Chapter Twenty-Five

Subject One

We moved deeper into the facility as quietly as possible, sneaking past patrols of soldiers in brandless armor and scientists prattling on about the results of the sick experiments they were conducting. The pride they spoke with made me want to vomit, but I managed to keep it together as we progressed further in. I couldn't hide the anger their words filled me with, Miranda occasionally muttering her own hate as we went. At least I wasn't alone in that opinion.

We were working our way towards the main tower, the only place with the capability to keep something like this running and secret. Once there we'd disable the jammers and broadcast a warning message Miranda had recorded, just waiting for the right moment to start playing it without getting us completely killed. After all, announcing our presence without some sort of escape plan was a very bad idea.

Then again I was a master of making bad plans and somehow surviving.

Miranda was keeping me at a distance, walking further ahead, glancing back my way suspiciously every so often. I couldn't say I blamed her, not after how I'd been acting. Getting too close to the reaper artifacts meant I would struggle to retain control of myself, signals battering down on my defenses. Even if I'd closed myself off from everything around me, I couldn't get the damn reaper pieces to be quiet, eagerly communicating with its own kind and inviting more in like a child sneaking their friend into their house. I kept hearing the Voice, hissing like glass on metal, demanding I kill Miranda for her sin of being organic. Each time it made such a demand I instead fantasized about Aria, making it shriek in disgust and slink away as the distance between artifacts and me grew.

The corridors we snuck down ran along a series of labs like the first, one after another conducting the revolting experiments of turning refugees into abominations. From what we'd learned along the way, Cerberus intended on using this research to combat the reapers' own soldiers. They wanted to take control of them, make their own or even steal the enemy's. It was sick, the Voice and I in full agreement at their disgusting arrogance though that was the only thing we agreed on.

"Miranda," I whispered as we walked down another maintenance shaft, pipes that rumbled with liquid running along the way. It was hot and stuffy, sweat beading down my brow. I was really going to need a shower when we got back to the ship. "Do you think your sister will be in the tower?"

She didn't stop moving, footsteps masked by the rumbling pipes. "Father more than likely wants her close," she said, "he's controlling, and I doubt he brought her here to turn her into one of these husks. He wants a perfect legacy after all." She glanced back at me, a flash of wary blue eyes. "Logically speaking, if he's here, he's up in that tower. Oriana will be there too."

"What if… what if she isn't?"

She paused. "If she's not, then I'll find her. Simple as that. The tower will have the information we need to investigate further."

I stopped walking. Shadows lurked in every corner of my mind, clawing across my brain and whispering how I was going to submit just like everything else in the galaxy. They'd been growing louder, unintelligible to frustratingly understandable. Gritting my teeth, I managed raggedly, "I can't travel with you after this."

She stopped, heels coming together barely detectable among the churning pipes. The muffled noise made my heart clench. Miranda turned to me, face calm and composed. I wished I could hide my true feelings so easily. "You're getting worse."

"Yeah," I replied briskly, "I also need to get back to Aria and Marco. They're expecting me. So if your sister isn't here…" I was shaking, fear making my stomach turn. Now might not have been the best time but if we got there and Oriana wasn't there, I wouldn't be able to turn Miranda down then. Not when she'd be emotional and vulnerable.

A few painful minutes dragged on between us that felt like lifetimes, Miranda watching me with detached blue eyes. "Understood."

I let out the breath I'd been holding, unclenching my hands. "Really?"

"You have a life Athena, it's yours to live. Given your mental state, I'm not sure if it would be worth the risk of your skills either." She rubbed her neck. I flinched. "I do hope you could at least help me figure out where she's gone if Oriana isn't present, but I won't stop you from leaving. After all, I hired you to help me defeat my father, not find my sister. The credits owed to you will be wired after all this mess is taken care of."

I'd almost forgotten about the money. I didn't care about them either, credits are credits honestly and what use would they be when all this fighting was over? I'd be with Aria, I wouldn't need mention of them did get one thing across- this was all business to her. I needed to remember that, and stop getting attached. Things were almost over, one way or another. Why did that thought hurt so much?

I tried to hide the confusing emotions with a half laugh. "Heh well… You could probably take a good bit out for attacking you so many times." She gave a thin smile. "I'm sorry for all that, by the way."

Miranda sighed, glancing around to be sure no one was coming our way. Probably not the best time for a heart-to-heart but I needed to say this and I needed to say it now. Before I fucked it all up even worse like I always did. At least all the piping was covering our words. "We can talk about all this after I have my sister or at the least my father dead," she said. "Alright?"

Nodding, I relented. At least I'd tried. "Okay, sure."

We kept moving.

Using my omni-tool to guide us through the maze of corridors, we slowly twisted up higher and higher, passing through stairwells and maintenance shafts. We'd been here for hours, having to be patient as we worked our way through the halls, growing ever closer to the control center. The static in my head was also increasing.

