A/N:
I was challenged to make Jack ... similar and yet different. I will reserve judgement on whether or not I have succeeded by the replies to this chapter, which is either one of my best...or worst.
Jack isn't a character I was particularly fond of in the games and I've tried my best to make her situation here both different and meaningful. That being said, she has a lot of commonalities with my Shepard. You can draw your own inferences.
I'm indulging MonkeyEpoxy with more quotes from Benezia.
Thanks to the Editing Gang for their usual bang-up job, and to several of them for pointing out much needed clarifications.
'The guidance I am most often asked to provide is how one should deal with privation and loss. I could offer trite bits of wisdom, pithy exclamations that sound fair to the ear yet fall empty upon the soul. Instead, I will give the answer my own mother told me. To grow in life requires suffering. One must simply identify the people it is worth suffering for in order to find the strength and will to endure. To avoid suffering is to avoid the lessons the universe teaches us, an act of hubris that has undone countless fools.'
Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, 'No Single Raindrop Blames Itself For The Flood'
Pain was the first thing she remembered and felt. Pain, and cold, and hunger.
Sounds came into her ears, but they were all blurred; shifting tones of garbage noise that babbled in sharp, growling clicks. A heavy, ponderous weight filled her head, her body.
Fragments of old memories, disjointed, full of sound and darkness, blasted through her skull, making it feel swollen.
She wanted to go back to sleep. She curled instinctively into a ball, or tried to. Her muscles didn't want to work, spasms of pins and needles wracking her with more pain.
A sharp, pricking sensation stabbed at her left arm, and sudden fire raced through her system.
Jack gasped, eyes opening while her body arched and shuddered. She fell back onto the uncomfortably firm medical table, as the turian cryotech flicked the used syringe into a bio-hazard bin and stepped back.
Another turian slapped something cold and plastic onto her arm. "Prisoner 24601, do you understand me? Nod if you are unable to reply verbally."
Rather than answer, she growled. She flexed her muscles, feeling for her power, and found the well empty. Her body felt slack, weak, sick. She lifted her head with some effort, glancing around.
The room was drab gray, each corner taken up with a powerful ceiling turret, each pointing triple barrels dead at her. Four turians in heavy riot armor and stun-sticks surrounded her at a distance, behind the two techs. The pain in her head sharpened, clarified into the burning ache of pulse dissipation devices, phase disruptors and whatever other techy bullshit they used to keep her from her biotics.
She was naked, natch. At least Kuril's pack of assholes wasn't likely to fucking rape her. Probably. They might still be pissed about the guards she'd killed before they put her on ice, after all.
"Prisoner 24601, you have been awoken from cryosuspension. You have been under for more than a year. Indicate you can hear and understand me."
She glanced at the turian who spoke with a scathing glance. "Fuck off." Her voice came out dry and scratchy.
The turian tapped his commlink. "Warden, prisoner is conscious. Vitals are shaky but stable." He listened to something for several seconds, then nodded. "Understood, cera." He clicked off, gesturing to the other tech.
That turian pulled out a small dufflebag. "Prisoner 24601, you are being released from the Purgatory Unit into the custody of a third party. Our understanding is that you are to be set free. We have already been paid. As of now you have no monetary value to us – start anything and you will be killed. We have injected you with a substance that nullifies your biotics, this entire section is suppressed against biotics, and we have clear orders that you are to be shot until dead if you so much as move wrong. Am I clear?"
She glared hatefully at the turian, then spat on the floor. "Yeah, real clear. You gonna give me something to wear or do I go shake my tits at whoever is here to pick me up?"
The turian tossed the bag onto her lap. "With the exception of your omni-tool, bio-amp, and weapons, these were the belongings you had upon capture. You will be taken to another room to shower, dress, and comport yourself before transport." The turian gestured, and the far door into the room opened, two more turians flanking a heavyset krogan with a blue-white crest and a scarred muzzle pushing a lift chair.
She sneered. "I can fucking walk." With a grimace she slid her ass across the metal table, feet slapping against the icy cold tiling of the floor. Agony like hot fire raced up her legs and she almost collapsed, swaying and blinking back sudden tears of pain as she gasped.
A moment later a rough push had her seated in the chair, knocking the breath out of her, and her bag was placed none too gently into her lap. She blinked back the pain as the tech spoke to the krogan, his voice low and cold.
"Get her moving. Kuril's got the hangar bay on lockdown but the rumor is the Butcher is here for her. Quicker that psycho – and this one – are off the station, the better."
Whispers exploded around the room as the krogan turned the chair around and pushed her out. She glanced around sourly, the corridor beyond the room she'd awoken in just as drab. Heavy pipes coated in dripping condensation lined the ceiling, while electrical shunt boxes and other baroque machinery jutted from the walls here and there.
The lift chair moved silently over the metal decking past several doors, and Jack bit her lip. "Who the fuck is this Butcher guy?"
The two turians following the krogan said nothing, but the bigger alien gave a nasty, grating laugh. "Heh. You've been on ice a long time, that's alright. Butcher is the scariest bitch in the entire fucking galaxy right now."
Jack snorted. "You fuckers forget how bad I tore your asses up already?"
The krogan's laugh was louder. "Not at all. But the Butcher makes you look like a fucking volus, kid. You ever deal with the Umlor Pirates?"
Jack's eyes closed. "Yeah, more than once, the fucks."
The krogan's growling bass held a note of reluctant awe and something else. "Yeah well. The Butcher killed them. All of them. Didn't even take her a fucking month." Another chuckle. "Who could have thought asari got that angry?"
Jack swallowed, leaning back. She wasn't stupid. Uneducated, yeah. Not much chance of that when you're running for your life from place to place, after all. But not stupid. Whatever she and the rest of the Blade of Eris had gotten themselves into, they'd pissed on the wrong mushroom patch.
She remembered the black-armored turians cutting her gang down like they were nothing. She'd killed more than a few of the fuckers, but there were so many, and they weren't pirates or slavers, but some kind of special forces soldiers. Nilor... the ex-Corsair captain had died saving her life, and then she'd been taken out.
