Mass Effect 2: Interstitial Spaces
By: bsmart
Disclaimer: Rated R (or M depending on the site) for the good stuff, you've been warned. Currently its cursing and violence, we'll see where it goes from there. Mass Effect is owned by whoever owns Mass Effect and I do not begrudge them it at all.
Chapter 2: A Good Night's Rest
"Brain activity is increasing exponentially! She's waking up!"
A male voice, muffled, distant. He was off to her left. He sounded agitated. Who was waking up? Was she? Where was she?
"That's not possible!"
A woman this time. Her hearing was sharper. Now it just sounded like someone had a pillow over here ears instead of trying to listen to a conversation through the water. Neither voice was even a little familiar.
"Well it's happening!"
Neither voice was at all familiar... That thought nagged at her. She should know them. She didn't. That was bad. Bad...the Normandy. The crew. Alyssa's brain roared into overdrive. What had happened to the crew? What had happened to Liara?
"Jesus! Her brain activity just spiked, she's awake!"
Alyssa blinked her eyes, trying to focus them. Above her bright lights bore down into her eyes, blinding her. Everything was muddled. Her brain registered a lack of breathing on her part and she tried to take a deep breath. It only lasted a half second before she gagged on tube down her throat and she began to cough. Into her vision came a woman in white with black hair.
"Calm down Shepard, you're fine. Just calm down," she said tersely. Her eyes didn't linger on Alyssa's but turned accusingly towards someone else, someone she couldn't see.
Alyssa's hand snapped up, or she tried to make it snap up, to grab the woman's wrist. Even the thought of moving was painful, the actual act sent waves of agony up her arm and shoulder but she ignored it. "Crew," she tried to say only to realize there was a tube in her throat getting in the way.
"Adrenaline levels rising, heart rate one twenty and climbing."
"How is she still moving," a male voice exclaimed. "She's got enough in her to put down a Krogan!"
"Well give her another dose!" the woman said over Alyssa. The mystery woman looked back down at her and pleaded, "Relax."
Alyssa focused on squeezing the woman's wrist and was rewarded with a wince. She tried to bring her other hand up to get the tube out of her throat but it refused to respond. She closed her eyes and tried to focus but her arm refused to move. Nearby something metallic clattered to the floor spilling its contents all over.
The man exclaimed, "Shit! She's active! If I give her another dose it may kill her!"
The mystery woman was having none of it. Shepard's senses were sharpening and she could detect the accent in her words. "We've already given her enough to kill her and she's about to break my damn wrist, hit her again!" There was an orange emblem on her chest that seemed important but even as she tried to focus liquid ice flowed through her veins and it made her head swim. Growling she tried to force herself to sit. She needed to get up, be up. She had to find her crew and Liara and these people were trying to prevent that. She felt what must have been IV's or monitors pulling at her skin.
"Are you kidding me?" The man yelped as something fell over.
"Again! Before she fries herself!" The woman said, her eyes suddenly fearful as Alyssa started to sit up. The pain was unimaginable but her body was responding. Doctor Chakwas could fix whatever was wrong with her but she had to get moving.
"We're just doing it for her," the man complained. "We're already risking massive neurological trauma with this much in her!"
"Do it anyways, she can obviously take it!" Again chilled mercury seemed to fill her veins and Alyssa's head swam. She felt her limbs stop responding and she started to fall back to the bed only to be caught by the woman in white. "Just calm down Shepard, we're here to help."
"Holy hell, five doses...," the man said.
"Heart rate down at eighty and falling, brain activity decreasing...," someone said.
The last thing Alyssa saw and heard was the woman in white smiling down at her. "She's alive."
"Shepard! Get up the station is under attack!"
It hurt.
"Shepard! Get! Up!"
God it hurt. It didn't even need to be specific, if you named it then it hurt, a lot.
"I am not going to let you just die on that table Shepard! Get up!"
Even the noise in her ears hurt. Alyssa brought her hand up to her jaw, trying to move it. That hurt too. It wasn't even specific. Dull aches at joints, sharp pain in muscles, tendons groaning as she moved. She coughed as she drew in a deep breath and even that was filled with pain. The uncomfortable scratching rattle as she drew in air, the sharp stab in her gut as she inhaled and again as she exhaled. The cough it all generated was almost exquisite in its agony.
