The Normandy's crew assembled in the briefing room, Shepard and Miranda at the head of the table.
"We've located a derelict Reaper in Hawking Eta's Thorne system," Shepard brought up a holophoto of the ship orbiting a brown dwarf. "We're going there to extract the Reaper IFF. It should lead us through the Omega 4 relay to the Collector base. Garrus, Zhar, you're with me. We'll be there in a few hours, so get prepped now."
Zhar clipped on additional armour to his suit. It was made of carbon fibre, and moulded so that it fit straight onto his enviro-suit with minimal restrictions to his movement. He then laid out a number of thermal clips for his rifle and pistol, slotting them into his belt along with a number of sticky grenades. His pistol felt lighter than ever as he holstered it, and he was pleased that he had not spent his credits in vain. He slipped his rifle's strap over his head and waited for Shepard at the airlock.
Tali came to wish him luck as he waited. "Stay alive," she whispered.
"No promises," Zhar smiled at her, making her laugh. He could hear the anxiety in it. He spotted Shepard and Garrus over her shoulder and stood back, straightening up a little.
"I'll see you when you get back," Tali said to him, leaving the trio to enter the airlock. Shepard glanced at him.
"We are definitely not talking about this now," Zhar said to them. Garrus loosed a bark of laughter, but Shepard only extended a hand to him. In it was a familiar, titanium-edged combat knife.
"You might need this back," he said to the quarian.
"Thanks Shepard," Zhar replied, sliding it back into its sheathe on his chest.
The ship was suddenly rocking, sending the team staggering into the walls. "Joker, what's with the chop?" Shepard asked him over the comm.
"Wind's blasting at 500kph," Joker sounded strained. "Doing my best. There's a second ship alongside the Reaper, ladar paints its silhouette as geth."
"Guess that explains why the science team stopped reporting in," Garrus commented. The shaking suddenly stopped.
"What just happened?" Zhar asked.
"The Reaper's mass effect fields are still active," Joker explained. "We just passed inside their envelope. Eye of the hurricane, huh?"
The Normandy linked up with the airlock constructed by the Cerberus, and Zhar readied his rifle while the atmosphere pressurised. The team moved forward in synchronisation when the doors opened, revealing the silent laboratory. Moving on, Zhar saw a bloody corpse sprawled on the floor and grew uneasy. He dropped to one knee and watched the door as Shepard accessed a nearby terminal.
"The angles of the walls seem to press down on you. I find myself clenching my teeth," Zhar heard the scientist in the videolog say. Shepard played the next log on the terminal.
"Dr. Chandana has been staring at some of the samples for hours," the scientist said in a concerned voice. "He says he's listening to them…"
"Keelah," Zhar muttered. "They were indoctrinated. Do you think anyone's still alive?"
"Let's find out," Shepard said, squaring his shoulders and raising his rifle.
They advanced through the doors, and the Reaper shook suddenly.
"What just happened, Joker?" Shepard asked over the comm.
"The Reaper put up kinetic barriers, I don't think we can get through from our end."
"Trapped in a Reaper," Garrus sighed. "Why do I get all the fun jobs?"
"That was no accident," Zhar said darkly.
"EDI, any ideas?" Shepard asked, tightening his grip on his assault rifle.
"A kinetic barrier can only be produced by a mass effect generator," EDI replied. "That is true for any ship, even a Reaper. Sending coordinates for the ship's core now."
"Isn't the core is maintaining the Reaper's altitude?" Zhar asked as they moved on.
"Lieutenant Zhar'Nara is correct," EDI replied.
"We'll make a sweep for any data and survivors," Shepard ordered. "The Normandy can extract us after we destroy the core."
"Aye Commander," Joker confirmed. "Good hunting."
"Hunting is what I do, Joker," Zhar grinned maliciously.
"You're weird, Zhar."
They passed by another three bodies as they entered the Reaper itself. Like the first, they were covered in blood. Zhar shifted his grip on his rifle.
"I've seen a lot of death," he said quietly to the others. "But this…"
They heard a shriek from behind a crate, and half a dozen husks sprinted around the corner.
"Husks!" Zhar shouted, dropping to one knee and loosing off bullets at head height, sending a pair of husks crashing to the ground. Shepard and Garrus drilled the remainder with rifle fire, and blasted away chunks of the husks as they charged. The last one fell only a few steps away from the squad. Zhar pulled out his pistol and fired half a dozen rounds into them to make sure they were dead.
"Zhar, one o'clock!" Garrus shouted. Instinctively, he raised his pistol and backed away, but it was too late. A husk bore down on him, hands scrabbling at his visor and sending them both to the floor. Zhar twisted and tried to crawl away from the husk but it leaped on him as he tried to loose off another shot, which instead went into the kneecap of another husk as another band set on Garrus and Shepard.
Zhar dropped his pistol and went for his knife instead. He jerked away from a swipe of the husk's claw and thrust his knife through its jaw and into its brain. The husk slumped lifelessly onto Zhar, and he pushed it away as he wrenched the knife out of it and picked up his pistol once more. The crowd had thinned considerably, and Zhar only had to pick off half a dozen from behind before the silence resumed.
They carried along the platform to the main Cerberus laboratory without speaking. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous interior of the Reaper. Handfuls of husks clambered up the platform, but they didn't appear in large enough numbers to pose much of a threat. As they reached a bend in the platform, a pair of shots rang out, killing two husks at the entrance to a high-ceilinged room.
"Sniper!" Zhar called out, sliding up against a nearby wall. "A survivor?"
