Leviathan – The Depths
The team and I had taken Ann to Huerta Memorial hospital as quickly as we could. Even though the hospital was tasked to capacity with all the wounded soldiers and refugees, as was every hospital on the Citadel, I was able to take one of the head doctors aside and explain the strange circumstances through which Ann had been hurt, and was assured in turn that she would be well cared for. Before I left, Ann had given me her contact details and made me promise to contact her as soon as we found what we were looking for or, alternatively, if Leviathan slipped through our grasp. After all that Ann had suffered through, however, I was adamant that there was no escape for Leviathan this time.
Rushing back on to the Normandy with all the urgency of a team on a mission, Joker had the ship flying away from the Citadel in barely any time at all. Sigurd's Cradle, where Leviathan's signal seemed to be coming from, was a quick jump through the relay and then we had the task of searching the locations that EDI had pinpointed on the galaxy map. There were four planets that could possibly have been Leviathan's hiding place, but they were all in different systems from each other and it would take at least six days to search them all.
"If you had let Leviathan maintain control over the woman longer, we would have found this creature," Javik argued as we all met in the conference room.
"Ann could have died after what we did to her," James bit back spitefully.
"And how many souls will die in the days that it takes us to track leviathan down, Human?" Javik countered. "The loss of one life is insignificant compared to the thousands that will die while we wander around space."
"We can't think like that, Javik," Ashley told the Prothean, "Ann helped us, she's a friend and we don't betray our friends."
"The young species still have much to learn," the angered Prothean stated.
"No," James growled. "I don't know how things worked in your cycle, but this is our cycle now and you'll just have to…"
"Enough!" I bellowed to get everyone to shut up. "I'm in command and it was my call. We won't have to search all of the possibilities. EDI's continued to investigate the planets which we were going to look at, but fortunately for us there is only one that can support life. That is where we are going now, and so your arguing has absolutely no purpose. Got it?"
James and Javik backed down from each other, apparently content with my reasoning.
"I know we're all different, but need I remind you that we are a team and have to act as such. People die, friends die, if we don't," I said.
"Understood, Sir," James nodded, "and… thanks for not letting Ann die."
Javik rolled his four eyes but conceded,
"Let us find Leviathan quickly and either recruit its help, or destroy it before it can turn on us."
"Would it turn on us?" Ashley asked, "it seems to hate the Reapers the most."
"You heard Ann," Tali said painfully, her eyes not leaving me, "it wants to kill Scott."
I knew that my wife was fearing that the worst would happen as she stood there, her hand going for the Promising Band on her arm and touching it nervously.
"Not with you guys backing me up it won't," I said confidently. "Joker, get us to the planet Despoina 2181, we have a Reaper-killer to find!"
While the Normandy bolted through the empty expanses of space, I attended to my regular duties of filling in reports before doing my rounds of the ship and checking in on everyone. I allowed my team time to rest before we set off on the mission and so they were absent from their posts. However, the rest of the crew were noticeably quieter than normal, and when I caught Ken Donnelly in engineering, I asked if there was anything wrong.
"Nothing really, Commander," he said, his Scottish accent stronger than my own, "we've just all heard about how Doctor Bryson helped you find Leviathan. Some of them are just spooked, that's all."
"Are they worried what we'll find on Despoina?"
"Well… they have good reason to. You've told us about what it did to those miners on Mahavid and with the auld Bryon's assistant."
"Fair enough," I understood completely, "as long as they're ok. I'm afraid of what we're goin' to find as well, this thing could kill us with a single thought. But think of all we've survived before!"
Ken was there when I had been fighting the Collectors, who had abducted him along with the rest of the Normandy crew, and knew full well what I meant. He assured me that he supported me and that the rest of the crew were all behind me too, they just wanted me to be careful.
"I'll do my best, buddy," I told him before taking my leave of him. The crew's concerns were well warranted as I myself knew that we may as well have been flying into a big black hole of "I don't knows". Having looked at what little data was available on the unexplored and uncharted Despoina, I only knew that there was actually very little landmass on the planet. The vast ocean that encompassed the huge majority of the world was where the primitive life-forms of Despoina dwelt, and the waters of the planet were documented to rarely be calm. While I hoped that this meant that we had less land area to scan in search for our target, I could not shake the feeling that we were going to have to get wet for this mission.
"Ground team get suited up and be ready to go in the hanger in ten," I ordered over the Normandy's comms. "EDI, launch a probe at Despoina and see if it can help us home in on where we should start looking."
I had already been down in the hanger bay for a while, armoured up and checking over my Mattock, Paladin and Black Widow in turn. One by one, my friends appeared from the elevator and collected their combat gear and Steve made the Kodiak ready to fly us down.
"Did we get anything from the probe yet?" Tali asked EDI. The AI folded up her sub-machinegun and attached it to her side,
"The probe has landed and I am picking up faint traces of Leviathan's signal. I have uploaded the coordinates to the Kodiak for you Cortez."
"Much obliged," my shuttle pilot said.
"That means we should get somewhere near them, at least," James poked fun at Steve.
"Ok," I said as everyone boarded the transport, "we have no idea what we're looking for down there, no idea where we'll find it and no way to know what Leviathan might have waiting for us! I need everyone on the top of their game today and stay alert. We all do that, and we'll get back to the Normandy again in one piece."
