The Fields of Punishment: In Greek mythology, a section of Tartarus in the Underworld where the wicked were eternally tortured for their crimes.
III
Purgatory: The Fields of Punishment
"So what's the verdict, Mom?" Shepard asked, leaning up against the wall of the infirmary, arms crossed.
Doctor Chakwas carefully folded a new bandage over the worst of the scarring. He felt the sealant reattach to his face. A lot of the pain was starting to fade, but the damn bandages—and the healing flesh beneath them—did itch. "You're healing well, Garrus," Chakwas said. "Your body seems to have accepted the cybernetic hearing implant without much trouble. I want you back next week so I can continue to monitor the scar tissue, but I see no problems with your returning to active duty if you feel up to it."
"Oh, I'm up to it," Garrus promised. "Thanks, doctor."
"Likewise," Shepard said from the back of the room near his locker. She opened it without so much as asking for permission. "We've been parked next to Purgatory for an hour, and I need the most badass turian in the galaxy back in action." She walked back over with his rifle, and raised her eyebrow. "Well? Gear up, soldier. If you want another weapon, we've got more guns in the armory."
Slowly, Garrus took his rifle back from her. She smiled at him. Their mission was supposed to be a routine pick-up, but considering Jack was a prisoner that might not want to join their crew, they had to be ready for anything, and that smile promised trouble.
Damn.
He slid off the cot, and her smile widened. She turned and headed out of the med bay, presumably toward the armory to collect her own weapons.
"That smile should be outlawed," Garrus grumbled.
He wasn't sure if he was speaking to the doctor or himself or if he'd meant to speak at all, but it still startled him when Chakwas replied, "Just don't let it distract you in the field. If things go badly on the prison ship, I want you both back here alive, you understand? Neither of you are to let yourselves get blown up again."
Garrus blinked. "I didn't mean it that way," he said, wondering belatedly whether he actually had. Doctor Chakwas's lips twitched, as if she wasn't convinced, either.
"You'd better hurry after her, Garrus," she advised.
So Garrus did.
The second they stepped off the shuttle, Garrus had a bad feeling about Purgatory, and it had nothing to do with the facts that according to the mission briefing, it was supposedly a prison for some of the worst terrorists and mass murderers in the galaxy, or that Shepard had chosen Massani and Taylor along with him to assist her in escorting Jack off the station.
No. Garrus's issues were more to do with how he'd heard secondary and tertiary locking mechanisms engage after the airlock closed, even though looking around, the area was obviously secure—designed for visitors.
No prisoners in sight, and every exit and entrance into the place is under armed guard. They aren't worried about escape attempts, so why cut us off from the shuttle? Could be protocol, but . . .
Every guard in the room was wearing a Blue Suns uniform.
The Blue Suns are an enormous organization. Tarak's operation was just one arm, and unless an escaped merc got a lot closer than we thought, there's no way they know our faces, but if the Suns are running this establishment, it could explain why this prison is willing to release a dangerous convict to Cerberus for creds, and Commander Shepard could have bigger problems here.
Garrus's fingers twitched. He and Shepard exchanged a glance. She gave him the shadow of a nod. Be ready.
At his side, Garrus moved his fingers in the Alliance hand signal for the same, and he sensed rather than saw Jacob Taylor straighten. Massani was already on his guard, looking around the room, his mismatched eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Shepard forged ahead, and stopped when she came to the guard stationed on the ramp in the center of the room, obviously their reception. Turian, tall, helmeted, he stood at parade rest but Garrus could tell he was ready for action at a moment's notice.
"Welcome to the Purgatory, Shepard," he said. "Your package is being prepped and you can claim it shortly. As this is a high-security vessel, you need to relinquish your weapons before we proceed."
Two more guards started toward them, ostensibly to remove their weapons, but Shepard lifted her hand. "I can't do that," she said, calmly, but in a voice that rang with authority.
In a flat second every gun in the room was leveled at them. Garrus, Jacob, and Zaeed had also drawn, surrounding Shepard, who didn't—but didn't signal for them to holster their weapons, either.
"Everyone, stand down!" The voice rang from an observation platform above. Reluctantly, the ship guards lowered their weapons. Only after they had done so did Garrus lower his, and Jacob and Zaeed followed suit, though none of them put the guns away.
The man that had spoken was a turian, in Blue Suns armor like the rest, but without his helmet. He was barefaced, and the cracks and weathering on his dark brown plates proclaimed him to be middle-aged at best.
Still, those are high-quality shields, and the way he's moving—he hasn't let himself go. This is a man to watch.
He walked down the steps toward Shepard. "Commander, I'm Warden Kuril," the new turian said. "This is my ship. Your weapons will be returned on the way out. You must realize this is just a standard procedure."
Shepard folded her arms. "It's my standard procedure to keep my gun."
Kuril held her gaze for a lengthy moment, testing her resolve, but Shepard held her ground, and it didn't surprise Garrus in the least when Kuril backed down. "Let them proceed," he told his men. "Our facility is more than secure enough to handle four armed guests. We're bringing Jack out of cryo," he informed Shepard. "As soon as the funds clear, you can be on your way. If you'll follow me to outprocessing for the pickup, Commander."
Now Shepard signaled him, and Garrus holstered his gun. The others followed his lead. All of them were ready for action the second the least little thing went wrong, but it was Shepard's policy never to start a fight if there didn't absolutely need to be one. "Let's go," she said.
Kuril nodded, and led them through the door opposite. As it closed behind them, Garrus again heard the triple lock engage. Probably automated protocol, then. I still don't like it.
This area was different. One wall of the corridor Kuril led them through now was an observation window out onto an enormous room, riddled with catwalks. The walls of the room were lined with cylindrical black metal units. They reminded him of the dead stasis pods on Ilos, but here, each was big enough for an elcor to take a couple paces back and forth. As they looked out over the area, a mechanical arm with a claw attached moved a cylinder from one unit bank to another.
"Cell Block Two," Warden Kuril said, stopping at a guardrail. "As you can see, we keep tight control over the population. Each prisoner's cell is a self-contained modular unit." His mandibles tightened in an unpleasant smirk. "I've blown a few out the airlocks as an example. This ship is made up of thirty cell blocks identical to this one. We house thousands of criminals. We can put the whole place in lockdown on a moment's notice. Nothing goes wrong here."
