Version 1.00 Notes: Written during a relentless cold. A little unsure of myself after having not written a full chapter in so long. Hoping to have positive feedback and improve upon future drafts. The dream sequence at the beginning came to my head after a frightening little dream of my own, but instead of doing pull-ups in three-gee, I finished up my workday and then wrote about it at the last minute before loading up the chapter. Hopefully it was a worthy addition. Same goes for the rest of the chapter.
Mission One: Deployment
Flames surrounded him, their heat pressing in closer by the second, the incineration of his flesh only moments away. All around him he heard the scream of those for whom it was already too late, a grim reminder of what was waiting for him at the end of this long, futile game of cat and mouse. No, not against the fires—the true enemy was a demon who rained not only fire, but death and slavery upon his home. The slavemasters and butchers with four black, beady eyes and ugly, flaring nostrils.
Evil was upon Mindoir again.
He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, looking for anyone who could help him, anything he could use to stop this senseless destruction. But the farther and faster he ran, the hotter the fires got, and the louder the screaming became. Farther and farther and hotter and louder, until each footfall was met with such din that he had to cover his ears to keep his head from shattering, and such heat that his shoes began to melt underneath him.
And then he rounded the corner, and saw his parents die again. His father had tried to protect them, his mother and him. But he was merely an agricultural worker; he was cut down like the grain they had only yesterday finished harvesting. Blood was everywhere, staining the blue grasses red. His mother wailed with grief and horror, and then the demons took her, too. Her head exploded, and he was covered head to toe in blood and brains and bits of skull. He wanted to scream, to cry, but he couldn't.
Then one of the demons tried to restrain him. They meant to drag him back to hell alive. He would be their puppet, living to serve. He would be forced to lift, to carry, and to push. When he was too tired to continue and fell to his knees, he would be beaten until he rose up and continued anyway, or else until he was a useless, bloody heap. Then he would die, and his soul would join those of his parents in eternal torment.
"NO!"
He lashed out with what he thought was his arm, and the demons flew away. They crumpled to the bloodstained ground, all broken but one. He didn't know what he had done. No power like that had ever been in his family. Both he and the remaining demon faced each other, stunned at what he had done.
But this was only temporary. Slowly, he felt the rage begin to return. He didn't care where his power came from. He only wanted the demon to go away. He cocked his arm to swing again.
The demon's head exploded, a sniper round doing to the alien skull what the pistol had done to his mother. Then he was being dragged away by another human. His voice was sympathetic and comforting, but urgent. They needed to get away from this place. A quick escape was needed now, before the demons came back. He let himself be hauled away by his wrist, too stunned to be angry at the man for depriving him of his final revenge.
Again, this was temporary. When the man brought him to his ship, insisting that they leave right away, he caught sight of the demons again. He hated them! He wanted to rend them, gut them! He struggled and broke free of the man's grasp and ran to them. The power built in his body, coiling and pulsing and begging to be used. His family demanded vengeance.
But the demons were ready this time. They came together as one, four-eyed devils locking arms against him. Then they merged, their bodies forming into the true demon: a massive, black hulk with a sleek metal skin, legs like a centipede's, and eyes burning brighter than suns. Too late, he realized he faced his end. Enormous, cold metal fingers closed around him, slowly crushing him. His bones snapped and pushed through his skin, some spearing his organs. His blood ran out over the dirt of his broken home, and as his life ebbed away he heard the devil speak.
"You cannot stop us."
SKEPSIS SYSTEM – 2186 CE
Shepard sat bolt upright, cold sweat making his bedsheets cling to his body. Frantically he glanced left, then right, his eyes darting over the room for any sign of the Reaper or its underlings. Then his gaze settled on the bedside alarm clock, which read 02:43 and was currently playing a slow, soothing orchestral theme with the volume set low. It was the only source of light in the room, save the soft glow of the fish tank heaters on the wall to his right. Even this dim illumination, he could see that he was alone.
That dream again, he told himself, shaking his head violently to get the images out of his head. The dream had followed him all the way from Mindoir. It haunted him almost every night in his early years, and though time and focus on training had buried it deep in his subconscious, from time to time it would resurface.