"We got it, Scott," Garrus nodded, gripping his Viper sniper rifle tightly.
With every gain that we had made in our hunt for Leviathan, I had felt a greater sense of dread, a deeper sense of foreboding and now, with what could very well be the last leg of our journey ahead of us, fear. Its icy fingers were creeping around my spine and, though I knew that I could not show it in front of the others, that was proving a great difficulty in itself. Steve fired the Kodiak into life and the shuttle flew gently out of the Normandy's hanger, curving slowly down towards the deep blue planet.
"What are you thinking?" Tali asked me as I stared blankly at the monitors in the cockpit.
"What d'you mean?" I asked. She tilted her head slightly and I knew that there was a knowing smile under her helmet,
"You're chewing your lip pretty hard," she said, "that means you're worried about something. We've detected no Reaper presence here so we should be able to search freely."
"That doesn't mean they'll be far," I suspected, "and I just want to get this mission over with. Leviathan has been a lot of trouble, it killed a lot of people to try and stop us and we're still going to try and get it to help us. Anything from the probe Steve?"
"Yes sir," he replied, "I'm tracking it and can confirm that Leviathan's signal is originating from this planet."
Steve threw me a quick, questioning glance,
"I heard about how Ann helped us find it… weird!"
"Makes you wonder what we're going to find down there," I heard Garrus say.
"Dr Bryson classified Leviathan as a Reaper-Killer, yet it does not wish to be found," EDI replied.
"Well it's too late," I said, "we're here now."
"Right… but then what?" Garrus asked, "it plays pretty rough, and if it is a Reaper I don't know if that's the kind of help we want."
"We do not need to be friends to fight a common enemy together," Liara stated.
"And if Leviathan has the Reapers worried, then we need its help," I agreed.
"Scott," Tali said behind me, "new readings from the probe."
"It's narrowed down Leviathan's location, but I don't think you're gonna like it," Steve said.
"What's up?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"There's nothing but ocean. I show a concentration of structures floating on the surface but Leviathan's signal is coming from below that… way below!"
"Under water?" Ashley said in a worried whisper.
"Looks that way," Steve nodded. He was fixed on the data streaming in from the probe, trying to figure out the best way to approach this situation.
"The shuttle should still be able to reach it," Cortez finally said. He activated the external cameras and the artificial windows lit up to show us what we were approaching. The ocean was raging and waves five metres high were surging across the surface. The sky was a dark, harrowing grey and the rain beat down hard on the Kodiak as we flew towards the floating structures that Steve had mentioned. I had a good look and realised that they were the dead remains of ships that seemed to have crashed in the water, broken down over years by the hammerings of storms.
"Are you sure we can do that?" Tali sounded a little afraid.
"The Kodiak is designed to resist nearly a thousand atmospheres of pressure…" he then looked at me, "but I've never actually tested that."
I took a long, heavy breath and simply said,
"Then I guess we're going to find out."
The shuttle rocked heavily to the side all of a sudden and everyone was thrown to the ground. Cortez fought desperately with the controls, but the Kodiak just seemed to have gone ballistic. It lurched and veered off course, and looking out of the front windows, all I could see was the ocean rising up sharply to meet us. If we hit the water at this speed the shuttle was going to be ripped to pieces by the impact, with all of us inside. Cortez just would not give up and slowly, by some miracle, he steered us back towards one of the floating ships, but there was nothing he could do about our dangerously high speed.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" I screamed with all the air in my lungs.
The shuttle went in hard and we smashed right into the hull of a huge freighter. The force of the collision was unbelievable and I felt my organs almost trying to break free of my own body. Steve had managed to bring the shuttle in relatively level, so despite the fierce crash, we skidded and slid across the surface of the dead ship which was a whole lot more preferable to being crushed right against it. The screeching of the metal and the howls of my team mates died down slowly. When the shuttle eventually came to a stop, I was up and checking on everyone immediately.
"Steve, what happened?"
"I don't know, Commander," he shook himself off, "some kind of pulse hit us and all the systems started shutting down."
"Well, all things considered, you did well to get us down intact."
"Thank you, sir," he said. Even though there was nothing that Steve could have done, I knew that he was beating himself up about being downed like that. Never-the-less, we still had to carry on and come up with a plan for moving forward. I manually opened the side doors of the shuttle, the rain instantly starting to blow right in, and stepped out onto the hull of our metal island.
"Is everyone ok?" I asked as I did a head count while my friends joined me outside.
"Just the usual cuts and bruises," Garrus quipped.
"Another normal day in Scott's team," James added with a joking nod. If they were joking around then I had little to worry about, other than not being able to get out of here.
"Steve, will you be able to get the shuttle flying again?" I asked.
"I'm already swapping out parts and getting power restored, give me a little while."
"You got it, Steve," I said. "We'll look around and see if there's anything useful here."
Even as I said it, I doubted that there was anything that we would find on this weather-beaten hulk of scrap metal, but it was better to be doing something than waiting around for the shuttle to be fixed.
What became immediately apparent to me was that the ship that we had landed on had also been hit by the same pulse that brought it down like it did to us. There were the remains of dozens of make-shift shelters made of whatever materials that could have been scraped together, their tarpaulin roofs weighed down heavily by the torrential rain. Tali scanned the ship and the others that were floating relatively nearby and pulled up what records could be found on them.
