ALPHA CITADEL
THE VOID
SYSTEM INAPPLICABLE
NOVEMBER 2188
TIME FLOWED STRANGELY, he mused, when one really had only oneself for company. He'd followed these new ones for a while now and was noting patterns. Many had come here in his time on this station. None he recognized. Not yet. He knew it was inevitable that what he needed would come. It had to be inevitable. He had no certainty, only a small ember of hope. He was starting to believe that 'having hope' was simply another way of saying 'encroaching madness'.
He'd watched them come and go and if any were aware of him, they gave no sign. His mandibles juddered in agitation. There were far too many things far too inexplicable happening on this station. Odd ships coming and going where there had been none for the longest time. Faces he thought he knew and did not. Unshackled asari. Unbowed quarians. Non-hobbled krogan. Turians. They didn't call themselves that but that was how he remembered them.
A Keeper clicked by but he ignored it. Since discovering the things weren't edible, he'd had nothing else to do with them. Food had been lean in his initial time here. Upon discovering the many derelict spacecraft moored to this place, he'd learned sickening lessons in what was edible and what wasn't, but an eventual discovery of a ship literally stuffed with dextro-based foodstuffs had been a miracle he'd wondered he'd shouldn't have thanked some god or another over. Then he remembered only the blood-soaked ringing silence that had met his last desperate prayers and spat a heartfelt disdainful curse into the empty æther and ate his fill.
He listened in on their conversations as they arrived and departed. He waited and contemplated them and any moves he might make. He'd only killed once since the others started arriving – a 'turian'. The 'turian' had been a complete stranger. Yet it had not been an easy kill. Just one more death among uncountable billions. What difference could it have made in the end? He'd killed for the 'turian's' armor, for his weapons, for whatever supplies he had. Some had been very curious and quite useful. Among those objects were three orb explorer drones the size of his fist, activated by voice command. It took some trial and error, but eventually they obeyed him. Now they were his eyes and remote hands. The 'turian' had seemed to be an advance scout, his kit designed to be left for others to follow, with mapping programs and first aid, small beacons and printable, disposable weapons for the tiny fabricator that came pre-installed on the kit. He'd never managed to get that to work. After, he'd spend a long time hunting for the 'turian's' ship. Most of the ships seemed ancient. Many were alien beyond anything he'd seen or heard of before. There had been one that had basically been a box, filled with tubes lined with instrumentation, the biggest tube no larger than the circumference of his arm. He'd spent some time trying to imagine what had flown that one. The oddest he'd encountered had been a transparent sphere, full of clear liquid with control interfaces that refracted through the liquid itself. He suspected the ship was flown by swimming through it in a set way. He had thought he'd found the turian's ship but the AI of the vessel had been extremely hostile and he'd blown the gantry to which the thing had been attached and sent it spinning into the Dark. So it came, so it went, he'd muttered to himself and then promptly forgot it.
Nothing had mattered much. The monotony of endless grey and white corridors and long silences had begun to wear him down, drain his vitality and sanity. He dreamed on occasion that there were other instances of himself not so blighted nor so alone, but had a hard time believing it. He didn't care about life or death nor living or dying. He had no future and had renounced everything but his one goal and that seemed to become more and more an empty hope with every day that plodded morosely by.
Then the Inquisitoria arrived and life began surging through his depleted heart again.
Using his knowledge of the Keeper accessways to stay out of sight of both newcomers and Inquisitoria, he'd followed these latest visitors. The battle had waged for a good while now and he focused on the human with the tattooed biotic – that pair was having the most success so far, although that was relative. He'd doubled back and found the destroyed probe and dead Inquisitoria. He took a few moments to savour their destruction, initially fighting the urge to kick one then succumbing. The corpse he kicked grunted, much to his surprise, and let out a moan. He started then pounced, the desire an almost palpable, physical thing, hands locking around the throat of the struggling human and he squeezed as hard as he could. The body thrashed for a few moments and then faded, kicking violently once or twice before sagging. His hands released the corpse and came back as two fists that smashed into the faceplate with hiss of rage. Eventually he rose, his anger abated but never gone. He spat in the dead face then stalked away.
