Leviathan – Mahavid
I was in my cabin writing up an official report on the events at Bryson's lab when there was a knock at my door. Tali no longer knocked, seeing as my cabin was now our cabin, so I was pleased when Garrus came in when I called. However, my friend's expression was not so happy and from the moment he entered he had a distant, distracted look in his eyes.
"You ok?" I asked the Turian. He stalked back and forth for a moment, almost as of forgetting what he had come up to see me about.
"It's just… I don't even know what we're doing right now," he began, "racing around trying to chase a myth? Should we really be focusing all our efforts on this when we still need to find the Catalyst and get the Crucible completed?"
I managed to convince him to sit down and try to breathe,
"As much as I hate to say it, Garrus, we don't have any leads on the Catalyst right now. So in the meantime, we have to do whatever we can to help the war effort."
"Yeah, yeah…" Garrus murmured. "Finding a Reaper-Killer, something that can actually scare the Reapers is definitely something that sounds great, but only if it actually exists. I read the report on the Reaper corpse that the Batarians recovered, but there was no way to determine exactly how old that Reaper was or how long ago it died. Whatever took it out could be long dead as well."
"The Reapers don't seem to think so," I said, "they've been following Aurora's teams as well. Hoping to find whatever it was that killed one of their own, I'd assume."
"Scott," Garrus said, not prepared to hear what I was saying, "I know you're following orders, but is this all we have to do? There's got to be someplace else…"
"What's brought this on, Garrus?" I asked him before he worked himself into hysteria. His head sank and he seemed utterly diminished in front of me,
"I got a detailed update on how our forces are doing against the Reapers on Palaven and some of our other colonies from the Primarch."
"And?" I did not feel good about what I was possibly going to hear.
"We're losing everywhere, Scott," he said miserably. "My people, the Krogan, the Quarians and Geth, the Human reinforcements… all of it is just feeding the Reapers more prey to kill. Nothing we do is stopping them on the ground or in space. Our fleets are being torn apart."
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had been receiving similar reports from Admiral Hackett for days now, every one of them with casualty reports in the tens of thousands per day. Being able to keep my chin up was proving a gargantuan task every moment and a few times I had almost fallen to the despair only to be picked up again by those around me. Now Garrus was having his moment, and I needed to be there for one of my greatest and most trusted friends.
"You know that the Normandy, our team, does not get sent on good-for-nothing missions, Garrus. I believe very strongly that this Leviathan is out there, and we are going to find it! The artefact in Bryson's office, that did not activate by mere chance or cause Hadley to kill Bryson by accident. Whatever is on the other side of the artefact does not want to be found, but we are going to bring it out into the light and get it to help us. Everything we do is another victory for the galaxy. Every time we get sent on a mission, we cause the enemy a major setback."
Garrus was listening to me, but his expression did not change. I clapped a hand on his shoulder,
"Garrus, I'm not going to force you to believe that Leviathan exists. But I believe, and I could really use your help, as always. I don't go far without you, buddy."
The Turian chuckled a little, that was something at least.
"I've got your back, Scott. Just… let's make sure we get something out of this. I don't want to be following a, what do you Humans call it… a wild goose chase? Not while every world is slowly being ground down and millions of innocent people are losing their lives."
"It'll be worth it, Garrus! Trust me," I assured him.
"Always, Commander," Garrus nodded and took his leave. I was unsure just how much I may have lifted his spirits, but I needed him to hold on to hope like the rest of us, no matter how thin that hope may have been.
"Oh there's one more thing, Scott," Garrus said from my door, "I received a report about a squad of Quarian marines that sacrificed themselves to repair and hold one of our comm links on Palaven. They held their ground under a hell of a lot of fire and lasted long enough for Krogan troops to secure the comm. They were led by a Quarian called Kal'Reegar. I thought… I dunno, maybe you'd want to let Tali know."
