Author's Note: something something whoops something something Cyberpunk 2077.
Well, to be honest, that's not entirely true. I mean, it's partially true. I spent a good portion of the last few months furious that CD Projekt Red wouldn't let me mindfuck Johnny Silverhand. The cowards.
But on a more serious note, lately I've been insanely busy at work, and I think that overwhelming level of stress had spilled over to a pretty bad depression funk for a while. So I guess I just also wanted to take a moment to apologize for the lateness, but also to tell you to take care of yourself. We're all going through it right now.
And, uh, not to swerve wildly, but I also wanted to provide a trigger warning for some body horror-adjacent stuff this chapter. If that kind of scene bothers you, I've changed the line break prior to the major scene containing this imagery with a tTt rather than the normal xXx I use for line breaks, since whoever programmed is apparently an absolute monster who won't allow pound signs, which are the actual industry standard for scene breaks in manuscript.
xXx
"Keep them safe, Vakarian."
Those had been Shepard's last words to him, as she, Tali, Mordin, and the biotic lunatic had disappeared down the curve of a long, dark tunnel. He felt the four sets of eyes on him as they left, waiting for his instructions. Already he had burned the pingers' map into his mind, so that he could have seen it in is dreams.
Probably not that good an idea, since the map in question was of a dead Reaper, but he wasn't about to lead these people in blind. He wasn't about to lose anyone.
Never again. He had let Sidonis live. Sidonis, who had cost him everything. Sidonis, who had betrayed the friendship they had built on Omega. The family.
This was his new family, now. Shepard, and Liara, and Tali, and the strange crew that had assembled around them. He didn't know all of them that well, but—that was family. Sometimes you showed up to Memorial Day and were introduced to your third cousin from the colonies.
Sometimes there's a krogan teenager trying to see if he can discreetly fire off a few practice rounds from his shiny new rocket launcher, Garrus thought to himself. He had to keep an eye on Grunt, but at the same time he couldn't look like he was babysitting the kid. Any krogan, never mind a pubescent one, would hate that. Especially from a turian.
"All right," Garrus said, nodding in the direction of the tunnel they were headed for. "We're headed down that path. I've already cast a copy of our map to you with our highlighted route. Grunt, you and I are on point. Thane, Nyxis, you hang back and stay near Kasumi."
"Aw, I'm flattered," Kasumi said, swapping in the blushing human face for her mask image again. Garrus resisted the urge to comment. She was the only person here who wasn't a seasoned killer—or, in Grunt's case, an engineered killer—and Garrus wasn't about to leave a civilian alone without protection. Even if that civilian was a master thief packing more advanced technology than Garrus had probably even heard of.
Once upon a time, he would have counted T'Soni among that class of delicate civilian that needed protecting. But even before she'd become the Shadow Broker, the young asari had hardened in ways Garrus never would have expected. She had always had a certain cool intellect, like any academic, but she had managed to translate those skills into a kind of analytical mastery that had let her become one of the foremost information brokers on Illium. And her biotics, always powerful, had been honed over the two years when, solely among all of them, she had fought against the Broker and the Collectors and the spirits only knew what else to get Shepard back.
So he didn't really have any concerns for her safety, anymore.
"I was hoping we'd have something to kill by now," Grunt rumbled, leading the way at the head of their formation. The tunnel they were walking down was long, and narrow—pingers put it about a half kilometre from the Cerberus installation. Unlike the other branching paths that sometimes fed into their tunnel, though, this one was lit by a familiar orange lighting, coming from strips running along the floor. Even without the pingers Garrus would have known they were going in the right direction. If Cerberus was consistent in anything, it was branding.
"Well, our luck is bound to change sooner or later," Garrus said wryly, not bothering to point out that what he and Grunt thought of as lucky were two very different things.
"We should remain cautious. Cerberus will very often lay traps posing as civilian outposts," Thane said calmly, his voice somehow even more soothing over the crackle of their suit comms. The drell had only brought a light machine pistol, which normally Garrus wouldn't have approved of, if he hadn't seen what the drell could do with that weapon back on Illium. Garrus had already drawn his own Vindicator, specially modified for greater stopping power and range. Made the thing kick harder, but Garrus was used to it, and the extra penetration had been the difference between life and death more than once on Omega. And not just his own life or death, either.
"Thane's right," Garrus said, as he continued down the tunnel, occasionally checking his rifle's scope—another custom mod he'd installed. There was nothing. But traps didn't show up on your scope, after all. "Kasumi, I want you monitoring for any kind of broadcast signal. Anything that might send a message or mark some kind of silent alarm."
"Way ahead of you, boss-man." In the turian military, you would've been reprimanded for speaking to a superior that way. But he was the only turian, none of them were in the military, and besides, it was hard to be annoyed at Kasumi. "I'll let you know if anyone starts muttering about secret plans on AM radio."
"I have been monitoring, as well." Liara's voice came out as a shadowy croak about a full register deeper than her normal voice through her voice modulating software. Garrus knew who it was under that mask, but it still gave him the creeps.
"All right. We're nearly there. Careful, everyone. I wouldn't put it past Cerberus to somehow plant a Thresher Maw in this thing."
They emerged into a large chamber, lit by more of that orange Cerberus light. The chamber itself was a huge, ovular structure that would have had a sheer drop from the tunnel, if Cerberus hadn't built a series of catwalks between a pair of blocky prefab buildings that they'd installed in the sides of the chamber. Garrus raised a hand as he tapped commands in his omnitool and threw a pair of scanning dice out onto the catwalk. After a moment, his omnitool crunched the data and assured him that the structures would support well over their weight, and Garrus walked forward and collected up the little gadgets he'd brought from Omega. They'd been a necessity for sneaking around on rooftops.
"Nyxis, you go to the installation on the right, there." Garrus highlighted it in his omnitool map, sharing the details automatically with the others. "Kasumi, you take a look at the other one. Grunt, I want you to stick with Kasumi. Thane, you and I will stay on the main platform, monitoring."
He expected Grunt to grumble about being on guard duty, or for Kasumi to let off some wisecrack or another, but instead everyone set about their tasks with the kind of arch-backed stoicism that he did associate with the turian military. Garrus took up a post on the platform suspended between the two prefabricated buildings, and started counting the entrances. There was only one that connected to the structures that Cerberus had installed, but he could see two other tunnels leading away, up near the ceiling of the huge chamber. Maybe an access point for some kind of drone?
