Chapter 09

Jane Shepard

A poorly timed Alliance patrol put Shepard's trip off for a couple of days, much to her annoyance, causing her to miss Rasa's departure with the corrupt Spectre Tela Vasir. She sat in the shuttle beside Morales clutching the armrest, completely zoned out to whatever he'd been rambling at her since shortly after take-off. A distant part of her was guilty for blanking him, but she had many more important things to focus on.

Flying out to take temporary control of the operation aboard the mining facility, she had to admit, would probably do the organisation as a whole good in the long run. Montez's hostile aura towards her had only gotten worse since their return from Cyrene, and having Shepard sitting around watching over her while she coordinated ship repairs had to have been suffocating. And Shepard empathised. Doing little to nothing over the last handful of days had worn on her mental health. It would be good to get back into a role of active leadership—even if it was to cover for Rasa's dangerous mission.

"—Quarian friend got me into Fleet & Flotilla," Morales told her. "I wasn't too sure about it at first, but I'll be the first to admit I was bawling my eyes out by the end. I've seen some pretty incredible masked performances in Human movies, but damn! Quarian's have a whole 'nother dimension of vocal acting in them. It's incredible really!"

Shepard looked over to him. "You said you had a Quarian friend?"

"Yeah! Meerko'Pootz nar Shellen. We met on the Citadel when I was a cadet and she'd just started her pilgrimage. Funny story, actually! We stumbled upon each other when we both got lost in the warehouses down by the Wards. She was meant to be meeting a merchant who'd promised her a part she could take back to the Migrant Fleet, and I was far too drunk and somehow ended up down there from Dark Star." He chuckled contentedly to himself, then tapered off into a sombre mood. "We exchanged extranet addresses and emails, met up when we could. Needless-to-say, that all stopped when I joined Cerberus."

"Have you considered messaging her again? You did leave Cerberus recently, after all."

"I didn't think it would be allowed. Based on the way Rasa talks about us, we're just Cerberus again with a… I don't know. Purer goal? Tighter focus?"

"Contact her," Shepard urged. "As long as it's properly encrypted and hidden, I don't see why you should be without a friend. It's…not fun to be without your friends."

Morales' finger scanned the controls as he input a series of minor trajectory adjustments. "I'm not sure she'd take my message if I did," he said. "She wasn't particularly sold on me joining Cerberus in the first place, and that was before they attacked the Fleet."

She sat forward. "They attacked what?"

"The Migrant Fleet. Yeah, I know, it's insane. I don't know the details—they're strict about the whole independent cells thing—but I heard about it on the news."

Shepard slumped back into her chair. She couldn't get her head round why anyone would want to work for a group like that, especially after everything she'd exposed about them during her hunt for Saren. A kernel of guilt popped in her chest knowing she was the one who'd inspired Morales to join up, however indirect that influence might've been.

"Did you find out if your friend was all right?" she asked.

"She was still away when it happened, but it soured our relationship and we've not talked since," he answered.

"Reach out; trust me."

"I will. Thank you, Shepard."

Morales brought the shuttle into a soft landing in the main hanger. Shepard thanked him, then left him to perform the necessary shutdown procedures. The hanger had been strategically cleared to look cluttered at a glance, but still provided space enough for several shuttles to land and crates to be neatly stacked.

Banderas and Volyov were waiting for her by the exit, both carrying tablets; the former offered a casual nod while the latter a stiffer, more severe nod.

"Who wants to go first?" she asked.

"Well, we're both here to see you about the same thing," Banderas replied.

"The drug supply Rasa had us looking into," Volyov elaborated.

"One of the major factors for turning away recruits have been the drugs in their system, and we didn't have any idea where they were coming from until recently."

"Rasa had my team searching for a lab or store of store; we found one hidden away beside one of the auxiliary hanger bays—caught a handful of cooks and guards, too."

Shepard took a moment to soak in the information. "I'm guessing the drugs from the lab matches those in the bloodwork's?"

Banderas nodded. "There have been slight variations from person to person," he told her, "as if groups of them have taken different versions of the drug."

