Author's Note: I revised the earlier story to make it fit with the extended cut. This stories follows the destroy ending. This story is also heavily influenced by the Ghost in the Shell films and anime series. With that said, enjoy.
"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." - Plutarch
"Balak Marsh'tur," I speak to myself, running my synthetic hand over the dossiers, each labeled by name. Dossiers of various people, mostly batarian. I feel the rough, brown texture of these dossiers. Feel the sensations seep from the electronic nerves in my synthetic fingers. Feel the sensations flow at instant speeds to my cybernetic brain, my amalgamation of flesh and machine. "Balak Marsh'Tur," I repeat, arcing my back on my black, cushioned chair, having the chair dig into my 90% synthetic 10% flesh and blood body, sending the sensations to my 95% synthetic 5% flesh and blood brain.
My name is Anatoly Ilyushin, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, aka a Spectre. I am a human from the nation of Zimgorod, from the human colony of Terra Nova. I fought in the human resistance movement on Earth during the Reaper invasion, in the city of London. During the battle, a downed chopper blew up close enough to blast off both of my legs, three fingers on my right hand, and a part of my face. A quick medical evacuation and an insane amount of luck allowed me to survive, although I was reduced into an amputee. Until the war was over, the Reapers were reduced into pieces, and a new era was born.
My name is Anatoly Ilyushin, a male human from the nation of Zimgorod, from the human colony of Terra Nova. But I don't have to be. I could be William Mathis, a human street vender from the United North American States, Earth. I could be Jiao Feng, a female human kick boxer from the colony of Shanxi. I could be Doran Sal'Malesh, a batarian slaver operating in the Terminus Systems. I could be a self-aware tomkah truck, crushing through debris on Tuchanka. All that is required is that my cyberized brain could be inserted into an appropriate synthetic body, male, female, human, asari, even machines as small as a printer and as large as a dreadnought, receive the proper nutrients necessary for my brain to survive, and I could become that. I am what they call a 'transhuman'. But I prefer that my name is Anatoly Ilyushin, a male human from Zimgorod, from the human colony of Terra Nova.
"Balak Marsh'tur," I repeat. The man nearly dropped an asteroid on my dolbani planet, only to be stopped by the human hero Ryan Shepard. Disappearing off the grid, he returns after the Reaper invasions, the highest ranking batarian left in the Hegemony Military. He went from trying to wipe out my planet to sacrificing ships alongside humanity in the Reaper wars. Now humanity wants his head once more. Heh, fickle galaxy we live in.
It was incredible really, at least the reports. Admiral Anderson…dead. The Illusive Man…dead. Yet he somehow survives, screaming like a lunatic. His legs were crushed by the rubble, must have hurt like hell. They found him alive…barely. He kept screaming "Liara! Liara!" I heard that he had to be treated for a throat infection…on top of his legs being amputated. Then one day, the galaxy collectively blinks, and Shepard and his blue asari 'friend' Liara T'Soni…they disappear.
Of course, prosthetics have existed for centuries already, and have allowed the otherwise handicapped to function in society. Also of course, the technology that was created in the aftermath of the Reaper wars completely changed how prosthetics truly work. For now, a brain can fool nerves into thinking that a lump of synthetic flesh coated over metal is really an arm. That it feels like an arm, looks like an arm, tastes like an arm, smells like an arm. By all means and purposes, it IS an arm. Except…except it does not need exercise and conditioning to look like a muscular arm. It does not need training to punch a hole through a wall, or break a person's jaw in a fight. So is it still an arm? Heh…you tell me.
None of this could be possible if it wasn't for the other piece of technology that was found in the Crucible's blueprints…the ability to cyberize a brain. Right now, there is a pair of holes in the back of my head, one right under each of my ears, that house a cord. Centered right behind my neck, is a third port that can allow another to plug their cord in, and a fourth port underneath that is necessary for cyberized brain transplants. With these cords, I could link with another entity and experience their memories, their thoughts, their emotions. I could talk with them without saying a physical word, and receive data uploads to my brain. And since I am a highly skilled hacker, one of the best in the Spectre forces, and as such, in the galaxy, I could plug my cord into someone's port, fry their brains, and kill them. For a limited time, I could hack their eyes, their ears, their senses, shut them off or replace them with something else. With great difficulty and for a limited time, I could hack their brains, and force them to act as I will them to act. I could enter their memories, forcibly read them, forcibly erase them, even, although this very rarely works, forcibly alter them. Of course, I cannot do this without risking that my target has firewall defenses of his/her/its own, defenses that can sometimes do just the same to me as I could do to my target. So I got to be careful in how I go around my business.
