Post by neutralground on Feb 3, 2013 21:11:25 GMT 1
This fic will tell a unique backstory for my female Shepard, Nicole. It will start with the basic definition of what happened on Mindoir and Akuze--but the timeline's shuffled around a bit, and a very great deal has been added.
I hope you guys enjoy it.
Fanfiction.net link
Where there had once been a shining colony on a lush world, Mindoir was now an ashen scar slashed across the blue-green face of the planet. Rakesh Malhotra turned away from his shuttle window. Approaching a planet was usually inspiring; now he only felt a nascent sense of primal dread. It was too much to look at, to imagine all those bodies. If he were a different kind of man it would make Rakesh weak to his stomach. But Rakesh had seen bodies before. He had been a soldier. Still was. Only now….
Now my mission is more secret, more important … and less honest, he admitted to himself. He didn’t pretend to understand the people he worked for, the shadowy agents of an Alliance black ops codenamed Shadowhill. He just knew that they acted on behalf of humanity, and that was what mattered.
As he looked back out at the charred remains of what had once been a peaceful farming colony, hot tendrils of anger wormed through his chest. The turians at least had their damned sense of honour, but the batarians were just four-eyed, ass-faced freaks with 18th century morals. They’d only left a single little girl alive—just one damned girl.
“Ready for landing,” the pilot warned. Rakesh waved him on from the back of the shuttle. One little ten year old girl had somehow managed to survive. The reports were restricted only to Alliance Black Ops, but apparently she’d taken a pistol from a fallen guard and shot two batarians—right in between their four ugly eyes. Then she’d managed to hide and wait it out. A girl like that … Rakesh’s boss had been interested. So Rakesh was interested.
When the shuttle landed, Rakesh walked out to survey the carnage close-up. Mindoir’s weather was annoyingly pleasant. The grass was an off-bluish green, due to some chemical in the soil or something, but other than that it almost looked like a sunny day back on Earth. Except the prefab buildings were all damaged or demolished, and here and there the grass had been burnt away to reveal blood red earth. Sakesh shielded his eyes from the sun and looked to the only standing building, a relatively large home that had somehow survived the batarian attack and ensuing battle with the Alliance. The girl was there, he knew, under watch until Rakesh got there. Whoever ran Shadowhill had powerful enough connections to make the Alliance wait on his pleasure.
When Rakesh walked into the building, he was struck with
the sudden realization that this had been someone’s home, quickly transformed into a military base of operations; there were faded spots on the wall where personal viewscreens had been hung, and marks on the floor from where the furniture had been dragged out. In their place there was now a small military command center, supplies stashed on one end of the long, narrow room, military computers hastily set up. One soldier was standing guard. She saluted when Rakesh walked in, though she didn’t—couldn’t—know Rakesh’s rank or name. Rakesh’s uniform was identity enough.
“Sir!”
Rakesh nodded in response.
“She’s in there?”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier pointed to a room in the back. “Won’t say a word. Not surprising, I guess.” The soldier looked at a loss. “Poor kid. I’ve got a little boy a couple years younger. Can’t stop thinking about him.”
Rakesh didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t have kids.
“Is it okay for me to go in and see her?”
“I can’t see why not.” The soldier shrugged. “Be careful, though. She might snap or something. I couldn’t blame her if she did, after what she saw.”
Rakesh smiled.
“I’ll be sure to keep my guard up.”
“I’m not joking, sir. That girl does not fuck around. Not another damn soul survived this mess. They all got carted off before we could take it back. She was holed up beneath a prefab for eleven days, just waiting.” Rakesh knew all this.
“Noted,” he muttered. He walked past her and into the small, windowless room.
Inside there was a desk, with two chairs. Nicole was sitting in one, staring at her hands on the desk. She didn’t respond to Rakesh walking in.
“Would it be all right if I took a seat?”
The faintest jerk of her head. A nod, he realized.
He took the opposite seat.
“Hi, Nicole. My name is Rakesh Malhotra. I’m an Alliance soldier.”
Nicole looked up. Her face was blank. He’d seen the same look on soldiers: shock.
“Like the ones that killed the batarians?” She was unusually direct. Her red hair had jumped out at him when he’d come in—some sign of genetic tampering, probably way back in her bloodline from the genetics fad in the late 2070s—but now it was her eyes that pierced him. He’d never seen such green eyes, filled with sharp suspicion in a ten-year-old’s face.
“Not quite.” Rakesh managed a smile. “I’m a special kind of soldier. I work with a lot of other special soldiers, and scientists, at a place far away.”
Nicole’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Rakesh took that as a sign of encouragement.
“What we do is figure out how to make the best soldier possible. How to keep humanity on the edge, so that things like … what happened here,” Rakesh leaned forward and let his hands rest on the table, “Don’t happen again.”
“How?”
Rakesh raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected that. Nicole Shepard’s face remained inscrutable.
“Research, training, hard work. A little experimentation. We do whatever it takes.” Rakesh waited, not for Nicole to say anything, but for her to think. Then he spoke again,
“It’s quite remarkable what you did. You must feel rather awful but it is incredible that you survived. You displayed a real natural talent.”
“My brother always said I was good at sports,” Nicole said distantly. Rakesh got the feeling she wasn’t really talking to him.
“Your brother was a doctor, right? I never met him, but he seems like a good man.”
“He’s the best.”
He was dead. He had been one of the first to die; they’d managed to extract some footage from a blasted security cam that showed him shielding patients with nothing but his arms. It was one of the most stupidly noble things Rakesh had ever seen; but then again, there wasn’t much a doctor could do in the face of guns. He had died without fear. It seemed this girl shared her brother’s fire.
“And … you lived with your mom, too?”
Nicole turned away.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
He waited a while longer. Tried to get the measure of her. She was scared. Pretending to be tough, but still just a ten-year-old girl that had seen everything she’d known massacred. He didn’t envy the person tasked with getting inside her head.
“Nicole, I’ve seen some evaluations. Your report cards, aptitude tests, and the tests they ran when they found you here. You’re a remarkable young woman. If you ask me—” Rakesh raised his eyebrows, as though inviting her to, “—you’d make a remarkable soldier. If you want to, you can come with me. You can come to the program, and become a soldier. A special kind of soldier who will keep things like what happened here from happening.”
Rakesh waited patiently.
