A two-for-one this time, because this was getting too long to put in a single chapter.
"Now arriving at Rift Station, a Binary Helix facility," the tram helpfully announced while slowing to a stop.
As if these people would ever forget who they worked for, Shepard thought while waving Wrex and Liara out of the tram car. They'd planned a careful exit, with Wrex covering the front end while Liara and Shepard swept the rear door, but it seemed to be for naught. The station, while poorly lit even with power restored, was abandoned and empty, without even the snow or signs of burrowing rachni to indicate something was amiss.
"Eye of a hurricane," Wrex rumbled as he rejoined the others after sweeping the front platform. "It's too damn quiet, Shepard."
"I don't like it, either," she said, keeping her voice down. "Given how broken things were earlier, I'm surprised this place is so... intact."
"But not unmarked," Liara said, pointing her pistol's flashlight at the rail near the tram line where claw marks were clearly visible. "They must have moved through here."
"All the rachni we've seen so far have been aimless, at least as far as I can tell," Shepard said, frowning. "Just wandering around eating things. These have been going somewhere, which means either they ran out of things to chew on, or there's something here they don't want to be around."
Shepard met Liara's gaze. "Or both."
Wrex began sniffing the air and frowned.
"Smell something?" Shepard asked. Her own nose had long gone numb from the cold, but the Krogan – despite growing up on a tropical world – clearly had no issues with it.
"No," he said, "and that bothers me. Where is everyone?"
Shepard pulled up the map of the facility she'd downloaded from the VI. "That's the emergency exit from the labs," she said, pointing at a door at the end of the platform. "Mira said it could only be opened from the inside, but I don't think a lack of door handles will slow the three of us down much."
"Heh," Wrex chuckled.
"In any case," Shepard went on, "there's not much else on this level. A lift leading to the hot labs, a lift leading to the civilian quarters, this platform, and the emergency exit."
"Benezia could be in either location," Liara said, biting her lip. "Is there any way to see inside? Cameras in the lab, maybe?"
Shepard shook her head. "I asked Tali on the ride over. She said it looks like there were cameras, but the only working ones are in this platform – all the others here didn't respond, and she couldn't find any in the labs themselves."
"Sounds like the only way we'll find out is by going and looking," Wrex said. "So what'll it be, Shepard?"
Shepard pursed her lip. "The barracks, I think," she said. "If I were a civilian, I'd try to hide there, and even if there aren't any survivors we still might be able to find out more about what they were up to in the lab before going down there."
"Makes sense to me," Liara said. "Lead on."
The decorative glass in the elevator gave Shepard only a moment's warning, but it was more than enough.
"Shepard? What are-" Liara asked while the human threw up a barrier across the doorway.
"Stand down!" a tired voice called from the far side of the room the elevator opened out onto, and several figured hunched behind what looked like storage crates lowered their rifles.
Shepard opened her fist, letting the barrier in front of her dissipate back into the nothingness she's conjured it from, then lowered her pistol.
The owner of the voice, a beleaguered man in a battered Elanus Risk Control Services uniform, stood up and stepped out into the gap in the crates. "Sorry, but we couldn't be sure who came in on that tram," he said.
Interesting, Shepard thought. Not what – who. Is he expecting company?
"I'd only have been upset if they'd fired," Shepard replied, deferring the issue of who the man was afraid would arrive for later.
He gave her a weary smile. "Even hopped up on stims, my people know the drill – two legs good, four legs bad. You're human, and that's enough that they won't shoot. I would like to know who you are, though."
She gestured to the blue insignia sewn onto her breast. "I'm Commander Shepard with the Citadel Council."
"Council, huh?" he raised an eyebrow at her, then gave a little shrug. "Well, not sure what brings you out here, but I'm not going to look a heavily armed gift horse in the mouth."
He shifted his rifle and extended a hand. "I'm Captain Ventralis, Elanus Risk Control Services."
"A pity it's not under better circumstances," Shepard said, accepting the man's handshake. "What happened here?"
"Those things overran the hot labs last week. Only Han Olar got out, and he ain't all there any more. First thing we knew the bastards were clawing their way in to my command post," he said, then glanced down at his boots. "... we had a lot more staff, then."
Shepard scowled. "You don't know what they are?"
He looked back up. "They're fast, vicious, and there's a hell of a lot of 'em, which is more than enough for me. The board was supposed to send some hotshot asari to help handle the problem a week ago when everything first went to shit, but that ass running Port Hanshan made a mess of things and she didn't arrive until yesterday. She went straight down to the hot labs and we haven't heard from her since."
"Benezia..." Liara muttered, then blinked in horror. "Wait, a week? You've been here a week?"
Ventralis got a distant look in his eyes, then nodded. "Yeah, it was Wednesday that everything went to shit, and it's, what, Monday now? So, yeah, a bit under a week."
"How have you been surviving? With the power off..." Liara frowned.
"We've had power," Ventralis explained. "There's a separate generator here. The VI's been offline and it's been torquing the doc, but this place is otherwise well-stocked in case a blizzard closes the road for a while."
"Is the asari still over there?" Shepard asked.
Ventralis shrugged. "I dunno. To be honest, I don't really see what one person could do."
Wait, one person? Parasini said she had an escort with her, and we didn't run into them on the way in...