"The cooks are using the populous as lab rats."

He nodded again.

She then asked Volyov, "are they talking?"

He seemed to shy away from the question for a beat. "Not initially, but after employing some…tougher methods of interrogation, we managed to get a some info about their operation."

"You're lucky we don't have a formal command structure in place yet"—Shepard drove a glare through his head like an omni-blade—"because you'd be getting far more than a slap on the wrist for this. It never happens again, understand?"

"Y-Yes, ma'am."

"Good. What did you find out?"

"The operation appears to have been masterminded by a group of officers and politicians operating out of Arcturus Station," he explained. "The cooks are sent diverted shipments of surplus medical supplies to use as raw materials, which they then turn into drugs, experiment on the locals, refine the product, and on and on and on, ad infinitum."

"Does that mean they've not yet come up with a viable formula?"

"Oh, they have one," Banderas answered. "Preliminary tests of their latest formula and the data I've managed to analyse so far from their own tests show it to be a highly addictive hallucinogen that hyper stimulates the adrenal gland, dopamine receptors, sensory cortex, insula, putamen, and hippocampus. It puts the body into such an intense state of shock that it sends the user into a quote/unquote 'pleasure coma' of sorts that looks on the outside like a seizure, but mentally it's whatever the user wants to see. Now, obviously, I'll know more when I'm done with my research."

Shepard was stuck between a place of naïveté, unbelieving that Alliance officers and officials would mastermind such a vile project, and cynicism, knowing exactly the depths to which Humans were capable of sinking. It was deceptively easy to see Cerberus and believe all the bad people were off in this pro-Human, supremacist entity that was apart from the rest of Humanity. All the bad people are over there, off in the corner, where they can spew their rhetoric and beat their drums in a contained environment; but that line of thinking is dangerous. Shepard had browsed the Alexander's databases, uncovering that the Illusive Man held owned outright or held large stakes in massive corporations from starship construction to weapons manufacturing, and an alias of his provided the majority donations to the pro-Human Terra Firma party. Then there was the cell that infiltrated Alliance black ops to conduct experiments with the Rachni.

Human cruelty existed in every time period, woven throughout all facets of society.

"Do what you can, Doctor, and get the report to me immediately."

"Consider it done."

Then to Volyov, Shepard said, "take me to the one in charge."

Shepard and Volyov went left at the corridor while Banderas went right. The pair made their way out to the promenade which continued the purposefully desolate aesthetic. More of the facilities residents were out and about than she remembered seeing in the past, their aura comfortable with the arrival of Shepard and Rasa's mercenary band. They even seemed slightly happier, but that could've been Shepard projecting.

Volyov took her to the old security headquarters—he'd taken the initiative to claim it for himself and his team. The only cell with full structural integrity remaining was the large drunk tank in the centre of the room. The smaller, singer cells around the edge of the room all had some sort of breach or technical issue.

Six Human's dressed in lab coats and light safety gear milled about with all the body language of a sobering rabblerouser. One of them shot to their feet upon seeing Shepard and approached the bars, catching the attention of the others and drawing them with her like a magnet.

"What's going on here?" asked who Shepard assumed was the senior scientist, as they elbowed their way to the front of the crowd of gaping mouths. "Have you any idea who…I…work…for… C-Commander Shepard? They told us you were…dead."

"I get that a lot," she replied offhandedly. The injuries from Volyov's interrogation were plainly apparent under the harsh downward lighting of the cell: cuts and bruises, a black eye or two, a couple of burn marks. The category six she'd noticed in his record came into stark detail. "You in charge?"

They reached out a hand. "Doctor Rajesh Marcel."

Shepard ignored the gesture. "My people have told me all about what you're doing here," she said. "I need to know names, I need them now, and I need to know when the next shipment is due."

"Your brute has already gotten all the information we—"

"Don't give me that shit. You're lacking the injuries from the unfortunate interrogation techniques of my subordinate; care to tell me how that happened? I think your team have told us everything they know, but I think you've been a coward." She turned to Volyov. "I want the prisoners released, given meals and medical treatment, and kept under guard in more hospitable facilities."

