They spent months rehabilitating her. She had a torso length wound that ran from her collar bone to her opposite hip received by her flight ending attack that her pod's stasis and medical systems hadn't done a whole lot to repair. The system had been overwhelmed by keeping her alive vs. healing her.
The doctors had to repair that wound first. It had festered enough time to leave a scar. She had never minded scars, but this one was somewhat symbolic to the death of her old life into this… Half-life that she was living now.
They constantly tried to beat her down emotionally and physically which hadn't worked… at first… But after months of hearing how they were the only ones who attempted to find her escape pod, how her brother and Garrus had moved on… How she was essentially theirs to do with as they will… Well, it was grating on her and she found herself thinking they were right more often than she knew she should.
She didn't believe any of it, not at first at least. But the longer she was there, the more she had to hear it the more it started to make sense in a twisted way. The fact that it was starting to make sense angered her even more.
After the healing of her main wound the doctors went to work on her alterations. Biotic powers upped and a new amp put in. She had always had some minor biotics, but this pharmaceutical regime they put her on had exploded her abilities. To the point of pain and no control. The control would not have been so bad if they had someone who actually had biotics able to teach her. But they didn't. Not yet at least, the doctors had touted on about how someone impressive was coming to instruct and help her.
They also updated her optics, adding synthetics to her irises to increase her night vision and allow her to see at greater distances. Her muscles and bones were reinforced and altered to allow for quicker movement, higher leaps, and surviving falls from greater heights.
They worked her mercilessly in simulations and battle tactics. She was paired, unarmed, against vorcha and krogan.
They killed her much of the time and never quickly.
They medical team would simply recover her and work hard at putting her back together. Some were the same people that had worked on her brother, or so they bragged. They were now pseudo-experts and bringing the dead back to life. She wished that just once she would be beyond their repair.
The purpose of the exercises, as she understood it, was that she was supposed to become a ghost, move silently towards her target and assassinate them.
It wasn't that she didn't understand or couldn't do the tasks presented to her, it was simply that she didn't want to do it. She didn't want to please these doctors that had put her through so many painful alterations and then killed her repeatedly in an effort to get her to do what they want.
She had never been one to cow down to anyone who exerted pressure on her, it was what had made her such a good agent for the Alliance.
No, she wouldn't do what these people wanted of her. They had taken her from her death and from any possibility of having a normal life. Who would want some Frankenstein experiment?
The buzzer rang, it was time again for more torture masked as training.
She moved herself up from her cot and made her way out the door, all the while wondering what new games they had in store for her today.
She was moved into a stark white room with a chair and a vid screen. All the rooms were stark white but few had vid screens.
She was obviously meant to sit in the chair, so she didn't. Usually she would be forced to sit in one way or another and she would always gain some measure of satisfaction knowing that they had to work at getting her to do what they wanted.
It was her one pleasure in this white walled hell.
Dr. Tolorin was the only one in the room. She knew there would be other measures to keep her in line if she tried to assault him, she had learned that lesson once already. He started with the standard pleasantries… That she was being difficult for no reason, that they had rescued her and improved upon her, that she had nothing else waiting for her.
It always went back to the "no one else waiting for her". She didn't believe him and he knew it… So he simply turned on the vid screen.
It was a news vid. Some special going over the crew of the Normandy on shore leave after beating the reapers…
She watched, as she knew she shouldn't because he wanted her to. The fact that he was showing her meant that she wasn't going to enjoy what she saw.
Garrus was alone at a table, drinking heavily. Her heart broke for him and how miserable he looked. Then someone came up next to him and touched his mandible. A three fingered, gloved hand. Tali. They chatted for a bit and then left together, forehead touching repeatedly as they moved out of the bar.
Not completely damming, but the vid continues to show moments of them together. It was apparently a special on the Normandy romances. It went over her brother and Liara and was seconded by Garrus and Tali.
They had started dating only a few weeks after she had died.
That thought, the thought that she grieved over their future while he was wetting his whistle elsewhere was the nail in the proverbial coffin. Why the hell was she putting up with all of this?
In one swift movement, she swung her fist towards the vid screen, shattering the glass. At the same time she utilized her biotics to move the chair towards the door in an attempt to block it. She also took a swipe at the good doctor, not to kill him but to render him useless for a few minutes.
She knew they were taping this. They taped everything.
She bent over and picked up a shard of glass as the alarms went off around her. Staring straight at the camera lens above her, she drew the glass over her throat.
Deep, sever as much as possible.
She hardly felt the pain. She felt the warmth rush down the front of her shirt. She stared at the camera as long as possible, listening to the doctor shout orders as he regained consciousness.
She felt the cold take her and she felt the ground rush up to meet her.
She knew that she wouldn't remain dead. She knew that they would revive her. Inflicting the self-mutilation was more of a statement than anything. Truth be told, she didn't feel any better. It was a pathetic attempt to regain control of something, and she understood that. She was lashing out in the only way she could.
The blackness came and went. She was laying on her cot again, her throat swaddled in bandages and moist with medigel and blood.
She was surprised to see that they hadn't fixed her completely. The doctor probably thought that leaving her with a scar would be punishment… Or he was leaving her scar as her one trophy, even if he didn't realize that was how she thought of it.