"Why weren't they indoctrinated like the rest?" Garrus asked, peering around the corner and eliminating another couple of husks. Zhar stepped around the corner, pumping out rounds at three more as he crossed to the other side of the doorway. Meanwhile, Shepard blasted one that had crawled up behind them with a shotgun.
As they reached the end of the room, Shepard approached a number of long telescopic spikes.
"These were on Eden Prime," Shepard muttered. "The geth used them to create husks."
"The geth used these?" Zhar asked him, analysing the constructions with his visor's optics and trying to ignore the bodies impaled on them. "They don't look like geth technology, none that I've seen anyway."
"The way the room is arranged, it's like an altar," Garrus said distastefully. "Why would anyone want this?"
"The Reaper made them do it," Shepard said angrily. "We have to stop this now!"
"Agreed," Zhar said as he ejected a spent thermal clip from his rifle and approached a locked door. "Hacking the panel, standby."
His fingers danced over the keypad, constructing an override command for the console. After a few seconds, it stuttered open. Several husks lay on the floor, and the team moved past them.
"Zhar, Garrus, move right," Shepard signalled to them, and they moved up swiftly. Two shots rang out, and Zhar looked back to see two husks falling to the ground, and another moving towards Shepard. Another shot rang out, and the third husk fell to the floor.
Zhar searched ahead of them for the sniper's location, to his surprise he saw a geth. Instinct took over, and he raised his rifle and sank to a knee. To his surprise, however, the geth didn't fire on him. It stood up and spoke.
"Shepard-Commander," its voice acknowledged. It sounded monotone and metallic. It said nothing more, but Zhar's surprise stayed his hand.
"The geth are working against the Reapers?" Garrus said, the confusion obvious in his voice.
"I'm a little concerned that it knows who I am," Shepard replied. "Let's go find out what it knows."
"That platform was operating alone and speaking," Zhar said to them as they advanced. "It's a unique model. Nothing I've ever seen before."
"Unique or not, I've got a few questions for it," Shepard muttered. Moving through the Cerberus constructions, the team dispatched several dozen husks over the course of the next hour.
"Running low on thermal clips," Zhar informed them.
"Same here," Garrus replied.
"The core is just through this door," Shepard accessed the console. "Let's go."
The mass effect core illuminated the silhouette of the geth at the far end of the room interfacing with a console. Not far away, a group of husks was shuffling towards it. The deep blue glow also revealed the shimmer of a kinetic barrier between the squad and the core. As they watched, the geth pulled a pistol from its hip and dispatched three of the four husks and turned back to the console, disabling the barrier, but the final husk was within striking distance. The geth turned back too late, and with a heavy swipe of its claw it knocked the geth to the ground. Apparently it had scrambled the circuits, because the geth remained motionless on the floor.
"Shepard, deal with the core," Zhar shouted at him as more husks crawled up from below them. "We'll cover you."
While Garrus and Zhar dispatched the approaching husks, Shepard pulled a missile launcher from his back and fired off a volley of rockets. They collided with the core in quick succession, and it exploded as it destabilised.
"Shepard, that geth's behaviour was unlike anything I've seen," Zhar shouted at him as the Reaper shook violently. It was beginning to fall into the brown dwarf. "We should take it with us. If geth are acting alone, the Fleet needs to know."
"We've got enough problems without it," Garrus shouted back as more explosions riddled the room. "Leave it Shepard!"
"No, we're taking it. Zhar, give me a hand!"
The squad ran out onto the exposed remnants of the ship, the geth supported between Shepard and Zhar while Garrus covered them. The Normandy slid into view seconds later, and Shepard launched the geth into the open port-side airlock. Zhar followed after it, and pulled out his rifle to cover Garrus as he made the jump.
"Shepard, hurry up," he shouted. The Commander turned and ran towards the airlock, jumping just as a husk snatched at the air behind him. But he'd timed it wrong, he wasn't going to make it. Zhar threw his rifle strap around his neck and lay flat on the airlock floor, extending a hand to Shepard as he floated towards him. After a tense few seconds, Shepard caught Zhar's hand and Garrus helped pull him up into the airlock.
"Joker, go!" Zhar shouted at the pilot, hitting the door control panel. The airlock sealed itself and began to pressurise as the Normandy flew away from the derelict Reaper.
In the briefing room, Zhar joined Tali, Shepard, Miranda and Jacob in the discussion of the geth.
"An intact geth would be a valuable addition to Cerberus," Miranda argued. "The cyberweapons team could use it to great effect. Not to mention the bounty Cerberus placed on capturing one intact."
"You're not the only ones with an interest in it, Miranda," Zhar leaned on the table and watched the hologram of the geth, which was being reproduced from the camera in the AI core. "The Migrant Fleet needs to know if the geth are making advancements – ones that could actively threaten us. This is more important than Cerberus and any credit chip they could send you, Shepard. Lives are at stake."
"We should get rid of it now," Jacob shook his head. "I saw enough of these things on Eden Prime to know there's not a good one amongst them. Send it out the airlock."
"It saved our lives on that ship, without it we wold never have disabled the core," Shepard looked closely at the geth. "It stays here."
"Shepard, you saw what the geth did on the Alarei," Tali said, exasperated. "We can't afford to have that replicated."
"We'll keep it contained until we know more. What about the IFF?"
"It will take several hours for the IFF to be ready," EDI popped up in front of Shepard. "I will inform you when it is ready."
"Understood. Dismissed."