Khyar system - Pokhara, planetary surface

Lumiscant, the omnic engineer, hunched over the husk of one of the cyborgs they had fought not an hour ago. Her articulated hands picked at the many metal parts on the charred corpse.

"So?" Shepard asked guardedly. Vakarian was a few steps away, watching as well.

"'So?'" she echoed, "I pity the poor bitch. That's 'so'. Whatever got its hands on… her, I think, eviscerated her while she still was alive. Notice this." She pointed at the ocular implants; there was still some fresh blue blood around them. "They tore her eyes out and replaced them with these things."

Without ceremony, she pulled the implants out and tossed them over to Shepard. They were ugly, multifaceted, angular things, vaguely reminiscent of an insect's eye. Next, she tossed a disc-shaped object that landed at Vakarian's feet:

"At least she didn't blow up when we shot her. She has more of these in her insides. You're familiar with this stuff, right?"

The Turian picked it up and his expression twisted into something Shepard guessed was a wince, then bowed his head. "Didn't you find any identity discs?"

The omnic seemed to ignore him for a few instants, continuing work on the corpse instead, but eventually, she replied deadpan: "So you finally summoned up some spine to talk to the evil robot. Good for you. And no, no identity disc. You chip your troops?" when Vakarian did not reply, she pressed her point, "You want help, I need info. I have info, you get help. Get it?"

In spite of himself, Garrus snorted. "Your engineer is… feisty. To put it nicely," then he replied, "If by 'chip' you mean some kind of implant to identify us, then yes, we are chipped."

"If you want the evil robot to help you I need the cipher to read it and see if these things can be tracked. Otherwise, it's your problem." That said, the omnic turned back to her dissection work.

Someone else would have found Lumiscant's attitude rather comical, but Shepard did not. Thousands of omnics had been killed by the Turians — thousands of Shambali at that. Some could be brought back by means of re-attaching their memory cores into new frames, but most were gone.

"She's angry. I would be too if you had slaughtered thousands of my fellow humans."

"It's different," the Turian said automatically. "They are synths—"

"The most peace-loving and friendly synths you're ever going to come across," Shepard retorted bluntly. "Of all omnics, you went and killed those who not only espoused peace but actively preached for it. You could have fucked up worse — if you had put some serious effort into it."

Vakarian glared at her. "If you ever get to visit the Citadel, look around for a Quarian and try telling her about 'nice AIs'. I could point you to a few worlds that are nothing but ruins because of synthetic uprisings."

He let that sink in and then added, "Now all we can do about you is hoping it doesn't happen."

She did not look back. "You've made it more likely, not less."

"You're wasting your breath, commander," Lumiscant growled as she worked.

Garrus saw he was wasting his breath as well, so he did not press the point. "I don't believe I can get cleared for sharing the cipher."

"Then shut up and leave. We'll solve this on our own."

Shepard was surprised by the alert that flashed on her HUD, and the message from Nile: "Stand by for reinforcements."

She left Schreieder's team in charge of keeping a watchful eye on Vakarian's platoon and made her way to the reactor building, where upon reaching the gate she was met by a set of familiar faces:

"Tovarich Shepard'yeva," Zaryanova greeted her.

"Aleksandra Andreyevna," Shepard saluted, then noticed her grim disposition. Tracer was also there, equally upset, alongside Mercy, Genji, the slender D-Va next to the huge bulk of her hardsuit, and the reason for their discomfort — a leather-clad man wearing a skull-like mask. The post-combat relief evaporated at once.

"What's he doing here?"

Reaper said nothing, merely staring back coldly at her instead. Then three more troops joined them.

"Commander Shepard?" a black-skinned man asked. He was fully outfitted in a featureless matte-black armor, except for the small N7 logo on his breastplate.

"Sir," she saluted. He can't be…

"David Anderson. My partners are Kathleen Sanders and Brian Ryder. We have new orders for you."

At once she boxed her amazement and displeasure into a compartment and refocused, "I'm listening, sir."

"We understand you have been informed already about the nature of these cyborg forces battling both the Turians and us."

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other in discomfort. "If we're going to believe what this Vakarian said, sir, then yes."

"Until we make our own investigations, we don't have much of a choice in the matter. Part of what we're going to do involves that, but our primary mission is a rescue. Contact with a fellow N7 team was lost as they tried to infiltrate the mining compound. I've asked Overwatch to assist in the extraction."

It was extremely hard for her not to blink. Reaper coolly glaring in amusement at her probably helped. She struggled to control her hatred and bottled the impulse to ask why to bring the murderer along, then inquired instead, "Is there anything else I need to know, sir?"

Anderson waved everyone beyond hearing range except for Zaryanova. "This alien squad is coming with us. We have agreed to a ceasefire with the Citadel forces while the terms of an armistice are negotiated. They have their own worries — the Turians have lost a lot of people, with many still MIA."

"Are you sure that is their only concern?" Zarya muttered darkly.

The N7 bowed his head, showing he shared her mindset. "They're every bit as interested as we are in finding out as much as they can about this cyborg menace, if only because of the quality of their weapons. And they'll want to keep us in the dark about whatever they find, so we must get to the bottom of this before they do."

Aaliyah acknowledged him with a nod. "Alright, sir. What do you need me to do? Do we need to bring someone else with us?"

