Disclaimer: The Mass Effect universe is the property of Bioware/Electronic Arts. No infringement of these copyrights is intended as this is a not for profit fan fiction work.
Rewrite Notes: Still inspired by the Beyonce song "Save the Hero," from the album I am…Sasha Fierce.
Author's Notes: Notice that I do not mention in any way that the prison ship Purgatory is associated with the Blue Suns. That is because in this AU the Blue Suns are an all Human mercenary group…no Turians and definitely no Batarians. Purgatory, as was initially described is a Terminus Systems prison ship run by turians. Also…ME3 and Andromeda showed off some amazing biotic defensive talents (I'm thinking of Ms. I can shield half of a ship, Sarissa) that I'm planning on bringing into this story.
Revision History: 11/21/2017; 12/20/2017 (Jacob's a biotic opps); 6/6/2018 (more corrections due to having forgotten Jacob was a biotic)
Part 1: Chapter 5::30 hrs. Post Awakening: Prison Ship Purgatory
Shepard had sensed that something was wrong the first time she had met Warden Kuril, it was something in his voice and in his manner which gave it away. Therefore his betrayal, when it came, was actually something of a relief. A confirmation of her suspicions, and an end to the pretense of behaving as if nothing was wrong. Not to mention that it gave her something to do besides focusing on ignoring the claustrophobic feeling the helmet was giving her, and the whispering in the back of her mind about whether or not there was actually enough air to breathe. When she got through with this mission she would definitely be visiting Chakwas to take care of this before it got any worse, she vowed.
Through the speakers in her helmet she caught the sound of a derisive snort from Miranda as Kuril informed them that they had more value as prisoners than as buyers. They had sent in the FENRIS mech right after the Warden's announcement. These were one of the quicker mechs, and were usually equipped with very powerful taser devices in their 'heads' which were powerful enough to shock most sentients into unconsciousness. Miranda never let them get close enough however, summoning her biotics and sending a quick singularity toward the only entrance into the room, the doors that separated it from the hallway outside. They might be trapped in here, but the single entrance funneled their attackers into a very convenient kill zone. As soon as the singularity pulled the four FENRIS mechs into it, Shepard announced, "Detonating," for Miranda's benefit and sent a warp in its direction. The resulting detonation from the two dark energy fields coming into contact with one another was powerful enough to destroy the mechs caught up within its effect.
Not wanting to lose their current attack tempo or the initiative they had gained with it, Shepard called out, "Move up!" knowing that the microphone in her helmet would securely transmit the command to both of her teammates. She then immediately charged toward the door, winding up just beside of the opening. She took a quick glance around the doorway as she pulled a few grenades from her utility belt. There were six guards rushing toward her position, and without over thinking it she summoned her biotics and thrust forward her arm, releasing an unusually, at least for her…or the old her, powerful shockwave. The biotic attack lifted and pushed back the attackers, leaving them sprawled upon the ground - vulnerable. Shepard activated two of the grenades, set one to fragment and the other to incinerate and then threw them one at a time down the hall, then ducked back into cover. A second later and the two grenades detonated one after the other, the incinerate first followed by the flash of the explosion and screams and then the fragmentation grenade which cut off quite a bit of the screaming. She glanced out once again…took in the smears of blue blood on the floors and walls. Not many of the turians were moving and those that were - she took aim and began firing.
"On your left," Jacob announced as he pounded up. Throwing himself into position on the other side of the doorway he began firing as well, his body shimmering with the bluish-white energy of a barrier. He was a bit late, but at least he was here now. Miranda…she spared a quick glance behind her, spotting the other woman, her body also tightly wreathed in the indigo-white of a barrier kneeling behind a table. It provided almost no protection, but did give her and excellent field of fire down the hallway. It only took the three of them a few seconds to mop up the few guards who remained alive after the two grenades.
