“This looks like it was abandoned much longer than you said it has been.” Revan noted as they were forced to land on the roof of the facility to avoid the vegetation swiftly reclaiming the ruins of the Pragia facility. The materials commonly used for construction here might not be as durable as the ones found in her home galaxy, but that didn’t mean they were easily corroded.
“Welcome to Pragia, it's a shithole like that. Cerberus actually HAD to build the landing pad on the roof or the vegetation would have overgrown it in a few hours.” Jack muttered. “Fuck, I forgot how much I hated this place. Maybe this was a mistake.”
The commander tapped Jack on the shoulder. “Calm down, everything will be fine.”
“...yeah. Fuck it, I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
With that the members of the ground team filtered out of the Kodiak and into the torrential downpour outside. They weren’t expecting any opposition besides maybe some automated defenses struggling to remain active so Shepard had opted to only bring Mordin and Miranda as backup. Revan decided to tag along to keep her sort-of student in check.
Jack had been doing well in their exercises on controlling her emotions. Revan didn’t want her backsliding in the limited time they had before they ended up in another deadly mission. The human biotic losing control at the wrong time could be ruinous for everyone involved.
“Well that’s inconvenient.” Revan heard Shepard mutter as they reached the entrance they planned on using.
“Something wrong?”
“The door doesn’t have power. Not sure if it’s a local problem or something to do with the entire facility but we either need to find another way in or try to restore power here.”
Which meant the rest of them would be standing around in the rain doing nothing while that was being attempted. And while Revan’s armor was sealed to the elements, that didn’t mean she enjoyed standing around in the rain feeling raindrops bounce off her faceplate.
“Why don’t I give it a try then.” The Sith more stated than asked as she pulled one of her lightsabers and ignited it. The team hastily moved out of the way as Revan plunged the blade into the access hatch and slowly cut a circular hole in the thick metal doors.
“Fascinating technology, contained plasma field much more useful than initially evident. Are you certain you cannot be convinced to provide a sample?” Mordin asked as the cut portion fell out with a dull metallic ‘thunk’.
“Yes. Traditional reasons aside, the materials required are somewhat rare. I’d rather not risk the few I have so you can study them.” Revan replied, stepping through the new opening. “You will just have to be content with the blasters I provided.”
She had finally finished modifying the more technical parts to prevent anyone from tearing them apart to learn how they functioned without making it impossible for anyone to do basic maintenance. With that done, she had freely distributed several different weapon types to the members of the ground team. Even Samara had not refused, not that Revan particularly cared if the Jedi Zealot knockoff accepted the gift or not. Apparently Shepard had managed to convince the Asari that the improved firepower was more important to the mission than her one sided enmity with the Sith.
“Yeah, yeah. Ice Queen’s laser swords are freaking awesome and she won’t share. Who gives a fuck.” Jack cursed, stepping inside herself. “Let’s just get in there and plant the bomb in my cell. I want to watch this place burn.”
With those cheery words the small group entered the facility.
The inside hadn’t fared much better than the exterior. The floor was cracked and had tiles missing in places. The ceiling had fallen out in places and wires hung depondantly from the gaps. And everything else was covered in some form of dust, dirt, grime, or small bits of plantlife. Obviously the facility wasn’t completely locked down, traces of native fauna invading were present as well.
Revan followed Jack and the others silently through the hall. The ex-convict was actually behaving much more mildly than she had expected. She had half expected to have to restrain Jack from lashing out minutes after they had arrived but the human hadn’t shown any signs of losing herself to her anger. She had really come far in her control despite the relatively small amount of time Revan spent teaching her. The Sith was also beginning to think she might have underestimated the other woman greatly to her own chagrin.
“I never saw this room. I think they brought new kids in these containers.” Jack’s voice pulled Revan out of her musings. “They were messed up and starving, but alive. Usually.”
No one wanted to bring up that there might have still been younglings alive inside the containers when Jack had made her escape. Or the fact if they were, they certainly had perished long before now.
“Unbelievable.” Mordin commented. Revan agreed.
The containers looked like heavily sealed shipping crates. No hookup ports for power or waste. No openings that Revan could see either. The younglings, if they were really brought in that way, would have been kept in the dark for Force knows how long with no light, water, or food. Potentially stewing in their own filth for an unknown amount of time. It was a good thing that the ‘scientists’ had abandoned this facility for a long time. If Revan ever caught someone causing that amount of harm to a youngling for any reason, they would beg for death a long time before she granted them that release.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Miranda had nothing to say to that. It was hard to argue with the evidence right there and she knew Cerberus wasn’t always blameless.