Bugs started crawling along my skin, itching trails left in their wake. I wanted to scratch my own skin off and set my body on fire. It pitched, twisting like a coil, rising up inside of me. My knees quaked, staggering to the wall in the stairwell we were in. Miranda looked back at me, biotics rippling over her body.

"Sorry," I gasped. Please don't kill me! I don't want to attack you I promise!

"What's going on? Is it the jammers?"

"No it's… something else." I grimaced, shutting my eyes, trying to block it all out. The Voice snickered menacingly. "I think we're getting near something reaper based," I managed, "something big."

Miranda moved closer, a hand on my shoulder now. It felt wrong, like being touched by a slimy tentacle, but I didn't have the strength to move away. "Can you keep moving?"

It was getting louder, but we weren't moving. "Fuck!" I shouted, gripping my head, heat rising inside of me. It burned, everything just burned like my organs were on fire. Everything turned red and hot white, searing along me as I crumpled to the ground. Something shook me, Miranda maybe, but there was a deep sensation of wrongness that was near to bursting. What was going on? We weren't moving, was it the artifacts? Did they transfer some experiments somewhere nearby?

No. This was too powerful, too raw. It was a sensation I was steadily growing accustomed to in one place and one place only, my dreams.

"Miranda we need to go!" I screamed, surging forward and scrambling up the stairwell.

"What's going on?" I could hear her footsteps behind me on metal steps, Miranda shouting something after me but it got garbled. Static roared in my head, consolidating into a singular voice. The Voice. Alarms blared across the facility, my omni-tool lighting up as warnings flashed across. I slammed it shut and kept running. Fuck fuck fuck, this couldn't be happening! Here? Now?!

Something exploded, wracking the facility, shaking the steps beneath us. I tripped, jaw slamming down into the edge, white filling my vision. Ow ow ow! Move your feet! My mouth tasted like blood now. Miranda helped me up and we kept running, no longer caring for stealth as we burst into a corridor, guards rushing past us without a second glance. They had a greater threat to handle. My head was screaming, pulsating so rapidly I couldn't even see straight anymore. Miranda guided me towards a window, it felt like we were decently up high now. The floor shook beneath us, increasing in frequency. It took me a painful second to even understand what I was looking at.

Horizon was a beautiful planet with sprawling farms and sparse skylines. Alien forests crawled along rivers and few cliffsides, a truly breathtaking sight of natural beauty; if it hadn't been on fire. Everywhere I looked it was ablaze, if not outright destroyed, burned away by the might of a laser weapon powerful enough to split most cruisers in half. The kind of weapon that belonged to only one particular abomination.

Reapers.

Three of them were descending upon Sanctuary, their long silvery purple bodies would have dwarfed any skyscraper. Three tentacle appendages were at the bottom, while along the sides along its tapering central frame were multiple smaller tentacles almost that curled back behind it. Bright purple lights ran along the massive hull, and a pair of giant orbs rested between the lower limbs like eyes of some sort. I'd never seen a reaper with my own eyes, only the twisted forms in my dreams or grainy images on what's left of the extranet. This thing was… beautiful. Its design felt perfect, smooth and sleek with a terrifying presence. It made me want to scream, run, and worship all at the same time. Every part of me was flooded, filled with the presence of the reapers. A weight settled on my mind and I gaped in awe.

An electrified noise built, like lightning just before it struck, a red light gathering along the end of one of its lower limbs. Then that dirge noise I'd heard over the hospital radio blared out as a beam of red lanced the lower facilities, explosions following along as fuel depots were destroyed. Nothing was left in its wake. It was a thousand times more powerful in person, heat searing through thick glass even from here. My skin felt like it was going to melt right off, leave a metal skeleton in its place, eager and ready to serve the masters.

The Voice crooned sickly, whispering that it was time for me to serve. I wanted to serve. I wanted to carry out its will, the deepest part of me rising up to obey. It told me to kill, to tear flesh from bone so it might be made pure with metal. So they could sing with the masters in a sour song of perfection. Its words were all that filled my head, telling me how they would ascend me, how I would become whole at last and shed my mortal form. I'd join them in perfection.

All I had to do was kill Miranda.

No.

Miranda was staring at me, shimmering with biotics, ready to fight. She could already tell what was coming, but then again she was smart for a human. No. There wasn't anything she could do to stop this. Organic. Stop it please! She wasn't attacking yet, watching me carefully, waiting. She was patient I'd give her that, but in the end we'd win. The masters always got what they wanted.

I tried to fight back, but the power I'd had before was gone. No matter what I showed it, no matter how strongly I focused on what made life as an organic worthwhile, it persisted. Marco, Aria, Miranda; nothing worked. Think Athena think! Something! Anything! It had to work! Making love to Aria? No. Drinking with Marco and laughing as the night passed on? That didn't work either. Claws dug deeper into my skull, sinking in with dark intentions. The sound of Aria's laugh, the touch of her hand on mine, but nothing worked. They were too strong. I couldn't beat them. I was weak.

