The lights flickered once, then died.

Eisha swept the room with her SMG, the built-in flashlight on her collar illuminating nothing but tubes, wires, and datapads discarded on workbenches. It looked as if everyone had left in a hurry. The room was one of several that her team had cleared, all of them the same: a workbench around the entire room littered with equipment; a single console in the corner; the same grey and white tiled floors; and, most disturbingly of all, a chair bolted to the ground with ankle, wrist, and neck restraints. But this time, she had seen something. Exactly what it was, she didn't know, but something was there. Lurking in the shadows. Waiting for her. Eisha heard a faint whisper behind her and snapped around, the SMG quivering in her hands.

"What's wrong?" The Admiral asked her from the doorway. The human in black – Kasumi – was examining the datapads. Eisha had seen the ones in the other rooms – they had all been wiped clean of all information.

"Nothing," Eisha lowered her SMG and shook her head.

She felt like a child all over again.

Eisha had been afraid of the dark for the entirety of her childhood and well into her teenage years. When they found out about it, her schoolmates had teased her about it non-stop. After each day, Eisha crawled into the Neema's maintenance tunnels and stayed there for hours, trying to blink away the tears. It was in 2182, in a spot outside Admiral Han'Gerrel's office, when she first saw Zhar'Nara vas Doranz. He was taller and more physically imposing than any quarian she had ever seen – even the marines on the Neema seemed to pale in comparison. His armour was thick and black, seeming to drink in the light. An elaborately-crafted mask covered his face with only a thin slit of across his eyes. Whenever Zhar spoke to one of the marines, they looked tense. On edge. Fearful. Even the officers outranking Zhar seemed eager to get away from him, despite him only being a Gunnery Sergeant at the time.

Every quarian had heard tales of the Revenants, but few had actually seen one. They weren't secretive, but they rarely set foot off of the Doranz unless they had to meet with an Admiral. This man, she knew, wasn't afraid of anything. He made other people fear the darkness and the night. He was the terror in the shadows that kept people looking over their shoulders. From that day onwards, Eisha knew exactly how to overcome her fears: she would become them.

Eisha took half a dozen deep breaths to steady herself, then went to leave the room. A deep, guttural noise drifted down from the roof. Eisha stopped dead in her tracks. Shaking so hard that she could barely hold the weapon, Eisha raised her SMG to the roof. The flashlight on her collar illuminated something she could only describe as a monster. It was a huge, hulking creature of black metal and sacs filled with blue fluid. A weapon of some kind had been fused to its arm. Several drops of the bright blue liquid splashed onto the floor close to Eisha, who was rooted to the spot halfway between unloading her SMG's clip and sprinting out of the room and crawling into the vents.

The creature dropped to the ground and began to advance on Eisha. Her finger refused to move – refused to pull the trigger on this snarling, growling beast. She felt a scream building up inside her. A shotgun boomed behind the beast, bursting one of the sacs on its back and spilling the fluid inside across the floor. The creature whirled around and roared at the Admiral, swinging a huge, clawed hand at her. A burst of rifle fire from outside the room hit the beast squarely in the face, and it lurched backwards. The claw missed the Admiral and cut into the wall, tearing away huge chunks of the concrete. Still, Eisha could only watch.

"Hey!" Kasumi grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her away from the creature, which had turned its attention back to the pair inside the room. "Wake up!"

Eisha let the human pull her away. She felt numb, as if this wasn't really happening, as if the creature was simply a figment of her imagination. A nightmare. The terror in the shadows that kept her looking over her shoulder. And that was when Eisha made up her mind. She needed to overcome her fears, to be more like Zhar. If he came across this creature, this thing, he wouldn't have been paralysed by fear; he would have blown its fucking head off. She wasn't going to be a scared little girl anymore.

Flicking through her suit's combat applications, Eisha initiated a scan on the creature to find any weak points. She ducked down as it swung its claw again, then rolled aside as the beast lunged forwards. Its claws sank deep into the workbench directly behind Eisha. The scan finished, and the remaining sacs were highlighted in bright red to denote them as weak points. She rose to her feet and steadied her aim on the creature, who was still trying to pull its claw free.

"Concentrate fire on the sacs," Eisha ordered the other three. "Quick, before it gets free!"

Two more of the sacs burst in quick succession and spilled their viscous contents on the floor. With a bellow of what Eisha assumed to be pain, the creature wrenched its claw free along with a chunk of the worktop. Eisha and Kasumi backed away towards the door, their SMGs blazing. The cannon fused to the creature's right arm began to glow with an intense blue and slowly turned towards the doorway. Glancing backwards, Eisha saw the Admiral would be right in the path of the shot. Eisha sprinted over to the door, slid to the ground, and kicked away the Admiral's legs. A blaze of blue light flew overhead and hit the wall, where it hit the concrete and blew a chunk of the wall away. Eisha untangled herself from the Admiral and began to get to her feet, when she was kicked back to the ground by the other human – Zaeed.

"What the fuck?" Eisha shouted at the human.

Her words were nearly drowned out when the creature let out a deep, guttural snarl. Zaeed didn't say anything, but sighted down his rifle and emptied his entire thermal clip into the thing's face. With a screech, it fell to the ground. Eisha pushed herself off the ground and approached the creature cautiously, her submachinegun trained on its head. Its face had been completely obliterated, but she wasn't taking any chances.

"What is it?" Kasumi prodded it lightly with her toe.

"I don't know," Eisha knelt by the creature and ran a scan with her omnitool, this time searching for any matching DNA strands recorded by the Revenants.

The regiment had come into contact with all kinds of species doing exploratory work for the Migrant Fleet - whether the subject race knew it or not - and had extensive files on how to kill, wound, or perform a non-lethal takedown most of them. This thing didn't match any of them, although some of the technology had similar markers to those Zhar's suit had recorded in the Collector base.

Her brow furrowed. "Looks like Cerberus has been playing around with Reaper tech."

"Reapers?" Zaeed's scarred eyebrows shot up. "What the hell are they trying to do?"

"I don't know," Eisha said darkly, her eyes running over the creature's body. She set up a comm-link with Zhar and Vakarian. "We've encountered some kind of creature – looks like Reaper tech. I'm sending you the battle report."

"We've found similar things," Vakarian replied quickly. "Looks like they were being experimented on. Probably broke free."

"I was thinking the same thing," Eisha looked over at the restraints on the chair, which had been all but torn off. "Zhar, have you found anything?"

"The Lieutenant is busy," Xin's cool voice played through Eisha's earpiece. "We've found the main control room. I'm sending you our coordinates."

"What's going on, Xin?"

"We've been played."