The Routine Mission

"It's never just another routine mission."

There were a few final fleeting moments of consciousness that Mary experienced as her eyes were closing. As she gasped for her last few breaths of oxygen in a suit hemorrhaging air into space. The animal panic of her oncoming washed through her and she came out the other side before she dropped into the black. She thought of Joker, who she had managed to into the last pod out. She thought of Ashley, who had tried to pull her into the first pod out. She thought of Kaidan, who she had left behind on Virmire some years ago. Finally, she thought of Liara, how the young scientist might react when she found out her lover was dead.

"Don't think about that, don't go out worrying about other people."

Shepard turned and looked at the crimson star painting the place where she was dying. It was in orbit of a planet without a proper name, of course, it wasn't somewhere noteworthy.

"I suppose it might be pretty noteworthy now."

Maybe it would be best to name it, of course, it wouldn't be for anybody but herself. But Shepard wasn't about to die thinking about the name "Sigma-0378."

"What about David?"

That was a pretty dumb name for a planet, but she didn't have a lot of time to spend thinking about it to be fair. She looked down at the surface of David, it was hard to see through the atmosphere in the vibrant red of solar radiation but it looked icy. Maybe it was cold on David, maybe it just looked icy. It was hard to say from low orbit.

"I didn't ever think I'd spend long enough dying to get bored of it."

Shepard laughed weakly. The sound of it out of her throat was strange, she heard it only through the vibrations, not with her ears. It was like marbles grating together. Shepard closed her eyes and died quietly in orbit of a planet with a person's name.

She opened them again shortly after, which was an unexpected phenomenon.

To Shepard, it was like blinking, but when she managed to pull her eyes open again she was somewhere else. Her eyes wouldn't focus, in fact, every one of her senses was kind of... swimmy. In some hazy corner of her hearing, she could sense a droning alarm pealing for attention. The world around her was stark white, she couldn't make out much more detail than that. She tried to lift her hand, but it couldn't move. Every sense seemed to be working at one-fifth of what she wanted it to. The sounds had no location of form, just walls of discomforting noise. The world was all color and no shape. She could feel her body, but only in the sense of knowing what should be there. Everything felt attached at the very least. She took a deep breath, one that felt like trying to a log through a garden hose. She rocked her head slightly, she could move that at least.

"If this is heaven, I hate it."

Thoughts. She was thinking again. She had managed to climb staggeringly out of the trough of simply experiencing reality to be able to bitch about it. It was something, at least. It was easier to exist if you could think, easier to suffer too. She had them, they were welcome for now.

"Why would heaven have alarm bells?"

Okay, the rational mind was doing battle with the caveman brain again. Big progress. It probably wasn't heaven. Probably. Could it be hell? Would being perpetually mildly annoyed while feeling hungover be a kind of hell? It would certainly be annoying, but she'd always pictured more and misery. Would hell be boring? If she had to spend a lot of time there, that was probably a good form of . Perhaps that was the almighty's plan, to come up with tortures you'd never pictured.

"Keep trying to move."

Okay, maybe she couldn't feel her body as well as she thought. When she tried moving her arm again she felt uncertain that it was even there. Some part of her brain remembered the synapses to fire to move an arm, but would she even be able to tell if she were to succeed? What could she verify that she still had?

"Eyes and ears, probably."

Okay, that "probably" was doing a lot of legwork. How little vision could you have before being considered blind? Shepard tried to sniff or wriggle her nose. It definitely felt like something was there, but the room smelled like nothing. She was definitely breathing and she hadn't been when she died. It was... something?

"I should try closing my eyes."

Okay, the white went away. She opened them and it came back. Black, white, black, white. Like a bad television signal, but a signal was still a signal.

"The alarm is getting louder."

That was the first instinct, certainly, but it was hard to say that it was getting louder. It seemed more like it was getting real-er. If she tried to, she could place it in a hypothetical room now. Somewhere up and to the right from her. It was a little more definite, less of a drone and more of a bweep. Being able to deal in absolutes was progress as well. She tried her eyes again, things were still out of focus but a little less so. The ceiling could be split into lights and non-lights. The white split into more of a black and a white with some greys in between. It was like some cave-dwelling organism's pre-evolutionary sight. Perhaps in whatever place she now was, man had finally evolved into something like a crab. Either way, there was depth, shadows cast in harsh light. Somewhere in the harsh black/white world dichotomy, somebody had built something somewhere.

"Probably indoors, good to know the probably afterlife probably has furnishings... probably."

She tried raising her arm again, no good. She tried making a fist, no good. She tried wiggling a single finger. She felt like it moved but in a sort of heavy and limp way. Like her whole body was asleep. It was hard to say how long she had been "awake." It was hard to say anything for certain. She wiggled her finger again, forcing life into it slowly and patiently. She got to the point where she could wiggle it with little effort.

"Now the hand."

Forcing her hand to move started to work slowly. She blinked her eyes again and got a little bit more detail back. An inch at a time images began to form and her arm began to loosen. She got bold, tried a single big heave. She managed to flop her hand down onto her chest. Above her was a bright surgical light, an array of primed and empty needles. A hospital of some kind, not the afterlife. Not unless the afterlife had doctors.

