Chapter 22:

Four days later, January 20th, 2095.

"So you're saying that she escaped? How?" I asked, staring at the hologram of Daro'Xen before me. Lyna was standing to my right, with a stoic expression on her face.

Xen pressed her palm against her mask while sighing. "From what I'm getting from Myriad and the Geth Consensus, Ferryn'Artrem was able to escape from her cell on Rannoch by dislodging the toilet inside of her cell. She somehow got rid of the excrement pipes as well. After that, it is suspected that she exited the prison through one of the many maintenance shafts."

"Wasn't she supposed to be heavily monitored by at least five guards at all times?" Lyna inquired, crossing her hands under her chest. Her stoic expression was replaced by one of disbelief.

"Yes, Lyna Rilac. She was supposed to be guarded at all times. However, some of our guards were apparently playing Quasar on their omni-tools while Ferryn was quote-unquote, 'sleeping.' However, they didn't hear her breaking out over the noise of maintenance work going on in the area, as well as their little game," Xen explained through clenched teeth.

I raised my eyebrows at Xen and opened my mouth to speak, but before any words came out, Lyna interrupted me. "The URG's guards should be trained more, especially when guarding a prisoner such as Ferryn."

Daro'Xen rolled her eyes at Lyna, turning her holographic head over to me. "As I was going to say, we have no way of locating her. She could already be leaving Rannoch, or hiding somewhere in the rocks. Ferryn is a master at her games. No one knows where she might be."

I stepped backwards, taken back by what Daro'Xen said. "So what will happen? She's clearly a threat. Do something about it."

"Kyle, Ferryn escaped many of hours ago. I suggested putting a tracking chip on her, yet my father insisted that she would never be able to escape. To put it in simple terms, we have no idea where she is," Xen monotoned, her voice barely above a whisper.

Lyna moved herself forwards, leaning at Xen threateningly. "Did it not occur to you that you could just block any ships exiting or entering the system? What about doing a planetary search?"

"I only just got these messages now, since the absolute idiots that were supposed to be guarding Ferryn didn't report for a few hours. She has probably already escaped by now. As for the planetary search, the Geth are reportedly doing scans of the area."

Closing my eyes, I sighed at the fact that the URG was able to lose such a high-value prisoner so easily. "Well this is just great. It wasn't like we didn't have enough to worry about, going into the Lidera Kop'ye cluster and all of that."

Xen's holographic display frowned and looked over to her right. "Hmph. As much as I'd love to continue this conversation, I need to attend to other matters, stay safe," she spoke, cutting her connection to the Bermuda shortly afterwards.

Lyna turned her gaze to me for a moment. She sighed and put her fingers to her temples, lightly rubbing them. "I swear to the Goddess… The United Rannoch Government can't even handle their own prisoners anymore. They are so incompetent."

"To be fair, two admirals went with the exploration fleet. They didn't exactly leave Rannoch well-prepared," I retorted, shrugging my shoulders in the process.

"Except for the three other admirals, and the billions of Geth platforms."

I rolled my eyes at Lyna. "Yes, but as Xen said, Ferryn is a master at her games. She'll probably be able to evade forces for a long time."

A small sigh came out of Lyna's mouth as she looked away from me. "In all honesty, the farther away from civilization we get, the worse things become."

I slowly moved up to Lyna, putting my hand on her shoulder. "As bad as things can be, we need to look on the bright side every once in a while. While we may be far away from everyone else in the galaxy, we have time to talk to each other, instead of continuously training every day, or dealing with what Aria assigns us to do."

"First off we need to train every day, secondly, our days are numbered, Kyle. If everything goes as according to what you say, we have less than a century to convince the people of the galaxy that the Reapers are coming, and that they're not just some bullshit fairy tale! We're wasting our time on this search for a species that might be extinct. All the information that we have on them comes from documents that are hundreds of thousands of years old," Lyna growled and moved away from me, shaking her head from side to side.

"Lyna-" I tried to speak out.

