"There is a point system that determines how your preparedness for the Suicide Mission will affect your final outcome. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell beforehand how many points you might have until the mission has already been started. Good luck!"
The Mass Effect 2 Manual (2010)
Berlin, European Continent
Alliance HQ
Earth
The first thing that Admiral Mihai Vulkov noticed upon entering his office's anterior reception area was the look on his secretary's face. Normally cheery and upbeat woman, Lisbeth had an expression that indicated something was weighing that smile down by several degrees. Vulkov immediately honed in on this discrepancy as he removed his officer's cap, revealing a flat top of hair the color of smoky soot.
Lisbeth spoke before he could. "Welcome back from Montevideo, Admiral." Feigned interest. It came with the job of being a secretary. And the worries of a secretary were secondary to the person she represented. "I hope your visit to the Karde Shipyards was productive."
"Thank you, Lisbeth. There were some items that made my trip worthwhile, yes. Is there anything that—?"
"You have some people in your office waiting to see you," the secretary flicked her eyes to the side. A silent gesture. Evidentially that was had her all concerned. "They… seemed to think it was urgent business."
Vulkov stopped in the middle of the reception area and craned his head to his door. "Are they inside right now?" When Lisbeth nodded, the admiral sighed. "Lisbeth, for god's sake, this isn't a doctor's office where people gather for appointments. I can't afford to see everyone who knocks at my—"
"I think you'll want to make an exception for these people." The secretary leaned forward, her eyes locked onto Vulkov's before she whispered, "Normandy crew."
Ah. Well, at least now Lisbeth's anxiousness had a genuine reason for its existence. Vulkov waited a beat to collect his thoughts before providing his secretary with a singular but pronounced bob of thoughtfulness. Expressing relief at not being caught off guard by her alert. Vulkov then made to depart her presence by striding up to the door to his own office, pausing out of habit to pat down his hair, even though not a strand was out of place on his agonizingly close-cropped head. With a minute sagging of the shoulders, Vulkov palmed the keypad to his office and it flashed a green light at him, allowing him entrance into his own domain.
Two steps later and Vulkov was inside. The cone-shaped lamps of the office were set at providing the majority of the room's luminescence but they were overpowered by the light that was coming in from the window to Vulkov's left—a picturesque display of the greater Berlin metropolis, all made possible from the vista within the forty-seventh floor of the monolithic Alliance headquarters structure.
At least, it would have been picturesque if it was not such a cloudy day. A thick veil of condensation hovered above the squashed city, nearly reaching the top of Vulkov's window. Sheets of gray colored the branching streets and layered neighborhoods as though a sheer-thin blanket had been draped across the city—the only building in view that was of comparable height to Alliance headquarters was the Fernsehrturm over near the Alexanderplatz area, its needle tip hidden by the cloud layer. Alliance headquarters was only a few miles away from the tower, having been erected near the old rail station at the north end of the Tiergarten, a thick blot of green vegetation in the middle of the glowing city.
Vulkov's shoes quietly screeched on the polished synthetic wood floor as he turned towards the corner where a set of low sofas had been set up. He found three people staring at him expectantly, just as Lisbeth had said, a duffel bag in front of the middle one, but what threw him off for a second was that none of the strangers was of the same species: a human, a turian, and a quarian.
The quarian Vulkov did not recognize, though he swore that fabric covering she (at least, he was assuming it was a "she") wore was somewhat familiar. Perhaps it was the purple color of the article that was tripping up his familiarity. Next to her, the admiral recognized Garrus Vakarian right off the bat—the eyepiece and the face paint helped to give him away. The human on the other end of the sofa though, gave Vulkov a little more difficulty in his recollection, but once he did finally figure it out, a scowl came to his face. Though he was now sporting a goatee and was grizzled by age, Shepard was an innately familiar face to anyone in the service for all humans and, come to think of it, every other race in the galaxy.
"You have a lot of nerve showing your face in this city again," Vulkov grunted to the former commander, frozen so stiff he might as well have been a block of stone.
Upon the couch, Shepard shrugged. He held an overall neutral expression, a feat all by itself considering the bad memories he had of this city. "You know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a good reason, Admiral."
Vulkov gave a wordless murmur and briefly walked over to his glass-paneled desk so that he could set his hat down upon it. The faintest rustle of his clothing was amplified by the stone walls that made up the backbone of the room itself. Cut from a famous Italian quarry, the entire building was comprised of the sand-colored shale and granite that was meant to invoke strength and perseverance while also maintaining an aesthetically pleasing component. A large brass-inscribed insignia of the Alliance Navy hung on the wall behind Vulkov's desk. The room had a Spartan-like mien that was quite commonplace amongst those in the military—many servicemen would hold firmly to the tenets of not possessing any items that did not serve a functional purpose in any fashion for years, a symptom common even in those that had voluntarily left the employ of the government.
The admiral tapped his fingers while he stood behind his desk for a moment, glaring at Shepard all the while. In contrast to Shepard's partially ruffled appearance, Vulkov held all the mannerisms of a true military man: straight posture, clean-shaven, piercing eyes, immaculate uniform. Shepard, decked out in a flight jacket, held a bit more of a casual atmosphere that Vulkov could not decide if he should take as an insult to his rank or not.
"You still have outstanding warrants at three separate governmental agencies on this planet as a result of your little escapade here," Vulkov said as he now headed over to take the couch opposite the trio. "Not to mention the Berlin City Police have also put out a warrant of their own, claiming jurisdiction on you after you broke out of their jail."
Shepard just gave a tender shrug, trying to downplay his mirth by not making an obvious glance at Garrus, who had been the one who had sprung him from jail in the first place. "I had the feeling that they didn't like the commotion that was caused as I was being chased through their streets." He gave a distinct pause. "Are you inferring that you'll have me arrested after we're done here?"
It looked like Vulkov dearly wanted to reply in the affirmative, but instead he leaned back on the couch and folded his hands upon his lap. A diplomatic gesture.
"It would technically be the moral thing to do, but throwing you in jail would most likely result in unintended consequences down the line. For the situation at hand, you have too much clout with the public—for obvious reasons, you're a hero to them. I can think of at least eight people off the top of my head whose political careers would be ruined if we put you behind bars."
"Would you happen to be one of the eight?" Garrus burst in, blinking knowingly.
Only Vulkov's eyes shifted to address the turian. "I don't think I need to spell that out for you, Mr. Vakarian."
Next to Garrus, Roahn allowed a small smile. The admiral clearly did not like Garrus' pressing. In Roahn's mind, Vulkov fit the stereotype of every hard-assed human commanding officer that a lot of the old vids had the tendency to depict.
"Dare I ask how you even managed to get here presumably without being spotted, Shepard?" Vulkov asked.
"Took the shuttle down from our ship in orbit," Roahn's father said. "None of which list my name anywhere on the manifest or registry. We also got to use one of HQ's landing pads—we avoided any unnecessary traffic and any prying eyes that way."
"How prudent of you. Hopefully you will continue to maintain this level of discretion while you're on the planet, Shepard, unless you're planning to start another debacle with a private military during your visit."
Now Roahn was not starting to like this man in return. There was a distinct sense of disrespect that stemmed from Vulkov, detectible only when he spoke her father's name instead of his former rank. Though Shepard was no longer in the military, he was frequently referenced with esteem among her peers to the point where he would forever be referred to as a commander. But apparently Vulkov seemed to think otherwise, as if he held the mindset that once someone was out of the service then they henceforth relinquished the privilege of their rank.
Roahn's boot nudged the duffel bag in front of Garrus accidentally. She had the urge to clench her fingers tightly, but had to restrain herself as the admiral was no doubt experienced in detecting minor tics in body language. As a quarian, she was automatically at a disadvantage. She was still not at all enthused at the timing of arriving here after the detour they had made to disrupt that attack by Dark Horizon, and Vulkov's overall demeanor was not helping her agitation levels.