"Michelle?"

Kill her.

NO!

I slammed my head into the glass, cracking it, blood trickling down my brow, dripping into my eyes. I couldn't breathe. I punched the glass, piece of it splintering off into my fist. I couldn't really feel it, just vaguely aware of the damage. I didn't want to obey. I didn't want to be those things', those monsters, toy. This was my life dammit! I wanted to live it!

Claws dug into my brain, raking down my back for daring to disobey. A scream caught in my throat. I slammed my head again. It cracked louder, quieter than the blasts of energy that were decimating the facility. Unholy screams filled the corridor, rising up the stairwell we'd emerged from. Husks, my brothers- No! Not my brothers! Those things were nothing like me!

A fresh wave of agony rolled over me and I fell to my knees. More blood slipped down my forehead, into my eyes, onto the ground. Hot and sticky, not cold and smooth like the reapers. Everything was getting numb, my head was fuzzy, tingling sensations behind the burning pain. I wanted it to stop.

Miranda's voice cut through with a violent shout, a deep reverberating boom that could only come from biotics. I couldn't blame her for making the choice. The Voice roared in fury. I closed my eyes, waiting for my body to get snapped in half with a crunch of biotic power. More biotic explosions, but I wasn't dead. What was she doing? I opened my eyes and looked at where she'd been.

I'd misjudged her.

Deep blue shimmered around Miranda, yes, and she most certainly was using biotics. Only not on me. Instead, she was throwing soldiers around with ease, slapping them with warps and causing biotic detonations that shook the already trembling tower. One tried to shoot her but with a barrier thrown up she was safe. She grabbed their pistol with her biotics and ripped it towards herself, snatching it out of the air and getting a headshot on the soldier. Her voice was raw as she tore another apart with biotics, the helmet coming clean off while the head remained intact. As she killed the last one, all I could look at was the head of the soldier.

It was more husk than human.

Glowing cybernetic eyes with tubes that burrowed in and out of greying flesh, fissures spreading across the face that were just as bright as the eyes; that wasn't a human. That was something else. Something wrong. What the reapers wanted me to be.

Miranda was staring at me, panting heavily, holding her shoulder as blood seeped between fingers. She'd been shot. Her finger was just above the trigger. "Michelle?"

"You should find your sister before it's too late, right?" I asked, smiling up at her. Blood dripped onto the floor. I must have looked insane. I felt like it. Her eyes were full of pain. "I'm sorry."

She rippled with biotics. "So am I."

Her fist smashed into my face, and everything turned black.

I was sitting on a cliff, legs dangling over the craggy edge that fell away into an abyss of swirling shadows. They sang a sick siren call, trying to get me to jump in. In the distance, where the horizon curved away, was a monolith shaped like a reaper. The air vibrated around it, hypnotic and alluring. Waves of darkness emanated from it, turning into the clouds and abyss. I wanted to jump in, but something held me back.

Something afraid.

I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there, on that cliffside. Wasn't I just on Horizon with Miranda? She'd… she'd punched me. I was losing control and she stopped me. So was I... dead? I didn't feel like it, but then again how could I really know?

Was this hell?

"What are we doing here Athena?"

I looked to my right. Marco was sitting next to me, green eyes focused on me, sadness within them. I couldn't remember when he'd gotten there, but the sight of him, even so sad, made my heart swell. There was so many things I wanted to say, so many thoughts bubbling to the surface and struggling to come out. How sorry I was for leaving him on the Citadel. How afraid I was that I wouldn't see him again. How much I regretted letting him get hurt. Instead, I said something else. "I don't know."

"You never know what you're doing," he said simply, not an accusation, but not endearing either. It was a fact, one I was painfully aware of.

"I tend to just wing things, yeah."

Marco sighed, and rubbed his faceplates. "What a mess you've gotten yourself into huh?" He leaned back against the grass, watching the monolith in the distance. I'd missed seeing him. Everything else faded away, just Marco and I, the monolith vaguely at the edge of my mind. It lingered like a constant reminder, clinging to the anxiety and fear bubbling on the fringes. I tried my best to ignore it.

"Seems to be my natural talent."

"As well as every other organic being."

He shifted, eyes glowing. My heart ached at the sight. I didn't want him to be like me, it was terrible. It was wrong. "Marco?"

"Why did you leave me?" He was watching me, staring into whatever scrap of a soul I possessed. The wind picked up, the abyss roiling beneath us. I wanted to fling myself into it all the more. "Because I'm weak?"

"I'm sorry," I confessed, "I wish I could have protected you."

