Chapter Three: Teltin
The Spectre returned to the Normandy alone. After all she figured trying to explain to your aunt (even if she was adopted—best friend to mom sort of aunt) that you were now married to an alien would take a bit of time. Not to mention Tali needed time to properly say goodbye to her father. And to perform whatever funerary rites were needed to send those lost on the Alarei on their way with dignity.
Shepard decided they could spare a day or two at the most. If Tali needed more time, the Spectre understood, more than most on the ship save for perhaps Samara who had recently had to say goodbye to her own daughter. Granted the Justicar had to kill Morinth but that did not lessen the pain. In fact, it made it razor sharp, just as sharp as the pain that lanced though Shepard's chest every time she thought of how she was responsible for the death of Secura. Admittedly she had not been the one who had shot at Liara but it was her actions that caused Udina to retaliate, it was the bond born of the gestalt and the oncoming Cyan Syndrome that added to the babe's demise.
Almost as soon as Shepard put foot to deck on her ship she was approached by Kelly Chambers. "Commander, it's good you've returned. I think we have an issue with Jack. She's been agitated since you Tali and Garrus left. She desperately needs for you to talk to her. She won't tell me what it's about."
Fracking Shakespeare was right. Trouble comes not in single spies but in whole battalions. Shepard squared her shoulders, took in a breath and made a move for the lift from there down to the Engineering level.
When she got down to the cubby hole Jack called home. Agitated wasn't exactly the word Shepard would have used to describe the ex-con's state of mind. She was positively climbing the walls. Shepard watched the younger woman pace frantically back and forth in and out of the cubby to the stairs and back again, like a great cat trapped in one of the cruelly designed cages of an old-fashioned zoo.
Jack gave a less than cursory look to the Spectre: more out of what she could offer rather than what Shepard could deliver.
"I got thoughts crawling in and out of my head like little bugs. I can't stop it." Jack pinned Shepard with distain not for the Spectre herself but for sake of the emotion that was overwhelming her. "You know I got issues with Cerberus. You know how far back it goes?" A question that did not need to be answered.
Shepard answered regardless. "I'll listen to anything you have to say Jack."
Jack moved to the stairs and sat down on the metal grating stair. "Your pal the Illusive Man? Never seen him before. But Cerberus raised me. First thing I remember is my cell door in a Cerberus base. They did experiments, drugged me, tortured me." She looked down to her feet for a moment then lifted her bald head, her dark brown eyes glaring. "Whatever chance I had at being normal...they stole it by trying to turn me into a super biotic. The doctors, the other kids, every one of them hated me. They let me suffer!"
Shepard was appalled. "What did they hope to gain by torturing a little girl?"
Jack shrugged. "There was something about pain breaking down the mental barriers and how it might clear the way for more biotic power." She said the words as if she had read from some report and commenced them to memory. Given that Shepard made sure Jack had access to all Cerberus files via Miranda Lawson that was quite possibly the case.
Jack shook her head. "I'm sure there was some kind of payoff at some point but I never got to see it. All I remember was a scared little girl locked up all alone in a cell, crying!"
Shepard felt like an ass for pointing out something so obvious. "You love the power they gave you."
The ex-con snorted. "They never gave me a choice!"
The Spectre took a few steps closer to the younger woman and leaned the majority of her weight on her left shoulder that was pressed against the wall, her arms folded over her chest as she rested one ankle against the other as to appear as calming and casual as possible.
"How did you get out of there?"
Another shrug. "There was some kind of emergency and I made a break for it. The other kids came out of their cells and attacked me and so did the guards. I just held up my own and ran. I guess my biotics 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." the more she spoke of her dark-past the more gravel entered her voice. "That's my uplifting escape story."
"There were other children in the base?"
A dismissive shake of the head. "I didn't know much about them. I was kept separate. They hated me just like everyone else did. When I broke out I had to fight through them all." A wistful dangerous smile slipped upon full lips. "I showed them that there were no loose ends."
Shepard pushed her weight off the wall. "Are you absolutely certain it was Cerberus running the base?"
"I was a kid but I wasn't dumb. I knew how to listen. It was Cerberus! I don't care how far down it chain it was. They thought they were sooo clever." The sick smile returned. "Turns out screw with someone's head enough and you turn a scared little kid into an all powerful biotic bitch. Fucking idiots!"