Shepard ignored Kuril's boasting. Cool as dark space, she just looked out at the cell block and observed, "Maintaining a population this size in space can't be cheap."
"We can cut corners that governments can't," Kuril explained. "And each prisoner brings in a fee from his homeworld. These individuals are violent and their home planets pay well to keep them here."
Ever so subtly, Shepard leaned back on her left leg, closer to Garrus and the others. She raised an eyebrow at Kuril. "What happens if the homeworld doesn't want to pay?"
Kuril spread his hands. "We explain that we can't maintain the prisoner without their help, so we'll be forced to release him back onto his homeworld . . . at an unspecified place and time."
Surprise, surprise. It turns out the Blue Suns are the Blue Suns, no matter what service they think they're doing for the galaxy. "So it's an extortion racket," Garrus said flatly.
Kuril scowled. "You don't have to agree with my methods, but don't question my motives. These are despicable people, and I'm keeping them locked up." But he'd lost interest in showing off, and he started moving through the corridor again.
"How'd you end up here, anyway?" Shepard asked, endeavoring to maintain civility.
"I was in law enforcement on Palaven," Kuril answered. "I got sick of seeing criminals escape out into the galaxy to carry on with their crimes. Bounty hunters aren't dependable."
Zaeed took exception to this. "You're not hiring the right ones," he growled.
"Eventually I hit upon this idea," Kuril continued, ignoring Massani. "Keep the criminals in space, and the galaxy is a safer place."
Shepard slowed. She frowned. "You do this because you think it's necessary?"
Kuril stopped. "Every day I see the worst sapient life has to offer," he explained. "Governments are soft, unwilling to make the hard choices. Someone had to stand up and make the galaxy safe."
Garrus saw Shepard swallow, tense. Jacob as well, though he suspected for a different reason. Massani stood there completely unbothered, but the rest of them, for a moment—well. Looking one another in the face had suddenly become rather difficult.
Ah, conscience, my old friend. How I have not missed your nagging. How can any of us claim to be any better than this merc who extorts planets, cuts corners in prison conditions, and occasionally sells off convicts in order to keep violent criminals away from innocent civilians? He thinks he's doing what he has to, but you can rationalize away any means and say it's just, necessary to achieve a noble end. Taylor joined a terrorist organization because he doesn't think the Alliance is protecting human beings well enough, and right now, he might be right. Does it mean he should have joined Cerberus? Me? I killed people—hundreds of people, hoping that I could do some good in the worst place on the galaxy. Did I help? Maybe. I hope so. But does it make all those murders right? Even Shepard—she's trying to save thousands of colonists from the Collector abductions, save the galaxy from the Reapers, but she's here buying a person to do it—a person that might not exactly be a willing recruit. We'd all of us like to think we have the moral high ground here, but do we really?
After a long, awkward pause, Shepard recovered herself. "Can you tell me about Jack?" And if her voice and manner was a little subdued, Kuril didn't comment.
Instead, he looked surprised. "Cerberus hasn't told you? Jack is the meanest handful of violence and hate I've ever encountered," he said, sounding genuinely awed. "Dangerous, crazy, and very powerful. You'll see soon enough."
Garrus frowned. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet the human that could trigger that kind of reaction in the seemingly calloused Warden, far less that he wanted to work with them. Ah, well. Too late now.
He couldn't help noticing Shepard shift so her pistol was more accessible, too. "Let's get on with this," she said.
The Warden led them through another door. "In a place like this there must be escape attempts," Jacob remarked.
Kuril snorted. "We're in space. They have nowhere to go, and they know it. But still, we exercise extreme caution. These are dangerous individuals. We have many ways to control the population." Kuril paused to look out of another observation window into another cell block. On the catwalks below, it appeared two prisoners were getting into an altercation. A guard below shouted something, and pressed a button on his omni-tool, and a tower emerged from the catwalk guardrail. It actually emitted two mass effect fields that forced the prisoners apart and contained them. Garrus stared.
Self-contained cell units. Thirty cell blocks. Mass effect field riot deterrents. Even for the Blue Suns, this is high-tech and high-budget. No way Kuril's turning over those kinds of creds through extortion alone.
Jack's not the only one they're selling off.
Kuril's omni-tool buzzed. He looked at it for a moment, then glanced back up at Shepard. "I'm going to confirm that the funds from Cerberus cleared," he said abruptly. He gestured down the hall. "Outprocessing is straight down this hall. Just keep going past the interrogation rooms and the supermax wing. I'll catch up with you later, Shepard." He gave her an assessing look before he left, and his mandible twitched.
Several of Garrus's alarm bells started ringing, but Kuril was gone before he could ask any questions. "Shepard," he murmured.
"I know," she replied in the same low undertone. "Let's just get Jack and get out of here. Fast."
She led the way down the hall Kuril had indicated. Before too long, they heard anguished shouts. Anguished shouts, and vicious, angry blows.
"Interrogation, huh?" Jacob said under his breath.
"No one walks away from torture unchanged," Zaeed muttered. "Not the subject, not the torturer himself. Never found torture worth the price, myself."
Garrus was disgusted. One of the first things they taught in C-Sec basic training was that torture was a stupid way to get information. "Forget the price: it's not even effective. After a point, victims admit to anything to make the pain stop."
The torture scene came into view. A small hallway of isolated cells, each containing a prisoner, and in the first, a turian guard was brutally beating a human prisoner in a dirty, numbered jumpsuit. He kicked the man, pounded him. Each blow elicited a raw, echoing shout. The prisoner's voice had gone hoarse, and Garrus saw smears of dark, red blood on the guard's gauntlets, boots, and all over the cell floor.
Shepard's jaw tightened, and her eyes flashed. Another turian guard was watching the beating, arms folded. The turian inside the cell stomped on the prisoner's groin. Zaeed winced, Jacob gave a little groan of sympathy, and even Garrus flinched, but the turian guard outside the cell didn't so much as move a muscle. When Shepard came up to him, he looked over at her. He seemed almost bored. "Is there something I can do for you?"
Shepard was seething. "There's no excuse for beating a prisoner who can't fight back," she spat.
The guard chuckled cruelly. "This is a massage compared to what his victims went through."
Another blow ripped the prisoner's jumpsuit open, exposing a long, wicked gash that bled freely. He was sobbing in between outcries. Shepard's lip curled as she looked up at the supervising guard. "So, what, you're ranking yourself on a scale with murdering criminals?" she demanded.
