Oh, great, Jack thought. A dubiously sanctioned prison. What could go wrong?
"Jack," Shepard said, bringing him back to reality. His head snapped over to her. "You with us?"
"Yes ma'am," Jack said. "I'm just..."
"Yes," Shepard said. "I know. But this should be simple. We get in, get out with the prisoners. That's it."
"Is this place legal?" Jack asked.
"Mostly," Shepard said. "Like I said: in and out."
"And we're essentially buying this person?" Jack asked, with more than a little judgement.
Shepard took a moment, then answered, "I'm your commander. You'll do what I say when I say it. Understand?"
Jack nodded. His eyes drifted to Samara. She hadn't spoken to him about Morinth. Part of him was offended, as it was her daughter who tied bungie cords around his neck. Another part was absolutely fine with her staying as far away from him as possible; she creeped him out. He also found himself judging her for hunting her daughter, because what the fuck, but... well, he didn't have much room to judge her, did he?
Miranda had given him a thorough file on Pragia, and the allegations of abuse by the guards, borderline extortion racket that they were running, and the sheer amount of former C-Sec officers in their ranks put him on guard. He tensed and flexed his fingers, closing his eyes and seeing rusty handcuffs, abused slaves, and dead Enclave prisoners.
Jack scowled behind his gas mask. He shifted in his seat, began to tap his foot on the floor of the shuttle. Megaton, Rivet City, the Brotherhood - all of them had jails, but the Terminus systems, behind the fancy tech and lights, could be just as bad as anywhere in the Wasteland. An unsanctioned prison, that was an awful idea, but he had some faith in the Commander. Not as much as Tali, maybe, but some, and Shepard had won every firefight she'd gotten herself into before. Things should be fine. Still, he kept tapping his foot.
For the first time, Jack was genuinely pissed with Shepard. He was glad for his mask, because it let him glare daggers into his Commander.
"This is... not ideal," Samara said.
"No," Shepard agreed. "It isn't."
He had joked about it, but Cerberus including dental in their benefits wasn't something he was ungrateful for. Nor was it something he was going to get when he was locked in another goddamn cell in an attempt to buy someone and kill another for some crazy monks. Fuck. This.
Jack approached the door of the cell and banged on it, drawing the attention of the guard.
"Let me out." He growled.
The guard turned to him and laughed. "Or what?"
"Or I'll decorate the wall with your intestines and feed them to a varren." Jack said venomously. The guard took a step back.
"Get someone in here," he said, "We've got another psycho!"
Jack could feel Shepard and Samara's eyes on him, but he was too angry to care.
The opening of the door bought them the chance to escape, and Jack made sure to single out the guard and back him into a corner, his pistol leveled between the guard's eyes.
"Hey, man..." the guard said. "... I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!"
"Jack," Shepard said from behind him. "Calm down. Let's get some information out of him."
Jack fired twice.
"Jack!" Shepard said. She turned him around and yelled, "I told you to stand down!"
"No," Jack said. "You didn't. And you nearly got us fucking enslaved. Do you know what that's like? I do. I didn't earn my freedom back to have it taken away by thugs."
"I suppose I didn't," Shepard said, regarding him for a moment. "Explicitly, anyway. Still, I won't stand for insubordination. Are we clear?"
"Yes ma'am," Jack said.
"I made a bad call," Shepard said. "And I apologize for that. You and Samara are my responsibility and I got you into this situation. I'll also get you out, I promise."
Jack believed her. Kind of. He said, "Yes ma'am."
Pragia was a tougher nut to crack than it ought to have been, with the guards locking doors, throwing together barricades, and well-positioned to fight defense. They were coordinated, disciplined, and surprisingly well armed. There were often overlapping fields of fire, at least two layers of guards per room, and plenty of robotic dogs to cause trouble. It was almost a relief to let the prisoners loose and cause a prison riot.
Still, in the end, it didn't much matter. Even as Samara had to peel away to find Morinth, Jack took point and Shepard picked apart the rest from a distance. After fighting through more hallways, cell blocks, and even break rooms, the pair of them found their prospective crew member cornered by the prison warden.
She was bald, covered in tattoos, and cursed vociferously. Jack wasn't terribly impressed.
