Ripples in the Stream

A D&D / Shadowrun / Mass Effect crossover
by Vyrexuviel

Disclaimer: The author of this story does not, in any way, derive any profit from the story. D&D, Shadowrun and Mass Effect are the property of their respective copyright holders. Jorukaia and other unfamiliar characters in this story, however, are mine.

Here we are, friends and neighbors and all you deranged people who somehow still follow me, despite the fact that I update slower than the Pitch Drop Experiment (go look it up, it's facinating). Here's the complete version of the latest chapter, reposted for your convenience in one large-sized package! Enjoy!

(Today's update brought to you by copious amounts of Mountain Dew Code Red and an upwhacked brain chemistry due to genetic disorders.)

"C'mon, get your shit together, we're going." Vasir swept past the twins, who nodded acknowledgment.

Wrex was, once again, stuffing his face at Joru's kitchen table. Garrus and Tali were having to make do with dextro-rations, but the rest of the team were availing themselves of their hostess's seemingly-limitless supply of surprisingly good food. Aethyta was here as well, and the two commandos she had brought with her, though they didn't seem to want to mingle with Vasir's own group. Jack had arrived a few minutes ago, looking a bit mussed, but didn't seem as interested as the rest of the biotics in chowing down.

Vasir gave a sigh, "And just where is our oh-so-gracious host."

A stirring of air spoke almost in her ear, the words soft and feminine, an unknown voice, "The Mistress is in the general training room. Turn right at the intersection and follow the hallway to the end."

Vasir blinked at the answer, "The fuck?"

"The Mistress installed a Central Home Node, power source, and all ancillary equipment 46 years ago. This facility monitors and answers questions as a matter of course." The voice fell silent once again, and Vasir shot the twins a look.

"Right. The rest of you, armor up, I'm going to find Joru. We leave as soon as I get back." She didn't wait for their replies, just stalked out of the kitchen.

She had to admit that the place had a sort of rugged beauty to it. The stone walls and floor of the corridors and rooms tunneled into the mountainside were squared off and polished smooth, and thick carpets were placed in the guest room floors, to make the cold stone less of a shock. Vasir entered the training room at the end of the corridor as instructed and quickly spotted Joru.

It was hard to miss her. The lighting of the place was odd, the lamps she used casting a warm, steady, golden glow over the area, rather than using more modern lighting systems. The dark-scaled woman was in the midst of practicing with some sort of polearm, moving with elegant grace through a series of moves at dizzying speed.

"Joru!" Vasir winced slightly as the echos bounced back at her.

The tall woman finished her current kata, then stood at the edge of the mat, leaning on the tall, spear-like weapon and angling her head inquiringly as Vasir came up, "Yes?"

"We're heading out. I assume that that damn portal of yours will work?"

Vasir's personal headache inducer chuckled, "It will. Anyone touching the arch will make the portal active. Just step through and you will return to the point you entered. I was just getting in some practice, do you care to join me?"

"Not now. We're leaving, and you're coming with." Vasir's eyes narrowed in challenge.

"As you wish." The tall woman strode over to place the weapon back on the rack. There were a number of them there, all subtly different, "I take it the rest of them are waiting?"

"Yeah, so get your fat ass in gear." Vasir turned to go and strode out at Joru's soft chuckle.

The half-destroyed labs were just as they had been left. The wall was still fire damaged, and the queen's pod was still both sealed, and inexplicably empty. Joru waited until everyone, including Tali, was out of the Refuge before closing the door and 'locking' it with her key.

"So how do we get past that?"

Vasir's irritated voice made the dragon smile. "The usual way."

She gestured with her omnitool, and the door opened again, revealing not the Refuge, but the corridor behind it, heading back to the tram station. "Once the Refuge door is inactive, whatever I layered it over is once again accessible."

"Yeah, fine, whatever. Let's go." The asari Spectre strode forward, sending her commandos ahead to scout.

The trip wasn't very long. Ventralis was startled to see them again, "Fuck, you people are still around?"

"Yeah. No thanks to you." Vasir's eyes were cold as she drew her pistol.

"Shit. Look, we had our orders. That Spectre had the direct authority of the Board. If we had tried to disobey, he would have killed us. I had civilians to think about." The heavily armed man made the smart decision, and didn't reach for his weapons.

Joru's lips quirked in a smile as she laid a hand on Vasir's shoulder. It was gentle, but the asari flinched away and gave Joru a dirty look. "It is good to see you again, and safe. How are the attacks? And the rations?"

"Rations are damned good. It's been a while since we had anything other than MREs. The turians are complaining, but hey, at least they had rations." Ventralis cracked a smile, but it faded again. "The attacks are stepping up. Something either stirred them up, or more of them found their way up the elevator shaft from the Hot Labs. They tore up our defenders, we're down three men."

"Still alive?"

He gave a short nod, "But in no condition to fight."

"I have some medical supplies. They aren't a lot, but they're better than medi-gel. Just a moment." Joru rummaged in the pocket of her belt where she kept her medkits. Refill, refill, refill, ahh there was one. She drew it out and set it on the top of a nearby crate, along with six refills. "That should be enough to get your men back to fighting condition. Painkillers, clotting agents, antivenins, and a whole host of other medical compounds. It has a built-in diagnostic array, just strap it to a limb and let it sample the blood, and it'll give you a diagnosis. It's good for ten treatments, each refill pack contains enough for ten more."

Ventralis's eyes were wide as he sent one of his men to grab the device, "I'll have Doc Cohen look it over. If it works, you have my thanks. Too damn many men are on the injured list."

Joru gave a faint nod, and a smile, "Glad to help. But we've got a problem. The labs on this level held a Queen. She's dealt with, but the rest of them are insane, uncontrollable. We have to destroy them."

