Chapter 21 – Shepard

Once we're in the lower atmosphere and closing in on the facility, EDI opens the shuttle bay doors. The wind speed is the first thing I'm aware of. It's gotta be at least 200 kph. I simply hold onto the side of the shuttle bay as I shuffle my feet just enough down the ramp to get a clean shot. I practically hear Garrus wincing inside, but I tell myself I know what I'm doing. At least I'm pretty sure I do.

My hand is tight around my bow, almost as if I'm clinging to it for dear life. Really, my only concern is losing my grip on it and dropping it out the open doors to the ground below. Right, 'cause I'm not the least bit worried about losing my footing and sliding down to the edge and dropping 500 feet to my death. Nothing like that's ever happened before. No. I shake it off. Now's not the time to be thinking about that. Besides, Garrus pulled me back before I could fall last time. He'll do it again in a heartbeat. He's right behind me. He knows I can do this. I know I can do this. …I can.

Finally, I pull out an arrow, nock it, and draw the bow. I catch sight of my target…I take aim…I breathe deep, steady my hand…

…and I turn sharply to the left and let the arrow fly.

It flies through the air before the wind takes hold of it, sending it in an arc and right to one of the windows of the industrial building the Shadows are hiding out in.

Joker checks. "…uh…nice aim, but…it's stuck."

I simply smirk. "It was supposed to do that." It's then that the five-second warm-up period comes to an end. The sonic arrow fires up and, after three seconds, every window on the floor it reached shatters.

"Alright! Nice one, Commander!"

I take a moment to feel victorious before turning around and heading back to the others, letting the bay doors close behind me. "OK, this is it," I tell everyone, "Ashley, Liara, and I can go through the main passage and open the way into the stronghold itself. Everyone else, keep us covered until we give the signal and we'll breech the side entrance as quiet as we can."

"We aren't worried she might've set up anti-Normandy defenses?" Wrex questions.

"Please," I counter, "Shooting down the whole ship would kill us all in four seconds. That's not her style. She wants to make it slow if she can't do it personally. Or both."

"Great," Joker sighs, "This Kendra person sounds like the kind of girl who tore the heads off her dolls."

"Ken-driss. …and…she probably did." With that, I head over to my weapons locker. I have my pistol and SMG ready, but I'm not counting on taking the whole stronghold with two weapons, even with the whole squad right behind me. I start to retract my bow with one hand, my other hand ready to take off the quiver…then I stop…

I look between the assault rifle and my bow for a moment, considering what to do. There's a holster for the bow in my quiver, but the quiver will make my rifle holster inaccessible—I can't take both. Reason dictates I should take the rifle and be done with it. Assault rifle is to Shepard as sniper rifle is to Garrus, after all. But…the bow is my weapon. Holding it now just feels right. Plus, for all I know, I'll never get a chance to use it again. And I really want to take it now.

Guess it's pretty appropriate. The Shadows gave me back archery. I should take them down with it.

So I keep my quiver strapped on, loading in as many arrows as it can carry, and then retract my bow and place it in the holster.

"Just couldn't resist, could you?"

I smile at the sound of his voice before turning to look at him. "What would you do if you'd just used a sniper rifle for the first time in 20 years?"

"Point taken," he sighs as he places said rifle in its holster.

I smile to him a second longer before turning to look at the others. Looks like they're mostly ready, just checking their weapons. They're still within earshot and most of them are definitely eavesdropping on some level, but they don't seem to really be watching us.

"Is this the part where you tell me to stay close," Garrus questions as soon as he's also certain the rest of the squad isn't paying attention, "because you love me?"

"No," I answer, "this is the part where I tell you to be careful…and remember what you promised me."

He simply looks at me for a moment. He promised he wouldn't let himself lose control with Kendrys like he did with Orion and Sidonis, that he wouldn't risk his own life to protect me unless there was no other way. Those are probably two of the hardest things I could ask of him. But he understands. So he nods briefly, signaling so.

I find myself simply standing here, looking at him. When I'm satisfied I've looked long enough, I smile to myself at what I know I'm going to do next: "Jack?"

Jack looks over at me curiously.

"…we're going to kiss now."

She gets the message and looks away, somewhere between groaning and scoffing.

