For Blood
When the elevator doors opened, Garrus was perhaps not surprised to find the Normandy's acerbic pilot occupying the far corner, a slender statue in black fatigues, face half-hidden by his odd little hat.
"Cargo bay?" Garrus asked, stepping into the car. The door closed behind him.
Joker nodded. "Lawson's down there with Shepard, talking."
"About what to do next," Garrus guessed.
"Yeah. I've been watching the cameras. Shepard's pissed. Seeing as I have something to do with that, I figure I better step to."
"It wasn't your fault, Jeff," EDI said from the elevator terminal.
Joker eyed the AI's avatar in sullen silence and just shrugged. Whether or not he was concerned by EDI's sudden use of his given name, Garrus didn't know. The rules governing naming formalities among humans were no easier to sort out than their ranks.
"Jack's down there?" the turian asked.
"Yeah."
The ensuing tense silence was finally broken by the elevator doors cycling open into the short hallway to the cargo bay. Only half of the usual lighting was on, throwing shadows around the cavernous room. Several long, dark stains, clinging to the corners near the floor, spoke of the last moments of the Collectors trapped here when EDI had accelerated away. Shepard stood a few feet from a humanoid-sized oblong black canister lying on the bay floor.
They were on every ship, even if they were stored out of sight most of the time. No one wanted to think about them, but the nature of the job made them an occasional dark necessity. Cerberus, like in all things, spared no expense on their coffins. The gleam of a light readout from the lower rim told Garrus this one was probably refrigerated against decay, in case the occupant had somewhere to go. But if Jack had anywhere that she wanted to go, Garrus didn't have the faintest idea where that would be. Nor, he suspected, did Shepard. It would account for the somber expression on her face.
But there was something else in the air, something that made Garrus' hide itch. A tension in the way the commander held herself that spoke of open anger. She didn't look up when Garrus entered, Joker shuffling along at his side.
"It doesn't matter, Miranda. The fact is, I left," the commander was saying. "I just... She didn't deserve this."
"You can't expect to help someone who doesn't want to be helped," Lawson replied.
"Why don't you just stay out of it?" Shepard replied coldly, still looking at the coffin. "I think Cerberus has said all it has to say to Jack."
The operator drew herself up, casting a glance in Garrus' direction. "Fine. We have to decide on our next objective. We only have so much fuel to burn, and-"
"We have to go after the Collectors," Garrus said. "Now."
Joker made an uncertain noise, but said nothing.
"Are you out of your mind?" Lawson looked at the turian as if he'd grown another eye. "We're short two team-members, Krios is wounded, and the ship is damaged! The entire damn crew is gone! And let's not even get started about the unshackled AI!" She jabbed an accusing finger at Joker.
"Hey, screw you, Lawson!" he snapped. "If I hadn't plugged EDI in, your precious ship would be stuffed and decorating a plaque inside the Collector's big bug collection!"
"If we move now, there's a chance we could rescue the crew," Garrus suggested.
Miranda shook her head. "Or get ourselves killed and waste everything! Or did you forget the first time we went into their territory?"
"Who was responsible for that particular clusterfuck?" the pilot asked, examining his fingernails. "Gosh, I forget. Why don't you remind us?"
The Cerberus operator shot Joker a withering glare.
Garrus folded his arms, anger rising. "So you'd just condemn them all so we can limp around in circles for a little while longer? Jacob too?"
"Don't you think I know what's at stake?" Miranda flared, a startling emotion cracking into her voice. "This mission can't fail! Not after everything I've-"
"It'll sure as hell fail if we never actually go and do it!" Joker cut in. "We're not going to-"
Shepard took a step and flung out her arm, throwing her weight into it. Dark energy exploded around her. A huge supply crate lifted off the floor and flew across the cargo bay to smash against the bulkhead. Teeth bared, she reached out with both hands, and two more crates heaved into the air.
"I can't-" Shepard spun, and the crates fired themselves at the bulkhead, shattering with a squeal and spilling the contents over the floor. Gravity under Garrus' feet wobbled as more blue-black distortion poured out of her. A massive container of raw microfabricator ore spun into the air, along with several loose tools.
