"Psst!"

The annoying noise buzzed by, infringing on his ears and making him instinctively wince in his drowsy state. In response, Shepard mumbled in his half-sleep and curled tighter into his little ball as he faced the wall. The cell had no bed, no blanket, nothing to provide warmth. With his bodysuit ripped, all of his heat was escaping easier and he had to find some way of conserving it before he froze to death in this place.

It had been a mostly sleepless night for him, his lack of amenities being the most obvious reason for this. But what had kept him mentally alert for hours on end the most, was what Tali had been trying to say before he had been pried off of her just last night. What had she wanted to tell him? She was acting like something had been gnawing inside her chest and that speaking would cause the pain to go away. But what would cause the pain to begin with?

"Psst!"

That noise was probably a guard, come to toy with him like he was a varren crammed into its cage.

He ignored it for now, trying to come up with the solution for the unknown quandary that Tali had placed in his mind. Shepard recalled that when the guard banged his head against the cell wall, Tali's sentence had been cut off. He had missed what she was in the process of saying. Was this all an actual part of his memory, though, or was it just a fabrication? Was it only him imagining what he wanted to hear, or was it something else entirely?

What did Tali want to say?

"Psst!"

Shepard now grumbled a little more audibly, briefly rising his head before letting it drop back to the floor. The action was done a little harder than he had thought, wincing as his skull bounced off the ground painfully. He blinked his eyes, now more awake than before.

"Psst!"

"For the love of-," Shepard groused sleepily, finally rolling his body around so he could see who was making that infernal racket from the hallway outside.

Through blurry eyes, Shepard saw four black shapes assembled just outside of the blue barrier. They were all crouched and were draped in black. Shepard recoiled slightly before he realized that none of the people before him were Grevel. They didn't look like batarian soldiers either.

Their armor was light, a matte black. A loose fitting bodysuit connected what random bits of plating they had over their bodies. The helmets were a large bubble of darkened plastic, obscuring their faces. They all carried assault rifles, the barrels pointed at the ground.

Intrigued, Shepard sat up slowly, the side of his body aching from where it had lain the entire night. "What's going on?" he whispered fiercely.

"Quiet!" the closest person whispered before he activated his omni-tool. With a few taps, the electronics crack did its thing the azure barrier dropped and the four newcomers quickly stole inside Shepard's cell.

Another black-coated person stepped up and produced a portable laser cutter from a back pocket. "Cover your eyes," he ordered Shepard before he grabbed the prisoner's cuffs and held them closely to the laser.

Shepard shut his eyes at the same time he felt a burst of heat near his wrists. The source of the increase in temperature was moving down quickly and several times, he thought his skin would blister from the sheer heat of the laser. But in a few seconds, the beam switched off and the cuffs clattered to the floor noisily.

"We have your armor," the first person said as he gestured to one of his comrades at his back. They moved forward and dumped the N7 armor in a heap at Shepard's feet. "Get dressed. There's no time."

Shepard knew better than to argue, especially since he had grasped that a jailbreak was occurring. In record time, he managed to seal the armor back up (albeit a little sloppily in some places) and he flexed his fingers tenderly. His omni-tool was working now, thanks to the removal of the nullifier cuffs, and he ran through a few programs to make sure that everything was working correctly before addressing the group in front of him.

The one kneeling closest to him offered a pistol. "Couldn't get your weapons," they said apologetically. "Armory was locked down. They still had your armor in processing, though. That's how we got it."

Shepard checked the pistol to see if it was in decent condition before he shook off the shock of this encounter. "Wait, hold on a minute. Who the hell are you people and how did you even get in here?"

"Keep your voice down!" the one standing nearest to the hallway hissed.

The closest one looked at the man who just spoke before turning back to Shepard. "Security isn't all it's cracked up to be. As for who we are, follow us and you'll find out."

The rest of the group rose to their feet, followed shortly by Shepard. The figure nearest to the edge of the cell briefly glanced both ways down the hall before giving a thumbs up. In single file, everyone moved out with their guns aimed downward the whole time, Shepard noticed, not covering all possible angles.

Amateurs, he reckoned. Not real soldiers.

However, the group took a left right off the bat, causing Shepard to halt in place. "Wait!" he whispered.

"What?" the man leading the group shot back.

"What about Tali!" Shepard looked to the right down where he knew her cell was housed.

"Who the fuck's Tali?"

"I'm not leaving until we get her too!" Shepard asserted, nervously checking around the cell block in case any guards were around.

The man in front fidgeted a little before shaking his head. "Fuck that! We don't have time to get anyone else. If you want to spring another, you're on your own for that, mate."

