The controller's leftmost holopad warmed to life as it wavered for a minute before its orange, green, and blue lines weaved and organized themselves into visual data. He reached for a pair of force-feedback gloves that lay on the surface of the console and slipped them over his hands, pulling them at the bottom to make sure they were tight. Haptic interfaces in this era had become so common that most individuals underwent cybernetic enhancement surgery to have the accelerometers implanted in their fingertips, but he didn't bother. To him, any technology would eventually be rendered obsolete.
"Starting up systems. All suit functions undergoing diagnostics. Normandy moving to an optimal position for tracking. T-minus ten seconds. Stand-by."
The controller expanded the hologram of the planet and its orbiting starship until it could be easily manipulated by the movements of his hands. The wire mesh holographic model of the ship slowly matched up with its intended location as it overlapped a dotted outline. A small blue dot rose from the ground elevation to meet up with the orbiting orange one.
"Bird has returned to the coop. Normandy is in position. Bringing sensors online. Stand-by."
Sensors filled the expanded landscape with layers upon layers of data, each layer gathered from a different lens. He twisted his wrist and cycled through the lens' till a soldier's image burned red-hot beneath a canopy of cool foliage. He grabbed the shimmering light with his gloved hands and pulled his hands apart until the image expanded enough to outline a distinctly human figure. Tapping the moving form, a real-time streaming connection was established and authenticated; the soldier's suit passed data to a feed directly to his base of operations. He grasped the data thread and pulled it to its own dedicated holopad. Live biometric stats gathered from the suit expanded to fill its new home from the flow of information. Turning back to the leftmost holo, he expanded and assessed the immediate environment, twisting his arms this way and that, peeling back layers of sensor data from every possible angle. The primary scans revealed no foreign presence or notable anomalies.
"Green lights across the board. Sensors online. Stealth engaged. Shields at full capacity. Weapons ready. All suit functions tested and transmitting. Mission ready."
He turned back to the planet model and twisted it with his fingers, cycling with the sensor data. Clouds covered most of its atmosphere. Cold, overcast, and heavy liquid precipitation.
"So," he asked, unable to keep himself from teasing her despite the seriousness of the mission. "How's the weather down there?"
"Really?" The voice on the other end replied, sounding annoyed. "Are you trying to rub it in?"
Arius grinned. "Just checking. I want to make sure the Normandy's scanners are working properly."
"Sure. To think I was almost impressed with the way you were handling this." Shepard radioed with a sigh.
A blip appeared in his monitor, interrupting their banter. EDI had run a scan of the complex to place an entrance and came up with a hit. "EDI found an entrance to the complex on the side closest to you. One hundred meters northeast of your position. Setting up a way-point now. Do you see it on your HUD?"
Nearing the edge of the dense bush, a marker popped into existence in her helmet, hovering in place. "Crystal clear."
"Good. Starting now, I'll keep comm chatter to a minimum. You'll be entering the clearing soon."
Arius muted his mic and watched a holo track Shepard's movement. Stepping out into the clearing, she tactically looked around and slowly made her way to the entrance.
When she breached the door, she found the complex's interior an utter ruin. Shepard's combat boots crunched over cracked rock and broken tiles wherever she stepped. Leaks of all manners stemmed from old and rusted pipes that extended themselves on every wall. Small lights flickered and barely held onto power. Massive gaping holes in the floor resulted when the damaged sandwich of metal and stone gave in to the pull of gravity and collapsed on one another. If she didn't know better, she would have thought this place had been abandoned fifty years ago. Maybe that was the plan, she thought, to make it look uninhabited. In front of her loomed one such hole. She could see that a metal grating could be extended from under the floor, bridging the gap. She spotted a passageway that led below.
"One heat signature detected within twenty meters one level below you." Arius notified her. "It's alone, so I'm predicting it's an animal that has taken up residence here. A batarian would not live in this hole alone."
When she rounded the corner, a beast lunged toward her. Three shots from her pistol fixed that problem. "Varren," she declared, but she noticed it was plump and well-fed, not like the malnourished scavengers she encountered on the Prothean ruins on Feros; This was someone's pet. Peering over the broken edge to the next floor below, she discovered its bountiful food: half-chewed human corpses in a dark pool of blood. The sight was gruesome, but luckily none proved to have any semblance to the Doctor. Her blood ran hot. "The batarians must send their prisoners down here to die. I have to find Doctor Kenson before she ends up as food." She hurriedly found the switch to the bridge and activated it.
