[Book Three] Chapter 41: Sanctuary

Chapter 41: Sanctuary

Three days.

That’s the time it took for them to find what they were looking for. Draining the water area to reach the secret section of Sanctuary had been a no go from the get go. Too exposed. So they had to keep searching by looking at the blueprints of the complex to see if there was another mistake Cerberus had missed. At least Rick and Miranda did. Jennifer after two hours of looking at her omni-tool, decided she had enough and to do some actual recon. It turned out to be the right decision as after two days she was successful in their endeavor. She had realized that the cantina was way too small for a kitchen twice as big. Clearly the kitchen didn’t just serve the refugees of their building but someone else too. The problem with that was, the food never left through the cantina and after checking the blueprints, found out that the kitchen was a closed space. Miranda immediately checked the blueprints too, while Rick hacked the camera of the kitchen. Late in the night their surveillance revealed the existence of an hidden elevator when the doors of a big freezer opened and through it came two Cerberus agents in Cerberus armor.

It was decided they would act a couple hours before dawn, when the guards in the complex would be tired and at the end of their shifts. Furthermore with the cover of the night and most people asleep they could move undetected more easily. After gearing up and sending a message to Benezia, they sprung into action. Making themselves invisible in the eyes of the cameras had been a piece of cake and so was avoiding the patrol pairs doing their rounds. In no time they reached the kitchen and opened the freezer revealing the elevator. Unfortunately for them it was going up.

“Let’s hide.” he whispered to his teammates.
“The fuck we do with them?” Jennifer asked as she moved behind a kitchen counter.
“We could steal their armor and make our infiltration easier.” Miranda suggested.
“If we can knock them out without them making any kind of noise or alerting others, otherwise we let them go.”
“That’s not a plan!” Miranda hissed from Jennifer’s side.

Any answer Rick was about to give never came as the elevator opened and two cerberus guards came out of it. From his position Rick was behind them, while Jennifer and Miranda were to their side, hidden behind the counter.  When Rick suddenly flared his omni-tool, creating a bright orange light in the dark kitchen, the guards immediately turned around pointing their weapons right at him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? This place is off limits to non-staff members.”
“Rick Wald, here to kill you.” Rick replied nonchalantly while the two guards tried to fire at him when they heard his name. Try being the word as no shots came to their confusion. That didn’t last long, Miranda and Jennifer acted quickly. The former snapping one’s neck while the latter punched him so hard the other in the head that she knocked him out.

“Wha the fuck, Dickhead! What was that?!”
“What she said.”
“They’re using TR models.” answered Rick, already removing the cerberus armor for one of the men down.
“So?” inquired Jennifer.
“So, as the creator of those models I have special creator privileges, like removing the ID of a person from the gun’s computer, making them unable to be used.”
“... You shitting me!”
“The Alliance let you do that?” Miranda asked in bewilderment.
“Of course not.” he snorted while removing a boot. “They’re not aware. Wanna hear something better?” he asked but not waiting for an answer. “It’s legal. There is no clause in the contract forbidding me from having those privileges. The lawyers understand squat shit about the tech, so they just checked what the military asked them to check. The price, the ownership, things like that. And since the military never thought of the cessation of my rights of administration from the ID program…”
“The lawyers were never told. Clever.”
“Now, you’re just insulting. It was a master stroke. I fucked over the entire Alliance and they don’t even know it.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a genius, we get it. Now who’s putting that shit on?”

Rick picked up the helmet of the unconscious Cerberus guard and tossed it at Jennifer.

“I’m 6’5”, Jen. That won’t fit me.”
“Ugh! I better be the one to blow up that complex!” To both Miranda and Rick’s surprise, Jennifer didn’t protest putting on a Cerberus uniform. For someone who had the greatest hate boner in the galaxy against the black ops organization agreeing to wear their colors was abnormal. “What?” the psycho biotic asked at her teammates’ reaction.
“I thought you’d have protested.” Rick said.
“You would have months ago.”
“Yeah?! Well, It’s not months ago! It’s now! And if putting that thing on makes it easier to screw them over then I’m putting it on! What about you, cheerleader, hm? Missed the uniform? Won’t turn your coat again?”
“In your dreams maybe and I have no problem with it. It’s just a means to an end.”

With the two guards completely stripped down, Rick made them float with a pull and put them in a real freezer to hide them (after snapping the neck of the still living one). When he turned around he saw Jennifer in her underwear. It wasn’t a surprise for him to see that she didn’t stick to military panties and had her own instead.

