Shepard wakes up.
For a second or two she has no idea where she is. Then the bland grey walls of her hospital room settle around her again, her fleet of monitors and stands still shut off and shoved in a corner, the whole room quiet and dark with the middle of the night. Rain still lashes against the window, as it has since this storm front rolled in two days ago. Garrus's fold-out bed—upgraded from the cot last week—is empty, his blankets thrown aside instead of neatly folded at the foot.
There's another flash outside, then a crash of thunder that makes her bed rattle. Maybe that's what it had been, but somehow she doubts it. There's something else, something—
Someone's shouting in the hallway.
The calm that settles over her is total, automatic. Shepard rolls carefully off the far side of the bed, ignoring the twinge of protest in her left leg, then eases herself down to her knees. She's in sweatpants and a t-shirt, the linoleum freezing on her bare feet, but her mind is clear, cataloguing every sound for threats.
Someone shouts again. Strained, clipped, but not in pain. She can't make out the words. A door bangs distantly; for a second she can hear the shriek of an alarm before it fades. Lightning flashes again outside; this time when the thunder hits she seizes her bed's supports and flips it on its side, a makeshift barricade between her and the door. Her back hates that, but her options are rapidly dwindling, and she crouches behind the bed and pulls up her omnitool. In the worst of her enforced boredom she'd amused herself by seeing what hospital systems she could access from her room; now she locks her door, seals the one sealable entrance at the end of her hallway, and calls for a list of system-wide security breaches.
"Garrus?" she whispers into the comm as the scan runs. "Liara? Tali?" No answer; she switches frequencies. "This is Commander Shepard on the sixth floor of St. Mary's Hospital on Reedham Road. Are any Alliance soldiers receiving this? I'm hearing disturbances in the hall and I need a sitrep."
Static.
Damn it. Okay, options. Her floor's too high to go out the window. Her corner room has a small balcony on the other side, and she thinks she could drop safely to the next floor down if she had to, but she's pretty sure her knee can only take one bad fall and she's not eager to waste it. Her biotics are recovering better than expected—enough she can probably do some serious damage—but she's nowhere near her best shape of the war, where she could charge into a group of soldiers like bowling pins and come out laughing on the other side.
Shouts in the hall again, a little more panicked. More voices. Something rattles against the gate she sealed—the sound's muffled and distorted, but she thinks it's fully automatic weaponry. Harrier fire, maybe.
Shepard grips the bed and heaves herself to her feet. Her cane is helpfully on the other side of the room, so she clutches the wall like a lifeline and slowly, excruciatingly staggers the ten steps to Garrus's bed. For all he'd teased her she knows there's no way in hell he wouldn't have—
"Gotcha," she says, triumphant, and then with horror, "a Predator?"
The pistol sits heavy in her hand, unearthed from beneath Garrus's pillow, almost insulting in its unmodded, weak existence. She can't exactly look the gift of a gun and a full clip in the mouth, so she checks the sights and thumbs the safety regardless, but as she limps back to the bed, she lets herself be very, very annoyed.
"A Valiant I give him," she mutters, her fingers white-knuckled on the bedframe as she clumsily lurches down behind its cover again. "A Valiant with an extended barrel, and an anti-smoke mod I had to make three stops to get, and I let him paint blue stripes on it. Three hundred thousand credits, and what does he hide in the hospital? A Predator. A Predator with no mods and a chip in the slide. Goddamn it."
The bed rattles again. Not with thunder this time—with an explosion, and not too far away. Shepard lets the invective die, slips up against the wall, and takes ready position with her gun trained on the door. Her omnitool helpfully displays her requested report: explosions at the main hospital entrance, one side door, two elevators, and the sixth floor nurse's station. Casualties unknown. Assailants unknown. One glimpse of a shuttle with a black-and-gold insignia deploying troops in the street before taking off again.
Belatedly, she notices a message from Miranda flashing in the corner. A warning, sent only a few minutes ago, that the Cerberus cell she's been tracking is coming Shepard's way. Error: no communications uplink detected. Please try again later.
"You've got to be kidding me," she hisses as she kills the display and tries one last time for the comms. "This is Commander Shepard. If you can hear me, please respond!"
Something slams suddenly against her door. In the gap underneath she can see shadows scrabbling quickly on the other side—she hears a meaty thud and a grunt of pain—a gun fires, two quick retorts, and something heavy hits the ground hard. There's a pause, and then the red electronic pad on her door begins to flash orange with a forced bypass.