.
Shepard moved out from the subterranean layer to somewhere higher in the building, away from the dense rock, and as a result, Arius' power of sight had increased seven-fold. EDI had secured enough data to generate a three-dimensional structure layout that extended above the surface. He placed one hand on the surface of the holopad and raised it, popping out the floors of the building into the air. He twisted the structure, bringing one particular floor closer. "Multiple batarian contacts in the building, all on the floors above you... And from the way they're moving, two more varren on your floor. The infrastructure is also shot on this level. Be careful; I can see run-away emissions and unchecked power outputs. You may need to close a few valves and cut a few relays to traverse safely."
"This place is run down... even for a prison," was her response, followed by the sound of her gun discharging into another hungry varren.
Arius tapped the building's critical systems. The lines were so run down and uninsulated that he could trace their path around the building. This sort of pattern she was encountering suggested this was planned. He guessed the key points of the breakdowns existed to deter or maim someone who wanted to gain further access. When he watched her approach their first locked door, he observed that the way was obstructed by broken discharging beams of power.
"Do you hear that?" she asked him suddenly, through the connection.
He adjusted the controls of the suits feed on his console to amplify the audio signal. Voices could be heard.
"Get the human into questioning." said a voice that was distinctly batarian.
"Get your hands off me!" followed immediately. Sounded human, female. It was the doctor.
"Sounds like Kenson is still alive." Impatient but cautious, Shepard picked up a strip of metal grating from the floor and passed it through the discharging power lines to test how serious it was. It glowed red-hot and melted in her hands. Her suit would not fare much better.
"Shit," she blurted. "I gotta get a move on and don't have much time. What's the shortest way?"
"Not through those lines," he remarked. "You'll need to find a way around or find a relay to cut. There's a passage behind you that leads around and up. I'll have it marked. It's your best bet."
He traced a line around the corridors and eventually reached a door on the level above that led to an outer courtyard. The systems on that level ran cleanly, possessing a heated air exchange system, stable power, and multiple contacts. It was the actual entrance to the prison. While he sent the updated way-point to Shepard's suit, an alert on her suit's temperature gauge blinked amber on his holopad. Concerned, he opened the channel again.
"Your suit just registered a jump in temperature. Please tell me you didn't do what I thought you did."
"I'm not stupid. Blasted valve started spewing burning gas everywhere when I switched the line…" he heard her fume. "But nothing I can't handle. I take it you found another entrance to the prison?"
"Yes. Follow the way-point I just set up. It's a bit of a way off, but it's the only way I can find through."
"Anything is better than those lasers," she replied, heading into the dark corridor. After turning corner after corner, Shepard made her way deeper into the maze. Every wall looked the same, and every corner revealed another just like it. The distance-remaining gauge on her route was the only thing that proved she wasn't going around in circles.
"Voices again." Shepard noticed, "Listen."
"They wanted to slam an asteroid into the mass relay." a voice said.
"Can they even do that?" another questioned.
"What difference does it make? We caught 'em." Both sounded batarian.
He saw Shepard creep out of the building and into the courtyard from his screen. She was within a dozen feet of a pair of batarians.
"They've still got her down in the prison."
"I'd just kill her. Interrogating a human's a waste of time."
Too busy to catch up on the freshest batarian gossip, Shepard slipped between the barriers, cut a relay and disappeared into the pre-fab building at the center of the courtyard. She slicked around the passages, silent and hidden, appearing on the other side. Climbing over a container, she found the next door and continued searching. More voices. She paused.
"No way it would have worked. Relays can't be damaged, much less destroyed."
"Those humans will do anything to destroy us, I swear."
Arius glanced at the bio-stats. At the last comment, Shepard's had risen slightly.
"We have to make this one an example to the others. We can't respond kindly to terrorists."
Shepard's heart pounded loudly on his console, but her form remained still on his monitor. He performed a scan. The room she passed was filled by two batarians who were occupying themselves with looking out from the window that spanned one of the walls while they spoke. Her form moved right past.
.
"There's a shuttle incoming. Clear the hangar bay." yelled a loudspeaker. On one side of a crate, a batarian moved past. On the other, Shepard paused.
