To: Headquarters, Systems Alliance.
From: Secretary, Alliance Fleet.
Date: June 28, 2186
Subject: Arrest of Captain David Edward Anderson, I5 (ex-N7). Personal Number: DE-87154-P
Message:
First of all, we offer our utmost sympathies for you those who you have lost. We have beaten the Reaper and restored peace. This victory, achieved here on Earth, will allows us more leverage on the council. However, as much as I would like to discuss the future, we live in the present.
After the Catalyst incident, we discovered Captain David Edward Anderson next to the owner of the biotech giant Cerberus, aliased Jack Harper. Jack Harper was dead at the time of first contact. Captain David Edward Anderson suffered heavy blood loss but he survives.
Unfortunately for us, there have been an increasing number of cults forming in the recent few days, growing at an alarming rate. A lot of these cults worship either Commander Ellis Gordon Shepherd or Anderson, some both. Commander Ellis Gordon Shepherd is MIA, presumed dead.
We fear Anderson may use the cults to extort money and power. While some may consider these fear baseless, there are enough of us who have this fear. And so, Captain David Edward Anderson will be kept under house arrest for an indefinite amount of time. We will publish a story announcing his heroic death, build a memorial and wait until all this dies down before deciding further on Captain David Edward Anderson's future. Detailed plans will be forwarded within the day.
Thanking you,
The Secretary,
Ralph McCleary.
June 16, 2186. Near M25, London. 1121hrs.
Prince George didn't expect this. Queen Elizabeth couldn't fathom this. Lord Erwin didn't understand this. Lady Bell didn't scream. Lord Lowe didn't cry. How could they? They were dead. God rest their souls. And the souls of the millions otherwise that died in the last two days. They were lucky. They died quickly.
"Get down!" shouted Faye White at the other guards. The brilliant white light shut down her optic augment temporarily as she fell. She imagined her head splitting, headache. There was a moment before the firefight continued. Her neural implant restarted the optic implant and her vision returned. She would need to get the implant recalibrated but now wasn't the time.
"Bailey, report, now!" she shouted again. She was firing blindly at the hordes rushing toward her squad's location. The gun fell silent. Damn! It's either overheating or lack of clips!
The man she screamed at was slowly getting back out of his initial shock. The blow had come out of nowhere. One moment, they were fighting inferior critters with simple equipment; the next, they are targets of heavy rpg fire. Bailey blindly fired a round into the critter. No sound. No hit.
"Bailey! Stop wasting ammo!" shouted Faye. The blast had shaken her crew into inaction, and stirred her into action. She removed a flash grenade from her backpack and threw it towards the critters after shouting, "Delta Charlie!" Flash Grenade! The large hangar they were in light up. From the side of her cover she noticed a large woman like creature near the base of the only plane in the hangar, thirty yards away. The fuck is that?! The creature was surrounded by a number of the critters that she and her squad had been fighting. It's going to be a bitch to fight. Fighting the critters had been tiring. They killed five of them and another five sprang up. Where these things really human? The British Internal Guard, BIG, were going to brief her on that. The BIG HQ building was rubble before she reached it.
"Adryan is seriously injured. Carbon says he can reach him but he will need cover fire. The rest are okay." Bailey muttered. Faye noticed the large creature walking slowly towards Adryan, flanked by the critters. He was out in open, and unable to move. He was holding his gun and waiting. Waiting because his arm had been shot and he would only be able to take one shot, close range, before his arm gave way. "Ma'am, Adryan is running out of time! Carbon wants to help him!" Carbon and Adryan, best of buddies. He wanted to help him. Hell, everyone in the squad wanted to save him. Seeing so many death didn't desensitize them, it brought them closer. He's going to do it.
"Ma'am!" Bailey shouted again. The creature slowly inched towards Adryan, now a few feet away. The critter around her didn't do anything. No one expect Adryan was in their line of sight. This was the perfect time. Adryan would distract them long enough for Faye and the squad to get away. She needed Carbon to act so she could find out if her deduction was correct.
"Bastards!" shouted Carbon. He ran out of his cover and started firing indiscriminately. The big creature turned towards him just as the critter stumbled out of inaction. Now! Faye thought and covered her eyes. Even with her palm shielding her eyes she could feel the intensity of the light. She looked up at the creature keeping her hands close to her eyes. Just as she had thought, it had been the creature who performed the brilliant light magic trick. The critter closest to the creature had fallen down. Carbon and Adryan were screaming in pain but not for long. The remaining critters finished them both off. Now.
