XCOM: Second Contact

by Agayek

With the destruction of the Temple Ship humanity knew peace. XCOM never forgot their motto however, 'always vigilant, always reliable'

20. Fumigation

Chapter 19: Fumigation

By the time the tram arrived, perfectly safely, at the far end of the tunnel, Shepard was a nervous wreck of paranoia and dread. He had practically begged Murphy to intervene in the crossing, yet nothing had gone wrong. There wasn't even a rachni welcoming committee on the receiving dock. As far as he could tell, everything had gone exactly to plan.

And as every other part of this mission could attest, Shepard never got anything to go perfectly. Ever. A sense of sick, formless dread welled within him as the tram reached the dock. A loud click sounded and the car jerked slightly as it was locked in place. A beat later, the doors slid open soundlessly and allowed the squad to depart.

They emerged into an almost perfect mirror of the other dock, complete with small crates of cargo and a platform leading to a nearly-identical door set into the wall beyond the tram. The only major difference being that the far side had not been covered in corpses. Relief surged through Shepard at the sight. Finally something had gone wrong. He could stop waiting for the other boot to drop.

Aliens, primarily turians with a small collection of asari and salarians, had been torn apart in an orgy of violence. Bodies lay strewn over nearly every surface of the platform, and sometimes each other in waist-high piles. Blood and offal coated the floor in thick layers, and he could faintly hear a steady dripping sound as it fell from the edge. The platform was a chaotic and ruined nightmare that was sure to haunt his sleep for weeks to come. He could only be thankful he didn't have to smell it too.

Shepard cast his gaze over the bodies and cursed under his breath. Garrus' ability to read events from their aftermath was uncanny, and would have been enormously useful here. So of course the rachni had to take him out. Shepard took a deep, steadying breath to calm the flash of rage that thought had inspired. With a mental effort, he turned his full attention on the bodies. As he studied them, he began to notice a pattern to them.

The ratio of turian to 'other' bodies changed dramatically as they got further from the tram, and the turian bodies furthest out, and nearest the door to the facility, were all wearing light, matte black armor eerily reminiscent of the security forces from Port Hanshan. Most likely the security Mira had mentioned.

The bodies nearest the tram however, wore little more than labcoats. They had been torn apart regardless. Many fell mere feet from the tram's doors, hands reaching for the salvation that would never come.

"Keelah," Tali whispered quietly, her voice thick. She swallowed heavily and gave voice to his thoughts. "They were trying to escape."

"Didn't do 'em much good," Wrex grunted with a hint of satisfaction. The krogan strolled calmly into the carnage, kicking bodies aside as he went to form a path. "Let's go."

"We don't have time to stare," Shepard agreed. He consulted the map Legion had provided and in a matter of seconds found a route that led to Nihlus' probable location. "If we he-"

The commander was cut off by Mira's voice. "You are trespassing on private Binary Helix property," The VI's, for some reason still utterly pleasant and polite, voice echoed from a speaker buried somewhere in the tram station and easily filled the space. "Security has been dispatched to apprehend you. Please surrender your weapons and comply with their instructions, or you will be killed."

The cheerfully pleasant tone of voice made the threat as eerie as it was absurd. And it was made all the worse when one of the bodies littered around them started blaring loudly. It was a siren of some kind, and the sound cracked through the still, dead air of the station like a whip. Piercing echoes bounced down the tunnel into the distance. His armor absorbed the worst of the sound, but even behind its protection, the sound was deafening, almost painful..

Wrex froze. The krogan took a long, deep breath through his nose and turned to Shepard. "We need to leave," he shouted through the comm. "Now."

"What?" Ashley asked in surprise. "Why?"

The surety with which Wrex spoke had been all Shepard had needed to hear to comply. "Doesn't matter," he said as he charged through the bodies, down the path Wrex had forged.. "Let's go." Behind him, he could hear the rest of the squad falling in behind him. Apparently, they trusted him enough to follow along. The thought was encouraging.

"Talk later," the krogan shot over the comm. "Outrun a horde of rachni now."

Well, Shephard thought idly. The warm and fuzzy feeling is gone now. Wrex's words lent wings to the squads' feet. They practically flew across the platform and through the door into the compound proper. By the time they got inside, even Shepard's comparatively blunt human hearing could detect the chittering stampede of thousands of the enormous insects surging toward the tram station.

Oh goody. There's even more of them than he'd thought. Shepard was going to enjoy getting out of this place and bombarding it with the Normandy's main gun until the mountain had become a valley of the same size. Fuck what the NDC has to say about it; this place deserved nothing less. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to resurrect these things?

They charged down the facility's walkways and in only a minute, had left the tram station far, far behind. The desperate sprint slowed to a jog and then a walk and Shepard called a halt. "We should be safe here," he said quietly between deep breaths. "We need to find a route to Nihlus that won't take us back there."

Before he'd even finished talking, the map appeared on his helmet's hud, complete with a collection of hallways and rooms highlighted in red. "We recommend this route," Legion said. "Accessible security information suggests it is clear of rachni."

"Let's get to it then," Shepard agreed with a nod. "Rex and Urdnot on point."

The dog quietly barked an affirmation and fell in beside the krogan as they followed the route laid out by Legion. Shepard followed along behind them, grim determination etched into every line of his body. He was going to get Nihlus, find Benezia, then torch this place. And he was going to cackle maniacally while he did it. Fucking killer space bugs.

---

"That," Ashley said quietly, her voice simultaneously nervous and impressed. "Is one hell of a drop."

Shepard nodded mutely beside her. Less than an inch from his toes, a shaft dropped well over a hundred meters straight down, deep into the heart of the mountain. Judging from the control panel on the wall beside the entrance to it, it was most likely an elevator shaft, and according to the map Legion had grabbed, it was the only way down to Nihlus that didn't involve crawling through rachni-infested ventilation.

Unfortunately, it was no longer able to perform such a task. The doors had been violently torn open and left as little more than twisted scrap. Liberal splashes of acid had bubbled and melted nearly every surface within 10 feet of the shaft. The rachni had clearly been through here already. Shepard balanced carefully on the unsteady terrain and leaned over the shaft. His light diffused almost completely before reaching the bottom, but even still, he could see faintly make out the broken remains of the car.

He took a few snapshots then pulled himself back onto solid ground and blew out an explosive breath. "Figures," he said, glancing at Ashley. "Still think I'm too paranoid?"

The gunnery chief just grunted noncommittally.

"What now?" Tali asked in the ensuing silence. "We," she cut off with a glance at Wrex. "Most of us can't take that kind of a fall, and I don't see any other way down."

Wrex snorted loudly, but didn't say anything. He glanced at Shepard and cocked his head inquisitively. The look in his eyes echoed the question he was too proud to ask.

Shepard's lips quirked into a smile. He'd always wanted to say this. "That's because you're not thinking with portals." Tali made a soft sound of realization and Wrex frowned at him. Shepard shrugged and opened a line to the Normandy. A quick tap sent over a package of targeting data for the t-psis. "EDI, I need a portal between these points."

A few seconds later, psionic light filled the corridor. Shadows danced across the hall as the portal coalesced, linking their position with the bottom of the shaft so far below. The wormhole's plane was cocked at a slight angle, perfectly aligned with the far end hovering a few feet above the bottom of the pit. Shepard waved a hand at it and the squad hopped in.

Shepard landed lightly atop the broken elevator car, easily finding his balance on the wildly uneven surface with the ease of long practice. The portal swiftly sealed itself behind him and would have dropped the shaft back into pitch blackness were it not for the state of the elevator. The roof of the car had collapsed almost completely, leaving Shepard's shoulders level with the top of the door into the room beyond. Dim red light filtered through the open door, giving the shaft a hellish cast.

"Rex, take point," Shepard ordered as soon as the portal closed. The dog yipped quietly and slipped into the opening without a sound. The rest of the squad trickled through behind him, tense and ready.

The room beyond held all the markings of a fairly advanced biology lab, to Shepard's inexpert eye. It was hard to be sure however, because this room, like almost every other one in this godforsaken place, had been ransacked. Expensive looking equipment lay shattered, broken into a billion pieces and strewn across the floor. Unidentifiable fleshy fluids were splattered liberally on nearly every surface, and broken tables were scattered chaotically throughout the room.

"You took your time, Commander," a familiar voice drawled the instant Shepard stepped into the room, the very same instant that his hud registered a regained signal. As one, the squad whirled on the source of the voice, and Shepard had to fight the urge to cheer. Tali and Rex didn't bother, cheerfully crying out their delight.

Just to the right of the elevator doors stood a shoulder-high barrier of broken tables and distinctly insectoid bodies, a veritable bulwark that blocked off access to a full fifth of the room. Thick blood, cast a deep black by the red lightning, oozed out of the wall and slowly seeped across the floor, carrying small pieces of dead rachni along with it in endless, slow circles.

Behind the barrier stood Nihlus with his alloy cannon resting atop the wall, where he could fire it one-handed. The turian had definitely seen better days. His armor was pitted and corroded in several places, obviously the victim of some of that crazy acid. His helmet was missing completely and from the way he was holding it, his right arm was out of commission. But he was alive. That was what counted.

"Well, you know how it goes," Shepard answered the Spectre with a dismissive shrug, though he didn't, couldn't, stop the heady relief that seeped into his voice. He met the turian's gaze and nodded happily. "If I came in to rescue you immediately, you wouldn't have a chance to learn anything."

Nihlus leveled a glare at him. "I will pass on future lessons, if you please," he practically growled. Shepard held up his hands in surrender and the turian's glare slackened. He glanced down to something at his feet. "We need to get out of here. I found a survivor, but he will not last much longer without medical attention. Before he fell unconscious, he implied he knew something of import."

"On it," Ashley said, before the turian had even finished speaking. She hopped over the barrier, looked down, cursed loudly and threw herself to her knees, taking her out of Shepard's line of sight. A series of rapid hand signals ordered the rest of the squad to set up on overwatch and Shepard took the opportunity to climb over the barrier himself.

As soon as he did, he understood the gunnery chief's reaction. A salarian lay sprawled out on the floor beside Nihlus's feet, clearly unconscious and just as clearly in a great deal of agony. Deep rents were torn in his flesh, bloody green bites that had been violently severed from their donor. A piece of his arm here, side there, even one of his horns had been devoured by the rachni. All of that paled in comparison to his legs however, or what was left of them. The unfortunate sap just stopped a few inches down his thighs, allowing thin green blood to slowly seep out into an enormous puddle covering most of the area behind the barricade.