"No Kyle! You don't get to say, 'Lyna stop over-reacting, stop doubting the United Rannoch Government.' Everything that's going on with the URG is too good to be true; it truly looks like something out of a children's book. You allied a waring species in less than a week, with only the help of your precious AI…" Lyna trailed off, staring in my general direction with her teeth bared.

Her fiery gaze was no longer on me, instead she was looking to my left, where a hologram of Sirius stood. He towered over the both of us by at least two feet. The holographic display that Sirius was controlling through my omni-tool merely stepped towards Lyna. "Asari, I ask that you calm down, for the good of all of us. If I must, I will give you the information that you seek, but do not act like a child to obtain it."

"I wasn't acting like a child," Lyna angrily stated.

"Not entirely, but I do understand your desperation. Our days are numbered in your eyes, but time is a delicate thing. We can't rush this sort of thing. Before we meet the Council, we must find the Inusannon. Unless you want a wave of panic to sweep out across Citadel space, we must wait."

Lyna raised one of her painted-on eyebrows. "What exactly are you talking about?"

Sirius's hologram moved forwards, placing a hand on the Asari's shoulder. "As Vodnik and Samara are making appearances across the galaxy, such as the killings of Varina T'Narkoti, a notorious Eclipse drug lord. There have even been reports of conflicts with a Turian named Nokius Erian, a nefarious serial killer operating on Irune. More and more people are beginning to look into humanity's existence as a whole. Both you and Vodnik haven't done too good of a job with hiding yourselves. I've seen various extranet articles popping up on sightings of a 'mysterious species.' If we stood on the Citadel now, people wouldn't know what to think. However, if we wait a few more years, give Samara and Vodnik more time, and gather more evidence on the Reapers, we'll be fully prepared to meet up with the Council."

"Don't we already have enough evidence? You convinced Aria T'Loak back in the late 2070s with that video clip of the Inusannon's war with the Reapers," Lyna spoke in a slightly calmer tone than before.

"That was enough to convince a crimelord. Don't get me wrong, she's smart, but she doesn't have the power to influence an entire portion of the galaxy. Aria has control of Omega, but the Council possesses so much more. They would judge that video much more harshly than Aria would," Sirius blankly stated.

A frown made itself present on Lyna's face as she moved to the side, shaking Sirius' holographic hand off of her shoulder. "What about all of those files that you gathered back on Aite? The Larim-Tatek facility that we recovered those Pythet drives from? Surely they must have contained some information on the Reapers."

"You mean Latem-Tarik. While my facility contained information on the Reaper threat, all of the files that I could find were either irrelevant text documents, or they had been corrupted."

"Corrupted? How exactly did they become corrupted?" Lyna inquired.

After a few seconds of silence, I finally butted into the conversation between Sirius and Lyna. "To my knowledge, the files could have been corrupted during my brief encounter with Rigel."

Lyna turned her gaze towards me, arching one of her eyebrows. "You're acting like I know who or what that is."

Sirius seemingly growled at my mentioning of Rigel. He closed his holographic eyes for a few moments before sighing. "I hate to bring this up now, but it seems that I have no other option. Rigel Tavekanal-1931O is an Inusynthetic just like I am. However, he differs from me quite a bit. I'm not talking about his personality or his abilities either. He is officially known as a Corrupt Inusynthetic, an Inusynthetic which was 'indoctrinated' by the Reapers. Compared to him, Ferryn'Artrem is a very small threat."

"If you believe that this 'Rigel' is a bigger threat than Ferryn'Artrem, then why hasn't he attacked us yet? Why haven't we gone after him?" she asked, folding her arms under her chest.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Rigel has actually contacted me once. During our exploration inside of the Latem-Tarik facility, I was separated from you for several minutes. During that time, I found the ISYLR, but Rigel also contacted me at that moment."

Lyna turned her attention towards me, slowly moving away from Sirius' hologram. She stopped her approach about five feet away from me. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? What did this… thing… say to you? "

"It wasn't something that I could just randomly bring up! Besides, he talked about a human female that was with him. From what I can recall, her name was Tiryn, or something along those lines. He tried to convince me to join the Reapers too."

