Until recently, I had no idea that Bioware had considered having Shepard rescued by the Geth, settling on Cerberus later. Honestly, I don't think that the idea of Shepard as an uploaded personality is all that interesting of a concept; my feelings on continuity make it pretty clear that an uploaded Shepard is not Shepard. The same personality, maybe. The same memories, maybe. The same person, no. Yeah, there's mileage there, but it's not a story I'm interested in exploring.
But a Shepard who has the same brain? Mostly? Maybe not entirely? That's another matter. What do you think when you know one of the most alien species in known space has put implants into your very brain? What do you do?
Well, aside from stop the Reapers.
My rule for this fic is that everything that happened in my Mass Effect 1 playthrough is canon. So is the prologue to Mass Effect 2: you know, the one where an unknown alien ship warps in, blows the Normandy to pieces, and Shepard almost makes it out. Beyond that, nothing is known. Some things I may include as I see fit; others I won't. The hunt for Shepard's body didn't end with Liara turning Shepard's body over to Cerberus; it just fell to a halt when the last clue disappeared. Shepard's team left their lifepods with a sense of mission - though not a unified one. The biggest change in circumstance is probably the Virmire Survivor - well, not all that big, but it's a sequence change at least.
I can't promise any update schedule. I do have a bit more buffer to play with, and all the big plot points ironed out, but I still have to write it, and I have some life events going on right now, so we'll see.
Shepard Commander
The first thing I understood was pain.
My arms were on fire. My eyes wouldn't open. My mouth - best not talk about my mouth. My legs I couldn't feel at all.
My ears - my ears heard the telltale twitter of Geth. It's basically impossible to read tone from Geth talk, since they use tone for words. It was a familiar sequence, though, one that my memory twigged to a mix of surprise and worry.
I'd heard that sequence all too many times, when a Geth patrol stumbled on my team during my fight against the Geth and their master, Sovereign.
I strained my arm, trying to move it enough to reach my weapon. I begged my eyes to open, but not only did they feel like they were stitched closed, they felt like they were covered in lead. All I was able to manage was a feeble twitch.
"Shepard Commander. You are injured. Geth are attempting to repair." The voice was clearly synthetic, but also clear and distinct. I'd never heard a voice like it. It had a trace of a Quarian accent, but while Quarians had extensive cybernetics, I'd never heard of one with a mechanical voicebox, and the phrasing was odd. The voice came almost directly overhead. I felt something touching my arm, and I renewed my useless attempts to struggle, but then my arm felt cold, a coldness that ran upwards towards my shoulder. "Sleep. You will fight again."
My arm felt like it was covered in cotton, and that slowly enveloped my chest, and then my head.
"The Old Machines will not prevail."
"Shepard Commander."
I have absolutely no idea how long it was before I woke to the sound of the Geth's synthesized voice. It barely registered on my subconscious.
"Shepard Commander. You need to wake up."
I twitched. My head hurt. My neck hurt. My shoulders hurt. At that point, I realized that my everything hurt and I stopped checking.
"Shepard Commander. Wake up. We are under attack."
I finally managed to open my eyes to see a pure black ceiling, with red light sweeping across it. I could see a blue-green light off to one side. A geth platform.
"I'm awake." My voice was dry, cracked. How long had I been out? What had happened?
Why was I alive?
The geth trooper let out a short squeal of beeps and raised its assault rifle. My heart lunched. The geth turned...away from me?
"Shepard Commander. We have repaired your omni-tool. You will need to activate it."
"Right, right..." I lifted my arm - ow - and half-closed my hand, like I was holding an imaginary ball. An instant later, holographic 'light' enclosed my arm, flashing twice, then running a band from elbow to wrist and back. I lowered my arm - it hurt too much and there was no point to keeping it up - but a moment later, text started appearing in the corner of my eye.