Or something that can crawl up walls.
He hadn't yet had to fire a single shot in that Reaper's corpse, but it already felt like he'd been there too long. No wonder his makeshift little squad was following orders so readily. They wanted to be out of here as badly as he did. Garrus shouldered his assault rifle and looked down the scope, scanning up into the tunnel entrances he'd seen near the top of the chamber. Nothing but empty darkness. No heat signatures. No signs of movement at all. But that didn't help him shake the unassailable feeling that there was something in this place. Something here was waiting for them. Waiting to pounce.
xXx
Jack had been a lot of weird places. A stolen quarian hydroponics ship. A military base overrun by cultists. Once, she had stolen a bunch of tech from a cryogenics lab that it turned out had been working on an early version of the containment capsule used on her in Purgatory. And that didn't even start in on the fucked-up places she went at night, when she let herself sleep soundly enough to dream.
Weird as those places were—and her dreams got pretty fucking weird—none of them came within spitting distance of the giant alien spaceship filled with robot corpses on the weird-o'-meter. In fact, Jack was feeling the parameters of her own personal weird-o'-meter adjusting, as though she was being given a new definition of what "ten out of ten, maximum weirdness" looked like.
They were walking in near pitch blackness, illuminated only by the lights projecting from an attachment on Shepard's rifle and a flood of directional lights on Tali's suit visor. Jack bit back a comment about how she'd always wondered where the geth got the idea of having flashlights on their heads.
They hadn't encountered any geth. But they'd found plenty of corpses. Well, scrapped hunks of metal that Jack had to assume were destroyed geth bodies. They didn't look like any geth Jack had ever seen; but Shepard had stopped them and bent over the first misshapen hulk they'd come across, beckoning the quarian to investigate. After a while they'd determined that the strange thing, which looked more like a big, lopsided crab than any kind of geth unit Jack had ever seen, was the result of the geth stripping the ship for materials to build an improvised body. What was more unsettling was that whatever had killed them … didn't seem to have done so with any kind of firearm. There were huge rents in the metallic structures, as though they had been torn by some kind of massive claw, or pulled apart at the improvised arm socket by some horrifically strong limb.
Shepard's reaction to this was to lean over the geth body and investigate the torn up body, hmming to herself as she studied the wound. She actually reached out to poke around at the tears in the structure, and murmured,
"'Hostile organics,' huh?" Shepard considered the corpse for a moment longer, and stood back up, shouldering her rifle again. She glanced at all three of them and took a deep breath. "All right. Switch to incendiary rounds. Tali, you have sonar up and running?"
"Yes, Shep—Dragon."
"We're on a Reaper, Tali, I think we can afford to break protocol," Shepard said wryly, before saying, in much more serious tones, "Make sure you're not just scanning for geth footprint frequencies. Add organic pitch scanning to your sensory overlay and let me know the moment you pick anything up."
"Of course, Shepard."
"Mordin, if there are Seeker swarms in here, will the booster shot we all received before Horizon still be of any use?" Shepard was still scanning downrange, as though she expected something to lurch out of the darkness. Jack's fists were clenched, biotics blistering just out of reach, blue fire dancing along her fingernails.
"Afraid not. However, suit seals should prevent any infestation from Seekers. Unfortunately, your mask does not have same protections as our helmets and Seekers will fly at speeds below kinetic threshold for localized barriers." Mordin rummaged in one of the pouches of his trench coat and produced a slim cartridge, which he inserted into one of his bracers. With a quick command to his omnitool he generated a small, quick-fabricated syringe, glistening with sterilizing heat. "However, have antibodies on hand."
"All right. Best hurry," Shepard said, though she was unmoving from her place at the head of their formation. Undeterred, Mordin walked forward and with surprising delicacy, pulled Shepard's hair back and inserted the needle into her neck. Shepard didn't react outwardly, but Jack could see a furious vein jumping in her temple.
The salarian backed off, and Shepard guided them further into that dark corridor, lit only by the sweeping lights of their rifles.
Jack was really itching for something to blow up. She didn't know shit about tech, she hated tunnels, and she hated wearing this goddamn hardsuit. She felt confined.
And she really hated being confined.
But as they continued, they still didn't find any more geth. Or at least, they didn't find any traditional geth. Just more of their strange, improvised bodies, all looking like they'd managed to piss off a giant grizzly bear. Looking at the mangled sheets of metal that were left behind, Jack found herself hating the stupid hardsuit even more. It wasn't like ceramic plates and ballistic mesh were going to stop whatever it was that had torn all those geth to pieces. The largest of the platforms had been nearly the size of a krogan.
Jack's suit helpfully informed them that the exterior temperature had dropped to -14 degrees centigrade, and that it was regulating her body temperature. Jack snarled at the intrusion. As though she needed some scraped together piece of Alliance tech to do that for her. She could warm herself with biotic fire, if she had to. Could shield herself with barriers thinner than paper and stronger than steel. She could—
"Hold up. Something's up ahead." Shepard was looking down the scope of her own sniper rifle. Jack froze, and felt the vicious onslaught of adrenaline that she associated with the anticipation of a fight, but Shepard didn't move.
"Something moving?" Jack hissed, trying to sound like she was annoyed, and nothing else. It grated on her every last nerve that some part of this place was actually, improbably, frightening. She hadn't thought anything could even be frightening after Pragia. She had thought she'd had all the fright burned out of her.
"Yes. Something fast. Going further down the tunnel. Towards where the Alarei is docked. I only got a flicker of it in the dark, but I think we've found our geth."
tTt
The locking mechanism in a prefab Cerberus habitat should not have been so effective.
Breaking door security was not the kind of thing you needed years of experience and technical mastery to accomplish. You just needed a good decryption program, and as it happened, Liara had the best. She had access to programs that could make trivial work of anything short of an active AI encryption, and despite that, her omnitool kept returning error reports when she tried to open the door. It didn't make sense—it was as though the locking program were constantly rewriting itself, except that was something that Liara's program should have been able to solve, too. But so far, it hadn't.
We do not have time for this. Nicole was plunging into the geth-infested half of this horrid, creaking monstrosity, while Liara was fiddling with an overgrown doorknob. Frustration boiled up in her chest and rapidly cooled into cold, glistening rage. She closed her eyes and reached out, harnessing that rage. By now she had mastered the trick of grabbing her anger by its slick and deadly edge without cutting herself. When she opened her eyes, her right hand was wreathed in flickering blue flame. She clenched her fist and the locking mechanism on the prefab door crunched with a satisfying clang, the door swinging open of its own volition now that Liara had destroyed the lock.
