Chapter 14
Scars of the Past
Author's Note: Wow, the last chapter got the lowest amount of reviews this story has had so far. Sad face :( Aw well, here's to hoping that this next chapter turns out a little better. By the way, someone posted several reviews without a name, all of them the same person. Each one contained several paragraphs of why this story sucks. I just want to say this, if you don't like this story, I understand that, it isn't for everyone, but why on earth would you read it, write a review on how much it sucks and continue to read it! I don't want twelve reviews from the same person telling me how much each chapter sucks, it pisses me off! I know that barley any of my readers do this, so I'm going to let it go, but if one more person does this, I'm going to disable anonymous reviews so that if someone trashes me I can report them. All right on with the story.
"She just fainted?" Chakwas asked, a disbelieving look on her face.
"Believe me I'm just as confused as you are," Shepard said, shaking his head. Both he and Chakwas were standing outside of the infirmary, where Rebecca was resting. "Soldiers don't kill a Thresher Maw just to faint because she saw a corpse."
"It could be a phobia," Chakwas said "Or maybe she has some mental scarring. Commander if I may ask, where are we heading next?"
"We've set course towards Feros," Shepard said "We lost contact with the research colony Zhu's Hope and we're going to investigate."
"Uh, Commander?" joker said over the intercom "I sent the data on the dead Marines that you found on Edolus a couple of hours back. Admiral Kahoku is on the line, and he wants to talk to you."
Shepard let out a sigh. "Let me know when Rebecca wakes up," he said, as he turned and walked away from the infirmary "I would rather not go through her personal files without her permission. Still if it may come to that, but if she's willing to tell me why, I see no reason to invade her privacy."
As Shepard walked through the Normandy, he approached the COM room, stopping in front of the console. "Commander Shepard?" said Kahoku through the COM lines "Is that you?"
"It's me Admiral," Shepard said "How can I help you?"
"The data that you sent me, those men were under my command," Kahoku said grimly. "I pulled some strings and I've got some bad news. My men were killed my Cerberus."
"Cerberus..." Shepard said as he scratched his head "I know I've heard that name somewhere.
"Not a whole lot is known about them," Kahoku said urgently "They used to be a moderate UNSC blackops that reported to ONI but they went rouge awhile back. They claim that they intend to make Humans the dominate species in the galaxy, no matter what the cost. From the point of view of most, they've become a terrorist group that doesn't care how many people get killed as long as they get what they want."
"Why would they lead a team of Marines into a ditch to be killed by a Thresher Maw?" Shepard asked "What do they gain from it?"
"I don't know," the Admiral replied "Maybe they were testing the capabilities of the Thresher Maw, maybe they wanted to see if the Marines had what it took to kill it. I can't say for sure, I don't have enough data all I know is Cerberus is nothing but trouble. I have some good news though, the UNSC has successfully planted several moles in Cerberus that are leaking us information. It's rather limited though, Cerberus is an organization that thrives on secrecy, only the man who runs the entire thing knows everything that there is to know?"
"Who's the mole?" Shepard asked curiously.
"For obvious reasons I can't tell you, but she did give me some interesting information," Kahoku told Shepard. "Apparently one of Cerberus' long term goals is to create a super soldier, they want their very own SPARTANs. My contacts couldn't get me any information on how far off they are, but she did get me the location of a research base. Cerberus has one on the planet Binthu in the Yangtze system. I know that you have a mission of your own but should you happen to be in the area, I would appreciate if you could destroy the base and get whatever data from it that you can."
Shepard nodded. "I'm busy right now Admiral, but right after I take care of the situation on Zhu's Hope I'll get right on that."
"I knew I could count on your Shepard," the Admiral said in a relieved voice "I would've sent in ODSTs but we can't spare any ships, they're all being deployed to the colonies in case of a Geth attack. Godspeed Commander," Kahoku said as he closed the line.
Rebecca moaned slighted as she pressed her hand to her forehead. As she sat up in the bed that she was in, she realized that she was lying in the infirmary. "I thought I was past this," she muttered "I thought that this wouldn't happen anymore. Now the nightmares are probably going to start again."
"What nightmares?" asked a voice right next to Rebecca. Rebecca nearly jumped out of the bed, as she turned around and saw Liara sitting next to her bed, looking at her patiently. "If it isn't that far out of line," Liara asked politely "Why did you faint?"
Rebecca let out a groan as she rubbed her eyes. "Look, it was only trigged by very unique circumstance that I doubt will ever happen again. This won't jeopardize the mission in any..."
"I don't care about it affecting the mission," Liara interrupted "I care about it affecting you." Rebecca blinked, clearly confused. "You showed me kindness when I first came aboard, I thought that it would only be right to repay it." Rebecca looked extremely uncomfortable as she rubbed her forehead.
