Chapter 7
At first, the new day actually started off alright. The abandoned building's large windows allowed the first rays of dawn to pour in, and as they bathed her face, Miranda smiled. It was only now, having it back, that she realized how much she had missed that early morning light. That dreadful little prison the Alliance had kept her in had afforded no such luxuries.
Jack, however, was clearly not a morning person. She awoke with a good deal of grumbling, muttering something doubtless obscene under her breath.
"Good morning, Jack," Miranda told her, her own mood enhanced by the convict's discomfort.
"Fuck the morning," Jack muttered, pulling on her boots. "It's too damn early and I'm hungry."
"I am too, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy this sunrise. Who knows how many more we'll get to see?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's pretty and all that bullshit. So, you got a fucking plan to get us into that prison yet? 'Cause I'm guessing they've got some grub there we can take after we finish kicking their asses."
Miranda permitted herself a small laugh at that. The previous days' meal was a fading memory and given how likely it was that they were going to have to use their biotics soon, they had better find something to eat. "I think I do," she replied, "But you're probably not going to like it."
"Oh, really?" Jack finished tightening the laces and stood up straight. Somehow, her generally disheveled state meant that having slept in a chair didn't change her appearance very much. "Why's that?"
"Well, if you want to get into a heavily guarded facility, there are three possible approaches. You can fight your way in, which despite your talent for destruction, I don't think we have enough muscle to do. You can sneak in, but I doubt you'll be able to take the silent approach for long. Or, you can get whoever runs it to let you in."
"Okay, I take your point. I'm not a child. Now, how do we do that?" There was a suspicious edge in Jack's voice that sounded as if she already had an idea as to what Miranda was planning.
"There are two kinds of people who get admitted into a prison: guards and captives. We don't currently have the credentials to pass as the first one for long, but I think we might be able to pull off the second. Particularly with a regime this eager to round up dissidents. What I propose is that one of us plays the loyal Cerberus member who captured some alien-loving degenerate, and the other is said degenerate. That should allow us to get inside long enough to find this Brother Givoni and get him talking."
Jack's eyes narrowed, her suspicions now confirmed. "And I'm guessing you think I'm going to be the prisoner."
"Look at the two of us, Jack. Which do you think is more plausible in that role? Besides, I know enough Cerberus protocol to maintain our cover, at least for a little while."
Jack edged closer to Miranda, hesitation clearly written on her face. Miranda suspected that the convict knew, on some level, that she was right, but her natural suspiciousness wouldn't let her just come out and say so. "So, I've got to be your prisoner? How do I know this isn't just some bullshit Cerberus trick to escape?"
"If I wanted to escape, I would've let you drown back at the wreck. Besides, you won't really be helpless. I'll have to take your gun but no one here knows you're a biotic, so you might look like a prisoner, but I'm sure you would have no problems killing me if you think I'm betraying you. And really, do you want to be the one saying 'Hail Cerberus' or whatever other nonsense we'll have to tell them in order to get them to trust us?"
Jack threw up her hands, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Miranda's arguments. "Fine, fine, cheerleader. You win. You get to pick up your pom poms again and I'll be the fucking prisoner."
A small smile crossed Miranda's face. "Excellent. Now, then, what exactly should you have done to get thrown in prison..."
"Fucking a turian? Right out in public?"
Miranda shook her head disapprovingly. "Not just a turian. Two of them. Right in the middle of some filthy alleyway, sucking one of them off while the other screwed her from behind. But look at her? Can you really be that surprised she'd lay with animals like those?"
Jack snarled in a mixture of mock disapproval and the real thing. The more outrageous the lie, the better it will serve, Miranda had told her. Truth may not be stranger than fiction, but people expect it to be. Still, the operative couldn't deny that she was taking a certain perverse pleasure in this particular deception.
"Nah, I guess not," another of the guards along the barricade laughed. "Talk about trash. I wonder if it was for credits or if she just likes it that way."
"Fuck you!" Jack spat. "This bitch is making it all up."
"I would've had the bone faces she was screwing too," Miranda said, ignoring Jack's protests, "But they ran off like the alien cowards they are when they saw me coming. This one, though, couldn't go so fast, not with her pants down around her ankles."