"Yes, ma'am." He nodded and crossed to the door, waving his omni-tool over the glowing red locking mechanism; it chirped and blinked to green. "Everybody out, c'mon."

Marcel took a step toward the door, and choked when Shepard grabbed his collar and twisted. She held him there until the others had exited and the door locked. He stumbled away from her, gasping air and straightening out his shirt and lab coat.

"You'll regret laying your hands on me, Commander," he spat. "My benefactors can ruin you, and not even your Spectre status can save—"

"Don't presume to threaten me," Shepard snapped. "I died, and came back to life…twice. Your posturing means nothing to me. Answer my questions."

The pair locked into a mental negotiation, as she spread the intensity on thick while Marcel calculate the best course of action.

He eventually sighed, and brushed imaginary dirt from his sleeves. "All right," he said. "My primary employer and representative of the little cabal they're running on Arcturus is Simpson Porter, but you may know him as the current PA for Charles Saracino, head of the Terra Firma party and holder of six parliamentary seats."

"I'm familiar with him. Is he involved?"

Marcel's chuckle dripped condescension. "Oh, heavens no! That buffoon? Terra Firma was never going to be a mainstream party; not with such extreme policies. They'll always live in the shadow of the centre-right parties. They're too narrowminded, and the perfect way for someone to weasel into a position of relative power without too much oversight.

"I was never made aware of the full network, but I believe prominent politicians and military leaders are involved somehow and using Porter as a nexus of sorts. He's the one with his fingers in all the concoctions on a day-to-day capacity, reporting back to the other with our progress, and an easy plug to pull should anything go wrong."

"And this counts as something going wrong?" Shepard asked, confident in the answer.

"Undoubtedly," he replied. "If word gets out that you've seized the operation…" And he drew his thumb across his neck. "Better ensure that doesn't happen."

"Based on what my people have told me, I'm going to take a wild guess and say nothing's ready to be shipped out; correct?"

Marcel nodded.

"Why not?"

"Perfection, of course. My benefactors and I agree that only the highest quality product can be allowed to go on sale."

"It's already the highest quality I've ever seen."

"Much appreciated."

"When is the next shipment of surplus medical supplies coming in?"

"Two days from now," he answered with a shrug, then folded his arms. "Or maybe never. What makes you think we didn't hit a silent alarm? After all, your brutes were hardly subtle."

"That's for us to deal with. You're help's been much appreciated. "Then before he could reply, Shepard added, "I should go."

Her omni-tool was putting a call through to the operations centre seconds after leaving the lockup.

A fresh-faced technician answered. "What can I do for you, Commander?"

Shepard rolled her eyes at the casual use of her former rank. "I need you to scrub through all the transmissions leaving the station since we arrived; check for any abnormalities. I've got reason to believe a distress signal may have been sent to Arcturus station in that time."

"Right away, Commander!"

Shepard had to get a lid on this before it spiralled out of control. They were hiding right under the Alliance's nose, helped by the fact that no-one would even contemplate the facilities existence, let alone search it. It seemed that was also, in part, thanks to the cabal on the station ensuring it continued to fly under the radar to keep their shady side hustle a secret. If something got out that could draw attention to the facility in any way, Shepard and all the personnel she was charged with keeping safe, would be screwed.

Shepard took lunch—or was it dinner?—in Rasa's office while browsing the extranet for information on Simpson Porter, trying to determine his outward reputation. He was listed on the Terra Firma website under the personnel of note section, all the way at the bottom below Saracino, Staci and Stephi Strong—the so-called 'Terra Firma Twins'—and a number of others, hidden in the periphery of the party. She took a short detour to Staci and Stephi's profiles, admiring the retro style pin-up propaganda they were heavily featured in; her mind dipped into lewd territory for a brief second before she wrangled herself back on topic. Another click through to Porter's profile revealed it to be as sterile, professional, and devoid of any useful information as she guessed. Several other social media profiles Shepard was able to dig up mirrored the same deliberately inoffensive tone of the first, and the scarce news articles portrayed a painfully mundane politician. Shepard, therefore, immediately believed Marcel's assertion that he was dirty.