"I'll talk to the Illusive Man, and he better have some answers. "
"Pft...He'll only lie like he has been the whole time, or that whole shitty thing setting us up on the Collector ship slip your mind? That's not what I'm after anyway." Jack took a data pad from one of the larger cargo pockets on her BDU trousers legs and handed it to Shepard. "I found some coordinates in their files. I want to go to the Teltin Facility, where they tortured and drugged me. I want to go to the centre of the place- my cell and deploy a big fucking bomb and I want to watch from orbit when it goes!"
"Attacking a base with kids isn't something I will do, Jack. I will never authorize a soft target. Not to mention taking something like that out will derail our mission. I can order an All..."
"It's fucking empty Shepard. The files say it was all shut down after my escape. It's been abandoned for years. No kids, no soft targets. Nobody is going to care we blow up a fucking garbage dump!" Jack was on her feet in an instant. Her hands glowing blue just as Shepard's did when overly vexed.
"You lived with this your whole life." Shepard cocked her head to the side, deliberately ignoring the glow. "Why do this now?"
"Because I didn't know where it was before. You can't expect me to just sit on information like this, Shepard. Hell, when all those merc guilds went after your Blue, you declared fucking war on them! You even went as far as to rent a whole building block from T'Loak on Omega to carry it out. I need this like you needed that!"
The Spectre nodded, noting at a casual glance that Jack had clamped down enough to gain control of the knee-jerk reaction of summoning her biotics. "I'll set a course for Pragia now."
That surprised the ex-con. "I owe you Shepard." she said sincerely
The Spectre's answer was only a short nod of the head.
"Shepard..." Jack called out just as the Spectre reached the landing between staircases. "Have the Cheerleader go with us. I wanna see her face when she sees this hellhole. I wanna know how she's gonna cover up the shit her precious Cerberus peeps did to me."
"You may not get the answers you want Jack. You sure you want to do this? To bring her?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"It's your call, Jack. Like you said with TIMmy she may simply deny everything."
"Let her try. "
ME~ME~ME~ME~ME~ME~ME
The shuttle swooped in over the Teltin facility. From the air it looked like the jungle had long ago reclaimed it. Having read from the Normandy's codex about the planet before they came here, Shepard discovered that almost the entire surface of Pragia was choked by the hyper-grown of non-native species. She half wondered if this was one of Cerberus terra-forming experiments gone array. Wouldn't surprise the Spectre in the least if were so. It fit the status-quo so far as Cerberus projects went. So long as there was no damned thorian lurking somewhere in the overgrowth, Shepard was happy enough to let the jungle take the facility.
Jack's raspy voice broke over the stillness on the passenger bay and penetrated Shepard's wandering mind. "I'd forgotten how much I hate this place." she gestured with the tip of her chin. "See the landing pad? Had to be on the roof, or the vegetation would overgrow it in a few hours."
Reclaimed indeed.
*Shepard, I am picking up thermal signatures everywhere, except at your landing zone. *
"Considering we're flying into a jungle that's not surprising." Shepard stated the obvious. "Except for the LZ... hmm... means something's distorting the sensors."
"This was a secret Cerberus facility." Miranda reminded them all—unnecessarily in Jack's book.
"Yeah, they built their equipment to last. Assholes." Jack growled. She turned to Spectre unnerved by the weight of what it meant to return. "It was a mistake coming back, Shepard."
"Get a hold of yourself. It will be okay." came a very calm voice.
Taking in a deep breath Jack squared off. No way she was pussying out now. "I'm fine. Okay...let's get the shuttle on the ground."
It was overall a very smooth landing despite the jungle and the deluge pouring down from the sky. Great. Shepard thought to herself. That's we need, go in and find the whole damn place flooded.
"Let's just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell. I want to watch this place burn." the ex-con's words did not elicit a response from either of the other two team members. What was there to say?
Weapons hot, fingers flagging triggers the trio moved from the LZ into what looked to be a reception area or processing center, not unlike a prison. It was difficult to say with the jungle's green creeping in, the destruction and warping of the walls due to the near constant rainfall leaking in various holes in the structure.
"I never saw this room." Jack said looking around. "I think they brought new kids in these containers." At those words Shepard traded looks with Lawson; the former loyalist wisely said nothing, despite the accusatory glare shimmering in both Jack and the Commander's eyes. "They were messed up and starving, but alive. Usually."
