Next chapter here, this time with Lena's reawakening and Mordin's loyalty mission. We're almost done with Tuchanka people. Just missing a last chapter. After that, main mission time.

See you later people, and as always make sure to tell me if you liked (or not). How i'm supposed to improve if i do not receive feedback?

Tuchanka. The missing assistant

Normandy' infirmary 26 march 2185. 13 49 ship hour

Darkness. That was all that Lena's eyes could see in the distance. Her mind remembered the only fragments of what happened to her. The Gaping maws of the beast ready to swallow her; the desperate holding inside its mouth; the columns of fire erupting from her neck. But after that, only Darkness. One so thick that it swallowed every light and prevented her from seeing what was happening.

The dark was not barren thought: Inside it, the Claymore heard voices.

Voices that she knew quite well.

"Good...od"

"Will she...fine?"

"...ve me the..."

"No...sts...llowed. Not even yo.."

It was Kasumi's voice, and the good doctor's. And Raina's. They were calling for her, but they felt so distant, so far.

Their words swirled inside her void, barely understandable by Lena's fractured psyche and yet, despite all of this, Lena's mind still recognized what was happening to her. She had been wounded by the blast, severely. Enough to have her body enter in some coma for her safety.

Not an uncommon occurrence for her since she ended inside this blasted universe. How many time had she risked death in battle against yoma, aliens and goddesses knew what else since she became a Claymore?

But this time, there was something slightly different: every time she ended up wounded, the oppressive presence of the yoma always tried to wrestle control from her, to be free to feast on humans and let loose its inner beast. Even now, Lena could feel the beast clawing at her mind, vying for dominance, but now its presence felt different. Tamer.

Gone was the brutal pressure that tortured her body and mind in the past years, replaced by a weak mewling of a wounded beast. Was it because she was now half-awakened? Was this new state of her being capable of handling the monster within her better than before? Was this the secret of the seven ghosts?

Lena had no answer to these questions, and at this point, he could not care. All she cared right now was to get out.

For this reason, she decided to focus on the voices and damn all the rest. They were far, far away from her, but time meant nothing in this strange, eerie dimension of her mind.

She only had to find a way to grasp them.

"Doct.r...work"

"I...e...me"

The voice's tone changed in the response of her moves. Surprise and hope now brimmed within them as she saw a small sliver of light making way through the Darkness. The Claymore redoubled her efforts, uncaring about any pain of fatigue plaguing her mind.

The voices were so close now, and light images of people emerged from the light. She just needed to push a bit more...

And all of a sudden, with a weak cry of pain and defiance, Lena awoke from her slumber.

Her tired eyes were attacked by a blinding light that almost compelled them to go back in the dark, but someone quickly reduced their level for her, allowing her tired pupils to wander into the ether.

She was inside the infirmary, that one was clear even for her tired self. The texture of the steel beds covered in that silken frame that so much entranced her inside Aran's ship was biting her back, and the buzzing sound of dozens of medical beds invaded her ears.

"Already awake, I cannot believe it." said a voice next to her "You keep breaking every expectations dear."

Lena's neck turned slowly toward the source of the voice, and her eyes saw the worried face of doctor Chackwas looking at her. On her right arm, her Omni-tool brimmed whit life and scanned the Claymore for her vitals. When Lena tried to respond, only tired grunt escaped from her lips.

"Easy girl," chided Chackwas gently "You have just awakened from a seven-hour long coma. Your body needs to remember itself."

"You forgot to add that is already a miracle that she awoke at all doctor!" added playfully someone else inside the room. It was Kasumi's voice, and Lena managed to catch a glimpse of the lively thief despite her current weakness. She was a bit further from her bed and near the exit door; next to her Raina slept on one of the free medical beds.

Kasumi's cloak was off, something quite unusual for the cheerful thief that allowed Lena to see her painted face. It had been used to cover Raina's sleeping body like a blanket, and the girl was resting peacefully together with her new teddy bear from Illium.

"What were your words just two hours ago? It will be a miracle if she will wake up in four days if at all?" said Kasumi back to the doctor "And look at that!"

"I know what I said, Ms Goto" grumbled the doctor back "But I had forgotten that Miss Lena is a walking paradox when it comes to conventional medicine."

Their banter was amusing, but Lena had no intentions of wasting her time here in a bed. Struggling with her body, she tried to stand up, but something metallic stopped her on her track. When she turned around to see the source of this new problem, her eyes witnessed in surprise the frame of a metal cage enveloping her entire right arm until the base of the shoulder.

"Ah, that!" quipped the doctor back to Lena, seeing the question inside her eyes "Sorry Lena, but when you arrived, your arm had already mutated out of control, just like last time after Korlus. That is why I decided to encase it inside that metal cage."

Lena's arm rattled inside the cage out of pure instinct, but the metal and the straps held her still, forcing the Claymore to get back to her bed.