Even more impressive, I could enter the extranet and hack others just the same through indirect means, though that would be much trickier. The extranet is a large place, and if a target's internal defenses would attack my consciousness while it traverses the net, and kill it, I will die as well. And in places with Wi-Fi, I could access the extranet, or a local hub, without even having to connect my brain to a machine, though such connections are harder to protect through firewalls. Fortunately, or unfortunately at times, hacking is more limited on the Wi-Fi spectrum, and uploading my consciousness onto the extranet through Wi-Fi is nigh impossible.
As you can imagine, this new era of technology…this concept of 'transhumans'…it has changed life forever. We are stronger than before…faster than before. A single transhuman could do the labor that 10 humans could do. These prosthetics, most of them made from salvaged materials, has made the repairing of the relays, of the planets…it has made them not just possible…but relatively finished in the span of years. The relays at least. And the Citadel has been put together. They were the first major engineering projects to be initiated. They worked, amazingly. Earth, Palaven, and a lot of other planets still look uglier than burnt elcor. But hey, it's progress.
I put my feet on the desk, spreading dossiers around. My feet are only covered by my socks, these white fake cotton socks. I watch my big toe on my right foot point forward, then upward, then awkwardly to the left. Inside my brain, I enter my internal database, finding a memory that I want to relive. Ah yes, the Nevski Rangers versus the Gatesburg Skirmishers, 2180 Terra Nova ice hockey championship. I saw that live on the extranet, alone in my apartment with a bottle of vodka imported from Earth. I remember…right there, yes, with 6:23 minutes left in the 3rd period, Rangers down by 1, Pierre Dumas #21 makes an excellent pass to #23 Ryan Kildare. This is where Kildare takes 'the hit'…right there! Can't believe how he still maintained possession of the puck right there. Kchort, I doubt the goalie himself could believe what happened, which explains this gem of a goal when Kildare winds up and…
The door to my quarters splits open and a figure steps inside. I pause the memory in my head and tilt my eyeballs to the left, watching the slender woman strut that synthetic eye popping blue attire. "Ashley Williams, in the flesh…more or less. What can this humble little servant do for you?" I speak out, smirking, my slight Ukrainian sounding accent rolling off my synthetic tongue. "You are being more snarky than usual. Did I ruin your barnyard animal porn session?" Ashley fires back, smirking to herself. "Ha, you must be confusing me with Montezuma back over there," I laugh back. "I heard that, cabrón!" a voice yells from outside the walls, the ship's little Mexican pilot Hector Davila.
Ashley and I chuckle between each other. It is nice to have these moments to remind you that you are still human. That you are still an organic, in a sense. "In all seriousness Ash, what's up?" I ask, tilting my face toward her. The room is so silent that my neck gives off a mechanical sound as it turns to face her. "Just relaying to you what Hector told me. We're going to be in Zorya airspace in a few hours, so you might want to wrap up whatever you want to do, look over case notes, so on," Ashley says, looking at what I think is my feet.
"Yeah, I like to walk around in socks, so what?" I speak out, to which Ashley simply shakes her head and approaches my desk. Looking down on my desk, she speaks out "Our first Tier III assignment…our first real Spectre assignment. To think that this four-eyed scumbag once fought alongside us against the Reapers." I cup my hands behind my head, feeling the ports on my neck "Hey, never know who we might find on Zorya. I wouldn't be surprised if any of the other intelligence agencies are gunning for Balak. Like the Turian Blackwatch, the Salarian STGs, or the Systems Alliance Special Activities Group, aka SASAG." I chuckle to myself "Heh, and shit…kinda feel sorry for the guy, Balak I mean. Rallies what's left of his people, joins the resistance, makes himself a hero, and what does he get? Backstabbed by his people in Khar'shan and forced to go pirate."
