"Okay Kelly," Shepard said, "I'm going to need you to explain everything that has happened over the last three days. Take your time."
They were sitting in Afterlife, Shepard, Garrus and Kelly all around a table. The stripper had been politely but firmly asked to leave, giving the trio a measure of privacy. Zaeed was holding a respectful distance as he surveyed the club around them for any signs of trouble. A shot of liquor was brought for the table and Kelly sank it down quickly.
"Another one" Shepard ordered, transferring the credits as the waitress left to go fulfil the order. "Now, start from the beginning, and don't leave out any details."
Kelly shrugged. "After we held the ceremony for Jax's family, there wasn't much to do. Jax suggested we go purchase some food, make a change from all the rations we had been living on. That's when we met her."
"Who?" Garrus asked.
Kelly sank down the second shot as she flashed back into the memory.
"That's crap, that's crap, that's freeze dried crap, calling that crap would be an understatement" Jax listed off as they walked amongst the food stalls in the Omega market, purveying the goods on offer.
"That doesn't look so bad" Kelly said, looking at a stall in front of them.
Jax leaned over it. "Not if you're a turian. If you don't have dextro DNA, you're in for a bit of reaction."
Kelly leaned back, deciding quickly that she would let Jax take full charge of what to purchase. Jax led her into the next aisle. "This doesn't look half bad" he murmured, examining a line of hanging meat.
"What is it?" Kelly asked sceptically.
"Klixen meat" Jax grinned, "imagine mixing a hybrid of crab meat and space cow and you're on the right track."
"You've eaten crab before?" Kelly asked. "On Omega, with no major water sources?"
"I've tried crab before" Jax replied, "at least I think it was crab. Some batarians consider hanar to be a delicacy, hoping that's not what I got."
As Jax started haggling for a price, Kelly looked around. She could see down several alleys towards vendors of different goods, mostly scrap and ship parts. One held an older human woman, clearly agitated as she and the human vendor berated each other loudly. "Jax" she nudged him as the argument escalated again, clearly over the piece of hardware in between them, some sort of computer.
Jax looked and sighed. "Fine, take it. But any food poisoning and I'm throwing you out an airlock" he warned the vendor, paying the full price. "Let's go see what that's about" he told Kelly as they left the market. As they approached, they could hear the woman shouting. "I'm with the Alliance and I need this, doesn't patriotism mean anything to you?"
"Patriotism doesn't feed my children lady" the vendor shot back. "And my price is reasonable, I am not selling you my salvage at cost!"
"I'm not asking for cost but what you're asking for is extortion!" The woman yelled. She tried to snatch at the piece but the vendor had already grabbed a stun baton and shocked her in the chest as she lunged forward.
"Whoa, hey, easy!" Jax called as he quickly stepped between them, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. Kelly helped the woman back up from her feet. "There's no need for violence, what's going on here?"
"She tried to rob me" the vendor accused. "I got cameras, they're going to throw you off the station!" He yelled at the woman.
Jax rolled his eyes. "If thievery got you exiled, this station would be an empty shell long ago" he told the vendor. "Go about your business, we'll take her with us."
"Who are you?" Jax asked the old woman after they had escorted her away. They were still near the Omega markets, having purchased three drinks at an Asari tea stall for the right to sit at their tables.
"My name is Doctor Amanda Kenson" the woman replied.
"And you're with the Alliance?" Kelly inquired.
Kenson looked nervous as she held her silence.
"It's okay" Jax assured her, "we work for a woman with pro-Alliance interests. We can help."
"My mission is above top secret" Kenson told them, "but I've run out options. I've been given a task by Admiral Hackett."
"The highest ranked officer in the fleet" Kelly said. "What could be so important?"
"Reapers" Jax guessed.
Kenson nodded. "They're close, closer than any of us realised. I was part of a team deployed to find out how close, give us a timeline for establishing a defence. That research operation has now become far more desperate."
