Chapter 6 – Even in the Darkest Times

January 23rd, 2211, 1959 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 7, Pedestrian Corridor 24D

2 hours, 59 minutes after Outbreak

The scent of Sarah burning threatened to tear down the walls that I had hastily constructed within my mind. Tears welled up beneath my eyes, unbidden, but I violently hammered them back down.

In truth, I was glad and relieved at Cade's actions. In my desire to immediately distance myself from her loss by re-immersing myself in the mission I had forgotten to give her a proper send-off, had forgotten to ensure that those monsters wouldn't desecrate her body. Instead of turning back I had instead chosen to keep on walking, scared to look back at where she lay small and still, scared that if I looked at her again I would go down a path that I wouldn't surface from.

I rubbed my jaw with my gloved hand, making a futile attempt to ease the pressure trapped there. I hadn't noticed how hard I'd been clenching my teeth. I massaged my jaw a few more times before opening my mouth experimentally.

The pressure eased up and I somehow managed to pull enough of myself together to refocus on the mission at hand, banishing the last thoughts of Sarah deep down inside and resuming my scan for possible ambush points, attack vectors, and enemy hostiles. I moved my hand from my jaw to the barrel of my Snakebite and resumed my march down the dimly lit corridor.

Cade sped up so that he was walking directly beside me. His Vindicator was held loosely in his hands but his eyes darted systematically throughout the corridor, watching carefully for any signs of ambush. He shot me a glance that I didn't need to see to know was laced with concern.

It was understandable that he felt apprehensive at my current emotional disposition and the effect that it would have on my combat readiness but at the moment I really didn't feel like trying to convince him that I was perfectly fine.

There was an elevator at the end of the hallway. The fastest and most direct way to the Bridge would be to take the elevator to Deck 19 or 20, make our way through the Crew Quarters and take an elevator back down to Deck 7 where we would exit almost directly at the Bridge.

I double-checked my schematics again. We were about halfway within the SSV Hippocrates. The Crew Quarters stretched for nearly 400 meters near the spine of the ship. I could see sleeping chambers, communal bathrooms, several messes and even two recreational gymnasiums. Despite the sheer number of facilities on that Deck, all of them were connected and would form what could be roughly considered to be a direct path to the Bridge.

We travelled in silence towards the elevator. Once we were a few feet from the lift buttons, Cade grabbed my shoulder to halt me. I looked at him quizzically, but when I realized why he had stopped me I rolled my eyes. I turned around to cover our rear while Cade walked up and tapped the elevator button. The panel lit up, displaying a bright, yellow six. Cade grinned at me, prompting me to flip him off.

Fucking Korlus.

After a few seconds there was a slight ding and the elevator doors open. Cade stood to the side and extended his arm invitingly into the elevator, his smug grin still plastered on his face. I flipped him off one more time before stepping inside. He followed behind me and pressed floor 19. With a slight hum, the doors closed and I felt the gentle tug of gravity as the elevator began its ascent.

Cade shifted in place as the elevator crawled upwards. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I sensed what he was about to say.

"I'm sorry about Sarah," he began.

I didn't reply, merely grunted and kept my eyes fixed on the doors ahead of me. I willed the elevator to move faster.

"She was very brave," Cade continued.

Someone had scratched the initials DL and RC into the bottom of the door and then a heart around it. It was a crappy job, like it had been done by someone with cerebral palsy. My brow wrinkled in disgust and I shook my head at the shoddy worksmanship.

"I can't imagine how you feel right now, but I need to know that your head is in the game. The situation is still very, very bad, the saboteurs are much more dangerous than we had anticipated and I need to know that you've got my back—," he spoke cautiously.

Thankfully when we had restarted the back-up generator and therefore the elevators, it had not restarted the shitty muzak music along with it. I had heard it in the first elevator I had taken down to Containment Airlock 1 and it had been annoying enough for me to put a fist through the speakers. My mind wandered back to the two technicians who had entered the elevator after I had left. I smiled a little when I imagined the looks of bewilderment that must have been on their faces when they had entered the elevator and found a hole punched through the sound system.

"—Hey, are you even listening to me?" Cade asked. He grabbed my arm and spun me to face him. His blue eyes were indeed filled with concern and pity, just as I had feared. His mandibles twitched in irritation and a note of anger had seeped into his flanging harmonics.

"Yeah, I told you before I'm perfectly fine," I assured him. I brushed his hand away and tried to resume my intense staring contest with the elevator doors but he grabbed me again.

