Nightfall was in two hours. If anything went sideways, they were to retreat and meet back on Illium in two days. Shepard sat in her room, going over every outcome she could think of in her head. Planning further by figuring how she could succeed in getting out of said situations. Prepare yourself, Cara, her dad had told her when she was young, for any contingency. Picture it in your head and know how you can overcome the situation. Panicking will only make things worse.
The time had finally arrived. Kas, Keiji, and Reyes had left an hour earlier to get set up at their designated positions. Sloane went to the same bar as the night before, catching up with another set of military buddies and keeping an eye on things there. Zaeed, Jack, and Shepard had headed down to the dock. When they heard a chime in their comms, they disappeared discreetly into the nearby forest. They got dressed in their new armor, hidden in the forest earlier that day, then made their way quietly through the dense forest. Senses were alert in case of any unscheduled guards. The group used their new stealth mods to stay hidden when guards were running behind on their route. Their timing was perfect. They reached the valley, where the artifact awaited them, as the replacement guard arrived. They watched the new guard settle in, and the old guard leave, before lobbing the tranquilizer grenades. The canisters, wrapped in mesh cloth to soften the landing, came to rest behind the new guards and dispersed a sphere of gas around them. It took but a moment for the gas to work. They collapsed bonelessly to the ground at the base of the valley. Shepard and her group moved in. Kas and Keiji had given the all-clear, followed a moment later by Reyes. Shepard was the first to reach the artifact and walked around it once to scope it out and make sure there were no alarms or anything attached to it. It was surprisingly clear.
She began to wave the other two over and lit up the artifact with her biotics when two things happened. First, her comms crackled to life, Reyes' voice on the line with warning, and second, a familiar voice called out, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Cara turned, losing focus on the artifact and her biotics, surprised by the voice of Ashley Williams. The couple of inches she had managed to lift the artifact off the grown disappeared quickly as gravity did its job. It returned to the ground with a thunk.
A humming noise emitted from it, and Shepard turned back to see it light up - a sickly, green color glowing from behind the strange glass. Shepard had just enough time to look back at the surprised and confused face of Ashley Williams as she felt something pull her towards the artifact. She tried to break free from the force field or whatever it was but was unable to break its hold on her. It lifted her from her feet, and a second later, blinding pain crashed through her skull. It felt like someone was squeezing her head while forcing knives into her skull over and over. Fuzzy, unclear images raced through her mind. Some seemed familiar, while others were incomprehensible and completely alien in nature. None of them made sense. The pain continued until she thought her head was going to explode, then... blissful nothingness.
When Shepard first regained consciousness, she could hear noises around her but couldn't decipher anything. She tried to open her eyes, but they were too heavy. The sound of clinking metal on metal sent shards of pain once again through her head, and she floated back to the void of silence and darkness.
When she came around for the second time, Cara thought she heard La'Dauna's voice. She tried to call out to her but could only groan. Footsteps approached the side of the bed, and her eyelid lifted without her permission. A bright light shined into her eyes, sending needles of pain through her head. She flinched away, regretting it as another wave of pain crashed through her skull. Once again, she returned to that glorious void of painless nothingness.
The next time she gained consciousness, Shepard didn't feel as bad as she had the two times before. Her head, although still feeling like she'd been on a three-day drinking binge, was manageable. Shepard slowly opened one eye, testing her senses. No shooting pain or other hurts, so she opened the other one. She was in a hospital room. Well, that made sense, she thought. She tried to run her hand over her face to wake herself up more, but halfway there, she met resistance. A device around her wrist secured her to the hospital bed. She leaned forward to get a better look, then collapsed back onto the bed. "Fuck," she groaned to herself. She looked around the room again and finally saw the Alliance logo. She was in an Alliance military base, handcuffed to a bed. "Shit," she muttered.
She heard someone approach the door and pretended to be asleep. She didn't want to answer questions yet or deal with anything before she had time to think.
Someone entered the room and approached the end of the bed. Cara heard the beeping and clicking of a datapad. Her medical charts probably, she thought. They approached the side of her bed and checked her vitals and drips, then stood beside the bed. "Cara, I know you're awake." It was La'Dauna's voice.
Shepard peeked an eye open and saw La'Dauna standing over her, a concerned look on her face as she pretended to read her patient's medical charts. She tried to give the asari a carefree smile but didn't have the energy, and it turned into more of a grimace. "Hey," Cara said.
"What the hell happened out there?" La'Dauna asked, glancing between charts and current readouts.
"Not sure," Shepard said honestly. The last thing she remembered was waving over Jack and Zaeed. With that thought, she asked, "Is everyone else okay?"
"Everyone else got away safe, only because you managed to draw all the attention to yourself. What did you do?"
