Kaidan entered the room at the bottom of the stairs, expecting to find the Illusive Man. Instead, he found himself in an empty room with bare walls and a ring inscribed on the floor. As he moved inside the ring, a grid rose up to envelop him, and he finally found himself looking at the Illusive Man. He sat, legs crossed, cigarette in one hand, in front of a backdrop displaying an enormous star. Other than his chair, the room was empty, yet it was expansive. The Illusive Man idly shook the ash from the end of his cigarette, then addressed Kaidan.
"Hello, Lieutenant."
"What do you want with me?" If he wasn't getting anywhere without speaking to the Illusive Man, he was going to keep things as brief as possible. He was becoming desperate to contact Shepard.
"I see you're not one for pleasantries."
"Pleasantries are fine. But I'm not going to play games here. You spent a lot of time and a lot of money to bring me back here, you had to have a good reason."
"Understandable. I'll keep this brief, then. Humanity is standing at the brink, facing the biggest threat it's ever known."
"You mean the Reapers."
"Exactly. Now, the Council's trying their best to sweep what happened under the rug. Trying to pretend that Sovereign was an isolated threat. But you and I, Lieutenant, we know different. So you're right; you are here for a reason. I have a job for you. Human colonies are being attacked, entire populations disappearing. They work fast, Alenko. Whoever is doing this has access to technology far beyond anything we're aware of."
"And that's why you think the Reapers are involved."
The Illusive Man nodded.
"That still doesn't explain what you want with me. I'm just a soldier. I'm nobody. You could hire an army for what it took to bring me back."
"You occupy a unique position, Lieutenant. You worked closely with Commander Shepard. You're intimately familiar with her methods. That's the kind of insight we need to oppose the Reapers."
He should have known this had something to do with Shepard. He wasn't buying the Illusive Man's reasoning, though. "Then why me? Why not her?"
"I would, of course, prefer to have Commander Shepard herself working on this, but she's been a difficult person to reach lately."
Considering their alternative was plucking a frozen corpse out of the sky and reviving it, Kaidan had to believe that difficulty was relative. They needed him because Shepard had already turned them down. They were looking for bait to bring her into the fold. Well, he wasn't about to let Cerberus get their claws into her. And if that meant sticking around, and, nominally at least, doing what they wanted, then so be it.
"If what you're telling me about these colonies is true, I'll be willing to look into it."
"Understood. I'd hardly expect you to buy into this without evidence. I've got a shuttle waiting to depart for Freedom's Progress; it was the last colony to be hit. You'll be taking Miranda and Jacob with you to investigate, and see if you can turn up who's behind it. I do hope we find some evidence to work with, but if you're still not convinced, we can part ways and that will be the end of it."
"You'd really just let me go that easily?"
"I'm nothing if not a man of my word, Alenko."
Their current system was linked directly by mass relay to that of Freedom's Progress, but they still had over an hour's travel time before they arrived. Kaidan had planned to spend the journey in silence, but curiosity-and, admittedly, confusion-got the better of him. "Miranda, I'd like to find out a little more about project Lazarus. What all was involved? Is there anything I should be aware of?"
Miranda smiled greedily at his question, like she'd won a battle and was about to partake in the spoils. He hated the feeling that he was giving into her, but he needed to know, to understand. "Well, your skeletal structure was mostly intact, but most of the rest had to be reconstructed. Organs rebuilt, skin regrown, blood vessels... those were trickier."
"And all that I can almost believe, but brain tissue needs oxygen to survive, and it doesn't grow back; once it's dead that's it."
"Yes, and the brain was the hard part. I'd speculated beforehand on how we might revive it, but it was all theoretical until you came along. Nonetheless, despite what you believe, we were able to grow new tissue and re-stimulate the nerves, and the evidence that it worked is sitting right in front of me. Your memories appear to be intact, and Jacob tells me even your new biotic implant is functioning properly."
Instinctively, Kaidan's hand flew to the base of his skull. "New implant? No more L2?"
