the first guard turned the corner. The man was wearing light armor but he still let out a scream as the girl barreled towards him. He reached for his gun but it was too late. With a fierce cry Jack lifted the man into the air and smashed him against the wall leaving a large blood stain.

The guard coughed and blood spilled past his lips, Zero's first strike had rendered his ribs and back broken and ruptured a few internal organs but he still raised a hand up in desperation as Jack stalked towards the man. "Zero, please..."

Jack didn't want to hear it. She brought her foot down on the man's face over and over again until his head was nothing but a bloody mess on the steel floor. Usually there was a small squad of guards just outside her cell, but they had mostly disappeared and left behind only this one poor idiot to guard her. Jack knew this was her chance. Bits of the man's brains were still stuck to Jack's foot as she ran further into the Teltin facility.

She didn't know where she was going. Every turn she took seemed to drag her further and further into unknown territory. Outside of her cell, the lab and the arena Jack had never seen much of the facility she'd called home for most of her life. A few more guards found her and Jack ripped them to threads with her biotics. She left the last one crying for mercy as his bones poked through his twisted and broken body.

Eventually she found a staircase so she scrambled up it hoping it would lead her to freedom. But when the door at the top of the stairs slid open she found not guards but a group of fellow kids. Her escape must have triggered a riot and the other kids had escaped. The children sneered at Jack and their bodies glowed blue before they began throwing attacks her way. Jack was able to just barley dodge their biotics before retaliating with the most powerful blast she could muster.

All four of the other kids were tossed back to the ground and Jack sprang on top of the closest one and bit her teeth down into the young boy's throat. She tore the flesh away and left him to bleed to death or drown on his own blood, whichever came first.

The other kids ran in different direction to get away from Jack so she kept on her path to freedom. She needed to figure out how to get out of here and she had to do it fast.

Doctor Nicholas Cardo was killing time in the security control offices watching the feed of the facility's cameras when he first heard signs of the riot. Before long the security control's comm began to ring and the officer sitting next to Cardo answered. "Who is this? What's happening?"

"Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin facility. The subjects are out of their cells! They're tearing the place up!" Zemkl answered. Cardo wondered why he bothered mentioning the facility by name before the reality of the situation hit him. Cardo shot to his feet and the security officer continued speaking. "Subject Zero is going to get loose I need permission to terminate. I repeat, permission to terminate!"

Cardo shoved the officer aside and leaned in to speak into the comm. "All subjects besides Zero are expendable. Keep Jack alive!" He didn't know why he used that name Zero insisted on being addressed by but he quickly vowed to never let it happen again.

"Understood," Zemkl said. "I'll begin the lockdown procedures asap."

Cardo grabbed the young guard next to him by the shoulder. "Keep your eyes on these screens and tell me where to find Subject Zero."

"But sir, where are you going?!" the guard asked.

"To salvage the experiment. Or die trying"

Jack was dripping with blood and none of it was her own. Her overcharged biotic amp was getting more use in the past few minutes than it ever had before. She prowled slowly towards another corner and could hear the voice of a doctor just out of sight.

"It's all fallen to pieces. The subjects are rampaging, and Zero is loose." Jack clenched her teeth when she heard the doctor call her that. She hated it, it was just one more thing they did to dehumanize her. "We're shutting Teltin down. What a disaster." the doctor continued as Jack inched closer to the corner. "We'll infiltrate and piggyback onto the Alliance's Ascension program. Hopefully that will..."

Jack rounded the corner and sprinted towards the bald man standing alone on the vid-comm. Her body crackeling with powerful blue energy as the man struggled to respond. "Who are..." Zero, wait!" he screamed as Jack lifted him off the ground with her powers and smashed him down as hard she could.

The bald doctor tried to crawl away but before he could Jack turned him over and raised a glowing fist behind her head. "Wait!" he pleaded again.

"How the fuck do I get out of here?!" Jack screamed.

"What?"

"How do I get out?!" she repeated.