"If I may," Zaryanova replied politely, "I suggest we bring Kaname and Lumiscant with us. That will round out my team."

At once, Shepard radioed the order for the woman and the omnic to join them. "I suppose I am to be the liaison with this Vakarian?"

"That is correct. You have already set up some sort of rapport with the Turians. Your quick thinking is to be commended, LC."

"Begging your pardon, sir, being mutilated into that shape is a fate I would not wish upon anyone."

"Me neither," Anderson agreed, "but don't let that get in the way of your work. I don't have to tell you how fragile or dangerous the situation is."

So, no simple rescue mission. Of course not. And if we find ourselves up to our necks in Turian cyborgs… Suddenly the perspective of having Reaper around changed from borderline intolerable to barely tolerable. Supposing the madman could be counted not to shoot them.

"Copy that loud and clear, sir. If you'll excuse me I need to sort things out with my team."

"You do that, then report back here."

Pokhara, despite being a remote, barren and inhospitable world, had been settled because of the rich deposits the main mining complex had been built around. Initially an open-cut operation, now the complex was one giant borehole almost half a kilometer across, and countless galleries had been excavated into its walls.

Now the place was a smoking ruin. No recognizable machinery was left. It had been blown to pieces, and their wrecks had been subjected to barrage after barrage until there was nothing left of them other than twisted metal. Cyborg husks littered the terrain around the borehole, and the bottom was black and blue with charred metal and Turian blood.

"Just how many died here?" Shepard whispered in horror.

"Too many," Vakarian replied darkly. "Just because of an overzealous officer."

Now both Alliance and Citadel troops manned the perimeter, the former heavily outnumbering the latter. Rigid discipline was enforced on the ranks by either side, nobody wanting to risk the precarious ceasefire being rent asunder by any mistakes.

Both platoons stood ready, coolly eyeing each other as last-minute preparations were made. Shepard caught sight of Mercy approaching her with an Asari in tow:

"Commander, meet Valena Danaan. You have come across her before."

Aaliyah studied the blue-skinned face warily, not placing her, then her memory joined the dots. She blinked in surprise, wondering what she would do now that she was back on her feet, but before she could say anything the Asari anticipated her:

"Calm down, I'm not about to reignite the fighting because of our first encounter."

Instantly Shepard took a liking to her. "That's some of the most judicious talk I've heard since I made planetfall. If it's true."

"Why lie? Nobody stands to gain anything from further bloodshed. In fact, I've come to join you in your mission."

She double-took at those words, then noted lowly, "I assume you're well aware of the risks. Yours was no simple flesh wound."

"And that's why you need me. You need not fear us, officer. De'Alia Vasir fought alongside you and she did not turn on you either."

"That won't stop you from betraying us later." The discussion was pointless, so she cut it short right there: "Alright, if you're coming with us, I suppose you can join Vakarian's platoon."

"You misunderstand me. I'm not going as part of my Turian comrade's force, I'm going with you."

Immediately Shepard glanced at Anderson and his fellow N7 commandos, who were all busy discussing preparations with other officers while still in full view of the conversation: nobody raised an eyebrow about it. Neither did any of the Overwatch elite. Reaper, though, was staring intently at her.

That glare was what compelled Shepard to accept:

"We are a tight unit, miss Danaan, and everyone here is expected to fulfill a role. Still, I've seen what you can do, so I won't refuse having you around where we're going."

A few minutes later, a company of Turian troops escorted them all the way down to one of the lowest galleries. It had been sealed in the past with the circular hatch-like doors typically used on mines in colonies all over Alliance space, but there was no trace of the hatch now; it had been blown away — from the inside.

"This is as far as we go," the company commander told Garrus. "Good luck to you."

"Thanks."

Given the narrow confines, it was obvious that the score of troopers could not march next to each other. Vakarian and his troops solved the conundrum by marching ahead without uttering a single word; Anderson and the N7 team, alongside Reaper, Shepard, and their Asari guest, comprised the middle ranks, and Zaryanova and the Overwatch squad covered their rear.

Aaliyah held herself tightly in control. Having to work alongside the murderer that had killed her whole squad grated her immensely, but it was not the moment to dwell on that.

Signs of the bitter fighting that had raged on the tunnels were everywhere, with walls blackened by explosions and pockmarked with holes all over. There were, however, no corpses at all, but many blue blood stains. Despite the cool antipathy between Alliance and Citadel troopers, the former could not stop themselves from reconstructing the battle on their minds and feeling horrified — all except for Lumiscant and Reaper.

"When did this start?" Anderson asked quietly.

Vakarian was slow to answer. "Four standard days ago."

As they went deeper into the mines, sparse glowing blue dots started to appear on the stone. Shepard expected those to grow into veins, but she was noticeably surprised when out of nowhere they came upon a solid chunk of pure element zero embedded on the wall. The Turians also noticed this and they talked among themselves for a few seconds:

"This is not normal, officer," their Asari 'guest' translated their words into English for her benefit before her onboard AI could. "Some forms of refined eezo look like this."

"There's something buried here," the Turian leader muttered. "This is no mere mine."

Shepard wanted to ask, Why are there no bodies here? The answer was obvious and terrifying.

It took her some instants to realize Danaan had not used her mother tongue: she speaks English? How come?