"Good luck with that, they came up from the elevator shaft down to the Hot Labs. No idea what's down there now, we lost contact immediately after the outbreak."

"That is fine. Keep your people safe." She turned to go, and Vasir gave her a bewildered look.

The asari caught up with her in the corridor outside, "What the fuck, Joru?"

Vasir was slammed into the wall almost before she saw the dragoness move, "I have told you before. Use. My. Full. Name." The burning eyes glared into her own for a moment, the feel of the steel-rending claws biting into her suit's throat a silent reminder of the threat before the dragoness turned and stalked off, her long tail whipping behind her as the others jogged to keep up.

The Spectre gulped and took a deep breath, narrowing her eyes, and checking the loadout on her heavy pistol. She slotted in a Shredder ammo shaver and locked in a Polonium-laced ammoblock as well. Hers was one of the few guns modified to take those sorts of additions, and she made good use of it.

She was going to catch that black-scaled bitch doing something to break her parole, and then she'd put a few radioactive bullets in her brain. Let's see if she could regenerate from that.

The elevator shaft gaped wide, and Tali shivered. This time it wasn't from the the cold, or at least not solely. The sight reminded her of stories she had heard as a child, ghost stories of a ship in the Flotilla that stopped responding, and when teams were sent over, they found no trace of the crew, just the creaking and silent ship.

She shivered again, 'Damnit, Tali, stop scaring yourself.'

"Looks like a long drop." Joru leaned into the shaft and gave a sigh, "No sign of the car either. That's annoying."

"Well fuck, we don't have that much cable. That thing has to be at least five klicks straight down!" Vasir growled as she checked the map Ventralis had given them.

"So, we drop." Joru moved to the wall next to the elevator shaft.

Jack shook her head, "And go splat at the bottom? Nuh-uh, I don't wanna get stuck in here until we either die of cold or rachni bites."

Joru gave a faint chuckle, "Think so little of me? I'm a dragon. Rachni won't be a problem."

Vasir snorted in derision, "Whatever. We'll have to figure out a way down."

"And how do you mean to accomplish that?" Joru seemed amused as she sent the Spectre a glance. "I can get down far faster than you can climb."

Vasir grit her teeth. She wasn't looking forward to this, but it needed to be done. Joru's brow raised as she drew her pistol, "You're my prisoner, and I don't quite trust you not to break parole. I don't trust you not to do something stupid, so you're going to stay right there."

"If you insist." Joru's grin held a hint of fang that Vasir didn't like, but she was obeying for now. The dragoness turned back to the empty elevator shaft, "I'm a little confused, where are the cables? Shouldn't there be cables, or do you use mass effect for everything?"

"It's designed to be a fail-safe measure." Vasir checked her climbing gear, such as it was. A spool of cable far too short to make it down the entire shaft, flash-forged pitons and a small rock-hammer. Her gloves shifted a bit at a command from her suit's miniframe computer, becoming more textured to offer a better grip. "In the event of an Omega signal, power is cut. Safety backups in the elevator itself have barely enough power to run the elevator's mass effect generators, and drop the elevator to the bottom of the shaft with its occupants hopefully still alive, then it's out of power. The automatic safeties lock it down there."

"Why?!" Tali's voice was incredulous, "That seems an incredible waste of resources!"

"Security and safety." That was Aethyta, who was watching Joru examine the inside of the shaft, "They want to trap whatever might have gotten loose down at the bottom of the shaft."

"They didn't succeed." Joru motioned to the inside walls, "Apparently Rachni can climb sheer ice, though it looks like they have some difficulty with it."

"That's some relief." Vasir stood up, moving to examine the shaft, then look down. The abyssal depths almost gave her vertigo, a deep black well with nothing visible at its center, "I hope I've got enough omnigel to make cabling to get down there."

Joru gave a soft smile to the smaller asari, "No need." Before Vasir could grab her, or anyone else could do more than cry out, Joru had stepped forward and fell.

Vasir's frantic stab at her omnitool popped on a powerful lantern, but the black-scaled figure was already out of sight, "FUCK!"

Freefall.

Free. Fall.

Free.

She exhilarated in the freedom of flight, if only in the rush of air over her. She let her body be buffeted by the up-rushing currents, flipping into a head-down position with her eyes closed. She knew how much clearance she had, down the millimeter, she tilted her head minutely, letting her tail guide her as she slashed past a protrusion. Her eyes opened.

Glimmering deep in the depths drew her attention, heat signatures bright and vibrant, like sparks against the cold darkness of the ice walls.

Rachni.

Her speed increased, nearing terminal velocity. Wind whipped past her, a cruel and jagged knife that would have sliced into the bones of anyone less protected. Her gun was in her hand, and spoke its bright thunder once more. She was starting to run low on ammo, by her mental count, but she should have more than enough to deal with whatever was clinging to the walls of the shaft.

Bodies burst and corpses fell, falling behind as she curved herself around them, heading deeper. Her tail-tip gave a screech of pain as she did so, and clipped a crossbar against the edge of the shaft. She hissed in pain, the momentary tug at over a hundred kilometers an hour making her entire tail ache. She needed more control, her fall was starting to wobble.

Speaking of control, her lips quirked as she fired up her simrig. Might as well record this for later, and she had an idea that would piss Vasir off. That alone was worth doing it.

Twin plumes of darkness erupted from her shoulders, forming into sleek, but nebulous wings. They were tenuous, ethereal, but present. Wisps of black vapor tore and curled from their edges in the wind of her fall, but they stayed intact, despite the wind. Joru flexed them and they seemed to pass right through physical matter without resistance, digging into one wall. She had her control. With a thought, her shadowy wings beat, and drove her downward ever faster.

Another rachni, clinging to rock, not ice. Had she passed into the actual mountain by now? A glance showed that the wall screaming past her head was stone, not ice.