It had been a while since I had rebooted my omni-tool. The last time was when those Batarian pirates had managed to throw a nasty info-warfare package - not that they were state-funded, that would be ridiculous - at us when we boarded their ship. Managing any permament damage to an omni-tool was tough, and generally required physical access. Which it occured to me, given that the geth had me on an operating table for who knows how long, they actually had.
Still, after a moment I saw the AR symbol for 'door' pop up on a blank spot of wall, the one the Geth trooper was looking at, and the omni-tool's omni-gel and medi-gel reserves blinked into life.
"Who are you?"
"Geth." After a pause, the geth continued. "We are all Geth. If it makes you easier, this platform has been allocated to communicate with you. As such you may address it as 'Speaker.' The platform near you is called Webbing. Webbing Trooper will be accompanying you."
I nodded, which was a mistake as it made my headache worse.
"What happened?" I asked, rubbing the back of my neck.
"Damage to your hardsuit caused unrepairable pressure loss. Secondary effects included severe ice damage, internal bleeding, blood vessels rupturing, brain damage, and death." There was a pause. "Your expressions indicate pain. We apologize. You appear to have built up a tolerance to the anasthetics we applied, and we were forced to reduce their dose due to the attack."
I felt ill. In addition to in pain. But then... "Attack?" I knew without looking there was no pistol at my side, nor rifle on my back. I'd been toying with a few programs for my omni-tool, but they weren't ready for a field trial yet.
"Yes. A Terminus organization identified as 'Eclipse' has assaulted this facility. We are evacuating."
"How - what - why? Eclipse. That's a mercenary organization, right?"
"Yes."
"Why would they be here?"
"...Encryption keys determined. Routing communications feed to your omni-tool. We recommend armor."
I rubbed my eyes with one hand and tapped through the menus on my omni-tool. After a moment, I heard a woman's voice, smooth and with a crisp Novarian - or I suppose British - accent. "We have confirmed geth in the facility. Remember, priority one is Shepard's body. If you have to put it down to bring it back, so be it, but if what's left is unrecognizable, neither will be what's left of you."
"Right. Armor."
My armor was stored neatly on a shelf about three feet from the bier where I had - no, let's call it a bed. It's not accurate but it's much more comforting. Like a bed would have been. Anyway, the softsuit went on easily enough, tightening as power was applied, and the hardsuit plates on top followed suit. "The servos seem to be a little more responsive," I admitted as I tested the movement of my arms. "Did you make some upgrades when you were bored?"
"Geth do not feel boredom," Speaker's voice said. "No upgrades were applied to your armor directly. Your muscles, however, were damaged by pressure loss associated with loss of softsuit power in a vacuum environment. Some were repairable, some required mechanical assisstance. Mechanical assistance imbalance had to be corrected."
"Forget I asked."
"Affirmative."
Under the armor was a heavy pistol. My trigger finger was itching for something with a bit more...emphasis, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
The geth's rifle immediately snapped up, pointing at the door. Speaker's voice accompanied it. "Warning. Hostile forces have reached this location."
My kinetic barriers snapped on and I slid behind the bed, frantically linking the pistol to my suit's systems, checking the ammunition levels. It looked like it had been modified, with the internal heat sink moved to where it could be ejected. Weird, but handy, if I had a heatsink I could put in its place when the near-molten one hit hard ground and almost-splashed. Which I didn't, but sometimes it was the thought that counted.
The door lock indicator abruptily shifted from red to yellow. Someone on the other side was running an override.
The geth pulled its rifle to shoulder height, and I pulled up the Incinerate program. A mass of plasma began building next to my clenched fist, still tighly contained within a mass effect field.
"Nothing like testing under fire," I muttered, and then the door opened.
On the other side was a Salarian in white and yellow armor, carrying a shotgun. "One hostile!" A spray of pellets burst from the shotgun and swept over the geth, though none penetrated its shields. The Salarian ducked behind the door. "Correction, two hostiles, including target!"
"Bring them both down," came the woman's voice. "I'd rather not have a Shepard who's thinking for herself."
