Normandy-Shepard's Cabin

Your mind, your will, will belong to us Shepard, you cannot escape.

Abigail bolted upright in her bed and groaned as she over balanced, crunching her stomach causing a pain to arch through her abdomen. A cold sweat was running down her back and she was panting, but for the life of her she could not remember why, just that voice, those words, so familiar.

Waving her hand over her light fixture she moved to get up and head for the bathroom. She stumbled halfway there but was able to find her footing, but grabbed her head rubbing it slowly.

It was then that she noticed that the light wouldn't come on; she was still in pitch darkness. She froze solid between the sleeping part and the office part of the cabin.

In fact nothing was on, her juke box was supposed to come on as well when she was moving about during normal business hours.

She glanced around the room but found that her only source of light was the green door light to the elevator and then by extension the rest of the ship.

Cautiously she picked her way over the steps heading for the door, and it made to open in front of her, the holographic display twirled in the air and disappeared but the door did not part before her.

Frowning, she brought the Omni-tool up and activated the emergency door release protocol. The door groaned before her, hissed, and opened up on the foyer leading to the elevator, which was also dark.

Abigail froze at this, what the hell? this has to be more than a simple malfunction? She went back to her bed and fished out her Eagle Pistol from the bedside table along with the two thermal clips.

Running her hands over her front she had to pause for a second, frowning chagrinned, crap, I left my armor in the shuttle bay. All I have is...well the clothes in my locker…and that won't open without power…not a vital system.

So all she had on was her…armor striped N7 T-shirt and then her short shorts that she wore to bed. Terrific way to be fighting through the bowels of the ship if something is going wrong.

But the crew didn't have time for that, if something had invaded or they had suffered a massive power failure through some fluke of nature then she had to go investigate it immediately, confer with the rest of the crew, and restore order

If this is a nasty practical joke I am going to kill someone.

But with that Abigail Shepard, Commander of the Normandy, and hero of the Citadel marched out the open door and smack dab into the elevator full tilt.

After rubbing her nose she scrolled through the list of available Omni-tool programs and didn't find a release valve for the elevator itself.

Well, the maintenance shafts it is.

CIC

Abigail fell out of the maintenance shaft in a heap on the floor, with a hacking cough, she scrambled to her feet and waved the Eagle around, and making sure that her overall position was secure.

It was, but almost as pitch black as her quarters. Only the emergency lights on the Galaxy Map were in any operational order, and a few of the stations were glowing but their displays were off.

This put a relief of Traynor's console and the Galaxy map area, making it look peaceful, but creepy given the tension flooding through her.

And there is no one here…well it is the night shift breathed Abby.

Next she maneuvered through the CIC darting through the familiar terrain even if it was dark, trying to surprise any would be attackers if they were there waiting to split her guts over the decking.

But there wasn't, as she got to the bridge, only the locked door leading to the cockpit.

Cautiously she approached holding the Eagle at the side but loosely so she could bring it up to acquire a target in a hurry.

The door again wouldn't open leaving her to lean up against it.

She counted slowly, "Joker! You in there?!" She called hoping her voice would carry through the heavy plating.

"Commander? Shepard! That you?" His muffled voice came back.

"Yeah, thought you'd be on duty at least. What happened?"

"You mean with the lights?"

Abby wanted to retort with a nasty quip, but didn't want to get into a slugging match with the master of such things, "Yeah, and the rest of the power."

"Not sure, EDI reported a massive life form reading and then my displays went dead. And then the lights and internal communications, and then my bladder control."

Shepard snorted to herself but kept to business, "you mean its dark in there? Can't you get out?"

Abby could just feel the pilot shake his head, "no, sorry. It's airtight in here and the emergency protocols activated. I'm stuck in here until someone restores power. Seems the idiots who designed this thing for the Alliance…or Cerberus…figured that if the ship was about to fall to seal off the helm to avoid them taking the ship. Yeah not like there is a million other ways you can take the ship. Explosives I heard are a great door stopper."

"You ok in there?" Abby asked her eyes darting back and forth. "What systems do we have online?"

"I can't be sure but it seems that I still have life support." Joker replied after a second.

She sighed, "Alright Joker I'm not exactly armed and I need to find a way to restore power, to see how many of the crew are still roaming around and what the status is in engineering…. So I need to go."

"Yeah, sure, ok." Joker replied. "Just me and the creepy empty cockpit, not even my robot girlfriend to keep me company, nor my…erm...data displays…yeah this should be really fun."

