Chapter 8

Miranda was no stranger to violence. Throughout her long career with Cerberus she'd done more than her fair share of unpleasant things. She'd killed people without knowing the reason why; she'd exploited, lied and manipulated others for Cerberus' gain more times than she cared to count. Yet for all the bad she'd done, she had never enjoyed it like this.

As she watched the crowd gathered around the make-shift fighting pit, dressed in their black and gold Cerberus uniforms, cheering on two prisoners beating each other to death with their bare hands, Miranda wished she could look away. She began to wonder how she could ever have been a part of an organization whose members could do something like this. Even if this so called Cerberus was a far cry from the group she'd joined, its roots were there, and the thought made her sick.

After the muscular asari finished beating her turian opponent into submission, she stood above the man and turned to the roaring crowd.

"Well, what do you want me to do with him?" the asari Miriam had identified as Alfina asked.

Suddenly Miranda felt a jab in her side. Miriam elbowed her playfully and turned to Miranda with a smirk on her face. "This is the best part, newbie."

"Finish him!"

"Stomp his brains out!"

"Kill him!"

The crowd screamed their suggestions with such hatred in their voices that Miranda couldn't bring herself to watch as Alfina snatched up the beaten turian by the head. Instead she turned her eyes to Jack and found her partner watching the execution with a barely-contained rage that had seemingly grown with each passing second they had spent on Typhon. As the turian's shrill screams of agony cut through the air, Jack gritted her teeth so hard that veins jutted out from her neck. Noticing that Miriam was too enthralled with the "fight" to notice anything else, Miranda reached a hand over and turned Jack to face her.

"Don't look," she whispered.

Jack turned her head back towards the pit. "I have to."

When Miranda finally found the stomach to look at the scene herself, she found Alfina with blue blood caked on her boots and hands, standing over the corpse of a turian she could hardly recognize.

"How long have these fights been going on?" Miranda asked Miriam.

"Oh, ever since we had more freaks than we could keep in the Kennel's cages. Who knew population control could be so much fun, right?" she answered with a cheerful pat on Miranda's back. "Don't worry. You'll get used to it by the end of the week. Besides, these animals deserve it after what they did to us. Don't ever forget that."

She tried to cleanse her voice of any trace of mockery. "Of course not."

"Well, if you'll excuse me I just won a shitload of credits and I intend on collecting them. I'll catch up with you two later. Feel free to wander around; only rule here is to make sure the prisoners stay in line." Miriam gave them a wave and slipped off into the crowd of spectators.

"Fucking bitch," Jack hissed under her breath before Miranda could pull her aside to an unoccupied corner.

"I know this is difficult-"

"You don't have to say it cheerleader. Keep the damn cover. This whole place is just so fucked up." Jack buried her face in her hands and paced back and forth.

Miranda crossed her arms, watching the convict seethe, and before her better judgement could stop her, she spoke. "Are you...are you alright, Jack?"

"What the hell do you care? Let's find this Givoni asshole already."

"Not yet."

"What?" Jack spat.

"Thanks to our friend at the gate we already know where to find him. What I'm curious to discover is how this facility came to be."

"Why's it matter?"

"Miriam said the non-humans deserved this treatment after what they did to Typhon. The better we understand this planet and its people the better chance we have at getting to Ford."

"I already know everything I need to know about these bastards."

"You may feel that way, but it's only by understanding why these people are following Ford that we can get them to turn on him. That fighter, the asari, she seemed to know what was expected of her. It's probable she's been here for a long time. We should speak with her. Then we can find Givoni."

Jack shrugged. "Fine. Whatever."

With the "entertainment" over, most of the other guards had cleared out of their make-shift arena, which meant there was no one to interrupt them as they made their way up to the top tier to see Alfina. The asari had her own cell there, perhaps as a reward for winning so many fights, and when they stopped outside of it, she looked up from the bunk she'd been flopped on.

"What do you two want?"

Up close, the asari was a study in contrasts. The characteristic graceful beauty of her race was present in her light blue face, but it made an odd match with her muscled frame, especially when it was contained in a prison jumpsuit smeared with blood.