Ashley sits down on my desk, looking at me. "Don't tell me you are feeling sorry for the bastard. He did try to drop an asteroid on your home planet," she responds, pulling the dossier from literally under her ass. "Hey, just saying. Trust me, I want to neutralize that four eyed fuck as badly as you want," I respond back, retreating to my internal database so I could finish that sweet goal by Kildare. Winding up the stick…and "Yes!" I fist pump the air, looking up to Ashley, who simply shakes her head in hopelessness. "Which memory is it this time? The time you actually finished a crossword puzzle without cheating?" she asks. "2180 Terra Nova hockey championship, game 6, the final game. Now tied 3-3," I reply, fast forwarding to the last 48 seconds of the period.
"Anatoly, how the hell did you get into the Spectres?" she asks, smiling to herself. "Space magic, Ash. Answer to every question," I sarcastically reply. "I thought the answer to every question is 42?" Ashley responds with a tingle in her tone. "Bah, you and your classical literature," I snort back at her. Ashley bursts into laughter and says "Hitchhiker's Guide is not a classic! Dead Souls is a classic. The Count of Monte Cristo is a classic. I don't know what Hitchhiker's Guide is called but it is definitely not a classic." I respond with slow, sarcastic clapping and say "Woah ho ho, we got a critic on the ship!" I watch as Ashley moves off the desk, sending a dossier to the ground, and responds "AND that type of behavior is why you are never going to get laid." Ouch, that was harsh. "Hey, that was a little below the belt," I bark back. I watch Ashley respond with a wink back at me. Did that really happen?
"Was that a wink, Ash?" I ask, really amused. "Nope, I just hacked your eyes and made it look like I winked," Ashley responds, smirking. C'mon, this is getting excessive. I immediately check my firewall when I then remember that there is no Wi-Fi on this ship "Ha, ha, very funny Ash. There ain't any Wi-Fi onboard. Your decision, remember?" I follow Ash's left arm as it rests itself on her hip. "So anyway…" she says, looking at me "got any ideas on Balak, from the info banks you were supposed to dig up?"
I pull my feet off of my desk and lean my chair closer to Ashley. "I got some information. Most importantly, I don't think that Balak is going to switch his cyberized brain to another body. It is offensive in batarian religion to remove one's eyes, as the soul leaves the body through them. Balak has been regarded as a very religious batarian, and as such, I doubt that he has switched or will switch bodies, or significantly alter his face. I do know that he is cyberized, according to reports from Council assets on Khar'shan. He is also apparently partially synthetic. Mildly though, as his right arm is synthetic and has a shotgun fitted inside it."
Ashley's hands move, finding rest on the edge of my desk. "Alright, so he is relatively unchanged appearance wise, his right arm is carrying a weapon, and his brain can be hacked. Most of his body cannot be hacked without a cord brain to brain connection, since he is mostly organic. What I want to know is why Zorya. He was last spotted in Zorya to…go pirate, as you said?"
I shake my head, not exactly what I meant. "Yeah, allow me to elaborate on the pirate comment. It turns out that the Blue Suns Head of Operations, Solem Dal'Serah, actually bankrolled Ka'hairal Balak during the latter's attempt in seizing power in Khar'shan. Balak promised to allow Solem's Blue Suns exclusive rights over the Eclipse and Blood Pack groups to operate on Hegemony owned planets and also reduced tariffs on the goods that they would sell. As we know, Balak seized power of the Batarian Hegemony and attempted to establish a military dictatorship. He was quickly ousted by forces in the political theater and the industrial complex. These ousters are now pushing Khar'shan into a civil war. Now, it seems that Balak fled to meet with the Blue Suns, possibly to pay back campaign money to Solem, maybe even to join the Blue Suns."
"Balak joining the Blue Suns?" Ashley asks me, probably trying to wrap her head around the idea. "Balak tried to turn Terra Nova into a wasteland out of his hate for humans, and now he not only granted a human owned company exclusive rights to sell products to what used to be his people, but might even start working for them? Something doesn't add up, Anatoly." I arc my head back as respond back "Hey, people change, especially when they get desperate." Ashley smiles, shakes her head, and says "People don't change when they get desperate. They just reveal more of who they are, or they become better liars." Ashley walks toward a wall in my spacious quarters, stopping a few feet before it. "What about Balak's associates? Sympathetic interest groups that followed Balak in exile from Khar'shan? Friends, family?"
