Jump Chain Gothic 1 - Mass Effect 2 - Jack

Engineering. The Normandy

I had not expected Shepard to come down and ask me to do something like this. Well she hadn't just roped me into this, Tali would have to help too.

"So you want a bomb" I summarised.

She'd not exactly phrased it that way, however it was a bomb which she wanted me to build.

"One large enough to take out an entire Cerberus base" the Commander said "I don't think we'll need the same level of boom we had on Virmire when we took out Saren's base, but we should make sure the place is nice and levelled".

This must be for Jack's Loyalty quest.

"I'm putting you in charge of the mission" Shepard was now telling me "Build the bomb, and then take it to an old Cerberus base that used to hold Jack. One she's done whatever it is she needs to do, plant the bomb and detonate from a safe distance".

My guess was that the Spectre just didn't want to go on this mission. Maybe she was getting close to Thane, and as such had other things on her mind. Plus it wouldn't be long before we went through the Omega Four relay, as such Shepard must have other things on her mind.

"Consider it practice for taking out the Collector base" Shepard then added "I'll need an even bigger bomb for that place".

Okay two bombs then.

"We'll see what we can do" I told Shepard.

Next I turned to face Tali.

"Okay we're a couple of brilliant engineers we should be able to build a small yield nuclear device" I said.

While I couldn't see her face, I could tell that she was smirking.

"No dear I'm the engineer, you're tech support for Alliance Marines" she reminded.

Indeed that was how my military career had started.

"I've come along way since then" I pointed out "And when I'm a Spectre. I'm going to need my own team. Including a good engineer. No anybody suited for the job ?".

Tali moved closer to me.

"Well you know how much I enjoy being under you" she said.

It would be fun to flirt back, but alas we had work to do. Bombs didn't build themselves.

(Line Break)

Landing Site. Cerberus Base.

Jack pointed out the window at the facility as the shuttle came in to land.

"See the landing pad?" she said. "Has to be on the roof, or the vegetation would overgrow it in a few hours".

"Gothic," EDI broke in. "I am picking up thermal signatures everywhere, except at your landing zone".

"So either the landing zone's stone cold or something's distorting the sensors," I concluded.

"Of course. This was a secret Cerberus facility," Tali reminded us.

I didn't think there was any other kind, but still she had a point.

"Yeah, they build their equipment to last. Assholes," Jack cursed.

I almost missed the look of trepidation on her face as it was quickly hidden underneath her often worn scowl.

"It was a mistake coming back here" Subject Zero then said.

"We can turn around and go back to the ship if you want" I offered "But then you won't get to explode this bomb that Tali and I spent hours working on".

She took a deep breath, before she nodded.

"Yeah. Okay. Let's get on the ground" she decided.

It was raining steadily when we got out of the shuttle, and the clouds were making everything very gloomy and dark. Kinda like Jack's mood. It was also hot here despite the lack of sunlight. I didn't like it.

"Let's just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell," Jack urged. "I want to watch this place burn".

What we found was your typical abandoned facility, no lights, papers and containers scattered everywhere, stains all over the place. There were a lot of puddles and dripping water, mostly through holes created by plant growth, Over time vines of some sort had forced their way inside.

"I never saw this room," Jack commented, while looking around.

She pointed over to a stack of containers.

"I think they brought new kids here in those things" she said next "They were messed up and starving, but alive. Usually".

It was just Tali, Jack, Grunt, and I on this mission, so nobody had much to say to each other. Well Tali and I could have talked, but we both spent our time listening to Jack speak. Grunt didn't care about this. He'd come along just because he'd wanted to get off the ship for a while.

Soon we went through a door and down some stairs into another room. It had an active security console that when I brought it online got caught in a loop, repeating the same vid-recording over and over again:

"The Illusive Man requested operation logs again," one man was saying. "He's getting suspicious."

"When we get results, he won't care what he did," another man said "But if he knew..."

"He won't find out," the first one replied very firmly.

"Sounds like this facility went rogue" I mused "At the very least they were hiding things from the rest of Cerberus".

Jack had nothing to say on that subject. At least not to me, so we soon got moving again.

The next room was a lot larger. It seemed like some kind of atrium, or at least a storage bay with a lot of windows. Containers were scattered everywhere, all drenched with rain from the broken skylights above us. Trees were actually bursting out of the floor, stretching all the way through the roof. Which was a sign of just how fast the plant life here could grow and how aggressive it was.