“What if I don’t?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve been told you have no next of kin, no one else … I’m afraid you’d be taken to an adoption agency. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m only here to make you an offer. But I can promise you that if you come with me, your life will mean something. Something more.”
Green eyes stared into his.
“Okay.”
XXX
Nicole flew by shuttle back to an orbiting Alliance vessel, and was told she’d be given passage to another Alliance outpost. Rakesh confided to her that she’d be taken from there to another, secret facility, but after that she didn’t see him much. She was left to her own quarters—a space nearly the size of her old home—and was pried at by a psychologist who had come with Rakesh. Nicole ignored him and answered his questions as quickly as she could.
She didn’t know what to do with herself. She curled up on her bed, just sitting, trying not to think. She wanted to do something to distract her mind, but whenever she toyed around with the omnitool they gave her or hooked up to the extranet, it somehow made it worse. She couldn’t read. She only ate when they forced her to.
They arrived one week later in some world in a system Nicole had never heard of. Rakesh emerged from hiding and guided her onto another shuttle, and from there they got on another ship. This one was smaller. Nicole’s quarters here were barely more than a broom closet, but she liked that better anyway. She slept a lot.
She had a port window. When they came out of FTL she saw that they were approaching a meteorite maybe a tenth the size of Earth’s moon. She could see surface-entrances on the ground; most of the installation must have been subterranean.
A chime came out of her omnitool, startling her; she’d left it on the floor of her cramped quarters. She picked the small
device up and affixed it to her wrist.
“You are ordered to proceed to the main docking ramp,” said a bored voice. It wasn’t a question. Nicole didn’t care, so she found her way to the ramp. It was a small ship, and besides, Nicole remembered details. She hated that, now. She needed to forget.
She was walked into a facility with white steel walls and dozens of research areas, labs, and testing chambers. Rakesh had left her the moment they’d entered the facility; an Alliance soldier, hidden by a helmet and hardsuit, marched her along now. The destination of her journey was an office deep inside the complex. The soldier shoved her in, nearly knocking her small body to the floor. Fear flooded her for a moment, before she dismissed it with the same cool calm that had saved her on Mindoir. She was going to be safe here.
The man behind the desk was old, with graying hair and a salt-and-pepper beard.
“Nicole Shepard.” He smiled with his teeth. “My, my. I have heard so much about you. Do you know who I am?”
She shook her head.
“I’m Dr. Gabreau. I’m a behavioural analyst. That means I watch people and figure out why they do what they do. I run this center, and I work with all sorts of scientists to find out how to make the best soldier. That is where you come in.” He picked up a data pad and smiled again, that too-wide smile that somehow made Nicole’s spine tingle. It was cold. “We have all sorts of data on you, Nicole, and you show great promise. You can be great.”
He waited. She realized he was waiting for a response.
“Thank you, sir.”
He smiled congenially.
“You’re welcome. But … I’m going to need one thing from you.” He raised a finger. “Will you give yourself to this program?”
“Yes.” Nicole was certain.
“You don’t know what that means yet. But you know it’s right. That’s the kind of people we need. People who know what’s right,” Gabreau said, a manic twinkle in his eye. It was unsettling. “I’ll ask you one more time.” He flipped a switch on his deck. “For the record. So you’re sure. Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole swallowed. For a moment her throat didn’t work. A sudden impulse gripped her in a vice, warning her, urging her to run. But there was nowhere for her to go. No other answer for her to give.
“Yes.”
XXX
Her quarters at Shadowhill were even smaller than they had been on the ship. Her room was better described as a cell, its floor just long enough for the bed it contained; the bed fitted to a full sized woman. Nicole understood immediately that she was meant to grow up here. It was good. They didn’t send her to her room for much other than sleep, though. The first weeks were tests. Those were easy. They gave her more injections than she could count, and on some level she knew that these were the sorts of genetic modifications that soldiers received. She’d never heard of anyone so young receiving gene therapy, but she didn’t care about that, either.
There were no faces she could remember. She never saw any scientist or psychologist more than once. The days blurred and the nights dissolved into restless sleep. After a while, after they’d gotten enough empty answers, the psychologists stopped coming. She started going to a sort of school, except the room was small, and it was only her and a single teacher behind a pane of glass. She never disobeyed. Something told her that if she did, something terrible would happen. What they taught her was easy. Advanced mathematics, physics, biology and xenobiology. She started learning alien languages. That was harder, but she had lots of time to practice.
In two years’ time she was fluent in the four major dialects of asari, the two primary turian derivatives, and salarian common. She learned the histories of each major council race.
She never saw Rakesh again. Dr. Gabreau visited every now and again during a school session. Nicole had never met another kid in those closed, cold corridors, but she knew there must be some somewhere. They spoke of other students.
She knew one thing for certain. There were no non-humans here. Everything she learned about the turians, the asari, the salarians, even the krogan, was a strict detailing of military history, cultural inclinations, weaknesses, sympathies, and prejudices. She learned about their biology. She was shown corpses, told to cut them up to look inside, identifying organs. She pointed to where she would attack if she had to.
She was taught to use a gun, how to assemble and disassemble one. She was taught how to hack tech, which she’d always been good at. She remembered the time before Shadowhill vaguely, as though her memories were obscured by fog. Looking back hurt, so she focused on the task at hand, and there was always a task at hand. As she started puberty her bodily changes were handled with curt efficiency.
One day, she realized it was her thirteenth birthday. She kept track of the days in her head; unless she was carrying out a specific exercise using an omni-tool or personal computer, she wasn’t allowed any implements herself. Her birthday came to her like a piece of sunken wood floating to the surface; the memory surprised her more than anything. She was supposed to be sleeping. A part of her wanted to explore the feelings lurking in the back of her mind, the faint memories, the comforting warmth that threatened to burn her.
But she had been taught that a lack of sleep was not acceptable excuse for poor performance, so she let herself fall to sleep.
She woke up in the morning four minutes before the alarm went off, as usual. She triggered the little button next to her bed to let the system know that she was awake, then proceeded to the back of her room, where the wall slid back into a recess to reveal a cramped shower. She clambered in and showered, shivering in the freezing water out of nothing but habit. After three minutes, the water stopped and automated driers blasted her with brief, but pleasant heat. Water drained from the bottom of the shower. A slit opened near the bottom and her clothes were ejected from the receptacle, as they were every day. She pulled on the tank-top and tight-fitting pants that had been her uniform for every day in the past two years and buckled on her military-grade boots. She left her shower and stood at the foot of her bed, waiting for the door to open.
