Leviathan – Task Force Aurora
Once back aboard the Normandy, I reported in to Admiral Hackett and gave him my report on the battle for Omega. He was rightly worried about Cerberus' experiments with Reaper technology and the creation of the Adjutants, but I assured him that they were all destroyed.
"This is a huge win for us, Gardner," the Admiral told me, "Cerberus' operations in the Terminus Systems will be far more limited from now on. This is the same as liberating an entire colony from them. Tell your team they did an excellent job, Commander!"
"Thank you, Sir," I said, "what's our next assignment?"
"Report back to the Citadel. Once you're there, I'll have a team escort you to Task Force Aurora. An Alliance Intelligence operation headed up by a Doctor Garrett Bryson. He'll be expecting you."
I signed off and headed to the crew deck. I had never heard of Task Force Aurora and could not think of what their main focus was. Intelligence gathering was obviously what they were all about, but intelligence on what? And why were they set up separate from the major Intelligence body of the Alliance Military?
However, the first thing I was going to do while the Normandy sailed through space towards the Citadel, was inform the crew on how admirably they had all performed and reward them with down time before we had to start our mission with Aurora.
"Do you realise that the battle on Omega took us less than twenty-four hours?" Garrus said to me, "it feels like we were on that station for weeks!"
"That's 'cus the dust and dirt from that place is gonna take weeks to clean off," James commented. I remembered Miranda making similar comments about Omega the first time I had gone there with her. The close quarter fighting, the claustrophobic atmosphere and the muggy feeling of Omega certainly left its mark on you for a while.
All in all, my friends were in high spirits after another victory and we all spent a couple of hours in the lounge having a couple of drinks. Samantha joined us and gave Liara such a tight and gleeful hug that I thought Liara was going to be crushed, but Liara just laughed and kissed her worried girlfriend better. It was well deserved after all. Garrus told us about how, in his Archangel days, he had discovered some of Aria's secret passages and used them repeatedly to ambush his merc enemies or escape from them if they came after him. Liara told of how even she, in her capacity as "the" information broker, knew very little about the inner workings of Omega and had been amazed by the underlying complexity of the station. All of us decided that the Omega mission had definitely been far more intense than any of us had anticipated, the heavy urban combat had strained all of our nerves to their limit and now was a time to rest.
Tali and I retired to our cabin and prepared to settle down to sleep. Then I noticed her looking at me curiously, her head cocked as if contemplating something.
"You ok, Tali?" I held her.
"Did you even check your equipment when we got changed?" she said. I had taken off my armour and washed very rapidly, intending to do my regular checks a little later.
"Why?" I asked. She went to my locker and brought out my helmet, pointing to the skull of it. There was a huge, open hole surrounded by scarring and burn marks, only a high-powered bullet could have inflicted that kind of damage.
"Some chancer Cerberus sniper almost ended your life, Scott," Tali said quietly. "That could have been it. Over. It just shook me a bit when I saw it."
I took the wrecked helmet out of her hands and laid it aside,
"it's ok, Tali. I'm here. Our mission is dangerous and either of us could be killed at any moment, we wouldn't have signed up for it if we didn't know that, right?"
"I know," Tali said, her hands tightening on mine, "I just can't think of how I would cope if the worst happened to you. You're so important to me and I want my future to be with you! If you died…"
I closed into her and she stopped talking, stopped worrying herself. Once my wife was a little calmer she asked me,
"Do you ever think about what it would be like if something happened to me?"
Even trying to think of a life without Tali hurt me, so much so that I had put a mental block on even considering such things.
"No, I don't Tali," I told her honestly, "because I will never, ever let anything happen to you! You are going to live a long and happy life."
"That's out of your control."
"I know," I said, "but… if I lost you, it would destroy me. The universe is dark, it can be heartless and brutal. Amongst all that, you are the light that can make it beautiful again, something worth fighting and dying for. I won't lose you, Tali."