And then she woke up in prison. There wasn't much reason for her to be the only survivor of the attack, unless they were planning something else for her. She'd taken a few weeks to figure that out, then tried the time honored tradition of suicide by cop.
If she was going to die, dammit, it wasn't going to be on some chop-shop table. She didn't survive being a lab rat just to go back to being one.
They'd put her on ice, rather than kill her – and now she was being let go? Given to some asari nut called the Butcher who killed slavers?
She never got a break in her bad luck, and she didn't think that would change now.
The krogan stopped at a doorway, and one of the turian guards pushed it open while the other one continued to cover her with his rifle. She was almost amused at the way they were making sure she couldn't get up to any shit.
Still, Purgatory had a rep. A hard rep – no one ever escaped alive, and killing a guard meant you were in for a long, hard beating that would make you beg for death and never get it.
She'd killed two of the fuckers, wounded a dozen more. That brought a smile to her face, but gave her another thought. They'd said they had her shit, except her gun, bio-amp and omni.
"Where's my bio-amp?" Hers had been surgically implanted, not designed for removal. They had thought – stupidly – the suppressor collar and phase disruptor devices in the general prison block would control her, not understanding she wasn't a normal biotic.
The krogan grunted again. The room was a plain box, with a long shelf on one wall, a small shower unit in the corner, a mirror and sink, and a thin, gray mattress on a bunk rack. Yet another turret bulked in the corner of the room. "Surgically extracted. The Butcher was given that, and your other stuff."
He brought her to a stop in the middle of the room before engaging the brakes on the chair and lifting, unceremoniously dumping her onto the floor. "Might take a bit for the cryosickness to wear off. The Warden will be around in a bit."
He backed out of the room, turians covering him, and Jack sat up in time to spit in his direction as the door shut. "Fuckers."
It took her a good five minutes to struggle back to her feet and be able to stand, biting back tears of pain the entire time. She'd been through a lot of pain in her past, but every muscle felt like it was jelly, and her stomach was empty and hurting.
She opened the bag they'd given her, half expecting to find her shit ruined. Instead her clothes were there – skin-tight black leather armored pants, battered old steel-toed shitkicker boots, and a strip of black gauze for her chest. Her combat jacket was a bit tattered in a few places, the crimson leather still glossy for the most part, but Jack saw they'd ripped the stims and knife she'd sewn into the lining out of the jacket.
A small, battered black case held her tattooing equipment, and her battered journal was there as well, the scan-strip lining sealing it shut showing that it had not been opened. She sighed in relief at that, she didn't need fuckers going through her thoughts.
She laid that all on the counter, before upending the bag on the bed. A pair of socks was still tucked into the boots, and a pair of ration bars fell out of the bag, as well as a roll of black gauze, but that was it.
She paused for a long second. "...great. Goin' commando."
She got dressed with a grimace, after scarfing down the two ration bars. She was surprised Kuril, or whatever asshole pulled her shit together, had enough fucking brains to toss those in, but the fact was she was straight starving to death. She pulled on her clothes, binding the gauze over her breasts tightly enough so they didn't sway but still leaving the vast majority of her ink on display.
She swallowed as she pulled on the jacket Vinis had gotten her, still remembering the stupid expression on her face when she'd handed it to her. God, why did it all seem like that had happened so long ago?
Vinis was dead, cut in half by an omni-axe. The two drell girls, Bi and Lo, shot to pieces by assault rifles. Vakis, hit with plasma fire. Toras, shotgun to the head. Karl, Dennis, Gracie... the whole unit had been fucking executed so fast she didn't even have time to get off barriers. She'd never even got to see how Morris, Taleth and Jessica bought it, and Captain Nilor...
She exhaled away the pain. She didn't have time for memory, shit made you weak. She walked to the sink, splashed water on her face, and examined herself in the mirror.
Her face had grown thinner, the cheekbones more defined. She wondered if you aged in the cryo or not, and then shrugged it off. Pulling the jacket on and flexing into it, she picked up her tat kit and journal, tossing them into the slender pouch on the back of the jacket.
She didn't bother with a fucking shower. She'd already learned her lesson about that shit her first week on Purgatory, and shit, if this Butcher blue didn't like her smell she could deal with it. She turned her thoughts to that, interrupted by the heavy knock on the door.
It slid open a moment later, revealing the large frame of Warden Kuril himself, flanked by two more turians holding shotguns. "Hello, Jack. Figured we'd have a little … talk, before I turn you over to the person picking you up."
She sneered. "The Butcher, right?"
The warden flicked a mandible, eyes narrowing. "Your guards must have had loose mouths. No matter. Yes, the Butcher is here to pick you up. She has a task for you." He sighed. "A violent one, no doubt, involving a massive amount of killing – something you will probably enjoy."
Jack's own eyes narrowed. "And why the fuck are you letting me go?"
Kuril smiled. "I'm being paid. Money always makes things happen." He met her gaze squarely. "I usually don't bother discussing this with inmates, since most of the … beings … I house are walking excrement. I hate slavery, and in my own way, my incarceration for cash of various criminals and malcontents, I am no better than they. The irony of the situation is not lost on me."
He gestured with a hand to the surroundings. "Very nearly every last one of the vile monsters on this station in my care belongs here. Slavers, rapists, murderers, clone-leggers, so-called 'political activists' whose only acts are anarchy and death. None of them are redeemable, none of them deserve the chance to be redeemed, and I'd space the entire lot of them if they were not making me money I use to stop more of the bastards and undo some of their evil."
He glanced back at her. "You, on the other hand … do not belong here."
She frowned at this statement. "You coulda fooled me, with the way you locked me up and took the money of who ever hit my crew, not to mention letting me get fucking raped."
His mandible flicked again. "I would say I am sorry, but those are meaningless words. I thought you might like to know that the inmates who did that, and who survived your payback scheme were introduced to the airlock. But I digress. You and your people killed slavers. I won't say you were upstanding souls or a credit to whatever passes for a meritocracy among humans...but you were not the sort of filth that belongs here."
