"What are 'the vats?'" Krios asked abruptly, giving the impression of someone who, when he had a reasonable question, would not scruple to ask it.
Sheffler approved: lots of times the young kids had to get over working with an N7, or over the fear that he attracted Akuze-like trouble on a weekly basis, or something else in keeping with an otherwise intimidating presence. He liked the direct, logical question.
"It's what we're calling whatever factory Cerberus is using to crank out their shock troops. There were these books, and the villain was growing his army in vats," Sheffler answered vaguely, passing a new poster on the wall. He glanced at it—Sanctuary—and sighed. Great way to attract Reaper attention: tell them where the refugees were going to congregate.
It wasn't the first of these ramshackle places that had cropped up—although it was the first with such a big, clean-looking sign. There were plenty of people willing to prey on the desperate, and it was all Sheffler could do to pray that fewer ended up dead in ditches after being robbed than his cynical mind predicted.
Sheffler suddenly stopped walking, looked back at the sign, then shook himself. It wasn't the first advertisement designed to draw desperate people to promised safety. Just the prettiest. It had the look of a vacation advertisement, now that he thought about it—which was out of keeping for the sale of safety. It looked surprisingly reputable compared to the many promises of safety being sold these days.
He started walking again, then stopped when he passed a second poster further on, something cold pooling in his stomach. His hands started to shake, the way they did when he suspected a thresher maw of lurking in his general vicinity.
No. Surely not…
The nasty little voice in his head that called things as they were, cynical and sterile in its assessments, had already begun elaborating the chilling prospect. Desperate people flocking to a centralized location? That sounded like a steady stream of living bodies, didn't it?
He—and by extension, Hackett—was fairly certain the Illusive Man wasn't actually making people; he was simply perverting people who already existed. The question of where he kept getting his manpower had everyone scratching their heads. Cerberus had always been sketchy, too sketchy to attract the numbers being seen.
And he didn't believe for one moment that the Illusive Man hadn't ordered those kidnappings on Benning, no matter that Hackett believed the creep. Experiments that broke free were rarely so organized. Even if it had been a rogue group…since when did drones have the brain power to improvise or come up with tactics and objectives without someone smarter hissing in their ears?
He shook himself. Anger distorted logic. The reason everyone was scratching their heads about the locations of the vats—Shepard's suggestion of hiding in plain sight sent adrenaline dumping into his veins—was because no one could be so depraved as to bait a trap with safety to lure the desperate in, only to turn them into husk-like drones then unleash them on the galaxy. Because so far, he had yet to hear of one report—one measly, miniscule report, or a note on the back of a napkin at a fast food joint, even—that suggested the Illusive Man had pointed any of his operatives in the Reapers' directions. The man was waging a war against the Allied Galaxy, not the Reapers…
…was he using innocent people to do it? It didn't sound out of character for the Illusive Man, who had never given much thought to innocent lives before, as long as he got something out of spending them. Still…if nothing else, it showed that Sheffler still allowed that the man might have some limits to his disregard for life, some form of conscience…
…and that he'd been dead wrong. Anger tried to blaze up, but failed. This new depth of darkness left even Sheffler staggered; it represented something far beyond the insanity he knew the Illusive Man was overcome by.
Stars…following that line of thinking, the Illusive Man was practically doing the Reapers' jobs for them…which would explain why—not without some weak points, but in the general sense—why he might advertise a place like Sanctuary so publically, without worrying about it being found.
But the Reapers didn't know the Illusive Man like Sheffler did. Unless they had him totally in thrall—and Indoctrination reports indicated the tighter the grip, the less functional the subject—he wouldn't be serving their ends. In some twisted way, he was serving his own agenda…however corrupt and incomprehensible that garbage was.
"Sir, are you alright?" Siu asked, genuine concern in his voice.
Sheffler looked at the lads, realizing as he did so that he'd clamped a hand over his mouth as if it might keep him from making this new scenario real by refusing to give utterance to it. "Hang on, I'm thinking…" he mumbled through his hand, regarding the poster through narrowed eyes.
The Illusive Man, whatever he might say, proved repeatedly he had little regard for life. If he thought his drones could help him win this war, he'd convert the whole galaxy, and throw the ones he didn't want out as slag. Or find a way to melt them down into nutrition paste, or something equally disgusting. Waste not.
Sheffler took a deep breath. It was no good jumping to conclusions. He couldn't just storm the Sanctuary facility—wherever it was—and kick in the door on a maybe.
But it was a good place to start looking for vats, however carefully the looking would need to be done. If it turned out he was simply being paranoid, was giving the Illusive Man more credit (or less, depending on how one measured it) than he deserved, he didn't want to ruin something legitimate.
But he'd be damned if he just sat back and pretended this new idea hadn't occurred to him.