Warning: War is never pretty and terrorists do not fight fair. In order to give us a better picture of who my Shepard is, I did a lot of research on terrorist-type tactics. Plus, my own view of the world is pretty stark. Read at your own discretion.
The scientists took great strides in meticulously preserving their pet project. Suspended in a glass tube, months felt like seconds. It was a regenerative prison. Turning a mere human into something… more.
Whenever the scientists hit a snag, he was painstakingly submerged in a vat of viscous goo, only his nose and mouth were spared, and the appendages were not the better for it. The mucilaginous material reeked of antiseptic and a subtler, more malicious scent. Something wrong. Dead, metallic rot squirmed around him, trying to worm its way into every pore.
He was Shepard. That much he knew. Yet, there was nothing familiar to grasp onto. A tickle at the back of his mind spoke of friends, companions – people who needed him. Were they trapped here as well? Their faces distorted. Their names, at the tip of his mind, would vanish beyond comprehension every time he tried to summon them. Silhouettes on the horizon. Alchera in the distance.
That's when he saw it – a familiar symbol worn on the sleeve of a passerby. The memory, a hammer to the skull, crashed down – leaving him momentarily stunned. Those revolting labs. Rachni and thorian creatures charging at the behest of their human masters. Admiral Kahoku dead on the floor. His last words to him reverberated in his mind like a trumpet.
They've gone completely rogue Shepard… They're trying to build some kind of super soldier.
His reaction was instantaneous. His fist slammed against the glass, a crack in the tank forming where it collided. Alarms began to blare over the speakers. His hand, far stronger and more durable than human capabilities, pounded against the fragile prison, only relenting when it shattered. Bits of goo leaked out of the fine crevices before giving way. Shepard toppled forward. Gripping the breather, releasing a muffled roar, he pulled a long, black tube from his throat.
As he crunched against fragmented glass, no bloody footprints trailed behind. No pain. No awareness outside of the thundering revelation.
Cerberus. Cerberus ?!
He marched over to the threshold and, to his immense surprise, ripped the door clean off its hinges. Two guards spun wildly, eyes wide, as he seized the first man's head and jerked, snapping his neck.
"I'm no one's puppet." His voice croaked – so raw and degraded that the words were incomprehensible.
The effect of fighting, of killing, was undeniable. Memories hit him like a truck the instant he felt the bones snap.
There was an underground bunker nestled on the outskirts of the desolate moon Torfan. Batarian slavers within. They'd retreated upon seeing the influx of Alliance shuttles, realizing they couldn't take them head on. Shepard checked his rifle, unlocking the safety. You can run filthy cockroaches but you can't hide forever.
He was surrounded by fifty marines under the command of Major Kyle. They'd been fighting batarians in The Verge for months, tracking their slaver shipments, paying them in kind for their ruthless attacks against human colonists.
A puff of white dust erupted as he knelt down in the moon's massive crater. They'd dig in here… use this position for cover while...
"Lieutenant Shepard! Are you seein' this?!"
Two small figures were approaching, their shrill cries carried across the desolate expanse. "Affirmative. We've got… they look like kids?"
"Humans." Damien's voice pitched, hopeful. "Hey! Maybe they're releasing hostages."
Shepard tapped his com, every hair on his arms stood straight up. Even from this distance, he could see the blinking blue lights shock collars gave off. "Major I've got confirmation on two civilians incoming. They're human children sir, probably some of the colonists from their latest slave grab. But something… something's off. Their collars are functional but they're making their way towards us. What are your orders?"
"Get them the hell out of the line of fire then advance on the compound!" Kyle broke up momentarily, static filled the air. "... clicks south of your position but …. our way."
"You heard the man. Damien, Rodriguez, and Kent, grab the kids, we'll cover you."
While the squad raced ahead, Shepard watched through his rifle's scope as a little blond boy nearly leaped into Kent's arms. For one naive moment, he smiled at the sight. And then it happened. Fast as lightening the world around them erupted into chaos, the blast was so forceful that it threw him and ten of his men backwards. They slammed into the far side of the crater, human carnage raining down around them.
"They rigged the kids! They're bombs. They're fucking bombs!" Shepard shrieked into his com as his troops reacted to the grisly sight. Pieces of their friends intermingled with little arms and legs, the smells of perforated colons and burnt meat wafting across the hollow depression.
"What the shit?!"
"Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck balls FUCK."
His stomach lurched when he saw it – another pair of small figures advancing. He aimed his omni-tool's amplifier in their direction. The sounds of sobbing and beeping could be heard over his men's repulsed shouts. Movement on the far side of the moon caught his eye, he swung his rifle in the offending direction and spotted several batarians trying to salvage their sabotaged shuttles. Those fuckers were using suicide bombers to buy them time to escape.
