Chapter Text
The first thing Jane Shepard noticed when her eyes opened was that the whole world was painfully bright. The room felt like it was spinning and it took quite a bit of restraint to fight the rising bile that burned her throat. The combination of dizziness and nausea was enough to keep her from immediately slipping back into the tempting arms of unconsciousness. It took several moments for the daze to start to shed away, and even more still for Shepard to actually come back to herself enough to form a coherent thought.
She was alive. Exhausted and in some pain, but alive. Where was she? As the world began to solidify around her, her breathing became quick, greedy for the oxygen she had been so desperate for seconds ago. Her heart was loud in her ears. With some effort she willed herself to move, to confirm that the slowly returning sensation in her limbs was real and not some last second synapses firing right before she chocked to death. She let herself lean heavily against the table she had been resting on, legs too numb to keep her upright on their own. Seconds passed. She was still there. Still in the same chilly room, body protected by nothing but a thin layer of cloth. She was definitely alive.
That couldn’t be right though. She’d been there just a second ago – floating useless through the stars while her suit’s precious oxygen leaked away. The memories were coming back slowly, as was the feeling in her extremities. It didn’t make any sense – she remembered dying. Well, she remembered the devastating realization that she was doomed to perish in the wreck of the Normandy before the world had gone dark. It hadn’t hurt, not really. Not like she’d always expected it might. But her suits oxygen had been compromised – she could still hear the hissing release. There was no way she should have been alive. So, how was it that she could feel her own heart pounding away in her chest and air being sucked into her lungs? They’d been burning for breath just a minute before as she’d fought to greedily suck up every last bit of oxygen her damaged suit had held onto. So how the hell was she there, eyes open and air in her lungs?
Realistically, the how didn’t matter much for the time being. The first step was figuring out where she was. The more that the heaviness that was settled over her subsided, the more room there was for panic to squeeze in. It was the muffled sound of what seemed like an explosion that got her moving, forcing partially numb arms to hoist herself up to sit upright. She felt like she was underwater as she fought to keep herself upright, her muscles apparently not fond of the idea of her trying to push herself to stand. It felt Herculean to fight against her own body’s will, but after a minute of struggle Shepard managed to hold herself upright long enough to survey the room.
At first glance, it looked like a hospital of some sort. Alright, she could work with that. A hospital made sense, given her last memory was watching her ship blown to pieces by…something? Geth. She’d been on the Normandy, hunting down geth. The images were coming back in flashes – the Normandy shaking and coming apart, engineering on fire. Joker, just barely making it to the escape pod before the entire ship was blown to pieces. Joker. The thought of her helmsman’s face, wide eyed with terror as her grip on the Normandy was loss. Her legs buckled like they were going to give out under her as it all came rushing back.
Hopefully, whoever the hospital belonged to wasn’t too upset by the fact that she’d vomited on the pristine white floor. The image of Normandy’s fiery demise and the all too real memories of suffocating in her own suit pushed her over the edge, unable to fight back the wave of sickness that had threatened her since she’d opened her eyes. The sounds of her retching echoed in the tiny room. Leaning heavily against the table she used her now free hand to hold the mess of red back. Her hair was longer than she remembered.
Shepard wiped her mouth with the back of her hand with a grimace, only to find herself doubled over once again when the room gave a violent shake. Was she on a ship? Medical transport made sense, but then where the hell was everyone? Another shake, but this time she managed to hold herself back from retching up sourness.
For better or worse, the question didn’t hang in the air for long. “Shepard! Shepard can you hear me?” The voice that came from the speakers overhead had a strange familiarity to it. High, feminine, and with a strong accent that she couldn’t quite place. “I need you to get up, this station is under attack.” Despite the warning, her voice was calm. So she was in a medical station, and it was under attack. Of course it was.
Her legs felt like jelly as she slowly made her way across the room to retrieve the pistol and clothing that her mysterious helper directed her to. It took far too much effort to redress herself and reload the pistol, but the routine gave her a second to get a sense of her bearings. If they were under attack, she needed to get herself together. Deep breaths. She inspected the weapon, her free hand had curling into a fist, fingernails digging white crescents into the flesh of her palm. Whatever the hell was going on, she could figure it out after she’d escaped whatever was going on outside. The here and now was about survival. Pull yourself together, Shepard. She’d get out of this.
“Someone’s hacked the system’s security – they’re trying to kill you. They’re sending security mechs to your location. We have to get you to the shuttle, Commander.” Following a mysterious, somewhat familiar voice was better than running blind through a station out for her blood, she supposed. Equally risky, at least.
