July 9, 2187 0100 hours
Mould and dank rot clung to the inside of Shepard's nostrils. Keeping her eyes closed, she tried to move her arms and legs without success unless she counted the shout of pain from her broken arm. So, held captive underground, arm still broken-not exactly the rosiest of situations. She listened, trying to form a picture of the number and placement of her captors from the subtle cues of breathing, rustling fabric and footsteps. Three in the room with her, another two outside the door, and countless more above her. Turning her face slightly, she caught a through draft of drier air that smelled of dust and old decay.
She checked on the speck and found its light there, glowing strong and steady. At least the crash and the fight hadn't done it any harm. Well, unless the presence she felt was just a figment of her imagination.
"Don't worry," she said, her words a silent promise, "we're getting out of here."
"It's still some time until sunrise," a male voice said above her. "Are you ready?"
Shepard opened her eyes and glared up at the human man. "Cerberus? Let me guess, ran for the relay as soon as the batarians entered the Pertexa system?"
He waggled his head. "Sort of. Cerberus yes, but captured on Pertexa. The word changed everything, Shepard. Hearing about the coming of the Scion changed me." He closed his eyes and smiled. "The word sings to us. Surely, you must hear it? After all, you're the Vessel."
She sighed and looked up at the medical equipment hanging over her. "Sings to you? Are you indoctrinated?" She lifted her head, craning it to look around her prison. "What is all this?"
"We're preparing you for your trial. You must purify yourself and prove yourself worthy to bring the Scion into this universe, to guide and protect it until it can show us the way forward." He smiled and laid his hand on her forehead. "Just relax. You'll come to no harm with us. We love you and your child."
Shepard scowled and sighed. "I'm just a woman. I'm no vessel, and my child is just that. Just a child."
He chuckled and stroked her arm. "Such modesty. The word does not do you justice. Rest now, there are several more hours before sunrise. You'll need your strength."
"Then how about fixing my arm?" Shaking her head, Shepard looked to the others in the room, noting the same loving, idiotic smiles on all their faces. If she didn't know better, she'd swear they'd all been indoctrinated by some mascot from one of those sunny, dancing, singing shows for children. She shuddered.
"Don't worry Speck, your dad totally has us covered by now. He'll find us." She closed her eyes, taking the mad scientist's advice to rest. She needed to be ready to fight loose.
After the shuttle went down, she'd regained consciousness as the pilots dragged her from the wreckage, her shattered arm pulling her straight from the black void to full on screaming and kicking. The first one fell within thirty seconds. He hadn't expected his unconscious prey to spin behind him and twist his head around so he had a first rate view of his own cloaca. The second one ran. Shepard realized too late that he was running toward back-up rather than away from her, but she'd introduced him to his own ass as well before she went down.
She'd called for Garrus, but he must have still been unconscious. People in gold and white robes surrounded her, their faces smiling, their arms outstretched. She'd charged them, but they swarmed her, not hitting her nor fighting back if she hit them, just bearing her to the ground with their sheer numbers. Someone gave her an injection, and the darkness reclaimed her.
"We're moving to the cleansing area now," the mad scientist told her, that same beatific smile plastered to his face. "You'll sleep for a time, and when you awake, you'll be ready to step forward into the full glory of your role in the coming ascension. It's a glorious day."
"Ascension?" The word burned through her with a potent combination of terror and familiarity. She opened her mouth to say . . . something, but the words vanished into a dizzy fog that gradually faded to black.
Shepard woke in another room, this one above ground. Six people in robes stood around her, muttering a chant that she couldn't understand. The room seemed to move in slow, looping circles, her eyes unable to focus on anything. Nausea filled her entire body, as if every cell, every particle of her being all demanded to throw up at once.
They've done something to me. Maybe even something to the baby.
That thought send fear flaring along every nerve like flame along a primer cord. Just as Terion and Susie, all those poor souls on Pertexa had been altered, these psychos had done something to her.
One of the figures in the robes walked over and laid its hand on her forehead. "You should not be awake. Sleep now. You'll need your strength for the coming trial." She, for the voice was decidedly feminine, pressed a syringe to Shepard's neck.