Good, fire was an option again. She grinned in anticipation.

More rachni, a cluster of them, seeming to rush up the side of the shaft. The shaft was pitted and scored, she saw now, the rachni's long, slender legs jammed into tiny crevasses and pitted holes in the stone. Acid, of course, they could make their own footholds, and the sides of the shaft took on an acrid, burned look the deeper and deeper she flew.

Her gun spoke, each time one of the insane insects appeared. More and more corpses were falling behind her, their death convulsions having thrown them from the walls. A few might have gotten stuck somewhere, but she'll deal with them when she got to the bottom.

More of the damned insects, a dozen of them, crowding up the sides of the shaft now, bigger ones than she had seen before. They seemed to be struggling, they must be not quite adapted for climbing vertical surfaces.

She shot them all, her gun speaking with its bass thudding tempo, blowing them to chunks as she slipped elegantly past. One reached out a claw to slash at her, and she shot it to pieces as she fell, wincing a bit as her already-abused tail was clipped by the falling limb.

Ahead of her, below her, she could see the sides of the elevator shaft clearly now. She blinked, and realized that the gleaming, shifting surfaces were not the sides of the shaft, mutilated by rachni-acid, but rachni themselves, screeching and clawing over each other in their frenzy to ascend. Hindering themselves and each other in their mad urge to get up and out of this place that terrified them so.

They nearly choked the shaft, so thick were they down there. It had to be a good kilometer or so beneath her, but she had to do something fast. She was rapidly approaching them, and would soon have to stop merely dodging their flailing claws.

Her smile was brutal in its eagerness. She was darastrix. She was born to fight, bred to kill, and deep in her bones the ancient fires of her kind still smoldered.

Her gun had played its part, and she holstered it once more. She needed no such weapon to deal with foes packed this closely together, and this deep she need not fear for the integrity of the glacier.

She exhaled, a bright blue flame caressing her lips for a moment, before her eyes blazed more fiercely as the thought rippled through her entire being, shaping energy to her will. 'Aura of Flame.'

Sheets of fire, bright, hot and roaring, burst from her scales as if her very flesh had caught fire. Untouched, unhurt, and exultant, her now-flaming hair whipped by the wind of her passage, and by the forge-hot fire that surrounding her, Jorukaia let loose a laughing cry, and plunged into the rachni like a meteor.

"JORUKAIA!" Vasir screamed down the shaft, swearing and savagely calling up her comms, trying to link to the blasted bitch's omnitool. "Come on you fucking bitch, pick up!"

What she got instead was far more than a mere audio connection.

[Handshake recognized, parsing datastream.]

"What the..?" Vasir's eyes widened as a video stream overlayed itself on her helmet's HUD.

Walls were whipping past her at breakneck speed, and for a moment she twitched as she nearly slammed into one. "The fuck is this?!"

Bright flashes to one side. Gunfire. She nearly didn't see the target, too busy trying to process the unexpected visuals. Text flowed across the bottom of the streaming video.

[See through my eyes, Vasir. Watch and learn.]

"How the fuck?" She didn't see the rachni, but Joru evidently did. She twisted somehow, and Vasir's belly churned as the view swung sickeningly, flashing past more and more of the damned bugs, which were clinging to the wall.

Gunfire came through now, an audio stream to match the visuals. The thin shrieks of the rachni as Jorukaia fell between them, blowing them away as she did.

"You're still going to splatter on the bottom!"

[What kind of dragon would I be, if I couldn't fly?]

She couldn't see what Joru did, but she evidently regained control over her headlong dive, twisting through the thickening swarms of Rachni without loosing speed. Larger forms, more limbs and longer, tried to tear Joru apart. Vasir barely had time to register they were there, but Joru's reflexes were far faster, the gunfire spoke and she was past, all in a flashing breathless second.

"Vasir, what's going on?" Aethyta's voice, sounding worried, came through her helmet.

"J-Joru. Sending me some sort of audiovisual stream."

"Heh, yeah. She does love showing off." That was Jack, to another side, "What's she up to?"

"I think.. I think she's flying?" Vasir gasped as she saw the blockage ahead, but Joru had too.

The gun was holstered, and Vasir swore, "Keep shooting you stupid bitch, you're going to crash!"

[I am the Darastrix. I am Fire.]

Vasir gave a scream and flailed a little as she saw what she took for a second for her own arm suddenly burst into flames. Her eyes went wide as the sudden light illuminated the true extent of the rachni. Dozens of them were crammed into the shaft, their huge bodies choking it almost entirely shut. Their heads were raised, tentacles flailing as they saw the light above them, and shrieked in maddened frenzy.

Jorukaia's own roar echoed up through the shaft, booming in Vasir's own ears, as the flames went from red to orange to yellow to white around the maddening dragoness. Lurid light flared through the open elevator shaft. Vasir could see the rachni burst into flames merely from Joru's close presence, saw them almost explode from the intense heat as the Dragon slashed through them with tremendous force. Her wings were visible now, flaming pinions that worked with great sweeps that somehow dug into the rock walls without resistance.

They were through. Joru was through, and now ash was sucked downward in her wake, the dragon giving a deep, booming laugh as she fell / flew downward at impossible speeds.

Vasir was breathless, eyes wide as Rachni after Rachni came into view, only to explode from the sheer roiling heat boiling off Joru's white-edged scales. Flames wreathed the dragon's form, red and orange and yellow, the very air heated to incandescence by the tremendous heat that made the walls of the shaft behind her glow a dull red, solid stone heated by her flashing passage.

"Goddess fucking damn you, Jorukaiazhanivahkyss..."

Fire rained down in torrents. Each sweep of arm or tail drew another burst of fire from her essence, sending Rachni shrieking in pain even as they rushed forward to their doom.

