AN:- Another big chapter for y'all.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Pragia
Shepard spent most of the time to Pragia locked in her cabin. She claimed to the crew that she was filing reports to the Illusive Man regarding their mission status, but in reality she was coming about as close to sulking as she let herself.
Three members of her crew in the medical bay, all with serious wounds, and all because the Illusive Man had lied to her and forced her into a situation she was deeply uncomfortable with. There was very little other way for her to think of it than 'violated.' He had violated her crew in a very real and tangible way. She sometimes joked with Joker about how the Normandy was more his body than his actual body, but in many ways they both knew it to be true. And the Illusive Man was able to use both the ship and her as he saw fit.
After three days EDI finally intruded on her moping, asking if she was okay. It was such a marked change from her usual blunt questioning that Shepard was hocked into responding honestly. "I'm tired EDI. Too many things I can't control."
There was a moment's pause, then the AI flashed open again. "I shall speak with Operative Lawson."
Wondering quite what that meant Shepard turned back to the datapad, reading up on Pragia. There wasn't a great deal in the codex, and she suspected Cerberus might have had something to do with that. Fast growing vegetation was a planetary staple, along with brutal electric and thunder storms. It sounded perfect for hosting a secret research base.
EDI blinked back on. "Miranda has just informed me that the cameras in this section of the ship appear to have suffered mechanical fault. It will be some time before they can be repaired."
"Thanks EDI."
"Good night Commander."
There were very few excuses left. She went down to her bed and changed into her night clothes. Another gift from Liara that had survived in storage and been shipped to them at her request. Unlike her fuzzy cartoon asari pajamas these were silk, a deep midnight blue with a button down shirt and long trousers. She could remember the last time she had worn these in vivid detail. Although more specifically she could remember the last time they had been ripped off her and flung into a heap in the corner. Heat swelled in her chest and she pushed the memories away. It would do no good to dwell on that while she was still stuck out on the rim.
She took another of Chakwas' patented night-night pills and swallowed it dry, knowing enough to be almost lying down when she took it. Within seconds she was asleep.
The shuttle sliced through pouring rain that beat the outside hard enough to make the inside ring like a drum. To her great surprise it was Miranda at the controls. When she had come down to the cargo bay she had found both women waiting for her. Although she wasn't sure how, apparently the two had come to some sort of agreement while in the medical bay.
The facility was visible through the shuttle window, just as dark and imposing as Shepard had imagined it would look. "I forgot how much I hate this place." Jack was leaning slightly to see better. "See the landing pad? Has to be on the roof or the vegetation would overgrow it in a few hours."
EDI's voice came over the speakers. "Shepard. I am picking up thermal signatures everywhere, except at your landing zone."
"Something's distorting the sensors."
Miranda toggled the speakers. "This was a secret Cerberus facility."
"Yeah, they built their equipment to last, assholes." Jack rubbed her face hard. "It was a mistake coming back here Shepard."
She sounded genuinely distressed. "Get a hold of yourself. It'll be okay."
A single breath later and her voice was back to normal, no hint of the quaver it had had before. "I'm fine. Okay. Let's get on the ground."
Miranda brought them in safely despite the high winds buffeting them from every side. Shepard triggered the door and stepped out into rain that hammered at her helmet and almost drove her to her knees it was so strong.
"Was it like this when you escaped?" She shouted back to Jack as the biotic exited as well.
Jack just shrugged. "Let's just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell. I wanna watch this place burn."
Miranda was last out, locking the shuttle down and drawing her submachine gun, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the rain. Shepard noted with a grin that it was heavy enough to dampen even her hair, which had withstood even the blast from the particle beam.
They hurried along the gantries that led down to a locked open door. Inside they found a standard pre-fab setup, though with the addition of some metal containers that looked heavy duty and military.
"I never saw this room," Jack said before Shepard could ask. "I think they brought new kids in these containers. They were messed up and starving, but alive, usually."
It was a more brusque reminder than she had expected. Shepard had known Jack had to come from someplace dark, but to imagine children being forced into these tiny metal boxes, stolen from their families and brought to this place.
She gestured for Miranda to take point through the facility. She didn't want Jack exposed to something before they'd had a chance to scout it out.
At the bottom of the stairs there was a terminal of some sort. Miranda tinkered with it for a moment and a voice emerged from it.
"The Illusive Man requested operations logs again. He's getting suspicious. When we get results he won't care what we did, but if he knew... He won't find out."