Shepard shot a look at Nihlus. "Yes, the rachni were eating him," the Spectre confirmed. His voice shook slightly, a minor tremble that hinted at a blazing fury. "I believe they intended the same for me. Fortunately, I am a tougher meal than an unarmed scientist."

Shepard shot a meaningful glance at the pile of rachni corpses. "I can see that." His voice turned sincere. "It's good to see you alive, Nihlus."

"You as well, Commander." He paused and his eyes bounced across the rest of the squad before his mandibles twitched into a frown. "What happened to Vakarian?"

Shepard grimaced. "He took a faceful of acid spit. He was alive when we got him back to the Normandy, but beyond that, I can't say."

The tendons in Nihlus' good hand creaked as it tightened into a fist. "Damn," he spat under his breath. The Spectre hissed quietly and visibly forced the topic from his mind. "Do you yet know if Benez-"

Nihlus' question was cut off by a sudden scuffle breaking out on the floor. The salarian had surged awake in an instant, slapping away the sedative Ashley was about to pump into him. The gunnery chief jerked back with a surprised oath, falling on her ass in the salarian's blood.

"No!" the amphibian scientist half-yelled, half-groaned. His eyes darted around and landed on Nihlus before a hand twitched out and loosely grabbed the Spectre's boot. He coughed once, dribbling blood out of his mouth, and continued, only fractionally more calmly. "I-I am d-dying. Li-listen to m-me."

"Easy," Ashley said soothingly as she settled back on her knees beside the man. "Just let m-"

"No!" the salarian repeated, desperation thick in his voice. "H-have to sp-speak. Our sins c-can't be forgotten."

"What're you talking about?"

The salarian's gaze disappeared far into the middle distance. "We f-found it decades ago. A ship, a rachni ship, drifting since the war. T-there were eggs, cry-cryo-" he coughed out another wad of green blood. "frozen."

"A two-thousand year old egg hatched?" Nihlus asked in surprise. His voice turned quietly furious. "And you let it live?!"

"Yes," the salarian coughed wetly again. "W-we planned to clone rachni. Make an army. B-but the egg, the egg was a queen. She laid more eggs and w-was taken away." His head fell back into his own blood with a wet slap. When next he spoke, his voice was on the verge of breaking. "Our b-biggest mistake. The rachni need a queen. With-without, they are feral, animals. Insane."

He descended into a coughing fit, splattering more globs of blood and vomit into the ruinous puddle. Shepard and Nihlus traded helpless glances. The salarian suddenly heaved himself up and onto the turian, where he clung to Nihlus' waist with one hand. The other hand pressed a datapad into Nihlus' bad hand. He locked gazes with Nihlus and spoke in a rush. "Key to neutron purge, kill everything in hot labs. Lure rachni, activate purge. Run."

Nihlus nodded slowly and the salarian collapsed. He hit the floor and Shepard could faintly hear him say in a slow, breathy whisper, "Thank you." The scientist shuddered once and his eyes drifted close. He let out a low breath and went still.

Ashley scurried over to his side and checked him over quickly. A few seconds later however, she sat back on her heels, look to Shepard and shook her head. The commander nodded before turning to Nihlus. "You heard the man," he said. "Let's go fry us some bugs."

"This laboratory's control room is through that door," Legion offered from the other side of the barrier. When Shepard glanced over, the geth pointed out a door set in the wall directly across from the elevator. "We presume the purge controls are also there."

"Good call," Shepard agreed with a nod. He turned back to Nihlus and made a show of looking him over. "You up for this?"

"No," Ashley said firmly as she began fussing over the turian. Her medkit moved in practiced motions over his wounds, leaving a thick healing gel in its wake. "He's not."

Nihlus' mandibles flexed in a motion Shepard had rarely seen before. The turian was absolutely furious. "I'm fine," he countered grimly. He set aside his alloy cannon and patiently endured her care. "I simply need to force my arm back into its socket. I could not afford to take the time when I was alone."

"How long does it take?" Shepard asked. Dislocated shoulders were nearly instant fixes for humans. Was turian physiology that weird?

"Enough time for an opportunistic rachni to kill me," came the answer. "My exoskeleton renders internal bone movements difficult, even when correcting a problem." He gently pushed Ashley away from him and gingerly held out his right hand to Shepard. "Your assistance would speed the process immensely."

The commander cautiously gripped the turian's wrist and met his calm gaze. "You sure about this?" he asked at length.

"Yes. I am going to see these animals dead," Nihlus answered firmly. His eyes blazed with surety of purpose and the human knew then and there that he would not be dissuaded, not while these rachni still lived.

Shepard blew out a long breath. "Alright, fine. What do you need?"

The turian ignored Ashley's murmur of protest and prepared himself for the move. He bent his knees slightly and flexed his mandibles in the turian equivalent of a grimace. "Hold my arm steady then, on my signal, pull to your right."

Shepard steadied his grip and his feet burrowed into the carpet of blood for better footing. When he thought he was ready, he nodded to the Spectre.

Nihlus returned the nod and, without another word, forcefully twisted his torso. He grunted in pain and a low grinding sound reached Shepard's ears as the Spectre pulled. Several seconds of the tense standoff passed before Nihlus growled out, "Now!"

Shepard immediately pulled the turian's arm to the side with a quick twist of his hips. The grinding sound intensified for a brief moment, followed by a sharp, crackling pop. Nihlus stumbled to his knees, breathing heavily. He shook his head loosely and stood back up. His injured arm began to move in progressively larger motions and he grinned happily. "Much better. Thank you, Commander."

"No problem," Shepard replied easily. He led all three of them in the corner back over the barricade. A wave of his hand sent Rex and Wrex through the door Legion had singled out, and the rest of the squad followed on their heels. The room beyond was a rather understated and mundane affair. A small, and now very crowded, office with a single VI terminal standing prominently against the rear wall and a bank of switches, buttons and physical screens running along the right side. There was a single, wheeled chair before the bank of monitors, but the room was otherwise completely empty. And much to Shepard's surprise, completely untouched by the chaos that had ransacked the rest of the facility.

"Huh," Shepard mused aloud as he took in the room. "Wonder why they never came in here."

"No one was in here when it started, I think," Tali answered him in a subdued voice. "And afterwards, I doubt they had time."

"Doesn't matter," Wrex grunted firmly. "Let's just blow this thing and get out of here."

"We cannot," Legion countered smoothly.

Shepard turned to the geth with a puzzled look. "Why not?"

Legion's eye narrowed slightly. "Detonation of the neutron purge is ill advised; the rachni have left the area. It is probable they are still near the tram station. We must lure them here before detonation."

"Damnit," Ashley cursed loudly. "How are we gonna do that?"

"I may have an idea," Tali said, her voice distracted. Everyone in the squad immediately turned to her, but the quarian ignored them all in favor of playing with her omnitool. She tapped out a long sequence on the device, nodded sharply once and looked up. "Done!" she chirped, only to falter as she realized she was the focus of everyone's attention. She rallied quickly however and continued, holding up her omnitool for their inspection. "I've rigged up a program on my omnitool to create a 'noise bomb', almost like that cryo grenade Jondum used on Feros. If the rachni were attracted to the siren on the tram, dropping something even louder into the ventilation down here should bring them running."

"Good idea," Shepard praised the girl. The idea was crafty and actually building something like that in only a few seconds was impressive as hell. "That should get them down here for sure. Keep it contained until we're ready though." He pointed at Nihlus and Legion. "Now take those two and take a look at those controls, figure out how to activate the purge. Rig up a remote trigger or a time delay so we don't fry ourselves. Everyone else, watch their back."

The squad received his orders and settled into their tasks. For those on watch, the next few minutes passed agonizingly slowly as the trio of techies tore apart the terminal. Low muttering filled the room as they bent to their task, but it was nowhere near enough to distract any of the watchers from the fact that they were planning to draw the entire horde of rachni down on their heads. There was a billion little ways this could all go wrong, and Shepard felt as if his mind had run through every single one, and their gruesome results, by the time Tali announced that she was finished.

"How's it work?" Shepard asked immediately.

"Well, we couldn't do a remote detonator," Tali began enthusiastically. The technological puzzle seemed to have restored a spark of something she had been missing ever since she had found that asari near the entrance to the facility. "This lab is shielded against practically everything, probably as a way to contain the purge if they ever had to use it. Remote signals can't get through. We were able to rig up a timer though. Once activated, we'll have 59 seconds to get out of here, and once started, we can't stop it."

The specific number she used jumped out to Shepard for two reasons. "Alright, but why 59 seconds?" he asked. "That seems a little specific, not to mention rather short."

Tali's eyes flashed behind her helmet. "It is, unfortunately," she agreed with him. "But any longer and the station's VI will disable the purge. I think it's meant to be a safety feature but I can't be sure, because whatever bosh'tet programmed the thing had to have been lobotomized," Rex yipped in laughter and bumped the quarian with his shoulder, earning him a fond head scratch from the girl. She looked back to Shepard and continued. "Mira's code is... idiotic, to be diplomatic, but unless you want to give us a few days down here, we don't have any other options."

"Fine," Shepard conceded unhappily. He didn't like it, but he liked the idea of spending days down here even less. "Let's do it then. Find a vent and toss your flashbang down it. Once we can tell they're coming," he glanced over at Wrex then. "We'll need you for that, Urdnot."

The krogan nodded sharply with a muttered assent, which Shepard returned before turning back to Tali. "As soon as he calls it, start the timer and we'll bug out."

"Yes, Shepard," Tali replied as she turned around. Her eyes danced across the wall until they settled on a small grate to the ventilation system. "Perfect," she said and practically skipped over. A quick tug pulled the grate out of the way and her other arm pointed down into the hole. Her omnitool flared to life and spat a glob of gently glowing orange into the vent.

Almost immediately, an ear-piercing wail filled the room. The sudden wave of sound hit Shepard in the chest, almost like a physical blow. He had never before been so thankful for the sound-protection systems in his armor. The sound pulsed and beat in the air like a living thing, rising and falling in a regular pattern that Shepard unconsciously found his heart falling into sync with. It was disconcerting on several levels.

An interminable few seconds later, the sound died as abruptly as it had come. Nearly the same instant, Wrex spoke up. "They're on the way." Nihlus nodded sharply and slapped a hand on the terminal. A wave of barely-noticeable tension flooded out of the turian's body with the motion and he flashed a hand in a gesture of success.

