Hello to all my readers. Thank you for all your responses, I really didn't expect this to be popular but I am glad it is. I initially planned for this chapter to be a slow one, mostly talking and planning and setting up for the next few ones but then it hit me. So please read and enjoy and review if you can.

Edited 29/05/2021 for grammatical, stylistic and logic errors.

As Jarrg had said that crafting the weapons and armour to the quality that would satisfy him would take at least two weeks we left him to it. Through another contact of Kal'leena I got rid of the weapons in the cargo hold of the shuttle and was pleasantly surprised by Erinna when a delivery of asari shower, beds and a proper compact ship's galley arrived with a coffee machine. I was ready to kiss her there and then for the coffee machine alone but she wasn't on the ship at the moment.

Installing everything in the right place was easy enough and by mid afternoon I was sitting in the galley drinking coffee from my new coffee machine, I had installed the galley first then the beds and I had left the biggest job, showers until last. Right now I was taking a break with Kal'leena who had been helping me by mainly reading the various instructions in asari. Kal'leena was not fond of coffee but was more than happy to sit and drink a cup of hot cocoa while discussing matters.

"So I say we go find us some pirates or slavers and promptly requisition their credits and equipment. They can't complain to C-Sec and I doubt they would surrender to us anyway so that problem would take care of itself." I said

"You want to start a war with all of the pirates in the Terminus systems? We could hit a few of the smaller gangs but they don't have equipment that's worth much. So we would need to hit the bigger ones, like Blood Pack or the ones funded by the Hegemony. It's too risky right now." Kal'leena said

"So what do you suggest?" I asked

"We sign up as freelancers, do some merc work. In the end we are going to be doing the same thing but at least we will have some backing. I know a few volus who would happily pay us a lot of money to get some of their riskier investments back." Kal'leena said

I really didn't want to be muscle for a volus loan shark or be a merc for the highest bidder. I was already working for one shady organization, signing up for another one seemed like asking for trouble. And I still needed to make sure that I wasn't working for Cerberus. I knew that they recruited from Alliance but I doubted they would use aliens as instructors and knowing their love of crazy experiments I would have already been sent to clean up after it failed.

And that was when it hit me. Jack. Pragia.

"We are going to Pragia." I said and looked at Kal'leena. She saw the look in my eyes and simply nodded in confirmation.

"Where is it?" she asked simply and I appreciated her not prying, I hoped that knowing where Cerberus was torturing children would be less of a shock than knowing about the Reapers but I wasn't about to launch into an explanation. And while apocalyptic visions were actually a thing thanks to the Prothean beacons knowing the location of a secret facility belonging to a terrorist human supremacist group could not be explained in the same way.

"Nubian Expanse I think. Don't know the exact coordinates." I replied

"I will find it. Erinna should be back in an hour with our equipment and temporary weapons and armour from Jarrg for you. How fast do you want to be there?" Kal'leena said standing up

"Thanks. Best speed. I just hope I am not too late." I said, I didn't know when Jack breaks out of Teltin facility, it was never mentioned in the games but from her descriptions it sounded like she was a teenager at the time, maybe early teens. Since she was born in 2161, that would her thirteen now. I couldn't prevent what had already happened to her but at least I could help her get out and maybe stop her from becoming what she was when Shepard met her. For now I had a shower to install as there was nothing useful I could do at the moment.

17/08/2173 Nubian Expanse, Dakka, Pragia

Finding the right planet and getting there was the easy part thanks to Kal'leena, she was by far more experienced in the astronavigation part of the space flight so 4 mass relay jumps later were were there. Now came the hard but enjoyable part, kicking the stuffing out of the morally bankrupt Cerberus goons.

Gearing up I was glad Jarrg had sent me new equipment. The stuff I had previously was not bad but it was on the cheap side and abundant side. Just what you need for covert missions so it's harder to identify you but not as good when assaulting a base. Light Crisis Mk6 armour manufactured by Jormungand technology painted blood red even came with a note attached how blood is less noticeable if the armour is the same colour. Considering the close quarters nature of the fight ahead I selected Savage Mk9 shotgun also by Jormungand and Karpov Mk7 by Rosenkov Materials. All top of the line and unfortunately quite expensive, my bank account had only a few thousand credits left. An oversight I was looking soon to correct. While my primary mission was to rescue Jack and any other children I wasn't going to let an opportunity go of getting a siphoning a few credits here and there from Cerberus local accounts.