A little further in they saw the first evidence that despite the elements, time, and general disrepair of the facility, some portions still had power. As evidenced by a glitching security console playing a random log file between one of the security officers and a scientist.
“The Illusive Man requested operation logs again. He’s getting suspicious.” The officer said.
“When we get results, he won’t care what we did. But if he knew…” The scientist trailed off.
“He won’t find out.” The other man reassured before the log started looping.
“Working outside program parameters. Hiding information.” Mordin stated.
“Yes, I think we can safely confirm this was a rogue facility.” Miranda added with obvious relief.
“He never said what they were hiding from the Illusive Man.” Jack pointed out.
Thankfully, all of them were willing to drop the matter and continue on. For different reasons, no doubt, but neither Shepard nor Revan questioned it.
They continued in silence until they entered another wide open room filled with the container crates they had seen earlier.
“I remember escaping to this room. Fighting here. I saw sunlight through the cracks in the ceiling.” Jack commented. “Only a half-dead guard between me and freedom. He was begging for his life.”
From her tone it was obvious Jack did not spare the guard. Revan wasn’t about to judge. Younglings had both the potential for infinite kindness and infinite cruelty. One that was scared, likely injured, and looking for escape was likely not going to be merciful to her captors.
Out of habit more than anything Revan cast out her senses and was mildly surprised to find they were not the only things in the room. It seemed some of the local wildlife was taking cover from the storm outside here. Unfortunately, not only had these animals noticed their group as well, they were feeling increasingly aggressive as the Normandy team moved forward. Apparently the animals had taken their presence as an invasion of their territory and were preparing to ambush them.
The Sith informed the team of the incoming ambush moments before the first of the predators leaped out of cover, only to be immediately bisected by a lightsaber the second it came in range. More of the ugly lizard fish dogs sprinted out from the rubble or over several containers and were greeted by glowing red energy bolts from the team's new weapons.
Seconds later all that was left of the predators were charred bodies and the smell of cooked meat.
“Ugh, Varren. Should have known they would be around. Keep an eye out, people.” Shepard ordered, scanning the surroundings for more threats. The group moved forward cautiously, both looking for threats and making sure the floor wasn’t about to collapse underneath them.
-o-
“This looks like an arena.” Shepard commented as they moved through the ruins and she stepped over several old bloodstains.
“That’s right. They used to stage fights here. Pit me against other kids.” Jack replied, surprising Shepard. She had been trying to break the silence, she didn’t actually want to be right! “I loved it. Only time I was ever out of my cell.”
And this was supposed to be a science facility! What good was forcing two kids to fight going to do?
“Hell if I know.” Jack answered uncaringly when Shepard repeated the question out loud. “Maybe that’s how they got their kicks. I never understood anything that happened here.”
“How often did they do this?”
Jack gave her a dirty look. “I was in a cell for my whole life. Sometimes they took me out and made me fight. Filled me with drugs. Other stuff. Time gets funny in a cell.”
That was…fair. But there was one thing she needed to know.
“And the other kids…what happened to them?”
Jack didn’t answer right away.
“I was a kid, filled with drugs. I got shocked when I hesitated.” She said at last. “Narcotics flooded my veins when I attacked.”
“They actually rewarded you for attacking?”
“I still get warm feeling during a fight.” The smile Jack wore was more of an ugly grimace. Like she was forcing herself to smile since the only other option was to cry. Shepard still couldn’t believe what she was hearing though. It certainly confirmed for her that she would be breaking ties with these ‘people’ the first chance she reasonably could.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“What the hell was wrong with them?!”
Jack shrugged fakely. “I dunno. Doesn’t matter now.”
Shepard discreetly looked at their resident empath and was darkly relieved when Revan shook her head and confirmed what she already thought. Jack was much more conflicted about what had happened than she appeared. So not quite the sociopath she was projecting herself as, but still a deeply traumatized individual. God, she wished she had the time to just give everyone a vacation. Maybe find a planet and a nice easy mission that let her crew get some downtime while they waited? Revan did submit a request for a chance to study more of their techbase to see what she could contribute to upgrading the Normandy.
She pushed those thoughts away and refocused on the current mission.
“Let’s keep moving.”
