"Longshot in position."
"Ghost in position."
"Raider in position."
"Pathfinder in position."
"Sentry in position."
"Mystic in position."
"Juggernaut in position."
Rael nodded his satisfaction at the seven check messages before adding his own.
"Warrior in position."
He quickly performed a last minute check over his weapons. A heavily modified version of the Atavira staple, the Mattock, his powerful hybrid weapon, a Gast's Rifle, sat sleek and deadly in his hands. Fitted with a laser sight, a silencer and an under slung armour penetrating attachment, the rifle exuded a sense of menace even in its compact form. Sitting over his left shoulder was a compact grenade launcher, the Arkbuster, with extra grenades for it slung over his chest in a bandolier, and clamped at his hip was an SN7 pistol, the weapon appearing like an M5 Phalanx but with the handguard removed, coloured midnight black and with a silencer on the barrel. Certain his weapons were ready, he glanced around at the other members of his team, his advanced HUD marking their locations hidden above the shuttle pad the high value object would be arriving at.
The plan was fairly straightforward. As soon as the shuttle touched down, Juggernaut and Sentry would use their Saber missile launchers to destroy the gunship escort. Ghost would then stealth up and EMP the shit out of the shuttle, ensuring it couldn't go anywhere. Juggernaut, Sentry and Longshot would stay up on the ridge, providing support with their chaingun, hand mortar and sniper rifle respectively as he, Raider, Pathfinder and Mystic charged down into the centre, sweeping away the guards and securing the high value object. Simple.
He switched over a private channel.
"Longshot. You ready?"
His wife's sweet voice filtered over the comm link to him.
"Born ready. You?"
"Looking forward to celebrating."
"Me too."
He fell silent as the sound of whirring gunship engines drew his attention.
"Inbound. Sabers ready."
The Batarian guards in the clearing below looked up as two Mantis gunships came to hover over the clearing, swiftly followed by an older model Turian shuttle. The shuttle hovered over the sunken crater, slowly lowering itself down onto the landing pad.
"Sabers lock on."
Moments later twin beeps sounded in his helmet.
"Fire."
Juggernaut and Sentry, the two Geth Primes assigned to his unit, stood and slammed the triggers on their Saber launchers. The two boxy weapons released their payloads in a puff of compressed gas, propelling the missiles away for their engines to ignite a second later, sending them arcing upwards. The first missile struck the first gunship dead centre, blowing the thing apart from the inside in a gout of fire, and the second missile hit the second gunship's cockpit, turning the front half into modern art and sending the stricken ship spiralling into the crater wall where it exploded a second later.
As soon as the debris was finished raining down on the landing pad there was a quiet hum as the EMP device concealed under the landing pad detonated, taking out the shuttle's electronics and the guards's weapons. This particular group of slavers were far too cheap to put EM shields on their rifles.
Longshot's sniper rifle made a small ping noise, the silencer almost completely killing the noise as the rifle hurled a shredder round at hypersonic speed. The round made a neat, millimetre wide hole in a Batarian helmet, then an equally sized exit wound as the guard slumped to the floor. Rael wasn't fooled by the apparent lack of effect of the round. He knew that the tiny oak leaf shaped sliver of metal had caused massive internal trauma to the unfortunate man's brain. As if the first headshot was the catalyst, the four man assault team surged down the crater walls, Mystic using her biotics to propel her ahead of the others, him and Pathfinder neck and neck while Raider executed a textbook Geth Destroyer bullrush. He pulled out his Arkbuster while sliding down the near-vertical wall, pumping three arc grenades in rapid succession into the crowd of confused and terrified slavers before collapsing the now empty weapon onto his back in favour of his Gast's rifle. As a triple burst of electricity rocked the platform Mystic took off in a biotically fuelled leap, sailing over the Batarians as her own Arkbuster pumped three mass effect cluster grenades into the crowd. Pathfinder followed up the attack with a barrage of incendiary rounds from his Gast's rifle. By the time Raider got close enough to douse the platform with his flamethrower most of the guards were either dead or bleeding out. The assault team stacked up by the shuttle door, each one switching to their SN7 pistols.
"Switch taser rounds."
The team all popped the ammunition blocks out of their pistols, replacing them with shiny black blocks that smelled faintly of ozone.
"Okay. On my signal, Pathfinder open the door. As soon as it opens, Mystic put everyone inside into stasis. Then we breach, taze everything, recover the target and any noncombatants and execute the rest. Stand by."
