Mass Effect: Humanity First
(Fan Fiction)
By Mortimer Jackson
Copyright 2012
The Morning Dread
www.themorningdread.weebly.com
Mass Effect: Humanity First is a multi-pathed interactive short story specifically formatted for Amazon Kindle. For reader input to work, please read this story via Amazon Kindle. Also, since Mass Effect: Humanity First is an experimental short, please rate and leave comments for any improvements you would like to see in the future.
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Samuel Hallard once thought he could believe in the Alliance. But when Eden Prime fell, when so many he knew were lost, he was certain he’d learned his lesson. When the flagship of humanity’s military bowed its head to a council of asari, salarian, and turian bureaucrats, he finally saw the Alliance for what it really was; a mouthpiece, a puppet, a servant to every race to ever have the fortune of discovering the mass relays before humanity.
Even the top brass, men he once respected, all fell in line at the council’s whim. Anderson, Kahoku, Hackett, they were all the same.
So when Hallard signed on with Cerberus, he thought he’d finally found his calling. A mission, a purpose, a fight he could believe in; the protection of humanity.
But to the detriment of his greatest hope, things were never quite so simple.
“You know what to do, Hallard.”
Hallard didn’t. Although he didn’t have very many options.
“No, don’t,” groaned the asari, squeezing the open wound on her side as she struggled to stay alive. She had her back against the front entrance to Station 12, one of Cerberus’ few research facilities on the planet Feros. The function of Station 12, as Hallard had always been told, was to enhance the potential for human biotics. It was one of the first things he’d learned working for Cerberus. It was something the science division would always brag about as an important stepping stone for human advancement.
But what Cerberus never told him until three hours before this mission was that Station 12s research revolved entirely around data acquired from asari test subjects. Test subjects, or asari who had been kidnapped and detained for years until, by force, they took over the lab and barricaded themselves inside it. That was when Hallard and Cavanaugh were ordered to go inside and eliminate every single one of them.
The order was clear. No survivors. No circumstances. Simple, and yet Hallard was utterly lost.
“What are you waiting for, Hallard?” egged his partner. “Kill her already.”
The asari was young. She looked 19 in human’s terms, but she could just as easily have been over a hundred. Still, she didn’t look good. Her naturally blue skin had turned pale, and with all the blood loss it wouldn’t be long until she fainted. But with what little strength she had left in her, she stared into Hallard’s eyes, and in a tired whisper asked him, “Why?”
The longer that Hallard delayed, the more annoyed Cavanaugh became as he continued to push his partner to shoot the woman.
After finally gathering himself, Hallard made his decision.
Help her.
Shoot her.
Shoot her.
She wasn’t going to live long no matter what he did. She’d already lost too much blood. And since Hallard’s orders were to kill every escaped asari in and around the compound, there wasn’t anything that Cerberus would do to help her.
She was going to die no matter what.
So against his reservations, Hallard raised his pistol and brought the barrel to her head. She raised her free hand in the air and shielded her face from the weapon.
“I’m sorry.”
It hurt to hear her apologize for something that wasn’t her fault. She didn’t deserve whatever had happened to her. And she deserved better than a bullet to the head.
But it was too late to change anything now. And with all the pain she was going through, it was probably better for her this way.
Hallard pulled the trigger. Her head jutted back with the shot, and she fell.
Cavanaugh scoffed, “Took you long enough.”
Hallard turned around and saw Cavanaugh shaking his head with a smug look on his face. It took everything in him not to shoot him too. Instead he gave his partner an angry stare.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Me? I’m not the one who chickened out just then.”
“Why the hell does Cerberus have us gunning down innocent civilians?”
“Civilians? Innocent? Are you serious?” He scoffed again, mocking his partner. “You really are a newbie, aren’t you?”
“This isn’t right. Cerberus using aliens like a pack of lab rats.”
“What is the matter with you? We’re at war. It’s us versus them.” He pointed at the dead asari with his pistol. “Humanity’s a speck in the galaxy. If we want to have a glimmer of hope at long term survival we have to do whatever it takes to get ourselves at the top of the food chain.”
Hallard didn’t like it. Not one bit. But he was enough of a pragmatist that he could see his point. In spite of his reservations, he could at least bring himself to acknowledge that humanity would need every available advantage it could get.
“Now pull your shit together,” said his partner. “We’ve got a mission to complete. Let’s get this over with so we can get back home.”
With his right boot, Cavanaugh shoved the dead asari away from the door. Before they made their way inside, he looked at her, and he wasn’t so sure if he could stomach the things he’d have to do next.
Cavanaugh led the way, sidearm in hand. The facility was quiet. Too quiet, especially for a place that was a complete and utter mess.
“What happened here?” thought Cavanaugh out loud.
“Mess from all the shuffle.”
