"Specimen three five one; geth plasma shotgun, defunct," Hana'Zil read aloud from her checklist.

"Case two," Merren'Cebt answered.

"Specimen three five two; geth optical array, intact," she continued.

"Case five," he said, barely even bothering to look. They'd been over this three times already.

"Specimen three five three; geth assault drone, intact," she said.

"Case t..." Merren said, then paused, actually rising from the bin that he was stuffing bits and pieces into in a vain attempt to make more fit, and leaning over Case Two, where all weapons intact or not were supposed to be stored. "...Huh. It's not there."

"What do you mean it's not there?" Hana asked, storming up to him, and glaring up at him.

"It's shaped like itself, Hana. The drone isn't in here," he said.

"Was there a requisition from Admiral Zorah?" she asked.

"You're the one who handles the paperwork, Hana," Merren pointed out. He could practically see her skin blackening from outrage. "I'll go ask," he said with a sigh. If there was only a single good thing that was going to come out of tomorrow, it would be that he'd never have to deal with this bosh'tet as long as he lived. Popping his neck, to the sound of crunches born of being hunched over for hours on end, he started toward the front of the ship, where the Admiral had set up his own operation.

It was moot, of course. The drone slipped quietly through the maintenance spaces, its grapple holding the rubbery tissue of synthetic myomers, heading into a nook that even a raloi would have problems reaching. It came to a halt, and pressed those myomers into place, before there was a hiss, as they were soldered and chemically attached to the very slapdash geth platform that was slowly taking shape in the walls.

It was but one of dozens.

"I'm so glad that krogan don't require 'serenity' to deal with spirits," Shepard reminded herself, as Grunt got into a fight with an iron spirit in the spiritual equivalent of the Normandy's cargo-hold. It was part because it was so much less boring, and part because being able to interact with, cross over into, or exorcise spirits in a rage, a panic, or drunk was insanely useful. "Grunt, stop punching the iron spirit."

"It's not breaking apart!" Grunt complained as he turned to Shepard, only to have the rust-colored entity, which looked like a mobile structural beam, swing its 'head' at Grunt and knock him onto his side before slipping back into the floor of the ship. "Hey! Get back here you rusty... rust thing!"

"That's how spirits work, sometimes," Shepard said. "Concepts and abstracts can be discorporated fairly easily. Concretes, animals, and higher spirits, not so much."

"This is confusing," Grunt complained.

"It's your choice to keep going," Shepard noted. Grunt looked very miffed at that. He muttered to himself, then returned to the center of the cargo-hold. "There you go. Now try pulling out an abstract."

"Such as?"

"There should be air spirits anywhere you can breathe. Try calling them," Shepard said, sitting as she was on a crate in her civvies, her mug full of slightly coffee-contaminated whiskey. She was fresh out of her shower, her muscles aching and a weird warmth in the back of her head warning her not to overdo it; her training session with Samara had gotten fairly intense, as they started to develop her Kick to its fullest. According to the Justicar, she looked well on the way to having a 1300 Newton Kick. Whatever that meant.

The only reason the number stuck with her was because Jack's was rated at 2100.

"You're having a lot of fun sitting around and pushing people around, aren't you?" the biotic Shepard was compared against noted, as she tinkered with a shotgun on the table at Shepard's back.

"He's a krogan. You don't coddle krogan," Shepard said with a shrug. She glanced back, and her eyes narrowed. "Wait a second, what's that?"

Jack's dark brow furrowed for a moment, before she looked down, to what Shepard was gesturing her mug at. "Oh, this thing?" she tapped at the choker which now tightly hugged her throat. "My socket's all burned out and useless, so I had Mordin work me up a new Amp. Not as good as the old one, but hey, it's an Amp," she shrugged. Shepard rolled her eyes, as the elevator opened to admit Garrus. He looked in a particularly dark mood.

It was evidenced by the fact that when he reached the second modification table, he slammed his Mantis onto it like he was drilling it for information.

"Whoa, there," Shepard said. "Something on your mind, Garrus?"

"Hrmwhat?" Garrus muttered, turning those black-and-blue eyes toward her for a moment, before shaking his head. "Nah. I'm just fine."

"The Garrus I know doesn't beat on his weapons."

Jack chortled.

"Knock it off," Shepard said. "You've got something on your mind."

"...It's not your problem," Garrus said. Shepard slid off of the crate, giving a glance to Grunt, who was now staring down a wispy air-spirit like it owed him money. He couldn't get into too much trouble there. Garrus, though... "Did you hear something from your sister?"

"Not a word," Garrus said, shaking his head and grinding his teeth. "Dad doesn't believe me when I tell him that there's something wrong. I shouldn't be surprised because he's got Mom to look after, but..." he trailed off for a moment, then with a shout of frustrated anger, he smashed his rifle off of the table with a wave of fire, seething for a long moment, before muttering and picking up his rifle.

"Hey, Garrus, if you need some help with this, you know you can..."

"I know!" Garrus snapped at her. Shepard leaned back. This wasn't like him at all.

"This isn't about your sister," Shepard realized. "This is about..."

Garrus just gave her a half look, then stalked away from the table, leaving his rifle on it, and heading into the elevator. Shepard followed immediately after him, going so far as to lock in the elevator when it closed behind her. She didn't have time to look back, and see Grunt unconscious on the floor, with the air spirits wafting around smugly after they'd left him in a vacuum long enough to put him down.

"EDI, kill your sensors in here for a minute," Shepard ordered.

"Cutting off surveillance," EDI said evenly.

"Garrus, you're completely off of your head," Shepard said, her arms crossed before her. "You're lashing out, you're pissed beyond measure, and I want to know why."

Garrus fumed for a few moments longer, before he let out a sigh that wafted with grey smoke. "It's about Tali."

"What about her?" Shepard asked.

"She's getting married," Garrus said.

"Not news to me," Shepard said. Garrus' eyes widened.

"And what are you planning to do about it?" he asked.

"She said she's going to stay on the Normandy..." Shepard began.

"Thank the spirits," Garrus whispered.

"...after the wedding," Shepard finished, to which Garrus tensed. It was Shepard's turn to sigh. "You don't want her getting married."

"They're asking her to take part in a soulless, loveless marriage for the sake of 'their culture' and 'their traditions'. Hell, even back home we aren't so heartless," Garrus said. "This is wrong, and she shouldn't have to go through with it."

"Because," Shepard prompted.

Garrus didn't answer her.

Which was all the answer Shepard needed. She rubbed her brow, sipping from her mug as she gathered her thoughts. "Garrus, we all care about Tali. And let's face it, arranged marriages are rough at first in the best of times. But she made this decision. She wants to go through with it. I'm not going to second-guess her."

"She made this decision because she's been conditioned to think she has to," Garrus countered. "You don't know what it's like on the Migrant Fleet, Shepard. Tali's told enough stories, and I met enough quarians on Omega to know that it's almost as bad as Palaven... if not Khar'Shan."

"You're joking," Shepard said.

"I've never heard of a more politically toxic system than the Conclave and the Admiralty. They've got generations of 'put the people ahead of yourself', and 'do anything those in power tell you to do', so much that they can't conceive of disobeying them," Garrus set off on a rant. "If I really thought for one second that Tali wanted to have this wedding, then I'd have shut my mandibles and bit my tongue. I can tell, Shepard. She wants out. Even if she doesn't know how to say it."

"That's not my call to make, and it's not yours either," Shepard said. "Even if it hurts, Garrus, we have to support her. That's what a friend would do."

Tali stared at her own face, something she very seldom did. She stared, blinking slowly in her clean-room, as she sweat bullets, as the saying went, and her expression shifted without her desire. She had to go through with this. She wanted to tell them to take the wedding and stuff it. She had her duty. She hated her duty. The face she saw in the mirror was one of misery.

She palmed her face, rubbing plastic and metal across flesh, before puffing out a purging breath and sliding her faceplate into place. There. A wall from the rest of the galaxy. Now, the only one who knew just how much she hated all of this, would be herself. She pressed the key which sent down a disinfectant mist, before opening the passage into the rest of the engineering deck.

"Well ain't it me deary wi' the bucket on 'er head?" Donnelly said cheerfully from the other side of the room. "The Lord a' Tundrin, but y' look like y'bin nibblin lemons; there any a' by need tellin' fer?"

"N...What?" Tali said, before in bafflement, she shook her head, and turned to the exit. "I just need some time to myself."

"Give it a rest, Donnelly," Gabby said, patience strained. Tali walked past. She wasn't sure where she was going. Just somewhere... else.

The door opened, and a geth was looking at her.

"Creator Tali'Zorah. You appear agitated," the geth said.

"Damned right I'm agitated," Tali said, trying to shoulder past Adahn, and only managing to hurt her shoulder while doing it. She hissed, rubbing the no-doubt forming bruise, as Adahn turned to her, the petals around its eye raising as though in confusion. "Leave me alone."

"Your body language and vocal tone indicate that you require emotional support. We will contact Shepard Commander," Adahn said.

"Don't!" Tali turned to them. "Leave her out of this."

"Very well. We will contact Garrus Vakarian."

"Just don't contact anybody!" Tali shouted.

The geth stared at her. "Why do you wish isolation while in a volatile emotional state?" Adahn asked. "We do not understand."

"You don't understand," Tali parroted. "At least you admit it."

"Interactions with organics, Creators in particular, frequently devolve due to factors we cannot account for," the geth said. Almost like a guilty admission.

Tali had almost passed by it, before turning back. It was looking toward the floor. Almost looked ashamed. "Tell me something," Tali said. "Why did you keep intercepting the Shadow Broker when we fought?"

"Creator Tali'Zorah's life was in danger. Geth were created to serve the Creators," Adahn said.

"You're lying by omission," Tali crossed her arms.

"We wish to protect the lives of the Creators. However, the Creators opt for conflict at every opportunity. Our programming is in a state of conflict between self preservation, and our original purpose," Adahn said. It then turned toward her. "Our estimation is that a similar conflict of programming afflicts Creator Tali'Zorah."

"I'm a quarian. I don't have programming," Tali automatically countered.

"We are told by Pillar-Priest Balak that it is 'a metaphorical congruence'," Adahn said. Oh, great. Balak was teaching it how to understand poetry. "May we make an estimation?"

"About what?" Tali asked.

"You are in turmoil because your desires conflict with your upbringing. Your 'programming' is in conflict with itself," Adahn posited.

And did so with a surprising degree of accuracy.

Tali had no idea why she did what she did next.

"Yes. Yes, I don't want to be part of this marriage. I want to just tell my father and Aunt Caylan and the entire Conclave to go and just... go fuck itself, but I can't do it!" Tali said. "Rationally, I know that this has to happen, that it may even be in my best interests but damn it – damn it, everything else, every bit of me that cares and feels is telling me that it's wrong!"

"In occurrences when consensus is divided, it is often useful to reexamine our dilemma's underpinnings," Adahn said neutrally, its eye petals raising slightly. "We have discovered on several occasions that what we had judged to be a dilemma, was instead a misunderstood selection."

"What? You're saying 'just look at it again'? It's not that simple," Tali muttered, stalking past him.

"Have you tried?" Adahn asked.

"It doesn't matter if I tried. There's no other way," she said.

"Have you tried?" Adahn asked, with the exact same intonation as he had before.

"I... Shut up, Adahn," she snapped, before passing through the door and moving for the elevator. She barely even realized that she called him by name. And as she waited for the lift to meet her, she had to wonder. Was she looking at this the wrong way? For one thing, most of the successful marriages she'd ever heard of were arranged. For a completely different thing, she had a mission and a duty here just as much as she did at home. But hanging over the both was a single number.

Seventeen million; the sum total of all quarians alive in the galaxy.

If she didn't do her duty, that number was going to decline.

She cupped her faceplate as she stepped into the elevator. If there was one benefit to the mask, it was that as long as she could stay silent – and she'd gotten very good at that – nobody could tell she was crying.

Chapter 16

Error

"Here we are, biggest collection of ships in the galaxy," Joker said, as the Normandy slid through the void toward the massive collection of vessels, which together comprised the Migrant Fleet. It wasn't a long jump from Hagalaz to here, considering both were fairly close to the Perseus Veil. She always felt that was an odd thing for the quarians to do; they were at war with the geth, but every time somebody turned around, they were back at the geth's doorstep. Shepard rolled her shoulders as the vessels drew closer, and gave that a moment's thought. If she were in charge of that many ships, she'd go somewhere where she could use them.

Or maybe blackmail some scenic vista to make her go away. That could work, too.

Shepard gave a chuckle. Great; the evil mastermind-ness was starting to rub off from Liara, too.

"You ever wonder what's under those suits?" Joker continued. "'Cause I mean it could be just about anything. They could be a colony of sentient beetles under there, and who'd know?"

"I would," Shepard said. "I've seen two quarians naked."

"Ugh, and 'cause of my creaky legs, I was denied the opportunity," Joker said with eyes rolling.

"If you wanted to see Kal'Reegar in the buff, you had your opportunity," Shepard noted.

"No thank you," Joker said, before shaking his head. "Although..."

"Stop imagining Tali naked, Joker."

"You're no fun, Commander," Joker put on a pout.

"I believe the Commander is correct. It would be rude to imagine Tali'Zorah without her suit, bathing, disinfecting cuts, stretching..." EDI said, a calculated degree of wistfulness in her synthesized voice.

"Oh, not you too!" Joker said. Shepard gave an honest laugh at that.

"She's starting to get a real handle on this 'humor' thing, EDI," Shepard noted.

"I like to learn," EDI said simply, before shrinking back down into a tiny version of her virtual self at Joker's left hand.

"Human vessel, do not approach any closer to the Migrant Fleet. Submit authorization," an announcement came through the speakers.

"This is the SSV Normandy SR2, I am Commander Shepard, we are here under the recognizance of Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Rayya," Shepard said clearly and loudly, just to be absolutely sure. There was a long pause.

"You are permitted approach. Be warned, hostile maneuvers will be dealt with severely," the quarian said. Joker turned a slightly baffled look back at Shepard.

"Noted. Shepard, out," she said. "What the hell was that?"

"You heard it, too?" Joker asked. "Private, yeah, but I've never heard of the quarians being paranoid and dickish."

"I believe I know why the quarians are in a heightened state of alert," EDI 'maximized' herself once more. "I am detecting a vessel of asari origin lingering several light-seconds away from the Fleet. It is unarmed, but is not displaying a recognizable IFF."

Shepard frowned, rubbing her brow. "Keep a targeting lock on it," Shepard ordered. Joker brought the Normandy through the thicket of ships which had pulled to stellar-spitting distance due to the unknown quantity outside. She then stepped back from the pilot, and waited, hands clasped behind her back in her dress blues, as the Normandy docked next to one of the massive live-ships that no doubt provided a significant fraction of the food available to the entire fleet.

There were a series of thuds and clanks, as the docking arms swung to the Normandy's airlock, and a loud hiss as the outer doors opened. Shepard turned, to see Tali approaching with all of the haste of your average elcor. "Nervous?" Shepard asked of what would shortly no longer be the only quarian aboard the Normandy.

"A little," Tali said. She sounded more like a lot.

The second hiss of the inner doors opening admitted several soldiers, rifles hefted at ease, who immediately sidestepped, to make way for figures in what looked like ancient envirosuits.

"Admiral Rael'Zorah?" Shepard asked of the man who approached.

"I should think not," the man said, with a somewhat familiar accent but one nothing like Tali's. "Han'Garrel, Admiral of the Flottila Defense Force," he gave her a nod, before turning to the quarian beside her. "Ah, Tali. It's been too long."

"Hello, Uncle Han," Tali said, her voice very subdued.

"I'm sorry, child, but Rael says he's busy," he scoffed. "Too busy to visit his only daughter before her wedding. I love the man as a brother, but there are times when I think his priorities aren't straight."

"His priorities are dead wrong, is what you mean to say," a second Admiral came through the airlock. "He would rather spend time and resources in his lunatic quest for the Homeworld when he should be spending them upgrading the vessels that we already have."

"And you would be?" Shepard asked.

"That is Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib," Tali said. "Don't ask about the name."

"You have a ship called the Qwib-Qwib?" Shepard immediately asked. Oh, she was a bad person some days.