This pulled Garrus up short, and he dropped his gaze. Humans often portray justice as a scale to be balanced—this for that. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, and they consider themselves merciful if they stop short of demanding that. It's always been what's made sense to me—but Shepard doesn't see things that way. To her, justice has always meant keeping to a higher standard: no matter what methods, what crimes your enemy commits, the laws that made them wrong for him mean those methods and crimes are still wrong for you, even to punish him with.
She's wrong. She has to be. There has to be retribution for people like these. People like him. Right? They have to pay for what they've taken from others.
His eye landed on the burned out name on his visor rim. He looked away.
The turian guard was uncomfortable, too. "Look, we have orders, lady," he said, as a particularly vicious kick to the prisoner's torso resulted in a clear snap of breaking ribs.
Shepard scoffed. "You're not important enough to make your own decisions?"
The guard raised his hands. "I admit, I sometimes get tired of this. Does this really get us anything useful?"
Shepard caught his gaze and stared him down. "Stop this," she said softly. "For your own sake."
Garrus wasn't sure if it was a threat or a plea, but it worked. "Yeah, you're right," the guard said. "Call it off!" he yelled at the guard inside the cell. The guard beating the prisoner raised his hands, let them fall, and walked out the other exit in disgust. "At least for now."
Shepard looked sick, but she jerked her head at Garrus and the others to continue on after her, only for the man in the next cell to flag her down.
"Hey, hey guys, over here!" he called. "Let me ask you something."
Garrus held in a huff of annoyance as Shepard walked over. Shepard, you were the one who said we should get out of here. Fast. Remember? Guess not.
This prisoner looked healthy enough, for now, though he was filthy. The "780" on his jumpsuit was just visible through the grime and dirt that covered him like a second skin. Like the man being interrogated, he was human. "If you're buying prisoners, can you buy me?" he asked. "Man, I don't care where you take me or what you do to me. It's got to be better than this."
Garrus folded his arms. "We're here for Jack," he said.
The man's eyes widened. His arms came up, and he took two full steps back, which in his tiny cell, took him more than halfway to the wall opposite them. "Jack? Forget what I just said. I don't want to go nowhere with you," he said vehemently.
Shepard glanced sideways at Garrus. "I thought this was a prison, not a market," she muttered.
The prisoner spoke up again. "Sometimes people buy cons so they can do some punishing of their own, if you understand," he explained. "Warden sells us to whoever can pay enough."
Sometimes I wish I wasn't right. Purgatory is just a glorified slave market with exceptionally dangerous merchandise.
Shepard jerked her head at Prisoner 780. "What are you in for?"
The man shrugged. "I killed a few people. Only about twenty or so. And I blew up that one habitat. Small time compared to most of the guys here."
Shepard took a small step back. She obviously hadn't been expecting the guy to be a mass murderer. Zaeed chuckled darkly. Garrus was with him. Funny thing about criminals. You get to the point where you stop expecting them to look a certain way. You look at Saleon, Wayne, Williams—what is it the humans say? Don't judge a book by its cover? Not like any of them have read paper books in almost two centuries, but the point stands. You never know the evil someone's capable of just by looking at them. And everyone's capable of it.
Shepard recovered quickly. "It must be bad here," she muttered.
780's eyes darkened. "Yeah. And you got to watch out. Damn, but someone's always after your stuff. Your smokes, clothes, your—"he took another glance at Shepard and changed what he'd been about to say. "Pride. I haven't taken a shower in three months."
Shepard's face softened. She jerked her head at the cell next door, where the guy they'd been beating was slumped in a bloody, pulpy mess in the corner, sobbing, fighting just to breathe. "So what about that guy? Why were they beating him? Does he know something?"
780 shook his head. "Nah, that's Bimmy. He don't know nothing. He offed someone in the showers yesterday, I think. Guy he killed was worth a lot to the warden." He stared at the sagging man for a long moment. "Yeah, sucks to be Bimmy right now."
Shepard stared at him, too. "They were really laying into him. Have they ever killed anyone by accident?" she asked.
780's brow furrowed. "Haven't heard of anyone dying. Warden can't make money off us if we're dead. Funny thing, though: the more a guard does it, the meaner he gets. So they rotate 'em through."
Shepard glanced over at Zaeed. The merc was grim. She looked back at 780. "Tell me more about Jack," she ordered him.
Garrus could tell she'd been hoping their conversation would relax the convict for just this purpose, but it hadn't done any good. He shuddered. "The worst trouble you ever saw mixed with some crazy and way too much biotic power. That's all I'm saying," he said. His lips were tight, and Garrus knew they weren't getting anything else out of him. So did Shepard.
She looked at all of them. "We should go," she said.
780 sighed. "Wish I could go."
They continued down the route Kuril had indicated until they finally came to another door. Garrus wondered if they'd have any trouble—the Warden hadn't issued them any security passes or anything, but the door opened smoothly. As they entered, Garrus spotted a camera above the door. Guess Kuril called ahead. Nice of him.
A technician was at a console just inside. He waved them to the other side of a long, wide room. Metal benches were spaced throughout. Each bench had fixtures attached to it where chains could pass through. Apart from the benches and the console, there was nothing else in the room. As far as visitation areas went, it was fairly low security, but Garrus had seen the kind of muscle they had on call here. But if they compensate for the lack of tech in outprocessing with manpower, why aren't any of the guards here, especially if Jack is as dangerous as they say?
The back of Garrus's neck started to prickle. He turned, to see the tech had gone and the door had shut behind him, and even before Shepard opened the door at the far side of the room to see nothing but one of Kuril's empty "self-contained" units, he knew.
The comms crackled, and Kuril's voice filled the room. "My apologies, Shepard. You're more valuable as a prisoner than a customer. Drop your weapons and proceed into this open cell. You will not be harmed."
They'd all had their weapons out before he finished talking. But if he thinks we'll be dropping them any time soon . . . well, we'll just see.
Shepard's voice was venomous. "Yeah. I thought it might go something like this. You talked up your noble intentions with this prison, but it turns out you're a criminal like the rest."
"Activate systems!" Kuril cried. The door they'd just come through opened, and Blue Suns mercs came pouring through.
"Heads up!" Garrus shouted, diving for cover behind the visitation benches.
