AN—I'm gonna start referring to Shepard by her first name, for reasons that will become obvious in a minute. For a laugh, check out the list of Things Doctor Bright Is Not Allowed To Do At The Foundation.
Jane collapsed heavily in the shuttle's bucket seat. She'd gone cold and clammy, and had broken out in a sickly sheen of sweat. Garrus kept glancing worriedly at her out of the corner of his eye but he didn't pry, not yet. That could come later, when they didn't have an audience.
*Jane.* A voice, as familiar as her own, full of concern.
John, I'm here.
*I can feel your fear even through the blocks. What the hell happened?*
Have you gotten an e-mail about Halion yet?
A short pause. *Yeah, I got it. Why?* Jane grimaced at the always-invasive sensation of him flipping through her recent memories like a slideshow. He was starting to put it together, but was having as hard a time remembering as she had before seeing the dead D-class on the floor.
Remember 076? Able?
*Oh, fuck. Oh no.*
Yeah. He got out, and I think he took the shuttle.
*Why the hell did they have a shuttle at a containment site?!*
She winced, the silent shout thundering in her head. You think that hasn't occurred to me? Anyway, it can't be helped. By the way, since when did they start relocating SCPs off Earth?
*Probably since they figured that shooting one into the void was a lot more cost-effective than building an elaborate storage unit.* His sardonic tone came through loud and clear, and she had to suppress a little chuckle. Talking to John always made her feel better; he offered a counter-balance whenever she was off-kilter, and she tried to do the same for him. Theirs was a good relationship, if a little awkward at times.
We didn't run into anything alive, but there were a lot of casualties. See if you can get into the Admin offices—we tried, but Able's box was giving us a serious case of the willies. Maybe take Tali, Chiktikka can light the way for you.
*Will do. Thanks for the heads-up, Jane. Keep me posted, and stay safe out there.*
Yeah, she scoffed. Safe. Right.
*I'm serious.*
I know. And then she felt the blocks come back up and he was gone.
"Final approach to the Normandy, Commander," said Rolston from the pilot's seat. "Joker, open 'er up." They cruised back into the ship and Shepard was out before the engines had quit powering down. Garrus was right behind her, followed by Zaeed. As freaked out as she was by the implications of what happened on Halion, she had to take control of the situation as best she could.
"EDI, inform the crew there will be a debriefing in the comm room in ten minutes. Attendance mandatory for ground team personnel, and Joker."
"I will forward the order."
"Can you access the transport records from the facility?" She strode into the elevator and Garrus shadowed her, keeping a respectful silence. That was something she really liked about him, she decided-he knew when to shut the hell up every once in a while. That was a trait she was finding it hard to come by these days.
"I'm showing one small delivery vessel requesting entry at 21:00 yesterday."
"Can you get a lock on it?"
"Negative. It is outside broadcast range."
"Of course it is." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Let me know if anything—and I mean anything-enters this ship without prior permissions. If there's a fly in the mess hall that doesn't have a boarding pass, I want to know about it."
"There is very little insect life in deep space, Shepard."
She stared at the ceiling, giving the speaker a stare that could melt a hole in the hull. "That was a figure of speech."
"Understood. I will remain alert for any foreign presence."
"That'll be all." When the doors opened on the second floor, she didn't move right away. Out there lay dragons she didn't want to slay just yet, memories that should have remained buried.
"Much as I love elevators," Garrus began, "we've got a debriefing to get to." He swept his arm in an "after you" motion, and after a moment she pushed off the wall and strode into the CIC, her back ramrod straight. The bright lights and bustling activity seemed inappropriate considering how dark her mood had become.
In the comm room, she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, the very image of casual. Not-giving-a-fuck. As the others trickled in, she and John went over what to give away and what to keep secret—a daunting task in itself, given the nature of their secrets. Tali was the last one in, and the room went silent as all eyes turned to Jane.
"Today on Halion Zaeed, Garrus, and I encountered the containment cell of a very dangerous man. Someone I haven't seen in a very long time. I have every reason to believe that he may attempt to contact the Reapers, and if that happens we'll be in serious trouble."
"Who is he?" asked Jack, who was cleaning her nails and making a big show of not caring about any of this, a deception which didn't fool Jane anymore—the woman was much more capable than she wanted people to believe.
