"Yeoman Chambers," Adrian said politely. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited for her to turn around and respond.
When she did, she smiled, as she always did. It was a lovely smile, but it did not affect Adrian today, considering what he wanted to ask her. The question had been burning in his mind ever since he'd met her, and now he could no longer help himself.
"How may I help you, Commander?" she asked, as usual.
"Do you have a moment to talk?" he asked in turn, direct as he ever was.
Chambers' smile widened, and she nodded. "I always have time for you, Commander," she said. Her tone was cheerful, but he could see a sort of awareness in her facial expression, as though she had noticed the hardness in his eyes and was wondering about it. That was good, but it wouldn't help her in the end.
He got straight to the point. "This organisation has a dark reputation," he said delicately. The words were like acid in his mouth. As far as Adrian was concerned, he was given Cerberus far too much credit by saying that. He really would have preferred to speak his mind, but he knew that doing so at the outset would not help matters. "Do you have any concerns working for them?" He hoped she said yes; he wanted to like Chambers. She did seem friendly, Cerberus or not, and while he did not much care for any member of Cerberus, those who expressed their concerns and regrets about its past actions, such as Taylor, were automatically better in his book.
"Not at all," Chambers said at once. Adrian's heart would have sunk, but frankly, it was no surprise to him. People like Taylor were very few and far between, and even Joker and Dr Chakwas seemed to have completely forgotten about all the horrible things they had seen Cerberus do two years ago. They must have, for how else could they have been so able and willing to throw away all their principles and join Cerberus? It was hardly a shock to him that Chambers should not know or care about what the organisation had done in the past.
Chambers continued speaking. Adrian almost wished she hadn't, for every word that she spoke was like a knife in his gut, and with every second that passed, his glare grew blacker and blacker. "Our methods can be harsh, but Cerberus has noble objectives. We look out for human interests, advance human technology, save human lives. They're good goals!" By the time she had done talking, her tone had become a little defensive—and rightly so, Adrian thought. She would have had to have been blind to have missed the fury in his face.
Save human lives! Look out for human interests! Tell that to Admiral Kahoku and his men—or to my squad on Akuze! You bastards! You lying, hypocritical, murderous bastards!
He almost wanted to scream those words at her, but it was not quite the time for that yet. Instead, Adrian took a deep breath and said, "It sounds like Cerberus wants to dominate all aliens and put humankind on top." He knew that that was the case in truth, and it didn't just 'sound' like it, but once again, this required some degree of tact. If he made the accusation too directly, Chambers would continue to go on the defensive.
"Cerberus looks out for humanity," Chambers more-or-less repeated. "But that doesn't mean we hate aliens." Adrian had to bite his lip to restrain himself from letting out a very rude snort, and then had to bite down harder when Chambers followed her words up with what had to have been the stupidest analogy that he had ever heard. "My sister started a dog shelter, but she loved cats, too. I love humanity. I also love asari, quarian, turian, salarian, hanar—that isn't in conflict with Cerberus ideals."
Once again, by the time Chambers had finished, her tone was defensive, and once again, it was rightly so. Adrian was now staring at her with a mix of fury and stunned disbelief. He continued to do so for some moments, shaking his head mutely. Incoherent words rose in his throat and fell just as quickly. What the hell was he supposed to say to that?
And then, all of a sudden, he knew just what. At the same moment that he knew, his patience broke. Ever since Adrian had realised who he was working with back in the laboratory where he had awoken, he had felt a rage within him that was more powerful than any other he had before experienced. It had been a struggle to keep it restrained, especially when he had come face to face with the Illusive Man and when he had found out that Joker and Dr Chakwas were now part of Cerberus, too. He had somehow managed to do so, but he no longer could. Chambers, Joker, Dr Chakwas, Lawson, Taylor—every single member of this crew had to know the truth. He would be damned if he did not give it to them.
"Understood," he said coolly. As Chambers began to turn back to her work, Adrian raised a hand and said, "Wait. I have something to say to the crew."
She looked at him curiously while he called out, "Joker, patch me into the ship's comm systems. I have a ship-wide announcement to make." After a moment's consideration, he added, "And make sure this is recorded."
By now, nearly everyone in the CIC was staring at him. Adrian heard a small click, then Joker's voice came through, saying, "You're in, Commander." He quickly thanked him and then, more out of habit than necessity, ascended the steps to the galaxy map. Gazing out at it, Adrian took a moment to gather his thoughts, and then he began to speak.