She would be left out of trials for a few days while it healed. She had plenty of time to think of an escape plan.
Aeryn's opportunity appeared only a few days earlier. She had a friend on the inside… Kind of. Apparently a woman that her brother had helped once. Why she was still doing all of this for some offshoot of Cerberus was beyond Aeryn, but she would take the help where she could.
The woman had been in to dress her wounds, had whispered "below the audio pick up of the microphones" in her room. Yeah, right.
The plan wasn't perfect, far from it actually. But, it was the best she had to work with on such short notice. She knew her destination, she knew the final outcome of this venture.
She trusted her inside person to get her a way out, but without resistance was another thing altogether.
The alarms began to go off, her door light changed from red to green and then all electricity went out.
Crude, but effective.
Aeryn roused herself up and made for the door. She could hear the guards yelling orders and running to posts. Posts she had memorized while being moved from room to room.
The only area she didn't know by heart was the space port. She was unconscious the only time she had been through there, but she had to take that chance. It was either the unknown or stay in this place until she was a brainwashed puppet.
She waited for the hallway to clear of rushing guards before she pushed her door open and slipped out. It was dark and for the first time she thanked her upgraded eyes. She could see perfectly fine. She made off in the direction the mole had indicated for her to leave. Slow and quiet.
She made it to the port and ducked into a cubby to check the surrounding area for guards. She found the provisions she had requested, a copy of the vid files regarding her stay here at the Hell Day Spa, some food and bandages. Her neck was still healing but as long as she kept up the medigel regime it would heal just fine leaving a small scar.
Her blatant disregard for her own life was supposedly what had prompted the young female assistant to help her. She refused to give Aeryn her name out of fear and Aery could sympathize. The woman said she thought Aeryn had volunteered.
Bullshit.
The woman was deluding herself for the opportunity to work on genetic alteration. However, Aeryn wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She would jump on this opportunity.
The coast looked clear and Aeryn made her way towards the closest shuttle. Standard Kodiak, but it had the ability to get her where she wanted to go with little issue. Sure, it wouldn't be comfortable, but who the fuck cared at this point.
She was halfway across the hanger before she got the feeling that something wasn't quite right. She thought she heard a noise behind her when pain blossomed in her side.
Shit.
Her mole either set her up, folded or she had an overly efficient guard stumble upon her.
The sudden blast of gunfire from multiple directions was her answer. It was more than one guard, her mole had spilled the proverbial beans or set her up. Either way it no longer mattered. Freedom was within her grasp.
Not wasting a second, Aeryn sprinted towards a different shuttle. One that wouldn't be an obvious choice for someone running for their lives, someone untrained. If they had known this was where she would be then logic suggested that they would try to disable the choice shuttles.
Aeryn was lucky it was dark. She was also lucky that she was currently navigating the most piss poor designed and managed space port known to the galaxy. She was a trained infiltrator and sometimes she thought her captors had forgotten that.
She found a shuttle, around a corner and down a passage. It had an open shot towards the protective mass effect field and was completely unguarded. Her pursuers were fast on her heals and even with her upgrades she couldn't outrun them forever.
She had been hit multiple times in her attempted escape. Nothing critical, but if she didn't take care of her wounds soon she would bleed out.
Hell, it was still a better alternative than staying in this place.
She boarded the shuttle and prepped for takeoff. Some guards were trying to bodily block her route. Assholes. She didn't give a shit if she killed them.
And that's just what she hoped she did as she plowed straight into them. Before accelerating through the mass effect field and off world, she utilized the weapons on the Kodiak to critically damage the rest of the shuttles and the frigate standing by.
She hoped that everyone on the launch pad was caught in the crossfire and explosions.
She punched in her destination, recorded a messaged for the docking crew when they grilled her on who she was and why she was there should she pass out. Hacking the shuttle's tracking software was easy enough so that she could pass out with the comfort of no waking back up looking at Dr. Tolorin's scrunched face.
Good thing she paid attention in tech class.
She was confident that they would have to manually follow her and that they would have a hard time finding an undamaged shuttle. Even the frigate would have to limp after her and at this point her undamaged shuttle would be more maneuverable.
She settled herself in the pilot's chair and took a deep breath of relief. Tending her wounds would keep her alive for a little while, but not indefinitely. She would likely be unconscious once she reached Omega.
Good thing she was on Aria's good side. Aeryn had been close to Nyreen before her and Aria had parted ways, and she had gotten close to Aria in the process and stayed close to her. Seen as something of a kindred sister, Aria and Aeryn had saved each other's collective asses on multiple occasions.
It was time for Aeryn to call in another "save my ass you blue bitch" moment.
Aeryn smiled to herself at the thought.
She knew she couldn't rely on the mole to send John the vids on her stay in the white walled hell, but she wasn't so sure that she could have trusted the woman to make a copy of the vids either, since she had ultimately betrayed her.
Aeryn popped the OSD into the vid screen next to her to confirm its contents.
Sure enough, there was ever glorified moment of her experience. Good. The mole obviously didn't think she could make it off of the rock.
She hid the OSD in among her meager belongings and waited.
Eventually her eyes closed and her breathing evened out. Blood dripped down her dangling hand to sully the floor with specs of red.