Post by Duncan Ryder on May 8, 2022 13:03:08 GMT -5
Shepard’s journey since leaving Omega had been long and winding. It was strange, being forced to adapt to operating without the Normandy and without the authorisations and privileges that his Spectre status normally afforded him. With all of that stripped back though he remembered who he truly was, the kid that had grown up in the proving grounds of Earth’s slums, the war hero of the Skyllian Blitz, the sole survivor of Akuze. He realised he didn’t need all those other things. No matter what rank or status he was, he was always the same man, he was always Shepard. He would always do whatever he had to do to get the job done and he would always come out on top.
The salarian that J’nay Himaker had found for him on Omega had set Shepard on the path but it had not been the singular answer to all of his problems. Where the salarian led Shepard he arrived to find he was a step behind. The salarian smuggler, the one who had escaped with the energised artefact on Angelios, was constantly moving. Shepard would reach one world to find that his quarry had moved on mere days, sometimes even only hours before and he would be forced to track down a new lead in order to continue his pursuit. It was frustrating but Shepard’s determination knew no bounds. The galaxy was at stake and he had come too far for too long and bled too much to give up now.
He had met opposition along the way. The black hooded asari mercenary on Atalan had been formidable and threatened to alay him so fiercely that all might have been lost before it had even truly begun. On EV-44N he had been forced to ally himself with an unscrupulous human thug against the threat of sickly vorcha, whatever ailment having addled their already savage minds also turning them an unpleasant shade of purple. Shepard and his erstwhile ally had survived only for Shepard to be betrayed. Shepard caught up to him on the green world of Boronc, but the man had escaped the full extent of Shepard’s retribution and with greater matters at hand Shepard had been forced to give up his pursuit.
A pursuit that had brought him here, to a planet known simply as Poe’s World. He had chartered an FTL transport ship from Boronc and even as he had entered the system Shepard knew that something felt wrong here. Even from the edge of the system something niggled at the back of his head, like an itch under the skin that he couldn’t scratch, like insects inside his skull. The feeling only grew stronger the further into the system he pushed. It was a sense of impending dread that his base human instincts roared at him to turn back from, a primal voice pleading for survival. He couldn’t though and although he felt the fear sinking down heavily into the pit of his stomach he took it as an indicator that he was on the right track. Something was very wrong here and that was how Shepard knew he was in the right place.
He brought the transport ship into orbit around Poe’s World. It looked a lot different now then it did in the records that Shepard had downloaded before setting out. The world in the archive images was largely industrialised but still habitable, with blue seas and clouds indicating a breathable atmosphere. What Shepard looked down on was a different story though. It was scorched red Mars.
‘Or Hell itself,’ the insects in the back of his skull whispered.
Shepard shook his head to fight the thought away. That much was preposterous. In between the great swathes of red desert, in the ruins of cities were blue lit towers and seams of black and silver-grey that criss-crossed the landscape like scars or veins.
Shepard scanned the surface. The world was awash with unusual but all too familiar energy signals. What few remaining doubts Shepard had about his course of action were washed away. This was the place. He locked coordinates of the strongest signal and transferred the data to the transport’s landing shuttle and prepared to make his descent.
Lenny Brasco: Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Lenny Brasco. The EXP 24 stream has just ended from this great event here in Greensboro, North Carolina. We just saw the Game Changers, Larry Tact and E.A. Blizzard defend both the Power and Courage titles in our back-to-back double main event and remember, the new Game Changers t-shirts, caps, beanies and jackets are available on the Level Up webstore right now. Here with me now though I have caught up to the number one contender to the Final Boss title, the winner of The Last Of Us Part 2, Commander Duncan Shepard.
The camera pans a little to the right and Duncan comes into shot, still dressed in the same grey t-shirt, blue jeans and black hoodie he wore down to the ring at the opening of the show.
Lenny Brasco: Commander, I’m here to tell you that, following on from your challenge you laid down to the champion Joey Crash earlier tonight that you both ‘unleash hell’, the Developer has signed off and made it official, your title match in two weeks time at Doom will be a Last Man Standing match. How do you feel?
A wry smile crosses Duncan’s face as he leans into the mic and looks down the camera.
Duncan Shepard: I feel great Lenny. Joey is the kind of guy who doesn;t care if he has to step outside the rules and take a shortcut to pick up a win. He showed that to The Last Of Us when he won the title. When you know that you’re going into a match with someone like that, you can take precautions, you can be alert for whatever tricks they might pull but you can never completely negate those chances. People like Joey Crash always find a way to tip the scales. This match though, it’s too important to leave to chance. So, instead of trying to keep the scales balanced, I threw them clean off the table. Now we’re on level ground. Anything Joey Crash can do will be legal. I’ll be ready for all of it and everything I give back to him in kind will be legal too. Remember Larry, this isn’t my first mission into blood saturated waters. I was the first ever Level Up Power Champion. I came through the Skeleton Key match. This is not the first time I’ve walked through Hell Larry, I’m comfortable here. I roast marshmallows in the fires of Hell and Joey Crash is going to find out that he might be the champion, but at Doom he’s walking into my territory and he’s going to get burned.
With that, Duncan steps out of shot, leaving Lenny Brasco dumbstruck and the clip comes to an end.
The shuttle set down in a cloud of red dust kicked up by the downwash of its own engines. The side hatch opened and Shepard stepped out. In moments the black of his armour was stained the scorched red of the blasted world and he had to wipe his hand down across the visor of his helmet to be able to see.
He checked his rifle. Already the dust was starting to sink into it and he was worried it would jam if it was exposed for too long. He made a mental note to rely on it too deeply.
He noted that the dust around him was still swirling. The original cloud had been a product of his own arrival but he looked back to the shuttle and despite its thrusters being shut down the cloud around him was only growing in intensity. He found himself suddenly in what felt like a blood stained sandstorm. Even clearing his visor every couple of seconds visibility became perilously low. He was forced to rely on his head’s up display, transferring the signal tracker directly to his optical cybernetics. With his only compass displayed directly onto the lens of his eye he pushed all but blindly into the storm.
With each step though the insects in the back of his skull grew more agitated. They scurried back and forth, climbing over each other in their hurry to get nowhere. They began to bite at him. Shepard’s head throbbed and the pain made him nauseated but he kept following the blinking dot on his eye, hoping that getting out of the storm might grant him some kind of relief.
It didn’t though. As he pressed forward, fighting to take each step a sudden jolt of white hot pain lit up his body, from his eyes, down his spine and through every part of his body. Every part of him that had been rebuilt with cybernetics years before. For a second he felt like he was on fire, then, mercifully, he blacked out.
“What do you mean you sort of told her?”
“I suppose you could say that I strongly implied it without actually going so far as to use the exact words one might typically use.”
Through the camera of her phone, transmitting an image from five hundred and fifty kilometres away, Duncan watched his sister Annie pinch the bridge of her nose and slowly shake her head.
“Duncan, you’re my brother and I love you but I swear, sometimes, you’re the absolute fucking worst.”
“What?” Duncan protested, leaning back in his seat at the small table in the corner of his living room, even though he knew there was no arguing it. Like usual, his sister was right.
Annie sighed. “OK, just, take me through it again, from the beginning, what happened?”
“She just showed up at my door one morning. I was getting ready to go to the gym and then she was just there.”
“Does she live nearby?”
“No! She lives in freaking Los Angeles!”
