“Ana!”
“Keep running, Ana! Don’t look back!”
“H-Huh? What? Where… where am I?”
Anastasia opened her eyes to find herself standing up, dressed in her military uniform. All around her was an endless expanse of woods. Nothing about these woods were normal, though. Every tree was completely black and leafless, wavering like a reflection on rough waters. Even the trunks of the trees weren’t still. Only those closest to her seemed to solidify until she stepped away from them and further into the strange world. Black snow fell from the sky and it was only when she wiped a bit of it off of her cheek with a finger that she realized it was ash. Looking up, she saw only white. White and black… the only colors in this place. Even she seemed to blend in with the color scheme.
“Ana!”
The redhead whipped around, blue eyes scanning the darkness for the source of the noise, but she could hear the whispering all around her. Someone was calling out her name, screaming, begging for help. It sounded so familiar. Was it…? No, it couldn’t be. Talitha? And those words… Her mom? Were they here?
“Momma?” Ana called out as her voice echoed across the abyss.
No answer. She stepped further into the darkness, leaves crunching and disintegrating under her feet.
“Hello?! Talitha? Momma? Is anyone out there?!”
The whispers abruptly ceased, only silence filling the air before she could hear moans. Someone was crying, but there was more than just one person. It sounded like dozens, maybe hundreds.
“Aaaaannnaaaa~”
Sweat began to bead at her forehead as she slowly turned around. Her heart beat at a hundred miles an hour, enough to nearly make her deaf because of it, but when she turned around her gaze fell on her family. Bryce, Spence, Carter, her mom and dad, Talitha, even the rest of Mindoir… they all stood there staring back at her. Her gut warned her that all was not what it seemed, but the happiness she felt at that moment drowned it out. She began to run towards them, but her footsteps were heavy and slow as if she were trudging through water or thick mud. What was going on? Glancing down at her combat boots, she realized that black wisps were erupting from the ground and wrapping tightly against her ankles, beginning to drag her down into its unfathomable depths. She looked up desperately at the people of Mindoir, reaching out a hand for them to grab.
It was then that she noticed a gruesome metamorphosis beginning to take place. The once lively appearance of the colonists took on a ghastly form. Their cheeks were sunken in as if they were made of nothing but skin and bones. It occurred to Ana that their clothes probably hid the rest of that deformation. One by one their eyes began to roll and sink into the back of their heads before there was nothing but black holes left. The same happened to their nose. They just … disappeared, giving them all the distinct visage of a skeleton. They opened their mouths in unison, nearing the point where their jaws would just break off and emitted such a horrible cacophony of screams, moans, and pleads for help that it physically drained Ana of energy.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the black wisps now wrapping around her wrists like chains to prevent further movement. “I’m so sorry… I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t save any of you…”
From the incomprehensible noise, she could hear someone whispering her name. It continuously increased in volume before the world began to crumble away beneath her feet, a white flash of light blinding her.
“ANA!”
“Ana! Ana, wake up!”
Ana’s eyes shot open and it was then that she realized she was levitating in the air surrounded by a light purple nebulous shell. It evaporated as soon as she was fully conscious and she fell to the floor with a THUD!
“Ugh! Ow…” she muttered, sitting up and rubbing the bump that was beginning to form on the back of her head.
“Finally,” a female voice from beside her remarked. It was Rachel Givens, a friend of hers that she met in the Alliance military. “You were freaking us out with those biotics of yours. Bad dream again?” she asked, already fully dressed in her uniform and raring to go. She would have asked if Ana wanted to talk about it, but she knew by now that Ana wasn’t one to talk about her problems. Rachel didn’t even know where she was from, just that she had been under the care of David Anderson for two years before she joined the Alliance military.
“Yeah…What time is it?” Ana asked groggily, resting her face in her hands.
“We have about a minute before we’re supposed to be down in the mess hall. Meet you down there!” she sang before dashing out of the room.
“Shit!”
It had been six years since the incident on Mindoir. Though she asked to join the Alliance straightaway, Anastasia was underage. David Anderson took her under his wing after the failure to find any surviving family members and rather than making the poor child grow up on the streets of Earth, he adopted her as his own. For two years she lived with him, though most of the time he was away on active duty for the Alliance, leaving her to fend for herself (not without setting up her own banking account with plenty of money, however). Those days were… difficult, to say the least. Every week a therapist would come to the house, but Ana never spoke about her past. Soon, she repressed those dark memories except for the few times that they would resurface as the most horrible of nightmares. On the rare occasion that Anderson was home, he would help her train physically and mentally for the challenges she would face in the Alliance. She learned quickly and showed the potential to be a powerful biotic. As a gift for her seventeenth birthday, Anderson paid for L3 implants. From then on her powers grew exponentially, rivaling even the Asaris’ biotic prowess.