I loved my wife so much. This conversation had actually succeeded in shaking me up a little so I held her close and took her to our bed. No messing around or amorous activities, we just lay there in the warmth and comfort of each other. Tali said,
"I love you, Scott," before drifting off to sleep, her soft breaths calming me further. Knowing that she was reassured and in a better place, I felt myself falling asleep and let myself join her in our shared bliss. However, if Tali's dreams were full of beautiful and wonderful things, then mine were far from the same. In my mind I saw a face that I had not seen for quite a long while now, and the instant I saw him, my heart froze as the terror took hold.
Callum, the little boy from Vancouver that I had watched die from the safety of the Normandy, was standing alone in the forest again. The shadows and shades of dead people lurking around the two of us, the silence pressing in against me. He was scared, the ghosts of the dead slowly drifting towards him, and he began to cry. I called to him, yelled his name so that he would hear me and know that someone was here to help him. But he took one look at me and ran away. Sprinting through the ashen trees, tripping and stumbling over the roots as if they were trying to seize him. I went after him, desperate to help him out of this nightmare. But once again the dream came to the same end. Once I caught up to Callum and tried to take a hold of his hand, the boy simply burst into flames and disappeared in front of me.
Shooting upright in bed, I heard myself scream. My entire body was fired up as if for battle and the sheets were slick with sweat. My fists were clenched as they gripped the duvet cover tightly and Tali got the fright of her life from the sudden commotion.
"Nightmares again?" she said softly, a kind hand touching my thigh, "you haven't had those for a while."
"I've never felt so afraid before, this time was more vivid than I remember."
"Calm down, Scott," she said, making me notice that I was hyperventilating as well, "I'm here, you can tell me."
I closed my eyes and focused on slowing my breathing. What was happening to me? I had been relatively fine for a while now, until this. I needed to figure out what was going on in my mind, what underlying issue was causing the nightmares about Callum to return.
"I just… I wish I knew what the dreams meant, you know?" I looked at Tali, her eyes shining out at me from behind her mask as they always did. "Do they mean anything? Is Callum representing every single person out there who is depending on me to save them? But is the dream telling me that I can't?"
"You can, Scott," Tali said, closing in to me, "of all the people in this universe that can pull everyone together to fight the Reapers, it is you!"
Her eyes were wide and she stared at me in deepest sincerity,
"I've known that since the first time I saw you in action, when you saved me from Saren's assassins. I saw this new face, a Human soldier, leading a squad with a Krogan and a Turian that he had just met and had already secured the friendship of them. People are drawn to you, Scott. If they are in your presence, they will always be swayed by you, influenced by you. Everyone you've ever met has been inspired by you. If it wasn't for you, I would either be dead or feeling like everything is lost just like so many millions out there."
I sat with Tali as she told me all of this, telling me just what I represented to all the hopeless people across the galaxy. How it was my actions that were the ones that were the deciding factor in our war for survival.
"I know the weight of the burden that's been given to you is so immense," Tali said, "but you can never lose hope, Scott. If you lose hope then we are all finished. I'm here… we're all here to help and support you when you need us. But it is you and your leadership alone that will see us through whatever we come up against."
Her belief in me was so strong that she moved me back out of my fretful state and into a more focused and optimistic frame of mind. Tali's hand gently brushed my cheek and I looked into her lilac eyes,
"I will not let the man I love, my Husband, worry alone."
I drew the Quarian into my arms and held her tight, so thankful for the day that she had come into my life.
"Ok, Tali. If you believe, then I can too. I… I think it might have been Nyreen that set off the nightmares again," I said.
"Nyreen?" Tali said.
"She gave up her own life, made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the people of Omega and to kill those Adjutants. If I don't win against the Reapers, then her sacrifice will be all in vain, as will Kaidan's, Mordin's and Legion's. I don't want that to be the case, I will not allow it. But it's not something I can control, like you said about the bullet hitting my helmet."