“Must be.”
Everything had been tossed aside. Office furniture, storage lockers, crates. They were all laid out in a chaotic, haphazard manner. Even crates, things that weren’t meant to be in the lobby, were. Someone had obviously moved them. But that shed new light on all the mess they saw before them.
“Cavanaugh, it’s an ambush.”
“What?”
The asari must have heard him, because that was when they all ducked out of cover, assault weapons drawn.
“Cavanaugh, get down!”
But Cavanaugh hadn’t been able to react fast enough. He flinched when he should have ducked. And that one split second got him shot on the arm.
Hallard had a choice. Either save his partner, or save himself.
Save partner.
Leave him.
Leave him.
A burst of plasma fire bolted all around them. Hallard dropped on the floor while Cavanaugh was left to save himself. But he didn’t. Rather than back down, he raised his pistol and began firing back.
“You worthless shots! We’ll kill you all just like we killed that bitch outside!”
“Cavanaugh!” yelled Hallard. “Get down!”
He wasn’t afraid of getting shot. He stood his ground and fired his pistol in a blind rage. It was disconcerting to Hallard. Cavanaugh obviously got off on killing, on making himself feel like the bigger man. As his partner, Hallard was supposed to watch his back. But what little time they’d spent together had been more than plenty to make him hate his guts. If he died on this assignment, if he died right then and there right before his eyes, Hallard could honestly say that he wouldn’t mind.
But that didn’t happen. Despite all certainties to the contrary, Cavanaugh actually managed to take them out. Two of th
em, at least. He heard the grunts, and saw the bodies fall. With three down, there was supposed to be five more left. Hallard expected more gunfire, but it stopped. The room settled into silence while the smoke began to clear.
“Any more of you want a piece of me?! I’m right here! Come and get me!”
“Wait! We don’t want any more shooting!”
An asari from the opposite end of the room called out, hiding under cover.
“Get out here!” demanded Cavanaugh.
“Please, stop firing.”
But from the way he was waving his gun, it was quite obvious that Cavanaugh had no intention of stopping. Hallard immediately rose to his feet.
“It’s alright,” he said to the asari. “We don’t want any more shooting either.”
“How do we know we can trust you?”
Hallard couldn’t see her. But from the sound of her voice he could only imagine how deathly afraid she must have been.
“We all want to resolve this peacefully,” said Hallard.
“Okay. We’re getting up.”
They did. Cavanaugh and Hallard counted five of them, two armed with assault rifles that they’d obviously never held before in their entire lives. It sagged in their hands like dead weight. These asari weren’t combat trained. They could barely hold a weapon. The other two that Cavanaugh had shot were lying dead behind their cover. They must have been the ones that fired. They must have been the ones that planned the ambush.
Hallard considered to himself that if Cavanaugh hadn’t killed them, then the remaining asari wouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Now, without a leader, they were directionless, with no move to make.
“We surrender,” spoke the one asari for the rest of her group. “We just want to get out of here. Cel and Mina said we could take the first ship that was coming and leave this place.”
The first ship obviously referred to the craft that Hallard and Cavanaugh had arrived in.
A clever idea, but it wasn’t going to happen now.
Or was it?
“What’s your name?” Hallard asked the asari.
She hesitated at first, then replied, “Nadia. My name is Nadia. Please, don’t keep us in here any longer. The needles, they hurt so much.”
The one thing that Hallard was certain of was that she didn’t deserve what Cerberus had done to her, or the rest of the people they’d kidnapped. It wasn’t right.
But that was where the facts ended, and everything else became a grey area.
Was he going to take innocent lives in the name of protecting Cerberus’ secrets, its research, and its mission? The advancement of human biotics would undoubtedly prove invaluable in securing humanity’s future. But was it worth the lives of so many innocents?
No (Free them all).
Yes (Shoot them all).
Yes (Shoot them all)
War was hell. And it would stay that way until the end of time. Humanity was at war for its own survival. And in war, there would always have to be casualties.
Hallard didn’t like it. He hated it. He detested himself for it. But in the end he did what had to be done.
He had the five remaining asari locked in his line of sight. He and Cavanaugh drew their weapons. The aliens had only enough time to shudder at what they knew would happen to them.
“No. No…”
Before they could do anything else, or say anything else, Hallard and Cavanaugh finished them off one by one.
Eight asari dead at Cerberus’ hands. And that was only on Station 12. Knowing now what he did about the people he was working for, he could only imagine how many more lives they had and would be willing to take to reach their goal.
Hallard wanted to puke. And the pat on his back didn’t help.
“Guess I was wrong about you, rookie,” said Cavanaugh. “You really pulled through on this one.”
