Cortez woke slowly, instruments on the Kodiak's dashboard screaming at him to let him know a million things were wrong. His whole chest hurt, arms feeling as if they'd been wrenched out of their sockets…but he didn't seem to be badly injured, just rattled around. His neck and spine ached from one end to the other, but he could move his fingers and toes…albeit they responded numbly, as if unsure of their connections.
The last few minutes played themselves back sluggishly. The last thing he remembered was Shepard's scream. He must have been out for more than a few minutes, because she wasn't on the radio anymore. From how still the shuttle was, either he'd succeeded in running the Harvester into the ground and using it as a landing pad, or the impact had thrown the shuttle away from the Harvester. It all felt tangled and weird.
Slowly, he found the release on his harness. He groaned as the pressure let up. His chest was going to be a mass of bruises with livid white cross-cross marks where the safety straps had been. Still, it was better than being dead…and he still hoped that when he checked his surroundings, he'd see an ugly Harvester carcass somewhere nearby in a state of extreme damage.
He'd never been shot down before. Forced down, yes, but shot down? That was new. "Just think…" he mumbled nonsensically to himself, remembering ancient maritime tradition. "You can get the earring now…"
"Steve?" Shepard demanded, relief suffusing her voice. "Steve, if you can hear me, answer me."
"I'm okay…better than the Kodiak…" he managed, tongue feeling numb.
"Do we need to come back and get you?"
His brain felt slack in his head. "N-no…I'm okay. I'm okay," he repeated, more forcefully. "You've got an objective; don't change it." He struggled out of his seat, pausing long enough to find and grab Shepard's crystal from the corner of the dashboard. Apparently, swapping juju had some merits sometimes. He hadn't been killed, he could still move around.
"…are you sure?" Shepard asked.
"Come on, Shepard, this is London. Someone's going to check this shuttle out sooner or later. Go on." And, with that, he severed the radio-link. Better if she didn't have a choice, he thought, as he shrugged into the gear always packed in the shuttle.
If he knew anything about being shot down, he knew someone would come to investigate the shuttle, either people looking for allies or supplies, or enemies looking for trouble. It beat with his pulse, the need to survive. Part of him was surprised that he felt it so strongly, that he was already up on his feet rather than still slumped in his chair, wondering about survival.
Robert was gone, but Steve was still here. And Steve knew he was still needed, still had purpose. Shepard hadn't given up on him and he wouldn't give up on her…
…though what he could do without a shuttle, aside from simply survive, was questionable.
He checked the block in his pistol, then took a moment to steady himself. The adrenaline needed to cope with his current situation was doing a good job of pushing his crash-landing fog out of the way.
He had to use the door in the cabin, because neither of the front doors would open.
The sight that greeted him was grim beyond words: a rainy, skeletal render of the London skyline, insufficiently lit except for harsh clusters of light from the beam—which preliminary intel said connected the Citadel with the ground—and from the remaining cannons. Now that he could see them, sort of, he had the feeling those cannons could walk around and change position as easily as anyone else could. Why else would the ambient light, presumably from their firing orifices, shift and move like spotlights on opening night?
Damn.
He hopped out of the shuttle and onto the ground, looking around to see if the Reapers were already coming for him. So far nothing, but he didn't want to trust that this would remain the case. Part of him hoped the Reapers were all way too busy coping with the teams attacking the cannons, one of which exploded spectacularly some distance away. It was too far for him to hear the explosion, but to see the thing go up in a spectacular orange explosion? Good for the soul.
Cortez shivered as he began ambling away from the shuttle, ducking into the nearest ruined building so as to present less of a target. He waited for a few minutes, then decided that no one was close enough to investigate. It might be prudent to wait and see who came to investigate the shuttle, but he found he couldn't sit still. Not here.
It was a long walk with no sign of an allied presence. It wasn't until he passed a sign for an Underground station that he realized there had been no visible allied presence in any of the preliminary scans, not the ones he'd done himself, nothing in the flyby, nothing from EDI.
Well, he thought, looking at the sign, if there was no significant allied presence on top of the ground, maybe that was because they were all underground. In the Underground, to be exact. It made sense: the tunnels stretched all over the city, it would be easier to move unobserved and while there were certain tactical drawbacks to using an underground network, it seemed the pros outweighed the cons.
Cortez changed direction, following the signs towards the nearest Underground entrance.
He wondered how, once he found people, he was supposed to prove he wasn't Indoctrinated, that he wasn't a sleeper sent in to cause trouble at some point. He hadn't considered that, in all his heavy-duty thinking.
He didn't know, nor could he figure it out. He could only hope that Shepard had told Anderson, who would tell his people, that she had a missing pilot, and not to shoot him on sight.