Her omnitool pinged. She glanced down, amused; it was helpfully informing her that it had successfully unlocked the door. She assigned her omnitool's copy of Glyph to set to running all extraction and isolation programs for any data on the computers inside; Cerberus had a paranoid habit of enabling full signal blocking on their habitats, so she hadn't been able to just extract the data once she'd been in wireless range. However, with the door open, the Cerberus signal block would lose its integrity, as it ran through the physical structure itself.
The door parted, and Liara reflexively shielded her eyes as the interior was revealed to be shockingly bright in comparison to the dim hallways of the Reaper ship. A moment later her facial mask automatically adjusted to filter some of the light, and she was able to enter. Once she was inside, Liara realized that the light inside wasn't just bright in comparison to the ship outside, but that it was almost blinding. Almost as soon as she'd made this revelation, she heard a strange, low moan coming from deeper into the habitat. She summoned her biotic barriers on sheer reflex, the air shimmering with the light of her biotic corona.
Curiosity led her further into the Cerberus habitat where discretion might have led her back to the safety of her colleagues—but she had to know. The hab was full of computer equipment connected by thick, strange cables of a design Liara didn't recognize; at first she thought that they were simple black cables connecting a number of improvised systems, but as she looked more closely at one she saw that it was almost like fibre optics, made of thousands of impossibly fine strands spun together to form a larger coil. It resembled no kind of connecting interface Liara had ever seen, and she ordered her VI to obtain reference images for her to compare to her archives once she was back on the Normandy.
She heard the groan again. The hab was an L-shaped model, and whoever was making that noise was behind the corner. There was one desk that was piled with notes—actual, physical notes—but even at a quick scan Liara could tell the words were nonsense. Her translation software was having trouble interpreting the human Mandarin the notes were written in into anything resembling a coherent Siin transcript. The only words that kept flashing through were something about a monarch or a Queen. Liara double-checked her translator—human genders didn't align well with the asari idea of the phenomenon, but the text was definitely using the female pronoun. Liara tried not to read anything into it—for all she knew based off a partial translation, this was just the personal diatribe of a Cerberus agent about some Earth-based monarchy.
Liara moved beyond the desk and kicked aside an overturned chair as she came to the bend at the end of the hab, and only her years practicing silence on Illium kept her from audibly gasping when she saw what was there.
There was a human. She was reclining in a chair, head lolling to one side, her mouth hanging open in what was either ecstasy or pain, Liara had no way to know. Her skin was pallid and sagging as though she were ill, and though Liara would have thought she was only middle-aged, her hair was white as snow. She was wearing a Cerberus coat not unlike the one Miranda had once worn, except—and here even Liara's battle-tested stomach threatened to turn—dozens of those thin cables were feeding directly into her skin, forming ugly wounds with scabby, bloody marks along her flesh. Liara had no way of knowing how long the woman had been like that, but she must have been there for ages—perhaps days.
The woman's head twitched, and her eyes locked on Liara's face. If the woman thought anything of the smoke-like mask Liara was wearing, she didn't say anything. Indeed, she barely seemed to process that Liara was there, and certainly didn't acknowledge that Liara was an intruder. A sick, delighted smile spread across the woman's face, and she blinked slowly, one eyelid trembling unnaturally, like a broken puppet.
"Can you hear them?" The woman's voice was a desperate whisper, almost pleading. Liara realized what the expression on her face was—neither pain nor ecstasy. It was love. Wild, hopeless love. "They are calling to us. It is beautiful."
"I can hear them," Liara said automatically, without thinking. The woman's smile grew so wide that Liara thought the corners of her mouth might start to tear. Several of the small wires were feeding into the soft flesh of her tear ducts, and they crinkled with the motion. Liara swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat, and pressed onward, "But I don't know who they are. Can you help me?"
The woman threw her head back and laughed, a manic, delighted cackle, and spoke into the ceiling.
"They are the end-makers! They are the beginning of the world and the eating of the dead! They are the divine monarchs, thrusting their beautiful minds into our ugly, misshapen world," the woman said, her chest heaving wildly as she spoke for what Liara suspected was the first time in days. The woman snapped her gaze back on Liara again and whispered, "Have you seen their servants? Oh, they are so lost, lost!"
Their servants. The Collectors? The geth? Or some horrid thing else? Liara had to assume the woman was rambling about the Reapers. Whatever this tech was, it had to be the Reapers, Liara felt sure of it. Were Cerberus such fools that they had been tampering with the tech they'd found on this ship? Or had they succumbed to the Reaper's indoctrination as easily as Saren had, even though this Reaper was nothing but a corpse? As though in answer, the woman let out a startling, anguished cry
"They are the sleeping gods. Even dead, they dream! Such beautiful, horrid dreams. They seek their lost children, their children. Oh, how they pray for children!"
"I would like to help you find these children," Liara said carefully, even as one hand drifted towards the pistol slung at her side, "But I don't know who they are. What children? The Collectors?" But that didn't make sense, the Collectors weren't lost, they were the ones kidnapping—
"YOU LIE!" The woman shrieked as a horrible, mechanical screech erupted from her, and she began to shudder in her chair. Some black fluid leaked out of her mouth, as her atrophied limbs began to jerk and twitch in a painful attempt to rise. Tarry spit flew from her open mouth as the woman snarled, and she pressed herself to her feet, "I SEE YOU, LIAR, YOU WHO WOULD KEEP THEM FROM THEIR CHILDREN, YOU WOULD HIDE THEM FROM THEIR NEWBORN QUEEN!"
Liara had drawn her pistol already, but she shouldn't have bothered. The woman's eyes bulged, she clutched at her heart, and then she collapsed into her chair, as more of that black liquid began to pour out of her mouth, and her body began to sag, as though it were undergoing rapid decomposition. Liara immediately ran from the habitat, burning a biotic corona an inch around her suit in all directions, to ensure that none of that whatever it was got on her. As she escaped, she turned around and slammed the door back shut, using biotics to crunch the metal around itself so that it couldn't open. Garrus had already clambered over to her, but she waved him back, commanding her omnitool to check her armour for any kind of contaminants. Only when the VI affirmed that nothing from that strange habitat had gotten onto her did Liara let Garrus approach. Thane followed politely with his weapon drawn, though behind his sheer faceplate, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
"Liara, what happened—are you all right?" Garrus asked, his voice curt and serious. Liara nodded, though she winced at the use of her real name. She supposed she had to forgive Garrus that, given that she'd run out of the Cerberus habitat wreathed in biotic fire before warping the door shut behind her.