That removed all doubts, and so my fist straightened and opened, launching the plasma burst from my hand, its containtment hitting the Salarian, who stumbled away from the wall, his shields failing. I put two rounds in his chest and he fell. The trooper - Webbing - moved smoothly into the hall.
I followed.
From the look of the facility, it was a standard Alliance pre-fab, the kind we'd crawled through a hundred times during our time in the Uncharted Territories. I pitched my voice low, so it wouldn't carry. "Who made this place?"
"Probability is 98.6% that it was established by the illicit organization known as 'Cerberus.' It was constructed by a Systems Alliance engineering team, all documentation deleted. It was then occupied by a team of Alliance scientists until a change in Cerberus policy led to all members of the organization terminating Alliance employ. The team was sent to another Cerberus facility, but no records of this facility exist on Alliance records."
The pain seemed to be ebbing slightly. "Why a Cerberus facility?"
"Damage to your body was extensive. We needed advanced medical equipment geared towards human physiology. Additionally, the facility was unoccupied and acquisition was simple."
"...Rent was cheap and no one was home?"
"There is a storage facility adjacent to the main landing pad. That makes for the optimal rendezvous point. I am updating the location on your HUD."
"Throw a joke out and then right back to business."
"You are incorrect, Shepard Commander. Geth do not joke. As artificial intelligences, we do not have a sense of humor. This is a well documented fact."
"Riiiight. How much farther to the hostiles? And will there be any more backup?"
"All platforms have disengaged from facility sensors. No further information is available." Speaker paused. "Last recorded location of hostiles indicates high probability of ambush in the storage facility attached to the hangar."
"Hardly a surprise." I hadn't seen this particular warehouse, but I had seen so many that it scarcely mattered. "Do you know why I don't seem to be tired?"
"Your lungs were not repairable. They have been replaced."
That was disconcerting.
"Your heart was not repairable. It was replaced."
That was very disconcerting.
"Your brainstem was not repairable. It was-"
"Nevermind!" My hands clenched on my gun, and I wondered how much of that skin I had looked at was real skin. And since I hadn't seen any bruising, I was afraid I knew the answer. "Back to the main topic! Do we have any reinforcements?"
"There are three Geth platforms in the base. I have reached the storage facility, but I have not made contact with the enemy. I have identified seven hostiles. Webbing Trooper is with you and should arrive at the storage facility at the same time." Speaker seemed to hesitate. "I do not have an ETA on Harmony. Harmony is...difficult to predict."
"So you can track me and uh...Webbing?"
"Negative. Geth do not share sensory data. However, while Webbing does not speak an organic language, we are communicating over radio. Additionally, the geth subroutine embedded in your brain-"
"Nope nope nope." I raised my pistol and took the next corner. No targets. "Nope."
"This platform wonders, why do organics do this? Refusing to admit a problem does not solve the problem. Lingering internal conflict will-"
"Speaker? My personal gibbering terror at wondering how much of me is still 'me' ranks after the armed mercenaries who want to ensure that I stay dead. Denial does not solve the problem but it's something I can deal with later, when we're not getting - duck!"
I hit the left wall while Webbing pulled to the right. Cover was love, cover was life. After a moment, the hail of submachine gun fire let up. I clenched my free hand, triggering a shortcut I'd written into my omni-tool ages ago. Then I leaned out and thrust the hand forward.
Instantly the Salarian with the submachine gun resumed fire, two rounds streaking past me, a third hitting the metal container I was hiding behind, and the fourth smacking into my barrier. An instant later, my e-war package - a heavily customized variant on the old 'Sabotage' standby - glitched the submachine gun's software and the thing locked up.
"I need back-" the Salarian shouted, before his voice was drowned out by Webbing's assault rifle, the Geth trooper moving out of cover and pouring relativistic slugs into the Salarian's barriers until they collapsed, followed by the Salarian.
