Test Protocol

Chapter 1: Aperture

Though her cabin was warm, Alchera's chill seemed to have seeped into Shepard's very bones. Sitting on the end of her bed, she shivered as she turned her warped and cracked helmet over and over in her hands. Memories of being spaced—falling, suffocating, burning, oh God I'm BURNING—worried at the edges of her mind, nipping at her sanity, dogging her no matter how hard she tried to push them down.

And once the shivering started, she found she couldn't stop.

Beside her, Thane placed his hand over hers, gently stopping her anxious fidgeting. "Are you all right, siha?" he asked softly.

Grateful for the distraction, she turned a wan smile up at him. "Yeah, I…" That was a lie. "No. Not really," she admitted. "It was hard, exploring the old Normandy. Gathering my dead crewmen's dog tags to send home to their families. Remembering the people I lost. I did what I needed to do, but… I kind of wish you could've been there with me."

"You need only have asked," he said.

"I know. But it was something I really needed to do alone. As much as it sucked." She looked down at the helmet again. "It was finding this that just… has me a little freaked out."

Thane's brow ridge furrowed. "Why is that?"

"Well, it's just… God, this is gonna sound stupid." She shook her head. "I don't trust Cerberus. I don't believe a word that comes out of the Illusive Man's mouth, and to be honest, I'm not sure about Miranda yet, either. So when they told me I'd died and they'd spent two years bringing me back to life. I was… let's call it 'skeptical.' It seemed more plausible that I'd been rescued somehow, that they'd captured me and experimented on me or something, and then maybe wiped or altered my memory."

"I see." Thane looked troubled at the thought. He hesitated, then said, "The Justicar could tell you."

Shepard frowned. "What?"

He kept his face carefully neutral, but his voice was just a little bit strained as he replied, "If you were to meld minds with Samara, she could tell you if your memory has been altered."

She studied him with narrowed eyes. "Why do I get the impression you're speaking from personal experience?"

"It was many years ago," he demurred. "A tale for another time, perhaps."

Shepard shrugged. "Okay," she said amiably. She knew better than to press him for details about his past. "But anyway, there'd be no point. This proves they were telling the truth." She held up the helmet. "This is definitely mine. Nobody else on the Normandy would've had an N7 insignia, and EDI confirmed there were traces of my… DNA… inside. M-more than traces. It's… there's no possible way I could have survived. But here I am. Just the fact that I can sit here and honestly say I died has me a little bit… I don't know. It's like… it's one thing to know how fragile life is. It's something else entirely to have tangible proof of exactly how fragile my life is." She snorted bitterly and shook her head. "I'm not making any sense, even to me. You probably think I'm crazy."

"No." Thane slipped his fingers under her chin and lifted her face until she met his eyes. They twinkled. He leaned down as if to kiss her, but stopped just short of making contact and murmured, "I know you are."

Shepard jerked back in surprise and stared at him for a long moment, processing what he'd said. Then, finally, just as his faintly teasing smile began to waver uncertainly, she burst out laughing. "You're damn right I am." She stood and crossed the room to her desk, and set the helmet down. She'd figure out a better place for it later. For now, though, she turned back around to face Thane, folded her arms, and leaned her hip against the chair. "And do you know what that makes you? Being with me?"

Thane raised his brow ridge. "Tell me."

Straightening, she dropped her arms and let her hips sway as she approached him again. "Just." She climbed up onto his lap, he knees straddling his hips. "As." She stroked the frills on his cheek with one hand, and he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch with a contented hum that was almost a purr. "Crazy."

His lips captured hers almost before she could finish the word. She kissed him back, hungrily, drinking in the warmth and love he poured into her, letting the heat of desire build between them until it melted away the chill that had followed her up from Alchera. For now, she wasn't going to think about death, or Cerberus, or exactly what was still inside her old helmet. For now, there was only this. The taste of his tongue in her mouth. The warm solidity of his body against hers. The electric thrill as his hands slid under the hem of her shirt, tracing slow spiral patterns up her ribcage until—

—until the intercom clicked on. "Commander Shepard, the Illusive Man would like to speak to you in the briefing room."

Shepard bit back a whimper of disappointment as Thane's hands stilled and disappeared, and she broke the kiss with a frustrated growl. "Damn it, Miranda," she hissed under her breath.

"Duty calls, it seems."

"Yeah," she sighed, "it does." She stood and straightened her uniform with a sharp, annoyed tug. "Rain check?"

"Of course." He rose as well, and his eyes flicked briefly to something behind her. "Though if I may, I'd like to meditate here for a time."