"I remember escaping to this room," Jack said, her voice cold ever for her "Fighting here. I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling. Only a half-dead guard between me and freedom. He was begging for his life".

No one was sure how to respond to that, so we silently made our way through the room, keeping an eye out for vines and roots so as not to trip over them.

Well, the rest of the squad was doing that, I was also on the lookout for loot. Which I found, of course. But there wasn't much, just some research data for Cortana to go through.

About halfway through the room, we ran into a small pack of varren. Thankfully, their growls gave them away. It didn't take long to finish them off after that. They were fast and deadly, but we had guns and biotics. Also a krogan, not much trumped one of those.

Near the end of the room, we came across a small spot. There were a bunch of barricades arranged in a rough circle. Inside the circle, I could see some knocked-over barricades, broken tiles, dirt and scratches. And blood stains.

"This almost looks like an arena," I heard Tali say.

I wasn't sure where she would have seen an arena before, but this wasn't the time to ask.

"That's right," Jack confirmed. "They used to stage fights here. Pit me against other kids. I loved it. Only time I was ever allowed out of my cell".

"Was this some sick kind of game," Tali asked, "or were they actually studying something here?"

"Hell if I know," Jack replied with a shrug. "Maybe that's how they got their kicks. I never understood anything that happened here",

"How often did they do this?" I asked.

At this point I figured that Jack actually wanted to talk, but I found myself uninterested for the most part. Still I made an effort to be involved.

"I was in a cell my whole life," Jack replied. "Sometimes they took me out and made me fight. Filled me with drugs. Other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell".

Tali seemed more interested in asking questions that anyone else.

"Did other kids die in these fights?"

"Sometimes," Jack said. "I was a kid, filled with drugs and told to fight. When I hesitated, I got shocked. When I attacked, narcotics flooded my veins"

"They actually rewarded you for attacking other children?" Tali asked in disbelief.

Maybe the Reapers had a point when they decided it was time to harvest all advanced form of organic life.

"I still get warm fuzzy feelings during a fight" she admitted.

Which explained her love of violence.

"Okay, I thought playing around with thorian creepers and rachni and subjecting entire colonies to wacky experiments was all screwed up. This was just sick. What the hell was wrong with those people?" Tali wondered.

Good question. Sometimes it seemed as if Cerberus did evil for the sake of doing evil, and tried to justify it with flimsy excuses for science.

"I don't know," Jack replied "Doesn't matter".

"Let's get going," I said.

Before long we came across another damaged, but somewhat intact console. It still had power, so I tried to pull up any logs. All I got was a fragment of the last recording.

"Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin facility," a man in armour was saying. "The subjects are out of their cells! They're tearing the place apart! Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate—I repeat, permission to terminate!"

"Permission denied," someone else replied. "All subjects besides Zero are expendable. Keep Jack alive!"

"Understood," said the man in armour "I'll begin the—"

Jack shut down the recording before it could finish.

"That's not right," she argued "I broke out when my guards disappeared. I started that riot".

I shrugged.

"Maybe more was going on than what you saw" I suggested.

"The other kids attacked me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me," Jack retorted, while stabbing a finger into my chest "That doesn't leave a lot of room for misinterpretation".

I wasn't so sure. Being attacked didn't necessarily identify her as the cause of the riot, and an abused child being given drugs wasn't a reliable witness. But I kept my mouth shut, and instead spent my time looking around.

The corridor we were currently in was a dead-end. The only way forward was through a nearby door that went down a couple flights of stairs. Between the first and second set of stairs was a locked door. And a dead varren.

"This place is supposed to be empty," Jack said with a frown. "Who the fuck shot that varren? It's a fresh kill".

I wanted to warn everyone without giving too much away.

"Could be a salvage operation going on" I suggested "Or maybe some crooks are hiding out here".

This was when I heard something.

"Company," Grunt yelled.

We were already ducking for cover as the bad guys opened fire. Vorcha, mostly, and they were in Blood Pack colours. One carried a flamer, so I repeated a trick I'd used before. Using Overload I caused the crude weapon to explode and this made the Vorcha panic. Which in turn made them easy to gun down. The ensuing fire fight was very one-sided and only lasted a minute. A minute after that we were on the move again. But we were being more careful now since we knew that mercs were operating out of his base.

