ESV Stalingrad, Undisclosed Location, March 2079

Shepard sat at the conference table of the Stalingrad. For the moment, just Vasir was there. Both women were sporting minor injuries: Shepard had her right arm on a sling, courtesy of a bullet and wrongly applied medigel. She looked terrible, and not because of a flesh wound. The loss of seven of her men weighing heavy on her consciousness. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie once more, no need to let Vasir see her tears. Vasir was marginally better off, but since she was out of her armor and only in her leathers, Shepard could see the bandages on her left leg, she was staring intently at the younger woman. The next one in was Commander Anderson, who took a sit and dumped the pile of datapads he'd been carrying.

"Shepard, Vasir, I want to know just what the hell happened down there"

Both women shared a look, Vasir decided to take the plunge and go first. She recounted how she discovered the main purpose of the facility: a science lab, when she found scientific equipment and cryopods laying around, and dead scientists, and how she ended up helping Shepard and her team storm a Batarian defensive line.

Shepard took the telling from Vasir, as she recounted the first time they saw the zombies, the inefficacy of their concussive shots and how they locked themselves in a room. She also told about their discovery of the rows and rows of slaves being transformed into those… monsters, how they seemed to had been implanted with cybernetics in their faces and torsos. And who they downloaded some data but then found a scientist hiding in a closet, and what he had told them about some sort of ancient technology being used.

Anderson listened with full attention their retelling. When Shepard finished, he sighed and began telling his part of the mess. Apparently, some "zombies" as they were being called decided to stop banging on the door where Shepard was hiding and made their way to where Anderson was. His troops took some losses because of the original surprise, but quickly started to mow down the creatures. The evacuation order came when a tech on his team noticed several more masses of bodies breaking free from containment cells and converging to their locations.

Vasir, now seated on a chair with her leg suspended on another, asked.

"What about the intel? And the egghead we found? Did we get anything useful?"

Anderson sighed. "Not yet, the intelligence people are pouring over the data and no doubt making the scientist's life miserable right now, we'll learn more by the time we get back to Sol, in the meantime, you two are wounded, go get something to eat and rest, it's quite a trip back home"

Shepard and Vasir saluted the commander and left the conference room. After a few steps, Vasir stopped Shepard dead on her tracks and pressed her against a wall

"Shepard, I know that look in your eyes, you're going through a bad bout of survivor's guilt and are blaming yourself for the loss of your men. You did everything you could, I'm sorry"

Shepard didn't really want to fight the asari, but she felt as if she owned her man

"Fuck off Vasir! You don't know what you are talking about! Those guys had families! They were MY responsibility, and I fucked up! My first mission and almost half of my team is dead!"

"Your first mission where they wanted to test you! To see if you are Special Forces material! And what did they do? Send not only you, but Anderson into a complete black hole of information, facing an enemy much stronger than your average pirate and goddess knows what abominations those were! If someone fucked up, it was the SIS and Havelmo, you did the best you could on a situation with only bad choices"

Vasir finally let Shepard go and got a shove for her politeness. Shepard stormed to her quarters, but not before having Vasir grabbing her by the shoulder and whispering. "It's ok to grieve, to get mad and to cry, just… don't bottle this all up inside you. I'm here if you wanna talk, ok? I know how your military types prize your tough girl persona, but I'm letting you drop off that mask with me"

And with that, Shepard went to her quarters, fighting off the tears once again forming in her eyes.

Brussels, Operations Bunker, March 2079

The silence fell over the entire room as soon as the last screen transmitting the raids went dark. No one dared to speak, director Havelmo and vice Admiral Baltazar decided to break the collective trance.

"Well, that was a fuck up, a big fuck up" said Havelmo, but not on an accusatory tone, as if he knew the fault was his to take.

Bianchi and Suri came to the rescue of the spymasters

"No one knew we were going to do these operations, right? As far as the public can be concerned, we liberated two worlds full of slaves, and the other Task Force was busy bombarding a random pirate base to kingdom come" Suri said, Bianchi nodding her head in agreement

"That can be done, we'll need to ensure that all personnel involved in the raid fall in line, but it can be done" Answered the aging Admiral Basil

Koopmans had stayed silent for the whole discussion, it was her style, letting her subordinates brainstorm their best ideas, and then help them guide the maelstrom to some conclusion. Finally, she intervened. "Ok, how we are keeping this from the public has an easy solution, but I do have a question" She took two long stares at her spymasters. "How the fuck did we miss this one out?"

Baltazar cleared his throat. "Well, it has to do with how we collected the intel about which worlds to hit. We never investigate what the worlds were housing, we only knew that large quantities of ships went there, and those ships carried slaves and slavers. We intercepted the middleman in hopes it would lead us to their cargo's destination, and it did, we just never expected the involvement of the Hegemony's elite forces and, well, zombies"

Koopmans looked somewhat placated by the answer, it did make sense, since they were not interested in what the slaves were doing, only where they were to rescue them. "Ok, so it was an operational design failure, no need to assign blame then". She lit a cigarette, orders banning indoor smoking be damned, and took a long drag. "Still, that creates another problem, if the Hegemony has this kind of experiment going on, we cannot rule out that they are doing the same inside their core systems, maybe the Chinese's backed rebels found some and kept it under rugs as well, or maybe they were only doing it in far away sites and Kar'Shan, the places least likely to fall. My point is: do we inform the rest of the world's governments, or the rest of the galaxy's governments, about what we found?"

That gave something for her subordinates to think. She personally thought that the Hegemony having the ability to create bona-finde zombies was something everyone should be alerted to. Director Havelmo was the first to speak.

"I'd advise that we withhold such a decision until after the Stalingrad returns. From what I've heard and saw, they manage to secure some data and a live scientist, so we could learn more about these… creatures. One thing that I heard the Batarian saying to Shepard and Vasir that worries me is that they are using some kind of ancient tech they fund. If said tech can so easily turn a sapient being into a mindless husk, is it something we want, say, the Chinese getting their hands on?"

Everyone in the room agreed with the spymaster's suggestion, but Leclerc, the Foreign Minister, still had some reservations. "But we should share this information, regardless of the origin of the tech, to our closest allies anyway. Vasir will tell the Asari at least, and probably the Council. We should tell them as well, lest they think we are hiding such information from them. And I'd recommend keeping the Krogan in the loop, if military action is needed to stop whatever this madness is, their help could be vital. As for Earth's nations, I wouldn't object bringing the Russians and the Quarians to the known"

Koopmans appeared intrigued with Leclerc's suggestion. "So, what you're proposing is: let our allies known, but withhold the information from our competitors and the galaxy at large until we deemed prudent to release it? I like it, any objections?"

When no one raised any objections, Koopmans allowed herself a smile. "Good, call everyone involved, we can meet them at the Admiralty's building in Malta in…. Four days?"

A/N: Short chapter this time! Real life caught up to me and, well.

Vasir will be a mostly sympathetic character in this story, since I've always found her quite reasonable on her rants about the council not providing enough for the specters and how Shepard isn't that different from her and, well, Shepard does kill Vasir's boss and let Liara take his place, keep working with Barla Von, who no doubt ordered a terrorist attack or two to kill someone and, well, blows up a fuckin relay and the system it resided in.

Also, it's "funny" how poorly treated Shep's mental disorders are. Most of her backgrounds involve some absolutely fucked things happening to her, and then they basically tell her "you're on your own, go save the galaxy and commit terrible war crimes, mental health is not covered on the benefits package of Specter"