"No, you're not fine," he said accusingly. "Every time something like this happens, it's like you try and become someone else, someone who pretends like they don't care. Well let me tell you, you're not fooling anyone."

I didn't respond. A part of me knew it was true, and that same part of me couldn't bring itself to tell him that maybe that's how I coped, that maybe it was the only way I could cope.

"You can pretend that you're all tough and bottle it up deep down. Percival and I usually don't say anything because usually we're both there to watch you, to make sure you don't anything too stupid or suicidal," he continued. The anger in his tone increased an octave, the flanging becoming more and more evident as he went into full-on lecture mode.

"But this time Percival isn't here, we're fighting monsters beyond anyone's wildest nightmares and were up against a shadow organization embedded in the very Systems Alliance itself, comprised of deadly, skilled operatives and running spirits-knows how deep," he said sternly, a note of anxiety now creeping into his voice.

Cade sighed and ran a gloved hand through his fringe. "I need to know that you won't do anything stupid. I've seen how you can get sometimes, like you did back on Demeter when that family died in that explosion, or on Lusia after that asari reporter was shot. You take risks, you throw yourself into the goddamn fire like it was all your fault. Don't pretend that you don't."

Cade loaded a new heatsink into his Vindicator and turned his gaze towards the elevator doors.

"You and Percival are the only ones I trust aboard this ship and Percival isn't here. I need your help. You don't need to atone for anything. Spectres aren't supposed to be heroes…I would know," he finished silently.

I closed my eyes and sighed. "Cade…" I began. He looked up towards me.

"I've got your back, man," I assured him.

"I know," Cade nodded. "Just promise me that after this if you need help you'll ask."

"I promise."

My mind drifted back to the rogue N7, Locke, the quiet turian saboteur, the insane salarian and that psychotic, traitorous bitch with her perfect teeth. I couldn't think of a better therapy than putting a bullet between their eyes.

The panel read deck 19 and the doors began to slide open. Immediately a set of long, wicked, metallic claws attached to a desiccated, synthetic-organic arm scythed towards Cade. The snarling, slavering jaws of a salarian Corpser snapped hungrily at us as it tried to force its way through the partially-opened doors.

I shoved Cade out of the way, causing the claws to dig deep gouges into the floor of the elevator where he had been standing moments before. My left hand went behind my back and as quick as lightning ripped my Talon from its sheath and drove it deep under the chin of the Corpser with a powerful upward thrust. The blade slipped between the metal plates and synthetic cabling ringing its neck and into its mouth and head.

I ripped my knife back out. Immediately its red eyes dimmed and it collapsed to the floor in a sick jumble. I waited for the Crawlers to come pouring out but I shrugged lightly in surprise when none of them did. Satisfied, I wiped my Talon on my forearms before returning it to the sheath affixed to my lower back. I stepped over the Corpser, standing off to the side between the open elevator doors and gestured for Cade to exit first.

"After you," I told him.

January 23rd, 2211, 2009 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 19, Crew Quarters – Entrance D

3 hours, 9 minutes after Outbreak

I sighed as we stepped out of the elevator and into a complete mess. This entrance to the crew quarters had doubled as a lounging area for the ship's crew. Broken glass lay everywhere, almost every chair was overturned, likely knocked over as the inhabitants of the room tried desperately to escape. A few had large tears in them and disturbingly large pools of blood staining the cushions. A television installed into the wall flickered quietly with static, bathing the room in a dull white light.

A table lay overturned, scraps of food and broken plates lying strewn around it. The remains of four lab technicians were scattered around the table, their bodies so mutilated and destroyed that even they couldn't be repurposed into Corpsers.

Beyond them lying at the entrance to the dormitories a turian security guard lay sprawled beside the doors, an M-8 Avenger clutches in his talons, surrounded in spent heatsinks and intestines spilling from a giant tear in his stomach. Cade shook his head sadly at the sight of him and padded over to pick up a few fallen data pads, examining their contents.

"Just as they were having dinner," I commented.

Cade shot a furtive glance at the carnage around us, "the technicians or the Corpsers?"

We moved into one of the main dormitories and found an even bigger mess. A couple of the night-shift crew members must have been catching up on sleep when the outbreak started because nearly a third of the beds had gaping tears and bloody sheets on top of the mattresses. Disturbingly, none of them contained any bodies, indicating that there was a good chance that we'd be encountering those monsters during our journey to the Bridge.