"The landing pad on the roof! There should be s-shuttles! Just keep going up and you'll find it! " the doctor cried. "Now please..." he didn't get a chance to finish before Jack snapped his neck. She kept going up until she found herself in the large room where the arena fights were held.

The entire room was in chaos. Guards and subjects fighting for their lives and biotics and bullets being fired off in a seemingly endless stream of violence. An automated drone flew up in front of Jack's face and drew her attention away from the carnage before her. The drone's gun began to spin up and so Jack grabbed it in a field of energy and tossed it towards the struggle before diving in.

Jack ripped everyone before her apart. Sinking her teeth into anyone who got to close and tearing away their flesh and pounding her fists into their faces. She used her biotics to throw them like ragdolls across the open room and to shatter their bones. Eventually only one half dead guard stood between her and freedom. The young girl was caked in gore and fresh blood as she stepped over the twisted bodies of subjects and guards towards the only other survivor.

"Oh god! Please!" He pleaded for his life and Jack almost felt sorry for him before she recognized him. The broken man before her was the same asshole who used to drag her to the arena fights, who used to beat her when she resisted and who used to reach his hand down her pants when the doctors weren't looking. "Zero! Stop! I'm sorry!"

"Not yet you're not." Jack growled and pounced on the man. She grabbed his head with both hands and smashed it against the steel floor before plunging both her thumbs into the man's eyes. He screamed as blood poured from his now empty eye sockets and Jack silenced him with a quick stomp.

She got to her feet and suddenly became aware of a searing hot pain in one of her arms. She looked down and found that a bullet must have grazed her in the struggle but she hadn't even noticed the gun being fired at her. Then something on the ground caught her attention. A faint glimmer of light danced on the ground, there was almost a sense of magic to it as Jack marveled at the tight beam of light that shone down from the cracks in the ceiling.

Despite the pain her body was in, despite the lives she had taken and the carnage she had just fought through a smile came to Jack's face for a reason she couldn't point to. She inched closer to the alien phenomenon and reached a hand out to it. The sunlight glimmered on her blood soaked hand and Jack was overtaken with a powerful need to be press on. To be free of this facility once and for all.

She kept moving until eventually she came to the last door between her and the outside world. As Jack prepared to take her first step outside a sudden and agonizingly painful jolt of electricity struck her. She fell to her knees and screamed out as her collar continued to shock her. It soon became to much for her and Jack fell to the ground. That's when she saw him.

Doctor Cardo approached her with his omni-tool glowing in the darkness. "Did you really think you could escape, Zero?"

Jack struggled back to her feet and Cardo shocked her again sending her back to her knees. "You're n-not stopping me!" she screamed.

The doctor chuckled. "Please tell me, what is it that you think awaits you out there? Freedom? Happiness? Love?"

Tears brimmed in Jack's eyes and she attempted to crawl towards the door and he shocked her again. "You're an experiment, Zero. Nothing more than an animal. Nobody will ever really care about you."

"Fuck you." Jack muttered.

Cardo eyed the blood soaked girl. "Look at what you've done just in this foolish escape attempt. The damage you've caused, the lives you've taken. You're a savage. We engineered you to kill. It appears we've succeeded. Do you know what they would do to a creature like you out there? They'd see you for what you are and they'll either lock you up again or kill you. The only future you have is with me, Zero. You'll never be anything more than a killer. And you'll never be free."

"No..." Jack whimpered as she propped herself up by her hands.

Cardo entered the command on his omni-tool again and electrocuted the girl again. "What was that, Zero?"

She leapt towards the doctor with a fierce cry and took hold of the man's arm. A powerful biotic field surrounded the doctor's limb and fear filled his eyes. "My name is Jack!" she screamed before tearing Cardo's arm clean off his body taking his omni-tool with it.

Cardo screamed in agony and fell to the floor. Jack lifted the severed arm above her head and clubbed her tormenter with it while she howled with rage. Eventually the man fell still in a pool of his own blood and Jack spit on his face before she stumbled towards the last door.

With the bleeding arm still clutched in her hand she opened it. A wave of cold air struck her and Jack took a deep breath of fresh air. She went to take her first step before a ragged voice stopped her. "T-There's no place for you. Yo-...You can't change. You'll never survive."

