Shepard had the crew gather in the mess hall. It was easier than trying to fit them all into the briefing room, and the CIC was too impersonal for this.
They'd dropped out of FTL an hour ago. Alpha Centauri's binary stars winked at them from outside the viewports. The stealth drive was engaged, EDI had severed all outgoing communications, and she had received one final, detailed briefing from Hackett on the QEC, along with a heavily encryped data packet transmitted on a secure channel. They were all as ready as they were going to be.
Now it was just a matter of coming clean.
"Those of you who know me, know that I value trust," she said, standing at the head of the largest mess hall table. "Once earned, it's the most important bond we have. But I've always believed it has to go both ways, or it means nothing."
Shepard scanned the crowd, lingered on a few faces. Adams. Chakwas. Joker. "Each of you has put your trust in me. It's only right that I do the same."
She straightened and linked her hands behind her back. "This isn't a routine shakedown cruise. We've had orders to investigate a Systems Alliance research installation for the last four days. I was told to keep it quiet, for the sake of the mission. But I won't let anyone on this ship walk into something they aren't prepared for. And from the sound of it, we'll need to be at our best.
"Those of you who know me, I hope you understand. Those of you who don't..." Her gaze drifted to specific crewmen, then to her officers, particularly Vorek and Din. "All I can do is tell you that this will not happen again. This ship and this crew deserve better from me, and I won't hold myself to a different standard than I would hold any of you."
Shepard took a moment, then straightened. "If anyone has any objections to this mission or my command, speak now. It will be noted in my report."
Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. No one said a word.
Shepard bowed her head. "Thank you," she said. Then she straightened. "Officers, to the briefing room. All other crewmen, dismissed."
"This," she said, pulling up a holo, "is where we're going."
The planet flickered into life above the center of the briefing room table, information scrolling alongside it in neat little boxes. A class-M world, barely habitable, nothing but vast mountain ranges and mineral deposits too small to justify large-scale mining.
"The installation is located here," she said, gesturing near the equator of the planet. "It's nestled in one of the small mountain ranges, tucked into a little canyon. Sensor shielding is in full effect, and any attempts to communicate have been ignored."
"What's the layout?" Vega asked, leaning against the bulkhead.
Shepard pulled up another holo, replacing the original. A three dimensional floor plan of the base appeared – a top level, with access to the sole landing pad, and a single, massive elevator shaft leading down, with floors at regular intervals until the bottom, where the labs and power plant were located.
"We drop off at the top and assess the situation. If things look as bad as our intel suggests, then our first priority is to plant a bomb on the main power core. Long as we have a detonator that's proximity based, it'll only go off once we reach a safe distance. We work our way up, locate any survivors, and extract."
"Simple," Din rumbled from the opposite end of the table. "But effective."
"I can whip up a bomb and detonator like that in about ten minutes," Sorono said, taking a drag off his cigarette. "Give or take."
"We concerned about recovering any data they might have?" Kaidan asked.
Shepard shook her head. "If the facility is compromised, the data is destroyed along with everything else."
"Hackett's order?"
"Mine," she said sternly. "The brass can chew me out later."
"Sounds like you're thinking they weren't doing anything good down there," Sawyer ventured.
"Hackett's the admiral of the Fifth Fleet," she said, crossing her arms. "If he didn't know about this place, it means someone didn't tell him. And I can't think of a reason for them not to that ends in anything good."
"Another bomb on Tuchanka," Garrus grumbled.
She nodded slowly, then looked up at her gunnery officer. "Din, I want those guns ready to fire at a moment's notice."
He tilted his broad head, green eyes glinting. "You believe there is something down there that might require a precision orbital strike?"
"I don't know what's down there," she said simply.
"But you point the gun anyway." He pushed away from the table. "Wise, Commander. The guns will be calibrated before you make planetfall."
Shepard was close enough to hear Garrus snort softly. She did her best not to smile and turned to Sorono. "Sartorus, after you've got that bomb rigged up, I want you in engineering."
"Making sure the ship won't fly apart and the engines are running extra hot." He nodded and flexed a mandible. "You got it."
"And try to pay attention to Adams," she said with a small frown. "He knows this ship better than you. Don't forget that."
He bowed his head and made a sort of conciliatory gesture with his hand, smoke trailing.
"Sawyer." His head snapped to her. "We're going to need some pretty specific gear for this. We have field chutes and line guns?"
"Plenty of, ma'am," he said. "I was thorough, and Lieutenant Cortez was helpful with procurements."
"Good. Vega," she said, and he straightened off the wall. "I want you with me on this. You too, Garrus."
Both men nodded sternly.
"Which leaves the ship in your hands, Kaidan." She grinned tightly. "Let's hope it goes smoother than Ilos did."
Kaidan scoffed quietly. "Let's hope."
