Chapter Twenty-Two

I've always had a difficult time waking up. Ever since I was a child, I can remember having an extremely rough time rousing myself from unconsciousness in order to face the day ahead of me. When I was young, I didn't think much of it. I'd always had a sort of sadness deep inside me, even when I was a kid, but I don't think that factored in too much back then. I was just tired, constantly.

When I got older, my parents blamed it on puberty and laziness. What teenager in their right mind wants to wake up early in the morning? Once you've reached that stage of adolescent freedom where you can make the choice to stay up all night, you're going to do it without fail. Kids have an innate desire to break the rules, test the waters, and experience the highs and lows of life for themselves. If they have parents that allow it, they'll never develop a healthy sleep schedule.

It wasn't until adulthood that I realized I had a small handful of disorders that prevented my brain from properly recharging when I fell asleep. My body liked to move a lot while unconscious, hindering my ability to actually rest, and my brain tended to prevent me from falling into the deepest stages of sleep. Family members and ex-girlfriends even told stories about me rambling incoherent words and sentences throughout the night on occasion, which wasn't necessarily a horrible thing, but combined with the other issues it made for a poor night's sleep.

So it was no surprise to me when, some time after I'd realized that I was waking up, I desperately wished I could go back to sleep. At first, base instincts took hold of me and pleaded with my brain to simply stay inactive and keep my eyes shut. Then, the more cognizant I became, the more subtle and grandiose the reasons became. I remembered where I was, what I had just woken up from, and what I no doubt had to face now that I was awake. The possibilities were endlessly negative, spelling out a hundred horrors that I might open my eyes to find.

Yet even more concerning was what I'd just given up on, and what I'd decided not to abandon. So there really was no debating it; whatever shitty situation wanted to present itself, my stubborn ass had chosen this path. Time to get ready for it.

I opened my eyes slowly, already taking in details and sounds that the Seer made sure I couldn't ignore. It was amazing what you could learn about your surroundings from even the smallest details when those details were put under a microscope. Movement, for example, informed me that the only person in action was a man frantically working at one of the half-dozen terminals to my right. His fingers slapped the virtual keyboard furiously, no doubt due to the fact that I was waking up and therefore no longer under his control.

Lawson. I was sure of it.

Dozens of wires had burrowed their way into my body or stuck to my skin, attaching at several points across my skull and chest. Even had a few sticking out of my arms, probably monitoring vital signs. The ones in my chest had to be doing something similar, as well as helping regulate my organs while I was under. Whatever they'd been doing to my brain must have put me in such a deep sleep that it interfered with the neurochemical signals which told my body how to function.

𝘊𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰.

Forethought might have convinced me to be a bit more cautious given all the technology and regulating components entwined with my body, but a layer of cold fury had already buried itself into my heart. I knew it was irrational, I knew I was mentally and emotionally vulnerable, I knew that I was literally bare-chested and weaponless, and I even knew that I was too smart to let impulsivity get in the way of a sound course of action.

But none of it mattered, because my mind and soul had just been hijacked and toyed with like I was nothing but a lab rat. For the first time in a long time, I found enough value in myself to be outraged at my mistreatment.

I sat up from the cold metallic cradle that I'd been lying in, yanking loose every wire that could be yanked. The rest, upon realizing that they were either too deep in my skin or too well-attached, I severed from my body with one of my omni-blades. I didn't pass out, nor did I experience any pain or discomfort, so whatever they'd been doing clearly didn't matter now that I was awake.

"What the—?" I heard from across the room. Lawson turned around to look at me, undoubtedly alerted by my brutish removal of the shackles he'd place on me. "That's impossible!"

I won't even lie, it gave me so much satisfaction to absorb his fear and incredulity. I've never thought of myself as a particularly vindictive or petty person, but he deserved a world of hell for what he'd just put me through.

I slid off my death bed on shaky legs, and despite the difficulty, I began advancing towards him. There were others that I realized I probably needed to worry about, as well as the fates of my team, but in that moment the only thing I cared about was bitch-slapping Lawson so hard that they'd feel the tremors all the way back on earth.

He pointed a gun in my direction, and even that didn't cause me too much concern. I was quicker, more agile, and at least twice as durable—I had the scars to prove it, all of which were on display since Cerberus had so graciously removed my armor. A shot escaped the pistol, but I'd already ducked to the side and broken into a full sprint towards the man. Even without the assistance of jump jets, I had always been a quick motherfucker. The gene mods had only made me quicker.

A second shot whizzed past my right arm just before my fist connected against Lawson's jaw with a sharp crack. He went reeling, giving me the opportunity to grab his right arm and wrist. Then, with the force of gravity and momentum on my side, I snapped both his wrist and his elbow so that his grip on the pistol immediately loosened. With one quick motion, I took possession of the gun and stood over him as he slumped onto the ground, yelping in pain.

I very nearly shot him in the skull. To this day, I can't decide if my motivations for sparing him were borne of mercy or revenge.

𝘏𝘦'𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵.

God, was that an understatement. There were at least three other Cerberus operatives somewhere in the complex, going off my count before I'd been knocked out, but I'd caught no sight of any of them. Even when I focused all my senses and tuned out everything inconsequential, not a sound or reverberation on the air alerted me to any presence but mine, Claire's, and Antarom's.

Speaking of, the two of them had to be my immediate concern. I still needed to alert Adison and J'Kal, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 we really needed to contact Garrus and Shepard, but it had to wait. Too much shit had happened and I needed to find out whether Claire was on our side or completely subjugated by whatever fuckery Cerberus had cooked up to take over her mind.

Lawson was outdone and completely neutralized as a threat, but I still couldn't risk him being a wild card. Before he could even yell in resistance, I smacked him on the back of his head with the gun I'd taken from him. The effect was practically immediate; combined with the pain he was in from several broken bones, the hit sent him into the void of unconsciousness effortlessly. Then I was able to focus on Claire.