They shut the recording down, and Miranda looked thoughtfully at the terminal. "Sounds like this facility went rogue."
"You'd like to think that wouldn't you," Jack spat the words at her. "He didn't say what they were hiding from the Illusive Man."
Miranda didn't push the issue, and Shepard was glad. It seemed to her more than likely that whatever the scientists had been doing here, it had at leats begun with the Illusive Man's full backing.
They moved a little deeper in, and soon came across a wide open space overgrown with trees and foliage. There were crates and tables and sections of wall and roof in the middle of the room. Rain poured in from outside, flooding the floor.
"I remember escaping to this room. Fighting here." Jack walked to the edge of the walkway they were on. "I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling. Only a half dead guard between me and freedom. He was begging for his life." She didn't say anymore, but it was obvious enough. Shepard led them down to ground level and through the winding maze of crates and tree roots. There were strange noises coming from close by, sounding animal.
They rounded a corner and three varren came bounding towards them. They opened up and cut the animals down in a second of concentrated gunfire. Once they were all down she took a moment to examine her surroundings. There was old blood on the floor, and metal barriers set up in a ring.
"This looks like an arena," she said.
Jack nodded, walking forwards and standing at the edge of the ring. "That's right. They used to stage fights here. Pit me against other kids. I loved it, only time I was ever out of my cell."
"What were they studying?"
She shrugged. "Hell if I know. Maybe that's how they got their kicks. I never understood anything that happened here."
"How often did they do this?"
"I was in a cell my whole life. Sometimes they took me out and made me fight. Filled me with drugs, other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell."
Looking back to the blood, she couldn't help but wonder. "Did other children die in these fights?"
"I was a kid, filled with drugs. I got shocked when I hesitated. Narcotics flooded my veins when I attacked."
Shepard didn't like the look on her face. "They actually rewarded you for attacking?" She was beginning to understand. And it was even worse than she had feared. Someone who fought from anger and pain, lashing out at the world, that was one thing. Someone who had been conditioned since childhood to take pleasure in killing was something else.
"I still get warm feelings during a fight."
"What the hell was wrong with these people?" She looked to Miranda, who was staring at Jack with an odd look in her eyes. It was almost fear.
"I don't know," Jack said. "Doesn't matter now."
Shepard reined in her temper again and drew her pistol. "Let's keep moving."
The next corridor they moved into was practically flooded from the amount of water pouring into it. They waded through ankle deep water until they came into another testing room, a security console against the wall. Miranda opened it up after a moment.
"Security Officer Zenki, Teltin facility. The subjects are out of their cells, they're tearing the place up! Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate, I repeat, permission to terminate."
Another voice came over the recording. "All subjects besides Zero are expendable, keep Jack alive."
"Understood, I'll begin the-"
Jack shut it off and turned to Shepard shaking her head. "That's not right. I broke out when my guards disappeared, I started that riot."
"Things might have happened that you didn't see."
"The other kids attacked, me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me. That doesn't leave lots of room for interpretation."
"Let's just keep moving."
There was another locked door they had to open, but the lock was rusted from the amount of water, and was easy enough to force open. Inside there was another set of stairs, a dead varren at the top."
Jack kicked it and turned back to Shepard. "This place is supposed to be empty. Who the fuck shot that varren? It's a fresh kill."
Shepard just shrugged, tightening her grip on her pistol and leading the way down the stairs. At the bottom she shoved the door open to find a room with two levels, metal gantries looking down on two smaller rooms with opaque glass shielding them from view.
"What is this place?" Miranda asked as they moved to the centre of the room.
"Check those rooms," Shepard said. "Might as well find out what we can."
Miranda nodded and went towards one of the rooms. Before she could check inside the glass shattered, a gunshot ringing out. Shepard dove for cover, Jack right behind her. The glass on the other side broke and bullets sparked off her shields. Shepard snapped her pistol up and fired blind, forcing their enemies back behind cover.
"What have we got?" She shouted.
Submachine gun fire chattered from Miranda's location. "Blood Pack."
"Biotics would be welcome right now."
Beside her Jack flared, firing a heavy blast through the window facing them. Two vorcha went flying from cover, giving Shepard the chance to blast one of them in the neck, all but decapitating him. The second one fell to Jack's shotgun.
"Miranda?"
"One left." There was a heavy thump and the final window shattered. "Done."
"Any idea why they were here?"
"If I had to guess I'd say a salvage operation. This looks like a military base, they must have thought there would be weapons and equipment they could scavenge."