She had to take a breath. Just relax.
There was a muffled thump outside the window and everyone except Vulkov turned to look at the source of the noise. A yellow and black striped drone with several orange flashing lights adorning it was buzzing around the outside, a cable running beneath it that was attached to a bundle of long metal poles dangling precariously in the open air.
"Construction drones," Vulkov explained. "A hailstorm came by here last week. They've got the drones outside performing maintenance to the building, fixing the damage. You probably saw the scaffolding."
As a matter of fact, Roahn had. When the shuttle had been coming in for a landing approach at the midway point of the building, a quick glimpse out the window had revealed a significant section of the tower that was encrusted with walkways and tarps with several orange dots—the drones—scurrying around the exterior, floating to and fro wherever their programmed duties took them.
Vulkov then sat in silence as he appraised the three individuals in front of him. "Now is when I hear the explanation for finding you in my office," he stated flatly.
Garrus cleared his throat as he leaned forward. "I suppose I need to explain our jurisdiction in this matter first, admiral. I command the Council XMO known as Umbra Team and we've been given full authority to spearhead the proactive—"
"I know about Umbra Team," Vulkov interrupted with a slight nudge of his eyebrows. "More importantly, I know of the generous circumstances surrounding your mandate."
"You already know?" Garrus was surprised. Umbra was not exactly public knowledge. The team was not necessary required to resign itself to secrecy, but they certainly had not been blatantly advertising their existence.
"I'm the admiral of the Seventh Fleet and the chief commanding officer of the SpecOps branch," the man retorted. "I'm required to know if there are any borderline vigilante groups floating around out there that are expressly given permission to encroach upon human borders."
Roahn noted the admiral's use of the word encroach. It was as if he saw Umbra as little better than a PMC, a nuisance impervious to the supposed order and logic the Alliance somehow represented.
"In that case," Garrus continued, "we are here to ask for your help."
"My help?"
"Yes, admiral. On a few of our missions, we have come into contact with unusual enemy forces that have been committing acts of wanton violence mostly against colonists in the outer territories. Now, we have reason to believe that the people behind this are—"
"If it has been mostly colonists in the outer territories that have been affected," Vulkov interrupted as he raised his hand a couple inches above his knee, "what makes you think that the Alliance will be the one to claim jurisdiction? I would assume that your immediate chain of command is directed to the Council, is it not?"
Garrus looked like he had to bite his tongue, miffed at being cut off. "It isn't so much where these massacres took place but by whom."
"Are you insinuating that Alliance personnel have been committing war crimes in unmonitored space?"
"To a point, yes."
Vulkov now slowly leaned forward, his hands clenching his knees. "I want you to be absolutely certain with what you're saying, Mr. Vakarian. Even if you are correct in your assessment, bringing light to matters like this is not something that can easily be fixed, even with me on your side."
Roahn had a good idea what Vulkov was referring to. All militaries in point of fact were biased against themselves when prosecuting their own for war crimes. They did not want to go through all the effort just to tarnish themselves by admitting that individuals wearing their colors were dishonoring their legacy through their unbecoming conduct. To prosecute was to admit fault and the military would rather not admit fault for as long as possible. That was how crimes got covered up, be it from simple assault to far greater infractions like rape and murder.
"We have the evidence to prove any allegations," Garrus answered back. "To that end, we have—"
"Does the name Aleph sound familiar to you at all, admiral?" Shepard inserted, impatient at Garrus trying to beat around the bush.
Roahn's eyes made sure to hone in on Vulkov's face, desperate to witness any reaction. She waited with bated breath, biting her lip.
The admiral, in a remarkable show of effort, did not alter his expression a whit, but Roahn did detect a hint of stiffness enter where his neck met his collar. A faint twitch at the man's jawline. A nearly indiscernible squint of the eyes.
"I suppose it's not entirely coincidental that you asked that question," Vulkov said tacitly. "Considering that, just a few days ago, our database detected a user attempting to look up information on that exact subject. Would it be fair to say that you might be responsible for the source of this inquiry? That, upon being refused access to the database initially your next course of action was to try my office?"
"Actually," Roahn inserted, speaking for the first time, "I was the one who searched for Aleph in the Alliance records, Admiral. The database found a match on that name to a highly classified document buried deep in the archives, so we know for a fact that someone in the Alliance has information on who he really is."
Vulkov honed in on Roahn, seemingly studying her as if he had just noticed her. "And… who might you be?" he asked, trying so very hard not to seem too impolite.
"Roahn'Shepard," she said simply. "Lieutenant Commander of Umbra Team."
And there it was. The sudden and unfortunate realization that manifested into an immediate shift in demeanor once her last name had been revealed. For years, Roahn had despised the attitude reversals that the connotation of her family name caused, although this time she had been relishing it for some reason. Probably because she did not particularly care for Vulkov all that much and had wanted to see him shook up for once. Apparently she had received just what she had been hoping for.
Vulkov shifted his eyes from Roahn to Shepard and back again, trying to understand the process for how a quarian had come to have a human last name, as if he had the outrageous thought that some mutated biological process had somehow been responsible for this outcome, rather than the truth which was far more simply explained.
"Ah…" Vulkov murmured as he lifted a finger. "So you're…"
"We have irrefutable proof that our subject in question—Aleph—has come to be in possession of experimental Alliance technology," Shepard evenly took control, taking care to speed past the familial revelation without as much as a blink. "Portions of armor plating, to be exact. Now, this could mean two things. One is that the armor had been stolen from whatever Alliance warehouse it had been issued, in which case it would be expected that a theft report would have been issued, one that we have not been able to locate if it does happen to exist. The second is that it was issued to Aleph at some point, which would be a confirmation that he is or was an agent of the Alliance."
Now that Roahn figured she had a handle on Vulkov's tics, she did take note that he was quite an easy man to read now that she knew what to look for. Right now, it seemed that the admiral would have loved to fall back on the tried and true option utilized by many a politician when confronted with news of an unsavory sort: deny, deny, deny. However, Vulkov was military. And those in the military tended to have the bipartisan urge to be forthcoming and transparent in their interactions all in the name of personal accountability.
Wishful thinking? Most likely, but hope was in short supply these days. It would not do to outright refuse it.
Regardless, Roahn found that she was tapping her fingers on her thigh nervously. She had to force herself to stop.
Vulkov took a diplomatic beat before he breathed in. When he next spoke, he did so with deliberation. "The armor you were trying to look up was a special prototype created at a skunkworks site in Osaka. It was the product of the Alliance reverse-engineering the asari-made Silaris armor, which as you know, is used on warships but rather sparingly as it is quite expensive to make. Carbon nanotube sheets woven with CVD-diamond and crushed by mass effect fields, if I recall the composition correctly. Very dense and quite adept at withstanding extreme temperatures."
Roahn held her breath, hardly daring to believe where this was going.
"The goal of the project was to create special armor for our N7 troops. This armor could theoretically take the full brunt of a ten machine-gun onslaught… without having to utilize any shielding. It would have been a game changer. However, despite engineering's best efforts, it was determined that the armor would have been too cost-prohibitive to put into production and so the prototype was shelved. It was the only example the project had ever concocted. But… shortly before the war, someone had the idea to put the prototype to use and issued it to a particular operative. It was never listed as stolen or misplaced. As far as I know, it has been out in the field before I even became aware of its existence."
Intensity furrowed over Shepard's brow as he leaned forward.
"That operative was Aleph, I take it?" It was more of a statement than an actual question.
There was nowhere for Vulkov to go. He just gave a singular, solemn nod. "He was indeed working for the Alliance. Deep cover. The only references to him in any documents are to his alias. What hasn't been redacted has been left deliberately ambiguous. There's nothing there that gives you any information on him. We don't know his name, his age, or where he comes from. I probably couldn't even confirm for you if he was a human, to tell you the truth."