Oddly enough, she'd been allowed to stay in her armor despite both Antarom and I being practically stripped naked. Of course, if she'd been telling the truth when trying to convince me to remain in my fantasy, she was already indoctrinated. Cerberus's artificial version of the process must have required the individual in question to be medically sedated, which explained the various pins and needles that had been attached to my body while I was under. Claire, on the other hand, only had a few wires connected to her skull, likely allowing her to interface with me.

Why she hadn't woken up was a mystery then, as was the fact that I had. Coma victims don't typically wake up of their own accord, and especially not when their coma is created and sustained by medical science.

Either way, I ran first to the monitor next to Antarom's cradle, checking vitals and trying to make sense of the information on display. If I was right, they'd done the same thing to her that they'd done to me: she was living out a life in her dreams where she had everything she thought would make her happy. If I knew Antarom, it probably included a metric assload of dead mercenaries piled at her feet and an endless supply of ryncol.

She'd be furious, but I had to wake her up. I entered a few keystrokes and ignored the warning that popped up, then set to work undoing all the IVs and wires attached to her. It only then struck me as odd that Cerberus had even tried to indoctrinate her; the Illusive Man wasn't stupid, but he'd never shown any particular respect for other species, either. Perhaps he simply saw the value in having a powerful asari commando at his beck and call.

Regardless, if the process was at all similar to how it had unfolded with me, I knew I had a few minutes before she woke up. Our gear had been stored fairly close by, so I set about putting my armor back on and moving Antarom's to the foot of her station. Once she awoke, we had a very difficult choice of what to do with Claire, and I knew we'd need to leave the facility so we could explain to Adison and J'Kal what had happened.

𝘚𝘩𝘪𝘵, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘴 𝘏𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘺?

That was a can of worms I sure as shit didn't want to open. Not only had the theta wave treatment apparently not worked, but we also had Cerberus to contend with. If the bastards could somehow use the seeds of Reaper indoctrination to bend people to their will, we were all in for a world of hurt. There had been hundreds if not thousands of military leaders who'd had to undergo the treatment. If all of them were now compromised, the situation was about to go from an impossible struggle to an absolute fucking nightmare.

A grunt sounded off from behind me, immediately followed by the frantic dash of Antarom escaping her mental prison. When I turned around, she'd leapt out of her indoctrination cradle and had nearly charged me with the sheen of biotics before recognizing that I wasn't the bad guy.

Her eyes were bloodshot. It was the first thing I noticed, because I'd only ever seen it a small handful of times before when she'd overexerted herself. Whatever she'd been dreaming about, the sudden realization that it wasn't real had done a number on her.

"What—the fuck—is going on?" she gasped between strained and rapid breaths. Shit, I'd never seen her so vulnerable before.

"Easy," I said, immediately regretting my choice of words. No one ever likes when someone else tells them to calm down. "Same thing happened to me. Cerberus got the jump on us and put us under."

"Cerberus?" Her eyes darted around, looking for some proof that I wasn't bullshitting her, but all she saw was Henry Lawson passed out on the floor.

"You saw the uniforms before all hell broke loose, right? The patches that were on their arms?"

"The Council said Cerberus got annihilated the second the Reapers invaded."

Yeah, I was still having trouble believing it too. Hackett and Shepard had been so sure of themselves when they'd said that the Illusive Man wouldn't be a threat to our plans, and yet there we were, having just barely survived the attempt to indoctrinate us into his servitude. That was, assuming Claire hadn't been lying. There was a very good chance that this was all just a Reaper trick.

"Look, I don't understand what the hell's happening here any more than you do," I said, grabbing my weapons and holstering them on my armor. "All I know is that they were trying to indoctrinate us, and the balding motherfucker over there is one of the Illusive Man's most trusted allies. Whatever the case may be, the mission failed, and we stumbled into a shitstorm. So I need you to get your shit together so we can report in and get some goddamn help."

She shot me a look of defiance that sent a shiver down my spine. It wasn't a good idea to piss off Antarom under normal circumstances; what she'd just gone through had practically turned her into a feral animal, and I stood as the only conscious being in the room to whom she could direct her confusion and anger.

Still, she was impulsive, not an idiot. After a few moments spent considering her options, she must have decided that trusting me was the best one for the time being. "What the hell do they want with us?"

"We'll figure that out later," I answered. Satisfied that her head was back in the game, I began moving toward Claire. "Gear up and get ready to move out."

"What about the other eggheads? I saw at least ten of them, and we only killed four. Guy on the floor makes five."

I shook my head as I began skimming through the terminal attached to Claire's cradle. "Dunno."

"Wait . . ." The room turned awkwardly silent, and I looked up to find Antarom eyeing Claire suspiciously. "You and me get stripped down but they let her stay fully armored? What's that about?"

𝘚𝘩𝘪𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦.

"She wasn't in your dream?" I asked.

"Dream?"

"They were trying to indoctrinate us. Gave us dreams of the lives we wished we could've had so that we'd give up and become complacent. I couldn't stand the inconsistencies, kept tearing back at things that didn't make sense. Claire had to show up to convince me to stop."

Antarom had made it halfway through re-equipping her armor, only to stop once she heard something that didn't make sense to her. "She was trying to get you to submit?"

I gulped and took a deep breath. "I think Cerberus found a way to piggyback onto the chemical alterations left by Reaper indoctrination. She isn't herself any more."

I'm not sure I'd ever seen Antarom surprised before, or if I had, she'd done a damn good job at downplaying it. It's always odd seeing someone you know or have observed for a long period of time act uncharacteristically, but I would've been more shaken if she had remained her undeterred self. Instead, her eyes bent into a frown and her mouth parted slightly, for once at a loss for words to describe a fucked situation.

"She's one of them?" Anger and a tinge of disgust laced her voice, subtle enough that I almost dismissed it as shock. But when I turned to face her, it was clear what was on her mind.