"Breathe Shepard, but get moving. They'll be there any minute and I can't hold them off much longer!"
That voice. She knew it, commanding, terse, a little husky but not so much as to be unpleasant all with an Earth accent she couldn't really place. Something about the voice made her uneasy, but the advice seemed like a good idea. Her drill instructors had once told her that even if the situation was confusing, the right choice wasn't obvious, or you had nothing but shitty options you still picked a course and got your ass moving because the only things that happened when you did nothing were bad things.
She started to sit up and immediately hissed as her movement put more stress on her stomach and another round of coughing commenced. Somewhere in it she managed to push herself up to sitting and the thin paper blanket that had been covering her slid away.
She was no stranger to hospitals. She'd woken up in more than one med bay in her time but this... this was bad. Medi-gel patches covered half of the skin she could see. The thick silvery compresses sticking to her skin and bunching up when she tried to move. The combination of healing agents and anethetics in them left most of her skin numb. The half that wasn't covered in patches probably should have been. Deep angry scars ran across her body, most of them had closed and were now surrounded by fresh pink skin but some were still partially open and angrily red. Direct contact monitoring patches dotted her chest, arms, and legs and she could feel the tug of needles in her arms and neck. She'd never woken up like this.
"What the hell...?"
"Shepard we'll talk about it later but if you don't get moving right now you're dead!" the voice urged her. In the background Shepard heard an explosion and a moment later the bed trembled under her.
'Space,' she thought, 'no ground to dampen the vibrations.'
"Shepard, MOVE!"
It came out like an order and Shepard responded like it was one, her hands coming up to start peeling off the diagnostic sensors even as she turned towards the edge of the bed and let her feet dangle. The insistent tone of the voice had sent a surge of adrenaline through her body and she started to respond. She needed to get moving and she needed to do it now. The pain would have to wait and her body was just going to have to do as it was told. She found the IV's in her arms and pulled them out tossing the needles aside where they hung limply from the machines that had moments ago been pumping her full of medicine. She reached up on the left side of her neck and found the last IV, a central line and she started to pull. A chilling shiver went through her body as what felt like a meter of tubing was pulled out of her veins before it fell to the bed.
"That's good Shepard, now you have to get out of the operating theater and into the scrub room. There'll be an emergency locker in there. You have to get to it."
She nodded her ascent. After all there must be cameras in here if the voice knew she was making progress. Alyssa tentatively pushed herself off the edge of the bed. The thin sheet that covered her fell away leaving her sitting there naked in the cold air. The adrenaline in her veins was making it easier to ignore the pain but she knew this would hurt, and it did.
The only way to describe the agony was as if she'd never worked out in her life and then done a triathlon, twice. Her joints ached as they took her weight, her muscles sent lances of pure agony right into her brain behind her eyes and even her sense of balance betrayed her threatening to dump her on her ass. She momentarily wondered how long she'd been out of it and what had happened that had put her in this hospital. Then she remembered the patches covering her chest and decided that maybe not knowing wasn't such a bad idea.
"It's fifteen meters to the scrub in room Shepard, lets go," the voice urged.
"Easy for you to say," she croaked.
For a few moments Shepard only heard heavy breathing through the comms... then, softly, almost conciliatory, "I suppose it is."
Fifteen meters was a distance she normally could have crossed in seconds but now, each step was pure unadulterated pain. She had to lean on her bed and then any hospital equipment she could find just to stay upright. The pain was almost unbearable, until she remembered something one of her drill instructors had told her. 'Pain is your body's way of telling you that you're not dead, but you will be soon if you don't do something right now.' By the time she'd made it through the litter of machinery that surrounded her bed she still had a solid ten meters to go. What was with this hospital. She'd been in many before but never one like this. Her bed was in the center of the room surrounded by a gaggle of machinery but all it only resembled and operating room for about five meters out from her bed. The rest of the room was full of working tables cluttered with all kinds of machinery and medicines. Desks were all over, most with their work stations still on. This couldn't be a military hospital, it was too neat, too perfect, too new, and most of all it was just too big. The SR-1 managed to fit in three beds in not even a tenth of the space.