His voice hardened. "The group your little band of ex-Corsairs attacked was connected to, and probably staffed with, the turian Deathwatch, Jack. They were paying me a little bit of cash every month to keep you on lock-down until they were ready to investigate your biotics."
She felt icy hands trace along her spine. The goddamned Deathwatch. The most fucked up and terrifying turians in the entire fucking galaxy. "What the fucking shit, man? Why in fuck would turian special fucking forces be holding slaves?!"
Kuril's expression was hard to read, but he seemed amused. His voice certainly was. "You really have to ask that, Jack? You never struck me as stupid."
She swallowed back bile. Experiments. Sick shit. She could put the pieces together, yeah. "Figures. So if you get bank by holding on to me, why let me go?"
"Aside from the fact I am being paid far more to release you? Because as I said..." His voice flanged, with something like regret. "...you do not belong here. The Butcher has a more pure use for you. She is someone I have known a very long time, and while she can be very cruel and terrifying... she is not evil, and she will not tolerate evil. She will not stand by while others suffer, nor will she tolerate the sort of injustice that you and your people were trying to stop."
She lifted her chin. "...guard said she wiped the Ulmor Gang. That true?"
He nodded. "Yes. You will no doubt need to catch up on the news." He folded his arms. "I have done what little I could in your time here. You asked me why I didn't kill you for killing my guards. I told you that the day would come in which you would pay for their lives, once I figured out how to make the price appropriate."
He smiled thinly. "You were not the only survivor of your little raid. Three more of your people also were taken into custody."
Her eyes widened. "Where are they?!"
He gave her a fanged smile. "Two of them are dead, Jack. Two, to match the men you cost me. And this is my final lesson to you, human. You think that because you have suffered, that because you have lost, that you are entitled to act as you see fit. But there are always consequences to every action. Those guards had families. They had people who cared for them. They were only trying to do a job, and instead of letting them do it, you stole their lives from them."
She was shaking in rage. "You … you sick fuck..."
He shrugged. "Unlike you, they had actual crimes against their names. There's a reason your friends were EX-corsairs. And in any case, my morality is not under question, Jack. Those two would have lived if you had not decided to take the lives of my men. The Butcher is not even remotely as forgiving as I am, so I am giving you this warning. If you are foolish enough to hurt any of her people the way you hurt mine, she will kill you in ways I do not even wish to contemplate."
He jerked his head to the door. "She awaits. You will follow us and keep yourself civil, or the last one of your friends goes out the airlock. As soon as you are off my station... I'll see about letting the last of your group, one Jessica Yanor, go free."
She closed her eyes, fists clenched so hard her fingernails, ragged from her biting them off, cut into her palms. She exhaled and opened her eyes. "One of these days, Kuril, I'm going to come back and kill you."
His drawling voice was amused once more. "You are always free to pounce if you feel like you're ready to ride the vakar, Jack. For now... we're done. So move." He pulled out a Sunfire pistol, gesturing sharply at the door even as he carefully stepped back out of range of a grab, the subtle whine as it powered up grating to her ears, and she walked.
The trip down the long, boring corridor towards the hangar bay was done in silence,
Jack's thoughts on her dead... acquaintances on her mind. She didn't call them friends. Friends just got you hurt, tore up. She'd only run with them because the cult thing didn't go through – well, that, and because they saved her life and broke her out of the fucking slave camp she was in.
Although damn, the cult did offer some mind blowing sex, even if they did turn out to be a bunch of assholes working for the Shadow Broker.
She had no clue where she was going in life, bouncing from fuckup to fuckup. She'd gone along with Toras, Captain Nilor and the Blade of Eris bunch because the purity of their hate for slavery resonated with her own past. She didn't believe in 'causes' or any of that shit – hell, she wasn't even in it for the fucking money.
She wanted to belong...and she never did. They themselves were fuckups, after all – as Kuril had pointed out, you had to be pretty shit to get thrown out of the goddamned Corsairs. She thought she might fit there. They'd rescued her and given her a goal of sorts, but she never belonged. She was just driftwood, running away from the ugly shit on Pragia...
Her mind flinched at the memory of it.
She could still see the two black-armored killers, stained with blood, executing the staff. The big black guy with a disgusted look on his face, electrocuting that sick fucking doctor slowly and painfully. Glancing over the other kids, shaking his head as he'd put them out of their shrieking misery with single pistol shots.
The Asian guy, the hot one, kneeling down to stare her in the eyes. "Pain is merely a method to measure how much payback is to be rendered back unto the world." The blood-slicked handle of the man's sword as he'd pressed it into her hands. "Redeem your rage."
She'd stabbed and stabbed and stabbed the doctors who had tortured her, until she was covered in blood and bits of flesh, until her body was shaking, until she was sobbing and threw up. She remembered the big black guy picking her up and carrying her out of there, the gold and white hexagon on his armor.
The same one on the walls where they'd tortured her and the other kids.
Cerberus.
She exhaled shakily. Her life was fucked, and spending a year or more on ice was just more proof she had no fucking idea what she was doing. Still, she was free. She'd go along with this Butcher bitch until she saw the first open port, and then she was gone. Once she had her amp and guns back, they'd never stop her.
She'd find somewhere to belong, eventually. Or she'd die. Either way, she was doing it on her own fucking terms. She'd learned the hard way doing it on other people's terms just got you fucked over, figuratively and sometimes literally.
The corridor ended in a massive pair of reinforced doors which slid open with a low rumble, revealing the bay beyond. The two other turian guards turned away, falling back about twenty feet and not following them in. Kuril gestured her forward and she entered, the doors sealing closed behind her and the Warden.
The hangar was dominated by the flat-black and aggressive looking shuttle, trimmed in a burned orange that seemed familiar for some reason. Standing in front of it were two females.
The one on the left was some kinda supermodel bitch. Pouty, dick-sucking lips – Jack's own smiled at her own hypocrisy – and flouncy curves under thin armor that looked like some shit you'd see in a stripper's club on Military Appreciation Night. She was standing there, looking bored, with the same kind of arrogant look in her eyes that most of the people Jack hated had.
