-Ashley-
She'd awoken sitting against a wall in a large, circular, room. The walls were white, the domed lights dotting the curving ceiling shone bright and intensely off them. She was alone, her clothing and boots removed, leather cuffs and shackles tethering her wrists and ankles to a belt at her waist. She felt a collar sitting tightly around her neck. The floor was hard and cold beneath her bare ass and feet. Worse: she had no idea what was happening to her, or why.
Ashley had spent an hour that way after waking up; sitting there in her shackles and thinking. The last she could remember, she'd been in a dark place with a red light coming towards her. Or was it a red place with a dark light coming towards her? Everything was foggy, confusing. There was a strange taste on her tongue. She felt a lot of things in that lonely hour, but mostly she was afraid.
Finally, she worked up the courage to stand, though it wasn't easy with her binds. She managed though, and found the chain between her ankles had just enough slack to allow her to shuffle forward. There was a rectangular indentation at the far end of the room; no handle, but the lines certainly gave it the appearance of a doorway. She made her way there, slowly thanks to the shackles, and set her ear against it to listen. Nothing. She took a breath, raised her hands to her stomach-the highest the chain would allow them to go-and rapped her knuckles on the wall. Nothing once more.
"Hello?" She tried, glancing around the room as she waited for reply. The ceiling was curved, liked the walls, and it bounced the sound of her voice around in a splash of echoes. It was so bright in the room, though, she had to turn back to the door and close her eyes. "Hello? Is someone out there?"
After being met with her second empty silence, Ashley sighed, defeated, and shuffled back to her spot against the wall to sit once more. Seated, she rested her head back and focused. Wherever she was, she didn't think it was the mansion. The room was so sparse and spacious and cold... it felt like a ship; like she had been stashed in the cargo hold of some cruiser or shuttle, and the cargo completely removed. She didn't hear engines, though, so if it was a ship, at least they weren't moving. She stared at her hands, turning them over, and her brow creased with concentration. Shepard... she remembered Shepard had gone missing and Liara had spoken to her. But then? Nothingness. Empty space except that red light and the dark hall.
Or, perhaps, dark stairs. That triggered something, some lost memory, and just as she was fishing for it, that rectangular indentation across the room slid away with a woosh. Ash's eyes widened, her head lifted, and she opened her mouth to speak-
-but closed it once she saw the volus entering the room.
Volus, Ash thought. Volus... volus... one of them attacked me. Yes, one attacked me on the stairs and then... what?
"You're getting company," the short alien spoke, distorted through his breather. The sound of that voice echoing off the walls and filling every inch of the room sent a chill up Ash's spine. "Misbehave and you will be punished. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ash spoke, meaning to sound strong but the word came out in a whisper.
Then they started coming and did not stop for a long time. Ashley understood why she'd been left in such a large room; the volus had literally dozens of prisoners to fill it with. She watched, mouth agape, as they wheeled in unconscious body after unconscious body on medical gurneys. Many were human, some asari, some turian, some salarian, but all were stripped naked and shackled at the waist, hands, and feet the same as her. The volus stepped beside the gurneys in silence, going about the task in a very workman-like fashion. They didn't seem to be separating anyone or putting anyone together in any particular order, just finding a spot and then dumping the bodies to the floor. Two volus rolled a large turian right beside her and dropped him. Ash shifted away at the last moment before his big arms nearly crashed down atop her. The turian smacked the hard floor with a thump and Ash glanced at him. He was strange looking in the nude; Ash had never seen a naked turian and she quickly averted her eyes.
Empty gurneys were wheeled out and then brought back in minutes later with fresh, unconscious, bodies resting on their tops. At least, Ash hoped they were only unconscious. She stole another glance at the turian and saw his chest raising and lifting with respiration. That, at least, was good. Turning back to the door, she spotted a familiar blue being wheeled in.
"Liara..." she muttered under her breath.
The volus had the sleeping asari in shackles, the same as the rest of them. They rolled her to the edge of the room, shoved her body off, and returned to the door with the gurney. Ash frowned, confused. She'd had suspicions about Liara; she remembered that much. But if the volus had done to her whatever they'd done to everyone else... she had to be innocent.
Two salarians on the same gurney, a blonde woman on the next, a man with a goatee after her, and then Jack; her eyes closed, her tattoos prominent on her bare flesh. Shepard had shown Ash pictures of the woman, claiming she was loose on the island and a threat, but... she was down here too. It didn't make sense. None of it was making any damned sense!
