Powerless
The voice that sounded eerily like Harbinger, the first Reaper, penetrated the mind of Clara. From beneath the soul crushing voice of the Reaper, the human heard the whispered voice of the turian telling her to just give in.
Clara couldn't do anything to help herself.
There was only the voice, and the invasion of her mind.
It felt like some stabbed an icicle straight through her skull. The pain was so intense, that Clara was considering surrendering.
Alleis had taken the elevator down to the cargo bay to check on Clara and the unconscious Kurana.
When the elevator doors open she saw Kurana standing over the helpless human. Even from the great distance Alleis could see Kurana's blue eyes burning.
The asari started sprinting towards the pair. And she did the only thing she could: she cast a biotic throw in hopes that she could get the indoctrinated turian in the hold.
With a suddenly flash, Clara's field of vision cleared and everything was topsy-turvy. She couldn't tell which way was up. It was because both she and the turian were thrown into the holding cell.
Clara figured she should attempt to close the cell, but Kurana was already back up and preparing to charge at the running asari.
The cabal's charge smashed into the sentinel's tech armor with such a force that it burst. It knocked Kurana back, but it gave Alleis enough time to set up her annihilation field.
It gave her the edge over the turian in the close quarter combat that followed. The cabal tried to attack the asari with the poisoned gauntlets, but the asari kept the pressure on the turian.
Even though Alleis' hand-to-hand was considerable, the indoctrinated turian's was better. Kurana landed a few close cuts to the asari's exposed face. Alleis could feel the poison rushing into her blood stream. She knew that the fight needed to end one way or the other soon.
For a split second, Alleis got an opening and launched a throw at the turian. Combined with the annihilation field, the two powers exploded and forced the turian into a nearby wall.
But Kurana didn't pause. She immediately charged back at the tired and poisoned asari. This time the asari was ready and used a play she saw Clara use earlier.
When the turian cabal appeared before her, she was met with a prepared biotic punch that met the charge and resulted in a powerful explosion. The asari's closed fist connected with the turian's face and broke through the skin and bone.
Alleis had punched through Kurana's skull. The turian was certainly dead.
She pulled her fist and half of her forearm out of the turian's empty skull and said, "I'm sorry."
The wounded sentinel walked over to the chamber where Clara lay on the ground.
"Significantly more badass," Clara said with black humor.
It didn't make the poisoned asari feel any better. She just shut the room off from the outside world.
Her midnight blue skin was significantly paler now.
"You gonna be ok?" the pained Clara asked. Her head felt like it had been opened with a rusty cleaver.
Alleis sat down. "I think I'm just going to sit here for a bit. How are you?"
"Eh, I'm fine," Clara lied as the edges of her vision started to collapse into unconsciousness.
"Me too," Alleis said.
Before she passed out she managed to apply a dose of medi-gel to herself, and one to Clara.
"What the hell happened?" Baht yelled at them when the door opened.
He had already seen Kurana's dead body.
"She was indoctrinated," Alleis said. "Fully by the looks of it. She attacked me, and I killed her."
He put a gun to Clara's sore head. "Next time, I'm going to remember why I don't listen to humans and I'm just going to pull the trigger."
Alleis helped Clara stand up, "What's happening now?"
"We dropped off our esteemed guests on their home planet. Doak is staying at the base to look it over, see if we can't find out what they are after. Aten is going with the Admirals to see what he can get out of Xen. The geth wants to seek revenge on the Controlled and we are heading to Earth," Baht said before leaving. "Suit up."
It took them an hour or so to make it to the Sol System, enough time for Alleis to take another medi-gel to clear out the poison from her system. And for Clara to take enough medi-gel to clear up her massive headache.
"How are you feeling?" whispered Alleis to Clara, trying to make sure that the angry batarian didn't overhear.
"I'm good," Clara said. "I think. It feels like I've been hit by an orbital bombardment by the entire quarian fleet."
"What are we doing on Earth?" asked Alleis.
Baht said nothing, but the geth answered. "Not Earth. Earth's satellite. Classified Alliance storage base for disabled Reaper parts before complete destruction. Shepard-Commander ordered all Reaper technology thrown into a star for total destruction."
"What did the Controlled, the indoctrinated do here?" Clara asked.
"We just got this," Baht said angrily. But he always sounded angry. "Hopefully we can catch them in the act."
Clara attempted to shake her mind clear as the ship landed on the moon.
They all adorned their breather helmets, except for Mark.
The guards at the warehouse entrance were all dead, along with a few Controlled forces.