Shepard spun the chair round to face the breath-taking view of Themis outside, stretching and yawning. She'd spent the majority of her time since getting back from Cyrene attempting to catch up on galactic events from the last two years, familiarise herself with her new colleagues and Cerberus as a whole, and partook in some light cyber-stalking of her old crew. Her skull felt like it was going to pop like a melon under a hydraulic press; she hadn't taken in that much information in such a short time since cramming for exams.

Shepard then got an idea; a stupid idea. She brought up her omni-tool, entering the extranet address for Liara's information brokerage with a request for dirt on Porter. Obviously, she couldn't reveal her true identity without drawing attention to the operation… Would that be such a bad thing? To see Liara again. All of Shepard's original contact info, extranet address, and omni-tool serial number were all with her original self, wherever she was, and the IP address of the facility would be somewhere immediately associated with her. Even if she couldn't send a personal message, maybe a professional one would be enough. Surely passing contact was better than none at all?

Shepard sent the message.

The technicians came back to Shepard later that day to inform her that no obvious signs of a distress signal had been sent, but the flood of comms traffic made burying a message in the noise highly likely. Shepard chose to go into their encounter with the delivery shuttle assuming it was loaded up with Alliance marines, or mercenaries.

They'd tracked the shuttle's course to the secondary hanger located nearest the lab, and Volyov had positioned his team at all the entrances. Shepard and Volyov himself were inside, tucked away behind a stack of crates and safely enclosed in their armour. The mass effect field keeping that atmosphere inside this particular hanger was on the fritz, keeping anyone who wanted the water vapour and gas to remain inside their bodies away, and making it idea for clandestine deliveries.

Shepard's faceplate HUD informed her the shuttle was two minutes out.

"I've been getting up to speed over the last few weeks," she said, "and I looked into your record."

Volyov's helmet continued its expressionless observation of the hanger. "There aren't a lot of opportunities out there for guys like me, and I reckon this is my last."

"There are all sorts of—"

"Don't. People on Earth fetishize the military, and yet veterans are tossed to the curb. They took me in as a substitute for prison and taught me to harness my anger, embrace the bitterness I felt for life, and pointed me at the enemy. People dismissed me as a 'problem child' and a criminal, then the military twisted me into a weapon. Getting Six'd was inevitable."

"Why join Cerberus?"

"Believe it or not, I tried to get help after my discharge, but none of the veterans care organisations wanted to deal with someone dishonourable, my chequered past made it hard to get any other job, and what little savings I had ran dry. Cerberus was my shot in the dark—that or a return to crime. You can see how that worked out."

The hanger doors laboured apart and a blinking blue mass effect field attempted to hold the atmosphere together, letting pressure out in coughs. An Alliance Navy blue Kodiak dropped into view, reoriented to match the plane of the station, then glided to a soft stop on the far side of the room. Shepard zoomed the helmets sight. Six figures disembarked in the recognisable formation of a trained unit of marines, clad in their signature dark blue camouflage print armour and wielding M8 Avenger rifles.

"That settles it then." Volyov unfolded the Harrier assault rifle that clung to the back of his armour. "We have an overwhelming advantage, and can toss the bodies into the incinerator when we're done."

Shepard reset her view and unfolded her own Avenger. "At least act like you're not the person everyone's written you off as," she told him. "We take them alive."

She then called the ops centre, and the same technician from earlier, Park Sun-Mi, answered. "Hey, Hey, Shepard!"

"I need you to seal the hanger doors and invert the arti-grav plating inside for three seconds, then switch it back."

"Aye, aye!"

The call cut off, and Shepard and Volyov activated their mag-boots. The closing doors caught the marines attention for a split second before Shepard suddenly felt herself flipped upside down; the shuttle and two of the marines dropped like boulders, smashing into the deckhead, then crashed back onto the deck when the gravity reset. Shepard seized the opportunity, hopping out of cover, weapon drawn, and baring down on the recovering Alliance personnel. Volyov followed, and the rest of his squad from the multiple entrances a beat later.

