Editorial Note: This personnel report focuses on Jack, one of Shepard's more volatile squad members. As usual, it includes both personal conversations and a mission that provides some sense of closure.
Personnel Report—Jack
No one wanted to spend time with Jack unless they absolutely had to. Jack didn't want to spend time with anyone unless she absolutely had to. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, as far as everyone was concerned.
So why did I feel the need to drop by every now and then? It's not like I had a lack of people to harass. And most of them were a lot more stable and a lot less psychotic. Which brings me back to my original question: why did I insist on visiting her? Why didn't I take a hint from everyone else? Because I was curious about her—which meant I absolutely had to spend time with her. Maybe getting spaced had atrophied my sense of self-preservation. It would explain a lot.
"Hey," she nodded when she saw me.
Ignoring the fact that she was engaging and disengaging the safety on her pistol—I still hadn't managed to figure out how she swiped it out of the Armoury—I nodded back. "What are you up to?"
"Still checking out your ship." Getting bored, she got up off her bunk and started pacing around. "Wouldn't mind putting her through her paces when you're not around."
And here I thought it was Kasumi who was the thief. Note to self: if I wanted a ship to return to after each mission, make sure to bring Jack along. Unless she was pulling my leg. Hard to tell with her. "I doubt Joker would appreciate that," I warned. "At least, not while we're working."
"Relax," she said, leaning against a bulkhead. "Joy-riding doesn't have the thrill it used to. Besides, if I wanted it, I'd take it."
I raised an eyebrow. "That so?"
"I've been around," Jack shrugged. "Ran with gangs, wiped out some gangs. Joined a cult, kept the haircut. I learned how to survive and not be a victim."
As if I needed any more proof that she'd had a seriously messed-up past and might, just might, have some issues. "It's hard to imagine you in a cult," I smirked, keeping my concerns—or just my common sense—tightly bottled up. "That usually involves a lot of rules."
"I was looking for answers," Jack replied. "Drugs and sex and going to a better place. A better place... right. It was all about money. They wanted to take a colony, shake the suckers down to fund their spread. And guess who their ace in the hole was?"
Yeah, that was a no-brainer.
"They were just like the rest," Jack spat bitterly. "Didn't give one shit about me."
"What did you do when you found out?"
Jack gave me a look. "What do you think?"
Well I was looking for specifics, but I guess I'd have to settle for letting my overactive imagination fill in the blanks. Gave me shivers just thinking about—gah! "You must have met some good people, too," I tried, hoping to get her out of her funk before she took it out on the Normandy. Or me.
"You've seen where I came from," she snorted. "Everybody wants something. And because of that, everything is fair game. Murder, assault, kidnapping, drugs, stealing, arson. Done it all. And that's the boring shit."
I had to shake my head. She was just reciting it like a real boring checklist. Probably was boring, for her.
She wasn't done yet. "Piracy, theft of military craft, destruction of a space station and vandalism—that was a good one."
"You were a pirate at one point?" I asked.
"Ties in with the kidnapping," Jack shrugged. "If you hijack a passenger ship and don't kill everyone, anyway. Good lesson. Simpler to just kill them all."
"Speaking of 'simpler,' military's anything but that," I pointed out. "Bet swiping a military vessel made you some friends."
"Shouldn't have left the thing unlocked," she sniffed. "Besides, parades are boring. I helped."
Note to self: definitely bring her with you. And don't let her get bored. "What about the space station?" I asked. "That's kinda pushing what I can believe."
"Ain't saying it was easy," she admitted. "Not everything is spur of the moment. Sometimes you gotta work to give people what they deserve."
"So what happened?" I asked.
"Had some people I hung with for a while," Jack said. "Outlaw colony. Felt like they were like me. Guess that made us a nice target. Turians think they know something about a scorched earth response. Fuck 'em."
"So you've got murder, assault, kidnapping, drugs, stealing, arson, piracy, theft and destroying space stations," I summarized. "I'm surprised you'd even mention vandalism in that bunch."
Jack grinned for the first time. "That's what the hanar call it when you crash that space station I mentioned into one of their moons and make a new crater."
Ooh. Yeah, they were a bit touchy about things like that.
Jack clearly knew that as well. "They really liked that moon," she chuckled.
"Do you ever wonder if you could have done things differently?" I asked carefully.
"No."
"Shouldn't you?" I pressed.
"There's no reason I should be alive, but I am," she replied coldly. "You know why? Instinct. It's worked for me so far and I'm not gonna change."
Still seems pretty psycho to me, but I'm a firm believer in the ol' adage of 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Unless a newer model comes along, of course.
I was about to turn and go when Jack called out. "Hey, Shepard."
"Yeah?" I said, turning back.
"No one's ever asked me about this shit. It's strange to talk about. So fuck you. And thanks for asking."
"Um. You're welcome."
I think.
It was cheery conversations like that which discouraged people from hanging out with her. Even if she did wear next to nothing from the waist up. So it was a bit of a surprise when Jack actually emerged from her hidey-hole, looked around for me, simultaneously aroused and traumatized Ken, then finally left a message with Kelly.
When I found her, she was wearing a groove in the floor with her pacing. "I got thoughts like little bugs crawling in and out of my head," she blurted out. "I can't stop them." Then she walked past me.
"You know I have a history with Cerberus," her voice echoed out. "You know how far back it goes?"
I followed the sound of her voice. She was sitting on one of the stairs leading up to Deck Four. "Not exactly, but I'll listen to anything you have to say, Jack," I told her.
"Your pal, the Illusive Man?" Jack started.
"He's not my pal," I interrupted.
"Whatever," Jack said. "Anyway, I've never seen him before, but he's the reason why Cerberus raised me. First thing I remember is my cell door in a Cerberus base. They did experiments. Drugged me. Tortured me. Whatever chance I had to be normal, they stole it by trying to turn me into some super-biotic. The doctors... the other kids... Every one of them hated me. They let me suffer."
Sadly, I wasn't surprised. "What did they hope to gain by torturing a little girl?" I asked.
"It was something about pain breaking down mental barriers and how it might clear the way for more biotic power," she said, closing her eyes and frowning in concentration. "I'm sure there was a payoff due at some point, but I wasn't going to see it. I was wired up in a cell."
"They tortured you just to see if they could make a strong biotic," I repeated. "That's it?"
"Wasn't in a position to ask, Shepard," Jack reminded me. "All I know is... a little girl crying in a cell, begging for the pain to stop..."
