. . .

Chapter 4: Laid Bare

. . .

"His story checks out."

The turian blinked, his knuckles leaning over the console side-by-side with the dark-skinned intelligence officer, intent faces glowing from the warm light uppercutting them from the console.

That was fast.

"Ahem . . . . well, at least partially. The code he provided checks out. There was a Jacob Marcelus Rienfield under that registration in the old UAC files."

"What do you mean 'was?'"

She glanced back at her notes. "According to the file I pulled up, he was declared missing 32 years ago."

The turian frowned, expecting the tale the creature told to be a whole lot of crock-shit to gain sympathy. A bad metallic taste began to cling to his rough tongue.

"I think it . . . mentioned something about that. Is there anyone else that went missing around that time?"

Samantha Traynor eagerly scrolled to the next item on an already compiled menu, while they all were still reeling in the midst of the chaos inherent in bringing an overgrown slab of meat aboard. Something about how impressed Garrus felt didn't quite catch on with his dour expression. The turian in him would barely offer a shrug and say, if anything, that the crew member was simply performing the role expected of her. The other part worried that his being impressed indicated the cloud of doubt he held of the fresh crew handling his baby. The calloused, unspeakable part dismissed Traynor as a woefully green as grass recruit scraped up by the Alliance who would surely balk when it came to the real pressures of handling core mission data in the middle of a war. While he was going to hunt down the telling scent that had laid a paw on his gun calibrations, his hopes for the crew's potential were truly in the gutter, in more ways than one.

Shepard. All that time lost to the Alliance, brought down to rock bottom by the ruthless calculus of war. Garrus knew this would be a zero-sum game but he didn't quite anticipate how much it would affect him. He didn't know what bothered him most, the fact that Shepard kept everybody in the dark about Admiral Hackett's personal favor or the fact that she was grounded indefinitely, her fate decided on by suits and barefaced politicians who had spent years denying her warnings.

He trusted her implicitly, now lamenting the lack of reciprocation. That dingy apartment he had holed up in, deciding what best to do with his fledgling Reaper 'task force' became his marching room, padding trenches into the grout with the soles of his three-fingered feet. All due to the stacks of letters he had scribbled down in his native tongue before forcing his talons to perform the steep, angular, and altogether clunky letters of a language called 'English.' In one, he declared, with words looking like the scribbles of a youngling spinning upon a rotating disk . . . of his feelings for the Commander. All those nights, pacing up and down, claws aching and twitching with the rigidity of its motions, through the pacing he put them through. One of the telling factors easily was the mountainous pile of scrap paper scattered among the waste-bin. Those who thought Archangel never misses a shot . . . . had surely never seen his poor accuracy in the drawing room.

That's how Shepard affected him, and it terrified him, knowing that even countless light years away, that incessant cord kept tugging at his waking moments. It frightened him further when they finally reunited, during the battle of Manae, to find the jittery suspicion he now eyed her with, peering into her mind's eye, searching for an indication that that the eye had crossed those juvenile scrawls of his, like talons on a chalkboard. It was the reason now his very nature was threatened by wayward beings, and that haze made him insubordinate, sloppy, and most heart-wrenching of all, inexplicably cold.

How little she must think of me, to consider that I would "turn tail" as Joker had so eloquently put it, after all those years watching her back as we made history . . . and now fighting to preserve our very way of life. Shepard was right. I'd only put her in danger now if I stood by her side.

A stray talon rubbed at the itch pinning his brow plates together before noticing that Traynor was trying to catch his attention.

"You're doing that thing again."

His predatory eyes flashed angrily.

"What?"

"Brooding."

His body betrayed him once again as he turned away, rolling his eyes like those human teenagers pop culture was so fond of. What is wrong with me?

"Look . . . I know what happened down there with Shepard was rough and I want to sa-"

He held up a silencing palm.

"That's enough! Did you find out about the other missing personnel reports I asked you for?"

Her doe-y eyes widened incredulously at him before subsequently narrowing in miffed silence, shaking her head subtly in disregard of the defensive but authoritative scapegoat of a slight.

Great, now I insulted both of our intelligence's. 'Keep it up, tough guy,' Shepard would say.

"Well, there happens to be one. David Jackory. A lowly security guard. Nothing special. Reported missing on the same day." She gave an exasperated huff as she was forced to refresh the pages held up on the holographic monitor due to the lack of activity. Cleared up, they happened to both be shots of the employees and corroborated by a still of a vid taken of the late demon by a security camera and shifted them all to a bigger holographic display for detail and background analysis: to see if there was even a mere sliver of a match.