"Reasonable." Shepard didn't think it quite added up though. How exactly had they found it in the first place if they didn't know to look here. Unless Cerberus were in the habit of disclosing the locations of their secret bases. She glanced up as Miranda came back to join them. Probably not.
"So what is this room?"
"It looks like a morgue. Beds set up for autopsy in there."
"Why'd they need a morgue?" jack asked. "This was a small facility."
"A lot of children died here," Miranda said, looking slightly sickened by the thought. "And even then they were part of the experiment."
"Bullshit." Jack's voice was shaking. "I had the worst of it, and I made it out of here alive."
Neither of them had an answer for her. Shepard gestured to the far door and Miranda took point, leading them out into another two level room. Half a dozen Blood Pack were already coming towards them, obviously following the noise of the gunfight in the morgue. Without the advantage of an ambush they went down easily.
As they waited for Miranda to open up another locked door Shepard stared up at the gantries overhead, wondering what it must have been like to grow up in the facility. It seemed clear to her that the children would have been down on the lower level while scientists and guards watched from above. Observed every second of their lives, and they knew it.
The door opened and they moved into a short corridor, Jack lagging a little behind. When Shepard turned to look at her she shrugged."So strange to be back here," she sounded more reflective than Shepard had ever heard her. "I feel like… I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch, but then I'm a little girl again. Shit." She shook herself and grimaced. "It's complicated, let's just go plant that bomb."
They had reached more stairs leading down, and on a walkway above two Blood Pack shooting at them. Shepard sighed and blasted the fuel tank one of them carried. The explosion reduced both mercenaries to mulch.
Down the stairs they found yet more horrors. Tiny cells, barely big enough to hold the two-story bunks crammed into each one.
Miranda looked into one of the cells and blanched a little. "They kept children here?"
There were no personal effects in any of the cells. No sign that actual children could have lived there and been anything resembling happy. This place had stripped away all of their childhoods. Shepard watched Jack as surreptitiously as she could, trying to gauge the biotic's mood. She was harder to read than ever, wavering between emotion and icy-coldness.
Through the door was another two-level room, but this time they were on the upper floor looking down at an open space with a large tree growing right through the floor. It had breached the ceiling, and more water was coming in. Against the far side wall there was an enormous window, blacked out. Jack froze when she saw it.
"This… it's a two way mirror." She sounded like she was having a revelation. "My cell is on the other side. I could see all the other kids out here. I screamed at them for hours, and they always ignored me."
Shepard waited for her to say something more, but she was just staring at the window. After nearly a full minute of silence she ventured, "Jack?"
The biotic twitched, flaring blue for a second. Shepard took a step back and forced herself not to draw her gun. Jack's arm came up with her pistol in hand, and she unleashed an entire clip into the window, cracking the glass. It was clearly bulletproof, but the outburst seemed to have sated Jack anyway, as she reloaded and marched around to the next door without another word.
Shepard and Miranda followed at a distance, both knowing that the closer they got to the centre the worse Jack was likely to become. They found her crouching in the dark in the next room, an open space with two medical beds separated by screens. The beds had restraints built into them, and there were traces of dried blood on both sets of restraints.
"I must have come through here when I broke out," Jack muttered, scratching the floor. "But I don't remember it." Shepard realised she had scratched hard enough to crack a nail. Blood was running down her finger as she brought her hand back up. "This is a bad place."
There were more security terminals in the room, in better shape than the others they had found. It was a simple matter to turn them on.
"Entry 1054, Teltin Facility." The hologram showed a weedy looking man dressed in casual clothes. "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." The impact of what he was saying suddenly hit her. At least six children had died so they could test their next round of treatments on Jack. "I hope our supply of biotic potential subjects holds up. We are going through them fast."
Jack slammed her hand into the terminal, smashing it to sparks and scrap. "This is bullshit!" She screamed it. "They weren't experimenting on the other children for my safety."
"You can't help what they did to the others."
"You don't get it Shepard." Her voice was back to normal, but it shook with emotion. "I survived this place because I was tougher than the rest, that's who I am."
"Then prove it. You move on from this, harder and tougher."
She moved to the next terminal without a word and activated it. The same voice out, accompanied by a hologram of the same man looking nervously around himself. In the background there were sirens and crashing noises.
"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 Programme." She recognised the name. Kaidan had mentioned it to her. The successor to BAaT. A genuine sign of hope for the future. "Hopefully that will…" The man looked off to one side of the recording. "Who? Zero, wait!" He disappeared from view and the recording ended automatically.