Sirius' hologram nodded. "I haven't had contact with Tiryn, all I know about her is that she allied herself with Rigel. However, there was a message that Tiryn sent to Kyle's omni-tool"

I brought up my omni-tool, which had already been on due to Sirius displaying a hologram of himself. Opening up another window on my omni-tool's display, I tapped on my messages app, and pulled up a page of my extranet messages. "That's right, I did receive an email from Tiryn a few days ago," I trailed off, swiping through a few emails that I received from the URA. Eventually, I found the email that was titled 'Final Offer.' I continued speaking, "She tried to make a deal with me, stating how I would be saved if I joined her and Rigel, and that I would live a life of eternal agony if I didn't accept her offer. Vodnik is also mentioned in the email, with Tiryn calling him a barbarian and a fool. To sum it up, what she sent me is just a bunch of bullshit coming from an indoctrinated mind."

"I hope you didn't reply to her," Lyna fearfully stated, uncrossing her arms from under her chest.

"Erm, I haven't replied to it yet," I murmured, scratching at the back of my neck lightly. "In all honesty, I was hoping to ignore it until we got back to Rannoch."

Sirius strayed to the other side of the communications room silently. He turned himself around when I finished speaking. "If Rigel behaves the same way that he did during my cycle, he won't attack until absolutely necessary. I can only assume that he's using Tiryn to find his physical body, which is a… Well, it's similar to a Geth platform in a sense. Rigel's physical body is incredibly advanced, capable of sporting synthetic biotics. Rigel could also be attempting to gather resources to give to the Reaper fleets upon their arrival into the galaxy. If the latter is true… Well, we're just going to have to counter it with the best that we have to offer."

I held up the palm of my hand in order to get Sirius to stop speaking while my eyes went wide. "Wait wait wait! Synthetic biotics? What do you mean?"

"Synthetic biotics are pretty self-explanatory. While this cycle relies on Element Zero, the Inusannon and the Inusynthetics relied on a more advanced sort of biotic system. In the middle of our war with the Reapers, we found ourselves to be fighting the Collectors of our time, the Ropisoen. We had studied the technologies of the Ropisoen, but relied much on our own development. However, one of the main things that we adapted from their technology was their ability to use biotics through the manipulation of antimatter. In short, our biotics can be shared with all forms of life by synthetically manipulating antimatter."

"Okay, but let's backtrack a bit. What is the best we have to offer? You speak like Rigel is an omnipotent being, like we could never defeat him, no matter our efforts," Lyna muttered, walking towards Sirius with her arms at her sides. "Vodnik and Samara are on their hunt for that Ardat-Yakshi. Neither Daro'Xen nor Ithera'Lyik are suited for combat. What if Rigel attacked now?"

"If he was pitted against us, we would perish," Sirius bleakly stated.

I shook my head. "I find that hard to believe. We have the ISYLR, that should be enough to at least destroy his 'physical body,' even if it is unethical to-"

Lyna suddenly put her hand up at me. "Kyle, if what you and Sirius have led me to believe is true, then we do not have an option to worry about what is right and what is wrong. The time that these Reapers invade our galaxy is approaching, though we don't know exactly when they will come, at least not anymore. It could be tomorrow, or it could be centuries from now. And if this 'Rigel' thing is as powerful as Sirius says he is, then we must reunite with Vodnik and Samara."

"You and I both know that they won't join us until they've found and killed the Ardat-Yakshi. Knowing how things went in my timeline, Samara successfully killed Morinth in 2185," I stated in a flat tone. "However, Samara didn't have the assistance of Vodnik in my timeline. She didn't have Sirius providing her with data either."

Sirius held his holographic hand up towards me. "I've provided Samara with all that I could scavenge from a quick search through the surface of the extranet. Believe me, searching through 9240 yottabytes of data is tasking, and I've only just scratched the surface of that."