A holo-still on the nightstand beside one of the bloody beds drew my attention. I walked over and picked it up, squinting in the dim gloom at the figures in it. A smiling salarian held a giggling asari infant in his arms, his eyes betraying how tired but happy he was. I shook my head and set it back down on the nightstand. Whoever those saboteurs were and whatever they wanted, they had orphaned too many children with their actions. They'd have to pay for that. They'd have to pay painfully.

As we moved further and further down into the Crew Quarters, I began to hear a voice. The voice spoke unintelligibly at first, but as we moved deeper I began to pick up recognizable words, recognizable spanish words to be precise. They sounded angry, almost like the person was yelling at something. I turned to Cade who I saw had his head tilted upwards, his acute hearing had probably picked it up before mine had.

"Do you hear that?" I asked him.

Suddenly, what was unmistakably a weapon discharge sounded from further within the Crew Quarters, and then another, and another. Although at this distance I couldn't exactly make out whether it came from a pistol, sniper rifle, or shotgun, it didn't sound like it came from any weapon that I was familiar with.

"Survivors," Cade said urgently.

Immediately we both started into a run, heading towards the sound of the gunshots.

We sped through the sleeping area, hopping over fallen furniture and darting around overturned tables. The cursing and the gunshots became louder and louder the further we ran, the voice now distinctively female and most assuredly, definitely angry.

We exited the dormitory and entered a long hallway. We began to hear the telltale moaning and snarling that Corpsers made and knew that we were close. The gunshots stopped and the voice shifted from anger to fear. A sign appeared on the wall ahead, indicating that the next room on our left was a communal shower area. As we moved closer I began to also hear the sound of running water and slow, steady splashing.

We sprinted down the hall and dashed into the shower room. It was dark and dimly lit, a few badly mangled turian bodies lay strewn around the perimeter, naked, coloring the water in the room a light blue.

Also in the room were the near-destroyed bodies of almost half a dozen Corpsers. Though I couldn't see much in the light, I could see that most of them had their torso's oddly melted, and at least two of them were very nearly burnt to a crisp. Heat emanated from the dead Corpsers, steaming up the water coming from a number of active showerheads and filling the room with a light, wet mist.

We ran further in and stumbled upon six snarling Corpsers, all converging on one location with their backs turned to us. I unsheathed one of the Talons from my back and immediately sprinted towards the nearest Corpser, using the back of the ex-salarian's backward-hinged knee as a steeping stool to propel myself up as I drove the Talon down into the spine of the Corpser, killing it instantly.

Cade used his armor's jet boosters to throw himself forwards, crashing bodily into the back of another Corpser and knocking it flat on its face. Cade took out his knife from his shoulder sheath and also drove it into the neck of his target, ceasing its snarling.

My eyes widened in fear as a hot ball of plasma came shooting out of the mist. Luckily, Cade was no slouch. He rolled to his left, the plasma bolt missing him by centimeters and only succeeding in leaving behind a sooty streak on his right pauldron. It impacted a wall a few meters behind us, slagging it and sending melted bits of tile and metal sizzling onto the wet shower-room floor..

Another plasma bolt collided with a Corpser further in front of us. It howled as the white-hot plasma ate through its torso and the Crawlers housed inside seemed to shriek as they melted. After about two seconds, its desiccated, synthetic torso was completely gone, its head landing with a wet flop onto the ground while its legs lay splayed out in a wet puddle, smoke hissing from it.

A third fiery projectile, one that I recognized to be an Incineration bolt fired from an omni-tool program, slammed into another Corpser and melted half its face off, causing it to crumple to its knees and dying in a wreath of steam.

"Vete a la mierda!" an angry, female voice screeched loudly. As we moved closer, the mist from all the heat and the showers finally cleared to reveal the last two Corpsers advancing menacingly at the soaked, disheveled form of a female technician.

In her hands she cradled a large, almost insect-looking weapon that I recognized to be a rare Geth Plasma Shotgun which was currently in the process of overheating. Her back was pressed firmly against the wall, putting her as far from the Corpsers as possible as she waited desperately for her weapon to cool down.

The Corpsers snarled, legs bent and prepared to pounce. A familiar sizzle erupted from the base of my neck and suddenly blue fire licked down my arms. I flicked my hand upwards, pulling her two attackers into the air. They screeched angrily at having their hunt interrupted, their wildly swinging claws coming within inches of the face of the cowering female technician.