"Time to get out of here," Shepard declared, even as he opened his comm to the Normandy. "EDI, we need a portal to the Normandy," he declared firmly.

Nothing happened for multiple seconds.

"EDI!" he barked into the comm, a sudden sense of nervous foreboding settling over him. "Do you read me?"

Silence met his request. "Uh, Shepard?" Tali ventured nervously. The mix of resignation, fear and implied insult in her tone made the bottom of his stomach drop out. "Do you remember when I said this lab was shielded?"

Ashley summarized his response to that perfectly with a loud groan and a cry of, "Well, fuck."

"Okay," Shepard said with a trace of nervous desperation. Don't panic, he told himself. There's still another option. A bad one, he conceded to the aggravating part of his mind that was determined to make him curl up in a corner and cry, but it was the only one they had. "Time for Plan B."

What's Plan B?" Tali asked, her voice both worried and resigned.

"Run like hell," Ashley cut in firmly.

Shepard jerked his head in a stiff nod and took over the explanation. "The elevator shaft is still open, and since we could call EDI up there, the top of it is beyond the shielding. We just need to get there."

"You're giving us forty-five seconds to charge through a rachni horde and climb out of a hundred meter hole," Wrex pointed out reasonably, his tone belied by the feral smile on his face. He slapped the activator plate and the door slid open. Shepard damn near felt his heart stop as he beheld what had happened while they were in the control room. Rachni filled the bio lab, boiling out of the ventilation and scurrying along the walls and ceiling like demented spiders. The sound of the door opening grabbed their attention and, as one, the rachni charged at them in a tidal wave of chitin and acid. Wrex just laughed fiercely, leashed bloodlust thick in his voice. "You take us to the nicest places, Carnifex!"

"Shut up and run!" he barked in response, shoving the krogan forward. "Make a path, I've got your back!"

Wrex turned the shove into a sprint and bellowed an ear-splitting war cry. He stampeded across the room, riot shield held before him and streamers of blue fire bursting out of his skin. A series of biotic explosions rocketed across the ground, plowing into the wave of rachni and tossing the enormous animals aside like they were made of paper.

Shepard forced his mind away from his worries, his fears, his guilt, any and everything that would keep any of his soldiers from getting to the top of that elevator. Now was not the time for second guessing. There was only the goal and the obstacles in the way. He nodded sharply to himself. Time to do what he did best.

Anger exploded in his chest, rushing in to fill the void and fed by the memory of his fears and frustrations, turning into a seething fury that he embraced wholeheartedly. A feral snarl tore from his throat and that strange, superhuman part of himself took his rage and transformed it into awesome power. A thick purple haze settled over the room as he brought a telekinetic field to bear.

Streamers of acid were grabbed in mid-flight and scattered to the winds, splashing uselessly against the ground or even into the tightly-packed ranks of the frenzied rachni. Deep, spluttering hissing could be heard as the acid chewed through metal, chitin and flesh alike and filled the room with thin, acrid smoke.

The chittering cries of shock and pain were music to Shepard's ears. Even more so when the squad behind him added their own contributions. Blazing plasma tore into the rachni with explosive force, indiscriminately shredding the bugs into limp piles of shredded chitin and steaming meat. Rachni died in droves before the squad's charge.

But for every bug that fell, half a dozen seemed to take its place, mindlessly charging over, and sometimes even through, their dead to get at the fleeing squad. It was madness, and it was slowing them down.

Despite his best efforts, Wrex was being overwhelmed by bodies. Every rachni trampled tied up his feet, every bug thrown stole his concentration, and every body left broken and steaming pulled his gun away from another rachni menacing his other side. There were just too many of them to keep up the pace.

Their breakneck charge faltered as the rachni enveloped them, circling around to press against the rear guard. Nihlus and Tali whirled around and the air was filled with thunder and a storm of flechettes, slamming through chitin with ease and tearing great gouges out of the first wave of attackers. Insectile bodies fell to the ground and formed their own bulwark that brought the rachni surge from behind to a temporary halt.

"30 seconds!" Tali yelled over her shoulder. "Keep moving!"

"I'm trying!" Wrex bellowed back, punctuating his statement with a biotically enhanced backhand that threw gallons of dark liquid flecked with small shards of chitin flying through the air. Another rachni took the opportunity to throw itself at his back, but a focused lance of purple energy speared it through the middle and carried it clear of the krogan.

The struck rachni careened into its fellows, bowling over those it hit, sending them falling into their neighbors in an almost-comical domino effect that left a dozen of the creatures sprawled across the floor. Shepard loosed a shout of triumph tinged with no small amount of bloodlust. Seeing these things die was unspeakably satisfying. Such efforts weren't going to get anyone out of this hellhole though. He'd have to do something new and drastic. He really hoped it didn't give him an aneurysm.

"Urdnot! Get down!" he bellowed a moment later. The krogan complied instantly, crouching as close as possible to the bloodstained floor without a word of protest. The rachni, sensing weakness, redoubled their efforts, but Shepard was having none of that.

Twisting streamers of purple light burst from the commander and shot over Wrex's back in a deadly spear. The entwined streams of psionic energy spun around each other into a tight piercing drill that slammed into the insectile horde at chest height. The wet crunch of impact underlined Shepard's roar of triumph. The rachni menacing Wrex burst like a struck melon, throwing thick sludge of rachni offal over everything in sight. Pieces of chitin flew through the air in a glittering blizzard turned hellish by the lab's deep red lights. Panicked screeching rang through the room as the drill continued on, tearing a perfect line straight through the rachni all the way to the elevator shaft.

The drill hit the rear of the shaft and exploded violently, peppering the rear of the rachni horde with enormous pieces of shrapnel. For the first time, the surviving rachni seemed uncertain, hesitant to attack. Shepard failed entirely to notice it though, as his vision swam wildly and the floor dropped out from under his feet. He stumbled slightly, only to find Tali under his arm and taking his weight. "Thanks," he mumbled, letting the quarian drag him along while he recovered.

Wrex shot back to his feet and, backed by deadly volleys of plasma fire, resumed his charge. The krogan barrelled across the remaining space to the elevator before the rachni had the chance to recover their nerve. His heavy foot falls crunched pieces of rachni underfoot and forced aside anything too big to step on, ploughing a path for the smaller beings behind him to follow.

He spun around when he reached the elevator and brought his weapon to bear. Heavy plasma fire rained into the horde, keeping the bugs at bay as the squad clambered onto the elevator behind him. It could only work for so long however, and the rachni recovered their nerve as Ashley, the last of the squad, pulled herself into the shaft. Nihlus and Legion took over the job of covering fire, allowing Wrex to haul himself up beside them.

As soon as the krogan had climbed up, Shepard forced through his dizziness and yanked a grenade off his belt before flicking it through the small opening, hoping to buy a bit more time. The sharp bang of detonation rang out as he turned to face the rest of the squad. "Use your eezo," he barked, not even bothering to go for the comm. They didn't have the time to wait for a portal. His next orders came out in a hurried, slurred rush. "We're climbin'! Ash, take Rex. Legion with me on Urdnot. Tali, Nihlus."

The quarian grabbed Nihlus tightly as the telltale blue aura of the mass effect burst from his armor. She glanced up at the distant glimmer of light from the hallway so far above. "It's too far!" she cried. "My grapple won't reach!"

Shepard scowled. That wasn't going to happen. Renewed anger burst from him at even considering the possibility, temporarily piercing the fuzziness of his thoughts with ease. Before he could think about it any further, he forced his powers to cooperate and grabbed the pair in a purple fist. Tali shrieked as they were catapulted upward, but retained enough presence of mind to fire her grapple the instant she got into range. The grapple quickly pulled taut and she swung into the wall of the shaft, where both she and Nihlus caught the impact with their legs before rushing up the wall with the aid of the grapple's winch.

The rest of the squad rocketed past them an instant later, archangel packs carrying them in a furious rush for the exit. Shepard followed Ashley through the opening and set down lightly on the floor of the original hallway. His grip on Legion and Wrex disengaged instantly and he spun back to the opening, just in time to see Tali and Nihlus climbing over the lip. He rushed over to help and blew out a noisy breath of relief, until movement at the base of the shaft caught his eye. Rachni were swarming through the broken door and rushing up the sheer walls like it was flat ground.

"Fuck!" he cried, his eyes wide. He grabbed both of the aliens on the lip and hauled them into the hallway. "We gotta run!"

"Two seconds!" Tali shot back as she was thrown to the floor of the shaft. "No time!"

Shepard opened his mouth to retort, but in the same instant, a furious torrent of blinding white fire roared through the shaft not even a full meter away. He instinctively threw himself away and landed on his back. He could only watch in awe as white flames licked from the top of the opening and traced blinding patterns across the ceiling before being sucked back into the shaft. It lasted for only the briefest of instants, but to Shepard it seemed to stretch into eternity.

The white fire died and he let his head fell back to the floor with a thud. Silence reigned for several seconds, before his tired voice filled the hallway. "Anyone hurt?"

"Owwww," Tali groaned in answer. His head rolled over toward her, to see her gingerly moving her arm, testing the movement of her shoulder. She noticed him looking and glared at him. "You're a dick, Shepard."

He snorted quietly. "At least you got out."

"You could ha-" she began crossly, only to be cut off as EDI's voice crackled over the comm.

"Commander, I lost your signal for several minutes. Are you in need of assistance?"

Shepard spluttered briefly, before he started chuckling. The sudden loss of adrenaline made everything hilarious, and he simply could not stop laughing. His chuckles quickly built up steam, turning into a full belly, manic laugh in a matter of seconds. His sudden bout of manic hysteria earned him several strange looks from the squad, but he just shook his head at them. He was way too happy to be alive to care about his dignity.

"Was it something I said?" EDI asked, her voice bewildered. Her only answer was even stronger laughter.

---

"The rachni are all dead now right?" Ashley asked as they rounded another corner in the confusing maze of hallways. Shepard grunted an affirmative, but didn't otherwise respond. She hissed a quiet breath then pointedly wondered aloud, "Then remind me, why are we doing this instead of, oh I don't know, getting on the Normandy and nuking this place from orbit?"

Shepard distantly wished he could take off his helmet and massage the bridge of his nose. His head was killing him, even through the handful of painkillers he'd taken, and the gunnery chief's whining wasn't helping matters. "Benezia is still our only lead on Saren, and she's in here somewhere," he said tiredly. His frustration leaked into his voice and he glared at Williams. "Not to mention the rachni queen that started this whole mess. We're going to find them."