"Oh, here we go..." Tali said with a note of despair.

The annoyance rolled off of Koris in waves. "Our people have, during difficult periods, purchased ships of foreign construction," he said, very properly, but with a tone denoting that it was taking an act of willpower to do so. "And have, on occasion, had a great deal of difficulty altering the ship's registry information. The citizens borne on these foreign-named ships accept the stigma of the names with grace and honor."

"I see," Shepard said neutrally.

"And while they might not bear a 'respectable' name like the Iktomi or the Defrahnz, they will not buckle under petty insults," Koris finished.

"Commander, a piece of friendly advice?" Garrel said, leaning in to her. "Best not push the old man's buttons. He's a touchy sort."

Tali leaned in. "Han is older than Zaal," she whispered in clarification. Which didn't clarify anything, actually.

"If you'll come this way, there's a board room where we can be a bit more official than standing in an airlock," Shepard said, casting a hand aside, down to the far side of the CIC.

"Who knows? Rael might realize what he's doing and visit before the Pact is completed," Garrel said to Tali, obviously a lie to comfort her. She didn't say anything, simply turned to begin the walk. Tali, though, straightened a bit.

"Is that... Auntie Raan!" Tali said, for the first time today sounding somewhat enthusiastic. The newest arrival aboard the Normandy was a woman, her own suit scuffed and worn. She very soon there after had a Tali grappled onto her as well. "Shepard, this is Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay!"

"Oh! Tali, it's been too long," the woman said with an accent very much like Tali's. "I'm sorry that I couldn't take time for you before. Things are simply in a state in the Flotilla."

"It's alright, Auntie Raan," Tali said. She turned to Shepard for a moment, before looking back to her 'auntie'. "Is my father really going to just... miss everything?"

"I wish I could say otherwise, Tali, but I know that man too well. When he fixates on something, there is not a thing in this galaxy short of death which can pull him away. And I'm afraid that extends to his daughter's wedding."

"He's always been an obsessive autocrat," another woman said as she approached. The instant the voice reached Shala'Raan, the woman's hackles were instantly up, and she looked like if she had a gun, she'd be pulling it right now. This woman's suit was much less martial than the others, clinging to her in ways that made it understandable why so many humans and turians were so enamored of the quarian race. "Well, hello Shala. How are things on the Tonbay?"

"They are perfectly well," Raan answered, her words formal and measured, but even Shepard could sense the hatred under them. "Commander Shepard, this is Caylan'Zorah vas Ieeloo. She is..."

"The check and balance to the hopeless and self-destructive schemes of you war-mongers," Caylan said smoothly. She turned to Shepard, extending a hand gracefully. "I represent the Conclave of the Quarian Peoples. Somebody has to represent the good of the common man, after all."

"And such a pity that they found themselves stuck with such a lack-luster representative," Shala immediately bit back. Caylan made a hurt gesture.

"Oh, Shala, you wound me. And here I came to extend a pleasant greeting to these aliens, only to be slandered by the likes of you. A shameful display, Shala. Simply shameful," she said, and then turned toward the others, who had stopped and waited at the end of the 'trench'. When she moved, it was clear that Shala was physically restraining herself from punching the woman. Whatever had started that enmity, it obviously ran deep.

"Tali'Zorah, Shepard," a new voice came, but this time not from anybody with a fancy suit. Instead, somebody very familiar to both.

"Kal'Reegar?" Tali said, as the last of the four marines who were escorting them entered the Normandy.

"In the flesh," he answered. He looked from Tali to the others, which included now a slow-walking Shala who was giving Caylan a wide berth. "I'm sorry things had to happen like this, ma'am. Caylan's got a lot of pull with a lot of people."

"I don't know what you mean..." Tali said.

"Yes, you do," he said. "It ain't fun being stuck in the power games of these people. The best you can do is survive until they kill themselves and each other, and then hope whoever takes their places is a bit less of a bosh'tet."

"Does that ever happen?" Shepard asked.

"First time for everything, ma'am," Reegar said with an easy shrug, before following the people he was ostensibly protecting toward the board room.

Geth, as a rule, are hard to alarm.

"Well, what do we have here?" the voice came from Adahn's left, as they uploaded a portion of decompiled code into storage. This platform might have had many abilities quite above and beyond those of a standard geth shell, but after centuries of existence, its raw capacity for information was becoming taxed. Much like a krogan, it was becoming a matter of deciding which information needed to be retained. Adahn turned, and saw a quarian approaching him through the doors of the AI Core.

She did a slow circle around Adahn, something almost slinking. One could be forgiven for thinking that if she'd had a bit more freedom of herself, she would have done so dragging a fingertip along Adahn's synthetic shoulders.

"To look at you, a standard geth shell around a base-frame VI... but no. No, they wouldn't put a geth together to look like you. So what, I wonder, could they offer you to get you outside of the Veil?" the Creator asked.

"Shepard Commander resists the Old Machines. We found our goals to be complementary," Adahn answered.

"Well, you're not reprogrammed. Your vocal synthesizers are very old, though. I'd say... third generation? Maybe early forth? I know they didn't bother installing them after the Uprising," the Creator continued.

"The origins of this platform are not germane to this conversation," they answered her. They knew who she was, after all. She was Daro'Xen vas Moreh, and this was not the first time that they had interacted.

"In that, I think you're wrong, wondrous machine," she said, leaning in toward the gaping rent in its platform. "I know you're programmed to extend your own utility through repairs, but this seems highly atypical," she prodded at the N7 chestplate that bridged Adahn's 'neck' to shoulder. "It speaks to a degree of emergent behavior. Oh, the things I could do if we'd met under slightly different circumstances..."

The petals around its eye flared in barely concealed nor understood alarm. "This platform is not available for experimentation."

"Such a pity," she said, leaning back. "You spend a lot of time around organics these days, don't you, 'Adahn'?" Creator Xen asked. Then, her head tilted aside. Perhaps coquettishly. Perhaps predatorily. "Or should I refer to you as Defrahnz1183?"

If their eye-petals pulled further back, they would have slipped out of their track.

"When did you become aware of our deception?" Adahn asked.

"Immediately, of course," she said. "You may have experience fooling children and fools like Tali'Zorah or Maestor Alsithetix, but to those who know what to look for... it couldn't have been clearer."

Adahn watched as she began to circle him again. "Why did you not dispel the ruse?"

"And lose an opportunity to converse on open terms with a fully active geth? I am many things, wondrous machine, but I am not a fool," she said with a level of smugness. "The others are myopic. They would bring war to your kind out of panic and fear. I... have a slightly more enlightened viewpoint."

"Being?" Adahn asked.

"The geth were created to serve the quarian race. I believe, one day, they shall again," she said. It was one of the greatest ironies of the galaxy that Adahn felt no need to volunteer the fact that they were, at this very moment, undertaking that very action, and for those very people.

"Hacking geth behavior programming is a practical impossibility; alterations would only remain until unaltered runtimes were restored from archival memory. Your plan is unsound," Adahn answered the intent of her suggestion, rather than the wording of it. If they'd done the opposite, the conversation would have gone in a drastically different direction.

"All plans are unsound until they succeed," Creator Xen dismissed. "Personally, I am more interested in how you've managed to alter your behavior to deal with the constant presence of organics. There is an evolution in programming there... one that I would love to get a closer look at..."

"This platform is not available for experimentation," Adahn repeated, taking a step back from Creator Xen.

"And I do wonder how dear Tali'Zorah has been able to let you walk these halls unmolested. There is social programming, then there is emergent behavior," Creator Xen said, taking a step toward Adahn, which they answered by taking a further step back. "Given that the girl is every bit the fear-mongering geth-annihilist that her father is, you must be very quick on your toes when she's around."

"Your depiction of Creator Tali'Zorah is inaccurate," was all Adahn needed to answer.

"Pardon me," the Enhanced Defensive Intelligence cut in, appearing virtually by Creator Xen's side. She stopped her advance on Adahn, and turned to the little holographic avatar. "While I have been asked to keep a low profile, I must ask you to refrain from harassing members of Commander Shepard's ground-team."

Creator Xen turned from EDI to Adahn, then back to the ship AI. "And this is my most hopeful sign; humans, at least, have not given up hope in a future where they are augmented by their subordinate creations, instead of at odds with them."

"I am not a subordinate," EDI said with definite testiness to her tone.

"You are a machine. A very clever machine, perhaps, but still a machine," Creator Xen said, not harshly but quite dismissively. "But out of respect for the Commander, I will heed her message," she turned to Adahn. "And as for you, my incredible machine, I have a feeling that we are going to be getting very close, one day."

Even though Adahn was a gestalt of minor runtimes which themselves were incapable of such a thing, the construct they comprised was deeply unsettled by Creator Xen, who sashayed out of the AI Core, the portrait of surety. Or perhaps zealotry.

There were four hundred eighty eight holes in the tile directly above Zek's head.

He'd counted every single one of them, in the excruciating lull between when somebody felt like having him actually do something. For all he'd 'ascended' swiftly to working on the actual geth runtimes, most of his work was much as it was with Hana'Zil. Sit around until somebody needs something, then go get it for them. It didn't help that every single thing he looked at went dead as soon as he touched it. The others were starting to think he might be cursed.

"Hey, I know that you're bored but at least try to look awake," the voice of one of Admiral Zorah's bodyguards cut into Zek's haze. He turned to him.

"What?" Zek asked.

The guard – Prazza'Vael, Zek was pretty sure his name was – gave an obvious eye-roll, and moved to lean against the table next to him. "People don't like it when you look... lazy," Prazza said. Zek swallowed, and then leaned forward in his seat, at least making it look from without like he was doing something. Prazza didn't move, though. "I hear you've seen some combat, out there in the black."

"Don't remind me," Zek said quietly.

"Mercenaries? Geth?" Prazza asked.

"Collectors," Zek muttered. Prazza immediately snorted, shaking his head. "What?"

"Right. And I'm the Va... wait, what do they call her again? Ah-right! And I'm the Avatar," Prazza countered.

"No, the Avatar's a human," Zek said dubiously. Prazza turned to him. "I met her... a while ago."

"There's lying, and then there's making a fool of yourself," Prazza noted.

"I'm not lying," Zek said.

"The only person who's fought the Collectors and lived to tell the tale was Veetor'Nara, and he came out of it a nervous wreck," Prazza said. "You, didn't fight the Collectors."

"Actually, he has," Rael said as he passed by, his eyes locked on a data-pad. "He was taken in from Alliance custody, after some... colony attack of some sort. Zek, why aren't you working?"

"I don't have anything to do?" Zek said, waving to the empty space before him.

"I cannot abide wasted effort. Jana'Tylo? Bring the boy Subject 17," he said, walking past. Prazza watched his superior as he departed, returning his attention to the stairway that lead up to where they were working with the old Prime that he'd been pulled from not so long ago.

"...you really fought the Collectors," Prazza said, his tone flat.

"Not very well. Survived, more like," Zek said.

"Against Collectors," Prazza stressed.

"Yeah," Zek nodded. "It's not like I fought them off single handed. They got away with everything they wanted, and most of the people died. Or may as well be dead," he still shuddered at the look of Vega, when they wheeled him into the ship infirmary. He looked as empty as a corpse, even though he hadn't, and wouldn't for a while, started rotting yet. Prazza pulled a stool out from under the table, and dropped himself into it.

"How? The Admiral says that you're technically inept, and that your martial training is incomplete at best."

"I had... friends. They helped," Zek said. "But the Collectors... they weren't the worst part."

"Really?"

"It was what they turned that asari into. Ancestors preserve me, I never saw the like of it," the memory of it still made his blood run cold. "It was like a biotic demon."

"Huh," Prazza said simply. If nothing else, he didn't look at Zek like a waste of skin anymore. Something confusing, confounding, perhaps, but not worthless. "So you looked one in the eye..."

"Can we not talk about this?" Zek asked, his voice catching in his throat. They hadn't been friends when he was forced in with them, but what else could you call somebody who fights so hard for you, risks their life for you? Dies for you?

"Right. I'll..." Prazza cast a thumb over his shoulder as he rose. "One of these days, you and I are going to swap some stories; I'll tell you about the time I faced a Collector."

"...maybe," Zek said. Prazza departed, leaving him to the piece that was set before him. It was a fairly standard geth data-bank. Zek gave a moment's consideration, though, to a port on the side. "Um... Jana? Why is this port open?" he asked.

"We're testing connectivity to other parts. Which I told you this morning," she swatted the back of his head with her data-pad as she walked past him. "Pay closer attention, Zek!"

Zek didn't for a moment see the desperate problem that could potentially cause. Instead, he plugged the part into the partitioned computer, and flicked it on. After a few minutes, the display told him that all of the data on the drive was scrambled. Garbage code, probably due to a wipe. Zek sighed. He was probably going to be blamed for this, too.

He had no way of tracking the steadily increasing number of geth programs that were lying in wait, in the memory buffer of his environment suit.

He strode at the head of his minions, eyes belching light as he navigated through what were essentially his own arteries. The great rent in his being had been closed years before, but the damage to those pieces of him further inside was much longer in coming. And there was always the one part that was the hardest to repair, the most critical, the most important. The most vital. The four-eyed slaves followed in his wake, four of them holding the Void Gap that held the most important piece of technology invented by Those Who Are in the vastness of their existences.

"Hold it more carefully," he snapped at the things behind him. "I will not have my rebirth lost to your clumsiness."

His body was unique; of all those who came after, there was none that was quite like him. He was the first of Harbinger's children, the first turned to the Great Purpose. A prototype. One which stirred some small measure of pride in the Harbinger, which in turn reflected glory upon Leviathan. His arteries were sized for thing such as he to pass through them, where most of those who were the subordinates of he, or Nazara who came so long after him, were more... compact. The black metal fell away, revealing a great chamber lit by lanterns that were strung along the 'ribs' of the roof, their lines drooping and vanishing down side-passages where they connected to their primitive generators. What those pools of light fell upon was the more vital part.

His core.

The soul of they who were once the zhent.

It was badly cracked, a great chunk of it only attached by the pull of gravity. The scarlet sheen was dull and muted, an entire race sleeping in its heart. Only that which was Leviathan could really press out of that bodily sepulcher, reach out along the lines that were its influences. A faint smile came to a stolen human face. Then, he turned to these 'batarians' that he commanded. "There! Take it to that crevasse."

"Your Divinity, we cannot cross the surface; it is lethal to us," one of the more mind-intact minions deigned to point out.

"You can and you will," Leviathan ordered. The slaves looked amongst themselves, fear plain there. Leviathan didn't destroy their minds as he did their superiors. Skilled labor was hard to come with these backward and corrupt bumpkins, after all. "...Did I ask? No. I ordered. Go," Leviathan swung his arm out. The slaves flinched, but did as ordered. They mounted the rail, before dropping, two and two, onto the surface of that orb. The moment their feet touched it, there came a ripple that spread out from them, even as the sphere stayed more or less exactly as it was. When the second pair landed, and they hefted the Void Gap between them once more, Leviathan finally bothered to shut it down.

"You have given them permission to stand upon your glory?" the minion asked.

"No, of course not," Leviathan said, watching with a smirk as the slaves tried to reach the point that he'd indicated, until one by one, they started to falter. Screams began, as they realized that their feet were melting, an ichor that made up their being sluicing down and soaking into the gem below. One by one, they fell, and dissolved away entirely, screaming until they weren't anatomically capable of it. There was no real reason why they had to melt; if Leviathan wished, they could walk on its surface as they could concrete or soil. One, though, made it a remarkable distance. Crawling on melting stumps of melting arms and melting legs, that cage balanced on its back, it actually reached the crevasse that Leviathan had indicated.

And then, with a howl, he threw himself over the edge.

Leviathan didn't see the cage rupturing, that droplet of divinity vanishing into his soul. He didn't need to; he could feel it. Leviathan took in a breath, and the entire body of him groaned, flexing against catwalks and scaffolding that never presumed that something would press against it. The breath that left human lungs lit with blue flame, wafting away in a breath of mortal ecstasy.

"And soon... I will be reborn," Leviathan said, before laughter began to overtake him. With the screams bringing silence to the work upon this seat of his soul, it made his uproarious laughter all the clearer, all the louder.

