Chapter 2 is up and I hope you all have an umbrella because this is going to be a bloodbath.
The Wildcard
Chapter 2
'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.' Plague recited in his thoughts.
He was within a void. Surrounded by darkness, silence, stillness, emptiness. Since his suit self-destructed he had been in the darkness for what felt like years.
'I will give unto him, that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.'
Not being so religious, Plague recited the only revelation he knew. 21:6. His mother's favorite. The only thing he knew about his mother other than the fact that her name was Catherine.
No last name, like him and his father. The only ones who knew his name was those from the vault. Since he left the vault he had been simply called 101, and over time, Plague. He felt that his name was the only thing he had left of his days of innocence.
The next time he heard his name was when he found his father in another vault stuck in a machine. When Plague entered the machine he found himself in a computerized world under the control of a madman who took the form of a sweet little girl. When he refused to hand over his father, Plague unleashed hell.
Within seconds Plague forced him to watch as his world was brought down around him. The fake houses burned, the picket fences distorted, the sky turned blood red, the ground shattered. With his mind in that world, Plague had full control. He was compassion and rage, water and fire, light and dark, God and Satan.
Through the girl's eyes the madman was screaming as he looked upon this being of destruction, this simple being that stood within the chaos.
Plague simply walked and laughed historically as he ripped the false world apart with his bare hands. He only showed mercies to those who like his father were trapped. The ones who could survive leaving the world awoke, while those who couldn't were given a swift and painless death to release them from this hell they had been forced to live for years as the puppet master's entertainment.
Not one to leave loose ends, he didn't kill the man. In fact he improved the machine and extended his life as he condemned him to hell within his own nightmare.
Since then he has both built, and carved a road for himself throughout the Capital Wasteland. Saving lives purer than him, created bonds, single handedly gutted the Enclave reducing them to small numbers, purged Paradise Falls.
When his father died he had been reduced to a shell of his former self. With no emotion and no will to live, he threw himself at any challenge wanting his existence to end.
It was with one more bond he formed that he found himself. When he joined the Brotherhood of Steel. He had met them several times throughout his wanderings and met Sarah Lyons. She was the only one from outside the Vault that he told his name.
Plague fell truly in love for the first time and she loved him back.
When they battled against the remaining Enclave, Sarah threw herself in the machine not wanting to watch Plague die from the radiation.
Plague was in shock when he realized Sarah was no longer beside him and turned to see her entering the code.
He ran up the stairs and dove for the door only to have some of the fingers of his right hand crushed under the door. He then screamed. Not in pain, but fear for his love's safety. With his free hand he removed his helmet and pounded the almost unbreakable glass with it. The visor on the helm shattered under the punishment, but that didn't stop him from hitting the glass. With tears running down his face he watched as Sarah walked back to him with only the glass to separate them. She kneeled down to him and removed her suit's helmet and smiled at him. With her health leaving her she placed her hand on the glass as tears ran down her cheeks.
Plague dropped his helmet and gingerly brought his hand up to hers as he rested his forehead on the cool glass. He watched as her strength left her making her sit with her side against the glass door, never taking her hand away. Her face was pale as her hand started to slide down. With the last of her strength she lightly kissed the glass and then knowing Plague couldn't hear her mouthed the words 'I love you Adam' before she finally slid down the glass and went to sleep on the metal floor with a smile on her face knowing she had both saved lives and saved her lover from his fate.
Sobbing uncontrollably Adam rammed his head into the glass. He didn't feel the warm liquid running down his face. All he felt was the hole appearing in his chest.
A few minutes later the rest of the Brotherhood troops entered to room and looked at the image of a barely breathing man with his fingers crushed under a glass door with blood from multiple sources of his forehead smeared on the glass. In his free hand was a piece of glass from his helmet that he was holding to his neck.
A few of the Brotherhood members ran up the stairs and emptied his hand when they realized what he was about to do. The whole time Plague was screaming at them to leave him and let him die next to his love, Sarah Lyons.
He thrashed violently against them as they tried to hold him still as he twisted his already shattered fingers while they remained trapped under the door.
Once the Brotherhood scribes opened the door Plague dragged himself to Sarah and held her cold body in his arms. New tears appeared as he whimpered over her. Fighting the wounds he had received, he picked her up with her armor and slowly lifted himself to his feet. The surrounding knights cleared the way as the sight shuffled past them. He shoved away all who tried to help him as he slowly went through the halls. A knight opened the door to the outside for Plague. Sunlight washed over them as Plague walked to the center of the structures courtyard.