"Some of these ships are old, Scott, very old! They could have been here for many centuries."
"No chance of finding any living crew then," I surmised. Almost as if to fully back up what I had said, I suddenly noticed something inside one of the shelters that I was walking past. There, wrapped in bundles of spoiled and torn blankets, was a skeleton. I went into the shelter, brushing aside the flailing curtain that served as a door, and found yet more skeletons of the same appearance. Initially I thought that they all looked Human which confused me a little as to the time-scale of when this would have happened, but Liara solved the mystery when she too saw the bodies.
"They are Asari. All of them."
"And look what they have," I said as I looked into the darkest corner of the shelter. My friends peeked their heads in to have a look at what I was talking about, and they all suddenly looked extremely concerned.
There, right in front of me, was another of Leviathan's artefacts. It glowed with a faint blue hue and I could hear the hum of its energy. I wondered of Leviathan was looking at me right then at that moment, seeing me through this device as I glared back.
"Spread out and see if you can find any more of the artefacts, and any clues about what happened to this Asari ship. See if we can find out how long they were here."
"I can already see a few more, Commander," Javik said as he went back outside into the storm. We had a quick scout around and found that there were ten of the orbs located in the camp alone. Questioning how the crew had come into possession of all of these artefacts was a mystery we were never going to solve, and wondering about if we were ever going to get out of here became an acute concern in everyone's minds.
We found journals that the Asari crew had written. From those that had survived the passage of years, we were able to find out that the crew had managed to repair their vessel on several occasions, but whenever they had tried to fire the engines and make good their escape, they had been struck by the same pulse that had brought them down in the first place. Over time, they had run out of resources with which to make repairs, not to mention started to run out of food and medical supplies which caused the deaths of many of their people. Their situation becoming completely hopeless with no way off of Despoina in sight.
However, there was something else in the writings of the last survivors that caught my attention. One of the crew members had started to write down that, for a reason that they could not explain, they no longer wished to leave. When others continued to fight to try and find a way home, the writer had always chastised them, called them fools and idiots, hated them and wished harm on them all. In another crew member's diary, they noted how the behaviour of the rest of her crew mates seemed to be changing, they no longer cared about leaving Despoina and she blamed it on the artefacts, deciding to take matters into her own hands. In the diary of the first Asari, she wrote how the second had tried to throw one of the artefacts into the water, but the rest of the crew suddenly went berserk and attacked her, ripping her limb from limb as she screamed and begged for them to stop.
When I read this out to the rest of the team Tali, James and Liara were all visibly disgusted by this description of events. We all knew that we were in close proximity to many of these artefacts, and the more time spent near them the more time Leviathan had to work its way into your head. If we were stuck here for too long, how long would it be before we started turning on each other? I did not enjoy thinking of such things, but the reality was that we could all become enslaved thralls to Leviathan and none of our actions would be our own. We would be but toys to Leviathan.
Reading on through the journals, I found that the murder of one of the Asari had caused a few more to commit suicide out of guilt and shame of their uncontrolled rage and violence. From one journal to the next it was just one big horror story that must have ended only when the very last Asari perished, alone and lost in a galaxy that would never know what had happened on this dreadful planet.
"This is so horrible," Tali whimpered. I put a comforting arm around my wife and looked at the faces of my friends. Discovering what had happened to the crew of this ship had certainly not helped to raise the mood of my team and Javik had stormed off angrily. Ashley was staring up into the sky and I wondered if she was saying a silent prayer to the God that she believed in. Maybe we could all use some faith. What would befall us? Should we destroy all the artefacts we could find to prevent the same from happening to us? I was about to propose the question to everyone when I heard a call from Garrus.
"Hey guys! I found something interesting."
We assembled outside and saw what Garrus was looking at. Only half covered by a loosely tied tarpaulin, I saw a mech of some kind. It was designed to be piloted manually and had a weapon, a cannon or missile launcher, on one arm with a rotatable claw on the other. It seemed very familiar indeed.
"An Atlas mech?" I said aloud.
"Looks like a much earlier prototype, and it's not flying Cerberus colours," James observed, "pretty different from the ones we usually see."
"That's because it's not shooting at us," Ashley joked.
"Yet…" Tali added.
"It's rigged for diving," I said as I spotted the air tanks and buoyancy gear fitted to the vehicle. On the back there was a high-powered rocket booster and I started to get excited,
"This must be to power it back to the surface. Can we get it working?"
"No way," Tali, the resident engineer said, "it's far too corroded and worn from the weather."
I thumped the machine with my fist,
"Then let's try to find another one," I said, "one of these could…"
From the sky came a horrendous roar like the sound of metal creaking and bending under the strain of great force. All eyes shot upwards and all hearts started beating triple time as we all saw in horror what had just arrived,
"Reaper!" I shouted as the metal monster flew down towards us and came to a stop only a mile or so up in the air.
"Get ready for troops dropping in," I warned, and with weapons drawn we fell back towards the shuttle in a defensive formation.
"Steve! How are the repairs coming?" I asked urgently. My pilot's voice was full of uncertainty when I heard him speak over the comm,
"I'm going as fast as I can, sir! I can't get the damn thing powered up no matter what I try."
"Keep trying, Lieutenant," I ordered, "we need to get out of here."