"Why'd they need a morgue?" Jack asked herself as we entered another room "This was a small facility".

It wasn't hard to figure out why.

"Looks like they were experimenting on the kids" I said "They must have lost a lot of test subjects"

"Bullshit!" Jack yelled. "I had the worst of it and I made it out alive."

That might be so, but there were an awful lot of people who didn't. I didn't mention that either. We just go moving again.

"So strange to be back here," Jack said softly. "I feel like... I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch. But then I'm a little girl again"

She almost sounded human at this point.

"Shit," she shook her head. "It's complicated. Let's just go plant that bomb."

We made our way an empty room that broken windows and some sort of grass was sprouting up out of holes in the ground. After shooting a few more Vorcha we found some small cells were they must have kept the children.

The door at the end of the hallway led into another large room. There was a catwalk that wrapped around the room, hugging the walls. Below us was a floor filled with debris and clutter.

Jack abruptly halted when we were halfway along the catwalk, staring at a set of large windows.

"This... it's a two-way mirror. My cell is on the other side," Jack old us "I could see all the other kids out here. I screamed at them for hours. They always ignored me. Why didn't they hear me?".

"Maybe it was soundproofed," Tail suggested. "If so, it wouldn't matter how long or how loud you screamed"

Not knowing what else to say, we let Jack digest that while we kept going. Perhaps I should have come up with something meaningful to say, or at least I should have tried to be comforting, but right now I was more concerned about Miranda. If things progressed as they did in the game then Subject Zero was going to get into a major fight with Miranda, and it might not end as peacefully as it did in the game.

In the next room we found some kind of chair, like the kind you see at dentist, although I don't recall dentist chairs with shackles at the wrists and ankles.

"I must have come through here when I broke out," Jack said with a frown "but I don't remember it."

Over in the corner was another working console.

"Entry 1054, Teltin facility," some guy said, all too calmly. "The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four and Six died. No biotic change among the survivors. We lowered core temperatures of surviving subjects, but no biotically beneficial reactions occurred. As a side effect, all subjects died. So we'll not try that on Zero. I hope our supply of biotic-potential subjects holds up. We are going through them fast".

"This is bullshit!" Jack declared to the world in general. "They weren't experimenting on the other children for my safety!".

Looking in her eyes, I didn't see anger or indignation as much as I saw, well, shock. I don't think it ever occurred to her that she wasn't the only one who suffered here.

"It looks like they were used to figure out what would boost biotics," I replied. "Anything that worked, they gave to you."

"You don't get it, Gothic," Jack replied. "I survived this place because I was tougher than the rest. That's who I am".

No she survived because the so called scientists here performed the more dangerous experiments on people other than her. But again I didn't speak about this. No sense upsetting Jack even more.

"It's all fallen to pieces. The subjects are rampaging and Zero is loose. We're shutting Teltin down. What a disaster. We'll infiltrate and piggyback onto the Alliance's Ascension program. Hopefully that will.. No, Jack!".

That recorded message came to a swift end, and I didn't need anyone to tell me why.

"Fuck they started up somewhere else!" Jack cried out.

I shook my head.

"No the Ascension Project is an academy" I told the scary woman "They don't torture people there. Well not unless you count being subjected to some very boring lectures".

The mere memory of some of them made me want to cry.

"You're sure?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Sure" I told her "Its were I learned to use my biotics".

Well I remembered it at least. I'd never actually been there. It was part of my back story.

"A lot of this... isn't the way I remember it" Jack admitted after a while.

I tried to be nice to her.

"None of this is your fault. You couldn't have known what was really going on," I said "They had you locked in a cell and drugged up".

"Yeah? Well, I'm a lot smarter now," Jack retorted. "I keep my eyes open and I always shoot first".

Well, I'd tried to be sympathetic. Guess she was still processing everything.

"We're getting close to my cell," Jack said. "The place I came from. Let's keep moving".

There were no more Blood Pack, either they were else where, or the vorcha had been left behind when the mercs pulled out. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case as to the Krogan who ran the Blood Pack the vorcha were little more than cannon fodder.

However there was someone else here.

"Come out now," I ordered, while using my best 'Do what I say NOW' voice. "We know you're here"

A man slowly stood up from his hiding spot between a large crate and the remains of a bed.

"Who are you?" Jack demanded to know.

"My name is Aresh," he replied somewhat calmly, "and you're breaking into my home".

