Note: Holy shit this chapter kind of got away from me. Also, I wanted to mention the cover art you should see at the top of the page … it was done by my friend Taz, who is a phenomenally gifted artist. Her tumblr that houses her artwork can be found at .com. Her drawing of Nicole is more or less how I imagine her (Nicole, not Taz—that would be weird), and is frankly one of the coolest things anyone's ever done for me.
Tobias examined his own medical charts with some interest. Shepard has chosen her target well. She had chosen her weapon well. Medigel had done some work, but his kidney was still compromised. It would take him several weeks to be entirely free of the injury. The throbbing pain in his abdomen seemed to carry Shepard with it, bringing her into the small, dimly lit room he was occupying in the Yangtze base. It almost reminded him of home, in a way, the sterile, cramped compartments, the ruddy red light, the low, constant hum that permeated the building, likely some sort of power supply. He threw the medical report onto his bed; he had learned all he had to from it. He would need to destroy it.
In the privacy of this room he had stripped off the coat he wore over his exoskeleton. He found it uncomfortable, the way the black metal caught on every stray bit of fabric. He examined one of his long fingers, a long black line running down from his knuckle to his fingertip. He flexed the finger and the metal obliged, offering no resistance.
Not as long as I'm co-operative, Tobias mused. Could Gabreau have managed such fine control over his suit that he could force one of Tobias's own fingers to bend at his command? No, that seemed unlikely. Much more likely was that the entire suit would seize up and his artificial heart would cease to pump the moment he disobeyed. Not that he knew how to disobey, really. The meteor base he'd been raised in had defined his entire life. Shadowhill, Cerberus, Gabreau … they were just words, names for the event that had created him and those like him. The pitiful rejects like Ten, who didn't even have a name. Shepard, the perfect specimen, the ultimate weapon. He wondered if she felt as he did, if she surveyed her own body with mixed disgust and fascination. They were unique weapons, the two of them. Unique products. Something to be feared and admired.
He twisted in his chair to grab his cup and the pain in his abdomen reminded him of Shepard again. As he gulped down the cheap liquor the Yangtze staff had on hand, he stared at the table in the corner of the room, the table that occupied his thoughts. He could almost see Shepard sitting there, her cold face a perfect mask, all cool calculation and precision. How he wished they had more of a chance to speak to one another. Surely there was a great deal they could learn about themselves…..
But no. She was not here. In her place was a small, almost unseeable blinking dot on the table. A chip. A tracker, actually, that Shepard had slipped onto Tobias at some point during their fight. That had surprised him, at first. He hadn't thought she would be able to slip past his defenses. But she had. And the tracker was there.
It was a death sentence for everyone in Yangtze, of course. Shepard would come and kill them all. Tobias knew she could will herself to great mercy, in her strange attempt to cling to morality—but that mercy wouldn't extend to a hive of willing Cerberus scientists and troops, conducting experiments on dead human bodies, on husks and Thorian thralls. He almost wished he could be here when she came, just to watch. He wondered if she would bring those blundering aliens and half-bred humans she had acquired along the way. Probably, given her profession. That seemed wrong, somehow. It should only be her. Only the two of them, the last and the greatest remnants of Shadowhill.
But he would not be here, as much as he regretted it. The thrill of finally, finally facing someone whose talents might outstrip his own, whose training was as brutal, whose soul was as deeply mutated and twisted as his own … it had been exhilarating, like nothing he had experienced before. Not like the meaningless sex he had with disposable nobodies in the Traverse or the cold killing he carried out at Gabreau's behest. Their battle had been art, art only the two of them could understand. What could turians, with their frigid honour, know of the deep and abiding bond of hatred between the two of them? What could asari, those philosophical fools who lived long enough to forget death, know of the countless lives that had been lost to shape the two of them? What could humans, in their sneering ignorance, know of the sheer perfection that they both were, perfection that demanded one of them kill the other?
Tobias rose from the chair and pulled on his cloak. He ran a quick check of his exosuit. Everything was normal. His heart, as it was, was still beating. Despite his brush with death, he had survived. He flicked his hand and a biotic warp field materialized around his medical report, shredding the paper into dust.
He left the tracker blinking on the table in Yangtze, wondering as he did if Shepard, too, had been changed by her brush with death.
XXX
"And this is strictly unofficial?" Anderson asked, as he crossed through the threshold to Hackett's office. He had the air of a man wary that he was walking into a trap.
"You know as well as I do that nothing with that girl is official," Hackett replied, reclining behind his desk. "Drink?"
"I'm fine, thank you," Anderson said.
"Don't be an ass."
"Fine. You still have that scotch?"
"Somewhere around here, yeah." Hackett got out of his seat to go rummage in a cabinet at the end of his office, leaving Anderson to contemplate the expansive room. Certificates were pinned along one wall. Anderson saw, with some amusement, a highschool diploma. And then he remembered that Hackett, unlike half the brass, had been raised poor, and that his diploma had been hard-earned, indeed. His desk was mostly clean, but there was a datapad that still had a news headline plastered across it, with the face of Nicole Shepard glaring up at him. The picture was from her declaration as a Spectre, and it didn't do her any favours. Her eyes were hard, and a bad trick of light threw her scar into sharp relief. By the time Hackett returned with their drinks, Anderson was grateful for the distraction.
"The damn press have been having at her ever since the announcement," Hackett grimaced. Anderson knew as much. "Al-Jalani is demanding an interview. Surprise."
"She won't get it," Anderson said at once. "Nicole has an … aversion to reporters."
"Well, I have more good news," Hackett replied grimly. "According to the papers, people are wondering why humanity's first Spectre has been so invisible in her first weeks on the job. You didn't hear it from me but Command is practically shitting themselves over it. They don't know which is worse: the indignity of hiding the first human Spectre from the spotlight, or the questions that might arise with having Nicole Shepard in said spotlight." Hackett downed his drink in one brisk shot without savour. "I know how protective you are of her."