Finally, he said, "This is the Commander. I want everyone on board to listen to me; I have something vital to say to all of you regarding the nature of your employers. Sit tight; this is going to take a while." There was a sudden hush. That was good.
Adrian allowed another pause. Then he continued, "Having not had the chance to speak to all of you just yet, I do not necessarily know all your motivations for joining Cerberus, nor what you think of the organisation as a whole, nor whether any of you have any doubts about some of its past actions. Still, I have spoken to some of you, so I know some of your reasons. I know a good number of you joined because you felt the Alliance was doing nothing about the Collector threat and because the Council has swept that of the Reapers under the rug, while Cerberus is actually doing something about both. I know some of you joined because you believe in Cerberus' ideals, that humanity needs an organisation to advance its interests and that we deserve a greater role in the galaxy. I know some of you joined because you lost everything and felt you had nowhere else to turn. I know most of you are comfortable being part of the organisation, and that you somehow have managed to weld your belief in humanity's advancement at any cost and your respect for aliens together. I know you believe Cerberus does good work and has noble objectives, even if its methods can be harsh." Out of the corner of his eye, Adrian saw Chambers flinch.
"Most importantly, however," he said, "I know that most of you have few doubts or regrets about what the organisation has done in the past. That is—if you even know what it has done. A good portion of you seems to have no idea. I'll amend that. Some of you know better than others. Some of you have some idea of what Cerberus has done. But none of you truly know what Cerberus is like. Well, allow me to enlighten you. Because the truth is, Cerberus is nothing like what any of you think it is. It does not have noble goals; it does not do good work. It is not so much a human survivalist organisation as it is a human supremacist organisation. There is nothing good to be said about it."
As Adrian spoke, his tone became increasingly furious. The rage that he had been holding inside him was finally beginning to boil over. A quick look around the CIC showed him that the crew were all looking very nervous. They shifted on their feet, shot worried glances at each other, and one or two muttered uncertainly among themselves, but none of them looked at him.
"And even its claim to be a human supremacist organisation is mostly a hollow one," he added, by this point positively seething. "Let me tell you why. Joker, Dr Chakwas, you both listen very closely, seeing as you seem to have forgotten! Two years ago, while I was still a part of the Alliance Navy and was captain of the first Normandy, I had several run-ins with Cerberus operations. Let me tell you, not a single one of them was good. As a matter of fact, I ended up shutting them down and killing everyone involved in them, and I have no regrets about doing so. There was Chasca, in the Matano system of the Maroon Sea. The Cerberus people there used 'samples' provided by ExoGeni to turn the entire pioneering team of the colony into husks—humans, I might add. Why? Don't ask me why; I do not know, just like I do not know how turning people into husks could ever advance humanity's interests. Frankly, I've often wondered if the people involved were indoctrinated. It sounds like something that the indoctrinated would do. But I could equally believe that they were entirely in control of themselves and were trying to fulfil some sick, twisted end that no sane person could ever comprehend."
He took another deep breath, and his hands unconsciously clenched on the railing that surrounded where he stood. The memories floated through his head, so fresh that they could have formed yesterday. He ploughed on. "Then there was Listening Post Theta on Altahe, in the Acheron system in Styx Theta; Listening Post Alpha on Nepmos, in the Erebus system, also in Styx Theta; and Depot Sigma-23 in the Gorgon system of Argos Rho. What did I find there? Rachni. How did they get to the listening posts from the depot? Because Cerberus had been experimenting on the rachni—the same beings that laid the galaxy to waste a thousand years ago and almost destroyed the facility at Peak 15 on Noveria—and eventually the rachni overpowered them and got loose! Once again, I ask you: how was experimenting on rachni in the best interests of humanity? If there's a reason, I certainly can't see it."
Adrian let go of the railing and stood up tall. He stared around the room, catching the gazes of several crewmen. All of them were growing more and more uncomfortable by the second, and their discomfort gave him a sick, twisted kind of pleasure. "There was Binthu," he added. "In Yangtze. The Voyager Cluster. Cerberus had no fewer than three facilities here. Two were experimenting on rachni, again—because you people clearly don't learn your lesson—and another on Thorian creepers. The same beings that the plant on Feros vomited up to protect itself—the plant capable of making those who resided on Feros into its thralls! And once again, without a thought to the consequences or the ethics of such actions, Cerberus started conducting experiments on them! I might have put an end to them before they could, but can anyone here deny that they would have gone wrong sooner or later? I think not! And, yet again—how does this benefit humanity in any way? How does it benefit anyone?"