Two years after she moved in with Anderson, Anastasia enlisted in the Alliance military. Now she was in her fourth year on active duty and planned to engage in a long career in the Alliance. There was something about it… Maybe it was the fact that it kept her busy all the time, no time to really think about anything so she wouldn’t have to revisit past memories. It was also a chance to redeem herself. She couldn’t protect her family, but when she had her own squadron under her control, she’d be able to take care of them. The past four years at Arcturus Station doing shakedown runs in the Terminus Systems taking care of pirates didn’t offer that chance yet, but maybe soon..
“That must be a new record,” Rachel called from across the mess hall as Anastasia came bounding in through the entrance. She reserved one of the smaller tables for her and their friend Richard Jenkins to sit, the handsome sandy brown-haired soldier leaning back in his chair with an empty bowl in front of him. Ana laughed and jogged over to the counter to grab the breakfast slop they were usually given before heading over to sit with her friends.
“You know me, I like being fashionably… early,” she replied, slurping her breakfast as quickly as possible before they were called out to the field for training. Her face turned sour much like the taste of the slop she had been given for breakfast. “Oh man, Hector’s just not on his game this week…”
Both Rachel and Richard burst out laughing, Richard nearly falling backwards out of his chair. “That’s why I just pour mine in the plant pots over there. It’s worked for me, but I think ol’ Giers is getting suspicious now that the plants are dying…”
“You’re so bad,” Ana chided, shaking her head though smiling nonetheless.
“Hell yeah, I’m a rebel,” he bellowed in reply, winking at her which made her cheeks flush a dark shade of red. They had been courting each other since they met, but never made a serious relationship out of it. It was just harmless flirtation, really.
“A rebel, huh? I’d say extra time on the obstacle course is needed to straighten you out, wouldn’t you?”
All three of the soldiers froze upon hearing that voice, a chill racing down their spines before they quickly scrambled up and saluted their commanding officer: Lieutenant Commander Giers. No smile ever formed on those scarred lips of his and many considered him a real asshole. They bit their tongue and dealt with it, though. He was of a higher rank than them. They were mere Corporals.
“Oh, and you too, Shepard, for your sloppiness in the barracks.”
Ana grimaced, mentally chastising herself for forgetting to make her bed. She gave a curt nod to her commanding officer. “Aye aye sir!”
He turned away from them then and addressed the rest of the soldiers in the mess hall. “Enough dilly-dallying, maggots! Get your asses to the fields! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”
That mess hall was completely empty within seconds, all of the bowls stacked up near the dishwasher. Hector sighed. It was going to be a long day.
“Hit the track!” Giers ordered after he had made it outside. Ana would have joined her friends, but this was the time for training not chatting.
“You can move faster than that! Keep those legs moving! It’s double lavatory duty for /anyone/ who slows down! And Shepard, I better not see you using those fancy-schmancy biotics of yours again!!”
And thus, the day had begun. After half an hour of jogging around the track, they were sent through the normal drills and training: marches (flanking, forward, rear, etc.), pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, other workouts for the core of the body, and the obstacle course. Everyone was finished by sun-down except for Shepard and Jenkins who still had to run through the obstacle course another twenty times. Oh punishment, how much they hated thee.
“The faster you move, the faster you get inside!” Giers barked, following them along the obstacle course from the sidelines. Ana was already three laps ahead of poor Jenkins who was just ready to give out by that point. She breathed heavily through her nose, darting across the rope bridge and to the top of the obstacle course where she would scale down the twenty foot wall. Halfway down, she noticed someone running from the main base towards Giers. When she touched the ground, he immediately approached her, grabbing both her and Jenkins and dragging them inside where the other soldiers were.
“Everyone to the SSV Pandora immediately!” he shouted, Ana and Jenkins stumbling towards the crowd. “I want everyone there in no more than five minutes! Get your belongings and get your asses to the docking port!”
“Aye aye!” all of the soldiers replied in unison, rushing off to the barracks to pack their bags. They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew that Alliance Command had called for more soldiers to be sent to the frontlines. It looked like they were going to see some real action after all.
Within ten minutes, Giers’s squadron was boarded onto the SSV Pandora, all of them gathered in the large debriefing room that could house nearly five-hundred soldiers. Their commanding officer stood at the front, waiting for everyone to take a seat before he would begin speaking. Ana took a seat next to Rachel and Jenkins, resting her arms on the curved table in front of them that stretched across the entire room. Everyone lurched forwards as the pilot activated the FTL drives and shot straight through one of the many mass relays surrounding the station.
“We received word from Alliance High Command. Admiral Hackett has requested more infantrymen on the frontlines. This is /not/ a drill or a normal shakedown run. We are at war with an overwhelming enemy force of pirates, mercenaries, slavers and warlords. We’ve lost hundreds of men and women already, so you better be ready. We have a few hours before we arrive at the rendezvous coordinates, so I suggest you get some rest before the assault. Any questions?”
“What species is the enemy, sir?” one of the soldiers asked from the bottom row.
“Batarians,” he replied simply. “They’ve attacked a colony in the Skyllian Verge: Elysium.”
Ana’s eyes widened as screams of horror filled her ears once more and the stench of dead flesh made her gag.
No……