She hated this bitch already and didn't even know her name.
The other one…
Just standing there, clad in thick white armor, it was hard to make out anything. She was tall, that much was obvious, and definitely not a small girl. The armor was bulky but had enough curves to show she wasn't underdeveloped either.
The helmet turned to face her, a mirrored face-plate vaguely shaped like a skull, blank nothing reflecting the distorted image of her own face. The voice that emerged was deep, obviously modulated, and almost musing, but there was a faint hardness in it that spoke of complete, total, and almost disdainful confidence.
"I presume you are Jack?"
With a sour glance at Kuril, she stepped forward. "Yeah. You're the fucking Butcher?"
The figure inclined her head shallowly. "In the flesh. Has the Warden given you the rundown?"
She snorted. "Hell no, only that you're responsible for me not being an ice cube any longer."
The Butcher folded her arms. "There's lots to go over, but we'll do that in another... location. Short version. I plan to kill the Shadow Broker and I need your help."
The blunt admission floored her, and Jack narrowed her eyes. The Broker had been involved in the cult she'd been in, and behind the fuckers who'd thrown her in a slave camp and tried to capture her, before the Blade of Eris busted her out. She gritted her teeth.
"I got my own problems with the Broker, so don't see much problem with that. But that's some pretty big talk. Lots of people have wanted to off the Broker. I don't do suicide runs, and most people think they're harder than they are."
The Butcher's voice was amused. "I'm not most people, honey."
Jack felt her eyebrow arch. "Shit, you don't sound like a fucking asari. And I ain't your honey, bitch. Let's get one thing straight. You want me to kill, I'll kill, but I do it my way, my fucking rules. No one owns me."
Rich laughter spilled from the speaker on the Butcher's armor, while the pretty bitch next to her shot her a disbelieving, amused glare. The Butcher shook her head.
"We'll get along just fine, Jack. I get it. You've gone through some rough shit and you aren't gonna let anyone run over you any more, right?"
She folded her arms. "Fucking A. I don't care how fucking scary you're supposed to be. Once you give me my fucking amp, I'm the worst nightmare you'll ever see."
The bitch in tight armor covered her mouth as she chuckled, and Kuril burst into mocking, open laughter. The Butcher, for her part, only tilted her head slightly.
"...is that so?"
A good thirty feet separated the two of them, and Jack had just opened her mouth to retort when there was a blue flash. Agony seized her throat as she found herself dangling in mid air, a blue-glowing armored gauntlet wrapped around her throat, the Butcher's mirrored face-plate staring up at her.
She could feel pulsing waves of biotic power radiating out from this crazy bitch, strong enough to make her own nervous system vibrate, as the Butcher slowly brought her closer. "I'm sure whatever was done to you to make you a badass is pretty fucking impressive, Jack. I'm more familiar with Cerberus than you think."
Jack's eyes widened in shock, but the Butcher continued. "But if you ever fucking challenge me, amp or no amp, I will fuck you up so bad that pissing will be your highest goddamned achievement for the rest of your short life. If you work for me, I take care of you. No one can hurt you, and no one can kill you. But you do it by my fucking rules, not yours."
With a casual flick, Jack was hurled a good ten feet away, landing on her ass, her tat kit and journal flying from her back pouch, the breath knocked out of her. The Butcher's voice rang out. "And just so you don't get any ideas, I'll be happy to put your on your ass with your amp in, too, once we re-install it. I've beaten the shit out of two Glorious batarians, honey. I can handle you."
The sheer brazen confidence shook Jack. God, she wanted to be able to have that so bad. She knew she was powerful, that whatever had been done to her had made Jack, in some ways, the ultimate biotic. Not only in power but in ability. But the Butcher's own confidence shook her more than a little. She couldn't let that shake her... but damn. Two Glorious batarians?
Wiping her mouth, she got to her feet, picking up her shit and sliding it back into her jacket. "...at least you aren't a fucking pussy."
The Butcher turned to face Kuril. "I think we're done here, old friend. Keep in mind what I said. I'll... need you when this all comes out."
Kuril gave a strangely shaky nod. "I... I will remember. The case I gave you has Jack's bio-amp and omni-tool, along with the two guns she was captured with. I'd appreciate it if you waited until she was gone to give them back. She's caused enough grief on my station."
The Butcher nodded, gesturing to the shuttle. "Let's go. The quicker we're back on my ship, the quicker we can get your amp back in and let you know what is going on. Also, a meal."
Jack bit her lip, but had no real choice. "Whatever. I could dig some grub."
The other woman touched her omni and the shuttle hatch popped open. The Butcher tossed something to Kuril. "In case you need me. The money should have already hit your accounts, but... if you need anything – "
Kuril nodded. "... I will keep it in mind. Go. And by the spirits, girl, be more fucking careful. You put me through this shit again and I'll kill you myself."
For some reason that made the Butcher laugh. It was a surprisingly bright sound to Jack's ears, but had a ring of pain to it. "Maybe later, old man."
Jack got into the shuttle behind the other woman, glancing around. It was spacious on the inside, more flat-black décor, a rack of rifles on one wall, leather couches fore and aft. A moment later, the Butcher got in, sealing the hatch and sitting opposite Jack. She tapped something on her armor. "Vigil, get us back to the ship, please. Inform TIM we've picked up Jack and are proceeding to home base, then to Korlus as planned."
A smarmy, asshole-sounding voice rang out. "Of course, primitive. We had an issue – Trellani messaged that she was encountering additional resistance on Bekenstein. Mr. Taylor was dispatched with a group of mechs and a battle-suit to provide additional backup, since it was not thought his assistance would be missed on Korlus given its tight confines."
The Butcher glanced at the other woman. "Miranda, what's going on with Bekenstein?"
The woman named Miranda gave an elegantly casual shrug, her voice clipped and precise enough to make Jack hate her more. "I'm not entirely sure. Ms. Goto was engaged in some form of operation there, something... TIM... thought would be of use to us. Matriarch Trellani was dispatched to provide assistance in this, but open combat was not part of the concept."