She stood and shouted, "Take this, you fuckers!" She released the auto lock on her Machine Gun and fired. It lasted only five seconds, but God did those five seconds pumped adrenaline in her blood! She kept screaming and hurling abuses at them as the creature and some of the critters fell down from the sheer of volume of bullets flying at them. Faye's squad started firing as well. In five seconds, they went from dejected to hungry for more destruction, more death. That is what war, and victory, does to soldiers.
"Those fuckers are all going to die!" roared Bailey as he shot as the large dead creature. "Stop!" shouted Faye. Bailey relunctantly did so. "Ma'am, they deserve nothing better. Bastards killed Adryan and Carbon. Adryan was lying on the floor injured!"
"Bailey, those fucks aren't exactly humans. They don't honor the code of war. However, Adryan's and Carbon's death haven't gone to waste. We can now retreat and plan ahead."
"But, ma'am, we won! Why don't we go on the aggressive right now?"
"That's your adrenaline speaking. Also, this time they were careless and distracted. They were more interested in the injured than us. Now they know we ain't going to take them lying down! They will be ready the next time. And so will we."
Bailey looked the creature once again. The four other surviving member, John, Maine, Samantha and Alexa looked at it too. They were all tired, fighting for the last two days. John was still angry. Faye knew she was a loose cannon, much like Alexa. They were both young and brash but luckily hadn't made a crucial mistake. Maine was the oldest and the most sane, which was amazing considering the number of skirmishes and battles he had taken part it.
"Leave it, Bailey. Every bullet you waste on it is a bullet not travelling towards the head of a critter who is alive."
Bailey gave her a smile and helped Maine and Samantha as they searched the corpses for stuff they could loot. "Were they really human?" asked John as nudged the large dead creature with his legs while pointing his gun at it. "It's dead," said Maine as he removed the magazine from one of the critters. The critters used to be human, now they were husks. Formed by what Maine and his friends called "dragon's teeth", spikes on which humans and other organics were impaled. The spikes changed the corpses in these critters. Very aggressive but lacking the creativity and inginuety, just like movie zombies did. He remembered his grandfather's stories about his own grandfather being a fan of some videogame in which they had to shoot waves of zombies and how he dreamt of being one of the supersoldier. I'm living the dream, old guy, and I'll gladly swap places with you.
"Okay, Bailey, the Reapers are concentrating on London and other crowded places around the world. So we'll be considerably safe when get the hell out of this city. You SAS guys have a lot of safe houses. Lead us to one which is on the other the M25."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Faye looked at the hangar that surrounded them. One lonely plane stood in the middle. Some of the roof had been lasered away by the Reaper. Now that the hangar was deathly quiet, her ears focused on the distant rumbling of the lasers. Relentless bastards. "These crates, Maine, you find anything in them?"
"Nothing we can use, Ma'am. Aeroplane parts. We may find repair tools on the second floor but," he pointed at the place where the stair case had been destroyed. Someone had fought here long before they had come here. "This hangar is isolated and large. Bad for us owing our numerical inferiority. Let's go." These bastards are going to die by my hands.
June 16, 2186, Brentfordshire, 5 miles from London. 1351 hrs.
The house was nice, five bedrooms, a large hall and spacious kitchen. None of the six could afford the house. It was majestic.
"SAS could afford the smallest house on the block. What has it come to... Sigh..." Bailey ignored Alexa's sarcasm as he plopped down his gear and let out a heavy sigh.
"We should be safe till London falls. It feels so funny when I say that, when London falls. A week ago, people would have thrown me in looney house if I'd say that," remarked John.
"I'm more surprised they didn't put you in the looney house regardless," said a smiling Samantha as she checked the fridge.
"Ya, well, I guess when they've had their hands full since they admitted you," replied John without missing a beat. "Any beer in there?"
"Beer, beer and some more beer. There's enough here for a whole army," Samantha looked at Bailey who made his 'I'm innocent' face. "Bailey, why did you choose this safe house?"
"It's, um, closeby, in case we need to get back quickly."
"Nothing related to all this beer?" Samantha asked while helping herself to a can. She handed one to John as he looked at the open fridge. "Damn, Bailey, no wonder they couldn't afford the best house. This must have cost a fortune."
Faye entered the house after she had done all her necessary checks. "Want a beer?" asked John.
"Not now. Also, everybody, I'm ordering you all to go to sleep in the basement."
A collective groan and two minutes later, all five of her squad left for the basement. She glanced at her watch. Two. Anytime now. She opened the fridge and waded through all the beer to find a packet of easy-to-cook fish and chips. As much as she hated fish and chips, food was food. She had barely touched anything in two days.
Even the call came she had finished her lunch. "Cani here. Who's speaking?" she replied.