"What do you mean?"
"We found an object that reacts in proximity to Reapers" Kenson explained. "We termed it 'Object Rho'. Using it, we could determine their distance from the object and calculate their speed. The Reapers are four days away from reaching the Alpha Relay in the Bahak System of the Viper Nebula, once they reach it, the entire galaxy could be overrun within a week."
"The Viper Nebula?" Kelly asked. "That's on the fringes of Batarian space, the Hegemony has claimed it as sovereign territory."
"I'm well aware" Kenson replied, "and that claim won't do a thing to stop the Reapers."
"And what is your strategy for stopping them?" Jax asked.
"I'm purchasing…" Kenson stopped herself. "Trying to purchase" she amended, "as much ordinance as I can get my hands on and detonators to blow them."
"For what purpose?" Kelly asked.
Kenson locked eyes with her. "I plan to load a ship with enough explosives to ignite a supernova and a guidance system to direct it into the one thing that can stop them."
"If the Reapers are legion, one kamikaze vessel won't stop them" Jax said.
"I'm not going to target the Reapers" Kenson said, "I'll target the mass relay."
"That can stop them?" Jax asked.
"No," Kenson replied, "but it will force them into using FTL travel to reach the next relay before they can hit the rest of the galaxy. We can turn four days into six months. I don't need to tell you the lives we can save with that time; it may end up winning us the inevitable war. That's what this project is designed to achieve."
"But destroying the mass relay…" Jax began.
"Will annihilate everyone and everything in the system, I am aware" Kenson said. "Including a batarian colony with three hundred thousand inhabitants, we've done the math and considered the situation from every possible angle. This is our only option."
"Three hundred thousand?" Kelly echoed.
"Batarians" Kenson clarified.
"Innocents" Kelly corrected.
"Asserting your only option is to vaporise three hundred thousand innocent lives is more than a bold claim" Jax said sternly. "I assume you have evidence to substantiate that claim?"
"I do, but back at the base my team established in the system" Kenson explained.
"Somehow I doubt the batarians are in on this 'project'" Kelly commented.
"We're facing an intergalactic war with a far superior threat" Kenson said, "I won't risk weakening humanity with a menial one in the time we can spend preparing for the real war. Our base is hidden in the asteroid field."
"What do you need to finish your 'project'?" Jax asked, leaning forward.
"The flight guidance computer module" Kenson said, "I had an agreement with that vendor to purchase it at a set price. When I arrived on the station, he had raised the price substantially. I do not have the funds to purchase it."
"Shouldn't have given away how badly you needed it" Jax told her, "vendors are predatory here, they can tell the value of an item by who's purchasing it."
"And now I need to find another one and return to my base immediately" Kenson told him. "Or kill that merchant."
"That's a bad joke" Kelly told her.
Kenson looked back at her humourlessly. "I've come to a decision to enact a course of action that will result in three hundred thousand deaths. One more is not even a drop in that pool of shrouded morality."
"We can help" Jax told her. "We have funds through our own interests. We can assist with the purchase and I'll help with the installation."
"Are you skilled with ordinance?" Kenson asked.
"I've had demolitions training from a former STG operative" Jax said. "I've lived on this station nearly the majority of my life so I understand and speak most forms of Batarian if your translators glitch as often as ones from Harrot did. I also have experience with suicide missions, any questions?"
"There's a lot I could question about that statement" Kenson replied, "but frankly, I'd be endangering trillions if I turned down any help that could be even remotely useful."
"Then it's settled" Jax said, activating his omnitool. He transferred Kenson access to the bottomless Cerberus account of credits with a few taps. "Make the purchases you need to, do you have a shuttle?"
Kenson nodded.
"Send me its coordinates" Jax told her, "be ready for take-off in an hour."
The trio left, Jax and Kelly going their separate ways. "Were you even going to discuss this with me?" Kelly asked once they had got home.