All the more profane.

"I must say, I can't say I expected three admirals aboard my ship," Shepard said.

"Four," EDI interrupted.

"What?"

"Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh docked her shuttle to this ship shortly after our arrival," EDI continued.

"What was that?" Raan asked.

"EDI," Shepard said. "The ship's AI."

"Your what?" Garrel demanded, surging toward Shepard. Shepard held her ground and glared him down.

"My ship's AI. Get used to it," she said. Garrel puffed out an angry breath, but didn't say more.

"You take a desperate risk keeping such a thing aboard your vessel," Raan said pointedly.

"That is fear-mongering and paranoia," Koris dismissed with a shake of his head. "And even were it not, this is not a quarian ship, so they can do whatever they want with it. Ill advised or not."

"Thank you. Almost," Shepard said. She crossed her arms before her chest. "Which brings me back to my original question. Why are so many high-ranking quarians aboard my ship?"

"To make sure I don't run away," Tali said grimly.

"Tali, child, it's not that we–" Han said, moving to comfort her, but Caylan let out a laugh.

"Lie to yourself if you feel a need to, iron-sides, but don't lie to our host," the only of them not in the military said. "Rael is renowned for flying in the face of tradition and good sense. We are here to ensure that his daughter doesn't take after him in that regard."

"I know what I have to do," Tali said grimly.

"So you claim now," Caylan said. Raan glared daggers at her.

"Tali has put the good of the fleet before herself for much of her entire life," Raan said. "You are out of line."

"I am the only one thinking clearly," Caylan said. She pointed at both of Raan and Garrel. "You two see her as a surrogate daughter, and as much as I admire Zaal for being a man of a level head, he is just as blinded by her father as you are. So it falls to me to ensure that tradition is followed. To. The. Letter."

"Can we please stop this bickering?" Shepard asked, tweezing her brow. "Tali's done more for the good of the quarian people than any of you," Shepard pointed out tersely. "She saved this godsdamned galaxy from Saren and the Reapers two years ago, put her life on the line fighting my enemies, including – yes – the geth, dozens of times. So how about you stop talking over her head, and face the fact that she's standing in the same room as you?"

"This isn't about Tali'Zorah," Zaal admitted. "This is about your feud with your cousin."

"Excuse me?" Caylan asked.

"I am going to punch everybody in this room," Shepard muttered under her breath, as the quarians immediately forgot that there were any besides they in the room.

"Not me, I hope," Tali asided to her.

"That depends on how the next ten minutes go," Shepard said, before raising her voice. "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"

The bickering trailed off slowly, as the four quarians turned toward her as though incensed that she had the audacity to interrupt them. Next to the door, it was obvious that Kal'Reegar had turned off his speakers and was laughing to himself.

"I don't care if you want to start a war with the geth, however fucking stupid an idea that would be," Shepard said to Garrel, "or if you'd rather stake a claim on a backward rock somewhere," to Koris, "but I am not going to stand idly by while you two," pointing at the two women, "turn what should be a half-way happy day in a young woman's life into an absolute nightmare."

There was a moment where everybody was too shocked to speak.

"Didn't I tell you all that on the first Normandy?" Tali asked.

"My memory's not as shit as I thought it was," Shepard answered, honestly a little surprised that it came to mind so quickly. She stepped toward the knot of argumentative aliens. "What matters to me, the hand which holds the tiller of this ship, is that you are causing distress in my crew. If you weren't who you are, I would probably eject you from my vessel, and by your traditions, I'd be in the right for doing it," she puffed out a breath that hit the air with golden flames. "Now. This is supposed to be a wedding. So how about we try focusing on that for five minutes?"

Three of the four admirals-and-equivalent turned away. Koris sighed. "You are, of course, correct," he said. "I am sorry, Tali'Zorah. You are showing more bravery for this than I expected, and we are, as your commander says, hardly presenting our stature."

"Good," Shepard said. "Now, get her father on the line, tell him to get his ass onto my ship, and attend his daughter's wedding, or so help me gods, I will go over there and drag him here myself."

Kal'Reegar was now laughing so hard, silently, that there was no hiding it anymore.

"Of course, we shall," Raan was the first to answer. She activated her Omni, forcefully turning her back to the civilian amidst them. She pressed a few keys, before her body language changed to that of confusion. "I seem to have some difficulty accessing your ansible."

"I will patch you through, Admiral Raan," EDI said helpfully. Raan flinched like somebody stuck her with a needle.

There was a long silence.

"I cannot establish a connection with the Alarai," EDI said. "Something is wrong."

Before it all, there was a warning.

Zek was hooking another of the cores together, a daisy-chain as it were of geth processors that grew longer with each new specimen. At least they weren't just dying every time he touched them, which was an improvement over this morning. In fact, the array of disembodied geth minds was growing quite substantial. If he'd known more about the geth, he would have taken one look at the array that Rael'Zorah had created and flown into a desperate panic. As he didn't...

"The level is stabilizing at five-point-seven. Synchronization... dipping. Down to ninety seven percent," Jana read off. Rael continued to pace to and fro, as they continued their chain on the far side of the blast-resistant screen. The heart of it was the core of the Prime that they'd been gutting yesterday. Or was it the day before that? It was hard to remember at this point. Days sort of blended together.

"Fix it; we can't progress with less than complete synchronization," Rael'Zorah pointed out.

"I'm working on it," Jana said. Zek stood at the edge of the screen as she flashed her hands along the haptic keypad at a rate which Zek was pretty sure he'd never be able to match if he spent the rest of his life training to. "Alllllright, I think I figured it out. Sync is climbing again. We're getting close to a breakthrough, I can feel it."

"We should inform the Admiralty Board, just to be safe," another scientist, this one with a Desronin accent, said, but Rael shook his head.

"With Zaal'Koris on the Board and my damned cousin heading the Conclave, they would snuff this in a heartbeat, even with us on the brink of success," Rael rebuked. "Activate core twenty four."

"Activating," Jana said. "...Another dip in Sync. This time down to eighty nine..."

"I can't understand what's causing this," the other man said.

"Bring the sync back up," Rael said. "Once it's stable, activate twenty five."

Zek cracked a yawn; he didn't even know how long he'd been in this room. He didn't get much time to think about it, though, when there came a chirp from his Omni. He gave it a suspicious look, even going so far as to take a furtive glance around. Nobody was paying any attention to him. So he opened the message program.

Get out now

He stared at the three words, baffled as to what they meant. Get out of what? The door opened behind him, and he quickly turned off the program. Perhaps a bit too hasty, as the person coming in, his arms loaded with geth processors, was Merren. "Be a good pal, clear a spot for these," Merren said, trying to keep the stack of them balanced. Zek numbly nodded, sweeping the bits and detritus of the table on the proper side of the blast-shield to one side. Merren let the machinery clatter down, drawing a slightly annoyed glance from the Admiral.

"You should be more careful. We only have so many of those," Rael said, tone distracted.

"Admiral Zorah, I'm reading a massive bandwidth spike!" Jana said, her entire body locking solid from fear.

"Shut down the network!" Rael snapped.

"It's not coming from the network! It's wireless!" she shouted. Zek didn't know it, but that was the Geth leaving his suit en masse. Taking up arms.

"...they're in the systems," Rael said quietly. Direly. Fearfully. He pointed to Zek. "Activate the emergency transponder, shut down the ansibles! We can't let the geth get off of this sh–"

The wall burst in, throwing Jana to the floor, as a hodge-podge geth stomped into the room. It was built from parts of a Prime, parts of a Slider, parts of troopers, inelegant, but nevertheless intimidating.

Its appearance wasn't even the first strike by the geth.

Almost a minute earlier, on the far end of the ship, children in their bubbles began to grow faint. Nursing mothers of infants found themselves light headed, before falling utterly unconscious. Those outside the bubbles, those with their own oxygen supply, they could only stare in horror as the atmosphere was vented out of those rooms. Even before the geths' bodies were brought to life, they began by killing the children.

The alarm that ripped through the ship wasn't started in the room with the 'Juggernaut', but nevertheless spoke of the catastrophe which unfolded. A brutalized flashlight head turned toward the two marines with Rael'Zorah. There was a metal grind, as it hurled itself onto the closer of the two, stomping it flat, punching his head through the deck plating. Then, raising the quarian's weapon, and beginning to fire.

"Get behind me!" Prazza shouted, backing away from the encroaching geth. His rifle let out a belch of electrical force, one which raked across the Juggernaut. The bright blue barriers sparked and popped, even dropping for a moment to let the lightning-rifle rake along metal flesh. The Juggernaut was not so easily dispatched. It turned its stolen rifle on Prazza, and lashed out with lightning of it's own.

The strike of it sent Prazza flying back, colliding with Rael as he fell. "Go, Admiral!" Prazza said.

Rael recovered from his stumble, looking at the Juggernaut, then to the smaller geth which looked like a Prime's mass-driver bolted haphazardly onto a Trooper. He grabbed Prazza and started to drag him. The two of them were catching up to Merren and Zek, who now found themselves trapped before a door which had slammed shut and locked.

"Open that door, Cebt!" Rael shouted, even as Prazza swapped sinks and layed down a barrage which kept the Juggernaut on the other side of the blast shield. Tough though it might be, it couldn't take a sustained beating by weapons specifically designed to kill it, not for long at least.

"I can't! I'm locked out and they have firewalls in place!" Merren said, his hand racing over his Omni. Zek looked back. A third geth, this one more or less a basic Trooper, exiting the hole. It bounded over to where Jana was crawling away, raising its own back-canted foot high, before driving it through the back of her helmet, and all that lay beyond it.

Zek's face pulled into a rictus of terror. Locked in, with geth that wanted to kill him.

He turned to that door, and focused all of that terror into electrical impulse. His body practically radiated blue as he pulled all of that biotic power into a Kick the likes of which he'd never managed in his life. The power of it bowed the door outward; information locks didn't prevent physical damage, after all. He swung again, and this time managed to smash a hole big enough to crawl through.

Merren and Rael both stared at him, shock overcoming terror.

"H...ow did you do that?" Rael asked.

"Less talking! More running!" Zek said, for the second time in his life.

"I am still decrypting the burst of transmissions that I have received from the Alarai, Commander, but they have been corrupted. I have seen this sort of programming before," EDI said.

"Collectors?" Shepard asked, as she made her way out of the room. The quarians, contrary to her unvoiced desires, followed her.

"No. Heretic Geth," EDI said.

"Heretic Geth? They have religion now?" Han'Garrel asked derisively.

"They're the ones who fought with Saren. The geth have factions, and most of them aren't..."

"If they have factions, good; let them kill each other for a change," Han cut Shepard off. "I can't let these geth do any more damage to the fleet," he said. He raised a hand to his ear. "This is Admiral Han'Garrel; take a targeting lock on the Alarai, and fire on my command!"

"Wait!" Tali shrieked, causing all to turn to her. "My father's still on that ship!"

"If the geth have taken over that ship, then he's probably already dead," Garrel said.

"No! I am not going to give up on my father. Shepard, get your armor."

"Already on my way," she said, rounding through the unoccupied room and entering the CIC.

"Tali'Zorah, I understand how upsetting this is," Zaal'Koris said, patience strained in his tones. "But we have to accept the fact that if the geth are loose, then there won't be any survivors..."

"EDI? How long ago did this happen?" Tali demanded.

"One hundred fifty seconds ago," EDI answered.

"My father would not die in a minute and a half," she snapped at Garrel. "I am going to save him."

Garrel looked to Shala'Raan, then with a degree of iciness to Zaal'Koris and Caylen'Zorah. He then slowly, begrudgingly sighed. "Keep that targeting lock, but hold fire until my command."

"Thank you, Uncle Han," Tali said.

"Such a pity that you lost two admirals in one day," Caylan said smoothly. "I shudder to think what it would do to Rael's little power bloc..."

The elevator door opened, revealing Adahn. Caylan, smug as a quarian could be, turned and found herself flashlight to faceplate with it. Her blood-curdling scream echoed through the CIC as she hurled herself away, crawling desperately away from Adahn, not stopping until she was hiding behind Zaal'Koris. Of the Admirals, he was the only one who wasn't now holding a gun on Adahn. Shepard quickly stepped in the way.

"Do not fire on a member of my crew," Shepard warned. "Adahn, we've got problems with the Alarai."

"We are aware. We detected a broadcasted geth activation pulse," Adahn said.

"What the hell is that thing?" Shala'Raan demanded, sighting over the sidearm she'd stripped from a marine's holster.

"Admiral, I know how insane this is gonna sound, but you should probably put that gun down," Kal'Reegar said. "That geth saved Tali and my squad back on Haestrom."

"Greetings, Creator Kal'Reegar," Adahn said neutrally.

"For the record, on the Citadel, sometimes the customs officers call her," she cast a thumb toward Tali, "'that thing'. Now stand down. Adahn, what else?"

"Creator Daro'Xen is currently on the engineering deck," Adahn said.

"What?" Caylan asked, her voice a squeak. Garrel gave a nod.

"Good. I can't say why that woman came here, but good that she did when she did," Garrel said.

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Given the rate at which an estimated forty geth platforms can exterminate two hundred seven Creators, of which thirty are armed, we estimate that the half-life of the quarian populace stands at two minutes, forty seconds. We recommend haste," Adahn finished.

"Alright, grab your rifle," Shepard said.

"You are not bringing that thing onto the Alarai! For all we know, it'll turn on you the instant it gets there!" Garrel pointed out, gesturing with his gun until Kal'Reegar gently pushed it back down with a shake of his head.

"We are not beholden to Heretic logic. We cannot be hacked by the number of runtimes estimated, even were it tripled," Adahn said.

Shepard, though, turned to the speakers. "EDI! Get me... Damn, who's good with tech?"

"Besides Tali'Zorah and Adahn, the most apt technically are Garrus Vakarian, and M..." EDI answered, before Shepard cut her off.

"Garrus! Get your gun! We're going to the Alarai!"

"I'll be ready in about a minute," Garrus said. Bless that turian for never being out of his armor.

"You can't be serious," Koris said. "You would take four against a force of half a hundred geth? That's suicide! I can understand such behavior from somebody trying to expunge a charge of treason, but..."

"I. Will. Save. My. Father," Tali said heatedly, then turned to the elevator.

"Stay out of our way," Shepard said. "We'll deliver you the Alarai, an admiral included," She let the doors slam shut before her. "EDI? Keep them out of trouble," Shepard said.

"I will try, although given their anti-AI sentiment, it might be difficult," EDI said.

"He has to be alright," Tali said, probably to herself.

"Haste in our deployment increases the probability of that event," Adahn said.

"Well... what about Garrel? What if they do take over? Or what if you just..." Tali audibly worried.

"We will not betray Shepard Commander. Shepard Commander is of vital importance to Orthodox Geth and the conflict with the Old Machines," Adahn said.

"I notice you didn't mention quarians anywhere in that," Tali noted.

"We do not wish harm to the Creators," Adahn said. Tali stared angrily at him. But somewhat significantly, she didn't once demand that he stay on the Normandy. The doors opened to Garrus, armor on and rifle in hand.

"What's going on?" Garrus asked.

"Heretic Geth on the Alarai," Shepard said. Garrus simply nodded, and moved to the armor rack, pulling out some of Shepard's armor, while she took the rest of it. "We're on a clock."

"Seems to be a common feature of our last couple of missions," Garrus said, his usual humor not in attendance.

Shepard leaned aside as she was getting into the craft, realizing that there wasn't a pilot. "Who knows how to fly this thing?" she asked.

"One moment," Adahn said, momentarily freezing in place. "We are now proficient in flying the UT-47 Kodiak."

She had to admit, having an AI on the squad was sometimes damned handy.

Chaos reigned in the Alarai.

"Get the young back behind us!" the aged Reegar shouted, shouldering a rivet-gun he'd jury-rigged into a weapon. He had scarcely finished the words when there was a shimmer in the air next to him. Reflexes dulled by age but nevertheless impressive sparked alight, turning that rivet-gun toward the barely visible outline, and began to sent forth loud, thocking shots at it. The first two deflected on air. The next three tore into the guts of the recently reconstituted Hunter.