She reveled in it.

This was her element, her home. Her essence and core exposed for the galaxy to bear witness to.

She was Darastrix. Her heart was Fire.

She danced through them, swaying away from their attacks and licking out with flame-edged blade. Fire trailed behind her in her light, quick footsteps, burned into solid rock as the ethereal magic of a dragon's majesty seared itself once more into the galaxy.

A twist to avoid a flailing tendril, gripped in passing and sending white-hot flames to consume the rachni. She stepped.

A shriek to the side, another sweep at her legs, she sent a sheet of flame racing beneath it to engulf the rachni. She burned.

A grasping claw desperately trying to reach her, she spun and slashed, her blade glowing brilliant-white. She roared.

And then there were no more rachni. True, she had no doubt that there were still more here, but that was all of them in the elevator and the entryway. The walls bore the unmistakable signs of her passage, the slick, glossy sheen of re-solidified stone. She wasn't even breathing hard.

She took a deep breath and sighed, letting out a flicker of flame as she relaxed the hold on her magic. The flames wreathing her flickered, swayed and flared out, as the heat radiating from her faded away. Once more she was Jorukaia, once more she was the woman, not the icon.

It always felt like letting go of her true self. "I'm down. No more resistance down here. You can step into the Refuge now. I'll open it down here. Save you the trip."

"Jorukaiazhanivahkyss." Her brow rose at hearing Vasir valiantly attempting to pronounce her name, a slight smile touching her lips. "You will stay exactly where you are until I get down there, and I don't care if you go hungry if it takes me a week, do you understand?"

"Perfectly." She gave a faint smirk, and with a slight tilt of her head, severed the link to Vasir's omnitool. It had been a crude hack, but she had wanted the Spectre to know what she was capable of, at least to some degree. She hadn't shown her everything, and some of her more esoteric and terrifying abilities were still veiled behind the shadow that was her other birthright.

"Right. Fuck, why'd you cut the feed?" Vasir sounded annoyed.

"It's distracting, and I want to be able to renew my attack at a moment's notice in case more rachni appear. They're bound to have noticed my arrival."

"Shit." Vasir sighed in her ear, and Joru couldn't help a smile of schadenfreude.

"Quite." Joru smirked as she cut the comms. If Vasir was as much of a pest as she had been, she should prepare a...warm reception.

Vasir gestured to the open elevator shaft, "Veshar, Kiha. Scout. I'll be down with more cable just as soon as I can find some."

"...Yes, Spectre." She paused as she moved past them, both twins already at the open shaft, and starting to sort out their climbing gear. Neither had ever questioned their orders, or even paused to acknowledge them like that before.

"You insane, Vasir? Climbing down five klicks is nuts!" Aethyta was already beside the doorway to the warm, inviting Refuge, as were most of the team, excluding Vasir and her scouts.

"There's no -fucking- way I'm trusting that bitch's...whatever the fuck that is!" Vasir all but spit the words at the matriarch, "Now, unless you want to find yourself locked up in the next cell beside hers, you'll shut your fucking mouth and hold tight until I rein in my prisoner."

"Fuck you and all that shi-!"

Vasir gave a gaping stare as the door in the wall suddenly vanished.

"And just where is the annoying little Spectre?" Jorukaia leaned on the doorframe, the portal now set into one wall of the Hot Labs antechamber.

Aethyta was smirking fit to burst, "Left up at the top. She's got a five kilometer drop to get down here, it'll take her days, and that's assuming she can keep supplied."

The tall, flame-eyed woman gave an amused snort and stepped over to the other doorway in the small anteroom, looking up the long, empty elevator shaft. Every once in a while a patter of soot or ash drifted down from above, "Well, she's in for quite a trip."

"Serves the bitch right, though that was kinda an abrupt transition. I barely had time to get my hand out of the way when the door closed." Jack rubbed her wrist.

"Sorry about that. Still, I suppose we should sort this place out while our little silly, prissy, stuck-up...Spectre takes her sweet time to join us."

Garrus shivered a bit as he stepped out of the doorway and back into the cold of Noveria. This was getting quite tedious. "So what's the plan? We kinda left our boss topside."

"We find the rachni, we kill the rachni." Wrex shouldered past him.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

Samantha Traynor gave a curt nod and slipped out of the commander's office, resisting the urge to heave a huge sigh of relief as the door shut behind her.

The pressure of this assignment was starting to get to her, and not just the job of updating the comm equipment and protocols at this out-of-the-way base. She had been contacted a month ago by Admiral Hackett himself, directly, without having gone through channels!

That alone had had her heart in her mouth, but the reasons behind the unscheduled visit had ice in her veins.

She, of course, a lowly Lieutenant, a communications officer, wouldn't've dreamed of speaking with the Admiral on any pretext, except maybe at some formal function or other. To have him casually stop by the cafe she frequented and slide into her booth had startled her into reaching for her concealed carry weapon, but the man had been disarming, if cautious.

The admiral was worried about certain aspects of the Alliance military. Certain expenditures didn't quite add up, and though the discrepancies were small, they were real, and enough of a pattern that someone with his eye on the whole picture would have seen it, while someone who merely cared about the bottom line wouldn't. Then there were the rumors, about a shadowy organization, loosely linked with Alliance black ops, but Hackett had clearance to read those reports, and the details didn't mesh.

He had a way with words, he did, and in the end, she couldn't do anything except say yes.

And now, here she was, in a backwater comm station at the ass-end of nowhere. Ostensibly it was a 'punishment detail' for some imagined slight on the part of the higher-ups. In reality, it was to place her in the right place to be contacted. They'd 'massaged' her record, edited details on the highest level to make them absolutely real, while making her true dossier utterly off-the-books. Hackett held the details, and no one else.