"Wasn't much to discuss" Jax replied, "you heard her Kelly; Reapers, trillions of lives, destroying a mass relay. That's not something we can leave to chance."
"And what about Shepard?" Kelly asked. "What about the Collectors, assuming she gets that IFF, we are going to make a run through the Omega 4 Relay in three days at the most."
"If everything goes to plan, I'll be waiting here when she comes to pick us up" Jax said. "Half a day's travel there, a day to finish The Project, half a day to get back, I'll be gone two days at best."
"And what if you're not?" Kelly asked.
"Then you can tell Shepard where I've gone and why" Jax said. He exhaled and sat down. "I was never meant to be on the Normandy" he said absently. "I was never meant to survive the gangs that Sidonis betrayed us to. But I did, and I have been desperately looking for a purpose ever since, something more than just a distraction. Shepard has the best team in the galaxy and I'm just… me."
He looked back up at Kelly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to fight with Shepard, I believe in her mission and I will do whatever it takes to achieve it but it doesn't need me to succeed, Shepard could do this without me. The Project, Kenson, that might need me." He stood up and approached Kelly, taking her hands. "This needs to be done and I have the power to do it. You have to let me go" he told her, "and trust that I will come back to you."
Kelly felt her resolve to keep Jax crumbling. "Two days" she finally said. "Two days and a moment more, and you'll be sorry."
"I'll keep the seconds counting down" he told her as he stowed the rest of his gear into his bag. An alert went off on his omnitool; it was time to leave. Kelly crossed the room kissed him hard, holding him close by his shirt, and then let him go. "Come back to me" she whispered.
"Always" Jax told her. Turning, he walked out the door and it closed behind him.
"That was the last time I saw him" Kelly told Shepard. "He left and never returned, no contact of any kind."
"So what about that makes you think he's dead?" Garrus asked.
Kelly looked at him, wiping her eyes as she took another drink. "After the second day and Jax failed to return, I went to Aria's second in command, Anto Korragan."
"We've met, what of him?" Shepard asked.
"I heard rumours he had ties to the Hegemony" Kelly explained, "I asked if he could find out any information about Jax."
"And did he?" Garrus quizzed.
Kelly nodded. "He came back to me with one thing; Thra'ash A'garn." From across the floor, Zaeed turned his head ever so minutely.
Shepard gave the side of her helmet a few knocks. "I think my translator just glitched, say that again?"
Kelly shook her head. "It didn't translate for me either, Anto told me what it meant; it meant Jax is in Hell. He told me to mourn, that he was never coming back, that he…" She trailed off, trying to say it. "That he was dead."
"You're sure?" Garrus asked, his hand curled into a fist, barely concealed shaking wracking through it.
Kelly nodded.
Zaeed had made his way over to the table. "I think I heard that through Shepard's radio" he said. "But did you say 'Thra'ash A'garn'?"
Kelly nodded. "It means death."
"It represents death" Zaeed told her, "it doesn't mean death."
"You've heard the word before Zaeed?" Shepard asked.
"There's a reason it's not translating Shepard" Zaeed told her. "It's not a word, it's a name, a place."
"Where?" Shepard asked.
"Ever been to Batarian prison?" Zaeed asked her. "If they don't trust you enough to sell you into slavery, that's where they send you. In there you've got either two choices; bash your head open on the wall or kill everyone between you and the exit. They're horror stories, nightmare stuff. The shit I've seen in there changes you. And Thra'ash A'garn is the worst of them all, it's become so secretive and notorious that even most Batarians don't believe it exists anymore. I've learned a loose bit of batarian in my time, enough to know what the name means."
"What does it mean?" Shepard asked.
"It means 'The Hellpit'" Zaeed answered her.
"And Jax was sent there two days ago" Garrus finished.
"We need to rescue him" Shepard said, "and we need to establish the status of The Project as well. If we're caught between the Reapers and the Collectors, this war is lost before it's already begun."