The Butcher nodded. "Should we reroute?"
Miranda shook her head. "Jacob is more than capable of handling any issues." She glanced at Jack. "You may wish to... reveal yourself."
"Oh, right." The Butcher glanced at Jack. "You know who Sara Shepard is?"
Jack's face fell. "Yeah. Baddest bitch back in the day." A sad smile twitched across her lips. "Gonna sound fucked up, but she was kinda my hero. Came from dogshit, made herself famous and rich, and put the boot in slavers and fucking assholes. No one believed in her and she still saved the fucking galaxy and all that shit."
Her voice soured. "And then of course, she got fucking killed. Kinda turned me off of heroes." She frowned. "Why the fuck you care? You think just because you call yourself 'Butcher' you're like her?"
The Butcher stared at her for long seconds, before shaking her head. "You could say that."
Jack felt herself get uncharacteristically angry. "Bullshit. You're a fucking asari. The fuck you know about suffering? About coming from jack shit nothing? Eating out of garbage cans, dusting just to you can forget you're fucking starving?"
The Butcher lifted her hand to her armored collar, tapping a control there. The face-mask split down the middle, the helmet sliding back in multiple pieces to reveal her face.
Black, straight hair framed the brown-skin, the strong jaw. Cool blue eyes met hers, surprisingly open.
Shepard's voice was almost sad. "More than you might think, Jack."
O-TWCD-O
By the time the shuttle docked with the Normandy – a fairly short trip – Jack had recovered at least a little bit of her equanimity. Most of the trip was spent with Shepard giving her a quick run down of their overall goals – stop the Collectors, figure out their plan, blow them up, and kill the Broker and his flunkies.
Shepard had kept her tone casual, and Miranda had mostly kept silent, but the situation was still more than a little tense. Being told about their mission – and who they worked for – had set Jack off again, but it was a curiously muted anger.
Jack's history with Cerberus was vile... and ambivalent. Shepard had read the file, and for once she actually believed it when Harper claimed Williams had been the one to go too far. Harper's own personal assassins had been the one to free Jack, clean her up, and let her go, but Jack still clearly held a lot of anger and frustration about her past – she had no idea who her family was, or if she'd been abandoned or stolen. She had no background and by all reports the cell who had been doing the work on Jack and other biotics had deliberately destroyed any such information.
It had been Miranda who'd pointed out Cerberus had done what it could over the years to make up for their mistakes, but Jack was – for obvious reasons – unimpressed. She didn't like the idea of being being around the same organization responsible for her problems, much less working for them.
Shepard had interjected. "You don't work for them, Jack. You work for me. I'll tell you the same thing I told that Illusive fucker and my own marines. I work with him, for as long as he's fucking useful. The first moment he lies to me, or I catch him pulling some bullshit like cutting people up or using them for lab rats, I'm going to kill him and all of his fucking lackeys."
Jack had stared at her a long time, some desperate emotion in those wide, pretty eyes, before her face sneered. "I'm gonna hold you to that, Shepard. Just because I used to look up to you don't mean I'm gonna lick you off and be your fucking fan-girl. I got my own issues and... shit."
Shepard was hard pressed to keep a smile off her face. Jack's foul-mouthed defiance and fire was like watching herself if she'd never been further warped by the Tenth Street Reds. She was an oversexed, arrogant, ill-mannered foul-mouthed little bitch.
Just like Shepard had been.
Just talking to Jack had taken her whole mentality back to those days. It was a weird emotional state to be in. Even so, Shepard wouldn't have Jack change a thing. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the emotional stress of the day in her mind if not her body.
Miranda had been highly concerned with Jack's attitude, but Shepard had waved her concern away. Speaking very quietly in the pilot's cabin while Jack scarfed down an MRE on the shuttle, she let her voice convey her displeasure. "Look, Miranda. Please don't take this the wrong way, but you really can't understand her. She and I came from the same kind of... hell. A hell where your very life, your existence, didn't even mean shit."
Miranda folded her arms. "I understand that, although I freely admit my empathy for such situations would be theoretical. All I am saying is that she's clearly far more unstable than we thought and dangerous. She killed two of Kuril's men and literally butchered a group of inmates who raped her."
Shepard shrugged. "I'm sorry, Miranda, but did you or did you not go through my fucking memories and read about my past? You know exactly what I did to the sick fucks who used me in that fashion, and those who recorded and transmitted the sex shows. Am I supposed to fucking castigate her for killing some guards when I shot up a dozen cops myself?"
She sighed. "Jack is what she is. Changing her has to come from something she decides on, not some external bullshit. As long as Harper doesn't antagonize her or do some stupid shit, we'll be fine. You've got your issues, she has hers. I'm not going to judge her on that any more than I do you. Like I said...it's what you bring to the fight, not what you used to be that matters."
Upon arriving back aboard the Normandy, Shepard had ordered Joker to make best speed to the base and lead Jack down to the living area. "Right now, the ship is almost empty. A pair of engineers – two humans and a quarian – make up the engineering staff. One asari doctor. Ms. Lawson, who you've met, and Mr. Taylor, a former Alliance soldier, who's away from the ship right now. Some marines, who won't bother you much."
Jack had sneered at the clean and neat bunking area. "This ain't my speed, Shepard. I don't like being around people much."
Shepard shrugged. "I kinda figured that. Did some looking around the ship when I got on board. Come on." She lead the girl down the elevator to engineering, past the outer isolation doors, and then down the staircases that flanked access to the primary eezo control chamber. The space was cramped and dark, but solidly built with heavy cover everywhere and off the beaten path.
"I tried to think about how I would have felt as a Red in your situation. You've been through some shit, and it's going to take time for you to get used to being around people again. " She gestured. "This is the most isolated place on the ship. I strongly doubt anyone will ever need to come down here except maybe one of the LOKI bots to do maintenance."
Jack glanced around. "...yeah."
Shepard let her weight fall back on one hip. "You don't have to live down here, you know. God damn I used to be just fucking like you. Worried the people behind me were sizing me up to knife me for creds, or the sand I'd scored, or to rape me. Or worse."
