Chapter 36: Parts Can Be Replaced
Debris smothered the air, and Shepard knew then that her mask was malfunctioning. She ripped it off - tried to, realizing she'd been pinned down by the debris responsible for all the dust. She made a mental note that the Normandy was in dire need of thorough cleaning and that it'd be a good disciplinary task for her marines, after they'd pull through from this nightmare.
Pain seared harshly all around the edges of her cheekbone and jaw. Weakness emanated throughout her body. She observed her destroyed surroundings, then at the arm pinned under rubble. She had no feeling left. She looked over at the shaft, where another slab had fallen over the vent. A new sense of urgency gripped her and she'd moved without thought, though remained trapped.
"Liara has to be okay," Shepard coached herself. "There was only one way out for her, and that was down to the others. I'm still here. She will be there, too."
She had to return to the CiC, though, to receive a status update from Lieutenant Moreau in the event that they were still being tailed by the geth. Her nerves were grated by annoyance with every chime of 'critical power failure' announced over in the med-bay.
"Enough slacking, or I'll turn into a sloth."
Confident her geth arm could get the job done, she'd reached over and tried to move the rubble off her organic arm. Creaks and groans shot out - but not from the debris. Her head shot over and she'd gritted her teeth, renewing her focus on the rubble with panic as she listened to cryo pods hissing.
≤Critical power failure.≥
"I...!"
Agony shot through Shepard's jaw, and the groaned burned deep in her throat. She couldn't talk. How has her jaw broken, when it was reinforced with titanium? It gave Liara that stupid bruise, that one time the asari didn't mind her well-being when she'd shot up from her nap. She ripped off the oxygen mask once and for all, noting how it was shattered on the side. She didn't have time when a body slovenly sat up from the cryo pod.
One of Liara's friends - was that one Kaleema, or Neekoo?
"It doesn't matter. She's indoctrinated, and she's going to kill me right here if I don't get myself out."
But the debris wouldn't budge. She glanced over and tried to reach, straining for her fingers to at least nudge the rifle right there. The indoctrinated asari's eyes panned eerily calm over to her, and soon collectively climbed out the pod. Shepard was out of time - out of choices. She looked at the arm pinned under the rubble.
She couldn't even sigh, when another bout of sharp agony rippled across her cheekbone, buzzing hard in her ear.
With a piece of her frayed uniform ripped off, she stuffed it in her mouth. She glared at the asari as her geth arm clamped over her organic elbow. There was only one way to ensure it wouldn't be as excruciatingly painful. The true test for the strength and capability of her new cybernetic, it seemed. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes.
All pressurized output shot through her geth arm and she twisted as soon as the talon fingers clawed into flesh, her scream reverberating deep in her chest as she'd ripped free from her elbow. The indoctrinated asari rushed for her. Fury overtook her as the talons sank into a new target: the asari's throat. She yelled incoherently, purple blood oozing out and trailing down to stain the ivory arm, incensed by the sounds of the plop plop of her own life essence dribbling on the floor. She'd almost slipped in it as she torqued to snap the asari's neck when she launched the emptied soul at the wall. She marched over when the other cryo pod, which was trapped under the stack of the first, attempted to budge open the door. She picked up her rifle and pressed it to the glass of the pod, looking away as she held the trigger until the rifle hissed, overheating.
The door stopped moving.
Thoughts were growing sluggish at a rapid pace. She'd felt dizzy and weaker, stumbling into the remnants of the med-bay as she searched for supplies. She tore into all the cabinets until she found a tourniquet, and growled in agony when she couldn't even move her jaw to bite down. Then she'd felt how the piece of uniform in her mouth seemed to fall out, but through the side. She pulled herself along the counter until she'd reached a mirror, and a slew of cusses raced through her mind then.
One of her cheeks was missing.
All nerves were gone, save for the edges of the wound, still crying out in protest. She'd wormed the one end of the tourniquet through the hole of her cheek in order to get her teeth to bite down on it, tying it over what was left of her organic arm as tightly as she could to slow down all the blood she was losing.
Whirs threatened to take her life, and she grabbed a scalpel as her legs moved on auto-pilot, stumbling over to the remains of a geth unit that still tried to work with what was left.
A morbid thought taunted her in the back of her mind, as she thrust the scalpel into it's headlight.