The room the voice had directed her to was alive with gunfire, the first confirmation that she wasn’t alone here. She was quick to move to cover, sliding behind the barricade where a lone figure was in the process of reloading a pistol similar to her own. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the shock that passed over his face when he saw her.
“Shepard?” So, he knew who she was. “What the hell are you doing here?” His brown eyes searched her face for a moment before realization dawned on him, lips stretching into a scowl. “Fuck, it’s that bad?” He paused, popping up for a second to empty a clip into one of the LOKI mechs approaching them. She followed suit. Thankfully, the mechs that had been sent to take her down weren’t particularly advanced. Despite whatever had happened to her between Alchera and here she found that she could still aim a gun well enough. That was comforting. “I thought you were still a work in progress. Miranda wouldn’t have you up and running if she thought we could get this under control.”
Miranda. The name had the same sort of dreamy familiarity as the voice that had been directing her from the medical wing. It brought back a vague memory of bright blue eyes staring down at her, lips pursed with concern as she spoke to someone nearby, though the words were muffled in her mind. The woman had definitely been talking to someone though. William? Wilson? Honestly, she couldn’t recall much beyond her heart racing, eyes frantically searching the room to make sense of things before slipping back into darkness.
“Shit, sorry. I forget this is all new to you.” The man crouched beside her again after throwing one of the mechs into the air with impressive force. A biotic, then. “Jacob Taylor. I’m with Miranda. Not a lot of time to explain, but I’ll answer whatever you want once we get you to the shuttle. We can’t lose you now.” The last words would have given Shepard pause were it not for the fresh wave of LOKI mechs swarming the doors pulling her attention away.
“Right. Your station, you lead.” If Jacob Taylor turned out to be leading her to trouble, she’d deal with it when the time came. But she had absolutely no intention of being inside of a spaceship as it fell apart again if she could help it.
“Follow me. If we’re lucky, Miranda has already got the shuttle ready to launch. We just have to clear a path through the service tunnels and head for the control room.” She nodded, indicating that Jacob should lead on once the last LOKI sputtered and exploded to bits.
The hallways of the facility were impeccably kept, save for the destroyed LOKIs scattered around. Based on just how long they were running, it was a big facility as well. Beyond that though, the place seemed largely unremarkable. The clinical decoration gave very little clue as to where the hell she actually was, which was more than a little frustrating. She really didn’t like being in the middle of so many unknowns. Taylor was going to have quite a few questions to answer when they finally reached safety. The mysterious Miranda too, if they found her.
“Taylor! Shepard! Down here!” A man’s voice called out to them as the pair rushed into the dimly lit service hallway. Behind a stack of crates, a bald man was cowering, hands pressed firmly to a dark spot on the fabric of his grey pant leg. “Thank God. Those fucking bastards got me in the leg,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
“Alright, just relax. I’ve got some medi-gel, it’ll hold you until the shuttles. Someone at Minuteman will be able to do the rest.” Jacob was already kneeling beside the other man and applying the aforementioned aid with practiced precision. A soldier, then, or at least experienced in the battlefield. It made sense, given his biotic abilities. “Shepard, Wilson. He’s been helping Miranda put you back together.” When the man – Wilson – pulled away his hand, the wound really didn’t look too bad. A gunshot, but an imprecise and rather shallow one. Good. They didn’t have a lot of time to waste.
Jacob’s introduction seemed to upset Wilson, if the scowl on his face were any indication. “I’m not her goddamn assistant, Taylor. I’m the fucking Chief of tech.” He groaned when Jacob pressed the gel into his wound. “Now isn’t the time for explaining all this. We need to get off this goddamn station before it comes apart.” The ship rocked again and she had to hold down a wave of queasiness. Turbulence was going to take some getting reacquainted with. Ideally on a ship not under attack. “I was down here trying to turn the damn mechs off. Whoever got in the system totally fried the controls though, completely irreversible.”
Jacob halted his motions, eyes narrowing with obvious suspicion. “I didn’t ask what you were doing down here.” He sat back slightly, the medi-gel on Wilson’s leg beginning to stitch some of his flesh back together. It was enough to halt the bleeding. “Why do you even have security mech clearance? You’re in the bio wing, only Miranda has the authority to operate mechs in that sector.”
Wilson’s face screwed up in annoyance. “Were you not listening? I was trying to shut down the mechs and fix this mess. Besides, I was shot!” He shoved himself to his feet then, still scowling at Jacob as he did. “Miranda is the one you should be throwing accusations at. For all we know, she’s the one behind this! You said it yourself, she’s the one with the access codes. Where the hell is she anyways? Either she did this, or she’s dead. Last I heard she was in D-Wing, and that place is crawling with mechs. No way she makes it out.”