"Shut up, annoying human!" the next person in line spat at the one who just talked, his actions agitated. "No time to negotiate. Just do as he says!"

"Yes, lets," the leader of the group nodded before sighing in front of Shepard. "But be quick about it."

"Okay," Shepard breathed in. "It's just this way."


The hangar bay doors opened a relative crack, allowing Grevel to step inside from his watch. His coat was soaked from the rain outside and his mask dripped along the concrete floor, leaving a trail of dark splotches as he walked. His eyes didn't burn any less angrily though and his strides were purposeful as he made his way back to the relative comfort of his private security station.

The night had been another dull affair of watching over the prisoners gathered outside, just in case the Broker's talks with the Collectors fell through. Grevel sincerely hoped that an accord could be reached soon as he tired of babysitting such a pathetic group of humans day in and day out. If the Collectors preferred Shepard over the crops gathered in the cages, then he could let the batarians have all the fun they wanted with the humans while he could take Shepard for himself. Besides, it was easier to transport one than it was to transport ten, or eighty for that matter.

Under his guard, no more of his prisoners had perished due to another demonstration of batarian laxness. Some of the parts from the last trooper he killed were still where he had left them, a cloud of flies buzzing around the spot where the organs had slipped out of the cadaver, marking the place quite clearly. Everyone seemed to be on their best behavior that night and Grevel only wished that every night could have gone so smoothly since the beginning. His life would have been much easier.

As he ascended the steel stairwell, he glanced over to the cells specifically reserved for the important prisoners at the far end of the hangar. Grevel's thoughts turned to Shepard and how he seemed to be quite protective of the quarian, noticeably cracking when he had threatened to put her under the knife instead of him. That was an interesting weak point, Grevel considered. He would have to apply a little more pressure, though, to see how far he could go before Shepard broke completely. All he knew was that things were going to get a lot more interesting with this new line of questioning.

He was debating whether he should start another session with Shepard today or let the human rest while letting his fear simmer as he opened the door to find his room occupied, to his displeasure.

Inside the small security station, a pair of batarians looked to have been in the middle of a conversation, their expressions frozen mid-sentence once they saw Grevel positioned at the door. Their backs were positioned away from the cameras and their slouching postures did not impart on Grevel that they were actively absorbed in whatever assignment they had so poorly chosen to carry out in here, of all places.

"Out," Grevel barked, causing the batarians to jump in their seats. "Now!"

"Y-Yes…of…of course!" one of the batarians stammered as he turned around to log himself out of the system, his cohort also doing the same thing.

Frustrated, Grevel stomped back over to the station to ream out the pathetic aliens some more when a flash of movement caught his eye on one of the screens. Heart stopping, he froze in place for a split second before he cautiously crept closer, the batarians frantically trying to vacate their positions before the terrifying figure's rage was unleased.

Grevel tilted his head as his eyes narrowed at the screen. In just a quick interval, he spotted five black shapes crouched down as they moved across the range of the camera. They monitors did not provide any coloration, but Grevel could easily tell that these people were not wearing the red Na'hesit armor. Also, one of the last people to cross the threshold had an unusual insignia on their chest. If Grevel peered even closer, he was able to make out the tiny figures of "N7" etched on the chestplate.

Grevel's mouth dropped open before he grabbed the nearest batarian and bodily yanked him out of his chair, pressing him up against the screen while the alien wailed in terror.

"What…is…that?" Grevel growled, his voice shaking with so much fury that he could hardly speak.

"T-T-Th-T-Th-That?" the batarian managed meekly, his four eyes rolling in his sockets, trying to concentrate on what Grevel was referring to, his cheek uncomfortably smashed against the screen, slurring his speech somewhat. As soon as he saw the five people sneaking across the screen, the screen that he should have been manning while he was on duty, he knew that he had messed up for good this time.

"You…" Grevel whispered, too shocked to scream. "Incompetent…mother…fucker!" With a primordial bellow, Grevel grabbed the batarian and used all of his strength to smash the alien's head through the screen. Glass sliced at the batarian's throat and blood streamed down the security console while the body twitched in its dying throes.

Before the other batarian could react, Grevel, in frustration, yanked his pistol out of his holster and leveled off a single shot. The bullet careened into the target's forehead, splattering brains all over the far wall, the nearly headless body toppling over.

"They never…fucking…learn," Grevel gritted his teeth as he grabbed his assault rifle from his back and rushed back out the door, sprinting over the catwalk in the direction of the cells.


"Tali!"

It didn't take long for the quarian to quickly scramble up from her fetal position on the floor to the sound of his voice as he stood in front of her cell.

