((The chapter heading is a line from The Glory and the Scum by Delain.))

Chapter 10
Creator of Entropy

'Kasumi?' Finding the door that should lead him into the bowels of the clinic hadn't been a problem. He had been seen by the receptionist, had been glowered at by someone he didn't recognise but who'd clearly been there last night. No-one had tried stopping him. Why should they? He wasn't exactly trespassing. Yet. 'Wonderful. I'm standing here like an idiot talking to an empty corridor.'

'Come here often?' The air shimmered in front of him and the slight human came into view. 'Don't go in there, Garrus.'

'I'm sure I've survived worse.'

She gave him a lingering look. 'Wait a minute.' It took the thief little more than an instant to open the door and she slipped through before him. 'Listen,' she said. 'This place is bad news. But it is one of too few hospitals at the moment.'

'I'm not planning on shutting it down.' Again: Yet. 'Look, you don't know what happened, so … What?'

'I think I know a little. Not why you care about it, but I suppose you're doing Mordin a favour. That's great, by all means, help the old genius. But at least convince him that this place is needed.'

'I'm not here for Mordin. I'm here for Iris.'

'Iris? But she's …' Kasumi looked at him with her mouth open. 'Are you saying that Iris is alive somewhere? I don't think she'd be … here, but if there's the slightest chance, we'll turn it upside down until we've got her.'

'She's alive and she's safe. They really did keep that secret well, if even you didn't know. But she was hurt and Mordin thinks I might find answers here.'

'Oh. Shit.'

'I don't think I've ever heard you swear.'

Kasumi turned to the door behind them. 'I won't jam the lock, that would make people suspicious, but I'll get an alert on my Omni-tool if someone comes in. The place isn't dangerous itself, no hazards I know of, but trust me, that would be preferable.'

Apprehensive, Garrus let himself be led into a perfectly ordinary looking corridor. This level corresponded exactly with the floor above. 'What if someone does come in?'

'We hide and get out.' Kasumi halted before a door beneath one of the patients' rooms above. 'But it's very unlikely. Go in there. Take a look.'

With a feeling of foreboding, Garrus opened the door and entered. He had expected your run-of-the-mill unethical hospital: A room with patients either badly cared for or being experimented on. Perhaps even a makeshift morgue. But there were no bodies in here, neither dead nor alive. Compared to that, the place felt somewhat anticlimactic. The room held nothing but shelves with small jars. Unidentifiable tissue samples were floating lazily in some preservation fluid, lumps of organic matter that could be anything as far as he was concerned. On the left side of the room, there was a microscope and various glass slides. He knew enough about them to take a look at a couple of them, but he couldn't tell what the samples were of. He left the room and shrugged. 'So?'

'What do you think you saw?'

'No idea. Biopsy samples?'

'That's what I thought. Next room, Garrus.'

The room looked identical to the previous one, except there was a large metal contraption hooked to a terminal. Other than that, there were only more shelves with jars with samples.

One of the larger bits of tissue caught his attention. It was about as long as a single finger joint of a human and looked like a weird bean. He tilted his head and nearly stumbled into the desk behind him when he realised what he was looking at. A suspicion formed in his mind and he all but ran back to Kasumi. 'Let me guess, in the next rooms I'll find a ton of human embryos in progressively further stages of development.'

'Yes, but you're not quite there yet.'

'What … is going on here?'

'I'm not sure. Do you still want to see?'

'Yes.' Trying to add up what he had, Garrus went into another room with Kasumi. The first thing he saw was that the jars were significantly larger. Large enough to hold something the size of a child at birth. 'Oh crap.' The turian military and C-Sec had taught him to detach himself in a bad situation and his training kicked in, shutting out the anxiety about what that had to do with Iris or what had been done to other unsuspecting people to achieve this. Garrus took the tour the room offered. 'So here we have late-term fetuses, perfectly preserved. Both genders, obviously. I'm hardly a doctor, but I can't see anything wrong with them. So why were they removed and preserved this way?'

'What do they look like?'

'They look like a ton of dead babies, Kasumi. What else should they look like?'

'What species?'

'Human.'

'You'll find that there are other species in the rooms on the opposite side of the corridor. Specifically asari. And then at the end there are the monsters.'

'I'm not in the mood for jokes or guessing games right now.'

'I'm not joking. Go look.'

Garrus felt the light flutter of his mandibles and checked it. A turian would be able to see that he was upset. Iris wouldn't need more than a passing look at him. Kasumi might not notice if he kept a hold on himself. 'At this point, I really don't want to. But I can't go back now, can I?'

Perhaps the thief did catch something in his expression or his voice, because she placed a hand on his shoulder. 'I know the feeling. And I can answer a few questions you'll want to ask. Come on.'

The last room Kasumi showed him was below the nurses' lounge upstairs. Or what had once been a lounge and now held patients. It was significantly larger than the rooms at the side of the corridor, meaning more shelves. The size of the jars varied and the contents were mostly unrecognisable. Here, they were all labelled, but it meant nothing to Garrus. 'What are those? Failed experiments?'

'Yes.' Kasumi brought up her Omni-tool and scanned one of the labels. 'Hybrids that didn't make it. There by that corner they look more recognisable. The labels tell you what they are once you figure them out. You have mixes of all sorts of species, but they all share one component.'

'Let me guess, human.' Garrus looked at one of the less horrid results – meaning the arms were matching and their size was proportional to the rest of the body, they had recognisable facial features and a small fringe that might indicate asari or turian. He couldn't tell because the shape was wrong for either.

'You'd guess wrong. They're all half asari.'

Garrus nodded, then tilted his head and faced Kasumi. 'That's got to be wrong.'

'And why is that?'

'Because,' Garrus said, tapping the glass right in front of him, 'this is definitely a botched hybrid. And it is definitely male.'

'Yes. I know.' The thief stood next to him, looking wistful. 'Why are you here, Garrus? What did they do to Shepard?'

'They implanted her with an embryo. I assumed a human one, up until now.'

'Yeah, I think you can rule that out.'

'But what is the point of all this? Why create a male asari hybrid?'

'I have a vague idea at best, you'll need Mordin to puzzle this one out. But the more successful ones are all male, if I got the labels right. As for the reasoning … beats me, Garrus.'

'How long have you known about this?'

'A while. I meant to tell someone – Mordin or Miranda – once the situation is a bit less dire. If this is found, the entire place will be shut down. So many people will die if that happens now. We can't afford to lose the clinic.'

'Understood. But I will tell Mordin about this, I'm sure he'll agree that keeping the clinic functional is the number one priority. Do you think you can … appropriate one of the larger … specimens?'

Kasumi's lips curled slowly. 'Oh, please. Think who you're talking to. Give me your address, and I'll make sure Mordin gets a few. On one condition.'

'Name it.'

'I get that you're still keeping Shepard being alive a secret. That way, people will leave her alone to recover from what must have been hell. But I want to see her.'

Garrus's mandibles flared. 'Done. Not that it wasn't a given.'

'Great. Now leave. I work alone, and you've just given me a job.'