"I have no clue. How'd I get here?"
"They brought you in, unconscious. Said you somehow triggered the artifact."
A vague memory of being dragged into the air by a sickly green light flashed through Shepard's mind, "What'd it do?"
"No one's sure. Your brainwaves were abnormal for the first ten hours you were out. Then they fluctuated between abnormal and normal for a couple of hours. They only normalized completely an hour ago."
"I've been out for how long?" Shepard asked, surprised.
"Almost fifteen hours. It's nearly 11 AM," La'Dauna said.
A small seed of dread, similar to what she had felt the day before, rose to the surface. Panic filled her voice as she said, "Dauna, we need to get out of here."
La'Dauna missed the panicked tone. "I am quite aware. Unfortunately, you've drawn a lot of attention to yourself. The plan is to throw you into the brig as soon as you are released from here. Then, let the big shots, who are coming to pick up the damn thing that did this to you, deal with you." There was a knock at the door. "A moment, I'm finishing up now," La'Dauna called. Shepard noticed, for the first time, there was a guard posted at her door.
"Dauna listen. I need you to make sure everyone, including you, gets off Eden Prime. Get as far away as you can, and warn the people in charge here. Those dreams I had, about that mech army, they weren't a figment of my imagination," Shepard said, her voice stern and sincere, but her eyes were wide with worry.
La'Dauna finally noticed the panic. "And what about you?"
"You just said I wasn't going anywhere soon, except the brig. I'll be fine. I've gotten myself out of bigger messes than this one."
La'Dauna started to protest, but Shepard cut her off, "Please, I need to know that you all will be safe. I can't lose another family."
La'Dauna was speechless for a moment, the raw emotion in Shepard's words freezing her in place. She felt Cara grab her hand and squeeze. "I'll make sure, Cara. Just please, you're our family, too. Get safe. If all hell breaks loose like you believe it's going to do..." La'Dauna trailed off not wanting to voice her concerns.
Shepard gave a half-hearted smirk, "I plan to be right in the middle of it, mom. Thanks." Shepard could feel the wetness of tears as they fell down her cheeks. She did her best to wipe them away with her shoulders, seeing as her wrists were bound.
La'Dauna smiled lovingly at Cara, tears forming in the asari's own eyes, as she helped wipe away the tears Shepard couldn't reach. When Cara's cheeks were dry, La'Dauna gave a last squeeze to Cara's hand and left the room.
Shepard dozed off and on throughout the rest of the morning. A few nurses and doctors came in to check on her, but not La'Dauna. Shepard hoped she had done what she'd asked of her.
Finally, a little before noon, an older looking gentleman, balding with hair graying on the sides, came in, giving her a smile, and looked at her charts. Shepard hadn't seen him before but figured him to be another doctor. He moved with the proficiency of someone in the medical field, so she gave him no second thought. After looking at her charts for a moment and checking her current readouts, he went back to the foot of her bed.
"Looks like everything's back to normal. No more weird brain waves or anything like that." He gave Shepard, who hadn't talked to anyone since La'Dauna had left, a curious look. "That said, with head injuries, you can't ever be too sure. Do you wanna tell me what happened? It might be important to your health."
Shepard cocked her head at the subtle threat behind his words, wondering whether it was purposeful or not. Between that and his attempt at sounding professional but missing the mark, set off warning bells in her head. She stayed silent.
The man acting as a doctor tried again. "If you've got nothing to give us, I'm gonna have to release you, and they're going to take you to the brig, which is a lot less comfortable." His words seemed more threatening than caring.
Shepard kept silent, only staring at the man.
"As you wish," he said, "the guards will be here shortly to take you to the brig." He stepped outside the room to talk to the guard.
Shepard relaxed, Maybe she was being paranoid. Or not, she thought as the doctor stepped back into the room.
He watched the guard leave. When he turned back to Shepard, his demeanor had changed. He was no longer playing a concerned doctor. He still smiled, but the smile didn't reach his cold, hard eyes that narrowed as he approached the bed. "I need to know what that device showed you," the man snarled, an obvious heir of menace to his words and movement, "and your cooperation isn't necessary."
Shepard tried to back away, pulling at her bindings and biotics. The bindings on her wrists didn't budge, and her biotics were non-responsive. A single IV in her arm, giving her fluids to keep her hydrated, allowed a place for the man to insert a needle and release a small amount of pale pink liquid into the drip. Cara tried to call out, but a firm hand over her mouth muffled her shout.
Shepard tried to get the IV out but couldn't reach it. She struggled a few more seconds before she felt herself getting sluggish. What the hell was going on? was the last coherent thought she had before she was floating. Her thoughts, floating away with her. Her eyes traveled around the room, aimless, unable to focus on anything.
