Author's Note: Don't forget that the Citadel DLC for single player comes out tomorrow!
Chapter Thirty One: Tuchanka
Mordin
Bodies lay here and there. Some were burnt, others were mutilated, and most were unrecognizable. They had puffy features with open bloody wounds. It was mess, and Colt thanked his lucky stars he wasn't the one to clean them up. Most of the bodies were krogan. The next highest body count belonged to humans.
"What happened here?" Shepard glanced around and felt his stomach lurch.
"Live testing. Indicated by boils and puffiness." Mordin was bent over someone's body, taking a scan.
"Why?" Shepard couldn't believe that somebody did this. His guess was on some chemical warfare component sent via bomb, rather than someone doing testing on each of these people.
"Don't know. Probably didn't have adequate centers." Mordin's voice was disconnected, scientific. It was somehow reassuring.
"Is this what it was like working on the genophage?" Only after Colt said it did he realize what a monumentally assholish thing that was to ask. Why didn't he ever think before speaking? Evidently, not even Cerberus could cure him of foot-in-mouth syndrome.
"Absolutely not! Made with morals in mind. Cure was necessary." Mordin sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
"Morals," Grunt growled from behind Colt. He kicked a bottle across the floor, sending it shattering against the wall. Bringing Grunt along may have been a colossal fuck-up.
"Grunt…" Colt warned. The young krogan looked between Shepard and Mordin before stomping into the next room.
"Should-?"
"No," Shepard said, "This is tough. For you and for him. We'll catch up." Colt held his tongue before he could say it was probably worse for Grunt.
There were two sides to this story and they needed to be heard. It was the only way to eventually cure the genophage. He got why the salarians did what they did. The Krogan Rebellion was an impossibly intricate conflict with incredibly high stakes. But the solution was dated and frankly barbaric. He'd studied the situation carefully in Officer Candidate School before deciding that the krogans had suffered enough. Hopefully nudging Mordin towards the same conclusion would be the first step to a cure.
"Understood."
"So...how did you, you know, deal with it?" Shepard asked. He wanted to keep the momentum on this conversation going.
"Studied spiritual teachings of different species," Mordin said. He closed down his omni-tool before standing to face Colt.
"You studied religions?"
"Yes," Mordin said after a long pause. This was the first time ever that the salarian seemed reluctant to talk. It was time to let this topic go. A slow and steady approach would change Mordin's mind, not some rushed conversation.
They continued on, eventually meeting up with Grunt again. The krogan was still pissed but knew well enough to leave it alone.
The three walked in silence as they made their way to the epicenter of this hellhole. The number of mutilated bodies along their path was astonishing. Scientific experiment or not, this was a slaughter. Whoever did this was sick.
In a rare instance, Colt took off his helmet to wipe sweat off his face. As it turned out, the smell was slightly worse than the sights.
"Shepard," Grunt called, breaking the silence. "Come look in here." He was peering into a shipping container.
Colt pulled his helmet back on and walked over to find a krogan sitting in the middle of the filthy crate. "What are you doing here?" He asked. Was he part of the experiment and managed to get away? Or did he come to rescue his clan mates? Either way, the poor bastard should've run a long time ago.
"I have nothing left, there is no strength left in my body." The krogan looked pitifully at his hands and never made eye contact. Colt pulled off his helmet once more. Twice in one mission was exceedingly rare.
He sucked in a huge breath before getting into the krogan's face. "Get off your goddamned ass right now! There are females to court and your clan to defend. You can't just sit on your great big lard ass, and feel sorry for yourself! What kind of fuckin' krogan does that?!"
This krogan would die here without his clan. But, like all krogans, he needed a special kind of encouragement. The yelling and semi-aggressive kind of encouragement.
"Not this krogan! I won't sit on my ass, and do nothing!" He roared, "For the females!" And Shepard thought he'd been yelling loudly.
The krogan stood up, banged on his chest, and charged out of the crate. For the love of God, hopefully he knew where to go.
"Impressive," Mordin said.
Grunt was laughing mightily and gave Colt a healthy pat on the back. "Really, Shepard? Great big lard ass?"
"Shut up."
…
Colt stood up from a recently deceased krogan. He'd been checking for a pulse and came up with nothing. It almost made him regret letting Maelon live. Hopefully he took Mordin's advice and opened a clinic on Omega.