"I'm no different than it."
Adrenaline was her only power source left. She'd lost all thought, stumbling about in the med-bay without purpose. It became clear, momentarily, after she'd dumped out all the tools in the med-kit and filled it with ice. She lumbered back to the rubble, grabbing and pulling at it from different angles - anything to dislodge it just enough to grant an opportunity to free her limb and preserve it in the ice.
Wretched groans bubbled in her throat at the traumatic thought.
{My team reports these ruins are unstable. Do you know by how much?}
{No, not particularly. I have taken great care to preserve this site to the best of my abilities. The University of Serrice has sponsored this expedition for me, so I cannot disturb anything. Well, I can, as it is expected of my profession, but-}
{Dr. T'Soni, I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm asking because I might have to destroy some things to get you out.}
{Oh.} Crestfallen, T'Soni nodded. {Can you try to preserve as much as you can?}
{You can stay in there, if you want.}
{That does not really sound like a yes...}
Somehow, somewhere, that small smile grew. {It's not. No guarantees, but I'll see what I can do, alright? And with luck, your university won't sponsor another archaeologist to dig our corpses out.}
{At least they will preserve us.}
There was almost a manic laugh that threatened more agony to burn through what was left of her face. All that talk about preservation went on forever, and she was certain it was added to the roster of things to be tormented by PTSD. She made it her mission that, as soon as she preserved her bloody arm, as soon as she made it out of here - in at least some kind of functional fucking piece - then she would ruthlessly tease the archaeologist the way she'd regretted not to, because of all the manners and respect she told herself to retain.
God fuck it all, this would be the - yet another - turning point in her life.
That was the story she was going to stick with, and it was the reason T'Soni would just now have to do her compassion thing to, to understand.
Vestiges of strength were dwindling. She'd fallen on her knee, and willpower alone wasn't enough to drive her back up. She scolded herself, then - ensured she'd never tell Liara how she was calling herself a maggot, for fear of earning that ire burning hot in those ocean-blue orbs.
Nothing worked. She'd just barely moved the slab a little, and exhaustively fell to a crawl. She reached in the hole and pulled her arm out. For a fleeting second, she saw Simone's hand in hers, still clutching a grenade. The illusion was broken, and she was sure her mind was too. This simply didn't make sense to her, and she deflated on the ground. She absentmindedly dumped what was left of her arm in the med-kit, praying someone would make it to her soon, and that Dr. Chakwas still had time to perform surgery and re-attach the arm.
Or rather: forearm.
Dazed, Lucy stared up at the ceiling. Her mind was screaming at her to be awake, furiously waving all sorts of red flags. She smiled at peace, even when she knew she was hallucinating the starry sky above her. She reached up, relieved to see her organic arm was working again. A blue hand reached up beside hers.
{The stars always look so different, far away, from the ground. Can you feel the breeze? Hear what the ocean is trying to say? See how all the little things in nature work together to paint this wonder before us?} Liara looked over at her, insanity tumbling out so casually. {Close your eyes, Commander.}
{But-}
{We're safe here. It's just you and me.}
Shepard's hand fell on her stomach. She absentmindedly reached up until she heard the clicking of a vial scrape against what sounded like metal. She held it dearly, wishing to hear Liara's voice.
Her eyes burned.
She knew she wouldn't get to hear Liara - she was out of time. She didn't want to shutter away and die like the geth unit though, and her cheekbone was chewed away by volcanic lava when something moist slid down.
"I'm tired... I don't want to be a soldier anymore..."
For once, she allowed that foolish optimistic side take control - the side that was all Liara's fault. She hiccuped, laughing, and it helped ignore the pain a little as more moisture trailed down her cheeks. She forced herself to smile, no matter the agony. Not for morale, not for anyone else, but for herself. She would die as a human, not as a husk. A realization dawned on her, then, too. She closed her eyes, drifting in peace.
"I've finally found it. After all this time, it was in you that I've found acceptance."
Another moist... No. Another tear. She accepted it.
She was only human.
"Liara... Thank you for giving meaning to my life. I pray someone will help you experience these strange feelings too, someday."
Her only regret was whom she was leaving behind, now having felt that pain herself. She wanted to keep fighting.
But she was tired.
Lucy drifted to sleep, dreaming of a brave blue hand palming her cheek as tantalizing things were purred in her ear.
