Chapter 26: Subject Zero
"Remember back when becoming a Spectre was an acknowledgement of a lifetime of training and achievement by the most august body in the galaxy?" Tali needled Commander Shepard while we took the shuttle down to the surface of Pragia, "Now people can get it by sleeping with a Councilor."
Coming as no surprise to anyone, Commander Jane Shepard was not amused by Jack and I becoming the first krogan and second human Spectres in the way that we did. The woman ran a pristine military career in honor of her parents, received the Star of Terra for her incredible defense of the Elysium colony during the Skyllian Blitz, somehow managed to be one of the nicest people in space, and she became a Spectre by the skin of her teeth.
Poor girl should have taken the low road like we did and got in on blackmail and called in favors.
"Please don't remind me of that." Shepard muttered.
"Tali." I locked eyes to what are probably some intense glowing peepers behind the quarian's purple tinted visor, "I have been providing intense and repeated satisfaction to the females of this galaxy since I was barely two weeks old. This was recognition by an august body for my lifetime of training and achievement. In fact, I have spent a higher percentage of my lifetime honing my craft than any of those other pansies that join the club." I snorted, "And I kill people. Lots of people."
Jack wasn't feeling particularly chatty as we flew across the overgrown world. Below us, Pragia existed like a sci-fi horror survival show. In an attempt to create a breadbasket world, the batarians seeded the world with modified crops, but hadn't done any research into the microbial life native to the fertile world. The plants the batarians brought with them mutated, many becoming carnivorous, and could overgrow a building in a matter of hours.
Do those guys ever not fuck up everything they touch?
"There it is." Jack spoke finally, "Cerberus built the place to last."
EDI informed us of the multiple thermal signatures in the facility, and we entered from the rooftop landing pad. Right from the start we encountered signs of how Cerberus ran this show, the inhospitable containers used to ship kidnapped children to this madhouse still waiting in the very first room.
Up next we encountered a holoprojector on loop stating that the Illusive Man was getting suspicious of operation and how he did not know what kinds of experiments the wackjobs in lab coats were running here.
"That's sus as hell." I stated bluntly, "This facility has just been running an 'Illusive Man is innocent' advertisement for years? Even if the dipshits here believed they'd pulled the wool over IM's cyber eyes, I'd bet my quad he knew and silently approved."
"You only get so many war crimes you can write off as rogue cells before even the most stubborn bosh'tets have to agree the place smells like bullshit." Tali agreed with me.
We entered a larger chamber with a broken glass ceiling allowing the rain to flow through, bringing up memories Jack shared with us of her escape and the last half dead guard between herself and freedom.
The place was trashed, with a broken catwalk and the containers resting willy nilly throughout forcing us to slog through the maze until we encountered a pack of varren. Something about the weird dog, fish, python hybrid space hounds moved me, and I signaled the team to stand down and removed my helmet. I began growling at the rapidly approaching predators, and smacked the first of them on the snout. My hands came down heavily upon the beasts as I shouted at them in krogan speak.
Fifteen minutes later I had four bad boys sadly following me through the facility, praying to sink their fangs into some fools to make me happy.
"This looks like an arena." Shepard commented on an open space with blood stained floor tiles.
"Only time they ever let me out of my cell was to fight the other kids here." Jack told her.
"Did other children die in these fights?" Shepard asked.
"Yep." Jack nodded, "They'd pump me full of drugs and shock me if I hesitated. Still get those warm feelings in a fight."
A bit further we encountered another holoprojector that last logged a recording of a guard during the riot that ended the facility. The statement that the riot would free Jack and the insistence that Jack be captured alive contradicted her memory of the event.
"I don't remember it like that." Jack mused, "I broke out when I noticed my guards were gone. The other kids attacked me, the guards attacked me, the automated systems attacked me."
"My dear," I spoke up, "you're going to have to be okay with the fact that your memory of events as a drugged up freaked out little girl aren't reliable."
"It won't matter either way once Tali rigs this place to blow sky high." Jack agreed in a round about way.
"It'll be nothing but a smoking crater soon enough." Tali nodded her head.
Our foreword advance hit a unit of Blood Pack vorcha led by a single krogan merc. I opened up with machine gun fire that tore him and a vorcha with a flamethrower apart while my new varren pack started tearing into the rest of the ground based enemies. The report of Shepard's anti-material rifle signaled the end of the vorcha up on the hanging catwalk.
A hail of rifle fire tore through the glass to our left and I returned fire on a team of vorcha who fell to pieces immediately.
"Anybody else notice that this place has such a huge morgue for such a small facility?" I commented on the macabre location of our firefight.