She frowned, the SR-1, the Normandy. Something had happened. Something that had put her here.
"You're doing good Shepard, use the cart in front of you to support you to the scrub room."
Alyssa glanced down at the cart. It was covered in medical instruments of which Shepard could identify none, but it had wheels, and when she leaned on it the thing didn't go zipping off. It would do indeed.
The scrub room was exactly what it sounded like, lockers and hangers for outside clothes, piles of scrubs for doctors to put on, and a line of sinks looking out a window into her operating theater. The odd one out was the large locker near the door. Jet black with red stripes horizontally on the middle, a bright red light shone next to the handle.
"That's the emergency locker, I've manged to get it open. Put on the armor and get a gun. I can't hold them off for long Shepard, some of them are headed your way."
Alyssa nodded, not trusting her voice to not send her into a coughing fit if she spoke. The locker opened up easy enough and inside was a non-descript hardsuit, a pistol, a sub machine gun, and a shotgun. The hardsuit made her sigh in relief and with relish she began to put it on. The thick chest plate was a dead weight on her shoulders that almost finished her but she quickly squirmed into the legs of the suit ignoring the way the squishy lining tugged at her medi-gel patches. It didn't fit quite right but once it was interfaced with the chest piece she felt the suit start to adjust to her frame. Thankfully whoever had set up the emergency locker was smart enough to get an adjustable hardsuit. Most were sized carefully, and her old N7 armor had been custom fit exactly to her body. As a suit for general use this one had been equipped with joints and segments that could expand or contract to a degree depending on who put it on. It wasn't as good as a properly fit up suit, but it would do. The suit's actuators powered up and Shepard felt the legs start to take the weight of her body and she sighed in relief. The rest of the armor went on quickly and she tolerated it as the suit pulled and tugged at her skin until it was happy with the fit. Alyssa brought up her omni-tool and turned the suit's actuators up to support more of her weight.
"Alright Shepard, you need to get moving. A few security mechs have managed to squeak through. You don't want to get caught in here with them."
Alyssa nodded slowly. Her sense of balance was still off but the tiny movement didn't leave her reeling, just slightly queasy. She reached in and grabbed the pistol out of the locker. It was a thoroughly nondescript affair. Simple, serviceable, it was the kind of weapon you expected to find stuffed in an emergency locker on the off chance of a rainy day where someone... assaulted a hospital. That thought bothered Shepard, who would attack a hospital station? She pushed the thought back down as she flipped the pistol's power on and groaned at what she found. The pistol was a disposable heat sink using model.
Heat was the biggest problem mass accelerator weapons had. Their eezo power sources and just the act of accelerating rounds to a significant percentage of the speed of light created a lot of heat. People had been looking for the best way to deal with that for a long time. Most militaries stuck with fixed internal heatsinks. Accepting the cooldown periods in exchange for not having to ship crate after crate of heat sinks around all the time. The disposable heat sink concept was something that had cropped up with the civies from time but never really caught on. Fire discipline was more important than rate of fire.
Alyssa blinked in surprise when a heads up hologram appeared before her with the weapon's heat capacity, extra sinks, and various other little tidbits of information sprang up, including a map of the local area. She snorted, they went cheap on the weapons but sprang for a HUD in the armor. Still, it was useful. She powered up the submachine gun and brought it up into her line of sight, sure enough the HUD tracked the projected impact point of the weapon.
She quickly stowed the shotgun and pistol but kept the submachine gun at the ready. The scrub room's doors had large windows in them and a quick check showed the hallway outside to be clear. Staying low and ignoring the pain that caused her abdominals she left the scrub room behind. Her HUD map showed a few small rooms off the hallway but nothing major. She checked each quickly before moving past but she found nothing but specialized medical equipment rooms, various diagnostic scanners speciality treatment devices, but no one to use them. Everything was bright, clean, and shiny. Like it had just been taken out of the box and polished. She could smell the disinfectant and floor polish everywhere.
She'd woken up in an empty operating room, hooked up to all kinds of IV's and monitors. There was a locker with a hard suit and firearms in the scrub room, and now she was walking down a hallway full of incredibly expensive hospital equipment that no one ever seemed to have used. 'I'm either dreaming or in the start of a really bad movie,' she thought as she reached the end of the hallway and crouched behind the double doors.