Shepard grinned. "If by 'meditate," you mean 'take a cold shower,' go right ahead."

She could never resist poking at him. He was so cute when he was flustered.

One of the pitfalls of interspecies romance was the annoying physiological side effects of alien biochemistry. By the time the Normandy's painfully slow elevator finally released her into the CIC, Shepard was already beginning to feel lightheaded and see auras. She stopped in Mordin's lab for a dose of the counteragent he'd discreetly concocted for her—and administered without comment, bless him—then proceeded through toward the briefing room. But as the door out to the corridor slid open, she nearly collided with someone coming in.

"Commander," Miranda greeted her.

Her head still spinning a little, Shepard only nodded in return, stepped around her, and let the door close between them. She took a moment to let the medicine clear the last of the dizziness away, then set her jaw and keyed the briefing room door.

The lights were already turned down, the table lowered, and the QEC active. Shepard blinked in mild surprise at what had to be EDI's initiative, and stepped onto the transmission pad.

"Shepard." As always infuriatingly casual, the Illusive Man took a long drag of his cigarette before continuing. "I understand you've found yourself in the Amada system. How does it feel to walk over your own grave?"

Shepard folded her arms defiantly. "You don't get to ask me questions like that."

"Of course." The Illusive Man leaned back in his chair and stubbed out his cigarette. "I was hoping I might prevail upon you to do me a favor. There's a cell on the second moon of Anjea that we've lost contact with. I'd like you to investigate."

"Because I just happened to be in the area?" Shepard bit out. "Can't this wait until we've dealt with the Collectors?"

Completely unfazed by her hostility, he said patiently, "This cell is working on a device that could give us a huge advantage in our fight against the Collectors. Or they were. I want you to find out what made them go dark, and retrieve the device if you can. This is top priority, Shepard. The Collectors cannot be allowed to get their hands on this technology."

"It would help if I knew what kind of device I'm looking for."

"Details have been sketchy," he said, "but I do know that they were working on a kind of portable teleportation device."

Despite herself, Shepard found herself intrigued. This could definitely be a game-changer, if it were true. "We'll take a look."

"I appreciate it, Shepard. Oh, and I suggest you take Miranda with you when you go down there. Her knowledge of Cerberus procedures could come in handy.

Shepard frowned. "I'll take that into consideration."

The gravity on this moon was light, roughly the same as on the Presidium Ring of the Citadel. As a result, the trees soared to absolutely staggering heights. Privately, it made Shepard feel very small, a child lost in a giant's world.

And it made the compound that had housed the missing Cerberus cell seem small, too. After half a klick's trek through the towering forest, Shepard had half expected it to be proportionately enormous. For it to be a normal, human-sized building was a little bit jarring.

There didn't seem to be anybody home. Dirt, vines, and spiderwebs climbed the walls, and all the exterior lights were dark. No one hailed them on the radio. No guards accosted them. Shepard began to wonder if they'd even be able to get inside.

As they drew closer, she could see a sign over what looked like the main entrance. Stained and faded now, the once-crisp white lettering spelled out APERTURE SCIENCE against a background that might have been light blue.

The door stood open.

Shepard raised an eyebrow at Miranda. "Aperture Science? Does that mean anything to you?"

"It doesn't." Miranda shrugged. "But there's no reason why it should. All Cerberus cells are completely independent of each other. That way, if we're compromised, we can't endanger anyone else." She frowned up at the sign. "Aperture is probably a shell company, used as a front for whatever this cell was doing here. But it looks abandoned."

"Did the Illusive Man tell you how long ago this cell went dark?" Thane asked.

"No," replied Shepard and Miranda simultaneously.

Shepard eyed her suspiciously. Had Miranda spoken to the Illusive Man before she had? She suddenly remembered running into her outside the briefing room, and then finding the QEC already active. If her head hadn't been swimming in drell venom at the time (which was not to say she regretted it one single iota), she might have put two and two together right then and there.

Miranda met her gaze evenly, as if daring Shepard to call her out. But the middle of a mission was neither the time nor the place. They would have words later.

"All right, stay on your toes," said Shepard. "There's no telling what we might find in there."

Weapons drawn, they approached the open door cautiously. The building within was dark and lifeless, musty-smelling and damp. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, echoing in the silence.

Shepard flipped on the light on her rifle and scanned the area. They seemed to be in a lobby of some sort, wide open and empty. Dingy gray tiles covered the floor. Dirty windows looked into abandoned offices full of overturned furniture and moldering papers. She shook her head in amazement. "Whatever happened here," she said, "it looks like they left in one hell of a—"

With a sudden squeal of rusty metal, the door slammed shut behind them. But before Shepard could do more than turn around, there was a flash of yellow light, and the floor opened up beneath her.

