Jack
Adrenaline coursing through her veins, bringing on an euphoric rush, memories of narcotics flooding her system, Jack flared her biotics, using them to rip the door right off the retracting mechanism and flung it aside.
Pathetic sonofabitch thinks he can hide? Nah, fuck that. His ass is mine.
She stepped through the door, feeling Grunt press in behind her, rushing her when she wanted to take her time. Savor the moment, savor the kill. She growled, snarling at him over her shoulder before turning her attention to the man standing behind a desk, back to her as he looked at a holographic screen flashing the words 'message sent'.
"I'm disappointed in you, Miranda." The Illusive Man turned around, taking a drag of his cigarette, smoke coiling up into the air around him.
Jack snorted, glancing over at the life-sized Barbie, makeup and hair no longer picture-perfect, blood smeared over her catsuit. She turned her attention back to the Illusive Man. "I'm pretty damn sure she doesn't really give a fuck what you think. So, how's this gonna go? You done running and hiding like a little bitch?"
"Ah. Subject Zero. I see your time with Shepard has done little to curb—"
Jack lashed out, using her biotics to pick up the desk and Pull it across the room, sending it crashing into the wall a few feet from the door. "Don't call me that."
"—your abrasive personality, or your aggression, I see," he continued, as if her display of power was nothing more than a minute nuisance. He turned his attention back to Miranda. "You brought the Alliance with you. Do you really believe they'll allow you to step in and fill my shoes? Come on, Miranda, I thought you were smarter than that. We both know as soon as I'm dead, they'll turn their strike team on you." He glanced at Jacob. "You, too."
"If you think you can talk your way out of this, you're sorely mistaken." Miranda leveled her pistol at the man, flaring with biotic energy.
The Illusive Man took a heavy drag of his cigarette and glanced up towards the ceiling behind the group. "Kill them, and then help the reinforcements take care of the Alliance."
Jack spun, pulling her biotics up around her just in time to see a crazy ass looking half-human half-robot man drop down from a balcony. "You." She remembered the motherfucker and his stupid ass sword.
She hit him with a Pull, but all it seemed to do was throw off his trajectory as he swung his sword around behind him, landing on the ground with a Nova blast as he slammed his fist into the tiles, shattering several of them. Glancing over her shoulder, Jack growled, seeing the Illusive Man heading for a side door. Her jaw clenched hard enough to ache, she looked at Kai Leng, wanting to kill his ass almost as much as the Illusive Man. Almost. Turning on her heel, she chased after the Illusive Man. Barbie and the others would have to deal with Kai Leng on their own, no fucking way in hell was she letting Jack Fucking Harper get away.
Bloodied, bruised, but not broken—never again broken—she fought her way through wave after wave of Cerberus troops, surviving on biotics and pure rage. She didn't know where the hell they were all coming from, or where the fuck the Alliance strike team was, but she knew one thing for sure.
The. Illusive. Man. Dies. Today.
Finally, she had him cornered. "Nowhere else to go? Fucking pussy." She lifted her lip in a snarl, feeling her energy flagging. It didn't matter, though. She had him. She fucking had him. But then, she felt a pinch in her neck, and the whole building turned upside down. The last thing she saw before her world went black was the Illusive Man staring down at her, impassive as he lit a cigarette.
Jack woke up, dazed and confused, restraints biting into her wrists, waist, and ankles. A sound to her left made her turn her head, and she nearly puked all over herself with the movement.
The fuck …?
The Illusive Man sat in a chair about eight feet away, lit cigarette in hand, smoke creating a thick haze in the cell. Growling, she pulled uselessly against the restraints. She reached for her biotics, finding … nothing. Shock took her like a punch to the gut, ice water to the face, leaving her terrified for the first time in a long, long time.