The fighting had stopped. Knights secured the area. The Enclave who surrendered were stripped of their power armor and lined up in rows next to the building. The Brotherhood robot stood in the distance on standby as scribes worked on it.
Once in the center of the courtyard Plague fell to his knees and looked at Sarah's smile. Between sobs he kissed her on the forehead as the quiet courtyard was filled with his sorrow.
Brotherhood Knights and scribes walked up to him and kneeled around him with their helmets removed. It was quiet until one Knight put a hand on his shoulder and said it wasn't his fault.
It was at that exact moment that Plague went silent. The silence made everyone around him feel uneasy as Plague slowly lowered Sarah to the ground.
"Yes…" mumbled Plague as he got to his feet."…It's not my fault…" as Plague started to slowly walk away from the group.
With the knights glad to hear those words they failed to realize where Plague was walking. They also didn't notice Sarah no longer had her laser pistol on her belt.
Plague stood in front of an Enclave prisoner at the end of a row. His hands were tied behind his back while he sat on the ground. The prisoner looked up at the man and froze when he saw those empty sad eyes.
"W…what do you want?" he stuttered when he saw the weapon in his hand.
"You killed her…" Plague's voice was almost a whisper.
The colors on the prisoner's face left him as he looked in the direction this man came from. He saw nothing but a few Brotherhood Knights paying respects to a fallen Knight before them.
"No. No I didn't!" he said as he panicked. He had killed a few Brotherhood during the fight but he knew he didn't kill any in the courtyard. "I…I didn't kill her!"
By this time the rest of the prisoners both men and women looked at the man before them.
"Your Enclave…" Plague stated flatly. "If it wasn't for this battle we would have had enough time to find a way to safely activate Project Purity without the risks." He then checked his love's weapon making sure the safety was off. He was never good with energy weapons. In his chillingly calm voice he continued. "…If it wasn't for the Enclave, Sarah would have not lost so many brothers. If it wasn't for the Enclave, my father wouldn't have had to hide us in Vault 101. If it wasn't for the Enclave, my father would still be here with me." With that he lifted the weapon and aimed at the panicking soldier. "If it wasn't for the Enclave… SARAH WOULD STILL BE WITH ME!"
With Plague's raised voice the Knights around him looked at him. When he pulled the trigger the man had a hole fried into his forehead as he fell to the ground. As if on cue the rest of the unarmed and unarmored prisoners screamed as Plague started firing wildly into the rows. His eyes were filled with rage as his face showed his teeth.
With the prisoners tied they had trouble running, crawling. He aimed for those ones. He would shoot the ones begging last.
Before he could kill a sixth prisoner Plague was tackled to the ground. Knights held his arms as they pried the weapon from his hand.
"I WILL KILL YOU ALL!" he shouted over the chaos "I WILL PURGE YOUR ENCLAVE FILTH FROM THE WASTELAND! I WILL NOT STOP 'TIL ALL OF YOU ARE DEAD AND ROTTING!" Plague then managed to throw three knights of him only for four more to help hold him down. "I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU. I WILL COME FOR YOU EVEN IF YOU BEG. MY ARMOR WILL BE RED WITH YOUR BLOOD. I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT IT's LIKE TO LOSE EVERYTHING!"
The next few months Plague lived with the Brotherhood. The Knights wanted to repay him, but the only things Plague wanted was either to have his love returned to him, or to end his own existence. Not wanting Plague to kill himself, the knights restrained him in the safety of the Brotherhood base.
Plague was silent most of that time. The only sounds he would make were for his visitors to leave him alone are he would start having another episode. They had to hook him up to an IV since he would either use the silverware in a suicide attempt or he would simply not eat.
The first few days were the worst. Scribes had to find a way to put his Pipboy in lockdown so that he wouldn't use the weapons he had stored to kill himself. Whenever one of his weapons was knocked out of his hands the weapon would atomize and again be stored in the Pipboy.
Once they succeeded the suicide attempts were replaced by more outbursts directed at those around him. They also knew Plague was known to eat human flesh long before he met the Brotherhood. His cannibalism was triggered by having to survive in truly unlivable circumstances. Since then he was starting to clean himself up. He stopped multiple times from looking at the corpses of the raiders and other enemies he killed but with Sarah's death he started to revert to his old tendencies. After a gruesome attempt to chew through his wrists, the knights put a mask on him.
As time went by Plague slowly regained his sanity.
