Mass Effect: Broken Angels
Chapter Ten – The Chains That Bind
-Year Three-
The commotion that erupted after Vyrnnus' death reached a fever pitch on the seventh day. The white coats were too afraid to go near the children of Blue Team, lest they end up with similar injuries from the teens they deemed "out of control." Additionally, no staff came to check up on the students or do anything short of bring food out. Felix couldn't help but point out the increased quality in their lunches, as if the staff was trying to appease them.
The infirmary was completely unmanned as well, with only the holographic nurse available to verbally assist the kids in mending Rahna's broken arm. It didn't go as well as any of them had hoped.
With no lessons, no instructors, and no worries, the students very quickly resorted to having fun with anything they could find.
"Alright, listen up, you ass monkeys!" William stood before his audience in the extragravitational ring with his arms raised like a conductor. "This is how we're gonna do things. Kaidan and Felix will go first. The goal of this game is to manipulate your medicine balls around the entire ring. Whoever reaches this line first wins."
With that, he dragged a piece of metal across the flooring. It created an unbearable screeching noise, but he didn't stop until he was satisfied with his line.
"My ears! Oh, my God!" Felix was doubled over with his hands pressed onto the sides of his head. "What's wrong with you?"
William shrugged. "Cry me a river, build a bridge and…shut up." He stepped to the side of the corridor. "Are you two ready?"
"Ready!" Kaidan said, picking up the weighted medicine ball in his hands.
"Yeah, you douche, I'm ready," Felix snapped.
"Aaaaaaand." William's drawl put the entirety of Blue Team up on their toes in anticipation. "GO!"
Mass effect fields flickered to life around Kaidan and Felix's medicine balls, and they threw the things away down the corridor with all their strength. With their arms flaring up blue, the balls rolled with great speed behind the curvature of the ring.
A few minutes passed with no sign of any movement coming from the opposite direction. Kaidan and Felix seemed to be the only kids in the ring enjoying the event.
"Wow, this is a bit boring," Anders called out.
"Yeah," William agreed. "This is powerful boring. We should pick something to do that we can actually watch."
A flurry of eager nods and calls of agreement rose up, and Blue Team began to meander towards the nearest umbilical. Kaidan and Felix sighed, looked at each other, and relaxed their implants.
"I was winning anyways," Felix muttered.
"Like heck you were," Kaidan laughed. "Your field wasn't even close to mine."
"That's because I was so far ahead!"
—
And that's the way it went until that seventh day—twelve children looking for direction in a place where there was never meant to be any. They endured thinking that it would only be a matter of time before they got back into the way of things again. That it had been the instructors themselves who had been the only thing keeping Blue Team from rejoining humanity.
It wasn't long before their laughter and games came to an end under the weight of their own imprisonment. It was easy to act human, but that's all it became: acting.
When they decided it was time for lights-out, the students spent the next couple hours talking about the possibility of escaping Jump Zero. It was a difficult subject to discuss for the obvious reason that a similar discussion that took place a couple years back ended in tragedy. They spoke lightly about it, as if becoming outright serious with the topic would invoke some sort of ghost.
Mentally, they mapped out the sections of Jump Zero that they had been familiarized with and carefully listed the doorways which could conceivably lead to the hangar deck. Considering that they had been unconscious during their trip down to their home section, this was a very difficult task.
"The infirmary," Kaidan suggested. "I think that's our way out."
William sat up from his bunk, a solemn look across his face. "He's right," he replied in all seriousness. "Letting the holographic nurse sex us to death is our only logical course of action." He stood as if supporting a heavy burden. "I volunteer to be the first."
"Anyway," Kaidan continued, "when I was there for the first time, the doctor—"
"So we're not gonna…?"
"No, William. When I was there for the first time, the doctor came from this other hallway. I think it leads to the other infirmaries on the station, which means we have a shot at finding a route to some sort of…I don't know…staff lounge. They have to go somewhere."
Kaidan knew his plan didn't have a much merit, but they were looking for anything remotely solid to act on. It was a sound plan, not to mention the only one available, so Blue Team decided they would act on it.
"They're not gonna just let us walk out of here," Felix added, playing the devil's advocate. "Who knows what they could have waiting for us? I certainly don't."
"You're right, we have no idea," Kaidan said. "That's why it's not up to me. This is Blue Team's decision as a whole. If one of us disagrees, then it's a no go. This has to be unanimous no matter what. Is there anyone who disagrees?"
As silence fell upon the barracks of Blue Team, a thunderous roar rumbled forth from the floor paneling. It was loud and foreign enough to frighten all of the teens form their bunks.