"There was a woman," Liara said, her voice coming out cool and detached through the modulation software of her mask. "She was—" Liara's voice hitched as she tried to find the right word. "—integrated with some sort of technology. Nothing like I had ever seen. She ranted about … monarchs and children, and then she dissolved into some sort of black mucous. It may have been a kind of nanotechnology."
"Forsaken spirits," Garrus swore, his mandibles pulling tight against his jaw as he looked at the habitat with renewed horror. "Please tell me there's not some sort of Reaper goo in there that's going to rewrite life as we know it."
"If there is, I suppose we are all dead already," Liara said, trying to sound as though the idea were a joke. She felt the horrible sensation of being on the edge of a cliff in total darkness, not knowing if the fall before her was great or shallow, if the rock wall was smooth or jagged, or if there were some impossibly huge creature lurking in the dark.
"I would think not," Thane murmured quietly, studying a readout on his omnitool. "There are scanning schematics for virulent nanomachine events built into every omnitool made within the last thousand years, and nothing has triggered." Liara nodded gratefully in Thane's direction, then turned back to Garrus. She had to hope the drell was right.
"Have Kasumi and Grunt had any more luck?"
"Yeah, they got into their pod after you did. Think Grunt saw your trick with biotics and got frustrated waiting for Kasumi to pick the lock," Garrus said, cracking half a smile that wasn't anywhere near as light-hearted as his usual. Liara nodded, and was about to say that they should check on them, before Kasumi opened their comm link and said,
"Hey, uh, guys, you might want to come take a look at this."
"Oh, goodie," Garrus sighed. "More good news."
xXx
They were nearly upon the Alarei when the geth first spoke.
"Please do not be alarmed. We communicate remotely to avoid hostility."
The geth was talking to them directly through their comms. Jack nearly ripped out her comm link except A) she was wearing a fucking helmet so she couldn't and B) a part of her was curious to hear what the thing had to say.
"Can you hear me?" Shepard said, voice as warm as winter. Shepard already had her rifle readied, but Jack saw her adjust something at the side of the weapon. No idea what she was doing, of course, aside from the fact that it was vaguely sinister and would probably turn the geth to pulp if it showed its face.
"Yes. We understand your reason for scepticism of geth motives. However, you have not met geth."
"I feel I've made the acquaintance of a few," Shepard murmured, sotto voce.
"No. Not geth. You have met a separate heretic class of programs. Please understand we do not wish for any hostilities. There are dangerous hostile organics aboard this ship. Our transport is badly damaged." The geth's voice was … unsettling. It spoke as smoothly as any organic, but it started and stopped sentences abruptly, regurgitating a list of facts. Its voice was clearly synthetic, but almost soothing, and Jack was pretty fucking sure that meant it intended its voice to be soothing.
She didn't like that much better than the alternative.
"You mean the Alarei?" Shepard asked, waving at them to continue down the dark corridor that led to the breach made by the quarian ship. The voice responded instantly.
"No. The Creator-vessel Alarei was overtaken by heretic programs and rendered inoperable. When we arrived our vessel was likewise overtaken by these programs. However, the hostile organic units aboard this vessel detected the heretic intrusion and deployed aggressive countermeasures. These organic units have returned to a restive state deep within the corpus of the Old Machine. It is possible your presence here will trigger a response."
Shepard paused, looking at the quarian. Neither of them said anything, but Shepard shrugged, punching something into her omnitool. After a moment's pause, she continued.
"Okay. Hold on. Let's say I believe you. That you're geth, but you're not like these heretics of yours. What do you want?" The quarian moved urgently towards Shepard, but didn't manage to say anything. Something invisibly passed between them—again, very touching—but Shepard continued to play hostage negotiator with fucking headlights-for-brains. The response was immediate, and if Jack didn't know better, downright cheerful.
"We want to help."
xXx
There was a dead Collector lying on a table in the other Cerberus hab. Kasumi had immediately declared that she had not "signed on for this kind of Area 51 shit" and stepped outside. Liara and Garrus had entered the unit while Grunt stood guard nearby, and Thane had, strangely, gently requested that he not be required to enter. That had surprised Liara—before she remembered what Nicole had said about drell assassins being "philosophical." She could only imagine this was part of that strange, spiritual impulse the assassin felt regarding death.
Be that as it may, Garrus was more than used to dead bodies as a member of C-Sec, and Liara was growing used to just about anything. Once they were through the doorway and the communications seal, she set Glyph to extracting whatever data they could find, and approached the table with interest. The Collector had its chest spread apart, along a straight line starting below its neck. Liara could see the aborted attempts at a y-shaped incision, which must have been abandoned when Cerberus realized that a human-style autopsy wouldn't work for the Collector's physiology. As Liara approached, she wrinkled her nose in disgust and shock—the Collector's interior looked almost as though it were of solid matter, like a fungus. There were holes and valves which might once had housed some kind of function, but they were empty now, and whatever fluid might have been inside the creature must have been drained.
"Glyph, obtain surgery footage and display," Liara ordered, leaning in to get a better look at the Collector's interior. Its outer layer of skin was thick, and solid as stone—experimentally, Liara pressed a gloved finger against the open flesh of its insides and found the consistency spongy, but surprisingly strong. As she depressed the tissue she thought she could see some sort of fibrous strands; she assumed this had to be some sort of analogue to muscular tissue in most Milky Way ogranics. After a moment, Glyph began streaming video to one wall, apparently a file already mid-way through the operation. It must have been the first file Glyph had been able to unlock.
There had been two Cerberus scientists peering over the body, while automated tools explored the Collector's insides. In the video, the body was much … well, wetter. The tubes that formed in the creature's flesh were filled with some kind of gritty ooze that might have been blood. Or something worse. The scientists were rapidly typing notes onto a data pad as their automated machine—which was nowhere in the hab in Liara's present—pulled a seemingly endless supply of featureless, black slop from the Collector's insides.
"What do you think all this crap is for—oxygen exchange?" Both scientists were unidentifiable, fully covered in lab suits and masks, but the one who was speaking now was taller, and had stopped writing on his tablet. The other scientist shook their head.
