"Wait. Hold up, I just need-" Scott buried his head in his hands. "You did what?"

"There weren't any other options, Scott-"

"One coma, Sara. One time." He dropped his hands and laughed. "I fall into one measly coma for the first time in my entire life and in that time, Dad dies and then you die- not once, but twice?"

"That'll learn you," Sara said. "No more comas, Scotty."

"No more comas," he sighed. "Seeing as you are currently not dead, I assume it worked out."

"It did, I guess." She shrugged. "I mean, I would have preferred to have not died, but I'm here now and so are you."

And said like that, it sounded like some succinct, perfect little ending tied off in a bow. It disregarded the trail of bodies that led them to that cloying footnote in future history texts. Because regardless of the limited options available, every choice seemed wrong or more wrong. There would always be that point at night before the blackness of sleep took her where Sara would consider if in stepping left instead of right, she would have miraculously saved everything and everyone.

After she freed her team, the simplest path would have been to immediately flee to the Tempest and retreat. The kett were overconfident with their trap and hadn't accounted for Sara being willing (and able) to die- and certainly not for her to just stop being dead when it was convenient.

As such, the sensible thing for them was to press hard on Raeka's team and crush them while the human Pathfinder and her allies were indisposed. While the entire ship was focused on the salarian strike team, Sara, Cora and Drack would be safe.

But without Raeka's group, there was no EMP device. And without the EMP, there'd be no Ark Paarchero, no salarians.

That left Sara with the insane decision to alert an entire ship full of kett to their presence.

They raced back to the laboratory of horrors. There was the naive glimmer of hope that perhaps they'd find living salarians within some of the stolen stasis pods, but realistically, the lab had a central terminal where they could announce their whereabouts to the kett.

"SAM, let's start causing a ruckus," Sara announced, none too sure of herself.

"That's the plan?" Cora asked, eyeing the door.

Sara nodded. "We need to distract the kett from Raeka long enough for the salarians to do their job."

Drack laughed over their nerves. "I like it!" The krogan immediately began blasting consoles and smashing over shelves filled with vials.

"Let's see what we can do," Sara murmured. In the immediate, she could open some holding pens, so she did that. And cut the lighting to their level of the ship. They were too far center for access to an airlock, which was a shame, but she resolved to work with what she had.

In the dark, the emergency lighting kicked in. It called attention to the basic diagrams of salarian anatomy in the medical lab. Salarian, turian, asari, krogan and human.

"Ryder, we need to move if we're going to provide support for Raeka's team," Cora said.

"Yeah, just hang on a sec..."

"Most useful in these 'salarians' are their cognitive abilities. Their thought processes occur much faster than the others. There is a cleverness about them. A cunning which could be leveraged. More work is needed to isolate the genetic markers. There is no shortage of specimens to choose from."

Sara rounded the crude mock up of a salarian body. How many autopsies and dissections went into it? Cora grabbed her by the arm. "We knew this already-"

Sara shook her head and held up a finger. The next one played.

"These 'turians' possess a useful exoskeleton. On harsh worlds, it could prove advantageous. More intriguing, there is discipline about them- adherence to militaristic order. An effective trait for instilling obedience. Additional specimens will be required for study.

"The ones they call 'asari'- their reproduction is a mixture of biology, thought and memories. They take what they need from a species, as they should. Reproduction cannot be left to chance. The superior race dominates. Yet these asari pretend otherwise. A 'melding,' they call it. 'Embracing eternity.' Biology has no use for poetry. In the end, their biotic traits may prove the most useful.

"Among the new specimens, the 'human' is the most perplexing. They possess an emotional range which often exceeds the others. Their unpredictable nature marks them as dangerous. But if the roots of their passion could be isolated... We must identify a champion among them, and capture it for further study.

"The krogan are a brutish race. Which could be useful. Redundant organs and a savage temperament- made to kill. Even the other specimens fear them. A deliberate genetic fault was introduced to limit the krogan population. But I wonder... without this defect, they could be unstoppable."

Sara looked over to Cora. "They've got us all. We've been struggling to gain a foothold and they've been collecting us like clawball cards."

"Then we'd better make them work for it," Cora replied. "Now come on."