"Please avoid rattling too much Lena, this is for your good." insisted the doctor "I will remove it once Mordin and I find a way to bring it back to normal."

"And how long will it take for you two to find a solution?" asked Lena back with gritted teeth. She did not like this accommodation at all. The arm felt overly constricted, and she felt the cold metal already itching on her skin.

"Some days, at least." replied Chackwas after some seconds of rumination "Doctor Solus is down with Shepard right now, alongside Mordin and other agents. It will take a while before they come back, assuming the come back in one piece on the first place. Besides"

"Wait!" Lena stopped the doctor in mid-track "Shepard is still down? After that hell of a fight?"

"Yes, he is." fussed Chackwas "Despite all my protests. Three broken ribs, a split nose and who knows how many cuts and bruises and he still refused to be hospitalized. He just allowed to be patched and grab a new set of armor up before jumping back into that accursed planet." a sigh escaped from the old doctor "Soldiers. Always ready to kill themselves."

"And the others?" pressed Lena "Are they fine?"

"Garrus is fine. Just some minor cuts and bruises. Grunt, not that much. But their traditions dictate that the shaman must heal the wounds of the winning aspirant, so he remained inside Urdnot's camp. And Tali.." The doctor pointed at another bedframe, one placed at the end of the infirmary and covered with what looked some kind of broad, medical tent not present just some yesterday. It included an entire angle of the infirmary, and the Claymore saw the symbol of medical hazard prevention stamped at the centre of the fabric. The cloth was transparent thought, allowing Lena to pierce inside with her eyes. And what she saw..

"Is she?" asked Lena fearfully. Inside that secluded part of the infirmary rested Tali on an unusually large bed, covered in a yellow medical suit that isolated her whole body from the air and linked to various medical machines. All around her strange contraptions purified the air while a computer regularly checked the number of bacterias present in the zone. She was breathing, that was clear to see, but apart from that, the girl looked dead.

"No Lena." quickly assured Chackwas "She is out of danger, thankfully. The scorching air of Tuchanka wreaked havoc on her body, but I managed to clear away most of the infections and destroy the pathogens inside her." Tired eyes appeared on the doctor's face while remembering that distinct moment "It took four hours of work, but I did it. Still, she will need to stay inside that clear room for at least four days, and to be constantly monitored."

"I...i see, doctor. And Raina? Why is Raina here with you?"

"Ah, Raina." huffed the doctor "When your daughter discovered that you were, again, in a coma, the poor girl started to lose control of herself. Kelly, of course, immediately come to her aid, and somehow managed to calm her down, for a time. But when Raina discovered that both her mother AND her beloved teacher were in danger of life, she lost it. She stormed my infirmary despite Kelly's attempt to stop her, pretending to see you and resisted any attempt to keep her away from you. She even bit Ms Goto with her teeth when we tried to get her out of the infirmary."

"She...bit Kasumi?" interrupted Lena shocked "For real?"

"For real!" answered Kasumi back "And let me tell you Lena: your daughter has one hell of a bite." She pointed at her right hand, where the leather of her gloves had been now ripped away at the height of the palm. Lena covered her eyes in shame at this.

"Don't feel angry about this. She was in shock, so is understandable, and begged for our forgiveness after calming down." cooed Kasumi

"Does not mean that I will not find a suitable punishment for her after I am free from this cage." grumbled Lena back "Biting people. What a joke!"

"Regardless" continued the doctor "In the end, we allowed to let her inside the infirmary, as long as she stood still and let me do the job in perfect silence, and she kept her promise. After that, and calming down a bit, I decided to let be here with you for the night. I even gave her some paper and a pencil to pass some time."

"Pencil and paper?" Lena failed to understand the reason for this last action, and her eyes showed it.

"Yes, for drawing." replied the doctor "An old suggestion from a pediatrist and good friend of mine. He assured me that the best way to distract children without having them running amok is giving them something to draw. I planked her papers on that wall."

It was true. Locked with some glue on the wall near the doctor's working desk now rested a pair of crude drawings made with pencils, showing what looked like Tali and Lena sleeping on a bed with the doctor looking at them. The picture was, of course, childish. Small black lines and crosses stitched together to the point that only the name scribbled near the images revealed to Lena the subjects' identity. And yet the amalgamation of clumsy lines, hearts and smiles were so cute that one rare smile managed to wrench away from the Claymore's lips at sight.

"Adorable, isn't it?" chided Kasumi back to her "She was so cute when she drew them, all hyperfocused and serious. Children can be so cute sometimes!"

"Yes, they can." agreed Lena heartily "Doctor, please warn me when Shepard comes back. I need to speak to him."

"I will" promised Chackwas "But now try to sleep, no matter how hard it feels. Superwoman or not, even someone like you need some actual rest after waking up from a coma."