"I will get you for this," Jack growled under her breath, but Miranda didn't feel too bad for her. Not after the incident with her Cerberus uniform pants the previous day, and especially not because the deception seemed to be working.
The sergeant in charge of the blockade nodded. "Okay, we'll lower the shield and you can take her to the intake office and tell him what you saw. This bitch'll be one of the few humans in there."
"Will do," Miranda said before shoving Jack towards the gateway.
"Welcome to the Kennel," the sergeant said, a note of sadistic glee evident in his voice.
As they moved across the yard and towards the crashed prison ship Jack took advantage of the momentary solitude to voice her disapproval. "Really? A fucking alien threeway on the curb?"
"Just be glad I didn't make the aliens vorcha and shut up," Miranda snapped before shoving her once more to keep their cover.
"Ya know, I actually fucked a turian once. It's not so bad really."
"Why am I not surprised? I would keep that information to yourself around here."
Even though the prison ship was situated inside of an impact crater, it was still upright and relatively level. A boarding ramp had been set in place and the lone entrance in and out of it was guarded by a squad of six men.
"Got a new one?" one of the guards asked.
"Yeah." Miranda didn't feel the urge to engage these bastards in more conversation than necessary.
One of the guards stepped in front of their path. "What's your name? I've never seen you around here before and believe me…" The man eyed Miranda up and down, "I'd remember."
"She does look kind of familiar," another one of the guards observed, "But I don't know from where."
"I was just transferred to this posting. Now, I need to take the prisoner inside. Step aside."
Miranda put as much of her old authority as she could manage into her voice and the guards gave her another look, one that made her want to puke, before they finally moved out of her way. "She looks like a fun catch," one of them commented as Miranda escorted Jack inside.
The prison ship the Typhon people had lovingly referred to as "The Kennel" was a large vessel. Though not the same size as the Purgatory, it did remind Miranda of the station she had first met Jack aboard what felt like several lifetimes ago.
Nostalgic for the first time I met Jack? I must be losing my mind.
After passing through the decontamination chamber, the doors opened up to a small prisoner intake office occupied only by a scrawny man behind a desk, an empty holo-pad, and a garbage chute on the back wall. The man didn't raise his eyes from the datapad he was reading as Jack and Miranda approached him, instead just stretching out one hand.
"ID card?"
Shit.
"Excuse me?" Miranda asked, trying not to show her concern.
Finally the man looked up and for a moment he appeared taken back by Miranda's beauty. But only a moment. "Your card. C'mon, you people know the drill. If you're going inside the Kennel, you have a card. Where is it?"
"Look, I just got transferred to this ship and they haven't given me whatever card you're talking about yet," Miranda explained. "Can't you buzz me in instead?"
"No card, no entry."
Miranda looked up to the corners of the room and saw that the security cameras were aimed at the ground. She doubted whatever power system they had running this ship was enough to keep the cameras operational, which worked in her favor.
Miranda let go of Jack's arm and sauntered over behind the desk, making sure to sway her hips as she drew closer to the clerk. "Well, you have a card don't you?"
"Uh...of course," the man answered, his voice catching as Miranda sat down on his desk and beamed a sultry gaze at him.
"Where is it? I'd like to see it."
"I really shouldn't…"
"Come on, I want you to show it to me." Miranda rested a hand on the man's knee. "I really don't want to mess this new posting up. The lieutenant who sent me here never even told me about the ID cards."
"They're idiots like that. Ya know Father Ford once visited us here and he said I did good work unlike all the other knuckle draggers in this posting."
"Really?" Miranda pretended to be impressed.
"Well...he implied it."
"That's amazing. Have you met Brother Givoni too?"
"Oh sure! Brother Givoni is here right now actually. Do you know him?"
"I'm just an admirer, I'm afraid."
"Well you can find him in his workshop in Cell Block D once you get inside. Me and him are pretty close actually ...don't tell him I said that though."
"Thanks, maybe I'll stop by. So what does this ID card look like?"