Jack sneered. "Shit, what's worse than that?"
Shepard's lips twitched downwards. "I don't have the scar anymore thanks to fucking Cerberus, but I had to fight off a pair of chopshoppers doing some organ harvesting when I was fifteen. Left a gash where they tried to cut my fucking kidney out."
Jack swallowed, worrying at her soft lips with her teeth. "Shit, man, that's..." She shook her head. "Okay, I get it. You went through what I did, or worse. So you should fucking understand!"
Shepard folded her arms. "I understand that isolating the fuck out of yourself only means you have no one to have your back when they really do come for you. This isn't the goddamned arcology, though." She leaned forward. "I've been there, the worst parts of there, and then sunk lower than that. Something in me snapped one day and said 'no, no more of this bullshit'."
She smiled. "Something snapped in you, or you'd have been doing stupid shit like robbing and killing people, blowing up ships for kicks and dusting up instead of rolling with ex-Corsairs to free slaves and hurt slavers."
Her voice hardened. "Just because you had to become a hard bitch doesn't make you a bad person, Jack. And just because you've had bad people in your life doesn't mean everyone is bad."
The younger woman swallowed, but her eyes and jaw spoke her defiance. "Easy for you fucking say. You didn't have shit in your head that someone had fucked with to mess you up."
Shepard shook her head. "I didn't get chipped but I had … alterations. To make me a more lively fuck when the bastards who held my contract liked transmitting a thirteen year old getting gang-banged by six or seven guys. I got enough bad shit in my head that it once killed a goddamned asari who linked with me."
She pushed off the wall, stepping back. "I'm not here to compare who has the most sad-sack story time, Jack. I'm letting you know I get it. I don't give a shit about your mouth, or how you dress, or if you call me 'ma'am' or 'cunt'" Her voice hardened. "But I expect you to pull your fucking weight, and you'll have to interact with the other people I bring on sooner or later."
Jack sneered. "More Cerberus assholes?"
Shepard gave her a look. "Do I look fucking stupid? The only Cerberus on the boat is Miranda. The rest of them are either my own fucking people from the Alliance, or people Cerberus hired up specifically for this gig – and they answer to me. The Illusive Man can go eat a fucking dick if he's stupid enough to think I'm going to let him station his people on my ship."
Shepard grimaced. "Anyway, once we get back to base I'll have my people throw a cot and a secure locker down here. Come with me."
Jack looked around the small area and shrugged. "Where now?"
"My quarters, You need a fucking drink and a shower."
Jack raised both eyebrows. "You comin' on to me, Shepard? I know I'm hot, but I figured you swung for blue."
Shepard rolled her eyes. "Bitch, please. If you rode this pony you'd break your goddamned spine. No, my shower is the only one on the ship isolated and where no one can get in. We'll drink, talk about some shit I need to know – but first you can shower while I stand outside my quarters making sure no one fucks with you."
Her voice dropped. "I... remember what it was like. Like I said. I get it."
Jack gave a shaky little exhale. It was hard having someone fucking care, or even pretend to care. She felt herself get angry at that. "Why does it fucking matter t'you anyway, huh?"
Shepard lead her up the stairs, and glanced over her shoulder at her. In the dim lighting, her cybernetic eyes glowed a dim pale red. "I won't lie to you Jack – I honestly have problems right now caring about...anything. Everything that made my life worth fucking living is gone, and I can't ever get it back. I'm an undead fucking zombie, some jacked up version of the fucking Crow out to kill those who have to be killed."
Her voice softened. "But I used to wish, back in the bad old days, I used to wish so bad someone gave a shit about me, and I figure you aren't much different." She swallowed. "The guy I wish was my real dad instead of the fuck who sold me told me being nice never costs you anything, but is priceless to the people who need it."
She continued up the stairs. "Plus, you smell like ass. Cuts down on the so-called sexy of yours."
Jack followed her. "Bitch."
O-TWCD-O
Cerberus planned for everything, as Jack found out. Shepard had laid out black-ripstop pants, clean black socks, and a plain black t-shirt that fit her on her couch after stepping out and leaving Jack to get showered.
And panties. Commando hour was over at last.
Shepard's 'quarters' were fucking palatial, at least by starship standards. Jack glanced around the cabin, seeing nothing personalized about it yet. A fish-tank – empty. A bed – unused. Empty bookshelves. A terminal not even hooked up to the ODN.
With a sigh, Jack stripped out of her old clothes. The pants she could do without, and she had a roll of more black gauze to wear instead of a shirt, but the jacket was the only thing she really wanted to keep a hold of. With a shrug she stuffed everything else into the recycler, carefully hanging the jacket on the back of Shepard's desk chair, and then stepped into the tiny bathroom.
The water was hot and clean, and Jack let it soak into and hammer her slim form as she let her head rest against the cold, silvery metal of the stall. She was in some serious shit now.
There was probably still a way out of this. Play along, until they went somewhere open and with lots of people, and slip away in the confusion. She could do this.
But she could also stay. Jack would never admit it, but she used to read and watch so much about the Butcher of Torfan it wasn't even fucking funny. Watching her tear through her enemies, smirking and walking along like a pissed off lady panther. Telling the entire galaxy it could fuck itself, and never backing down from shit.
When Shepard had been rewarded for her acts and made a noble, and then married that asari girl, Jack had actually cried in happiness. She laughed at herself now, a sort of hiccup, at how stupid she was.
There were probably a lot of little girls like her, abused, shat on, used up, who felt the same way. But they weren't Shepard. No one else was, and no one else could be. She blew out another shaky breath, scrubbing herself clean, washing away the last traces of that fucking Purgatory shithole.
When she was dressed – she had to admit, the pants fit better than her own and the socks were comfy – she hammered on the door. "Hey! Break out the fucking drinks."
Shepard walked back in, arching an eyebrow at the fact Jack had simply wrapped herself in fresh gauze rather than wear the t-shirt. "You showing off your tits or your tats?"