Shepard takes a long breath, holds it, lets it out again. Her hands are steady on the gun, her mind clear. The world narrows to the next fifteen seconds, which is honestly how she prefers it. Ready.
The door gives a cheerful beep, the display glows green, and the metallic lock releases. The white-lit hallway beyond is blinding at first, a terrible glare haloing the tall armored shadow stepping silently into her room—her finger tenses on the trigger—
"Shepard?"
"Garrus," she gasps, and jerks the barrel up and away just in time. "What's going on?"
Relief crashes over his face. He shuts the door swiftly behind him, closing them both back into the shadows, and keys something on his omnitool. The lock display flashes red, then green, then throws a shower of sparks and settles on a steady orange. "That'll have to do for now. Cerberus is here. Comms are down. I'm sure you've already figured most of this out." He leans over the bed and grips her shoulder, just for a second, before going back to his omnitool. "Spirits, I'm glad you're okay."
"We'll talk about your choice of hidden firearms later. Do we know their objective?"
He cuts his eyes at her, lit from below, and even through the visor's rapidly changing displays she can see his disdain. "Two guesses, Shepard, and the first doesn't count."
"Fine. What's the exit strategy, then?"
"Still working on that part."
"They killed both elevators?"
"Yeah, and they're storming the stairs, including the maintenance access and the fire escapes. The Alliance is trying to block them off, but it won't last long. I didn't think Cerberus even had this many people left." He finishes with his omnitool, comes around the foot of the bed as she jams the gun into her sweats, and helps her to her feet again. Something metallic bangs distantly below them. "Where's your wheelchair?"
"It's—shit." She casts a guilty look at the pile of disassembled plastic and rubber in the middle of the room where she'd left it this afternoon. "I told you that wobbly wheel was bothering me—"
"Shepard," he says, and it's so painfully longsuffering she can't help but grin, even given the context. "You're a monster."
"I'll be okay," she says, shifting her grip from his arm to the bedframe for support. "Leave me a better gun. I can hold out here until you get back with reinforcements."
He whips around to stare at her, and this time there's no humor at all in his face. Her teasing dies unvoiced. "Shepard," Garrus says, deadly serious, "if you think I'm taking one step out of this room without you, you've lost your damn mind."
Her chest suddenly gets very tight. "Okay," she manages, as if that can possibly convey the painful depths of her gratitude. "Okay. Then what? You gonna carry me out of here?"
Garrus snorts. There's a pause; then he straightens to look at her with a more calculating eye. "Huh."
"Uh, Garrus—"
Gunfire explodes just outside their door. Definitely a Harrier, and something more staccato, deeper-voiced, behind it—"Here," Garrus says brusquely, pulling some spare thermal clips off an adhesive strip under one of her plastic chairs, and he tosses her something from his armored waist. "Don't say I never gave you anything nice."
"Is this—" A Carnifex. Specifically her Carnifex, with her mods and her preferred grip and the scar down the barrel from a lucky brute on Tuchanka. "Where did you—how—"
"Watch the leg," Garrus says, and bends down to hook his arms around her thighs. He grunts—even with six weeks of hospital life behind her, the cybernetics and weaves have made her dense for her size—and then he has her hoisted high on his right side, her fingers curled over his cowl, his elbow crooked up under her ass and supporting almost all her weight. "Give me the other one," he says, a little strained. She yanks the Predator from her waistband and shoves it into his free hand—gunfire peppers the door again—
The lock display shatters. The door smashes open, glass and steel shards flying everywhere, and four silhouetted Cerberus troopers pour in with weapons drawn.
All four recoil under the pressure of her biotic shockwave. She gets two with headshots immediately: clean, quick, automatic. Garrus wings one in the temple, but his gun's not powerful enough to blow their heads from their shoulders like hers, and he has to back up with her until he finishes that one off, until they can clear the fourth together. The assault rifle fire goes wide enough neither of them flinches, but her amp sizzles and spits at the base of her skull. Even she can't ignore that warning.
Four bodies. A fifth in the doorway, fallen where Garrus had fought him earlier. All Cerberus. The black helmet of one has cracked over his eye, revealing the twisted, husk-like ocular beneath.
"Stairs up?" she asks as he steps over the bodies, carrying her into the hallway. No sign of her regular Alliance guards. The alarm still shrieks in the distance.