The exact events would differ between instances, but the pattern was almost always the same. He would be thrust into a dying world, with fire and demons all around him. Sometimes the demons were batarian, like on Mindoir or Elysium. Sometimes the victims he saw murdered were his parents. Other times they were geth or krogan and ripping Ashley to pieces just before the bomb on Virmire went off. He'd even watched Collectors tearing apart members of his current crew, the ones who hadn't died yet. In the end, however, he always found himself forced to watch them die, powerless to stop it, and then he'd run away until he could run no more, and charge headlong into the demons only to be completely dismembered himself.
Since his resurrection, however, one thing had been added to his dream that he had not seen before. The Reaper, bringer of annihilation, had begun showing up at the end of every dream. It was never the same one, and its precise method of destroying him was always different. They had two things in common—it was always a Reaper, and the feeling of his body slowly dying was always horrifyingly vivid.
Shepard rolled out of bed and cued the lights, soft white brilliance banishing the darkness back into space. It was very early by ship's time, but he refused to go back to sleep with Harbinger and its kin waiting for him beneath the pillows.
Several hours later, he had suspended himself from a conveniently placed pipe hanger located in his private restroom, which he'd found only a month ago while making repairs to the ship. He had not had any convenient place to add pull-ups to his fitness routine beforehand. Now, though, all he needed to do was temporarily remove a ceiling panel and his handhold was ready for use. So long as he cleaned up the perspiration on the floor afterward, the small compartment was an adequate place to perform his workout.
Sixty-five... Sixty-six...
His muscles were screaming at him, and a fairly large puddle had accumulated on the floor. With the gravity generator set to create three times the standard weight in his quarters, just standing up required tremendous effort. An average human would have found it nearly impossible to do even one pull-up, and likely given up after a few tries.
Sixty-seven... Sixty-eight...
He embraced the pain. It was a verification of the energy being released from his body, of stresses being burned away and forgotten in a sea of lactic acid. Though primitive, this momentary distraction from the nearly constant mental strains of his unsung struggle was nonetheless more effective than almost every alternative.
For the last eight weeks he'd run a veritable gauntlet of challenges in every corner of the galaxy. Miranda and the Lazarus Project had forced life back into his body after his death at the hands of the Collectors, and he had not been awake for a minute before he'd been thrown to the wolves. No sooner had he escaped the compromise of the facility where he'd been reborn than he was standing before the Illusive Man, leader of the human-supremacist terror cell Cerberus. The Man sent him off in a brand new ship with a freshly handpicked crew to gather forces for an attack on the very group that had previously killed him.
Shepard had fought the Reapers' puppets before in the form of the synthetic geth, but the Collectors had had all of the advanced technology of the dead Protheans and several hundred generations of genetic and cybernetic repurposing. Not only that, but the chase through the Terminus Systems—where laws and authority were decided by who had the most and best muscle—had been fraught with perils completely unrelated to the Collector threat. Mercenaries, slavers, drug runners, extortionists, and every type of thug and villain imaginable populated that space. Shepard witnessed atrocities that almost made him think the Reapers would be right to wipe everyone out.
Sixty-nine... Thud.
At last, his hands could grip the pipe hanger no longer, and he dropped back onto the floor, panting. His arms burned with fatigue, and he could barely manage to lift them above his head, but he forced himself to do so. It made catching his breath easier, and he needed to wipe the sweat from his brow before the salt stung his eyes. Focusing his will, he slowly but steadily brought his respiration and heartbeat down to resting rate.
When it was done, he let his arms fall to his sides and turned to examine himself in the mirror. An extremely well-muscled, shirtless, sweaty, and somewhat bruised thirty-two year old man blinked back at him. He was not a narcissist—it had been said he wouldn't even bother to groom himself if the entire galaxy didn't have him under their collective microscopes—but on those rare occasions when he did stop to look at himself, he was always overwhelmed by how radically different he was from the last time. In his previous encounter with the reflective glass, he'd only just finished his escape from the Lazarus facility. He remembered marveling at how good a job they'd done in his reconstruction. Aside from a few ghastly scars through which his cybernetic implants were visible, he'd looked almost exactly the same as he'd been at his death.