"Hmm…" I ponder to myself, accessing a section of my internal database that I sectored off for the Balak case. "From assets on Khar'shan and from the hack into Khar'shan computers, courtesy of intel that the salarian STG shared with the Spectres, I've gathered that Balak's brother was killed on the Torfan 2178 raid. Actually he was executed by former Alliance marine and violent mercenary, the Butcher of Torfan, who is known in most circles as Zaeed Massani. As for parents, no records exist of them…it is heavily rumored on Khar'shan that Balak was abandoned as a child and taken in by the Batarian Liberation Army. As we both know, the BLA was a paramilitary organization, now defunct, that was created in response to human colonization of the Skyllian Verge. The BLA collapsed with the Battle of Torfan, and Balak was one of less than a dozen members that survived. Two of those members remained with Balak after the Torfan defeat, and it turns out that you, Ash, already met one of them."
Ash gives me a raised synthetic eyebrow, looking at me kind of like she is waiting for me to continue. "Well?" she asks me, talking with her hands. I turn to my holographic keyboard, move my finger toward an icon on my holographic screen, click it, and then click on an icon shaped like a projector. Suddenly, a beam of light shines from the ceiling and projects a holographic image onto the wall in my quarters, showing an image of the interior of some facility. I get up and approach the image, saying to Ash "May 21, 2183. Asteroid X57, in the Asgard System. You, Ryan Shepard, and Kaidan Alenko, may he rest in peace, muscled your way into the main facility, killing the slaver Charn along the way. By the way, I heard you took that bastard down yourself."
Ashley nods and responds "Yeah, he bunkered down and became a bitch to flush out, so I climbed to the upper level and dropped a small container full of nitroglycerine right next to his cover, blew four eyes into fourteen pieces. We were lucky as hell that his pass to the main facility still worked. Anyway, what were you getting at?"
"Alliance brass forked over, to the Spectres, the hidden camera footage of the facility shortly after the attack, with Balak being branded an intergalactic fugitive and all. I made a copy of the video and noticed a few things," I say, touching the holograph with my finger. The images move, showing Balak flanked by a batarian. I pause the video and tell Ash "The man flanking behind Balak, the one with an orange shade of skin, is Mesh Sal'Vushash. Mesh's brother Vad, the other BLA veteran that stuck with Balak, was the ringleader in the Franklin colony terrorist attack. Shepard took out Vad and his cronies, saved the spaceport, but the residential district was leveled. The Alliance cross referenced Vad's DNA with batarian signatures they had stored in their database and found a familial link between Vad's corpse and a cigarette bud found in the main facility on X57. Months before the Reaper invasions, the Alliance was able to identify Mesh through records and recordings left behind during the Battle of Torfan. Now get this. Turns out Mesh is not just a bodyguard, but a close friend of Solem AND the man that facilitated this Balak/Blue Suns alliance. From 2178 to 2181, the two of them worked on the same pirate ship, as sourced by word of mouth in the Terminus Systems. Seems Mesh and Solem made some nice credits from pirate raids across the Terminus Systems."
I hear Ashley ask me "What do we know about Mesh? Personality? Any synthetic parts? Any level of cyberization?" "Hmm…" I pause, searching inside my brain for answers "Found nothing on any synthetic body parts or cyberization. All information I have on Mesh is from this video, the scant recordings on Torfan, and from data collected back when Mesh and Solem ran as pirates together, which all obviously predate cyberization and advanced prosthetics. I know that Mesh is a chain smoker, though. The only time he doesn't appear with a cigarette in his mouth is in this video on X57, although in other footage of the facility, he could be spotted burning through a pack. An audio recording picked up Balak yelling at Mesh for smoking in his presence. Balak considers anything that causes self-harm to the batarian body to be taboo. Makes his decision to cyberize his brain and get a new arm seem even more unusual."
"Interesting. So Mesh is the liaison between Balak and Solem," Ashley pauses, turning left toward my large window and my nice little view of outer space. Ashley continues "I did my digging on the Blue Suns. As expected, the Aria T'Loak alliance between her organization and the other three mercenary gangs has dissolved. Rare mistake by Aria, but she should have known that Omega always returns to the status quo, and an alliance between all four gangs is NOT the status quo. Anyway, Darner Vosque and the Blue Suns was the second boss/organization to break off from Aria's little alliance, a few months after the Blood Pack cut their ties. His Blue Suns have basically resumed to business as usual, same old same old as it was before the Reaper invasion. That fiasco with holding the Eldfell-Ashland refinery hostage ended up doing serious damage to their reputation, and so Zorya saw a decline in foreign investment. End result is an 18% unemployment rate on Zorya and a lack of…well…anything to extort. Darner Vosque and Solem Dal'Serah have been hard at work doing damage control, but the bottom line is that Zorya has been making a lot less money for the Blue Suns now than before. As a result of reduced foreign investment and a staggering unemployment rate, a lot of makeshift prosthetics have ended up in Zorya, considered the best that most of the populace could afford, so don't be surprised if you see a lot of exposed metal."