"Gotta be. No choice." It's bizarre, checking corners from someone's shoulder—his fringe is long and she has to keep her head low or risk getting clocked in the temple, and the armor is murder on her left knee where it's mashed against his keel—but they've been working together too long to struggle with something like this now. He glances up at her. "When we get to the top, though…"
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking." Two troopers emerge from the stairwell on the other side of the nurse's station. She misses the first shot wide left and blasts a fire extinguisher off its hook—out of practice—but the second and third send them careening back against the wall in bloody smears.
Garrus hasn't even stopped moving. "Wrist holding up?"
"Yeah, no problem." She clutches at his cowl for balance as he leans carefully around a corner. "What about you?"
"I'm okay. Adrenaline's doing me a lot of favors. And the armor's joint servos." Not effortless then—he'd be making a joke about her weight otherwise—but not enough she needs to be concerned. As for the stairs—well, she'll worry when they get there. "I hate fighting through hospitals."
"I know. Stay with me, big guy."
"Always." They take a hard left into the wide hallway leading to the floor's surgical suite. The white waxed floor shines almost painfully under the harsh fluorescents, but the hall's otherwise completely empty. No life. No Cerberus. Not even a gurney they could repurpose. "Which way? Down this hall, then—?"
"Then right, and then it's the second door on the left," Shepard says, glancing at the schematics pulled up on her omnitool. Except— "Wait, Garrus. Look at this. Service elevator at the end of that same hall. It only runs the top ten floors—they might not have gotten to it yet."
"An elevator in the middle of a firefight," he grumbles, but as they reach the stairwell door it abruptly slams open, revealing a dozen Cerberus troopers looking just as shocked to see them.
"They're here!" one shouts, and then the gunfire deafens her.
The only reason she survives is that she's within the reach of Garrus's shields. Harrier fire ricochets off the barrier an inch from her bare feet; Garrus pivots to put more of his bulk between her and them and bolts onward down the corridor. She twists to get her stomach over his shoulder, his arm clenched around the backs of her thighs, and steadies the gun with both hands against his pounding run. She squeezes the trigger and a man collapses. One. Breathe. In, out, steady, squeeze. Two. Breathe. Three, four.
Garrus fires blindly behind them as he runs. A lucky shot takes out a trooper's leg; Shepard finishes him off as he writhes on the floor. Five.
They reach the elevator. Garrus slams the button—one floor away—and topples a tall supply shelf on its side, sending folded scrubs and sharps containers flying. It's made of metal and wide enough for a little cover, even if he has to duck to get Shepard hidden too. The remaining troopers seem to have the same idea; they've positioned themselves more carefully, hidden around corners and behind another nurse's desk rather than rushing all at once. One throws a grenade that pings right to them, two sharp bounces off the shining linoleum; Garrus kicks it right back, and a second later the nurse's desk explodes in smoky rubble. Someone screams.
The elevator doors swish open. Garrus eases in backwards, dragging the supply shelf with his foot for cover; Shepard kicks twice at the button for the roof and provides suppressing fire until the doors crawl closed again.
Shouts from the troopers, running feet—a sudden banging on the doors, then the piping rattle of rifle fire against metal. Not fast enough, though—they're already a floor or two up, the elevator dinging brightly as they pass each one.
They both heave for breath. The sudden silence is shocking after the violence of the fight; carefully, he eases her weight off his shoulder and sets her on her feet. Her ribs are screaming from the pressure of his armor, and her knee's gone disturbingly rubbery, but all things considered—she's feeling good. Great, even. Her mind's clear as a bell, all her senses sharp; the worn grip of her Carnifex fits her hand like a song.
"You okay, Shepard?"
"Fantastic." She smacks his chest like the hood of a sporty skycar. "Hey, thanks for the shields back there. You were really hauling ass."
His eyes narrow as he looks down at her, then: "Spirits," he says, sounding a little awed. "You're enjoying this."
She tips her face back to the elevator's mirrored ceiling, trying to calm her heart. "I am." Fuck, she can't even stop the wild grin. "If I could trust my biotics—"
"Shepard, you're not wearing any shoes."
"I don't need shoes to fling them out windows with my mind."
"One of us is wearing armor, with shields and boots and everything. One of us is in cotton." He sounds aggrieved, but he's grinning, too. "Guess which one wants to throw her own body at the enemy."
"I didn't say I'd actually do it." She pushes at his hands where they still support her waist. "Let me go. Rest your arms a minute."