Hallard wanted to bash the grin out of Cavanaugh’s face. There was nothing here to be proud of. There was nothing to celebrate.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m gonna put in a good word for you when we get back to base. Cerberus owes you one, Hallard. From this moment on, consider yourself an honorary member of the club.”
Hallard didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. Proud? Or sick to his stomach? After everything he’d seen today, he didn’t think he could have hated anything more than he hated Cerberus.
But for better or for worse, Cerberus had proven its dedication to its goals. They did what they had to do. Just like him. They were the only ones fighting the fight. Without Cerberus, there’d be no one to do what had to be done; to put humanity first.
Mission Completed.
Help her.
Hallard couldn’t let her die. No matter how impractical, or how much it went against his orders. He didn’t know if he could help her. But he owed it to her to at least try.
He leaned in and scanned her bio-signs. Things did not look good.
“What are you waiting for? Kill her.”
The asari was barely alive. She’d lost a lot of blood, and her condition was only going to get worse unless she received medical attention soon.
But there was no time for that now. All he could do was administer medi-gel over the wound. It wouldn’t save her, but it would buy her time.
Hallard administered the dose.
“What the hell are you doing?”
But Cavanaugh’s words were little more than background noise to Hallard. He didn’t care what his partner had to say. He wasn’t going to shoot an innocent civilian. It infuriated him to no end think that Cerberus could even authorize something so heinous.
He looked into the asari’s eyes. Her eyes were as blue as the color of her skin. She was scared, and her consciousness was fading. But she was stabilizing. At least for now.
“Are you alright?” he asked the asari.
She nodded only once.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll come back for you. In the mean time, wait here and…”
Her eyelids dropped. She fainted. Hallard checked her pulse. She was still alive.
“Hallard, you want to explain to me what you just did?”
“I saved someone’s life.”
“That wasn’t what we were ordered to do.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
“Yeah? Well I do.”
Cavanaugh brought his pistol to her face. He was about to fire when Hallard knocked his arm away.
“There’s no need to eliminate her unless we absolutely have to. Cerberus will want her back.”
While it frustrated Cavanaugh to no end, a larger part of him agreed, or else he wouldn’t have backed away.
“You got a crush on our little friend, here?”
Cavanaugh shook his head and bore a smug look on his face.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Me? What’s the matter with me? I’m not the one who wanted to gun down an innocent civilian.”
“Then maybe you should have picked a different line of work.”
“You’re a real cold prick, you know that?”
“Hey, I’m what the job needs me to be.”
“Why the hell does Cerberus have us gunning down innocent civilians?”
“Civilians? Innocent? Are you serious?” He scoffed again, mocking his partner. “You really are a newbie, aren’t you?”
“This isn’t right. Cerberus using aliens like a pack of lab rats.”
“What is the matter with you? We’re at war. It’s us versus them.” He pointed at the unconscious asari with his pistol. Hallard was afraid he’d try to shoot her again. Fortunately, he didn’t. “Humanity’s a speck in the galaxy. If we want to have a glimmer of hope at long term survival we have to do whatever it takes to get ourselves at the top of the food chain.”
Hallard didn’t like it. Not one bit. But still, he was enough of a pragmatist that he could see his point. In spite of his reservations, he could at le
ast bring himself to acknowledge that humanity would need every available advantage it could get.
“Now pull your shit together,” said his partner. “We’ve got a mission to complete. Let’s get this over with so we can get back home.”
With his right boot, Cavanaugh shoved the dead asari away from the door. Before they made their way inside, he looked at her, and he wasn’t so sure if he could stomach the things he’d have to do next.
Cavanaugh led the way, sidearm in hand. The facility was quiet. Too quiet, especially for a place that was a complete and utter mess.
“What happened here?” thought Cavanaugh out loud.
“Mess from all the shuffle.”
“Must be.”
Everything had been tossed aside. Office furniture, storage lockers, crates. They were all laid out in a chaotic, haphazard manner. Even crates, things that weren’t meant to be in the lobby, were. Someone had obviously moved them. But that shed new light on all the mess they saw before them.
“Cavanaugh, it’s an ambush.”
“What?”
The asari must have heard him, because that was when they all ducked out of cover, assault weapons drawn.
“Cavanaugh, get down!”
But Cavanaugh hadn’t been able to react fast enough. He flinched when he should have ducked. And that one split second got him shot on the arm.
Hallard had a choice. Either save his partner, or save himself.
Save partner.
Leave him.
Save partner.
Hallard leapt into the fray of gunfire and threw himself over his partner, tossing them both down on the ground.
“Hallard, what the hell are you doing?!”
“I’m saving your ass!”
The Cerberus operatives motioned to their feet when suddenly they lost control of their own bodies. Hallard couldn’t move his arms, his hands, his legs, or even his fingers. Cavanaugh had the same problem. A blue aura lit their outline. It didn’t take long for them to piece it together.