The assault team all readied their pistols.
"Mark."
Pathfinder slapped his fist on the door and it slid open, just in time for a blinding flash of light to burst forth and stun the Privateer team momentarily. Rael recovered his vision just in time to see the target disappear into the door built into the crater wall.
"Keelah! Pathfinder, you said you had it locked down!"
The younger male raised his hand defensively and spat out a string of Russian curses.
"I did lock it down! They must have a damn good tech."
Rael opened his comm link.
"Support team, get down here stat."
A Geth Hunter materialised on the edge of the landing zone as the two Primes and Kleeah slid down the crater wall.
"Target is in the base. We need to clear it out. Pathfinder, pull up the schematics."
A holographic representation of the base appeared above his Omnitool.
"The base's layout is fairly simple. The entrance leads to a large open area with a gantry going round the whole thing. It's a killbox. Across the killbox is a set of stairs leading up to the gantry, then off the gantry we have three doors. North east is barracks. South west is armoury. North west is the main complex. Through the north west we have another corridor that leads to three more doors. North east is their control hub, north west is their kitchen and dining area, and south west leads to a long staircase with a sentry position at the top. That staircase leads to the slave holding area. On the opposite side of the control hub is VIP and base commander's quarters and then a long stairway leading to an escape hatch that comes out here. Our shuttle is parked right on top of their escape hatch so that's blocked off. The target will be in the control hub."
Kleeah glanced at him.
"What about the slaves?"
He looked back at her.
"Extracting them is a secondary objective."
Kleeah grabbed his wrist, her voice lowered to a venomous hiss.
"You saw that Blood Pack base on Sybaen just as well as I did. You saw what they did to their slaves. And you would just leave them?"
He frowned behind his mask and shook off her hand.
"I want to free them just as much as you do, but our objective is the Batarian."
She sighed and dropped her shoulders, looking dejected.
"Okay. Let's get this done."
He loaded a fresh trio of arc grenades into the chamber of his Arkbuster as he spoke.
"We go in hard. Juggernaut and Sentry can take the most fire, they'll storm the killbox. Juggernaut, get chaingun fire on the gantry. Sentry, use your hand mortar to take out the position on the opposite side of the lower floor. The assault team will follow you in, storm the stairway under cover fire from the support team and take the upper level. Longshot, Ghost, run with the assault team."
He turned to Juggernaut and Sentry.
"You two need to take as much fire as you can draw, make sure us squishy Quarians make it across the killbox without getting shot."
The two Primes nodded and checked over their weapons, each one wielding a chaingun and a hand mortar as well as their now empty Saber launchers. Sentry rumbled in his deep synthesised voice.
"We will draw their fire. What can we expect?"
"Batarian slavers and Blood Pack mercs. Remember, Krogan and biotics are priority targets."
The team performed a last minute check on their weapons before stacking up by the door, Juggernaut and Sentry taking point, each one loading a fat shell into their hand mortars.
"Breach!"
Pathfinder, the team's tech, hacked open the door and the two Primes immediately stuck the muzzles of their hand mortars round the corners, running the math before squeezing the triggers. Two enormous fragmentation shells arced through the air, hitting the ground just behind the thick slabs of armour plate at the far end of the room. The Vorcha boom-squads with their crude missile launchers trained on the door had just enough time to stare in dumb confusion before the shells erupted, thick clouds of metallic slivers turning the unfortunate Blood Pack troops into a nasty mess that coated the back of their cover as well as a large portion of the room.
Amongst the wet splashing sound of the Vorcha being redistributed was the thundering of two sets of colossal footsteps as Juggernaut and Sentry charged into the room, hand mortars stowed in favour of whirring chainguns that spat torrents of shredder rounds at the Batarians and Vorcha on the upper level. Four of them were cut down before the rest even had the presence of mind to hunker down behind their cover. From his position, Rael could see the six blocks of shredder rounds arranged radially around the main body of each chaingun visibly shrinking as the weapons chewed through almost one thousand of the little oak leaf shards each second.
"Go go go!"
At his shout, the four Quarians and two Geth not currently engaged sprinted across the room, Mystic throwing a singularity as she ran that plucked two Vorcha into the air, allowing Sentry to pan his chaingun around and turn them into bright red slush puppie. Somehow Rael managed not to slip over in the puddles of ex-Vorcha on the floor as he breached the stairwell, Gast's rifle out and ready in his arms. Pathfinder and Raider, holding a Gast's rifle and a flamethrower respectively, were right behind him, with Kleeah and Mystic each holding a TCN4 SMG behind them and Ghost holding a Jackal automatic shotgun bringing up the rear.