The man watched for a second as the woman gazed listlessly around the room, then went over and checked the door. He looked back at the woman, then walked over to her bedside and grabbed her chin, turning her face towards him. "Listen to my voice," the man said.
Shepard's eyes moved slowly until they noticed the person talking to them. When did he get here? the thought floated through her mind then was gone. She gave what she thought was a smile.
The man gave a quick smile back and said, "That's it, focus on me." He waited a moment longer to make sure he had as much of her attention as he could get. "Now, tell me what you saw from the artifact."
Shepard jerked her head out of the man's fingers and let out a crazed laugh that stopped abruptly. Unknown but familiar images flashed through her mind. Her pupils blew wide with fear, and her pallor whitened to that of a ghost. "The end," she whispered.
"What exactly did the Protheans show you?" he prodded.
"Death, destruction," Shepard slurred as the drug began impairing her speech, "no escape."
"Focus, girl," the man said, shaking her and looking back at the door, "Where's the conduit?"
The images, clearer than they had been before, began flashing through her mind again. Death. Destruction. Total annihilation of a species and their culture. She began to hyperventilate, panic filling her body and mind. She pulled at the cuffs on her arms, trying to get free. "They're coming," she said. A simple matter of fact statement. Then, "THEY'RE COMING!" A spine-tingling scream of fear and defeat.
The door burst open, and a soldier rushed in, pushing Shepard down and trying to hold her. "What happened, Doctor?"
"I don't know," he lied, putting on a good show of being afraid. "One moment we were talking, the next, she was acting like a woman possessed." He moved to a set of cabinets in the room and removed a syringe and vile from one of the locked cabinets. After pulling liquid from the vial, he inserted half of it into the drip. "This should calm her down," he told the soldier, who was still struggling to hold the woman down. The doctor watched as the blonde woman calmed down, her body relaxing as her eyes fluttered shut. That would keep her out for at least a couple of hours, long enough for him to disappear and alert his associate of the complications. He pocketed the half-full syringe, making sure to cap the needle. It might come in handy later.
The guard released the now docile, sleeping woman. "They were getting ready to take her to the brig. Is that still a good idea?" the guard asked, concerned.
"She'll be fine. There are no immediate health issues," the doctor assured the soldier. "I'll send someone down to her for a psych eval when she wakes, but she should be fine to take to the brig. Keep her locked up, so she doesn't hurt herself, but health-wise she's perfectly okay." The doctor patted the soldier on the shoulder, "Thanks for the assist. Don't know if I would have been able to keep her from hurting herself, pulling at those cuffs like she was."
The soldier smiled then shrugged, "Just doing my duty, Sir. I need to get her down to the brig. I have a guard who should be on their way up with a liftchair. I'll make sure she gets where she's going safely, Doctor. You can finish your rounds, or whatever you need to do."
"Thank you, again," the man glanced at the soldier's nameplate, "Taylor. You were a big help in there," the man said. He took one more look at the patient before leaving the room and heading for the building's exit.
Jacob Taylor looked at the unconscious woman. Well, things just got a lot more difficult, he thought to himself. He peeked his head out the door but didn't see anyone. He went back into the room and tried to rouse the woman. Nothing. Whatever the doctor had dosed her with was potent. A thought crossed his mind, and he pulled up a medical program on his omnitool. He waved his arm over the prone woman. His omni beeped at him, and he looked at the results. An eyebrow raised at the readout his omnitool was giving him. Psychoactive drugs in her system, for what purpose? He looked back at the door, Did that doctor do this, or is it a side effect of the prothean thing? Jacob shook his head, he didn't have time to figure this out. He needed to get her a message, but now that she was unconscious, how was he going to do that?
"She ready," a voice asked at the door.
Jacob cursed under his breath, then turned to the woman in the doorway. The dark-haired soldier looked at him, then the sleeping woman questioningly. "The doctor had to sedate her. I got up here and she was trying to break out of her cuffs, raving about someone being here. He said she was okay to go to the brig though. Physically she's fine. He's supposed to send psych to see her later."
"Sure, whatever. Let's just get going, so I can get the hell out of here. Hospitals give me the jeebies." She pushed the liftchair forward and parked it next to the bed. "You get feet, I'll get the shoulders?" she asked, undoing the end of the cuff around the bedrail and attaching it to the chair.
"Yeah, let's get this done." Well shit, Jacob thought, moving to the foot of the bed and uncovering the sleeping woman. As he helped move Shepard into the liftchair and secure her, his foot hit something under the bed. He turned to see if the dark-haired soldier was paying attention, but she was already pushing Shepard out the door. He bent over and reached underneath the bed. A bag was hidden there. He opened it and an idea formed. He straightened, with the bag of clothing in his hand, and followed his fellow soldier out the door.