As a seasoned detective with C-Sec in his earlier years, the turian knew enough not to assume that anybody is above killing their partner and assuming their identity to escape the law. That was under the normal suspicion he would proceed under in this investigation but that theory was invalidated by the essential crux of the issue. These were very different suspects. Beyond the occasional cosmetics and flimsy facade that some perps would hide under, it was pretty clear to what race they belonged to. But the more and more he stared at the looped video footage of the alien, the crazier it looked. This guy . . . was the real deal.

"Why have I never heard of this . . . U.A.C?" Garrus said the acronym like an expletive. His translator had trouble picking up the term so his foreign turian tongue had to curl around it and digest the letters manually.

"All this time, there should have been at least one mention of it. What does it stand for?"

"Union Aerospace Corporation. And the reason for that is that humanity . . . we were . . . in a bad place at the time." She curled another strand of hair idly and then inhaled with exhaustion.

"There's something else. It's strange, the UAC project was buried a long time ago by the Alliance for illegal weapons and energy research. Two years after the disappearance of these two individuals."

She paused and bit her lip, brushing away a strand of curious fur from her forehead.

"Years ago, we used the technology the Alliance seized from the UAC facility as the basis for our own mass-accelerator prototypes during the First-Contact War. But no mention of research with demons . . . unless . . ."

His plates bristled briefly, interpreting that cliffhanger as patronization before catching himself. The dramatics was beginning to grate on the turian's plates.

"Get to the point, Traynor."

"I'm trying!" She snapped before blinking back in regret.

"Apologies, sir. The UAC is a long story."

"Well? Debrief me."

"Yes . . . sir."

Whatever had crossed her mind then seemed to have rattled her.

"Without a stable source of fuel, our planet was on the verge of going to tatters. We despaired of ever finding a solution to the damage we had irrevocably caused. Then a genius named Samuel Hayden offered a solution and we were too desperate, too needy, to object. Many thought he could do no wrong. We're not proud of it. At the time, we were stuck on our lonely planet and were quickly reaching the capacity for human life on it. One of Hayden's first projects, the colonization of Mars, and the growth of Lowell City helped relieve some of that and seeing the effects of his genius, we were eager to play along."

She flipped through another few screens on her console, frowned, backpedaled, and then dismissed the pages with a flick of her hand. Her small knuckles leaned against the console.

"That's where the story gets murky. There was a leak spread all over the extranet, pretty big deal too. As it turns out, vital tech that could have relieved the situation was purposely being held back to keep us in that cycle. The UAC needed us dependent on their energy, their product. Anybody who came close with the allegations were privately threatened with deprivation of vital energy. They had humanity by the balls with that threat."

The turian furrowed his brow plates and stared quizzically at Traynor. Rarely had something so explicit left her lips like that. He always thought Samantha was kind of shy, too shy to belt out profanity without a second's pause. This was becoming a whole lot bigger than he thought. Brief flashbacks to the chamber where he and Shepard first confronted the projection of a lone Reaper, brought his guts to a low broil.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Now, look at us!" She raised her arms and gestured to their ship-wide environment. "We've managed to orchestrate the essence of atoms and merge them like the notes to Clair de Lune but most of us are old enough to still remember a time when we were so dependent on primitive means. Alliance likes to make the other species think we were far above fossil fuels sooner. However, it wasn't long before the public caught wind of reports about how far we, as a species, were being held back. Many were already uncomfortable with how much sway the corporation held and not a shred of how that energy came to be was disclosed to the public . . . 'trust us," they said . . and we were all too happy to eat off the hand of Samuel Hayden. Everything died down for a while . . ."

"But that lie simmered over years and started reaching the boiling point."

"With poverty becoming so endemic on Earth, many pointed their sons and daughters towards Mars and launched them into a life of skilled labor. For them, it was their only source of income and losing that made the most desperate of humanity turn against each other."

She sniffed and her knuckles turned ghost-white. Her voice was gray with gloominess.

"Then we started getting reports of bodies being returned to families, shipped in heaps back to Earth. People in the neighborhoods began to whisper about kids getting stuck in the machinery, dying of frostbite, malnutrition. There was wailing in the streets day in and day out, parents holding the mutilated bodies of their children for all to see. The collective grieving sobered the few and hardened hearts till we had become blind to what were becoming. It was a nameless war and it was . . . chaos."

