It was the voices that brought him back.
He felt like he was submerged, his thoughts came sluggishly, his limbs held back by some unseen force. It was dark, it felt like he was floating. The concept of time was lost on him as he continued to simply exist.
The fact that he still perceived himself was not exactly a comforting thought. It didn't necessarily mean that he was dead but he had no other proof that he was alive. The last thing that he could remember was a sliver flash, a spurt of blood, and flames licking at his body. The more he considered it, that wasn't a comforting thought either.
But was there a point to all this? It seemed like only seconds had passed when he felt like his mind was working again. What had drawn him into this limbo? He had blacked out for only a few minutes, right? Surely his crew had come back for him, they needed him as much as he needed them.
They could fix his arm, his leg, and whatever else on his body that was damaged from the craft. He felt a stab of impatience as he longed to see his friends again, to let them know that it was all right, that he was back.
But nothing came. He merely waited, trapped in this pit of darkness.
He might as well try to speak. He made a motion in what he thought was his mouth opening (he had lost all feeling entirely) but was unable to elicit a sound from his throat. Frustration flashed across him as he drew deep into his memories, bringing familiar faces to mind as he strived for new ways to pass the time.
As quickly as the thought of his friends became a reality, they vanished. What was going on? Did he no longer have control of his own thoughts anymore? It was unfair, he never wanted to be in this position in the first place. As he felt himself wallow in despair, his attention was suddenly caught as there was a brief tint of purple that seemingly glowed from afar. He quickly looked in that direction to perceive the ghostly apparition. What was it? Purple? Why would only a color come to mind?
If there was a direct answer to his rhetorical question, it never came to him as the warm purple faded into blackness. He reflected on his vision momentarily. The shade of the color was familiar to him, now that he had time to process it. In fact, it was the exact sort of shade that-
A bright light fell upon his entire being, causing him to writhe in agony. He winced as his entire body seemed to be burning from the intensity of the light. He opened his mouth to scream and was rewarded with a sound, not a chilling shriek of pain but a ragged breath. He felt air pour into his lungs, the sensation causing his head to throb in pain. The pain was good, it reminded him that he was still alive.
As he struggled to gain consciousness, he could hear muffled voices in the background. They seemed rather frantic, as if he was reliving the destruction of his ship again. Was the entire thing a dream? Was he getting a second chance to live again, doomed to repeat this cycle of misery until he could find a way to correct his past mistakes?
It soon hit him that the location he was now positioned in was not the Normandy. It was not anywhere he could discern because his vision suddenly appeared, making him involuntarily blink in surprise. The sensation of blinking, however, came rather slowly, mechanically, and his sight was now permeated by a red filter. For some reason, numbers scrolled across his view, random points of data without an immediate purpose. He must have hit his head harder than he thought, now he was hallucinating.
The more he lay in his position, the more convinced he became that he wasn't hallucinating. The random numbers still persisted, but he could now see that a set in the corner of his view showed the approximate time for where he was located, as if he was wearing a HUD, despite the fact that the month indicated was fifteen months ahead. Most likely a software glitch. On the other hand, it didn't feel like he was wearing a headset with that type of display, much less like he was wearing anything at all.
Now a face hovered over him in worry, middle-aged man, bald, obviously talking to someone outside his field of vision as he continued to lie on his back. What kind of hospital was this? What were they doing to him? The voices were still muffled, as if he was wearing earplugs. Straining to comprehend, he felt his mind flex and an audible pop sounded as the raw, clear sound filtered into his head.
…."-waking up," the face above him was saying. "It's too early."
"What do you mean, waking up?" another voice inserted itself. This one was deeper than the man before him.
"I mean, his vitals are increasing, he's coming back."
"Miranda, what should we do?" The other man was sounding fairly agitated, not a good sign.
"Take no chances, sedate him," another voice, this one sounding like it was coming from a loudspeaker burst through. She seemed rather annoyed at the interruption and that their plight was grating on her nerves.