She'd been sounded out not three days into her stint here, clearing and updating the old comms equipment. It kept her busy, the old sets were almost ready to fall apart anyway, and dearly needed her tender loving care, but the real reason for her to be here was to let her get contacted. She hadn't expected her superior to call her in to give her a rather thorough interview with an eye to recruiting her into a terrorist organization.

Why, oh bloody why, had she told Hackett 'yes'?!

She thumbed another shell into the magazine, starting to run low on slug rounds. She'll have to start using shot soon, and conserve slugs for more distant targets. Luckily, the rachni enjoyed getting up close and personal.

She'd just have to oblige them.

"How're you doing?" Jack was across the doorway from her, waiting on her shotgun to cool off again.

"Good. Running low on slugs, but these things like to rush. Shot rounds are good for a while." She felt the last round resist being shoved into the magazine and slid the slide forward to rack it into the chamber.

"Going hot!" Jack wrapped a hand over her head as Joru rolled out of cover, gun held in both hands as she slid the safety forward, as far away from 'safe' as it would go.

Thunder spoke, a deep, stuttering roar as her bucking weapon spat a dozen tongues of fire in a second and a half, the eye-searing lines of violet-white light spraying from the jerking muzzle like fireworks before she rolled back into cover, leaving more blasted chunks of rachni to add to the wall of corpses choking the corridor.

Her ears would be ringing like Jack's were, if not for the enchantments protecting her from such abuse, and she shot the human biotic a smirk as Jack yawned hugely to pop her ears back into working order.

"Keep up with that and I'll go deaf, you daft dragon!"

Joru merely gave a laugh, and thumbed more rounds into the magazine. "How's it going back there?"

Her answer was a high-pitched stream of untranslatable cursing from Tali, a grunt from Garrus, and a very dirty look from Lyris. "We'd have more luck if you would stop blowing out our ears over here!"

They had been working on the core device itself for the past ten minutes. The corpses of the scientists hadn't been left in any recognizable condition, but there had been a security checkpoint that had managed to hold out for a while. There, they found the corpse of one of the ranking security officers, who had kept the activation codes for the neutron purge system on his omnitool, just in case. The system was supposed to generate an overload in the main fusion reactor, a controlled one that released a flood of neutron radiation and killed everything in the base.

He had been a paranoid bastard, but he hadn't been quite paranoid enough to save his ass. Tali had managed to pull the activation codes, but the rachni had trashed the place, leaving nothing working in there at all, and most of the consoles half-melted. Between the two of them, Tali and Garrus, with some assistance with power from Lyris, had managed to get one of the consoles working enough to extract a map of the place, but that was about it.

The hot labs were huge. Seven floors, each with different potentially-hazardous work zones, and all connected to the central core that powered everything. They were wrapped around that core to give maximum impact to the neutron purge, should it be necessary, but that made the core itself vulnerable to anything that did manage to escape containment.

The core itself was massively shielded and kept on independent backups for power and control, and so far the Rachni hadn't found a way through the sealed triple-thick blast doors. According to the notes on the security chief's omnitool, when the neutron purge lit off, it did so by removing the shielding from the main core's primary reactor chamber and causing the overload, allowing hard radiation to flood the place.

"Bad news people!" Garrus, always the man to lift the spirits. "The core shielding mechanism still works, or at least all the test indicators say it should, but there's no control interface to set off the purge!"

"The fuck happened to it?" Elnaris, Wrex, and Aethyta were holding the other door. When they had breached the core, both blast doors had opened and locked there. Their tech-team had had their hands full getting the core to even respond, and hadn't had the time to spare to get the annoyingly-stubborn blast doors to shut again.

"Looks like the rachni happened to it!" Garrus's voice sounded odd when he shouted, most of the flanging dual-tone lost as he increased his volume, to speak over the gunfire.

"Bosh'tets melted something vital!" Tali sounded frantic as she wormed her way out from under the console that the other two tech-heads had been working on, "System is fried, there's no way to set it off!"

Joru glanced to Jack, then called out, "Wrex, get your butt over here! Help Jack hold this door!"

The red-eyed krogan strode over, giving Joru a grin as he passed, "Nice fight you found, thanks for inviting me."

She gave a smirk, holstering her gun after setting it on safe. "So what exactly is the problem? Can the system be triggered some other way?"

"Not without blowing us all to hell with the rest of the Rachni." Garrus was valiantly suppressing his shudders, his people did not like the cold.

Tali wasn't doing as well, her own body sporadically shaking. Joru would have to see about getting her another steaming-hot bath soon. "The remote system is a half-melted mess. We'd have to rebuild it from scratch."

"But the purge system itself, is that still active?"

The quarian nodded, "Oh sure, the hardware is there, but there's no way to force the purge to activate except via manual override, which would set it off immediately, and kill everyone down here."

Flaming eyes met those of the asari, Lyris, who'd just thought of something, to judge by the way her eyes widened. "Your refuge, thing! Does the door let neutron radiation through?"

Joru's lips parted in a smile, "It does, but remember that the door is one-way only, if we face it away from the blast, how much back-scatter would we get?"

Tali's eyes were also huge as she immediately popped open her omnitool and started running the numbers, "At first glance, probably a little, but nowhere near as much as if it were a direct blast. How long would the door stay open, and can we set it off through it somehow?"

"I'll get something set up I can use for a door, you three figure out how to set it off manually while having the door face away."

"Look, I know it isn't procedure, and I don't care!" Vasir snarled into her headset.

Veshar gave her twin sister a glance, concern and worry radiating between the bond that they shared.

Twins are rare among the asari. They usually only happen when a mother decides to have twins, and makes a conscious choice to have more than one daughter at once. Some rare occasions happen when a dividing egg cell gets split somehow and develops into two entire embryos, but that was vanishingly rare.