She shivered.

"For years, we fought that battle in the courts and later . . . on the battlefield. The Systems Alliance used to be the simple governing branch in charge of transit and trade between both worlds. When the quasi-gubernatorial body was rumored and slated to be gobbled up by the UAC, they stepped in for us. Like vigilantes, they exposed the extent of the UAC's deception. Vast reserves of power left to waste, technologies that would have made fossil fuels obsolete for all."

She paused and collected her breath. Garrus found it interesting to note that she had not even glanced his way once since they had begun their investigation.

"The UAC didn't take too kindly to that and the two sides confronted each other in the Demos Ravine on a lonely packaging facility on one of the Martian moons. The bloody conflict was short, reminiscent of the unofficial rail-road enterprise battles of the Wild West. What they did here was a catalyst for the rest of humanity. They took the first steps for us and we eagerly took after them; knocking the bricks off the foundation until there was nothing left."

"For all intents and purposes, the UAC was finished. The information gleaned from the UN inspection was turned over to the Alliance and having showed their capabilities in standing up for the helpless, we found a new leader. The rest is readily accessible history."

She paused and then finally looked up towards the engrossed turian whose mandibles had been flared for entire minutes, rapt with interest. They snapped back towards his concave mouth underneath the sudden stare and partly from an ache that he had only recently become aware of.

More importantly, it was the expression on her face that made him uncomfortable. It was an expression he knew all too well in himself, the day he found his entire squad massacred because of one loose end still wandering out there - that traitor, Sidonis.

It was shame.

"Those were our dark days. We could easily have ended up like the krogan or the drell, left with a shell of a homeworld. We raked up the ashes, binded up the wounds of humanity, and then took our first tentative steps into the galaxy we know . . . knew today.

Her knuckles leaned against the platform in silent anguish, turning ghostly white with how tightly she had put her appendages in a vice.

"And now we're right back where we started."

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her black shoulder pads, bearing the mark of the Systems Alliance.

"We owe our lives to the Alliance. It's why we've been the most dedicated, the most motivated our species has ever been. Poverty turned to prosperity and we left that dark stain of our past in the rearview mirror along with Earth. Soon, we happily forgot that pain but the Reaper War is stirring all these old uncertainties in all of us, it seems." Her voice cracked.

She sighed and turned away from the console.

"Please, don't ask me to repeat all of that again to Shepard," she laughed but the sentiment remained.

Garrus got the inkling that this had to have been more personal than she let on. Obviously, she was too young to have lived through this period but it must have bled over. Still echoing in the void like it was now.

The turian cracked a smile and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, what countless turian fathers had done before in times of genuine stress.

"Don't worry. I got it all on my omni-tool . . . if you don't mind . . . annnd I've got a handkerchief to boot."

He presented the rag like it was a bath towel when in reality, it was stained with too many gun oil marks to look sanitary. She plucked it nonetheless from his talons, sniffing briefly before wiping her nose loudly with it. However, when she looked up, a smile had broken through the rain.

"Damn. Should have known a seasoned vigilante like you would have come prepared." She quipped, mockingly impressed. "Who were you saving this up for?

His mandibles jutted outward with an amused grunt, his arms crossed. "Well, I've been on the Normandy long enough to know you humans leak from somewhere once in a while. Insides must be as weak as your squishy carapace." That trademark drawl of his just barely revealed the mock ignorance of a krogan trying to comprehend how a human doesn't spontaneously implode.

"We're not all varren like you, sir." She shot back, blowing one final time into the rag.

"There, that should fix the Thanix cannon right up," she said in a airy tone . . . was it a British accent? Traynor balled it up and tossed it to him as revenge which he caught, pinched between his forefinger and thumb in disgust.

"To be honest, I thought it would be Shepard needing a shoulder to cry on using that sooner or later."

He rolled his eyes, stowing it carefully on his utility belt.

"Funny. So, I assume Joker isn't the only one that's been getting that impression."

She pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and that's when Garrus noticed that it wasn't tied up like usual. The breeze it created reminded him all too keenly of Shepard's ruby mane. "With the gremlins running around in his head, I would have been right there with you myself, sir. It's just that some of us have been placing a few wagers which I am not at liberty to divulge." The tips of her fingers met together awkwardly.

"A few . . . have been rooting for you two to seal the deal . . . you know, now that it's a war to end all wars . . . for real this time."