Of course, there had been numerous subtle changes. His nose had retained the same shape, but was set slightly higher on his face. His jaw had protruded just a little bit more prominently. Much to his amusement, he had found that Miranda had taken the liberty of having his stubbly beard shaved off, leaving only a vertical stripe running down his chin, and had somehow managed to turn his natural hair color from a light brown to something much more reddish. The most significant changes, however, went beyond the superficial. His L3 biotic implants had been replaced with prototype L5n's, and the synthetic fibers woven through all parts of his musculoskeletal system made him stronger and more durable than was possible for an average human.
This time when he looked himself over, Shepard had to admit that, despite the failures he was forced to see in his dreams, he'd come much farther than he'd ever expected to go since his departure from Mindoir, and not merely physically. Despite the pain of losing his family, he'd recovered and gone on to save more lives than were lost, with fewer and fewer casualties on every successive mission. On Elysium his kill zone had been littered with almost four times as many batarian attackers as human victims. On Feros, he'd lost a total of three civilians. In the battle on Virmire, the only death he could claim responsibility for was Ashley Williams, and then only because the geth had given him the impossible choice. Now, two years later, he had just taken his squad through a previously unnavigable mass relay to a region where no non-Collector vessel had ever survived, reduced the Collectors' entire base to irradiated rubble, and lost not a single life. In the last eight weeks, through tedium and hardships that would have destroyed a lesser man a hundred times over, his scars—both physical and emotional—had nonetheless healed.
Running a hand over the relatively smooth skin of his face once, he shook off the fatigue of his workout and offered his mirror image a small, tired smile. The war was nowhere near over. Now, however, for the first time, he was finally starting to feel ready for it.
Of course, he wasn't going to win anything by standing around looking at his reflection. Nodding to himself, he turned away from the mirror and began to undress while he forced his thoughts to turn to his next task. Repairs to the Normandy had just been completed a galactic standard day previously, concluding a long and costly process that covered everything from electrical load centers and support systems right up to the superstructure and mass effect core. With his ship at full capability again, it was time to start preparing for the Reaper fleet. Deprived of the Citadel relay that was their normal path into the galaxy and having lost their primary agents, there was nothing left for the hyper-advanced death machines to do except slowly advance from Dark Space under their own power. This would delay them, but not for long. In time, hundreds or even thousands of ships would descend upon the Milky Way, each one powerful enough to wipe out half of the Citadel's defense forces.
The galaxy needed a fleet—a big one.
Naked, Shepard stepped under the showerhead and turned on the hot water, his mind working at a mile-a-minute pace. Possible allies danced through his head, as did the numerous obstacles to recruiting them to his cause. As the endorphins released during his workout began to wear off he became acutely aware of how tired he was, but he ignored it. After the Normandy made a brief stop to replenish fuel and food stores, he planned to make a galaxy-wide call to arms before the Citadel Council, which would be no easy task. Knowing what to say, as well as how and to whom to say it, was crucial. He needed to plan.
So engrossed was he in his thoughts and in mechanically scrubbing his skin clean that he didn't even hear the door to his cabin slide open. It was another half-minute before he registered the footsteps outside the bathroom. Barely distracted, he spared enough time to call out to his unknown guest, uttering only three words before returning to work.
"In the shower."
To his surprise, his guest did not immediately leave, but instead opened the bathroom door. Shepard whipped around, too bewildered to think of covering himself. Then he blinked his eyes, his confusion mounting higher as he saw that the intruder had hidden out of sight behind the doorframe to the right. He could see a distorted shadow, but no body.
Then he heard a faint snap-hiss from around the corner, and realization dawned. He grinned broadly, then put the soap down and stood waiting, simply letting the warm water rush over him. "What are you hiding from?" he joked. "Don't tell me you're still nervous."
A two-toed boot flew at his head in answer, but it was thrown softly and he easily caught it. He tossed it away lightly and crossed his arms over his chest, smirking. The guest remained out of sight and continued to undress, throwing a helmet visor, a quilted shawl, and a form-fitting enviro-suit into an untidy pile on the floor. Only when everything had been removed did Tali step through the doorway and join him under the steaming water.
"You know," Shepard said, "You didn't have to wait until the middle of the day. I would've been happy to see you last night."
"With Joker pushing the drive core twice as hard as he should be less than a day after we finish repairing it? I would have been happy to see you, too, but I had to save us all from death by inadvertent drive discharge."