"I just hate the way they use her," Anderson said, staring down at her face on Hackett's datapad. In a moment he knew how everyone who saw that picture judged her, what they would think of her. How some would see her as a badass, others as a monster, others as a hero, though Nicole would never acknowledge the latter. "I sometimes think I should've kept her away from the Alliance. From all this."
"Are you so sure?" Hackett replied, without particular inflection. "By our medical reports if anyone else had been struck by that beacon they probably would've died. And even if they hadn't, I don't know many soldiers who could survive Feros and Noveria."
"She's not a soldier. Not really," Anderson reflected, and it was a mark of their mutual respect that he said anything at all. Anderson kept his opinions about Nicole close to his chest, most of the time. "She has some leadership ability, though most of it is inborn. She didn't go through most of our training—just Shadowhill's. She knows how to infiltrate, and sabotage, and … kill, when she has to." Anderson's mouth twisted in a way that had nothing to do with his drink. "But I worry about how she'll handle command. She wasn't prepared for it."
"Too late now. I suppose we'll find out when the Normandy docks at the Citadel. See what the meatheads think of their commander." Hackett spoke carefully. "There's a lot of alien on that ship."
"Don't you start with that xenophobic bullshit," Anderson blurted, before amending: "Sir."
"It's not me I'm worried about. Terra Firma has more backers than you or I would like, I'm sure."
Anderson finished his drink uneasily. It burned in his throat, all the way down. The burning felt good, was a temporary distraction from the confusion he lived in.
"She's not your daughter, Anderson." Hackett was frowning, his entire face wrinkling, the scar that marked one side of his face twisting—rather like Nicole's. It was hard to tell what Hackett was thinking.
"I know that," Anderson replied, too quickly. "I know she doesn't need me … doesn't need my mistakes haunting her." Images of Saren surfaced in Anderson's memories, of bodies burning, of men and women screaming as they died…. "But to see her thrown out onto the fire, shoved into the light for people to judge her, not knowing what she's been through, not knowing …" Anderson couldn't decide what they didn't know. "Not knowing her. That Al-Jilani, I don't care if she makes insinuations about some spacer hero or a jarhead cadet, but … Nicole doesn't deserve it. She didn't ask for it. She didn't ask to be used by us."
"I thought she agreed to join the Alliance?" Hacket's brow crinkled with what Anderson was fairly sure was curiosity.
"Raise a child to think killing is the only thing there is and then ask her to join the army … yes, she agreed," Anderson scoffed, his nostrils flaring, "But it's not the same thing as consent. As choice. She's not my daughter, but she might as well be. Who else has she got?" Anderson said, more loudly than he'd intended. Hackett hardened for a moment, but his lips twitched and he almost smiled.
"Well, at least she's got you." Hackett picked up the datapad and read over it, the frown etched back on his face, "You've read this report?"
"No," Anderson said tersely, his jaw clenched. He'd closed it after reading a single sentence from Al-Jilani's "profile" of Nicole describing her as a "killing machine with no personal life to speak of and a professional record as covered in redactions as her face is with ugly scars."
"There's a name mentioned. Kevin Osaka, you ever heard of him?"
It didn't ring a bell. "No, why?"
"He was a colony developer, involved in some really shady stuff, but it was all outside Citadel space. His 'developments' often wound up being pirate dens, drug rings, that kind of thing. But it was outside any of our jurisdiction. Until…."
"Until what?" Anderson asked, with an uneasy churning in his stomach.
"Until he had his skull opened up by a shotgun about two years ago. Make and model was common in the system, and the weapon was using a local mod to boot, so no one looked too close … until now. Jilani lets slip in this article that Osaka was 'probably killed by a highly professional hitman—or woman.' She goes on to say that such a murder would definitely be in the Alliance's … best interests."
There was a loud smashing sound as Anderson dropped his glass on the floor.
"Damn, sorry," Anderson muttered, bending over to pick up the pieces.
"Don't bother." Hackett waved a hand, still surveying him with that unreadable stare of his. "Is it possible?"
"Of course it's possible, we send soldiers to take out minor drug lords all the time," Anderson said in disgust.
"Except they're usually fighting back. Not 'unarmed and lying in bed, pleading for his life, according to exclusive holotape records.'" Hackett's voice remained grim. Anderson slumped back into his chair, staring at Hackett's office without really looking at it. It was a sunny day outside, on earth, which felt somehow offensive. "There's no way she actually has holo records, but of course she'll say she does."
"If it was Nicole, there wouldn't be anything anyway," Anderson said. "She wouldn't have technically been doing anything illegal, since it wasn't in Council space—"
"But it wouldn't have been technically sanctioned, either. You know how Al-Jilani works. She'll make Shepard out to be a comic book villain, an assassin who goes and kills where she pleases. She'll make us either look like incompetent fools who can't control her, or like kennelmasters that let the mad dog off the leash."
"I need to go," Anderson decided, getting up.
"To the Citadel," Hackett said, not asking, or agreeing, but only acknowledging. He suddenly looked very tired. "You'll have a new posting soon, Anderson. You can't keep watch for her forever."
"To hell with my posting! I won't see this happen to her!" A fire seemed lit behind Anderson's eyes, and he stood tall in Hackett's office, the shadow of a fierce young man livid on the face of the old one standing there. Hackett watched appraisingly and nodded.
"I'll make sure that doesn't happen. For now. I don't forget, Anderson. A lot of men and women owe you their lives. And I owe you my gratitude. And whether or not the Admiralty admits it, Shepard deserves that, too. She probably did kill Osaka." Hackett tented his fingers and stared into them, leaving Anderson feeling somewhat foolish, half through the door as he was.
"She probably did. On 'unofficial' orders," Anderson sighed, his anger subsiding in the wake of concern for Nicole.
"Well, if she did, then I'm glad she did. The man was a monster, Anderson, protected by the bureaucrats' squabbling over space. Get to her before Al-Jilani does. Or humanity's golden girl might suddenly seem a whole lot less golden."