Shepard had already faded completely away. Jacob lit up blue—Ah, so he is a biotic—and a batarian combatant was pulled from the back through the line, scattering their attackers into momentary disarray. Zaeed's assault rifle started up, and two rifle shots rang out at the same time.
Garrus's target—a human engineer that had been punching up something nasty on his omni-tool, fell back almost a meter—his shield destroyed. The turian with the assault rifle at the head of the line went sideways, and his brain matter went all over a second guard beside him. The second guard cried out, momentarily disoriented, and Garrus had reloaded and pasted his brains over the floor before he'd adjusted his grip on his shotgun.
Shepard appeared across the room from where she'd flanked the enemy, behind another bench with her rifle at her shoulder.
"Gotcha!"
The eyes of the batarian caught up in Jacob's biotic field began to boil away, floating away from his head as he screamed until the field dissipated and gravity got a hold of him again. His dead weight fell to the deck with an audible crack, as Zaeed shot the human engineer trying to climb to his feet to mincemeat.
"Press forward!" Shepard ordered. "We're not letting these bastards bottle us up in here!"
Jacob took point, Zaeed at his flank. Garrus and Shepard took up the rear as they charged across the room. Outside in the corridor, Garrus heard the synthetic whining of artificial servos.
"Mechs!" he warned.
Shepard laughed, and it really should not have been as thrilling as it was. "Please. Massani, Taylor! Focus on the guards. Garrus and I have got the bots!"
"Aye-aye, Commander!" Jacob bellowed. He charged out into the corridor, Massani on his heels, assault rifle roaring.
"Reinforce outprocessing! Shepard is loose!" Kuril yelled over the com. Beside Garrus, Shepard snorted. She drew her Locust and shot out both camera and speaker.
The mechs came howling. If LOKI mechs were the corporations' answer to the krogan, FENRIS mechs were their answer to the varren. They were fast, programmed to take an enemy to the ground in a vicious, overwhelming assault. Equipped with electric fields to immobilize opponents and mini mass effect generators to tear them apart. Expensive to produce, so fortunately, there weren't many of them across the galaxy, but once or twice Archangel had gone up against security firms that had bought some. Weaver had had a nice scar on his bicep from when they'd taken him down once. He'd been down all of three seconds before Ripper had smashed the mechs into so many nuts and pieces of shrapnel, but in that time they'd done a real number on his arm. That had been a day they'd had to visit Mordin's clinic.
The thing was never to let them get close. As the mech dogs rounded the corner of the corridor, Garrus and Shepard triggered their omni-tools as one. Shepard's program was a little more sophisticated than his own—rather than simply frying shields and synthetic circuits, it rerouted the power she drew back into her own shields, a trick she'd learned from Tali—but for all that, it didn't pack the same punch as his. It didn't matter. When their combined tech attacks hit the mechs, they crashed and slid, sizzling and sparking, knocking the mercs in front of them out of the way like pins and electrocuting anyone unfortunate enough not to be wearing protective insulation.
"Whoa!" Jacob yelped, jumping to the side to avoid the wreckage. "Watch it!"
Zaeed shot the last guy moaning in the hallway.
Shepard stepped out of the room, smirking. "You're welcome. Come on!"
Zaeed pointed his gun at a painted sign on the wall. There was an arrow pointing to the left and a painted sign that said CRYOGENIC STORAGE.
"Let's get Jack out of the freezer!" he said.
Shepard swung around and headed in the direction Massani indicated instead with a nod of thanks. "Stay alert!" Garrus yelled, as he heard booted feet in the distance and four more guards rounded the corner.
He had his rifle to his shoulder again before he'd finished speaking and had fired off a shot. A split second before it connected he saw a blue flash—saw the confident expressions on the four guards' faces evaporate as their two of their shields were hacked and stolen. Then one of their faces was gone—plastered over the sleek bulkhead. BLAT! The other's armor crumpled in as Jacob's shotgun blast hit him point blank, sending him flying.
One of the survivors was panicked, unloading his assault gun trying to stop Jacob's charge. But just as Taylor's barriers gave, he smashed into his assailant, throwing him into the wall. The guard slid down and Taylor shot him in the head twice. The other guy dived for cover, at a low extension of the bulkhead Garrus imagined had been set up in case of prison riots for just that purpose. He fired at Garrus, but Shepard, with her strengthened shields, hurled herself in the way. The shrill chirping of her Locust ricocheted off the metal walls. Garrus was already moving with her, constructing a targeting solution as he did.
He fired above the bulkhead, just hitting the top of the last guy's helmet, taking out his shields and knocking him from cover. That was all the help Shepard's Locust needed. Garrus saw the guard's chest collapse as no less than eight bullets hit it in less than a second.
Shepard kept running, barreling down the hall toward cryogenic storage. Taylor picked himself up and followed her, shaken, but not hurt, with Zaeed behind him and Garrus in the rear, punching up a quick hack on his omni-tool, just in case.
He saw the orange light over the door that led to cryogenic storage turn green as they approached. "Good work!" Shepard called back at him, punching the door and ducking on the outside of the doorway.
Good thing, too. The second it opened, three shots came through. "Shepard is loose! Shepard is loose! Get people down here!" someone screamed.
There was a single human technician in the room beyond with a pistol. No armor. His face twisted in hatred and fear as he fired blindly until his thermal clips ran out and his pistol just clicked and steamed. Garrus almost felt sorry for him as Zaeed gunned him down.
Almost being the operative word.
A silence fell over the room. There was no sound except everyone's slightly more rapid breathing. All of them entered the room. The door hissed shut behind him, and Garrus heard the familiar triple locking mechanism engage.
Aside from the pool of blood forming under the technician's corpse, this room was like outprocessing—clean and empty, aside from the console the technician had apparently been standing at and an enormous observation window. To the left, there was another door.
The window looked out on a ramp that led up to a single cryogenic stasis chamber. It was closed, but the green lights over the sliding hatch told them the inhabitant's vitals were still strong. Two as yet dormant YMIR mechs stood guard over the chamber. Shepard examined the console.
"Damn it! He locked everything down!" she snapped. "Hold on—I can probably hack it."
Garrus and Jacob both already had their omni-tools up, scanning the computer systems. Garrus opened his mouth, but Jacob spoke first. "Shepard, if you hack that control, every door on the cell block opens!" he warned.
