Lesotho, South Africa – 2191 CE

The Alliance squad moved through the ruins of the small city Lesotho, laid to waste by the reapers five years ago. Its inhabitants were harvested by the machines, leaving no one alive to rebuild it. The former city was overgrown with vegetation; it looked like any ruin you would read about in history books, even though it had only been a few years. It was unsettling. Perhaps that was what made it so appealing as a hiding place.

Five years ago, Cerberus was all but stamped out by Commander Shepard himself. However, they're nothing if not persistent. It's been years, but there are still Cerberus agents hiding in the shadows, in the cracks, still causing trouble for anyone who fought against the reapers, anyone not human. The so called best of humanity had been reduced to guerilla tactics and terrorist attacks. There wasn't a lot of sympathy for the splinter group, even from those who originally supported them. Cerberus' attempted coup on the Citadel five years ago showed most of the galaxy their true colors.

The Alliance had gotten some intel from the Shadow Broker that a group of Cerberus loyalists were holed up in the Thaba-Tseka district in Lesotho. The Broker had been instrumental in finding the pockets of Cerberus troops still active after the Reaper War. However, it was still a slow going process. Much of the galactic communication system had to be completely overhauled in the aftermath of the war, the reapers having destroyed most of the FTL com buoy system. Pulling the galaxy back to order was not an easy task, but they eventually got there. The squad deployed to Thaba-Tseka was a small one; the Cerberus contingent they had tracked there wasn't a high priority one. Still, one less Cerberus squad means a lot less trouble for the rest of the galaxy.

The Squad was commanded by a Lieutenant Commander Ira Merchant. It was put together by Admiral Hannah Shepard about a year ago and was tasked with tracking and eliminating Cerberus cells. Merchant's team consisted specialists skilled in stealth and tracking. They were good at finding the enemy and taking them out.

The squad's drop shuttle was approaching their quarry. The soldiers grabbed their gear, getting ready for action. They were only a five man team including Commander Merchant. The squad was made up of several species at Admiral Shepard's insistence. One man, a turian, cricked his neck a bit; a habit of his before an op. He was a mountain of a man, made even larger by his heave armor. He was armed to the teeth with a Phaeston assault rifle, a Wraith shotgun, and an M-920 Cain.

"Low priority," he said. "Good job for the rookie to cut his teeth on."

"He might be new to our team, Carvis," said a female voice with a noticeable accent. "But he is no rookie."

A quarian woman sat next to him, checking her gear. She was lightly armored; obviously wearing and upgraded version of a quarian environmental suit. Thanks to the geth, of all things, the quarians were able to re-strengthen their immune systems. As such, they no longer needed to wear the face obscuring helmets.

"Oh really, Aryn? Who is he, then?"

"Trent Morgan. But most people just call him Morgue."

"Morgue?"

"Yeah, 'cause that's where he sends guys stupid enough to get in his way."

"What? Come on, how old is this guy, like twenty something?"

"22," said another female with a distinctive drell voice. "He was 17 when he trained at Grissom Academy."

She had an amber complexion to her, spotted by black sections on her face. However, she usually covered her face with a Recon Hood to increase her shot efficiency. She carried a Viper sniper rifle and a Shuriken machine pistol. The woman sat rather stoically, her hands folded in silent prayer. She always prayed before embarking on a mission.

"Grissom?" Carvis asked. "What wing?"

"Ascension. Under Jacqueline Naught," she clarified.

"Damn, Jerricah," Carvis breathed. He gripped his rifle a bit tighter at the mention of Jacqueline Naught.

"You really should read the personnel files of people you work with."

The three of them get quiet they hear someone coming into the passenger section of the shuttle. They thought it might be the commander, but it turned out to be a young man sporting a dirty blonde crewcut and icy blue eyes. It was the guy they were gossiping about. Trent Morgan, better known as "Morgue." He was clad in a full set of the Rosenkov Materials armor. The armor was renowned for the lights that adorned the armor. Morgue's set just happened to be jet black with red lights. The three soldiers were professionals, but they had to admit that he looked pretty intimidating.

He didn't say anything. He just sat down in preparation for the mission. The commander walked in shortly after. Merchant was a grizzled man who's seen a lot of action in his long service with the Alliance.

"Alright, you know the drill," he iterated. "There's a Cerberus cell holed up in those ruins and we're gonna burn 'em out."

"We have any idea how many?" Jerricah asked.

"Intell says about ten. However we know how slippery these bastards can be, so we should expect more."

"You can count on us, sir," Carvis affirmed.

"Good. As you've noticed, we've got a new recruit joining us on this. I assume Jerricah has informed you of his reputation, so I don't want any 'kick the new guy' bullshit. We're landing in ten, get your weapons primed and optimized."

The squad complied, pulling out their weapons to optimize them with ammo modifications. Jerricah dropped in armor piercing ammo, while Carvis went for incendiary. Aryn optimized her Kassa Locust and Plasma Shotgun with disrupter ammo, further enhancing the weapons' already formidable shield piercing ability. Morgue pulled out his Phalanx pistol. His hand suddenly flared with the familiar blue glow of a biotic mass effect field; he was modding his ammo with biotics. He holstered the pistol and did the same with his Vindicator assault rifle.