"Keep the data or destroy it?" Mordin said, bringing Colt back to the present. The salarian was waiting by a console. Above him a holographic Krogan skeleton turned and a high pitched voice read something in the main Salarian dialect.
Shepard looked around the bodies of all the people who had died to get this information. He didn't want a cure that came out of immoral testing, but all these people didn't have to die in vain. Their deaths could help the krogan people.
"Keep it," Colt said slowly, "These people didn't die just so we could delete everything."
Only time would tell if he made the right choice.
…
Grunt
The day after they dealt with Mealon's experiments, Shepard came back to Tuchanka with Rosebud. It was time to get the varren out and about. After all, this was her homeland. And she needed to get some energy out. She'd grown considerably in the weeks since Colt saved her, and she was now just below his waist. Gone were the days of riding around in his pockets.
Another unintended, but welcome, bonus of Rosebud was that the the krogans definitely approved of her. Whenever she passed any krogan, they would nod approvingly. She was way more popular than he was. Even when they talked to Wrex, he'd been more interested in her than the fact that Colt was alive.
She also accompanied them to figure out Grunt's predicament. And as it turned out, Grunt was going through puberty, which sounded awful. Shepard was painfully awkward throughout his adolescence. Sadly his puberty just involved lots of acne, rather than killing massive mutated animals in a rite of passage. At least Colt didn't have to go through mountains of assholes who were trying to deny that right of passage.
When they'd finally won all the internal clan battles over Grunt's birth it was time to go face the Thresher Maw, but not before taking Rosebud back to the Normandy. She was still a puppy. A one hundred and twenty pound puppy, but still a puppy. She needed more training and experience before any real missions.
…
Hopefully the rest of the crew was getting a kick out of the huge Thresher Maw trying to kill himself, Grunt, and Mordin, because he sure as hell wasn't. The damn thing just wouldn't die, and on top of that, it kept melting Shepard's cover. For a horrible second, acid got on Colt's armor until he ripped it off. Not a moment too soon either, as the acid had almost reached his arm.
"This thing just doesn't know when to stop, does it?" Shepard yelled at Grunt. The krogan had just ducked out of the way of another acid spray.
"Nope, and I love it!" Grunt roared with laughter and fired at the Thresher.
Forty-five minutes later, the Maw finally came down. To say that Colt was tired would be like saying that Grunt was kinda excited. This was hands down one of the toughest fights of his life, definitely the worst since his revival. Colt had taken down Thresher Maws before, but never on foot. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs and clouded his mind. The next priority was sleep.
Then, like Shepard hadn't done enough, those krogan shits he'd told off earlier arrived. They were no doubt trying to catch the trio in a moment of weakness.
"No one has killed a Thresher Maw since Urdnot Wrex. Join us Grunt, and be among the most powerful krogan," a rather large, and mean looking krogan shouted. His numerous supporters roared behind him. They spread out around the trio in an obvious attempt to block an escape. These krogan were itching for a fight.
"Shepard is my battle master," Grunt replied, "He's the best warrior I've ever seen. I don't want to join you or your pitiful clan." For a few blissful seconds, Colt felt pride and relief. Grunt's words were so touching and sincere, plus maybe they could go home without further fighting. That dream was shattered when a spray of bullets headed their way.
Whatever Cerberus had done to him seemed to be doing the trick. As soon as the first shot was fired, his exhaustion melted away. His reflexes were just as fast, his shots just as accurate, and his biotics just as deadly.
Shepard was motivated by both annoyance and the urge to go home. That, coupled with genuine disdain for the showboating krogan leader, led to the krogan being cleared away in impressive time. The other two did their part, but failed to reach the same level of lethalness.
Performing at a higher level than a young krogan was startling. Cerberus did not mess around for those two years. And they certainly weren't joking about the expectations they put upon him. The realization sent a jolt through Colt's body. The modifications they made were no longer lists on datapads, they were real and they were deadly.
...
Why Colt thought they'd make it back to the Normandy without ceremony after ceremony was beyond him. Of course Grunt deserved the title of Urdnot Grunt, and all the honors associated. He just hoped the ceremonies would be tomorrow. There was no such luck.
He was happy for the krogan, of course, but this day just dragged on. He needed room to think about all that had happened. He needed to watch more videos on his resurrection. Maybe talk to Miranda.
The day's only saving grace was a request on the way back to the Normandy. EDI's voice came over Shepard's helmet speakers, "Several breeding requests have been generated for Grunt...and one for Shepard."