AN: I've taken many aspects of the training from a documentary about the Russian Spetsnaz, even the personality/potential chart. In my opinion, their policy of "do or die" comes the closest to what the ICT is like. All I did was put the ideas into the Sci-Fi setting. Thank you everyone for reading so faithfully and for all your wonderful reviews!
The very next day things started to happen. Shepard sent out a note to the crew notifying them that she would now be training him for the N1 course, so she would need complete discretion and privacy with him sometimes and asked everyone to respect that. Also, the ship undocked in the early hours and set course, but nobody knew where. Shepard ordered James to build a kind of a closed off area in the cargo bay, a huge box, for which the techies and guards had to clear some space. It had to be big enough for them to spar in it, but there could be no prying eyes, cameras or listening devices inside. That this was primarily a precaution against EDI didn't seem to worry the AI too much. She was giving James practical advice while he worked with a welding iron.
He was still at it when the ship docked at what looked like an abandoned mercenary station. Shepard went off alone and brought back a huge crate, which she proceeded to open and unpack in the almost finished sparring box. He knew it had to do with his training, but she wouldn't let him touch or look at anything inside it save a beautiful set of armour. It bore no insignia of the ICT whatsoever, which kind of disappointed him. Shepard told him that he had to earn the right to wear black and stripes first. The armour was grey, but the quality of the materials filled him with awe. Custom made just for him. State of the art technology, reduced weight, supple joints, shining new surface of the plates, freakishly strong shields and barriers, an integrated VI with sensors all over, life support for open space, heat, cold and water... There was so much stuffed into the beautiful piece that James was drooling before he even laid out the last piece on the floor.
He had to try it on, of course. And it was an experience he truly cherished. The armour fit him so well that it felt like a second skin, going easily with every move or twitch of his body, yet cocooning him in layers upon layers of protection. He could feel the love with which it had been made. True care for the people who wore it. He couldn't wait to put some battle scars on those new, shiny plates, to make his armour look as worn as Shepard's did. It was not just a piece of equipment, it was a statement in itself. The Academy provided their people with everything they could possibly need.
Shepard put everything else back inside the crate save one datapad. She sat in the corner with it and opened whatever text she planned to read.
"While I read the instructions for what is required of you to pass each course, you will practice putting your new armour on and off until you know each belt and buckle. Bare minimum is for you to be fully battle dressed in forty six seconds. Try and do better than that."
She proceeded to sit there and ignore him for a long while in which James practiced as she told him. It was nothing new, every recruit did that in boot camp at some point, then moved on to dissembling and reassembling all kinds of weapons in the shortest possible time until it all came as naturally as taking a piss. James kind of loved this. If he had any say in this, the only armour he would wear after this one would be a black set with three stripes on the right arm and an N7 emblem pressed into its collar.
When Shepard was done reading he could get battle ready in forty one second. Of course, Shepard did that in thirty three, but she had a decade of practise on him. Then she took out some weird looking device from the crate, made him sit still and started taking readings from all his organs, starting with his brain and ending with the sinew of his ankles.
"What is that?" He asked.
"Apparently you're not supposed to know, unless you become an instructor one day," she said, sceptically looking at the readings and then at her manual. "All I can tell you is that they did the same to all of us in orientation, but back then the machinery was different. They put us in a zero-g chamber and hooked us up on a dozen sensors. Basically it measures your body and brain's potential."
"And how great is my potential?"
"That's the thing you're not supposed to know. Knowing will hinder your mental state in training, but I need to know to give you adequate advice for your specialisation, if you pass the N2 test."
"All right. But you never finished giving me the orientation last night. What is this about specialisations?"
"Right." She sat comfortably and told him to get upside down and stand on one hand, like she did countless times in Vancouver when she was bored. As he did that, she explained to him the basic structure of the N courses. The first two out of six were pure combat and survival, the hardest and physically most challenging courses. Not everyone survived them and most people in the galaxy weren't prepared mentally or physically to even consider such harsh training.
