Chapter 01
Jane Shepard
"Wake up, Commander!"
THOOM!
"Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now—this facility is under attack."
Shepard brought a hand to her head as a nearby explosion rocked the gurney on which she lay; it felt like Wrex was using her skull as a basketball. Sterile, harsh white lights burned her eyes as she forced them open, greeted by a row of slanted windows that pulsed with the coloured lights of exchanged laser and thermal clip fire.
Another explosion.
"Shepard, your scars aren't healed, but I need you to get moving." The voice was feminine, urgent, distant and spoken through an intercom unit with that characteristic synth tone. "This facility's under attack."
Shepard hauled herself into a sealed position and swung her legs over the side, slipping onto them and dropping to the ground with a meaty thud. She spent some time working feeling back into them, then successfully stood.
"Grab the pistol and armour from the locker," the mysterious voice commanded. "You don't have time to wait around, Shepard! Grab your weapon and armour!"
Military training kicked in and she complied; there wasn't time to ask questions. She knew the immediate situation and danger it represented, and cracked the locker door to find a set of armour and an M-3 Predator inside. She pulled on the skin-suit and attached the armour in a precisely practiced dance that, to her inner pride, lasted a curt two minutes. The pistol was light when she picked it up and a quick check of the chamber confirmed as much.
"This pistol doesn't have a thermal clip," she said to the omniscient voice.
"It's a med-bay," was the reply. "We'll get you a clip from…damn it! Those canisters are going to blow! Get behind cover, now! Keep your head down, Shepard! Shield yourself from the blast."
Shepard spun and clocked the canisters by the far door spraying jets of fire as she dove. An explosion threw bits of shrapnel and debris over her head, soft clinking rained down on the surface she crouched behind.
"Someone's hacking security trying to kill you," the voice explained. "Look for a thermal clip for your pistol."
The door was mangled, slit apart, one side trying and failing to open. Beyond was a second, locked door. Shepard emerged from cover and crossed to it, stepped through into the corridor beyond and retrieved a handful of thermal clips from a bloodied body beyond, slotting one into her pistol. The previously red door controls blinked to green and a little tone announced its opening. Beyond was a makeshift barricade constructed from tables and chairs and crates—whatever could be pulled together on short notice—and the walls plastered with the familiar logo of Human supremacist group and terrorist organisation: Cerberus. Shepard had no idea why she'd woken up in a Cerberus facility or how she got there. Her memories were murky, reduced to sparse sounds and fleeting images. The Normandy was on fire, alarms blaring, the crew sprinted…somewhere. Liara came up behind her, telling her something, but she couldn't hear the words.
"Looks like they set up a barricade to try holding the mechs off," the voice cut in. "Look out."
Across the room, plodding from the doorway, a pair of LOKI Mechs descended the far staircase, pivoting towards her and levelling M-4 Shuriken's at her, squeezing off burst fire that pinned her down behind the table. Table shavings snowed on her, sparks arced above her head. The fire was relentless—until it wasn't. Guns fell silent as the familiar sound of reloading triggered Shepard's reflexes and she popped from cover, dumping a hail of rounds into them and ejecting the glowing spent clip. The two mechs crumpled to a glitching, twitching pile of junk on the floor.
"Keep moving. We need to get you to the shuttles."
And she did, bolting up the stairs to the next room: a lab of some kind.
"Shepard! Security mechs are closing in on your position. Take cover!"
The equipment she ducked down behind looked expensive, state-of-the-art. She hope no-one would begrudge her when they found it full of holes on Monday morning. The intense conical blast of a cutting torch sliced through the doors like butter and they fell apart. Four mechs providing cover fire for each other diffused into the room. Shepard blinked out of cover and popped the head off one, caught the second in the shoulder, and the third centre mass to no effect. They advanced; unrelenting. She shimmied round to a slightly different position, then opened fire. The first stumbled back and collapsed to a wreck on the floor, the second was damaged badly and continued on for another two steps before exploding, taking the final two with it. Shepard reloaded.
"Nice work, Shepard. The coast is clear."
She proceeded onward, out into the corridor beyond. The damage was evident out here: blast marks, sparking panels and consoles, blood and guts and bodies strewn everywhere. A window at the end of the corridor cut her off from a raging fire subsisting on the bodies of fallen personnel. As she approached, a hazy silhouette formed the shape of a hulking YMIR Mech. She froze. The likelihood that the window could sustain the punishment the mech could throw at it was slim. But there wasn't time to test the theory. Shots twanged off its armour from back down the hallway and it lumbered round on the spot and disappeared back into the flames, leaving the echoes of mass accelerator fire in its wake.