"A matriarch has the skill to keep herself alive for a long time," Liara said, but her heart clearly wasn't in it.
"Maybe," Ventralis said. "Hell, we can't even check up on 'em – they're on a different network, something about security. I'm not about to send one of my boys down there to take a look, in any case – too many of the damn things crawling through the walls."
Shepard frowned. "You said that there was a survivor from the initial attack?"
"Yeah, a volus named Han Olar," Ventralis nodded. "He's alone in the back somewhere, since his... uh... attitude was making the other people uncomfortable."
"Right," Shepard said. "We'll talk to him before we head down to the labs. It's been rough enough going, I'd like to know as much as possible before we walk into the belly of the beast."
"By all means," Ventralis said, stepping aside to let them pass.
The civilian quarters were in a sorry state.
Most of the occupants stood by themselves, either staring off into space or quietly passing the time on personal computers and omni-tools. A few were playing cards on an overturned crate in the corner, but even that distraction seemed to be doing a poor job of holding their attention.
"Cheery bunch," Wrex noted as they walked passed one of the turian security guards looking over the room.
"Can you blame them?" Liara asked. "They have been trapped here for days, with only the guards at the lift standing between them and a grisly end."
And the guards holding guns right here, Shepard noted. In case the rachni break through, I wonder? Or in case one of the civilians loses it?
"True enough," Shepard said. "Alright. Let's split up and talk to some people. Try to focus on simple questions – what happened, what's the layout of the hot labs, what's in there, is there anything you can do to help with their current predicament. Have your suit cams dump to your omni tool so we can compare notes when we finish."
"Shepard, I don't know if you missed the whole 'krogan' thing, but we don't really do doctors, scientists, salarians, or turians that well," Wrex said with a faint sneer.
"No," Shepard acknowledged, "but you do know survivors. I want you, Wrex,to talk to the volus that survived the initial attack on the lab. Your people beat the rachni, and while you can be downright frightening, sometimes that's what a survivor needs."
He eyed her levelly for a long minute.
She stared back.
"As you wish," he said at last, and began lumbering off down one of the side passages.
"What was that all about?" Liara asked, craning her neck after the departing krogan.
"Could be a lot of things," Shepard said, not really interested in discussing her theories about the krogan and Wrex's personal relationship with them in the middle of the hunt for Benezia. "Remind me to talk it over with you in the evening sometime."
Liara flashed her a smile. "I shall. Now, who will I be speaking with?"
"Why don't you go speak with the doctor that Ventralis mentioned," Shepard suggested. "I know you're not a medical doctor, but you have been living in back room of one, and you'd probably be a better person to speak to her than I would."
"Perhaps," Liara smirked. "Meet back up here when I'm done?"
"Or comm if we're not here," Shepard confirmed.
"What about you? Who will you talk to?" Liara asked.
Shepard glanced around the room. "I'll probably go try to get more information out of Ventralis and the guards," she said. "Failing that, I'll pick people at random."
Liara shook her head. "Somehow, I imagined you would have more of a plan than that."
"What can I say?" Shepard shrugged. "We all need to start somewhere."
Urdnot Wrex did not like Noveria.
It managed to combine everything he detested: corporate lies, scientists with more brains than sense, corruption, reminders of every piece of the gentle genocide the salarians had wrought, and the damn rachni... not to mention a boss he couldn't get a read on.
He'd served under many employers in his centuries of mercenary work. Some competent ones, some incompetent ones, a few great ones, far too many terrible ones, a handful of good ones, and only one or two truly monstrous ones. They were all unique, of course, just like everyone else... except for Shepard.
Shepard was an oddity.
She was competent, that much he was certain of. He'd seen her in battle, and if it came down to a fight between them, he'd been startled to realize it might not go in his favor. More interesting still was that she apparently felt the same way. He'd watched her size him up back on the Citadel, could tell she was calculating the odds behind those green alien eyes... and the small smile that said she liked them.
He wasn't sure she was wrong, either.
She also treated him... oddly. He was, despite the lack of formal arrangement between them, her hired muscle, and she treated him like that. But she also didn't treat him as just muscle, and he'd been pleasantly surprised when she'd ordered him to go take care of things that anyone with a few years under their belt would expect someone like him to know.
The thing is, it all felt a little... off. He was no great judge of character, especially not aliens, but he'd managed well enough over the last few centuries, and while he hadn't seen anything explicitly warn him that the human was trouble, his guts had been warning him constantly that something was wrong... and it wasn't just human food.
She might play her cards close to her chest, but nobody working on the level played their cards that close, and he could tell that she'd been distracted on their mission to Noveria... and it wasn't by the rescued scientist that wanted to jump her bones, either.
Whatever she's up to, it's tied up here, he thought with a grunt that made one of the salarians scamper out of the way in terror. And anything that makes somebody like her think hard is something to be reeeeeal careful about.
He sighed to himself before craning his neck down to look at the round frost-rimed environment suit of the volus. "You Han Olar? Got a few questions for ya."
This, Liara thought, is a terrible, terrible place.
She hadn't noticed it at first, but many of the scientists appeared nervous or downright afraid, and not just of the rachni. She was no social butterfly, but it would have taken a blind fool not to notice their furtive glances at the gun-carrying security guards at every corner. That, combined with Wrex's earlier remark about aiming the guns toward the interior of the complex, and the picture became grim indeed.
