A/N: Another slightly short chapter. Hopefully still worth it
As Sam and Liara disappeared down the hallway, Sihra and Ashley kept their sights trained on the stairwell, the rakir edging down the steps cautiously, her ears swiveling.
More breaking glass, not as loud. The sound of voices, far below- the first floor, perhaps, or the lobby. Ashley, right on Sihra's flank, spoke softly.
"Be careful. Could be the evac team coming through, or scared civvies looking for shelter. Don't attack unless you're certain they're hostiles."
Sihra grunted faintly, a low growl in the sound, but she said nothing. She reached the landing, carefully leaning over and scanning down the stairwell as she heard shouts, running feet.
Somewhere behind them, there was a single gunshot. Both froze a heartbeat but when no more came, they did not turn back.
"There," Ashley said, swinging her rifle toward the third floor stairway below them. A pair of figures were running upward, their movements the frantic, frenetic motions of infected. About half a flight above them another figure ran, clearly fleeing from the first two, sobbing.
"I have it," Sihra said, and before Ashley could react, the rakir was over the railing. With a firm plant of one foot that broke the wooden handrail, she leapt across the open well. Ash's jaw literally dropped as the rakir caught hold of the fourth floor railing just above the two infected, her tail wrapping around a post as she swung upside down toward them. Her omni-bows went off with identical snaps, both infected lurching against the far wall as each was pierced neatly through the neck, pinned to the plaster.
The fleeing figure halted half a floor away, turning and gaping in surprise. Ashley ran down the steps, taking them two at the time, and grabbing the boy by the shoulder. "Are you all right?"
She was unsurprised when the kid- probably no older than fifteen- whirled and punched her in the shoulder pad…then cursed sharply in pain, shaking out his hand. "Fuck!"
"Hey, it's all right, we're friends," Ashley told him, gripping his arm. "You hurt? Bit? Ill?"
He seemed to grok suddenly that she was Alliance, his glare at her transforming into desperation. "I-I'm fine, my Mum…she needs help, we have to go and get her. They're evacuating but no one's come to our building yet. I thought I saw lights over here, I was going to get the evac team-"
"It's ok, there's a full evac team that should be reaching us in the next few minutes. We're not going to leave you or your mother, ok? Is she sick?"
"I-I'm not sure. Not…not like these guys were, not like the ones going crazy. She just…she needs help. You have to-"
He grabbed her arm and turned, clearly intending to tug her toward the steps, before he jolted to a halt and cried out, surprised as his turn brought him face to chest-plate with Sihra, who'd come up the steps behind him. At first his cry was a mere startled reflex, before he looked up at the creepy face-mask glowering back down at him, huge rounded eyes alight with jack o'lantern flame.
Then he flat out screamed.
The girl was dead, laying sprawled on the floor where she'd fallen, the wound from Liara's bullet having left her right eye a hollow, bloody socket. The asari let her barrier drop, solemnly looking at the body as Sam moved over to its side, crouching.
Being asari, Liara could not quite always evaluate the ages of other species, however she was pretty sure this girl was not yet fully grown- an adolescent, and therefore not Bette. Still, she could not be one hundred percent sure and took a step in, quickly playing her omni-light around the room to make sure no other hostile was about to leap at them.
"Sam?"
"It's not her," Feris said. Her voice was still tightly schooled, but Liara could clearly hear the relief beneath her words. She felt it too. For a moment, she'd been sure she'd just blown away Sam's intended right in front of her- however necessary that action might have been. "It's Monica, from down the hall."
Liara's light glimmered over a hand resting on the floor and she snapped her fingers toward the N7 marine before she edged toward it, rifle once again ready. Sam spotted it and rose, lifting her own gun as they rounded the sofa.
The body was that of an elderly man. His face was blue, his eyes dusty and dull as they stared upward. He'd clearly been dead a while. One of his knotted hands was wound in the chest of his sweater, showing he'd died fairly quickly of coronary collapse after infection.
Or possibly simply from stress. At his age-
"Bette?" Sam called again, turning her light away from the body and toward the short hall leading to the closed bedroom door. "Bette!"
YYY
Bang!
The sharp bark had woken her, her exhausted eyes snapping open but not registering the sound fast enough for her reluctantly conscious mind to recognize what it was that she had heard, and whether it was real or part of a dream.