Shepard's heart drummed against the inside of her chest plate.
"Don't waste time. I can't keep the mechs distracted for long."
She crammed her fear into a locked chest in the very back of her mind and forged on to the next room. Inside were more dead personnel, this time carrying heavy weapons—an M-100 Grenade Launcher.
"More reinforcements heading your way. Grab the grenade launcher off the security officers body." A pause. "Here come the mechs. Use the grenade launcher to take them out."
The door ahead exploded inward, rupturing a series of large drums lining the left side of the room. Shepard swung the launcher up and fired. The drums exploded, the mechs bearing down on her exploded, her shields flickered blue around her under the strain of the impact. Fires raged, secondary explosions popped off at random, the fire suppression system remained dormant.
"Take the elevator down one floor. Hurry! Get to the door! Run!"
The next room after that was a walkway crossing over a series of multiple floors. A squad of mechs on an adjacent balcony were laying down crossfire on a lone security officer crouched behind the railing. Shepard sent the remaining two grenades arcing through the air towards the aggressors and switched to her pistol. Two mechs were still operational and riddled the security officer; he swayed and toppled over the railing. Crunching thuds were heard all the way to the bottom. Shepard destroyed the final two mechs and pushed on, heavy with guilt over failing to save him.
Eery emptiness filled the next several minutes of her escape; no mechs or living personnel or sounds that weren't muffled by who knows how many bulkheads. The deeper the reprieve, the tighter the tension. The corridors stretched out ahead of her like some labyrinthine maze, every door opened to a new seemingly endless corridor.
She stopped, arms falling limp at her side, and looked up; a massive gash was ripped in the deckhead of the Normandy CIC. A looming icy planet peered in at her like a giant eye. Chairs, tablets, debris, bodies hung lazily in vacuum. A support beam pierced the flickering, glitching galaxy map. What happened to her ship?
Directional markers were erected at every junction, so she never felt lost and anchored herself with them to get her through to the one door marked Hanger.
It opened into a colossal hanger bay that was littered with Cerberus shuttles and equipment, soldiers and mechs. Some dawned armour and others in simple fatigues. Bodies and blood and shell casings were everywhere. The stench of burning oil and chemicals turned the air to tar. A harsh, unrelenting storm punched its way into the far end of the hanger, drenching that closest to the door with thick rainfall. She flinched as the noise stabbed at her ears, all screaming for dominance.
"Shepard!" Her eyes were drawn to a dark-skinned woman with an English accent—she was the one from the intercom—and long, black hair. She was dressed in a set of navy blue combat fatigues and hunkered behind a barricade blocking off the gaping maw of a Cerberus shuttle. Half a dozen others were with her, taking pot shots at the advancing Cerberus soldiers and mercs below. "Up here! C'mon, we don't have much time!"
Shepard's body surged into action. The pistol she wielded had no chance of putting a dent in the shields and armour of the attackers, so she holstered it and put all her energy into running, ducking and weaving, dodging through the messy hanger. Bullets impacted all around her. A grenade licked at her shields. She charged up the ribbed metal floor towards what she could only hope was safety.
All at once the defenders folded in on themselves to be swallowed up by the closing pressure door after Shepard barrelled past them into the shuttle. It wobbled as it rose, thrusters blinking on and off as the pilot levelled their ascent. Shepard slammed into the nearest chair and strapped in, as did the others, right as the shuttle blasted forward and g-forces stomped her into the cushioning for a brief second before the mass effect fields became fully operational.
The hanger wall slid away to reveal a stifling cover of thick, grey clouds raining violently down on a sprawling forest canopy below. The shuttle tipped back and climbed, climbed, climbed. Clouds closed in around them before falling away, replaced by perfectly clear blue sky that faded to shard speckled black. They jolted hard. Ahead of them were two Cerberus frigates and a cruiser that had surrounded and were closing in on another cruiser, exchanging fire with them. Fighters zipped around like hornets. Strobing lasers turned the cabin into a budget nightclub, torpedoes exploded in brief flickers of fire put out immediately by the vacuum.