They burst onto the gantry just as the heat sinks in the chainguns finally gave up the ghost, each one popping out a heat sink the length of Rael's forearm. The two Primes immediately came under intense return fire, their shields appearing in a solid blue outline as the enormous heavy weapon platforms calmly slid another foot long heat sink from the chain of them clamped round their leg and, moving in eerie unison, loaded it into the breech of their miniguns. The Batarians and Vorcha were so intent on raining fire on the Primes that they didn't even notice the assault team until a fusillade of Gast's rifle and TCN4 fire ripped into their ranks, the polite tapping of the silenced rifles drowned out by the angry buzzing of the SMGs. Raider whipped out his Arkbuster, computing trajectories with machine precision before bouncing three Lift grenades off a wall and behind the cover of a particularly troublesome Vorcha team. The unfortunate aliens were yanked bodily off their feet by the detonations, the sheer force snapping their skeletons in a dozen places before Raider sealed the deal with his flamethrower. On the opposite side of the room Ghost disappeared, not even bothering to fire his weapon and instead sweeping it in upward arcs to knock Batarians over the railing and down into the killbox for the Primes to kick to death. Rael toggled the second barrel on his rifle, sending a thick, armour piercing dart through the skull of a Batarian and out the other side to decapitate a Vorcha on the other side of the room as Mystic, having spent almost ten seconds building up dark energy, released it in a furious Flare that took out four Batarians in one hit. Kleeah and Pathfinder tag-teamed tech attacks, him overloading shields for her to incinerate the suddenly exposed bodies, putting them down with tight bursts from her TCN4 as they frantically flapped at the flames licking their bodies. By the time Juggernaut and Sentry had made it to the back stairwell they had seized control of the upper level. By the time they had managed to force their bulky bodies through the staircase the only things left alive on the upper level were the Privateers, and Rael was already strategising. He was interrupted by Juggernaut's rumbling voice.
"Alert: Corridors are too narrow for Prime platforms to operate. Addendum: We will secure this area in case of Blood Pack reinforcements."
"Alright. Lock down this area, keep your chainguns ready in case another wave comes through from the control room or barracks. Assault team, on me. We'll breach the armoury first."
The assault team stacked up either side of the doors, Rael and Mystic on point. The breach was anticlimactic, with nobody in the armoury.
"Warrior, look at this."
He went over to Pathfinder, who was standing in front of a table.
"What have you got?"
"Looks like Earth-tech weapons. Mattock rifles mainly, a couple of Eviscerator shotguns. Useless to the Blood Pack, they don't have a steady supply of heat sinks."
Rael picked up one of the Mattocks. The rifle was coloured white with a blue insignia on it.
"These aren't for the Pack. These are Blue Sun weapons. Military grade, high end model. Looks like a Mark Six. Under-barrel grenade launcher too, very nice. Looks like the Pack bosh'tets looted these from the Suns."
The barracks were equally anticlimactic, although the team scavenged a couple of handfuls of platina from one of the lockers. Platina were small discs of platinum often used as an alternate currency in the Terminus Systems. These platina were stamped with the Blood Pack logo.
The team finally stacked up outside the north-west door, Raider and Mystic on point. Raider had stowed his Arkbuster in favour of his flamethrower, well aware that he only had three grenades left.
"Breach!"
Raider analysed the situation almost as soon as the door had finished opening, filling the corridor with flame. The ill-prepared Vorcha ambush was ignited, the four Pyros suddenly having a taste of their own medicine. Their back mounted fuel tanks detonated in a quadruple pop that sent an unpleasant mixture of burning fuel and chunks of crispy fried Vorcha scattering across the corridor, eventually necessitating Pathfinder to use his Snap Freeze module to put out the flames and clear a path.
He left Kleeah and Raider to cover their backs as the other four prepared to breach the main control room.
"Okay. Remember, our target is a Batarian slave lord named Vortan Balak. We do not shoot him. We take him alive. He wears bright red armour, carries a big ass shotgun and has green and black markings on his face, and he never goes anywhere without his two half naked Asari slave whores. Try not to shoot the Asari either. Mystic, use your SN7. You're on taze duty. Ready?"
He got three affirmatives.
"Go!"
The door slid open.
"Fuck! Krogan!"
Moving at preternatural speed, Ghost whipped the Shredder ammo block out of his shotgun, replacing it with the vivid orange of high explosive ammunition.