Nobody answered. Maybe they weren't brave enough to do so, but Adrian only said, "Exactly. But did you think I'm done? Oh, no, there's more. I haven't even got to the worst of what your employers have done." He rested his hands on the railing again, took another look around the CIC, and then continued, "I'm sure you all know the name Admiral Kahoku. A respected career soldier and a family man. Official reports are he 'passed away' two years ago." Adrian snorted. "Indeed, he did not. Cerberus murdered him. I found his corpse in one of the three facilities on Binthu. And why did they murder him? Because he found out that Cerberus was behind the deaths of his team and investigated them. How did Cerberus kill his team? Well, they only set up a false distress call on Edolus, in the Sparta system of Artemis Tau, luring the marines into a trap. This trap, I would have you know, was a fucking thresher maw!"
His voice had been rising throughout, and at these final three words, it finally turned into a roar. At the same time, he began to glow blue as his biotics flared up. Just below, Chambers jumped, and several of the crewmen stared wildly at each other. By this point, their faces were ashen. One of them stared at him, and then his eyes went wide, and he murmured, "Akuze. Oh, God, Akuze!"
Adrian smiled grimly, but it was more like a snarl by this point. For a moment, as he got his biotics back under control, he considered calling attention to the words, but he decided against it. Akuze he would mention, of course, but he had his plans for how to do so. Instead, he allowed them to consider all that he had said. When the silence had gone on for what he deemed long enough, he said, "So, how many humans is that, dead for the alleged advancement of humanity? How many of them died needlessly, or in horrible pain, or not understanding what was happening to them? How many lines have they crossed, how many rules were broken? What decency has Cerberus not sacrificed for their hollow goals? I don't think any of you could give truthful answers to any of those questions. Because there are none.
"How many humans dead? Probably about fifty, max, not counting the Cerberus people who I killed putting a stop to the insanity. Yes, fifty is a small number, but so what? You want humanity to be advanced more than anything else, but you think nothing of throwing humans into the meat grinder to meet your twisted ends. Now, I don't know the names of the people who Cerberus killed in 2183, and I don't think I ever will… but there are fifty names that I do know. And I am going to share them all with you. You will listen. And you will remember them all, just as I do."
With that, he descended from the galaxy map and began to walk around the bridge. As he went, he looked every single crewman in the eye, recited a name, and then walked on to the next. He had his hands clasped behind his back. By this point, his rage was more controlled, more a thing of ice than of fire.
"Commander Terrance Montgomery. Staff Lieutenant Stephen Ryers. First Lieutenant Atanas Iliev. First Lieutenant Megan Fitzroy. Second Lieutenant Jeremy Becerra. Operations Chief Dominic Alexanderson. Gunnery Chief Esperanza Cervantes Ortiz. Service Chief Peter Kynaston. Corporal Jason Toombs. Corporal Ilse Sturm." Toombs' name he called out to Joker, who he could see even from here was facing him and staring at him with bulging eyes. He took a particularly vicious pleasure in that. Joker's decision to join Cerberus had cut him deeply. He wanted to remind him especially of who it was for whom he had abandoned the Alliance.
"Corporal Nicholas Saunders. Corporal Stamatis Markopoulos. Corporal Yamazaki Michiko. Corporal Tomás Carrasco. Private 1st Class Astrid Svärd. Private 1st Class Jonathan Baines. Private 1st Class Malika Karim. Private 1st Class Oliver Tasker. Private 1st Class Zachary Godbolt." To recite the names in full after so long was painful, and Adrian's hands balled into fists as he continued his slow walk, but he could control it easily. His squad at Akuze, his friends, the people who had helped him start to see some joy in life again after Mindoir—and Cerberus had thrown them into a meat grinder like it was nothing.
"Private 1st Class Cody Metcalfe. Private 1st Class Brandon Mynatt. Private 1st Class Roger Westenra. Private 1st Class Benjamin Tomlinson. Private 1st Class Jocelyn Carrington. Private 1st Class Huang Caixia. Private 1st Class Dražen Kovač. Private 1st Class Amanda Bolton. Private 1st Class Iftiin Jaamac Xirsi. Private 1st Class Cathal O'Reilly." He remembered them all. Their names, their faces, their ranks and serial numbers, and at least one or two facts about their personal lives. Roger Westenra had just become a father; Jocelyn Carrington had recently got married; Terrance Montgomery had won the Star of Terra for his actions in the First Contact War and was on the fast track for a promotion. Those lives had all been snuffed out.