"What they're saying," she asked Arius, "about the relay: can you actually destroy one? I thought those things were indestructible; they've been known to shrug off supernovae."
"I don't recall it ever occurring in my time, but it may be possible - the material of relays are locked at the subatomic level, but maybe with a large enough impact with an object of enough mass, you could make the eezo contained within go critical."
"Hypothetically, if we threw a big enough rock at it, how big of an explosion are we talking about?"
"Hmm. A secondary relay like this one? Probably big enough to wipe out the local system."
"An entire system? Why hasn't someone used it as a weapon yet?"
He laughed humorlessly. "I don't think it's something anyone wants to gamble on. Relays are the only means of long-distance space travel - they're too vital to risk. Even now that we have the Prothean schematics for the Conduit, the resources required to replicate it at a scale to transmit more than a small shuttle are immense."
Shepard waited till the batarian passed, and she continued down toward the loading docks.
"I heard an artifact was found in that asteroid belt. Think the humans got it?"
"If they did, they'd have swarmed it and put flags all over it."
When she tried for the door in her way, it was, of course, locked. "Which way now?"
Arius dissected the building. Passing his hand through horizontally, he cut through the schematics and revealed a cross-section. EDI's processing power really came in handy. "Found a way, but you're not going to like this," he said. "Down."
"Down?" she repeated.
"Down. You've played the crane game before, right?"
"The crane game?" Confused, Shepard looked around. " You mean those arcade games where you use the claw to get a prize…" Shepard looked across at the dock. Items were stacked upon one another, the waypoint disappearing into the floor under a stack of containers.
"Yep, that one," he said, looking through her suit's visual feed. "High-stakes version."
.
"I found a security log," Shepard notified him, relaying back a recorded log she recovered from a desk.
"Our comm buoy intercepts paid off. We picked up a message to the Alliance coming from somewhere in the asteroid belt. We listened to the feed until we discovered an operation run by a human named Kenson – smuggling engine parts and guidance systems into the system from Omega. We intercepted Kenson's vessel and took her and her people into custody. The interrogation had produced nothing but frenzied rambling so far."
"Is there anything else?" he asked.
"No, " Shepard said, giving it a look over. "It stops there. I'll continue to keep an eye out, but the priority is the doctor. She'll be able to tell us what's going on."
"This one's apparently the mastermind."
"If she doesn't talk, kill her."
"You're close, Shepard. Last room at the end of the hall."
When she entered the long-sought-after room, she was greeted with the sight of Doctor Amanda Kenson being held in a prison restraint with a suited batarian powering up an interrogation device and lining it up with the doctor's head. She tapped the batarian's shoulder.
"Huh?"
When the batarian turned around to face her, Shepard gave it her best right hook, spinning and knocking it out cold. The body collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
Bewildered, the doctor cried out. "Who are you!? What are you doing!?"
"Doctor Kenson? I'm Commander Shepard. I'm here to get you out."
.
A prison model floated in front of him, a collection of cell blocks stacked on top of one another and arranged all around like its own proper city. The glowing wire mesh models from where he worked cast no light in the dark room that he currently sat, leaving the lines of light blazing like lasers in a vacuum. When performing this sort of work, he preferred the dark. His eyes saw the lines of data with perfect clarity, no distraction. He watched Shepard's marker encounter two signatures in one room on the model. One of them - identified as a batarian - fell to the floor unconscious. The other signature - belonging to Doctor Amanda Kenson - did not move. She was most likely restrained at the moment. While waiting for Shepard's confirmation of the doctor's status, a pulsating red circle appeared where the doctor's hold chamber was located. It then spread through corridor after corridor like a virus, till the entire building was infected with the pulsating red dots. The nature of the symbols unknown to him, he tapped out a few commands to discover the purpose of the signal. It was the alarm. When the doctor freed herself, the room had automatically alerted the rest of the prison that an escaped convict was on the loose. It was foolish to hope they could have run without incident.
"Status of contact?" he sent through the channel.
"Still alive and kicking, if that's what you're asking," reported Shepard.
"Good. We have a problem," he informed her. "Every alarm in the building just got set off when Kenson broke the restraint."
"Damn," Shepard joked, "And here I thought we were going to walk right out the front door." Her marker on his screen inched closer to the doorway. "How long do we have till they converge on our position?", she asked him, her hands riveted on her weapon.