Why were Cerberus ships shooting at each other? Why was she here? The danger of the battle seemed so far away like they were watching it from the comfort of her old apartment on Intai'sei. The adrenaline pulsing through her veins stopped her questions from becoming too probing as a part of her animal brain remained focused on each and every shot that came perilously close to blowing them up.
The shuttle zigzagged and looped. Enemy fighters would fall in behind them and Shepard would hold onto the safety railings like a child on their first rollercoaster until one of the 'friendly' fighters drove it off. Her fellow passengers were a pick 'n' mix of every terrified behaviour you could imagine, their fight instinct from the ground battle draining to reveal only flight as they trusted in their pilot to navigate the shitshow of explosions, munitions, and debris outside.
The outnumbered cruiser grew and grew and grew. A split appeared in the side and drew a semi-transparent membrane over the gash that was the starboard hanger bay.
"Hold on," the woman from the intercom said, white knuckling the safety brace.
The shuttle passed through the air tight mass effect field and came to a rough, bumpy stop in a set of docking arms that hooked into latches on the hull, umbilical's seeking out their ports with mechanical efficiency. The engine wound down and a second, smaller bump announced the connection of the jet bridge. The door control panel blinked from red to green, informing them it was safe to disembark.
A light chirping buzzed in the woman's forearm and she activated her omni-tool. "Are you safe?" came a gruff voice over comms.
"And secure," she replied. "Go."
The shuttle door slid out and waved open. A hit to the cruiser shook the personnel getting out of their chairs and heading out in a professional, orderly manner. Shepard's first instinct was to go with them, take charge of the situation, but she instead stayed strapped into her chair. The deck jolted underfoot, she came up behind Joker in the cockpit. He stubbornly remained glued to the pilots chair, working futilely at the intermittently fuzzing flight controls. She grabbed his shoulder to steady herself and announce her presence.
"C'mon, Joker! We have to get out of here!"
"No! I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!"
"The Normandy's lost. Going down with the ship won't change that."
"Yeah… Okay. Help me up." He reached out to make it easier for her to grab him and took one last look at the failing readout. "They're coming around for another attack."
A massive beam of washed out yellow cut into the CIC like a blowtorch and eviscerated everything inside. Shepard turned back to watch helplessly as her ship, her home, was torn apart by an unknown being for an unknown reason. After everything they'd been through and all the close calls they'd shared, this was how it ended.
She turned back as the ship bucked and roughly grabbed Joker's arm. "Ah! Watch the arm!" he groaned as she yanked him from his chair.
They hobbled aft to the airlock. Shepard punched out to the escape pod controls and the wall slid away as the doors opened up. She fed him into the bright white light of safety while the aft section of the ship was torn away and the beam made its way forward, bucking Shepard away like a rodeo rider. She threw her arm back at the last second and scraped the panel, commanding the pod to slam shut and launch. Pain exploded in her back and she cried out into her helmet, her vision going momentarily bloody. She floated for a moment in the still night, admiring the soundless sight of the Normandy finally coming apart and sinking past her.
Then she heard the hissing of escaping air.
"Shepard!" Slap! "Get it together, soldier!"
Shepard blinked. The woman was standing over her with a scowl carved into her brow.
"Are we…safe?"
"When are we ever really safe?" she replied. "But we managed to escape that last engagement unharmed. Mostly."
"Would you mind answering some questions?"
"After we get you looked over."
Shepard lifted the safety bar. "Can you at least tell me your name?"
"Rasa," she replied. "Ex-Cerberus operator and top of the Illusive Man's shit list—not that he'd admit it. Welcome aboard the Alexander."
None of that meant much to Shepard at this point, but it was a start. For now, she was content to follow along with Rasa until she could take a moment to pick up the scattered pieces of her life. The interior of the Alexander was a carbon copy of an Alliance frigate in terms of layout and design, but swapped the moody blues and blacks, for whites and greys with a hint of orange. The Cerberus logo was plastered everywhere and the crew were content to wear casual fatigues over a formal uniform. Crew members stopped to stare or salute or welcome Shepard aboard as she passed. Repair crews paused mid-fix to gawk. A couple of fatigued, sweat sheened pilots clapped her on the back. They cheered for her and praised her part in the defence of the Citadel against Saren and his Geth. She let it wash over her.