Normally, someone would arrive in two minutes. Always the same two minutes that she had to herself. Those two minutes threatened to expose and allow all the ugliness she’d buried so far inside. It was always a trial.
Her two minutes passed. Sweat formed on her palms. For the first time she touched the flat steel panel that became a door when her supervisors came. Nothing happened. She stepped back. She started repeating a turian poem in her head. She hadn’t been supposed to learn turian poetry, but one of the instructors had shown her a favourite. That woman had disappeared after that, but such disappearances weren’t uncommon. She whispered beneath her breath in the Octan dialect,
“What is born of Fire rises
What fades is not destroyed
What glimmers hope despises
What shudders faith restores
What death begets becomes
The last of us are still.”
She had no idea what the poet had meant. Strictly speaking, she had no idea what any turians meant. But it made her feel better.
In four more minutes the door finally opened. She almost said something but remembered herself in time. Her frustration escaped her as a pained gasp. The person standing on the other side of the door was Dr. Gabreau. Smile affixed to his face, he grabbed her shoulder and steered her down the long hall which contained her room. Nicole immediately knew that if she had to she could spin around, grab his wrist, and break it before he had time to respond.
“Have you ever met another student here, Nicole?” Dr. Gabreau asked. His voice was conversational. He always called Nicole a student.
“No.” Nicole’s response was without inflection. She could imitate Gabreau’s jovial manner if she had to, but he’d recognize the imitation.
“Of course not. Did you know the rest are sleeping in these rooms right now? We stagger your wake periods.” The kindness slipped away from his voice. “You’re a particular favourite of mine, you know. No protestations, no struggles, no petty dilemmas. I knew you would turn out well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’ve done well. Now you’re ready for the next stage in your training.”
Nicole continued in silence. Eventually Gabreau took her to a lab. He brought her to a table. There was something lying beneath a pale blue sheet—a body. From the way it was bulging at various points beneath the sheet, it had to be a male turian. Gabreau left her and went out a door. For a while she was alone.
From a speaker in the ceiling of the room Gabreau’s voice calmly directed her,
“Remove the sheet and deposit it in the waste-bin to your left.”
Nicole removed the sheet, folded it evenly eight times, then placed it neatly in the empty trash. She turned back to see a naked turian on the table, a hole blasted into his left waist.
“Describe the cause of injury.”
“Volkov-line sniper rifle; five-inch extended suppressed barrel; shot distance one hundred yards. Round entered from behind. Notable; turians not often shot from behind.” Nicole pulled on the gloves next to the body and poked her finger into the wound. “Seared quality of flesh indicates incendiary rounds. Likely second-grade or higher.”
“Well done. Step back from the body.”
Nicole complied. The gloves felt clammy in her hands.
“Wake hostage.”
A mechanical arm extended from the side of the table, swung back around, and injected something into the turian’s arm. The distinct hum of electricity and biotic energy reverberated in the air. Nicole’s eyes, normally sharp, attentive, and utterly without feeling, had gone wide as saucers.
“Describe likely time to full resuscitation.”
“Tw-two minutes,” Nicole barked out. It was a guess at best. She’d backed away from the table, into the flat steel wall behind her. Her palms were pressed flat against the cold metal. Her heart was racing.
“Incorrect. Patient will be revived within forty seconds. Gradual return of motor control factoring in turian adrenal response times?”
“Thirty-five seconds.”
“Good.”
Gabreau fell silent. Nicole watched in silent horror as the turian started to stir. That distinctive flanged voice groaned in obvious pain. He clutched blindly at his side. He was still completely helpless. Nicole looked to the door and found it was just a flat piece of the wall. There was no way out.
She scanned the room for any sharp implement, maybe a scalpel, or some sort of tool, but there was nothing. The turian said something in his native language. Nicole had no translator, and she was too addled to translate. He spoke some dialect she’d never heard. His was still an alien tongue.
Slowly, he opened his throat and started to scream. He clutched at his side then snapped his jaws shut, forcing himself into a sitting position on the table.
He looked up at her, and his eyes were the most beautiful blue Nicole had ever seen in her life. He was naked, and in pain, and he was obviously scared. She didn’t know if he’d ever seen a thirteen year old human girl before. She’d never seen a turian male before, not in person. His skin was brown and faded but his eyes were beautiful.
He asked her a question. She ran it over in her head and broke it down into its components. Decrypted it. He had asked who she was.
“My name is Nicole,” she responded in the most common turian dialect.
“You speak Octan-turian,” he replied in the same. That face made of gnashing teeth and alien frills was completely foreign to her, but he seemed surprised.
“I speak two dialects,” Nicole responded automatically. He let out an odd flanging sound that she realized was a laugh.
“Are you going to kill me?” His eyes met hers. She wondered what he thought of her.
“I don’t know.”
Gabreau’s voice returned in the form of the speaker overhead. It said, in English:
“Kill him.”
Nicole swallowed.
“I have to.”
The turian only nodded. He seemed relieved.
“You are a child. But to die fighting is still a better death than … kris vos sendiil.” Nicole couldn’t understand the last part.
“I don’t know your last three words.”
He chuckled.
“You wouldn’t. Old turian proverb, from a dead tongue. It means ‘burnt by wind’. More literally … coward.”
Nicole nodded. She knew a turian would not simply roll over and die. But she found she didn’t want to kill him. He’d spoken more honestly, more openly to her than anyone had in three years. She found she missed that connection, that fundamental living connection, with a fierce hunger. It was an ache in her heart.
“I don’t want to,” Nicole whispered. Gabreau couldn’t speak Octan, but he’d have a translator on-hand.
“You have to,” the turian said. He shrugged. “Wish I were wearing something, but a good death is a good death. Bare or no.”
Without warning, he leapt from the table at her, claws flashing in the dim light of the lab. Nicole dodged out of reach only on instinct, and she realized with slow terror that though he was wounded, this man was a soldier, a military creature, and he was tall and strong and covered in metallic skin. He leapt at her again, pouncing like a tiger, and this time Nicole ducked beneath him and aimed a jab at his wounded side. He anticipated it and twisted in mid-air, avoiding the attack and flying into the far wall. He got back on his feet and stared her down. At his full height he was over seven feet tall, while Nicole was barely 5’4”. She circled behind the table, putting it between them. The turian’s mandibles twitched in what Nicole now recognized was a smile.