"John!"

Shepard smiled as Tali wrung her hands thankfully, the barrier of her cell the only thing separating them. He knelt down, trying to stay as low as possible, Tali copying everything he was doing.

"How…how did you get out?" she asked, her glowing eyes betraying her astonishment.

"I guess we have a few friends in high places," Shepard jerked a thumb back at the four approaching figures, hunched down as they scanned the rows between the cells. To the lone tech, he turned worriedly. "How long to crack the barrier?"

"Half a minute," the man said, fingers fumbling at his omni-tool, the orange glow casting a cursed light about the place. "Maybe a little longer. The encryption in this place is a tough nut to crack."

Assuring Tali with a smile, Shepard placed a hand flat across the barrier and Tali raised her own to meet it, pressing their palms perfectly across the other.

"Are we just going to start a routine of us saving the other now?" Tali asked in a relived manner.

"Not sure," Shepard grinned broadly. "I'd prefer it if any future expeditions would remain relatively bland from now on."

The taller figure who had protested initially shuffled on his feet. "Didn't know we were springing a damn quarian…" he muttered.

"You be quiet," Shepard said dangerously, his eyes glaring coldly at the man who spoke. The person just shrugged and turned away at that. Shepard decided he didn't like this man, whoever he was. His indignant attitude, plus his obvious distaste at the fact that Tali was a quarian, didn't rate him highly on Shepard's books. He would have to stay away from this fellow, he decided.

Back to Tali, Shepard warmed up again. "You'll be out in no time, Tali. God, I can't wait to-"

"SHEPARD!" a familiar voice roared, the sound echoing from all over the place.

In a heartbeat, the entire hangar flared with emergency halogen lighting, a blinding illumination that caused everyone to throw up their hands to protect their eyes. Incapacitated, Shepard yelled at the discomfort before his ears reverberated from a quick, explosive beat.

Slowly, Shepard realized that gunfire was erupting inside the cell area and he instinctively threw himself backwards. Sparks flew as bullets smacked up and down the space Shepard had been crouching, causing Tali to make a sound of exclamation and tumble backwards, the shots startling her. Shepard crawled behind another cell around the corner as he held his pistol up, trying to see past the bright lights.

Heavy booms rocketed the place and there was a shattering sound to Shepard's left. He peered around the corner carefully and saw one of the matte-armor individuals, the tech, was lying face down in a spreading puddle of blood. The visor of his helmet was shattered and his body was riddled with holes that had been from bullets passing completely through his body. Gore stained his clothes, dispersed when a round exited through his spine.

"Shaw, no!" one of Shepard's rescuers cried, but they did not move. Instead, they stared in horror at the cooling corpse, knowing that going to retrieve it would most certainly result in their death.

From up top, perched on the catwalk that ran central to the wing of the hangar, Grevel waited for his rifle to cool down before aiming down the sights again and pulling the trigger. He couldn't see Shepard from his position but he knew that he would be going for the quarian. He created a few avenues of sites that his bullets impacted upon, some going back through the body of Shaw for good measure, causing more blood to spray into the air.

"You want her, Shepard?" Grevel called from his perch while he sprayed Tali's cell with bullets. Tali screamed in fear as the impacts violently rippled along the barrier, creating a deafening noise from inside the cell. "Is that why you linger? You'd risk your life for a quarian?"

"Oh, he's fuckin' risking his life all right," the taller individual crouching next to Shepard grumbled.

Shepard beat the side of the cell he was using for cover in anger. He couldn't get to Tali's cell at all and none of them would be able to get an angle on Grevel without him noticing. Even if they could manage to get into a fortifiable position, Shepard was unsure of the skill and the experience his newfound cohorts had in dealing with crazed psychotics like Grevel before. He was stuck.

"Shepard!" Tali cried in her cell. "John! Please don't leave me!"

"I won't, Tali!" he answered helplessly, his face falling at her despair. "I will not leave you!"

"There's no time, Shepard!" the leader of the rescuers shouted over the din, trying not to look at their dead comrade. "We can't stay here or we'll get captured or killed!"

"Please!" Tali sobbed, her visor almost touching the barrier.

Shepard jolted as another round of bullets skimmed off the top of the cell he was using as cover, sending sparks raining down. He raised a shaking hand to wipe away the sweat beading on his brow and began to edge away from Tali.

"Tali…" he began to call.

"No!" she screamed, already seeing what he was doing. "NO, John! Please help me! They'll kill me!"

"They will not!" he roared back. "They want you alive because they need me, remember? And they'll get me, Tali, because I will come back for you. When the time is right, I will return to free you."