Before I could raise my rifle, my boy Cade came in clutch. Lightning fast, he blew both their heads open with Meera, showering the pour female technician in sparks and blood and bits of human grey matter. My biotic field dissipated and they dropped limply to the floor with a wet splash. Crawlers began squirming within their stomachs but I threw a tiny, blue Warp with a flick of my hand that tore them to pieces.

The female technician blinked once in shock before raising her now cooled-down plasma shotgun and sighting it on the nearest target, which fortunately for me was not me. I couldn't really fault her on what happened next, it was understandable given the situation. Adrenaline mixed with a healthy dose of shock due to a near-death experience usually caused stuff like this to happen in untrained personnel. I would have to have a stern talk with whoever gave her a friggin' Geth Plasma Shogun afterwards.

The scared technician fired her shotgun, letting loose a second fiery-blue bolt straight at Cade before he could even open his mouth, likely mistaking him for another Corpser. Like I said, understandable given the situation, and I'd be lying if I said I never wanted to do the same thing from time to time.

Luckily for all three parties, this was not the first time an angry female had opened fire on Operative Cade Kitiarian, and thanks to my friends quick reflexes it would not be the last.

He ducked quickly, the bolt flying over his head to slag the wall behind him. "By the Spirits, we're friendlies!" Cade shouted angrily. He strode forwards and ripped the plasma shotgun from her hands, grunting in surprise as the technicians' left fist went crashing into his right mandible and ducking under a furious swipe from her right.

The female technician nursed her bruised hand and winced, having skinned a few knuckles on my friend's scaly skin. She looked in askance at Cade and it was a few seconds before it finally registered to her that he was not one of those synthetic, rotted freaks that had just been trying to kill her. The pain seemed to jar her mind back into reality, clearing the battle-fog from her eyes and the shock at having narrowly avoided death.

"Maldito Turiano," she breathed in relief. As capricious as a summer storm, she instantly went from angry and scared to relieved and crying. The technician threw her arms around Cade and began sobbing into the turian's collar armor. Cade awkwardly placed the plasma shotgun on the ground beside them and gently patted her back as she cried. "Estàs seguro, estàs seguro…," he told her repeatedly in spanish.

The female technician sobbed a few more times into his collar armor before sniffling and wiping her eyes on her soaking-wet sleeve. After a few moments, she untangled herself from Cade and bent to pick up her shotgun. Cade gently kept both hands reassuringly on her upper arms as she calmed herself down.

I recognized her as the pretty female technician that Cade had accidentally bumped into on our way to the Bridge before the outbreak had started. Her eyes shimmered with tears and the mist from the showers had caused her highlighted streak of hair to lay plastered against her forehead, but I could still recognize her.

"Come on, it's not safe here," I urged. She nodded and raised one shaking hand to a door marked as a female locker room off to the side. Cade kept one arm around her in an attempt to keep her shivering form marginally warm as I walked over and kicked the door open.

I marched in with my Snakebite out and scanned it for hostiles. It was empty and not particularly large, a number of benches covered the center while electronically sealed lockers ringed the perimeter.

I waved them an all-clear and they made their way inside behind me. She padded over to a locker, leaving wet footsteps across the floor, and placed her shotgun down beside it. The technician dialed a code into the locker key pad, causing it to swing opened, and pulled out a towel, a fresh jumpsuit and what appeared to be some very light body armor.

"So," Cade began. "What were you doing in there?" he asked her.

"Trying to get to this," she gestured at the armor. She immediately began unzipping and stepping out of her soaked jumpsuit, leaving it in a sopping wet puddle on the floor. Cade coughed turned to cover our entryway with Meera while I turned to cover another door that led back to the dormitories. We were better than that.

"My friend Anna is, was, a security guard aboard this ship," she began as she toweled herself off and started pulling the jumpsuit on one leg at a time.

"She liked to keep a spare set of armor in her locker. I used to make fun of her for it. I used to laugh at her, kept telling her what polite attackers she must be expecting if they would wait until she was clean before shooting at her," she explained sadly in lightly accented English. It was common for civilians to launch into anecdotes after surviving a near-death situation, an effective self-soothing technique that kept the silence out.

We waited patiently, eyes on our respective entryways as we waited for the female technician to get dressed. Behind me I could hear clips being fastened and the familiar whine of a kinetic shield being powered on. "I was trying to reach it when those things caught up to me. It is a good thing you found me when you did, I thought I was a goner for sure."