The infirmary was state-of-the-art and packed with injured. Shepard stepped aside to let a nurse slide to her knees beside a crew member bleeding from the head. The other medical staff were too busy to notice them. She glanced over at Rasa, who was chatting animatedly with someone on her omni-tool. This wasn't her first experience with someone doing whatever they could to distract themselves from the pain and suffering around them. Shepard went through a similar thing after Virmire: she powered ahead with the mission to distract herself for failing one of her crew. Not until after they'd defeated Sovereign did she really take the time to work through her emotions surrounding the incident.
A handsome, salt and pepper haired man with heavy bags and dark circles plaguing his eyes approached wearing a medical/scientific tunic. "Good afternoon, ladies," he said in a smooth, husky Chilean accent. "Ah, and the great Commander Shepard, up and about at last. Let me see here." He activated the scanning function on his omni-tool and ran it over Shepard. "Very good," he mused. "The revival and reconstitution has gone off perfectly! I'm detecting some readings consistent with heightened stress and a couple of bumps and bruises here and there, but you're otherwise the perfect picture of health."
With that out of the way, Shepard asked, "do you know what happened to my crew?"
The doctor glanced to Rasa, who was now paying attention. "It's been a little under two years," he said in that voice doctors used when they were trying to convey bad news in a sensitive manner. "Everyone thinks you're dead—and you technically were until a couple of months ago."
The news hit Shepard like the high calibre round from a sniper at point blank range. "Did the others make it?" she asked, mind racing. "What about Joker?"
"All but twenty-one of your crew successfully evacuated," Rasa answered. "Your XO, Pressley, didn't make it."
Shepard slumped back against the bulkhead. "I… Who attacked us? Why?"
"We think it was—"
"That's enough for now," the doctor cut in. "This whole situation is overwhelming for all of us, so let's get Shepard setup in some quarters and let her rest—doctors' orders."
Rasa nodded. "Follow me, Shepard." She tapped the door control. "We've had a cabin set up for you since we acquired the ship."
"Thank you, Doctor…?"
"Alonso Banderas."
Shepard gave his shoulder a supportive squeeze. "Thank you, Doctor Banderas, you're a credit to your staff and the crew."
Rasa led her back out into the corridor to the same fanfare as before. Shepard blocked it all out, her body following on autopilot, as guilt slammed into her psyche like a tsunami against a cliff face. Twenty-one members of her crew were dead. She'd been dead. Their attackers had gotten away with it. Her head spun.
The pair entered an elevator. She could see Rasa telling her something, but the ghostly echoes of her friends drowned her out: Garrus, Wrex, Tali, Liara, Ashley, Kaidan, Joker, Jenkins, Chakwas, Anderson…Pressley. She'd failed them.
Rasa stopped outside an unremarkable door identical to every other one on the ship save for the nameplate that had been slid into the holder: Shepard.
"I've transferred all the necessary locking and entry codes to your omni-tool," Rasa told her. "take as much time as you need to get settled in. We'll be hiding out in the Terminus Systems until we assess and repair all the damage to the ship, so I can't imagine there will be much going on until then."
"Will I be able to contact my crew? The Council? Tell them what happened and that I'm still alive. What about my mother?"
"After the repairs. There are full sets of civilian clothes and some uniforms in the wardrobe—although, I don't know how relevant they are now. Take your time to get yourself situated and centred. Any questions, just ask." Rasa paused, then took a breath. "There are some…complicated issues we'll have to discuss when you're up to it." She held up a hand to freeze her questions. "When you're feeling better; I promise."
Shepard nodded and Rasa strutted off back towards the elevator, omni-tool glowing around her forearm. The room itself was standard issue officers' quarters for a cruiser with a factory fresh quality to it; she doubted anyone had been inside at all after it was initially stocked. She must've been about halfway down the ship due to the blue shifting forward transitioning to the red shifting after in a blurry albeit noticeable divide. Her first order of business was to shut off the suffocating, oppressive lighting and bask in the pulsing blue/red glow.
She stripped off her armour pieces, then the skin suit, then her underwear, and barely got halfway to the bathroom before slumping to the ground and curling up into the foetal position as the pain of her loss overwhelmed her.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this initial chapter. Clone Shepard is very much played as a moustache twirling villain to fit in with the tone of Citadel, and based on what I could find during my research, it's implied that Rasa just kept him sheltered in the mining outpost from the end of Foundation through Citadel, but I thought there were a lot of potentially interesting ideas to dig into by having their story run parallel to prime Shepard, so here it is.