The first drop pods began to smash down around us, on the ship and into the sea from where Husks and Cannibals began to emerge. I locked my crosshairs on a Husk's head and fired two shots in rapid succession, dropping the beast to the ground. My bullets tore through the chest of another before I blasted a Cannibal in the face.
My Mattock burned through its first thermal clip in seconds as I blared away to take down the first wave of Reaper troops. A Husk climbed out of the water and lunged at James, but Liara biotically lifted one of the loose crates scattered about and threw it with the force of a meteor into the creature and crushed it against a bulkhead. However, another Husk threw itself at the big Marine and knocked his weapon from his hand. James was initially overcome by the sudden and ferocious attack, but the man was no weakling, and using his considerable physical strength he managed to grapple the Husk and throw it away from him.
Gaining enough time to regain his balance, James charged forward at his enemy and with one hand he grabbed the Husk's throat and forced it back against the outer wall of one of the shelters, and with his other he punched his fist right through his enemy's head. Blue blood ran freely over his arm, but was washed away in seconds by the pelting rain. Not wasting a moment, he jumped for his machinegun and gunned down three more enemies as they tried to rush him.
"Garrus, watch the left flank," I shouted out orders to the team, "Javik, help Liara! James, get some grenades out! Cortez, status?"
"I've almost got it, sir," my pilot replied loudly, the adrenaline and desperation to get the Kodiak flying again clear to hear. I slotted a Cannibal as it rounded the corner of one of the shelters ahead of us and when I ducked back to reload, I suddenly saw that a few of the Reaper troops had climbed up behind the shuttle and were nearly upon it.
"Don't let them reach Cortez!" I shouted as I started running. I charged at one of the Husks as it approached the shuttle and shattered its ribs with my blow. Two bullets in its head finished it off. I activated my Omni blade and proceeded to butcher the other three enemies in front of me.
The blade burned through the chest of a Husk, I ducked an attack from the other and caught it with a left hook across the jaw. While it stumbled back, I plunged my blade into the centre of its head and ripped along the side. The Cannibal turned its gun on me and fired a few shots. My shields flared up as they deflected the bullets, but they would not hold much more and before they went down, I carved an X across the beast's face and shot it three times in the gut. A loud blast behind me alerted me and I spun around to meet my next foe, just to see the Marauder fall to the ground. Tali's shotgun still smoked from the shot and I told my team to form a closer ring around the shuttle to protect it. The Reaper troops still kept on coming at us, but my team of elite warriors were littering the ground with their corpses until, finally, I heard a beautiful noise.
The Kodiaks engines burst into life and I saw the emissions coming from the burners were blazing hot.
"I'm airborne, Commander," Steve said with exhilaration, "I'll give you air support."
"Make it quick, Steve," I said. The shuttle flew off just to our flank and Cortez began to blast away with the cannons at the Reaper troops attacking us.
"Sir," Steve called me, "I can see a sort of docking bay further along the ship, there's one of those diving mechs inside, it looks in good shape!"
"Get to it," I shouted to the team. Like a well-oiled machine, my team began to advance towards the hanger bay. Cortez would pummel the enemy troops ahead of us and half of the squad would move up to take the position while the other half gave them covering fire and protected the rear of our team.
Cortez put in another salvo of high explosives against the enemy and Javik gave me the signal to move up past them. With Tali, EDI and Garrus, I sprinted ahead to take up a firing position. The green beam of energy from Javik's Prothean rifle streaked past my head and sheared a Husk in half while Tali switched to her Arc pistol and put a Marauder down with solid shots to its chest and neck. EDI fired an incineration attack at a Cannibal and the monster howled with rage as it panicked and fired wildly all around us. Liara shot the enflamed enemy to put it down and took down a Husk that tried to rush them from behind.
The chorus of gunfire from my team and from the Cannibals and Marauders that stood against us seemed to drown out the storm through which we were fighting. The rain still battered against my armour and threatened to cover my visor at times, and I could only imagine how tough it must have been for Tali to keep her mask clear enough to fight effectively. But the young Quarian was throwing herself into the action. Wielding her pistol in one hand and her Omni blade in the other, no Reaper could get near her. She drove her blade into the gut of a Marauder and shoved her pistol in between its mandibles, pulling the trigger and unleashing a spout of blood from the top of the enemy's head. Garrus moved to one strut on the ship's hull and put a well-aimed bullet through a Cannibal's shoulder before popping to another bit of cover and shooting across my line of fire at an oncoming Husk, the beast dropping like a bag of bricks as its brains disappeared through the new hole in its skull.
Through the small town of shelters, we fought our way ahead against the Reaper forces that continued to drop in all around us. A few enemy soldiers dropped onto the ship on the levels above us and began firing down, threatening to pin us down until we were overwhelmed. Firing the last three rounds of my thermal clip into a Cannibal, I quickly reloaded and switched to my Black Widow. The huge rifle was pointed towards the enemy high above us and through my scope I homed in on them. The rocking of the ship in the unsettled ocean made it harder to get my shots on target and a couple of my rounds went slightly astray, which served only to infuriate me further.