She was about to dismiss them when she saw Vorek shifting uncomfortably at the opposite end of the table.
"Something wrong, Vorek?" she asked.
He shook his head and linked his hands behind his back. "Nothing wrong, Commander. But... I would appreciate it if you kept your omni-tools active and recording. If something happens, I'll need the data to analyze."
Shepard nodded. After a moment, EDI's blue orb materialized above the conference table.
"I will record and store any data I receive from their hardsuit links, Dr. Vorek," she said.
His eyes blinked in sequence, top then bottom. "Thank you."
Shepard regarded the room at large. "You have your orders. Ground team, be ready to move in thirty." She nodded with finality. "Dismissed."
Shepard kept from fidgeting, arms crossed and eyes closed, but Garrus was keying at his omni-tool and James bounced his foot up and down anxiously as the shuttle made its way through the atmosphere of Centauri Theta. There was still the possibility, however slim, that things weren't as bad as they seemed.
Once the shuttle made visual contact with the installation, that possibility vanished in a puff of smoke.
The research station was partially camouflaged, built into the side of a sheer cliff of red rock in the narrow fissure of a canyon. The base itself was entirely underground. The only visible sign of it was the landing platform, itself built around a rocky outcropping.
It was covered in scorch marks, rubble, and the burnt out chassis of three Kodiak shuttles. They didn't look like they'd even made it off the ground.
Cortez couldn't land. There wasn't enough space. He hovered as low as he could over the platform, and Shepard and her team leapt out.
"Keep the engine running, Cortez," she said as she drew her rifle. "We'll be back."
"You got it, Commander," came the response through the comm.
They performed a quick sweep of the area. Plenty of destruction, weapons fire, spent heat sinks, and dust blown in from the desert. But no bodies, no signs of hostiles. No sign of any life whatsoever.
"Alright, people," Shepard said, "looks like the facility has been compromised. We go in, rescue what survivors we can, and blow the place."
"I can live with that," Vega said, eyes still scanning for hostiles.
"We sure that bomb will do the job?" Shepard asked, eyeing the round metal casing the size of a bowling ball attached to Garrus' lower back.
"Plant it on the side of the primary power core, and it will," Garrus said. "Which is, of course, at the heart of the base and not just inside the front door."
Shepard signaled and they fell in behind her. Cortez pulled the shuttle away as they passed through the first archway. He'd be back to extract them, but there was no need for him to stick around in case there were still hostiles here in force.
None of the doors were powered, which meant breaching them was a matter of cutting through the seals with omni-tools and forcing them open. Once they were through the abandoned security checkpoints and inside the base proper, it was pitch black. They had to switch on their hardsuit flashlights, and things started to look grim.
"Lot of blood here, Lola. Not a lot of bodies."
There was indeed a lot of blood, dried nearly black in tacky pools and occasionally spattered on the walls in patterns that spoke of desperate struggle. Pockmarks and debris scattered the floor, broken glass and upturned desks, potted plants spreading dirt and ceramic over the ground, and a shattered aquarium, its jagged edges still retaining a small amount of stagnant water while the fish flopped and gasped on the floor. Numerous small barricades had been erected in corridors and against doors from whatever had been at hand.
There wasn't anywhere to look that didn't scream 'firefight.' Still, there was something off about the whole place. Something that bothered her and made everything seem wrong somehow.
"Shepard?"
She turned. Garrus was regarding a particularly heavy barricade, numerous pieces of office furniture piled up against a door along the corridor they were taking to the main elevator shaft. Shepard stepped alongside him and regarded it, then checked the floor plan they'd been given on her omni-tool.
"These are someone's quarters."
He nodded. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Shepard grimaced. "I'm thinking that this place wasn't attacked from the outside."
No more words were exchanged until they reached the elevator shaft. It descended ten levels, directly into the mountain. Once they planted the bomb, they could worry about finding any survivors, although at this point, Shepard had serious doubts about their success in that endeavor.
The elevator was at their level, but like everything else, offline. After they forced the doors open, Garrus cut a sizable hole into the floor with the plasma cutter on his omni-tool. The deck plating fell away, taking a good ten seconds before they heard the clang of it clattering against the base of the shaft.
"Well, I'm not going first," Garrus said dryly.
Shepard looked to Vega. "James, you take point."
He took a deep breath. "You know, I was really hoping we wouldn't have to do this."
James crossed his arms over his chest, kept his legs together, and jumped into the void. The mass effect parachute strapped onto the back of his hardsuit slowed his descent once he reached half his terminal velocity, and he decelerated before gently alighting ten levels down.
"Clear," his voice came from Shepard's omni-tool. "Christ. That was a rush."
She looked to Garrus and gave him a tight smile. She gestured at the hole.
"Age before beauty."