Prison riot on a massive scale, with some of the worst mass murderers and psychos known to the galaxy all rushing to settle scores, help their buddies, take what they can, or make a break for it before the guards get it under control again. It'll be chaos. But—
"It's the only way," Zaeed concluded grimly.
Shepard tapped her fingers on the edge of the console, and he could see her mind working. Scrub the mission and get out, or get what we came for, damn the consequences? She grit her teeth and raised her chin, and Garrus adjusted his grip on his rifle.
"Doing it," she said. "Be ready."
She pressed a few buttons on the console in a certain sequence, and the lights over the sliding hatch started flashing. Alarms started blaring through the ship, as the cold air from the chamber reacted with the warm air of the ship and set steam rising.
The hatch opened, and a platform with a standing figure bound head, foot, and neck to a vertical stasis table rose from the ground. As the steam cleared, Garrus, Shepard, Taylor, and Massani stared at the rapidly defrosting prisoner.
Powerful human biotic. That was all they'd known going in. Since they'd learned even Warden Kuril and the serial killers in this place were scared of Jack, and unlike the others in this place, they'd been forced to keep Jack in cryogenic stasis to keep the convict under control. Garrus didn't know what he'd expected Jack to look like, really.
Just not like this.
"That's Jack?"
They were looking at a wiry, rangy human girl, probably not too much older than Tali, stripped to the waist, except for a makeshift leather harness that barely covered the most sensitive areas of her anatomy. The rest of her was covered in a dizzying array of colorful tattoos, with no identifiable pattern Garrus could see. They did not quite obscure the long, raised scars on her arms, neck, and abdomen—the ones that were in a very obvious pattern of surgical experimentation.
As her brain reawakened, her arched dark eyebrow twitched—aside from the two sculpted eyebrows, her head was shaved clean, and tattooed like the rest of her.
Jack's eyes—golden brown—snapped open. Garrus saw her register the alarms ringing throughout the ship. She looked down at her hands, bound to the cryogenic platform with thick metal binders. And then she lit up blue.
The YMIR mechs that had been inactive before began powering up as Jack ripped one arm free of her restraints, then the other. She bent the collar restraining her neck out of place. Jerked one foot, then the other out of the foot binders. Her heavy combat boots hit the deck as the YMIR mechs targeted her, obviously programmed to shoot her down.
Jack launched herself at one, a juggernaut of biotic energy.
"We have to get down there!"
Shepard was already headed toward the door on their left that led to the cryogenic storage area. Red lights started flashing. The deck rocked beneath their feet as something exploded, and close.
"Warning! Warning!" a synthesized female voice said over the comms. The ship's computer, warning of a bulkhead breach or some other catastrophic failure.
"They're attacking Jack!" Garrus shouted.
They ran into the cryogenic stasis chamber. The metal binders that had held Jack were twisted and melted open, and not two meters away, lay the smoking chassis of one YMIR mech. The other's head had been carried halfway across the room from its chassis, and lay sparking in front of a jagged tear in the bulkhead. "I think Jack's attacking them," Shepard called back. "Come on!"
She charged into the breach. It let them into a maintenance walk behind the walls. The red lighting shone off blue smears on the bulkhead as Kuril yelled over the comms, "All guards, restore order! Lethal force authorized, but don't kill Jack! Techs, lockdown! Lockdown!"
They found the turian corpse dismembered in front of the blackened wreckage of a fuse box. Without slowing, Shepard knelt as she went. Her hands darted into his cowl, and a keycard snapped off a chain around his neck. She thrust it in her belt and kept going. The magnetic access would open all locked down doors in their path. Even Jack couldn't rip open walls forever—and it looked like she hadn't. There was no breach going into the next ward. She'd used the door.
Shepard nodded at them all. "Fan out," she ordered. "Don't draw attention if you can help it. It's chaos in there—if the guards and prisoners want to kill each other instead of us, let them. Remember: our objective is to get Jack and get out."
The door ahead lit up green, and they entered into the prison block. "Might be easier said than done, Commander," Jacob said.
It was insane. The prisoners aboard Purgatory might have known they had nowhere to go, but now that their cells were open, they sure as hell knew they didn't have to be prisoners anymore. Across the room Garrus could see half a dozen alliances forming as prisoners joined together to swarm the common enemy. Biotics were tearing off the railing. Utensils had been repurposed as knives. Those that were evolved for it were just tearing into the armed guards with teeth and claws. When the guards went down, the alliances instantly shattered, as all the prisoners tried to be the first to grab the gun and establish dominance, and the scenes collapsed into a gory mess of blood and broken bone. Over all of it, the alarms blared with ever-increasing urgency, clashing inharmoniously with the shouts and cries of the dying and the damned, and the smell of blood was mingled with a growing scent of smoke and molten metal.
"Sectors Seven, Nine, and Eleven have lost life support. No survivors," the computer said calmly. Good to know, Garrus thought grimly.
Jack was nowhere to be seen, but it was plain as day where she had gone. The trail of blood and wrecked infrastructure was at least a meter wide, and again, when she'd left, she'd bypassed the security door by just tearing into the wall. Another ugly bulkhead breach leered at them from across the cell block, nearly ninety impossible meters away.
"One girl did all this?" Zaeed muttered. He'd forgotten he was on the comms.
"This Jack is powerful, but she lacks subtlety," Garrus replied.
"Oh, because you're so subtle yourself," Shepard whispered. She was already fading away, moving right, so Garrus moved left. Taylor didn't surprise him when he elected to head right down the center, with Massani on his flank. Those two will charge the enemy every time. A simple tactic, not the most elegant solution, but hey, overpower the enemy with overwhelming force is the first thing they teach you in basic, and these guys certainly have the muscle to pull it off.
Of course, going up the middle, some prisoners caught sight of Taylor and Massani right away. These ones had held back—either cowards or smarter than the rest of them, but once they'd seen a couple of armed men that weren't in the Blue Suns uniform, they thought they'd spotted an advantage. A gaunt, dirty human yelled some sort of challenge or gang battle call, and his buddies rallied behind him to mob Taylor and Massani.
Warden Kuril's voice crackled over the speakers, edged with panic, "All prisoners, return to your cells immediately, or I'll open every airlock on this ship!"