Both of us were silent as our minds dwelt on the great struggles that we had been through, and those that may still lie ahead. How many more battles would I have to fight? How many more enemies would I have to kill? How many friends might I still lose to this war? It was all so overwhelming that I eventually just closed my eyes and gave myself a good mental slap across my face,
"Get a grip," I told myself, "you're still alive and you can still fight your enemies. You've got allies, friends and an incredible wife that all trust you and believe in you. Get your shit together!"
All of a sudden, I was fully awake. The doom and gloom passed away and I focused only on the short term. We had just won a great victory against Cerberus and were on our way to our next assignment. I took Tali's mask off and gave her a long and passionate kiss, stroking her cheeks with my fingers and running them through her ebony hair,
"You're the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, Tali, and I love you more than I could ever tell you. I hope you know that."
"Always," she said with a smile, enjoying the feeling of my fingers gently stroking her face.
I left Tali to get some proper rest, without me disturbing her, and went about checking on the crew. If everyone needed to believe in me then they needed to see me as well, to know that I was still with them and that I was still in charge. All of my crew that were awake and at their stations were encouraged by our recent victory and were happy for me to spend some time chatting to them. I was not going to let myself slip into despair again. For the rest of the voyage back to the Citadel, I made my rounds with a new energy and had all the crew up to speed with what we were to do next and what we should perhaps be ready for. When Tali caught me alone in Engineering, she whispered,
"This is the Commander that I remember best."
Her cheeky giggle was the cherry on top of the cake that was my exultant mood and I told her to "be ready" the next time we were in our cabin, to which she answered with a laugh,
"Why does it have to be in the cabin?"
On the Citadel, an Alliance transport was waiting to take me, and just me, to the office of Doctor Garret Bryson where he would brief me on Task Force Aurora and my new assignment. Tali, Garrus, Liara and the rest of the Normandy crew were given some time to go onto the Citadel and relax a little before we would have to be setting out again. The driver of my transport, a lovely young woman called Becky, was obviously very excited and yet intimidated by my very presence. She calmed down when I made the effort to make small talk, and when she asked about some of my missions, she was delighted that I shared some of my crazy stories with her. As we bolted along the Presidium above the lake, I could still see some of the damage left over from Cerberus' coup attempt. Where we were headed was more out of the way and was more like the picturesque Presidium that I remembered more fondly.
Dr Bryson's office was tucked away off of the main paths, but still easily accessible for those who knew where they were looking. From the outside, the headquarters for Task Force Aurora could well have been just another store with large bay windows going around all sides. Except, they were all tinted black and you could never see inside no matter how hard you tried. The console at the door bleeped as soon as I approached and slid open for me. When I saw what lay inside the building, however, I knew that I would be dealing with a group of dedicated and hardcore researchers.
Books and papers were piled on top of each other, some piles almost touching the low ceiling in places. Data pads were everywhere as they lay beside science equipment of all types from microscopes to scanners, from processors to cryogenic refrigerators. There were pictures of people and places and implements up on the windows all over the lab, further reducing chances of seeing anything from the outside. Each picture would have a bit of coloured string linking it to another picture or two. Not only were the men and women stationed here keen scientists, they were obviously experienced investigators as well.
In one corner there was a large chunk of metal, for that was the only way that I could describe it, but when I checked it further, I realised that what I was looking at was actually a part of a Reaper, salvaged from Sovereign itself! There was an energy barrier around it to prevent indoctrination, but I knew too well the dangers of staying close to such technology for too long. At the complete opposite end of the danger scale, I saw what could only be described as a child's drawings on a notice board. Poorly scribbled images of a man and a smaller person next to him, maybe a child, with the word "Daddy" across the top. There were quite a few of the pictures pinned up and they served to give the lab less of a gloomy, serious feel. For the moment, however, the lab was quite quiet and there were only two men there when I walked in.
The younger man, perhaps in his early thirties with dark skin, a shaved head and a very neat beard, was working away at a console in the first of the two rooms. I noticed that above him hung the skeleton of a dinosaur of aquatic nature, its long and slender neck curving delicately to look at me. The second man came through from the back with a data pad in his hands and a hard, focused look in his eyes. He was much older and was wrinkled like a prune. But he still had a perceptive and alert air about him. He saw me and held out a welcoming hand,
"Ah, Commander Gardner! I've been expecting you, I'm Dr Garret Bryson and this is Task Force Aurora."