He tilted his head. "I think objectively we're the same age."
"I refuse to count the two years I was dead. Now get in the hole."
Garrus grumbled something and jumped, keeping his legs tightly together and his head bowed, so neither his fringe nor his spurs caught on the edges. His parachute triggered just as easily.
"Sweet spirits, Shepard," his flanging voice sighed out of her omni-tool. "If I ever have to do that again..."
"Quit your whining and be ready to catch me," she shot back. Then she jumped.
A sensation of falling, her stomach leaping into her throat, the inevitability of gravity terrifying in the air... then the pins and needles sensation of a mass effect field wrapping around her, slowing her. She landed just as easily as the others.
Vega had breached the doors already, scouting the corridors ahead. Garrus had waited for Shepard at the bottom of the shaft.
"Always heard that paratroopers were crazy, and now I know why," he said as she landed. "That was worse than my zero-g field training."
"I hear you," Shepard said as her heart rate slowed. "But I'd still take that over weightlessness."
Garrus said nothing. She'd woken up next to him gasping for air too many times to not know what she was talking about.
They climbed out of the shaft and found Vega, shouldering his shotgun and looking profoundly disturbed. It didn't take long to figure out why - even in the dim light of their flashlights, the carnage was readily apparent. If what had happened above was a desperate firefight, this was a slaughterhouse. Where before blood had been in distinct pools, down here, it was everywhere, coating nearly the entire floor of the corridor in miasmic gore. Some of it looked fresh, but there still wasn't a single body.
And it was far, far too quiet.
"Commander," Vega said, voice tight. "Permission to blow this place to hell and get the fuck out of here."
"Permission granted," Shepard replied. "Move."
The floor plan was easy enough to follow, and most of the doors they ran into were already open - all from the inside. Eventually they reached the door to the primary power core, housed in the center of the base. It had been blown wide open, and the amount of furniture and debris around it suggested that this had been where the initial attack had occurred - it was the largest barricade they'd yet seen, thoroughly destroyed and scattered.
Shepard signaled (sweep, stay tight, on my six) and they entered, Vega scanning left, Garrus right.
The power core was still functional, barely, the massive ball glowing and flickering on its pedastal, providing just enough light to see the rest of the chamber. Lined across the floor and the wall and the ceiling of the spherical room were dozens of what looked like Dragon's Teeth, stained with blood.
And just below the dim core was a smaller object, about seven and a half feet in height. Broad and curved and strangely bulbous in spots, it looked like a piece of abstract art. Its polished ebony surface was marked with scratches that might have been script or perhaps was simple wear, and it ended in a rough diagonal point, as if it were broken off of something larger. Its position in the room seemed almost reverent.
"You seen anything like that before, Shepard?" Garrus asked.
"No." She frowned. "But I think I know Reaper tech when I see it."
Hackett hadn't told her exactly what the purpose of this installation was. Which meant he didn't know. If he did, he would have told her to bomb this place from orbit.
"Not that that thing isn't grande da miedo, but I'm more concerned with the fact that we haven't seen a single damn thing since we got in here." Vega shifted and scanned behind them. "This ain't right. Not one bit."
"Plant the charge." Shepard nodded to Garrus. "We'll cover you."
What followed was one of the longest minutes of Shepard's life. She didn't know what it was about this place that made her so uneasy. Well, she knew, but it shouldn't be bothering her quite so much. She had been inside a dead Reaper once. She'd seen worse than this, and she knew it.
So why was her skin crawling? Why did she feel the almost overpowering need to run like hell and not look back?
She placed the blame on the unknown Reaper artifact. Whatever it was, whatever it's purpose, it was clearly having some kind of effect on her. Shepard shook her head and steeled herself. She wouldn't be brought low now. The Reapers were dead. All of them. She had seen to that. Now all that was left was to clean up the mess they'd left behind.
"Charge is armed." Garrus stepped quickly away from the core and skirted around the edge of the strange monolith, not wanting to get close to it. "Detonator's based on distance. Once we pass out of range, it'll blow. Guaranteed."
Shepard blew out a breath in relief. "Then let's get-"
The room seemed to buck under her feet. Shepard collapsed to her knees and Garrus fell beside her. Everything was vibrating, or she was trembling. She didn't know. There was screaming, endless, anguished screaming ringing in her ears. Hundreds of voices in undefinable agony.
She slammed her eyes shut and in the black she saw them die, all of them, tearing each other apart with their bare hands and throwing the remains before the monolith, or upon the Teeth, then carrying them, piecing them back together, transforming them, changing them into more, and the survivors fleeing for their lives, establishing barricades as the monolith spoke to them, whispered, turned them one by one.
She saw them, the ones who turned, overloading the shuttles on the landing platform and burning themselves alive inside them, taking the last hope of escape. Then those who remained barricading themselves inside as they waited for a rescue that would never come.