She rose up enough to peek through the door's windows and she didn't like what she saw. The room beyond looked like some kind of reception/waiting area complete with generic gray furniture. The far wall was one large window looking out onto space and other parts of whatever station she was on. The biggest concern was that unidentifiable bits and pieces of station were floating past that window as well along with the occasional body. Who ever was attacking didn't seem too concerned with taking the station in one piece and that was not giving her a warm fuzzy feeling.
She reached for the center of the door but no holographic lock appeared and a quick shove on the door didn't produce one either. 'Probably to keep family from wandering into an operating theater.' She hunted for an alternate control panel but found nothing.
"Sorry, was keeping it locked and disabled till you got moving." A red hologram appeared over the center of the door then turned green right before the doors slid away. "Keep moving Shepard, you need to get out of the medical wing as quick... as yo..an. Mechssss...osing in... ur position..." and then the voice faded to static.
"Hello?" Alyssa croaked but she got no reply. "Shit."
Keeping her submachine gun ahead of her Alyssa walked into the room, scanning it quickly. Aside from a little knocked over furniture there was nothing worth noticing aside from a wide staircase leading to the only apparent exit from the room. She was starting to make for it when the door snapped open with a hiss and hard mechanical feet stomped into the room.
"Target acquired," the spindly security droid said in it's buzzing monotone.
Alyssa sighed to herself as her opinion of the security of the facility dropped. SecDroids were useful for a few things, but real security wasn't one of them. While their aim was good their ability to respond to strange situations wasn't. Raising her submachine gun she casually placed her aim point on the machine's upper chest and pulled the trigger sending off five shots in rapid succession...
...into the wall over the mech's head.
The fact that the droid was still up and moving was so unbelievable as to leave Alyssa standing there, stunned into immobility as the droid raised it's pistol and opened fire. Only when the first of the droid's rounds bounced off her kinetic barriers did her instincts kick in as she dove behind an upturned table breaking the mech's line of sight and causing it to lose it's lock on her.
"Target lost, pursing," it stated to no one as Alyssa looked the submachine gun over again. Except as her body automatically went through the process of making sure the weapon was in good working order her mind was reeling from the realization that she'd missed. A humanoid sized target not even ten meters away, in the open, and she'd missed with every single round in a five round burst. She tried to recall the last time she'd missed such an easy shot and was completely at a loss. 'What the hell happened,' she asked herself as the sharp steps of the droid closed in. Shooting was automatic to her, something she gave as much thought to as most people gave to breathing or walking, it had been since basic. Missing such an easy target just would not process with her. Conscious thought wasn't really required to eliminate targets for her, she just thought about it and her muscle memory would take over the rest. Except it hadn't, and the mech was getting closer.
A sideways glance at her shield indicator showed them to be recharging from the mech's salvo as Alyssa rolled from cover enough to see the mech. It was still woodenly pointing it's pistol where she had left it's sight. As stupid as it seemed to her with the thing only five meters away Alyssa took the time to line up the mech's center of mass with the iron sights and holographic aim point before pulling the trigger.
This time when the submachine gun snapped at the target she was rewarded with the sight of her rounds punching into the mech's side. It tried to turn to bring it's gun to bear on her but one of her rounds found it's power core and the mech flopped over, dead.
It could have been the hardsuit, or the gun that had made her miss the first time but hitting it like that the second confirmed what she already knew. It had been her and only her that had missed it. A humanoid target not ten meters away and she'd missed it with the entire burst. Drugs, maybe, or being out of it for a while but she'd spent weeks in the hospital before with little effect on her ability to shoot once she was back on her feet. This was like, she'd never touched a gun before.
Her revere was broken by more metallic foot steps and another mech appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Target Acquir...," it began before Alyssa took aim and opened fire. Some of the burst missed the mech but at least two shots hit the head and staggered it keeping it off balance long enough for the second burst to put it down.
"Sloppy," she said to herself as she moved towards the stairs. She couldn't hear any more mechs coming but the room offered no real cover so leaving it immediately was imperative. Besides, nothing in here was getting her anywhere.