Lawson wandered close to one of the security terminals. Not that she did not believe Jack's story about the containers, but she had to know- just how many children Cerberus had harvested over a decade ago. There had to be some rudimentary data concerning the incoming of 'assets'
Lawson found however that there was an audio log inputted from a security officer. She let it play: *The Illusive Man requested operations logs again. He's getting suspicious. *
Immediately following those words was a voice of another man responding: *When we get results, he won't care what we did. But if he knew...*
*He won't find out. * the first scientist cut off his colleague.
"Sounds like this facility went rogue." Lawson said being very mindful this time to stop her hand from reaching her collarbone.
Jack scoffed. "You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? He didn't say what they were hiding from the Illusive Man."
"Poor operations if every other Project and their Leads go rogue. How many is that, now?" Shepard turned to Lawson. "Hell, even the Project Lead from Operation Lazarus went rogue if you look at it from a certain point of view." she quirked a mirthless half grin in Lawson's direction. "As did a certain yeoman. So much for the 'Making Humanity Great Again' campaign."
The next room was a utilitarian gun-metal gray. The only color in this place was the vegetation crawling in from holes in the dilapidated roof. More of the cargo crates for transporting the children (kiddie carriers' the Spectre's mind sardonically categorized the octagonal capsules) were stacked one atop the other—three high. The stacks created labyrinthine passageways throughout the large chamber.
"I remember escaping to this room. Fighting here. I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling."
Shepard inwardly winced and she wasn't the only one as it must have dawned on Lawson that those rays of sun seeping in from the destruction of the explosion must have been the very first glimpse of the sun a very terrified and pissed off sixteen-year-old Jack would have seen.
"Only a half-dead guard between me and Freedon. He was begging for his life."
No one asked if Jack took his life or gave it to him.
In the center part of the atrium were very old blood stains. A look of nostalgia washed over Jack's face. But it was Shepard that spoke. "This looks like an arena."
Jack nodded. "That's right. They used to stage fights here. Pit me against the other kids." she was actually smiling. "I loved it. Only time I was ever out of my cell. "
"Did other children die in these fights?" asked Shepard, her voice cool though it bore no accusation towards Jack but those who did the staging.
"I was a kid, filled with drugs. I got shocked when I hesitated." she took on a more wistful look. "Narcotics flooded my veins when I attacked."
"They actually rewarded you for attacking?" This came from Miranda
The smile remained. "I still get warm feelings during a fight." That explained a hell of a lot.
"That's fracking sick! What the hell was wrong with those people." the coldness in Shepard's voice became sharp as an omni-blade's point.
Jack only shrugged. "I don't know. Doesn't matter now."
"How often did they do this?" Shepard wanted to - needed to - know.
"I was in a cell my whole life. Sometimes they took me out and made me fight, filled me with drugs. Other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell."
I bet...." What were they studying?" Shepard couldn't help but put voice to her wonderings. Part of her mind went back to Liara's words on Noveria. How locking a girl in a cell for sixteen years and then suddenly letting her loose—she would not be entirely sane or accountable for her actions. How could she be when all she knew was torture pain and terror for those sixteen years. Add to that special conditioning rewards for dissociated killing and you yes you will create a psychotic biotic.
"Hell, if I know. Maybe that's how they got their kicks. I never understood anything that happened here."
"I'm hating Cerberus more and more." Shepard muttered. "We should get going."
"Hell yeah." Jack took point.
The halls were eerily silent, save for the random dripping of water pooling somewhere out of sight. The halls were made even more unsettling by ever creeping plant life intent on its invasion course though out the facility's interior. Passing through another door was another security point. This time it was Jack who activated it.
*Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin facility. 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! *
An over comm-response came from Security Control: *All subjects besides Zero are expendable. Keep Jack alive! *
*Understood. I'll begin the...* Jack shook her head vehemently and switched off the com-device.
"That's not right! I broke out of my cell when my guards disappeared. I started that riot."
"Things might have happened you didn't see, Jack." Shepard calmly pointed out.
"The other kids attacked me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me." the younger woman got directly into Shepard face and stabbed her finger on the cuirass of the Spectre's hardsuit. "That doesn't leave lots of room for interpretation."
Rather than reprimand her for the action of touching a superior officer, (nevermind Jack wasn't military) Shepard only shrugged. "There was a reason your guards disappeared. They wouldn't leave such a prized 'asset' alone. It's just something to consider."
The only comeback was a 'Pft'. Jack pushed ahead leaving her companions to catch up
Lawson gave Shepard a warning look that said, 'She's already wound tight. Do you really need to antagonize the psychotic-biotic further?'