“Done perving on her?” Miranda’s voice brought him out of his thoughts and averted his eyes from the well toned and tattooed ass of his sister-in-law. Her tone was hard but her eyes were amused and a bit exasperated.
Jennifer straightened up, the pants parts of the armor in hand and put it on. “Of course, he’s looking at my ass.”
“Of course, I’m looking at your ass. You spend the last two days looking at me naked in the shower via the camera feed. Tit for tat.”
Turning around in a flash, her angry expression failed to have any effect because of the very noticeable blush on her face. “How do you know about that?!”
“I didn’t.”
““...””

A chuckle escaped Miranda’s lips, clearly amused, enraging Jennifer, who sent her a death glare.

“I mean, I remember you blatantly admiring this body of mine. And Miranda, I wouldn’t laugh in your place when you spied on Jen when she was taking a shower.”

The black haired woman’s chuckle immediately came to a stop and her face took the expression that most people knew of her. The’ I’m an ice queen bitch’ one. Jennifer’s anger changed to surprise then smugness.

“I guess we’re all perv here. Liked what you saw, cheerleader? Huh?”
“We have a mission and very little time to complete it.”

Brushing aside the conversation, Miranda put the Cerberus helmet on and entered the elevator. Meanwhile, Rick and Jennifer exchange a grin.

“Honestly, Jen. Make a move on her already.” he whispered to her and joined their teammates in the elevator, leaving Jennifer deep in thought for a few seconds before she joined them too.

During the ride down. Rick opened a private communication channel  for the three of them. He would stay hidden and observe the situation while the two of them would openly infiltrate the base. They may have been disguised but they didn’t know anything about the codes, code names and everything else. Should a superior ask simple probing questions, they wouldn’t know how to answer and that would have been a disaster, so that was why Rick was out of sight to get the drop, if possible, on any Cerberus who would block them like that.

Their advance was slow, Rick stopping them in some rooms to steal data from terminals disconnected from the servers. What he found made him sick. It wasn’t concrete evidence but it was personal reports about what was happening here. Cerberus was reaperying the refugees to try to find a way to control them. He should have known that TIM would try to have the reapers under his thumb. The notion terrified him and implied that he may not have been indoctrinated like Rick thought. They wouldn’t let him try to find a way to become their puppeteer or if they did it was because they believed he couldn’t do it. If he could, it was even more imperative to get rid of the man and this unholy research. No one in the galaxy should have control of the Reapers.

They may have been at it for thirty minutes when an alarm activated.

“What the hell?!” Jennifer exclaimed.
“Wasn’t me. Wasn’t you either.” Rick replied from the com.
“That’s not good. We just received orders to take a defensive position. The whole base.”
“What do we do?”

Rick mentally nodded at Miranda’s information and ignored Jennifer for a moment. Looking at the cameras’ feed he didn’t see any threats. What he saw instead, jumping from one camera to another was plenty of Cerberus troops rushing out to the entrances of Sanctuary and taking position to stop anything that would come in. Switching to a camera on the outside, he was shocked at the presence of Reapers and their ground troops.

“Reapers are here.” he announced.
“What?!”
“You must be kidding me.”
“No, they are here and are attacking. The only reason they would do that is…”
“If Cerberus succeeded in their control project and are indoctrinated enough for the reapers to know about it.”
“Yeah. I’m contacting Benezia to warn her to get the fuck out. We will find our way out of this planet on our own. In the meantime, let’s go forward, we need to destroy the research, put a bullet in the scientists’ head and…”
“And?”

Rick had stopped what he was saying, when he saw Kai Leng walking inside Sanctuary in a hurry. He tracked his movements from camera to camera.

“Dickhead?!”
“Kai Leng is here. He must not leave this planet alive. Let’s hurry up. No need to take our time anymore and be overly covert.”

With that said, Rick moved out from his hiding place and joined his friends two rooms down. When they arrived, Miranda was already removing her armor to be in her catsuit only, while Jennifer had only the pants part on.

“They’re all rushing out through predetermined routes, meaning some passages are empty. People have been locked inside their room. Gas is being released. I don’t know if it’s lethal or not and we don’t have the time to find out. Let’s move.”

Both ladies nodded and followed Rick who opened the march. They went through a succession of rooms at a breeze pace until they found a few unarmed scientists, trying to flee. A quick interrogation later and the team knew where to go and who was in charge here. After Jennifer put a bullet in each of their heads, something that neither of her teammates disagreed with, she turned to Miranda.

“Are you alright?”
“I knew that my father was a monster but to go that far!”

The ravenette was beside herself in complete and utter fury at the knowledge that the person in charge of Sanctuary and the inhuman experiments being conducted here was her own father.
Rick silently disagreed with her. He knew Henry Lawson had ties with Cerberus and wasn’t surprised to hear that every atrocity going around here was a result of his research. Checking the situation with the Reapers above ground, he cursed.