"Are you going alone?" Kal'leena asked

"Yes, I need both of you in the shuttle. There might be some children in need of medical attention, biotic children. Traumatized biotic children." I said not looking at her, right now I felt shame. Shame for forgetting about this place, about the children. I could have been here months ago, told Alliance at least. How many of them died because I forgot? I knew that the answer to that question would only bring me more shame and self loating but I couldn't help but ask it. But all the answers were inside the facility. Feeling the pit in my stomach grow into a miniature black hole I took a deep breath to calm down. Later I might have time to blame myself but now I needed my head in the game. Breathing in, holding my breath for a second and then releasing it I centered myself on the task.

"I understand. How are you getting down? I doubt they will allow us to just land." Kal'leena said changing the topic

"By jumping." I said and walked over to the armory table I had set up, "I made a kinetic harness. It uses a pair of mass effect field generators, the kind people use in low or high gravity environments to move about normally. Instead of providing a steady level of gravity I modified them to be able to output nearly all their charge in less than a second. Now I could jump from orbit and still land safely. One generator will negate my kinetic energy upon striking the ground and the second one will make sure that I don't turn to jelly from sudden deceleration." I explained as I picked it up.

"That is useful. Like the levitation I can do with my biotics but more powerful, I wouldn't be able to do it from this heigh up." Kal'leena said impressed

"That's where I got the idea." I said making sure the harness is properly attached and opened the cargo bay doors "Wait for my signal to come down."

"Good luck." Kal'leena shouted, the shuttle might have been flying slow as the shuttles go but the wind was still strong. I nodded and put my helmet on. It was a standard breather helmet obscuring everything but my eyes. I wasn't going to show my face on internal footage of the facility to Illusive man. Unlike the Leviathan who simply might ignore me Illusive Man was not the guy to let someone destroy his project without repercussions. Even back when I was playing the game I never believed his statements that they were operations gone rogue. A control freak like him would never allow that.

Looking at my omni-tool I waited until the trajectory matched up and dove out of the shuttle. I didn't know how good were their anti-air defences so I needed to seem like a piece of debris falling down. A bag of trash jettisoned from a ship. Nothing noteworthy. I had to wait until the last possible moment to trigger the harness.

Looking at the HUD in my helmet I noted calmly that I had attained the terminal velocity and it would be another 39 seconds before I could trigger the harness. That calmness of my mind would have surprised a lot of people including myself from back before I got thrown into this world but the training and whatever that thing with wings of fire did to me have changed my whole perspective on what I should find alarming. Falling at nearly 60 meters per second was not.

As I watched my altimeter drop I set the altitude my harness would deploy. Thankfully the Teltin facility was big enough that I could actually land on it and not in some random part of the jungle.

At a hundred meters above the facility the harness deployed, spinning up the two mass effect generators, one slowing me down from 220 km/h to a gentle in comparison 30km/h. The second one made sure that the g forces didn't actually rupture all my soft tissue. The harness worked for about second before burning out and I fell the last ten metres or so.

The impact wasn't so bad. There was only a slight dent where two of my armoured boots struck. A two hundred kilo mass striking at just over 30km/h made sure that anyone who was sleeping would be awake and any guards would be on high alert. At least I wouldn't have to go looking for them so shooting them would be easier.

I didn't have time to stand around as my HUD informed me that I was getting painted with a targeting laser. Diving forward into cover of some kind of air conditioning unit I drew my Karpov. As a stream of projectiles slammed where I had just been I peeked out, found the turret and sent an overload it's way followed by about a dozen shots from Karpov. It didn't explode into little pieces like in the game but it was definitely out of commission. Taking down another three turrets in quick succession I stood up. Karpov really was a massive upgrade over the cheap guns I had been using. And the armour had a nice combat microcomputer to take on some of the load from the omni-tool when launching combat programs like Overload.

Quickly scanning my surroundings I found the entrance and as I suspected my landing forced a lockdown. The lock on the door was lit a steady red. Scanning it with my omni-tool I set it to manufacture an electronic lockpick. In essence it was a small one-use electronic device that forced a lock open by burning out circuitry that kept it locked. Manufactured out of omnigel it's only downside was that you had to manufacture it for a specific lock. Not just for a specific lock type or model but a specific lock. Made it's usage a bit wasteful in comparison to proper tools you could use to break in but it didn't require the technical expertise and it was impossible to trace as the lockpick fused itself with the lock after it was done. The procedure went like this, the omni-tool application responsible for the lockpick would scan the lock, send fabrication order and ten seconds later a circle of about an inch across came out of the minifabricator in the omni-tool.