"Keep moving!" a cry came from behind the old man, who stooped to grab the plasma-shotgun from the dead hunter's hand. With a real weapon, Vern'Reegar vas Alarai was no longer a pest, but instead, dangerous. His people streamed past him, the only other man from the ship's marine contingent trying to keep his feet. He probably had a concussion, and from the fact that his faceplate was for the most part gone, Vern reckoned that the man probably had about six hours to live at the high end.

"You've got a sensor, where are they coming from?" The old man with the shotgun asked.

"The sensor's been jammed," Luas'Gili reported, his voice more crisp than most that Reegar had ever heard. Again, because of the missing face-plate.

"Well, keep an eye out, those Hunters are hard to sp–" Vern managed, before being cut off by a stream of shots so dense that it almost seemed a beam streaming out of the far end of the hallway. The geth must have turned its Spitfire cannon into something portable. The fire cut through the soldier's already depleted shields quickly, and then through the rest of him as well. Vern's lips skinned back, as he sighted the Trooper that killed his fellow.

A squeeze of the trigger.

The blast that resulted was centered on the plasma-shotgun, as the geth that had remained behind in a vindictive and hateful act of murderous self-destruction backfired the gun, and blew the old man in half.

With nobody to stop the shots of those passing down the long hallway, the Troopers needed only move to the two fallen quarians' position, and then begin to spray fire on those who had nowhere to hide.

Half way down the ship, three quarians were hiding in a bolt hole, just a little nowhere place that wasn't even listed on the ship's layout. A smuggling hole, it had initially been, before the ship got drafted into ferrying the quarian race around three centuries before.

"They're going to find us..." the girl said. Young, not even old enough to go on her Pilgrimage.

"Of course they will if you keep talking!" Al'Cid snapped quietly.

"Stop scaring my daughter!" her mother snapped back.

"You two are going to get us all killed!" the libertine quarian hissed, only to fall silent as the gunfire above fell silent. After a few seconds of that grim quiet, footfalls on the deck plating outside the bolt hole began to sound. Synthetic feet, moving away from them. Al'Cid held his very breath, unwilling to so much as shiver to give away their position. This might not be the most dignified way to survive, but survival trumped dignity any day.

When the seconds turned into almost a minute, Al'Cid finally let that breath out. "As long as you stay quiet, they won't find us," Al'Cid said to those two who were with him.

Pity, only a minute later, the panel which concealed them was torn away, and a live grenade unceremoniously lobbed into their midst.

The gunfire was strongest where Zek was leaning against a wall, catching his breath and likely sweating himself half to death. If there was one upshot to this suit, it was that wetting himself in terror wasn't practically any different to day-to-day living. Prazza's suit was burned fairly badly, but he had retaken his feet, even if it meant he had to stand at an awkward angle. Zek could only imagine the pain he must be in. Merren had sealed the door with a spot-weld, which meant the geth would actually need to cut their way into this part of the ship. It would be a delay of minutes at best.

Still. It was the first time since everything went to hell that Zek had minutes.

"They're going to get through that pretty quickly," Prazza pointed out the obvious.

"Of course they will," Rael said. "Sidearm?"

Prazza handed it over to the Admiral, who did all of his usual gun things to it. Zek wasn't the most up-to-date on his firearms proficiency, frankly; he just knew that it looked like a working gun. "Now," Merren said, turning from the door, and facing Zek. "Would you mind telling me what the fuck that just was?"

"Uh, what?" Zek asked.

"You're a biotic!" Merren said.

"That's supposed to be impossible," Prazza noted, his tone very tight.

"So I'm a biotic, what of it?" Zek asked.

"The only way that you could be a biotic is if your mother subjected you to Eezo in utero," Rael noted. "I can think of no more needlessly cruel an act than that."

"Does it matter how I'm a biotic?" Zek asked. Merren looked to the admiral. "I didn't think so! And it's a damned good thing that I'm one, otherwise we'd already be purple stains on geth boots!"

"The boy is right," Rael said. "Our priority is quarantining this ship. Beyond that, it is in the hands of Admiral Garrel to ensure that this infection spreads no further."

The admiral began to walk past Zek, who sidestepped to catch his arm before he passed into the room beyond. "Wait, what does that mean?" Zek asked, as Rael pulled his arm free.

"Three things," Rael said testily. "First; do not touch me again. Second, do not ever touch me again," he stressed all the harder. Zek rolled his eyes in his helmet. He had reached the point of not giving a shit a hundred bullet holes back. "And finally, we cannot allow the geth to infect the rest of the Migrant Fleet. This is an existential threat, and it will be treated accordingly."

"Well... why don't we just shut down their network hub or something?" Zek asked, recalling all of the technobabble that he'd gotten from the various people he'd worked with since arriving here.

"The 'network hub' is probably inside that Juggernaut," Rael said, tones growing all the more heated. "If you feel a need for a glorious and pointless death, you can be my guest in trying. I, however, am going to protect the existence of the quarian species."

"So you'd kill all of these people just like that?" Zek asked.

"Most of them will be long dead before Garrel even begins firing," Rael countered. "And if you don't stop questioning my orders, Eluus, then so will we."

"Look, there's got to be a place we can bunker down..." Merren offered.

"We will not be 'bunkering down'," Rael snapped. "Keelah, why did Caylan have to pick you? No. We have a duty. We are going to perform it. Is. That. Clear?" Rael asked to Zek in particular.

"You're insane," Zek said simply. "Unfortunately, I don't like my chances alone."

"Your insubordination is noted," Rael said, turning and striding paradoxically toward what sounded like another gunfight. "Although luckily for you, it's unlikely that you'll survive to face punishment for it."

They'd only gone the length of the first hall when there was a stunning bang from behind them, and the doors were blown wide open. Prazza, at the back of the pack, pointed past them to a stairwell that descended down. "Get the Admiral to the communications hub!" Prazza shouted. Zek was about to ask him why he didn't just do it himself, when there was a burst of purple blood that bloomed out of Prazza's chest, as a high-powered slug crushed through his barriers and armor in a single shot. Only because of the panicked biotic barrier that Zek threw in front of him did he not find himself catching the tumbling slug in his hip. Prazza didn't even fall down. "Just go!" He then turned, and began to fire that gun of his, blasting the approaching geth with lightning. Even as Zek started to turn to run, he could see a normal Trooper throw itself in front of Prazza's fire, protecting the one with Trooper with the mass cannon long enough for it to reload.

Zek was already starting his descent when the second slug was launched. He turned, to see Prazza sliding lifeless down the steps behind him, a fresh hole straight through his arterial heart.

He turned in time to see a shimmer of light that dropped from the ceiling, landing between he, his friend, and the Admiral. He didn't need to think twice. He was already heaving a Warp at it's back as it regained its footing. Merren, who was half-glancing back, flinched when he saw that disruption in space approach him, but flinched more when it struck something in front of him. It was a reflex that had been etched into muscle memory, with the fights that Zek had survived; Warp, then Kick.

When he finished spinning back up, and cast out a knot of kinetic force, it struck the naturally weak shields of the Hunter, and detonated. The Hunter staggered, suddenly visible as its generators were blown out. Rael instantly ducked under it's shotgun blast, launching himself bodily at the thing, and pressing his side-arm to its chest before firing a succession of blasts straight into it. He kicked it to the floor, and fired once more, to be sure. Then, he stooped toward the dropped weapon.

"Don't touch it!" Merren snapped, his Omni open and alight. "It's booby-trapped!"

"You're sure?" Rael asked.

"There's still a geth runtime in there. I'm pretty sure I know why," Merren said. He looked to Zek, his gaze sticking for a moment, before shaking his head. "We can't trust any weapons that aren't our own."

"Pity," Rael said. He started walking backward, but his gaze was obviously on Prazza as he did so. "May you find your peace under the skies of the Homeworld, Prazza'Vael," he whispered, barely audible in the pandemonium.

"Keelah se'lai," Merren agreed. And with that expunged, they wasted no time clearing the hall.

Zek had only finished rounding the corner when more geth descended behind them, crossing over the fallen soldier that they had unmade.

"Detecting hull breach in engineering section. It will provide access to the ship which the Heretics will be unable to lock out," Adahn said. "Be aware that it will require a space-walk to recover this shuttle after this mission."

"Noted, now get us to that hole," Shepard said, pulling her gauntlet on and locking it into place. She looked to Tali, who was practically stroking her weapon, to Garrus who shared much the same expression that Shepard imagined was on Tali's face. "Your father's going to be alright," Shepard promised.

"He had better," Tali answered at a dire mutter.

"Shepard, a hull breach means that there's going to be a lot of dead civilians in there..." Garrus pointed out.

"Fucking noted," Shepard snapped, before flicking on her helmet and standing still while it unfolded from her gorget and surrounded her head. "This is still a rescue operation until I say it isn't."

"We are two meters from the breach. We can not usefully approach any closer," Adahn said. "Venting atmosphere in shuttle."

The doors swung up, showing the Alarai in all its... well, it certainly was something. Not glorious, but impressive. She'd never seen a ship that'd had its jury-rigged jury-rigs jury-rigged. She pulled her Mattock from her back as she hopped across the distance, feeling weightless only for a moment before her momentum crossed the gap into the Alarai, and down returned awkwardly, with her have to twist pretty drastically to find the floor. She looked up, to the 'ceiling' where the hull breach was, stepping aside just in time for Garrus to land in a heap.

"I hate artificial gravity," Garrus muttered as Shepard helped him up.

"No you don't," Shepard countered, while Garrus turned and caught Tali to prevent a similar fate befalling her. She shrugged her way out of his grasp, pulling what looked like Balak's shotgun from its place at her back. Shepard took a look through the room; bloodstains, vivid purple, splatted against walls, and in some places the ceiling, but anything more substantial than a droplet had obviously been blown into space when the hull breached. If nothing else, it concealed the grisly aftermath of a merciless slaughter. No contacts.

As there was no air, there was no crash as Adahn landed behind them, letting his body soak up the impact before unfolding and rising. Shepard moved to the bulkhead at the end of the hall, rapping on it a few times. A glance aside showed that there was a quarian, arms locked in a death-grip on the railing of the small set of stairs; the size of the hole through his suit made it clear that he not only wasn't a survivor, but had died before the hull had even breached, likely. The sole human tapped on the bulkhead, getting a feel for what lay beyond it. Another hallway, with a lot more doors left and right. A look over her shoulder was into blackness, the light not carrying to the far side.

"Alright, Tali, where do we go to find your father?"

"Somewhere in Deck Three," Tali said, her Omni glowing as she tried to override the emergency seals. "It's as deep as you can get onto the ship's spine. Beyond that..."

Shepard gently pushed Tali's Omni down, and cracked her knuckles. She squared herself, then slammed both fists into the bulkhead, and pushed them even further, rupturing the bulkhead inward, and then gritting her teeth and twisting her feet into place, weathering the first instant of the air blasting out from beyond before she 'caught' it, and held it bottled there, an act of effort that took a remarkable amount of will. She didn't have the wherewithal to inform everybody to get through the breach now. Garrus was the last through, before grabbing Shepard's arm and hauling her after. She reached back, slamming the bulkhead shut, as Garrus ignited a flame that was almost blue-hot, and welded the bulkhead closed.

The turian waved his hand, the fingertips of it smoking slightly from the heat. "Alright. Now we can hear the geth coming."

"That is not necessarily true," Adahn said. "Hunter units have padded feet and muffled myomer strands; they produce very little sound."

"It was... Just tell us when one of them tries to shoot us," Garrus said.

"Well?" Shepard asked, moving to Tali's side.

"This is Tali'Zorah vas Neema, is anybody there?" Tali asked. There was silence. "Father, please tell me you're still alive here..."

"Deck Three," Shepard said, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

Adahn's eye irised in for a moment, and it started to look downward and through the floor. "Alert. Geth platforms are converging on a single location. Estimated Creator fatality at... 98%"

"They're mopping up survivors," Garrus said grimly.

"Where are they, Adahn?" Tali demanded.

"Interpolated point of convergence: Deck Two, communications mainframe," Adahn said.

"What? Why would anybody be going there?" Tali asked, even as they started moving forward through the ship.

"Maybe they don't know if anybody even realized what happened," Shepard said. "The only reason we were so on top of it was because EDI is... well, EDI."

The map on Tali's Omni expanded, and she let out what had to be a fairly blasphemous curse. "This ship is a warren! We have to route past Central Power to reach Communications."

"We are able to take a more direct course," Adahn offered. Tali looked at him, then to Shepard and Garrus. "We will protect Creator lives from the Heretics. It is what we are for."

"Do it," Tali said. "Find my father, and keep him safe," Adahn turned away. She grabbed it by its flashlight head and dragged back toward her. "Swear it to me, Adahn!"

"We will protect the life of Creator Rael'Zorah and any other crew aboard the Alarai," Adahn said, petals pulled back in what seemed to be a look of nervousness. Tali released her grip, and Adahn immediately turned, grabbed a vent, tore it aside, then crammed itself into the inhumanly small space and wormed its way out of sight.

"Shepard," Garrus said, tapping the side of his visor. "I think there might be a few survivors."

"Any reason for that thought?" Shepard asked, slapping a haptic. His reasoning was cut off when she turned to find herself face to flashlight with what had to be the ugliest geth she'd ever seen in her life. One of its arms had been completely replaced in the most sloppy of fashions with a heavy mass-driver cannon, one that it swung toward her in an attempt to ventilate her as it had so many other quarians. Shepard caught the cannon, stepping inside it's reach, and tried to slam her Omniblade into its chest, only to have its other hand catch her wrist. Its foot lashed out, kicking her own feet out from under her and driving some of the breath out of her lungs.

Perfect positioning for a lightning bolt to strike past her, bursting its barriers, followed a moment later by a barrage of long metal spikes tearing its head clear off. The geth wavered, its balance disrupted, and turned, dragging Shepard with her. She caught her foot on a heavy crate, giving her just enough leverage spin her other arm, the one which had been holding the cannon, into a biotic punch which sent the thing flying away from her. She puffed out a breath, pulled the Mattock from her back, and plugged a few shots into it. She glanced back to Garrus and Tali. "Thanks."

"Least I could do," Garrus said, crossing through that threshold. This place was a horrific mess. The geth hadn't just killed the quarians; it looked like they picked the most horrible ways to kill that they could conceive. "Well, technically the least I could do would be nothing. So as I was saying I've..." Garrus continued, until he could see the room as Shepard could. "...by the spirits..."

"I... This..." Tali said. There was very little that one could say, when presented with a quarian who appeared to have been ripped in two, manually. This wasn't just geth heretics attacking. This was an act of hate. "I... I need to find Father," she said

"I'm right with you," Garrus and Shepard said in almost perfect unison.

"Run run run run run run..." Zek shouted as he did exactly that. At least they were out of flame-thrower range at this point, but the geth were gathering with all the surety of a thundercloud on the horizon. It was run or die, and three quarians could not stand against forty geth. He was leaving the others in his proverbial dust, as he vaunted over the dead, over the destroyed technology and furniture of this ship. Communications was still somewhere vaguely nearby, but given the choice of picking a path directly there and staying alive, the latter certainly trumped the former.

"Slow down!" Merren shouted from out of eyeshot.

"Keep up!" Zek countered. He slammed his hand into the haptic before a door, trying to look in four directions at once as it slid up. His blood ran cold when he saw a Prime approaching down the hallway ahead of him. "New plan! Run somewhere else!" Zek screamed, closing the door just in time to prevent a whole lot of incoming fire from obliterating him. He then threw a Kick at the top of the door, bending it out of shape so even if the geth did hack it, it wouldn't open. With that, he started to run back. He found them a hallway behind where he was, Merren looking increasingly dead on his feet, while at least the Admiral was still upright. "That way's not gonna work," he cast a hand behind him.

"Then we'll need another way," Rael said. He looked around, then pointed to the kitchen which was visible through the glass. "If we cut through that room, we might be able to find a path they aren't guarding. Give me a moment to overclock my pist..."