She raised her hands in surrender. "It's your call, Commander, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to sift through the rubble afterwards." She snorted. "It's not like they deserve any less."

"And then we're back at square one with Saren," he snapped at her. His thoughts descended into a stream of virulent cursing at the woman's stubbornness, his headache, the lights of the hallway, his headache, the steady dripping he could just barely hear, and, just for good measure, his headache. Externally, he just sighed heavily. "Look, just find the stupid bitch so we can get out of here, alright?"

"Al- whoa," Ashley said, her words turning into a surprised yelp as the squad rounded the next corner. "Damn, those chryssalid-wannabes really got around."

Shepard silently agreed with a grimace. Several meters down the hall, right as it opened into a fairly large room, stood a makeshift barricade, comprised of a metal bookshelf tipped onto its side and wedged into a hallway over a foot too narrow and just barely tall enough to properly accommodate it. And it was clear, even from a distance, that the rachni had already been through here.

Ragged holes, obviously the work of rachni acid, could be seen in a number of places on the bookshelf. A turian body, wearing the armor of the security forces, lay draped on its chest over the top of the barricade, blue blood slowly dripping from its severed neck to splash on an asari corpse stretched out below. The asari, clad in a skinsuit of a design Shepard had never seen before, lay in an enormous puddle of half-congealed blue and purple blood. Both of her legs and one arm were simply gone, and her stomach had been violently torn open by large, mindlessly hungry bites. Glazed eyes stared sightlessly out of the gore, an expression of shock, pain, and fear permanently etched into her face.

"I recognize that armor," Nihlus said as they approached. He stepped ahead of the rest of the group, stopping just at the edge of the pool of blood and offal, where he crouched down to peer intently at the asari. "She was a commando."

"They wouldn't have paid an asari commando to sit around as a security guard," Wrex rumbled as he came up beside Nihlus. "This is one of Benezia's."

"Agreed," Shepard said quietly. He ignored the throbbing in his temples and tried to force his thoughts to cooperate. This was the first real sign of Benezia's presence since the geth at the front door. What did it mean?

He didn't realize he had given voice to the question until Legion answered him. "It is unlikely for a high-value person such as an asari matriarch to separate from her guards in a time of crisis. It is probable that Matriarch Benezia is nearby."

Shepard grimaced and cursed his headache again. He really should have been able to see that immediately. "Agreed," he said again, in a frustrated tone. His gaze bounced from the asari to the barricade beyond her. "We need to get through this thing and start looking for clues. Keep the noise down though. If Benezia survived, I don't want her knowing we're coming."

"Ten credits says she's been watching us through the security system since the tram station," Ashley groused under her breath.

Shepard shot her an arch look. "I would imagine someone in a building overrun by alien killing machines would have bigger things to worry about," he pointed out. "And if she has, there's not much we can do about it." He turned to Wrex. "Think you can get this out of the way without making enough noise to wake the dead?"

Wrex snorted in amusement. "Quaint saying," he said with a half-laugh. He gave the bookshelf a speculative glance and shook his head. "That thing isn't moving unless you want to take the walls out with it," he announced at length. He pointedly eyed the small opening between the bookshelf and the ceiling. "And I'm not going to fit through that."

"Damnit," Shepard sighed. There was only one other option. He pulled out his pistol and deftly swapped it over to torch mode. "Needs must then," he said as he gingerly stepped into the puddle of blood. He pulled the turian off the barricade and set the body lightly on the ground before turning back to the bookshelf. His pistol pressed against the left edge of the metal barrier and began the noisy process of cutting through it. "Rex, get the other side. And somebody hold this thing up so it doesn't fall when we're done."

The dog yipped an affirmative and trotted over to the bookshelf, where he jumped up onto his hind legs and replicated Shepard's efforts on the far side of the barrier. The hall filled with the crackling of plasma searing perfect holes straight through the battered metal as Wrex stepped in to the center, grabbing a steady hold on the middle portion of the bookshelf as its supports were cut away. In a matter of seconds, the crackle of seared metal was replaced by the hiss of steam as the torches reached the last two inches. Blue and purple blood was evaporated instantly, boiled away by the superheated plasma in a fraction of a second.

Several seconds of furious cutting later, Shepard's torch had reached the floor. He pulled the device out of the blood and released the trigger, allowing the blinding flare of plasma to die off. A deft motion returned the thing back to pistol mode and stored it in its holster on his thigh. Rex stepped back nearly the same instant the gun settled back into its place and Shepard nodded at the krogan.

Synthetic muscle along the krogan's back flexed and he easily lifted the severed section of sturdy bookshelf into the air. The puddle of blood at his feet immediately rushed through the new opening, spreading out of Shepard's sight and into the room beyond. Wrex stomped through the opening and lightly set the hunk of metal off to the side before stepping out of the way and granting Shepard his first unimpeded view of the inside.

"Joy," he drawled, simply unable to muster the disgust he thought he should have been feeling. He'd just seen this too many times today, he supposed. Then again, it wasn't like he had expected anything different. "Another roomful of corpses. Today just keeps getting better."

He shook his head and walked into the middle of the carnage. The room was a fairly good size, easily twenty meters across and half again that wide, with a pair of low benches that ran the length of the room, from a meter ahead of Shepard's feet, all the way to a closed and sealed door on the far side. Blood covered nearly every surface of the room, pouring out of the two score bodies that had been so messily slain. Salarian and asari, most in labcoats or other civilian dress, had been viciously cut down all across the room, but the highest concentration by far was the far left corner, where a veritable mound of corpses had formed. It was as if the rachni had herded them all there before cutting them down. Shepard scowled. That was probably exactly what had happened.

To his right, another hallway entered the room, but the barricade blocking it, an upturned desk in this case, had been overrun. A pair of asari commandos lay sprawled out behind the half-melted remains of the desk, enormous portions of their armor and skin simply gone, burned away by rachni acid.

Behind them lay the broken remains of a security force. A turian in white armor, one hand completely gone while the other clutched a melted rifle in the tight grip of rigor mortis, had been impaled through the chest and held above the floor by a broken shard of the desk, like a sick perversion of an entymological display. Thick blue blood dripped down the meter long spike to pool on the floor, mixing freely with the puddles formed by the ten or so turian and asari bodies strewn around him.

Shepard shot a look at the squad as they trickled through the opening behind him and waved a hand obliquely at the bodies of the asari commandos. "Benezia was in here, probably after they fortified," he said. "Wrex, Nihlus, check if she's in the pile. Legion, with me. Let's see if the commandos have any clues. The rest of you, keep an eye out. Odds are good at least a few rachni didn't get to the basement in time and survived the purge. I don't want them or Benezia able to sneak up on us."

Acknowledgements rang out and the squad bent to their assigned tasks. Shepard and Legion each took one of the asari commandos and rifled through their bodies, searching for anything that might give them a clue to Benezia's location. Unfortunately, Shepard's search turned up nothing but an omnitool that had taken a bath in acid. He snorted in disgust and threw the asari's arm away from him before turning to the geth. "Find anything?"

Legion looked up from his asari and let the active omnitool on her arm fade. His head flaps narrowed slightly and he spoke. "Matriarch Benezia was contacted by this user approximately twenty hours ago. We believe it was a warning that the fortifications had been breached." The geth pointed at the door at the rear of the room. "We judge it likely Benezia is in the laboratory behind that door."

"Good job," Shepard said with a breath of relief. "Is there any word on her condition."

"No."

Shepard nodded and stood up. "Alright, we've got a lead," Shepard announced, catching the squad's attention. Nihlus gratefully shot away from the pile of corpses and turned his attention fully on Shepard. Wrex snorted lightly, but didn't say anything, so Shepard continued. "Legion and Tali, get that door open. We're pretty sure Benezia's hiding or dead somewhere behind it. I want a hostile breach as soon as the door's unlocked. Rex and Urdnot up front, Nihlus and Tali behind. Anything that's not Benezia is dead. Any questions?"

There were none. "Right. Let's get to it then," he ordered. Tali and Legion threw themselves at the door's controls while the rest of the squad pulled into a practiced breaching formation. The weight of his plasma sniper was comforting to Shepard as he braced it against his shoulder. His head throbbed quietly, but he ignored it with the ease of long practice. They were so close to finally be doing with this shit. He wasn't about to let a stupid headache stop him now.

A few seconds later, the hologram on the door flickered and turned green and Tali flashed a thumbs up at Shepard. He raised three fingers and slowly pulled them down one by one. As the last finger pulled back into his fist, the door shot open and the squad rushed through.

The first thing Shepard noticed upon moving through the door was the sudden and complete disappearance of his headache. In its place came a bizarre feeling of disconnect, as if there was an infinitesimal delay between thought and action. The abrupt change surprised the hell out of him, enough so that he faltered briefly in mid-run, his body automatically reacting to the unexpected sensation. He stumbled slightly and nearly fell, only just catching himself with one hand on the nearby wall.

The second thing he noticed was the bizarre structure of the room itself. Four large, suspended platforms, one in each corner of the room, comprised the lion's share of the room's available space. Narrow walkways made a circuit around the room, or at least as much of it as he could see, linking all four platforms together. The walkway directly ahead of him led up a short flight of stairs and went level for several meters before descending to the platform directly opposite. Roughly halfway across this walkway, a fifth platform had been erected, stretching out toward the center of the rom. Enormous buttresses jutted out from underneath the platforms, forming a truncated pyramid mere feet from the edge of the fifth platform that both supported the roof and held aloft an enormous, mostly-transparent box of sturdy plastic and metal. Something big, purple, and moving was held in the box, but Shepard couldn't see it well enough to identify it.

And he didn't have the chance to look further as he noticed the third thing in the room. Which in retrospect, he thought, should really have been the first. Immediately in front of him, a pair of asari commandos crouched behind a low crate, only their heads and guns visible over the makeshift cover. Behind them, at the top the stairs to the walkway, a geth trooper was covering the door, and in the far corner in the same direction, another commando and trooper, this one armed with a sniper rifle, were doing the same. The walkway to his right had another trooper blocking the route and two commandos on the far platform. A quick glance up revealed at least two hoppers hanging from the buttresses, and god only knew how many more where he couldn't see.

A virulent oath ripped through his thoughts, cursing that brief moment of distraction for everything he was worth. Fortunately for his continued survival however, the rest of the squad was much more on the ball.

