10 May 2183, Zhu's Hope/Feros
Nine of us descended into the Thorian's pits.
Shepard led us, with Ashley, Garrus, and Wrex at his side. Kaidan and I stayed in the center of the formation, ready to bring telekinetic force to bear in any direction, or apply medical aid as needed. The rest of the Marines walked at the rear: Jean-Paul Bayard, Heinrich Müller, and Alexei Dubyansky. At Shepard's orders, most of us switched to shotguns, expecting close-order combat against the Thorian's proxies in the cramped tunnels. Only Kaidan and I stayed with our pistol and submachine gun, expecting to be more effective as biotics.
All of us wore sealed suits. I had gone through a complete armor check, with Ashley ruthlessly swapping out any piece whose seals didn't meet with her approval. None of us wanted to take any chances breathing air laced with the Thorian's spores.
As we descended, the stairwells and tunnels took on a disturbingly biological appearance. Thick ropes and webs of vegetable matter hung on the walls, scum-covered water pooled on the floor. We saw white masses of tissue in dark corners, like enormous tumors. Stray air currents rose to the level of a strong breeze at irregular intervals. My suit sensors reported relative humidity of one hundred percent, with all manner of strange organic compounds in the air. Had any of us opened our faceplates, the stench alone would probably have been enough to knock us flat.
It was like descending into the depths of a stagnant marsh . . . or the bowels of some enormous beast.
The Marines chattered at first, but as the surroundings became more alien, more threatening, they fell silent. Even Garrus and Wrex, usually irrepressible when a fight was in the offing, found themselves with nothing to say.
Finally Shepard stopped dead, looking ahead of us. "I . . . think we're going to need bigger guns."
Slowly we moved forward, all of us staring upward in fearful awe.
We saw the Thorian.
In five hundred years I have seen many strange and alien life-forms. Some of them have been grand, others have been terrible, and a few have been both. I think nothing could possibly compare to the sight of Harbinger sweeping down out of a stormy sky, its vast arms spreading wide to devour all light, its howl of devastating thunder sounding from horizon to horizon.
The Thorian came close.
A great well stood at the core of the Prothean structure, about thirty meters in diameter, probably intended to bring in natural light for the long-dead inhabitants. We had emerged onto a broad portico, its inner side open to the well, a place where Protheans might once have gathered to enjoy fresh air and sunlight.
Now a vast vegetable mass occupied the well, a lumpy sphere over twenty meters across and suspended about ten meters above our level. It must have massed thousands of metric tons. The sunlight gleamed on its flanks, setting off hues of gold, green, and brown. It had a horny carapace, and several clusters of massive tentacles. It seemed to expand and contract slowly, taking in and expelling air like an enormous bellows. Several thick cables of vegetable fiber, each of them well over a meter thick, anchored on the sides of the well to support the thing's enormous weight. Another thick cable depended from the central mass, falling into shadow down in the well, possibly maintaining a connection to the world-spanning mat of plant tissue on the surface far below.
All of us stared at it. Short of high explosives, none of us could see how we could possibly harm it.
After several moments, I became aware that the mass heaved and strained, as if trying to expel some foreign object. A cluster of tentacles moved slowly to hover over the edge of our portico. Another heave, and a rush of greasy fluids spilled out on the floor. Shepard backed away apprehensively.
A form emerged from the mass of tentacles: bipedal, slender, and very graceful. It dropped to the floor, landing in an elegant crouch, and then rose to a standing position. It showed no concern for its nudity, or for the sheen of oils that ran down its body to pool on the floor. It raised a crested head and looked at all of us with piercing jade eyes.
Corporal Müller made a vulgar comment, earning a sharp rebuke from Kaidan.
Aside from its vivid green coloring, the creature was perfectly asari. In fact, I recognized it.
"Shiala?" I breathed in shock.
"Who?" asked Shepard.
"This looks like Shiala, one of my mother's acolytes, as well as a childhood friend of mine." I took a deep breath. "I mentioned her to you before. It was Shiala who remained in communication with me for a number of years, after my mother and I stopped speaking to each other."
"Liara, I don't think that's really an asari," said Kaidan.
"Of course not. It must be another of the Thorian's proxies. Still, the resemblance to Shiala is quite remarkable."
Then the Shiala-thing decided to speak. "Invaders! Your every step is a transgression. A thousand feelers appraise you as meat, fit only to dig or to decompose. I speak for the Old Growth, as I did for Saren. You stand within and before the Thorian. It commands that you be in awe!"
Even the voice is the same. Although Shiala never sounded quite that arrogant.
"Liara, does this make sense to you?" asked Shepard.