“I take it back. You might be a child, but this will be a good death.” Inexplicably, Nicole flushed with pleasure. The turian leapt onto the table, and Nicole rolled to one side just as he charged towards her. She readied herself to attack him but instead found that his clawed rear foot had raked her in the back, sending her flying. Shocking lines of pain flared beneath her shoulder blades. She ignored the pain and turned to see that the turian was charging again. This time she waited, and at the last minute slipped beneath his legs. He expected another attack at the wound, and moved to block; but Nicole was already gone, backpedalling to the other side of the room.
How can I kill him? She thought desperately. Her back was killing her. His claws had torn her shirt nearly off her back, despite the tough, military-grade material. Her eyes went wide and with the briefest sorrow, she knew how to kill him.
She pulled the thin black fabric over her head and ripped the back of her shirt, leaving her with a heavy black rag. She whipped it into a corded shape and held it between both hands. The turian closed his eyes and smiled again. He whispered something that Nicole couldn’t hear.
He ran at her again. Nicole trapped one clawed hand with her shirt, yanked him to the side, then slipped behind him, clambering up onto his back. She wrapped her legs beneath his torso and pulled the shirt across his neck, strangling him not beneath the jaw, as she would on a human, but deep beneath his shoulder ridges. He gasped for air and struggled to grab her with his claws. One hand, flailing back, dug into Nicole’s bare shoulder and tore through the skin there, but she ignored it and pulled. His breathing was growing faint. She felt a little sad—
The turian reached back for her face and his claws found her cheek, splitting it open down to her jaw, near her neck. She jerked out of the way just in time to prevent him from damaging anything major. She pulled. Pulled. Pulled.
The turian breathed for the last time. His limbs shuddered. He fell, and Nicole went down with him, the strength completely emptied out of her arms. She was shaking, not from fear or terror but from pure adrenaline and exhaustion.
“Well done.”
The wall opened into another door and two workers in protective suits walked in. One picked Nicole up in her arms and carried her into the hall. She brought her to a surgery room and injected something in her arm. Nicole realized she had been muttering beneath her breath. Reciting the turian poem. She saved the last line, just in time, for herself.
The last of us are still.
XXX
She woke to cold water splashing her in the face. Her arms were bound behind her and the room was dark; she was naked, on her knees, and completely disoriented. A bucket of water was set in front of her face. She leaned forward to drink and gagged; it was salt.
Without warning, a man grabbed her from behind and forced her face into the water. She screamed and kicked, trying to resist, but the bonds on her hands were tight. With all that was left to her she fought the urge to inhale the water, to take it into her lungs. Her chest was burning and her limbs stopped kicking.
She inhaled seawater. A moment later she was pulled from the bucket as she hacked and wheezed her way back to sense. When she was done, she vomited. Her throat was raw and bleeding. She was picked up and thrown back into a chair. The man grabbed her arm and inserted a needle into her bicep. Fighting back felt impossible now.
Pain wracked her and flowed through her veins, sending her into violent convulsions. She shook and screamed, trying to find something to make the pain go away, but it was so consuming, so total. Her pain tolerance was superhuman but she was nothing before the all-consuming fire.
As she passed out the last things she remembered were blue eyes and a mandible smile.
XXX
She was clothed again. Her arms were tied behind her, to a cold metal chair. This room was just as dark as the last. As she tried to think lingering pain thrust into her consciousness, blinding her. The pain was in her muscles, flaring with shocking intensity whenever she moved.
A light blinded her. She flinched away from the brightness and winced as the lingering effects of whatever they’d drugged her with sent burning knives into her neck. When she was able to see again, she saw that a man in a white uniform was standing in front of her. His face was unfamiliar.
“Do you know why you are here?”
“No,” Nicole gasped, stunned at the effort it took to speak. Bandages on her face rustled uncomfortably when she spoke. Someone had cleaned and bound her wounds.
“You disobeyed. It was only a moment, only the slightest hesitation, but that was enough.” The man stepped forward and looked down at her. “I’m going to share something with you, Nicole. You don’t exist. Not according to any government or Alliance database. There are records of your unsurprising suicide shortly after you left Mindoir on a ship taking you to a foster home. No one remembers you. No one even knows you’re here.
“You are known to Alliance officials as XGS-zero-twelve. When you came here you gave yourself to this program. That means all of you. It means no turian poetry. It means not the slightest moment of hesitation when you are given an order by the administrators of this program. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicole replied immediately. She was shaking.
“Not yet,” the man promised. “But you will.”
He kicked over her chair. She landed on her side and cried out as one of her arms was pinned by the steel back of the chair. The next kick came for her ribs and knocked the wind out of her lungs. She clenched her jaw shut and refused to scream. The man kicked her again. And again. And again. Nicole only opened her mouth to spit out blood, and endured the rest.
For hours the man tortured her. He started simple and grew increasingly creative. Electrical shocks. He drowned her with water and a towel. At one point he brought in a biotic who held Nicole in stasis while the man injected her with the same burning drug that had knocked her out before.
He let her fall to the floor to sleep. The next day he continued his work. Three days passed like that. Each day Nicole clung to the image of blue eyes, trying to find a place to hide away while the white-suited man beat her bloody. He never maimed her, though, never damaged her beyond use. With cold logic Nicole surmised that they did not want to dispose of her.
On the fourth day the overhead lights all came on at once, revealing the room to be little more than a steel box. Nicole was lying on the floor; they’d stopped bothering tying her up yesterday. She had no strength left.
Dr. Gabreau walked into the room and tsked his displeasure. Nicole managed to look up at him. He picked up the chair that
had been thrown to one corner of the room—when had that been done? Had she been sleeping?—and set it down in the middle of the room. He picked Nicole up and sat her in the chair. She flinched at his touch but didn’t have the strength to fight back.
He kneeled down and looked into her eyes.
“Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole shook. She swallowed. Tried to find her voice. He snapped his fingers and a nurse walked into the room, carrying a bottle of water. He thrust it into her mouth and Nicole drank greedily. He threw the bottle to the floor.
“One last chance, Nicole. Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole managed to nod her head. She looked back at him. She gathered her voice and in that moment she saw not a greying human male, but a turian facing his death. She saw her brother, warning her to hide before he ran off to try and save doomed patients. The cruel clarity of the memories stunned her.