Eventually, they came upon a new installation, something unlike anything any Alliance hardware; it seemed to have been a large zero-g blast door at some point, but it had been reduced to charred metal. Fighting in this hall had been fierce and desperate. Bloodstains were everywhere, and many small bits of metal were scattered on the ground.

"We had hoped to contain them here," Vakarian mused, anticipating their thoughts. "We had fortified this chamber."

Shepard expected to hear more, but the Turian was silent. Zaryanova then intervened:

"Then what happened?"

Garrus still could not bring himself to talk, so one of his subordinates spoke for him:

"A team had went in to rescue some people who got sealed off somewhere further underground. They came back to us turned into living bombs. Some remained here to buy time for the rest of us to retreat back to the surface."

Beyond the torn hinges of the hatch, the tunnel stretched on, dimly lit by solid chunks of eezo on the walls but no other lighting. Nothing moved.

Reaper ignored the dread that was stalking both platoons and simply strode on, twin submachine guns ready on his hands. Zaryanova followed him, spurred by the need to keep an eye on their enemy, and the rest of the Overwatch force went with them. Without a word, both forces switched positions and resumed their walk, but Vakarian joined Shepard and Anderson on the middle rank. Nobody spoke. Everyone was now on edge, senses very alert.

But no one expected the galleries, ever more abundant with eezo chunks, to suddenly and abruptly change from near perfect cylindric tunnels into a wide, cavernous gallery of purple metallic walls.

"This is not a mine," Hana Song spoke for the first time, unknowingly echoing Vakarian's earlier words, unease creeping into her voice. Nobody acknowledged her.

Even Reaper himself had stopped. Shepard could only see the black hood as he was absolutely still, his back turned to her.

Then slowly he raised his guns and started walking again. Making almost no noise at all this time.

Both the Overwatch team and Anderson's N7 commandos understood immediately and safeties went off. Vakarian noticed this and his troop followed suit, even though he could not see anything.

The gallery eventually led to a chasm so deep they could not see the end of it. A narrow ledge ran left and right. Everything here was solid metallic purple, both the floor and the walls, except for regularly occurring seams.

Vakarian pointed to the left. "That way."

"So you have trackers after all," Shepard noted.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't allowed to share it with you."

"Guess it doesn't matter now…" She looked around her. The place was impossibly huge and quiet. Still, there was something indefinable, vaguely resembling the shrill of an ultrasonic whistle in sensation, except that there was no sound at all.

Reaper started walking away, oblivious of the exchange, his motions now almost liquid. D-Va fell behind him with Tracer and Kaname the sniper at her back and the rest of the Overwatch team in tow.

Painfully aware of how vulnerable they were walking on a narrow ledge, they hugged the wall of the chasm until they reached another passageway. Some steps down the corridor and Anderson halted the march:

"Hold on."

Lumiscant stepped forward and crouched next to the discarded piece of armor. She picked it up: it was the left brace of a suit not different from Anderson's, the same area where the omni-tool was housed.

She plugged into the portable computer and after a few instants, she reported dryly, "It's been scrubbed. The homing beacon is still on, though. Whoever dumped it did so hours ago."

"Who did it?" Anderson demanded.

"Harper, sir," then the omnic froze. "We've got company."

Reaper grunted. "This is a trap."

Then, clear in the silence that seemed to swallow all sound, something reached them. It was the distant echo of a feminine wail.

Shepard's blood chilled and she felt all of her hairs standing on end. It was a horrible feeling, but one she was well acquainted with. Twice had she experienced something similar: on the Overwatch oubliette in the Cabeus crater, and on the cargo bay of the London.

But the person responsible for that was now standing one step ahead, back turned towards her, both submachine guns raised.

"I got it," Lumiscant announced, then reported in a rush, "Enemy forces are converging in our position. Range three-two-eight meters bearing two-one-one, and two-eight-one meters bearing zero-six-five." The omnic patched through the feed to the rest of the squad.

"We will get the rear," Vakarian said on the spot, putting aside his disquiet: if the synth was not lying and if she was tracking the signals on the implants of his erstwhile comrades, then she could crack their ciphers in a matter of hours.

"Understood," Anderson acknowledged him.

He did not need to impart orders: the Overwatch elite was already ready and his fellow commandos needed no preparation. The Turian troops retreated back to the passageway entrance by the chasm and took defensive positions there.

"I'll scout ahead," Tracer volunteered, and darted away into the darkness before he could say anything.

"If that girl was a man, he'd have a serious pair," one of the N7 commandos admired her.

We need all the help we can get, lost in this goddamned maze, Shepard thought bitterly, then instantly boxed that thought away. Being fatalistic now was a luxury she could not afford.

They waited like coiled springs ready to burst at the sight of the enemy. Hana Song kept her eyes on the feed from Tracer's omni-tool as she raced through the labyrinthine passageways. Genji Shimada had unsheathed his tanto knife and was wielding it backward, his grip completely still, the color accents on his black armor helping him blend in with the purple metallic walls. Zarya's weapon hummed, pointed forward and upwards to provide indirect fire, its wielder steady and relaxed, confident in her skills after having fought numberless battles in close quarters. Of the Overwatch elite, Anika Ziegler was the most unsettled, her golden wings trembling slightly with each breath and the heavy Caduceus blaster quivering in her hands. Kaname, the sniper, had never shifted from the cold, professional persona Shepard had known during their battle for the Tokamak reactor, and had her right eye on the scope of her canister rifle, multiple nanite grenades hanging from webbing on her chest.