"Promise me, you bosh'tet!" Tali cried, her hands beating at the barrier. "Promise me that you meant everything you said!"

"I promise that I'll free you, Tali!" Shepard yelled without hesitation before he succumbed to the tugging of the leader at his arm. "I'll return for you!" With a final forlorn look at the completely defeated and frightened quarian, Shepard blinked tears out of his eyes before he turned and ran.


Grevel scowled as the rifle in his hands shook uncomfortably. He held the trigger down but the weapon didn't even fire. The displays were not even lighting up. He turned it on its side and he immediately realized what had happened.

To compensate for the continuous overheating of the rifle, Grevel had deliberately overridden the heat exchange protocol in the middle of the fight. This meant that the clip could keep firing even after it had been pushed over the threshold for safe usage. Unfortunately, Grevel had fired too many shots and the thermal clip had finally exploded, gouging a chunk out of the rifle, rendering it useless.

He tossed it down to the ground, himself quickly following as he vaulted over the guardrail. He landed heavily but quickly shook off the jolt to his knees and drew his pistol from his armpit holster. Grevel did not bother with being cautious this time, quickly skirting around corners and walking at a brisk pace, eager to attain something to focus his fire on.

But, there was just one problem right now. No one was firing back.

This was odd to Grevel. Apart from the sobbing from the quarian in the cell, there was no other noise he could discern at the moment.

But wait! There was a faint crackling sound coming from behind the row to his left. Grevel did not find any cause to use safety at this point, taking off at a blistering speed and doing an impressive whirl around the final corner to aim at what he could have never expected to find.

A hole perfectly sized for an average humanoid had been sliced into the floor in the corner, bits of concrete crumbling around the sides. It dug straight down into the ground, connecting some sort of passageway that had been lying completely under everyone's noses this whole time.

Shit!

Shepard may have escaped, but that did not mean that he was safe yet. Grevel holstered his pistol as he knelt to check out the hole. No one seemed to be lingering directly below and from the footprints etched in the mud, it looked like they were in a big hurry. There was still time to catch them.

Now a little cautious, Grevel carefully leaned his head into the hole to see if anyone was lying in ambush just out of his sight. His upside-down gaze revealed a maintenance tunnel that ran underneath the hangar, a maze of corridors that revealed a completely hidden side to this base. How interesting.

A beeping sound alerted Grevel and he swiveled his head, seeing only a flash of a yellow timer before he yanked himself bodily back, narrowly escaping the demolition charge. The explosion rumbled the floor of the hangar and unleashed a cloud of smoke and dust from the hole, coating Grevel in the fine particulates.

He did not cough, but Grevel's eyes stung from embarrassment, the shame in having Shepard in his very hands and losing him in a matter of mere hours! He lay on his back some more, hoping that no one would find him moping like this, too incensed to even think about moving at this point.

From the sound of rocks crunching together beneath him, Grevel surmised that the tunnel had collapsed in on itself, blocking any pursuit from his direction. Theoretically it could all be dug away but that would require an unsustainable amount of resources and manpower to sufficiently achieve the removal of blockage and thereby resuming the chase. These humans certainly thought of everything.

Grevel bet that he could spin the whole debacle on the two technicians up in the security station that were not doing their jobs, but because they were dead it would cast suspicion on him now. The only thing holding him back from killing every single person within a mile span was the fact that he still had the quarian. Shepard was drawn the quarian, somehow. Also, the human did not have a ship so how was he planning on escaping this planet to begin with? The only ship within range lay within this very hangar, just like the quarian. Grevel knew that Shepard had two good reasons to come back, for he was too stubborn of an individual to let anything get in his way, especially with his crew and freedom on the line. What hubris, to believe that he could run roughshod and elude Grevel forever.

Now all he had to do was dust himself off and lock himself in a room before Zherl came upon him, undoubtedly searching for some answers. If that batarian so much as opened his jaw one more time, Grevel felt that it would be smacked across the room for the alien to drown in his own blood. Isolating himself was the only effective means of maintaining whatever working relationship that he needed in place at the moment. Hopefully that moment was nearing its end.


After running through the damp, dimly lit tunnel that he had been so unceremoniously shoved into, Shepard was surprised when he rounded what must have been the five hundredth corner in the last hour to come to an extraordinary sight.

The first thing he immediately noticed was the heat, it was sweltering. The next thing was that he was now perched on a series of railings that overlooked a huge cavern, the metal walkways latched all around a crater that boiled and churned down below.

Metal buildings and shacks were constructed around the rock wall; many perched precariously into the air. The whole thing was a small town, built into the recesses of this tunnel, this cavern.