Garrus left me sitting slumped in my chair as I pondered what to do. Kal'Reegar had been on Tali's team on Haestrom when the Geth had found them and all hell had broken loose. He survived that hell storm and was present to support Tali's claim of innocence at her trial back on the Migrant Fleet. Since those two emotionally chaotic events in Tali's life, she had kept in touch with the marine and considered him a close friend. They had gone through the re-settlement of the Quarians on Rannoch before they had been thrust back into the war with the Reapers. And now Reegar was dead. If there was anyone on this ship who should tell Tali this grave news, it was me, and I knew that she would need me afterwards as well. This war was going to leave many survivors with deep scars. If any survived at all.
"Tali," I started softly when she was sitting on our bed, "I have some bad news for you. Kal'Reegar has been killed in action on Palaven."
Silence. Tali stared at me with wide eyes as she struggled to let what I had said sink in. Then, as my wife started to succumb to the gravity of the news, I took her in my arms and let her cry. At the loss of her good friend, she could only vent her emotions in such a way and I stayed with her. For a few minutes, she kept her head buried in my chest and I tightened my arms around her shoulders until she felt able to talk, her voice still quivering.
"How did it happen?"
I told her the story that the Primarch had sent to Garrus in the report, about the selfless heroism that he and his men had displayed in their final action. Tali listened to me, and though still grief-stricken, she seemed to compose herself a little.
"I'm so sorry, Tali," I said, feeling completely helpless.
"I can't believe he's gone! But… if I know Kal, then that's the way he would have wanted to go."
I remembered meeting him for the first time on Haestrom when he was trying to stop the Geth getting to Tali in the observatory, a puncture in his suit. He was adamant that he was not going to die from an infection, that that would just be insulting. Yet he had given no thought to falling in a fight with his enemy as long as it served to save Tali and fulfil his mission.
Tali was quiet for a while. However, she did not break down again and seemed to be coping for the moment.
"Is there anything you need?" I asked her, "anything at all?"
With a hiss and a click, Tali slowly removed her mask, revealing her stunning face to me. Even after all this time together, and the number of times that I had seen her without her mask, I still felt a little jolt of excitement whenever the mask came off. This time, however, she just seemed so sad, a single tear still making its way lazily down her cheek.
"I need this war to be over," she said, "I need you to win this war for us so that things can go back to normal. So that we can have a normal life. I need it to be that I can wake up in the morning and not have to check my messages for casualty reports, hear about the millions of sacrifices being made for minimal gains. I need to be with you in a galaxy where peace has returned."
"We'll have that, Tali," I told her, "All of it."
Tali returned to my embrace and I laid us both back on the bed. All she needed was for me to be there right now. She gently brushed her cheek against mine, the feeling of physical contact was always a morale booster for her. In my mind, I wanted so badly to wake up from this living nightmare that was the Reaper invasion. I wanted to get out of bed and go through to the living room of the house that Tali and I had built together on Rannoch, look out across the striking landscape through huge bay windows. Tali would be there with me and we would both live in love and harmony, something that was indeed well earned after all we had been through together.
Every so often, when moments like that came about, I was given a huge reminder of why I was fighting with every ounce of my strength to win this war. It was not so much that I needed the reminder, but moments of mourning over the loss of Kal'Reegar served to reinforce my passion, my desire to win. Mordin had once talked to me about receiving a call from his favourite nephew before we had jumped through the Omega 4 Relay to do battle with Collectors. About how it had given him a "personal connection" to the mission. I knew what he meant. To say that the galaxy was at stake or that millions were in danger sounded more like a statistic. Sometimes, most times, thinking of losing just one person that I was close to would give me far more strength to carry on than that of a million empty faces.
Joker brought the Normandy into position in the asteroid field in which Mahavid was located. I used this to keep me calm and focused. I hoped that, just this once, a mission would go smoothly.
"Commander," Joker's voice came over the comm onto the shuttle, "we've got Reaper signatures in orbit. This could be tricky."
"Just don't let the Normandy get blown up, we'll find Doctor Garneau as quickly as possible and we'll get the hell out of here," I said.
"Do you think they've found Garneau already?" Tali said.
"We'll know when we get there," I replied, "but Bryson said that the Reapers were shadowing his teams so… that fact that they're here is actually a good sign."