"Nah, look at the scans—there's a lot of varied cell types in this mess. At least 35% synthetic, is my guess. I feel like … I feel like these are almost like organs. Except liquefied." Liara hissed as the woman spoke. She recognized that voice. The last time she'd heard it, it had been screaming about a newborn Queen. That meant that this must have been filmed quite some time ago. Liara couldn't believe the woman could have completely descended into madness so quickly; and in the grainy video, Liara could make out dark brown hair, whereas the woman Liara had met had hair as white as snow.
Liara turned back to the Collector, stomach uneasy. Surely organic material should not have been so well preserved for so long, if it was open to oxygen?
"Hmm. You think the liquefaction happened on death?"
"Maybe—or maybe it's a result of whatever it was that took a Prothean and turned it into this. Maybe this is someone's idea of more efficient."
"No way. That can't be—they can't be serious," Garrus gasped, watching as the Cerberus scientists continued to operate. The video suddenly ended, and Glyph sent a text message to Liara's omnitool to inform her that it was attempting to locate the remainder of the video.
Liara stared at the Collector in renewed horror, unable to reconcile the reality of what she had heard with what she saw. Of course, two Cerberus lunatics muttering over a fuzzy surgery video was hardly proof, but what cause would they have to lie? The Protheans had been vaguely insectoid, Liara knew that much for certain, but the visual resemblance to the Collectors was … ghoulish at best.
But she had to know.
"Garrus, look around to see if you can find some sort of sterile container we can use to take a sample. Whatever they extracted from this corpse, they must have carted it off long ago."
"Sure," Garrus said, rummaging through some of the remaining drawers in the desks behind them. As he did, an unsettling thought occurred to Liara: there were only these two units in the Cerberus section of the Reaper, and they had found neither living quarters nor any kind of food supply. Had Cerberus been operating out of a ship? But if that were the case, why leave the woman strapped into the wires behind? Or were there other installations, deeper into the Reaper's body?
"Found something," Garrus said, handing her a small test tube. Liara thanked him absently and pulled a knife from her belt. As she carved small slivers of flesh from the Collector's exposed innards, the tissue became tight and corded, strands of flesh thickening in what must have been a reflex action. Helpfully, this made it even easier to obtain a few samples, which Liara slipped into the test tube. As she stoppered the tube shut and slipped it into one of the pouches on her armour, she found herself remembering the sludge the Cerberus woman had melted into. It was impossible to be sure, based on the grainy video Glyph had found and the patina of disgust still stretched over her memories, but she couldn't help but wonder whether that woman had undergone some kind of process like the Collector had. Or even if she hadn't, if the underlying technologies were similar.
If only the Cerberus samples were still here. They would be invaluable. So would be the remains of the woman in the other hab, but they didn't have any way of gathering the material, nor could Liara be confident that those remains were no longer active. The Collector, on the other hand, felt reasonably stable. She hoped.
"I suppose it's stupid of me to point out that there's no beds in here." Garrus's voice, subharmonics rumbling with unease, rang through the hab, bringing Liara back to reality. "No food, no first aid, not even any running water. You said you found a woman alive in the other one."
"I had the same thought," Liara mused, examining the flesh of the Collector for one last time. Could it really be some sort of mutilated Prothean? The thought was such anathema to her that she felt the Liara of years past, wide-eyed investigator of the Prothean mystery, reacting with instinctive dismay. The Protheans were supposed to be … better.
But the Liara of years past was, if not dead, then certainly transformed. And the Liara who she had become, who she had needed to become, did not have time for precious biases. In that moment, she could very well believe the Collectors were some mutant derivative of the Protheans, made subservient to the Reapers to collect samples for … whatever ends the Reapers had.
Liara found herself remembering the deranged woman's words. She said they dreamt for children. Could that refer to the Collectors? Or something worse?
Are the Reapers trying to reproduce? Could such a thing be possible? Liara had grown used to thinking of the Reapers as pure machines, but the layout of the Reaper's interior couldn't help but remind her of the ventricles and veins of a living thing. But the woman had described the Reaper's children as lost, and Liara struggled to believe the Reapers were unable to locate the Collectors. Or maybe "lost" meant something else.
Or maybe she was a broken woman possessed by technology beyond my understanding who was babbling nonsense as her brain turned to porridge.
In any event, the Cerberus data and analysis of the Collector corpse would prove enough. In the meantime, they just needed to—
Her thoughts were interrupted by a shriek, a horrible, clanging sound that bounced off the cavernous walls of the Reaper's body, echoing so loudly that Liara nearly clapped her hands over her ears.
She spun to see Garrus was already exiting the platform, and began to follow, pulling her pistol from its holster and thrusting all thoughts of the Reapers and the Collectors out of her mind. She came onto the Cerberus catwalks to find Garrus scanning all of the overhead entrances to the chamber, while Grunt was pacing, grip ironclad on his rifle. Kasumi, to Liara's surprise, had raised a compact submachine gun of her own, and was sticking closely to Thane, who seemed the least affected of any of them.
"That did not sound like the geth. Or Collectors. Not even the husks the Reapers used to create," Garrus growled, as he swivelled his scope to look up into one of the overhead openings which fed into their chamber. "Omnitool says whatever that was … it was coming from above."
Liara trained her pistol on the entrance, and a very unsettling thought occurred to her.
"We have not been able to determine the age of this vessel," she murmured. "But we know it is exceptionally old."
"Not following." Garrus's voice sounded tense, his subharmonics so low they almost grated on her ear.
"Well, this is just a theory. And I hope I am wrong," Liara muttered, her voice coming out sinister through the voice modulation of her mask. "But it is possible that this Reaper predates the Prothean extinction. In which case, whatever has been sleeping here … could be anything. The husks of a bygone age."
Garrus glanced at her over his scope, and sighed.
"Just once, I'd love for one of these things to go well."
xXx
The Alarei had connected to the Reaper hull where there had been a massive, polygonal rent in the ship's structure. As they had approached the Reaper, Nicole had assumed that the geth must have somehow deformed an existing hole into a more uniform shape. But now, inside, she knew that couldn't have been the case. The geth had installed some platforms and a rudimentary airlock, and had used the massive wound in the Reaper's side to hide the Alarei, but now that they could see it from the inside, it was obvious that the geth simply hadn't been capable of so much as scratching the paint on the Reaper's corpse. Like Cerberus, the geth structures were simple catwalks and support struts built into the Reaper, laying flat against the walls and relying on the artificial gravity being generated by the Reaper body; when Nicole looked closer to investigate, not so much as a single screw had been drilled into the superstructure.