An Asari popped up from a pile of steel pipes, assault rifle blazing. Webbing backed rapidly towards cover, but dark energy gathered around the Asari's hand and she gestured, and suddenly Webbing was in the air.
I ducked out from behind my own crate, and sent a trio of slugs at the Asari, but she just ducked back into cover. And before her Pull field could dissipate, she popped back out and launched a Push that blasted Webbing against the wall.
Hard.
"Webbing Trooper is down." Speaker's tone seemed flatter than usual. Then he added, in a slightly more relaxed tone, "Runtime upload complete. We will meet again. Be careful, Shepard Commander, you will be on your own until we rendezvous."
For a moment, I hesitated. I hadn't known Webbing very long - or at all, really. The trooper was a very familiar form only because I'd killed hundreds like them. They hadn't spoken a single word - had even only chirped a few things in that Geth twitter - but they had fought by my side, and that made them one more on the long list of people who had fallen in my battles.
And that made me angry.
Something twisted in my mind. Heedless of the danger, I stepped away from my cover, raising my pistol in a steady two-hand stance, and advanced down the hall towards the Asari. I saw some kind of count-down on my HUD, but I didn't care.
The Asari leaned up, assault rifle socketed firmly into her shoulder, eyes on the crate where I had been. After a moment's hesitation, she stood, moving towards the crate, completely ignoring me.
It was her last mistake.
I fired two rounds into the kinetic barriers over her face and yanked my off-hand back, squeezing my hand like it was holding a wide, flat disk. Over the back of my hand, close enough that I could feel the warmth, my omni-tool flash-forged a triangular shard of silicon-carbide, then super-heated it. My arm straightened.
She died with a look of surprise on her face.
After a moment, my brain lurched back into motion.
"What was that?" I gasped.
"Shepard Commander, I do not recieve telemetry or sensor data from you. What was what?"
"I just...went berserk." My blood was still pumping, my heart pounding. Which I realized was kinda weird. Wasn't it artificial? "...Should my heart be racing like this?"
"Biofeedback and hormonal responses were built into your artificial heart. They seemed important to the context of the decision making process, which we did not want to alter in any way. Similarly, biochemical detection and production were important to the artificial brain-"
"NEXT QUESTION." I drew in a shaky breath. "She didn't see me."
"...Your skin was badly damaged and had to be replaced." That was an annoyingly familiar phrase. "However, construction of a suitable substitute proved difficult. Geth pseudo-organic surfaces were deemed unsatisfactory."
To that I agreed whole-heartedly.
"Above a certain optimum armor density," what? "skin flexion was visibly reduced and formed a non-suitable replacement. This platform suggested using a plasticine outer layer to match the tone of your undamaged skin. It was overruled."
"And rightly so, darling," came another synthetic voice. This one was far more melodious, higher in pitch and richer in timbre, but still obviously artificial. "Sorry to break in. This platform is called Harmony and uses female, singular pronouns."
"Please do not mind Harmony Prime," Speaker said. "She is...divergent from the norm, but adds to consensus."
"Which, darling, is why I took the name Harmony. Now, as Speaker Sniper was saying, I felt it was best to add a bit more flexibility to your skin. Among other things, should you desire to not be seen, your skin will become invisible! Your clothes won't, but your armor does include cloaking systems of its own."
I drew to the side of the corridor, lowered my pistol, and let certain parts of me relaxed while I did some self-examination. If the Geth were lying, then I would most likely be unable to tell until a third party got a look. If they were telling the truth, I had gone berserk because I was really, really mad. If that was the case, it was because Webbing had gone down.
The last trooper in my squad who'd gone down in combat was Jenkins, to Geth -
No.
The last trooper in my squad who'd gone down in combat was Lieutenant Alenko. Kaiden. Who hadn't gone down to enemy fire. He'd gone down to friendly fire because we would have had to extract two Alliance soldiers from two places at the same time. I'd been on the radio with him until the bomb I'd helped plant killed him.