{You're knee-deep in the water. The fish are taunting you to catch them, Lucy.}
This was fucked. This was beyond fucked. There was no actual word in the dictionary to describe this level of fuckery.
Talitha was fucked.
Li was fucked.
The doc was fucked.
Addison was fucked in the head.
The Gunnery Chief and the stick-up-the-ass turian were the only ones not fucked, and that just made this all even more fucked. They were damage control, coordinating with the unfucked to go ahead and get all kinds of fucked up.
Needless to say, Helen was on edge. She watched over the asari who was so numb and traumatized that she was too fucked up to even cry herself to sleep. There was no way to get to the Commander with the elevator disabled and the shaft leading directly to the med-bay blocked by debris. Pressly reported there were still pockets of geth roaming the ship, causing more damage and making it difficult to just charge right in without consequences.
"Watch me," Helen inwardly challenged. Her protectiveness surged when her gaze fell back on the asari, her heart tightening as she'd watched her hand instinctively cuddled.
Jesus... What a shitshow.
It took too long to organize the squads. She understood the chief and turian's need to do so, but didn't they understand that time was of the essence? Why the hell were they being like the Commander now, of all times, when urgency was the best course of action? It didn't take a single thought on what she needed to do once she'd saw a squad heading to the core, catching mention of another shaft that could be taken up to the mess.
She ignored her heart when she had to pry her hand away, ignored the whimper that followed.
"Please," warbled from behind.
Helen couldn't bear to look. She squared her shoulders with confidence and beamed a reassuring smile over, but she couldn't bring herself to look at Li's eyes. "I promise we'll bring her back." She marched on over and grabbed Addison's elbow, pulling the shaken marine up. They'd each shared melancholic looks, the words passed between their eyes. Helen mustered a supportive pat on the back when her fellow soldier sighed.
"Don't know how you do it, Helen," Addison muttered as they went off in hopes of injecting themselves into the squad without any barking about rank.
"No other option," was all Lowe said.
They pretended to be helping the engineers when Chief Williams turned around to glance about, before jumping over the rail to follow the squad into the shaft. They waited, and Helen idly undid her belt. She ignored Addison's panicked look and smirked a little. "Jeez, Addy, I'm not droppin' my pants here... How much of a horny rabbit do you think I am?"
"I can't say I'd be surprised," Chase taunted back. "What are you doing?"
"Gonna toss it to make them look the other way before we hop over the railing." Helen's eyes met the quarian who was supposed to be in their quarters, but never was. She'd clenched her teeth when it didn't seem like Tali would ever look away - but rather, came closer instead. "Aw, balls..."
"If you're about to do what I know you're about to do, then you won't need your belt," Tali stated, and for a second, Helen smirked. It was elbowed off by Addison.
"What a weird thing you're saying, I have no clue what you mean," Lowe shrugged. She'd winced and almost yelped when sparks suddenly shot out the other end, causing a commotion among concerned engineers. The quarian's hand wrapped on her bicep and tugged roughly.
Before she knew it, there were three going through the shaft.
"Aren't you supposed to help with the core?" Addison asked.
"Engineer Adams has everything under control," the quarian affirmed. "I want to help bring the Commander back. Need to."
"You sure?" Chase coaxed quietly. The others stopped. She couldn't bring herself to look at them as she succumbed to doubt. "With what we just saw... There might not be a Commander left."
Silence hung over their heads. Nobody had the courage to say anything. Helen sighed and forced herself to keep walking forward.
There was no other option.
Damage was finally under control. Dr. Chakwas snapped off her medical gloves and disposed of them in the temporary trash chute after she'd finished setting a bone and stitching a wound. She kept an eye on the clock - and the amputated hand. It had been roughly two hours since the time of detachment. There were four hours left of grace, and then she wouldn't be able to reattach the muscle tissue nor nerves anymore.
Four hours. She didn't have high hopes, with the radio frequently exploding with instances of geth hiding in the ship, tallying up more casualties. They were terribly efficient and determined to cause as much chaos as possible, even if stranded from their mother ship, and it was working well for a crew that only had a select few familiar with how to fight them.
Dr. Chakwas took a moment to use the reflection of the rails to check on her own injury, a thumb sliding across a skin-glued and taped forehead - courtesy of the Commander.