How far we have fallen that we have more to fear from the monsters wearing our faces than the monsters wanting to tear them off, she thought sadly.
It got worse when she finally managed to get some information out of the medical doctor on staff, too. Her field of expertise was archaeology and anthropology, not medicine, but between her careful studies of human history as well as her more technical talks with Chakwas she'd recognized a few of the terms the doctor had used and why they might come up in a top-secret military research facility.
Bad enough to be bringing the scourge of the galaxy back from the dead, they also had to have a division dedicated to chemical and biological weapons, she thought angrily.
The victims of the accident were stable, at least, now the the VI Mira was back online and the automated medical beds were active again. They wouldn't improve without help, but it at least meant that assisting them became an option rather than an ethical necessity.
At least, an ethical necessity to me, she added as an afterthought. Shepard may have a different opinion.
She was tired of all of it.
Tired of the lies, the layered plans, the hidden loyalties. Tired of every layer that they exposed revealing a new atrocity. Tired of inching ever close to her mother... and being forced to face the fact that she would likely have to kill her.
It all sank to the pit of her stomach and sat there, weighing down even the brighter moments in the mission, tainting every victory with thoughts like it's only a drop in the bucket or one step closer to matricide.
She shook her head and sighed. She'd done her duty, spoken with the doctor and gathered information. Shepard would start looking for her if she didn't report back in time.
Off I go, then, to find out what else is awful here in this Goddess-forsaken ice pit...
Shepard eyed the pair as they walked up, noting the wrinkles in the corner of Liara's eyes and the tightness around Wrex's mouth. "I take it you didn't like what you found," she offered, leaning against the one of the crates in the storage closet they'd chosen to have their conversation in.
"Can we blow this place up?" Wrex said.
"Shepard, everything here is awful," Liara said at the exact same time.
The two blinked in unison and glanced at one another.
"There are days," Shepard said, shaking her head with a rueful smile, "that I'm glad we record missions. Alright. Wrex first."
"Han Olar," the krogan rumbled, "needs a swift kick in whatever the volus have for assess."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that your professional opinion?"
He sighed. "He's a mess. Krogan don't do the whole 'survivor's guilt' thing, but I guess the volus do. I got info from him, though," he added. "They found an egg, Shepard. And hatched it. And when it turned out to be a queen, instead of burning everything down and throwing it into the nearest star, they decided to breed her. Because you know what this galaxy really needs is more rachni."
He shook his head and growled. "They were planning," he said, making air quotes while he spoke, "to train the drones and get them to serve as... something. He said it was for labor, but I don't buy it. You don't breed and train rachni warriors to make buildings."
"You think they were making shock troops?" Shepard asked.
"I don't know what else they'd do with 'em."
Shepard rubbed her temples. "I don't- oh. I understand. Duly noted. Liara. Anything from the doctor?"
"If that wasn't bad enough," she said with a nod at Wrex, "they're also making chemical and biological weapons here, Shepard – and they have live samples of at least some of them in the hot labs."
"Are we safe to move through unprotected?" Shepard asked, her head snapping up.
Liara nodded. "The doctor assures me it's perfectly safe and that the weapons have a very short viable period, but... Shepard..."
The human sighed. "I know, Liara. I know."
"The doctor wants us to retrieve some antidotes for what the people in the medical bay were accidentally dosed with. I have a key to a secondary lift that will take us down to the lab where they were working."
"Is it urgent?" Shepard asked.
Liara bit her lip and shook her head. "As long as Mira stays active, they're stable. If the VI goes down or they lose power they'll be in trouble, but for now..."
"Understood." Shepard said. "If it's on the way, we can look into it, but if they're stable as is then I'm less inclined to put us at risk."
"What about you?" Wrex asked. "You find anything?"
"Not as much as I'd like," Shepard admitted grumpily. "The guard captain, Ventralis, is hiding something, but I can't tell what. All the guards are tense. All the civilians are tense. This whole situation is a train wreck, and I'm this close to just aborting the run and having the Normandy blow everything to pieces. If this wasn't my last lead on Saren, I would be."
Liara pursed her lips. "While I concur with your assessment that this place has far too many secrets, I'm afraid I do not see why everyone here deserves to die."
"They don't," Shepard replied, "At least, most of them don't. The issue is the big picture. What happens when you combine a traitorous Spectre with the ability to control minds with a hive mind led by a single queen?"
"A problem," Wrex said grimly, "and a big one. You think that's what they're up to?"
"I don't see what else it could be," Shepard said while Liara's eyes went wide. "It's the only explanation that fits."
Liara's eys flickered back and forth, like she was watching a holo only she could see. "That would explain my mother's involvement here, as well," she murmured. "Goddess, mother, what have you done..."
Shepard patted the asari on the shoulder. "We'll try to get her to come peacefully, Liara," she reassured her.
Liara's eyes met Shepard's, but her smile didn't reach her eyes. "While I am pleased that you are willing to make the attempt, Shepard, the more I see here, the more I believe that will not be possible."
"That doesn't mean we won't try," Shepard said. "In addition to providing a better lead on Saren, getting her to surrender would mean I don't have to fight an asari matriarch... and since fighting matriarchs is a poor way to reach retirement, I'd like to avoid it if I can."