Two marines held the perimeter while two attended their injured squad-mates.

Only when Shepard was sure the situation had somewhat stabilised into an uneasy standoff did she return her rifle to her back and approach, hands raised. Conscious of them recognising her voice from various promotional vids or extranet clips, she modulated the tone of the helmets external speakers enough to throw them off without sounding obviously synthetic. She had to establish if they were in on the conspiracy, or here under false pretences.

"Stand down and you won't be harmed," she said.

"You're Cerberus!" The marine with a colonel rank insignia said. "How did you—"

"Ex-Cerberus. We're here seeking refuge from the Illusive Man, and we only wish to be left in peace to live in safety."

The colonel's body language stiffened further. "And why would ex-Cerberus personnel being manufacturing drugs on an abandoned mining facility if not for some nefarious reason?"

False pretences, it was.

"If you'll standdown and let my medical personnel treat your wounded," Shepard suggested, "I'll show you definitive proof that members of your own government and military hierarchy have been experimenting with the disenfranchised of this facility to create the drugs."

"Okay, so…no."

"Well, it's happening anyway; we have you surrounded, complete control of the environment, and numbers and positioning advantage."

Shepard gestured to her soldiers, and they proceeded to take the uninjured marines and pilots into custody, and the injured across to the infirmary. She watched from off to the side, wondering if it was even possible to keep their presence here secret, or at least unnoticed, until the Alexander was repaired. There had to be abandoned mining facilities like rain drops in a storm out in the Terminus Systems. Space is huge, and somewhere would've been just as safe with a fraction of the risk.

The Colonel stayed behind to ensure her squad were treated accordingly, and was the last one to be led out. A clock began ticking in the back of Shepard's mind; it wouldn't be long before the team failed to report in and the military presence around Arcturus ramped up. If the Alliance brass sent any more firepower, they'd be overrun without much resistance and the Alexander would be trapped in the Kupier Belt. As a precaution, Shepard took the time to compile a detailed report of the situation for Captain Montez. Maybe it would help them escape successfully, because someone deserved a second chance to remake themselves away from the toxic influence of Cerberus.

Shepard's time on the station had been somewhat eye opening. She'd seen her fair share of the injustice of the galaxy, the acts big and small of evil sentient being were capable of committing, yet it was the state of the facility and those who called it home that struck right to her heart. Seeing a place like this out in the Terminus was easier to dissociate from owing to the harsh, inhospitable, lawless nature of the frontier, but seeing it allowed to manifest at the very core of Humanity… One could look out the nearest window and see the decadence of Arcturus Station glimmering in the distance. And to think they only time anyone remembered the suffering on the facility, it was to run experiments on people abandoned by the system.

Shepard looked down at the plastic tray with her half-eaten lunch in front of her; it tasted sour. She took it and stood, turning for the recycler to find a trio of scientists from the drug lab. They crowded her like starstruck groupies.

"C-C-Commander Shepard," the one in the middle said, "we saw you come in for food a-and wanted to just say thank you!"

"It's no problem at all," Shepard replied, happy to see them looking healthier and in higher spirits, but wanting to get back to Rasa's office to deal with the spiralling situation around them. "If you'll excuse me, I should…go…"

A sharp sting in her forearm turned to soaring euphoria, and Shepard's body went limp, floating up into the air as if some unseen hand scooped her from the walls of a playhouse. She rose up through the deckhead into the infinite cosmos. She smiled. Space! Without a suit! She could touch the exterior of the facility with her bare hand, smell the void—a scent like cherry cola. Her chest and shoulders bounced as she giggled silently. Released from her mortal coil, Shepard was free.

The universe pinched, warped, rushed past at incredible speed, and Shepard found herself sat at a table across from both of her parents. She caught her reflection in the a glass, and looking back was her ten-year-old self.

A/N: So, I realised I'd made a mistake in the last chapter. Shepard knows Tela's corrupted despite not going through the events of Lair of the Shadow Broker, and she somehow knows Tela's working for them despite Rasa never telling her. I didn't even notice until reading over the first paragraph of this chapter. Oops.

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