Even as she half-complained, Tali wrapped her small frame tightly around Shepard's, intertwining their legs and nuzzling into the crook of his neck. Her body temperature was usually lower than his, and she was always eager for his warmth. Shepard was still getting used to feeling three fingers on his bare back as opposed to five, but other than that he was all too happy to reciprocate.
"Blame me, not Joker," he told her. "I told him to get us to the Citadel as fast as he could. I forgot how literally he takes it when he gets told to 'floor it.'"
"Yet now you complain when I come to see you the first chance I get. Hypocrisy isn't a good way to keep the loyalty of your crew, Captain," she teased.
Shepard reached down and pinched her bottom playfully, causing her to squirm against him in a way that he found most gratifying. He merely smirked when she punched his shoulder in retaliation—it had been well worth it. "I'm not a hypocrite. My schedule's on the ship's intranet. You knew I was busy."
"You think I give a damn? I've worked hard for nine days. I've earned one night with my boyfriend."
Shepard laughed. Tali was always generous and cooperative—it was part of her quarian nature—but since they had spent their first night together, she had started adopting more aggressive behaviors whenever she happened to be naked. Perhaps it came from the thrill of being free of her enviro-suit for a few hours. Maybe she did it to make the most of her time with him. Or maybe it was simply a part of who she was, suppressed by a lifetime of necessity for isolation and selflessness that briefly flared to life when it was just the two of them.
Whichever it happened to be, Shepard didn't much care; regardless of the reason, it made being her lover that much more fun.
"Fair enough," he conceded. Spinning suddenly, he lifted her from the ground until her eyes were level with his and pinned her gently to the nearby wall. "Your move, Miss vas Normandy."
As the steam engulfed them and flooded the room, Tali laid into him like a predator devouring a fresh kill. Shepard let her set the pace, for now. He'd re-assert his dominance before they were through.
Hell, he thought, I could use a break. Planning the salvation of the galaxy could wait a little longer.
CITADEL - SAME DATE
After having served on the Normandy SR-1, Kaidan Alenko thought the Alliance would eventually either decide his service was outstanding enough to give him a ship of his own or that his relationship to the wayward Commander Shepard was grounds to bury him in some unimportant desk job. At first, it had looked like the latter. Then, after two years, he'd found himself on the colony of Horizon—officially, as a representative of the Alliance in a sector that had no love for them, and unofficially with the intent of confronting Shepard over his rumored relationship with Cerberus. He knew he'd been used, but he had the sense not to complain. After that, his performance began to reward him with better duties, and it seemed he was on his way towards prospective captaincy.
However, he never imagined that his career would take a turn like this. Less than half a year later, he was standing in an Alliance docking bay in front of a crew of about two dozen, poised to make the initial boarding and inspection of his own ship: The Normandy-class frigate SSV Bull Run. He was to take her out for shakedown the following morning, and immediately after would proceed with his first command mission.
The decision, as Councilor Anderson had told him, came as a result of Alenko's unique experience in matters related to this particular mission. Though his former Captain was not authorized to say more, Kaidan did understand that this undoubtedly meant involvement of one or more Reapers. Given that their destination was supposed to be the human colony on Elysium—a colony which, as the extranet and Citadel newsnet had begun spouting this morning, had had its main spaceport as well as the Shepard Memorial Plaza and everything in between targeted for what was considered a terrorist attack—he also had reason to assume that the Reapers had help. Not the Geth or the Collectors; those had been all but wiped out. Even so, it was certain to get ugly.
Which was why Kaidan was extremely uncomfortable at the moment. Shepard had succeeded because of his steadfast determination, his open-mindedness, and a personal magnetism powerful enough to hold together a team of aliens from cultures as different as apples and oranges and gain the trust of each. Even with supposedly human-supremacist Cerberus personnel on board, Shepard had crewed the Normandy SR-2 with an even larger and more diverse crew than the original ship, and gone off into the unknown with them to eradicate the enigmatic Collectors, proving Alenko's perception of his betrayal completely wrong. Kaidan had no real prejudice against aliens, and he was a devoted Alliance soldier as well as a talented one. When it came down to it, however, he didn't believe he was made of the same stuff.
Still, he had his duty: try really, really hard to emulate Commander Shepard, and find out what it was the Reapers were up to this time.