The shuttle landed about a minute after that. It had a state-of-the-art stealth system, utilizing both an emission sink and a tactical cloak, rendering it virtually invisible. The squad was able to deploy within the city without giving away their position. As soon as they hit the ground, Jerricah went ahead to scout the area. Initiating her tactical cloak, the drell went into one of the buildings and climbed up onto its roof to get a good look of the city.

"No sign of activity as of yet," she said quietly. "Will continue to survey the area."

"Watch your step, Jerricah," Merchant replied. "Some of these buildings look ready to collapse."

"Will do."

Carvis took point, keeping an eye out for any troops that tried to rush them. Aryn began taking a few scans with her omni-tool, searching for any clues that might lead them to Cerberus, as well as any surprises the terrorists might have left for them. With the city in such a state, there were a million places Cerberus could be hiding. Morgue brought up the rear, watching the squad's six. The city just felt wrong. The reapers left it an empty husk, mirroring what they did to its people. It was almost like hallowed ground; all the more reason to kick Cerberus out of there.

Jerricah surveyed the area with her rifle scope. She had the rifle fairly heavily modified. Precision scope, Mark V extended barrel, armor piercing ammo, and finely tuned concentration mod made the moderately powered gun into a highly effective weapon. Jerricah kept her targeting laser off so not to give away her position. The drell sniper was nothing if not professional. She was about ready to move when she caught a glimpse of movement. Her eidetic memory allowed her to confirm what she saw: a Cerberus Nemesis sighting in on her team's position from a window ten stories up. Jerricah fired once, scoring a hit in the center of the enemy sniper's chest. The shot was partially blocked by the target's kinetic barrier, which was whittled down to nothing. The Nemesis however took cover behind a wall before Jerricah could get off another shot.

"Sniper in a building 10 o'clock from your position," Jerricah said into her radio. "She's ten stories up and five windows from the right hand side and taking cover."

"Not for long," Morgue spoke. These were the first words the squad had heard him say since the mission started. He arced a biotic pull toward the Nemesis' position. Without any shields to counteract it, the Cerberus sniper was pulled out of cover and into Jerricah's line of fire. A shot to the head finishes her off. The biotic field suspending her soon died and dropped the Nemesis to the ground with a loud thud.

"Stay alert people!" Merchant ordered. "They know we're here now."

"We've got contacts!" Carvis yelled.

Several Cerberus troops popped out of cover and opened fire on the squad. However there was plenty in the way of cover in the ruined city. Carvis ducked behind a wrecked shuttle and fired a barrage of shots at the two assault troopers, setting both ablaze. Their armor bore most of flames, but it caused the troopers to flail about wildly, leaving them wide open to gun fire from Aryn and Merchant.

"Morgan, you've got two Guardians on your six," Jerricah warned.

"I got 'em."

Two Cerberus Guardians baring riot shields approach Morgue from behind. The biotic whipped around and pulled the shields out of their hands. He immediately drew his pistol and shot them both through the head, then twice more in the chest for good measure.

"Aryn! We've got a Combat engineer about to lay down a turret!" Merchant barked.

"On it!" Aryn confirmed. She fired up her omni-tool and fired an Overload micro-dart at the turret, which causes it to explode in the Cerberus engineer's face, taking down his shields and leaving him open for a head shot from Jerricah. "Nice shot!"

"Thank you, Aryn," Jerricah said.

"Centurions incoming!" Merchant boomed. "Team, on them! Take down their shields!"

Three Centurions came out of cover and fired at the squad. Aryn fired another Overload at the one in the middle, shorting out his shields and stunning the Centurion. Carvis followed up with a concussive shot, arcing the electrical charge to the other two, shorting out their shields as well. A volley of shots from Carvis, Merchant, and Aryn finish them off.

"Centurions are down," Carvis affirmed.

"Stay frosty people," Merchant ordered. "There might be more of 'em dug in somewhere."

He had been right. As soon as Merchant finished his sentence, a Phantom jumped out of a second story window directly toward him. Before she could touch him, she was struck by a biotic field, throwing her back a short distance. The Phantom landed on her feet, ready to attack again. Her barrier managed to withstand the few shots she couldn't avoid. Before she could mount any sort of counter attack, the Phantom was struck by another biotic blast. Morgue had three biotic orbs revolving around him, which he promptly hurled at the Phantom, killing her.

"Damn, kid. What kind of attack was that?" Carvis asked.

"Saw a volus do it once," Morgue answered. "I figured it out."

"Aryn, you picking up anything else?" Merchant questioned.

"No. Looks like we're clear," she replied.

"Alright, get on the long-range and report our progress. Jerricah, regroup."

"Sir," Jerricah replied as she made her way back down to the squad.