Geez, this was really messed up. Or fucked up, to use Jack's words. Maybe this was why I kept poking my nose around.
"And you weren't the only one," I said. Even by Cerberus standards, this was sick. "There were other children in the base?"
"I didn't know much about them," Jack growled. "I was kept separate. They hated me, just like everyone else there. When I broke out, I had to fight through them all. I showed them, but there's a loose end I need to deal with."
"How did you get out of there?"
"There was some kind of emergency and I made a break for it," Jack replied. "The other kids came out of their cells and attacked me. So did the guards. I just killed everything in my way and ran. Guess my biotics had developed faster than they thought. I managed to get a shuttle off the ground. Drifted until a freighter picked me up. The crew used me, then sold me. That's my uplifting escape story."
"You're absolutely certain that Cerberus was running the facility?" I asked, just for the sake of confirmation.
"I was a kid, but I wasn't dumb," Jack sneered. "I know how to listen. It was Cerberus. Don't care how far down the chain it was. They thought they were so clever. Turns out, mess with someone's head enough and you can turn a scared kid into an all-powerful bitch. Fucking idiots."
"I'm gonna talk to the Illusive Man again," I scowled, "and he'd better have some answers." (1)
"He'll just deny everything," Jack waved it off. "That's not what I'm after anyway. I found the coordinates in your files," she said, lifting a datapad up. "I want to go to the Teltin facility on Pragia, where they tortured and drugged me."
She got to her feet, growing more animated as she continued. "I want to go to the centre of the place—my cell. I want to deploy a big fucking bomb. And I want to watch from orbit when it goes off."
Yes. Watching from orbit is good. "Is this facility still active," I asked.
Jack shook her head. "The files say it was shut down after my escape. It's been abandoned for years. You think Cerberus is gonna care if I blow up a garbage dump?"
"If they do, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it," I decided. "I'll set a course for Pragia."
Jack looked at me in surprise. She probably couldn't believe I'd give the okay so easily. "I owe you, Shepard," she finally said, before returning to her bunk.
"I hate this place," Jack muttered.
We had entered synchronous orbit over the Teltin facility a half hour ago. We would've arrived sooner, but TIMmy wanted to have a chat. In my book, though, a plea from a psychotic biotic beats chatting with him any day of the week. So I went to the comm room, started talking to TIMmy, then had Joker cut the connection. (2) As I'd hoped, he'd turned off his command overrides once I responded, so we were able to regain control of the Normandy and jump to the Dakka system before he could lock me out again.
I had debated whether to bring everybody along. After all, it might be a good team-building exercise if everybody came along to support Jack. Of course, she might be offended if I drag everybody with me. Then again, she might be offended if I didn't.
In the end, I just told them that Jack and I were going down to her old stomping grounds where bad people did bad things and left it up to them to decide whether to come. When Jack saw that everybody—even "Jacob and the cheerleader"—decided to tag along, she just rolled her eyes, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Fuck it, not my fault if you wanna waste your time" and clambered onboard.
Jack pointed out the window to the facility. "See the landing pad?" she said. "Has to be on the roof, or the vegetation would overgrow it in a few hours." (3)
"Shepard," EDI broke in. "I am picking up thermal signatures everywhere, except at your landing zone."
"So either the landing zone's stone cold or something's distorting the sensors," I concluded.
"Of course. This was a secret Cerberus facility," Tali reminded us.
I don't think there was any other kind, but she had a point.
"Yeah, they build their equipment to last. Assholes," Jack spat. I almost missed the look of trepidation on her face underneath her scowl. "It was a mistake coming back here, Shepard."
"Calm down," I replied. "It'll be okay."
My confidence was apparently enough to assuage her fears. She took a deep breath, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Let's get on the ground."
It was raining steadily when we got out, the clouds making everything very gloomy and dark. Kinda like Jack's mood. "Let's just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell," Jack urged. "I want to watch this place burn."
Good idea, I thought. I was getting soaked.
We quickly hustled down the stairs and into the complex. As we shook ourselves dry—literally, in Grunt's case—I looked around. Typical abandoned facility—no lights, papers and containers scattered everywhere, stains all over the place. There were a lot of puddles and dripping water, mostly through holes created by bushy plant growth and vines that had forced their way in.
"I never saw this room," Jack commented, looking around. She pointed to a stack of containers. "I think they brought new kids in those things. They were messed up and starving, but alive. Usually."
"This is..." Jacob shook his head. "...unbelievable," he finally said.
Yeah, that's one way of putting it.
Pausing to grab some loot, we went through a door and down some stairs into another room. It had an active security console that was on a loop, repeating the same vid-recording over and over again:
"The Illusive Man requested operation logs again," one man was saying. "He's getting suspicious."
"When we get results, he won't care what he did," another man said with false bravado. "But if he knew..."
"He won't find out," the first one replied firmly.
"Sounds like this facility went rogue," Miranda said. I wasn't sure if the tone in her voice was thoughtful or hopeful.
Apparently, Jack was certain it was the latter. "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?" she snapped. "He didn't say what they were hiding from the Illusive Man."
The next room was a lot larger. It seemed like some kind of atrium, or at least a storage bay with a lot of windows. Containers were scattered everywhere, all drenched with rain from the broken skylights above us. Trees were actually bursting out of the floor, stretching all the way through the roof.
"I remember escaping to this room," Jack said with a cold, brittle smile. "Fighting here. I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling. Only a half-dead guard between me and freedom. He was begging for his life."
No one was sure how to respond to that, so we silently made our way through the room, keeping an eye out for vines and roots. Well, the rest of the squad was—I was also on the lookout for loot. Which I found, of course. About halfway through the room, we ran into a small pack of varren. Thankfully, their growls gave them away, so we were already dropping biotics and plasma on them before they even noticed us. It didn't take long to finish them off after that.
Near the end of the room, we came across a small spot. There were a bunch of barricades arranged in a rough circle. Inside the circle, I could see some knocked-over barricades, broken tiles, dirt and scratches. And blood stains.
"This almost looks like an arena," I said.
"That's right," Jack confirmed. "They used to stage fights here. Pit me against other kids. I loved it. Only time I was ever out of my cell."
"Was this for some sick kind of game," I asked, "or were they actually studying something here?"
"Hell if I know," Jack shrugged. "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," Jack replied. "Sometimes they took me out and made me fight. Filled me with drugs. Other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell."
Time for the latest disturbing question: "Did other kids die in these fights?"