But they were only memories, and she was still sitting on a chair in a cold steel room, staring into the guiltless eyes of a true believer.
“Yes.”
I hope you guys enjoy it.
Fanfiction.net link
Beyond the Fire: Chapter One
Where there had once been a shining colony on a lush world, Mindoir was now an ashen scar slashed across the blue-green face of the planet. Rakesh Malhotra turned away from his shuttle window. Approaching a planet was usually inspiring; now he only felt a nascent sense of primal dread. It was too much to look at, to imagine all those bodies. If he were a different kind of man it would make Rakesh weak to his stomach. But Rakesh had seen bodies before. He had been a soldier. Still was. Only now….
Now my mission is more secret, more important … and less honest, he admitted to himself. He didn’t pretend to understand the people he worked for, the shadowy agents of an Alliance black ops codenamed Shadowhill. He just knew that they acted on behalf of humanity, and that was what mattered.
As he looked back out at the charred remains of what had once been a peaceful farming colony, hot tendrils of anger wormed through his chest. The turians at least had their damned sense of honour, but the batarians were just four-eyed, ass-faced freaks with 18th century morals. They’d only left a single little girl alive—just one damned girl.
“Ready for landing,” the pilot warned. Rakesh waved him on from the back of the shuttle. One little ten year old girl had somehow managed to survive. The reports were restricted only to Alliance Black Ops, but apparently she’d taken a pistol from a fallen guard and shot two batarians—right in between their four ugly eyes. Then she’d managed to hide and wait it out. A girl like that … Rakesh’s boss had been interested. So Rakesh was interested.
When the shuttle landed, Rakesh walked out to survey the carnage close-up. Mindoir’s weather was annoyingly pleasant. The grass was an off-bluish green, due to some chemical in the soil or something, but other than that it almost looked like a sunny day back on Earth. Except the prefab buildings were all damaged or demolished, and here and there the grass had been burnt away to reveal blood red earth. Sakesh shielded his eyes from the sun and looked to the only standing building, a relatively large home that had somehow survived the batarian attack and ensuing battle with the Alliance. The girl was there, he knew, under watch until Rakesh got there. Whoever ran Shadowhill had powerful enough connections to make the Alliance wait on his pleasure.
When Rakesh walked into the building, he was struck with
the sudden realization that this had been someone’s home, quickly transformed into a military base of operations; there were faded spots on the wall where personal viewscreens had been hung, and marks on the floor from where the furniture had been dragged out. In their place there was now a small military command center, supplies stashed on one end of the long, narrow room, military computers hastily set up. One soldier was standing guard. She saluted when Rakesh walked in, though she didn’t—couldn’t—know Rakesh’s rank or name. Rakesh’s uniform was identity enough.
“Sir!”
Rakesh nodded in response.
“She’s in there?”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier pointed to a room in the back. “Won’t say a word. Not surprising, I guess.” The soldier looked at a loss. “Poor kid. I’ve got a little boy a couple years younger. Can’t stop thinking about him.”
Rakesh didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t have kids.
“Is it okay for me to go in and see her?”
“I can’t see why not.” The soldier shrugged. “Be careful, though. She might snap or something. I couldn’t blame her if she did, after what she saw.”
Rakesh smiled.
“I’ll be sure to keep my guard up.”
“I’m not joking, sir. That girl does not fuck around. Not another damn soul survived this mess. They all got carted off before we could take it back. She was holed up beneath a prefab for eleven days, just waiting.” Rakesh knew all this.
“Noted,” he muttered. He walked past her and into the small, windowless room.
Inside there was a desk, with two chairs. Nicole was sitting in one, staring at her hands on the desk. She didn’t respond to Rakesh walking in.
“Would it be all right if I took a seat?”
The faintest jerk of her head. A nod, he realized.
He took the opposite seat.
“Hi, Nicole. My name is Rakesh Malhotra. I’m an Alliance soldier.”
Nicole looked up. Her face was blank. He’d seen the same look on soldiers: shock.
“Like the ones that killed the batarians?” She was unusually direct. Her red hair had jumped out at him when he’d come in—some sign of genetic tampering, probably way back in her bloodline from the genetics fad in the late 2070s—but now it was her eyes that pierced him. He’d never seen such green eyes, filled with sharp suspicion in a ten-year-old’s face.
“Not quite.” Rakesh managed a smile. “I’m a special kind of soldier. I work with a lot of other special soldiers, and scientists, at a place far away.”
Nicole’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Rakesh took that as a sign of encouragement.
“What we do is figure out how to make the best soldier possible. How to keep humanity on the edge, so that things like … what happened here,” Rakesh leaned forward and let his hands rest on the table, “Don’t happen again.”
“How?”
Rakesh raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected that. Nicole Shepard’s face remained inscrutable.
“Research, training, hard work. A little experimentation. We do whatever it takes.” Rakesh waited, not for Nicole to say anything, but for her to think. Then he spoke again,
“It’s quite remarkable what you did. You must feel rather awful but it is incredible that you survived. You displayed a real natural talent.”
“My brother always said I was good at sports,” Nicole said distantly. Rakesh got the feeling she wasn’t really talking to him.
“Your brother was a doctor, right? I never met him, but he seems like a good man.”
“He’s the best.”
He was dead. He had been one of the first to die; they’d managed to extract some footage from a blasted security cam that showed him shielding patients with nothing but his arms. It was one of the most stupidly noble things Rakesh had ever seen; but then again, there wasn’t much a doctor could do in the face of guns. He had died without fear. It seemed this girl shared her brother’s fire.
“And … you lived with your mom, too?”
Nicole turned away.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
He waited a while longer. Tried to get the measure of her. She was scared. Pretending to be tough, but still just a ten-year-old girl that had seen everything she’d known massacred. He didn’t envy the person tasked with getting inside her head.
“Nicole, I’ve seen some evaluations. Your report cards, aptitude tests, and the tests they ran when they found you here. You’re a remarkable young woman. If you ask me—” Rakesh raised his eyebrows, as though inviting her to, “—you’d make a remarkable soldier. If you want to, you can come with me. You can come to the program, and become a soldier. A special kind of soldier who will keep things like what happened here from happening.”
Rakesh waited patiently.
“What if I don’t?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve been told you have no next of kin, no one else … I’m afraid you’d be taken to an adoption agency. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m only here to make you an offer. But I can promise you that if you come with me, your life will mean something. Something more.”