Unless... Shepard herself was behind this? Ash refused to believe that. She'd made so much progress with her former commander. This... this would be one, big, regression. No, she though. Shepard's stronger than that.
The Commander's dark-skinned slave-girl came shortly after. They wheeled her near Ashley and dumped her. Ash scooted beside the girl's body as soon as they'd left. "Sam?" She whispered, gently laying a hand on the girl's bare shoulder and giving her a shake. Sam did not stir, but her breathing was normal enough, and she didn't look bruised. Ash stayed beside her as the volus continued there stream of prisoners in through the doorway.
When it was done, and all the gurneys lay bare, the volus had pretty much filled every spare inch of room with a shackled and nude prisoner. The short aliens stood for a moment, looking over their work, and then retreated. The door slid shut once more, and even with all her company, Ash was alone again. She looked over the crowd of bodies lying about the floor. There were only two people of note missing: Shepard... and Miranda Lawson.
Liara warned you, Ash thought, her eyes widening. She said something about Miranda... about Miranda betraying Shepard... something about Cerberus.
She wasn't ready to jump to any conclusion just yet, but Ash, being an Alliance girl her whole life, didn't like Cerberus one bit. If they were behind this... she shook her head, not wanting to even entertain the idea; it made her too angry. She just hoped Shepard was alright... wherever she was.
It was another hour of silence then, the sleeping bodies carpeting the floor not so much as stirring an inch. Finally, though, the large turian to her left groaned and started shifting his weight around. Ash held her breath watching him; he was big and even with the shackles, he could hurt her if he wanted to. She saw his bird-like eyes flicked open once, twice, and then stay open. She saw the confused anger on his face upon realizing his movement was restricted. She saw him look her way, and she saw him snarl.
"What the hell is this!?" His voice boomed into the room. He tried standing, but the shackles denied it, and he wound up tumbling to his side instead. "Damn it! What the hell is this!? What's going on!? Get me out of these binds!"
Ash tried to calm him, but he cut her off almost instantly with another shout. The turian went on like that for three minutes before someone else's shouts joined his. A salarian was flopping around on the floor at the other end of the room. "Restraints!? I don't understand! Help! Someone HELP!" He yelled and began crawling towards the door indentation. He got onto his knees and pounded the butts of his fits into it the best he could with them in shackles.
The turian turned his anger on the salarian, and soon enough a third angry voice had joined the fray. A blond woman had awoken and was sitting on her butt, crying and screaming in shrill hysterics. "Where's Erik? Where's my husband!?" Ash was able to make out between the weeping and the moans.
More awoke, more shouting, more anger. Ashley couldn't get in a sensible word in over them all; her voice lost in the madness. An asari, not Liara, clambered to her feet in tears and tried shuffling to the door, but her feet tangled in the chains binding them and she spilled face first onto a red-headed women, who promptly cursed the asari and shoved her aside. The turian who'd first woken up was roaring in fury and trying to break the shackles by pulling his arms apart. It was not going well.
"Her!" A new voice screamed above the others. Ash craned her neck over the turian's shoulder and saw a short man with blonde hair and a scruffy beard had taken a seat against the wall. He was surrounded by four other humans, two women who were red-eyed and shaking, and two men who looked like they were trying to wake from a dream. The blonde man wrestled to his feet and pointed a finger across the room. "The asari! She's responsible!"
Ash traced the line of his finger to Liara's unconscious body.
"She hurt Shepard!" Another voice added from somewhere else in the room; it had become nearly impossible to pinpoint now that everyone was waking and talking. "And now she's gotten us all killed!"
Beside her, Sam moaned and rolled to her side. Ash put a hand on her hip and gave her a shake. "Sam? Are you okay?"
The girl blinked her eyes and slowly sat up. She took a glance around the room, then her eyes widened with apprehension. "Commander? Where's the Commander!?"
"Shhh, Sam," Ash tried soothing her. "It's alright. Shepard's not here, but I'm sure she's fine."
The girl's lip trembled. "Why... why is everyone shouting? What's going on? The Commander... she was hurt."
"Who hurt her, Sam?" Ash asked.
Sam's eyes scanned the room, landed on Liara, and narrowed. "Her."
Liara was awake herself now. She was scrambling back on her hands and knees to push up against the wall, trying to get some distance between the angry mob that had now surrounded her. She had a frozen look of terror on her face as they closed in.
"Liara? This was Liara's doing?"
Sam frowned. "I don't know about all this," she said, tugging at her chained wrists before her, "but I know she hurt the Commander's back. I saw it. It was... the most horrible thing in the world to watch." Her lip trembled again, and with it came tears this time.