With my omni-tool done I slapped the small circle onto the lock and let it work, which it did a few seconds later with a puff of burned electronics and the click of the door getting unlocked. I let it slide open and threw a flashbang down. I had to do this carefully, couldn't afford to get kids in a crossfire so flashbangs and pistol would be my main weapons and the shotgun reserved for anything that my Karpov couldn't take down or where there was no danger of collateral damage.

A moment after flasbang detonated I sprang into the corridor leading down. There were two security guards dazed from the flashbang and I shot them both with a quick double-tap. I couldn't take prisoners and even if these two were not involved directly in the abuse and torture they still watched it happen without doing anything. Letting them go was out of the question.

I connected my omni-tool to theirs and data-mined them quickly. My omni-tool was the one item that connected me to my mysterious employers, it had a variety of special issue software and encrypted communication interface that allowed me to send and receive messages without trace. I didn't care about their personal stuff but I hoped that they would have the clearance keys to open doors and a map of this place. I didn't want to spend precious time exploring this place and unlocking every single door.

While the simple VI inside the omni-tool churned through the data I opened the door to the facility proper. The guards hadn't locked it behind them so it was a simple issue of pressing the button. Quite careless of them but it wasn't like they would have expected an attack from outside.

Without pausing I pivoted rapidly to give myself the best field of fire but didn't see anyone there. The corridor was painted the same sterile white as in the games. Holding my pistol at the ready I walked forwards. The facility couldn't house more than a few dozen staff in addition to all the children so even if half of them are guards, I should not have too much trouble.

I heard him before I saw him, must have been in the corridor when the doors locked and now he was pounding on one. He was a scientist if his clothes were any indication and when he saw me he turned towards me.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he demanded and for a moment I entertained a thought to lie to him. Make up something about unscheduled security check. Only for a moment. Instead I pointed my gun at him.

"How many kids died in the last month?" I asked, my voice distorted by a voice changer and I could see understanding dawn on his face. I could see the wave of fear wash away the arrogance that was in him.

"Don't kill me please! I will tell you everything." he pleaded and actually dropped to his knees

"How many kids died this month?"I asked again

"Three." he said hesitantly not meeting my eyes.

"Where is Subject Zero?" I asked

"Two levels down. In her room." he answered and he looked up at me

"What's her status?" I asked and let Karpov point downwards slightly as if I was no longer thinking of killing him. That should make him think that if he tells me everything I want to know he could still come out of this alive.

"Oh, she is well. She is making progress. We made sure that she only gets the treatments we know are working." scientist said and lifted his head to look at me. I could see a glimmer of hope in his eyes. My omni-tool chimed and displayed a message on my helmet HUD that it finished sorting through the data so it updated the map of the facility. So I pointed my gun at this face and pulled the trigger. I had no need to listen to human garbage anymore.

Along with the codes and the map I also got the link to the security system of this place. Which told me where the various staff members and subjects were. It was one way only giving me read only access so I couldn't take over the facility. The room that the scientist was trying to get in had two other people in it. Both staff members, both marked as part of the medical team, not research. I didn't think there was a difference and frankly did not care. I opened the door and saw the relief on their faces quickly change to fear when the saw my gun and the dead scientist behind me. Two shots later I closed the door.

The next level down I met with some resistance, guards had made a makeshift barricade, a couple of tables on their sides. I changed to my shotgun and blasted it to chunks. The guards didn't survive that. Most of the scientists were in locked rooms, most of the guards were trying to converge on my position to put me in crossfire. A room to the right was marked as surgery and the security system reported that there were three people inside. Opening the door I saw the three people in blood-stained surgical clothing and between them on the table lay a small form. I couldn't tell what kind of child it was anymore.

"Who are you?" one of them demanded holding a scalpel, I guess she thought that facility wide lockdown was no reason to stop her work.

I let my shotgun reply, three times just to be clear. When I walked out of the room I couldn't tell what kind of humans they were anymore. After that my anger turned cold and clinical. I no longer was kicking ass of some Cerberus goons. I was excising a cancerous portion of human race with fire and steel. I didn't bother to keep track of my shield status, I simply walked, saw targets, aimed and shot.

