Chapter Ten

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.

I'm a little worried that I may have been guilty of racial profiling today. Or is it species profiling? Although I was totally right so that might be a mitigating factor and I don't know if I should be feeling guilty or not. Publicly I suppose I should but publicly I'm not admitting to the profiling.

The very first of the civilian survivors that I met was this Asari scientist. She was pretty new and the only Asari here. Is it really any wonder that I was concerned? I know that all sorts of bad things happen when you start making these judgments but it was only once! Still, you know what they say about a slippery slope…Not to mention that she was a huge bitch. Apparently I interrupted her meditations and she went out of her way to make me feel stupid when describing her work in an overly technical manner and then acting as though she was speaking to a child when I couldn't follow it. Not to mention that I'm firmly of the belief that meditation is pretentious.

So yeah, total bitch. I was not at all surprised when she turned out to be a plant and tried to murder me the minute I walked out of the line of sight. I killed her, though, so it's all good. And see! Right!

I talked to some other scared and traumatized survivors. They just want this to be over; it's understandable. Less so is the Elcor merchant's insistence that if I want extra equipment to save everyone then I'm going to have to pay for it. I still don't trust them even if he was saying things like 'furtively' and 'forced cheer' to describe his emotions. He was probably just trying to lull me into a false sense of security.

I felt really awkward speaking to the one Volus survivor from the hot labs. He apparently shut his colleague out of an elevator and she was brutally killed ("her head was split open like a melon") right in front of him. I'd judge him more except he said that she only had time to knock to be let in once so she was a goner anyway. And he feels guilty as hell, too.

There were some sick people because an experiment was being performed when the power was shut off so the quarantine failed and the closest observers were all infected. I want to judge them for their lack of safety standards but I guess if the power is shut down because of a containment breach that may get the entire facility nuked then that's not really something you can have a contingency for. The guards refused to risk their lives recovering information to create a cure and so I volunteered to do it. I was fortunate not to get infected or they surely would have left me down there to die. That was when the psycho Asari bitch attacked me, by the way.

I couldn't get directly to the labs so I had to go via maintenance. That was when I met this Russian guy who told me what these insect monsters were.

Mother fucking Rachni.

Yeah, that was my reaction, too. They were supposed to have gone extinct two thousand years ago! As in, the time of Christ (give or take a century or two)!

…Damn, the galaxy is old.

Binary Helix found an ancient ship with a bunch of frozen Rachni eggs and one of them actually still lived. They intended to just clone the Rachni but this one was a queen (perhaps why she was the one to live) so she was just made to have children who were taken away from their mother at birth. I would have expected that she'd need a male for reproduction but this guy told me that Rachni queens can reproduce by themselves as they carry the genetic materials of their fathers. Which is great and all except didn't we just establish that Rachni don't have fathers? Or maybe just the queens do.

Unfortunately, nobody thought to examine the effects kidnapping the baby Rachni would have. The fact that the children are going crazy and attacking everyone and appear to be rather mindless has made them think that perhaps the queen helps to shape the Rachni minds. I wonder how sentient regular non-crazy Rachni are. The queen was fairly eloquent.

Admittedly, the guy had an ulterior motive that had to be taken into account for telling me that the Rachni were all mindless and had to die since he wanted me to kill them all and some might hesitate at committing unnecessary genocide. I would have thought that they could be cured of their mindlessness by bringing them to their mother but he said that it's too late. I guess it's like the language thresholds and feral children and whatnot.

I figured that I would have to kill them all but was pleasantly surprised to learn that there was a way to kill them all at once rather than having to personally take out each one. The only problem is that apparently we have to activate it from the building in which all life is to be extinguished and let me tell you that that is a glaring design flaw. And we only have two minutes to get out once we activate it.

He was about to tell me the genocide password when he was stabbed through the chest by a Rachni who snuck up behind him. Since it was behind him and pretty quiet, he had no way of telling it was coming but I feel like maybe my team and I (all facing the sneaking Rachni) should have maybe noticed something. I mean, it wasn't invisible.