"Just to talk," Miranda replied.

"Since when do you people care about what any of the inmates have to say? All you want is to hear us scream."

"We're not like them."

As soon as she said the words, Miranda regretted them. Who in Alfina's situation would believe anything but the worst of someone wearing this uniform? Indeed, the asari's response was to snort derisively and say, "Sure you're not. You want to be my friends, right? I don't care if this is some fucking head game or you really want to walk on the azure side. Either way, I ain't biting, so come back when you've got some clean clothes for me. These have blood on them."

Surprisingly, it was Jack who saved the situation. The convict stepped up to the bars, and flicked her wrist, generating a tiny biotic field inside Alfina's cell. The flash of power yanked her into a sitting position, and more importantly, it got her attention.

"Listen up," Jack hissed, her voice low enough not to be heard by anyone but the three of them, but filled with unmistakeable venom. "We're not with Cerberus. What they're doing to you, I went through for years." She unbuttoned her shirt collar, giving a glimpse of the scars along her neck. "Believe me when I say I'd rather die than work for those sick fuckers."

Alfina seemed to shake off her air of indifference. "Suppose I believe you. Who are you and what do you want?"

"The Alliance sent us to Typhon to stop Cerberus," Miranda said, deciding that, at the very least, she could trust in Alfina's obvious hate not to betray them to the other guards, "But right now, we don't even know what's going on here. Why are they locking up all the aliens? Why does everyone support them?"

"You really don't know?" Alfina's eyes widened. "They say we brought the Reapers here."

"How does that make sense?" Miranda asked.

"After Thessia fell, there were a lot of refugee ships scattering. Some of them came here. So did people from a lot of the other words that were being overrun. Typhon is the nearest habitable world to a lot of planets out here. Plus the Alliance had made a big deal about it being a great place to live, and we knew it hadn't fallen yet, so we figured it was worth a shot. It wasn't the best plan in the galaxy, but pretty much nobody had a better one at that point."

"It was only a few days after my ship got here that the Reapers attacked. Maybe they did follow us. Maybe they were already coming for the colony. Who knows? Either way, the Alliance didn't put up much of a fight. Most of the fleet had already been pulled away for whatever Shepard and Hackett were planning, and the rest go smashed to bits pretty fast. The Reapers landed and started killing everyone, same as they had on Thessia. That was when Cerberus showed up. They had some kind of a base here, and they made the best stand anybody was managing. Probably wouldn't have been enough, but then one day…"

She shrugged. "One second, we're getting killed and the next, this massive energy wave washed over the planet and wiped out the Reaper forces. Cerberus took the credit, of course. They were a little fuzzy on the details of how they did it, but this Ford who's leading them claimed he was responsible."

"Assholes," Jack growled. "It was Shepard who blew the Reapers up, in spite of all the crap Cerberus threw at him."

"Shepard, huh? Well, I guess I owe the man a drink."

"Save your credits," Miranda said softly, pained by the reminder of her former lover. "He didn't make it."

Alfina shook her head. "Figures. It's always the good ones who pay the price. Anyway, the Reapers going down was just the start of the shit. People already blamed us for bringing them here but after that pulse went off... One of the ships that had crashed down during the Reaper invasion was this lovely hunk of junk. The whole place was filled with non-human prisoners and when the security went down, a bunch of them got out. There were good people who called this colony home and I'm not talking about the humans. But after those bastards got out of here and started raising hell, what little good will non-humans had was gone."

"The prisoners ran amok, and a few innocent people got killed, most of them human. That's when Cerberus stepped in again. They already were being called saviors for taking down the Reapers and after that little alien riot, they had the excuse they needed to institute their new world order. They said that the alien scum had brought down the Reapers on everybody and if we weren't put in our place, more shit like that would happen. It was stupid, but everyone was scared and confused, and Cerberus had the most guns, so they went along with it."

"And you?" Miranda asked. "What's your part in all this?"

Alfina shook her head. "I'm just an old commando who got caught in the middle. So, you gonna let me go or what?"