Right. Because that will work. You don't have to be a genius to see this ship is going down, and you don't have to be a murderer to think it's better to die in a fight than to be fried in a prison cell. Can't blame the prisoners—for that, anyway.
Garrus targeted one of the prisoners rushing Taylor, but the others had it well under control.
Zaeed shot two of them so full of bullets they were still dancing as they hit seconds after they were dead. Jacob tossed the third guy back over their heads, screaming right into the warm embrace of a couple of Suns guards. They obligingly finished the guy off, but Taylor had caught their attention.
Garrus saw one of them say something to the other, and he looked across the room at the door. Garrus followed his gaze. Oh, crap. "Incoming heavy mech!" he shouted. He fired off a shot and one of the guards targeting Massani and Taylor went down, then took cover behind another riot barricade just as the heavy artillery started up.
Almost at the same time, Garrus saw the other guy go down, blood spurting from the ragged new hole in the back of his skull. Shepard's tactical cloak blinked out, and she somersaulted across the catwalk into cover on the bridge exactly opposite from the door. "Cover me!" she shouted, bringing up the new missile launcher. Thank you, Professor.
Taylor and Massani started to move up to the sides of the room, trying to get to the bridge, but they were beneath Shepard now, in the thick of the remaining prisoners. "Not you," Garrus yelled at them, "I've got her—clear the way to the breach!"
He saw Taylor nod, but he was already scanning the room. He kicked the guard coming up on his flank, hard in the spur. He felt it give, saw the armor bend and heard the snap. The guard went down screaming, and Garrus shot him in the face. There was another guard, slightly ahead of him, targeting Shepard on the bridge. Garrus took aim again, and fired. The visor of his helmet shattered inward, and if the bullet didn't kill him, Garrus knew the bone fragments from his broken nose or the glass through his eyes certainly would.
With the entrance of the YMIR mech, any brief advantage the prisoners had had at the outset of the riot had vanished. These prisoners are violent, vicious terrorists, anarchists, rapists, arsonists, and serial killers—psychotic scum, but these guards have them outgunned. And whatever else you can say about the Blue Suns, they're professionals. They were prepared for this. The prisoners were obliterated by rockets, their clothing melted into their flesh and their limbs blasted meters away from their bodies in seconds. They were shredded by the rain of bullets it could shoot from both claw-like arm cannons. This was a mech Shepard hadn't had the advantage of hacking before the battle.
The guards were starting to rally, heartened by their tech support. They'd been fighting solo, or in pairs, but now they started moving as a unit, focusing their energies to shoot the remaining prisoners and address Shepard's now clearly-visible line, halfway across the room to the breach, and regain control of the situation.
Shepard, crouched in cover on the bridge, focused her fire on the YMIR mech and ignored them. As the only one of them with heavy weapons, it was her job to take it out. She was counting on Garrus and the others to take the guards.
The M-77 missiles whistled as they flew through the air, changing course to target the mech as it slowly moved right, sweeping the room with its fire. Thanks to Shepard's fire and the mech's, the temperature in the block had risen nearly five degrees in the last ten seconds. Though that might be the ship's core—going critical.
Garrus flicked his wrist and saw his program sizzle on the mech's shields, then shot a guard across the room on the mech's flank as Massani and Taylor made for a trio of guards near the breach.
Shepard was grimacing, gritting her teeth. The mech was fifteen meters away from her now, focused on her as the biggest threat in the room. Garrus's mandibles contracted. He knocked the commando that had just come in the opposite door back on his ass, frying his shields, and ejected another heat sink. Shepard, don't be stupid. We're annihilating the Suns—cloak and fall back, and we'll regroup to take out the mech—
Just then he saw the tell-tale blue flicker that was the mech's shields failing, and his stomach swooped. The mech staggered. Its optics blinked.
"Shep—"
She'd already jumped back as the mech exploded in a shower of shrapnel and oil, in accordance with the standard YMIR hostile destruction defensive programming. She grinned as she came up on his flank, swinging her missile launcher back over her shoulder and re-equipping her sniper. "Didn't worry you, did I?" she panted.
Garrus swore his responding grin was automatic. "Never," he replied.
She laughed. "Well, that's good. I was worried."
Retargeting in an instant, she fired off a shot at the commando that had just climbed to his feet again. The bullet exited out the back of his head and embedded itself in the wall. Almost simultaneously, Massani and Taylor finished off the last guard to his left.
They fell back into formation at Shepard's flank, and the four of them made for the breach. Garrus took up the rear, looking back at the room so he could catch any prisoners or guards who might have stayed back during the slaughter, but there was no one. Not three minutes ago, the noise in the cell block had been deafening. Now the only sound was the echoing alarms, dying gunfire from other wards, and a growing crackle that meant somewhere, a fire was growing.
As if to confirm his dark suspicions, the ship's computer came over the speaker again. "Warning: power line damage has led to overload. Core systems failure imminent."
Garrus's stomach twisted, and the brief moment of joy he'd felt fighting at Shepard's six again evaporated at once. There is nothing in the galaxy like fighting beside your friend at the world's end, torching the bad guys and laughing at the dark, right until you remember that the world is ending and you're burning your way out.
Shepard echoed his thoughts. "We have to get out of here," she said. She nodded at a guard by the breach. This was one they hadn't killed. Garrus swallowed. His mandible and part of his fringe had been pried completely off. A makeshift shiv had broken off in his armor plating, but that wasn't what had killed him. His face was a mess of broken teeth and viscera. The murder weapon lay useless half a meter away, in the hands of a prisoner that had obviously been one of the first hit by the YMIR mech. "He was swarmed by prisoners with improvised weapons," she said. "He never had a chance." Her expression was clinical, though, and Garrus saw her omni-tool flash as she took a scan of the scene and the gun. Mordin will be proud. So would Pallin, actually—always a good idea to document new tech.
Garrus just felt sick. The prisoners here hadn't just killed the guard. They'd ripped him apart with their bare hands, out of sheer cruelty. "Shows you what kind of people these prisoners are. I don't agree with everything they do here, but it's in the galaxy's best interests. This guard kept maniacs away from innocent people."
Shepard glanced back at him for a moment. In her eyes there were equal parts judgment and guilt, but Garrus was the first one to drop his gaze. Or maybe he was more concerned about the credits he could make selling these people off. We'll never know now. He's dead. It's so much easier when we can say exactly who the enemy is and who's the victim. But life doesn't work that way. And gang members or prisoners, Shepard's going to carry them all on her back. All of Purgatory, in the hopes that one murdering criminal will help us save every human in the Terminus.