"Ten seconds. I traced a way back to the docks, but you can't go back the way you came. Go down and out through the cell blocks. There is a security console you can override along the way."
"Understood."
Shepard's comm clicked closed.
Arius sat forward, fingers joined, intently looking at the streaming data. He watched Shepard meet the approaching forces while also keeping an eye on her stats. He didn't really need to; she had a waypoint for escape, and she was more than capable of handling herself even when outnumbered. He was interested in her approach to the enemy, particularly this enemy. Batarians had, on several occasions, taken from her more than most people had to begin with. The colony names of Mindoir and Elysium were known throughout the galaxy as two of the most distinctive examples of large-scale batarian brutality towards humans, and Shepard had been present at not one but both of those harrowing events.
The Rape of Mindoir had occurred while she lived in the colony, still in her teens. The largest before-seen force of batarian slavers had raided the farming colony, slaughtering most colonists. Those not fortunate enough to die immediately were subjected to horrific cranial implants that the batarians used to control them. The atrocities inflicted on the colonists were so appalling that many of the Alliance troops dispatched to drive the batarian's out became afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder. Shepard's friends and family had all been killed during the raid.
The second event, the Skyllian Blitz on the colony world of Elysium, had occurred when Shepard had been on shore leave there. A huge band of pirates, slavers, and batarian warlords, partly funded by batarian financiers, launched an attack to destroy the colony outright. Shepard had rallied the colonists against the invaders, and when enemy forces broke through the colony's defences, Shepard single-handedly held them off and sealed the breach. She lost friends that day, was awarded the Star of Terra for her selfless actions, and all Systems Alliance personnel knew her by name as a true hero.
Arius knew humans as well as he knew himself, and he knew that they seldom forgot or forgave their aggressors - especially ones that threatened the collective. After the First Contact War, human attitudes toward the turians could be sour at the worst of times, and the batarians posed a far more vindictive and personal threat. The fallout of the Skyllian Blitz led to a major operation on Torfan two years later to destroy batarian pirate bases. The reports of retaliatory ruthlessness inflicted by involved Alliance personnel were well known.
Shepard's past had been profoundly marred by batarians, and he saw the number of them she would need to fight through now. He had reasonably expected carnage from her, perhaps even a measure of cruelty. He had imagined that while she always put up an excellent front, the toxic pull of retribution still tugged within her, and he would not have judged her for any oversteps in the slightest. But that is not what happened.
Shepard had on her person an ammo upgrade popular among pirates, criminals, and mercenaries: chemical rounds coated with a highly toxic compound. She didn't use it. She had a combat blade affixed to her boot she could have used at any time for more personal attacks. She didn't unsheath it once. He had in missions prior witnessed her briefly dip into moments of retributive justice, but this was nothing like it. Her stats were running hotter than usual, even considering the active fighting, but there was no moment when she used an ounce more force than required. While he watched, she efficiently cleared the compound, advanced to the hangar and stole a shuttle. Before she lifted off and lost contact with him, she gave him a green signal to signify that she and Kenson were safe.
Arius signalled to Joker to follow the shuttle, then leaned back in his chair, pensive. He thought that perhaps he had missed something, but the replay in his mind confirmed that he hadn't. Her actions had all been above board, and he was looking for something that simply wasn't there. He had misjudged her, and he was gratified that he had been proven flagrantly wrong.
.
Shepard knocked on the shuttle door to draw the doctor's attention, who was fiddling with the pilot controls. A middle-aged grey-haired woman who could still hold her own, Dr. Amanda Kenson was a human scientist from the University of Arcturus who became notable when she and her team claimed to have discovered that the construction of the mass relays pre-dated the existence of the Protheans.
"Engaging autopilot." Kenson reported, "We should be well out of range before they get their security measures unscrambled."
"Do you think they'll come after you?"
"I'm not taking any chances. Batarians don't take kindly to humans who plan to destroy their mass relays.
"So the charges against you are true," Shepard affirmed.
"Well, to be fair, that's about half the story." Kenson explained, "My people and I were here investigating rumours of Reaper technology out in the fringes of this system."
"I guess you found something."
"We found proof that the Reapers will be arriving in this system. They'll use its mass relay to travel throughout the galaxy when they get here. We call it the 'Alpha Relay'. From here, the Reapers can invade anywhere in the galaxy."