He turned to his assistant,
"Hadley, could you compile the Leviathan data for the Commander to read over please?"
"No problem, Sir," Hadley replied gladly, "I'll have it up in just a minute."
"Nice to meet you Doctor Bryson," I said, "that the Loch Ness Monster you've got there?" I chuckled, pointing at the dinosaur skeleton. Doctor Bryson laughed along with me,
"If only, Commander. That one is just a regular old Plesiosaur. Though, judging by your Scottish heritage, I maybe should have just said yes to keep the mystery alive."
"Nessie's still out there, Doctor, you'll see," I joked. "So, Doctor Bryson, Admiral Hackett directed me to come give you help. What do you need me to do? What is Aurora's objective?"
Bryson led me through to the back room where there was still the same assemblage of equipment and computers. At the far side of the room, I saw a few Prothean looking artefacts. One thing I noticed was that the entire left hand side wall was taken up by a galaxy map similar to the one on the Normandy. No doubt an extremely costly bit of kit.
"Our mandate is to investigate rumours and legends. Old stories that are out there in the galaxy that may actually have some basis of truth to them. Imagine if this Task Force was around when you first found out about the Reapers Commander! We might have been better prepared for their arrival."
"Interesting," I agreed, "but is anyone really doubting that Reapers exist these days?"
"Even the Reapers have a history," Garret told me, "the Alliance is still desperate for intelligence on them. Reaper motives, their operational tactics. Anything we can dig up just might give us an edge, a fighting chance against them. If we can find out about any kind of weaknesses that we can exploit, we could really make a difference."
"So you're in this for the challenge?" I asked the Doctor.
"For the truth," he replied confidently. "Even as late as twenty-one-forty-eight, Humanity still believed that aliens were a myth. That was within my lifetime!"
I could already see Garret Bryson as a child or a young teenager in my mind, obsessed with stories and fantasy tales. Delving deep into histories of rare and obscure things that few people would have known about. I bet he could entertain for hours with the facts and discoveries he had made. However, it did strike me as odd that Bryson and Hadley were the only ones here.
"Where's the rest of the Task Force?" I asked him.
"Out following leads, Commander. I received an audio log from one of my scientists, Doctor Alex Garneau." He directed me to a data pad in the middle of his desk, "but I haven't been able to contact him since, nor have I heard anything further from him…"
Behind us I could hear Hadley walk into the room and Garret asked him,
"Derek, do you have the Leviathan da…"
The bullet ripped through his chest and Garret dropped to the floor hard. My combat-honed instincts kicked in and I rushed Hadley before he could turn the pistol on me. I got inside his swing and hip-tossed him to the ground, restraining him. He struggled violently and I found that he seemed to be far stronger than his slim, weedy build suggested.
"This is Commander Gardner! I need C-Sec at my location now!" I called over my comm to the emergency channel. All Hadley seemed to be doing at this point was murmuring to himself as if in some kind of trance. His voice was distant and his eyes glazed over like he had lost his mind. When I leaned in closer to hear what he was saying, all I caught was one sentence that he repeated many times over,
"You shouldn't be here. The Darkness cannot be breached."
Doctor Garret Bryson was dead. The C-Sec officers confirmed what I already knew, that the bullet had killed the old man outright. There was no evidence of any kind in the labs to help find out why Hadley had suddenly turned on his boss, a man that he had seemed happy working for.
"Derek Hadley's worked here for a couple of months, Commander," a Turian cop told me, "never had any problems with the law in his life and had outstanding performance reviews from Dr Bryson."
"So why'd he do it?" I asked myself. The young man had fallen asleep, or unconscious, while I had held him down. But now that the C-Sec officers were here, I needed him awake and was trying to shake him and even dumped a glass of water on his face. That worked.