“What happened?” Miranda asked, calming herself down.
“Cerberus is overwhelmed. Reapers troops are inside the complex. We need to hurry.”

Following the direction given by the scientists, they took another elevator but this time up. Way up. To the point they reach the top floors of the building they were in. Hacking the cameras in this part of the building revealed that, just like he thought, everything in this zone was cut off from the rest of Sanctuary. After switching from camera to camera again, he caught a glimpse of Lawson on the top floor in a remote room. Kai leng however was on another side of the area.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Your genetic donor is that way.” he pointed to a door on the left of the room”. Be careful, there are plenty of reaper troops on the way. From cannibals to Banshees.”
“Already?! How did they get here so fast?”
“They didn’t. Jen, those reapers are Cerberus made, they’re the results of the experiments on the refugees. I said to be careful, I meant it, who knows what upgrades they got.”
“What about you? Clearly you’re not coming with us.”
“No. The server room is this way.” he pointed right this time. “And that’s also Kai Leng’s destination and mine. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” he added and began to move.
“Don’t miss him!” shouted Miranda who moved in the opposite direction.
“Who’s that guy anyway? I know Aria wants his head but like… It’s personal, not business.”
“Kai Leng killed her daughter months ago as for who he is… The biggest piece of filth that had ever seen the light of day in this galaxy. An arrogant, xenophobic asshole with a superiority complex to begin with.”
“Oh… Perfect recipe for ending up on Dickhead’s shit list.”
“You have no idea.”

~~~~~

Once on his own, Rick began to run at a faster pace that he did with the girls. His shotgun had been replaced by his lightsaber to be as silent as possible to not alert his target. That limited his combat efficiency greatly in case he’d encounter a banshee but thankfully, so far he hadn’t anything more difficult than a rachni and from its arrival through a balcony, Rick was sure it came from one of the reapers outside. From what he saw on the cameras, the tops floors were separated in two areas. Bio labs, where Jennifer and Miranda were going and tech lab where he currently was. Unless that made a transfer from experiments in the bio labs to this side, odds were low that he’d encounter much resistance or many obstacles on his way.

Arriving in the server Room in no time, he saw Kai Leng finishing whatever it was he was doing.

“I’m surprised you’re back on your feet after the humiliation I gave you on Thessia.” the assassin said, closing the terminal he was working on and picking up his metallic sword in hand. “But then again, you’re with Shepard. You never know when to giv…”

He was interrupted by his body being lurched forward, right towards Rick. The helmeted man had created some kind of biotic thread and latched onto Kai Leng. After a tug of the wrist the assassin went flying right in front of him. One slash later and the cerberus agent was laying in two parts on the ground. Looking down, Rick had the last words.

“I could have done that on Thessia.” he began as Kai Leng drowned in his own blood. “I let you win so I could make you think Cerberus had won. We already have the catalyst, we just needed you to think we didn’t so we could wipe you all without problem. Thank you for being such an obedient and predictable idiot.”

With that said, he swung his lightsaber a second time and decapitated the man. Turning around, he accessed the server and copied as much as he could before deleting everything. With his personal quest done, he picked up his new trophy for his mom and put it under his arm then left the area to join the others.

When he arrived there, it was just in time for Miranda to put a bullet in the head of the man she hated more than anything in the world. That action resulted in her collapsing on her knees. The man who had been after her and Orianna, who had done an untold number of monstrous experiments, was finally dead for good. The relief she had felt at that moment had been so sudden that her body simply went limp. Thankfully, Jennifer was by her side in a flash.

“I suppose we’re all done with our personal vendetta.” said Rick, coming closer to his pet to offer her some more comfort.
“Yes. Finally.” replied Miranda with a genuine smile.
“I’m really happy for you guys but how do we get out of this mess?”
“I told Benezia to leave us behind.”
“Are you…”
“There are plenty of ships around.” he continued, raising his hand and cutting Jennifer’s own interjection.”
“What about the refugees?”
“Dead. The gas was lethal.” he had checked about that while he was making a copy of the data on the servers.
“Bastards.” Jennifer sword with gritted teeth.

After picking Miranda up, the trio left the complex by simply breaking a window and jumping down, stropping their fall with their biotics. It was way faster and less dangerous than going back the way they came from. During their controlled fall, Rick pointed out a ship in the landing zone, clearly belonging to Cerberus. Making their way to it, he hoped it was Kai Leng’s. They did well to do so because it was. After killing the guard and the pilot they took possession of it and left Horizon, warning Benezia they were out and that they were going back to the Citadel, the mission successful.