"Erm, I thought you were created as an 'Inusannon AI.' Why aren't you able to browse through thousands of files in milliseconds?" Lyna queried. She pressed her palms onto a table, staring directly at Sirius with a serious expression on her face.

"Lyna, do you even know what a yottabyte is?" I inquired.

"I'd assume that it is a step up from a petabyte," she slowly responded, choosing her words carefully. Her tone indicated that she was unsure on what she was saying. Sirius glared at Lyna for several seconds, the whole room being masked in silence. Eventually, Lyna spoke again, her expression only containing annoyance. "Okay, you can tell me I'm wrong, just don't stare at me like an idiot because I don't know how bytes are correctly charted."

Sirius let out a long sigh. "One yottabyte roughly equals 1,000,000,000 petabytes. I can process terabytes of data per second at my maximum capacity. Even someone who isn't adept in mathematics could figure out that I have a lot of information to search through. Add that onto being tasked with handling the drive cores of this ship, piloting this ship, communicating with Kyle, managing Kyle's implants, managing Kyle's augmentations, and so much more… I don't exactly have the technological capacity that a Reaper does, so I can't exactly search through the extranet at the speed of light."

Even I was taken aback by what Sirius stated. The sheer size of the extranet dwarfed the internet back on Earth. Lyna was in the same speechless state that I was in. Silence filled the room for a good thirty seconds before my Asari companion replied to Sirius' statement. "Uhh… That's… That's a bit big. I apologize for overestimating you."

"Big would be a tremendous understatement," I mumbled, feeling even smaller in such a large galaxy.

"Overestimation is far from an insult, at least when referring to someone's capabilities. I'm flattered that you would think of me so highly, but just like the organic races, I'm not perfect," Sirius stated with a small smirk.

I grinned slightly at Sirius. "You're closer to perfection than Lyna and I am, Sirius. You don't have the genetic imperfections that we do."

"No, I'm not. Not a single life form in this galaxy is perfect. Everything in existence has flaws, even synthetics. We can continue this pointless speculation another time if you two would wish. I believe there are more important things to do than standing around and talking about petabytes and genetics," Sirius flatly spoke. His hologram flickered for a moment and disappeared into my omni-tool moments later.

Lyna slowly turned her head towards me and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, that was certainly informative. Mildly frightening, but informative."

I chuckled at her comment, while a grin made itself present on my expression. I slowly approached Lyna, moving just to her right, and positioning myself next to her. "Yeah, I'll agree with you on that," I said in a calm tone.

My Asari companion smiled back at me. She placed her hand onto my shoulder, lightly squeezing at it. "I certainly didn't get all of the questions in that I wanted to ask about Rigel, but I suppose that conversation can come later."

"Mhmm… Say, do you know anyone that could help us with Vodnik and Samara's hunt for Morinth later on?" I inquired, glancing over at Lyna.

She paused for a moment, then shook her head moments later. "My sister would probably be up for the job, if she hadn't begun a decade-long tour of the galaxy alongside some Krogan. I'm not sure who else would be willing to help us hunt down an Ardat-Yakshi."

"So you don't know anyone that would be available to help us?"

Lyna shrugged her shoulders, glancing back over to me and holding my gaze for a few seconds. "I've basically been out of contact with my mother and everyone else in Citadel space for twenty years. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I still have a contact out there that would just love to assist a Justicar with her tasks of finding and killing Morinth, but then again, I've had little contact with anyone since I met you."

I slowly nodded my head and moved away from Lyna, finally parting myself from her grasp. While walking towards the door, I peered at Lyna through the corner of my eye. "I'll talk to you later, Lyna," I calmly said as I walked out of the room.

"Yeah, talk to you in a bit," Lyna quietly replied before the door shut behind me.

Four days later, January 24th, 2095.

'It seems my estimations were wrong, Kyle. We won't be arriving in the middle of February, we'll be entering the region of Lidera Kop'ye within one week. Apparently that EMDrive is much more powerful than I had initially anticipated.'