They moved on in silence through the next maintenance area, in between the breach Jack had torn in the bulkhead and the next ward. Warden Kuril came over the speaker again to inform the guards they'd achieved lockdown in three of the blocks. As they passed through the maintenance corridor, Garrus noticed that again, there didn't seem to be a breach on the other side—just the door. Huh. Doors must only be secured on the one side back here, Garrus thought. Have to have a pass to get from the block to the maintenance area, but they assume anyone already back here is cleared for the wards. Shepard made for the door, and that's when Garrus noticed that though Jack had obviously come this way, there was no blood on the walls, no bodies on the floor—the guards had already cleared out. And other than the alarms, there was no sound emanating from the other side of the door. No shouts. No gunfire. I've got a bad feeling about this…
The door opened.
"Wait!" Garrus yelled.
Too late.
The second they entered the next ward, half a dozen guns swung their way. "Find cover!" Shepard shouted, as everyone's shields took a hit. Garrus dodged behind a water tank. Massani and Shepard hit the floor behind a riot barricade, and Taylor hurled himself off the catwalk to get down into the empty hold, where the shooting angle was too difficult for the guards across the way, but he had plenty of room to move. Garrus started his visor on calculating the number of hostiles—all the prisoners had already been taken care of, here—the guards had laid this ambush specifically for them, or for Jack, still on the rampage. Eight, maybe ten, and—
Fire exploded off the side of the metallic water tank, and heat sizzled in the air. Garrus's stomach dropped and roiled. The side of his face flared up with remembered pain, and he tasted fear, bitter and electric in his mouth. The deafening drilling noise of YMIR cannons started up again.
Not Tarak in the gunship, and this tank was built to take a hell of a lot more than your sofa. Pull it together, Vakarian.
But Shepard was looking at him, too, as she swung down the missile launcher again, jaw set in a grim line. Garrus nodded at her, pushed his hand, palm down, toward the ground and moved it in a horizontal arc.
I'm fine. Just take it out.
Shepard gave him a thumbs up, and Garrus called up his omni-tool, configured the firing solution, and shot an overload program around the corner at the mech. "Light 'em up!"
Shepard's omni-tool flashed, too—the mech was too close, and they were boxed in here. Instead of drawing its fire so he and the others could take out the guards, Shepard wanted to take it out in a hurry so they could regain mobility.
The computer spoke up again. "The hull has been breached in sectors Twelve, Fourteen, and Thirty. No survivors." And so we can get out of here.
Garrus saw Zaeed with his assault rifle raised, firing at the guards that were outside of his view just now. Shepard faded out, and seconds later, Garrus heard the burr of her Locust start up. His visor lit up, telling him she was deploying electrical ammunition, still working on the mech's shields. Then the outline through the tank that was the YMIR's silhouette started flashing, and he heard the synthesized bass grate out, "Primary defenses offline."
She'd done it.
"Now!" he yelled. "Focus fire on the mech!"
He dodged out of cover, rifle already aimed at the YMIR's central processor. Taylor fired off six pistol rounds with him as Massani's bullets pockmarked the mech's chassis.
The head of a guard near the mech snapped around, and he yelled, "Fuu—"Then Shepard's missile hit, the mech exploded, and machine and man were blown to bits and pieces.
"Damn it! You see that? Get back up!" a human near the door screamed.
A turian charged down the ramp from the catwalk toward Jacob. "Blue Suns!" But it was their game now. Jacob lowered his head and let the man run right into his armored shoulder, letting his momentum take him with the biotics right into the face of the guard bearing down on Zaeed. Garrus left the tank, moving relentlessly up the catwalk across the room from cover to cover. His every shot landed. He knocked out shields with concussive rounds and his omni-tool and let Massani do the clean-up, while Shepard?
Shepard danced. She was everywhere they needed her most and the enemy wanted her least. Just like old times, she knew before any of them had to say anything. She took down what shields Garrus didn't. Taylor's blue biotic fields turned purple as she lit up the helpless guards suspended inside with her incendiary tech.
In less than thirty seconds, they'd cleared the room. But now capacitors were sparking. Garrus actually saw the fire in a damaged vent. This time, Shepard didn't need to tell them to run. She gestured at the breach Jack had left, and they ran out through it. Somewhere in the last few minutes, they'd turned around, and Garrus realized they were heading back toward the hangar now. Maybe she's a reckless psycho, but she read the situation the second she thawed, didn't she? Knew someone had to be here for her—they wouldn't have let her out otherwise, so she started carving a path straight through to the place they'd brought her in to steal our ship.
Taylor got it, too. "She's heading for the Normandy," he said. "If we're not there when she arrives she'll tear the ship apart—if her heart hasn't burst from the effort yet."
"Keep moving," was Shepard's only reply.
Kuril was eager to find Jack, too. They heard him yelling at the guards to find her as they passed into the next area. The panic was raw in his voice by now. Even the humans heard it. The ship was getting more dangerous by the second. Sparking wires fell from the ceiling. Smoke was filling the halls. The ship moaned and creaked as they ran, protesting their hurried feet in its agonized interior. Just before they came to the door out into the next ward, a rafter collapsed. It hurtled toward Taylor's head. Without thinking, Garrus raised his rifle, flipped the interface on the side, and fired. The concussive shot blasted the rafter clear, and it fell, melted and twisted, to the side.
Jacob's biotics flared in panic. He froze for half a second, staring at the fallen rafter. He settled, and turned slowly. ". . . Thanks, Garrus."
"Any time," Garrus answered.
"All guards to Cell Block One," Kuril ordered over the speakers.
Shepard gestured at the door with her gun. "What do you want to bet that's Cell Block One?" she asked drily.
Garrus looked at her. "I wouldn't want to pin my life savings on it," he said in the same tone. "The odds are so good, returns would have to be terrible." Shepard let out a huff of surprised laughter, pleased.
"Bring it on," Massani sneered.
Shepard refocused. "Be ready," she told them.
"Aye aye," Taylor said.