"Raeka!" Sara activated her omni tool as she hustled behind Cora. "We're here; what do you need?"

"Ryder, you're back?" A delighted cackle made the radio frequency pop. "Archon, do you hear me? Now you have two Pathfinders to deal with! And we're not impressed with your security!"

"We're coming, Raeka," Sara promised, before turning to Cora and Drack. "We're going to be loud and messy to pull the heat, but don't forget this is a kett ship. They have numbers and the home advantage."

"Make every inch hurt," Drack agreed. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for something like this."

"Just a thousand years, right?" Sara snorted. She may have been seconds from a panic attack, but the old krogan was in his glory and as seasoned as she was, Cora was grimly calm.

Drack kicked open the doors to the lab and sprayed wide with his rifle. His method- if he could be said to have one- was widespread destruction and chaos. Cora was more precise; she focused on a single enemy grouping at a time and likely had the higher number of confirmed kills. Both were necessary. Cora reduced the chance of crossfire while Drack ripped open wall paneling, destroyed equipment and ruined the door sensors.

And Sara? Sara synced up with any nearby console (before Drack eviscerated it) and freed kaerkyn from cages, activated fire suppression systems, put the dormitories in lock down. It all seemed as good a plan as any until the kett regrouped. Then the reality set in. It was literally a flagship full of kett and Sara and her team numbered at three. Bottlenecked in a hallway there wasn't much room for a bulky krogan to hide. Drack took a blast that sent his massive form sprawling backwards. A wave of blue seemed to almost cradle him as Cora spun him off to the side with a wave of her arm.

"There's too many!" the lieutenant barked. "We need to fall back!"

Sara nodded and began to inch back, but glancing behind her at the lab left her screaming, "They're gathering behind us! We're getting pinned down!"

She saw a glimmer of blue biotics as Cora blanketed the three of them in a rapidly shrinking shield. Sara huddled close to the lieutenant and Drack as shrapnel ricocheted off the finite amount of eezo.

"If either of you have a miracle in you, now's the time to use it," Cora grunted.

Sara had nothing. But then the ground started shaking. A loud boom echoed down the corridor and not even the auxiliary lights were left intact on the path they'd been headed. The kett that hadn't been blown to kingdom come scrambled towards the point of impact

"Ryder, come in!" It was Raeka.

"I'm here," Sara said. "What's going on?"

"A little diversion!" the salarian Pathfinder answered. "Selden and Venro needed time to set up the EMP and it sounded like you needed some help."

Drack laughed. "I like that salarian!"

"Hey, we were supposed to be the ones helping you." Sara couldn't help but grin. "We owe you one."

"We get the ark to the Nexus and I'll call us even."

"Tall order," Sara replied. "Let's do it." She glanced to her team. "If there's an opening, let's push ahead."

"You heard the Pathfinder," Cora said. "You going to be okay, Drack?"

"Slap some medi-gel on it and it'll be fine," he grunted. "Going to have to shoot lefty, though. My aim might not be that great."

"You were aiming before?" Cora snorted.

Drack chuckled. "Guess not."

They hurried on, past the hole Raeka had blown in the wall, over pieces of kett and kaerkyns. The door ahead was locked and try as he might, SAM was having no luck. Either it was bad luck or the kett had caught on to Sara's hacking prowess and melted the controls. Cora wasted no time in wrenching the door out of its frame.

It was another lab, or medbay. Sara supposed with a ship that size it would make sense in a war zone to literally have an entire level as a makeshift hospital, but that went with the presumption that the patients would be kett.

Sara's omni tool crackled. "This is Raeka. Some of our people are still alive. I'm headed there now. Venro, what's your status?"

"The EMP is primed and ready."

"Ryder?"

"Not yet," Sara answered. "Alert me when everyone's ready for immediate evac."

"Will do. Raeka out."

This lab almost looked like an aquarium. Vats filled with fluid lined the walls. There, in the gloom of cloudy water floated a massive figure, grayer than it ought to be, distorted by the reflections in the glass.

Not for the first time, Sara stopped in her tracks. "Is that a krogan?"

A quick scan had SAM confirm what her eyes were telling her. The DNA was krogan, but drastically altered.

"Not anymore it isn't." Drack joined her side to peer at the tanks. "Must be one of my missing scouts. I can't tell which one."

