Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

At one point he heard the sound of distant gunfire — three quick shots from a pistol — and he froze. It was impossible to tell exactly, but the sound seemed to have come from the direction he was heading.

There were no further shots, so Anderson continued his methodical progress. Whatever encounter had triggered the shots was obviously over; there was no sense recklessly charging in now and possibly getting himself killed.

After several minutes he finally reached the hall leading to the main research lab where the data archives were stored. As he peeked around the corner, he saw something lying on the floor right in front of the lab’s sealed door.

He ducked back quickly on instinct, then paused while his mind processed the memory of the image. It looked like a bundle of clothes, or maybe a blanket. He couldn’t imagine how it had come to be there, but it didn’t seem to pose any threat.

Creeping into the hall, he approached the lab’s door with his shotgun at the ready. As he drew nearer he was able to confirm it was a blanket on the floor; he could see that it was stained with blood. An image of a child getting up in the night to wander the halls and stumbling across Grayson forced its way into his consciousness, and he struggled to push it aside.

He hit the panel on the wall and the door slid open with a soft whoosh. Anderson wheeled into the doorway, ready to fire. But what he saw in the lab didn’t prompt him to pull the trigger. Three bodies lay on the floor, each shot once between the eyes — a clear explanation for the pistol fire he’d heard earlier.

The adrenaline was pumping through his system; his senses were hyperalert, and he could hear the sound of his own breath inside his helmet. Grayson had to be close. If he wasn’t in the lab, there was only one other place he could be.

With the shotgun pressed tight against his shoulder, Anderson carefully approached the door at the back of the lab. It was closed, but the green light glowing on the nearby wall panel indicated it was unlocked. He pressed himself against the wall just beside the door, took a deep breath to steel himself, then hit the panel.

Grayson was standing inside the room only a few meters away from Anderson, intently focused on the display screens of the room’s lone terminal. He was so absorbed in whatever he was looking at that he didn’t even seem to notice the man now standing in the doorway with a shotgun aimed directly at him.

Up close, Anderson was shocked to see how invasive the Reaper cybernetics had become. Even through his visor it was clear the thing before him could no longer be considered a fellow human being.

Despite this, Kahlee probably would have given him a chance to surrender. Anderson felt no such compulsion.

All this flashed through his head in the fraction of a second that it took for him to squeeze the trigger.

He aimed at his target’s center of mass to inflict maximum damage. At point-blank range the projectiles mushrooming out from the shotgun’s barrel maintained a tight dispersal pattern; the blast took Grayson square in the side of his torso. The impact spun him around and sent him sprawling face-first onto the floor.

Without a combat suit or kinetic barriers to protect him, the damage to Grayson’s internal organs was almost sure to be instantly lethal, but Anderson wasn’t taking any chances. He stepped forward as he prepared to fire again, only to be suddenly lifted off his feet and tossed back through the open door to crash against the computer terminals in the lab. He fell in a crumpled heap to the floor, stunned but not seriously injured.

It took him a second to recover from the biotic attack, enough time for Grayson to rise to his feet. His right side had been reduced to hamburger; blood was oozing from a hundred tiny holes in his torn flesh.

But somehow he was still going.

From his prone position Anderson fired again, taking aim at his enemy’s head. Grayson dodged out of the way by throwing himself awkwardly to the floor. Then he scrambled back to his feet, yanking a pair of pistols from his belt.

He was still quick, but he didn’t have the unfathomable speed Anderson had witnessed during the ambush at the warehouse on Omega. In the time it took him to get up and draw his weapons, Anderson was able to roll into cover behind the edge of the lab’s massive computer console.

Grayson fired the pistols several times, keeping Anderson pinned down. And then Anderson was rocked again by another biotic attack. This time instead of a simple push to send him reeling, his enemy created a series of microscopic, rapidly shifting mass effect fields that completely surrounded him. They flickered in and out of existence, subtly warping the very fabric of the space-time continuum. The powerful push and pull of the opposing forces tore at his flesh, causing him to scream in pain.

It felt like he was being ripped apart at the subatomic level. Anderson knew if he didn’t get out of the shifting fields, they’d cause all the cells in his body to hemorrhage and rupture.

Ignoring the pain, he popped up from behind cover and fired off several rounds with the shotgun.

Grayson fired back with the pistols as he dove for cover. The kinetic barriers in Anderson’s enviro-suit shielded him from the opposing fire, allowing him to fall back into the hall.

He backpedaled quickly, putting some space between himself and the door, then dropped to one knee and took aim at the opening, waiting for the enemy to emerge once more.

Grayson could feel his heart fluttering erratically. His lungs were drowning in blood from his wounds.

He knew the only things keeping him alive were the cybernetic implants and the irresistible will of the Reapers.

He thought the wounds might cause their hold on him to slip, but if anything they were holding on even tighter. Try as he might, he could find no purchase in his efforts to wrest back control of his body. It was like grasping at thin air; there was nothing left for him to seize onto.

The Reapers knew their enemy was lurking just outside the door. Another well-placed hit from the shotgun and even the synthetic elements of their avatar might begin to fail. So rather than step out into the hall, they waited, gathering their strength for one last attack.

Nick couldn’t get comfortable in his seat. He kept casting glances over at the cafeteria door, where Captain Jimenez stood watch.

He’d seen the gun in Miss Sanders’s belt, but her fingers were all bandaged up. There was no way she’d be able to use it. What was she going to do if she ran into the kidnappers? She wasn’t even biotic.

Focusing on the glass on the table in front of him, Nick briefly gathered his strength, then caused the glass to slide across the surface toward him. He caught it with his hand just as it was about to topple off the table’s edge.

I could yank the guns right out of the kidnapper’s hands. Send them flying back to smash against the wall. But they want me to sit here like I’m some kind of kid!

He glanced over at Yando, who was sitting beside him. The younger boy was staring at him with wide eyes.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” he whispered.

Nick knew he was referring to the trick with the glass. The instructors would have called it a “gratuitous display” of biotic ability, something that was frowned on in the Ascension Project. They didn’t want kids to push themselves too far by experimenting on their own. But for Nick, moving a glass was easy. He’d been using biotics for years. He knew what he was capable of, even if nobody else believed in him.

“Hey, Yando,” he said, getting a sudden flash of inspiration. “I need your help.”

“With what?” The younger boy was suspicious. He was always worried about getting in trouble, but in the end Nick knew Yando would do whatever he told him to.