Once the last Marauder on the high ground fell with a hole about ten inches wide in its chest, I could focus back on the enemy closing in on us. Without switching back to my assault rifle, I scoped down a Husk and blew the thing in two with the enormous power of my Widow. The feeling of it bolting back into my shoulder was always comforting somehow, and seeing an enemy go down with such horrendous wounds that it would never get back up could only increase the chances of my friends getting out of here alive. A Marauder that dared to peek out from cover to take a few shots received one of my bullets through the upper part of its head and a few of the head crests blew apart and scattered into the air.
"We've got good momentum going," I encouraged everyone, "don't lose it!"
Giving each other cover and following the path being cleared by Cortez, we were finally nearing the hanger which housed the mech. Closer and closer, foot by foot and bullet by bullet we were getting nearer to our objective. Not only would the mech be our only possible way to reach Leviathan, it also had heavy weapons that would help dealing with the Reaper forces. But then, as I vaulted over a strut, I felt a surge of energy push against me for a fraction of a second as it rushed over me. I gave myself a lightning quick check-over to see if anything had been shut down, but my armour and weapons were fine. The shuttle, however, was yet again floundering in the air and I watched with my heart in my mouth as the Kodiak, and Steve, crashed head on into the ship. The boom from the crash caught all of my friends' attention as well and we were all driven on by a new purpose. Get to the shuttle and hope that Steve had survived.
Several waves of Reaper infantry were beaten off and killed as my squad launched their rescue mission. There were reaper soldiers in between us and the shuttle and I saw a Cannibal try to blast its way inside, but from inside the shuttle there came a hail of bullets that shredded the monster to bits and I saw Steve emerge with an Avenger assault rifle in hand and start to fire away at every enemy in sight. He was doing the right thing and taking the fight to the enemy instead of waiting to be boxed in inside the Kodiak, but he was no fully-trained or experienced soldier.
"Get to him," I yelled louder.
"I can make a run for the mech, Scott," Garrus shouted to me and I assessed the situation. My Turian friend was right. It was an equal distance to the hanger bay as it was to Steve and I gave him an affirmative nod. The Turian took off as fast as he could, killing those enemies that he could not avoid and simply dodging those that he could. I gave him covering fire and took down some of his pursuers and Javik grabbed a Husk in mid-air with his biotics as it lunged for Garrus. Using his influence over dark energy, Javik proceeded to rip the Husk's head from its shoulders and use the body as a heavy implement to crush another of the vile husks.
A resounding boom echoed out from my Widow as I sent a bullet hissing through the air and into the back of a marauder's head as it chased down Garrus. I needed my friend to have the time to open the hanger and get the mech activated. Gunning down a Cannibal with his Vindicator assault rifle, Garrus reached the control panel and used his Omni tool to power and open the door mechanism. As the thick glass hanger door retracted out of sight, my Turian friend rushed over to the mech and managed to open the cockpit.
Tali fired an incineration attack at a Husk that was closing on her before taking down another Cannibal that had its eyes on Garrus as he worked furiously to get the machine working. Thinking quickly, he took the power cell from his shield generator and plugged it into the mech, and there were smiles all around my team as the engines whirred into life and Garrus started to march the mech out of the hanger.
"I'm online, Scott," Garrus said to me, "its only got a few rounds but it'll be enough to give the bastards something to worry about!"
"Keep heading towards Steve and we'll form up around you," I replied. I shot a Husk dead and led the team over to the mechanised walker that now began to rip apart the enemy soldiers with its lethal cannons and missiles. As Garrus blasted away at the Reapers, whooping and cheering as he had the time of his life, we reached Steve safely and were warmly received by the stranded pilot.
"Thank God for that!" He exhaled, "thought I might have been done for there."
"You did great, Steve, but the only way we're gonna get out of here is if we find Leviathan ourselves," I said, "and that means I have to go down with the mech."
"Bring it to me and I'll make sure it's ready."
"And we'll keep the Reapers off of you," Tali said.
Once again, my team bunkered down in a defensive position around the shuttle where Cortez began checking over the mech. Garrus was disappointed that his turn in the mech was so short, but we all noticed that the volume of Reaper soldiers coming at us seemed to have lessened.
"We're just killing too many of them," James grinned. Even as one of the big Brutes appeared, we were able to focus all of our fire on it as there was little else to shoot at the time. Two shots from my Widow into the Brute's head seemed to bring it down before my team hit it with all they had to kill it off quickly. Satisfied that my friends could hold this location, I hurried over to the mech to see if it was ready.
"Am I good to go?" I asked Steve.
"Everything seems to be ok," he said, "you can go as soon as you like."
"Good," I said and walked towards the diving mech, but I heard a quiet voice say my name from behind.
I turned to see Tali following me and as I climbed into the cockpit her eyes would not leave me.
"Scott… you don't have to do this… just…"
She was scared. So was I. Yet I could see no other option for getting off of Despoina. If we got the shuttle in the air, Leviathan would bring it down again. If I brought in the Normandy then the same would happen to her, and the landing would not be as pretty.
"The only way home is through Leviathan, Tali," I said softly, "I'll be fine."
As if to give her some piece of mind, I jumped back out of the mech and closed in to her, touching my helmet to hers and looking into the glowing eyes beneath the mask. Tali gave me a nod and touched my Promising Band even as I touched hers, then she took up her shotgun and re-joined the fight. If there was a time to dive into the uttermost depths of this world's ocean, this was it.