"The other children must have died in great numbers." Tali added her two cents.
"That's bullshit." Jack denied, "I got the worst of it and I made it out alive."
"Babe." I interrupted her woe is me routine, "I think it is time to accept that you weren't an experimental subject."
"Then what the fuck am I?" She snarled.
"The final product." I answered calmly.
"You being for real right now?" she asked far more incredulous than pissed.
"Hundy, girl." I nodded.
"Makes sense." she agreed and we continued our tour the Teltin Facility.
"So strange to be back here." Jack spoke as we continued our trek through this dank hell hole, "I feel like… I'm pissed off. I'm a dangerous bitch. But then I'm a little girl again. Shit, it's complicated. Let's just go plant that bomb."
A pair of vorcha tried to ambush us in the cell wing of the facility, and I got to pick up three more varren for my pack, these ones quickly falling in line with the others.
"Is there a reason you are picking up all these stray varren?" Tali asked.
"Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Supper are good boys." I announced, "Elevenses, Afternoon Tea, and Night Rats will have to show their worth if they want to stay off the grill."
"The fact that you are talking about eating your pets bothers me." Tali stated, "It bothers me a lot."
"I like it." Jack told me as we approached the two way mirror that made up one wall of her cell.
"I used to scream at the kids outside of this for hours." Jack told us bitterly, "I hated them for ignoring me, but it was a two way mirror."
Beyond that we encountered the experiment chambers. Two connected rooms with the evil scientist version of a dentist chair in each. A final holoprojector conveniently logged the experiments run on the children, often fatal, that were conducted to find ways to push Jack's biotic strength just a little bit farther.
"Looks like you were right." Jack admitted before playing the next log that revealed they hoped to infiltrate the Alliance Ascension program and start over, a log that ended with the scientist getting flung across the room.
What a fucking mook. Jack baring down on him and he stops to Vlog for a bit. Fucking millennial deserved the biotic trucking she splattered him with just for his idiocy, let alone his mustachio twirling evil.
The next room found a trio of krogan and their vorcha henchmen complaining on a call about the lack of salvage this outing brought them, and then how they'd kill us for more credits. Their hostility let us know the guy on the other end agreed.
"Ya'll fellows sure you want to ride this train?" I asked them before the fight.
"Choo choo asshole." The leader replied.
The fight was brief and pointless, but did take a long time to finish as I stuffed one krogan's head up his leader's ass, the pair bucking around like a fucked up centaur. It was a lot of hard work, but the reaction of my teammates was worth it. The fact that we would post Jack's helmet recording on the net would make it quite lucrative later.
"That was one of the most fucked up things I have ever seen." wheezed a bent over Tali as the Commander gently rubbed her back.
"I'd give it a seven." she scored.
"You'd think a head that big wouldn't fit up an ass that tight." I nodded my head sagely, "You just aren't approaching the problem with the right attitude."
"Is the attitude, fuck these guys?" Jack asked.
A big thumbs up for my girl.
We found a human waiting in Jack's cell, the unhinged screams of the front half of the centaur echoing down the hall behind us. I know this is some kind of big moment for Jack in the game, but fuck this guy. A quick punch relocated his balls to his throat, causing his scream to choke off into an agonized hiss.
He managed to squeak out his name and his status as another survivor of this facility before he fucked up and told Jack he wanted to restart the project because it all had to have been done for a reason. Jack pulled her gun, but just laughed in his face.
"I'd shoot you, but it'd be funnier to see you try to outrun the blast of the bomb I am going to set off. Get to hobbling, bitch."
I felt proud of my girl as she shot his ass on his way out.
"What a fucking wackjob." She commented.
Jack took a nostalgia trip while Tali primed the bomb I'd been carrying this whole time. On the way out, a hoarse voice whispered up to me.
"Kill me." whispered the front half of the collapsed centaur, the back half having lost the fight for air some time ago, "Kill me."
I pulled out my golden side arm and pointed it down at the relieved krogan.
"Psyche." I laughed as I spun my pistol around my finger and holstered it.
It's real good to embrace your inner asshole sometimes.
It is not good to embrace your friend's face with your inner asshole.
They done learnt that today.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
JManM
JManM This chapter was pretty hard to write. I knew this would be one of the most important chapters of the story, as it is the turning point in canon Jack's arc and my chance to show how much Grunt's changes had shifted that arc, and I had to do it in one of the most boring missions in the game.
I tried to show a more adjusted and mature Jack. Don't know how well that turned out if I am being honest, but the Hancock reference was dope.
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