"Shepard they started up somewhere else." Jack sounded on the verge of tears, and her eyes showed every inch of pain she had endured.
"Ascension is an Alliance program, it's a school for biotic kids. They don't torture children there."
Jack looked away, taking several deep breaths. When she spoke again her voice was still shaking. "A lot of this isn't the way I remember it."
"There was a lot going on."
"I was dumb, I keep my eyes open now, and I always shoot first." She seemed to be going inside herself now. "We're getting close to my cell. The place I came from. Let's keep going."
They came into a Mess Hall full of mercenaries. There were two krogan on the other side of the room, as well as a dozen vorcha spread around. The krogan was speaking to someone on a comm unit.
"Hey Aresh, it's Kuresh. Yeah, the intruders are here." He glanced at them but didn't seem overly concerned that three heavily armed women had just strolled in. "You want them dead, we have to talk creds. You promised us lots of salvage, but this place is a waste." She didn't hear the response, but it apparently convinced the krogan, who turned to his men. "Fine, put 'em down, but I'm coming in there and were gonna talk salvage."
As every mercenary turned to them, weapons readying, she held up her hands. "What are you doing here?"
"First we're gonna kill you, then we'll see!"
"Fine." She grabbed her rifle off her back and brought it to bear. By the time it was unfurled she had sighted on the krogan in charge. The Anti-Material round ripped cleanly through his armour and straight out through his back. Miranda and Jack sent rippling blasts of biotic energy down through the ranks of vorcha on the lower level, scattering them and sending several of them into the walls with enough force to break bones.
Shepard cycled the action and fired again before the mercenaries were even able to respond to their opening attack. Her round hit the second krogan and dropped him in a single blast, his head entirely missing. She finally ducked behind cover as the first rounds of assault rifle fire began to strafe their position. She switched to her usual combination of submachine gun and pistol, waiting until Miranda had ducked back behind cover before standing to add her fire to the mix.
Her shields caught a few stray rounds, but nothing penetrated and she was able to drop three of the vorcha before the heat sinks popped.
Jack was sparking with the intensity of her biotic field. She stepped out of cover and launched a wave of energy right into the centre of the room. The tables were ripped from their housings and swirled in the centre of the room, striking the remaining Blood Pack with enough force to rip a vorcha in half. Blood covered the floor as the storm finally died down.
"Huh." Shepard stood to see Kuresh limping out from his cover. "Bad call." He leaned against a pillar and put a hand across the hole in his stomach. "Got me good."
He dropped to one knee, still trying to raise his assault rifle. She opened up the Widow again and walked over, jamming it into his neck and pulling the trigger. The top of his head fell away from the bloody stump of his neck and she turned back to Jack.
"Only room left is my old cell. Whoever Aresh is, he's in there. I wanna plant the bomb there anyway. Might as well do it on his corpse."
They walked down a narrow corridor, a dent in the wall covered in old blood. The door at the end opened at a touch, revealing a bare room. Only a desk, a bed, and basic washing facilities. They walked in and stopped just in front of the doorway, listening to the sound of scraping from deeper in.
Shepard took another pace forwards. "Come out. We know you're here."
A man emerged from behind the desk. He was tall and thin, unhealthily so. Jack raised her pistol and trained it on him. "Who are you?
"My name is Aresh, and you're breaking into my home." He was very softly spoken, and he was very calm as he faced down Jack. "I know you Subject Zero. So many years have passed, and I thought I was the only survivor."
"My name is Jack. How the hell do you know me?"
"We all knew your face Jack. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you. You were the question, and I'm still looking for the answer."
Shepard stepped forwards, not quite shielding the man from Jack's pistol. "Looks like you're not the only one pulled back here Jack."
"I tried to forget this, but a place like this. It doesn't forget you, it follows you." She was finding him far too lucid. She also felt the tug at her own memories. Mindoir, Akuze. They had stayed with her, followed her, as he said. "I hired these mercs and came back almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding it, piece by piece. I'm gonna find out what they knew. How to unlock the biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin Facility. It will be beautiful."
Or not. There had also been Toombes. So locked up in what had happened to him he had broken.
"I wanted a hole in the ground. He's trying to justify what happened by using it?"
"You'd do the same thing to new kids?" She asked, trying to read any emotion on his face. "Wasn't this forced on you?"
"Some were bought from poor families on Earth or kidnapped from colonies. Most ended up here the way I did. Batarian pirates." That sent a shiver down her spine. Talitha. The children abducted, not killed, when the slavers hit Mindoir. "They did such horrible things to us. They must have had good reasons." That betrayed some emotion. He was still trying to convince himself.