I mentally penciled in a note to talk to a therapist.
However, the closest therapist was on the far side of an indeterminate amount of hostile mercenaries, so it was time for me to get moving.
The warehouse door was a pretty standard Alliance prefab, but the orange door tag told me my omni-tool believed the locks weren't strong enough to keep it out. I held my hand up to the door and the machine went to work, doing its magic. After a moment, the tag went to 'unlocked' green.
"I'm about to enter the warehouse," I said.
"We are prepared to provide support," Speaker's voice said.
"I'm not there yet," Harmony said. "A Prime's body isn't as mobile, unfortunately."
"Right." I slapped the door and my omnitool pinged it. A moment later, it was retracting. I had already ducked right and was stacked up on the right side.
As soon as the door started opening, a hail of fire poured through it, but it slowed to a halt as soon as they realized they didn't have a target.
I hit my cloak, hoping I had the feeling right, and charged through the door. There were two crates inside the door that would do for cover, and I went for the left one. At the last second, a trip mine indicator popped up. Instead of rolling into cover, I dropped low in my stride and launched off the one foot as hard as I could.
The next thing I knew, I was face down on top of the shipping containers next to the crate. The much taller shipping containers. With a splitting headache.
"Shepard Commander. Status request."
"...Son of a b- what happened?"
"You jumped, Shepard Commander. Into the ceiling."
I looked up at the ceiling. It was about four meters off the ground. Only one and a half from where I was lying, but a four meter jump straight up...
Damnit. "What did you do to my muscles- never mind that, taking fire."
I rolled away from the slugs, most of them passing over me or smacking into the container I was on, a few hitting my shields.
"We are in position for fire support," Speaker said. "We will engage as soon as you do."
"Copy that," I said as I rolled off and behind the shipping container. The near edge was closer, but the far edge of the container probably wasn't mined. Hoping my cloaking reserves were back up after my catastrophic first attempt, I re-engaged them, moved out from behind the corner, and selected my target - a human who was cautiously, though not cautiously enough, advancing towards the container, still holding a barrage of fire on the spot near the ceiling where I had fallen.
I didn't have to wait long. The rifle abruptly stopped firing, to the evident surprise of the trooper, and the radiator compartment of the mass accelerator snapped open to allow the heat sink time to cool. Then to my surprise the heat sink itself popped out of the rifle and started to fall, even as the man reached into a pouch and pulled out a cool, black, replacement heat sink.
I was surprised, but not enough to not take the shot. My slug hit the superheated coolant reservoir, which burst and sprayed droplets of metal at about five hundred degrees all over the trooper's shields. They dropped. I put another round center mass and launched a ball of plasma to follow, then ducked further left to behind the next container.
"Target down. Engaging."
I mentally catalogued the glances I'd seen. There were two Asari, two Salarians, and one Human still standing, a surprisingly egalitarian mix. Both Asari would be biotics, of course, but one of them had been toting an assault rifle and probably wasn't a specialist. One of the Salarians had the look of a tech specialist, too. It felt like my cloak - which had failed the instant I took that first shot - was still recharging, but I did have my shields, so I moved to the far end of the container and waited for the tell-tale sound of a Geth sniper rifle.
Instead the room filled with the loud BOOM of an anti-material rifle. "Target down," Speaker said.
Hesitating for less than a second, I moved out of my cover. The biotic was down with a messy hole; the other Asari was moving in the direction of the muzzle report and away from me, trying to pin Speaker down with covering fire.
I put a few rounds into her back, though none penetrated her shields. As soon as she spun around to return fire, though, my Sabotage routine killed her rifle. Her shields flared and she dove for cover, but not well enough. One more round did something nasty to her leg and she collapsed, out of the fight.
Three down, three to go.
BOOM. "Target down."
Correction, four down, two to go.
"Shepard Commander. Enemy reinforcements have arrived. We count four additional hostiles."
Four down, six to go.