Because they were unable? Or unwilling?
"Shepard, where's the fucking tin can?" Jack snarled, prowling around the corridor with her shotgun drawn, checking up and down either end of the tunnel. Nicole got up from where she had been crouching, examining the geth construct outside the Alarei, and shrugged.
"Not sure. Tali, Mordin, back up from the entrance a bit," Nicole said, almost after the fact, as she drew her own pistol and readied it. If that geth wasn't going to make contact with them again, they'd just have to breach into the ship.
"Shepard-Commander. We apologize for recess in communication. Geth have been building consensus regarding likelihood of re-activation of organic hostiles aboard Old Machine."
Nicole waited.
"And?" She asked, trying not to sound too exasperated. The geth, ludicrously, sounded almost offended.
"Apologies. Prior consensus indicated organic lifeforms prefer opportunity for brief rejoinders between major conversational nodes. We will use this insight to rebuild organic communications maps."
"That's, uh, that's fascinating," Nicole said, struck by the absurd frustration of chatting to an intelligent teenager who knew too many big words. "Do you have door control over the Alarei?"
"Yes. Request Shepard-Commander-Formation please lower weaponry. Geth can confirm there are no hostile platforms aboard Creator-Vessel-Alarei."
"Not happening. We are not about to walk onto a vessel whose safety I cannot guarantee without weapons ready." Nicole's voice was inflexible as steel. Everything in her head, every scrap of training and intel from Shadowhill, screamed at her not to trust this geth thing, to take the Alarei corridor by corridor and reduce any geth inside to scrap.
But she found herself wanting to give it a chance. There were some things—like the geth trying to emulate what it thought of as a normal organic conversation—that gave her pause. The problem with the part of her that still belonged to Shadowhill was that it could be suspicious of anything. Sometimes that was useful. But sometimes trust could be useful too.
"Understood."
Nicole inhaled sharply, but before she could say another word, what had appeared to be a solid door revealed itself to be a mechanical iris; a series of leaflike blades spiralled to the edge of the construct in a fluid rotary motion which left an open entrance with a diameter of at least three meters. Standing in the space behind that door was the geth, its posture erect and its hands patiently resting at its sides.
"Shepard-Commander."
It took Nicole half a beat to realize the geth was waiting for a response, again. "Uh, hi. First question. What is the status of Admiral Rael'Zorah?" Nicole still had her rifle at the ready, but was no longer holding it in an active firing stance. To her astonishment, the geth bowed its head, its facial plates twitching serenely.
"It is our grief to inform you Rael'Zorah-Creator passed away of injuries incurred by the combat platforms constructed by heretic units aboard the Alarei." The geth turned its head toward Tali, its facial plates now completely still. Nicole was taken aback, but before she could even think of the proper response, Tali had already charged forward, her shotgun levelled at the geth's face.
"How dare you use that word, geth!" Tali snarled, finger just a hair's breadth from the trigger of her shotgun. Nicole hissed as she realized what, exactly, the geth had said; it was speaking to them in Ixquillach, the single quarian language that had survived their exile to the Flotilla. And of the many words for "grief" in Ixquillach, the geth had used "surnqe-enx", which was specifically a term for the kind of horrible, sudden separation that you might associate with violent death. Except it had originally been coined during fallout of the Geth War, and pretty much every quarian knew that, because it was in their basic school curriculum.
And Nicole, of course, only knew all of that because Gabreau had thought it would help her kill a quarian someday.
The geth still did not move, though it rose its head to meet Tali's gaze with its central ocular array, its facial plates twitching as though it were considering.
"Apologies. Rebuilding consensus."
There was an extremely tense couple of moments, where Nicole considered stepping forward to lay her hand on Tali's shoulder. She did not need the geth's face blown off before she could get any intel from it. But before she had a chance, the geth spoke again.
"We remain in consensus regarding chosen diction. Geth have come to know Rael'Zorah-Creator during unit of time equivalent to eight-hundred forty-two human standard minutes. Death of Rael'Zorah-Creator inflicted considerable impact on geth consensus. Among geth this is analogous to organic concept of grief."
"How could you—never mind, where is my father?"
The geth was still again, before it nodded and moved aside, gesturing to the ship.
"We have attempted to preserve his body as per Creator funerary tradition. We can bring you to him. Alternatively, if organic self-preservation instinct overwrites this potential course of action, geth can bring body to you."
"Listen—" Nicole started, but stopped herself as she felt … something. Like a faint buzzing, whispering in a far-off tunnel. Fear iced her insides as she realized what that could mean. If that was the beginning of indoctrination, was it unstoppable? Would it burr into her like a tapeworm of the mind, leaving behind eggs that would feed on her thoughts and grow until—
Not helpful. Besides, she was sure she was hearing actual sound, rather than anything else. She raised a hand, calling for silence.
"Can anyone else hear that?" she asked. The buzzing was growing louder.
"Geth sensors detect low frequency sonic event. Warning: these frequencies typically precede activation of hostile organics within Old Machine." The geth turned behind it and knelt down, picking up a truly massive sniper rifle from somewhere on the floor. Tali started to say something in outrage, before there was a horrible, world-ending shriek, clanging through the Reaper. They all stumbled from the sheer force of the sound, even Nicole, but she was sure, absolutely sure, that in that screaming voice, she heard something. Something calm, and gentle, and almost amused.
Whispering to her.
We know you understand this,the voice murmured, rattling in her skull. Pain exploded behind her eyes and Nicole collapsed onto her knees, as the Prothean vision of their destruction was replayed in her mind. She felt a thousand screaming souls, saw the impossible body of a Reaper reaching down through the sky. Her stomach churned as she felt the cold grasp of metal hands wrapping around her ribs. We know you will come to us.
"What the fuck—help her!" Jack's voice. Screaming. More hands, grabbing at her, pulling her down, clutching at her, piercing through her mind.
We know you will be afraid. This is unnecessary. We do not seek your destruction.
Nicole recognized the voice—it was the same thing that had spoken through the Collectors, on Horizon. Each word hammered at her brain, white spikes of pain blasting through her skull.
You will come to us. And you will understand.
The visions came to an abrupt, snapping stop, but the pain had not gone. Instead, Nicole was alone, floating in an ocean of space, looking out at the stars. She tried to understand, tried to find some way to fight back to reality, to break out of the confines of her own skull, but even as she tried, she felt the voice return, now urgent, insistent.