"That reminds me," Wrex said. "You have a plan to deal with her? The three of us might be able to take her alone, but her and a shuttle full of commandos will turn us all into dust."
"I do," Shepard said, pulling up a holographic map of the station and pointing at a large cluster of rooms halfway between the barracks and the hot labs. "I'm fairly certain Benezia's in here somewhere, and likely in the center chamber."
"Why?" Liara asked. "That would leave her exposed..."
"Because it's the only room in this whole complex big enough to hold a rachni queen at breeding age," Shepard explained. "I looked up how large they were while you were asking questions. I would bet almost anything she's in there, trying to use whatever mind control tech she and Saren have on the queen. Now, it's poor tactics to put all your people in one spot where they can be easily dispatched by a few grenades, which means her commandos are probably scattered throughout the adjoining rooms, or in vantage points in the main area."
"There's a lot more 'should' in that plan than I like," Wrex grumbled.
Shepard silenced him with a glare. "Those rooms – and the majority of rift station outside the barracks, actually – are within a few meters of the surface, either through the edge of the glacier or the rock of the mountain. The rock here is tough, but not like armor plating... and the Normandy has an axial mass accelerator."
Liara flinched. "You're going to use the Normandy's guns on them?"
Shepard nodded. "She expects us to try to talk to her. Doing what people expect is an excellent way to make them thing everything is going according to their plan, so long as you can change course quickly. We stall for time until Joker can get a fix on our position in the room, then he starts the fight by taking out her backup. We take down Benezia, then head back out the way we came."
"What about the civilians?" Wrex asked. "They're not gonna last long here, and rachni don't go quietly when their queen dies."
Shepard nodded at him. "Ventralis said they always come up the same way, and that he has all the other entrances sealed. I don't think he's lying about that, so I figured we'd go down to the hot labs, have a look around, and see if we could arrange a more permanent solution. After we have the civilians and our own backs secured, we can make our way to the main lab and confront Benezia."
"I suppose that means we will not be dealing with the sick researchers, then?" Liara asked.
Shepard bit her lip. "If they're stable in their current situation, I don't think we can justify it," she said. "I had Tali sweep this room, but there's no way to secure an entire complex, so we're in Benezia's turf. Wandering through hostile territory full of rachni, geth, and asari commandos to treat somebody who's already stable risks too much, especially with what we have at stake."
Liara sighed and looked at the deck. "I... understand," she said. "I wish it was not so, but I understand."
"Good," Shepard replied with a nod. "Anything else? Wrex?"
The krogan shook his head. "I still think we should shoot everyone here," he rumbled.
"Duly noted," Shepard said. "Grab your kits. We've got bugs to squish."
Much to Shepard's surprise, the hot labs were not crawling with rachni.
At least, none that they could see.
They could hear them just fine – clawed legs skittering in the dim light that filtered through the ice of the glacier, and uncertain flickers on their motion sensors.
Her upbringing had ensured she had little fear of the dark. After all, she frequently was the most terrifying thing in the dark, and as such had little to fear from what else might be lurking there, but moving through the gloomy ruined labs and frozen corpses definitely had her guard up.
Liara was clearly petrified, with wide eyes flickering between her sensors and the ghosts of motion in the black and a heart rate that Shepard was sure wasn't healthy.
Even Wrex was grimly silent as they picked their way between the consoles and pieces of equipment.
"Hold," Shepard said, raising a fist in the air. "Do you hear that?"
"All I hear is rachni," Wrex muttered.
"Rachni don't whisper prayers," she said. "There's someone alive down here."
They crept forward through the empty lab, until they rounded a corner and nearly tripped over a haggard-looking middle aged man in a dirty lab coat lying on the floor, his head propped against a desk and a pistol in his hand.
"Hello there," he said, half raising a sweaty hand at them with surprising cheer. "Are you real? Or another hallucination?"
Shepard gestured for Liara and Wrex to cover her, then knelt down by the man. "I'm real, last I checked," she said, taking note of the smell of dried blood, rotting flesh, and human waste that surrounded him. "Who are you?"
The man shoved himself into a more upright sitting position and smiled weakly at her. "Yaroslev Tartakovsky, director of operations, at your service. Since I think you are real, I assume that means you're here to secure the situation?"
Shepard nodded slowly. "After a fashion, I suppose," she said. "I'm a Council Spectre."
"Ah, that kind of securing. Eh, is still good," the man said. "I would shake your hand, but, ah," he gestured down at the unseen mess his lab coat was hiding. "Is not so good. At least I will not be problem for long."
"Do you need medical attention?" Liara called over her shoulder. "I have my first aid kit-"
"Eyes forward," Wrex rumbled at her. "Commander knows what you can do. She'll call if she needs you."
"I- yes, of course," Liara said, returning her attention to the room.
Shepard gave the man's wounds a once-over. If he received medical attention now, from an actual doctor, he might live, but his legs were a loss, and the sweat beading on his brow combined with the delirious glint in his eye and the foul smell told her that sepsis had almost certainly already set in.
"Please," he said, looking up at her with an almost fierce intensity. "I know this must sound foolish, but you must stop our mistake. The others, they think this is for progress. No. I know better now. No good will come from this."