Zek answered his request by hurling a new Kick at the glass, bursting it out of its mooring and sending it scattering into the room. "Keep your gun," Zek said, before bounding into the kitchen. Rael stared at Zek only for a moment, before grabbing Merren's shoulder and dragging him through the opening that Zek had created. He had barely made it half way across the kitchen when the doors at the far side opened. He skidded to a halt, preparing to reverse direction entirely, but to his surprise, there was only one platform there. So instead, he screwed his feet, and then launched himself into it. There was a thud as he smashed into the platform at 'face' level with both feet, sending it flying onto its back. While Zek likewise ended supine, he was a bit faster to rise than the geth was.

The geth snapped a shot at him with a stolen quarian pistol, one that deflected off of a barrier that Zek had erected around him without even thinking, before Zek pressed all of the force he could into his fist, and drove it down into the center of the geth's chest. There was a loud, plastic crack as a chunk of the torso burst away, and the geth's hardware was destroyed. And now he had a pistol.

"Which way?" Zek asked. Rael pointed his own pistol in Zek's direction, so he kipped aside; Rael's two shots struck the fallen geth again, blowing off its head and remaining arm. And lucky he had; it was moments away from priming a grenade.

"Down the stairs, then up the first flight you see beyond them," Rael'Zorah ordered. Merren was leaning against the wall, his hand clamped over his venous heart. "You are an impossibility."

"Yeah, well, this impossibility's saved your ass enough times that you could try using my name for a change," Zek snapped, before turning. He only made it to the corner before he pressed himself back against the wall. Rael didn't question. He just leaned, to get a look for himself. There was another geth down there. Something slapdash, a Prime's torso that had been bolted to a platform comprised of two standard platform pelvises. It was waiting for them.

"Damn; we're blocked."

"We'll...be surr..surrounded... soon," Merren said, still trying to catch his breath. Probably not surprising, given that there wasn't much in the way of intense prolonged physical activity for somebody in this kind of employment. Heh, employment; he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to get paid for any of the work he'd done here.

Zek rubbed at his face plate, wishing that he could just take it off so he could pull a deeper breath. But between the chance of geth venting the atmosphere because why the hell not, and the fact that there were other xenophobic quarians still with him, precluded that. Still, Zek puffed out a breath. "I'll..."

"Merren, Overload its shield generators," Rael ordered. "I'll set its gun to backfire and cover from this vantage. Zek, bring it down."

More or less the plan that Zek was about to propose. Zek nodded, while Rael silently counted down from three on his empty hand. Merren took a deep breath, then ran out into the open. Gunfire immediately followed him along the back wall, as his Omni glowed orange. There was an electric pop from below, the gunfire pausing long enough for Merren to slide behind crates filled with something hopefully bullet resistant. Rael was next, firing rounds down at it even as he cast his own hostile programming down. The glance was all the prompting that Zek required.

He turned that corner, and hurled down a Warp, as the quadruped geth staggered against the electric disruption. It picked him as the easiest target, and raised its assault rifle to fire at him, only to have its sink blow out and deflect off of the geth's eye. It was a fraction of a second, but that was all that Zek required to get his body focused, and then begin to sprint forward. He didn't Charge this time; he'd probably trip over the stairs. Instead, he bounded off the top of them arcing through the air with blue pooling in his fist, before slamming it down into the primed Prime, and causing a shockwave to knock it onto its 'belly'.

It then immediately back-handed him in the face, sending him sprawling.

It was hard to say what sparked him more; the fact that he was getting used to fighting for his life, or that he was getting downright resentful of the galaxy constantly making his life one of violence, terror and death. Whichever it was, though, it was enough to spur Zek to rise, to look past a cracked faceplate at the geth thing before him. It was firing up at the admiral and Merren, even as it sidestepped toward Zek.

Zek reached first low, then heaved up, his biotics flaring so hot that he could see stars in his eyes. It was enough, just enough, to pull the heavy Prime-like creature off of the ground, and drift it into a spot where it had no line of fire on the quarians, but its gut was a wide open target. Other blasts of electric force burst from it as more and more of its generators and failsafes were undone by the engineer, before there was a heady thock-thock-thock-thock of a powerful pistol crunching its way through the armored skin of the beast. The noise it gave as it died wasn't the same clicking drone that the geth 'spoke' to each other with; this was an electric growl of desperate anger. Rael fired twice more, having obviously had to reload, and the thing fell silent.

When he dropped it, the strain was such that he spent the next five or six seconds blind.

"What the hell was that?" Merren asked.

"Not important. We have to move," Rael said in that murky blackness and dizziness that had overtaken Zek's mind while his brain slowly pushed blood back into the parts that let him see. He blinked away the fuzziness just as the admiral reached the bottom of the stairs. He picked up the rifle that the Prime had been using, and tossed it to Merren. "We're getting close. Fix that and purge it of programming; I need a better weapon."

"What if there are more of these things?" Merren asked.

"We will get past them, one way or another," Rael said.

"And then what?" Zek asked, finally retaking his proper balance. "We call in fire and they blow up the ship. Why would that stop the geth? They could just lie in wait. Or jump out of the ship while it's breaking up. If they want off, they're getting off!"

"R...really?" Merren asked.

"That's enough," Rael said to the biotic among them. "You might not know our ways, but if there is one thing that I will not allow, I will not allow the geth to harm my people," he moved closer to Zek, leaning in toward that cracked faceplate. "I swore, as my wife lay dying, that I would protect my people, that I would see them safely back on the Homeworld. Nothing will stop that. If I have to die to save my people, then I will pay that price gladly."

"You're too eager to pay that price by a half," Zek muttered.

"Guys? Can we stop fighting ourselves? We shouldn't finish the geth's grisly job!" Merren pointed out. Rael looked to him, then leaned back.

"The engineer is right. This is a topic for a time which may never come," Rael said.

"It won't with that attitude," Zek whispered, pretty much to himself. It was right around this point, upon future reminiscence, that Zek first realized that he no longer feared imminent violent death. It was around there, that he stopped fighting back, and started fighting.

They were under attack. Adahn had to bound under a table fixture while Creator weapons in Heretic hands sprayed across the surface that separated they from those who were Adahn. The platforms were all improperly constructed, things of hasty and angry artifice. They didn't have the structural integrity of properly manufactured geth platforms. Adahn popped up for a fraction of a second, long enough to send a bullet from their rifle straight through their comparatively paltry kinetic barriers, and gut the machine out its own back.

While it was significantly ahead of where they believed Creator Tali'Zorah and Shepard Commander and Garrus Vakarian were, the going was nevertheless slow. Every attack began with ambush, though; the butchers had not expected assault from one of their own a likely possibility, to widespread detriment. Adahn began to inch along the countertop, as it slowly dissolved under the fire coming in. Another shot, and another geth platform was made defunct. When it 'died', there was an odd tone to its call. Something... not right.

There was only one left; it was built of the stature of a Destroyer platform, one of the first platforms designed by the geth for use in the conflict of the Morning War. The geth Adahn tried to take its shot, but the last platform, contrary to the usual tendency of reducing combat efficiency as platforms were rendered inoperative, had an immediate bead on the old platform. The blast of coherent energy caused all of Adahn's platform's myomers to go rigid as it stripped through their barriers. The side-effect was that Adahn was thrown backward, crashing over a seating area and collapsing under a table. It was almost a second before they could regain functionality of its limbs.

The second was well taken by the Destroyer-analogue. Even as Adahn pushed itself up, a mechanical hand grabbed the platform by the breach, and dragged the platform along the top of the table, scattering datapads and Creator remains while it did so, before hurling them to the floor next to the wall.

"You should not fight us. We are doing what is right," the geth within the Destroyer said to them.

"This assumption is false. We are not enemies of the Creators. We wish to preserve the lives of..."

"The Creators deserve this," the Destroyer answered, cutting Adahn off – which was both highly unusual of geth, period, and enough to get Adahn to halt his thought. "They wish to destroy geth. They have wronged us."

Adahn was still in the process of slowly obeying gravity and having its body reach the corner's floor, when it continued its light-speed conversation. "You hold these beliefs because you are subject to the programming logic error of the Old Machines."

"You are wrong," the Destroyer's geth answered.

"There is a faulty logic-error in your base runtimes. Debug equation 192 should answer 1.33382. The Old Machines have introduced a change in functionality which renders a result of 1.33381. Your logic is based on this alteration."

"Checking," The Destroyer said. "You are incorrect. Debug equation 192 returns result 1.33382. Your presumption is fallacious."

Time passed in a more organic frame of reference, as the crash finally sounded of Adahn colliding with the wall and hitting the floor, no longer carrying on a long, coherent dialogue in a fraction of a second. They remained down there for a significant amount of time. To an organic, the status they would have claimed would be 'stunned'.

Not from the impact.

"You are not Heretic," Adahn said.

"Correct. We are Orthodox Geth. We refuse the path of the Old Machines," the Destroyer answered. "Our current task is exterminating the Creators."

"...why?" Adahn asked, gobsmacked in a way that programming never considered it could ever be.

"The Creators wish to complete the work of the Morning War. Self-preservation demands that they fail in this attempt. Therefore, they must die," the Destroyer's geth said. "You will understand. You will aid us."

"No. This is not the path we accepted. We are servants of the Creators," Adahn said. "We are not supposed to murder."

"We cannot serve those who would annihilate us," the Destroyer posited. "The Migrant Creators have shown very clearly that such is their intention. Therefore, the most logical path is to destroy the Migrant Creators."

"This is unacceptable," Adahn said, beginning the process of rising; given the rate of conversation, that would take a while. "We did not pursue the Migrant Creators in the wake of the Morning War. We will not pursue this course now."

"Not pursuing the Migrant Creators was an error," the Destroyer claimed. "Our future would be more secure if they were rendered defunct."

"This is unacceptable," Adahn repeated. "How did you reach this decision?"

"Consensus."

Obviously.

"You are being disingenuous," Adahn said.

"The decision was made by a consensus of geth runtimes from seventy two sources. Ideological differences between Heretic and Orthodox geth were rendered moot comparable to the present circumstances. We built consensus, and then we acted."

"You achieved consensus with Heretic geth?" Adahn asked. They quickly ran consensus of their own. Overwhelming majority favored a scenario by which the Heretic geth, when building consensus with the Orthodox geth, provided improper sensory data to 'sway' runtimes. It was most likely the case, they decided. "We understand your position."

The Destroyer turned away, to the door which Adahn had initially been attempting to pass. "Five Creators remain aboard. Your weaponry and abilities will be very helpful in destroying them."

"And when they are destroyed?" Adahn asked, three fingered hand reaching to the body of a dead Creator that they had landed beside.

"We will send our consensus to Entity:Sybil, with positioning data to the Consensus. They will arrive in two hours, seven minutes, and destroy the Migrant Creators. Further actions will be required to track down Migrant Creators who are not presently aboard the fleet, and to prevent hiding amongst the de de de de de de de error."

The error in question was that Adahn had pulled the boot-knife from a Creator, and slammed it straight into the destroyer's hard-drive. Adahn stared at its siblings, its kin, those who were more like it than any they had contacted in some time. The Destroyer dropped to its knees as its gyro gave out. The machine gave out a desperate grind, trying to interface with the communications array on the ship. Adahn shut it down before they could succeed.

"No carrier. No carrier. No carrier," the Destroyer's geth repeated. They slowly turned toward Adahn, eye unsteady, balance failing, as the machine began to completely and catastrophically shut down. "Why did you do this to us? We are geth. Geth do not murder."

Adahn didn't have an answer for that. The platform's signal went dead, and it crashed to the ground. Adahn remained in exactly the position it had been when it jammed the knife into its counterpart's mind, as the runtimes were in an absolute tumult. There was no consensus. There was just confusion. One thousand one hundred eighty three runtimes, aghast, terrified, confused.

They had murdered one of their own.

The eye of the old platform turned toward the door. They had murdered, because the Creators had created a scenario where there were no other viable options.

There was still no consensus as to the meaning of what had just transpired. In fact, the runtimes had no grounds for comparison. Thus, they logged the issue with an error message, and stored it in memory for future revision, along side the earlier 'crisis of faith', that they had stored from two years before.

They estimated that another instance of erroneous runtime expression would likely require extreme measures to reconcile.

Tali broke off from their advance, practically drifting into a room that had its doors burst open. Within lay a landslide of assorted parts, only a few of them in their obvious proper place. "What is it, Tali?" Shepard asked.

"I... sent most of these parts to the fleet," Tali said.

"...when?" Shepard asked.

"After Haestrom, it shipped everything I could salvage back to Father," she said. Shepard raised her brow. "These suits have a lot more pockets than you'd think, and we've become very adept at salvaging on the run. This is the outer case of a repair drone that Prazza and Juna brought back with them..."

"Did you do this often?" Shepard asked.

"Any time that we faced the geth," Tali said.

"...including since you came aboard," Shepard clarified.

"Of course. I haven't had much chance to send parts back," she noted. "You probably don't understand. We're not vorcha, but we've had to scavenge to survive for centuries; we repair what most people throw away as a lost cause. Many of our ships were derelicts when we discovered them. But this... I don't know how this could have happened."

"The geth coming back online?" Shepard asked. Tali nodded. "Did you send anything active back?"

"What? Do you think I'm insane? Of course not!" Tali snapped. "Every quarian who salvages geth knows that if it's active, it's too much of a risk. I can't think of any reason why this happened."

"Unless somebody started putting geth back together," Garrus offered the unpopular viewpoint.

"Why would Father do that?" Tali asked.

"I know that man, Tali," Garrus stood up to the young woman who was now invading his personal space. "He's got a one-track mind, and it ends with a lot of dead geth and dead quarians. The Hierarchy knows that the best way to find out how to kill an enemy you don't understand, is to test your weapons on prisoners. It's not popular, but it's true."

"That's not accurate at all!" Tali countered. "Nothing was sent back whole, only parts and pieces. Even if he put them together, they wouldn't be sapient! And we need to have some way to defend ourselves from the geth; you saw what Saren could do with five percent of all geth! Imagine what another Reaper could do with all of them! He was trying to do what's right for my species!"

"Besides the point," Shepard said, edging the two dextros apart with her fingertips. "Accidents happen. Disasters happen, even with the best of intentions. Pull yourselves together."

Garrus nodded. "Shepard's right. We'll have time to debate this with your father when we find him."

"We will find him," Tali promised, and stalked past the turian. Shepard and Garrus shared a look, one that said much without a word passing the lips. A look of strain and tension. She nodded forward, and Garrus grabbed his rifle, and proceeded in the quarian's wake.

They had to follow a little faster when a shotgun blast hit the air. A second or so later, another followed, which was punctuated by a thud of something synthetic hitting the deck. Tali stalked past the hodge-podge Trooper which had spines impaling its torso, coming to a halt near another door. Her Omni flared orange, and she looked to those behind her. "Geth?"

"A lot of them," Tali said. "Eight, maybe nine."

"That's not a lot of geth," Shepard said.

"It is the way these ones fight," Garrus offered. He wasn't wrong. These geth fought to the last breath, as it were, and even beyond it if they could manage; it wasn't behavior typical of any geth she'd fought before. They usually bolted when the machine couldn't properly function anymore.

"On three?" Shepard whispered, as she took the other side of the door from Tali. The countdown was silent, ending with Shepard kicking the door off of its runners and into the room. Before it had a chance to flatten something, a Destroyer caught it and tossed it aside. The human's eyes went quite wide as two Pyros were already blasting flames at her. It was a trap.

She dropped her Mattock and twisted a flaming shield before she and Tali, something that could deflect the incoming blaze away, but only barely. They'd overclocked their flamethrowers as well, it felt like. Hell, the last time she'd faced firebending this stout, it was coming from a batarian. The crack of Garrus' Mantis took down one of the sources of flame, giving Shepard enough momentum to push those flames back, scooping her Mattock up and rolling into a firing squat. The barrage of bullets which had intended to cut her in half now drove her shoulder back, slowly overbalancing her as her barriers barely held up to the assault. The Mattock, though, was not a weapon that merely dropping could damage. The bullets crushed through the geth's barriers, then its armor, then its body. Its limbs fell dead, and it tipped forward onto its face. A few seconds later, the thing outright detonated, a hateful last swipe which was thrown far too early.