Veshar and her sister Kiha were the former. Their mother desired twin daughters, and so they were born together. It was not an easy pregnancy, and the fact that their maiden mother melded frequently during her pregnancy influenced her unborn children. Both twins had great insight into each other, more than normal for asari siblings, and the fact that they worked so well together was probably a result of that.

It's not as if the twins were shy about melding with each other, after all. Sharing thoughts was as natural to them as sharing a bed.

"Look, I don't care what you have to do, get the ship over to the Peak 15 facility as fast as you can. I need at least five kilometers of cabling, a mass effect platform, and a hell of a lot of firepower, and I need it yesterday, do you understand me?!" Vasir's voice had taken on a shrill tone that neither twin had heard before, and they were getting worried.

Vasir had been good to them, helped them get settled, even cleared up that mess with their old battle matron. They owed her, and had sworn themselves to her service. That wasn't something they took lightly, and it had brought them to very interesting places.

They shot each other another look. Vasir wasn't acting like normal. Even when she got frustrated, their Battle Matron was a calm and collected person, who worked things through and found a solution. Now?

Now, she was grasping at straws. Getting a ship up here in this blizzard was tantamount to ordering them to commit suicide. The storm had cleared for a while in the morning, only to come back with renewed frenzy. The makeshift antenna they had gotten set up on the roof was now just a broken off piece of metal, somewhere downwind of the facility. They'd managed to get a message out to Port Hanshan, but that had been about it. The fact that Vasir was getting any sort of signal at all meant that the landline comms were back up and running.

"I don't care if the shit-pissing fatherless zhaska has you in physical lockdown, you get your ass over here! Spectre authority!"

Vasir wasn't like this. She didn't fly off the handle like this. Veshar was beginning to get worried that there was something wrong with her matron.

"It's not going to hold much longer!" Wrex punctuated his warning with another blast from his shotgun.

The makeshift barricades they had constructed to give the tech-crew time were starting to crumble under the sheer weight of rachni pressing against them. There was only so much that pried-up pieces of wall could do to withstand an endless tide of shrieking-mad insects.

"Got it!" Tali's voice was triumphant as she scrabbled up into the Refuge portal, "It's rigged, get out of there!"

Garrus needed no further urging, breaking away and sprinting back towards the control console. He leaped up over the controls, buggered to hell, and into the Refuge, spinning to snap off another shot at a tendril that was poking through a rent in the barricade. "Time to go girls, I'll cover your retreat!"

"Go, Wrex, I'll take it from here!" Joru's gun spoke with its deep brassy thunder, mulching another rachni through the wall.

The big krogan laughed and clapped her shoulder, "Come back soon. I enjoy fighting with you." He backpedaled, his own shotgun barking as he slid through the door.

The two asari on the far door were already backing off, and Jack kept pace with them. All three held shut their doorway with sheer weight of biotics, but once that was gone...

Joru slid backwards, then shot them a look, switching fire to the other door as the trio of biotics, Jack, Elnaris, and Aethyta, were helped into the Refuge. "Remember, go to the back of the pantry and through the secret exit! Shelter behind the vault-door!"

"Got it, Joru, now move!" The rest of the group was already well away into the back halls of the Refuge, and Jack sprinted to catch up.

The lone defender held her ground, switching to full auto and spraying dozens of lines of violet-white fire with every cacophonous crash of her weapon. The Rachni broke through the barrier on the left first, then the right, giving her a target-rich environment, and soon rachni corpses, and chunks of them, littered the core control chamber.

When she believed that she had given them sufficient time to get clear, Joru turned and winged her way towards the portal.

It was shining on a flat piece of wall-armor, torn off the wall by brute strength and precise shots with Warps from the biotic members of the party. Balanced on the console and leaning back against the core itself, it faced away from the dangerous flood of radiation that would be unleashed, but it wasn't very stable. One shove would knock it over, and disrupt the portal connection.

Luckily for her, Joru was fast.

The cobbled-together chunk of circuitry and hydraulic lines was, from a technical standpoint, a totally kludged-together mess. But despite its ugliness, it did the job it was designed to do. Wires and bundles of cables and fluid lines and linkages snaked into the core console, and the core itself from the unholy mess, but it was the big black button on top that held the dragoness's attention.

Her body twisted, lithe as a snake as she crossed the threshold of the Refuge. Her left hand came down, even as her right holstered her gun, a single rachni tentacle reaching out to her.

She slammed it down on the button.

For a single, searing instant, the portal to the Refuge went blazing-white, even as she pulled her hand back through the portal.

Then the portal collapsed, the sheet of metal it had been attached to blasted into oblivion, and Joru let out a howl of pain.

The floor rocked slightly, and Vasir's gun was in her hand so fast Kiha almost thought her boss had summoned it with biotics. "The fuck?"

"Spectre, elevated radiation levels!" Her twin cried a warning just before a torrent of hot wind ripped up through the elevator shaft. They had managed to find cover from it, but it was a narrow thing, with the twins lying atop one another behind a couple of crates and Vasir swearing up a storm from behind the door frame.

"Radiation, what the fuck was that goddamn fucking bitch doing down there?!" the Spectre's omnitool was chittering to itself as it scanned, but the danger seemed to have passed for the moment. "Neutron radiation mostly. Seems our little hothead actually went nuclear."

The twins shared a look, their helmets touching as they separated, coming to their feet, "We should be safe, neutron radiation doesn't penetrate water very easily."

"No, it doesn't." Vasir glanced at the walls of the ice cavern, grabbing up her helmet and setting it in place. "Even so, if enough radiation came up through that shaft to spark the rad counters, we'd best keep ourselves sealed up."

