Shepard had never been the type who would pine over a woman, but she still found herself thinking about Samantha almost daily. It had been over three years now since they'd said their goodbyes and Shepard couldn't understand why her heart still refused to let go.
"Hey! Quit your fucking daydreaming, I'm sick of working alone here," Shepard's new partner said. She was the only person Shepard had met who had genuinely not given two shits about who Shepard was or what she'd done, at least not in the way people usually did. She wasn't intimidated because she was scared, she was intimidated because she saw Shepard as the rival for the title of the baddest bitch in Omega.
"I'm getting to it, Jack," Shepard mumbled as she began gathering the files she and her partner were supposed to clear out from the infirmary. Doctor Chakwas had specifically requested that Shepard be here for this job, and she couldn't figure out why.
"Might wanna hurry on that. Know the damage I can do in a confined space like this?" Jack threatened but Shepard wasn't fazed, she was used to Jack's bravado.
"How about you go find some rubbing alcohol to drink while I look at these papers," Shepard suggested with a smirk.
"Yes, ma'am, commander, ma'am!" Jack saluted sarcastically.
The scene was messy, someone had died there earlier and that meant there were a lot of unpleasant bodily fluids to clean up. Jack busied herself by peeking into the cabinets looking for alcohol and drugs while Aria wasn't paying attention to keeping an eye on them. Shepard didn't bother, she knew better already, but Jack hadn't been here before, at least not as a cleaner.
Shepard rather focused on trying to figure out why Chakwas would request her here. She'd always been one of the few people on this entire damn island who had genuinely looked after Shepard from day one. She'd never understood why Chakwas had chosen to work here, someone with her bedside manner and skills could've gotten a job anywhere else. Perhaps she'd already been everywhere, seen everything else and had decided to dedicate her time on improving the conditions in places where no one else would volunteer to do it.
In other words, she wasn't the kind of a person who would request to assign a literal shit-job to anyone unless she had a reason to. Shepard deduced Chakwas had wanted to tell her something but hadn't had a chance to do it directly and privately, and probably wouldn't since the guards were always there.
She said the old medical records should be removed and taken to the shredder, Shepard mused and looked through the folders piled on the edge of the desk. Jack joined her and grabbed a folder, opened it and began to read through a former inmate's medical record.
"Okay, this bitch came in complaining about a 'bad smell originating from her anus'. I don't even know where to start listing what's wrong with this," Jack guffawed. Shepard ignored her and flipped through the labels on the edges of the folders until she found a familiar name.
Traynor, S.
ID 31100-672
Symptoms: Headaches, nausea, fatigue.
Performed a pregnancy test to rule out the obvious cause. Tested positive. Father unknown, patient refuses to disclose the identity. No need for further investigation at this point, patient says it was consensual.
"...but this was over three years ago," Shepard mumbled to herself. Jack glanced at her but didn't comment, she was too busy reading the gory details in an autopsy report.
Shepard looked at the date again, assuming Samantha hadn't had a chance to say anything about it if this was from the last checkup performed before the inmate was escorted out, but that wasn't the case. Samantha had known for over three weeks before being released.
Why didn't she... Shepard thought and then scoffed at herself. Why the hell would she have said anything, what would've been the point of it? Shepard wasn't going anywhere, ever. It wasn't like she could've been involved in the child's life even if she had known.
Besides, how do you know it's even yours, Jane? For all you know, she was fucking a CO on the side. You can't get a woman pregnant, it's statistically impossible, Shepard scolded herself, but even as she was thinking that, she knew she was wrong.
Samantha wouldn't have needed to fuck a guard for favors and none of them would've had the nerve to force her either, Shepard had made sure Aria would look after Samantha whenever Shepard wasn't able to, and while Aria wasn't the most honorable person on the planet, she had always kept her word to Shepard, as she had kept hers to Aria. It wasn't a friendship, it was a mutually beneficial partnership, both parties respecting each other's specific skills and needs, and compensating for each other wherever necessary. So, no, there was no way Samantha could've gotten pregnant by someone else.
"Not a word," Shepard said to Jack who regarded her curiously as she emptied the folder and tucked the papers into her shirt.
"Fine, but I get this," Jack said and held up an anatomy-chart.
"You want that?" Shepard scoffed.
"It's better wank-material than Homeward bound ," Jack shrugged and Shepard let out a whistle.
"You are one sick puppy, Jack."
"Says the mass murdering mutant," Jack retorted. "Now hurry up, it's your turn to empty the shit-bucket."
Kai Leng was Shepard's favorite person to hate. He was overconfident, a trash talker, and much to his annoyance, he had nothing to back up his grandiose claims with. He was the kind of a guy who had to figuratively pick on people smaller than him to feel big. He was the kind of a guy who walked around pretending to be something he wasn't, a beta desperately trying to convince everyone that he was an alpha when everyone around him knew that a real alpha wouldn't need to proclaim his status. It made him the pathetic laughing stock. It also made him dangerous because when a guy with a fragile ego needs to feel like a big man, people get killed.