"Shepard" EDI radioed, "I have sent out several scans. The Alpha Relay in the Bahak System of the Viper Nebula is still active. It appears, for the moment at least, that The Project has thus far proved unsuccessful."
"Then it's even more important we go there, and that we go there now" Shepard said, rising quickly. "All hands on deck, Joker; prepare for immediate take-off."
"Roger that" Joker said, initiating the sequence.
"Let's go" Shepard said, leading them out of Afterlife.
"Glad to be out of here" Zaeed remarked, "most battlefields wouldn't see half as much combat and fatalities as this place. Places like this are slaughterhouses dressed up as nightclubs, I shit you not."
As Joker pushed the Normandy to the brink of its already impressive limits, Shepard had Zaeed detail everything he knew about the Hellpit. "Arotoht" he told her, "it's a wet mossy rock good for nothing except plausible deniability. The batarians maintain an outpost here. Plenty go in, none go out."
"Standard batarian procedure when they don't want to admit they have someone is to feed them to varren" Garrus said, "how do you know this isn't the same procedure?"
"Do you know how to hide the worst prison in the galaxy from everyone?" Zaeed asked. "You stick it right under their noses. The outpost isn't the prison; it doesn't have the space to hold the amount of people they send there. Arotoht has massive geothermal chambers underneath it, mazes of caverns and tunnels carved out by lava, steam and burrowing animals. They hide their best prison right underneath their most pathetic one and no one in this galaxy is any the wiser."
"So we break into the Arotoht Outpost and we get into the Hellpit" Shepard said.
"Not so easy" Zaeed rebuffed. "The Hellpit only has one way in, an elevator that drops you right into this main cavern. The main cavern is the hottest part of the entire place; the heat drives you into the tunnels where you get lost or hunted down by whatever else is down there."
"How does anyone survive?" Shepard asked.
"They don't" Zaeed replied bluntly, "that's why it's synonymous with death. Your boy has already been in there two days, that's the most important period. If he's alive, he's managed to withstand the other prisoners and maybe get lucky in hunting something. Smart odds says he's dead already."
"If he's at this prison, there's a likely chance that Dr Kenson is too" Shepard said, "our mission is to extract them both and finish The Project before the Reapers' arrival. According to Kenson's intelligence from Kelly, the Reapers were due to arrive in the system in four days, three days ago. Time is crucial here."
"How do we approach this Shepard?" Garrus asked, "guns blazing?"
"You're going to attack a facility that is the claimed territory of the Batarian Hegemony" Miranda rebuffed. "This isn't Omega, this isn't some hidden mercenary base in a remote system in the Far Rim, this is an official, recognised government. You go in guns blazing and there's a good chance you set off a war between the Hegemony and the Alliance."
"Which was exactly the opposite of Kenson's agenda" Shepard agreed. "We go in covert. If it was just Kenson from the outpost I needed to take, ordinarily I'd propose I go in alone but given the complications; I'll take Zaeed for his previous experience with batarian prisons, and Grunt."
"Grunt?" Garrus asked, clearly taken aback she hadn't chosen him. "For a covert operation? I don't mean to question you Shepard but you just said you needed a surgical operation with precision and then just picked a sledgehammer to do it with."
"Grunt will fight how his battle master tells him to fight" Shepard replied. "And once we're in the prison, we will need a tracker. Grunt's sense of smell can detect blood with the precision of a shark, and since no one else has suitable qualifications for the job, I'll take what I can get."
Garrus looked down. "Understood."
"I'll find him" Shepard promised.
The air shimmered as the shuttle's engines softened coming in to land. The door hissed open as Shepard emerged first, assault rifle at the ready, flanked by Zaeed and Grunt. "We're on the ground" Shepard reported as the shuttle took off again quickly. "Any signs we've been detected?"
"Negative" Joker reported back, "EDI's cyberwarfare suite is flooding them with interference, they wouldn't even detect a meteorite until after it hit them."