Green eyes stared into his.
“Okay.”
XXX
Nicole flew by shuttle back to an orbiting Alliance vessel, and was told she’d be given passage to another Alliance outpost. Rakesh confided to her that she’d be taken from there to another, secret facility, but after that she didn’t see him much. She was left to her own quarters—a space nearly the size of her old home—and was pried at by a psychologist who had come with Rakesh. Nicole ignored him and answered his questions as quickly as she could.
She didn’t know what to do with herself. She curled up on her bed, just sitting, trying not to think. She wanted to do something to distract her mind, but whenever she toyed around with the omnitool they gave her or hooked up to the extranet, it somehow made it worse. She couldn’t read. She only ate when they forced her to.
They arrived one week later in some world in a system Nicole had never heard of. Rakesh emerged from hiding and guided her onto another shuttle, and from there they got on another ship. This one was smaller. Nicole’s quarters here were barely more than a broom closet, but she liked that better anyway. She slept a lot.
She had a port window. When they came out of FTL she saw that they were approaching a meteorite maybe a tenth the size of Earth’s moon. She could see surface-entrances on the ground; most of the installation must have been subterranean.
A chime came out of her omnitool, startling her; she’d left it on the floor of her cramped quarters. She picked the small
device up and affixed it to her wrist.
“You are ordered to proceed to the main docking ramp,” said a bored voice. It wasn’t a question. Nicole didn’t care, so she found her way to the ramp. It was a small ship, and besides, Nicole remembered details. She hated that, now. She needed to forget.
She was walked into a facility with white steel walls and dozens of research areas, labs, and testing chambers. Rakesh had left her the moment they’d entered the facility; an Alliance soldier, hidden by a helmet and hardsuit, marched her along now. The destination of her journey was an office deep inside the complex. The soldier shoved her in, nearly knocking her small body to the floor. Fear flooded her for a moment, before she dismissed it with the same cool calm that had saved her on Mindoir. She was going to be safe here.
The man behind the desk was old, with graying hair and a salt-and-pepper beard.
“Nicole Shepard.” He smiled with his teeth. “My, my. I have heard so much about you. Do you know who I am?”
She shook her head.
“I’m Dr. Gabreau. I’m a behavioural analyst. That means I watch people and figure out why they do what they do. I run this center, and I work with all sorts of scientists to find out how to make the best soldier. That is where you come in.” He picked up a data pad and smiled again, that too-wide smile that somehow made Nicole’s spine tingle. It was cold. “We have all sorts of data on you, Nicole, and you show great promise. You can be great.”
He waited. She realized he was waiting for a response.
“Thank you, sir.”
He smiled congenially.
“You’re welcome. But … I’m going to need one thing from you.” He raised a finger. “Will you give yourself to this program?”
“Yes.” Nicole was certain.
“You don’t know what that means yet. But you know it’s right. That’s the kind of people we need. People who know what’s right,” Gabreau said, a manic twinkle in his eye. It was unsettling. “I’ll ask you one more time.” He flipped a switch on his deck. “For the record. So you’re sure. Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole swallowed. For a moment her throat didn’t work. A sudden impulse gripped her in a vice, warning her, urging her to run. But there was nowhere for her to go. No other answer for her to give.
“Yes.”
XXX
Her quarters at Shadowhill were even smaller than they had been on the ship. Her room was better described as a cell, its floor just long enough for the bed it contained; the bed fitted to a full sized woman. Nicole understood immediately that she was meant to grow up here. It was good. They didn’t send her to her room for much other than sleep, though. The first weeks were tests. Those were easy. They gave her more injections than she could count, and on some level she knew that these were the sorts of genetic modifications that soldiers received. She’d never heard of anyone so young receiving gene therapy, but she didn’t care about that, either.
There were no faces she could remember. She never saw any scientist or psychologist more than once. The days blurred and the nights dissolved into restless sleep. After a while, after they’d gotten enough empty answers, the psychologists stopped coming. She started going to a sort of school, except the room was small, and it was only her and a single teacher behind a pane of glass. She never disobeyed. Something told her that if she did, something terrible would happen. What they taught her was easy. Advanced mathematics, physics, biology and xenobiology. She started learning alien languages. That was harder, but she had lots of time to practice.
In two years’ time she was fluent in the four major dialects of asari, the two primary turian derivatives, and salarian common. She learned the histories of each major council race.
She never saw Rakesh again. Dr. Gabreau visited every now and again during a school session. Nicole had never met another kid in those closed, cold corridors, but she knew there must be some somewhere. They spoke of other students.
She knew one thing for certain. There were no non-humans here. Everything she learned about the turians, the asari, the salarians, even the krogan, was a strict detailing of military history, cultural inclinations, weaknesses, sympathies, and prejudices. She learned about their biology. She was shown corpses, told to cut them up to look inside, identifying organs. She pointed to where she would attack if she had to.
She was taught to use a gun, how to assemble and disassemble one. She was taught how to hack tech, which she’d always been good at. She remembered the time before Shadowhill vaguely, as though her memories were obscured by fog. Looking back hurt, so she focused on the task at hand, and there was always a task at hand. As she started puberty her bodily changes were handled with curt efficiency.
One day, she realized it was her thirteenth birthday. She kept track of the days in her head; unless she was carrying out a specific exercise using an omni-tool or personal computer, she wasn’t allowed any implements herself. Her birthday came to her like a piece of sunken wood floating to the surface; the memory surprised her more than anything. She was supposed to be sleeping. A part of her wanted to explore the feelings lurking in the back of her mind, the faint memories, the comforting warmth that threatened to burn her.
But she had been taught that a lack of sleep was not acceptable excuse for poor performance, so she let herself fall to sleep.
She woke up in the morning four minutes before the alarm went off, as usual. She triggered the little button next to her bed to let the system know that she was awake, then proceeded to the back of her room, where the wall slid back into a recess to reveal a cramped shower. She clambered in and showered, shivering in the freezing water out of nothing but habit. After three minutes, the water stopped and automated driers blasted her with brief, but pleasant heat. Water drained from the bottom of the shower. A slit opened near the bottom and her clothes were ejected from the receptacle, as they were every day. She pulled on the tank-top and tight-fitting pants that had been her uniform for every day in the past two years and buckled on her military-grade boots. She left her shower and stood at the foot of her bed, waiting for the door to open.