“A couple of mechs wouldn’t stop Miranda. She’s alive.” Jacob sounded so convinced, it was hard not to believe him.
“Wake the hell up, Taylor! If she was alive, where is she? Why isn’t she on any comm frequency? Either she’s dead, or she’s a traitor!”
Jacob’s jaw tightened at his words. The idea of Miranda being a traitor obviously angered him. Interesting. They must have been close then, or at least on friendly terms – she filed that information away for later. “This project was Miranda’s baby. She wouldn’t abandon it, not for anything.” He sounded more than a little defensive.
There was no mistaking the animosity radiating off the pair, but Shepard really wasn’t overly interested in litigating who was responsible for this mess before she’d even had a chance to find out why she was there to begin with. “You’re both strangers to me.” Her firm voice cut off any argument between the two. “Let’s get to that shuttle and then we can sort out who to blame for whatever is going on. There’s no point in arguing if we get swarmed by mechs. Someone owes me a lot of answers, and I expect to collect – later.” She nodded to Jacob. “Lead the way to the shuttles.”
Both men seem satisfied with dropping the conversation, turning their focus to pushing towards the shuttles rather than bickering. Good. It would have been much harder to escape this alone, especially as they ran into an even heavier and heavier mech resistance. Someone really did not want them getting off the station.
One of the rooms they passed was in their sprint was loud with screaming, windows streaked with blood and gore as an ATLAS mech gunned down a handful of humans in similar uniforms to those of the two companions she’d picked up. The sight had her slowing her gait, only to have Wilson throw a half reprimand over his shoulder.
“Leave them be, Shepard! We don’t have time to save anyone else if we are going to make it out! They’re all already dead!” And maybe Wilson was right, but that didn’t make it feel any better to walk away from such slaughter, strangers or no.
“He’s right – they knew the risks when they signed up. We can’t save them. Getting you off this station is the top priority.” Jacob at least had the decency to sound regretful over it. Still, his particular wording created even more questions. All these people had apparently consented to die to make sure she was unharmed. She didn’t even know who they were.
Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t just a medical ship. It was a medical ship for her. She’d have to reserve judgement on whether that was flattering or terrifying until after they survived.
“The shuttle bay is just through here.” One more obstacle to safety. Or however safe it was to pile into a shuttle full of armed strangers headed from one unknown location to another. At least the weight of whatever sedatives had been keeping her under had fully subsided now. Gunfights did tend to have that effect.
The shuttle bay was large, larger than the narrow service tunnels that had brought them there. It was also considerably more filled with mechs, tens at a time able to swarm from all angles. And it was apparently all to keep her here, if Jacob was to be believed.
Jacob at least was quick on his feet, moving from cover to cover and throwing LOKIs forcefully into the air with ease. Not just a biotic, but a powerful one. Potentially a strong ally, or an respectable adversary. Time would have to tell on that front. Wilson was…less graceful on the battlefield, though she wasn’t exactly expecting much from an obvious non-combatant still limping (a bit dramatically, were she being honest) from a shot to the lower leg.
Between her own quick shots and Jacob’s biotic power, they were able to make relatively quick work of the remaining resistance, freeing up room for Wilson to boot up the shuttle escape sequence. “Right through here. We’re almost to the shuttle. We should be out of here in just a minute, I’ll just need to get the launch sequence up and running before anyone else arrives.” Shepard was impatiently shifting her weight from foot to foot as Wilson rambled on about the shuttle. He was interrupted suddenly by the door sliding open, revealing a woman there with a gun in hand, outstretched towards him.
“Miranda!” Wilson looked like he’d seen a ghost. “But I thought you were-“
Shepard didn’t even have a chance to react before a gunshot brought Wilson’s words to a halt. “Dead?” There was the voice again, the one that had woken her from her sedated stupor. The same bright blue eyes from her half-there memory stared down at the body that had slammed to the floor, seemingly unbothered by Shepard drawing her own gun and pointing at her head. So, this was Miranda.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jacob had taken the words right from her mouth.
Miranda holstered her gun, hands coming to rest on her hips as she looked between them. “My job,” she responded cooly. “Wilson betrayed us all. Set the mechs on the staff and tried to run, the bloody coward.”