When I got to the level below four goons were opening cells and getting the children ready for transport. Someone must have understood that the facility was compromised and gave the order to evacuate. They hadn't seen me come down the stairs from above so I had the element of surprise. Two of the goons were smart, they were wearing full armour including helmets. One smart goon and one stupid goon were guarding the children while the other two were each opening a cell. Shooting the stupid goon in the back of his head as he was turned away from me I shifted aim to the second goon and only managed to deplete his shields when he opened fire. Letting my shields absorb it I leaped forward and unsheathed my combat knife. Using my momentum I drove the blade straight through the armour as I collided with the goon and drove him to the ground. The other two goons were already turning towards me and I rapid fired my Karpov until it overheated into the second smart goon. His shield broke on the fifth shot and another four ended his life. As I was about to rush the last goon he was lifted off the ground and sent flying into the wall with enough force to crack his head against it, dazing him. Next to me a scrawny teenage kid stood with two arms raised in the direction the goon had been sent flying and panting deeply. I unfolded the shogun and finished the Cerberus goon off.

"Thanks." I said. Grabbing the omni-tool from the goon I put it on boy's wrist and switched on the map mode putting a marker on the roof, "Here, this will guide you to the roof a shuttle will be there it will take you to safety."

"Thank you." he said and nodded as I went to unlock the other cells. There were seventeen kids alive. Most of them needed medical attention but all I could give them right now was a chance to escape. Leaving them to the leadership of the kid who helped me I went on, quickly sending a message for Kal'leena to land the shuttle. There was only Jack left.

As I got across the room with the makeshift fight ring I saw a guy in a lab coat flying right into the wall, the crunch that accompanied his face hitting the wall sounded quite final. As I turned the corner I saw Jack pound another scientist with her biotics enhanced fists. They must have been covered by small warp fields as the level of damage seemed far too excessive for a girl her size. Blood splatter flying freely with every punch, coating her and the walls. I put my pistol on my hip, letting the gun fold up and secure itself.

"Jack. I am not going to hurt you. I came to help you." I said but that didn't seem to draw the response I wanted. She stopped beating the scientist, rose to her feet, her fists clenched and glowing, ready to attack. This was never going to be easy was it?

Secondary Codex Entry/Human Biotics

As biotic potential is tied to the presence of element zero in the nervous system, before 2148 there were no human biotics. However due to poor understanding of element zero and it's effect on human biology the rapid expansion of it's use by humanity in the years following lead to a high rate of exposure among the population on Earth and in various colony worlds. Element zero storage and containment was also insufficient leading to millions of people being exposed in a short time period before the first victims of these exposures were apparent. It was not until years later when the children born of such exposures started to develop health issues outside of known science of the time that the governments of Earth and Alliance started a systematic track and trace program. But by then it was too late. Millions of children would be born exposed to element zero, many would die without ever being properly diagnosed and treated. But few, no more than one in ten, would develop element zero nodules in the right places in their bodies allowing them to use biotics. It wasn't until after the First Contact War and several scientific exchanges with asari and salarians that the existence of human biotics and the effort to train them would start in earnest. Efforts by many Earth governments would be set up to help and train these children but none would be as infamous as BAaT. Biotic Acclimation and Temperance program would be the largest set up, to handle biotics from countries that were unwilling or unable to set up their own biotic school programs. Unfortunately for the children the people chosen to run the program would be Conatix Industries, a corporation that somehow was chosen without consultation from the Alliance oversight council.

Conatix Industries would go on a recruiting drive, using fear and greed to motivate parents of biotic children to give them up, sometimes relinquishing parental rights altogether. It wasn't until an accident that resulted in the death of a turian mercenary hired to train these children that the BAaT and Conatix would be investigated and subsequently shut down in 2169.

Current(2175) estimates are that there are a between hundred thousand and three hundred thousand potential human biotics living at the moment with more born every day. New programs set up by Alliance and governments of Earth in conjunction with asari have proven to be more effective with much better safety records. Current notable biotic schools not run by Alliance are Skye Academy on the Isle of Skye, Kronstadt Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, Fukuoka Harmony College and Casablanca International School for the Gifted. Locations of Alliance biotic training facilities are considered sensitive information and are not available for public information.