"Do you see now what happens when you give into your carnal desires? Damage and rot," Marco said, voice hissing out now. Something mixed with his subharmonics, the edge of a blade that was stabbing right into my heart. The color was fading from his faceplates, chocolate brown desaturating into a grey hue. "You abandoned me to have sex with Aria, and I almost died."

Why wasn't I crying? The words he said cut deeper than any surgical knife, but instead all I felt was… empty. "You did. I did. I'm sorry."

"Words don't change what happened." He was twisting, monstrous, an abomination in place of my best friend. His body shifted, growing sharper, metallic, tendrils of light crawling along his body plates. Glowing blue lights burrowed out from his skull, eyes spidering out across his face, all of them staring at my in accusation. "This is what you want, isn't it? For me to be one of them?"

"No! Anything but that!"

"Don't lie to me!" Marco screamed, grabbing my wrists, claws drawing blood. It should have hurt more but all I felt was… disconnected. Warm blood trickled down my skin, dripping onto the grass. Still I couldn't cry. "It's what you want! You want everything to be like them!"

Something within me sang, humming like a cord struck just right. There had been moments I did hadn't there? Moments when I wondered if everything would have been better if he'd just been a cyberzied organic like me? Or had that just been the Voice, creeping into my mind, poisoning me one dark whisper at a time? I honestly couldn't tell.

His claws dug deeper, making me wince.

"Just admit it for once! You want this! You feel superior because of your cybernetics, like you're the only one who really understands the galaxy!"

"No!" I tried to pull free, but he wouldn't let go.

"I thought we were supposed to tell each other everything," he hissed out, hurt in his voice. I never wanted to hurt him dammit, yet somehow I was. "So please, please Athena. Tell me the truth."

What was the truth?

"Marco…" I managed, throat dry. "It's just like you said. I never know what I'm doing or what I want."

"You have to know something! You're not an idiot!"

"But I am lost." The air shifted, heat fading away. The song of the abyss grew quiet, Marco softened even. "I don't know anything Marco. I don't know how to escape Cerberus for good, or how to tell if someone is really my friend or just using me, or hell how my powers even fully work. One minute I'm in control and the next I'm rampaging chaos. I don't know."

Marco hugged me, tubes uncomfortably pressing against me. My skin crawled at his touch. "They know," he whispered, voice a sickly note. "The reapers, they know everything. They'll make it all perfect, and then you won't have to fear. No insecurities, no doubts; it'll be exactly how it always should have been."

It was a tempting thought, it really was. There was a certain allure to such confidence, to such certainty. What would I be able to accomplish if I wasn't held back by fear? When I believed in myself, I could do amazing things, like breaking my friends out of that Cerberus facility. But then that certainty would just get swept away again, a brief moment of power gone. Is that all I needed, some confidence?

As if that would fix all my problems.

I peered out over his shoulder to the monolith, an alien and terrifying structure that caused some part of me to recoil. It was seamless from such a distance, every part exactly as it should be, unified, sleek, perfect. But if I got up close, would look like Marco? Would it be twisted like a soul half ripped from its body, a broken puppet being danced along as if that was its true form. That wasn't beautiful, that was horrifying.

"I do know one thing," I said, Marco pulling back to look at me with his abominable glowing eyes. "I'd rather find out what it means to truly be alive than spend one more day under someone else's control."

Marco changed. Every inch of his body became one of those husks; grey, elongated, glowing blue and festering tubes. My friend was gone. It screeched like a demon and lunged for my neck. I rolled back with its momentum, and then kicked out against its chest with everything I had. Claws raked my neck as it sailed backwards, out over the edge, blood trailing behind monstrous claws. Time felt slow, the thing I once called my friend lingering before it plummeted. There was no fear in glowing eyes, only cold hate. Maybe they weren't lying, but that wasn't what I wanted.

I wanted to live.

It fell into the abyss, swallowed by shadows. A guttural roar shook the cliff beneath me. Blood spewed from my neck, choking me, killing me. I collapsed onto the grass, clutching my neck, trying to keep my blood inside. The monolith shimmered, ripples of light dancing across its smooth form before it faded into nothingness. Everything was growing dark, dimming like the last breath of a candle. Was it because I rejected them, or because I was dying?

I was exhausted, the pain turning to numbness, eyelids heavy. I could sleep here couldn't I? Just a few minutes… Just long enough to get better. I'd wake up and Miranda would give me some omni-gel and then we'd find her sister and I'd go home. Home. Where even was that now? Omega? The ship? With Marco and Aria? Yeah… that was my home. Them.

Heh.

Best time to think about that is right before you die, isn't it?

AN: Wow it's been about two years since I updated this story huh? My interest in it constantly wanes, but I want to finish it. So I reworked the original plan, made it better, and will resume work on it. This story will update once in a blue moon entirely dependent upon how I'm feeling about it, but it will eventually finish. It's just not a priority anymore. Happy Holidays!