"Copy that" Shepard replied, "going silent."
The rain pelted down as they made their way towards a rocky opening Zaeed had directed them to. "Most batarian prisons situate themselves on top of varren dens to take care of corpses, means it's not that hard to get in. Getting out is where it's usually a bitch but there's very few prisoners who'd be packing as much heat as we are."
"This must be where they send their prisoners to die" Shepard said, looking at the dozens of varren tracks.
"Dead prisoners come here" Zaeed said, "the living get sent much further down."
"Lots of dead meat here" Grunt confirmed, his nostril twitching. "But its old, there's no fear. Whoever is here met their end somewhere else, probably died screaming."
"Let's hope Jax and Kenson aren't among them" Shepard said, moving forward. Eventually the tunnels turned into built corridors, shifting into the batarian installation. Laser grids separating the prison from the feeding den were quickly bypassed as Shepard and her team moved quickly through the prison, still remaining undiscovered thanks to the lack of guards.
Shepard suddenly raised a fist as they heard a raised voice. "Get your hands of me!" They were clearly on the right track to where the prisoners were detained.
The prison was rundown, decrepit, the lax nature of the security made Shepard uneasy. This was a secret batarian outpost used to torture foreign citizens, the last thing they would expect if someone were to find this place would be to keep quiet about it but that didn't mean they shouldn't be vigilant against infiltration. The team halted quickly again suddenly; they could hear new voices.
"Are our systems back online?" One voice asked. The tone was obviously batarian.
"Yeah" the other said, "it was only a minor error, probably the rain getting into the systems and shorting our connections to the instruments."
"Go outside and check" the other ordered. "We discovered the human planning to crash a meteor into the mass relay, anything's possible at this point."
"Can they even do that?" The other asked.
"What difference does it make? We caught 'em. Now go outside and check the systems."
Kenson was still alive Shepard realised, they were still holding her in the outpost. That meant she hadn't given up the information the batarians needed about the Project, not yet at least. The Project seemed to have changed though, from Kelly's intel they had been planning to send a ship loaded with explosives into the mass relay. That ship seemed to have now upgraded into an asteroid. Shepard dismissed the thoughts for now; they could worry about the Project later. For now, Kenson was the priority target, they would secure her first, and then Jax. Grunt raised his shotgun as the first guard left the room but Shepard shook her head; they needed to get Kenson alive. If they started a firefight here, there was every chance they would kill Kenson rather than losing her. Grunt seemed irritated but bowed to her command and the trio moved further into the heart of the prison. The guards' overconfidence was more and more on display with the amount of turned backs, not investigating small noises, the fact that a krogan was moving through the facility unobstructed was a black mark against them. The next room they reached was seemingly a kitchen, but every shelf was full of random junk, from old weapons to credit chits to data pads and terminals, it was a mess.
"This is the crap they confiscate from prisoners" Zaeed told her, "anything and everything they can get their grubby little hands on."
Shepard was about to question further as she quietly opened another draw and turned cold. Inside were a number of Jax's signature grenades. He had been processed here. "Let's keep moving and find the little bugger" Zaeed said, seeing the same thing.
An empty lounge held a data pad, Shepard cautiously played it, hearing a guard complain about the lack of days off. Most of it was useless rambling, but one line stuck out. "…now there's humans in the prison below…" Jax. Others as well by the sound of it but Jax had been alive when they had thrown him in the Pit, that was something at least. The next log they found was of an official nature, logged by a security officer. They had found Kenson through comm buoy intercepts, that was interesting. Why would they have been making communications at all? That was the most likely way to be caught on high risk assignments behind enemy lines.
The next room offered a window, a woman strapped to a stretcher held upright with a machine claw keeping her face secured and blasting it with light. Kelly's description of Amanda Kenson was perfect, Shepard recognised her immediately. It was a quick route to head down the next hallway and violently disable her interrogator.