"Eliminating."
The charging Krogan was suddenly and violently stopped by what felt like the impact of a vehicle cannon to the chest. His barriers were overwhelmed by the miniature explosions, being knocked across the room by the force of them as a number of holes appeared in his armour, fire licking at his chest and preventing him from regenerating. Rael and Pathfinder didn't even need to communicate. With the ease of long practice they raised their Gast's rifles, secondary barrels each spitting out four armour piercing darts before the beeping indicated they needed to replace the cylindrical dart magazines. It was enough. They had subconsciously divvied up the critical organs, putting a dart through each of the three hearts and lungs and two through the brain. In the meantime Ghost had switched to his TCN4 and had put down one Batarian, the other three quickly falling as Mystic plucked them into the air to be introduced to the business end of two Gast's rifles. Ghost switched out his shotgun for shredder rounds again as they secured the control station, quickly using the security cameras to search for Balak.
"There! In the holding chamber."
"Gotcha, bosh'tet. With his Asari sluts too. Nice catch. Ghost, Mystic, clear out the VIP quarters."
The two soldiers nodded and burst through the doors in textbook enter and clear manoeuvres, putting down a single Vorcha that was in Balak's quarters for some reason. He listened in on the conversation,
"Ugh! What's that stuff on the sheets?"
"Analysis: Batarian genetic material."
"Balak's been slinging seed in here? Keelah, never been happier to be in an exosuit."
Chuckling to himself, Rael watched Pathfinder finish his analysis of the control room systems.
"Got it, boss. I can remotely seal doors from here."
"Great work. Assault team, reassemble in control room. Pathfinder, seal off the kitchen area."
"Will do."
The team filtered into the control room, Mystic with a smug cast to her shoulders and the sound of platina jangling in one of her suit pockets.
"What's the plan, Warrior?"
"First up, I want Pathfinder and Longshot in here, sealed in. You guys are our eyes and ears. The rest of us will clear out the holding pens, recover the slaves and capture Balak."
"Sounds like a plan."
Kleeah put a hand on his arm.
"Be careful."
He smiled beneath his mask and briefly hugged her, the enormous sniper rifle on her left shoulder blade making the hug a little awkward.
"You know me."
"That's why I'm worried."
The four of them left the control room, the door sealing itself behind them, and crossed the corridor to the door that led to the holding cells. As the door opened, he found himself face to face with a snarling Vorcha.
"Hi."
The alien snarled and leaped at him, claws extended. He batted it away with his rifle butt then grabbed the long knife strapped to his boot. Pulling out the blade, he sidestepped the Vorcha's next pounce, slamming a hand down on its head and forcing it to the ground before reaching under to stab it through the brain. The creature thrashed in his grip, a thrashing that suddenly stopped as he sharply twisted the blade before withdrawing it from the skull.
"Nice kill, boss."
"Thanks. Bang out."
With a startled squeak the rest of the squad dove for cover as Rael casually tossed a flashbang over his shoulder. The grenade bounced down the stairs to the bottom, detonating in an enormous flash a second later and hopefully blinding anyone at the bottom of the stairs.
"Go!"
The four man assault team charged down the stairs, Mystic out in front as she used her biotics to propel herself at breakneck speed, then the two Geth units and finally Rael at the back.
When Rael reached the bottom of the stairs he immediately split left, gunning down two Vorcha guards before his brain even registered what was going on.
Balak himself was there, wielding a weapon that looked very similar to a miniaturised version of the chainguns Juggernaut and Sentry carried at a slab of cover, effectively suppressing Raider. Ghost's stealth shroud had been damaged and was fitfully sparking on and off as he engaged four Vorcha in melee. Mystic was engaged in a ferocious biotic duel with Balak's two Asari whores, their turquoise bodies barely clad in anything as they flung biotic attacks at his teammate. Pulling out his SN7, Rael sprinted across the room, kicking off a wall and pistol whipping one of the Asari in the back of the head, blasting three tazer rounds into her back for good measure. Suddenly relieved from half the pressure, Mystic went on the offensive, hurling Warp fields at the remaining Asari's barrier just as Balak's Minigun overheated. Raider immediately popped up and doused Ghost down with his flamethrower, the Geth Hunter unaffected by the fire as his Vorcha assailants went up in flame. But Balak wasn't done. Even as the final Asari's barrier dropped and Mystic flung her into a wall, knocking her cold, Balak waved his Omnitool, overloading Mystic's barriers, and then blasted her in the chest with his shotgun.