"There's no reason good enough. Are you nuts? You lived it!"
She was still confused over how he had made it out in the first place. "This place was like a prison. How'd you get out?"
"We all attacked at once as they were taking us to the lab. They would have put us down, but then Jack got loose. When I came to it was over. The guards, the scientists and the kids were all dead. And you were gone."
"I stopped it," she growled. "All of it. Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed."
"Everything we went through must have been worth something."
Shepard turned to Jack, but her face had gone just as blank as his. They were unreadable. "We can blow up the place but that still leaves him. What do we do with another you?"
She stalked forwards, dropping her pistol but glaring at him with murder in her eyes. "That's easy
"Just leave me here, this is where I belong." She knew that sentiment.
"Fuck that."
A blast of biotic power hit him square in the gut. He folded and dropped to his knees, Jack standing above him with her pistol in hand.
She leapt forwards, getting right up next to her. "Jack he's trapped in his past. You need to move on from yours."
"He wants to restart this place, he needs to die."
"He's crazy and he's never gonna restart this facility." She tried to catch Jack's eye but it was impossible. "You have to let it go. Your past doesn't have to control you."
Her finger tightened on the trigger as she glared down at Aresh. He was muttering nonsense now. "Fuck. Get out of here, go." She stepped back and he scrambled out of the door on all fours. "He's not worth chasing, none of it is."
"You did the right thing Jack." She wondered whether he had actually left, or was merely hiding away somewhere. But she knew from experience that there was a world of difference between someone dying and pulling the trigger yourself.
"Maybe." She holstered the pistol and looked around at the empty walls. "This room was my whole childhood. Give me a minute to look around."
"Go ahead."
She wandered to the bed first, kicking the mattress. "Sometimes I dream that I'm back in this bed being tortured. I used to tie the sheets around my wrists and try to trip them off. I wanna stop coming back here."
She looked over to where Shepard was standing by the desk. "I used that table for everything. It was like my best friend. I'd crawl under it to cry. I was pathetic." She was trying to sound like her usual hardened self, but Shepard could hear the emotion in her voice now.
Jack turned back to the window. "I thought that room out there was the rest of the world. I'd pound and yell." She gave a bitter laugh. "Never did any good."
Miranda was done setting the bomb they had carried with them. It was a small device, but it would still have more than enough power to wipe out the entire facility, right down to the bedrock. Shepard couldn't help but feel tense around it. She had lost Kaidan to a similar device, if on a smaller scale.
Jack led them back out, pointing to the dent Shepard had noticed earlier. "See the scarring on the wall here? That's where I killed my first man. One of the guards tried to stop me. Instead I stopped him." She touched the wall, then turned away and straightened up, actually smiling. "Okay, no more wallowing, let's blow this place to hell."
They retraced their steps through the facility. As they passed the arena Shepard thought she heard someone muttering deeper in the room, but whether Aresh really was there he didn't show himself. They reached the landing pad and climbed back into the shuttle with a weariness that had nothing to do with the firefights they had endured. Even Miranda seemed shocked into silence at the reality of the place.
They lifted away and made for atmosphere, keeping within range for the detonator while Jack opened it and closed it a few times, looking out of the window at the facility as it shrank on the horizon. Finally she looked back to Shepard and depressed the button.
Shepard hammered on the door to the cockpit and Miranda put the thrusters to full, sending them rocketing to the atmosphere.
Behind them the bomb detonated, blasting the facility to pieces. The shockwave caught them even so far away, and half the jungle was turned into a ball of fire.
"Better?" Shepard asked as they broke atmo, the Normandy swinging in for the pickup.
"Getting there."
AN:- One of the things I've quite liked about this fanfic is the subtle changes in EDI. She changes the way she addresses people, she changes how she intrudes/aids with briefing, acting more and more like a functioning member of the team instead of a support-based AI. It's just fun to write.
I like making references to Liara and Shepard, particularly in the bedroom department. I just like to think of them having a great relationship. They buy each other presents, they do lots of silly things on dates. They are a couple, not just conquests.
Miranda is here for a couple of reasons, mostly relating to her development more than Jack's. A lot of this will become a bigger thing in the upcoming chapters but basically she has started to have doubts about Cerberus, and now she wants to know for certain whether her faith may have been misplaced. This is as good a place as any to start.
Please read and review, next chapter deals with the fallout of this little venture.