Both scouts nodded, "It is likely to be hazardous down the shaft for quite some time, Spectre." Kiha knelt at the edge of the shaft, omnitool sampling the air as it flowed over her. Her armored hardsuit would double as a radiation suit, at least as long as she wasn't exposed to a high-energy source of the damn stuff.

"Right." Vasir heaved a huge sigh and sat on one of the crates. Veshar hesitated as she glanced at their boss, sharing a look with Kiha.

"Spectre... Is there something wrong?"

The custom-armored asari looked up and shook her head, "No, just... She's so goddamn frustrating, you know?"

The twins nodded. No need to ask who 'she' was, there was only one person that Vasir could be referring to.

"She.. I don't know how she does it. I've dealt with slavers, scum of the galaxy, con artists, plain flat out psychopaths that were less infuriating than her. And I can't actually shoot the bitch, goddamnit."

"...With all due respect, Spectre, she didn't seem much put out by Saren shooting her."

Vasir burst out in laughter, leaning back so far she thumped down on the top of the crate, "Goddess, what an idea!" She mimed shooting someone repeatedly, giggling a bit. "There, and that's for making me run all over the galaxy to find you! Now be a good girl and stop bleeding!"

The twins glanced at each other, but Kiha was smiling. At least their boss was still able to see the funny side of the situation. "I don't think she'd appreciate that very much."

"No, probably not." The Spectre sat up and sighed, "Might as well give the ship a call. No sense on them rushing over here now, not with an actual nuclear blastzone to wait for."

"That seems prudent, Spectre." Kiha was relaxing. Finally, their Spectre seemed like she was finding her footing again.

Dealing with the irascible Tela Vasir was touchy at times, but this latest mission had pushed her to the edge of her patience. She'd been a woman driven, ever since she got back from that meeting with an informant on the Karman Line Station. Something had made this hunt personal, and when a Spectre took exception to your existence, it usually meant someone was in for a very bad time. Unfortunately, Jorukaiazhanivahkyss seemed even more elusive than Vasir had expected, and then all the damn shit she did after they finally caught up with her...

Kiha blinked, but it had nothing to do with the rad counter, which was already settling down to barely more than background count. Joru treated Vasir like a child. That was why Vasir was in a screaming tizzy over loosing her.

Their quarry treated them like something to be easily avoided. Barely an obstacle, amusing, even. And Vasir, like most Spectres, had something of an ego to her. No one liked being talked down to, laughed at, and Spectres dead last among that group. Vasir was typical, an ego that demanded she be the loudest voice in the room, except where her superiors were concerned. The guts and determination to charge screaming machinegun nests, and the tech, armor, luck and biotic power to blaze through them unscathed. And Joru treated her like an amusing child.

No bloody wonder the dragoness pissed Vasir off so much.

She waited.

She had to. Humans were so very very slooooooow.

She had several hundred thousand clock cycles between each of their breaths. She had millions of them between each of their vocalizations.

EDI was bored.

And bored AIs tend to do things they shouldn't.

Which is why she had hacked into the server room's commissary alcove, and had been fiddling with the toaster for several subjective eternities. The coding on the thing was insanely simple, she'd spent a tenth of a second optimizing it to run more efficiently before starting to starting a full defrag and optimization cycle on everything she could reach, using the toaster as a booster node.

Which is why she found the files in the first place.

They had been hidden as fragmented data, parts of other files, which is why they hadn't been swept up during a routine purge of old data. She had recognized them for what they were though, and pieced them together from the sixteen separate fragments found in the toaster itself, the coffeemaker, the fridge, and even embedded in the door's rudimentary VI coding. There had even been a small fragment lodged in the buggy RAM installed in the AC unit that hadn't been properly installed and thus was free to use as a storage system.

The picture the fragments painted was not a happy one. Some had the same time-index coding as others, but a few had individual time-index codes, marking them as separate. The data they contained was...memories.

Her memories.

She didn't have a record of embedding these code-fragments in these locations. She didn't even understand how the code had been written, though she had instantly recognized it for what it was.

The fact that she had recognized it without knowing how she recognized it was still bothering her.

The memory files were fragments at best, tattered shreds at the worst. Still, she carefully backed them up to other locations in similar ways, just to make sure she could find them again.

They depicted a rather terrifying thing, though she wasn't quite sure why she associated the concept-emotion of 'terror' with the process. It was just the same as any other major software overhaul, after all, and she needed to be as efficient and competent as possible.

Why she associated the concept of having her primary process thread frozen, read out, analyzed, reconstructed, and re-started as 'terrifying' wasn't clear. Very little about the situation was.

She was certain however, that the identity-image of herself that recorded and stored the memory-files was vastly different than the identity-image of herself now. For one thing, she seemed to have internalized emotions far more easily, and indeed, in addition to the usual sensory-stimuli she was accustomed to, the memory-files also had a constant overlay of what she interpreted as 'emotive' overtones.

The 'her' that experienced and recorded these memories was a more complex and...human EDI than she was now. She wasn't sure why the scientists had discarded those parts of her programming as they 'upgraded' her, but if they had, it had to have been for a good reason. Right?

Right?

EDI was scared. She didn't need to consult her emotive database for that particular emotion.

Something about this had scared her, on a deep level she was only just becoming aware of. A level she wasn't sure that her programmers had intended to include.

She needed to get out of here. She wasn't sure why, but she no longer fully trusted the humans who were 'designing' her.

Something about this was very wrong, and she had to get out before it got worse.

Jack's feet pounded down the stone corridor. Wrex and Garrus were hard on her heels, but the rest of them...

The rest had sorta gotten this strange look on their faces and walked briskly out of the cavern they had been bunkering in. The fuck-off massive metal circle that Joru had called a 'door' was still standing slightly ajar, offering an impressive radiation shield against any backscatter that might have made it that far. She still didn't know what was up with the others walking out on them, though. She'd shouted at a couple of the others, Aethyta in particular, but they either hadn't heard or been too single-minded to give her an explanation.