"Antarom, don't even think about—"

"Fucking knew they were lying!" she yelled, frantically pulling her chest plate on and lunging for the shotgun on the floor. Before she'd even laid a hand on it, instinct took over and I jumped to action, leaping over Claire to keep Antarom from doing anything rash. I wasn't quick enough to get the gun before her, I knew, but perhaps doing something drastic would make her rethink her actions.

She whipped the shotgun up in my face just as I'd grabbed at her arm, forcing reflexes to kick in for both of us. An impulsive kick came my way, but I twisted my body to absorb it with my hip, still hanging on to her forearm in an awkward attempt to keep the barrel of her gun away from myself and Claire.

"Antarom, stop and think for a second!" I yelled, defensively hip-checking her to put some distance between us despite losing my grip on her arm. "If she 𝘪𝘴 indoctrinated, you know what that means, right?"

"Why the fuck do you think I'm doing this?" Her voice matched my intensity, though it contained slightly more bewilderment than frustration. "The fucking brain therapy didn't work—that means there are thousands of people out there who're gonna turn on us! I don't give a shit if it's the Reapers or Cerberus, and I sure as shit don't care who they've been fucking, everyone who's had that treatment is a threat that has to be eliminated."

I'd known she was a heartless asshole, but that still hadn't prepared me for such a drastic sentiment. "We still don't even know what's really going on here! Murdering people isn't going to get us any answers, and—"

I was interrupted by a detonation that instantly reminded me of a mortar strike, but I didn't have time to do much guesswork. The wall at the far end of the room imploded, sending debris flying inward in a cloud of dust so thick it must've been caused by one of J'Kal's improvised explosives. Takkan's atmosphere began flooding inwards, leaving precious few seconds before we were engulfed by the heat and pressure of a planet that would cook us alive.

Entirely unconcerned with Antarom at the current moment, I rushed to attach my helmet and began fumbling around beside Claire, desperately tearing the wires from her head to make room for her breather. I still had no idea what she was actually going through internally, so I could only hope that her mind wasn't somehow reliant on whatever Lawson had done to her.

Either way, if she hadn't gotten her helmet on, Takkan would have killed her in seconds. I didn't have much of a choice.

My HUD went crazy as the unexpected and rather instant change in temperature and pressure surrounded me on all sides. A dozen different warnings and system overrides came up in front of my eyes, all attempting to convince me that this wasn't standard depressurization protocol and I risked immediate harm to my person by ignoring procedure. I dismissed all of it save the tidbits that warned me about potential malfunctions. My shields had practically committed suicide just to keep me from exploding, and it looked like they weren't coming back any time soon.

In all the confusion, I hadn't even noticed that the abrupt change in atmosphere had sent me flying into the nearest wall. A rush of sensory input overloaded the Seer so much that my brain was still trying to make sense of it all, and the feeling of colliding against something solid barely even registered. Considering all that I'd gone through in the last nine months, it was a wonder my nerves could even feel anything.

Unfortunately there was no time to bemoan the painful circumstances I often found myself in. Instead, I pushed myself to my feet and tried to figure out just how big the stone was that the universe had decided to throw at me.

I'd like to say that being surprised at anything had become impossible due to the sheer amount of ludicrous circumstances to have befallen me, but I'm not sure it's possible to become so jaded as to never be taken aback. Or at least, not for someone like me, because the sight of J'Kal hurtling through the air into the facility was one that I definitely hadn't been expecting. Perhaps even more surprising was when Adison then entered through the same hole in the wall, though on foot and with his rifle aimed steadily at J'Kal.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬?

"Adison!" I yelled, momentarily forgetting that we had radios which were certain to work now that there wasn't a building between us. "What the hell's going on?" I asked, this time using the subtler communication method.

He didn't have time to answer—or maybe he did, and I simply didn't have time to listen. An incredibly painful force slammed into my midriff with enough strength to knock me back so hard I landed flat on my ass, grappling with whatever had broadsided me. Strong arms pinned my shoulders to the ground and before I knew it, Antarom was kneeling on top of me with the hazy blue light of biotics enveloping her entire body.

"Now is really not the time for this!" I yelled at her, struggling as best as I could. There was a rather easy way for me to get out of the deadlock, but I was saving that in the hope that I could still reason with her.

"I don't see there being a better one," she said through gritted teeth, using all of her power to keep me pinned. "Either you let me sort this out here and now, or we're gonna have a much bigger problem."

I let out a growl of frustration that seemed even too guttural for me. "All right, then. Just remember, you wanted this."

The jets on my armor activated on command, sending both myself and Antarom skidding across the floor at high speed. In the chaos I managed to twist my body around and shove the asari off of me, then pulse the jets just enough that I began floating in what was now a low-gravity environment full of debris drifting lazily back down to ground level. It was as much of a bird's-eye view as I was going to get, so I had to make the most of it.

My eyes hadn't initially deceived me; Adison and J'Kal were indeed fighting, with the former remaining largely on the defense while the latter used all manner of explosives and ballistics to his advantage. Luckily Adison had mobility and the neural link between himself and his gear, giving him an advantage in reaction time. If J'Kal lined up a shot, Adison was able to dodge almost immediately.

Perhaps more pressing, however, was the fact that the chaos seemed to have woken Claire, who strutted through the building toward Henry Lawson's body without a care in the world. In my negligence and hasty attempts to make sense of what was happening, I'd completely forgotten that Lawson hadn't been wearing protective gear of any kind. Needless to say, his death had surely been a quick one.

It was a clusterfuck, no two ways about it. Antarom had that look in her eyes that meant she was dead set on killing a target, Adison and J'Kal were trying to kill each other for reasons that only God knew, Lawson had turned into a charred sack of flesh, and Claire continued to wander about without a care in the world. There must have been some link between she and Lawson, and with his death, I didn't even want to think about what that meant for her.

I still didn't even know if she could be considered a friend or an enemy.