"Fix-" The container sailed into a shelving unit with an ear-splitting crash, scattering shuttle repair parts. Miranda's corona flared to life as she raised her arms. The dark energy field bubbled and bowed, then snapped back, sending the Cerberus Operative sprawling to the floor. Joker swore acidly as he backed away, eyes bulged in terror. He flinched away from of the cargo bay kinetic barrier generators as it lurched and squealed, tearing off the floor and trailing a spray of sparks.
"EVERYTHING," Shepard roared. Winding up as if to throw a grenade, she sent the generator cannoning into one of the automated cranes. The generator's casing split, spraying coolant and parts across them.
Garrus threw his arm over his head as he tottered, trying to keep his balance as parts rained down over them. In the brief lull, he heard Shepard inhale, a horrible harsh sound of exertion. The scars across her cheek had split, and streaks of crimson blood ran down the side of her face. The crane's swing arm buckled and toppled over, smashing into the overhead shuttle runners and hanging there.
"Shepard, stop!" he yelled.
Fists clenched, she snarled an inarticulate denial, scanning the bay for something else to throw as a new flare of dark energy bloomed across her body. Garrus staggered forward through the heaving gravity and hooked an arm under Shepard's shoulder just as she was pulling back for a throw. She twisted with a snarl, and he heard the buzz of his armor's systems skew from the sharp static charge buildup. An impact slammed into his chest and sent him flying back. He landed with a painful jolt, his armor stiffening in reaction. Light and sound burst painfully in his head.
As it subsided, a silence fell on the cargo bay. Garrus groaned and rolled over. Shepard stood only a short distance away, staring at him, hand outstretched. A horrified expression was fixed on her face.
There was a thud from the doorway, a heavy body vaulting down the stairs. Grunt charged through, shotgun leading the way. "Did the Collectors return?" he demanded, casting a suspicious eye at the wreckage as he pounded to a halt, sweeping his weapon back and forth..
Shepard's expression froze. Garrus saw the trembling shudder that swept through her limbs as she straightened. Then she turned on her heel and stalked over to where Joker sat paralyzed against the Kodiak's docking crane. Miranda, who had regained her feet, watched her with wary consternation.
The commander grabbed Joker by a fistful of uniform and dragged him up. "You want to go home when this is done?" she asked, her voice low.
"Well, uh, yeah..." he stammered, transfixed by her bloody face
"Good." She set him standing and let go of his shirt. "Then you will. Hang onto that. Set course for the Omega-4 relay, all possible speed."
"I meant-"
"Now!" she barked, pointing at the open door.
He jumped and shuffled away as fast as he weak legs would carry him, disappearing through the cargo bay door.
"Did the turian offend you, Warlord?" Grunt asked, scowling uncertainly in Garrus' direction.
Shepard laid a hand on the krogan's arm. "No. Save it for the Collectors, Grunt."
Hope sprang into the krogan's eyes. "Are we finally going to kill them?"
"Every last one."
A smile split his broad face, and he pounded a fist into his chest. "Jack will be avenged! Blood for blood!"
Shepard nodded, wiping her hand across her cheek. She looked down at her hand. "Blood for blood." She turned and walked out the open cargo bay door. Nearly bouncing with anticipation, Grunt followed, running his hand over his shotgun.
Miranda stood, arms folded, pinching the bridge of her nose. "This is insanity," she muttered once the krogan had left.
Garrus picked himself up. "It's Shepard. Insanity is part of the deal."
The turian looked up to see Joker slip back into the room, eying the hallway to the elevator with obvious wariness. "That went well," he drawled.
"Aren't you supposed to be setting a course?" Garrus asked.
Joker shrugged. "We're already on a run for the relay to the Omega system. I'll worry about that once we jump. In the meantime, I think I'll wait for Shepard to clear out and my knees to start working again. I'd rather be able to get up to the cockpit without wetting myself."
"If the commander has an iota of sense left, she won't do that again," Miranda said archly. "She'll kill herself before we even get there."