"So you found a backdoor in the relay network… and you decided to destroy it," Shepard said, connecting the dots.
"Exactly. Doing that would stop the Reaper's invasion. Even at FTL speeds, it'll be months or years before they got to the next relay."
Shepard hadn't expected an invasion so soon, especially when the Reaper's weren't yet considered a real threat by the galactic governing body, but this plan would buy them time. She looked out of the main shuttle window to the mass relay that spun perpetually in the distance, its eerie blue light casting illumination on the interior of the shuttle.
"We came up with what we just called 'The Project'," said the doctor, continuing. "A plan to launch a nearby asteroid into the relay and destroy it before the Reapers could arrive. Of course, the resulting explosion would probably wipe out the system."
Shepard's eyebrows narrowed. "Are you sure that will work? We've known mass relays to be indestructible."
"I've heard that, too. But I think it's more that nobody's willing to find out what happens when one is destroyed. And, well... we planned to slam a small planet into the thing at very high speed. By our calculations, that's more than enough."
"Is the project still operational?"
"I.." the doctor said, thinking to herself, "I imagine it is. We were one button-press away from launch when the batarians arrested me."
"And how did you plan to launch an asteroid into a mass relay?"
"Moving an asteroid just requires thrust and guidance, which are readily available in Omega's salvage yards. Get the right amount of power and a good VI to drive it, and you can pretty much just point and shoot."
"Would destroying the relay really destroy the entire system?"
"Mass relays are the most powerful mass-effect engines in the known galaxy. The energy released from a relay's destruction would probably resemble a supernova. This is a remote system, but just over three hundred thousand batarians live in the colony where they held us. The explosion would undoubtedly kill them all."
The words froze Shepard on her spot, and she shook her head, still not able to add the facts up. "I still don't see how you learned about this supposed invasion. What tipped you off?"
"The evidence came from what we call Object Rho, a Reaper artifact we discovered among the asteroids near the relay itself. When we get back to Arcturus Station, I'll explain everything and provide copies of all our notes on the artifact."
The very mention of Reaper artifact gave her pause, but Shepard nodded. "One question, how exactly does a Reaper artifact give you proof of an impending invasion?"
"It showed me visions of the Reaper's arrival... much like your Prothean beacon, I imagine. The Reapers are coming, Commander. That much I know for certain."
Close proximity to anything Reaper usually ended in losing your mind, Shepard thought to herself. "If you're working near a Reaper artifact, how have you avoided indoctrination?"
"We've been very careful. We know what we're dealing with."
"Respectfully, I don't think you do. I've seen it bend a powerful asari matriarch and one of the galaxy's most successful Spectres, even while they actively knew it was affecting them."
"You're not speaking to a child, Shepard. I saw what Sovereign did at the Citadel. Trust me – I know what's at stake."
"Fine. How did this even start in the first place? What is a Reaper artifact doing in an asteroid?"
"We don't know, or even what its purpose is. Some things are just too old or large to comprehend. Even a Reaper thousands of years dead contains power. Their artifacts are worthy of study, regardless of their purpose."
Shepard leaned forward in thought and shook her head. "The stakes are too high. If you were willing to destroy a whole system over this, I want to see your proof."
"I guess I can't argue with that. Give me a moment." They were approaching the base, and the doctor tried her comm. "Kenson to Project Base," she said out loud.
"Good to hear your voice, Doctor. You coming home?"
"Affirmative. And I've got Commander Shepard with me."
"Shepard? Really?"
"Tidy up the lab. The Commander needs to confirm the artifact."
"Right. I'll get everything set up for your arrival. Project Base out."
"All set," She reported. "Just sit back and relax. We'll be there in no time."
.
A model of a shuttle floated weightlessly in front of him, slowing as it approached a large asteroid. The connection was reestablished to Shepard's suit, and her stats returned online.
"Here we are," he heard a voice through Shepard's comm announce. "Welcome to Project Base."
Arius looked over the Normandy's position. The base lay mostly obstructed by the rock of the asteroid, so the connection wasn't going to be the strongest from their present position. EDI crunched some data and got the optimal distance and coordinates for their over-watch. Joker moved the ship silently into place.
"What's this?" He heard Shepard ask, her helmet looking up.
"That's our countdown to Arrival." The doctor answered her. "When it gets to zero.. the Reapers will have come."