"I am tired of sleeping doctor" replied Lena back in response "Can I not really."

Someone else entered inside the infirmary, and Lena stopped speaking the moment she saw who the newcomer was. It was Kelly, the worried face and the pair of earring clasped on her ears unmistakable even for Lena's tired eyes.

Her eyes betrayed anxiety once inside, quickly followed by happiness once she saw that Lena was safe.

"Counsellor," asked doctor Chackwas to the girl "What bring you here?"

"Ehm...I" blabbed Kelly at first

"Specialist Chambers asked to be immediately informed about agent Lena'awakening," answered EDI of all people inside the room.

"EDI!" snapped Kelly back, but the damage was already done.

"Oh, really!? What a considerate girlfriend you are Kelly!" snickered Kasumi back at the girl "I am out, doctor. Giving the two lovebirds some space. Call me when I can retake my coat."

"We are not!" tried to shout back Lena and Kelly, both their faces flushed, but Kasumi had already disappeared, leaving them to speak with the air, leaving two dumbfounded girls and a smiling doctor alone.

"Ah, is good to be young!" commented the doctor at this "I will be checking Tali for a while. The place is soundproof, so feel free to have a long chat. Later."

More shouts of protests erupted from the couple's mouth, but the whistling doctor merely ignored them and quickly left Lena alone with Kelly after wearing a yellow biohazard suit. She entered inside Tali's decontaminated zone, something that immediately increased the machines' workout, and began working on some terminal.

She never turned toward the two girls, always showing her back to them.

They were alone now, and both had no idea of what to say.

"So...how, do you feel Lena?" tried to ask Kelly rigidly. Lena raised both eyebrows at this question.

-This is going to be a looong day!- She cringed on her mind.


Tuchanka. Clan Weyrlok's territory. 4 before Lena's awakening

"Shepard, sure you can use the binoculars properly?"

"Yes, Jack. Thanks for asking!"

"You sure? Because your face still looks like a fucking"

"I said I am fine, Jack! Focus on my mission instead of my face. We are inside enemy territory if you have forgotten!"

Jack shrugged at this outburst and resumed her watch on the endless dusty plains of Tuchanka, freeing Shepard from her unexpected nagging. Shepard needed this quiet because this mission was promising to be even more dangerous to Grunt's initiation rite, and that was saying something.

According to Wrex's sources, the Salarian they were looking for had been captured by a Krogan clan named Weirlock, a very traditionalist and dangerous bunch of warriors at war against pretty much everyone on the planet, even themselves from time to time. Why such a tribe had captured, and not merely killed the Salarian on sight, was beyond Shepard and right now he didn't care.

The plan was simple: entering inside one of the less defended zones of the tribe's territory, finding the place where they keep the prisoner and free him before an army of angry Krogan come swarming at them with guns blazing. No useless fanfare, no pointless battles. A quick strike in, and out.

For this reason, Shepard had chosen to bring nothing more than a small but mighty group this time, comprised by Samara, Mordin and Jack.

Mere firepower would not save them if discovered. They needed to hit quickly and hit hard if they wanted to have a single chance of victory.

So far they had been lucky: they met only scant patrols of poorly armed Vorcha and couples of Krogans guards barring their way, trifling enemies that they quickly dispatched with the combinations of fire, biotic powers and electronics before having the chance of warning the rest of the tribe. But now, after one hour of trudging and sneaking, the group was coming closer to what, according to the intel ripped away from the guard's corpses was the VIP's prison. An old, semi-abandoned hospital in the middle of nowhere.

Semi abandoned because it was bristling with Vorcha and Krogans right now.

"Mordin, before moving you told me that there are many secret entrances for this hospital, correct?"

"Correct!" exclaimed the aged doctor next to him "Used this same facility years ago, during the last expedition on Tuchanka. Created various secret exits in case of immediate extractions. Surmise that Krogan clan want something from my apprentice and he asked in exchange to be relocated here. Increasing chances of escaping in case of a rescue party."

"It might be." conceded Shepard "But I am still unsure." His binoculars moved again away from the hospital itself and toward the Krogan guards. They were few, barely ten if Shepard's eyes were right. And they looked peaceful, almost happy for some reason. "There is something strange about this assembly, but I cannot put my hand into what it is. Anyone coming into the horizon, Jack?"

"No one Shepard. It is all quiet as fuck!" replied the young convict brashly.

"Good. How long before the hatch is open then?"

Shepard was talking about one of said "secret" emergency exits by Mordin. An old tunnel semi-buried in the scorching sand placed just beyond a small hill that overlooked the hospital in all its crumbling glory. Nothing more than a circular door painted with the same colour of the dust covering Tuchanka and enhanced by some special paint that would prevent it from glinting when hit by the sun.

Sealed, shut, and welded, of course.