She'd wanted to kill him for years, but she hadn't. She couldn't say what had stopped her from doing it, there had been opportunities, there'd been times when Shepard felt that Aria had been practically setting it up when she'd left Shepard alone with Leng, expecting she'd kill him. But she hadn't, and now she was glad she hadn't.
Everything has a reason, she mused when she realized Kai Leng was her key to getting out of here, a man most deserving of his role.
Shepard hadn't even thought about the scalpel she'd stolen from the crime scene she'd been cleaning with Samantha years ago. She could've sold it to another inmate or used it herself but she hadn't, she'd left it be and now was glad she had. She was finally coming up with a use for it.
Shepard stood by the door to her cabin as Aria ran her hands along Shepard's sides, under her arms, along her legs, checking her as thoroughly as she could be bothered to. When she moved to stand in front of Shepard to go over her once more from this side, Shepard quietly cleared her throat to get her attention. Aria continued working but glanced at her to imply she was listening, so to speak.
Shepard glared at Kai Leng, who was idly standing by, fidgeting with his keys. Aria quirked an eyebrow and Shepard tilted her head back to indicate her cabin. Aria shrugged one shoulder as if to say "whatever" and the silent conversation was over.
"You know what, Leng? I think it's about time we did a random search of Shepard's cabin. Would you do the honors?" she then smirked.
"It would be my pleasure," Leng grinned and entered the cabin, expecting Aria to stand by outside with Shepard. He was about to gleefully begin trashing the place when he heard Aria speak again.
"You have until tomorrow morning to do whatever it is you're doing, the new kid Jenkins will be here at eight to let you out," she said and locked Shepard in with Leng... or more accurately, locked him in with her.
"Aria, what the hell!" Leng called out after her, fumbling to get his gun, but Shepard had already closed the distance between them and before he even had a chance to pull his weapon on her, Shepard delivered a hard left hook into his midsection, punching his liver with such force he immediately dropped to his knees. She kicked him in the throat and he fell onto his back on the floor, gasping for air and complaining loudly in the excruciating pain the shock to his liver caused.
Shepard took his handcuffs and cuffed him to the bed's steel leg which was bolted to the floor. He let out strangled noises, finally turning to just straight up scream at her. He was in pain and frustrated, refusing to believe this was happening to him. Shepard had seen this reaction many times before. He knew he was going to die but instead of pleading, he got angry.
Shepard let him continue struggling and went to retrieve the scalpel. When he saw it in her hand, he got louder.
"Why are you screaming when I haven't even cut you yet?" Shepard snapped but he kept kicking and screaming, literally.
He drew his legs back and kicked hard, the soles of his boots impacting with Shepard's midsection, sending her across the room until she slammed against the wall. The scalpel clattered on the floor and Leng tried to see where it went.
"Bitch!" Shepard coughed when she was finally able to breathe again. "I'll split you in two!" she grunted and stood up, inhaling heavily. He refused to stop kicking and instead of uselessly threatening him or trying to reason with him, Shepard went to grab the heavy metallic boxes piled up next to the secret door. Without warning, she raised one as high as she could and then threw it down, the box not heavy enough to crush Leng's legs completely, but it caused enough damage to make him stop kicking, at least for a while.
"Does that hurt? Aw, poor you," Shepard then said, knelt down and pushed on Leng until he was on his stomach on the floor. She straddled his legs, reached for the nightstick in his utility belt and yanked his trousers halfway down his thighs.
"Remember how we first met? I know it was a long time ago, but I remember, do you?" she asked, leaning over him to be able to speak into his ear. His screams had slowly begun to dissipate into desperate sobs.
"You didn't know everything about me and thought you could have your way with me, but then it turned out my dick is bigger than yours, literally. So, you hit me in the back with so hard that I was momentarily paralyzed, and then you sodomized me with a nightstick. I was bleeding internally for three days. Remember that, CO Leng?" Shepard said through clenched teeth, grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back.
"I remember," he cried.
"Good. Then you have an idea of what is coming next," Shepard smiled sweetly and tapped Leng's cheek with the tip of the nightstick.
"Please..."
"You brought this on yourself, a thousandfold," Shepard scolded, realizing but ignoring the fact that she was repeating her mother's words, the situation close to identical too. "Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell."
"Don't..." he pleaded and she slammed the nightstick against his buttocks, sideways, leaving behind an angry red mark which would rise to severe bruise eventually. She hit him again, this time on the backs of his thighs, then on the backs of his knees, down on his ankles. She climbed back up the same path, hitting him as hard as she could before she finally stood over him, grabbed the back of his utility belt and yanked on it, rising his hips off the floor.
"Stay still!" she ordered and he blubbered desperate apologies as he pleaded her not to go through with whatever it was that she was planning. Shepard rolled her eyes, she was getting annoyed with his crying.
"You do realize the more you whine, the harder I'll make this for you?" she asked, quoting her mother once again. He nodded, trying to calm himself down and stop, but he couldn't. Shepard got a new idea and disappeared into the hidden room for a moment.
"What are you going to do?" he asked over his shoulder when Shepard emptied a long but somewhat narrow glass jar from white asparagus.