Jack turned around to see Cardo still barely alive on the ground, his eyes struggling to keep open. "I'll do more than fucking survive."

The doctor's eyes closed and his head fell back. Jack finally took her first free steps and the sun shown down on her as she raced to the landing pad. She spotted one of the facilities workers sprinting away from her towards the last shuttle landed on the rooftop. Jack blasted him to the ground and advanced on him. "You! Can you fly?" Jack asked. The man nodded franticly, his eyes glued to the severed arm in the blood soaked girl's hand. "Get me off this planet and maybe i'll let you live."

Illium 2188

Jack leaned against the guard railing of her hotel room balcony and looked below to the skycars that raced by. It was nighttime in Nos Astra and Miranda had left Jack alone in the room to gather "Supplies" from contacts she still maintained from her Cerberus days. Jack didn't know what "Supplies" meant but she trusted Miranda knew what she was doing. And the irony of her lover's Cerberus connections being used for this endeavor wasn't lost on the Convict.

As she waited for Lawson to return she gazed out to the city lights and watched her breath trail away in the cold air. She'd been on edge ever since she'd discovered Cardo was alive but his daughter had brought things to a new level. Miranda could say whatever she wanted but Jack knew what happened to that little girl could have been avoided if she had just finished the job back on Pragia instead of leaving Cardo to bleed out. But she hadn't and now it was her chance to make up for that.

After Pragia Jack's whole life had been nothing but a violent blur of lies, betrayal and pain. Cardo had been right, the galaxy didn't seem to have a place for her. That is until Shepard came along. Jack smiled as she thought about the Commander and entertained the idea of calling the woman before the hotel's door swooshed open behind her.

The tattooed biotic spun around and saw Miranda make her way inside with a small black case under arm. She stepped off the balcony and towards the dark haired woman and Miranda set the case down on the bed.

"What the hell is that?" Jack asked.

"Things we don't want to be caught with." Miranda answered before opening up the case.

A set of needles and chemicals was inside. Jack picked up one of the syringes. "Fitting." she commented.

"I thought you'd approve of that."

"Why do we need two though?"

"One for Cardo and one for the girl." Miranda answered.

"What the fuck, cheerleader! We're not killing the kid!"

"Of course not! God, Jack what do you take me for?" Miranda said as she snatched the syringe from her lover and placed it back in the box. "This is for tranquilizer. We're using his apartment for the kill site so we'll have to knock both him and the girl out before we set things up. That is unless you wish to do things quicker, we could always kill him in his sleep."

"No way. I want him to know." Jack said.

"Know what?"

"That he was wrong."

Miranda picked up another object from the case that was shrouded by a black cloth. Lawson removed the cloth and revealed a very large and very sharp knife and handed it to Jack. "Suppose you'll need that then."

The convict smiled and noticed the way it made Miranda's eyes drop. "You're cool with this right?"

"It's nothing I haven't done before." Lawson answered.

"Be straight with me, babe. Tell me you want this too."

"I do."

"He needs to die. You saw what he did."

The raven haired woman nodded as she took a seat on the bed. "I saw. You don't need to convince me. I just want to make sure you're not losing yourself, Jack."

"This is who I am, Cheerleader. It's who i've always been. He doesn't just get to do what he did to me, what he did to his own fucking daughter, he doesn't get to just walk away from that."

"We'll make sure he doesn't."

Jack stared down at the knife in her hand. "What did it feel like to kill your father?"

"It felt like a relief. It wasn't just about vengeance, it was about keeping Oriana safe. So what's killing Cardo about?"

Jack was silent. "It's about setting things right."

"Alright."

"Miranda when this is done do me a favor."

Lawson wrapped one arm around Jack and rested her head on the convict's shoulder. "Anything."

Jack set the knife back into the case and closed it. "Never talk about this shit again. Once we leave Illium this never happened."

"I promise."

Jack leaned in and kissed Miranda.