Currently, the old Salarian was busy trying various combinations on an old panel, all while Samara helped him in clearing with her powers the worst of the rust and corruption that had seeped inside the old machines.

"Five more minutes Shepard. Lucky to find this passage still functioning. Tuchanka's air usually capable of destroying even the most resilient of structures."

-Too lucky if you ask me.- Groaned Shepard softly. The whole thing smelled like a trap to Shepard. The prisoner inside the same hospital where it had worked in the past, the old passages never found, the strange ways the Krogans moved. Everything screamed at him that he was missing something crucial of the puzzle. But no matter how much he wracked his brain at it, he could not understand what! And so, refusing to lose himself in pointless debates, he stood still and spied the Krogans with his binoculars, wary of every suspect movements.

"Open!" exclaimed Mordin in triumph after what felt an eternity. Behind him, Shepard heard the groan of metal against metal, and the sound of a door long closed finally opening to the air. A waft of decayed air hit the commander's already broken nostrils, and Shepard dreaded at what could they met inside that cursed tunnel. The place looked barely able to fit two people in a column, and he did not want to think about fighting a Krogan inside such a small area.

"Didn't look like much." groaned Shepard "No matter. Samara, in front with me. Jack with Mordin behind. From now on, we move in utter silence."

-And let's hope that this is not a giant trap.-


It turned out that Shepard's suspects were unfounded this time: no one tried to attack them while trudging inside that small bowel of a tunnel. A good thing, considering that the quartet had to march in utter silence and without lights in what Shepard would forever remember in his nightmares.

For one hour, Shepard and his group trudged through the underground corridors, blind save for their visors and moving through a labyrinth of passages and openings, trusting an old STG map brought by Mordin for the occasion.

More than once they discovered that the main road was gone, turned by time and rust into a crumbling mess of rubble, and were forced to take alternative routes in that dark, hellish maze, using Mordin's memory and their sensors as a new map. In the end, they always managed to get through.

Jack still complained like a bitch for this despite the orders, albeit with just a whisper of a voice. There was a hint of fear in her usually brazen speech. Maybe she was scared of enclosed spaces, but every time Shepard tried to pry further, he received a snarl in response.

When they finally reached the main hatch, their entrance ticket for the hospital, and left that cursed place, everyone left sights of relief. Even one as stoic as Samara could not hide her happiness.

Of course, they were not out of the woods yet, not one bit.

"Ok Mordin, we're in! Where to go now?" asked Shepard to the Salarian

"According to my intel, Krogans are forcing my old apprentice to work on something. Only good place for laboratory work is the inner sanctum, three levels under our feet."

"That far!?" asked jack surprised "Why someone would build a fucking hospital like a bunker complex? And why haven't reached it with the tunnel system?"

"Quite common architecture here on Tuchanka. Enemy clans usually target hospitals. Need to be protected by enemy shelling. They are also provided with small ventilation hatches to prevent enemy incursions."

"Firing at a hospital?" replied jack "That's fucked up! Even for me."

"Not for Krogans apparently, Jack. Move out people, and let's hope that no one notices us inside."

They moved and moved inside the infirmary for what felt like hours, vary of any unnecessary battle and always careful to not make too much noise. The interior of the hospital was as ruined as anything else inside this cursed planet: piles of rubble covered the floor, ancient walls crumbled and fell under their feet, and the residues of old waterworks littered the ground like broken teeth, making the act of moving silently quite tricky. The bleak expanse amplified every noise, to the point that the group felt every step as the one that would betray them, and yet no one came.

The place was deserted, but not abandoned. The more they descended, the more signs of work Shepard and his group found. And not all of them were pretty to see.

"Another room like that?" asked Shepard to Samara, almost dreading the answer.

"Yes, Shepard." replied the Justicar calmly "This room is also full of corpses, human corpses."

The room, barely three meters long and wide, was littered in corpses. Human corpses. Old, young, male, female, they were piled everywhere, like past papers waiting to be disposed of. The stench was unbearable, and everyone had locked their helmet the moment they witnessed such a gruesome spectacle.

"What the fuck is wrong with these people?" cursed Jack behind grinding teeth "This is the second room we found, all chock full of humans. What do they want from them?"

"Same signs of the others?" continued Shepard.

"Yes, commander" this time Mordin was the one that answered to him "Signs of restraints of both legs and arms, and chirurgical scars."

"Can you give me a hypothesis on why they did this?"

"Can only speculate Shepard" began Mordin while still checking the bodies. "Hypnotizing that the Krogans have kidnapped my assistant because they discovered his contribution on the genophage project. Surgical marks on the victims are all near the thyroid and reproductory glands. Clever."

But why humans? Why not experiment on Krogans?" demanded Shepard.

"This is the result of a preliminary phase, Shepard. The human genome is very variable, easy to manipulate and change in response to various biological attacks. Just like Varren'. Experimentations on mother race usually come after this."