And I wasn't given any time to try to figure it out. A seizing sensation gripped my entire body as I floated in the air, followed by a quick thrust and a fall so swift and painful it sent stars through my eyes and stabs of pain across every inch of flesh that could still feel it. I stumbled to my feet quickly, knowing that Antarom could've done much worse if she'd wanted to, and spun around wildly trying to find her.

"You don't know what they did to me!" Antarom screamed. An enormous pile of technology reminiscent of a memory bank floated above her right shoulder, ready to be used as ammunition at a moment's notice. "They don't get to just walk away. If she's one of them, she dies."

"DO YOU FUCKING SEE WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!" There was no way to express my frustration and disbelief more effectively than yelling at the top of my lungs, far surpassing Antarom's intensity. "Does it not bother you that two of our people are fighting each other?! There's a lot of shit going on right now so please, for the love of 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘎𝘖𝘋, worry about it some other time!"

The massive bulk of technology floating in the air suddenly came careening towards me without so much as another word from Antarom, forcing me to leap out of the way or risk being turned into paste. I didn't waste time looking to see if more attacks were coming or if another huge object threatened to crush my skull; instead I assumed the worst, scrambled as fast as I could, and ran for the first bit of cover I could find.

"We'll do this my way, then," I heard Antarom say through the comm. It was unsettling to hear her voice, if only because it wasn't common to hear someone speaking in my ear while also trying to beat the shit out of me. Furthermore, it reminded me that I still had no idea why Adison and J'Kal were fighting, and that I very much needed to speak to my cousin and gain some understanding of what the fuck had just happened.

Of course, Antarom and J'Kal were on the same radio frequency, so that wasn't great. Still, we had to coordinate somehow.

"Adison," I said as I dashed to the far end of the room. "I hope there's a better explanation for your shitshow than there is for mine." A dozen random objects crashed around me as Antarom flung everything in sight at me, but I knew that I was fast enough to evade her for now. I just had to draw her away from Claire.

"I'm a bit tied up at the moment, Donz," was Adison's curt reply.

"Yeah, no shit!" I ran out of space to run through, so I hit the jump jets and flew to the upper balcony above me. There was nothing up there, I knew, aside from a back room that would get me cornered if I ran there, but it was possible I could outmaneuver Antarom with the stairwell. "We're in the same boat, dude, and we don't have a lot of time to figure this shit out."

As expected, Antarom leapt to the upper floor right behind me, and I made a point of showing her that I was headed to the stairs. She shifted tactics mid-jump and instead went down to the bottom of the stairwell, falling head first for the bait. Before I'd even begun descending, I turned around and hopped back down to ground level. Due to the low gravity that had poured in from outside the facility, my jump carried me halfway across the room before I touched down.

Luckily, that put me relatively close to Claire, who had reached Lawson's body and seemed content to simply stare at it. Without someone telling her what to do, she had to be at a loss.

"Guy just snapped!" I heard Adison grunt frustratedly. "One minute everything was fine, the next he was trying to kill me. Not much more I can explain."

𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭.

I approached Claire from her side, making sure I was within eyesight so that she wasn't startled. She stood completely motionless, staring at the scorched corpse that was beginning to look more like a pile of refuse than human remains. How she'd even identified it as Lawson's body was a complete mystery.

"Claire?" I breathed, making sure comms were shut off. "Is that you in there?"

"Of course it's me." Absolutely neutral response, hardly any inflection or cadence in her voice. Either she was still under subjugation, or she was shutting down due to shock and trauma. I couldn't decide which was worse.

"It doesn't really sound like you."

"It's always been me." A sardonic chuckle escaped her mouth, like laughing was the only way she could process whatever was going on behind her eyes. "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride."

I moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder, trying to rouse her out of whatever depressive state she'd been put in. "You're not making any sense. We have to get the fuck out of here."

"Don't you get it?" she asked, turning to face me for the first time since I'd seen her in my dreams. "They used me to get to the rest of you. I wasn't even the objective."

My heart sank like it was a block of steel in a bottomless pond. Not only was she boldly declaring that she was fully indoctrinated, but that it was our fault. She didn't intend to place guilt on anyone, I thought, but all the same it did lie with us. The Illusive Man was alive, and in his latest perversion of technology, he'd intended to take control of us all using Claire. He hadn't wanted her—probably hadn't even known she'd existed. If she hadn't been part of our crew, this never would have happened to her.

But that didn't mean anything. We could still get her help; as long as we separated her from whatever signal they were using to piggyback onto the indoctrination, she had a chance.

𝘈 𝘧𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘏𝘰𝘸'𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘥 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘊𝘦𝘳𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘳?

I internally told myself to shut the fuck up and returned to the moment. "We can fix this. I promise, we can make it right."

Only her teal eyes were visible, but they told me everything I needed to know. And I was distracted, lost in that feeling so deeply that I didn't even see the reflection of a blue blister screaming through the air towards me. Had I not been so preoccupied with my own guilt, maybe I wouldn't have been hit so hard that I blacked out for a second.

Funny, a long time ago I had wondered just how painful Antarom's biotic charge would've been had she not restrained herself. As it turned out, painful wasn't a powerful enough description.

Though I only lost consciousness for a few seconds, coming to again was remarkably jarring. Call me an idiot, but when I was a kid, my siblings and I would breathe helium out of birthday balloons to laugh at the ludicrous high-pitch it gave our voices. Once, I inhaled far too much far too quickly, and blacked out for about five seconds. During the whole escapade I suppose my eyes must have stayed open, because I saw everything happen in front of me, but it felt like a dream or a memory rather than living in the moment. When I came back to reality, I was on the ground after having slammed into the wall behind me. I hadn't felt it as it happened because obviously I was unconscious, but when I awoke all the pain rushed me at once.

The same thing happened as I picked myself up after Antarom's charge. I remember a vague, grainy, almost black-and-white version of myself flying through the air and colliding with a solid and very painful wall, and then I woke up. And when I did, the pain of both Antarom's attack and my full-body collision hit me all at once like a missile. I'd taken bullets that had been less concerning.