"That's not something you hear every day," Cortez muttered from his pilot seat. The shuttle passed through the kinetic barrier and settled down on the landing pad. I jumped out, not sure what exactly I was supposed to expect. I had my rifle in my hands, but a part of me wondered if I would even need it, or if it might spook the T-GES workers.
However, as if the Reapers knew that we had landed, there came a wave of drop pods that smashed into the floor of the main entranceway. All of my squad leapt into action and started taking down every target they could, and before half of the Reaper troops had emerged from their pods, many lay dead. With my Mattock, I pummelled a Cannibal, its hunch at the back bursting open as my bullets carved through it. Bullets pinged off of the wall next to my head and I ducked away, emerging on the other side to fill the Marauder full of heavy rounds. While the Reaper troops kept us occupied, I spotted a pair of the massive Brutes further up the stairs at the entrance to the mining facility. They were throwing every ounce of their considerable strength into bashing down the doors, and with every crushing hit of their claw-hands, the thick metal doors slowly started to wilt under the pressure.
"We need to take those Brutes down now!" I ordered my team, bringing their attention to the main threat. With James giving us covering fire, I vaulted over my cover and advanced to the next section of seating where the pillars acted as my defence. As soon as I arrived, a Marauder burst out from the other side and I swiftly had my Omni Blade ready and slashed right up through its chest. A Cannibal within sight had its eye taken out by a bullet from Garrus' rifle but did not go down and kept firing. I wondered if the Reaper troops actually needed their eyes at all after the Reapers mutilated the corpse of some unlucky civilian to create their legions of monsters. Garrus followed his shot up with two more and the beast died in spouts of blood and screams.
I urged my friends on and Ashley and Tali were soon around the side of the cover that I was positioned at, giving them a clear line of sight up the stairs where they could fire at the Brutes. Javik biotically crushed a Marauder in an impressive display and killed the final Reaper soldiers with his beam rifle, the corpses of his victims bubbling and spewing forth the most awful burning stench. Only the Brutes were left, and they both turned their attention to my team as they fired everything they had at the hulking death machines. I did not relish the thought of fighting even one of these things, but the two menaces lurched down the stairs towards us using their armoured arms as shields from our bullets.
"Everybody down," I heard James shout. We ducked aside and a missile screamed past us and connected with the nearest Brute right above its armour. The explosion ripped half of its body to pieces and the whole chamber was splattered with flesh, metal and blood as the Brute fell dead. We all spread out and surrounded our second adversary. When it focused its attention on one of us, the rest would fire everything they had into the unprotected back. With such a beating, the last enemy finally collapsed and with a loud, disgusting gurgle of blood, the creature lay still.
Without hesitation, we all rushed up to the doorway into the T-GES station. The doors bore the scars of the Brutes' strength as they had tried to hammer their way inside. When EDI hacked the lock and James and I were able to prise the doors back into their opening slots, they slid open with little problem. We had gained entry to the station reception and were expecting scenes of utter pandemonium as the staff inside all scrambled for safety as the doors opened, but this was not what we found. Everything seemed perfectly normal inside. Staff were at their desks typing up reports or calling other members of staff elsewhere on the base, others stood in little groups and discussed issues amongst themselves or were passing along bits of paper and data-pads. I stood in the doorway completely unsure of what to do, this was the last thing I had anticipated. Either, these workers had nerves of steel and were not concerned with the Reapers knocking on their doors, or there was something else at work, behind the scenes.
It was such an anti-climax for my team and I, our bodies pumped up from our brief firefight. We still had our weapons in hand and had entered the reception in formation to be ready for anything, just to see these workers sauntering around as if everything was perfectly normal. Only when I moved closer to one of the huddles of people, all Human, did they stop talking amongst themselves and give us any kind of acknowledgment. And it was not the nice, welcoming kind. Their glares were cold and angry, their stances defensive as they tried to block us out.
"This isn't right," Ashley said quietly.
"Maybe we should be careful here, Loco," James backed her up. I agreed and we moved slowly over to the reception desk as if afraid that any sudden movements would send the workers into a rage.
There were two men at the desk as I approached, one working on the computer and the other seemingly supervising. When I approached, they made no inclination that they had seen or heard me, and when I actually said hello to them, they continued doing exactly the same.