Arius took a still from her suit's feed by dragging three fingers from the live video to a new screen. Eight digits counted down. "I must be reading it wrong," he audibly voiced to himself, not believing what he was seeing.
"Just under a day. Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?" the doctor said, tilting her head on his screen.
"Under a day?" he voiced over to Shepard. "Surely that's not correct."
Shepard wasn't convinced, either. "How do you know that's an accurate countdown?" she asked the researcher.
"It is." assured the doctor, "The artifact has been giving off pulses at definite intervals since we found it. The intervals have been decreasing at a steady rate. The artifact is reacting to the Reaper's proximity. In just over eighteen hours, the pulses will become constant, and the Reapers will be here."
"You're saying the Reapers could be at Earth today?! There's no time to waste."
"Then let's show you that proof," Kenson directed, motioning to the doorway. "That door exits the hangar. The artifact is in our central lab area."
He watched the two of them enter the base. He began running scans.
.
Shepard followed the doctor through the walls of the pre-fab base. "So, what would it take to get the Project back up and running?"
Kenson did not stop to talk. "Everything was in place when we were arrested. It wasn't a question of 'could we' but 'should we'."
The hairs on Shepard's neck stood on end, at once sensing that everything was not as it seemed. The two of them passed dozens of guards and personnel, all persons utterly oblivious to the fact that the doctor was alive and back. They got no side glance, no eye contact, no interaction whatsoever.
"What alternatives do we have?" Shepard asked, eyes darting around. Not a single person had yet to acknowledge their presence.
"The Reapers will reach this system regardless." The doctor explained, unaware. "But the Alpha Relay is their shortcut to the rest of the galaxy. If you want to keep the Reapers at bay, this relay must be destroyed."
"Then we have to get the Project running again. It's probably the only chance we have."
The two of them stood in front of the locked door of the lab. "One sec, let me get the door." said the doctor apologetically, tapping an access code onto her omni-tool.
The doors slid open.
.
On Arius' holopad, the complete scan of the base came online. Without even magnifying the image or delving deeper into the model, he saw something that made his eyes go wide. In the bowels of the base, a massive structure sat, blazing white on the element zero scanners, pulsing with waves of energy. EDI's hologram sprung to life at the same time it took his brain to register what he was looking at.
"I have recognized the artifact's energy signature," the AI said, "It is of Reaper origin."
Dr. Amanda Kenson's voice in the darkness of his room continued speaking. "Commander Shepard, I give you Object Rho."
Arius' eyes zoomed to the feed. Something he had not seen in thousands of years, both eerily beautiful and highly deadly, sat in front of Shepard. It was a massive, two-story-tall abstract flower. Made of dark blue metal, its long petals reached up and out, glowing. At its core was a maelstrom of element zero… and something else.
"You have the Reaper artifact just sitting here... out in the open?!"
The doctor did not respond. Instead, she had her back turned, arms crossed in front of her. "When we found it, it showed me a vision of the Reapers' arrival," she said, oblivious to the Commander's outburst.
She shook her head. "Kenson, this is not good."
"Give it a moment, Shepard. It'll give you the proof you need."
Arius sputtered into the microphone. "Shepard, you need to leave the area immediately. Object Rho is a Reaper Icon!"
While he urged Shepard not to step one foot closer to the cursed artifact, a swirling blue blast of energy sourced from the object overcame her, bringing the helmet feed to the floor. An alert on his console blinked: her brain's EEG scan showed signs of abnormal brain waves. Such patterns existed when organic minds interfaced with the Prothean beacons and saw the vision of their destruction. When Shepard looked back up toward the doctor, she looked down the barrel of a pistol.
"I can't let you start the Project, Shepard. I can't let you stop the arrival."
The doctor had already been indoctrinated, he realized. Did the restored proximity reinstate the Reaper's hold on the doctor's mind? Or had this entire mission been a trap set precisely for Shepard from the start? He didn't have the time to think about it. Every life form on his scanners re-animated at exactly the same moment and rushed toward the lab as if under a hive mind influence. "Run, Shepard!"
The Commander staggered to her feet, knocking the doctors' weapon out of her hand. By the time her disoriented head had stilled, the doctor had escaped. Guards came streaming in through the doorways. Arius twisted the building's schematics. Doorways and exit points lit up. Bodies glowed hot and merged together, flowing like a river. She was trapped in a square room with a Reaper artifact and a small army. The mission just went FUBAR. His voice became unnaturally monotone as he streamed tactical info to her as fast as he could see and react to.