She smirked, "I'll be back for you Joker, I promise."

"Yeah." Joker replied after a long pause, she turned to leave, "And Commander?"

"Yeah?"

"Good luck."

Deck 3

Next on her grand tour of the Normandy was the Crew Deck, which was appropriately just as dark, though a light behind the kitchenette area and the memorial wall gave her just enough to see.

But it's what she heard…

Is that scratching? Pawing? What the heck is that?

Abigail checked her Eagle and cautiously began to head around the elevator, towards the noise, which seemed to be coming from the medbay. The ship seemed bigger to her now that she had to creep around in it in the dark, trying not to make any noise. Which she found to be easy without combat boots on.

As she was about to round the corner though she heard a wail behind her, she spun around and was confronted with a raging blue eye stock flying at her. She winced back as she brought her weapon up…

But it exploded before either she could do any damage to it or it could do any damage to her.

And right behind the formerly flying bug was the visage of James Vega.

"Hello Lola." He greeted, with a cocky smirk.

"James," Shepard nodded and then smirked, "I see your usual sense of timing was impeccable…what are you doing out?"

"Oh you know the usual, having a bear, lifting weights in one of the cargo holds, just wandering the ship to get reacquainted with her."

"Uh huh," She responded, "seems we are under attack…same thing that happened to the Rome?"

The N7 trainee nodded slowly, "yep. Though we had more warning they still went for the power and attempted to cut the crew off from one another. Took them longer cause we were prepared and we were a full blown Cruiser."

Shepard nodded and began to turn around to check on the former noises of clawing and chewing by the med bay, she shined her weapon down range but got nothing of note.

Whatever it was must be gone.

"We need to get to the armory and then assume control of the ship again; starting with engineering and hopefully that'd be it." The Commander ordered glancing at her muscular marine.

"After you Lola." He responded.

The Armory.

The grating to the maintenance hatch flew open from her precise and strong kick to it as she and James Vega spilled out onto the floor of the shuttle bay by the armor lockers and weapons consoles.

Commander Shepard cleared left and James Vega cleared right as they both quickly determine there was nothing in there, even with their relatively small lights, the bay was, like the rest of ship, pitch black. Only work lights providing the small pin pricks of light over the work bench on the left, the procurement console, the upgrade console, and then the armor locker itself.

But the station itself was off line.

Great, Shepard decided as she marched over to the console and ran her hands over the darkened GUI interface.

"Hey Lola, is that stuff standard issue now?" James teased from behind her.

Well he is referring obviously to my typical night time clothes, she sighed, but hell lets break the tension.

Abigail twisted on her subordinate and sighed, "Really James? You're just noticing now?"

Barking a laugh, "Yeah, well I noticed it but didn't know what to say."

"It's not one for you to be speechless James," She grinned.

"Yeah…well…uh…if anyone can do it you can ma'am." James spluttered, and then he went to go off and check the perimeter.

Finally she snapped her fingers as she thought of the solution to her problem, toggling her Omni-tool she picked out the devices power cell and slowly moved to install it into the command consoles emergency power grid.

"Ha!" She said as it instantly came online.

Going to work her hands raced across the screen before the weak power source would run out and they would've missed their opportunity. Making her way through the vast array of menus she toggled the equipment that she wanted and the appropriate mechanical latches disengage across the other side of the bay, in the darkness and the quiet it radiated purely.

"Well done." James congratulated.

"Thanks."

They moved as a unit and made their way over to the trays of weapons.

"Seriously Lola, the Valkyrie, for both of us?"

"What? It's a good weapon and can you really see yourself lifting the Revenant in these close quarters?" She bent down to fish the weapon at least off its tray along with the appropriate pile of thermal clips and moved onto the armor lockers.

He shrugged moving over to join her, "I suppose not."

"Good," She said opening up the locker and fishing out her pants.

She sat down and slid it on in a hurry; one leg at a time, James busied himself with getting his armor on.

"There that's better." She said admiring her armored gloves and flexing her fingers.

Her friend shot her a look and muttered something almost unintelligible.

"What Vega? You don't like what you see? Would rather see me running around gunning through waves of husks in my underwear?" She teased.

He eyed her again and snorted, "Well I was always a sucker for a woman in battle armor."

She was about to make the appropriate rejoinder that leapt to her mind but the ringing crash of another piece of the bulkhead brought their attention to the fact they were still under attack.