"Hello?" I said again a bit louder, but no response was given from the men. "I need your help."
Again, nothing. To my left I spotted a button labelled "Press for assistance" and as soon as I pressed it and the ringer sounded, the eyes of both men suddenly, and unblinkingly, darted at me.
"Welcome to T-GES Mineral Works," one said, his voice rather flat and emotionless.
"For the tour, please sign in," the other said, his voice exactly the same as his colleague. I was still totally exasperated with this whole situation, but I felt that some progress had finally been made,
"What's going on here?" I asked, "Is there something I don't know?"
"T-GES Mineral Works is a small-to-medium supplier of tungsten to the galaxy," the first man said in response.
My mind was spinning as the random answer totally threw me off for a moment,
"That's not what I meant," I said with a grump. The first man stared at me blankly and continued spouting random nonsense,
"Are you familiar with the applications of tungsten?"
"I'm looking for a man called Doctor Alex Garneau, is he here?" I asked.
"We have no doctor here," the first man said.
"Do you need to see a doctor?" the second said with feigned concern.
"How about I just go in and look around?" I asked, not wanting to spend another second talking to these guys.
"No," the men said at the same time. The second man told me,
"The elevator is broken, no one can use it."
I was just about to argue with them when both of them suddenly had this wrathful look in their eyes and warned,
"And now, it is time for you to step away!"
"Step away," the second man said, "you do not belong here."
Before I could respond, Tali put and hand on my shoulder and pulled me away,
"Come on, Scott. We're not getting any more out of them."
"We have to keep looking around," I said to the squad, "Doctor Garneau is here, I know it."
"I think the best way to go is to look at that elevator that they don't want us to use," Garrus put in.
The rest were in agreement and we moved over to the elevator and started searching through the logs on the console nearby. That was about all there was left to look at in this small room, and soon our search bore fruit. Among a short list of other people who had used the elevator in the last week was our man, Alex Garneau. However, it turned out that the strange receptionists were right about the lift being out of order.
When a chill ran down my spine, I noticed that the room had become completely silent and all voices had suddenly disappeared. When I checked around, I saw every worker in the room glaring at us. Their eyes were screaming a warning at me, as if trying to tell us to go no further, yet none of them made any move to stop us. Tali tinkered around with the elevator controls and managed to get the system operational again, and not a moment too soon as I began to feel the eyes of the workers starting to bore into my skin. Seeing all the incredible things that I had seen could prepare me for many strange, extreme and scary things, but this station was really beginning to give me the creeps. One more piece of information did not help as Tali quietly leaned over to me and told me that the elevator had not broken down, but had been deliberately sabotaged to prevent its use. Whatever was being hidden in this mine had to be found, if only to tell me what was wrong with the people here.
If the workers of the mine had been acting strangely in the reception, then the ones we found down in the security station at the bottom of the elevator were even more bizarre. Where the ones up above had been simply wandering around and talking intensively between themselves, the miners were now busy working on a whole range of different experiments in cluttered office spaces. Computers were running simulations and breaking down gathered data all around us. A section of the station had been turned into some kind of botany lab. When I headed further into the offices, I overheard a couple of the workers talking about "breaking pain barriers to allow a greater time window within which to conduct further experimentation".
All these weird endeavours were taking place all around us when Javik made an astute observation,
"It occurs to me that none of these so-called "miners" are doing anything remotely related to mining."
To back up my Prothean friend, Tali managed to sneak a glance at a data-pad lying on one of the tables in the botany section and read out the title to us,
"Evolutionary implications of Human biotics…"
"Why would they be looking at stuff like that?" Ashley asked. We all agreed that nothing here made sense and that we were feeling increasingly lost. I also got the feeling that the further we wandered into this facility, the greater the chance that these crazy miners could suddenly turn on us.
While we looked around, under the watchful eye of every person who happened to be close to us, I happened upon a group of people in a darkened side room, clustered around a holographic image that they quickly switched off when I appeared. But they had not been quick, or quiet enough. I had heard them discussing something about colonies going missing, and at the mention of "Freedoms Progress" and "Horizon" I knew that they were running through the list of colonies that had been abducted by the Collectors before I had destroyed them.