Aryn set up a sort of transmitter on the ground, an innovation made after the reaper war. It was a revolutionary long range communication device that could reach almost anywhere in the galaxy. It was co-developed by Samantha Traynor in collaboration with the rachni in order to create a cheaper and more efficient alternative to the quantum entanglement communicators originally designed by Cerberus. It had some long, scientific sounding name, so most people just called it the Long-Range. While it didn't need to be installed on a ship, it was still fairly bulky and had to be carried in a backpack. A small price to pay for lag free communication across the galaxy. As advanced as the Long-Range was, however, its signal was still able to be jammed.

"Ugh, looks like Cerberus put up a jamming device somewhere," Aryn informed.

"Well let's find it and disable it," Merchant said. "Carvis, Aryn, head back to the shuttle and get it prepped for launch."

Carvis and Aryn simply nodded and headed to the shuttle. The rest of the squad started scanning for any jamming devices or anything else that might be interfering with the Long-Range. Finding jamming devices such as this was fairly easy with current technology, if a bit tedious. However, finding the source of interference was quite easy: the source was huge. Merchant and Morgue moved in closer to try to find the epicenter of the interference, and to try and figure out what could be causing it. Before they could get three meters closer to it, the ground began to rumble, almost like it would when a thresher maw was about to surface. The Alliance soldiers didn't have a chance to speculate before the ground began to crack and split open. The ruined streets erupted, sending fragments of earth and asphalt raining down on the two humans who were trying to get to cover. The shock was enough to even throw Jerricah off balance. Before the dust could settle, something came crashing down between the two humans; something metallic. It was something that shouldn't even exist anymore.

It was a reaper.

It didn't look right, however. It was about three times the size of a harvester, which was still small for a reaper. The thing looked like it had been thrown together, like Cerberus had built it from scrapped reaper parts. It climbed its way out of the ground, causing small tremors with every step. The reaper let out a terrible, ear splitting noise, like metallic howl. There was hardly any time to react. There was a flash of red light, and there was a small creator where Merchant was standing.

Morgue pulled out his Vindicator and switched it to full auto, then unloaded an entire clip into the reaper. Morgue had modified the weapon to maximize thermal clip efficiency, so he was able to put a lot of rounds into the metal monstrosity. It might have been like flies hitting a windshield, but that didn't really matter. All that mattered was that there was a live reaper, and it needed to be dead. When his clip reached capacity, he threw out a singularity straight at the reaper's optics, and upon impact, violently dragged debris into the beast's vision, even cracking a few of its eyes. This gave Morgue the chance to fall back to Jerricah's position.

"We have to go!" He yelled to her.

"Goddess of Oceans… It's a reaper," she muttered.

"Which is why we need to go!"

Morgue grabbed Jerricah by the arm and the two of them started running. They had no chance of taking the thing on themselves; they needed Carvis's Cain, or if that didn't work, the shuttle's weapons. The reaper blindly fired a few wild shots, one just barely missing them. They were half way to the shuttle when a shot from the reaper hit the back end of it. The blast wasn't enough to completely destroy it, but it wasn't going to be flying again anytime soon. Fortunately Carvis and Aryn weren't inside when it was hit.

"Holy shit!" Carvis cursed.

"Keelah, is that a…?"

"Yes, now can you please shoot it in the face with your big-ass gun, Carvis?" Morgue shouted.

"Hell yes," the turian replied, pulling out the Cain. He took aim and after a brief warm up period after pulling the trigger, its high-explosive projectile went screaming toward the reaper, hitting it square in its already damaged optics. Fortunately, it looked like it didn't have any shields to protect it, meaning the shot blew a massive chunk out of its target. It struggled to keep standing, but it eventually fell, its optics flickering out. Carvis lowered his weapon, breathing heavily. He had Atlas heavy mechs in mind when he had brought the Cain for the mission, not a reaper. The turian had hoped to never see one again.

"Is it dead?" Aryn asked?

"Looks like it," Morgue answered. "We shouldn't stick around too long."

"Wait, where's Merchant?" Carvis questioned.

"He didn't make it," the human said after a brief pause.

"What?! What the hell happened?!" The turian looked ready to punch Morgue's lights out.

"It wasn't his fault, Carvis." Jerricah defended. "You have avenged the Commander's death."

"Alright… alright." Carvis calmed down a bit. "What's our status then?

"The shuttle's not going anywhere, that's for sure," Aryn said.

"The Long-Range was destroyed as well," Jerricah added.

"Great. This day just gets better and better," Carvis groaned.

The ground suddenly began to rumble again. This time felt worse than that last. It almost seemed like the whole city was shaking. Whatever was coming up was big, possibly a larger reaper. Multiple cracks started forming around the ruined city, some even big enough to further damage some of the buildings. The squad grabbed a few supplies from the shuttle and started running full tilt out of the city. They managed to get to a small crevasse to take cover from what was coming. They looked back toward the city just in time to see not one reaper surface, but many. Some were smaller than the first, some larger. All of them looked like the first: rebuilt from dead reaper parts. It was just another routine mission. Now, it was a nightmare come to life. Morgue got up to get a better look at the small reaper army. Only one thing when through is mind as he looked upon the terrible sight.

"… Fuck."