This only took a second for him to register before he felt a jolt pass through him as he fully realized. She was referring to him, they were going to sedate him. Why would they do such a thing? The whole point of a hospital was to make patients better, not keep them in a coma. He felt a rattle pass through his bed as his limbs shook. There was no give, he had been strapped in. Panic was now seething through him, he had to do something, quick.
The man who had stood over him previously, the thin, bald male, walked over to a medical console on the right side of his bed. The man took a quick second to look at what lay before him, and in that instant, he felt himself act.
A snapping sound echoed throughout the room as the restraint cracked, his right arm a blur as groping fingers extended and grasped the man's throat. He started to gag immediately as the powerful grip dragged him towards where he imagined his face would be.
"Wilson!" he heard a cry from the other man in the corner of the room but he paid no heed.
Looking straight into his captive's eyes, he growled, "Who...are…you?"
The voice that came out from his mouth shocked him. It was not the voice he was used to, rather it sounded more sinister, more electronic. What was going on?
The man could not speak for the life was leaving him as his fingers constricted. His assailant frantically looked over the man's body for any insignia, finding none he recognized, ignoring the alarming snap that reverberated through his arm.
"You're not Alliance…or C-Sec. Who are you?"
It was at this point that he realized that the man who was still in his grip was dead. The sound he had heard earlier was his neck breaking, or it could have been from when his throat was ruined from a foreign body. Blood ran from between his fingers as he saw that his fist had unknowingly torn out his trachea while he questioned him. Tubing and red splattered everywhere as he let go of the body in a daze. This wasn't how he imagined it at all. There was no explanation for how he could have done such a thing.
Lifting his hand to his face, he stopped breathing as he took in the sight. Rather than the pink flesh he had taken for granted so many times, he now beheld a mechanical, entirely metal appendage. His hand and parts of his arm were covered with a greyish material while the rest of it was an exposed, black, chassis.
A prosthetic limb?
"Shepard, stop!" He whirled to face a man who was leveling a pistol at him. This man was dark-skinned, and dressed in the uniform of a security officer. Much like the hapless man who now currently lay in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, this one also wore the same strange symbol.
"She….pard?" he whispered, the familiar name coming back to him. He swung his legs off the bed as he started to approach the man but there was yet another surprise in store. A clacking sound of metal making contact was distracting to him, yet it happened every time he took a step. He glanced down and simply stopped where he was, dumbfounded.
His legs were made from the same material as his arm, grey covering over a metal skeleton. It shocked him that despite his vivid recollection of only one leg getting amputated in his accident that both legs were now inexplicably replaced for some reason. The limbs gleamed in the bright light, the clicks and whirs coming from them eerily reminded him of the geth. Them and all their synthetic brethren.
A thought struck him and he lifted his left arm in confirmation of his hypothesis. Sure enough, the artificial extremity glinted at him, perhaps maliciously, as he now fully understood what he was now.
"Jacob!" the voice over the loudspeaker snapped him back to reality. "Don't shoot Shepard!"
"I…am," he heard himself say, perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in determination. "John Shepard."
He resumed walking forward, at the dark man. The pistol trembled in his grip as he struggled with his options. Apparently finding some comfort in the hope that he could somehow get out of this situation alive, he pulled the trigger and watched as a bright flash headed for the target's face.
Shepard instinctively shut his eyes but he felt no pain. The bullet didn't even alter his momentum, he realized. Opening them again, he saw the remnant of the shield splash fade away, the same effect as someone would witness if they were equipped with a personal shield generator.
Audibly growling, he stalked forward, now ignoring every impact that gnawed away at his shields, the small indicator in his vision denoting that their strength hadn't even dropped to half. A concussive burst slammed into his midsection and he finally fell to his knees as the dark man reloaded.
"Dammit, Jacob!" The woman called, "We need Shepard alive!"
"He's trying to kill me, Miranda!" The man cried.
"What have…" Shepard gasped, stumbling to his feet. "What have you done to me?"
Jacob fumbled with a clip, which rolled away on the floor. Cursing, he moved to his belt for a new one but Shepard sprung off his feet and closed the distance between them in two large steps. He raised his arm, hearing the man start to scream before the impact, and finally a second of silence as his body flew through the air before connecting with the window a few meters away.