"We need to talk." A man's voice answered.
"I need to sleep. Got any pillows?" Got any information?
"Yes."
She ended the call and sighed. She wanted to sleep but she had to call the man again. Se picked up the house keys, locked the house and left. The streets were all quite. All but one old man had left for makeshift hiding houses. The old man's house was two houses to the left of theirs. He was sitting outside and had his shotgun with him. Like he's going to able to fire that thing. It would be a better off included in our arsenal. She walked passed the old man who waved at her. She waved back and hurried on to the last house in the street.
"There will be widespread looting. Stay safe and away from crowded areas. The government will take care of them," every reporter alive, every one with a camera, radio station, working internet connection said these very words. Every minute of every hours, the same thing was looped. Faye laughed. Looting? Since when did those pussies get the balls to loot while Reaper were murdering everyone's ass?
The house was empty, of course. She went inside and searched the rooms. Finally, she found a vidcon attached to the wall in the kitchen. She dialed a number and waited while it looped through many relays around the world, trying to set a course for a vidcon twenty miles south of her.
"Darling! Are you safe!" A trembling voice said, its acting not so good. Is the phone secure?
"No." No, the phone isn't secure.
Two minutes later a voice cracked through, "Young lady. Always a pleasure." It was the Prime Minister of UK, Gordon Chemsfield. The old man was the PM who news media openly proclaimed as the 'Last Honest Man in London'.
"Mister Prime Minister, I'm sure you're very safe in that bunker of yours while million of Britishers die."
"Good afternoon to you too. I'm sure you'll understand a headless chicken is more dead than a featherless one."
"I don't think soldiers will like an old guy comparing them to feathers. What next? No please, don't compare soldiers to flower. You compare them with flowers and they'll flip out." She heard coarse laughter.
"Young lady, you are a pleasure to talk to. Everyone here misses you," he stopped speaking for a moment and then started laughing again, "Or not."
"My job was to protect you, not laugh at crap and crappy jokes."
"True enough... It seems the technicians are restless. Let us talk pleasantries the next time we meet. Are you outside London?"
"Yes."
"Well then you may not have noticed that we slayed three Reapers in the last five hours. What do you think about that?" The Prime Minister's voice serious mid sentence startling Faye. He always did that.
"Impressive. Also, interesting. Zero kills in two days, three in five hours. The soldiers are destroying Reapers now that they are tired? I'd say something's wrong."
"The picture is missing a word; weakness."
"You found a weakness?!"
"Yes." The PM had lingered the 'yes' for too long.
"All good things have a but."
"You are good detective, young lady," the PM said and smiled. The seriousness left as quickly as it came. It resurfaced again. "The problem is that the weakness only applies to maybe five Reapers."
"What? Aren't they all identical?"
"No. It seemed all those who looked at enough Reapers to make this deduction kept dying. I wonder why. The only way we found out about it when two of the crews failed to successfully use the weakness."
"Must have been painful for them. Their boss assuring them that it will work. And then? Surprise motherfucker!"
"Some die so other may live." Faye remembered Carbon and Adryan. "Using high power sniper scopes and staying the hell away, we found that Reapers weren't clones. Turns out, a lot of things influenced their design. A report from Commander.. uh, someone said that they were making a human Reaper. So maybe all the Reapers are influenced by previous cycles." Commander Shepherd... That stupid bitch. Doesn't stop screwing with me.
"You're on thin ice, Prime Minister."
"My apologies. In any case, I must leave." The voice changed and the one from before spoke again, "Your squad needs manpower revitalization. We'll send you someone from here."
"I'm not a bloody squad leader! I need to be there protecting the Prime Minister. That's my job!" The line was dead. Wanker!
17 June, 2186. 0101 hrs. Brentfordshire.
"Wake up, Faye. Time to rise and shine," John spoke quietly, barely a whisper. Faye opened her eye and saw him staring at her with large blue eyes and the usual smirk. "Do you want breakfast in bed?"
"Do you want to end up dead?" she asked as she lifted herself off the couch. The television, which had been on mute started blaring again. It was the sports channel. They were showing an old football match where England had won. "Nice attempts at infusing citizens with patriotism. Unfortunate no one except us is watching this. Nor do Reapers play football," Samantha said.
"I'll be right back," Faye said and headed to the bathroom. She came back fifteen minutes later. It was then she noticed the old man and two new guys sitting near the couch. "And you are?" she asked them.
It was John who answered, "Old man Murray is cool. Can't let a old man with a rocking shotgun alone, can you? As for these two, I don't know. They decided to rob this house. We're cool now though."
One of those two replied without removing his eyes from the telly, "We are not thieves. We were sent here by the old man." He was referring to the PM.