The door at the top of the stairs was active and when she approached it slid open. The corridor after it was a sterile silver and gray but at a good three or four meters high and three wide it was far too big. "Definitely not military," she murmured. Even on Arcturus the corridors were small and tight, minimizing wasted space and the associated wasted energy that went along with it. Whoever had designed this station hadn't been worried about that. More doors led off the corridor but of the few who's haptic interfaces were active almost all showed locked and remained so when she tried them. The lone door with a green interface beckoned and she went for it. More than likely it was how the mechs had made it to her but if the voice was telling the truth she'd locked down as much of the area as she could before she'd been cut off. Unfortunately it looked like she hadn't had the chance to unlock it. That didn't bode well.
When she activated the solitary unlocked door it snapped open to reveal a laboratory. Long benches full of unidentified machinery, chemicals, and what she assumed to be samples filled the center of the room. Low walled cubicles were lined up against the right wall of the room up on a small platform beneath a large open window that looked down the side of the station.
Alyssa whistled as she realized the size of the station she was on, and just what condition it was in. She could see large rents in the bone colored outer hull. Most of them just gaped open out into space, whatever compartments that had been involved long since voided of their atmospheres. A few were still active though, flames licking out of the gashes as the last vestiges of oxygen in the compartments escaped before being exhausted. At least she hoped they'd be exhausted. Alyssa didn't care for the idea of being stuck on a station with faulty blast doors. Suffocating... she brought her hand up to the neck of her hard suit and touched it. The reinforced polymer gasket that would seal the suit to it's helmet was there but there hadn't been a helmet in the locker. Suddenly it seemed like an important oversight. Even as a chill swept over her body a meter popped into her field of vision in the HUD displaying the barometric pressure along with a reassuring 'nominal' beside it in comforting green letters.
Why the HUD had chosen just then to reassure her about the atmospheric integrity of the area she didn't know, and she didn't have time to consider it as the far door into the room opened and four security mechs tromped into the room in their wooden manner.
A chorus of mechanical, "Target acquired,"s bounced around the lifeless room as Alyssa ducked behind the low partition wall separating the raised cubicle area from the rest of the lab below. The high pitched whine of discharging fire arms was accompanied by the dull thump of mass driver rounds hitting the transparent plasticine wall Alyssa was crouched behind. She quickly started moving even as the plasticine cracked and then started to give way, sand grain sized chunks of metal ripping through it looking for Alyssa as she sprinted for the next bit of cover knowing it would only last a handful of rounds before buckling like the last one.
The crackling and crumbling wall did give Alyssa a split second to react in. While the mechs assessed their effects of their fire and determined what to do about the wall Alyssa popped up and brought her own submachine gun to bear. The mechs were on a small raised platform in front of the door out. With no cover for them and no programing to seek it even if it existed Alyssa aimed low at the centermost mech and held the trigger down. Her own weapon ripped off a long rolling burst towards the mechs as she got up and headed for the marginally better cover of one of the lab benches.
Her aim was as fantastic as it had been previously but the clumped together mechs and almost a thousand rounds per minute firing rate of her submachine gun meant it really didn't matter too much. The wall behind the mechs was cratered with dozens of mass driver impacts but the burst hit the dim witted robots just as well. The lead mech had crumpled over, it's legs giving out as Shepard's low aimed burst clawed out the actuators that worked it's legs. The mech to the left staggered two steps and ran into a low partition all before pitching over it and crashing through a desk on the other side. It didn't move again. The mech on the right fared better, staggered by the rounds hitting it the mech never took it's eyes off Alyssa and rapidly began to recover it's balance and head for her. The mech in the back had the bad luck to catch a round in the head and be momentarily stunned as it's main processor was forced to reset.
As Alyssa slid behind the hopefully more solid lab bench the submachine gun was returned to it's clip on her side. It was overheating and useless for the moment so she retrieved her shotgun. In spite of her body squealing in protest at her sudden action and her own concerns about her suddenly shoddy aim every other instinct she had was telling her to attack and not just let them come after her. She could hear the mech coming up the right side of the long bench she was hiding behind so she instead turned and crouched down low enough to hide behind the left side as she began to move towards the exit and the pair of supine mechs. The still mobile mech was clomping down the right as she hustled down the left, at least until the mech who's legs had given up managed to lever itself up by one arm and let loose a burst of gunfire towards her.