The window was rated to be military strength but the body had so much force behind it that it cracked, the sound like a lightning bolt. Blood dripped down from where Jacob's head had impacted with the window, but Shepard didn't notice it. He instead grabbed the man's shirt and lifted him partially up so that he could address him.
"Why am I here?" He screamed, "Who do you work for?"
Any effort he made to contact the man was hopeless, he realized a few seconds later. Jacob's head had been completely caved in from the impact, blood was dribbling down his nose as it leaked out of his body. His head lolled in the direction that gravity imparted on it, no longer held up by the flaring of nerves. Disgusted, Shepard let the body fall to the ground with a pulpy smack.
An alarm was now sounding throughout the room, Miranda must have triggered it. Shepard had no intention of finding out what kind of response the alarm's purpose denoted. It was best to leave as soon as possible, wherever he was.
Picking up the dead man's pistol, he stood up until something caught his eye in the window. He walked towards the reflective surface as he stared straight ahead, now completely uncertain of his mental state, whether he had descended into some twisted nightmare or not. Whatever the case, the sight in front of him was more troubling than all of his unfortunate discoveries made in the past five minutes combined.
A tall, thin body gleamed back at him. It wasn't just his arms and legs that were shiny and new, his torso and head were made from the same material. The same grey layer formed a sort of protective shell over his chest and parts of his back, protecting the organs that were encased within the cold metal. If he turned his head in the right direction, he could see the hint of red deep within his chest. Evidently his new body was not meant to be one hundred percent accurate or protective.
What disturbed Shepard most was the sight of his face. His brow creased in his worry, causing him to notice that the top portion of his face was made out of some nanoweave material, reacting to the motions that normal skin would make, enabling the eyes to become more expressive by imitating the cock of an eyebrow in apprehension or any other complex emotion that could not be detected by voice alone. His eyes were made from a silvery material and glowed orange around the iris, synthetic. They were cold and lifeless, lacking his own blue color that he could find peace in. The nose of the head was little more than an elaborate slot, mimicking the appearance of a skull. His jaw was made from the same black metal, more and more emulating the overall skull look.
Shepard raised a hand to his face, fingers slightly trembling despite the new look. These limbs were only appendages controlled by motor impulses which meant that his brain still retained some basic senses. A finger touched the smooth, shiny surface and Shepard could feel something now. It was more of a pricking sensation in the back of his mind when he rubbed his finger across an object but it became more defined after time. It was almost as if he could feel the temperature through the metal itself. It was an uncanny experience but upsetting all the same.
I'm no longer human.
Distracting Shepard from his self-pity, the door slid open and several tall, white forms strode out. The LOKI mech was not designed for combat situations but merely as a security option. They were slow, sluggish, and incapable of handling any large weapon. Plus, they were fairly noisy in the fact that they had a long warm up period in which they acquired targets in a vocal manner before they actually fired. It was that design flaw that caused Shepard to scramble behind the bed he had laid in while bullets chewed up the floor around him.
He still held Jacob's pistol so he leaned out of cover. Shepard was pleased to see that one LOKI mech was in a perfect position so he immediately fired, the gun comfortably kicking back in his hand. The mech toppled as its head exploded, metal and plastic raining everywhere.
The rest of the unit hardly paid any attention and they continued to fire at the bed, still not hitting Shepard. Exhibiting an extraordinary foolishness, he abruptly stood up and casually strode towards the mechs blocking the exit.
Bullets hit the shield but glanced off, just as before. Shepard guessed that he there had been a generator installed in his new body and from the way it was handling punishment, it must have been quite expensive.
Almost, lazily, Shepard raised the arm holding the pistol and fired three times, the gun hardly moving in his hand after he exerted an unbelievably strong grip on the weapon. He stepped over the ruined mechs as the voice on the loudspeaker continued to dish out orders. Shepard stretched as he continued to acclimate to his new body. There was nothing he could do about it now. There were bigger fish to fry. Right now, he needed to leave this place and get some answers. There were none to be found here.
