Every broken enemy will know

That their opponent had to be invincible

Take a last look around while you're alive

I'm an indestructible

Master of war…

- Disturbed, Indestructible

Her eyes snapped open violently, the blinding, sterile lights burning unrelentingly into her skull. It took her another five minutes before she was able to even squint against the lights. Every part of her body cried out in agony at her as she attempted to move, small appendages at first, a toe, a finger, flaring her nostrils. Her head felt heavy, as if she had had a krogan sitting on it for an age, and it throbbed with every beat of her heart. The room she was in, it smelled of antiseptics, medicine, gauze... of blood and death. She cringed in disgust... and tried once more to blink away the burning lights... As she lay flat on her back, staring up at a white ceiling, she made an effort to remember who she was and how she got here... wherever here was...

Taking a painful glance around the room, she realized she was quite alone. Several empty beds were lined up against the walls, sheets pulled tight and pillows arranged in neat stacks. Diagonal from her was a desk, also empty, save for a significant amount of supplies littered across its surface. There were windows above the desk, large and picturesque, shades pulled down, obscuring her view as to what lay beyond. A few moments of struggling to determine her predicament, and she dredged up brief flashes of a horrific reality and of her nightmares as they danced across her mind's eye. In one fell swoop, memories came crashing down, smashing into her like a convoy of a thousand Makos, all at once.

In a panic stricken fit, she screamed, her heart racing and her breath quickening, flailing her arms wildly as she thought she might lose a grip on reality once more, and sink back into her own tormented hallucinations.

Thrashing and kicking and screaming did nothing for the situation, except topple over the medical bed she was laying on, sending her careening to the cold, metallic floor. Crashing into the floor knocked the wind from her already weakened lungs, and she coughed, a spray of blood splattering the otherwise immaculate surface.

Shaking and trembling, she managed to push herself into a kneeling position. Looking down the length of her arms, she realized with a shock, both were covered in bandages. Her right forearm was swathed and her entire left arm had been wrapped from shoulder to wrist, with only her hand sticking out of the end. Her hand… it didn't even look much like a hand anymore, instead it was burned nearly to the bone, the flesh darkened and hard. She had no feeling in her left arm as she attempted to clench her hand into a fist… dead weight. Her eyes widened at the horror attached to her, as she stifled yet a second scream of terror. Thank God her right hand appeared somewhat normal, pink, fleshy, and at least a little range of motion before she winced in pain.

She stood up, slowly, her knees quaking as the weight of her body bore down on them. Both her feet were bare also, and with an utter sigh of relief, her feet seemed to be quite average looking, minus several missing toenails.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she took small, careful steps towards the desk. After what felt like an eternity, she crashed into the chair, gulping for air to fill her lungs. Taking a few large and stabilizing breaths, she was able to steady herself enough to rifle through the drawers with her right hand, her left hanging limply over the arm of the chair.

Not moments later, she pulled a small mirror and M-5 Phalanx pistol from deep within the bowels of the desk. Setting the pistol to the side, she held the mirror up in front of her, dreading what she'd see. The reflection looking back at her was far worse than what she had anticipated.

Her face was thin and gaunt. Her light eyes were sunken, encircled in heavy, purple bruises. The left side of her face also covered in burns, while unhealed gashes across her very prominent right cheek bone had been stitched up. She head had been shaved, no hair, only a shadow light stubble grew from her scalp, barely covering long slivers of scars. More bandages had been placed at the base of her neck and ran down the length of her back. And are those tattoos? She craned her neck in the mirror to catch a better look, and sure enough, black tattoos shown under the stubble of hair, around the back of her head, down her neck and disappeared under more dressings of thick, white gauze. She recalled having seen similar markings before… on another Cerberus test subject…