Hidden from sight, Roahn clenched her prosthetic hand. She felt her face smoldering as a darkness floated in front of her eyes. I'm getting closer to you now.
"You said that he was working for the Alliance?" Garrus pointed out. "Then you know he's left for good?"
Vulkov gave a hasty shrug. "There was a particular division within the navy briefly mentioned in those documents that I presume was where Aleph reported to. It is confirmed that there has been no communication from this division based on the fact that its commanding officer was confirmed to have been killed during the Reaper War. I would assume that Aleph cut ties with the Alliance shortly thereafter."
"Do you have the name of the commanding officer?"
"I do not."
"Then how do you know he was killed?"
"One of the redacted documents mentions the officer as being a crewmember of the SSV Raleigh," Vulkov said. "The Raleigh was confirmed lost with all hands during the final battle at Earth. Seeing as we've not had anyone from that ship show up since it was destroyed, it stands to reason that the officer perished in the attack."
"Or managed to fake his death," Garrus mused.
Vulkov stared at the turian for a few seconds. "I can assure you, Mr. Vakarian, that the officer did not survive the battle. Our recovery efforts were a bit protracted, I'll admit, but we did recover all the bodies on board the wreckage of the Raleigh. Those that were too damaged to take back were all accounted for in the ship's logs. Other than that, I can't reveal anything else to you on that."
Roahn shifted in her seat anxiously before taking the lead, her vocabulator strobing frantically. "But what about when the records start? Do you know when the Alliance began to file info on Aleph?"
Sheepish, the admiral could only spread his hands. "We don't have the full picture, unfortunately. To my knowledge, the records on the subject only start in the late 70s. Roughly a few years before you," he nodded to Shepard, "took command of the Normandy. He's like a ghost."
"And the documentation on Aleph doesn't help clear anything up?" Shepard asked.
"It's all heavily redacted, like I said," Vulkov scratched at his chin. "His dossier is also not located on the central server. It's in an offsite location, disconnected from the extranet."
"First things first," Shepard said. "How can we get the files un-redacted? Is that where you come in, Admiral?"
Vulkov shook his head. "Not me. The files are locked by a bio-signature. Only the individuals named in the documents or the person who sealed the files away can restore the redactions."
"Okay, so who sealed the files away?"
"I don't know."
"Was it Aleph?"
"I don't know."
"We can figure that out later," Roahn said as she waved a hand toward her father. She let the silence hang in the air for a few seconds, wanting to ensure that everyone had a moment to think straight before returning to Vulkov. "Do you at least know where the files are?"
The admiral craned his head over to the window, where a trio of construction drones were now proceeding to wash the windows. Soapy fluid flowed across the glass. Thick rivulets with bubbles dribbled down the front before being quickly wiped away.
"It won't make any difference," he said. "The files are stored in a security vault at an Alliance base on Luna. The same biologic restrictions apply. You wouldn't be able to enter to even get your hands on them."
Roahn blinked, her body feeling rather raw as her enviro-suit seemed to be hugging her closer. Images of glass-like blobs of superheated moon dust and rock, surging forth in a violent hailstorm amidst a wall of enemy fire blasted into her head for a brief second. Muted thumps of grenade echoes pummeling her eardrums. The crackle of her comrades' death throes over the radio. Her own breath being overpowered by the pounding of her heart while weightlessness sent her flying across a dry and barren landscape.
Luna, she mouthed before she looked up.
"The security site on the moon. Is it in…" Roahn paused as she tried to recall the name, "…Portskerra Base?"
Vulkov, already in a semi-petrified state, went even more rigid. "How did you know that?"
Roahn did not answer right away because she had been momentarily rendered speechless from Vulkov's confirmation, though there was no way for the admiral to tell what sort of effect his words had had on the quarian.
Crumpled on the cold ground, cradling a shattered hand. A dark red pool growing around her. A silhouette against a bright, circular opening. A deadly and sinister voice. "You are not to kill this one." Fire and steam bursting from a jagged mouth filled with razors. Heat blistering and blood sizzling as her scream became her world.
She was pulled back as a twisting sensation curled at her stump. "That was what he was there for…" she murmured.
Everyone around her did a double-take—they had not heard her properly.
"What was that, Roahn?" Garrus asked.
Trying to control the trembling of her hands, Roahn became more animated as she took a deep breath before speaking. "I know why Aleph went to Luna! He wasn't there for an… an artifact or anything that he was making. He was there to collect his own records! Maybe to delete them or to prevent anyone else from looking at them but… but that has to be it!"
Unconsciously, the quarian flexed her left hand. All that needless death and her own maiming for the acquisition of a document that she would not even be able to access in the first place. Aleph had invaded that base to cover his tracks and had, by any measure, succeeded in his task. Roahn almost slumped in her despair—if she had held off on mounting a singular assault inside that base, she probably would have made it off that moon completely intact. In more ways than one.
Shepard had been looking at his daughter thoughtfully as she had been processing all this. Her introspection only lasted a few seconds at most but that was enough for her father to detect the churning conflict battling within her very mind at this moment. His face drooped as he watched Roahn struggle with this knowledge as though he could feel her very anguish.
"I think," Shepard turned back to Vulkov, "that we can rule out ever taking a look at those files. If Aleph actually retrieved them, then we have to assume they're no longer in play."
"But that wasn't the only vault theft that took place in Alliance territory, right Roahn?" Garrus glanced at his XO. "Luna was just an outlier compared to the other bases Aleph hit."
Now Vulkov squinted deeply in confusion. "What are you going on about?"
"He's right," Roahn remembered as she recovered. "I saw the aftermath of what he did in New York. The circumstances were very similar to other sites across the galaxy. Vaults plundered, the guards brutally killed, and any witnesses murdered or otherwise scarred for life." Her luminous eyes grabbed for Vulkov's attention. "I know what was in that vault on Earth, Admiral. Are you going to tell me or will I have to show you?"
The admiral's reticence in answering provided as much of an answer as if he had spoken. The self-censorship was paramount to the truth, one that everyone in the room already knew but needed to have the question voiced in order to cull the liars from those who were otherwise well-intentioned.
Now Roahn dragged out the duffel bag from where it had been sitting in front of Garrus' feet. She lifted it onto the low table separating them. A muffled bang—something heavy—settled on tempered glass. The quarian kept starting at Vulkov as she reached over and unzipped the bag. A hermetically sealed clear cylinder now sat revealed with the deflated duffel bag crumpled around it. The canister had a metallic base where it stored a battery that fueled an ionic radiation inner shield around the object within.
The Reaper artifact, the dense sphere colored darker than night, sat superimposed in the middle of the canister, the manufactured ridges that looked like melted planetary crust glistening from the light shining in.
Vulkov tilted his head, still not speaking, but his eyes held an intrinsic understanding.
Roahn's outstretched fingers grazed the surface of the container that held the evil obelisk within. "You've seen items like this before, yes?"
The admiral's mouth set itself into a hard line. He nodded.
"The Alliance has been keeping Reaper artifacts within its territory, yes?"
Another nod.
Now Roahn leaned forward with bated breath. "You've been losing inventory on these artifacts because Aleph has been stealing them, correct?"
"You're making it sound like the Alliance has neither the resources nor the manpower to prevent petty theft from occurring at some of our most top-secret sites, Lieutenant Commander," Vulkov said, visibly trying not to get heated.
"Yet… it is happening, isn't it? Admiral, do you have any idea why Aleph is so interested in artifacts like these?"
Vulkov scratched at his chin. "I've been told that some pieces have been vanishing from our control—but you never heard that from me and I will never freely admit that in any public forum. As for Aleph's reasoning for stockpiling them in the first place, I don't have the first clue. It most likely isn't to replicate our own justification for keeping them, I can tell you that. But I would also question your reasoning for bringing an artifact like that here to my office. If those things are as dangerous as you're intimating, why risk bringing one here? A simple picture would have done the trick to prove you have one in your possession."