Shepard leaned out into the hallway once again. The clear armored glass that lined the hallways gave her an excellent view of both the hallway in front of her and the branching hallway that led to the super-max wing, both were clear at the moment. Odd, the guards should have prepared for this and should have setup defensive positions as soon as they entered the room, thought Shepard. Had they really expected a few mechs and guards to be enough to deal with them? Still she was not about to complain at the enemies' failure to properly prepare some sufficiently manned defensive positions. With one hand she motioned toward the branch about 7 meters away, "Moving," she alerted the other two just seconds before she suited action to words. Honestly at this point, Shepard thought as she took cover at the intersection, she wasn't exactly sure if she were still charging or performing something that previously she had thought only asari capable of with their innate level of control over their natural biotics - a flash step. "Jacob, Miranda other side of the hallway, Miranda you're on rear guard, watch out for reinforcements from the way we came in."
No sooner had the two of them gotten into position than the prison guards showed that they did have some tactical sense. The doors opened from the way they had come in, disgorging more FENRIS mechs and guards at the same time as Jacob's warning shout about more guards coming from the super-max wing. There was no cover here and they were about to be flanked, should she engage or retreat? "Suppressive fire, Jacob, fix them in place," as he glanced over at her, his disagreement with her command clear in his expression, she waved her hand toward the guards coming from the super-max wing, "Miranda and I will take care of the others."
She heard him utter a sharply questioning "Shepard?" right before she flash-stepped, and definitely this time she knew it was a flash step, over to the side of the hallway across from the dark-haired woman. She threw out her hand and concentrated on extending her personal barrier into a spherical shaped bubble that covered the entire group. Concentration, focus and control, Shepard thought, recalling both Lindariel's instructions and what she had learned from the dream of the musician. Her barrier firmed, the indigo-white streamers of dark energy arranging themselves into an ordered lattice. She would have never tried this before her death, for she had been only an average at best biotic and extending her barrier like this would have provided at best only a few seconds of protection. The advancing guards were firing upon them, but from the inside of the bluish-white sphere the impacts simply rippled the mass effect field like raindrops seen from below the surface of a still pond.
Out of the corner of her eye Shepard caught Miranda staring at her wide-eyed, and quickly snapped out, "More shooting and less staring Lawson, singularity then grenades followed up by a warp." That jarred the Cerberus operative out of her stupefaction, as the other woman quickly began following her instructions, allowing Shepard to focus her attention on maintaining the barrier that was protecting all of them. Lindariel's instructions, beyond training in the fine control of mass effect fields, could also be labeled 'How To Get The Most Out Of Every Joule Of Your Biotics'. Shepard had noticed that when she had managed to get ready in time to take a half hour and practice a few of them. She had grabbed an energy bar afterward, but had not really found herself really needing it. The techniques did focus on control, but a lot of that was producing the minimal amount of dark energy needed for the biotic power to be effective. As a result, right now she wasn't really expending that much of her biotic reserves to hold the spherical barrier in place. In scale of difficulty, keeping her focus on exactly how the barrier should be formed in order maintain its highly-coherent dark energy field felt like it took more effort than actually powering it.
The triple assault she had suggested to Miranda proved highly successful, the other biotic casting a singularity right in the middle of the oncoming groups formation which had pulled several of them off their feet. The operative had immediately followed it up with two grenades and then without pausing a threw a warp field after them, detonating her own singularity. All of this took place within the span of less than ten seconds, quite impressive thought Shepard. That had left only two FENRIS mechs and one guard still alive and able to fight at the end of it and they were closing upon them fast. With a grunt of effort Shepard expanded her barrier field, knocking back the oncoming mechs and guard. Still recovering from the effort of expanding her barrier Shepard choose to simply lift her rifle and start firing at them, for the moment letting her kinetic shield protect her from the return fire of the sole remaining prison guard. A few bursts later, first one and then the other mech were destroyed, and the guard quickly followed them.
Shepard drew in a breath as she whirled around, reforming her personal biotic barrier as she did so to reinforce her shields. Now doubly protected, she took a moment to assess the situation in the other corridor. Jacob had done an excellent job of fixing the second attack team of four guards in place, but without her extended barrier he was having to duck back into cover, which was giving them time to advance.