"Guess I forget how tiring that is for you people."
"'You people?'" Miranda looked for a moment as if she would launch into a tirade, then took a deep breath and threw up her hands. "This isn't how I envisioned anything. But the die is cast. Maybe... maybe we really can get to them in time." She frowned, eyes distant, then turned and left the cargo bay.
Joker scratched his stubbled chin. "Okay, that wasn't the most civil thing I've ever said."
"You? Uncivil?" Garrus said with a raised brow.
"Har har." Joker pointed out into the bay. "Listen, when you're made of matchsticks, that shit is terrifying. Sweet tap-dancing Elvis, I think I've seen enough biotics in the past twenty-four hours to last several lifetimes. What a mess."
Garrus cast a glance into the carnage. A console on the far wall was blinking red damage alerts, but if nothing else, the Kodiak seemed undamaged, still safely stowed above them.
"It's not the cargo bay I'm worried about," he admitted.
The pilot's shoulders slumped. "Yeah... me neither. But what the hell do we do?"
They made the jump an hour later. And some time after that, while the ship sped toward the Omega-4 relay, Garrus found himself in front of Shepard's door, hesitating over the red lock holo. The unease was palpable, everyone locked away in their private world while they made preparations for the final battle. He touched the holo, and waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He had no idea what to expect, nor even what to say, only the nagging weight of uncertainty hanging on his shoulders. He didn't want to be here. But he didn't trust anyone else to do it, either.
A long minute passed, then the door clanked and cycled open. He edged inside. The small office space was empty and dark, but he could hear Shepard moving around in the larger bedroom section. The large fishtanks cast a blue-green glow across the floor. Garrus' eye was drawn inexorably to the scorched and broken helmet Shepard had brought back from Alchera. Sitting akimbo in the sand at the bottom of the tank, a fine coat of green fuzz was growing on the helmet's rough surface. A shape moved in the dim recesses behind the shattered visor. Garrus leaned forward, peering at it.
Something jetted out of the gap in the visor and splayed itself against the intervening glass, making Garrus lurch back with a yelp of surprise.
"Hackett!" Shepard chided from further into the room. "Be nice, you mangy beast."
In the tank, four beady black eyes regarded the turian from a mound of head set behind a sextet of legs spread in a star. "Hackett?" Garrus asked warily.
She came to the bottom of the stairs, hands on her hips. "He's grumpy, ugly and demanding. And he ate all the other fish. It seemed to fit." She'd washed her face, he could see, but there were still dark spots visible on her fatigues.
"What... what is it?" He was unable to keep from peering at the creature again, mesmerized by the play of inquisitive cilia waving in the water and the pulse of its color-changing skin.
"I can't even pronounce the name. He's from a salarian colony world. He's quite smart, apparently you can train them or something. The asari at the Citadel pet store was desperately trying to sell him off for cheap."
It squirmed along the glass as its small, toothy maw searched for a chink in the surface between it and Garrus. It appeared to have lost the tip of a tentacle somewhere.
"I think we know why," Shepard muttered.
"Either it likes me, or it wants to eat my face."
"Good money's on the latter." She sighed. "Garrus... about what I did to you. I'm sorry. That was unforgivable."
He looked away from the tank, straightening. Shepard had retreated back into the room proper. He stepped carefully past the tank and its overeager denizen, his armored boots loud on the floor. "You know, under almost any other circumstance, I might have agreed. But this isn't any circumstance, is it?"
Shepard shrugged. "That's no justification."
"Are you... all right?" Garrus asked, surveying the scene. Her bed was covered in weapon and armor parts. The couches were adorned with her now extensive collection of heavy artillery, each propped up like a deadly dinner guest lounging on the cushions.
"No. But we'll get this finished. Wipe out the Collectors."
Despite everything, the blunt negative still startled him. He groped for something to say. "Think the Council will finally listen to us now?"
Shepard shrugged again as she searched among the parts laid out on the bed and selected two, snapping them together. Silence stretched out, making the turian fidget. He recognized the grip of her krogan-style shotgun. The thick, inelegant casing sat on the bed, streaked with heat scoring from the massive sinks' blowback.