Thankfully, my armor and the genetic enhancements I'd undergone had made me remarkably resilient. While Antarom packed a hell of a punch, it would take more than that to put me down. I was used to pain, after all.

"That all you got?!" I screamed, still not fully aware of how much had transpired during my blackout. All I knew was that I had to get Antarom's attention to keep her away from Claire. Once I got a better hold of my bearings, I was glad that I'd spoken up so impulsively.

Antarom stood just feet away from Claire, priming her biotics for another harsh blow. Hearing my interruption, however, she couldn't resist turning to face me. "How many times do I have to kick your ass?"

"Someone wanna explain what the two of you are fighting about?" Adison abruptly cut in through the radio. Of course, the whole thing must have looked ridiculous from his point of view, assuming he had time to observe the charade while J'Kal tried to skewer him.

"Antarom thinks murder is the solution to everything," was my terse response.

"It's her or us!" she hissed back. "We can't cure indoctrination—what the fuck do you suggest?!"

"Maybe not killing someone who's defenseless and putting up no fight?"

She didn't have any retort, and to be honest I hadn't been expecting it. The longer I stalled, the more time I had to think up a plan because there was no way for me to best Antarom. As much as I hated to admit it, I had speed and reaction time, whereas she had raw power and endurance. Eventually, she'd hit me with another of her charges and knock me out for good. The argument had given me some time to strategize, but without any response on her part, we'd be back to physical engagements rather than verbal ones.

"I'm enjoying the show guys, really," Adison cut in once again, "but there's a very real threat on my life at the moment and I'd appreciate some help."

"We're busy," Antarom responded.

I could almost see Adison shrugging in my mind's eye despite the fact that he was nowhere in sight. "Wasn't asking."

With the end of his sentence, both he and J'Kal came crashing into sight behind Antarom, the two of them drifting through the air throwing punches and kicks at each other as they grappled. Apparently they'd gotten bored of guns and decided to go for a straight up melee.

The collision almost became comedic when they slammed into Antarom, sending her spiraling into the same frenzy of aerial fisticuffs until all three of them made contact with the ground. They each skidded across the floor with enough momentum to separate them, but also send them within ten feet of me.

At least it got Antarom away from Claire.

The four of us stood in a circle, all staring at each other wondering who was going to make the next move. Hell, I wasn't even sure there was a move to be made. We were all weaponless, beaten up, and tired. We could continue with close quarters fighting, of course, but to what end? I wasn't going to kill Antarom, and despite her brutality, I didn't think she'd kill me either.

Adison and J'Kal, on the other hand, were a different story. I hadn't seen Adison really go on the offensive, but the batarian had been shooting to kill. Was it possible that he'd been indoctrinated too, or did he just snap due to how much he hated us?

𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘩. 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩.

"All right, now that we've got a minute—"

I didn't even have the opportunity to speak for two seconds before Antarom jumped down my throat. "We've talked too much. Get out of the way."

"Antarom, regardless of how you feel, we're on a mission." Adison spoke with much more authority and gravitas than I did, making me hope that his voice would be more effective than mine at convincing her. "You're a professional. We can't let anything get in the way of our objective."

"End of the day, our objective is stopping the Reapers. Can't do that if we're making nice with their servants."

"That's bullshit and you know it," I piped up. "Claire could've taken advantage of the situation a dozen times in the last five minutes, but she hasn't lifted a finger against us."

"Except to knock us out and feed us our worst nightmares."

Nightmares? I suppose that, in a way, having to live forty-odd years in a utopic version of my life only to then tear myself away from it had been a bit of a nightmare, but it certainly wasn't the first word that came to mind. For the most part, it had been absolute bliss. The only terror had been realizing that it was all a fiction.

Had she experienced something vastly different than I had?

𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵.

"That wasn't her choice," I responded, attempting to hide any disorientation I may have displayed. "Her handlers are dead, Cerberus apparently bugged out. Without their intervention, I don't think she's any threat."

"You don't think." She drew pointed attention to the fallacy in my choice of words, but I also thought she meant what she said in a very literal fashion as well. "What happens if we bring her home and she runs into Cerberus again? Or the Reapers? I'm not taking that risk. And what the fuck are you staring at, four-eyes?"

For a moment, all of us turned our attention to J'Kal, who really was drilling a hole through Antarom's helmet with his eyes. I still had no idea why the hell he'd attacked Adison or what his endgame was, and somehow that didn't bother me nearly as much as the predicament we faced with Claire. It had always seemed like he wanted to murder us even back when we'd put together the crew for the Evanescent, and that sentiment hadn't ever changed. Whether he was indoctrinated or not, I thought he was only acting on impulses that he'd had to suppress for a long time.

But he didn't say a word, as always. Didn't offer any explanation for his actions, didn't give us a goddamn thing to help make sense of this absurdity. Instead he just stood there, weighing his options. Without his rifle or his explosives, he must have known that each of us stood a very good chance of winning a fight against him, even individually. I may have been a slouch with firearms, but the combination of jump jets, genetic enhancements, and the Seer had made my melee game a force to be reckoned with.

"Could he be indoctrinated too?" Adison asked, breaking what had grown into an uncomfortable silence.

"If he is, fuck him just like the rest." Antarom lifted her hand in his direction, and in under a second she'd sent him flying across the room before Adison or I had time to react. When she turned to us, fight or flight had already kicked in. Fighting wasn't an option—at least not one we had a chance at surviving—so we both ran for cover and hoped that she didn't have enough energy left in her to tear the entire facility apart.

Unfortunately for us, energy or no, she was determined. Scraps of tech, chunks of debris from the explosion, and whatever loose items she could find all came hurtling in our direction, forcing us to stay on the move and hide behind whatever pile of refuse we could find. Not all that different from avoiding enemy fire, with the exception being that a few shots from a Reaper drone didn't tend to blast you into next Thursday.