"Really, which one was the last 'war to end all wars' for humans? Still convinced you guys don't know what real battle is."

Like a bumbling fly to a web, she took the bait.

"Oho, really? You want to go there? Alright, let me set the scene for you here. The whole planet armaturizing themselves, radical ideologies that somehow forgot to die, stock market crashes, crop depressions, and hasty alliances that couldn't possibly be kept longer than the average fuck. For humanity, I think our old pal Churchill used that phrase to describe the importance of winning that war . . . and you're changing the subject." She noted, crestfallen.

He wanted to say something, shoot another quip from the hip, but as her expression feel deeper into grimness, the turian found the shriveled words drying on the tip of his tongue.

"It's stupid really. If anything, I should be mourning the present instead of a past I barely got to see."

Garrus hummed a soothing tune in his subharmonics, even though it was falling on deaf ears. He experienced enough from Shepard to know that the futility of the gesture made his sincerity all the more genuine, something politicians had clearly forgotten.

"You said it yourself. The Reapers are bringing out vulnerabilities in all of us. It's alright to be scared."

She straightened and then mock-slapped herself.

"I'm a soldier, goddammit! There're more important things to get on with. Maybe the Mars archives holds more information."

She made to dive into the plethora of information left on her terminal but the turian stopped her by grasping her by the wrist. She gave a brief cry of surprise, her eyes questioning the sudden physical contact. Garrus leaned back, allowing the mask of professionalism to drop down.

"Maybe . . . but we're not here to chase red herrings. Our priority is the Crucible. I'm not going to send Shepard in based on a conjecture . . . and certainly not for that thing."

She looked as if she was about to object, but the words died on her lips.

"Understood, sir," came her mute response.

"I heard enough. I'm going in for an interrogation. See what else I can glean from our mysterious guest."

He loped off towards the Med-bay but was stopped just short of the scanner that would allow him access upon hearing the meek, timid voice of Samantha.

"If Jacob is who he says he is, please try to help him however you can. The UAC stole a lot from us . . . and likely from him as well. Don't be too harsh."

He paused but did not look back, betraying no emotion. Harshness had become part of his routine, his life, as a beat cop or a vigilante. There would be no exceptions.

"That's all up to him," was all he managed to offer.

Then he crossed the threshold.

. . .

Meanwhile

. . .

"Please, doctor, I need a mirror. I need to see the damage for myself."

No amount of pleading could change the doctor's mind. She refused to hand him anything and his continued persistence caused the requests to be ignored without a second glance. Something about the potential trauma being too much for him to cope with.

He snorted with disdain. Nothing could compare to hearing the sounds of his own bones breaking inside of him or body parts falling into a heap of his own flesh. Or coping with the fact that he had become . . . what? A demon with free will? Though he wondered how long that would last. The other demons had been dragged to the temple by some influence . . . probably that corpse in the chamber. Could it still speak to him from across the void?

Jacob shivered.

Reproachfully, and quickly becoming sour, he fell silent and paused unnecessarily before every request made by the doctor, but he eventually obeyed every time. The routine was becoming mind-numbing, asking to raise his arms, check his vitals, flex his claws. Checking his pupillary response, reflexes, and inserting every node possible through his veins to monitor his vitals. The drone of his staccato heartbeat had habituated into nothingness.

Nothing to ponder except the strange turn his life had taken. When the mirror thing didn't pan out with her, he tried asking for water.

His exasperated snarl managed to draw the attention of the doctor who had now shifted to detective, studying slides of his tissue and blood through a microscope. His outburst drew her attention who peered up at him through the rims of her curious spectacles.

"Can I at least have some water . . . you know, if it isn't too traumatizing to my health."

She frowned briefly but the delay in understanding did not stop her from flashing him a glare, something that he had seen a million times when his tactless wit was too much for the ladies but it looked odd . . . on someone her age. That was not to say she didn't look youthful, but it was clear that technology and good health had a factor in her now worryingly youthful look. It didn't help that his testicles still reacted to the cold, sterile environment and hugged closer to him for warmth. He prayed she didn't notice.

Funny, a demon resorting to prayer for perfectly trivial matters . . . Never thought I'd be the one experiencing it.

After turning away from the dispenser that thankfully wasn't the sink, Dr. Chakwas presented him with a biodegradable, fresh from the office, coffee cup. He watched it apprehensively as an unwanted thought came in.