Good, that means less sitting around.

'It's not necessarily the best thing. I planned to stop the URG's exploration fleet before we entered Lidera Kop'ye.'

What makes you unable to do that now?

'I can still do it, but I'll just need to do it sooner than I originally planned. We'll be stopping right outside of Lidera Kop'ye in six days. Once we enter the four lightyear range, the sensors used by my people will tag every single ship in the URG exploration fleet, as well as us. If we go in there without a plan…'

That would be a horrible mistake.

'Indeed. The Inusannon wouldn't know. While we're not using any Reaper IFFs, they will see it as a potential threat. The last time the Inusannon experienced first contact with organics, it started a bloody war over Eingana.'

So, alert the Admirals and the Geth Consensus.

'Already done.'

Good, thanks for that. It'd be a good idea to tell Lyna about this, I wouldn't want her panicking.

'I would tell her, but she seems to be sleeping at the moment. I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather not wake up a sleepy Asari.'

Then tell her later. It's not nuclear science, Sirius. Just tell Lyna when she wakes up, I'm sure she'll be glad that you waited.

Sirius cut the connection and went back to what he was tasked to do. I was frankly annoyed with all that was happening around me. The fact that Rigel was lurking in the dark while Ferryn'Artrem had escaped from the prison that claimed to be the most secure installation on Rannoch was stressful, to say the least.

So many emotions were going through my mind. I didn't know exactly what to think, so I eventually decided to get some rest that would hopefully clear my thoughts.

[-]

"Ohoh! What are you going to use her for, Human?"

"What does it matter to you, Draak? I'm buying her, that's all you need to know," I flatly replied, crossing my arms over my chest.

I stood before a freakishly large Krogan, who easily towered over me by at least a meter. I was in a sort of armor that I hadn't ever seen before. My armor was primarily silver, but had many purple shadings and lights on it. The chestpiece was fairly flat, with a few edges jutting out of my stomach area, while my arms and legs seemed to have a smoother, circular appearance. I glanced back, and saw that my ISYLR was placed on a magnetic clamp on my back.

The Krogan eventually rolled his eyes and let out a small chuckle. "It doesn't matter to me, but my suppliers will certainly wonder why a species more mysterious than the Collectors is wanting a very specific slave."

"As I said, I'm buying her. My uses for her shouldn't matter to you."

He rolled his reptilian eyes, lightly bumping his fist against my chest. "There has to be some reason…" Draak muttered. He slowly formed a grin on his face as a slightly malicious expression spread across it. "Oh I get it! You're going to buy her for a little breeding ritual, eh?"

"No. That's not what she is going to be used for, Draak. Do we have a deal or not? I'm getting low on my patience here, and I don't exactly have all the time in the galaxy to sit here and talk."

Draak shook his head from side to side and leaned forwards, getting right into my face. A small snarl came from his lips, and I could practically taste whatever 'food' that he ingested before our little meeting. "You come to this planet with 12,000,000 credits and a request to buy a slave that Uvenk has kept in his control for centuries…" Draak muttered, putting both of his hands on the table before us. "And you expect us to simply give her to you. Haha! You're in over your head, Terrah. We could kill you and take the credits off of your rotting body. In fact, I think that's a perfect idea!"

In an instant, I found the barrel of a shotgun pressed against my head, and a small chuckle coming from the Krogan's mouth. Before the trigger could be pulled, I dove to my right. Time seemed to slow down for me as the shotgun went off, and I heard a small, muffled cracking sound, indicating that my shoulder pad had been blown off and my kinetic barrier collapsed. The shoulder piece was now a jutted piece of metal, instead of the armor that it once was. Behind me, there stood a burning hot spike, with a large chunk of my shoulder pad pinned to the wall. A sharp pain made itself apparent in my arm, indicating that it had been dislocated. Luckily, Sirius managed to divert some of my suit's power back into the kinetic barriers, which gave me enough time to take out my ISYLR and move behind cover before Draak could fire his spike thrower again. I tried to ignore the pain of my dislocated limb, popping it back into place with a suffering yell. At the very least, I was joyful that this Krogan was so slow. "Alright! I guess the easy way is out of the window!" I yelled out, my voice being muffled by the ping of another spike hitting my cover. Leaning slightly out of my cover to get a good luck at the Krogan, I poked my head out. A spike flew right past it, sticking itself into a nearby wall.