I tried to bluff the VI with a mumbled password but she saw through that and ordered me to report to security for arrest. The hell I will, even if security wasn't all dead. Fortunately, I quickly found the super-secret genocide password just lying around in the next room. These people!

The Rachni seemed to sense something as more of them crawled up and attacked the moment I activated the life cleansing but I just took the hits and ran away. Wrex did not approve but come on! Maybe I had a minute and thirteen seconds to spare but I was not fucking around with a damn death date!

After all the Rachni were dead, we quickly headed off to the main lab. Now, the VI was a bit useless in not being able to calculate the number of Rachni around for whatever reason but she swore up and down that Benezia was the only living person in the lab.

Have I mentioned that all of the survivors seem to think that Benezia is trying to fix the problem? I didn't want to crush their hopes and it's not like knowing would save them if she comes out to kill them since they wouldn't be a match for her.

Benezia is Saren's representative and Saren is a really powerful and important person on Noveria as well as a major stockholder in Binary Helix.

I want that kind of power! Will being a Spectre let me get really rich and powerful? I mean, I can do what I want after all. And I am making a lot of money on this mission already. I suppose a lot of it will be beyond me as long as I refuse to be bought but I'm going to try to keep the dream alive.

Anyway, when we came upon Benezia she was alone but she quickly called in all of her commandos. I mean, what the hell? Were they zombie commandos or is Mira just super incompetent? I am really not a fan of VI.

I knew that Benezia was hardly at her best but I did not get the sense that she was a very good parent in general seeing as how she was perfectly willing to murder her own daughter. Though she didn't seem gleeful about it so I guess that's something. Not much but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

She accused me of bringing Liara there to try and weaken her resolve. I was rather indignant about that accusation because I didn't even want Liara here and she sort of invited herself. Benezia did have a rather hilarious comment that Liara didn't appreciate me laughing at when she responded to my query about if she'd really kill Liara by saying that she should have been more strict with her. Because come on. That's kind of great.

Liara herself was really not a help here so it's a good thing that that's not why she came. She might have been more useful if she had tried to use sentiment or whatever to appeal to her mother's softer side but she decided to let her resentment rule her instead and just yelled at her about her failures as a mother.

Once we killed the commandos, Benezia changed her tune. And I have a bit of a worrying confession to make. For the first time, I found an Asari compelling. But honestly, I think it was more the darkness than the Asari bit as when she shook it off that feeling disappeared. So I don't find broken people attractive but I do like evil people. That…is probably not a good sign. I need to pay closer attention to Kaidan, I guess. And Benezia's darkness seemed rather one-note and simplistic, almost a thrall, and so it wasn't as strong as it could be. Good thing, too, because seriously? Liara's mother.

Normally I would suspect such a sudden about-face was a ruse in order to escape responsibility but given that Benezia ultimately insisted that we kill her, I guess that that wasn't it.

She just…stopped suddenly and acted like she was on our side. And her voice was pained and distant. She told us that she sealed a part of her mind away and was relying on that now but that it wouldn't last long. That's kind of weird. Is it an Asari thing? I don't think that I could do that. And how did that piece reassert itself? There wasn't really time to quiz her on it.

According to Benezia, Saren never actually told her anything so finding her was pretty much a waste of time. She did, however, know the location of the Mu Relay (or thereabout) which Saren had been searching for after a supernova explosion displaced it and we're not really sure why it's important. I'll look into it after Feros, I guess. And I half-suspect that the supernova story is just an excuse because he's embarrassed he lost a mass relay. I don't blame him because I'd be mortified, too.

Apparently Saren's ship, Sovereign, is a really big deal. It has special magical powers and I'm sure that she believes it but she seems pretty crazy and so I have my doubts. I'm reluctant to share the news lest it make me seem crazy as well. And everyone else's absolute faith doesn't help our image, either.

She also introduced me to the idea of indoctrination which, if true, would explain her Jekyll and Hyde behavior. She says the ship's doing it and I guess that could be true. This whole thing is so fantastic but brainwashing technology isn't too crazy, I guess, and could explain why all these people are going along with this. Whatever this is. I still don't even know what Saren is after.

