And It All Seemed Harmless: Chapter 19

(TW: Brief mention of past non-con, skip the italic text with Jack's flashback to skip if you need to)

The asari bitch has the nerve to smile at Jack, her white teeth glinting over the barrel of her pistol trained on the head of the struggling biotic.

It had only been minutes since….whatever had happened….had taken place, and the convict found herself struggling for the first time since she had created pure chaos in the sterile Genex building.

She had been toying with a group of the mercenaries when it happened, using her power to slam them into each other. Their own weapons discharged as they crashed into each other, dispatching their own in bright flashes. They were helpless. Projectiles bending to the biotic's will.

The mercenaries had corralled Jack upstairs with seemingly unending waves of new guns, chasing her as she was forced back through the building. And yet, she had not considered herself captured then. Not when she ran up the stairs, leaving a trail of blood on the metallic walls from the mercenaries behind her. Not even when she entered that narrow hall, the cold iron floor making her footsteps echo as she ran. And certainly not when her back was finally pressed against a wall, the doors around her flashing red denying any entry.

Trapping Jack in a narrow hall upstairs was a terrific tactic to render most adversaries helpless, but the survivalist biotic was at her best with her back against a wall. Something about walls and enemies surrounding her transformed the biotic into an animal, a dog lashing out with sharpened fangs to escape the cage intended for her. The mercenaries paid for their mistake, in attempting to cage the wild biotic, with their lives.

When it happened, the end of her wild combat against them was near. The biotic began to see the end to the bodies she was thrashing through like nothing. She raised her hand to launch yet another attack. Only nothing happened. She saw blue electricity fizzle from her fingertips." The power surging through her nervous system sends a shock to her extremities instead, causing her to cry out.

The mercenary closest to her took pause, clearly in shock he still had his very life. But, the shock did not last long enough. His body covered pinned Jack's as he ran into her small frame. His heavy armor knocks the air out of the smaller woman's lungs as she fell to the ground.

Then she was being lifted, two pairs of gloved hands groping for a hold on her as they lifted her thrashing body to her feet. Without her biotic powers, Jack's attempted blows are incredibly less formidable. Yet, she doesn't stop attempting to rain down any sort of punishment she can manage for the two guards trying to restrain her. She had refused to stand, kicking her feet out at the guards every time they had tried to set her on them. Finally, the two had roughly forced her to her knees, guns trained on both side of her head.

The asari came then, gracefully stepping over the bodies littering the hall A dead end. Her boots making a defining click with each step on the metallic floor. Her features narrowed in a vengeful smile when she saw Jack on the ground, glee evident in her features as she took in the state of confusion that had been funneled into frustrated attempts to violently attack her men holding the biotic.

"Subject Zero, my have you been a thorn in the side of this company."

Jack doesn't respond, but her thrashing subsides as she notices yet another weapon trained on her head.

Fuck….breaking their dicks off isn't going to do much if she paints the walls with my head…

Taking a deep breath, the convict's mind races through possible reasons for her sudden inability to use her dominant biotic powers. Was it her Eezo levels? Probably not, Jack was well aware she was a biotic specimen few could match, capable of performing exhausting biotic attacks with even a few grains of Element Zero coursing through her blood. Even when the biotic was dehydrated, starved, on the brink of collapse, she could tear a heavy duty mech apart limb by limb. That power was a gift the experiments had meant to create in her.

Jack thrashes her head as if to keep herself from delving into those memories. The two guards beside her bring their guns closer to her in response, pressing the barrels to her tattooed temples. Jack grits her teeth and wills herself to step back from the edge of falling into memory of starving alone in her cell, going days without food just because those bastards wanted to see if a deprived specimen could still use a biotic lift…fuck. That's it.

The convict's eyes well with tears at the memory, but she allows herself to experience it. Only because she knew she had seen this level of biotic censorship before, and anything she remembered, could possibly get her out alive.

Jack is shaking, bile is the only substance in her stomach and it makes her went to bend over and throw it all up, but she has nothing in herself to expel. A scientist takes her by the shoulder and forces her forward, forward to a stack of metal crates an adult biotic would struggle to send airborne.