He lived here?

"Hey I know you, Subject Zero" he then said.

He stepped forward, prompting Jack to lift her pistol. Ignoring the threat of an imminent and violent death, he continued talking.

"So many years have passed. I thought I was the only survivor" he was now saying.

The crazy woman sneered at the crazy man.

"My name is Jack," she corrected. "How the hell do you know me?"

"We all knew your face, Jack," Aresh said. "They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you. You were the question... and I'm still looking for the answer".

At this point I glanced over at Jack. I wondered if she'd shoot him.

"I tried to forget this. But a place like this... it doesn't forget you," Aresh whispered, while tapping the side of his head. "It follows you. I hired these mercs and came back almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding it, piece by piece".

Yeah it didn't seem that way. The few mercs we'd seen weren't doing anything.

"I'm going to find out what they knew," Aresh continued by saying "How to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin facility. It will be beautiful".

Jack immediately tensed up.

"They did such horrible things to us" the crazy guy then added "They must have had good reasons".

"There's no reason good enough!" Jack yelled out. "Are you nuts? You lived it!"

Seeing no reason not to let things play out I signalled the others to step back.

"I stopped it, all of it," Jack was currently saying "Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed up".

He didn't actually seemed to be doing anything judging by the state of the place.

"Everything we went through must have been worth something!" he yelled back.

"We gonna plant the bomb or not?" Grunt asked.

Clearly tact and patience weren't things his warlord father had programmed into him while he was in the tank.

"Just leave me here," Aresh pleaded. "This is where I belong."

"Fuck that," Jack stated

She brought him down to his knees with her biotics, then pointed her pistol at him.

"Jack don't" Tali urged "He's a sick man. He needs help".

"He wants to restart this place," Jack replied "He needs to die!"

She ended up not shooting him and the crazy man ran away.

"You did the right thing" Tali stated.

"Maybe." Jack said as she looked around the cell. "This room was my whole childhood. Give me a minute to look around?"

"Sure," I said "Go ahead"

I motioned to Grunt, who'd been tricked into lugging the bomb without much difficulty. Tali had just appealed to his male pride by suggesting that he couldn't carry it all the way here by himself. Which of course he had.

Jack spent several minutes deciding where to place the bomb, then changing her mind, then changing her mind again, the way women did when you tried to move a sofa or hang up picture. But in the end we managed to get it set up.

It was still raining when we left the facility, so we didn't waste any time getting back to the shuttle. As it lifted off, Jack grabbed the remote detonator. For a moment, I thought she was gonna set the bomb off right then and there. Instead, she just flipped the cap covering the trigger open, then closed it. Open, close. Open, close. Open, close. Open...

I banged the wall behind me, knowing that the Jacob would interpret this to mean 'hurry up and get us the hell out of here' Sure enough, the shuttle picked up speed—just as Jack pressed the trigger. Thankfully, we were almost out of the blast radius, so we were just shaken around a bit by the shockwave. Still it could have been much worse.

"Well our home made nuclear device worked" I said to Tali.

Hopefully no one would ask where we got the fissionable materials from.

(Line Break)

Briefing Room. The Normandy.

It had all happened so fast. One moment Miranda, Jacob, Shepard and I had been standing around discussing if there was anything else we could do to prepare for the Collector attack, and then Jack had stormed into the room.

Of course I'd warned Shepard, and Miranda about Jack's mood, as well as about what we'd found in the Cerberus base, but I'd been expecting a fight not a murder attempt.

There had been no exchange of heated words, or displays of biotic power. Jack had entered the room, and she'd opened fire. Miranda had been the target, but like me she had enhanced reflexes and so had been able to duck for cover.

Before anyone else react Shepard must have had a renegade interrupt moment, because she'd pulled out her pistol, and had put a bullet right between Jack's eyes.

Now Subject Zero was lying on the ground, and there was big stain on the wall.

"Well, shit" Jacob muttered.

There wasn't much else to say. At least not for a few moments.

"Gothic help me take her to the infirmary" Shepard ordered "Chakwas will need the body, she can put Jack's remains on ice until we figure out what to do with her".

I didn't move at first. I was still in shock.

"Gothic, you'll be a Spectre soon" Shepard reminded "And you'll have to make the hard choices like I do, and deal with the mess afterwards".

Sometimes I forgot just how cold the commander could be. Would I ever become like her? I really hoped not.