"The second I do is the second those doors open to an engineer's turret. Not to mention I no longer trust you not to go charging off immediately if I don't hold you down."
"Garrus Vakarian: vigilante hero, all-time world-class sniper, battlefield flirt." She leans as close as she can without putting weight on her left leg. "Does that handsome face have a plan for when we get to the roof?"
"Thought I'd leave that to my Spectre girlfriend," he says, voice dry, but even if he's not built for blushing she can see she's flustered him. "My best plan was to get across to the other building, take it from there. Might be some stairs down they don't control yet."
She lets the teasing die. "I had the same idea. The other roof's the helipad, though. No cover at all."
"Yeah. Even worse, the access door's on the far side of the pad. It'll be a dead sprint."
"Better than nothing." She rests her hand on his chest again, lets her fingers curl over his armored cowl. "We've got this, big guy. Stay focused. Just delivering a package."
"Yeah, but I like the package without bullet holes." His mandibles press tight to his jaw. "Shepard—"
Every light in the elevator cuts out, pitching them into total blackness. The elevator jolts to a sudden, whining stop.
Even with Garrus holding her, Shepard goes down hard, her busted knee no match for the sudden deceleration. She catches herself clumsily on her left elbow; agony lances through her shoulder where the cybernetics have struggled for weeks, but she grits her teeth and lets Garrus help her up again. His visor glows like a beacon in the dark. "Well, that's not good."
Shepard peers at the bay of buttons, but they're just as dark as the rest. "Did you see how close we were to the top?"
"I'm not sure. Close." He's already feeling along the ceiling for the escape hatch. "Ah, got it."
But something's wrong. It should open up and out, but it gets only an inch or two before striking against metal. A hard stop, no give at all. Garrus forces his gloved hand through and twists his wrist—she can see the tendons in his neck straining with effort—but whatever it is doesn't even begin to budge. "I think it's part of the elevator itself," he says, very tense and very calm. "It's bolted down."
"Let's force the doors."
They do, shoving them open to reveal—concrete. Grey concrete, floor to ceiling with no gap, the bottom two-thirds of a giant painted "16" on its surface rubbing in how close they'd come to the top floor. Distantly, they begin to hear shouting voices.
Shepard looks up. "Do you think you can break the hinge of the hatch? Maybe it's only partly blocked. I might be able to squeeze through."
"Yeah," Garrus says, a little doubtful, but after a few tries it becomes clear he has neither the leverage nor the access to break the hatch cover off completely. The shouting grows louder. "Shoot it off?"
"Ricochet will be a serious problem." Her mouth has gotten very dry all at once. She pulls up her omnitool. "I'll see what I can do with the hospital systems. Trip the fire alarm."
"Do it fast, Shepard," Garrus says. He checks the chamber of the Predator, then a second time, then jerks up his head. "Visor's picking up four," he says evenly. "Six. Seven. Nine."
Her omnitool's not responding properly. Sluggish, dim, her commands only partially executing—finally she gets the schematics open again, only to discover— "They've locked me out." She looks up grimly. "I've got nothing, Garrus."
"Okay." He draws himself up, lets out a long breath. "We'll fight our way through."
"We've had worse odds."
"And we've had better," he points out, though the visor casts enough light she can see his wry smile. She can pick out words from the shouting now: here, they're here, the elevator on the top floor, northwest hall. "No place I'd rather be, Shepard."
"Same," Shepard says tightly, renewing her grip on her own pistol. Her heart is breaking. She can feel it like a physical thing in her chest, something very real and very painful ripping itself apart right down to atoms. If they've come all this way—if they've come through all of this, come through everything—only to die now, trapped in a goddamn elevator fighting goddamn maddened indoctrinated Cerberus bastards—
"Good evening, Commander Shepard."
Shepard gasps, staggers, scrabbles at the wall for support as her legs threaten to give way. Garrus's eyes have gone very wide, his hand clamped against his own earpiece. "Is that—are you—" She can hardly get out the words. "EDI?"
"In the flesh, Shepard. So to speak." Her voice is odd through the comm, thin and a little flatter than before, as if she hasn't quite remembered where the inflections are supposed to go. It's still absolutely, undeniably, her. "My scans indicate that you and Garrus appear to be in measurable peril. May I be of assistance?"
"EDI," Shepard says, voice tight through the excruciating lump in her throat, "We're trapped in an elevator on the sixteenth floor. Cerberus is everywhere—not sure how. No comms except you."