I thought quickly, and realized I had at least a hypothesis. "We know Saren came here. He needed something from the Thorian. Perhaps he bargained with it, using Shiala as an intermediary?"
"How would that work?"
I glanced up at the creature's central mass, and shivered. "Shiala could have melded with the Thorian."
"Could she even do that?" asked Kaidan.
"Yes, if it has anything approximating a nervous system. Which it must, however exotic the biological mechanisms involved."
"You understand," said the proxy. "Saren sought knowledge of those who are gone. The Old Growth listened to flesh for the first time in the Long Cycle. Trades were made."
"Would you be willing to trade with us as well?" asked Shepard. "I need the same knowledge that Saren took."
"Never. After Saren departed, his Cold Ones came and sought the destruction of the Old Growth. They began killing the flesh meant to tend the next cycle. Flesh fairly given! Falsehood and betrayal!"
Shepard sighed. "Yes, Saren has a habit of doing that."
"The Old Growth sees the air you push as lies! There will be no more trades with flesh!"
"Well, if you won't bargain, then you had better listen to this: I won't let you keep the slaves you've taken. Release them, now."
"No more will the Old Growth listen to those that scurry and nibble and betray. Your lives may be short, but they have already gone on too long. Your flesh will feed the ground and the new growth!"
With that, the Shiala-thing made a commanding gesture and ignited with blue light. A telekinetic bolt flew out, hurling Shepard backward against a stone column.
More of the half-formed humanoid proxies flooded onto the portico from both sides.
That quickly, we found ourselves fighting for our lives.
I couldn't begin to make sense of the battle. We had no plan, no doctrine, and no tactics. All of us simply did what we must to survive from moment to moment.
Garrus, Bayard, and Müller stood back to back, using their shotguns to keep the proxies at bay.
Wrex roared, seized one of the proxies in both hands, and simply ripped the thing in half. It continued trying to attack him until he stomped it to mush beneath his boots.
The proxy creatures caught Ash on her own, surrounding her in the first moments of the fight. Somehow she became a creature of agility and raw reflex, spinning to the four quarters, dealing out a roundhouse kick one moment and a shotgun blast the next. A goddess of war, who none of the Thorian's creatures quite managed to touch.
Shepard picked himself up, shook himself briefly to make sure nothing was broken, and then hurled himself into the wild melee.
Kaidan and I shared a lightning-swift glance, each of us in an instant knowing what the other intended. Then we went hunting for the Shiala-thing. We didn't have far to look.
It moved like a trained asari commando: fast, graceful, and deadly. It lacked armor or weapons, but if anything its biotics were more powerful than anything I remembered from Shiala. I suspected genetic meddling on the part of the Thorian.
It watched for opportunities, using biotic pulls and throws to knock our people off balance. I saw it hurl Private Dubyansky off his feet and into a mass of the proxy creatures. A viciously strong pull broke up the triangle formation Garrus had set up with the Marines.
I took a chance. "Shiala!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, and used my submachine gun to hurl a storm of bullets at it.
Distracted, it turned to me.
In that moment, Kaidan threw a powerful biotic pull of his own, yanking the Shiala-monster off its feet. I followed up with a ferocious throw, hurling the creature off the edge of the portico to fall into the depths.
Without the Shiala-creature to help, the Thorian's proxies weren't nearly as effective. Slowly the tide turned, the creatures collapsing or splattering across the walls as we destroyed them one by one. In a few minutes we stood in the quiet, breathing hard, wondering how we had survived.
Not all of us had gotten out of the battle unscathed. Shepard looked around and assessed the situation, counting the wounded. "Müller, get Dubyansky and Vakarian back to the Normandy for medical, then report to Lieutenant Pressley."
"Ooo-rah," grunted Müller. He turned to support Alexei and Garrus as they moved away, nursing broken bones. Garrus also had some bad chemical burns, where the proxies' acidic bile ate through the seals of his armor.
"Sir, there's something unusual over here," reported Bayard.
We went to look. The Marine had found one of the anchor points for the Thorian's supporting cables, attached to the outer wall a few meters away. Upon closer examination, it appeared to be more than just an attachment point. I saw some kind of bulbous organs in the end of the cable, and a hint of fluids moving back and forth under the surface.
"Stand back," Shepard ordered, and aimed his shotgun.
Blam – blam – blam!
The cable shuddered and then tore loose from the wall, spilling fetid liquids everywhere. Out in the well, the Thorian's central mass heaved and wallowed, emitting a sound like an enormous low-pitched shriek.
"It felt that," said Shepard, smiling grimly. "Let's go find some more."
It took us well over an hour to kill the Thorian. It felt like a dreadful eternity.