"Private 2nd Class Owain Wiegold. Private 2nd Class Kevin Abbott. Private 2nd Class Ayokunle Idowu. Private 2nd Class George Trevelyan. Private 2nd Class Lauren Hartley. Private 2nd Class Joshua Steel. Private 2nd Class Alexander Smytheman. Private 2nd Class Erica Jarvis. Private 2nd Class Mark Audley. Private 2nd Class Aaron Terrell." Lauren Hartley had been on the verge of receiving a promotion to Private 1st Class; Joshua Steel had come from a broken home but risen above it all to find a good life in the Alliance Navy; Aaron Terrell had only been eighteen, the youngest and the newest, fresh out of training. And Cerberus had killed them all.
"Private 2nd Class Matthew Rains. Private 2nd Class Maris Koser. Private 2nd Class Paul Falkner. Private 2nd Class Kelsey Appleby. Private 2nd Class Samuel Whittaker. Private 2nd Class Sarah Richardson. Private 2nd Class Jesse Hollins. Private 2nd Class Ethan Mason. Private 2nd Class Aidan Roscoe. Private 2nd Class Nguyễn Dũng Vinh. And last but certainly not least, Private 2nd Class Julian Irons." Good people, one and all, who he had been proud to serve with and to call his friends. And barring Toombs—who had suffered a fate worse than death—Cerberus had killed them all. For him to work with Cerberus now was to disgrace their memories. As far as Adrian saw it, this was the least that he could do to make amends for it.
He returned to the galaxy map, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. "They were the 4th Brigade of the 6th Infantry Regiment in the 7th Frontier Division. In other words, my squad at Akuze. We all know about Akuze—humanity's first encounter with thresher maws, fifty marines dead as a result, only one survivor—me. What they don't know—what I didn't know until two years ago—was this. Cerberus lured those thresher maws to the site of the attack and set them on my squad, apparently for no other purpose than to study the creatures and see how we reacted—as though we were nothing more than lab rats in an experiment! Fifty-one men and women, some of them among the best, and Cerberus made lab rats out of us without a thought to the cost! Well, having lived through what happened? I can say with authority that nothing could ever be worth that. Nothing. Fifty good people dead, and I? I have to live with the scars, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the trauma, for the rest of my life. But your employers don't care. No, they'll just keep throwing innocent men and women into the meat grinder to suit their own ends—ends that cannot possibly benefit humanity or anyone but Cerberus. I'm sure everyone's seen the images of Akuze. I ask you, was it worth it?
"And there's one more thing," he added, voice now cold as ice. "There was… one another survivor. Corporal Jason Toombs, a good friend of mine. But unlike me, he didn't make it back to the base. More's the pity, for Cerberus captured him. It wouldn't be until six years later that I found him again, and what did I find? Cerberus had been conducting experiments on him, too. He didn't share the details, but I distinctly remember him saying that one of the things they did was fill his veins with thresher maw venom. Thresher maw venom. That stuff's toxic as hell and your employers pumped him full of it. For what end? Once again, hell if I know. But what end could be worth keeping a man like an animal and performing such experiments as that on him? What end?"
Once again, there was no answer. Adrian made a mental note to get back in contact with Toombs quickly and send the recording of this to him; he had to know that Adrian hadn't betrayed his principles and the Alliance, that he had not forgotten what Cerberus had done. He owed it to Toombs. But there was still more.
"And for those of you who would say that Cerberus has changed in the past two years," Adrian added, "I have a fresh example, from this very crew no less. As you all know, Operative Lawson headed the Lazarus Project and was responsible for bringing me back. A good thing? Perhaps. But what I don't doubt she has told none of you is that during the process, she considered planting a control chip in my head, which would have destroyed my personality and made me Cerberus' slave. The Illusive Man had to tell her not to do it, and she gave in only reluctantly. I'll say that again: Lawson wanted to make me nothing more than a slave."