"Welcome home, Subject Zero." The Illusive Man stood, turning on his heel and crossed the floor to bang on a reinforced steel door, the sound echoing in the otherwise empty cell. The door opened, and the Illusive Man stepped out, stopping in the doorway to give orders to a man wearing a white lab coat, the Cerberus emblem standing out on the shoulder like a death omen. "Give her a couple of hours, then throw her in the pits. Let's see if she can channel her rage without her biotics."
Panic welled up inside of her, ripping the air right out of her lungs, suffocating her. She pulled at the restraints again, squirming, twisting her entire body as much as she could.
No. No. No, no, no. Fuck!
"Let me the fuck out of her you sorry, piece-of-shit sonofabitch!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, refusing to let despair take over. She would not go back into those pits. No fucking way in hell. She would not be Cerberus' fucking monkey toy again.
Children …? They want me to fight children?
"No." Jack's jaw snapped closed hard enough she thought her teeth might shatter as electricity coursed through her again. She fell to knees, fingertips digging into metal and concrete before folding under, knuckles scraping over the rough surface. The electricity stopped, leaving her gasping for breath, head hanging limply between her shoulders. She licked her lips, tasting blood in her mouth and smiled. "Bitch please, you can do better than that."
The next shock hit her twice as hard, making her head jerk back, muscles going rigid, on fire. Her entire body was on fire, her fucking brain was on fire, white hot, eyes rolling back in her head. It stopped and she collapsed, writhing on the ground, panting as she continued to twitch. The whimpers and sobs of the kids huddled together on the other side of the pit cutting through the haze. "No," she tried to say, but it just didn't come out right, her mouth and tongue refusing to cooperate. After a moment, she tried again, "Go to hell, you sonofabitch."
She paced the floor of her cell, telling herself she just needed to hold out until he came for her. Garrus would come for her.
Will he, though? He's on the Citadel with Shepard. He'll never leave her to come help you. He loves her more. Always will.
"He'll come," she whispered, rubbing her hand absently over her arm, cringing at the feel of cloth covering her skin.
They'd stripped her, drugged her up and stripped her down, forcing her into a fucking black, white, and orange jumpsuit. At least the shit wasn't skintight leather like Miranda's. The first few days, she took it off and laid around the cell buck-ass naked. But they only drugged her up again and shoved the damn thing back on her. The next day, she used the edge of her bunk to help her tear through the fabric, ripping the top into strips and tying them around herself, a twisted mimic of her harness. That's when they started with the electrocution shit. At first it was just what looked like a cattle prod, but then one day she woke up with a migraine from hell, those motherfucker's knocked her out and put something inside her head.
Garrus will come. Shit, Shepard would never forgive him if he didn't. But … what if … what if he doesn't even know what happened? What if Kai Leng killed Barbie and the rest? Nah, fuck that. He might've gotten one or two of them, but he didn't get them all. No fucking way. Not with Grunt there. But would they realize I'm still alive … do they know he kidnapped me? Would Barbie even bother to tell Garrus? Shit.
Tilting her head back to look up at the ceiling, she shook out her hands, fighting back the tears threatening to push their way out of her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath, and let it out slow, trying to find the spot inside of her where her biotic energy manifested for probably the thousandth time. Nothing.
She sat on the floor in her cell, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, arms pulling them in tight as she hid her face in the empty space between, hidding her tears. Rocking back and forth, she took shallow, shuddering breaths, biting back the sobs wracking her body. She wouldn't let them see her cry. Never let them see her cry.
She'd hurt one of the kids. She didn't mean to, of course, no way she meant to. It was just … they finally started attacking her, even if she wasn't attacking them … and … fuck. The Cerberus fucks wouldn't even tell her if the boy lived.
Garrus isn't coming.
She stopped rocking, rubbing her cheeks over her knees. "Then I'll get myself the fuck out of here." She sniffed, sucking down phlegm buildup in her sinuses and raised her head, looking around the cell. Just like the one on Pragia, it had a two-way mirror, only the one in her current cell let assholes look in on her instead of making her watch the world passing her by. Two-way mirror, chair bolted to the floor, bed bolted to the floor, and a reinforced steel door. That was it. That was what she had to work with.