"If you have a way to stop this that still lets me chase it to the top, I'm all ears," Shepard told him. "Blowing this place up buries the evidence."
He grinned up at her. "No need. We were blind, not stupid. Reactor that powers the hot labs is fast neutron fission reactor. Company added, eh... final safety feature. Can be made to cause massive criticality incident, without exploding. Will irradiate hot lab, but no farther – too much ice, you see? Leaves data intact for next team, but stops loose ends."
"I'll take your word for it," she said, although she'd run the claim by Liara first. "How long until the lab is safe to explore after setting off the failsafe?"
Tartakovsky licked his lips. "Days, maybe weeks? No longer. Depends on how much water got in lab."
A cough wracked him, and he shook his head. "Here. Help me lift my arm."
Shepard frowned.
"You must take my omni-tool. Changed the password. Is now one, one, one... one. I made recording earlier, when I was... less foggy. Has story of what we did here, some notes. A letter or two. Know it is asking much, but..."
"I'll make sure it gets to the right people," Shepard assured him while carefully taking the device and tucking it into her belt. "Is there anything else?"
"Is one last thing," he said slowly, hesitantly. "Is... means much. Was scientist most of life, but... my mother, she was catholic. Bad to go by one's own hand, ya?"
He looked at the pistol in his left hand and smiled up at her weakly.
"I understand," Shepard said, and reached a hand forward, willing power to her fingertips.
"Thank you," Tartakovsky whispered before a gravitational shear that would twist hardened armor turned his brain into pudding.
Shepard stood and brushed her hands off on the legs of her jumpsuit, then drew her pistol again and nodded at Wrex and a teary-eyed Liara. "You heard the man," she said, nodding toward the passage ahead. "Sounds like they've done a bunch of the work for us. Let's take care of this place and go find Benezia."
"We were being stalked," Wrex said as he shoved a file cabinet into the doorway between the labs and the reactor control room. "No, not stalked. Herded."
"Damn," Shepard said. "I was hoping I was wrong."
He spared a glance at her. "You noticed?"
She nodded. "I grew up in dark tunnels and close spaces. How's your flamethrower ammunition holding up?"
"Got half a tank left. Was hoping to save it for her mom," he shook his head. "Don't think I'll get that chance."
Shepard hummed noncommittally. "Try to keep enough to make some noise, but otherwise don't hold back," she ordered. "This isn't going to be easy. Liara?"
"Yes?" The asari's voice was tense.
"You holding up okay?"
Liara looked at Shepard like she wanted to say something, then shook her head. "I am... no, I am not okay," she said finally.
Shepard just nodded. "Can you fight?"
"I... I don't know," she said. "May I... borrow your rifle?"
Shepard tilted her head at the woman, but handed the stocky weapon over. "I didn't know you could shoot one," she said.
"I will not pretend that I am as practiced as you are, or anyone else on the ground team for that matter, but in my current state..." she raised a hand up to show the slight tremor running through it, "I believe I will be more effective."
At least she knows her limits, Shepard thought. "Well, try not to hit us if you can help it, those incendiary rounds sting."
Liara managed a weak smile. "I will try not to."
"That's all I can ask," Shepard said, then eyed the terminal. "No time like the present. Shall we?"
After proving to the VI that, yes, she did have permission to irradiate the labs, she began working her way through the technical specifications of the failsafe.
Which were, if she was being honest, completely monstrous.
It was a failsafe, yes, but not one designed to protect the scientists. It was one designed to protect the research. The neutron source would irradiate the level, but was wired to only be triggered from this specific terminal, and it went off without a delay – which meant that roughly five seconds after using the failsafe, the shielding and coolant for the reactor would fall away and the whole lab would be bathed in a nice warm wave of fast neutrons.
Clearly the owners of this lab knew that the work they were doing was questionable, if not downright unethical, and had wanted to ensure any scientists that were suddenly taken by a bout of conscience wouldn't be able to use the failsafe to destroy their work.
A delightfully effective way to stymie that particular approach to whistleblowing, she thought with a sigh.
She tabbed through a few more pages, keeping half an ear out for Wrex and Liara. Most of it was what she expected to see – authorization, punishments for misuse (as if dying wasn't bad enough, one would also be fired), and finally, some technical data.
This all assumes the reactor is hot, she thought, narrowing her eyes at the documentation. I know this one isn't... hm. Can we even do this with it cold?
"Hey, Liara," she called over her shoulder, "I don't suppose you know anything about fission reactors, do you?"
Liara broke off her conversation with Wrex and moved to peer over Shepard's shoulder. "I am afraid not," she said. "Why?"
"Because that's how they irradiate this level," Shepard said, gesturing at the technical documentation.
"Wait," Wrex rumbled from the doorframe. "Let me see."
Shepard canted her head at the mercenary. "You know nuclear reactors, Wrex?"
The old krogan nodded slowly. "Fusion needs eezo. Eezo costs money. Tuchanka doesn't have money. Tuchanka does have a whole pile of leftover nuclear material from the war, and we already wrecked the environment, so why not? Run 'em for half a century, then toss the whole mess down a hole and find another one."
Liara started to say something, then bit her lip and shook her head.