"During orientation we were directed to meet up with one of our survival instructors. He welcomed us, pulled a living toad from a bucket and opened it up," she demonstrated quite graphically. "Then he bit into it, telling us that we would have to learn to stomach all kinds of food to survive. It was his way to greet a new batch of recruits and to see which one of us would run away, retching."
"Did anyone?" James felt lots of blood flooding his brain in this position and his body was swaying, but he'd seen Shepard keep it up for hours, so he would have to, as well.
"No. In fact, I went over, took another toad from the bucket and told him that he missed the best part to eat. The eyes. Which I demonstrated for him."
"The eyes are the best part of a toad?! Have you eaten lots of toads in the olden days in Vancouver?"
"No, never touched a toad before that moment. But yes, I killed the thing and ate its eyes right in front of him. And I licked my fingers. He was impressed."
"And you just robbed me of a chance to impress you in the same way. Not saying I'd enjoy it, but I would have done it, too, if we had toads around here."
"Don't you get any ideas about my fish," she said sternly. Then she told him about the specialisations. From N3 on each recruit could choose one of the following: Advanced Combat, Intelligence, Infiltration, Negotiation and Leadership.
"It used to be possible to take Combat through all six courses, which is what Kai Leng did. He is also the reason why ICA has revised the whole program and forbade such a narrow specialisation. N1 and N2 are Combat, so even if you add four Infiltration courses on top of that, it's fine. But you can no longer do only Combat. The Academy deemed a mix of courses necessary to better gauge the agent's mental stability. Leng cracked on us and there is a chance it could have been prevented. Accidentally, pure Combat is the quickest way to get you through the ranks and become an N6 or N7. He did it in under a year."
"How long did your training last?"
"Six years."
"Which is why your mental state is stellar, even the Reapers can't indoctrinate you."
"Probably. That is also why I said that the Academy is lowering their standards lately. They allowed pure Combat specialisation once more. I don't care if they let others do that. Under my instruction you will have at least three different specialisations or you won't be any number of N at all."
"I would never choose the easy way out, Shepard. When I commit, I fully commit."
"Good to hear it."
So she explained each specialisation to him. Intelligence was not for him. It was for technology geniuses who were born that way. Infiltration was divided in Civilian and Armed. She told him that she chose the Civilian Inf branch for her N3, which basically made her a spy, able to blend in anywhere. James knew that with his bulk and tattoos he was hardly the best candidate for that. He could blend into a military environment, but not the civilian one. Armed Inf, however, sounded exactly like what he would like to do, since it was basically the core of what Shepard and her ground team were doing most of the time.
There were Hostile Negotiations, meaning hostage situations and resolving conflict in battle regions without bloodshed, then Interspecies Negs, which created best ambassadors to deal with other races, and Internal Negs, dealing purely with human matters, often preventing scandals from becoming public.
She told him that her specialisation was Hostile Negs because she did Interspecies Negs on daily basis, so it paid off to take on a course that widened her horizon. He found the attitude more than admirable. With every word she said he understood more and more about her and his awe deepened. She hadn't gone the easy way of taking the courses she would have liked due to natural predisposition. No, she dropped combat courses, counting on getting enough experience in the field to get better. She loved nothing more than interracial cooperation, but trusted herself to learn that on the go, while using ICT to become an even better agent, adding something new to her résumé. She didn't tell him that, but he was smart enough to realise: not every recruit went that road, which was one of the reasons she was an N7 and most others weren't.
Leadership was one of the hardest things to specialise in. She told him so, and while admitting that she had two courses in Leadership under her belt she firmly refused to elaborate on that kind of training. That, he realised, was the core of what made her Commander Shepard and he had a lot to learn and to prove before she'd teach him any of that stuff.
"There are still all the forms I told you about waiting for you, but since I think you're already sold on the idea, it's just a formality." She handed him a datapad and James realised it was a test. He did his absolute fucking best not to lose balance when he stretched out his free arm to take the device. She hadn't released him from the upside down stance and he would not show weakness by dropping it prematurely. "This is officially the end of your orientation. I'll leave out the toad incident since you've already served in space and on far colonies. You've seen icky stuff and eaten unfamiliar food. What came next for me was a fucking hardcore psych eval with the most motherfucking evil psychologist in the history of mankind. She dished out so much tough love that by the end of the week you either became a motherfucking N, or you put a bullet to your head."