"It's…" Shepard said in wonderment as he wiped his brow, "…a volcano."

"A dormant one," the leader who brought him here clarified, "but one still prone to geologic activity. Come, we need to get you to our medic."

Pressed against the reddish-black rock, Shepard ascended a warm staircase that led upward into the same portable metal housing that colonies all over the galaxy utilized. These homes were meant to be easily transportable, efficient, and cheap. Looks like whoever lived here was putting them to good use.

Opening the door, a turian in regular garb looked up from a data terminal; spotting three people plus Shepard enter the wing. He stood up from his desk, knocking aside his chair in the process.

"Deborah!" the turian breathed, quickly taking Shepard and guiding him to a medical bench in the middle of the room. "Thank the spirits. I was getting worried after I detected the slight spike on the seismograph."

"Wasn't anything to worry about, Interius," the leader spoke. "Just us setting a little going-away present for the bastards up top. Shaw's doing, actually."

"Wait," Shepard butted in as the turian forcefully sat him down, looking at the armored person standing in front of him. "Deborah?"

The person nodded once before they lifted the stealth covering off their head, revealing a shock of long, brown hair. The woman sighed as she breathed in cleaner air than the helmet could provide and when she opened her eyes, he could see that they were hazel colored. She was around forty, Shepard had to guess, a woman who looked tired of where her life had gotten her into. There was a distinct sadness about her, but she was trying to hide that as best as she could.

"Sorry, Commander Shepard," she dipped her head gracefully. "These helmets always come equipped with a voice scrambler that lowers our pitch to avoid detection. I guess it made mine seem a bit deeper than you were expecting." She pursed her lips expectedly. "Or is it because I'm a woman that surprises you?"

"The helmets kind of threw me off," he replied, Tali still in his mind. "I don't really care about what gender you are. But you still haven't told me who you people really are and what's really going on." He gazed around the small room, glimpsing the rigging of the refinery clinging to the rock wall in the background. "And for that matter, where the hell am I?"

"Okay," Deborah held up her hands. "Relax, commander. Don't try to take things too fast."

"Screw that," Shepard shot back. "I'm done taking things slow. All this time I've been two steps behind everyone and I'm frankly tired of that. I want answers right now."

"That sounds reasonable," Deborah nodded encouragingly, trying to diffuse the mood before things got explosive. "But first, let me introduce myself. I'm Deborah, the leader of Genex Site Theta 3. Behind me is Zlette, our in-house armorer-"

The person she gestured to took off his helmet and an angry pair of red eyes stared back at Shepard. After getting over the shock at seeing the vorcha underneath the armor, Shepard conceded that their species always looked particularly sour. He didn't hold it against the alien.

"Interius, our medic-"

"Charmed," the turian said as he began scanning Shepard's body with his omni-tool. "You know that you have multiple fractures on your rib cage, soldier?"

"You don't say," Shepard painfully rasped.

-And this is Alec, one of our best workers," Deborah finished nodding to the taller person behind her.

At her words, the helmet came off and a bearded man of about thirty stared back at Shepard. His hair was medium-length and greasy. His eyes were beady and small and, unlike the vorcha, he deliberately fixed a grimace on his face, the same kind of attitude that Shepard had picked out back in the cell block.

"You better be worth all this hassle," Alec growled as he slammed his rifle on a nearby table. "We lost Shaw because of your delaying. Any more deaths and our little adventure with you up there will have all been for nothing."

"Wait, Shaw's dead?" Interius asked in the middle of his examination. "Damn, I liked Shaw."

Shepard felt his face grow hot. "I didn't ask for you – any of you - to come save me," he defended, his eyes making sure to touch every person so that he wasn't speaking just to one person. "If you're looking for an apology then you're asking the wrong person. Right now I'm feeling a little more angry than grateful at the moment. You rescued me, but forced me into a position where I had to leave a crewmate, someone I trusted with my life, behind. Your presence set up that confrontation with Grevel back in there and now I've broken the bond between a leader and the people under his command by practically abandoning them. Do not blame me for your man's death-"

"You're fucking wrong that I can't!" Alec bellowed as he kicked a chair over. "Shaw didn't matter to you because you didn't know him! Just like my brother before him! They were both killed and you don't even give a shit!"

Shepard attempted to stand up but Interius placed both hands on his shoulders, keeping him situated in place. "Easy, Shepard," the turian said.

Deborah swiftly stepped in between the two, glaring at Alec. "That's enough. Get some air, right now."

Alec breathed heavily, spittle flecking his beard. "I didn't fucking ask to save him."