Sadly Plague was no longer the same man he used to be. He had lost too much. He couldn't return to the vault, he couldn't argue with his father, he couldn't hold his love in his arms. He had nothing but his Pipboy and his name.
Once the Knights thought he was no longer a danger to himself they unlocked his Pipboy and let him leave.
He was not seen in the Capital Wasteland for a few years.
He traveled to the Mojave Wasteland and found a new purpose. He had been shot in the head and left for dead. In response he gutted the landscape, showed no restraint, hunted until he found his target.
Plague with his perfect memory remembered as he used his own fists to reduce the man to pulp in front of an audience of shocked and terrified gamblers and guards. Nothing in the Wastes could prepare them for the punishment he gave to the inspiration for his rage.
With his bloodlust sated he wandered the Mojave. He found new fights, new challenges, new places.
He then met Mr. House. Another man who needed machines to survive. This Mr. House offered him a proposal. Give him the chip and Mr. House would have him set for life within the New Vegas strip.
It was a nice offer till he realized what that chip could do. The machines under Mr. House's control became more powerful. He would force those within and outside the strip under his control.
With the words 'Sarah wouldn't want this' in his mind Plague brought Mr. House and his precious Lucky 38 down. Even with the machines' upgrades they didn't stand a chance. The tower fell.
It was not long until Plague found his next target. He discovered Caesar's Legion's base. Plague spent the day watching them from a cliff. He saw the women kept as slaves and raped, he saw men be disemboweled while they were still alive and put on crosses, he saw heads on pikes.
Slowly his anger grew. It was when he saw a teenage girl working that he gasped. She had blond hair and blue eyes. The facial structure was familiar. She looked like she could have been Sarah's daughter if she was alive. It was as if Sarah herself was guiding him.
The next morning Plague ambushed a lookout and took his uniform. He walked amongst the killers and slavers. Eventually he found his way to the teen.
She looked up from the herbs she was grounding and felt as if this man was different from those who enslaved her, but she wanted to avoid the whip.
"How…may I serve you master?" she asked afraid of the answer.
She was lucky none of the slavers noticed the curves of her body. With this man before her she felt as if her luck finally ran out.
The man slowly lifted up his hand and lightly touched her right cheek with his fingertips. The contact made a tear run down her face.
She was unsure of this man's intentions. She was expecting to be thrown to the ground and her clothes ripped off of her form like she had witnessed happen so many times within the camp. But the gentleness of the touch confused her.
He drew back his hand and pulled a pin out of his pocket and started messing with her shackles.
If she thought she was confused then, she sure was confused now. Once the shackles fell to the ground she felt what she hadn't felt in a long time. Hope.
"I need you to hide." the man said as he handed her a knife. "No matter what you hear…Don't come out."
The teen didn't know how to react to what she was hearing. But she obeyed. She took the knife and ran to the supply crates and hid herself in one. The silence that followed the next few seconds disappeared as the screaming came. Guards shouted orders and slaves screamed in panic as gunshots filled the air.
She heard metal rip into flesh, she heard screams of pain from the guards, and she heard the yells from confused slavers. The whole process sounded terrifying. But what scared her most was a sound of hysterical laughter moving around the battlefield.
She screamed when she heard something land on top of the crate she was hiding in.
The next second the lid was thrown off by a slaver, who looked inside. Before she could react a Legion machete went through the man's chest covering her in the warm liquid. The man fell away from the crate leaving the teen exposed with the lid off.
She was starting to panic like everyone outside when the sounds of battle went silent.
The quiet was becoming more and more uncomfortable as the seconds ticked by.
Shaking, she looked out of the crate and couldn't believe what she saw.
The camp was decimated. Limbs littered the ground, guards drowned in their own blood.
The only people she saw that did not get killed were the shaking slaves and the figure in the center of the camp.
It was the man she saw earlier. As she got closer his back was to her.
"I said no matter what." the man said calmly as he turned to her.
She took a step back when she saw blood around his mouth. He no longer had the uniforms helmet on so she was able to see his white short hair. His age was around the mid-twenties. The blue in his eyes were so light that they looked as if they were actually silver but looked extremely hollow. He had a collection of scars on his forehead.
Seeing the image of himself in his mind disgusted him. He devouring human flesh sickened him. His eyes shot open to reveal the darkness.
For the two-hundred and fourth time he realized he was still in the void. He screamed at the top of his lungs only for his voice to be muted. He couldn't even hear himself in the darkness.
While he screamed he noticed one difference in his view. A speck of light appeared in the distance. As the light grew he was laughing
Finally he would be with Sarah. Finally he wouldn't have to feel the ache in his heart. Slowly the light grew, and then consumed him.