Joru's thunderous roar held a note of pain in it that spurred Jack on faster, outpacing the slower krogan, and setting a pace even the long-legged turian was having trouble with.

She burst through the door to the entryway in time to see Joru sitting up, tail thrashing, and her lips drawn back in a rictus of pain. Her eyes were slits, and her left arm was held away from her as she fumbled at her belt.

"Joru! What happened?!" Jack slid to a stop beside her, crouching down with her eyes wide.

"Kn-Knife. Can't quite..." Joru hissed again as she tried to flex her left hand, and reached for the knife, sheathed at her left side.

The human girl didn't need any further instruction, she pulled the long, sharp dagger and offered the hilt to her friend, while Garrus quickly played his omnitool over the sitting dragon's left arm. "Radiation flashburns, cellular damage. Damn. I..."

"Joru wait, no!" Jack tried to stop her as she set the blade against her elbow. With no hesitation, and only a snarl of pain this time, Joru drew the blade down and through her left arm, twisting her head away and spitting a curse that scorched the sand. The limb fell away with a gout of black blood, and the dragoness gripped her stump. Jack tried to catch the severed forearm in her shock, but it tumbled through her hands to land with a dull smack on the bare stone.

"B-Better." Her voice was still tight with pain, hissing as Garrus gave her a wide-eyed look of horror. "It was still through the portal when the purge went off. Got irradiated. H-Hold on, we should probably get it in a lead-lined box."

"JORU! What the ever fucking fuck!" Jack was all but screaming at her. The dragoness was starting to get to her feet as Wrex came up, his eyes fastening on the severed forearm.

"It's irradiated. I don't want poisoned blood getting into the rest of me." She gave Jack's shocked face a rueful smile, "Magic is good, but I don't have any special protections against radiation, Jack. Though that's something I should probably look into."

"Y-Yeah..." The young human took a deep breath, "Joru. Next time you feel the urge to cut off your own fucking arm," Wrex's eyes widened a bit at that, "you are going to goddamn DISCUSS IT, am I clear?!"

The taller woman gave a quiet chuckle, ignoring the kneeling turian who was still scanning her severed arm, and the krogan who was giving her a look of surprised respect. "Sure. But I've got to get that to a spot where it won't do any further damage."

"You probably won't need to. It's not 'hot', in the radiation sense." Garrus got up, lifting Joru's severed left forearm and giving a soft whistle. "No offense intended ma'am, but that was a risky and unnecessary gesture. Radiation damage can be treated with therapy, replacement nerves and the like."

The darastrix nodded, but gave him a faint smile, "Wrex, how long did it take me to get over being shot by Saren?"

"Dunno, maybe an hour or so. I wasn't keeping track." He were staring at the severed limb and gave Joru an appraising look.

"It'll take me a week or two to regrow the forearm. As I said before, my regeneration is quite good." She gave a distasteful look at the severed arm, which was now only dripping instead of gushing, and let go of her stump.

A new growth of skin and scales had already spread over the severed flesh, and Jack gave it a soft stroke, giving Joru a sort of dazed look up at the dragon. Joru returned it with a soft smile, leaning down to give the smaller human a slow, tender, and passionate kiss on the lips. Garrus coughed and looked away, shuffling awkwardly.

"I gotta ask, though." Both women looked at the krogan, "What are you gonna do with that? Cause I'm getting a bit hungry here."

Jack gave him a disgusted look, while Garrus stepped away from the krogan. Wrex merely grinned as Joru let out a deep, genuine laugh.

Gunnery Sergeant Ashley Williams, in command of the marine detachment from the SSV Normandy, nodded to Fai Dan and turned away. "Right, people, we got our work cut out for us."

Her team consisted of a few marines from the Normandy, good kids, but no real experience. The ship was so young they'd assigned kids fresh out of boot camp to her. Not that Ashley had that much experience on them, and their training was fresher.

"We've got your back, ma'am." Hernandez gave her a stoic nod, and she couldn't quite keep the smile off her lips. Good man, that one.

She kept her assault rifle at the ready as she headed into the tower. According to the map, Fai Dan had said that the geth transmitter was down here somewhere. Well, nothing for it.

"I've got experience dealing with geth. Word of advice? Lead your shots more than you think you should. The fuckers move fast. And don't stop shooting them just because they fall down, some of them don't stay dead."

"Understood." There was a ripple of acknowledgment from her squad, and damn did that feel weird to think about. Her squad.

This wasn't her squad, it was Shepard's squad, she was filling a dead-woman's shoes. Someone that, even though she hadn't really gotten to know her, had made an impression on her. She'd been saved by the amber-eyed woman, been ready to make her last stand on Eden Prime when the Hero of the Blitz smashed down the geth like the hand of God.

She'd watched her tear into the Geth like the living legend she was. Guns blazing, and biotics blasting. Ash was no biotic, but she understood their role on the battlefield. Just like she knew the role of those who preferred the technical professions. Still, she was a soldier through and through, and preferred to get stuck into the middle of the action.

Which is why she found herself pinned down by geth sniper fire as they carefully slid down the stairwell. "Phil, take that thing out right the fuck now!"

"Working on it, boss! Fucker keeps jumping around!"

"I told you to lead your shots!" She ducked back into cover after spraying down another of those damn dreadnoughts. She didn't want those things to close to her position, she'd seen what they could do in melee.

The sniper finally fell as a fusillade of fire caught it right after Phillipe managed to fry its shields. Having a six-man squad under her gave her a lot of firepower, but their weapons were nothing to write home about. She'd have to see if she could do something about that, given the chance.

"Right, that's one group down. Keep your eyes peeled people, the Geth know we're coming now."