"I...," she said weakly "I had a close brush with death once." Liara nodded, silently asking Rebecca to continue. "We had lost contact with one of the new towns on the colony Akuze. I was one of the Marines stationed on the planet at the time. They sent out a platoon of us to go see what was wrong. We went by Warthog, half of them were only the passenger model, but when we got to where the town was, there was nothing there, like it had never existed.
"We were as confused as Hell, but it was getting dark, so we decided to set up camp, and thats when it all went to shit."
"What happened?" Liara asked.
"The town had been destroyed by a Thresher Maw, and as soon as the sun went down, it came back up for us." Rebecca shook her head "We had no idea what they were back then and we had no idea what to do. It fucking slaughtered us, smashing the Warthogs, dissolving people, I even got a nice glob of acid on my shoulder."
Liara's eyes widened. 'But, that doesn't make any sense,' she thought, looking at both of Rebecca's arms 'Thresher Maw acid is highly corrosive, a glob would be enough to eat through her armor and take her arm off, but she still has both.' "But," Liara said speaking up "How did you survive? Thresher Maws just don't let their pray go."
Rebecca let out a bitter laugh "You're right, the only reason that it didn't kill me, was because it thought I was already dead, and I can't say that I blame. It flipped a Warthog, and it landed right on top of me." Liara let out a startled gasp, despite her best intentions to remain silent.
"When the next team that came through found me, I was a real mess," Rebecca continued. "Blunt trauma to a good deal of my internal organs, one of my eyes had burst wide open, I had lost a lot of blood and my right arm had been completely melted off."
"But..." Liara spluttered "You have your arm, your eye's fine too."
"Oh yeah," Rebecca said grimly "I forgot to mention to you why I'm still alive. See when they found me they tried a very advanced medical technique to save me and it worked. Cybernetics."
Liara blinked "What?"
"They replaced my arm, my eye, and some of my internal organs with cybernetic implants and then covered them with artificial skin, I'm freaking 20% metal and circuitry" Rebecca answered "Oh yeah, they did this too." she said as she drew her combat knife, and pricked one of her fingers. A bright white liquid oozed out of the wound. "Artificial blood," she said "There wasn't any donor blood available so they filled me up with this. It's much more effective than regular Human blood, carries more oxygen, more resident against disease. In the end it ended up 'choking' the rest of my regular blood cells to death and now all of my blood is artificial."
"Do they...bother you?" Liara asked cautiously, not wanting to unintentionally insult Rebecca.
"My implants? Nah," Rebecca replied "I can't even tell that they're there, except my right arms a lot stronger now. But I was one of the lucky ones," she said, looking down sadly. "Sarah, Blake, Alexandra, Michael, Katey," tears began to form in Rebecca's eyes as she spoke. "Derek, Tomas, Lucas, Martha...Jesus Christ," she said, pressing her hands to her face as the tears began to flow from her eyes. "Dead," she sobbed "All dead."
Without consciously thinking about it, Liara reached towards Rebecca, wrapping her arms around her and pulling the woman into a hug. Rebecca quickly returned the favor, unintentionally pulling Liara onto the bed as she hugged her. "You are strong," Liara said, a little shocked at how easily Rebecca had pulled her towards her.
The ODST chuckled weakly "Thanks," she said as she released Liara and stood up "I needed that, it feels good to vent just do me a favor and don't tell anyone else what I just told you. I'm gonna head back to my quarters now, if Dr. Chakwas comes around tell her where I went." As she spoke, she turned and began to walk towards the door.
"Um, Rebecca," Liara said quietly, causing Rebecca to stop and turn around. "I was just wondering, we are friends right?" she asked uncertainly.
A warm smile spread across Rebecca's face "Yes Liara, we are," she said, as she left the infirmary. A small smile spread across Liara's face as she felt much happier than she had in a long time.
"We're in orbit around around Theros," Joker's voice said over the intercom as Liara walked out of the infirmary, privately hoping that she could sit this one out."
Author's Note:It's short I know but it's mainly there for character development , just so you know, I am not focusing solely on Rebecca in Liara, neither of them will be on the Zhu's Hope mission, which will last a couple of chapters...I think. I'll use that time to develop other characters. BTW I am slowly becoming addicted to an online game called Ogame. Let me break it down for you, basically you command an empire in space, working your way from a small empire with one planet that can't even afford 1 fighter, to a massive galactic power with massive fleets at your disposal. If anyone is interested in joining Ogame, I play in Universe Electra and I am part of the WARP alliance. Please note that if inexperienced players want to join WARP they'll have to join the wing alliance, WARPling, first. Please message me if you play or plan on playing Ogame.