Drew Karpyshyn - Ascension

Two against five now.

"Okay, I'm ready," he said, taking a deep breath.

"Good luck," she replied. She didn't turn to look at him, but kept her attention on the battlefield.

As he broke from the boxes, she started firing.

Grayson heard the shotgun blasts in the hall outside, but wasn't sure what to make of them. A few minutes later he heard gunfire coming from a distance, though he guessed it was still inside the building.

Somebody's assaulting the base. Now's your chance to get out of here.

He was trapped in a storage room, not a real jail cell, and the walls imprisoning him were nothing but the turian equivalent of drywall. Standing up, he went over to one of the side walls and began to slam the bottom of his foot hard against the surface.

If the guards were still out there they'd see what he was up to on the cameras. But Grayson was banking on them being otherwise distracted.

After a few hard kicks his foot broke through to the other side. He put his eye to the hole to see what lay beyond. It appeared to be another makeshift cell, much like his own. But this one was empty, and the steel door leading out to the hall was open.

He continued his assault on the wall, and five minutes later he had broken away enough of the material to crawl through. No one had come to check on him during his slow-developing escape, so he assumed none of the guards were around. Based on the continuing sound of gunfire from somewhere else in the building, he guessed they had gone to help fight off the attackers. As he stepped out into the hall and saw the two bodies, he realized he was wrong.

A quick look around told him just about everything he needed to know. All the other cells were empty; Gillian and the others were gone. Someone had obviously busted them out.. though he couldn't even begin to guess who it might have been.

Whoever it was, they were kind enough to leave me an assault rifle, he thought, picking up the discarded weapon from the floor of one of the cells.

Grayson didn't know where he was, but he knew where he wanted to go — he needed to find Gillian. The most logical way to do that seemed to be to follow the sound of the gunfire.

It didn't take him long to realize that this task was harder than it seemed, and he quickly became hopelessly lost in the building's nonsensical floor plan.

Lemm darted back and forth between the containers, constantly changing direction, stopping and starting without warning, and never staying in one place too long. His hands clutched his shotgun tightly, but he wasn't looking to fire at anyone — he was simply trying to make it to the vehicles.

Kahlee was doing her best to cover him, but she was badly overmatched. The one time he'd dared to stop long enough to look back, he saw two slavers firing at her from cover positions behind a pile of containers on the floor, and another two, newly arrived, shooting down at her from the small landing overlooking the garage from above.

The two teams coordinated their attacks, never giving her a clear opening to retaliate. But that didn't stop her from occasionally popping her head out and firing back.

Brave thing to do, considering she doesn't even have any shields.

With Kahlee occupying four of the remaining five slavers, that left only one more for him to deal with. Unfortunately, he had no idea where his enemy was. Every time he ran out into the open he could be stepping into a spray of lethal assault-rifle fire.

Don't think about it. Just stay focused on the vehicle. You're almost there.

Only ashort stretch of bare floor still separated him from the rovers; a quick sprint and it was all over, one way or the other.

He broke from cover and dashed for the vehicle. The fifth slaver was waiting for him, popping up from behind a crate not twenty feet away as he ran past. She opened fire from close range on his flank;clouds of concrete flew up from the floor as she fired low, where his barrier shields were most vulnerable, trying to take his legs out from under him.

Head down, Lemm knew his best shot at survival was just to keep running. He was half a step away from safety when a hollow-point round entered his left calf. It mushroomed then split apart on impact, sending a spray of metal fragments through his lower leg, shredding the muscles and tendons. Screaming in agony, he pitched forward, his shotgun falling from his hand. His momentum allowed him to manage two more stumbling, off-balance steps that carried him far enough to put the metal-plated rover between him and his attacker before he collapsed to the ground.

He rolled over onto his back, clutching at the bloody pulp below his knee that used to be his leg. He heard footsteps coming toward him, and he realized his shotgun had been left behind, skittering across the floor when he'd dropped it after being hit.

A second later the woman materialized from around the front of the vehicle. She smiled and aimed the weapon at him.

Then suddenly she was flying across the room.

Lemm followed the path of her body as it arced high through the air before slamming into one of the walls and crashing down to the floor. She lay there motionless, her neck twisted at a gruesome angle. It was only when he heard Hendel screaming at him that he realized what had happened: the man was bi-otic!

"The rover! Hurry!"

The quarian knew it would take thirty or forty seconds before Hendel recovered enough to use his bi-otics again. . time they didn't have. Gritting his teeth and hoping he wouldn't pass out from the pain, he used the rover's front bumper to haul himself up. Standing on his one good leg, he pulled the driver's side door open and crawled inside. Blocking out the pain as best he could, it took him half a minute to override the operator codes and get the engine fired up.

There was no windscreen on the vehicle; it was more like an armored transport carrier, with a navigation screen on the inside to give him the layout of his surroundings. Organic creatures picked up by the vehicle's infrared and ultraviolet sensors showed as small dots on the nav screen, revealing the locations of everyone in the warehouse, both friend and foe.

The rover wasn't equipped with weapons, but it was four tons of bulletproof metal. He threw the vehicle into gear, the tires leaving patches of smoking black rubber on the garage floor as he peeled out and spun in a crazy circle, fighting with the steering in his haste.

He careened into a pile of crates, sending the heavy metal boxes flying. He spun the wheel and stomped on the accelerator. Ignoring the agonizing jolt of pain as his wounded left leg bumped against the side door, he headed straight for Kahlee and the others.

Along the way he plowed through the containers providing cover for the remaining two slavers on the ground, mowing them down under his wheels before bringing the rover to a skidding halt, only inches shortof running over Hendel.

Lemm threw open the door and the biotic clambered up into the backseat of the vehicle, the still unconscious girl gripped tightly in his arms while Kahlee lay down another stream of cover fire at the last two surviving slavers atop the landing. They returned fire, the sound of their bullets ricocheting off the armored roof and hull in a metallic, staccato symphony.

"They're loading up a rocket launcher!" Kahlee shouted, tossing Lemm's bag into the back with Hendel as she leaped into the front of the vehicle. "Get us the hell out of here!"

"You better drive," Lemm panted through clenched teeth as he tried to slide awkwardly over to the passenger seat.

She glanced down at his mangled leg, then shoved him out of the way as she slid behind the wheel, causing him to scream in pain.