"This will scar, but at least she'd done a good job." A grim smile. "Even without school or proper training, the Commander's had plenty of opportunities to perfect her skill."
It was a favour she was determine to pay back and mentally coached herself through the steps she'd studied. It was going to be a gruelling surgery, to be sure, where she often referenced her omni-tool whenever nobody was looking. Even she had her limits in her skill-set. She wasn't exactly a specialist in nerves and limb re-attachments.
The outcome was... Not favourable.
"Joker is getting us to the Citadel as quickly as he can. The Council has to listen, especially after this attack - and the information Liara shared. The Commander... If they find her... Will receive the best care."
There was a lingering guilt nagging her, and that was something she'd suppressed long ago in her profession. Things don't always go the way she wanted to on the surgery table. It just came with the risks and the job, just like how being a soldier had their risks too. Her scalpel was her trigger. Still, she couldn't help but feel a measure of responsibility for pushing Dr. T'Soni to meld.
What if that was what aided Saren into tracking them down, and attacking them?
Karin sighed and gently massaged her forehead when an ache slowly ebbed to life. She threw herself back in her work and distracted herself with the next injury to treat, her hands trained enough to keep going even with a wandering mind. The screams of the wounded constantly echoed in here, with no supplies or medications to prescribe to numb the pain. She hoped Williams would be able to salvage something from the med-bay among the wreckage.
After another round of setting bones or suturing without anaesthesia, a marine had prompted her to take a break. The worst of the casualties were dealt with anyhow. She stretched her hands, her gaze constantly panning over to the one on ice. Another look at the clock. Her stomach sank grimly.
There was an hour left before it'd be... Unserviceable.
Her heart hardened. She threw herself back in her work, stretching her fingers along the way. She braced herself for the monotone talks as the Commander walked through traumatic events as if she wasn't fazed. What she had yet to learn was that she was covered in wounds and burns, and one day she would realize that she had been on fire all along. Karin glanced over at the asari, still rooted in shock anchored to her soul.
"Meanwhile, that girl is on fire and feels every bit of it - is trying to desensitize herself to it. If we find the Commander, Dr. T'Soni is going to be faced with a difficult time to heal and come to terms with what she'd just witnessed."
And what she would continue to witness.
Work, work, work. Karin kept throwing herself at it, to stop her mind from slipping down the slippery slope herself. It had taken years of harsh lessons before she'd finally learned how to accept things, so that she could keep moving forward, no matter how gruelling or cruel the reality of it all was. "Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best."
All she could hope for now was that Dr. T'Soni wouldn't become Commander #2.
Agony jolted Shepard back to life when her chest kicked with a gasp. Still trapped in a daze, she moved as if she was on auto-pilot. She tried to crawl, but there was no strength left. She heard footsteps and yelled incoherently, reaching to grab her rifle. Her synthetic leg managed to help push her up against the rubble, where she twisted awkwardly to figure out how to brace the stock against her shoulder.
Eyes in the darkness goaded within, rattling a cage. Phantom pain exploded in all her limbs when a ghostly hand tried to wrap a finger around the trigger. Another incoherent yell, and footsteps thundered in their rush to her, the voices warped and shrouded in a high-pitched whine. She'd finally figured it out on how to hold her rifle - though it was far too late with bodies already in here.
Blurs muddled her mind and she briefly recognized she'd been seeing blue, her heart soaring with hope.
"Lia-" she hissed and her eyes squeezed shut when the pain shot through her jaw. She tried to focus on the blue that was moving too quickly for her to grasp. "Ra?"
"Sorry to disappoint, Commander," a deep voice vibrated, and there was a flick of something at their jaw. She'd reached to pat the face and heard hard chitin click against her metal hand.
She deflated.
"Rus," she forced past the pain, narrowing her eyes as she tried to make sense of the blurs and movements. Her skin crawled when she'd been lifted and cradled. "Space."
"I'm afraid that's not possible right now, Commander," Garrus calmly countered. "We need to get you to Dr. Chakwas."
"...Fuck."