They didn’t go very far before they came across another security panel that still had power. Out of a grim sense of duty Shepard accessed the last log entered.
She wasn’t delusional or a masochist to even entertain the notion that she, as an individual or as a member of the Alliance, was somehow responsible for not stopping the horrors that happened here. But she did feel she owed the people that died here deserved to have someone listen to their story, even if it was told by their captors.
“Security Officer Zemkl, Teltin Facility. The subjects are out of their cells! They’re tearing the place up!” The hologram of the Security Officer panicked. “Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate – I repeat, permission to terminate!”
“All subjects besides Zero are expendable.” A stressed voice immediately answered. “Keep Jack alive.”
“...Understood. I’ll begin the–” The recording cut off as Jack slammed her fist on the console.
“That’s not right. I broke out when my guards disappeared.” She snarled and jabbed at her chest. “I started that riot!”
“Things might have happened you didn’t see.” Shepard offered.
“The other kids attacked me. The guards attacked me. The automated systems attacked me. That doesn’t leave lots of room for interpretation.”
“You were a child. You might be misremembering things.”
Jack rounded on Miranda. “I know what happened, Cerberus bitch! Don’t try and make excuses.”
There was a sudden tension in the room that Shepard was preparing to deal with when Revan stepped forward.
“Then we find out more.” She said, standing between Jack and Miranda like it was no big deal. “There must be more consoles that survived. We find those and figure out what happened on the way to Jack’s cell to plant the explosive.”
Mordin nodded. “Separate power systems. Additional generators. Stands to reason more consoles will be active.”
They continued down into the facility. As they did so, the signs of damage from the riot the console and Jack mentioned became more visible. Walls were partially destroyed now rather than just succumbing to decay and nature. It looked like a hurricane had swept through…
…or a horde of angry biotic children.
Shepard kept that observation to herself. There was a time and place for trying to raise morale with poor jokes. This wasn’t it.
But seconds later she almost wished she could go back and make the remark anyway because the group stumbled across a pair of Varren corpses.
“This place is supposed to be empty. Who the fuck shot those verren? They’re fresh kills.”
Shepard did a quick check over all her weapons.
“No idea, but they’re likely still here. Keep an eye open.”
“They might be salvagers.” Miranda stated. “There’s a lot of equipment here that might be worth a few credits to the right people.”
-o-
The ‘who’ Jack had been wondering about turned out to be Blood Pack mercenaries.
The ground team had run into a couple squads of them as they turned a corner into another room filled with equipment and the mercs hadn’t waited long to open fire.
Unfortunately for them, the Normandy crew had tangled with some of the best the Blood Pack had to offer and walked out the other side, now they had even better weapons to use against the Vorcha and Krogan mercs. And these…these mercs were far from the elite forces Shepard and Revan had fought on Omega.
Blaster bolts had torn the Blood Pack to shreds in seconds while Revan distracted the few that were too stupid to duck behind cover in favor of shooting at the enemy. It was over so quickly none of the ground team had time to question what they were doing here in the first place.
“Why’d they need a morgue? This was a small facility.” Jack asked, stepping over the body of a fallen Vorcha.
“Corpses of other subjects analyzed here. Many subjects.” Mordin said, skimming over a number of logs present on one of the few functioning machines.
“What could they possibly have been hoping to accomplish?” Miranda asked. The Cerberus officer seemed faintly horrified at the sheer amount of children the facility managed to murder in the pursuit of their goals.
“Different methods to increase biotic potential. Some that would obviously result in the death of the subject.”
“Bullshit,” Jack snapped. “I had the worst of it, and I made it out alive.”
A heavy armored hand landed on her shoulder as Revan forced her to face her. “I didn’t teach you to run away from your feelings, Jack.” The Sith said disapprovingly. “Follow your lessons.”
For a second it looked like Jack was going to protest, but a slight increase in pressure from the hand on her shoulder killed the fire in her eyes a little.
“Right, ‘Acknowledge your feelings, identify what causes them, and master both’. I can do that.” Jack looked around the morgue, a conflicted expression on her face. “I thought I knew everything that went on in this place. Guess not, huh? I feel like… I’m pissed off. I should be this dangerous bitch right? Escaped and left this place behind. But then, it's like I’m a little girl again.”
Revan nodded and released her. “Very few sentients can honestly say they enjoy others trivializing their pain and suffering by claiming others have it worse. Suffering is relative. What kills one, another might survive. But both suffered. Do not dismiss that lightly.”