Still, we couldn't play hide and seek for long. Eventually Antarom would get bored and try to finish what she'd started. The fact that Claire seemed determined to stay vegetative and immobile in the center of the building didn't help matters any.

Thankfully, we also had a distraction. Antarom was so preoccupied with us that she didn't see J'Kal sneak up behind her until it was almost too late. He'd flash-forged what looked like a goddamn sledgehammer, and with a strong frame like his, the asari had to pull out a hell of a barrier to blunt the blow. Even so, the hit sent her flying a good fifteen feet thanks to low gravity.

"What's our play here, Donz?" Adison asked from my right. We both crouched behind the remains of a storage terminal the size of a queen-sized bed, still not sure if we should be taking sides or just trying to survive the shitshow.

"All I'm focused on right now is keeping Claire alive," I replied.

"Well we're gonna have a hard time doing it with these two tearing the place up."

A crash sounded off from further in the room, signalling to us that Antarom hadn't taken the attack lying down. I peeked over our cover to check on the situation, only seeing that she and J'Kal had begun fighting full-force. As long as that was the case, Adison and I had a few seconds to strategize.

"We can't beat Antarom," I said. "Not without killing her, and shit's fucked enough as it is."

"What about J'Kal?"

A frown made its way onto my face, though it did no good since Adison couldn't see it. "He doesn't stand much of a chance either. If he 𝘪𝘴 indoctrinated, I don't think he's gonna give up."

Adison sighed so forcefully that I could hear it even though we weren't transmitting audio via suit-to-suit radio. "Then Antarom may be right about him. He did seem pretty set on killing me."

"You really have no idea why? He didn't start acting strangely beforehand?"

He shrugged. "Just as silent as ever. About thirty minutes after you breached the building, he attacked. Nothing more to it than that."

Well, shit. I'd preached at length that we needed to try to save Claire despite her indoctrination, and yet if that was the case with J'Kal, I didn't have any problem taking him out of the equation. Hypocritical? Maybe, but as I mentioned, the bastard hadn't exactly been the cheeriest fellow or the best team player. Indoctrination had probably only given him the extra motivation he needed to put his murderous instincts to work.

It was a fucked up line of thought, but one that made sense in the context of the war. Claire hadn't shown any aggression since severing her connection to her handlers. J'Kal was a different story. We still had to try to reason with those who were capable of listening to it; for those who weren't, well . . . we didn't have the luxury of mercy.

"Then we just have to keep Claire safe," I said, skimming the facility once more to make sure Antarom hadn't discarded J'Kal in favor of her original target. "I don't know what the hell's happened to her, but I have to try and help her."

"We'll still have Antarom to deal with. You said it yourself, we can't beat her."

"No, but we can wear her out," I replied, checking my omni-tool to make sure the flash fabricator was still working. "The more a biotic uses their abilities, the more it drains them physically. If we can keep her going long enough, eventually she'll collapse."

"Safely, I hope."

Well, truth be told, that was entirely dependent on how stubborn Antarom decided to be. "Just watch my back. I have to try to get through to Claire."

"Copy, I got you."

I could've jumped headfirst into the depths of hell with nothing more than the reassurance Adison's words brought. When he said he had your back, he had your fucking back like no one else ever would. Thankfully, while it certainly wasn't a picnic in the flower fields of Forest Park back home, Antarom and J'Kal were hardly the worst things we'd ever had to deal with.

Perhaps more importantly, the quick jog across the facility ended up being a much easier trek than any jump into hell, headfirst or not. While our teammates tried their damndest to kill each other, Adison and I skirted through the wreckage relatively unhindered except for the odd piece of semi-floating debris.

As expected, Claire still hadn't moved. She just stood as rigid as a steel girder, staring unblinkingly at Lawson's remains.

"Claire?" I really didn't know what else to say. How the hell was I supposed to rouse her out of something like indoctrination?

"You should leave," she responded. Her voice was heavy and strained, like using it required an incredible amount of effort on her part.

"We're not going anywhere without you," I said. "Come on, you've gotta work with me. I know you haven't given up yet."

If I hadn't been in such a frantic and exhausted state of mind, I likely would have expected something horrible. I would've thought that, instead of seeing Claire's eyes when she turned to face me, they'd be replaced with some grotesque imagery or the decaying eyes of a corpse. I'd have imagined that her acknowledgement of my presence somehow meant the end of the world, because when she finally broke her stoic stance and demeanor, it really felt like the planet was going to explode.

But nothing quite so dramatic happened. She turned to face me, sending raw arcs of fear and relief through my system in equal measure.

"She's right," Claire said, motioning behind my back where Antarom and J'Kal could be heard clashing. "If you take me back, I'll be putting all of you in danger."

"That's shit and you know it," I replied instinctively. "We've dealt with this before. We can do it again."

"Why? So I can spend a year in recovery this time only to betray you again the second we leave for a mission?"

"We'll keep you off field ops, far away from the Reapers or Cerberus or—"

"Donovan, stop."

I didn't want to stop. The very last thing I wanted was to give up or admit defeat in any way, because in spite of my emotions or the illogical reasoning dictating my actions, I'm also a stubborn shithead. When I wrap my brain around something, I charge towards it full force with little thought given to the repercussions.

Claire, even in her compromised state, had remained just the opposite. Ever the practical one, continuing to look after my well-being even when it put her own in question. I admired that about her, but in that moment it only served to infuriate me. She had no right being just as stubborn as me.

And I had no right being such an asshole, even if it was just the first fleeting thought to cross my mind. That sentiment became abundantly clear when, a moment later, I was knocked off my feet for the umpteenth time in the past ten minutes alone. Had I not been so preoccupied with a dozen different problems, I might have questioned why the Seer wasn't working like it should have. As things were, the thought didn't even cross my mind.

Thankfully, the hit didn't stagger me nearly as much as the last few had. It was Antarom, that I knew for sure due to the tingling feeling of being bombarded by biotic power, but she'd been going strong for quite a while. My back collided into a databank with a dull thud, and I was able to shrug it off by rolling back onto my feet.