"And does that mean I face the same fate?"
"Indeed. Only that evil lady is either back on Earth or dead, so you'll have to go through it with me."
"I thought 'motherfucking evil bitch' was your middle name."
"It is because I learned psychology along the way, so, for a change, I'm perfectly trained to do this with you."
"So how do we proceed?"
"The same way she did it with us. You and I meet privately and I'll tell you what she told me. She said: Dollface, this is the toughest motherfucking school in the galaxy and if you want to be one of us, you need to say goodbye to all your weaknesses. Train your body all you want, it won't help you if your mind is weak. And I'm here to either beat those weaknesses out of you or to beat the brain out of your head if you're not tough enough. So, unload."
"And what did you do?" Now he was curious. It didn't seem like an invitation to open your heart to a nice therapist. It sounded just like what he'd imagined ICT to be. Sink or swim.
"I unloaded. She's the only person besides Joker who knows every single one of my exploitable weaknesses. And I will be that person for you. With only one difference: I have to go do some other work now, so you have time until tomorrow to think about this. She didn't give me even a minute's pause. In the meantime, ask Garrus to spar with you. Tell him to be as hard on you as he can. If you're not wearing any bruises tomorrow morning, I'll personally murder you for slacking."
And so it started. James spent most of the day reading the agreements. He did sign the one allowing experimental treatment and implants on himself, but he wondered how and where such treatment could be administered, now that he was on a space ship.
Traynor caught a distress signal from some reformed Cerberus scientists nearby so the Normandy headed that way to investigate. In the hours it took them to arrive there Scars heeded Shepard's request and beat the shit out of James. The composed and stoic turian never seemed quite so ferocious on the battlefield, even though James knew he was a tough and skilled son of a bitch. Three hours of training with him showed that there was a real monster hiding behind the dignified facade. It also showed James that Shepard and Scars had trained each other very well along the line. He saw him use some clearly human combat tactics, which made him quite unpredictable.
At dinner time Shepard informed the freshly medigelled James that his endurance training was beginning immediately and he was not to eat, drink or sleep for the next sixty hours. Then, of course, they arrived on the planet and he was ordered to gear up, carrying twice as much ammo as usual to weigh him down, and then Shepard simply sat back with Javik behind some crates and let him fight his way into the compound by himself.
He did it. His new armour took a few hits, but his ego didn't. Then again, this was only the beginning of his endurance training. He would surely see the world in a different light by the end of those sixty hours.
They met Jacob Taylor and the scientists, and while Shepard acted politely enough towards the man, she calmly said into her earpiece:
"This one has joined Cerberus out of conviction back in the day. I never had much use for him and he makes my skin crawl."
Then she went for the overkill. They went outside to repair the AA guns and while she and Javik kept Cerberus away from him, James had to do the actual repairs. She switched their coms to a privacy mode and started asking questions. All kinds of questions. Math, physics, history, pop culture - anything that crossed her mind. And then, after she had allowed Cerberus to hit him often enough to get his shields down, she simply turned around and shot him in the head. He'd never forget the moment when he saw her point her rifle at him and afterwards he realised how lucky he'd been that she'd replaced her incendiary rounds with the regular ones. Her bullet scraped his head just so, opening a gushing wound but leaving his skull intact.
He would also never forget the sight of her when he fell to his knees, disoriented from the shot, losing blood like crazy, aching all over after Garrus, thirsty and hungry. She stood over him like the goddess of war, a golden valkyrie, her eyes dark like a thundering sky and cold like the heart of a serial killer.
"Get up, recruit," she spoke. Her voice resounded in his spinning head like a gong. "You have ninety seconds to finish those repairs or you and everyone on this planet will die."
Logically he knew there was no time limit to his task. But his gut told him that if he failed, she would do exactly what she'd threatened to do twice already: murder him for slacking.