"Go, Alec!"

With a muffled curse, Alec wheeled about and marched out the clinic door. Zlette looked around uncomfortably before retreating after the human. Deborah looked furious for a second before she calmed down and approached Shepard. "I apologize, commander. He's been…tense as of late."

"I'd say you're understating the problem," Shepard said as Interius began to dab at his cheek with some medi-gel. "You let all your subordinates off the leash like that?"

Her face hardened. "Listen, Shepard. Don't compare me to whatever structured life you've been comfortably accustomed to because I've never lived it. I've been managing a slew of refugees in this place that depend on me to make their decisions for them while the outside world has been trying to kill them. I may be the one elected by popular democracy but that does not mean that I'm a natural leader. You think it's easy to manage the lives of two hundred souls when your previous occupation was only managing a group of ten doing a regular job? No, Shepard. My subordinates have no leash because I can't really control them. This isn't the military and you don't know the hell we've been through."

"I'd say that you've done a good job," Interius shrugged.

"Well, you're right," Shepard admitted. "I might not have experienced the hell you've been through but that does not mean that I don't understand. I get it; you've got batarians up there taking slaves like it's hunting season. You took refuge in here, wherever here is, to elude them. But you're scared, you know that they're searching for you, you know they have an idea where you are and you know that eventually, they will find you and it will all be over."

"Is that all you know?" Deborah asked with a dry smile.

Shepard slapped his knees emphatically. "Yes, that about covers it from whatever I can remember."

"Interius, the data," Deborah said, causing the turian to retreat back to his workstation and type at some keys frantically. "Firstly," she began, "some history about this place would be beneficial to you. As you've probably guessed by now, we're not soldiers. We aren't even what you'd call a militia. We're former workers from Genex Chemical who have resided in this place for little over a year now. There's about a couple of hundred people living in this refinery at the moment. You're at what used to be a GC site for methane production, actually."

"So everyone here is all part of the corporation?"

"Most of us were local. Some like Zlette and Interius were outsourced from other divisions. The weapons and suits were left behind by our security detail. Our being here was a mixed blessing because we were reasonably well hidden when the chaos started on this planet. Only it's made the waiting a bit more unbearable, if you know what I mean."

"But why does everything look run down?" Shepard indicated the shantytown look of the refinery outside. "Surely a large corporation such as GC would have the funds to keep this place running reasonably well."

"That would be true, but I used the past tense earlier. 'Former' workers instead of 'current.' The company left in a hurry and they didn't exactly do a good job of locking up after themselves. It was just one day that they all just up and left and most of us simply chose to stay here. We'd been living here for some time and we didn't really feel the need to leave just yet."

"But why did they leave?"

"You have to understand the purpose behind their operation here. This is our interior location, housed in a dormant volcano for our more…secretive ventures."

"What sort of secretive ventures?" Shepard asked, almost rolling his eyes. "Worried that I'll give away any company secrets if you tell me?"

"Oh god, no," Deborah snorted. "That ship has sailed as far as I'm concerned. What I'm getting to is that Genex Chemical left the place when it found out that its workers were contaminated from one of the methane shafts. More like they knew about the contamination, but once the workers discovered that they were contaminated, Genex abandoned the site rather than face any liability, knowing that us poor Anhurians could not afford passage off-planet to inform the proper authorities and enact the judicial process fairly. Also, it's not like we had any contacts from friends in high places. And we'd find no help from the local government on Anhur as they're all completely corrupt."

"Wait, slow down. You mentioned that the shaft was contaminated. Contaminated with what?"

Interius reached behind his desk and produced a clear cylinder which he handed to Deborah. Inside the cylinder was a dull grey rock, but as the light shifted with its position, Shepard could see tiny particles flickering inside the stone.

"This is an example of the contamination that plagued the methane shaft," Deborah explained. "It went unnoticed by us because it looks very unassuming, but what the higher-ups in the company figured out before us was that the entire volcano shaft was loaded with igneous rock laced with eezo."

"Element zero…" Shepard mused, recalling the rare material that served as fuel for starships across the galaxy. An odd material and incredibly radioactive in its own right, element zero was the key towards faster than light travel that had been responsible for promoting trade and connecting countless planets together.

"Yep," Deborah smiled. "Instead of mining methane, we were actually mining eezo and we didn't even know it."

Shepard could feel his chest getting tighter. "But…shouldn't that mean that this entire area is infected with eezo as well? Because you've mined the stuff out in the open shouldn't there be some risk for contamination?"