"You can turn around now, thank you," she finished. Cade and I both turned and lowered our rifles. The female technician was now dressed in a navy-blue security guard jumpsuit with an SSV Hippocrates patch on the left shoulder and wearing the light-armored Elkoss Combine torso armor that was standard issue for the ship's security personnel. She also had the armored boots and forearm armor on, but had neglected to wear the microweave undersuit and the armor on her upper thighs and arms.

"You're the turian I bumped into a few hours ago," she nodded at Cade while she started toweling off her hair.

Cade cleared his throat. "Spectre Operative Cade Kitiarian, and this is my colleague Spectre Operative Cloud. We, alongside Spectre Operative Lancelot Percival, were sent to monitor the next phase of Project Prometheus," he introduced and explained.

"Spectre Operative Percival, the big, pretty one?" the technician asked. Cade nodded. "And Spectre operative Cloud, do you have a first name?" she asked.

"Everyone has a first name," I said dismissively, neglecting to answer.

She didn't press it. "Regardless, thank you both for saving my life. I would have ended up like one of those monsters had you two not shown up," she nodded gratefully at the both of us. She turned back to Cade and her brow furrowed in concern. "Do you know what is happening aboard the ship? Where these things came from and why they are killing everybody?" she asked quietly.

"No idea, although Cloud was there at ground zero when the outbreak began. We believe that the Reaper Core malfunctioned after it was activated, initiating the outbreak. Things went south from there," Cade told her.

"Dios mìo, a Reaper Core?" she whispered.

"Yes," Cade nodded. "There was a cell of saboteurs embedded within the ship's crew. We believe that they sabotaged the project, although we currently do not know why. Several high-ranking scientists and technicians, including doctor Olivia Flanagan, are among the saboteurs, as well as other individuals who should be considered incredibly dangerous," he explained, his mind no doubt wandering back to the quiet, young turian who had bested him.

"Doctor Olivia Flanagan? Redhead, tall, pretty, smiles a lot?" she asked him.

"Yeah," I responded.

She turned to me for the first time since we had met and looked me square in the eyes, fiery light brown ones meeting an icy blue stare.

"I hate that bitch," she said plainly.

I cracked a smile and she smiled back. "Good, because I intend to kill her," I responded flippantly. She chuckled and did her hair up in a loose bun before running a diagnostic on her omni-tool. Satisfied that it was in working order, she hefted her plasma shotgun and walked over to Cade, plucking a pair of spare heatsinks from his utility belt and slotting them into her own.

"What kind of shotgun is that? It was very effective against those Corpsers. I've never seen anything like it," Cade gestured at her weapon.

She handed him her weapon and Cade immediately began inspecting it, eyeing the bulbous grey armor plating that gave it an insect-like shape.

"Mi padre, he found it while serving during the Reaper War. It's called a Geth Plasma Shotgun, it fires superconducting plasma projectiles from a plasma core instead of the standard metal shavings that most weapons fire nowadays."

"Those are very rare, the Geth usually don't part with them willingly," I pointed out.

"The Geth that was using it had no need for it anymore. Anyways, I find that it is very useful against those monsters, shots to the body tend to not only destroy them but also those metal spiders that they hold," she answered simply.

Cade shouldered it and sighted down the gun. Like me he preferred sniper rifles, battle rifles, knives and pistols, usually eschewing the fast-firing assault rifles and close-range shotguns that Percival favored. The Geth Plasma Shotgun looked more like an impressionistic metal sculpture from the early 21st century rather than a weapon, but he nonetheless admired the organic and sleek-curvature of the weapon in his hands.

"Very curvy," he purred.

"Thank you, it was my father's favourite gun before he gave it to me," the technician responded, gently taking it the proffered weapon from his hands and clipping it to her armored back.

"I wasn't talking about the gun," Cade grinned at her.

She rolled her eyes and cursed rapidly in spanish. Cade laughed while I shook my head and shot her an apologetic look.

"So, what do we call you?" Cade asked her.

"My name is Camilla Martell, and you have a better shot at getting off this ship in one piece than getting with this, you pig," she gestured up and down her body.

"Ouch," I joked. Beside me Cade sighed dramatically but otherwise decided against inflaming her any further.

"Anyways, where are you two headed now?" Camilla inquired.