Miranda nodded. "I thought you'd be pleased to hear that. Yes, that antique is long gone. You've been fitted with a top-of-the-line L5 model.
He frowned. "The L5's just a prototype."
"Two years ago it was just a prototype. Now they're just very expensive, very rare, but extremely well-tested technology. Regardless, you're carrying a very sophisticated piece of hardware around in your brain." The shuttle's alarm system began to sound. "We're approaching Freedom's Progress. Everyone strap in."
A light snow settled down onto the prefabricated buildings of the colony. It might have been a peaceful scene, if not for the eerie silence and emptiness of the abandoned settlement. Departing the shuttle on the outskirts of the area, the trio entered a nearby building as they worked their way to the central courtyard.
He remembered hearing ghost stories as a kid, about villages and settlements whose residents had vanished, all their things left behind, sometimes with half-eaten meals still sitting on tables. He'd always laughed it off then, but he realized that he'd now walked right into one of those stories. "It's like they didn't even have time to react."
"Every colony we've searched has been like this," said Jacob. "No survivors, no people at all, just the things they left behind."
"So what makes you think we'll find anything here," Kaidan wondered aloud.
"We've never gotten to a colony so soon after it was hit. Official investigators always beat us to it. Sometimes pirates and looters, too."
"Yeah, or maybe they really haven't left any evidence. Maybe whoever's been doing this is just that good."
Jacob shook his head. "No one's that good. They have to slip up sometime. I just hope we're there when they do."
The sound of gunfire cut their conversation short as two LOKI mechs, similar to the ones they'd fought at the Lazarus research station, burst out of a nearby building. While they worked to bring them down, a pair of canine FENRIS mechs joined the fray. One of them jumped at Kaidan, knocking him to the ground, but he managed to disengage it with a biotic throw and finish it with a gunshot to its 'face'.
"This was a human colony," remarked Miranda, "those mechs shouldn't have attacked us- unless someone reprogrammed them."
"Maybe there are survivors, then," Kaidan said. "C'mon, we need to find them."
They hurried through the 'streets' of the settlement, the spaces between the identical prefabs, hoping for some kind of lead. As they approached one of the buildings, Kaidan held up a hand for silence. He'd heard voices inside. Drawing his weapon as a precaution, he entered an override code and opened the door to reveal a group of quarians crowded in a circle. He just hoped they hadn't been too late again.
At the sound of the door opening, one of the quarians lifted a shotgun to point it at the trio. "Put your hands where I can see them, humans." As they complied, he took notice of the logo affixed to their field armor. "Cerberus bosh'tets," he barked, drawing closer with his weapon.
Another quarian pushed her way to the front of the group. "Prazza, I told you to let me handle this. Now I'm sure we can-"
Kaidan recognized the voice. "Tali?"
She stopped speaking abruptly. He couldn't see her face, but Kaidan was sure her mouth was hanging open right now. She took a step closer, gazing at him. "Kaidan? But Shepard said you were dead. And now you're here? And with Cerberus?"
Kaidan put a hand on her shoulder. "It's a long story, Tali, but right now we're just trying to find out what happened to this colony. It's not the first human settlement to be hit and we're hoping to find some evidence of who's behind it. But what about you? What do the quarians want with it?"
"A quarian, Veetor, was here on pilgrimage. We know he's still alive; he hacked the mechs to attack anything that moves. But he's sick, probably delirious, and we have to find him before he gets hurt."
"Pilgrimage? In a human colony?"
"Crowds always made Veetor nervous. He wanted to go somewhere quiet, out of the way."
Kaidan could sympathize. "Well, I think we can help each other. You want to find your friend, and with any luck he can tell us what happened here."
"Not a chance!" roared Prazza, the quarian who'd confronted them when they entered. "Veetor needs medical help, not to be interrogated by some Cerberus-"
"Prazza!" Tali shouted. "I am in charge here. And he's a friend. We're going to help him." She turned back to Kaidan. "As far as we can tell, Veetor hid in a warehouse at the center of town. If you head that way, we'll circle around to the far side to draw off some of the defenses."
"All right, Tali, we'll meet you there."