Shepard forced her eyes open and the images left her. She stared down at the deck plating below her, willing herself not to blink, still half-caught in the images. She needed something real, something to anchor her to the present. She tore off a gauntlet, feeling the steel with her fingers. She found it, and pushed herself up, staggering a little.
She grabbed at Garrus, yanked him off the floor and onto his feet. He was incoherent, hissing and growling and snarling, barely able to stand. She ran her bare hand along his face, and the faraway look in his eyes disappeared. He grabbed at her and steadied himself.
"You with me?" she rasped, her throat too tight.
He nodded shakily. "Vega."
Shepard left him reluctantly, reaching for Vega next. He was babbling in Spanish, words she barely recognized repeated over and over, until she pulled him up and slapped him across the face. He seemed to snap out of it, shaking his head and rubbing his forehead.
"We're getting the hell out of here."
As they scrambled for the door, she heard screaming again. But it wasn't in her head. Shepard spun, and husks began pouring out of the access vents around the walls and ceiling of the room.
No. Not husks. There was no telltale glow to them, no metallic components, no slowly spreading cybernetics. They were organic. Human.
But wrong.
Arms in the wrong places, legs bending the wrong way. Some had too many limbs, others had too few. Some were larger, two or three times the mass of a human being, an impossible tangle of flesh and bone somehow crawling its way along the ceiling. Some were small, tiny and bony and skittering towards them. And every mouth, where ever it was, was twisted and gaping and screaming incoherently.
James spun and fired his shotgun, the thundering sound echoing off the walls. Shepard backed up and fired her Revenant, holding down the trigger until the heat sink steamed while Garrus ran for the elevator shaft. Shepard kept close behind and turned to find him already firing his line gun up the shaft. She slapped her rifle onto the back of her hardsuit and wrapped her arms around his cowl and they lifted into the air, speeding up ten levels in a matter of seconds. She grabbed for the hole Garrus had cut, climbing up while he descended again for Vega.
Shepard waited with her heart in her throat until they rose again. When they pulled themselves through the hole, Vega and Garrus collapsed, breathing fast and hard.
"What in the fuck," Vega spat.
"I don't know," Shepard said, voice wavering more than she wanted. "Those... aren't Reapers."
"They were human," Garrus said quietly.
"Those things were not human," Vega shouted. "What do you-"
"Shh!" Shepard held up a hand and listened.
The screaming from the bottom of the shaft was getting louder.
A quick glance in the hole confirmed her fears – somehow, they were climbing up the walls, and more than halfway to the top.
"Move!" she shouted, shoving them out of elevator and keying her comm. "Cortez! Extraction!"
"-tain?" The pilot's voice crackled in her ear, pitched and warbling.
"Cortez," she shouted, bursting through another door, "do you read me?!"
"-ting s-e in-ference, but - read you. ETA - minutes."
They sprinted through the facility and were almost to the entrance when Shepard fell, slipping in front of the destroyed aquarium. She landed on her stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and she struggled to regain her feet as Garrus spun around to pick her up.
Shepard looked down to find that she'd tripped on one of the fish, still flopping around on the floor.
And then she remembered that this base went dark months ago.
She turned. A plant lay on its side, pot broken and earth scattered. Its leaves were green and healthy.
For the first time in a long time, Shepard couldn't move, couldn't act, couldn't think as the weight of realization came crashing down on her.
It wouldn't let them die.
Garrus yanked her to her feet and she stumbled. He gripped her forearm hard and practically dragged her along as he ran. The shrieking and wailing behind them was almost deafening now.
They burst out into the light of day, the red rock mountains around them and sickly yellow sky bringing Shepard back to reality. Her finger flew to her ear.
"Cortez, get us the fuck out of here!"
The shuttle flew in from the side and hovered just off the edge of the platform. Vega went first, leaping on board and immediately going for the turret, sliding the gun out far enough to cover them.
Shepard shoved Garrus forward and for once he didn't argue. He climbed aboard and held out a hand.
She made the mistake of looking back first.
The creatures poured out of the doors, too many of them, climbing over each other in a tide of flesh. Patches of clothing still stuck to arms and legs and torsos, torn at the joints where they had been reattached. The longer she looked, the more she could see the men and women who had once been.
Then the shuttle's gun started firing, ripping them apart like wheat before a scythe. The thundering sound brought her back from the brink, and she turned and leapt into the shuttle.
Shepard didn't even have to shout the order. Cortez was already pulling away, gunning the thrusters as hard as he could. Garrus helped her up and into a seat while Vega stowed the turret as the passenger bay doors closed.
The brief bit of turbulence as they passed the detonation threshold wasn't the relief that Shepard thought it would be. There was acid roiling in her stomach, and she had to fight not to retch.