"Pictures can be faked," Shepard said. "We figured that you would be more forthcoming if we showed you the artifact in person. And you don't need to worry about the threat of indoctrination, Admiral. That has not been a viable weapon for nearly thirty years after the Reaper network was knocked offline. But I don't understand something. The Reapers were all supposed to be destroyed. Last I heard, the Council had ordered all of the disabled hulks to be disposed of into black holes, to be crushed into the size of an atom and disposed of forever. Why are we still keeping their relics around, knowing the damage they could have done to us?"
"What you are doing is preaching to the choir," Vulkov responded. A twitch of irritation at the corner of his jaw. "The decision to preserve Reaper artifacts for study had nothing to do with me. Had it boiled down to my decision I would have had us chuck them all into the nearest sun and be done with it. But the eggheads with their silver tongues managed to spin convincing yarns to the right people in the government—something about the 'scientific responsibility' to know everything we could possibly learn about our enemy. Where they came from, what they're made of, you get the gist. What I do know is that, after all this time, our studies did not come up with anything remotely useful from those artifacts. No breakthroughs, no miracle wonders, absolute fuck all." Vulkov stood, a man warring on multiple fronts, and faced the window. "That was why the artifacts were put into storage, because someone somewhere has the naïve hope that our technology will someday improve to the point where we will be able to glean something. For the time being, it seems we had hit a wall."
"We both know it won't amount to anything," Shepard similarly stood, though he wobbled on unsteady legs, a grimace flashing across his face for a brief moment. Roahn jolted as she thought her father was about to fall but stilled herself as he regained his strength, pushing the pain back down where it had stemmed from. "But Aleph seems to think that it will."
"So we're to assume that he knows something the best minds in the Alliance do not?" Vulkov frowned. "And if he somehow does, is this a prelude for you requesting a call to arms? Marshal our forces against this enemy before he somehow accomplishes… what?"
"Do you think that we can afford to wait?" Shepard urged as he walked up to Vulkov, managing to straighten to his full height, matching the admiral eye to eye. "We need an armed response to answer this threat."
Vulkov looked lost. "What threat? And where could we find Aleph? You said it yourself that indoctrination is no longer in play. What danger could these artifacts possibly pose to us? These are answers I know you don't have, Shepard. It's because you don't have them that I won't humor the idea of sending the fleets out against a lone person whom we know very little about."
Roahn sensed that their conversation was nearing its finale. Shepard and Garrus seemed to detect that change in the air as well. They had showed all the hands they had but had not appeared to have made a dent in Vulkov's defenses. Some part of the quarian wanted to scream in the admiral's face. The other part sympathized with him—they had just presented the man with several unknown variables and a lot of suppositions. Decisions at his station could not be based on mere assumptions, especially if he did not share the mindset from which these assumptions stemmed.
Shepard dipped his head in a singular bob before turning to Garrus with only his eyes flicking over to his daughter. A mute signal. Roahn leaned over and zipped the canister that contained the artifact back up before standing alongside her captain. She noted that her father and Vulkov had embarked into a deep and knowing look that transcended disappointment. It was as if Shepard knew that he had convinced Vulkov in some small part that was atomically discernable but the admiral's veil of stubbornness and scorn kept that part from arising. Shepard could sense this withdrawal and slowly departed from the man's presence, his eyes leaving Vulkov's face last in a torturous scraping motion.
Roahn let her father leave first, then Garrus, before she too left with a departing glance. The admiral stood alone in his office, hands in his pockets. If anything, she could have sworn that the man was shivering. It was as if they had left him with nothing but bad news.
And in some sense, that was true.
After the door closed, Vulkov immediately walked back over to his desk and sagged into his chair, a hand at the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, held it, before letting it out in a slow exhale. He tapped the area above his nose and contemplated the inside of his eyelids before he dropped his arms onto the armrests of the chair, his back molded to its contours. Berlin whirred by just out the window, but he did not take notice. Rather, he stared off into space, as if waiting for something to occur, or someone to come back through those doors.
No sooner had he come to a determination to continue with his business as normal was when, out of nowhere, the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end, as if exposed to an electrical charge. A scything glow began to emanate from the corner of the room and a high-pitched whine emitted at the same time—Vulkov did not look at the source of the noise and the light for he could see the back of his hand brighten dimly. He froze in his seat, still staring straight ahead, even as the light faded. An aura of quiet then enveloped his senses before it was replaced by the slow and purposeful clomping of boots headed in his direction.
Now a churning throb wriggled into Vulkov's ears. A dark and deadly chorus. Whispers in a dead language murmuring taunts. He blinked painfully as he could feel a presence just to his left, behind his chair.
"How much did you hear?" Vulkov spoke out loud, not turning around in his seat. He tried to swallow, but that was a fruitless effort.
There was no intake of breath in the beat before the response. Nothing to indicate that something else in this room was alive.
"Enough."
"Then you know that I didn't lie to them. Everything I said was the truth."
"I know." The voice was powerful enough to conjure demons in Vulkov's mind, as if it could shatter glass and crack stone with a mere whisper. "But they didn't ask you the right questions. I wonder… would you have been as cooperative if they had?"
Now the admiral turned to view his distorted visage in within the domed prison of Aleph's helmet. He sucked in a worried breath as the being towered over his chair. The armored denizen appeared calm, poised, and eerily patient. His empty hands hung at his sides expectantly. His head dipped downward towards Vulkov, as if awaiting a damning confession to bear his sins on display.
Vulkov eyed the thickly encased fingers in fear, knowing that his head could be squeezed like an overripe fruit easily between them. "We both know that it wouldn't matter. They would not let me be the lynchpin in their plan if it came to that."
"Nor in mine," Aleph agreed. "You did well and held your own admirably. You told them nothing that I would have them rather not hear, though your own visibility in this tangled web has been limited. But now the time has come for your part in the Tranquility to conclude. Your cooperation and position has been important to my work… yet I always knew that your value to me would decrease with each passing day. Now is the time where we part ways, Admiral. You should be honored—you far outlasted my expectations."
There was a glint of movement behind Aleph's still cloak. The quadrupedal form of Raucous edged into sight, the ridges upon the cyborg's spine flared, sharp as knives. Slits that trapped a fire raging inside burned two holes in the metallic canine skull. The four clawed limbs made gashes upon the floor as the heavy cyborg prowled near his master, hissing in anticipation.
Shying away as far as his chair would let him, Vulkov trembled before Aleph, who had remained straight and still, endless judgment mirrored in his helmeted gaze. What eyes that lingered beyond that tormenting glass were known to no other man, for they could not find understanding in Aleph. The fissures in the admiral had been torn open—the proud warrior had now aged into a frightened old man in the presence of a monster.
"Please…" Vulkov whimpered as he raised a hand to ward off an attack that had not yet manifested. "Please… I'm begging you…"
"Men of lesser statures have been able to confront their destiny with ease. Which pantheon will you choose to stand with?"
"That… that quarian. She had one of the pieces you were searching for! She… she's still in this building! P-Promise me that you'll let me live… and… and… and I'll call her back in. I can get you that artifact… if you'll just let me live…"
Aleph gave no indication that he was giving the offer any consideration, for he had not moved so much as a muscle since he had manifested within Vulkov's office. He stood in his preferred silence, merely watching. Observing. Learning. Thinking.
Finally, he spoke.
"It is… of no concern."
Vulkov's face fell. "N-No concern…?"
"What you misunderstand, Admiral, is that I have always sought to bring palpability to my plan with a laboring patience so great that you could not hope to imagine. All the pieces will eventually come into my possession. It might not be today, or tomorrow, but it will transpire. I have waited this long. I will be able to wait a little longer. When my Monolith is complete the Tranquility will begin and the galaxy will be offered a second chance at the opportunity they missed the first time."