"Better she let off steam here than on the Normandy." Shepard whispered to the unasked question.
The door Jack passed through was still opened when Shepard and Miranda caught up to her, at the bottom of the staircase were two dead varren. Shepard was suddenly very glad she had left her pup back on the ship.
"This place is supposed to be empty. Who the fuck shot that varren? It's a fresh kill"
"Good question. This place was gutted long ago...if there were anything of value or worth the trouble of salvaging it's long gone by now." Shepard said. "Even if this place hadn't been hit, it seems like a very unlikely base of operations for any sort of smuggling outfit or merc guild to set up shop even for red sand development. Unless they are the desperate kind."
"That makes them dangerous." Lawson returned.
"Don't care. Still blowing this shit-hole in to ashes." Jack vowed. She held her M-27 Scimitar assault shotgun at the ready flanking the door. She wasn't so consumed by her anger to storm off into a darkened room—not with those fresh kills behind her and her team.
Miranda took the right flank, holding position. "We got movement on the far side of the room." she whispered.
"Confirmed." Shepard touched the side of her visor allowing the HUD to seek out heat signatures. She saw one large mass- no make that two and seven smaller gangrel shapes. "Count nine. She switched to night-vision allowing for a clearer picture than ultraviolet gave Merc colors... I see markings. It's the Blood Pac." Shepard acknowledged. "Means krogan and vorcha."
"Just means we gotta use a lot more ammo before they regen." Jack scoffed. "Nail the biggest motherfucker with warpfields until there's nothing left but brain jelly."
Shepard nodded her head agreeing to heavy use of biotics. First however, she took a small globe from her utility belt. With a small nod to the head, both Jack and Lawson did the same. Lift grenades- biotically enhanced explosive, they packed a hell of a punch. "Load warp ammo. We move in three." She held up three fingers and counted down, then waved her hand.
All three grenades were rolled into the centre of the room closest to the krogan trooper. Hundreds of shards of shrapnel exploded around them, tearing into the bodies of the Blood Pack. The explosion was enough to distract but only for the time between breaths.
Shepard motioned to the others to set up another sort of explosion. Jack was to use a lift Miranda a throw, and Shepard a flare on the trooper on the ledge above the courtyard. The area effect on the troopers worked, getting four of the six troopers in the courtyard off their feet, Jack used all her rage that been building up in one magnificent throw. Vorcha bodies slammed in to the far wall, their bones cracking. Not dead but out for a second.
Shepard concentrated on the troop on the ledge, pulling the vorcha from his perch with a flare causing his body to lift, swirl as if in a singularity then slam two stories down into the bodies of his cohorts more especially the second krogan. Jack and Lawson pushed forward into the courtyard taking cover behind crates.
All this happened within a span of two point six seconds. The one to recover first were the krogan. The first- the larger of the two grabbed his Claymore shotgun and charged towards the women.
"They see you Jack!" Miranda called out. "Enemy surging! Clear the blast zone." Lawson threw the krogan back using a warpfield with everything she had left. Beforehand she had the foresight to toss one of the remaining two grenades she had left into the field.
Jack lifted her rifle and shot the krogan in its great maw and emptied the chamber. Echoing her shot for shot was Shepard with her hand-cannon into the krogan's massive face. The only truly vulnerable spot on a krogan's head. Overwhelmed by the array of fire and biotics the male fell.
Having taken out the trooper on the ledge, Shepard turned her attention to the rest of the small horde, regardless of seeing their leader cut down the vorcha surged forward. The only thing keeping them back was the heavy singularity field—placed there by all three biotics.
The next few seconds were critical. The second krogan fell into a blood rage. "Try a real man's weapon!" The challenged roared as the massive form surged forward, propelled by his natural prowess. The bloodrage was powerful but rendered those under its influence mindless. A mind wasn't needed for the sheer deadly power of kinetic force of a krogan charge.
The krogan had to be an adept as he used a biotic lift to launch himself over the singularity field to land directly in front of the smooth skin bitches that tore open his pack mate.
He made a grab for Jack, but he hadn't accounted for the equal rage engulfing the psychotic-biotic. Just as she had with the mechs back on the Purgatory, Jack used a specialised warp-throw that generated a ball of subcutaneous dark energy that expanded within the center off mass of whatever unfortunate thing or being that just happened to be her target.
She pushed the orb of pulsating dark energy onto the chest of the shell-back. A scream of pure rage rippled out of the ex-con's throat. She poured that rage onto a single attack, the power of the mass effect field tore into the male's chest creating a cavity large enough she could have slipped through as if crawling through a tunnel.
