Crysis is the property of Crytek and Electronic Arts
Mass Effect is the property of Bioware and Electronic Arts
Welcome to the Future: Chapter 5
"Commander, we need to bring this onboard the Normandy."
"We will, Jacob; along with any other personnel we recover here, living or dead. First, we need to find out what happened to the researchers."
Shepard could tell that Jacob was about to protest. He had raised his right hand to chest-height, fingers opened, as if he was a shy kid in a classroom trying to get the teacher's attention. But before he could begin his sentence, Miranda stepped in from the left side of Shepard's field of vision and interrupted.
"I disagree, Commander. This takes top priority. We need to secure that Nanosuit now."
Shepard started, and had to resist the urge to go for her weapon. She hadn't expected Miranda to appear from behind her like that, and she did not appreciate being sneaked up on. It really didn't help that Miranda had shown up so damn fast.
Over her suit radio, she could faintly hear Kasumi's complaints that no-one was helping her with the generators. She shut it out.
Prior to the destruction of the Normandy SR1, Shepard's few interactions with Cerberus had left her with a far from favorable impression of the shadowy organisation. And in the few weeks since her "recovery", she had found nothing that suggested their ways had changed for the better.
Which left her in something of a dilemma now. She knew the reputation that Nanosuits had, even though more than a century had passed since they had last been fielded by any military force.
Simply put, Nanosuits were the stuff of legend, a 21st century equivalent to Greek Fire or Damascus steel. A technology that had put all of its contemporary competitors to shame, and that mankind had summarily lost the knowledge or ability to create or use. And while the latter two had been eventually surpassed by more modern innovations, no form of armor developed by humans or any of the other council-aligned races had come close to matching the capabilities that Nanosuits were said to have possessed.
Certainly, a decent suit of armor and a good kinetic barrier could offer just as much, if not more protection then a Nanosuit; and there existed cloaking systems and exoskeletons that could make any soldier transparent as glass or strong enough to throw a Krogan overhead like a ragdoll; but the simple fact was that no other armor system existed that could do all three things at once.
Even if the skeptics were right, and the Nanosuit's capabilities were vastly overstated, any organisation that managed to recreate that technology would gain an immense advantage in future infantry engagements.
And Shepard was damned if she was going to let Cerberus be the first organisation to do it.
Miranda obviously sensed her hesitation, because she quickly offered a concession.
"I suggest that Jacob and I bring the suit up to the shuttle, along with the associated weaponry, while you and the others continue.. investigating here. We'll come back down once we have the Nanosuit secured in the shuttle."
She paused.
"I estimate that it would probably take us around 30 minutes to make the trip to the shuttle and back."
Which gives you half an hour to investigate a Cerberus outpost on an alien world without the supervision of any Cerberus personnel.
Shepard smiled. She still didn't entirely trust Miranda, but she had to admit, the woman knew how to bargain. As long as Shepard was present onboard the Normandy when the suit was brought aboard, she would have the final say on what was done with it. And while Miranda would undoubtedly send data on the suit back to the Illusive Man and Cerberus at large, that was infinitely preferable to letting Cerberus get their hands on the Nanosuit itself.
Jacob glanced between the two of them, confused. Miranda had been transmitting to Shepard only, so he'd heard none of what she had said. All he could see were his Commanding Officer and Executive Officer apparently staring each other down.
Shepard spoke then, transmitting to both him and Miranda.
"Alright Miranda, you bring this up to the shuttle and then come right back. Jacob, you're going with her."
Surprised by her sudden change of tone, Jacob stared blankly at her for a fraction of a second before responding. "Understood, Ma'am."
Shepard turned away and headed back to help Kasumi with the generators, as Miranda and Jacob started the trek back through the tunnel towards the waiting shuttle, laden with their grisly trophy. By the time she got back to her, Kasumi had managed to restore power to the micro-habitats; "No thanks to Miranda. Wasn't she meant to be helping me?"
"We found a more pressing issue. Besides, you seem to have done alright without her help."
Looking over the six habitats, Shepard waved an arm to the nearest one. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's pop the cork."
Kasumi activated her Omni-tool, linking it with the habitat in question. Shepard felt the floor vibrating through her feet as air was pumped out of the habitat and back into a waiting pressure tank. Then, a red light on the habitat flipped to green as the pressure inside the habitat reached equilibrium with the ambient pressure and the pump stopped running. Shepard grabbed at the flexible seal that served as the habitat's door and pulled it away, tearing it from the rest of the habitat like a scab from a wound. Tiny crystals of ice cracked and drifted away in the low gravity from as the seal crumpled to the floor. Bending low to clear the entrance, Shepard peered into the cramped interior of the tent-like habitat.
The habitat's occupants lay inside, a foot of empty floor space separating each one. They were three women, all curled into the foetal position. A thin layer of frost obscured their features, but Shepard could tell that their eyes were closed and their jaws were clenched tight. All three of them were wrapped in thick, full-body sleeping bags, the kind that had separate closed sleeves for the arms and legs. They didn't store heat as effectively as the traditional kind, but they allowed the wearer much more freedom of movement. Other detritus littered the area, including the insulated pressure suits that the women would have worn for any normal work outside the habitat.