The admiral was about the furthest thing from comfortable, his previous attitude of condescension all but completely fled in terror. There was no pretense of being in charge anymore from his person. Command of the room had been yanked under his feet.
"My family…" he still mustered the nerve to beg. "At least… just… leave them be. That's… that's the one thing I ask of you."
Now the polished hand of Aleph reached out, breaking the petrified spell that had been self-imposed upon him. Cold fingers encrusted in dense armor brushed Vulkov's face, causing him to flinch and shake heavily as the inorganic touch slowly closed upon the side of his head.
"The sins of the father will not be bestowed upon the son," Aleph promised as he leaned down, bringing his helmeted head inches from Vulkov's shaking face. "Yet those sins demand suffering."
Vulkov was a worm in the shadow of Aleph. He could only behold his own pathetic face sent searing right back at him.
"You did lie to them about one thing," Aleph whispered as he brought himself close to the admiral's ear, vocabulator a centimeter away from the shivering organ. "You didn't tell Shepard who was really responsible for locking my records away on Luna. For if you had said that it had been you, that would have betrayed your deal with me." Aleph waited for his words to sink in, continuing only when he saw Vulkov's face shift into sheer panic. "Your attempt to obstruct me was an admirable feat of courage, Vulkov. Admirable… but so very stupid. I know what you were planning to do with my records. Although I'm curious what your plan was to get around the bio-codes attached to the documents to open them. Only I and a man far greater than you ever could have been would have that kind of privilege. Did you really think you could use them as an insurance policy against me? That possessing them would allow you to stall for time? There is nothing in those documents that could be used against me, Vulkov. Nothing. But apparently, you thought otherwise."
Aleph then straightened, becoming a mountain over the chair as the admiral was abruptly thrown into darkness, the air around him having grown quiet and still. His hand still remained locked onto the human's face, the brushed Silaris armor remaining icicle cold even against the burning flesh of the man.
"And that foolishness is why you have left me no choice."
In the next moment, Vulkov's fate was sealed.
The hand touching Vulkov's face never wavered, but the man gave a nearly imperceptible jolt as it felt like a slight burning sensation had enveloped every one of his nerves. A dull ring emitted in the air. There was no time to comprehend what was happening to him. The pain erupted from everywhere and nowhere. Vulkov started to wheeze before undergoing intense spasms in his chair—his legs were kicking out in all directions, his fingernails were gouging cuts into his chair, and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head while garbled noises flowed uncontrollably from his throat.
Aleph silently watched, straightening back up, as the admiral thrashed in his seat.
Invisible fluxes like buffeting currents surged into the matrices enveloping flesh within Vulkov's skull. In less than a microsecond, they all collided, creating a miniature nova that emitted powerful ripples through solid matter. It was over in an instant. There was a slight pop and Vulkov's eyes immediately became flooded bright red with blood, dark trails weeping from his eyelids, making him look demonic. His nose let go and gushed blood over his navy coat. Crimson bubbles frothed at the corners of his mouth. Violent waterfalls poured from his ears, making it look like the man had melted in his seat.
Vulkov's foot gave a final twitch and then he was still. His dead visage sagged and twisted in the curvature of his killer's reflective hemisphere, soaked in blood.
Aleph lifted his hand away from the corpse, examining it to find a bright bead of blood perched precariously upon the tip of a finger. The only stain garnered. He wiped it away on the dead man's coat. His hands as empty as they had been the entire time, the armored monstrosity showed no mirth, reveled not a whit, but stared in silence at the human he had just killed, knowing that the act had brought him no satisfaction to be gleaned.
Knowing what he knew, Aleph considered Vulkov to be fortunate.
The mood was dark as Roahn, Shepard, and Garrus treaded over to the elevator bays at the far end of the floor. The building here smelled of cleaning chemicals and treated stone. There was no traffic at this level so the three of them were free to take up as much space as possible between them, a hunting pack ambling through shadowy territory. Ironic, given that personal space was at a premium on some parts of Earth.
Everyone silently waited around until the lift they had called finally arrived to pick them up. Garrus and Shepard entered after the doors had slid open, somewhat stymied by Shepard's halting gait. Roahn was about to enter last when she gave a panicked stumble, as though gravity had suddenly shifted upon her person. The duffel that hung around her shoulder swung precariously. She placed a hand against the side of the doors, preventing them from sliding shut. It took a second before Garrus and Shepard had noticed that Roahn had stopped before turning around with confused looks on their faces.
"I just realized something," she murmured out loud, still not stepping into the elevator. "Some parts of that conversation didn't make any sense. Vulkov knew the documents on Luna were redacted, right?"
"So he said," Garrus affirmed.
Roahn rapidly blinked. "But the documents were already in the vault on Luna. Vulkov said they were sealed away… but how would he have known that unless he was the one who put Aleph's records there?"
"So he lied to us," Garrus said.
Hidden behind her visor, Roahn gave a grim smile. "He lied to us."
She took her hand away from the door.
With nothing blocking it anymore, the elevator doors quickly shut with a flash of steel, separating Roahn away from her father and Garrus. Startled, she took a half-step back. There had been no time to react. In dismay, she looked at the floor counter above the doors to find that the lift was already on a fast track to the bottom floor, helpless to stop its descent.
Roahn was now alone.
"Damn it," she bemoaned, not finding the circumstances to be all that amusing. Still, it was best to jump on this opportunity as soon as possible. It would take several minutes for her father and Garrus to find a way back up to this level. She was certain that she held the upper hand and would be easily able to offset Vulkov once confronted.
Roahn marched back into the office from the hallway, crossed through the suite inside, ignored the protests of Vulkov's secretary, and levelled a three-fingered hand upon the unlocked portal to where she had last left the admiral, palming it open.
"Admiral?" she asked as the door began to open. "There was one last thing that I wanted to—"
The next few moments stretched out towards infinitude as all of the adrenaline emitters in Roahn's body spiked into overdrive. Echoes of screams telling her to run blared out in a congregation in her head. A hand of icy blackness closed around her heart. Her mouth and tongue became an artic desert as tendrils of fear manifested themselves as inky roots across her eyes.
Aleph, standing over the emaciated corpse of Vulkov, turned calmly in place, an anthem of chilling whispers seemingly muttering all around him. Behind him, Raucous edged to the side, giving a feral hiss at Roahn. A low growl—perhaps emanating from outside—rumbled through the room. Roahn felt the duffel bag, the artifact within, tumble from her shoulder to land at her feet, the sound ignored as she stood frozen in the presence of the tall and mysterious being.
Her body lost all feeling. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Seemingly locked within Aleph's reflective helmet, a firecloud of unnamable proportions billowed eagerly. The monster held his own hell for all to see, embracing the embodiment as he found only muted emotion yearning to break through Roahn's own visor. Curious, he took a step forward, his feet soundless upon the ground. His cloak trembled with each impact—fabric waves flowing slowly like disturbances in a pond of mercury.
Ropes of what felt like searing metal heated from the precise flame of a blowtorch felt like they were wrapping their ends around and around Roahn's left arm, but when she looked down, all she could see was her metal appendage twitching uncontrollably. Phantom pain. A thick but soft cry shot through the gaps in her teeth, a reaction to a false sensation, an actual pain localized over a fictional location.
Roahn's vision grayed. She had forgotten to breathe. Only when she managed to suck in a torturous gasp, did she come to her senses.
The heat around her arm faded. Her stump simmered and cooled to a tender ember smolder.
In the next instant, Roahn reached down and yanked her pistol from her holster. The safety was already off. She rapidly lined up the sights to her eye and, once Aleph's center of mass was underneath the middle tack, she unleashed the first shot, already prepared to send several more to follow.
But Aleph had also reacted at the same time. He lunged forward as he swept his right hand from his left wrist upward. Glitters of a ferrous-like substance hovered in the air like a fine mist before a sudden electrical pulse the color of a ferocious sunset shot out in all directions, crackling into the form of a wide sword that it looked like it could cleave the sky in two.