XXX
Hrm. Loses its kick around 500 yards, Garrus thought to himself, contemplating his assault rifle. He preferred his Viper sniper rifle, generally, but Shepard had told him they would likely be entering close quarters combat … probably meant that he wouldn't have to worry about anything past 500 yards, but if he could just get his talons on an Armax scram rail mod, he might just be able to get his old Vindicator to pump out some respectable firepower.
He hadn't forgotten Shepard's promise to help him hunt down Saleon, and he wanted to be ready. And he hadn't forgotten what he'd seen Shepard do to the Thorian, how easy she had made it all seem, cutting away the rotten bits of ExoGeni's corruption on that world and leaving behind a colony that could thrive. He wanted to be a part of that. Spirits … he needed to be a part of something like that. Where he wasn't just watching a rotten city turn foul as he tried to clean up the residue. Somehow Shepard made all the blood and guts and brains that got between reality and real justice just … go away.
Shame she wasn't a turian. He stopped and realized what he'd been thinking, and almost laughed at himself. What Nicole Shepard would say if she caught him imagining her with a nice healthy pair of mandibles, he didn't want to think….
"Something funny?" Garrus looked up. Ashley had come over to the small work station Garrus had set up at the corner of the cargo hold.
"Not really. Just losing myself in my work, you know."
"Modifying your gun?" Ashley asked, fairly blandly.
"More like daydreaming about mods I can't afford." Garrus' mandibles twitched reflexively in amusement, and Ashley pulled back a bit. He would have been shocked if the same thing hadn't happened hundreds of times on the Citadel. Humans—most aliens, actually—had a hard time with turian facial expressions. But Ashley recovered quickly enough, and tried to pass off her start as professional curiosity. "I'd kill to know what Shepard has her weapon tricked out with, eh?"
"I'm not sure I want to know," Ashley joked. She sounded oddly formal and stiff—or was that just the lack of subharmonics in her voice? He wasn't sure. "We're going to be going dirtside together in Yangtze."
"Yep. Looking forward to it," Garrus said casually. Ashley raised an eyebrow, which Garrus took to mean she wasn't impressed.
"There's going to be civilians. Terrorists, we're supposed to call them, but … not soldiers." A muscle was jumping in Ashley's jaw, though she otherwise looked very calm. "You were a cop, so I thought you might have more experience…." Garrus was startled to realize she was asking him for advice.
"It's easier when they're wearing battle armour," Garrus acquiesced, putting down his gun. "But once you realize that the people you're shooting at are … drug-dealers who sell to kids, or xenophobic maniacs who want to kill anything with different parts than theirs, you get past it. I don't think Shepard would order us to shoot anyone who didn't have it coming to them."
"No, of course not," Ashley replied, her brows furrowed. "It's just … we're supposed to protect and defend. Going to a system and attacking people in their home doesn't seem like … defending," Ashley finished lamely.
"Maybe not. But tell me, if you knew those people were going to leave their homes tomorrow and go shoot up a highschool, how would you feel then?" Garrus asked. "Sometimes I would have to go to a drug den, try and bust it up … we don't go in looking to shoot, you know. Well, most of us don't. It's typically them who start the shooting."
"That help you sleep at night?" Garrus looked away from her human face, focusing on her question.
"Turians don't deal with guilt the way humans do, I think. I don't stay up thinking about the criminals I've gunned down. Not the ones who deserved it. I stay up thinking about the people I failed … the kids who got sucked into drug running and prostitution and the spirits forbid what else, because I couldn't put away the mob boss who had all the right connections, or the street enforcer who was too smart to leave trace evidence. That's what I dream about. The ones that got away. And the lives they went on to ruin."
It was a long time before Ashley spoke, her eyes dark, turned inward. "I'm not sure I can think that way. Maybe it's a turian thing."
"Maybe. We raise our kids to think of duty, honour, to always respect right and wrong … but if every turian were like me, Palaven would be a very different place." Garrus shook his head. "Which do you think Shepard is haunted by? The ones she stopped, or the ones she saved?" Garrus had meant it conversationally, but he realized how incredibly insensitive he'd been the moment he'd spoken. He slapped a talon over his mouth and muttered, "Spirits, don't tell her I said that."
Ashley still looked deep in thought, her arms crossed, her posture taut, her eyes looking nowhere in particular.
"I think … I think she's haunted by something much worse."
XXX
Warm blood gushed over Nicole's hands and forearms, slick against her skin, as she held the violently spasming girl in place, one arm crossed around her neck, the other holding the girl's left hand away. Even now, she was trying to reach back to stab Nicole, but it was useless. Nicole had struck first, and now her counterpart was dying in her arms, jerking, seizing, choking on her own blood.
"Good," Gabreau's voice said, over the intercom. "Well done."
The girl's weight went dead and sagged against Nicole's arms. She checked for a pulse and found none, then released the girl, the corpse collapsing clumsily onto the ground, tangled limbs covered in blood, black hair matted against her face. Nicole ran a quick biometric scan for any signs of false death—she knew the girl was dead, but she also knew it was a part of the test that she had to check. She had to pass, because if she didn't, she'd be just like the girl on the floor, and it would be her eyes blinking dumbly up at the ceiling…..
But it wasn't her. It wasn't even the girl's face anymore, and Nicole recoiled in shock and horror when she looked at the face that was there in its place. Then she reached forward and grabbed for her body, pulling her close to her, blood gushing over her Shadowhill uniform.
It was Vargas. Vargas's dead eyes, staring at her, Vargas with a stab wound in her throat, Vargas with a broken right arm, the bone protruding through the skin and tickling Nicole's side as she pulled the body to her. Nicole was sobbing, weeping, her chest heaving uncontrollably, while a voice tsk'd disapproval on the intercom. Then Vargas's head exploded, showering her in purple blood, asari blood, and somehow Nicole was holding both Benezia and Liara in her arms, and then in her horror the world was swallowed up, and she was falling, falling towards a black shadow, a horrible evil waiting in the dark….
THEY ARE COMING.
And then she was thrashing, tearing her sheets off of her, choking in gasps of air so deeply that her head was swimming as she kicked her way back to reality. Her breathing began to slow as she realized where she was, that it had just been a dream, no matter how real it had felt. She could still remember Vargas's face, could still see it in her hands. She raised her own hands and saw that they were shaking. Thankfully, she'd had the foresight to turn the walls of her quarters opaque before sleeping.