He collected as many of their weapons as he could and stuffed them in his ditty bag. They would weigh him down but that was irrelevant. They would be his coin with which to buy his passage off this echoing tomb. First, he had to secure that passage and he couldn't do that if everyone necessary to that deliverance were dead. He re-entered the Keeper tunnels and began to climb upward. He'd been here for a long time and he knew this station. He knew where to go and what to do. He had half-heartedly planned for and fantasized this day for a long, long time. Now a reality, it was only a matter of patience and time.
For a moment he swore he heard someone call his name, from far away.
"Be quiet," he told it. "I know what I'm doing."
Patience and time and …malevolence, he told himself as he scaled the dim shaft, Keepers clattering by unheeding of his presence. Any day is a good day for genocide.
He stepped out into the silent space at the top of the tall pinnacle and listened intently. Nothing but the dim clatter of Keepers and the subsonic hum of energy powering the great station. In no hurry, he made his way to the half-bridge that jutted out over the deep shaft that hollowed the pinnacle and made for a cautious approach to any susceptible to acrophobia. Even he approached it with the utmost caution. It had taken him some time to figure this all out, through trial and error with some heart-stopping instances of utter terror until he'd gained the confidence to approach it methodically. Eventually it had made sense. Sometime in the past and he didn't know when exactly because he had long ago stopped trying to measure time, he'd found a visitor that had the proper …attachments… to activate the controls of this station and had relieved them of it. The work had been gruesome and he'd vaguely regretted the need to mutilate the being he'd encountered, but his needs had been paramount. The carefully preserved appendage he swiped across the space before him and the large control interface lit up. As long as the appendage was in the field it stayed active. He extracted a severed finger from a belt pouch and used it to tap controls.
Now the real work began.
He tracked and found the two he wanted then watched them. It was becoming obvious they'd soon be backed into a corner. He pondered offering actual aid. He shrugged to himself after a few moments consideration. Taking no chances gained no changes. He desperately needed change.
Again he thought he heard someone call his name, the voice hard and just ever-so-slightly manic. It came ringing through the great hollow space below him to echo up and down until it seemed as if a hundred others called him, all equally cruel and ever-so-slightly manic.
Madness, he thought as he pulled trembling fingers from the controls and waited until he was calm before resuming, is just sanity with nothing left to lose.
A deep breath. Not optimal. Not how he would have wanted it. He punched his left fist into the palm of his right hand in frustration.
He'd just have to do what was necessary and they'd just have to go along.
Or else.
THE PLAN WAS HITTING SNAGS.
Shepard and Jack had not managed to move since arriving at their spot and just around the corner raged a fierce battle that could easily spill onto them. There had been a few too near-misses already.
"It sounds like a dozen of you over there, Shepard," Jack told him in his ear. "It's more than a little creepy."
He could hear his voice – from multiple places – giving orders, shouting …screaming. The crunch of gunfire and the sound of explosives seemed to be everywhere.
"How do you think I feel?" He sent her a wan smile. "We've got to get the hell outta here. I think I took one longshot too many."
"Even you can't be right all the time. Backtrack?" Jack told him.
"We may have to… it'll take twice as damn long to go around this…"
"Mulholland did say this isn't like our Citadel." Jack frowned, trying to think of ways out and keep an ear on the battle. "Makes you wonder why the Reapers didn't just use this place after you shut down the Citadel way back when."
"I have a feeling they didn't have a choice."
"Why wouldn't they have had a…?" Jack began but a sudden blast near the corner decided them and back they tracked. As they neared a wall, a section of it slid open and a Keeper emerged. Shepard and Jack ducked into it as it closed. On the other side, the dimly phosphorescent light strips of the tunnels cast everything in a dull blue glow.