"I'm tired, Garrus. Of all of it," she said at length. She rubbed her hand against her temple, face scrunched up in an expression he didn't recognize. "Exhausted... you have no idea. I can hardly sleep any more, everything hurts. Every thought hurts. No relief anywhere, except... when I'm fighting. And even then..."
The turian spread his hands. "Once the Collectors are dead, we-"
"No. I'm done."
"What?"
"I'm done," she repeated. "We'll do this, and while we're at it I'm going to take Cerberus' expensive toy away from them."
"The ship?"
"Me."
A chill traveled up his spine. "There's no reason to stay under Cerberus' auspices..."
She shook her head. "They'd always find a way. This time, there won't be enough left to cobble back together. They won't be able to dangle any more lives in front of me to make me do what they want."
Garrus stared at her, not quite believing what he was hearing.
She snapped the eezo core assembly into place, fitting the connectors to the power cell cradle. "I can hurt Cerberus more than I ever thought possible. All that money they spent on me, gone. Do you know how few cells there actually are? It would be the biggest blow to their resources they'd ever sustained."
"But this was your mission. You were never a slave to Cerberus."
"Exactly," she said, a deep bitterness creeping into her toneless voice. "I should have walked away the moment I set foot on the Citadel. But they made sure they showed me Freedom's Progress first. Played me. And like an idiot I went along with it."
"You've saved countless lives! You'll save thousands more, maybe millions by stopping the Collectors!"
"Who the hell cares?"
Garrus breath hissed past his teeth. "You don't mean that."
Her expression as she swiped a hand over her eyes told him she really didn't, or at least he hoped it did. He couldn't tell. "What if this is the best we can do?" she said.
"What... what do you mean?"
"All the resources and power of the Citadel, all the money and smarts free-flowing back and forth across the whole of the galaxy... When Armageddon threatens, the sum of everything we are-" She threw her arms wide, lip lifting into a vicious smirk, "is a single ship funded by an amoral supremacist, populated by unhinged killers, assassins and criminals. All led by a shambling corpse."
She finished adjusting something in the power cell then picked up the flanged heat sink and slotted it into place over the firing chamber. "But the worst part? The worst part is the Illusive Man might have the right of it. Feeding off each other until the strongest rise to the top? Any means necessary? Maybe it really is the only way to survive, because the monsters in the dark are much, much worse than any of us could ever have dreamed. Maybe Chambers was right after all, killing all those people. What if that decision saves millions later on?
"I tried to make that decision... to do the right thing for all of us, with the geth. Tried to put aside all my anger and see that just maybe it was a chance to put a stop to the fighting. Maybe head off a whole war before it starts. Instead I get back here and half my crew is gone, Tali probably hates me, and Jack..." she shook her head. "She needed something better than me, better than more violence... I don't even know. I failed her too. She'll never even get the chance, because I had to have my stupid moment of idealism.
"I abhor what Cerberus does. And yet, here I am, alive when I should be a carbonized popsicle. In the most advanced ship I know of, with armor, weapons and support staff beyond the dreams of any commando force that has come before. There's simply no way to argue the effectiveness of their methods. What if this really saves us?"
She slotted the ammo feed into place. "Knowing their methods, with everything they had to do, just how many lives did it cost to resurrect me and put me here? How much blood am I drowning in, just by breathing? How could I, one person, possibly be worth that?"
Garrus searched for an answer but none came.
"There was nothing in between, you know," she said softly, looking away from her work. "No light, no darkness, no voices, no... time. It was the blink of an eye. I was on the Normandy, and it was on fire, then I blinked and I was on my back, hearing Lawson's voice. Then I blinked again and she was yelling at me to get up and fight. There was nothing in between." She chuckled dryly, an empty sound devoid of humor. "But maybe that's a good thing."
"Why do you say that?" Garrus managed.
She smirked. "With everything I've done? If there was a place to go, I don't think I'd end up anywhere nice. But it's always been that way. That's the fundamental contradiction of people like us, Garrus. We're fighting for a world we don't belong in."