"His name is Able, and he is the most pure sociopath I have ever encountered. There isn't much that scares me, but Able . . . he's a monster. He loves killing and stirring up trouble, and there's a chance he's contacted the Collectors and, through them, the Reapers."
"Well this just gets better and better," Joker said from the vicinity of the doorway. "Do you collect deranged lunatics, or are we just lucky?"
"If we see him, we kill him," Zaeed grumbled with a shrug. "Simple. Effective."
"It's not going to be that easy," Jane said as she rubbed her neck, the muscles bunched and painful. "He's stronger than anyone here, and that includes Grunt. I've seen him in action before, and believe me, that's not something you forget."
"You seem to know this guy well, Shepard," said Garrus, and the unasked questions hung in the air.
"I know you want an explanation, but I honestly don't know where to begin. This . . ." she said, waving her hands around as if to encompass everything, "is really complicated, and even if I told you, you might only believe half of it."
"You came back from the dead, Shepard," he said. "I think I'd believe a lot where you're concerned."
"You say that now," she said and barked a harsh laugh.
"If I may, Shepard," EDI's soothing synthetic voice intoned, "I believe I can help elaborate for the rest of the crew."
"Uh, okay," she said, unsure what the AI could possibly offer. "Go for it."
"SCP-4762, The Shepard," said EDI, and Jane went rigid. "Object Class: Euclid. Special Containment Procedures: Access to SCP-4762 restricted to Class Two personnel. Testing to be performed only when ordered by the Site Administrator in the presence of Doctor Hardwick. No extraordinary containment measures necessary; subject appears to possess average strength for a human female. Subject currently being held at Site [REDACTED] in a 15'x15' comfortably furnished cell. Reasonable entertainment demands may be met upon approval by Doctor Hardwick."
Jane could feel the eyes boring into her, and John was there listening silently, his suspicion nearly a tangible thing.
"Description: SCP-4762-2 came to our attention in September of [REDACTED] at the age of six, when she fell from the fifth floor of an apartment building in [DATA EXPUNGED]. Her skull was cracked open, both arms and spine broken, and her heart and liver were fatally damaged. She was declared dead for a period of approximately five minutes before regaining consciousness with no signs of the damage sustained in the fall. Agent dispatched on October [REDACTED], subject acquired with minimal resistance."
"Thank you, EDI, that will be all," she barked suddenly, and closed her eyes against the confused and disbelieving eyes of her crew. "The SCP Foundations records are several layers beyond classified, Miranda. Care to explain how in the name of all that's holy Cerberus happened to come by a copy?"
"I don't know where The Illusive Man gets all his resources," she said, cooly as ever, "but I always assumed he had contacts in high places."
"The SCP Foundation?" asked Kasumi. "Never heard of it."
"And you shouldn't be hearing about it now," Jane answered, mentally cursing EDI. She needed to know how Cerberus had gotten her file; that was a breach in security that would have alerted an O5, or maybe even an Overseer. No way The Illusive Man had contacts that high.
*You might as well tell them. They're your crew, they deserve to know what they're getting into now that Able's loose.*
"I don't claim to know everything about them," Jane began. "I was a prisoner, and it wasn't like I was kept in the loop, but basically the SCP Foundation is the repository for all the scariest, most malevolent and dangerous objects to ever exist. Keys that open doorways to mazes that never end, wrecked ships whose interior measurements are vastly larger than their exteriors, and sentient beings with supernatural qualities. I was one of those. They kidnapped me and held me captive for 'further study'."
"That sounds familiar," Jack muttered.
"I spent twelve years of my life in a cell. It looked a lot like a nice hotel room with a television, toys, and my own private bathroom but it was still a cell. They did all kinds of experiments on me, sometimes for days at a time, to see how much I could handle. I've been shot, stabbed, hung, poisoned, bled out, gutted—and survived it all.
"Jesus," Jacob breathed. Mordin was watching her like he was going over all the experimental possibilities, a look she knew well from her time with the SCP Foundation.
"It wasn't until I was maybe eight that I told them about my brother, John."
"You have a brother?" Miranda asked. Obviously that hadn't come up in her background investigations.