"Ten-hut!"
The Bull Run's crew snapped to attention at the order of their Chief as Kaidan approached. Kaidan recognized the tall, bald, and stern-looking NCO as Gunnery Chief Garth Thompson, whom he'd served with before. Of course, he thought. Anderson would've seen to it that I got one or two familiar faces in the mix. "Weren't they supposed to put you on ice for that time with the Admiral's daughter?" he asked, returning Garth's crisp salute with a small smirk.
"They tried to, sir," the Chief answered somewhat smugly. "Fortunately, Tara has very talented friends. The vid-mails were off the extranet before her father or any lawyers got hold of them."
Kaidan's smirk became more noticeable for a second before it disappeared and he let his arm drop to his side as he proceeded with the inspection of his new crew. It was a respectable bunch, with a healthy mix of nervous new blood and gritty old salts, all with impeccable uniforms and perfectly-shined boots. Every one of them seemed to know and respect him, at least from what they'd seen on public channels.
A few more familiar faces passed him by. Serviceman Chad Glacier, similar to Chief Thompson in build but easygoing and mischievous by contrast. Flight Lieutenant Jessica Wood, or "Twig," whose call sign was supposed to be a play on her last name rather than a reference to her thin, wispy build and cedar-colored hair. Corporal Lawrence Meers, a stocky blond marine who had been much more nervous the last time Kaidan had seen him. Two or three more faces stood out as well, though none that Kaidan could put a name to.
One such soldier was at the very end of the line, a young, small female with auburn hair tied back in a neat bun. She looked fresh out of high school, and despite her perfect military bearing she looked disconcertingly out of place in her uniform. Kaidan gave her the once-over he gave every serviceman, lingering just a little longer on her face. The deep brown eyes and the facial structure bore a striking resemblance to someone Kaidan had known before, but the name wasn't coming to him off the top of his head. Silently he swore, wishing he'd brought the roster with him. "What's your name, soldier?" he asked—calmly as he could, so as not to betray his interest.
"Williams, sir," she answered, her voice like a bell going off in his mind. "Private Second Class Sarah Williams."
Williams, he echoed in his head. Ash's little sister. I should've known. Kaidan wondered what the Council and the Alliance were playing at, thrusting an emotional landmine like this into his crew. He and Ashley had not been romantically involved—she had favored Commander Shepard in that sense—but the two of them and the Commander had been tight, especially in the days leading up to the Virmire mission.
Of course, he also had to wonder what had led such a girl into the service—and to accepting this assignment—of her own will? By Ashley's own admittance, her whole family was blacklisted in the Alliance military, their grandfather being the only human ever to surrender a colony to an alien force. Not only that, but Sarah didn't look like she belonged here. He knew she'd taken Aikido and was capable of defending herself against ruffians and pushy boyfriends, but did that make her ready for war at such a young age?
It had to have been Virmire, he thought. Ashley had given her life to ensure that the bomb went off and destroyed Saren Arterius's krogan cloning facility, while the rest of the team rescued Kaidan and the salarian Special Tasks Group operatives he'd help lead. As a result, she'd been postumously awarded the highest honors of both the turian and salarian governments, which must have improved the reputation of her family. Her noble death had probably spurred her youngest sister's enlistment out of a desire to live up to her sister's example—or to avenge her death. Either way, Kaidan wasn't certain how having her on the team was going to play out.
Williams seemed to notice his discomfort, even if she couldn't guess the reason. "Is there something wrong, sir?"
"As you were, Williams," he said quickly, turning from her and marching back to Chief Thompson to avoid engaging her further. He knew he'd have to work with her, which meant he'd eventually have to talk to her, but before that he needed to sort out his thoughts... and before even that, he still had a ship to shake down.
"Orders, sir?" Garth asked, ready and able as always.
"Get everyone aboard and start the initial systems check," Kaidan told him. "If we can, I want her flying sometime tonight. No sense waiting around if the enemy is who I think it is."
"Aye, sir. Crew, fall out! To your stations!"
Everyone eagerly picked up and, one by one, began to board the Bull Run. Most newer servicemen gave the airlock an awe-struck glance before going through, unable to believe their luck in assignment and that this state-of-the-art vessel would be their new home. The older crew simply shouldered their bags and strode aboard without a second look. Kaidan watched them go, trying not to let his gaze or his thoughts linger too long on Sarah.