"I'm William and he's Nathan," the other one said. Nathan had curly hair and was so lean Faye would look fat next to him. William was better built. He had orange hair on top which gradually turned red as they reached his neck. Faye sighed and sat down on the couch between Samantha and Alexa. They smiled at her and she smiled back. The tiredness had all but gone. Actually looking at the calm faces of her squad, and of old Murray, she wondered if the war was over.
"Maine, tell Faye what you told us. Cool story," John spoke. Faye looked outside the window and saw that all houses she could see had their lights turned on. These bastards wanted to watch the telly so bad that they switched all the lights in other houses on to confuse enemies? Or did the neighbours forget to turn the lights off? Faye smiled to herself. Instead of wondering her next course of action, she was wondering what shenanigans they had done.
"I'm glad you woke up. We will need to move in an hour," William said, "We saw some husks, turian, asari and human, on their way here. Very slow, searching every house." Faye looked at him in surprise. I knew all this was too calm! She spoke, "And none of you bother to tell me until this late? You all are sitting here, getting your asses drunk," she said angrily pointing at the beer cans near John, "While those critters make their way here?"
"Hey no worries. This is a safe house. Maine, tell her your story," said John. Faye looked at John. That bastard is affecting everyone's willingness to fight!
"It isn't a story, John. It's a theory on the Reapers." Faye turned her head to Maine. His bald shaven head glistened with sweat. His nose was longer than normal but no one talked about. No one felt the need to get to know Maine's bad side. She felt confident she could beat him, but he hadn't shown enough of his hand-to-hand skills making the deduction of his skill level difficult. "Go on," she spoke.
"William said that Reapers weren't all alike. He had a theory that Reapers resemble many species, most likely all of which they had destroyed. Sick fetish, I must say. But I wonder. Let's say the Reapers were created by some entity, let's call him Creator. The first Reapers looked like them. Now the Creators are dead, probably killed by the Reapers. The next cycle came and were wiped out. The Reapers created new Reapers that looked like these new creatures. They looked different and the point I want to make is that perhaps from the inside they are different too."
"Different as in they have emotions?" asked John as cheered on the English strikers. Maine ignored the comment and carried on, "With intelligence, artificial or natural, comes its side effects, laws of evolution and feelings of superiority among individual. I think the Reapers that were not created by the creators are not as smart as the original Reapers themselves."
"My father once told me the difference between social animals and herd animals. Social animals have a clear structure, a clear order of who should be first to mate. Herd animals have a clear objective, a clear code which tell what each animal must do to help the herd. For social creature, each animal is important to some degree and for herd animals, the collective is more important. I ask you, Maine, do Reapers have a clear objective or a clear order and structure?" Alexa spoke. John did mock 'Oh my god, so intelligent' which earned him a scorn.
"And that is the problem. I could not get past that for a while. Would Reapers really jeopardize their own mission?"
"Maybe their feeling of superiority reached far enough for them to assume no one could challenge them."
"Then why did they need so many copies? They could have just stored the data in their massive heads. Even if they wanted souvenirs, they should have just made one. They clearly wanted to bulk up their army."
"So what is the solution?" John asked him.
Maine smiled, "The answer lies in the fact that we never unlocked the secrets of the brain. We now how it works, but why does it work? Why the neurons do the thing they do? You can say because of evolution but that answer will not survive a science conference. The reason why don't know why things happen the way things happen is because we cannot fathom it. I think the Reapers cannot understand why they work, why they do what they do. They may be able to read the code but if they don't understand it, they can't replicate it. It's similar to how a cracker cracks a software. If he doesn't know what each part of the code is doing, he may screw up the program."
John looked imporessed but Faye didn't know whether he was acting or not. She was impressed. Though she will leave all the whys to the scientist and concentrate on killing them. William spoke, "There is a way we can find it out."
"Ask the Geths." Maine completed the sentence to the sounds of explosion erupting from the first house on the street. "They're here, and they're dead," announced John.
"We better get moving then," said Faye and stood up. Maine's theory still revolved in her head. The Reaper couldn't understand why they did what they did? "I don't know why I did that." The most convinient answer.
"Bailey, where next?" she asked. Bailey pondered for a moment but before he could answer, Faye's omni tool rang. "Get here fast!" rang out the PM's voice. Faye looked at her crew. They knew where they were headed. "Well then, resting was nice. Let's get back to fun times."
June 17, 2186. Underground, near the House of Lords. 0234 hrs.