Aleph swung the blade, catching Roahn's bullet on its face. A geyser of sparks erupted outward, spraying over the swordsman's feet. Roahn fired again. And again. Aleph calmly waved his arm to meet each shot, disintegrating every bullet as they impacted on his omni-sword. Loud clashes and bangs erupted in the small room, and tendrils of lightning and sparks greedily grasped at Roahn, completely terrifying her. Aleph then gave a slash at the ceiling, shattering the overhead light and causing the entire room to be consumed in the helpless strobing throes that projected nightmarish shadows of the combatants over the walls.
Wordlessly, Aleph gave a small leap before thrusting his unarmed right hand out in a gentle push. Roahn steeled herself, as if she expected a burst of biotic energy to flare from his palm, but was instead surprised when every single muscle in her body erupted in a silent but agonizing cry. It had felt like someone had injected pure fire into her veins. The quarian reeled, her mouth open in a quiet scream, her pistol tumbling from loose fingers. The weapon settled next to the fallen duffel. Rigid and trapped in helpless spasms, Roahn swayed in place as it felt like her body was sizzling just underneath her skin. Tears clambered at the corners of her eyes as she felt her feet leave the floor, nestled in an invisible grip.
She was levitating a foot over the ground now.
Bleary and confused, Roahn spread her arms as she struggled to scream. What… is… this?
There was a sucking noise as Aleph deactivated his sword and dropped his arms to his side. The pain had departed Roahn at this point, but there was still the lingering afterimage that she could not shake off—her body still remembered the violating sensations and quivered, a fearful reflex. Roahn was still unbelievably hovering in place, as if she had been trapped in an anti-gravity chamber.
This isn't biotics, she realized helplessly. This is something else.
Aleph walked up to Roahn and considered her shaking form thoughtfully. He was close enough to touch her, yet he purposefully kept his distance. As if he was interested in studying her like she was a lab animal or if the idea of disposing of her was somehow detestable to his tastes.
"You have a habit of showing up whenever I choose to venture outward, Roahn'Shepard," Aleph said.
He knows my name, she blearily thought before her mouth automatically responded. "I would follow you to the edge of the galaxy if it meant that I could cut your head off," she seethed through clenched teeth.
"Careful. You're blurring the line between confidence and irrationality."
"Fuck… you," Roahn gasped, incensed at Aleph's condescending tone.
"I'll ignore that insensible outburst."
Roahn's face was a mask of pain and hatred, her clenched jaw crushing her teeth together in a frenzied chatter.
"You're quick to violence," Aleph said, "but that is all reactionary. Instilled from your parents, no doubt. Perhaps when everything they saw in this galaxy was under the barrel of a gun, they lost their capacity to discern perspective. There is much more dimensionality to our 'conflict' than you realize, Roahn'Shepard. It is why I spared your life on Luna… or did you think that was a mistake on my part? Regardless, you seem to lack a certain gratitude."
"Let me go," Roahn hissed, her legs continuing to dangle in mid-air, "and I'll show you just how grateful I can be."
Aleph's silver head gave the slightest shake. "Neither of us will benefit from making a martyr out of you. You still have not realized the choice you have yet to make. You can still walk away. Disengage yourself and guarantee not only your life but the lives of your friends and comrades. Is that not preferable to the turbulent life you pursue?"
Now it was Roahn's turn to shake her head, her eyes filled with fiery anger. "I can't. I won't. You mutilated me when you took my arm."
"A courteous gesture. Not barbarism."
"I fail to… see the difference," Roahn gritted.
"Then I suppose we'll soon see just how willing you are to discover the truth for yourself," Aleph said as he bent over to the duffel bag. He calmly unzipped it, demonstrating an unusual delicateness in his actions. He lifted out the canister containing the artifact, hefted it in a hand, and unscrewed the top. Slowly, he tipped the container so that the matte sphere tumbled into his hand with a soft clunk. He considered the obelisk for a moment, appreciating its contours and how the plates upon the face seemed to fold over one another like an imprecise puzzle. "If it is any consolation," he said without looking at Roahn, "this would have ended up in my possession one way or another. I suppose I must relay my appreciation to you for ferrying this all this way. It has had a long journey and still has far to go until it reaches its destination."
Unceremoniously, the unseen force keeping Roahn aloft suddenly switched itself off. Roahn felt her gut drop to the floor right before she hit the ground hard. She crumpled, a puppet without a puppeteer. She splayed her hands across the ground, panting hard, tingles radiating over her skin. Aleph did not seem to care as he stood only feet from her—he had deliberately deactivated whatever energy field that had been manipulating her body as a taunt, to show her that he did not need to control her actions to be the true lord over her.
An unbelievable anger burgeoned within Roahn's stomach, acidic bile and frothing rage. The inky blackness melted from her vision—she saw only red. Her prosthesis clenched so hard that she could hear the hydraulics hiss and bleed air in protest.
So close… Aleph was right… there.
One quick move and it would all be…
Roahn leaped to her feet, omni-blade extended as she hurled her body in a manic thrust, the point of her weapon stabbing at Aleph's neck. She practically flew through the air, mouth open in a frantic howl, though no sound escaped her lips.
But Aleph turned with a whirl of his cloak. A large hand shot from nowhere and fastened itself securely around Roahn's metal wrist.
…over.
Roahn's eyes opened wide in a panic. Aleph uttered no response as he smoothly rotated his body, throwing the quarian down upon the ground hard onto her back. She cried out as she felt the back of her ribs bruise. His hand was still clamped on her wrist, her omni-blade still ignited and locked in a precarious position.
No! Nononononono!
"I was wondering if you would try to chance it," Aleph spoke without an iota of smugness, as if it was no big deal that he had just stopped such a wild attempt on his life. "Desperation and the perceived loss of control. You have yet to master your own inhibitions. Perhaps I shall dispense another courtesy to emphasize that point."
The hand that gripped Roahn's prosthesis, omni-blade still wrapped around her wrist, began to move, angling Roahn's arm toward her face. The curved weapon continued to blaze freely, humming with energy as its edges sizzled in the air. The quarian's eyes widened as she tried to edge her head away, but she was in a bad position. Desperately, she tried to deactivate the blade around her own arm—just a mere thought… an instinctive reaction to just turn it off—but the weapon did not blink into nothingness. It continued to brighten the world before her eyes, deadly and humming.
Her own weapon was being turned against her.
This is impossible! Roahn thought. She hammered the command to turn off her blade over and over in her head, akin to depressing a large red button repeatedly, but nothing happened. How? How?! Omni-tools were linked via implant connections. She should have been able to turn the weapon off as easily as taking a breath!
But Aleph's powerful grip continued to push the blade further and further towards her face. Roahn had run out of breath to scream for she had been hyperventilating so intensely. A beam of violent red cut diagonally across her foe's silver face, a fog straining her mind as her muscles screamed in protest.
"No…" she pathetically whispered as she could imagine the heat of the blade begin to rip at her body. "No…"
The blade still would not switch off even as it finally reached Roahn's visor. There was a slight grating noise, an emission of smoke, and microscopic sparks as fibrous shards of tempered glass were expelled into the air from the intense heat. Roahn's howl was swallowed by the sudden squeal of the blade biting into her helmet.
"Warning, warning," her suit's VI calmly alerted. "Breach in sector one. Enivrons have been compromised—contaminants have been detected. Warning, warning."
Fire erupted between the polished sheens of silver and blue. Heated cores within sunlight icebergs. Roahn felt a splinter of heat start to reach at her face.
But seconds after it had all started, it was over.
Momentarily lit alight from the glow of the superheated sparks, Aleph's grip suddenly slackened, releasing the quarian from his grip. Her omni-blade inexplicably now blinked into nothingness, a final gasp of relief. Roahn lay on her back upon the ground, shuddering, as Aleph stood back up and slowly walked away, back towards where he had left Vulkov's body. He turned his back to her, shunting her carelessly out of his mind, as if he was bored with her already.