Ashley couldn't believe it. So it had been Liara all along. "Why is Liara in here with us if she's behind this all, though, Sam?"
"Volus... I think they're very bad," Sam said, visibly swallowing.
"Volus..." Ash echoed. Yes, the volus, that's what you were remebering. The last I remember was the volus covering my face with his chloroform... because I'd discovered their little secret beneath the mansion. "Sam," Ash said, swallowing herself now and feeling her heartbeat quicken. "We're still on the planet."
Sam's brow creased in confusion.
"There's a ship beneath the foundation of the mansion, built directly below it, connected to it. The volus have a ship... and I think we're in it."
Sam licked her lips, darting her eyes from Ash, to Liara, to the door, and back. "Perhaps... perhaps the Commander isn't here because she escaped them! Perhaps she's coming to rescue us!"
"Maybe, Sam. Maybe," Ash told her, but, unfortunately, she didn't think that was the case.
"Ah!" Liara screamed across the room. Ashley looked and saw a man' grip around her ankle squeeze before she tugged it away and backed further up against the wall. "Get away!"
The room was fully awake now, and the blonde man had worked to aim all their confusion and anger at Liara. "Sick bitch..." he was growling, the crowd shouting their approval. "You all saw Shepard was going after her! Shepard was going to kill the bitch! I saw we finish her job!"
"That's what Shepard would have done!" Another man shouted.
Liara desperately shook her head, holding her shackled hands up before her in a surrendering gesture. "Please!" She screeched and a tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm sorry! Please don't do this!"
They closed in.
"Mercy!" Sam shouted. Ash looked over at her, confused. Sam raised her voice and tried again. "Mercy!"
The angry mob quieted down and began turning their attention her way.
"What are you saying, Sam?" A tall man with one eyebrow raised questioned. "This asari was going to fuck you in the ass in case you forgot! Mercy? What the fuck is mercy?"
"You asked what the Commander would have done," Sam told him, told the whole room. "And I'm telling you... she would have shown mercy."
Liara stared across the room at the girl, her eyes wide and incredulous.
Sam stared right back, straight-faced. "So leaver her be."
The crowd shared unsure glances and muttering disapproval.
Ash took the moment of quiet as an opportunity. "Sam's right. Look at her, she's down here chained up with the rest of us. She's not responsible for this. Harming her will do none of us any good. We need to stay sharp and work together if we want to get out of this, alright?"
The crowd wasn't happy. They'd had seen red, tasted blood, and were hungry to satiate that violent lust, but one by one they broke off and shuffled their shackled feet back to wherever they'd came from, disappointed.
Liara was left trembling and confused and alone at the edge of the room.
Jack stepped through the crowd, making her way slowly over to them. "I would have let them kill the bitch," she admitted, looking down at Sam. "Hell, I still might."
Sam lowered her head. She seemed afraid of the tattooed women.
"You're Jack, right?" Ashley greeted. "I'm Ashley Williams."
"I know who you are," Jack snapped. "And I don't care. I want to know two things: first, was Miranda Lawson in here before I woke up?"
"No," Ash answered.
The woman actually smiled a bit then. "Alright, then we might have a chance of getting the fuck out of here. She's free..." her smile widened. "Miranda's alright."
"What's your second question?'
Jack narrowed her look back down to Ash. She opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes flicked to the side and she closed it again. "Never mind. Questions answered."
Another woman joined the group who Ashley had never seen before. She had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a strip of purple paint on the middle of her lips. She was slender and exotic looking and when she spoke, her voice had an odd, playful quality to it. "Have you missed me, Jack?" She asked, turned and noticed Ashley's puzzled look. "Kasumi Goto," she greeted with a bow of her head. "You're Chief Ashley Williams," her eyes landed on Sam. "And Samantha Traynor. It's your fault I'm in this whole mess. I'd shake your hand, but my bracelets are awfully heavy," she said, clacking her chains against each other as she shook her wrists.
"M-My fault?" Sam asked.
"It's a long story," Kasumi admitted. "Let us have a seat and pool our information. Jack?"
Jack pressed her lips together and sighed, but eventually nodded. "Yeah, alright."
And so they talked. Kasumi went first and had, by far, the most to tell. She explained about Sam's parents hiring her to rescue her, and about the danger of the volus. She told them they belonged to a former slave-trade clan, the worst in the galaxy. Jack filled them in on how she found Shepard strung up in the basement and about what Liara did not only to the commander, but to herself. Ashley grimaced as she listened, unable to believe that Liara T'Soni, a person she once called a friend aboard the Normandy, could have become so twisted. Ash then told her story about the volus attacking her with a needle, and how she found the cave path leading into the ship below.