The main body of the Thorian had no power to harm us directly. On the other hand, it seemed to have an unlimited supply of humanoid proxies, to hurl at us in endless waves. Occasionally another Shiala-thing joined the attack, sweeping down upon us in a wave of biotic power. We advanced slowly, earning every meter of progress with firepower and determination.
Without the advantage of surprise, the Thorian never again came so close to overwhelming us. We took no more casualties.
That doesn't mean we did not suffer.
Killing is not so easy as it seems. Killing in great numbers is worse, even for soldiers who have already seen many terrible battles. The Thorian's proxies may have been made of vegetable fiber and acidic bile, they may have been mindless, but they looked human enough. We found it difficult to keep violently destroying them. Shepard and his Marines became grim and silent, their eyes dull, as they killed and killed and killed.
Only Wrex seemed to revel in the endless warfare, but then he was krogan and born to it. In any case, he had no reason to see the Thorian's proxies as resembling his own kind.
Of course, I had to keep killing monsters that looked just like one of my oldest friends.
Once a Shiala-thing leaped out of nowhere, sending a bolt of biotic force at me. I blocked its attack with my own barrier, used a cheironomia technique to throw the clone to the floor, and then smashed it in the throat with a biotic-enhanced hammer blow. Its eyes stared into mine as it thrashed and died. Eyes just like Shiala's, aside from their color.
Goddess. Four hundred years later, I still wake up screaming once in a while.
As we proceeded to demolish each attachment point in turn, the Thorian became more desperate. Its proxies attacked with more ferocity, sometimes driving us into a fighting retreat for long minutes until the wave exhausted itself. I thought I could hear rage, pain, and eventually terror in its echoing screams.
It was callous and arrogant. Who knows how many beings it enslaved over millions of years? Yet it was also vast, ancient, and very probably unique, and we destroyed it.
When Shepard demolished the last of the Thorian's nerve trunks, it lost its grip. Cables tore and snapped, the sounds almost musical but extremely loud. The frayed cable-ends whipped about in all directions, forcing us to dive for cover. With a final howl, the central mass tumbled and fell down the shaft, leaving nothing behind but echoes.
For the first time in ages, Shepard closed his shotgun and stood without a weapon in his hand.
"Damn it," he said, his voice utterly weary.
The others moved to lean against stone columns, or even to sit on the floor, glad to take a moment to rest and recover their sanity. I went to Shepard, pulling my helmet off . . . wincing at the stench, which was exactly as terrible as I had imagined. "What's wrong?"
He removed his own helmet, revealing a pale face, slick with sweat. "All of this. I needed to know what the Thorian told Saren. It might have been just the clue he needed to find the Conduit. I can't think of anything else that could have brought him to this God-forsaken planet. Now it's gone. What a waste."
"There was no other way to free the colonists," I told him.
"I know. It's a victory . . . but what's our next step? What if Saren has everything he needs now? Did we just save a few hundred colonists, at the cost of the whole galaxy?"
"I don't know, Shepard." I wanted to take him in my arms, but not in front of the others. I settled for holding his gaze and trying to send him strength. "Let's go check on the colonists, make sure they're well, and then go back to the Normandy. We can't give up now."
"No." He rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me a grim smile. "The game's not over yet. Come on."
We turned to go, the others rising to follow us up the long trail to Zhu's Hope.
"Wait a minute," said Ashley. "Commander, look!"
We turned to look where she was pointing. There in a shadowed corner, we saw one of the big masses of pasty white tissue, adhering to the wall. Most of these had been still as we passed them, but this one was moving, stretching, finally tearing open. A body rolled out of it, falling to the floor in an ungainly heap. Slender, feminine, nude, skin of purest blue . . .
Suddenly I understood what we were seeing. "Shiala!"
Tendrils wrapped around her limbs and throat, delved obscenely into all the orifices of her body, connecting her to the innards of the pulpy mass from which she had emerged. Shepard and I pulled on them, gently at first, then more firmly as she showed no signs of distress. When we cleared her throat she suddenly convulsed, her lungs going into violent spasms. A flood of greenish liquid spilled out of her mouth and across the floor. She gasped, coughed, retched, and then she breathed air once more.
I don't think she realized who I was until I helped her to rise. Finally she brought her head up and found herself staring directly into my face.
"Liara?"
Then her knees buckled and she almost fell into my embrace. I held her as tightly as I could and whispered comfort in her ear.
Finally she felt strong enough to stand on her own. She looked around at all of us and took a deep breath. "Thank you, all of you. Thank you for my freedom."
"Your name is Shiala?" Shepard asked gently.
"That's right." She glanced at me. "Liara will have mentioned me. I serve . . . I served Matriarch Benezia. When she allied herself with Saren, so did I. I'm very glad to meet you, Commander Shepard."