Jack pushed herself to her feet, scrubbing her palm over her eyes. She spent a few minutes pacing, racking her brain to find a way to escape the cell, but she couldn't think of anything. She tried ripping the chair free from the floor, but it got her nowhere. The bed wouldn't budge either, so she banged on the mirror, yelling and screaming obscenities at whoever watched her from behind the glass.
Finally, they got tired of listening to her, and her door opened, big ass men wearing scrubs filling her doorway. "Ready for another round in the pits, Subject Zero?"
"Fuck you. Don't call me that." She snarled, curling her hands into fists and backing away from the door as the first man stepped through. Let him think she was scared of him, she didn't give a fuck, she wanted him complacent.
"Such a dirty mouth." He tsked, smirking at her as he eyed her up and down. "I got something you can do with that mouth."
"I wouldn't put my dick near her mouth, bitch would probably bite it off." The other man stepped into the room behind the first, leaving the door open behind him. "Wouldn't mind a piece of that ass, though."
"Yeah?" Jack raised an eyebrow. "Come and get it then." She popped her shoulder in a shrug. "If you think you're bad enough." She reached for her biotics, not giving up when she hit a wall of nothingness, fighting to push past it. She remembered the face of the little boy she beat the shit out of when she snapped in the pits. Remembered the faces of all the kids she plowed her way through the first time she escaped a Cerberus facility. Remembered all the shit Cerberus did to her, pulling it all into an angry, snarling ball of hate and used it to smash straight through the wall.
Just as the two sick fucks were closing in on her, biotic flames sprang to life around her body, filling her with an euphoric rush. The shock and fear in the two assholes' eyes was orgasmic. Throwing out a Shockwave, she rushed forward, fists flying.
Alarms blared throughout the facility, a long line of corpses trailing behind her. She located a weapons locker, finding her shit inside. "Fuck yeah."
She closed the door to the room, leaving it open a crack to make sure it didn't lock, and stripped out of the torn jumpsuit as fast as she could. Pulling on her pants, she strained to listen beyond the sound of alarms. Strapping her harness back on, she moved to the door, peering out through the crack. The halls were still empty, but it was only a matter of time before more Cerberus bastards moved in on her. Balancing on one foot, she slipped on a boot and then closed the lowest buckles and the top buckle, leaving the ones in between loose to save time. As soon as she got her other boot secure, she grabbed her guns, holstering her shotgun and checking the heat sink on her heavy pistol, activating her Warp ammo and grinned.
Time to get the fuck out of here.
Moving back to the door, she pressed against the cool metal, looking both ways before stepping out of the storage room and over a dead Cerberus fuck. She almost made it to the end of the hall before the sound of armored boots clanking against the floor echoed down the hall, moving towards her. She grit her teeth, thinking of all the times Shepard yelled at her in battle, telling her to keep her ass behind cover. Glancing around, she spotted a planter a little ways back the direction she came from. Letting out a frustrated growl, she turned and ran down the hall, sliding behind the planter just as the first bullets started flying.
She ducked out of cover, sending a Shockwave out as soon as they got close enough, but it didn't do a whole lot of good against full armor. Still, it made the two commandos up front stumble back, and gave her a chance to fire off a few shots.
"Shit! Where'd she get a gun?"
Jack grinned, ducking back behind the planter, waiting for her amp to cool down while bullets peppered the back of her cover. Pulling more biotic energy into her hands—fuck it felt good—she turned out, flinging them from her body to pick up one of the commandos in a Pull. She lifted her gun, firing off three more shots before pressing her back against the cover. She listened, hearing the man drop to the ground with a thump, and peered past the edge of the planter. He didn't get back up again.
She smirked, pulling more biotics up and sent them flying.