"Entrance to your three-o'clock just opened. Pyro's circling to the left to outflank you. The soldier who is coming out of the door will join with the rest of the group around the other way."
He watched her lay down cover fire for the main crowd, then swing around and clap the pyro through the skull. The main crowd running the corner, they were greeted by two grenades placed just seconds earlier.
"Two contacts on your six. Lightly armed, they will cower behind the barriers. Suggest direct action."
Shepard's shotgun was waiting for them as the two hunkered down to protect their heads. The heat from her blasts singed the barriers.
While the firefight raged on, the energy of the Object Rho swirled within itself, its black and blue storm of power chaotically mixing. "Do not resist," apparated an unearthly hum from the artifact. "Give yourself over and be spared."
"Go fuck yourself," Shepard muttered between shots. The object must have taken offence to Shepard's words, for at that moment, another pulse of dark energy spread outward from the artifact, debilitating her. She doubled over, vitals out of whack, but she held.
The arrangement of bodies on his model converged. "Get yourself to the other end of the room, Shepard. You'll get cornered."
She did one better. Biotically charging the room's full length in a single bound, she mashed an engineer through the gut while avoiding the choke point. The doctor's voice rang out. "We don't want to hurt you, Commander. Lay down your weapons!"
"Like hell, I will." he heard Shepard mutter through the mic.
"Your galaxy is in sight. Your final days are at hand," rumbled the artifact. Another pulse of dark energy discharged from the Reaper Icon, the marker representing the alien object glowing brighter on his screen with each release. From the pulse, Shepard took another bad hit. His screen had lit up with two red alerts: Two shots had breached her shields, and ammo was also almost nil. Medi-gel was automatically administered to stop the bleeding, but there was nothing to make heat-sinks spontaneously materialize.
He switched views. He saw more guards... and a heavy mech. The chances of escape were so low that even getting hit by lightning seemed more likely.
"Struggle if you wish. Your mind will be mine." The next pulse was larger this time as it reached the far fringes of the room, barely beyond where Shepard was crouching down, reloading with whatever sinks she had left. A near-constant stream of fire peppered the side of the obstacle. Her heartbeat sounded loudly and quickly in the otherwise quiet of his room on the Normandy. Physical capabilities were getting stretched to the max.
"Permission to raise a little hell?" Shepard panted in between breaths.
"You're the Commander, remember?" he retorted.
"Heh. That's right," she managed between gasps. "Where's the mech?"
"Your north-west." he relayed. "Thirty-two meters away and closing. Three soldiers left in a line over on the other side of the artifact."
A rocket exploded against the barrier. It would be time before the mech reloaded; Now was the opportune time to move. Shepard sprinted out from the cover, spraying the area with her rifle, dropping shields. She made her way around the outer perimeter of the room, where protection was the most plentiful. One of the soldiers got hit in the throat, silencing him permanently. The other two made the mistake of hiding behind the same barrier. Her last flash-bang exploded between them, both of them down for the next few seconds.
Shepard dropped her empty rifle, grabbed her shotgun and charged half of the way between herself and the mech, evading the next airborne rocket. She fired the last four inferno rounds of her shotgun into the mech's armour, the heat peeling back the plating and exposing the delicate circuity beneath. The woman on fire dropped her spent shotgun, taking hold of her last weapon, her pistol, and unloaded a fist full of biotic power into the mech's exposed frame. Blue blossoms of element zero energy tore the internals apart, and the mech fell to the floor, damaged beyond function. She pistol-whipped the back of the head of the rising soldier, then fired the remaining rounds of her pistol into the last. The ground turned red, the soldier stopped moving, and the gun ran empty.
Arius had risen from his seat in anxious excitement, eyes laser-focused on the data, the sound of Shepard's heartbeat pounding in his ears. She stood alone among the wreckage. She had done it.
He sighed, but it was premature. The artifact, still charging, glowed with an intensity not witnessed during the battle. "You shall be the first to witness our arrival," it commanded before a massive blast of energy tore through the room, enveloping the entire space in rampant dark energy. Shepard disappeared from his screen as her connection went offline. The room then vanished from view as the flux of energies rendered any sensors useless. He was blind.