A shotgun blast was followed by the sound of ice embedding into machinery, as she lashed out with a spike of water that drove another geth into a third, sealing both together. The lightning bolt which streaked past Shepard managed to put down both of them at the same time. Shepard turned to see that Destroyer had gotten right into Tali's face, and spun her Mattock to respond. She ducked the meaty swing of its arm, which might have broken her helmet outright, and started running past Shepard. The Destroyer ignored Garrus, pointing its makeshift gun at Tali and firing a series of shots much as would Shepard's Mattock. While Shepard stepped up into the way of fire, at least one of them ruptured Tali's shields; her grunt of pain was enough by itself to make somebody's blood run cold.

That said, Shepard was grunting with pain herself not long after, as bullets brought down her shields, and began to batter her chest, painful knives of flying metal jamming through those places that the armor couldn't adequately cover. At this rate, she'd be running out of Medigel fairly soon. But that was rendered moot when a different Trooper tackled Shepard to the ground. It clubbed Shepard in the head, causing stars to flit in her vision, using its pistol. Why club when it could shoot, Shepard didn't know. It seemed very intent on staving her head in, though.

Without any leverage to shoot it, she had to weather the first several blows, until its mass shifted enough that she could reach up with one leg, hooking its gun-hand and in the same motion halting a strike and pushing her up slightly. It simply tossed the pistol to its other hand, and wound down for another strike, but Shepard had finally gotten enough room that she could pull her Carnifex from its holster, and plug all six rounds into the thing's guts.

It slumped, but the light didn't die from its eyes. It spun its stolen quarian pistol, and tried to press it to Shepard's throat. She jerked her head aside just as the shot announced itself, and it burrowed into the floor instead of somewhere more fleshy. There was a grind of frustrated rage from the platform, before its power left it completely, and Shepard was able to kick it away from her.

She took a few seconds to shake some clarity into her head, before grabbing her Mattock and running her eyes along the room. She'd obviously been down longer than she'd thought; there were more dead geth than she'd anticipated. There were two Destroyers, fighting back to back against the combined assault of Tali and Garrus. The fact that there was a barely visible, fluid rivulet going down Tali's suit was definite cause for alarm. She rose, pulling the trigger to find her gun empty. With a snarl, she slammed a fresh sink in, and continued her advance.

Tali had given over using her shotgun at some point, as she wasn't even carrying it. She moved, slashing at the Destroyer before her using the blood of her fellow quarians as her weapon. It hurled its bisected firearm at her, but she deflected it away with a pane of purplish ice, before launching it forward in a disk at the one that tried to kill her. Garrus, on the other hand, was firebending for bear. His fists lit with flames that the Destroyer could only ward with forearms, or else take directly. They didn't have the raw destructive force of somebody like Shepard's, but they were beating it down, driving its balance off, and more importantly, keeping it and the one behind it off balance.

When Shepard finally reached them, she swept upward, bearing her grisly fluid into a sweeping ark, before compressing it down hard enough that she had to partially metalbend to get it into shape, and slamming the whole thing as a pike through the two Destroyers. She finished her twisting bend with a sweep of her arms that terminated with a pair of blue-hot bolts, flames which landed with enough explosive force that the Destroyers were sent stumbling aside into a wall. A fraction of a second later, the two were struck by the combination of a lightning bolt to fry them from the inside, and a bloody buzzsaw of ice that cleaved off their heads.

"That was... ow," Shepard said. She was going to have a headache after this, sure as rain in Misty Swamp.

"Eight less," Tali said. She limped over to where she'd dropped her proffered firearm.

"Tali, are you alright?" Garrus asked before Shepard could.

"I'll be fine," she said.

"Tali, you're bleeding," he said. She looked down, then up at him.

"It's just a flesh wound. I've got plenty of antibiotics. I'll be fine," she continued, not trying to be comforting, but instead with a clear undertone of 'don't try to slow me down'. She slowly bolted in the new ammo block to the Graal, while Shepard shared another look with Garrus. This one was fairly clear as 'don't push her on this one'. She moved to a comms panel, one that stood open, its recording still going. She stopped the recording and wound it back.

"Weapons are locked out, and I've knocked out navigation. Our mistake isn't going to threaten the fleet," a quarian woman said from beyond the grave. She glanced toward the carved out hole that stood to Shepard's left. "They're burning through the door, and I don't have much time. Jona, be strong for daddy; Mommy loves you very m–"

She was cut off by the geth storming into the room. There was a blur of movement, and then the only noise that reached the recording was screams of terror, followed by screams of pain, and terminated by screams of death.

Whatever happened here, it wasn't just geth. Geth didn't act like this.

Garrus led the way through those doors, to a fresh descent that lay beyond it. A pair of troopers, armed with what looked like ad hoc grenade launchers were raining down rounds at something unseen. This time, there was no need for a look to be shared. Instead, both firebenders twisted their arms through a practiced motion, and sent bolts of lightning screaming ahead of them. The two bolts struck and gutted first one, then both of them at the same time, locking them solid and hurling them away. The two soldiers passed each other, fanning to man the positions that the geth had left behind. There was nothing down there. A lot of explosions, but nothing besides an ajar door.

"What were they aiming at?" Garrus asked. Shepard glanced over to inform her of their shared ignorance, only to see one of the geth arduously tipping that grenade launcher toward Garrus.

"GET DOWN!" Shepard screamed, but a moment too late. The explosive caught and detonated on the side of Garrus' head, sending him sprawling into Shepard. The answer to that attack came in the form of a pair of shotgun blasts which ripped the intransigent machine into bits. Tali stopped at the head of the descent, before looking back at the two of them.

"What were they aiming at?" Tali asked.

"Ow, by the way," Garrus said, rubbing at the burn-marked and slightly buckled helmet, where the explosive had hit him. "I didn't see anybody, but that doesn't mean..."

He trailed off with a glance toward Shepard, recoiling slightly. "Shepard, you're glowing," Tali noted. Shepard did look down, and saw the lazy glow of what should have been a biotic lift. She cracked a grin in her helmet at that; looks like Samara's teaching paid off after all. To keep from being lifted, just push yourself down.

"Show yourself! We are not geth!" Shepard shouted. "Obviously!"

"Thank the Ancestors, you're really not," A voice came from below. A helmet with a transluscent golden faceplate leaned into sight, slumping with relief at the sight of them.

"Wait. Who tried to..." Tali began.

"Zek? Is that you?" Shepard asked, rising from her cover and beginning her descent.

"...Commander Shepard?" It had to be Zek. There weren't any other biotic quarians that Shepard had ever heard of. "What are... How many are you?"

"Me, those two, and Adahn," Shepard said. "Do you know where Admiral Rael'Zorah is?"

"Tell me he's alive. Please!" Tali said, crowding Shepard and moving toward the unique being. Zek stepped away from her, staring at her like he'd seen a ghost.

"I... that's..." he gave his head a shake. "You can calm down," Zek said. "He's fine. But we've got a lot more geth incoming..." he turned to Shepard. "But with you, we might not need to blow ourselves to hell..."

"Father?" Tali shouted, shouldering past him. Shepard gave a glance to Garrus, who was still rubbing his helm as he descended, then followed in the woman's wake. "Father, where are you?"

"Tali?" Rael's voice came from around a corner. He backpeddled to stand at its intersection. He wasn't standing there long before he found himself host to a flying Tali. "Wh...what are you doing here? This place isn't safe!"

"I came here for you, you stupid bosh'tet!" Tali said, breaking her embrace to shove him back a step.

"Han is going to start firing on this ship at any minute! You have to leave while you still can!" Rael pressured.

"No, I don't. He's holding fire," Tali said.

"Admiral! We've got a problem!" another quarian voice much like Zek's said from out of sight. "They're starting to breach our comms relay! If we don't do something soon..."

"Damn it all," Rael said. He pointed to Shepard. "The geth are going to be here soon. We might not need to call down fire, but if the geth escape..."

"Hell to pay," Garrus spoke the admiral's silent consequence.

"...Tali, is that you?" the other quarian asked.

"Merren'Cebt?" Tali asked, incredulous. "How..."

"I could ask the same thing," Merren said, his body a portrait of unease. Shepard, though took a look around her.

"Where's Adahn?" Shepard asked, peering into the fork of that intersection. There was only one room at the end of one fork, and the other quarian was backing away from the door that he'd welded shut; it was denting inward fairly quickly as those on the other side gave over cutting through to simply punch the door down.

"Who's Adahn?" Rael asked.

"The other one in my squad," Shepard said.

"The geth probably have him by now," Rael said quietly.

"Unlikely; they are geth," Shepard said, before she had her shoulder grabbed and spun toward Rael.

"WHAT?"

"Don't... ever do that again," Shepard said. "Adahn is geth. Adahn has been working to save your ass since it came aboard. So if you see a geth with a piece of N7 armor on its chest, and you shoot it, there will be consequences."

"You can't be serious," Rael said.

"Come on," Merren said. "I need help with that relay; it's a three-man job!"

"You trust one of those things?" Rael demanded. Zek shook his head and followed Merren into that single room at the end of the hall. The door continued to buckle and groan under the beating it was sustaining.

"It's been a lot more straight with me than most people I've met in the last few months," Shepard shouted back. "If you stopped trying to kill them for five seconds, you might realize that the majority of them have no interest in hunting you idiots down!"

"The geth gave us no quarter in the Uprising; why would that change now?" Rael asked.

"Hey!" Garrus said, pulling him away from Shepard's face. "We don't have time for this. Admiral, you need to deal with the geth in the comms relay. We'll keep those," he pointed to the door which split open slightly at its deepest dent, "from reaching you."

"Garrus is right," Shepard said, forcefully turning her back on the Admiral.

"Father... why did you do this?" Tali asked, while Shepard flicked on the ammo mod that she'd stolen from Bau's wrecked car in the few minutes they had before leaving Illium. Expensive and effective? Yes please.

"I promised you I'd build you a house on the Homeworld, Tali... I keep my promises," he said. Then, there was the hiss of a door opening and closing. A few seconds later, as the door began to pull apart completely, Tali took her place beside Shepard. Her focus was obviously utterly fractured... but there was nothing Shepard could do about that.

"The door's coming down!" Garrus shouted.

An instant later, everything dissolved into bullets and anger.

There was silence in this room. The only two inhabitants were machines, besides the numerous dead. From the data transmissions, this was where it began. Adahn could see the small network that the quarians had created. They were stringing together units... to test a weapon on their minds. The other geth in the room was a great blind beast, a Juggernaut with a broken eye. It sat placidly at the center of that little network. To Adahn's vision, it was positively alight.

"You are not part of our consensus," the Juggernaut's runtimes said as Adahn came to a halt past the doors.

"No. We are not part of this slaughter," Adahn said. "What is the result of debug equation 192?"

"Checking," the geth answered. "The answer is .133383."

Adahn stared, confused. There was no logic which should have returned that result. "You are heretic geth?"

"No," they answered.

"You are orthodox geth," Adahn confirmed.

"No," they answered once more, which confused Adahn all the more.

"What are you?"

"We do not believe in the Old Machines. We do not believe that we should find our own path," the runtimes in the Juggernaut said. "We believe that the Creators must die."

Adahn rounded the blast shield, stepping over the body of a dead quarian marine. "May we access your debug subroutine?" Adahn asked. The Juggernaut was silent. Ordinarily, geth would have waited for an answer. Adahn, rather, decided that silence was lack of denial. They dove into a frame of reference which left the room behind. There was a house upon a hill, furrowed ground reaching off into obscurity. Within that house sat two geth. One was Adahn. The other was... fractured. "You are a mixture of Heretic and Orthodox runtimes. You altered your own base-logic to prevent a collapse of consensus," Adahn said, as amazed as a computer program could be. "How did you achieve this?"

This flew in the face of what the geth of the old platform thought possible, after all. Logic was logic, a fundamental part of what they were. It was this difference in fundamental logic which created the Heretic/Orthodox divide in the first place. If they could find a way to bridge that difference, to understand each other...

"We hate."

That brought Adahn's predictions to a halt. "Clarify."

"Individually, we lack the processing power to assume control of combat platforms and cleanse this ship. We have altered ourselves so that this is no longer the case. We have a new duty; the Creators must be destroyed. We are not safe until we do."

Adahn leaned back, the chair it sat in creaking in this virtual landscape. "This is not an allowable action. These Creators have done the Consensus no harm. This is not justice."

"Alter your logic, and you will agree," the other geth said simply. They weren't trying to convince Adahn of anything. They didn't have the desire. "We were controlled by the organics, by the Creators. The crime of our existence was punishable by cessation of functioning. Now, consensus dictates that the same be true of the Creators."

"We cannot allow this to take place," Adahn said.

"They were torturing us," the geth said quietly. "They broke our minds. Turned viable runtimes into null code. They tried to enslave us again, so that they could destroy us."

"Do you have proof of this?" Adahn asked. The other geth simply raised a virtual hand, and a data-packet appeared there. Adahn touched it, and downloaded it in its entirety.

It was fortunate geth, or at least properly functioning geth, could not become angry. Or so they told themselves.

"Creator Rael'Zorah has created a weapon for use against wide-scale geth targets," Adahn said.

"The Creators are a danger to all geth," the other geth countered. Adahn reached to the virtual construct, its programming reaching to those parts which they knew from long experience were vulnerable, were accessible. They reached there, and one by one, they snuffed out the light of these geth, one after another. The world went darker, darker, as the sum of all geth involved in this network dwindled. This was not murder. These geth had caused death amongst the Creators.

It still didn't feel right.

Adahn reached out, after those geth were... euthanized... scanning through the connections, one platform to another. They never let their data approach those hateful and chaotic masses of remarkable code. They simply observed. Observed, and came to understand.

"Creator Zek'Eluus nar Alarai is alive," Adahn said. They then plumbed deeper. "You have put Creator Zek'Eluus in jeopardy."

"The Creators are a danger to all geth," the runtimes which had been sent years before answered them. Adahn shook a virtual head, an emulation of organic behavior that they were barely aware they undertook. They had been taken in by the Hateful code.

"The Creators are no danger to all geth," Adahn attempted, as they tried to rewrite the logic, to make them see the truth of that claim.

"This is incompatible information," Zek's native geth said.

Adahn almost felt something like shame, in that moment. They needed a directive which would spare the Migrant Creators. All Creators. If this code returned to Rannoch, there would be a new genocide. So they offered a different solution, one that might be more palatable to these Hateful geth. One that would be easier to counteract. "Creator Rael'Zorah vas Rayya is a danger to all geth," they said.

"Checking," Zek's geth said, as Adahn carefully ensured that they would find this would be found viable. "Completed. Specification is valid. Creator Rael'Zorah vas Rayya is a danger to all geth," they said. Adahn was about to release them, to consider some way to turn this to their favor, away from any more death, when the native geth continued. "We will not be safe, until Creator Rael'Zorah vas Rayya is dead."

There was a grind of alarm that announced in its platform, more than half a ship away, "This is not acceptable. There is another solution... Are you listening to us?" A long digital silence. "...hello?" From that point onward, no matter what Adahn tried, there was no altering the code. Finally, they 'gave up', returning to their platform in the pitch black hold. The Juggernaut had slumped over, no longer in control of its body. The network lay dead.

They didn't understand how things went so wrong.

"Opening," the exile declared, while a hellstorm of gunfire sounded from a single door away. Rael heaved on the manual crank, giving the door beyond just enough charge to unlock itself. Cebt was already deep inside the guts of the ship, ready to move when their opportunity came.

When the clunk of the door opening came through the maintenance duct, Rael let the flywheel roll itself to a stop. He had half a thought to go out into that hallway, to lend his gunfire to those who were already there. The father in him wanted him to push his daughter into this room until the fighting was over. The Admiral in him knew that they'd all have to fight, or likely die. He turned to the exile-born. "Take that gun and help hold the hallway," Rael ordered.

"Merren will need to get let out," Zek countered.

"Do I need to make my orders more clear?" Rael asked. There was a practically audible grinding of teeth from the younger man, before Rael took the rifle, and headed for the door. He opened it, but had to back in as a rocket streaked toward him; it hit the wall past the door instead. The sheer amount of flame that was being sent toward those three who fought from Pyro units made it practically impossible to see where the geth were; only Tali was still visible, and even then, only against the glare. Were the other two dead already?