Jack tilted her head with a grin. "Maybe a little of both? You like?"
Shepard rolled her eyes. "The ink is .. interesting. Ink always tells a story, but yours looks pretty long. All of mine is gone, burned the fuck up when I died. They were nice enough to give me back my Reds tat, flag, but that's it."
Jack sat down on the wide leather couch as Shepard rummaged in the small food unit next to her bed and then tossed her a flask. She caught it, turning it over in her hands – strong scotch. With a shrug, she uncapped it and took a swallow, grimacing a little as it left hot slow warmth down her body. "So why am I here?"
Shepard pulled out a pair of glasses with ice in them and put them down on the table, before opening another bottle and pouring. "As you can imagine, Miranda had some kind of idea about an 'in briefing'. You know, sitting in a chair, hearing about the Cerberus Way of Life, the Goals of the Mission, Humanity, blah, bleh."
Shepard pulled a face and despite herself Jack had to laugh.
Sipping at her scotch, Shepard smiled back. "Don't misunderstand me. I like Miranda. In a way she's had it worse than us. Her story isn't mine to share, but she was... bred... to be a fucking tool, a throwaway tool at that – and then found wanting. She's got no sense of who she is... but she's trying."
Jack sniffed. She poured the scotch into her own cup, and shrugged. "Like I give a shit. She's a goddamned cheerleader."
Shepard shrugged. "She's got her uses. And... she's more human than the fucking Illusive Man, that's for sure. She was kind when she didn't have to be." She drank again. "Just remember the Cerberus fucks are the only people doing anything about all those missing colonists, rather than sitting on their asses plotting on how to use the situation for their own purposes."
Jack sourly considered that. "It... man, this shit is strong. Uh, it's really fucked up if fuckin' Cerberus is the good guys."
Shepard gave a short bark of laughter. "That was the first thing that hit me when I understood the situation." She shrugged. "Even so, I plan to drag people into this mess, and I need to know if they're really in for it, and what I need to do to convince them to come along – and that if Cerberus turns out to be bad, that they'll have no problems helping me clean house."
She met Jack's stare. "Harper has promised me whatever I need to get this job done. What I need... is revenge." Her eyes became cold, cruel. "I need blood, I need to find a turian and fucking kill him and pull him apart and smear his goddamned blood across my lips. And then find his boss, and skull fuck him with my shotgun. They took... " She exhaled. "Everything from me. Ship, career. Life. Wife. Family. Everything."
Jack leaned back, sipping at her own drink, eyes lidded. "That bl..that asari you married. Liara, right."
Shepard's nostrils flared at the name. "Yes."
Jack shook her head. "Broker killed her, you said?"
The cold blue eyes flicked up. "Yeah. And one of my best friends, and his wife. Killed my... father-in-law, so to speak. Killed a good fifteen members of my crew. And ultimately, is responsible for the fact that the man I look at like my father is locked in a fucking loony bin and the guy I called boss and respected is in fucking exile for life."
Shepard snarled. "So I'm a little pissed. That's my fucking motivation." She clenched and unclenched her fist, forcing herself to relax. "You – and the rest of the people I plan on having join up – don't have any connection to me. I figure everyone has something they need."
She stood, picking up a pack of cigarettes from her desk and lighting one. "So here's your chance. You want cash? Illusive man spent six billion bringing me back and acted like it was pocket change. You want freedom? He's got access to an AI that can reinvent your entire datasphere, make you a citizen of any place you want, set you up with any lifestyle you can think of. You want a fight? I'm going up against the craziest , sickest motherfuckers in the entire goddamned galaxy – and ultimately, against an enemy that will fucking kill everyone if I don't stop them. You want fame? Revenge?"
She leaned forward. "What do you want, Jack?"
The convict felt herself shiver from the intensity of that stare and the question behind it, before looking away. "Shit. I don't know. I want..."
I want to belong.
No, that was a pussified answer. And she didn't even know if it was the answer or just her own head fucking her game up.
She looked back up. "I want to be free. Where no one can … take shit away from me again. And I want to know who I should have been, before I got ... fucked over and out."
Shepard nodded. "Vigil."
The voice Jack had heard on the shuttle sounded again in the room, coming from nowhere in particular. "Yes, Shepard?"
She glanced up. "Make up your fucking mind what you're going to call me, shiny."
"Primitive, meatbag, potential future Reaper slushy – there are so many appellations. How may I be of assistance, oh warrior of destiny?"
Shepard shook her head. "I should have left your ass on Ilos, I swear. Look, this is Jack."
A sphere of silvery metal appeared out of nowhere some three feet in front of Jack, making her jump. "Ah yes. The biotic experiment. Full name of record on several criminal databases Jacqueline Nought. Known aliases, Jump Zero Jane, Jo, Janeth. Posts rather emotionally charged if inelegant poetry on the extranet art site 'Unclear Ruminations' as SubZero. Wanted by the Hierarchy on charges of terrorism, murder, and dishonorable conduct. Also wanted by several bounty services, some Volus interests, and has additional bounties and posted contracts from actions taken while a part of the Zethreum Cult."
Jack's jaw hung open as the sphere pulsed. "I could go into further and more sordid details, but yes, Shepard, I am of course familiar with her. I know everything after all."
Shepard rolled her eyes again. "I need to make her criminal record go away, entirely. Fix up her SA citizenship. Make the bounty bullshit vanish. And see if you can't figure out who her parents were."
The sphere pulsed a second time, and a second passed, before it spoke. "It will take some time to match her DNA against various databases in Alliance space – and I would caution you more than a third of all of your citizens do not have DNA information on file. Her criminal and bounty records have been expunged."
Jack's eyes were wide enough that Shepard wondered if they'd fall out of her head. "Thanks. You can go back and pester Joker now."
The sphere pulsed arrogantly. "What do you mean, 'Go back'? I am large. I contain volumes. I can hold a thousand conversations at the same time, and one of them is always dedicated to keep Joker's self esteem at the level of his intellectual capacity - that is to say, near zero.."
Shepard sighed. "I mean, get the hell out of here. Shoo."