“And she came to you in Indianapolis?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so romantic,” said Annie.
“Is it? Or is it a bit creepy? You know, to just turn up unannounced on someone’s doorstep who lives practically a whole country away.”
“She’s not some stalker or a weirdo you met on the internet. You guys spent Christmas together. You went to Hawai’i together.
Duncan huffed, “objection withdrawn,” he said sullenly.
“Then what happened?”
“We talked.”
There was a pause as Annie just looked at him expectantly with ever increasing impatience. “And?”
“And what?”
“You talked? About what? The weather and what you had for dinner last night? For fuck’s sake Duncan, you ask for my help then force me to bleed it out of you like a stone.”
“I didn’t ask for your help. Literally all I did was mention that something kind of, sort of, but not really happened and you just started asking all sorts of questions.”
“Oh don’t bullshit me. The only reason you brought it up was because you wanted my opinion on it so start talking. What did you say?”
“I…” Duncan hesitated, “don’t really remember. It was weeks ago. It was emotional, a little overwhelming. I had done an interview for this charity show where I talked about how I ended up in Mexico, what happened there, how it led to my drinking and the problems I’d had with that. She saw it, confronted me about Gabriella. Guess she made the connection between her and why I maybe wasn’t rushing into another relationship.”
“It’s been almost seven years Duncan, no-one is going to accuse you of rushing into another relationship,” Annie said dryly.
“Not like that, I mean-”
“I know what you mean.”
“I think she said she was hurt that I thought that she’d abandon me over the dumb shit I’ve done before or might do. She told me that she almost got married once, not that long ago actually and that guy had died.”
“Wow, OK. What did you say about that?”
“I don’t remember. What do you say about something like that? I don’t think I said anything completely stupid at least.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Then I told her I was on a knife edge. That I couldn’t afford to put myself in a position to get hurt again when I’ve finally just about put myself back together.”
Annie didn’t reply right away. For the first time since they’d started talking Duncan could see familial love and sadness in her eyes.
“Oh Duncan. I didn’t know you-”
Duncan put his hands up to cut her off, “no, no, it’s fine, I’m fine. It’s not like I’m white knuckling it through every day. Things have been good since I joined Level Up. I have an actual home, right!” he gestured around at the room he was sitting in, “I’m employed somewhere where I feel valued and appreciated. I’m at the peak of my career. Things are going well.”
“OK,” Annie said while nodding to indicate her understanding, “good. So, you are in love with her then?”
Duncan threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes with audible exasperation, “for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, “yes!”
“I knew it!”
“You did not know it, you hoped for it because you watch too many romantic movies.”
“No, I knew it. Whenever you talked about her you got the look.”
“What look?”
“The one you’d get when we’d watch Gladiators on a saturday night and Jet would come on and you’d have to put a cushion in your lap,” she laughed.
“It was just comfortable!” Duncan protested.
“And you just had to get comfortable every week, on que. Right, whatever mate.”
“OK, fine, whatever so you ‘knew’,” Duncan said, throwing air quotes around the last word, “so what?”
“So a woman you’re in love with told you that she’s in love with you and then for literal months you’ve sworn blind that you’re not in love with her, if you’re not just ignoring her entirely. Am I right so far?”
“That’s accurate.”
“Then when you did have a chance to actually tell her you just, what, heavily implied it?”
“That would probably be the most accurate way to describe it.”
Annie groaned, “yep, I was right to start with. You’re the fucking worst.”
“Now I’m worried that maybe I’ve pushed her away too hard for too long and I’m actually going to lose her.”
“And now we finally get to the actual reason that you called me.”
Duncan smiled sheepishly, “what should I do?”
“Well, tell her how you feel for a start.”
“I did!”
“In actual words. The actual words. There’s only three of them, I know you know them.”
“But I’ve got this big match coming up and I don’t think I should get distracted from focussing on that and she’s got a big match too and I don’t want to get in the way of her preparing for that.”
“Well then wait until after the show.”
“But then what if that’s too late?”
Annie threw her hands into the air, “well what do you want me to do Duncan? Build you a time machine so you can go back and not be a dickhead for the past six months so you won’t be in this mess to begin with?”
“That’d be perfect. Call me when it’s ready,” said Duncan and reached for the red button that would end the call.
“Oh ha de fucking ha. Those are your two options. I’m sorry but there’s no miracle option three.”
“...synthesis,” Duncan muttered to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing, nevermind, go on.”
“You’ve just got to pick one and deal with whatever consequences come from it.”
“Ugh,” Duncan groaned, letting his head rock back, “is it me or does the moral choice system in real life suck?”
“Yup, but what can you do?”
“I guess, thanks for listening anyway. It’s gotta be late there, I’ll let you get on,” said Duncan, reaching for the disconnect button with actual intent this time.
“Just a sec.”
Duncan withdrew his hand, “Yeah?”
“I just wanted to say that, we all understand what this match next week means to you. I’m sorry we can’t all be there for it but know that, even though you won’t be able to see us, we’ll be right there watching and cheering you on?”
Duncan chuckled, “you mean Martin will be and you’ll be trying your best to stay awake?”
“No, we’re making a whole thing of it. We already bought the show. Mum and Dad are going to come over, a few other people too. Your old rugby mates, Stu and Miles I still run into sometimes, they’re coming. I mentioned it to my friends too, they’re not usually that interested but they seemed to get that it was a big deal. Kelly still asks about you sometimes you know.”
“Who?”
“You know, my friend Kelly, tall, like five eleven or something. Long hair. Snorts sometimes when she laughs.”
Duncan frowned and then realisation dawned on him, “Oh, bucktooth Kelly!”
Annie’s brow furrowed deeply, “she had braces and now she’s had very nice teeth I’ll have you know. Just thought you’d like to know in the likely event that you screw things up with Emily even more than you already have.”
“Thanks for the words of confidence.”
“Yes, well, what I was trying to say is that we’re all going to be here. You’ve been gone a long time. You may have forgotten about a lot of people back here but not everyone has forgotten about you. Martin explained to me what a Last Man Standing match was. Sounds like the two of you are probably going to kill each other so when the time comes and you need to dig deep and pull yourself back to your feet and keep fighting, if you need something to reach for, reach for us, because we’re all going to be here cheering you on loud enough to keep the neighbours awake.”
A felt a warmth spread through his stomach and a contented smile gently eased onto his face, “thanks. I will.”
“I love you Duncan.”
“I love you too kiddo.”
“See, I knew you knew how to say it.”
“Oh piss off and go to sleep or something. Say hi to the sprogs for me.”
“Will do. Night Duncan and if I don’t speak to you again beforehand, good luck.”
When Shepard came around he didn’t know where he was physically, but he knew where he was situationally. It was a facility that felt much too familiar, just like one’s he’d been in before on Virmire or Horizon. It was cold, metallic and sterile, at least it had been. Shepard smelt the blood rather than seeing it. He tried to sit up and found he was tied down on a cold metal slab. Not a bed, but the kind of surface you’d put a cadaver down on for examination or dissection.
Something felt wrong. These places always felt wrong, from the sheer inhumanity and suffering that always came with them but here, it was like even the wrongness felt wrong. Robotic surgical arms with scalpel blades and needles connected to vials filled with nanites so small that as they squirmed in their glass containment they looked like a liquid, hung threateningly above him but they didn’t move. There was a crack and something above him sparked. Bright white surgical lights gave out and were replaced by dull red emergency lighting.