Jack's body primed and pumped fueled by surging dark energy she used the fallen krogan as a spring board and launched herself over the vorcha pack-landed and set off the last of the superfluous power in the form of shockwaves. Like bowling pins along the polished floor of a bowling alley, the vorcha were tossed this way and that. Shepard's s area flare crushed one lot leaving Lawson the second. Her reaction was to send the vorcha back towards the far wall with her own shockwave.
For the moment, the trio took in the fetid decaying air that still stung with ozone, metal shavings, plant life, dirt, mould and blood. Shepard looked to each of her teammates. No CO worth her salt proceeded into hostile territory without insuring her squad was five-by-five. And they were.
Only now were the three women granted the time to take in their surroundings. The room they were in looked to be access surgical theatres and labs. One room though stopped Jack cold.
"Why did they need a morgue? This was a small facility." Jack frowned. None of this made any sense to her.
It was Miranda who answered. Her voice softer than Shepard ever recalled hearing outside of talking to and about Oriana. "A lot of children died here. Even then, they were a part of the experiment."
"Bullshit. I had the worst of it, and I made it out alive."
Jack may have indeed had the worst of it, by her own admission she was conditioned to kill other children in the arena. After they died there would be dissection if not vivisection on the near dead if only to enhance Jack's abilities even further.
The bald-headed woman shook her head and the nightmare memories that were rapidly clouding her judgment.
Shepard always believed in confronting one's demons. But this place-perhaps Jack was right back on the shuttle when she said coming back here was a bad idea. PTS... was not something to scoff at and shrugged off. And with Chambers the only viable counsellor onboard it did not bode well for Jack in the forthcoming weeks—hell perhaps even years to come.
Still following the ex-con Shepard shuffled away her own misgivings and presented the more confident facade her crew came to rely upon.
One more door, one more catwalk. "I feel like...I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch but then I'm a little girl again. Shit, it's complicated. Let's just go and plant that bomb." It was eerie how Jack's words echoed Shepard's thoughts.
The door opened up to yet another set of stairs. These were heading down. Immediately the waiting vorcha opened fire not allowing the trio to take a breath before taking cover behind more stacked crates. The catwalk was a perfect bird's nest for sniping any unwanted intruders. And to the Blood Pack nothing could be more unwanted than a Council Spectre and her lackeys. More of the vorcha like the vermin they were so commonly compared to slinked out from behind walls and popped up like wack-a-mole targets to take shots at the women.
It made targeting troopers with firearms difficult. Biotics were another matter. All three used their lift attacks to arch over the cartons and hoist the startled vorcha up off their feet. As one the three propelled the swirling and tumbling bodies back against the far bulkhead six meters away.
Like krogan vorcha could regen but broken spines and necks were not something so easily ignored or healed. If any of the five vorcha still lived they were forever paralyzed. Hardly a concern for the trio, they had been neutralized.
Yet another door that led to a balcony that overlooked a proper atrium. Or what passed for an atrium in this place of gray and metal. The trees below were planted deliberately—not a part of the jungle's aggressive overgrowth.
Jack looked at a window on the far side of the room. "This...is a two-way mirror? My cell is on the other side. I could see all the other kids out here. I screamed at them for hours, and they always ignored me.
The catwalk led to another door, but rather than go directly to Jack's cell the three diverted to an observation deck.
"I must have come though here when I broke out, but I don't remember." Jack admitted. She stopped and like a child her mind flared with warnings "This is a bad place!"
Shepard moved to put a hand upon the smaller woman's shoulder but stopped just shy of touching her. The comfort was not something that Jack would welcome at least on in the presence of another—especially the Cheerleader.
Slowly Jack made her way to a security panel and activated the memory logs. This held the most recent archived data. It was the voice of the scientist from the first panel they had activated.
*Entry 1054, Teltin facility. The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four and Six dies. 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're going though them fast.*
"This is bullshit! They weren't experimenting on other children for my safety!" Jack roared.
"You can't help what they did to others." Shepard said sagely.
Jack turned her back on the Commander. "You didn't get it Shepard." her voice almost breaking. "I survived this place because I was tougher than the rest. That's who I am!"
"Then find strength in it Jack. You move on, harder and tougher."