He frowned at the bitter thought. "But that's utopia, and we both know it won't happen. People willing to fight for what's right will always be needed."
"What's... right." She spread her hand, looking at it. Streaks of black grease coated her fingers. "I used to have something like a life. It wasn't much of one, but it was mine, and I hung onto it. I used to have... a reason for all of this. It took me a lot of fighting to find it. And then I had to fight all the time to keep it. Now... it's gone.
"They even took my voice," she murmured. "It won't matter what I say now, or to whom, for any reason. All anyone will ever hear now is Cerberus. Cerberus." She said the word like it nauseated her.
"Kaidan-"
"Don't bring him up." she snapped, heat surging into her voice. "He made his choice."
Garrus shifted his weight. Perhaps anger was better than the chilling blankness. "He had no right to say the things he did on Horizon," he said carefully.
"Oh yes he did, he was right! All of it." She rammed the barrel of the shotgun into place with a loud snap. "Can you imagine how I would have reacted if our positions had been reversed? It was the right choice. Staying as far away from me is the best possible thing he could do. There's nothing he'd want in this... this fucking Frankenstein!"
"You don't-"
"Garrus, Get out!" she snapped, and winced, indicating the door as she turned away. "Go... go rest. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
The turian shook his head, edging forward a step. "I can't."
"You can, and you will. Look at... look at what I'm capable of. I could have killed you in the cargo bay."
"You were angry-"
She snorted. "I don't care how angry a normal person is, they don't do shit like that to their friends. What about-" she broke off, her voice twisting. When it came back, it sounded ragged. "What about what happened on Aite, Garrus? It was in my head! In me! All because of these damn implants I have no control over. Because I'm a walking corpse full of computers!"
"But you fought it off."
"But I didn't! It was there the whole time, behind my eyes. Throwing phantoms at me, screaming in my head. Oh god, Garrus, it was in my head!" She dropped the half-assembled gun and clutched at her skull. "And that was just one. One AI, one stupid human experiment! What if a Reaper figures this out? Harbinger keeps calling for me, my body, my mind. What if it figures out it can just take control? It's a million times more sophisticated than one demented AI. It could show me anything it wanted me to see. It could make me kill all of you!"
"You'd never..." Again, uncertainty became a bitter truth in his mouth, stealing his words.
"I don't know either. It terrifies me," she whispered, eyes squeezed shut. "Garrus... go. Rest up and get ready. We'll be jumping in a few hours."
The turian shook his head, his chest constricted around his voice. He heard her shift and move toward him on quiet feet.
"It's okay, Garrus."
His breath wouldn't come. "No..."
"It is. I have one thing left that's mine." She touched her chest. "This heartbeat. Not even the organ itself, just the beat of it. Everything else is gone. I don't recognize, don't trust any of it anymore. Maybe it's selfish." Her gaze drifted, growing distant. "But I just don't care. It's mine, to do with as I choose. My little selfish thing."
She reached up and slipped two fingers under his chin, lifting his head so that he was forced to look her in the eye. Her fingertips were cold against his hide, and the familiar steel crept into her voice. "No one will take this away from me."
With that, Shepard took his arm and steered him up the stairs to the door and, without a word, ushered him out. The hiss and clank of the door closing and latching behind him echoed with a dreadful finality in the tiny anteroom. The elevator car gaped emptily at him.
He rode the elevator down in a daze, not seeing the divots of small-arms fire along the inside of the car. The sight of the mess hall was arresting. The tables were uprooted, the chairs twisted and stacked in a corner. The deckplates in the middle of the floor were dented and heaved, and the bulkheads scarred with deeply scorched trails from the praetorian's plasma weapons. Little fragments of security glass twinkled from the corners of the floor, and a poorly-washed stain colored the wall under the broken med-bay window. The thick, heavy silence was broken only by the sputtering of a broken connector in the light above the kitchen.