Miranda felt a twinge of guilt. The weariness in the asari's voice was heartbreaking, and the operative hated herself for what she had to say. "I truly wish we could, but there's just the two of us on Typhon right now. We have to keep ourselves hidden."

"I suppose it was too much to hope for, but if you get the chance, just give these Cerberus bastards a kick in the ass for me."

"No doubt," Jack agreed. "And maybe we'll find a way to bust you outta here while we're at it."

As they walked away from the cell, Miranda told Jack, "You shouldn't have done that. Given her false hope. I doubt we can save ourselves, let alone anyone else."

"And you shouldn't give up," Jack insisted, more determined than Miranda had seen her in some time. "A chick that tough, we could use her on our side. And nobody deserves to live like that, made to fight like some animal. Nobody."

"People don't deserve a lot of things that happen to them," Miranda said softly. "Now let's go and find Givoni before anyone realizes we don't belong here."

"Lead the way, cheerleader."

Miranda looked up at the faded "D" on one of the prison walls. The ship must have been a human-made vessel once, she realized, to use the english alphabet. "The guard at processing said Givoni had a workshop in cell block D. Hopefully we'll know it when we see it."

They walked past the Cerberus guards trading credits through their omni-tools and raving about the viciousness of Alfina's fight.

Cerberus was supposed to be about protecting humanity. These animals don't have a shred of their own left.

Soon enough, they arrived at the "D," where they entered a door on the wall using their stolen security pass. It opened with a swoosh and as the duo took their first steps into the cell block, it was obvious that something was different there.

The other cell blocks had been ablaze with activity, patrolled by Cerberus guards with the cells packed with noisy alien prisoners. Cell block D was a different story entirely. The lights were dimmed so severely the hall may as well have been lit by candles. Still, Miranda was able to make out the series of cells flanking them as they walked down the hallway. Instead of the usual swears and grunts of pain, all Miranda could hear was a weak and haunting moan echoing from a few of the darkened cells. Others were unsettlingly silent and bathed in total darkness. It stunk too, not like the other cellblock which had reeked of body odor and sweat, shit and piss. This was a different smell, something more focused, thicker and surprisingly even more revolting. It as almost as if she could taste the air.

Miranda couldn't stop herself from covering her nose with her hand. "What the hell is that stench?"

Jack answered her without hesitation. "Blood."

"Givoni's workshop is supposed to be around here. But I can hardly see a damn thing."

Jack stepped deeper into the hall and approached the cracked reinforced glass of a cell. "I think this whole fucking place is his workshop."

When Miranda came up beside her and peered inside the cell, she feared the convict was right. In the shadows, there was a figure restrained to the back wall with their arms chained above their head. A low moan was emanating from inside but darkness masked everything else. Miranda suspected it might be a bad idea but Jack had been right back at the fighting pits. She had to see this, had to see what these people had done in the name of the organization she had once sworn her life too.

She powered on the flashlight application of her omni-tool and directed the beam into the cell, and in spite of all her experience, she let out a gasp of horror. Strapped to the wall by the chains around her wrists was an asari, her eyes missing from her head and her legs broken and twisted. The prisoner let out a cry of terror as she sensed someone watching her. "Please…" was all she was able to rasp out.

Miranda quickly shut off the light and turned to Jack, her face as pale as a sheet. Before she could speak, an unexpected sound cut through the tense air. Music. Miranda looked past Jack and down the hall where she noticed a dim light at the end of the line of cells. The sound of an old classical peice Miranda herself loved but now realized she'd never be able to enjoy again was just barely audible.

"I think it's time we pay this man a visit," she said, not a trace of warmth in her voice.

"I've got a few things I'd like to say to him," Jack hissed as she spun on her heels and began storming down the hall.

Miranda ran up beside her. "We have to remember to keep this quiet. We can't blow our cover or the whole city will be after us."

"Uh-huh," Jack grunted, barely listening to Miranda's protests.