"Watching an entire species die isn't pretty," he said, and even Shepard could hear the bitterness in his voice. "Not a lot of room for hope or thinking of the future."
Shpard bowed her head and stepped aside, gesturing at the terminal. "Then you're the one to read this, not me," she said. "I'll cover the door."
A little over half an hour later, Wrex stood up from the terminal with a groan and rolled his shoulders.
"Figure anything out?" Shepard asked without taking her eye from the barricaded doorway.
"Think so," he rumbled. "We safe to talk?"
"As safe as we can be, down here," Shepard said. "These rachni are definitely not smart, though. Cunning, perhaps, but definitely not controlled by a greater intelligence, and they don't communicate with each other."
"How do you figure?"
Shepard gestured at the a corner of the room outside that had several new dark splatters on it. "Every time one of them walks over that corner, I pull a leg off of them. They're smart enough to not walk over it multiple times, usually, but new drones don't avoid it, even when I push the legs into a pile as a warning."
Liara glanced at Shepard with an expression somewhere between amusement and disgust. "You've been tearing the legs off of bugs?"
"It's the least they deserve," Wrex said while Shepard shrugged. "You want to know about the reactor or not?"
"Sorry, go ahead," Liara said.
"It's a fast neutron fission reactor that uses enriched uranium for fuel and water as the coolant," the krogan explained. "Weird design, but I guess they wanted it to be able to do this little self-destruct trick in addition to powering all their stuff. All the failsafe does is open all the coolant drains while pulling the moderator out. Pile goes critical, everyone gets nuked, then it goes into shutdown and the backup moderators fall in to kill it before you have a hole in the floor."
He grinned. "Trick is, it's cold enough here that the water freezes. Turn it on and hit the failsafe at the same time, you have until the core melts the coolant in the vessel before everyone's dead."
"How long?" Shepard asked.
"A minute, maybe a minute and a half." Wrex said, his good cheer fading. "Vessel's pretty small and it's not that cold here."
"A minute?!" Liara paled. "How far do we need to get?"
"About four meters up the elevator shaft," Wrex said. "That thing goes through ice all the way down. Soon as you have a wall of ice between you and the core, you're safe."
Shepard flicked a wrist and crushed another rachni that had drawn too close to the doorway, then pulled up the holographic map of the lab on her omni-tool. "There are five rooms and three hallways between here and the elevator if we retrace our steps exactly. If we can't hard-wire the doors open from here, we'll just smash through them, so assume no environmental delays. It is..." she peered closely at the map, "... a hundred and sixty four meters from this doorway to the elevator. Call it a hundred and seventy."
"Doable," Wrex said, "as long as we don't get tied down by rachni, we run the whole way, and nobody falls."
Shepard nodded. "Both of you, take your time, prep what you need to, make sure your shoes are tied. We only get one shot at this."
Goddess preserve me, this is madness.
She didn't know how Shepard and Wrex were so calm. They were about to intentionally irradiate an entire laboratory, while they were still in it, with only a krogan's engineering expertise and some back-of-the-envelope calculations assuring them that they'd survive... and that was setting aside the fact that survival was dependent on everyone in their group maintaining a sprint through a warren-like series of rooms that, oh, by the way, were crawling with rachni.
She took a steadying breath. Calm. She needed to be calm, or she wouldn't make it.
"Ready when you are, Shepard," Wrex called, a gloved finger hovering over the "confirm activation" window on the terminal.
Shepard double checked her grenade pouches, her ammunition blocks, and the holographic arrow she'd configured her omni-tool to project on the floor ahead of her. "I'm ready. Liara?"
Goddess, no, I'm not ready.
"... Ready as I'll ever be, I suppose," she said, gripping Shepard's borrowed rifle tightly.
"Right. As soon as Wrex hits it, I'll throw the barricade out, and he'll take point with the flamethrower. Liara, you follow him, and I'll take the rear guard. Remember: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast."
"On three," Wrex rumbled. "One... two... three!"
The clawed finger slammed down, and Liara's world erupted into chaos.
Wrex half-ran, half-leaped into the gap left by Shepard's nearly explosive biotic throw, and Liara blinked once before sprinting after the krogan. The instant they were clear of the doorframe, Wrex pulled the trigger on his flamethrower, and unlike his earlier use of the weapon, there was nothing careful or measured about it.
Their path forward was a writhing mass of burning severed limbs, screeching metal, and howling rachni. The walls around them were covered with the creatures, some fleeing the krogan's blazing advance, others readying themselves to attack from a flanking position, others moving to their rear, only to be caught in the less visible but no less lethal storm of biotic energy that Shepard was trailing in their wake.
"Liara! On your left!" Shepard called above the din, in an impossibly steady voice. Liara's eyes snapped left and widened, and she sprayed down the three acid-flinging rachni down with a burst of fire that she was sure didn't kill them, but at least forced them to take cover.
"Well done! Keep moving," Shepard yelled, giving her a nudge forward. "We're almost there."
Liara managed a bitter laugh as she sprinted to catch up with Wrex. She could read the distance indicator just as well as Shepard could; they were barely halfway.
Fifteen seconds that felt like as many years later, they entered the final room leading up to the elevator, and Wrex's flamethrower fell silent. He threw the weapon aside, pulling out his shotgun with a single hand in one clean motion and pulled the trigger three times, sending rachni blood and viscera flying.