"They were chanting," Ashley told them, her eyes distant with remembrance. "All the volus were gathered in this big ship command center and they were kneeling around a hologram and chanting."
"Hologram of what?" Kasumi asked.
"It was the strangest thing," Ash said, running a hand through her hair. "They were kneeling before an image of a krogan." Jack and Kasumi shared a look. Ash caught it and frowned. "What? What is it?"
"I spotted a Krogan before we busted into the mansion," Jack explained. "The creep was standing outside on a hill, staring down at the place." She turned to Kasumi. "You know anything about a krogan leader?"
Kasumi shook her head. "If the krogan leads them, it is a well-kept little secret. I've never heard of him."
Silence befell their little group then. Ash was putting all the pieces together. "So... these volus are slavers. They were sworn to Shepard under their Oath of Servitude, then what? Shepard let them go?"
"Liara did," Jack answered. "She talked Shepard into giving them to her, and I'm assuming they talked her into releasing them."
"So they must have had this planned from the start," Kasumi added. "If they've had a ship built down here all along."
"Shepard was given the volus by their clan... what, in order for them to get close to her?" Ash asked.
"Maybe," Kasumi said. "Maybe they had planned all along to have Shepard gather up as many important people as she could so they could do this," she gestured to the walls and to their shackles. "I mean, if they are selling us off, they'd make a fortune. These are all very wealthy individuals."
"The Commander would never help them do something so terrible," Sam said in her quiet little voice.
"No, she wouldn't," Ash agreed. "Not willfully, anyway."
"She's always been a kink," Jack said. "But not like she's become. Is it possible they doped her up or something? Kept her on some kind of medication that let them, shit, I don't know, persuade her into going as far as she went?"
"You mean kidnapping you and Miranda?" Ash asked.
"Yeah. The Commander Shepard I knew would never have done that."
Ash nodded. "It possible."
"Where is she, though?" Sam said. "Why are they keeping her from us?"
"If it were me running the slave ring," Kasumi interjected, her eyes on the doorway across the room. "There's no way I'd let the Commander Shepard slip through my fingers. Think about it: she's the most valuable prize any slaver could ask for.. arguably the most famous person in the galaxy.. she's a damned legend for all she's done."
Sam's lip was quivering again. "Do you think she's okay?"
"I don't know," Kasumi admitted, shaking her head. "I really don't know."
-Shepard-
Every inch of her was either sore, bruised, or aching. The blood had ran out of her hands an hour ago; they were suspended above her in cuffs, stretching her out and keeping her just high enough off the ground that she had to balance her weight on the tips of her toes. The volus had left her naked, but added a leather muzzle around the lower half of her face to keep her silenced. The leather was pushing up against her nostrils, making it hard to breath. Her eyes were opened only to slits. She was dead tired from the whipping they'd given her earlier, but every time she felt sleep coming, the chain holding her wrists jerked her awake. Someone must have been monitoring her, and that someone wanted her awake. Wanted her to suffer.
Shepard had no way of knowing. The room was dark, empty, and bare. She stood suspended in the middle of it, the hard floor cold on her feet, the occasional burst of cool wind from the air conditioning unit blowing down from the ceiling, kicking up her hair.
She'd awoke like that an hour ago, and they had immediately started in with the whipping. The volus... her old 'friends'. They hadn't even asked her any questions, hadn't bothered to remove the muzzle. Only whipped and whipped until she thought they couldn't whip any further. Then they did anyway. Now she was alone, left to deal with the pain in the deafening quiet of the cell.
Eventually, the sound of a door opening and closing came from over her shoulder, and the head volus, Serj, marched around to her front side. His hands were behind his back, his head cocked to the side as he spoke, "Hello, Commander. How are you?"
She stayed quiet, not giving him the satisfaction of trying to speak through her muzzled mouth.
"I see. Well, you should be happy to hear that I've come to make you an offer that could get you out of this whole predicament. How are the wounds, by the way? I apologize for setting my clanmates on you so violently, but... it was His will, and so it had to be done. They did enjoy it, though. I shan't lie. After being forced to listen to you boss us around for so long, you understand, I'm sure, that it is a bit of a joy to have you where you are, no?"
She glared at him; the sound of her breath shooting from her nose and trickling across the leather was the only sound in the room.