Roaring in fury, Rael tackled the Batarian to the ground, his own Omnitool sparking as he drained Balak's shield and then his SN7 quietly barking as he plugged no less than nine tazer rounds into the Batarian's twitching body.
"Ghost, grab him. Raider, grab the Asari bitches."
He ran over to Mystic, who was lying on the floor, sprawled on her back with a tight cluster of holes in her armoured exosuit through which violet blood was flowing.
"Maya!" In his worry he wasn't bothering with codenames anymore. Bringing up his Omnitool, he waved it over her, analysing the damage. It didn't look good. Infection was already setting in. The element zero in her bloodstream made her naturally more resistant but bacteria were still a major threat.
There was a slam sound and he glanced up, seeing a Human male standing in one of the holding cages, shouting at him in perfect Keelish.
"I can help! I'm a medic!"
He ran over to the cage door and grabbed hold of it, the synth-muscle weave in his exosuit enhancing his strength to the point where he could just rip the door off. The Human immediately limped over to her and flared blue briefly before surrounding her in a stasis field.
"That'll keep her stable for a while. She needs to get to a sterile room immediately. Centurion Marco Vega, Blue Suns."
"Rael'Zorah nar Tonbay, Soviet Privateers. Our shuttle is close."
###
Perabanus was a rough planet. If Omega was the jewel of the Terminus systems, then Perabanus was that nasty mole on its ass that it didn't want anyone to know about.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pit!"
Urdnot Wrex, stripped to the waist, growled in excitement. Mercenary work was all well and good, but nothing could quite beat the thrill of the Pit, Perabanus's premier fight club arena.
"Next, we have the legendary Urdnot Wrex, champion of the Pit for six years running!"
He raised his arms, feeling the roar of the crowd merely as background noise as he started stamping, working up a head of Blood Rage.
"And the challenger! The Scourge of Tirfan, the Butcher of the Parliament, wanted for war crimes throughout Earth space, I give you Pasana Ton-Day Forsellia!"
The door on the opposite side of the arena opened to reveal a female Seu'Seun, standing at almost thirteen feet and possessing formidable natural poison. This could be interesting.
The Seu'Seun angrily clicked her pincers together in a form of challenge, rearing up and buzzing her wings at him. He simply took up a half crouched stance and erected a biotic barrier around himself.
She was the first to go on the attack, springing up into the air with the intention of bringing her serrated mantis-like forearms down onto his head. He responded with a Throw that knocked her slightly off course, then charged as her leg bent under her, knocking her off balance. Their considerable size, combined with the formidable natural defence of an exoskeleton laced with small amounts of eezo, made the Seu'Seun impervious to all but the strongest biotics. Fortunately for Wrex, he was one of the few individuals with biotics strong enough to affect them, although nowhere near as much as normal. He smashed into her side, bowling her over with an enraged screech as her tail, with its wickedly curved stinging barbs on the end, speared at his throat. He quickly ducked so the sting hit his crest instead, the four barbs scoring deep gouges down his crest and face, the poison preventing his body from regenerating. She followed up with a swipe from her forearm, opening a long, ragged gash across his chest that knitted itself back together before her disbelieving compound eyes.
"First time with a Krogan?"
She hissed at him and slammed the flat of her forehead into his chest, sending him flying clear with a surprised curse as she flipped back onto her feet with agility that belied her size. Wrex had fought Seu'Seun before - he knew that her jaws could crunch through his crest like a Salarian cracking a mo'hellt nut, and that she would probably try to grab him and hold him still with her powerful arms while her pincers and tail did the damage.
Dropping into a crouch, he raised one stubby digit in an approximation of the obscene gesture used by the Earth races, making her hiss in rage. This was going to be an interesting fight.
###
Taren Rantarius sat in his booth in Afterlife, nursing an Atavira drink aptly named a Pau City Skull Imploder and watching the wigglers on the stage up above him. Although Asari in crimson bodysuits were still the most common of the eye candy, in recent years an increasing number of Humans and Atavira had joined their ranks, wearing their own brand of scanty clothing. Still, the Asari had the majority.
One such Asari was wiggling her way over to him, winking and running her hands up and down her body seductively before sliding herself into his lap.
"Hey there, big boy. You want a dance?"
She punctuated her question by turning down part of her bodysuit, briefly exposing her chest. Taren's raptor vision, uninterested in the proffered nipple, instead focused on the small hammer and sickle symbol stuck to her flesh just below the swell of her breast.