Benezia said that she knew Saren was a threat and had thought to moderate him but she wasn't strong enough to resist in the end. And even snapping back now wasn't enough as she was no longer herself and never would be again. She begged us to kill her and told Liara that she was proud of her moments before removing all choice by trying to murder us again.

We had to kill her and it was all very sad. Liara was so devastated that it was just awkward and I never know what to say to people when they're in need of comfort. Grand motivating speeches, sure, but not the more personal aspect of it. And then Benezia seemed to come back to herself as she lay there dying and it's strange because I still don't quite understand indoctrination but I think I've just seen it.

And as if all of this wasn't enough, we had to decide the fate of the Rachni. Wait, sorry, did I say 'we'? My mistake. I mean 'I', of course, as my team always puts all of this on me. And maybe, as the captain and Spectre, it should be on me but it's still highly annoying.

And it was further complicated when the Rachni queen was revealed to have psychic power and possessed a dead Asari commando to communicate with us. Yeah, that really happened.

On the one hand, I do not approve of possessions. On the other, she really had no other choice to make her voice heard and it was a dead body. That makes it even more creepy in a way although perhaps less morally troublesome. And it was just for a few minutes. But if possession is required to communicate then I think galactic relations just hit yet another snag. Good thing I'm not actually a diplomat.

The queen seemed pretty reasonable. She didn't blame anyone for her people's genocide. That's certainly very forgiving. Of course, my people weren't even involved and she hadn't yet been born and so didn't know any of the dead Rachni so that might have had something to do with it. She said that…Well, to explain that I should try to explain why the possession happened at all.

Rachni don't communicate the way that we do. They communicate via some sort of song that no one else can hear. She thinks, though she can't know, of course, that something influenced the Rachni to attack in the first place. She said the songs turned a sour yellow note and that there were the sounds of oily shadows.

Well alright then. I don't really get it but I do concede that that sounds rather worrisome.

And as long as the songs aren't like that now things seem less dire. All of this could be made up, of course, but I don't think that that was needed. She could have just said that she had no intention of invading after seeing her people destroyed and I probably would have believed her. The Rachni paid a high price for their ambitions and it may have even been a situation like the First Contact War but they refused to back down.

And this weird influence could finally give a motive for the attacks that is more compelling than 'it's in their nature.' I hate that stupid scorpion and the frog crap. But could it happen again? One lone queen isn't much of a threat and I can end her now but one day…

She asked me to let her live. And people have asked me to let them live before and I usually do but this is the first time that I've held the fate of a species in my hands. If I let her live then the Rachni will survive and might come back. If I don't then there probably won't be any other miraculously surviving queen eggs to be brought back and given another shot. And even if there are, why would anyone else give them a chance if I'm not willing to?

This queen has done nothing but maybe one day she will or, generations down the line, her descendents will. If there are ever any further problems with the Rachni ever then it will be on me. And it's been two thousand years, such an impossibly long time, and everyone still hates and fears the Rachni for all no one could identify them on sight. How can they ever truly integrate back into society when they were never a part of it in the first place like the Krogan were who are similarly – if less so – distrusted? Still, I can't just kill them because they'll have their work cut out for them getting accepted.

I don't know. It's probably a mistake. But this is genocide and she hasn't even done anything. She promised that she would hide herself and raise her children and maybe one day return. I trust that she'll keep her word, if only for her own safety.

I do have to admit that, even though I fully planned on freeing her, I did have this strange impulse to press the 'kill' button instead. I have weird impulses like that a lot and even though I never give in to them I think that they may be a problem. I mean, that can't be normal, can it?

We left Noveria and I was slightly put-out to go from the weight of species to some idiot trying to get me to smuggle things past security for him. I'm not that easy to corrupt. Why didn't he just ask some of the super-corrupt security force? Surely I didn't kill all of them. I blew him off and headed back to the Normandy.

Liara said something in our post-mission meeting and I don't even remember what it was but Ashley bit her head off. Either she doesn't like Liara personally or, as I'm beginning to suspect, she has serious alien issues. Possibly both.