"Time to pay a visit to this…Miranda," he growled, voice low and raspy.
Tali stared numbly at the valve as she twisted it into place. Satisfied that the pressure of the tank had dropped to a sufficient level, she nodded and backed away.
The quarian liveship Rayya was constantly being plagued by mechanical problems, it had been this way for years. To be more precise, it was clearly no small feat that the majority of ships in the quarian fleet were holding together as it is. Because many of them had been built centuries ago, it was only through the constant tinkering that these ships hadn't fallen apart already.
Which is where Tali came in, as one of the lead mechanics on board one of the flotilla's most important ships, Tali had a duty to see that the Rayya didn't decompress all of a sudden due to a breach or lose control of its thrusters after an outbreak of rust.
The liveships were, in essence, the heart of the quarian fleet. There were three of them in total, responsible for growing the food that would feed the millions of quarians stranded in space, all thanks to their meddling in AI technology, which backfired tremendously when the AI collective, dubbed the "geth" rebelled and forced the quarian people to abandon their homeworld. Now confined to the lonely void, the quarians merely drifted along, biding their time until they could find a suitable place to colonize, or to retake back their homeworld, Rannoch.
Such concerns were in the back of Tali's mind as she sighed in the confines of the cramped maintenance room. A blinking icon in her helmet indicated that her shift was up. Slumping in relief, she left her tools where they were and proceeded toward the ladder, climbing up the slippery surface to open the hatch to the hallway.
Spending a few minutes talking to her coworkers, she entered her room where she proceeded to curl up on the small bunk in a fetal position. Most quarians were required to share rooms together but Tali was an exception. It was not so much the fact that she was the daughter of a noted admiral, but by the pride she had brought to her people serving aboard a human ship and the gift that she presented to the captain of the Rayya at the end of her Pilgrimage, the quarian rite of passage into adulthood.
The gift itself, while plain looking at first sight, was more precious than food for her people. It was an OSD which contained vital information on the geth, containing basic information such as nomenclatures and attack formations to intricate knowledge of local processes and data patterns. The methods it was obtained under would have originally meant that it would have been appropriated by humans for study as it was considered classified information. It was only though the generous actions of her captain at the time in which she was able to obtain a copy. Both promised to keep it a secret between them as it technically was a felony for him to distribute such sensitive information, but it gave her a thrill knowing that he confided in her for such matters. It turns out that the information was the most important gift anyone had brought back from a Pilgrimage in recent years and for that, Tali was allowed to have her own room, whether she liked it or not.
Tali hated it. She never had her own room before but she just couldn't decide to do with all of the space, in the quarian sense of the word. She had never even had her own room on the Normandy as the sleeper pods had sufficed quite nicely, as a matter of fact.
That brought a pang to her heart. The Normandy. The last ship she had served on before this. Tali sniffled slightly as she conjured up the memories of her friends aboard the doomed vessel. Liara, Kaidan, Wrex, Garrus, and…Shepard.
Tali whimpered as she curled up even more. The human who had done so much for her, who gave her the gift, who took her under his wing, who had shown her kindness, was suddenly taken away fifteen months ago. She could remember every detail, the shaking of the craft, the hot flames reaching for her, and her screaming when she found out that he was gone.
As much as she wanted to forget that painful day, the memories wouldn't stop flowing. Tears trickled down her face, unseen behind her mask. It was like this every day. As much as she tried to forget, as much as her friends told her the pain would fade, it was all for naught. She couldn't forget, she just couldn't. Tali wanted to hear his voice again, to share one of their many conversations as each of them did in engineering, describing their people to each other. He wasn't humoring her, she had thought at the time, there was something else, another reason for them talking so much. It went unsaid, but she could feel it, she knew it! But she would never find out his true motivations now.
"Shepard," she whispered helplessly to the empty air. "Why did it have to be you?"
The blood stained tiles passed underneath his feet, his footsteps leaving red imprints behind him. Shepard cautiously peered around the next corner before opening the door beyond.
