It was an early afternoon on the first day of Illium winter. The heat outside has died down to 30 degrees Celsius and I was eagerly looking forward to my daily post-work walk. It's always unbearably hot on Illium outside, but in the carefully controlled micro-environment of my office it is not at all noticeable. A good motivator to work more hours per day. I have just finished with another patient - a salarian suffering from kleptomania due to a certain childhood trauma, I cannot share the details: doctor-patient confidentiality is extremely important in psychological therapy. But it did interfere with his work as a salesman of red sand and expensive electronics components, to an alarming degree.

"Doctor, your last patient for today has arrived," Shirala informed me over the intercom.

"Capitan Kyle? Let him in," I pull up the file he filled in over extranet on to my Omni-tool and proceed toward the door. My Asari intern-assistant Shirala opens the door, letting him in, before him and we shake hands exchanging greeting:

"Alfred Kyle, ex-Alliance intelligence," he extends his hand.

"Doctor Leonidas Paraklamenos, nice to meet you!" I shake his hand feeling the strong military grip.

"That's a very weird door you have here," he looks back over his shoulder.

"Yes, yes indeed." I smile, "it's a wooden door, Oak as a matter of fact. As you can see my office lacks a lot modern electronic equipment. I find it creates a more relaxing atmosphere for my patients," I gesture my hand around the office, pointing out 21st century style leather armchair and sofa, glass coffee desk, heavy wooden office desk and a bookshelf full of hardcover paper books. He follows my hand with awe. A reaction I am aiming at whenever I meet my patients for the first time here. I offer him a seat on one of the armchairs and we begin our first session:

"Before we begin I think you should know, you have nothing to worry about in terms of confidentiality. Doctor-patient confidentiality is even more important here on Illium - you will not believe what kind of people I have as my patients sometimes!" I go for a little ice-breaker, managing to pull a little smile out of him. "I read what you submitted over the extranet. Can I ask you a few general questions to make sure I understood everything correctly?"

"Of coarse, go ahead,"

"So, Captain , honorable discharge after 25 years of service. Alliance intelligence, I imagine your latest position would be a managerial role? Is that correct?"

"Yes I retired a few years ago. My last post was a desk job in the headquarters,"

"And before that you were a field agent?" I inquire.

"Not exactly, I was sort of the intelligence 'clean up crew'. My job was to extract all useful info from taken enemy documents and files. Usually on sight, after the fight,"

"I see," I covertly switched on a behavior monitoring software, every therapist's best friend. "You indicated that you wanted to talk about some event that happened 'quite a while back'" I read off the file.

"Yes I want to... need to, talk about one of my missions from the war..."

"From the war?" I raised an eye brow, "That was over 20 years ago! What made you come here only now?"

"Nothing really, I always wanted to but I never could..." his eyes drifted away towards the bookshelves.

"Never could bring yourself to it?" I dragged him out of his daydream.

"No, I simply couldn't. It was classified until yesterday,"

"Really? I haven't heard yet. Usually when Alliance declassifies something from the war, it makes headlines just about anywhere," I flashed a look at the behavior analyzer, it showed no signs of lying or concealment of any sort. Only slight nervousness associated with traumatic memories. Now my interest was genuinely hooked.

"They tried to keep low profile. Even now it could cause some minor public disturbance," he muttered.

"Well, how about you walk me through exactly what happened then?" I pulled up the note taker.

"Well, it was a few months after the start of the war. I was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant and transferred over to the intelligence right before the attack on Earth," his eyes drifted off once again, no doubt remembering the days of his youth.

"Please continue," I prompted.

"Oh! Hm! Yes. As one of the lowest officer ranks my job was working in a squad with other such officers under a command of a Staff Lieutenant or a Lieutenant Commander. I was assigned Cerberus specialization. I would be grouped in a squad with whoever else was available and flown over to the whatever Cerberus base, ship or outpost was taken over or blown up to try and extract any and all information on their activities and supposed goals,"

"You said you were 'assigned a specialization', did you have any choice in the matter?" I interrupted.

"You have to understand, the situation was desperate. Some minor liberties had to be given up for the better cause," he replied. "Yes, I see..." I replied, jotting down some notes.

"So something happened on one of those mission? Why don't you tell me about it?"

"Alright, so..." he looked away gathering his thoughts, "We were deployed to this facility after Commander Shepard cleaned it out. Maybe you heard of it: Sanctuary?" he looked at me.

"Sanctuary?" I tried to remember, "You mean that Alliance refugee camp which was occupied by Cerberus and later liberated by Commander Shepard?" I looked back at him.

"That is just what they told the public. In reality it was a Cerberus ran facility all along. They were pretending to be Alliance, even had the uniforms and coloured shuttles, to lure in desperate refugees. Thankfully, Commander Shepard shut it down before it too long,"

"Very interesting... so what happened to you there?"

He looked away and continued: "We were the first on the ground, besides the team that were sent to secure the place. We went in through the front entrance. I was assigned to hack and retrieve data from the mainframe of the facilities supercomputer. Of coarse all the import data was already scrubbed or in process. I managed to upload a virus that prevented further deletion. I was able to save some shipping and inventory manifests, inflow chart and predictions graphs as well as lab notes and some copies of messages sent from the facility." He stopped and looked at me, tapping away at the Omani-tools holographic display.

"Oh! Don't stop on my account. Please continue," I urged him whiteout stopping, "just making some important notes..."

"I opened the files up one by one. The facility was large but you would not get the true size of the operation until you saw the numbers: they had 10,000 Alliance uniforms for their stuff and guards to wear, and that's just for those that would be seen by the refugees. But besides that there was absolutely nothing else in any other outstanding amounts. They had no large stockpiles of food and water - they weren't; planning to keep the refugees there; they had no extra Cerberus uniforms or guns - there weren't planning on recruiting them; in fact the documents indicated that the whole facility was designed to work with a set amount of people for about 10 years even with no outside contact! Meanwhile the reports indicated that nearly a million refugees, women and children, have entered the facility and the predictions all stated that the rate of inflow would only increase with time!" The behaviour analyser started picking up disturbances and spikes in agitation and anger.

"So what were they doing there?" I tried to keep the conversation going.

"I also asked myself that question... and that's when I opened the research notes... I am no biologist and at first I thought that it's coded or something but then I played the attached vids... They were transforming refugees into reaper husks and trying to control them! Yes all the refugees, women and children included!" His fist smacked the cupboard on his left, as my jaw dropped wide open. The old soldier, already slightly red faced from rage and anger, turned completely red and jumped to his feet, and walked towards the door rubbing the underside of his fist.

"S-sorry about that... I... I have to go?" he muttered. I just sat there. The news hit me hard.

"Same time tomorrow?" I finally managed a few words as he slammed his head into the oak door expecting it to open as a normal automatic.

"Yeah, yeah..." he pulled on the handle, now rubbing his face, and disappeared into the hallway.

"Doctor...? Doctor Paraklamenos?" Shirala's voiced called me ver the intercom.

"Yes?"

"What happened in there? I heard a loud sound and now is leaving. He hasn't payed. Do you want me to stasis him?"

"No it's alright, hold your biotics. Just put him down for the same time tomorrow," I said walking over to the window. I reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of expensive Cognac. I kept it for special occasions.

"But you have an appointment with the turia-"

"Cancel it!" I took a sip, not bothering with the glasses. And to think: I had friends who went to Sanctuary; even I was pondering the idea for a time, even saved up for a shuttle ride!

It was the first time I ever missed my post-work walk.