"Sometimes," Jack said. "I was a kid, filled with drugs and told to fight. When I hesitated, I got shocked. When I attacked, narcotics flooded my veins."
"They actually rewarded you for attacking?" I asked in disbelief.
Jack gave me a disturbing grin. "I still get warm feelings during a fight."
Okay, I thought playing around with thorian creepers and rachni and subjecting entire colonies to wacky experiments was screwed up. This was just sick. "What the hell was wrong with those people?" I burst out, trying not to look at Jacob or Miranda.
"I don't know," Jack shrugged again. "Doesn't matter."
"Let's get going," I said. I've seen a lot of disturbing sights in my life, but this was rapidly rocketing towards the top of my depressingly long list. Judging by the looks of the other squad mates, I wasn't the only one.
"Hell yes," Jack nodded.
As it turned out, we only got out of the room and halfway down the adjoining corridor before we came across a security console. It still had power, so I tried to pull up any logs. All I got was a fragment of the last recording:
"Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin facility," a man in a hardsuit was saying. "The subjects are out of their cells! They're tearing the place apart! Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate—I repeat, permission to terminate!"
"Permission denied," someone else replied. "All subjects besides Zero are expendable. Keep Jack alive!"
"Understood," Zemkl sighed. "I'll begin the—"
Jack shut down the recording before he could finish. "That's not right," she snapped. "I broke out when my guards disappeared—I started that riot."
"Things might have happened that you didn't see," I suggested.
"The other kids attacked me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me," Jack retorted, stabbing a finger into my chest plate. That doesn't leave room for interpretation."
I wasn't so sure. Being attacked didn't necessarily identify how the riot actually started. But I kept my mouth shut and looked around. The corridor we were in was a dead-end. The only way forward was through a nearby door that went down a couple flights of stairs. Between the first and second set of stairs was a locked door. And a dead varren.
"This place is supposed to be empty," Jack frowned. "Who the fuck shot that varren? It's a fresh kill."
"Clearly we're not the only ones here, so stay alert."
"Mmm..."
"Uh, Grunt? Did you hear me?"
"Fresh kill..." I'm sure Grunt was drooling.
"You just ate before we left," Garrus protested. "Gardner was practically in tears when I dragged you away."
"So? That was half an hour ago."
"Try fifteen minutes," Kasumi corrected. "Plus, it's raw. I know that's funny coming from me—believe me, you haven't lived until you've tried sashimi. But at least you prepare and treat it first!"
My fingers were busy bypassing the lock, but my mouth was still free: "Jack, I agree that that varren didn't shoot itself. Kasumi, I'm with you—fresh sashimi is amazing. Grunt, you've eaten enough for now. You can't bring it with you and you can't take a bite before we go."
"I fear you are too late," Thane told me.
Ignoring the chomping sounds I heard behind me, I finally bypassed the door and entered a small storage room. I paused long enough to swipe some eezo and led the squad on before Grunt could have some more lunch—or anyone else could lose theirs. We went down another flight of stairs, around a couple corners and into a large room filled with containers and tables. Tables with dark stains on them. Before I could consider that, I saw movement.
"Company," I yelled.
We were already ducking for cover as the bad guys opened fire. Vorcha, mostly. Sporting Blood Pack colours. Noting that one of them was carrying a flamethrower, I melted his armour. Miranda promptly overloaded the fuel pack regulators. A look of horror spread across the vorcha's face before he frantically scrambled to unhook the fuel pack. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have enough time. As he went up in a burst of flame, I looked around. Where there were Blood Pack vorcha, there was a good chance that there would also be...
Aw, crap.
"Krogan!" I called out. Using my HUD, I assigned Mordin and Thane to the task of melting or ripping off its armour. As soon as my omni-tool had recharged, I set him on fire. The krogan managed to voice his anger at this development before Jack sent a biotic shockwave his way, followed shortly by an inferno grenade from Zaeed. Satisfied that the krogan had been dealt with, I turned my attention back to the vorcha. One of them was stumbling around without any armour, but Grunt and Garrus got to him first with twin concussive rounds. So I fired a shot from my sniper rifle through another vorcha's armour and into his skull.
"More vorcha on our left," Garrus warned.
He was right. Four more vorcha were trying to sneak up on our side and ambush us. Luckily, Garrus was paying attention to his HUD and gave the heads-up. By the time they crashed the party, we had found new firing positions and were waiting for them. They had just enough time to show surprise on their ugly mugs before we opened fire. The ensuing firefight was very one-sided and only lasted a minute.
"Why'd they need a morgue?" Jack asked herself afterward. "This was a small facility."
Aw, crap. Now that I had a chance to look, those tables did look like something you'd see in a morgue. I always thought they were cleaner, though. And larger.
"I'm saying..." Kasumi inhaled sharply, abruptly forgetting whatever it was she was going to say. "...these tables are the perfect size for little kids. Dissecting children... oh God."
"Looks like a lot of kids died in these experiments," Zaeed said quietly. "I've done some bad stuff, but this..."
"Bullshit!" Jack spat. "I had the worst of it and I made it out alive."
That might be so, but there were an awful lot of people who didn't. I didn't mention that, though. Dying was easy, as we'd just demonstrated. Living, that was hard. I didn't say that either. We quickly looked around for anything useful and got out of the morgue.
Leaving it to the dead—new and otherwise.
The morgue exit led us to a catwalk, part of a two-story open-concept room. Large glass panes lined the walls on our left, showing a row of smaller, more cluttered rooms. This area seemed a lot cleaner than the rest of the facility that we had passed through so far, which made it easier to see the Cerberus symbols stamped everywhere. I guess Cerberus advertising was just as aggressive back then as it was now.
Jack was pausing and looking around just as much as the rest of us. "So strange to be back here," she said softly. "I feel like... I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch. But then I'm a little girl again."
"Are you surprised?" I asked. "Sure you're a bad-ass now, but you were just a kid in here. Subjected to all sorts of pain and torture. This hellhole's bound to bring some of those memories back."
"Shit," she shook her head. "It's complicated. Let's just go plant that bomb."
The catwalk led us to an empty room with broken windows and grass sprouting amidst dirty, damp tiles. As we weren't on a nature hike, we got out of their almost immediately and headed down some more stairs. Some vorcha tried to ambush us halfway down on an elevated walkway that overlooked the stairs. To be honest, it would have been scarier if we didn't outnumber them six to one. They certainly didn't slow us down.
