Jack sat in the bed next to Alma's, reading from his new omnitool. Big Sis had bought him one so he could help her take care of the others before…
He sighed. It had been years since he'd had the luxury to think about those times. But he still remembered everything he and Max had learned about cracking omnitools. In fact, when he was ten she'd given a high quality cracked omnitool that she had optimized herself. She had been about as experienced as him so it wasn't a good job, but he still remembered it.
Alma had mentioned the ghosts that followed her around, but he had his own share.
He sighed. He had too much time to just think about the past now.
He'd spent the last few days repairing necessary systems like the second set of medical equipment and learning how to reload the REV8's repair pack. There had also been the bodies and body parts he'd had to move into one of the rear rooms that he had deemed unlikely to be used. It allowed him easier access to the rest of the ship.
But it had been painful; Alma had been right when he said he hadn't fully recovered. The aches weren't the worst part, not even the time he'd pissed blood. It was the on and off headaches and the way his sight had occasionally blurred.
He'd managed to get enough supplies into the medical room so that he could us the machines he'd repaired with Alma's guidance in order to fix himself up. According to his omnitool, which he'd spent the first day afterwards cracking with the help of Alma's omnitool, they had been recovering in their beds for the past two days, though Alma had now been in her bed for the past five. With medigel and other modern medical amenities, Jack was almost recovered but it would take about a week for Alma to get better. It turned out that it was pretty close to a miracle she wasn't dead either from going beyond a burnout or from her much smaller, younger and weaker body's handling of the toxins that had been pumped into the air of the facility. It had taken Jack a day to fix the air scrubber, and not just because he'd found he'd passed out in the middle of repairs.
"I never want to go through this again."
"I would appreciate avoiding this as well…" Alma replied.
"Nearly dying sucks," Jack agreed. "Let's not do that again." Then he paused and tilted his head, as though he could hear laughter. He quickly shrugged it off.
"Agreed."
"We'll need to be prepared."
"Armor and weapons would be useful."
Jack nodded. "And we'll need a ship. This one is owned by Armacham, and they and the law will be looking for it. "
Alma looked up from her omnitool and furrowed her brows. "Where can we get a ship where that won't be a problem?"
Jack smiled thinly. "An old acquaintance from when I ran in a gang worked with pirates. He said you get anything in Omega for the right price. It's the galactic capitol of pirates and freelancers. The perfect place to sell a stolen ship and loot, and then buy a new ship with a clean record."
Alma thought for a moment. "This could work, but if Armacham knows we are alive, and they will know survivors escaped and subsequently chose not to report in which itself is indicative of test subjects escaping, then we will be hunted upon arrival."
"Bounties are likely." Jack nodded. "Just means more loot to sell."
"This is dangerous."
"Yeah," Jack agreed and paused for a moment. "We'll be making a lot of dangerous enemies, and it's entirely possible we don't need to."
Alma frowned. "Why not?"
A part of Jack didn't want to do this because of his time on the streets and in the labs had shown him how cruel and capricious those with power could be. Who's to say they wouldn't just throw them and their testimony out, or refuse to seriously protect them, or that the protection wouldn't be enough? He wanted to punish Armacham, see the people responsible suffer and die for what they did. He wouldn't really get that if he went to either government, they would give Armacham a fine and punish some indiviuals who could be reasonably blamed by those above. Not satisfying at all.
On the other hand, after what they'd been through, how they'd both nearly died, a chance at safety would be a relief. He wasn't one to turn away from a challenge, he always wanted to succeed in the end. But he owed Alma his life and she owed him hers, and she was just a kid who had almost died like him. He was willing to at least delay his quest for revenge if it would get her somewhere safe.
"We could go to the Citadel or the Alliance, and ask for protection in exchange for testimony against Armacham."
"I'm not giving up," Alma said, staring at him intently. "I want [i]revenge[/i], they won't give me that."
"They can keep you safe from Armacham," Jack explained. "A Citadel Specter or just CSec could just protect you from them while Armacham got drawn out to court and their evil exposed for the galaxy to see."
"They won't keep me safe, why would they?" Alma looked down and away. "Everyone tries to use me, even you used me to get out…and now that you've escaped you want me to go away to people who will just lock me up again."
Jack slumped. "You can read emotions, so you know that's not true. I'm not suggesting this to get rid of you. I want you somewhere safe. I've lived the orphan thug life, and it's only going to be worse as what will amount to an outlaw's life."
"You're still going to do it."
"What else am I going to do?" He looked down at his hands. "I have a patchwork education, some illicit skills, and some fighting experience. Not much of a life I can have outside this sort of thing, but you're just a kid so with their protection you could have a different sort of life. I know that's what the only person I can call a parental figure in my life wanted for me. I was wrong to suggest the two of us going to Omega."
Alma was quiet for a long time. He didn't look over at her, but he thought he saw her shoulders shake. He didn't listen, and didn't do anything else.
Eventually she stopped shaking, turned to him and spoke with a wavering voice. "Please don't go."
Jack clenched his hands and blinked furiously.
"Doctor Franken wanted to help me like you do…" She swallowed, but Jack didn't look to see what else she was doing. "He wasn't scared of me and he liked me…" There was another pause, this one filled with quiet sobs Jack tried not to listen too. "You want to go without me…and you'll [i]die[/i] if you do…"
Jack turned his head further down.
"I don't want to lose my friend," she said sniffling.