"Could use a little help here," he said, reinforcing her assessment. A quick flash step took Shepard across the opening to the other side, where she set herself against the wall. She focused on what she wanted to do, trusting in her newly strengthened biotic abilities - yet another question for Chakwas - in the next second she banished the distracting thought, leaned out and 'extended' her biotics toward the nearest guard. The bluish-white mass effect field surrounded him, lifting the turian guard from his feet to hang suspended and flailing in the air. If he yelled, she didn't know for the guards were just as armored up as her own team. She concentrated, altering the effect of the field and pulled the floating turian toward her, then with an alacrity she certainly hadn't been able to pull off before, and with as much force as possible, reversed the dark energy field and threw him at the oncoming guards.
The guard slammed into the others with enough power that they impacted with the clear walls of the corridor with enough force to actually crack the armored glass. The guard she had thrown, and one of the guards he had slammed into did not rise again and the two remaining guards did not live for much longer. A quick glance around confirmed that this was the last of their attackers, at least for the moment.
"How did you do that?!" Miranda exclaimed, striding up to her. "No human has yet managed to successfully perform a charge much less a flash-step, and your files implied you knew only how to form the basic personal barrier that the Alliance teaches all its biotics."
"You mean we knew of no human who knew how to charge until just now," Jacob corrected her and was rewarded with an annoyed glare for his effort.
"Not the time or place for a discussion on it," Shepard snapped at them with a disapproving frown. "Let's move," she ordered with a wave up the hallway, "before more reinforcements arrive." Suiting action to words, Shepard took off at an easy jog up the hallway, completely ignoring the other woman's protests. She jogged past the quartet of guards they had just killed and toward the doorway leading into the super-max wing of the prison where hopefully Jack would be located. "Jacob left side, Miranda right side," she ordered the two of them, motioning to where she wanted them to stand on either side of the big double door.
Miranda shot her a look as the operative passed by, "We're going to talk about it as soon as we return to the station. I'll get the lock."
"Appreciated," Shepard replied to the last while ignoring the first and then focused on strengthening her barrier. As the other woman worked on hacking the lock open, she took position next to Jacob. Her weapon was drawn and readied for the moment when the door opened, for there was no way to know what exactly they would find waiting for them on the other side. It turned out to be a single unarmored turian, standing in front of a console which was itself in front of a floor to ceiling windowed wall.
The turian turned toward them, "Shepard just unlocked…" that was as far as he got before she flash-stepped into the room, raised her arm and pulled him away from the console with her biotics. Really, she thought, surprised at the ease with which she transitioned from flash step to biotic pull, the more she used her biotics the easier it seemed to use them. Propelled by her pull, the turian rolled across the floor, finally coming to a rest face-down a few feet away from her. Once more she extended the field, this time to raise him into the air with one hand while with the other she reached out and yanked his sidearm, a pistol, from his hand. "Someone turn off that comm call and re-lock the door…maybe this time with a better encryption code." She took time to look around the room and noticed another door, and frowned at it. That gave them two entrances they needed to worry about guarding.
"I'll get the console," Jacob offered as he jogged over to it.
"I'll get the door," Miranda responded as she turned back toward the one they had just come through.
"See if you can do something about that second one as well please," Shepard commented as she moved so that she could both keep an eye on her turian prisoner and the two doorways. After that she waited for Jacob to tell her the console was no longer transmitting before asking, "Jacob, how does it look over there for finding this Jack?"
"Actually," he quickly responded, "Her cell is that one down there, they keep her in cryo-stasis. But that's the end of the good news, the bad is that I can't figure out a way to get her out of cryo without also releasing every prisoner in this cell block."
"Hmm," she murmured thoughtfully, as she watched Miranda finish locking down the one door and turn to the other one, "maybe we can find an alternative to that." She turned to her captive, who had been steadily threatening them with what would happen once the guards subdued them as he attempted to struggle against the biotic field holding him. Turning on the speakers in her helmet so the turian could hear her she said, "So my teammate over there tells me we have to unlock this whole cell block in order to get Jack down there out."