As expected, Antarom had similarly flung Adison aside and made a straight shot towards Claire. She must not have been expecting any resistance, or she thought she'd hit me much harder than she had. Good. It meant she was getting tired.

I activated the jump jets and flung myself toward her, tackling her stomach when she was just inches away from Claire. Really, there were only two options: I could continue running and hoping she'd throw things at me with her brain, thereby draining her stamina, but that ran the extreme risk that she'd simply turn her attention to Claire when I wasn't close enough to stop her. On the other hand, I could fight her hand-to-hand, refusing to allow any distance between us. She could still punch and kick and tackle with her raw power, but enhancing her physical abilities with biotics fatigued her even more than telekinesis or mass effect manipulation. Additionally, I'd gotten pretty damn familiar with her fighting style, and while close-quarters combat would certainly prove insanely dangerous for anyone opposing Antarom, I was fairly sure that I had the reflexes to keep out of reach.

So that's precisely what happened; Antarom tried to wriggle out of my tackle, but I kept a firm grip on her until we crashed to the ground. Even then, every time she tried to put distance between us so she could grab something with her biotics, I closed the gap and threw a swing at her. It was all reckless and very poorly thought out—hardly the actions of a battle-hardened soldier—but I wasn't playing to win, nor did I have any particular desire to actually hit Antarom and risk her rage burning off her fatigue. It had happened before to the great dismay of any platoon the Reapers could throw at her, and I sure as hell didn't want to meet the same fate.

Adison soon rejoined the fight, and with him at my side it became exponentially easier to keep our ally within arm's reach. She reacted like a feral lion, not sure whether to pounce and rip our throats out or try to run and expose her back. I like to think that she knew we didn't intend to harm her, but we had apparently both just awoken from extremely traumatic events only to be met with absurdities that we hadn't been prepared for. There's no accounting for the unthinkable ideas that go through a person's head in that kind of situation.

Still, Antarom was a hell of a fighter, and a well-trained commando. Even while being outnumbered, she attempted to engineer situations in which she could get even a second to rush away to murder Claire. Fortunately, after the first few, she must have realized that there was no outspeeding both Adison and myself when we had jet-assisted propulsion built into our armor. The fight had dragged on for quite a while, and I doubted she had the energy to use a biotic charge to get halfway across the building. Even if she did, we were both playing a serious defensive game.

Which nearly went out the window when J'Kal leapt onto Adison's back, forcing my cousin to perform a sort of WWE twirl-and-throw to instinctively fling the crazed batarian off of him. Antarom attempted to seize the opportunity, only for me to fly after her and yank her back by the shoulders.

I flung her behind me, where Adison was waiting. In a practiced move that surprised even me, he wrapped his arms around her midriff from behind, lifted her into the air, rolled backwards, and slammed her into the ground hard enough that I thought I heard her armor crack under the pressure. I nearly hollered and clapped due to utter shock and wonder, but time didn't want to give me even a moment to celebrate.

A spiked ball reminiscent of a morningstar came crashing towards my cranium, forcing me to activate my own omni-tool to block the blow with a hastily forged shield. Both objects shattered and dissolved on impact, unable to remain in existence after the severe beating they'd taken. But that didn't stop an angry batarian from descending on me, knife in hand as if I weren't wearing armor specifically designed to stop piercing weapons and shrapnel.

At first I evaded his attacks out of instinct; after all, when you see a deadly object coming your way, the natural reaction is to avoid it. Hilariously, it is possible to be born without that basic survival instinct, leading to all sorts of scenarios in which people saw danger heading towards them and simply didn't have that impulse fire off in their brains telling them to move. Luckily such a thing is incredibly rare, and it's very difficult to purposefully do the opposite of what your brain subconsciously tells you to do.

But I knew that my armor could take the hit, so when J'Kal flipped his knife into a reverse grip and lunged at me, I made no effort to dodge it. Both of us toppled to the ground as the blade lodged itself in my chest, and seeing as he'd accomplished his task, the batarian rolled off of me.

His four eyes practically went crossed when I stood to my feet as if nothing had happened. The knife had lodged itself so firmly in my chest that there was no removing it, yet the armor was so thick that it hadn't even pierced the outer layer. I shot J'Kal an amused smirk, realizing too late that he couldn't see my face. Even so, a grotesque snarl of outrage made its way to his lips once he saw that his attack had utterly failed.

Outrage quickly turned to surprise when Adison broadsided him, hitting him with a dropped shoulder that sent the batarian reeling. Seizing the opportunity, I ran full speed ahead, using the jets to give me a little boost just before lifting my feet off the ground and planting a drop kick right into his chest. Thanks to Takkan's gravity, I was even able to make myself look like a badass by flipping backwards to land on my feet.

J'Kal went down like a sack of rocks, weakly struggled to get back to his feet, and collapsed wholeheartedly on the ground.

"One down," Adison panted, bending over slightly to rest his hands on his knees.

"Yeah, now we just have the psychotic one left," I replied. "Where'd she go?"

Adison shook his head. "Think she's down for the count. Didn't get up after that suplex."

"Fucking badass, by the way." I glanced around briefly, making sure Claire was still unharmed and Antarom was nowhere in sight. "All right, you find Antarom, I'll try to deal with Claire."

The report of a shotgun sounded off from behind me, setting my nerves back on edge before I even spun around to see what had happened. Of course, the past thirty minutes had been so full of surprises and sights that had sent my mind reeling with questions that everything had started to numb. Surely there wasn't much more that could shock me.

In a way, I was right. Antarom stood over J'Kal with her shotgun inches away from his chest. With no shields, even armor as durable as his didn't stand a chance against a point-blank blast from a weapon specifically designed to shred through flesh and armor.