“Right, fuck this is complicated.” Jack nodded before stalking off. “Let’s just go plant this bomb.”
“That sounded like a really profound saying.” Shepard muttered as she and Revan started walking after Jack. “Where did that come from?”
“It was one of the sayings of Jedi Master Soont Thalcard. One of the wiser Jedi teachers I had the pleasure of learning from.”
“I’m surprised you can admit that so easily. You never like talking about anything to do with Jedi.”
“Wisdom can come from anywhere, only idiots deny this. And it helps that Soont Thalcard died four hundred years before I was born.” Revan said bluntly. “The Jedi, for all their faults, were very wise. They just weren’t intelligent enough to make use of it.”
-o-
“I must have come through here when I broke out, but I don’t remember it.” Jack said uneasily from outside a medical room. “We should move on. This is a bad place.”
“We’ll move on in a second.” Shepard reassured her. “But this is the only place we’ve seen so far with more active terminals. There might be more information on what really happened when you escaped.”
“High probability of test data and procedures as well.” Mordin added. “Proof of Cerberus’s actions.” He directed that last portion at Miranda.
“We already found out this facility was hiding things from the Illusive Man. They might have been getting the funding from Cerberus, but they clearly weren’t loyal to us.”
Before that could break out into another argument, Shepard pressed a button on one of the active consoles. It looked like an experiment log of some sort. Selecting one of the files at random, she pressed the playback option.
“Entry 1054, Teltin facility. The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four, and Six died. No biotic change among the survivors.” A Cerberus scientist reported tonelessly in the recording. Shepard was infuriated to see the man seemed almost bored discussing the deaths of several children. “We lowered the core temperatures of surviving subjects, but no biotically beneficial reactions occurred. As a side effect, all subjects died.”
“Despicable.” Mordin commented from the side.
“So we’ll not try that on Zero. I hope our supply of biotic-potential subjects holds up. We are going through them fast.”
Shepard clenched a fist so hard it hurt.
“How’d they manage it, Miranda?”
“Commander?”
“If this was a rogue facility, how did they manage to get enough kids that they could butcher them for just hints of progress?”
She was starting to agree with Jack. This place needed to burn. But more than that she wanted to make sure none of this could happen again.
“I-I don’t know what to tell you, Shepard.” Miranda faltered, her face pale. “Small facilities like this are expected to source their own resources. Cerberus helps with the funding, but we don’t directly contact them except for updates and reports. If the files are still in the facility EDI might be able to extract them, but the administrator may have removed them to cover their tracks…”
“Bullshit!” Jack raged. “Are you still trying to convince everyone this wasn't Cerberus’s fault?”
“Because it was not!” Miranda yelled back. “This has to be a rogue facility. It has to.” She nearly whispered the last part.
Shepard shook her head. Rogue or not, Cerberus was still at least partially willing to experiment on children. At that point it was just arguing details.
She played with the console a bit more and was able to find a recording for the security system. With a few more keystrokes a hologram of the same scientist as before appeared. Though this time he was far less composed and on the verge of panicking.
“It’s all fallen to pieces. The subjects are rampaging, and Zero is loose.” The scientist stammered while making the motions like he was frantically collecting something in front of him. “We’re shutting Teltin down. What a disaster. We’ll infiltrate and piggyback onto the Alliance's Ascension program. Hopefully that will–” there was a loud banging picked up by the speakers. “Who are…? Zero, wait!”
The recording ended suddenly as the scientist was violently thrown away by a biotic blast.
Shepard glanced up at one of the walls and noted the dented plates and old bloodstains. No mystery what happened to the scientist then.
Jack wasn’t as calm as her.
“Shepard, they started up somewhere else!” Jack rounded on her, eyes wide and panicking. Those lessons with Revan were doing wonders. Before Jack wouldn’t have cared about another program unless it was for revenge. And now here she was, actually worried about others going through what she did.
“Relax. Ascension is an Alliance program. It’s a school for biotic kids. I went there myself. They don’t torture kids.”
The powerful biotic slouched in relief. “A lot of this…isn’t the way I remember it.” She finally said.
Shepard nodded. “You were a kid. Anyone expecting you to remember everything completely unbiased is an idiot. And facing trauma of any kind is difficult. Especially old ones.”
“...yeah. We’re getting close to my cell. Let’s finish this.”