"You know who I am?"
"Oh yes," she breathed. "All of Saren's followers know who you are. Years ago, he prevented another man from becoming the first human Spectre: your mentor, David Anderson. Now to have you succeed where Anderson failed, to have you as the hunter on his trail and the shadow at his heels? You cannot imagine his frustrated rage."
Shepard smiled slowly, with an edge sharp enough to cut glass. "Good."
"How did you end up as part of the Thorian?" I asked.
"Saren needed me to communicate with it, to learn its secrets. I joined my mind to that of the Thorian." Even after all she had been through, her face took on an expression of wonder for a moment. "It was a remarkable experience . . . but once Saren had what he needed, I was no longer useful. He bartered me to the Thorian in exchange for his safe departure. I became its thrall, the genetic source for an eventual army of cloned warriors."
"He's pretty quick to betray his own people."
Shiala nodded. "He was quick to betray the Thorian as well. After he escaped safely, he ordered the geth to destroy all evidence of its existence. Saren knows you are searching for the Conduit. He needed to prevent you from gaining what he called the Cipher."
"I don't understand. What's the Cipher? What does it have to do with the Conduit?"
"The beacon on Eden Prime gave both of you visions . . . but the visions are confusing and unclear."
Shepard nodded. "I'll say. I've had no luck making sense of them."
"Neither did Saren, until he came here. The visions were meant for a Prothean mind. To truly comprehend them, you must be capable of thinking like a Prothean. You must understand their language, their culture, their history, everything that made them distinctive and unique. The Thorian had that knowledge. When the Protheans lived on Feros, it watched and studied them. It made some of them its thralls, just as it made me and the humans above its thralls. When they died, it consumed them. They became a part of it. That knowledge is the Cipher."
I stepped in. "Shepard, I think I understand. Remember our assessment of Saren's objectives? He needs some way to translate the visions into symbols and images that would make sense to his mind. At the time we couldn't see how he might accomplish that."
"But if he could learn to think like a Prothean, then he wouldn't need a translation anymore. He would be able to understand the vision directly."
"That is correct," said Shiala. "The Cipher gave him the ability to fathom the vision in its entirety. It was not enough to find the Conduit, but it was an enormous step forward. Saren is very close to attaining his goals."
"Then I need the Cipher too. How do I get it, now that the Thorian is gone?"
Shiala smiled. "There is a way. I retain the knowledge from my own melding with the Thorian. If I were to join my mind with yours . . ."
It felt like a sudden electric current surging through me, a wave of jealous anger. No. He is mine!
Shiala had always been very sensitive to the moods of others. She must have sensed something of my emotional state. "Liara, is something wrong?"
I swallowed my rage and concentrated on maintaining a serene façade. "No. Nothing at all."
She looked at me more closely and lowered her voice, so that no one but the three of us would hear. "Liara? Are you involved with this human?"
Shepard gave me a sharp glance, suddenly understanding, but said nothing.
I sighed, feeling the anger ebbing away, leaving only bitter defeat in its wake. "Yes, Shiala. Shepard and I are . . . exploring the possibilities. He and I have not joined as yet."
"I understand. Commander, I don't wish to intrude on your relationship with Liara, but I truly see no other way. The Cipher cannot be taught, only experienced."
"Can you give us a minute?"
She nodded and moved gracefully away, going to speak to the others.
Shepard turned and planted himself before me, resting his hands on my shoulders. "Liara."
I shook my head angrily. "Don't say it. I know what you have to do."
"That's right. If this is the only way for us to salvage something out of this disaster, then I have to do it." He placed a gentle hand under my chin, tipping my face up so he could look into my eyes. "Liara. I love you."
It was the first time he said it. I felt tears spring to my eyes for a moment. "And I love you, Shepard. I know this has to happen. I just . . . I wanted it to be me."
"I understand." He gave me a smile, warm and full of compassion. "I suppose we could slip out around the corner for a few moments . . ."
I scoffed. "Don't be absurd. We don't have time, and besides, this has to be the least romantic place I could possibly imagine."
He looked around: broken stone and steel, the Thorian's torn support cables, lumps and masses of dying tissue, scattered fires, rank fluids pooling on the floor. "I sincerely hope you never imagined anything like this."
I shuddered in revulsion. "Goddess, no. And now that you mention it, I would like to be away from here as soon as we possibly can. Go on. Do what you must. Just remember that when we have some time to ourselves . . . how would Ashley put it? Your ass is mine."
"All the rest of me too. You have my word on it."
He bent close to kiss my forehead tenderly. Then he turned and walked over to Shiala.
"I'm ready," he told her.