Shepard tried to lift his head to look around. Doing so summoned excruciating pain around his eyes and the back of his neck but he fought against it.
Something rasped to his right, a dry mechanical breath like a geth with emphysema. Shepard knew that sound too. He looked over as the husk started shambling towards him. Shepard fought desperately against his bindings, pulling and straining, gritting his teeth as he exerted every ounce of muscular strength his body could generate but nothing gave. Instead he reached for the dark energy that saturated the universe. With the pain in his head he didn’t know if he’d be able to exert the concentration he needed but the sight of the swiftly closing cybernetic zombie coming to tear his throat out was inspiration enough to blank out the pain for a couple of seconds at least. The swirling blue and black biotic power formed around his right fist and with a surge of it Shepard pulled his hand free. Not a second too soon either. The husk was in arm’s reach. Shepard backfisted it across the face as it led at him. Before it could recover he grabbed its skull, driving his thumb into its eye socket. Its jaw’s snapped open and shut and it hissed with pain before Shepard slammed its head down on the edge of the table, caving in its skull. He let go and the body fell limply to the floor.
Looking to his left he spotted two more of them in the corner of the room. They seemed not to have noticed him there at first but perhaps the sound of him slaying their kin had drawn their attention. In the dull red light Shepard spotted a pistol on the floor between himself and the husks. Drawing on his biotics again Shepard freed his left hand. In his hurry to get up he slipped off the table and hit the ground. Now he saw the blood. He crawled through it, the viscous fluid making everything slick and slowing him down as he struggled for traction but he reached the pistol. Not his Carnifex but it would have to do. From his prone position on the floor he raised the weapon and hoped that the thermal clip still held some charge. He squeezed the trigger and it fired, the shot taking the closest husk in the abdomen. It wasn’t enough to stop it. The two husks lunged with greater urgency. Shepard adjusted his aim and his next four shots struck the husks in the head, two each and they fell into the spilled blood in front of him.
Assessing the environment Shepard confirmed there were no more immediate threats but it was clear he was very very far from being safe. He pushed himself to his feet. He was naked, almost, stripped of his armour and undersuit and reduced to his underwear. He walked around the room and approached the door. It didn’t open. On the panel beside it though, a translucent blue light blinked. He touched it.
A VI walked through the door. No, not a VI, a recording, played out in the same translucent pale blue of the button, in stark contrast to the many shades of red of the room. There was a man. The detail of the recording was poor but Shepard expected that even had it been perfect he’d still not have recognised him.
“We need to contain this,” a woman’s voice said.
Then the recording cut off and the door opened.
Shepard stepped out. In the next room he found his armour. It was stood up, on a stand as if on display in a museum. It had been cleaned of the dust that had been coating it when it had last been on his body. It felt like a trap. Why was it here? Why had it just been left for him? He didn’t have time to question it, whatever had happened here, whatever was coming he needed his armour. He reached for it, laid his hand upon the cuirass and-
Visions rushed through his mind. Shepard hadn’t felt anything so intense since the first Prothean beacon he’d encountered on Eden Prime. This wasn’t Prothean though. The Cipher had made him capable of understanding and interpreting the Protheans' messages, these though were still broken, violent and chaotic. He saw teeth and claws rendered in shimmering silver. He saw flesh being ripped and torn. He saw organic matter being consumed and replaced with synthetics. He saw a creature, a behemoth with a shining scaled hide. He saw a pit, so wide and so deep he thought it could consume a star and off of its light. It consumed him.
He was back in the room, back in front of his armour. His hand had drawn back reflexively as if the armour was burning hot to the touch. He was tentative to reach for it again. The vision left him with a feeling of impending doom that manifested as a cold void in the pit of his stomach. He reminded himself that he needed it. He touched the armour again. No visions came this time and he donned the suit. As he put his helmet on a screen beside him powered into flickering light. It read:
“Commander? You’re Commander Shepard right? What’re you doing here? Did our distress signal get out?” It was the female voice from the recording.
“No, there was no signal. I came here on the trail of a salarian smuggler.”
“Y-yes, the salarian.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. We don’t get a lot of visitors here, especially not aliens and even fewer without prior warning. He just arrived one day, said he was looking for something. We turned him away. Our research here is top secret but somehow he got it. That was how this all started. Everything was fine before he arrived. Now, everyone is gone.” The woman trailed off. The more she spoke her voice became ever more distant, haunted. “It’s coming commander. You have to stop it. Hurry. Hurry!”
The line went dead. Shepard checked the clip on the pistol and pushed on.
The corridors beyond were just like the rooms he had found himself in, horrifying ruins. Consoles and screens were blown out and spraying sparks. Ceiling panels had been torn down, crashing to the ground or hanging loose, swinging and trailing thick bundles of cables. There were husks and around every corner there were more. The woman’s pleas for haste replayed in his mind with panic and urgency. Shepard threw caution to the wind and plunged into the fight. There was no time for caution, no time for strategy. He realised he had to leave behind Shepard the Spectre, Shepard the Marine, he became Shepard the warrior, Shepard the berzerker. The first husk he gunned down with his pistol. The next he struck with a biotic charge that split the husk in two. He landed and leapt straight into a nova, striking his fist into the ground and unleashing a burst that threw three more into the walls behind them. They fell in twisted broken shapes. Trapped beneath a sealed blast door was the top half of a man in a security uniform. He held a shotgun in outstretched hands, a katana, standard Alliance pattern, nothing special but it would do the job. Shepard prized it from his cold dead hands.
In the next room he found pillars, the spikes upon which the husks were driven to impale their victims to turn them into more husks. Shepard set about them ruthlessly with biotics and firearms; he tore the husks apart and cast down their towers. With the threat removed a security door opened. It closed behind him as Shepard passed through. Another recording played, from the voice he knew it was the woman he had spoken to before.
“We don’t know where the vessel came from, what species it belonged to or how it came to be buried on this world. All we know is that its technology is far superior to anything humanity has created. It perhaps surpasses anything in council space. It is clear that, should we be successful here, this will be the greatest leap forward in human advancement since the discovery of the prothean archives on Mars.”
The message stopped, flickered and disappeared. At the end of the hallway was an elevator. Shepard stepped inside. Another dead body sat slumped against the wall. Its head sagged at an angle the human neck was not capable of achieving while intact. Shepard touched a blank console and the pod began to move.
“Commander,” the woman’s voice spoke through tinny broken speakers, “you have to understand, everything we did here we did for humanity. The subject, it was dormant. It had been dormant for tens of thousands of years. We had no reason to believe it would ever awaken again. It was the salarian. He had something with him, some kind of orb. It awakened the subject. That was what doomed us all. The elevator will drop you at the armoury. We prepared for this eventuality, at least, we thought we did. We never expected it would come. Perhaps it can not be destroyed, perhaps we will all die here, but your greatest chance lies in the armoury. Go! Hurry!”
The elevator stopped and opened into another scene of devastation and death. Shepard steeled himself and pressed through it. Signs on the wall, though now obscured by scratch marks rent in the wall's surface and obscured by smeared splatters of blood guided him to the armoury. He passed the bodies of husks and security personnel alike. The husks had fallen upon them here as they had attempted to arm themselves. Both sides had slaughtered the other to the last. Shepard had no choice but to step over the bodies. Something grabbed his ankle. His body snapped around, shotgun raised, prepared the blow apart the somehow still functioning remains of a husk but he stopped himself. The hand that grabbed him was human. She looked up at him, eyes pleading as life drained from them. With her other hand she grabbed a keycard that was attached to a lanyard around her neck. She gave it a sharp tug and the strap came away. She held it up for Shepard to take. He reached down and gently took it from her hand. The hand that had gripped his ankle loosened and pointed to a sealed door at the back of the room. Then it fell, just as the woman’s head slumped forward, lifeless.