"Out of fuel?" Liara asked, squeezing off a long burst into a rachni on the right side of the room.
"Don't want to break the elevator," he replied, bashing a still twitching rachni into submission with his boot.
"Oh. Right," Liara said. "Wait, where's-" she began, then turned behind her.
The world seemed to slow around her.
She had expected to see a battle-worn human, along with more than a few dead rachni. Maybe even an injured human, or, in a nightmare, no human at all.
The figure she saw was barely recognizable as humanoid, let alone human. She was limned in a barrier so intense that parts of her body seemed to weave in and out of existence as light itself was bent around her. When they were visible, she could see no firearm, and only flashes of ichor-soaked armor. Behind her, bouncing along in the wake of whatever unholy twisting of the laws of nature she'd wrought, were no fewer than a dozen dead and dying rachni.
She let the barrier fall, and Liara was shocked to silence by the expression of pure joy on the woman's face.
Shepard brushed her hands together with a wet sounding splat and nodded at the elevator. "Shall we?" she asked, as though they were going for a stroll through the park, not fighting for their lives to outrun a nuclear weapon and horde of nightmarish monsters.
Wrex nodded appreciatively at the sight and stepped into the elevator. "Let's," he said, pushing the button for the top while Shepard walked and Liara scampered inside.
"Forty-one seconds," Shepard said when the elevator lifted them into the tunnel of ice above the lab. "My rad counter didn't even tick. Nice work, both of you. Anybody hurt?"
"I'm fine," Wrex said. "You were right, Shepard. They were barely above mindless."
"I am... uninjured?" Liara said, her voice raising in question as she gave herself a quick examination. "I... yes, I believe I am unharmed."
"Good," Shepard said, "because I'm not really clean enough to deliver any kind of first aid."
Liara looked at the woman, who was covered up to her elbows in ichor and pieces of rachni. "Goddess, Shepard," she said, "you're... quite the sight. Did you lose your shotgun?"
Shepard shook her head. "No, although I did overheat it," she said. "I'm more effective against multiple targets with biotics, and that's the best example of 'target rich environment' I've been in since we had to take out a suborned combat drone factory on foot."
"You know," Wrex said, eyeing her hands, "you never did teach me how that punch works."
"You're right, I didn't," Shepard said. "Remind me when we get back to the Normandy, and I'll show you. I've seen your biotics, you probably have the focus to pull it off without breaking your arm."
Deep below them, a muffled siren went off.
"Is that the failsafe?" Liara asked.
"Nah," Wrex said. "No point in having an alarm on that. The siren's the reactor going into shutdown, which means the failsafe went off about thirty seconds ago."
Liara swallowed uneasily. "I didn't even notice," she murmured.
"Radiation's like that," Wrex said.
Silenced stretched in the elevator, although not an uncomfortable one, at least in Liara's opinion. Wrex was checking his shotgun for damage, Shepard was trying to get some of the ichor off of her gloves, and as for her, well, she was leaning against the wall and trying very hard not to let her legs collapse beneath her.
I think I need to spend more time exercising, she thought to herself, somewhat ruefully. At least, if I plan on making 'fleeing rachni drones' a regular part of my life.
"Wait," Wrex said in a low voice, pushing the 'close doors' button at the top of the elevator leading to the barracks. "Something's not right. Get away from the window."
Shepard hugged the side of the elevator with Wrex, while Liara crouched down below the frosted glass. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"I don't hear any of the civilians," he said. "When we got here the first time, I heard voices through the walls and the ducts. Now? Nothing."
Shepard frowned. "They were working on biological weapons," she said. "Do you think...?"
Wrex shook his head. "Guards are still outside. It's everyone in back who's quiet."
"Betrayal?" Shepard asked.
The krogan just shrugged.
Shepard sighed and pulled away from the wall. "None of their gear was good enough to stop us, and they weren't lying about the condition they were in. If they're betraying us now, then it won't be much of a fight."
He readied his shotgun and moved to flank her. "Your call," he said.
They stepped out of the elevator and into the guards' killzone, eyeing the nervous men and women while they shifted their grips on their rifles, and gestured for Liara and Wrex to keep their weapons down.
"I'm sorry about this, Shepard," the man said, and he sounded... tired, weary beyond measure. "But we've got orders from Benezi-"
Shepard didn't let him finish the sentence. Her pistol flashed up, barked once, and the headless corpse of the head of security collapsed down in a pile.
"Drop your guns," the Spectre hissed, her voice like a knife. "Or you all die. Now."
A pause, one second, two-
And Liara let out a held breath as the well-used weapons of the security team clattered to the floor, slowly at first, and then in a rush at the end.
"Smart," she advised them. "Liara. Get your first medkit and knock them all out. If any of them try anything, kill them."
Beside her, Liara gave a small start and began pulling out several vials from her kit and loading them into an injector.
"Wait a second- the rachni! They'll get us!" one of the guards wailed as the asari approached, until Shepard cut her off with a withering glare.
"I just turned all of their genetic code into gravy with a neutron bomb," she snarled. "They're all dead or dying. Your biggest threat right now is me, followed by the asari and krogan in front of you, and then distantly by your soon-to-be former boss."
