(Long Ago)

The floor held no warmth, not even the heat it leached from her thin body seemed to stay housed within the plastic and metal. Despite the dire nature of her situation, a strange satisfaction drifted through her exhausted mind.

'At least a part of me got out.'

Slowly her hand slid from beneath her head, travelled along her protruding ribs, and came to rest at the bandaged site of her latest surgery. They'd put something else inside her; she could feel it deep in her abdomen, like a cramp wrapped around a shard of obsidian.

The anesthesia had failed completely toward the end. Since sleep had been taken from her after an earlier procedure, she figured it must have also counteracted the drugs, awakening her to a new world of pain.

Medieval leather straps, crisp and stained with the blood of countless slaughters, had held her in place, but she had known they were for show, since several weak biotic fields had held her completely immobilized while the madmen hacked at her.

Through the surgery's final horrific minutes, the masked butchers had laughed at her wails, even going so far as to comment on the inferiority of her sex for this particular operation.

'Wish we could find a male. Working around all this shit wastes time.'

His mask flowing into what must have been a grin, the second surgeon had added, 'Fuck being careful. Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

That had been hours ago…or minutes…or years; the pain made the telling of time difficult.

Determined to deny her captors the satisfaction of seeing her weep, she had commanded her eyes to remain dry for months, but this time, the pain was too great and her grief manifested.

'Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

Dimly, as if in a fever dream, she saw the silhouette of the faceless form she knew to be her mother, a woman she hadn't seen since she was four. Like all orphans, she had conjured up the 'idea' of a mom from feelings, wishes, and the cave drawings of a mind too young for such loss.

The shadow didn't say anything, instead it's fingers touched the floor beside her and began to gently tap. The staccato 'song' calmed her and gave her something, other than pain, on which to focus.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened then, her mother's shade was gone but the tapping of the uneven melody remained. More vibration than actual noise, she pressed her ear against the chill of the floor and fought the despair with the song's notes.

Her escape from captivity had been a traumatic affair; one that produced more confusion and questions than it did answers. However, one mystery was solved as soon as she made it outside. With her face to the sky, Jack had quickly realized that the 'music' she had heard for years was in actuality the rain falling on the Teltin facility on Pragia; each drop vibrating through the pre-fabricated structure until it reached her waiting ears.

Several times a day before her 'freedom', she would hear her mother's music, and it instantly granted her focus despite the day's horrors. Still even the song couldn't illuminate all of the place's darkness, and just when she would nearly find a measure of peace, one utterance, thick with evil, would invade her calm.

'Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

(The Present)

Her mother's song…Jack heard it.

But this wasn't Pragia and in London no rain fell…yet her mother's 'song' remained.

Slowly she opened her eyes.

Around her the ash and soot of massacred London had fused into an eerie patchwork of what appeared to be baked earth and distorted glass. For five feet in every direction, the terrain remained the same bizarre geological amalgamation; though the destruction extended beyond the borders of Jack's immediate area.

Metal and stone smoked in the night air, the inheritors of the nova of heat brought to the space by Subject Zero. The bearer of the blast came courtesy of the most powerful biotic flare to have ever graced the planet; one that had created the aforementioned environmental alterations but had also reduced the Banshees to just five more whips of smoke among the others.

As she had done in Teltin, Jack lay curled on her side, ear pressed to the ground. The debilitating pain that had manifested earlier again wracking her body. Mortar rounds exploded behind her eyes, and her naked torso fought against itself in a war of convulsion and seizure.

Yet the 'notes', the vibrations, of her mother's song cut through the agony, lending her the focus only one as tortured as she could obtain.

Slowly as the pain eased, the 'tap' of her mother's song became a 'ting', the 'ting' of metal-on-metal.

Shepard.

With a will born in prisons of the mind and body, Subject Zero rolled until she faced the ground, where her warped, carnivalesque reflection returned her gaze from the glassy surface. Instantly, her image in the mirrored patch conjured more memories of Teltin, memories of tortures and trials. Her reflection cried against the pain; the little lost girl stolen from her mother because of the desires of monsters.

One drop of blood ran from her nose and struck her image. Soon others followed, making a mockery of her mother's song and Shepard's signals by mimicking the erratic tempo and striking the fused earth, and the girl reflected there, in a macabre melody.

'Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

The statement so damning during her captivity now acted as a rallying point, and with its arrival, her strength mustered.

'Shepard,' she whispered, as blood-specked spittle misted from her lips.

Bent but never broken, Subject Zero slapped her palm down on her bloody reflection and viscously wiped it away in a smear of crimson. The muscles in her shoulders fired and flexed beneath her thin flesh, as she began to push away the ground and the shattered reminder of her former self.

'You pulled…me from…the dark…Shepard,' Jack breathed. 'Saved me.'

First one knee planted against the glass beneath her, and then a combat boot found its purchase, and slowly…she rose.

'Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

'Shepard…you…proved…them…wrong,' she whispered; each syllable a pledge of love and certainty.

Standing at ground zero of the similarly titled Subject, Jack lifted her hand and made a fist. Again the blistering white-hot biotic energy clawed its way over her frame, but this time her target wasn't the Reaper horde…it was the ground beneath her.

'Call my name,' she whispered.

The 'mirror' beneath her exploded. Soot and dust tried to choke the air, but a globe of energy appeared, and like a vacuum, began pulling in the tiny particles, clearing the area. As each larger piece of debris was revealed, Jack carefully lifted it upward until it seemed the parts of an entire building floated above the spot.

Against Jack's painted flesh, sweat streaked with blood and grime, dulling even her bright canvas. If the exertion pained her, no reflection of the trauma reached her features. Instead her own voice, clear and strong, repeated one simple command.

'Call my name!'

Wider and deeper, her search expanded, and more debris lifted into the London air.

'Call my name!

Despite her best efforts, Teltin, and its tendrils of cancerous doubt, began to slither into her mind, inviting despair.

'Call my name!'

Perhaps her mother had been nothing more than the fabrication of a desperate child.

A large girder joined the others revealing…nothing.

'CALL MY NAME!'

Perhaps the 'ting', like her mother's song, was just the rain…just a lie, a trick of her mind.

A crumbled wall of plaster was drawn into the glowing sphere…nothing.

'CALL MY NAME!'

'Isn't like she'll ever have kids.'

Perhaps…

An ancient metal tub marred by the rubble but still sound rose into the night…and a battered hand clutching a set of N7 dog tags appeared.

No longer a 'ting' but still just as weak…one 'note' lifted to her ears.

'jack'