Jack drew in a ragged breath and wiped his eyes. "You're not the only person how lost the people that cared about them…That they cared about…" He sighed, blinking. "My older friends all threw away their lives or sold them to mercs…Big Sis…Maxine…gone." He closed his eyes and slowly breathed in and out. "Before I got taken, I still had some friends, but I don't know what's happened to them. They might still be there, whiling away their lives if they haven't signed them away." He forced a laugh. "A few of them might have gotten lucky. I hope they did. Even if I went back now, I'd probably never know their fate." He shook his head. "And that's not counting the people I knew from the pens. Those are all dead now."
"…If you go there alone you…you will just throw your life away too…"
Jack shrugged. "I've got street smarts and some nice tricks. I think I've got a chance."
"So did they…"
"…yeah."
They were silent then. Neither could speak.
"I'm not letting you die," Alma finally said. "And I'm not letting you throw it, [i]and me[/i], away."
"I–"
"[b][i]NO![/i][/b] I don't care what you say! I'm staying and no one [i]either[/i] of us care about is going to die again! We're going to make [i]all[/i] of them pay and we're both going to live and [i]neither[/i] of us is going to throw their life away on some [i]stupid[/i] idea!" she screamed, radiating psionic power.
Jack was leaning slightly away from her by the end of it. He straightened and nodded. "Okay, we'll stick together."
"…No matter what…"
"No matter what happens, we'll stand together." Jack blinked and nodded. "And even if we have to burn the galaxy down to do it, we'll make them pay, and we'll do it together."
Alma sniffed and nodded. "It's a promise."
"It's one I won't break. Ever."
"…Good…"
They were quiet for a few minutes, each of them in their own thoughts and memories.
Finally Jack broke the silence. "If we're getting a ship, we'll need money even with selling this stuff. And we'll need a crew to help run the ship and help us fight."
"…We will have to be careful about who we let join."
"I know, but we'll manage something. I mean we can both sense emotions, so we can guage how trustworthy they are; and if they try anything…well, we'll stop them. You can fry their minds."
"That is acceptable."
"Excellent. Now, who do we need? Definitely an engineer. Hmm…" Jack stroked his chin. "I hear Quarians are generally good with tech, and they work cheap. Good combination."
"I have the knowledge of many engineers."
"Yeah, but if something happens to you or you're busy we need someone to take care of things until you can manage. Also you're short."
Alma scowled at that.
"Don't worry about it shorty, you're only eight years old after all. Maybe you'll get taller eventually."
She reluctantly nodded.
"Shorty."
Jack let out an involuntary grunt as Alma sent out a 'light' psychic shove, nearly knocking Jack off of his bed.
"Hey!"
Alma smirked. "If we are going to get a Quarian engineer, then we will also need a Krogan mercenary to keep you from getting shot."
"Says the little girl who couldn't hit a – gah!" He nearly fell off the bed again.
"We will also need someone who can help you sneak. That way we won't have to fight everyone in the next base we fight through."
"Solid. We should probably pick up a pilot too, if we can manage."
Alma nodded before asking "Should we keep the REV8?"
"Yes." Jack quirked an eyebrow. "Why would you even ask such a ridiculous question. Of course we will. And we'll pick up one for each member of our crew."
"What money will we buy them with?"
"Well…we're two dangerous psychics who will hire a dangerous merc a Quarian engie and hopefully a stealth expert, if we can find one. That sounds like a pretty decent group for a variety of jobs so we could hire ourselves out in between looting and killing Armacham."
"That seems reasonable."
"Good," Jack said, "Then we have a plan. As soon as we're both fixed up we'll go to Omega, rustle up a crew and a ship, and some odd jobs to do or people to steal from."
"I thought we needed to get rid of this ship because of its record."
"They'll look more closely for stolen ships. Also, we'll be doing that stuff mostly outside of Citadel space so they won't care, and it's not like the Alliance would do much even if we showed up in a stolen dreadnaught or something." He thought he could almost hear laughter again, but dismissed it.
"If our ship acquires a record or becomes targeted by the Citadel, we could also buy or seize another ship."
"That too."
"We can also gather information on Armacham at Omega. The extranet access there will help with."
"Yep, but we should be careful about making the pirate lords and others angry with us," Jack added. "I mean, Armacham will probably be putting a bounty on us but our lives will be simpler if we don't make anyone other than them too mad at us. That would really complicate things."
"We can handle them," Alma pointed out. The Jack thought that the almost heard laughter occurred again and intensified.
"I think I'm going to need to tell you about tempting fate. And how it's a bitch."
He suddenly a strong sense of foreboding.
The Umbrella Corporation Regional Director for the Omega Sector sat in his office. It had been a relatively normal day, if somewhat uneventful what with only one containment break in the hot labs, but now something [i]interesting[/i] had happened. And not the good kind of interesting either. The Chinese kind.
He rubbed his eyes. He had gotten his position through a combination of management skill, making nice with the right people, and the incredible luck not to have something blow up disastrously in his face. That rare quality among the Umbrella management outside the core worlds of the Alliance and the Citadel was a mixed blessing. In part it meant that it was relatively easy for him to get promoted. On the other hand it meant that he had to put [i]even more work[/i] into putting out fires or keeping his people from setting them when he could afford to stop the pyromaniacal idiots.
And then he got this. It was from the top, with the highest priority possible and it had been sent to every Regional Director in the galaxy, but was likely most applicable to him.
It was a simple message and files on a rival's top secret psionics experiment and two people who were 'participants' in said experiment, as well as their likely next destination.
The message? 'Acquire' the two 'assets' at any cost. The 'or else' was implied as per company policy.
If he hadn't signed a literal 'for life' contract, he would have quit by now. At least Umbrella didn't care about collateral, and given where he worked he didn't much either.