She and Garrus exited the skycar while it was still slowly moving, the door closing smoothly behind to leave them in an empty darkened alley. Their instructions had them climbing a wall within seconds, locating a vent with purposely broken fastenings to slip quietly inside. The Salarian prep team had done well.
"Wish we had these guys working on our Cerberus raids back in the day," Shepard said appreciatively while they settled and did a weapons check.
Garrus huffed and shook his head over his own assault rifle, checking the status of his thermal clip. "I'd feel better if we weren't being set up for the news story of the year."
Shepard grinned crookedly and met his gaze. "At least we know, right?"
"Heh," he replied, avian blue eyes twinkling. "Guess we better put on our best hero faces."
"Lots of 'STOP, cretin!'" she joked to ease the tension.
"And then the 'POW!' 'THWAP!' 'CRASH!''" he whispered with punching gestures.
The old Earth comic lines had them grinning at each other until their faces eventually smoothed in serious consideration of the challenge that lay before them. They were looking around for a way down into the complex when an amber light flashed dimly on Shepard's Omnitool. She called up the display and found a message from Liara waiting, which she quickly read.
"That's my girl," she crooned before switching off the interface and looking at the Turian waiting expectantly beside her. "The intel was from Kirrahe. We're green."
"Never doubted it," he lilted with a puff of his chest. "Rentola may act tough, but he'd never betray his boss."
"Happy to be wrong," she murmured, then carefully lifted another panel in the floor, revealing the inside of the detention center below.
"Hey," she said with a glance at him and a lift of her chin. "Don't die, okay?"
"Yeah," he rebutted with a wink, "You either. Getting tired of carrying your ass."
She smirked, and with that they dropped from the ceiling into the dead end of a hallway. Intel'd made them aware that there would be a number of security panels dotting the floorplan and they found one a few feet away, which Garrus immediately began hacking.
Shepard flicked a badge affixed to her armor with a concerned expression before whispering, "Think these'll work?" They'd been told that recording cameras would automatically erase footage within a 3 meter area of anyone wearing one.
"For the worst of reasons," he breathed, focused on his work. "Can't have dignitaries monitored for overseeing their dirty work, can we?"
Her jaw clenched in protest but she said, "Should buy us a few minutes, at least." She slid her back against the wall and kept watch over the hallways instead, waiting for his direction.
"Nothing about Valern here, I'm afraid, but it looks like the highest security cells are in the northeast corner, to our right," Garrus said finally.
"Okay," Shepard breathed with a narrowing of her eyes. "Let's do this."
They spent a good five minutes peering into one small unidirectional window after another, wondering at the fate that led these prisoners here before having to duck down a side passage to avoid their first patrol; three armed, Salarian professionals with steely eyes who spoke in low voices as they passed. The place was a labyrinth, but they kept following left turns with right turns to stay moving in the same general direction. Each desperate but unrecognizable face they saw in those cells produced a short shake of one another's heads, so they could continue their task quietly and efficiently.
The third patrol they found themselves ducking had the bad taste to keep making the same turns they did. Shepard couldn't tell if they were following them on purpose or not, but when the last turn came to another dead end, they plastered their backs against the near wall. The patrol's steps audibly approached until she and Garrus finally lifted their rifles and prepared to engage.
As she was counting down their attack on three fingers, they heard the patrol suddenly stop.
"Sector two reporting," they heard a male Salarian voice say, followed by, "Affirmative. Reinforcing." Then the steps began moving rapidly away.
Garrus grinned, then whispered, "Guess our friends dropped the distraction in the lobby."
Rentola, along with his team, was to erroneously deliver a prisoner to this facility, which was supposed to pull some of the guard units to the front while paperwork was checked. It had been well timed.
"Good," Shepard agreed, dropping her muzzle floorward and sighing. The solid reasoning she'd given Rentola about the casualties on Virmire was hard won, her mind worrying at the memory long and often after they left the garden world. It was one of many internal debates she'd had about the choices she'd been forced to make during the war. "Don't really wanna hurt these guys if we don't have to," she admitted.
They resumed their search and after a couple minutes Shepard noticed that the construction materials surrounding them appeared to be different than in previous corridors. She put a gloved hand to the stainless appearance of it and paused, looking to her friend in silent regard. Garrus nodded in understanding. This whole section of the building was new and the rooms they peered into were larger as well. They had to be getting close.