"What have … ." Shepard tried to form words, but her thoughts dissipated like mist.
"Sleep now, mother of the blessed one. When you wake next, you'll be cleansed and ready to face your destiny."
July 9, 2187 Sunrise 16 hours of daylight remaining
"Consider yourself blessed, Shepard." Six people in robes circled her, sprinkling her with handfuls of water. One of them spoke, but she couldn't tell which with their faces covered and their constant movement. She sat up then slid off the gurney, staggering, dizzy and nauseated. Her arm felt like a varren had clamped it in its teeth and still hung, dangling from it. A light dew of sweat beaded on her face.
"You've been chosen by the universe for a glorious fate," the voice continued. "Only by embracing it and cleansing yourself through fire will you emerge from this trial. Good luck Blessed Vessel. We pray you bring the Scion through unscathed." They stopped and broke off, filing through a door that closed behind them.
Covering her eyes to block out the bright light of the new sun that shone directly into them, Shepard staggered to the door and yanked on the handle. She hit the controls, but they'd been locked out. When she tried to activate her omni-tool, nothing happened: ditto for her radio.
"Crap." She moved into the long section of shade next to the building and slid down to sit on the ground. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she cradled her broken arm against her chest, and wrapped her good arm around her knees. She lowered her forehead to rest on her arm, needing just a few minutes to shake the dizziness and nausea. Just a few minutes.
July 9, 2187 14.5 hours of daylight remaining
Shepard dozed until the heat woke her up. After a moment, she pushed herself up and looked around.
She had no idea where she was, but at least she seemed to have shaken the nausea. Turning a slow circle, she took stock of her situation.
"Well, Speck," she said out loud, "we're still on Palaven, still in Cipritine, but I have no idea where." She looked in the direction of the sun. "Sun's been up over an hour, so it's going to start getting hot. We can't stay here, or we're going to bake before lunch." She turned another circle. "I have no idea where the docks are, no idea how to find people. Where are we going to go?" She looked up at the escarpment across the river.
"Huh. Don't supposed your dad would expect us to head there, do you?" She nodded and let out a long breath. "I think it's our best shot, and if I remember that holo-room right, there was a forest a quarter klick or so back from the cliff face. If nothing else, it'll help keep us out of the sun."
Shepard shook off the pounding in her temples, forcing herself to focus on the walk. It was going to be a long one, so she needed to be prepared. Palaven's weak electromagnetic field would turn her into a well-done crispy critter if she didn't protect herself. She held her arm away from her chest and tried to pull up her sleeve, deciding after screaming to just leave it alone. The heavy material of her blues would help control the swelling. A splint, maybe even a decent mud cast if she could find some plaster, would keep it as immobile as possible.
"Okay, Speck. Supplies. What do we need? Water and protection from the sun above all." The area around her was baked dry, the ground cracked where it showed between the rubble. The river water would prove undrinkable, she knew that, but if she could find the means to start a fire, she could distill enough to keep her alive for the day. Then, she'd just need radiation shielding. Lead would be best, but she knew that her chances of finding lead in the rubble scraped zero. Too old and too toxic for common use.
"First things first. We're going to need water and lots of it. That means finding the river." She rooted through the rubble around the building, finding a pile of discarded white robes. "Well, Speck, this is a start. I need to splint this arm. Just so you know, sweetie, nice guys don't crash a lady's shuttle, break her arm, and then leave it untreated." Using her prosthetic arm and her teeth, she shredded one of the robes, then hunted around for wood. Finding a fairly narrow board, she stomped it into sections of the right length, using the strips of robe to bind the arm solid.
She layered on all the robes, turning one into a headdress that she tied on with a leftover strip.
"The height of blessed scion fashion," she grumbled, picking up a metre and a half length of rebar. Wrapping another strip of the white fabric around the end, Shepard transformed the scrap metal into a walking stick. She let out a long sigh and rolled her neck, trying to ease the ache behind her temples. "Come on, Shepard. Get moving," she said, setting out.