"Where's our damn tech? Lenny! Get your ass over here."
The engineer's pale, gray eyes had sunken into his skull. Shock.
"Snap out of it man. I need you to disarm these kids while we…." Shepard started.
"I can't …. they're… I can't."
"The hell do you mean you can't?"
"It's old, old tech. So old it's unhackable. It's nothing but TNT with a remote detonator. No VI signal. See the cords? They're..."
This was not happening. He punched in the Major's frequency. "Sir? Those kids are..."
"Deliver the children!" Kyle wailed. "Deliver them from this evil and send the monsters back underground!"
"Sir what are your orders we can't…."
"Oh heavens above oh devils below they're all dead. Deliver them!"
He could see the disconcerted looks flicker across his men's faces. Whatever happened on the Major's end had caused him to become unhinged. He was on his own.
"Lenny, fast as you can, give me a detailed tech scan on the entire area. I want to know exactly what those bombs are hooked up to." The moment the map was uploaded to his omni, he could see the news wasn't good. They were surrounded. Each bomb was equipped with proximity alarms. Even if they fell back from their position and let the batarians escape, the devices were designed to explode the second those shuttles left atmo. And if they refrained from firing on the kids, he'd lose a good chunk of his forces for the slim chance one or two might be armed with duds.
"Retreating isn't an option. The batarians still have control of the AA guns. They'll blow us out of the sky. These kids are already dead, we can't disarm this type of tech… And they're using them as a distraction."
"Sir? What are you saying?"
"That we don't have a choice. Delta squad head around back, cut off the batarians' exit. Alpha you're with me. We'll advance into the compound … it should go without saying but don't approach any of these kids' bodies and…make … give them… as clean a death as you can." He paused, allowing for the abhorrence of the situation sink in. "We've all lost someone to the batarians. That's why we're on this squad. While we can't save them, we will make their murderers pay. Stow those negative airwaves. We're going to take out the worst of the worst today. And no surrenders. We execute each one of these shit bags."
Seeing the truth in his words, the troops slowly nodded in ascent, saluted, and loosed chorus of 'aye aye's.'
"Weapons hot, we kill these slave-dealing, terrorist fuckers at any cost. Scum like this cannot be allowed to escape."
So he charged. And tried not to imagine flaming red hair, missing teeth, or scabby knees.
There had been no other choice. But he made certain the four-eyed bastards paid.
With both guards dead at his feet, he paused to take an accounting of this new, incongruous body. There were no mirrors. No way for him to see his face. But the rest? From his waist to his knees, his legs were nothing but exposed metal fused with flesh. Black against red, blinking lights. An incomplete Frankestein. Strangely enough, he felt no pain. A side effect of their experiments perhaps?
He stumbled through the swinging, double doors into another laboratory. While he was a man forged in the fires of tragedy – someone who didn't shrink away from carnage or the smells of war; the ghoulish sight greeting him was unsettling to say the least.
A perfect replica of himself lay dead on a steel gurney. Rib cage cracked, his chest cavity was laid bare without a heart to pump. Horrified, he glanced down at his own chest. Only to see a precision scar extending vertically across the sternum. Were they cloning him for… parts?
The rest of the sterile, alabaster lab was no better. Jars filled with fetuses and cybernetic-fused skin lined the walls – shelves upon shelves of them. A large apparatus was set on the far table. Glowing orange tubes entwined around a cylindrical, steel tank. The liquid it churned out was beyond foul. Rancid, biological material was being melted down and dissolved for what could only be some heinous purpose.
Footsteps then. Heavy boots marching in his direction. He fingered the stolen pistol and took cover. They were cloning Shepards – trying to create some sort of super soldier. Yet, how had they captured him? His memory ended rather abruptly after Saren's defeat.
A flash of a datapad, a missing girl, someone lost to him. Garrus and Tali speaking in soft, hushed tones – attempting to comfort a wound that would never heal. A wound he had no right to recover from. Yet, the next thing he remembered was The Normandy coming to pieces around him, blazing fires igniting electrical cords, sending sparks in every direction as his ship was ripped to pieces.
Cerberus would pay for every life they took. His crew. They must have…
The doors blew open and men in white and black armor poured through the opening, each armed with a shock-cannon.
He smiled in spite of the situation. Those poor bastards were trying to recapture him. If they knew what was good for them, they'd toss in a few grenades, flush him from cover, and shoot to kill.
This would be fun.