I nodded my head in the vague direction of the ship's stern. "Cade and I are headed towards the Bridge, Spectre Percival is also headed there with a group of survivors in tow. Once we're there were going to try to hail our ship for evacuation. Afterwards we intend to follow containment protocol, scuttle this ship and destroy these fucking things for good."

Camilla nodded. "Sounds good to me, mind if I go with you? I'm a communications and drive core technician. I've been monitoring the interference on my omni-tool, and I think that if you get me to the Bridge I might be able to reset the suite to clear the interference and patch you through to your ship so you can call for evacuation."

"I like this one, can we keep her?" Cade mocked pleaded. Camilla rolled her eyes threw a fake punch towards him that Cade slipped around. Cade chuckled and gently pushed her away, causing her to curse quietly at him in spanish.

"Come with us, we'll keep you safe," I assured her.

"Don't make a girl a promise if you can't keep it," she joked. "Don't worry, I'm not a total liability. I am not half bad with my shotgun, plus I have a few offensive and defensive modules installed into my omni-tool. I can hold my own in a fight," she assured me.

I swallowed and nodded slowly, my mind inadvertently going back to Sarah. Cade shot me a concerned glance but I refused to meet his eyes. "Then let's move out before more of these things find us. We both don't have much ammunition left, and I can only use my biotics for so long before I'm tapped dry," I told her.

I checked the meter on my Snakebite. I had about half-a-dozen more shots before I would have to find a new ammunition block, and maybe another two or three reloads on my Predator before it too was nothing more than a fancy paperweight. I suspected Cade had even less ammunition than I did for his Vindicator and Meera, although his dual Carnifex pistols likely still had relatively full ammunition blocks inside.

"Alright, that sounds like a good plan. Let me take point then, my shotgun doesn't run on a standard ammunition block and is muy efectivo against these creatures," she said. Camilla brushed past the both of us and began heading back out into the shower room with her plasma shotgun raised and ready. We moved to follow behind her, with Cade in the middle and with me acting as the rearguard.

"More than happy to watch your rear," Cade in a low voice that only I could hear. Had Camilla heard him I had no doubt that Cade would have had to dodge a third plasma bolt. I sighed and shook my head again. A ship full of homicidal aliens ready to stab us in our faces and a bunch of stealthed saboteurs ready to shoot us in our backs and Cade still found time and inclination to be Cade.

I prayed for the soul of my friend and followed him out the room.

January 23rd, 2211, 2037 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 19, Crew Quarters – Pedestrian Corridor 9E

3 hours, 37 minutes after Outbreak

"So what kind of omni-tool combat programs do you Spectre's use?" Camilla asked Cade as the three of us made our way down the empty corridor.

We were currently headed towards an elevator at the end of this long hall that would take us almost directly to the Bridge on deck 7. We had not encountered any more Corpsers since we had left the locker room and I sincerely hoped that that would remain true for the rest of our journey to the Bridge, although deep down I knew that Cade and I were most certainly not that lucky.

"Uh, Cloud and I both have state-of-the-art tactical cloaks installed into our armor," Cade responded as he rubbed his fringe nervously. "Aside from that, we have some top-level bypass and de-encryption modules and some of the best hacking programs that money can buy."

"Seriously, that's all?" Camilla said incredulously. "No combat or defensive programs? No Incineration, Defense Matrix, or Cryo Blast? Not even a simple Overload program?"

"I have my Arc and Homing grenades, and I might also have an old Overload program somewhere on my omni-tool," Cade said defensively. "I also carry four different guns, all of them chambered for slugs as big as your thumb, and an old metal spoon. I don't really think I need another way to kill someone."

"Yes, I can see your dual Carnifex pistols, very macho, except that this isn't the wild west, turian," Camilla snorted dismissively. I withheld a laugh, if only she knew. To be fair to Cade, he very, very, rarely used both Carnifex's at once, and usually only to show off.

Having a pistol in each hand worked great in the holo-films, but for real combat situations it was a terrible idea. The only reason why he had two at all times was because Cade was ambidextrous and because, well, generally you don't get to pick the hand that's keeping a bunch of sharp, vorcha teeth from tearing out your throat.

"Having a bunch of programs just slows you down, makes you hesitate in key moments. I don't know about you, but I don't intend to get my ass shot off while I'm cycling through a dozen different modules," Cade argued back.

But in his defense, Cade was right. Many inexperienced combat engineers I had known tended to load up their omni-tools with as many defensive and offensive programs as they could, adopting a "the-more-the-merrier" mindset and believing that a wider range of options would make them more combat effective.