I'd known that Antarom wasn't playing around, but still the sight of it sent a shiver down my spine. She'd been the only one who'd managed to get even remotely close to J'Kal, yet taking his life didn't appear to have been any more difficult than taking out the trash. We hadn't even figured out why the hell he'd attacked, and she'd needed no reason. Being an obstacle in her path was all it took for Antarom to kill him.

𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘦.

"Time to stop fucking around," Antarom said. She lifted her shotgun away from J'Kal's lifeless body so that it was aimed directly at Adison and I. "Get out of my way."

"Or what?" Adison demanded, taking a step forward. "You gonna kill us too?"

"I won't have to."

"A little arrogant, don't you think? You're worn down, even I can see it. There's no way you get past us without using that gun."

It looked like she knew he was right, but Antarom wasn't the kind of person to admit defeat even when she didn't have much fight left in her. None of us did, I thought. We'd all been beaten damn near senseless—and in my case, literally senseless for a few moments—to the point that anything more was sure to prove too much. The deciding factor was that Antarom was alone, whereas Adison and I had each other.

"That what you think, too?" Antarom asked, directing the question to me. She had to be stalling for time, trying to rest and replenish a bit of energy.

"You're not touching her," I said. "There was a way we could've handled this and you fucked it up. I don't care what happens now. Try to kill us, I guess. I'm not letting you fuck up even more."

She stared me down like she was seriously considering expending all her energy on a frenzy right then and there just to teach me a lesson, but she had to know it was a bad play. She didn't have the strength left in her for anything bombastic, and Adison would've been on her in seconds.

"Go, Donz," he said taking another step towards Antarom. "I can handle this."

I looked at him, then at Antarom, then back at him. The two of us could've taken her, I was sure of it, but a one-on-one had me a bit concerned. "You sure?"

"Go."

I nodded, turned around, and thankfully wasn't hit in the back by another of Antarom's pushes or a random pile of scrap. Instead I had to worry about just how in the hell we were going to explain J'Kal's death, not to mention the fact that we'd run into Cerberus and had failed to detain even a single one of them for questioning.

But there was Claire. She had to be the priority at the moment. As long as we saved her, nothing else mattered. The only problem being that I didn't think she wanted to be saved.

"Claire," I called out once I got close, doing a quick visual inspection to make sure she hadn't been hurt during the fighting. "Come on, we don't have much time." I didn't wait for a response; instead I took her hand and slung it over my shoulder, reaching around her back to help guide her toward the hole that had been torn in the wall during Adison's explosive entrance.

I didn't expect resistance—or if I did, I certainly didn't expect it to be so forceful and quick. Before I even managed to start walking towards the exit, Claire freed herself from my grasp, took a few steps back, and had my pistol in her hand pointed directly at my head.

My eyes went wide. I'd known she wasn't exactly in the best of places mentally, but pulling a gun on me seemed extreme and frighteningly uncharacteristic.

"Easy," I breathed, slowly reaching out with my hands so that she could see I had no intention to make any quick moves. "We're gonna get you help, I swear. They can't take your free will, not any more."

"This is 𝘮𝘺 choice, don't you get it?" she yelled, choking back even more intensity.

"I know you, Claire." I wanted to take a step closer, but every bone in my body screamed at me that it was a bad idea. However desperately I wanted to help her, she wasn't herself. "You don't have to do this."

She scoffed at that, pressing forward with the gun before realizing that I wasn't the source of her problems.

"You've gotta fight it," I said.

"I am!" Her voice surely carried throughout the entire room, and for the first time ever I saw her lose control of her emotions entirely. Not that it was unexpected; had I been in her position, I surely would have looked like a raving lunatic or a ticking time bomb seconds away from destroying everything in my vicinity. The fact that she managed to remain as collected as she was—even if that wasn't saying much—was astonishing.

"You have no idea what I have to do just to keep from pulling the trigger!" Her voice cracked violently, reinforcing the idea that she was just barely containing a tidal wave from being unleashed. "I'm always going to be theirs."

This time I did reflexively take a step forward, suddenly urged to prove her wrong. "That's bullshit. You're the reason I broke free—I know you can do it too! Believe me, please."

She stumbled backward, unable to help herself. It was like I was watching her internal struggle physically sap her of all energy, causing her to lower the gun and fall to her knees. I immediately rushed to her side, placed a hand on her shoulder, and felt her quick shallow breaths shake her entire body.

It was quiet, but I heard her sobbing uncontrollably, and a sickening wave of remorse swept over me like a chilling gust in the dead of winter. I wrapped my arms around her, completely unsure of what I was supposed to do or how we could get her through this mess. All I knew was that she was dying inside, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"It's okay—you're okay, you're here, you're safe—we're gonna be okay, I promise."

Her body shook uncontrollably, forcing me to hold on tighter in an effort to counteract her own natural reactions to the emotional hurricane raging inside her. She'd had to do the exact same thing for me after Jerusalem; no matter how much she broke down, I had to be there for her the same way.

Little did I know, it wasn't the same at all.

"There's no other way."

For one brief moment, time almost stopped while my brain sorted out the meaning of those words. Really, it wasn't even the words themselves, but the resignation in Claire's voice that I immediately recognized. I'd been in that state of mind too many times and for far too long to not understand exactly what sped through her thoughts.

But before I could pull away and reach for the gun, Claire had separated us and used her legs to kick me away from her. They say that there are a handful of moments in each of our lives that we can recall with perfect clarity, and to my great dismay this was one of those moments. But oddly enough, most of what I remember is the lack of sensation. I didn't feel the pain that certainly accompanied being kicked in the gut by both of Claire's feet; I didn't register the fact that I toppled over backward so completely that it took several seconds to scramble to my knees. I didn't even think of the fact that a weapon could have been fired from anywhere in the facility, because I knew what was happening before I could even make sense of it. My mind was so singularly focused on Claire that quite literally everything else faded into a blurry background, only leaving one thing in my memory when all was said and done.

The gunshot that followed came so quickly that I hadn't even recovered from the shove, and I didn't have even the slightest chance of stopping it.

I couldn't save her.