Lumiscant was fidgety, keeping eye on the clusters of red icons that were inching closer by the second. Reaper froze still again, both guns raised, and Shepard's eyes were on her enemy, her intuition trusting his uncanny senses more than her reason…

Then some more icons appeared out of nowhere, and the omnic yelled, "TURIANS! THEY'RE ON YOU!"

It was too late. Like unholy spiders, cyborgs were climbing the chasm. A storm of gunfire erupted as Vakarian's troop tried to smite the abominations, but these had no interest in fighting, only in reaching the knot of Turian troopers, and Garrus realized this with only enough time to retreat to safety before—

—a coruscating sphere of darkness and purple energy trapped the cyborg horrors before they detonated. The explosions ripped through the Turian squad, but they held their ground. Anderson noticed this, turned to squint down the dark tunnel, and as he failed to see anything coming he ordered:

"We'll help them out! You guard this flank!"

"Tak tochna, tovarich komandir," Zarya acknowledged him, her knuckles white within the heavy gauntlets of her powered armor.

"I see them! I see—"

They heard Lena's voice before it was cut short by a feminine scream unlike anything they had ever heard before. It was so high-pitched it stung the eardrums, but it was no lament. Instead, it was a malevolent shrill, a cry aimed like a weapon right at the heart of their resolve.

Then there was another scream:

"TRACER!" Anika exclaimed in fear.

Nobody said anything. Everyone knew there was nothing they could do for her, and besides, the time-jumper was resourceful and impossible to corner or pin down. They had to trust she could make it to safety.

Reaper did not wait. He strode forward into the darkness, guns raised, and melted away in smoke — almost right at the same moment a cluster of red and blue lights turned round a corner and ran towards them.

Kaname loosed a round automatically, the noise of D-Va's chainguns drowning her shot but not her warning: "HOSTILES!"

Lumiscant fired two hardlight blasts and tossed a small sphere down the hallway that became a giant turquoise ball running through literally everything on its way. Several of the cyborgs erupted in showers of sparks and dark blue sprays. Shepard ran to the front and deployed her squad-shield as the things detonated explosively, the shockwave almost overwhelming her defense. A purple protective bubble enveloped her, and it was a good thing because a fusillade broke through her shield, peppering D-Va's mech but inflicting no real damage.

Hana ceased fire and deployed her point defense, giving them a few precious seconds to marshal a counterattack which Zarya did not waste. Augmented by Anika's Caduceus staff, she unleashed one plasma bomb after another, wreaking havoc on the cyborgs as Genji dashed ahead. He deflected incoming fire back to the enemy and cut a bloody blue swathe through the staggered attackers with precise sword slashes—

There was a blinding burst of light.

Then, out of nowhere, a tall, blue silhouette blinked into existence among the cyborg husks. It… it… had apparently been an Asari once… like the cyborgs had been Turians in turn… but now it was a ghastly perversion of the blue aliens, stripped of all armor and cloth, biomechanical grafts lining its emaciated shape… terrible foot-long talons where each of the nails would be…

Shepard and Danaan went pale simultaneously at the horrific sight, and the former tried to yell a warning—

The thing hunched forward, arms spread wide, and screamed. Pain exploded in Aaliyah's head, and she could do nothing but reflexively trying to shield her ringing ears to no avail. Around her and further behind them, the Overwatch crew and Anderson's commandos were equally stunned, except for Lumiscant—

"SHUT UP!" D-Va raged as she literally stepped on the gas pedal and her hardsuit rocket-blasted forward, wading right into the husks and smashing onto the wailing horror—

But then, after a series of bright flashes, and the horror was no longer there, and then icons and alerts started to flash all over D-Va's HUD telling her that something was eating through the upper rear armor of her mech. She pivoted in place to find again the ghoulish figure, its clawed hands ablaze with blue fire and raised as if about to hurl something at her; she raised her point-defense system but the toroid simply ignored it, and the yellow alerts turned red as her right gun pod was sliced off clean.

"RYUJIN NO KEN WO KURAE!" But now the monster was no longer screaming, which meant that D-Va's comrades were coming back to their senses, and the closest one was Genji. His sword went right through the horror's gut; a flick of the wrist, and then the blade ripped all the way out through the belly. Glowing blue ichors spurted out—

"GENJI!" Zarya screamed and watched in horror as the thing blinked around in the same fashion Tracer usually did and neck lifted the ninja. A cruel glare and then the large talons impaled him through the chest. With a dismissive and deceptively powerful flick of its arm, the monster tossed him away. Genji crashed noisily against the wall without so much as a painful grunt.

At once, Kaname tossed a nanite grenade that went off on top of the badly mauled Genji, then she brought her rifle to bear and fired. The large syringe-like canister dart hit the monster squarely on the chest. The thing waved its head around, briefly disoriented, then glared at the dart lodged in its flesh—

And then a submachine gun barrel was jammed through the monster's right eye socket.

"Die."

A brief buzzsaw-like sound and a splatter of ichors and brain matter stained the floor. Then Reaper put his other gun underneath the chin of the monster.