I closed and sealed the cockpit while checking over the systems with Cortez. The comms system was up and running and I took a hold of the controls. With only slight hesitation, I finally started to walk the mech towards the edge of the ship where the side dropped away into the waves below. I felt like a madman, but I knew what had to be done and when I arrived at the edge, though I could hardly breathe, I took that final step and sent myself falling over the side into the watery abyss waiting for me. The automated systems kept the mech upright during the fall and I entered the waves feet first and began the descent down into the darkness below.
"You still reading me, Steve?" I asked over the comm.
"Affirmative, Commander," he answered, the sounds of a gun battle very clear in the background, "though I'm getting interference on this end."
His voice became distorted and fuzzy and I knew that it was not long before our comm link would cut out completely, and I would be alone.
The mech continued to sink for what seemed like an age, the window of the cockpit fogging up as the outside temperature fell far below what it was inside. The light on the shoulder of the weapon arm suddenly blew out as the pressure became too much for it. All the while I continued to feed updates over the comm, hoping that they could still hear me back up on the surface. There was some aquatic life around as I saw a huge jellyfish about five metres in diameter in the distance, as well as a few smaller ones randomly swimming around.
There was plant-life also, and when I finally landed hard on the seabed, I found myself looking at the start of what would become a vibrant ecosystem over the millennia to come. I checked around me and checked my scanners for the probe, which was still at least another two hundred metres further below me. At the depth of over two thousand metres below surface level, the atmospheric pressure on this Atlas must have been incredible, but the machine still moved and negotiated the rough underwater world well enough. Little warning lights blinked at me and I switched off non-critical systems to save power and ease the strain on my mech. Also, I did not know how much power I would need to get back to the surface.
With only the probe's signal to guide me, I made my way through a maze of rocks and tangled sea plants. If this had been a trip of leisure, I could have stayed down here for days exploring this incredible landscape before me. Far beyond, I could see the openings of vast underwater caverns and islands of rock surrounded by great empty spaces. Being used to having the free air flowing around me back on the surface world, it captured my imagination as the light from above made the water around me seem to shimmer and ripple softly all around me like some sort of show of magic. The light was able to penetrate down to this level better than I had expected and I could see my own way through my exploration without having to rely on lights or flares. One step at a time, and a few more descents, and I finally found the probe which was still fully intact and giving me clear readings. Something very large, and alive, was nearby. An icy chill moved up my spine and I felt the perspiration on my forehead as my nerves became wild with life, my imagination clamouring to think of what I would meet down here.
From the flat that I was on, there was a narrow ledge that jutted out and came to a point before another giant precipice that expanded for miles and miles. I had only glanced over in that direction when I saw something floating up from beyond the ledge. It was a bubble. A simple bubble of air rising from the depths. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then there came more and more. I knew this was not coming from some fissure in the planet's crust, it was too slow for that. These bubbled were coming from something alive and breathing. I turned the Atlas towards the ledge and marched on, refusing to let my fear make me back down and run.
The ground began to tremble, gently at first but then it became far more vigorous and suddenly I saw it. Leviathan began to emerge from the shadows. It was like a great sea monster from old tales rushing up from below to find me, totally eclipsing all light and I found myself drowned in Leviathan's shadow and overwhelmed by its sheer size. The most noteworthy attribute, however, was that Leviathan very much appeared to be like a Reaper. The same squid-like body and tentacles, yet instead of being a machine, Leviathan was undoubtedly organic. Where the Reapers had their main armament, there were instead four huge black eyes staring down at me. If I had been even a little superstitious, I would have considered myself to have stumbled into the realm of the God of Oceans.
Leviathan towered above me in my little mech and I could almost feel the weight of its gaze. I had never had such an alien experience before and I could not draw my eyes away from this massive, ancient creature. More than this, I could also feel a slight itch at the back of my head, growing hotter and more painful by the second until my head began throbbing. A demonic voice rumbled through the deep,
"You have come too far!"
Leviathan's rage could be felt in the oceans, could be tasted in the air in my cockpit. With all that I had been through, I knew that never before had I been in a more dangerous situation than now, for this mighty creature could end me with a single thought.
The pain in the back of my head suddenly exploded and everything went blank for a second, and when I opened my eyes again, I seemed to be standing… nowhere. I was alone standing in an empty void, empty except for a feeling, a feeling of cold and dark. Yet, I figured, I was still in control of myself. Leviathan was giving me a chance to speak. I snapped awake again and was once again in the Atlas mech staring at the giant looming over me.
"I had to find you!" I said back to Leviathan with a strained voice.
"This is our domain," Leviathan sounded angry, "you have breached the darkness."
"You killed a Reaper. I need to know why!"
"They are the enemy, one that seeks our extermination."
I blacked out again, the feeling of cold and dark returning for but a moment before I fought back, kicking Leviathan out of my mind.
"But… I thought you were a Reaper," I said. I had had doubts about Javik's theory that Leviathan was a Reaper-gone-rogue, but at that moment I realised that I had simply had no clue whatsoever about the nature of Leviathan's being.
"They are only echoes, we existed long before," Leviathan declared, fury boiling in its heart.
"Then what are you?" I asked. There was a pause, a moment of silence as Leviathan considered its answer. Then when it spoke, it was with utter conviction,
"Something more."