The holo that they had tried to hide from me had definitely been a map of the galaxy with the locations of the targeted colonies highlighted. Had they been trying to figure out a pattern? Were they tracking the movements of the Reapers and their slaves? Did they perhaps hope that they were not headed towards their system? It infuriated me that I could not answer any of these questions. Tracking Garneau had led us down here, but now I had to find out where he had gone.
Just as I was about to give up on this room, the faces of the silent workers grim as they stared at me, I noticed a door at the other end. The door control panel to the side had been disengaged and there were heavily loaded crates arranged in front of it as if trying to block anyone from getting in, or out. I marched straight for the door, keeping an eye on the workers, and started moving the crates one by one. The workers seemed to grow more aggravated with each crate I moved, and at one point one even made a step towards me. I turned to face him in case this was an attack, but as I stood ready to meet him, the man stopped as suddenly as he had moved.
Calling in James and Garrus to aid me as the others kept watch, I had the door cleared and open in minutes. I scanned the small storage room for Doctor Garneau, thinking that I had made a breakthrough in our search, but there was no one there. However, there had been someone locked in here at some point and my heart told me that it was our elusive doctor. Searching for clues revealed little until I moved a large metal box and a data-pad slipped out and fell on the floor, its screen still on a list of calls that Doctor Garneau had attempted to make from here.
I took the data pad and hurriedly left the room and gathered everyone around me back in the main section of the security station, right across from the main terminal which controlled access across the rest of the facility. The most immediate detail was the small warning notification on the screen of the data pad that told me that none of the messages that Garneau had tried to send had successfully been sent. So if he had come to harm or been in trouble and tried to send an SOS, no one would know.
Another important piece of information gathered was that every one of these failed calls had all supposed to reach Ann Bryson, Garrett Bryson's daughter and the girl whose childhood art had held the all-important encryption key that had enabled us to find Mahavid in the first place.
"Looks like we'll need to find her too, Commander," James said as he looked over my shoulder.
"Only if Garneau can't help us," I replied. Finding Leviathan was becoming a race against time and I did not want to lose precious hours or days on yet another man-hunt. I played Garneau's message and was immediately aware that Garneau was, or had been, in grave danger.
"Bryson! It's Garneau," the man's voice played, sounding scared, "I've had to go into hiding and need you to come get me. I found another one of those artefacts here, they're more important than we realised."
"There's another one of those orb things here?" Ashley questioned quietly.
"It's in the mines," Garneau's alarming message continued, "here's the nav-point and that's where I'll be. If something happens… I'm attaching a pass-code that will enable you to hack past any security terminal."
There was an elongated pause in the message, but I knew that it had not ended because of Garneau's heavy breaths. Then, finally, he spoke again,
"Ann, something is very wrong here. Please hurry!"
"So the Doctor is still here," Javik said.
"Let's hope so," I said, "do we have that pass-code?"
"I have it, Scott," Tali said as she scanned the data-pad with her Omni tool.
"Right," I walked over to the main security terminal on the wall, "then let's find out what happened to our man."
EDI put the code in and quickly scanned all relevant files that would be useful to us. I watched as she uploaded footage of Doctor Garneau arriving on the landing platform on a date that was just over a week ago. The image was not crystal clear and I did not manage to have a good look at his face, but the man had been given a warm and friendly welcome from an Asari worker before being led inside.
"It appears he had full access at one point before going into hiding," EDI surmised. I wondered what this meant when a red warning flashed up on screen across Garneau's face.
"Unknown male was involved in an altercation in the mines," I read out the message shown to us.
"That's where Garneau was headed," Garrus said.
"The logs say he was taken to the med-bay," I told everyone, "but we can't get in there without the correct file number. Authorised personnel only."
Of course, EDI had the file number we needed in a second and we quickly headed further through the strange, isolated world of the facility.