We did slow down once we entered the corridor at the bottom of the stairs, though. It was dark, there was lots of clutter to step over, and a trio of varren met us with growls and fangs as soon as we entered. We hastily backed up, firing biotics and plasma before finishing them off with gunfire. After that, we were very careful, clearing each cell before moving on. I say cell because it looked more like a corridor of prison cells than a dormitory.
"They kept children here?" Jacob whispered after the fifth or sixth cell. He turned to Miranda as if hoping she'd have answers. Miranda didn't respond, probably because she was biting her lip. I also noticed that her face was paler than usual.
The door at the end of the hallway led into another large room. There was a catwalk that wrapped around the room, hugging the walls. Below us was a floor filled with debris and clutter.
Jack abruptly halted when we were halfway along the catwalk, staring at a set of large windows.
"This... it's a two-way mirror?" Jack sputtered.
Oh. I guess that wasn't a window after all.
"My cell is on the other side," Jack burst out. "I could see all the other kids out here. I screamed at them for hours. They always ignored me. Why didn't they hear me?"
"Maybe it was soundproofed," Garrus suggested. "If so, it wouldn't matter how long or how loud you screamed."
"He's right," I said. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."
Not knowing what else to say, I let Jack digest that while we kept going. I swiped some medi-gel before leaving the room and going down another long, messy, plant-infested hallway that ended at a T-junction. The left turn led us into a small room with stacks of crates along the wall and some kind of chair—the one you see at dentists—in the middle. Though I don't recall dentist chairs with shackles at the wrists and ankles.
"I must have come through here when I broke out," Jack frowned, "but I don't remember it."
The right hand corridor was more interesting. I managed to dig up some spare power cells and a schematic for a biotic amp upgrade. More importantly—for Jack and my curiosity—I found a couple computer consoles. Sifting through the first one, I managed to retrieve a log entry that was still in the buffer:
"Entry 1054, Teltin facility," some guy said, all too calmly. "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. I hope our supply of biotic-potential subjects holds up. We are going through them fast."
"This is bullshit!" Jack declared, whirling towards me. "They weren't experimenting on the other children for my safety!"
Looking in her eyes, I didn't see anger or indignation as much as I saw, well, shock. I don't think it occurred to her that she wasn't the only one who suffered here. "No, it looks like they were used to figure out what would boost biotics," I replied. "Anything that worked, they gave to you."
"You don't get it, Shepard," Jack replied. "I survived this place because I was tougher than the rest. That's who I am."
"I know," I nodded. "You move on, harder and tougher. But other kids suffered here, too."
I couldn't dig anything else out of the console, so I moved to the next one. It took a bit of work, but I found another log entry after a couple minutes. As it turned out, it was the same guy who'd given the experimental results. He wasn't as calm this time, though:
"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 program. Hopefully that will..."
He broke off and turned to his side. We heard a humming sound, the kind you hear when a mass effect field was being generated. "Who are..." the man started before his eyes widened. "Zero, wait—" The recording broke off, but not before we saw him flying through the air.
"Shepard, they started up somewhere else!" Jack cried out.
I shook my head. "Ascension is an Alliance program. It's a school for biotic kids, with civilian support and parental input. They don't torture children there." (4)
"You're sure?"
"Never been there myself," I shrugged, "but I read the reports and news stories. They let parents come and visit. Kids are free to go whenever their families give the word. The Alliance inspects them twice a year."
Jack looked back and forth between the two computer consoles. "A lot of this... isn't the way I remember it."
"You couldn't have known what was really going on," I reassured her. "There was a lot going on."
"Yeah? Well, I'm a lot smarter now," Jack retorted. "I keep my eyes open and I always shoot first."
Well, I tried to be sympathetic. Guess she was still processing everything.
"We're getting close to my cell," Jack said. "The place I came from. Let's keep moving."
There was only one door out of here. As we approached it, I suddenly felt the back of my neck start to tingle. I led the squad through, tightly gripping my sniper rifle.
Sure enough, the room we entered was filled with krogan and vorcha.
Aw, crap.
One of them looked at us, then turned away and activated his comm. "Hey Aresh, it's Kureck. Yeah, the intruders are here. You want them dead, we have to talk creds."
Not surprisingly, we all charged our weapons at that point.
Kureck paused a moment. Evidently, he didn't like what he heard. "You promised us lots of salvage, but this place is a waste," he snapped. He paused again, then sighed. "Fine—we'll put 'em down. Then I'm coming in there and we're gonna talk salvage."
"Hi guys," I said brightly. "Is that why you guys are here? Salvage?"
"That's what we were told," Kureck replied. "So far, it's been a whole lotta nothing. So I think we're gonna kill you. After that... we'll see."
"If you want creds, maybe we can make a deal," I offered. "You want some medi-gel or something?"
To his credit, Kureck considered that for a moment. "Nah," he said, shaking his head. "I'd rather kill you."
Figures.
"Concentrate fire!" Kureck ordered his troops as we scattered for cover. "All squads—form up now!"
Looking around, I noticed that one of the vorcha was carrying a flamethrower. Before he could get any bright ideas, I blasted through his armour and let Miranda blow up the fuel pack. While that vorcha was howling with his last breath, I aimed my sniper rifle at one of the krogan. Unfortunately, he ducked behind a crate before I could get a lock. Lowering my sniper rifle in annoyance, I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. One of the vorcha was sidling along the left, no doubt hoping to sneak behind and get the drop on us.
Getting Thane's attention, I had him crack the vorcha's armour open with his biotics. By then, my omni-tool had charged up another dose of plasma, which I sent merrily blazing his way.
"Tighten up," Kureck roared. "I want suppression and I want it now!"
We don't always get what we want. Case in point: we weren't really seeing the suppression Kureck wanted, mainly because Garrus had Team Two dropping the rest of the vorcha one by one. Miranda, Grunt and Kasumi had been slowly chipping away at the armour protecting one of the krogan. I noticed Miranda intently staring at that krogan, no doubt assessing the integrity of the armour. Evidently, she had decided it was weak enough, because she launched a whirling ball of biotic energy at him. The armour popped open with a loud crack. By then, Thane and I were ready for another round and we gave him a one-two punch of biotics and plasma. The big lug went down for the count.
Kureck spat out a string of words I couldn't understand, but I was fairly confident that they expressed his frustration. Grunt's laughter seemed to confirm that, though it was possible that he was just having a good time. While I pondered that, I noticed that the other krogan had roped a pair of vorcha to tiptoe down the right hand side of the room. Team Two managed to drop the vorcha, but the krogan was still heading our way.