On the way, she picked through crashed skycars, finding a couple of emergency blankets that she hung over herself, shiny side up and tied into place with her headband. She also found a large handbag and several empty bottles for water. A huge metal bowl provided her with a little shade when she put it on her head. "Remind me to strip all this off really fast when we get found. I look like an idiot."
The sun beat down on her, glaring at her from every surface, an omnipresent enemy that taunted her with her human frailty. She found dark glasses in another car. Even though one of the lenses was cracked, they helped ease the constant pounding in her head.
'Thought you could just move in here and make me your home?' the planet laughed. "You haven't got what it takes to survive here without your environment suits and shielded sanctuaries. You might live here, Shepard, but I will never be your home.'
"It doesn't matter, Speck," she said, her voice cracking with thirst as the first hour of exposure teetered close to the second. "Palaven will be your home. Mordin saw to that. As long as you and your dad are here, I'll be good, even if I have to wear an environment suit to take you for a walk, or play with you outside." She reached up and wiped her brow. "It's warm, though. I'll give it that. I need to take a short breather."
Hunkering down in a patch of shade next to a skycar, Shepard sighed and took off her head gear, letting the wind dry her sweat-plastered hair.
"Once I have some water, we need to get some radiation protection over you." She wrapped a protective arm over her stomach.
Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the car. "Instructor Perrin, I'm sorry I called your orienteering and outdoor survival course three days of my life that I'd never get back." She forced herself to focus on the problem through the pounding haze in her head. "Okay, so I don't have lead for a shield. I need to stack layers of materials. Tin, aluminium, copper, polypropylene, dirt. Concrete and steel are better, but I can't see being able to carry those very far." She sighed. "Don't worry, Speck. I don't know if the sun and radiation are much of a direct threat to you yet, but better safe than sorry."
She rested for a few more minutes, then pulled her headdress, reflective sheets and bowl back over her head. Her body needed water and soon, regardless of how tired she felt. At least her arm had faded to a dull roar.
"Probably because the sleeve is cutting off circulation as your arm swells, Shepard."
The first hour tipped over into the last half of a second before she reached the edge of the river. Endless city blocks of rubble, each looking very much the same as the last, stretched before her. She stumbled from shade patch to shade patch, feeling her strength waning fast as she dehydrated.
Despite her efforts to keep all her body parts inside the robes, burns and blisters soon covered her hands. She wrapped them in strips off the robes, able to feel the burning deepening even still. Her lips cracked, mouth too dry to even wet them.
At last, she crouched on a broken cement pier, weaving dizzily. Three hours without water … she needed to do something fast.
As she suspected, contaminants filled the river, leaving it looking like nothing she wanted to drink. Luckily, she'd paid attention to that part of Instr. Perrin's class.
"We need a place to build a fire and find some pots." She followed the river, picking her way over the refuse of war. Ten minutes along she found a basement apartment open to the river. The rubble had been cleared away, and a firepit built inside. Someone lived in there.
"Hello?" She ducked her head inside the casement. "Is anyone here?"
She followed her nose to a back room and the remains of the previous occupants, lying where they'd been mostly eaten by predators. Closing her eyes on the sad scene, she let the curtain drop shut over the doorway. Obviously, not a safe place to stay, with the ripe smell of food calling to every predator in the city, but hopefully she could manage to get some water before she needed to move.
"This place is a massive chunk of lucky, Speck," she said, lifting a lighter off a counter. "Big chunk of lucky." She built a fire, placing her big bowl on the grate. Filling a pot with water, she placed it inside the big bowl, then put a couple chunks of metal across the top, topping it all off with an upside-down bowl bigger than the pot but smaller than her sexy hat bowl. When the water boiled, the upper bowl would catch the steam and drip down into the bottom. Now, all she needed was time.
She stayed in the relative coolness of the apartment while she waited for the water. If she went out scavenging before she drank, she'd die. More than two hours, even with the thick layers of covering and the shade of her highly fashionable bowl hat, had drained her every resource.