"What? What?" Hadley yelped when he awakened, confused and disorientated. "What's happening?"
"Why don't you tell us?" I growled at him and showed him Garret's lifeless body, a small pool of blood around him. Derek's eyes were wide and horrified, his expression one of absolute loss,
"I don't know! I was gathering the data for you and then I felt… cold, and dark… like I was somewhere else."
"Dark? What do you mean you felt dark?" I pushed for an answer to the strange statement.
"I don't know! There was just this loud noise!"
"That was you shooting him," I told Hadley. All of us were looking for answers as to what had just happened. What motive did this apparently harmless young man have for killing his boss? Either Derek was an extraordinarily talented actor, or he did not know himself.
The door to the lab opened up behind us and I was surprised to see EDI entering, walking with a purpose.
"Commander. I registered a C-Sec alert coming from this location. Are you hurt?" my AI friend asked. The C-Sec officers threw each other curious glances as the robot approached, but thought better than to ask questions.
"I'm alright EDI, thanks. But I could use your help figuring this all out," I said. I gave her the facts that we had so far and EDI quickly came to an alarming conclusion,
"This does bear similarities to reports of indoctrination."
I could not help but glance at the fragment of Sovereign residing menacingly in the corner of the lab.
"Indoctrinated? Me?" Hadley tried to come to terms with EDI's accusation.
"Help me, Derek," I said to him, "what was going on here before I arrived? Do you know what I was supposed to help Dr Bryson with?"
He remained staring at Garret's body, but he managed to focus long enough to reply,
"It was on our Leviathan Project. He wanted you to find Doctor Garneau… AAAHHH!"
He burst our screaming and gripped his head as if something was tearing away on the inside.
"Hadley!" I shouted to him, but my words did nothing to calm him down. However, as Derek screamed in agony, I thought I saw an artefact, an orb that seemed to be liquid-like in form on the far side of the room. It glowed momentarily just a second before Derek seemed to lose his mind, but now the young man sank to his knees. His eyes were empty and his voice changed,
"Turn back. The Darkness cannot be breached."
That was the last we got out of Derek. He passed out on the ground and the C-Sec officers took him away to a clinic nearby. This left EDI and I in Bryson's lab with only the objective, find Doctor Garneau. However, we had absolutely no clue where Alex Garneau would be, whether he would still be in transit, what he was researching and what we needed from him. We did not even know what he looked like.
"What do you wish to do, Scott?" EDI asked me. I checked over the strange orb again and went over to it,
"I'm sure this… thing did something just before Derek went mad. My gut says that whatever is going on here has something to do with this orb."
EDI seemed to scan the orb, but instead changed her attention to a data pad next to it,
"There is a message from Alex Garneau on that data pad, Commander."
I played the last message from Doctor Garneau and listened carefully, hoping for any kind of information that we could use to find him. This was now my investigation.
"Doctor Bryson, it's Garneau," a calm voice said, "I'm sending you an artefact I found. About the only thing I found out there actually."
Both EDI and I had a good look again at the curious item that had made Derek go mad. It sat idly by while my head was swimming with questions.
"Maybe it's nothing," Garneau continued, "but I'd swear that Leviathan came through here. I'm going to crunch some numbers, burn through the rest of this project travel allowance. Maybe I can project our Reaper-Killer's movements. I'll check in when I get to the next site."
"Garneau appears to be our best lead to track Leviathan," EDI said immediately, "but he does not give a destination."
"What does he say then?" I said thoughtfully, "let's focus on that."
"He wishes to extrapolate Leviathan's path," EDI said.
"And he mentioned crunching numbers," I said, "he wasn't operating blind. He had data."
"A significant amount of data judging by this lab." EDI glanced around the jam-packed rooms.
"Ok, so how do we find him?"
EDI went over to the galaxy map on the side wall,
"Bryson and his colleagues evidently used a galaxy map search program in their hunt for Leviathan. It may help us to find Garneau."