Jack nodded; squaring her shoulders she hit the next entry. It was the same needle-man from before. *It's all falling to pieces. The subjects are rampaging and Zero is loose. We're shutting Teltin down. What a disaster
*We'll infiltrate and piggyback on to the Alliances' Ascension program. Hopefully that will-who are...? Zero, wait!* The holographic image of Needle-man went flying and the feed cut out.
Jack spun around, anger and fear laced her doe brown eyes. "Shepard, they started up somewhere else."
"Ascension is an Alliance program. It's a school for biotic kids. They don't torture kids there. I know the director of the Grissom Academy, she's a good woman. Solid.
"It's also a school those gifted in science-maths and the arts. Believe me Sanders has no love for Cerberus." Looking to Miranda for a moment Shepard turned her gaze back to Jack.
"The Cerberus bastards did try to infiltrate the Ascension Program but the man they put there was discovered and executed. The child they tried to turn into the next Subject Zero is safe from Cerberus's clutches. Trust me on that." Another look to Miranda. "And yes to get to her Cerberus captured and tortured and murdered quarians they believed to be harbouring the girl. What Cerberus did here...they can't do again." This time Shepard did place her hand on Jack's shoulder but only for a micro-second before she pulled her hand back.
"A lot of this-isn't the way I remember it." the younger woman finally admitted.
"He-ey...there was a lot going on. Make sense it isn't exactly how you thought it was."
"I was dumb. I keep my eyes open now, and I always shoot first. We're getting close to my cell. The place I came from. Let's keep going."
They passed through the 'Bad Place' and came upon what looked to be a salvage team ir would be if they were not so very heavily armed. More vorcha, more krogan in old Colossus style armor of black and red, favored by the Blood Pack.
Immediately the trio took cover. Shepard signalled for both Jack and Miranda to indicate pulls on the enemy setting them up for Shepard—throw which would result in an impressive biotic explosion.
"Hey Aresh, it's Kureck. Yeah, the intruders are here. You want them dead, we have to talk creds. You promised us lots of salvage, but this place is a waste.
"We got 'em," Jack whispered her shout. "Like I just said. Shoot first."
Shepard wasn't disagreeing, she thought she might have gotten the krogan leader to monolog allowing her teammates to target and take out the vorcha, but the turtle didn't seem the chatty sort.
Shepard signalled for the trio to use the last of their lift grenades. Miranda had one left; Jack had two as did the Spectre. In a synchronized movement, the volley of grenades arched over the cover of crates and cartons the vorcha had taken shelter and landed in their midst. The blast destroyed the cartons, made a metallic tangle of the crates and vorcha bodies alike.
Kureck called out to his squadron clearly disgusted with the slathering piranha faces. "Push and overrun! We outnumber and outgun them all!
"That's when we fight best asshole!" Jack screamed back. "I'll destroy you all!"
Shepard targeted the Blood Pack pyros turning them into walking bombs. The vorcha realizing the isohaline tanks on their shoulder packs were readying to explode hurried with frantic taloned fingers trying desperately to climb out of them but they were neither fast enough nor calm enough to unlock the belts.
The bodies of the pyros were pulped and came back down in the room in orange rain. There weren't even enough of their bodies left to fall in meat chucks.
Kureck barked over the chaos. "Tighten up. I want suppression, and I want it now!
The trio kept moving, never giving Kureck a change to get a bead on them, cashing around the enclosed place, slamming the remaining vorcha with shockwave, slams and throw after shockwaves, slams and throws. In their spiral dance, they the three pummelled the massive battlemaster with warps.
"Useless, all of you! I'll kill them, myself!" Kureck snarled climbing to his feet after Jack's warp field crumpled his body like an empty aluminium beer can.
"I highly doubt it." Miranda usually not one to snark back over the battlefield simply couldn't help herself. "You have no idea who you are facing."
Don't say hero of Skillian Blitz, don't say hero of Skillian blitz.
"Hero of the Skillian Blitz, the first human Spectre!"
Augh. Shepard made a disgusted noise. "He's already dead, Miranda. I don't think he actually cares who I am. And since when did you get into trash talking?"
"Since she's been hanging around me!" Jack laughed as she targeted the last of the vorcha blew his head clean off.
"I know you Shepard! I know what you did on Omega. I know what you did on Elysium!"
"Yeah? Then I'd back down and go get more guys." Shepard shot back before her brain could catch up. She turned to the others. "Spider-trap!" She issued the order even as she sprinted away. Spider-trap—code for laying trip wires from their omni-bows.