As they approached the doorway on the right side of the hallway, they slowed their pace, creeping up towards its entrance. The music was blaring now but Miranda now could tell it was being used to cover up another sound. A shrill, painful screaming.

Jack peeked her head around the corner and so Miranda was forced to join her. She recognized "Brother" Givoni at once. He stood over a medical table he had positioned in the middle of what looked to be the ship's old Warden's office. Strapped to the table was what was left of a human man, the last breath he had left releasing in a pained howl as Givoni stabbed a needle into his arm and pressed down on the plunger.

Miranda knew enough about the human mind to know that this Givoni was a completely different beast from the others they had encountered. Most of the people of Typhon had only just gone mad, drived by their need to hate the aliens just as the people of earth had needed to hate her. They needed a scapegoat, something to direct their anger, fear and grief at now that the war was done. But this man was something else. He'd never had any humanity to lose in the first place. This wasn't xenophobia, just sadistic insanity, and war hadn't created it; it had only unleashed it.

Yet the image of the unsanitary, makeshift lab and the dead human strapped to a table with needles sticking out from his corpse was not an entirely unfamiliar nightmare. Miranda was filled with dread when she realized the image reminded her of Pragia. Nor was she the only one. Before Miranda could stop her Jack ran into the office, her body glowing bright blue.

"Jack, wait!" Miranda cried, unsure of whether to whisper or shout, but her plea fell on deaf ears.

"You fucking Cerberus bastard!" Jack screamed as she ran up on Givoni from behind.

The man moved faster than his bulk would've suggested. At the sound of Jack's anger, he whirled around, seemingly amused by the tiny woman attacking him. His humor didn't last though, as inches away from his face, a biotic glow appeared around Jack's fist, the blow sending him flying into the bloody table behind him.

He recovered quickly though. Perhaps blinded by her rage, Jack wasn't ready for the counterattack and Miranda gasped as Givoni's fist crashed into the side of the convict's head. Jack stumbled back but before Givoni could follow the blow up, she blasted him across the office with a biotic throw and a loud scream. The large man crashed into a collection of mason jars on the wall. They shattered on impact, leaving a disgusting collection of multicolored gore to ooze from the broken glass and onto the man's back.

"Who the fuck are you?" Givoni growled, even while his hands were fiddling with something behind his back.

Jack didn't give him an answer, except to charge. Unfortunately, she was still too angry to see the light of Givoni's omni-tool ignite.

"Jack!" Miranda screamed while Givoni swung his glowing arm towards his attacker. She only had the blink of an eye to act. Just as a stream of flames flew from the device towards the convict, Miranda tossed Jack across the room with her own biotic throw.

The convict howled in rage as she flew against the wall but Miranda had succeeded in sparing her from the worst of Givoni's flames. As Jack rolled on the ground, trying to beat out the rest of them, the Cerberus commander turned his gaze to Miranda.

"You're not Cerberus," he growled. "Which means I get to play with you two all I want."

"Try it, you bastard," Miranda hissed as she raised her glowing fists.

Givoni charged, his eyes wild and angry as he barreled towards her. Miranda dodged the tackle like a matador and threw a warp at her enemy. The attack landed with a loud crack but it didn't seem to slow the man down, the tell-tale glimmer of a personal shield appearing around his body.

Givoni's omni-tool extended into a large, searing blade and Miranda's eyes widened as she tried to jump out of the way. The man's reach was too long however and the strike too quick to be avoided entirely and the tip of the omni-blade sliced across her stomach. It wasn't deep enough to hit an organ but the cut still drew an immediate rush of blood.

Miranda let out a cry of pain but she kept her fists up and was quick enough to duck under the man's follow-up right hook. She tried to push the pain from her mind and remember the combat training she'd received from Cerberus years ago.

Target pressure points. Damage vital organs.

She jabbed her fist into the man's ribcage, giving the blow a biotic boost. The shields buckled and she felt bones snap, but even then, Givoni was undeterred. Miranda aimed her next attack for his kneecap but the wound to her stomach made her sloppy. The bastard caught her leg in his giant hand and pulled her in close, wrapping his giant treetrunk arms around her like an anaconda squeezing the life out of it's prey.