They undressed each other without saying a word. They'd done it so many times it was routine and before long both women were naked and under the covers together. Their tongues danced as Jack rolled over on top of Miranda and snaked one hand down between her lovers long legs. She slipped two fingers into Miranda's heat and Lawson moaned into the kiss as Jack's other hand teased one of her nipples into stiffness.

The tattooed woman threw the covers off them with a small biotic pulse and slid down the bed to situate herself so they could grind their parts together. Their legs interlocked and both began to thrust their hips as they leaned back and let out dueling cries of passion. Soon Miranda came for the first time and she fell back on to the mattress while her chest heaved. But Jack was still not satisfied so she quickly buried her face between Miranda's legs. Lawson's already stimulated body quickly began to approach a second climax, "Oh god, Jack! Yes!" she cried before her body tensed and she fell back to the pillows again. But Jack didn't give up, her fingers returned to their position insider her lover and the convict used her biotics to vibrate them as the pumped them into her fiancee's pussy. "Jack! Uh! Slow down I'm goin-Ahh!" Miranda screamed and a jet of wetness shot out from between Lawson's legs and soaked the sheets.

Jack quickly bent down to continue pleasuring her. "Jack, enough." Miranda said between deep breaths. "It's too much." The convict looked up. "I need to catch my breath." she rasped.

The convict nodded and silently crawled back up to the head of the bed and laid down with her back to Lawson.

Miranda turned her around pulled her into her arms. "Jack? What's wrong?"

"Tell me you love me, Miranda. Please." Jack whimpered.

"I love you." Miranda complied. "You know I love you. And you don't need to fuck me to have me say that. Is that what that was about?" Jack stayed quiet. "Talk to me. What am I missing?"

"Nothing. Just go to sleep." Jack said and closed her eyes with Miranda's arms still wrapped around her.

Oriana Lawson didn't even know it was past midnight as she sang along to the music she had blaring in her apartment. "Be my love, be my man, be with me." She air-guitared along with the instrumental. "Hold me, thrill me-" The sound of her apartment buzzer made Ori stop singing immediately and shut off her music before looking at the time.

"Crap! Oh no!" She had a test tomorrow she was supposed to be studying for but her mind was dragged away from that worry when her buzzer sounded again. "I'm coming!" she shouted in the sweetest voice she could muster. She was wearing just a pink night shirt and panties but she didn't want to keep her angry neighbor waiting so she ran for the door. She must have woken them up with her music.

She opened up her door without checking the hall cam. "I'm so sorry I..." her eyes widened when she saw it was not her neighbor at the door but instead a familiar one armed man. "P-Professor Moser?"

"Doctor Moser." Cardo corrected her.

"Doctor um...excuse me." Oriana said and crossed her arms over her chest when she suddenly felt very uncomfortable standing before the man half dressed. "This is a little strange, Doctor. Why are you at my apartment?"

Cardo stepped past the girl and entered her home uninvited. "Hey!" Ori cried.

"Your sister."

"Miranda? What about her?"

"Is she staying here with you?" The man with the robotic arm asked.

"No she's not. And I think you need to leave!"

Cardo ignored her and continued to snoop around her apartment. "There was a break in at my home. Luckily my daughter and I were not home, someone could have gotten hurt. But strangely nothing was taken. I almost didn't notice. "

"Why would that have anything to do with my sister?"

"Why indeed." He said.

"I'm sorry sir but either you tell me why you're here or I'm going to call the police."

"I'm not going anywhere until I get what I came for. I think we need to have a conversation, Miss Lawson." Cardo closed Ori's door and locked it. The bald man turned and smiled, "Just the two of us."

Notes- So this one took awhile. Sorry it ended up a little long but hopefully it was a good one! I had a lot of things I needed to make sure fit with the canon based on what Jack says in her loyalty mission (Like the half dead guard between her and freedom etc.) so hopefully the flashback turned out okay. Sorry but there was no way that scene wasn't gonna be graphic but hopefully it showed how far Jack has come. Tell me what you thought of it, that ending, and the chapter in general in the reviews! And have a fantastic day : )