The sphere gave a faint, irritated glow. "Reduced to a slave of an unstable, overly violent meat head... me! The pride of the Eternal Empire of the Holy Inusannon... " The sphere popped like a soap bubble, and was gone.
Jack slowly turned to face Shepard. "...what... the... fuck..."
O-TWCD-O
Traveling back to the base didn't take as long as Shepard expected. After a talk with Jack – from which she only took away that the girl was still in a bit of shock and not sure what the hell she really wanted, except more information about her past – Vigil was working on that much now.
Some of her past, of course, included Cerberus. Miranda had said she would pull all available data on the project that lead to her alterations and modifications, to see if anything else that would help Jack could be found out. The two women clearly did not like each other, but Miranda had clearly heeded Shepard's earlier words about the subject and was, surprisingly, not rising to Jack's baiting.
As usual, the system was clean of any evidence of habitation when they entered, although several of her fleet ships were cleverly tucked away in the asteroids with prepared firing solutions on most FTL entry points. As the Normandy lined up to dock with the base, however, Shepard was surprised to see a Cerberus-flagged shuttle in her docking bay.
She tapped her comm-panel. "Normandy to base. We're docking now. Do we have visitors?"
The hard, steely voice of Randall Ezno rang out. "Yes, we do, ma'am. Mr. Harper sent some people that your newest recruit might want to talk to."
Jack, leaning against the wall of the CIC, snorted. "Cerberus pukes? Fat chance of that shit." She looked disinterested.
Docking took only a few minutes, and Shepard lead Jack out via the drop ramp in the cargo bay. As they disembarked, Shepard arched an eyebrow at the two black-armored figures standing in her hangar, both of which turned in their direction as they reached the bottom of the ramp.
Jack had literally frozen in place, eyes wide, as the two approached.
"Hey, slant-eye, check this shit out. Little girl is all grown up." The bigger of the two figures, a heavily muscled black man with a wide grin on his blunt features, walked slowly forward. "More than grown up."
The slender form of Kai Leng gave him a sidelong look. "Someone hasn't learned a lesson about calling me slant-eye, I see. Perhaps I should let her pick where I deliver the next reminder at on your body.." The glowing eye-shapes of his cybernetic mask fixed onto Jack. "You did not die. Have you redeemed your rage?"
Jack swallowed, saying nothing, and Shepard took a step forward. "Not sure who you two are."
Miranda, following, gave a sigh. "These... gentlemen... are Mr. Harper's personal troubleshooters. Theo Pellham and Kai Leng. They... ah, extracted Jack from the project she was being held at."
Pel glanced over Shepard, eyes narrow. "So you're the Grand High Imperial Badass we've been killing Broker fucks to keep safe all this time. Huh. Don't look like much."
Leng's whispery voice was dryly sarcastic. "You somehow manage to become more idiotic every time you open your mouth. I seem to recall she beat Saren while you were beaten like a child– "
"Shut your fucking mouth, Leng, or we'll bring up old girl Kae and how she owned your ass with your own knives."
The slender figure shrugged dismissively. "Hardly a threat. At least my tastes do not run to talk, dark and... spikey."
"Oh, it is ON motherfucker!" The bigger man launched himself at Leng, who neatly sidestepped and tripped him, leaving Pel to sprawl on the floor.
Jack burst out laughing, drawing a surprised look from Shepard. "Oh, god, you two...still doing the same shit."
With a thinning of his lips, Leng turned to face Shepard more fully. "We have a connection with Jack. I am not a sentimental man, but I would appreciate a few minutes alone with her. Cerberus... is not a concept for the weak to embrace. She must understand its necessity."
Shepard frowned. "I don't understand its necessity."
Leng's head tilted. "Then you are lying to yourself. You are not blind enough to think this galaxy is driven by anything but hate and the pursuit of advantage in the weakness of others. Cerberus only acts in the way it must."
Pel levered himself to a sitting position, dusting himself off. "Well, now that we got the sick fucking assholes out of the Dog it does. Except Minsta." He looked up at Jack. "Kai's too goddamned stoic to say it, but it's good to see you, kid." He tilted his head. "Nice ink."
Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "Jack, when you get done catching up with... whoever these two are... have them send you to Medical so we can get your amp in and make sure you're in good health. We'll be heading out in a few more hours, once another person who has joined up finishes up in medical. Vigil, if you call for him, can show you a place to rack out – this place is damn near empty too and we have a private room for you."
Jack nodded, still staring at Kai Leng. "Yeah, whatever. I got shit to talk about. I'll be around... later."
Shepard glanced at Miranda, who gave a carefully doubtful look, and she nodded. "Alright." She walked past the three of them, Miranda trailing, and waited until she got into the elevator to speak.
"That... was a little strange."
Miranda nodded quietly. "It was. I've had to work with those two for some time. They are... somewhat silly in their interactions, but otherwise extremely lethal. They were part of the team – and the only other survivors besides myself and Ms. Zorah – who recovered your body. They have always had a strange interest in Jack, one I haven't been able to get them to explain."
She glanced up at Shepard. "I will say they are extremely dangerous – they were battle associates of your mentor, David Anderson, as well as contemporaries of Admiral Ahern and General Florez."
Shepard frowned. "...I sometimes feel like a goddamned extra character in a book with all these older mysterious badass types floating around."
Miranda chuckled, then almost hesitantly patted Shepard's arm. "I would hardly call you an extra, Shepard." She glanced at her omni-tool. "It looks as if Mr. Harper would like a word with you. I'll monitor the situation with Jack and make sure she's ready to move out when it comes time to depart for Korlus."
Shepard smiled. "Thanks, Miranda."
The Cerberus officer shrugged. "Mr. Pressly has been... helpful... in understanding some aspects of secondary command management systems. He has a very organized and logical mind."
Shepard sighed. "I know. He thinks of everything." She paused. "Was it you who decided to bring Jack some clothing?"
Miranda glanced down. "...no, that was Mr. Pressly's idea."
Shepard grinned. "Like I said. He thinks of everything."