Garrus stumped down the gangway to the gunnery pit. Within, the power feeds and targeting system of the massive Thanix canon were safely pristine. The door ground shut behind him, scraping against the twisted frame. He paced back and forth in the small space. You can convince anyone of anything you want, can't you, Shepard? He swung his fist, connecting with the bulkhead with a jarring bang. The jolt of pain up his arm forced back some of the fog, the memory of her determined stare.
He ran his tongue along the inside of his canines, flicking his mandibles wide. You can even make me believe it.
He stopped his pacing and popped his omni-tool display. Out of habit, he turned away from where he knew EDI's cameras were, holding his arm close to his body as he leafed through his stored files. The contents of his tool were a mire of all the data fragments and programs he'd picked up over the years, all hidden behind a messy maze of encryption and firewalls. He weeded through it to find one data cache in particular. Even without going through the necessary decryption, he knew what was in there- a lot of biometric data.
"EDI, are you there?" he said, turning his head toward the door.
"I am always here," the AI replied. A disjointed blue glow shone from the power distribution holoconsole beside the door. Only a few hours ago, he'd pulled it apart in his frantic attempts to seal the gunnery doors against the Collectors, and hadn't yet repaired it. The damaged focusing matrices scattered light in all directions, filling the room with a soft glow. "How may I assist you?"
"What does..." He frowned, mandibles flexing, as he tried to fit his mouth around the bizarre word. "Frank-en-steen mean?"
"Frankenstein."
"Yes."
"The original Frankenstein is the title of a work of fiction first published on Earth in the year 1818 of the Common Era by the author Mary Shelley. That is 365 years ago by Earth standards."
"A story? About what?"
The blue light flickered. Without a reference point, EDI's voice seemed to come from everywhere. "The work concerns the science experiment of one Doctor Victor Frankenstein, a male human scientist. It is widely considered the first work of horror fiction in Western literature, and follows both the Gothic and Romantic traditions."
"What experiment?"
"The book posits that Doctor Victor Frankenstein is obsessed with the mechanisms of life, though it must be said that the book was written during a time when the function of the human body was poorly understood. His experiment is the creation of a man made out of various parts of dead humans and animated with a jolt of electricity. The story was re-interpreted many times over subsequent years, especially in low-budget pulp films. This led to a popular misconception that the monster itself is named Frankenstein, when in fact it remains nameless throughout the original story."
Garrus ran a finger down the side of the dressing still covering the right side of his face. The ache of the wound was almost gone, though he was still getting used to the odd difference between his normal ear and the artificial one. "It doesn't end well, does it?"
"There are many interpretations of the story. However, the unnamed monster ultimately fails in his attempt to integrate with human society and banishes himself to the wilds."
A walking corpse full of computers.
He shifted his weight, then moved to the bench by the back wall. Shepard had sat here when she'd come to talk to him, talk about Sidonis. He brushed aside the scattered console parts and sat down, leaning back with a heavy sigh. The prospect of losing Shepard again left a hole in him he couldn't quite identify until recently. Unlike his time at C-Sec, the fight against Saren had been clear in a way nothing else had been in his life. Shepard's death had left him once again adrift, in a desperate search to find that clarity again. The Citadel was a maze of gray, but Omega, well, at least everyone there was a criminal of some kind. A poor substitute, but something nonetheless.
Still, those criminals were drops in a vast ocean. Having Shepard walk back into his life out of nowhere was a burst of bright light; the Collectors took Saren's place in his head, an enemy for whom there wasn't the slightest hint of a potential redeemable quality. They were tools of the Reapers and there was nothing more complex to it than that. More than that, he was fighting the real threat again. It stilled the creeping helplessness that had dogged him every moment on Omega.
"EDI?" he said, staring at the ceiling.
"Yes?"
"Can you still contact any of the Omega station comm buoys?"
"I am able to reach T'aurn-B and the Suns' Arc-782."
He flicked the command to re-start his omni-tool display. The bright orange hologram spun and formed itself into his usual interface. He touched a few icons, and a blank message space folded itself open. He stared at it for a long moment. A niggling thought gelled in his mind, and it was a terrible one. He'd missed the signs... again.
Garrus looked up into the blue glow. "How much longer do you have contact?"