"You're... you're here for Benezia?" One of them squeaked.
"Do you really think any of you are worth my time?" Shepard shook her head. "Knock them out, T'Soni, I need to go see if they've slaughtered my witnesses."
"Wait," one of the guards – a lieutenant, if Shepard remembered the rank markings for Elanus Risk Control correctly – said while Liara was readying the injector at his arm. "We didn't hurt the eggheads, I swear, but the asari in the back, the lippy one – I think she's one of Benezia's. She's new, rude, and came in at the recommendation of the board, not other researchers."
Shepard motioned for Liara to wait, then peered at the man. "Do you know which board member?"
He shook his head. "Ventralis knows- er. Knew. He said it was a turian? Named started with an S, I think?"
"Saren?" Liara asked.
The guard nodded jerkily. "Saren! Yeah, that was it!"
Liara pursed her lips. "Thank you," she said, and pushed the injector into his arm, then carefully lowered his head to the floor.
"We need to move," Wrex rumbled. "If there's an agent of Benezia's..."
"I know," Shepard said. "Guns up. If we can manage to get her alive alive, go for it, but I'd rather have the civilians than her if it's a choice."
They crept through the quiet barracks, noting the signs that things had been shut down quickly – a dropped coffee mug, an abandoned card game, and in one case, a bullet hole in ceiling that hadn't been there when they'd left to clear the rachni out of the lab.
They rounded a corner, coming face to face with a very surprised asari, flanked by two geth and backed up by a pair of turian guards.
"What th-" the asari began, her eyes narrowing and a glow forming at her fingertips.
"Get them!" Shepard yelled, hurling an unfocused blast of biotic energy into the midline of the group that sent them all sprawling.
Wrex's shotgun barked and Liara's borrowed rifle roared, turning the hall into a hail of gunfire, smoke, and a few small fires from decorations that were likely not up to code.
The fight took less than three seconds, and when it was done, the hall had gone from eight people standing to three.
The door beside them hissed open, and a wide-eyed doctor in a lab coat peeked out.
Liara lowered her rifle and smiled tiredly at the man. "Hello again, Doctor Cohen."
"You- you killed her," he stammered, gaping at the bullet-ridden corpses littering the floor. "You killed all of them! Oh, god!"
"Doctor Cohen, I-" Liara tried to get a word in edgewise.
"No... no! I'm not dying here! You're all insane!" He backpedaled into the medical bay and promptly tripped over his own feet, landing on his rear in the doorframe. "No!"
Shepard sighed. "Doctor Cohen, we're not here to kill you," she said, holstering her pistol. "We're just here for Benezia, I promise."
"No! Please, no! I'll- I'll do anything!" the man began to sob.
"... Liara, do you still have that sedative?" Shepard asked.
Liara stepped up behend her and stared at Doctor Cohen. "I do," she said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. "Do you want me to-?" she gestured down at the sobbing doctor.
Shepard nodded, and Liara carefully took out the tranquilizer and re-loaded her injector before administering it to the doctor, putting his frantic struggles to rest with a faint hiss.
She stood and brushed some nonexistent dust off of her knees. "Every time I think this place cannot possibly get worse, it finds new and terrible ways of proving me wrong," she said while stowing the medical equipment, a hitch in her voice. "I just want this all to be over."
"Soon," Shepard said, patting her on the shoulder. "We'll secure the last civilians, then head for the main lab."
Of course, it is one thing to say one wishes it was over, and another thing entirely to be face to face with the reality of what the last thing one has to do is, Liara thought, a shiver of fear running through her spine.
They'd tracked down the remaining civilians – alive, but with a fresh gleam of fear and suspicion in their eyes after their coworker turned out to be a commando planning on killing them all to keep the project quiet – and moved them into a secure location before putting them all to sleep. She hadn't liked that last part, but as Shepard had explained, there was nothing stopping two of the civilians from being spies in the service of Benezia, and she wasn't willing to risk having that at her back.
They'd taken it better than Doctor Cohen, at least, although she suspected that had more to do with them not witnessing her gun down the hallway and less to do with accepting a Spectre's archaeologist's application of chemical restraints.
Still, they hadn't complained, especially after Shepard told them to lie down on the bunks first to avoid waking up with a sore neck. It wasn't much, really, but the unspoken implication that they would wake up seemed to calm them a little, in the same way that it would soothe a child fearful of going to sleep to hear that their mother would see them in the morning. Meaningless, maybe, but comforting.
Unfortunately for her, their peace had cleared out the last obstacle between them and Benezia, and Liara swallowed in fear when Shepard swiped the borrowed omni-tool past the locked door to the main laboratory.
"Joker? You have a fix on us?" She asking, holding a finger to her ear.
"Affirmative, ma'am," the pilot replied. "Everything's hot and ready to go. I'll beep you as soon as I have a firing solution that doesn't involve, uh, well, you."
"Good man," Shepard replied, then nodded at the two of them. "Both of you ready?"
No.
"Ready, Shepard," she said.
Hopefully sometime tomorrow: Benezia showdown and part of the post-mission wrap up. It's written, but I'm doing an editing pass on it. After that, a breather, then off to a certain research lab. Also some really screwy romance, because I did promise a dysfunctional relationship along the line here.