Then I move closer to the turian I love and we really do kiss. We don't have much time, so I'm forced to keep it short, but I take as much time as I can, giving him a bright smile as I pull back. Once we're done, I head for the bay doors again. We're about to land and Ash and Liara are already waiting.

Ashley simply smirks at me as I walk up to her. "You two just can't keep your hands off each other, can you?"

"Pick your battles, Lieutenant," I counter.

"Right. Sorry. If there's one person in this galaxy I don't wanna tick off, it's you."

"Glad someone on this team knows when to back off."

"Well, it's just so much fun to 'push your buttons,'" Liara smirks.

I just give her a brief look as the ship comes down and the bay doors open. Then I step out and jump down from the ramp to the ground. "Wait ten seconds and come out after us," I tell the rest of the squad as I lead Ash and Liara to the building. The sonic arrow shattered the windows on the third floor, so we have to get up a little higher. Luckily, there's a ladder nearby. I start up it, letting Liara and Ashley come on behind me.

"We are coming out now," Samara reports, "We will attempt to cover your tracks."

"Good. Joker, go ahead and fall back before they look out a window."

"Alright," Joker says over the COMM, "we'll just circle around until you're ready to pull out. Go have fun."

"Stay close," I tell him as I reach the top of the ladder and step onto the third floor ledge, "We might need to come back sooner than you think."

"You? Retreat? Obviously not. Maybe you'll take them all down faster than you planned…"

I can always count on Joker to build my confidence. And bring out a smirk despite the life-or-death situations we're usually in. "Just wait for the signal."

"You got it, Commander."

I move across the ledge to the nearest window, stepping through. A few quick glances around it confirm it's too quiet to be part of the active stronghold. Guess the base itself is really under the facility. Should've expected that much; the building itself is too small for a home base, so the Shadows would've expanded in concealment, like going underground and settling into the tunnels. "We'll have to head down to the lowest floor and go from there. There should be a heat exchange or something leading to the basement—they're probably holed up down there."

"I see a path down," Ash confirms, stepping over to a stairwell, "Looks clear from here."

"Then let's go." I head down the stairs. They take us straight to the bottom floor. With a clear path forward. This is too easy. There has to be some sort of catch.

The heat exchanges do lead down. Right to what was once a storage area that now leads to what can only be the Shadows' enclave. Eventually, we come to our target. The entrance passages all lead directly to this point. The only access to the stronghold itself comes in the form of a broken hallway guarded by a locked gate. Through the gate, we can see the chasm on the other side, on the other end of which are the halls leading to the Shadows' newest headquarters. Looks like a bridge is automatically deployed when the gate opens. As we come up to the gate and check the lock—

Oh no. "Uh…this isn't good."

"What?" Garrus instantly comes over my COMM, "What happened?"

"There's a biometric lock on the gate and it's synched directly to the alarms. Even if we could hack it, trying to get into the system without an authorized access code would trigger every defense they have."

"Let me see it," Liara takes the front, looking over both the gate and the lock itself, "…we might be able to…no…EDI, could you break through without triggering the alarms?"

"Not without direct access—connecting to any system besides the central console would require too many relays, leaving very little margin for error."

I quickly start looking for another way. Come on, Sara, you snuck into places like this all the time when you were nine years old and no one ever caught you. There's gotta be a way… Alright. There's only ever four ways when it comes to crossing obstacles: over, under, around, or through. Through is no longer an option, the walls prevent around, and the chasm makes under a huge dilemma. That just leaves over. I quickly look up. Yes! The pipe system in this building is fairly primitive, so the gate doesn't reach the ceiling thanks to the opening letting the pipes and vents go past. If I can climb up there, I can use the pipes or the vent shaft to get across to the security checkpoint and let the others through. So, not giving myself time for second thoughts, I move to the wall and start climbing up it as best I can.

"…and even if we could hack the gate, there's no guarantee the bridge would deploy," Liara is saying, "so we couldn't cross this chasm I'm guessing was left by the Reapers' occupation. Shepard, what—" That must be the point at which she turns and notices I'm no longer standing right next to her. I'm already planting my feet on the top of the gate. "Shepard! What are you doing?!"