"You can't do that!" the turian interrupted her with a yell, "these are some of the worse criminals in the galaxy. Murders and killers all of them."
"Then give me an alternative," she responded in a cold tone, "otherwise I'll have no choice but to do just that. One way or another, I am leaving with Jack."
"But I can't!" the turian, a male with reddish colony markings shook his head, sounding frantic. "The Warden just locked down the wing from central control. I can't help you even if I wanted to! I'm telling the truth!"
Shepard glanced over toward Jacob who nodded, "From what I can tell he is telling the truth," he assured her, "the lock down came from a console with higher security precedence than this one. It can't override it. I have a program to hack it open, but as I said it will override the entire wing."
"That's unfortunate then," Shepard responded, looking back at the turian, "unless you can make a suggestion in the next five seconds I'm going to have to order him to unlock the wing."
Now the turian really looked frantic, "You can't do that! Look, maybe if you got local access you could do it by over-ridding the local console by her cell, but there are three YMIR mechs guarding it."
"Her?" Shepard had been assuming this Jack was a male. She chuckled, "So you've got her in cryo and still have three YMIR's assigned to her? What do you expect her to do from cryo?"
"You don't know, she's crazy!" the turian assured her earnestly. "She hates everyone and everything. You don't want to un-thaw her, really you don't!"
Shepard shrugged, "Yes I do, now you've been very cooperative so…" she pulled the now shouting turian closer and then very precisely struck him across the head with the butt of her rifle. Releasing the dark energy field, she stared down at the now unconscious guard, "Tie him up Jacob, then let's see about his suggestion."
"On it," Jacob replied, the barrier field around him fading as he came over while reaching into his hip pouch to pull out a restraining tie.
While he started restraining the turian, Shepard strode over to the windowed wall to stare down into the room beyond. As the guard had mentioned there were three motionless YMIR mechs standing in off-mode position on either side of the room facing Jack's cell. The cell itself was halfway lowered into the floor, probably where it interfaced with the mechanism that maintained Jack's cryo-stasis. Off to one side she saw a console; if the guard hadn't lied, that was where they might be able to unlock just this one cell.
"The quickest way out of here is just to unlock the entire cell block," Miranda strode over, her omni-tool already raised and active. "The prisoners will keep the guards too busy to organize another attack against us."
With a very annoyed growl, Shepard stepped in front of her. "You will cease trying to hack this console or you will never go on another mission with me," her tone was cold and clear. "The entire Terminus uses this prison ship. The Warden and guards might be corrupt, but if we let these prisoners go and they escape then the blame will be placed on the few humans out here…again. They don't need that, especially coming so soon after Cerberus' Trident debacle." She snorted in derision, "Unless that's Cerberus' plan, to force the humans out here to return to Citadel space. If so, then you're doing an excellent job of it."
"That's not our plan!" Miranda ground out, her face was flushed in anger. "Fine," she growled as she deactivated her omni-tool and took a step back, "but how were you even planning to get down there, much less deal with those YMIRs. You will recall how difficult the single one on Freedom's Progress was to deactivate."
Shepard allowed herself to relax as the operative stood down, "They are in monitoring mode right now, depending on their self-preservation settings it might not be very difficult at all."
"Yea," Jacob grunted as he rose from where he had just finished restraining the turian, "if they are set to only respond to Jack breaking out of cryo and are just running basic preservation codes then we can use remote detonated grenades against them. Most mech's in stand-by mode won't recognize them as a threat. Trick will be getting down there," he pointed to the second door, "maybe that's the way down?"
Miranda did not really look pleased with her comrade's helpful suggestion Shepard noted with amusement as she turned toward Jacob. "Maybe," she responded to him, "but there is a chance they might be set to activate if someone enters the room who's not authorized." She looked at the armored glass floor to ceiling windows separating them from the two-story tall room. "Let's try another way first," she said as she made her way around the console and over to the square of glass in the center. Raising her omni-tool she began a scan of the glass to get an idea of its composition and of its resonance frequency.