This would be his first drink of water in what felt like an eternity of drinking an unknown cocktail of blood. That, and accidentally consuming the occasional bit of intestines that managed to be carried down by the streams from age-old massacre grounds from afar. It was rivers of it, a veritable water hole. Some part of him was terrified that he had developed a taste for it or worse yet, dependent on the stuff, now more so from being . . . not him.

"Well? Come on, it isn't poison."

His head snapped up in surprise, shaking him out of his deplorable line of thinking. Rienfield briefly noted her Australian accent as he tentatively plucked the cup from her grasp. Instinctively, he expected his lips to automatically curl around the rim but when he tried to send it down the hatch, cold water dripped onto his trouser area. With a curse, he amended and now put his snout completely vertical and let gravity run it through his thirsting maw.

And was relieved to find it was indeed refreshing.

"Ahhhhh, I've been drinking blood for so long, I thought I would lose the taste for water."

She fixed him with an absurd look and then he reexamined what he said.

"Sorry, down where I was stranded, the only thing I had to drink was pools of blood. Jesus, I had no idea where the shit came from but it was the only thing I had to survive. I guess now some part of me thought I would turn into a vampire or something. When you're trapped in hell, the shit you see . . . nothing seems absurd anymore."

She gave him an odd look, akin to the hold my drink expression and judging by the way she finally peeled off her gloves, he was right in his assumption.

"So, are we talking about hell of a metaphorical variety or . . . ?"

He held out the cup and licked his chops with an inelegant swipe of his reddened tongue then promptly sucked it back in for the threatening visual it created. He raised the glass.

"You're buying. Want to get the rest of the story? You're gonna have to pour me another round."

It was as if every little idiom and cultural reference he made to humanity in general stumped the doctor for a good moment.

She blinked. "Yes . . . alright."

With refill in hand, he took another long swig the reptilian way and downed it in one go this time.

"The literal variety, Doc." He said suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"The place was flesh and blood, just like you or me. I can't hold a philosophical discussion about the potential ramifications but hell . . . inferno, whatever it is, happens to be a real dimension. It may just be coincidence that it embodies our concept of hell, the tortured screaming, the sound of flesh tearing, shit that burrows into your head and never let's go."

He felt an odd tremor deep in his forearms, and he raised them to study the blackened slits along them. Some part of him had repressed that last detail of his transformation, hoping that he was so delirious by the end of it that he had imagined parasites tunneling within him.

Rienfield shook his head. "It takes massive amounts of energy to point yourself in that direction, but I managed to stumble on this portal. Ended up falling like an idiot. If I hadn't been turned into this thing, I would have been heavily scarred potentially minus a limb. Somehow, I managed to live in that place for almost a month. Most only lasted an hour, ripped to shreds by monstrosities you can't even imagine. Case in point, me."

He paused, reflecting on how the relative calm in his new voice allowed the pounding and muffled screams of his old one to come through, if only slightly. Old Jacob fighting to the surface unsuccessfully. As a distraction, he took another swig from the cup but found it empty. She didn't even ask. The doctor scooped it out of his hand and went to work on another refill.

"So . . . what race are you?"

He blanched incredulously. "I'm human! Like you."

She offered him a tight smile over her shoulder, and he knew exactly

"Of course, my apologies for the eagerness, Mr. Rienfield."

She continued, as if trying to draw attention away from the slip.

"So, I heard you've been acquainted with Joker?"

"Yeah, your goons wouldn't even let me see the cockpit." He indicated sourly.

"You're on a warship now. It's all standard procedure."

He chuckled sardonically, shaking his elongated maw.

"Great, you sound just like every other VI I've-"

Then pain shot through his chest like a lightning bolt had stabbed his heart. He gave a shuddering gasp, clutching his exposed ribs, his muscles spasming uncontrollably. He doubled over and clattered to the ground as the chair skidded back with an ear-wrenching screech. Dr. Chakwas immediately came to his aid, trying to catch him before he fell but tumbled along with him underneath his weight. She was shouting something to him, but his eyes pointed towards the fresh dispenser. Cold was spreading through him, sending all his systems haywire and beginning to shut down his vision.

"Your body temperature is dropping like a rock . . ." She made to leave but fingers easily wrapped and held firm around her forearm. She cried out as his talons dug in briefly. No time to apologize.

"Coffee . . ." he groaned.

"What?"

"COFFEE!" he boomed with sudden impatience.