And Liara wonders why I don't get much sleep, Nicole thought ruefully, rubbing her eyes. Her hair was in her face, so she rubbed that away too; it was slick with sweat. She checked her omnitool's timer: still four hours until they jumped to the Yangtze system. She reclined back against the bed, then immediately threw herself out of it. She should've just slept in one of the pods. Actual beds always unnerved her, for some reason. Her clothes were filthy and sticky with sweat. She'd need to take a shower before her first mission. Of course on an Alliance vessel the only thing close to a "shower" involved several sanitary wipes and a few sprays of water, but it was better than nothing. The mechanical gestures helped her keep her mind off of things, though as always whenever she had to deal with her own body her mind remained firmly fixed on nothing but the task of cleaning it. She couldn't think about it, couldn't acknowledge her body and all its scars, not without falling into another hole….
She finished quickly and pulled her clothes back on, with increasing levels of comfort as she did so. First her undergarments, then the black combat mesh—and already she felt more at ease, her pulse slowing, her breath coming easier. Then her pants and shirt, and lastly the thick leather jacket which had three small kinetic-barrier generators hidden in the fabric, and two hidden holsters for small arms. There was also a knife on a belt, which she tied about her waist, but it was just an ordinary bowie knife—not her Talon. That weapon was reserved only for her Alliance uniform. Only for her duty.
Might as well have just suited up in the first place, she thought idly, but she had been moving automatically, trying to put as much distance between her and her dreams as possible. Now she found herself fully dressed, sitting in her quarters without much to do. At least she had quarters. The lack of privacy on other ships had made her rather intense standards of personal space … difficult.
She hadn't even known the name of the girl in her dreams. Just another of the dozens of Shadowhill trainees who had died in the program. By her hands. Nicole's hands. She raised her right hand and looked at it, encased in combat mesh. It wasn't shaking anymore. Hidden beneath microkevlar, there was precious little evidence she was more than a machine. Her shoulder was still sore, but it was healing. Thanks to what had been done to her at Shadowhill, she healed abnormally fast.
She could almost imagine the blood, could almost feel it trickling down over her fingers, glistening along her skin. Before she realized it, her breath was coming in ragged gasps again, and she was having trouble controlling her chest. She closed her eyes, forced the girl out of thoughts. She was only one of the ones she had killed. Not the first or last, or even the most significant. She clenched her hand into a fist, watching the mesh warp around her fingers.
I can't change what I've done. I can't change what I am. No matter how much I want to. Chakwas, Anderson, Liara … however she had fooled those people, they deserved better than her. They didn't know the full extent of what she'd done, of what she was. Not even Liara, who'd only been inside her head for a few minutes. She couldn't count the gallons of blood. She couldn't imagine the sea of dead faces Nicole Shepard had left in her wake.
Maybe the crew are right to fear me. If it wasn't for political bullshit it could have been Ashley commanding this vessel. An officer who deserved it. A real marine. Not just some killer.
And now she was going to kill again. She knew it, as certainly as she knew that she wouldn't find Tobias on some moon base in Yangtze. He'd be gone. But Nicole would dig for evidence. She was good at finding the traces of people, once they were gone, dealt with the traces much better than the people themselves.
Is this what you want, Gabreau? For me to kill all those men and women down there? Still doing what you designed me to do, all these years later.
Nicole knew the truth. They could slap an N7 stripe on her shoulder, they could call her a Commander or a Spectre, but they could never erase what had been done to her. What she had been made into. And try as she might, she was just going to wind up killing people, until she died. The thought didn't make her feel better, but it made her feel less.
Time to do what I was made for.
XXX
The Yangtze moon base was very isolated. According to Shepard, this system had until now been almost entirely ignored, with no settlements and a single helium mining installation on the outer-most gas giant some three hundred years ago. Ashley and Garrus were already suited up, waiting for Nicole in the hangar. Both of them were nervously checking their guns, by now very aware of how seriously Nicole took every excursion. Ashley still couldn't help but think that she might have crossed a line in speaking to Shepard so brazenly. It would be just like her to open her big mouth and practically invite the Williams family curse to strike again, burying her career….
Yet somehow, for all the things that made Nicole Shepard a very peculiar Commander, she didn't seem like the type to hold a petty grudge. Or at least, Ashley hoped so. Even now, she still wasn't sure what to make of their Commander.
When Shepard did arrive, she was fully suited up, a shotgun slung around her waist and heavy pistol at her side. Her helmet was already on, which Ashley and Garrus took as the cue to seal theirs, as well.
"We've confirmed that this is a Cerberus installation. Have either of you heard of them?" Nicole asked, her voice clipped and professional in their comms.
"Yeah, pro-human wingnuts with enough funding that they can raise a private army?" Garrus replied conversationally.
"The very same. The Alliance loves getting a whack at Cerberus, so they'll be pleased we've taken out the installation. That said, the Cerberus personnel on that base will likely know how much the Alliance loves getting a whack at Cerberus, so they'll probably start shooting. Even now they're most likely fortifying their position as much as possible." Nicole turned directly towards Ashley. If they hadn't both been wearing helmets, she would have been staring directly into her eyes. "I'm going to suggest we breach the front entrance with low-level charges and proceed corridor-by-corridor in tight formation, with myself at point." Shepard paused, and seemed to take a moment to maintain the strict formality she'd spoken with thus far. "We won't fire until fired upon, but we'll keep our shields fully raised. Gunnery-Chief, does that sound good to you?"
"Ma-ma'am?" Ashley spluttered, as a jolt went down her spine. Did Shepard think Ashley was going to second-guess her every command?
"Squad-based ground combat is your area of expertise. If you have any suggestions I'll defer to you," Nicole said simply, and Ashley felt a great rush of relief pass over her. Shepard had been serious. She'd actually been asking her opinion. Not many of Ashley's commanders had done that, but then again Shepard was … unique.