"What are you doing?" the dark-haired woman's tone was angrily challenging as she came over, "we can maybe break through this glass, but that seems likely to cause the mechs to activate."
Shepard smirked as the omni-tool returned some very favorable results. The glass was one solid three-inch thick sheet instead of more difficult layers. The tempering process that it went through to make it harder actually helped in this case as the molecular structure was, as a side effect, very regular which would actually make it easier to shatter with a resonance effect. "I'm not planning on breaking it by bluntly beating against it," she told the other woman as she lifted her right hand and pressed it close to the top right corner of the large glass pane. Closing her eyes for a second she visualized the effect that she wanted, then using her hand as a focal point formed a barrier around her hand. One that was very orderly and rigid, so rigid that it would help hold in place the molecular structure of the glass.
"What are you doing?" Miranda repeated her question, however both challenge and anger had drained from her voice, replaced by confusion and curiosity. Instead of responding, Shepard took a step closer to the glass, bought her left hand up close to her mouth and formed the second, mass increasing, dark energy field. Then she activated her external speakers and sang. Blessedly, Miranda did not interrupt her, though the Commander could hear her muttering to herself about the difficulty of maintaining two different mass effect fields at the same time as the operative activated her omni-tool so she could monitor what the auburn-haired woman was doing.
Shepard carefully increased the effect of the field around her left hand, lowering the note in a steady decrease until finally she sensed a vibration in the glass underneath her right hand. Now that she had the proper pitch she needed more amplitude, she thought back to the dream memory recalling exactly how the musician had done it, then subtly altered the dark energy field until with a startling suddenness, and a sharp sounding noise, the glass cracked underneath her hand. She glanced down into the next room, verifying that the YMIR mechs had not reacted to what she was doing, then refocused on the glass in front of her. This was not as easy as the prothean musician had made it seem, Shepard thought as she felt the start of a headache forming. She grimaced at the starting throb in her temples, she needed to figure out how move both fields before she ended up with a biotic over-extension migraine.
'Do or do not. There is no try,' the immortalized words of the old Star Wars movie came to her, causing her to grin. How to do this? A thought came to her, and she relaxed her focus on the barrier field around her right hand. She took a step to the side while sliding her hand along and then refocused her concentration, recreating the needed ordered rigidity. Focus, concentrate - now she moved the field around her left hand. Another snap resounded in the room and the crack in the glass extended. Now that she had the proper pitch and amplitude that part wasn't proving to be that difficult.
"Woa," Jacob sounded in her helmet, "I've never seen anyone use their biotics like that - human, asari or otherwise."
"Neither have I," Miranda responded, sounding oddly subdued, "I've never even heard or read of any technique that would allow you to do this either. I don't understand it," she complained, "nothing in her files suggests she sought out any advanced training beyond the Alliance standard biotic training for Vanguards. There was not even a hint in them of her having an interest in researching advanced biotic techniques on her own," the dark-haired Operative added, sounding rather miffed.
Shepard's lips twitched once in amusement and then stilled, she needed to focus only on what she was doing her and speed this along. Right hand relaxes, step, re-focus, left hand move - again the crack in the glass extended another half meter further along the top of the panel. Rinse, repeat, her focus narrowed to just the task in front of her, trusting that Miranda and Jacob together would be able to keep watch for any further attacks. She reached the corner, shifted to go down the side, reached another corner, shifted to go up. Shift, crack, shift, crack, she was almost there. Finally, the last shift, by now her head was truly throbbing in a full over-extension headache. Just once more, she shifted, focused, the glass snapped and cracked and with gasp of relief Shepard let her biotics fade away. She went to one knee as she closed her eyes and bowed her head with an audible groan of pain, her temples felt like a bass drum was pounding in them.
"She over extend herself?" She winced as Jacob's overly loud voice echoed in her helmet.
"Yes," Miranda responded him in a thankfully quieter tone as she knelt next to Shepard. "Commander, you need to use your energy-gel, the second tube to the left in your helmet will provide you with it."
