Time gets funny when all external stimuli is just that, external. You can kinda remember the pattern of footsteps just outside the cell, the heavy double beat of mechs making sweeps. However, every few years by her perception, she'd feel the thrum across her skin and through out her body as her heart would beat, and she would feel. It totally scared the shit out of her every time she felt it come on, because she'd finally begun to feel cold and dead, like she was becoming hollowed out, only to feel the pulse and suddenly feel everything for a moment. These milliseconds of lucidity every few minutes, as her heart slowly ebbed in the effects of the stasis cell, would bring everything back, let her remember everything that had faded back to fog and half remembered screams.
Jack's awareness of herself was perhaps half-dream and half-intuition. Though she couldn't begin to guess at how long she'd been held in the tiny cell, bound to the interrogation chair, she'd felt certain that she'd felt a bump, whether that was from some guard tapping at her cell window with a pistol or from the drive core exploding a instant before she was vaporized, who knew? Another mini-eternity later she'd felt a jarring that had at first made her think the ship was falling into a gravity well, a instant of elation sweeping her as she imagined the whole misery of her time in the cell as coming to a close. Barely had the idea flitted through her fog of consciousnesses before she realized she was lifting up, she could see the walls sliding past as the stasis effect released it's power.
Light. Blinding acid in the eyes, clenching them did nothing but but grind the stabbing pains deeper, before she could stop herself. A moment later she was fine as the stasis had actually kept her rods and cones from adjusting to the pitch black of her cell. As her platform finally came to rest, she saw three mechs unwinding themselves from the contortionist fold they placed themselves in when not activated. Above in a little windowed observation room, she could see a small group of helmeted soldiers, most likely the latest interrogation team sent to try once again to extract any details on her Cerberus upbringing.
Dumb asses actually started the bullshit from her last time, the yells from the warden making her laugh as she was forced back into her cell. They'd actually believed that they'd had all the kids chained together, naked in the artic. Not that the truth was any better to hear, but that sure as fuck wasn't going to be said due to some asshole thinking he could force the information from her.
Finally having stopped moving, Jack realize that the morons had actually disabled the stun cuffs keeping her from moving. Normally any twitch would send 10 kV through her, a standard security precaution when dealing with a biotic, but now the only thing keeping her to the chair were a few centimeters of insulation cloth. Quickly she ripped the two opposing hand straps off, she kicked out with each leg, and in half a moment she was free.
Seeing their quarry leaving her restraints without authorization, all three mechs began to spin up their chain guns and align themselves for unimpeded firing lines on the target. Before any could begin to fire however, a massive shockwave flew in every direction , the mechs knocked back and unsteady as the interrogation chair was bent over and back in on itself by the explosion of force.
With everything slightly unsteady, Jack flung herself forward, any hesitation would have enough firepower on her to force a eventually surrender, and Jack wouldn't let that happen again, She'd drive this floating piece of shit into the sun before letting herself get marched into a cell again, the warden all the while making comments about how he'd be living rich off her ass for the rest of his life.
Charging forward, Jack pressed for everything she had, determined not to get boiled into a battle of attrition. Her first shockwave having thrown off their aim, her second attack hit like a battering ram, completely blowing apart the mech directly before her while the other two her pushed back, then completely annihilated as the debris of the first mech slammed into them. Seeing the all three disabled, Jack glanced up and saw the group eyeing her with shock clearly evident in their postures. Flipping them the finger, she reached a hand out and bioticly hammered a hole in the wall which she took off down like a streak into maintenance tunnels barely lit by emergency lighting. Jack assumed she must've ripped out the area power feeds if she was already finding darkened passages. Time for a little fun.
-_.
Shepard had barely noticed the mission up to the point that things started to go sideways. The warder betraying him had brought a punch to the arm from Garrus with a laugh, while even Miranda seemed to smirk at the nearly prophesized turn about from the warden.
"Your're happy about this, right?", Miranda asked as she ducked behind cover and waited for the guards to overheat their weapons as they vainly shot into her cover. "Aim you dumb asses don't just spray and pray!", shouted Shepard, to hear a immediate drop off in shots. A quick nod to Garrus, and both quickly flipped over their cover, quickly taking out the guards who'd decided to pop their heads up to take aim. Six rapid shots, two from Shepard's widow rifle and four from Garrus' mantis had the enemy cleared in moments.
"God, yes!" Shepard answered finally, "Why wouldn't a bunch of idiots who actually take instruction from their enemy make me happy?" Garrus came over to the duo, swapping out his sniper for his assault rifle. "Yeah, remember, this is the guy who rather than take ten seconds to just shoot his enemy, spent five minutes debating philosophic ideas over what it means to live before convincing him to take his own life. All of this while thousands were fighting in battle."
"Bite me, bone-face, you saw me twiddling my fingers behind my back, subtly telling you to "shoot the fucker I'm talking to in the head while I have him distracted". Shepard turned to look at the Turian, crossing his arms and definitely glaring at him through his darkened eye guard. "Yeah," easily replied the glib and scarred veteran, "but you know it worked out better that way, for the movie and all."