"Sounds good, ma'am."
"I'll lead the breach with my shotgun, and you twofollow with your assault rifles ready. Remember, don't fire unless fired upon." Judging by the tense, clipped way Nicole was speaking, there seemed to be considerable effort going into controlling her tone of voice. Was it because of Ashley? Or maybe—because of Cerberus? Ashley knew Cerberus was a sore spot for most Alliance marines, since Cerberus had sprung out of the darker Alliance black ops programs … but Ashley had a hard time imagining the tension in Nicole's voice being born of professional pride.
Joker dropped them dirtside two clicks from the base itself, far away enough that any long-range artillery the Cerberus fighters had prepared would be ineffective. The moon—Ashley hadn't bothered to ask the name—was cold and rocky, requiring their hardsuits to adjust for temperatures of -35 degrees. Even then, it was still freezing, and Ashley had to clench her teeth together to keep them from shaking. The terrain was covered in deep craters, with boulders scattered in every direction. Nicole brought them to the lip of one nearby crater that rose well above the landscape and had Garrus use his sniper to get an eye on the base. It was a short, squat cylinder-like structure that was half concealed by a mountainside, the sort of dwelling that was extremely common on an unmodified atmo-dead moon. The door was a single sliding panel that Ashley knew would be tightly sealed and difficult to get into.
"Any fortification we couldn't see in orbit?" Nicole asked, her voice cutting across the eerie silence of the low-atmosphere moon, grainy over their comms. Something in the air must have been interfering.
"No, that's … just the thing. There's nothing. At all. No cannons, no barricades, not even a sniper."
"We would've picked up the heat signature from a sniper from orbit, anyway," Nicole said off-handedly.
"That's why you didn't bring your sniper?" Ashley asked. She'd been a little surprised, since she knew how damn good Shepard was with the thing.
"That's why. Not much use in a confined space. Come on. Let's get down there."
Ashley couldn't help but feel somewhat stupid, just sort of walking right up to the front door, but no one emerged from the base, not even when they were only two hundred yards from the place. By now, Ashley could make out a sort of hexagonal yellow-and-black emblem on the base doors. It made her think rather suddenly of bumblebees, and she almost wanted to laugh, if breaking the silence on the moon wouldn't have felt somehow transgressive.
"Placing charges," Nicole informed them, as she tossed a couple of mines which took flight and snapped to the front of the door magnetically. They all waited for a moment, their fingers at their triggers, for a response … but there was none.
"Is the base empty?" Garrus wondered.
"That's a possibility. If so that will considerably simplify things." Shepard sounded very dubious at the prospect. "Breach in five, four, three, two, one." On her final word, Nicole detonated the charges, blasting the door open with a loud THWUMP that turned into an aggressive roar as the oxygen inside caught fire. After that single dramatic instance however, their entrance was blasted open, revealing a long, dimly lit corridor inside that was utterly still, without any life. Ashley relaxed her grip on her assault rifle, which had been nearly vicelike. Neither she nor Garrus dared to speak; Shepard silently directed them into the base, her shotgun still hovering with deadly precision at shoulder height. Once they were inside, they all lit the flashlights on their weapons, revealing the Cerberus base to be not much more complex than a single corridor that led deeper into the base.
"No one home?" Garrus wondered. Nicole didn't respond, at first, but she brought up her omnitool for a moment and entered a few short commands. Then: "Quickly! Down the corridor."
And Nicole took off at a run. Ashley was so stunned that she barely had time to register the orders, but she and Garrus bolted after her, struggling to keep up with Shepard, who well apart from having a head start was running like an Olympic sprinter. She reached the end of the corridor, slammed her omnitool into it, and an arc of electricity connected her omnitool to the door panel as it whished open. Once Garrus and Ashley were inside, Nicole closed the door behind them. Ashley looked up: they were in another corridor, though this one still had local atmosphere and pressure, according to her hardsuit. Compared to the freezing cold outside, it was practically a beach resort at a cozy fifteen degrees. To Ashley's surprise, Nicole promptly took off her helmet.
"What are you—" But she never got to finish her sentence. There was a sound like a loud, mechanical scream, and suddenly a wave of energy issued from the end of the tunnel and knocked them all on their asses. Ashley quickly realized that she was perfectly uninjured by the blast—but her helmet's HUD was dead, and her assault rifle was unresponsive in her hand, the little glowing overheat hologram on the butt completely gone.
"That's a technology that one of Saren's mercenaries used. A kind of massive overload. If they had got us while we were outside in the low-atmo, well, we'd all be very cold and finding it very hard to breathe as our suit systems failed."
"I hate the cold," Garrus muttered, with venom.
"So what now?" Ashley asked, removing her own helmet now that she could barely see out of the thing. The dull red light that had been lighting up the corridor was gone—they were in near total darkness.
"Our suits and weapons will reboot quickly enough, and that wave couldn't have been focused—that's why the lights went out. The internal atmosphere should hold long enough for their systems to get back online, but for now they're as unarmed as we are. I think they were hoping to kill us outside, with the environment," Nicole said, almost too calmly. "I'm going to go ahead. Once your weapons are back online, I'll signal you on the comms and you can follow."
"What? Shepard, we have no idea what's in there!" Garrus protested. Immediately, he bowed his head, and said, "Sorry, Shepard, I just—you could get yourself killed! I have some CQC training and I'm sure Williams does as well!" Ashley just stared; she had never heard of a turian speaking that way to a superior officer. She was starting to see why Garrus had been so eager to leave C-Sec.
"There's nothing on this base that can kill me," Shepard said, very matter-of-factly. "The assassin from Noveria is gone by now; he would've known better than to try and use the overload trick on me after I had already seen it on Feros. I'm going ahead, and you will stay put. That is an order."
"Ma'am," Ashley said, her stomach swooping as she said something very stupid, "You took me along for my knowledge in squad-based ground combat, yes?"
"Yes I did."
"Seems an odd way to utilize my skills, then. Ma'am." Ashley felt her blood pounding through her veins at the sheer idiocy of what she was saying, but perhaps Garrus had spurred her on.