Hypothermia. Probably happened in minutes, when the power to the habitat got disconnected. Probably while they were asleep, and they didn't regain consciousness. If they had been conscious, they'd have clustered together to conserve heat.
They'd have to perform autopsies to confirm her suspicions, but that could happen later when the bodies were moved to the Normandy. For now, Shepard moved on, checking the remaining five habitats one by one. She found similar scenes in each one, the only difference being the number and gender of the occupants in each habitat. Final tally, six habitats, two with three women in each, four with four men in each, all occupants having apparently frozen to death in their sleep. 22 persons in total, accounting for the entirety of the research team, at least according to the personnel list provided by the Illusive Man.
Not counting, of course, our mystery man in the crate. Guy stumbles into a portal on Earth, ends up here, and a Cerberus team finds his frozen corpse 100 years later and just throws him in a box. Poor bastard.
Still nagging at her was the unanswered question as to how the Cerberus teams' habitats had all been disconnected from the generators that powered them. It reminded her of a classic "locked room" mystery, except with 22 victims spread across 6 locked rooms.
But Shepard had no time to play detective. The Illusive Man had asked her to discover what had happened to his researchers, and she would tell him the truth: they had all died. How they had died really wasn't her concern, curious as she was. Activating her suit radio again, she made another call to Miranda.
"Miranda, have we got body bags in the shuttle?"
"Yes commander, we do. How many do you need?"
"Twenty-two."
There was brief pause before Miranda responded.
"I see. No survivors then. Jacob and I will bring the bags ba-"
The radio cut out into static then, and Shepard's HUD flashed red. The words Tesla and Seiverts popped up in the lower left corner, along with numbers that climbed at an alarming rate. The gentle blue glow of the chamber increased into a harsh white, and then the bottom dropped out of Shepard's stomach as the already low gravity of NK386 suddenly went from 0.3 Gees to 0. Then the numbers in her HUD dropped back down to zero too, and the static in her helmet went away in time for her to hear the rest of the ground team shouting over the newly-cleared airwaves.
"-ust lost gravity-"
"-adiation spike! Probable counter-intrusion mechanis-"
"-The hell's going on! I-"
"-Get it off me-"
Shepard turned around then, feet firmly planted on the floor thanks to the magnetic grips in her boots, and realized with sudden dread that she couldn't see Kasumi anymore.
She was right behind me, where the hell did she go?
Over her radio, she could hear the team continue to talk over each other.
"-was a lot of radiation. We need to clear out of here befo-"
"-no Mass Effect field detected. Must be somehow directly counteracting gravitational f-"
"-crap floating everywhe-"
"-an't see, something's dragging me-"
"-Kasumi! Are you alri-"
"-ing's got my leg now, get it off, get it off-"
Shepard looked up then, and saw Kasumi floating above her, saw the thing that had wrapped itself around her helmet and half her torso, saw Garrus, holding on to her leg and trying to drag both of them back down to the floor with his hardsuit's EVA thrusters while Kasumi kicked wildly and the thing swatted at Garrus with a translucent tentacle as thick as a man's bicep.
She reacted without thinking, extending her left hand outward before clenching her fist and yanking all three of them down towards her with a biotic pull. Kasumi and Garrus crashed to the floor, dazed, but not hurt. The thing unwrapped itself from Kasumi before impact, launching itself at Shepard through the thin atmosphere of the chamber. Shepard swung her hand downward, palm open, as if she were aiming to slam her hand down on a table.
The creature smashed into the floor a meter in front of Shepard's feet and was pinned there by the Mass Effect field that she was generating with her left hand. With her right, she freed her Carnifex from the magnetic hardpoint on her hip and shot the creature in its center of mass, once, twice, three times before it finally stopped moving.
Slowly, and careful not to accidentally launch himself off the floor, Garrus maneuvered himself back onto his feet before reaching down to help Kasumi stand back up. Muttering her thanks, Kasumi just stood there for a few seconds, shaky and weak at the knees despite the lack of gravity to weigh her down.
She turned to Shepard then, before glancing down at the creature.
"What was- what is that thing?"
The creature, or what was left of it, looked a little bit like a Hanar. The color was different, a pale blue as opposed to the iridescent purple of most Hanar, and its overall shape was sleeker, meaner than a Hanar, but the resemblance was unmistakable. The jelly-like flesh, the faint bioluminescent glow (rapidly fading now), the basic body plan, it was all the same.
Shepard had never seen anything like it before, but she'd heard the stories, and she'd read the historical accounts.
This thing was what exobiologists called Charybdis. In the heat of battle, soldiers had called them squids. To everyone else, they were Ceph.
And if the Ceph were here, if they were the ones who had built this place, that meant two things.
First, it more or less confirmed Jacob's explanation of the corpse of a 21st century human soldier being found on a planet that was over 3000 light years away from Earth.
Second, it meant that they all had to get the hell out of there.
Author's Notes:
Once again, I apologize for the massive delay in this chapter. Crysis 3 has completely invalidated a lot of my planned plot points, so it's fair to say that this story is going to be completely AU as far as the Crysis universe is concerned. Mass Effect's side of the narrative is going to be left mostly intact, though you can expect to see more differences between my interpretation of "historical events" and the canon established by Mass Effect.
As always, please leave a review, and thanks for reading!.