Sink or swim. He found it in himself to get up and finish the repairs, even though he could barely see anything through the blood flooding his face by the end.
The scientists rushed over to help him when they re-entered the compound, but Shepard ordered them to leave him alone. She gave him a thread and a needle and told him to stitch up the wound on his head.
No standard med kit soldiers carried on them contained such crude tools anymore. It was so last century! Medigel was helpful and left almost no scars. Yet James knew that he wouldn't always have standard med kits and medigel on him. So while the scientists packed their shit, he stood in front of a reflective metal surface and breathed through his teeth, trying to stop his hands from shaking. And then he did it. Sewed himself up. He kept going with clenched teeth and through pain. This was what it meant to be an N7 and he would be damned if he ever complained even once.
The rest of the day was no better. She sent him into the thick of battle against Cerberus while the scientists escaped in their shuttles, then let him take a direct hit from an Atlas mech, and then she got herself shot in the hip. He had no other choice but to grab her and carry her off the battlefield and into the waiting shuttle under heavy fire.
Once inside, she freed herself from his grasp with the calmness of an iceberg. Her shields magically recharged and she could walk just fine even with the wound.
"What is going on here, Commander?" Dr Cole looked bewildered at all three of them. Taylor also seemed puzzled.
"Nothing that should concern you, Doctor."
"Please don't think that I'm ungrateful. I am very grateful. You saved all of us and we're forever in your debt. And I'm not a soldier, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about but... it seemed a bit like you were playing with our lives out there."
"I would never do something like that," Shepard looked the doctor in the eyes with deep sincerity. James would have believed her if he hadn't watched her say the same to Aria before she put a bullet in her head. Personally, James thought that Shepard wouldn't care if there were a few Cerberus scientists less in the world, considering David Archer's evil brother was among them. But it was just his opinion. Right about now he cared only about staying on his feet.
When they were back home she ordered him to clean the entire cargo bay, just to keep him occupied during his coming sleepless hours, and for when he would be done she pointed at a wall and told him to learn how to walk it.
"Walk it?" He blinked. So she demonstrated. She took two quick steps towards it, tossed her body against it, latched onto what seemed like flat surface with her fingertips, found miraculous leverage with her feet, knees and elbows until she was by the window to Javik's room. From there she pushed herself further up until she was pretty much at the ceiling. Just when he thought she'd tell him to walk the ceiling she jumped down, rolled over and came to stand next to him, her breath even, no hint of limp after the injury to the hip. "I see," he nodded.
She and the rest of the crew had dinner and the day crew went to sleep. The night crew took over as the ship moved on to their next mission: checking out an asari colony nearby. For the next eight hours he was the only one awake in the cargo bay. He was falling off his feet from exhaustion and blood loss, but the thought that this was what he'd wanted for so long kept him going. He would be damned if he didn't clean the room spotless.
During breakfast Vega showed up looking like hell. He saluted Jo with a bruised hand and reported that the cargo bay was clean.
"How far up did you climb that wall?"
"About three and a half meters."
"Keep practising, but later. Right now Kenneth and Adams are going to do routine maintenance in the ducts. You'll do it for them."
"Commander," Adams spoke up, unable to watch the whole thing anymore. "There is sensitive equipment involved and if he touches the wrong pipe, he could get cooked and the whole ship could lose a system or two. Look at him, he's dead on his feet. I can't in good conscience let him do such work in this condition."
Jo turned a heavy glance to Adams. The whole rest of the crew at the table kept quiet, avoiding her look.
"That is the whole point," she said slowly, making sure Adams understood that if he resisted an order he would pay with his life. Dr Chakwas' face was an exercise in detachment. "As a part of his training he needs to know the consequences of any mistake he makes. It will cost his life, lives of others and perhaps an entire ship. And it doesn't fucking matter how tired he is. Real life won't cut him any slack."
"I can do it," Vega declared. Jo nodded. That was the attitude she wanted to see.