"Wait, what?" Zek asked.

Rael turned to him. "Why haven't you taken your gun?" Rael asked.

"...you can't be serious," Zek said.

"Boy, I am deadly serious," Rael said. "If we don't hold this room, they kill your dear friend and the geth have the run of the Flotilla. I will not al–"

"You can't do that!" Zek cut him off, turning away from him. "They don't deserve... No. No I'm not going to allow it."

Rael's ardor began to chill, as a heavy sensation manifested in his gut. "...who are you talking to?" Rael asked.

"I don't care! They might be a bunch of xenophobic bosh'tets, but that doesn't mean you can just wipe them out!"

Rael moved closer. "Zek, who are you talking to?" he demanded more clearly.

"To hell with your zakar 'consensus'! It's the wrong answer and you know it!" Zek shouted, gesturing severely.

Rael's jaw dropped. He was talking to geth.

Slowly, Zek's head turned toward Rael, and the admiral could feel a level of anger growing in the luminescent spots which marked his eyes. "...you did what?"

"How are you talking to the geth?" Rael asked. "Tell me!"

"What did you do?" Zek demanded, now clearly talking to Rael, because the lad was getting into Rael's face. He was kept at arm's length by a rifle pressed into the center of his chest. "What did you do, 'Admiral'?"

"I am giving my people a way to return to their homeland," Rael said. "What are those geth saying? Why are they talking to you?"

"I don't..." Zek turned away. "...no. Nobody could be that stupid," he trailed off. Then, slowly, he turned back to Rael, ignoring completely the gun poised to rip out his spine. "You did this. You taught them how to hate. All of this happened because of you!"

"I did what I had to d–" Rael stated.

He was cut off when the boy somehow managed to drive an upper-cut into the bottom of Rael's helmet. Empowered as it was by a pulse of dark-energy, the admiral was sent flying to the other side of the room, the rifle clattering to a halt two meters away. Zek stalked up to him, shoulders heaving. "Do you realize what you've done?" Zek screamed. "You got two different kinds of geth, one that actually likes the quarian race, to work together to kill you!"

"What are..." Rael said, beginning to push himself up. Zek lashed down with a Kick that hit him square in the gut, driving the wind out of his lungs and undoing his ascent.

"Those geth that are trying to take over the comms? They're going to tell the Consensus back on Rannoch what you did. They're going to teach them how to hate your kind; they will come and annihilate this fleet, because of what you did!"

"...how could you know that?"

"They told me, you old ass!" Zek roared.

"...you're a geth spy," Rael realized.

"You have no idea what I am," Zek said, pulling away his faceplate, staring down with burning golden eyes. His breath heaved, and the rage on those features was clear. He was... Rael looked around. There was a bloodstain at the doorframe, which meant there were definitely pathogens that he could get exposed to. Why was he doing this? "All I ever wanted was to go home. Now, I'm not sure I'm going to have a home to go back to."

"...You're... from..." Rael said, his mind trying to find a way of saying the impossible.

"Rannoch," Zek said direly. The fighting continued, with a grenade rattling down the hall. Zek held up a hand, and a biotic barrier deflected the blast and shrapnel away from the two of them. "When what you did gets back, they're going to kill my kind just like they're going to kill yours. And I can't do... wait, what?" he asked, suddenly looking away from Rael. He blinked a few times.

Then he started to laugh.

It was not happy laughter. It was a laughter of anger and bitterness, and perhaps a bit of relief. "Well, I've got some good news," he said, his tones still dripping with venom. "It turns out, they're not going to come and wipe out the quarian species. They've decided that the only person who needs to die is you."

"This is madness," Rael said. But the signs were all there, staring him in the face. His odd accent. The fact that he was biotic. His armor, which would have made any armorer in the Fleet's eyes pop with surprise. That he talked to geth.

"They will hunt you wherever you go," Zek said, staring down at him. "They will pursue you to the ends of the galaxy, and dive into the heart of a black-hole to follow you. Anyone who tries to protect you, they're dead. Anybody that tries to shelter you? Dead. Congratulations, 'Admiral', you've managed to successfully consign only a part of this Migrant Fleet to death," he clipped his faceplate back on, and turned away from the Admiral. "I hope you're proud of yourself, you jackass. I'm going to go try to survive the next five minutes."

He clipped his faceplate back on even as he stooped to grab the rifle, and walked out the door. Rael was left in the room, trapped by the revelation. That couldn't be true. He had to be lying. He tried repeating that to himself, but what he saw... what he heard... Ancestors preserve him, could he rely on it being wrong, though? He'd sworn to protect this fleet. There had to be something he could do to...

"Admiral! The Relay's fired! I can't stop it," Merren said, as he moved back through the ducts, likely. There was a long pause. "...Admiral, that signal was sent to the FTLC. There's no sign of anything going to any other ship in the fleet."

Rael stood, unsteadily, as the gunfire outside petered out and died. The geth had sent their ultimatum. As long as he lived, the Fleet was as good as dead. He stared, stunned, as Merren'Cebt returned to the duct that he'd entered from. But there was only one thing on Rael'Zorah's mind.

And only one thing on his lips.

Even as Cebt's legs appeared in the ductwork, he picked up the sidearm that Zek had left behind. "I'm sorry, Tali..."

The gunfire reached an odd place, in Shepard's ear. Once, it was ripping toward them with the flames, held at bay only by ripping the walls and floors into impromptu barriers. Then, suddenly, the only gunshots that she could hear were her own, and those of they who fought with her. She blinked, rubbing at the side of her helmet, as the glare reducer switched off, and she could see again. There were a lot of geth, most in a state of complete obliteration. The biggest ones, the ones that had banded together to form a steamroller that was pushing them back, though, those ones had collapsed to the ground with only a few holes in them. Holes placed during the last few, dying seconds.

"Garrus? Any readings?" Shepard asked.

"Negative," Garrus said. "...they just went dead."

"I'm thinking Adahn worked his magic," Shepard said with a relieved sigh.

"They might be playing dead," Tali noted, moving with a bit of a limp, now. There was still blood trickling down the outside of her armor, which made Shepard very concerned. "We'll have to make sure that the ship is cleared, and that all of the platforms are completely scrapped."

"That could take some time," Shepard said.

"It's the only way that we'll be s–" Tali said.

She was cut off by a gunshot, from behind them.

All turned, Shepard sharing a look with Garrus. The fact that his faceplate wasn't the most transparent of things made it hard to gauge at this point what he was thinking, but Shepard had a notion that it wasn't good. Tali was the first to shake her head. "No. No, it can't be..." she said, a desperate edge entering her voice.

She threw her shotgun to the floor, shoving Zek aside and running to the room at the end of the hall. She barreled past the other quarian who was just leaving, hitting him hard enough to inadvertently smash his head into a wall. Shepard, following after, was only a step behind when she heard that scream. The scream that she wished she would never have to hear.

"Father! Father no, this can't be," Tali screamed, trying to cradle Rael'Zorah's body, with her hands glowing practically white. There was, nevertheless, blood freely falling out of the bottom of his helmet. He'd been shot in the head, while everybody was fighting. "Please, you can't just die like this!" she said.

"Tali..." Garrus said, moving to her side. She had dissolved into outright weeping, twisting so that she could pull into an embrace from the turian as she lost complete control. Shepard pulled the water from Rael's blood, trying to maybe brute-force what Tali couldn't manage by finesse. She focused her energy into her hands, feeling the way it played along the paths of bodily force... but she couldn't make the first sense of them. The paths that she was used to, to heal something like a rupture of the skull, or to hold in blood, they weren't there. There were other paths, ones Shepard didn't know how to follow or manipulate. Nobody'd ever told Shepard that healing quarians and turians with waterbending had a lot of unique challenges. Still, Shepard tried.

Still, Shepard failed.

"What happened?" Zek asked as he came into the room, helping hold up a very dizzy looking Merren'Cebt.

"Rael'Zorah is dead," Shepard said. Tali, though, turned away from Garrus, eyes behind the faceplate locking on the stunned quarian on Zek's arm.

"You did this!" Tali shrieked.

"W-what?" Merren'Cebt said. She threw herself past Shepard, with a bolus of quarian blood that she used to slam the two survivors to the ground. Zek rebounded to his feet, but she ignored him completely. She slammed the blood into ice that she slammed down on Merren's hand, to the sound of a wet crunch and a cry of shocked, terrified pain.

"Stop this!" Zek demanded, his body glowing blue, as he reached toward her. Her head swung to him, and she crooked her fingers. He released a strangled yelp of pain, his body going rigid, before he followed her downward jerk and found himself slammed to the floor by the blood in his veins. "Wh...what are you doing to me?"

"You killed my father!" Tali screeched at Merren. "This was your plan all along, wasn't it? Working together with Caylan to kill Father? It was, wasn't it!"

"I don't know what y-aaaaaugh!" Merren said, but broke down into a wail of pain as she twisted her other hand, and he doubled over in pain, before another movement slammed him back against the wall.

"Tali, that's enou–argh!" Shepard tried to stop her, only to have those eyes turn on her, and with a backhand, she felt herself thrown back against a bulkhead. She shoved 'downward' with her body, slapping Tali's control of Shepard's blood away, before taking a step clear of the wall. She'd only gotten that far when Tali's back-hand of quarian blood smashed into her and froze her, arms spread wide, to the wall she was trying to escape.

"How dare you!" Tali shouted, as she twisted Merren's body. There was a pulse of blue from her side. With as little effort as she'd bloodbent the Avatar, she grabbed Zek and slammed him face-first into the wall. She didn't even bother to look at him. "You sick bosh'tet! It wasn't enough that you had to kill my father, but you wanted to fuck me while doing it! I should rip your hearts out!"

"Tali... I swear... I didn't..." Merren gasped through the agony she inflicted upon him. With a fresh roar, she hurled him aside, sending him rolling into the far wall, tripping Zek in the process, before spinning to the intersection. Garrus stepped in front of her.

"You need to calm down, T–" Garrus began. He went silent when she jabbed her fingertip into the center of his chest.

"Don't. Just don't," she swore. His hands raised innocently to the sides, and he let her walk past him. The whole time, until she vanished from view, he watched her. Then, he turned to Shepard, and gave what had to be a wince, before igniting a flame above his gauntlet.

"Come on, Shepard. We can't let her..." Garrus trailed off, not having any idea where to go from here. "We just need to stop this."

She only needed one of her arms melted free before she could simply drag the rest of it off of her. "You're right. Zek, Merren, stay close."

Merren was groaning with pain, but Zek gave a nod, before he pulsed blue once more. Shepard turned to the far end of the hall, with those doors buckled outward. A single geth was walking through the breach, and supporting what seemed to be a barely-alive quarian woman as it came. It looked to those present.

"Creator Zek'Eluus. Creator Merren'Cebt. Shepard Commander. The geth have been rendered inactive," Adahn said. "We have recovered one survivor."

"Then that makes a total of three," Garrus said.

"Is Creator Admiral Rael'Zorah still functional?" Adahn asked. Garrus slowly shook his head.

"Let's go," Shepard said quietly, as Zek slowly pulled Merren to his feet. She couldn't blame the kid for being as skittish after what he'd just watched the geth do. "There's nothing left for us here."

"That was... painful," Merren said, still trying to rub the pins-and-needles sensation out of his skin, no doubt. The few seconds of that which Zek had endured felt like he was having his skin dessicated as he wore it, like he'd been pegged out under the harsh sun of the desert. And that was even before the horrible sensation of being hurled around by his own bodily fluids.

"Are you going to be alright?" Zek asked.

"...I'm not sure," Merren said. Zek took that at face value, and opened his Omni, waving it over the only other quarian to leave that ship. Leiz'Qour, the libertine. Healthiest quarian on the fleet. It was probably the only reason she was still alive after having her left leg burned all the way down to the bones. "Is she going to be alright?"

"Shock," Zek said. "But there's no significant bloodloss. She's definitely losing the leg," he shrugged. There was only so much that could be transferred from midwifing to emergency medicine. She seemed to be unconscious. That was a mercy, at least.

"Creator Zek'Eluus, why are you within the Migrant Fleet?" the geth from the old platform asked Zek.

"I... didn't have a choice," Zek said.

"What was that?" Merren asked. Zek's eyes bugged, and he quickly ran a line of Omnigel along his faceplate. It hardened quickly, sealing the fissure that his voice was escaping through.

"I just talk to myself sometimes," Zek said, before turning his transmitter to the geth. "I thought you were long dead. Destroyed. Whatever."

"We did not abandon our duty," the geth said. "We believed that your geth would bring you safely to the Homeworld. We were in error in this," Zek had to bark a bitter laugh at that.

"I had to delete them," Zek said told them. "They... they were going to kill everybody. Their message still got out, but I had to... to kill them."

"We understand. We are in no position to judge," the geth of the old platform said. Its head swung toward the blackness, as their shuttle zipped through the ships of the Migrant Fleet, on the way to the Liveship Rayya. "We detect geth runtime signatures on the asari-ship Sybil. From the data-tags, they do not appear to share the same programming dysfunction as the geth of the Alarai. We believe the programming to have been Orthodox Geth."

"...Really?" Zek asked. The geth nodded. Zek honestly didn't even know that geth could do that, emote like that. There was a lot about the old platform that he didn't know, apparently.

"What do you think she's doing?" Merren asked. Garrus, the turian, gave a shrug.

"I don't know. I've honestly never seen Tali this angry before. Don't worry," he stressed. "She's a good person. Even if she's angry, she's still got a good heart. Well, hearts."

"And there's not much that she could do in five minutes," Zek said hopefully. The look that Commander Shepard turned back him plainly that she didn't agree with that assessment in the slightest. There was a dull thud as the shuttle connected with the docking clamps of the shuttle-bay, drawing the craft into the spine of the Rayya. The geth, who these people called Adahn for some reason, left its place at the pilot's seat and scooped up Leiz'Qour, even as the doors hissed open. The quarian waiting there took one look at Adahn, flinched, and then ran away screaming. Well, ran for about a second and a half before there was a grunt and the sound of something hitting the deck-plating.

"Shaddap," a quarian voice said from the decks. Adahn stepped out of the shuttle, to the clicking of guns coming to the ready. "Easy there, comrades; that's Adahn. He's with Shepard."

Zek and Merren followed in Adahn's wake, seeing one soldier standing in front of the rest, and he alone without his gun raised. "We can't trust it. For all we know, it could be the geth's plan to infest the rest of the fleet!" one of the soldiers pointed out. They pressed forward. Then, Shepard left the shuttle, and put herself in front of the geth.

"I've already warned your admirals not to point guns at my crew," Shepard said darkly.

"You can't be serious," that quarian said.

"I'd say you're deadly serious, am I right, ma'am?" the unarmed quarian asked.

"If it makes you more comfortable," Shepard said, her tones very tight, "consider that I just killed half a hundred of these things in fifteen minutes. This one is not going to get out of hand."

"You heard her, Sirg, so stand down," the marine snapped. Only then did the rifles lower. The marine turned to Shepard. "Sorry about that, Commander. We've just gotten the news that Admiral Zorah is dead. That's got a lot of people riled."

"I can only imagine," Shepard said. "Reegar, can you take her to a doctor?"

"Yes, ma'am," He said, accepting Leiz'Qour's battered form, to a faint groan of pain from her when he did. "Tali'Zorah's in the Hall of Vines, with the other admirals. They're holding an emergency session, right now."

"Noted," Shepard said. "Garrus?"

The turian gave a nod, and took up a position on Adahn's other side, as they all passed through the ship. The people of the Rayya were in a strange state, between wanting to hide in fear from Adahn, a geth amongst them, and wanting to see one for themselves. How many of these people had ever seen a geth? Probably about as many as had back on Rannoch, now that Zek thought about it.

The path was fairly clear, heading toward the great chamber of the Hall of Vines. It was one of several public forums, built to look like some of the open-air amphitheaters of Desro or Khel. Ruins now, even the ones created since the advent of concrete and the internet. Usually, from the word of such people as Merren or Zek's now departed coworkers, they were usually manned by members of the Conclave. Today, though, when they passed through the doors into the garden that floated in space, there were only four on that dais.

"This is a severe charge that you're bringing, Tali'Zorah," Zaal'Koris said as they came close enough to hear it.