The more time he spent on this station, the more assured he felt that surrender was a bad idea. Literally everything he could see was either shooting at him or yelling authoritatively for him to stand down. If they wanted to adopt a more polite attitude, then they clearly needed to refine their etiquette skills.
Shepard had kept on seeing the strange yellow symbol all around him and it was only when he concentrated at it long and hard at a particular example on the wall, a pop up display had analyzed the icon and shown him the exact affiliation. Just great, bloatware installed into his own head. Was any of this really necessary?
His annoyance vanished when he scanned the brief description of his would-be captors. It was the symbol of Cerberus, a human paramilitary group that had spun off from the existing Alliance military. The leader of the group was codenamed the "Illusive Man," the shadowy puppetmaster behind the scenes and was constant thorn in the galaxy's side. Shepard had not met any individuals from Cerberus personally until he had begun tracking down Saren. Throughout his travels, he encountered several separate teams that were not exactly demonstrating humanity as the paragon of the galaxy. Their work included experimentation on Thorian creepers and rachni, even murdering an Alliance admiral for snooping around too closely with the Illusive Man's twisted work.
It made no sense. Why was he in the hands of Cerberus? How had they gotten to him before his crew? Why did they put him in this…thing?
Each face that passed before him was less friendly than the last. All tried to stop him, all failed. Bodies and mechs alike fell to the ground as he continued to walk down the hall, seething with anger at his current predicament. He growled, somehow enjoying the lower timbre that his new vocabulator utilized.
A mini-map in the lower left corner of his vision indicated that there was one more life-form left aboard this station. Miranda, most likely.
He waited for the final door to open before he found himself in a shuttle bay. LOKI mechs at the bottom of the staircase started to fold up in an attack position but he vaulted down the steps and smashed their bodies with his metal fists, the cheap plastic crumpling from the force. Shepard wondered how he must have looked, a rambling, dazed, bipedal machine that was in the midst of an unstoppable rampage. Surely that must have counted for someone's worst nightmare at one point. He never thought that it would be him in that position.
The door across the bay slid open, revealing a woman in a skin-tight combat suit. She carefully aimed a pistol at Shepard's head, who just laughed in response.
"You know that's not going to do anything, right?"
Miranda slanted her eyes, "You never know, Shepard. But you're going to have to stop right here."
She certainly had an assured exterior, he had to admit. "And why should I?" he asked, arching his artificial eyebrow.
"Because we need you. Humanity needs you."
"You mean Cerberus needs me. Don't even bother trying to hide the truth from me. I can tell when people lie to my face."
"We're doing important work!" she defended. "We brought you back, we saved you. Now what does that tell you about us?"
"Saved?" Shepard barked in a self-depreciating laugh. "Take a look at me, does this look like everything was saved to you?"
"You were critically injured! The chassis was necessary!"
"Bullshit," he spat. "I don't buy that for an instant. You just want to control me, you only want me to do your dirty work. I know what Cerberus really is and my answer will be no."
Miranda steadied her grip as she continued to stare at the machine that contained John Shepard. "Is that your final word then?"
"As final as it's going to get. I'm not working with terrorists!"
Shepard grabbed for his pistol at the same time he lunged to the side. Depressing the trigger in a blur, three shots rang out, causing Miranda to stumble backwards as they impacted on her shields. She yelled out briefly in pain before she adjusted herself. Eyes lowered, her body glowed in a violet wreath before Shepard found himself sliding across the floor uncontrollably.
So, Miranda was a biotic. This made things interesting.
He laid down some precise fire, causing her to duck behind the wall of the bay as he ejected his clip. Six more bullets in the gun, he wanted to see what he could do with them.
Miranda now brandished her own pistol and methodically fired but he casually stood there and took the hits, shields absorbing each shock. By the time she had reloaded, they had recharged back to full strength. This wasn't a battle that would be won on firepower alone.
Miranda raised her arm to push Shepard back again but he aimed carefully with his gun and fired once. She cried out as the bullet hit her shields just over her hand, causing it to flop uselessly by her side as it was stunned.