Adrian clenched his fist as he remembered. This, more than anything, had been what caused him to finally lose his temper after his resurrection. When he had found this out and heard the utter disappointment in Miranda's voice as she spoke of it, he had been unable to help himself: he had pistol-whipped and thrown her across the room with his biotics. She had been nicely concussed, and while that had compromised her for the mission on Freedom's Progress, he hadn't been able to care. The cruelty of it all—and the hypocrisy, given everything that Miranda's father had apparently done to her. Most certainly, he would never forgive her for it.
He looked around, drinking in the renewed expressions of horror on the faces of the crew. Even this, it seemed, was far too much for them—as well it should have been. "Now bear in mind what Cerberus had already done to me on Akuze," he said. "And bear in mind what happened to me on Mindoir. Nearly my entire family and most of my friends were slaughtered by slavers. Those who weren't were made slaves, had control chips planted in their brains. One of these people was my own father. My father was taken and sold into slavery and had a control chip planted in his brain, and he lived with it for six years before it was removed. When he reunited with me two years ago, he told me what it was like, said it was the worst kind of hell one could imagine. Now I don't doubt that the Illusive Man and Lawson would have known about this, considering that the Illusive Man's information network rivals the Shadow Broker's. They knew my history, all of it—and yet Lawson still considered putting a control chip in my head. She would have done to me what batarian slavers did to my father, to my friends! And not for any greater goal, but so I would be useful to Cerberus! It's telling that even the Illusive Man rejected that! As for you, you know all that I've done for the galaxy. Would me becoming a slave to Cerberus be worth it?"
Yet again, there was no answer. Several of the crew had moved from looking horrified to looking out-and-out disgusted, which was precisely what he wanted. Now it was time to drive the point home.
"I don't doubt there's more that I don't know of," he said finally. "But I dare any of you now to look me in the eye and say that Cerberus is a good organisation and that you have no doubts about it. I dare you. There's nothing good about them—they're lying, hypocritical, murdering bastards with no regard for ethics and no respect for life, human or alien. They're scum—the worst scum in the galaxy. And everyone on this ship who is a member of Cerberus, which is everyone apart from myself?—And I exclude myself because Cerberus trapped me in this situation and as soon as the Collectors are finished, I'm out, make no mistake—You are all are a part of that scum. Maybe you think that you're good people, but look at what you support by being here and saying you have no regrets. Torture. Cold-blooded murder. Highly unethical experiments. In theory, at least, human supremacy. You spit on all moral standards and on the graves of those who died genuinely defending humanity. And those of you who left the Alliance—Dr Chakwas! Engineer Donnelly! Engineer Daniels! Taylor! Flight Lieutenant Jeff 'Hell-yeah-I-joined-Cerberus' Moreau! You're worse. You spit on the Alliance, too, on everything for which it stands. And that you, Dr Chakwas and Jeff Moreau, could join Cerberus after everything you saw them do—that makes you the worst of all. I'd throw you off this ship myself, except your replacements would be Cerberus, too, and I need people I can put a semblance of trust in—but only a semblance, mind. I doubt I'll ever really trust you two again. As for the rest of you, you're my crew, so I'll look out for you, but so long as you remain a part of Cerberus, I don't trust you. Demoralising? Yes. But I'd prefer you be demoralised than living in ignorance of what your employers have done.
"And for those of you who think Cerberus has good intentions, you're naïve. You're foolish. And I hope that you learn the truth the easy way, rather than the hard way. I had to learn the hard way, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone." He turned away once again. "But, if you won't learn, then you can just keep using harsh methods to carry out Cerberus' noble objectives. I'm sure the 4th Brigade of the 6th Infantry Regiment and everyone else who died as a result of Cerberus' madness—indeed, even the whole of humanity—will thank you for it. Moreau, that's all."
There was another click, and Adrian smiled in grim satisfaction as the video showed up on his omni-tool. The next step would be sending it to the Alliance, particularly Hackett and Anderson, as well as the Council, his old squadmates, particularly Kaidan, Toombs, and his poor father. They needed to know the truth.
Chambers was in tears, as were several of the other crewmen, and the exceptions were pale as death and staring at each other, their expressions uniformly horrified. Usually, Adrian would have done his level best to comfort them, but this one time, he only smiled grimly at his handiwork. Lawson would probably kill him for this, and the Illusive Man would be no happier, but he didn't give half a damn what they thought, and it was done, regardless. The truth of Cerberus had been revealed to the crew. What remained was to turn their loyalty from the Illusive Man to himself.
And, as luck would have it, Adrian was rather good at winning people over.