Vented
A whip went across his back with a loud crack. He could feel the blood seeping out.
„Get moving, you pathetic excuse of a living being!"
This experience is giving him a whole new meaning for hate.
Jack thought that hate is when someone steals your candy and you want to simply punch them.
Now he wanted to murder every single batarian he would ever come across.
He wanted to gouge all of their eyes out one by one, and then curbstomp their head until they stopped moving.
But for now...? He simply gave the batarian slaver a death glare, and kept carrying the crate filled with Element Zero.
Then the intercoms suddenly came online.
„All workers! Deposit the Eezo you have collected and get to your cells!"
Jack went to the collection station and dropped off his current load, completely exhausted.
What made this mining operation particularly effective, was that it was on an asteroid.
Noone could hope to escape, and they all knew it. Which only left two options: Keep mining Eezo, or try to kill the slavers. The latter usually didnt work out so well due to one side having a rather large amount of weapons.
There was also the low gravity, but that was because the slavers had tweaked the gravity plating so their slaves could carry heavier loads.
The entire way back to his cell, Jack had been pondering on different ways to escape and kill the guards.
But he saw no way whatsoever. There were simply too many slavers, and he wasn't a combat specialist.
In fact, until he arrived to the Mass Effect universe, he never thought he would need to learn how to kick someone's ass.
Jack was sitting in his cell somberly, trying not to think about his back pains. He looked around.
It was a simple cell, with just one metal wall, and a door. They hadn't bothered to wall off the rock and dust. Just enough so that the slaves wouldn't be able to escape. All he had was a bed and a small, carved hole in a corner to do his business in.
It was his 10-th day on the „job". He was extracting a rather large deposit of Eezo with a small team.
He was watching as the machines slowly processed the ore and separated the Element Zero from useless rock.
Suddenly, an older slave, with a long white beard approached him, and spoke in a raspy voice.
„I know you're looking for a way out. I have a way."
Jack looked at him for a second and raised his eyebrow. Then he looked back at towards the machinery and made it a point to ignore the old guy.
„You may act like a child all you want, but there are vents throughout the asteroid. They can lead you to the office of the one who is leading this operation."
Jack slightly perked up when he heard that. He gave the old man a wary look, and asked: „Is this a joke of some sort, or are you actually speaking the truth?"
The old man only smiled briefly. Jack nearly missed it.
„In the third section, at the 6-th turn from the main area, there is a rusty grate that leads into a vent. There are also no cameras there. Wait for a slaver patrol to go past it, then would be the safest time to crank it open."
The old man handed him a small jagged piece of metal.
„Here. It will work as a screwdriver well enough. There's a small hole in the grate, you can use that to to put it back in place more easily, once inside."
Jack nodded briefly to express his gratitude, and hid it inside a small hole in his shirt sleeve.
„From there, work your way upwards. The office is on the top floor."
Jack got slightly suspicious of the old man.
„Why don't you do it yourself?"
He chuckled.
„I'm too old for that shit. I can't crawl through those dusty ducts and then kill a batarian."
Jack only nodded again. „Alright, then. I'll get to it as soon as I can."
The next day, he was impatiently walking back and forth near the vent with a full load of Eezo, waiting for a patrol to go past.
Soon enough, a pair of batarians with assault rifles and whips came along.
„Hey you, what the hell have you been doing here all this time? Get your ass into the storage areas."
Jack suddenly stopped and nearly dropped the crate in fear. How did they know he was waiting here?
„Hey, didn't you hear me, slave? Get moving." One of the slavers took out his whip and cracked it against the floor.
„Looks like someone needs to be taught some obedience." They started grinning at the prospect of getting to beat up another human.
They were slowly walking closer to him, like he was some sort of a prey for them.
Jack woke up from his stupor, and suddenly dropped the crate on their toes.
The batarians screamed our in pain. „You piece of shit, We're gonna get you for that!"
He punched one of them in face hard enough to drop him to the floor. While the other batarian was jumping from one foot to the other madly, trying to alleviate the pain, Jack unclasped the assault rifle from the downed batarian and used it to kill them both quickly.
Knowing the noise had been heard, he quickly got to work on getting the grate open.
Jack used the metal piece to unscrew the grate and got in. He picked up the grate, lifted it back in position, and started moving upwards in the dusty, rusty old vents.
Jack was coughing more often. The dust was like sandpaper to his lungs, and he had been slowly crawling upwards for half an hour already.
At the moment he was going through a rather long, straight section of the ventilation system. It was also loud. Really loud. He blamed it on the machinery that must have been somewhere nearby, just beyond the walls.
He reached the end of the current vent section, only to find a large tube going vertically.
Jack saw no other way but to go downwards. A temporary setback, he thought.
He realised his huge mistake just as he was starting to fall towards the giant fans right below him.
With nothing to grab onto, he went into panic, and started screaming.
The batarian slavers in the office laughed hysterically as they watched the human get torn into pieces by the fans on camera.
It went on for a full minute, and when they finally stopped, the lead batarian spoke up.
„That was the most hilarious one I've seen yet! The others never even bother with the vent, and simply try to kill all of us head-on!"
Then he addressed the old, white-bearded man in the room.
„You have more than earned your... Privileges. The new vids and red sand are waiting for you in your cell. Now go."
The old man, smiling, bowed for a moment, and then left to enjoy his new rewards.
What do you think about that? An SI getting a perfect opportunity to escape, only to have it turn out to be a trap set by his fellow slave in the name of his next dose of 'sand.
Don't forget to review, and I'll see you in the next chapter!