Jack saw the exit, it was right fucking there, so why the fuck was she hesitating? She'd taken a couple of hits, but patched herself up with Medi-gel. She was starting to taste the burned, metallic tang of an overheating amp on her tongue when she used her biotics, letting her know she really needed to rest some place and get something to eat, let herself recharge. She'd run out of ammo twice and had to switch to her shotgun until she could harvest more off of the corpses she left in her wake. The exist was right in front of her, she was more than ready to get the fuck out of the place. She needed to get the fuck out … but she kept thinking about those kids.
"Goddamn you, Shepard." She growled, turning down the hall on her left instead. "Made me fucking soft. Shit."
She ran, flinging biotics at any researcher—or whatever the fuck the lab coat wearing assholes were—lucky enough to still be alive and yet stupid enough to get in her way. She knew she'd find the children housed close to the pits, and she was pretty sure she knew how to get back there.
"Fuck!" Jack flared, biotics licking around her as she dragged herself up from the floor, already feeling the bruises forming, pretty sure she'd cracked a rib or two, maybe fractured her wrist. "I'm trying to help you, you little shit!"
Seven girls, cowering in the corner of their dormitory, looked at her from between the slats on a bunk bed. An eighth girl stood out in the middle of the floor, blue-white biotic energy surrounding her. The little bitch used a Slam on Jack the second she stepped through the door, tossing her up in the air to hit the ceiling before ramming her back down into the floor. She'd barely gotten her biotics up around her in enough time to buffer some of the damage.
"Right," the ringleader said, lifting her lip in a sneer that might've, under different circumstances, made Jack actually like her a little. "Like you helped Matt."
Matt. The kid's name is Matt.
Jack growled. "I don't have time for this shit. Do you want to get the fuck out of here or not?"
"You can't get out of here." The kid had balls, Jack would give her that. She stared Jack down, defiance written all over her face. "No one ever gets out of here. They'll kill you if you try."
"Yeah, well, I've already killed most of them, and I'm still standing." Jack waved her left hand back towards the exit, the twinge of pain in her wrist only pissing her off worse. "Now come the fuck on, we've got to move."
The girl glanced over her shoulder at the other's hiding behind the bed before looking back at Jack, staring at the gun in Jack's hand. "What about the boys?"
Jack let out a frustrated sigh and rolled her eyes. "We'll get them, too."
"What about Matt?" the girl asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Where is he?" Jack licked her lips, something in her loosening a little, taking the girls question to mean the kid was still alive.
"In the hospital room," the girl said.
Fighting back the urge to grab the kid by her shirt and shake her until she just fucking go to the goddamn point, Jac asked, "Where's that?"
The girl hesitated before saying, "I can show you."
"Well then why the hell are we still talking?" Jack turned toward the doors before glancing back at the girls creeping out from behind the bunk. "Stay close to me, and if I tell you to do something, you'd better fucking do it if you want out of here alive."
They'd managed to make it to boy's dormitory two halls over, and Jack coaxed the six boys out into the halls with the rest of them without any trouble. They were on their way to the 'hospital room' to get Matt when more Cerberus assholes showed up, taking shots at Jack and the kids. She expected the little shits to freak the fuck out and run, but they didn't. They listened to her when she told them to duck down behind the nurses' station or whatever the fuck it was.
Jamie, the little chick with the attitude, didn't stay down, though. Jack kept seeing biotics flying past her, picking commandos up with a Slam. She couldn't really complain, the kid was helping, no doubt. Just so long as Jamie didn't get stupid and get shot. Jack didn't have time to fucking babysit.
When the hall was clear again, Jack waved the kids forward. Jamie moved up next to Jack, pointing to one room in particular. Swallowing, dread creeping through her veins, Jack made her way to the door and opened her omni-tool to hack through the lock. She pressed her back to the door frame, waving the kids back against the walls, before hitting the door's release control. The door slid open, and she peered around the edge, something inside of her breaking when her gaze found Matt, unconscious on a bed. The kid was black and blue, face so swollen she barely recognized him as the—maybe twelve-year-old—who she'd finally lost it on in the pits.
