Chapter Four; The Bodies in the Escape Route
There must have been twenty of them, at least, piled in corners or against air tanks or slumped over gurneys. All wore the same black mercenary outfit that Shepard had seen on the other groups within the hospital: identical to the set of armour he was now wearing.
The group of four moved into the destruction, observing for any signs of life from the fallen mercs. Each had a bullet wound in a vital location: some had several.
This wasn't a fire-fight, this was a massacre.
Furthering this sober thought, Shepard observed four bodies that lay too symmetrically to have been random kills. Walking over to them, Shepard saw that each had a bullet wound to the back of the skull. They had been murdered, execution-style, in front of their comrades, possibly to create fear or force co-operation. Ultimately, the reason mattered little.
Shepard bent and looked into one of the faces. He was a youngish man, probably no more than twenty-five. If he had been in blues he would have made an imposing Alliance marine, but here, lying on this cold hospital floor, his grey eyes offered no stern reprimand or salute: his ashen skin reflecting nothing but the harsh electric lights above.
Shepard knelt and bowed his head, as if in prayer, before reaching forward and closing the unknown boy's eyes.
A radio crackled into life: Shepard did not flinch, though the same could not be said of Rachel Josephs who spun around from her position near the exit, gun aimed back into the room.
"They will all be dead," Shepard said, over her shoulder. "I've seen this kind of thing before." She paused, and drew in a deep breath before standing and continuing, "Groups like this," she waved her hand around the room, "they are simply fighting until a bigger group comes and wipes them out. We won't find any survivors." He pauses, "Or rather, we won't find any survivors here."
Josephs still had not lowered her gun and when the crackle of the radio flared again, tension ran through her body, stopping just short of her trigger finger.
Searching through the bodies, Shepard found the radio. It was strapped to the shoulder of a man with three stripes on his arm, denoting loyal, quality or long years of service. Letting his rifle drop onto the support straps, Shepard fiddled with the receiver for a couple of moments before
'...Anyone? There are ... -eem to be ... in the North corridor. I'm ... Oh God, NO! ... -nd me ... Shit, they're ... they've...' The interference could not drown out the barrage of rifle fire and the screams of the dying man.
"No survivors, huh?" Asked Josephs.
"There aren't anymore," Shepard replied, still looking away from the exit. He had recognised the accent: American, but generic enough to indistinguishable from a plethora of districts. Shepard though his name was Jay.
"We should move." Rachel continued, ignoring Shepard's previous response and subsequent silence. Shepard nodded to this and tucked the radio into the band of his pants.
"Search the bodies" Shepard stated, "Take any clips, grenades or light weapons you can find. You should probably find somebody armour," he nodded to Nerala and Josephs, "And we should see if we can find you some more medi-gel" Shepard spoke this last line to the limping doctor.
After a brief search of the bodies, that gave their team three frag grenades, a flashbang, an M-920 Cain Heavy and several thermal clips.
'Right,' Shepard stated, after the unpleasant task of removing all useful items from the dead men, 'We should get going. Before whoever did this decides that they missed four prime targets.'
Pushing his unit forward, Shepard jogged quickly round the corner, closely followed by Nerala supporting the injured doctor, with Rachel regularly checking over her shoulder, keeping watch for attackers from behind. Setting a swift pace, Shepard jogged around the corner, keeping close to the corridor's sloping, curved wall.
Suddenly, a man in a white armoured uniform appeared around the corner. Without waiting for a reaction, Shepard shot a blast of his shotgun from his hip: the small pellets of shot bursting through shield, armour and flesh. Without breaking his stride, Shepard continued, stepping over the body as if it were nothing.
Nerala was not so nonchalant.
"You shot him. You just shot him" the Asari protested, giving the body a wide birth. But Shepard had no time to respond.
Rounding the corner, Shepard ran into a seeming firing squad of white-uniformed men. There was a tense pause as both parties registered the shock of the other before all hell broke loose.
As the white lights of muzzle flashes began, Shepard dived sideways, crouching behind a conveniently placed desk in the reception area. Switching from his shotgun to the newly acquired assault rifle, Shepard took a deep breath and prepared to return fire.
Bullets ricocheted off the reinforced glass panelling of the desk, and rebounds smashed one, two, then three of the lights overhead. Sparks continued to flare as an electrical transformer box exploded just to Shepard's right.
As he stood, the world seemed to slow. He could predict where bullets would hit as adrenaline rushed through his system and his bullets seemed to be more accurate, more deadly. Despite this, even his quickened reactions did not register a civilian stumbling blindly across the barrage.
As the lights sparked and spluttered out, and the mussel flashes became the only source of intermittent light, the scene continued to play out like a strobe-lit club or a bad horror movie. Blood spattered the walls, and arms flailed as a body in the middle of the fray dropped to the floor with the speed only a dead weight could produce.
Shepard didn't even have time to pull his finger away from the trigger before Nerala took a bullet to the shoulder, sending her staggering towards the white-suited men.
They either didn't notice or didn't care about the non-combatant and continued firing, leaving Nerala with wounds in her arms, legs and torso. She didn't feel the solidness of the ground as she hit it.
A rage engulfed Shepard. Nerala had survived seeing her friend, Dr Freeth, killed and then she survived torture, only to be senselessly cut down in a firefight. Running out of the small cover the desk offered, Shepard sprinted towards the unknown assailants, shooting as he ran. And then he was amongst them, all quick shots and flying punches. A headbutt to one, a kidney punch to another: a rifle butt to the jaw, a muzzle to the groin. It was brutal, efficient. Shepard only stopped when he had the last man pinned to a wall.
It was in this position that Rachel found them - Shepard standing, surrounded by bodies, an unknown man pressed against the wall. As she approached, Shepard drew his pistol and pressed the barrel into the soft flesh under the man's chin. Looking him in the eyes, Shepard said
"That Asari? The one you and your men just shot? She was a friend of mine." And without looking away, Shepard pulled the trigger.
Rachel almost dropped the injured medic in shock. Nothing in Shepard's profile had hinted at this level of cold, calculated violence.
"And where the fuck were you?" Shepard's harsh voice cut through her thoughts, nothing like the calm, authoritative voice of before. There was a bestial anger in him now, something dark and uncontrollable. A fierceness that was tapped to the basic instinct: rage.
Without waiting for a reply, Shepard wiped his blood-spattered face and stalked off around the corner into the parking lot. Struggling to keep up while supporting her injured companion, Rachel followed.
She caught up with Shepard just outside the Accident and Emergency entrance, where the ambulances would normally pull up and deposit their cargo to either the pre-prepared stretcher, the on-call doctor or the morgue. As Rachel watched, Shepard bent down and seemed to be examining something on the floor.
Again the world seemed to slow. Each millimetre rotation turned with such determination. Colours became more vibrant; yellow parking stripes stood out in contrast to the black of the tarmac, their lines blurring in the orange, pink hues of the morning sun.
Rachel couldn't see what it was that Shepard was looking at, but as soon as he heard her footsteps drawing nearer, his head whipped around to look at her.
Before he could so much as utter a breath a shot rang out from across the parkway.