"This sucks, Shepard."
"You keep being right…" Shepard told her. "…and it's starting to get annoying."
"Whatcha signed on for, mister." She stuck half a tongue at him. "Get used to it."
Outside, the dull crump of energy could be dimly heard and Shepard's instincts urged him to help, but his intellect knew better. There wasn't a damn thing he could do that would make a difference even if running and hiding went against his own instincts. The Inquisitoria had remarkable discipline and he was beginning to suspect that the success against them so far had more to do with their unfamiliarity with this Citadel and less their prowess in battle, not that he was underestimating anyone's abilities, least of all his own. Frankly his chief suspicion was more leaning to luck and perhaps some small level of intervention by whatever brought them all here in the first place. Not that one could trust that either would hold for long.
Jack heard it first, a small hum that seemed to be tracking toward them through the dim tunnels. Light beams speared from the shadows to climb walls and spin around themselves as if the approaching object were scanning as it went. A small silver sphere seemingly riding those beams around a corner then halting and aiming all at the two standing before it. Jack grabbed it biotically as the light flicked over her.
"Nice catch," Shepard admired as he took a step toward it.
"This device is no threat to you," it said and Jack almost crushed the thing in surprise.
"Great. More AI." She tightened her field.
"Not at all. Consider me …a watchful eye. An ally." Jack sent a dubious look to Shepard who stepped up to the now-immobilized drone.
"I'm just going to assume you already know who we are and ask the obvious."
"Airk Vnkar." The flanged voice replied, cool and even, obviously turian. Shepard found it curious that in turian 'Airk' meant 'bleak' or 'empty', and 'Vnkar' meant 'anger' or 'malice'. He doubted Vnkar's mother had named him quite so harshly. "Or your saviour, whichever works."
"All this just coincidence, is it?" Shepard asked him dryly.
"Please. There are no coincidences. Especially here."
Shepard stepped back. The field did not abate.
"I've been watching you, of course." The drone sniffed. "This is unnecessary. I'm in this station's control centre at the top of the spire. I can show you a safe route off this station – away from the Inquisitoria. Or I can feed you to them. Do you have a preference?"
Shepard glanced back and nodded slightly at Jack who reluctantly dropped the barrier. He tapped the sphere with a pistol barrel the second the field dissipated.
"You're cautious. That's understandable, if a bit misplaced. I'm no enemy of yours."
"Heard that before," Jack muttered. "Didn't buy it then, either."
"I am about to save you from the Inquisitoria." Vnkar told her. "Decide then."
It started as a slight feeling of vertigo, a sensation of tilting back, of sliding sideways without actually moving. A slow rumble came towards them, shuddering through the floors and walls. When it reached them it knocked them off their feet. There was a sickening feeling of the Citadel itself beginning to rise, but they didn't slide or move from where they'd fallen.
Then the gravity vanished.
Shepard got a grip on Jack just as she cursed and began to float off the floor. The drone remained where it was, motionless.
"Now I have their attention," Vnkar said through the drone. Outside there was a sudden howling and the Keeper door seemed to flex slightly. Jack felt her ears pop. "I wonder if you were aware that this section can be opened to space. Isn't that interesting?"
"You're venting the Presidium?!" Shepard asked the drone. "It isn't just the Inquisitors out there!"
"We all have choices to make when the time comes," Vnkar said. "Greater goods and all that veschk."
"Stop!" Shepard shouted but the drone said nothing and the air in the tunnels began to move. When the drone finally spoke again two minutes later, it was almost a steady streaming wind.
"Done and done. Unfortunates all around. Those who survive, survive." The drone bobbed back half-a-metre. "Fair is fair."
"That was fair?" Jack demanded.
"Of course. Equal chances for both sides. Now," The drone bobbed away to make it a full metre and it spoke again, the voice sounding irritated. "Do you want off this damn station or not?"