When we came to the door to the med-bay, I read the file number aloud to the VI and we were granted access. My heart jumped as I felt that we were seconds away from finding Doctor Garneau and finding out what was going on here on Mahavid. I wanted answers about where Leviathan could or would be, I wanted to know what was wrong with the miners and I wanted to know why Garneau's own investigation here had gone sour. I passed a contained medical room which had its lights out, but I could just make out that the person lying still on the bed was a woman and quite probably dead. At the next room, however, the body was that of a man and once again the lights were out and I could not see the man's face. While I strained my eyes to try and see something that would give me a clue Garrus asked,
"Is that Garneau?"
"Can't be," James said, "we didn't come all this way to find a dead guy."
I sympathised with the big marine. It felt like such a kick to the gut that we may have wasted all of our time searching for the Doctor, and come to a complete dead end in the process. Then a voice spoke from behind us. In the third and last containment unit, also with its power gone, the silhouette of a man suddenly appeared as he leaned on the glass, one of his hands splayed on the pane.
"If you are looking for Garneau, you have found him. I am Doctor Garneau."
"I'm Commander Gardner of the Alliance," I hastily moved over to his window, "are you alright?"
"Yes," Garneau replied, "though I am trapped in here."
I was incredibly relieved to see that he was ok, to see him standing and hear him talking without any hint of pain or suffering was great considering that I thought we would at least find a battered wreck of a man.
"What's been going on in this place?" I asked Garneau as the team gathered round me.
"I was doing my research, until the incident," the Doctor replied.
"They attacked you?" Tali asked. Garneau nodded,
"It's true. But aside from my confinement, I'm fine."
"Bryson's research led me to you," I said, hoping to reassure him. However, Garneau suddenly seemed surprised and a little confused.
"Bryson sent you?" he mused. He was looking right at me, but in the dark, I could see no details on his face, only the little reflections of lights of his eyes as they gazed out at me from his prison.
"I'm afraid he's dead, doctor," I told him, "killed by his assistant. I need you to tell me everything you've learned about the Leviathan. Bryson seemed to think it killed a Reaper."
"It's a myth. A dead end," was what I got in response. It did not make any sense to us and Garrus soon questioned Garneau's statement,
"But what about the artefact you mentioned in your message?"
"I did?" Garneau said, "no!"
"Yes doctor," I told him, "you did. But now we've got Reaper forces attacking and need to get you out of here. We'll grab the artefact and go."
Garneau's body seemed to become completely still and he did not even seem to be breathing as he spoke quietly but frantically,
"Reapers! The darkness must not be breached."
I heard Hadley's final words again before he passed into the coma from which he may never awaken, and I felt a freeze run up my spine.
"The darkness?" I repeated in alarm. The fist pounded on the glass of the prison and for a moment I thought the whole complex had blown up, so fierce was the noise. Garneau banged on the glass again and when he spoke it was no longer the voice of the man I thought we were talking to, it was not even human.
"Why do you pursue me?" the voice boomed.
"Doctor?" I recoiled in shock. Another hammering blow on the glass.
"Leave the artefact. You will not take what is mine!"
"This is no longer Garneau," Javik said. I looked back at the man trapped inside the medical bay, wondering what possessed it now.
"You," I demanded, "you killed a Reaper. I need your help."
"You bring only death," the voice resounded, shaking the entire base before the glass shattered and burst across the room all in a second.
I was thrown to the floor with the rest of my team, shielding my face from the thousands of shards of glass that tore at my skin. Garneau, or whatever was controlling the body, leapt out of the room and sprinted at a frightening pace along the far away corridor. Scrambling to get on my feet, I took off after him with my friends close behind. Garneau led me on a chase through the corridors before he finally managed to lock a door behind him and disable the electric lock, leaving us trapped.
"He's heading to the mines," Tali yelled out.
"Then we need to find another way," I said. EDI caught my attention and brought down an access ladder for emergencies and we all rushed up it and continued to pursue our target. He was not getting away from me now.
We were now outside of the facility on the roof, but still within the huge kinetic barrier that stopped asteroids and debris from hitting the station so there was still regular gravity. As one we hurtled along, jumping over pipes and treacherous walkways, in the direction of the mines hoping to catch up to Garneau or, even better, head him off. As if things were not already complicated enough, the Reapers had returned and were also interested in catching Garneau. Their troops plummeted from above and slammed into the ground in their fleshy pods. Soon, Husks and Cannibals were everywhere and engaged us, seriously hampering our own pursuit.