She was cramped, and sore, sitting in the small space between her bed and the corner of the wall. The pistol from her bureau was beside her, the pillow she'd tucked around her ears now draped over her head like a haphazard cap. Heart thundering, she listened…unsure if she was actually hearing muffled voices from deeper in the apartment or if it was just Monica rustling around again.
At least she stopped screaming and beating at the door, she thought. At least-
"Bette!"
She surged forward, nearly falling as her legs almost instantly buckled beneath her. She caught herself with one awkward arm over the mattress, and tried again, calling out.
"S-Sam?"
"Bette?"
No, it can't be Sam…she's on some covert deep space operation right now…what would she be doing here?
She forced herself to her feet again, limping shakily toward the bureau she'd moved in front of the door. On the wall nearby, the access panel gaped open, a few cold wires dangling impotently from its innards. She reached the bureau just as the door jolted a little, someone pounding on it.
"Bette? Are you in there? Can you hear me?"
It was her! "Sam! I'm here! I-I disabled the door!"
"Are you hurt? Hang on, we'll get the door!"
Bette weakly took hold of the heavy bureau and began to pull on it, trying to shift it away. She'd been trapped in the room now more than twenty hours, with no food or water. Though her bedroom had a small en suite, the water in the building had stopped working shortly before she'd sealed herself in. The ordeal of the last thirty hours had taken their toll on her physically, and she was not nearly as strong as she had been when she'd shoved the bureau into place the first time.
As she tried to shift it, the dead wires in the wall panel fizzed and sparked briefly, sending a tiny flare of light out. The door jumped a bit.
Gritting her teeth, Bette got her shoulder around the heavy furniture and pushed, shifting it a bit more. "Sam?"
"Nearly there!"
In the slim crack that had opened, gloved fingers appeared and muscled the door aside as Bette finally got enough room to force herself past the bureau. A hand grabbed hers and pulled, and she let out a weak sob of relief as she flung her arms around the hard-suited figure.
"Sam!"
"Are you ok? Are you hurt? Sick?" Gloved hands cupped her cheeks, the dark eyes behind the face plate frantically looking her over.
"N-no, not sick, I-"
Sam pulled her toward the sofa, arm around her to steady her. As they rounded it, Bette caught sight of Monica and let out a weak sob, covering her face. Sam sat her down on the sofa, blocking her view.
"Shh, I'm here," she said, crouching in front of her. "You sure you're not hurt?"
An orange light passed over her, and Bette blinked at the second figure she hadn't even noticed as an omni-light scanned her.
"I-I'm all right, I wasn't-"
"She is not hurt, just severely exhausted and somewhat dehydrated."
"We're gonna get you out of here, out of the city," Sam told her.
"Th-there might be others in the building, others hiding-"
"There is a full evac team just arriving on site," the second one told her. "If there are, they will be found and retrieved."
Bette looked at her, then back to Sam, her brows knitting. "You're not here on duty? You're not an evac team?"
"Not…not as such," Sam told her, brushing a hand over her hair gently before giving her a faint grin. "C'mon. You know I had to come and get you."
Bette lowered her head, then leaned forward and hugged her tightly, ignoring the uncomfortable lines of the hard-suit. The other woman gave them a moment before gently clearing her throat.
"Come on. Sihra and Williams have another civvie with them. We need to get them out of here and to the medical area to make sure they are clear. We still have a lot of work to do."
It was an insane amount of only barely controlled chaos in the medical quarantine area. Patients and evacuees were pouring in almost constantly at one end of the ad hoc facility. Blood samples and idents were taken as they came in the door. Wounds, dehydration, and other injuries were treated as the blood samples were sent to the next section, where Shepard and other doctors were plugging them rapidly in to the system. The red cells from each sample were mingled with samples of red cells from other, non-human sources, the results watched closely by both observers and machine. If the human cells morphed into the animal cells, the infected individual was immediately isolated and taken to a separate quarantine area. If there was no change, the individual was cleared through a dozen static fields to eliminate any PMD that might be on their skin, retested, and then evaced outside of the city to either a refugee camp or a hospital if they needed medical care unrelated to infection.