"Not really. We sealed off the shaft once we learned the truth and the heat does a great job of vaporizing whatever particles are in the air rather quickly. We go around from time to time, scanning all parts of the refinery to make sure that there aren't any more contaminations, just to be sure."

"So that's it?" Shepard asked. "You just had an element zero contamination and that was that?"

"Not quite," Deborah said, obviously holding something back. "Since we are unsure about the properties of eezo as a substance completely as a galactic society, when faced with exposure, which most of us were when we were mining, eezo behaves weirdly in certain situations. Like, for example, if you take an enormous drill grinding up the laced rocks into a fine powder, and letting the powder become superheated from the extreme heat of the volcano for just seconds, they become microparticles. Those microparticles then are able to penetrate fiber and flesh and reside there, latching themselves into the host and dispersing the eezo inside."

"Common explanation of eezo poisoning," Shepard added. "That sort of thing is usually attributable to biotic abilities in humans if they are exposed in utero."

"That's not even the best part," Deborah said grimly, gesturing to Interius.

The turian cleared his throat as he tapped at a control on the datascreen that now shone in front of Shepard. Detailed digitally was a familiar dual-strand double-helix shaped form that Shepard recognized immediately.

"A DNA strand," he voiced out loud.

"A human DNA strand," Interius added. "Note the nucleobases." He tapped at a key, creating a blue stream to suddenly streak towards the projected strand. "Observe what happens when the superheated microparticles of element zero are introduced."

Shepard did watch. He saw that whenever the tiny blue fragments collided with the DNA, a small area of the molecule glowed a cool blue before absorbing the particle. It eventually faded back to its original digitized color but many times the DNA was shown as being bombarded by the element zero particles. At the end of the demonstration, Shepard saw that the DNA was emitting a slight blue aura around it, wavering as it was perpetually humming radiation.

Interius paused the show. "Of course, that was all just an extravagant display of the actual truth but as to what it depicts, it is very much reality."

Shepard was uncomprehending. "What is true?"

Deborah stepped in, gesturing to the modified DNA. "That the humans who were in this very location during the mining process were being subtly changed by the eezo. For some reason, it never affected other alien species quite so massively, but all of the humans, including me, are walking proof of the wonders that eezo can do."

"And that is?"

Leaning against the table, Deborah's tone quieted. "That the eezo latched itself onto our DNA. Our genetic code is laced with the key to unlocking biotic potential for humans. For us, the abilities have yet to manifest, but because eezo is in our very genes, we have the ability to transfer this gift. In essence, we have the ability to make biotics a genetic trait."

Shepard breathed out, not seeing this coming at all. His mind was whirling in several different directions. One was wondering what Tali would think of this, the other was examining the possible repercussions of such a revelation. It was almost too crazy to believe.

"So…if you reproduce," Shepard clarified, "There's a good chance that your children will be able to manifest biotics? Like the asari?"

"And their children after them," Deborah proclaimed proudly. "And their children too. I doubt this was the sort of outcome Genex expected, but we've made it work for us. I bet they just expected us to manifest cancerous tumors, not achieve a new inheritable trait."

Shepard gave a quiet chuckle, staring back at the DNA animation which had started playing again. "Such an ability would be highly prized," he admitted. "People might be willing to…"

He broke off, his mouth dropping slightly. Shepard's eyes slightly widened as he redlined his brain once more, searching the very depths of his mind as the pieces began to slowly connect.

Grevel wanted some humans alive, but the others he didn't care about. Why?

Grevel made a big deal about that one person accidentally killed in the field because she 'tested positive.' What if she had tested positive for eezo contamination?

Grevel wants the eezo infected humans so he can turn them over for a profit! He's nothing more than a glorified slaver trading people for money!

And he's got his hands on Tali.

Recovering his facial expression as fast as possible, Shepard could not trap the low growl that escaped his throat. His hands slowly began crushing the edges of the metal table, leaving his handprints permanently indented in the wobbly aluminum surface.

I need to get to Tali.


The pounding at the door was relentless, but Grevel had muted the audio feeds inside his helmet. There was still a slight vibration from the angry batarian outside the security station, but it could go unnoticed as he continued to sit in solitude.

"Grevel!" Zherl roared outside. "Open this door immediately! I demand an explanation for all the disruptions today!"

Grevel ignored him, fully intending to not comprehend what the damned alien was bitching about. He obviously wanted some sort of report from all the gunfire that happened in the interior cell block. Why Zherl couldn't get that sort of report from his own men was beyond Grevel entirely. Maybe he just wanted to chew the mercenary out some more, not fully knowing that his life was on the line in Grevel's book.

