K·A·N·D·R·O·S
The fan came to life as somewhere, someone adjusted the temperature and Omega's airflow system redirected the vents to accommodate. Heat management was the lifeblood of any station out in space. You didn't mess with the ventilation system unless you were crazy or stupid.
Cerberus was neither. But the Adjutants...
Nyreen Kandros tucked herself a little tighter into her corner, where she had a view of every angle, and a video feed of every exit. Her motion sensors were set to vibrate if something tripped the sensor. She'd have plenty of time to move if something came by.
She had to risk sleep. She was nearing 40 hours without a single NREM cycle. She was making bad calls. Her decisions had consequences.
Consequences like her team turning into monsters.
She shut the vision of Lalius from her mind. She'd be re-living the slow, wet mangling of his face for the rest of her life. But right now, she needed to survive. For that, she needed sleep.
She gasped, wrenched to reality by the insistent pulse of her omni-tool. None of her monitors caught the thing that had triggered the motion sensors. It could have been nothing. It could have been something small, like a pest.
Or a child.
As much as she longed to ignore the alarms a more sane version of herself had put in place, she couldn't ignore the possibility of a child in the vents getting eaten by one of those... those things.
She pulled herself to her feet, and went to investigate.
She could swear she had seen a flash of orange.
The right color for a krogan-though krogan children were so rare outside of Tuchanka it was almost impossible. Batarians were almost as rare, but it was Omega, so a possibility. Could have been a human in an orange jumpsuit.
She got down on her hands and knees to peer through the hole too small for her to fit comfortably through, and heard sharp hiss.
She bucked backward, slamming the back of her head against the overhang of the vent.
"Spirits what is that?"
She toggled the flashlight on her tool, illuminating a... creature.
It had mottled orange fur, like a pyjak, covering its body. It moved on four legs with a long tail and had a squat, triangular face. But the eyes... the eyes were so turian it unnerved her.
It appraised her, as she appraised it, with those weirdly intelligent eyes. It didn't look like anything on Palaven. It's face wrinkled and peeled away from its mouth to display rows of sharp needled teeth, just like hers. The hissing started again.
"It's alright. I'm not going to hurt you." A predator. But a scared one, and a small one. Maybe it was a child after all. She treated it as she would a young Turian, not invading its space. Keeping the area open. Slow, peaceful blinks.
After a moment, the creature approached. It appraised the larger space with wide, turian eyes. Content with what it saw, it walked right up to Nyreen, and pressed its face into her leg.
Her breath caught in her throat. It was warm, and the fur felt... like a luxurious fabric, but plush like a bed. Nothing like the itchy edged hairs she imagined on a pyjak.
Her omni tool buzzed, and the orange creature darted backward, arching its back and splaying its fur out like a fringe. It made a multi-toned sound that reverberated in Nyreen's lungs, but the curiously turian eyes were fixed at a place behind her shoulder.
She felt the impact before she could turn.
Long, three fingered hands curled around her cowl, digging into the soft flesh inside the lip. She was pulled backward and thrown into a wall. Stars flared in her vision as she reached for her biotics to get a shield up.
The Adjutant slammed against her shield, howling and pounding, but unable to break through. It spared a moment's glance at the orange creature, who hissed and bared teeth in defiance. But the Adjutant paid it no mind.
There was only one. She could take it down, as long as it was only the one.
She steadied her breathing, and readied her grenades.
She couldn't see past the haunted face of Lalius as she stared the Adjutant down. She screamed, flinging the explosives blind and hurling as much energy as she could forward. The many gravity wells collided, destabilized, and blasted outward. She hardly felt the impact as the back of her skull slammed into the wall behind her.
It was warm.
Her head felt heavy.
Something... tickled?
Something warm and rough dragged along her neck, just inside her cowl.
With a momentous effort, Nyreen opened her eyes. The tiny orange creature had curled up around her head, resting inside her cowl. She was laying on the floor in the corner of the ventilation exchange. Her limbs worked. Her omni-tool worked. And she was pretty sure she was still alive.
She tentatively lifted a finger to the creature, and touched it behind the ear. It started to vibrate. It... it purred like a happy child, sub vocals to relieve stress, to reduce pain.
It was comforting her.
After she slept, she would take this thing back to base. See if anyone could identify it. But for now, she would take comfort in her strange turian-like creature, and let it rest in her cowl.
And she would destroy anything that tried to hurt it.