Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of it.
—
Location Unknown
The alarms drowned the hissing sound as air escaped from the pod. The man inside was disoriented and couldn't see or hear clearly, all his senses muddled.
He stumbled out of the pod and fell, his arms unintentionally protecting his head. He lay down there, trying to think, but his brain was sluggish, as if he was trying to swim through mud, and he couldn't focus.
The man didn't know how long had passed, but his hearing slowly came back, only to be assaulted by a loud noise. His vision wasn't back yet, and he could only see spots that were cleaning up.
He continued to breathe while trying to make sense of what was going on and remembering who he was.
"Shepard! Shepard, get up." He could barely comprehend the voice, but it triggered something.
Right, he was John Shepard, but what was he doing here? In fact, where was he?
Shaking his head, Shepard slowly got up as his vision finally cleared enough, though the world still was a blur.
The alarms, combined with the woman's voice shouting at him, irritated Shepard. "Enough!" The same voice replied with something, but he was too busy rubbing his eyes to listen.
Finally, his senses cleared up enough, and the memories slowly came to him.
—
Two Weeks Ago
Location Unknown
The Illusive Man, leader of the Cerberus, put out his cigarette. "Fascinating. Shepard's ingenuity never ceases to surprise me. How has the Alliance missed him?" From his holographic computer, he examined the images of a modified Collector stasis pod, with the legendary Commander Shepard sleeping in it, hale and in one piece.
"He couldn't drag the Collector pods far away with his limited oxygen and chose to work right on the crash site. But after modifying the pods and putting himself in stasis, the ground beneath him gave out. The pod was undamaged, but he was buried beneath ice, and his emergency beacon was non-operational." Miranda showed him images of the place they found Shepard, as well as scans of the pod.
"Still, this is excellent news. Can we wake him up?" Two years had gone by since Jonathan Shepard was believed dead on the Collector ship after it exploded.
Miranda nodded. "We are trying to do that without causing any harm; he should be up soon." Their sample of Collector technology was barely a sliver of what the Alliance and the Council had taken from the wreck, but they had managed to find some pods that were thrown into space.
"Good, because humanity needs Shepard with the Reapers on the horizon." Video recordings of bug-like aliens taking humans away played on the screen.
—
Shaking his head, Shepard checked for his weapons, only to find they were both out of charge after who knows how long he had spent in the stasis pod.
And for some reason, he was in a Cerberus facility.
Yay.
As if it wasn't evident from the alarms, the voice that kept speaking to him through the intercom explained the situation. "Shepard, you need to move; this facility is under attack."
"I need guns." His laser pistols needed repairs, and he didn't have the time for it.
"There is a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room. Hurry!"
His armor was out of power, and in his stasis-weary state, he half stumbled to the locker. The power sources were compatible, so it was just a matter of switching the power cells and taking the mass accelerator pistol from the locker.
And it wasn't anything like the ones he used.
"You need a thermal clip to fire it. We'll find you some from… damn it."
Seeing the oxygen canisters near the door that were about to blow up, Shepard took cover and waited for the explosion, moving forward after the danger was gone.
Near the door, there was a dead Cerberus person with the thermal clips the woman talked about.
"Someone's hacked security to kill you. Get ready."
"They are going to need an army for that." Tired or not, he wasn't going to die here.
Shepard reloaded the gun, opened the door, and jumped over the barricade. "Look out!" The woman warned him, but it was a late warning as Shepard slammed the LOKI mech to the wall with his biotics, and the machine did not get up.
"Keep moving. We need to get you to the shuttles."
Using a simple throw had tired him more than usual, and Shepard knew he had to use his biotics sparingly. Moving through the door the mech had come in, the woman warned him about more mechs, and Shepard took cover once more.
The mechs weren't anything dangerous; they were more useful to cover the back of a retreating force or as disposable units, so dealing with them was easy.
At the end of the corridor and through the door, he saw two Cerberus personnel firing at a YMIR mech, who shredded the humans with his machine gun.
Shepard ignored it and turned right and found a grenade launcher on the other side of the door. "Now we are talking."
Just in time for a group of LOKIs to enter through the door on the lower floor, all gathered together nicely for him.
He pulled the trigger, sending the mechs sprawling out and out of commission.
But he only had two grenades left, so wanton destruction was out of the question for now.
Taking the elevator down, he rushed through the fire and resorted to exploring his way out since the woman's voice broke down and the connection was gone.
There were two doors, and Shepard found logs that spoke of how he had recovered and that two years had passed since the day Normandy went down in one of them.
God damn it.
The other door had a Cerberus agent fighting mechs who didn't expect to see Shepard here at all. "Shepard, you're awake?"
Headshotting the mechs, Shepard turned to the Cerberus agent. "Yeah, and I needed an explanation yesterday."
"Alright, I am Jacob. I'll fill you in, but we need to get to the shuttles first." Two more mechs came out, and both stood up from the cover at the same time, two headshots putting the mechs down.