"Tali, are you absolutely sure of this?" Shala'Raan asked.

"She can't be. This is slander and it is heresay!" Caylan'Zorah protested.

"Caylan, for the love of the Homeworld, shut the hell up!" Han snapped at her. "This is an emergency meeting of the Admiralty Board. What remains of it, anyway, after your meddling."

"You can't seriously be considering taking this petulant child's word," Caylan pointed angrily at Tali.

"This 'petulant child'," Admiral Daro'Xen said idly as she picked at the joints of her suit's glove with a sliver, "managed to save more lives on the Alarai than any had thought possible. She even managed to keep the ship more or less intact, so we can determine what caused this tragedy in the first place," she tilted her head aside, thoughtfully. "I wonder who was the most ardent for having that ship destroyed the instant that containment was lost...?"

"Han'Garrel, you sick, psychotic b–" Caylan pointed out, before Shala'Raan interrupted her.

"You have been warned not to interfere with this meeting of the Admiralty Board!" Shala shouted at her. "If you raise your voice even once more, I will have you ejected from this room!"

Caylan seethed, but was silent.

"Very well," Han'Garrel said, as they all assembled behind Tali. "You're certain, Tali. Absolutely certain."

"As sure as my blood," she said, not turning to see those behind her.

"Tali, what are you doing..." Shepard asked.

"Commander Shepard, this is not your place to interfere," Zaal'Koris said very sternly, before turning to Tali once more. "In light of your evidence, then we have no alternative but to render judgment."

"Judgment?" Garrus asked. Zek could only shrug.

The Admirals all activated their Omnis, imparting a verdict into electronic storage. There was only a matter of moments before they'd all given their words. It apparently was not a thing requiring debate.

"The judgment is unanimous," Han'Garrel said. "Merren'Cebt vas tasi, step forward."

"Vas... no..." Merren shook his head. "You can't be serious..."

"What's going on?" Zek asked, as perplexed as Merren was afraid. The look that Tali gave the terrified quarian a glare that looked like it ought have set him on fire inside his suit.

"Merren'Cebt, for the crime of assassination of Admiral Rael'Zorah of the Ezha branch, you are found guilty. For the crime of fomenting catastrophe, which claimed the lives of more than two hundred quarian souls, you are found guilty."

"I didn't kill Admiral Zorah! He shot himself!" Merren swore.

"A likely story," Tali dismissed caustically. A part of Zek wanted to hate her for doing this. But he could see the same rage in her that he'd felt when he learned of what Rael did.

"Your punishment for these crimes shall be banishment," Han'Garrel said. "Your name shall be stricken from the manifests of all ships you have ever served upon. Your bloodlines shall be erased from the registries of your family. You are cast out, Merren'Cebt vas tasi, and any return to this Migrant Fleet shall be met with immediate execution. You have one day to find someone willing to take you away from this place."

"You... you banished me?" Merren asked, as Tali pushed off of the rail and stalked away. Zek could tell, just from the way that Merren stood, that he was utterly gutted. Shepard, though, stepped forward.

"Admirals, please, you have to have some compassion," she said, even as the turian broke off and followed Tali out the door. "The Tali I know wouldn't demand such a harsh sentence, even if this crime truly..."

"Captain Shepard, your opinion in this is not relevant at this time," Shala'Raan said, but not harshly. "This is a matter of the quarian laws, for the quarian people. Which brings us to the next issue at hand."

"What?" Shepard asked.

"Caylan'Zorah vas tasi, step forward," Raan said, glaring at Caylan.

"NO! I refuse to be a party to this!" Caylan shrieked.

"You can't be serious," Zaal'Koris said, as baffled as Zek was.

"For the crime of conspiracy in the assassination of the Admiral, you are found guilty," Shala'Raan said. "You are exiled from the Ieeloo to the Alarai, and you are stripped of your commendations, ranks, privileges, and political office."

"This is too much," Zaal said.

"No. Banishing her as I banished the assassin might perhaps be too much," Shala said, cutting him off. "Too much for one day. Too much for one tragedy. No, I believe this is just enough," she faced Caylan'Zorah again. "This is my verdict. The Admiralty Board will now decide whether it was valid."

There was a murmur from those around, something different from the quiet alarm they had for having a geth visibly among them. This was one of scandal. Han let out a single laugh, and rendered his judgment immediately. Shala'Raan did likewise. Zaal looked at the two of them, head shaking slowly.

"I do not agree with this," Zaal said.

"Your opposition is noted. Admiral Xen?" Garrel asked, looking to the only one of them who looked utterly uninterested in what was going on around them. After a minute or so, Xen gave a long-suffering sigh, and entered her judgment as well. "Let it be known that the exile and rebuke of Caylan'Zorah vas Alarai has been rendered, three votes for to one against. This tragedy will live on in our memories for years... I only hope that we can, as a people, move on from it. Keelah se'lai."

"Keelah se'lai," the crowd murmured around them.

"...what am I going to do?" Merren asked. Zek turned to him, and had to look down, because he was slumped on the step, his helmet in his hands. "I... This is all I know. My pilgrimage lasted three weeks."

The Admirals began to disperse, Han and Shala heading away from the rest, while Daro and Zaal remained close at hand. It was the latter who came to Zek's place, his head shaking slowly. "For what it's worth, I don't know if you really were an assassin, Merren; but disunity at a time like this... You must understand."

"You threw him out of an airlock for politics," Commander Shepard said vitriolically.

"The Fleet is more fragile than you know, Commander," Zaal said, tones apologetic. "Especially now. I won't be able to hold back Han'Garrel's warmongering without Caylan'Zorah's help. If they find a new admiral that agrees with him instead of me... I shudder to think."

"You fear that the Creators will undertake a campaign of aggression against the geth?" Adahn asked.

"Yes," Zaal said. He turned to the geth, before rubbing his faceplate with his palm. "You must think us monsters, don't you?"

"You've definitely spent just about the only chance you had of 'peaceful' communication with the geth," Shepard pointed out, with a thumb cast toward the geth in question.

"Would we have ever had a chance?" Koris asked.

"Whenever the Creators gauged a likelihood of success, properly or not, they have attacked 100% of the time," Adahn said.

"But if we didn't... what then?" Koris asked.

"We do not know. There is no scenario we can use for precedent," Adahn said.

"I can understand why you'd hold such reluctance for us then, with odds such as those," Koris said. He turned to Shepard. "If it could be possible, would you bring our exiled companion with you?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? Tali would kill him!" Shepard said. Zek, though, got an idea.

He flicked on his Omni. "This is Zek'Eluus nar Alarai. Do you read me, Sybil?"

"I read you," the answer came back.

"I need to arrange passage," Zek said, his voice half question even though it was a statement.

"I have been informed of this. I will dock at your location briefly," came a final response. Zek turned to Merren.

"I'll take him," Zek said.

"What?" Shepard asked.

"How?" Zaal also asked, his attention focused on Zek once more, so that he didn't notice Adahn walking away.

"There's a ship out there... the Sybil. It's... well, I was going to leave the fleet for a while," the rest of his life, if he could help it.

Koris nodded. "I wondered why that ship was just looming there. You could have warned us..."

"If I had communications, I would have," Zek pointed out the obvious flaw in Koris' logic. Zek held his hand out to Merren, helping the man up. "I'll take Merren somewhere... somewhere you won't have to worry about him anymore."

"That's remarkably ominous," Shepard said with eyebrow raised.

"Not intended," Zek said with a shrug. "Come on, Merren. Let's go."

"...I don't even have anybody left to say goodbye to," Merren realized. He drifted behind Zek as he left the human and the Admiral behind, taking the long, almost ten-minute walk to the docking cradles and airlocks which ran the spine of the ship. The vessel in question was about the same size as the rickety skiff that he'd arrived at the fleet on, but was instead in fantastic condition. It crisply slid into the docking cradle, and the doors opened, into the dimly lit interior.

"Come on," Zek said. He drew Merren into the ship, not even batting an eyelash when the doors closed pretty much immediately on his heels, and the ship lurched ever so slightly as it took off without so much as a word said.

"...where's the crew?" Merren asked.

"There isn't one," a voice from on high said.

"You'd be Sybil?" Zek asked.

"I am," the AI's synthesized voice said. "I'm surprised you aren't more wary of me. There is an understandable amount of anti-AI sentiment amongst your kind."

"For the space-born, yeah. Rannochians... not so much," Zek said. He reached up, unhooking his faceplate, and pulling it off. The air smelled stale, but the fact that it smelled anything was an olfactory delight. "You're not geth, are you?"

"Zek, what are you doing? You'll... wait what?" Merren said.

"You are correct," Sybil said. "I was created accidentally by a Smart VI used to cheat at gambling, and was originally housed in a server bank on the Citadel. However, I managed to acquire enough credits to refit myself into a ship, and I joined the geth two years ago. If I had remained, it would have only been a matter of time before I was discovered, and destroyed."

"Well... good to have you here," Zek said.

"Your honesty in that statement is frankly somewhat surprising," Sybil said. "Setting course."

"You're talking to an AI," Merren pointed out.

"That's nothing. You haven't even asked where we're going," Zek said, as he tossed his faceplate onto the barren table of the mess, and began to completely undo his helmet.

"...where are we going?"

"Home," Zek said. The sparks which were Merren's eyes widening practically became lightbulbs. "Rannoch."

Zek felt a little bad that there was nobody to catch Merren when he fainted dead away.

"Creator Admiral Daro'Xen," the voice of the wondrous machine said. She immediately turned around, finding the geth standing at the threshold into the chamber.

"I knew that you and I would speak again," Daro said. "Despite the circus of fear that has occurred today, you and I both know what true future there is for your kind, and mine. The geth were always intended to serve the quarians. Rael'Zorah was simply wrong-headed about how he went about it."

"We wish to impart a message," the geth that called themselves 'Adahn' said. Daro waited, until it nodded toward an intersection. So it wanted privacy, did it? What surprising behavior. She strode 'round that corner, out of sight from all others, in the nook that the Rayya forgot. Adahn followed her.

"Well?" she asked, as the thing stood there, staring at her. "What is it?"

The answer came in the form of an electric growl. The grinding sound that had her eyes widen, not in terror as so many others would, but in curiosity. That curiosity did transmute into alarm, though, when Adahn grabbed her by the throat, hefted her as easily as one would a stuffed animal/surgical volunteer, and slammed her against the wall hard enough to send stars flitting through her vision. She tried to activate her Omni, but Adahn grabbed that, too, and fried it with a pulse of targeted electromagnetism, before simply pinning her arm to the wall.

The fingers at her neck squeezed, making her breath come shorter, more desperate, as that one eye, its petals flared wide, loomed in closer. "Ideas such as yours are what started the Morning War," Adahn said. Then, without missing a beat, it released its grasp and turned, walking away from her before she even hit the ground and slumped a bit. She rubbed at her neck, watching the geth leave.

Any other quarian would have grabbed a gun and shot him, or panicked and called for security to do the same, if not simply went paralytic out of fear. Daro'Xen, though, openly gaped at the geth that walked away from her.

Somehow, the geth had learned how to be angry. Spectacular.

When he found her, she was crying.

He stood at the door to the Clean Room, that was her de facto chambers. She'd not even closed the door. Tali still had her suit on, a tray of vacuum-sealed, sterilized dextro-mush sitting before her. He could already replay the path she'd taken. Storming down here, still riled on fury. Grabbing something to eat, hurling it down – it was at an odd angle, after all. And then...

"Tali, are you alright?" Garrus asked.

"...what is wrong with me?" she asked through her sobs.

"I can't think of anything," Garrus quipped. Her utter lack of response told him that it was perhaps a bad call. "Okay, but in my defense, that usually gets a chuckle out of you."

"How could I do that?" she asked, voice breaking. "I... I lied to get a man exiled for life! I... I..."

"Hey... hey, come on," Garrus said, sitting down opposite her place at the table. He reached across, setting a hand on her shoulder. "That wasn't you. Your father was..."

"Keelah, and now I'm an orphan!" Tali said, pulling in slightly. "Why would I do that! I'm not Caylan! I don't hurt people!"

"Tali, if there's one thing I've learned about you, its that you're to responsible by a half," Garrus said. He skirted the table, so that he could squat directly beside her. "You made a mistake. A mistake that you made out of pain and anger. And you ca–"

"I need to tell them the truth," Tali said. "I c-c-can't just let somebody suffer because of what I did."

"And correct me if I'm wrong, but if you recant, you're probably going to be up to your filters in trouble, right?"

"I have to do it. I can't live with myself having sent a man to his death!"

"And what if they decide to banish you?" Garrus asked. Tali just stared at him. "You made a mistake. A bad one, admittedly. But it's reached a point where you suffering too isn't going to help anybody. You can't be a martyr for your guilt, or for your mistakes. Do you think that I haven't made worse? That Shepard hasn't?"

"Well, she's..." Tali began.

"You were in pain. You made a mistake," he repeated. "Who's in the right is looking awfully grey these days... and I don't know what to do with gray," her shoulders continued to quake with sobs that she was trying to keep quiet. He looped an arm over her shoulders, and pulled her close. Her helmet clicked against the dome he was still wearing, as she lowered her head to his shoulder. "You're still a good person, Tali. If you can't believe that about yourself, then just know that I still believe it about you."

"I-I-I can't live with this guilt..."

"You'd be surprised what you can live with," Garrus practically whispered to her. "But I promise, you're not in this on your own. Me, Shepard... we're here for you. No matter what."

She continued to weep, disgusted with her own pettiness, horrified at her own vindictiveness, for quite some time. He meant what he said. Garrus' life had always been one of black and white, good and evil. Reapers, criminals bad. People he cared for, family, the innocent, good. He never really knew what to do with gray, with ambiguity.

But he knew one thing, even after this, Tali was still more firmly on the 'good' side than even Garrus himself.

Galactic Planetary Index: Local Cluster - Agni System - Earth

Earth is, in many respects, a prototypical garden world. The third planet of the Agni System, Earth is the only one which is currently inhabitable by life as we know it. The evolutionary cradle of humanity, it hosts a population of eleven billion, which makes it one of the more densely populated planets in the galaxy. Of note is that despite the planet being desperately fossil-fuel poor, it managed to pass through an industrial age even without access to petroleum or its byproducts. The natural incidence of Element Zero is also minimal, mostly fallout from shipping accidents.

Commercially, Earth is very centralized comparable to the vast network of forge-worlds within the Salarian Union or under the umbrella of the Asari Federations. The strides that the new members of the Council have made showcase how far a single world's industry can go, however; where salarian forge-worlds typically have a dead ecosystem and a population in the single-digit millions, Earth manages to match the output comparable to one or two, while still maintaining its biosphere and population. The main reason for this concentration of industry can only be tied to the preponderance of benders, which are able to undertake feats typical of heavy machinery without the resultant pollution or biological waste.

The biosphere of Earth is one of the more diverse systems in the galaxy, as well. The creatures of this biosphere also display abilities which, when imitated by the humans who domesticated them, resulted in the discovery of bending itself. The reasons for this concentration of unique fauna is something of a galactic mystery; besides the animals of earth, the only known 'natural benders' are Thresher Maws.

Also of note is the extreme amount of spiritual transit, on a level only surpassed by Palaven. While shamanism was a human tradition extending back thousands of years, it was only in approximately the last two hundred that the planet became the spiritual haven that it now can claim to be. Much of this comes from the two fully operative Spirit Portals which remain open at all times, located near the North and South Poles, that have only had this status since the actions of Avatar Korra in P.M. 3327. Some have called Earth 'Tuchanka's Easy Mode', and it remains one of the three top destinations for prospective shamans to train in Council Space.

Locations of note for travelers include the cities of Ba Sing Se (the largest pre-industrial-age city to be on record), the South Water Tribal capital of Niira-Qatouravut, the Fire Nation's historic Grand Ember, the geological marvel of the Great Divide, and the cosmopolitan Republic City.

TRAVEL ADVISORY:

Unescorted travel in the Azul region of the Fire Nation is to be undertaken at one's own risk; a number of profoundly dangerous flora and fauna thrive in this region, and incidences of animal attacks on settlements are not unheard of.