"Getting across to the control panel," I tell her, "The path out is never as guarded as the path in, so it should be possible to hack through the gate from there without tripping the alarms." I check my options. There's about a 30- to 50-foot drop into the sewers from here—hard to tell—and the only ways to cross the distance between floors are the vent shaft, the water pipe, and the gas pipe. Touching the gas pipe instantly dismisses that one—it's too hot to hold to. The vent shaft is too small for me to squeeze in (maybe if I still was nine years old…). Guess I'm going to have to shimmy across the water pipe the whole way there. Great. Still, I grab onto it, throw my legs up around it, and start moving.

"I'm sorry, how did you say you were getting on the other side of the gate?" Jacob cuts in.

"Uh, Shepard?" Ashley calls straight to me, dismissing Jacob entirely, "That's a water pipe you're climbing on!"

"Yes, I'm aware of that!" I snap back as I start shimmying along the pipe I'm clinging to, "Thank you!"

"Wait, WHAT?!" Garrus half-panics, "Sara, I know you've done some crazy things in the past, but don't you think there should be a line?!"

"Would you rather I wait at the entrance for a Shadow to come along so I can ask them to unlock it for us?"

"Shepard, there is a time and place for sarcasm and this is not it!"

"I know what I'm doing! Just—" Then I cross over the bolts keeping one section of the pipe to the next. And find out the bolts here aren't as tight as the others. When I feel the pipe shifting, I reach to grab onto the next section and jump forward as fast as I can.

Which is not fast enough.

The pipe breaks apart, letting a stream of water free as the section I'm clinging to drops to an angle. The pipe itself stays together and still supports my weight, but the drop causes my legs to lose their hold. I quickly tighten my arms' grasp on the pipe and hold to it before I end up falling, but the way the rest of my body jars back draws an unfortunate yelp from me to accompany the creak of the pipe giving way.

"Sara!" Garrus calls all too quickly, "What happened?! Are you OK?!"

I keep hold of the pipe, but, thanks to my original plan for crossing it, I'm facing the wrong way. So this is going well. "I'm fine. Just might take a little longer to get over there than I thought it would."

"Shepard, be careful out there!" Liara calls.

"Yeah, 'cause I was actually considering letting go! I thought that'd be fun!"

Liara just sighs, rolling her eyes. "Garrus was right about the sarcasm, you know."

I growl under my breath before taking a few deep breaths and steadying myself for what I have to do. For a moment, I try kicking my legs back up to grasp the pipe again, but I can't go high enough without risking losing my hold on it otherwise. I'll have to find a way to turn around.

"Gotta hand it to you, Shepard," Wrex smirks, "Just when I think you've done the craziest thing ever, you find something else to do."

I take one more deep breath, cling as tight to the pipe as I can with my left hand, and let go with my right long enough to swing around and take hold on the other side. Panting as the adrenaline thankfully kicks in, I do the same thing to my left so that I'm facing the right direction. Now all I have to do is get across.

"Yeah, what was her record before?" Jack banters with him, "Falling through the fish tank? No, wait, killing a Reaper by throwing a thresher maw at it probably trumps everything else."

"Guys," I finally cut in, "as amusing as these conversations usually are, it's pretty hard to keep my balance with you all talking up my ear."

"Alright, we'll keep the COMMs off for a minute," Garrus sighs, "but we're coming over there."

Well, there's obviously no one behind us and they'd have to come through anyway. "…fine. I'll have the gate open by the time you catch up." Once I've said so and heard my COMM click off, I look at the pipe. There's only one way I'm traversing it now. I'm going to have to… …focus, Shepard, you've done this before.

Yeah, I have. I was six years old and I came across an abandoned playground. The equipment itself was in reasonably working order, so I spent the whole day—the best day I had that year—playing through it all. Jumping onto the swings, going down the slides…

…and crossing the monkey bars to somersault down.

Same thing. Just have to cross.

I keep my eyes forward, focus on one move at a time. One hand over the other, one push closer. Every time I get the subconscious urge to look down, I drive it back. I'd like to think my mental discipline is halfway decent, which means I'm strong enough to fight off the impulse—every time it comes, I think back to just an hour ago in my cabin. I can't fail now. I gave Garrus a promise. So I keep moving. Finally, I come to the end of the pipe. I'm still about three feet back from the ledge I'm trying to reach, not to mention nine feet over it. Time to flip for it. I swing my legs back a few times and then let go of the pipe as I fling myself forward. I hit the floor in a roll. She sticks the landing!