Shepard moved to the back of the room. The keycard slid into a slot beside a thick sealed hatch.
“Access to M-920 granted,” said an artificial voice and the hatch began to rise.
Shepard had been trained in the operation of dozens of weapons in his service to the Alliance and the Citadel Council, from pistols to sniper rifles, shotguns to grenade launchers, but of all of them no weapon was more singularly devastating than the M-920 Cain. A portable particle accelerator surrounding an array of dust-form element zero chambers. The Cain’s 25 gram slugs could be accelerated to speeds of five kilometres a second. It was, for all intents and purposes, a handheld nuke launcher. Though no-one had said the word, Shepard knew what was here. If any weapon was going to allow him to destroy it, this was it.
He left the armoury. As he did so, emergency lighting flashed in a line. He was being guided and he had no reason not to follow. The glowing path led him to a breach in the wall of the hallway. Red dust coated everything where the storm had blown it in. Shepard stepped through the breach and found himself on the edge of an abyss.
The hole in the planet led as far as he could see to his left and right. It was so dark it was impossible to see anything below its rim. He found the salarian, finally, the man he had tracked across half the galaxy. The man that brought him here. The man that destroyed this world. He was dead, his neck broken in two places. The artefact, the one he had escaped with on Angelios lay beside him, inert.
There was a sound, deafeningly loud, a garbled blast of machine noise. A sound Shepard heard in his nightmares. The sound of a Reaper.
It rose inexorably from the abyss, up and up, higher and higher until Shepard stood before it like an ant standing before a god. This was it. This was what everything from the fall of Archimedes Station had led to. This was what the reaper artefacts were seeking, to awaken one of their own that slumbered within this remote world, so that it may begin the cycle.
Shepard raised his weapon and prepared to fight until his last breath, until he could stand no longer.
As usual when it came to these gigs that Johnny had been arranging for Duncan since becoming his agent, all the information Duncan had been given was a date, time and location with zero further information. This had been a bit disconcerting at first but the past weeks had proven that, while not exactly what Duncan had expected when he had first taken on the Hitmaker’s services, Johnny instincts for what was good for him and what he’d be happy to do had been pretty accurate. These past weeks he’d enjoyed the smiles and greetings and free samples from the farmer’s market.
So he wasn’t too disconcerted when another of Johnny’s cryptic messages had led him to a small recording studio. The door was unlocked and he let himself in. Inside he found one guy sitting in front of the sound controls.
“Hey, I’m Duncan. I think I’m here for a shoot or recording or a commercial, I’m not really sure I-”
Before he finished the bored looking man just pointed to the recording room which had several cameras set up in front of a green screen. Duncan went inside and was about to stand in front of the cameras.
“Open the envelope,” the bored man said.
Duncan hadn’t even noticed an envelope but having had its existence brought to his attention he found it on a stool at the edge of the room. It was brown and plain and simply had written on it in black sharpie, Important Product Information Inside.
Duncan opened it, reached in and removed two sheets. The first was a glossy A4 photograph of him taken moments after his victory at The Last Of Us. He was sweaty, bruised, clearly in pain but still stood up proud and tall. With the picture was a note that read.
You’re the product Duncan.
Sell yourself.
Johnny.
Duncan smiled. “You ready?” he asked the bored man who gave him a lazy thumbs up in response. “Good. I don’t want you to miss a word.”
We open on Duncan Shepard, clad in the medium armour ring gear he’ll be wearing in his next match. He’s holding a prop replica of an M-23 Katana shotgun loosely across his body. The background behind him is as black as the void of deep space.
Shepard: Joey Crash, we’re just days away now. May 10th, the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena in Baltimore, Maryland, that’s where we’ll meet, that’s where we’ll fight and that is where I’ll defeat you so soundly that you can no longer stand up under your own strength.
One by one stars start twinkling into life behind him.
Shepard: I want to start by telling you Joey that, despite the barbed words we’ve shared, despite the cheap knuckle duster shot you took, everything I’m going to do to you two nights from now isn’t personal. That said though Joey, I am mad at you.
Shepard: Cast your mind back Joey to November 2nd, TriForce Heroes. Three champions entered the main event that night, competing to become the first to call themselves TriForce champion and earn a shot at the very same title you and I are about to fight for. Now I wasn’t the longest reigning champion that night, but I had been the most dominant. I was undefeated in singles competition, yet to be pinned or submitted under the Level Up banner, not everyone will want to admit it but I was the favourite going into that match. That wasn’t how it went though was it.
The stars behind start growing brighter and more intensely.
Shepard: No, we all know Bert McAlroy won that night. He slipped past me, took the path of lesser resistance and got out of dodge. Now it bothered me that I didn’t win that night but I couldn’t hold it against Bert, he did what he had to do and he did it clean. He’d go on of course to become the second ever Final Boss champion at Final Fantasy on the same night I’d first be pinned, it was a rough night for me but it steeled my resolve. I knew that I would earn my shot at the Final Boss title, defeat Bert, erase that loss at TriForce Heroes and become champion. When the new year rolled around that was exactly what I did. I won The Last Of Us gauntlet and earned my shot but instead of Bert I’m here now facing you Joey. Not because you were better, not because you’re the more worthy champion but because, unlike Bert, when you did what you had to do to win, you didn’t do it clean. You cheapened your victory. You cheapened the title that fell to you to represent but worst of all to me Joey, you took away my rematch. Now, there’s a black blot on my record that I don’t get a chance to erase, not now, maybe not ever.
More stars blink into existence and they grow brighter, some of them uncomfortably so.
Shepard: So instead I’ve got to prove without a shadow of a doubt that I can beat the guy that beat him. Unfortunately for you Joey, that’s you. You know I can do it too. There’s a reason why these past months I’ve been the number one ranked competitor in Level Up. There’s a reason why I’m ranked above all six of this company’s reigning champions. I am undefeated in 2022. I am already the Final Boss in all but title. Two days from now, when we finally meet in the ring, it’s going to be a formality. It’s not about taking your title away from you, it’s about making you give me the title that it already mine.
The stars now burst from incandescent light to flames that slowly start to spread out from their origin points.
Shepard: Joey, you might be the Reaper to my Commander Shepard. You may be the Final Boss but I’m the hero and there is a truth that everyone who has ever picked up a controller knows, the Final Boss battle is never over until the hero is victorious.
The flames grow in intensity until the entire backdrop is a roaring inferno.
Shepard: I’ve got unlimited lives Joey. No matter what you do to me I’m going to get back up. I’m going to keep on coming. I’m not going to fight to my very last because there is no last for me to reach. No Joey, I’m going to fight to your last, no less. In Baltimore, May 10th the gates to the underworld will be opened and Hell will be unleashed. Two demons will do battle but at the end of the night, when the fires are waning, it will be me that reigns supreme over the burning ruins, me that walks away with the title, me that everyone will call The Final Boss.