So, Jacob’s suspicions hadn’t been unfounded. That was if Miranda could be trusted. Unfortunately, the woman hadn’t really left Shepard the chance to investigate both sides. “You should have taken him alive, see what he knew.” Her gun was still poised in the air – she was not so easily fooled as to think that a holstered gun meant someone was no threat. For all she knew, Miranda was a biotic as well.
Miranda just shrugged at the suggestion. “Maybe, but that would be far too risky. I’ve put too much time and effort into putting you back together to let you die because some incompetent idiot sold us out to the highest bidder.” Her full lips turned down into a frown. “Besides, the bastard sent an ATLAS to kill me. He’s lucky I just shot him.”
Jacob looked somewhere between shocked and displeased. Mostly the latter. “Come on, Miri. You seriously think Wilson of all people was capable of doing all of this? Seriously?” Miri, not Miranda. They were close. Maybe that explained the hostility between Taylor and Wilson. It wasn’t much information, but she’d take anything she could to level the playing field a bit. All she had was names, some half-memories and a promise of answers to work with, whereas everyone else seemed to know her. Anything that helped her put together a picture of who she was dealing with was valuable.
Blue eyes swept over Wilson’s lifeless body with a cold detachment. “Not anymore.” Her gaze flicked back to Shepard, rather unfazed by the pistol aimed at her head. “If we’re done with the theatrics, we need to get off this ship. My boss wants to speak with you.”
Miranda wasn’t the highest in the chain-of-command then.
“We should tell her.” Jacob’s words made Miranda’s face scrunch up as she crossed her arms with an impatient sigh.
“Jacob now really isn’t the time for you to have a crisis of conscience – there could be more mechs here at any second. We can explain on the way.”
“Lying to the Commander isn’t the way to do this and you know it.”
“What difference does it make if we explain here or on the shuttle? We need to get out of here.”
Jacob appeared unconvinced. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Miranda looked as if she was just barely repressing an eye roll. “You’re being ridiculous. The principle doesn’t matter when there’s only one functioning shuttle left on in this wing of the station. It’s not like she has a choice either way.”
“Telling her the truth is giving her a choice, even if the alternative option is a shit one. Consider it a sign of good faith. We need her.” Shepard looked between them, tempering her annoyance at being discussed as though she weren't in the room.
After a second, Miranda heaved a rather dramatic sigh, waving her hand at the other to indicate he should continue. So much for ending the theatrics. “Go ahead, tell her. I’m getting the shuttle ready.” The click of her footsteps echoed as she exited. “Talk fast.”
Shepard lowered her gun as she retreated, turning to Jacob expectantly. Suddenly, he looked uncomfortable, like someone had been unexpectedly selected to deliver bad news. Maybe he was.
“Right. So, this is going to be a bit of a shock. But like I said, I don’t feel good starting this off on such unequal footing. It’s not fair to you, given everything.” It was his turn to sigh. “Miranda and I, we work for Cerberus.”
“Cerberus,” she repeated, to which Jacob nodded confirmation. The name was familiar. “I destroyed Cerberus bases on Binthu.” The whole place had smelled of rot. “They were experimenting on husks. Rachni. What the hell does Cerberus want with me?” Her voice grew slightly louder as she spoke. He had to be joking. Cerberus, a goddamn human supremacist terror group was, what? Trying to recruit her? How had they even managed to get their hands on her?
“That isn’t for me to answer, Commander. We’re taking you to the Illusive Man, he’s in charge of this whole thing. He’s the one who has got answers for you.” She watched him, unimpressed. “I get you don’t trust us; you’ve got no reason to. All I can say is that he spent billions of credits to bring you back, because something is coming after human colonies. It’s worth hearing him out at least.” That made her stand up a bit straighter. Something was attacking human colonies, and Cerberus needed her to stop it, presumably. That still didn’t even begin to satisfy her need for answers, but it was a start.
Maybe Jacob’s apparent noble attempt to clue her in on what was happening was an act to win her trust. It wouldn’t surprise her that a Cerberus operative would have the capacity for that sort of manipulation. Frankly, she expected Cerberus operatives to be capable of much, much worse. The things they had been doing on Binthu were horrific, and that was just one operation.
Maybe Miranda had been in on the whole act, playing the cold counterpart to Jacob’s compassionate honesty. Maybe she was lying about there only being one shuttle left to escape on.
Maybe this so-called Illusive Man wouldn’t tell her a thing. Maybe he’d try to kill her on arrival. Maybe worse.
The ship trembled again.
There were a million uncertainties to consider, but one thing that Shepard was very sure of was that she was not going to choke to death in the remains of an exploded ship again.
“Fine. Let’s get to that shuttle. But I expect a hell of a lot more answers on the way there.”