Fancy that, a turian teaching a human how to disobey orders and defy the hierarchy. In another time that would have been funny. Nicole looked a little surprised, then slowly shook her head.
"You're right. But I'm not going to risk either of your lives when your shields are down and your weapons fried. Not pointlessly." And without any further elaboration, she left, walking down the corridor, her footsteps as silent as a ghost's.
"What do you think she'd do to us if we followed her anyway?" Garrus asked lightly, as Nicole left them in the darkness. Ashley managed a very shaky laugh, but she didn't respond. She wanted to go strictly as a point of duty—but what was she going to do, throw her Avenger at the Cerberus agents? Garrus was right, Ashley did have some CQC training, but she had no idea how effective she'd be in the dark, against unknown enemies.
And with a very strange chill, she realized that Shepard would be very effective in the dark.
XXX
It was only after they had launched the M.A.R.O.D.—the massive autonomous radial overload device—that she realized that she had trapped herself in her room. In her panic at the sight of an Alliance vessel in the system, she had sealed herself in her private quarters, knowing that if the Alliance found her, the others would be stupid enough to start shooting, and if they didn't, then their test subjects certainly would get the violence rolling….
Stupid! Stupid! She chided herself. She'd shut her damn door—and now, with the electronics disabled, it would prove as moveable as a solid wall. She didn't want to die here, of all places, on some godforsaken moon in some godforsaken corner of some godforsaken system that nobody knew how to pronounce. She hated it here, no matter how well Cerberus paid her, no matter how advanced the science was … those husk things gave her nightmares. She preferred not to think about them. Preferred to think even less about the pitiful test subjects they had once been, before exposure to the geth nanomachines. It turned her stomach.
I can't die here, she thought pitifully, hiding beneath her bed. If she just hid, maybe this would all be over soon, the others would handle it, the ones who were as devoted to Cerberus as her parents had been to that stupid, cult-like religion that had sprung up on the backwater colony where she'd been born….
She thought she heard something, and every bone, muscle, and fibre in her body tensed as she tried to strain her ears, begging for some sign that it was over. There was a loud banging, and then, there it was, the telltale shriek of the husks, the vicious, mechanical sound that tore from them when they were stimulated. She tried not to imagine what the husks were doing to those Alliance marines, but it was almost a relief. Sure, they would have to contain the husks themselves, but they had countermeasures in place….
She heard several banging sounds, hollow thuds like bodies being thrown to the walls and the floors, as the ravenous horde attacked their prey. Yes, yes, let it be quick, at least. Not even Alliance marines, she thought, deserved to be torn apart by husks … for very long. But there were a lot of those sounds, so many violent thuds reverberating throughout the base, that she realized that nobody was dying very peacefully out there. She shuddered and tried to go back to dreaming about all the very fancy things she was going to buy once she left this place.
More of the violent noises, more mechanical screams echoing throughout the base. How many marines were being killed out there? Without their weapons, surely the husks would be tearing them apart. Maybe the husks were just playing with their food. The screams seemed to reach a fever pitch, and then—
Nothing. The screaming stopped. The violence stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. She wouldn't be able to open her door in here, but once the power was back on the others in the main lab would trigger the husks' collars and send them back to their cage, before freeing her. Yes. This was best, in a way. Now she wouldn't have to be involved in the husks' recapture.
But somehow she couldn't get up the nerve to inch out from under her bed. She chided herself for a child, but that didn't make that sense of uneasiness twisting her stomach go away. She thought she heard something like a footstep—then she froze. There was a very fast whooshing sound, then a large thud, and then a definitely human, blood-curdling scream. That was just down the hall from where she was.
Please don't notice me. Please don't notice me, she thought fervently. She heard the footsteps again, growing more faint. Every muscle in her body was tensed so badly that she was shaking violently. She prayed all sorts of things, even going so far as naming the god of her parents, Father Jonah. Well, as a matter of point Father Jonah had preached a very modified Judeo-Christian nonsense—but he had insisted his followers prayed to him anyway.
She shook her head, disgusted with herself. Even if she were to believe in a god, she wouldn't believe in anything that crazy, manipulative, evil old man had—
There was another scream, this time from farther away. Why did every sound have to echo across the entire damn base? This scream was longer, and even more agonized. It sounded like the owner of that voice was being eaten, or torn apart, or … something. But certainly not shot. A terrifying thought occurred to her: had the husks turned on the scientists? The second scream was cut abruptly short, and then another echoed out through the base. More screams started and were struck dumb, until she had counted seven in total. Her blood froze: there were only nine Cerberus operatives in the entire base, now that the assassin had left on "important business." If only he had stayed … he could have dealt with whatever was going to happen, she was sure of it.
She heard nothing for a long while. Whatever was going on, at least it wasn't loud enough that it was echoing into her room. Until—
"ARGH!"
And then silence.
It's okay. It's okay. The husks can't think, they won't open your door. It's okay, they can't—
The dull red light that covered the entire base flooded her room. Someone had turned the power back on.
Then they can't all be dead!
Unless, a small voice said inside her, they weren't killed by husks. That was ridiculous, though, she was sure of it, no one could fight two dozen husks unarmed, let alone take out Krueger and Olson, who both had deadly combat training….
Her door opened almost noiselessly. She froze, too afraid to even look, too afraid to even turn her head to see the pair of feet that were walking into her room, barely making a sound. She started shaking more violently than ever as the soldier approached, and she screamed in abject horror as an impossibly strong arm dragged her out from under the bed like she was a doll. She kicked and screamed and slapped with her hands, but nothing she was doing had any impact on the cold armour the soldier was wearing. She kept screaming, and punching, until—
Stars exploded in her eyes. The soldier had struck her in the side of the head. When the world stopped spinning, she realized she was leaned against the bed, one cold, armoured hand wrapped around her neck. Still shaking, she looked into the soldier's face—she had no helmet on. Her hair was red, like fire, and her eyes were so terrible, so pitiless, so utterly devoid of anything resembling human feeling. A vicious scar dominated the left side of her face, turning her blank stare into something monstrous and frightening.