"Kaidan!" Tali's voice was shrill in his ear as they approached the entrance to the warehouse. "Veetor reprogrammed one of the heavy mechs. It tore through Prazza's squad and it's headed your way."
"We'll be ready for it, Tali." He turned to Jacob and Miranda. "You two get into position on either side of that door. I'll take point." Kaidan crouched behind a crate near the warehouse door and brought up his barrier. "Miranda, hit the door."
The mech was huge and heavily shielded, fitted with heavy weaponry. He immediatedly tried to overload the shields, and from the loud sizzle he heard, suspected that Miranda had done the same. Even the two of them hadn't managed to bring down the shield entirely, however. He poured fire into it from the semiautomatic pistol he was carrying. Unable to keep up with the speed of his attack, the shield finally shorted out on its own.
"Now the fun starts!" hollered Jacob as he shot a fist out, lifting the target high overhead. "Hit it."
Miranda put her own biotics into play and the mech exploded as the well timed warp field connected with it.
High on adrenaline and yet relaxed by the familiar rhythm of combat, Kaidan smiled. "You two sure know how to make a guy feel inadequate," he said, then remembered who he was dealing with. They weren't his crew, they weren't his friends, for now they may as well be his jailers. He turned and headed into the cavernous warehouse.
He tried every door they came to, hoping for some sign of life. Finally, a door slid open to reveal what appeared to be a security room, with a quarian sitting in front of a wall of vidscreens. Kaidan stepped into the room. "Veetor?"
"No Veetor. No more. Only the swarms. They come. They take. They..."
Kaidan turned his attention to the footage on the screens. "Looks like he put this together from the security camera footage. Not seeing anything useful, though. Just those bugs."
"I don't think they're bugs. Not exactly. They appear to be more mechanical in na- wait." She peered more closely at the screen, at a figure pulling a body from a vehicle. "I think that's a Collector."
"Collector?"
Jacob spoke up. "It's a species that shows up in the Terminus from time to time. Supposedly from somewhere beyond the Omega 4 relay. They're known to trade advanced technology for DNA samples, then when they have what they want, they leave."
"Advanced tech... Reaper tech?"
"It would make sense," said Miranda.
"Veetor," said Kaidan, "what can you tell us about what happened here? About the aliens who did this?" But the quarian only continued to babble.
"I don't think he can hear you, Lieutenant," Miranda said condescendingly.
She had a point, he admitted privately. Veetor was absolutely mesmerized by the footage on the screens. He activated his omni-tool, tuned it to the room's frequency, and shut down the screens in one move. Breaking free of his trance, Veetor spun the chair around, taking notice of the three humans for the first time.
"Veetor," Kaidan repeated, "can you tell us what happened here?"
The quarian hesitated, but when he finally spoke the words came quickly.. "The monsters come, with the swarms. Swarms freeze the humans, paralyze them. Monsters take them away. Soon, colony is empty, no one left but me."
"Why did they leave you behind?" asked Jacob. But Veetor only shrunk away from them, shaking his head.
"Maybe he has some technology in his suit, something that blocked the paralyzing agent they used," Kaidan speculated.
"Or if they're only looking for humans, they may have just ignored other life-signs," Miranda added. "Regardless, he'll need to come with us. If he has any more information on what happened here, we need to know.
"Not a chance," said Tali, who had entered the room unnoticed. "Veetor needs medical attention. We're taking him back to the fleet."
Miranda threw a glance at Kaidan from the corner of her eye. "Lieutenant?"
"She's right, Miranda. We've got the footage here, we can get whatever Veetor has in his omni-tool, but he needs to go back to his people. He's been through enough; we've no right to put him through more."
Tali stepped forward and put a hand on Kaidan's arm. "Thank you, Kaidan. I'm still not sure why you're here, but I'm glad that you are." She continued to Veetor's side, helping him up from the chair, then she and Prazza led him from the room.
Miranda was now glaring at him openly. "That's not how I'd have handled that, Alenko."
"Well, then, you might just have to get used to someone handling things a little differently."