Normally, someone would arrive in two minutes. Always the same two minutes that she had to herself. Those two minutes threatened to expose and allow all the ugliness she’d buried so far inside. It was always a trial.
Her two minutes passed. Sweat formed on her palms. For the first time she touched the flat steel panel that became a door when her supervisors came. Nothing happened. She stepped back. She started repeating a turian poem in her head. She hadn’t been supposed to learn turian poetry, but one of the instructors had shown her a favourite. That woman had disappeared after that, but such disappearances weren’t uncommon. She whispered beneath her breath in the Octan dialect,
“What is born of Fire rises
What fades is not destroyed
What glimmers hope despises
What shudders faith restores
What death begets becomes
The last of us are still.”
She had no idea what the poet had meant. Strictly speaking, she had no idea what any turians meant. But it made her feel better.
In four more minutes the door finally opened. She almost said something but remembered herself in time. Her frustration escaped her as a pained gasp. The person standing on the other side of the door was Dr. Gabreau. Smile affixed to his face, he grabbed her shoulder and steered her down the long hall which contained her room. Nicole immediately knew that if she had to she could spin around, grab his wrist, and break it before he had time to respond.
“Have you ever met another student here, Nicole?” Dr. Gabreau asked. His voice was conversational. He always called Nicole a student.
“No.” Nicole’s response was without inflection. She could imitate Gabreau’s jovial manner if she had to, but he’d recognize the imitation.
“Of course not. Did you know the rest are sleeping in these rooms right now? We stagger your wake periods.” The kindness slipped away from his voice. “You’re a particular favourite of mine, you know. No protestations, no struggles, no petty dilemmas. I knew you would turn out well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’ve done well. Now you’re ready for the next stage in your training.”
Nicole continued in silence. Eventually Gabreau took her to a lab. He brought her to a table. There was something lying beneath a pale blue sheet—a body. From the way it was bulging at various points beneath the sheet, it had to be a male turian. Gabreau left her and went out a door. For a while she was alone.
From a speaker in the ceiling of the room Gabreau’s voice calmly directed her,
“Remove the sheet and deposit it in the waste-bin to your left.”
Nicole removed the sheet, folded it evenly eight times, then placed it neatly in the empty trash. She turned back to see a naked turian on the table, a hole blasted into his left waist.
“Describe the cause of injury.”
“Volkov-line sniper rifle; five-inch extended suppressed barrel; shot distance one hundred yards. Round entered from behind. Notable; turians not often shot from behind.” Nicole pulled on the gloves next to the body and poked her finger into the wound. “Seared quality of flesh indicates incendiary rounds. Likely second-grade or higher.”
“Well done. Step back from the body.”
Nicole complied. The gloves felt clammy in her hands.
“Wake hostage.”
A mechanical arm extended from the side of the table, swung back around, and injected something into the turian’s arm. The distinct hum of electricity and biotic energy reverberated in the air. Nicole’s eyes, normally sharp, attentive, and utterly without feeling, had gone wide as saucers.
“Describe likely time to full resuscitation.”
“Tw-two minutes,” Nicole barked out. It was a guess at best. She’d backed away from the table, into the flat steel wall behind her. Her palms were pressed flat against the cold metal. Her heart was racing.
“Incorrect. Patient will be revived within forty seconds. Gradual return of motor control factoring in turian adrenal response times?”
“Thirty-five seconds.”
“Good.”
Gabreau fell silent. Nicole watched in silent horror as the turian started to stir. That distinctive flanged voice groaned in obvious pain. He clutched blindly at his side. He was still completely helpless. Nicole looked to the door and found it was just a flat piece of the wall. There was no way out.
She scanned the room for any sharp implement, maybe a scalpel, or some sort of tool, but there was nothing. The turian said something in his native language. Nicole had no translator, and she was too addled to translate. He spoke some dialect she’d never heard. His was still an alien tongue.
Slowly, he opened his throat and started to scream. He clutched at his side then snapped his jaws shut, forcing himself into a sitting position on the table.
He looked up at her, and his eyes were the most beautiful blue Nicole had ever seen in her life. He was naked, and in pain, and he was obviously scared. She didn’t know if he’d ever seen a thirteen year old human girl before. She’d never seen a turian male before, not in person. His skin was brown and faded but his eyes were beautiful.
He asked her a question. She ran it over in her head and broke it down into its components. Decrypted it. He had asked who she was.
“My name is Nicole,” she responded in the most common turian dialect.
“You speak Octan-turian,” he replied in the same. That face made of gnashing teeth and alien frills was completely foreign to her, but he seemed surprised.
“I speak two dialects,” Nicole responded automatically. He let out an odd flanging sound that she realized was a laugh.
“Are you going to kill me?” His eyes met hers. She wondered what he thought of her.
“I don’t know.”
Gabreau’s voice returned in the form of the speaker overhead. It said, in English:
“Kill him.”
Nicole swallowed.
“I have to.”
The turian only nodded. He seemed relieved.
“You are a child. But to die fighting is still a better death than … kris vos sendiil.” Nicole couldn’t understand the last part.
“I don’t know your last three words.”
He chuckled.
“You wouldn’t. Old turian proverb, from a dead tongue. It means ‘burnt by wind’. More literally … coward.”
Nicole nodded. She knew a turian would not simply roll over and die. But she found she didn’t want to kill him. He’d spoken more honestly, more openly to her than anyone had in three years. She found she missed that connection, that fundamental living connection, with a fierce hunger. It was an ache in her heart.
“I don’t want to,” Nicole whispered. Gabreau couldn’t speak Octan, but he’d have a translator on-hand.
“You have to,” the turian said. He shrugged. “Wish I were wearing something, but a good death is a good death. Bare or no.”
Without warning, he leapt from the table at her, claws flashing in the dim light of the lab. Nicole dodged out of reach only on instinct, and she realized with slow terror that though he was wounded, this man was a soldier, a military creature, and he was tall and strong and covered in metallic skin. He leapt at her again, pouncing like a tiger, and this time Nicole ducked beneath him and aimed a jab at his wounded side. He anticipated it and twisted in mid-air, avoiding the attack and flying into the far wall. He got back on his feet and stared her down. At his full height he was over seven feet tall, while Nicole was barely 5’4”. She circled behind the table, putting it between them. The turian’s mandibles twitched in what Nicole now recognized was a smile.