Wadding up her robes to protect her hands, she pulled her construction apart as soon as she had a little water collected in the bottom bowl, pouring it into a bottle with shaking hands that barely noticed the extra burning. Cupping the bottle between both hands, she blew on it the best she could, sipping it with guttural sighs of relief despite burning her tongue. As soon as her mouth held moisture again, she rebuilt her distillery and sat back against the wall to sip at her water.
She drank a bottle's worth and filled another bottle to take with her before heading out to find materials for her radiation shield. None of them proved difficult to find. She even picked up a few small pieces of steel to add extra protection where she most needed it.
At the end of a broken pier directly out from the apartment, she found a small, flat-bottomed skiff. No doubt it belonged to the bodies.
"Looks like our ticket across the river, Speck." Shepard looked out at the river. Being so murky, she couldn't judge the depth, but the current moved swiftly between the rubble. Swimming across would have proved difficult, if not deadly.
Back at the apartment, she laid out one of the robes to make a long strip she could wrap around her middle. Then she coated the center few feet of it with a half centimetre thick layer of mud from the river, laid down several layers of aluminum foil, more mud, tin, mud, the steel plates, mud, some heavy black polypropylene, mud and then aluminium again. Once her water was finished, she'd melt down the copper wire she'd found to finish it off.
Despite having a cool, shaded shelter, the minutes and eventually hours weighed more and more heavily on Shepard. Whatever killed the people who lived there would come back, and without even a door to keep the predators at bay, she wouldn't fare much better than the previous occupants. Besides, she needed to keep moving, to get somewhere Garrus had at least a chance to find her. Down here, it could take days for them to find her, even if she lit a fire. No, moving remained her best option. Get to the escarpment and take shelter in the trees. He'd know she would head there.
Once she filled her water bottles, and drank her fill, she used the remaining clean water to make a thick mud to coat her hands and face to help ward off at least a little sun. Searching through the cabinets, she found a container, filling it with the rest of the mud. No doubt, she'd need to reapply regularly.
Wadding the copper wire into chunks, Shepard added them to the pot until she had enough copper to pour a thin layer the length of the belly band. She just prayed that she'd made it light enough to carry it long term. Once the mud dried, it would lighten up and hopefully fit to her well enough to let her hips bear a lot of the weight. Waiting only until the copper cooled enough to not burn through the layers of her robes, Shepard lifted it and wrapped it low around her middle, snugging it up good and tight before ripping and tying the ends. She crouched and bent a little, finding it heavy but not unwieldy.
A low rumbling sound drifted in from outside, alerting Shepard to danger. She stuffed the lighter and bottles of water into the bag, looping the handle over her head. Fingers scrambled along the ground looking for her walking stick, while she kept her eyes up and focused on the door. Damn, she'd left her walking stick, her only weapon, outside.
Shepard bolted for the door. If varren pinned her in the apartment, they'd kill her. She snatched the rebar from the outside wall, burning her fingers on the bare metal. Turning a slow circle, she spotted the first set of bulbous, reflective eyes between crates no more than twenty metres away. She stuffed the rebar under her arm and crouched, picking up a chunk of concrete as she backed up, moving toward the dock and the small boat.
Four more varren appeared, spreading out to surround her, their movements slow and patient. All their senses declared her weak, easy prey. Hopefully she proved them wrong. One lunged at her. She threw the concrete, hitting it square in the head, backing it off a little.
Shepard glanced behind her as the sound of her footsteps turned hollow. She checked the locations of the holes in the damaged pier, where the swirling, angry water dared her to try to make her way through without looking. A growling bark drew her attention back to her stalkers. One growled and snapped at her as if sensing its window of opportunity closing. It and one other followed her onto the dock, the other three moved down the shoreline.
Shepard glanced around. What did the ones on shore have planned? Distraction or something else? Pushing that concern aside, she tried to figure out how to untie the boat, get inside and shove off before eighty kilos of muscle and teeth moving at thirty kph took her down.
Her heel slipped off the edge. Arms flailing, she tipped backwards, pulling every muscle, straining them until they screamed as she fought to regain her balance. The lead varren ran at her, but her walking stick cracked it under the jaw, and it snapped but backed away. Shepard caught herself, risking a glance over her shoulder before stepping around the hole.