Our next objective was to find key words or topics to put into the search engine in order to track down Doctor Garneau. From the laboratory, we tried to use Task Force Aurora's research into things such as murders where the accused had claimed total memory loss, like Derek had. There was research into Rachni Fleet activity from way back during the Rachni War. Data on Element Zero deposits along a particular path through the galaxy. Leads on unexplained creature sightings were noted and documented in several files and EDI and I tried all of them. Nothing.
For over two hours we tested different search subjects along with different combinations of what we had found. I even input a query about Prothean artefacts and locations in case there was any data on what could be put together from their war with the Reapers. Yet again, I was given no answers. The galaxy map certainly lit up many locations in response to our data input, but we needed to narrow our search down to a single planet, even a single system would have satisfied me. We could ill-afford to search through the entire galaxy for a single man while planet after planet was falling to our enemies.
I was becoming very irate by this stage, as nothing we did helped us to find our missing scientist.
"What are we missing?" I said to EDI. The AI, detecting my increasing agitation, tried to keep me calm and focused,
"Perhaps the clue we are looking for would not be kept out in the open, given the classified nature of this mission."
"So we need to dig into some personal files?" I said.
"It may offer us more than the research lying around in the lab."
"Good idea, EDI," I told her and moved off in the direction of the stairs. They would take me up to Bryson's own room, which we found to be surprisingly bare. I had pictured even more mountains of files and papers everywhere, but instead the small bedroom was very neat and organised with only a single bed, a bookshelf with a personal communications terminal on it and the bedside table.
"Shouldn't take long anyway," I murmured. EDI opened the comm and found a message from Doctor Bryson to Admiral Hackett,
"This message is dated from a few weeks ago," EDI told me. I was eager to hear what would be said between the Doctor and the Admiral, anything to do with Admiral Hackett was very high profile in this war.
A small holographic Bryson appeared in front of me and the message began to play. I found myself in a pensive state, dying for any kind of answers that could lead us to the supposed Reaper-Killer called Leviathan.
"What have you got for me, Doctor?" I heard Admiral Hackett's voice say.
"Sir, about twenty years ago the Batarians discovered the corpse of a Reaper that had died in battle. They covered it up and denied it ever existed," Bryson explained.
"The Leviathan of Dis?" Hackett pondered.
"Exactly," Bryson said eagerly, "but I'm intrigued by the larger implication…"
"What could have killed a Reaper in the first place?" Hackett finished.
"That is the real Leviathan of Dis! And it's still out there somewhere."
"It's worth pursuing," Hackett told the Doctor, "continue your investigation and update me on your progress."
The message had not told me much other than the Batarians had gotten their hands on Reaper tech a long time ago which was worrying enough, but irrelevant to our current mission. Fortunately, however, I found another message to Admiral Hackett from a few weeks after the first call.
"Admiral," Bryson said when Hackett answered him. The old man was clearly unsettled and his voice was monotonous and full of concern,
"The Reapers are shadowing my field teams as if they're hunting Leviathan themselves. Whatever it is, I believe that Leviathan is nothing less than a Reaper-Killer, an apex predator almost, and it has the Reapers nervous. If we could just find it, imagine the impact on the war! I'm formally requesting assistance in tracking it down."
"You'll have it," Admiral Hackett said, "this is now your top priority, Doctor. Find that thing."
"It appears that we were meant to be that assistance," EDI said.
"So we have this artefact and a missing field agent, and Bryson had his heart set on finding our Reaper-killer…" I put together what little information we had. To my disappointment, it still did not allow me to come to any conclusions about what we had to do.
"Is there anything else, EDI?" I asked my AI friend. I was drawing blanks whenever I tried to conceive a path forward, but unless we had Garneau's location, we were doomed to remain at this dead end we had reached.
"There is a call from Doctor Bryson to the head of Alliance Intelligence," EDI looked at me.
"Play it," I said, "we'll listen to every message on this comm if we have to."