“I take it back. You might be a child, but this will be a good death.” Inexplicably, Nicole flushed with pleasure. The turian leapt onto the table, and Nicole rolled to one side just as he charged towards her. She readied herself to attack him but instead found that his clawed rear foot had raked her in the back, sending her flying. Shocking lines of pain flared beneath her shoulder blades. She ignored the pain and turned to see that the turian was charging again. This time she waited, and at the last minute slipped beneath his legs. He expected another attack at the wound, and moved to block; but Nicole was already gone, backpedalling to the other side of the room.
How can I kill him? She thought desperately. Her back was killing her. His claws had torn her shirt nearly off her back, despite the tough, military-grade material. Her eyes went wide and with the briefest sorrow, she knew how to kill him.
She pulled the thin black fabric over her head and ripped the back of her shirt, leaving her with a heavy black rag. She whipped it into a corded shape and held it between both hands. The turian closed his eyes and smiled again. He whispered something that Nicole couldn’t hear.
He ran at her again. Nicole trapped one clawed hand with her shirt, yanked him to the side, then slipped behind him, clambering up onto his back. She wrapped her legs beneath his torso and pulled the shirt across his neck, strangling him not beneath the jaw, as she would on a human, but deep beneath his shoulder ridges. He gasped for air and struggled to grab her with his claws. One hand, flailing back, dug into Nicole’s bare shoulder and tore through the skin there, but she ignored it and pulled. His breathing was growing faint. She felt a little sad—
The turian reached back for her face and his claws found her cheek, splitting it open down to her jaw, near her neck. She jerked out of the way just in time to prevent him from damaging anything major. She pulled. Pulled. Pulled.
The turian breathed for the last time. His limbs shuddered. He fell, and Nicole went down with him, the strength completely emptied out of her arms. She was shaking, not from fear or terror but from pure adrenaline and exhaustion.
“Well done.”
The wall opened into another door and two workers in protective suits walked in. One picked Nicole up in her arms and carried her into the hall. She brought her to a surgery room and injected something in her arm. Nicole realized she had been muttering beneath her breath. Reciting the turian poem. She saved the last line, just in time, for herself.
The last of us are still.
XXX
She woke to cold water splashing her in the face. Her arms were bound behind her and the room was dark; she was naked, on her knees, and completely disoriented. A bucket of water was set in front of her face. She leaned forward to drink and gagged; it was salt.
Without warning, a man grabbed her from behind and forced her face into the water. She screamed and kicked, trying to resist, but the bonds on her hands were tight. With all that was left to her she fought the urge to inhale the water, to take it into her lungs. Her chest was burning and her limbs stopped kicking.
She inhaled seawater. A moment later she was pulled from the bucket as she hacked and wheezed her way back to sense. When she was done, she vomited. Her throat was raw and bleeding. She was picked up and thrown back into a chair. The man grabbed her arm and inserted a needle into her bicep. Fighting back felt impossible now.
Pain wracked her and flowed through her veins, sending her into violent convulsions. She shook and screamed, trying to find something to make the pain go away, but it was so consuming, so total. Her pain tolerance was superhuman but she was nothing before the all-consuming fire.
As she passed out the last things she remembered were blue eyes and a mandible smile.
XXX
She was clothed again. Her arms were tied behind her, to a cold metal chair. This room was just as dark as the last. As she tried to think lingering pain thrust into her consciousness, blinding her. The pain was in her muscles, flaring with shocking intensity whenever she moved.
A light blinded her. She flinched away from the brightness and winced as the lingering effects of whatever they’d drugged her with sent burning knives into her neck. When she was able to see again, she saw that a man in a white uniform was standing in front of her. His face was unfamiliar.
“Do you know why you are here?”
“No,” Nicole gasped, stunned at the effort it took to speak. Bandages on her face rustled uncomfortably when she spoke. Someone had cleaned and bound her wounds.
“You disobeyed. It was only a moment, only the slightest hesitation, but that was enough.” The man stepped forward and looked down at her. “I’m going to share something with you, Nicole. You don’t exist. Not according to any government or Alliance database. There are records of your unsurprising suicide shortly after you left Mindoir on a ship taking you to a foster home. No one remembers you. No one even knows you’re here.
“You are known to Alliance officials as XGS-zero-twelve. When you came here you gave yourself to this program. That means all of you. It means no turian poetry. It means not the slightest moment of hesitation when you are given an order by the administrators of this program. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicole replied immediately. She was shaking.
“Not yet,” the man promised. “But you will.”
He kicked over her chair. She landed on her side and cried out as one of her arms was pinned by the steel back of the chair. The next kick came for her ribs and knocked the wind out of her lungs. She clenched her jaw shut and refused to scream. The man kicked her again. And again. And again. Nicole only opened her mouth to spit out blood, and endured the rest.
For hours the man tortured her. He started simple and grew increasingly creative. Electrical shocks. He drowned her with water and a towel. At one point he brought in a biotic who held Nicole in stasis while the man injected her with the same burning drug that had knocked her out before.
He let her fall to the floor to sleep. The next day he continued his work. Three days passed like that. Each day Nicole clung to the image of blue eyes, trying to find a place to hide away while the white-suited man beat her bloody. He never maimed her, though, never damaged her beyond use. With cold logic Nicole surmised that they did not want to dispose of her.
On the fourth day the overhead lights all came on at once, revealing the room to be little more than a steel box. Nicole was lying on the floor; they’d stopped bothering tying her up yesterday. She had no strength left.
Dr. Gabreau walked into the room and tsked his displeasure. Nicole managed to look up at him. He picked up the chair that
had been thrown to one corner of the room—when had that been done? Had she been sleeping?—and set it down in the middle of the room. He picked Nicole up and sat her in the chair. She flinched at his touch but didn’t have the strength to fight back.
He kneeled down and looked into her eyes.
“Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole shook. She swallowed. Tried to find her voice. He snapped his fingers and a nurse walked into the room, carrying a bottle of water. He thrust it into her mouth and Nicole drank greedily. He threw the bottle to the floor.
“One last chance, Nicole. Will you give yourself to this program?”
Nicole managed to nod her head. She looked back at him. She gathered her voice and in that moment she saw not a greying human male, but a turian facing his death. She saw her brother, warning her to hide before he ran off to try and save doomed patients. The cruel clarity of the memories stunned her.
But they were only memories, and she was still sitting on a chair in a cold steel room, staring into the guiltless eyes of a true believer.
“Yes.”