Fortunately, she wasn't the only thing bothering him, so the task was quite easy. He frowned, realizing that one final crewman had not arrived. No, not a crewman, he corrected himself—a partner and vital personnel to the success of the mission, but not officially part of the ship's company. Kaidan had never met the man, and reportedly few had, though he was rumored to be an exceptionally talented fighter and able to get into places most couldn't even approach within a hundred clicks.
This meant that Kaidan didn't trust him, but he had no choice. The order had come from the Council itself, and even Anderson had agreed that it was in their best interests to take him along. Though by his admission not even the Council was sure that he was totally on their side, he was more than a capable warrior and tactician, and he supposedly had experience with the Reapers and their pawns that most people lacked. Kaidan had argued—politely, of course—out of reasonable concern that he couldn't trust anyone that Anderson wouldn't trust and that he had his own experience with the Reapers, but he'd known from the beginning that it was a losing battle. Like Williams, he'd just have to learn to put up with it.
At least I'm still in command of the ship, he thought. The specialist was supposed to guide and oversee the mission, but the decisions would ultimately fall to Kaidan. If his guest didn't like it, he was more than welcome to disembark at the nearest port and do things his own way, on someone else's ship.
Williams passed him, and looked him over ponderously. She saw where he was looking—towards the docking bay doors. Correctly, she deduced what he was thinking about. "Sir," she asked, "Wasn't there supposed to be a Spectre with us?"
Kaidan was about to gently ask her to pose her questions to her NCO when he was stopped by a metallic grip on his unarmored shoulder. Whirling around, he found himself face to face with thin air.
"Settle down, Commander Alenko."
The voice came from in front of him, but Kaidan didn't see who had spoken until he materialized, the air shimmering around him as his cloaking mechanism deactivated. All of a sudden, the Commander was face-to-chin with a tall, fully armored and helmeted figure whose gear was painted jet-black with navy blue trim. This was all that Kaidan could use to describe it, for it was unlike any armor he'd seen before, and definitely not standard-issue. The chestpiece was slightly bulkier than one usually saw, and there were penetrations for more than the standard number of subsystems. Armoring the shoulders were two spaulders, one fairly standard-sized and angular, the left one twice as large and rounded, painted entirely blue. An odd, ornate strip of cloth was strung from it and trailed behind him like a blue-and-white patterned scarf.
The helmet, though, was the strangest piece of all. At first it looked like a modified version taken from one of the new Kestrel suits Kaidan had started seeing a few months ago, with traditional transparent visor replaced by a solid plate with many built-in cameras that transmitted visual data as well as infrared and ladar scans to an internal Heads-Up-Display. The Kestrel helmet, however, left the mouth uncovered, while this one had a rebreather mask fitted into it, completely obscuring the wearer's face. In addition, it had an inlaid antenna on the right-rear plating whose purpose Kaidan could not discern.
Combined with the stranger's manner of appearance, the overall effect was to cause all unboarded crew to stop dead in their tracks and stare, and Kaidan to recoil in surprise. The stranger seemed to find this amusing; he laughed from behind his helmet, the mask distorting his voice so that it came out as a deep baritone with the gravelly undertone of one speaking through a radio. "Scared you good, didn't I?"
Kaidan appreciated the Spectre's sense of humor as much as he appreciated the circumstances that led to his assignment to the ship. It was impossible to tell whether the man behind the mask was human or batarian—it might even have been drell, depending on whether the middle two fingers moved together or not. Regardless, the Commander was not happy with his sudden intrusion, and it showed through in his voice. "Surprised me, for sure. I hope you don't plan on greeting the pilot that way; Twig might get up and break your faceplate."
"Or you might, eh?" the Spectre asked. "I can tell that we've already gotten off to a bad start, and the Councilor said you might be mistrustful. Thought opening with a little practical joke might help break the ice, so to speak."
"I appreciate the thought," Kaidan lied, "But I'd prefer to stay focused on getting the ship ready to go. You know the mission—it's not going to be a picnic."
All trace of humor vanished from the Spectre's voice. "Fair enough. Name's Monarch, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. I'll be your guide and Council Representative on this mission." He held out his hand to Kaidan.