Even as Shepard was recognizing the threat, the synthetic members of the team had catapulted into action. A sharp whine filled the air as Legion's archangel pack roared to life, throwing the geth up into the rafters. At the same time, Rex took off like a shot, throwing himself into a shoulder tackle against the crate the commandos sheltered behind. Half a metric ton of cyberdog in a full sprint proved more than a match for the crate and it went sailing through the air. One of the asari managed to throw herself over it, but the other was still recovering from the surprise of their sudden entry. The crate tumbled into her and threw her to the floor, where it bounced once off her legs and rolled right over her. A sickening crack sounded as it struck her head on its second bounce and slammed to a stop against the railing of the platform, the head and shoulders of the limp asari pinned beneath it.

The second commando flared with biotic power, only to be intercepted by a storm of vahlenite flechettes. Deadly shards of the wonder metal slammed into her chest, ripping through her shields with ease. A sick tearing and crunching noise filled the platform, even as thick purple blood was thrown through the air in an arterial geyser. Tali dismissed her target in nearly the same instant and vanished from conventional sight in an electric flitter. Shepard could only follow her spin to the right because of his hud.

Unfortunately, the element of surprise only works so well against synthetic enemies. Benezia's geth opened fire in almost the same heartbeat as the squad, and the air above the small platform was suddenly full of bullets. Sparks flew as supersonic particles pinged off the squad's armor, driving them into cover.

"Williams!" Shepard barked, throwing himself under the dubious shelter of the platform's right-side railing. "Get up there and help Legion! Urdnot, get her an opening!"

Ashley nodded sharply and triggered her archangel pack. Another sharp whine filled the room as she rose into the air. At the same time, Wrex shot to his full height, bellowing an ear-splitting warcry. The missile batteries on his shoulders came to life, spitting finger-sized missiles on chaotically twisting courses that all eventually rained down on an enormous biotic barrier that sprang up to cover the entire left side of the room. Smoke, fire and chaos filled the air, and while the missiles hadn't killed anything, they'd done their job. The hostiles in that portion of the room had gone temporarily quiet. Then Wrex repeated his cry and flung himself into the chaos, the squad's SHIV on his heels. Nothing over there was going to be bothering Ashley. Now it was Shepard's turn.

The commander threw himself to his feet and turned to face the rightmost platform. He reached deep inside himself, to that place of roiling power that had been alongside him for well over a decade, ever since that hell that Mindoir had become. He reached out for his power, his mind already bent to the task of shaping it to his will, but unlike every other time before, he was answered by silence. A beat of raw shock passed as he realized what had happened. His psionics were gone.

His mind screeched to a halt with that realization. Raw, animal panic rushed to the forefront of his thoughts, tripping every single one of his physiological stress responses at once. His mind raced at a million lightyears a second, but couldn't form a single coherent thought. His psionics were gone. Everything else was eclipsed by that one, inescapable fact.

That was impossible! Nobody even knew what psionics really were, let alone how they could be stopped. How the f-

A furious voice suddenly cut into his thoughts. "Shepard!" Williams barked as she dodged away from the focused fire of nearly a third of the room.

He started violently, forcing himself to think about it later. He could have a breakdown on his own time. "My psionics are gone!" he called, even as he reseated his rifle on his shoulder. Plasma lanced through the air, crossing the space between platforms in a heartbeat and slamming into an asari surrounded in biotic light. The reinforced shields proved enough to keep the blow from being instantly fatal, but even it could not protect her from all of the heat. A small plume of purple-tinged steam shot out into the air as the outermost layer of flesh on her arms boiled away.

"What?!" both Nihlus and Williams demanded at the same time. The gunnery chief's voice cut off with a yelp of surprise however, as biotic power grabbed her in its tight embrace. Without warning, she was catapulted through the air and into the nearest wall, where she hit with a loud crash. She bounced off the wall and fell out of sight to the floor below, striking hard on the edge of one of the walkways as she went.

"Ashley!" Shepard yelled wildly. Cursing himself for a dozen different kinds of idiot, his eyes immediately sought out the one responsible. Atop the central platform, a wizened asari, more wrinkled and ancient than any he had ever seen and wearing excessively formal robes and a ridiculous head piece, was using one hand to maintain a barrier capable of holding off Urdnot Wrex, while the other snaked around in chaotic patterns. Corpses, both asari and geth, littered the platform around her feet, proof of the deadly force she was holding back so well.

Biotics flared on the central platform as Wrex and the asari, Benezia he assumed, dueled. There was no other word for it. Benezia's free hand would weave a motion and biotic light burst in the air, only for Wrex to twitch his head or twist his shoulders and the light would be dispersed. Then Wrex would go on the offensive with a rain of plasma and reptilian fury, only to be forced to disengage as Benezia countered.

It was an intricate and awe-inspiring sight, and it filled Shepard with a seething rage. He was going to take what they needed from that bitch and then he was going to kill her. "Nihlus, Tali, clear the right!" he snapped as he tore a grenade from his belt and whipped it over to the platform. "Loop around and support Legion!"

"On it," Nihlus said and threw himself out onto the walkway. The grenade bought him a few precious seconds, and his riot shield bought him the rest. The turian Spectre threw himself into a running leap that hit the injured commando feet first, throwing her to her back underneath him. His mass effect module was turned on in the middle of the fall, causing her chest to burst messily under his now-enormous weight and throwing purple blood through the air. It doused the asari's companion, as well as the indistinct shape beside her. The commando's eyes went wide and she moved to attack, only for Tali's alloy cannon to roar and tear off her head in a shower of metallic death.

The pair turned their attention to the ceiling and Shepard followed their gaze with a brief glance. Legion was holding his own against the hoppers, but judging by the splattering of white on his armor, it wouldn't last much longer.

"Legion, down!" Tali yelled, and the geth immediately complied. Legion dropped like a rock, luring the hoppers down with him, and Shepard dismissed them all from his mind; they'd be fine. He had a matriarch to capture.

Neither Wrex nor Benezia had made any headway against each other, and it didn't look like they were going to anytime soon. Shepard's lips twitched into a feral grin. It was time to change that.

A flurry of plasma blasts shot across the intervening space in a fraction of a second, each one slamming into Benezia's barrier with the explosive force of a grenade. Through his scope, Shepard could see the matriarch's eyes go wide and his grin widened, only to devolve into a yelp of shock as her free hand shot in his direction thrice without her looking away from the ancient krogan she faced.

The next thing Shepard knew, he was tumbling uncontrollably through the air. The room spun crazily in his view and, when combined with the unmistakable sensation of motion, the dizzying spectacle threatened to bring up his gorge. Until he stopped, that is.

He slammed back first and upside down into something hard and unyielding before he flipped over and was sprawled on his chest. A yelp of pain escaped him from the impact as fierce agony boiled up from the back of his chest, forcing his eyes closed. He sighed internally. He knew that pain. Cracked ribs were never fun.

He groaned quietly and climbed to his knees, just in time for a horse to kick him in the chest. Nonsensical words of surprise washed over him as he was thrown through the air yet again. His feet caught on something and sent him spinning once more until he hit the ground with another spike of terrible agony. His mind went white with the pain and simply shut down.

When his senses returned, two seconds or two millenia later, he could not tell, all he could see was a small, slowly spinning monolith in the dead center of the room. Intricate patterns had been traced in gently glowing blue lines all along the exterior of the misshapen pyramid and with every rotation, Shepard felt a faint pulse of something in the deepest recesses of his mind.

This thing is dangerous, Shepard concluded.

"You can say that again," a tired voice suddenly cut into his thoughts, and let him know he voiced the thought aloud. Shepard jumped in surprise, and cried out as the motion jostled his ribs. "Easy Skipper," the voice said again, and he could feel hands rolling him onto his side. A moment later, there was a sharp pain before a wave of blessed relief rushed through him. He exhaled noisily and opened his eyes to find Ashley kneeling beside him. "That should get you walking." She gestured vaguely at the elevated platforms some ten meters overhead. Bright flashes of light strobed from the platforms overhead, casting the roof in deadly shadows. "We need to get back up there and take down Benezia."

Shepard nodded distractedly, his attention once more captured by the spinning monolith. "I, I think this is the thing blocking my psionics," he said, giving voice to the terrible certainty he felt within him. "We gotta destroy it first."

She nodded. "Fine by me. Got any more grenades?"

Shepard laughed sharply, only to wheeze as a twinge of pain burst through the anaesthetic. "I like the way you think," he said, pulling his last grenade from his belt. A flick of his hand armed the grenade and he nodded at the chief. "Payback time," he said simply.

"Get in line," Ashley countered, her voice angry. Her archangel pack coughed to life a second later and she hovered a few feet off the ground.

"First come, first served," Shepard retorted, activating his own pack. He tossed the grenade at the monolith and they took off into the air. Shepard and Ashley had just reached the level of the central platform when the grenade exploded with a furious roar. Bright blue fire rushed through the air in a wave, harmlessly passing through everything in its path.

And in its wake, Shepard felt revitalized. An intoxicating rush of power flooded his mind, that forlorn piece of his soul waking up at long last. It took him a minute to realize it, but he had been laughing madly since the wave passed. His thoughts could once again reach out and twist reality to his whims. It was exhilarating. It was intoxicating. He felt like a god.

Which made it even worse when he was struck by a wave of debilitating terror. Raw, seething rage tinged by fathomless sorrow and an unending love filled the air, all twisted together into a murderous desire that gave a booming resonance to the cry that echoed through his mind.

DIE!

The box in the middle of the room exploded in a violent surge of purple light. Before anyone could react, the thing inside it was among them. An enormous purple rachni, six meters tall at least, smashed through Benezia's barrier like it wasn't even there. The matriarch had just enough time to scream before the rachni's jaws closed around her with a sickening crunch. It bit down once and the matriarch's lower body collapsed to the platform with a wet thud. The rachni pulled back its head and screeched loudly, a trilling call of pain, grief and satisfied vengeance.

Then it turned to look directly at Shepard.

Immediately, the squad responded to the implied threat like the well-oiled machine of war that they were. Plasma flew thick in the air, wave after wave roaring across space toward the gigantic rachni from nearly every direction. It trilled once and every single shot slammed to a halt in mid-air, held aloft by a gently rippling wall of psionic light. Shepard's eyes went wide. He knew what came next.