"Warning, warning," the VI was still ringing in her suit.
Something was causing her eyes to blur in and out. There was a faint tickle in her lungs. Trying to focus as best as she could, Roahn could appraise a thin line cutting across her visor, nearly imperceptible, but deep enough to create a slight area of suction that violated her filtered atmosphere. She coughed, finding that to be alarming.
Breach, breach, she thought frantically. Aleph temporarily was of no concern in her mind right now. The reaction's already starting. Seal it. Seal it up.
Another cough. Her throat started to feel ragged. Bad sign.
Rolling on the ground, Roahn reached towards one of the pockets at the belt around her waist. She withdrew a tiny flat roll of gray gaffer tape from which she pulled off a strand about half a foot long. After cutting it loose she smashed the tape against the cut in her visor and used her fingers to press it down firmly to obtain a good seal.
Roahn listened to the wails of her suit.
"Breach in sector one. Breach in sector one. Environs have been—" There was a distinct pause. "Breach repaired. Environs restoring to optimal levels. Foreign contaminants detected in respiratory airways. Allergic reaction has started. Recommend immediate treatment."
She was spluttering now, clutching at her throat, vision partially obscured from the duct tape that covered a portion of her visor. Crawling on all fours, she made it over to one of the couches and used it to shakily get back to her feet. Her eyes felt red hot. They were now watering. She had to blink several times to clear them.
Aleph had seemed to carve a respectful amount of distance between Roahn and was now watching her intently. Behind him, Raucous edged forward, whimpering in agonizing impatience. After a wheezing Roahn had bent down to pick up her pistol from where it had fallen, Aleph looked down upon his pathetic minion before turning towards the quarian again.
"He… remembers you," Aleph said. "And I can only control him for so long until his urges consume all logic in his mind. You may still have a part to play, so I'll ensure he doesn't kill you, but you will not escape pain. Perhaps this time he'll take a leg. Or… your other arm. If you're as determined as I believe you are, you'll find a way to overcome your fear so that you might live."
On unsteady legs, Roahn faltered in place, not understanding.
Aleph then took a step forward. "Run," he hissed, malevolence ablaze in his visor.
Lungs burning, Roahn bolted for the door.
Her shoulder throbbed as she knocked open the entrance and sprinted through the foyer towards the elevators. Now her throat was feeling like it was constricting. It was now effortful to suck in breaths. Behind her, Roahn could already hear the vicious scrape of metallic claws upon tile. Raucous had been unleashed.
She had to grab onto a corner as she rounded it, her feet skidding on the slick floor. The synthetic hissing and growling—an animalistic choir—surged into her ears frightfully. Roahn wanted to scream but could not muster a sound around a congested windpipe. She nearly collided with a low coffee table as she ran, forcing her to stutter-step for a second, losing valuable time and speed. Roahn clasped her pistol to her side for she was too addled to even use it. One hand was at her throat while she coughed and ran simultaneously.
The elevator bay loomed through her wobbling myopia, but none of the doors were opened to admit her. It was too late, there were no lifts for her to take and Raucous was too close. Her eyes scrambled around the hall, desperate to catch sight of an insert where she could take cover. No use, there were no other doors in her line of sight—Raucous had closed the gap all too well.
Looking back was a mistake. Raucous was tearing through the hallway, smashing aside the doors as if they were made of paper. Desks were overturned and aides were knocked aside, spilling datapads, coffee, and various adornments to the ground. Snarling and teeth gnashing, the quadrupedal cyborg roared through the building, hell-bent on tearing at Roahn limb from limb.
She could feel the memory of Raucous' bite on her arm. A flash of seeing her severed limb on the ground, bloodstained, a knob of bone—shockingly white—poking out from ragged flesh. The ghost of her left arm gave a throb of reminder.
Roahn faltered in the middle of the elevator bay until she spotted the window to her left, where a bevy of construction drones swarmed by in their duties. The catwalks! Yes, the building was undergoing repairs! Roahn unlocked her pistol from her holster, only seconds before Raucous could be upon her, and fired two shots at the window, blowing it outward in a hail of dust-like safety glass. Cold air hurtled in from outside, but Roahn had tucked in her shoulder and had mounted a charge at the cracked barrier, her heart feeling like it was beating ten times as fast while her chest tightened all around it.
Her feet were a blur as she sprinted towards the impromptu exit. Roahn barreled through the weakened glass and it shattered all around her in a clear blizzard as she entered open air. A chill pressed upon her enviro-suit, making her aware of her own heated temperature. With a gasp, she stumbled and fell onto the temporary metal floor, nearly letting go of her weapon. She rolled on her back, temporarily giving her a view of a clouded sky. As she got to her feet, she took a brief look down from where she was before recoiling back in a panic. She was still more than forty stories up off the ground—people looked like tiny insects down below. The construction catwalks did not even reach completely towards the bottom floor as they wrapped around one side of the building for only about ten stories further or so.
A cadre of construction drones, lights flashing upon their dish-like heads, suddenly orbited Roahn in an angry frenzy, blaring repeated warnings to leave the construction zone or else face legal repercussions. The quarian had bigger things to worry about; Raucous was standing amidst the shattered remains of the window, mewling in confusion. However, the cyborg's yellow incisions for optics found Roahn again and he carefully began to tread onto the catwalk. Roahn slowly backed up, coughing and spluttering, as the footway creaked and groaned.
In seconds, Raucous was fully onto the thin metal platform. His four feet began to sag the floor where he stood, but the structure held.
"Shit," Roahn gagged.
Raucous unleashed a hellish laugh before he pounced at Roahn again.
With a grunt, Roahn rolled to the left, off of the platform and tumbled in all directions as she fell one story down. She landed heavily on her side onto the catwalk below, drawing the wind from her with a startling wheeze. Above, Raucous smashed through plywood barriers and metal poles, dislodging part of the attached structure just over his head, showering the cyborg in debris. Roahn scrambled to her feet and ran in the opposite direction around the corner of the building, hopping over pipes and ducking protruding bars so that she would not trip or crack her visor any more open than it already was. To her side was a startling edge—there were no guardrails. She had to fight to keep her balance. Tears and mucus poured out of her eyes and nose. Half-blind and coughing up a storm, Roahn's body was battered and bruised as she smashed against column after column, clumsily making her way around the building with a murderous creature hot on her heels.
The ground shook under Roahn's feet, nearly throwing her off balance. She managed a cry as she knew that Raucous had jumped down to her level. The cyborg was barreling through the obstacles that the quarian had been meaning to avoid, not at all in the way impaired. The structure wobbled and began to list—Roahn looked over and saw, to her panic, that the bolts connecting the catwalks to the building were being sheared away from the violent force of the rampage. Her heels were starting to slip.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Roahn squeaked as she hopped down another level, this time landing on her feet, but there was a distinct grinding sensation of bone and she knew that her ankle had just snapped. Roahn howled again, her throat clearing just enough for this one evocative moment before she erupted in a spate of coughing once again. Blood misted her visor as something in her windpipe tore open. She clasped a hand to her chest, fighting to continue.
Raucous leaped down as the floor above them precariously tipped away, tumbling to the ground far below in a bizarre collage of metal and plywood. Construction drones buzzed around the head of the cyborg angrily, but Raucous lunged, teeth snapping, and caught one of the drones in his mouth. The edges of his teeth heated to a blistering temperature, glowing red with a silver center, and he bit the drone in half, the sparking pieces twitching on the ground at his sides. Raucous gave a few swipes to the other drones in his vicinity, catching two of them and knocking their repulsors offline so that they spiraled out of control before crashing upon the side of the building.