Turning a corner to the right, they entered a larger, wider hallway that appeared to open into an even larger space at the end, about 15 meters away. Unlike the rest of the building, there were no side passages here; just a long, exposed jaunt where they'd be unable to hide if seen. This is it, her bones tingled in the words of ancient instinct. Her fingertip caressed the trigger of her rifle, and they both moved forward, ears tuned for the slightest sound.
Their feet covered the passageway without incident and they paused to carefully peer around the corners, only moving into the room once it was clear. The floor, walls and ceiling in this room were curved, making the room spherelike. The only exit was a door to their left that had an access panel just to its right. Shepard put her back to the interior wall so she could peek back down the hallway from where they'd come while Garrus investigated the door.
"It's locked," she heard him say behind her. "I'll have to bypass."
"Do it," she said tersely. The hallway was still empty, and she glanced around the room trying to make heads or tails out of the layout. There were concentric rings evenly spaced on all the surfaces, the central rings standing off from the center ever so slightly. She took a glance at the hallway again before sliding over to one and running her gloved fingers over the edges.
Something about this wasn't sitting well with her. She turned to her friend and asked, "ETA?"
"Still working," he said tensely, the panel lighting up with various colors as it fought his attempts to access it.
She turned to move back to the hallway and noticed that a metal door was sliding down over the opening. It'd covered a third of the doorway but was moving smoothly. She could make it if she dove...and all her muscles tightened to send her through the narrowing gap...but she realized as she was taking that gathering step that she couldn't possibly get Garrus out in time. She called out his name, but froze where she was as the door slid shut, left fist clenching at missed opportunity.
"What?" he said, turning to her, his panel solid red. "Uh...that's not good," he added at the sight of the sealed passage, then turned back quickly to re-engage with the security system.
Shepard spun in place, feeling trapped and looking for another way out, but found nothing. Her mind ran frantically, looking for something, anything, she could do; and noticed the pulsing lure of the groupthink in the corner of her mind. That could only happen if a member of the Convergence was nearby. Valern! She thought ecstatically, and embraced the groupthink for the first time in over five years to speak to him, diving into the thoughts presented there boorishly, brazenly. She'd apologize to him after, she promised herself, but right now she had to see if he knew anything about how to escape this room!
The thoughts and experiences she began pulling into herself were disjointed and alien, much like any other separate being she'd performed this process with; but seconds in...it dawned on her that these thoughts, these memories, were nothing like what she had seen from Valern in the past.
This wasn't him .
The shock was like a splash of ice-water over her head and she began recovering...began learning who this new person was, but they were aware of her now...and they were angry.
"Christ," she gasped out loud, "It's not Valern...Garrus! It's…"
It didn't make sense.
Garrus was running the latest scripts and the latest code. What he didn't know about hacking he'd mimicked from Tali, taking advantage of all the knowledge she possessed whenever he asked. It was so easy for her; always had been. She was born into it, after all.
The adversary he faced now defended and countered at a cadence he'd never seen before, even in staged games against the love of his life. He found himself on the defensive in seconds, the devices he was using as weaponry only scarcely prevented from turning on him, instead. He'd kept the alarms from triggering, barely, but when he saw the door closing he knew he'd finally been beaten.
He returned to the panel to try and open the door...hell either door at this point; but recognized a sequence that looked frighteningly like a countdown. When it reached 2 seconds and he was helpless to stop it, he heard Shepard shouting something behind him and spun, racing to tackle her with his larger size and bring her to the floor beneath him.
Then the world went white with an explosion. He cursed himself for a fool a hundred times, thinking about Tali and the kids and how much he loved them and spirits, who was going to take care of them now while his ear holes were buffeted by a ringing sound that rose in pitch until he couldn't hear any more and he smelled smoke all around and waited for the pain he knew would soon be coming...and...
Spirits...how was he still alive?
Garrus cracked open an eyelid and saw the metal walls around them just as they had been and not blackened or burned as they should be. A flash of sparks hit his face, forcing his eyes closed again, and he batted the tactical eye gear off his head to land on the floor, where it lay smoldering. Some kind of electromagnetic pulse, he figured. Had to be. His hands pushed against the floor around Shepard's form and he lifted himself to look at her.