The power of dark energy granted the three humans inhuman speed allowing them to lace the arena with blazing orange guai-illuminated wires. With speed that belied the krogan's massive girth Kureck charged towards the Great Hero of the Skillian Blitz. He had lost brothers in that damned raid on Elysium. Clutch-brothers. That was something he could never forgive. He lost Pack brothers on Omega. Another crime. An unforgivable crime he had pledged a blood-oath to take the human cunt that had destroyed his brothers.
Now he had her. He trained all concentration of fire power on Shepard. The N7's armour shielding held up against the assault as did her barriers.
"Get to goddamn cover Shepard!" Jack roared needlessly as the woman in question biotically charged the upper balcony. The mass effect field around her body allowed her body to 'phase' through the low bulkhead and appear solid on the other side. She was safe from the barrage. But Kurak's assault did not let up. If anything, they became more oppressive.
Miranda used a slam, Jack a slam directly into Kurak's center of mass. The krogan toppled in air as if caught in an unending spiral of Zero-G, allowing Shepard the micro-second to let loose a flare. The three powers combined made for a very effective, very powerful biotic explosion.
Kurak fell to the ground. Still alive. Without a word, Jack strode up used her shotgun and shoved the muzzle directly under the over-flap of the krogan's upper lip- pointed up and pulled the trigger. The affect was an impressive spray of orange mist, bone and gristle.
No coming back from that.
The trio came together. Panting hard and gathering their wits. "Everyone good?" Shepard asked wanting a post-battle SitRep
"Five-by-Five, Commander." Miranda answered for her and Jack both: the former taking a very deliberate effort not to look in Jack's direction knowing without a shadow of doubt the ex-con was giving her a 'shit that was a good fight, I want to get laid' look. An experience Miranda was growing to appreciate more and more. Their hate sex had turned into something less hate filled and more lustful. It was strangely contrarily welcome and uncomfortable.
Jack wiped the sweat off her brow with her forearm. "Only room left is my old cell. Whoever Aresh is, he's in there." She slammed another heat sink into the chamber of her shotgun. "I want to plant the bomb there, anyway. Might as well do it on his corpse.
Steeling herself. Jack was first through the door to the place she knew as home for the first sixteen years of her life.
There was no Aresh. No vorcha, no krogan. The room seemed all but empty.
"Come out, we know you're here." Shepard said in her most authoritative voice.
Slowly a man near the same age as Jack stepped out of the shadows from the corner where he had been skulking and confronted the trio.
"Who are you?" Jack demanded
"My name is Aresh, and you're breaking into my home." his voice was broken, and soft. on the edge of madness. "I know you, Subject Zero." he turned his back on the women. A large mistake on his part. "So many years have passed, and I thought I was the only survivor."
"My name is Jack. How the hell do you know me?" the ex-con wasted no time in pulling her Carnifax pistol and aiming it directly at Aresh's skull. She didn't give a damn his back was to her or not. She'd plug him all the same.
Aresh turned, "We all knew your face Jack. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you. You were the question, and I'm still looking for the answer."
"Looks like you're not the only one pulled back here, Jack," Shepard said. "He was drawn here just like you."
Aresh turned to Shepard then and issued his words more to her than to Jack. "I tried to forget this. But a place like this...it doesn't forget you." He tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. "It follows you. I hired these mercs and came back here almost a solar year ago. We're rebuilding this place, piece by piece." He turned his attention back to Jack.
"I'm going to find out what they knew-how to unlock true biotic potential in humans. I'm restarting the Teltin facility." Once more his back was foolishly turned towards Jack. "It will be beautiful!"
Jack turned to Shepard. "I wanted a hole in the ground-he's trying to justify what happened by using it!"
"Aresh. you'd start it again? You'd do the same thing to new kids? Wasn't this forced on you?"
Aresh turned once more facing the women. "Some were bought from poor families on Earth, or kidnapped from colonies. Most ended up here the way I did: batarian pirates. They did such horrible things to us. They must have had good reasons." He scratched the back of his head at the implant site. A place all three of the women by personal experience knew was a sensitive area for biotics.
His words nearly set Jack off into a rage. "There is no reason good enough!" she snarled. "Are you nuts? You lived it!"
"This place was like a prison. How did you get out?" Miranda asked.
"We all attacked at once as they were taking us to the lab. They would have put us down, but then Jack got loose." he sounded mystified or perhaps just in awe. "When I came to, it was over-the guards, the scientists, and the kids were all dead. And you were gone."