When Vega wandered off to find the right clothes for the work in the ducts, Garrus spoke up. He made sure not to sound like he was accusing anyone of anything:
"That's a bit harsh. We went through similar things in our military training back on Palaven, but this is still intense."
"It's only the basics," Jo said. She found no pleasure in torturing her friends like that, but she'd meant it when she told Vega that she would apply a different frame of reference to him now. He was no longer just a friend. He was a recruit and he would go through hell before he was elevated.
"How long will you put him through this?" Joker asked.
"Until I deem him ready. The first course lasts about two months."
"That's really brutal," Gabby whistled.
"Did you go through the same?" Joker asked again.
"That is only the basics," she said pointedly, making everyone understand that she'd been through a lot worse in her time.
"Aren't you endangering all our lives here when you put him to work on the ship in this condition?" Garrus cocked his head.
"Not really. If he's half as motivated as I was back when, then the cargo bay is truly spotless right now and the maintenance will be done perfectly. Besides, he needs to know that the consequences are real. It's like the difference between training with blunt plastic swords and real, sharp ones. Much more effective, and the learning curve sky-rockets."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Adams said and earned a seriously murderous look from her.
"I do. Do you?" Jo nailed him to his seat with that look.
"I'm sorry, Commander, it was not meant as a criticism. I apologise. You know what's best and everyone knows you'd never endanger your ship and crew. We trust you with our lives."
Jo tolerated no more talk about this. None of them was even supposed to know how ICT worked, but it couldn't be helped. At the very least they had to learn how to ignore the brutality going on right under heir noses. It was strictly voluntary, which made it worse.
It was probably the hardest on Karin Chakwas. Jo had spoken to her earlier and implored her to ignore her oath to help those in pain in Vega's case. To ignore the crude healing methods he would have to use on himself, ignore dangers to his health, ignore potential infections he could get from stitching a wound with a needle and a thread. To ignore basic compassion. It was hard for the woman, but she agreed, trusting that Jo knew what she was doing.
While the ship was on its way to the asari colony, Jo got back to reading the manual for the instructors. The measurements she took from Vega last night were a part of a scientific-psychological evaluation program that had been applied and perfected by the military in the last two hundred years to determine soldiers with the greatest potential for leadership, stress resistance, for suicide missions - parameters varied. She'd never known what this test was about because as a Field Agent, even with seniority, she hadn't needed to know. After taking a look at Vega's chart when the machine finished its calculations Jo went to dig up her own ICT file in search of a similar chart. Unsurprisingly, she found it classified even from her. Vega's chart, however, rated him as a potentially great leader with high pain and stress resistance, if he learned to control himself, his emotions and his state of mind better. He had a high potential for incorruptible integrity and deep compassion, was not prone to meaningless violence and wouldn't become a danger to himself and others if he trained correctly. The chart told her that she was looking at a potential Admiral of the entire human fleet here.
This made her wonder what her instructors had seen in her chart, judging by the things they had put her through in training. For example the little chain saw incident.
"EDI, get the fuck out of my seat," she said when she came to the cockpit later that morning. EDI's mech, which was dressed in a uniform - practically redundant but aesthetically necessary - was familiar with the treatment. It vacated the premises and wandered off to the CIC. Jo noticed that many crew members were now coming to this mech when they wanted to talk to EDI, which the AI found fascinating. Jo refused to do that. EDI was still always and everywhere on the ship, so Jo could talk to the ceiling whenever she needed her. The mech was a minor nuisance because it insisted on sitting in the same chair where Jo always sat when she needed some peace and quiet in her man's company.
Joker seemed to like it there, despite Jo's grumbling. Sometimes he even commented on how sexy the metal body was. Jo always had to do some breathing exercises in those moments to stop herself from killing them both.
Joker shot her a glance once she sat. After Vega came to her with the invitation she'd told Joker that she would be training him and that she needed to insist on complete privacy for some of that training, which meant switching off all spying devices, even the implant in her jaw. He'd considered himself notified back then, but now he had a slightly better idea what would be happening with Vega from now on and he had yet to express his opinion.
"Was it really so much worse for you?" He finally said, never looking up from his console.