Somehow, for some reason, the turian chuckled. He seemed to be shielding her, then, shifting with how he held her. Her gaze lazily fell over other bodies that were in the med-bay, staring at her. She didn't have the energy left to analyze or command, the strength sucked out her muscles. She reluctantly fell apart in the arms, until she was carried over a half-destroyed plinth. The world wouldn't stop spinning. She vaguely registered that Chief Williams seemed to be the next one standing in front of her, arm curled up, more voices bleeding into the atmosphere - modulated by radio frequency.
≤I'll be there as soon as possible. Keep her stable and monitor her vitals.≥
That was... Dr. Chakwas, maybe. Lucy swayed a little in her seat. She numbly looked down at her organic arm, where what was left tied off by the tourniquet had begun to change colour. The tissue was necrotic. She looked up when she'd registered more movement, a purple blur this time. A voice modulated by a suit made it through the fog encasing her brain. She'd absentmindedly leaned forward, held safely in place by a firm hand on her synthetic shoulder. She glanced over and tried to study the face.
And growled.
"Jent-Low, what... Doing...?"
Something about Helen's face changed, but it was hard to see her eyes. Someone sounded like they were retching in the corner.
Focus shifted back to the purple blur, whom came closer with what remained of her arm: her forearm. The ends were growing necrotic. Shepard sighed. She did her best to look up and study the face, reminded that she couldn't when she was faced with a visor. She slovenly jerked her synthetic shoulder forward, but was still kept back in her seat by Helen.
"Dead," the soldier strained, trying to fall into a mental mantra to ignore the shots of pain burning through her jaw. "New hand. Tali - order."
Sharp sucks of breath whirled about her. She didn't care. After all, as she's always told everybody: parts could be replaced. She needed to get back into fighting shape.
Saren was still out there.
Voices were somewhat muted, where she caught snippets of conversations between too many bodies to count. In the end, the sounds that comforted her were the sounds of progress as she was able to make out Tali tinkering on the plinth opposite to her.
Shepard leaned away from fingers that tucked under her throat, glaring up at the bearer of the offensive hand. Her body locked and screamed for space when she'd been surrounded by eyes. She barely caught wind of strands of grey, and the firm order for the squad to clear out the med-bay. Dr. Chakwas. Confidence was back within reach, and Shepard straightened in her seat, ready to report her analysis. She mustered enough strength to move what was left of her organic arm, her gaze falling to a bucket of ice that the doctor held.
"Hand... Is that mine?"
The wrist portion had grown necrotic too. She nodded in her affirmation, looking back up at the doctor who'd continued to do her job. She wasn't sure why Karin would pinch her nose and clear her throat every now and then.
"Commander - can - me?"
"Wha?" Shepard's brow pinched with confusion, struggling to maintain her focus as she watched Dr. Chakwas' lips move to ask her question again. "Can you hear me?"
She nodded, even if the words continued to phase in and out.
Something about surgery. Something about the time having passed for re-attachment. Things she already knew. She hissed in pain when fingers cautiously cupped her chin, still jostling her jaw. There was something about taking skin from another part of her body, then, to attach to her cheek. She nodded and nodded and nodded until she groaned from it all.
"Sleep," was all she could manage.
She was tired.
Peace returned when she'd felt a needle thread in her jugular, injecting her. A mask was carefully pulled over her face, and the doctor laid her fully down on the plinth. Footsteps rushed again, her body disarmed of it's capability to react when it'd rapidly grown sluggish by the second. Her head lazily fell to the side to the source of commotion. She didn't care for the pain that erupted then, when she smiled upon seeing a familiar blue blur. She reached out with her hand.
Only for the phantom to mock her again.
"I can't... Feel her... Anymore?"
Liara rushed over, her expression hard to read, her eyes too much to read. Shepard glanced over at Chakwas, who was donning her surgical greens in her prep. The soldier managed to lift her mask, and her arm fell with a thud, relaxed when Liara had lifted the mask for her.
"Ch... Chakwas. She..." She struggled, sighed, but she needed to get this out before the drugs lulled her to be put under by anaesthesia. It was a priority operation now. Fingers gently coaxed her bangs out of her face, where warm lips pressed to what part of her forehead wasn't lacerated. She grimaced when something moist plopped on her and trailed down, hissing when it'd fallen into the sunken hole of where her cheek once was. Liara immediately parted, much to Shepard's dismay.
With the way the asari looked, though, it fuelled resolve.
"Need... Alprazolam..."
Her last memory was Liara's hand on the anaesthetic apparatus.