The two squad mates proceeded over what limited cover that there was in the bay, the shipping boxes and storage that was scattered in one corner, Shepard took the other.

Squealing a maw of a corrupted Yagh and two husks came along the back wall of the shuttle bay by the elevator, passed the consoles.

They turned on the group as one and Shepard launched a concussive shot down range, followed by a burst of adrenaline as the two squad mates began firing, Shepard lined up the three husks and blew their respective heads off while James emptied his magazine into the Yagh.

It grunted and snorted mounting the console with a roar beating its chest.

Shepard looked at James and began to fire on the Yagh as a unit the bullets knocking off the thick hide of the creature.

The Creature began to lumber on over to the Commander's position but a blast of James's Carnage slammed into it exploding dramatically.

Abigail took up the opportunity and unloaded into it several repeated bursts from her Valkyrie into the exposed bit of flesh that the Carnage had revealed when it blew off the armor plating.

The thing grunted in frustration and began to charge, then roared and swung at her; Shepard rolled back and ducked under the blow. But it came at her again slamming her across the face and onto the deck plating.

It stumbled over to her again and Shepard moved to cover her face from the blow but the rapid ratta tat of weapons fire, followed by sparks, interrupted the creature in its charge.

It groaned and began to get rocky on its feet, then ambled over and started to collapse, heading right over on her.

She quickly rolled out of the way preventing herself from being pinned.

Running her eyes up on the thing checking to make sure it was dead she glanced over her shoulder to see James, staring down the sights of his Revenant Assault Rifle.

"See? Who says the Revenant isn't a good weapon!"

She sighed, "no one you occasional jarhead…no one. Just that it may not be the best in this situation."

Forestalling the coming rant she held up a hand, "But it did save my life, thank you."

"No problem."

Snatching up her fallen Valkyrie she checked it over for damage. "Come on, let's get to engineering and put a stop to this madness."

She marched determinedly for the maintenance vent.

"Right Shepard, lead the way."

Engineering

Getting to engineering was easy as it was one deck up and basically right around the corner. The two person squad walked through the doors as they whirred open in front of them, a pale green light covering the entry way to the engineering proper.

At least something has power. Shepard thought, they must need it here for something.

They ran through the door as one clearing the room and saw Pressly slumped by her console, Shepard rushed over to her and checked her pulse.

Then at Vega's questioning look, "She's alive, come on, let's go."

Rounding the corner they waved their lights down the corridor, and into the Tantalus drive core…which was…

"What the heck is that?" Vega breathed.

"I don't know." Shepard responded in kind.

But it looked like a mass of breathing metal tangle of the corrupted Rachni workers that exploded out of the Ravagers. All of them were wrapped around the Tantalus core and was breathing deeply, in, and out, in time with the weak pulse of the drive core itself.

"They seem to be feeding off the energy." Vega surmised picking up on what she saw.

"Yeah, and that is blocking the power to the rest of the ship." Shepard finished the rest of the thought.

Looking around the area for any weakness or way out other than just shooting them, she noticed the emergency vent that was used to vent excess plasma into the core, it was uncovered…mostly…and it was right next to the end stage of the drive core itself.

"You know, I wonder what roasted Rachni tastes like?" Shepard mused.

Vega frowned so Abigail nodded at the vent with her head. Vega smiled predatorily at the idea.

Shepard moved over to the console and Vega backed up but covered the hallway with his Revenant in case they woke up and came after the squad.

Punching up the console, which still had some power, she toggled the emergency release then overrode the safeties.

Then ran to the other end of the corridor and aimed the weapons down the corridor, the vent began to glow red and then flame burst through with a hiss followed by a roar.

The bottom rung of the Rachni caught fire and it quickly leapt up the chain burning the first several.

As one the Rachni screeched and began to scatter, trying to escape the flames and make their way onto the deck plating.

Shepard and Vega opened fire, each of them firing precise bursts with their weapons, James hosing down with about five rounds a trigger pull and Shepard with the auto burst from her Valkyrie.

The Rachni creatures were splattered by the rifle fire and killed, the process took several minutes to complete as Shepard moved to go seal off the vent and restore power.

With a hum the lights came back on in the engineering section, at least as much as their ever were as power was slowly being restored to the rest of the decks.

"Nice having you back on board Mr. Vega."

"Glad to be here Lola."

Smirking the two of them headed out of the engineering, and made their way to the elevator, and then the mess hall for a midnight drink and maybe a snack.