"Fine, let's go." He would leave grilling this guy for later, and if worse comes to pass, he would just space the Cerberus henchman and find answers on his own.
They were ready to proceed, but Jacob's omni-tool rang as someone sent a message on an open channel.
"Check. Check. Anyone on this frequency? Anybody still alive out there? Hello?"
"Wilson? This is Jacob. I am here with Commander Shepard. Just took out a wave of mechs over in D wing." He explained the situation over the comms.
"Shepard's alive? How the hell… Never mind. You need to get him out of there. Get to the service tunnels and head to the network control room."
Shepard's instincts told him Wilson wasn't happy about his survival.
And his instincts never led him astray.
"Roger that, Wilson. Stay on this frequency."
"We should go."
"The service tunnels are this way."
—
The tunnels were affected by the attack on the station as well. The lights flickered, and LOKI mechs were crawling through everywhere.
Even with Jacob's constant whining and Wilson screaming like a little girl in a horror movie about the mechs finding him, they eventually reached server room B, where Wilson was lying on the ground, wounded in his leg.
Grabbing medi-gel from the wall and slapping some on Wilson got him back on his feet.
"Thanks, Shepard. Never thought I'd be saved by you. Guess that makes us even." Shepard listened to the logs and knew the man meant how they found his stasis pod.
"I thought maybe I could shut down the security mechs. But whoever did this fried the whole system. Completely irreversible." The man explained what he was doing, and Shepard just sighed.
It was rare to find competent bad guys.
Mostly because he killed the majority of them.
"We didn't ask what you were doing. Why do you even have security mech clearance? You were in the bio wing." Jacob sounded suspicious, and Wilson was quick to defend himself.
"Weren't you listening? I came here to try and fix this. Besides, I was shot. How do you explain that?"
So Wilson was the one responsible, and either the mechs got out of control and wounded him, or he shot himself to save face.
An interrogation was in order, though later.
"Let's just get out of here."
"Right, Shepard, but we need to find Miranda. We can't leave her behind."
"Forget about Miranda. She was over in the D wing. The mechs were all over that sector. There's no way she survived."
"A bunch of mechs won't drop Miranda. She is alive." Jacob sounded so sure of Miranda, though; the LOKI mechs didn't really present any trouble to a well-trained soldier unless they severely outnumbered them.
Wilson was going to retort, but Shepard had had enough. "We are in a station that is under assault, and you two want to stay here and discuss whether she is alive or not? Fine by me, I'll find a shuttle on my own."
"No, wait." Jacob and Wilson followed him. If Miranda was as good as Jacob said she was, then she would find her way out, because he wasn't going to comb this station for a Cerberus employee.
Mechs came out of the door on the other side of the room before they could get through the canisters, and rather than waste thermal clips, Shepard threw the canisters towards the mech, with Wilson overloading them halfway. The explosion scraped the mechs, and they were free to move forward.
"Ok, we took 'em down, but this is getting tense. Shepard, if I tell you who we work for, will you trust me?" Jacob stopped to explain something that was quite obvious.
Shepard looked at Jacob as if he was speaking an incomprehensible language. "Gee, Jacob, I don't know. With all these Cerberus logos around us, maybe you're working for a secret Hanar sex cult or something?" Shepard's sarcasm stupefied both men, who looked at him owlishly.
"Believe me, if I thought you two were a problem, you'd be dead by now, so let's just go before I change my mind." He couldn't figure out whether Jacob was sharp for figuring out Wilson was up to something or an idiot for thinking Shepard didn't know who he was working for.
"Yeah, okay."
—
The mechs were swarming the shuttle bay as well, and he only had two grenades on his launcher. The first three mechs were just coming online, so they were easy targets.
Taking a left and up the ramp, more LOKIs were waiting in ambush, which was when Shepard pulled out his grenade launcher to clear them out.
Jacob and Wilson took down the mechs on the opposite side, but more came through the door at the end, and he launched his last grenade at them and dropped the launcher now that it was just dead weight, as he couldn't be sure about finding more ammo for it.
"Come on, through here. We're almost at the…" Wilson unlocked the door, only to find a woman glaring at him. "Miranda, but you were…" He began to say something, but Miranda wasn't in the mood to listen.
"Dead?" Raising her pistol, she shot Wilson right in the throat; only Shepard's timely intervention by putting the man on stasis did he live.
"What the hell? He is a traitor!" The woman scowled, pointing his pistol at Shepard, who didn't even bat an eye.
"Yeah, I figured it out. What I didn't figure out is who he works for. Now stand down so I can interrogate him on the way out." Shepard matched Miranda's glare, and she lowered her pistol with a scowl.
Miranda turned around, holstering her pistol. "Come on, the shuttle is ready."
Shepard knocked Wilson out with a kick and gestured to Jacob to bring him in.
Boarding the shuttle, they left the station behind.