"Zero. You will receive one portion of rations when this is completed, but not a moment sooner. Lift. Those. CRATES!" The man's voice is hoarse as he shouts. Jack couldn't tell if it was naturally that gravelly, or if he simply shouted so often his voice could never recover.

Jack sniffles, and closes her eyes. Her head is light from lack of sustenance. Her thoughts barely form coherently as her core instincts beg her to address them. As she extends her arm, her thoughts cease to form. Only emotion courses through her thoughts.

The scientist isn't expecting it. He isn't expecting for her to turn on him. The blue light envelops him before he can retaliate and he is slapped into the wall violently. His body makes an deep indentation in the metal.

With an animalistic scream, Jack begins to tear him apart. Her biotics rip his arm from his limp body and tossing it across the room. It flies like it was nothing more than a training baton.

Jack wants this. She wants him to suffer like she has. She doesn't react when his screams join hers. Or when his course voice begging for mercy in a series of yelps that barely resemble words. He hadn't shown her mercy when he had forced himself upon her. She responds in kind.

Suddenly, as Jack flails her arms once more, glee overtaking her as she prepares to tear the man's head from his shoulders, the blue envelope surrounding her dissipates. Shred of light from grates in the ceiling are now the only light illuminating her fist. The impulses she had called travel through her body and cause her sharp pain instead. A sharp pain she attempts to forcibly ignore. She lashes out again, willing her biotics to her, but again, the man's head stays on his body. Jack shrieks in a combination of rage and pain.

It's only moments before the scientists have her, dragging her kicking and screaming body to a cage on the far side of the room. A medical professional runs to her victim's side, shouting orders to a small team to fetch him supplies for the man.

"Good thing we have that prototype biotic dampener….she would have killed him if Kirkpatrix hadn't turned it on when he did."

"I don't care about his pathetic life...did that machine of yours do anything to her biotic ability permanently?!"

"No sir. It sends a signal to the nervous system to prevent an electric charge from being received in the eezo nodules of the biotic. It redirects the charge to stimulate the originator with pain, to condition the biotic against continual attempts to summon biotic energy. A lesser biotic would be rendered unconscious or otherwise, but it just shocks Zero. When we stop sending that signal, she can use her biotics as demonstrated. It's a fantastic device, we've designed ourselves..."

"I don't care. Don't stop sending that signal until I'm out of this god-forsaken room."

The asari's cruel laugh shakes Jack from her flashback, and the mercenary steps forward, making a show of harshly wiping the few tears that had escaped the convict's eyes from her cheeks. Jack doesn't react as the asari touches her, the convict's body slumped in defeat as she grapples with the realization that the same device must be present to have the same paralyzing effect on her biotics.

She could never escape them...

"I never thought you'd be on your knees when you died Zero. And crying? Fucking crying? Pathetic. I've killed slaves with more fight in them at the end than you. Maybe your friends will squeal a bit more when Archer wastes them downstairs. They're only one floor below us you know...you came so close….and failed. Maybe I'll give you the privilege of bleeding out slowly so you can hear them when they die through the floor. Since you let me hear my men die at your hands!"

The asari's voice is colored with emotion, an emotion Jack understands perfectly. Vengeance. The convict would almost feel something for her, if she wasn't working for a group of scientists Jack wanted to slaughter more than she wanted to breathe tomorrow. However, though Jack does not empathize with the asari, she understands her, something she can use to her advantage.

Though Jack was not incredibly well versed on how the biotic dampener worked, her flashback has provided her with valuable knowledge. The knowledge that the dampener worked on a subject's nervous system, and if a lesser biotic than Jack attempted to invoke their skills, they would be rendered unconscious. Maybe even die. If I can convince her that her biotics still work...maybe she'll try to use them on me to satisfy her vengeance hard-on and fry herself. But how? Maybe, maybe I can use this bitch's asari superiority complex against her….convince her it only works on humans...

"I didn't just kill them."

"What did you just say?"

"I said, I didn't just kill them." The best psychopathic grin Jack can imitate spreads across her face, and she smiles at the asari, her eyes wild once more. The asari's eyes flash, her bottom jaw jutting out in annoyance, and Jack knows she has her.