"Who are you?" Kenson asked, "what are you doing?"
"Doctor Kenson, I'm Commander Shepard" the soldier introduced herself. "I'm here to get you out."
"Shepard?" Kenson repeated, "I'd heard you were alive."
"We're not safe here" Shepard said quickly, activating the release on the restraints. "Can you walk?"
"I'm fine" Kenson replied, pulling herself free. "Just give me a moment."
"There's no time" Shepard said, "we have to get you out of here now. When was the last time you saw Jax?"
"Two days ago, when I was taken to this room" Kenson replied, "they were escorting your compatriot as well. They took him further down that corridor. The guards who were taking him left and to the best of my knowledge, no one has visited him since, not even for the times prisoners are provided food and water."
"We'll find him" Shepard said. "Zaeed, take Kenson and contact the Normandy to send in the shuttle, kill anyone in your way, just keep her alive. We'll make our own way out."
"Understood" Zaeed growled, cocking his rifle. He and Kenson exited the room and went right, back up the corridor from where they came whilst Shepard and Grunt headed left, breaking new ground. The corridor they found themselves in was a stretch of empty cells, barred doors rusted black. It had clearly been a long time since the batarians had found any use for holding anyone alive. At the end of the door was an elevator. Shepard looked at Grunt briefly, then opened the door and stepped in.
The descent was long, the elevator rumbled and shook as it dropped deeper and deeper into the bowels of the planet. The Hellpit seemed to live up to its name as the atmosphere began to become uncomfortably hot inside the elevator, beads of sweat grew to stick Shepard's fringe to her skin, the inside of her armour became sweltering. The elevator stopped with a crash and the doors hissed open to reveal blackness. Shepard leaned out and surveyed the landscape. The elevator had only descended to hang in the middle of a chamber. The drop below was short enough to survive being thrown out of but too high to get back the same way you were thrown in. There was plenty of safe places to land but Shepard eyed the orange glow that rose out of the crevices between rocky platelets, the source of heat was obvious. Shepard nodded to Grunt and the pair jumped, landing safely. "Grunt?" Shepard asked.
Grunt closed his eyes and sniffed, taking in all the scents. "Meat. But there's others" he said, "there's sweat, and fear. The varren don't just hunt here Shepard, they play. If they wanted us simply for food, they would have swarmed this place when they heard us coming in the elevator. No, they want us to run, they want to turn us into sport."
"Can you tell where Jax is?" Shepard asked.
Grunt took another sniff. "No," he replied, "but the smell of meat is strongest from that direction. That's a place to start."
The pair took off down the corridor Grunt had indicated. As they proceeded further through the Hellpit, more of its appalling nature became clear to Shepard. There were two immediate options presented to someone thrown in here. Corridors that rose or went lower. The corridors that ramped back towards the surface seemed like the obvious choice, that was the only path that led to escape but the corridors doubled as geothermal vents for these chambers, the air grew hotter, the temperatures more unbearable. Be caught during an eruption of steam and be boiled to death by the air. The path that went lower gave reprieve from the hotter temperatures but of course took you further from hope of escape. Escape or survive, it was a brutal choice to pick a path that favoured one but not the other. The varren knew it too, Grunt could smell them lying in wait. Barks echoed down the walls, seemingly coming from everywhere. They called to each other, and their prey, laughing like hyenas. This was their territory, they had adapted large eyes to see better in the dark, shorter legs to keep them close to the ground where the air was cooler and powerful jaws to help them kill efficiently. Being the main form of life down here had made them cannibalistic, weeding out the weak until now only the strongest, most lethal hunters remained. Grunt paused only briefly at every fork, Shepard noting a mix of choices between raising and descending corridors, Jax clearly keeping his path random to attempt to throw off the hunt. It was a poor attempt though, down so deep the varren had long learned to hunt with limited ability to vision. Thankfully Shepard's rifle came with a torch so she didn't have to be the same.
