Running Silent:

Escape from Omega

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An alternate ME3. Commander Shepard and her team are on the run from Cerberus and trying to make alliances before it's too late. In a galaxy with no reaper kill switch, how can they hope to defeat something so ancient and powerful? Their last hope is a desperate plan that may cost them everything. Shepard/Garrus, other side pairings.

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Disclaimer: This author in no way profits from the writing of this story. All characters, dialogue, or other referenced material from the Mass Effect trilogy belong to Bioware.

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Alarm bells were ringing. Red lights flashed. Shepard rounded on Maelon. "Did you know this could happen?" she demanded.

"No! No, I didn't know!" Maelon cried, his hands up. "I swear."

"Any console linked into main system?" Mordin asked, and they both turned to him. Maelon, still frightened, wordlessly pointed to one on the far end of the room. Mordin rushed over to it and began to type furiously. After a moment he declared, "Lockdown."

"What kind?" Shepard spat out.

Maelon crept up behind Mordin. "Looks like… all exits have been shut down with steel doors. Only controllable from the security center."

"Can we get there?" she demanded.

"Sure, if you have a death wish," Maelon snarked. "It will be swarming with guards."

"Know we're in lab," Mordin jumped in. "Headed this way."

Shepard leapt into action. "Are there any secondary escape routes from the lab?" she asked Maelon. "If so, we should barricade the door. They'll be coming from that direction." She strode purposefully to begin doing just that.

"Yes!" Maelon said, scrambling after Shepard. "The lab requires extensive ventilation. Some of the shafts are large enough for a person to crawl through." At Shepard's raised brow, he added, "This isn't the first time I've considered escape."

"Excellent," she said. "Now we just need a way out of the compound." She began pushing the heavier lab equipment in front of the door, with Maelon aiding where he could despite his considerably lesser strength.

Mordin had pulled up the schematics of the compound. "Windows not covered by lockdown," he said quickly.

"I've never seen a window here," Maelon replied, but Mordin shook his head.

"Tower has windows," he countered, pointing to the screen showing the only high point in the compound. "Can break windows to escape."

"And what then?" Maelon asked. "Fall to our deaths?"

Shepard came up behind them and shook her head. "If I can reach the roof, I can probably call in the shuttle. Comms should be clear once we're outside the building."

"Forgive me if that doesn't fill me with confidence, Commander," Maelon said sarcastically.

At that moment, they heard a pounding on the door.

"Well, it's the only plan we've got," she said. "Let's get moving before they decide to blow their way in."

Eager to escape such a fate, Maelon showed them the large ventilation shaft over his work bench where they hoisted themselves up and through. Just as Shepard's feet disappeared from sight, gunfire began to rain through the door.

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Stealth was no longer an option as they ran up stairs and careened down hallways, trying to reach the top floor of the tower. They fired indiscriminately at anyone in their way. Anyone who escaped could tell the others where they were headed. It was a chance they couldn't take.

When they finally reached the top level, they found the roof access locked down like every other exit. Instead, Shepard turned and shot out a window, shielding her face with her arm. She leaned out, trying not to look down as she sought a way up. It was sheer concrete all the way to the top, further than she could reach.

"Damn, it," she swore. "I can't get up."

"Shepard," Mordin instructed, "Lean out the window as far as you can. Further from the walls, clearer comms. Try to make call from here."

While Shepard wasn't naturally afraid of heights, she did have a perfectly reasonable fear of falling. "Hang onto me," she instructed the two salarians, and she stuck herself out the window as far as she could go.

"Shepard to O'Connor," she called. "Come in. I need emergency evac ASAP."

The comm crackled and buzzed. Shepard thought she heard a voice through the static. She sighed. "Grab onto my hand and don't let go," she told the two salarians. She carefully swung herself out of the window, planted her feet firmly against the side of the building, and stretched out as far as she could. The two salarians, gripping her hand and wrist, were the only thing keeping her from falling. "Shepard to O'Connor, come in!" she called again.

The comm crackled to life. "O'Connor to Shepard, I'm pinging your location," he said through the static. "Should I bring in the shuttle?"

"We need evac, and quickly. We're at a broken window, top of the tower."

"I'll be there in six," he said. "O'Connor out."

The salarians helped Shepard back inside, but Mordin was concerned. "Six minutes enough to bring Blood Pack upon us."

Shepard nodded. "We better barricade ourselves in." For the first time, she looked around the room they stood in and realized it was probably Krag's suite. It was filled with luxuries that most krogan would scorn. She knew Wrex would. But the heavy, ornate furniture made it easy to erect a makeshift barricade. Before long, they heard voices and footsteps approaching.

"They're here!" a krogan voice cried. A loud slam followed, rattling the door and barricade.

"Shit," said Shepard in response, fingers ghosting over her SMG. With Maelon's help, she overturned an armoire to serve as cover. They crouched behind it, broken window to their backs, and trained their weapons on the blocked doorway.

"Two minutes," Mordin said, settling in beside her.

Unfortunately, Shepard knew just how long two minutes in combat could be. "Long enough," she said, and waited for the door to break.