Heh, exposed metal. "Probably illegal parts sold on the black market, the parts that the Blue Suns wouldn't bother selling to the real clients." Ashley nods at what I said and asks "So, looking forward to our first real mission together? Catching one of the most wanted terrorists in the galaxy? Proving Jondum Bau that we are competent enough for work outside of staring at holographic screens and keeping intoxicated diplomats from falling off balconies?" Damn you Ash, you just reminded me of all those years spent in the Security Room, bashing my head against a steel wall. "I remember that time where we had to escort that drunk elcor diplomat into his hotel room. Blayt, if it wasn't for our synthetic bodies, we would have both gotten hernias. Shit, listening to that behemoth sing…and now you reminded me of that!" 'With utmost sincerity, I pine for thee, for truthfully, you are meant for me,' oh shut the fuck up, you monotone elephant!
"Of course, Council didn't want to put us at risk when the Citadel was being renovated and security was adjusting to the new wave of technology. Felt we belonged on the Citadel, working with C-SEC to make sure that nothing destabilizing happens on the station. I get that, but fuck those were some horrible years." I nod to what Ash says and watch her grow silent for a moment. "Yep," she continues "time does fly. It's almost going to be the 5 year anniversary of the destruction of the Reapers. October 17, 2191, a few weeks away from V-Day. So much time has passed, so much has changed…"
Looking through my window, outer space is beautiful…all the dots peppering the darkness. The galaxies, distant galaxies like our own. "You know, galaxies themselves evolve by merging together into a larger entity. They get larger and larger, evolution through addition. Makes you wonder…if that is the fate for organic life as well. If we are all just stars, swimming around a giant black hole, bumping into other galaxies, merging, forming a larger galaxy. Evolution through addition…ain't that what we are already doing?"
I swear, I have spent nearly the past five years working with Ash, but I never saw her heave a sigh like she heaved just now. I guess I never had the chance to, since we haven't really had the opportunity to speak like this, always heading our separate ways after work. She speaks out "Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will…to strive…to seek…to find…and not to yield".
"Tennyson?" I ask. "Yeah, how did you know," she asks me, looking bemused. I smirk and reply "You always carry that paperback book, that collection of Tennyson poems." Looking at Ash, I could guess that she wants to say something.
She turns to me and speaks "Is it strange that I could upload all of the poems into my cyberized brain and reread them whenever, but I instead choose to only read them on printed paper…so…so…so I am reminded that I am a human and not a machine?"
You too, Ash? "Nope, I see nothing wrong with that. Whatever makes you feel comfortable, go for it," I respond. Damn Ash, you too…
Smirking, I say "You know who I feel envious of? Shepard. Everyone went through the meat grinder against the Reapers, but he gets to escape to some unknown planet with an extremely rich and powerful asari, who happens to be the Shadow Broker. Lucky svoloch, never having to work again for another day."
Ash frowns and says "I wouldn't say he got off so well. None of us did…but over time…I started to see Shepard's mind almost fall apart. I guess it has been falling apart since Akuze. Then Kaidan Alenko…well. And the Reaper invasions…seeing close friends die before his eyes, reduced to animals before his eyes. I remember, after that mission at the monastery…where Samara killed herself so as to not violate her Justicar Code. And then Shepard killed her remaining daughter…he said it was because he couldn't allow another banshee to be created. I think Liara said something to him about the matter, because he then entered my quarters…pulling his hair, crying, screaming about…I don't even know what he was screaming about. It was as if all those years…he finally cracked. He didn't even realize that I was there. He seemed better the next day…but I'll never forget that. It seems he suffered a PTSD delivered straight from the heavens…though I guess you can say that about everyone in this galaxy right now."
We stand there, together, quiet for what felt like five minutes. I didn't time it. "Well," I break the silence "we should suit up. Zorya is approaching and we got heads to break." Ash slowly nods at me, at least I think that was a nod, and responds "Yeah, that we do, sailor."