Amanda grunted an acknowledgment, she knew that the operative was correct some energy-gel with its mix of sugars, proteins and stimulants would help with the over-exhaustion. She identified the proper tube and took a few good pulls on it and grimaced at the lemon-lime, over-sweetened taste of it. Still though she could almost feel the pounding lessen as she continued to suck the gel down despite its almost nausea inducing sweetness. "Thanks for reminding me," she told the dark-haired woman, and didn't even have to force the sincere tone as she rose to her feet. "Think you can pull it free?" She gestured to the approximately 3 meters by 2.5-meter section of glass that she had cracked lose.
The bluish white shimmer of a barrier field reformed around Jacob as he walked over to the windows to looked down. "Mechs still haven't moved," he noted as he turned to look at the door behind them. "We need to get moving soon. They're probably trying to figure out how to get us out of here without us hacking into this terminal and releasing all the prisoners, but that will only last for so long."
"Agreed," Miranda responded to him, and then turned her gaze on the glass pane. "And yes Commander, I can pull this free," she said while extending her hand toward it. A bluish-white haze surrounded her outstretched hand, then boiled out toward the glass and enclosed it. The woman's fist closed, she pulled her arm back toward her and the pane of glass groaned, shrieked, and then with a loud crack came free. Miranda lifted it up, over the railing, and then guided it over to the side. She left it leaning up against the railing.
Leaning out, Shepard glanced below and let out a breath of relief at the still mechs below. As she had guessed, breaking free the glass did not match with any of the pre-programmed stimuli that would cause them to come of out their current hibernation mode. Lucky. The parameters could have been set to indiscriminate rather than discriminate and that would have likely resulted in them activating. She had suspected, however, that the guards did not want three YMIR mechs alerting on just anything and unleashing their full arsenal at it due to the risk of it possibly being one of them.
Shepard pulled out three grenades and started modifying them so that they would detonate upon receiving a remote signal and so that they were magnetic. "Two grenades each, try and sticky them on the heads?"
"That should work," Jacob nodded as he worked on his own three grenades. Another minute and they were both finished with their modifications.
"So how is your throwing aim?" Shepard asked him with a challenging grin.
"Good enough for this," he smirked back confidently.
"Alright, let's do this then," Shepard said, very conscious of the time passing. Her head was still pounding, but the lights were no longer bothering her and she didn't feel dizzy. At this point her recovery was simply due to her not using her biotics, it would take the energy gel around ten or so minutes to really affect her. Fortunately, the YMIR's were rather large targets and they were very conveniently placed as well in a tight semi-circle almost directly below Jacob and she when they stood next to the nine-foot-wide opening in the glass paneled wall. Along with Jacob she leaned forward and gently lobbed one grenade, watching with a held breath as it clicked and held onto the rounded head of the mech on the far right. The mech didn't move, she glanced to the side and shared a pleased smile with Jacob. Two grenades, and then they took turns, first Jacob and then her on the center one.
"Probably should step back some," Jacob commented, "there's a good chance the self-destructs will activate."
"Just what I was thinking," agreed Shepard, moving around to the other side of the console with him. Miranda was over next to the locked doors, plenty far enough away. "Light em up," she directed Jacob. He nodded and tapped his omni-tool sending the signal, and the six grenades went off in a single explosion powerful enough to shake the floor beneath them and their armor's VIs to dampen their external sound receivers. They didn't move waiting for it, and a half-second later the characteristic warning sound of a YMIR's self-destruct times three sounded. A few seconds later there were three more explosions in quick succession, shaking the floor once more and then silence. "Alright let's get down there," Shepard ordered, taking a reluctant look toward the opening. She really didn't want to use her biotics until she absolutely had to until the energy-gel kicked in.
"This door should lead down to the next level," Miranda suggested, raising her omni-tool and releasing the door's lock. It slid open, revealing a descending ramp, a corner and what looked like another descending ramp.