Roahn continued to limp forward, now unsure where her pain was being manifested from. Her whole body seemed to ache all at once, nearly bringing her mind to a standstill. She reached a ladder, now shaking from hearing Raucous' roars, and gingerly slid down it to the next floor. Tools and ripped pieces of piping rained down above her head. She looked up to see the triangular maw of Raucous staring down right above her, panting eagerly and preparing to pounce again. Curved claws grasped at the edge of the platform, nudging the first rung of the ladder while steam curled from the edges of the cyborg's mouth.
The quarian was not having any of it. Roahn yanked her pistol free and pointed it right at Raucous' face.
"I'm not easy prey," she spat as she pulled the trigger.
Raucous reeled back and reared his head as he screeched, yellow fluid spilling from his cracked left optic. The supporting beams of the construction structure seemed to rattle with the bellowing cry. The cyborg retched and coughed as thick conducting liquid poured from the fissure in the glass of his eye.
There was a window that lead into a lower elevator lobby right next to Roahn. Quickly she whirled and shot it out as well before diving through it like a madwoman. She slid across the desert granite floor along with a mass of glass pebbles, her injured ankle feeling like it had ballooned inside her boot. Her breathing was now at a whispering slither. Her mouth tasted of blood. She was seeing double.
She had made it halfway to the lift console from the window when Roahn heard an artificial groaning sound. Unable to conjure the strength to stand, she rolled over onto her back as she beheld the wounded Raucous standing feet away from her, golden liquid similar to plasma dripping off his jaw. The predator slowly stalked inside, taking the opening that Roahn had provided him. He was no longer charging at the quarian in a frenzy—he now seemed to regard her as a genuine threat, prey that had a fair amount of barbs to ensure that whatever fight would crop up that no one would emerge unscathed. The cyborg emitted a low whine of frustration, watching Roahn attempt to crawl away.
Roahn was nearly unable to breathe at this point. She had to lunge her entire body above her waist in a painful convulsion to force every breath into her lungs. The color in her eyes started to wash out. Her right arm curled tightly to her chest, spasms yanking her muscles taut.
The pad to call the lift was just a couple feet above her head. Limply, she tried to grope for it with her prosthesis. She made a pass—missed. Her eyes were focusing in the wrong place. She tried a second time—also a miss. Raucous was starting to creep forward again, sensing that Roahn was becoming more and more overtaken by her allergic reaction. He was seizing his moment to strike.
Whimpering, Roahn heaved her entire body upwards to even touch the panel… but her fingers uselessly scraped the side and slid right off. Exhausted, Roahn slumped against the wall, shuddering with her waning breaths. Crumpled, she curled into a fetal position, extremities numb, ankle swollen with heat and pain.
Seeing the wounded quarian poise herself for her defeat, Raucous uttered one more sinister chuckle, the side of his face coated and smeared with a translucent yellow-orange fluid. He lowered himself to the ground, his jagged tail waggling in the air, claws puncturing stone for a precise grip, bared his teeth and—
The doors to the lift opened. Raucous immediately swung his head to the right in alarm.
There was a puff of vapor and a translucent streak shot out from the lift, impacting squarely upon Raucous' torso. The cybernetic creature gave a yelp and was propelled all the way down the hall, smashing apart doors and desks as he skidded across the smooth tile.
Blearily, Roahn tried to open her eyes wider just as the smoking end of an assault rifle poked out from the elevator, its owner coming into view.
Garrus calmly strode out, Shepard right behind him, both touting their weapons. The under-barrel of Garrus' rifle wisped from where the concussive shot had been fired. Shepard had his own weapon locked in place against his shoulder, his eyes already aiming down the sights—old tricks could not be forgotten so easily.
"Sorry, was I interrupting?" Garrus called after the dazed Raucous.
The cyborg shakily got to his feet, multicolored bolts of electricity arcing around his joints and his head. He shook himself all over, dog-like, spraying liquid and bits of armor everywhere. Raucous was now sporting a slight limp on his front right leg—the housing there was cracked and leaking conductive fluid. His reptilian head surged in the direction of the turian and he gave an inhumane bellow… right before Garrus and Shepard opened fire.
The hall exploded with the rapid-fire reports of the two soldiers' weapons. Bullets pinged off of Raucous' armor but some impacted on precise areas, denting them and distorting the cyborg's shape. One round took a chunk off of one of Raucous' slanted ears, procuring more electrical arcs from the affected area.
Roahn shuddered from the noises the guns were making on her ears—it was sounding like a thunderstorm was choosing to erupt right next to her. She spasmed on the ground, coughing and spluttering, a trickle of blood now flowing freely from a nostril as everything started to take on translucent rainbow outlines while her entire body seemed to be travelling in slow-motion.
Raucous' head was nudged back from a well-placed shot, sending one of his teeth skidding across the ground. In his primitive mind, he had made the determination that enough was enough. He still held the wherewithal to figure out when was an appropriate time to flee. Frantically, he wheeled around, bullets impacting the floor all around him in dusty geysers, and galloped in the opposite direction, away from Garrus and Shepard. Several Alliance guards rounded the corner at the far end, drawn from the commotion, and straight into the path of the retreating cyborg. Raucous' momentum was great enough to prevent him from slowing completely—he barreled into the guards, who had all been stupidly grouped in a tight cluster, and took a pause in his retreat to tear every one of them apart. He pounced with jaws opened wide and claws spread upon his feet.
There was a whirlwind of silver, black, and crimson.
The walls and hall decorations in the vicinity were soon painted red with blood as Raucous went insane with violence. Razor claws slashed at the soldiers, slicing off limbs or disemboweling them in seconds. Sticky gore soon flowed and coated the tile. Raucous lunged forward and bit down hard, taking out chunks of flesh with every chomp. Viscera dripped from the remaining teeth in his mouth, thick and bloody colored so red it looked black. The cyborg gave an ecstatic sigh once he had messily killed the troopers in his vicinity, relieved at finally having killed something.
Shepard and Garrus continued to fire until Raucous came to his senses and finally rounded the corner, fleeing from sight for good. A haze of smoke billowed near the ceiling. Bullets pockmarked the walls. Splinters of furniture and shards of glass spilled across the ground. There was a sudden clatter as Garrus ejected a spent clip, the cylindrical object still glowing red as it rolled to a stop.
The shuddering sound by the elevator quickly regained Shepard's attention. He stumbled over to his fallen daughter, who by his observation, looked worse for the wear. With her duct-taped helmet, labored breathing, bedraggled appearance, and glazed eyes, she was in poor shape indeed. Quickly, he linked his omni-tool to hers to check on her suit's diagnosis.
Suit breach. Allergic reaction already taking hold. Roahn needed medical attention right away.
"Oh, honey…" Shepard whispered as he turned her over, his hands providing stability.
Roahn's shuddering gasps lingered, her pupils dilating as her body was being attacked from within. The last thing she saw before she passed out was her father's assuring face, lined with concern.
"We're going to get you out of here," she distantly heard before the next second transpired and then she heard nothing at all.
A/N: I know Aleph has been appearing sparingly throughout this story so I realize it might be hard to pass judgment on whether he is an effective villain or not. He'll definitely be showing up more as we get closer to the end, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts on his overall presence in the story.
However, I will have to mention that the next chapter will be quite a bit delayed. Mostly because I will be leaving for a vacation out of the country next week and will not have any access to a computer to write at that time... not that I would want to write while I'm on vacation, anyway. And right after that, I have to deal with moving my things across the city from my current place which is never fun. Once those are behind me, I'll be able to get back to work and have the next chapter out as soon as I can.
Playlist:
Umbra v. Vulkov
"Gehenna"
Thomas Newman
1917 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Aleph Arrives/Vulkov's Death
"Face Hugger"
Jed Kurzel
Alien: Covenant (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Chase Through the Construction Zone (Raucous Theme Pt. I)
"Cargo Lift"
Jed Kurzel
Alien: Covenant (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)