She stumbled to her feet and sped off. The fresh pot of coffee clung to the air, the vapor whistling into his lungs, releasing him of an oppressive pressure. He snatched it and glugged it down. What must have been boiling to the human felt only like a cup of tea that had been standing out for too long.

"Get me another!" he demanded, his body continuing to quake.

She wrestled with the coffeemaker for more juice before it bringing to his mitts where he promptly, and unceremoniously, tossed its contents over his head, steam instantly rising from all around.

Gradually, he felt his entire body restart, and he gasped.

Dr. Chakwas was staring at the monitor.

"Your internal temperature is returning to norm . . . wait, it's too fast . . . what the hell?"

He grunted a query, but she didn't answer. His raptor-like head craned around to face the monitor where he saw the blurry, out-of focus measurement sharply increasing in height. The relatively weak nodes hooked up to him had begun to melt.

"That can't be possible. Your brain would be liquefied by now."

He grabbed her by the arm again to shake her out of the current train of thought. His demonic eyes peered into hers intently, following even as she squirmed underneath his hold.

"Right now, I need to find out what happened to my family. Do you understand me? I need to know what happened on Earth."

The topic seemed to come out of nowhere, but he needed her to understand the mental crisis that had befallen him as well. If he had an untimely expiration, if his form was unstable and short-lived, Rienfield would never know what became of his distant family.

"I'm not so sure that's advisable . . ."

"Make it advisable!" He warned with a low snarl, jostling her again. "No more games, Doctor. I need answers. I can't keep playing this charade for much longer."

Her eyes narrowed with anger and she attempted to pry his claws away.

"Then get your meaty paws off. I don't take unruly aggression in here. That you leave outside the door just like everybody else." She paused in her comeback to brush herself off. "You'll get your answers."

She breathed an exasperated sigh and then went on an extended silence that started to irk the behemoth.

"Earth," she blurted out but then she paused, hesitating to choose her next words carefully. ". . . has fallen. It's been overrun with giant machines called Reapers. They're here to obliterate all life in the galaxy and all our families are cut off. They're actively turning the best of us against each other, converting thralls where they can and hunting the rest that don't succumb. It's an extinction level event and this is the only ship and crew that can put an end to the madness."

Something scratched at his brain, a familiar word. A whisper clawing to the surface but a chill ran down his spine in contrast to the rest of the heat current.

"Reapers?"

In his mind's eye, he was brought back to the madness of Hell, searching the ashes for life. He saw the titans again, leveling the hellish mountains into barren plains and hurling vicious fire at each other. Then he saw a mug he wished he would never see again. The Insect.

Again, it's life was replayed but another voice, a rumbling quake that did not exist before, narrated his horror. The insect. Reapers. A hand fell on his slack maw. It was from those creatures he was reborn out of. Those he drew energy from. Those he breathed from.

All that time, those demons were worshipping what lay entombed in that tomb, having influenced their thoughts. The one that had stolen his body from him. A dead Reaper . . . and now he was one of them.

"They . . . can't have done this."

She frowned at him but she was also desperate to get his mind off the implications.

"I got a catalog of the listings of shelters. What are the names of your family, Jacob?"

The first name basis barely dragged him out of his growing horror. His tongue stumbled and tripped over the names.

"Little Helena . . ." he paused and shut his eyes against the torrent of emotions that him. It was always her nickname of her. " . . . Rienfield. Forget that first part." he croaked out mournfully. "And Pierce Orville Rienfield."

Dr. Chakwas pulled out a datapad, one that looked cracked and chipped from usage. After a brief few seconds she set it down on her lap.

"Well?" he demanded. "Where are they?"

She looked like she wanted to backpedal drastically but her hands were knowingly tied. "I'm sorry, Jacob. Pierce passed way from lung cancer six years ago."

He dipped his head in mourning and a low keen began to whistle out from the depths of his maw.

"Oh god, I could have been there . . ."

The datapad clattered on the table.

"I don't see how this can help you."

"I don't care. I need to help them, can't you see? I have no-one else to live for. Now, tell me about Helena."

"I . . ."

"Tell me!"

She shuddered. "She's gone. Her body was recovered yesterday."

That was the final straw. He trembled in a dizzying mixture of fear and anger as his world came crashing down. Dr. Chakwas put what was supposed to be a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"She lived her life well. From what I briefly read, it seemed she was a remarkable girl, got a Ph. D in Astrophysics, respected by her colleagues. I had EDI briefly pull up any mentions of your name on the extranet and this came up. It's a transcript of her acceptance speech when she graduated summa cum laude from MIT." Chakwas tapped a few commands into her data pad and handed off to him.