The salarian that J’nay Himaker had found for him on Omega had set Shepard on the path but it had not been the singular answer to all of his problems. Where the salarian led Shepard he arrived to find he was a step behind. The salarian smuggler, the one who had escaped with the energised artefact on Angelios, was constantly moving. Shepard would reach one world to find that his quarry had moved on mere days, sometimes even only hours before and he would be forced to track down a new lead in order to continue his pursuit. It was frustrating but Shepard’s determination knew no bounds. The galaxy was at stake and he had come too far for too long and bled too much to give up now.
He had met opposition along the way. The black hooded asari mercenary on Atalan had been formidable and threatened to alay him so fiercely that all might have been lost before it had even truly begun. On EV-44N he had been forced to ally himself with an unscrupulous human thug against the threat of sickly vorcha, whatever ailment having addled their already savage minds also turning them an unpleasant shade of purple. Shepard and his erstwhile ally had survived only for Shepard to be betrayed. Shepard caught up to him on the green world of Boronc, but the man had escaped the full extent of Shepard’s retribution and with greater matters at hand Shepard had been forced to give up his pursuit.
A pursuit that had brought him here, to a planet known simply as Poe’s World. He had chartered an FTL transport ship from Boronc and even as he had entered the system Shepard knew that something felt wrong here. Even from the edge of the system something niggled at the back of his head, like an itch under the skin that he couldn’t scratch, like insects inside his skull. The feeling only grew stronger the further into the system he pushed. It was a sense of impending dread that his base human instincts roared at him to turn back from, a primal voice pleading for survival. He couldn’t though and although he felt the fear sinking down heavily into the pit of his stomach he took it as an indicator that he was on the right track. Something was very wrong here and that was how Shepard knew he was in the right place.
He brought the transport ship into orbit around Poe’s World. It looked a lot different now then it did in the records that Shepard had downloaded before setting out. The world in the archive images was largely industrialised but still habitable, with blue seas and clouds indicating a breathable atmosphere. What Shepard looked down on was a different story though. It was scorched red Mars.
‘Or Hell itself,’ the insects in the back of his skull whispered.
Shepard shook his head to fight the thought away. That much was preposterous. In between the great swathes of red desert, in the ruins of cities were blue lit towers and seams of black and silver-grey that criss-crossed the landscape like scars or veins.
Shepard scanned the surface. The world was awash with unusual but all too familiar energy signals. What few remaining doubts Shepard had about his course of action were washed away. This was the place. He locked coordinates of the strongest signal and transferred the data to the transport’s landing shuttle and prepared to make his descent.
Lenny Brasco: Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Lenny Brasco. The EXP 24 stream has just ended from this great event here in Greensboro, North Carolina. We just saw the Game Changers, Larry Tact and E.A. Blizzard defend both the Power and Courage titles in our back-to-back double main event and remember, the new Game Changers t-shirts, caps, beanies and jackets are available on the Level Up webstore right now. Here with me now though I have caught up to the number one contender to the Final Boss title, the winner of The Last Of Us Part 2, Commander Duncan Shepard.
The camera pans a little to the right and Duncan comes into shot, still dressed in the same grey t-shirt, blue jeans and black hoodie he wore down to the ring at the opening of the show.
Lenny Brasco: Commander, I’m here to tell you that, following on from your challenge you laid down to the champion Joey Crash earlier tonight that you both ‘unleash hell’, the Developer has signed off and made it official, your title match in two weeks time at Doom will be a Last Man Standing match. How do you feel?
A wry smile crosses Duncan’s face as he leans into the mic and looks down the camera.
Duncan Shepard: I feel great Lenny. Joey is the kind of guy who doesn;t care if he has to step outside the rules and take a shortcut to pick up a win. He showed that to The Last Of Us when he won the title. When you know that you’re going into a match with someone like that, you can take precautions, you can be alert for whatever tricks they might pull but you can never completely negate those chances. People like Joey Crash always find a way to tip the scales. This match though, it’s too important to leave to chance. So, instead of trying to keep the scales balanced, I threw them clean off the table. Now we’re on level ground. Anything Joey Crash can do will be legal. I’ll be ready for all of it and everything I give back to him in kind will be legal too. Remember Larry, this isn’t my first mission into blood saturated waters. I was the first ever Level Up Power Champion. I came through the Skeleton Key match. This is not the first time I’ve walked through Hell Larry, I’m comfortable here. I roast marshmallows in the fires of Hell and Joey Crash is going to find out that he might be the champion, but at Doom he’s walking into my territory and he’s going to get burned.
With that, Duncan steps out of shot, leaving Lenny Brasco dumbstruck and the clip comes to an end.
The shuttle set down in a cloud of red dust kicked up by the downwash of its own engines. The side hatch opened and Shepard stepped out. In moments the black of his armour was stained the scorched red of the blasted world and he had to wipe his hand down across the visor of his helmet to be able to see.
He checked his rifle. Already the dust was starting to sink into it and he was worried it would jam if it was exposed for too long. He made a mental note to rely on it too deeply.
He noted that the dust around him was still swirling. The original cloud had been a product of his own arrival but he looked back to the shuttle and despite its thrusters being shut down the cloud around him was only growing in intensity. He found himself suddenly in what felt like a blood stained sandstorm. Even clearing his visor every couple of seconds visibility became perilously low. He was forced to rely on his head’s up display, transferring the signal tracker directly to his optical cybernetics. With his only compass displayed directly onto the lens of his eye he pushed all but blindly into the storm.
With each step though the insects in the back of his skull grew more agitated. They scurried back and forth, climbing over each other in their hurry to get nowhere. They began to bite at him. Shepard’s head throbbed and the pain made him nauseated but he kept following the blinking dot on his eye, hoping that getting out of the storm might grant him some kind of relief.
It didn’t though. As he pressed forward, fighting to take each step a sudden jolt of white hot pain lit up his body, from his eyes, down his spine and through every part of his body. Every part of him that had been rebuilt with cybernetics years before. For a second he felt like he was on fire, then, mercifully, he blacked out.
“What do you mean you sort of told her?”
“I suppose you could say that I strongly implied it without actually going so far as to use the exact words one might typically use.”
Through the camera of her phone, transmitting an image from five hundred and fifty kilometres away, Duncan watched his sister Annie pinch the bridge of her nose and slowly shake her head.
“Duncan, you’re my brother and I love you but I swear, sometimes, you’re the absolute fucking worst.”
“What?” Duncan protested, leaning back in his seat at the small table in the corner of his living room, even though he knew there was no arguing it. Like usual, his sister was right.
Annie sighed. “OK, just, take me through it again, from the beginning, what happened?”
“She just showed up at my door one morning. I was getting ready to go to the gym and then she was just there.”
“Does she live nearby?”
“No! She lives in freaking Los Angeles!”
“And she came to you in Indianapolis?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so romantic,” said Annie.
“Is it? Or is it a bit creepy? You know, to just turn up unannounced on someone’s doorstep who lives practically a whole country away.”
“She’s not some stalker or a weirdo you met on the internet. You guys spent Christmas together. You went to Hawai’i together.
Duncan huffed, “objection withdrawn,” he said sullenly.
“Then what happened?”
“We talked.”
There was a pause as Annie just looked at him expectantly with ever increasing impatience. “And?”
“And what?”
“You talked? About what? The weather and what you had for dinner last night? For fuck’s sake Duncan, you ask for my help then force me to bleed it out of you like a stone.”