The pistol was growing heavy in Jack's hand she kept it from shaking, barely. "I stopped it, all of it. Maybe the others did have it bad, but what you're doing is just messed."
Aresh now talking with is hands countered all of Jack's arguments. "Everything we went through must have been worth something!" he was desperate to believe it, needing to believe that he was anything but a test subject to keep Jack alive. He had to have some meaning to the torture.
This was going to go no where. Shepard put an end to the circular argument that was surfacing. "We can blow up the place, but that still leaves him. What do we do with another you?"
Jack lowered her hand and walked to Aresh's side. "That's easy."
Almost as if he were agreeing with her, Aresh nodded. "Just leave me here. This is where I belong."
"Fuck that!" Jack snapped. Her body pulsed in dark energy, the blue glow swirled around her has she summed up a micro mass effect field and slammed it into Aresh sending the broken man to the ground. Once down she pulled her pistol out from the holster and held it this time in both hands.
"Jack he's trapped in his past. You need to move on from yours." Shepard intervened.
"He wants to restart this place. He needs to die!"
Shepard took a step forward, one more and she'd be directly over Aresh. "He's crazy, and he's never going to restart this facility. You have to let it go. Your past doesn't have to control you."
Jack snarled, took in a deep breath and snarled once more. "Fuck!" a heavy sigh. "Get out of here! Go!"
Aresh didn't need to be told twice he was on his feet in a thrice and dashed out of the door as swiftly as was able.
His footfalls still sounded in the hall as Jack muttered. "He's not worth chasing. None of it is."
"You did the right thing, Jack."
"Maybe." fucking Queen of the Girl Scouts. She turned away from Shepard not wanting to see the proud smile on the older woman's face. "This room was my whole childhood. Give me a minute to look around."
"Take all the time you need." Shepard said.
"Nothing's changed...but it's all different."
The room was indeed a jail cell it had its own toilet, sink and small counter top for toiletries. a broken dresser, a desk and a bed that looked more like a cot than proper bed. No wonder Jack preferred the camping cot down in her hidey-hole. It was familiar.
Together the three of them approached the large bay window. Jack sighed "I thought that room out there was the rest of the world. I'd pound and yell. Never did any good. "
Miranda looked away. She was a prisoner as a child as well but at least she tasted the rain on her tongue, walked barefoot on careful manicured lawns, ate ice cream on a hot sunny Australian afternoon. listened to the birds and counted stars and wished upon the ones that fell. She listened to crickets' chirp and swam in a very large pool
She had wanted for nothing save for the freedom from her father. But she had...life. Jack had metal, cement and glass. Reared to kill, punished if she didn't. Sixteen years in a solitary room- was it any wonder she was a high functioning sociopath? Called the psychotic-biotic...
Jack's raspy voice cut into the guilt lacing Miranda's heart. "Sometimes I dream that I'm back in this bed being tortured. Sometimes I used to tie the sheets around my wrists and try to rip them off. I want to stop coming back here."
How many times do you come back here? Miranda asked herself, and she cold see that the Spectre was asking the same question to herself as well. How many nights did Jack's dreams bring her back to this place, believing she was back here in horrible solid- lucid dreams that seem so very real you doubt you are dreaming.
Jack went to the desk, dragging her fingers across the dusty surface, leaving finger marks like furrows in a ploughed field. "I used this table for everything. It was like my best friend. I'd crawl under it to cry. I was pathetic." she tilted her head side to side as she traced her hand along the surface once more.
Then without any further ado anything further she simply walked out of the room. Once out in the corridor she paused by a wall. "See the scarring on the wall here? That's where I killed my first man. One of the guards tried to stop me. instead I stopped him." like the desk she traced her calloused fingertips along the ancient blood splatter and impact crater left by biotic attack "Okay, no more wallowing. Let's blow this place to hell."
ME~ME~ME~ME~ME~ME~ME
The trio were sat upon the crew section of the shuttle. All silent. Shepard's arms were crossed over her chest, her eyes steadily watching the only movement in the bay. Jack was flipping the lid of the detonator like one fidgets with the flip-lid of a lighter. open-close-open-close-open-close-open the button pushed.
Shepard's eyes widened and she slammed her fist into the bulkhead. The shuttle must go faster—must go faster
The shuttle pilot pushed the small engine as fast as possible barely flying out the blast radius of the neutron bomb they had planted in the facility. And yes, Jack got her wish: she saw the Teltin facility explode from orbit.