"Yes, and do you remember the first thing I did after pulling myself out of that pile of wreckage Sovereign's leg made of the council chambers?"
"You called the Normandy and had them immediately eject all the dextro liqueur and my bed out the airlock, yes, I remember."
Feeling vindicated, Shepard relaxed his confrontational stance with a chuckle, realizing the whole time they were talking, that Miranda had been busy scavenging clips, updating Edi with a situation report, and checking their egress for incoming. "Just as long as you remember the lesson, Vakarian. Let's move it out, I don't want a hostage situation developing where the warden tried to take this "Jack" as a shield."
"Little chance of that, Shepard." Miranda chimed in. "Scans and historical blueprints indicate that the highest security areas are all isolated cells fitted with cryo-stasis. Odds are we'll need a microwave when we find her." Looking back from his lead spot in their formation, Shepard saw a small little lift to her cheek, literally the most emotive reaction he'd seen from the staid woman since they met.
"Finally, a moment of levity from the C. Queen." "C. Queen?" asked Miranda. "A name that seems to have floated around in your wake among the crew. I believe the 'c' is for Cerberus, but don't make me bet on it." at this, Shepard knew Miranda was going through her mind at all possibilities, though his first guess with the engineers had proven accurate, not that he'd ever clarify the matter for her.
Finally shirking the trivial, Shepard and team entered the administrative controls for the high security wing. A technician who'd fired a shot at him as he'd entered was whining in a corner about his broken wrist and ankle, caused as he'd felt the impact of the concussion shot Garrus had nailed him with a moment after he'd been lifted by Miranda. Shepard, barely noticing the noise at all, went over to the control station to see what could be determined. Seeing only a overload of the internal locking mechanisms would be able to break the warden's lockdown, he quickly gestured at Garrus to do the deed as he turned located Jack's cell and finding a menu labelled interrogation, pressed the icon showing two individuals talking back and forth.
"Garrus, what's with these interfaces? No real labelling other than main menus, it's like they assumed that people completely unfamiliar with the system would be trying to figure it out without reading the manual. I've seen more technical knowledge required to order a burger on the Citadel."
"Not sure, other than they assumed their standard guard might not be the intellectual savant needed to read things like "do not press" or "open cell door"." Glancing over Shepard's shoulder, Garrus couldn't believe his eyes. "Huh, they really do have a picture of a person behind a door openning and closing, funny. Anyways, I'm done here, but I had to bypass the lockout, meaning it'll hit all the cells. Hope you brought some extra clips."
"Do it." With that, Garrus tapped a button on his tool, allowing it to send a quickly devised program to ignore further communications with the warden and also arcing a bolt of electricity out to the panel, causing the lights to flicker a moment before they heard a familiar whirling sound. Looking out the window, they could all see a panel set in the floor of the room beyond openning to reveal a pit, a bound figure rising on a platform to ground level. Seeing yet another human, Garrus gave a sigh before straightening up. Just once he'd have liked a bit of novelty, a female Turian biotic would've been pretty bad ass and allowed Garrus a reason to leave his duties other than getting hammered with Shepard and Jacob.
Miranda saw the figure rise from the ground and had a double take reaction. At first the convict had appeared to be a emaciated male, bound and half naked, likely as part of his interrogation Further observation proved that erroneous as he, correction she, was covered in blues and black swaths of tattooing, that while beautiful even from this range, likely provided no protection from the elements or small arms fire. Miranda couldn't help to look at the flawless skin of her hands and imagine what force might make her want to mar it to such a degree. Unlike Shepard, who seemed just as happy collecting scars and tattoos as much as adding to his odd assortment of crew, she'd never really thought about inking her skin.
Shepard barely noticed the convict move, hardly noticing her as the mechs spinning up and immediately turned his attention back the way they came. Knowing that they'd immediately take out his hard fought quarry in a moment, Shepard couldn't help a small, "Shit!" burbling out as he considered the wasted trip and the likely long struggle to fight back to his ship. As he considered their likely resistance going back, he'd not noticed the jerks of surprise from his squad as they'd seen the convict rip off her binds like taffy and started to rush towards the mechs. He quickly turned back at feeling a massive shockwave wreck the room, seeing the past the cracked window as a petite woman, radiating the densest cloud of biotic charge he'd ever witnessed, charge a opponent out of sight, a second later being jerked onto his back as a nova of energy seemed to detonate from the floor beneath them.
Seeing the rest of his team also getting up, Shepard finally seemed to wake up from his general apathy, looking back to Garrus,"Finally, someone who doesn't need me to save their ass. Let's go watch the show." With that, Shepard showed a real, a real actual smile, and booked feet to try and catch up the powerhouse rather quickly tearing through the skyscraper sized station. Shaking his head at the comment, Garrus couldn't help smiling as he tried to catch up to his commander, the Cerberus operative closely following behind.
AN: Complete-ish, baring grammatical and clarity fixes. Just a heads up, I've mostly planned out the rest of the game's story with the finale to this story being the after SM party aboard the Citadel, but am open to story requests as long as I don't have to retread through a chapter.