"Way to nearly get yourself killed, Shepard," she grumbled. With one more glance back, she stepped down into the small, flat-bottomed skiff. Swinging her rebar walking stick at the varren on the dock, she snatched the end of the rope, pulling it free. She braced her prosthetic leg against the concrete and shoved off as hard as she could. Losing her balance, she fell backwards, her shoulders and both arms hanging over the skiff's short sides.
"Well, I'm on my ass, but at least I'm in the boat."
A blur of movement dragged Shepard's gaze to the dock, then with a sudden rush of horror, weight and flashing teeth, the lead varren leaped over the water. It crashed into her chest hard enough to slam the air out of her lungs and tipped the skiff, flipping both of them over the side into the river.
Hitting the water in a blinding maelstrom of mud, bubbles and flailing varren broke through Shepard's shock. She fought back against the animal as it used her as a ladder to the surface, punching it in the eye until it fled. Shepard watched its paws swim away, then braced her feet against the bottom and launched herself up toward the air.
She reached out for the boat, her good hand grabbing hold, but then something slammed into her from behind, grabbing hold of and enveloping her leg. She surged up as far as she could to grab a breath of air, then dropped down, her belly shield pulling her to the bottom. Her leg had slipped in between the tire and body of an upside down tank. Grabbing hold of the metal, she pulled herself down, letting out a garbled burst of sound and bubbles as she gripped her pant leg with her bad arm and yanked. The material tore, setting her loose, tumbling into a deeper current. It rolled her over, scrambling her sense of up and down as it dragged her along the bottom. Her broken arm complained again as her splint snagged on a patch of torn up, tangled metal.
Her lungs aching, insisting on getting some air soon, she tore at the splint, feeling the bone in her arm grinding broken end against broken end as she yanked. Finally, the caught strap gave way, releasing her to the mercy of the current once more. She pushed off the bottom, managing to break the surface for two gasps of air before the combination of the current and the weight of her radiation shield bore her down into the brown-green depths.
"How very appropriate that you should seek me now, Shepard," Balak said, a wide, almost joyful smile splitting his face as he floated before her, a shimmering hallucination barely visible against the churning water. "For when I sought you out, I was drowning in the darkness, awash in rage and desire for righteous vengeance. When I tracked you down in the refugee camp and held that gun to your head, I thought that killing you would end the pain, the rage, and the frustration I felt over losing my people."
Shepard floundered, her lungs screaming, the metal around her waist bearing her to the bottom. She seemed to sink forever into the gloom and filth. Bodies reared out of the wreckage like nightmares, arms swaying, reaching out to embrace her in death.
Balak laughed, a throaty laugh of pure bliss. "Then you told me how to save my people. How to save us all. You showed me that the Reapers were just a test, a trial to be endured, a darkness to be purged so that together, we could ascend further than we ever dreamed. You saved me, Shepard. Don't you understand? I don't hate you. I love you."
Shepard's feet hit bottom. She coiled herself, her hands reaching for the ties that held her radiation shield in place. If she didn't drop it, she could well drown right there. She glanced to her side, seeing movement, and found herself staring into the half-empty eye sockets and gaping mouth of a turian. She cried out, losing some of her precious air, watching it scurry toward the surface without her. She needed to drop the shield.
And then the speck flickered. The steady, comforting glow blinked.
Shepard shoved off the bottom as hard as she could, letting out a muffled bellow of defiance that raced up next to her, a large, shifting, shimmering ball of air. It encouraged her to claw at her watery prison, coaxing her to expend her every last ounce of strength to follow it to freedom.
Her fingers slammed into something. She looked up, not quite able to believe it was the skiff, but also not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Clambering up the side, she used the buoyant material to heave herself the rest of the way into the dry, searing, blessed air. She sucked in a screaming breath and hooked her elbows over the side of the boat. Gasping, sobbing, maniacal laughter tore from her throat as she clung there, too weak to haul herself the rest of the way up.
Fuck you, Balak. Fuck you.