The mech's aim was horrible but it alerted it's still moving partner. When Alyssa popped up over the top of the bench the mech was already turning her direction. Her shotgun was already there though thanks to how loudly the mech had been moving and she fired. At close range the collection of rounds from her gun didn't have time to disperse and the entire load struck the mech in the face, ripping it clean off the automaton's body. Turning her attention back to the live opponents the mech with the dead legs, it was dragging itself towards her with it's non-gun hand. Behind it the stunned mech was starting to sit up and both of them were struggling to draw a bead on her.
Alyssa never gave them the chance, blowing away first one, then the other, with quick blasts from her shotgun. Before hopping over their bodies and through the door they'd come in.
And the damage she'd seen suddenly became much more real. Unlike the previously clean and sterile corridors this one was decorated with bullet holes, burn marks, and dead bodies. Men and women were sprawled on the floor with the tell tale pockmarks of mass driver fire cratering their bodies. The door to the lad slid shut behind her and she glanced back at, unsurprised to find bloody hand prints, scratches, and mass driver dings by the dozen on it.
The bodies piled up close to the door, everyone facing it in some way, Alyssa shivered at the thought of them running for what they thought would be safety only to find a locked door. Without armor and a weapon a security mech was as good as a trained marine and these people hadn't stood a chance.
That short moment of mourning was all she could spare though and Alyssa quickly checked over the bodies for anything useful, key cards, badges, anything that might give her information or an edge. A few datapads were laying around and Alyssa had her omnitool copy them before moving on. There was precious little else which raised the hackles on the back of Alyssa's neck. No name badges, few if any keycards, none of the usual little bits of paraphernalia that usually adorned people who worked in labs or hospitals. The only thing they all had on them was a small orange diamond shaped symbol that made her skin crawl for some reason.
Grunting in annoyance she headed for the end of the corridor and things got worse.
The hallway to the right was a seething mass of flames. She could see a blast door through the flames but it's paint was blistering. For all she knew the other side of the door could be a kiln, or it could be vented to space, not good. There was evidence of weapon's fire all over the place but no indication that any fire suppression systems had kicked on. The sprinkler heads in the roof had popped out of their housings but not a drop of foam was anywhere to be seen. As a member of the Navy Alyssa was well versed in damage control aboard a spacecraft and fire was one of the biggest hazards imaginable. Most craft's fire suppression systems were totally independent of anything, not requiring crew or even computer intervention to work. They were so dumb that what controlled them were usually plastic tabs with low melting points. Yet here the sprinkler heads had deployed, but no foam. The word sabotage echo'd loudly in her head.
To the left things looked safe, or as safe as a bullet riddled hallway strewn with papers and datapad and smeared with blood could look safe. As usual in these kind of situations things were largely relative.
She set her omni-tool to continuous scan and record so that it would grab whatever it could from any open datapads. She needed to move and she didn't have time to read everything. Starting off at a quick walk she made her way through the complex. Fires and locked doors commonly bared her path. It only took moments for her to realize she was being herded. The pattern was too perfect. She was never boxed in, never presented with a real choice. There was always just one door open, just one way to go. The hairs on the back of her neck started to raise up and she kept the submachine gun in her hands, ready.
Bland corridors started to fade and after stepping through a set off doors she found herself in what looked like an office section. Whatever had happened here had happened fast. There were few few bullet holes, just a lot of evidence of people leaving in a hurry. She stuck her head in a few of the offices to check for survivors but found none. A few of the offices had bodies in them, people who'd tried to hide from the way she found them.
As she turned a corner she heard a familiar voice talking.
