Mass Effect: Humanity First

(Choice AB) Leave Him

A burst of plasma fire bolted all around them. Hallard dropped on the floor while Cavanaugh was left to save himself. But he didn’t. Rather than back down, he raised his pistol and began firing back.

“You worthless shots! We’ll kill you all!”

“Cavanaugh!” yelled Hallard. “Get down!”

He wasn’t afraid of getting shot. He stood his ground and fired his pistol in a blind rage. It was disconcerting to Hallard. Cavanaugh obviously got off on killing, on making himself feel like the bigger man. As his partner, Hallard was supposed to watch his back. But what little time they’d spent together had been more than plenty to make him hate his guts. If he died on this assignment, if he died right then and there right before his eyes, Hallard could honestly say that he wouldn’t mind.

But that didn’t happen. Despite all certainties to the contrary, Cavanaugh actually managed to take them out. Two of them, at least. He heard the grunts, and saw the bodies fall. With three down, there was supposed to be five more left. Hallard expected more gunfire, but it stopped. The room settled into silence while the smoke began to clear.

“Any more of you want a piece of me?! I’m right here! Come and get me!”

“Wait! We don’t want any more shooting!”

An asari from the opposite end of the room called out, hiding under cover.

“Get out here!” demanded Cavanaugh.

“Please, stop firing.”

But from the way he was waving his gun, it was quite obvious that Cavanaugh had no intention of stopping. Hallard immediately rose to his feet.

“It’s alright,” he said to the asari. “We don’t want any more shooting either.”

“How do we know we can trust you?”

Hallard couldn’t see her. But from the sound of her voice he could only imagine how deathly afraid she must have been.

“We all want to resolve this peacefully,” said Hallard.

“Okay. We’re getting up.”

They did. Cavanaugh and Hallard counted five of them, two armed with assault rifles that they’d obviously never held before in their entire lives. It sagged in their hands like dead weight. These asari weren’t combat trained. They could barely hold a weapon. The other two that Cavanaugh had shot were lying dead behind their cover. They must have been the ones that fired. They must have been the ones that planned the ambush.

Hallard considered to himself that if Cavanaugh hadn’t killed them, then the remaining asari wouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Now, without a leader, they were directionless, with no move to make.

“We surrender,” spoke the one asari for the rest of her group. “We just want to get out of here. Cel and Mina said we could take the first ship that was coming and leave this place.”

The first ship obviously referred to the craft that Hallard and Cavanaugh had arrived in.

A clever idea, but it wasn’t going to happen now.

Or was it?

“What’s your name?” Hallard asked the asari.

She hesitated at first, then replied, “Nadia. My name is Nadia. Please, don’t keep us in here any longer. The needles, they hurt so much.”

The one thing that Hallard was certain of was that she didn’t deserve what Cerberus had done to her, or the rest of the people they’d kidnapped. It wasn’t right.

But that was where the facts ended, and everything else became a grey area.

Was he going to take innocent lives in the name of protecting Cerberus’ secrets, its research, and its mission? The advancement of human biotics would undoubtedly prove invaluable in securing humanity’s future. But was it worth the lives of so many innocents?

No. Free Them All (Choice ABA)

Yes. Kill Them All (Choice ABB)