She and Thane tumbled through the hole, landing with a stomach-twisting shift in gravity on a wall—now the floor—on the other side. Thane fell heavily on top of her. Leaping to his feet immediately, he extended a hand to help her up.

"My apologies, siha," he said. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," she grunted, allowing him to pull her upright while she oriented herself. When her head stopped spinning, she winked at him. "Though that might've been more fun if I wasn't wearing armor."

Thane's frills flushed red and he coughed once into his fist. "Shepard, I'm not sure this is an appropriate time—"

"Hey, you were the one who got the cold shower, not me."

"Are you quite done?" Miranda floated through the hole with considerably more grace, navigating the shift in gravity with the help of her biotics, then turned back and studied it quizzically. "Odd. It's yellow on the other side."

The hole in the wall was a perfect oval, about two meters tall and one wide, and rimmed in bright blue light. Shepard peered back through it to find the lobby they'd entered through tuned on its side. "That is… weird."

"An artificial gravity field, maybe?" Miranda speculated.

But Shepard was skeptical. "We're on a planet. It would take a mass effect generator the size of a small moon to—hey!"

Shepard and Miranda leapt back as the hole abruptly disappeared. "What the hell?" Miranda demanded.

"It seems we shall have to find another means of escape," said Thane.

Shepard looked around the room—or more accurately, the cell—they'd found themselves in. It was tiny, most of it taken up by a bed, a toilet, and a small nightstand with a radio, all of it in once-sterile white and chrome, now gray and grimy with disuse. Three entire walls and most of the fourth were made entirely of glass, looking out into an empty, brightly lit white corridor with no other cells in sight.

There were no doors.

"Shepard." Miranda's voice was tight and clipped. "We may have a problem."

"No kidding," Shepard drawled. "Whatever gave you that id—oh." She cut off abruptly as she followed Miranda's gaze.

Through one of the glass walls, a clock was visible across the corridor. And it was counting down.

00:56.

00:55.

00:54.

00:53.

An identical one sat above the solid portion of the fourth wall, where they'd come through. Less than a minute until… what? There was no way to know. No way even guess.

"…shit," Shepard swore, for lack of anything more useful to say.

But before they had too long to fret about the countdown, a hidden speaker somewhere in the room crackled to life, and a computerized, feminine voice spoke.

"Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center," it said. Its cadence was mechanical, robotic. "We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one. We are now ready to begin the test proper."

"Test?" Shepard demanded. "What kind of test?"

But the voice went on as though she hadn't spoken. "Before we start, however, keep in mind that, although fun and learning are the primary goal of all Enrichment Center activities, serious injuries may occur. For your own safety and the safety of others, please refrain from…" The voice dissolved into static for several seconds, returned for a moment in garbled Spanish, then resumed. "…stand back. The portal will open in three, two, one."

The timer ticked down to zero as the voice finished its speech, and the solid wall opened up into the same kind of hole they'd fallen through: a two-meter-high oval rimmed in yellow light. Another, rimmed in blue, appeared across the corridor.

Shepard studied the portal cautiously. It seemed to open up into the corridor outside, but the angle was wrong. Peering through it, she looked to the left—a solid wall, glowing softly white, displayed a large black "00" above some smaller icons that appeared to warn about falling objects. And to the left, she saw…

She saw herself, from the side, blinking uncomprehendingly into the portal. She saw Thane and Miranda standing behind her with equally puzzled frowns.

Dizzy, she stepped back and shook her head. "That is definitely weird."

Miranda looked through it as well. "My God," she gasped. "I think it's a wormhole!"

"Please exit the Relaxation Vault," said the computer voice. "The portal will close in ten seconds. It will open again in-in-in-in…" it stuttered into static once more, and went silent.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. For the voice to short out on critical information once was bad luck, but twice was beginning to make her suspicious. But if they had any chance at getting out of here, they had to take it. She shrugged. "You heard the lady. Everybody out!"

She charged through the portal, the utter lack of any sensation of transition leaving her momentarily disoriented as her perspective changed. Thane and Miranda followed suit, and the portal vanished behind them.

The voice's vague warning about "serious injuries" echoed in Shepard's mind. "Everyone okay?" she asked.

"I am unharmed, siha."

"Good to go, Shepard."

She relaxed a little. "Good. I don't know what it is we're supposed to 'refrain' from doing, so just… try not to touch anything, I guess. Let's go."