My head burned in agony and I wanted to scream, but then it was like I had been punched in the gut and all the air expelled from my body. Cold and dark washed over me once again, and I felt myself slipping away as I gasped for air. Suffocating in this lifeless plane, I suddenly felt a hand on my heaving chest and Leviathan's deep voice said to me,
"Your mind belongs to me. Now, breathe. Breathe."
As if my neck was released from the clutches of strangling hands, my lungs were gratefully able to suck in all the air they could. As I lay there inhaling every ounce of oxygen available, a figure stood up and backed away from me. It was watching me carefully, analysing my every move as I managed to sit myself up. Looking at the figure, I saw a familiar pair of eyes looking back at me,
"Ann?" I said, confused. "What's happening?"
My body was cold, so cold. It was as if all my body wanted to do was shiver like crazy to get some warmth in me. But something else, some foreign influence, was preventing me from doing so.
"Your memories give voice to our words," Ann said in Leviathan's voice, pointing a finger at my head as she closed in. "Your nature will be revealed to us. Accept this."
"The galaxy's at war with the Reapers, you defeated one. Why aren't you fighting back?" I demanded an answer. Ann dismissed me outright,
"There is no war. Only the harvest."
"Then help us stop it," I barked.
"None have possessed the strength in past cycles," Leviathan's voice came from behind me now, even though I had been watching the effigy of Ann right in front of me. Now my mind placed the image of Derek Hadley as Leviathan's stand-in in this dark, dreary realm that I was trapped in. "Your own species could be destroyed with a single thought."
Leviathan changed his form again and now I recognised the man who had been playing the part of Alex Garneau from Mahavid. Why Leviathan was doing this, I could not fathom. Perhaps it was some elaborate game to try and disorientate me and make me easier to take under its control.
However, Garneau turned to me and looked long and hard into my eyes, piercing down to my soul.
"But you are different," Leviathan said, "I have witnessed your actions in this cycle. The destruction of Sovereign, the fall of the Collectors. You stand in defiance of the Reapers, and they perceive you as a threat."
Ann reappeared again, though Leviathan still stared at me,
"And I must understand why!"
As if Leviathan lost its hold over me for a second, I felt myself shaking awake in the cockpit of the Atlas again, thousands of metres below the surface of the ocean. I looked up at Leviathan, my head feeling like it weighed a ton, and found the enormous beast still looming in place over me.
"Before the cycles our kind was the apex of life in the galaxy," Leviathan began to speak, dragging me back to the plane between consciousness and death, "the lesser species were in our thrall, serving our needs."
In front of me a memory of the wall paintings of Leviathan faded into view and then slowly dissipated again.
"Over time, we became more powerful and our servants were cared for. But we could not protect them from themselves. The species would build machines that then destroyed them. Tribute does not flow from a dead race."
I found myself picturing the war between the Geth and Quarians, remembering all that Tali had told me about the Geth uprising, what Legion had called the Morning War, and knew that leviathan was talking about this exact kind of eventuality.
"To solve this problem," Leviathan continued to switch between forms, "we created an Intelligence with a mandate to preserve all life, at any cost. As the Intelligence evolved, it studied the evolution of civilisations, its understanding grew until it found a solution. And in that instant… it betrayed us."
Leviathan's tone was almost lamenting now, pained by the deaths of his kind that must have happened so long ago.
"It chose our kind as the first harvest. From our essence, the first Reaper was created."
"Harbinger," I said. The name made the form of Garneau bristle and tense, but I was not about to back down now.
"You created that Intelligence despite what you saw happen to the other races!" I accused Leviathan. "What were you thinking? How could you be so stupid as to repeat the exact. Same. Mistake?"
"You cannot conceive of a galaxy that bends to your will," Leviathan replied, "every creature, every nation, every planet that was discovered became our tools. We were above the concerns of lesser species. The Intelligence was envisioned as simply another tool."
"And now we "lesser species" all pay the price for your mistake," I said.
"There was no mistake," Leviathan growled, "the AI still serves its purpose."
"What's the point of all these harvests?" I asked. The Reapers returned to plunge the galaxy into genocidal war every fifty thousand years to create more of their own, there must have been some goal behind it all.
"The Intelligence has one purpose," Ann replied, "preservation of life. That purpose has not yet been fulfilled. It directed the Reapers to build the Mass Relays to speed the time between cycles for greater efficiency. The galaxy itself became an experiment, evolution its tool."
"Will it ever end?"
"Unknown. Until the Intelligence finds what it is looking for, the harvests will continue."
"What do you know about the Crucible?" I asked, wondering if it had ever witnessed the weapon actually being used. My hopes were dashed when Leviathan took a few moments to answer, looking pensive and uncertain.
"We have watched its construction before. It has never been completed. Those who have tried still fell victim to the harvest. Its outcome is unknown."
"How did the Intelligence defeat you?" I asked Leviathan. I had come here in search of the creature and now that I was here, I needed answers.
"To find a solution it required information, physical data drawn from all organic life in the cosmos. It created an army of pawns that searched the galaxy gathering this data. There was no warning… no reason given when it turned against us. Only slaughter. Only the harvest."
"But the Intelligence missed you," I said, "how did you remain hidden all this time?"
"Our extermination was not complete. Some survived and found refuge in the dark corners of the galaxy. I am their progeny. Over the cycles the thrall races were controlled, removing traces of our existence as we directed them to. In this way, our survival was kept secret from the Reapers."