It was a practice that the more experienced combat engineers and Spectre's seldom practiced. When you were being fired upon from all sides by an unseen assailant, or being charged by a pair of angry krogan, or being stabbed to death by nightmarish, cybernetic monsters, you really didn't want to be stuck cycling through a variety of programs, wasting your time picking the best one. Ideally you had the one or two that you were most proficient with, or better yet had a buddy at your back with a complementary set of programs covering your six.

"And what about you?" Camilla turned towards me. "Back at the shower room I saw you use your biotics to pull those two Corpsers off of me."

"I have an L7x custom Adept implant," I told her. "Singularity and Stasis specialties, although I can also create personal and group Barriers and your standard Warp, Throw and Pull fields. Otherwise I don't really use any offensive or defensive omni-tool programs either, unless you count my tactical cloak."

"Still better than this pendejo," she jerked her head at Cade, who shrank sheepishly into his armor. Also in my friend's defense, he was deadly proficient with his Black Widow sniper rifle, beating me in long-distance proficiency by a slight margin while I edged him out when it came to combat pistols.

We were about neck and neck when it came to burst-fire battle rifles, both of us favoring either the M-15 Vindicator or the N7 Valkyrie. There had been many missions when one of us had run out of ammunition for our snipers and had to use each other's spare battle rifle. My Vindicator was currently stored in my private locker aboard the SSV Excalibur, since I hadn't opted to take it with me. Luckily Cade had brought his, and it had proved useful in cutting a bloody swathe through the many Corpsers that had tried to eviscerate us.

"Here, let me," Camilla said as she grabbed Cade's arm and wrenched it towards her face. Without a glance to acknowledge my friends startled look of surprise, she activated her and his omni-tool and began playing with it.

"Hey, what are you—," Cade began in protest.

"Done," she said. A second later, Cade's omni-tool flashed a bright orange. With a satisfied look on her face, she turned her omni-tool back off and re-shouldered her plasma shotgun.

Cade looked at his omni-tool and smiled. I glanced over and saw that she had upgraded his Overload program, adding an extended range software patch and an intensity boost. That would be very useful in a fight, with the upgrades allowing Cade to shock an area about three meters in diameter.

Back in the hallway just before we had encountered the Chimera for the second time, Cade's Arc grenades had shocked several Corpsers in place, allowing me to destroy many of them simultaneously. The ability to repeatedly stun these monsters in place without having to resort to using his limited supply of Arc grenades would be invaluable if we were to survive.

"Just in case, it's very useful against enemy kinetic shields and you never know when you need to stun a bunch of targets, just remember to let it cool down between uses so that you won't overheat your omni-tool," she told him.

"I can't count the number of times my father told me it saved him fighting Marauders during the Reaper War, plus it's always better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it," Camilla lectured at the two of us.

"So you do care." Cade sighed dramatically, bringing the back of a gloved talon to his forehead. "And here I was thinking that I was nothing more than an extra body between you and those genocidal monsters."

"You are a lost cause." Camilla gave up and shook her head, smiling but refusing to further engage the childish turian.

We reached the elevator at the end of the corridor without any further trouble. With a sigh I turned to cover our six while Cade strode forwards and slapped a palm on the panel, calling the elevator to our floor. The indicator lit up to show that the elevator was currently on floor 21.

He turned to me and grinned infuriatingly, prompting me to scowl and flip him off. Camilla looked at the both of us in confusion but refrained from commenting on our childish antics, wisely deciding not to ask. After a few moments the elevator doors slid open with a slight chime and we filed inside. Cade palmed the button for deck 7 and the doors closed shut and instantly the elevator started to descend.

We stood awkwardly in silence as we waited for the elevator to do what elevators do. I tapped the trigger guard of my Snakebite as I watched the indicator shift painstakingly from 19, to 18, and then 17 ever so slowly. I sighed and shut my eyes, trying hard to forget the last time I was in an elevator with Cade and trying even harder to shake the phantom touch of a pair of soft, gentle hands on my face.

Hardly less than two hours had passed since then and yet to me it felt like a thousand years. I sighed again and tried hard to banish those thoughts from my mind, to focus on the mission at hand. I did now as I had done before, deciding to focus on the thought of revenge, clutching at it like a life-jacket to anchor myself in the present. In my mind's eye I saw Locke, the mad salarian, the quiet turian, and that psychotic red-headed bitch all lying dead at my feet.