Shepard stepped forward. The door opened, shrieking. The four of them ran out. Shepard ducked behind the riot barricade just in time, as the crack of a sniper blast actually set the hair on the top of her head waving, regardless of the gel holding it tightly in place. Garrus's gizzard clenched, but she'd made it with the rest of them.
Kuril's familiar voice rang out over the ward. He had to shout to be heard over the alarms in here. An electrical fire at least a meter square was raging, unheeded and unrestrained, in the corner to their left. "You're valuable, Shepard! I could have sold you and lived like a king!" he informed her. He cracked off another shot. It discharged harmlessly against the barricade with a metallic ping. "But you're too much trouble! At least I can still recapture Jack!"
Shepard had her Locust in hand. "Not a chance!" she shouted back. "You're a two-bit slave trader, and I don't have time for it!"
"I do the hard things civil governments are unwilling to!" Kuril retorted, furious. "This is for the good of the galaxy!"
But Shepard was done talking. Her omni-tool flashed, and a guard across the room yelped as his shield fritzed out. Garrus took him out in one shot. And thank you for volunteering. Taking advantage of the temporary shield boost she'd stolen off the guard, Shepard stood and fired in Kuril's direction, but her bullets stopped at least a meter away from him and fell to the ground, and a blue mass effect barrier flared up in relief—Kuril had repurposed Purgatory's barrier engines to protect the platform he stood on. He can fire out, but no one can fire in.
Shepard recovered from her surprise in a second and sank back into cover. "Where?" she called.
"One right there," Massani growled, pointing straight ahead at one of the pylons powering Kuril's shield.
"I see the others," Garrus reported. "One by the exit, and the other on the opposite wall—by the fire. Hurry!"
"I'll handle it. Keep them off me!" she ordered.
"You got it!"
Garrus cased the room. Kuril had the best position—on the platform he had the high ground, and he had his back to the wall on two sides, but once Shepard took out the shields he'd be relatively vulnerable. "Stay in cover," he told Taylor and Massani. "Don't let him get a clear shot!"
There were two main groups of hostiles—a group of five on the area where they were, and up a ramp to their right, several more guarding the path up to Kuril's position—when the shields did come down, they'd have to take him out from a distance. And up the ramp, the exit door panel glowed green. Unsecured, which means Kuril's not worried about us escaping. He's got reinforcements coming from that way.
"Someone has to cover the exit," he warned. "There are more coming!"
"I'm on it," Massani grunted, shifting position to make for the door. One of the Suns in their way went down to his assault rifle, his scream cut off as his throat was shot out.
Garrus couldn't see Shepard anymore, but he heard the distinctive sound of her Locust, and he saw the spark and the crash as the first pylon, the one behind the guards immediately in their way, went down. Up above, Garrus saw the flicker around Kuril as his shield weakened. Garrus flicked his wrist, and another guard's shield went down. They'd been fighting together long enough that Taylor saw it. The guard yelled as Taylor's biotics lifted him off his feet and sent him hurtling through the air. His face hit the wall behind Garrus with an audible crunch.
The three remaining guards immediately focused on Taylor, but Garrus had already pulled out his assault rifle and charged down the ramp to join him, as Massani tried to clear the ramp up to the exit to get into position by the door alone.
One of the guard's heads exploded from behind, and Garrus saw Shepard blink back in, halfway up the ramp to the second pylon. She turned to face her objective again. Garrus clubbed his guard with his assault rifle, using close quarters both to make it more difficult for Kuril to get a clean shot and to throw the immediate enemy off balance. Behind him, he heard Taylor doing the same, and heard the snap of breaking bones and the blat of the human's shotgun that meant he'd won the fight. Garrus sent a round into his own opponent and left him on the ground, and he and Taylor turned to back up Massani.
The old mercenary was already halfway up the ramp, laughing and shouting abuse again, assault rifle roaring. Kuril's shield flickered again—Shepard had taken the second pylon.
"Ignore them!" Kuril screamed. "Find Shepard! Kill Shepard!"
Easier said than done, though, isn't it? Garrus thought with satisfaction, as he and the other two men made it up the ramp and into cover. Kuril had been setting up the area for a while—not only had he reconfigured the mass effect engines, but he'd moved supply storage crates to give his guards more cover. The only problem was that, like the riot barricades they'd used throughout the ship, the defenses they'd set up to protect themselves worked against them just as well. Massani took up position by the door—while the position was ideal for keeping anyone from coming down the corridor and catching them in a pincer movement, it left him relatively exposed to the rest of the room, so Garrus moved up to defend him while Taylor kept right down the middle. He'd switched to his pistol for the range, and was bringing hell down on the guards still between them and Kuril. A commando screamed as Taylor shot his pistol right out of his fist. His bloody fingers fell to the floor with the gun, and while he was staring at them, Garrus took his eye, and his brain with it. Behind him, he heard the door whoosh open, and Zaeed's assault rifle going off.
"I don't think so, you bastards!"
Just ahead of Garrus and to his right, the last shield pylon went up in a shower of sparks. Kuril's shield sputtered and died. Not too far from his left foot, a red hot heat sink hit the metal floor with a hiss. Garrus turned his head and saw Shepard, not two meters to his left, cradling her Mantis, with her back to a stack of crates. She glanced back at him, and one corner of her mouth lifted just so.
"Let's end this."
Garrus grinned. "You got it, Commander." No place better than this.
In another forty seconds the room was clear. Kuril's corpse was a charred, smoking ruin on its pedestal, face ravaged beyond recognition. And the four of them were pelting down the hall Massani had cleared toward the Normandy and Jack.
A/N: This story is set in the same universe as my Disaster Zone series, and progresses concurrently with Part Five of that series, Resurrection. This chapter and the six after it take place between Chapter Two of Resurrection, "Trust," and Chapter Three, "On Horizon."
Pay attention to the details as you read this. With a character like Garrus, they're everything. His knowledge of Alliance hand signals may just be insight into an untold story in ME. The fact he uses them to try to communicate with Jacob and Zaeed is a little more than that. What Garrus does, says, and doesn't say is all important, in various ways. In this chapter, it's all about how Garrus acts and reacts in battle situations. He may not even completely be aware of all the ways that's changed since Omega, but I can guarantee you Shepard's noticing—and although they might not be able to verbalize what's going on here, the other squadmates react to it, too. That isn't to say that none of the squadmates will verbalize what's going on here. More on that in the next chapter. :)
Best Always,
LMS