"Die."

Another sickening splash. Then the guns were pointed at the arms.

"Die."

Short bursts tore the arms off. Then Reaper became a cloud of living death and he enveloped the monster and its minions as he screamed his murderous mantra: "Die, DIE, DIE!"

The carcass of the banshee-like monster messily hit the ground. The cyborgs crumpled unceremoniously on the floor. Reaper wasted no time making sure they were truly dead and simply blew their heads off—

And then there was another stroboscopic cadence of blinding lights, and again there was the shrill screaming. Not even Reaper was immune to the near-supersonic wail of the monster that had appeared right next to him.

Out of reflex, he turned again into a cloud of smoke, but a pulsing black orb trapped him even in that form before he could escape. Blue fire blazed in the gaunt monster's hand as it readied its attack—

And then it was frozen into place. Danaan yelled, eyes clamped shut in exertion, "HURRY! I can't keep it in stasis for long!"

Shepard reached for Lumiscant, who was unaffected by the screaming. They both raced forward, taking care to stay clear of the pull of the black hole-like orb; Aaliyah primed two grenades and lodged them between the talons of each hand while the omnic deployed small sentry turrets around it. Using their hardlight projectors together, they wrested Reaper's smoky form away from the orb's pull and retreated to safety behind the bulk of D-Va's hardsuit, then screamed to Danaan:

"NOW!"

In quick succession, the Asari released her supernatural hold on the monster, and both grenades went off. The monster screamed in pain and rage as the sentry turrets fired on it—

Then a thin silhouette popped right next to it: "Time's up for you, you cunt."

The bloodied and bruised Tracer popped away to safety, then her pulse bomb detonated. The monster became a series of ugly stains on the walls.

Silence followed. Turians and humans alike groped back to their senses and tried to account for their wounded.

Slowly and ungainly, Reaper stood up, turned around, and found what he was looking for. Shepard and the leather-clad assassin squared off.

"Thanks."

The voice had been quiet, without any of its usual hostility.

Aaliyah felt her temples swell and she turned aside. "I didn't do it for you," she muttered.

Anika, oblivious to the exchange, was on top of Genji. The ninja was out cold.

Tracer limped up to her. "How is he?"

"If we get him quickly out of here he'll live," Mercy answered through gritted teeth. "No tissue damage, but his life support system is wrecked."

"If it's mechanical damage I can help him," Lumiscant volunteered. "Maybe you'd want to look after Tracer and… well, him, doc."

Anika nodded and turned her attention to Tracer. "Mein Gott, what got you?"

Lena's right arm was on a makeshift sling improvised out of her customary flight jacket. There was a clean hole on her right thigh she had crudely patched up with medi-gel and bandages. A multitude of small bruises and cuts covered her all over.

Tracer's smirk turned into a painful grimace. "You can dodge only so much."

Mercy grunted in agreement and undid the blood-soaked bandages. "It got hairy here."

Lena winced as Anika worked on her wound. "It also got hairy there."

"No doubting that."

Anderson slowly approached them, Garrus in tow. His eyes quickly scanned everything, including the casualties and the fallen enemies. He approached Shepard and Zaryanova, both equally ashen and standing next to Lumiscant and the shell-shocked Danaan: "Good to see you made it."

"It was no walk in the park," Shepard grunted. "How was it over there, sir?"

"We had some casualties," Garrus answered. "We have to send them back to the surface. They won't live long otherwise."

"You fared better than us, I see, in spite of…" Anderson's words trailed off as he laid eyes on the carcasses of the blue-skinned horrors. His eyes jumped between them and the traumatized Asari.

"We never came across those… apparently, that's what they do to any Asari they get their hands on," the Turian speculated.

"What's 'they', Vakarian?" Zaryanova demanded tiredly, still numb. She could not shake from her mind the vivid specter of the horror impaling Genji.

A shrug. "I haven't seen what it is. Eventually we'll find it down here."

"Will he live?" Anderson was asking Lumiscant as she worked on the unconscious Genji.

"Without help, he won't make it past today," was the cold answer. "I'm doing what I can, but without the right parts I can't fix him up."

A Turian soldier approached Garrus: "We'll have to find another way up, sir. The tunnel is gone."

Shepard stared at the trooper. "What?"

Moments later, they were on the edge of the chasm again. Where the passageway had once been, there was now a solid wall of purple metal without so much as a seam to mark a moving wall.

"Just great," she swore.

"Lumiscant?" Hana asked the omnic. She did not like her situation in the least. With a gun pod missing, she was reduced to barely being a bulky and inefficient fire support unit.

"Nothing around, but don't trust me," she warned. "Last time the bunch that got the jump on the Turians appeared almost right on top of them."

"We can't afford splitting up," Garrus mused.

"We cannot," Anderson agreed. "Can you repair D-Va's suit?" he asked of the omnic engineer.

"I can, but it'll take time," the synth replied flatly. She needed not clarifying that time was in short supply for some of them.

"Then we'll have to continue with what we've got. We will take the lead, as we've taken less casualties. Song, you and Ziegler go on the rear with Vakarian's platoon and cover our wounded. Zaryanova, Shepard and Reaper on point. We'll follow you along with Lumiscant and Kaname."