"I'm going to give you a list of things which I know are true and not true. You're going to answer correctly," the woman said, in a voice so filled with cold, furious anger that she almost tried to struggle to get away. "Until three months ago you were raising children here as part of a series of biotic experiments."
"Yes," she said, without hesitating.
"You subjected them to minor gene therapy to enhance physical durability that they might survive your harsher experiments." The woman's voice was still cold, cutting into her like ice. Those eyes never blinked, never once wavered from her face.
"Yes."
"Some of the children were taken from wealthy families in debt to the Illusive Man."
"No," she blurted, eager to identify one of the lies, "They were all orphans."
"I know," the woman snarled, the ice in her voice turning to white-hot rage in a moment. The soldier's grip almost tightened on her throat, but she loosened it immediately. When she spoke again, the anger was gone. "Three months ago you received intel that a unique nanomachine spore was recovered from Eden Prime after the geth attack."
"Yes."
"You exposed the children here to the nanomachine spores, changing your mission directive from biotics to the study of their new conditions."
"Yes." Her stomach twisted with fear and, absurdly, guilt, even though she was sure that this woman was going to slaughter her at a moment's notice. Maybe if she gave her some useful information, she'd take pity. Most of the others had died much quicker, she was sure, and she would now be the soldier's last source of information….
"They all changed completely by two weeks' time."
"Faster. The last boy to fully change lasted only a week," she said immediately.
"Good. You were recently visited by an assassin named Tobias. He was treated for minor wounds before leaving."
"Yes. Ma'am," she added desperately. Or was it supposed to be "sir"?
"He didn't tell you about any of his plans, but he stayed in room 14C."
"No, it was 15D, but yes, he didn't tell us about any of his plans, sir." No, dammit, she should've stuck with "ma'am."
"You have limited documentation at this base about other Cerberus projects."
"Yes, we only really know about our own cell, to—"
"Prevent you from doing what you're doing right now. But you have some information stored in your main computer, since the Director of Operation Trilobite was a long-standing Cerberus agent with a rich and paranoid history with the organization."
"Yes," she said breathlessly.
At that moment two others rushed into the room, a woman in pink armour and a turian in blue. She desperately looked from her captor to the two newcomers, but her heart sank: the woman, with her ramrod posture and cautiously guarded stare, was definitely Alliance, while the turian was a turian. They weren't famous for their sympathy with humans, especially not Cerberus humans.
"Commander Shepard, ma'am, we came as … fast as we could," the human said, sounding very, very disturbed. She noticed for the first time that the red-haired Commander—the one the other one had called Shepard—was holding a knife in her other hand, and it was covered in blood. In fact, the blood had splashed all across her armour. She suddenly felt light-headed.
"I suppose you saw those husks. The bodies," Shepard said, very tersely, sounding almost angry.
"Yes. They were—"
"Children."
"She was one of them?" the turian asked, his harmonics wildly out of sync, giving his voice a frightening, monstrous overtone. She supposed that was the turian version of the white-hot fury that had been pouring out of the Commander. "One of the ones responsible?"
"Yes. She was."
"N-no! I was only just a low-level scientist, I swear, never anyone important, I just followed orders, I—I didn't want to lock up those kids, I—"
But whatever else she was, no one would ever know. With one swift movement Shepard slit her throat, and watched, disinterestedly, as she died, choking on her own blood, crying uselessly as the life bled out of her.
XXX
"Commander!" Ashley said sharply, bringing Garrus back to reality. He had watched as the Cerberus scientist had died, had seen the moment when the intelligence in her eyes had been extinguished. It had felt … not good. Watching someone die was always ugly, but this had felt right. Ashley might be shocked, but Garrus wasn't. When they had followed Shepard through the building, they had first been horrified at the sheer number of grotesque, mutilated husks Shepard had left in their wake: until Ashley had stopped and noticed that their bodies were all too small, that one of their blue-veined, wire-laced hands would have fit twice in one of Garrus's talons. That had turned his stomach—but even he had been stunned to find what was left of Nicole's … victims. Most of them had their throats slit, but one man in particular had been brutally stabbed three times, and his head had been nearly hacked off. Ashley had stared at that body for a long time, before she had beckoned Garrus to rush after her.
"Yes, Ashley?" Nicole said, rather quietly. The burning rage in her voice had subsided, and now she almost seemed contemplative.
"She was unarmed! She was defenceless, she even—"
"She admitted to aiding and abetting the kidnapping, torture, and mutilation of twenty-seven human children," Nicole said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "And I'm a Spectre. The Yangtze system is Council space."
"So that gives you carte blanche to kill a defenceless woman?" Ashley demanded, and at once Garrus knew she had gone too far. Shepard stood up, and turned to look directly at Ashley, her eyes flashing dangerously.
"Yes. It does. If I arrested these people they'd either slither out of their charges thanks to Cerberus or they'd be killed by Cerberus." There was a hard edge in her voice that Garrus had rarely heard there before. He normally had trouble making out human vocal tones, but there was no doubt that Nicole Shepard was extremely angry. "I'm not asking you to approve." Garrus expected Nicole to reprimand Ashley for speaking out of turn, but instead she turned to him. "Garrus, scan the computers in the private rooms. I'm going to go to the Director's room."
And quick as that, she was gone.
"I thought she was going to skin you alive," Garrus said, the moment he was sure Nicole wouldn't hear. Ashley grimaced.
"So did I. I just … that wasn't …."
"You think she should've tried to process them?" Garrus asked, with more feeling than he intended.
"I … I don't know what I think."
"I watched too many criminals get away because they were well-connected, or because the evidence wasn't good enough, or … any number of things. I know she did the right thing. I only regret that I didn't get to help her," Garrus muttered, with feeling. Though Cerberus only employed humans, Garrus had seen Saleon's salarian face in every one of the scientists Nicole had killed.
"That was butchery, Garrus."
"No, I think Torfan was what we'd call butchery," Garrus replied wryly. "You can't tell me that if Nicole had wanted them to suffer she couldn't have made it worse."