Warily, Kaidan shook the metal-clad appendage while staring up into the expressionless faceplate. "You could take that off and greet me in person," he commented.
But Monarch simply shrugged, reaching up and tapping the helmet lightly. "I would if I could," he said. "But that could be hazardous to my health, so I'll pass. No offense."
"What does that mean?" Kaidan inquired, growing even more wary and releasing his hand.
The Spectre just shrugged again and turned to walk into the ship's airlock, apparently not caring if Kaidan followed him. He did, and the two of them made their way into Bull Run's CIC.
The Bull Run was even more a magnificent ship than the Normandy SR1 was, from what Kaidan remembered. The soft blue and grey color of the interior was familiar and felt like home, and the layout was the same modified turian-style setup as before, with the command panel aft of the rest of the crew. The interfaces were much the same, as well. Differences were apparent, however, in that the diagram of the ship hovering near the center showed marked effort to upgrade the armor and guns, and in the several additional instrument panels and an upgraded power distribution configuration that reflected recent technological gains in Alliance ship design. Kaidan thought he could scarcely have done better for a first command assignment.
Of course, he'd probably need it.
"They tell you who the target is on this little errand they sent us on?" Monarch asked. He was also marveling at the details of the ship's many wonders, though he kept his mind focused on the mission. If nothing else, Kaidan would credit the man on his professionalism.
"Terrorists," he replied curtly. "But given the class of ship and the personnel they're sending, and the path the attackers were reported to have taken, I'm positive it's more than a few angry batarian radicals." He brought up a map of the colony as he spoke, dragging his finger from Elysium's spaceport directly to Shepard Memorial Plaza. In the corner of his eye he saw Sarah Williams watching them from her guard post across the CIC, but he redirected his attention quickly. "Though, given their choice of targets one can assume they tried pretty hard to make it look like it was. Shepard's heroics really rattled the batarians."
Monarch nodded. "Good eye. Now, what if I told you that you're right, and that the attackers were human?"
"Human?" Kaidan questioned. Then, he had an idea. "Cerberus?"
"They might have a hand in this, somehow," Monarch replied, "But this next tidbit all but rules out direct involvement. Our 'terrorists' were affected by nano-technology that transformed them into bio-synthetic hybrids. While I'm not one to make blind assumptions, my guess is that it's Reaper technology at work."
"What makes you so sure?" Kaidan asked. In reality, he admitted it was a good theory, but he wanted to hear the Spectre's thinking. The Council said he had first-hand Reaper experience, but he'd believe it when Monarch showed him some proof.
Monarch answered by bringing up an image with his omni-tool. The picture was blurry and distorted, but the subject was undeniably human, albeit with a plethora of tubes and wires sticking out of him and two bloody shotgun wounds. Next to that, he toyed with the monitor, running bystander footage of the attack on Elysium that seemed to have been taken from a high balcony. Though farther away, the picture was much more focused, and the same tubes and wires seemed to be running up and down the limbs of five or six adult humans wreaking havoc within the crowds. Bodies were flying everywhere, some in more than one piece, from biotic attacks, physical beatings, and gunfire.
"This fellow here," he said, indicating the still picture, "Was Paul Grayson. He was a Cerberus test subject. They injected him with what the reports called 'self-replicating nanides,' which were meant to repurpose him into a tool of our favorite harbingers of the apocolypse."
"Where did you get that?" Kaidan asked incredulously. "Nobody I know from the Alliance saw anything like that."
Monarch tapped his helmet. "Spectre, remember?"
Kaidan had to try very, very hard not to roll his eyes. "All right. I'll take your word for it. But are you sure it's linked to this attack?"
"That, my friend," Monarch answered, sounding pleased, "Is what we're going to find out. That, and to see if this guy here..." he highlighted and zoomed in on one of the attackers, who appeared to be leading the assault, "... is who we think he is."
Even squinting, it was difficult to make out the leader's face. But once Kaidan's eyes adjusted and he got a good look, he found himself taking a step back, blinking, and looking again, before shaking his head and running a hand through his black hair in stark disbelief.
"No," he thought out loud. "It can't be."
Though Monarch offered neither confirmation nor denial, Sarah Williams, in her small corner of the CIC, bit her lip.