“I didn’t ask for your help. Literally all I did was mention that something kind of, sort of, but not really happened and you just started asking all sorts of questions.”
“Oh don’t bullshit me. The only reason you brought it up was because you wanted my opinion on it so start talking. What did you say?”
“I…” Duncan hesitated, “don’t really remember. It was weeks ago. It was emotional, a little overwhelming. I had done an interview for this charity show where I talked about how I ended up in Mexico, what happened there, how it led to my drinking and the problems I’d had with that. She saw it, confronted me about Gabriella. Guess she made the connection between her and why I maybe wasn’t rushing into another relationship.”
“It’s been almost seven years Duncan, no-one is going to accuse you of rushing into another relationship,” Annie said dryly.
“Not like that, I mean-”
“I know what you mean.”
“I think she said she was hurt that I thought that she’d abandon me over the dumb shit I’ve done before or might do. She told me that she almost got married once, not that long ago actually and that guy had died.”
“Wow, OK. What did you say about that?”
“I don’t remember. What do you say about something like that? I don’t think I said anything completely stupid at least.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Then I told her I was on a knife edge. That I couldn’t afford to put myself in a position to get hurt again when I’ve finally just about put myself back together.”
Annie didn’t reply right away. For the first time since they’d started talking Duncan could see familial love and sadness in her eyes.
“Oh Duncan. I didn’t know you-”
Duncan put his hands up to cut her off, “no, no, it’s fine, I’m fine. It’s not like I’m white knuckling it through every day. Things have been good since I joined Level Up. I have an actual home, right!” he gestured around at the room he was sitting in, “I’m employed somewhere where I feel valued and appreciated. I’m at the peak of my career. Things are going well.”
“OK,” Annie said while nodding to indicate her understanding, “good. So, you are in love with her then?”
Duncan threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes with audible exasperation, “for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, “yes!”
“I knew it!”
“You did not know it, you hoped for it because you watch too many romantic movies.”
“No, I knew it. Whenever you talked about her you got the look.”
“What look?”
“The one you’d get when we’d watch Gladiators on a saturday night and Jet would come on and you’d have to put a cushion in your lap,” she laughed.
“It was just comfortable!” Duncan protested.
“And you just had to get comfortable every week, on que. Right, whatever mate.”
“OK, fine, whatever so you ‘knew’,” Duncan said, throwing air quotes around the last word, “so what?”
“So a woman you’re in love with told you that she’s in love with you and then for literal months you’ve sworn blind that you’re not in love with her, if you’re not just ignoring her entirely. Am I right so far?”
“That’s accurate.”
“Then when you did have a chance to actually tell her you just, what, heavily implied it?”
“That would probably be the most accurate way to describe it.”
Annie groaned, “yep, I was right to start with. You’re the fucking worst.”
“Now I’m worried that maybe I’ve pushed her away too hard for too long and I’m actually going to lose her.”
“And now we finally get to the actual reason that you called me.”
Duncan smiled sheepishly, “what should I do?”
“Well, tell her how you feel for a start.”
“I did!”
“In actual words. The actual words. There’s only three of them, I know you know them.”
“But I’ve got this big match coming up and I don’t think I should get distracted from focussing on that and she’s got a big match too and I don’t want to get in the way of her preparing for that.”
“Well then wait until after the show.”
“But then what if that’s too late?”
Annie threw her hands into the air, “well what do you want me to do Duncan? Build you a time machine so you can go back and not be a dickhead for the past six months so you won’t be in this mess to begin with?”
“That’d be perfect. Call me when it’s ready,” said Duncan and reached for the red button that would end the call.
“Oh ha de fucking ha. Those are your two options. I’m sorry but there’s no miracle option three.”
“...synthesis,” Duncan muttered to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing, nevermind, go on.”
“You’ve just got to pick one and deal with whatever consequences come from it.”
“Ugh,” Duncan groaned, letting his head rock back, “is it me or does the moral choice system in real life suck?”
“Yup, but what can you do?”
“I guess, thanks for listening anyway. It’s gotta be late there, I’ll let you get on,” said Duncan, reaching for the disconnect button with actual intent this time.
“Just a sec.”
Duncan withdrew his hand, “Yeah?”
“I just wanted to say that, we all understand what this match next week means to you. I’m sorry we can’t all be there for it but know that, even though you won’t be able to see us, we’ll be right there watching and cheering you on?”
Duncan chuckled, “you mean Martin will be and you’ll be trying your best to stay awake?”
“No, we’re making a whole thing of it. We already bought the show. Mum and Dad are going to come over, a few other people too. Your old rugby mates, Stu and Miles I still run into sometimes, they’re coming. I mentioned it to my friends too, they’re not usually that interested but they seemed to get that it was a big deal. Kelly still asks about you sometimes you know.”
“Who?”
“You know, my friend Kelly, tall, like five eleven or something. Long hair. Snorts sometimes when she laughs.”
Duncan frowned and then realisation dawned on him, “Oh, bucktooth Kelly!”
Annie’s brow furrowed deeply, “she had braces and now she’s had very nice teeth I’ll have you know. Just thought you’d like to know in the likely event that you screw things up with Emily even more than you already have.”
“Thanks for the words of confidence.”
“Yes, well, what I was trying to say is that we’re all going to be here. You’ve been gone a long time. You may have forgotten about a lot of people back here but not everyone has forgotten about you. Martin explained to me what a Last Man Standing match was. Sounds like the two of you are probably going to kill each other so when the time comes and you need to dig deep and pull yourself back to your feet and keep fighting, if you need something to reach for, reach for us, because we’re all going to be here cheering you on loud enough to keep the neighbours awake.”
A felt a warmth spread through his stomach and a contented smile gently eased onto his face, “thanks. I will.”
“I love you Duncan.”
“I love you too kiddo.”
“See, I knew you knew how to say it.”
“Oh piss off and go to sleep or something. Say hi to the sprogs for me.”
“Will do. Night Duncan and if I don’t speak to you again beforehand, good luck.”
When Shepard came around he didn’t know where he was physically, but he knew where he was situationally. It was a facility that felt much too familiar, just like one’s he’d been in before on Virmire or Horizon. It was cold, metallic and sterile, at least it had been. Shepard smelt the blood rather than seeing it. He tried to sit up and found he was tied down on a cold metal slab. Not a bed, but the kind of surface you’d put a cadaver down on for examination or dissection.
Something felt wrong. These places always felt wrong, from the sheer inhumanity and suffering that always came with them but here, it was like even the wrongness felt wrong. Robotic surgical arms with scalpel blades and needles connected to vials filled with nanites so small that as they squirmed in their glass containment they looked like a liquid, hung threateningly above him but they didn’t move. There was a crack and something above him sparked. Bright white surgical lights gave out and were replaced by dull red emergency lighting.
Shepard tried to lift his head to look around. Doing so summoned excruciating pain around his eyes and the back of his neck but he fought against it.
Something rasped to his right, a dry mechanical breath like a geth with emphysema. Shepard knew that sound too. He looked over as the husk started shambling towards him. Shepard fought desperately against his bindings, pulling and straining, gritting his teeth as he exerted every ounce of muscular strength his body could generate but nothing gave. Instead he reached for the dark energy that saturated the universe. With the pain in his head he didn’t know if he’d be able to exert the concentration he needed but the sight of the swiftly closing cybernetic zombie coming to tear his throat out was inspiration enough to blank out the pain for a couple of seconds at least. The swirling blue and black biotic power formed around his right fist and with a surge of it Shepard pulled his hand free. Not a second too soon either. The husk was in arm’s reach. Shepard backfisted it across the face as it led at him. Before it could recover he grabbed its skull, driving his thumb into its eye socket. Its jaw’s snapped open and shut and it hissed with pain before Shepard slammed its head down on the edge of the table, caving in its skull. He let go and the body fell limply to the floor.