"I'm gonna have fun, that's what," Shepard said and went to him. The amount of resistance she met when she began to insert the jar into his ass took her by surprise and she had to strain to get it in.
"Well, aren't you a tight little bitch," she smirked, stood up and gave the jar a light kick. He was howling in pain until he couldn't even make another sound.
"The jar was cracked so try not to clench, or the-" Shepard began to say but it was too late; the glass shattered.
"No, no! Somebody! Help me!"
"I'll help you," Shepard said and straddled his ass, her weight on him making it all worse, the shards of glass cutting deeper into him. She pushed his shirt up to expose his lower back.
"I was recently assigned to clean up the infirmary, and you know I like to educate myself, and the doc was about to throw the book away anyway, so I took it. The book was titled something along the lines of 'Spine injuries for dummies', and you know, I learned a thing or two from it..." Shepard trailed off.
She ran the blade along Leng's spine and she could feel him tense up when the cool steel touched his skin. He knew better than to agitate her further by struggling. Little did he know it wouldn't make a difference, her mind was already made up.
"I'm no doctor, but if I understood correctly, injuries to the spine around here should take away the feeling below your hips," she then said and tapped the blade against his lower back.
"Shepard... whatever you're thinking about doing... please, don't do it."
"Shh, darling... trust me," Shepard grinned, raised her arm and then drove it down, drilling the scalpel into Leng's spine. He screamed.
"Almost done," Shepard said calmly and stabbed him again, this time a little lower, trailing further down with the blade, twisting it to make sure the spinal cord got severed. She then waited for him to stop crying and screaming before turning him so that he was once more on his back on the floor. She took the scalpel and went to straddle his chest.
"What are you going to do?" Leng asked hoarsely.
"Well... I'm kind of infamous, I need a new look," Shepard smiled sweetly and put her left hand over Leng's forehead. "Hold still."
CO Richard L. Jenkins unlocked the door to Shepard's cabin, feeling excited about his new job, happy to prove he wasn't scared of anyone, not even Shepard. When he got the door open and saw what was inside the cabin, he nearly pissed himself.
"Oh, God!" he gasped. He grabbed his radio and fumbled with it, unable to keep his hands from shaking.
"Command, I have an officer down! The prisoner's missing and the officer's gun is gone! Repeat, Shepard is missing and armed!" he said and went to the body then, kneeling by it. The nametag on his shirt identified him as Kai Leng, but his face was just a bloody mess, covered in deep lacerations and blood.
"Oh, God... officer Leng?" Jenkins then gasped when he realized his chest was still rising and falling, his breathing labored, but steady.
"I need a medevac, officer Leng is still alive!" Jenkins radioed.
"Oh, for fuck's sakes," Commander Bailey sighed when he arrived at the scene with his team and saw the body. "All right, stay with him, son. You two, help him move Leng and get him to the helipad for the chopper, the rest of you, find Shepard!" he barked and the officers did as they were told.
Once Leng had been moved out of the room and rushed to the helipad, Bailey noticed the strange markings on the wall and went to investigate closer. He pushed heavy boxes aside and realized there was a secret door. He called in his team and entered the cabin neighboring Shepard's. It was dark, there was no electricity being run up there since no one was supposed to be living there.
"All right... everybody, be sharp. Shepard's an ex-marine, an N7, which is basically a fancy title for a government sanctioned assassin, so don't think you can take her on," Bailey muttered as they looked around the space. They proceeded to investigate the area cautiously and Bailey went to open the bathroom door.
"Jesus Christ," he gasped when he saw a naked body slumped in the corner.
"What the hell happened here, who the hell are you?" Bailey frowned at the dead body as he knelt by it and looked closer. The body was missing a face and at first, Bailey was about to just consider that it was Shepard, that something had gone very wrong during the fight between Shepard and Leng; looking at the nether regions alone it could've been her, but Bailey realized something was missing. If this were Shepard's body, she should've had breasts.
"Call back the medevac!" Bailey shouted.
"Why?" Jenkins frowned.
"Because this is Kai Leng! Shepard is on the chopper, she's wearing his face!"
"This is medical unit number twenty-six, we're inbound with a forty-year old male with severe facial lacerations, weapon unknown. Vital signs are good..." a young medic spoke over the radio as the pilot waited for the all clear to be able to take off. Shepard sat up on the stretcher and turned to him. He dropped the radio and backed into the wall, startled, then terrified when she peeled off Leng's face from over her own.
"Get out," she said and he nodded sheepishly, opened the helicopter's door and jumped down onto the helipad.
"You too!" Shepard then ordered the pilot and kicked him in the side to shove him out of the seat before taking his place and pulling the door shut.
"Ah, there we go," Shepard mumbled and began the ascend. It had been a while since she'd last piloted a helicopter but the majority of the tech and the machinery seemed to have remained the same or similar to what they'd been back in her day. She knew she wouldn't get many miles out of the chopper before the authorities would catch up, but she didn't need to, she just needed to get close to the mainland. She could then parachute out, ditch the helicopter and let it crash, give the authorities a little something to keep them busy until they could confirm she hadn't been in the chopper when it crashed.
Hold on, sweetheart, I'm on my way.