"Team Two, focus on the remaining vorcha. Team One will deal with the approaching krogan." I fired another round of plasma, hoping I wouldn't regret that last sentence. Miranda and Thane attacked him with their biotics. His armour couldn't withstand that assault, not after the damage done by my fireball.
Unfortunately, it had lasted long enough for him to get to our side of the room, which meant he had a clear line of sight to all of us.
"I will destroy you!" Jack yelled, lifting him up with her biotics. Well, she tried to lift him up. The biotic field surrounded him and he was wobbling a bit, but he didn't float up in the air. Still, he paused long enough for Miranda to recover her strength and detonate Jack's levitation field with a biotic attack of her own. The resulting flash and explosion had barely waned when I set him on fire. A single bullet from Kasumi was finally enough to take him down.
"Useless, all of you!" Kureck raged. "I'll kill them myself!" As I watched, he moved over to the left and started stomping our way. And unless my sensors were malfunctioning, Kureck had a biotic barrier protecting him as well as armour plating and the usual oversized hardsuit.
Aw, crap. The only bright side was the fact that it had taken this long before he started charging us. Uncharacteristically patient of him. Shame he couldn't have been a little more patient.
In unison, we all scrambled for submachine guns and assault rifles and laid down a withering barrage of rapid fire. After thirty or forty seconds of constant fire, we managed to drop his barriers. Mordin and I aimed our omni-tools at him, adjusted our aim as Kureck made a bee-line for us through the centre of the room, and lit him up with twin fireballs. It was Thane who managed to blast his armour off with his biotics.
Unfortunately, Kureck was right on top of us by that point. I could literally smell his breath—it reeked.
I cloaked, lifted my sniper rifle and fired a shot into his skull at point-blank range. He stumbled back, shook his head and glared at me.
Aw, crap.
Then I heard a rat-tat-tat sound. Kureck suddenly looked confused, swayed back and forth...
...then toppled to the ground.
I traced the sound back to its source. "Thanks," I nodded.
Miranda silently nodded back.
"Only room left is my old cell," Jack said, walking up to me. "Whoever Aresh is, he's in there."
"Right," I nodded. "Let's look around to replenish our ammo and whatnot. Then we can go to your cell and have a chat with him."
"Sure. I wanted to plant the bomb there anyway," Jack added. "Might as well do it on his corpse."
She's always looking on the bright side of things.
It didn't take long for us to sift through the wreckage—and bodies. Kureck wasn't kidding when he said there wasn't much to salvage. As a result, we reached Jack's cell within five minutes.
We hadn't met anyone along the way to Jack's cell. And we hadn't seen any other doors or rooms. Which meant that Aresh had to be hiding somewhere in the cell.
"Come out now," I barked, using my best 'Do what I say NOW' voice. "We know you're here."
A man slowly stood up from his hiding spot between a large crate and a bed. "Who are you?" Jack demanded.
"My name is Aresh," he replied calmly, "and you're breaking into my home. I know you, Subject Zero." He stepped forward, prompting Jack to lift her pistol. Ignoring the threat of imminent and violent death, he continued talking. "So many years have passed. I thought I was the only survivor."
Jack sneered at him, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. Not completely, anyway. "My name is Jack," she corrected. "How the hell do you know me?"
"We all knew your face, Jack," Aresh said. "They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you. You were the question... and I'm still looking for the answer."
I glanced over at Jack. "Looks like you're not the only one pulled back here."
"I tried to forget this. But a place like this... it doesn't forget you," Aresh whispered, tapping the side of his head. "It follows you. I hired these mercs and came back almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding it, piece by piece."
This suggested that Kureck was a lot more patient than he'd led us to believe, if he had his mercs rummaging through pitiful amounts of salvage for that long.
"I'm going to find out what they knew," Aresh continued dreamily. "How to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin facility. It will be beautiful."
Jack immediately tensed up. "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?" I asked him. "Wasn't this forced on you?"
"Some were bought from poor families on Earth or kidnapped from colonies," Aresh explained. "Most ended up here the way I did: batarian pirates. They did such horrible things to us. They must have had good reasons."
"There's no reason good enough," Jack burst out. "Are you nuts? You lived it!"
"And then escaped," I added. "This place was like a prison. How did you get out?"
"We all attacked at once as they were taking us to the lab," Aresh replied. "They would have put us down, but then Jack got loose. When I came to, it was over—the guards, the scientists and the other kids were all dead. And you were gone, Jack."
So Jack didn't start the riot after all. Interesting.
"I stopped it, all of it," Jack snapped. "Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed up."
"Everything we went through must have been worth something!" he snapped back, showing emotion for the first time.
Understandable, I suppose. Aresh had spent his entire childhood being tortured. The only way to cope with that sort of trauma was to rationalize it. It wasn't Stockholm syndrome so much as it was trying to make sense of a galaxy that... well... didn't make sense. Whatever.
"We can blow up the place, but that still leaves him. "What do we do with another you, Jack?"
I regretted the words as soon as they'd left my mouth. They were sure to set Jack off. She proved me right immediately. "That's easy," Jack replied, walking forward.
"Just leave me here," Aresh pleaded. "This is where I belong."
"Fuck that," Jack snarled. She brought him down to his knees with her biotics, then pointed her pistol at him.
"Jack, he's trapped in his past," I said quickly. "You need to move on from yours."
"He wants to restart this place," Jack retorted. "He needs to die!"
"He's crazy and he's never going to restart this facility," I replied. "You have to let it go. Your past doesn't have to control you."
She looked at me, then down to Aresh, then back to me. Then she looked at Aresh again. "Fuck," she cried out in frustration.
"Get out of here," she snarled, lowering her pistol. Aresh scrambled to his feet.
"Go!"
We all stepped aside as Aresh bolted from the room. Garrus watched him disappear down the colony. He later told me that he'd thought about apprehending Aresh so we could drop him off at some psychiatric facility—non-Cerberus, of course—but figured it was more important as team leader to stick around and offer Jack his support. I agreed that that was the right call, mostly because I didn't think about chasing after Aresh. As it turned out, Jack agreed with us.
"He's not worth chasing," Jack muttered. "None of it is."
"You did the right thing, Jack," I said.
"Maybe." Jack looked around the cell. "This room was my whole childhood. Give me a minute to look around?"