"Duck and cover!" he snapped, even as he cut the power to his archangel pack. The squad scrambled to comply, throwing themselves down into whatever cover they could find as he fell. His last sight of the platform was every single one of the projectiles held in the rachni's grip being flung straight up.

The rounds exploded harmlessly against the ceiling with a discordant echo of light and sound. Choking dust was thrown down by the explosions, filling the air with an almost impenetrable grey-black fog. The squad's markers on his hud scattered as the dust cloud filled the air, each scrambling to not fall victim to the oversized insect.

Shepard's pack kicked back on a beat later and arrested his fall. "Sitrep," he whispered over the squad's comms. "Anyone hurt?" A chorus of quiet negatives came back in response, so he continued. "Good. We need to take this thing out. Line up a shot on the platform. I'll verify it's there. Attack on my signal."

Acknowledgements of his orders came quick in rapid succession, so, with a nod and a sensation of imminent doom, he slowly brought himself back up to the level of the platform and straight into the heart of the dust cloud. The tension ratcheted up with every second that passed with no sign of the rachni. Nervous sweat beaded inside his armor and he couldn't help the tightening of his grip on his rifle. With a single thought, psionic power thrummed within him, straining at its leash to obey his will.

As if that was a signal, foreign thoughts suddenly invaded his mind. Bizarre images with colors he had never seen, scents he had no words to describe, even sounds that were beyond his comprehension crashed into his thoughts. Thoughts not his own raced through his mind in something both so much more and so much less than communication. Rage at the violation forced its way into his thoughts. It was like the Thorian all over again.

The tide of foreign thoughts ended as abruptly as it began, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. Without consciously noticing it, his archangel pack had died, dropping him onto the central platform with a solid thud. He caught himself on one knee and looked up, just in time to see the twenty foot tall rachni loom out of the dust.

His mouth went dry and he threw himself backward, raising his rifle even as the foreign mind touched his once again. This time however, it was infinitely more gentle. A low, almost musical trill echoed through his thoughts and was somehow understood as words.

"You who can sing," it said, at once giddy and apprehensive. "You who have freed us. You who carry the mark of Those Who Came Before, yet bear not their taint. We mean you no harm."

"Wh-what?" Shepard said aloud, stumbling over his voice in surprise.

The rachni emerged from the swiftly settling dust once more, coming to a stop mere feet from Shepard. The rachni's enormous head, still dripping with Benezia's blood, swung down beside him and a trio of eyes stared directly into his soul. "We apologize," it said haltingly. Sorrow and regret pulsed through the music in his mind. Its legs folded beneath it and it lay down as low as it could beside him. "Your musics are... limited. We reached too far."

Shepard returned the bug's gaze helplessly. "What are you?" he whispered.

"We are rachni," it answered simply. "We are the mother."

Holy crap, Shepard thought, the queen. "That explains a hell of a lot," he muttered to himself with a shake of his head. He slowly, cautiously lowered his rifle. "What do you want?"

"We want to survive," she said. Her thoughts drifted through his mind and he could sense her sincerity. "We want our children to grow and prosper. You have freed us. We want to give gratitude, not violence."

Suddenly, it surged to its feet and whirled around. A psionic shield sprang to life inches ahead of a volley of plasma fire. Shepard's eyes tracked the fire back through the mostly clear dust to find Wrex's heavy plasma roaring with destructive power. The rachni queen chittered quietly and flashed with psionic power, slapping the gun out of the krogan's hands.

She hissed angrily at him, but made no further moves, so when Wrex's biotics burst to life, Shepard threw himself between them. "Stand down!" he barked as authoritatively as he could. "She's friendly!"

"What?!" Wrex demanded angrily, followed half a second later by the rest of the squad. The krogan's tone dripped with derision as he continued. "Have you lost your mind?!"

"I said, stand down!" he repeated himself, glaring at the krogan. "She wants to talk, and she hasn't hurt any of us."

"Need I remind you, Commander," Nihlus' voice interjected. "Her children have slaughtered every living thing in this facility, and her ancestors are responsible for trillions of deaths." He paused a beat, then continued in a skeptical tone. "And how is she even talking to you?"

"She's a psionic," Shepard countered heatedly. "And if she doesn't have a damn good reason for this mess, then I'll be right there with you. But not until I hear what she has to say." His glare bounced between the two, ignoring the rest of the group as they cautiously complied with his orders. His voice turned firm and unyielding, demanding unswerving obedience from all who heard it. "Keep your guns ready, but do not fire until I give you the go ahead. Am I understood?"

"Fine," Wrex bit out angrily. He kicked the banister in front of him and severely dented the metal before picking up his heavy plasma and training it on the queen. "But the second she tries anything, she's dead."

The commander turned his glare on Nihlus, who exhaled noisily but eventually nodded his acceptance. He blew out a low sigh of relief. Maybe now he could get some answers.

He turned around to face the rachni queen, fighting down the sudden, instinctual surge of fear as he found himself eye level with her jaws. "Alright," he said a moment later. "Talk, and include the rest of my people."

The queen's eyes flashed purple for the briefest second before she answered. "We cannot." Her touch on his mind was tinged with apology. "They do not sing."

"What do you mean, 'sing'?" he asked, his brows furrowed.

"Their music is flat," she replied. "Colorless. Their minds are closed to us."

"Psionics," Shepard breathed in surprised realization. "You can only communicate with psionics."

The queen's mental song took on an approving chirp. "Yes."

Shepard frowned. "Is there any way for you to speak?" he asked. "Form words that they can understand?"

The queen was silent for several seconds. "Yes," she said calmly. A sudden movement from the corner of his eye prompted Shepard to look down, and he jumped back in surprise.

One of the dead asari on the platform was climbing to her feet, a dim psionic halo illuminating her form. Shepard could only watch in shock as the corpse walked over beside the queen and began to speak in a halting, disjointed voice, echoing the words of the queen's harmony in Shepard's mind. "Is this acceptable?"

Shepard's jaw closed with an audible clack and he swallowed heavily. "Yes," he said at length. "That will do."

"Keelah," Tali breathed quietly. Her alloy cannon made a clatter as it fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. "Did she just- Is that-"

"This one's light has faded," the queen answered the stuttered, half-formed question. "She will be our voice. Through her, we wish to calm your fears."

"You are doing a fine job of that," Tali muttered faintly. She picked up the discarded weapon at her feet and immediately trained it on the risen asari. "The undead are fantastic for that."

"Fine," Nihlus interjected in a tight voice before anyone else could chime in. The Spectre strode briskly onto the platform and took a position beside Shepard. His alloy cannon never once wavered from the queen. "Let us talk. What happened here?"

"These needle-men wanted our children," she answered in fits and starts. "To turn them into weapons of war. Claws with no songs of their own." A tremble of fathomless fury leaked into her voice. "They took our children from us, long before they could learn to sing. They were lost to silence." The rachni's head twitched slightly in an inscrutable gesture and she hissed angrily before bowing her head. "Our elders can cope with silence, but with none to sing to them, children know only fear. Fear shattered their minds."

"How did they get loose?" Nihlus demanded.

"We do not know," the queen answered. "We have known only this cage for many cycles. The psi disrupter silenced our music."

"Speaking of," Shepard cut in smoothly, ignoring the turian's glower. He had more important questions to ask. "Do you know where they got this 'psi disruptor'?"

"They stole it," the queen answered simply. "Our mother sang of desperate hope when she placed it beside us and sent us away."

"Away?" Shepard asked with a frown. "Away from what?"

"Those Who Came Before," the queen answered, and the music in his thoughts swelled. Sorrow and anger mixed into the tune in equal measures.

"You mentioned them before," Shepard said slowly. He had a sinking feeling he knew who they were supposed to be. He took a steadying breath and asked the question whose answer he really hoped would prove him wrong. "Who were they?"

"We know not their name." Vague images flared in Shepard's mind. Distant, hazy memories of an orange sky dotted with the unmistakable shape of several spacecraft. "They came from the sky and gave us the gift of song, before they left in peace. We honored their memory and their gift."

The music abruptly turned discordant and jarring. "Then they returned. Their music was harsh and demanding." A new image surfaced then, one that Shepard couldn't possibly fail to recognize. The sky was the same burnt orange, but this time, the ethereals' Temple Ship dominated the image. Smaller craft of every description fell from the enormous vessel like fleas from a dog until their engines kicked in and they vanished into the distance. More memories followed. In his minds eye, Shepard watched as hulking mutons tore apart rachni by the dozen, an ethereal slaughtered a young queen with nothing but its mind, a wave of floaters descended upon a clutch of eggs. Even in these images, he could recognize the tactics that they had used, the framework by which they had attacked Earth. Damnit. Why did he have to be right?

Then a new series of images appeared. Rachni were captured by the dozen, drugged and dragged aboard the ethereals' vessels. "They sought to make slaves of us." The queen's words rang through his head as the images progressed. The captive rachni were subjected to unspeakable cruelties. Vivisection, amputation, exploratory surgery while aware. Queens and common rachni alike were dragged through that hell. Shepard felt his gorge rise. He always knew the ethereals did terrible things to their captives, but knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.

Finally, blessedly, the horror show came to an end. The ethereals had found what they sought, and they had released it. Purple monstrosities, just over two meters high when standing on their four pointed legs, raced through the tunnels of their forebears. Thin, powerful arms carved through chitin and flesh alike in a mad rush to kill everything in their path. Bright yellow, glowing eyes dominated a face bearing vicious mandibles that could chew through vahlenite.

Shepard's mouth went dry. Every human alive knew that image. "C-chryssalids," he choked out in surprise. "The ethereals made chryssalids from your people."

The queen's music became remorseful and slow. "If that is what you call the Abominations."

The room filled with shocked exclamations at that. "Whoa! Timeout!" Ashley said in a shell-shocked tone. "You mean to say that chryssalids used to be rachni?"

"Yes," the queen answered. The asari twitched slightly in response to the rachni's thoughts. "Those Who Came Before returned and turned our children into Abominations. We could not fight them. We were forced to flee."

"But they chased us. They could hear our music. Follow our song. We created the psi disrupter to hide our music from them. It silenced our songs and saved us from their wrath." The queen's music turned melancholy. "We could not return to our home and risk their return once more. So we traveled the stars for many, many cycles. Eventually, we discovered new lands. Places Those Who Came Before would not go. In our desperation, we took them. And unknowingly sealed our doom."

"The Rachni Wars," Nihlus breathed in realization. Shock rang thick in his tone. "You took Citadel territory to flee the Ethereals." His mandibles drew into a frown. "But if that is the case, why did you not simply ask for refuge?"