Tracer nodded reluctantly at that. The 'wounded' included her. Medi-gel and Mercy's magic staff or not, her stiff leg meant she could not dodge and jump around. But that did not mean liking to depend on Reaper to make it out of that maze. She exchanged glances with Aaliyah: beware of this chap.

It did not take long for them to find Lena's handiwork: over a score of shot-up cyborgs and the wreck of one of those horrific siege units. One of the walls bore a long scorch mark where the thing had apparently hunted after her with its beam weapon.

"What happened here?" Garrus asked.

Shepard made a vague gesture at the limping Oxton, who just shrugged.

The Turian was amazed. "You took on all of them just by yourself…"

"It wasn't easy… I had to really work at it." She pointed at her wound. "I didn't get away scot-free either."

They were following Lumiscant's indications, following passageways that twisted, turned and sometimes retraced its steps. Shepard wanted to ask what it was that they were after, but in all likelihood the beacon on the omni-tool they had found was linked to those on the armors of Harper's fellow team members and they were trying to home in on that. She allowed herself no further speculation: being on point meant that she would be the first to die if they failed to spot the enemy.

At one moment, though, Reaper stopped cold.

"What?" Zaryanova asked dryly.

"We've been here before." The masked assassin turned around in place. The passageway was completely ordinary, except for a few seams here and there on the purple metal. After a complete turn he stopped, stared intently at the wall before him. Without warning, he turned into smoke and vanished.

Then they heard his voice on the radio. "Reaper here."

Lumiscant demanded, "Where are you?"

There was no response. Then the wall section on their right slid upwards without a noise. Reaper was on the other side.

"This is a shifting maze."

Anderson was dumbstruck. "How did you get that open?"

The assassin started walking down the newly opened tunnel. "Too long. Let's get this done and get out of here."

Garrus was speechless. Shepard noticed that:

"Ask about him at your peril," she warned him quietly, and followed after her enemy.

Two things became immediately apparent: first, something had been herding them down those passageways that apparently led nowhere, and second, they were not meant to ever set foot on that particular corridor. The motif here was different: the walls were brownish in tint, and seemed to be covered with a resinous material rough to the touch.

After some time they reached a wide chamber. Faceted containers lined the walls. Many were dark and silent, but several were powered and shone with bluish light.

"They're large enough to hold people," Vakarian said, approaching one on a hunch, one he was wishing to be wrong about. The containers were translucid but not to the point of being able to see what was going on within.

Reaper approached another of the capsules. He stretched his neck forward in a fashion that Shepard's unconscious mind equated with that of a predator smelling the wind for prey — and that caused her to recoil in shock when her conscious self realized it.

"What's… what is it, officer?" Danaan asked in worry. Shepard was startled and tried to cover her lapse, but it was too late: "There's something… someone alive in there, is it?"

The masked assassin touched the crystal briefly then pulled away.

Aaliyah did not look into the Asari's questioning eyes. "Do you want to know?"

"We don't have the time to find out," Lumiscant alerted them, then she patched through her data to the rest of the squad: "This place will get lively in minutes if we stay here."

Anderson looked for the beacon on his HUD: some fifty-three meters to the northwest of their position. "We don't leave until we complete our mission. Safeties off!"

"This will slow them down," the omnic engineer said, then set up some small sentry turrets on the walls and the roof, concealing them in a way that it would be impossible for any pursuers to see them until they had gone right past them. She followed up by spraying a near-invisible layer of film-like material on the ground a few steps ahead of the turrets. "Done. Let's go."

They continued down the hallway into another chamber not too dissimilar from the previous one, except for a series of contraptions resembling tall metal stakes on tripods. They all were soaked in blue blood.

Except for one.

Danaan laid her eyes on the single impaled Asari, and her face contorted in terror. Before anyone could stop her, she levitated herself upwards and, as delicately as circumstances allowed, wrenched the victim free. At once the stake telescoped down and shrunk in size until it became a small, broad spike.

Mercy thought she had already seen enough horrors down here to be inured to more, but she was wrong. It took quite an effort to set that aside and approach the terror-stricken Asari and the helpless victim that was bleeding to death with no possible recourse on her arms. As she gazed on that tortured and agonized face, Anika realized she would not sleep well for weeks if she made it out of here alive. The eyes had been torn out. Metal pieces had burst through the skin as if they had grown from within. The poor woman was gulping out like a fish out of water, trying to say something but completely failing at doing so.

Despite the urgency of the moment, nobody dared to interrupt Danaan as she soothed the woman in her arms. Then she laid her softly on the ground, stood up slowly with tears of rage flowing down her serene face, and she clenched her left fist until it became ablaze with a blue flame, knuckles chalk-white:

"May the Goddess grant you in death the peace that was robbed from you in life."

She smashed downwards. There was a sickening crunch. The woman's limbs tensed for an instant, then relaxed forever.

Mercy gave her two whole seconds, as much time as she dared given their situation, before softly touching her shoulder and whispering, equally softly, "I'm sorry. We have to go."

Danaan nodded and started walking without a sound. Her face was an expressionless mask, but tears kept rolling, and her fists were still clenched white.

They continued at a brisk pace, turned around a corner, then a loud beeping was clearly heard in the darkness. Immediately Shepard realized what it was:

"IED!"