"Hell yes."
He made a show of reaching into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a fistful of platina, carefully selecting ten of the small silvery discs, each one stamped with the Soviet hammer and sickle symbol as his other hand lightly rested on her shoulder.
"This do?"
She leaned down and whispered in his earhole, her scent not entirely unattractive.
"For that you get a private dance."
He caught sight of two Humans in mismatched armour giving him the stink eye, something that made him chuckle as he caught some of their conversation and applied his basic grasp of Russian to deciphering it.
"Lucky bastard. Hottest girl in the club goes right for a scaly, I don't get that."
"Eh well. Those blues will fuck just about anything. Hell, I once saw one get freaky with a Vorcha."
The Asari dancer towed him out of the club and into one of the private rooms, all the while shooting him sultry glances.
Almost as soon as the door to the private room closed, the Asari's demeanour changed almost instantly. She picked up a leather jacket and a pair of jeans from the bed and put them on over her bodysuit, Taren telling himself he wasn't disappointed as she covered up, and then turned to him.
"Damn. When I signed up for the KGB I never thought they'd send me to shake my ass at four-eyes on Omega. You got the payment?"
He pulled out a credit chit and she waved her Omnitool over it.
"Five million. Nice. I'll call ahead and send the packages to the meeting point."
He sat down on the bed and looked at her.
"How are you doing?"
She sat next to him and sighed.
"Truthfully, I hate this job. Day in, day out getting drooled on by creepy guys and the odd creepy girl with only the odd arms sale to earn my pay. When I joined the KGB I expected to be infiltrating merc bases and blowing up cruisers, not supplying my tits for public use. Plus, I only ever get to see my boyfriend when I'm selling him missile launchers."
He put an arm around her shoulders and she inclined her head to his shoulders.
"Well, now that we're here, let's make the most of it. After all, I was promised a private dance."
"You are such a pig."
Any further protest was cut off in a gasp of pleasure as his teeth found her shoulder.
###
Consciousness returned to Liara in fits and starts, every nerve ending in her body screaming its protest as she slowly opened her eyes.
"Doc! Doc, I think she's waking up!"
She raised her head and looked around, starting to panic as something happened to her vision.
"What's wrong with my eyes! I can't see properly!"
She felt a hand on her shoulder and suddenly the blurry shape of Alex resolved itself into a perfectly sharp image of her fellow researcher, making her cry out in panic. The image defocused again, instead focusing on some symbols on the ceiling, symbols she somehow instantly was able to read.
"Alex, what's happening to me!"
She felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder and tried to relax.
"Look, Liara, there's no easy way to tell you this so I'll just be blunt. What that beacon did ... It literally disassembled you and put you back together over the course of about an hour. It wasn't pretty. We ran some tests as well. You ..."
He trailed off, his face briefly snapping into focus before her traitorous eyes blurred again.
"What?"
"Whatever it did ... You have Prothean DNA wired into your body."
Liara's mind went blank apart from a faint ringing sound. Her eyes widened in shock as her vision went haywire, random objects snapping into focus for a tenth of a second each before moving on.
"I ... How bad?"
The blurry shape that was Alex shifted around, holding up a reflective silver glimmer. Her focus kept jumping around for a couple of seconds before she managed to force it to focus on the mirror for a handful of seconds. What she saw shocked her to the core.
Her eyes. Where they had been pale blue orbs in her face they were now a solid teal colour, each one containing a black pupil shaped like a human number eight. Her crests faded from the pale blue of her face to the vivid green of her new eyes at the tips and her face had two green slashes descending diagonally from each eye to the corners of her jaw. She flared up her biotics in shock and saw the energy, instead of comforting blue, was a vivid green colour.
"Oh Goddess ..."
Alex leaned down to her, his face briefly resolving itself before descending into the blur that was her world now.
"Okay look. You need to get out of here. One of the other researchers called this in. They're sending a team to get you. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a lab rat you have to drop off the grid."
She nodded, too scared to speak, as he helped her up and half guided, half carried her to the shuttle bay.
###
When Garrus got home, he was surprised to see his parents frantically dashing around the house throwing clothes into suitcases.
"Mom? Dad? What's going on?"
"Pack a bag, honey, we're going to Earth."
"What? Why? It's in the middle of the school week!"
Carissa paused in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"It's Lizzie. She's had a biotic event, she's very sick. The doctors don't know if she's going to make it."