Just over two million people called San Francisco home, an additional five hundred thousand in the city for other reasons when the missile had hit. That was a lot of people to find and process, even considering the fact that forty percent died in minutes after contacting the PMD, a further thirty percent or so going mad as it affected their minds.
Shepard looked at sample after sample as it passed in front of her eyes, screening for infection. Compared to the other doctors she was feeling relatively fresh, but even so exhaustion was leeching in and she was fighting desperately not to let each sample meld into a blur in front of her eyes.
Above the general din, she suddenly heard one of the other screeners calling her name. "Doctor? Dr. Shepard, I think you need to look at this."
Blinking up from her station, she surrendered it to a volunteer and hurried over to the man who was waving. "What is it?"
He had halted his own scanner on a single sample, gesturing at it. "I nearly missed it, had to go back again. This is goddamn strange…you ever see anything like it?"
Her brows knit as she looked over the sample, pulling up the scrolling computer data and then slowly shaking her head. "No, this is…what? This is from one of the residents brought in? ID?"
"Sample 1430-DS," he said, finding the relevant information. "Came from…young woman, late twenties, showing no visible sign of infection…some minor dehydration, but no notable illness or injury. She was brought in by an evac team about an hour ago, she's just waiting clearance. Name pulling up in the system is Tripp, Alyssa- resident of Columbus Ohio."
She turned and headed for the secure doors that separated the lab area from the incoming patients, and touched the com. "We have a patient waiting for processing: Tripp, Alyssa-Columbus Ohio, 1430-DS. I need another sample from her, please."
"Understood. We'll find her and send it through flagged."
"Thank you."
The retrieval of the second blood sample did not take long. As soon as it came through Del took it to her console and plugged it in. The same sight and data she'd seen before scrolled in front of her, and she shook her head.
"This isn't possible," she said softly. Downloading the information to her omni-tool she headed back to the com. "I need Alyssa Tripp, 1430-DS. Clear her through the static fields and have her escorted back to the quiet room."
"Uh, will do, doctor."
Shepard started to step away, then frowned and returned to the com, pressing the button. "Just in case, make it an armed escort, soldiers if you can spare them?"
"Understood."
The 'quiet room' was merely a small, ad hoc resting area that had a few cots in it, for workers and doctors to catch a few minutes of shut-eye when they could, when their exhaustion lent too much danger that an infected sample might slip through.
It was empty at the moment, and Shepard eyed one of the cots with momentary longing. Even her shock at Tripp's blood sample could not abate her weariness completely.
It didn't take long before the patient in question arrived, along with two armed Alliance privates. One of the privates stepped in first, nodding to Shepard before he moved aside to allow the patient in.
Shocks of purple hair draped over a dark forehead, but it was the incredibly pale eyes that lifted to her that Del recognized with a horrified jolt.
The moment she saw that recognition, the patient lunged forward and upward, her arm flinging around the first private's neck. Using it as leverage, she arched up and planted a back kick in the throat of the second private behind her, knocking him down. The first man grabbed his pistol but barely an inch out of its holster her hand clamped over it, spun it free of his grasp with seeming effortless ease, and she threw her body weight to the side, drawing him off balance.
He fell awkwardly, she landed on her feet. Two flat shots, and both privates jolted and fell still, crimson starting to gather on the floor beneath them.
"Hello, Dr. Shepard," the assassin from Purdue said with a smile, tossing the pistol aside as she strode forward. Del managed an awkward step back, her hand moving behind her to catch herself on the wall as a hand like steel closed on her throat, shutting off her air instantly.
She was hauled up, pressed painfully against the wall behind her as the assassin bore her teeth. "You're a tenacious little bitch, aren't you? I was certain you were dead back on Purdue. Well, this time I'm going to make absolutely sure of it."
She leaned harder and Shepard bucked, unable to get any air. The fingers felt like steel daggers digging into her neck. Her ears were roaring, her head pounding, her lungs aching, frantic for breath. Her free hand pried frantically at the woman's fingers, then shot toward her face, but the assassin was wise to that maneuver, and simply leaned back a little out of reach, turning her head slightly so that Del could not press or gouge at her eyes.
Her other hand was still pinned behind her back. Vision was starting to tunnel into darkness and she bucked again, thrusting her hips forward slightly, one foot pressing back and skidding over metal as she tried to plant it to get leverage. Her hand slid out a little with the faintest rasp of metal.