Understand.
The stars began to fade. Their light became faint, until each one began to blink out. It was slow, at first, so slow that Nicole barely noticed as she tried to force herself back to reality, tried to tell herself that this was some sort of stress nightmare brought on by the Reaper ship and the Prothean vision, tried to force her damn stupid monkey brain into compliance, told herself this is not productive, this is not mission imperative, this is not acceptable thought for a program asset, this is not—
And as she was burying herself in her thoughts, she realized the stars had all blinked out. All of them. There was only darkness. Darkness and emptiness and the vastness of space.
"—geth, Red Dragon weighs approximately one-hundred-thirty kilograms, can you carry?" Mordin's voice was rapid, but calm, with the practiced efficiency of an ER doctor. Nicole blinked, and realized she was on the ground. She tried to move, and found she could not.
That's not good.
"This weight is within tolerance parameters for this platform. However, we cannot carry Shepard-Commander and body of Creator-Rael'Zorah."
"Have to leave body. No time."
"Negative. Funerary rites extremely important among Creators. Cultural reconnaissance reports extensive efforts by Creators to retrieve bodies of Creators who terminated outside of Creator-controlled space. Chance that Creators will launch second survey mission to Old Machine corpse is greater than 68.3%. Cannot be risked."
"Oh, for fuckin'—I can carry her, Mordin, get out of my goddamn way," Jack snarled. Nicole heard the stomping of Jack's hardsuit, and finally, her limbs began to respond.
"Won't be necessary," Nicole gasped, as she pushed herself up to her feet and steadied herself. She did a quick sense check and found that she was still slightly impaired, but uninjured. She waved her hand in front of her face and found she lacked the crystalline clarity of movement she normally had. "Something in that sound triggered the Prothean vision. I'm fine." As she looked around, she saw that the geth was very delicately carrying a body, covered in a medical tarp.
How long was I out? Nicole found herself wondering, as an involuntary shudder shook her.
"Good. Need to get out, must hurry, geth has warned—"
But was cut off by a wet thudding sound, as something huge and bulbous fell from a hole that opened in the ceiling above them, landing between their group. It was about the size of a man, but was otherwise like nothing Nicole had ever seen. It had five equally separated, tendril-like limbs which ended in a set of grasping claws, and its body was about the size of a human torso. From the centre of that torso there was a long, stalk-like neck that ended in a gaping maw of a mouth that opened in three directions, like a yahg. Rows of what Nicole assumed had to be eyes flanked the head and each of the set of claws, and its flesh was mottled and grey, lined with veins of bruised blue, like circuits sunken into the skin.
It raised its hideous, tripart head, and let out a gurgling, hucking sound, black fluid spilling out of its throat and onto the floor.
Moments later, the thing collapsed under a storm of bullets as Nicole, Jack, Tali, and Mordin all opened fire. Nicole watched closely as the bullets struck it, observing that when its body was struck it barely flinched, but impacts to its limbs or head resulted in a huge, lurching motion that had to be something like pain. By the time it died and stopped twitching, Nicole turned to the geth.
"Those the 'hostile organics' you mentioned?"
"Yes."
"All right. If we see more, aim for the limbs, not the torso," Nicole rasped, her head still pounding from … whatever it was that had scorched her subconscious earlier. "Let's get out of here."
xXx
"Shit shit shit shit fuck my eyes double shit!"
Liara reminded herself to ask Kasumi for tips if she ever wanted to really master the art of swearing in English. The five of them were running at breakneck speed back through the artery they'd taken to the Cerberus installation, gunning down the horrible, multi-limbed monstrosities that had started slamming from the ceiling in disgusting, flopping piles. Grunt had blasted the first two with his rocket launcher, before Garrus had ordered them all to run.
And then the horde had come. If the first shriek had been what had summoned them, what followed was an echoing, hideous chorus of gagging noises that came from the tunnel openings in the Cerberus chamber, as misshapen bodies slapped to the floor of the Reaper. Liara had thrown a hasty, blazing shockwave behind them as they ran back to the ship, struck by the sudden horror that there could be an almost endless supply of those things; if the Reaper was somehow consciously sending those things after them, it might have thousands at its disposal.
Or maybe not consciously—maybe like an immune response? Liara's mind was still buzzing even as they sprinted down the cramped corridor, Grunt blasting one of the horrible, tentacled things out of his way as he charged at the lead. Liara jumped over the corpse and followed alongside Garrus and Thane, as a second realization occurred to her. Nicole's team had to go much farther to reach the Alarei, and their path had been connected to more tunnels. If those monsters came for them….
They'll have nowhere to go.
"Garrus! Take everyone back to the ship! I need to get to N—the Red Dragon!" Liara summoned as powerful a warp wave as she could muster as the first sign of a tentacle started pulling itself up out of an aortic vent at the side of their tunnel. As the creature tried to pull itself up, Liara wrenched her fist, and the force of her biotics ripped its limbs from their grotesque, oozing sockets.
"Negative, Liara!" Garrus was running with his sniper rifle raised, firing downrange whenever he saw something with his superior turian vision and scanning visor. "I need you to take Kasumi and Thane to the Normandy, Grunt and I can get Shepard!"
"I wasn't asking, Garrus!" Liara snapped, looking over her shoulder to see the remains of the creature she'd torn still trying to crawl after them. She snapped her fingers and spun a weak singularity into existence above it, just enough to slow it down.
"Neither was I! Shepard already has a biotic with her, and we need that data you and Kasumi have! I want Thane to stay with you as firing support in case those things swarm you, but Grunt has that rocket launcher and Nicole might need it!"
Liara clenched her teeth, forced to admit that Garrus was right. It wasn't foolish pride to say that Liara's biotics might be strong enough to help Nicole; but it would have been foolish pride to say that her biotics were stronger than Jack's. And it would have been equally foolish not to admit that of all of them, Nicole had the best chance of escaping. Never mind that, they would need to defend the shuttle if they were all going to escape, and Thane and Liara's biotics would be the most effective in a choke point.
"You're right," Liara said, in between heaving breaths as they continued to sprint down the corridors. She wanted to use her biotics to hover along the ground—it had been a favourite technique of her mother's—but the concentration required to do that might mean that her combat biotics would be just a hair slower. And as badly as Liara did not want to have to run, she did not want to find out what those horrible claws or mouths would to do asari, human, drell, or krogan flesh if they got hold of one of them. "You're right."