I called the Council more out of obligation than because I thought that either of us wanted to have this conversation. They don't really know what to make of Benezia and want me to go find the Mu relay. But they were more interested in the Rachni. They do, in fact, believe me that I found a Rachni queen and let her go and it's nice to know that just because my reports mostly consist of impossible statements that doesn't mean that they're going to dismiss them all out of hand.

They all feel that I did the wrong thing. I'm going to have to get used to that reaction or stop telling people about it. Probably the latter. They'll find out when they find out. The queen seemed so kind and not a threat but people are scared. The Turian councilor yelled at me for my recklessness and reminded me of the problems I may have created for future generations.

I felt another flush of guilt but I had carefully considered that and don't see how I could have done anything else. I just have to hope for the best, I suppose, and hope that I'm not blamed if I'm wrong. Sure I'll be long dead at that point but I still don't wish to be vilified.

I went to go check on Liara and she was putting up a brave front. Or, I guess, quickly got over her mother's death. She kind of creeped me out here. She said she initially didn't like humans because she thought that we were too hurried and impatient but over the last week she's come to understand why we were like that and to view it positively.

And she also wants to date me.

She promises that it's no longer completely about her fascination with my Prothean vision but if she even has to say it…

I didn't want to bluntly reject her because it would be awkward but, frankly, if I were going to pursue a lesbian relationship (and I don't care she and every other Asari that I've talked to says. It would be a lesbian relationship) then I'd go talk to Ashley. Just the way she looks at me before saying 'Ma'am' makes me think that…But, well, I'm not looking for that right now. I agreed half-heartedly that we have a connection or whatever and then quickly left.

I was looking for Kaidan but I couldn't find him so I went to go see Joker He also thinks that I was being stupid about the Rachni but at least he's funny about it! Sometimes I remember why I used to have a thing for him.

Then I went to go check in on Ashley and the non-Liara aliens.

Despite the fact that nothing I've seen has convinced me that anything exciting has ever happened at C-Sec, I wasn't really sure what else to ask Garrus about so I did ask him about that. And it turned out that, much to my surprise, Garrus did have a story! And it is a story so very interesting that I actually remember the names of the people involved! I know, I know. Sign of the coming apocalypse. Maybe the people around me are on to something about Saren and his mass genocide after all.

But anyway, Garrus was stuck on what appeared to be a pretty dull and straightforward black market investigation when he came across an organ trade spike. That usually means a lap or a psycho. He had once come across an Elcor diplomat who hacked people up and sold their organs. Am I a bad person if I say that that sounds awesome? Terrible, of course, but come on. The Elcor are big and bulky and seem to lack mobility and precision. How the hell did he ever manage to pull that off? He must have been super creative.

But though this seemed the most likely scenario, that actually wasn't it. They traced a liver back to a living Turian who was in possession of his liver. He also worked – past tense – for a Salarian geneticist named Dr. Saleon (told you I remembered the name). It seemed like a lead worth checking out and so Garrus brought in a bunch of employees who refused to say anything and it might have ended right there if one of the workers hadn't started randomly bleeding profusely and freaked out at the offer of free medical treatment.

The forced him and then the others to get examined and found something super disturbing. The organs of the workers were obviously being cloned but what Garrus and the others hadn't known was that they were being cloned inside their own bodies. And they were just cut open to take them out! But only if they were good organs otherwise they were just left in there! What the fuck? I don't care how poor you are, that is a terrible idea. Oh my God.

Naturally, Garrus was hell-bent on nailing this guy. Tragically, Saleon must have been tipped off or something since he blew up his lab and fled with hostages. Consistent with his loose-cannon cop persona, Garrus tried to get the ship shot down or at least disabled but his boss was worried about the hostages and let him get away. Those poor people probably died horribly once their bodies could no longer be used as test tubes.

I sympathized with Garrus but like freeing hostages so I think I may have given him mixed signals. Although he did at least agree that living hostages were nice and then said that he might know where Saleon is and really wished he could find somebody to go deal with it…

Well, I took the hint and am glad that our friendship has progressed to the point that he'd trust me with this. I promised that I'd take him with me and he promised that he'd try to treat it like any other mission and not go on a roaring rampage of revenge.

That's all I ask.

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