She didn't have to wait long. Charging krogan smashed through the door, their shotguns blasting apart the furniture holding it closed. Mordin's fingers began flying over his omni-tool as soon as the first krogan and vorcha appeared. Shepard and Maelon followed with bullets. Shepard tried not to use her biotics—they were becoming more unstable, weakening her the more she used them. She was low on energy, needed to eat.

The bodies were piling up and they were running low on heat sinks when Shepard heard the shuttle pulling up behind them. But she wasn't the only one who noticed. She heard a krogan's cry of fury, and half a dozen more vorcha poured through the door at once, trying to swarm them. The cavalry had arrived, it seemed, and just in time to stop them from escaping to the shuttle.

Shepard knew what she had to do. "Keep them off me," she told her companions before holstering her SMG. The blue glow of biotic energy began to swirl around her. With great effort, she pushed the unstable mass down her arms to gather into a ball she held in her hands. "Duck," she ordered, and thrust it away, over their makeshift cover.

The explosion lit the room with a blinding light and shook the very floor they stood upon. The armoire they hid behind was a loss. Dead and injured lay strewn across the ground. "Go," she instructed, and stood on shaky legs. The salarians scrambled through the window and into the waiting shuttle. Shepard went last, looking behind her to see a large krogan entering the room, furious at the carnage of his troops. He bellowed in rage as she jumped into the shuttle and hit the control for the door. "Get us the hell out of here," she ordered O'Connor.

"My pleasure," he said, grinning back at her. At her incredulous look, he sped away.

Exhausted, Shepard dropped into the copilot's seat and ripped off her helmet at last. "Are there any snacks on this thing?" she asked.

"Water and nutrient bars," he replied. "You stocked it yourself, remember?"

"Remind me to thank myself later," she said dryly, opening the compartment he indicated.

She was digging through to find her favorite flavor of bar when she heard O'Connor mutter, "Oh, shit."

Shepard's head popped up immediately. "What's going on?"

"Three vehicles in pursuit, one is firing. Employing evasive maneuvers."

Shepard held on tight as O'Connor used his skills to try and escape the Blood Pack shuttles. But their vehicles were fast and gaining on them. "We'll need to shoot them down," Shepard said, reaching for the gunner controls. "You know what to do."

O'Connor turned more sharply than Shepard knew the shuttle was capable of, and began taunting the Blood Pack shuttles. Shepard began firing.

O'Connor's considerable skills were on display as he wove in and out of buildings and formations, dodging fire from the Blood Pack while lining up shots for Shepard one by one until only the last shuttle remained. "Piece of cake," he said, slipping between two buildings and laughing. Then the blood pack shuttle appeared in front of them again, door wide open and a rocket launcher pointing their way. "Shit," was all he said. Shepard fired, missing the shuttle by inches.

The rocket launcher fired. Their placement between the two buildings boxed them in, and the rocket shook the shuttle and set off warning bells on O'Connor's console. Typing furiously, he resumed their evasive maneuvers. Shepard stood shakily from her seat and moved to the back. Two could play the Blood Pack's game.

She started typing into the built-in console and the shuttle's machine gun moved into position. The side doors lifted open. "What are you doing, Commander?" O'Connor called back.

"Pull up alongside them," she replied.

She thought she heard him muttering something about her being crazy, but she ignored it, setting herself at the machine gun turret. As soon as the other shuttle pulled into her field of view, she began firing upon it, aiming for as many essential parts as possible. It began to sag as her bullets struck it's thruster, but that wasn't enough to take it down. "Pull up a little more," she called to O'Connor.

The krogan with the rocket launcher fired again, passing within a foot of her head. She ignored the frightened cry of Maelon behind her as it went harmlessly through the open doors of the shuttle.

"A little closer," she called back to her pilot. As they inched closer to the other shuttle, she could see the krogan reloading the rocket launcher. But that wasn't her focus. She was staring into the open interior of the shuttle, waiting for the angle to be just right. And then she fired.

The Blood Pack pilot's controls exploded in front of him from Shepard's direct hit. The shuttle began to fall from the sky. Just as she began to relax, the krogan with the rocket launcher dropped it and, with a loud battle cry, jumped from his shuttle to land on theirs. Shepard cried out in shock and scrambled for the controls to close the shuttle doors. The krogan had caught onto the door but it closed just in time to prevent him making it inside. She could hear him climbing to the top of the shuttle. "O'Connor!" she shouted, moving to the front of the shuttle. "Do something!"

He grinned. "I got this. Hang on, guys!"

He slammed on the brakes, sending the krogan flying forward and away. They could hear his angry bellow as he fell. Shepard, hanging on tightly, nearly went flying herself. "Well done, O'Connor," she said wearily, dropping back into the copilot's seat. "I'm going to have that nutrient bar now." She reached for the compartment and paused midway. "Call the Normandy, will you? Let them know we're on our way."

Shepard grabbed the first nutrient bar she saw and started munching, regardless of flavor. She needed to eat something before they reached the rendezvous point. She didn't want Garrus to worry.

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