She raced towards the sound and deployed her squad-shield with barely a split-second to go before the explosive trap detonated. The blast was powerful enough to actually push her back several steps, but somehow she remained standing. A few coughs helped her voice work:

"Is… is everyone okay?"

A chorus of acknowledgments followed. "Good eye, LC," one of the N7s approved.

"Textbook, sir," she merely replied, which earned her a nod. Building improvised explosive devices to secure a hideout while waiting for extraction was one of the many topics on the ICT curricula. "They must be close by."

"There." In the darkness, a dim yellow light blinked in sequence. Anderson pulled out his flashlight and blinked back. Then, some more lights —headlamps and similar gear— turned on, and a single man approached. The left brace of his armor was missing.

"Excuse me, sir, I must have bungled my… oh. No, I didn't bungle anything." The man's voice changed after spotting Garrus and his team. His eyes flickered very briefly when he recognized the skull-like motif of Reaper's mask.

Anderson nodded, but procedures came first. "Identify and authenticate."

"Commander John T. Harper, attached to the Pokhara Expeditionary Force as part of 3rd Recon, serial number three-two-one-oh-four-nine-niner-oh. My authentication code is CHRONOS."

One of Anderson's commandos checked the information and sent him a silent 'OK' over the squad intranet. Again, the N7 leader nodded, and replied, "The response is BISHOP."

Harper relaxed slightly. He eyed Vakarian, who glared back guardedly, and asked Anderson, "When did we agree to the ceasefire?"

"Before deploying planetside."

"Good." He bowed his head in agreement, then approached Garrus. "Down here we couldn't afford to shoot each other. Maybe you can help the guys that teamed up with us."

Vakarian nodded, having pieced together that part already. The signal of the beacon his own team was tracking emanated from these chambers so it could only mean one thing.

"Kandros," he ordered quietly.

His team medic nodded and, escorted by two men, joined him as he approached the knot of humans clustered around the four forms lying on the floor.

A quick glance at the first two and the Turian shook her head slowly. When she approached the third one, her face twisted in a way reminiscent of a brow knotting. "He's alive. Prepare him for transportation."

"Yes, ma'am," one of her aides acknowledged her.

One of the humans they had just met approached Kandros: "Please excuse us… we tried our best to save the others, following this fellow's instructions. Guess it wasn't good enough."

She was checking the fourth and last one. "I can tell. You did save her, so your efforts weren't wasted."

The human — apparently a female, given the bulges on the breastplate — deflated in a sigh. "Thanks, ma'am."

Garrus approached and noticed who had survived. His eyes flashed with surprise and he tried to conceal it, but Shepard was looking at him.

"Someone special, I gather," she ventured.

Vakarian nodded. Trying to hide it now was pointless. "If someone could survive this long down here, it was Saren Arterius. He's some of the best there is."

Aaliyah caught sight of Reaper; the masked assassin was apparently listening with well-guarded interest. This once, she had to agree with her enemy:

"I'm surprised you actually tell us about him in detail."

"You would know of him eventually."

A sharp echo came from down the hallway they had traversed minutes ago.

"They're here," Lumiscant warned quietly.

"Stand to!" Garrus ordered, then turned to Anderson, "Take my wounded teammates and get them out of here. We'll delay them."

"If we lose all of you here, we'll never make it out," the N7 argued, then as he saw Vakarian was not persuaded, he changed his tack: "I know you Turians will take one for the team if you deem it necessary. I don't question your courage, and your commitment to the mission is exemplary, but this time the way out is to run together."

Urged by the sounds of the approaching enemy, Garrus had little time to think. His first impulse was to urge Anderson to leave them, but then they heard again that malevolent feminine wail:

"Here they come!" one of his troopers warned.

"Make every shot count!" he barked harshly in reply, then he turned to Anderson: "We'll get the rear! Go!"

Then the first cyborgs turned around the corner, and almost immediately opened up in a storm of gunfire — and right afterward, after a series of blinding stroboscopic light pulses, one of the emaciated blue horrors appeared:

"SCREAMER!"

"Not this time." In a single fluid motion, Garrus raised his heavy long rifle and loosed a single shot. The round pierced all the way through the head of the monster, leaving a tiny hole on the forehead and making a bloody mess of the rest of the skull. The abomination gurgled hideously, then slowly toppled forward and landed flat on its face. With the same murderous precision, the Turian switched from target to target, dropping three enemies in quick succession until a burst forced him to take cover amidst the large cylinders by the walls. One of his subordinates, however, opened up from another angle, again inflicting a toll on their pursuers, and in this fashion they managed to keep the enemy busy on one or two of them at a time. They were superbly organized; each trooper defaulted to specific arcs of fire that overlapped with those of other troopers, and their firing patterns ensured they never targeted any foe twice by mistake.

Anderson and his fellow commandos had used the shock caused by Vakarian's quick disposition of the main visible threat to charge forward. The N7 leader was a legend for a reason, a veteran of many rodeos who had earned his spurs as an assault specialist; as such, he excelled in disrupting formations, his business being to crash into the enemy and dish out explosive and ballistic death all around him. He had worked in tandem with Sanders and Ryder for years now, and they knew his fighting patterns down to the letter. Helped by the deadly and accurate fire support from the Turians, it took them less than twenty seconds to slice through half the enemy like a hot knife through butter, and managed to throw the remainder into a disordered and chaotic retreat before they themselves were forced to take cover.