Feeling things was a bad idea, she was becoming aware of pain swimming in her head. Her mouth was warm, filled with spit, too much spit. Her throat was creaking and dry. She wanted to do something with the spit, but her mouth and throat still only barely wiggled when she moved them. She managed to roll her head to the side, the blurry scene of bay windows materialized. Figures moved on the other side of them, a cart of medical instruments toppled at her side. If she pushed her eyes to the corners of their sockets, she could see things in her periphery, but it hurt to move her eyes.

"A Medbay?"

She tried to open her mouth to say something, anything. She managed a slurry of vowel sounds, drool coming sloshing out of her mouth. She was up, probably on a table. There was a half-chance that she was still cut open and dying. She didn't feel like she was dying, at least not the same way as before. She managed to push her gaze down and focus on her own shoulder. There was an ugly white cloth over it. She flopped her arm again, pushing her hand into view as it fell on her shoulder. There was no blood, no viscera, she probably wasn't hanging open in a medbay somewhere. She let the drool keep falling out her mouth, not that she had much choice.

She tried speaking again, more vowels but this time with a spare consonant or two. She managed to turn one of her legs. The steady bweep of the alarm was starting to make her feel something new. It was a sort of dull panic, a reasonable response to most alarms. She wanted to stop the sound, but she probably couldn't have stopped from pissing herself... if she hadn't already. Her lower body was too numb to know.

A figure came blurrily into view. Shepard tried to call for it but didn't get any farther than before. The figure approached the bed quickly, the white and black hexagonal padding of a weirdly designed jumpsuit shifted into focus. The figure crouched next to Shepard, staring into her unfocused eyes. She was beautiful, in a way that Shepard hadn't really thought of another woman as being before now. A flawless face with pouty lips and long black hair. Too picturesque to be human, angelic.

"Can you hear me, Shepard?" Her voice was distant, waterlogged. It didn't come in sync with the movement of her lips.

Shepard groaned a couple of letters back.

"Don't try to speak, blink twice if you can."

Shepard obeyed. The woman took on a curt smile.

"Good, you're not done cooking but we're out of time." She spoke softly, she grabbed a needle from a table nearby and quickly jabbed Shepard's arm. Her lack of bedside manner made Shepard grateful that she couldn't feel that arm.

Shepard grunted quizzically, hoping the woman would catch the unspoken question. A tingling crept into her arm as a drop of blood crept out.

The woman looked back into Shepard's eyes briefly before opening her datapad. "Trust me, you are not going to thank me for this. Try to think happy thoughts."

Shepard had a moment to brace before a bolt of lightning shot up her arm and left a scorching trail directly into her brain. Shepard's eyes focused instantly before blurring again with tears. She took a long gasping inhale of what smelled like pure ammonia and coughed the air right back out. Her whole body was still numb, but it felt like her bones were burning every second she wasn't moving. Her lungs caught fire, forcing the timber out and leaving the garden hose gaping wide.

"Fuck!" Shepard managed to cough out, bringing her hands clumsily to her face.

"I warned you. that was enough adrenaline to kill you."

"Why didn't it?" Shepard grimaced.

"Probably because you were under enough sedatives to kill you already."

Shepard tried to pull herself out of bed and managed to flop onto the floor. The stranger helped sturdy her and threw one of Shepard's arms around her shoulders. She managed to set Shepard down in a wheelchair. Shepard's limbs still moved groggily and all she could do was slump down and let herself be pushed.

"What the fuck is happening?"

"Right, long story short, you were dead." The woman explained, jerking the chair around through a labyrinth of corridors.

"This is hell then?"

"Past-tense were, were dead."

"I didn't think that was possible."

"My employer had a great financial interest in making it possible." They entered a large chamber, a couple of security mechs had enough time to turn before being tossed over a railing.

"Who do I owe the thanks?"

"We can deal with that later. How do you feel?"

"My bones are on fire, other than that, nothing."

The stranger pushed her into an elevator. "Unfortunately your nerves are going to take a while to fully reconnect. The fact that you can feel anything at all means you'll be fine." She punched a button.

Shepard winced "Peachy."

The stranger offered her hand "My name is Miranda Lawson, you'll be working under me for the foreseeable future."

Shepard took it gingerly "Look, I'm grateful, but I don't think that's how this works."

The elevator door opened to a hangar bay. Miranda shook Shepard's hand once almost out of obligation and went back to pushing. "I'm afraid that's not open to negotiation."

The hangar was big enough to stretch what the mind could even conceptualize. It was a proper full starport, though one that had seen better days. The ships all looked mid-repair, bearing only one distinct similarity.

"Cerberus"

"Look, obviously you know who I am," Shepard complained, tugging at the starchy surgical gown. "So let me save you the lecture and tell you that I don't work for just anybody."

Miranda's face didn't budge "We were concerned about that, we've done our best to make you reconsider."

Shepard wanted to argue but balked as they approached a massive centerpiece. It was the Normandy, no mistaking it. Granted, it was a lot more intact than she remembered it. Intact and not in standard alliance colors. Shepard slid back in her chair as the docking bridge lowered toward them and opened just as she remembered it.

"You..."

Miranda just kept pushing. "Carrot and stick Shepard, I'm sure we can make you see it our way."

There was an unfathomable wave of relief to hear the door hiss shut behind them. The chair stopped in the transitional airlock. She was alive, on the Normandy. She had dealt with Cerberus before, they could be reasoned with.

"How bad could it be?"