She fought recklessly, failing to take cover when it presented itself and only skating by on the sheer scale of her biotics. That was something Jack had to respect, at the least. In the way he respected an Enclave hit squad, but still respect. All the same, if Shepard hadn't intervened, Jack knew the prisoner would have been killed. Jack was in cover, and the warden had taken up a rocket launcher. He had the prisoner caught out in the open, chest heaving, bleeding from a head wound, when Shepard shouted:
"Hey! If you're gonna shoot at anyone, shoot at me!"
The warden obliged. Shepard shot the missile out the air and gave Jack a signal to go to the prisoner, who had finally developed enough sense to get into cover.
Jack approached slowly, glancing around before holstering his weapons. He took out a patch of medi-gel and held it out in front of him, taking things one step at a time. The prisoner had lost her gun and was also clutching her shoulder, but her hand couldn't cover up all of the blood that had already darkened the jumpsuit.
The prisoner glared at him, curling her lip. Jack simply tossed her the medi-gel, which she applied after only one moment where she looked like she wanted to kill him.
When all was said and done, the warden was dead, most of the guards had fled, and most of the other prisoners were also dead. They still hadn't found Mornith, but at least they hadn't actually bought someone, which was something.
While Shepard negotiated terms with the prisoner, Jack checked the perimeter, picking off the few guards that were left whether they were running or not, and he was about to turn a corner when he heard a curse behind him. Jack rounded and there Morinth was. Neither of them said anything before Jack began the chase.
But Morinth was injured in the leg, trailing blood behind her, which lead Jack to a trashed cell with Morinth collapsed against the wall. He thought she would have done something, anything, but instead she just looked up at him in pain. Jack quickly noticed the reason she wasn't trying to defend herself: one wrist was twisted the wrong way, as was the joint of the other arm. All the while, blood pooled from the wound in her leg.
Jack trained his pistol between her eyes, but didn't fire. It wasn't that they had a night together - mostly - but something else that stayed his trigger finger. He closed and opened his eyes. He breathed in and out slowly. He should have shot her; it would be a mercy: he had killed people for far, far less. But -
Bittercup, crying over the pregnant raider's body -
His father, telling him how proud was that he'd saved Megaton -
Dr. Li, telling him the Brotherhood was using him -
Werner, asking him to help save his people -
He had murdered for less. Morinth's eyes were widening even as she winced from her own coughs. Jack's arm began to shake, his fingers began to tremble. Samara was coming. Better he do it than her, right? Spare Samara from killing her own daughter, spare Morinth from being killed by her own mother?
"James," his mother had asked hoarsely, "Why?"
Jack shut his eyes, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't lower his arm, either. How long he stood there, arm trembling, hand shaking, barely breathing, he didn't know.
Eventually, Samara appeared beside him, and she shot Morinth once in the head. Gently, she lowered his arm and took away his pistol.
"It's over," she said.
But it wasn't. Not for Jack.
"Sure you want to do this?" Mordin asked. "Handgun is antique. Could fetch a good price."
Jack swallowed thickly. In truth, he had picked up the thing maybe a day or two before he got in this mess; all of his first weapons were long gone, lost to the wastes or abandoned by himself. It was special. Then again, it was. Cerberus had radiocarbon dated it, and it was physically older than anything else here. It was proof in his hands that he wasn't crazy, that what he had lived was real. Perhaps that made him crazy to let it go, but...
Jack placed the pistol on the ground alongside the other trash. Then he stepped back, the airlock shut, and out it went. Mordin put a hand on his shoulder, but Jack shook it off.
His walk back to his quarters was silent. He raised his hood to better hide his face. He passed Garrus on the way, who he regarded, for once, without any hostility. The turian seemed surprised. He passed Jacob, who clapped him on the shoulder and said he was there if he needed to talk about things. Jack didn't have it in him to thank Jacob; he only just had it in him to keep walking at all. He fisted his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie as he turned a corner, and then he found himself face to face with Tali.
"Shepard told me what happened," Tali said. "Enough of it."
Jack nodded, then wove around her. His mind was swirling with too much for him to properly express or explain. So, instead, he arrived at his room, opened the door, and began to hum.
He sat down on his bed and began to sing.
"I love coffee, I love tea," he was out of tune. "I love the java jive and it..." he swallowed, then restarted. "I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive and..." he trailed off. Jack shook his head. "I love coffee, I love tea, I love the java jive..."
He tried again and again, but he sang less each time, until he broke down into tears.