Cerberus… the name spread hatred through her. The terrorist organization had captured her… found her in a wreckage, barely alive… How long ago had it been? Was that where she was now? On a Cerberus ship? The thought unnerved her, and she reached for the pistol, setting the mirror down softly. Taking another glance around the room, there was no indication it was in fact Cerberus she was currently dealing with. Where then? Reapers? No… they were gone… or so she hoped… She couldn't remember if it had been a dream… or a hallucination… or… hell… she couldn't tell if this was real…

Reapers… Catalyst… Dark… Indoctrination… Being… Lazarus… Cerberus… Light… Energy…

There were those voices again… further away than she recalled, but still on the fringes of her mind, haunting her… tormenting her… She shook her head in an effort to rid herself of them… and to her surprise, they retreated to a dark recess… still there, but manageable… at least for the time being.

Somewhere behind her, she heard the swoosh of an automatic door opening and closing.

Pistol still in hand, she spun around in the chair and jumped to her feet, nearly making herself sick.

"Damnit!" a kindly looking, older woman, with silvery white hair breathed, half frightened, half concerned, and with both hands in the air defensively. "Put the gun down. I'm not going to hurt you. You're safe here…," she urged.

Recognizing the older woman almost instantly, she lowered the pistol.

"I'm Dr. Chakwas, and you're not supposed to be out of bed."

"Karin…," she croaked, her voice breaking.

Chakwas nodded, a warm and comforting smile on her lips, "That's right. How are you feeling?"

"I- uh…,"

"Pretty bad I imagine… Considering the state we found you in," Chakwas said, concern still on her soft face. "Do you know who you are?"

"What?" she uttered, confusion ripping through her. What sort of question was that? Of course she knew who she was, Karin should know too.

"Do you know who you are?" Chakwas repeated again, only this time a bit more slowly. "We don't have enough resources right now to run your prints."

"I-I-. You have no idea?" she stammered.

Chakwas shook her white head, "I'm sorry… Should I?"

What the hell was going on?

"No worries, though," the doctor said cheerily. "We're back in Alliance space, and we'll be rendezvousing with Admiral Hackett in just a few moments. We'll get this sorted out soon enough."

"Hackett?"

"Yes. In fact, I believe Commander Shepard is up in the CIC, awaiting him now,"

Her eyes widened in fear, "C-Commander Shepard?"

Chakwas frowned, just ever so slightly, "Of course. This is her ship… The Normandy… You know, you ought to get back into bed before you hurt yourself."

Oh no… no… no… This was not good… not good at all…

She limped toward the door, gun in hand, but Chakwas cut her off.

"I have to get up there, now!" she said.

Chakwas put a hand gently on her left arm and said in an apologetic tone, "I can't allow you to do that."

She raised her gun once more and pointed it reluctantly at the doctor, "Stand aside, Karin. That's an order."

Garrus paced nervously back and forth in the cockpit, hands behind his back, as Joker and EDI watched him.

"You're gonna wear a hole in my floor if you don't stop doing that…," Joker said, winking at EDI on his console.

"Why didn't Admiral Shepard inform me that we were rendezvousing with Hackett twelve hours sooner than previously expected?" Garrus growled irritably. They had already passed through the relay and into the Sol System before anyone had even informed Garrus they were this close. And now there was an Alliance dreadnought breathing down their necks as Hackett's own ship approached the Normandy.

"Probably because her crazy daughter is still onboard, and she doesn't want the Commander chucking anything at her head if she gets upset," Joker chided.

Garrus glowered at the pilot, and said, "I hate being left out like this."

"It's probably become a 'need to know' basis,' Joker said, using his fingers as quotation marks. He had seen Kasumi do that once before… maybe it was just another human gesture he didn't quite understand.

"Come on, Joker," he said. "This is Shepard we're talking about. I need to know!"

Joker sighed, looking defeated, "I know, big guy… I know."

Garrus flicked a mandible. He hadn't meant to hurt Joker's feelings. Hell… he hadn't been like this since his days on Omega. His feelings towards Shepard, of loving her, then losing, then finding her again only to realize it wasn't the same woman in her body… It was all finally starting to take a toll on him, and his temper had become a short fuse as of late.