Shepard saw his chance and started sprinting for the woman, firing indiscriminately to prevent her from retreating back into cover, the bullets barking between her and the wall. Now panicked, Miranda lifted her other hand to quickly send a purple force in his direction. Reacting from experience, he simply batted the offending attack aside, his charge not slowing any. Only steps away, he viciously swung his arm in a blow that would have knocked her head off had she not ducked at the last moment. Somehow, he had anticipated this outcome, sweeping his leg across, feeling it catch on hers, and she fell heavily to the floor, her breath exiting her lungs in a whoof!
Servos whirring, Shepard dropped to a knee as he noted the lack of fatigue. There were no muscles to tire, no limbs to weaken. He felt that he could take on an army of krogan at this rate. He grabbed Miranda by the neck as she lay on the floor and lifted an arm above his head.
"Perhaps you should have let me die," he said simply, and he powered his fist to the ground with all of the ferocity he could muster from his mighty arm.
Miranda's face disappeared in an explosion of blood and bone, Shepard's hand completely impacting through her skull. Even though he had expected such a result, the consequences still shocked him. He pried his fist from the woman's head, shaking off the spongy material that was her brains. Anything that had been directly in front of his blow was now mush, the eye matter a liquefied puddle.
The sight disgusted him, he felt like he should gag but no reaction came to him. There were no tears to be shed as the lack of proper ducts prevented this natural development from occurring. The whole situation was a mess. He still hadn't received answers to all of his questions and had no idea of what he should do to obtain them.
However, considering short-term options, he figured that a first step would be to actually get off this station. If he would never set foot inside it again it would be too soon. The nearest white shuttle glowed to his presence as he stepped aboard. It was VI controlled and had a route already plotted, most likely a gateway station. He could figure out where to go from there.
Before the shuttle jumped to FTL, he adjusted the controls to manual and oriented the craft to the back of the station. The software embedded inside him had sent him an image of the station's schematics so it took little effort to locate the life support systems that were nestled away near the observation deck. He flipped the triggers for the weapons systems and part of the station fell away in a molten mass, blown to pieces from the shuttle's guns.
Shepard sat back in triumph as he reverted control back to the VI. He lifted a hand up to his face as he studied it some more, taking advantage in the lull of his hectic situation. He could hear a mechanical whirring from every movement he made, sometimes there was a clicking as inorganic parts clashed together. It made him sick to his stomach as he accepted the fact that this was where he was at now. That this was the path life had set him on.
It was like he never had a choice in the matter.
He whirled to the middle of the craft and furiously punched the inner wall in frustration, feeling the reverberation of the impact jolt up through his arm. There was no pain to discourage him from repeating the foolish act, only the sizable dent that his fist had made in the craft. Why? Why did he have to be like this? A grotesque mockery of his former self? A freak of nature, who by all accounts should have been buried in the ground in some nameless cemetery by now? Was this truly preferable to dying?
He sank to his knees and screamed his agony in the confined area, the terrifying noise embracing its hellish prisoner in his despair. He felt like throwing up, but he couldn't. The desire was there but he was unable to act upon it. The sensation was driving him insane. He continued to writhe on the ground as he screamed some more.
Shepard was now utterly lost.
Fingers tapped relentlessly at the desk on board the bridge of the frigate Desperado. The images on the monitor troubled the man but at the same time gave him a sense of vindication. The Illusive Man had always turned a blind eye to his preferred subordinates, to which he was not a member of, and he was fighting the urge to display a smug smile at the moment.
Colonel Henry Rukin was not exactly the image of respectability. His hair was rumpled, longer than standard military regulations, his goatee was bushy and untrimmed, and his clothes always looked rumpled.
Perhaps that had to do with Cerberus' rather relaxed style of leadership. It treated itself like an extension of the military but in reality everyone was free to make their own rules and command in their own unique manner. It suited Rukin just fine but grated on the more senior members of the organization.
In most cases, the higher ranking members of Cerberus had all served in the military at one point. They had either joined up after they mustered out or were kicked out altogether (as was usually the case). They were a particularly bloodthirsty bunch but Rukin was a special case. He had been a private mercenary for twenty years, sticking his fingers in every sort of illicit trade one could think of. Money, drugs, valuables, people, you name it, he dealt it.