His predatory eyes gleaned over the information and he could not help the bittersweet swell of pride that opened up inside him with every passing line.

"And above all others, I owe my thanks to my eldest brother, Jacob Marcelus Rienfield who won the most prestigious award in life and never reaped what he sowed. Giving his sweat, blood, heartache, and ultimately, his life for a family's future. It is from his inspiration and sacrifice that I stand before all of you today. I watched him pull off night school while supporting a hungry family with such a sad grace. Maybe he never knew that we understood but that made his resolve stronger because he didn't ask for any of it. He did it without compromise til the bitter end. He deserved better.

A pause.

It is my honor to have been contracted by the Alliance to create the next-gen models and data for our starships dedicated to exploring a world without end for many years to . . .

He paused the torturous recording, and the roll of his sinewy shoulders caved inward with grief. He could not stand another word uttered from that source. That voice, all grown up, but still deeply familiar.

In the silence, she slowly plucked the datapad from his limp talons, waiting for an objection that would never come, a strength that had long since faltered.

"Helena helped us to stand where we used to be . . . and nothing, not even the Reapers can take that from her."

He shook his head and brushed off the comfort. After a while, as his shoulders trembled, he finally looked up from the dark place formed by the shadows of his looming form.

"I killed her," he whispered.

"Don't say that," she chided.

"Isn't it obvious? The Reapers, they're what the demons were so afraid of. I tampered with technology, energy that shouldn't exist and not only eviscerated the little humanity I had left, I also left my family at the mercy of the world. They're one and the same and I let them loose."

He dug painfully into the sinews of his right thigh until blood came out.

"This . . . body was their conduit. "

Something about what he said seemed to personally strike her as she didn't immediately protest his dangerous line of thinking. Another thought dawned on him and in the throes of panic, he began to wail.

"I can't remember what they used to look like anymore! My face . . . Oh, god, it's all fading." He reached for an identification badge on his fleshy chest and found nothing but sinews. Rienfield checked his nonexistent pockets for the old-fashioned wallet that contained all the photos he had of his family, the late girlfriend, anything . . . something that could prove to himself what he thought he once was.

"FUCK! I need it! Where is it?"

He rolled off the cot which careened into the corner with a metallic twang and sped off, pursing and parsing through the materials on the tabletops and in the drawers lining the medical facility. Pill bottles slammed against the handles before being thrown on the other side. His talons scraped along the table, shoving off anything that didn't meet the standards of his tense limbs. He rummaged through papers, smearing them in the process with blood, his own tears now. With greater ferocity, he yanked the drawers out of their sockets and sent data pads flying through the air. They were names he did not recognize, psych evaluations that meant nothing to him.

He rounded on the doctor and pointed an accusing talon.

"My personal effects!" he boomed. "I know they've been salvaged. Where are you keeping them? Why are you hiding ME?"

He turned away from her startled visage and faced the drawers once again.

The guards burst in but he ignored them at his back. They were insects, annoying but not worth his time. He could only distinctly sense the doctor telling them to back off. Progress . . . ruined. Why did he keep hearing these words?

Upon finding one drawer locked, he wasted no time snapping the hinge off and pulling another data-pad. His intent was to stamp it on the ground and continue his search, but his talons caught on something familiar in the roughness of antique paper like the journal harbored by that doomed soldier back in that cave. Pausing, his eyes crossed the subject line. Dates and reflections of the doctor but they weren't his. The man's rage returned, conspiracy flashing through his electric gaze.

"Is this some sort of trick to get me to accept this!? Accept what I was turned into! I will not. You can't have me!"

His body shuddered and then he found his movements slowed as his rage ebbed away . . . His back slammed against the drawers as he slid onto his haunches.

"They're all I have left. Please . . . I can't live like this." He hoarsely begged to the doctor.

He pulled the strange gun hidden underneath the journal, heard the choruses of barked orders of "put the weapon down!", the jostling of small arms at the ready . . . but his eyes glazed past to an unseen palace, knowing he had never escaped his ultimate fate . . . his doom.

"You see . . . this is a path I have to take myself."

It quickly dawned on her. Karin knew the procedure all too well. It was the words of a dead man. Then the gun was jammed into his bony maw.

"Jacob, NO!"

Without an ounce of hesitation, he pulled the trigger.