Popping out of cover to kill one of the Batarian mutations, I ducked back down, shifted position slightly and peeked out again. With my Mattock, I shot another Cannibal several times in the chest and managed to fire the last round of my clip right in the head of a Husk, blowing the back of its skull off. My squad shot at everything that moved and we advanced across the roof of the facility, using the ducts, pipes and air filtration units for cover.
"Marauders on the walkway above us, where Garneau just was!" Garrus shouted. He whipped around to a new position and with his Viper rifle started sniping away at the new threat. From above, they could pin us down unless we dealt with them quickly. While Javik threw a Husk away with his biotics, I told Ashley to lead the others and continue pressing forward towards the entrance to the mines while Garrus and I took out the Marauders. Their fire was coming in extremely close and even as I drew my Black Widow, I felt a heavy blow to my head as a bullet hit me. My shields had slowed the bullet enough to stop it from penetrating, but it was still a shot to the head and shook me for a second or two.
"You ok?" Garrus grabbed me.
"Do I look ok?" I shouted back, aware of his eyes scouring for any holes in my helmet.
"No worse than usual!" Garrus said. I grinned and nodded, readying my Widow again,
"Then let's kill these guys."
My crosshair came to rest on the forward-most shoulder of a Marauder as it fired at us. When I pulled the trigger and I felt the huge recoil jump back into my shoulder, I watched with glee as the enemy's shoulder was completely blown apart and took a chunk of its neck, right up to where the jaw started, with it. I aimed along to my next target, who decided that it was going to relocate. But in that instant, I pulled the trigger and the enemy went down hard on the ground, its arm dangling over the edge of the walkway. The next target was claimed by Garrus as he put two rounds from his smaller calibre rifle into the Marauder's chest, who then received a third shot in the head when it tried to raise its gun one more time.
Ashley and the squad were making good progress and the Husks were being slaughtered while the Cannibals could barely pop out to take a shot. I saw an opportunity as I slammed a bullet into the face of the last Marauder, Garrus and I could move freely along the flank of where the Cannibals were taking cover and take the whole lot of them out. I tapped him and signalled for the Turian to follow me, but he knew what I was planning and changed to his Assault rifle. Slipping quietly behind the Cannibals as they focused on the rest of my friends, Garrus and I threw grenades, and when the explosions rocked the ground, we both leapt forward with Vindicator and Mattock rifles blasting away. We killed every one of them and the last Cannibal tried one more lunge at me, but my Omni blade flashed out and carved its way through my enemy, sending it to the ground as a lifeless sack of meat.
My squad regrouped and we headed with all speed towards the entrance to the mines.
"Took your time hitting the Marauders, Skipper," Ashley joked.
"Keeps the suspense up," I quipped back. We were checking around us for more Reaper troops arriving, but soon we had another problem to deal with.
"Scott!" Tali yelled, "the door to the mines, it's already open and I saw Husks and Cannibals go inside."
"Double time!" I ordered. Everyone sprinted as fast as they could go to the door and I was first in. I ran down the stairs, two steps at a time, and when I rounded a corner and met a Husk I did not even bother killing it. I just shoulder barged the beast out of the way and kept going, hearing the sound of Ashley's rifle finishing the job for me. There was a light up ahead at the end of the corridor and I could see Husks, but there was something else in the mine that I could not quite make out.
The strange item sat on the top of a pile of rocks in the centre and the Husks were closing in, but seemed to be doing it cautiously. As soon as I cleared the door into the mine, I dropped to one knee and took aim, slotting a few Husks before the rest of the team turned up. At the base of the pile of rocks I could see Garneau standing guard in front of the artefact that sat at the top, a liquid-like orb just like the one in Bryson's office.
"Don't let the Reapers get to the artefact!" I told the others and they spread out to pick off as many Husks as possible. However, soon my friends were running back to me as if in a panic.
"What is it?" I demanded to know.