"You're prettier than the others," he leered.

Miranda played the only card she had left, lunging forward and sinking her teeth into whatever she could reach. A rush of blood filled her mouth as she bit down on Givoni's face and at last the giant man flinched. He threw Miranda to the ground and she took a strip of flesh in her mouth as a parting gift. The man cried out in pain and rage and pressed a hand to his ruined cheek. Blood seeped through the cracks in his fingers, drenching his bushy mutton chops as he gritted his teeth.

"You still think I'm pretty?" Miranda taunted after she spat the bit of Givoni's face out of her mouth.

He howled as he charged at her once more. Before she could scramble to her feet Givoni had snatched Miranda by the hair and hoisted into the air. "Whore! I'm gonna-"

"Get the fuck off of her!" Jack screamed as she hurled a biotic wave into the man, knocking him off of his feet and Miranda from his grasp.

The convict fell on top of him and just when Miranda expected to see the large beast roll her to the ground under his immense weight, she noticed Jack had one of Givoni's tools clutched tightly in her hand. Before he could act, Jack struck. She brought the man's own meat cleaver down on his outstretched arm and cut halfway through the bone on the first strike.

He howled in agony as Jack followed the strike up, chopping the man's arm off just below the elbow. Blood shot from the wound like a geyser but Jack didn't let up. She tossed the cleaver aside before she snatched the shocked man's head up in her tattooed hands, and Miranda cringed as Jack plunged her thumbs into Givoni's eye sockets.

It was a fitting punishment considering the horrors they had seen this man inflict, but Miranda was still stunned by Jack's brutality. She stood still, her hand pressed to her bleeding stomach as the convict went to work.

"Where is he?!" Jack screamed. When all he did was moan, she snatched the cleaver up again. "Tell me where I can find Ford or I keep cutting pieces off!"

"W-What?! Ford?!" the eyeless man groaned.

Jack smashed her fist into his face. "Where is Ford?!"

"The tower!" Givoni howled. "He's in the tower!"

"What was that?!" Jack said.

"Ford. The tower in the c-center of the city. The top floor is where he stays….he hasn't left it since he started getting sick."

Finally Miranda joined in. "Sick? What's wrong with him?"

"Let me go," Givoni pleaded, cowering like any bully who'd been taken down a peg.

"Answer the question, asshole," Jack sneered back.

"Something about his heart. It's fucked up, I don't know. Ever since that red pulse went off and took down the Reapers, it's been acting up."

"If we go to this tower, we'll find Ford at the top?" Miranda asked.

"Yes…" he whimpered..

"I swear to God if you're lying…" Jack hissed.

"I'm not!" Givoni swore. The blood streaming down his face from his empty eye sockets made him nearly unrecognizable now. "Who are you crazy bitches?!"

"Crazy?! We're the crazy ones?!" Jack slammed her fist into the man's face once more. "Look at what you're doing to these people?! Do you have any fucking idea what it's like to be locked up? To be experimented on and tortured?! To be treated as a fucking object your whole life?!" Jack kept raining blows down on Givoni as she screamed. "You think they deserved this, you fuck?! That I did?! Do you have any fucking idea what people like you cost me? What you took from me?!"

"Jack…" Miranda's voice wasn't loud enough to be heard over the convict's anger.

"So many good people died for nothing while scum like you gets to survive and do whatever the fuck they want?" Jack's knuckles were split open now, but she still didn't stop. "It's not fucking fair! Why are they dead and you get a free fucking pass? Why did I survive and they didn't?!" Jack had screamed herself hoarse by then, but she still smashed both of of her fists in Givoni's ruined face until it resembled nothing so much as a raw steak.

"Jack!" Miranda cried as she pulled the convict away from what reminded of the butcher.

"Get the fuck off me, cheerleader!" Jack yelled and it was then that Miranda saw the tears in her eyes.

"Calm down," Miranda told her, her voice more soothing now.

The convict wouldn't listen. She continued to struggle against Miranda's hold. "Let me go! I'm not done with him!"