"The initial course - no, that's basically the gist of it. But later on... Infinitely harder."
"I'm starting to think I don't really want to know."
"Might be better that way."
He turned to her suddenly, emotion clouding his features:
"You know I love you, right? No matter what happens in the future, no matter what happened in the past, I'll always love you."
Jo swallowed a lump in her throat. Neither of them was a vocal person when it came to heir feelings and words of love were scarce. But in Jo's opinion they meant more if they weren't repeated every day.
"And I love you, more than anything or anyone in the world," she said.
"Commander, Admiral Hackett requests a private conversation," Trayor informed her from behind. Jo sighed and heaved her body out of the seat.
"Be back in a moment," she said to Joker and went to the QEC. Hackett stood rigidly, his face stern, hands clasped behind his back.
"Shepard, I'm missing a Major," he said accusatory.
"No, you're not," she shot back. "You knew perfectly well why Alenko had been moved up the ranks and you went along with it. I know you could have stopped it if you wanted and I know you realise even now that Alenko isn't suited for that rank. I'm not happy with you about that. So no, you're not missing a Major. Maybe a Staff Lieutenant, though."
"Where is he and what have you done with him?" Hackett sounded really pissed.
"Locked away on my ship, where I can personally make sure that he doesn't do any damage."
"Shepard," Hackett growled with a clear warning. "You can't kidnap people like that."
"I can and I will, if I consider them a threat to society."
Hackett glared at her with narrowed eyes. They'd been butting heads for years, but lately Jo stopped pulling punches. She was becoming more and more disillusioned with the two men who used to present themselves as her mentors. Those times were long gone.
"Be careful, Shepard. I know you're under stress and I can overlook a lot because we need you. But I'm not someone you want to openly go against. We have bigger things to worry about, but this is an official matter and will be dealt with accordingly."
"Have you ever been offered a position as an instructor at the ICA?" She asked. Hackett frowned at the sudden change of topic.
"I've been considered, once."
"What happened?"
"The political situation back then was difficult, so it never came to be."
"I just received the status and got my first recruit to train." She sounded smug, she knew it, and she loved the startled expression on Hackett's face. At least he was smart enough not to point out the fact that while ICA was a branch of the Systems Alliance, she was not in the military any longer and technically couldn't be an instructor. He knew as well as she did that the Leadership of the ICA didn't give a rat's ass about something like that. "When I was explaining our guidelines to him I had a chance to freshen up my own memory. We don't do what we do for any personal or political gain, Hackett. We do it because it's the right thing to do."
"Your idealism is naive at best, dangerous at worst. You can't possibly be blind enough to believe that you'll never encounter a questionable situation where you have to make a tough choice. I always did what I had to do."
"I know you've been longer in the military than I've been alive. But my years as a Senior Field Agent showed me that I always have a choice. So did you. I seriously see no tough choices when Udina requests a Spectre commendation for a weak officer. What happened? Did he cash in a favour?"
Hackett remained silent, which told Jo everything she needed to know.
"He did," she nodded. "And you sold your integrity to the highest bidder. You endangered the Council, basically allowed the Cerberus coup, and now you're demanding Alenko's release? You may be useful right now because the Alliance needs a strong leader, but from one N7 to another I feel it's my obligation to inform you personally: you are done. If we win this war, you either retire with honours or I will retire you without them."
Hackett's silence spoke volumes. Jo knew exactly that she'd just thrown his inadequacy, his shame and his weakness into his face. She could see it in the hologram's eyes that Hackett remembered the guidelines and that he knew just how far he'd stepped away from them in his belief that he was doing the right thing. But Jo was done with weak and corrupt leaders. She knew that not everyone was as strong as she was, that not everyone held the same values and morals. But there was a reason why people kept coming back for her kind of justice and leadership again and again, trusting her with the most difficult decisions. If she could make them, then she could at least count on someone in Hackett's position to be able to remain as uncompromising and maybe even idealistic as she was. She dismissed Hackett with that and went back to Joker to watch him work on his approach to the asari planet.