She did it again, this time managing to plant her foot just enough to arch and free her hand…
…and the pistol it was gripping, that had been tucked in the back of her jeans.
There was no time for hesitation or thought. Reality was dim and far away, even the pain of the grip on her throat numb and unimportant. As soon as she had it free she swung it around and fired.
Wet heat slapped over her hand and almost instantly the grip on her throat fell away, the assassin stumbling backward. Shepard fell hard into a sit. Her thin inhale let a narrow rush of burning air into her lungs, her head spinning madly as she gasped and struggled for more.
The assassin had landed in a sit, her hands planted over her gut where blood was spilling in crimson sheets over her fingers. She stared at Del as if she was an alien of a kind never before seen, before her face contorted into fury.
Wordlessly she lunged forward again, the motion weak but driven by murder. Shepard lifted the pistol again and again, she pulled the trigger.
The assassin collapsed, the back of her skull evacuating in a fan over the ground.
The weapon clattered to the ground and Shepard gripped her throat, whooping and coughing and fighting not to sob as tears poured freely along her cheeks.
Liara's sky blue eyes reflected the thick pools of blood with a grim intensity as she stood in the door of the quiet room, looking at the bodies strewn before her.
Two, the Alliance privates, had been carefully covered. The third- a human woman with dark skin and purple hair- remained exposed, glaring sightlessly under the ruin of her skull.
They had barely landed at the evac sight than they were being informed of what had happened. Liara had left Sam and Ashley to make sure that Bette, the boy, and his mother they'd rescued were cleared through, before she and Sihra went into the back.
"The stunted detrak did this?" Sihra asked over Liara's shoulder, quietly impressed. Liara said nothing, only turned and headed down another short hall, where a third private stood guard. He waved her in as she ducked past and into another tiny room.
Shepard sat on a small cot, her face reddened and angry blue and black bruises bright on her throat. One of the medics crouched in front of her, but the asari didn't spare him so much as a glance as she knelt down nearby.
"Del…"
Shepard's voice was little more than a raspy, painful croak. "It was her," she said. "From Purdue…"
"The one that shot Deefa and tried to kill you before?" Liara asked.
"She shouldn't talk," the medic said, but both women ignored him.
Shepard nodded, her words slow and punctuated by grimaces. "Her blood…sample. Strange…alter. Bio…synthetic. Human but…not. Not human…"
"Biosynthetic?" Liara asked. Shepard nodded.
"Body…dissect-"
Liara shushed her, then looked at the man at the doorway. "Have that body sealed up and delivered to the Orizaba immediately. Take whatever quarantine precautions you need, make sure it has no sign of infection and no nasty hidden surprises."
She looked back at Del as the human woman lightly gripped her shoulder, coughing a bit. Her free hand gingerly touched her throat and she swallowed before speaking, her brown eyes simmering and intent. "Osco smarter than…giving her away…"
"Shh," Liara said gently, her hand going almost unconsciously to Shepard's cheek, the affectionate gesture surprising even her. "No more talking. Here…"
She powered up her omni tool and activated a writing program, turning the interface toward Shepard. Gratefully, Shepard reached out and quickly typed.
She is Osco's assassin, and clearly she's altered her in some way. I'm betting she's immune to the PMD: potential is there. At any rate, her cells are like none I have ever seen…they are no longer purely human. Osco must have sent her here, and Osco would have known that someone would take her down in the middle of an evac center crawling with soldiers. If not you, then someone else. She would not sacrifice such a wealth of knowledge and a possible vaccine that way unless she intended us to find it. She's too smart to make such a mistake just because she wants me dead.
Liara read her response, and nodded. "I understand."
Shepard searched her eyes for a moment, then shakily typed out: Is Sam's Bette all right?
Liara nodded. "We found her, alive and uninfected. She's going through the blood test now just to be absolutely sure- but we got to her in time."
Del let out a relieved breath, then covered her face momentarily. Switching off her omni-tool, Liara reached out and gently took her shoulders. As Shepard lowered her hand and looked at her with damp lashes, the asari asked softly, "Are you all right?"
Del closed her eyes, tears tracing down her cheeks. Leaning forward, she hugged Liara tightly.