"And you can't tell me she couldn't have made it cleaner," Ashley said stubbornly.
"Between too messy and too clean, I'll take the option that ends with the human traffickers dead," Garrus replied bluntly. He was still thinking of Saleon. Garrus knew that Nicole never would've let him get away. No matter what her damn superior said. He didn't notice Ashley, still staring at him silently, her face nearly as masklike as Shepard's. Remembering himself, Garrus started to scan the computers. He wasn't particularly surprised to find most of the data had been wiped from storage.
"I just—we're soldiers. If we just start going around shooting whoever we like, how are we different from common thugs?"
"You're a soldier," Garrus corrected her. "I'm a cop, and Shepard's a Spectre. She's a soldier, too, but … Spectres have to make the hard choices. You haven't seen any Spectre handiwork, beyond Saren and our own Commander. I did, a few times, on C-Sec, even the ones who are considered pretty tame can be … extreme." Garrus shuddered as he remembered arriving at a mob boss' apartment to find it had been nearly blasted out of the complex. The Spectre who had done that had tied the mob boss, and several of his associates, together inside the apartment as it had been blown apart. Bits and pieces of them had scattered across half the Zakera Ward.
"Well, we better get something on Saren from all this, then," Ashley said ruefully.
XXX
Nicole felt oddly calm. The rage that had been burning through her since she'd seen the first small, mutated body had somewhat dulled, though she still felt disgust nestling in her stomach. She knew she should have felt guilty for killing them—the last girl in particular—but she felt nothing for them. She couldn't even remember their faces. The Director had some skill in close quarters combat, but that hadn't been of any use against Nicole. She had cut through them like butter.
Breathing, bleeding butter, she thought venomously. She'd come to the end of the long hall at the very back of the base, and hacked her way through the door. The Director's office was similar to the other rooms she'd found, but somewhat more lavish—in one corner there was an entrance to a small bathroom, which even had a shower. The office was familiar, but of course it was: it was almost exactly like Gabreau's had been. Nicole walked into the bathroom and stared at the mirror, imagining Gabreau staring into a mirror just like this one every morning. Somehow the thought of him shaving seemed bizarre—he had to exist fully formed, complete, without need for maintenance.
But the only thing staring back at her was her own face, and a stray bang reminded her that she needed a haircut. She brushed the face of the mirror with one hand, and left her reflection smeared with blood. She turned away from it and back to the room, the scanner on her omnitool running automatically. Of course, she didn't expect any real data to be encoded anywhere she could access electronically. From what she'd gathered, the program director was just paranoid enough to use the old methods….
She swept across every surface in the room, leaving smears of blood everywhere, until she found a small, almost undetectable depression the size of a thumbprint beneath the Director's bed. She pulled herself out from under it, then hauled the bed to the other side of the room. It wouldn't be a fingerprint scanner, those were too easily fooled. Once she crouched over the thing to examine it properly, she almost laughed. It was a keyhole. Quaint, but just as easy to crack. She used her omnitool to fabricate some micro-tools and set to breaking the lock without much difficulty. Of course, no one really knew how to pick this kind of thing nowadays, but Nicole had been raised by exactly the kind of paranoid lunatics that the Director had been. The lock clicked open and swung out to reveal a small, black-walled safe two square feet in diameter. There was a small collection of photos of people Nicole didn't recognize—she scanned them then tossed them to one side. There were a couple of personal documents which Nicole was surprised to learn were letters to a Ms. Roman, who the Director had apparently cared for a great deal. And then, lastly, there was a data disc. She scanned it with her omnitool and found it had a collection of audio recordings.
The vault emptied, she leaned back against one wall and set the recordings to playing. The first was just some nonsense about tissue regrowth, which concluded with a very satisfied person declaring,
"In two years' time—with considerable investment—we would be fully equipped to bring a deceased subject back to life, depending upon the manner of death and the condition of the subject's brain."
Nicole queued up the next audiofile. Something about turian metal poisoning. Then the next—a brief mention of the Thorian. And then—
"Where will you be going next?" The Director asked. Nicole recognized his voice from earlier.
"That's really not for you to know," said a cold, bored voice. It was Tobias.
"You're tasked with hunting down Saren, correct?"
A pause. "Among other things. Recent intel indicates he is enlisting more than ordinary numbers of krogan mercenaries. They seem drawn to him, somehow."
"Dumb beasts. He's probably just paying them in ryncol or something."
"Don't be so sure. It takes more than the ordinary persuasion to encourage true … devotion out of a krogan mercenary. Something more than money. Or their favourite drink."
The transmission cut out. That left Nicole something to ponder—true, she'd encountered krogan working with Saren, but she hadn't paid them more than ordinary attention until now. Was there something Tobias knew that she didn't? Or was he only working on his guesses, as she was?
There was another recording. Nicole recognized the first voice immediately.
"And you will provide us with additional funding?"
It was Gabreau.
"Yes," said a second voice, a middle aged man's. The easy confidence in his voice spoke of power and influence so massive they had almost become facts of life for him. "When the Alliance funding dries up—and it will dry up, my friend—Shadowhill can look forward to receiving continued funding from Cerberus."
"That is good to know. As you know, we have been building on the genetic work done by Ryan Shepard—"
Those two words dropped into Nicole's life like stones. She sat there in stunned silence, and realized she had missed the rest of the recording. She tried to replay it and wound up starting at the beginning, her fingers clumsily navigating her omnitool's holographic interface. She fast-forwarded to get back to where she'd been.
"—before he became some two-bit doctor on a backwater colony."
"And you're sure we can't convince him to come over?"
"Probably not. He's on record as having close companionships with," and here Gabreau's voice soured, as though discussing something slimey and shameful, "A krogan, a volus, and a quarian."
"Interesting."
"A waste of his time and talents, consorting with aliens," Gabreau snapped. "But no matter. We have his work, and we can build from it. We may soon have exactly the specimen I've been looking for…."
The recording ended. Nicole sat in the silence, staring at the walls, her brother's name echoing through her thoughts.