Mercifully, there seemed to be a pause in the appearances of anything new and horrifying, and Garrus took the chance to look back at her, a turian grin pulling at his mandibles. They couldn't stop running—couldn't risk it for even a moment, but she thought he was trying to say something to her. Trying to tell her it would be all right.
Bring her back to me, Garrus.
xXx
This was what Jack had been made for.
Sure, the Reaper things were gross. Whatever. Now that she knew what they were, gross didn't really fucking register on Jack's list of things to give a shit about. They were tough, but when you tangled up or damaged their limbs, something went wrong. Jack had assumed that the quarian and the murder-doc would've been next to useless against enemies like this, but the quarian was a goddamn surgeon with her shotgun and the salarian had the cool, brutal efficiency of an STG agent straight out of the Cold War. Or the Krogan Rebellion. Whatever.
"Shepard-Commander. We request safe passage."
In the midst of the fighting, the geth still hadn't picked up the fuckin' anti-aircraft gun it called a sniper rifle, instead delicately holding Tali's father's body in both hands. Jack had to stop herself from snapping at the damn flashlight.
"We can talk about this later!" Shepard said, as she took a knee and fired downrange into the tunnel, letting loose with five careful shots from her sniper rifle. She started running again, though Jack was starting to get the feeling that Shepard was moving at a light jog just so that she wouldn't outrun the rest of them.
Goddamn superhuman. Why couldn't Jack have been given the turbo muscles? No, her Cerberus experiments had to leave her with a bunch of super tumours that would probably give her cancer by the time she was thirty.
"Shepard-Commander. Our transport was destroyed by heretics. If we cannot leave this vessel, we will be destroyed by hostile Old Machine organics. If we are turned over to quarian or other civilian governments, we estimate our chance of survival at 2.4%. We request safe passage."
Shepard came to a stop. The quarian was instantly at her elbow.
"Shepard…."
Well, at least we've all given up on that dumb Red Dragon thing, Jack thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
"This isn't like EDI,' the quarian whispered. Why she bothered to whisper, Jack didn't know; everything echoed in the goddamn nightmare ship. It was impossible to tell what Shepard was thinking, behind the eyepatch and the hologram obscuring her other eye, but Jack was pretty sure she saw a moment of doubt. It was the way her shoulders angled, just so, away from the quarian and the geth, away from the problem she didn't know how to solve.
"We can at least guarantee you safety off this ship. I can't make promises from there. It's not my decision to make. And we'll need to isolate you from any digital communications until we've had a chance to come to … to come to consensus," Shepard finished wryly. Mordin actually chuckled, as he checked the ammo block in his SMG.
"We accept this."
More of that awful, shuffling vomit sound coming from the Reaper around them. Beneath her mask, Jack grinned, and Shepard nodded curtly at the geth.
"All right. Let's move it!"
xXx
Liara had never hated the Normandy's shuttle so much. Kasumi was already strapped into the pilot's seat, while Liara was standing by the open loading doors, her pistol at the ready, her biotics flaring at her fingertips. Thane was further along in the entrance to the tunnel, keeping an eye out, but he had reported with surprise that nothing was coming. The creatures which had chased them so relentlessly from the Reaper's depths had now backed off completely.
"I would like to formally submit that I am never going on one of those things again," Kasumi said faintly. Liara had two immediate thoughts: first, that they were not off the Reaper yet, and second, that while she didn't have many doubts about Kasumi's loyalty, the woman was no soldier. Liara would have to keep it in mind, to tell Nicole to consider that for the next time.
Assuming there is a next time. Assuming they are coming. She knew that Garrus was right. She knew that the data Glyph had siphoned from the Cerberus installation was invaluable and, if this onslaught was any indication, might not be something they could retrieve again in future.
But a part of her didn't care. A stupid, selfish, barely-over-one-hundred-years-old part of her would have dumped all of their intel out the airlock if it guaranteed Nicole would come back to her. By the dead and buried gods, if it would have got her Nicole back, Liara would have dumped Kasumi out the airlock.
Liara almost visibly flinched, shocked by brutality of the thought, and how easily it had come to her. Was that really who she was? Or were those the thoughts of a woman who missed her partner, and worried for her safety?
"Operative Nyxis, come in. Please prepare shuttle for immediate takeoff. We are enroute, ETA three minutes." It was Nicole—of course Nicole would still remember to use the stupid codenames while running from ancient abominations—and she didn't sound like she was moments away from being disembowelled by a prehistoric husk. Liara tapped her omnitool to respond, and said,
"We receive you. Shuttle is ready."
"Pilot is even ready-er," Kasumi muttered. There was a shift in the shuttle as Kasumi engaged the ship's eezo core and engaged the mass effect drives, neutralizing the gravity of the shuttle. Without any outside force, the shuttle wouldn't move, but having the drive engaged meant that as soon as they needed to, Kasumi could trigger the thrusters and get them moving. Moments later, Liara's audio scanner picked up the approaching footsteps, and then, with her heart pounding in her ears, she saw Shepard leading the way, bracing herself against the side of the Kodiak and waving the crew inside. Liara immediately began helping them in—not Grunt, obviously—and paused as she saw Mordin following at the end … accompanied by a geth. Liara looked at Nicole, and though both of their faces were shrouded in masks, Liara knew Nicole knew what she meant. Nicole nodded, and Liara knew what that meant, too.
We'll talk about it on the ship. Nicole clambered up into the ship and Kasumi immediately began sealing the doors.
"All right, Kasumi, let's go! Now!"
As though to punctuate Nicole's point, the Reaper roared again. And in that moment, Liara somehow knew that the roaring, horrible screech that they'd heard was the Reaper, an undead AI, bellowing its last, dying fury. As they pulled away, Liara summoned a screen and sent it to the wall of the shuttle, watching the Reaper as it faded away.
It was starting to fall. Its mass effect drive was disengaging, and it was beginning its long, lethal descent towards the planet.
"Why?" Liara murmured, wondering aloud. She looked to her side and saw that Nicole had joined her, staring after the dying colossus. "Why would it just let go?"
"I think … I think it's because it got what it wanted. Or … someone did," Nicole muttered. Liara looked at her, but this time, their masks really did stand between them. Whatever was going on behind Nicole's mask, Liara couldn't know. Except that Nicole was in pain. Except that there was some great, terrible weight that she was bearing.
And I swear, Nicole, I will learn that pain. I will bear it with you.