The Normandy was quieter the usual. Sure the Cerberus crew worked around the clock but it felt extremely quiet to Taylor Shepard. She missed the old crew. By some miracle one of 'Timmy she liked to call the annoying bustard's dossiers was actually Garrus, one of her friends from the first Normandy. Sure it was fun to watch Joker yell at the ship's AI but that didn't stop her from missing everyone.
She was standing at the holotank planning a course to some worlds to gather resources when Joker talked to her on the com.
"Shepard, The Illusive Man wants to chat. Should I patch him through?" Joker asked.
Taylor let out a large sigh as she moved a strand of her dark hair that must have escaped her ponytail out of her view
"Patch Timmy through." she answered as she walked to the com room.
Once she entered the room the meeting table lowered itself as the chairs moved out of the way on tracks. She stepped in the center of the room as she was scanned by a grid. Soon she was welcomed with the unpleasant sight of the one and only Tim sitting in his seat.
"Shepard, nice of you to join me…" he was cut off by Shepard.
"Cut the crap Timmy. What do you want?" she asked with her hands on her hips.
The Illusive Man let out a sigh as he took in a big breath of his cigar. He then let out a smoke ring before he answered.
"Fine Shepard. I have a problem. To be more specific Omega has a problem…"
"Hmm, when does it not have one?" Shepard retorted.
"…the next day after you recruited Archangel and Mordin Solus, we picked up a strange signal." with that a small screen appeared next to Shepard showing the market district of Omega. "At first it was just the signal. When we hacked into the security feed the camera was blinded by a bright light." as Timmy spoke the feed played. A ball of light appeared startling some of the pedestrians and then exploded and somehow took out the feed. It then switched to a second feed as the light died down and revealed a humanoid figure on the ground. Before Shepard could ask a question Timmy talked. "That's not even the strange part."
As the feed played the crowd started to calm down. They looked at the body and acted as if it was a normal thing maybe thinking the flash was a malfunction in the lighting. A few seconds went by until a krogan walked up to the corpse. Now that Shepard focused she realized it was a human wearing what looked like a jumpsuit. The krogan kneeled down and started to mess with a digital device on the man's right wrist. As the seconds went by the krogan was beginning to be more and more irritated when the thing wouldn't come off.
The scene changed drastically when the man's hand freed itself from the krogans grip and grabbed the krogan by his armor and brought him to the ground as he rolled on top of him. People backed away as the human started punching the krogan's face with his fists. Taylor feared for the man's safety until a puddle of krogan blood started to form under the reptiles head. He didn't stand a chance. The krogan's arms fell to the ground as he died. His face was stuck as if from shock. Even though the alien was dead the man kept pounding away at his skull. Shockingly the krogan's crest caved in.
As the man pummeled the thief's head he started to calm down. Slowly he looked at his hands and then at the krogan under him. He was more shocked at the sight of the crowed of aliens around him than the two other things.
She had seen men get beaten to death by krogan. Hell one of those krogan was a close friend of hers, but to see it the other way around. Her eyes threatened to fly right out of their sockets.
He then said something and the device on his wrist started glowing. Within a second the light consumed him and when the light died down there was an armored figure in the man's place. The dome visor of his helm made him look slightly like a Quarian, he had pieces of armor covering parts of his body as what looked like an old duster jacket appeared on him.
"W…What the hell?" Shepard blurted out.
"He has some advanced tech. somehow he can materialize gear out of thin air." Timmy explained.
Then the man activated some kind of cloaking field and vanished.
"Ever since this man's appearance he has been accepting merc jobs all over Omega. He follows through in the jobs without any civilian casualties. His weapons are old antiques; 10mm pistols, revolvers; the list goes on. Selling those weapons would make him an extremely wealthy man. Where he gets his ammunition I don't know. All I know he makes them himself. But the strangest thing about him is his armor which is not in any record and the fact that he will not take credits as payment."
"What? What is he paid with? How can he make a living without money?" Shepard asked with her eyes finally looking away from the screen.
"That's the thing. He does not accept currency. He works for resources, food, and shelter." Timmy answered. "We have no name, no ID, no DNA, no fingerprints. I want you to find this man."
"Why? To kill him?" Shepard asked.
"No. This man is unpredictable, almost invincible. There are too many unknowns. We have classified him as The Wildcard."
"What do I do when I find him? If he's as strong as you say then it will be hard to get his tech even if we ambush him."
"I want you to recruit him."