"Demolition charges! Get down!" Tali dived on me, pushing me to the floor. As the Husks were about to swarm over Garneau, I could have sworn he turned to me and I heard the deep, ominous voice,
"Turn back."
His thumb pressed down on the detonator.
The explosion ripped half of the mine to bits, and when I opened my eyes I could see no better than when I had them closed, for the dust and grains of rock were thick in the air like a smoke screen.
"Everyone ok? Talk to me!" I shouted out. One by one my squad sounded off and when I made sure everyone was unharmed, I ran over to where Garneau and the artefact had been, only to find nothing.
"It's gone," I said, disappointment in my words.
"Perhaps for the better," James said, "but I guess that means that our doctor is gone too."
All my friends searched the area for anything we could use, or for any clues as to what to do next. The artefact had been completely destroyed by the explosion and there was not even a shard of the thing to be found, but we did find something.
The explosion, as well as causing major damage to the entire mine, had even shaken the furthest away wall and caused a few panels to come loose. From behind one panel, EDI had spotted a hand and when the body of a man was brought out, we all came to the same sudden realisation.
"This is Garneau," I said, "the miners down here killed him and stuffed his body in the wall. The Leviathan must have planted the fake to try and dissuade us from looking further."
I patted the body down and found another data-pad with a warning of many missed calls, just like the last pad we had found. And, just like the other pad, all the calls were from Ann Bryson.
"I guess that's the next person we have to find," I told everyone, "ok everyone let's get…"
I stopped as I looked back towards the door into the mine and saw the forms of a few of the workers entering. They were wary, shaken and seemed to be entirely unprepared to see the squad of armed soldiers that now greeted them.
"Who… who are you? What are you doing here?" A woman asked me, even though I had spoken to her when in the reception to the complex.
"I'm Commander Gardner of the Normandy. I need you to tell me everything you remember happening here."
The woman now wore a pained expression on her face, like incapable of thinking too hard. If they had all been under the influence of the Leviathan through the artefact, then their minds may not have been fully functional as of yet.
"Please," I tried again, hoping some of the other workers might help as well, "I need to know what happened here. I need to know who killed that man over there," I pointed at the body of the real Doctor Garneau.
"Someone here?" the woman seemed shocked, "that can't be! I'm sorry."
"All I can remember is this feeling," a man spoke up, "I don't know how to describe it. Cold and… dark?"
"If dark is a feeling," the Asari said, "then that's definitely what I felt."
Cold and dark, just like Hadley when he had killed Dr Bryson. Right then I hated the Leviathan, whatever it was, and hated the fact that I was actually trying to get it on our side in this war. The Leviathan was murdering and mind-controlling people to try and cover up its existence even though there was no way that it could hide forever. I would keep searching.
"Commander," I heard Steve over the radio, "are you ok? The Reapers just disappeared a few minutes ago like they were in a hurry."
"We're fine, Cortez," I replied, "standby, we're coming out and we need to head back to the Citadel ASAP."
"Understood," Steve said and I heard him kick the shuttle into high gear as he began his approach. My squad gathered together and were about to leave when the male worker suddenly asked me,
"What's a Reaper?"
My squad could not help but feel stunned and we all passed glances between us. Everyone in the galaxy knew what the Reapers were by this point. If their home had not already been destroyed by the machines, then there was a good chance that the Reapers were on their way to give them their turn of terror and death.
"What year do you think this is?" I asked the workers around me.
"2176," the Asari said without a second thought.
"There's no better way to say this but… 2176 was ten years ago," I told her.
The look on the faces of these poor people compelled me to pity, they knew nothing about the threat that every living soul in the galaxy was facing right now. They knew nothing about the Battle of the Citadel three years ago or about the abductions of dozens of colonies by the Collectors over a year ago. They would have to be told what was going on, and I did not envy the person whose task it was to bring these people up to speed.
"These poor people," Tali said, "they're going to get quite the shock when they learn about the Reapers."
"Let's arrange for them to be put into temporary quarantine," I said, "we need to get to the Citadel immediately. Move."
"Whatever these artefacts are, they're too dangerous for my liking," Garrus commented. I nodded as I headed for the exit,
"And we have one sitting right in the middle of the Citadel."