I moved back into my cover, and flipped off the safety of my ISYLR. A figure uncloaked to my left, which mimicked the body shape of a Quarian, yet for some reason, it had five-digit hands with elongated fingers. "Yes, I know I was supposed to stay cloaked, but I'm not going to sit around and watch you get your head nailed to a wall by one of those spikes," the figure transmitted to my radio in a feminine tone. She had a voice with multiple underlying tones, which had varying pitches and a synthetic undertone.

I looked up to the Quarian-like creature and nodded my head while yelling into my radio. "Well, I'm not complaining! Let's defeat this monster, find the slave, and get her out of this place!"

"Try to keep the body intact, I'd rather enjoy dissecting this… Beast of a Krogan," the Quarian chuckled, re-enabling her tactical cloak. I felt the wind come off of her body as she left the cover that was protecting the both of us from Draak. I took a deep breath, set my ISYLR to a low-wattage, and leaped out of my cover. A spike whisked right past my cheek, and I could practically feel the heat coming off of it. If I had been wearing a helmet, my head most likely would have been taken off.

I found luck to be on my side again, as a spike passed right past my now-mangled shoulder-blade. I dove to the left, trying to move as much as possible. Getting hit by a red-hot spike was not on my schedule today. Raising into a crouched position, I took aim at Draak with my ISYLR, but I didn't have the time to pull the trigger. I found myself being hit by a biotic warp, I knew that my shielding wouldn't hold up much longer. While shaking off the feeling of the warp, I felt the bodyweight of the Krogan plow into me.

I knew that my kinetic barriers wouldn't hold up against another blow after the Krogan had pressed me up against a wall with the barrel of the shotgun pressing up against my abdomen. "You should never have come here, Human. At least you will die knowing that your head will be the ornament on my tomkah!"

As the Krogan finished yelling into my face, the Quarian uncloaked herself, jumped onto the Krogan's hump from behind, and stabbed Draak in one of his eyes. She twisted it around, causing blood to squirt everywhere, as a cause of this, Draak screamed out in pain. Right as that happened, I felt a spike bypass my kinetic barrier, and hit me directly in my gut.

Draak fell to the ground after the Quarian hilted her blade under his head plate. She yanked her blade up, and with it came the Krogan's plate, which clattered to the ground along with a Krogan that was crying in utter pain. The Quarian took an SMG off of her thigh. The SMG had Lavar-43 etched across its body. A green glow emitted from the sides of the weapon, and its design relied heavily on sharp edges. She shot the Krogan's now-exposed head, ending his suffering once and for all. It definitely wasn't made with mass effect technology. Instead, it seemed to rely on bullets, since I could clearly smell gunpowder in the air.

As that was occurring, blood began to seep out of my wound and I felt an extreme pain in my stomach as it was ruptured. The spike had completely blown through my armor, and pierced through my stomach and anything else that got in the way. I looked up to the Quarian, who was staring down at me with an empathetic expression. "Kyle, I'm sorry, but we both know your destiny. I hope that you can forgive me for this."

She took a knee before me, and grabbed my wrist, removing the omni-tool that was on it. A moment later, she pressed her hand to my head, and I felt the space that Sirius inhabited slowly fade away. "J-just make it quick," I muttered, looking up at her.

The Quarian nodded, then aimed her weapon at my head. She slowly pulled the trigger, and a 7.62x25mm round blew through my skull.

[-]

A/N: I enjoyed writing this chapter, and it clocked in at just under 5000 words. It has been a fair bit of time since I have written a 'dream sequence,' so I hope I wasn't too rusty with it. In 2-3 chapters, a lot will be cleared up.