"Stupid piece of crap!" shouted Williams. The tunnel ahead was gone, their way was buried under rubble. "We're so fucking underground. How'd this happen?" They had travelled through this route themselves. "Where's the way to the surface?" asked Samantha as they jumped out of the jeep. Bailey helped old man Murray out. What's he doing with us? Stupid liability, thought Faye. The group had grown out of hand. She had no experience in handling so many people. Her job had been protecting the Prime Minister and that too she reported to another X7, the elite N7s (yes, elite among the elite) who keep the big shots from getting shot.
Murray looked at Faye and noticed her irritation before she could hide it. "You have a problem, miss?"
"Yes, you are old and I don't want to compromise the entire squad's safety." John smiled as if he had been anticipating this.
"Miss, I was in the Secret Service. I brought down more mob bosses than you've had periods."
"You can't get out of the van!" she said angrily. You arrogant bastard!
"Last time I heard, nobody pulled triggers using their knees. Getting shot does that to knees."
"There's always augments," muttered Bailey.
"Better organic than half machine," he pointed the shotgun at Faye's eyes. She stood there fearing she might kill him if he got on her nerves. But she noticed he held the shotgun like a professional, completely stable. The man wasn't joking. She calmed down. "Whatever," she said and followed William to the surface point. Behind her, John was high fiving Murray.
June 17, 2186. The Bunker. 0415hrs.
Silent. Too silent. The inbuilt night vision in her eyes revealed nothing. Silent. Too silent. She motioned her crew all of whom had full light armor suits on except Nathan. He say he had kevlar protection underneath his shirt which made John point at his body and laugh for a few moments. That was an hour ago; now there was just silence.
They crept across the corridor leading to the first door. William looked at the door. It was working but someone had changed the password since they had left. He hacked the door and the light went green. He stepped aside for Faye who was still checking the door. There was a slight dent on it which was annoying her. The dent was towards them; something had hit it from inside. Fifteen feet thick door with a dent on it... Move with caution.
She signalled them. Something's wrong. They readied the weapon and entered.
"Holy moly," muttered John. There were dead bodies strewn across like pizza boxes in a college goer's room. There wasn't one human alive in the room. There wasn't one complete dead human in the room. It looked like a flea market with each shop selling different body parts. Then they noticed it. Large and foul smelling (was the odor it's own or the blood's?), it was eating a limb in the corner. Faye aimed her gun. The CE-71, deadliest semi-machine gun, burst out a second of fire, twenty rounds. The beast cried out and looked at them. It's eyes were bloodshot, hungry for carnage and death. More humans equalled fun for it. It let out a roar and charged.
"Dodge!" cried Alexa. The warning wasn't needed. They all got out of the way. Murray barely managed to get away, even after being tackled by John. What? John is helping Murray? Maybe Murray isn't useless. I'll need to make sure they stay together, thought Faye as he turned towards the large creature and shouted, "Feel the wraith!" She let the gun rip. Samantha and Bailey joined in.
The creature roared once more. But however strong it was, with three guns pumping all their rounds into it, it wasn't going to last. The monster fell down. Samantha had concentrated her shot on its knees. "The fucking thing is still alive!" shouted Bailey as he reloaded. John emptied the clip of his pistol into the creature's head. Finally, the creature moved no more.
"Krogan?" he asked.
"Krogan," Samantha replied.
"We have a problem," said Murray. "It was injured before we attacked it."
"Yes," said Faye in her 'It's obvious' voice.
"These people must have fought back. But, I don't see any bullet marks on the three sides of the room we didn't shoot at." They had shot at him when he had charged and hit the wall next to the door. There were bullet marks on that wall but none anywhere else. "These people died without a fight," concluded John.
"This is what made the dent the door. With that much force in its charge, I'm amazed we don't see any mashed dead bodies. Crudely cut dead bodies are all I see here," said Maine. William and Nathan were busy searching for any equipment they could use. The group didn't have any repair tools.
"What are you suggesting? Someone kept the krogan husk here?" asked Alexa.
"It surely didn't cause the mayhem here. Look at the computers and the wall here. Except for the dent on the wall, it dudn't charge any other time. Maybe, even the dent wasn't made by it. I think it wouldn't have attacked us if ma'am hadn't unloaded her clip on it."
"They killed Adryan when he was injured," spoke Faye. She was loosing her cool. She needed to get to PM quickly. This crew business was stupid. "Now suddenly they won't be interested in fully armored humans? That was a krogan husk, a more aggressive creature created out of an already aggressive creature."
Maine nodded, "Yes, you are right."
"Let's move to the inner chambers," she said turning towards a group of soldiers. "You won't be going any further," said a soft voice. The soldiers were decked out in heavy suits and had their gun trained at her group. Great.