"Shepard? You okay?" He was relieved to hear her groan, but she didn't speak or look up at him from where she was awkwardly curled. Her eyelids fluttered and her hands twitched and shook like she had some kind of palsey instead. It occurred to him that she had a lot of computerized parts inside her body...and some or all of them were probably fried. "Shit," he swore as he stood, then lifted his weapon to see its displays smoking as well.
Both doors slid open at that point and a lot of angry Salarians swarmed them. He dropped his favorite rifle and kept his hands empty and raised. "Well, hello fellas," he said calmly and reasonably. "Nice trap you got here."
His voice sounded muffled in his ears as they rang and he couldn't hear the barked orders sent his way. Truth be told he probably wouldn't have understood them if he had since the translator was likely as dead as everything else electronic on him, but he had a pretty good idea what they wanted him to do and did his best to be non-threatening while they took him into custody. Shepard, they cuffed and drug by her arms behind him, deeper into the complex; now ironically the last place he wanted to go.
He got to see the inside of one of those big cells they'd been passing and was secured to a chair. They didn't bring Shepard in, and he broke his companionable silence to shout, "Hey she's gonna need medical attention!" before they shut the door. Probably served her pretty well that she was unconscious, as his next few hours weren't pleasant at all.
Shepard had been knocked to the ground hard with Garrus' shout of warning and was too preoccupied in the share to resist, only managing to exit just before the blast hit. From that point on she was at war with her own body with nothing responding as it should. Every breath, every sound, every movement seemed to stop and start like a dying engine and the harder she fought to control them the worse it became, until she forced herself to relax. She could momentarily feel things like the weight lifted from her before she became numb, could hear voices around her before becoming deaf again. She vaguely knew she was being pulled somewhere and could only hope that it was Garrus, as her vision was alternatively bright and hazy. Relax , she reminded herself again, needing every ounce of air she could pull through stuttering lungs to think clearly.
She felt herself being lifted to a flat surface, where she was left for some time. She wasn't in pain from what she could tell, and the only hint to her condition was the similarities she recalled from the Citadel that last fateful day of the war; the day when the body that had served her so well simply…stopped. Whatever happened in that metal room had nearly done the same thing, had targeted the clockworks that made her tick. It couldn't have been the same thing that destroyed the Reapers, no matter how deeply her fear suggested otherwise. It had to have been some sort of EMP; one so strong that it could penetrate the protection of shields and armor to get at her core.
But she was still alive. The microscopic machines thrumming through her veins were still alive too, or she wouldn't be functioning at all. They just needed time to fix themselves so they could fix her. Three years of Asari therapy gave her a mental shield against the panic hitting her in waves, just now, and she retreated to a safe place in her memories; the cabin she and Liara had shared in the woods, huddled close to one another under the blankets. Her thoughts drifted into dreams as a warm lethargy began to settle in. Had to...keep...breathing.
"Report," came a gravelly voice over the intercom. The Salarian doctor hovering over the intruder on the table hummed before answering.
"No response to stimuli," he said flatly. "Occasional seizures. Her life signs are fading, Dalatress, but she is still alive. Shall I terminate?"
"No. Bring her to me."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed to slivers before saying, "That's not a good idea for many reasons, the least of which is security. You shouldn't be getting worked up right now."
"I don't care, do it," came the angry reply.
"Dalatress," he pressed, "Why would you put your health at risk for this...interloper?"
A growl of impatience came through, followed by the words, "Because I want to watch her die with my own eyes, Doctor. If I also happen to die, it will be with a smile on my face. Now stop arguing with me and bring her, before I miss it!"
"As you wish," he relented doubtfully before contacting security to protect the Dalatress in spite of herself.
Half an hour later his ears were still being assaulted with complaints, but the prisoner had been relocated to the Dalatress' quarters, properly secured, and thankfully for the head on his shoulders, she was still clinging to life. He checked on his ruler's vitals dutifully while she gazed up at the slackly hanging human woman with a look akin to lust, if it weren't so intertwined with vitriol.
She ordered everyone out of the room, but he shook his head stubbornly. "If you're going to insist on this course of action, I'm staying here," he said firmly.
She grunted, aged lips curling as she slung a hand at him, but didn't force him out. "If you're going to stay, you can try and be useful," she croaked. "Take that armor off her."
He nodded and went to work, though it took time for him to figure out the clasps. With her arms fastened above her on the wall, a shock of red hair hung limply over her pale, bluish face. She didn't stir as the armor came off, piece by piece.