"I guess I could show you mine. No harm in that, right?" The man reached into his pocket and handed a thin, plastic card to Miranda. "Pretty neat right? I personally re-worked the Kennel's security systems to only allow access to card bearers. No door in this entire facility will open without one."
"Thank you." Miranda smile never wavered as she knocked the man out cold with a single punch.
Too easy.
"Damn! How the hell did you do that, cheerleader?" For once, Jack sounded impressed.
"He's a man," Miranda answered bluntly as she circled back around the desk. "And usually men like him swallow their tongues if you flaunt your tits and imply you might be interested." It was an oversimplification. Miranda had spent months in her early days in Cerberus learning the perfect way to seduce and manipulate all kinds of subjects, both male and female. But that wasn't a fact she felt inclined to share with Jack. "Think you can fit into his uniform?" she asked.
Jack shrugged and removed the civilian Cerberus shirt she had previously stolen before taking the guard's clothes. They were an awkward fit, too long in the sleeves, but not a total disaster either.
Miranda picked up the datapad the guard had been looking at and found it filled with a series of photos the guards of the prison had taken with various prisoners. Many of the later group were no longer alive, and even those who were presented a disturbing picture, battered and bloody. As she swiped through them, she came upon one featuring the very same man she had just punched, smiling while posing next to the mangled corpse of an asari.
Is this it? Was this the Illusive Man's grand vision for humanity?
"What the hell are we gonna do with him? He's gonna wake up eventually."
"No, he won't." Miranda pressed the barrel of her gun against the man's chest to silence the blast and minimize the blood spray when she pulled the trigger. His body lurched back as she fired before it slumped forward, a little bit of blood dripping from his lips.
"What the hell?!" Jack cried, for once the one surprised by the display of violence.
"These walls were made for deep space, nobody heard that. And if you're worried whether he deserved it..." Miranda tossed the datapad to the convict.
As Jack scrolled through the photos her eyes narrowed into furious slits. "Fucking animals."
"It seems this planet's depravity knows no bounds. These people need to be put down. If what's going on here ever reached the rest of the galaxy humanity's reputation would be even more damaged than it is already."
Jack tossed the datapad aside. "You're worried about humanity's reputation? You still sound like a Cerberus bitch, cheerleader."
"You really think I'm like these people, Jack?"
After a moment of silence Jack answered. "No...I guess not."
Miranda turned her attention to the garbage chute on the wall of the intake office. "Good. Now grab his legs."
After Jack finished putting on the guard's uniform shirt, she helped Miranda shove the man's body into the opening. As they watched his corpse tumble down the chute, Jack turned to Miranda. "Where do you think it goes?"
"If we're lucky, an incinerator. But seeing as this ship was meant to be in space I'm betting it empties out some kind of a waste dump instead. I doubt people will go looking for him there, at least until we're well clear of this place."
After they used Jack's old shirt to clean up the little bit of blood on the ground they tossed the dirty garment down the chute as well before heading for the large automatic door opposite the Kennel's entrance. Miranda pressed the guard's ID to the reader and with a hiss, the doors slid apart.
What they opened into was as close as Miranda had been to the mouth of hell. The prison ship was laid out in a fairly standard fashion: three tiers of cells arranged in a circular pattern around a central, open area, but the conditions in these cells were far from standard. It's not as if the ones she'd seen before were luxury Citadel apartments, but prisoners weren't usually packed in this four or five to a cell, nor were they as likely to have untreated wounds. It was a varied assortment too, turians, asari, salarians, and even a couple of drell and a krogan visible from her vantage point on the middle tier. A few humans were mixed in as well, but they made only a small break in sea of hundreds of alien prisoners who filled the rest of the cell block.
If the sight was bad, the sounds might have been worse. Many of the inmates were groaning or crying out in pain, while others seemed to be caught up in furious arguments made worse by their close quarters.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Jack gasped. "Every time I think these Cerberus bastards can't go any lower…"
"I know," Miranda said softly. The place was an assault upon the senses, and she blinked hard, trying to summon up her mental barriers so that she could close herself off from some of the horror and remember their mission.