Smiling ecstatically as I get back on my feet, I turn to locate the control panel I came for. When I see it to my left, I make my way over to it and navigate my way to the gate controls. Once I've found them, I activate them. Then I take great pleasure in the way the security gate slides open and the bridge over the chasm I just crossed stretches out to the others right as my remaining squad-mates catch up to Ash and Liara. "Told you."

"Oh, we never doubted your capability," Jacob points out as they start across the bridge, "Just your sanity."

Garrus crosses last. As he does, he looks to the right. Watching the water falling from the offset pipe overhead. Before he turns his attention back to crossing the bridge, he looks over at me, silently telling me You scared me. Don't let this happen again.

I simply return the glance, discreetly giving a slight nod to say I won't. "Come on. The side entrance should be down this hall." I start down it, the others following me through. "They'll expect us to storm the front door, so this way gives us the element of surprise and a flanking advantage." I turn the corner, finding the door ten meters away with no one guarding it.

"Sounds like our odds are decent," Garrus says as he leads us running to the door, "Let's get inside before—" He then actually reaches the door and stops dead in his tracks, staring at it. "…uh…"

We all follow his gaze and see the problem. There's no visible locking mechanism to bypass. Except for a bolt in the door with a knotted slot at its center.

"Wait a minute," Ashley steps up, "Is that…?" She groans. "You've gotta be kidding me! The Shadows are actually using a tumbler lock on the side entrance to their HQ?! I thought everyone on Earth got rid of those 40 years ago!"

"WHAT?!" Tali demands, "You mean we can't get in?!"

"Uh, actually—" I start.

"Not unless we've got a key," Ashley sighs, "Which I'm betting only Kendrys and her goons have copies of."

"But we could—"

"Couldn't we just break it open?" James suggests.

"It—" I finally give up and get on with it, rolling my eyes in exasperation, pulling an arrow from my quiver, and snapping the shaft in half.

"Not without setting off every alarm in the building," Miranda dismisses James' idea.

"I might be able to use a holo system in my omni-tool to simulate the key," EDI suggests.

"I doubt that would work either. The tumblers need real pressure, not synthetically generated."

Grunt growls. "Just break down the wall next to it!"

"Right," Liara comments, "Because I'm sure doing so would be more effective than breaking down the door."

"Well, we have to think of something!" Garrus says, "We can't just wait here and—!" He then turns just the right way to see me kneeling by the door with a bent and broken arrow wedged into the keyhole. "…uh…Sara…what are you doing?"

"One of the first skills I ever learned…" I answer. Then my work comes through and the lock clicks open. "…picking the lock." With that, I toss the broken arrow aside, get back on my feet, and carefully push the door open. When no alarms sound, I toss the others a smug look and head through.

I notice a distinct two-second hesitation before they follow me.

As we stick to the shadows and check to make sure the coast is clear, I pull out my bow and snap it open. "Looks like they're not patrolling this sector right now. If we hurry, we might be able to cross the hall before—" I stop moving when I hear a clicking sound that's regrettably familiar. "…please don't tell me someone just stepped on one of those pressure plates."

"Eh…" James hesitates, "…OK…I won't tell you."

I don't even have time to turn to glare at him before I hear Shadows approaching. "Well, there goes that plan. Weapons free." I jump behind the nearest cover and pull out an arrow, hearing the gunshots start immediately after I put it in position. I stay behind cover for the first part of the fight, peering around every five seconds to send an arrow at the first Shadow I catch sight of. There's not many of them, thankfully, so once the squad has worn them down sufficiently, I send out a yellow-fletched arrow—it catches one of the last Shadows standing with an electric blast, sending similarly charged shrapnel shards at the others to take them all out in a chain reaction like arc lightning.

Tali sighs as the fight dies down. "I'm sorry, Shepard, but it's kind of hard to picture you with these guys."