"I always knew you'd come," the Dalatress said in a low voice to her prisoner. "Surprised it took you this long, but I knew..." The frail woman nudged her mobile chair forward, leaning back to rest her bones while considering her. "I'm glad," she whispered fiercely, "Glad I'll be able to watch you slip into eternity before I join you."
The last piece fell to the floor and the Doctor looked up at his doomed patient with a critical eye. She did indeed look close to passing, her cheeks sunken and eye sockets rimmed with dark hollows. Her underclothing lay limply against her skin, the opening at her neck pulled away from her throat with the chestpiece gone. There were some interesting marks there, he noticed, and he leaned in to pluck the shirt away for a better look.
The skin looked widely blistered, as if burned; the skin split in lines like webs travelling up her chest and around her throat. The skin breaks weren't weeping as he would have expected from traumatic burns, however, and he couldn't resist reaching in with deft fingers to pull at one of the lacerations. The bluish tint of her skin that he thought representative of the fact there was little to no oxygen left in her blood turned a deeper color under the fine layer of skin he pulled away. This wasn't the color of any hypoxia he knew of, but a metallic aqua he'd never seen outside a Turian's scales.
The Doctor's eyes, refined over millennia to sense the slightest predatory movement, flickered upward instinctively, but he was relieved to see she wasn't regaining consciousness. As he pondered what he might have seen he saw it again, the fine splits he was examining moving and expanding visibly up her throat and jaw like wire-thin fingers. He jumped back, startled, but curiosity brought him closer once again.
"What is it?" The Dalatress asked irritably.
He paused, thinking about how to put the phenomenon into words before he began. "She appears to be having...some sort of reaction. To what, I'm not sure."
"Oh," the old woman crooned before cackling. "Tell me it's painful."
"Likely," he admitted with a sage nod. "If she were conscious, that is."
"Then wake her up."
He spun to look at the female he'd followed without question his entire lifespan. "Are you serious?"
The Dalatress looked at him as if he'd turned an odd shape before sharpening her tone. "Are you questioning me?"
"No, I...It's just…" He blustered, looking between them both and wondering what could have produced such hatred.
"Is she any danger to me at all?" she asked sharply. When he shook his head, she followed up with, "Then what are you waiting for?"
"Yes. Yes of course, Dalatress," he stammered before heading to the exit for the supplies he'd need. The last thing he ever wanted to see was his revered matriarch looking at him the way she was looking at her .
The Doctor left to get whatever he needed to wake the human up, leaving them alone together. She couldn't take her eyes off Shepard, the sheer joy of the sight of her, dying, bringing a life to her limbs she hadn't felt in years. There was so much she wanted to say that she couldn't put the words together properly.
"Why couldn't you have stayed dead?" she said, ending in a shout, hands clasped in wrinkled fists. So much damage done in so short a time. She thought her life's goal would be to lead her people to glorious new heights but instead all her energy had been spent holding the pieces together. Her dreams must be left to the next generation to fulfill, and the knowledge left a bitter taste in her mouth.
The Spectre's body tightened and twisted in her bonds, and she could see the reaction the Doctor mentioned moving up and over her jawline and onto her face before her body relaxed against the wall again.
"It's a shame you will never fully grasp the mistake you made with the Krogan, though," she said with a heavy voice.
When the Doctor returned, she drew her head back and nodded for him to proceed, moving her chair backwards enough to give him room to operate.
"I'm not sure how she will react to the stimulant, Dalatress," he said matter of factly before lifting an injector from a case. "She may be too far gone."
"Yes, yes," She nodded impatiently and kept her eyes focused on Shepard's face, ready to savor any and every expression the procedure might bring.
She jerked a moment after the injection was given and began to shiver, then groan, her head rolling weakly from where it hung against her chest. The blueish lines crept up again, quickly this time, and disappeared into her hairline before her chin began to finally rise.
The effect on her appearance was dreadful. She looked every bit like a corpse and as her eyes opened it only grew worse, the orbs coated in a crimson liquid quickly being overtaken with a darker blue hue, a mixture of the two weeping down along the side of her nose in a deep purple. Even she found herself cringing at the thought of what that must feel like, though she knew next to nothing about human mortality.
Though it appeared to take a great level of effort to fix her gaze, those darkening eyes beneath a heavy brow still found their mark; and strangely enough her voice was calm and clear when she said, "Linron. I should have known."