It didn't bode well. The warehouse was eerily quiet. No signs of life. Except for Clara, who swore she heard each of the dead pieces of Reaper whisper to her, like tiny gusts of wind in the massive structure. She tried to ignore it, but the warehouse was massive, designed to hold the giant pieces of defunct Reapers. The group decided to split up and search the warehouse.
Clara crept off towards the left, where she swore she could feel some indoctrinated forces.
Baht had doubled back from the way he was supposed to go so that he could follow Clara.
Sure enough she stumbled upon a whole squad, about twenty indoctrinated, loading Reaper parts onto a large transport shuttle.
"I found them," she whispered into her omni-tool.
Then using her stealth skills, she pulled an indoctrinated behind a crate and cut his throat with her omni-blade. She knew the others would feel his death, so without missing a beat she activated her tactical cloak, lined up a shot, and blew away a Controlled's head.
She loaded a new heat sink and managed to kill another indoctrinated before the others could react. Clara knew that she couldn't hold them off by herself, but her hope was that she could delay them until her reinforcements arrived. And maybe she could prevent them from taking off.
Baht had decided to remain out of sight and watch Clara. She was killing as many indoctrinated as she could. And she was doing her best to keep anyone from retreating to the shuttle.
Her tactical cloak was cooling down when she tried to take a shot a Controlled who was sprinting towards the shuttle. A round impacted against her shields and caused her shot to go wide, missing her intended target.
She activated her cloak and tried again, but it was too late. The pilot was out of range.
"They're taking off!" Clara yelled.
"Ship disabled, engines down!" called the salarian pilot over the coms. "Crippled!"
"Son of a bitch!" Clara yelled as she blew off another Controlled's head.
"Secondary Controlled force attacking ship, already disabled our engines," the pilot replied. "Will try to hold them off with turrets until help arrives."
Mark and Alleis showed up as the ship took off. Baht melted out of the shadows a second later. With the squad reunited they managed to kill off all but two of the Controlled.
But they both activated their ocular flash bangs that blew their own heads off before they could be questioned.
"Shit!" Clara swore. "Now what?"
"We get back to the ship," yelled Baht.
"Controlled here defeated," the salarian pilot said. "Will start emergency repairs immediately."
"Now we report for our orders," Baht said.
"For what? What leads do we have now? Unless you know something about these assholes that I don't," Clara argued.
"If I didn't think I needed you I would blow your head off," the batarian said. "Now back to the ship."
Back on the ship the engineer and the pilot had put aside their differences so they could fix the ship as fast as possible.
Baht led all four combatants to the QEC room for a debriefing from the Shadow Broker.
"We lost them sir," Baht said.
"I know. And if you ever pull anything like that again Baht, I will kill you myself."
"You told me to watch the indoctrinated ones," he said in his defense. This meeting took a turn that he was not expecting.
"Not at the cost of the mission. This could have been prevented if you did your job. If you ever do this again…" the Broker was a threatening figure.
"This what we know," the Broker said once it was clear that its threats were understood, "the indoctrinated forces have been kidnapping people on Omega, presumably other places as well but we shut down their operation on Omega. This was for the sole purpose of bolstering they're already limited numbers. How they are indoctrinating new people is something we haven't been able to figure out. Then they were apparently after fragments of Reaper Code with the geth on Rannoch. Xen told us there was little to no code left inside the programming of the geth that remain. And now we know that they've been stealing Reaper parts. My best guess is that they are rebuilding themselves a Reaper. I have every single agent looking into what they are doing. We know it isn't Leviathan, the Alliance has it blockaded. The Omega-4 Relay is dormant but we mined it shut so that anything less than three dreadnaughts would be obliterated if they attempt to pass through it. All the Cerberus facilities are under lock and key pending destruction. So if they are building a Reaper then they are going to need the Reaper Code. Keep looking for anything that can lead us to where they are or where they are going."
The Broker ended the conversation.
Baht left the room without a word.
It left Clara with the opportunity to talk with Mark the geth, "So why did you want to join with us?"
The geth was silent for a second. "You humans have a phrase: revenge is a dish best served cold. The geth have been called cold and emotionless. Who better to offer revenge than the geth?"
"This is all because the indoctrinated took your mate?" Clara asked.
"Yes."
"So what did you do on Rannoch for the last two years?"
"I assisted the Creators in their construction of their planetary defense systems. We are designing prototypes that we hope to share with the galaxy," Mark answered.
Clara had to ask her next question, "I hope I don't sound like an ass, but how to geth… reproduce?"
Mark's flaps twitched a bit as its processors tried to come up with an example.
"It is similar to the asari. We geth combine our code and we select the best parts of each unit to make a new, cohesive whole," Mark answered. "The geth are not like organics. We do not have sex or reproduce for any need."