"Well, that's nice to know," grumbled Jack behind them.

"Then let's make sure this are the last corpses we find, team. Let'"

"Wait Shepard shouted Samara all of a sudden "There are not only human'. There is a Krogan's corpse here."

The commander quickly sprinted toward the Justicar, careful of avoiding the piles of humans all around him. What Samara said was true: in a separate angle, partially covered by human corpses, there was the body of a Krogan, a female Krogan.

The differences were minimal, both females and males possessed the same ridges and heavy body frame, but this corpse was dressed in what looked a variation of a human burka with ample openings on the mouth and eyes. The fabric was dark and heavy, and covered most of the Krogan's frame, but not enough to hide the many scars adorning her chest and lower back.

"Krogan. Female," said Mordin when he finally reached her. His Omni-tool "Show signs of severe chirurgy on her chest and lower torso. No signs of restraints. She volunteered."

"Why anyone would volunteer to such suffering?" wondered Shepard out loud.

"genophage made her sterile, my assistant's work promised a cure," replied Mordin with a soft voice. There was a strange undertone in the old Salarian's tone now. One of sadness, and small regret "She wanted a child. That is why she volunteered. What a horrible waste."

"What, doctor butcher? Getting cold feet!?" snickered jack back to Mordin, "You said you were here when you improved the genophage no? You had to know about its effect. A bit late to grow a soul at this point."

"It was not supposed to end this way." murmured Mordin back. More to himself than to Jack "The genophage was supposed to contain them. No deaths, no suffering. Just a population control pathogen to prevent the disasters of the past. All this suffering is...wrong. Useless."

"And yet here we are Mordin." concluded Shepard gravely "You know Mordin, I have to go with Jack at this one: The Krogans on the past may have been a danger for the galaxy, but that time is long gone. And this...is disgusting."

"It was necessary Shepard" repeated Mordin with more vigour "Krogans too dangerous. Their society too warlike for pacific coexistence. We needed to lessen their numbers for the good of us all."

"And you decided that the ideal solution was sterilizing them en masse with a bioweapon, turning a warlike people in a mass of desperate mercenaries, ready to do everything for their objectives." finished Shepard "You forgot one thing Mordin. I was here, on Virmire, where Saren promised the Krogans a future without the genophage. I saw the desperate hope inside Wrex's eyes when hearing of such a marvel. That day my friend and I come an inch close to kill each other. We stopped Saren that day, but mark my word Mordin: one day, the Krogan people will find a cure, and that day the anger that simmered within them for centuries will explode like a volcano, and kill us all in the process. We must create a better way, or the future our leader dreads so much will come one day, no matter how many time you splice their genes. Besides." Shepard shrugged, lost in thought for a second "I am ready to bet that this idea is the same that moved the bastard that tortured and changed Lena into a living weapon."

Mordin's eyes blinked twice after hearing these words, unsure.

"Elaborate."

"What? Don't tell me you never thought about it. Hear this, Mordin. Why create a living weapon like Lena in the first place? Not certainly for something as mundane as harvesting organs, or selling gladiators to the black market. My idea is that somewhere, in the depths of the Terminus system perhaps, someone decided to create a new type of weapon. One so powerful, it could rip apart Krogans with their bare hands. Someone reforged Lena as a tool of war, a war so terrifying I dread even to try to picture." Shepard's words cut deep inside the old doctor's mind. You didn't need a brilliant brain to see the similarities between this hypothesis and the current situation.

"And it is not over" continued Shepard "This war, it must have ended someday. Otherwise, the rest of the galaxy would have noticed something already. So, always in hypothesis, let's imagine that the enemy that Lena and her other (supposed) companions fought lost the war, that Lena's faction won. I can see a lot of packs on the backs and shouts of happiness in the immediate end of it from the winning team, but what about the surviving living weapons now? What to do with them now that the menace is gone? Days ago, I asked for her story, and in response, Lena bid for time. I am respecting her wishes, and I will keep doing so until she is ready to open herself to me. But during these weeks, I managed to hear snippets of conversations between Lena and others. Snippets of conversations about a cruel master and how they gained their freedom by rebelling and shedding blood. Rivers of blood."

Mordin's head lowered in shame, the lesson behind this story clear

"This is not the same situation. Agent Lena is not like the Krogans." he tried to counter

"Young girls taken forcibly from their homes, violently uplifted and sent to fight a desperate war. And when they won, their master tried to dispose of them because he couldn't handle them." returned Shepard without a shred of mercy

"For what I can understand, the only difference between Lena and the Krogans is that Lena defeated her master."

This time Mordin found no way to bite back at Shepard. He gazed at the room with blank eyes, not knowing how to reply to someone for the first time in years.