"Your kind do not sing," she answered simply. "Never had we encountered beings who could not sing." The chorus in Shepard's mind turned into a fanfare of sorrow and regret. "We believed your kind to be drones. Replaceable. Our mother sang of her regret as she sent us away."

"So that is it?" Nihlus asked, his voice furious. "Trillions dead over a misunderstanding?"

The rachni queen turned to him and bowed her head slightly. "Yes."

"What possible reason do I have to believe you?" the turian countered with a pointed shake of his alloy cannon.

"We offer only truth," the queen answered. "The choice to accept it is yours."

Nihlus was silent for a long moment. Then, with a frustrated half-yell, he swung his alloy cannon to the side and fired it one handed into the platform. An echoing boom filled the room as a small section of the platform buckled. Vahlenite flechettes tore through the thin metal with ease, leaving nothing but a ragged hole. Small pieces of shrapnel chimed quietly as they struck the floor below.

"Feel better?" Shepard asked dryly.

The Spectre sent him a withering glare. "You are insufferable at times, Commander."

"You know you love me," Shepard shot back teasingly. A beat later, he shook his head. Now wasn't the time for that. Turning back to the rachni queen, he sobered and waved a hand at Benezia's remains. "Anyway, can you tell me anything about what she was doing here?"

The music in Shepard's thoughts turned rapid and angry. "The she-witch sought information. The location of something thought lost."

"And?" Shepard prompted when she fell silent. "What was it?"

"And where is it now?" Nihlus voiced the second half of the question.

The queen eyed Shepard steadily for several seconds, and he had to fight the urge to squirm under her regard. "We propose a trade," she said at length. "The information for safe passage off of this world."

Shepard felt his brow rise under his helmet. That was unexpected. He probably should have seen it coming, but still it took him by surprise. His mind raced through possible responses.

He knew right away the queen couldn't be allowed to run free. She was simply too dangerous. The rachni had nearly eradicated the Citadel Council two millennia ago. If the queen was allowed to rebuild and turned hostile, there was no telling just how much damage she could do. The Coalition couldn't hope to stand against a species that blew through everything the Council had. It took an unending horde of doom lizards to put them down last time, and the galaxy was short on that nowadays.

But taking what she knew and killing her just didn't sit right with him. She had been nothing but cordial so far, even with good reason not to be. He simply couldn't justify throwing her into an interrogation chamber and ripping out her secrets. He glanced sidelong at her. Not to mention he wasn't completely sure he could force the issue, if it came down to it. Not without unacceptable losses at least.

Please, he thought, let her take the middle option. "Alright," he said aloud, drawing the word the word with a thoughtful lilt. "You have a deal, if you can agree to certain conditions."

The queen trilled quietly, her steady stare never wavering from him. "Speak your terms."

"First, you tell me what Benezia was looking for, right now. You can hold on to where it is until we're away from here."

The queen bobbed her head in a shallow nod of acceptance but she remained silent, waiting for the rest of the list. A minor, curious waver in her music prompted Shepard to continue. He shrugged. Fair enough. "Second, that you don't disappear."

"Explain," she said with a soft chitter.

"I," Shepard floundered briefly, struggling to phrase his next sentence diplomatically. After several seconds of failure however, he shrugged. She'd get the gist of it either way. "Well, I don't trust you," he said bluntly. "Your people damn near eradicated the Citadel Council in the past. I want to believe you," he bulled ahead even as the queen trilled a protest. "But I'm not willing to risk my people on your word. And something tells me the Citadel Council would not be precisely welcoming of your return."

"No," Nihlus confirmed with a sharp nod. "They would not."

The queen's voice and music was cautious as she asked, "What do you propose?"

"That you come with us to a known world and agree to observation until such time as relations have gotten better." He met the queen's gaze steadily. "Please understand, your people are well known throughout the galaxy for being genocidal monsters. This arrangement will both allow you to begin the restoration of your people without undue risk, and give the rest of the galaxy the time and security we need to feel sure you won't try to kill us."

"Define observation," the queen countered with a strange tone, a mix of outrage, annoyance, acceptance, and resignation.

"I won't pretend to know that," Shepard answered slowly. "If you agree, I will put you in contact with my superiors, and you can hash out the details with them. I don't want to make any promises I can't keep."

The queen hissed lowly as a wave rolled through her tentacle arms. A few quick beats of frustrated anger rushed through the queen's music before she sagged in place. "We see little alternative. We accept."

Shepard sighed in relief. "Excellent," he said. "Then will you tell me what Benezia was after?"

"The she-witch sought the Mu Relay," the queen answered with a trace of venom. "It was lost in a supernova thousands of cycles ago. Our mother's mother located it. We still carry the songs of her discovery. The she-witch pierced our mind and stole our knowledge. Then she sent it to one other. We know not why."

"Saren," Shepard said with a growl. "The relay must be needed to reach the Conduit." He shook his head. There wasn't anything he could do about it from here. "Let's get out of here. Tali, lead the way back out."

The quarian looked at him and her head cocked to the side quizzically. She glanced at the queen and then her voice came over the squad's comm. "Is there a reason we're not taking a portal?"

Shepard responded in kind, making sure he was not audible to the queen. "I want her to see what happened here. Make sure she knows damn well why people don't want the rachni making a comeback tour. Maybe make her a little more cooperative."

"Alright," Tali said in response, her voice tinged with resigned dread. She walked over to the door and palmed the control. Her voice turned sarcastic as she continued. "It's not like this place hasn't given me enough nightmares."

"You'll be fine," he said encouragingly.

She ignored him, keeping her attention on the door. It slid open in a matter of seconds and Tali led the way out. Rex and Nihlus came through behind her, then it was the queen's turn. She let her control over the zombie asari drop and approached the door. The door was never meant for something of her size however, and she was forced to fold her torso almost in half in order to fit through it. In the end though, after a great deal of work, she made it.

However, the very instant she squeezed through, the voice of Mira came over the PA. "Alert," it said in a pleasantly warning tone. "Containment has been breached. This facility will be destroyed in twenty seconds. Have a nice day."

Shepard's eyes went wide. "So much for that plan," he muttered, even as he snapped photos and sent them over to the Normandy. "EDI! We need an extra-large portal from here to the cargo bay ASAP."

"On it, Commander," the AI replied instantly. The squad piled through the door and waited impatiently for their escape route to form. Each second seemed to stretch into eternity, each heartbeat took eons. Until finally, a wormhole forced itself into being mere feet from Tali.

Without prompting, the squad threw themselves through the large portal in rapid succession, until only Shepard and the queen remained behind. The rachni had frozen, staring at the wormhole in abject shock. Clearly, she had never seen one before. Too bad they only had-

"This facility will be destroyed in ten seconds," Mira chimed in cheerfully. Shepard felt a flash of boiling rage at the VI's cheer. Explosive, violent death is not something to be happy about.

"Through the portal!" Shepard barked at the queen, tugging on her with his psionics. "It'll take you to our ship!"

The queen shuddered violently at his voice, but she had been woken from her stupor. She trilled a confused thanks to Shepard and surged into the opening. He jumped through right behind her and landed in the Normandy's cargo bay with a solid thump. "Close the portal!" he bellowed loudly. "Now!"

The swirling purple boundary spun abruptly and swirled tighter and tighter until, a fraction of a second later, it vanished in a brief flash of purple light. Shepard sagged in place as the portal disappeared, taking the thick adrenaline in his blood with it. "Whew," he said tiredly. "That was one hell of a way to end a mission."

"You can say that again," Ashley agreed with a sigh as she took off her helmet. Behind her, a door shot open and Liara came rushing through.

"Shepard!" she cried. "Is-" The asari slammed to a halt as her gaze landed on the giant bug standing calmly beside him. Her eyes went wide and her mouth moved soundlessly for several seconds. At length though, she seemed to find her voice, weak as it was. "Ah. That explains it." She blinked and seemed startled by something before she turned and walked away, muttering with an edge of hysteria. "Note to self, don't eat anything Joker recommends. My dreams are getting weird again. I don't even have my whip."

The door sealed itself behind her and the squad dissolved into laughter.

---

"Are you out of your mind?!" the emissary to the Citadel thundered. One hand waved dramatically through the air. "The rachni are the Council's most feared and hated enemies. They're not going to just sit back and watch as we foster their return. Sparatus will be calling for my head at the very suggestion!"

"Not to mention that the rachni are just as grave a threat to us as the Citadel," the Supreme Commander of XCOM rumbled quietly. His gravelly voice was firm and unyielding. "If even half of the Citadel's historical reports are accurate, their continued survival is a grave risk with minimal return. Kill it."

"Commander?" Shepard asked with a start. He could not be serious... could he?

"You heard me," the Commander replied firmly. His gaze softened slightly as he continued. "I understand your position, but I will not risk our people for sentimentality. Am I understood?"

Shepard glanced to Udina for support, but the emissary shook his head pointedly. The grunt scowled angrily and turned back to the hologram of the Commander. He blew out a long breath, fighting to keep himself calm. "Permission to speak freely sir?" The Commander nodded with a negligent wave of his hand. "That's bullshit. I've talked to her. She means us no harm and has already agreed to put herself under our supervision. She is grateful we pulled her from Noveria. If we treat her fairly, we could have a very valuable ally. At the very least, she knows things we don't. Hell, her people built a fucking psionic blocker!"

The Commander scowled right back. "Then stick it into an interrogation chamber and pull everything we need from it beforehand. We can't afford to be fighting the rachni and the reapers at the same time."

"That won't happen, sir," Shepard shot back confidently, with just a hint of a snarl.

The sheer conviction with which he spoke seemed to take the Commander back slightly. "What guarantee do you have of that? The rachni attacked the Citadel for no damn reason. What's stopping them from rebuilding and doing the same thing, but to us this time?"

"They're not running from the ethereals anymore," he answered. "That's what."

The ensuing silence was absolute.

Shepard allowed the pair several seconds to absorb the implications of his last statement before continuing. "The rachni were the original source of chryssalids. The ethereals came and harvested them. A handful of queens managed to steal some ships and escape. Then they developed the psi disrupter thing to hide from the self-important fucks and fled to near Citadel Space. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Did she give any proof of this?" the Commander asked slowly.

"Not physically," Shepard admitted. "Rachni queens have the ability to share memories, to pass them from parent to child. She shared some of her ancestors' memories with me regarding the Ethereal invasion of their homeworld. I am as sure as I can be that she is telling the truth."