There's a deafening screech—several of the soldiers above them yell in protest—and then Shepard's omnitool lights up like a Christmas tree. "Jammers disabled. I have you located. Please hold while I disrupt enemy communications with a selection of turian death metal."
"Will do," Shepard says, and she bursts into tears.
"Shepard," Garrus says, sounding just as aghast as the bellowing troopers, and he grips the back of her head hard. "You okay?"
"Yeah—yeah—oh, God—shit." She cups her hand around her comm, cradling it like something precious. "EDI—are you all right? Are you—how are you feeling?"
"Thank you for your concern, Shepard. I estimate I am currently functioning at two percent of my complete operational capacity. I look forward to my return to full functionality, but as Jeff has declared, I ain't dead yet."
"That's good to hear. That's great." She scrubs furiously at her eyes, but Garrus's shadowed face still swims when she looks up at him. "Thank Christ."
"On that topic, Shepard, I have several questions about resurrection." A pause. "Jeff informs me these inquiries should wait for a less life-threatening moment. Very well. Please prepare for the elevator to resume progress."
This time they're both ready, Garrus's arm firm around Shepard's waist to keep her upright. The elevator lurches into motion again, still pitch-black inside—he takes the lead, angled just enough in front he'll absorb any first wave—and a hair-thin line of white fluorescent light stretches across the top of the opened elevator doors. It widens to an inch—two—a handspan—
They both fire the moment the troopers come into view. There's hardly even a defense; most of them are already on the ground, clutching their helmets, scrabbling for latches and releases to escape the tinny blasting music she can hear even from the elevator. The two or three that have managed to get free of their helmets still struggle to see through the pouring fire sprinklers and strobing overhead lights. She can't be sure, but she thinks the lights pulse in time to the beat.
Regardless, Shepard gets six to Garrus's three—not that she's counting—and as the last one falls, the lights flicker on and stabilize, and the sprinklers slowly trickle down to a drip. The linoleum floor is slippery with blood and water, and Shepard's bare feet nearly go out from under her more than once, but carefully, deliberately, they make their way together to the roof access door at the end of the corridor.
Garrus takes the electronic keypad as Shepard leans back against the wall beside him. Her heart pounds in her chest from both battle and elation. "How are we looking, EDI?" She glances back at the pile of bodies. "I'm not hearing much from here."
"There are two squads each on floors fifteen and twelve. I am attempting to lure them to storage rooms for temporary confinement with moderate success. I recommend continuing your exit strategy via the roof."
The lock gives a happy chirp, and Garrus shoves open the door. The night sky beyond is black, the rain stopped, the thunderhead clouds gone patchy and thin. Pinpoint stars shine faintly beyond the city lights; a handful of bulky generators and creaky aircon units have become lumbering shadows in the dark, surrounded by rain-soaked concrete reflecting the city's neon lights.
Garrus slings Shepard's arm over his shoulders and starts forward, letting the wind slam the door closed behind them. She knows Garrus can feel she's on her last legs—he's taking more of her weight than either of them is willing to admit—and his voice is strained. "We've made it to the roof, EDI. Now how are we getting off it?"
All at once, Shepard's omnitool flashes with a new connection. "I thought I could help with that," says Steve Cortez, and over the far edge of the hospital roof, the familiar blue of a Kodiak shuttle rises like the sun.
—
"…Hey, Garrus. You awake?"
"Hey."
"You doing okay? Things got a little dicey today. A couple of times, here and there."
"Nah, I'm fine. Peace was getting a little boring, anyway. What'd we get? Six weeks?"
"Something like that. Did you keep a kill count?"
"Nah, you won when you took out the Reapers, remember? Besides, I was using a crap gun in my off hand. You know, since you were in the other one."
"You're the one who kept that crap gun around. Come here."
"Mm."
"Is that okay?"
"Yeah. It's nice."
"…You know, this is the first time we've shared a bed since the war ended. How tired are you?"
"Move one limb without wincing. Just one. You pick."
"There."
"Your thumb doesn't count, Shepard, and you know it. Besides, we're guests."
"James won't judge."
"Maybe not, but he'll never let us forget it, either. Just…"
"Garrus? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. Just—let me just—feel you breathe for a minute."
"Yeah, okay." A long pause. "Hey, Garrus."
"Mm."
"Thanks for taking me with you. Thanks for not leaving me behind."
"Never doubt it, Shepard."