-o-
Commander Shepard let out a deep sigh as she could finally relax after changing out of her hardsuit.
Pragia had been far more stressful than expected.
Not only had there been even more Blood Pack scavenging around the Teltin facility, they had run into another survivor from the riot that shut down the facility.
If Jack was crazy and dismissive of much of her past, choosing to not remember or ignore the worst parts as best she could, Aresh had been her exact opposite. Not only was the broken man stuck in the past and hellbent on making sure that the suffering he and his fellow victims counted for something, he wanted to continue it. Restart the facility.
Shepard wondered if he had even bothered escaping after she convinced Jack to not murder him right there. They hadn’t seen any other shuttles escaping…
In the end it didn’t really matter. Aresh had made his choice. And torturing children to unleash the ‘true human biotic potential’ wasn’t something she could support.
With that little adventure wrapped up they could–
“Hey Commander, Jack and Miranda are in the middle of a…disagreement.” Joker’s voice rang out over the ship intercom. “Can you head it off before they tear out a bulkhead?”
Dammit not again!
“I’ll deal with it.” She was already running.
“Take pictures!”
The inside of Miranda’s quarters looked like a warzone as the two very powerful biotics looked like they were seconds away from attacking each other.
“ENOUGH! Stand down, both of you!”
Both women glanced at Shepard before going back to glaring at the other, but the corona of biotic energy disappeared from both of them.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“The cheerleader won’t admit what Cerberus did to me was wrong.” Jack snarled first.
“It wasn’t Cerberus. Not really. But clearly you were a mistake.”
“Screw you, you saw that damn facility but you’ve got no idea what they put me through! Maybe it’s time I showed you!”
Dear god what did she do to deserve this? Jack was still twitchy from the emotional rollercoaster they had all just been on and Miranda was choosing the worst possible time to stick up for her organization.
Still, she couldn’t have her team fighting it out in the middle of her ship.
“Stow it! Miranda, are you actually saying what we found in that facility was okay?”
Miranda jerked back like she had been slapped. “No, of course not! But it was a rogue facility. Not Cerberus. We would never–”
“Bullshit!” Jack jumped in, but Shepard stepped between them and held her back.
“You both know what we are up against. What our mission means. If we don’t pull this whole thing off the Collectors are going to destroy everything. Save your anger for them!”
“I agree. Jack, come with me. Apparently we need another lesson on mastering your anger.” Shepard looked over to see an unmasked Revan looking very unimpressed at all of them from the doorway.
“Hold on, are you two going to be okay?” She didn’t need this popping up again.
Thankfully, both women agreed it was settled until the mission was over. Whether that promise actually held up…
Shepard stayed behind as Revan led Jack off somewhere else, leaving her alone with Miranda.
“I apologize for letting that get out of hand. It's a good thing you showed up when you did.” The Cerberus operative tried deflecting but the Commander wasn’t having it.
“Miranda, the hell?”
“Shepard?”
“You’ve been with Cerberus for years. You know the twisted shit they get into. I know you saw the details of what Cerberus did to Corporal Toombs and his squad at Akuze. Why is it so hard to believe they were behind the Teltin facility?”
Miranda looked haunted. “I know Cerberus doesn’t have the cleanest record. But everything we do, we do for the advancement of humanity. Akuze was regrettable and when the team went rogue after the experiment ended was horrific. But we have limits. We don’t target children, Shepard. We don’t – we can’t target them!”
This was a little disturbing. The sheer desperation in the ravenette’s voice was incredibly unlike her. This sounded…personal.
“Why is it so important to you that Cerberus doesn’t target children?”
“...Because if we did, that means I’ve been doing everything I hated my father for. Everything I sacrificed for my sister…none of it would matter because I was just like him. And that wasn’t what I joined Cerberus for.”
It was times like these that Shepard wondered how much control the Illusive Man had over what Miranda had access to. She usually seemed so high up in what they did, but then there was that almost naive outlook that she would need to be delusional to honestly believe.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Miranda, but if Cerberus goes too far so often that people don’t hesitate to believe they were behind something, there’s usually a good reason for it. Maybe you should look into those ‘rogue’ facilities again. Find out if they were labeled that because they did what they wanted…or if it was because they got caught.”
As Shepard walked out she saw Miranda looking at her terminal with a conflicted expression. Looked like the cheerleader wasn’t as confident in Cerberus’s dealings as she pretended.
There was hope for her yet.