A nurse, judging by her uniform and scared-shitless look, stood behind a desk, hands held up in surrender. "Subject Zero, please."
Jack raised her gun, pointing it at the woman wearing Cerberus colors. "Dont. Fucking. Call. Me. That."
"Her name is Jack," Jamie said, crossing her arms.
"Jack! Jack, I'm sorry!" The nurse licked her lips. "Please, please don't kill me. I can … I can help you get out of here. I know where the shuttles are, I have access codes … just please."
Jack narrowed her eyes, everything inside of her telling her to just shoot the bitch and be done with it, but her gaze slid back to Matt. "Is he going to be alright?"
"There's someone coming!" one of the boys whispered, terror filling his voice.
"Shit." Jack glanced over her shoulder. "Get inside, all of you! Get down, over there, behind those crates." She glared at the woman behind the desk. "You, get the fuck down and shut up. And stay the hell away from those kids. I'll tear you to shreds if you go near them."
She took cover next to the door frame and looked out into the hall, spotting six or seven commandos moving in on her position, and she thought more might be coming. One spotted her, and she fired at him, her shot doing dick against his armor. Then, suddenly, half the squad stopped and turned around, something around the corner catching their attention. They raised their weapons, firing back the way they came. Her heart slammed against her ribs, a hopeful voice in the back of her head yelling Garrus' name.
She watched as a perfectly placed headshot dropped a commando, a grin spreading across her face. "Fuck yeah."
Biotics lifted another commando off his feet, tossing him out of view with a Throw. A Singularity sprung to life, dragging in the wounded standing nearby. Jack threw out a Shockwave, knocking back the Cerberus fucks trying to retreat further down the hall and started shooting. The first familiar face to come into view wasn't Garrus, but a rainbow-hued drell.
"Feron?" she said, but her voice didn't carry over the sounds of gunfire.
She fired a few more rounds, dropping a commando, drawing Feron's attention. The drell took one look at her face before smiling and turning back to say something to someone behind him. A moment later, Garrus tore through the hall, assault rifle leveling everything in his way, stealing ground from Cerberus. Thane, hot on his heels, rounded the corner, flinging commandos around with his biotics. An asari Jack didn't recognize pushed forward, taking up position next to Garrus.
As soon as the fighting stopped, Garrus turned, holstering his gun and taking off his helmet. "Jack." His shoulders sagged, and for a moment, she thought he might just fall over completely, he looked so exhausted.
She stepped out into the hall, holstering her heavy pistol. "You're late," she said, a smirk lifting the corner of her mouth.
He chuffed, moving down the hall to her, arms outstretched before he'd made it halfway. She glanced back into the room, finding the nurse still huddled behind her desk and the kids behind the crates. She saw Matt, and shame washed over her. She didn't want Garrus to see what she'd done. Didn't want anyone to see what she'd done.
Garrus stopped a few feet away, arms dropping to the sides. "Jack … you're hurt." He growled, looking over her battered flesh as he slowly moved closer. Reaching out, he gently turned her chin, giving him a view of the side of her head. "What did they do?" he asked, looking at the fresh, still tender scar cutting through her scalp.
She jerked her chin free. "It doesn't matter … there's kids in here who need help. One of them's … one of them's hurt, bad."
Garrus glanced past her into the med bay and flared his mandibles. Thane and the asari moved past him, Thane dipping his head to Jack as he made his way into the room.
"Jack. What happened?" Garrus asked again, reaching for her.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."
He hummed, reaching out to press his palm to her cheek, and the goddamn tears started flowing. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her in against his chest.
"Jack?"
She turned to look at the kid calling her name, wiping her eyes. Jamie stood in front of the others, biotics surrounding her as she looked over the asari and Thane, keeping them from getting near Matt.
She smirked at the girl's spirit. "It's alright, kid. They're here to help. You're safe now."