The cacophony was suddenly pierced by the sound of a gunshot. Miranda's head whipped around and she saw a tall, thin woman with dark hair circling around towards them, a small shotgun in one hand. "Shut the fuck up," she barked, "Or the next one's going in your cells." The screams and cries diminished somewhat and she then turned to the two women. "Hey there. Sorry about that; the animals get riled up sometimes." She stuck out her hand while looking Miranda up and down. "Hi, I'm Miriam. Welcome to the Kennel. You're the new girl right? The buzz is some new pretty face had just been transferred in."
Miranda managed to beat back her shock long enough to shake. "Good to meet you. I'm Elizabeth. Sorry, this place is a little overwhelming."
"Yeah, at first most people feel that way. You'll get used to it."
Jack shook her hand as well, showing what Miranda felt was an unusually admirable amount of restraint. "Jacqueline. We both got transferred here."
"Boys only mentioned one new guard..." Miriam said before seemingly shrugging it off. "They must be bad at math too. God knows we can use the help, what with all the scum we've got jammed in here. Anyway, you picked a good time to show up. The fights are just getting started, and you don't want to miss that. Come on, I'll take you."
Deciding not to ask too many questions lest she give away the game, Miranda fell in behind the taller woman, and Jack did the same. They made a half circle of the tier towards another door, and as they passed by some of the cells, the operative had to fight back the urge to wretch. They had basic sanitary facilities but clearly some of the ones there weren't working, and the stench was nauseating; a mixture of blood, and refuse, and other alien odors she couldn't entirely place, but was fairly sure she didn't want to, all made worse by the lack of an active climate regulator to control the heat.
Thankfully, the odors abated once Miriam had led them out of the cell block, but Miranda's relief didn't last long. From down the hallway they were now in, she could hear the sounds of cheering, and in a place like this, she suspected that didn't portend anything good.
When the next door was opened, Miranda realized why the previous cells had been so overcrowded. They were in another, similar cell-block, but there were only a tiny handful of prisoners kept in the cells here, generally of a particularly hard-looking type. Instead, the room was mostly filled with guards, and all thirty of so of them were gathered around the railings, watching the action in the circular area at the bottom of the cell block so intently that they barely turned their heads at the new arrivals.
There, two combatants dressed in orange jumpsuits were circling each other. One was a turian, a lean, scared specimen with a deep scar along his cheek, blue blood dripping from a number of cuts, and a murderous gleam in his eyes. His asari opponent was wearing a metal collar around her neck, no doubt to suppress her biotics, but even without them she was clearly formidable. The woman was one of the largest members of her species Miranda had ever seen, tall and unusually broad in the chest, her large arms bulging with muscle. She also had a few cuts, but less than the turian, and her movements seemed more energetic.
Noticing her interest in the second fighter, Miriam told her, "That's Alfina, the current champ. 8-0 already, and it looks like win number 9 isn't far off."
The turian lunged at this Alfina, but she grabbed his wrists and drove forward, slamming her knee up into his torso. He recoiled with a grunt and tried to wrench himself free, but her hold was too strong. A second strike of the her knee left the turian gasping for breath and he tried a headbutt instead, slamming his ridges into Alfina's skull.
This caused the asari to release one of his wrists, but it didn't do him any good. Before he could use the arm for anything, she used her hold on the other one to flip the turin onto the ground. He crashed into the hard concrete with a sickening thud, one that was followed up by a vicious kick at his ribs. He screamed at the blow, but when a second one followed it, he went limp instead, curling up into a ball and whimpering, even as the assembled guards hooted and cheered his defeat.
Alfina looked up to the gallery, but in her eyes, Miranda's didn't see the sort of sadistic fervor she was becoming all too used to. Instead, there was only a deep weariness, perhaps mixed in with a tiny streak of pride when she asked, "Well, what do you want me to do with him?"
Notes- Thanks for reading! The next update shouldn't take as long. I hope you'll share your thoughts on the chapter with us in the reviews. Also check out the latest chapter of Rise of the Asari if you haven't already and all Legend of Korra fans should also check out Revan's Mask's smutty and awesome "Driving Lessons" and "Closing the Distance" on her profile.
Have a great day!