When the Alliance began to take notice of his unsavory activities and put a bounty on his head, Rukin had become worried. He had never had a whole armada chasing him before but welcomed the challenge. It would have been a manhunt that he had always dreamed, a spectacle of blood and guts with the whole galaxy watching, with an ending that would result in him going out in a blaze of glory, taking down as many enemies as he could with him.
Prying him from his fantastical path shortly thereafter was an offer of cooperation, from the Illusive Man himself no less. It seemed that with the Alliance's newfound attention on Rukin's head, Cerberus had taken notice as well and wanted the veteran mercenary to join their cause. When promised that he would be given free reign of his actions as long as it was logistically sound, he jumped at the chance, somewhat relieved that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder and having to plot a meticulous suicide attempt.
And thus began the man's career at Cerberus. Given the title of colonel, Rukin could now enjoy the fact that he was virtually untouchable. Cerberus went to great lengths to protect their own and he could pillage and plunder as he pleased, provided that he gave a percentage to the man up top on occasion, which Rukin was only happy to do. He knew that the Illusive Man didn't fully trust him as he had not had enough time to prove that he was not in this solely for the thrill of the hunt, but by his belief in the organization. He truthfully didn't care about Cerberus but was loyal to the fact that it accepted him for what he was, a killer at heart.
To placate the notion of any untrustworthiness, the Illusive Man did allow Rukin to supervise a few assignments on the side, an introduction to the darker aspects of Cerberus. He had been chosen to oversee the study of rachni on one of their remote outposts, a project that had become noticed by an Alliance admiral after his unit was killed when they were tricked into wandering into a thresher maw nest. Rukin knew that there would be retribution for his rather ingenious maneuver so he was only happy to continue his work, eventually capturing the nosy admiral after he foolishly tried to go after Cerberus on his own. To the admiral's credit, he didn't seem like the type who would crack easily and Rukin didn't even want to try. Torture had its uses but was pointless if there was no discernable goal from the exercise itself. In the end, he simply injected a lethal dose of chemicals into the admiral's body, no point in leaving a huge mess. The body itself was a clear message, regardless of the state it was left in.
But it aggrieved him to no end when less competent members were promoted ahead of him, leaving him behind in the dust. He still managed important research portions of Cerberus' research and development but for all his hard work, the Illusive Man still wouldn't trust him.
If there was a silver lining, there was one less person that the Illusive Man would fawn over now. Rukin casually glanced to the screen as the mashed body of Miranda Lawson lay on the ground in the Wayfarer Station. The display read that the entire station had been deprived of oxygen for the better part of an hour. Flipping through the security feeds, he confirmed that everyone that wasn't shot to pieces had suffocated, sitting in their own filth as they struggled to breathe. Evidently Shepard had done more damage than anyone could have possibly calculated.
If only Lawson hadn't been so cocky and tried to shut Rukin out of the process. With a project as important as bringing Commander Shepard back to life, they needed every able bodied person they could find but she repeatedly insisted on working with a skeleton crew. The Illusive Man, as always, had sided with her.
Rukin copied select clips of the carnage as he shut the display off. He rubbed at the scraggly hairs on his face, carefully going over the upcoming conversation in his head. He would have a little more pull now with his boss but he knew that he couldn't push too hard for the plan that he'd formulated or else he'd be back to square one.
She said she was never wrong to me once. Shows how much she knew.
There was no appropriate method of contacting the Illusive Man on board this ship so he would have to borrow the nearest one. Rukin detested the thought of having to beg Petrovsky for the use of his holodeck but that would hardly impact the righteousness he felt within him.
As he headed for the shuttle bay, he reminded himself not to gloat too much. Impropriety was never a good idea, especially when one dealt with devils.
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to t3hPrO, who gave me my most pointless review to date.
Take this example to heart on how NOT to write a review. You can determine for yourselves if he made a valid point.
But, in the future, I prefer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, not DUMB criticism.