The right side of the security console was sticky with blood, still drying from the batarian that Grevel had plowed through the screen. There was nothing to clean the mess up so Grevel had just kicked the two bodies in the corner to dispose of later when Zherl had left him alone. This would push the number of batarians killed into the teens, he reckoned. This was the sort of behavior that was generally frowned upon come a performance review.

Nevertheless, Grevel cared less about the lives of the batarians that he had snuffed out over the past few weeks but was more intrigued at the welfare of the lone human that had managed to escape. Silently, he tapped on a few keys and a screen booted up the events leading to Shepard's flight from confinement.

Watching the entire series of events unfold only made Grevel madder, however. Here was deliberate evidence that something foul had been afoot and the idiots who were at this station did not even notice until Grevel had walked in himself! Perhaps he was doing Zherl a favor by weeding out all of the poor performers in this little army of his.

The whole sequence flashed by uninterrupted, Grevel watching from multiple angles on the screens in front of him. His mask was illuminated by the moving pictures, the light bending around the curves and grooves, shining from the metallic jaw to cast him in an eerie light.

Once it ended, on a whim Grevel rewound the footage to last night, when he had thrown Shepard into the cell with Tali for a few minutes. This was a common tactic used by the humans, he had learned. A few centuries ago, some civilizations liked to give their prisoners time with each other to converse. This made separating them much harder on the psyche, making them easier to bend to whatever their captors demanded of them. Grevel had been looking forward to seeing how Shepard would have reacted, but he was now gone.

Perhaps the whole ordeal was not a total loss, though. Grevel looked up at the corner and saw Tali curled up in a fetal position in the corner her cell. This was the real-time feed; she had stopped crying shortly after Shepard had fled and now she was trying to comfort herself by entering a troubled sleep.

Grevel continued to look at the image as he pressed the play button, his attention gradually drawn to the images projected towards him. He unmuted the speakers on his helmet and found the blessed silence from outside gratifying. Zherl must have given up on trying to draw him out.

Sounds of a scuffle caused Grevel to lean into the image, peering closely. The video was showing the exact moment when Shepard was being dragged off of Tali, how they pleaded for more time together. Grevel couldn't help smiling but froze when the quarian threw herself forward and shouted something unintelligible. His head shot up, having caught the faint trace of a word that started with an L in there. He rewound the tape a few seconds and concentrated hard.

On the screen, Tali shouted, "I l…ou!"

Damn. There was still too much interference from the scuffling and the noise from the guards. Grevel isolated the audio clip and projected it on the monitor directly in front of him. A jagged burst of lines running left to right spanned the screen, the visualization of noise.

Grevel highlighted the clip and set the console to automatically reduce the noise level. The audio lines thinned somewhat and Grevel played the clip again.

"I lo…ou!"

Still not good enough.

Now Grevel activated the dynamic range compressor, a dialogue box popping up to indicate what modifications he wanted to make. He equalized the noise thresholds by three units, applied a gain to the overall mix, and set the level of compression to a ration of two to one. He waited until the console finished the modifications and then he played the clip one last time.

On the screen, Tali surged forward and screamed, "I love you!"

Grevel froze, hardly daring to believe it. His palms were face down on the console and he gradually drew himself up, staring with bated breath at the recording. He was not mistaken but such a revelation like this was…exhilarating. Unexpected, but exciting nonetheless.

I now have my new line of questioning, Grevel thought decisively.

With a slender finger, Grevel pushed down the transmit button and waited for the guard to pick up. After a delay (most likely caused from the guard noticing the ID of who was calling) the call connected.

"Operant Grevel!" the batarian greeted politely, with a slight shake in his voice. "Uh…what can I do for you?"

"Listen closely," Grevel leaned down so that his mask was only a foot away from the audio transmitter. "I need you to retrieve the quarian from the interior cells and put her in the interrogation room. I don't want any questions and I don't want Zherl to know about this. Am I understood?"

"P-Perfectly!" came the panicked voice on the other end. "When did you want this done, sir?"

"I'm on my way down right now. That gives you a five minute window. I'm not in a particularly patient mood right now so I would prefer it if she was in that room in that time frame. You know what happens to people when I get impatient, yes?"

"I do!" the batarian almost yelled in panic. "I'm on my way to bring her in right now!"

"Glad to hear it," Grevel rasped as he disconnected the call.


A/N: At least I had all of yesterday to recover from my traveling ordeal. Driving for four hours after a six hour flight is not particularly good for anyone's health.

Regardless, more exciting and tense things are on the horizon so keep your eyes peeled! I'd like to have another chapter done this week if my schedule permits it, so I'd better not goof off.

As always, read and review!