He saw the many humans, caught into a horrible end. He saw the rough chirurgical scars on their mangled bodies and perceived the pain these poor souls must have suffered before dying. He saw the female, willing to sustain such pain for the small hope of having a child.

And something inside him broke.

"I...I do not want to talk about it, Shepard." Crackled Mordin "Need to find Maelon. Need to have some answers for this."

Shepard sighed and waved toward the exit of the room. He pitied the poor doctor right now. He could only imagine just what maelstrom of confusion must be raging inside his mind right now.

And yet, he feared that his tribulations were far from over.


Hospital's main researching area. Minutes before Lena's reawakening

"Freeze!" shouted Shepard to the people inside. Behind him, his squad members did the same as him and trained their weapons toward the people inside it.

This was it. After hours of stealth, of great cautions and dangerous close calls, they were finally inside the foremost research room, and in front of the Vip. Maelon was here, working on a small terminal at the centre of the small, rectangular room.

The place itself was quite a surprise for Shepard: far from being a half-destroyed laboratory with old technologies and barely standing together, his eyes saw that the Krogans had furnished the place with the best stuff available on the black market. Medical screens, supplies of components of the most excellent order, hi-tech terminals, medicines, chirurgical tools, the site was worthy of a Cerberus laboratory.

All this bounty and yet a solitary Salarian was the only one working. The Vip they were looking for.

He didn't look like much: of average build for his species, dressed in a form-fitting, white doctor garb and smooth, orange skin.

Unfortunately, he was not alone, and that was why both Shepard and his squad had decided to make such a strong entrance, weapons in hand.

The guest inside the laboratory was, after all, a massive Krogan and not a mere soldier if the markings on his armour were accurate.

Old and scarred, maybe even more than Wrex, the Krogan towered around every person inside the room with massive bulk and violet armour. When his brown eyes saw the intruders, a low growl escaped from his old lips but did not fire with his shotgun. He waited instead, patient and calm for the enemy to make a mistake.

"Who are you, pink skin, and why are you here?"

"Name's Shepard. You took Maelon away from his people, I'm here to bring him back," replied Shepard, his shotgun trained at the Krogan

The Krogan smiled at these words. A cold, savage smile

"Wrex's human friend. That Pijiack always bombast your strength and cunning with his war stories. I am glad to see that you are worthy of that fame, human.

No matter. I am Weyrlok Guld, chieftain of the Weyrlok clan, and I says that he Salarian remain here."

Shepard saw Maelon hiding behind a steel table while all this debacle continued. Good, now they could fire without risks.

"In your dreams." snarled Shepard, and opened fire.

The aim was right, but the Krogan moved with speed unexpected from a creature of such bulk and avoided the worst of the shot. More shots and bullets battered his defences now, but the Krogan endured with practised experience, moving for the kill.

His first target was Jack. Uncaring of the many biotic attacks that the snarling girl threw at him, Guld slammed his way against the convict's shield, breaking it with a single shot of his massive shotgun. Jack reeled under the blow, and the Krogan used the momentum to headbutt her with such strength that it sent the young girl flying in the room. She hit the wall with a loud thud and didn't move.

A neural shock coming from Mordin hit the Krogan after this, hurting him beyond words and making him tumble for a second, but still, he refused to die. Shepard and Samara pumped shots after shots inside the warrior's frame, but the enemy's armour absorbed them like a sponge.

Guld roared in pain, and moved his shotgun toward Shepard and aimed at his heart, but a second before firing Samara lashed at him with her biotics. The blow broke the weapons right into the Krogan's hands, and Mordin quickly capitalized with a flame shots that engulfed the warrior whole into a fiery inferno.

"No!" screamed the Krogan in a mad rage. He charged at Shepard with such ferocity that the commander failed to avoid it in time. Shepard swore under the hit and felt his body lifting from the ground. A pair of burning claws grabbing the armoured collar covering his neck.

"You will not...destroy my people's last...hope." roared Guld inches away from Shepard's face. Shepard couldn't bite back such was his pressure on his neck. His neckpiece slowly bent under the Krogan's claws, and a smouldering stench of burning flesh attacked Shepard's nostrils like a mallet. Shepard somehow grabbed his side-arm with his right hand and fired shots after shots on the Krogan's belly, but the beast refused to give up.

Air escaped from his lungs, and black dots started to appear on his eyes. Shepard was losing consciousness, no matter how much adrenaline his damaged armour pumped into him.

Then, by the grace of some miracle, the pressure on his body disappeared.