Miranda heard the depths of the pain in Jack's voice. She'd suspected something was off with her ever since they had been reunited but she'd underestimated just how bad the situation was. Jack was shattered, a broken woman without anything left to live for but this suicide mission against Cerberus.

Jack continued to thrash in her hold and so Miranda acted on instinct. She pulled the convict into her arms and held her close in a desperate attempt to calm her down. Perhaps Miranda should have just felt pity for her but there was something more there now. Empathy. She understood Jack's pain entirely. It was what she had lived with for months now, and she knew exactly how lost and alone the convict was.

Finally Jack stopped resisting and buried her face in Miranda's shoulder. The operative brought a hand up and tried her best to comfort her, running her fingers through Jack's short brown hair, and holding her close. After a time, she realized that Jack had stopped trying to pull away, instead returning Miranda's embrace.

I should let go, she thought as she shut her eyes and kept her arms wrapped around the other woman.

Why don't I want to let her go?

But before Miranda could answer her own question, an ear splitting siren cut through the air as red lights began to flash all through the cell block. At last Jack and Miranda seperated and stared at each other with wide eyes as the prison alarm continued to wail.

Miranda looked to Givoni and her stomach filled with dread when she found the man's omni-tool flashing despite the fact that the man himself was beyond dead.

Shit. The alarms must be linked his pulse.

Miranda grabbed Jack's hand and yanked her towards the room's exit. "We need to leave! Now!"

Jack pulled her hand away from Miranda's. "No way. You saw what they're doing to these people here. We need to shut this place down."

"We need to shut this whole planet down and do that we have to get to Ford. That doesn't happen if we're dead."

Jack weakly nodded her head in agreement. "Let's go," she said, only sparing a second to spit on Givoni's corpse as they exited his "lab."

If anything, the cell block looked even more disturbing bathed in the red light of the alarm, but Miranda didn't have the time to worry about that now. A prison was not a good place to be trapped in, especially after you'd just killed the warden. Things were bad enough on their side of the bars.

Thankfully, no one got in their way as they dashed out of Cell Block D, but that was as far as their luck extended. Halfway between the arena and the cell block they had first entered, a voice cried out, "Stop right there!"

Miranda looked up, and on the tier above her, she saw Miriam along with a half dozen of her fellow guards, assembled into an impromptu posse that already had their guns out. "I should've known something was up with you two," she yelled out, her earlier friendliness gone. "Now put your hands in the air before we shoot you two bitches where you stand."

Perfect.

The two of them had their biotics, but the guards had the numbers, as well as the high ground. Maybe Miranda and Jack could take out this group, but in the time it would take, reinforcements would come. Their reserves of energy weren't limitless, and the wound carved across her stomach already ached.

Beside her, she could see Jack's teeth clench with hate, flickers of her biotics already evident in the air around her. Maybe this was what she wanted; to die taking as many Cerberus guards with her as she could. Hell, that was probably why she'd volunteered for this mission in the first place. In spite of everything she'd lost, though, Miranda realized that she didn't want to die that way in this fucking hell, and she didn't want that for Jack either. As the guards trained their weapons on them, the operative raised her arms in seeming surrender but at the same time, she frantically scanned the room for some way out of their predicament.

"Stick 'em up, you tattooed piece of trash!" one of the other guards yelled over the sound of the alarm, but before Jack could respond, Miranda saw it. 10 meters or so away from where she stood was a control panel that read, "Caution. Cell block door release."

Well, the man did say this would open any door in the building.

Without warning, Miranda dove in the direction of the panel. The guards opened fire on her as she ran, and she pushed everything she had left into her barriers. Shots slammed into her body and she grimaced at the pain of their impacts, but she kept going in spite of it. Do or die, she reminded herself, and with a final effort, she hurled herself forward and pressed the keycard against the panel. It flashed once, and after that, everything went completely mad.

Notes- Sorry for the delay, the next chapter should be coming much sooner. I hope you enjoyed this one and will share your thoughts with us in the reviews!