"This is big." The mood of the room made her words come out in a hushed whisper. "The Initiative needs to know. It's not just the angara. It's everyone."

Drack responded by shooting the console and then following that by shooting holes into the tanks.

"Tempest are you getting this?" Sara asked.

"Scariest thing ever in existence?" Kallo's voice rang across her omni tool. "Affirmative, Ryder. I've had SAM record all of your interactions aboard the Verakan in case you're not around to relay the intel."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kallo," she heard herself snarl. Sara continued on to an access panel that confirmed what they already knew: the kett were hardening their security. It was what she didn't know that piqued her interest. "There's more krogan onboard, " she announced. "They're not far- just a couple clicks away... they're scheduled for exaltation."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Drack demanded. "Could be the rest of my missing scouts."

"Yeah. Let's-"

There was a rumbling in the decks, like a shift of power or a generator starting up. Suddenly, Kallo was back chirping over the radio. "Those weapons are charging up, Ryder."

Sara's response was automatic, "Venro, discharge the EMP now!"

"Roger!"

With a shudder, the entire ship went dark. Sara continued to address the radio and her team. "All right, folks, our time line's just been exponentially reduced. We need to get to an extraction point now-"

"Ryder, it's Raeka. I'm pinned down. Don't think I'm going to make it."

"Where are you?" Sara asked.

"Near holding cells where they're keeping several of my people. They're still alive. I've ordered Venro back to the ark."

"Venro..?"

"Seldin's wounds were fatal. We've taken too many losses-"

Frustration made Sara snap, "You should be with him."

"I couldn't leave my people-" Raeka insisted over gunfire. "I had to try. And now... I think it's over. From one Pathfinder to another... Farewell. Raeka out."

"Damn it!"

A massive hand clapped onto her shoulder. "Ryder, my scouts..."

"Fuck." They were all looking to her. They had barely enough time to get their own asses off the Verakan without accounting for two separate rescues. Sara glanced up at the ceiling and ignored SAM in favor of her gut. "Reload. Drack, I'm sorry we're going after Raeka."

The krogan didn't say anything. He just cocked his rifle and growled before falling in line behind her and Cora.

There were a lot of reasons for her choice, rational and otherwise. Sara tried to gather them in a coherent jumble to throw at Drack later. For now, they needed to beeline it to the holding pens as quickly as possible to get out of there sooner rather than later.

They opted for maintenance routes away from their previous open corridors. SAM counted down the minutes they had available before the Verakan's weapons would be online.

At the holding pens, Raeka had barricaded herself inside with the salarian prisoners. On the other side, a small kett contingent slowly burned through the sealed door. Drack launched himself at their backs, not bothering with his rifle as he tore into the kett with his bare hands. Biotics provided the momentum needed to swing one kett into the next like a baseball bat. He dropped his living weapon and went for the next, gripping its face in his hands so he could drive his thumbs into its eye sockets.

"Oh, for the love of..." Cora hovered with her rifle, taking shots when appropriate. "Now's not the time to be showing off."

"He's not," Sara said. "He's angry. Just be glad he's taking it out on the kett."

Cora stomped her foot and unleashed a wave of biotic energy that sent what was left of the kett against the side of the hallway. "Clear the way," she warned the radio. "I'm getting the door."

"You came?" Raeka hesitated just long enough to gawk at Cora crumpling metal as easily as paper.

"We couldn't just leave you here," Sara replied.

"Thank you." The salarian Pathfinder nodded back toward the deactivated pens. "My people are at the end of the tunnel. It's kett the whole way."

Sara nodded back. "Then we push ahead and don't stop for anything."

"Including krogan?" So Drack did have something to say after all.

"Drack..."

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll shoot whatever needs shooting."

Somehow, that didn't sound particularly reassuring. Raeka moved quickly to round up the ramshackle group of salarians and Sara did a quick head count. Twenty-three. How many krogan scouts did clan Nakmor send out?

Sara brought her omni tool to her mouth. "Tempest, we're going topside. Prep for extraction."

"Understood."

"Ryder." Raeka paused in front of the huddled salarians. "Thank you."

Sara shook her head. "Save it for when we're safe."