The subject under which the message was highlighted made references to Reaper fleet activity and invasion patterns. With a glimmer of hope returning, I listened intently to what was said. The Alliance Intelligence Officer was a very well-spoken man and by the sound of his voice he was not happy with Task Force Aurora demanding information from them.
"Sir, this is Bryson. We know the Reapers are after Leviathan. Studying Reaper hunting patterns could be vital for finding it."
"This information is classified "Top-secret", Doctor Bryson. If it falls into the wrong hands…" the Intel officer warned.
"It won't, Sir. The data will be encrypted and I'll keep the key to myself, close to my heart."
"Close to his heart," EDI repeated, "perhaps Dr Bryson implanted a device with the decryption key in his body. We may have to request surgery on his body to retrieve it."
I could not help but laugh. EDI was getting a good grasp of organic ways, but in this instance, she was way off of the mark.
"I think he means that the key will be kept somewhere personal or be found on something of strong sentimental value," I explained. EDI processed this for a moment before looking back at me,
"Your assessment seems more likely, Commander."
"Ok, so what was important enough to Doctor Bryson that he would use it to hide a decryption key in?" I knew the answer immediately. What was closer than family?
I raced down the stairs to the lab again and went to the wall with all the child's drawings. The drawings were largely of a man and his daughter standing in fields of flowers basking in the sunshine as they walked together.
"Does Doctor Bryson have a daughter?" I asked EDI.
"Yes," she answered, "Ann Bryson. According to my records she is now 28 and works for the Alliance, under Task Force Aurora."
"She works with her father then," I said, "EDI, look for anything in Bryson's files or communications related to her. Anything that can be used for a decryption key."
I was almost working as if in a flurry of childish excitement. For hours, EDI and I toiled away in Bryson's lab looking for clues as to Garneau's whereabouts and found next to nothing. Now I felt that we were so close to unlocking this mystery. If we could access the data on Reaper movements and cross-reference it with some of the other information we already possessed, I just knew that we would find the answer.
Our search took EDI and I a while. It had now been seven hours since I had first come to see Bryson to lend him help in his Leviathan project. Message after message was scanned and examined by EDI, and still we could find no trace of something that could be put together as a decryption key. However, in my gut I knew that we were on the right track, or at least near it. EDI continued working tirelessly while I started to feel a little bit faint, my brain frazzled from the close examination of so many e-mails and audio logs.
"Commander, perhaps you should take a break," EDI suggested, "I will alert you if I find anything."
"Cheers, EDI," I said. I stepped out of Bryson's lab and into the open air of the Presidium, watching the reflections in the water of the lake. If we were going to have to pull an all-night session on this, I considered calling in the rest of my squad so we could search in shifts. But I needed them rested and loathed to pull them away from what little free time off of the Normandy that they got.
Thinking of Tali, Garrus, Liara and the rest made me think of my family and how I had not checked in with them while I had been back on the Citadel. I called the apartment that Anderson had loaned me, which I had then loaned to my parents in turn to use as they wanted. It was good to see dad's face when he answered and his broad grin returned when he saw me.
"Scott! Good to see you safe, son. How you doin'? You look tired."
"Going through a lot of… paperwork right now," I said, "I know why I prefer to be out fighting battles than working in some cushy office. It's been a while since I called you, how are you two getting on?"
"We're doing much better now," dad smiled, "the shock of being marooned in space and what happened with the Turians has largely worn off now, I think, and the Alliance comes by to check up on us every so often. But they won't tell us anything about you. So what you been up to? We any closer to… you know, ending this?"
I wished so hard that I could say yes. I wished that I could tell my family that we had won and that we could all go back to living our lives again. But that was not to be so, as I was far from knowing if we were close to finishing the Reapers. It all depended on the Crucible and the Catalyst, but leads on the Catalyst had gone cold and we could only fight in the meantime, straining ourselves every second while the Reapers continued to slaughter millions.
"We're still here dad," that was the best I could do, "as long as I'm still healthy enough to raise my gun I'm going to keep going. And you know I can't…"
"…Tell me what you're doing," dad grinned, "I know, Scott. But… whatever it is, be safe."