"I tortured them. Ripped them apart limb from limb with my biotics. They died, and not without pain. Helpless, like bugs being picked apart by a child. It's the worst way to die asari, and anything you do to me won't compare. You're about to give me an end I didn't even consider gifting to your fucking piss poor mercenaries.

"I can be pretty creative you bitch. I will give you much worse!"

"I doubt that, seeing as you haven't even been fucking creative enough to stumble upon the idea that your piece of shit biotic dampener doesn't even work on natural biotics like asari. That bullshit device isn't so special, it was built on Pragia, just like me. And only one of us became something impressive. That garbage targets human implants dumbass. But I'm only telling you because I know, oh I know, you don't have the power to rip me limb from limb. And I want you to know that, when it's finally over, I'll sleep like a goddamn baby knowing I didn't suffer like they did."

The asari fumes, her shoulders shaking with pure hatred.

"Stand back!" She suddenly shrieks, and the two men holding Jack release her, their guns still trained on her small body.

The asari faces Jack then, her body in a stance suited only for biotic combat.

If I'm right….she's about to get a fucking beautiful surprise. If I'm wrong, maybe I'll die quickly before she tears me apart….

The asari sticks out her fist then, her entire body starting to glow with biotic energy. Dread sets over Jack as she wrestles with the thought that she may have remembered incorrectly, that the device might work on implants as she had bluffed and not host nervous systems...

Her dangerous bet is rewarded moments later when the blue light suddenly disappears, the asari screaming as energy attacks her nervous system. She convulses multiple times, her expression of hate frozen on her face as her body falls to the ground. Both guards on either side of Jack react predictably, their attention leaving the small biotic when the asari begins to convulse.

The convict is ready for the opportunity, and with a tap to her wrist, her omni blade is activated and being thrust clean through the closest mercenary's neck. He doesn't even manage to scream before the life leaves his eyes, and Jack lifts his lifeless body dangling from her tool in front of her to absorb the fire the other guard unleashes upon her.

Using the body as a shield, Jack charges him, her omni blade shattering against the metal wall she rushes into, but not before she stakes her second victim upon it, both falling lifelessly as the blade shatters.

Fuck, I hope Jacob has another one of these bitches in the armory. I like watching vids on mine.

Taking a moment to kneel by the asari to double check there was in fact not a pulse in her body, Jack strips her of her expensive pistol, taking every clip she can find and shoving them down the pockets of her prison jumpsuit pockets.

If she had to rescue the cheerleader and blue bitch without her biotics, then she fucking would. Maybe the additional supplies would give her an edge.

The convict lifts one of the rifles laying beside the dead guards, but the weapon is bulky, more likely to slow down her progress than aid her. She sets it down in a split second decision, and strips each man of their side arms and ammo, tucking them in the pockets of her jumpsuit. Maybe Liara and Miranda could make use them when she found them. They would have to, since there was no way she was going to be able to swiftly deliver two heavy duty assault rifles to them.

Edging herself down the hall from which the asari had come, Jack takes a pause at the corner, listening for any additional mercenaries. To her pleasant surprise, she hears nothing, not even the click of a boot.

They must think the asari bitch was a lock to kill me without my biotics...now where did they all go...

To be truthful, Jack doesn't care where they went, as long as it wasn't one floor down to where the asari had blabbed Liara and Miranda were being held.

Where the fuck is Shep… Jack muses, finding it very odd she had heard not a word of chatter from a single mercenary mentioning the Commander… She better get her big ass down here soon...shit, she needs to be warned not to use her biotics…

Jack instinctively reaches for her omni-tool, only to paw the shattered remnants of the device.

Shit….shit….I need to warn her….with Shep's power she'll fry herself trying to charge one of these fuckers if I don't. Hopefully Miranda and Liara still have their comms…

And with that thought, Jack hustles to the stairway, not a single guard blocking her as she makes her way downstairs.

(Thank you to everyone for being patient, this month was wild nuts. Also, good announcement, I will be starting on a Life is Strange fic real soon so be on the lookout! Pricefield centric! Also, thanks to Sayahiei for beta-ing this chapter and polishing it up and being patient with my weird schedule. Totally the best person and to thank for this chapter)