"Then why did you decide to do it?" Alleis asked.
Again, Mark's flaps twitched while it tried to come up with a satisfactory answer.
"No data available."
Clara shrugged. "I guess that is geth speak for 'I don't know'."
"What happened to your companion?" Alleis asked.
"It is back on Rannoch with the other geth. They are attending to the platforms injuries."
"Will it recover?" Clara asked.
"The hardware damage was extensive," Mark said. The simulated voice sounded angry. The flaps were down in a kind of anger. "But the software was intact. Recovery should be swift."
"That's good," Alleis responded.
"I saw the way you fought on Rannoch's moon," Clara stated.
The geth hung its head in shame. "This unit could not bear the thought of losing its companion. Emotions are… difficult."
"I think I would have done the same thing," Alleis said. "It's hard seeing something bad happen to someone you love without being able to do something about it."
"Yes," Mark agreed. "This unit is going to message Rannoch."
The geth said as it left the CIC and went to find some place quiet. Its processors had much to mull over.
Silence fell over the remaining two. They both knew they should discuss what happened, but neither wanted to bring it up.
Finally Alleis broke the silence, "I'm sorry for what I did."
"How can you be sorry?" Clara responded.
"I killed your friend and I'm sorry for that. But she was going to kill you."
"Don't be sorry. You saved my life. And we weren't friends. We were warriors thrown together by circumstance and the only thing we had in common was that we fought for the wrong people at some point," Clara said.
"Then why do I feel so bad about it?" she asked.
"Is it because of my body count speech?"
"Maybe."
"If you didn't do what you did then the bad guy count would have gone up by two, instead of the body count by one," Clara reasoned.
"It still doesn't make me feel any better."
Clara gave a knowing shrug. "But it is my fault. You had to clean up my mess. I was trying so hard to prove that she could be saved, that I could be saved. Instead of doing any good I put everyone else in harm's way and force you to kill Kurana to save my pathetic ass. If you want to blame anyone, blame me."
The human didn't leave time for a response. She just walked to the elevator and took it down to the cargo bay and her isolation chamber.
Clara had to walk by Kurana's dead body on the way down. It was another reminder of the failures of her life. Bad choices she's made that tended to get people killed.
Alleis followed the human a few minutes later. She also saw the dead turian. Alleis put down the bottle of Dead Reaper Gin and picked up the broken body. She carried it to the nearest airlock, placed inside the small room, closed the door, and ejected it out into space.
"Find peace in the embrace of the goddess," the asari said quietly.
As she turned back she couldn't help but let a tiny smile play across her lips as she realized that Clara would have approved of her improved one liner ability.
She picked up the bottle of gin as a tiny maintenance drone appeared to clean up the dried blood. One less task for her to do.
Alleis knocked on the sealed room. Clara's back was to her. The human's omni-tool flashed briefly and the door opened.
"I figured that since we've completed two missions I figured we ought to celebrate," Alleis said.
"I failed the last mission," Clara said. "And I lost us a team mate."
Alleis took a swig of the gin out of the bottle. She had forgotten to find glasses. "But we saved Mark and his… -its companion. They are going to make new life. That's worth a toast isn't it?"
Clara turned around. "I guess."
She took the bottle from the asari and drank from it. She could taste the faint taste of the blue woman's lips on the rim.
"Come on!" the upbeat Alleis said. "The geth are trying to make babies! Isn't that just the most adorable thing you've ever heard?"
"I just keep thinking of the geth as the things that invaded my home planet," Clara said.
Alleis' eyes narrowed. She slapped Clara. "That was for being depressing. You know that wasn't Mark's fault."
Clara just looked kind of stunned. She sat down on her mattress and took a swig of the bottle. "I'm sorry. I just… -I'm hanging on by a thread here. When I'm out there every breath is another challenge, each heartbeat is another chance for me to give in. My thoughts are against me, even in here. I don't know if I am myself any more. I don't know if I've been me since the war ended."
"Of course you're you," Alleis said as she grabbed the bottle from Clara and took a drink. She savored the taste of the rim for a second. The asari never had a mind for philosophical things like this.
"I don't think you get how indoctrination works," Clara said. "It is subtle. There is the voice in your head telling you to do something. And you can ignore it, you know it isn't yours. But slowly, very very slowly, it starts to change, to convert you. Then before you know the voice starts to sound more like your own, to the point where you can't tell if it really is you or not. The voice is persuasive, no matter how hard you resist, it starts to erode at your defenses from within. Eventually you change so much that don't even recognize yourself, you've become someone new without even realizing it. And that's when it happens: you lose control. Your thoughts are not your own. Your body is in someone else's hands and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it."