"I will."
"And that goes for Tali and Garrus and all your friends," Dad told me, "if there's one thing that I hear about over and over again from people on the Citadel, it's the Normandy. About how Commander Gardner and his elite team are going to stop the Reapers! No pressure."
That was all I ever heard about as well. But thinking of all the brave souls who had ever fought by my side, I knew that I could believe in every one of them, so why could the rest of the galaxy not find reason to? Feeling as if my mind had cleared a bit, I headed back inside Bryson's lab where I began to speak to EDI and check on her progress when something caught my eye. I had seen it already but had deemed it entirely insignificant.
"EDI!" I called. When she came over, I pointed out what I had seen to her, "could that be used for a decryption key?"
I stood in front of the board with all of Ann Bryson's childhood drawings on it and pointed to a picture where the two figures, father and daughter, stood in a field of green stems and yellow and red flowers. Only now I noticed that some of the flowers in the lower right-hand side of the picture had been drawn very tightly together, so much so that they almost seemed to form a series of very well camouflaged numbers. EDI analysed the numbers and gave me an affirmative look.
"Let's get to the data pad and try it," I exclaimed. Success was so near I could taste it.
EDI worked her magic and the decryption key unlocked the sealed data for us as my anticipation and need for answers grew.
"These Reaper movements do not match the standard invasion pattern," EDI told me, "there is a possibility that Garneau would have used this Intel."
"Does that mean we can find him?" I asked. EDI looked at me and a smile appeared on her face,
"If I match this information with the data we have already compiled… yes!"
"Nice work, EDI," I said jubilantly as I was already heading to the galaxy map, "let's find this guy."
EDI uploaded our new information to the search program and the computer instantly gave us a location in the Caleston Rift on the far side of the galactic core from the Serpent Nebula. I saved the location on my Omni tool and we headed for the shuttle, a welcome sense of clarity having come over me concerning our mission. All we had to do was find Doctor Garneau and extract him back to Bryson's lab so that we could pick up where Garret left off and continue our search for our Reaper-Killer, whatever it was.
Once aboard the Normandy, EDI and I filled in the team on what had happened at Doctor Bryson's lab and told them of our current search for Doctor Garneau.
"So this Hadley just lost it and shot Garret?" James said again, "but you don't think it was indoctrination?"
"No," I told everyone, "he tried to help us and then as soon as he went to explain about the artefact, he suddenly seemed to lose control and then fell unconscious."
"From transmissions from the hospital, I can tell you that Derek is in a vegetative state and they think it unlikely that he will recover," EDI added. Despite what he had done, I could not help but feel dreadfully sorry for Derek. I believed that he was not responsible for Bryson's death, that he was simply a tool being used by another. Now he was doomed to lie comatose on a hospital bed until someone decided that it was time to turn off his life support. And why? Because there was something out there, Leviathan, that did not want to be found.
"We're on the trail now," I told myself internally, "and we will find you, Leviathan."
"So where are we going?" Liara asked me. I used the Normandy's galaxy map to bring everyone into the Caleston Rift and homed in on the coordinates that EDI and I had recovered only to bring up a hologram of an asteroid.
"An asteroid called Mahavid," I said. "There's a small mining facility there under the control of a company called T-GES Mineral Works, and that's all. If Doctor Garneau is on that asteroid, he has to be on the premises and we're going to get him out, then we learn what he knows. If he's not there, then T-GES will have to have a record of his departure and where he was going to go. In other words, we're not quitting until we have found Garneau."
"And found this Leviathan?" Garrus asked.
"Exactly," I said, "this Leviathan killed a Reaper, and we need that kind of power on our side."
"Do we know what Leviathan is?" Garrus said. I looked at my friend and despaired that I could not tell anyone any more,
"No. We won't know a thing until we find Doctor Garneau. But Admiral Hackett made this Task Force Aurora's priority, and now it's fallen to us to finish their work. We will see it through."
"Yes Sir," my friends all said in unison.