"Not really. He's . . . well, he's me. Or what I would have been if I'd made different choices, or been born a boy. He lives in a sort of parallel reality with his own version of the Normandy, his own crew—there's even another you over there—and his own experiences with the SCP Foundation. He's SCP-4762-1, actually. As far as I can tell, we're linked so tightly that our experiences overlap more often than not: he's taken down Sovereign, fought with Saren, and he was also spaced over Alchera."
"Hang on, I thought you said you couldn't die," said Garrus. He was trying so hard to believe her, bless him, and if their friendship hadn't already been cemented it would have been then.
"I can die, just briefly—unless John dies, too. That seems to be the only way I can be permanently killed . . . or in my case, less temporarily. Otherwise, I resurrect within a few minutes, and he can do the same; I think it has something to do with our life forces sustaining each other, but I never understood the science. "
"What you're describing, not possible," said Mordin. "Physical tissue cannot be spontaneously transferred. Cross-dimensional telepathy, reversal of fatal injuries, not medically possible—"
"I could always just shoot myself in the head if you want proof," Jane offered. "It'll hurt like a bitch, but if it'll help you to believe me, doctor, I'll be happy to demonstrate."
Mordin blinked at her. "No, not necessary, Shepard."
"What about the slightly more pressing matter of the 'dangerous sociopath' that may or may not be out to kill us?" Zaeed asked. The thought of that cube sitting in the heart of the mountain, with its cryptic symbols and twenty locks with no keys, had stayed with him and made him edgy. He'd seen some crazy things in his life, but nothing like that box. The whole facility seemed to be full of malice, a malevolent presence, and he still felt as though something were watching him.
"This conversation has been most enlightening," said the disembodied voice of The Illusive Man, who had been listening in since the beginning. "I believe I may have an answer to that question."
"Don't you ever knock?" Jane asked through gritted teeth.
"That's still technically my ship you're flying, Shepard. You'd do well to remember that."
"Asshat," muttered Jack, and Jane had to bite her cheeks to keep a straight face.
"I'm sending you the dossier of an old acquaintance of yours, someone who might be able to point you in the right direction."
Jane powered up her omnitool and opened her messages. Seconds later, the dossier arrived and she skimmed over it quickly. "Clef? You want me to go get information from Clef?"
"Is that a problem, Shepard?" She swore she could hear the bastard smirking around his scotch.
"No, sir, if you want me to have to tapdance around his bullshit for a few hours before getting maybe a third of what I need to know, in which case he's perfect. You might as well ask Bright to stop putting lyrics to 'The Safety Dance' at the end of his reports." She paused, staring daggers at the middle of the table, from which The Illusive Man's voice was issuing. "You and I are going to have a talk, and soon, about how the hell you're getting all this information, by the way."
"When that time comes, I can assure you that in all probability, I won't be telling you." He broke the connection, and Jack looked like she was about to explode with all the expletives she wanted to scream at him. Jane elected to take the high road and wait to vent her frustrations by shooting mercs. Lots of them. Maybe an entire platoon.
"All right, we have a lead. Joker, I'm sending you the coordinates now."
"Aye aye, Commander," he said, snapping off a rather sarcastic salute before hobbling back to the cockpit.
"Samara, Thane, I want you two with me when we land." The two of them were not only very good in a firefight, they were also slow to anger and didn't take offense easily—qualities that would be necessary when dealing with Doctor Alto Clef. As her crew filed out to return to their duties, Jane slumped to the floor and wished she could stay there for the foreseeable future.
*So, Doctor Clef?*
Yeah. This is gonna be about as fun as pulling teeth.
*No kidding. Let me know when you land, I want to be there when you question him.*
John, you know I can't concentrate when you're here. Besides, you'll get to have a turn as soon as you get back from Halion.
*True. Well anyway, let me know how it goes. I'll see if I can't get some more information from the Site.*
Fucking immortals.
*Yeah, no kidding. Try not to kill him, okay? You know how much he hates that.*
Jane laughed at that, the first real laugh she'd had recently. They came too rarely now; ever since waking up on that lab table she hadn't had much occasion for mirth of any sort. I'll try. She threw up the mental blocks that kept his presence from distracting her for the most part and made her way up to her cabin to get ready. If one could ever call themselves ready to deal with the Devil.