Alleis handed the bottle back to Clara who took a long drink from it before continuing. "Like if I were to meet myself when I was still Alliance would I, could I, even recognize myself? Or would I find someone so completely different, so completely at odds with what I once believed that I would go to war with myself?"
The asari could only offer an, "I don't know."
"You know what the kicker is? If you hadn't shown up when you did, I would have given in," Clara said.
"Then I'm glad I arrived when I did," Alleis responded after she took the bottle offered by Clara. "Maybe you'll just need me to stick around. Whenever you feel yourself going over the edge, I'll pull you back up."
"Sounds good, if you are up to it," the human said. "Sorry I'm so depressing."
"That's why I'm here to rescue you. I brought the gin and everything," Alleis said.
"Well, I hate to disappoint, but the gin is all gone," Clara said as she suddenly felt the bottle of alcohol hitting her system.
Alleis shook her head as the dunk started to settle on her, "That was quick. Has the room always been this spiny?"
"I don't think it is the room," Clara said. "I think it is the whole ship."
"Well shit," Alleis said. "I don't know if I can make it back to my room."
Clara stood up and announced, "Just stay here. It's quiet."
"It wouldn't be the first time I've slept on the floor," Alleis said. "Before I met you and I didn't even have a floor to sleep on."
"Wait… You were homeless?" Clara asked.
"Yup. This is like the lap of luxury," Alleis said.
"Well you are welcome to share my floor mattress," the drunk human said.
"Sounds nice," Alleis said as she flopped down so she lay on top of the bed.
Clara began, clumsily trying to get out of her combat armor.
Alleis watched her for a second and said, "What're you doing?"
"As much as I like my combat armor, it isn't really something I like to sleep in if I can help it," she explained.
Alleis looked down and was surprised to find her own armor was still on. "You make an excellent point."
The asari struggled to stand. When she did, she started divesting herself of her armor. Clara turned her back to Alleis to give her some sort of privacy.
"You know I was kind of hoping something like this would happen when I came down here," Alleis mumbled.
"Did you come down here with precious alcohol to try and get me naked and drunk?" Clara asked.
"Not specifically," Alleis said as she took off her chest piece. "I did want to talk about us. I mean if a geth could find love, what about us two?"
"That's a depressing thought," Clara said. "I'm being shown up by a robot."
"I like you Clara," Alleis told her as she took off the last of her armor and stood only in the simple white underclothes that most people wore under their combat armor. "You are strong, independent, trying to make the best of a horrible situation, and you care more than should be reasonably healthy. And behind your scars and your pain, you're quite pretty."
"I like you too," Clara said. "You are the nicest person I've met in a long time. You are so selfless and good and you are the kind of person I wanna be. And you are kind of adorably lame."
"Hey!"
"It was a compliment!" Clara tried to cover.
"Sure it was… So do you want to try this?" Alleis asked.
Clara nodded.
"I don't know what I'm doing though," the asari admitted.
"Me either," the human responded.
The asari kissed the human.
The first one was just the emotional and physical connections between two people. Each subsequent kiss was deeper than that. The asari's mind had reached out and touched the human's.
She could feel Clara's wounds, and self doubt. Each instance of emotional turmoil. Each scar under her fingers and each mountain of pain that went with it. Their souls touched and Alleis was almost overwhelmed for a second by the sheer amount of fear present within the human; and the small part of herself that she had locked away, the part that Alleis could hear whispering across the landscape of Clara's mind. But then she found the undercurrent of strength within her. The driving force, the survival instinct, and the indomitable will to fix what she had broken. For Alleis it was awe inspiring.
Clara could feel the asari, she could feel the emotional make up of Alleis. The pain of loss. The undercurrent of sadness. The self doubt that fueled the asari's bravado. Her heartache was plain to Clara. But it was all covered by Alleis' optimism and hope. Then Clara discovered the core of Alleis' being, the pure, unadulterated kindness that enveloped everything the asari is and was. The kindness that once led the asari down the path towards being a Justicar. The kindness that allowed Alleis to work with a geth without any kind of prejudices. The same kindness that gave complete and utter trust in the clearly indoctrinated human before. For Clara it was amazing and she didn't feel worthy to be loved by someone like the asari in her arms.
Each time the pair connected they felt the pain and hardship start to melt away. Alleis' was strengthened by Clara's will, and Clara was saved by Alleis' hope and kindness.
Their time together was short, as each only had enough emotional energy to last for a little under an hour. Both slept surprisingly well for the first time in a long time.