"Shepard is alive," It was the same voice that has woken her, though less stressed and more excited, and with a rather attractive and statuesque raven haired face to go with it, something she'd been too distracted to really process at the time. The small office had two terminals in it and one was playing a visual log. "It was unexpected but the result is undeniable. Shepard achieved consciousness. However this is not without danger. Shepard's implants are working far beyond what was anticipated. She required five doses of Kenzelamine to sedate but showed no adverse affects to an amount of the drug that would wiped out all higher brain functions in a Krogan much less a human. I've delegated Dr. Haskins group to investigate alternative methods of awakening Shepard that will not place as much stress on her, or us, though I am beginning to wonder if we should even bother. Having just awoken she was capable of rising off the operating table, resisting multiple doses of sedative, activating her implant, and nearly breaking my wrist. I suspect she may be able to take it. We have a lot of tests to perform before we awaken Shepard, and even then we will have to confirm her identity." The woman took a deep breath and composed herself. "Regardless, Commander Shepard is alive. The Lazarus project will succeed."
Alyssa sagged against the chair in front of the desk making the office furniture squeak and protest as several hundred pounds of woman, ceramic, and metals were thrust upon it. 'What did she mean, alive? How badly was I injured?' she wondered. Subconsciously she reached up and touched the seal around the neck of her suit. 'Why didn't it come with a helmet?' she wondered.
She punched a few keys on the terminal but it only looped the same log entry again. Her omni-tool recorded it and Alyssa scanned the rest of the room. On another desk was another terminal and she crossed the room to it. This log was voice only but again it was familiar, someone from the operating room. "I asked for a raise again. Denied. With the amount of money being slung around here you'd think they could spare a little for the people making it happen. It's not like we're doing the impossible or anything. Two billion credits spent on one person, and I can't even get a crappy five percent raise. That bitch Lawson just told me, 'There are more important things at stake than your bank account.' Yeah, well, that's easy to say when you're the Illusive Man's pet. The rest of us have bills to pay."
The log cut off and just like the other terminal it was shot. It would loop the log, or section of it and nothing more. Spotting nothing more of interest Alyssa quickly left, remembering the admonitions of the raven haired woman she tried to keep the pace up.
The corridors blended together but the sense of being herded in a direction never left her. No matter where she turned, every way would be blocked but one. The cynic in her had to wonder if the people attacking the station might have taken over the door controls. How would she ever know the difference until she ran right into a firing squad of security mechs?
As if to reassure her she heard the woman's voice again but it was distant and just prattling on. As she got closer she found a computer terminal sitting in an alcove with the woman's face on just as she was beginning her entry. She rubbed her brow like someone who'd been up all night working on something, or someone who was just over stressed and over tired. "Reconstruction is proceeding as planned. The tech we received is doing it's job. The organic/synthetic interface is seamless, surprisingly so. I ordered one of the implants examined while we had her opened up yesterday. Even under the SEM we can't detect any definitive demarcation between the organic and synthetic. I am not entirely comfortable using this tech, we don't know enough about it. I also know that we cannot proceed with out it, the organic remains were too badly damaged to repair conventionally. Even if it could be done the time table won't allow it. We're still two months behind. This synthetic tech is allowing us to catch up but the Illusive Man is insistent. That we're doing the impossible doesn't seem to phase him or deter him in the slightest. On a personal note the lack of attention to detail is becoming an annoyance. We were detailed to bring Shepard back just as she was, same morals, same judgement, the same woman she used to be. The doctors here seem to think that a simple physical reconstruction will suffice so long as we get the mental aspects correct. Details like eye color, hair color, physical markings, all appear to not register with them or the potential impact they could have on Shepard and her psyche. Frankly she'll have enough to worry about when she returns, she doesn't need to wonder why she's suddenly a redhead."
As the log went into another loop Alyssa backed away from the console. 'What the hell was she talking about? How long was I under, how badly was I hurt? Who is the Illusive man? Months behind schedule? Reconstruction? Untested synthetic tech?' Something was very, very wrong.
With the log silent as it recycled for another go Alyssa heard the distant and muffled pop of gunfire. She turned on her heels and searched for an open door, when she found it she leveled her gun and charged through.
Onto a catwalk in a wide open and cavernous room. Gunfire was raking the catwalk in front of her and a small buttress gave her cover from whoever was doing the shooting. Out in the middle of it all though was a man in his late twenties with dark skin and a skin tight white and black utility suit. Upon seeing her his eyes widened. "Commander Shepard, think I can get a hand here?"
Author's Notes
1) OMG it's not dead.