"Sure," I nodded. "Go ahead."
"Nothing's changed," she said, walking to the window. "But it's all different, somehow."
She stared out of the window for a minute. "I thought that room out there was the rest of the world," she revealed. "I'd pound and yell. Never did any good. Maybe this was soundproofed, too."
Then she took a few quick steps over to an old, beat-up table. A lamp and several papers were scattered across the surface. "I used this table for everything," Jack said. "It was like my best friend. I'd crawl under it to cry. I was pathetic."
Before I could say anything, she was on the move again. A couple seconds later, she was standing in front of the bed. "Sometimes I dream that I'm back in this bed being tortured. I used to tie the sheets around my wrists and try to rip them off. I want to stop coming back here."
Guess that was the real reason why she chose the dimly lit, pipe-laden obstacle course under Engineering for her 'room' rather than a proper bunk. Beds were just too scary for her.
I decided to keep my mouth shut. Seemed like she was talking to herself—for herself—as much as she was talking to the rest of us; seeing these childhood memories for the first time as an adult, just like us. Maybe she didn't need us to say anything as much as she just needed someone to keep her company. Someone to witness the horrors she'd endured.
I suddenly realized that Jack had left the room. The squad was already following her, so I was the last one out. We congregated outside, near a section of the wall that sported a man-sized dent, right in the middle of a large, dried blood spatter. "See the scarring on the wall here?" Jack pointed out. "That's where I killed my first man. One of the guards tried to stop me." (5) She ran a hand along the wall before stepping back. "Instead, I stopped him."
"Okay, no more wallowing," Jack declared, facing us for the first time in, well, the last couple minutes. "Let's blow this place to hell."
I motioned to Grunt, who I'd finagled into lugging the bomb without much difficulty. It wasn't hard. All I had to say was that he was strong enough to carry it to the destination despite anything that we might run into—words I definitely regretted now—and he could ensure that this place would face a glorious demise by fiery explosion. Anyway, Jack spent several minutes deciding where to place the bomb, then changing her mind, then changing her mind again.
It was still raining when we left the facility, so we didn't waste any time getting back to the shuttle. As it lifted off, Jack grabbed the remote detonator. For a moment, I thought she was gonna set the bomb off right then and there. Instead, she just flipped the cap covering the trigger open, then closed it. Open, close. Open, close. Open, close. Open...
I banged the wall behind me, hoping the shuttle VI would interpret that to accelerate. Sure enough, the shuttle picked up speed—just as Jack pressed the trigger. Thankfully, we were almost out of the blast radius, so we were just shaken around a bit by the shockwave.
As the bouncing stopped and the shuttle flew into the atmosphere, I linked my omni-tool to the shuttle's comm system and started playing an audio file that I had been saving for a mission like this:
"I can't seem to face up to the facts.
I'm tense and nervous and I
can't relax
I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire.
Don't touch me I'm a real live wire.
"Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away." (6)
That song seemed to cheer Jack up and scare everyone else. Not sure why.
I was in the middle of my usual rounds when Joker contacted me over the comm. "Commander? EDI says Jack and Miranda are in the middle of a... disagreement. Can you head it off before they tear out a bulkhead?"
Oh for crying out loud.
"I'll deal with it," I replied, making an about-face and heading for Miranda's office.
"Take pictures," Joker said cheerfully.
I arrived just in time to hear Jack. "Touch me and I will smear the walls with you, bitch!" As the doors opened, I saw Jack flinging a chair towards Miranda with her biotics. Miranda leaned out of the way, biotics flaring into a protective barrier in case she'd misjudged the trajectory. She didn't, so the chair just slammed into the wall and bounced off.
"Am I interrupting something?" I asked innocently.
Jack hurled another chair, which Miranda deflected back. Almost took my head clean off. I decided that they needed to focus on something besides each other. "Joker suggested I take pictures."
"Not now, Shepard!" they snapped in unison. Once they realized that, they glared at each other. Again. Biotic fields started flaring around both of them.
"Enough!" I snapped. "Stand down, both of you!"
"The cheerleader won't admit what Cerberus did to me was wrong!" Jack seethed.
"It wasn't Cerberus," Miranda corrected in an icy voice. "Not really. But clearly you were a mistake."
"Screw you!" Jack spat, stabbing a finger in Miranda's face. "You've got no idea what they put me through! Maybe it's time I showed you!"
"Our mission is too important to let personal feelings get in the way," I broke in, stepping between the two of them. It was then that I realized I'd just stepped into the middle of a catfight between two very pissed and dangerous women, either of whom could grind me into a pulp. With their brains. Smart move, Shepard. What the hell were you thinking?
"Fuck feelings," Jack sneered. "I just want her dead."
"You both know what we're up against," I reminded them. "I need both of you if we're gonna pull this off. Save your anger for the Collectors."
Jack glared at me, but only for a moment. I suspect that had less to do with what I said and more to do with the fact that I'd taken time out of my busy day of harassing the crew to help her with some interior redecorating and demolishing. Still, she wasn't about to lose face by volunteering to back down.
Miranda, surprisingly enough, swallowed her pride first. "I can put aside my differences... until the mission's over."
"Sure," Jack agreed immediately. "I'll do my part. I'd hate to see her die before I get a chance to filet her myself."
"So you two are going to be okay?" I asked.
Jack ignored me and stomped out of the room. It may have been my imagination, but the air suddenly felt a whole lot lighter.
"It's a good thing you came by when you did," Miranda admitted, walking back to her desk. "As long as she does her job, we'll be fine. Thanks, Shepard."
I nodded, put the chair Jack knocked over back in its place and resumed my rounds. With a twist—I decided to see two specific people last, given the need for them to clear their heads and calm down. Even if it meant some extra walking around.
About an hour later, I popped back into Miranda's office.
"You're here to talk about Jack," she said. "You're usually pretty punctual about your daily visits," she added in response to the look of confusion on my face. "Under other circumstances, you wouldn't be here for another hour. I can only think of one reason why you'd be early."
Putting aside the thought that I used to be better at concealing stuff like that, I simply nodded. "What happened?"
"She barged in here, wanting an explanation for why Cerberus put her through what she experienced."
"What was Cerberus trying to prove by experimenting on children like Jack?" I asked.
"The Alliance was trying to start up the Ascension Project, but they were still reeling from the aftermath of the BAaT debacle. Cerberus wanted to start their own project to develop biotic potential. To succeed where the Alliance failed."