The corridor led all the way around their cell and through an open door. In the next room, a tubelike piece of machinery hung from a corner of the ceiling, and a giant button, nearly a meter across, sat in the middle of the floor. From the button, a line of blue dots ran across the floor and partway up the wall to an "X" next to another door. This one was closed.

The room was otherwise empty.

"It looks like that button operates the door," Miranda observed.

"I think you're right." Shepard put one foot on the button and tried to press it down, but to no avail. It wouldn't budge until she put her entire body weight onto it. But when she finally got it to go, the dots on the floor turned yellow, the "X" became a jaunty little checkmark, and the door slid open. "All right, that was easy," she said with a shrug. "Onward."

But as soon as she stepped off the button, it released, and the door slammed shut.

Shepard stared from the button to the door and back, frowning. "This must be the test, then."

"What, to see who gets left behind?" Miranda demanded.

"No one is getting left behind," Shepard snapped. "We're getting out of here together or not at all. There must be some other way to work this door."

From behind her, Thane said, "I believe this may be of use."

Shepard turned to find him studying the device hanging from the ceiling. On the floor in front of him were two pictograms like the ones on the wall outside their cell: one showing a square object falling from a tube; the other, a careless person being struck on the head by the falling object.

Now that she took a good look at it, she could see a large gray cube inside the device. "Okay," she said as she approached it. "Now we just have to figure out how to get this thing—"

Before she could finish, the bottom of the device opened up, and the cube fell to the floor with a deafening metallic clang. "—open."

"Must be on a motion sensor," said Miranda."

"Hey, I'll take it." Shepard tried to pick up the cube, but even in the light gravity, it was difficult. "Oof. This thing's got some heft to it."

Out of nowhere, the computer voice spoke again, making them all jump. "Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the 1500MW Aperture Science Heavy Duty Supercolliding Super Button."

"Supercolliding Super Button," Miranda repeated slowly. She shook her head. "Who names these things?"

"All Aperture Science equipment was named by the founders of this company."

Shepard looked up in surprise. She couldn't find a speaker, so she addressed what looked like a camera above the door instead. "You can hear us?"

"Of course I can hear you. I am monitoring your actions, words, and vital signs as part of standard test protocol."

A virtual intelligence, then, not a recording as she'd assumed. "Monitoring for whom?" she demanded. "We didn't agree to this! Who's in charge here?"

"I am in charge of all testing and maintenance in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Please place the Weighted Storage Cube on the Button."

Shepard growled in frustration. "What the hell kind of 'test' is this, anyway, if you're just going to give us the answers?" she snapped.

She didn't really expect an answer. Whoever had programmed this VI hadn't even bothered to make her sound remotely natural; surely she would be able to answer only the most basic questions.

But instead of remaining silent or responding with something like Avina's standard answer about "value judgements," the voice replied, "I can make it harder for you if you want. Perhaps removing your eyes would present a sufficient challenge?" Maybe it was her imagination, but Shepard thought she sounded irritated.

Thane raised his brow ridge. "An AI?" he murmured. "Perhaps we should avoid antagonizing her, siha."

"Yeah, I get the feeling you're right," she said, keeping her eyes fixed suspiciously on the camera. "Well, it looks like the only way out is through. Let's go. Help me with this, Thane?"

"I've got it." Miranda's hand glowed blue, and the storage cube floated up into the air and across the room to settle gently on the enormous button. Its weight held the button down, and the door slid open.

"Excellent," said the AI. He irritation of a moment ago seemed entirely forgotten. "Please proceed into the chamberlock after completing each test. First, however, note the incandescent particle field across the exit. The Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it—for instance, the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube."

Shepard stopped before crossing the particle field. "Unauthorized equipment? Are we going to come out of this thing naked?

"The Material Emancipation Grill is designed to prevent the removal of proprietary Aperture Science equipment from the premises. Other materials should remain mostly unaffected."

"Should. Great." Shepard shook her head. "I guess that's the best we're going to get. Keep an eye on your weapons; I don't want anybody getting hurt if the eezo cores overload or something."

She studied the particle field dubiously. It looked so innocuous: just a few dots of light gliding smoothly back and forth across the doorway. But there was no telling what it might do to their equipment—or them. The AI didn't exactly seem to have their best interests in mind.

A chill ran up her spine as a terrifying thought occurred to her. She was being held together entirely by cybernetic implants. What might this "Material Emancipation Grill" do to them?

Miranda seemed to have the same thought. "Are you sure about this, Shepard?"

"No," she said, "but we don't have much of a choice, now, do we?" She took a deep breath, gathering her courage, and set her jaw. "Let's do this."