Grunt stopped suddenly, dipping a finger into the dirt, raising it to his nose and taking a cautious scent. "Blood" he stated, "human. One died here, maybe a day ago, maybe more."
Shepard looked around, there was nothing besides a patch of darkened dirt to suggest that. The varren clearly did not waste food. "Can you tell where to go next?"
Grunt nodded. "One of them tried to help, got bloody themselves. The scent is wrong though; it's not just flesh."
"Jax took his cybernetic arm with him, could that be it?" Shepard asked.
Grunt nodded. "Maybe."
They rounded the next corner and Shepard's torch fell on a bloody palm print on the wall. It was about the same size as hers but it gave her no leads, save that Grunt was on the right track. As they continued to move, they found remains, but they weren't human. "That looks like a varren skeleton" Shepard noted.
Grunt nodded as he pulled off a rib and smelt it. "Fresh" he said, "its kin stripped it of meat."
"Its skull is missing" Shepard noted cautiously.
Grunt nodded. "They didn't do this. A fight happened here, victims on both sides. The humans laid in wait, trying to ambush this one. They didn't realise it was already hunting them."
"Come on" Shepard said, pushing forward faster now, urgency driving her every step. "We need to hurry."
"Why?" Grunt asked. "All that's ahead is dead meat."
Shepard stopped. "All?" She asked.
Grunt nodded.
Shepard felt a stone of dread form in the pit of her stomach. "Let's hurry anyway, before the varren get bolder."
They rounded the next corner to find the varren skull, and a corpse. The body was male, facing away from them. Shepard lowered her rifle slowly as Grunt took two steps forward and rolled the body over with his leg.
There was a snapping sound and Grunt roared in anger and pain. Shepard rushed forward to see. The body wasn't Jax, but that wasn't what had made Grunt roar. The varren skull had been under the body, rigged into a rudimentary booby trap, snapping shut around Grunt's leg, blood oozing out of the punctures above the ankle. There was the sound of running footsteps behind them. Shepard wheeled around, pointing her assault rifle as a figure came around the corner, a varren fang in each hand bared like daggers. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw the pair. Shepard illuminated him with her torch, he was covered in dirt all over, eyes wide as he tried to catch his breath. The figure raised a hand as the light shone in his eyes, revealing a sliver of reflective plastic where the artificial skin had melted away. "Jax?" Shepard asked.
Jax took a slow step forward, his lips were cracked, eyes red and ringed with exhaustion. His clothes were torn and blood was both dried and fresh at a dozen points on his limbs. "Shepard?" He whispered, dropping the fangs. He took another step forward, trying to see beyond the torch light. "Is that you?"
Shepard sheathed the assault rifle. "It's me Jax, you're safe" she told him as he collapsed into her arms, able to relax for the first moment. She looked back as Grunt ripped the varren jaws off his leg from behind them. "Can you find us a way out of here?"
"You want the safe way or the quick way?" Grunt asked.
Shepard looked back at Jax, fast losing grip on his consciousness. "Quick" she said, pulling him onto her shoulders and rising.
Grunt grinned as he cocked his shotgun, feeling the adrenaline pumping from the smell of his own blood and the endorphins from the pain. "Good."
"Dehydration, exhaustion, photophobia, a large number of bites, cuts, abrasions and burns, all in all I'd say you're very lucky to be alive" Dr Chakwas told Jax as she completed her report.
Jax nodded from the table, an IV feeding into his arm. He'd been asleep for almost ten hours now, having succumbed to exhaustion on the shuttle. Garrus was assigned to his debrief but Jax had questions first. "Where's Shepard?" He asked.
"She flew with Doctor Kenson to their asteroid base to evaluate the status of the Project" Garrus told him, "which, I might add, sounds like complete insanity. Why?"
The grim look in Jax's eyes told Garrus they weren't out of this mess yet. "She's flying into a trap."