It took some seconds for the coughing Shepard to understand what was happening: a force higher than any dash of rage had violently yanked the Krogan apart from Shepard. And the one responsible fur such a feat was the Justicar. Samara was glowering with power, in a way that surpassed even a prodigy like Jack. All around her rubble and medical equipment levitated in the air. Samara's eyes became as blue as the energy she mastered after centuries of training lashed out against her foe. Ripped away from his enemy, the Krogan warrior now dangled in the air, flames still flickering across his ravaged body. He roared and fought, but the Justicar's grip was stronger than steel. Then, with a quick act, Samara moved her right wrist, and Shepard saw blood erupt like a fountain from his mouth. Only later he would discover that Samara had increased the gravitic pressure on the Krogan's internal organs tenfold with her attack, causing a total organ failure within the warrior. The Krogan thrashed like a fish outside water in a desperate effort to free himself — all for nothing.

Slowly, methodically, Samara chocked the life out of his weakened body, piece by bloody piece, until he finally died, covering the ground with his blood.

The battle was over.


Hospital's basement. six minutes after the fight

It was official now: this was Shepard's worst week in his entire life. Period.

Sure, he appreciated the chance of seeing his old friend Wrex once again, and considering the planet where they had to land for these missions, the fact that he was still alive he should not complain so much. But the truth was that, only in these two days, Shepard had managed to wound himself more times than during all the previous missions combined since Cerberus had reawakened him with project Lazarus.

A bloody record on itself. And one that did not want to repeat if possible.

"Feeling better?" asked Samara next to him. Being the only person of the group reasonably healthy, the Justicar had taken the unfortunate duty of nursing back both Shepard and Jack to an acceptable level with a combination of first aid and medi-gel. She did wonders, considering her meagre knowledge and lack of proper medicines (all the ones stashed in the laboratory were Krogan-tailored and so unusable). However, they still needed a doctor's attention.

Shepard snarled at this thoughts, something that caused him to grunt in pain. The mere act of breathing was giving him problems, and the commander knew that once back on the Normandy old Chackwas would give him hell for all of this mess, but right now his mind was too angry at another problem even to care.

Because there was a doctor in his team, one quite brilliant at that, but he was too busy quarrelling with the Vip right now.

"Yes." whispered Shepard back "They are still doing it?"

"Yes, Shepard. They are still at it, and do not seem it will end soon."

Another groan of pain escaped from Shepard's tired lips. All he wanted was to be done with this cursed planet and be back on his ship with the Vip in tow. But the cursed Vip did not want to be saved for some reason, and here they were now, with two Salarian arguings at each other and the rest of the team trying to limp itself back into a decent shape. Shepard had the faintest clue of what they were saying; the language was Salarian, but so different compared from their common tongue that his translator failed to decode back even a single word. Not that it mattered to him right now. Because if he was in bad shape, Jack was even worse: the young convict had managed to regain her conscience, but standing up without falling flat on her face was all she could muster right now. Her face was a mess of blood and pain, with the skin of her scalp heavily cut by the Krogan's ridges, and a hematoma bigger than her fist nested right on her forehead. She was so weak that she even accepted Samara's hand when offered and knowing Jack, that was saying something.

"To hell with this." Shepard cursed under his breath. He had no intention to stay here and wait until someone outside the infirmary finally decided to take a peek at them.

"Shepard, wait! You are still too weak" tried to say Samara, but the commander ignored her plea and forced his body to rise from the ground. Every cell within his body screamed against him and, for a second, Shepard almost tripped on his own feet so much was the pain. But he endured, and this gave him more confidence in keeping on this path. Slowly, one step after another, he burned the distance between the two still quarrelling Salarian. They were mere meters away from him, but still, it took almost one minute for Shepard to reach them.

When he finally did it, he grabbed his shotgun and fired in the air, air breadth from the two Salarian's heads.

That finally stopped them.

"Good! Now that I have your attention" said Shepard to the now very aware Salarians "I want to know from you, Maelon, what the hell is the problem. And from you, Mordin, how do you plan to resolve it."

"You, you are...Shepard." answered Maelon back to the commander "How Mordin managed to involve a Spectre like you in this mess, I will never know. Still, there isn't much to say: do you know about Mordin's work on the genophage?"

"I do," replied Shepard "And?"

"Then I hope you understand that what we did was beyond disgusting. Sterilizing an entire civilization for the sole crime of not being slaves to the Council." grunted Maelon back in disgust "We played God with these people, and look what happened."

"You worked with me Maelon!" swore Mordin at this " You saw my diagrams, the tests. We were all in agreement that this operation was necessary."

"Of course I agreed!" snapped back Maelon "We all agreed! How could we not?! How could anyone of us disregard the works of the great Mordin Solus, the rising star of the Salarian Union?! But I came back to this planet after out work was done. I did, and I saw the piles of dead children and grieving mothers with my own eyes! I saw your "statistics" with my own eyes, and I felt disgusted at my work!"

"And so, you decided to work on a cure." finished Shepard for him "But why working with Clan Weyrlok?"

"I just needed the support of a clan and Weyrlok was the first one to answer. For being a rather conservationist clan, their leader proved to be quite open-minded."