Looking to his left he spotted two more of them in the corner of the room. They seemed not to have noticed him there at first but perhaps the sound of him slaying their kin had drawn their attention. In the dull red light Shepard spotted a pistol on the floor between himself and the husks. Drawing on his biotics again Shepard freed his left hand. In his hurry to get up he slipped off the table and hit the ground. Now he saw the blood. He crawled through it, the viscous fluid making everything slick and slowing him down as he struggled for traction but he reached the pistol. Not his Carnifex but it would have to do. From his prone position on the floor he raised the weapon and hoped that the thermal clip still held some charge. He squeezed the trigger and it fired, the shot taking the closest husk in the abdomen. It wasn’t enough to stop it. The two husks lunged with greater urgency. Shepard adjusted his aim and his next four shots struck the husks in the head, two each and they fell into the spilled blood in front of him.
Assessing the environment Shepard confirmed there were no more immediate threats but it was clear he was very very far from being safe. He pushed himself to his feet. He was naked, almost, stripped of his armour and undersuit and reduced to his underwear. He walked around the room and approached the door. It didn’t open. On the panel beside it though, a translucent blue light blinked. He touched it.
A VI walked through the door. No, not a VI, a recording, played out in the same translucent pale blue of the button, in stark contrast to the many shades of red of the room. There was a man. The detail of the recording was poor but Shepard expected that even had it been perfect he’d still not have recognised him.
“We need to contain this,” a woman’s voice said.
Then the recording cut off and the door opened.
Shepard stepped out. In the next room he found his armour. It was stood up, on a stand as if on display in a museum. It had been cleaned of the dust that had been coating it when it had last been on his body. It felt like a trap. Why was it here? Why had it just been left for him? He didn’t have time to question it, whatever had happened here, whatever was coming he needed his armour. He reached for it, laid his hand upon the cuirass and-
Visions rushed through his mind. Shepard hadn’t felt anything so intense since the first Prothean beacon he’d encountered on Eden Prime. This wasn’t Prothean though. The Cipher had made him capable of understanding and interpreting the Protheans' messages, these though were still broken, violent and chaotic. He saw teeth and claws rendered in shimmering silver. He saw flesh being ripped and torn. He saw organic matter being consumed and replaced with synthetics. He saw a creature, a behemoth with a shining scaled hide. He saw a pit, so wide and so deep he thought it could consume a star and off of its light. It consumed him.
He was back in the room, back in front of his armour. His hand had drawn back reflexively as if the armour was burning hot to the touch. He was tentative to reach for it again. The vision left him with a feeling of impending doom that manifested as a cold void in the pit of his stomach. He reminded himself that he needed it. He touched the armour again. No visions came this time and he donned the suit. As he put his helmet on a screen beside him powered into flickering light. It read:
CONTAINMENT FAILURE
RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC
DIAGNOSTIC FAILED
ERROR
CASUALTIES: UNAVAILABLE
BASE DAMAGE: UNAVAILABLE
THREAT LEVEL: UNAVAILABLE
ATTACK ORIGIN: UNAVAILABLE
COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY: OFFLINE
MESSAGE INCOMING
RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC
DIAGNOSTIC FAILED
ERROR
CASUALTIES: UNAVAILABLE
BASE DAMAGE: UNAVAILABLE
THREAT LEVEL: UNAVAILABLE
ATTACK ORIGIN: UNAVAILABLE
COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY: OFFLINE
MESSAGE INCOMING
“Commander? You’re Commander Shepard right? What’re you doing here? Did our distress signal get out?” It was the female voice from the recording.
“No, there was no signal. I came here on the trail of a salarian smuggler.”
“Y-yes, the salarian.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. We don’t get a lot of visitors here, especially not aliens and even fewer without prior warning. He just arrived one day, said he was looking for something. We turned him away. Our research here is top secret but somehow he got it. That was how this all started. Everything was fine before he arrived. Now, everyone is gone.” The woman trailed off. The more she spoke her voice became ever more distant, haunted. “It’s coming commander. You have to stop it. Hurry. Hurry!”
The line went dead. Shepard checked the clip on the pistol and pushed on.
The corridors beyond were just like the rooms he had found himself in, horrifying ruins. Consoles and screens were blown out and spraying sparks. Ceiling panels had been torn down, crashing to the ground or hanging loose, swinging and trailing thick bundles of cables. There were husks and around every corner there were more. The woman’s pleas for haste replayed in his mind with panic and urgency. Shepard threw caution to the wind and plunged into the fight. There was no time for caution, no time for strategy. He realised he had to leave behind Shepard the Spectre, Shepard the Marine, he became Shepard the warrior, Shepard the berzerker. The first husk he gunned down with his pistol. The next he struck with a biotic charge that split the husk in two. He landed and leapt straight into a nova, striking his fist into the ground and unleashing a burst that threw three more into the walls behind them. They fell in twisted broken shapes. Trapped beneath a sealed blast door was the top half of a man in a security uniform. He held a shotgun in outstretched hands, a katana, standard Alliance pattern, nothing special but it would do the job. Shepard prized it from his cold dead hands.
In the next room he found pillars, the spikes upon which the husks were driven to impale their victims to turn them into more husks. Shepard set about them ruthlessly with biotics and firearms; he tore the husks apart and cast down their towers. With the threat removed a security door opened. It closed behind him as Shepard passed through. Another recording played, from the voice he knew it was the woman he had spoken to before.
“We don’t know where the vessel came from, what species it belonged to or how it came to be buried on this world. All we know is that its technology is far superior to anything humanity has created. It perhaps surpasses anything in council space. It is clear that, should we be successful here, this will be the greatest leap forward in human advancement since the discovery of the prothean archives on Mars.”
The message stopped, flickered and disappeared. At the end of the hallway was an elevator. Shepard stepped inside. Another dead body sat slumped against the wall. Its head sagged at an angle the human neck was not capable of achieving while intact. Shepard touched a blank console and the pod began to move.
“Commander,” the woman’s voice spoke through tinny broken speakers, “you have to understand, everything we did here we did for humanity. The subject, it was dormant. It had been dormant for tens of thousands of years. We had no reason to believe it would ever awaken again. It was the salarian. He had something with him, some kind of orb. It awakened the subject. That was what doomed us all. The elevator will drop you at the armoury. We prepared for this eventuality, at least, we thought we did. We never expected it would come. Perhaps it can not be destroyed, perhaps we will all die here, but your greatest chance lies in the armoury. Go! Hurry!”
The elevator stopped and opened into another scene of devastation and death. Shepard steeled himself and pressed through it. Signs on the wall, though now obscured by scratch marks rent in the wall's surface and obscured by smeared splatters of blood guided him to the armoury. He passed the bodies of husks and security personnel alike. The husks had fallen upon them here as they had attempted to arm themselves. Both sides had slaughtered the other to the last. Shepard had no choice but to step over the bodies. Something grabbed his ankle. His body snapped around, shotgun raised, prepared the blow apart the somehow still functioning remains of a husk but he stopped himself. The hand that grabbed him was human. She looked up at him, eyes pleading as life drained from them. With her other hand she grabbed a keycard that was attached to a lanyard around her neck. She gave it a sharp tug and the strap came away. She held it up for Shepard to take. He reached down and gently took it from her hand. The hand that had gripped his ankle loosened and pointed to a sealed door at the back of the room. Then it fell, just as the woman’s head slumped forward, lifeless.