To my side, I saw one of the artefacts that Leviathan used to reach out and control its victims and the form of Garneau walked over to it and placed a reverent hand upon its smooth, watery surface.
"Today, we reach out through the fragments and watch for discovery. They provide a window into the galaxy. Tools for exploring the events of the cycles from the safety of this world. Through them we watch, we study, and remain in the shadows."
The way that Leviathan kept using the word "tools" made me wary. This was an incredibly powerful creature whose race saw themselves above all else, everything that they came across was theirs to possess and control in whatever manner they wished. Could this cause future problems if I convinced them to help us now? Was it worth the risk it posed? I had no way to know for sure, but I remembered my original purpose for coming to Despoina in the first place. We had to get Leviathan to help us.
"Ok, you've made your point. Will you help us fight the Reapers?" I asked bluntly.
"I have searched your mind. You are an anomaly, yet that is not enough."
The form of Ann went to step away, but I lunged after her and called for Leviathan to come back. Ann turned back to me and told me straight to my face,
"The harvest will continue."
"No!" I blurted out, "you've been watching this cycle. You know things are different!"
"We will survive," Leviathan stated, "you will remain here as a servant fulfilling our needs. The Reapers will harvest the rest."
"If you release me, no one has to be harvested," I pleaded. Ann shook her head,
"Nothing will change."
That was it. Leviathan had given me the ammo I needed as I launched into my counter attack,
"But it has already changed!" I bellowed, "the Reapers know where you are. You can't just watch anymore. You have no choice but to fight!"
Leviathan watched me curiously, not saying a word. It was listening to me and knew that I spoke the truth.
"Even if you survive the battle today, the Reapers won't stop. Ever. They'll come for you in such numbers that even your energy pulses won't stop them. You will be destroyed, exterminated. Release me and we have a chance to stop this, once and for all!"
Still Leviathan did not speak, but in the back of my mind, I felt its hold on me loosening and I snapped back to the real world in my little mech, a mere ant next to the huge mass of Leviathan itself. I felt something wet on my top lip and when I wiped it, I saw blood on my fingers, blood running freely from my nose the same way that Ann had suffered back in the lab.
Then, as if Leviathan alone was not enough, I then saw two more of its kind emerge from the depths on either side of it. Their great and powerful bodies dwarfing me beyond what I thought possible. I truly was a mortal in the presence of gods. Like a lightbulb, I was switched back to the world of cold and dark and I saw Ann, Garneau and Hadley all swarming around me at once. They were checking me, analysing me and testing my worth.
"Your confidence is singular," one said. Their voices were all the same though their chosen forms moved independently of each other, circling me like a predator searching for a weak point to charge in at their prey.
"I've earned it," I said proudly, "out there fighting, where you should be."
"It is clear why the Reapers perceive you as a threat," Leviathan responded, "your victories are more than a product of chance."
The form of Hadley came right up to me and stood tall in front of me,
"We will fight, but not for you or any other lesser race. We were the first, the apex race. We will survive. And the Reapers who trespass on this world will understand our power. They will become our slaves. Today, they pay their tribute in death."
This time, there was no breaking loose from Leviathan's control as I woke in the cockpit of the mech. They allowed me to go freely and so when I came to, I was more alert and focused than I had been before. Warning systems were going haywire and I struggled to bring everything back into balance. My job down here was done and I had to get back to the surface as quickly as possible. Walking the Atlas a short distance to where I had a clear path back up to the surface, I fired the rocket booster and sent myself sailing up through the crushing depths of the water. Now I only had to wait and with one look back at the three God-like Leviathans I suddenly felt the worst pain in my head yet, searing and scratching, crushing and squeezing all at once.
Every second that ticked by took hours. All I wanted was to get back to the world above the waves and escape from this damned mech. The machine lurched suddenly and I felt it fall backwards as it came to rest on its back, floating on the surface that I had sought so badly. Opening the cockpit, I scrambled out and breathed in the heavy, salty air. I could barely move, my limbs screaming in agony every time I tried to command them to do something. I could see the ship that we had crashed on, but it was still a fair distance away and with great despair I realised that I would not be able to get myself back to my friends on my own power alone. I activated my comm, but all that came out of my mouth was a series of blubbers and nonsense, muffled words that might not have even belonged to any language in the galaxy.
My fears of being stranded here, with no way for Tali and the rest to know that I was back and in need of rescue, soon passed by as I saw Steve's shuttle flit across the water towards me. When it drew up beside me, the side doors opened and several pairs of hands grabbed me and pulled me inside. Safety at last. I wanted to hug all of them, so glad was I to know that everyone was ok. I wanted to tell them the news, wanted to tell them that Leviathan would join us and that we had a potent new weapon against the Reapers. But my body would not work and all I could do was lie there paralysed while my friends fussed over me. All I could remember hearing was Tali's voice as she crouched over me,
"He's freezing!"
She was holding my head in her hands so she could check if I was still with them. I tried to raise my arm to place a hand on her mask, but my arm did not budge and soon all colours started to fade away from my vision. The world went from alive and vibrant to flat and grey. A part of me thought that I was dying. Bringing Leviathan into the war just to perish anyway. Then the grey grew darker and darker until all was gone and I felt no more. No more, other than the chilling memory of feeling trapped in the cold and dark.