Suddenly, some of the stealth experts make their move, dropping from the vents to the catwalks or jumping from the shadows behind us. Wrex and Grunt make quick work of a few of the close-range attackers, leaving the others for the biotics of the squad. Garrus and Ash manage to take out the snipers before they can take any shots at us (well, any that catch us with our shields down, at least), but one of the Shadows on the catwalks is specializing in the bladed weapons and starts tossing knives. When one of the knives starts flying in our direction, I duck out of the way and then snatch it from midair and toss it back with all the strength I have. It flies right through the assassin's neck with enough strength to drop them from the catwalk to the floor.

Tali looks at this in astonishment… "Never mind."

I give her a brief smirk before turning to EDI. "Can you hack their systems now?"

"No," EDI answers, "I still need a direct link."

"And I don't suppose anyone knows which direction we're supposed to go."

"Well, experience suggests we follow the trail of people trying to kill us," Garrus remarks, "but, clearly, that's not gonna help when they're coming from all directions."

I groan. "I was really hoping we wouldn't have to do this… We're splitting up again. We have three paths forward, we'll have to send four of us through each one."

"You should probably check your math," Jack points out, "There's 13 of us."

"I meant on this level." I retract my bow and put it away, stepping over to the path up to the catwalks. "The vents are always a shortcut. If I can cut straight through, I can signal you over the COMMs and we'll all know exactly where to go; if one of you reaches it first, I can catch up that much faster."

"What—Sara, we just went over this!" Garrus snaps even as I start heading up.

"Yes, but this I actually have experience with, leaving you all no reason to be worried."

"You've crawled through vents on a regular basis?"

"At the time, I just called it Tuesday."

"They'll hear you coming," Grunt argues.

I just give him a short look as I reach the vent. "Me? I doubt that." Before they can keep trying to talk me out of it, I move in. Thankfully, the vents inside the buildings are bigger than the old-fashioned design I saw over the chasm, so I actually fit inside with enough room to maneuver forward. I crawl straight until I come to a fork in the road, then I move in whichever direction I hear noise. Two halls later, I reach the source of one such clamor: three Shadows moving towards the entry hall. I quickly pull out my pistol and fire it through the grate, taking all of them out with three consecutive headshots. When no one responds, I figure the hall is clear and holster my gun with a triumphant smile. "And I repeat: told you."

"What did you do now?" Samara questions.

"Took out a patrol group moving to blindside you. Never saw me coming."

"Well then, perhaps traversing the vents was a better idea than it seemed."

I just keep moving forward. But two seconds later, I stop. I hear something. A beeping sound, the origin of which I can't identify.

"Where's that noise coming from?" Wrex asks.

"Not our end," Miranda answers, "as far as I can tell."

Something's not right. "Guys, turn off your COMMs for five seconds." I turn my own off. I can still hear the beeping. It's coming from somewhere near me. Curiously, I start to go back towards the grate and peer through, see if I can locate the source and determine whether or not it's a problem.

Halfway there, I realize it is. The incessant noise is accompanied by another, more rapid beeping. About a quarter of a second later, I see what happened: the patrol group I just took out is rigged with the heart monitors we encountered on Noveria. Another quarter second later, I realize what the second beeping is: a proximity mine planted on the ceiling below me. The resulting explosion causes it to give way, dropping me to the floor underneath.

Ow.

My COMM is still off and my bow just fell out of its holster. Before I can even recover from the fall, someone kicks the retracted bow aside. I turn to look at them.

It's Irana.

I instantly reach for my gun.

She steps down on my hand first. Not hard enough to hurt it, but enough to make sure I can't move it. "Nice try. Just not good enough."

"Says the spy who gave herself away."

Irana growls before grabbing me by the arm and throwing me against the wall. I don't get the chance to try reaching for my gun again before she pins me there. "We didn't get to finish on Aephus. As much as I'd love to have a rematch, Kendrys will want this for herself."

"She's been going to an awful lot of trouble just to kill me," I point out as I unfortunately discover I can't break her hold.

"You still don't get it, do you? This isn't about you."

I look at her in confusion for a second before she starts leading me off. I could easily break the hold now that we're moving, but I know what'll happen if I don't: Kendrys will have me cornered right as the squad realizes what happened and comes up behind me, giving them a clear shot at her and me a chance to duck out while the Shadows are in sheer panic. Besides, my mind is pretty preoccupied with trying to figure out what Irana meant when she…said…

"This isn't about you."

…not me…this is about Orion.

And I'm not the one that killed him.