Well it certainly did look like it headed down to where they wanted to go. Shepard nodded, "Lock the door behind us please," she requested. "Might not do much good with the opening in the glass, but no reason to make it easier on them." Once on the lower level, the helpful guard proved to be correct. They could unlock just Jack's cryo-stasis chamber from the local console. "Do it," she nodded to Jacob and then the three of them watched as a large machine arm unfolded, lowered, grabbed onto the cryo-chamber, turned a half turn, and then lifted it from its recessed location.
"That's Jack?" Jacob sounded bemused and Shepard didn't blame him as they beheld the slender woman, her body covered in intricate body art. She at least wore pants, but the only thing covering, if one could use the word, her breasts was a halter top made of thin bands. Pretty much they covered only the woman's nipples and little else, leaving all of her upper body art on full display.
As soon as the woman's hands twitched, Shepard waved her omni-tool over the console, sending the order for the restraints around the woman's arms and neck to release. Jack went to one knee at the sudden release of her bonds before catching herself. Shepard stepped forward, "I assume you would like to get out of this place?" she said thorough the external speakers of her helmet.
Jack rubbed one hand down her face and then her dark brown eyes snapped open and focused on Shepard. She coughed once, "Who the hell are you? You're not a guard."
"Amanda Shepard, Alliance Commander and Council Spectre," Shepard introduced herself as she took another step forward and offered a helping hand. "And I'd like to recruit you."
"You sound like a pussy," Jack sneered at her hand as she rose without any help. "And Shepard died, everyone knows that."
Amanda smiled sourly, "I got better, Cerberus saw fit to dump a few billion dollars into getting me back on my feet." Shepard figured to better to get this out of the way immediately and see how the woman reacted to the idea of working with Cerberus before allowing an angry, powerful biotic aboard a cramped shuttle with them.
"Cerberus!" Jack snarled, the glow of biotics surrounding her body as she summoned a barrier. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
Shepard took only a second to evaluate the situation, "Alright, your call," she agreed easily. "But can I ask what your dispute is with them?" she inquired, crossing her arms casually over her chest. She was ready to summon her own barrier, but didn't want to escalate the situation.
Jack laughed wildly, "You don't know?"
"No, otherwise I wouldn't ask," Shepard responded.
Jack barred her teeth at them, "They took me when I was a child too young to remember, experimented on me, tortured me. I'm Subject Zero, and Cerberus has been trying to recapture me for quite a while, so if you think I'm going with you anywhere near them your crazy."
Shepard shook her head, turned toward Miranda. "Seriously, did you know about this?"
"No!" Miranda protested, "I've heard about Subject Zero, but had no idea that the Jack in the dossier was the same person."
Amanda shook her head, somehow she doubted that TIM hadn't known that Jack was also Subject Zero. "In any case, we are currently your only way off this prison ship. Let's get out of here, and discuss the matter further on the shuttle. As I said, I'm interested in recruiting you for a mission, not in turning you over to Cerberus."
Jack's eyes narrowed on Shepard, staring at her through the clear face plate of her helmet. "Tell you what, let's make a deal. I bet you have access to lots of Cerberus databases. I want access to them, see what Cerberus has on me. You want me on your team then let me go through those databases." Jack lifted her chin, crossed her arms over her chest and cocked one hip in an arrogant pose as she waited for a response.
"Agreed," Shepard acquiesced immediately, "I'll give you full access."
"You don't have authorization to give her access to those files," Miranda angrily protested over their inter-team communications channel.
She ignored the Cerberus operative's protest for now, "Now to get back to the shuttle from here." She glanced over at Jack, fortunately they had another biotic with them now, one that probably had a bone to pick with the guards. Also, the energy-gel had finally hit and her headache was receding, she could use her biotics again without feeling like her head was about to split open. Apparently while the protheans could easily maintain multiple dark energy fields at the same time she could not, at least not for any extended period of time…or at least not without one of those implants. Shepard shook her head, now was definitely not the time to risk getting caught up in a new prothean memory. "Easiest way is probably just to retrace our steps, so up the ramp," she directed them with a wave of her hand. Miranda and Jacob formed up on her left, while Jack hung uneasily on the other side of her. Shepard sighed, she could tell already that getting back to the shuttle was going to be interesting.