"This lull won't last long," the N7 veteran said huskily. "Lumiscant and Reaper, find us a way out of here!"

"We have heavies coming at us," the omnic warned.

The assassin acknowledged neither Anderson nor the omnic. He walked up to Tracer instead:

"Hand over your bombs."

Virtually the whole Overwatch squad had the same thought at the same time: sure, and then you have a perfect chance to blow us up right here. But then again, Reaper had shown he had no need for explosives to kill people.

Reluctantly Tracer handed him her two remaining charges. As he reached for them, she held them briefly: "Careful with that."

Reaper snatched the explosives with contempt, and sneered, "I'll just save again your lame asses with them. No sweat." Then he walked away.

Oxton gritted her teeth, and her eyes blazed angrily, but she said nothing. She was disabled, entirely at the mercy of her enemy; the situation was humiliating, but she had no choice other than rolling with it.

The assassin stormed off and simply strode forward past Anderson's team, caring nothing at all for the incoming enemy fire as he became a smoky specter and ignored it. Garrus put aside the concerns such a sight elicited — it looked human, spoke like a human, and wielded guns like a human, but almost definitely that thing was not human and certainly did not resemble anything he had ever heard of — and seized the distraction Reaper had created to snipe at another cyborg. His troop and the human soldiers wasted little time as well.

"Press forward!" Anderson ordered.

They started pushing, slowly at the beginning, but their pace quickened as the enemy learned Reaper was impervious to gunfire — whatever drove them, it was smart enough to realize that throwing cyborgs at him would only get them wrecked.

"We're almost there," Lumiscant encouraged them as the chasm was again visible down the end of the tunnel, then her voice changed. "The enemy is coming in in force behind us! Company strength, with multiple heavies."

Reaper said nothing but retraced his steps, readying one of Tracer's pulse bombs, and vanished down the hallway.

The N7 leader ordered, "Get moving! Overwatch team, make sure the way out is clear! Shepard, on me!"

Zarya wasted no time. She bubbled up and charged down the ledge, expecting to be fired upon at any moment but nothing happened. She reached the hallway on the other side of the chasm and yelled an alert over the radio:

"Clear!"

The wounded, escorted by Kandros and Ziegler, came next along with Kaname the sniper, who took position by the hallway threshold and waited for Anderson's team and the Turians to follow—

—and one of the blue-skinned screamers appeared out of nowhere amidst blinding pulses of light, floating in the midst of the chasm. Danaan was ready for this—

—but another singularity appeared right next to it, not hers. Next to her, Lumiscant fired multiple hardlight blasts off her weapon, and she realized the humans probably had their own means of generating such phenomena despite their lack of biotics because the omnic's attacks were impeccably timed, shredding the emaciated abomination to pieces before it could react.

Back in the tunnel, the echo of a powerful detonation reached them, and Anderson yelled, "That's our signal, let's go!"

D-Va had remained behind. Her damaged hardsuit was of limited use since she could not project her point defense grid with just one gun pod, but it would have another use now. She walked to the hallway entrance and waited by the edge of the chasm until they had all raced to safety, then she herself followed. As she was the last one remaining, she turned around, expecting the black cowled silhouette of their nemesis to appear, but instead of him, what she spotted were the blue and red lights hinting of more approaching enemies, so she rocket-blasted across the chasm, landing at the other side just at the moment the enemy started to fire upon her, and urged her fellows and Turians alike: "Get moving!"

They ran down the hallway until they reached the tunnels dug in the bedrock again. All the while, they were being chased by a persistent enemy that nonetheless was never in enough numbers to pierce through Shepard's shield. Then, Hana grinned to herself:

"Let's see how they manage now." A command, then red warning lights started blinking all over her HUD. She triggered the ejection system: "Nerf THIS!"

"FIRE IN THE HOLE! MOVE! MOVE!" Anderson yelled. D-Va raced over to them. Zaryanova and Shepard covered their retreat. The latter had her squad-shield deployed, and the former protected Song from enemy fire with a projected particle barrier. The moment the Korean pilot had cleared the shield, Aaliyah and the Russian disengaged, retreated around the corner, and dashed away in a dead run after the rest of the team.

The explosion tossed Shepard away and knocked Zarya prone. Hundreds of tons of rock crashed down behind them, sealing the passageway. The Russian helped the dazed Aaliyah stand up, and they kept racing forward and upward, the aftershocks of the avalanche creating cracks in the walls and the low ceiling above them.

Only when they reached the final checkpoint where the Turians had desperately fought to hold the cyborgs back a few days earlier did they stop.

"Where's… where's Reaper?" was Shepard's first question when she managed to catch her breath.

"Don't you fret, he'll turn up," Zarya muttered. "I've seen him survive worse than this."

Vakarian noticed the exchange. "I should know better than to ask, but what is he?"

The deputy Overwatch commander shook her head. "Shepard here told you what you need to know about him."

Indeed, they came upon Reaper on a tunnel intersection as they made their way back to the surface. This time, the Overwatch troopers reluctantly accorded him a nod in thanks for his work which he returned with just a cold glance.

Shepard did not. They stared at each other for a long second, then she walked past him in silence.

Author's note: a heartfelt thank you to BrokenLifeCycle for proofreading and ideas.