Cade tilted his head towards Camilla. "So, where are you from?" he asked her. I listened closely, trying to both distract myself from my thoughts and to learn more about our new third squad member. As the elevator descended my thoughts of the dead must have decided that tormenting me internally did not suffice. I winced as began to feel an aching pressure build at the base of my skull and a slight ringing in my ears.

The female technician tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at Cade. "New Mindoir, my father moved there after the War and raised me by himself. I graduated from technical college there and enlisted in the Systems Alliance when I turned twenty, how about you?" Camilla asked him in return.

"Born and raised on Palaven back in 2286, My fa—" Cade began.

The pressure in my head built and built, the ringing in my ears had solidified into quiet, rapid whispers in a language that I did not recognize. It was then I realized that this wasn't just some physical manifestation of guilt cruelly called into being by my psyche. It was happening again. I failed to stifle a groan and pressed a gloved hand to my forehead.

Cade, as always, was the first to notice my distress. His mouth opened and I could see that he was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear him over the rising din of those infernal whispers. As if she was curious as to what had gotten Cade's attention,

Camilla turned her gaze towards me as well. Upon seeing me her brow knotted in worry, mirroring Cade's concerns. She placed her hand on my shoulder and her mouth moved, but like I could hear nothing but those stupid, fucking whispers. I gaped blankly at them, trying my hardest to quell the aching headache and utterly refusing to scream out loud for the whispers to shut the fuck up.

The indicator shifted from 14, to 13, and then 12, and finally the whispers and the headache slowly receded, as if someone had turned down a giant dial rather than flipped a switch.

I shook my head to clear out the last vestigial whispers and turned to look my friend in the eye. "Cade, I think it's nearby," I told him.

If a turian was capable of showing fear on their stone-like, immovable faces, Cade was showing it now. His finger beat a frantic rhythm on the trigger guard of his rifle and his eyes immediately darted to the ceiling above us. Not that I could blame him, anyone in their right state of mind would steer far away from 40-foot long synthetic abominations.

I shuddered as I saw it in my mind's eye. Four stunted forelimbs comprised of dead, twisted synthetic corpses, two larger hind limbs, that twisting, thrashing barbed tail. Worst of all was the fact that it did not possess a gaping maw ten sizes too large for its face and a bunch of metal and organic teeth that the Corpsers had. Instead, it had a tiny, almost human-sized mouth, situated right underneath that bright red krogan metal headplate.

"Spirits, the Chimera?" Cade asked.

I nodded grimly, tightening my grip on my own rifle. Seeing the sudden change in our demeanor at the mention of the Chimera, Camilla started shifting nervously from foot to foot, eyes panning between me and Cade.

"What's a Chimera?" she asked uneasily.

The elevator indicator shifted to display a dim 10, we were 3 decks away and about 50 meters from the Bridge. I turned to Camilla and put on the best cold-hearted killer face that I had, the one that made ninety-nine point nine percent of the galactic population stop and listen whole-heartedly and obey whatever I decided to stay next, lest they suffer a painful, gruesome death.

"It's big and it's deadly. If you see it, you don't fight it, you don't shoot it, you stay behind us and you do whatever we tell you to do."

"And while we're on the topic of acceptable courses of action," I continued, "if either Cade or I tell you to do something, you do it. You don't hesitate, you don't second-guess, you simply do it. Because if you don't you will die, or you'll get us killed, and I'm sure neither of us wants that."

When we had met Camilla, we had found her surrounded by half a dozen dead Corpsers, cursing angrily and shooting at another half-dozen. Later we had found out that she had not been cornered in that bathroom, but had rather moved there with a clear objective in mind —to retrieve a suit of armor and increase her chances at survival. My instincts had immediately pegged her as a brave, capable under pressure, unafraid to fight and unlikely to take shit from anyone.

But as she looked into my cold blue stare, I could tell that whatever she saw there frightened her more than the prospect of being torn apart by the twisted, synthetically-reanimated abominations that had been her former crewmates. Her eyes met mine and she took a moment to really let the gravity of my words sink in.

Neglecting to say anything, Camilla swallowed nervously before nodding resolutely to show that she understood. Satisfied, I looked back at Cade, who looked at me and also nodded approvingly at the crash course in survival that I had given our newest rookie. I'm sure he didn't want her to die either. As far as Camilla was concerned, Cade and I were the only laws that mattered aboard this ship, laws that had to be obeyed if she wanted to make it out of this nightmare alive.