"Joker, I'm sorry…," he said quietly. The flight lieutenant nodded in acceptance of the apology then spun his chair around when he heard a chime.

"Hackett's ship is docked, and he's ready to board." Joker said, business as usual, glancing back down the corridor. Admiral Shepard and the Commander had just left the elevator and were striding around the galaxy map toward them and the airlock. EDI's orb disappeared.

"I told everyone else to stay below decks," said Admiral Shepard. "Hackett will need to debrief us before he can speak with the other crew members. Then we can get Aurora checked out."

"There's nothing wrong with me," the Commander muttered darkly under breath, her eyes rolling. She was in her dress blues, neatly pressed, her hair swept back into a tight knot, and she held her hands on her hips, clearly annoyed.

"We'll let the Alliance doctors make that decision," the Admiral snapped. Garrus whole heartedly agreed with her.

The airlock hissed opened and in stepped Hackett, also in his best dress blues. He was flanked by two armed guards on either side of him, both holding Alliance standard issued M-7 Lancers. Hackett marched right to Admiral Shepard and saluted, the Commander ignoring the military greeting. He nodded at Garrus and Joker before standing at ease.

"Commander," he said, apprehension on his face and in his words. "It's good to see you. We thought we had seen the last of you."

She sneered, and said in a voice dripping with as much fallacy as her smile, "Thank you, sir. It's good to be home."

Hackett relaxed just ever so slightly and continued, "We thought those Cerberus bastards had…,"

Hackett never got to finish what he was going to say about Cerberus. At that very moment several things happened all at once. The look on Shepard's face changed faster than a set of street lights. One moment, she was smiling pleasantly at the Admiral, then before Garrus could even blink, she whipped her sidearm from her holster and fired off three shots in rapid succession. The first and second found their mark in Hackett's details' heads, while the third hit Hackett in the shoulder, knocking him off his feet and dropping him to the floor, clutching at the wound, shock written all over his face.

Shepard then rounded on her mother, gun pointed squarely between her eyes.

"Honey… Aurora… What are you doing?" the Admiral whispered quietly… carefully…

"Shut up bitch. You're not in charge anymore," Shepard snarled. Garrus reached for his pistol at his waist, but he was too slow and Shepard caught him from the corner of her vision.

"Vakarian!" she barked. "Don't even think about it! Slide your pistol over to me, or I take her head off!"

Garrus did as he was told, however reluctantly, lowered his weapon to the floor, and kicked it over to Shepard, saying spitefully, "The real you would have killed herself first than get into bed with Cerberus again."

She picked up the pistol and holstered it, shrugging as she did so, "I am the real me." And as she straightened herself, an audible click of a heat sink dropping into the firing chamber came from Shepard's left side and behind.

"Doesn't your kind ever know when to call it quits?"

Craning his neck to see who had asked that, Garrus saw the woman from the medbay behind Shepard, with a pistol shoved directly into the base of the Commander's skull. The woman appeared to be Death personified. She looked even more emaciated than she did before, her skin clinging tightly to her bones, bandages and dressings coming undone to look like ghostly wrappings. Her hospital gown fell loosely around her thin body to her bony knees. Her left arm hung down at her side and, she walked with a noticeable limp, but her hand that held the pistol was unwavering as she straightened herself up, lifting her chin high.

Shepard whirled around to face her adversary. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" she spat, her gun still poised on her mother, as Hackett wheezed sharp breaths at her feet.

The woman's eyes narrowed and a smirk played on her thin, cracked lips. "I am Commander Aurora Shepard of the Systems Alliance Navy. Tag ID number 5923-AC-2826…," she declared vehemently, her azure colored eyes shining with all the fury of hell. "And I want you to get the fuck off my ship."

Updated 6/7/14