"At least that is clear" mumbled Shepard "But what about the bodies? We passed two rooms full of corpses before coming here."

On these words, Maelon's face lowered slightly in what appeared to Shepard's eyes to be an actual shame but still answered.

"I needed test subjects, for my experiments." was all he said

"You needed a lot of them, then" growled Shepard.

"I had already killed billions with my work, spectre!" grunted Maelon as a form of excuse "What are a few dozens more?"

After hearing this, Shepard felt the urge to skull-fuck the idiot with Lena's blade. And he was not the only one.

"Shepard!" groaned Jack behind him. She could speak now apparently, an improvement in on itself, but Shepard did not like the impasted intonation of her voice. It was weak, almost hollow. Her scalp was still bleeding despite the first aid, and Jack hands relentlessly massaged it to stop the pain "Stop arguing with the little shit and be done with this! I don't think i...i..." Jack lost her footing and fell, and only Samara's reflexes prevented her from hitting the ground. A gurgle of pain escaped from the convict, quickly followed by her puking on the ground.

"Jack is right." grumbled Shepard "We do not have time for this. Mordin, it is your problem, so you deal with it. But be quick about it!"

And so Mordin did. In a way that left everyone surprised.

In a fluid motion, Mordin grabbed the butt of his machine gun and slammed it in the skull of Maelon. The Salarian fell, cursing and screaming while green blood escaped from a cut on the head, but when he tried to rise he found the end of said machine gun pointed at his face.

"Unacceptable goals, unacceptable experiments," said Mordin full of scorn "Brutal tortures, countless murders, and utter disregards of the political and moral outcome of your actions. You...you are not the Maelon I once knew. You are a monster!"

"Come on then!" croaked Maelon back, his voice dripping with venom "Kill me, teacher. Show to everyone that I am right, that we are all a bunch of killers!"

The machine gun moved dangerously close to Maelon's horns, and Shepard believed that Mordin would have fired. Behind him, Samara raised a hand and prepared a biotic attack, but the commander stopped her with a gesture.

"Mordin, I will not stop you whatever choice you make, but are you sure killing your old apprentice is your only choice?" he inquired, "During your conversations on the Normandy, you always told me that you a doctor, not a cold-blooded murderer."

The gun was now an inch away from Maelon's face and did not promise to move away. Shepard had never seen such a look on Mordin. No smile, no focus, only a burning hatred that seeped inside his wrinkled face and eyes that burned like bonfires.

And yet he didn't fire.

Slowly, almost painfully, Mordin moved the gun away from his apprentice's face.

"No, you are right! Am a doctor, not a murderer. Thanks, Shepard." he said "You might all be right. Genophage a mistake, and must be rectified. But not like this."

Mordin left his apprentice on the ground, speechless and mouth agape, but alive. He moved instead toward the computer mainframe and started doing something with his Omni-tool.

"What are you" tried to protest Maelon, but it was too late. The computer exploded with a shower of sparks, and entire terabytes of data appeared inside the main screen, only to disappear forever a second later.

"No!" screamed Maelon.

"It is done" announced Mordin after some seconds "No more research Maelon. No more experimentations, no more murder. Project is scrapped, alongside your protector. Doubt Krogans will help you after this failure."

"Then what will I do?" accused Maelon in tears now "You robbed of my life purpose doctor. What will be my fate?"

"Don't know, don't care!" shouted Mordin back, shutting Maelon in an instant. It was the first time Shepard heard Mordin raising his voice, ever. It was an unusual noise. "Will escort you out the compound, but after this, we're done. Not my problem anymore. Try Omega maybe. Place always need good doctors."

The words hit Maelon like a truck, and the young assistant fell into a desperate silence. Shepard ignored him and moved toward Mordin

"You...ok, Mordin?" he asked.

"Apologies commander. Misunderstood everything. No kidnapping, my mistake. And thank you, for stopping me." he said

"You would have killed him?" inquired Shepard.

"Easier than listening. Better for him too maybe. Experiments indicate how far he's fallen. Once my best assistant. Never expected this from him." Mordin raised his Omni-tool, still working and processing

"One last thing. Destroyed raw data, but still have a copy inside my banks.

Destroying would make all deaths here useless. But one day it may save more people. Faster than creating a cure from scratch. So many variables, what should I do?"

"Keep them." quickly answered Shepard "They caused so much death, but maybe one day they will bring life. And If not, they will serve as a watchman for your mind, and remember you just how thin is the line between good and evil."

Yes will do." answered Mordin "Thanks, Shepard. Illuminating missions. Discovered many new variables. Need to think about my past now. About my actions. About their morality."

"I'm sure of it. But let's move now Mordin. We are still inside enemy territory, and with me and Jack wounded, we cannot afford any battle right now."

Sooo, still here? Then i hope you enjoyed it people. See ya