She winced before continuing: "Obviously, it was a mistake. There's no question about it. Apparently, Cerberus was trying to shut it down when the riot occurred."
"Really?"
Miranda handed over a datapad. An e-mail browser was open with the following message highlighted:
To: Operative Lawson
From: Cerberus Intel
CC: Commander Shepard
Contacting you per Illusive Man's instructions. He believed you would want to know that he had ordered Subject Zero's project shut down before the riot broke out. Cerberus personnel arrived to find all guards dead, along with most of the subjects. Any surviving children were treated for injuries, given mild amnesic treatments, and delivered to Alliance facilities as survivors of slaver attacks. (7)A few surviving doctors were forcibly retired for their role in the project.
Per your report, the facility on Pragia has been destroyed.
Several files were attached to that message, and I took a few minutes to read through them. From what I could gather, Cerberus had never ordered the Teltin facility to torture the kids or subject them to all those horrific experiments. Of course, they didn't say they couldn't, either. Still, they did note several problems with the Teltin facility, including a reluctance to provide timely—or detailed—updates on their progress and a constantly increasing demand for 'biotic test subjects' without any sort of explanation. Attempts to investigate were rebuffed—either verbally or at gunpoint. According to the time stamps, TIMmy had indeed given the word to pull the plug weeks before everything went nuts.
That still didn't justify why TIMmy started that project in the first place, and I said as much. "There's no reason why Cerberus had to do that," I said. "Unless they were trying to create weapons for humanity's benefit, as defined by the Illusive Man."
Miranda stiffened. "Weapons? We don't know that."
"I don't think they were torturing all those kids for kicks. You heard the logs: at the very least, they were looking for practical applications, and were willing to do anything to get them. It wouldn't be the first time either," I reminded her. "I saw your bases two years ago, remember? You were using husks, Thorian creepers, even rachni to make your own army!"
Miranda was quick with her rebuttal. "The husks were already dead, the Thorian creatures were mindless and the rachni were abandoned once we understood their intelligence."
"You're forgetting the settlement on Chasca," I replied. "Their colonial pioneer team was fully alive before Cerberus got its hands on them and turned them into husks. Was that deliberate, or another instance where an operation went rogue?"
"I... I don't know," Miranda admitted.
"And the rachni being abandoned when their intelligence was fully understood? Cerberus didn't exactly do a good job of cleaning up after their mess. Rachni were shipping themselves all over the Styx Theta cluster and wreaking havoc until I showed up. Isn't that a little sloppy?"
"You have a point there," Miranda conceded.
"So what was the purpose of all of that? A bunch of botched attempts to create—"
"We weren't breeding an army," Miranda interrupted. "We were breeding expendable shock troops for high-risk scenarios. How many soldiers died in Saren's attack on Eden Prime? How many would have lived if we'd had just a dozen rachni soldiers on our side?"
"If history is any indication, few if any soldiers would have survived," I replied. "It doesn't seem like any of those 'shock troops' are good at staying on anyone's side for long. Besides, there's that 'expendable' part. When you fall into the mindset where you can classify someone as expendable, it doesn't take much to start expanding that definition. First test subjects, then support staff, then the lower ranks. Before you know it, people like you and me are thrown into the meat grinder. Just because someone at the top decides that we're ultimately expendable."
At the time, I included schmucks like the two of us to drive my point home. If only I knew how prophetic my words would be. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes.
"That wouldn't happen," Miranda protested. "The Illusive Man—"
"Decreed that I was the only one worth saving from the Lazarus Project," I interrupted. "You said it yourself. "'Everyone else is expendable.'"
She didn't have a reply to that.
"That same kind of thinking also lends itself to sloppy planning, shortcuts or other things that tend to snowball into one big mess," I concluded. "I'm not saying Cerberus is the only group that does that and gets egg on its face, but it does seem to have a messier track record than others. And the Illusive Man still hasn't learned from it."
"I suppose I can see how your experiences might lead you to that conclusion," Miranda allowed grudgingly.
Wow. That must have taken a lot. I decided not to push the whole 'holier-than-thou' morality angle. It would probably wreck any progress I'd just made, not to mention the fact that I'd be stuck here all day. "How'd we get onto this subject in the first place again?"
"Jack."
"Right," I nodded. "Was that all she wanted? An explanation?"
"As you heard, she also wanted an admission that what Cerberus did was wrong."
"Was it?" I asked.
"The goal of the—"
"Yes, yes, yes," I butted in impatiently. "Biotic development, do a better job than the Alliance, ya-de-da-de-da. Was. It. Wrong?"
...
...
"I suppose so. Yes."
"Did you say that to Jack?"
"Jack wanted a fight more than an apology," Miranda said tersely.
That made sense. Plus, Miranda took a lot of—well-deserved, admittedly—pride in being right and bringing things to a successful conclusion. Apologizing or admitting she was wrong would be a difficult task—especially to someone who was the antithesis of everything she stood for. "Maybe so," I replied. "Still, maybe it would be worth sending an apology via e-mail. Not as personal, but it's less risky."
"For me or for Jack?" Miranda asked.
"Actually I was thinking of the entire ship," I admitted. "If the two of you come to blows, I might not get there in time before one of you punches a hole in the hull."
"Good point."
Now all I had to do was talk to Jack, and I'd be done for the day. To my surprise, she wasn't virtually naked from the waist up when I found her. Apparently she'd marched up to Kelly and asked—well, demanded—something to wear that wasn't too girly. Rather than put in a requisitions request, Kelly took her back to her quarters and pulled out a leather vest, which Jack immediately took a liking to. Guess Kelly's psych degree wasn't just for show after all.
"I needed to wipe that place off the map," Jack told me. "You took me there to do it and I owe you." She lay down on her bunk and stared at the ceiling. "You don't know what it's like, Shepard. To have garbage like that following you. It marks you in ways you... you don't expect."
"Not like that, no," I agreed. "But I've made a lot of hard choices, Jack. What to give up. Who... who to leave behind."
She stared at me suspiciously. "You shitting me, Shepard? The big commander hero? Who'd you leave behind?"
I slumped down on the floor. "Her name was Ashley," I said softly. "Lieutenant Ashley Williams. I rescued her from Eden Prime over two years ago, before I became a Spectre. We fought all over the galaxy to track down Saren Arterius, a rogue Spectre who'd allied himself with the geth. Along the way we discovered that he was working with the Reapers.