"Her claims should be simple enough to verify," Udina cut in suddenly. "We have chryssalid samples and the Citadel has maintained records from the Rachni Wars. We can validate that as soon as you give the word."

"You're considering this, Donnel?" the Commander asked with an arched brow.

"Yes. If the rachni truly were victims of the ethereals, our history with them should win us a great deal of cooperation from her." The emissary shook his head. "You know as well as I do that the interrogation chamber rarely yields complete and easily understood data. Her voluntarily sharing that information would yield much more effective results much more quickly."

The Commander's voice was pensive as he asked, "And what of the Citadel?"

Udina scowled. "They, especially Tevos, like to wrap themselves in pretenses of 'civility'," he said, his fingers moving in air quotes around the final word. "It's an angle I can exploit here. It won't do much, but it should keep us out of a formally declared war and the queen alive. Expect us to need to make concessions for anything more."

The Commander frowned in thought. "Do you think it's worth it?"

Udina shot a questioning glance at Shepard, who nodded firmly, before turning back to the Commander. "I do. Depending on what she knows, we may well have stumbled across the holy grail of psionic research. Keep her in a gilded cage, but absolutely keep her alive."

The Commander was silent for several seconds as he gazed into the middle distance, lost in thought. Finally he turned to Shepard. "Very well. We'll take the queen in. However, you will inform her that she has only one chance. If she proves hostile, I will not hesitate to kill her. Make sure she understands that, Lieutenant-Commander."

Shepard saluted. "I will sir."

"Good," the Commander returned the salute and his hologram turned off.

"You like to make my job difficult, don't you Shepard?" Udina asked in the ensuing calm.

Shepard shrugged sheepishly. "I just do what I think is right, Emissary."

Udina shook his head with a sigh. "Get back to finding Saren," he said tiredly. "And try to stop destroying the galactic status quo every time you set foot on a Council world, alright?"

The diplomat's hologram cut off before Shepard could reply. He shrugged with a roll of his eyes. Politicians.

---

Udina eyed the councillors as he strode briskly through the door into the Council's private meeting room. Tevos returned his gaze steadily, her icy visage completely void of the thoughts locked behind it, while Sparatus didn't even bother to disguise his glare. Valern blinked as the emissary's eyes moved to him, but made no other motion. Udina resisted the impulse to sigh. They already knew. Damnit Shepard, he thought without heat. Keep your pet Spectre on his leash.

He kept his annoyance off of his face though. He presented a calm, neutral front to all observers as he took his place opposite the Council and cleared his throat. "Good mor-"

"We want it dead," Sparatus interrupted his greeting with all the tact and grace of a thresher maw. The councillor's mandibles flexed in displeasure. "Now."

Udina glanced at the turian, just long enough for the councillor to recognize the act, then deliberately turned his attention back to Tevos. "Is that truly the official position of this august body?"

The asari's face was completely blank as she said, "Yes. The rachni are far too dangerous. There is a reason they were driven to extinction."

Udina nodded slowly. "I can understand that," he said quietly. "I must admit, I did not expect this body to so eagerly resort to genocide, but I can understand your position."

Tevos showed the first sign of emotion so far by cocking an eyebrow. "And I did not expect such a transparent manipulative ploy. You are slipping, Emissary."

"Is it any less true?" Udina shot back. "The fact remains that the rachni queen discovered on Noveria is the last known sample of her species. Killing her is an act of genocide. Are you truly willing to do that?"

"When the alternative is drowning in rachni soldiers and brood warriors, yes," Sparatus countered angrily. "The rachni are a danger to every living thing in the galaxy. I will not tolerate the risk."

Udina nodded along with the turian's words. "Neither will we. And if the situation was different, I would be right beside you," he admitted with a dismissive shrug. Sparatus nodded, even as Tevos and Valern exchanged uncertain glances. "Unfortunately, it is not. The Reapers are coming. We need every ounce of aid we can beg, borrow, and steal. The rachni would be a potent source of such aid. We cannot allow them to be eradicated."

Tevos sighed, as if in pain. "That excuse is getting old, Emissary. Your paranoia cannot be used to justify this risk."

"Which is why she will be held under strict observation and restrictions for the foreseeable future," Udina countered calmly. His gaze moved from one councillor to the next, trying to impress on each of them just how serious he was. "We do not want to see a repeat of the Rachni Wars any more than you do. But we will not squander a valuable asset that we can contain."

Sparatus glowered at the man and opened his mouth to respond, but Tevos held up her hand before he could speak. She met her colleagues' eyes and Udina got the impression an entire conversation happened with a few twitches of the head. Finally though, it seemed they needed to actually speak. Tevos turned to the human in sight and said, "We must confer. Emissary, if you will wait here?"

Udina nodded his acceptance and the Councillors turned and strolled briskly from the room. His thoughts raced as they left. Most likely, they were discussing what concessions to demand of him to leave the queen alive. He frowned as he settled in to wait. This list was going to be outrageous.

The next few minutes passed slowly as Udina tried to compile both the potential list of demands, as well as more palatable counter offers to each one. There were a few obvious items, but the more nuanced pieces were where he was going to run into trouble. There was just too many possibilities to plan for them all. He scowled. He didn't like having to improvise. It was sloppy.

Unfortunately, the opening of the door signaled that his time to plan had come to an end. The councillors walked unhurriedly back to their places and regarded the emissary as a unified front. He cringed internally at the look in their eyes. He was not going to like this.

"Emissary," Tevos began calmly. He matched her steady regard as best he could. "We are willing to accept the continued survival of the rachni, if you can agree to several conditions of our own."

Udina nodded his head in acknowledgment and waved a hand in a gesture to continue, so Tevos cleared her throat and began. "First, the rachni will be confined to a single world. They will not have access to spacecraft, with or without faster-than-light capabilities, and they will not construct their own."

"We can agree to that," Udina nodded, even as he tried not to show his relief. Maybe this list wouldn't be so bad.

"Second, the rachni's new world will be, at minimum, two hundred light years from the nearest mass relay or warpgate."

"Agreed, with two provisos," Udina said. Tevos gave him an arch look and he continued. "The world in question is to be within Coalition Space, and you will not cause a fuss if we are forced to move or destroy a mass relay in order to comply."

Tevos' eyes narrowed and she glanced at Sparatus, who nodded his acceptance after a slight pause. "Agreed, with the understanding that destruction of a mass relay is the absolute last resort." When Udina nodded, she continued. "Third, our Spectres operating within Coalition Space are given full access to all observation posts and research derived from the rachni."

"No," Udina countered immediately. This one had been one of the obvious demands. "We will not risk there being an 'accident' while a Spectre is observing them. We are prepared to offer access to all data from our observations of the rachni, as well as second-hand observation with devices of their choosing, provided we verify they are not a danger to the rachni."

"Not good enough," Valern said bluntly.

The salarian's unblinking stare was quite unnerving for the emissary, but he gamely tried not to show it. "That is what you will get," he said firmly. His gaze moved from the salarian to the asari councillor. Tevos frowned infinitesimally at him and he knew he'd have to give them something. "In exchange for these restrictions, we will allow you to double the number of active Spectres within our borders, as well as grant them access to any non-psionic-based technology derived from the rachni."

Tevos and Valern exchanged a long glance, full of small motions that hinted at a long, unspoken conversation, before Tevos turned to the emissary. "Very well. We accept the revised terms." Tevos' brow furrowed slightly and Udina suddenly felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. "Fourth, and finally, the Coalition will provide the process for elerium creation."

He had to give them credit for that one, it was ballsy as hell. Ludicrous, if they thought it was going to work, but ballsy. "No," he said aloud. He wasn't surprised to see Tevos' eyes flash over to Valern for a fraction of a second. He shook his head. Of course the salarians would want to get their hands on that. "Not a chance. It would be completely useless to you anyway."

"This is non-negotiable," Valern interjected.

"Then this negotiation is over," Udina said with aplomb. Ignoring Tevos' surprised look, he turned and strode for the door. "Call me when you decide to be serious."

"Plasma weaponry then," Sparatus offered, halfway through the human's turn. "The schematics and science behind infantry-scale plasma weapons." Udina stopped, still half-turned away from the Council and considered the matter.

Plasma weapons, as far as XCOM's best and brightest could tell, required elerium to generate enough power in a small enough package to be man-portable. The Citadel wouldn't be able to manufacture infantry weapons without Coalition assistance. That dependency would be nice. On the other hand, they likely had powerful enough generators on their ships. They would most likely take the blueprints and make their own version of a plasma cannon, let their frigates punch above their weight class.

Udina frowned. Making an alien military stronger was the last thing he wanted to do.

Then he remembered the Reapers. Damnit. Everyone needed to be at their best to deal with those things.

He turned back to the Council with a heavy scowl. "We can agree to that," he said slowly, trying to keep the venom out of his voice. It had physically pained him to say those words. "Plasma rifle schematics plus the other terms as we agreed and the rachni will be left in peace." He blew out a heavy, angry breath when Tevos nodded. "Very well. Will that be all?"

"Yes, Emissary," Tevos answered calmly. Udina gave the Council a shallow bow and strode from the room.

He hoped he still had a job after he reported this. The Commander was not going to be happy.

---

RESEARCH REPORT
Codename: Queen
June, 2183
Our first meeting with the rachni queen was quite possibly the simplest and least difficult interrogation in XCOM history. The subject, who has taken the name 'Maia', after the Greek goddess of rebirth, for dealings with humans, proved wholly cooperative with our questions and was quite understanding of the security precautions in place. It is clear she is not thrilled to suffer them, but she appears willing to tolerate it for now.

The information the subject has provided, on the other hand, has been of varying use. She was initially reticent, but upon learning that we were responsible for the destruction of the Ethereals, she has become much more amenable, even offering information unprompted at times. Unfortunately, even this enthusiasm does not extend to the one topic we most wish to know more of. She either does not know or refuses to share the mechanics behind the reported 'psi disrupter'. Given her general attitude and cooperation, we are inclined to believe that information is simply not available.

She has, however, provided a great deal of insight into the processes that created the Chryssalids. This insight has yielded a great boon to our own genetic manipulation capabilities. We are hesitant to extend such capabilities to use on humans, for obvious reasons, but it has already yielded promising early results with cancer-eating viruses and genetically engineered crops. We will continue to expand this research as new avenues open.