"What the hell was that?" Felix asked through panicked breaths.
No one could answer him. Another quake shook the room again, causing some of the students to lose their balance.
"Oh, God," Aryn moaned. "They're just gonna destroy the place and leave us here. We pissed them off, didn't we?" Her words provoked tears of dread from some of the other students.
"No," Kaidan said, trying to convince himself more than the others. "They wouldn't do that. Besides, in a place like this, any explosion would decompress the entire station."
Just then, the door hissed open. The kids screamed loudly, thinking they were about to be sucked out into space. The words death, frozen, and shine-matter raced through their minds until they were confident they were fairly confident they were still alive.
"There you are!" It was Miss Lola Veratryn, in all her porcelain glory, who stood in the doorway. Her hair was fairly ruffled and her clothes looked like they had just been thrown on in the dark—her chest was exposed beneath her unbuttoned jacket, revealing a dark blue training bra that was hanging loose and hardly covered what it had been intended to.
William stepped forward.
"I've been looking all over for you!" She exclaimed, stumbling into the room, hardly able to keep her balance. The way she shifted her weight to one foot, it looked as if she had twisted her ankle recently. "Remember me? Remember your teacher? Remember how good I was to you? You could never forget that, right?"
Lola leaned onto the nearest wall and took in long, stuttered breaths. Tears were forming in her eyes. "Make sure and tell them how kind I was to you kids. Make sure they know that."
"She's in here, Captain!" A heavily-armored soldier with a gasmask over his face stormed into the barracks. "Get on the ground!" he shouted at Lola. When she didn't respond, he gripped the woman by the shoulders and threw her to the floor with such force that she practically bounced.
As the soldier went about handcuffing Blue Team's former instructor, the woman looked up from the floor towards her students, blood seeping from her gums. "Please," she wheezed. "Please tell them."
Without the slightest hint of compassion, the soldier pulled Lola Veratryn to her feet and dragged her through the door, her wide eyes flashing with anguish as she disappeared around the corner.
Before the children could make sense of what they had just witnessed, another soldier stepped in the room. This one, though, wasn't wearing a gasmask and displayed his rugged features and prominently bald head proudly. He looked down at a datapad in his hand before turning his attention to the kids.
"Is this…Blue Team?" the soldier asked, the barest hint of a Russian accent slipping into his speech.
The students exchanged glances for a moment before Kaidan answered for them. "We're Blue Team."
The soldier smiled and shoved the pad into a pocket on his belt. "My name is Captain Orlov. By an executive order of Systems Alliance Command, this facility known as Jump Zero is to be shut down and its occupants released in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. All of you are hereby liberated."
Emotions ran high. The chains around the children's necks had finally been cut loose. None of them knew quite how to handle it.
Felix charged at Captain Orlov and began flailing his arms at the soldier's body armor with little effect. The Captain looked confused, but made no move to push the boy away.
"Where the hell were you!" Felix cried, his face red and wet with tears. "Where were you! They died and you didn't…"
The soldier did the only thing he could think to do and brought the child into a tight embrace. Felix hugged back, whimpering in his arms.
"I'm sorry," the Captain said. "We didn't know. I'm so sorry…"
—
Hardly a word was said when Blue Team was separated into different docking bays. They hugged and said their token goodbyes as they were pulled away in the current of hundreds of other children being released from other sections.
"Take care of yourselves!" Kaidan shouted above the commotion. He didn't hear a reply, but he knew there had been one. None of it really bothered him. There couldn't be any real goodbyes between them no matter how hard they tried. All of their lives had been intertwined in the deepest sense for three years. They knew, in a way, they'd never be apart.
In the midst of the chaos, he casually looked around for any sign of Rahna. In the time since Vyrnnus' death, he had done his best to stay out of her life, but he found it difficult to keep her out of his. On the far end of the crowd, he thought he saw her dark brown hair peeking out above the other students, but he quickly dismissed it. For his own sake, he didn't want to start his new life dwelling on his one great failure.
The children were packed into a cargo bay of an Alliance cruiser. Kaidan was eventually shoved up against a tiny viewport as the hold was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. When the ship finally disconnected from the dock, a wide vista of Jump Zero moved into view. It looked just as it had all those years ago—boring. It was so plain that he couldn't make the connection between what he was seeing at that moment, and the torment he had suffered within.
The landing lights of the cruiser shut off, condemning Jump Zero to wallow in darkness. As the ship made its first jump away from the station, Kaidan couldn't help but feel he had left something behind.