"We finally confronted him on Virmire. He'd found a workaround, if not a cure, to the genophage, and was using it to clone an army of krogan. We set up an improvised nuke to destroy the facility but geth reinforcements arrived before we could evacuate. There wasn't enough time to save everyone before it went off. It was either save Ash and a couple other soldiers or save a dozen people. She knew that. That's why she armed the nuke. She bought us enough time to get offworld before it blew. Took out an entire facility, more geth and krogan than you could count and a good chunk of the landscape to boot."
"Sounds like my kind of girl."
"I don't know," I said, grinning for the first time. "She had this thing about rules. Military brat and all that."
"Figures she'd be too good to be true," Jack snorted. "But I guess you do know about crap from your past. Hard to walk away from shit like that. You'd think it would get easier now that the place is a crater, but what do I know?"
"How about Aresh?" I asked. "I never thought I'd see you show mercy, but you let him live. Is it easier to walk away from a choice like that?"
"He was trapped in the past, reliving it every day," Jack said, still staring at the ceiling. "You showed how that could be me. I'm not getting stuck like that. I'm better than him and I'm sure as hell not carrying that crater around with me."
"What about Miranda?" I asked warily. "Are you going to carry your anger towards her around with you?" I asked warily.
"Yep."
Great.
"Speaking of the cheerleader, she sent me an apology," she added, lifting up a datapad. "Chicken must've been too scared to come down here. Still wanna beat her to a pulp, but I guess that can wait 'till later."
Yes. Later is good. "You feel any different at all?" I wanted to know. "You know, now that you blew up that facility?"
Jack sat up and swung her legs over to perch over the bunk. "I know that place is gone. But I still kind of want to kill every person I see. No offense."
"None taken," I lied, suppressing the urge to step back. "I'll take what I can get with you, Jack."
"So is that it?" she asked. "That's why you're here?"
Pretty much. That really should be my cue to get outta here. That would be the smart thing to d—aw, screw it.
"Just curious to see how you were doing," I told her. "And maybe curious in general. Tell me something I don't know about you."
"Nothing to tell," Jack said, staring at me suspiciously. "Why?"
"I wanna know more," I shrugged. "Like I said, I'm curious."
"I'm here to fight for you," she said, standing up. "Nothing says we have to be friends. But whatever. Something you don't know, like what's up with my ink? Or something else just as boring?"
Jack leaned against some of the pipes and glared at me. "You're not really interested unless it affects you. I've been through all this shit before."
"You're a hard person to like, Jack."
"Really?" Jack asked, laying on the sarcasm with a trowel. "I had no idea. What other insights do you have that I'm too stupid to see?"
I decided to ignore that. "I'll bite: what's with the tattoos?"
She looked up and down her arms. Her chest too, though that was a moot point now that it was covered. "Some are for prisons I've been in. Some are for kills. You know, good ones. Some are for things I've lost. Those aren't your business. They're nobody's business. And some are because, hey, why the fuck not?"
"You're tough, but you can't have survived alone all of these years. Don't you have any friends?" I asked.
Jack crossed her arms. "When I was starting out, I ran with this girl Manara and her boyfriend. They knew their way around. I thought they would help me. Right."
She snorted. "They helped me into their bed. And when we finally did take down something big, they helped themselves to my share of the take. I knew where it was heading and I got them first. Never bothered with friends after that."
"They sound like selfish pricks," I agreed. "That doesn't mean they were going to kill you."
"I get feelings. I don't need proof," Jack said. "I did the smart thing. I always do the smart thing if people fuck with me. That's probably something you should remember."
Probably. But I won't.
"You work pretty hard at not letting people get close," I observed.
"I've been with lots of people," she shrugged. "If you're asking about a boyfriend or girlfriend, no. It's a waste of time and it never works. You let someone get that close, it just means they need a shorter knife. Lonely and alive works just fine, thanks."
That was fairly nihilistic, but I couldn't exactly disagree with her. My social life usually involved trading bullets instead of barbs, and my romantic life was nonexistent. If I'd been through what she'd endured, I'd probably do the same thing, only by choice instead of by accident. Guess there are worse things in life than having the universe laugh at you.
"Fair enough," I said. "Talk to you later."
"Wait," Jack demanded. "My turn with the questions. People usually walk by now. Why are you really asking these things? You eyeing me up? 'Cause if this is about sex, maybe you should just fucking say so."
Despite the fact that she had only recently started covering up, that was actually the last thing on my mind. I don't know if that was chivalrous or sad. "I'm not looking for that," I replied.
Jack shook her head in confusion. "I don't get you. You don't want anything, but you keep coming around. And you did a lot to help me..." Jack started before shaking her head again. "Shit, I'm not good at this soft stuff. Just... thanks, okay? Let's... let's get back to work. Maybe we'll talk later. Maybe not."
I understood what she meant. When you think about it, the hard choices that everyone always talks about, like killing or dying, are actually quite easy to make.
It's the soft stuff that's hard.
(1): Apart from the shock and disgust Shepard was likely feeling after hearing such horrific abuses, this conversation took place shortly after the Illusive Man asked him to investigate the Collector ship with incomplete intelligence. As a result, his feelings towards the Illusive Man were likely at an all-time low.
(2): Something that he had never done with the Council when first inducted into the Spectres, despite his long-held ambivalence towards them.
(3): During the 1980s, batarians introduced foreign, industrially-mutated plants to Pragia, hoping to take advantage of its fertile volcanic soil to create a breadbasket that could yield agricultural surpluses. However, the synergistic combination of these plants, Pragia's geothermal conditions and chemotropic microbes created mutant plant strains that quickly overgrew colonies in days, and were often poisonous or carnivorous. Indeed, Alliance ecologists predict that Pragia's soil will be depleted of nutrients by the late 2500s as the planet's natural fauna is incapable of keeping this plant growth in check. Currently, its isolation and lack of population attracts criminals, terrorists and intelligence agents.
(4): I thought the Alliance's first program to train potential human biotics—Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training (BAaT)—was a disaster. Cerberus's Teltin facility—with its abuse, torture and wanton disregard for ethics, safety or life—was clearly much, much worse.
(5): Jack never explained what this guard was stopping her from doing, or if she did, Shepard never mentioned it.
(6): 'Psycho Killer,' released by The Talking Heads in 1977.
(7): Unfortunately, files during that period of time are not detailed enough to determine who amongst the depressingly large number of slaver survivors were in fact children who suffered at the hands of this Cerberus project.