Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

Open Relay

"Every action needs to be prompted by a motive."

Leonardo da Vinci

October 17th, 2187

Subject Zero

Jack hustled out of the classroom before the students could hit her up with more questions. She couldn't fucking believe her life, not really. Schoolteacher? How in the hell did she wind up a schoolteacher? There wasn't a grain of dust in her most ironic dreams that could have foretold her current situation. The worst part of it? She wasn't sure whether to ride it out or cut and run.

She'd lucked into the Grissom Academy gig. The Alliance was desperate at the time, the Reapers were coming and they needed biotics on the battlefield. They needed instructors that could prepare them for the hard realities of butchery, and above all they needed instructors with experience fighting Reaper troops.

Now it was all a wash. There was no war to get ready for, no kids to protect, and Jump Zero was certainly no Grissom Academy. All Jack's old students had moved on to various assignments, and she'd taken the new position in hopes that she could catch lightning in a bottle one more time. However, the job hadn't turned out as planned. Instead of training talented biotics for warfare against an epic enemy, she was teaching biotic teenagers of varying ability the minimum basics.

Many of her new students had been traumatized by the war, over half were orphans, and the vast majority were low to average in talent. There wasn't one in the whole bunch that could make a barrier strong enough to stop a Vorcha from pissing on their shoes. Jack had to face facts. What she had become, was a glorified babysitter.

The worst part of it wasn't the talentless kids, it was Jump Zero itself. The place was one big, giant fucking sardine can packed with aliens and humans. Its proximity to the Charon Relay made it the perfect stopover for work crews, and some smartass Alliance bureaucrat had caught on to this little detail. They'd sectioned off a whole part of the station formerly reserved for research and turned it into a strip of crappy bars. The swill they served was total shit, but it was enough to get you drunk and that's all anyone cared about in this place.

In retrospect it wasn't really the best spot for the Alliance to set up their temporary biotic academy. In fact, it was a totally fucking stupid idea, but somewhere along the line some asshat riding a desk must have read a report that there was once a biotic training program here, and so he or she made the assumption that this was a grand spot for trainees. If Jack was ever able to track down the asshole who made that call, she'd pulverize him, or her.

She was ready to climb the walls. What she really needed was to get shitfaced, or at least get laid, but Jump Zero was like a small town. Everyone who lived here knew everyone else. Even if there was an eligible candidate for her antics, Kahlee would be crawling up in her shit within days about setting a good example. In any case, Sanders had no antics to worry about.

The few times Jack went out bar prowling, looking for fresh meat amongst the relay workers, she'd run into a group of rough looking Turians or Batarians coming through, which reminded her of prison, which led to anger, and eventually a night alone staring at the mirror and wondering how much longer she could go on without killing someone.

Since killing was illegal in the absence of war, Jack found herself at her usual spot at the shitty bar, listening to shitty Asari trance music, drinking her usual shot of shitty tequila, which she chased down with the shittiest of all beers in the galaxy. Essentially, her life was pretty shitty. Someone sat down next to her and she didn't even look up, not until her nostrils were filled with a familiar scent