Biotic energy pulsed around Xera's hands as she repeatedly threw ball after ball of condensed mass effect fields at the husks swarming toward her and her team, making them fly back and knock down any of the others in their path. Behind her Amira panted loudly, her hands flung wide in the air to maintain the biotic bubble protecting them from the fire of the marauders and cannibals behind the cover ahead of them.
After a quick acrobatic flip and a slash of her sword, Eve sent a cascade of electrical energy at the wave of husks, killing them and flinging them backward to knock into the cannibals, which did not even move to dodge their comrades.
"Have you gotten that door open yet?" Xera yelled over her shoulder as she sent another burst of biotic energy from her palm.
"Almost! Just a minute more!" Alex, their engineer called back from where she was using her Omni-tool to hack into the locked door to the compound they were trying access.
"I hope it's a quick minute, I can't keep this up much longer!" Amira said from her position in the center of the biotic dome protecting the squad.
Suddenly, a bloodcurdling wail echoed across the battlefield, causing all of their eyes to widen.
"Shit! Alex, now would be nice!" Eve said as she saw the telltale glow of a banshee's aura jumping ever closer to them.
"I've almost got it! Try to hold it off!" Alex yelled, panic audible in her voice as she desperately clicked buttons on her Omni-tool.
The banshee finally became visible, appearing out of thin air in front of a crashed shuttle about fifty yards away from them. Surrounded by a pulsating biotic aura, the emaciated, mutated Asari looked like a vision straight from Hell.
"By the Goddess!" Amira gasped. As an Asari, she felt both sympathy and revulsion toward the monster before them. The creature had of course once been one of her people, before the Reapers mutilated her and took away her free will to serve in their forces.
Eve and Xera both rocketed into action. Eve flipped through the air in another graceful acrobatic move, sending more electricity cascading toward the former Asari while Xera flung her hand toward the creature, causing a field of dark energy to engulf the banshee, slowly eating away at its armor. After a moment Xera sent a ball of biotic energy which resulted in a huge explosion of biotic energy when it hit the banshee, throwing it back a few feet, but doing no visible damage.
Out of nowhere, the banshee's head exploded in a shower of purple blood and bits of flesh. Eve and Xera turned, eyes wide with shock, to see Alex reloading a Black Widow, triumph easily viewed in her posture.
"And that, ladies, is how it's done." She said as Amira dropped the dome around them with a shattering sound. She then returned the collapsing weapon to its holster on her back before turning to the now open door of the compound. "Coming?"
The other three looked at each other and shrugged before following her into the entry hall of the compound, a large glass structure that extended six stories up.
"What are we looking for exactly?" Eve asked as she looked around, her eyes roaming over the chairs against the walls and the reception desk with its blinking computer, making it obvious that they were in some kind of waiting area.
"All I could decipher from the intel we received from that Cerberus base Shepard and his crew raided was that something very important is being held here, and from the amount of Reaper forces out there, it was probably right. Whatever it is, they don't want Cerberus to have it." Alex wandered over to the desk and pressed a button, which made the door behind it hiss and open, revealing a lab area with several rows of computer banks, shelves full of files, and a few gurneys that had sheets over their occupants.
Eve wandered over to one of the gurneys and pulled the top of the sheet back, revealing the leering face of a banshee. She gasped and jumped back, narrowly avoiding the gurney behind her.
"I think I know what the Reapers wanted with this place. Or at least part of it." She called to the others, who were scattered around the room.
"Same here," Amira called from one of the computers, "looks like they were studying the changes in DNA that resulted from the Reaper's mutations. And the added strength gained by it." She turned to the others. "I think they were trying to use Reaper tech to upgrade themselves. Make themselves stronger."
"That would explain the banshees; they obviously wanted to find out what caused the exponential growth in their biotic abilities." Alex said, distracted by the datapad she was examining.
"And the husks that don't look like husks…" Eve said. While the others were talking she had wandered over to a security monitor and activated it, revealing a video feed of a holding area filled with creatures that looked human, but had the glowing eyes and cables all over their bodies like husks. Every so often one would let off a blast of biotic energy that caused the image on the screen to shake and making small dents in the wall of the cell.
The others walked quickly over to her to stare at the screen.
"Goddess, what has Cerberus been doing to these people?" Amira said, a look of disgust on her face.
"Not just humans," Alex said, tapping something on the datapad, which brought up an image of another holding cell, this one filled with Asari. They all still resembled Asari, but were emaciated just like the banshees laying on the gurneys. This cell was different; it had a mass effect field swirling over the walls, which protected them from the even more powerful biotic blasts of the not-banshees. "It looks like they've been experimenting on all kinds of races. There's data here from trials on quarians, drell, even hanar and elcor, all of them failures. Either the subject died because of too much stress on the nervous system, or they ended up like this, extremely powerful, but mindless. They don't even have the brain function to take basic orders."
"This is awful, is there any way to end their suffering?" Amira said, turning from the image on the screen.
"Yes," Alex said, activating her Omni-tool and waving it over the nearest monitor. "Cerberus has a backup implemented that automatically fills the cells with a deadly gas should anything mange to get out. I can hack the system and have it release the gas, they'll die quickly and painlessly."
"Then do it, and wipe the system clean. The Alliance doesn't need this sort of data, and we shouldn't leave it for Cerberus to recover later." Xera said, her clenched fists swirling with dark energy.
Alex nodded and waved her Omni-tool over the monitor again, it flickered for a second, then sputtered and went out. The other monitors followed soon after and a VI's voice echoed through the room.
"Warning, Emergency Protocol Omega activated, all personnel evacuate holding area immediately. All systems shutting down."
With that, the voice cut off, and the power in the compound shut off, leaving nothing but emergency lighting on. The squad turned and headed for the door where their shuttle was idling with the door open.