Shepard moved to the back of the room. The keycard slid into a slot beside a thick sealed hatch.
“Access to M-920 granted,” said an artificial voice and the hatch began to rise.
Shepard had been trained in the operation of dozens of weapons in his service to the Alliance and the Citadel Council, from pistols to sniper rifles, shotguns to grenade launchers, but of all of them no weapon was more singularly devastating than the M-920 Cain. A portable particle accelerator surrounding an array of dust-form element zero chambers. The Cain’s 25 gram slugs could be accelerated to speeds of five kilometres a second. It was, for all intents and purposes, a handheld nuke launcher. Though no-one had said the word, Shepard knew what was here. If any weapon was going to allow him to destroy it, this was it.
He left the armoury. As he did so, emergency lighting flashed in a line. He was being guided and he had no reason not to follow. The glowing path led him to a breach in the wall of the hallway. Red dust coated everything where the storm had blown it in. Shepard stepped through the breach and found himself on the edge of an abyss.
The hole in the planet led as far as he could see to his left and right. It was so dark it was impossible to see anything below its rim. He found the salarian, finally, the man he had tracked across half the galaxy. The man that brought him here. The man that destroyed this world. He was dead, his neck broken in two places. The artefact, the one he had escaped with on Angelios lay beside him, inert.
There was a sound, deafeningly loud, a garbled blast of machine noise. A sound Shepard heard in his nightmares. The sound of a Reaper.
It rose inexorably from the abyss, up and up, higher and higher until Shepard stood before it like an ant standing before a god. This was it. This was what everything from the fall of Archimedes Station had led to. This was what the reaper artefacts were seeking, to awaken one of their own that slumbered within this remote world, so that it may begin the cycle.
Shepard raised his weapon and prepared to fight until his last breath, until he could stand no longer.
As usual when it came to these gigs that Johnny had been arranging for Duncan since becoming his agent, all the information Duncan had been given was a date, time and location with zero further information. This had been a bit disconcerting at first but the past weeks had proven that, while not exactly what Duncan had expected when he had first taken on the Hitmaker’s services, Johnny instincts for what was good for him and what he’d be happy to do had been pretty accurate. These past weeks he’d enjoyed the smiles and greetings and free samples from the farmer’s market.
So he wasn’t too disconcerted when another of Johnny’s cryptic messages had led him to a small recording studio. The door was unlocked and he let himself in. Inside he found one guy sitting in front of the sound controls.
“Hey, I’m Duncan. I think I’m here for a shoot or recording or a commercial, I’m not really sure I-”
Before he finished the bored looking man just pointed to the recording room which had several cameras set up in front of a green screen. Duncan went inside and was about to stand in front of the cameras.
“Open the envelope,” the bored man said.
Duncan hadn’t even noticed an envelope but having had its existence brought to his attention he found it on a stool at the edge of the room. It was brown and plain and simply had written on it in black sharpie, Important Product Information Inside.
Duncan opened it, reached in and removed two sheets. The first was a glossy A4 photograph of him taken moments after his victory at The Last Of Us. He was sweaty, bruised, clearly in pain but still stood up proud and tall. With the picture was a note that read.
You’re the product Duncan.
Sell yourself.
Johnny.
Duncan smiled. “You ready?” he asked the bored man who gave him a lazy thumbs up in response. “Good. I don’t want you to miss a word.”
We open on Duncan Shepard, clad in the medium armour ring gear he’ll be wearing in his next match. He’s holding a prop replica of an M-23 Katana shotgun loosely across his body. The background behind him is as black as the void of deep space.
Shepard: Joey Crash, we’re just days away now. May 10th, the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena in Baltimore, Maryland, that’s where we’ll meet, that’s where we’ll fight and that is where I’ll defeat you so soundly that you can no longer stand up under your own strength.
One by one stars start twinkling into life behind him.
Shepard: I want to start by telling you Joey that, despite the barbed words we’ve shared, despite the cheap knuckle duster shot you took, everything I’m going to do to you two nights from now isn’t personal. That said though Joey, I am mad at you.
Shepard: Cast your mind back Joey to November 2nd, TriForce Heroes. Three champions entered the main event that night, competing to become the first to call themselves TriForce champion and earn a shot at the very same title you and I are about to fight for. Now I wasn’t the longest reigning champion that night, but I had been the most dominant. I was undefeated in singles competition, yet to be pinned or submitted under the Level Up banner, not everyone will want to admit it but I was the favourite going into that match. That wasn’t how it went though was it.
The stars behind start growing brighter and more intensely.
Shepard: No, we all know Bert McAlroy won that night. He slipped past me, took the path of lesser resistance and got out of dodge. Now it bothered me that I didn’t win that night but I couldn’t hold it against Bert, he did what he had to do and he did it clean. He’d go on of course to become the second ever Final Boss champion at Final Fantasy on the same night I’d first be pinned, it was a rough night for me but it steeled my resolve. I knew that I would earn my shot at the Final Boss title, defeat Bert, erase that loss at TriForce Heroes and become champion. When the new year rolled around that was exactly what I did. I won The Last Of Us gauntlet and earned my shot but instead of Bert I’m here now facing you Joey. Not because you were better, not because you’re the more worthy champion but because, unlike Bert, when you did what you had to do to win, you didn’t do it clean. You cheapened your victory. You cheapened the title that fell to you to represent but worst of all to me Joey, you took away my rematch. Now, there’s a black blot on my record that I don’t get a chance to erase, not now, maybe not ever.
More stars blink into existence and they grow brighter, some of them uncomfortably so.
Shepard: So instead I’ve got to prove without a shadow of a doubt that I can beat the guy that beat him. Unfortunately for you Joey, that’s you. You know I can do it too. There’s a reason why these past months I’ve been the number one ranked competitor in Level Up. There’s a reason why I’m ranked above all six of this company’s reigning champions. I am undefeated in 2022. I am already the Final Boss in all but title. Two days from now, when we finally meet in the ring, it’s going to be a formality. It’s not about taking your title away from you, it’s about making you give me the title that it already mine.
The stars now burst from incandescent light to flames that slowly start to spread out from their origin points.
Shepard: Joey, you might be the Reaper to my Commander Shepard. You may be the Final Boss but I’m the hero and there is a truth that everyone who has ever picked up a controller knows, the Final Boss battle is never over until the hero is victorious.
The flames grow in intensity until the entire backdrop is a roaring inferno.
Shepard: I’ve got unlimited lives Joey. No matter what you do to me I’m going to get back up. I’m going to keep on coming. I’m not going to fight to my very last because there is no last for me to reach. No Joey, I’m going to fight to your last, no less. In Baltimore, May 10th the gates to the underworld will be opened and Hell will be unleashed. Two demons will do battle but at the end of the night, when the fires are waning, it will be me that reigns supreme over the burning ruins, me that walks away with the title, me that everyone will call The Final Boss.
Feb. '22 - Jul. '22
2022
2021/2022
Jun '21 - Jul '22