His hands moved to his front and folded at his chubby waist. "Anyway, as I said, I come with an offer from out clan leader. Be grateful, because he doesn't make this offer often. Shepard, he is going to allow you to bend the knee to him and take the Oath of Servitude. Do you hear me, girl? He's going to let you become his life-slave. No more whippings. No more of this filthy, damp, cell. As his slave, you will be at his feet every waking hour of the day. You will serve him, obey him... pleasure him, if he so desires it."
Hey eyelids felt heavy. If she could just sleep a bit... just a little...
"Wake her up."
The chain jerked, and her head snapped up.
"Shepard, just answer my question with a nod of your head. Will you take the Oath? Take it and all this goes away. No more pain."
She didn't even have to consider it.
She shook her head.
Serj actually recoiled a step. "What? You... you refuse the Oath!? Do you realize what you're condemning yourself to!? Torture! I... you can't be serious? I shall ask once more: Will you take the Oath."
Again, she shook.
Serj stared at her then for a while. Eventually he put his hands back behind his back, nodded his head, and marched back out of the room. Before he left he added, "Whip her. Harder this time. I'll be back in another hour to see if her will is broken."
Three volus stepped forward and circled her body, whips in hands.
They started in on her. The lashes hurt, of course, but the volus had short arms and weren't very strong. She'd had worse. And as they whipped at her, Shepard actually managed to get her eyes closed and drift, momentarily, to sleep to the sounds of her own flesh being lashed. The rope jerked though, and the sleep went away as quickly as it had come.
And the whips were starting to hurt.
-Miranda-
In the growing white light of the misty morning, the mansion took on a glowing trim around its edges that, at some other time in her life, might have made it look nice. But not this morning; she knew what evils lurked inside.
Miranda pressed against a tree trunk, her arms wrapped around her bare shoulders to try and warm herself amidst the chilly morning breeze, and kept a way eye on the mansion. Her left wrist still throbbed where the krogan had wrapped his hand around it and squeezed, but it was getting better. And she'd gotten free; that was the important thing. He hadn't been able to stop her from running, and because of Jack's breathing mask, she was free.
The volus had looked for her only briefly in the dark night before retreating back to the mansion. Miranda had eluded them by staying in the shadows, low to the ground, and only moving when absolutely necessary. But now morning had come, and the volus she'd expected to come pouring out of the mansion searching for her never came. She didn't know what to make of that, but it probably wasn't a good thing.
The guests, Shepard, Jack, Sam... all of them were in there, somewhere, and at the mercy of those sick volus and their giant krogan leader. She shuddered and squeezed her shoulders a bit tighter. The thought of that krogan coming towards her with his black armor and the two scarred white marbles rolling around in his head where his eyes should have been still made her throat tighten, her skin crawl, her heartbeat quicken. He was a monster; a true, living, embodiment of the word in every way. And now Jack was with him.
She grit her teeth and glared forward. Her plan had been to slip inside the mansion when the volus went out looking for her, find a weapon of some sort, and kill the big bastard before he could do any harm to Jack and the rest. The fact that they had seemingly lost interest in her was a big problem with that plan.
As Miranda stood against the tree, half her face leaning out to watch the mansion, the planet began to shake.
"What?" She muttered, taking a step back and staring down at the ground beneath her feet.
It shook again, more violently, like a massive earthquake was rumbling through the entire foundation of the planet. Beyond the line of the trees, the mansion groaned; a monstrous roar that split the silence of the morning with a brutal hatchet. Miranda watched, terrified, as the whole building began trembling. Dirt and gravel shook loose at the edge of the property.
What the hell is going on, Miranda thought. The whole bloody planet feels like it's coming apart!
And then the whole bloody planet did start coming apart.
Huge patches of trailing dirt and grass and rock lifted apart in a long seam around the edges of the mansion. A tremble shook the ground with such force, Miranda nearly tumbled over, and then the mansion groaned again and that seam around its perimeter grew higher and higher.
Miranda stepped out from behind the tree wide-eyed. "It's a ship..." She whispered, her mouth falling agape. "It's a bloody ship!"
Engines. She could hear engines growling from under the dirt, and realized then with stark clarity: she had a decision to make.
The seams grew higher still, and the insides of the planet were now clearly visible as the mansion rose. The engines were gathering power, getting louder, taking off.
You're no good to them here, Miranda told herself. You'll be marooned on this planet and they'll be gone.
There actually was no decision to make, not really.
She ran for the mansion.
The ground came apart beneath her feet as she crossed onto its property.
Then they were flying.